Trunk

Trunk (pronounced truhngk)

(1) The main stem of a tree, as distinct from the branches (limbs) and roots (also as bole; tree trunk).

(2) Of, relating to or noting a main channel or line, as of a railroad, waterway or something which assumes a similar shape (topographically).

(3) A large, sturdy box or chest for holding or transporting clothes, personal effects or other articles.  Such trunks usually have a hinged (sometimes domed) lid and handles at each end, provided because such is the size & weight, it takes at least two to carry one when loaded.

(4) A compartment, most often in the rear coachwork of an automobile, in which luggage, a spare tire, and other articles may be kept (a “boot” in the UK and certain other places in the English-speaking world and a “dicky” in India and elsewhere in South Asia).

(5) A storage compartment fitted behind the seat of a motorcycle and known also as a top-ox or top-case (as distinct from a “pannier” or “saddlebag” which is fitted at the side (usually in pairs), below the level of the seat).

(6) In anatomy, the body of a person or an animal excluding the head and limbs (the torso).

(7) In pathology, the main body of an artery, nerve, or the like, as distinct from its branches.

(8) In ichthyology, that part of a fish between the head and anus.

(9) In engineering and architecture, a name for a conduit, shaft, duct, channel or chute etc, used variously for airflow (thermal or blown), water, coal, grain etc.

(10) In steam engines, a large pipe forming the piston rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.

(11) In extractive mining, a flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.

(12) In architecture, the dado or die of a pedestal.

(13) In architecture, the part of a pilaster between the base and capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.

(14) In hydrology, the main channel, artery or line in a river, railroad, highway, canal or other tributary system.

(15) In telephony, a telephone line or channel between two central offices or switching devices that is used in providing telephone connections between subscribers generally (also called a “tie-line”).

(16) In telegraphy, a telegraph line or channel between two main or central offices.

(17) In telecommunications, to provide simultaneous network access to multiple clients by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels or frequencies.

(18) In clothing, brief shorts (loose-fitting or tight) worn by men chiefly for boxing, swimming and athletics (some historically known as “trunk hose”.

(19) In zoology, the elongated prehensile, flexible, cylindrical nasal appendage of the elephant and certain other creatures (the proboscis).

(20) In nautical use, a large enclosed passage through the decks or bulkheads of a vessel, used as air ducting for purposes of heating, cooling, ventilation and such.

(21) In shipbuilding, any of various watertight casings in a vessel, as the vertical one above the slot for a centerboard in the bottom of a boat.

(22) A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas etc are driven by the force of the breath; a peashooter (archaic).

(23) In software engineering, the most current source tree, from which the latest unstable builds (so-called “trunk builds”) are compiled.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English tronke & trunke, from the Old French tronc (alms box, tree trunk, headless body), from the Latin truncus (stem, a stock, lopped tree trunk), a noun use of the adjective truncus (lopped; cut off, maimed, mutilated), (the later related to the English truncated).  Trunk & trunking are nouns & verbs, trunkful is a noun, trunked is a verb & adjective and trunkless is an adjective; the noun plural is trunks.

There are a myriad of “truck” terms in human pathology and other derived phrases include “elephant's trunk” (rhyming slang for “drunk”), “hand trunk” (a piece of luggage smaller than the traditional trunk and able to be carried by one), “junk in one's trunk” (corpulence of the buttocks, the alternative forms being “dump truck” or the vernacular “fat ass”), “the apple does not fall far from the trunk” (a variant of “the apple/pear etc does not fall far from the tree”) (children tend in appearance & characteristics to resemble their parents), “trunklid” (literally obviously “the lid of a trunk” and used of the opening panel which provides access to a car’s trunk), “bootlid” the UK equivalent and confusingly in the US used also as “decklid” on the basis of the trunk being a part of a car’s “rear deck”), “trunk novel” (a novel abandoned by the author while still a project), “trunk or treat” (an organized alternative to trick-or-treating where candy is handed out to children from cars in a parking lot; it was introduced as a child safety measure), “trunk show” (an event in which vendors present merchandise directly to store personnel or customers at a retail location or other venue, based on the idea of selling “out of a trunk”), “trunk sale” (and event at which goods are displayed for sale in the trunks of cars), “boot sale” the companion term)), “trunking” (travelling sitting in the trunk of a car”), and “trunk shot” (in film-making, a cinematic shot from within a car trunk (although there was a case of a serial killer who shot his victims while concealed in the trunk of a car.

Louis Vuitton Trunk #5 (left) and Louis Vuitton Trunk on Fire (right) by Tyler Shields (b 1982).

