Guidance

Guidance (pronounced gahyd-ns)

(1) The act or function of guiding; leadership; direction.

(2) When used as a modifier (marriage guidance et al), advice or counseling (that provided for students choosing a course of study or preparing for a vocation; that given to couples with “marriage problems” etc).

(3) Supervised care or assistance, especially therapeutic help in the treatment of minor emotional disturbances, use prevalent in the management of “troubled youth”.

(4) Something that guides (used of both hardware & software).

(5) The process by which the flight of a missile or rocket may be altered in speed and direction in response to controls situated either wholly in the projectile or partly at the point of launch (ground, air, sea or space-based).

(6) The general term for the part of the publishing industry devoted to “self-help” titles.

1765–1775: The construct was guide + -ance.  Guide dates from the mid-fourteenth century and was from the Middle English guide (to lead, direct, conduct), from the Old French verb guider (to lead; to conduct (guide the noun), from the Old Occitan guida, from the earlier guier & guidar, from the Frankish wītan (to show the way, lead), from the Proto-Germanic wītaną & witanan (to see, know; go, depart (also “to look after, guard, ascribe to, reproach”)), from the primitive Indo-European weyd or weid (to see, know).  It was cognate with the Old English wītan (to see, take heed to, watch after, guard, to keep) and related to the Modern English wit.  The Proto-Germanic was the source also of the German weisen (to show, point out) and the Old English witan (to reproach) & wite (fine, penalty).  The development in French was influenced both by the Old Provençal noun guidar (guide, leader) and the Italian guidare, both from the same source.  The suffix -ance was an alternative form of -ence, both added to an adjective or verb to form a noun indicating a state or condition, such as result or capacity, associated with the verb (many words ending in -ance were formed in French or by alteration of a noun or adjective ending in –ant).  The suffix -ance was from the Middle English -aunce & -ance, from the Anglo-Norman -aunce and the continental Old French -ance, from the Latin -antia & -entia.  The –ence suffix was a word-forming element attached to verbs to form abstract nouns of process or fact (convergence from converge), or of state or quality and was from the Middle English -ence, from the Old French -ence, from the Latin –entia & -antia (depending on the vowel in the stem word).  The Latin present-participle endings for verbs stems in -a- were distinguished from those in -i- and -e- and as the Old French evolved from Latin, these were leveled to -ance, but later French borrowings from Latin (some of them subsequently passed to English) used the appropriate Latin form of the ending, as did words borrowed by English directly from Latin, thus diligence, absence et al.  There was however little consistency, English gaining many words from French but from the sixteenth century the suffix –ence was selectively restored, such was the reverence for Latin.  Guidance is a noun; the noun plural is guidances.

Lindsay Lohan's latter-day Cady Heron as a High School guidance counsellor.  In November 2023, Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried (b 1985)), Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert (b 1982)) & Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan (b 1986)) were re-united for a presumably lucrative commercial for Walmart's upcoming Black Friday sale.  Constructed as a Mean Girls (2004) spoof and replete with references & allusions, Lindsay Lohan's now grown up Cady Heron appeared as North Shore High School's guidance counsellor, a self-explanatory joke.

The use of the word in jargon divides essentially into two classes, technical & descriptive.  Technical use includes the form “autoguidance” (the construct being auto(matic) + guidance) which is a general term describing the mechanical or electronic devices used to provide a machine with the ability autonomously to move without relying on external directional inputs.  Autoguidance systems date back decades and originally relied on the interaction of stuff like gyroscopes, accelerometers & altimeters (then known as “inertial guidance”) but became more integrated as electronics became smaller and improved in capacity & durability.  The most publicized use was in “guided missiles”, a term which entered general use in the 1950s (although it first appeared in British documents in 1944 in the sense of “a projectile capable of altering course in flight”, distinguishing the German V2 ballistic missile from the V1 (an early (unguided) cruise missile)) and the development of artificial intelligence (AI) has not only refined the technology but actually shifted the paradigm to one in which the machine (in some sense) makes "decisions", a process different from earlier autoguidance systems which were pre-programmed with a defined set of parameters which limited the scope of “decision making” to certain options.  The worrying implication of AI is that it might start making “its own decisions”, not because it has achieved some form of consciousness (in a sense comparable to that possessed by humans) but because the code produces unintended consequences.  When lines of code can be in the millions, not every permutation of events can be tested (although the use of AI should raise the count).  “Teleguidance” came into use to refer to the remote guidance of missiles and torpedoes but later also became a part of “space guidance” (an omnibus term encompassing the guidance operations required to launch a spacecraft into orbit or space, navigate in space and return to Earth or some other place).  Space guidance is especially complex because there can be a lag of minutes or hours between instructions being sent from Earth and received by the craft, thus the need for ground-based transmissions to interact with autoguidance systems.  Specialized forms in engineering include “non-guidance”, “pre-guidance” & “self-guidance”, all of which can be used of hardware components or segments of software within the one guidance system.

