Garbage

Garbage (pronounced gahr-bij)

(1) Discarded material (often animal and vegetable matter from food production).

(2) Any matter that is no longer wanted or needed.

(3) Anything contemptibly worthless, inferior, or vile (physical material or, used figuratively, any idea or content (literature, music, film, ideas, theories et al).

(4) Worthless talk; lies; foolishness.

(5) In informal use in architecture & design, unnecessary items added merely for embellishment; garnish.

(6) In the space industry, no non-functional artificial satellites or parts of rockets floating in space (space junk, a genuine and growing problem in near-earth orbit).

(7) In computing, meaningless, invalid or unwanted data.

(8) The bowels of an animal; refuse parts of flesh; offal (obsolete).

(9) In North American slang (of ball sports), an easy shot.

(10) In North American slang (of team sports), as “garbage time”, the period at the end of a timed sporting event that has become a blowout when the outcome of the game has already been decided, and the coaches of one or both teams will often decide to replace their best players with substitutes.

(11) In North American slang, to eviscerate (obsolete).

1400–1450: From the Middle English garbage, garbidge & gabage (discarded parts of butchered fowls; entrails of fowls used for human food).  In the Middle English, garbelage meant “removal of refuse from spices” & garbelure meant “refuse found in spices” while the Old French garbage (also as jarbage) meant “tax on sheaves of grain”.  Quite what were the mechanics of the sense-shifts has never been clear and further to muddy the waters there was also the Old Italian garbuglio (confusion).  All dictionaries thus regard the original form as being of “unknown origin”.  The familiar modern meaning (refuse, filth) has been in use since at least the 1580s, an evolution from the earlier sense of “giblets, refuse of a fowl, waste parts of an animal (head, feet, etc) used for human food).  Etymologists noted it was one of many words to enter English through the vector of the French cooking book and its sense of “waste material, refuse” was influenced by and partly confused with “garble” in its older sense of “remove refuse material from spices” (while Middle English had the derived noun garbelage it seems only ever to have been used to mean “the action of removing refuse (ie not the material itself)).  In modern North American use, “garbage” generally means only “kitchen and vegetable wastes” while “trash” the more common term generally used of “waste; discarded rubbish”.  The alternative spelling garbidge is obsolete (although it does sometimes still appear as a marker of the use of an eye dialect).  Garbage is a noun, verb & adjective, garbaging & garbaged is a verb and garbagelike is an adjective; the noun plural is garbage.

Portrait by Lindsay Lohan constructed entirely from recycled garbage by Jason Mecier (b 1968).  His work is crafted using discarded items and he attempts where possible to use objects in some way associated with his subjects.  Although described by some as mosaics, his technique belongs to the tradition of college.

The derived terms are many and include “garbage can” or “garbage bin” (a receptacle for discarded matter, especially kitchen waste), “garbage bag” (a bag into which certain waste is placed for subsequent (often periodic) collection and disposal), such a bag functioning often as a “bin liner” (a usually plastic disposal bag used to make the disposal process less messy), “garbage day” (or “garbage time”), the day on which a local government or other authority collects the contents of a householder’s garbage bin, left usually kerbside, “garbage collector”, “garbage man”, “garbage lady” & “garbage woman” the employees (“garbos” in Australian slang) who staff the collection process (known (usually humorously) since 1965 also as “garbologists” whose trade is “garbology”, “garbage truck” (A vehicle for the collection and removal of waste, usually a truck with a custom-built apparatus to compact the collected waste), “garbage dump” (the place to which garbage trucks deliver their load), “garbage disposal (unit)” (an electric device installed in a kitchen drain that shred waste before washing it down the drain (known commercially (sometimes capitalized) also as a “garburator” or “garberator”), “garbage bandit” (the wildlife known to raid garbage bins for food).  For the two holding centres used in 1945 to imprison the suspected Nazi war criminals prior to trial, the British used the codename "Camp Dustbin" and the Americans "Camp Ashcan"; both resisted the temptation to use "garbage" or "trash".  In coining derived terms or in idiomatic use, depending on the country, not only are "garbage" & "trash" used interchangeably, elements such as "ash", "rubbish", "dust" etc can also sometimes be substituted.  

In appearing to characterize the supporters of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) as “garbage”, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) gave something of a “free kick” to the Trump campaign which wasted no time in focusing on this latest gaffe to divert attention from the joke which triggered the whole “garbagegate” thing.  In mid-October, 2024 US comedian Tony Hinchcliffe (b 1984), whole performing a set as part of the entertainment for a Trump rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, included material in keeping with having “a bit of previous” in the use of jokes regarded variously as anti-Semitic, misogynistic and racist, the most controversial being: “I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico.”  The punch-line was well-received, greeted with much laughter and applause.

Tony Hinchcliffe on stage, Madison Square Garden, New York, October 2024.

It was interesting the comedian used “island of garbage” rather than “island of trash” because, in the US, “trash” is the more commonly used term and one which has a long history of being applied to social & ethnic minorities (white trash, trailer trash etc) which presumably was the intended implication.  The choice may have been influenced by the well-known “Great Pacific garbage patch”, an accumulation of (mostly) plastic and other marine debris in the central Pacific which is believed to cover at least 600,000 square miles (1.5 million km²).  While “…literally a floating island of trash” could have worked, not only would it have been more blatant but the impact of the punch-line depended on the audience summoning the mental image of the Pacific Ocean phenomenon (caused by and essentially circular sea current which is oceanography is called a “gyre”) before learning the reference was actually to Puerto Rico (and by implication, Puerto Ricans).  The racial slur wouldn’t have pleased the Trump campaign professionals who will have explained to their candidate that while it’s important to “feed the base” with messages they like, it doesn’t have to be done that often and certainly not in a way with the potential to alienate an entire sub-set of demographic in which a percentage are known to be the prized “undecided voters”.  There is a significant Puerto Rican population in three of the so-called “battleground states” where the election will be decided.

