Veavage
(pronounced vee-vig)
(1) The
expanse of bare skin a woman displays when wearing a dress (or top) with a
neckline cut in a deep (often called plunging) “V”, the vertex (the bottom
junction where the two diagonal strokes meet) typically reaching the midriff
but the lines can intersect as low as the waist or even the hipline. As a design, it’s the familiar “V-neckline”
taken to its logical conclusion although much the same can be achieved with
what technically are “scalloped necklines” or “U-plunges”.
(2) As
“veavage dress”, “veavage top” etc, a garment so designed.
2026 (2010
for an earlier, now extinct purpose): A portmanteau word, the construct being
ve(e) + (cle)avage. In English, vee had a
long history as an illustration of the pronunciation for the letter “V” but it
was in US English in the mid-1860s it began widely to be used in building,
architecture and engineering to describe various structures, components or
configurations. Because of the
attractive properties of triangles, the “V-shape” would for millennia have been
part of the man-made environment (indeed, it exists in botany, animals and
geology) but the form “vee” appears in this context to have been well documented
only from the mid-nineteenth century and use as a direct substitute for the Latin
script letter “V/v” is documented from 1869.
In internal combustion engines, “vee” seems first used of piston engines
in this configuration by 1915 although the first known V-twin was built in 1889
and the first V8 in 1903. Although
common as a descriptor of shapes or physical objects, the more abstract re-purposings
included (1) a polyamorous relationship between three people, in
which one person has two partners who are not themselves romantically or
sexually involved and (2) in the (male) gay community, “a Vee” is a verbal
shorthand for “a versatile” (one who is not exclusively “a top” (or “pitcher”)
or “a “bottom” (or “catcher”) but indulges in both practices. The coining is too recent for derived forms
to have emerged but the possibilities include veavaged, veavaging and
veavesque. Veavage is a noun (and
potentially a verb & adjective); the noun plural is veavages.
Of Vee
Cricket's “vee”, recommended for “high-percentage” shots.
Teevee was
a respelling of the abbreviation TV (for television) so the two are synonymous
but the former (with its four superfluous vowels) survived only as a “niche
word”. In the era between the early
post-war years and services like YouTube and its many imitators becoming
mainstream, a “teeveen” was a young person who “watched too much TV”. In SF (sci-fi, science fiction) a three-vee
was a screen able to display in three-dimensions; authors used also “3v”, “tri-v”
“tri-vid”, “tri-d”, “trideo” & “tridim” and although they didn’t show quite
the disdain for capitalization as later would emerge in the business of
computer hardware & software, the literary preference seems to have tended
to the lower case. The humorists of the
1980s used a mix of upper and lower when creating shorthand critiques of the US
cable television channel (1981) MTV (pronounced emm-tee-vee and an initialism of “Music Television”). Claiming the channel’s programming was banal,
they conjured up “eMpTyV”, “empty-vee”, “Empty-V”, “Emptyv”, “emptyV” & “eMpTy
V”, all to be pronounced emp-tee-vee. That was a variant of the technique used
to produce rebus abbreviations (in structural linguistics technically a “gramogram”)
such as “NRG” for “energy” or “XLR8” for “accelerate”. All worked best when written because although
non none possessed classic phonetic assimilation, sloppiness in real world use,
sloppiness in pronunciation probably often rendered the sound of emm-tee-vee vs emp-tee-vee indistinguishable. In cricket, the “vee” describes the arc of the field, forward of the batter, from cover to midwicket, in which drives classically are played (a shape better visualized as an “L” because, like many “vee” engines, the vertex is a 90o angle) and coaches still instruct batters to “play in the vee” because that’s most productive for “high percentage” (ie more runs, fewer dismissals) shots but in the newer, shorter forms of the game, that’s now less relevant. Whether “veagage” catches as jargon for coaches advocating “playing in the vee” remains to be seen.
