Purple

Purple (pronounced pur-puhl)

(1) Any color having components of both red and blue (often highly saturated), the darker the hue, the more likely to be described thus.

(2) In color theory, any non-spectral color on the line of purples on a color chromaticity diagram or a color wheel between violet and red.

(3) A dye or pigment producing such a colour

(4) Cloth or clothing of this hue, especially as formerly worn distinctively by persons of imperial, royal, or other high rank.

(5) In the Roman Catholic Church, a term at various times used to describe a monsignor, bishop or cardinal (or their office), now most associated with the rank, office or authority of a cardinal.

(6) Imperial, regal, or princely in rank or position.

(7) Any of several nymphalid butterflies including the red-spotted purple and the banded purple)

(8) Of or pertaining to the color purple (or certain things regarded as purple).

(9) In writing, showy or overwrought; exaggerated use of literary devices and effects; marked by excessively ornate rhetoric (purpureal).

(10) In language, profane or shocking; swearing.

(11) In modern politics, relating to or noting political or ideological diversity (in the US based on the blending of Democrat (blue) and Republican (red); in other places red & blue indicate different places on the political spectrum).

(12) In drug slang; the purple haze cultivar of cannabis in the kush family, either pure or mixed with others, or by extension any variety of smoked marijuana (“purple haze” a popular name for commercially available weed in those places where such thing are lawful.  Purple haze was originally slang for LSD.

(13) In agriculture, earcockle, a disease of wheat.

(14) To make or become purple (or, in ecclesiastical use, to put on one’s purple vestments) .

Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun and adjective purple, purpel & purpur, from Old English purpuren & purpul, a dissimilation (first recorded in Northumbrian, in the Lindisfarne gospel) of purpure (purple dye, a purple garment), from the adjective purpuren (purple; dyed or colored purple), from purpura (a kind of shellfish, Any of various species of molluscs from which Tyrian purple dye was obtained, especially the common dog whelk; the dye; cloth so dyed; splendid attire generally), from the Ancient Greek πορφύρα (porphýra or porphura) (the purple fish (Murex)), perhaps of Semitic origin.  Purpur continued as a parallel form until the fifteenth century and was maintained in the rules of heraldry until well into the nineteenth.  The verb purple (to tinge or stain with purple) was from the noun and emerged circa 1400.  The earlier form was purpured, a past-participle adjective.  The adjective purplish (somewhat purple, tending to purple) was from the noun and dates from the 1560s.  Purple is a noun, verb & adjective, purpled & purpling are verbs, purplish, purpler, purply & purplest are adjectives and purpleness is a noun; the noun plural is purples.

1974 Triumph Stag in magenta.  Some of the shades of brown, beige, orange and such used in the 1970s by British Leyland are not highly regarded but some were quite striking.

The rhetorical use in reference to “the splendid; the gaudy” began as a description of garments (classically imperial regalia) and since the mid-eighteenth century, as “purple prose” of writing.  In US political discourse and commentary, purple has since been used (often in graphical or cartographic form) to indicating the sectional or geographical spaces in which the increasing division of the country into red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) was less apparent.  That this came into widespread use only by around 2004 is because the use of red & blue by the US news media became (more or less) standardized only by the 1990s, use have begun circa 1980, something without any relationship to the linking of the colors (red=left; blue=right) traditional in other parts of the English-speaking world.  Other words used to describe purplish shades include lavender, mauve, amethyst, violet (with many sub-types) lilac, orchid, indigo, mulberry, plum, eggplant (aubergine seems rare but is used in commerce), fuchsia, heliotrope, periwinkle, purpureus & thistle and while many directly reference the flowers of plants, one curiosity is magenta: It was so called because the dye of that shade was created at the time of the Battle of Magenta (1559) in which French and Sardinian forces defeated those of the Austrians.  Purple is widely used in zoology and botany to create common names of species to some extent colored purple.

Purple patch: 1970 Dodge Challenger (440 Six-Pack) in Plum Crazy (left) and 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda in In Violet) (clone; right).

Chrysler had some history in the coining of fanciful names for colors dating from the psychedelic era of the late 1960s when the choices included Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told was that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape.  The lurid colors soon disappeared, not only because fashions change but because at the time they depended on the use of lead which was banned from paint in the early 1970s.  Not until the early twenty-first century did manufacturers perfect ways economically to replicate the earlier colors without using lead.

In idiomatic use, purple is popular.  One “born into the purple” was literally one of royal or exalted birth although it’s now often used even of those from families somewhere in the upper middle class.  The “purple death” was hospital slang for Spanish influenza and it was an allusion to the cyanosis which, because of the difficulty breathing, which would turn the skin purple.  In the early post-war years “purple death” was also used to describe a cheap Italian wine.   The phrase “once in a purple moon” was a variation of “once in a blue moon” and some dictionaries include an entry, apparently only for the purpose of assuring us that not only is it extinct but it may never have been in common use.  “Purple bacteria” (the form only ever used in the plural) are a proteobacteria which produce their own food using photosynthesis; they are all classed as purple, even though some are orange, red or brown.  In the analogue-era world of the phone phreaks (hackers who used the telephone networks for other than the intended purpose), a “purple box” was a device which added a hold facility to a telephone line.  It was an allusion to the general term “black box” used in engineering and electronics to describe small devices with specific purposes; not all “purple boxes” were actually purple.  “Purple gas” was a Canadian term which described the gas (motor spirit; petrol) colored with a purple dye to indicate it was sold subject to a lower rate of taxation and for use only in agriculture and not on public roads.  Anyone found using “purple gas” beyond a farm could be charged and many countries use similar methods though the dye is not always purple.  “Purple gold” was a synonym of amethyst gold (a brittle alloy of gold and aluminium, purple in colour).

