Superleggera

Superleggera (pronounced soo-per-lee-ghera)

(1) In automotive coach-building, a method of construction which combined a framework of thin steel tubes with aluminum outer panels, producing a lightweight structure.

(2) In recent years, a designation used as a model name to refer to a “lightweight” vehicle even if not a classic superleggera structure.

1935 (a patent for the technique issued in 1936):  From the Italian superleggera (super light) (feminine singular of superleggero), the construct being super- +‎ leggero.  Super was from the Latin super-, from the Proto-Italic super, from the primitive Indo-European upér (over, above) which was cognate with the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér) (above) and the Proto-Germanic uber (now familiar in English and translated as “over” although this doesn’t wholly convey the sense in Modern German).  Leggero (light in weight, slight, thin) was from the Old French legier, from the Vulgar Latin leviārius, from the Latin levis, from the Proto-Italic leɣis, from the primitive Indo-European hlengwih-, from hléngus, from hleng (lightweight). The cognates included the Sanskrit लघु (laghú), the Ancient Greek ἐλᾰφρός & ἐλᾰχῠ́ς (elaphrós & elakhús) and the Old English lēoht (the ultimate source of the English light).  Superleggera is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is superleggeras (or in the Italian the masculine plural is superleggeri, the feminine plural superleggere).

Carrozzeria Touring and superleggera

It was in 1926 that two Milanese lawyers discussed how bored they were with mundane, if lucrative, legal work and much preferred the exciting world of the automobile, the industry then something like that of IT in the early twenty-first century in that a critical mass of users had been established, growth was consistent and new ventures were coming and going amid a milieu of M&A (mergers & acquisitions).  The lawyers negotiated a controlling interest in Milan-based coachbuilder Carrozzeria Falco, changing the company’s name to Carrozzeria Touring.  Contracts to provide bodywork soon followed including from some of the industry’s major manufacturers including Citroën, Isotta Fraschini & Alfa Romeo and for some time they continued to adopt Falco’s methods which was an adaptation of the “Weymann” system which involved laying fabric over lightweight frames supported by a traditional separate chassis.  Touring produced elegant coachwork of a high quality and attracted the patronage of both Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) and Victor Emmanuel III (1869–1947; King of Italy 1900-1946) although perhaps more influential was the Queen who was often photographed alighting from one of Touring’s large cars, a more imposing sight than the exit of her diminutive husband.

1938 Alfa Romeo 8C-2900B LeMans with Touring Superleggera (left), a wrought-iron artwork installation based on the idea using the Volkswagen Beetle as a model (centre) and Lindsay Lohan with conventional (body-on-chassis) Beetle (Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)).

Touring proved innovative in its use of strong, lightweight alloys to support the fabric skins and they enjoyed much success also in applying the technique to aircraft components such as wings and fuselages but during the 1930s with both the military and civilian airlines wanting to fly higher, faster, for longer and in all weather, the shift was beginning towards all-metal construction.  This was an organic evolution of the Weymann technique but the weight and other characteristics of sheet aluminum differed greatly from stretched-fabric and the system needed substantially to be re-engineered and it was the lessons learned from fabricating fuselages which led to Touring developing superleggera, the design patented in 1936.  The essence of superleggera was a skeleton of small diameter tubes which formed a body’s core shape, to which were attached thin aluminum-alloy panels which provided both aerodynamic form and strength.  Compared with earlier methods, as well as being inherently light, the method afforded great flexibility in fashioning shape and Touring took advantage of the properties of the metal to create both complex and flowing curves.  Some of their cars of the era did have lovely lines and in addition to the collaboration with Alfa Romeo which yielded sports cars, gran turismo machines and racing cars, the house attracted business from Lancia, Bianchi and others.

1938 Lancia Astura IV series coupé by Touring (left), 1949 Ferrari 166mm barchetta by Touring (centre), and 2014 Ducati 1199 Superleggera (right).

In the post war years, an era in which demand was high and regulations rare, the number of cars built according to the superleggera system increased as Touring licensed the use of its patent to others including Hundon in the US, Pegaso in Spain and Bristol, Aston Martin & Lagonda in England.  Bristol particularly took to the idea because of their long experience with airframes but perhaps the most influential stylistically was the 1948 Ferrari 166 MM Touring barchetta, a charismatic shape which provided a template which would remain recognizable in Ferraris for a quarter-century, the motif of the egg-crate grill still in use today.  While superleggera was unsuited to volume production, for the exclusive ranges at the upper end of the market it was ideal and both Lamborghini and Maseratis emerged built with the technique.  Although the two are sometimes confused because there are visual similarities under the skin, the space-frame method differs in that it can support the whole structural load whereas a superleggera is attached to an existing chassis.

