Pylon

Pylon (pronounced pahy-lon)

(1) A marking post or tower for guiding aviators, much used in air-racing to mark turning points in a a prescribed course of flight.

(2) A relatively tall structure at the side of a gate, bridge, or avenue, marking an entrance or approach.

(3) A monumental tower forming the entrance to an ancient Egyptian temple, consisting either of a pair of tall quadrilateral masonry masses with sloping sides and a doorway between them or of one such mass pierced with a doorway.

(4) In electricity transmission, a steel tower or mast carrying high-tension lines, telephone wires, or other cables and lines (usually as power-pylon, electricity pylon or transmission tower).

(5) In architecture (1) a tall, tower-like structure (usually of steel or concrete) from which cables are strung to support other structures and (2) a lighting mast; a freestanding support for floodlights.

(6) In aeronautics, a streamlined, finlike structure used to attach engines, auxiliary fuel tanks, bombs, etc to an aircraft wing or fuselage.

(7) In modeling, as “pylon shot”, a pose in which a model stands with arms raised or extended outwards, resembling an electricity pylon.

(8) An alternative name for an obelisk.

(9) In aviation, a starting derrick for an aircraft (obsolete) and a tethering point for an dirigible (airship).

(10) In American football (gridiron), an orange marker designating one of the four corners of the field’s end zones.

(11) In the slang of artificial limb makers (1) a temporary artificial leg and (2) a rigid prosthesis for the lower leg.

(12) In literature, as "Pylon Poet" (usually in the plural as “the Pylons”), a group of British poets who during the 1930s included in their work many references to new & newish mechanical devices and other technological developments.

(13) In slang, a traffic cone.

1823: A learned borrowing from Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) (gateway; gate tower), from pylē (gate, wing of a pair of double gates; an entrance, entrance into a country; mountain pass; narrow strait of water) of unknown origin but etymologists suspect it may be a technical term (from architecture or construction) from another language.  The first use was in archaeology to describe a “gateway to an Egyptian temple”, a direct adaptation of the original Greek.  In Western architecture, it’s believed the first “modern” pylons were the tall, upright structures installed at aerodromes to guide aviators and it was the appearance of these things which inspired the later use as “power pylon” (steel tower for high-tension wires over distance, use noted since 1923) and the word spread to any number of similar looking devices (even those on a small scale such as traffic cones).  Until then, in engineering and architecture, tall structures used to carry cables or in some way provide support (or even be mere decorative) were described as a “tower” or “obelisk” (such use continuing).  Pylon is a noun and pylonless, pylonlike, pylonesque & pylonish are adjectives; the noun plural is pylons.  Despite the fondness in engineering for such forms to emerge, the verbs pyloned & pyloning seem never to have been coined.

The Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) was used of the grand architecture seen in the entrances to temples and the usual word for doors (and gates) rather more modest was θύρα (thýra).  It was a feminine noun and appears in various forms depending on the grammatical case (θύρα (nominative singular; a door), θύρας (genitive singular; of a door) & θύραι (nominative plural; doors).  Etymologists believe θύρα may have undergone phonological changes, adapting to Greek morphology and pronunciation patterns, while retaining its fundamental meaning tied to entryways or openings.  The word was from the primitive Indo-European dhur or dhwer (door; gateway) which was the source also of the Latin foris (door, entrance), the Sanskrit dvā́r (door, gate), the Old English duru (door) and the Old Norse dyrr (door).  Because of their functional role and symbolism as thresholds (ie transition, entry, protection), the door played a prominent part in linguistic as well as architectural evolution.

Temple of Isis, first pylon, north-eastern view.

The Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) was the classical term for an Egyptian ceremonial gateway (bekhenet) used in temples from at least the Middle Kingdom to the Roman period (circa 2040 BC–AD 395) and anthropologists have concluded the intent was to symbolize the horizon.  The basic structure of a pylon consisted of two massive towers of rubble-filled masonry tapering upwards, surmounted by a cornice and linked in the centre by an elaborate doorway.  Ancient depictions of pylons show that the deep vertical recesses visible along the facades of surviving examples were intended for the mounting of flag staffs.

An “anchor pylon” is the one which forms the endpoint of a high-voltage and differs from other pylons in that it uses horizontal insulators, necessary when interfacing with other modes of power transmission and (owing to the inflexibility of the conductors), when significantly altering the direction of the pylon chain.  In large-scale display advertizing, a “pylon sign” is a tall sign supported by one or more poles and in the original industry jargon was something in what would now be called “portrait mode”; a sign in “landscape mode” being a “billboard”.  Not surprisingly, there are a number of mountains known as “Pylon Peak”.  The task of naming such geological features is part of the field of toponymy (in semantics the lexicological study of place names(a branch of onomastics)) and a specialist in such things is known as a toponymist.  The term toponomy was later borrowed by medicine where it was used of the nomenclature of anatomical regions. In aviation, the “pylon turn” is a flight maneuver in which an aircraft banks into a circular turn around a fixed point on the ground.