1994 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6  (964) in Amethyst Metallic over Classic Gray.

A “purple passage” (also as “purple prose”) was any form of writing thought showy or overwrought, using an exaggerated array of literary devices and effects or marked by excessively ornate rhetoric.  It was a criticism but the later “purple patch” which describes any particular good period or performance (in any context) was wholly positive.  The “purple pill” was an advertising slogan used by a pharmaceutical company but unlike “little blue pill” (Viagra), it never entered the vernacular.  “Purple plague” has specific meanings in chemistry and electronics (relating to a chemical reaction which produces an undesirable purple compound) but a more amusing use is by Roman Catholic bishops noting a unwanted number of monsignors (who wear a purple sash) in their dioceses, sent there by the Vatican.  In US politics a “purple state” is a “swing state”, one which, depending on this and that, may vote either Republican (red) or Democrat (blue).  The “purple star” was the symbol worn by Jehovah's Witnesses in concentration camps in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), one of a number of color-coded patches, the best-known of which was the yellow Jewish star.  The Jehovah's Witnesses were an interesting case in that uniquely among the camp inmates, they could at any time leave if they were prepared to sign a declaration denying their religious beliefs.  In international air-traffic management, a “purple zone” (also “purple airway”) describes a route reserved for an aircraft on which a member of a royal family is flying.  In US military use, the “Purple Heart” dating from 1932, is still awarded to service personnel wounded in combat.  It’s origin was a decoration in purple cloth first awarded in 1782 which came to be known as the “wound stripe”.  In the mid 1960s, “purple haze” was slang for LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide, a psychedelic drug with a long history verging on academic respectability before becoming a popular hallucinogenic, users clipping the term to "acid"); it was later repurposed for various strains of weed.

Lindsay Lohan, admirer of all things purple.

The dye tyrian purple (all the evidence suggests it would now be thought a crimson), was produced around Tyre and was prized as dye for royal garments, hence the figurative use in the sixteenth century of purple for “imperial or regal power” (it was also the color of mourning or penitence among royalty or the upper reaches of the clergy).  Tyrian purple (also known as shellfish purple) was for long periods the most expensive substance in Antiquity (often (by weight) three times the value of gold, the exchange rate set by a Roman edict issued in 301 AD.  By the fifteenth century when the intricate process to extract and process the dye was lost, Tyrian purple had for millennia been variously a symbol of strength, sovereignty and money and its use had spread from the Classical world to Southern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia and was so associated with the civilization of the Phoenicians (the color named after their city-state Tyre) that they were known as the “purple people”.  What many didn’t know was that the dye associated with the illustrious came not from a gemstone or some vivid coral but from the slimy mucous of sea snails in the Murex family.  Debate continues about what must have been the process used in extraction and production although, given many factories and artisans were involved over the years, there may have been many variations of the method.

It was in 1453 when the Byzantine capital Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) fell to the Ottomans that the knowledge of Tyrian purple was lost, something of a footnote to the end of the Eastern Roman Empire but still a loss.  Then, the infamously smelly dyeworks of the old city were the hub of purple production although, after a series of punitive taxes, the Catholic Church had lost control of the pigment which is the origin of the pope’s decision that red would become the new symbol of Christian power and this was adopted for the garb of cardinals; the story that the vivid red symbolized the blood cardinals mush be prepared to spill in the defense of their pope was just a cover story although one obviously approved of by the pontiff.

Beginning in 1968 with Shades of Deep Purple (left), the rock band Deep Purple sometimes used purple-themed album cover art and may have wished they'd stuck with that their eponymous third album (1969).  The original cover (centre), featuring a fragment of one panel of the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450-1516), was declared "demonic" by the US distributors so an alternative needed hastily be arranged and whether because of the tight schedule or just wanting to play it safe, they stuck to purple (right).  They'd earlier had a similar difficulty with their US label when releasing their second album (The Book of Taliesyn (1968)), the objection that time that one song title (Wring That Neck) was "too violent" (it was an instrumental piece and the reference was to a technique used with the neck of a guitar but it was anyway changed to Hard Road).  Times have changed.

Spook

Spook (pronounced spook)

(1) In informal use, a ghost; a specter; an apparition; hobgoblin.

(2) A person whose appearance or conduct is thought “ghost-like”.

(3) In philosophy, a metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct.

(4) In slang, a ghostwriter (one who writes text (typically columns, autobiography, memoir) published under the name of another,

(5) In slang, an eccentric person (now rare).

(6) In disparaging and offensive slang, term of contempt used of people of color (historically African-Americans).

(7) In slang, a spy; one engaged in espionage.

(8) In slang, a psychiatrist (originally US but now more widespread under the influence of pop culture.

