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).

Plutonium & Uranium

Plutonium (pronounced ploo-toh-nee-uhm)

A radioactive chemical element that is artificially derived from uranium, plutonium is a highly toxic metallic transuranic element.  It occurs in trace amounts in uranium ores and is produced in a nuclear reactor by neutron bombardment of uranium-238. The most stable and important isotope, plutonium-239, readily undergoes fission and is used as a reactor fuel in nuclear power stations and in nuclear weapons. Symbol: Pu; atomic no: 94; half-life (plutonium 239): 24,360 years; valency: 3, 4, 5, or 6; relative density (alpha modification): 19.84; melting point: 1184°F (640°C); boiling point: 5846°F (3230°C); specific gravity 19.84.  Its longest-lived isotope is Plutonium 244 with a half-life of 77 million years.

1941: The construct was Pluto (the (now dwarf-) planet), +–ium (the element ending suffix from the Latin -um (neuter singular morphological suffix) and based on Latin terms for metals such as ferrum (iron).  The –ium suffix (used most often to form adjectives) was applied as (1) a nominal suffix (2) a substantivisation of its neuter forms and (3) as an adjectival suffix.  It was associated with the formation of abstract nouns, sometimes denoting offices and groups, a linguistic practice which has long fallen from fashion.  In the New Latin, as the neuter singular morphological suffix, it was the standard suffix to append when forming names for chemical elements.  Plutonium was discovered at the University of California, Berkeley and so named because it follows the recently discovered neptunium in the periodic table and, at the time, Pluto followed Neptune in the Solar System.  The name plutonium earlier had been proposed for barium and was used sometimes in this sense early in the nineteenth century.

Pluto was from the Latin Plūtō, from the Ancient Greek Πλούτων (Ploútōn) (god of the underworld”).  In Greek mythology & Roman mythology, Pluto is remembered as the Greco-Roman god of the underworld but the ultimate origin was the Greek Ploutōn (god of wealth), from ploutos (wealth, riches (thought probably used originally in the sense of “overflowing”), from the primitive Indo-European root pleu- (to flow); the alternative Greek name Hades is also related to wealth because it is from beneath the earth that lie valuable metals & precious gems.  Although some have expressed doubt, the accepted history is it was then eleven year old Ms Venetia Burney (1918–2009) who suggested the name Pluto for the newly discovered (then) planet, aware of the procedure apparently because her uncle had earlier nominated Phobos and Deimos as names for the moons of Mars.  In 2006, the humorless International Astronomical Union (IAU) made its scandalous decision to declare, on highly technical grounds, that Pluto was not a planet but a mere dwarf and this inspired the American Dialect Society to coin the verb "to pluto" meaning "to demote or devalue something".

Uranium (pronounced yoo-rey-nee-uhm)

A white, lustrous, radioactive, metallic element, it has compounds used in photography and in coloring glass, the 235 isotope used in atomic and hydrogen bombs and as nuclear fuel in fission reactors.  A radioactive silvery-white metallic element of the actinide series, it occurs in several minerals including pitchblende, carnotite, and autunite.  Symbol: U; atomic no: 92; atomic wt: 238.0289; half-life of most stable isotope (uranium 238): 451 × 10⁹ years; valency: 2-6; relative density: 18.95 (approx.); melting point: 2075°F (1135°C); boiling point: 7473°F (4134°C); specific gravity 18.95.

1789: The construct was Uranus + (the planet) the –ium.  The element was named (using the conventions of Modern Latin) because the discovery of the planet had recently been announced.  Uranus was from the Latin Ūranus, from the Ancient Greek Οὐρανός (Ouranós), from οὐρανός (ouranós) (sky, heaven).

Uranus Fudge Factory, 14400 State Hwy Z, St Robert, Missouri 65584, USA.

Nuclear Weapons

Of the first three atomic bombs built in 1945, two used plutonium as fissile material while one used uranium.  Two of the many problems faced in the project were (1) production of uranium of the required purity was slow but a bomb of this type was (relatively) simple to produce and (2) plutonium was more abundant but the engineering to create such a bomb was intricate, the results uncertain.  Two designs were thus concurrently developed: a (relatively) simple trigger-type device and a more complex implosion-type.  Trinity, code-name for the world’s first detonation of a nuclear device (New Mexico, July 1945), was one of the latter, an implosion-type plutonium bomb.  It was chosen because this was a genuine test, there being no certainty it would work whereas the trigger-type uranium device, ultimately dropped on Hiroshima a month later, was never tested because the scientists and engineers had such confidence in its design.  After the war, it was assumed the somewhat inefficient trigger mechanism wouldn’t again be used but technical problems saw production temporarily resumed, these stop-gap A-Bombs remaining in service until 1951.

