Usage of "the cubalow" - Has anyone heard the phrase?
When I was a child in the 1950s I remember my mother calling the domestic hot water tank 'the cubalow', sounding like 'queuebelow'. Has anyone else heard this word being used?
I found several instances of this word being used, but always as a small structure that is part of a building, not a hot water tank. Do you think that's possible?
The Yorkshire Post has an article about a Yorkshire dialect dictionary, and the author of the dictionary says this: " "In terms of accent, Tykes may all share some similarities, but the words are often peculiar to specific area. I had one woman write to me suggesting the word 'cubalow', it's a lovely word for a low cupboard in the kitchen and she thought it might have had it roots in cubby hole. I couldn't find anyone else who used it, and she did admit that it may have been specific to her own house. I love the thought of families making up their own language." He retells the same story for the BBC.
On Facebook, a US company that makes metal buildings shows a picture of a barn they made with a "3x3 [foot] cubalow".
A website that gathers information important to Ontario, Canada, tells a story about fire towers that have cubalows: "After the big fires the government contracted wooden fire towers to be built on the higher areas." " The first lookout on Green’s Mountain was a one storey shack with a 7’ square windowed cubalow (i.e., cupola) for a 2nd storey.
In 1821, a town in northeastern United States added a porch to their meeting-house instead of a cubalow.
You can find these articles by googling "cubalow" -cuba (that is, your word inside double-quote marks, and then a minus sign next to the word 'cuba').
The Scholar’s Companion has a lovely list of ‘Improprieties Heard in Conversation’, which includes
Cupelo, for cupola
This afterword to a poetry book gives
Cupelo – cupola, a furnace
and This French book about… stuff, seems to back up the ‘furnace’ association and also gives a spelling of ‘cubilot’ which I can imagine giving rise to the ‘cubilow/cubalow’ spelling of the OP.
Interglot gives 'cupola furnace' as the direct translation from the French of 'cubilot'and Google Translate confirms a pronunciation of approximately 'queue-below'.
My speculation therefore is this:
- It is not many generations ago that Hot Water cylinders were an unknown thing in UK houses. My Grandparents in Lancashire certainly didn't have them in their youth.
- Smaller Cupola furnaces look quite a lot like hot water cylinders
- People who were familiar with cupola furnaces in their industry transferred the name to hot water cylinders.
So the next question is: what foundry industries in Yorkshire (or Shetland) might have been using the French word for cupola furnace?
or... (Once you get googling on a subject you find all sorts) it is just straightforward French usage for the fire box used to heat water. I found this image 
which is captioned
la lessiveuse à bouillir sur son cubilot
The washing machine to boil on its cupola
The website this comes from appears to be about the history of a laundry.
So the real questions appears to be, how did Yorkshire women come to be using French laundry terms?