(9) In the slang of blackjack, a player who engages in “hole carding” by attempting to glimpse the dealer's hole card when the dealer checks under an ace or a 10 to see if a blackjack is present.

(10) In southern African slang any pale or colorless alcoholic spirit (often as “spook & diesel”).

(11) To haunt; inhabit or appear in or to as a ghost or spectre.

(12) To frighten; to scare (often as “spooked”).

(13) To become frightened or scared (often as “spooked”); applied sometimes to animals, especially thoroughbred horses.

1801: A coining of US English, from the Dutch spook (ghost), from the Middle Dutch spooc & spoocke (spook, ghost), from an uncertain Germanic source (the earliest known link being the Middle Low German spōk (ghost), others including the Middle Low German spôk & spûk (apparition, ghost), the Middle High German gespük (a haunting), the German Spuk (ghost, apparition, hobgoblin), the Danish spøg (joke) & spøge (to haunt), the Norwegian spjok (ghost, specter) and the Swedish spok (scarecrow) & spöke (ghost).  The noun spook in the sense of “spectre, apparition, ghost” seems first to have appeared in a comical dialect poem, credited to “an old Dutch man in Albany” and printed in Vermont and Boston newspapers which credited it to Springer's Weekly Oracle in New London, Connecticut.  The regional diversity in language was then greater and evolutions sometimes simultaneous and the word also appeared in US English around 1830 as spuke & shpook, at first in the German-settled regions of Pennsylvania, via Pennsylvania Dutch Gschpuck & Schpuck, from the German Spuk.  Spook & spooking are nouns & verbs, spooker & spookery are nouns, spooktacular is a noun & adjective, spooktacularly is an adverb, spooked is a verb & adjective, spookery is a noun, spooky, spookiest & spookish are adjectives; the noun plural is spooks.

Spooked: Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

A “spook show” (frightening display) was a term in use by 1880 and in the sense of a “popular exhibition of legerdemain, mentalism or staged necromancy” it was documented by 1910.  The spook house (abandoned house) was in use in the 1850s, the expression meaning “haunted house” emerging in the 1860s.  The meaning “superstition” had emerged by 1918, presumably an extension from the earlier sense of “a superstitious person”, documented around the turn of the century although it probably existed longer in oral use.  In the 1890s, “spookist” (described variously as “jocular” and “a less refined word” was used to refer to spiritualists and medium (and in those years there were a lot of them, their numbers spiking after World War I (1914-1918) when many wished to contact the dead.  Spooktacular (a pun on “spectacular” developed some time during World War II (1939- 1945).  The meaning “undercover agent” or “spy” dates from 1942 (inducing “spookhouse” (haunted house) to pick up the additional meaning “headquarters of an intelligence operation”, a place presided over by a “spookmaster” (“spymaster” the preferred modern term).  In the same era, in student slang a spook could be an unattractive girl or a quiet, diligent, introverted student (something like the modern “nerd” but without any sense of a focus of technology).

Senator Rebecca Ann Felton (1835–1930, left) and Senator Mitch McConnell (b 1942; US senator (Republican-Kentucky) since 1985; Senate Minority Leader since 2021).  The spooky resemblance between Senator Fulton (who in 1922 served for one day as a senator (Democratic-Georgia), appointed as a political manoeuvre) and Senator Mitch McConnell has led some to suggest he might be her reincarnated.  Some not so acquainted with history assumed the photograph of Senator Felton was Mitch McConnell in drag.

The sense of spook as “a black person” is listed by dictionaries of US slang as being documented by 1938 (the date of origin uncertain) and it seems to have begun in African-American (hep-cat) slang and it was not typically used with any sense of disparagement, nor was it thought in any way offensive word.   However, by 1945 it had picked up the derogatory racial sense of “black person”, defined specifically as “frightened negro” and it became a common slur in the post-war world, probably because that even by then the “N-word” was becoming less acceptable in polite society.  That was the “linguistic treadmill” in practice but spook had also deviated earlier: In 1939 it is attested as meaning “a white jazz musician” and is listed by some sources as a disparaging term for a white person by 1947.  Spook also developed a curious fork in military aviation although one probably unrelated to the informal pilot’s jargon of the 1930s, a “spook” a “novice pilot” of the type who “haunt the hangers”, hiring air-time and learning to fly for no obvious practical purpose other than the joy of flying.  During the early 1940s, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) began the recruitment of black athletes for training as pilots, conducted at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; the group (1940-1948) was known as the Tuskegee Airmen and during World War II (1939-1945) they gained a fine reputation when deployed as combat units.  However, they also suffered prejudice and when first posted to Europe were often called the “Spookwaffe” (a play on Luftwaffe, the name of the German air force) although as happened decades later with the by then infamous N-word, some black pilots “re-claimed” the name and used it as a self-referential term of pride.

Left to right: Spook, the Bacterian ambassador, Benzino Napaloni, Diggaditchie of Bacteria (a parody of Benito Mussolini), Adenoid Hynkel (Adolf Hitler) and Field Marshall Herring (Hermann Göring).  The satirical film The Great Dictator (1940) was very much a personal project, Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) writing, producing & directing as well as staring as Adenoid Hynkel, Phooey of Tomainia.  The rather cadaverous looking Spook was the Bacterian ambassador.

Seventy years of spooks.

