Fork

Fork (pronounced fawrk)

(1) An instrument having two or more tines (popularly called prongs), for holding, lifting, etc., as an implement for handling food or any of various agricultural tools.

(2) Something resembling or suggesting this in form or conceptually.

(3) As tuning fork, instruments used (1) in the tuning of musical instruments and (2) by audiologists and others involved in the study or treatment of hearing.

(4) In machinery, a type of yoke; a pronged part of any device.

(5) A generalized description of the division into branches.

(6) In physical geography and cartography, by abstraction, the point or part at which a thing, as a river or a road, divides into branches; any of the branches into which a thing divides (and used by some as a convention to describe a principal tributary of a river.

(7) In horology, (in a lever escapement) the forked end of the lever engaging with the ruby pin.

(8) In bicycle & motorcycle design, the support of the front wheel axles, having the shape of a two-tined fork.

(9) In archery, the barbed head of an arrow.

(10) To pierce, raise, pitch, dig etc, with a fork.

(11) Metonymically (and analogous with the prongs of a pronged tool), to render something to resemble a fork or describe something using the shape as a metaphor.

(12) In chess, to maneuver so as to place two opponent's pieces under simultaneous attack by the same piece (most associated with moves involving the knight).

(13) In computer programming, to modify a software’s source code to create a version sufficiently different to be considered a separate path of development.

(14) In computer programming, as "fork bomb", a program that creates a large number of self-replicating tasks or processes in a computer system in order to cause a DoS (denial of service).

(15) To turn as indicated at a fork in a road, path etc.

(16) Figuratively, a point in time when a decision is taken.

(17) In fulminology (the scientific (as opposed to the artistic or religious) study of lightning), as "forked lightning", the type of atmospheric discharge of electricity which hits the ground in a bolt.

(18) In software development, content management & data management, figuratively (by abstraction, from a physical fork), a departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT) (unintentionally as originally defined but later also applied where the variation was intentional; metonymically, any of the instances of software, data sets etc, thus created.

(19) In World War II (1939-1945) era British military jargon, the male crotch, used to indicate the genital area as a point of vulnerability in physical assault.

(20) in occupational slang, a clipping of forklift; any of the blades of a forklift (or, in plural, the set of blades), on which the goods to be raised are loaded.

(21) In saddlery, the upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.

(22) In slang, a gallows (obsolete).

(23) As a transitive verb, a euphemistic for “fuck” one of the variations on f***, ***k etc and used typically to circumvent text-based filters.

(24) In underground, extractive mining, the bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains; to bale a shaft dry (still often spelled forcque).

(25) As the variant chork, an eating utensil made with a combination of chopstick & fork, intended for neophyte chopstick users.

(26) In literature, as "silver fork novel" a genre in nineteenth century English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class and the aristocracy (known also as the "fashionable novel" and "drawing room fiction").

Pre-1000: From the Middle English forke (digging fork), from the Old English force & forca (pitchfork, forked instrument, forked weapon; forked instrument used to torture), from the Proto-West Germanic furkō (fork), from the Latin furca (pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke) of uncertain origin. The Middle English was later reinforced by the Anglo-Norman & Old Northern French forque (it was from the Old French forche which French gained fourche), also from the Latin.  It was cognate with the Old Frisian forke, the North Frisian forck (fork), the Dutch vork (fork), the Danish vork (fork) and the German Forke (pitchfork).  The evolved Middle English form displaced the native Old English gafol, ġeafel & ġeafle (fork) (and the apparently regionally specific forcel (pitchfork) though the use from circa 1200 to mean “forked stake or post used as a prop when erecting a gallows” did for a while endure, probably because of the long-life of the architectural plans for a structure which demanded no change or functional improvement.  The alternative spelling forcque is used in mining and describes the "bottom of a sump".  Perhaps surprisingly, dictionaries don't list forkish or forkesque as standard adjectives.  Fork is a noun & verb, forking is a noun, verb, adjective & adverb, forklike is an adjective and forked is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is forks.

Representation of the forks the Linux operating system.  Software forks can extend, die off or merge with other forks.

The forks of The Latin furca (in its primary sense of “fork”) may be from the primitive Indo-European gherk & gherg (fork) although etymologists have never traced any explanation for the addition of the -c-, something which remains mysterious even if the word was influenced by the Proto-Germanic furkaz & firkalaz (stake, stick, pole, post) which was from the primitive Indo-European perg- (pole, post).  If such a link existed, it would relate the word to the Old English forclas pl (bolt), the Old Saxon ferkal (lock, bolt, bar), the Old Norse forkr (pole, staff, stick), the Norwegian fork (stick, bat) and the Swedish fork (pole).  The descendants in other languages include the Sranan Tongo forku, the Dutch vork, the Japanese フォーク (fōku), the Danish korf, the Kannada ಫೋರ್ಕ್ (phōrk), the Korean 포크 (pokeu), the Maori paoka, the Tamil போர்க் (pōrk) and the Telugu ఫోర్క్ (phōrk).  In many languages, the previous form was retained for most purposes while the English fork was adopted in the context of software development.

Forks can be designed for specific applications, this is a sardine fork, the dimensions dictated by the size of the standard sardine tin.

Although visitors from Western Europe discovered the novelty of the table fork in Constantinople as early as the eleventh century, the civilizing influence from Byzantium seems not routinely to have appeared on the tables of the English nobility until the 1400s and the evidence suggests it didn’t come into common use before the early seventeenth century.  The critical moment is said to have come in 1601 when the celebrated traveller and writer Thomas Coryat (or Coryate) (circa 1577–1617) returned to London from one of his tours, bringing with him the then almost unknown "table fork" which he'd seen used in Italy.  This "continental affectation" made him the subject of mirth and playwrights dubbed him "the fork-carrying traveller" while the street was earthier, the nickname "Furcifer" (from the Latin meaning "fork-bearer, rascal") soon adopted and despite the early scepticism, there soon were many types of "specific purpose forks (cake fork, cocktail fork, dessert fork etc).  Mr Coryat thus made one of the great contributions to the niceties of life, his other being the introduction to the  English language of the word "umbrella", another influence from Italy.

Cause and effect: The fork in the road.

In Lewis Carroll’s (1832–1898, the (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), when Alice comes to a fork in the road, she encounters the Cheshire Cat sitting in a tree:

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice: “I don’t know.”

Cat: “Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”

One can see the cat’s point and a reductionist like Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021: US defense secretary 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) there would have ended the exchange but the feline proved more helpful, telling Alice she’ll see the Mad Hatter and the March Hare if she goes in certain directions, implying that no matter which path she chooses, she’ll encounter strange characters.  That she did and the book is one of the most enjoyable flights of whimsy in English.

The idiomatic phrase “fork in the road” wasn’t in use early in the seventeenth century when translators were laboring to create the King James Bible (KJV, 1611) so “…the king of Babylon so stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways…” appeared whereas by 1982 when the New King James Version (NKJV, 1982) was released, that term would have been archaic so the translation was rendered as “…the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads…”.

Ezekiel 21:19-23; King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611):

Also, thou son of man, appoint thee two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come: both twain shall come forth out of one land: and choose thou a place, choose it at the head of the way to the city. Appoint a way, that the sword may come to Rabbath of the Ammonites, and to Judah in Jerusalem the defenced. For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver. At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to appoint captains, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to appoint battering rams against the gates, to cast a mount, and to build a fort. And it shall be unto them as a false divination in their sight, to them that have sworn oaths: but he will call to remembrance the iniquity, that they may be taken.

Ezekiel 21:19-23; New King James Version of the Bible (NKJV, 1982):

And son of man, appoint for yourself two ways for the sword of the king of Babylon to go; both of them shall go from the same land. Make a sign; put it at the head of the road to the city. Appoint a road for the sword to go to Rabbah of the Ammonites, and to Judah, into fortified Jerusalem. For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads, to use divination: he shakes the arrows, he consults the images, he looks at the liver. In his right hand is the divination for Jerusalem: to set up battering rams, to call for a slaughter, to lift the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to heap up a siege mound, and to build a wall. And it will be to them like a false divination in the eyes of those who have sworn oaths with them; but he will bring their iniquity to remembrance, that they may be taken.

