Octopus

Octopus (pronounced ok-tuh-puhs)

(1) Any cephalopod mollusc of the genera Octopus, Eledone etc, having a soft oval body with eight long suckered tentacles and occurring at the sea bottom; the order is Octopoda (octopods).

(2) Something likened to an octopus, as an organization with many forms of far-reaching influence or control.

(3) An alternative name for a spider (archaic).

1758: From the New Latin octopūs from the Ancient Greek ὀκτώπους (oktṓpous) (literally "eight foot"), the construct being ὀκτώ (oktṓ) (eight) + πούς (poús) (foot), from the primitive Indo-European root ped (foot).  The surviving evidence seems to hint the word more usually used in Greek discourse was polypous (also as pōlyps), the construct being poly-, from the Ancient Greek πολύς (polús) (many, much), from the primitive Indo-European polhús (much, many) + πούς (poús) (foot) but of this etymologists have suggested non-Hellenic folk origins.

Octopus has since at least 1882 been used figuratively of powers having far-reaching influence (usually as considered harmful and destructive). To the ancients, the octopus was crafty and dangerous, thrifty (stores food in its nest), and proverbial of clever and adaptable men, based on the animal's instinct of changing color when frightened or for disguise.  When speaking of politics, the word octopus is often used in the sense of "those whose tentacles reach many places" and this is sometimes applied to the activities of sprawling corporations.  In antiquity, such was the suspicion attached to the creature that it was thought to be amphibious, climbing trees near the shores to steal grapes and olives (the giant ones were said to raid whole warehouses).  Later historians link the myth to their eggs which resemble ripe olives.

The plural: Octopi, octopuses and octopodes

Although often used, there’s no etymological basis for Octopi.  The form was created by English speakers who mistakenly believed octopus was originally Latin and thus pluralized with an -i suffix, the assumption being the -us in octopūs is a Latin second declension ending; it’s actually the third declension noun.  The historic plural octopodes follows the Greek: ὀκτώποδες (oktṓpodes).  Although octopus came to English via scientific Latin (one of the late varieties that kept the language alive long after it had died out as a living tongue), it was never a native Latin word and didn’t exist in that language until scientists borrowed it from Greek in the eighteenth century.  Latin scholars also enjoy pointing out even were it a Latin word, it would take a different form and would not be pluralized with the -i ending)

Southern Blue-Ringed Octopus.

Pedants insist therefore either (1) the original Greek plural is correct or (2) it has over the centuries become an English word and thus the usual convention should be followed and the plural is octopuses.  In modern use, there’s also the general anomaly of culinary matters.  Although typically served by the dozen, when describing octopus the dish, the singular form is always used.  Among the lexicographers, Merriam-Webster is octopi-permissive but their modern dictionaries tend now to the descriptive; popularity prevails over etymology.  Both the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Fowler's Modern English Usage demands “octopuses”, the OED listing the plurals (in order of popularity): octopuses, octopi, and octopodes, noting the rarity of the last.  The online Oxford dictionary states (1) the standard plural is octopuses, (2) octopodes remains occasionally used and (3) octopi is incorrect.  It may be decades before the classists accept octopi as a genuine invention of Modern English.  Hopefully none of this will encourage adoption of "diplodoci" as the plural of dinosaur; one can make a case for octopi but dinosaurs is fine.

Baffled: Lindsay Lohan as a judge on The Masked Singer, an Australian game show in which performers appear in disguise and the panel tries to guess their identity.  Given she'd never heard of any of the contestants, she was certainly impartial but, not unexpectedly, was baffled by the octopus.  Ms Lohan was paid to be there but others actually willingly sat through several seasons of what appears to have been among the worst examples of television programmes.

A ballerina being trained in China.  This is how ballerinas are trained so we can go and watch Swan Lake.  For the pleasure of that, it seems a small price for them to pay.

Ballerina is another word in English which, by virtue of the history of use, maintained an alternative (if rare outside the profession and the notes in the programmes sometimes provided at performances) plural form.  Ballerina was from the Italian ballerina, the feminine equivalent of ballerino (dancer).  In English, a male performer is usually called a “ballet dancer” and the alternative is danseur (the plural form danseurs).  Ballerina is also used as a name for what is more often called a “ballet slipper” or “ballet flat” although the latter should be avoided because the term is used by the footwear industry for street shoes in this style (somewhat confusingly also known in some markets as “ballet pumps”).