Quantum Physics for Dummies by Steven Holzner PhD (1957-2013) sounds like a Pythonesque joke title but it’s real and provides genuinely useful guidance on one of science’s more impenetrable topics.  For most of us, reading it will not mean we will understand quantum physics but it will help us more fully to understand what we don’t know; it is a good self-help book.

The term “e-guidance” is different in that it was just a buzz-phrase (which never really caught on) which referred to guidance given electronically (ie using the internet) and the forms which evolved (teleconferencing, telemedicine) were different again; they referred usually to human-to-human contact via screens rather than in person.  The descriptive uses included the familiar forms such as “guidance counselor”, “marriage guidance” & “guidance industry”, the latter responsible for the dreaded self-help books which although genuinely useful if focused on something specific (eg SpeedPro's highly recommended How to Build & Power Tune Weber & Dellorto DCOE, DCO/SP & DHLA Carburettors), also includes titles like “Getting Closure in Seven Days” or “201 Ways to Feel Better” (even God handed down only 10) et al, the utility of which varied to the extent it’s tempting sometimes to apply the noun “misguidance”.  Misguidance seems not to be used by those whose guidance systems have gone wrong, engineers preferring the punchy “fail” while the management-speak crew came up with “unplanned event”.

Guidance “books”, in one form or another can be traced back thousands of years and while there is evidence multiplication algorithms existed in Egypt (circa 1700-2000 BC) a handful of Babylonian clay tablets dating from circa 1800-1600 BC are the oldest guidance documents yet found, containing not solutions to specific issues but a collection of general procedures for solving whole classes of problems.  Translators consider them best understood as an early form of instruction manual and one tablet was found to include “This is the procedure”, a phrase familiar in many modern publications.  “Guidance” seems to have appeared in book titles in the 1610s.  In 2016, Lindsay Lohan threatened the world with a self-help book offering guidance on living one’s life.  It’s not clear if the project remains in preparation but hopefully a book will one day emerge.

Kim Jong-un & Kim Ju-ae with entourage (pencils poised) on an official visit to a Pyongyang greenhouse farm.

On Saturday 16 March, the DPRK’s (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)) state media department issued a statement, referring to Kim Jong-un’s (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK since 2011) daughter as “great person of guidance”, a term Pyongyangologists swiftly noted was reserved usually for senior leaders, the implication being a programme was in place preparing her status as a potential successor, thus one day becoming Kim IV.  The analysts said it was significant the statement was issued in both English and Korean-language versions of the official Korean Central News Agency report on the visit by the Supreme Leader and his daughter (within the family presumably now thought the "Supreme Daughter") visit to a greenhouse farm.  Attaching great importance to the use of the plural form of the honorific (the unavoidable suggestion being it applied to both), the analysts noted the crucial sentence:

“The great persons of guidance, together with cadres of the Party, the government and the military went round the farm.”

The existence of the Supreme Daughter has for some time been known although the official details are scant, her age or name never mentioned by state media but according to South Korean’s military intelligence service, her name is Kim Ju Ae and she is now aged thirteen.

Official DPRK Central News Agency photograph: Ri Sol-ju (b circa 1987; wife of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un) (left), Kim Ju-ae (b circa 2011; daughter of Kim Jong-un) (centre) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) (right), undisclosed location, February 2023.

The Kim regime, which will have the same sensitivity to domestic public opinion as any authoritarian or despotic operation (an often under-estimated political dynamic in such systems) and it would seem the groundwork for a possible succession has been in preparation for some time.  The appearance in 2023 of Kim Ju-ae at a banquet and subsequent parade commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Korean People's Army (KPA) attracted interest and even then the DPRK-watchers thought it might be a signal she had been anointed as Kim IV to succeed the Supreme Leader when he dies (God forbid).  That was actually her second public appearance, the first in 2022 when she accompanied her father inspecting some of his nuclear missiles, the big rockets long a family interest.  Fashionistas were on that occasion most impressed by the presumptive Kim IV in 2022 because she was dressed in black white & red, matching the color scheme the DPRK uses on its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM); everyone thought that a nice touch.  In honor of the occasion, the DPRK issued a range of ICBM-themed postage stamps featuring the daughter.