The original idea of a trunk being a “box; case etc” may lie in the first such “trunks” being hollowed-out tree trunks although some suggest the post-classical development of the meaning “box, case with a lid or top” was based on the notion of human body’s trunk being a “case” in which the organs were transported.  The modern idea of a “luggage compartment of a motor vehicle” dates from circa 1930, about the time trunks cease to be something separately carried and replaced by and space for luggage integrated into the bodywork.  The use of trunk had long been familiar in the medical literature (both of the torso and blood vessels etc) and the idea was by 1843 extended to railroad trunk lines and telephone networks by 1889.  “Trunk-hose” were first sold in the 1630s and seems to have been a kind of thermal underwear, the description a reference to them covering the whole torso (ie, the trunk) as opposed to most “hose” which was for the lower limbs.

The use of trunk to describe the “long snout of an elephant (or other beast with a similar appendage)” appeared first in the 1560s but etymologists are divided on whether it was an allusion to a tree’s trunk or has some connection with “trumpet”, based on the loud sound elephants are able to generate although the evidence does suggest the early use as a reference to the thing’s ability to hold water.  Predictably, by the early eighteenth century, it was a slang term for the human nose.  The use in clothing (always in the plural as “trunks”) emerged in the mid 1820s and initially described “short breeches of thin material”; it was a use of trunk in the sense of “torso”.  Use began in theatrical jargon but, as was not uncommon, soon it was applied to breeches generally, especially in US English and for the short, tight-fitting breeches worn by swimmers and other sporting types, adoption was close to universal by the 1890s.  “Swimming trunks” has survived as a regionalism; even within the one country, there are often several different names for what is one of humanity’s most simple garments.

Trump Trunks: MAGA (Make America Great Again) swimming trunks.  Trump trunks are made from a “silky, breathable, 4-way stretch mesh fabric” and features include (1) a small internal pocket, (2) a built-in anti-chafe liner.  The country of manufacture is not disclosed.  Clearly, the DNC (Democratic National Committee) in 2016 missed an opportunity by failing to release the "Crooked Hillary Clinton Bikini".

One linguistic curiosity was “subscriber trunk dialing” (later changed to “subscriber toll dialing” which later still switched to DDD (Direct Distance Dialing).  The “other” use of STD was as “sexually transmitted disease”, previously known as VD (venereal disease) and it wasn’t until the 1970s the initialism VD began to be replaced by STD (VD thought to have to have gained too many specific associations) but fortunately for AT&T, in 1951 they renamed their STD service (for long-distance phone calls) to DDD, apparently for no better reason than the alliterative appeal although it's possible they just wanted to avoid mentioning “toll” with all that implies.  Many countries in the English-speaking world continued to use STD for the phone calls, even after the public health specialists had re-purposed the initialization.  In clinical use, STI “Sexually Transmitted Infection” seems now the preferred term).

The evolution of the trunk: 1851 Concord stagecoach on display at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, Washington DC (left) with truck strapped to the back, additional trunks carried on the roof; 1928 Mercedes-Benz Nürburg 460 K Pullman Limousine (W08, centre left) with separate trunk still carried on a rear frame; 1936 Studebaker Dictator 4-door sedan (centre right) with the trunk now an integrated part of the bodywork; The US full-sized cars of the era had most capacious trunks but few could match Leyland Australia's infamous P76 (1973-1975, right) which effortlessly could carry a 44 (imperial) gallon (209 litre) drum.

The compartment which is most located in the rear coachwork of an automobile is used for luggage and historically also the spare tyre a toolkit (neither now not always supplied).  In North American use, this is called a “trunk”, an inheritance from the time when the passengers’ trunks (ie, in the sense of the box-like suitcases) were strapped on to an extension at the back of horse-drawn carriages.  In the early automobiles, the practice continued (often with lined wicker baskets because they were of lightweight construction) and when these were integrated into the bodywork, the space provided continued to be called “the trunk”.  The British called the same thing a “boot”.  In horse-drawn carriages in the UK, a “boot” was a compartment used to store travel essentials, among which (in an age of rutted, poorly maintained roads) included boots, the male passengers sometimes required to push the coach when it became stuck in mud, the frequent inclusion of a “boot box” or “boot locker”, made typically of leather and attached at the rear.  The other suggested origin is the French boute (compartment; box).  The term “boot” thus spread throughout the British Empire although, under the Raj, in India & Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) it became the “dickie”.  That was based on the dicky seat (also as “dickie seat” & “dickey seat” and later more commonly known as the “rumble seat”), an upholstered bench mounted at the rear of a coach, carriage or early motorcar and as the car industry evolved and coachwork became more elaborate, increasingly they folded into the body.  The size varied but generally they were designed to accommodate one or two adults although the photographic evidence suggests they could be used also to seat half-a-dozen or more children.  Why it was called a dicky seat is unknown (the word dates from 1801 and most speculation is in some way related to the English class system) but when fitted on horse-drawn carriages it was always understood to mean “a boot (box or receptacle covered with leather at either end of a coach, the use based on the footwear) with a seat above it for servants”.  Under the Raj, “dickie” was preferred while the colloquial “mother-in-law seat” was at least trans-Atlantic and probably global.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates how there are trunks and there are frunks:  The rear-engined Porsche 911 Carrera (997, 2004-2013) cabriolet (Los Angeles, 2012, right) has a frunk while the front-engined Mercedes-Benz SL 550 (R230, 2001-2011) (Los Angeles, 2009, left) has a trunk.  The R230 range was unusual because of the quirk of the SL 550 (2006-2011), a designation used exclusively in the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273).