Gallimaufry

Gallimaufry (pronounced gal-uh-maw-free)

(1) A hodgepodge (or hotchpotch); a medley of the unrelated; a mélange; a miscellany; jumble; a mish mash; olio; potpourri; an omnium-gatherum.

(2) Figuratively, something messy or confused.

(2) In music, any absurd medley especially if elaborate.

(3) In cooking, a stew.

1545–1555: from the Middle French galimafrée (ragout, hash; a kind of sauce or stew), from the Old French calimafree (sauce made of mustard, ginger, and vinegar; a stew of carp) of uncertain origin but probably coining of peasant cuisine, a conflation of galer (to amuse oneself; to have fun) + the Old Northern French (Picard) dialect mafrer (to gorge oneself; gluttonously to eat), from the Middle Dutch moffelen (to eat, to nosh (from Middle Dutch moffelen, (from the idea “to open one's mouth wide” of imitative origin)).  The alternative spellings were gallimaufray & gallimaufrey, both even more rare than gallimaufry although in historical fiction and poetry both have appeared, either suit the depiction of the era or as a device of rhyme.  Elsewhere, the equivalent sense was conveyed by Sammelsurium or Mischmasch (German), galimatija (Bulgarian), zibaldone (Italian), papazjanija (Serbo-Croatian), galimatías (Spanish) and karmakarışık şey (Turkish).  Gallimaufry is a noun; the noun plural is gallimaufries.

Gallimaufry Restaurant, Bristol, United Kingdom, noted for the excellence of its date pudding.

The English language is of course a gallimaufry, an agglomeration of words from all over the planet or, as some prefer to say it: a slut of a language.  That means there’s a wide vocabulary, one consequence of which is that for gallimaufry there are plenty of alternatives including farrago, hash, hodgepodge, hotchpotch, medley, mélange, mishmash, mixture, tangle, welter, mess, muddle; goulash, grab bag, mixed bag, miscellany, omnium-gatherum, array, collection, combination, combo, conglomeration, diversity, garbage, group, jumble, kind, mishmash, mixture, patchwork, potpourri & salmagundi.  Most are probably a better choice than the obscure gallimaufry which is now restricted mostly to poetic or literary use although retail outlets in various fields have used it.

In Dog Latin (amusing constructions designed to resemble the appearance and especially the sound of Latin, many of which were coined by students in English schools & universities), the term is omnium-gatherum, the construct being the genuine Latin omnium, genitive plural of omnis (all) + the English gather + -um (the accusative masculine singular).  The origin is lost to history but the earliest recorded use was by Sir John Croke (1553-1620), an English judge and politician educated at Eton & Cambridge who served as the last speaker of the House of Commons before the death of Elizabeth I (1533–1603; Queen of England & Ireland 1558-1603).

Lindsay Lohan in November 2022 appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to promote the Netflix movie, Falling for Christmas.  What caught the eye was her outfit, a suit in a gallimaufry of colors from Law Roach’s (b 1978) Akris’ fall 2022 ready-to-wear collection, the assembly including a wide-lapelled jacket, turtleneck and boot cut pants fabricated in a green, yellow, red & orange Drei Teile print in an irregular geometric pattern.  The distinctive look was paired with a similarly eclectic combination of accessories, chunky gold hoop earrings, a cross-body Anouk envelope handbag, and Giuseppe Zanotti platform heels.

The enveloping flare of the trousers concealed the shoes which was a shame, the Giuseppe Zanotti (b 1957) Bebe-style pumps in gloss metallic burgundy leather distinguished by 2-inch (50 mm) soles, 6-inch (150 mm) heels, open vamp, rakish counters and surprisingly delicate ankle straps.  The need for the cut of the trousers to reach to the ground is noted but the shoes deserved to be seen.

Although the origins of the word gallimaufry lie in the peasant cuisine stews made from lamb, mutton, pork and beef, probably the best known gallimaufry is bouillabaisse (pronounced bool-yuh-beys, bool-yuh-beys or (in French), boo-ya-bes), the Provençal fish stew first cooked in the docks of the port city of Marseille.  The word bouillabaisse was from the Provençal Occitan boui-abaisso, bolhabaissa or bouiabaisso, a compound created with the two verbs bolhir (to boil) & abaissar (to reduce heat (ie to simmer)).  Dating from the mid nineteenth century, the word actually encapsulates the recipe was translated variously as either “boil and then lower the heat” or “when it boils, lower the heat”.  The instructions are not only a recipe but also medically sound, the boiling killing the dangerous organisms associated especially with shellfish.

