Laurel

Laurel (pronounced lawruhl or lor-uhl)

(1) A small European evergreen tree, Laurus nobilis, of the laurel family, having dark, glossy green leaves (Known also as the bay tree or sweet bay).

(2) Any tree of the genus Laurus.

(3) In general use, any of various similar trees or shrubs, as the mountain laurel or the great rhododendron.

(4) The foliage of the laurel as an emblem of victory or distinction.

(5) A branch or wreath of laurel foliage.

(6) In the plural (laurels or victory laurels), an award conferred (literally or figuratively) as an honor for achievement in some field or activity.

(7) An English gold coin minted in 1619, so called because the king's head was crowned with laurel.

(8) In many color charts, a green of a darker hue.

(9) To adorn or enwreathe with laurel.

(10) To honor with marks of distinction.

1250–1300: A dissimilated variant of the Middle English laurer (laurel), from the Anglo-Norman, from the twelfth century Old French laurier & lorier (bay tree; laurel tree), the construct being lor (bay) + -ier, from the Medieval Latin laurārius, from the Latin laurus (laurel tree), thought related to the Greek daphne (laurel), probably from a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean language.  The French suffix -ier was from the Middle French -ier & -er, from the Old French, from the Latin -ārium, the accusative of -ārius.  It was used to form the names of trees, ships, jobs etc.  The second -r- in the Middle English laurer changed to -l- by process of dissimilation.  Laurel is a noun, a proper noun & verb and laureled (also laurelled) & laureling (also laurelling) are verbs; the noun plural is laurels.

Lindsay Lohan fridge magnet by Alexanton.

The use to describe an emblem of victory or of distinction (hence the phrase “to rest on one’s laurels” (the original form was “repose upon”)) which dates from 1831.  The phrase is now mostly used in the cautionary sense “don’t rest on your laurels”, a warning not to rely on a reputation gained through past successes but instead continue to strive and improve.  The companion phrase “look to your laurels” is an idiomatic expression known in Antiquity meaning one need to be vigilant and attentive to your accomplishments, skills or position because there will be those eager to surpass or outshine you.  Like “don’t rest on your laurels”, it stresses the importance of maintaining one’s competitive edge.

Sirens and the Night (1865) by William Edward Frost (1810-1877).

Although most associated with women, Laurel is a unisex given name and the feminine variants include Laura, Lauren, Lori, and Lorraine.  It was related also to the German Lorelie.  In several tales from Germanic mythology in which the maiden Lorelei (luring rock), who lives upon a rock in Rhine River, lures fishermen to their deaths by singing songs of such beauty they can’t resist, a variation of the story of Odysseus and the Sirens.  In Greek mythology, Sirens were deadly creatures who used their lyrical and earthly charms to lure sailors to their death.  Attracted by their enchanting music and voices, they’d sail their ships too close to the rocky coast of the Siren’s island and be shipwrecked.  Not untypically for the tales from antiquity, the sirens are said to have had many homes.  The Roman said they lived on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli while later authors place them variously on the islands of Anthemoessa, on Cape Pelorum, on the islands of the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae (all places with rocky coasts and tall cliffs).  It was Odysseus who most famously escaped the sirens.  Longing to hear their songs but having no wish to be shipwrecked, he had his sailors fill their ears with beeswax, rendering them deaf.  Odysseus then ordered them to tie him to the mast.  Sailing past, when he heard their lovely voices, he ordered his men to release him but they tightened the knots, not releasing him till the danger had passed.  Some writers claimed the Sirens were fated to die if a man heard their singing and escaped them and that as Odysseus sailed away they flung themselves into the water and died.

#metoo: Apolo persiguiendo a Dafne (Apollo chasing Daphne (circa 1637)), oil on canvas by Theodoor van Thulden (1606–1669) after Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

The feminine proper name Daphne was from the Greek daphne (laurel, bay tree) and in mythology was the name of a nymph.  Etymologists conclude the word is related to the Latin laurus (laurel) although the mechanism has been lost in time.  In Greek mythology, Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus, was a nymph with whom the God Apollo fell in love; he was provoked by Cupid, having disputed with him the power of his darts which Apollo, the recent conqueror of the Python, belittled.  When he pursued her to the banks of the Peneus, she was saved from being ravished by the god who transformed her into a Laurel tree, the origin of Apollo being so often depicted crowned with laurel leaves.  None of the writers from Antiquity seem ever to have pondered whether the nymph, had she been offered the choice between being ravished by a Greek god or being eternally arboreous, might have preferred to permit a slice to be cut from the loaf.  Still, being a sentimental chap, Apollo adopted the laurel as his favorite tree so there’s that.  The site of temples and a stadium, the Grove of Daphne was a pleasure resort of renowned natural beauty, dedicated to Apollo and located near Antioch.