The Fiat X1/9 (produced by Fiat 1972–1982 and Bertone from 1982–1989, centre) featured both a frunk (left) and a trunk (right.

Most cars built have had the engine mounted in the front, thus most trunks appeared in the rear bodywork.  There have however been cars with engines behind the driver (such things were quite numerous until well into the 1970s) and these usually had a storage compartment at the front (where the engine otherwise would sit, under the hood (bonnet)).  Until the early years of the twentieth century, these seem just to have been called a “trunk” or “boot” but as electric vehicles began to appear in volume “frunk” (the construct being f(ront) + (t)runk) and the less popular “froot” (the construct being fr(ont) + (b)oot)) came into use.  There have been mid-engined cars which have both a trunk and a frunk and those in the diminutive Fiat X1/9 were surprisingly large while others (such as Ferrari's Dino 308 GT4 (1973-1980) & 208 GT4 (1975-1980), both badged as Ferraris after 1976) were of a less generous capacity, the frunk in the Dinos most suited to storing something the size of a topless bikini but it was a genuine four-seater (2+2), something not often attempted with the mid-engined configuration.

Fluff

Fluff (pronounced fluhf)

(1) Light, downy particles, as of cotton.

(2) A soft, light, downy mass.

(3) In slang, a cloth diaper (nappy).

(4) In slang (New England region in the US), marshmallow crème, thus the local delicacy the “fluffernutter” (a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff), once a favorite of children’s school lunches but now likely to attract “mother shaming” on Instagram.

(5) In LGBTQQIAAOP slang, the passive partner in a lesbian relationship, known also as a “ruffle”.

(6) In slang, (Australia, New Zealand, Canada), a fart.

(7) In the slang of pop-culture fandom, fan fiction which (in whole or in part) is “sweet and feel-good” in tone, usually involving romance.

(8) In the slang (UK) of the role-playing game community, a form of role-playing which is inconsequential and not related to the plot and used sometimes in the context of (but not limited to) filling time.

(9) In UK slang short change deliberately given by a railway clerk (keeping the money for themselves), an example of a “deliberate fluff” (obsolete).

(10) Figuratively, something of no consequence; insubstantial.

(11) Figuratively (of literature, political argument, philosophy et al), a slight work or one of dubious artistic or intellectual value; unscholarly (used also as a polite euphemism for “bullshit (BS)” which is less explicit than “cattle feces” (“cattle faeces in non-US English).

(12) An error (flub, lapse, blooper, blunder, boo-boo, defect, error, fault, faux pas, gaffe, lapse, mistake, slip, stumble, brain-fart, brain-explosion), especially an actor's memory lapse in the delivery of lines (often in the form “fluffed their lines”.

(13) A young woman (often as “a bit of fluff”), the implication being of her providing a brief, amusing diversion rather than one sought for a permanent relationship)

(14) To make into fluff; shake or puff out (feathers, hair etc) into a fluffy mass (often followed by up).

(15) To make a mistake.

(16) To become fluffy; move, float, or settle down like fluff.

1780s: From the earlier (or perhaps contemporary) floow (woolly substance, down, nap, lint (which appeared also as flough, flue & flew)), possibly from the West Flemish vluwe (an imitative modification of floow), of uncertain origin but which may be from the French velu (hairy, furry), from the Latin villūtus (having shaggy hair), from villus (shaggy hair, tuft of hair) and may be compared with the Old English flōh (that which is flown off, fragment, piece), linked to the later “flaw”.  Although undocumented, etymologists generally conclude the word may have been a blend of flue +‎ puff.  “Fluffy stuff” is a common phenomenon in the natural world and descriptors existed in many European languages including the possibly onomatopoeic Middle Dutch vloe, the dialectal English floose, flooze & fleeze (particles of wool or cotton; fluff; loose threads or fibres), the Danish fnug (down, fluff) and the Swedish fnugg (speck, flake).  Traces of the sound of the word “fluff” are found in other languages including the Japanese フワフワ (fuwafuwa) (lightly, softly), the Hungarian puha (soft, fluffy), the Polish puchaty (soft, fluffy) and the Romanian puf (down; peachfuzz; soft hair of some animals; powderpuff).  Fluff & fluffing are nouns & verbs, fluffed is a verb, fluffiness & fluffer are nouns, fluffless & flufflike are adjectives, fluffy is an adjective (and non-standard) noun and fluffily is an adverb; the noun plural is fluffs.