Playing in the vee. Australian cricketer Ellyse Perry (b 1990) with the trophies of the two Cricket Australia (the new name for the old Board of Control) Cricketer of the Year awards she won in 2023 (in the T20 and ODI (One Day International) categories). Note the splendid shoulder & upper-arm muscle definition.
In
typography & computing, typography, a “vee” was a unit of vertical spacing,
typically corresponding to the height of an ordinary line of text. In machinery, a vee-belt (often as v-belt)
was a drive-belt of reinforced rubber or other compounds which was mounted on
drive wheels or pullies, the name gained from the V-shaped cross-section (some
with notches which were called “toothed belts”). “Vee Dub” was a slang term for a vehicle
produced by Volkswagen (VW) and a “Vee Dubber” was a VW fan boy (some of whom were girls). A “veejay” was the host of a television
programme who presented videos, based on the earlier “DJ” (disc jockey, a radio
presenter who introduced music broadcast by playing tracks from discs, a use
which has survived many DJs now operating without discs). A VJ was also a “vertical joist” which was a
length of timber used as a vertical upright for structural support. In vulgar slang, “VJ” also was a term for the
vulva or vagina and the user-generated Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2010 listing “veavage”
with the construct v(aginal) + (cl)eavage (ie the infamous “camel toe”) but that attracted negligible support. A veep is “a
vice-president”, a form popular use has made associated mostly with the VPOTUS
(vice-president of the US).
Of Veagage
Actor Keira
Knightley (b 1985) in a classic black veavage dress, illustrating how the emphasis
has shifted to skin rather than cleavage, the latter the traditional
focus of the deeper “V-necklines”, things now done with “a hint”: less is more.
With due acknowledgment of the use in 2010 (documented by Urban Dictionary) which never gained traction, “veavage” is a new word but what it describes is not new though the emphasis genuinely is a variation of an old theme. Veagage is a deeply plunging V-shaped cut in a garment which displays some of the chest & midriff down sometimes as far as the hipline although most stop at the waist. Obviously something best worn on red carpets or for photo-shoots in controlled environments (light, surface irregularities, wind-speed & direction, crowds etc), it differs from the traditional approach to the female chest in that emphasis is on the skin rather than the breasts, the veagage look de-emphasising those glands so the cut is ideal for those able to summon much of a cleavage only with structural engineering such as a bra or Hollywood Tape (better known by the more evocative “tit-tape”). So it can be a good, eye-catching choice for those without the anatomical advantage demanded by outfits optimized for “peak cleavage” but it has been criticized as a form of “privilege-dressing”, said to carry the whiff of “white feminism”.
Controversial and not accepted by all as something “real”, “white feminism” is said to be a fork of feminism concerned almost exclusively with concerns of white, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual women, the problems of women not ticking those boxes ignored. It’s thus an individualistic strain of feminism which aims to maximize one’s advantage within existing systems rather than seeking systemic reform for the collective benefit. From there it may seem a bit of a leap to veagage as marker of political exclusion but it’s true a link can be constructed if one wishes to find such a connection (the notion of v=(c+p) (cleavage + privilege = veavage)) in that while it accommodates at least some on the spectrum of breast size, slenderness is essential and for those not genetically lucky or disciplined, there are the GLP-1 (Glucagon-like peptide-1) drugs and overwhelmingly, they remain a tool for those who are (in global terms) “rich”. Like everything else, the frock is political.
Lindsay
Lohan, Olympus Fashion Week, Bryant Park, Manhattan, February 2006. Although Ms Lohan is more associated with the traditional
use of the V-neckline, this is archetypical veavage.