1960 Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato (left), 1961 Aston Martin DB4 Convertible (centre; the Volante designation wasn't then in use) and 1965 Aston Martin DB5 Saloon.

In the public mind, the most enduring connection was with Aston Martin which was granted a license to use the design and the Superleggera construction method at its Newport Pagnell plant for a fee of £9 for each of the first 500 bodies and £5 for each subsequent unit and the DB4 & DB5 (the latter made famous in the early James Bond films) were both built thus.  However, they represented something of the end of the era because governments were starting to pass laws which demanded road cars attain a certain degree of crash-worthiness, something the superleggera technique couldn’t be adapted conform to without sacrificing the very lightness which was its raison d'etre.  Additionally, the manufacturers were moving swiftly to replace body-on-frame with unit-construction.  Touring attempted to adapt to the changing environment by offering its services as a coach-builder for small, exclusive production runs and made the necessary capital investment but it had become crowded field, the supply of coach-builders exceeding the demand for their skills.  Touring ceased operations in 1966 but four decades on, there was an unexpected revival of the name, the company re-established as Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera, offering automotive design, engineering, coach-building, homologation services, non-automotive industrial design, and the restoration of historic vehicles.  A number of very expensive one-off and limited-production ventures for Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Bentley followed but what attracted most comment was the Sciàdipersia, shown in coupé form at the Geneva Motor Show in 2018, the cabriolet introduced the flowing year.  Based on the underpinnings of the Maserati Grantourismo, although owing no visual debt, it was very much in the tradition of the three Maserati 5000 GTs Touring built in 1959-1960, the first of which had been ordered by the Shah of Iran.  Superleggera however is now just a name with an illustrious history, the method of construction no longer in use and when used as a model designation, it now simply denotes what a literal translation of the Italian suggests: lightweight.

The original Maserati 5000 GT "Shah of Iran" by Touring (left; chassis #103-002) and Touring's Maserati Sciàdipersia in coupé form (centre; 2018) and roadster (right; 2019).

Vickers Wellingtons (B-series, Mark 1) during production, the geodesic structure visible, Brooklands, England, 1939.

There are obvious visual similarities between the classic superleggera method and the geodesic structure used in airframes and some buildings, most famously the “geodesic dome”.  The imperatives of both were strength both aim to create strong and lightweight structures, but they differ in their specific design and application.  As used in airframes, the geodesic structure consisted of a network of intersecting diagonal braces, creating a lattice framework which distributed loads as evenly as possible while providing a high strength-to-weight ratio.  This was of great significance in military airplanes used in combat because it enhanced their ability better to withstand damage better, the stresses distributed across the structure rather than being restricted to a limited area which could create a point-of-failure.  The geodesic framework was based on geometric principles which had been developed over centuries and typically employed hexagons & triangles to render a structure which was both rigid & light.  Superleggera construction differed in that it involves the creation of a lightweight tubular frame, covered with aluminum body panels of a thinness which wouldn’t have been possible with conventional engineering.  The attraction of the superleggera technique was the (relatively) minimalistic framework supported the skin, optimizing weight reduction without compromising strength.  So, structurally, the difference was the geodesic design used a network of intersecting braces to form a lattice, while the superleggera construction used a tubular frame covered with panels.

Muppet

Muppet (pronounced mup-it)

(1) A usually derogatory slang term for somebody conspicuously stupid (never capitalised).  Can be used affectionately and references intelligence; distinct from cultural references such as bogan, chav, redneck etc although they can (indeed sometimes should) be used in conjunction.

(2) Any puppet character so named in various TV programmes (always capitalised).

1955: The Muppets were created by puppeteer Jim Henson (1936-1990) who variously would claim the word was (1) a construct of m(arionette) + (p)uppet and (2) it had no specific etymology and was coined because he liked the sound.  The US trademark dates from 1972 with usage claimed from 1971 (and in print from 1970) and the eponymous US network TV programme was broadcast between 1976-1981.  Well-scripted and meta-referential, Muppets aren’t stereotypically stupid; the slang term apparently applied to dopy people because Muppets look stupid.  Use of the slang appears restricted to parts of the English-speaking world though not North America, having currency only in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

They are everywhere

Muppet & muppet: Kermit the frog with crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).

