Knownothingism

Knownothingism (pronounced noh-nuhth-ing-is-uhm)

A humorous coining to describe the American Party (1855 on) based on a stock reply the members were instructed to use if asked probing questions.

1855: A compound word, know + nothing+ -ism.  Know is from the Middle English knowen, from the Old English cnāwan (to know, perceive, recognise), from the Proto-Germanic knēaną (to know), from the primitive Indo-European ǵneh- (to know).  Nothing is from the Middle English noon thing, non thing, na þing, nan thing & nan þing, from the Old English nāþing & nān þing (nothing (literally “not any thing”)) and was equivalent to no +‎ thing (and can be compared with the Old English nāwiht (nothing (literally “no thing”)) and the Swedish ingenting (nothing (literally “not any thing”, “no thing”)).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

Knowing nothing

A nineteenth century US political phenomenon, the Know Nothing Party was originally a secret society known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB) which, like organisations such as the Freemasons or the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or, featured rites of initiation, passwords, hand signs and demanded of its members a solemn pledge never to betray the order.  One practical measure was an instruction to members, if asked probing questions about the society, to answer only “I know nothing.”  The phrase was widely reported and members of the OSSB, despite many name-changes, were always known as “the know nothings”.  As a tactic in politics, there is much to commend it, as easy as it is for one to talk one’s way into trouble, it’s easier still to avoid it by saying nothing.

The roots of the party lay in New York City politics, emerging in 1843 as the American Republican Party, spawning a number of forks in different states which in 1853 merged, becoming the OSSB.  In this form, seeking national influence, it was re-branded, firstly in 1854 as the Native American Party and a year later, the American Party.  Sounding surprisingly modern, Trumpesque even, (as opposed to emulating Crooked Hillary Clinton which would be described as "knoweverythingism") the platform supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals, a twenty-one year naturalization period for immigrants and mandatory Bible reading in schools.  Their stated aim was to restore their vision of what America should look like: a society underpinned by temperance, Protestantism and self-reliance with the American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation's highest values; a kind of Make America Great Again vibe.  Their especial concern was the infiltration of Roman Catholics and the influence of the Pope and they advocated the dismissal of all Catholics from public office.  In this vein, their catchy campaign slogan was “Rum, Romanism and Ruin”.

The Know Nothings in Louisiana (2018) by By Marius M. Carriere Jr, University Press of Mississippi, 230pp.

The Know Nothings were the American political system’s first major third party. In the early nineteenth century, the two parties leftover from the revolution were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.  Later would come the National Republicans, the Whigs, the Democrats and the Republicans but it was the Know Nothings which filled the political vacuum even as the Whigs were disintegrating.  They were the first party to leverage economic concerns over immigration as a major part of their platform and though short-lived, the values and positions of the Know Nothings ultimately contributed to the two-party system which has characterised US politics since the 1860s.

Pleonasm & Tautology

Pleonasm (pronounced plee-uh-naz-uhm)

(1) In rhetoric, the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; a redundancy in wording.

(2) An instance of this, as free gift or true fact.

(3) Any redundant word or expression.

(4) In a variety of disciplines, an excess in the number or size of parts (now rare except in pathology).

1580–1590: A learned borrowing from the French pléonasme, from the Late Latin pleonasmus, from the Ancient Greek πλεονασμός (pleonasmós) (redundancy, surplus), from πλεονάζω (pleonázō) (to be superfluous), from pleonázein (to be or have more than enough (in grammatical use "superfluously to add”)), a combining form of πλείων (pleíōn) (more), from the primitive Indo-European root pele- (to fill).  The adjective pleonastic (characterized by pleonasm, redundant in language, using more words than are necessary to express an idea) dates from 1778 although sources list the related pleonastical as being in use since the 1650s.  Pleonasm is a noun, pleonastic and pleonasmic are adjectives and pleonastically & pleonasmically are adverbs; the noun plural is pleonasms.  Despite the modern practice, verb forms seem never to have evolved.

Tautology (pronounced taw-tol-uh-jee)

(1) The needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clarity of meaning.

