My husband is fond of an old pub in Northumberland called the Red Lion, once a drovers’ inn, it says. In fact my husband is fond of lots of pubs, many of them unattractive. The red (or gules) lion of the Scottish royal banner is rampant, ‘rearing up’.
This rampancy is connected in complicated ways with the ramping up of virus tests and such things, about which the government is forever talking. Scientific advisers and civil servants probably think ramping up is to provide an inclined plane or ramp. That kind of ramp is borrowed from the French rampe, used in the 16th century for the slope of a staircase. It derived exactly from the ramping of animals in medieval terminology, especially heraldic lions.
The French rampant was a participle, meaning ‘ramping, rearing’, and the French verb ramper is related to the rare English word rimple (and the less rare rumple).
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