Bang

Bang (pronounced bhang)

(1) A loud, sudden, explosive noise (such as the discharge of a firearm).

(2) A resounding stroke or blow.

(3) In informal, use, a sudden movement, show of energy or instance of something suggesting great value, energy, vitality or spirit (source of many idiomatic forms such as “started with a bang”, “went off with a bang”, “great bang for the buck” etc).

(4) Suddenly and loudly; abruptly or violently.

(5) In figurative use, precisely; directly; right (such as “bang on” or “bang in the middle” (ie exactly correct” or “bang to rights” (caught red-handed; guilty as sin).

(6) In informal use, a sudden or intense pleasure; thrill or excitement (now less common).

(7) In slang, various senses of precision such as “bang off” (instantly; right away) or “bang on” (marvelous; perfect; just right).

(8) In vulgar slang, the act or instance of sexual intercourse (with many variants, the most infamous the gangbang).

(9) In the jargon of mining, civil engineering etc, the physical explosive product.

(10) In the slang of drug users, an injection or other form of dose of a narcotic; a shot of heroin which proved lethal.

(11) In US criminal class clang, to participate in street gang criminal activity.

(12) In the slang of typology & the printing trade, an exclamation point, a variant being the interrobang (a punctuation mark (‽) which merges the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!) to indicate a query made as an interjection).

(13) In Irish slang, a strong smell (often used of halitosis (chronic bad breath)).

(14) In regional slang (limited apparently to the New England region in the US), an abrupt left-turn by a road-user (Boston, Massachusetts) or a left, right or U-turn (more generalized); the typical use is “bang a left/right/uey”. The equivalent use in Australia & New Zealand is “hang a left/right/uey” although there a U-turn is known also as a “U-bolt”.

(15) In regional slang (limited apparently to urban areas in Nigeria), to fail an exam.

(16) In mathematics, a factorial (on the basis the factorial of n is often written as n!)

(17) In the jargon of financial markets, rapidly or in high volumes suddenly to sell (an equity, commodity, currency etc), causing prices to fall.

(18) In the jargon of hairdressing, as bangs, a number of variants of the fringe.

(19) In reggae music, an offbeat figure played usually on guitar and piano.

(20) In vulgar slang, to have sexual intercourse with (sometimes with the implication of “without consent”.

(21) To strike or beat resoundingly; to pound; to strike violently or noisily.

(22) To hit or painfully to pump.

(23) To throw or set down roughly; to slam.

1540-1550: From the Middle English bangen, from the Old English bangian or borrowed from the Old Norse banga (to pound, hammer), both from the Proto-Germanic bangōną (to beat, pound), from the primitive Indo-European ben- (to beat, hit, injure).  It was cognate with Scots bang & bung (to strike, bang, hurl, thrash, offend), the Icelandic banga (to pound, hammer), the Old Swedish bånga (to hammer (from which modern Swedish gained banka (to knock, pound, bang), the Danish banke (to beat) & bengel (club), the Low German bangen, & bangeln (to strike, beat) (the German dialect banken may originally have been imitative), the West Frisian bingel & bongel, the Dutch bengel (bell; rascal) and the German Bengel (club) & bungen (to throb, pulsate).  Bang is a noun, verb & adverb, banged is a verb & adjective, banger is a noun, banging is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is bangs.

Of the universe

The origin of the term “Big Bang Theory” (which describes a model accounting for the origin and most of the dynamics of the (present) universe during the last 14 billion years-odd) is traced to a chance remark by English astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) on BBC Radio in 1949 but it wasn’t until the late 1960s it came widely to be used in scientific circles and a few more years before it was part of the common public language.  Hoyle always denied he’d intended to be disparaging of what was then a theory some 30 years old and this most historians came to accept although certainly he was unconvinced of the idea’s soundness and for some decades clung to his preferred “steady state” model of the universe.  The steady state position is sometimes misunderstood as something like “twas ever thus” but is better understood as “constant process”, the crucial difference that while the steady staters held matter constantly was being created as the universe expands, the big bangers believed the distance between the matter which came into existence a fraction of a second after the big bang increased as the universe expanded from its one-time singularity.  Hoyle never quite became a big banger but as the evidence mounted, he modified his model to become what was dubbed “a quasi steady stater” although his increasingly convoluted explanations forcing observations to somehow fit his belief convinced few.  The criticism of Hoyle was he made cosmology into a kind of theology.

Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) is active on Instagram and recently posted a “Life update” to her four million followers, advising “I have bangs now”.  Hopefully, she will keep us informed and there will be more to come.  For golfers, she has posted a set of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies which are guides for both the experienced wishing to hone their techniques and those taking up the sport.  Being highly qualified, she filled one gap in the instructional market with a collection of tips for “busty golfers” (specific weight distribution a significant element as the body pivots when swinging a club).  On Instagram, in less than 24 hours, the clip garnered over 2.6 million views.

Hoyle's use of the term “big bang” while it did graphically emphasise the difference of opinion between the two schools of thought, was unfortunate as a contribution to public understanding because of the connotations of the words  “big” & “bang”, most imagining the origins of the universe as starting with a huge, noisy explosion whereas what was envisaged by the theorists was a sudden “cosmic inflation” (of space), a process which continues and was in the 1990s found to be accelerating although not everywhere equally.  The big bang theory is now the orthodoxy in the mainstream scientific community though some questions remain unanswered including the mystery of why, based on a number of calculations which explain many other things, over 90% of the universe’s matter is “missing” (or at least can’t be observed).  The fudge to “explain” that has been the twin concepts of “dark matter” and “dark energy” which are more “speculative concepts” than a theoretical model and best understood as an elegant way of saying “don’t know”.  There have been a number of suggestions to account for the “missing matter”, the most intriguing being the notion the calculated “matter number” might be too high because of “drag effect” created by the operation of time itself.  Time obviously is important otherwise everything would happen at the same time and who knows what else it does; recently, particle physicists reported having witnessed pinpricks of darkness moving faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of relativity so there's much still to be understood.

Of cars

Big banger and old banger: John Greenwood (1945-2015) in “Spirit of ’76” Chevrolet Corvette, Le Mans 24 Hour, June 1976 (left) and a despondent Lindsay Lohan with Herbie while in “old banger” state, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), the Corvette an “8-banger” and the Beetle a “4-banger”.  The Corvette was powered by a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block V8 and although forced to retire after a failure in the fuel delivery system, while it was running, nothing in the field could match the mark of 222 mph (354 km/h) it set thundering down the then 6 km (3.7 mile) Mulsanne straight.  In 1976, Mulsanne had yet to be distorted by the silly chicanes added in 1990 at the behest of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation, world sport's dopiest regulatory body)).

With cars, “banger” proved productive.  Because an ICE (internal combustion engine) always includes a “power stroke” (or its equivalence), in which the fuel-air mix explodes (the combustion causing “a bang” which sequentially is the sound from the exhaust system; to aficionados sometimes a pleasing tone, sometimes not), in slang, vehicles came to be described by the cylinder count thus (most frequently “4-banger”, “6-banger” or “8-banger”).  However, a car could also be a “big banger” (one with a large displacement ICE, usually a V8 with the appellation coming from the “big-block” era of the post-war years when Detroit mass-produced engines with pistons the size of paint cans) or an “old banger” (one old, worn out or battered”.  Old banger was synonymous with “clunker”, “beater”, “hooptie”, “jalopy”, “wreck”, “crock”, “shitbox”, “rustbucket” etc and the dubbing came either from the appearance (“banged up” in the sense of being dented or damaged) or the “banging” noise (backfiring, a damaged exhaust system etc) the dilapidated machines emanated.

Of sausages and such

Bangers & Mash by the Daring Gourmet.  Not everyone garnishes their B&M with chopped parsley.

Unrelated to ICEs, a banger could be (1) one who bangs (in any sense (sex, violence etc), (2) the penis (3) a sausage (the use reputedly based originally not on any resemblance to a penis but, dating from the time when they were produced by encasing the contents in the intestine casings of slaughtered animals (often sheep), the combination of excess water in the mix and the impervious skin making them susceptible to exploding if not punctured prior to being cooked), (4) the breasts of a female (and thus usually in the plural) and (5) in popular music a highly rated song (some of which would be enjoyed by (6) headbangers (that subset of music fans who “dance” by violently shaking their heads in time to the music)).

