Parthian

Parthian (pronounced pahr-thee-un)

(1) A native or inhabitant of Parthia.

(2) An Iranian language of ancient and medieval Parthia.

(3) Of or relating to, or characteristic of Parthia, its inhabitants, or their language.

522: (Although use doubtless predates the first recorded use)  It refers to a native or inhabitant of Parthia (ancient kingdom northeast of Persia in western Asia) and was from the Old Persian Parthava (a dialectal variant of the stem Parsa and the source of "Persia" (the plural was Partienes).  In English, Parthian had been used by historians and geographers since the 1520s and the familiar adjectival form "Parthian shot" seems to date from the early nineteenth century but images of the act had existed for two millennia and had since the 1630s been referred to as the "Parthian fight".  William Shakespeare (1564–1616) liked the word: Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight (Cymbeline (circa 1610), Act I, Scene VII).  Parthian is a noun & adjective and if used in the sense of “of or relating to the historic Parthia or Parthians” it is with an initial capital; the noun plural is Parthians.

The Parthian shot and the parting shot

Journalists at Murdoch tabloid the New York Post can be relied upon to re-purpose a metaphor.

The Parthian shot was a military tactic, used by mounted cavalry and made famous by the Parthians, an ancient people of the Persian lands (the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979).  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the Parthian archers would, in full gallop, turn their bodies backward to shoot at the pursuing enemy.  This demanded both fine equestrian skills (a soldier’ hands occupied by his bows & arrows) and great confidence in one's mount, something gained only by time spent between man & beast.  To make the achievement more admirable still, the Parthians used neither stirrups nor spurs, relying solely on pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping mounts and, with varying degrees of success, the tactic was adopted by many mounted military formations of the era including the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Magyars, and Mongols.  The Parthian Empire existed between 247 BC–224 AD.

As a metaphor, “Parthian shot” describes a barbed insult or some sort of attack delivered while in the act of retreat.  There are aspiring pedants who like to point this out to those using the term “parting shot” in a similar vein and while they’re correct the latter is sometimes being used incorrectly, in many instances they’re right for the wrong reasons.  “Parthian shot” seems first to have appeared in a letter written by an army officer serving under the Raj, Captain Godfrey Mundy (1804-1860), ADC (aide-de-camp) to Field Marshal Stapleton Cotton (later Lord Combermere, 1773–1865; Commander-in-Chief, India 1825-1830) using it while speaking of a successful shot during one of the many hunting expeditions which so contributed to the slaughter of the sub-continent’s wildlife during the colonial era.  That was in 1832 and while there’s evidence of use in succeeding decades, it was after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) published A Study in Scarlet (1886) which included the sentence: “With which Parthian shot he walked away, leaving the two rivals open-mouthed behind him” that the phrase began with some frequency to appear in English.

The battlefield tactic had for some time been known to historians and soldiers before it emerged as a metaphor and it’s thought Captain Mundy was being a little loose in his interpretation, everything suggesting the “Parthian shot” he mentioned was the firing his “Joe Manton” (a shotgun manufactured by the English gunsmith Joseph Manton (1766–1835)) backwards, over his shoulder, a trick with looks impressive in movies but which demands practice to avoid a self-inflicted injury.  Although it’s sometimes suggested “parting shot” was a folk etymology from “Parthian shot”, the former was in use by at least the late 1700s and etymologists can find no documentary evidence, however convincing the linkage may appear and it’s not impossible “parting shot” evolved (possibly even in more than one place) separately and among those who had never heard of the “Parthian shot”.  So, while the two terms are often used interchangeably and in general use “Parthian shot” is now rare, those who wish can achieve nuances of difference: (1) A “Parthian shot” is an attacking comment made while in retreat and (2) A “parting shot” is a “last word” delivered while breaking off from an oral engagement; it does not of necessity imply a retreat.

The Bolton-Paul Defiant (1939-1943)

The Royal Air Force (RAF) tried a variation of the Parthian shot with Bolton-Paul Defiant, a single-engined fighter and Battle of Britain contemporary of the better remembered Spitfire and Hurricane.  Uniquely, the Defiant had no forward-firing armaments, all its firepower being concentrated in four .303 machine guns in a turret behind the pilot.  The theory behind the design dates from the 1930s when the latest multi-engined monoplane bombers were much faster than contemporary single-engined biplane fighters then in service. The RAF considered its new generation of heavily-armed bombers would be able to penetrate enemy airspace and defend themselves without a fighter escort and this of course implied enemy bombers would similarly be able to penetrate British airspace with some degree of impunity.

By 1935, the concept of a turret-armed fighter emerged.  The RAF anticipated having to defend the British Isles against massed formations of unescorted enemy bombers and, in theory, turret-armed fighters would be able approach formations from below or from the side and coordinate their fire.  In design terms, it was a return to what often was done early in the First World War, though that had been technologically deterministic, it being then quite an engineering challenge to produce reliable and safe (in the sense of not damaging the craft's own propeller) forward-firing guns.  Deployed not as intended, but as a fighter used against escorted bombers, the Defiant enjoyed considerable early success, essentially because at attack-range, it appeared to be a Hurricane and the German fighter pilots were of course tempted attack from above and behind, the classic hunter's tactic.  They were course met by the the Defiant's formidable battery.  However, the Luftwaffe learned quickly, unlike the RAF which for too long persisted with their pre-war formations which were neat and precise but also excellent targets.  Soon the vulnerability of the Defiant resulted in losses so heavy its deployment was unsustainable and it was withdrawn from front-line combat.  It did though subsequently proved a useful stop-gap as a night-fighter and provided the RAF with an effective means of combating night bombing until aircraft designed for the purpose entered service.