The clusters are self-replicating; as one muppet departs, one or more appears and often, muppets reach critical-mass.  Think about it, at one time there must have been only a few muppets; now look how many there are.  Muppets are everywhere, seeming sometimes to populate whole streets or even suburbs.  In workplaces also they tend to cluster and there are corporations in which entire departments appear staffed by muppets.  Although low in productivity, muppet departments are harmonious workplaces and one muppet, witnessing some act of egregious stupidity by another, will playfully chide them, usually with the phrase “you muppet!”  That’s also often heard in shopping centre car-parks when muppets have locked their keys in the car or can’t remember where it’s parked.

Lindsay Lohan (left) with Telly the Muppet (right), The Letter Z Decides to Quit the Alphabet, Sesame Street (1995).

React

React (pronounced ree-akt)

(1) To act in response to an agent or influence.

(2) To act reciprocally upon each other, as two things.

(3) To act in opposition, as against some force.

(4) To respond to a stimulus in a particular manner.

(5) In physics, to exert an equal force in the opposite direction to an acting force; to act in a reverse direction or manner, especially so as to return to a prior condition.

(6) In chemistry, to act upon each other; to exercise a reciprocal or a reverse effect, as two or more chemical agents; to act in opposition.

(7) In chemistry, to cause or undergo a chemical reaction.

(8) In the hyphenated form re-act, to act or again perform.

(9) To return an impulse or impression; in Internet use, to post a reaction (now often in the form of an emoji), indicating how one feels about a posted message.

1635–1645: From the early Modern English react (to exert, as a thing acted upon, an opposite action upon the agent).  The construct was re- + act, thought to have been modeled on the Medieval Latin reagere, the construct being re- + agere (to drive, to do).  Act was from the Middle English acte, from the Old French acte, from the Latin ācta (register of events), the plural of āctum (decree, law), from agere (to do, to act), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European héǵeti and related to the German Akte (file); it partially displaced deed, from the Old English dǣd (act, deed) which endured and (especially in law), flourished in parallel.  The re- prefix was from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be” and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.  The Latin prefix rĕ- was from the Proto-Italic wre (again) and had a parallel in the Umbrian re- but the etymology was always murky.   In use, there was usually at least the hint of the sense "back" or "backwards" but so widely was in used in Classical Latin and beyond that the exact meaning is sometimes not clear.  Etymologists suggest the origin lies either in (1) a metathesis (the transposition of sounds or letters in a word) of the primitive Indo-European wert- (to turn) or (2) the primitive Indo-European ure- (back), which was related to the Proto-Slavic rakъ (in the sense of “looking backwards”).

The hyphenated form re-act (to act or again perform) began to develop during the 1650s (although the hyphen wasn’t de rigueur for decades) and there’s evidence to suggest there was often either an exaggerated pronunciation of the “re-“ or a slight pause between syllables to distinguish it from react.  Forms like overreact & overreaction (1928), interreact, interreaction (1820s), reactivate (1902 & reactivation et al were coined as required.  React is a noun & verb, reactive is an adjective, reactor, reaction & reactant are nouns, reactionary is a noun & adjective, reactivate, reacted & reacting are verbs,; the noun plural is reacts.

Lindsay Lohan reacting, demonstrating her emotional range (left to right:  happy, surprised, terrified and despairing).

The noun reactant (a reacting thing) came from chemistry and dates from 1901; as an adjective it was noted in the literature by 1911 although it may have been in oral use for some time and the noun reactance had been in the vocabulary of science since at least 1893.  The noun reactor (one that reacts) was a standard entry in the books of Latin instruction by 1825 but came into common use in the electrical industry after 1915 to describe “coil or other piece of equipment which provides reactance in a circuit”.  The word is now most commonly associated with nuclear energy, the reactor technically the component in a power-plant, submarine etc, where the nuclear reactions are contained but in the popular imagination often used of the power-generating installations to describe the entire facility.  The adjective reactive dates from 1712 in the sense of “a repercussive, echoing” although that use is long obsolete.  It was re-purposed in the early nineteenth century to mean “caused by a reaction” and by 1888 as “susceptible to (chemical) reaction” and in chemistry the related forms were reactively, reactiveness & reactivity, the words required as new chemicals and elements were subjected to experiments determining the behavior when exposed to others.