Rolling Stone magazine No.169, September 12, 1974.  Rolling Stone and Playboy magazine in the 1960s & 1970s attracted a large audience of the market segments attractive to advertisers and alongside the content with which both most were associated, they attracted respectable authors to write about politics and interview subjects such as celebrity philosophers and Nazi war criminals.

As well as being a noun plural “Bangs” is also a proper noun as a surname, the most noted being Lester Bangs (1948–1982) who in the late 1960s began to write reviews of popular music, prompted by an advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine inviting reader submissions.  He wouldn’t have thought what he criticized was “pop” and Rolling Stone magazine (first published in 1967) was one of a number of titles that created an ecosystem in which classifications proliferated with clear “hierarchies of respectability” evolving among those who regarded “pop” as a serious musical form and Bangs definitely was one of them; before the mid-1960s, popular music usually wasn’t written about with the tone of reverence afforded to jazz, opera, the avant-garde and such.  Bangs died a drug-related death although not the traditionally “messy” one associated with the field he critiqued.  Having contracted influenza, he was self-medicating with an opioid analgesic and a benzodiazepine; his overdose was ruled “accidental”.

Of hair

In hairdressing, the noun “bangs” is used to describe a number of variants of the fringe (or sections of hair) cut straight across the forehead, the derived verb used as “to bang the hair”.  Sometimes there are “left and right” bangs but even when a style wholly is a conventional fringe the convention is to speak of “bangs”, although hairdressers, especially when constructing something asymmetric, will refer to the “left” or “right” bang.  Although there are on the internet claims the use is based on the notion of a clipped hair “bursting out” (ie “explosively” in a figurative sense and thus based on “bang” in the sense of something sudden), verified evidence confirms “bangs” joined the rich jargon of hairdressing late in the nineteenth century as a clipping (get it?) of “bang-tail”, a term then used for decades in used in equestrian circles to described a horse’s tail being allowed to grow long and then cut (docked) straight across (the painless cut called a “bang-off”).  Apparently with origins in Scotland before spreading south and across the Atlantic, it joined “gee-up” as a phrase with equine roots enjoying a re-purposing for wider use.  The OED cites the first use of “bang” for the cutting of human hair to 1878 and within half-a-decade US newspapers and periodicals had adopted the plural form “bangs” when referring to a straight-across cut of hair on the forehead.  It was in the late 1880s the imaginative use “lunatic fringe” was coined (a century later to become a popular name for hairdressing salons) and “fringe” remained the dominate use in the UK and much of the Commonwealth while the US opted for the punchier “bangs”.  As a tool of US linguistic imperialism, the internet in the twenty-first century did its job and throughout the English-speaking world, bangs now peacefully co-exists with fringe with youth tending to the former.

Takes on Cleopatra with bangs long & short.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) in Cleopatra (1963, left) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) in Liz & Dick (2012).  Based on period sculptures, it seems likely the queen had curly hair but because of the prevalence of their appearance on women in surviving art from Ancient Egypt, bangs became entrenched in the public’s imagination of Cleopatra and film directors accordingly complied.  While it's true that the look (on men and women) does appear on much surviving imagery from Ancient Egypt it must be remembered that then, as now, public art was not necessarily representative of the appearance of the wider population although it probably did align with that of the elites.  Also, the as the archaeological records make clear, the consistency of style (straight-cut bangs (ie a horizontal fringe) across the forehead with hair apparently perfect (often shoulder-length and symmetrical) which appears dense, geometric, and highly regular was achieved with the use of wigs of human hair, wool, or plant fibres.  Carefully constructed and styled into clearly repeatable forms, the blunt bangs, at least among certain parts of society, must have been an enduring fashion statement.

The “bang” technique with origins in equine grooming is used with ponytails and is called the “straight blunt cut”; for this purpose the only substantive difference between a “pony's tail” and a “ponytail” is scale.