Fluffied: Lindsay Lohan in bikini embellished with faux fur, photo-shoot for the fifth anniversary of ODDA magazine, April 2017.

In idiomatic use there’s “fluff around” of “fluff about” (ineffectually to act or waste time”, “fluff off” (an affectionate form of “fuck off”), “fluff-ball” or “ball of fluff” (a fluffy kitten or puppy with the quality of “cuteness”), “bum fluff” or “belly-button fluff” (small particles the fabric of clothing which accumulates in body crevices), “fluffhead” (someone vague or confused (synonymous with “airhead”), “fluff up” (a polite version of “fuck up”).  The term “fluffy bunny” isn’t from lagomorphology (the scientific study of rabbits (small mammals in the family Leporidae)) although it may be assumed it’s often heard in pet shops.  Fluffy bunny (also as “fluff bunny” & “fluffbunny”) was an adaptable noun used to mean: (1) a synonym of chubby bunny (a competitive eating game in which contestants had to pronounce words or phrases (such as “Irish wristwatch”) while holding increasing numbers of marshmallows is their mouth), (2) in the strange world of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement which in theory can occur in theory never arises because of other physics and (3) a derogatory descriptor of a casual, naive practitioner of Wicca (or other neo-pagan religion), especially one deemed to have only a superficial understanding.  The slang “bit of fluff” (young woman with who one is enjoying or planning a brief affair) was first recorded in 1903 while the use to describe marshmallow confection seems to date from at least 1920, noted in Massachusetts.  The verb in the sense of “to shake into a soft mass” was in use by 1875 (directly from the noun) while the meaning “make a mistake” dates from 1884 as theater slang to refer to acts who had forgotten their lines.  The adjective fluffy (containing or resembling fluff) came into use in the 1820s.

Watergate Fluff

Watergate fluff is one of the alternative terms for the dish “Watergate Salad”, the others including Green Fluff, Green Goddess, Fluff Salad and Funeral Salad, the last picked up reputedly because it was so often served at wakes.  It’s not clear how the culinary delight came to be called “Watergate Salad” although there’s no doubt the use was triggered by some association the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s which revolved around attempts by the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) to “cover up” the involvement of operatives connected to the White House with the break-in in June 1972 of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate Building.  Interestingly, although the scandal (in the public perception although the legal proceedings would last longer) ended in August 1974 when Nixon resigned, the first known use of the term “Watergate Salad” dates from 1975 although in September 1974, Maryland's Hagerstown Daily Mail had published the recipe for “Watergate Cake”, also a similarly green-tinted dessert made with pistachio pudding in the mix and sometimes the icing.

The dish however predates the term.  Some claim the Kraft Foods Corporation deserves credit (apparently as a proud boast rather than an admission of guilt) as the creator because in 1975 they published a recipe called “Pistachio Pineapple Delight” as part of a promotional campaign to support the release that year of their “Pistachio Pudding Mix” (something with a long tradition, a whipped cream and pineapple concoction detailed in a Kansas newspaper in 1913, the year Richard Nixon was born).  At that point, history and myth become hard to separate, one story saying the food editor of the Chicago Tribune named it to stimulate interest, suggesting it was the ideal snack to enjoy while watching the televised hearings of proceedings pursuant to the scandal while another claimed it was associative because the Watergate Hotel (in the infamous building) served the salad on their popular weekend buffets; no menus appear to have survived to prove or disprove that one.  Best of was the link was because the salad was “full of nuts” (like the crew involved in the scandal, including the memorable lawyer and Watergate conspirator & burglary coordinator G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) who wasn’t really “a nut” but is often portrayed as one).  True or not, that’s the one which deserves to be accepted.

Aleita Dupree's Watergate Salad recipe

Ingredients

1 (3 ½ oz) box of instant pistachio pudding mix.
1 (20 oz) can of crushed pineapple with juice (most use sweetened).
1 (8 oz) container of cool whip, thawed.
1 heaped cup of miniature marshmallows.
½ cup of chopped pecan nuts.
Stemmed maraschino cherries for garnish (optional).

Instructions

(1) In glass serving bowl, mix crushed pineapple and juice with pistachio pudding mix.  Stir pudding until mix completely is dissolved and mixture is smooth.

(2) Fold in the thawed cool whip.  Gently fold until pudding and cool whip is completely blended.

(3) Add miniature marshmallows and pecans.  Cover and chill until salad is set (should take up to 30 minutes).

(4) To serve, garnish with stemmed cherries and extra chopped pecans (if desired).