The KJV & NKJV closely are related but do in detail differ in the language used, the objective of the latter being to enhance readability while retaining the stylistic beauty and literary structure of the original.  Most obviously, the NKJV abandoned the use of archaic words and convention of grammar (thee, thou, ye, thy, thine, doeth, speaketh etc) which can make it difficult for modern readers to understand, rather as students can struggle with Shakespeare’s text, something not helped by lecturers reminding them of its beauty, a quality which often escapes the young.  The NKJV emerged from a reaction to some of the twentieth century translations which traditionalist readers thought had “descended” too far into everyday language; it was thus a compromise between greater readability and a preservation of the original tone.  Both the KJV & NKJV primarily used the Textus Receptus (received text) for the New Testament and Masoretic Text for the Old Testament and this approach differed from other modern translations (such as the New International Version (NIV, 1978) & English Standard Version (ESV, which 2001) used a wider sub-set of manuscripts, including older ones like the Alexandrian texts (Codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus etc)  So, the NKJV is more “traditional” than modern translations but not as old-fashioned as the KJV and helpfully, unlike the KJV which provided hardly any footnotes about textual variants, the NKJV was generous, showing where differences existed between the major manuscript traditions (Textus Receptus, Alexandrian & Byzantine), a welcome layer of transparency but importantly, both used a formal equivalence (word-for-word) approach which put a premium on direct translation over paraphrasing, the latter technique much criticized in the later translations.

Historians of food note word seems first to have appeared in this context of eating utensils in an inventory of household goods from 1430 and they suggest, because their influence in culinary matters was strongest, it was probably from the Old North French forque.  It came to be applied to rivers from 1753 and of roads by 1839.  The use in bicycle design began in 1871 and this was adopted directly within twenty years when the first motorcycles appeared.  The chess move was first so-described in the 1650s while the old slang, forks "the two forefingers" was from 1812 and endures to this day as “the fork”.  In the world of cryptocurrencies, fork has been adopted with fetish-like enthusiasm to refer to (1) a split in the blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or (2) a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.

Lindsay Lohan with Tiramisu and cake-fork, Terry Richardson (b 1965) photoshoot, 2012.

The verb dates from the early fourteenth century in the sense of (1) “to divide in branches, go separate ways" & (2) "disagree, be inconsistent", both derived from the noun.  The transitive meaning "raise or pitch with a fork" is from 1812, used most frequently in the forms forked & forking while the slang verb phrase “fork (something) over” is from 1839 while “fork out” (give over) is from 1831).  The now obsolete legal slang “forking” in the forensic sense of a "disagreement among witnesses" dates from the turn of the fifteenth century.  The noun forkful was an agricultural term from the 1640s while the specialized fourchette (in reference to anatomical structures, from French fourchette (diminutive of fourche (a fork)) was from 1754.  The noun pitchfork (fork for lifting and pitching hay etc.) described the long-used implement constructed commonly with a long handle and two or three prongs first in the mid fourteenth century, altered (by the influence of pichen (to throw, thrust), from the early thirteenth century Middle English pic-forken, from pik (source of pike).  The verb use meaning "to lift or throw with a pitchfork," is noted from 1837.  The spork, an eating utensil which was fashioned by making several long indents in the bowl to create prongs debuted in 1909.

Dining room of Huis Doorn.

Huis Doorn (Doorn House) near Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the country house in which the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; Emperor of Germany & King of Prussia 1888-1918) would live until his death.  Confiscated by the state at the end of World War II (1939-1945), Huis Doorn is now a museum, maintained much as the former Kaiser left it.  At his place on the dining room table sits one of his special forks with three tines, the widened one to the left a blade serving as a knife because a congenitally withered left-arm made the use of a conventional utensil too difficult.

Compelled by circumstances to abdicate at the end of World War I (1914-1918) Wilhelm was granted asylum by the neutral Netherlands, the cabinet insisting his status would be that of a private German citizen; to the status-conscious former Kaiser, it remained for the rest of his life a disappointment that Wilhelmina (1880–1962; Queen of the Netherlands 1890-1948) would neither receive nor visit him.  He’d arrived in the Netherlands accompanied by a reputed 64 train carriages of imperial household goods (furnishings, art, bibelots and such) and an unknown slice of the German exchequer so was able to purchase and adequately decorate Huis Doorn which he purchased, taking up residence in May 1920.  However much of the Imperial Treasury came with him remains a matter of speculation but until his death, he maintained a household staff sufficient to ensure “a certain grandeur”.  Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) did on several occasions pay a visit but that stopped as soon as the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933; the former sovereign had out-lived any potential usefulness to the party.  Indeed, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) would have preferred if the old man had had the decency quietly to drop dead because the last thing he wanted was any possibility the monarchy might be restored.  He regarded Benito Mussolini’s (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) greatest mistake (and there were a few) as having not deposed the Victor Emmanuel III (1869–1947; King of Italy 1900-1946) when he had the chance and to his dying day suspected a conspiracy between the Freemasons and the royal court was behind the Duce’s downfall in 1943.  There may be something in that because Marshal Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956; Prime Minister of Italy 1943-1944), appointed by the King as Mussolini’s replacement, was a confessed Freemason.

Speciale vork voor Willem II: One of Wilhelm's silver Kaisergabels (Imperial fork).

In a coda which would have amused those who remembered Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) glee at hearing the chant “Hang the Kaiser!” at the end of World War I, after the Netherlands was invaded in 1940, fearing the Nazis might murder their former ruler, through diplomatic channels he offered to receive Wilhelm “with dignity and consideration” if he chose to seek refuge in the UK.  The offer was declined and he remained safely in Huis Doon until his death, the Nazis simply ignoring him because in the euphoria of victory, there was in Germany no longer a significant pro-monarchist movement.  Churchill's offer has been treated by some historians as “a humanitarian gesture” but he always had a fondness for monarchical government (his wife called him “the last man in Europe still to believe in the divine right of kings”) and it's suspected he may have pondered the idea of a restoration (possibly Crown Prince Wilhelm (1882–1951)) in constitutional form.

Der Gableschwanz Teufl: The Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939-1945).  During World War II, the Luftwaffe’s (German air force) military slang for the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning was Der Gableschwanz Teufl (the fork-tailed devil).

Novelty nail-art by US restaurant chain Denny's.  The manicure uses as a base a clean, white coat of lacquer, to which was added miniature plastic utensils, the index finger a fork, the middle finger a knife, the ring finger a spoon, and the pinky finger presumably a toothpick or it could be something more kinky.

The idiomatic “speak with forked tongue” to indicate duplicitous speech dates from 1885 and was an invention of US English though reputedly influenced by phrases settlers learned in their interactions with first nations peoples (then called “Red Indians”).  The earlier “double tongue” (a la “two-faced”) in the same sense was from the fifteenth century.  Fork as a clipping of the already truncated fork-lift (1953) fom the fork-lift truck (1946), appears to have enter the vernacular circa 1994.  The adjective forked (branched or divided in two parts) was the past-participle adjective from the verb and came into use early in the fourteenth century.  It was applied to roads in the 1520s and more generally within thirty years while the use in the sixteenth and seventeenth century with a suggestion of "cuckold" (on the notion of "horned") is long obsolete.    Applied in many contexts (literally & figuratively), inventions (with and without hyphens) include fork-bomb, fork-buffet, fork-dinner, fork-head, rolling-fork, fork-over, fork-off & fork-up (the latter pair euphemistic substitutions for "fuck off" & "fuck-up).

Führerspork: Spork (left) from a flatware set (right) made for Adolf Hitler's 50^th birthday, sold at auction in 2018 for £12,500.  The items had been discovered in England in a house once owned by a senior military officer, the assumption being they were looted in 1945 (“souveniring” or “spoils of war” in soldiers' parlance), the items all bearing the Nazi eagle, swastika and Hitler's initials.  Auction houses can be inconsistent in their descriptions of sporks and in some cases they're listed as splayds, the designs meaning sometimes it's a fine distinction.