Unlike some
“straight-line letters” such as “W” or “X”, the letter “V” is almost always
rendered with straight lines but fashion editors are more forgiving than geometers
(since the time of the third century BC mathematician of Ancient Greece Euclid, the historic term for those whose primary research field was geometry)
who would insist the plunging neckline of Ms Lohan’s red dress is not a “V” but
a “curvilinear angle” (an angle with sides of curves rather than straight line
segments). In elementary geometry, the
classic angle consists of two straight rays meeting at a vertex, whereas in a curvilinear
angle the sides are arcs or other curves intersecting at a point. In fashion, up to a certain stage, a “curvilinear
angle” is still a “V-neckline” because the visual effect is so close but, as
the curves become more curved, at some point the cut becomes closed to a
“scallop” or “scoop” and is so described.
Model & writer Hari Nef (b 1992) in Schiaparelli. Like the trade-off in
warship design between armor & speed, less gland means more veavage so those not best suited to cleavage in a V-neckline have an alternative.
So with V-shaped necklines descending to the navel (or a little beyond) hardly a novelty given their not infrequent appearances over the last two-decades-odd, why did the word “veavage” suddenly make an appearance in 2026? The obvious answer is of course “click-bait” but that’s not of necessity a bad thing because, in a sense, that trick is supply anticipating demand and there are aspects of the internet (which at least for now seem to have become structural) that should arouse more concern. It’s a good word and a welcome addition to the fashion business; presumably an industry commentator noted a spike in the “deep vee” showing up on the catwalks or red carpets and, things “on trend” needing a tag, conjured up (or re-purposed) “veagage”. The speculative link to the look becoming more prevalent because GLP-1s have rendered more women with physiques suitable for such things is intriguing but wholly impressionistic and trends anyway tend to wax and wane although, in its niche, veagage seems here to stay.
Of
Cleavage
Actor
Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) with a more traditional implementation of the
V-neckline. Empirically, this look is
likely to remain the dominant approach although, as it has for years, the
veavege will run in parallel.
The noun
cleavage seems first to have appeared in the 1805, the construct being cleave +
-age. It was used first in geology and
mineralogy to describe “the tendency (of rocks or gems) to break cleanly along
natural fissures” with the generalized meaning “action or state of cleaving or
being cleft” emerging in the mid 1860s.
Although the artistic record confirms the popularity of the look had
over the centuries come and gone in the cyclical way fashion behaves, use of
“cleavage” in the sense of the “the hollow between a woman's breasts (usually
when artificially supported), especially as exposed by a low-cut garment”
appears not to have been seen in print prior to the use in an article in Time
magazine discussing the (nominally) self-censorship codes of practice adopted
(not entirely willingly) by the Hollywood film studios. In finding a single word, Time’s editors
proved good practitioners of journalistic succinctness because what they were
reducing to a word had been described in the industry’s bureaucratese as “the shadowed
depression dividing an actress' bosom into two distinct sections.” Cleavage caught on although to this day the
more up-market fashion glossies still hanker after the French décolletage.
Variations on a theme of Vee: Lindsay Lohan (during
blonde phase) in V-neckline, V Magazine's Black and White Ball,
Standard Hotel, New York City, September 2011.
Cleave was
in use prior to 950 and was from the Middle English cleven, from the Old English strong verb clēofan (to split, to separate), from the Proto-West Germanic kleuban, from the Proto-Germanic kleubaną, from the primitive Indo-European
glewb- (to cut, to slice). It was a doublet of clive and
cognate with the Dutch klieven, the dialectal
German klieben, the Swedish klyva, the Norwegian Nynorsk kløyva; it was akin to the Ancient Greek
γλύφω (glúphō) (carve) and the
Classical Latin glūbere (to peel). Given the time and place of cleave’s
emergence, etymologists suspect the original sense was likely related to the
handling of timber (ie to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow,
especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood). The suffix -age was from the Middle English
-age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum. Cognates include
the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj. It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense
of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result,
(3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a
charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure. The French suffix -age was from the Middle & Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum,
(greatly) extended from words like rivage
and voyage. It was used usually to form nouns with the
sense of (1) "action or result of Xing" or (more rarely),
"action related to X" or (2) "state of being (a or an) X". A less common use was the formation of
collective nouns. Historically, there
were many applications (family relationships, locations et al) but use has long
tended to be restricted to the sense of "action of Xing". Many older terms now have little to no
connection with their most common modern uses, something particularly notable
of those descended from actual Latin words (fromage,
voyage et al).