Trends of Use

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Whet

Whet (pronounced hwet or wet)

(1) To sharpen (a knife, tool, etc) by grinding or friction.

(2) To make keen or eager; stimulate:

(3) To stimulate one’s curiosity (usually in the phrase “to whet the appetite”)

(4) The act of whetting or a person or device which whets.

(5) Something that makes more keen or intense; an appetizer or aperitif.

(6) A spell of work; a short period of time (US slang, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, such as the phrase “to talk a whet”).

(7) To preen (obsolete).

Pre 900: From the Middle English verb whetten & noun whete, from the Old English verb hwettan (to whet, sharpen (and figuratively "to incite or encourage”) and noun hwǣte, a derivative of hwæt (bold) and related to hvæt (sharp), from the Proto-West Germanic hwattjan, from the Proto-Germanic hwatjan & hwatjaną (to incite, sharpen), from the primitive Indo-European kehid (sharp).  It was cognate with Dutch wetten (“to whet, sharpen”), the German wetzen (“to whet, sharpen”), the Icelandic hvetja (“to whet, encourage, catalyze”) and the dialectal Danish hvæde (“to whet”).  The Proto Germanic hwatjan & hwatjaną which was from the primitive Indo-European root kwed- (to sharpen), source also of the Sanskrit codati (incites (literally "sharpens")), the Old English hwæt (brave, bold) and the Old Saxon hwat (sharp) was the source also of the Old Norse hvetja (to sharpen, encourage), the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch wetten, the Old High German wezzan, the German wetzen (to sharpen) and the Gothic ga-hvatjan (to sharpen, incite).  Whet is a noun and verb, whetted & whetting (used with object) are verbs, whetter a noun and whetted an adjective.  The noun plural is whets and the homophone wet (in accents with the wine-whine merger).

The Modern English words wet and whet are etymologically unrelated but for a number of reasons are sometimes, understandably, confused.  Nor is the whet/wet thing an isolated example and the reason for much confusion lies in the terminology familiar to historians, translators and etymologists: the source of most modern English being conveniently traced back to Ancient Greek and the surprisingly large number of forks of Latin, through the filter of Old and Middle English.  The Greek & Latin is obviously foreign and for most, words can be recognized only by their similarity to what is now familiar but Middle English is (at least substantially) readable to a modern English-speaking audience prepared to guess a little and pick up wherever possible from the context or sentence structure.  Old English (which once was the “Olde English” which better captures the idea) however really is a misnomer and is almost wholly unrecognizable and is better thought of as pre-English and probably only the most structurally oriented etymologists would regard it as a proto-form.  Indeed, many prefer the alternative “Anglo-Saxon” as a description because it was introduced to the British Isles by the Germanic peoples who settled in the mid-fifth century, a timing which meant it was in that language that were written what came to be regarded as the first works of Literature “in English”.

One suspects that were an anthropologist now to discover the old texts as a novel form, it’s unlikely they’d be labeled as any form of “English”, something which may have happened because of a desire (which long persisted in the study of “English” history) to make Englishness as ancient as possible, historians long seduced by their constructions of all that stretched back to the island’s links with the classical age.  Except when treated as aberrations, uncivilized barbarians and pockets of violent backwardness, much of the non-English contribution to the history of life on the British Isles tended until recently to be neglected or devalued by historians and the attitude to language reflects this but that Modern English contains both wet and whet, pronounced the same yet meaning different things hints at the tangle, an additional twist being that some “whets” and distinguished from others by being used “wet”.

In English use, this meshing of sound and overlap of meaning does produce the odd tendency to error.  For example, a Parthian shot (Parthian an Iranian language of the people of ancient and medieval Parthia) is a metaphor used to describe a barbed insult, delivered as the speaker departs, the construction based on a military tactic used by Parthian mounted cavalry.  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the archers would turn their bodies back in full gallop to shoot at the pursuing enemy, quite a trick which demanded fine equestrian skills given that the riders’ hands were occupied by his bows and arrows.  It was more admirable still because the Parthian military used neither stirrups nor spurs, riders relying solely on the pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping beasts.  However, the literal “Parthian shot” was literally also something of a “parting shot” given the way it was delivered and among English speakers is often rendered as “parting shot”, a use so frequently encountered that many dictionaries now accept it as a legitimate alternative form as long as the correct meaning is conveyed: Whichever word is used, the metaphor refers not merely to an effectively made comment, the essence being that it is delivered at the point of departure.

Part in this sense was from the Old French departir, from the Late Latin departiō (to divide), the construct being dē- (away from) +‎ partiō (part, divide).  Interestingly, “part” (in the sense of “piece of something) existed in Old English and is an example that the relationship with the more recent Middle & Modern English is occasionally recognizable.  Part was from the Middle English part, from the Old English part (part) and the Old French part (part), both from the Latin partem, accusative of pars (piece, portion, share, side, party, faction, role, character, lot, fate, task, lesson, part, member), from the primitive Indo-European par- & per- (to sell, exchange).  It displaced the Middle English del & dele (part), from the Old English dǣl (part, distribution).

Lindsay Lohan wetting her whistle during a fishing trip with Hofit Golan (b 1985, Israeli media personality), July 2016.

