Skunk (pronounced skuhngk)
(1) Any of various American musteline mammals (of the
weasel family) of the subfamily Mephitinae, especially the Mephitis mephitis
(striped skunk), typically having a black and coat with a white, V-shaped
stripe on the back and a bushy tail; infamous for the noxious smelling fluid sprayed
from two musk glands (anal gland) at the base of the tail when alarmed or attacked
(2) In slang, a most contemptible person; a cheat, knave,
scoundrel or stinker.
(3) In slang, anything very bad or a failure; something
not a total failure yet with still badly flawed can be described as “skunky”
although, in the way of such things, sub-sets of youth have repurposed “skunky”
to mean “very good; highly regarded; most satisfactory” (al la the earlier
inversion of “filth”), possibly under the influence of the famously potent
strain of weed.
(4) In US Navy slang, an unidentified ship or target.
(5) In the slang of drug-users, a strain of Cannabis
sativa & Cannabis indica with high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) (exceeding
those of typical hashish), noted for its exceptionally powerful psychoactive
properties (also as skunkweed, the name derived from its highly aromatic
properties).
(6) In the slang of certain (mostly North American) sports,
to defeat thoroughly in a game, especially when the opponent has been prevented
from scoring.
(7) In the game of cribbage, a win by 30 or more points
(a double skunk 60 or more, a triple skunk 90 or more).
(8) In brewing, of beer, to spoil.
(9) In popular culture, a person whose lifestyle (or as
it’s representing in their fashion choices) is a hybrid of the skinhead and
punk sub-culture, the construct being sk(inhead) + p(unk).
1625–1630: An early Americanism, described as the Massachusett reflex of the southern New
England region Proto-Algonquian šeka·kwa,
the construct being šek- (to urinate)
+ -a·kw (a fox, a fox-like creature);
a similar form was noted as the Abnaki segākw,
segôgw & segonku (he who
squirts urinates). The first application
of the verb was in 1831 when it was used in sport to mean “to completely defeat;
to prevent from scoring” and it was used as an insult as early as 1841. In botany, a local cabbage which gave of a strongly
pungent odor when bruised was in 1751 nicknamed skunk-cabbage, having been
known as skunkweed since 1738 (botanically unrelated to the later use in drug culture
although the etymological influence was similar).
Skunk hair.
The term “skunk hair” originally described a thick blonde highlight applied to dark hair but it’s now used of any two-tone combination (and strictly speaking, beyond two-color schemes it becomes a variegation). Skunk hair is derided by many who treat it as a class-identifier, associating it with those in lower socio-economic demographics, the folk who used to be labelled "not of the better classes". However, it offers real advantages over other color-changes in that it's possible to design one to accommodate re-growth, something frankly impossible with conventional styles which almost always require maintenance and for true obsessives than can be even weekly. While it's true there is a genuine "dark roots" aesthetic which on the right subject can be truly stunning, they're a rare breed so it's a niche market few choose to inhabit. By contrast, a properly executed skunk can last for months.
Lindsay Lohan 2003 with what is sometimes now described as "skunk hair" although it's better understood as a coloring when the dark/light contrast is more dramatic.
Czech, Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish and Slovak all adopted the English spelling, other variations including the Finnish skunkki, the French skunks, the Icelandic skunkur, the Japanese: スカンク (sukanku) and the Russian скунс (skuns). In idiomatic use, the phrase “as welcome as a skunk at a garden party” refers to someone badly behaved who is unwelcome and actively avoided, the analogy essentially literal. By contrast, “drunk as a skunk” means “highly inebriated” (also “skunked” in the vernacular) and belongs to a class of phrases which make no apparent sense and endure only because of their memorable rhyme although “drunk as a monk” may have come from empirical observation. Usefully, in polite society, most are acceptable in a way the rhyming “drunk as a cunt” is not. Skunk and skunks are nouns & verbs, skunking is a verb, skunked is an adjective & verb, skunky & skunkish are adjectives; the noun plural is skunks or (especially collectively) skunk. The adverb skunkily is a non-standard form and the verb skunkify appears exclusive to drug and related cultures.
Skunkworks
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works logo.