(2) In formal logic, as a logical tautology, something true under any possible case or interpretation; it differs from the linguistic form in that in propositional logic it’s a compound propositional form in which all instances simultaneously are true.

(3) In pathology, an excess in the number or size of parts (archaic).

(4) In engineering, the addition of a strengthening device to a design in which all calculations prove it unnecessary.  By convention tautology is applied to small-scale instances whereas a redundancy tends to be larger, extending even to duplicated systems.

1570–1580: From the Late Latin tautologia (representation of the same thing in other words), from the Ancient Greek ταὐτολογία (tautología from tautologos) (a repetition of something already said (the word originally from rhetoric)), the construct being ταὐτός (tautós) (the same) + λόγος (lógos) (saying; explanation), related to legein (to say), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather).  The modern version is tauto- +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).  Tautology, tautologism & tautologist are nouns, tautologize is a verb, tautologically & tautologously are adverbs and tautological, tautologic & tautologous are adjectives; the noun plural is tautologies.

A tautology is the unnecessary repetition (often in close proximity) of an idea, statement, or word in circumstances in which the meaning has already been expressed.  In the expression 4 am in the morning”, the tautology is created by morning because am (an abbreviation of the Latin ante meridiem (before noon) has already established an unambiguous meaning.  For technical reasons however the odd tautology may be required, 4 am in the morning once used for the lyrics of a pop song because, were either of the tautological elements to be removed, the rhythm of the tune would be lost.  In the same manner a poet might be moved (poets are often moved) to write of the dawn’s sunrise and that’s one word too many but the tautology might be justified if it adds to the lyrical quality (something not guaranteed in poetry).  Tautologies seem sometimes to be used to add emphasis or strengthen a meaning and thus function adjectivally.  To say completely and totally beyond my comprehension and understanding technically loses nothing if either of the two tautological pairs are pared down but the practice is common as a rhetorical device and probably often effective as long as the wordiness is restricted to the odd flourish and doesn’t infect the rest of the speech.  A device of oral use therefore but usually an absurdity in writing.

Tautologies abound but those who condemn need to consider the context and history.  The phrase PIN number has long been ubiquitous and sounds right but seems wrong once deconstructed: undo the acronym and it becomes personal identification number number; what has happened is either PIN has become a word or PIN number an encapsulated phrase.  Democratic English resolves the argument in the usual manner: pedants can have their PINs while the rest of us use pin numbers.  In commerce, tautologies are often part of what the law describes as “mere puffery”.  A phrase like absolutely unique and a one-off, something of a favorite of antique dealers, is not only a tautology but not infrequently also an untruth but in the business such things are understood.  Forgivable then in a way that the linguistic sin very unique is not often tolerated by the fastidious although strangely, quite unique seems to be, presumably because it’s a more elegant construction.

Pleonasm refers to overabundance, and is mow rarely used outside of the medical context in which it describes aspects of tissue growth.  A linguistic pleonasm is usually identified as a phrase with more words than necessary, often by being repetitive or having empty or clichéd words, but is not necessarily wrong or confusing.  At the margins the difference between tautology and pleonasm does get ragged and not all dictionaries and style guides agree.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) indicates the difference seems to be between redundancy of expression and repetition and as a general principle that’s probably helpful, if not exhaustive.  One suggestion of a method to define a tautology is to substitute an antonym for one of the allegedly offending elements.  That works well if it creates contradictions in terms like 4 pm in the morning or the dawn’s sunset but doesn’t resolve everything.  A pleasurable delight seems a pleonasm because it uses unnecessary words to make the point and, under the test, a tautology because there are presumably no un-pleasurable delights although even then there are nuances because the rare delicacy most would enjoy as a delight might to someone with a specific allergy be not at all enjoyable.