On 9 September 2019, the Royal Australian Mint released a 50 cent coin to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency (similiar in function to the UK's MI5 (Security Service)).  The issue was limited to 20,000 coins and each featured an encrypted code, similar in structure to those used by spooks during the Cold War.  At the time of the release, the Mint ran a competition inviting attempts to "solve the code", the prize the only proof commemorative coin in existence.  The competition was won by a fourteen year old who is apparently still at liberty, despite having proved him or herself a threat to national security.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) gave the word a few memorable phrases but one of the most evocative is a calque of the German spukhafte Fernwirkung (rendered by Einstein as spukhafte Fernwirkungen (spooky actions at a distance) in a letter of 3 March 1947 to the physicist Max Born (1882–1970)).  Einstein used “spooky actions at a distance” to refer to one of the most challenging ideas from quantum mechanics: that two particles instantaneously may interact over a distance and that distance could be that between different sides of the universe (or if one can’t relate to the universe having “sides”, separated by trillions of miles.  Known as “quantum entanglement”, it differs radically from some of the other (more abstract) senses in which everything in the universe is happening “at the same time”.

This aspect of quantum mechanics has for a century-odd been one of the most contested but the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who designed experiments which tested the theories, their results contradicting Einstein and discovering the seriously weird phenomenon of quantum teleportation.  Quantum entanglement is a process in which two or more quantum particles are in some way connected so any change in one causes a simultaneous change in the other, even if they are separated by vast distances.  Indeed those distances could stretch even to infinity.  Einstein was one of many physicists not convinced and he didn’t like the implications, calling the idea “spooky action at a distance” and preferred to think the particles contained certain hidden variables which had already predetermined their states.  This was neat and avoided the need for any teleportation.  However, what the 2022 Nobel Laureates found that the fabric of the universe should be visualized as a sea of wave-like particles that affect each other instantaneously, distance as conventionally measured being irrelevant.  What that seems to mean is that nothing has to travel between the two particles (the speed of light therefore not a limitation) because the two are in the same place and that place is the universe.  The English physicist Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) was surely correct when he remarked “…not only is the universe queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.”

Dart

Dart (pronounced dahrt)

(1) A small, slender missile, sharply pointed at one end, typically feathered (or with the shape emulated in plastic) at the other and (1) propelled by hand, as in the game of darts (2) by a blowgun when used as a weapon or (3) by some form of mechanical device such as a dart-gun.

(2) Something similar in function to such a missile.

(3) In zoology, a slender pointed structure, as in snails for aiding copulation or in nematodes for penetrating the host's tissues; used generally to describe the stinging members of insects.

(4) Any of various tropical and semitropical fish, notably the dace (Leuciscus leuciscus).

(5) Any of various species of the hesperiid butterfly notably the dingy dart (of the species Suniana lascivia, endemic to Australia).

(6) In the plural (as darts (used with a singular verb), a game in which darts are thrown at a target usually marked with concentric circles divided into segments and with a bull's-eye in the center.

(7) In tailoring, a tapered seam of fabric for adjusting the fit of a garment (a tapered tuck).

(8) In military use, a dart-shaped target towed behind an aircraft to train shooters (a specific shape of what was once called a target drone).

(9) An act of darting; a sudden swift movement; swiftly to move; to thrust, spring or start suddenly and run swiftly.

(10) To shoot with a dart, especially a tranquilizer dart.

(11) To throw with a sudden effort or thrust; to hurl or launch.

(12) To send forth suddenly or rapidly; to emit; to shoot.

(13) In genetics, as the acronym DarT, Diversity arrays technology (a genetic marker technique).

(14) Figuratively, words which wound or hurt feelings.

(15) In slang, a cigarette (Canada & Australia; dated).  The idea was a “lung dart”.

(16) In slang, a plan, plot or scheme (Australia, obsolete).

(17) In disaster management, as the acronym DART, variously: Disaster Assistance Response Team, Disaster Animal Response Team, Disaster Area Response Team, Disaster Assistance & Rescue Team and Disaster Response Team

1275–1325: From the Middle English dart & darce, from the Anglo-French & Old French dart & dard (dart), from the Late Latin dardus (dart, javelin), from the Old Low Franconian darōþu (dart, spear), from the Proto-Germanic darōþuz (dart, spear), from the primitive Indo-European dherh- (to leap, spring);.  It was related to the Old English daroth (spear), daroþ & dearod (javelin, spear, dart), the Swedish dart (dart, dagger), the Icelandic darraður, darr & dör (dart, spear), the Old High German tart (dart) and the Old Norse darrathr (spear, lance).  The Italian and Spanish dardo are believed to be of Germanic origin via Old Provençal.  The word dart can be quite specific but depending on context the synonyms can include arrow or barb (noun), dash, bolt or shoot (verb) or cigarette (slang).  Dart & darting are nouns & verbs, darted & dartle are verbs, darter is a noun, verb & adjective, dartingness is a noun, darty is a verb & adjective, dartingly is an adverb; the noun plural is darts.

Between the eyeballs: Crooked Hillary Clinton dart board.