Bella Hadid (b 1996, right), Cannes Film Festival, 2021.
A veavage
can of course be an eye-catching billboard and the obvious stuff to advertise is
jewellery (left).
Model Bella Hadid showed
how it could be done with scalloped neckline, wearing a black Schiaparelli gown (cut for the purpose with an untypically wide aperture) used to frame a sculptural piece, fashioned in
gilded brass to resemble an anatomical cast of the lungs’ bronchi (the paired series of cartilaginous,
tube-like airways branching from the trachea into each lung, acting as the
primary passage for air distribution). However, in while in commerce a handy advertising space, those adopting a veavage seem most inclined to restrict adornments to earrings or other accessories which don't interrupt the line of skin between neck and waist, the trick being to achieve a “lengthening effect”
Despite the etymological
implication, a veagage is about the display of skin and is not dependent on
being framed in a “V” but the point about it is the de-emphasis of the breasts
(and thus the cleavage). What Paige
Spiranac wore to Sports Illustrated 60th anniversary event could (with
some strategically placed double-sided tape) be used for the purpose but
technically the ensemble was a variant of the “curtain reveal” motif (in “open”
mode). Whether it would produce a
veagage or a cleavage would depend on the wearer.
In the
1980s, US political scientists used the term “cross-cutting cleavages” to
describe what had been revealed as a phenomenon both increasing frequency and
spreading demographically and geographically.
The term referred to a social structure in which different lines of
division in society intersect rather than coincide (ie groups created by one
social division are mixed across the groups created by another division,
instead of aligning with them). In the
West, as an identifiable trend, this likely was something that had ebbed and
flowed since the decline of feudalism but in the post-war years it became of
interest to political scientists because it was clearly something influencing
social conflict and voting behaviour, the issue-by-issue alignment within and
between sectional classifications no longer as predictable. What had become obvious was the membership of
groups in one dimension was overlapping with multiple groups in another.
Influencer
Sophadophaa (she stresses : “
It’s Sophia not Sophie”) in red gown with plunging vee.
Because the veagage effect is most effective when at its most 2D (two dimentional), when that’s what’s wanted, the usual approach is to have the fabric cling to the skin (with double-sided tape as required) but V-necklines can be executed differently for other outcomes; the double-sided tape is still applied but in different places.
Overlap was not new in that “coalitions of
interest or concern” had long been known to be subject to these “crossovers” (especially
at the margins) but in the days before big machine databases transformed this
into something political parties could not merely manage but exploit, it was a
genuine problem.
The more optimistic
academics suggested cross-cutting cleavages operated to stabilize democracy
because, with individuals simultaneously belonging to many groups (class,
religion, occupation, region), the overlap prevented politics from collapsing
into a series of polarized conflicts, what some called “
the Balkanization of society”.
The argument was the behaviour compelled political
parties to build broad coalitions across multiple groups, moderating the
inherent tendency to conflict and reducing the likelihood of groups becoming
the captives of extremist positions.
There may have been something in this because in the US, between the
1930s & 1980s it was those broad (notably geographical) coalitions which
characterized US politics; political conflict didn’t go away but it was diffuse
rather than binary.
In operation, that
mid-century model was very different from Europe.
There, “cleavage theory” was a descriptive
model of the way several centuries of major (and often bloody) social conflicts
(cleavages) worked finally as the catalyst for state formation and
industrialization.
The
manufacturers have for decades noted the appeal of the V-neckline and have
created a vibrant market in accessories and devices. Up to a point, the conventional cantilever
method works but there are practical limits.
However, while physics can’t be fooled, optics can and what Wonderbra
did for the New Deep Plunge Bra was replace the conventional fabric-covered
gore with one of translucent plastic, thus creating a “one skin tone fits all” fitting. Except on close inspection, it was close to
invisible.
