Synecdoche

Synecdoche (pronounced si-nek-duh-kee)

In the study of rhetoric, a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special; a member of the figurative language set, a group which includes metaphors, similes and personification; it describes using part of a whole to represent the whole.

Late 1400s: As a "figure of speech in which a part is taken for the whole or vice versa," synecdoche is a late fifteenth century correction of the late fourteenth century synodoches, from the Medieval Latin synodoche, an alteration of the Late Latin synecdochē, from the Ancient Greek συνεκδοχή (sunekdokhḗ) (the putting of a whole for a part; an understanding one with another (and literally "a receiving together or jointly" (ekdokhē the root of interpretation)) from synekdekhesthai (supply a thought or word; take with something else, join in receiving).  The construct was syn- (with) + ek (out) + dekhesthai (to receive), related to dokein (seem good) from the primitive Indo-European root dek- (to take, accept).  The construct of the Greek form was σύν (sún) (with) + ἐκ (ek) (out of) + δέχεσθαι (dékhesthai) (to accept), this final element related to δοκέω (dokéō) (to think, suppose, seem).  The alternative spellings syndoche & synechdoche are rare.  Synecdoche, synecdochization & synecdochy are nouns, synecdochic & synecdochical are adjectives, synecdochize is a verb and synecdochically is an adverb; the noun plural is synecdoches.  

Synecdoche vs. Metonymy

It’s one of those places in English where rules or descriptions overlap and it's easy to confuse synecdoche and metonymy because they both use a word or phrase to represent something else (and there are authorities which classify synecdoche as merely a type of metonymy although this appals the more fastidious).  Technically, while a synecdoche takes an element of a word or phrase and uses it to refer to the whole, a metonymy replaces the word or phrase entirely with a related concept.  Synecdoche and metonymy have much in common and there are grey areas: synecdoche refers to parts and wholes of a thing, metonymy to a related term. The intent of synecdoche is usually either (1) to deviate from a literal term in order to spice up everyday language or (2) a form of verbal shorthand.  In the discipline of structural linguistics, it's noted the distinction is between using a part to represent the whole (pars pro toto, from the Latin, the construct being pars (part) + prō (for) + tōtō, the ablative singular of tōtus (whole, entire)) or using the whole to represent a part (totum pro parte , from the Latin, the construct being tōtum (whole) + prō (for) + parte, the ablative singular of pars (part)).

The Pentagon, Arlington County, Virginia, USA.  Advances in technology have made the site vulnerable to long-range attacks as early as the 1950s and many critical parts of the military's administration are now located elsewhere.  After construction ended in 1943, for some 80 years the Pentagon was (in terms of floor area) the world's largest office building.  It's place on this architectural pecking order has since been supplanted by the Surat Diamond Bourse in Gujarat, India, opened in 2023.

Forms of Synecdoche

(1) A part to represent a whole: The word "head" can refer to counting cattle or people; hands for people on a specific job or members of a crew etc.

(2) A whole to represent a part: The word "Pentagon", while literally a very big building, often refers to the few decision-making generals who comprise the Joint Chiefs of Staff or more generally, the senior ranks of the US military.  However, the use of "the White House" (a smaller building) operates synecdochically to refer to "the administration" rather than "the president" and while it should be reasonable to assume some interchangeably, under both Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021), it's been not uncommon to hear "the White House" being quoted "clarifying" (ie correcting" something said by the president .    

(3) A synecdoche may use a word or phrase as a class to express more or less than the word or phrase actually means: The USA is often referred to as “America” although this is a term from geography while "USA" is from political geography.  The word "crown" is often used to refer to a monarch or the monarchy as a whole but in some systems (notably the UK and Commonwealth nations which retain the UK's monarch as their head of state) the term "The Crown" is a synecdoche for "executive government".  

(4) Material representing an object: Cutlery and flatware is often (and often erroneously) referred to as "silver" or "silverware" even though there may not be a silver content in the metal although, "silver" being also a term referencing a color, the use is thought acceptable.

(5) A single (acceptable) word to suggest to the listener or reader another (unacceptable) word; commonly used as a linguistic work-around of NSFW (not suitable for work) rules on corporate eMail or other systems: “crock” or “cluster” are examples, pointing respectively to “crock of shit” and “cluster-fuck”.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Parvenu

Parvenu (pahr-vuh-noo or pahr-vuh-nyoo)

(1) A person who has recently or suddenly acquired wealth, importance, position or the like, but has not yet developed or acquired the conventionally appropriate manners, dress, surroundings etc.

(2) Being or resembling a parvenu; characteristic of a parvenu.