Actually, biological reactions aside, something most would not find a delight can to others be entirely that.  In Freudian psychoanalysis, Lustprinzip (the pleasure principle) describes the driving force of the id: the human instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  However, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders notes the existence of masochism in various forms which involve pleasure being gained from pain.  Thus the connotations of words are a subjective and not objective test for there are those for whom pleasurable pain needs to be distinguished from un-pleasurable pain, the latter a mere tautology to most.  Sexual masochism disorder (SMD) had an interesting history in the DSM.  It wasn’t in the first edition (DSM-1, 1952) but in the second edition (DSM-II 1968) the only mention of masochism was in the categorization of sexual deviations, then defined as applying to those individuals for who sexual interest was directed primarily towards objects other than people of the opposite sex, toward sexual acts not usually associated with coitus, or toward coitus performed under bizarre circumstances as in necrophilia, pedophilia, sexual sadism, and fetishism.  It was noted that while many patients found their practices distasteful, they were unable to substitute normal sexual behavior and the diagnostic criteria was also exclusionary, noting the diagnosis was not appropriate for individuals who perform deviant sexual acts because normal sexual objects are not available to them.  This changed little in the third & fourth editions issued between 1980-2000 which refined the technical description and diagnostic criteria.  In the fifth editions (2013-2022), while classified as one of the paraphilias (algolagnic disorders) and thus "anomalous activity preferences", clinicians were advised a formal diagnosis of SMD was appropriate only if individual experiences clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.  By 2013 the DSM seemed to be back where Freud had started.

A mammary pleonasm (or tautology depending on one's view): Jasmine Tridevil during addition and the final result.

Pleonasm should not be confused with pleomastia (now largely supplanted by polymastia in clinical use) which is the condition of having more than two mammary glands (breasts) or nipples.  It’s a rare condition which doesn’t present in the geometrically perfect example presented in 2014 by Jasmine Tridevil, the stage name of Florida massage therapist Alisha Jasmine Hessler (b 1993).  Ms Tridevil initially claimed to have had the central unit implanted by a plastic surgeon but later admitted it was a construction made substantially of latex and silicone, attached to her with surgical glue, helpfully providing photographs of the maintenance being undertaken.  However, encouraged by enjoying more than fifteen minutes of fame, in 2019 Ms Tridevil sought to crowdfund the money (apparently US$50-000) needed actually to have the surgery performed.  Progress on this project hasn’t been reported but Ms Tridevil has maintained her presence on a number of internet platforms including vlogs on topics as varied as "How to dominate your boyfriend" and “My gothic Christmas tree”.

The offence caused by unnecessary words is such that not only do tautology and pleonasm exist but for serious critics there’s also auxesis (from the Ancient Greek: αὔξησις (aúxēsis) (growth; increase (which in rhetoric references various forms of increase)) and describes exaggerated language, battology (from the Ancient Greek βαττολογία (battología) (stammering speech)) which is the repeated reiteration of the same words, phrases, or ideas and perissology (from the Latin perissologia) which is the use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning.  At the margins, there’s often a bit of overlap so care need to be taken that one’s critique of a redundant (and all the constructions are really forks of that) word or phrase doesn’t itself commit the same offence.  Grammar Nazis of course delight in faulting others when they use a tautology, some particularly pedantic even correcting other obsessives who might wrongly have tagged a tautology when really they should have perceived a pleonasm.

Nothing

Nothing (pronounced nuhth-ing)

(1) No thing; not anything; naught.

(2) No part, share, or trace (usually followed by of).

(3) Something that is nonexistent; non-existence; nothingness.

(4) Something of no importance or significance.

(5) A trivial action, matter, circumstance, thing, or remark.

(6) A person of little or no importance; a nobody.

(7) Something that is without quantity or magnitude.

(8) A cipher or naught; the quantity or quality of zero.  The value represented by the numeral zero (and the empty set: {}).

(9) As “think nothing of it” and related forms, a procedural response to expressions of thanks.

(10) In no respect or degree; not at all.

(11) Amounting to nothing, as in offering no prospects for satisfaction, advancement, or the like.

(12) In architecture, the contents of a void.