The noun reaction (action in resistance or response to another action or power), although later much used in chemistry, dates from the language of physics & dynamics in the 1640s and came frequently to be seen in discussions of politics and international relations.  It was modeled on the French réaction, from the older Italian reattione, from the Medieval Latin reactionem (nominative reactio), a noun of action formed in Late Latin from the past-participle stem of Latin reagere.  In chemistry it was of course invaluable when describing “a mutual or reciprocal action of chemical agents upon each other” and it was the standard noun thus used by 1836.  The more general sense of "action or feeling in response" (to something said, an event etc) was from the early twentieth century.  The phrase reaction time (time elapsing between the action of an external stimulus and the giving of a signal in reply) was a creation of experimental science and first documented in 1874; it was later widely used (both as a precise measure and something indicative) in fields as varied as zoology, sport and electoral behavior.  Sometimes, the experiments to measure reaction times were conducted in a reaction chamber.

Porträt des Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Prince of Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein in Ritterorden des Godenen vlies (cerimonial robes of the Order of the Golden Fleece) (1836), oil on canvas by Johann Nepomuk Ender (1793-1854).

The adjective reactionary (of or pertaining to political reaction, tending to revert from a more to a less advanced policy) dates from 1831 and was on the model of the French réactionnaire.  It was part of Karl Marx's (1818-1883) standard set of descriptive terms by 1858, used to convey the idea of “tending toward reversing existing tendencies” and was the opposite of the ”revolutionary”.  The classic reactionary era is now that created by the Congress of Vienna (1514-1815) when the old monarchies contrived to ensure they wouldn’t again be threatened by something like the French Revolution (1789).  So dominant did the use in politics become that the use in science (of or pertaining to a chemical or other reaction) became rare.  In political science, the term reactionary is applied with rather more precision than in general use where, like fascist, it’s tended to become a general term of disapprobation for those who espouse an opposing view.  When applied with some academic rigor, it refers properly to the view that a previous political state of society is desirable and that action should be taken to return to those arrangements.  A reactionary is thus different from a conservative who wishes to keep things as they are but perhaps (at least sometimes) synonymous with ultra-conservative or arch-conservative, the classic example in politics being Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859; foreign minister or chancellor of the Austrian Empire 1809-1848) who constructed an intricate model of Europe which was design to avoid another unpleasantness (for the ruling class) like the French revolution (1789) and its aftermath.  It’s usually thought of as somewhere on the spectrum of conservatism although there are logical (as well as linguistic) problems with that and either in theory or historic practice, reactionary ideologies, although radical, haven’t always been the most extreme of the breed.  Even that sort of terminology wasn’t reliably indicative of anything except what the author intended, Sir Garfield Barwick (1903–1997; Chief Justice of Australia 1964-1981) giving his autobiography the title A Radical Tory (1995), a few reviewers enjoying the opportunity to point out he was neither.

Thou shalt not: Pope Pius IX and friends.

In the UK there were of course already the Tories but it was the French Revolution from which English gained the descriptors "conservative", "right-wing" and "reactionary".  Conservative was from the French conservateur and was applied to those deputies of the French assembly which supported the monarchy (ie they wish to conserve that which was).  The term right-wing came to be used because when the Estates General was summoned in 1789, liberal deputies (the Third Estate) sat usually to left of the presiding officer's chair while the (variously usually either conservative or reactionary) members of the aristocracy (the Second Estate) sat to the right (the clerics were the First Estate and it’s from here is derived the later idea of the press as the Fourth Estate).  Reactionary was from the late eighteenth century French réactionnaire (from réaction (reaction)) and was used to denote "a ideology directed to return the structure of the state and the operation of society to a previous condition of affairs".  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates the first use of the word in English to 1799 and political scientists have managed to coin variations like reactionist and even the (thankfully rare) reactionaryism.  In theology, the classic reactionary was Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, 1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) who in 1864 published Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors), a still controversial document which listed all the ideas of modernity which His Holiness thought most appalling and which should be abandoned because the old ways are the best.  Had he lived, his Holiness would have noted with approval the entry in that manual curmudgeons, Henry Fowler's (1858–1933) A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): "The word derives its pejorative sense from the conviction, once firmly held but now badly shaken, that all progress is necessarily good."

Boycott

Boycott (pronounced boi-kot)

(1) To combine in abstaining from, or preventing dealings with, as a means of intimidation or coercion; the refusal to purchase the products of an individual, corporation, or nation as a way to apply social and political pressure for change.

(2) To abstain from buying or using.