Fluff in fashion

Fluffiness in fashion: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022, left) and in New York to promote Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024, right).  The fluffy cream coat is by David Koma (Davit Komakhidze (Georgian: დავით კომახიძე); b 1985)) a London-based, Georgian-born fashion designer (the label of his fashion house is stylized as DΛVID KOMΛ).  The crystal payette-embroidered layered cup bra hints at the profile of the customer base; it’s on sale at US$1250 (down from US$1750).  The fashion business is regarded by some as a bit “fluffy” (frocks and such) compared with “hard” industries such as heavy engineering or nuclear weapons construction but the annual turnover of the global fashion industry is substantial.  The numbers bounce around a bit because it difficult to determine where “fashion” ends and “commodities” begin but estimates between US$1.5-2.5 trillion are widely quoted (In financial use, one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 (one million million or 1,000 billion)).

Natation

Natation (pronounced ney-tey-shuhn or na-tey-shuhn)

(1) The act of swimming

(2) The craft or skill of swimming.

1535-1545: From the Latin natātiōn(em) (nominative natātiō) (a swimming; a swimming-place) noun of action from the past-participle stem of natāre (to swim), from the primitive Indo-European root sneh & neh- (to flow, to swim).  The –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The construct of the Latin natātiō was natō (swim, float), the construct being the frequentative of nō +‎ -tiō.  Nō was used in the sense of “to swim” or “to” and as a poetic device “to sail”, “to flow”, “to fly”) and was from the Proto-Italic snāō, from sneh-yé-ti & neh-yé-ti, from sneh & neh- (to flow, to swim).  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek νάω (náō).  In English, “swimming lessons” sound mundane but to English-speaking ears, the French leçons de notation sounds poetic; a French swimming pool is a natatorium.  Natation, natatorium, natator & natatory are nouns and natant, natatorial & natational are adjectives; the noun plural is natators.

Lindsay Lohan in a natatorial image, floating in the azure waters of the Aegean, June 2022.

Although notation does have some technical uses in scientific publications, it’s most often used as a poetic or literary device to refer to swimming, floating in water or some imagery of floating, flying, drifting etc.  In poetry, as well as often searching for words which rhyme or suit the rhythm of the text, poets need to avoid repetition unless obviously it’s a deliberate device; even in epic-length works a too frequent appearance of a distinctive word can be jarring.  Natation can hardly be thought a common word so a poet must be sparing in its use; they might speak of a subject’s slow notation through their Beoetian life.  Boeotia was a region in Ancient Greece and the cosmopolitan Athenians would disparage the place’s inhabitants as provincial, dull and lacking cultural refinement (their district was one of the “flyover” states of Antiquity).  Nor need the word be applied only to people because the “silent notation” taken by the reflection of a full moon gliding across the silvery waters of a placid lake is an image evocative enough to appeal to any poet.  While in verse natation can be used of those actually splashing about, it’s as metaphor or symbolism that it’s more effective: a life can be a natation through the endless tides of life which can wash one onto sharp rocks or a tranquil shore.  Structurally, it is too just another word and one which a poet must use to construct the sounds which build the lyrical quality of the text and the act of notation is not an abstraction because just as a swimmer can flow with the currents, they can be compelled also to fight those tides and sometimes those battles are lost; often swimmers drown in the depths.

Model Adriana Fenice (b 1995) in bikini, ready to enjoy some natation (cautiously).

One not uncommon criticism of the literary novel is that authors are sometimes inclined to use obscure or archaic words for no reason other than "showing off", what Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) damned as "pride of knowledge".  Done well, it can make reading an exhilarating experience but over done, it becomes just hard work.  In prose, use is more difficult than in a poem because, although usually a longer form which makes repetition less intrusive, with such rare words, they're most effective if used but once in a text.  Natation is is though distinctive and can be an evocative choice , even if a reader has to turn to a dictionary, an imposition most readers of literary novels will likely forgive in exchange for an elegant passage.  It can be deployed as something merely descriptive; a synonym for “swimming”, there to add a splash of novelty but used carefully, it can convey a the quality of movement in water as well the movement: somehow the path of a swan’s natation suggests a peaceful and picturesque setting.

Two natators in a natatorium.  Mosaic floor of a bath from the Roman villa of Pompianus in Cirta, Algeria, fourth century AD.  In historical writing, being a word of Latin origin, it can be used to add a sense of authenticity: a discussion of a Roman mosaic showing athletes or soldiers swimming might mention it being a depiction of a "natatorial setting".