Daddy-Daughter day with ICBMs: DPRK postage stamp issue featuring ICBMs, the Supreme Leader & his daughter, Kim Ju-ae.  Like most eleven year old girls, Kim Ju-ae seemed much taken by the beauty of nuclear weapons.

However, the publicity attached to the Kim’s visit to the farm was believed to be the “first expression of elevating Kim Ju Ae to the ranks” of the leadership according to a statement from Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies (UNKS) in Seoul, something confirmed by the Sejong Institute’s Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy (CKPS) which noted the North Korean term hyangdo (guidance) was typically only reserved for “top leaders or successors.”  Attributing meaning to actions in the DPRK seems sometimes more art than science and the record is patchy but the CKPS observed “this level of personal worship for Kim Ju Ae strongly suggests that she will succeed Kim Jong Un as the next leader of North Korea" and it certainly follows the pattern of behavior adopted in the run-up to Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011) inheriting the country in 2011 after the death of Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994).  Notably, the lesson of the political uncertainty after the unexpected early death of the Dear Leader may have been learned and the mistake of not having prepared international & domestic opinion for the reign of the Supreme Leader will not be repeated.  In this, the public appearances and use of “great person of guidance” can be thought of as the early building blocks of the Stalinist personality cult used to reinforce and perpetuate the rule of the Kims since the 1950s.  Since her debut, Kim Ju Ae has appeared at a number of her father's official engagements which have included a visit to a poultry farm, military drills & parades and a tour of a weapons factory.  All this is taken as solid evidence Kim Ju Ae is the preferred successor and she can be thought of as something like a “crown prince” or “crown princess”; the heir to the throne.  It has never been confirmed is the new Supreme Daughter is the oldest or even an only child because the rumors of one or more sons have never been confirmed although the reports persist, including that the health of the possible son is not good.  By contrast, the official photographs seem to suggest Kim Ju Ae is in rude good health and although reports of food shortages in the DPRK appear frequently, she certainly looks well.

The Dear Leader (left), the Supreme Leader (centre) and the Supreme Daughter (right), looking at things through binoculars.  Dating from the time of the Great Leader, looking at things through binoculars is a family tradition and there have been websites devoted to the subject. 

Of course, while deconstructing phrases from Pyongyang is an exercise both abstract and remote for the DPRK-watchers, for the people of North Korea who have enjoyed some 75 years of guidance from the Great Leader, the Dear Leader and the Supreme Leader, the prospect of decades more of the same from the Supreme Daughter will be of more immediate interest.  Public opinion in the DPRK is difficult to assess (although The Economist did publish an interview with the Dear Leader in which he admitted genuine support for the regime was likely little more than 25%) but it shouldn’t be assumed the folk there are not sophisticated consumers of political information and as the despairing staff of old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) used to beg the press, they may be more focused on “what he means, not what he says.”

The second of the DPRK Central News Agency's photographs recording the visit to the greenhouse farm.  Fashionistas will be interested to learn the wearing of leather is a more recent family thing, started by the Supreme Leader who reportedly has banned his subjects from donning black leather, the echo of a number of royal households who centuries ago imposed a proscription on commoners using the color purple which was reserved for royalty.  Of course, the sartorial choice may be something purely pragmatic, black garments known to be "most slimming" and whether the ban has been extended to the Supreme Daughter's fetching chocolate brown has been neither confirmed nor denied.  The notebooks carried by civilian & military members of the entourage are both compulsory & essential: if the Supreme Leader says something interesting, they write it down and presumably, should the Supreme Daughter say something interesting, that too will be noted although experienced stenographers develop techniques to limit the workload.  Those employed at World War II (1939-1945) Führerhauptquartiere (Führer Headquarters) admitted they never bothered writing down the first thing said by the famously sycophantic Wilhelm Keitel (1882–1946; Nazi field marshal & head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the armed forces high command) because it was always the last thing said by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).

Tsar

Tsar (pronounced zahr)

(1) An emperor or king.

(2) Title of the former emperors of Russia and several Slavonic states.

(3) Slang term for an autocratic ruler or leader.

(4) Slang term for a person exercising great authority or power in a particular field.

