Lace (pronounced leys)
(1) A net-like, delicate & ornamental fabric made of
threads by hand or machine and formed historically from cotton or silk (modern
forms also using synthetics), woven almost always in an open web of symmetrical
patterns and figures .
(2) A cord or string for holding or drawing together
(shoes, garments, protective coverings etc) as when passed through holes in
opposite edges.
(3) An ornamental cord or braid, especially of gold or
silver, used to decorate military and other uniforms, hats etc.
(4) A small amount of alcoholic liquor or other substance
added to food or drink.
(5) A snare or gin, especially one made of interwoven
cords; a net.
(6) In the illicit drug trade, to add a (usually) small
quantity of another substance to that being offered for sale (also sometimes deliberately
undertaken by users for various purposes).
(7) To fasten, draw together, or compress by or as if by
means of a lace.
(8) To pass (a cord, leather strip etc) through holes
usually intended for the purpose.
(9) To interlace or intertwine.
(10) For decorative purposes, to adorn or trim with lace.
(11) To lash, beat, or thrash.
(12) To compress the waist of a person by drawing tight
the laces of a corset (used descriptively with undergarments like shapewear
which don’t use laces).
(13) To mark or streak, as with color.
(14) To be fastened with a lace:
(15) To attack (usually verbally but the term is rarely
applied to physical violence), often in the form “laced into”.
(16) As the acronym LACE, Used variously including the liquid
air cycle engine (a propulsion engine used in space travel), the Luton Analogue
Computing Engine (a computer used by the UK military) and the Lunar Atmospheric
Composition Experiment (a research project conducted on the final Apollo Moon
mission).
1175–1225: From the Middle English noun lace, laace, laz & las (cord made of braided or interwoven strands of silk etc), from
the Old French laz & las (a net, noose, string, cord, tie,
ribbon, or snare), from the Vulgar Latin lacium
& laceum, from the Classical Latin
laqueum from laqueus (a noose or snare). The
Latin was the source also of the Italian
laccio, the Spanish lazo and the English lasso, a trapping and hunting term,
probably from the Italic base laq- (to
ensnare) and thus comparable with the Latin lacere
(to entice). The verb was from the Middle
English lasen & lacen, from the Old & Middle French lacer,
lacier, lasser & lachier (which endures in Modern French
as lacer), from the Latin laqueāre (to enclose in a noose, to trap). Derived forms have been coined as required
including enlace, lace-up, lacemaker, laceman, self-lacing, unlace, re-laced
& well-laced although de-laced seems to be exclusive to the IT industry
where it has a specific application in video displays (interlaced,
non-interlaced and all that). Lace is a
noun & verb; lacer is a noun, lacing is a verb, lacelike & lacy are adjectives
and laced is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is laces.
Vulcan Surprising Venus and Mars in Bed before an Assembly of the Gods (1679), oil on canvas by Johann Heiss (1640-1704).
The metal net weaved by the god Vulcan was in renaissance
art called “Vulcan’s lace”, reflecting the general use to describe snares, fish
nets etc and vividly it was described in both the Odyssey (the Greek text from the eighth or seventh century BC
attributed to Homer) and Ovid's (the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17
AD) Metamorphoses (Transformations; 8
AD). The god Helios had happened upon
the gods Venus and Mars in a passionate, adulterous liaison and he rushed to inform
god Vulcan of his wife's faithlessness. Enraged, Vulcan forged a net of bronze so fine
it was invisible to the naked eye and carefully he place the lace over Venus’
bed so he could entrap the lustful pair at their next tryst. It didn’t take long and thus ensnared, Vulcan
called upon all of the other Olympians to witness the scene, the cuckolded Vulcan
making his case before his peers.
Because of the method of
construction, the word lace evolved by the turn of the fourteenth century to describe
“a net, noose or snare”, simultaneously with it coming to mean “a piece of cord
used to draw together the edges of slits or openings in an article of clothing”,
a concept which survives in the modern shoelace although in Middle English it
was used most frequently in the sense of “a cord or thread used particularly to
bind or tie”. It was used of fishing
lines and (especially poetically) of the hangman’s rope and noose, the struts
and beams used in architecture, and in the sixteenth century “death's lace” was
the icy grip said to envelop the dying while “love’s lace” was the romantic feeling
said to cloak youth enchanted with each other.
By the 1540s, improved technology meant increased production of “ornamental
cords & braids” which influenced the meaning “fabric of fine threads in a
patterned ornamental open net” becoming the predominant use of the English word
and the trend continued because by the late nineteenth century a review of catalogues
revealed dozens of varieties of commercially available lace. Noted first in 1928 was an interesting use as
an adjective of “lace-curtain” as a piece of class snobbery; it meant “middle
class” or “lower-class with middle-class pretensions”) although it was often
used in US cities of Irish-Americans, so it may also be thought both an ethnic and
anti-Catholic slur.