Pre 900: From the Middle English nothyng, noon thing, non thing, na þing, nan thing & nan þing, from the Old English nāþing, nān þing & naðinc (nānthing & nathing) (nothing (literally “not any thing”), the construct being nān- (not one (source of the modern none)) + þing (thing).  The earlier Old English was nāwiht (nothing (literally “no thing”), related to the Swedish ingenting (nothing (literally “not any thing, no thing”).  The ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European ne- (not).  In slang and dialectical English there have been many non-standard forms including nuffin, nuffink, nuttin', nuthin, nuthin', nowt, nuthing & nothin'.  Slang has been productive (jack, nada, zip, zippo, zilch, squat, nix) as has vulgar slang (bugger all, jack shit, sod all, fuck all, dick).  Nothing is a noun & adverb and nothingness is a noun; the noun plural is nothings.

Lindsay Lohan wearing nothing (shoes don't count; everybody knows that).  Playboy magazine pictorial, January / February 2012.

The meaning "insignificant thing, a thing of no consequence" emerged circa 1600 (although as an adverb (not at all, in no degree), it was known in late Old English) whereas nothing in the sense of "not at all" had existed since circa 1300.  Phrases in the twentieth century were created as needed: “Nothing to it”, indicating something easily accomplished was noted from 1925 and “nothing to write home about” was really literal, recorded first and with some frequency by censors monitoring the letters written by soldiers serving at the front in Word War I (1914-1918); it appears to date from 1917, the extent of use apparently encouraged by it being a useful phrase exchanged between soldiers by word-of-mouth.  Nothing seems not to have been an adjective until 1961, an evolution of use (or a decline in standards depending on one’s view) which saw words like “rubbish” re-applied in a similar way.  A do-nothing (an idler) is from the 1570s, the noun an adoption from the from the verbal phrase and as an adjective to describe the habitually indolent, it’s noted from 1832.  The adjective good-for-nothing (a worthless person) is from 1711.  The term know-nothing (an ignoramus) is from 1827 and was later applied (though not deliberately) to the US nativist political party, active between 1853-1856, the bulk of which eventually migrated to the Republican Party.  The noun nothingness (non-existence, absence or negation of being) was first used in the 1630s but is most associated with the ideas around nihilism, the exploration of which became a mainstream part of philosophy in the nineteenth century.  Nothingness is distinct from the noun nothingarian which references "one who has no particular belief," especially in religious matters, a descriptive dating from 1789.  It's striking how often in religion, even when factions or denominations are in disputes with one another (sometime actually at war), one thing which seems to unite them is the feeling that whatever their differences, the nothingarians are the worst sinners of all.

The noun nihilist, in a religious or philosophical sense, is from the French nihiliste, from the Latin nihil (nothing at all).  Nihilism, the word first used in 1817, is “the doctrine of negation", initially in reference to religion or morals but later extended universally.  It’s from the German Nihilismus, from the Latin nihil (nothing at all) and was a coining of German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819).  In philosophy, it evolved quickly into an extreme form of skepticism, the political sense of a "rejection of fundamental social and political structures", first used circa 1824 by the German journalist Joseph von Görres (1776-1848).  Most associated with a German school of philosophical thought including (rather misleadingly) GWF Hegel (1770–1831) and (most famously) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the particular Russian strain was more a revolutionary political movement with something of a premium on violence (that would much influence Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)).  Thus with an initial capital, Nihilism (Nigilizm in the Russian) as used in this context is specific to the movement of Russian revolutionary anarchism 1863-1917 and limited in that the meaning refers to the participants’ disapproval of all social, economic & political possibilities in pre-Soviet Russia; the sense they viewed “nothing” with favor.

A probably inaccurate representation of nothing.  