1545-1555: From the Old Russian tsĭsarĭ (emperor or king), akin to the Old Church Slavonic tsěsarĭ, the Gothic kaisar and the Greek kaîsar, all ultimately derived from the Latin Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) while the Germanic form of the word was the source of the Finnish keisari and the Estonian keisar.  The prehistoric Slavic was tsesar, Tsar first adopted as an imperial title by Ivan IV (Ivan Vasilyevich, 1530–1584 and better remembered as Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584) in 1547.  There’s a curious history to spelling tsar as czar.  Spelled thus, it’s contrary to the usage of all Slavonic languages; the word was so spelt by the Carniolan diplomat & historian Baron Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486–1566) in his work (in Latin) Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549)) which was such a seminal early source of knowledge of Russia in Western Europe that "czar" passed into the Western languages; despite that history, "tsar" definitely is the proper Latinization.  It still appears and some linguistic academics insist the lineage means it should be regarded as archaic use rather than a mistake and, as a fine technical point, that’s correct in that, for example, the female form czarina is from 1717 (from Italian czarina and German zarin).  In Russian, the female form is tsaritsa and a tsar’s son is a tsarevitch, his daughter a tsarevna.

Nicholas II (Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov, 1868–1918; last Tsar of Russia, 1894-1917).  He cut an imposing figure for the portraitists but his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) reckoned the tsar's mental abilities rendered him most suitable to "a cottage in the country where he can grow turnips".  Wilhelm got much wrong in his life but historians seem generally to concur in this he was a fair judge of things.

Tsar and its variants were the official titles of (1) the First Bulgarian Empire 913–1018, (2) the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), (3) the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), (4) the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721) (technically replaced in 1721 by imperator, but remaining in use outside Russia (also officially in relation to certain regions until 1917) and (5) the Tsardom of Bulgaria (1908–1946).  So, although most associated with Russia, the first ruler to adopt the title was Simeon I (usually written as Simeon the Great; circa 865-927, ruler of Bulgaria 893-927) and that was about halfway through his reign and nobody since Simeon II (Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, b 1937; (last) Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria 1943-1946) has been a tsar.  The transferred sense of "person with dictatorial powers" seems first to have appeared in English in 1866 as an adoption in American English, initially as a disapproving reference to President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; US President 1865-1869) but it has come to be applied neutrally (health tsar, transport tsar) and use does sometimes demand deconstruction: drug tsar has been applied both to organised crime figures associated with the distribution of narcotics and government appointees responsible for policing the trade.  In some countries, some overlap between the two roles has been noted.

Comrade Stalin agitprop.

Volgograd, the southern Russian city was between 1925-1961 named Stalingrad (Stalin + -grad).  Grad (град in Cyrillic) was from the Old Slavic and translates variously as "town, city, castle or fortified settlement"; it once existed in many languages as gord and can be found still as grad, gradić, horod or gorod in many place-names.  Before it was renamed in honour of comrade Stalin (1878-1953, leader of the USSR 1924-1953), between 1589-1925, the city, at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga rivers was known as Tsaritsyn, the name from the Turkic-related Tatar dialect word sarisin meaning "yellow water" or "yellow river" but because of the similarity in sound and spelling, came in Russia to be associated with Tsar.  Stalingrad is remembered as the scene of the epic and savage battle which culminated in the destruction in February 1943 of the German Sixth Army, something which, along with the strategic failure of the Wehrmacht in the offensive (Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) in the Kursk salient five months later, marked what many military historians record as the decisive moment on the Eastern Front.  It has become common to refer to comrade Stalin as the "Red Tsar" whereas casual comparisons of Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) don't often reach to Russia's imperial past; they seem to stop with Stalin.

Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) was from the late fourteenth century cesar (from Cæsar) and was originally a surname of the Julian gens in Rome, elevated to a title after Caius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became dictator and it was used as a title of emperors down to Hadrian (76–138; Roman emperor 117-138).  The name ultimately is of uncertain origin, Pliny the Elder (23–79) suggested it came from the Latin caesaries (head of hair) because the future dictator was born with a lush growth while others have linked it to the Latin caesius (bluish-gray), an allusion to eye color.  The "probity of Caesar's" wife (the phrase first recorded in English in the 1570s) as the figure of a person who should be above suspicion comes from the biography of Julius Caesar written by the Greek Middle Platonist priest-philosopher & historian Plutarch (circa 46–circa 123).  Plutarch related the story of how Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia because of rumors of infidelity, not because he believed the tales of her adultery but because, as a political position, “the wife of Caesar must not even be under suspicion”.  That’s the origin of the phrase “the probity of Caesar’s wife, a phrase which first appeared in English in the 1570s.

In late nineteenth century US slang, a sheriff was "the great seizer" an allusion to the office's role in seizing property pursuant to court order.  The use of Caesar to illustrate the distinction between a subject’s obligations to matters temporal and spiritual is from the New Testament: Matthew 22:21.

