How Products Are Made

[confused]

Does anyone know why the end of the bow is called the "Frog". Please answer seriously as this is not a joke. Thank you.

[frog_sf]

The term 'frog' is almost certainly a corruption of 'frock', the term used by luthiers for the small vice in which a frog is shaped and fashioned. Just as the vice gripped the ebony, ivory or whatever material the luthier was using at the time, so the 'frog' provides purchase, or grip, from the player (though,of course, that grip should not be vice-like but light and responsive). Why the word was changed from 'frock' no-one seems to know, but a full explanation of the derivation is to be found in 'Histoire des Luthiers Francais, Ses Techniques et Ses Traditions', by Rene Sottises (publ. Poisson d'Avril, Paris, 1968)