1979 Benelli 750 Sei (left) and Benelli factory schematic of the 750 Sei’s fork (series 2a, right).

One quirk in the use of the word is the tendency of motorcyclists to refer to the front fork as “the forks”.  Used on almost every motorcycle made, the fork is an assembly which connects the front axle (and thus the wheel) to the frame, usually by via a pair (upper & lower) of yokes; the fork provides both the front suspension (springs or hydraulics) and makes possible the steering.  The reason the apparatus is often called “the forks” is the two most obvious components (the left & right) tubes appear to be separate when really they are two prongs connected at the top.  Thus, a motor cycle manufacturer describes the assembly (made of many components (clamp, tubes, legs, springs, dampers etc)) “a fork” but, because of the appearance, riders often think of them as a pair of forks, thus the vernacular “the forks”.  English does have other examples of such apparent aberrations such as a “pair of spectacles” which is sold as a single item but the origin of eye-glasses was in products sold as separate lens and users would (according to need) buy one glass (what became the monocle) or a pair of glasses.  That is a different structural creation than the bra which on the model of a “pair of glasses” would be a “pair of something” but the word is a clipping of “brassiere”.  English borrowed brassiere from the French brassière, from the Old French braciere (which was originally a lining fitted inside armor which protected the arm, only later becoming a garment), from the Old French brace (arm) although by then it described a chemise (a kind of undershirt) but in the US, brassiere was used from 1893 when the first bras were advertised and from there, use spread.  The three syllables were just too much to survive the onslaught of modernity and the truncated “bra” soon prevailed, being the standard form throughout the English-speaking world by the early 1930s.  Curiously, in French, a bra is a soutien-gorge which translates literally and rather un-romantically as “throat-supporter” although “chest uplifter” is a better translation.

2004 Dodge Tomahawk.

There have been variations on the classic fork and even designs which don’t use a conventional front fork, most of which have been variations on the “swinging arm” a structure which is either is or tends towards the horizontal.  One of the most memorable to use swinging arms was the 2004 Dodge Tomahawk, a “motorcycle” constructed around a 506 cubic inch (8.3 litre) version of the V10s used in the Dodge Viper (1991-2010 & 2013-2017) and the concept demonstrated what imaginative engineers can do if given time, money, resources and a disconnection from reality.  Designing a 500 horsepower (370 kW) motorcycle obviously takes some thought so what they did to equalize things a bit in what would otherwise be an unequal battle with physics was use four independently sprung wheels which allowed the machine to corner with a lean (up to 45^o said to be possible) although no photographs seem to exist of an intrepid rider putting this projection to the test.  Rather than a fork, swinging arms were used and while this presumably enhanced high-speed stability, it also meant the turning circle was something like that of one of the smaller aircraft carriers.  There were suggestions a top speed of some 420 mph (675 km/h) was at least theoretically possible although a sense of reality did briefly intrude and this was later revised to 250 mph (400 km/h).  In the Dodge design office, presumably it was thought safe to speculate because of the improbability of finding anyone both sufficient competent and crazy enough to explore the limits; one would find plenty of either but the characteristics rarely co-exist.  Remarkably, as many as ten replicas were sold at a reputed US$555,000 and although (mindful of the country’s litigious habits) all were non-operative and described as “art deco inspired automotive sculpture” to be admired as static displays, some apparently have been converted to full functionality although there have been no reports of top speed testing.

Britney Spears (b 1981): "Video clip with fork feature", Instagram, 11 May 2025.

Unfortunately, quickly Ms Spears deleted the more revealing version of the clip but for those pondering the messaging, Spearologists (a thoughtful crew devoted to their discipline) deconstructed the content, noting it came some days after she revealed it had been four months she’d left her house.  The silky, strapless dress and sweat-soaked, convulsing flesh were (by her standards) uncontroversial but what may have mystified non-devotees was the fork she at times held in her grasp.  Apparently, the fork was an allusion to her earlier quote: “Shit!  Now I have to find my FORK!!!”, made during what was reported as a “manic meltdown” (itself interesting in that it at least suggests the existence of “non-manic” meltdowns) at a restaurant, following the abrupt departure of her former husband (2022-2024) Hesam "Sam" Asghari (b 1994).  The link between restaurant and video clip was reports Mr Asghari was soon to be interviewed and there would be questions about the marriage.  One of her earlier posts had included a fork stabbing a lipstick (forks smeared with lipstick a trick also used in Halloween costuming to emulate facial scratches) and the utensil in the clip was said to be “a symbol of her frustration and emotional state.”  Now we know.

Großadmiral (Grand Admiral, equivalent to an admiral of the fleet (Royal Navy) or five star (fleet) admiral (US Navy)) Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930; State Secretary of the German Imperial Naval Office 1897-1916).

He's remembered now for (1) his role in building up the Imperial German Navy, triggering events which would play some part in the coming of World War I, (2) his distinctive twin-forked beard and (3) being the namesake for the Bismarck class battleship Tirpitz (1939-1944) which, although she hardly ever took to the high seas and fired barely a shot in anger, merely by being moored in Norwegian fjords, she compelled the British Admiralty to watch her with a mix of awe and dread, necessitating keeping in home waters a number of warships badly needed elsewhere.  Such was the threat his namesake battleship represented, just the mistaken belief she was steaming into the path of a convoy (PQ 17, June 1942) of merchant ships bound for the Russian port of Archangel caused the Admiralty to issue a “scatter order” (ie disperse the convoy from the escorting warships), resulting in heavy losses.  After a number of attempts, in 1944, she finally was sunk in a raid by RAF (Royal Air Force) bombers but, because some of the capsized hull remained visible above the surface, some wags in the navy insisted the air force had not "sunk the beast" but merely "lowered her to the waterline".  It wasn't until after the war the British learned the RAF's successful mission, strategically, had been unnecessary, earlier attacks (including the Admiralty's using mines placed by crews in midget submarines) having inflicted so much damage there was by 1944 no prospect of the Tirpitz again venturing far from her moorings.

Lieutenant General Nagaoka Gaishi san, Tokyo, 1920.

When Großadmiral von Tirpitz died in 1930, he and twin-fork beard were, in the one casket, buried in Bavaria's Münchner Waldfriedhof “woodland cemetery”.  The “one body = one casket” protocol is of course the almost universal practice but there have been exceptions and one was Lieutenant General Gaishi Nagaoka (1858-1933) who served in the Imperial Japanese Army between 1978-1908, including as vice chief of the general staff during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).  While serving as a military instructor, one of his students was the future Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975).  After retiring from the military, he entered politics, elected in 1924 as a member of the House of Representatives (after Japan in the 1850s ended its “isolation” policy, it’s political and social system were a mix of Japanese, British and US influences).  After he died in 1933, by explicit request, his impressive “handlebar” moustache carefully was removed and buried in a separate casket in Aoyama Cemetery.

Thinspo

Thinspo (pronounced thin-spoh)

(1) Material created, curated or used (distributed almost exclusively in digital form) to inspire thinness or weight loss.

(2) A sub-set of the pro-ana community which exists to support those on a spectrum ranging from obsessive dieters to those who have chosen as a lifestyle a managed form of anorexia nervosa.

2005–2010: The short form of thinspiration, the construct being thin +‎ (in)spiration.  Thin was from the Middle English thinne, thünne & thenne, from the Old English þynne, from the Proto-West Germanic þunnī, from the Proto-Germanic þunnuz (thin) (and related to þanjaną (to stretch, spread out)), from the primitive Indo-European ténhus (thin), from ten- (to stretch).  It was cognate with the German dünn, the Dutch dun, the West Frisian tin, the Icelandic þunnur, the Danish tynd, the Swedish tunn, the Latin tenuis, the Irish tanaí, the Welsh tenau, the Latvian tievs, the Sanskrit तनु (tanú) (thin) and the Persian تنگ‎ (tang) (narrow). A doublet of tenuis, it was related also to tenuous.  Inspiration was from the Middle English inspiracioun, from the Old French inspiration, from the Late Latin īnspīrātiōnem (nominative īnspīrātiō), from the Classical Latin īnspīrātus (past participle of inspīrō).  It displaced the native Old English onbryrdnes (literally “in-pricked-ness”).  Thinspo inspired others forms such as fitspo (encouraging fitness) and blondespo (advocating being blonde) and between thinspo and fitspo, critics noted some overlap, suspecting that in at least some cases the later identity is assumed as an attempt at disguise.  Thinspo & thinspiration are nouns; the noun plural is thinspos.  Derived forms like the nouns thinspirationist & thinspirationism do appear but are non-standard.

Thinspo's idealized bone definition.

