Flookerang & Fratzog

Flookerang (pronounced flook–ah-rang)

A corporate logo adopted in 1957 by Chrysler Corporation for use in promoting the dramatically restyled versions of the company’s “Forward Look” designs (1955-1956).

1957: The construct was flook + (boom)erang.  Now mostly obsolete, flook was an alternative spelling of fluke (in the sense of “blade at the end of an anchor”).  In wide nautical use, flook (fluke) was used of any of the triangular blades at an anchor’s end, the appendages there to “catch” on the seabed or riverbed, keeping the vessel moored in position (ie not drifting away with the tide).  In armaments design, the flook was a metal hook that appeared close to the tip of many staff weapons (such as a bill) with the effect in combat depending on use; if thrust, could be penetrative (armor or flesh as need be) while if swung it could work as a “grappling hook”.  Fluke & flook are old words, documented since at least the tenth century although, anchors, staff weapons, arrowheads and such having by then been in use for millennia, the forms may well be more ancient.  The origin was the Middle English flok, fluke & flewke, from the Old English flōcand and cognate with the Old Norse flōki; it may be compared with the Old High German flah (flat (source of the modern German flach)), from the Proto-Germanic flakaz although for technical reasons related to the phonetics, etymologists seem to prefer a link with the Middle Low German vlögel (wing) and the Germanic vlōch & vlucht (used in the sense of both “wing” & “flight”) or even vlunke (the modern Low German Flunk (wing, pinion)).  The modern use in German of fluke to describe the tail of whales and such is thought borrowed from English.  The use of sea creatures came from the Old English flōc (flatfish), of Germanic origin, related to the German flach (flat), the Old Saxon flaka (sole), the Old High German flah (smooth) and the Old Norse floke (flatfish, flounder, flak, floe; disk), all ultimately from Proto-Germanic flakaz, from the primitive Indo European root plak- (to be flat).  The parasitic worm was so named in the 1660s by virtue of the distinctive (flat) shape.

A Flookerang: Chrysler corporation brochure, 1958.

In general use, “fluke” has become familiar as the description of the two lobes of the tails of whales (or similar creatures) and whales “fluking” their tails (appearing above the surface just as a deep dive is about to begin) have long been an Instagram staple; once hunted close to extinction for their meat and oil, the charismatic beasts are now among nature’s most prolific content providers although their flukes do occasionally suffer the indignity of being labelled “fishtails”.  Being mammals, they belong to the order Cetacea and are within the zoological class Mammalia, not Pisces.  Interestingly, although “fluke” & “flook” were historically used of the barbed projections added to some arrowheads, the terms seemed to have vanished from modern specialist terminology, replaced by “barbed arrowhead”, the two projections (pointing backwards towards the shaft) designed to resist withdrawal after penetration (and doing victim much damaged during the extraction).  The link with (in this case unfortunate) whales is that the biggest of the barbs were on the biggest of the arrows (the harpoons on whaling ships).  The variant in Scots English was fluik, known to be in use by at least the early seventeenth century.  The way use evolved differently in specialist vocabularies does make sense with nautical jargon retaining fluke or flook for an anchor's broad, seabed-catching blades while in archery, the industry settled on “barb”, presumably because the purpose of the structures mirrored the natural world, barbs in animals and plants doing much the same job.  Boomerang entered English texts only in 1827 and was from būmariny (missile weapon used by Australian Aborigines (a historic term for the native tribes in the continent of Australia, now generally classified as “indigenous” or “first nations” peoples)), the recorded phonetic form of a word in one of the now extinct languages spoken by the Dharuk people native to an area in what is now NSW (New South Wales) and known to geographers as the Sydney Basin.  A word pronounced as wo-mur-rang was noted in NSW in 1798 and it may have been related but there’s no documentary evidence.  Flookerang is a noun, Fratzonic is an adjective and Fratzonically is an adverb; the noun plural is Flookerangs.

1957 Chrysler brochure with Flookerang.  While the 1957 cars were (for better and worse) immensely influential, Virgil's real masterpiece was the 1955-1956 “Forward Look”; frankly, there he should have paused for a few seasons.