Models of short and medium-range ballistic missiles at DPRK Annual Flower Show, Pyongyang, April 2013.

Lindsay Lohan in mushroom cloud T-shirt.

It’s no longer certain the uranium-based bomb used again Hiroshima in August 1945 remains a genuine one-off.  It’s certain that in the sixty-odd years since Trinity, every nuclear weapon except the Hiroshima device was plutonium-based but, beginning in 2006, the DPRK (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)) conducted six nuclear tests and, despite advances in monitoring and detection techniques, it’s not clear what material was used although the consensus is all were fission (A-Bombs) and not fusion (H-Bombs) devices.  The tests, by historic standards, were low-yield, suggesting uranium, but this could be misleading because even a failed test of can produce a nuclear blast called a fizzle (when a detonation fails grossly to meet its expected yield).  The DPRK's programme will have had the odd fizzle but then so has every nation at some stage of the process but by historic standards it must be judged a success.  It was hampered by sanctions and international opposition (Beijing and Moscow as unwilling as Western powers to help the hermit kingdom join the nuclear club) but achieved the  necessary technology transfer by swapping ballistic missile blueprints with Pakistan which had detonated it's first fission device in 1998 but lacked a robust delivery system to counter the "nuclear threat" from India which had tested as early as 1974.  That transaction was illustrative of one of the two concerns the West harbours about the DPRK bomb (1) some sort of accident (and that covers everything from an unplanned detonation in some unfortunate place to a missile launch which malfunctions and hits a populated area) and (2) nuclear proliferation which happens because the technology is used by Pyongyang in the barter economy as a trade for something desirable but not available because of sanctions or other trade restrictions.

Aglet

Aglet (pronounced ag-lit)

(1) A tag or sheath at the end of a lace used for tying, as of a shoelace and made usually of plastic or metal; can be protective, decorative or both.

(2) A tip, originally of metal and often decorative, on a ribbon or cord that makes lacing two parts of a garment or garments together easier, as in corset lacings, "points" (lacing hose or trousers to jacket or doublet) or sleeves to a bodice (archaic sixteenth & seventeenth century use).  The aglet is still a part of dress uniforms in some militaries.

(3) An ornament worn on clothing, consisting of a metal tag on a fringe, or a small metallic plate or spangle; any ornamental pendant.

1400–1450: From the Late Middle English aglet, aglett & agglot from the Old French aguillete & Middle French aiguillette (a small needle), diminutive of aguille, the construct being aiguille (needle) + -ette (-et).  Root was the Late Latin acucula, an extended form (via diminutive suffix, but not of necessity an implication of smallness) of the Latin acus (a needle) from the primitive Indo-European root ak- (be sharp, rise (out) to a point, pierce).  Related were the Italian agucchia, the Portuguese agulha & the Spanish aguja (needle).  The alternative spellings aiguillette, aiglet & aygulet are used by some manufacturers.  Aglet is a noun; the noun plural is aglets. 

Lindsay Lohan Lightweight Leisure Breathable Running Shoes are available.  All use plastic aglets on the laces.

An aglet was sometimes known also as a catkin (spike of a flowering tree or shrub (especially a willow or birch) after fruiting, a 1570s derivation from Dutch katteken (flowering stem of willow, birch, hazel etc) which translates literally as "little cat or kitten”, diminutive of katte (cat).  The botanical connection to felines was because of the stems soft, furry appearance which had a resemblance to the lengthier kinds of a kitten’s tail.  It was cognate with the German Kätzchen and the Modern Dutch katje.  The ends attached to shoelaces were sometimes called catkins because of a similar visual connection.  Most of the earliest aglets probably were metal, glass or stone plastic hundreds of years away, although some were doubtless made from with fabric threads or thin strips of leather.  There’s more evidence of the metal ones in the archeological record because the survival rate of the hard materials is so much higher.  Known formally by cobblers as rabri threas igh somewere metalalso aiglet, (metal tag of a lace), they were created to prevent the fraying of boot-laces, making it easier to thread through the eyelet-holes, but later, certainly by the mid-fifteenth century and perhaps earlier, ornamental form had emerged for both men and women.

Variations on the theme.