While, whether of human fringes or horses' tails, “bangs” might be a nineteenth century coining, the hair style is as ancient as humanity, the prehistoric origins doubtlessly a simple expedient to keep the hair from dangling in the eyes, the trim presumably a tiresome task in the era before scissors.  From that humble beginning evolved eventually the array of styles now available, at least some of which allegedly have been a political statements of group solidarity.  A fine “brief history of bangs” is maintained by Odele Beauty (their “Rinse Blog” an indispensable source of technical information) and there it’s claimed Cleopatra’s (Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ (“Cleopatra father-loving goddess” in the Koine Greek); circa 69 BC–circa 10 BC, Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51-30 BC and the last active Hellenistic pharaoh) “famous fringe is apparently a myth” although on the basis of surviving art, it seems likely Ancient Egyptians “wore blunt-cut bang wigs as early as 3000 BC” and whether or not they were the “influencers”, the look spread north to the Greece and Rome of Antiquity, Odele Beauty noting Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (known also as Octavianus (Octavian)); 63 BC-14 AD, founder of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) and first Roman emperor 27 BC-14 AD) “wore his hair combed into a short, forehead-framing fringe, setting a new trend (later dubbed the “Caesar cut”) that future emperors would follow.”  

Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc, 1901), oil on canvas by Albert Lynch (1860–1950).  The short bangs were always present in older paintings of Joan of Arc but it wasn't unusual for modern artists to be influenced by contemporary trends.  Monsieur Lynch left no notes so it's not known if he had in mind the circa 1901 style what of what later would come to be known as a “bloshie young woman”.  Joan of Arc (circa 1412–1431) sometimes was depicted bangs blunt and not but artists had her variously blonde or brunette and with hair wild or coiffed and their images may reflect what male artists thought such a woman should look like.

Surviving European art from the Medieval to Modernity confirms bangs seem never to have gone away and the emergence of the word late in the 1800s suggests they must then have been a quite a thing.  By then, bangs had survived seventeenth century disapprobation of the church, priests finding fashion trends symbols of ungodly vanity and inappropriate for modest, pious women.  However what cemented bangs in their cultural place seems to have been the social ripples from World War I (1914-1918), the so called flappers of the “roaring twenties” taking to them as an adjunct to the other forms of fashion minimalism they adopted as earlier, restrictive conventions were shrugged-off.  Although it had earlier also enjoyed some less pleasing connotations, “flapper” in the sense of the “bright young things” of the era is thought a re-adaptation of the nineteenth century Northern English slang meaning “teen-age girl” and it referenced the hair not routinely being “put-up” in the adult manner and instead kept in plaits or braids, left to “flap about” as she moved.  The 1920s re-cycling of “flapper” retained the connection with “lively young girl” and had nothing to do with hair; bangs had been around for millennia before the flappers but they made them one of their signature looks.  Since the 1920s, trends have ebbed and flowed in the cyclical way fashion works and bangs variously have been softened, blunted, gained wispy curls (not to be confused with the dreaded “fly-away bits”), bulked up as “bumper bangs”, trimmed back to be the “baby bangs” of pixie cuts and evolved in the twin streams of the “curtain bangs” which seductively would drape over the eyes and the dramatic, “set piece installations” made famous by Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009) which for years provided hairdressers with a solid income stream as young ladies everywhere demanded the same thing.

Although it’s not uncommon to see headlines like “Bangs are back”, that’s misleading because they never went away; like hairdressers, headline writers have their own methods of operation.  It would be more accurate were the sites to headline which bangs are trending and that’s now a global thing because it matters not whether a trend is noted as happening in Seoul, Sydney, Seattle and Santiago because on the internet everything is happening at the same time and looks now wax, wane or die in global unison and while the imaginative can doubtless describe some variants, beyond than the basic, self-explanatory forms (short, straight, blunt), there are really five distinct bangs:

Air bangs (seen here in conjunction with long side bangs also favored by goths).

(1) Air bangs are characterized by being light and sparse.  First defined as an element of K-beauty (the aesthetic of South Korea which encompasses hair, clothes, cosmetics music) etc these are known also as “Korean bangs” but their alternative name (see-through bangs) better describes the look.  Despite the name, they are not ideally suited to those with thin or wispy hair and like just about every style, work best with thick locks which provide a better contrast and more scope for styling.  Professional stylists caution those at home crafting air bangs from a conventional fringe to do the process slowly because it's easy to over-estimate to much need to be cut (specialized tools are available).  One advantage of air bangs compare with a straight cut is that in using unequal-length strands, that aspect of precision is avoided but the look does work best if there's a perception of consistency in the spacing. 

Baby bangs: On Pinterest, this was described as a “statement cut” and on that the content provider didn't expand but one suggested statement might be: “admission of guilt”.  Still, the bangs do mean attention is drawn to her lovely sanpaku eyes so there's that.