1802: From the from French parvenu (said of an obscure fellow (often from "the provinces") who has made a great fortune), noun use of the past participle of the twelfth century parvenir (to arrive), from the Latin pervenire (to come up, arrive, attain) the construct being per- (through) from the primitive Indo-European root per- (forward (thus “through")) + venire (to come) from a suffixed form of primitive Indo-European root gwa- (to go, come).  Parvenu has been used as an adjective since 1828.  In the French, parvenue is the feminine form; parvenu/parvenue is one of the few words in English with two forms distinguished according to gender although, in the anyway rare use, the masculine form, incorrect or not, is almost universal.  Parvenu is a noun & adjective and parvenudom, parvenuess & parvenuism are nouns; the noun plural is parvenus.  One imagines the adjective parvenuistic & adverb parvenuistically might be handy but no dictionaries list them as standard forms.

Parvenu dream house, land & BMW package.  Package deals where certain "appropriate" items are included with the property are now not uncommon.

Parvenu and the more recent Australian invention CUB (cashed up bogan) do seem to mean much the same thing and there’s certainly some overlap but there are nuances.  Both refer to those who have recently and suddenly become richer yet lack the cultural and social skills to match what is typically expected of those with wealth.  However, conventions of use seem to suggest while a parvenu tends to come from the middle-class and is often an employee, a CUB is quintessentially from the trades and will likely be self-employed.  The parvenu will drive an Audi, the CUB a pickup truck which by any standards will, to many, seem huge.

The parvenu and the CUB are terms laden with classism.  The idea is of those newly arisen (ie the nouveau riche), especially if by some accident or luck or circumstances, being thought by those already there not worthy of their new assertion of status and despised for their attempts to persuade, the sort of people David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK Prime Minister 1916-1922), speaking of his Liberal Party colleagues, called “jumped-up grocers”.  The CUB by comparison is stereotypically unaware of or indifferent to the conventions of polite society and, content with materialism, makes little attempt socially to climb; should they take up golf, it's because they want to play the game, not just to belong to the "right club".  That means they’re despised for other reasons; multiple huge televisions in vulgar houses thought not tasteful, hence the view it’s just appalling for such people to have money because they have not the taste to know how it should be spent.  Snobs then, especially the poorer ones, look down on the nouveau riche while the pragmatic tend often not to worry so much about the "nouveau" as long as the "riche" is enough.  As a social stratum, CUB has proved most useful for snobs because, unlike the English equivalent chav, there’s no linkage with ethnicity and thus no disapprobation visited upon those who apply the label, classism apparently not yet a suspect category among the woke.

The "Mean Girls" house.

Listed by RE/MAX Realtreon Barry Cohen Homes Inc, an ideal house for a parvenu has re-appeared on the market, made more desirable still by having a pop-culture pedigree, being the home of Regina George (Rachel McAdams (b 1978)) in Mean Girls (2004).  Located in one of Toronto’s exclusive Bridle Path neighbourhood, the mansion has a total floor exceeding 18,000 square feet (1700 m³) and in configured with 13 bedrooms & 14 bathrooms;  it would thus suit a large family or a couple with many friends who like to visit.  Sited on a private, gated estate, the property covers two acres (.8 hectares) and includes staff quarters and a detached coach house with its own guest suite.  Obviously big by domestic standards, it has appeared on the marked on a number of occasions over the last decade, offered for CND$14.8m in 2015 and not selling, despite a price cut of CND$2m some months later.  It re-appeared in 2022, advertised at what was clearly an ambitious CND$27m, soon discounted to CND$23.8m, shortly raised by CND$100K.  In 2024, the asking price is CND$19,995,000 (US$14.95m) and for that the buyer will get desirable features like cathedral ceilings and a twin “Scarlett O'Hara” staircase, similar in scale to the one some wedding venues use for photographs with the train of the bridal grown cascading down the treads.  For those who focus on practicalities, the main bedroom’s walk-in closet is said to be bigger than many Toronto apartments and thus able to accommodate all but the most extravagant collectors of shoes and handbags while the garage can handle six cars, the driveway able comfortably to offer parking to another 20.  Potential parvenu purchasers should run the numbers: annual running costs (excluding utilities but including insurance, taxes and staff costs) would exceed CND$220,000.

Frame

Frame (pronounced freym)

(1) A (sometimes intricate) border or case for enclosing a picture, mirror etc.

(2) A rigid structure formed of relatively slender pieces, joined so as to surround sizable empty spaces or non-structural panels, and generally used as a major support in building or engineering works, machinery, furniture etc.

(3) A body, especially a human body, with reference to its size or build; the physique of someone (often with a modifier (large frame, slight frame etc).

(4) A structure for admitting or enclosing something (doors, windows etc); other in the plural and used with a plural verb).

(5) In textile production, a machine or part of a machine over which yarn is stretched.

(6) In statistics, an enumeration of a population for the purposes of sampling, especially as the basis of a stratified sample

(7) In telecommunications and data transmission, one cycle of a regularly recurring number of pulses in a pulse train (frame relay etc); in networking, an independent chunk of data sent over a network.

(8) A constitution or structure in general; the system.

(9) In beekeeping, one of the sections of which a beehive is composed, especially one designed to hold a honeycomb

(10) In formal language teaching, a syntactic construction with a gap in it, used for assigning words to syntactic classes by seeing which words may “fill the gap”.