The West
(and especially the US) is of course now in the age of “mega identity politics”
and the parameters of those identities are in the effective control of a
relative handful of extremists (“absolutists” or “purists” the more polite
forms) who have the historically unique (in reach, immediacy and scope)
platform of social media set agendas and cancel transgressors; even in groups originally
created because of oppression, now routinely oppress heretics who depart from
the orthodoxy. This does not imply
political parties have become “single issue” operations but substantially they
are tending towards the ideologically monolithic as aggregations of what scholars have
labelled “stacked identities” and the process of “purification” is not organic:
within the party machines, those seeking absolute control undertaking purges,
witness the gradual preponderance within the Republican Party of the MAGA (Make
America Great Again) over those condemned as “pseudo conservatives”, the RINOs
(Republicans in Name Only). In the
Democratic Party, identities have come to trump (the verb) all else and few now
dare to raise the matter of trans-females competing in sporting competitions
for women because the “trans rights” have become a litmus-paper test of
adherence to orthodoxy. So, the
machinery which decades ago assembled coalitions of interest now creates tribes
with much of what that word implies, political scientists sanitizing things a
bit with the tag “affective polarization”.
While the cause-and-effect processes in all this were not wholly binary,
it has rendered conflict now identity-based in that conflicts are between world
views and way of life rather than the minutiae of policies.
Ultradeep U-Plunge. Where the vee didn't plunge so deep, a more conventional construction could be used although many did include "clear" shoulder straps, made of the same kind of material as sometimes used for the gore.
So, whereas
the national and state legislatures once thrashed things out and often managed
to achieve compromises, that’s now less common because a “compromise” is seen
as a “surrender” or “betrayal” and the consequences for that included being
“cancelled” or “primaried”, two weaponized devices able successfully to be
deployed by a remarkably small number of committed extremists. None of this is any secret but there’s no
obvious solution because the simple fix (mass active participation of the
electorate (the so-called “sensible centre”) in party politics) has little
appeal for either the voters or those running the party machines, both groups
for their own reasons appalled by the notion.
The days are gone when the Republicans had their “moderate” faction (the
so-called Rockefeller Republicans (named after Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979;
US vice president 1974-1977 and who earned immortality by having “died on the job”) and the Democrats their “Southern Conservatives” (the so-called
“Dixiecrats” in the not always attractive tradition of figures like old Strom
Thurmond (1902-2003; senator for South Carolina 1954-2003)). By the 2020s, that overlap has almost
completely disappeared with politics now more polarized than at any time in
living memory and political scientists lament the shift but they should recall
a remark in the paper Toward a More
Responsible Two‑Party System (1950), published by the
APSA (American
Political Science Association): “The two parties do not differ enough.” Expanding on that, the authors added: “Alternatives
between the parties are defined so badly that it is often difficult to
determine what the election has decided even in broadest terms.” As a critique this came to be called the
“Tweedledum & Tweedledee problem” (two characters in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis
Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) who had different
names but look the same and behave in identical ways.
Das U-boob Theorie.
Orla U-Plunge Backless Adhesive Bra in Black (left) and Salma Hayek (b 1966, right) demonstrates the uvage, Evening Standard Theatre Awards, London, November 2015. Orla's “
adhesive” is a reference to the side panels which adhere directly to the skin (using the same technology as surgical tape), allowing the bra to a achieve a “backless” effect. Because the cut of some gowns obviously is a “U” rather than a “V”, the fashionistas
might feel compelled to add “uvage” (pronounced
yoo-vig, the construct being u + (clea)vage)) to the lexicon because, if the two styles appear together
on the catwalk, single-word differentiation might be helpful.