The late fourteenth century darten (to pierce with a dart) was from the noun and is long obsolete while the sense of “throw with a sudden thrust" dates from the 1570s.  The intransitive meaning “to move swiftly” emerged in the 1610s, as did that of “spring or start suddenly and run or move quickly” (ie “as a dart does”).  The name was first applied to the small European freshwater fish in the mid-fifteenth century, based on the creature’s rapid, sudden (darting) movements (other names included dars, dase & dare, from the Old French darz (a dace), the nominative or plural of dart, all uses based on the fish’s swiftness.  The alternative etymology in this context was a link with the Medieval Latin darsus (a dart), said to be of Gaulish origin.  The name dart is now also used of various (similar or related) various tropical and semitropical fish.  It was in Middle English Cupid's love-arrows were first referred to as Cupid's dart (Catananche caerulea).  The modern dart-board was unknown until 1901 although similar games (the idea of archery with hand-thrown arrows) long predated this.  In zoology, the marvelously named “dart sac” describes a sac connected with the reproductive organs of certain land snails; it contains the “love dart” the synonyms of which are bursa telae & stylophore.  In archaeology, the term “fairy dart” describes a prehistoric stone arrowhead (an elf arrow).  A “poison dart” may be fired either from a dart gun or a blow-pipe (the term “dart-pipe” seems never to have been current) while a tranquilizer dart (often used in the management of large or dangerous animals) is always loaded into a dart gun.  The terms “javelin dart”, “lawn jart”, “jart” & “yard dart” are terms which refer to the large darts used in certain lawn games.  In the hobby of model aircraft, a “lawn dart” is an airframe with a noted propensity to crash (although it’s noted “pilot error” is sometimes a factor in this).  In military history, the “rope dart” was a weapon from ancient China which consisted of a long rope with a metal dart at the end, used to attack targets from long-range.

Making smoking sexy: Lindsay Lohan enjoying the odd dart.

The Dodge Dart

The original Dodge Dart was one of Chrysler's show cars which debuted in 1956, an era in which Detroit's designers were encouraged to let their imaginations wander among supersonic aircraft, rockets and the vehicles which SF (science fiction) authors speculated would be used for the interplanetary travel some tried to convince their readers was not far off.  The Dart was first shown with a retractable hardtop but when the 1956 show season was over, it was shipped back to Carrozzeria Ghia in Turin to be fitted with a more conventional convertible soft top.  After another trans-Atlantic crossing after the end of the 1957 show circuit (where it'd been displayed as the Dart II), it was again updated by Ghia and re-named Diablo (from the Spanish diablo (devil)).

1957 Dodge Diablo, the third and final version of the 1956 Dodge Dart show car.

Although a length of 218 inches (5.5 m) now sounds extravagant, by the standards of US designs in the 1950s it fitted in and among the weird and wonderful designs of the time (the regular production models as well as the show cars) the lines and detailing were actually quite restrained and compared with many, the Darts have aged well, some of the styling motifs re-surfacing in subsequent decades, notably the wedge-look.  Underneath, the Diablo’s mechanicals were familiar, a 392 cubic inch Chrysler Hemi V8 with dual four-barrel carburetors delivering power to the rear wheels through a push-button TorqueFlite automatic transmission.  Rated at 375 horsepower, the Hemi ensured the performance matched the looks, something aided by the exceptional aerodynamic efficiency, the CD (coefficient of drag) of 0.17 state of the art even in 2023.  Some engineers doubt it would return such a low number under modern testing but it doubtlessly was slippery and (with less hyperbole than usual), Chrysler promoted the Diablo as the “Hydroplane on Wheels”,  During Chrysler’s ownership of Lamborghini (1987-1994), the name was revived for the Lamborghini Diablo 1990-2001 which replaced the Countach (1974-1990).  Visually, both the Italian cars own something of a debt to the Darts of the 1950s although neither represented quite the advance in aerodynamics Chrysler had achieved all those years ago although the Lamborghini Diablo was good enough finally to achieve 200 mph (320 km/h), something which in the 1970s & 1980s, the Countach and the contemporary Ferrari 365 GT4 BB (Berlinetta Boxer) never quite managed, disappointing some.

The memorable 1957 Chrysler 300C (left) showed the influence of the Diablo but a more rococo sensibility had afflicted the corporation which the 1960 Dart Phoenix D500 Convertible (right) illustrates.  Things would get worse. 

Dodge began production of the Dart in late 1959 as a lower-priced full-sized car, something necessitated by a corporate decision to withdraw the availability of Plymouths from Dodge dealerships.  Dodge benefited from this more than Plymouth but the model ranges of both were adjusted, along with those sold as Chryslers, resulting in the companion DeSoto brand (notionally positioned between Dodge & Chrysler) being squeezed to death; the last DeSotos left the factory in 1960 and the operation was closed the next year.  Unlike its namesake from the show circuit, the 1959 Dodge Dart was hardly exceptional and it would barely have been noticed by the press had it not been for an unexpected corporate squabble between Chrysler and Daimler, a low volume English manufacturer of luxury vehicles which was branching out into the sports car market.  Their sports car was called the Dart.

Using one of his trademark outdoor settings, Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) photographed model Suzanne Kinnear (b 1935) adorning a Daimler Dart (SP250), wearing a Kashmoor coat and Otto Lucas beret with jewels by Cartier.  The image was published on the cover of Vogue's UK edition in November 1959.