(2) Baby bangs are short, straight or blunt-edged bangs which are used usually in coordination with the shorter flavours of bob, the reason for that being that if paired with more voluminous cuts, the bangs tend to “get lost” or worse, look like mistakes.  Micro bangs are also “bangs writ small” but differ in that the look is used with styles other than bobs and is identified by being ; not usually considered conventionally attractive, it appears more on catwalks and in photo-shoots than on the street although some do (unwisely) pick up the look.  Baby bangs really suit only a tiny sub-set of the population (most of whom are aged under 15) and should be thought the Pontiac Aztec (2001-2005) of hair-styles in that they're functional, offer good visibility and undeniably are distinctive but are ugly.  All that can be said for both is that on the inside, looking out, one doesn't have to see them. 

Lindsay Lohan with curtain bangs, done in the “twin-hemispheric” or “double polyspheric mode”.

(3) Curtain bangs are long bangs, parted in the centre (although there have been asymmetric interpretations) and designed to resemble a two-drape curtain tied at the side, partially to reveal the face.  The leading edges of the most artfully styled sit just at the point where the eye color is visible and devoted fashionistas wear them with a “curtain reveal top” in which the curve of the garment matches that of the bangs, something which can be as hard to achieve as it sounds.  With a change of as little as a half inch (12.5 mm), stylists can use curtain bangs to change the perception of the shape of a face, the most popular visual trick being elongation, making a “round” face appear something more sought (heart, diamond or inverted triangle).  Combined with skilfully applied makeup, the transformation can be dramatic. 

An emo selfie with classic emo bangs.  The expression is emoesque but the vibrancy of the colors on clothes and bandana is untypical, emos tending more to goth-flavored looks with black and gray although purple seems now less of an emo thing.

(4) Emo bangs are less concerned with shape and symmetry, the important thing being the sweep of hair from the forehead fully covering at least one eye and maybe partially obscuring the other.  Amateur psychiatrists and other students of the emo (a distinct sub-set of humanity) probably have their own thoughts on whether the emo’s goal is to limit what they see of the world or to limit how much others see of them.  Emos are however pragmatic and although their have the honor of an eponymous style, they're also sometimes seen with various bangs. 

There seems little to suggest bangs are a reliable marker of TERFdom and those wishing to assert where they stand on TERFness should probably don an appropriate T-shirt.

(5) Not all agree TERF bangs should be thought a distinct class but they are short, straight, blunt-edged bangs seen usually with shorter cuts (not necessarily bobs).  The term is said to have originated on the microblogging platform Tumblr (which vies with MySpace for as the social media site to have suffered the greatest loss between its high-valuation and most recent sale) when in 2014 a user posted the suggestion such bangs seemingly were exclusive to TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists).  That obviously was impressionistic and it was never clarified whether the suggestion was intended humorously but if not, it’s an example of a gaboso (pronounced gah-boh-so).  A gaboso (Generalized Association Based On Single Observation) (also as the verb gabosoed) is the act of taking one identifiable feature of someone or something and using it as the definitional reference for a group; it ties in with logical fallacies.  While it’s doubtful many professional hairdressers have TERF bangs in the lexicon, it seems novel enough to warrant a mention.

Club

Club (pronounced kluhb)

(1) A heavy stick, usually thicker at one end than at the other, suitable for use as a weapon; a cudgel.

(2) A group of persons organized for a social, literary, athletic, political, or other purpose.

(3) The building or rooms occupied by such a group.

(4) An organization that offers its subscribers certain benefits, as discounts, bonuses, or interest, in return for regular purchases or payments.

(5) In sport, a stick or bat used to drive a ball in various games, as golf.

(6) A nightclub, especially one in which people dance to popular music, drink, and socialize.

(7) A black trefoil-shaped figure on a playing card.

(8) To beat with or as with a club.

(9) To gather or form into a club-like mass.

(10) To contribute as one's share toward a joint expense; make up by joint contribution (often followed by up or together).

(11) To defray by proportional shares.

(12) To combine or join together, as for a common purpose.

(13) In nautical, use, to drift in a current with an anchor, usually rigged with a spring, dragging or dangling to reduce speed.

(14) In casual military use, in the maneuvering of troops, blunders in command whereby troops get into a position from which they cannot extricate themselves by ordinary tactics.