The companion term ribspro (the short form of ribspiration (known also as bonespo)) is a particular genre within thinspo.  Whereas thinspo material can be long or short-form text, diagrams or images, ribspro is almost exclusively visual, the text limited to perhaps a few admiring or encouraging words and, as the names suggest, the focus is on ribcages or other bones proximately defined against taut skin.  Backbones, ribs, clavicles and hipbones seem the most favored, presumably because they tend to provide the most definitional contrast but there’s also the suspicion they're the particular aesthetic construct the thinspo community finds most attractive (unlike a knee or elbow which, however boney, seems not to be thought photogenic).  Another genre (a kind of applied thinspo) within the community is meanspo (the short form of mean inspiration), from the “tough love” or “cruel to be kind” tradition of weight loss and this school of thought advocates issuing critical and insulting comments to those considered “insufficiently thin enough”, the rationale being this will convince them to reduce intake, exercise more, purge and thus lose weight.  The thinspo ecosystem has also proliferated thematic variations such as “vegan thinspo” although that seems at least to some extent opportunistic given the most extreme of the thinspo operatives had long since banished animal products, regarding recommendations like “lean meat” or “chicken strips” as just so much fat.

Thinspo images often are rendered in grayscale, and that may have stated in in a nod to the aesthetic of art-house photography or simply because in monochrome the bone definition is more pronounced, a function of the contrast of light & shadow exploited by artists working with the chiaroscuro technique.  Whatever the origin, "black & white" became a thinspo motif although the B&A (before & after) posters appear to stick to original, full-color images. 

Like much in the pro-ana community, thinspo sites exist on a spectrum, those thought innocuous left to continue while any judged to be encouraging eating disorders subject to being shutdown although the efforts undertaken by (and sometimes imposed on) the platforms is a Sisyphean struggle, content shifting between hosts as required.  It’s also organic in that thinspo, like all that’s curated by the pro-ana community, is just another function of the supply & demand curve.  The supply of pro-ana content exists because of demand and in a manner familiar to behavioral economists, the ecosystem is symbiotic, the two forces acting upon and encouraging the growth of the other.  Like much that is on-line, some of the material blatantly is fake, something most obviously detected in the dubious B&A photos which appear with frequent duplication.  

Whether there were statistically significant differences in the nature of the content of thinspo and fitspo (a clipping of fitspiration (the construct being fit + (in)spiration) sites (featuring images and other material designed to trigger a motivation to exercise and enhance physical fitness) attracted academic interest and there were studies, the results differing in detail (there were widely divergent results depending on the platform analyzed which was thought to be a reflection more of the degree of success a platform achieved in enforcing its policies than any difference in the collective user profile) but displaying the same general trends: Thinspo sites portrayed body parts with more than twice the frequency of fitspo and posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness were overwhelmingly almost specific to thinspo.  Interestingly, the differences between fitspo & thinspo relating to sexually suggestive images, appearance comparison and messages encouraging restrictive eating were striking and almost wholly correlated with the platform on which they were posted.  The more extreme of the forks such as self harm (such as the cutter subset) also appear on thinspo sites.

Thinspo Rules

Thinspirationism: A blonde Lindsay Lohan during thinspo pin-up phase, 2005.

(1) Never eat something just because you want to finish it.  Eat only enough to stop the worst of the hunger pangs and don’t eat until sated; those extra bites add up.

(2) Don’t let emotions take over and eat only if hungry.  Stop yourself once you start eating if you know it’s for the wrong reasons.  The right reason is pangs of hunger; there is no other reason.

(3) If you catch yourself in a binge, stop the moment you realize.  Don’t forgive yourself for screwing up; it will only permit you to screw up again.  If you have binged, it must in some way be atoned for and than can be an increased energy burn (ie more exercise) or intake deprivation (eg skipping next meal).

(4) Every calorie counts so review every recipe and remove as many calories as possible.  Where available, choose the low cal version (but study nutritional-content labels because tags like "diet" or "97% fat-free" can be deceptive and misleading) and drink water (unmodified soda water is fine), black tea or black coffee instead of other beverages.  Avoid zero-cal sweeteners because (1) they’re a chemical cocktail and (2) the thinspo goal is completely to cure the body’s natural sugar addiction.  Artificial sweeteners may be equated with opioid substitutes such as methadone and while clinically there may be good reasons for a patient seeking to cease using heroin to be proscribed methadone, sugar is like nicotine: highly addictive but weak and able (chemically) to be withdrawn from within days.  Some will find the psychological addiction lingers longer but often that's associative (as it is with the social link between drinking alcohol and smoking).  The general principle is it's not good to replace one addiction with another so with added sugar the answer is "cold turkey", not packets of powdered chemicals.  The body does of course need sugar (it works essentially by converting intake into sugars the muscles, brain and other organs can use) but your intake should be exclusively in natural (unprocessed) sugars like those in green apples.    

(5) Don’t feel guilt about wasting food.  The undesirability on environmental grounds is noted but the sooner you change yourself, the better and as you hone your techniques, losses can be reduced to close to zero.  Set a goal always not to eat everything you’re served and gradually increase this quantity.  Before long, you’ll be throwing away food without barely a thought and if you have a garden or outdoor pot-plants, most organic waste can be chopped up or mushed to be mixed with water and added to the soil (plants will use the nutrients and eventually, the residue become soil).

(6) Eat slowly, savoring each bite.  Thinspo does not mean ceasing to enjoy food; it means the opposite because it makes every bite a rare and valued treat.  Thinspo life is like a rugby test in which only one try is scored but it is celebrated whereas "normal" life is like a rugby sevens game in which there may be two-dozen trys: after the first few they cease to be exceptional.  We evolved quickly (in biological terms) from creatures which had to hunt or gather every bite of the fat, salt & sugar we craved to survive but, with the same biology, we now live often sedentary lives among shelves laden with fat, salt & sugar, all within reach and sometimes packaged conveniently for instant consumption.  It is the curse of plenty. 

(7) Drink water during meals, as much as you can manage but, as a general principle, don't go beyond 6 litres (1.3 gallons (UK) 1.6 (US)); this is well short of of water's toxicity threshold but there's both a law of diminishing returns and a point at which water-intake becomes counter-productive.  Water curbs hunger, is filling, aids in digestion and maintains hydration which has many benefits.  Water has zero calories and can be taken as ice.

(8) Chew food more, taking at least one full breath after every bite.  While it will vary according to what’s being eaten, as a guide, chew 20-30 times for each mouthful. This not only assists digestion but slows the pace of eating, reducing consumption.

(9) Cut food into smaller pieces which (1) slows the process of eating, (2) can make you think you’re eating more (there's nothing wrong with fooling yourself if self-aware) and (3) it will make other people think you ate more (in some circumstances it can be helpful to fool others).

Thinspirationist: Actor Lily Collins (b 1989) in a semi-sheer white Calvin Klein ensemble, the cropped spaghetti-strap top and knee-length pencil skirt, both embellished with scale sequins, New York Fashion Week, New York City, September, 2025.  Note the pleasing definition of the sinews (arrowed, centre).  The hair-style is a chin-length bob.

(10) Associate unhealthy food with something else: ice cream with saturated fat, bread with carbs, juice with sugar etc.  Concrete visual examples are also helpful: imagine cake as fat sitting in and adding bulk to your thighs, chips as a permanent lining adding mass to the stomach etc.

(11) Learn from other people eating because while there are individual variations, overall, the patterns should be consistent.  Watch skinny people and apply their principles to your own diet; watch fat people with disgust and revulsion, avoiding what they do.

(12) Decide beforehand how much you are going to eat and never eat more.  If cooking, cook only one serving, so you can’t eat anymore.  The ideal model is to have no food in the house and each day buy only what you’re that day allowed.  It can at first be difficult but can be done and if stuck to, it’s a foolproof diet because you cannot eat what's not there.  If on the day you've not been able to buy food, you must fast and take in only water or black tea and coffee.  You won't enjoy it but it's good for you and may inspire you to add one or two "fast days" to the weekly cycle.

Lindsay Lohan shopping on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, 2009.  Her thinspo pin-up career long out-lasted her blonde phase.