Whet and wet are subject to the same linguistic clatter.  To “whet one’s appetite” and “wet one’s whistle” can both mean “to imbibe an aperitif” although there are differences of nuance, the former meaning “to sharpen the desire for more” while the latter references the usefulness of alcohol as a social lubricant.  The occasional mistake is thus understandable and those learning English must think such things surely unnecessary but, as a noun, things don’t improve.  The English whet is a word about sharpening things and a whetstone is a literally a piece of stone, most frequently in the shape of a rectangular cuboid (although there are specialized shapes optimized to sharpen different devices with more complex curves) against which the edges of a blade are worked at an acute angle until sharp.  That’s fine but whetstones are often used with a cutting fluid (water or an oil), both to enhance the sharpening and carry away swarf (the tiny fragments of metal lost from a blade).  A whetstone may thus be used wet or dry but fortunately, the term “wet whetstone” has always been avoided and the variations are instead styled water stones (also waterstones) or oil stones (also oilstones).

Japanese Natural Whetstone.

Whetstones may be cut wholly from natural stone or modern composites.  The natural product (an there are cults among the advocates of the various types), is formed usually of some form of quartz, and documented since antiquity are the locations of the quarries which produce the whetstones able to provide a blade with the sharpest edge although recent research seems to indicate there’s little difference in the results it’s possible to achieve but a huge gulf in the efficiency with which one does the job compared with another and it’s thought the ease of operation was as much a factor in historic preferences as the fineness of the edge.  The classical whetstones, being a natural product were subject also to much variation in appearance and the more pleasing or rare have always been prized, some now collector items, bought to be displayed rather than used for their historic purpose.

The synthetic composites are made usually with a type of ceramic such as silicon carbide (carborundum) or aluminum oxide (corundum), held together with a bonded abrasive.  Popular in industry and commerce because they offer a faster cutting action than natural stone, they have the advantage of being able to be fabricated as a double-block, coarse grit on one side, fine on the other, thus enabling the one reversible piece to be used instead of two.  Unlike a natural stone, the consistency of particle size, distribution and density can be almost perfectly replicated throughout and although artisans may still hanker for the look and feel of real stone, it’s admitted the modern synthetics are usually now superior; the ability to integrate nano-sized particles meaning the construction of composites is now almost infinitely variable.

Dalstrong’s summary of sharpening techniques when using their synthetic composite whetstones.

Karen

Karen (pronounced kar-uhn (kahr-ren or kuh-ren for the given name))

(1) A group of people of eastern and southern Burma (Myanmar).

(2) One of these people.

(3) The language of the Karen, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan family.

(4) Of or relating to the Karen people or their language.

(5) A female given name, originally a form of Katherine.

(6) A general purpose pejorative term used to disparage white, middle-class, middle-aged women.

1759: The original spelling was Carian, from the Burmese ka-reng (wild, dirty, low-caste man), a not entirely affectionate local descriptor of the Mongoloid people of Burma.  For the ethnic group, the noun plural is Karens, (especially collectively) or Karen; for all other uses it’s Karens. 

1800s: The feminine proper name entered English from the Danish Karen, a vernacular form of Catherine & Katherine that arose in medieval Denmark.  Rare in the English-speaking world before 1928, it first became popular during the 1940s and was consistently in the top-ten for girls born in the United States between 1951-1968, and was the third most popular girl's name in 1965.  That proved to be peak-Karen and its use rapidly declined to be negligible.  Used in the Danish, Arabic, Dutch, Hebrew, Norwegian, German and English languages, variants (mostly German, Austrian & the Nordic countries) include Caja, Kaja (Danish), Caren, Caryn, Karena, Kaat, Karin, Karyn (and dozens of others), it has since 1945 also been used in Japan, China, Malaya (later Malaysia) and the Philippines.

Karen can also be a family name (surname).  In Armenian, Karen (Կարեն) (kɑˈɾɛn) is a common masculine given name, derived from the Parthian name of the House of Karen (or Caren) which ruled the Tabaristan region, corresponding (approximately) to the provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran.  The House of Karen (Kārēn in the Middle Persian; Kārēn in the Parthian & Persian (کارن‎), Kārin or Kāren, known also as Karen-Pahlav (Kārēn-Pahlaw)) was one of the seven great houses during the rule of the Parthian and Sassanian Empires.  The masculine given name Garen is a western Armenian form of the eastern Armenian Karen.

One spelling used in both Germany and the Nordic countries is Carin.  The Swedish-born Countess Carin von Kantzow (1888-1931) was the first wife of Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) and the palatial country house (construction of which was paid for by the state) he had built during the 1930s was “Carinhall” in her memory.  Carinhall sat in the grounds of his large hunting estate (another gift from the state) in the Schorfheide Forest, north-east of Berlin and was the site of many events in which he showed off his varied tastes in clothing (including Roman togas and painted toenails) and sybaritic lifestyle.  What went on at Carinhall was the subject of much gossipy humor in political & diplomatic circles and the more austere Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) once suggested to a visitor: “You should visit Göring at Carinhall, a sight worth seeing.”.  He later had a much smaller lodge built after marrying his second wife (Emma “Emmy” Sonnemann (1893–1973)); that he named “Emmyhall”.  In 1945, as the Red Army approached, Göring had Carinhall destroyed with explosives and only a few ruins now remain.