An up-market bouillabaisse.

The dish, known in the Mediterranean since Antiquity, long pre-dates the entry of the word into French, being a stew cooked for their own consumption by fishermen, making use of by-catch, the unsalable rockfish neither fishmongers nor chefs wanted.  It was only when news of the tastiness of bouillabaisse spread that gradually it entered the canon of French cuisine although that would also change its nature, more expensive ingredients being added as it began to appear on restaurant menus.  Originally, it included only the boney fish with coarser, less flavorsome flesh but the fishermen would also add whatever shellfish, sea urchins, mussels, crabs or octopus might have ended up caught in their nets, the taste thus varying form day to day.  Vegetables such as leeks, onions, tomatoes, celery, and potatoes are simmered with the broth, served with the fish and of course, being the French, it’s accompanied with bread and an oil & garlic sauce.  Although not always part of the modern method of preparation, one of the key features in the cooking of bouillabaisse was that the experienced fishermen, added the fish at intervals, the time required for cooking varying.  The Portuguese version is called caldeirada.  Because it’s so specifically associated with something, the bouillabaisse is rarely used figuratively in the manner of gallimaufry although it can be done provided the context makes clear the use has nothing to do with fish: “The wallpaper was a bouillabaisse of shapes & swirls” or “The modern Republican Party is a bouillabaisse of right-wing fanatics, Christian evangelical fundamentalists, climate change deniers, white supremacists and conspiracy theorists drawn to any story which explains things in a more comprehendible way than science”.

Lotus

Lotus (pronounced loh-tuhs)

(1) In Greek mythology, a plant believed to be a jujube or elm, referred to as yielding a fruit that induced a state of forgetfulness and a dreamy languor in those who ate it.

(2) Any aquatic plant of the genus, Nelumbo nucifera, of the water lily family, having shield-like leaves and showy, solitary flowers usually projecting above the water.

(3) Any of several water lilies of the genus Nymphaea.

(4) A decorative motif derived from such a plant and used widely in ancient art, as on the capitals of Egyptian columns.

(5) Any shrubby plant of the genus Lotus, of the legume family, having red, pink, yellow, or white flowers.

(6) An English manufacturer of lightweight sports and racing cars, best known for its successes in Formula One between 1962-1978.

1530–1540:  From the Classical Latin, lōtus or lōtos, perfect passive participle of lavō (wash), from the Ancient Greek λωτός (lōtós) (the lotus plant), the origin of which is unknown but thought probably related to Semitic plant names such as Hebrew לוט‎ (lōt) (myrrh).  The feminine was lōta, the neuter lōtum.  The circa 1500 lote was an Englished form of lotus and it survives as Lote-tree.  The yogic sense is attested from 1848.

From the 1540s, the name was, rather casually, bestowed on many plants, some related, some not even alike and that had been the pattern of the Greek lōtós which was applied to several plants before it came exclusively to mean Egyptian white lotus (a sense attested in English from 1580s), a plant prominent part in the mythology of India, Egypt, China.  The Homeric lotus later was held to be a North African shrub, from which "a kind of wine" can be made and historians conclude that was a reference to the effects rather than the taste.  The name has also been given to several species of water-lilies and a bean that grows in water.   The noun lotion is from the circa 1400 Middle English loscion (liquid preparation for application to the skin), from the fourteenth century Old French lotion, from the Latin lotionem (nominative lotio) (a washing), a noun of action from lotus (varied contraction of lavatus (a popular form of lautus, past participle of lavere (to wash) from the primitive Indo-European root leue- (to wash)).

The circa 1600 noun lotophagi (literally “lotus-eaters”) was from the Greek lotophagoi (plural), the construct being lotos + -phagos (eating), from the primitive Indo-European root bhag- (to share out, apportion; to get a share), the more common literary form of which was lotophagous.  The lotus was believed to induce a dreamy forgetfulness, hence the mention of the lotus-eater as "one who finds pleasure in a listless life" (1812) from the Greek lotophagoi, mentioned in book IX of Homer’s Odyssey.  Odysseus had to force his lethargic sailors back on board after the lotus-eaters had shared with them the narcotic fruit.  It’s one of the earliest warnings against drug use.

Of the plural

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson at a charity fundraiser for the Children’s Miracle Network, Lotus Lounge,  Washington DC, October 2008.