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) in a “laurel leaves” hat designed by Hubert de Givenchy (1927–2018), photograph by Howell Conant (1916–1999), Switzerland, February 1962.

As an adjective, laureate (crowned with laurels as a mark of distinction) dates from the late fourteenth century and the earliest reference was to poets of particular distinction, from the Latin laureatus (crowned with laurel), from laurea (laurel crown; emblematic of victory or distinction in poetry), from the feminine laureus (of laurel).  The first known use of Laureat poete is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s (circa 1344-1400) Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) in reference to Scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), and it was used in Middle English of Greek fabulist Aesop (circa 620–564 BC) and, by the early fifteenth century of Chaucer himself.  In English the inverted form “poet laureate” was in imitation of Latin word order and although used informally since the early 1400s, the evidence suggests the first to be appointed by the state was probably (and perhaps posthumously) Benjamin Jonson (circa 1572–circa 1637) (1638) in 1638 although the first from whom the letters patent remain extant was John Dryden (1631–1700).  In the UK, the position of Poet Laureate is an honorary office in the gift of the monarch but these days, appointed on the advice of the prime minister.  Because many prime-ministers know nothing of poetry, they take advice on the matter.  There was a time when the Poet Laureate was an exalted character but these days there’s less interest and the best remembered is probably still Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) and then less for his verse than the calls by feminists to boycott his works because he had Sylvia Path’s (1932-1963) “blood on his quill”. The noun came into existence in the 1520s, either an evolution from the adjective or through a mistaken reading of poet laureate and laureateship has been in use since 1732.  Laureate is most frequently used of Nobel prize winners, a use that began in 1947.

Annex

Annex, Anex or Annexe (pronounced uh-neks, an-eks or an-iks)

(1) To attach, append, or add, especially to something larger or more important.

(2) To incorporate (territory) into the domain of a city, country, or state.

(3) To take or appropriate, especially without permission.

(4) To attach as an attribute, condition, or consequence.

(5) Something annexed.

(6) In architecture, a subsidiary building or an addition to a building.

(7) Something added to a document; appendix; supplement.

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the Anglo-French and Old French annexer (to join), from the Medieval Latin annexāre, from the Classical Latin annexus (tied to), past participle of annectere (to attach to; to connect with) from nectere (to join; to tie; bind).  It now almost always means "to join in a subordinate capacity", usually as it applies to nations or territories and the meaning “supplementary building" is from 1861.  In legal use, as it applies to documents, it’s an alternative to "append".  The alternative spellings are anex (US) and annexe (used variously in the rest of the English-speaking world).  Annex is a noun & verb; annexion, annexation, annexationism, annexationist, annexer & annexure are nouns, the noun plural is annexes.

A type of theft

Annexation is the formal act by which a state proclaims sovereignty over territory once outside its domain and varies from an act of cession in which territory is given away or sold.  Annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition and historically, annexation has been preceded by conquest and military occupation although in a few cases, such as the Anschluss, the 1938 German annexation of Austria, conquest may be accomplished by the threat of force without active hostilities and military occupation does not constitute or necessarily lead to annexation.  When military occupation results in annexation, an official announcement is the usual protocol, announcing the sovereign authority of the annexing state has been established and will be maintained in future.  This was the usual way of doing things, such as when Burma was annexed to the British Empire in 1886 and followed by Israel in 1981 when it annexed the Golan Heights.  George Orwell (1903-1950), who had spent time employed by the colonial police in Burma, when asked to explain the methods and purposes of the British Empire answered: "theft".  Privately, most in  the Foreign Office probably agreed but preferred "annexation" in official documents.  The subsequent recognition of annexation by other states may be explicit or implied; annexation based on the illegal use of force is condemned in the Charter of the United Nations and there are effectively annexed lands which for decades have been regarded as “disputed territory”.

Lindsay Lohan, after party at the Annex following Freaky Friday (2003) premiere, Hollywood, August 2003.

The formalities of annexation are not defined by international law; whether it be done by one authority or another within a state is a matter of constitutional law and conditions may exist which obviate the necessity for conquest prior to annexation.  In 1910 for example, Japan converted its protectorate of Korea into an annexed colony by means of proclamation; in a legal sense it was no more than a simple administrative act.  Preceding its annexation of the Svalbard Islands in 1925, Norway eliminated its competitors by means of a treaty in which the islanders agreed to Norwegian possession.  Annexation of Hawaii by the United States in the late nineteenth century was a peaceful process, based upon the willing acceptance by the Hawaiian government of US authority.  The Italian annexation of Ethiopia in 1936 was accomplished by a decree issued by the Italian King and joint resolutions of Congress were the means by which the United States annexed Texas (1845) and Hawaii (1898).

