Cluster

Cluster (pronoubced kluhs-ter)

(1) A number of things of the same kind, growing or held together; a bunch.

(2) A group of things or persons close together.

(3) In US military use, a small metal design placed on a ribbon representing an awarded medal to indicate that the same medal has been awarded again (equivalent to UK & Commonwealth “bar”).

(4) In phonetics, a succession of two or more contiguous consonants in an utterance (eg the str- cluster of strap).

(5) In astronomy, a group of neighboring stars, held together by mutual gravitation, that have essentially the same age and composition and thus supposedly a common origin.

(6) In military ordnance, a group of bombs or warheads, deployed as one stick or in one missile, applied especially to fragmentation and incendiary bombs.

(7) In statistics, a naturally occurring subgroup of a population used in stratified sampling.

(8) In chemistry, a chemical compound or molecule containing groups of metal atoms joined by metal-to-metal bonds; the group of linked metal atoms present.

(9) In computer software, a file system shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers.

(10) In computer hardware, two or more computers working at the same time, each node with its own properties yet displayed in the network under one host name and a single address.

(11) A collective noun for mushrooms (troop is the alternative).

Pre 900: From the Middle English cluster (bunch), from the Old English cluster & clyster (cluster, bunch, branch; a number of things growing naturally together), from the Proto-Germanic klus- & klas- (to clump, lump together) + the Proto-Germanic -þrą (the instrumental suffix), related to the Low German Kluuster (cluster), the dialectal Dutch klister (cluster), the Swedish kluster (cluster) and the Icelandic klasi (cluster; bunch of grapes).  All the European forms are probably from the same root as the noun clot.  The meaning "a number of persons, animals, or things gathered in a close body" is from circa 1400, the intransitive sense, "to form or constitute a cluster," is attested from the 1540s; the use in astronomy dating from 1727.  Cluster is a noun & verb; clustery is an adjective, clustered is an adjective & verb, clustering is a noun, adjective & verb and clusteringly is an adverb; the noun plural is clusters.  The specialized technical words include the adjective intercluster (and inter-cluster) & the noun subcluster (and sub-cluster).

Clusters various

Cluster is a (slang) euphemism for clusterfuck; drawn from US military slang, it means a “bungled or confused undertaking”.  The cluster which the slang references is the cluster bomb, a canister dropped usually from an aircraft which opens to release a number of explosives over a wide area, thus the sense of something that becomes a really big mess.  Cluster bombs began widely to be used during the Second World War, the first deployed being the two-kilogram German Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD-2) (butterfly-bomb).  The US, UK, USSR and Japan all developed such weapons, described in typical military tradition by an unmemorable alpha-numeric array of part-numbers, the battlefield slang then being "firecracker" or "popcorn" and it wasn’t until 1950 that “cluster bomb” was first used by the manufacturers and another ten years before the term came into general use.

However, the informal compound clusterfuck was at first rather more literal, emerging in 1966 meaning “orgy” or some similar event in which intimacy was enjoyed between multiple participants.  The sense of it referencing a “bungled or confused undertaking” started only in 1969, first noted among US troops in Vietnam who, with some enthusiasm, used it both as a graphic criticism of military tactics and the entire US strategy in the Far East.  The standard military euphemism is "Charlie Foxtrot”.

There are alternative etymologies for clusterfuck but neither has attracted much support, one being it was coined in the 1960s by hippie poet Ed Sanders as “Mongolian Cluster Fuck” and this may have been an invention independent of the military use.  The other is said to date from the Vietnam War and have been the creation of soldiers critical of the middle-management of the army, the majors and lieutenant colonels, those responsible for supply and logistics, aspects of war for millennia the source of many military problems.  The insignia for each of these ranks (respectively in gold or silver), is a small, round oak-leaf cluster, hence the notion when there's a screw up in the supply chain, it's a clusterfuck.  It's a good story but etymologists have doubts about the veracity.

Students learning English are taught about euphemisms and the vital part they play in social interaction.  They are of course a feature of many languages but in English some of these sanitizations must seem mysterious and lacking any obvious connection with what is being referenced.  There are also exams and students may be asked both to provide a definition of “euphemism” and an example of use and a good instance of the latter is what to do when a situation really can be described only as “a clusterfuck” or even “a fucking clusterfuck” but circumstances demand a more “polite” word.  So, students might follow the lead of Australian Federal Court Judge Michael Lee (b 1965) in Lehrmann v Network TenPty Limited [2024] FCA 369 who in his 420 page judgment declared the matter declared “an omnishambles”. The construct of that was the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field).  In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a. scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”.  As one read the judgement one could see what the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, he may have been thinking “clusterfuck”.  Helpfully, one of the Murdoch press’s legal commentators, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand) who had been one of the journalists most attentive to the case, told the word nerds (1) omnishambles dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 Word of the Year.  The linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.  If a student cites “omnishambles” as a euphemism for “clusterfuck”, a high mark is just about guaranteed.

Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak leaves & Swords (1957 version).  These “de-nazified” awards were first issued by the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG or West Germany) in 1957 and were awarded only to members of the Wehrmacht entitled to such awards.  Production of these awards ceased in 1986.

German law since the end of World War II generally have prohibited individuals from wearing the swastika but in 1957, under pressure from the newly (1955) reconstituted armed forces (the Bundeswehr (literally "Federal Defense")), the Gesetz über Titel, Orden und Ehrenzeichen (legislation concerning titles, orders and honorary signs) was amended, authorizing the replacement of Nazi-era Knight's Crosses with items with an oak leaf cluster in place of the swastika, essentially identical to the Imperial Iron Cross of 1914.

Lindsay Lohan at the Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022) premiere, New York City, November 2022.

The dress was a Valentino sequined embroidered floral lace column gown with jewel neck, long sleeves and concealed back zip.  It was worn with a gold Valentino Rockstud Spike shoulder bag in crackle-effect metallic nappa leather, complemented with Stephanie Gottlieb jewelry including diamond cluster earrings in 18k white gold and a heart shaped yellow sapphire ring with pavé diamonds.