Sponge (pronounced spuhnj)
(1) Any aquatic, chiefly marine animal of the phylum
Porifera (also called poriferan), having a porous structure and usually a
horny, siliceous or calcareous internal skeleton or framework, occurring in
large, sessile (permanently attached to a substrate and not able independently
to move) colonies.
(2) The light, yielding, porous, fibrous skeleton or
framework of certain animals or colonies of this group, especially of the
genera Spongia and Hippospongia, from which the living matter has been removed,
characterized by readily absorbing water and becoming soft when wet while
retaining toughness: used in bathing, in wiping or cleaning surfaces, etc.
(3) Any of various other similar substances (made
typically from porous rubber or cellulose and similar in absorbency to this
skeleton), used for washing or cleaning and suited especially to wiping flat,
non-porous surfaces; bat sponge, car-wash sponge etc).
(4) Used loosely, any soft substance with a sponge-like
appearance or structure.
(5) Use loosely, any object which rapidly absorbs
something.
(6) As “sponge theory” (1) a term used in climate science
which tracks the processes by which tropical forests "flip" from
absorbing to emitting carbon dioxide and (2) one of the competing ideas in the
configuration of the US nuclear arsenal which supports the retention of the
triad (intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine launched ballistic
missiles (SLMB) and those delivered by strategic bombers).
(7) A person who absorbs something efficiently (usually
in the context of information, education or facts).
(8) A person who persistently borrows from or lives at
the expense of others; a parasite (usually described as “a sponger” or one who
“sponges off” and synonymous with a “leech”.
(9) In disparaging slang, a habitual drinker of alcohol
who is frequently intoxicated (one who is more mildly affected said to be
“spongy” (a synonym of “tipsy”).
(10) In metallurgy, a porous mass of metallic particles,
as of platinum, obtained by the reduction of an oxide or purified compound at a
temperature below the melting point; iron from the puddling furnace, in a pasty
condition; iron ore, in masses, reduced but not melted or worked.
(11) In clinical medicine, a sterile surgical dressing of
absorbent material, usually cotton gauze, for wiping or absorbing pus, blood,
or other fluids during a surgical operation.
(12) In hospitals and other care institutions, as sponge
bath, a method of hygiene whereby a patient is cleaned with a sponge (usually
with soap & water) while in a chair or bed.
(13)In cooking (baking), dough raised with yeast before
it is kneaded and formed into loaves and after it is converted into a light,
spongy mass by the agency of the yeast or leaven.
(14) In cooking, a light, sweet pudding of a porous
texture, made with gelatin, eggs, fruit juice or other flavoring ingredients;
popular as a cake, often multi-layered with whipped cream (or similar) between.
(15) In birth control, a contraceptive made with a
disposable piece of polyurethane foam permeated with a spermicide for insertion
into the vagina.
(16) As “makeup sponge” or “beauty sponge”, a device for
applying certain substances to the skin (most often blusher and similar
products to the face).
(17) In ballistics, a mop for cleaning the bore of a
cannon after a discharge, consisting of a cylinder of wood, covered with
sheepskin with the wool on, or cloth with a heavy looped nap, and having a
handle, or staff.
(18) In farriery, the extremity (or point) of a
horseshoe, corresponding to the heel.
(19) In the slang of the nuclear industry, a worker
routinely exposed to radiation.
(20) To wipe or rub with or (as with a wet sponge), to
moisten or clean.
(21) To remove with a Usually moistened) sponge (usually
followed by off, away, etc.).
(22) To wipe out or efface with or as with a sponge
(often followed by out).
(23) To take up or absorb with or as with a sponge (often
followed by up).
(24) Habitually to borrow, use, or obtain by imposing on
another's good nature.
(25) In ceramics, to decorate (a ceramic object) by
dabbing at it with a sponge soaked with color or any use of a sponge to render
a certain texture on the sirface.
(26) To take in or soak up liquid by absorption.
(27) To gather sponges (from the beach or ocean).
(28) In marine biology (in behavioral zoology, of dolphins),
the description of the use of a piece of wild sponge as a tool when foraging
for food.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun sponge, spunge & spounge, from the Old English noun sponge & spunge (absorbent
and porous part of certain aquatic organisms), from the Latin spongia & spongea (a sponge (also (the “sea animal from which a sponge comes”),
from the Ancient Greek σπογγιά (spongiá),
related to σπόγγος (spóngos) (sponge).
At least one etymologist called it “an old Wandewort” while another
speculated it was probably a loanword from a non-Indo-European language,
borrowed independently into Greek, Latin and Armenian in a form close to “sphong-”. From the Latin came the Old Saxon spunsia, the Middle Dutch spongie, the Old French esponge, the Spanish esponja and the Italian spugna.
In English, the word has been used of the sea animals since the 1530s
and of just about any sponge-like substance since the turn of the seventeenth
century and the figurative use in reference to one adept at absorbing facts or
learning emerged about the same time.