(11) In physical film stock, one of the successive pictures, the concept transferred to digital imagery.

(12) In television, a single traversal by the electron beam of all the scanning lines on a television screen.

(13) In computing, the information or image on a screen or monitor at any one time (dated).

(14) In computing (website design), a self-contained section that functions independently from other parts; by using frames, a website designer can make some areas of a website remain constant while others change according to the choices made by the internet user (an individually scrollable region of a webpage; “collapsible frames” a noted innovation).

(15) In philately, the outer decorated portion of a stamp's image, often repeated on several issues although the inner picture may change; the outer circle of a cancellation mark.

(16) In electronics (film, animation, video games), a division of time on a multimedia timeline.

(17) In bowling, one of the ten divisions of a game; one of the squares on the scorecard, in which the score for a given frame is recorded.

(18) In billiards and related games, the wooden triangle used to set up the balls; the balls when set up by the frame.

(19) In baseball, an inning.

(20) In underworld slang, as “frame-up” or “framed”, to incriminate (an innocent person) on the basis of fabricated evidence.

(21) In law enforcement slang as “in the frame”, being suspected by the authorities of having committed a offence.

(22) In publishing, enclosing lines (usually in the form of a square or rectangle), to set off printed matter in a newspaper, magazine, or the like; a box.

(23) The structural unit that supports the chassis of an automobile (X-Frame, ladder-Frame, perimeter-frame, space-frame et al).

(24) In nautical architecture, any of a number of transverse, rib-like members for supporting and stiffening the shell of each side of a hull; any of a number of longitudinal members running between web frames to support and stiffen the shell plating of a metal hull.

(25) In genetics, as “reading frame”, a way of dividing nucleotide sequences into a set of consecutive triplets.

(26) In mathematics, a complete lattice in which meets distribute over arbitrary joins.

(27) A machine or part of a machine supported by a framework, (drawing frame, spinning frame et al).

(28) In printing, the workbench of a compositor, consisting of a cabinet, cupboards, bins, and drawers, and having flat and sloping work surfaces on top.

(29) In bookbinding, an ornamental border, similar to a picture frame, stamped on the front cover of some books.

(30) One’s thoughts, attitude or opinion (usually as “frame of mind”).

(31) To form or make, as by fitting and uniting parts together; construct.

(32) To contrive, devise, or compose, as a plan, poem, piece of legislation etc.

(33) To conceive or imagine, as an idea.

(34) To provide with or put into a frame (painting, mirror et al).

(35) To give utterance to (typically as “frame an answer” etc).

(36) To form or seem to form (speech) with the lips, as if enunciating carefully (often used in speech therapy and elocution training).

(37) To fashion or shape (often a term used in sculpture).

(38) To shape or adapt to a particular purpose.

(39) To line up visually in a viewfinder or sight.

(40) To direct one's steps (archaic).

(41) To betake oneself; to resort (archaic).

(42) To prepare, attempt, give promise, or manage to do something (archaic).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English verb framen, fremen or fremmen (to prepare; to construct, build, strengthen, refresh, perform, execute, profit, avail), from the Old English framiae, fremian, fremman or framian (to avail, profit), from the Proto-West Germanic frammjan, from the Proto-Germanic framjaną (to perform, promote), from the primitive Indo-European promo- (front, forward) and cognate with the Low German framen (to commit, effect), the Danish fremme (to promote, further, perform), the Swedish främja (to promote, encourage, foster), the Icelandic fremja (to commit), the Old Frisian framia (to carry out), the Old Norse frama (to further) and the Old High German (gi)framōn (to do); the Middle English was derived from the verb.  Derived forms such as deframe, misframe, reframe, subframem unframe, beframe, enframe, full-frame, inframe, outframe, well-framed etc are created as needed.  Frame, framer & framableness are nouns, framed & framing are verbs, framable & frameable are adjectives, frameless is an adjective and framably is an adverb; the noun plural is frames.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

In Middle English, the sense of the verb evolved from the mid-thirteenth century “make ready” to “prepare timber for building” by the late 1300s and the meaning “compose, devise” was in use by at least the 1540s. The criminal slang (“framed”; a “frame up” etc) made familiar in popular fiction all revolved around the idea of corrupt or unscrupulous police fabricating evidence to “blame an innocent person” seems not to have been in use until the 1920s (although the dubious policing practices would have had a longer history) and all forms are thought to have been a development of the earlier sense of “plot in secret”, noted since the turn of the twentieth century, that possibly and evolution from the meaning “fabricate a story with evil intent”, first attested early in the sixteenth century.  The use of the noun in the early thirteenth century to mean “profit, benefit, advancement” developed from the earlier sense of “a structure composed according to a plan”, developed from the verb and was influenced by Scandinavian cognates (the Old Norse frami meant “advancement”).