Hitler and Göring at Carinhall. The reaction of more conventional types to Göring’s appearance and behaviour was captured by an entry in the memorable diary of Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1944 (and the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943)).  The occasion was the Reichsmarschall’s visit to Rome early in 1942, seeking Italian reinforcements for the faltering campaign in Russia:

“As usual he is bloated and overbearing.  We had dinner at the Excelsior Hotel, and during the dinner Goering talked of little else but the jewels he owned. In fact, he had some beautiful rings on his fingers.  On the way to the station he wore a great sable coat, something between what automobile drivers wore in 1906 and what a high-grade prostitute wears to the opera.”

Beware of the edgy bob

Karen is a pejorative term used in the English-speaking world to disparage white, middle-class, middle-aged women on the basis of their sense of entitlement and demanding behavior.  It’s thus a particular critique of white privilege and is especially associated with a certain bob cut hairstyle, now known in the industry as the speak to the manager.  The origins are murky and the Karen in its now understood term is really a coalesced form from a number of threads to define characteristics like "entitlement, selfishness, a desire to complain" with stereotypical behavior being demanding to “speak to the manager”, usually about some trivial matter.  A creation of social media, the evolution from its point of critical-mass has (presumably coincidently) run in parallel with COVID-19; in November 2019, Google reported fewer than 20,000 instances of use which, by July 2020 had increased to over eight million.  It has origins in the mid-2010s as a way for people of color, particularly African-Americans, to satirise the class-based and racially charged hostilities and micro-aggressions they often face and in that it was different from the BLM (black lives matter) movement in that it focused not on violence but on instances of casual-racism, always by women perceived to be of a certain age and class.  Earlier instances were tied to specific events captured on the suddenly ubiquitous smartphones, yielding the predictably alliterative Permit Patty, BBQ Becky and Golfcart Gail but, in 2018, the trend distilled into Karen, an apparently quintessentially white name.

Except in Scandinavia, Karens are dying out.

Quite how "Karen" should be classified attracted feminist deconstruction. Although used exclusively in a pejorative manner toward a person of a specific race and gender, the subject, although female, is not one historically associated with discrimination in this context and thus the critical descriptive tools really didn’t exist.  The conclusion seemed to be this was just another way to silence women, denying them a right to speak.  The more radical feminist left, attracted more to intersectionality, suggested it was "sexist, ageist, and classist”, although, despite being deployed only against white women, it couldn’t, as a matter of law in most Western jurisdictions, be thought racist as such although, because the targets of many Karens were depicted as minorities, it did fit into the general rubric of the critique of white privilege.  Use seems to have peaked in 2020 but "a Karen" is still often heard.

Defiant

Defiant (pronounced dih-fahy-uhnt)

Characterized by defiance or a willingness to defy; boldly resistant or challenging.

1830s: From the French défiant, from the Old French, present participle of the verb défier (to challenge, defy, provoke), the construct thus def(y) + “i” + -ant.  Defy dates from the mid thirteenth century and was from the Middle English defien, from the Old French desfier, from the Vulgar Latin disfidare (renounce one's faith), the construct being dis- (away) + fidus (faithful).  The construct in French was thus des- (in the sense of negation) + fier (to trust), (from the Vulgar Latin fīdāre, from the Classical Latin fīdere (fidelity),  In the fourteenth century, the meaning shifted from “be disloyal” to “challenge”.  The suffix –ant was from the Middle English –ant & -aunt, partly from the Old French -ant, from Latin -āns; and partly (in adjectival derivations) a continuation of the use of the Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from the Old English -ende ( the present participle ending).  Extensively used in the sciences (especially medicine and pathology), the agent noun was derived from verb.  It was used to create adjectives (1) corresponding to a noun in -ance, having the sense of "exhibiting (the condition or process described by the noun)" and (2) derived from a verb, having the senses of: (2a) "doing (the verbal action)", and/or (2b) "prone/tending to do (the verbal action)".  In English, many of the words to which –ant was appended were not coined in English but borrowed from the Old French, Middle French or Modern French.  The negative adjectival forms are non-defiant & undefiant although there is a kind of middle ground described by quasi-defiant, semi-defiant & half-defiant, the latter three sometimes used in military conflicts where, for whatever reason, it’s been necessary (or at least desirable) for a force to offer a “token resistance” prior to an inevitable defeat.  The adjective over-defiant refers to a resistance or recalcitrance, the extent or duration of which is not justified by the circumstances; in such cases the comparative is “more defiant” and the superlative “most defiant”.  Defiant is a noun & adjective, defiantness is a noun and defiantly is an adverb; the noun plural is defiants.

Defiance in politics: use with caution

The commonly used synonyms include rebellious, direful, truculent, insolent, rebellious, recalcitrant, refractory, contumacious & insubordinate but in diplomacy, such words must be chosen with care because what is one context may be a compliment, in another it may be a slight.  This was in 1993 discovered by Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who labelled Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad (b 1925; prime minister of Malaysia 1981-2003 & 2018-2020) one of the “recalcitrant” when the latter declined to attend a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  For historic reasons, Dr Mahathir was sensitive to the memories of the imperialist oppressors telling colonized people what to do and interpreted Mr Keating’s phrase as a suggestion he should be more obedient (the most commonly used antonym of defiant, the others including obedient & submissive).  Things could quickly have been resolved (Dr Mahathir of the “forgive but not forget” school of IR (international relations)) but, unfortunately, Mr Keating was brought up in the gut-wrenching “never apologize” tradition of the right-wing of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party so what could have been handled as a clumsy linguistic gaffe was allowed to drag on.