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

Scimitar

Scimitar (pronounced sim·i·tar or sim-i-ter)

An oriental sword with a curved blade broadening towards the point

1540s: From the Middle French cimeterre or the Italian scimitarra (and in English originally spelled also as cimiterie).  Most etymologists agree it’s from an unknown Ottoman Turkish word and ultimately from the Persian شمشیر‎ (šamšir) (sword), an unusual event because the linguistic variations in the Ottoman dialects are otherwise so well documented.  There are contested variations too in the Persian shimshir (pronounced shamsher), said by some to be derived from the Greek sampsera (a barbarian sword) but most authorities find this explanation unsatisfactory.  There were many variations too in spelling, the preferred modern form scimitar reflecting the influence of Italian but at least one dictionary preferred simitar as late as 1902.  In palaeontology, the term "scimitar-toothed cat" describes any of the various species of extinct prehistoric cats of the tribe Homotheriini.  Scimitar is a noun & verb and the gruesome sounding scimitared is an adjective; the noun plural is scimitars.

Antique Persian scimitar with leather wood scabbard featuring natural engraving on pommel and wooden handle adorned with embossed metal.  The heavy curved blade is hand-forged and thirty inches (760mm) in length with a deep blood grove.  The leather-covered wooden scabbard is equipped with a pair of belt rings and wire decoration.  The drag is heavily embossed with nature designs and is thirty-eight inches (965mm) long.

1973 Reliant Scimitar SE5a.

Produced between 1968-1986 (and based on an earlier coupé of the same name launched in 1964), the Reliant Scimitar was an early and successful attempt to combine the stylistic appeal of a coupé with the practicality of an estate.  Although English manufacturers had a long tradition of (mostly bespoke) two-door estates called shooting-brakes, they were expensive and (except for the rakish Aston Martins) often rather staid designs optimised for the carriage of dogs, shotguns, picnic baskets and such rather than style.  The Scimitar, although in some ways crude and lacking the refinement of the better-bred, was at the time unique in the market and sold well, triggering a trend for the design which is still sometimes seen.

1973: Marilyn Cole, Volvo 1800ES.

Beginning in 1964, Playboy magazine (much read for the interviews) began rewarding the Playmate of the Year (PotY) with a pink car and in 1973 it was awarded to Ms Marilyn Cole (b 1949).  Still one of the more admired Volvos, the 1800ES (1972-1973) underwent a conversion from a coupé (1961-1972) which was exquisitely executed, the re-design undertaken entirely in-house, the proposal by Pietro Frua's (1913-1983) studio (the P1800’s original designer) thought too avant-garde for Volvo buyers.  They may have had a point because Volvo owners do seem impressed more by frugality of operation and longevity than anything flashy and there are several 1800s which are documented as having covered more than a million miles (1.6 million km).  The coupé gained much from its use in a popular TV series shown in the early 1960s, a promotional opportunity made possible only because Jaguar declined to loan the production company one of its new E-Types (XKE) which had debuted in the same year as the P1800.  Still, the seductive E-Type hardly needed a TV series to create its image.  Doubtlessly the equally seductive Ms Cole won PotY on merit but her photo-shoot was the first in which a "full-frontal nude" image appealed in the magazine so that alone may have been enough to persuade the judges.

Aston Martin's original 1965 DB5 Shooting Brake (left) and one of the eleven subsequently built by Radford (right).

Before Reliant adopted the style, there were Aston Martin shooting brakes.  Sir David Brown (1904–1993) liked his DB5 coupé (which the factory, in their English way, called a "saloon") but found it too cramped comfortably to accommodate his polo gear, shotguns and hunting dogs.  Now, that would be called a “first world problem” but because Brown then owned Aston Martin, he simply wrote out a work order and had his craftsmen create a bespoke shooting brake (thereby confirming the informal English definition of the term: “station wagon owned by someone rich”) which they did by hand-forming the aluminum with hammers over wooden formers.  It delighted him and solved his problem but created another because good customers stared writing him letters asking for their own but Aston Martin was at full capacity building DB5s and developing the up-coming DB6 and V8 models.  With a bulging order book, the resources didn’t exist to add another niche model so the project was out-sourced to the coachbuilder Radford which built a further 11 (and subsequently another 6 based on the DB6).  That Brown’s original car was bespoke seems clear but the others are a gray area because the coachbuilder’s records and assessments of the cars indicate they were identical in all but the color of the paint and leather trim.  There may have been only 12 DB5s and 6 DB6s but by conventional definition, all but one from some sort of production line (albeit one both leisurely and exclusive) so can all but the original be thought truly bespoke?  According to the Aston Martin website, all are bespoke so presumably that will remain the last word on the subject.

1970 Aston Martin DBS shooting brake by FLM Panelcraft (left), 1992 Aston Martin Virage Shooting Brake (centre) and 2023 Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake (right).