Like its predecessor the 300 SL Gullwing (W198; 1954-1957), the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster (W198; 1957—1963) was built on a tubular space-frame.

The use in engineering “sustaining parts of a structure fitted together” emerged circa 1400 while the general sense of “an enclosing border” of any kind came some two centuries later.  Surprisingly, the familiar form of a “border or case for a picture or pane of glass” seems to have come into use only in the mid-seventeenth century while the use “human body” (ie large frame, slight frame etc) was in use by the 1590s.  Of bicycles it was used from 1871 and of motor cars by 1900 although the early use referred often to what would now be understood as sub-frames, structures which attached to the chassis to support drive-train components, coach-work etc.  The meaning “separate picture in a series from a film” dates from 1960 and was purely descriptive because the individual “frames” on film-stock resembled framed photographs attached in a continuous roll.  The idea of a frame being a “specific state” was in use in the 1660s, the “particular state” (in the sense of “one’s frame of mind”) appears in the medical literature in the 1710s.  The “frame of reference” was coined for use in mechanics and graphing in 1897; the figurative sense coming into use by at least 1924.  As an adjective, frame was in use in architecture & construction by the late eighteenth century.  The A-Frame (a type of framework shaped like the capital letter "A") was an established standard by the 1890s and a vogue for buildings in this shape was noted in the 1930s.

Faster and smaller: By 1964 the IBM 360 mainframe (left) had outgrown its cabinet (the original “main frame”) and had colonized whole rooms.  By 2022, the IBM z16 mainframe (right) was sufficiently compact to return to a cabinet.  

In computing, the word “frame” was used in a variety of ways.  The mainframe (central processor of a computer system) was first described as such in 1964, the construct being main +‎ frame and the reference simply was to the fact the core components were stored in a cabinet which had the largest frame in the room, other, small cabinets being connected with wires and cables.  Mainframes were the original “big machines” in commercial computing and still exist; incomparably good for some purposes, less satisfactory for others.  Frame Relay also still exists as a standardized wide-area network (WAN) technology although it’s importance in the industry has declined since its heyday during the last two decades of the twentieth century.  A packet-switching protocol used for transmitting data across a network, Frame Relay operates at the data link layer of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model, which is the second layer in the seven-layer model.  In a Frame Relay network, data is divided into frames, which are then transmitted between network devices (such as routers), over a shared communication medium and it was this latter aspect which accounted for its widespread adoption: unlike traditional circuit-switching networks (in which a dedicated physical circuit is established for the duration of a communication session), Frame Relay allows multiple logical connections to share the same physical resources so for all but the largest organizations, the potential for cost-saving was considerable.  Importantly too, integral to the protocol’s design was the use of packet switching (which means data is transmitted in variable-sized packets (ie frames) allowing the optimal use of available network bandwidth.  Frame Relay had the advantage also of not adding layers of complexity to the network architecture, relying on the underlying physical layer for error detection and correction rather than including error recovery mechanisms (a la a protocol like X.25 which operate at the network layer).  All of this made Frame Relay scalable and adaptable to various network topologies, making it an attractive “bolt-on” for system administrators and accountants alike.  However, while it still exists in some relatively undemanding niches, the roll-out of the infrastructure required to support internet traffic mean it has substantially been supplanted by newer technologies such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS).

Pop-art painting of Lindsay Lohan in a mid-eighteenth century frame by Jean Cherin (circa 1734-1785), Paris, France.  This is an intricately carved example of the transitional Louis XV-style gilt double sweep frame, ornamented with shell centres, acanthus fan corners, and a top crested with a ribbon-tied leaf & flower cluster atop a cabochon.

Mojito

Mojito (pronounced moh-hee-toh)

A cocktail of Cuban origin, made with white rum, sugar-cane juice, lime juice, soda-water and mint.

1930–1935: From American-infused Cuban Spanish, perhaps a diminutive of the Spanish mojo (orange sauce or marinade) from mojar (to moisten; make wet) from the (hypothetical) Vulgar Latin molliāre (to soften by soaking), from the Latin molliō (soften), from mollis (soft).  The noun plural is mojitos.  The origin of the name mojito is disputed.  The most popular is that the name relates mojo, a Cuban seasoning made from lime and used to flavour dishes.  The alternative view is it’s a derivative of mojadito ("a little wet" in Spanish), the diminutive of mojado (wet).  Mojito is a noun, the noun plural is Mojitos and by convention, it seems mostly to appear with an initial capital.

Ingredients

Juice of 1 large lime.
1 teaspoon granulated sugar.
Small handful of mint leaves, plus extra sprig to serve.
60ml white rum.
Soda-water to taste.

Method

(1) Muddle lime juice, sugar & mint leaves in small jug, progressively crushing mint.  Pour into tall glass, adding handful of ice.

(2) Using chilled glass, pour over rum, stirring with long-handled spoon.  Top-up with soda water, garnish with mint and serve.

To create a virgin mojito, omit rum.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying ice-cream and (an allegedly virgin) mojito, Monaco 2015.