Tobacco

Tobacco (pronounced tuh-bak-oh)

(1) Any of several plants belonging to the genus Nicotiana (of the nightshade family), especially one of those species, as N. tabacum, whose leaves are prepared for smoking or chewing or as snuff.

(2) Any of numerous solanaceous plants of the genus Nicotiana, having mildly narcotic properties, tapering hairy leaves, and tubular or funnel-shaped fragrant flowers. The species N. tabacum is cultivated as the chief source of commercial tobacco

(3) Any of various similar plants of other genera.

(4) The leaves of certain of these plants, dried and prepared, as used in cigarettes, cigars & pipes, as snuff and for chewing.

(5) Any product or products made from such leaves.

(6) To indulge in tobacco; to smoke.

(7) To treat with tobacco.

(8) A range of colors in the brown spectrum, tending to the darker.

1525–1535 (attested since 1588): From the Spanish tabaco of uncertain origin.  It was either from the Arabic طُبَّاق‎ (ṭubbāq) (Dittrichia viscosa) or from one or more Caribbean languages (including Galibi Carib, Arawak or Taíno) from a word meaning “roll of tobacco leaves” or “pipe for smoking tobacco” (there are contemporary reports citing both and scholars tend now to prefer the former), the best known of which was tabago (tube for inhaling smoke or powdered intoxicating plants).  Taino is thought by linguistic anthropologists to be the most likely source.  That the name of the inhaling implement was applied to the leaves was explained by the Spanish assuming it was the name of the plant.  The West Indian (Caribbean) island of Tobago was said to have been named in 1498 by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) after the tambaku (pipe), a reference to the native custom of smoking dried tobacco leaves.  Derived forms include smokeless tobacco, tobaccoless & anti-tobacco and there are a wealth of slang terms for tobacco and its products (including the tax-evading illicit varieties) including occabot (the backward spelling), baccy, backy, chop chop, durrie, smoke, fag, gasper, ciggy, coffin nail, cancer stick, darb, dart, death stick, bine & stogie.  The spelling tabacco is obsolete.  Tobacco is a noun & verb, tobaccoing & tobaccoed are verbs; the noun plural is tobaccos or tobaccoes.

One attempt at social engineering began in earnest in the 1980s: Pressure was applied on film & television studios, advertisers and publishers to stop depicting smoking as "attractive, sexy and cool".  Because cigarette smoke is known to be carcinogenic and sustained use typically reduced the human lifespan by about a decade, it was an admirable part of the public health programme but the difficult thing was that images of smoking undeniably could be sexy.  Lindsay Lohan demonstrates.   

A supine Lindsay Lohan, smoking in The Canyons (2013).

The unusual construct of the noun tobacconist (one who deals in tobacco) was tobacco + -n- + -ist.  The abnormal inserted consonant appeared to reflect the way the word actually was pronounced.  The sense of the commercial trader in the product dates from the 1650s although the earlier meaning, dating from the 1590s was “someone addicted to tobacco and by 1873 the word nicotinism (morbid effects of excessive use of tobacco) had been coined so the awareness of the adverse effects of tobacco are not new.  The first “tobacconist” (a shop where tobacco and related products are purchased) seems to have operated in Florida in the early 1800s.  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).

Art deco: Snuffbox (left) and cigarette case (right).

Snuff (powdered tobacco to be inhaled) was first available in the1680s and was from the Dutch or Flemish snuf, a shortening of snuftabak (snuff tobacco), from snuffen (to sniff, snuff).  The practice of taking (sniffing) snuff quickly became fashionable in England and generated an industry in the making of “snuff boxes”; many small and exquisite, they’ve long been collectable.  The slang phrase “up to snuff” (knowing, sharp, wide-awake, not likely to be deceived) dates from 1811, the order of the words thought a reference to the upper-class association with the substance while the meaning is presumed to allude to the "elevating" properties of snuff.  The noun nicotine (which still appears occasionally in scientific papers as nicotin) describes the poisonous ,volatile alkaloid base found in tobacco leaves and was first documented in English in 1819, from the French nicotine, from the earlier nicotiane, from the Modern Latin Nicotiana, the formal botanical name for the tobacco plant, named for Jean Nicot (circa 1530-1600), the French ambassador to Portugal who in 1561 sent tobacco seeds and powdered leaves from his embassy in Lisbon to Paris.