The idea of nothing, in a universal sense in which literally nothing (energy, matter, space or time) exists is difficult to imagine, imaginable presumably only as infinite blackness, probably because that’s the closest to a two-dimensional representation of the absence of any sense of the special, white implying the existence of light.  That nothingness is perhaps impossible to imagine or visualize doesn’t however prove it’s impossible but the mere fact matter, energy and time now exist in space does imply that because, were there ever nothing, it’s a challenge to explain how anything could have, from nothing, come into existence.  Some have mused that there are aspects of quantum theory which suggest even a state of nothingness can be inherently unstable and where there is instability there is the possibility of an event.  The argument is that under quantum theory, if long enough is allowed to pass (something which, bewilderingly, apparently can happen even if there is no time) then every possible event may happen and from this may evolve energy, matter space or time.  To speak of a time scale in all of this is irrelevant because (1) time may not exist and (2) infinity may exist but it can for administrative purposes be thought of as a very long time.  The intriguing link between time starting and energy, matter or space coming into existence as a consequence is that at that point (in time), it may be the only time “now” could exist in the absence of the past and future so everything would happen at the same time.  Clearly, the conditions operative at that point would be unusual so, anything could happen. 

That is of course wholly speculative but in recent decades, the “string theorists” have extended and refined their mathematical models to a degree which not long ago would have been thought impossible so some modelling of a unique point of “now” in nothing would be interesting and the basic framework of that would seem to demand the mathematics of a model which would describe what conditions would have to prevail in order for there truly to be nothing.  That may or may not be possible but might be an interesting basis from which to work for those trying to explain things like dark matter & dark energy, either or both of which also may or may not exist.  Working with the existing universe seems not to be helpful in developing theories about the nature of all this supposedly missing (or invisible) matter and energy whereas were one, instead of working backwards as it were, instead to start with nothing and then work out how to add what seems to be missing (while remaining still not visible), the result might be interesting.

It’s not a new discussion.  The thinkers from Antiquity were known to ponder the philosophers’ traditional concerns such as “why are we here?” and “what is the meaning of life?” but they also realized a more basic matter was “why does anything exist instead of there being nothing?” and for thousands of years this has been “explained” as the work of gods or a god but that really not a great deal of help.  In the Western tradition, this basic question seems not to have bothered angst-ridden Teutonic philosophers, the German Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) writing on the subject, as later would the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951).  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976, who was only briefly a Nazi) called it the “fundamental question of metaphysics”.  The English-speaking school, more tied to the empirical, noted the matter.

Gundeck

Gundeck (pronounced guhn-dek)

(1) Historically, on warships of the sail era, any deck (other than the weather deck) having cannons in permanent place from end to end.

(2) As gundecking, navy slang for falsifying records (now used also in merchant and other commercial shipping) and a synonym of “pencil whip” (to falsify records to convey the impression tasks have been completed).