Where Hemmingway sat: Havana’s La Bodeguita del medio.  The red car pictured on the wall is a 1959 "bat wing" Chevrolet Bel Air convertible, emblematic of the "frozen in time" fleet of US cars which for more than two decades formed the backbone of the island's fleet, Washington's economic embargo meaning the importation of newer machinery was banned.  The survivors (now often re-powered with a variety of engines including diesels) are still used to take tourists sightseeing.

It’s not uncommon for the origin of the names of cocktails to be both obscure and contested.  Before the modern era, something like a cocktail could be uniquely regional, something well known in one part of a city yet unknown in another and around the world, because what seemed an appealing combination of drinks in one place would likely be tried in others, it’s a certainty many cocktails would independently have been “invented” many times.  So it’s impossible to know when, where or by whom a great number were first concocted and the contested history tends to be as much about the names as the recipes.  The Mojito, which has gained a new popularity in the twenty-first century, has a typically murky past and there are a number of stories which claim to document its origin, the best-known of which centres on Havana’s La Bodeguita del medio, a restaurant in which Nobel literature laureate Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) spent many hours, sitting in the bar; Hemmingway lent lavish praise to Bodeguita del medio’s version of the Mojito and he was a fair judge of such things.  The restaurant claims to be the first place on the planet to have served the drink, the recipe coming from African slaves working the Cuban sugar cane fields who created the mix from aguardiente de cana (literally “firewater of the sugar cane”).  In this telling it thus started life as a simply distilled spirit from the cane cuttings and the name Mojito fits this tale, the Spanish mojo meaning “to place a little spell”.  That lacks the documentary evidence etymologists prefer but points are gained for romance.

A brace of Mojitos with environmentally friendly stainless steel straws.  The earliest mixes may have been called El Draque.

Sir Francis Drake (circa 1540–1596) was a English sailor remembered for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588 but he was also a pirate (the English preferred the term “privateer”, pirates being “foreigners”), an aspect of his character which appealed to many including Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) who reckoned the decline of England was due to pillaging buccaneers like Drake being replaced by “shopkeepers” (as he would characterize Westminster politicians).  One of Drake's ventures was a plan to take Havana harbor from the Spanish and sack the city of its gold, the holdings there known to be vast but a survey of the place’s formidable defences led him to abandon that idea.  By then however many of his crews were suffering scurvy and dysentery which threatened the continuation of his voyage anywhere so, because Cuba’s native populations were known to have effective remedies for many diseases, Drake sent ashore a landing party to trade this and that for the ingredients for a medicine. The sailors returned with aguarediente de cana (mint leaves mixed with lime juice & the spirit distilled from sugar cane) and the tonic proved efficacious.  As the Admiralty would later understand, it was the lime juice which was most effective (and it would later be supplied on ships to end the problem of scurvy by providing the needed daily dose of vitamin C) but it would have been the spirit which made the potion more palatable to seamen.  A cocktail made with a similar mix was widely served in Cuba in the years after the abortive raid and this may have been the first commercially available Mojito although it didn’t use the name: it was called the El Draque.  It’s thus possible African slaves may not have mixed the first version but they may be responsible for the Mojito moniker, the Spanish mojadito (a little wet) and the Cuban lime-based seasoning mojo the other candidates.  Whatever the source, all agree it was the foundation of the Bacardi company in the mid nineteenth century which started the spread and Hemmingway’s imprimatur from the comfort of Bodeguita del medio’s bar stools was enough for it to begin its rise to the point where the Mojito is among the most popular modern cocktails.

Wonder

Wonder (pronounced wuhn-der)

(1) To think or speculate curiously.

(2) To be filled with admiration, amazement, or awe; marvel (often followed by at).

(3) Something strange and surprising; a cause of surprise, astonishment, or admiration.

(4) The emotion excited by what is strange and surprising; a feeling of surprised or puzzled interest, sometimes tinged with admiration.

(5) A miraculous deed or event; remarkable phenomenon.

(6) As a modifier, exciting wonder by virtue of spectacular results achieved, feats performed etc; wonder drug; wonder horse; seven wonders of the ancient world et al.

Pre 900: A Middle English nouns wonder & wunder from the Old English wundor (marvelous thing, miracle, object of astonishment), from the Proto-Germanic wundrą.  It was cognate with the Scots wunner (wonder), the West Frisian wonder & wûnder (wonder, miracle), the Dutch wonder (miracle, wonder), the Low German wunner & wunder (wonder), the German Wunder (miracle, wonder), the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish under (wonder, miracle), the Icelandic undur (wonder) and the Old Norse undr (wonder).  In Middle English, by the late thirteenth century, it came also to mean the emotion associated with such a sight.  The original wonder drug (1939) was Sulfanilamide, one of the first generation of sulfonamide antibiotics and best known as M&B (after the British manufacturer May & Baker); it was later largely superseded by penicillin and other sulfonamides.  The verb (derivative of the noun), was from the Middle English wondren & wonderen, from the Old English wundrian (be astonished; admire; make wonderful, magnify), from the Proto-Germanic wundrōną.  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian wunnerje, the West Frisian wûnderje, the Dutch wonderen, the German Low German wunnern, the German wundern, the Old High German wuntaron and the Swedish & Icelandic undra.  The sense of "entertain some doubt or curiosity" dates from the late thirteenth century.