Until the mid-twentieth century, there was much variation in packaging but in the post-war years things were (more or less) standardized in terms of size and shape.  It was a relatively small area with with to work and the convention which developed was to use the simple corporate symbol and product name, thus Marlboro's famous red-on-white chevron.  As the product range proliferated (women were a target market thought to have great potential), Philip Morris adopted the technique of semiotics to differentiate while retaining the same identifiable shape, the basic difference being in the color: red for the standard cigarette, blue for mild, green for menthol, gold for longer (ie 4 inch or 100 mm sticks) and black for higher-priced special offerings.  That didn't last and while some manufacturers stuck to the red / blue / green model, Marlboro's colors increasingly became random.       

James VI and I (1566–1625) King of Scotland as James VI (1567-1625) & King of England and Ireland as James I (1603-1625) was appalled by tobacco an in 1604 wrote the treatise A Counterblaste to Tobacco in which he left none in any doubt about how he felt and it’s a document which sounds very contemporary in its condemnation even if some of what was then medical orthodoxy is dated.  The king blamed the scourge of tobacco on Native Americans (although it was European adventurers which brought it from the new world) and is especially scathing about what is now called passive smoking, responding by imposing heavy taxes but such were the adverse consequences for the American colonies that in 1624 a royal charter was instead granted and the whole crop became a royal monopoly.  Written originally in Early Modern English (here transliterated) it still reads well:

Have you not reason to be ashamed, and to forsake this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken as something good to use?  In your abuse you are sinning against God, harming both your health and your wallet, making yourselves look absurd by this custom, scorned and contemned by the civilized people of any nation.  It is a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes are like the horrible Stygian smoke of the bottomless pit of Hell.

The king’s mention of Stigian is a reference to the goddess Styx (Στύξ) (stýks (literally “Shuddering”)) who in Greek mythology took the form of a river of Elia, Arcadia which surrounded Hades nine times and flowed from a rock into silver-pillared caves.  What the king probably had in mind was the tale that Stygian waters imposed senselessness for a year and a draft of the waters was decreed by Zeus for gods who had perjured themselves.  More positively though it was said of Zeus he also insisted the oaths of the gods be sworn by the water of the Styx.

Mid-century cigarette advertising.  Even in the 1950s the public's suspicion that tobacco was a dangerous product was rising and the industry's advertising switched from the traditional "lifestyle" model to one which relied on endorsements by celebrities and scientists and much quoting of research and statistics, much of which would later be wholly debunked.  The tactics and techniques similar to those later adopted by the fossil fuel lobby in their long campaign to discredit the science of human-activity induced climate change. 

Although there were always the fastidious types like James I who found it abhorrent, it wasn’t until late in the twentieth century that in the West governments began to crack down on the industry to the point where in many jurisdictions the stated aim is to eliminate it completely, the most recent innovation being progressively to raise the minimum age at which tobacco products can be purchased which, in theory, means that within decades, nobody will be able to buy them.  Having effected that policy, the heath advocates much have thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, only for vaping to become a thing.  Governments were however always interested in tobacco as a form of revenue and taxing an addictive, lawful product provided for centuries a constant and often gradually increasing source of income and cynics like to note the attitudes seemed only to shift when advances in surgical techniques and drug treatments meant those suffering the consequences of a lifetime of tobacco use began to be kept alive for decades, often at public expense.  Previously, the afflicted had had the decency quickly to drop dead, usually at an age when their usefulness as economic units had either vanished or significantly diminished to the point where, as pensioners, they were a cost to society.  The BBC’s comedy Yes, Prime Minister explored the math & morals in a discussion between the prime-minister and the permanent head of the cabinet office.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

Prime-minister: Perhaps I might have a précis of that?  It says here, smoking related diseases cost the National Health Service £165 million a year.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes but we've been in to that, it has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a ripe old age, it would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than it did in medical treatment.  So, financially speaking it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at their present rate.

Prime-minister: We're talking of 100,000 deaths a year.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, but cigarette taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health Service.  We're saving many more lives than we otherwise could, because of those smokers who voluntary lay down their lives for their friends. Smokers are national benefactors.

Prime-minister: So long as they live.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: A lot of people, eminent people, influential people have argued that such legislation would be a blow against freedom of choice.

Prime-minister: Rubbish. I'm not banning smoking itself. Does every tax rise represent a blow against freedom?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, depends how big the tax rise is.

Prime-minister: Oh, that's fascinating. Does 20p represent a blow against freedom?  25p? 30p? 31? Is something a blow against freedom simply because it can seriously damage your wealth?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: I foresee all sorts of unforeseen problems.

Prime-minister: Such as?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: If I could foresee them, they wouldn't be unforeseen.