With great expectations, Daimler put the Dart on show at the 1959 New York Motor Show and there the problems began.  Aware the little sports car was quite a departure from the luxurious but rather staid lineup Daimler had for years offered, the company had chosen the pleasingly alliterative “Dart” as its name, hoping it would convey the sense of something agile and fast.  Unfortunately for them, Chrysler’s lawyers were faster still, objecting that they had already registered Dart as the name for a full-sized Dodge so Daimler needed a new name and quickly; the big Dodge would never be confused with the little Daimler but the lawyers insisted.  Imagination apparently exhausted, Daimler’s management reverted to the engineering project name and thus the car became the SP250 which was innocuous enough even for Chrysler's attorneys and it could have been worse.  Dodge had submitted their Dart proposal to Chrysler for approval and while the car found favor, the name did not and the marketing department was told to conduct research and come up with something the public would like.  From this the marketing types gleaned that “Dodge Zipp” would be popular and to be fair, dart and zip(p) do imply much the same thing but ultimately the original was preferred.

Things get worse: The 1962 Dodge Dart looked truly bizarre; things would sometimes be stranger than this but not often.

Dodge got it right with the 1967-1976 Darts which could be criticized for blandness but the design was simple, balanced and enjoyed international appeal.  Two Australian versions are pictured, a 1971 VG VIP sedan (left) and a 1970 VG Regal 770 Hardtop (right).  

If Daimler had their problems with the Dart, so did Dodge.  For the 1961 model year, Dodge actually down-sized the “big” range, a consequence of some industrial espionage which misinterpreted Chevrolet’s plans.  Sales suffered because the new Darts were perceived as a class smaller than the competition, thus offering “less metal for the money”.  This compelled Chrysler to create some quick and dirty solutions to plug the gap but the damage was done and it was another model cycle before the ranges successfully were re-aligned.  However, one long-lasting benefit was the decision to take advantage of the public perception “Dart” now meant something smaller and Dodge in 1963 shifted the name to its compact line, enjoying much success.  It was the generation built for a decade between 1967-1976 which was most lucrative for the corporation, the cheap-to-produce platform providing the basis for vehicles as diverse as taxi-cabs, pick-ups, convertibles, remarkably effective muscle cars and even some crazy machines almost ready for the drag strip.  Being a compact-sized car in the US, the Dart also proved a handy export to markets where it could be sold as a “big” car and the Dart (sometimes locally assembled or wholly or partially manufactured) was sold in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe, East Asia, South Africa and South America.  In a form little different the Dart lasted until 1980 in South America and in Australia until 1981 although there the body-shape had in 1971 switched to the “fuselage” style although the platform remained the same.

How a Dodge Hemi Dart would have appeared in 1968 (left) and Hemi Darts ready for collection or dispatch in the yard of the Detroit production facility.

The most highly regarded of the 1967-1976 US Darts were those fitted with the 340 cubic inch (5.6 litre) small-block (LA) V8 which created a much better all-round package than those using the 383 (6.3) and 7.2 (7.2) big-block V8s which tended to be inferior in just about every way unless travelling in a straight line on a very smooth surface (preferably over a distance of about a ¼ mile (400 m) and even there the 340 over-delivered.  The wildest of all the Darts were the 80 (built in 1968) equipped with a version of the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Hemi V8 tuned to a specification closer to race-ready than that used in the “Street Hemi” which was the corporation’s highest-performance option.  Except for the drive-train, the Hemi Darts were an extreme example of what the industry called a “strippers”: cars “stripped” of all but the essentials.  There was thus no radio and no carpeting, common enough in strippers but the Hemi Darts lacked even armrests, external rear-view mirrors, window winding mechanisms or even a back seat.  Nor was the appearance of these shockingly single-purpose machines anything like what was usually seen in a showroom, most of the body painted only in primer while the hood (bonnet) and front fenders, rendered in lightweight black fibreglass, were left unpainted.  Seeking to avoid any legal difficulties, Dodge had purchasers sign an addendum to the sales contract acknowledging Hemi Darts were not intended not as road cars but for use in “supervised acceleration trials” (ie drag racing).  Despite that, these were the last days that in the US one could find a jurisdiction prepared to register such things for street use and some owners did that, apparently taking Dodge’s disclaimer about as seriously as those in the prohibition era (1920-1933) observed the warning on packets of “concentrated grape blocks” not add certain things to the mix, “otherwise fermentation sets in”.

The warning: What not to do, lest one's grape block should turn to wine.

Truculent

Truculent (pronounced truhk-yuh-luhnt or troo-kyuh-luhnt)

(1) Defiantly aggressive, sullen, or obstreperous; aggressively hostile; belligerent; fiercely argumentative; eager or quick to argue, fight or start a conflict.

(2) Brutally harsh; vitriolic; scathing,

(4) Savage, fierce (archaic).

1530–1540: From the Middle French, from the Latin truculentus, the construct being truc- (stem of trux (genitive trucis) (fierce; wild; savage; pitiless) + -ulentus (the adjectival suffix (and familiar as the related –ulent).  Although the ultimate source is uncertain, it may be from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root tere- (cross over, pass through; overcome).  Truculent is an adjective, truculence & truculency are nouns and truculently is an adverb

Narcissus Truculent, commonly known as the truculent daffodil.