Still what’s done is done and there was a problem to be managed, but the problem soon vanished after President Biden decided to issue a condemnation of the rally saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”  That statement was reflected in the text of the transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, but the political operatives in the White House press office decided to apply some spin, appending a “psychological apostrophe”, rendering “supporters” as “supporter’s”, explaining for those of us too dim to get it that what Mr Biden meant was that his critique was limited exclusively to the deplorable comedian.  Clearly the White House press office operates in the tradition of “Don’t report what he says, report what he means”, urged on reported by the staff of crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) during his disastrous 1964 presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969).

President Joe Biden nibbles on a baby dressed as chicken during White House Halloween event, Washington DC, 31 October 2024.

Predictably, the “battle of the transcripts” made things worse rather than better so Mr Mr Biden tweeted his “clarification” on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation.”  The problem with the tweet was it was coherent and used close to standard English grammar, leading readers immediately to suspect it had been written by someone else, it anyway being widely assumed the president is no longer allowed unsupervised use of any internet-connected device.  Worse still, the apparent disdain of Trump’s supporters did appear to be in the tradition of Democratic Party “elite” opinion of the people they like to call “ordinary Americans”, Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2008 caught belittling small-town Pennsylvanians for being bitter and turning to God, guns and anti-immigrant sentiment to make themselves feel better (he was probably also thinking of pick-up trucks and country & western music too) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) during the 2016 campaign infamously described the Trump crowd as “a basket of deplorables”.  Again, it’s really counter-productive to feed an already satiated base if the menu also further alienate some of the undecided.

Crooked Spiro & Tricky Dick: Spiro Agnew (1918–1996; US vice president 1969-1973, left) and Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974, right).

The Republican Party has for over fifty years paid much lip service to defending and acknowledging the dignity of those they claim liberals in general and Democrats in particular disparage as “garbage”, or “deplorable”.  That they did this while driving down their wages didn’t escape attention but one can’t help but admire the way the Republican Party has managed to convince the deplorables repeatedly to vote against their own economic self-interest by dangling before their eyes distractions like the right to own guns, abortion and transgenderism.  Occasionally, there’s even been the odd amusing moment, such as on 11 September 1970 when Spiro Agnew gave a speech designed to appeal to what he called the "forgotten Americans", that group of white, working middle & lower class votes Nixon believe could be converted to the Republican cause because the once blue-collar Democratic Party had abandoned their interests to focus on fashionable, liberal causes such as minority rights.  The tone of the speech (though perhaps not the labored syntax which would be rejected as TLDR (too long, didn’t read) in the social media age) would be familiar to modern audiences used to political figures attacking the news media and was a critique of what later Republicans would label “fake news”.  In attacking the liberals, it also had some fairly tortured alterative flourishes:  

“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.  They have formed their own 4-H Club - the “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history”  “…As long as they have their own association, crooks will flourish.  As long as they have their own television networks, paid for by their own advertisers, they will continue to have their own commentators.  It is time for America to quit catering to the pabulum peddlers and the permissive.  It is time to speak up forcefully for the conservative cause."

Mr Trump lost no time in exploiting the latest in a long line of Mr Biden’s gaffes, turning up to a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin (another battleground state) in a Trump branded Freightliner garbage truck flying an American flag, conducting an impromptu interview in the passenger’s seat decked out in the hi-viz (high-visibility) gear worn by garbagemen.  “How do you like my garbage truck?” he asked reporters.  “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

Probably the Biden camp was lucky the comedian didn’t use “trash” in his racist joke because had the president mangled his words enough to end up calling the Trumpers “trash” their reaction would likely have been visceral because it would of course have been deconstructed as a clipping of “white trash”.  The slur “white trash” has a long history in the US, first used in the ante-bellum South of the mid-nineteenth century (possibly and certainly concurrently as “poor white trash”), said to be the way black slaves referred to whites of low social status or working in low-level jobs.  It was apparently one of the first of the attempts to find an offensive term for white people, something which in the late twentieth century became something of a linguistic cottage industry and although literally dozens were coined and some have had some brief popularity in popular culture, none seem ever to have achieved critical mass acceptance and, importantly, none seem ever much to have offended the white folks.  Indeed, “white trash”, “white trashery” etc have even been adopted by sub-groups of white society as a kind of class identifier, rather as the infamous N-word has become a term of endearment among African Americans.

Edgar Winter's White Trash Live at the Fillmore (1971) and Edgar Winter's White Trash Recycled (1977).

Edgar Winter (b 1946) formed Edgar Winter’s White Trash in 1971, the name an allusion to the stereotype of “white trash” being most commonly found south of the Mason-Dixon Line because the band was an aggregation of musicians from Louisiana & Texas.  It was an example of a slur being “reclaimed” and “embraced” by a group originally it target.

Even when it’s directed at a whole society, the white people seem to cope.  In 1980, Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015; prime minister of Singapore 1959-1990) felt compelled to issue a statement telling the people of Australia their economy needed significant reforms were the fate of becoming “the poor white trash of Asia” to be avoided.  Mr Lee’s advice was certainly prescient, 1980 being the last “good” year of the “old” Australian economy (things would get worse before they got better) and the reforms would be imposed over the next two decades (especially during the 1980s) but at the time, the mention of “poor white trash” attracted less comment than the implication Australia was “an Asian nation”, the political class dividing into an “Asianist” faction and a group which agreed with the UN (United Nations) that like New Zealand, the place belonged with “Western Europe and others”.