1670–1680: The construct was gun + deck. Gun (in this context) was from the mid-fourteenth century Middle English gunne & gonne (an engine of war that throws rocks, arrows or other missiles from a tube by the force of explosive powder or other substance), from the “Lady Gunilda”, a very big crossbow with a powerful shot, the second element of the term from the Old Norse.  Originally restricted to the largest of projectile-launchers, “gun” was later applied to all firearms, pistols beginning to be described thus from circa 1745 although the military resisted the spread, preferring to restrict “gun” to mounted cannons, especially the big, long-barrelled (almost always big-bore) devices used with high velocity and long trajectory shells.  Hence the phrase “great guns” (used by both the army & navy) which were distinguished from small arms (muskets, pistols, rifles) and most western militaries still insist pistols are “side arms” rather than guns.  The idiomatic uses seem all to be modern: The use to describe a “thief or rascal: dates from 1858, the phrase “jumping the gun” was US English from 1812 which referenced a sporting competitor anticipating the starter’s pistol and “guns” to mean “a woman’s breasts” is said to be from as recently as 2006, the coining presumably because it was felt there weren’t a sufficient number of slang terms to use in anatomical tribute.  The origin of “son of a gun” is contested.  One theory suggests it dates from the eighteenth century when women sometimes accompanied sailors on long voyages, giving (as seems inevitable) birth on board, the most convenient place being the space between the cannons on the gundeck.  Such a child would therefore be called a “son of a gun” although this doesn’t account for the girls, the explanation for that perhaps as simple as “daughter of a gun” not so effortlessly rolling of the tongue.  There is no documentary evidence to support this and most etymologists appear to suggest the phrase was merely a euphemism for the vulgar “son of a bitch”.  Best of all however was the US Civil War (1861-1865) era story which in which “son of a gun” was used to explain a young lady’s otherwise inexplicable pregnancy by claiming a fired musket ball had passed through a man’s testicle before lodging in her ovaries.  There has never been any medical support for the theory but it’s not impossible the explanation was accepted (if not actually believed), south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The construct of the name Gunnhildr (of which there are many variations) was the Old Norse gunnr (battle, war), from the primitive Indo-European gwhen- (to strike, kill) + hildr (battle), which technically creates a pleonasm but the duplication may be related to the wish to emphasise the size of the weapon.  The linguistic technique is noted in other languages such as that of the Darkinjung people (the original inhabitants of a part of costal New South Wales (NSW), Australia) in which the word for “water, pond etc” was woy and their name for a large body of water was woy woy (which endures as the name of the town Woy Woy, situated next to a deep tidal channel).  In a military context, the woman's name meant “battle maid”, some of the variations (Hilda, Gunilda, Gunhild, Gunhilda, Gunnhildr et al) familiar from Wagnerian interpretations.  Another Middle English adaptation of the women’s name Gunilda was gonnilde (cannon) and it appears also in a military stocktake (written in Anglo-Latin), a munitions inventory of Windsor Castle dating from 1330: “... una magna balista de cornu quae Domina Gunilda ...”  In the usual military manner, ancillary pieces picked up names associated with their primary device, hence the early fourteenth century gonnilde gnoste (spark or flame used to fire a cannon).  Something which might provide some insight into the (male) military mind is the frequency with which women’s names were used of the most extraordinarily powerful artillery pieces (Mons Meg, Big Bertha, Brown Bess et al).  The other influence on the development of the word may have been the Old French engon, a dialectal variant of engin (engine), the word engine’s original meaning better understood as something like “machine” or “constructed device”.

Deck (in this context) was from the mid-fifteenth century Middle English dekke (covering extending from side to side over part of a ship), from a nautical use of the Middle Dutch dec & decke (roof, covering), from the Middle Dutch decken, from the Old Dutch thecken, from the Proto-West Germanic þakkjan, from the Proto-Germanic þakjaną and related to the German Decke (covering, blanket) and the Proto-Germanic thakam (source also of the noun thatch), from the primitive Indo-European root steg & teg- (to cover).  It was thus a doublet of thatch and thack.  In English, the sense was soon extended by the Admiralty from “covering” to “platform of a ship” and the apparently mysterious use from the 1590s meaning “the pack of playing cards necessary to play a game” may have been an allusion to the cards being stacked like the decks of a big ship.  In audio engineering, the tape deck was first documented in 1949, apparently a reference to the flat surface of the old reel-to-reel tape recorders.  Dating from 1844, the deck chair gained its name from their well-publicized use on ocean liners.  The phrase “on deck” was an old admiralty term (famously “all hands on deck”) meaning “ready for action or duty” and by the 1740s it had entered general (non-nautical) use, in the US by 1867 entering the lexicon of baseball in the sense of “a batter waiting a turn at the plate”  The phrase “clear the desks” is now used in many contexts (and a favourite in corporate jargon) but originally was an instruction during a sea-battle to remove from the deck of a ship the wreckage of the engagement (downs masts, sails & spars, the dead and injured etc) which might interfere with a renewal of action.  Perhaps surprisingly, it’s documented only since 1852 but was likely to have been in use at sea for generations and it may be a variation of the French débarasser le pont. (clear the bridge).

Ships of the line

HMS Victory’s 32 Pounders on the Lower Gundeck.