1880: (in the sense described): Named after Charles Boycott, an estate manager in Ireland, against whom nonviolent coercive tactics were used in 1880.  The surname, recorded as Boycott and Boykett, is both English and Irish, although the origins are the same.  It appears originally to have been locational from Boycott, either in Berkshire or Shropshire, derived from “Boia's cot” (Boia a pre-seventh century Old English term of personal endearment for a boy or young man).  Boycott is a proper noun, boycott is a noun & verb, boycotting is a noun & verb, boycotter, boycottism & boycottage are nouns, boycotted is a verb; the noun plural is boycotts.

Origin

Captain Charles Boycott (1832–97) was an English land agent for an absentee landlord in County Mayo, Ireland.  In 1880, after a year of bad harvests, the landlord offered his tenants what he considered a generous 10% reduction in their rents.  The tenants however thought this parsimonious and demanded a 25% reduction which was rejected and Captain Boycott was dispatched to evict the revolting tenants.  About the same time, the period which came to be known as the Irish “land war”, Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), a member of the Irish Land League, had proposed dealing with landlords and land agents through a peaceful form of social ostracism rather than resorting to violence, suggesting the local community should simply ignore the land agents and conduct no business with them.

Former England cricket captain Geoffrey Boycott (b 1940), Headingley, Leeds, 1977, playing a rare defensive shot.

As news of Boycott’s evictions spread, he found himself isolated within the local community and, despite the immediate economic consequences, his workers stopped working in his fields, stables and house, local businessmen no longer traded with him and the postman refused to deliver his mail.  Because of these actions, Boycott faced financial peril because nobody would harvest the crops, forcing him to bring in fifty workers and an escort of almost a thousand armed police and soldiers to guard them, the cost of these measures exceeding the value of the harvest.  Following the harvest, the boycott on Boycott was sustained and the new use of the word spread quickly, the New York Tribune applying the term in 1880, The Spectator the following year.  It has entered other languages, being used sometimes in French, German, Spanish, Italian and even Japanese (ボイコット (Boikotto)).

The boycott can be an effective tactic which can be applied in diplomacy, commerce or politics, the boycotting of elections a widely used tactic.   

Historically and by convention, a boycott is an action by an individual or a community whereas such programmes pursued by states tend to be known as embargos or sanctions.  An interesting hybrid, designed to encourage individuals, institutions and states, is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led pressure group, formed in 2005, with a stated objective to force Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.

Hostage

Hostage (pronounced hos-tij)

(1) A person given as a pledge or security for the performance of the conditions of a treaty or similar agreement, such as to ensure the status of a vassal.

(2) A person seized in order to compel another party to act (or refrain from acting) in a certain way, because of the threat of harm to the hostage.

(3) A security or pledge (obsolete).

(4) The condition of a hostage.

(5) To give someone as a hostage (rare).

1225–1275: From the Middle English hostage & ostage, from the eleventh century Old French hostage & ostage (kindness, hospitality; residence, dwelling; rent, tribute; compensation; guarantee, pledge, bail; person given as security or hostage (and ôtage (hostage) persists in Modern French)) of uncertain origin although most etymologists favor the Vulgar Latin obsidāticum (state of being a hostage; condition of being held captive), from the Latin obsid- (stem of obses (hostage)), the construct being ob- (before) + sid- (the base of sedere (to sit)) + -āticum (the suffix used (1) to form nouns indicating pertinence to the root verb or noun & (2) to form nouns indicating a state of being resulting from an action).  There is a (less supported) alternative etymology which traces hostage back to a construct from the Old French hoste (host) + -age (the sense development from “taking someone in and offering them lodging” to “taking someone in and holding them captive”.  The initial “h” was added to the Latin obses (hostage) under some influence which may have been the Old French hoste or the Latin hostis.  The word displaced the Old English ġīsl.  In idiomatic use, the phrase “hostage” to fortune historically had different meanings on either side of the Atlantic.  In the UK it meant “an action, promise, or remark that is considered unwise because it could be difficult to later to fulfill one’s obligations (even if merely implied)”.  In North America, it conveys the idea of “a person (or institution) whose fate is seen as dependent on chance or luck”.  Hostage & hostageship are nouns and hostaged & hostaging are nouns; the noun plural is hostages.

Swapped for one of Moscow’s hostages: Viktor Bout in Thailand.