The aglets may not first have been used for boot laces but rather as an alternative to buttons to fasten clothing.  Placed at the end of a ribbon, in addition to preventing fraying and permitting easier threading, their weight would have helpful when needing to find the end of the ribbon.  In ancient Rome, there would certainly have been a class divide in the aglet business, the poor folk probably using simple stones while those of the rich might have been fashioned from expensive metals, such as brass or silver.  Today, most aglets are made from a thin, stiff plastic and are used on more than just shoe-laces, cords, drawstrings and belts among the items with the handy terminations which can be functional, decorative or both.  Although there are a handful of fashion houses in Europe which still handcraft such things, most aglets are today applied by machines, the ones for shoes wrapping a plastic tape around the end of the lace, then using heat or chemicals to melt the plastic onto the shoelace and bond the plastic to itself.  Polyester laces can be crimped and heated so that an aglet is formed at the end out of the lace itself, the advantage being it’s less prone to falling off.

Aglets are available in various metals including stainless steel, titanium, aluminum, silver and gold.  The tiny size and defined shape of the device doesn’t lend much scope to designers seeking a decorative flourish beyond variations in color but bullets seem popular.

Phallus themed aglets exist but they seem not to be available for laces, instead being aglets in the other sense of the word: as ornamental pendant to be hung from the neck or attached to clothing.  The tradition of these reaches past antiquity and into pre-history, many societies known to have used fertility symbols.

Ri Sol-ju (b circa 1987) is the wife of DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) and she has sometimes appeared on state occasions wearing an aglet in the shape of the DPRK’s Hwasong-16 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM, left & right).  Analysts suggest her choice is jewellery is a layered political statement: (1) Eschewing a decadently Western display of gold, diamonds or precious stones over her tempting décolletage (centre), the demurely attired First Lady wears something crafted as a simple pendant in silver and (2) She is telling the world Kim Jong-un makes nuclear weapons sexy. 

Package

Package (pronounce pak-ij)

(1) A bundle of something, usually of small or medium size, that is packed and wrapped or boxed; parcel.

(2) A container, as a box or case, in which something is or may be packed.

(3) Something conceived of as a (usually) compact unit having particular characteristics.

(4) The packing of goods, freight etc.

(5) A finished product contained in a unit that is suitable for immediate installation and operation, as a power or heating unit.

(6) A group, combination, or series of related parts or elements to be accepted or rejected as a single unit.

(7) A complete program produced for the theater, television, etc or a series of these, sold as a unit.

(8) In computing, a set of programs designed for a specific type of problem in statistics, production control etc, making it unnecessary for a separate program to be written for each problem.

(9) In computing, software distributed with a (sometimes optional) routine which enables a number of components to be installed and configured in the one action, meaning the end-user doesn’t have to be acquainted with pre-requisites, co-requisites etc.

(10) In computing, an alternative name for a “software suite” which provides a structured installation and configuration of what are (historically or nominally) separate programs.

(11) In vulgar slang, the male genitalia.

(12) To make or put into a package.

(13) To design and manufacture a package for (a product or series of related products).

(14) To group or combine (a series of related parts) into a single unit.

(15) To combine the various elements of (a tour, entertainment, etc.) for sale as a unit.

1530s: The original form of the word was in the sense of “the act of packing”, either as the construct of the noun pack + -age or from the cognate Dutch pakkage (baggage).  Pack was from the Middle English pak & pakke, from the Old English pæcca and/or the Middle Dutch pak & packe, both ultimately from the Proto-West Germanic pakkō, from the Proto-Germanic pakkô (bundle, pack).  It was cognate with the Dutch pak (pack), the Low German & German Pack (pack), the Swedish packe (pack) and the Icelandic pakka & pakki (package).  The suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.  The familiar modern sense of “a bundle, a parcel, a quantity pressed or packed together” dates from 1722 while that creation of modern commerce, the “package deal” (a transaction agreed to as a whole) emerged in 1952.  As a verb meaning “to bundle up into a pack or package” it was in use by at least 1915 and was a development of the noun.  The noun packaging (act of making into a package or packages) seems to have come into use in 1875.  Derived forms are created as needed (mispackage, subpackage, repackage, unpackage et al). As a modifier, package is now most associated with the “package deal” in its many advertised forms (package holiday, package saver, package tour et al).  Package & packaging are nouns & verbs, packager is a noun, packaged is a verb and packageable is an adjective; the noun plural is packages.

DVD Package deal.