The original meaning was “cruel or savage” in the specific sense of “barbarous, ferocious, fierce”.  By the early seventeenth century the emphasis on “deadly & destructive” gave way to “defiant, uncompromising, belligerent, inflexible, stubborn, unyielding and eager to argue or start a conflict” and it’s likely the shift happened as the use transferred from descriptions of soldiers to more general discourse; it was thus an elaborated type of figurative use.  The noun truculence dates from 1727 and was from the Latin truculentia (savageness, cruelty), from truculentus.  The earlier noun truculency was in use as early as the 1560s.  The comparative is “more truculent” and the superlative “most truculent”, both forms able to be used either of one or between two or more: “Mr Trump seemed more truculent than usual” & “Mr Trump was at his most truculent” instances of one form and Mr Trump proved more truculent than Mr Romney” the other.  However, despite the labelling habits of some, truculence does not imply motive, merely conduct.  The use of truculent by some implies there’s resentment but there’s no etymological or other historical basis for that; truculence is a way of behaving, not the reason for the behavior.  An imaginative meteorologist might speak of “a truculent hurricane” but there’s no implication the weather system feels mistreated and is thus lashing out; it’s just an especially violent storm.  Nor does “truculent” of necessity imply something violent or raucous and there are many who gain their effectiveness in debate from their “quiet truculence”, a description often used of the English writer PC Wren (1875–1941), the author of Beau Geste (1924).  Wren’s “quiet truculence” was less to do with what was in his books than his unwavering insistence the tales of his life of adventure in the French Foreign Legion were all true, despite the complete absence of any documentary evidence.

Words often used (sometimes too loosely especially given the shifting sense since the seventeenth century) as synonyms include abusive, aggressive, antagonistic, bad-tempered, barbarous, bellicose, browbeating, brutal, bullying, caustic, combative, contentious, contumelious, cowing, cross, defiant, ferocious, fierce, frightening, harsh, hostile, inhuman, inhumane, intimidating, invective, mean, militant, mordacious, mordant, obstreperous, opprobrious, ornery, pugnacious, quarrelsome, rude, savage, scathing, scrappy, scurrilous, sharp, sullen, terrifying, terrorizing, trenchant, violent, vituperative & vituperous.  It may be a comment on the human character there are rather fewer antonyms but they include cooperative, gentle, mild, tame, polite, correct & nice (which has itself quite a history of meanings).

A truculent Lindsay Lohan discussing industrial relations with her assistant.

All things considered, truculent would seem an admirable name for a warship but only twice has the Royal Navy agreed.  HMS Truculent (1916) was a Yarrow Later M-class destroyer which had an unremarkable war record, the highlight of which was a footnote as one of the three destroyers escorting the monitors used in the famous Zeebrugge Raid of 23 April 1918 which was an early-morning attempt to block the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge by scuttling obsolete ships in the canal entrance and using others packed with explosives to destroy port infrastructure.  Only partially successful, the bloody and audacious raid is remembered for the phrase "Eleven VCs before breakfast", an allusion to the decorations awarded (11 x VCs (Victoria Cross), 21 x DSOs (Distinguished Service Order) and 29 x DSCs (Distinguished Service Crosses)).  The second HMS Truculent (P315) was a T-class submarine, launched in 1942, which sunk nine ships during World War II (1939-1945).  It’s remembered now for lending its name to the “Truculent Light”.  On 12 January 1950, while travelling at night on the surface in the Thames Estuary, she collided with the 643 ton Swedish carrier SS Divina, on passage from Purfleet to Ipswich with a cargo of paraffin and, her hull been severely breached amidships, the submarine sank almost instantly with the loss of 64 men (there were 20 survivors).  As a consequence, regulations were introduced requiring all Royal Navy submarines be fitted with an additional steaming, panoramic white light on the bow.  The “Truculent Lights” ensure that while on the surface, despite being low in the water at in darkness close to invisible, submarines remain visible to other ships.

The wreck of HMS Truculent being salvaged.  All Royal Navy submarines have since “the Truculent Incident” been fitted with a 360^o white navigation light on the bow, known as the “Truculent Light”.

There have been no Truculents launched since but other "aggressive names" have over the centuries been used or proposed including 5 x HMS Vindictive (the last launched in (1918), 6 x HMS Arrogant (1896; a planned aircraft carrier was cancelled in 1945), 1 x HMS HMS Aggressor (1801; a planned aircraft carrier was cancelled in 1945), 1 x HMS Antagonist (a planned submarine cancelled in 1945), 8 x HMS Bruiser class (1947), eight x HMS Savage class  (1942), 1 x HMS Violent (1917) and 7 x HMS Warspite (1991; Warspite scheduled to be the third of the planned Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines) and 9 x HMS Terror class (1916).  Anticipating a later truculent spirit however there was, uniquely, an HMS Trump (P333), one of the 53 of the third group of the T class.  She was launched in 1944 and for most of her life was attached to the Australia-based 4th Submarine Squadron (although remaining always on the Royal Navy's list).  HMS Trump was one of her class which remained in service after the war and based in Australia, was re-fitted to provide the enhanced underwater performance needed for the anti-submarine force to counter the growing threat from the Soviet navy.  The last Royal Navy submarine posted to be stationed Australian Waters, she was struck from the active list in 1969 and scrapped in 1971.  HMS Trump notwithstanding, the naming trend in recent decades has been less truculent and it can’t be long before HMS Diversity is launched.