The Ancient Greek πυλών (pulṓn; pylṓn) was used of the grand architecture seen in the entrances to temples and the usual word for doors (and gates) rather more modest was θύρα (thýra).  It was a feminine noun and appears in various forms depending on the grammatical case (θύρα (nominative singular; a door), θύρας (genitive singular; of a door) & θύραι (nominative plural; doors).  Etymologists believe θύρα may have undergone phonological changes, adapting to Greek morphology and pronunciation patterns, while retaining its fundamental meaning tied to entryways or openings.  The word was from the primitive Indo-European dhur or dhwer (door; gateway) which was the source also of the Latin foris (door, entrance), the Sanskrit dvā́r (door, gate), the Old English duru (door) and the Old Norse dyrr (door).  Because of their functional role and symbolism as thresholds (ie transition, entry, protection), the door played a prominent part in linguistic as well as architectural evolution.

The plyon pose: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates some variations.

In modeling, the “pylon shot” is used to describe the pose in which a model stands with arms raised or extended outwards, resembling (at least vaguely) an electricity pylon, the appearance of which is anthropomorphic.  There are practical benefits for designers in that raising the arms permits a photographer to include more of a garment in the frame and this can be significant if there’s detailing which are at least partially concealed with the arms in their usual position.  Topless models also adopt variations of the pose because the anatomical affect of raising the arms also lifts and to some extent re-shapes the breasts, lending them temporarily a higher, a more pleasing aspect.

The Pylons

The so-called “pylon poets” (referred to usually as “the Pylons”) were a group who dominated British poetry during the 1930s, a time when the form assumed a greater cultural and intellectual significance than today.  The best known (and certainly among the most prolific) of the Pylons were Louis MacNeice (1907–1963), Stephen Spender (1909–1995), WH Auden (1907-1973) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972), their names sometimes conflated as “MacSpaunday”.  It was Spender’s poem The Pylons which inspired the nickname and it referenced the frequent references to the images of “industrial modernity”, drawn from new(ish) technology and the machinery of factories.  The intrusion of novel machinery and technology into a variety of fields is not unusual; in the age of steam the devices were used as similes when speculating about the operation of the human brain, just as the terminology of computers came to be used when the lexicon entered the public imagination.  Their method underlying the output of the pylons was influenced by the metaphysical poetry of John Donne (circa 1571-1631) whose use of “scientific” imagery was much admired by TS Eliot (1888–1965), the work of whom was acknowledged as influential by both Auden and Spender.  However, the 1930s were the years of the Great Depression and probably their most fertile source was Marxist materialism although, of the Pylons, historians tend to regard only Day-Lewis as one of the “useful idiots”.

The Pylons (1933) by Stephen Spender.

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages
 
Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.
 
The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.
 
But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning's danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.
 
This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.

The term “useful idiot” is from political science and so associated with Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924; first leader of Soviet Russia 1917-1922 & USSR 1922-1924) that it's attributed to him but there's no evidence he ever spoke or wrote the words.  It became popular during the Cold War to describe pro-communist intellectuals and apologists in the West, the (probably retrospective) association with Lenin probably because had the useful idiots actually assisted achieving a communist revolution there, their usefulness outlived, he'd likely have had at least some of them shot as "trouble-makers".  Although it took many Western intellectuals decades to recant (some never quite managed) their support for the Soviet Union, the watershed was probably Comrade Khrushchev's (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964)  so called "Secret Speech" (On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences) to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956 in which he provided a detailed critique of the rule of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), especially the bloody purges of the late 1930s.

Some had however already refused to deny what had become obvious to all but avid denialists, and in 1949 a contribution by Spender appeared in The God that Failed, a collection of six essays in which the writers lay bare their sense of betrayal and disillusionment with communism because of the totalitarian state forged by comrade Stalin which was in so many ways just another form of fascism.  Spender was associated with the intellectual wing of left-wing politics during the 1930s and was briefly a member of the Communist Party but his attraction seems to have been motivated mostly by the Soviet Union’s promises of equality and its anti-fascist stance.  He quickly became disillusioned with the Soviet state, unable to reconcile its authoritarianism with his personal beliefs in freedom and individual rights, a critical stance differentiated him from figures like George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950) and Sidney (1859–1947) & Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), the latter couple for some time definitely useful idiots.

The sort of sights which would have inspired Spender’s line “Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret”.

Louis MacNeice, was politically engaged during the 1930s but that was hardly something unusual among writers & intellectuals during that troubled decade.  Among the pylons he seems to have been the most sceptical about the tenets of communism and the nature of comrade Stalin’s state and no historians seem every to have listed him among the useful idiots, his views of the left as critical and nuanced as they were of the right.  What he most objected to was the tendency among idealistic & politically committed intellectuals to engage in a kind of reductionism which allowed them to present simplistic solutions to complex problems in a form which was little more than propaganda, a critique he explored in his poem Autumn Journal (1939) captures his doubts about political certainty and his disillusionment with simplistic solutions to complex problems.  Auden certainly wasn’t a “useful idiot” and while politically engaged and associated with several leftist intellectual circles during the 1930s, his sympathy for Marxism and anti-fascist causes were really not far removed from those share by even some mainstream figures and a capacity for self-reflection never deserted him.  Much was made of the time he spent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1940) but he went as an observer and a propagandist rather than a combatant and what he saw made his disillusioned with the ideological rigidity and in-fighting among leftist factions and he made no secret of his distaste for Stalinist communists.  By the early 1940s, he was distancing himself from Marxism, the process much accelerated by his re-embrace of Christianity where, at least debatably, he discharged another form of useful idiocy, his disapproval of collectivist ideologies apparently not extending to the Church of England.