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Christ had been answering a question posed by the Pharisees to trap Him: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15–20)?  To answer, Jesus held up a denarius, the coin with which pay the tax and noted that on it was the head of Caesar, by then Caesar had become a title, meaning emperor of Rome and its empire.  It was a clever answer; in saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's", Jesus dismisses the notion of believers being conflicted by the demands of the secular state as a false dilemma because, one can fulfil the requirements of the sate by a mere payment of coin without any implication of accepting its doctrines or legitimacy.  Over the years much has been made of what is or should be "rendered unto Caesar", but more interesting is inference which must be drawn: if we owe Caesar that which bears his image, what then do we owe God?  It can only be that we owe God that which bears the image of God, an impressive inventory listed in the book of Genesis and now interpreted by some Christians as "the whole universe".  To Caesar we can only ever owe money; to God we owe ourselves.

In the Old English the spelling was casere, which would under the expected etymological process have evolved into coser, but instead, circa 1200, it was replaced in the Middle English by keiser, from the Norse or Low German, and later by the French or Latin form of the name.  Cæsar also is the root of German Kaiser, the Russian tsar and is linked with the Modern Persian shah.  Despite the common assumption, "caesar" wasn’t an influence on the English "king".  King was from the Middle English king & kyng, from the Old English cyng & cyning (king), from the Proto-West Germanic kuning, from the Proto-Germanic kuningaz & unungaz (king), kin being the root.  It was cognate with the Scots keeng (king), the North Frisian köning (king), the West Frisian kening (king), the Dutch koning (king), the Low German Koning & Köning (king), the German König (king), the Danish konge (king), the Norwegian konge (king), the Swedish konung & kung (king), the Icelandic konungur & kóngur (king), the Finnish kuningas (king) and the Russian князь (knjaz) (prince) & княги́ня (knjagínja) (princess).  It eclipsed the non-native Middle English roy (king) and the Early Modern English roy, borrowed from Old French roi, rei & rai (king).

The Persian Shah was from the Old Persian xšāyaθiya (king), once thought a borrowing from the Median as it was compared to the Avestan xšaϑra- (power; command), corresponding to the Sanskrit (the Old Indic) kṣatra- (power; command), source of kṣatriya (warrior).  However, recent etymological research has confirmed xšāyaθiya was a genuine, inherited Persian formation meaning “pertaining to reigning, ruling”.  The word, with the origin suffix -iya was from a deverbal abstract noun xšāy-aθa- (rule, ruling) (Herrschaft), from the Old Persian verb xšāy- (to rule, reign).  In the Old Persian, the full title of the Achaemenid rulers of the First Empire was Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām (or in Modern Persian, Šāhe Šāhān (King of Kings)), best as "Emperor", a title with ancient, Near Eastern and Mesopotamian precedents.  The earliest known instance of such a title dates from the Middle Assyrian period as šar šarrāni, used by the Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC).

Tsar Bomba: the Tsar bomb

Tupolev Tu-95 in flight (left) and a depiction of the October 1961 test detonation of the Tsar Bomb.

Царь-бомба (Tsar Bomba (Tsar-bomb)) was the Western nickname for the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (Project code: AN602; code name Ivan or Vanya), the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.  The test on 30 October 1961 remains the biggest man-made explosion in history and was rated with a yield of 50-51 megatons although the design was technically able to produce maximum yield in excess of 100.  For a long time the US estimated the yield at 54 megatons and the Russians at 58 but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was confirmed the true yield was 50-51 megatons.  Only one was ever built and it was detonated on an island off the Russian arctic coast.  The decision to limit the size blast was related to the need to ensure (1) a reduced nuclear fall-out and (2) the aircraft dropping the thing would be able to travel a safe distance from the blast radius (the Kremlin's attitude to the lives of military personnel had changed since comrade Stalin's time).  No nuclear power has since expressed any interest in building weapons even as large as the Tsar Bomb and for decades the trend in strategic arsenals has been more and smaller weapons, a decision taken on the pragmatic military grounds that it's pointless to destroy things many times over.  It's true that higher yield nuclear weapons would produce "smaller rubble" but to the practical military mind such a result represents just "wasted effort".

Progress 1945-1961.

The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO reporting name: Bear) which dropped the Tsar Bomb was a curious fork in aviation history, noted also for its longevity.  A four-engined turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform, it entered service in 1956 and is expected still to be in operational use in 2040, an expectation the United States Air Force (USAF) share for their big strategic bomber, the Boeing B-52 which first flew in 1952, the first squadrons formed three years later.  Both airframes have proven remarkably durable and amenable to upgrades; as heavy lift devices and delivery systems they could be improved upon with a clean-sheet design but the relatively small advantages gained would not justify the immense cost, thus the ongoing upgrade programmes.  The TU-95's design was, inter-alia, notable for being one of the few propeller-driven aircraft with swept wings and is the only one ever to enter large-scale production.  It's also very loud, the tips of those counter-rotating propellers sometimes passing through the sound barrier.