The Kennedy connection

The 1941 film Tobacco Road was based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987).  It involved a family living in poverty in the rural backwoods of the US and their antics did not suggest the possession even of average intelligence.  The term “tobacco road” came to be used as a slur against such folk and their lifestyle and while it’s usually an amusing disparagement exchanged between the rich and well-connected, even among them context can matter as Thomas Maier (b 1956) illustrated in one episode recounted in When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys (2014) involving John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) and Pamela Harriman (1920–1997), later one of Western society’s last great courtesans but then just divorced from what had been a brief and understandably unhappy marriage to the even then dissolute Randolph Churchill (1911-1968), son of Winston (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955).  Crooked old Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969) fashioned his sons to become politically powerful establishment figures but didn’t forget his great-grandfather had in 1848 left the poverty of rural Ireland during the potato famine to begin to build wealth and influence in Boston.  He’s made sure his sons knew the family history and when in Ireland in 1945, JFK’s curiosity had prompted a trip to the old Kennedy homestead:

At the Kennedy farm in County Wexford, accompanied by Pamela, Jack discovered not much had changed since his great-grandfather left. “I’m John Kennedy from Massachusetts,” he said after his knock on the door was answered. “I believe we are related.” His distant cousin Mary Kennedy Ryan seemed dubious at first but eventually invited the two strangers in for tea.

The Kennedys who remained in Ireland had spent much of the past century trying to regain the land rights to their tenant farms from the British and supporting Ireland’s independence movement led by such politicians as de Valera. Mary Ryan herself had been a member of the old IRA’s women’s auxiliary during the 1920s conflict against the British, carrying guns and money, either in carts or under her dress, to a secret hiding spot near their farm. “Jack kept pressing on about his ancestors going to America and so on, trying to make the link,” recalled Pamela. As a treat, Jack took the Irish Kennedy cousins for a short ride in Kick’s shining new station wagon, accompanied by the former Mrs. Randolph Churchill. “They never could figure out who I was,” recalled Pamela. “‘Wife?’ they’d ask. I’d say no. And they’d say, ‘Ah, soon to be, no doubt!’”

After nearly two hours “surrounded by chickens and pigs,” Jack recalled, he “left in a flow of nostalgia and sentiment.” The trip reaffirmed the Irish stories he’d heard from his parents and grandparents. Neither Pamela nor Kick, however, seemed impressed. As their car pulled away from the Kennedy farm, Pamela turned to Jack with a remark meant as witty. “That was just like Tobacco Road!” she tittered, referring to the popular novel about rural life in Georgia. Jack wasn’t amused. “The English lady,” he later recounted, ” …had not understood at all the magic of the afternoon.” To Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell, his Irish-Catholic political aides from Boston, he was much blunter: “I felt like kicking her out of the car.” At Lismore, Lady Hartington was even haughtier. After listening to her brother’s wondrous account of the Kennedy homestead, Kick mustered only a bemused question. “Well, did they have a bathroom?”

Exoskeleton & Endoskeleton

Exoskeleton (pronounced ek-soh-skel-i-tn)

(1) In zoology, an external covering or integument, any hardened external structure, as the shells of crustaceans or the scales and plates of fishes and reptiles, especially when it is of the nature of bone.

(2) All hard parts, such as hair, teeth, and nails which develop from the ectoderm or mesoderm in vertebrates (generally used only in technical literature).

1841: The construct was exo- + skeleton.  The prefix endo- was used as a word-forming element meaning "inside, within, internal.  It was from the Ancient Greek ἔνδον (éndon) (within; inner; internal) from the primitive Indo-European en-do- (an extended form of the root en (in)).

Skeleton was from the New Latin skeleton (bones, bony framework of the body), from the Ancient Greek skeleton soma (dried-up body, mummy, skeleton), from the neuter of σκελετός (skeletós) (dried up, withered, dried body (and as a noun: parched; mummy), from σκέλλω (skéllō & skellein) (dry, dry up, make dry, parch), from the primitive Indo-European (s)kelha- (to parch, wither); related was the Ancient Greek σκληρός (sklirós) (hard).

Skelton was an early variant form.  The noun use of Greek skeletos passed into Late Latin as (sceletus), hence the French squelette and the rare English skelet (1560s), the Spanish esqueleto & the Italian scheletro.  The meaning "bare outline" is first recorded circa 1600; hence the term skeleton crew from 1778 used to describe minimal staffing, the skeleton key a similar allusion to some of a structure being removed.  The phrase skeleton in the closet (source of secret shame to a person, family or institution) is from 1812 and thought an adoption from the imagery in Bluebeard fable (1697) by Charles Perrault (1628-1703). Exoskeleton was a creation in 1841 by English paleontologist Sir Richard Owen (1804–1892).

Endoskeleton (pronounced en-doh-skel-i-tn)

(1) In zoology, the internal skeleton or framework of the body of an animal (generally the bony or cartilaginous skeleton of vertebrates).  Certain invertebrates, such as sponges and echinoderms, also have endoskeletons.

(2) For most (non-technical) purposes, a synonym for skeleton.