Circa 1933 Chinese propaganda poster featuring a portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Chung-cheng).  Set in an oval frame below flags alongside stylized Chinese lettering, the generalissimo is depicted wearing his ceremonial full-dress uniform with decorations.

The admission an opponent is being “defiant” must also sometimes be left unsaid.  Ever since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) in 1949 fled mainland China, settling on and assuming control of the island of Taiwan, the status of the place has been contested, most dramatically in the incidents which flare up occasionally in the in the straits between the island and the mainland, remembered as the First (1954–1955), Second (1958) and Third (1995-1996) Taiwan Strait Crises which, although sometimes in retrospect treated as sabre rattling or what Hun Sen (b 1952; prime minister (in one form or another) 1985-2023) might have called “the boys letting off steam”, were at the time serious incidents, each with the potential to escalate into something worse.  Strategically, the first two crises were interesting studies in Cold War politics, the two sides at one stage exchanging information about when and where their shelling would be aimed, permitting troops to be withdrawn from the relevant areas on the day.  Better to facilitate administrative arrangements, each side’s shelling took place on alternate days, satisfying honor on both sides.  The other landmark incident was China’s seat at the United Nations (UN), held by the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) between 1945-1971 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (the mainland) since.

Jiefang Taiwan, xiaomie Jiangzei canyu (Liberate Taiwan, and wipe out the remnants of the bandit Chiang) by Yang Keyang (楊可楊) and Zhao Yannian (趙延年). 

A 1954 PRC propaganda poster printed as part of anti-Taiwan campaign during first Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-1955), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek depicted as a scarecrow erected on Taiwan by the US government and military. Note the color of the generalissimo’s cracked and disfigured head (tied to a pole) and the similarity to the color of the American also shown.  The artists have included some of the accoutrements often associated with Chiang’s uniforms: white gloves, boots and a ceremonial sword.  The relationship between Chiang and the leaders of PRC who defeated his army, Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong. 1893–1976; paramount leader of PRC 1949-1976) and Zhou Enlai (1898–1976; PRC premier 1949-1976) was interesting.  Even after decades of defiance in his renegade province, Mao and Zhou still referred to him, apparently genuinely, as “our friend”, an expression which surprised both Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) and Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1973 & secretary of state 1973-1977) who met the chairman and premier during their historic mission to Peking in 1972.

A toast: Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (left) and  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (right), celebrating the Japanese surrender, Chongqing, China, September 1945.  After this visit, they would never meet again.

Most people, apparently even within the PRC, casually refer to the place as “Taiwan” but state and non-governmental entities, anxious not to upset Beijing, use a variety of terms including “Chinese Taipei” (the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football) & its continental confederations (AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA)), “Taiwan District” (the World Bank) and “Taiwan Province of China” (the International Monetary Fund (IMF)).  Taiwan’s government uses an almost declarative “Republic of China” which is the name adopted for China after the fall of the Qing dynasty and used between 1912-1949 and even “Chinese Taipai” isn’t without controversy, “Taipei” being the Taiwanese spelling whereas Beijing prefers “Taibei,” the spelling used in the mainland’s Pinyin system.  There have been variations on those themes and there’s also the mysterious “Formosa”, use of which persisted in the English-speaking world well into the twentieth century, despite the Republic of Formosa existing on the island of Taiwan for only a few months in 1895.  The origin of the name Formosa lies in the island in 1542 being named Ilha Formosa (beautiful island) by Portuguese sailors who had noticed it didn’t appear on their charts.  From there, most admiralties in Europe and the English-speaking world updated their charts, use of Formosa not fading until the 1970s.

All that history is well-known, if sometimes subject to differing interpretations but some mystery surrounds the term “renegade province”, used in recent years with such frequency that a general perception seems to have formed that it’s Beijing’s official (or at least preferred) description of the recalcitrant island.  That it’s certainly not but in both the popular-press and specialist journals, the phrase “renegade province” is habitually used to describe Beijing’s views of Taiwan.  Given that Beijing actually calls Taiwan the “Taiwan Province” (sometimes styled as “Taiwan District” but there seems no substantive difference in meaning) and has explicitly maintained it reserves the right to reclaim the territory (by use of military invasion if need be), it’s certainly not unreasonable to assume that does reflect the politburo's view but within the PRC, “renegade province” is so rare (in Chinese or English) as to be effectively non-existent, the reason said to be that rather than a renegade, the island is thought of as a province pretending to be independent; delusional rather than defiant.  Researchers have looked into the matter when the phrase “renegade province” was first used in English when describing Taiwan.  There may be older or more obscure material which isn’t indexed or hasn’t been digitized but of that which can be searched, the first reference appears to be in a US literary journal from 1973 (which, it later transpired, received secret funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)).  It took a while to catch on but, appearing first in the New York Times in 1982, became a favorite during the administration of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) and has been part of the standard language of commentary since.  Diplomats, aware of Beijing's views on the matter, tend to avoid the phrase, maintaining the “delusional rather than defiant” line.

Picture of defiance: Official State Portrait of Vladimir Putin (2002), oil on canvas by Igor Babailov (b 1965).