Profiles of some electricity pylons.  There a literally dozens of variations, the designs dictated by factors such as the ground environment, proximity to people, voltage requirements, weight to be carried, economics, expected climatic conditions and a myriad of other specifics.

Of the Pylons, Cecil Day-Lewis (who served as Poet Laureate of the UK 1968-1972) had the most active period engagement with communism and Marxist ideals and he was for a time politically aligned with the Soviet Union; it was a genuine ideological commitment.  During the 1930s, the true nature of the Soviet Union wasn’t generally known (or accepted) in the West and Day-Lewis admired the Soviet Union as an experiment in social and economic equality which he championed and it wasn’t until late in the decade he realized the ideals he had embraced had been betrayed; it was Great Purge and the Moscow Show-Trials which triggered his final disillusionment.  Day-Lewis later acknowledged the naivety and moral compromises of his earlier stance and came to argue poetry and art should not be subordinated to political ideology, a view formed by his understanding of the implications of propagandistic pieces of his younger years being exactly that.

Inamorata

Inamorata (pronounced in-am-uh-rah-tuh or in-am-uh-rah-tuh)

A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover

1645-1655: From the Italian innamorata (mistress, sweetheart), noun use of the feminine form of innamorato (the noun plural innamoratos or innamorati) (lover, boyfriend), past principle of innamorare (to inflame with love), the construct being in- (in) + amore (love), from the Latin amor.  A familiar modern variation is enamor.  Inamorata is a noun; the noun plural is inamoratas.

Words like inamorata litter English and endure in their niches, not just because poets find them helpful but because they can be used to convey subtle nuances in a way a word which appears synonymous might obscure.  One might think the matter of one’s female lover might be linguistically (and sequentially) covered by (1) girlfriend, (2) fiancé, (3) wife and (4) mistress but to limit things to those is to miss splitting a few hairs.  A man’s girlfriend is a romantic partner though not of necessity a sexual one because some religions expressly prohibit such things without benefit of marriage and there are the faithful who follow these teachings.  One can have as many girlfriends as one can manage but the expectation they should be enjoyed one at a time.  Women can have girlfriends too but (usually) they are “friends who are female” rather than anything more except of course among lesbians where the relationship is the same as with men.  Gay men too have girlfriends who are “female friends”, some of whom may be “fag hags” a term which now is generally a homophobic slur unless used within the LGB factions of the LGBTQQIAAOP community where it can be jocular or affectionate.

A fiancé is a women to whom one is engaged to be married, in many jurisdictions once a matter of legal significance because an offer of marriage could be enforced under the rules of contract law.  While common law courts didn’t go as far as ordering “specific performance of the contract”, they would award damages on the basis of a “breach of promise”, provided it could be adduced that three of the four essential elements of a contract existed: (1) offer, (2) certainty of terms and (3) acceptance.  The fourth component: (4) consideration (ie payment), wasn’t mentioned because it was assumed to be implicit in the nature of the exchange; a kind of deferred payment as it were.  It was one of those rarities in common law where things operated almost wholly in favor of women in that they could sue a man who changed his mind while they were free to break-off an engagement without fear of legal consequences though there could be social and familial disapprobation.  Throughout the English-speaking world, the breach of promise tort in marriage matters has almost wholly been abolished, remaining on the books in the a couple of US states (not all of which lie south of the Mason-Dixon Line) but even where it exists it’s now a rare action and one likely to succeed only in exceptional circumstances or where a particularly fragrant plaintiff manages to charm a particularly sympathetic judge.

The spelling fiancé (often as fiance) is now common for all purposes.  English borrowed both the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) from the French verb fiancer (to get engaged) in the mid nineteenth century and that both spellings were used is an indication it was one of those forms which was, as an affectation, kept deliberately foreign because English typically doesn’t use gendered endings. Both the French forms were ultimately from the Classical Latin fidare (to trust), a form familiar in law and finance in the word fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūciārius (held in trust), from fīdūcia (trust) which, as a noun & adjective, describes relationships between individuals and entities which rely on good faith and accountability.  Pronunciation of both fiancé and fiancée is identical so the use of the differentiated forms faded by the late twentieth century and even publications like Country Life and Tattler which like writing with class-identifiers seem to have updated.  Anyway, because English doesn’t have word endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female betrothed would seem unfashionable in the age of gender fluidity but identities exist as they’re asserted and one form or the other might be deployed as a political statement by all sides in the gender wars.

Model Emily Ratajkowski's (b 1991) clothing label is called Inamorata, a clever allusion to her blended nickname EmRata.  This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in three aspects.

Wife was from the Middle English wyf & wif, from the Old English wīf (woman, wife), from the Proto-West Germanic wīb, from the Proto-Germanic wībą (woman, wife) and similar forms existed as cognates in many European languages.  The wife was the woman one had married and by the early twentieth century, in almost all common law jurisdictions (except those where systems of tribal law co-existed) it was (more or less) demanded one may have but one at a time.  Modern variations include “common-law wife” and the “de-facto wife”.  The common-law marriage (also known as the "sui iuris (from the Latin and literally “of one's own right”) marriage", the “informal marriage” and the “non-ceremonial marriage”) is a kind of legal quasi-fiction whereby certain circumstances can be treated as a marriage for many purposes even though no formal documents have been registered, all cases assessed on their merits.  Although most Christian churches don’t long dwell on the matter, this is essentially what marriage in many cases was before the institutional church carved out its role.  In popular culture the term is used loosely to refer sometimes just about any un-married co-habitants regardless of whether or not the status has been acknowledged by a court.  De facto was from the Latin de facto, the construct being dē (from, by) + the ablative of factum (fact, deed, act).  It translates as “in practice, what actually is regardless of official or legal status” and is thus differentiated from de jure, the construct being dē (from) + iūre (law) which describes something’s legal status.  In general use, a common-law wife and de facto wife are often thought the same thing but the latter differs that in some jurisdictions the parameters which define the status are codified in statute whereas a common law wife can be one declared by a court on the basis of evidence adduced.