Quartervent

Quartervent (pronounced kwawr-ter-vent)

A small, pivoted, framed (or semi-framed) pane in the front or rear side-windows of a car, provided to optimize ventilation.

1930s: The construct was quarter + vent.  Dating from the late thirteenth century, the noun quarter (in its numerical sense) was from the Middle English quarter, from the Anglo-Norman quarter, from the Old French quartier, from the Latin quartarius (a Roman unit of liquid measure equivalent to about 0.14 litre).  Quartus was from the primitive Indo-European kweturtos (four) (from which the Ancient Greek gained τέταρτος (tétartos), the Sanskrit चतुर्थ (caturtha), the Proto-Balto-Slavic ketwirtas and the Proto-Germanic fedurþô).  It was cognate to quadrus (square), drawn from the sense of “four-sided”.  The Latin suffix –arius was from the earlier -ās-(i)jo- , the construct being -āso- (from the primitive Indo-European -ehso- (which may be compared with the Hittite appurtenance suffix -ašša-) + the relational adjectival suffix -yós (belonging to).  The suffix (the feminine –āria, the neuter -ārium) was a first/second-declension suffix used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  The nominative neuter form – ārium (when appended to nouns), formed derivative nouns denoting a “place where stuff was kept”.  The Middle English verb quarteren, was derivative of the noun.  Dating from the mid fourteenth century, vent was from the Middle English verb venten (to furnish (a vessel) with a vent), a shortened form of the Old French esventer (the construct being es- + -venter), a verbal derivative of vent, from the Latin ventus (wind), in later use derivative of the English noun.  The English noun was derived partly from the French vent, partly by a shortening of French évent (from the Old French esvent, a derivative of esventer) and partly from the English verb.  The hyphenated form quarter-vent is also used as may be preferable.  Quartervent is a noun; the noun plural is quartervents.  In use, the action of using the function provided by a quartervent obviously can be described with terms like quarterventing or quartervented but no derived forms are recognized as standard.

The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz of course had quarter vents (“vent windows” to the Americans) but unlike most in the world, they were electrically-activated.  This was a time when the company's slogan “Standard of the World” really could be taken seriously.

The now close to extinct quarter vents were small, pivoted, framed (or semi-framed) panes of glass installed in the front or rear side windows of a car or truck; their purpose was to provide occupants with a source of ventilation, using the air-flow of the vehicle while in motion.  The system had all the attributes of other admirable technologies (such as the pencil) in that it was cheap to produce, simple to use, reliable and effective in its intended purpose.  Although not a complex concept, General Motors (GM) in 1932 couldn’t resist giving the things an impressively long name, calling them “No Draft Individually Controlled Ventilation” (NDICV being one of history’s less mnemonic initializations).  GM’s marketing types must have prevailed because eventually the snappier “ventiplanes” was adopted, the same process of rationality which overtook Chrysler in 1969 when the public decided “shaker” was a punchier name for their rather sexy scoop which, attached directly to the induction system and, protruding through a carefully shape lacuna in the hood (bonnet), shook with the engine, delighting the males aged 17-39 to whom it was intended to appeal.  “Shaker” supplanted Chrysler’s original “Incredible Quivering Exposed Cold Air Grabber” (IQECAG another dud); sometimes less is more.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) suggested a good title for his book might be Viereinhalb Jahre [des Kampfes] gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit (Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice) but his publisher thought that a bit ponderous and preferred the more succinct Mein Kampf: Eine Abrechnung (My Struggle: A Reckoning) and for publication even that was clipped to Mein Kampf.  Unfortunately, the revised title was the best thing about it, the style and contents truly ghastly and it's long and repetitious, the ideas within able easily to be reduced to a few dozen pages (some suggest fewer but the historical examples cited for context do require some space).

The baroque meets mid-century modernism: 1954 Hudson Italia by Carrozzeria Touring.  

Given how well the things worked, there’s long been some regret at their demise, a process which began in the 1960s with the development of “through-flow ventilation”, the earliest implementation of which seems to have appeared in the Hudson Italia (1954-1955), an exclusive, two-door coupé co-developed by Hudson in Detroit and the Milan-based Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring.  Although some of the styling gimmicks perhaps haven’t aged well, the package was more restrained than some extravagances of the era and fundamentally, the lines were well-balanced and elegant.  Unfortunately the mechanical underpinnings were uninspiring and the trans-Atlantic production process (even though Italian unit-labor costs were lower than in the US, Touring’s methods were labor-intensive) involved two-way shipping (the platforms sent to Milan for bodies and then returned to the US) so the Italia was uncompetitively expensive: at a time when the bigger and more capable Cadillac Coupe de Ville listed at US$3,995, the Italia was offered for US$4,800 and while it certainly had exclusivity, it was a time when there was still a magic attached to the Cadillac name and of the planned run of 50, only 26 Italias were produced (including the prototype).  Of those, 21 are known still to exist and they’re a fixture at concours d’élégance (a sort of car show for the rich, the term an unadapted borrowing from the French (literally “competition of elegance”) and the auction circuit where they’re exchanged between collectors for several hundred-thousand dollars per sale.  Although a commercial failure (and the Hudson name would soon disappear), the Italia does enjoy the footnote of being the first production car equipped with what came to be understood as “flow-through ventilation”, provided with a cowl air intake and extraction grooves at the top of the rear windows, the company claiming the air inside an Italia changed completely every ten minutes.  For the quartervent, flow-through ventilation was a death-knell although some lingered on until the effective standardization of air-conditioning proved the final nail in the coffin.