The idea of a territory being a “renegade province” can be of great political, psychological (and ultimately military) significance.  The core justification used by Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) when explaining why his “special military operation” against Ukraine in 2022 was not an “invasion” or “war of aggression” (he probably concedes it may be a “state of armed conflict”) was that he denied Ukraine was a sovereign, independent state and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy (b 1978, president of Ukraine since 2019) was not a legitimate president.  In other words, Ukraine is merely a region of the modern Russia in something of the way it was once one of the 15 constituent SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union.  Although the Kremlin doesn’t use the phrase, in Mr Putin’s world view, Ukraine is a renegade province and he likely believes that applies also to the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia) and possibly other former SSRs.  Lake many, the CCP is watching events in Ukraine with great interest and, as recent “exercises” seem to suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have sufficiently honed their techniques to execute either a blockade (which would be an “act of war”) or a “quarantine” (which would not), the attention of Western analysts is now focused on the hardly secret training being undertaken to perfect what’s needed for the triphibious operations demanded by a full-scale invasion.  The US think-tanks which think much about this possibility have suggested “some time” in 2027 as the likely point at which the military high command would assure the CCP’s central committee such a thing is possible.  What will happen will then depend upon (1) the state of things in the PRC and (2) the CCP’s assessment of how the long-term “strategic ambiguity” of Washington would manifest were an attempt made to finish the “unfinished business” of 1949.

Lindsay Lohan, who has lived a life of defiance.

The objectification of women’s body parts has of course been a theme in Western culture since at least Antiquity but rarely can as much attention been devoted to a single fingernail as the one photographed on Lindsay Lohan’s hand in July 2010 (during her “troubled starlet” phase).  The text printed on the fingernail was sufficiently explicit not to need a academic deconstruction of its alleged meaning, given image was taken when she sitting in court listening to a judge sentence her for one of her many transgressions; the consensus was the text was there to send a “defiant message” the internet’s collective conclusion (which wasn’t restricted to entertainment and celebrity sites) presumably reinforced by the nail being on the middle finger.  Ms Lohan admitted to fining this perplexing, tweeting on X (then known as Twitter) it was merely a manicure and had “…nothing to do w/court, it's an airbrush design from a stencil.”  So, rather than digital defiance, it was fashion.  Attributing a motif of defiance to Ms Lohan wasn’t unusual during “troubled starlet” phase, one site assessing a chronological montage of her famous mug shots before concluding with each successive shot, “Lindsay's face becomes more defiant — a young woman hardening herself against a world that had turned her into a punch-line”.

The Bolton-Paul Defiant (1939-1943)

The Parthian shot was a military tactic, used by mounted cavalry and made famous by the Parthians, an ancient people of the Persian lands (the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979).  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the Parthian archers would, in full gallop, turn their bodies backward to shoot at the pursuing enemy.  This demanded both fine equestrian skills (a soldier’ hands occupied by his bows & arrows) and great confidence in one's mount, something gained only by time spent between man & beast.  To make the achievement more admirable still, the Parthians used neither stirrups nor spurs, relying solely on pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping mounts and, with varying degrees of success, the tactic was adopted by many mounted military formations of the era including the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Magyars, and Mongols.  The Parthian Empire existed between 247 BC–224 AD.  The Royal Air Force (RAF) tried a variation of the Parthian shot with Bolton-Paul Defiant, a single-engined fighter and Battle of Britain contemporary of the better remembered Spitfire and Hurricane.  Uniquely, the Defiant had no forward-firing armaments, all its firepower being concentrated in four .303 machine guns in a turret behind the pilot.  The theory behind the design dates from the 1930s when the latest multi-engined monoplane bombers were much faster than contemporary single-engined biplane fighters then in service. The RAF considered its new generation of heavily-armed bombers would be able to penetrate enemy airspace and defend themselves without a fighter escort and this of course implied enemy bombers would similarly be able to penetrate British airspace with some degree of impunity.

Bolton-Paul Defiant.

By 1935, the concept of a turret-armed fighter emerged.  The RAF anticipated having to defend the British Isles against massed formations of unescorted enemy bombers and, in theory, turret-armed fighters would be able approach formations from below or from the side and coordinate their fire.  In design terms, it was a return to what often was done early in the World War I, though that had been technologically deterministic, it being then quite an engineering challenge to produce reliable and safe (in the sense of not damaging the craft's own propeller) forward-firing guns.  Deployed not as intended, but as a fighter used against escorted bombers, the Defiant enjoyed considerable early success, essentially because at attack-range, it appeared to be a Hurricane and the German fighter pilots were of course tempted attack from above and behind, the classic hunter's tactic.  They were course met by the the Defiant's formidable battery.  However, the Luftwaffe learned quickly, unlike the RAF which for too long persisted with their pre-war formations which were neat and precise but also excellent targets.  Soon the vulnerability of the Defiant resulted in losses so heavy its deployment was unsustainable and it was withdrawn from front-line combat.  It did though subsequently proved a useful stop-gap as a night-fighter and provided the RAF with an effective means of combating night bombing until aircraft designed for the purpose entered service.

