Butterfly (pronounced buht-er-flahy)
(1) Any of numerous diurnal insects of the order
Lepidoptera, characterized by clubbed antennae, a slender body, and large,
broad, often conspicuously marked wings which are typically closed when the
creature is at rest (the adjectival form is lepidopteran).
(2) A person who moves effortlessly from one social
situation to another, usually as “social butterfly”.
(3) Someone perceived as unserious and (originally)
dressed gaudily; someone flighty and unreliable; a bolter (common between the
seventeenth & nineteenth centuries; now archaic).
(4) In competitive swimming, a racing breaststroke, using
a dolphin kick, in which the swimmer brings both arms out of the water in
forward, circular motions.
(5) In carpentry, as butterfly joint (or wedge), a type
of joint or inlay used permanently to hold together two or more pieces of timber,
either as something aesthetic (usually with a contrasting color of timber) or
merely functional (also known as the bow tie, dovetail key, Dutchman joint, or
Nakashima joint).
(6) In sculpture, an X-shaped support attached to an
armature.
(7) As butterfly arm, the swinging brackets of a
butterfly table.
(8) In film editing, a screen of scrim, gauze, or similar
material, for diffusing light.
(9) In cooking or the display of food, to spread open in
halves what is being prepared, resembling the wings of a butterfly (the chef’s
term being butterflied).
(10) In financial trading, the simultaneous purchase and
sale of traded call options, at different exercise prices or with different
expiry dates, on a stock exchange or commodity market; historically a
combination of four options of the same type at three strike prices giving
limited profit and limited risk.
(11) In medical & surgical dressings, a prepared
bandage or the use of surgical tape, cut into thin strips and placed across an
open wound in a manner which resembles the open wings of a butterfly, holding
it closed.
(12) In mathematics and geometry, any of several plane
curves that look like a butterfly and known as butterfly curves (transcendental
& algebraic).
(13) In chaos theory and the discipline of alternate (counter-factual)
history, as butterfly effect, a single event or random change in an aspect of
the timeline seemingly unrelated to the primary point of divergence, resulting
from the event.
(14) In automotive design (also used on certain airframes
and nautical vessels) a style of door hinged from the A pillars (the windscreen
frame).
(15) In engineering, a term applied to a number of
fittings (butterfly valve, butterfly clamp, butterfly nut) with some
resemblance to the open wings of a butterfly.
(16) As a motif, a widely use shape in fields such as
architecture, stained glass, visual art and industrial design.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English buterflie, butturflye & boterflye, from the Old English butorflēoge, buttorflēoge & buterflēoge. It was cognate with the Dutch botervlieg and the German Butterfliege (butterfly). The construct was (with variations was butere (butter) + fly. Etymologists note alternative origins for the name. Either (1) it was first applied to creatures with wings of a notably yellowish hue (perhaps the dominant or single species of the type in an area) or (2) as a response to the belief that butterflies ate milk and butter or (3) the first element may have originally been butor- (beater), a mutation of bēatan (to beat), a reference to the movement of the wings. The idea of the fragile things as thieves of milk and butter is supported by similar instances in other European languages including the German Molkendieb (butterfly (literally “whey thief”) and the Low German Botterlicker (butterfly (literally butter-licker) & Bottervögel (butterfly (literally “butter-fowl”). There was also the notion they excreted a butter-like substance, memorably expressed in the Dutch boterschijte (butterfly (literally “butter-shitter”). Most memorable however is the explanation in the tales of the Brothers Grimm (die Brüder Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859)) in which witches disguised themselves as butterflies. The early forms in Middle English superseded the non-native Middle English papilion (butterfly) borrowed from the Old French. Butterfly is a noun & adjective, butterflied is a verb & adjective and butterflying is a verb. The noun plural is butterflies.
Anatomy of the butterfly valve (left), butterfly crochet (centre) & butterfly bandage (right).