Footage of the Tsar Bomb test de-classified and released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1991).

The Tsar Bomb was in a sense the “ultimate” evolution of the centuries long history of the bomb although it wasn’t the end of innovation, designers seemingly never running out of ideas to refine the concept of the device, the purpose of which is to (1) blow stuff up and (2) kill people.  Bomb was from the French bombe, from the Italian bomba, from the Latin bombus (a booming sound), from the Ancient Greek βόμβος (bómbos) (booming, humming, buzzing), the explosive imitative of the sound itself.  Bomb was used originally of “projectiles; mortar shells etc”, the more familiar “explosive device placed by hand or dropped from airplane” said by many sources to date from 1908 although the word was in the former sense used when describing the anarchist terrorism of the late nineteenth century.  As a footnote, the nickname of Hugh Trenchard (1873-1956), the first Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) was “boom” but this was related to his tone of voice rather than an acknowledgement of him being one of the earliest advocates of strategic bombing.

The figurative uses were wide, ranging from “a dilapidated car” (often as “old bomb”, the use based presumably on the perception such vehicles are often loud).  The bombshell was originally literally a piece of military equipment but it was later co-opted (most memorably as “blonde bombshell) to describe a particularly fetching young women.  So, used figuratively, “bomb” could mean either “very bad” or “very good” and in his weekly Letter from American (broadcast by the BBC World Service 1946-2004), Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) noted a curious trans-Atlantic dichotomy.  In the world of showbiz, Cooke observed, “bomb” was used in both the US & UK to describe the reaction to a play, movie or whatever but in the US, if called “a bomb”, the production was a flop, a failure whereas in the UK, if something was called “quite a bomb”, it meant it was a great success.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

I Know Who Killed Me bombed (in the traditional US sense) but in the way these things sometimes happen, the film has since enjoyed a second life with a cult-following and screenings on the specialized festival circuit.  Additionally, DVD & Blu-Ray sales (it's said to be a popular, if sometimes ironic, gift) meant eventually it generated a profit although it has never exactly become a "bomb" (in the UK sense).  However, while it now enjoys a following among a small sub-set of the public, the professional critics have never softened their view.

Waterfall

Waterfall (pronounced waw-ter-fawl or wot-er-fawl)

(1) A steep fall or flow of water in a watercourse from a height, as over a precipice; a cascade of falling water where there is a vertical or almost vertical step in a river.

(2) A hair-style using long, loose “waves”.

(3) As “waterfall development”, “waterfall management” and “the waterfall model”, descriptions of product research & development (R&D) (especially in tech) including sequential stages, from conception and design through testing and implementation, hopefully to result in a final delivered product.

(4) Figuratively, any waterfall-like outpouring of liquid, smoke etc.

(5) In slang (originally US but now widespread), the action of drinking from a vessel without touching it with the lips (a sanitary precaution with shared vessels).

(5) In the smoking of weed, a particular design of bong.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English waterfal & waterfalle, from the Old English wæterġefeall (waterfall) and cognate with the Old Norse vatnfall, the West Frisian wetterfal (waterfall), the Dutch waterval (waterfall), the German Wasserfall (waterfall) and the Swedish vattenfall (waterfall).  The colloquial use to describe (1) a necktie, (2) a cravat, (3) a chignon (in hair-styling, a low bun or knot positioned at or close to the nape of the neck) or (4) a beard are now effectively extinct.  Waterfall’s synonyms in general use (though hydrologists are more precise) include cascade, cataract, sault (old Canadian slang more often used of river rapids) and the clipping falls.  Waterfall is a noun verb & adjective and waterfalling & waterfalled are verbs; the noun plural is waterfalls.