The Trump class "battleships"

In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon announced the impending construction of a “new battleship class” the first of the line (USS Defiant) to be the US Navy’s “largest surface combatant built since World War II [1939-1945]”.  The initial plans call for a pair to be launched with a long-term goal of as many as two dozen with construction to begin in 2030.  Intriguingly, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) revealed that while the Department of Defense’s (it’s also now the Department of War) naval architects would “lead the design”, he personally would be involved “…because I’m a very aesthetic person.”  That may sound a strange imperative when designing something as starkly functional as a warship but in navies everywhere there’s a long tradition of “the beautiful ship” and the design language still in use, although much modified, is recognizably what it was more than a century earlier.  The Secretary of the Navy certainly stayed on-message, announcing the USS Defiant would be “…the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans”, adding that components for the project would “be made in every state.”  It won't however be the widest because quirk of ship design in the US Navy is that warships tend to be limited to a beam (width) of around 33 metres (108 feet) because that’s the limit for vessels able to pass through the Panama Canal.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

By comparison with the existing surface fleet the 35,000 ton Defiant will be impressively large although, by historic standards, the largest (non-carrier) surface combatants now in service are of modest dimensions and displacement.  The largest now afloat are the 15,000-ton Zumwalt class destroyers (which really seem to be cruisers) while the 10,000 ton Ticonderoga class cruisers (which really are destroyers) are more numerous.  So, even the Defiant will seem small compared with the twentieth century Dreadnoughts (which became a generic term for “biggest battleship”), the US Iowa class displacing 60,000 ton at their heaviest while the Japanese Yamato-class weighted-in at 72,000.  Even those behemoths would have been dwarfed by the most ambitious of the H-Class ships in Plan-Z which were on German drawing boards early in World War II.  Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) could have entered World War II with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.  Germany indeed entered the war without a single aircraft carrier (the only one laid down never completed), such was the confidence the need to confront the Royal Navy either would never happen or was years away.

The US Navy in 1940 began construction of six Iowa class battleships but only four were ever launched because it had become clear the age of the aircraft carrier and submarine had arrived and the last battleship launched was the Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard which entered service in 1946.  Although the admirals remained fond of the fine cut of her silhouette on the horizon, to the Treasury (an institution in the austere, post-war years rapidly asserting its authority over the Admiralty) the thing was a white elephant, something acknowledged even by the romantic, battleship-loving Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who, when in November, 1953 planning a trip to Bermuda for a summit meeting with Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961), opted to fly because “it costs Stg£30,000 if we go by Vanguard, and only £3,000 by air.”  In 1959, Vanguard was sold for scrap and broken up the next year while the last of the Iowa class ships were decommissioned in 1992 after having spent many years of their life in a non-active reserve.  Defiant is of course a most Churchillian word and after World War I (1914-1918, he was asked by a French municipality to devise the wording for its war memorial.  He proposed:

IN WAR: RESOLUTION

IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE

IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY

IN PEACE: GOODWILL

At the time, old Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) wasn’t feeling much magnanimity towards the Germans and nor was he much in the mood to extend any goodwill so Churchill’s suggestion was rejected.  

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The conventional wisdom therefore was the days of the big warships were done and the Soviet Navy’s curious decision in the 1980s to lay down five (four of which were launched) Kirov class battlecruisers seemed to confirm the view.  Although the Kremlin called the ships тяжёлый атомный ракетный крейсер (heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers), admiralties in the West, still nostalgic lot, choose to revive the old name “battlecruiser”.  The battlecruiser (essentially a battleship with less armor) was a brainchild of the naval theorists of the early twentieth century but while the concept was sound (and in practice may have proved so if the theory had been followed at sea) but in service was a disappointment and none were commissioned after 1920 until the Soviets revived the idea.  As recently as 2018, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) sources were sceptical any of the Russian ships would ever return to service but in 2025 the Admiral Nakhimov (ex-Kalinin) emerged from a long and expensive re-fit & modernization to serve as the world’s biggest warship.  Although fast and heavily armed, concern remains about her vulnerability to missiles and torpedoes.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The US Navy seems confident about the protection afforded by the Trump class’s systems, claiming “the battleship [the Pentagon’s term] will be capable of operating independently, as part of a Carrier Strike Group, or commanding its own Surface Action Group depending on the mission and threat environment.”  In other words, unlike an aircraft carrier, the security of the vessel does not depend on a flotilla of destroyers and other smaller escort vessels.  The first of the Trump class is projected to cost between US$10-15 billion although, on the basis of experience, few will be surprised if this number “blows out”.  The Trump class will be the flagships for the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” initiative (an old naval term dating from days of the Spanish colonial Empire and nothing to do with Mr Trump’s fondness for the metal).  In an age in which small, cheap, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, usually referred to as drones) have revolutionized warfare (on land and at sea), the return of the big ships is as interesting as it was unexpected and analysts are already writing their assessments of the prospects of success.

Although the concept wasn’t new, it was late in the nineteenth century naval architects began to apply the word “class” systematically to group ships of the same design, the pioneers the Royal Navy but other powers soon adopted the practice.  It had long been the practice for warships to be constructed on the basis of substantially replicating existing designs and some truly were “identical” to the extent a series would now be called a “class” but before the terminology became (more or less) standardized, warships usually were described by their “Rate” or “Type” (first-rate ship of the line, corvette, frigate etc) but, in the usual military way, there was also much informal slang including phrases such as “the Majestic battleships” or “ships of the Iron Duke type”.  The crystallization of the “class” concept was really a result of technological determinism as the methods developed in factories which emerged during the industrial revolution spread to ship-building; steam power, hulls of iron & steel and the associated complex machinery made design & construction increasingly expensive, thus the need to amortize investment and reduce build times by ordering ships in batches with near-identical specifications.