(15) In zoological anatomy, a body part near the tail of some dinosaurs and mammals.

(16) In mathematical logic and set theory, a subset of a limit ordinal which is closed under the order topology, and is unbounded relative to the limit ordinal.

(17) In axiomatic set theory, a set of combinatorial principles that are a weaker version of the corresponding diamond principle.

(18) A birth defect where one or both feet are rotated inwards and downward.  Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) was born with the condition although in early self-propaganda he did attempt to suggest it was a battlefield injury from World War I (1914-1918); Goebbels never served in the military.  

1175-1225: From the Middle English clubbe, derived from the Old Norse klubba (club or cudgel) akin to clump, from Old English clympre (lump of metal) related to the Middle High German klumpe (group of trees).  The Proto-Germanic klumbon was also related to clump.  Old English words for this were sagol and cycgel.  The Danish klőver and Dutch klaver (a club at cards) is literally "a clover."  Ultimate root is the classical Latin globus or glomus (forming into a globe or ball), a later influence the Middle Low German kolve (bulb) and German Kolben (butt, bulb, club).  The sense of a "bat used in games" is from mid-fifteenth century; the club suit in the deck of cards is from the 1560s although the pattern adopted on English cards is the French trefoil.  The social club emerged in the 1660s, apparently an organic evolution from the verbal sense "gather in a club-like mass", first noted in the 1620s, then, as a noun, the "association of people", dating from the 1640s.  The Club Sandwich was probably first offered in 1899, the unrelated club soda in 1877, originally as the proprietary name Club Soda.  Club, clubbishness & clubbing are nouns & verbs, clubber is a noun, clubbed is a verb & adjective, clubby & clubbish are adjectives and clubbily is an adverb; the noun plural is clubs.

On her Only Fans page, Tash Peterson shows her club membership.

Something of a local legend in the world of vegan activism, Tash Peterson (b circa 1995) is an animal rights activist based in Perth, Australia.  Not part of the the militant extreme of the movement which engages in actual physical attacks on the personnel, plant & equipment of the industries associated with animal slaughter, Ms Peterson's form of direct action is the set-piece event, staged to produce images and video with cross-platform (Instagram, TikTok etc) appeal, the footage she posts on social media freely available for re-distribution by the legacy media, her Instagram feed providing a sample of her work in various contexts.  The accessories used include blood (reputedly from slaughterhouses) and very fetching figure-fitting costumes styled to resemble various animals including cows, her favored locations including the meat section of supermarkets, cafés and restaurants serving animal flesh, processing facilities associated with the slaughter industry and any events celebrating the carnivorous.  Ms Peterson's other club membership is that of the vegansexuals (vegans who choose to have sex or pursue sexual relationships only with other vegans).  Vegansexuals differ from vegesexuals in that while vegetarians exclude from their diet meat, poultry, and fish, many do consume dairy, eggs and honey, all products Ms Peterson says involve animal cruelty or exploitation and according to her, "plant-powered penises last longer".  Based presumably on her empirical findings, that knowledge is a helpful contribution to civilization. 

The Club Sandwich

Most historians of food suggest the club sandwich (in the sense of an item able to be ordered) first appeared on a menu in 1899 at the Union Club of New York City.  It was however made with two toasted slices of bread with a layer of turkey or chicken and ham between them, served warm, not the three slices with which it’s now associated; at that point the "club" was merely self referential of the institution at which it was served.  Others suggest it originated in 1894 at an exclusive gambling club in New York’s Saratoga Springs; the former is more accepted because there’s documentary evidence while the latter claim is based on references in secondary sources.  It’s a mere etymological point; as a recipe, what’s now thought of as a club sandwich had doubtless been eaten for decades or centuries before the words Club Sandwich appeared on a menu.  The notion that club is actually an acronym for "chicken and lettuce under bacon" appears to be a modern pop-culture invention, derived from a British TV sitcom, Peter Kay’s (b 1973) Car Share (episode 5: Unscripted, 7 May 2018) in what’s claimed to be an un-scripted take, although, on television, very little is really ad-lib and within the industry, "reality" has a specific, technical meaning.  On the show, the discussion was about the difference between a BLT (bacon, lettuce & tomato) and a club sandwich.  On the internet the factoid went viral but was fake news.

Seemingly sceptical: Lindsay Lohan contemplates club.