(13) Always remind yourself of your goals and rewards.  Keep track of daily nutrient and food goals (some use a diet minder journal or tracking app but the best method is whatever works for you).  Weigh yourself twice a day (before morning coffee and just before going to bed), the goal being always to see a lower number than previous weigh-in.  If you have achieved a target weight and operate within a daily variation of +/- 100g, that is acceptable although that's also technologically deterministic: if your digital scales report in 50g increments, reduce your acceptable variability to that level for if God has given us such scales, She's trying to tell us something.

(14) Don’t eat 2½ hours before bed.  This time window can be increased but not reduced.

(15) You’ll be sometimes compelled to eat with friends or family so develop techniques surreptitiously to dispose of food.  You’ll get good at knowing where to sit so one hand can always be unseen and a good trick is to wear clothes with big pockets you can line with plastic bags.  Sit somewhere which makes disposal simple (open windows ideal, large pot plants can work) and develop a suite of reasons to ask to sit in certain spots.

(16) Don't be tempted to take up smoking or vaping.  While it can't be denied smoking often works as an appetite suppressant (all those commendably slender catwalk models can't be wrong), inhaling a known carcinogen is unwise because not only does it shorten lifespan (it seems on average by about a decade although the numbers do bounce around) but even while one remains alive it can induce or worsen many illnesses and other conditions.  While in the long run we're all dead and one should die thin, the object is to live thin for as long as life remains enchanting and what smoking does is tend to reduce life expectancy.  The numbers need to be understood because while dying at 75 rather that 85 may not (vied from decades afar) sound that bad, smoking directly can kill those in their twenties or thirties.  There are better ways (see 1-15 above) to lose weight and the evidence on vaping is mixed.  It's too soon to tell what the long-term health outcomes will be but there is anecdotal evidence flavored vapes can stimulate one's appetite and that makes sense because so many use tastes the mind associates with "sweet".  There's only one acceptable form of addiction: diet & exercise.     

Suicide

Suicide (pronounced soo-uh-sahyd)

(1) The intentional taking of one's own life.

(2) By analogy, acts or behavior, which whether intentional or not, lead to the self-inflicted destruction of one's own interests or prospects.

(3) In automotive design, a slang term for rear doors hinged from the rear.

(4) In fast food advertising, a niche-market descriptor of high-calorie products deliberately or absurdly high in salt, sugar and fat.

(5) A trick in the game Diabolo where one of the sticks is released and allowed to rotate 360° round the Diabolo until it is caught by the hand that released it.

(6) In Queensland (Australia) political history, as suicide squad, the collective name for the additional members of the Legislative Council (upper house) appointed in 1921 solely for the purpose of voting for its abolition.

(7) In sardonic military slang, as suicide mission, a description for an operation expected to suffer a very high casualty rate.

(8) A children's game of throwing a ball against a wall and at other players, who are eliminated by being struck.

(9) Pertaining to a suicide bombing, the companion terms being suicide belt & suicide vest.

(10) In electrical power, as "suicide cable (or cord, lead etc)", a power cord with male connections each end and used to inject power from a generator into a structing wiring system (highly dangerous if incorrectly used).

(11) In drug slang, the depressive period that typically occurs midweek (reputedly mostly on Tuesdays, following weekend drug use.

(12) In US slang, a beverage combining all available flavors at a soda fountain (known also as the "graveyard" or "swamp water".

(13) As "suicide runs" or "suicide sprints", a form of high-intensity sports training consisting of a series of sprints of increasing lengths, each followed immediately by a return to the start, with no pause between one and the next.

1651: From the New Latin  suīcīdium (killing of oneself), from suīcīda and thought probably of English origin, the construct being the Latin suī (genitive singular of reflexive pronunciation of se (one’s self)) from suus (one’s own) + cīdium (the suffix forms cīda & cide) from caedere (to kill).  The primitive European root was s(u)w-o (one's own) from the earlier s(w)e and new coining displaced the native Old English selfcwalu (literally “self-slaughter”).  Suicide is a noun & verb, suicidal is a noun & adjective, suicider is a noun; the noun plural is suicides.  Pedantic scholars of Latin have never approved of the word because, technically, the construct could as well be translated as the killing of a sow but, in medieval times, purity had long deserted Latin and never existed in English.  The modern meaning dates from 1728; the term in the earlier Anglo Latin was the vaguely euphemistic felo-de-se (one guilty concerning himself).  It may be an urban myth but there was a story that a 1920s editor of the New York Times had a rule that anyone who died in a Stutz Bearcat would be granted a NYT obituary unless the death was a suicide.  Suicide is a noun & verb, suicidal is a noun & adjective, suicider, suicidology, suicidalist, suicidality, suicidalness & suicidism are nouns, suicidogenic is an adjective, suicided is a verb & adjective, suiciding is a verb and suicidally is an adverb; the noun plural is suicides.

Terms like “professional suicide”, “commercial suicide” and “career suicide” are, even if the era of trigger warnings, still used as is “political suicide” and it is a word politicians like to use (of their opponents).  Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996), having read the Fightback! political manifesto prepared for the 1993 general election by the Liberal Party’s then leader Dr John Hewson (b 1946; leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1990-1994), declared it “the longest suicide note in Australian political history”, a critique which seems first to have been made by a member of the Canberra press gallery although a similar phrase had a decade earlier been used in the UK by Labour Party politician Sir Gerald Kaufman (1930–2017) when damning his own party’s 1983 platform.  An extraordinary 650(!) pages, Fightback! reflected well on Dr Hewson’s background as an academic neo-liberal economist but as something to persuade voters to vote Liberal it was monumentally bizarre and nobody has since attempted anything like it.  Dubbed at the time (for many a good reason) "the unlosable election", lose in 1993 Dr Hewson did and to this day Fightback! is blamed.

Bloody Bob hasn't!, John Clarke (1948–2017) and Bryan Dawe (b 1948), ABC Television 7:30 report, Monday 15 March, 1993.  

A footnote to the unexpected result in the 1993 election was an exposure of the dangers inherent in pre-recording television material for later broadcast.  The conventional wisdom was a significant factor in Labor's impending defeat was that Mr Keating allowed his personal ambition to become prime-minister prevail over the interests of the party and in deposing Bob Hawke (1929–2019; Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) who'd won the previous four elections, he'd sacrificed any hope of gaining a fifth term.  The satirists John Clarke (1948–2017) and Bryan Dawe (b 1948) produced a skit using their “pseudo interview” technique in which they followed the documentary model of the ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Labor in Power series; they depicted the political rivals as two children squabbling over whose turn it was with the toy.  The final question asked “Paul” which of them now had the toy to which he replied “Bloody Bob hasn’t!”.  The punch-line would have worked had Mr Keating had the decency to lose the election but of course he won so the joke went flat. 

UK Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 1830–1903; UK Prime Minister for thirteen years variously 1885-1902) remarked of the long, sad decline of Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) that the deceased had proved to be “chief mourner at his own protracted funeral” and confided to colleagues “the man committed suicide as surely as if he blown his brains out.”.  Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) remarked of the ill-advised book published by one politician whose career had imploded that it was probably the “…first time a man has committed suicide twice.”  Not noted for his wit, that may have been Wilhelm’s finest moment although it does vie with his observation on hearing that, in deference to the state of war between their two nations, the British Royal family was changing its name to “Windsor”.  The Kaiser said he hoped soon to attend a performance in Berlin of William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) “The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.”.

Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) arranged a few “suicides” and in a nice touch sometimes appeared at the funeral as chief mourner whereas Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) in similar circumstances seems to have restricted himself to sending a wreath and, for the especially exalted, authorizing a state funeral.  Although doubtlessly it's all just bad luck and coincidence, it is striking how many sources on various platforms have compiled lists of the remarkable number of "suicides" in some way associated with Bill (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) & crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  It's an impressively large toll but, in fairness, Socks (1989-2009; FCOTUS (First Cat of the United States 1993-2001)) did live an untypically long 20-odd years although he escaped the Clinton's clutches after 2001.

A pioneer in the field of suicidology, Dr Shneidman’s publication record was indicative of his specialization.

Dr Edwin Shneidman (1918-2009) was a clinical psychologist who practiced as a thanatologist (a practitioner in the field of thanatology (the scientific study of death and the practices associated with it, including the study of the needs of the terminally ill and their families); the construct of thanatology being thanato- (from the Ancient Greek θάνατος (thánatos) (death)) +‎ -logy.  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism etc).Like many working in the field, Dr Shneidman discussed the effect suicides have on the friends and family of those who took their own lives and there are to these events many responses beyond the obvious.