The use of plural forms in English is not consistent, though the wise attempt always to append just s or es as required.  This linguistic pragmatism (or Anglo-Saxon laziness if you prefer) simplifies things and plurals like stadia and referenda, while not extinct, are probably now archaic.  That said, plurals can sometimes need to end in an i, aux or a, often more for elegance than sticking to the rules.  Rare plurals persist because they’re useful within niche communities; scientists and statisticians being punctilious in the use of datum, the rest of us calling all such stuff, singular or plural, data.  Patterns of use in English, if of sufficient longevity (though not of necessity breadth of adoption), can re-define words borrowed from other languages.  The modern English agenda (from the Latin agenda (things that ought to be done)) is now singular, the plural being agendas and the individual components, items.  In the original, agenda was plural of agendum.  However, criterion is singular and criteria plural; any other use is a more recent lapse and remains wrong.  English is best evolving its own rules.  Lotuses isn’t pretty which is a good a reason as any for a word to vanish but under Latin rules the plural would be loti which is no better but anyway, lotus is of Greek origin.  So, because both lotos and lotus appear in the Latin texts and the plural in Greek was oi, not i, lotoi can exist in the same same documents.   That’s also why the persistent octopi is wrong and that’s a shame because it’s better than the standard English plural which is octopuses.  However, octopus comes from the Ancient Greek; the correct plural form is octopodes.

By 1968, the makers of the Lotus Formula One and sports cars responded to having their machinery called Loti and Lotaux by issuing a press release advising the company would henceforth adopt Lotus as both plural and possessive and hinted everyone should do the same.  Lotus thought all others, including the historically correct Lotuses, “horrible words”.  The press release had no effect.

The footnote: The Lotus 43

BRM H16 engine.

The change from the 1.5 litre (92 cubic inch) voiturette formula (1961-1965) to a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) displacement for the 1966 Formula One season meant not only would the teams need new engines but also bigger, stronger chassis.  Lotus had an advantage in solving the latter problem because it was able to modify the Lotus 38 which had won the 1965 Indianapolis 500 when fitted with a 4.2 litre (256 cubic inch Ford V8).  The 38 was a strong and adaptable design, many of the elements of which would be incorporated into the later Lotus 49 and many racing cars of the era were to some extent Lotus 38 clones.  For an engine, for a number of reasons, Lotus choose to use the BRM H16, a unit created by reconfiguring the successful 1.5 litre BRM V8 into a 180^o (flat) configuration and mounting one atop another, thereby creating a 3.0 litre H16 which had the advantage of a relatively short development cycle because so many existing components were able to be used but the drawbacks were weight, size and height.

BRM H16 in Lotus 43.

Although commendably short, the H16 was tall which meant a high centre of gravity, something exacerbated by having to mount the block high in the chassis to permit sufficient clearance for the exhaust systems of the lower banks of cylinders.  It was also wide, too wide to fit into a monocoque socket and thus was taken the decision to make the engine an integral, load-bearing element of the chassis.  There was no other choice but that aspect worked well.  Had the H16 had delivered the promised horsepower the Lotus 43 might have been a success but the numbers were never realized.  The early power output was higher than the opposition but it wasn’t enough to compensate for the drawbacks inherent in the design and, these being so fundamental they couldn’t be corrected, the only hope was even more power.  The path to power was followed and modest increases were gained but it was never enough and time ran out before the plan to go from 32 to 64 valves could come to fruition, an endeavor some suggested would merely have “compounded the existing error on an even grander scale.”  Additionally, with every increase in power and weight, the already high fuel consumption worsened.

Lotus 43, US Grand Prix, Watkins Glen, 1966.

In winning the 1966 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, the Lotus 43 delivered the H16 its sole victory, something BRM never managed when the engine was mounted in their chassis.  The 1.5 litre BRM V8 had enjoyed outstanding reliability but of the forty times the H16 started a race, twenty-seven ended prematurely.  The irony of the tale is that in the two seasons BRM ran the 400 horsepower H16 with its sixteen cylinders, two crankshafts, eight camshafts and thirty-two valves, the championship in both years was won by the Repco-Brabham, its engine with 320 horsepower, eight cylinders, one crankshaft, two camshafts and sixteen valves.  Adding insult to the exquisitely bespoke H16’s injury, the Repco engine was based on an old Oldsmobile block which General Motors had abandoned several year earlier (the engine blocks used by Brabham could be purchased by any customer for around US$20, a number which must have astonished outfits like Scuderia Ferrari).  After two seasons the H16 venture was retired, replaced by a conventional V12; Lotus sold the two 43s to a privateer who installed 4.7 liter (289 cubic inch) Ford (Windsor) V8s and campaigned them in Formula 5000 events.  The new Lotus 49 used the 3.0 litre Ford Cosworth (DFV) V8, a combination which enjoyed, remarkably, three successful seasons.