Mistress dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English maistresse, from the Old & Middle French maistresse (in Modern French maîtresse), feminine of maistre (master), the construct being maistre (master) + -esse or –ess (the suffix which denotes a female form of otherwise male nouns denoting beings or persons), the now rare derived forms including the adjective mistressed and the noun mistressship.  In an example of the patriarchal domination of language, when a woman was said to have acquired complete knowledge of or skill in something, she’s was said to have “mastered” the topic.  A mistress (in this context) was a woman who had a continuing, extramarital sexual relationship with one man, especially a man who, in return for an exclusive and continuing liaison, provides her with financial support.  The term (like many) has become controversial and critics (not all of them feminists) have labeled it “archaic and sexist”, suggesting the alternatives “companion” or “lover” but neither convey exactly the state of the relationship so mistress continues to endure.  The critics have a point in that mistress is both “loaded” and “gendered” given there’s no similarly opprobrious term for adulterous men but the word is not archaic; archaic words are those now rare to the point of being no longer in general use and “mistress” has hardly suffered that fate, thought-crime hard to stamp out.

This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in another three aspects.

Inamorata was useful because while it had a whiff of the illicit, that wasn’t always true but what it did always denote was a relationship of genuine love whatever the basis so one’s inamorata could also be one’s girlfriend, fiancé or mistress though perhaps not one’s wife, however fond one might be of her.  An inamorata would be a particular flavor of mistress in the way paramour or leman didn't imply.  Paramour was from the Middle English paramour, paramoure, peramour & paramur, from the Old French par amor (literally “for love's sake”), the modern pronunciation apparently an early Modern English re-adaptation of the French and a paramour was a mistress, the choice between the two perhaps influenced by the former tending to the euphemistic.  The archaic leman is now so obscure that it tends to be used only by the learned as a term of disparagement against women in the same way a suggestion mendaciousness is thought a genteel way to call someone a liar.  Dating from 1175-1225, it was from the Middle English lemman, a variant of leofman, from the Old English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart (and attested also as a personal name)), the construct being lief +‎ man (beloved person).  Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof (dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz and was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo & ljoo, the West Frisian leaf, the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs, the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the Polish luby.  Man is from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European mon (man).  A linguistic relic, leman applied originally either to men or women and had something of a romantic range.  It could mean someone of whom one was very fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly drifted to the latter: someone's sweetheart or paramour.  In the narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, that would now just confuse.

About the concubine, while there was a tangled history, there has never been much confusion.  Dating from 1250-1300, concubine was from the Middle English concubine (a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin concubīna, derived from cubare (to lie down), the construct being concub- (variant stem of concumbere & concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix).  The status (a woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the laity.  The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess although this title was wholly honorary and of no religious significance although presumably, as a vicar's wife might fulfil some role in the parish, they might have been delegated to do this and that.

Once were inamoratas: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, barefoot in Los Cabos, Mexico, 2008.

Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“sexually to violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction").  In Medieval Latin it also meant meant also "forcible violation" & "kidnapping" and a misunderstanding of the context in which the word was then used has caused problems in translation ever since .  Concubinage is, in the West, a term largely of historic interest.  It describes a relationship in which a woman engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage.  This may be due to differences in social rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions, or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities.  Historically, concubinage was often entered into voluntarily because of an economic imperative.  In the modern vernacular, wives use many words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).  They rarely use concubine.  They might however be tempted to use courtesan which was from the French courtisane, from the Italian cortigiana, feminine of cortigiano (courtier), from corte (court), from the Latin cohors.  A courtesan was a prostitute but a high-priced one who attended only to rich or influential clients and the origin of the term was when it was used of the mistresses of kings or the nobles in the court, the word mistress too vulgar to be used in such circles.

TikToker

TikToker (pronounced tik-tok-ah)

(1) One who is a regular or frequent viewer of the content posted on the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can in certain circumstances now be up to sixty (60) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com.

(2) One who is a regular or frequent content provider on the TikTok platform.

(3) With a variety of spellings (ticktocker, tictoker, tiktoka etc), a slang term for a clock or watch, derived from the alternating ticking sound, as that made by a clock (archaic).

(4) In computing, with the spelling ticktocker (or ticktocker), slang for a software element which emulates the sound of a ticking clock, used usually in conjunction with digitals depictions of analogue clocks.