Butter was from the Middle English buter & butter, from the
Old English butere, from the
Proto-West Germanic buterā, from the Latin
būtȳrum, from the Ancient Greek
βούτῡρον (boútūron)
(cow cheese), the construct being βοῦς (boûs) (ox,
cow) + τῡρός (tūrós) (cheese). Fly was
from the Middle English flye & flie, from the Old English flȳġe & fleoge (a fly,
a winged insect), from the Proto-Germanic fleugǭ (a fly) & fleugon (flying insect), from the primitive Indo-European plewk- (to fly). It was
cognate with the Scots flee, the Saterland
Frisian Fljooge, the German Low
German Fleeg, the Danish flue, Norwegian Bokmål flue
& Norwegian Nynorsk fluge, the Swedish
fluga and the Icelandic fluga, the Old Saxon fleiga, the Old Norse fluga, the Middle Dutch vlieghe, the Dutch vlieg, the Old High German flioga
and the German Fliege (fly (literally
"the flying (insect))). The Old
English fleogende (flying) was from
the primitive Indo-European root pleu-
(to flow).
Butterfly
was applied first to people circa 1600, originally in reference to vain and
gaudy attire, an allusion to the butterfly’s colors. By 1806 it had become a class-based put-down referencing
a transformation from a lowers social class to something better, invoking the
idea of progression from sluggish caterpillar to graceful butterfly
(essentially a synonym for bounder). The
reference to flitting tendencies (from one interest, occupation etc) dates from
1873 and the social butterfly (one who moves effortlessly between social
encounters and events) emerged in the 1920s.
The swimming stroke was first defined in 1935. As a general descriptor (butterfly agave, butterfly
ballot, butterfly fish, butterfly flower, butterfly plant, butterfly bomb,
butterfly keyboard, butterfly chair, butterfly ray, butterfly shell et al),
it’s applied wherever the resemblance to the open wings appears compelling.
Native to the forests of Central and South America, the Blue Morpho is one of the world’s largest butterflies. The wings are bright blue with lacy black edges, the result of light reflecting off microscopic scales on the back of their wings. Lovely though the blue appears, it’s often not seen because the underside of this butterfly’s wing is a dull brown which provides a camouflage against predators. When the wings are closed as the Blue Morpho sits on a tree, it blends in well.
Butterfly valves came into use in the late 1700s and have been popular since for their ease of manufacture, simplicity of operation and low maintenance. The butterfly nut appeared in 1869 although in some markets it usually called the wing nut; interestingly, the similar fastener with a male thread is known as a wing screw or wing bolt but apparently never a butterfly screw or bolt, presumably because the delicate butterfly is thought emblematically female. The phrase “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” is from Alexander Pope's (1688-1744) Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" (1735). The allusion is to "breaking on the wheel", a form of torture in which victims had their long bones broken by an iron bar while tied to a Catherine wheel, the idea a critique of excessive effort or deployment of resources to solve a simple problem; the less confronting phrase “sledgehammer to crack a nut” means the same thing. The phrase “butterflies in the stomach” is a descriptive reference to the mild stomach spasms induced by anxiety and dates from 1908. The butterfly effect is the most celebrated idea from (the somewhat misleadingly named) chaos theory, introduced in the 1972 paper Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas? by US academic meteorologist Edward Lorenz (1917–2008). Lorenz had developed the theory based on his observations in the early 1960s (in one of the earliest big-data models) that a tiny change in one variable (one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions) had an extraordinary effect upon long-term outcomes.
1966 Dodge Polara convertible (left) and 1966 Dodge Monaco 500 two-door hardtop (right).
The use of the butterfly motif in industrial design in 1967 became a footnote in legal history in the trial of the boxers Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (1937–2014) & John Artis (1946-2021 for a triple murder committed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Evidence presented by the prosecution claimed that witness descriptions of the getaway car matched the hired car Carter was found driving in the vicinity of the Lafayette immediately after the killings, their statements even including a mention of the distinctive butterfly-shaped taillight chrome. However, although a witness said the rear lights lit up across the back of the getaway car, the taillights on Carter's Dodge Polara, although there was certainly a butterfly chrome surround, lit up only at the edges; it was the more expensive Dodge Monaco which had the extended lights. In the ever changing swirl of model names and trim levels which characterized the US industry during its golden age (1955-1973), in 1966 the Polara was Dodge’s entry-level full-size model, above which sat the higher-priced Polara 500, Monaco, and Monaco 500. For some reason (and this was not unusual), the lineup’s nomenclature in Canada differed, being Polara, Polara 440, Polara 880, and Monaco. In both markets however, it was only the Monaco which featured the extended tail lamps.