Heart & wedge:
Luciana
Heart Cut Out Long Sleeve Mini Dress in black (left) and French content creator & author Léna Situations (Léna Mahfouf, b 1997), in Georges Hobeika (b 1962) black gown with inverted V-neckline (technically a wedge), Academy Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, March 2026. Ms Mahfouf uses “Léna Situations” as an online pseudonym because that was the name of the fashion & lifestyle-focused blog she, as a
teen-ager, created in 2012; it gained her a “brand identity” and was thus for some purposes retained in adulthood. The blog would have seemed familiar to the members of the long defunct
Situationist International because her concept was sharing fragments of her life in different “situations” which might be defined by the place, the outfit worn or what was being experienced so was thus a series of spectacles, able to be understood as individual relics of time & place or a series of narratives. Using that model, platforms like Instagram have allowed just about everybody to become a
situationist and while the original situationists would have recognized “
social lives mediated by images, media & commodities”, they'd not have approved.
However, although tempting,
being too specific about geometry might lead to a proliferation of terms because
designers have proved inventive when shaping “cut-outs” in gowns. A heart shape could perhaps attract “cardivage” (pronounced kar-dee-vig, the construct being cardi(ac) + (clea)vage) and an inverted vee could be called a “wedgeage”
(pronounced wed-jige, the construct
being wedge + (cleav)age). In formal
logic, the wedge symbol (∧) represents “AND” (the logical conjunction); in its opposite orientation (V) the symbol is called a “vee” and represents logical “OR”. So, imposing precision may be a needless
solution to a non-existent problem and the industry seems likely to continue to
tolerate what Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 &
1951-1955) in 1906 called “terminological inexactitude” (used as a euphemism
for the un-parliamentary “lie” and coined because in the House of
Commons, Mr Speaker had long since proscribed use of “mendacious”). Beyond the "V", "U", "heart" and "wedge", there are more shapes so veavage seems likely to serve as a generic
for all.
Charli XCX
(stage-name of English singer-songwriter Charlotte Emma Aitchison (b 1992)) in
a Christopher John Rogers (b 1993) white fit & flare dress with ruffled
peplum, featuring a more conventional implementation of the V-neckline.
Ms Mahfouf's retention of a
youthful online pseudonym is not unique, Charli XCX another example. The star herself revealed the stage name is
pronounced chahr-lee ex-cee-ex; it
has no connection with Roman numerals and XCX is anyway not a standard Roman
number. XC is “90” (C minus X (100-10))
and CX is “110” (C plus X (100 +10)) but, should the need arise, XCX could be
used as a code for “100”, on the model of something like the “May 35th”
reference Chinese internet users, when speaking of the “Tiananmen Square
Incident” of 4 June 1989, adopted in an attempt to circumvent the CCP's
(Chinese Communist Party) “Great Firewall of China” censorship apparatus. In 2015, Ms XCX revealed the text string was
an element in her MSN screen name (CharliXCX92) when young (it stood for “kiss
Charli kiss”) and, after appearing in the early publicity for her music, it
gained critical mass so Charli XCX we still have.
In 1950, the political scientists had concluded there was “too great a degree of internal heterogeneity” in that, housing both liberal and conservative wings, the forces tended to “cancel each other out” with the consequence being party programmes which were vague and often similar, meaning voters found it hard to identify clear policy alternatives. In a sense, that took the “science” out of “political science” and the academics didn’t like it, preferring clear battle-lines (Roundheads vs Cavaliers; democracy vs fascism and such) for without clear differences, there really was no politics; all that remained was the dreary business of management. In retrospect, the APSA likely agrees people should be careful what they wish for and and many contemporary political scientists now argue the system has moved too far in the opposite direction, producing intense polarization and reinforcing cleavages. Still, we may as well get used to the system because, with cleavages widening and edges hardening, most conclude it’ll likely get worse before it gets better. Of Vee
Engines
Ford
FE V8 (left) and Y-Block (right). The frontal view of the FE engine illustrates
both why the configuration is called a “vee” and why it would have been understandable
had the 90o engines been dubbed “L8s”. Ford’s first OHV (overhead valve) V8 (for pick-up trucks & passenger vehicles) picked
up the nickname “Y-Block” because the skirt extended to an unusually low point, the additional cast iron thus recalling the tail of the letter “Y”.