Geli Raubal.

One especially curious relationship in the anyway strange life of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was that he enjoyed with his niece Geli Raubal (1908–1931), the daughter of his elder half-sister Angela (1883–1949) who acted as his housekeeper; despite much speculation, it has never fully been explained and quite what transpired between them will probably never be known.  Most historians have concluded Hitler was obsessed with Geli although whether that meant he was “in love” divides opinion, a substantial body of those working in the field suspecting Hitler was no more capable of love than he was of true friendship.  One day in 1931, in the room he’d allotted to her in his Munich apartment, after Hitler had been driven off for a speaking engagement in Hamburg, Geli committed suicide, shooting herself with her uncle’s Walther PP pistol; she was then 23.  The (pre Nazi-state) Munich police ruled the death a suicide but, inevitably, there has long been speculation about her death, the most popular “theory” being Hitler, in a rage, accidently or intentionally shooting her after discovering her pregnancy, variations of the speculation suggesting the unborn child was either his or that of another man.  There is no substantive evidence to support any of these notions but Hitler’s subsequent reaction and apparent grief was well documented and from the moment he heard of her death he never again ate meat, telling the noted hunter and definitely carnivorous Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945): “It’s like eating a corpse.”

Suicide Squads

Henry Asquith (1852-1928) and his youthful friend Venetia Stanley (1887–1948).

Although few were quite as vituperative as Paul Keating who once describes the members of the Australian Senate as "unrepresentative swill", governments in the twentieth century often found upper houses to be such a nuisance they schemed and plotted ways to curb their powers or, preferably, do away with them entirely.  As the electoral franchise was extended, governments were sometimes elected with what they considered a mandate to pursue liberal or progressive policies while upper houses, by virtue of their composition and tenure (some with life-time appointments) often acted as an obstruction, rejecting legislation or imposing interminable delays by sending proposed laws to be “discussed to death” in committees from which “nothing ever emerged”.  This was the situation which confronted the glittering Liberal Party cabinet of HH Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916) which in 1909 found the Lords, in defiance of long established convention, blocking passage of the budget.  The Lords was wholly unelected, its membership mostly inherited, sometimes by virtue of some service (virtuous or otherwise) by an ancestor hundreds of years before.  Successive elections didn’t resolve the crisis and Asquith resolved to pursue the only lawful mechanism available: the creation of as many peers as would be necessary (in the hundreds) to secure the passage of his legislation.

Terry Richardson's (b 1965) suicide-themed shoot with Lindsay Lohan, 2012.

That of course required royal ascent and the newly enthroned George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), while making his reservations clear, proved a good constitutional monarch and made it known he would follow the advice of his prime-minister.  As it turned out, the “suicide squad” wasn’t required, their Lordships, while not at all approving of the government, were more appalled still at the thought of their exclusive club being swamped with “jumped-up grocers” in “bad hats” and allowed the legislation to pass.  Actually, “castration squad” might have been a more accurate description because while the Lords survived, Asquith ensured it would be less of an obstacle, substituting the road block of its power of veto with a speed-bump, a right to impose a two-year delay (in 1949 reduced to six months).  The New Labour administration (1997-2010) introduced further reforms which were designed eventually to remove from the Lords all those who held seats by virtue of descent and even the Tories later moved in that direction although the efforts have stalled and a few of the hereditary peers remain.  As things now stand, the last remaining absolute veto the Lords retain is to stop an attempt by a government to extend a parliament's life beyond five years. 

The preserved Legislative Council chamber in Queensland's Parliament House.

Some upper house assassins however truly were a suicide squad.  In Australia, the state of Queensland followed the usual convention whereby the sub-national parliaments were bicameral, the Legislative Council the upper house and like the others, it was a bastion of what might now be called "those representing the interests of the 1%" and a classic example of white privilege.  Actually, at the time, the lower houses were also places of white privilege but the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had long regarded the non-elected Legislative Council (and upper houses in general) as undemocratic and reactionary so in 1915, after securing a majority in the Legislative Assembly (the lower house) which permitted the party to form government, they sought abolition.  The Legislative Council predictably rejected the bills passed by the government in 1915 & 1916 and a referendum conducted in 1917 decisively was lost; undeterred, in 1920, the government requested the governor appoint sufficient additional ALP members to the chamber to provide an abolitionist majority.  In this, the ALP followed the example of the Liberal Party in the UK which in 1911 prevailed upon the king to appoint as many new peers as might be needed for their legislation to pass unimpeded through an otherwise unsympathetic House of Lords.  That wasn’t needed as things transpired but in Queensland, the new members of the Legislative Council duly took their places and on 26 October 1921, the upper house voted in favor of abolition, the new appointees known forever as "the suicide squad".  Despite the success, the trend didn't spread and the Commonwealth parliament and those of the other five states remain bicameral although the two recent creations, established when limited self-government was granted to the Northern Territory (NT) and Australian Capital Territory (ACT), both had unicameral assemblies.

Margot Robbie (b 1990) in costume as Harley Quinn (a comic book character created by DC Comics), Suicide Squad (2016).

Across the Tasman Sea (which locals call "the ditch"), the New Zealand upper house lasted another three decades but it’s eventual demise came about not because of conflict but because the institution was increasing viewed as comatose, rejecting nothing, contributing little and rarely inclined even to criticize.  Unlike in England and Queensland, in New Zealand the abolition movement enjoyed cross-party support, left and right (although the latter in those days were pretty leftist), united in their bored disdain.  One practical impediment was the New Zealand parliament couldn’t amend the country’s constitution because no government had ever bothered to adopt the Statute of Westminster (1931) by which the Imperial Parliament had granted effective independence to the Dominions but in 1947 this was done.  Despite that, the Labour Party didn’t act and after prevailing in the 1950 general election, it was a National Party administration which passed the Legislative Council Abolition Act, its passage assured after a twenty-member “suicide squad” was appointed and the upper house’s meeting of 1 December 1950 proved its last.  Opposition from within the chamber had actually been muted, presumably because to sweeten the deal, the government used some of the money saved to pay some generous “retirement benefits” for the displaced politicians.  New Zealand since has continued as a unitary state with a unicameral legislature.

Pineapples.

In the Far East (the practice documented in Japan, the PRC (People's Republic of China) and the renegade province of Taiwan), fruit sellers offer pineapples for sale of the basis of “Murder” (谋杀 and variants) or “Suicide” (自殺する and variants).  Ominous as it sounds, it's just commercial shorthand.  Pineapples being more difficult to handle than many fruits, fruit shops offer the “murder” service in which staff will (for a small fee) peel and chop as required.  Those prepared to do their own preparation at home can take the “suicide” option and (at a lesser cost) purchase the whole fruit, skin and all.  There are many reasons to eat pineapple.

Suicide doors

1928 Mercedes-Benz Nürburg (W08) with four rear-hinged doors.

It wasn’t until the 1950s the practice of hinging doors from the front became (almost) standardized.  Prior to that, they’d opened from the front or rear, some vehicles featuring both.  The rear-hinged doors became known as suicide doors because they were genuinely dangerous (in the pre-seat belt era), the physics of them opening while the car was at speed had the effect of dragging the passenger into the airstream.  Additionally, it was said they were more likely to injure people if struck by passing vehicles while being opened although the consequences of being struck by a car sound severe whatever the circumstances.

2021 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII Tempus with "coach doors".

Still used in the 1960s by Lincoln, Ford and Rolls-Royce, they were phased out as post-Nader safety regulations began to be applied to automotive design and were thought extinct when the four door Ford Thunderbirds ceased production in 1971.  However, after being seen in a few design exercises over the decades, Rolls-Royce included them on the Phantom VII, introduced in 2003, the feature carried over to the Phantom VIII in 2017.  Like other manufacturers, Rolls-Royce has no fondness for the term suicide doors, preferring to call them coach doors; nomenclature from other marketing departments including flex doors and freestyle doors.  Engineers are less impressed by silly words, noting the correct term is rear-hinged and these days, mechanisms are included to ensure they can be opened only when the vehicle is at rest.  Encouraged by the reaction, Rolls-Royce brought back the rear-hinged door for their fixed (FHC) and drop-head (DHC) coupés although, despite the retro-touch, the factory seems now content usually to call them simply coupés and convertibles.  