Exactly or vaguely synonymous are conjecture, meditate, ponder, question, marvel, surprise, amazement, bewilderment, awe, scepticism, reverence, fascination, confusion, shock, admiration, doubt, astonishment, curiosity, uncertainty, surprise, fear, phenomenon, oddity, miracle, spectacle & speculate.  The noun wonderment is a noun has been in use since the 1530s while wonderful was drawn from the late Old English wunderfoll and wondrous emerged circa 1500, derived (it would seem) from the Middle English adjective wonders which was first noted in the early fourteenth century, originally genitive of the noun wonder, the suffix altered by the influence of such as marvelous etc; it existed as an adverb from the 1550s, the evolution related to wondrously & wondrousness.  Wonder is a noun & verb, wonderer & wonderment are nouns, wonderless is an adjective, wondrous is an adjective & adverb, wonderful is an adjective & adverb (and a non-standard noun) and wondrously is an adverb; the noun plural is wonders. 

The Wonderbra

The “wonder” in the portmanteau word Wonderbra underwent a bit of a meaning shift, decades after the product was released.  Although best-known for the illusory enhancement the structural engineering made possible, “wonder” was originally an allusion to the comfort offered compared with the usually more uncompromising alternatives of the time.  Wonderbra, marketed with an emphasis on the practicality and comfort made possible by innovations in construction, was first trademarked in 1939 by the Canadian Lady Corset Company and was for some years available only in Canada.  Not trademarked in the US until 1955, it wasn’t until 1961 (with the model 1300) that the now familiar, gravity-defying, design was released.

Even then, although the 1300 became the brand’s most popular product, it was thirty years before worldwide success was realized; although it had been on sale in the UK since 1964, sales boomed only in 1992, a success repeated in Europe the next season.  The Wonderbra was launched in the US in 1994 and, assisted by a minimalist advertising campaign featuring Czech model Eva Herzigová (b 1973), became not only a best-seller but part of the cultural lexicon.  The engineering of the Wonderbra wasn’t difficult to emulate and other manufacturers released clones, each with a portmanteau at least as suggestive of “wonder” as it had come to be understood in this context, Gossard offering an Ultrabra and Victoria's Secret a Miracle Bra.  Wonderbra responded to the competition with a novel technical innovation, the Air Wonder, inflatable for "high altitude cleavage".  Included with the Air Wonder was a mini-pump, small enough to fit in a handbag and be thus available for adjustments as circumstances demanded.

Wonderment: Lindsay Lohan as an enhanced Hermione Granger (a fictional character in JK Rowling's (b 1965) Harry Potter series), Saturday Night Live (season 29 episode 18), 1 May 2004.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The pyramid today: it's the only of the seven wonders which still stands.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in 2570 BC and still stands, debate continuing about how it was built, how long the construction took and how many workers were required.  Built as a tomb for the fourth dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Khufu, it was part of a complex which included temples and many smaller pyramids.  Originally, the outermost stones were a highly polished white limestone, many of which were loosened by an earthquake some 600 years ago and over time, all were removed and used in the structures of cities and mosques.  As well as being of interest to architects, Egyptologists and archaeologists in general, the Great Pyramid has attracted cosmologists and mathematicians because of references to the Moon, the Orion constellation, continental gravity and other features of the heavens.  Each side of the pyramid is almost perfectly aligned with the four cardinal points of the compass while the dimensions convert to a ratio that equates to 2π with nearly perfect accuracy.

In the absence of evidence, artists can make of the gardens what they will.

According to legend, the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built in 600 BC and stood until destroyed by earthquake in 226 BC but among historians there has long been debate about (1) whether the gardens ever existed and (2) if they did could they possibly have been the form usually described.  None of that ever bothered medieval story-tellers or poets, some of whom embellished the legend as they went.  Most tales recount how they were by King Nebuchadrezzar II because his wife missed the lush, green gardens of her home and in the medieval imagination they were represented sometimes as a cascading series of rooftops and sometimes dangling from structures built into the walls of the royal palace.  A more recent theory, noting the difficulties which would have existed in creating an irrigation system speculate that the myth may be based on gardens planted not in Babylon but close to Sennacherib at the eastern bank of the river Tigris.