Ingredients

12 slices wholegrain or rye bread

12 rashers rindless, shortcut, peach-fed bacon

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 free-range eggs

½ cup whole egg mayonnaise

12 cos lettuce leaves

320g sliced lean turkey breast

4 ripe Paul Robeson heirloom tomatoes, sliced

A little freshly-chopped tarragon

Ground smoked sea salt & freshly cracked black peppercorns

Instructions

(1) Preheat a grill tray on medium.  Place half the bread under grill and cook until lightly toasted.  Repeat with remaining bread.

(2) Lightly brush both sides of bacon with oil.  Place under grill and cook for 2-4 minutes each side according to taste.  Once removed, place on a paper towel, turning over after one minute.

(3) Fry eggs, preferably leaving yokes soft and runny.  Fold tarragon into mayonnaise according to taste.   

(4) Spread 8 of the slices of toast with mayonnaise.  Arrange half of the lettuce, turkey and tomatoes over 4 slices.  Evenly distribute the fried eggs.

(5) Top with a second slice of toast with mayonnaise. Then, add remaining lettuce, bacon and tomato. Season well with salt and pepper. Top with remaining pieces of toast.

(6) Cut each sandwich in half or quarters according to preference, using toothpicks driven through centre to secure construction.

Variations

Chefs are a dictatorial lot and tend to insist a club sandwich must be a balanced construction with no predominant or overwhelming taste or texture; with chefs, the trick is to agree with everything they say and then make things to suit individual taste.  By varying the percentages of the ingredients, one can create things like a bacon club with extras and vegetarian creations are rendered by swapping bacon and turkey for aubergine and avocado.  A surprising number find tomato a mismatch, some add cheese or onion while many prefer butter to mayonnaise.  In commercial operations like cafés, tradition is to serve clubs with French fries but many now offer salads, often with a light vinaigrette dressing.  Served with soup, it’s a meal.

1946 Lincoln Club Coupe (body style 77).  When production of the V12 Lincoln Zephyr (1936-1942) resumed in 1946, the cars were sold simply as Lincolns with no model designation, differentiated by the style of coach-work (Sedan, Club Coupe & Convertible Coupe).  When production ended in 1948, it was the last of the American V12s.

The mysterious term “club coupe” emerged in the 1930s to distinguish the style from the “business coupe”, the latter a two door car with only a front seat, the rear compartment used to augment the space in the trunk (boot), the target market the numerous “travelling salesmen” who needed a vehicle with lots of secure storage for their wares.  What the term “club coupe” described was a two-door car with a rear passenger including a bench seat for two or three.  The use of the word “club” was an example of “aspirational branding”, a marketing flourish intended to suggest something more upscale than the utilitarian business coupe, the invocation that of the style and exclusivity of the “private club”.  Being a product of the marketing department, “club coupe” was never precisely defined and while the characteristics associated with the style were sometimes identifiable, never were they long consistent.

1951 Ford Custom Deluxe Club Coupe; long model names are nothing new.

The mid-century tendency was to use a body shorter than that of a sedan but retaining the convenience of a full-size back seat (unlike the single-seat business coupe) but as the “two door sedan” emerged as a descriptor things became fuzzy and by the time the two door hardtops appeared at scale in the 1950s, it wasn’t surprising “club coupe” fell from favour.  Ford in 1954 offered a club coupe but they were the next season renamed “Tudor sedan” (ie a two-door sedan) but made the use murkier still by calling the Customline Six two-door a "Tudor Sedan" and the new V8 Fairlane a “Club Sedan”; business coupes and club sedans lingering for years in the line-up but the club coupe vanished until 1966.  The 1960s revival was a use of the word to allude to the upmarket fittings once associated with the more luxurious club coupes of the pre-war years and like “landau”, “brougham” and such, was just another model designation, suggestive of some link to a happier past.

Promotional images used for 2015 Holden Commodore Clubsport R8 25^th Anniversary Edition.  Note the bogan-themed tyre marks; Holden knew their target-market.