1838: The construct was endo- + skeleton  The prefix exo- was used as a word forming element in words of Greek origin meaning "outer, outside, outer part" and was used from the mid-nineteenth century.  It’s from the Ancient Greek ἔξω (éxō) (outer; external).and was related to ex (out of).

Endoskeleton is used almost exclusively in the biological sciences.  For most general purposes, it’s synonymous with skeleton which is the default assumption of use because it’s familiar from humans and most familiar animals.  Exoskeleton has become more widely used in recent years because of the interest in fields such as engineering, robotics and medicine in using external structures, often to augment or replace human functions.

Trilobites

Trilobite (pronounced try-low-byte) translates literally as “three lobes".  Often casually referred to as bugs or sea-bugs, in taxonomy, all trilobites actually belong in the class of trilobite in the phylum arthropod and within the class are ten orders.  It’s not known how many species of trilobites existed but almost 21,000 have thus far been identified in the fossil record, their numbers and variety leading them to be regarded as one of history’s more successful animals.  They inhabited all the seas and oceans and endured some three-hundred million years, surviving several mass-extinction events.  Their long duration, their structure and living habits meant they became a common and frequently discovered fossil, noted since antiquity although the first attempt scientifically to classify one seems to have been by Wan Shizen of China who, in 1689 described trylobite pygidia (tails) as batstones.  The first known scientific drawing was by Welsh botanist, the Reverend Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709) whose sketch of a trilobite was published in "The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.  The drawing, now classified as being a Ogygiocarella debuchii, was then (not unreasonably), called the "flatfish".

Truly ancient, trilobites pre-date the Cambrian explosion and went extinct only towards the end of the Permian extinction event which ended the Paleozoic age.  However, the earlier events took their toll, a few orders vanishing after the Ordovician extinction event while the Devonian event removed all but one order, that last survivor dying out in the Great Permian Extinction.  Why such a successful and prolific creature could not endure these extinctions remains a debate.

All share the same basic structure, having three lobes: a left pleural, a middle axial and a right pleural lobe, their bodies divided into a cephalon (dead), thorax (middle), and pygydium (tail).  Trilobites had a thick, protective exoskeleton which formed a hard calcite shell, something like that of the modern crab and is the reason for their frequency in the fossil record, the exoskeletons usually the only part to survive although, in the rare cases where certain surrounding conditions exist, traces of soft tissue such as antennae can survive fossilization.  As a trilobite grew, it molted its exoskeleton, and many of the fossils which exist are molted frames rather than dead creatures.

Endoskeleton cars

The Birdcage: The Maserati Tipo 60/61 (chassis #2549).

Endoskeleton cars are far from uncommon but some make the concept more obvious than others.  The Maserati Tipo 60/61 (1959-1961) gained the nickname “Birdcage” (by which it’s almost always known) because observers were much taken with the delicacy of the construction.  By the late 1950s, space-frames had become familiar to race-car builders but they were usually robust-looking arrangements whereas Maserati had rendered an intricate latticework of some 200 chromoly steel tubes welded often in triangulated form in the points of highest stress, the designing providing both lightness and rigidity.

Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S, upper) & 300 SL (W198, lower).

One of the reasons the Maserati’s skeleton looked so delicate was that the space-frame had become associated with Teutonic-flavored construction like that used by Mercedes-Benz for its 300 SL & 300 SLR.  Both shared the same method of construction but despite the names and the the visual similarity between the two, there were few common components beyond the nuts, bolts & screws.  The 300 SL was a road car while the SLR was a lengthened version of the W196R Formula One Grand Prix car with a sexy body and an enlarged (though somewhat detuned) straight-eight engine.

Exoskeleton cars

MVE Exocet (left) & Exomotive’s Exocet Sport V8 (right).

Exoskeleton vehicles are numerous on farms, mine-sites and such but rarely seen on public roads.  They do though have a niche for those who want something which sacrifices just about everything (aerodynamics, weather protection, doors etc) for the nimbleness only extreme light-weight can deliver.  An example is the MVE Exocet, released for public sale in 2010.  It’s an inventive approach to the kit-car concept and takes the classic front-engined, rear-wheel drive approach, based on Mazda’s Miata (the MX-5, introduced in 1989 and a kind of clone of the Lotus Elan of the 1960s but without the problems), the advantage with the Japanese platform being its unusual sub-frame which permits the removal of the body, leaving the engine, drive-train and suspension as a rolling assembly to be transplanted to the Exocet chassis.

The nicely defined shoulder blade and ribcage definition of Lindsay Lohan's endoskeleton.