The hostage negotiator is now a recognized specialist category in law enforcement and there are also many in the private sector, engaged usually on an ad hoc basis as needed.  The taking of hostages, although use of the word spiked only in the 1970s as the hijacking of civilian airliners became a popular means of pursuing political agendas, is ago old and during certain periods was institutionalized as an accepted part of how conflicts were executed.  Nothing new then but of late, some regimes have become more blatant in the way “hostage diplomacy” is done, making only the most perfunctory gestures towards adding a veneer of legal legitimacy to what is essentially the tactic of gangsters.  Some cases have attracted some public attention such as the exchange by Moscow of one of their American hostages for Viktor Bout (b 1967) a Russian arms trader apparently of Ukrainian origin and one of the great characters who flourished in the chaos which prevailed after the breakup of the Soviet Union.  Whether it was grenade launchers, government officials subject to UN sanctions or frozen chickens, all through Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Viktor Bout’s air-freight operation gained the reputation of delivering the goods as described, on time and at the price quoted, international sanctions and embargos no obstacle.  Unfortunately, he strayed too closely to the claws of Western law enforcement agencies and ended up being extradited to the US where he was convicted of this and that and sentenced to a 25 year term, ten of which he served before he was exchanged in a swap.

Held us hostage” is now a commonly used phrase applied to the tactics or antics of trade unions, film stars, Meghan Markle, minority political parties and anyone else who proves difficult.

US diplomat and historian George Kennan (1904-2005) is best remembered for the “Long Telegram” he sent from Moscow in 1946, warning the State Department of the possible implications of Soviet policy and advocating the US adopt its own policies to contain Soviet expansion.  He also published widely on other aspects of US foreign policy including an assessment of the PRC (People’s Republic of China), early in the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and while he held the Chinese in high regard (he thought them “…probably the most intelligent, man for man, of the world’s peoples”), he thought “…no good could come of any closer relationship between the US and China” and he was little more enthusiastic about the rival Kuomintang government established by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), regarded to this day by Beijing as a renegade province.  To support his views, he made four points which, some seven decades on, sound remarkably modern and probably familiar to diplomats in many chancelleries and embassies:

(1) The Chinese were, as a people, intensely xenophobic and arrogant.  Their attitude towards the foreigner and his world, based as it was on the concept of China as the “Middle Kingdom” and the view of the foreigner as a barbarian, was essentially offensive to other peoples and did not provide a basis for satisfactory international relations, other than ones of the most distant sort.

(2) He noted it seemed clear the Chinese, despite the highly civilized nature of their normal outward behavior, were capable of great ruthlessness when they considered themselves to be crossed.  How he thought in this Peking much differed from Washington & London he didn’t explore but he nevertheless found admirable many of their best qualities including industriousness, honesty in commerce, practical astuteness and political acumen.  Where he found the national character lacking was in their lack of two attributes of the Western Christian mentality: the capacity of pity and the sense of sin though intriguingly he conceded the possession of these both qualities induced weakness rather than strength in the Western character.  Presumably, he added, the Chinese were all the more formidable for their lack but this was a reason to afford them a healthy but wary respect, not to idealize them or seek intimacy in our relationship with them.

(3) His third observation was that of the pragmatic diplomat.  While the Chinese were often ready to make practical arrangements of an unwritten nature and usually ones that could at will be reversed if that suited their purposes, they were never prepared to yield on matters of principle.  Occasionally, they would consent, were sufficient pressure applied, to allow others to do certain things provided they were able to insist that there was no actual right to act in such a way.  In other words, at least in theory, China was always in the right, others in the wrong.  Kennan thought this an expression of national arrogance that augured badly for really good relations with any outside power.

(4) Finally, there was the matter of hostage taking although it’s clear from his writing that he was somewhat in awe of the skill and success in the subtlety of their gangsterism.  Over decades he noted, the Chinese had corrupted a large proportion of the Americans who had anything to do with them and the longer these visitors resided there, the greater the risk.  He was anxious to point out this corruption wasn't always, or even usually, financial, deciding it was something far more insidious, the Chinese infinitely adept at turning foreign visitors and residents (even diplomats) into hostages.  Then, with their superb combination of delicacy and ruthlessness, they would extract the maximum in the way of blackmail or ransom for giving them the privilege either of leaving the country or remaining, whichever it might be they most desired.  It all sounds remarkably modern.

Metal

Metal (pronounced met-l)

(1) Any of a class of elementary substances, as gold, silver, or copper, all of which are crystalline when solid and many of which are characterized by opacity, ductility, conductivity, and a unique luster when freshly fractured.