The verb developed from the noun and emerged so closely most
etymologists consider it a concurrent form, the original sense being “fasten clothing
etc with laces and ties”, a direct adoption of the sense of the Old French lacier “entwine, interlace, fasten with
laces, lace on; entrap, ensnare” developed from the noun las or laz (net, noose,
string, cord). From the early fourteenth
century it was oral shorthand meaning “tighten (a garment) by pulling its laces”
and by at least the late sixteenth century (though probably earlier) it conveyed
the idea of “adorning with lace”, applied both to furniture and fashion. The meaning “to intermix (one’s coffee etc.)
with a dash of liquor (typically brandy or whisky)” emerged in the 1670s, a
product doubtlessly of the spike in popularity of coffee houses. That sense was originally used also of sugar
(from the notion of “to ornament or trim something with lace” while the meaning
“beat, lash, mark with the lash” dates from the 1590s, the idea being the pattern
of streaks left by the lash; from the early nineteenth century this idea was
extended also to verbal assaults (usually as “laced into). With his punctilious attention to such
things, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) in his A Dictionary of the English Language
(1755) noted “laced mutton” was “an old word for a whore”. The most enduring use is probably the
shoelace (also as shoe-lace although the old form “shoe string” seems to be extinct).
The “length of lace used to draw together and fasten the sides of a shoe via
eyelets”, the noun dating from the 1640s.
Also extinct is another older word for the thong or lace of a shoe or
boot: the Middle English sho-thong
which was from the Old English scoh-þwang.
1997 Toyota Century V12. Cars sold on the Japanese domestic market (JDM) are famous for frequently being adorned with what are known as Japanese car seat doilies. While most are mass produced from modern synthetics and appear in things like taxis, some used in up-market cars are genuine hand-made lace. Interestingly, while Toyota created the Lexus brand because of the perceived “prestige deficit” suffered by the Toyota name in overseas markets, for decades the Century (sold only in the JDM) has been supplied to the Imperial household.
The adjective lace-up dates (adj.) from 1831 and was originally a cobblers’ description of boots, directly from the verbal phrase “lace up”; in the mid-twentieth century it was re-purposed in the form “laced-up” to imply someone was “repressed, overly conservative and restricted in their attitudes” the notion being of someone (a woman of course” who never “loosened her stays” with all that implies, the significance being the use emerged decades after corsets had ceased to be worn, the suggestion being a throwback to what were imagined to be Victorian (nineteenth century) attitudes towards personal morality. This adaptation of lace wasn’t entirely new. The early fifteenth century adjective “strait-laced” referenced stays or bodices “made close and tight” which was originally purely descriptive but soon came to be adopted figuratively to suggest someone “over-precise, prudish, strict in manners or morals”. The adjective lacy (which differs from lace-like in that the former references extent, the latter resemblance) and dates from 1804; it’s wholly unrelated to the given name Lacey (which although technically gender-neutral is now conferred predominately on girls and was of Old French origin meaning “from Lacy (or Lassy)” and was originally the surname of French noblemen, the De Lasi, from the Normandy region; it reached the British Isles during the Norman conquest (1066). The trade of laceman (one who deals in laces) was known since the 1660s while the necklace (“a flexible ornament worn round the neck”) was first so described in the 1580s although such things had been worn by both men & women for thousands of years. A gruesome use emerged in Apartheid era South Africa during the 1980s where “necklacing” was a form of extrajudicial summary execution which involved drenching a car tyre in a mixture of oil and petrol (or pure diesel) and forcing it around a victim's chest and arms, then setting it alight. Although never officially condoned by the African National Congress (ANC), it was widely used in black townships as a form of public execution of black Africans suspected of collaborating with the white minority government. Victims were said to have been “necklaced” and the practice spread elsewhere in Africa, to South Asia and the Caribbean.
Real Housemom’s Irish Coffee Royale
Ingredients
2 oz brandy or cognac
2 oz Irish cream
4 oz brewed coffee (served strong)
Granulated sugar crystals (optional and nor recommended)
Instructions
Warm brandy and Irish cream in small saucepan over low
heat, then combine with coffee. A small amount
of sugar can be added but there is sweetness in the Irish cream and the sugar tends
to detract from the taste. The
difference between an Irish coffee and a coffee royale is that the former is
laced with Irish Whiskey, the latter with brandy or cognac.
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