Racialism

Racialism (pronounced rey-shuh-liz-uhm)

(1) The belief that humans can be categorized as belonging to distinct races, each race being characterized by fixed and heritable traits (obsolete).

(2) In technical use, any system of categorization which uses race (however defined); in technical use, what used to be called scientific racialism (and later race realism) is still practiced but the term is no longer applied except as a critique.

1882: The construct was racial + -ism (the adjective racial dating from 1862).  Race (in this context) was from the French racisme, dating from 1902, from the mid sixteenth century Middle French race from the early fourteenth century Italian razza of uncertain origin.  The word gained the various senses of (1) a group of sentient beings, particularly people, distinguished by common ancestry, heritage or physical characteristics (most notably skin color or tone), (2) an identifiably distinct group of people distinguished from others on some basis (which could be cultural or religious).  Noted first in 1928, use of the word racism became common by the mid-1930s and was widely applied to the legal and social systems in some countries by at least 1940.  The –ial suffix from the Middle English, from the Old French, from the Latin -ālis (the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) and was used to form adjectives from nouns.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Racialism & racialist are nouns & adjectives and racialistic is an adjective; the noun plural is racialisms.  Racism & racist are nouns and adjectives; the noun plural is racisms.

The word was coined in 1882, based on the existing use of "race" as a synonym of "nation, tribe, ethnic group"; the later senses emerged from circa 1890 from the use of "race" for racial categories.  The use in 1882 was essentially neutral and descriptive and referred to “tribalism” but in less than a decade it assumed the meaning “political system advocating superiority and exclusive rights based on race” but that would come later to be replaced by the more overt “racism” & “racist”.  The later attempt to repurpose the word for (allegedly) scientific purpose with a meaning closer to the 1882 original (including as race-realism) was unsuccessful.  In the West, expressions of racism became first unfashionable in polite society and later unacceptable.  This change in attitude unfolded over decades in the twentieth century and progress was socially and geographically varied, the clustering of populations by class, education and ethnic diversity probably the most significant factors accounting for the difference.  Racism does seem to be endemic in the human condition and while it can be suppressed by collective social disapprobation or rendered unlawful, apparently everywhere when people with recognizably different features or characteristics (in appearance, linguistically, culturally etc) degrees of conflict ensue.  This can be something so low-level it’s usually imperceptible such as the interactions between the Italian, French, German & Romansh speakers in Switzerland or more violent, as recent events in Sudan and Tunisia demonstrate.  It’s not going to go away and the management of it varies from place to place between the multi-cultural policies in the West and the “ethnic cleansing” (something of a euphemism in that it included mass-murder) associated with the wars in the Balkans in the early 1990s.  The most obvious modern manifestation of racialism is “racial profiling” which ranges from filtering processes which exclude certain applicants from the employment selection process to police selecting for “stop & search” only those perceived to be of a certain ethnicity to persons of middle-eastern appearance receiving heightened levels of attention from airport security staff.

Winsor Newton Black Indian Ink.

Racialism and racism are not unrelated concepts, but have different meanings and implications.  Racialism is practiced as a spectrum and explores the existence of differences between racial groups (as defined) and this can be in genetics, specific capabilities, traits, or characteristics.  It can be merely descriptive (even down to the cellular level) bit inevitably comes often to be used to suggest there might be races which are superior or inferior to others based on these differences.  Racism however, takes a belief system (usually of racial superiority) and imposes systemic oppression, discrimination, prejudice, and unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on their race, ethnicity, or nationality.  The most obvious examples involve the exercise of power and privilege by one racial group over others, leading to social, economic, and political disparities.  So seriously corrosive has race come to be seen in the West that some guides now recommend race never be mentioned by white people although there is a convention words & phrases using proscribed terms can be used the those in the group referenced, hence the ongoing popularity of the infamous N-words among the African American community.  That doesn’t however mean it’s now permissible for white people to use the phrase “white trash”, even as a self-descriptor because of its origins which essentially equated whites of the lowest socio-economic status with that of blacks although it does continue to be used both as a term of disparagement and one of group identity.  Helpfully, the guides suggest “Chinese whispers” should become “telephone whispers” and “Indian Ink” is best called “carbon-based ink” although under the original name it remains widely available.  In cricket, the “chinaman” delivery is no longer mention and if one is sent down, it’s correct to call it “left-arm unorthodox spin” or “left-arm wrist spin”, both of which are by comparison a bit of a mouthful but the sport seems to cope with the fielding position known as “deep backward square leg” so most should adapt.  The “French cut” seems to have survived.

Racialism can however still, with caution, be used.  Geneticists for example have determined the only “pure” human beings left are the black Africans while the rest of the planet’s population is a result of human Neanderthal interbreeding and that’s an example of racialism (the once current terms “race realism” and “scientific racism” have long been proscribed because they became tainted by a number of pseudo-sciences which (unsurprisingly) all supported notions of white superiority).  Also racialist is another discovery from the DNA labs: a genetic mutation found in Africans, the possession of which offers some degree of protection from malaria and that would have been a product of natural selection among those who live in places where the disease was endemic.