(2) Such as substance in its pure state, as distinguished from alloys.

(3) An element yielding positively charged ions in aqueous solutions of its salts.

(4) An alloy or mixture composed wholly or partly of such substances such as steel or brass.

(5) An object made of metal.

(6) Formative material; stuff.

(7) In printing, as type metal, the stencils used to apply ink; the state of being set in type.

(8) The substance of glass in a molten state or as the finished product; molten glass in the pot or melting tank (mostly in technical use).

(9) As road metal, the crushed rock used in road construction; small stones or gravel, mixed with tar to form tarmac for the surfacing of roads.

(10) To furnish or cover with metal.

(11) In popular music, verbal shorthand for the genre heavy metal (but apparently usually not other variations (thrash; power; gothic; doom; twisted; black; molten; death)).

(12) In admiralty jargon, the total weight of projectiles that can be shot by a ship's guns at any one time; the total weight or number of a ship's guns.

(13) In heavy element astronomy, any atom except hydrogen and helium.

(14) In heraldry, a light tincture used in a coat of arms, specifically argent (white or silver) and or (gold).

(15) In rail construction, the rails of a railway (almost always plural).

(16) In mining, the ore from which a metal is derived (the use to describe the mine from which the ore is extracted is obsolete).

(17) Figuratively, the substance that constitutes something or someone; matter; hence, character or temper (now archaic and replaced by mettle).

(18) In the jargon of civil aviation, the actual airline operating a flight, rather than any of the code-share operators.

(19) In the jargon of drag-racing, a descriptor applied to the largest capacity (usually big-block) engines.

1250–1300: From the Middle English, from the Old French metal (metal; material, substance, stuff), from the Classical Latin metallum (quarry, mine, product of a mine, metal), from the Ancient Greek μέταλλον (métallon) (mine, quarry, ore).  The Greek work picked up the sense of “metal” only in post-classical texts, via the notion of "what is got by mining”; the original meaning was "mine, quarry-pit," probably a back-formation from metalleuein "to mine, to quarry," a word of unknown origin which may be related to metallan "to seek after" but there’s no evidence in support and it’s thought derived from a pre-Greek source because of the presence of -αλλο- (-allo-).  Metal is a noun, verb & adjective and metallic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is metals.

In the West, what defined a metal was based on the metals known from antiquity: gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin.  The adjectival form (or or covered with metal) emerged in the late fourteenth century reflecting the advances in metallurgy.  The term metalwork is attested from 1724 and has been used to describe both functional and decorative endeavours and is a common title in technical education (al la woodwork).

Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968).  An early heavy metal recording, their previous album was Heavy (1968).

The use to describe a variety of loud forms of popular music (heavy; thrash; power; gothic; doom; twisted; black; molten & death-metal (there may be others, it’s hard to tell)) began with heavy metal, the term coming into general use circa 1970 to describe a genre which had evolved since what came retrospectively to be called the proto-metal pieces of the 1950s such as Link Wray's Rumble.  As a shortened form, “metal” appears to be used properly to reference only heavy metal, presumably because it came first, the other forms almost always identified with the modifier.  The use in popular music seems to have been picked up from counterculture literature, William S Burroughs (1914-1997) using the phrase "heavy metal kid" in the 1962 novel The Soft Machine.  That was not a musical reference but in the subsequent Nova Express (1964), extended the use to a metaphor for drug use and from there, adoption in somewhere in popular culture was probably inevitable; it was the 1960s.

The lightness and heaviness of naturally occurring metals has been noted since pre-historic times, probably because of the interest in the malleability of materials which might be used to craft metal ornaments, tools and weapons and until the early nineteenth century, all known metals had relatively high densities, indeed that very quality of heaviness was thought a distinguishing characteristic which defined metals.  However, beginning in 1809, lighter metals such as sodium and potassium were isolated, their low densities demanding a definitional re-think and it was proposed they be categorised as “metalloids” but instead, that was reserved to later refer to a variety of non-metallic elements.

The term "heavy metal" seems first to have been used by German chemist Professor Leopold Gmelin (1788-1853) in an 1817 paper in which he divided the elements into non-metals, light metals, and heavy metals, based on relative density.  Later, “heavy metal” would be associated with elements with a high atomic weight or high atomic number and it is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “heavy element” although, two centuries on, there is criticism of the very usefulness of the now classical categories, the suggestion being they’ve become so diverse as to be meaningless.  Despite that, “heavy metal” in particular remains frequently used in both scientific and popular literature, the latter most often without any definitional rigor.  By comparison, presumably because their less associated with environmental pollution, “light metal” appears most often in association with metal trading, referring usually to aluminium, magnesium, beryllium, titanium and lithium.