2018: The ancestor form (ticktock or tick-tock) seems not to have been used until the mid-nineteenth century and was purely imitative of the sound of mechanical clocks. Tick (in the sense of "a quiet but sharp sound") was from the Middle English tek (light touch, tap) and tock was also onomatopoeic; when used in conjunction with tick was a reference to the clicking sounds similar to those made by the movements of a mechanical clock.  The use of TikToker (in the sense of relating to users (consumers & content providers) of the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can be up to ten (10) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com probably began in 2018 (the first documented reference) although it may early have been in oral use.  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  TikToker is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is TikTokers (the mixed upper & lower case is correct by commercial convention but not always followed).  The PRC- (People’s Republic of China) based holding company ByteDance is said to have chosen the name “TikTok” because it was something suggestive of the “short, snappy” nature of the platform’s content; they understood the target market and its alleged attention span (which, like the memory famously associated with goldfish might be misleading).

A blonde Billie Eilish, Vogue, June, 2021.

Those who use TikTok (whether as content providers or consumers) are called “tiktokers” and the longer the aggregate duration of one’s engagement with the platform, the more of a tiktoker one can be said to be.  The formation followed the earlier, self-explanatory “YouTuber” and the use for similar purposes (indicating association) for at least decades.  So, the noun tiktoker can be a neutral descriptor but it can be used also as a slur.   In February 2024, at the People’s Choice Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles, singer Billie Eilish (b 2001) was filmed leaning over to Kylie Minogue (b 1968), remarking sotto voce:“There’s some, like, TikTokers here…” with the sort of distaste Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) might have displayed if indicating to her companion the unpleasing presence of peasants.  The clip went viral on X (formerly known as Twitter) before spreading to Tiktok.  Clearly there is a feeling of hierarchy in the industry and her comments triggered some discussion about the place of essentially amateur content creators at mainstream Hollywood (and such) events.  That may sound strange given a platform like TikTok would, prima facie, seem the very definition of the “people’s choice” but these events have their own history, associations and connotations and what social media sites have done to the distribution models has been quite a disturbance.  Many established players, even some who have to some extent benefited from the platforms, find disquieting the intrusion of the “plague of TikTokers”.

Pop Crave's clip of the moment, a brunette Billie Eilish & Kylie Minogue, People's Choice Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, February 2024.

There will be layers to Ms Eilish’s view.  One is explained in terms of mere proximity, the segregation of pop culture celebrities into “A List”, B List, C List” etc an important component in the creation and maintenance of one’s public image and an A Lister like her would not appreciate being photographed at an event with those well up (ie down) the alphabet sitting at the next table; it cheapens her image.  Properly managed, these images can translate into millions (and these days even billions) of dollars so this is not a matter of mere vanity and something for awards ceremonies to consider; if the TikTokers come to be seen as devaluing their brand to the extent the A Listers ignore their invitations, the events either have to move to a down-market niche or just be cancelled.  Marshall McLuhan’s (1911-1980) book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) pre-dates social media by decades but its best-remembered phrase (“The medium is the message”) could have been coined for the era, the idea being the medium on which content is distributed should be the first point of understanding its significance, rather than actual content, the theory being the initial assessment of the veracity or the value of something relies on its source.  In the case of pop music, this meant a song distributed by a major label possessed an inherent credibility and prestige in a way something sung by a busker in a train station did not.  What the existence of YouTube and TikTok meant was the buskers and the artists signed to labels began suddenly to appear on the same medium, thus at some level gaining a sort of equivalency.  Viewing TikTok on a phone, tablet or laptop,  sharing the same screen-space, in a sense, all are rendered equal.

On trend: Lindsay Lohan announces she is now a Tiktoker.

Ms Eilish and her label have been adept at using the social media platforms as tools for this and that so presumably neither object to the existence or the technology of the sites (although her label (Universal Music) has only recently settled its dispute with TikTok over the revenue sharing) but there will be an understanding that while there’s now no alternative to, in a sense, sharing the digital space and letting the people choose, that doesn’t mean she’ll be happy about being in the same photo frame when the trophies are handed out.  Clearly, there are stars and there are TikTokers and while the latter can (and have) become the former, there are barriers not all can cross.

The Tic-Toc Tach

1967 Jaguar 340 (left), 1980 Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC 5.0 (centre) and 1970 Plymouth Superbird (right).  Only the Americans called the shared tachometer/clock a “Tic-Toc Tach”.

Since the inter-war years, Jaguar had included a small clock at the bottom of the tachometer but in 1966, phasing in the change as models were updated or replaced, began to move the device to the centre of the dashboard (in the case of the 420 & 420G putting it in a blister in the padded section which had replaced the timber top-rail).  By 1968 the horological shift was almost complete (only the last of the Mark IIs (now known as 240, 340) and & Daimler V8 250 models still with the shared dial) and it was then Chrysler adopted the idea.  An urban myth has long circulated that Chrysler, with a flair the British never showed, called the device the “Tic-Toc Tachometer” (“Tic-Toc Tach” the popular clipping).  However, the term was first used by GM (General Motors) and it never appeared in anything published by Chrysler which used only the equally informative but less catchy “Electric Clock/Tach”.

1967 Porsche 911S Soft Window Targa (left) and 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T Coupe (right).  The enlarged, central  tachometer is still part of the Porsche shtick but the clock has now been relegated atop the dashpad.