Zeus: Because of the well documented contemporary descriptions, the renditions since are at least conceptually accurate.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (Δίας μυθολογία) was built in 430 BC and was destroyed by fire in 426 AD. Carved from ivory, on a throne of cedarwood, the statue in its right hand held a life-size statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, and in its left a large sceptre topped with an eagle. Said to be some 12 metres (40 feet) tall, contemporary accounts say it occupied the whole width of one of the temple’s aisles, its head reaching to the ceiling.  Debate has long surrounded the fate of the statue, some saying the structure was lost in the fire while others had it moved to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) where if remained for decades before being destroyed.  Evidence about its appearance is fragmentary and unreliable; although there’s no doubt many copies at various scales were created during the 800-odd years it stood, none are known to have survived.

Before the fire: The Temple of Artemis is a popular model for modern re-creations.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Ἀρτεμίσιον) was built in 550 BC and was destroyed by fire in 356 BC though as was the practice then, the structure was rebuilt several times over the centuries.  Unusually by the architectural conventions of the time, it was built substantially of marble and glittered with gold. The scale was impressive: from the high platform over a hundred sculptured columns supported the roof and being at least twice the size of the Parthenon, it was so breathtaking it was said to “rise to the clouds” which literally was rarely true but an example of how exaggeration in social media is nothing new.  The temple functioned also as an art gallery but the centrepiece was of course the statue of Artemis and if the legends are believed it was covered with gold and colourful stones, the legs adorned with carving of bees and animals with the top of the body adorned with breasts, symbolizing fertility.  It was destroyed in an act of arson by a malcontent called Herostratus who wished to secure a place in history by any means and the word herostatic (one who seeks fame at any cost) has endured.  Although made of marble, like the steel & glass Crystal Palace in London, the structure was packed with flammable materials and oils so it burned well.  There exists also a conspiracy theory that the act was a kind of inside job by the temple’s priests who had their own reasons for wanting a new building but neither that nor a reference to the writings of Aristotle which offers a lightning strike as the catalyst for the conflagration have much support among historians.

How to be remembered: The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Μαυσωλεῖον Ἁλικαρνασσεύς), built as a tomb for Mausolus, a governor in the Persian Empire, was constructed in 352 BC and destroyed by earthquake in 1404 AD.  Said to be extravagant even by the standards of personal aggrandizement known throughout antiquity, the work included sculptural reliefs for each of the four sides of the building, commissioned from the leading Greek architects and artists; these soon became something of a tourist attraction.  Almost perfectly square and some 14 stories tall, the base covered some 10,000 square feet (900+ m²) while on each side of the tomb stood nine massive columns supporting a stepped pyramid on which stood by a four-horse marble chariot in which sat carvings of Mausolus and his Artemisia (who supervised the construction).  So famous was the tomb that Mausolus's name became the root for the word for large tombs in many languages.

Pleasing lines: The Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria (ὁ Φάρος τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας) was built in 280 BC and was destroyed by earthquake in 1323 AD.  It sat on the island of Pharos in the harbor of Alexandria and was the world’s first “famous lighthouse” although it was architecturally different to modern structures, built in three stages, all sloping inward.  Built with marble blocks suing lead as mortar, the lowest was square, the middle octagonal and the top cylindrical.  Within the lighthouse was a ramp and “dumb-waiter” used to transport the wood for the fire which burned during the night.  On the lantern floor, a large, curved mirror reflected the sunlight during the day and the fire at night and in clear weather it’s said seafarers could see the light even at a distance of 50 kilometres (30 miles).  The earth’s curvature makes this seem improbable but under certain atmospheric conditions (such as the light reflecting from clouds), it may have been possible.  Also plausible is the legend the light generated by the mirror was so bright and hot it could be used as a weapon of coastal defense to set fire to an enemy’s ships.  Under controlled conditions, because such ships were sometimes coated with flammable, tar-like substances (for water-proofing & timber preservation), it might have been possible but it would have been challenging to achieve this against a moving target.  Such was the power of the legend of the Pharos that the word remains the root for “lighthouse” in a number of languages.

Vaguely plausible rendering of how The Colossus of Rhodes may have appeared.

The Colossus of Rhodes was a very big statue, erected somewhere near the port of the city of Rhodes, the biggest settlement on what is the one of the larger Greek islands of the same name which lies off what is now Turkey’s Aegean coast.  Taking a dozen years to complete, the statue, construction of which began in 292 BC, was erected to honor Elios, the God of the Sun, who brought the inhabitants victory over Demetrius Poliorcetes (Demetrius I of Macedon; “The Besieger" 337–283 BC) who laid siege to Rhodes in 305-304 BC.  It stood for only sixty-odd years, collapsing during a severe earthquake which struck in 226 BC, contemporary reports indicating the structure fractured at both knees before toppling.  Remarkably, the mostly bronze wreckage was left substantially undisturbed for some eight-hundred years, becoming something of a tourist attraction before, in 654, it was salvaged by Arab invaders under the Muslim caliph Mu'awiya I (معاوية بن أبي سفيان‎, Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān; circa 600–680) who sold it to someone described as “a Jewish merchant from Damascus” who is said to have carted it off on a camel train of almost “a thousand beasts”.