1965 Ford Cortina GT with eyeball vents and quartervents.

The car which really legitimized flow-through ventilation was the first generation (1962-1966) of the Ford Cortina, produced over four generations (some claim it was five) by Ford’s UK subsidiary between 1962-1982).  When the revised model displayed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October 1964, something much emphasized was the new “Aeroflow”, Ford’s name for through-flow ventilation, the system implemented with “eyeball” vents on the dashboard and extractor vents on the rear pillars.  Eyeball vents probably are the best way to do through-flow ventilation but the accountants came to work out they were more expensive to install than the alternatives so less satisfactory devices came to be used.  Other manufacturers soon phased-in similar systems, many coining their own marketing trademarks including “Silent-Flow-Ventilation”, “Astro-Ventilation” and the inevitable “Flow-thru ventilation”.  For the Cortina, Ford took a “belt & braces” approach to ventilation, retaining the quartervents even after the “eyeballs” were added, apparently because (1) the costs of re-tooling to using a single pane for the window was actually higher than continuing to use the quartervents, (2) it wasn’t clear if there would be general public acceptance of their deletion and (3) smoking rates were still high and drivers were known to like being able to flick the ash out via the quartervent (and, more regrettably, the butts too).  Before long, the designers found a way economically to replace the quartervents with “quarterpanes” or “quarterlights” (a fixed piece of glass with no opening mechanism) so early Cortinas were built with both although in markets where temperatures tended to be higher (notable South Africa and Australia), the hinged quartervents remained standard equipment.  When the Mark III Cortina (TC, 1970-1976) was released, the separate panes in any form were deleted and the side glass was a single pane.

Fluid dynamics in action: GM's Astro-Ventilation.

So logically a “quartervent” would describe a device with a hinge so it could be opened to provide ventilation while a “quarterpane”, “quarterlight” or “quarterglass” would be something in the same shape but unhinged and thus fixed.  It didn’t work out that way and the terms tended to be used interchangeably (though presumably “quartervent” was most applied to those with the functionality.  However, the mere existence of the fixed panes does raise the question of why they exist at all.  In the case or rear doors, they were sometimes a necessity because the shape of the door was dictated by the intrusion of the wheel arch and adding a quarterpane was the only way to ensure the window could completely be wound down.  With the front doors, the economics were sometimes compelling, especially in cases when the opening vents were optional but there were also instances where the door’s internal mechanisms (the door opening & window-winding hardware) were so bulky the only way to make stuff was to reduce the size of the window.

1976 Volkswagen Passat without quartervents, the front & rear quarterpanes fixed.

The proliferation of terms could have come in handy if the industry had decided to standardize and the first generation Volkswagen Passat (1973-1980) was illustration of how they might been used.  The early Passats were then unusual in that the four-door versions had five separate pieces of side glass and, reading from left-to-right, they could have been classified thus: (1) a front quarterpane, (2) a front side-window, (3) a rear side-window, (4) a rear quarterpane and (5) a quarterwindow.  The Passat was one of those vehicles which used the quarterpanes as an engineering necessity to permit the rear side-window fully to be lowered.  However the industry didn’t standardize and in the pre-television (and certainly pre-internet) age when language tended to evolve with greater regional variation, not even quarterglass, quartervent, quarterwindow & quarterpane were enough and the things were known variously also as a “fly window”, “valence window”, “triangle window” and “auto-transom”, the hyphen used and not.

1967 Chevrolet Camaro 327 with vent windows (left), 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 without vent windows (centre) and Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis (b 1958) in Chevrolet Camaro convertible during filming of the remake of Freaky Friday (2003) (provisionally called Freakier Friday), Los Angeles, August 2024.  The Camaro can be identified as a 1968 or 1969 model because the vent windows were deleted from the range after 1967 when “Astro-Ventilation” (GM’s name for flow-through ventilation) was added.  In North American use, the devices typically are referred to as “vent windows” while a “quarter light” is a small lamp mounted (in pairs) in the lower section of the front bodywork and a “quarter vent” is some sort of (real or fake) vent installed somewhere on the quarter panels.

Ford Australia’s early advertising copy for the XA Falcon range included publicity shots both with and without the optional quartervents (left).  One quirk of the campaign was the first shot released (right) of the “hero model” of the range (the Falcon GT) had the driver’s side quartervent airbrushed out (how “Photoshop jobs” used to be done), presumably because it was thought to clutter a well-composed picture.  Unfortunately, the artist neglected to defenestrate the one on the passenger’s side.

Released in Australia in March 1972, Ford’s XA Falcon was the first in the lineage to include through-flow ventilation, the previously standard quartervent windows moved to the option list (as RPO (Regular Production Option) 86).  Because it’s a hot place and many Falcons were bought by rural customers, Ford expected quite a high take-up rate of RPO86 (it was a time when air-conditioning was expensive and rarely ordered) so the vent window hardware was stockpiled in anticipation.  However, the option didn’t prove popular but with a warehouse full of the parts, they remained available on the subsequent XB (1973-1976) and XC (1976-1979) although the take-up rate never rose, less the 1% of each range so equipped and when the XD (1979-1983) was introduced, there was no such option and this continued on all subsequent Falcons until Ford ceased production in Australia in 2016, by which time air conditioning was standard equipment.

Pit

Pit (pronounced pit)

(1) A naturally formed or excavated hole or cavity in the ground.

(2) A covered or concealed excavation in the ground, serving as a trap for animals.

(3) In extractive mining, an excavation made in exploring for or removing a mineral deposit (also known (at scale) as “open-cut” as opposed to “underground” (although in casual use sometime used also of the mineshafts used in underground operations.  It can in mining slang also refer to an entire mine site, regardless of the mode of extraction.