The meaning denoted was different in 1990 when Holden added the V8 HSV (Holden Special Vehicles) Clubsport to the VN range as a “de-contented” entry-level model, along the lines of the original Plymouth Road Runner (1968-1970), the message being: fewer fittings meant lower cost, reduced weight and thus higher performance.  In this case the “club” element of the name denoted a vehicle suitable for amateur motor sport (ie “club-level” competition) in that the car could be road-registered and driven to racetracks where it could be used in standard form or with only slight, temporary modifications (tyres, brake-pads, exhaust systems etc). The Clubsport would remain in the line-up until the end of Holden production in 2017 although, for various reasons, equipment levels steadily increased.

Joyous German Porsche fanboys at a club meeting in 1957, held for them to meet Ferdinand Anton Ernst "Ferry" Porsche (1909–1998), a event they would have found a quasi-religious experience similar to that felt by Apple cultists permitted to be in the same room as Steve Jobs (1955–2011).

It was in the US in the 1930s that manufacturers began to dub cars “club this, that or the other” in a (vague) allusion to the up-market “private club”.  In Germany at the time, “club” was understood as “a stout stick with which one may strike another” and for some years cudgels had been the language of political discourse as the Communists and Nazis battled for control of the streets.  The Nazis clubs prevailed and under the Third Reich (1933-1945) private societies and associations became rare as the party and state attempted to assume totalitarian control, the party deluding itself into believing its crackdown on independence of thought had solved the “Freemason problem”, even creating a “Freemason Museum” on Berlin’s Prinz-Albrecht-Palais (conveniently close to Gestapo headquarters) to exhibit relics of the “vanished cult”.

Founding articles of the Westfälischer Porsche Club Hohensyburg.

After World War II (1939-1945) the private societies returned (including the scourge of Freemasonry) and on 26 May, 1952, seven fanboys (soon there were 13) of the Porsche sports cars (in production since 1948) formed the Westfälischer Porsche Club Hohensyburg; as Porsche Club Westfalen e.V. the club still exists and is based in Dortmund.  It was the world’s first “Porsche club” of which there are now hundreds in a reputed 86 countries with a membership roll believed to be close to a quarter-million and although there are factions devoted to other models, the core of the cult is a kind of “freemasonry of the 911”, a car with a lineage in which traces of the 1948 models remain detectable.  The club’s name also honored the Hohensyburg racecourse near Dortmund, which locals liked to call the “Westfalens Nürburgring” (Nürburgring of Westphalia).

2012 Porsche 911 Club Coupé in Familiengrün.

Although “fanboy” is understood to mean something like übertriebener Fan (excessively obsessive fan), blinder Anhänger (blind follower) or fanatischer Anhänger (fanatical follower), German has absorbed the English slang “fanboy” and uses it unmodified.  In 2012, Porsche celebrated the company’s 60^th anniversary and one component in the celebrations was a run of 13 911 Club Coupés, the unusual production volume a tribute to those 13 fanboys of 1952 who were the foundation members of world’s first “Porsche Club”.  Based on the 991 series (2011-2019) 911 (the concept in series production since 1964), the Club Coupé was bundled with the Sport Design package, X51 Powerkit, body-colored Sport Techno wheels, PCCB (Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes which used a ceramic disc-rotor reinforced with carbon fibre), Club-themed door sills, and PASM (Porsche Active Suspension Management).

1969 Porsche 911S (chassis #: 911 0300014) in olive green metallic, once the personal car of Ferry Porsche.

Although the specification was standard, Ferry Porsche got a sort of “advance copy” of the new model because it was one of fourteen built (chassis #: 911 0300013 skipped for “superstitious reasons”) for internal use before the summer holidays so customers had to wait a while to enjoy the 180 HP extracted from the 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) flat-six for the new 911S.  Others in the batch (01, 02 & 03) were allocated to the competition department for use in the 1969 Acropolis Rally which a 911S won.  What the 911 cultists adore is little details the factory added or omitted and of note are the missing front over-riders (an aesthetic choice by Ferry Porsche), a fuel-injection system from the 1966 906 (Carrera 6) and even a tow bar; the provenance of the latter two is uncertain but the tow-bar is a genuine factory part.  One marker of the uniqueness of the run in 2012 of the 13 Club Coupés was the color; although the factory listed the hue as Brewstergrün (Brewster Green), it was known internally as Familiengrün (Family Green), used for Wolfgang Porsche’s (b 1943) personal 911s.  Familiengrün is a concept rather than a chemical specification the influences over the years have included Oakgreenmetallic, Olivegreen and Emeraldgreenmetallic.