A favored term in
industries such as motorsport, aviation, defense, aerospace and ICT, a
skunkworks is a research & development (R&D) facility within a large
organization which exists to pursue special or urgent projects which can’t
conveniently be pursued within the normal structures. A skunkworks was originally a distinct physical
space but latterly it’s been used also to describe concepts or projects and skunkworks
can be either ad-hoc creations which are dissolved when their purpose has been
fulfilled or they can evolve into permanent institutions. One of the attractions of the skunkworks
concept is that, properly implemented, it operates without the apparently
inevitable bureaucracy which evolves in large corporations, stifling and suppressing
new ideas. In a skunkworks, the only administrative
structures which exist are there directly to handle the needs of the project,
unlike corporate bureaucracies which rather than being a means to an end, tend
to become an impediment to the means.
Airframe nose-cone outside the skunkworks tent, circa 1943.
The origin of the term dates from 1943 when the Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation needed urgently to develop a jet-engined pursuit (fighter) aircraft
to counter the imminent threat intelligence suggested the allied air forces
would soon face from German jet-fighters.
With war production operating at high-intensity, Lockheed’s factories
were operating at 100% capacity and thus no space was available for the project
so somewhere had to be found. The
details of quite what happened next have become the stuff of industry myth
& legend but according to Lockheed-Martin’s official history, a large
circus tent was rented and erected next to the closest available space which
turned out to be adjacent to a processing facility which used processes emitting
a strong odor. These wafted over, permeating
the tent and one of the engineers recalled the newspaper comic strip,
"Li'l Abner," in which there was a running joke about a mysterious
and malodorous place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works"
where a strong drink was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange
ingredients. One day, the engineer
answered the telephone by saying "Skonk Works” and, in the way Chinese whispers
work, his fellow employees decided it was the punchier “skunk works”, the name
adopted by Lockheed as the official pseudonym for their Advanced Development
Projects (ADP) division (now Advanced Development Programs). There are variations of the story including which
omits any mention of a tent, suggesting the ADP began in the mot-balled 3G distillery
which still reeked with the smells of making bourbon but Lockheed-Martin has
published a photograph of a prototype aircraft nose-cone with the tent in the
background.
Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star.
The Lockheed P-80 Shooting
Star was the first skunkworks project although the team did undertake some work
on the P-38 Lightning, first flown in 1939.
The first P-80 was built in a remarkable 147 days which, even given the
urgency of wartime production which tended to compress many development programs,
did seem to vindicate the skunkworks concept.
The P-80 reflected the thinking of the time and essentially optimized
the airframe of a piston-engined fighter around a jet engine. In that sense it was a developmental
cul-de-sac and future directions would be set by the German’s Messerschmitt 262,
all designers influenced by the swept-wings and other aerodynamic enhancements
which would define the next generation of fighters. However, the P80’s design was fundamentally
sound, in 1946 setting a new world speed record of 623.8 mph (1003.8 km/h) and
versions were still used as front-line fighters in the Korean War (1950-1953)
although the unexpected appearance in the skies of Russian-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s (NATO
reporting name: Fagot) saw the US rush to send squadrons of North American F86
Sabres to match the swing-wing threat. However, some overseas customers used them as
fighters as late as 1974 and so versatile did the platform prove that it continued
to be developed in a number of roles including reconnaissance, the US military
maintaining a fleet as jet-trainers until well into the 1990s.
Lockheed Martin SR-72 conceptual rendering.
Other skunkworks projects of note include the U-2 spy plane which played a notable role during the Cold War, the F-104 Starfighter which earned two nicknames (“the manned missile” & “the widow maker”; a brace which may be thought of as cause and effect), the high-speed, high-altitude SR-71 Blackbird which in the 1960s which set records which stand today and the F-22 Raptor, thirty-odd years on still the world’s most capable short-range interceptor which would have been produced in much greater numbers had not the USSR dissolved, ending the notion of dog-fights over Berlin being part of the Pentagon’s war-planning. Much of their work appears now to be devoted to hypersonic (Mach 5 (5 x the speed of sound and beyond)) unmanned aerial vehicles (which should be called "UAVs", the common moniker "drone" not appropriate for these)) platforms for one purpose and another. Most of the projects are thus far still vaporware although there have been notable advances in systems and specific components but the most dramatic (and best publicized), the SR-72 seems unlike to proceed even to the prototype stage although the speculated shape does suggest the engineers who ran the numbers on the Concorde's wind-tunnel sessions in the 1960s did their sums correctly. Whatever form of hypersonic UAV eventually does emerge from the skunkworks, it will be armed with hypersonic missiles, a necessity because if existing missiles were used, the thing would shoot itself down.
No comments:
Post a Comment