The sense of “one who persistently and parasitically lives on
others" has been in use since at least 1838. The sponge-cake (light, fluffy & sweet)
has been documented since 1808 but similar creations had long been known. Sponge is a noun & verb, sponged &
sponging are verbs, Spongeless, spongy, sponginess, spongable, spongiform &
spongelike are adjectives and spongingly is an adverb; the noun plural is
sponges.
The verb emerged late in the fourteenth century as spongen (to soak up with a sponge) or
(as a transitive verb) “to cleanse or wipe with a sponge”, both uses derived
from the noun and presumably influenced by the Latin spongiare. The intransitive
sense “dive for sponges, gather sponges where they grow” was first documented
in 1881 by observers watching harvesting in the Aegean. The slang use meaning “deprive someone of (something)
by sponging” was in use by at least the 1630s, the later intransitive sense of “live
in a parasitic manner, live at the expense of others” documented in the 1670,
the more poetic phrase “live upon the sponge” (live parasitically, relying on the efforts of others) dating from the 1690s; such folk described as “spongers” since the
1670s. However, in the 1620s, the
original idea was that the victim was “the sponge” because they were “being
squeezed”. The noun sponge in the general
sense of “an object from which something of value may be extracted” was in use
by circa 1600; the later reference to “the sponger” reversed this older sense. In what was presumably an example of military
humor, the noun sponger also had a use in the army and navy, referring to the
member of a cannon’s crew who wielded the pole (with a sponge attached to one end) to
clean the barrel of the weapon after discharge.
It’s not clear when it came into use but it’s documented since 1828.
The adjective spongiform (resembling a sponge,
sponge-like; porous, full of holes) dates from 1774 and seems now restricted to
medical science, the incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease
of cattle "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" (BSE) the best known use although the
public understandably prefer the more evocative "mad cow disease". The adjective spongy (soft, elastic) came
into use in the 1530s in medicine & pathology, in reference to morbid
tissue (not necessarily soft and applied after the 1590s to hard material
(especially bone)) seen as open or porous. In late fourteenth century Middle English,
there was spongious (sponge-like in nature), again, directly from the Latin. In idiomatic use and dating from the 1860s,
to “throw in the sponge” was to concede defeat; yield or give up the
context. The form is drawn from prize-fighting
where the sponge (sitting usually in a bucket of water and used to wipe blood
from the boxer’s face) is thrown into the ring by the trainer or second,
indicating to the referee the fight must immediately be stopped. The phrase later “throw in the towel” means
the same thing and is of the same origin although some older style guides
insist the correct use is “throw up the sponge” and “throw in the towel”. To the beaten and bloodied boxer, it probably was an unnoticed technical distinction.
In zoology, sponges are any of the many aquatic (mostly
sea-based) invertebrate animals of the phylum Porifera, characteristically having
a porous skeleton, usually containing an intricate system of canals composed of
fibrous material or siliceous or calcareous spicules. Water passing through the pores is the
delivery system the creatures use to gain nutrition. Sponges are known to live at most depths of
the sea, are sessile (permanently attached to a substrate; all but a handful not able
independently to move (fully-grown sponges do not have moving parts, but the
larvae are free-swimming)) and often form irregularly shaped colonies. Sponges are considered now the most primitive
members of the animal kingdom extant as they lack a nervous system and
differentiated body tissues or organs although they have great regenerative
capacities, some species able to regenerate a complete adult organism from
fragments as small as a single cell. Sponges
first appeared during the early Cambrian Period over half a billion years ago and
may have evolved from protozoa.
Of sponges and brushes
Both makeup brushes and makeup sponges can be used to apply blush or foundation and unless there’s some strong personal preference, most women probably use both, depending on the material to be applied and the look desired. Brushes are almost always long-bristled and soft sometimes to the point of fluffiness with a rounded shape which affords both precision and the essential ability to blend at the edges. Brushes are popular because they offer great control over placement & blending (users debating whether a long or short handle is most beneficial in this and it may be that both work equally well if one’s technique is honed). Brushes can be used with most varieties of formulation including powders and creams.
This not entirely flattering application of grey-brown shade of blusher attracted comment, the consensus being it was an attempt to create the effect of hollowed cheekbones, a look wildly popular during the 1980s-1990s and one which to which her facial structure was well-suited. However, the apparently “heavy handed” approach instead suggesting bruising. The “contoured blush look” is achieved with delicacy and Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, UK prime-minister 1868 & 1874-1880) might have called this: “laying it on with a trowel”. It’s not known if Ms Lohan used a brush or a sponge but her technique may have been closer to that of the bricklayer handling his trowel. Makeup sponges (often called “beauty blenders” are preferred by many to brushes and are recommended by the cosmetic houses especially for when applying cream or liquid products. They’re claimed to be easier to use than a brush and for this reason are often the choice of less experienced or occasional users and they create a natural, dewy finish, blending the product seamlessly into the skin and avoiding the more defined lines which brushes can produce. When used with a powder blush, sponges produce an airbrushed, diffused effect and are much easier to use for those applying their own make-up in front of a mirror, a situation in which the “edging” effect inherent in brush use can be hard to detect. For professional makeup artists, both sponges and brushes will be used when working on others, the choice dictated by the product in use and the effect desired.