The innovation proved proved popular and was adopted by other US manufacturers during the era, the attraction being an economical use of dash space, the clock fitting in a space at the centre of the tachometer dial which would otherwise be unused.  Although in Europe and the UK the standard arrangement of a matching speedometer & tachometer directly in the driver's line-of-sight had become familiar (though Porsche and liked to make a point with a larger dial for the tachometer and giving it pride of place), in the US, until the mid-1960s tachometers tended to be obviously "add-ons" located in various places (centre consoles a favorite) and other than quirky Studebakers, and Ford's Continental Mark II (1956-1967), few got a matching pair, even the Chevrolet Corvette not joining the trans-Atlantic mainstream until the release of the C2 (1963-1967.  Mercedes-Benz picked up Jaguar's now abandoned concept in 1971 when the 350 SL (R107, 1971-1989) was introduced and it spread throughout the range, almost universal (in cars with tachometers) after 1981 when production of the 600 (W100) ended; Mercedes-Benz would for decades use the shared instrument.  A tachometer (often called a “rev counter”) is a device for measuring the revolutions per minute (RPMs) of a revolving shaft such as the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine (ICE) (thus determining the “engine speed”).  The construct was tacho- (an alternative form of tachy-, from the Ancient Greek ταχύς (takhús) (rapid) + meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices).

1967 Oldsmobile 4-4-2.

Nobody however crammed more into a tic-toc-tach than Oldsmobile which during the first generation (1964-1967) of its 4-4-2 also included a temperature gauge, ammeter and oil pressure gauge, something necessitated because the instrument panel the stylists were compelled to use contained only two pods.  When the second generation (1968-1972) was released, the dash included a third pod so the ancillary gauges were given their own space and a true tic-toc-tach was used.  Thankfully, nobody seems ever to have attempted to coin a term for five-function device on the early 4-4-2s so those who worry about such things must content themselves with choices like “enhanced tic-toc-tach” or “augmented tic-toc-tach”.  Buyers got the instrument with its “perimeter auxiliary gauges” by choosing option code U21 (Rallye Pac with Tachometer and Clock) for US$84.26 which sounds modest but at the time the bikini-clad and neoprene-tailed “mermaids” who splashed around the coral reef in the middle of Submarine Lagoon at California’s Disneyland Resort were paid US$65 week.  Making a virtue of necessity, Oldsmobile described the cluttered device as a “compact instrument cluster [which] lets driver monitor engine performance at a glance”, not burdening brochure readers with the fact the Rallye Pac wasn’t planned as part of the range and with only two pods on the dash, there was no other way elegantly to cram it all in.

1967 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 Holiday Coupe W-30.

The 4-4-2 was Oldsmobile’s response to the Pontiac GTO, introduced in 1964 by the companion GM (General Motors) division.  The GTO (Pontiac shamelessly “borrowing” the name from Ferrari’s 250 GTO (Gran Turismo Omologato (ie car homologated for competition in the GT (grand-touring) category) was the template for the “muscle car” genre of the 1960s in that it used a big V8 from the full-sized range in the smaller, lighter, intermediate platform.  It was actually an old idea practiced on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1920s but the GTO institutionalized the concept and made it a commercial proposition on a scale never before known because of the then unique conjunction in 1960s America of a large cohort of males aged 17-25 with enough disposable income (or credit-worthiness) to pay for such things.  The GTO existed because Pontiac threaded the configuration through a loophole in the GM corporate rules designed to prevent such things being produced for road use but it sold in such volume at a pleasing profit margin that management’s scruples rapidly were discarded and the crazy years of the muscle car began.  The GTO of course encouraged imitators from Ford, Chrysler and (eventually) even AMC but it also compelled three of GM’s other divisions (Chevrolet, Buick & Oldsmobile) to do their own interpretations.  Only Cadillac stood aloof but in 1970 they did put a 500 cubic inch (8.2 litre) V8 rated at 400 HP (gross horsepower) in the FWD (front-wheel-drive) Eldorado which sounds a daft idea but the engineers disguised its inherent tendencies very well and the delivery of the 400 HP was a very different experience than something like that of the 375 Ford in the same year modestly claimed for the Boss 429 Mustang.

1970 Oldsmobile 442 Convertible, Official Pace Car (Indianapolis 500) Edition.

Though not original, GTO was of course a great name and the best Oldsmobile’s product-planners could come up with was 4-4-2, an allusion to the configuration (front to rear) of a four barrel carburetor, a four-speed manual gearbox and dual-exhausts.  Once explained it made sense but it remained a flaky name, something suffered by later imitators, Dodge’s “Super Bee” as good a car as Plymouth’s Road Runner but with nothing like the same brand-appeal.  Like Pontiac’s GTO, the 4-4-2 was originally an option package but such was the market response both became regular production models.  As it turned out, 4-4-2 was “just a name” rather than a promise because in 1965 when, in order to be advertise the things at a lower base-price, a three-speed gearbox became standard with the four-speed moved to the option list but there was no 4-3-2: 4-4-2 they all remained which made sense because at various times it could be ordered also with two or three-speed automatic gearboxes, none of which ever were dubbed 4-2-2 or 4-3-2.  However, in an inconsistency at the time not untypical in the industry, although in 1968 the badge was changed from “4-4-2” to “442”, both descriptions continued for years to appear in documents and sales literature.

1953 Kaiser Manhattan (left) and 1961 Chrysler 300G (left).

Although no other manufacturer put five separate functions in the one circular pod, others did do five-function clusters in a more elaborate housing but while Kaiser just appended a semi-circular surround for the ancillary gauges (fuel-level, coolant temperature, ammeter & oil pressure) Chrysler in 1960 introduced the “Astrodome”, the name one of many influenced by what was going on during the dawn of the space-age.  What the dramatic Astrodome did was offer the driver a “3D” effect by placing the four gauges in a staggered array on the steering column, using space usually taken by the transmission selector lever, that function moved to a push-button panel on the dashboard while the turn-signals were controled by a sliding lever; to complete the “space-race” look, buttons and knobs were prolific so although the ergonomics weren’t ideal, visually, the atmospherics were most fetching.