Navies in the era were also becoming more bureaucratic (a process which never stopped and some believe is accelerating still) and Admiralties became much taken with precise accounting and doctrinal categorisation.  The pragmatic admirals however saw no need to reinvent the wheel, “class” already well-established in engineering and taxonomy, the choice thus an obvious administrative convenience.  The “new” nomenclature wasn’t heralded as a major change or innovations, the term just beginning to appear in the 1870s in Admiralty documents, construction programmes and parliamentary papers in which vessels were listed in groups including Devastation class ironclad turret ships (laid down 1869), Colossus class battleships (laid down 1879) and Admiral class battleships (1880s).  In recent history tests, warships prior to this era sometimes are referred to as “Ship-of-the-line class”, “Three decker class” etc but this use is retrospective.  The French Navy adopted the convention almost simultaneously (with the local spelling classe) with Imperial Germany’s Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) following in the 1890s with Klasse.  The US Navy was comparatively late to formalise the use and although “class” in this context does appear in documents in the 1890s, the standardization wasn’t complete until about 1912.

As a naming convention (“King George V class”, “Iowa class” etc), the rule is the name chosen is either (1) the first ship laid down, or (2) the lead ship commissioned.  According to Admiralty historians, this wasn’t something determined by a committee or the whim of an admiral (both long naval traditions) but was just so obviously practical.  It certainly wasn’t an original idea because the term “class” was by the late nineteenth century well established in industrial production, civil engineering, and military administration; if anything the tradition-bound admirals were late-adopters, sticking to their old classificatory habit long after it had outlived its usefulness.  With ships becoming bigger and more complex, what was needed was a system (which encompassed not only the ships but also components such as guns, torpedoes, engines etc) which grouped objects according to their defined technical specification rather than their vague “type” (which by then had become most elastic) or individual instances; naval architecture had entered the “age of interchangability”.

A docked Boomin' Beaver.

It’s good the US Navy is gaining (appropriately large) “Trump Class” warships (which the president doubtless will call “battleships” although they’re more in the “battlecruiser” tradition).  Within the fleet however there are on the register many smaller vessels and the most compact is the 19BB (Barrier Boat), a specialized class of miniature tugboat used deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  Over the last quarter century there have been a dozen-odd commissioned of which ten remain in active service.  Unlike many of the Pentagon’s good (and expensive) ideas, the Barrier Boats were a re-purposing of an existing design, their original purpose being in the logging industry where they were used to manoeuvre logs floating along inland waterways.  In that role the loggers dubbed them “log broncs” because the stubby little craft would “rear up like a rodeo bronco” when spun around by 180^o.  Sailors of course have their own slang and they (apparently affectionately) call the 19BBs the “Boomin’ Beaver”, the origin of that being uncertain but it may verge on the impolite.  It’s not known if President Trump is aware of the useful little BB19 but if brought to his attention, he may be tempted to order two of them renamed “USS Joe Biden” and “USS Crooked Hillary” although, unlike those reprobates, the Boomin’ Beavers have done much good work for the nation.

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (left), Donald Trump with model of his proposed arch, the White House, October, 2025 (centre) and a model of the arch, photographed on the president's Oval Office desk (right).  Details about the arch remain sketchy but it's assumed (1) it will be "big" and (2) there will be some gold, somewhere.

As well as big ships (and the big Donald J Trump Ballroom already under construction where the White House’s East Wing once stood), Mr Trump is also promising a “big arch”.  A part of the president’s MDCBA (Make D.C. Beautiful Again) project, the structure (nicknamed the “Triumphal Arch” and in the style of the Arc de Triomphe which stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly the Place de l’Étoile), the western terminus of the avenue des Champs-Élysées) is scheduled to be completed in time to celebrate the nation’s 250^th anniversary on 4 July 2026.  Presumably, on that day, it will be revealed the official name is something like the “Donald J Trump Sestercentennial Arch” which will appear on the structure in large gold letters.  The arch is said to be “privately funded”, using money left over from what was donated to build the ballroom, a financing mechanism which has attracted some comment from those concerned about the “buying of influence”.

Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) sketch of an arch (1926, left) and Hitler, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and others examining Speer's model of the arch, presented 20 April 1939 upon the occasion of the Führer’s 50^th birthday (right; note the pattern in carpet).

A model of Germania.  To give some indication of the scale, within the dome of the huge meeting hall (at top of image), St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome would have fitted several times over; its diameter of the dome would have been 250 metres (825 feet).

Commissioned to honor those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), construction of the Arc de Triomphe (officially the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile) absorbed 30-odd years between 1806-1836, as a piece of representational architecture the structure is thought perfectly proportioned for assessment by the human eye and perhaps for this reason it has been admired by many.  As early as 1926, Adolf Hitler sketched his vision of a grand arch for Berlin, while bitter experience taught him the big warships were a bad idea because of their vulnerability to air attack, he never lost his enthusiasm for megalomania in architecture and in Albert Speer he found the ideal architect.  Noting the dimensions in Hitler’s sketch, Speer responded with something in the spirit of their blueprint for Germania.  Hitler’s planned the rebuilding of Berlin to be complete by 1950, less than ten years after the expected victory in a war which would have made him the master of Europe from the French border to the Ural mountains (things didn’t work out well for him).  While the 50 metre (163 feet) tall Arc de Triomphe presented a monumental appearance and provided a majestic terminus for the Champs Elysees, Speer’s arch stood 117 meters (384 feet) in height but even though obviously substantial, it would have been entirely in scale with the rest of Germania, the whole place built in a way to inspire awe simply by virtue of sheer size.