(4) The stone of a fruit (cherry, peach, plum etc) and technically, the hard, inner layer (the endocarp) of certain drupes.

(5) The abode of evil spirits and lost souls; hell; the depths of Hades.

(6) In slang (as “the pits”) an extremely unpleasant, boring, or depressing place, condition, person, etc; the absolute worst (used also as a clipping of armpits).

(7) A hollow or indentation in a surface (in substances like glass or when referring to surfaces (paint, varnish etc), treated usually as an imperfection).

(8) In physiology, natural hollow or depression in the body, organ, structure or part; fossa (used most often of the small of the back).

(9) In medicine, a small, indented scar, as one of at the site of a former pustule after smallpox, chicken pox or similar diseases; a pockmark.

(10) In music, a section of the marching band containing mallet percussion instruments and other large percussion instruments too large to march, such as the tam tam; the area on the sidelines where these instruments are placed.

(11) In botany, any of various small areas in a plant cell wall that remain un-thickened when the rest of the cell becomes lignified (used especially of the vascular tissue).

(12) In archaeology, a hole or trench in the ground, excavated according to grid coordinates, so that the provenance of any feature observed and any specimen or artifact revealed may be established by precise measurement.

(13) An enclosure, usually below the level of the spectators, as for staging fights between dogs, cocks, or, formerly, bears (as cockpit later extended to aircraft, cars, boats etc).

(14) In physical markets (such as a commodity exchange), a part of the floor of the exchange where trading is conducted (known in some places as “as open outcry pits” because transactions were done by traders shouting offers & acceptances at each other).

(15) In architecture, all that part of the main floor of a theater behind the musicians (in UK use also the main floor of a theater behind the stalls); sometimes used as “orchestra pit” (the area that is occupied by the orchestra in a theatre, located in front of the stage)

(16) In a hoist-way, a space below the level of the lowest floor served.

(17) In motorsport, an area at the side of a track, for servicing and refueling the cars (the use later adopted by cycle racing).

(18) In ten-pin bowling, the sunken area of a bowling alley behind the pins, for the placement or recovery of pins that have been knocked down.

(19) In track athletics,  the area forward of the takeoff point in a jumping event, as the broad jump or pole vault, that is filled with sawdust or soft earth to lessen the force of the jumper's landing.

(20) In casinos, the area or room containing gambling tables.

(21) In aviation, the part of the aircraft (usually the bottom of the fuselage) given over to freight; a luggage hold.

(22) In American football, the center of the line.

(23) In hospital slang, the emergency department.

(24) Literally, the bottom part (lowest point) of something; figuratively an undesirable location (especially if dirty, dangerous etc).

(25) In military slang, a bed (some evidence also of civilian (presumably ex-military) use).

(26) In nuclear physics, the core of an implosion nuclear weapon, consisting of the fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it.

(27) To mark or indent with pits or depressions.

(28) In medicine, to scar with pockmarks.

(29) In physiology (of body tissue) temporarily to retain a mark of pressure, as by a finger, instrument, etc.

(30) To place or bury something in a pit, as for storage.

(31) To set in opposition or combat, as one against another (usually in the forms “pit against” or “pitted against”).

(32) In motorsport, to exit from the track, entering the pits, to permit the pit-crew to effect a pit-stop.

(33) To remove the stone of a fruit (cherry, peach, or plum), sometimes with the use of a pitter (if something done vocationally, by a pitter, usually with the use of a pitter).

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun pit, pittle, pite, pute, put & putte, from the Old English pytt (natural or man-made depression in the ground, water hole, well; grave (the Kentish variation was “pet”), from the Proto-West Germanic puti, from the Proto-Germanic putt- (pool, puddle) which was the source also of the Old Frisian pet, the Old Saxon putti, the Old Norse pyttr, the Middle Dutch putte, the Dutch put, the Old High German pfuzza and the German Pfütze (pool, puddle), an early borrowing from Latin puteus (pit, trench, shaft) (etymologists noting the phonetic difficulties which exist also in the speculated relationship between puteus and the primitive Indo-European root pau- (to cut, strike, stamp).  Because the short u makes it unlikely puteus was from paviō (to strike), it might instead be linked to putāre (to prune) but the distance between the meanings makes etymologists just as sceptical and some suggest puteus may be a loanword though the spelling might be mysterious.  The use in the context of stone fruit was an Americanism dating from 1841, from the Dutch pet (kernel, seed, marrow), from the Middle Dutch pitte & pit (kernel, core (and cognate with pith)), from the Proto-Germanic pittan (the dialectal German Pfitze (pimple) was an oblique of the Proto-Germanic piþō), from the Proto-Germanic pithan- (source of pith).  Like the use in other contexts, each instance of the verb was derivative of the noun.  Pit is a noun & verb, pitter is a noun and pitted & pitting are verbs; the noun plural is pits.

Ford GT40 pit-stop, Sebring 12 Hours, International Championship for Makes, Sebring, March 1966.

The meaning “abode of evil spirits, hell” dates from the late twelfth century, one of the many means in the medieval world of referring to hell.  The meaning “very small depression or dent in the surface of an object” was in use by the early 1400s, the anatomical sense of “natural depression or hollow in some part of the body” from more than a century earlier.  The “pit of the stomach” was in the literature by the 1650s and it was so-called from the slight depression there between the ribs; the earlier terms used by doctors were the late fourteenth century breast-pit and heart-pit from circa 1300.  The meaning “part of a theater on the floor of the house, lower than the stage” was known by the 1640s while in market trading, the sense of “that part of the floor of an exchange where business is carried on” was first documented in 1903 as a coining in US English.