Although the The Flookerang can best be described as a pair of stylized boomerangs, one with an especially acute angle overlaid atop another in a more conventional shape and it can be assumed Chrysler used flook in the sense of the appendages on weapons rather than the homophonic fluke’s sense of (1) a lucky or improbable occurrence unlikely to be repeated or (2) to by pure chance obtain a successful outcome (although, in retrospect, there was an element of both in the corporation’s 1957 ranges).  The shape obviously was abstract and did not represent one of Chrysler’s manufacturing divisions (in 1957: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler & Imperial) or a specific model or range.  It was instead a mid-century modernist allusion to the latest version of the company’s “Forward Look” design, introduced for the 1955 season and styled by Virgil Exner (1909–1973; vice president of styling, Chrysler Corporation 1957-1962).  The 1955-1956 Chryslers were for the corporation a watershed because although the mechanical engineering had always been sound (in some ways, often industry-leading), by the late 1940s the styling of the cars had become “frumpy”, a product of the design ethos of Kaufman Thuma “K.T.” Keller (1885–1966; president of Chrysler Corporation 1935-1950 and chairman of the board 1950-1956) who believed a car should be able to be “driven by a gentleman with his fedora or Stetson on”.  This resulted in cars that were tall & boxy; while comfortable to sit inside and drive, they looked old-fashioned and out of step with styling trends from Europe or elsewhere in Detroit.  Basic engineering was the message (“function over fashion” in the modern parlance) and although there were critics of the approach (including many within Chrysler), Keller was unmoved, quoted as saying that while none of the corporation’s cars would: “…knock your eyes out, neither will they knock your hat off as you enter or exit”.  He also had earthier ways of explaining his philosophy.

Flookerang variations: 1958 Plymouth Fury (left), 1961 Dodge Dart Phoenix (centre) and 1961 Plymouth Fury (right).

Trouble was, in the unexpectedly prosperous US of the early 1950s, folk were becoming more interested in style and less in their hats and when Exner’s “Ford Look” appeared late in 1954, buyers responded to “longer, lower, wider” as predictably they would for most of the next two decades.  The lines were elegant, the dimensions well proportioned and, at least in the more expensive versions, there was nicely detailing and it was a direction the industry could have taken but the US of the mid 1950s had become something of a candy-store and there were lots of kids with pocket money; prosperity begat excess.  Exner’s 1957 range more than any was the one that ushered in mass-market fins and a half-decade of bloat in the American automobile; in retrospect, it was “the curse of plenty”.

Exner's masterpieces: 1955 Chrysler C-300 (left) and 1957 Imperial Crown Southampton (right).

Still, the macropterous era was among the most memorable era in an industry that’s had a few and, if excess there must be, it should be “laid on with a trowel”; that Exner’s re-styling for 1957 did but within a couple of seasons, compared with the ways GM (General Motors) outposts like Buick and Cadillac would explore the theme, the 1957 Chryslers appeared (almost) restrained.  By contrast with the extravagance seen on the cars the emblem was created to promote, the Flookerang was subtle, the overlaid shapes denoting (1) rapid forward progress and (2) the sweep of those big fins rearward.  As a conceptual link it was one of the more successful of its kind but, unfortunately, the species it referenced soon went extinct.  Chrysler in 1957 had announced the look in banner headlines reading “Suddenly, it’s 1960” and, in a period when the “futuristic” was everywhere in films, newspapers and fiction, the cars did seem to offer a glimpse of a bright, shiny new world.  The problem was however that once on the path of excess there is nowhere to go but “more excessive” and that’s what happened; by the time it really was “1960”, the moment had passed and the fins soon would be pruned, Exner fired (actually relegated to a face-saving consultancy) with the Flookerang in 1961 (mostly) abandoned, replaced by the mysterious Fratzog.

Flookercharger.

Chrysler’s use of the Flookerang was inconsistent, both in variations in shape and placement on vehicles, on some models appearing one season, vanishing the next, only to re-appear for an encore, perhaps explaining why it never really became culturally embedded as a symbol, its relatively short life contributing also.  It must though have appealed to at least one custom-builder who blended the tail-fins of a 1960 Plymouth Fury with a 1966 Dodge Charger, the Flookerangs left in place despite the tendency of those crafting such things to remove “extraneous detailing”.  The styling of the 1966-1967 Chargers was received with restrained enthusiasm (although, once a small spoiler had been added to the trunk (boot) lid to tame the “lift” encountered at high speed, the fastback lines proved aerodynamically efficient on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals) but few would have suggested grafting on a 1960 Fury’s fins would have improved the aesthetics.  That was however done by one visionary soul who didn’t stop at what clearly was thought a callipygous optimization, a 1967 interior used with the dashboard modified to house a remarkable 19 gauges, the four electroluminescent pods on the driver’s side matched by a symmetrical quartet to the right.  The engine was a 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 that may have been original although it included a Sonoramic cross ram induction system (most photogenic but never offered by the factory with the 440); the transmission a TorqueFlite 727 Automatic.  Given the configuration, adding five hood scoops seemed appropriate and the steering wheel boss retained its original Fratzog.  Unfortunately, the unique machine was damaged in a garage fire (one unkind comment on a Mopar site suggesting it may have attracted “the wrath of God”) and its fate is unknown.