1966 Dodge Polara convertible (left) and 1966 Dodge Monaco two-door hardtop (right).
On a dark night, glimpsed by a traumatized witness for a second or two, that may have not been significant because tests did reveal the reflective silver finish on the Polara’s rear panel did indeed appear red at certain angles when the brake lights were activated but the distinction, along with a witness’s correction of this in the 1976 re-trial did lead some to suggest the police might have been coaching witnesses; “hardening the statement” in law enforcement lingo. That actually aligned with the evidence provided by another witness and the prosecution would later suggest later suggested the confusion was caused by the defense misreading the court transcript.
2002 Ferrari Enzo (left) & 2016 Ferrari LaFerrari (right).
Butterfly doors are used on some high-performance cars and not wholly as a gimmick, the advantage being that in such usually low-slung vehicle, they do make entry and exit somewhat easier that scissor doors. There’s even more functionally on certain competition cars because (1) they allow the carefully-crafted aerodynamics of the canopy to be preserved, (2) the driver can enter and leave the cockpit more quickly and (3) the design allows the structural integrity of the shell to be maximized. Butterfly doors open upwards and outwards and in that they differ from scissor doors which are hinged to move only upwards, thus offering the possibility of a greater aperture while demanding more lateral clearance. Exotic doors were seen in a handful of pre-war cars, none of which reached production, but it was the Mercedes-Benz 300SL (W194) race-car of 1952 which brought to public attention the idea car doors could be something different. Such was the response that the factory used the gull-wing doors when, in 1954, the 300SL (W198) was offered in a road-going version although the engineering, like the concept, was not new, having before been used in both marine architecture and aircraft fuselages. Similarly, the design elements which underlie butterfly and scissor doors can be found in buildings and machinery dating back in some cases centuries but of late, all have come most to be associated with exotic cars.
1967 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale
Variations on the theme had appeared on the show circuit for some time before butterfly doors debuted on the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale in 1967 which was much admired but it was thought the complexity of such things would limit their use to low volume runs such as the Stradale (of which only 18 were built) or one-off styling exercises such as the Alfa Romeo Carabo (1968) which used scissors. However, scissor doors appeared on the prototype Lamborghini Countach (LP500) and, despite the doubts of some, were retained when the production version was released in 1974. Since then, gull-wings (which open upward on a horizontal axis, hinged from the roof), scissors (which open upwards, rotating on a horizontal axis, hinged from the front), butterflies (which open upwards and outwards on an axis unaligned to the vertical or horizontal, hinged from the A (windscreen) pillar and dihedrals (scissors which move laterally while rotating ) have become common (relatively speaking) and designers seem intent on adding some new twist which seem sometimes to add no advantage but usually attract publicity (admittedly an advantage in the abstract), the most complex to date being the dihedral synchro helix doors which open forward, slide forward and rotate up.
Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR Coupé & Roadster (top) and McLaren MP4-12C Coupé & Spider (bottom).
When Mercedes-Benz released the SLR McLaren (2003-2009), in an attempt to make explicit the link with the 300SL, they laid it on with a trowel, the phrase “gullwing doors” appearing in the factory’s original press release no less than seven times, just in case people didn’t get the message. Nobody was fooled and they’ve always been called butterflies. One clever piece of engineering was seen when the SLR roadster was released, those butterfly doors made possible by using hinge points along the rather than at the top. McLaren used a variation of this idea when it released the McLaren MP4-12C (2011-2014), omitting the top hinge which allowed the use of frameless windows even on the roadster (spider).
IBM Thinkpad 701 commercial, 1995.
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