One of the high-water marks of the analog era: cockpit of the Anglo-French Concorde.

The phrase money-pit in the sense of “an edifice or project requiring constant outlay of cash with little to show for it” is quite modern, dating only from 1986 and assumed derived from the popular movie of the same name of the same name released that year (though it’s not impossible it had earlier been in regional use).  The prior use had been in the 1930s when it was used of the shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia which legend suggested would lead one to treasure buried by Captain Kidd or some other pirate.  Popular Mechanics magazine in September noted wryly the term might better refer to the millions spent trying to get the treasure out than the hoard of gold itself and in 2022, entrepreneurial engineer Elon Musk (b 1971) produced a variation, describing the factories in Europe building the electric Tesla cars as “money furnaces”.  The ash-pit (repository for ashes, especially the lower part of a furnace) dates from 1797 and it replaced the earlier (1640s) ash-hole, reflecting the implications of industrialization as forges and furnaces grew larger.  The venomous snake the pit-viper was so-named in 1872 because of the characteristic depression between the eyes and nose.  In commercial forestry, the pit-saw was first described in the 1670s, referring to a large saw operated by two men, one (the pit-sawyer) standing in the pit below the log being sawed, the other (the top-sawyer) standing atop.  Pitman was one of a wealth of vocationally-derived surnames which began to appear late in the twelfth century and it referred to one who dwelled literally “in or by a pit or hollow”, the use to describe someone who “works in a pit or mine” not documented until 1761.  Pitman shorthand, a popular form of hand-written transcription of spoken-word text which could later be read by a typist (often the “shorthand-taker) came into use in the 1860s, having been devised by English teacher & publisher (and devoted vegetarian) Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) in 1837.  The phrase “flea-pit” dates from the 1920s and was used of cinemas, an allusion to the seats being infested with fleas or other bugs.

A Lindsay Lohan pit-stop from the blooper tape, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

The noun armpit was a mid-fourteenth century description of the “hollow place under the shoulder” and it ran in parallel with the earlier arm-hole although the latter use faded as it came to be used of clothing and as an anatomical descriptor it was obsolete by the mid seventeenth century.  There was also the early fifteenth century asselle, from the Old French asselle, from the Latin axilla but armpit prevailed.  The colloquial phrase “armpit of the nation” was used as a term of derision for any place thought ugly and disgusting and it’s not clear when it emerged but it was well-documented from the early 1960s.  The general term “the pits” was a variation and from late in the twentieth century applied to anything or anyone thought the worse possible of their type (ie based on something hairy, smelly and ugly).  Infamously, it was used by the US tennis player John McEnroe (b 1959) who at Wimbledon in 1981 called an umpire “the pits of the world” during one of their discussions.  The noun pitter (curved instrument for removing stones from cherries and other fruit” appeared in 1868 when pitters were made available as a commercial product (doubtlessly they had for centuries been improvised or adapted from other utensils) and where they were used vocationally, the user was also called a pitter, the same linguistic process which produced the dual use of shucker in the oyster business (the termed adopted also by others).  Pit-a-pat & pitter-pat, being imitative, are wholly unrelated and date from the 1520s, the noun emerging in 1580.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner cockpit.

The original cockpits were first described in the 1580s and were a “pit or enclosed space for fighting cocks”, the use soon extended to any space in which animals were set to fight to the death, the audience betting on the outcome.  From this came the verb use “to pit against” which meant “to put or set in or into a pit” and this soon extended to boxing; by the eighteenth century in figurative use it was used on any conflict, argument or rivalry.  The general verb use (make pits in; form a small pit or hollow) had been in used (as pit, pitted & pitting) by the late fifteenth century.  The dog breed pit-bull dates from 1922 and was short for pit-bull terrier (first registered in 1912), a type noted for its aggression a fighting abilities.  Cockpit was used of ships early in the eighteenth century of midshipmen's compartment below decks and in some cases was later applied also to the enclosed cabins located towards the centre of the deck began to replace the steerage systems at the stern (later universally known as the “bridge”.  It was picked up for the pilot’s compartment in aircraft in 1914 and (by extension) was used in racing cars in the 1930s.  The word cesspit was created in the 1860s because advances in plumbing meant something was needed to distinguish more modern systems handling sewerage from the earlier cesspool, in use since the 1670s.  The mid fourteenth century pitfall (concealed hole into which a person or animal may fall unawares) was a description of a physical danger which came into figurative in the early 1600s to refer to “any hidden danger or concealed source of disaster.  In mining, a pitfall could also be literally a collapse of the internal structure of a mineshaft, sometime because of the catastrophic failure of pit-props (the timbers which provided the structural integrity of a shaft).  Sometimes a mile or more deep, pitfalls frequently were fatal and the death-toll among miners was high, the phrase “pit-hell” often heard.

The original pits at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1913. 

It was difficult and expensive (and often impossible) to lift heavy machinery to allow mechanics to work on engines or other components so, where possible, it was better to construct a pit underneath from which people could work.  The concept was well documented in workshops by 1839 and the term was by 1912 picked up in motorsport to describe the “area at the side of a track where cars are serviced and repaired” and the early pits were often holes in the ground with waist-high surrounds in which the crew could stand.  They were used also to store spare tyres, parts lubricants etc.  As the sport boomed, the pits quickly became fully enclosed service areas and even garages, built along pit-lane.  When a driver brought his car into the pits (located on the stretch of track called pit-straight), they were said to be pitting to be worked on by the pit crew who might during the pit-stop make repairs, re-fuel or change tyres, either in front of or behind the pit-wall.  Pit crew became a popular term beyond the tracks, used of airline baggage handlers, sea-port staff etc.  In motorsport, a pit-babe is an attractive young lady who is in the pit area for some reason, not necessarily directly related to the competition.