The troubled 1970s were unforgiving times for the coachbuilders for which shooting brakes had been a minor but lucrative side-hustle and FLM’s Panelcraft’s 1970 Aston Martin DBS shooting brake remained a one-off.  Things had improved by the 1990s and although the industry in the years since has had its ups & downs, by 2023 it was possible for one buyer in Japan to order a Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake in pink.  Aston Martin are one of the English manufacturers which have long offered custom (even one-off) colors (at a price) and Bristol used to emphasise the nature of their clientele by mentioning often they would match the tints to old-school or regimental ties.  Sadly, Bristol entered liquidation in 2020 and the world lost one of its more charming anachronisms.

1970 Range Rover, the car which for a generation doomed the after-market shooting brake.

Although now thought a "luxury car", the original Range Rover was a utilitarian device with rubber floor mats, provided because it was assumed owners would need to "hose it out" after a day on the farm in their muddy boots.  As late as 1969, the plan had been for a basic four-cylinder version and an up-market V8 but constraints of time and budget meant only a single version was released, combining the interior fittings of the former with the latter's mechanical specification.  Not until the release in 1981 of the Range Rover Vogue did carpet, air-conditioning, leather and walnut facias appear, a response to the fit-outs being offered by a number of third-party operations.   

The industry never settled on an agreed definition of the shooting brake body style but from the 1930s it’s been used usually to describe a two-door car (there were variations) with estate-car coachwork added.  In recent years, what are (sometimes misleadingly) labelled shooting brakes have tended to be based on fast sports cars rather than the large chassis familiar in the 1930s when the intent was to offer the rich a large, comfortable car for outings like shooting parties, the enlarged rear compartment easily accessible and sufficiently capacious handily to accommodate guns, picnic baskets and (on a good day) a few brace of grouse on the trip home.  For reasons related to economics and engineering, the creation of shooting brakes declined in the post-war years and the release of the Range-Rover in 1970 rendered the style redundant except for the rare creations for those who still hankered for conspicuous exclusivity.  The sporty breed of coupés with estate coachwork which many (Volvo, Reliant, BMW, Ferrari, Lancia et al) have offered in recent decades are really not shooting brakes, the design instead intended to enlarge luggage space beyond the “toothbrush & bikini” capacity of some sports cars.  However, nobody seems to have thought of a better term and because of the historic association with class & wealth, the target market likes “shooting brake”.  The origin of the name lies in the shooting brake which was a large horse-drawn cart suitable for use by shooting parties.  The “brake” in the name is derived from the popularity among shooting parties of the heavy-framed carts used when “breaking-in” spirited horses although, etymologists have pointed out the Dutch word brik (cart or carriage) but any link is speculative.  In the UK, the term brake became so identified with large horse-drawn carts than it came to be applied widely, extended to wagons generally, whether used for shooting parties or not.  In France, an estate car (station wagon) was called a break, the French (somewhat unusually) following the example in English, the original form having been break de chasse (hunting break).

Dog owner Lindsay Lohan is part of the target market for shooting brake manufacturers although it's doubtful she's a fan of hunting & shooting.  Her first dog she name Gucci because the hound "chewed up" a pair of Gucci boots, something for which she was forgiven, living to the age of fifteen.

Borrowing shamelessly from Jensen which between 1966-1973 produced the FF, Ferrari chose the model name FF to allude to the specification (4 seats and 4 wheel-drive) although it was all-wheel-drive (AWD) rather than four-wheel-drive (4WD), the latter now indicating something built with some emphasis on off-road use.  The Jensen FF nomenclature was a reference to “Ferguson Formula” the AWD system developed by Ferguson Research, a company founded by Harry Ferguson (1884–1960).  Ferguson had developed its system for agricultural vehicles but the advantages for cars on the road or racetrack were obvious and a number of projects followed, all successful pieces of engineering but the economics were at the time not compelling and it wasn’t until the 1970s that AWD vehicles began to appear in any volume.

1966 Jensen FF Series 1 (left) and 1971 Series III, one of only 15 built (right).

Visually, the FF was distinguished from the standard Interceptor by a 5 inch (127 mm) longer wheelbase, added ahead of the windscreen to accommodate the transfer case and associated hardware, the twin vents the obvious marker (the standard Interceptor used one).  All used the combination of Chrysler's 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) B-Series V8 and TorqueFlite (727) automatic transmission and tales of some leaving the factory with the 440 (7.2) RB engine or manual transmissions are apocryphal.  Nor it would seem have any FFs subsequently been been fitted with the bigger engine although some have been transformed into convertibles using the parts from the factory's run of 267 (1974-1976), no small project but one which demands no modification of the complex drivetrain.

GKN FFF 100, MIRA (Motor Industry Research Association) proving ground, Warwickshire, England, September 1972, the images from the on-line Jensen Museum.  The car just prior to the test run (left) shows the raised centre panel which allowed the carburettors to protrude; the dual Holley 3116 carburetors atop the short cross-ram manifold  (centre) and the 0-100 mph-0 run in the wet (right).       