Gasoline

Gasoline (pronounced gas-uh-leen)

(1) A volatile, flammable liquid mixture of hydrocarbons, obtained from petroleum and used as fuel in internal-combustion engines or as a solvent.

(2) In the slang of drug users, marijuana, especially if notably potent (also as gas and there’s evidence both gas and gasoline have been used of other drugs).

(3) In slang, a cocktail made by mixing a spirit with an energy drink (the original believed to be a combination of vodka & Red Bull).

As used to describe the “light, volatile liquid obtained from distillation of petroleum”, gasoline dates from 1864 and was a variant of Gasolene which in the UK had been trade-marked the year before.  The word gasolene was from a trade-marked brand of petroleum-derived lighting oil, registered in 1862 which was based on the surname of English publisher and tea & coffee merchant John Cassell (1817–1865) who branched out into lighting fuel, marketed as both Cazeline & Cazzoline.  His publishing house Cassell & Co endures today as an imprint of the Octopus Publishing Group.  The surname Cassell was from the Anglo-Norman castel (a cognate of the English castle), from the Old French castel, from the Latin castellum, a diminutive of castrum.  The -eline suffix was from the Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (élaion) (oil, olive oil), from ἐλαία (elaía).  Etymologists speculate the spelling of gasolene (and thus gasoline) may have been influenced by Gazeline, an Irish product which was a clone of Cazzoline, either the promoters liked the assumed association with “gas” or simply they found it a more attractive word.  It’s though the general construct gas-o-line was built with the “o” representing the Latin oleum (oil) and the ending a borrowing from the chemical suffix -ine.  The alternative form gasolene is extinct in every market except Jamaica.  Gasoline is a noun & adjective and gasolinic is an adjective; the noun plural is gasolines.

Moderne BV-Aral Tankstelle (modern BV-Aral gas station), Bochum, FRG (Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)), 1958.  The cars are an Opel Rekord (left), a Volkswagen Type 14 (Karmann Ghia) coupé (centre) and a Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle) (right).  In the background stands the head office of the oil company BV-Aral AG.

In the US, the shortened form “gas” was in common use by at least 1897 but on the pattern of use typically found in other words, it’s likely it was around almost as soon as gasoline went on sale.  The “gas station” (place to fill up one’s automobile (“gassing up”) with gasoline by use of a “gas pump”) was recorded in California in 1916 and was in national use by the early 1920s.  The “gas pedal” (the accelerator) was first recorded in 1908 and is still used even in markets where the term petrol is preferred, as in the phrase “step on the gas” (depress the accelerator (ie go faster)) which is used generally to suggest increasing speed or effort and is not confined to automobiles.  The term gas-guzzler (a car with a high fuel consumption) was coined in 1973 after the first oil shock and in 1978 the US federal government imposed the first stage of its long-running “gas-guzzler tax”.  The noun gasohol (a gasoline with a small percentage of ethanol was coined in 1975; the mix was another reaction to the increase in the oil price and occasional shortages in the era.  To “pour gasoline on the fire” is a suggestion some action is making an already bad situation worse.  The term Avgas (the construct being av(iation) + gas) was coined during the First World War (1914-1918) when it was found the mix used in automobiles was unsuitable for aircraft which needed a mixture with higher specific energy (ie high octane).  The use in North America (and a handful of other places) of “gas” to refer to what is otherwise generally known as “petrol” sometimes mystifies because in many markets the usual distinction for road transport is between vehicles fueled by diesel, petrol & gas (usually liquid petroleum gas (LPG) or compressed natural gas (CNG).

Entertainment Tonight (ET) deconstructs Lindsay Lohan’s dance moves at a New Jersey gas station, October 2019.  According to ET, the routine was executed between gas pumps 3 & 4.