The pit-babes: coming or going, they always look good. 

Amber

Amber (pronounced am-ber)

(1) A pale yellow, sometimes reddish or brownish, brittle, translucent fossil resin of extinct coniferous trees that occurs in tertiary deposits; capable of gaining a negative electrical charge by friction and a fine insulator.

(2) The yellowish-brown color of amber resin; of the color of amber; yellowish-brown (not applied to the variety “blue amber” which appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight).

(3) To perfume or flavor with ambergris (rare and used only in the industrial production of scents).

(4) To cause to take on the yellowish-brown colour of amber (now rare and used only as a literary or poetic device).

(5) Certain objects made of amber (jewelry; ornamental articles; relics; fossilized creatures contained within the resin etc).

(6) The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection when safe to do so (green indicating “go” and red “stop”).  In some places the amber is referred to as “orange”.

(7) By extension from the use in traffic management, an indication in other contexts that one should hesitance to proceed or proceed only with caution (sometimes as “amber light”).

(8) As “amber alert”, a public notification of a child abduction (North America), named in memory of Amber Rene Hagerman (1986–1996); technically AMBER Alert, referencing the backronym America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.

(9) In biology, genetics & biochemistry, the stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.  UAG is named “amber” because the first to isolate the mutation was then California Institute of Technology (Caltech) graduate student Harris Bernstein (b 1961), whose surname is the German word for the resin known as amber.

(10) A female given name.

(11) In automotive lighting (often as “the ambers”), the lights of that color mounted so to be visible at all corners or an automobile which flash sequentially in indicate a driver’s intention to turn, change lanes etc (thus known various as “flashers”, “turn-signals” and even “trafficators” (the (originally mechanical) semaphore signals which when activated protruded from the bodywork of a vehicle to indicate an intention to turn in the direction of the illuminated device).  They’re used also as warning lights (four-way flashers) when all flash in unison.  Since the late 1950s, in most markets their positioning, luminosity and rate of flashing has been regulated (sometimes in unfortunately contradictory ways.

1350–1400: From the Middle English ambre & aumbre, from the Old French, from the Medieval Latin ambra, from the Arabic عَنْبَر‎ (ʕanbar) (ambergris), from the Middle Persian ʾnbl (⁠ambar⁠) (ambergris).  It displaced the Middle English smulting (from the Old English smelting (amber)) and the Old English eolhsand (amber), glær (amber) and sāp (amber, resin, pomade).  The seemingly strange confusion between the fossilized tree resin and the ash-colored secretion of the sperm whale’s intestine (ambergris) is assumed to have arisen because the dissimilar substances both were rare, valuable and found on the seacoast.  The word ambergris came into use in the West during the Crusades.  In English, amber came to be used as an adjective by circa 1500 and it was in use as the name of a color by 1735.  Amber is a noun, verb & adjective, amberlike, ambery, anberish, amberesque & amberous are adjectives, ambering & ambered are verbs; the noun plural is ambers.

Actor Amber Heard (b 1986) who seems to have a thing for 1968 Ford Mustangs.

In Europe, the word amber was picked up to describe the fossil resins found on the shores of the Baltic first in the late thirteenth century in Anglo-Latin which, by the turn of the fifteenth had entered English.  Over time, this meaning prevailed and ambergris came to be restricted to the whale’s secretions although there has long been a faction of the etymology community which has suggested it’s not impossible amber is an unrelated word of unknown origin.  Once they were distinguished as white or yellow amber for the Baltic fossil resin and gray amber for the whale’s contribution, French distinguishing between the two as ambre jaune and ambre gris.

Among her inventory of beauty care essentials, Lindsay Lohan lists the long-serving Dior Backstage Eyeshadow Palette in Amber Neutrals as her “favorite eye palette”

In a chemical coincidence, the solidified tree resin possesses remarkable static electricity properties and Baltic amber was known to the Romans as electrum, able to gain a negative electrical charge merely through friction and although rarely used as such, it’s a fine insulator.  In the Old Testament the Hebrew חַשְׁמַל (chashmal) is translated variously as “a shining metal” or “the gemstone amber” but as the light plays upon amber it can recall fire or lightning, the impression strengthened when the substance is stimulated to spark and crackle with static electricity.  The prophet Ezekiel clearly had witnessed the electrical phenomenon and although he'd not have understood the science, in his vision of God’s throne, Ezekiel wrote:

“On this throne high above was a figure whose appearance resembled a man. From what appeared to be his waist up, he looked like gleaming chashmal, flickering like a fire.  And from his waist down, he looked like a burning flame, shining with splendor.”  (Ezekiel 1:26–27)

It was the Lithuania-born journalist Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda (1858–1922) who re-established the Hebrew language as living tongue to be used in everyday life.  In the late nineteenth century, except for a handful of scholars, Hebrew was used only as a Holy language, restricted to prayer and worship in the synagogue, Yiddish the only recognizably Jewish language spoken on the street or in the home.  Something of a prophet himself, he created the first Israeli Hebrew newspaper and dictionary and to make it useful in the modern age, he had to create many new words and one was needed to describe electricity, then a concept understood for little more than a century.  He chose chashmal.  When the Hebrew Scriptures were first translated into Greek some 2,100 years ago, the Hebrew chashmal became the Ancient Greek ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron) and could be used to refer to the gemstone but was used also in the manner of the Phoenician elēkrŏn (shining light).  Seventeenth century English scientists who conducted some of the earliest experiments which began to explain the phenomenon called it electrikus (like amber) and from this came the Modern English electricity.  Ben‑Yehuda’s work was popularized by Judah Leib Gordon (1830-1892), a leading poet of the nineteenth century Jewish Enlightenment whose words were more lyrical than the dry, journalistic lists of Ben-Yehuda would write: “The light, the heat, the steam, and the electricity (chashmal), all nature’s forces are the angels above.”  He added in an explanatory footnote: “By chashmal (hash-ma-LA), I mean the natural force that is electritzitat, since the Greek translation of chashmal is elektrika.”