The concept of the "package deal" is to sell two or more items at a list price which is less than the total nominal value.  It's used for a variety of purposes, often to use a popular product to shift surplus copies of one less successful.  It's a popular concept but does need to be done with care.  In 2014, Apple did a deal with the Irish rock band U2 which for many iTunes users had the consequence of an unrequested downloading to their devices the band's latest album.  Many people take pop music very seriously and were apparently offended by the notion of an unwanted album by a boomer band being forced upon them.  Apple haven't since repeated the packaging experience.

Detroit, the option lists and the packages

1967 Chevrolet Impala SS 327.

When in the late 1950s computers migrated from the universities and defense industries to commerce, among the early adopters were the US car manufacturers; they found intriguing the notion that with a computerized system in place, each vehicle could be built to a customer’s individual order.  This had of course for decades been done by low-volume manufacturers catering to the upper class but the administrative and logistical challenges of doing it at scale on a rapidly moving production line had precluded the approach for the mass-market.  Computerization changed that and what happened was: (1) a customer visited a dealer and ticked what they wanted from what suddenly became a long and expanding options list, (2) the dealer forwarded the list (on paper) to the manufacturers central production office (CPO) where, (3) a data entry operator typed the information into a machine which stored it on a punch card which (4) subsequently produced (on paper) a “build sheet” which went to the assembly line foreman who ensured his workers produced each car in accordance with its build sheet.

Option list for 1967 full-size Chevrolet range (Biscayne, Bel Air, Impala & Caprice).

The system actually worked and within its parameters was efficient but accountants were not impressed by the complexity and while they acknowledged a system with dozens of options per model could be done, they said it shouldn’t be done because it would be more profitable to assemble often-ordered combinations of options into a bundle which could be sold as a package.  What this meant was production runs would become more efficient because thousands of identically configured cars could be made, reducing the chance of error and avoiding the need for each line to be supplied with optional parts not included in the set specification.  The other attraction was that people would end up paying for things they might not have wanted, simply because the “package” was the only way to get the stuff really desired.  The classic examples was the various “executive” packages which included power-steering, automatic transmission and air-conditioning and some packages proved so popular they were sometimes further commoditized by becoming a stand-alone model such as Chevrolet’s Caprice which had in 1965 begun life as a bundle of “luxury” items (packaged as Regular Production Option (RPO) Z18 for the Impala) before the next year becoming a separate model designation which wasn’t finally retired until 2017.  Under the pressure of (1) packaging and (2) increasing levels of standard equipment, the option lists shrunk in the 1970s and were soon trimmed to a handful of items, most of them fitted by dealers rather than installed by the factory.     

Care packages

Care packages were originally a private initiative of US based charities which organized the assembly of items (with an emphasis on food-stuffs with a long shelf-life which didn’t demand refrigeration) which could be shipped to Europe to aid the civilian population, many of who were malnourished in the aftermath of the war.  Initial discussions focused on post-war planning were held in 1944 and CARE was formed late the next year, the first shipment of packages beginning in the second quarter of 1946, one of the early sources of supply the large stockpile of Army ration-packs which were produced for the amphibious invasion of the Japanese mainland but never used because the conflict was ended by the use of atomic bombs.  What CARE shipped was an example of the use of the adjective pre-packaged (packaged at the site of production), a form which is documented from 1944 although the date is coincidental to the formation of CARE.  The name was originally an acronym: Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, but in 1959, reflecting what for some time had been the reality of CARE’s operations, it was changed to Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere.  In 1993 it was again changed to Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, cognizant both of what would now be called “political optics” and the organization’s now international structure.

North Korean Freedom Coalition care package price list.

News that Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) had banned Christmas in the DPRK so upset Christian activists that they redoubled their efforts to undermine the regime, advertising a list of “care packages” which could be launched into the Yellow Sea in bottles, the currents carrying them to the shores of the hermit kingdom, good Christian folk encouraged to donate between US$17 (which buys a small, concealable Bible) and US$1500 (a cell phone including roaming charges).  The activists operate from the Washington, DC-based North Korean Freedom Coalition (NKFC) which, in addition to challenging the “godless” Supreme Leader with teachings from Jesus, hopes practical care packages containing items such as shortwave radios and propaganda leaflets will destabilize the Kim dynasty.  The NKFC call the strategy “Operation Truth” and say it's modeled on the Berlin Airlift (1948-1949) which forced the Soviet Union to lift its blockade of West Berlin.  The most obviously practical of the packages contain enough rice to feed a family of four for a week, as well as a Bible on a flash drive and a US$1 bill, a much-sought after item in the DPRK.  In a clever twist which turns post-modernism against itself, the USB flash drives contain some North Korean music but with the lyrics altered from singing the praises of Kim Jong-un to lines worshiping God.  Decadent K-Pop songs are also loaded but the content of those (like the US movies also included) will be carefully checked to ensure nothing un-Christian is shipped.  Those who provided recorded messages included senators Jim Risch and Tim Kaine, & representatives Michael McCaul and Gregory Meeks; as if K-Pop wasn’t bad enough, that does sound like “cruel and unusual punishment”.  The packages are being supported by Fox News, the audience of which hates communists, atheists, Kim Jong-un and Joe Biden.