Fratzog (pronounced frat-zog)

A corporate logo since 1961 used from time to time by Chrysler Corporation (and of late revived by Stellantis, the multi-national automotive manufacturing concern into which Fiat-Chrysler was in 2021 absorbed).

1960: According to industry legend, a wholly meaningless word made up on the spur of the moment by the shape’s designer.  If the designer (whose name remains unknown) had some inspiration for their choice, it seems never to have been documented but frequently it’s been assumed the construct was frat(ernity)+ zog.  Fraternity was from the Middle English fraternite, from the Old French fraternité, from the Latin frāternitās, ultimately from frāter (brother).  Although almost certainly unrelated to Fratzog, in the Albanian language, zog translates literally as “bird” (zogu (“the bird”, using the definite article)).  The Zogolli family’s (the construct being the root Zog + the Ottoman-Turkish patronymic suffix –oglu (son of)) most famous member was Zog I (Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli; 1895–1961); King of Albania 1928–1939) and in 1922 (after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved), he Albanized and shortened his surname to Zogu, six year later clipping the final “-u” and adopting the mononym King Zog as his royal title.  Fratzog also predates by some 16 years the acronym ZOG (used also as Zog) (Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government, or Zionist-Occupied Government), a term (dating from 1976) for the US government used by certain antisemitic conspiracy theorists claiming Jews secretly control the US government (a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda under the Third Reich (1933-1945) extended also to the UK government).  JOG (Jewish Occupational Government) has also been used but, historically, SOG was preferred it was thought to distinguish “Jewish subversive conduct” from “being Jewish” although that subtlety escaped most.  Fratzog is a noun; the noun plural is Fratzogs.

1966 Dodge Charger.  In case people didn't “get the message”, Dodge added a fratzog to the hubcaps (top left), gas cap (top left) and grille (centre) while a Flookerang appeared on the C-Pillar (bottom left) with a pentastar behind the front wheel-arch (bottom right).

Using standard etymological deconstruction, a surface analysis of Flookerang reveals the portmanteau construction but all that’s known of the origin of Fratzog is the logo emerged in mid 1960 from Chrysler’s Highland Park styling studio, then under the direction of Elwood Engel (1917–1986; Chief Designer, Chrysler Corporation 1961-1973).  Whether it was the work of an individual or something of a team effort is unclear but, given the simplicity of the task, that it came from the hand of a single designer is quite plausible.  While never named, some sources have referred to the designer as “he” so it’s reasonable to assume it was a man (throughout Detroit the styling studios then an almost exclusively male domain although women had for decades being involved in color choices and interior detailing) but no documentary evidence has ever been sighted.  The meaning of Fratzog has long been a mystery with the industry legend being it was “made up on the spot” after someone in the marketing department sent a request asking how they should refer to the thing.  Having the punchy qualities of being short, memorable, phonetic, unique and needing only two syllables, it would have had some appeal to marketing types but whether they ever sent a “follow-up” asking what it meant, isn’t known.

Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity house, 107 Edgemoor Lane, Ithaca, New York.

Probably it was good they didn’t pursue the matter because the orthodoxy is “Fratzog” has no meaning, speculation focused usually on the “frat” element with the most popular theory being it may be a borrowing of the clipping of “fraternity” (a social organization of male students at a college or university) and familiar in forms such as “frat party” (much associated with drunkenness, frat houses to this day one of the most convenient paths to alcohol for those under 21 (in the US the minimum age at which alcohol may be purchased and consumed)).  Many of the designers at Highland Park would have been “frats” (members of a fraternity and habitués of frat houses) so it’s not impossible “fratzog” may have been slang among certain drunken students although that’s wholly speculative but there is a rich history of such constructs including “frat boy” & “frat rat” (members of a fraternity, the most obnoxious of the breed dubbed “fratholes”), “frat house” (a fraternity's building) and “frat flick” & “frat lit” (movies & books about fraternities or appealing to the frat boy stereotype (“fratire” the ultimate form of the literature, now understood as a stream of “toxic masculinity”)).  As might be predicted given the elements of frat house life (males aged 17-25, ample stocks of alcohol, disposable income and proximity to sorority houses (a source of female students aged 17-25)), behavior can be less than ideal and recent scandals at Cornell University have illustrated aspects of the culture.  Sorority was from the Renaissance Latin sorōritās, from the Classical Latin soror (sister), from the primitive Indo-European swésōr; the word may be compared with the Portuguese sororidade, the Spanish sororidad and the French sororité.

