Technical (pronounced tek-ni-kuhl)
(1) Belonging or pertaining to an art, science, or the like.
(2) Something peculiar to or characteristic of a particular art, science, profession, trade etc.
(3) Using terminology or treating subject matter in a manner peculiar to a particular field, as a writer or a book.
(4) Skilled in or familiar in a practical way with a particular art, trade etc, as a person.
(5) Of, relating to, or showing technique.
(6) A descriptor of something technically demanding or difficult.
(7) Designed or used for technically demanding sports or other activities.
(8) In education, appertaining to or connected with the mechanical or industrial arts and the applied sciences.
(9) So considered from a point of view in accordance with a stringent interpretation of rules; existing by virtue of a strict application of the rules or a strict interpretation of the wording (a technical loophole in the law; a technical victory etc)
(10) Concerned with or dwelling on technicalities.
(11) In the jargon of financial markets, having prices determined by internal, procedural, speculative or manipulative factors rather than by general or economic conditions.
(12) In association football (soccer), as “technical area”, a defined area adjacent to the pitch, reserved for coaching and support staff.
(13) In sport, as technical foul, a type of offence which, while not involving contact with another player, is a deliberate attempt to commit an offence designed to create an advantage for the perpetrator's team, usually to prevent an opponent from scoring; also called the professional foul.
(14) In boxing, as “technical knock-out (TKO)”, a rule under which the referee (and in some contests an officially appointed physician) can stop the fight and declare a winner if a fighter s judged unable safely to continue (the equivalent of the old hors de combat (out of the fight) from the chivalric code).
(15) In aviation movement management, as “technical stop”, a landing used (1) for refueling, (2) to make unexpected critical repairs or (3) in any case where there’s a need to make an emergency landing.
(16) A re-purposed light pick-up, adapted as a mobile weapons platform and widely used by militaries, paramilitaries, insurgents and irregular combatants, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and West Asia.
1610-1620: From the Latin technicus (skilled in a particular art or subject), from the Ancient Greek tekhnikos (of art; systematic), from τέχνη (tékhnē) (skill, art, craft) + -icus (the suffix added to a noun, adjective, verb etc, to form an adjective). The construct in English was technic + -al. The –al suffix is from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjective suffix -ālis, or the Old & Middle French –el & -al. The Latin form was probably from the Etruscan genitive suffix –l, the i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original case and later used freely. It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic -igaz , the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic –eigs and the Proto-Slavic –bcb which has long since become a nominal agent suffix but appears originally to have served adjectival functions.
Technically adept: Lindsay Lohan using digital devices.
The wide original meaning sense narrowed by the early 1700s to a focus on the mechanical arts, as distinct from literature or high culture, a division which informed the binary system of education in the West for centuries and remains influential today. The first use to describe the offence in sport was recorded in the rules of basketball in 1934 although as early as 1921, boxing had allowed the “technical knock-out” to decide bouts and the first known use of the abbreviation TKO is attested from 1940. The first recorded “Technical difficulty” appeared in print in 1805. The rare adjective atechnical meaning "free from technicalities" is from 1889. Technicality, which now has a generally negative association, was originally neutral, meaning merely "that which is peculiar to any science, the evolution of the meaning shift noted from 1828 when it was used in the sense of "technical character or quality". The noun and adjective “untechnical” is an informal construction, used often as a self-descriptor by those challenged by the complexities of modern phones and such. Technical is a noun & adjective, technicalness is a noun and technically an adverb; the noun plural is technicals.
Retrospectively named “technicals” from the two world wars.
The tank came into use during World War I (1914-1918) but before that, lighter vehicles (cars and trucks) were adapted for military purposes featuring heavy duty components, armor and increasingly, mounted weapons. There were the first “armored cars” and literally they were exactly that, the heaviest, most sturdy cars then in manufacture with armor plates welded on in the spots thought most vulnerable. They proved invaluable in the exercise of many tasks including communications, border raids and reconnaissance and among the most famous was the Rolls-Royce adapted for the purpose by TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia; 1888–1935). Lawrence was enchanted by the thing, trusting in its life-saving robustness and faithful reliability, regretting only its thirst for petrol and propensity to chew through tyres. From the Great War, the armored car evolved in parallel forks, one as a purely military vehicle with accommodation for sometimes a dozen troops, heavily armored but fitted usually only with light caliber, defensive weapons, the other light, essentially unarmored but heavily gunned and relying on its speed and maneuverability as the second element of for its defense. The latter are probably best remembered in the form of the Jeeps the British used in the North African campaign, fitted with heavy machine-guns, mounted to be fired by a gunner standing, they carried a crew of three and were equipped with extra fuel, ammunition, water and little else. In that form they proved ideal for long distance reconnaissance sweeps and what became known as “hit & miss” operations, fuel dumps among the popular targets. The British army thought of them in much the same was the Admiralty once viewed the use of light cruisers, noting the compelling similarities between the behavior of the desert sand with that of the oceans.
The inheritors this tradition are the “technicals”, the light pick-ups used as a platform for anything from general purpose machine guns (GPMG), Rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and (on the machines with a heavier chassis) even 4 inch (105 mm) howitzers. The most commonly accepted origin for the use of the term in this context lay in the Somali Civil War which began shortly after the collapse of the Somali state in 1989. Because so many restrictions were imposed on non-governmental organizations (NGO), they weren’t able to adopt their usual protocols for obtaining security contractors so they contracted with local warlords and their militia, the payments disguised as “technical assistance grants”. These protection forces quickly took to the Japanese pick-ups which had proven their durability in mining and agriculture (the Toyota Hi-Lux the classic example) and had before been used in Africa as weapons platforms, the term “technical” soon transferring from the purchase orders to the vehicles. Ideal for purpose in a battle between warlords, they’re highly vulnerable to attack (from land, air & water) by any conventionally equipped military but the view seems to be the personnel are expendable and in places like London & Washington DC, the generals have always been impressed that those who want them seem never to find significant obstacles in replacing their fleets of technicals. Interestingly, and highly unusually among the military when discussing materiel, technical seems always to be pronounced with its three syllables and never clipped to "tech", presumably because the shortened form already has such a well-established pattern of use in all the armed services.
The Mada 9, Afghanistan’s first “indigenously developed supercar”.
For adaptation as technicals, the various flavors of Toyota pick-ups have long been the favorite mount throughout Africa, the Middle East and West Asia and impressed by the build quality, reliability & robustness, the Afghan Taliban recently choose to use a Toyota Corolla engine to power what they described as Afghanistan’s first “indigenously developed supercar”. Provisionally known as the Mada 9 (apparently an engineering code-name), the plan is to name the production version the “Black Swan”, an allusion to the shock Europeans felt when explorers reached the shores of what is now Western Australia and it became known not all swans were white. Since then, the “black swan moment” has been used in university departments as diverse as philosophy and business to illustrate the dangers of making assumptions. The Mada 9 was built by a company called Entop, the development taking five years and the efforts of some 30 engineers and designers from the Afghanistan Technical Vocational Institute. While it looks the part, given it’s powered by the modest 1.8 litre (110 cubic inch) four-cylinder engine from Toyota’s mass-produced family hatchback, the performance is not going to match similarly styled vehicles which traditionally have been equipped with bigger eight, twelve and even sixteen-cylinder power-plants. However, the Taliban are thinking ahead and in its existing form, the Mada 9 exists essentially as a “proof-of-concept” platform, the plan being to add an electric power-train.
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