1961 Chrysler 300G.

The speedometer was calibrated to 150 mph (240 km/h) which was needed because, even in street trim, the most highly-tuned 300Gs easily could exceed 140 mph (225 km/h).  Despite the concerns sometimes expressed today, the tires of the era were safe to use at such speed (much had been learned from the tyres developed for use in aviation during World War II (1939-1945)) but the drum brakes of the era were inadequate.

Adding to the drama in 1960 was what Chrysler called “revolutionary Panelescent lighting” which was a fanciful term describing the use of electroluminescence (EL), an optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field.  As implemented for the Panelescent system, as well as the soft blue backlighting, each gauge pointer was also an individual source of red light.  The Astrodome was used between 1960-1962 on a number of Chryslers including the “Letter-series” 300s and the New Yorker while EL remained in use until 1967; it was last seen on the first generation Dodge Charger (1966-1967).

Conventions in English and Ablaut Reduplication

In 2016, the BBC explained why we always say “tick tock” rather than “tock-tic” although, based on the ticking of the clocks at the time the phrase originated, there would seem to be no objective reasons why one would prevail over the other but the “rule” can be constructed thus: “If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O.  If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O which is why we enjoy mish-mash, chit-chat, clip-clop, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong & ping pong.  Obviously, the “rule” is unwritten so may be better thought a convention such as the one which dictates why the words in “Little Red Riding Hood” appear in the familiar order; there the convention specifies that in English, adjectives run in the textual string: opinion; size; age; shape; colour; origin; material; purpose noun.  Thus there are “little green men” but no “green little men” and if “big bad wolf” is cited as a violation of the required “opinion (bad); size (big); noun (wolf)” wolf, that’s because the I-A-O convention prevails, something the BBC explains with a number of examples, concluding “Maybe the I, A, O sequence just sounds more pleasing to the ear.”, a significant factor in the evolution of much that is modern English (although that hardly accounts for the enduring affection some have for proscribing the split infinitive, something which really has no rational basis in English, ancient or modern.  All this is drawn from what is in structural linguistics called “Ablaut Reduplication” (the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated vowel is a low vowel) but, being English, “there are exceptions” so the pragmatic “more pleasing to the ear” may be helpful in general conversation.

Rolls-Royce, the Ford LTD and NVH

Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II, 1959.  Interestingly, the superseded Silver Cloud (1955-1958) might have been quieter still because the new, aluminium 6¼ litre (380 cubic inch) V8 didn’t match the smoothness & silence of the previous cast iron, 4.9 litre (300 cubic inch) straight-six, despite the V8 being remarkably heavy for something made substantially from "light metal".

The “tick-tocking” sound of a clock was for some years a feature of the advertising campaigns of the Rolls-Royce Motor Company, the hook being that: “At 60 mph (100 km/h) the loudest noise in a Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”.  Motoring journalists did verify the claim (at least in ideal conditions) but given electric clocks can be engineered silently to function, the conclusion was the company deliberately fitted time-pieces which emitted an untypically loud “tick-tock”, just to ensure the claims were true.  The Silver Clouds were, by the standards of the time, very quiet vehicles but in the US, Ford decided they could mass-produce something quieter still and at the fraction of the cost.  Thus the 1965 Ford LTD, a blinged-up Ford (the add-on "gingerbread" in pre-bling days known as "gorp") advertised as: “Quieter than a Rolls-Royce”.

The test conditions were recorded as: “Dry, level, moderately smooth concrete divided highway; light quartering winds.  All cars operated at steady 20-, 40- and 60- mph with all vents closed”.  The two Rolls-Royces were both standard wheelbase Silver Cloud III saloons with the 6¼ litre (380 cubic inch) V8 and four-speed automatic transmissions while the three Fords (a Galaxie 500 LTD, a Galaxie 500/XL and a Galaxie 500 Four-Door Sedan) were all fitted with the 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8 and three-speed Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission.  The test results were certified by the USAC (United States Auto Club).

To ensure what must at the time have seemed an audacious claim couldn't be dismissed as mere puffery, J. Walter Thompson, then Ford’s advertising agency commissioned acoustical consultants Boldt, Beranek and Neuman to run tests, two brand new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III saloons purchased for the project.  What the engineer’s decibel (dB) meters revealed was that, under conditions that were controlled but representative of much of the driving experience in the US, the Galaxies were indeed quieter inside than a Rolls-Royce.  Because of the way the dB scale works, the differences (as great as 5.5 dB) were quite large and obvious to the human ear.  It was a reasonable achievement in engineering and Ford, anticipating the ensuing controversy, was uncharacteristically modest in claiming their 2.8 dB advantage at 60 mph was only “slight”, the numbers making the point with no need for exaggeration.  Ford didn’t mention the tick-tock of the clock.

Ford Galaxie 500/XL advertising, 1965.  In the West, advertising has long been an exception to the general prohibition of the use of "child labor" (Lindsay Lohan was signed to Ford Models at the age of three and soon got her first gig!).