The construct was water + fall and the Modern English spelling appears to have been a re-formation from around the turn of the sixteenth century.  The noun “water” was from the Old English wæter (water), from the Proto-West Germanic watar, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The verb “water” was from the Middle English wateren, from the Old English wæterian, from the Proto-Germanic watrōną & watrijaną, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The noun “fall” was from the Middle English fal, fall & falle, from the Old English feall & ġefeall (a falling, fall) and the Old English fealle (trap, snare), from the Proto-Germanic fallą & fallaz (a fall, trap).  It was cognate with the Dutch val, the German Fall (fall) & Falle (trap, snare), the Danish fald, the Swedish fall and the Icelandic fall.  The verb “fall” was from the Middle English fallen, from the Old English feallan (to fall, fail, decay, die, attack), from the Proto-West Germanic fallan (to fall), from the Proto-Germanic fallaną (to fall).  It was cognate with the West Frisian falle (to fall), the Low German fallen (to fall), the Dutch vallen (to fall), the German fallen (to fall), the Danish falde (to fall), the Norwegian Bokmål falle (to fall), the Norwegian Nynorsk falla (to fall), the Icelandic falla (to fall), the Albanian fal (forgive, pray, salute, greet) and the Lithuanian pùlti (to attack, rush).

Two views of Niagara Falls:  Between June-November 1969 (left), a temporary dam was built to stem the usual flow so geological studies could be conducted to ascertain the condition of the rocks and assess the extent of erosion.  After rectification work was carried out, the temporary structure was dynamited, an event promoted as a tourist attraction.  In 1885 (right), the falls underwent one of its occasional freezes.  Usually, these are what hydrologists call "partial freezes" (of late there have been a few: 2014, 2017 & 2019), the only (almost) "total freeze" recorded in 1848 although that was induced by the accumulation of ice on Lake Erie which caused a "natural dam" to form, stopping the flow of water to the Niagara River.  It was this rather than a "total freeze" of the falls which caused the phenomenon.

Lindsay Lohan with waterfall, Guanacaste Gold Coast, Costa Rica, January 2016.

For most of us, we know a waterfall when we see one: it’s a point in a waterway (usually a river) where the water falls over a steep drop that is close to literally vertical.  However, among hydrologists, there’s no agreed definition about the margins such as when something ceases to rapids and becomes a waterfall, some insisting that what lay-people casually call “waterfalls” are really “cataracts” or “cascades”.  To most of us there to admire the view, it’s a tiresome technical squabble among specialists but among themselves they seem happy for the debate to continue and some have even suggested precise metrics which can be mapped onto any formation.

Wasserfall (Waterfall), the embryonic SAM

Wasserfall (project Waterfall) was an early SAM (surface to air missile) developed by the Nazi armaments industry.  Although never used, it was highly influential in the post-war years.  In his memoirs (Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) discussed both the weapons systems with which he as minister was usually in some way connected and the political in-fighting and inter-service rivalries which hampered their development.  Although his writings are not wholly reliable (there was much he choose not to say on his contribution to anti-Jewish measures and his knowledge of the holocaust), on industrial and technical matters historians regard his account as substantially accurate (if incomplete).  Interestingly, after reading in Spandau prison a smuggled copy of the memoir (Ten Years and Twenty Days (1958)) of Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; as Grand Admiral head of the German Navy 1943-1945, German head of state 1945) who had been a fellow prisoner for the first decade of Speer’s twenty-year sentence, without any sense of irony, he remarked in his (extensively edited) prison journal (Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1975)):

“Where he discusses military operations and the questions of armaments, the book is interesting and probably also reliable.  His political attitude, on the other hand, his relationship to Hitler, his childish faith in National Socialism – all that he either wraps in silence or spins a veil of sailor’s yarns.  This is the book of a man without insight.”

Speer re-invented himself by wrapping in veils of silence anything too unpleasant to admit and spun plenty of veils so appealing that for decades there were many who, for various reasons, draped them over his past.  He wasn’t a man without insight but compared with Dönitz, he had much more guilt to conceal and thus more need of selective silence & spin.

Speer regarded the regime’s failure to devote the necessary resources to the Wasserfall project as one of Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945)  many strategic blunders which, by 1943, had made defeat inevitable.  Having delayed development of the revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter (deployed at scale mass it would have been a devastating weapon against the Allied bomber fleets then laying waste to German cities and industry), Hitler took the decision to afford the highest priority to the A4 (better known as the V2) rocket to retaliate against English cities; psychologically, Hitler always wanted to be on the offensive and would later appal the experts by demanding the Me 262 be re-designed as a fast, light bomber.  As a delivery system the V2 was a decade ahead of its time and there was then no defense against the thing but it was a hugely expensive and resource-intensive way to deliver an explosive load under a tonne.  As Speer noted, even if it became possible to produce and fire the projected 900 a month, that would mean a daily bomb-load of some 24 tonnes falling on England and that at a time when the Allied bomber groups were on average dropping some 3000 tonnes a day on German targets.  Hitler wasn’t wrong in predicting the use of the V2 against civilian targets would have an effect well beyond the measure of the tonnage delivered and the historians who claimed the disruption to the allied war effort caused by the V1 (an early cruise missile) & V2 was “negligible” were simply wrong but to have been an effective strategic weapon, at least hundreds of V2s a day would need to have found their targets.