There was however one FF which did hint at the possibilities offered by mixing AWD with prodigious quantities of power and torque.  GKN (now an aerospace multi-national but originally Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, a manufacturing concern with roots traceable to 1759 at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution) in 1971, impressed by the FF, commissioned a special build.  Revealed in 1972 as the FFF 100 (claimed by some to be a reference to a planned production run but probably meaning nothing in particular unless an allusion to 100 mph (162 km/h), a speed which would later figure in the car's 15 minutes of fame), it used a one-off body of no great distinction but beneath the bland and derivative lines sat the intoxicating sight of a 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 (remembered as the much-vaunted "Street Hemi", a (slightly) civilized version of the unit used on the NASCAR ovals and on drag strips).  Complete with a power-boosting "short cross-ram" dual quad induction system and built to the A990 specification used in drag racing, the FFF 100 was lighter than the FF and when tested in a demonstration run, it achieved 0-100 mph-0 in 12.2 seconds and that was on a wet track; when the test was repeated in the dry the number was 11.5, a mark for road cars which would stand for three decades.  It proved beyond doubt the benefits of AWD & ABS although it wouldn't be until the 1990s many began to enjoy the combination.  However, any possibility of a production FFF 100 was fanciful, the FF and the Street-Hemi by 1972 already retired so all missed what would for decades been the world's fastest shooting brake.       

When the Jensen FF debuted, there was thus no AWD-4WD distinction and it was always referred to as “4WD”, its other notable innovation the fitting of Dunlop Maxaret’s mechanical anti-lock braking system, something which in rudimentary form had appeared on aircraft as early as 1908.  It was later used by railways but cars under braking on roads present more challenges for ABS than aircraft on runways or trains on tracks and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the first (almost) viable implementations appeared.  ABS is essentially a form of “pressure modulation” and the accepted abbreviation doesn’t actually reference the often quoted  “Anti-Lock Braking System”; the correct source is Anti-Bloc System, the name adopted in 1966 when Daimler-Benz and the Heidelberg electronics company Teldix (later absorbed by Bosch) began a co-development of a hybrid analogue-electronic system.  That was presented in a “proof-of-concept” display in 1970 during a media at the company’s Untertürkheim test track but what the engineers knew was that use in mass-production depended on the development of digital controllers, more reliable, more powerful and less complex than analogue electronics, the conclusion US manufacturers soon drew when their early implementation of electronic fuel-injection (EFI) proved so troublesome.  Such things were obviously going to be relatively cheap and available after Intel in 1971 released the 4004 (the first commercially available microprocessor and the ancestor of the x86 family and all which followed) and in 1978, Daimler-Benz made available the first version of ABS on some of the Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9s (1975-1980, the W116 platform 1972-1980) sold in the European market.  The Dunlop Maxaret mechanical ABS used on the Jensen FF was less sophisticated but was reliable and a remarkable advance and while some testers found adaptation a challenge, others noted that in skilled hands (and feet), it was in some ways superior because one could learn to “tramp-through” the system and induce wheel-locking selectively, something useful in the right circumstances.

Ferrari FF (2011-2016): The factory's official "hero" shot (left), an FF fitted with "aerodynamically optimized" ski boot (centre) and with rear compartment displaying "shooting brake" credentials (right). 

The Jensen FF really wasn’t a shooting brake although the huge and distinctive rear window was also a hatch so it did offer some of the advantages.  The Ferrari FF "shooting brake" (the factory seems not to have used the term although every journalist seems to thought it best) was very much in the same vein, its capaciousness closer to that of a “big coupé” rather than any size of station wagon although the factory did circulate photographs of the rear-compartment comfortably (if snugly) packed with a set of golf-clubs and a half dozen-odd travel bags; with folding rear seats, Ferrari claimed a trunk (boot) capacity of 450-800 litres (16-28 cubic feet).  Like the Jensen, it was aimed at those who like to drive to the ski-fields and the promotional material also included pictures of ski-racks and even a roof-mounted “ski-box”, able to hold ski-gear for four.  Despite the high price, the Jensen FF sold remarkably well but its market potential was limited because all Ferguson’s development work had been done in England using right-hand-drive (RHD) vehicles and the system was so specific it wasn’t possible to make a left-hand-drive (LHD) FF without re-engineering the whole mechanism which was so bulky the passenger's front seat was narrower than that of the driver so much did things intrude.  Consequently, only 320 were built, apparently at a financial loss.  Ferrari did better with their FF, over 2000 sold between 2011–2016 and although the packaging may have been remarkably efficient, with a 6.3 litre (382 cubic inch) V12 it was never going to be economical, listed by the 2013 US Department of Energy as the least fuel-efficient car in the midsize class, sharing that dubious honor with the bigger, heavier (though not as rapid) Bentley Mulsanne.  For owners, the 335 km/h (208 mph) top speed was presumably sufficient compensation.