Lindsay Lohan “on theme” in the livery of the Cincinnati Bengals (a football team in the NFL (National Football League) as a member of the AFC (American Football Conference) North division (left) and 1968 Dodge Charger Bengal Edition (right).

The Dodge Charger Bengal Edition was created in 1968 by Cincinnati Dodge dealer to celebrate the formation of an NFL franchise for the city, arranging with Chrysler’s fleet supply staff to have the cars painted in orange and fitted with black vinyl roofs to match the team’s colors.  Amusingly, Chrysler had no such orange in the color charts for its passenger cars but a shade mixed for Michigan Department of Transportation's fleet proved a perfect match.  An order of 50 was required for the specialized run so 50 duly were ordered in a variety of mechanical configurations.  Reflecting Dodge’s usual build practice for 1968 Chargers, Fratzog logos were fitted on the grille and rear panel unless the R/T package also was ordered in which case R/T badges were substituted.  In either case, a Fratzog appeared on the steering wheel boss but mysteriously, some 1968 Charger R/Ts exist with a small Fratzog on the instrument panel while others have a miniature R/T.  “Special editions” like the Bengal Charger often appeared to stimulate sales of slow-selling models but the 1968 Charger was a hit from day one and although the product planners had projected sales that season of around 20,000, they were pleasantly surprised when more than 96,000 left the showroom, a second assembly line quickly added to meet demand.  It was a remarkable increase on its slab-sided predecessor (1966-1967) that in 1967 had struggled to achieve a volume of less than 15,000.

King Zog I of Albania died in 1961 but there’s nothing to suggest Fratzog’s second element was inspired by or a tribute to the deposed monarch, by then living in France (the culmination of a peripatetic exile made comfortable by having looted the Albanian treasury of its gold reserves) where he would succumb to cancer, his 65 years a reasonable achievement for someone who reputedly smoked some 200 cigarettes a day (if true, assuming he slept the recommended eight hours, that’s a fag about every five minutes which does seem a heroic devotion to the art).  In the palaces and chancelleries of Europe, Zog was not highly regarded.  Although neither as vivid nor as entertaining as his diaries, when select documents from Count Galeazzo Ciano’s (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1943 (and the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) who ordered his execution)) time in the foreign ministry were published as Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers (1948), there were some shrewd observations from his travels, including Albania: “The king and royal family were highly unpopular; Zog was accused of nepotism, money-grubbing abd the flashy extravagance of his sisters as well as the high cost of the royal wedding.  The Albania people spoke of Zog in terms of the utmost contempt.”

Too good for King Zog: Bugatti Royale chassis 41141 (the “Kellner car”, unsold and retained by the factory).

Nor was it just the politicians who viewed his gaucheness with distaste.  Ettore Bugatti (1881-1947) refused to sell Zog a Bugatti Royale (Type 41, 1927-1933) on the basis “the man's table manners are beyond belief!”  That was quite a commercial sacrifice because, in the depths of the Great Depression, customers for the huge and expensive Royale had proved elusive; although a run of 25 had been planned, (kings & princes the target market) of the seven built, only three were sold (none to royalty).  Fortunately, some costs were amortized when unused examples of the Royale’s smooth, torquey, 12.8 litre (779 cubic inch) straight-8 engines were re-purposed by SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français (National Company of the French Railways, the state-owned rail operator)) to propel the newly-introduced high-speed railcars.  As a footnote, Zog should correctly be styled “Zog I”, despite there having never been a “Zog II”, that apparent anomaly explained by a monarch's ordinal a matter of nomination by the personage so, in strict historical and regnal terminology, Zog I it is.  It was though his second choice, his original idea being to become Skanderbeg III, associating himself with Albania's national hero Skanderbeg (George Kastrioti (circa 1405-1468)).

A Fratzog.

It’s intriguing to ponder whether being dubbed a “fratzog” was something good or bad but, whatever might be the history of the name (that might to some sound like something associated with the rituals in a Masonic Temple), the shape is no mystery to mathematicians, the Fratzog based on a Deltoid curve (the roulette created by a point on the circumference of a circle as it rolls without slipping along the inside of a circle with three or one-and-a-half times its radius).  Its year of debut came of course at the at the dawn of the space race but while the shape (three delta-forms arranged in an equilateral triangle) might be thought (at least vaguely) evocative of an aerospace theme, that would not much have encouraged more pessimistic types who saw only a “fractured deltoid”.  So, no translation, acronym or verified linguistic origin exists but despite that it certainly caught on, first appearing on the 1962 Dodge Polara 500 and Custom 880, before being applied to various Dodge and other Chrysler models until 1976 and in some places lingering until 1981 when, at the instigation of the new CEO, Lee Iacocca (1924–2019), the pentastar logo was standardized corporation-wide.