In chemistry, gas is matter in an intermediate state between liquid and plasma that can be contained only if it is fully surrounded by a solid (or in a bubble of liquid, or held together by gravitational pull); it can condense into a liquid, or can (in care cases) become a solid directly by deposition. The common synonym is vapor (also as vapour).  The word was a borrowing from the Dutch gas which was coined by chemist Brussels-based chemist & physician Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580–1644), from the Ancient Greek χάος (kháos) (chasm, void, empty space) and there may also have been some influence from geest (breath, vapour, spirit).  More speculatively, there were also the writings of the Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance Theophrastus von Hohenheim (circa 1493-1541 and known usually as Paracelsus) who wrote of kháos in the occultist’s  sense of “proper elements of spirits”" or "ultra-rarified water”, both of which accorded with van Helmont's definition of gas which he introduced to the world in Ortus medicinae, vel opera et opuscula omnia (The Origin of Medicine, or Complete Works (1648)) with the words Hunc spiritum, incognitum hactenus, novo nomine gas voco (“This vapor, hitherto unknown, I call by a new name, ‘gas’”).

Lindsay Lohan gassing up her Porsche, Malibu, California, April 2020.

The use in science in the modern sense dates from 1779 and it was adopted for specific applications as technologies emerged or were commercialized: To describe a “combustible mix of vapors” the term “coal gas” was first used in 1794; the use in medicine for the anesthetic nitrous oxide was from 1794 (made famous in dentistry as “laughing gas” although the laughter was induced by impurities introduced in the early production processes rather than the inherent properties of N₂O); “Poison gas” was from 1900" (1900).  The meaning “intestinal vapors” emerged in 1882 while the not unrelated sense of “empty talk” was from 1847 (meaning something like “hot air”) although more positively, by 1953 “it’s a gas” meant “something exciting or excellent”, “a gasser” in 1944 meaning much the same.  James Joyce (1882–1941) in Dubliners (1914) used gas to mean “fun, a joke”, an Anglo-Irish form thought linked to the use of laughing gas in dentistry.  In drag racing “gassers” (so named because they were fueled by gasoline rather than methanol or nitromethane) were the most common of the highly modified road cars in the early days of the sport but the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) retired the category in 1972 and split the participation of gasoline-powered units into a number of classes.

Art Deco gas station, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, 1931.

The “gas-works” was first described in 1914 and was a little misleading because they were actually bulk-storage facilities from which gas was distributed either by fixed lines or cylinders delivered to the premises.  The kitchen appliance the “gas-oven” was mentioned first in 1851 although “gas-stove” by then had been in use for three years.  The notorious “gas chambers” used by the Nazis in their mass-murder programmes are most associated with the attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe but the first were actually built in 1939, as part of Aktion T4 which involved the killing of those with physical and intellectual disabilities.  These early facilities used carbon monoxide and were built within Germany and served also to murder other prisoners and although by later standards inefficient, were adequate for the numbers involved.  As territories to the east were occupied, similar structures were built and there were ever experiments with “mobile chambers”, large air-tight van coachwork added to truck chassis into which the exhaust gasses were ducted.  Again, these worked but by 1941 the Nazis now wished to exterminate millions and the most efficient method was found to be scaled-up chambers (disguised as shower rooms) into which the hydrogen cyanide-based anti-vermin fumigant Zyklon B was introduced, permitting a throughput at the most productive death camps of some 5500 at day, sometimes for months at a time.  The term “gas chamber” was widely used during the post-war hearings conducted by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg (1945-1946) but as a method of judicial execution, many nations had by then used them at various times and the US only recently abandoned use of the method.

Roadsters line up to gas up, Gasoline Alley, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, May 1960.  This was one of the official postcards sold in the speedway's shop.

Gasoline Alley is the name of the garage area at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  That wasn’t the original name but in the 1920s, “gasoline alley” was the drivers’ slang for the forecourt at the back of the garages where the cars were taken to refuel.  Whether linked or not, there was in the era a popular newspaper comic strip called Gasoline Alley and the use of the name soon extended to the strip dividing the two rows of garages.  It caught the public imagination and the facility managers in the early 1950s added signage which meant the whole garage area became associated with the term.  As a result of the reconstructions necessitated by fires, modernization & expansion, Gasoline Alley is not recognizable compared to its original appearance but the name remains, even thought actual gasoline is now rarely pumped, the open-wheel cars switching first to methanol (1965) and later (2006) ethanol and it’s only when other categories use the track that gasoline is in the tanks.  If the sport is compelled to convert to electric (or hopefully hydrogen) propulsion, the name is unlikely to change.

Rod Stewart (b 1945), Gasoline Alley (1970).