Demetrios the Besieger had a scandalous private life but had a flair for military matters, noted too for innovations in engineering such as the machines and devices built by his armies as siege engines.  However, even the forces he was able at deploy in 305-304 BC weren’t sufficient to defeat the fortifications of Rhodes and eventually, Demetrios was compelled to retreat, abandoning the siege machinery on the island.  To give thanks to the Sun God, the Rhodians granted the commission to build a triumphal statue to Helios to the sculptor Chares of Lindos (Χάρης ὁ Λίνδιος, circa 330 BC-circa 280 BC), a pupil of Lysippos (Λύσιππος; fourth century BC) and, in the dozen years between 304-292 BC, he supervised the construction.

Logo of Lindsay Lohan's Beach House at Rhodes.

Structurally, the build was executed along the well-understood engineering principles of the age, the base of white marble first installed to which were affixed the feet and ankles, an iron and stone framework gradually formed as scaffolding and structure proceeded in unison upwards.  To permit the workers to reach the highest levels, an earth ramp was built because the heights involved meant a free-standing system of scaffolding would lack the needed stability; when the work was complete, the earth ramp was demolished and the soil carted off.  While the superstructure was built, workers cast the outer skin in bronze using plates, the metal formed with copper melted in large ovens, to which iron, making 10-20% of the mix, was added.  Then the mouton metal mixture was moved in large ladles to be distributed in clay molds, flat structures used to form sheets varying in thickness according to need. Once cast, the rough edges were ground away and the plates polished before they were transported to the building site where they were hammered to the desired shape to be attached to the iron structure,  The thickest and heaviest plates were those rendered for the feet and ankles, complex in the shape of their curves and needing more mass to afford greater stability.  Thus for a dozen years, the thin bronze skin was added to the growing body of stone, each plate fixed to the iron frame and then to the neighboring plate.  Once finished, it was polished to reflect the rays of the Sun so it would shine as intensely as possible, better to honor Helios. 

How engineers would today build a 122 m (400 feet) high Colossus using modern techniques of structural engineering.  An interesting exercise although the Greek exchequer may have other fiscal priorities.

From the laying of the first stone to its toppling, building its destruction lies a time span of but sixty-seven years but the Colossus ranks as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world with Great Pyramid of Giza which still stands after almost five-thousand.  Such was the scale of the Colossus that the ruins still impressed, “…even lying on the ground, it is a marvel" wrote Pliny the Elder (24-79) who noted few men could wrap their arms around the fallen thumb and each finger alone would have stood taller than most other statues.  The earthquake which so damaged the city 226 BC broke the Colossus at its narrowest and thus weakest points, the knees, and given the mass which existed above, there was no chance it could survive.  Although it would be centuries before the list of the seven wonders would exist as the codified canon now familiar, the stature was already famous and the an offer to the pay the cost of restoration was extended by Ptolemy III Euergetes (Πτολεμαῖος Εὐεργέτης, Ptolemy the Benefactor; circa 280–222 BC) of Egypt.  However, an oracle was consulted and their judgement forbade any re-construction so the offer was declined.  Details of the oracle’s pronouncement are lost but it’s speculated the conclusion may have been the earthquake was the act of a wrathful Helios and the ruins should be left where they fell, lest anger again be aroused.  There is no otherwise compelling explanation to account for why so much valuable bronze wouldn’t for centuries be recycled.

A (fanciful) engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes (circa 1540) by Martin Heemskerck (1498-1574).

The exact location remains uncertain but the notion the Colossus straddled the entrance to Rhodes harbor with ships passing between its legs was a figment of medieval imagination, a thing famously vivid.  Given its method of construction, such a thing would have collapsed under its own weight even before it was complete and, had it stood over the water, not only would construction have been challenging but when it fell, it would have blocked the entrance to the Mandraki harbor.  Despite that, in the early 1980s when a large piece of rubble was discovered in the water, there were still romantics who hoped this might vindicate the medieval theory.  There’s little doubt the story of a 60m (200 feet) tall Colossus straddling the entrance to the harbor was the work of opportunist poets and artists, the engineers and architects of the time sufficiently acquainted with physics and metallurgy to have assured all of the impossibility of their vision yet it seems long to have captured the medieval imagination.  Despite all that, it still influenced many even at the dawn of modernity, being one of the inspirations for the Statue of Liberty but that was designed in a way to ensure greater strength and stability, the weight distribution and the dimensions of the base entirely different.  There’s no doubt the statue stood somewhere in the proximity of Rhodes harbor but archaeological excavations have thus far revealed nothing, not unsurprising given the footprint of a vertical structure is much less than a temple or other building, and the urbanization of Rhodes over two millennia mean the site may long ago have been built-over.  The Colossus though would have shared one noted characteristic with the Statue of Liberty: When copper rubs on iron, it creates electricity, especially in a costal environment with salty air.  Like Liberty, the Colossus of Rhodes made its own electricity.