The “V” in certain
engines (V4, V8, V16 etc) is a reference to the angle of the banks of the
block’s cylinder banks when viewed along the line of the crankshaft and the configuration
in ICE (internal combustion engines) was used within half-a-decade of the
“first” automobile appearing on the roads in 1886, Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929) and
Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) in 1889 installing a 565
cm3 (34 cubic inch)
V-twin (ie two cylinder) unit in the Daimler Stahlradwagen (steel-wheeled car).
The Stahlradwagen’s V-twin
used what was, by the standards of which would follow, a very narrow angle for
the vee (quoted usually a 17o but listed also “in the 20o
class”) and over the years, “vee” engines have appeared with angles ranging
between 12.5 and 180o (while the latter may seem a contradiction in
terms, the 180o vee (e a straight line) is accepted engineering
jargon). The first V8 (1903) & V12
(1904) appeared in what was for each the “ideal vee angle” (90 & 60o
respectively), the number dictated by desire for the even firing intervals to
ensure the smoothest power delivery and those pioneers set the template which
has tended since to be followed although there have been many exceptions. Of course, a V8 in a 90o configuration
really should be a “L8” but because the Maybach & Daimler V-twin had
established the terminological model, regardless of the angle, such things have
always been “V-something”.
Ferrparts schematic of crankcase parts for the 365 GT4 BB's 4.4 litre (270 cubic inch) flat-12. According to engineers, this is a "flattened vee".
That’s fine
because, conceptually, there’s always a vertex but according to Ferrari, the “Flat
12” engine fitted the various iterations of the Berlinetta Boxer (1973-1974)
was also a type of “vee”, despite the two banks of six being horizontally
opposed (ie at 180o); they called it a “flattened vee” which, as
Euclid would have told them, there being no vertex, that means they’re
describing a “straight-line segment”.
The engineers would have acknowledged the wisdom of the geometers but
argued the use was an established convention in engineering to distinguish the
two types of “flat” engines (those with pistons which move in and out
simultaneously (on the model of a boxer’s gloves) being “boxers” and those in
which the pistons move in unison being “flattened vees” or “180o
vees”. The Ferrari website explains all
this while variously and cheerfully calling the engine a “flat 12”,
“boxer-type” or “180o V12”; so, take your pick. It’s on that site the factory acknowledged
the true story about how the original 365 GT4 BB (1973) picked up the “BB”
designation and why “Berlinetta Boxer” was concocted as a cover story.
1930 Cadillac V16 452.
At one end
of the spectrum, Lancia produced a range of what they described as
“narrow-angle” small-displacement V4s and that was apt because the vee was set
at 12.5o, the compactness of the jewel-like power-plant permitting
outstanding packaging efficiency. Less
obviously efficient was Cadillac which, for a brief, shining moment, made a 452
cubic inch (7.4 litre) V16 with the two banks eight arrayed in a 45o vee; that made it a
photogenic piece of machinery but it had the misfortune of being introduced in
1930, right at the onset of the Great Depression and although an encouraging
2,500 left the line in the first year of production, demand collapsed and it
was only for reasons of prestige GM (General Motors) kept it in the
catalogue. By the time it was withdrawn
from sale in 1938, not even a further 1400 had been ordered. It was in that year replaced by a technically
less intriguing 431 cubic inch (7.1 litre) V16 which, built with a 135o
vee, was even less successful, a reported 516 engines leaving the plant
although it’s believed only 499 were installed in rolling chassis. Also with a
vee was the most charismatic V16 of all, the BRM V16 (1947-1955) which
was one of those “glorious failures” at which the British are so adept but no
grand prix car since has sounded so good.
Factory
cutaway diagram of Daimler-Benz DB 605 Inverted V12 as fitted to Messerschmitt
Bf-109.