1971 Ford Thunderbird Landau with "suicide doors".

In a nod to a shifting market, when the fifth generation Thunderbird was introduced in 1967, the four-door replaced the convertible which had been a staple of the line since 1955.  Probably the only car ever visually improved by a vinyl roof, the four-door was unique to the 1967-1971 generation, its replacement offered only as a coupé.  The decision effectively to reposition the model was taken to avoid a conflict with the new Mercury Cougar, the Thunderbird moving to the "personal coupé" segment which would become so popular.  So popular in fact that within a short time Ford would find space both for the Thunderbird and the Continental Mark III, changing tastes by the 1970s meaning the Cougar would also be positioned there along with a lower-priced Thunderbird derivative, the Elite.  Such was the demand for the personal coupé that one manufacturer successfully could support four models in the space, sometimes with over-lapping price-points depending on the options.  The four-door Thunderbirds are unique in being the only car ever built where the appearance was improved by the presence of a vinyl roof, the unusual semi-integration of the rear door with the C pillar necessitating something be done to try to conceal the ungainliness, the fake "landau irons" part of the illusion.

1967 Lincoln Continental convertible.  The later cars with the longer wheelbase are popular as wedding cars because the suicide doors can make ingress & egress more elegant for brides with big dresses although those with big hair often veto the lowering of the roof until after the photos have been taken.

The combination of the suicide door, the four-door coachwork and perhaps even the association with the death of President Kennedy has long made the convertible a magnet for collectors but among American cars of the era, it is different in that although the drive-train is typical of the simple, robust engineering then used, it's packed also with what can be an intimidating array of electrical and hydraulic systems which require both expertise and equipment properly to maintain.  That need has kept a handful of specialists in business for decades, often rectifying the mistakes of others.  It was unique; after the last of the even rarer Mercedes-Benz 300d Cabriolet Ds left the line in 1962, Lincoln alone offered anything in the once well-populated niche.

LBJ's 1964 Lincoln Continental convertible.

The four-door convertible's most famous owner was Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) who would use it to drive visitors around his Texas ranch (often with opened can of Pearl beer in hand according to LBJ folklore).  While never a big seller (21,347 made over seven years and it achieved fewer than 4,000 sales even in its best year), it was the most publicized of the line and to this day remains a staple in film & television productions needing verisimilitude of the era.  The convertible was discontinued after 1967 when 2276 were built, the two-door hardtop introduced the year before out-selling it five to one.  The market had spoken; it would be the last convertible Lincoln ever produced and it's now a collectable, LBJ's 1964 model in 2024 selling at auction for US$200,000 and fully restored examples without a celebrity connection regularly trade at well into five figures, illustrating the magic of the coach-work.

A mother watching her daughter enter her 1963 Lincoln Continental, the door held open by the girl's brother.  These are two of the family's 2.66 (1964 average) children.

Ford's advertising agency rose to the occasion when producing copy for the four-door convertible.  They certainly had scope because it was unique so many superlatives and adjectives which usually were little more than "mere puffery" would in this case have been literally true.  It was though a case of making "a silk purse from a sow's ear" because Lincoln adopted the suicide doors only because the car's wheelbase was too short for conventionally (forward) hinged doors to provide a sufficiently wide gap for entry and exit.  While that may sound a strange thing to plague a new design, the 1961 Continental was built on the platform of a proposed Ford Thunderbird which would have been available only with a two-door body and despite what the advertising copy suggests, even with the use of suicide doors, access to the rear compartment was tight, something not rectified until the wheelbase (123 inches (3,124 mm) for 1961-1963 & 126 inches (3,200 mm) for 1964-1969) was extended.     

Lincoln Continental concepts, Los Angeles Motor Show, 2002 (left) and New York Motors Show 2015 (right).

The Lincoln Continental for decades remained successful after the "great des-sizing" began in 1979 and despite the perceptions of some, the generation which was least-well received was that (1982-1987) based on Ford's smaller "Fox" platform, sales rebounding when the larger eighth generation (1988-1994) made it debut and that was despite the switch to FWD (front-wheel-drive) and the lack of a V8; clearly for Lincoln buyers it was size which mattered rather than the details of what lay beneath and presumably many neither knew, could tell or cared it was FWD, a configuration which anyway increased interior space, something of more tangible benefit to most than what could be achieved on a slalom course.  Interest by the late 1990s was however dwindling and the nameplate suffered a fourteen year hiatus between 2002-2016.  Unfortunately, the resuscitation (without suicide doors) used as its inspiration the concept car displayed at the 2015 New York International Auto Show rather than the one so admired at Los Angeles in 2002.  The LA concept might not have been original but was an elegant and accomplished design, unlike what was offered in NYC fifteen years later: a dreary mash-up which looked something like a big Hyundai or a Chinese knock-off of a Maybach.  The public response was muted.

2019 Lincoln Continental Eightieth Anniversary Edition.

The tenth generation (2017-2020) managed what were by historic standards modest sales but by 2019, it seemed clear the thing was on death-watch but Lincoln surprised the industry with a batch of eighty LWB (long wheelbase) models with suicide doors to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Continental’s introduction in 1939.  Although there were those who suggested the relatively cheap process of a stretch and a re-hinge of the back-doors was a cynical way to turn a US$72K car into one costing US$102K and was likely aimed at the Chinese market where a higher price tag and more shiny stuff is thought synonymous with good taste, the anniversary models were sold only in the home market. Although even at the high price there was enough demand to induce ford to do a run of another 150 (non-commemorative) suicide door versions for 2020, the retro gesture proved not enough to save the breed and it was announced production would end on 30 October 2020 with no replacement listed.  Not only was the announcement expected but so was the reaction; the market having long lost interest in the uninspiring twenty-first century Continentals, few expressed regret.  The name-plate however, one of the most storied in the Ford cupboard, will doubtless one day return.  What it will look like is unpredictable but few expect it will match the elegance of what was done in the 1960s.

Haile Selassie I (1892-1975; Emperor of Ethiopia 1930-1974) being received by a ceremonial guard after alighting from the 1966 Vanden Plas Princess 4 Litre (DM4) Limousine of the Governor-General of Jamaica, 21 April 1966 (left) and Vanden Plas Princess with suicide doors open (right).

Emperor Haile Selassie’s 1966 state visit to Jamaica and the Caribbean has since been celebrated by Rastafari as “Grounation Day”, the term based on the emperor declining to walk on the red carpet provided in accordance with protocol because he wished to “make contact with the soil”.  Among many of the Rastafari (a movement which emerged in the 1930s, taking its name from Ras (the emperor’s pre-imperial name Ras)) Haile Selassie was worshipped as God incarnate, the messiah who delivered the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora to freedom from colonial oppression.  The limousine had been delivered to the island some six weeks earlier for the use of Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) during her royal tour after which, she returned to London and the car was re-allocated to Government House as the viceroy’s official vehicle.  While it looked like something left over from pre-war days, for its intended purpose it was ideal, the rear compartment capacious, luxuriously trimmed and tall, making it suitable for those wearing even the highest plumed hats.  Into this welcoming space, occupants stepped through suicide doors which offered unparalleled ease of entry and departure, especially for the diminutive Haile Selassie who would barely have needed to bow his head.

1965 Vanden Plas Princess 4 Litre (DM4) Limousine Landaulette (left) and 1940s advertisement for Dickson automatic rear door-locks.

Based on a car which was even upon its debut in 1952 seemed old fashioned, by 1968 when production finally ended, the Vanden Plas Princess was, stylistically and technically, a true relic and it’s remarkable that, still with a split windscreen of two flat panes, it was a contemporary of machines like the Lincoln Continental, Jaguar XJ6 and NSU Ro80.  It was very much a case it being better to be inside a DM4 among burled walnut and West of England Cloth (durable leather was for chauffeurs and other servants who rode up front) looking (and for some, waving) out than on the outside looking on.  What must seem even more remarkable was that despite picking up a nickname like “suicide doors”, governments for decades did nothing to compel manufacturers to fit the small, cheap mechanisms (available on the aftermarket for US$3.95 a pair) which would prevent the doors opening while the car was in motion.  These potentially life-saving devices were not expensive and if installed in bulk on production lines, the unit cost would not much have exceeded US$1.00.  It was another world and not until the 1960s did the rising death toll compel legislatures to take seriously the matter of automotive safety.

