Drake

Drake (pronounced dreyk)

(1) The male of any duck.

(2) As “Drake equation”, a formula proposed as a mechanism to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

(3) A small-bore cannon, used mostly in the seventeenth & especially in the 17th and 18th centuries.

(4) A dragon (archaic).

(5) In angling, an artificial fly resembling a mayfly.

(6) A fiery meteor, comet or shooting star (archaic).

(7) A beaked galley or Viking warship.

1250–1300: From the Middle English drake (male duck, drake), from the Old English draca, an abbreviated form of the Old English andraca (male duck, drake (literally “duck-king”), from the Proto-West Germanic anadrekō (duck leader) and cognate with the Middle Dutch andrake, the Low German drake, the Dutch draak (drake), the German Enterich (drake) and the dialectal German drache.  In the Old High German, the equivalent forms were antrahho & anutrehho (male duck).  The archaic meaning in Middle English (a dragon; Satan) dates from before 900 and was from the Old English draca (in the sense of “dragon, sea monster, huge serpent”), from the Proto-West Germanic drakō (dragon), from the Latin dracō (dragon), from the Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn) (serpent, giant seafish), from δέρκομαι (dérkomai) (I see clearly), from the primitive Indo-European derḱ-.  The Proto-Germanic drako was productive, the source also of the Middle Dutch and Old Frisian drake, the Dutch draak, the Old High German trahho and the German drache.  In a footnote in the long history of the Royal Navy, HMS Marshal Ney, the ship once known as "the worst ship in the navy" was briefly (during her surprisingly long service) re-named HMS Drake.  Drake is a noun, the noun plural is drakes.

Guilty as sin.  Functional necrophilia by a drake: In November 2001, a researcher at Natuurmuseum (Museum of Natural History), Rotterdam, reported the first known case of homosexualnecrophilia in the mallard duck (mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)).

In idiomatic use, the phrase “ducks and drakes” (usually in the form “playing ducks and drakes”) dates from 1585 and means “recklessly or irresponsibly to behave with something valuable or to waste something precious”.  The origin is believed to lie in the pastime of throwing flat stones across the surface of water (known also as “skipping stones”, “stone skiffing” or “skimming stones”, the allusion being to the behavior of the water as the stones bounce before eventually losing energy and sinking, the effect (the circular rings produced by the skipping stone) said to be something like that created by the splashing of ducks and drakes (and waterfowl in general).  It was thus a a reference to doing something in a haphazard and careless manner, without any particular aim or purpose and over time, came to be used generally to refer to any kind of wasteful or irresponsible behavior.  It accurately described the pointlessness of skimming stones but was something of a slight on the birds; their activities on water an indication of their industriousness.  The sense of “to squander, to throw away” emerged in 1614, the notion being “throwing money away, as if throwing away stones in this pastime”.  The perfectly-shapes stone for the purpose (flattish & disc-like) was called a drakestone and in parts of northern England the pastime was known as drakestoning.

The Drake equation

The Drake Equation is a mathematical formula developed in 1961 by US astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake (1930–2022) to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations that (1) might exist in our Milky Way galaxy and (2) be capable of communicating with us. The equation takes into account various factors, such as the number of habitable planets, the probability of life forming on those planets, and the likelihood of intelligent life evolving.  The equation takes the form:

N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy that are within the parameters capable of communicating with us
R* = the rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of stars that have planets
ne = the average number of habitable planets per star with planets
fl = the fraction of habitable planets that develop life
fi = the fraction of planets with life that develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop technology to communicate with others
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space

Sixty-odd years ago, Dr Drake was well aware his equation was not a tool of immediately practical application because there was no certainty about any of the values.  Additionally, the formula was designed not to estimate the actual volume of intelligent life in the galaxy but the number of instances where the conditions might exist which would allow an intelligent to broadcast radio transmissions into space.  Since then, we’ve actually been able to better quantify two of the variables but the equation remains an interesting, speculative device and it remains a widely used tool for discussion and debate.

Portrait of Sir Francis Drake (circa 1581), oil on panel by an unknown artist, National Portrait Gallery, London.  A navigator and buccaneer (a kind of pirate), Sir Francis Drake (1540–1596) was the first Englishman to sail around the world (1577–80) and is best remembered for his command of the fleet which faced the Spanish Armada in 1588.