Over time, warships evolved from two or three masted galleons into big, multi-decked affairs, the largest of which (those which would evolve into the dreadnoughts and the successor battleships of the twentieth century) were known as “ships of the line” which would form the backbone of the Western world’s great navies between the seventeen and nineteenth centuries before they gave way to the steam-power.  The idea of the “ship of the line” and the gundeck were intertwined because naval combat evolved into a fighting formation called the “line of battle” in which the opposing fleets manoeuvred to form lines so the guns could be fired in broadside (a simultaneous discharge of all the guns arrayed on one side of a ship).  Physics dictated the advantage in battle lay with the biggest ships with the biggest guns, thus the appearance of ships of the line with two, three or even four gundecks.  Of course, as decks with heavy guns were added, the centre of gravity rose and the need to find the optimal compromise balancing speed, stability and firepower preoccupied naval architects.

Model of HMS Royal William (1719), built as a First Rate (100 gun) triple-gundecked ship of the line, it only ever saw active service as a second and third rate ship.

By the turn of the eighteenth century, the definitive shape of a ship of the line had emerged.  The galleons protruding aft superstructure had been abandoned and they could displace as much as 2000 tons and be 200 feet (60 m) in length with crews of 500-800 sailors.  The cannons were arrayed along the (typically) three gundecks, the 30-odd heaviest guns (32-48 lb) on the lower gundeck, a similar number of 20-24 pounders in the middle with 24-30 12 pounders on the upper, the allocation reflecting the naval architects’ concerns with weight distribution.  The Royal Navy, rated it ships of the line according to firepower, the categories being third rate (up to 70 guns), second rate (70-100 guns) & first rate (over 100 guns) but the admirals were also realists, Lord Nelson (1758-1805) reckoning that on shore, a 12-gun fort could hold its own against a 100 gun ship of the line, a lesson which had apparently been forgotten when in 1915 some pre-dreadnoughts were sent to bombard the fortifications on the Gallipoli Peninsular when an unsuccessful attempt was made to force the straits of the Dardanelles and take Constantinople.

Gundecking

The term “gundecking” was naval slang for the falsification of records (and a synonym of “pencil whip”).  The origin of the tem is speculative but the most plausible explanation is said to relate to midshipmen (the lowest rung of the navy’s commissioned ranks) on the gundeck performing their celestial navigation tasks which (three time a day), were used to determine a ship's position using the morning star sights, the noon sun line, and the evening star sights.  However, not all midshipmen were as diligent as their captain would have hoped and rather than completing the dreary business of computing from fresh observations, simply reckoned the position on the basis of the speed and direction earlier recorded by their more contentious shipmates.  In other words, they made an educated guess and wrote down what they thought the numbers should be.  The term gundecking is now used to indicate the falsification of documentation in order to avoid doing the work required and in commercial shipping, the word is heard in cases which come before the courts.  There are stringent regulations which restrict how ships may process their bilge water (a truly disgusting mix of oil, water and sewerage) and on cruise ships with thousands of passengers there’s a lot of it and it’s an expensive business, ships’ engineers required to maintain hourly records of the purification processes prior to discharge into the open sea.  Because it costs a fraction as much to falsify the records and simply discharge the untreated bilge, some are tempted to “gundeck” the books and just open the valves on what is known as a “magic pipe” which is a straight line from bilge to ocean.  Fines in the order or US$40 million have been imposed so the costs of gundecking can be high.

Lindsay Lohan on community service, armed with a pair of ratchet loppers, gardening, Brooklyn Women's Shelter, New York City, 2015.

In 2015, a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles found Lindsay Lohan had been doing a bit of gundecking in recording as “community service” the hours spent working with the charity group Community Service Volunteers (CSV) during the time she was in London appearing in a West End production of David Mamet's (b 1947) Speed-the-Plow (1988).  Some of the hours claimed were absorbed lobbying the US insurance company Esurance to donate US$10,000 (£6,440) to the CSV although a statement issued by CSV confirmed Ms Lohan had volunteered on the organisation's “Positive Futures” project, which works with teenagers in Hackney, adding “She has built strong relationships with the young volunteers she has worked with on the scheme.”  The community service order dates from traffic offences in 2012 and the judge found some of her activities in London, including “meeting & greeting” fans didn’t qualify as “community service” and ordered the gundecked hours be annulled with a further 125 hours to be performed.