Moved to tears: The Supreme Leader sobbing when thinking of the lack of fecundity among his women, Pyongyang, December 2023.  

One who may deserve a care package is the Supreme Leader himself who recently was moved to tears as he implored his faithful female subjects to have more babies and raise them to love their country.  Kim Jong-un was filmed daubing is eyes with an immaculately pressed white handkerchief while addressing thousands of women gathered at a national mothers meeting in Pyongyang, the first such assembly in over a decade and one convened amid rising concerns over a fall in the DPRK’s birth rate.  “Stopping the decline in birthrates and providing good child care and education are all our family affairs that we should solve together with our mothers” the Supreme Leader was quoted as saying and with a rumored three children, he’s certainly done his bit.  Kim II went on to remind mothers their “primary revolutionary task” was to drill “socialist virtues” into their offspring and instil loyalty to the ruling party, adding that “…unless a mother becomes a communist, it is impossible for her to bring up her sons and daughters as communists and transform the members of her family into revolutionaries”.  Possibly fearing how they might be led astray by listening either to K-Pop or Senator Tim Kane, he warned the adoring women to be vigilant about any foreign influence on young minds, telling them to send their children to perform hard labour for the state to correct bad behaviour that is not “our style”.  The demographic problem isn’t restricted to the DPRK; in the region, policy-makers in both Japan and the RoK (the Republic of Korea (South Korea)) are also alarmed at the increasingly flaccid trend-line of population growth but for the DPRK, with its reliance on manual labour and military service, things rapidly could deteriorate.

Package deal: With every election of Bill Clinton, voters received a free copy of crooked Hillary.

There were suggestions the dictatorial tears were an indication of the uniqueness of the crisis and while it was true the dynasty had no tradition of lachrymosity, neither Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1948-1994) nor Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1994-2011) ever having been seen crying but Kim Jong-un had shed a public tear in the past: In 2020, he cried as he issued an apology for failing to guide the reclusive country through turbulent economic times at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.  So unexpected and unusual were the words of regret that the tears weren’t widely reported but at the military parade held in July 2023 to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War that divided the peninsula, the Supreme Leader proved he could also shed tears of joy, his eyes watering as the big missiles passed under his gaze.

Leverage

Leverage (pronounced lev-rij, lev-er-ij or lee-ver-ij)

(1) The action of a lever, a rigid bar that pivots about one point and that is used to move an object at a second point by a force applied at a third.

(2) The mechanical advantage or power gained by using a lever.  A force compounded by means of a lever rotating around a pivot.

(3) The power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions etc, based on position, personality, reputation etc (an applied to both institutions & individuals); sway.

(4) In finance, the use of a small initial investment, credit, or borrowed funds to gain a very high return in relation to one's investment, to control a much larger investment, or to reduce one's own liability for any loss (in some places known also as “gearing” and often used to express the “debt to equity” ratio).

(5) To use (a quality or advantage) to obtain a desired effect or result:

(6) To provide with leverage.

(7) To invest or arrange (invested funds) using leverage.

(8) To exert power or influence on:

1724: The construct was lever + -age.  Lever (a rigid piece which is capable of turning about one point, or axis (the fulcrum), and in which are two or more other points where forces are applied (used for transmitting and modifying force and motion)) was from the Middle English lever, levore & levour, from the Old French leveor & leveur (a lifter, lever (also Old French and French levier)), from the Latin levātor (a lifter), from levō (to raise).  The suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.  Leverage is a noun & verb, leverage is a noun, leveraged & leveraging are verbs and leverageable is an adjective; the noun plural is leverages.