Because of the light weight, even when using sensible four-cylinder engines the Exocet delivers high-performance but the Americans in particular can’t resist the idea that just about any car can be improved by the installation of a V8 and quite outlandish power to weight ratios are possible.  An indicative example of Exomotive’s Exocet Sport used a 525hp (LS3) version of one of the later evolutions of the small-block Chevrolet V8 which, fully fueled, weighed in at 1690 lb (767 kg), somewhat less than a 2023 Formula One car.  Because it possible to buy, off the shelf (as a “crate” engine), V8 engines with about the same power as a F1 power-plant generates, although there was be something a weight penalty, the potential does exist to build a two-seater roadster with a similar power-to-weight ratio and there are jurisdictions which even allow such a thing to be registered for use on public roads.  Opinions would differ on whether such a build is a good idea but the little machines, if the V8 was tuned more for low and mid-range torque rather than ultimate power, would seem to have great potential in competitions such as short-course events and hill-climbs although the dubious aerodynamics would render it less suited to high-speed tracks.

Skeg

Skeg (pronounced skeg)

(1) In shipbuilding, a fin-like projection supporting a rudder and protecting the propeller(s) at its lower end, located abaft a sternpost or rudderpost.

(2) In the design of smaller boats, an extension of the keel, designed to improve steering.

(3) In the slang of naval architects (in certain contexts), a stump or branch (the after-part of a ship's keel).

(4) In the slang of the General Motors (GM) stylists, a “lower fin”, matching the upper on the rear of 1961-1962 Cadillacs.

(5) The fin which acts as a stabilizer on a surfboard.  To suffer some injury after being hit by one of these fins is to be “skegged”.

(6) In Australian slang, a surfer; a person who leads the lifestyle of a surfer (used also derisively in the form “fake skeg” of those who adopt the style an appearance without actually surfing.

(7) A type of wild plum (obsolete).

(8) A kind of oat (obsolete).

(9) In Northern English dialectal use, a look or glance.

(10) In many cultures, a slang term applied to youth suggesting slovenliness, a predilection to petty crime and other anti-social behavior; also used widely in Scottish slang for a surprising variety of purposes including legs, trousers, dirt, scotch eggs, sex and women of loose virtue.

1590–1600: From a dialectal term for a stump, branch, or wooden peg, from the Dutch scheg (cutwater), of Scandinavian origin and related to the Swedish skog and the Old Norse & Icelandic skegg (projection on the stern of a boat).  In some Nordic languages, skegg means “beard” and was from the Old Norse skegg, from the Proto-Germanic skaggiją, from the primitive Indo-European skek, kek-, skeg & keg- (to jump, skip, move, hurry).  The name of the English coastal town of Skegness is though a construct of the Old Norse skegg (beard) + -nes (headland) and was thought a reference to the geography, the original settlement situated farther east at the mouth of The Wash (thus jutting out like a beard from a face).  A link with the Old Norse name Skeggi is thought unlikely.  The skegs of nautical architecture should not be confused with the homophone Sceggs, the acronym for students of Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar school (S.C.E.G.G.S.), seen also in the adjectival forms sceggesque & sceggish (one whose style suggests something similar to the stereotypical student of the school).  Skeg is a noun; the noun plural is skegs.

Lindsay Lohan in wet suit, with surfboard, Malibu, 2011.  The stabilizing skeg is the black protrusion at the back of the board.

On nautical vessels, skegs where they exist fulfill a significant function but they are not an essential part of hull design.  A skeg is an external structural feature, a vertical tapering projection permanently fixed at the aft, usually close to the centre-line.  Most are located in front of the rudder and structurally can often be considered a sternward extension of the keel (the internal, longitudinal members which lend much strength of the hull).  Although in military vessels there are additional functions, the moist significant contribution of a skeg is in hydrodynamics, a skeg designed to influence the flow patterns and thus affecting the dynamics of both the rudder (which is usually in line with the skeg) and propeller(s).  The design is thus a finely tuned equation because while a skeg inherently induces drag, the way it alters the flow pattern can reduces the drag and resistance suffered by the rudder and propeller(s), essentially by transforming the turbulent characteristics of the flow to laminar at the stern.  Historically, skegs were a vital component in maintaining a course and that’s still an important consideration in smaller vessels but in larger craft, improved rudder and advanced navigational as well as stabilization technologies like thrusters have meant skegs are no longer of the same significance in maintaining directionality.

An US Navy Iowa class battleship, showing the inner set of propeller shafts wholly enclosed in a pair of skegs.  On the big ships, the skegs were designed also as load-bearing supports while in dry-dock.