Immortality of sorts: An unfortunate gecko, trapped in amber 54 million years ago.

The first AMBER Alert, 1996.

The amber alert is a system used in North America to provide public notification of a child abduction (North America), named in memory of Amber Rene Hagerman (1986–1996).  Technically it’s AMBER Alert, referencing the backronym of America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.  Then aged nine, Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in 1996 and a campaign was organized which demanded protocols be established to alert the local population of details which might assist in finding the child (description of suspects, vehicle registration numbers etc).  Initially, the vectors of transmission were local radio and television stations but as technology evolved, other were added including platforms on the internet such as e-mail & social media, electronic traffic-condition signs, advertising billboards and SMS text messages delivered to cell phones.

Most succiniferous: The Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 1917.  This is the only known color image of the room.

Last seen (in crates) in 1945, it was either destroyed in the last days of World War II (1939-1945) or dissembled and hidden somewhere or otherwise disposed of.  Between 1979-2003, with early funding from the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, the old West Germany), a replica was built and installed in the Catherine Palace.  The golden, jewel-encrusted creation, rendered by artisans and craftsmen from tons of amber, was a gift to Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) in 1716, celebrating the conclusion of an alliance between Russia and Prussia.  Much admired during the centuries in which it endured wars, pandemics and revolutions, it was looted by the Nazis in the final months of the war, packed into crates which subsequently vanished.  Either they were lost or destroyed in the chaos or hidden away.

Originally installed in the Charlottenberg Palace of Friedrich I (1657–1713; King of Prussia 1701–1713), the Amber Room was a genuine multi-national venture, the design by Andreas Schlüter (1659–1714), a German sculptor in the baroque tradition, the bulk of the construction by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolfram (1646-1716), already famous for his skill in rendering amber.  It took over a decade to build and upon completion, Peter the Great expressed his wonderment and in 1716, Frederick William I (1688–1740; King of Prussia 1713-1740) presented it to the Tsar, part of his diplomatic effort to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.  Accordingly, along with a selection of paintings, the room was crated and shipped to Saint Petersburg where it remained until in 1755 it was moved to the Catherine Palace (Tsarskoye Selo (Tasar's Palace)) in Pushkin.  Now installed in a larger space, the Italian designer Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was engage to remodel the assembly to suit, addition amber panels shipped from Berlin.  Renovations and refinements continued to be undertaken during the eighteenth century and when complete, the room covered some 180 square feet (16.7 m³) and contained some six tons (6100 kg) of amber, semi-precious stones and gold leaf.  At the time, it was thought one of the wonders of the modern world.

In the Nazi mind, not only was the Amber Room of German origin but such treasures anyway belonged only in the Reich and it was added to the (long) list of artworks to be looted as part of Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union).  As the Wehrmacht advanced on Pushkin, the Russian curators began to attempt to disassemble the panels but their fragility was such it was quickly realized any work done in haste would cause only destruction.  Accordingly, they had carpenters construct a frame over which was glued wallpaper, there not being time even to construct a false wall.  Not fooled, the Nazi looters removed the entire structure, shipping it to be installed in the Königsberg Castle Museum (now in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) on the Baltic coast.  However, the tide of the war turned and in 1943 the museum's director received from Berlin instructions to return the room to crates and this had be accomplished by August 1944 when allied bombing raids severely damaged the castle.  Quite what happened to the crates remains unknown.  It may be they were destroyed during the war or were in the hold of a ship sunk in the Baltic but the tales of them being hidden somewhere has never gone away and continues to tantalize, a solitary panel actually found in Bremen in 1997.  The replica room, dedicated in a ceremony in 2004 by Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) and Gerhard Schröder (b 1944, Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005) remains on public display at the Tasrskoye State Museum Reserve outside Saint Petersburg.

The "tombstone" headlamps on the 1959 Mercedes-Benz W111 sedans (the so-called Heckflosse) were a variation of the style introduced in 1957 on the 300 SL roadsters (W198) and while much admired, were not lawful for use in the US so a "stacked" arrangement was devised which came informally to be known as "Californian".  So attractive was it found in Europe that ultimately it became available in the rest of the world (RoW) but with one difference: the  factory's solution of integrating the amber turn-signal indicators (the "ambers" or "flashers" to many) and side-marker lamps into the assembly was elegant but didn’t comply with the rules.  As explained by automotive lighting expert Daniel Stern, the lit area was probably compliant (the rules specified a minimum 3½ square inches (22.5 cm²) but the intensity and inboard visibility angles would have been inadequate.  A turn signal with its centre 4 inches (100 mm) or closer to the low-beam lamp had to provide at least 500 candela on-axis, which would be close to impossible for a lamp with this construction; turn signals more than 4 inches from the low-beam needed only to provide at least 200 candela.  The RoW cars (left) were supplied with the original design while for the US market some rather ugly after-market lamps were crudely added to the gaps next to the grill (centre).  Late in the 1960s, the aesthetics were improved somewhat by using a larger unit (right) which emulated the look of a fog-lamp, the US cars by then also suffering the addition of side-marker lights front & rear.