The original meaning was to describe the action of a lever, the meaning “the power or force of a lever” emerging in 1827 while the figurative sense of an “advantage for accomplishing a purpose” dates from 1858.  The use in financial matters seems first to have appeared in writing in 1933 and was a creation of US English, in use as a verb by at least 1956.  The synonyms and related terms when describing the physics of the mechanical effect include mechanical advantage, strength, multiplier effect & force multiplier; in the figurative sense the usual alternatives are clout, influence & pull.  In the world of limited liability companies, leveraged financial arrangements (such as the “leveraged buyout”) are so common that when the mechanism is not used, the adjectives non-leveraged & unleveraged often appear.  The word is so embedded in the slang of those in business where leveraged transactions are common that as a transitive verb, it’s commonly used generally to suggest “to use; to exploit; to manipulate in order to take full advantage of someone or something.  The word has also entered the language of international relations (though used more often by commentators than diplomats) to describe what is known casually as “hostage diplomacy”.  The taking of hostages for ransom or some other purpose is not new and has probably been practiced since human societies first interacted and many cases over the centuries have been documented but historically, the tactic was once blatantly admitted, the gangsterism unconcealed.  Now, states which use hostages for leverage usually gloss things with the pretence of legality, the hostage convicted of something and given a sentence disproportionately long and while none seem yet to have been sufficiently cynical to have used a charge of "unspecified offences" that may yet happen.  The leverage sought tends to be political (the release of prisoners held by the hostage’s country of origin or some other concession) and the expert practitioners are the usual suspects: the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)), the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the Russian Federation.

Lever porn: 1972 Mercedes-Benz Unimog w1416.  The multiple levers were required because of the many drive and gearing combinations available.  In vehicles of this type, this may be close to peak-lever because it's become common to use electronic controls for activation but the attraction of mechanical levers is their robust reliability.  For those who remember the way things used to be done, the tactility is also compelling.

The surname Lever is English and of Norman origin; it was a nickname for a fleet-footed or timid person, from the Old French levre (hare), from the Latin lepus (genitive leporis) although it’s not impossible that at least in some instances, it was a metonymic occupational name for a hunter or trapper of hares.  In some regions it may also have been a topographic name for someone who lived in a place thickly grown with rushes, the link the Old English lǣfer (rush, reed, iris).  Great & Little Lever in Greater Manchester are (collectively) named with this word and if there was a habitational origin to any names it would have come from such placed.  Although rare in Germany, where Lever exists it is a descendent of the medieval personal names Lever (a variant of Liever and Levert, a variant of Lievert.  In Slovenia, it’s an altered form of Levar.

Leverage began its life meaning “to use a lever or some similar tool to gain a mechanical advantage, typically in the context of lifting or moving heavy objects”, the idea generally thus one of “effective force multiplication”.  From here it came variously to be used figuratively, notably sine the 1930s in structured financial transactions.  Financial Leverage is the use of various financial instruments or borrowed capital to increase the potential return of an investment, the attraction the magnification of profit; the risk in increase in potential losses.  Social leverage is not new but it’s assumed a new significance in the age of social media because the proliferation of access afforded by the platforms has removed the “gatekeeper” role the legacy media once fulfilled and a presence, once established in one context can be leveraged into a position in other, lucrative fields.  Fame itself seemed to be enough: Lindsay Lohan’s forays into music and fashion might seem related to her career in film but wouldn’t appear obviously to be linked with her more recent activities promoting cryptocurrency.  That doesn’t matter because notoriety (for better or worse) is enough; her choice of a certain dress to wear to one of her many court appearances saw the garment sell-out within hours.  Nor is this multi-directional leverage a creature only of pop culture, a number of Nobel laureates wryly observing that having won the prize for their accomplishments is a certain branch of science, they end up on the “commentator lists” of media organizations and are asked for their thoughts on things hardly related to their field.

In the matter of Grand Theft Auto (GTA5): Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018)

It’s of course routine for leverage to be weaponized but sometimes, there’s the suggestion the leverage of others can be appropriated and misused, the essence of many an ambush marketing campaign.  Lindsay Lohan in 2014 sued a software house, alleging one of the characters in the game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA5) was based on a likeness of her and thus an invasion of her privacy: “an attempt to leverage her public profile to boost sales of the latest instalment of the series”.  The game’s producers responded, labelling the suit a “publicity stunt” and in private discussions they may also have called it a cunning one.  It took an unremarkable four years from filing for the case to reach New York’s highest appellate court where it was dismissed, six judges of the Court of Appeals finding the “actress/singer” in GTA5 merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Concurring with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character “could be construed a portrait”, which “could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy” but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was “not sufficiently strong”.  The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff” the judgment read.  Ms Lohan’s lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.