1968 Vanden Plas Princess 4 Litre (DM4) "facelift prototype".

Vanden Plas did in 1968 belatedly plan an update of the DM4 which sort of "brought it into the 1950s" although for the target market, that may have been no bad thing.  By then however Harold Wilson's (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) Labour Party government had engineered the "great coming together" which was the ultimately doomed British Leyland and with Jaguar also in the conglomerate, their much more advanced Daimler DS420 (1968-1992) limousine was obviously superior and there was no place for the "modernized DM4", the grafting of quad headlights and a one-piece windscreen not enough to save the relic from extinction.  Along with New Zealand's curious hybrid post-war model (which sort of worked until the UK's entry in 1973 into the EEC (the European Economic Community, the Zollverein that would evolve into the EU (European Union)), the Wilson government was the West's only serious attempt to combine political freedom with a quasi-socialist, planned (if not quite command) economy and the reactions to the lessons provided by British Leyland (and other state ventures) contributed to the hegemony of the neo-liberal model which for the last four-decades odd has done what it's done.  

When used by the wedding and hire car industries, some operators took advantage of many of the English limousines from the 1950s & 1960s being fitted with version of the GM (General Motors) Hydramatic automatic transmission, installing in each centre-post a dead-bolt activated by an electrical solenoid, the system triggered by “on” by the shift lever being in drive (locking the rear doors) and “off” by moving the lever to neutral (withdrawing the bolt).  Vanden Plas did at least on some models include on the dashboard a pair of red lights which brightly would glow if the corresponding left or right door was not completely closed.  The much more expensive Rolls-Royce limousines had no such “safety lights”; passengers in those were on their own.  It was not a theoretical problem because there were many documented cases of passengers, especially those sitting (without seat belts) in the jump-seats leaning against the doors, sometimes pressing down the handle, cause the door to open.

1960 Facel Vega Excellence EX1.

The four-door Facel Vegas featured suicide doors which were among the most potentially dangerous because of the dubious (though elegant) engineering in the locking mechanisms.  Note also the "dog leg" of the A-Pillar (windscreen), a styling trend borrowed from Detroit which caused many injuries to knees and one victim was Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) who who in August, 1960 suffered a hit during his doomed campaign for that year's presidential election.  It resulted in a staphylococci infection which for two weeks confined him to bed in Walter Reed Hospital at a time when his opponent (John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was travelling the country campaigning and for a born politician like Nixon it wouldn't have been much consolation that his bedside well-wishers included Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater (1909–1998; Republican Party nominee for the 1964 US presidential election); hearing those two were walking down the corridor, he may have wondered if he could fake his own death.  One biographer suggested the injury happened because his team deliberately chose to use a cheaper Chevrolet rather than a "larger" Cadillac in order to project a less elitist image.  While the reason for the choice of car was true, the impact injury would anyway likely have happened because, beginning with the 1959 range, for reasons of production-line rationalization, Chevrolet & Cadillac (along with corporate stable-mates Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac) all shared GM's corporate C-Body platform and while between divisions there were sometimes dimensional differences (notably in wheelbases), the front doors, A-Pillars and seat mounting points were identical in all.    

If compatible (which seems improbable given the novelty of this French approach to door-latch design), the Dickson locks would have been a worthwhile addition for the Facel Vega Excellence (1956-1964) which, in a triumph of fashion over function, had no B-Pillar (ie the central one between the doors) at all, the suicide doors secured only by a locking mechanism in the door sill, something which worked well in static testing but on the road, lateral stresses induced during cornering meant the doors were apt to “fly open”, something to ponder in the pre-seat-belt era.  The completely pillarless look did however look good so there was that.  One of the most glamorous machines of the era, many celebrities were drawn to Facel Vegas but the most infamous association was with the author Albert Camus (1913–1960), killed instantly when the FV3B in which he was a passenger crashed into a tree; the car was being driven by his publisher, Michel Gallimard (1917–1960), who was mortally injured, dying within days.  Although the accident happened on a long, straight section of road, the conditions were icy and the official cause was listed as "...a loss of control while travelling at an excessive speed for the conditions".  The FV3B was a two-door coupé so there was no link with the suicide doors used on the Excellence, the possibility of tyre failure has always been speculative and there's now little support for the conspiracy theory (which long circulated) suggesting the KGB may have sabotaged the car because of the author's anti-Soviet stance.  Powered by a variety of Chrysler V8s (the "Hemi", "Poly" & "Wedge" all at times used), the "big" Facel Vegas (1954-1964; some 506 coupés, 156 sedans and a reputed 11 cabriolets) were France's finest cars of the post-war years but the decision to produce a smaller range doomed the company.  The concept was sound, the market existed and the product was well-designed but the French-made four-cylinder engine proved chronically (and insolubly) unreliable; by the time a version powered by a robust Volvo unit was ready, warranty claims and the costs of the re-engineering had driven Facel Vega bankrupt.

Lure of the tragic

Evelyn McHale: "The most beautiful suicide".

Predictably, it’s the suicides of celebrities (however defined) which attract most interest but there’s a fascination also with those by young women and that’s understandable because of the lure of youthful beauty and tragedy.  The photograph remembered as “the most beautiful suicide” was taken by photography student Robert Wiles (1909-1991), some four minutes after the victim's death.  Evelyn Francis McHale (1923–1947) was a bookkeeper who threw herself to her death from the 86th-floor observation deck of New York's Empire State Building, landing on a Cadillac limousine attached to the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) which was parked on 34th street, some 200 feet (60 m) west of Fifth Ave.  The police would later find he last note which read: “I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation?  I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me.  My fiance asked me to marry him in June.  I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me.  Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”  It was reported her mother suffered from “an undiagnosed and untreated depression”.

Mary Miller and the "Genesee Hotel Suicide".  Earlier postcard of the Genesse Hotel with eighth floor ledge indicated by yellow arrow (left) and Mr Sorgi's photograph (centre) of the suicide's aftermath (right).

In many parts of the world, it’s now unusual if someone is not carrying a device able instantly to capture HD (high-definition) images & video footage but until relatively recently, cameras rarely were taken from the home unless to use them at set piece events such as vacations or parties.  Not only are people now able to record what they see but within seconds, images and clips can be transmitted just about anywhere in the world, some “going viral”.  This proliferation of content has had many implications, one noted phenomenon it seeming now more likely someone will film another at imminent risk of death or injury than offer to assist; psychiatrists, sociologists and such have offered views on that but the behaviour, at least in some cases might be better explained by lawyers and economists.

In 1942 it was mostly professional photographers who routinely would have to hand a camera and the devices were not then like the instantly available “point & shoot” technology of the digital age, the process then a cocktail of loading physical film-stock, assessing the light, adjusting the aperture and maybe even swapping lens.  The photograph (the lens wide-open and the shutter was set to a 1000th of a second), of Mary Millar (1907-1942), mid-flight in her leap to death from an eighth-floor ledge of the Genesee Hotel in Buffalo, New York was a thing most unusual: an anyway rare event happening when someone stood ready to take the picture.  When published, the photograph was captioned “Suicide” or “The Genesee Hotel Suicide” but the popular press couldn’t resist embellishment, one using the title “The Despondent Divorcee” which was in the tabloid tradition of “making stuff up”; Ms Millar had never been married and not in a relationship.  She left no suicide note.

Ignatius Russell Sorgi (1912-1995) was a staff photographer on Buffalo’s Courier Express who on 7 May, 1942 happened to take a different route back to the office when he saw a police car speeding down the road, sirens blaring.  Accordingly, in the “ambulance chasing” tradition, he followed, not knowing what he’d see but knew it might be news-worthy and gain him a front-page credit: “I snatched my camera from the car and took two quick shots as she seemed to hesitate…As quickly as possible I shoved the exposed film into the case and reached for a fresh holder.  I no sooner had pulled the slide out and got set for another shot than she waved to the crowd below and pushed herself into space.  Screams and shouts burst from the horrified onlookers as her body plummeted toward the street.  I took a firm grip on myself, waited until the woman passed the second or third story, and then shot.”