Sponge theory
Ever since the US
military (sometimes in competition with politicians) first formulated a set of
coherent policies which set out the circumstances in which nuclear weapons
would be used, there have been constant revisions to the plans. At its peak, the nuclear arsenal contained
some 30,000 weapons and the target list extended to a remarkable 10,000 sites,
almost all in the Soviet Union (USSR), the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the
Baltic States and countries in Eastern Europe.
Even the generals admitted there was some degree of overkill in all this
but rationalized the system on the basis it was the only way to guarantee a
success rate close to 100%. That
certainly fitted in with the US military’s long established tradition of
“overwhelming” rather than merely “solving” problems.
Over the decades, different strategies were from time-to-time adopted as tensions rose and fell or responded to changes in circumstances such as arms control treaties and, most obviously, the end of the Cold War when the USSR was dissolved. The processes which produced these changes were always the same: (1) inter-service squabbles between the army, navy & air force, (2) the struggle between the politicians and the top brass (many of who proved politically quite adept), (3) the influence of others inside and beyond the “nuclear establishment” including the industrial concerns which designed and manufactured the things, those in think tanks & academic institutions and (4) the (usually anti-nuclear) lobby and activist community. Many of the discussions were quite abstract, something the generals & admirals seemed to prefer, probably because one of their quoted metrics in the early 1950s was that if in a nuclear exchange there were 50 million dead Russians and only 20 million dead Americans then the US could be said to have “won the war”. When critics pursued this to its logical conclusion and asked if that was the result even if only one Russian and two Americans were left alive, the military tended to restrict themselves to targets, megatons and abstractions, any descent to specifics like body-counts just tiresome detail. This meant the strategies came to be summed-up in short, punchy, indicative terms like “deterrence”, “avoidance of escalation” & “retaliation” although the depth was sufficient for even the “short” version prepared for the president’s use in the event of war to be an inch (25 mm) thick. What was describe varied from a threat of use, a limited strike, various forms of containment (the so-called "limited nuclear war") and sometimes the doomsday option: global thermo-nuclear war. However, during the administration of Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) there emerged a genuine linguistic novelty: “sponge theory”.
The term “sponge theory” had been used in climate science
to describe a mechanism which tracks the processes by which tropical forests
"flip" from absorbing to emitting carbon dioxide (a la a sponge which
absorbs water which can be expelled when squeezed) but in the matter of nuclear
weapons it was something different. At
the time, the debates in the White House, the Congress and even some factions
within the military were about whether what had become the traditional “triad”
of nuclear weapons ((1) intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), (2) submarine
launched ballistic missiles (SLMB) and (3) those delivered by strategic bombers)
should be maintained. By “maintained”
that of course meant periodically refurbished & replaced. The suggestion was that the ICBMs should be
retired, the argument being they were a Cold War relic, the mere presence of which threatened peace because they encouraged a "first strike" (actually be either side). However, the counter argument was that in a
sense, the US was already running a de-facto dyad because, dating from the
administration of George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president
1989-1993), none of the big strategic bombers had been on “runway alert” (ie
able to be scrambled for a sortie within minutes) and only a tiny few were
stored in hangers with their bombs loaded.
Removing the ICBMs from service, went the argument, would leave the
nation dangerously reliant on the SLMBs which, in the way of such things, might
at any time be rendered obsolete by advances in sensor technology and
artificial intelligence (AI). The British of course had never used ICMBs and had removed the nuclear strike capability from their bombers, thus relying on a squadron of four submarines (one of which is on patrol somewhere 24/7/365) with SLMBs but the British system was a pure "independent nuclear deterrent", what the military calls a "boutique bomb".
There was also the concern that land or air to submarine communications were not wholly reliable and this, added to the other arguments, won the case for the triad but just in case,
the Pentagon had formulated “sponge theory”, about their catchiest phrase since
“collateral damage”. The idea of sponge
theory was that were the ICBMs retired, Moscow or Beijing would have only five
strategic targets in the continental US: the three bomber bases (in the flyover
states of Louisiana, Missouri & North Dakota) and the two submarine ports, in
Georgia on the south Atlantic coast and in Washington state in the Pacific
north-west. A successful attack on those
targets could be mounted with less than a dozen (in theory half that number
because of the multiple warheads) missiles which would mean the retaliatory
capacity of the US would be limited to the SLMBs carried by the six submarines on
patrol. Given that, a president might be
reluctant to use them because of the knowledge Moscow (and increasingly Beijing)
could mount a second, much more destructive attack. However, if the 400 ICBMs remained in
service, an attack on the US with any prospect of success would demand the use
of close to 1000 missiles, something to which any president would be compelled
to respond and the US ICBMs would be in flight to their targets long before the incoming Soviet or Chinese missiles hit. The function of the US
ICBM sites, acting as a sponge (soaking up the targeting, squeezing the retaliation)
would deter an attack. As it was, the
400-odd Boeing LGM-30 Minuteman ICBMs remained in service in silos also in flyover
states: Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. After over fifty years in service, the Minuteman is due for replacement in 2030 and there’s little appetite in
Washington DC or in the Pentagon to discuss any change to the triad.
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