The cosmological periodic table.  Chemists do at least agree on what metals are, heavy or otherwise.  Astronomers consider any element heavier than helium to be a metal, the distinction based on whether an element was created directly after the Big Bang (hydrogen and helium) or instead formed through subsequent nuclear reactions.  In the world of cosmology this is well understood but it can cause confusion among a general audience because it means elements such as carbon and oxygen are treated as metals, a most unfamiliar concept.

To astronomers, the production of metals is a consequence of stellar evolution.  Although metals lighter than iron are produced in the interiors of stars through nuclear fusion reactions, only a very small fraction escape (through stellar winds or thermal pulsations) to be incorporated into new stars.  For this reason, the majority of the metals found in the Universe are produced and expelled in the supernova explosions that mark the end for many stars.  This gradual processing of hydrogen and helium into heavier elements through successive generations of stars means that the metallicity of stars (the fraction of the mass of the star in the form of metals) varies.  Very old stars which formed from the almost pristine material of the Big Bang contain almost no metals, while later generations of stars can have up to 5% of their mass in the form of metals.  The percentage of metals in our star (the Sun) is around 2%, indicating it’s a later generation star.

When it comes to money, and not just with precious metals like gold, the choice of metal matters much; aluminum can become quite precious.

1950 Jaguar XK120 (chassis: 670165 (aluminum body))

Jaguar went to the 1948 London Motor Show thinking their big announcement would be the new XK engine, the twin-cam straight-six which faithfully would serve the line for the next forty-four years.  What instead stole the show was the test-bed, the roadster in which it was installed.  It was a sensation, the reaction convincing Jaguar's management to put it into production as the XK120.  However, tooling-up a production-line, even for a relatively low-volume sports car, takes time so the first 242 XK120s were hand-built with aluminum bodies affixed to an ash frame atop a steel chassis substantially shared with an existing model.  By 1950, the factory was ready for mass production and all subsequent XK120s were made with pressed-steel bodies although the doors, bonnet, and boot lid continued to use aluminum; the later cars weigh an additional 112 lb (51 kg).  All the aluminum-bodied cars were open two seaters (OTS (roadster)) and most were destined for the North American market, only fifty-eight being built with right-hand drive.  The most desirable of the XK120s, the record price for a road car at auction is US$396,000, realised in 2016.  Cars with a competition history have attracted more, a 1951 Roadster campaigned by the Scottish race team Ecurie Ecosse, sold for £707,100 in 2015 while the 1954 (steel) Competition Roadster that won its class at the Alpine Rally brought £365,500 in the same year.

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL (chassis: 550028 (aluminum body))

Intended for those planning to use the things in competition, the aluminum body for the 300SL gullwing was a regular production option, albeit a not inexpensive one although, given the processes required, it may have been a bargain.  Reducing weight by 215 lb (80 kg), the aluminum bodies were hand-crafted in the motorsports department in Untertürkheim and then mounted on the spaceframes sent from the Sindelfingen factory.  Of the 1400 gullwings, only 29 were built in aluminum, 26 of 855 in 1955 and 3 of 308 in 1956 so the option was taken-up only by two percent of customers.

Lindsay Lohan with metallic bags, London, 2014.

Adding to the desirability of the lightweights are the other modifications the factory made to improve competitiveness against the mostly British and Italian opposition.  Plexiglass windows, vented brake drums and stiffer springs were in the package, along with the Sonderteile (special parts (NSL)) engine with tweaked fuel-injection and a more aggressive camshaft, gaining fifteen horsepower.  Curiously, one option intended for use in motorsport actually added a little weight: the Rudge wheels, the seconds the knock-off hubs saved in the pits said to be worth the slight increase.  Available for any gullwing, the Rudge wheels are one of the desirable features, like the fitted luggage, tool kit and factory documents, the presence and condition of which attract a premium at sale.  For some years, the record price at auction for one of these was the US$4.62 million for a 1955 model, paid in 2012 for a car which in 1980 been bought by a German collector for US$57,000.  A new mark was set in 2022 at RM Sotheby's January auction at Scottsdale's Arizona Biltmore Resort when one crossed the block for US$6,825,000.