In the modern age, skegs became an unusual feature on warships, a relative few so equipped and the designs varied, some with only a few of their shafts inside skegs while others encased all.  While the traditional design imperatives were shared with other ships, for navies, they also offered the advantage of affording some degree of protection for rudders and propellers against torpedo attack.  Historically, another important attribute of skegs was what they add to a hull’s structural strength, making the (inherently weaker) stern resistant to outside forces and all the last of the US Navy’s dreadnoughts featured skegs.  Their hulls narrowed towards the stern and to save weight lacked the sternpost plates the British, German and Japanese navies always fitted to their battleships and the skegs compensated for this, offering a hull with similar rigidity.

The US Navy’s South Dakota class battleships were fitted with an unusual set of skegs, the design dictated by the relatively short hull, the large outboard skegs helping to reduce the adverse effects of fluid dynamics induced by the hull’s abrupt end.

However, advantages in engineering and metallurgy meant much of the functionality afforded by skegs could be achieved in other ways and skegs became unfashionable in naval architecture.  The modeling and simulations made possible by supercomputers meant hull designs could be rendered which mastered the turbulence caused by fluid dynamics so rudders and propellers were less affected so the skeg was in many cases a source of performance-sapping skin-friction drag with little compensating benefit.  Indeed, not only did this hamper performance, in some cases excessive vibration was caused, something which could only to a degree be ameliorated by changes to the propellers’ configurations.

Cadillac’s Skegs, 1961-1962

Cadillac Coupe DeVille, (1959, left & 1960 right).

The 1959 Cadillac’s tail-fins are the best remembered and most emblematic of the brief, extraordinary era during which the absurdly macropterous flourished.  They’re rightly known as “peak-fin” but it’s a myth they were the tallest because, measured from the ground, those on the 1961 Imperial are just under an inch (25 mm) more vertiginous.  The attractions of the style however were fading and in 1960, Cadillac and Chrysler (Ford never really got involved) began to tone them down.  Another cultural phenomenon is that because of the large number of pink 1959 Cadillacs which now exist, many assume they were a common sight when new, the things perhaps made memorable by the sight of the one owned by the admirable Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967).  However, the factory never made a pink 1959 Cadillac and in the era, it was only in 1956 such a color was on the option list and Ms Mansfield had one of those while her 1959 convertible received a custom re-paint.

Cadillac Coupe de Ville, (1961, left & 1962 right).

For the 1961 & 1962 range the fins became lower still but in compensation, the design staff added a lower fin and these, informally they called “skegs”.

1961 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, (left), one of the design proposals for 1961 (centre) & captured German V2 rocket (right).

While of course an extravagance, the skegs could have part of something even wilder because among the design proposals which emerged from the General Motors Advanced Design Studios was one which clearly was the ultimate expression of the motif of the 1950s which borrowed so much from the aerospace industry,  The proposed fins essentially were those of ballistic missiles which for decades were an evolution from the German Vergeltungswaffen zwei (V-2), developed first by the German military with the code name Aggregat 4 (A4).  Vergeltungswaffen is translated variously as "retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons" but in English use is often written as “vengeance weapons”.  Aerodynamically, presumably the proposal has something to commend it and it proceeded far enough into the selection for an expensive, full-sized clay model to be rendered (one wonders what the rejected sketches looked like) but ultimately the longer though somehow more restrained skegs were preferred.

The 1961 Cadillac: The long (left) and slightly less long (right) of it.

One quirk of Cadillac’s brief embrace of the skeg was there were two iterations: skeg long and skeg short.  Whether in response to or in anticipation of some owners preferring their Cadillac in a more conveniently sized package, between 1961-1963 a “short-deck” option was made available on certain body styles.  Offered first on the six-window Sedan de Ville, an encouraging 3,756 were built so the option was in 1962 offered on the four-window Sixty Two Town Sedan but sales actually dropped to 2600, the decline in interest confirmed the next year when only 1575 of the four-window Park Avenue Sedan de Ville were sold.  Using the same 129.5 inch (3289 mm) wheelbase as the regular models but eight inches (200 mm) shorter in overall length (215 vs 223 inches (5461 vs 5664 mm)), space utilization was obviously a little better but the market had spoken.  With fewer than eight-thousand of the short-deck models sold across three seasons while the standard editions shipped in the tens of thousands, the flirtation with (slightly) more efficient packaging was abandoned for 1964; in the course of the following decade, Cadillacs would grow another seven inches (178 mm) and gain over 400 lb (181 kg).

For 1963, the short-deck models returned for another dismal season but the skegs were abandoned, never to return.  The fins however the design studio found harder to forsake, conscious perhaps it was on the 1948 Cadillac they’d first appeared.  Then, modestly sized, they’d been an allusion to the tail-planes used on the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939) but the fashion had passed and the fins had to go so, inch by inch, there was a retreat from the heights and exuberance of 1959 until in 1966 the fins were vestigial, a hint which for decades would be retained.

A gang of four Sceggs, Sydney, Australia.