Ford did though “stack the deck”, a bit in configuring the Galaxies with their mildly tuned 289 V8 with a two-barrel carburettor; had the test included another variation on the full-size line which used the 427 (7.0) V8, the results would have been different, the raucous 427 side oiler offering many charms but they didn't extend to unobtrusiveness.  Still, the choice was reasonable because the tune of the 289 was more representative of what most people bought.  Amusingly, it wasn't the first time Rolls-Royce was surprised by the way things were done in Detroit.  Years earlier, the company had obtained a licence to manufacture Cadillac's four-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission, then the benchmark of its type.  Disassembling one, the Rolls-Royce engineers were surprised at the “rough finish” on some of the internal components and resolved their version would be built to their standards of precision.  That done, a lovingly built Hydramatic was installed in a car and tested, the engineers surprised to find it didn't work very well and offered nothing like the smooth operation of the original.  They contacted Cadillac and were told the prototype Hydramatics produced with universally fine tolerances had also misbehaved and the “roughness” of certain components deliberately was introduced to ensure the optimal frictional resistance was obtained.     

Ford Galaxie 500 LTD advertising, 1965.

Not much noticed at the time was another intrusion.  Although the trend had for years been creeping through the industry, what the 1965 LTD did was make blatant Ford's incursion into the market territory once reserved for the corporate stablemate, Mercury, the "middle class" brand between Ford & Lincoln.  This intra-corporate cannibalism (which had already seen Chrysler shutter its DeSoto division) would have consequences, one of which was Mercury's eventual demise, another being Ford's competitors, noting the LTD's success, bringing their own interpretations to the market, the most successful of which was the Chevrolet Caprice (which enjoyed the same relationship to the Impala as the LTD had to the Galaxie 500).  Notably, the Caprice contributed to the later extinction of the once highly popular Oldsmobile, squeezed from its niche by Chevrolet (from below) and Buick (from above).  What were once gaps in the market, catered to by specific brands, ceased to exist. 

1965 Ford LTD (technically a “Galaxie 500 LTD” because in the first season the LTD was a Galaxie option, not becoming a stand-alone model until the 1966 model year).

Even before the LTD was released the full-sized cars produced by the US industry featured the world's finest engine-transmission combinations and Ford justly deserves credit for what was achieved in 1965 because it wasn’t an exercise merely in adding sound insulation.  The previous models had a good reputation for handling and durability but couldn’t match the smoothness and ride of competitive Chevrolets so within Ford was created a department dedicated to what came to be called HVH (Noise, Vibration & Harshness) and this team cooperated in what would now be understood as a “multi-disciplinary” effort, working with body engineers and suspension designers to ensure all components worked in harmony to minimize NVH.  The idea was to craft a platform which, at least on the billiard table like surfaces of the nations freeways, would match the powertrains for smoothness and that was a task which would absorb much time and effort because the mildly-tuned V8 engines most customers bough were unobtrusive in their delivery and the automatic transmissions didn't so much change gears as slur effortlessly between ratios.

Ford Galaxie 500 LTD (with "Body/Chassis Puck") advertising with , 1965.

What emerged was a BoF (Body on Frame) platform (a surprise to some as the industry trend had been towards unitary construction) to ensure the stiffest possible structure but the combination of the frame’s rubber body-mounts (which Ford dubbed "pucks" because of their similarity in size and shape to the rubber disks used in ice hockey), robust torque boxes and a new, more compliant, coil-spring rear suspension delivered what even the competition's engineers (though probably not the sales staff) acknowledged was the industry’s quietest, smoothest ride.  To solve the problem of troublesome vibrations, the material had before come to the rescue, a rubber layer for the carburettor mountings proving the solution to the resonance which, at certain road speeds, affected the flow of the fuel-air mix in the MGA Twin-Cam, resulting in pistons melting.  Alas, the fix was discovered too late and the MGA was doomed.  Norton had better luck with their Isolastic, a rubber-based engine mounting which disguised the chronic vibration on the Commando's 750 cm³ parallel twin, allowing the company (as something of a last gasp) to extract a (sometimes profitable) decade from what was an antiquated design.

Ford LTD advertising, 1980.

In geopolitics and economics, much changed between 1965 and 1980.  Whereas Ford had once been able prove their Galaxie range (US$2,800-4,800) was quieter than a US$17,000 Rolls-Royce, by 1980 a LTD (the Galaxie name, dating from 1959 was retired after the 1974 season) sold typically for between US$6,400-8,000, reflecting the inflation which became entrenched during the 1970s.  That was representative of the effect on domestically produced cars but an "entry-level" (the concept really was used even of cars from the more exulted) Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow now listed for a minimum US65,000-odd and if that wasn't thought conspicuous enough consumption, there was the two-door Camargue with a price tag in six figures.  The LTD was looking even better value.  Ford in the era made a bit of a thing of comparing their locally produced machines with high-priced stuff from across the Atlantic, one campaign showing how closely the US Granada (1975-1982) resembled various Mercedes-Benz; these days it's the Chinese manufacturers which are accused of plagiarism although they often are more blatant in their copying.  Reckoning however what worked in 1965 would still work 15 years on, Ford re-ran their tests and, in a regulatory environment which was rather more harsh on advertising claims, asserted only that "The 1980 Ford LTD rides as quietly as a $65,000 Rolls-Royce".  The tic-tock of the clock still didn't rate a mention.