The DB 60X series was literally “an
upside-down V12” but it was regarded thus only because the convention had been
to mount them in the still familiar aspect.
Equipped with a dry-sump and direct fuel-injection, the angle assumed
in flight made little difference to the engine, unlike the early Allied
aero-engines which were carburetor-fed. In combat, that was a great advantage for the German pilots who were fortunate the British didn't accept a spy's offer to supply them with a stolen example of the vital DB fuel pump. As it was, the RAF (Royal Air Force) had to wait until Bendex developed a "pressurized carburetor" (a type of throttle-body fuel-injection) although the stop-gap "fix" which proved a remarkably effective partial amelioration was "Miss Shilling's orifice".
In the
first half of the twentieth century, the V12 engine held great appeal for the
designers of military aircraft because the layout solved several critical
aerodynamic and mechanical problems which would have remained insurmountable (and probably exacerbated) had the
traditional in-line engines been further extended or enlargedused.
More cylinders meant more power and this the V12s achieved without the
excessive length (and thus the dreaded “crankshaft flex”) which would have been
suffered by an in-line 12. The virtues
the designers sought were (1) robustness, (2) lightness, (3) power and (4)
compactness, the quest always for a better power-to-weight ratio and for this
the V12 proved the “sweet-spot”. The
British industry in the inter-war years developed many V12 aero-engines (notably the Rolls-Royce Merlin which became famous by powering all the early Supermarine
Spitfires) but because the Germans didn’t return to military aviation until the
mid-1930s, they had the advantage of working on a “clean sheet of paper”, one of their many innovations being the “inverted V12”, the most numerous the Daimler-Benz DB 600 series. In these,
the crankshaft was above the cylinders so the cylinder banks pointed downward
and this offered several advantages including (1) improved pilot visibility,
(2) greater propeller ground clearance (meaning also the larger propellers became possible without needing longer landing gear), (3) easier access to accessories (fuel
pumps, magnetos and such at atop, meaning mechanics could fix or replace
components more quickly), (4) the fitting of a Motorkanone (a cannon firing
through the propeller hub) became viable (5) shorter exhaust stacks and (5) the plumbing for the advanced MFI (mechanical fuel injection)
system was both simplified and made more accessible.
Exhaust stubs of left-hand bank of a BRM V16.
Like the DB inverted V12s, some of the BRM V16 had low-mounted exhaust stubs but whether the flow of the gasses had any effect on aerodynamics was never studied although, the breathing must have been efficient because the 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) V16 could at 12,000 rpm generate up to 600 HP. At full cry it produced the most glorious sound ever heard in Formula One but unfortunately it was at the threshold of pain for those standing close so the system was revised to use a pair of long "
dump pipes".
Almost as a
footnote, the German designers noted they were able also to exploit the location of the stubs to gain unanticipated benefits from the path of the inverted V12’s exhaust
thrust and cowling flow. It’s
overstating things to call it a “jet thrust” effect but that’s how it can be
visualized, high-velocity exhaust gases exiting the stacks producing a small
rearward thrust component and the engineers experimented to find the optimum
length and angle, calculating the “effective thrust” at between 50–150 lb
(220–670 N) depending on the power setting and throttle used. In real-world conditions, this translated
into perhaps an additional 25-odd horsepower which may not sound significant in
engines generating over a thousand but in combat, it could be the difference
between life and death. Additionally,
the aeronautical engineers used an aspect of fluid dynamics to improve the “boundary-layer
management” along the cowling (ie using the hot, high-energy exhaust stream
flowing along the sides of the cowling to “energize” the boundary layer of air "attached" to the fuselage surface). What
this did was slightly delay any flow separation, reducing “draw” and providing
a better flow over the wing’s critical root area. The differences were slight and subtle but
again, in combat happening at altitude, at hundred of mph, inches and seconds matter so it could be the difference
between life and death.