Captured blueprints and photographs from the Wasserfall project's development. 

Speer admitted he “…not only went along with this decision on Hitler's part but also supported it. That was probably one of my most serious mistakes.  We would have done much better to focus our efforts on manufacturing a ground-to-air defensive rocket.  It had already been developed in 1942, under the code name Wasserfall (Waterfall), to such a point that mass production would soon have been possible, had we utilized the talents of those technicians and scientists busy with [the V2] under Wernher von Braun (1912–1977).”

He added that von Braun’s team was employed to develop weapons “…for the army, whereas air defense was a matter for the air force.  Given the conflict of interests and the fierce ambitions of the army and the air force, the army would never have allowed its rival to take over the installations it had built up…”  The difference in resource allocation was stark, more than ten times the number of technical staff working on the V2 compared to Waterfall and other anti-aircraft rocket projects (such as the small Taifun (Typhoon)).  The attraction of the anti-aircraft rockets was obvious as Speer noted: “Waterfall was capable of carrying approximately six hundred and sixty pounds of explosives along a directional beam up to an altitude of fifty thousand feet and hit enemy bombers with great accuracy.  It was not affected by day or night, by clouds, cold, or fog. Since we were later able to turn out nine hundred of the offensive big rockets monthly, we could surely have produced several thousand of these smaller and less expensive rockets per month. To this day I think that this rocket, in conjunction with the jet fighters, would have beaten back the Western Allies' air offensive against our industry from the spring of 1944 on.  Instead, gigantic effort and expense went into developing and manufacturing long-range rockets which proved to be, when they were at last ready for use in the autumn of 1944, an almost total failure [a comment which, combined with Allied propaganda and disinformation, influenced for decades many post-war historians].  Our most expensive project was also our most foolish one. Those rockets, which were our pride and for a time my favorite armaments project, proved to be nothing but a mistaken investment. On top of that, they were one of the reasons we lost the defensive war in the air.”

Whether a mass-produced Waterfall would have been an effective weapon against the mass-bomber formations has divided analysts.  While the technology to produce a reliable directional mechanism had been mastered, what Germany never possessed was a proximity fuse which would have enabled the explosive charge to be triggered when a bomber was within range; instead the devices relied on impact or pre-set detonators.  Presumably, had other projects been suspended and the resources re-directed to Waterfall, mass production may have been possible and even if only partially successful, to disrupt a bombing offensive it was necessary only to inflict an ongoing 5-10% loss rate to make the campaign unsustainable.  Given the inevitable counter-measures, even that would likely have proved challenging but economic reality meant Waterfall probably did offer a more attractive path than the spectacular V2 and given the success in related fields, it was not impossible that had priority been granted, proximity fuses and other technical improvements may rapidly have appeared.  As it was, Waterfall (like Typhoon, Me 262, V2 and an extraordinary range of other intriguing projects) was the subject of a post-war race between the Russians, the Americans and the British, all anxious to gather up the plans, prototypes, and personnel of what were clearly the next generation of weapons.  As a proof of concept exercise Waterfall was convincing and within years SAMs were a vital component of defensive systems in most militaries.

The waterfall motif: Grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe (left) and the Liebian International Building in China (right).

In design, "waterfall" can be a motif such as used for the grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe.  It can also be literal and architects have many times integrated water-flows as an external design element but at 108 metres (354 feet) high, the one on the façade of the Liebian International Building in south-west China is easily the world’s tallest.  An eye-catching sight, the waterfall isn't run all that often (which must disappoint influencers who turn up with cameras ready) because it’s said to cost some 900 yuan (US$125) per hour just to pump the water to the top and, with the downturn in the property market, the building's revenues have fallen short of expectation.  When completed and displayed in 2016, the waterfall attracted some criticism on environmental grounds, water shortages far from unknown in China although the builders (Ludi Industry Group) pointed out the signature feature uses storm-water runoff, rainwater and groundwater, all stored in vast underground tanks.  It may for a while be the last example of exuberance to show up among China's skyscrapers, Xi Jinping (b 1953; general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013) in 2014 calling for an end to what he called "weird architecture".  Mr Xi thinks buildings should be "suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye" rather than "oversized, xenocentric & weird".  Those skilled at reading between the CCP's lines decided the president had called the architects "formalists".  They would have taken note.

On TikTok, a small but active community of those who find waterfalls mesmerizing post video clips.