Fratzog on 1972 Australian Chrysler Valiant Charger 770 SE 340 (E55); not only the Americans had long model names.

Nor is it known if the Fratzog’s “triangular” theme was an allusion to the company’s original logo.  The Dodge brothers' (Horace (1868–1920) and John (1864–1920) engineering business had begun production of passenger cars just before World War I (1914-1918) and their first emblem had been a dual interlocking triangle that resembled a stylized Star of David.  The family was not Jewish and it’s believed the logo used representations of the Greek letter delta (in upper case use a triangle shape) meant to represent the two brothers who had always been close (John dying of pneumonia during the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic and Horace expiring the same year from cirrhosis of the liver).

Flookerang: 1966 Dodge Charger brochure.

Other logos would appear after Chrysler purchased Dodge in 1928 (following an abortive earlier attempt) but none were even vaguely Fratzogish so history is not much help in tracing the origin; the industry legend of a designer just “liking the shape” may really be true.  It did though have a longer and more diverse career than the Flookerang, serving variously as body badges & grille emblems and appearing also on gas (petrol) caps & horn buttons.  Despite the proliferation, the Fratzog never became thematic in print advertising the way the Flookerang had been used in the 1950s.  So that's it, both words (one a conventional portmanteau, the other possibly one but genuinely mysterious) emerging from a Detroit styling studio although, had anyone concluded Flookerang & Fratzog was likely either an unfinished novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) or a firm of Jewish accountants, that would have been understandable. 

The original Dodge Brothers logo, used between 1914 and 1930.  The oft-repeated story the logo was adopted to annoy the notoriously anti-Semitic Henry Ford (1863-1947) is now thought an urban myth.

Except among collectors or students of such things, by 2024, neither logo probably much registered in the public consciousness in the way of Chevrolet’s bow-tie or Ford’s “Blue Oval” (that font a hand-drawn rendition based on Henry Ford’s signature although PostScript and TrueType emulations variously are available (FordScript the closest, Fabiola Script & Neville Regular similar)) but despite the collective memory having faded, in 2024 Dodge announced the Fratzog would be revived as symbol of its new range of electric power-trains, assuring the world the constant advances in battery chemistry meant the days of thousand HP (horsepower) EVs with AWD (all-wheel-drive) and a 500 mile (800 km) range were nigh; burning rubber wasn’t going away, it’d just no longer require gas.  To make the historic link, there was CGI (computer generated graphics, generative AI (artificial intelligence) at that point not sufficiently refined) footage with Fratzogs, a rationale and lots of tyre smoke.  As things turned out, batteries continued to improve but Dodge’s announcement 2023 would be the end of the line for their gas-powered V8 muscle cars turned out to be premature though genuinely that was the intent.

1967 Wolseley Hornet (1961-1969, left) and 2022 Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV Concept (right).  Although six decades apart, there are still commonalities, both having four wheels and illuminated grille badges.

Keen-eyed observers of promotional material for the 2024 (EV) Charger Daytona noted Fratzog logos on the wheel hubs with the one in the centre of the grille being illuminated, a feature long associated with the English manufacturer Wolseley which, under a number of corporate umbrellas between 1901 and 1975 variously thrived, survived or struggled until finally becoming one of the many victims of the doomed British Leyland (1968-1986).  Wolseley never produced a muscle car but in the 1950s & 1960s was one of the "preferred suppliers" for many of the UK's metropolitan police forces.  The Wolseley trademark is now in the hands of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the state-owned SAIC Motor (formerly Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) acquiring it by virtue of the MG Rover Group having in 2005 been absorbed by SAIC subsidiary Nanjing Automobile.  Although Nanjing has since 2008 produced vehicles using the MG name, there has never been any indication the Wolseley marquee might be revived, presumably because unlike MG which retained strong “brand recognition” because of the following enjoyed by its pre-1980 sports cars, Wolseley has faded from the collective memory, most of its original customers now dead. 

EV: The future of Fratzog.  Dodge's EV shtick is that “people buy performance, not a mechanical specification”, a variant of the hardware store's “people don't want 20 mm drill bits, they want 20 mm holes); it'll be interesting to see if the “US muscle car model” (front-mounted V8, RWD (rear-wheel-drive)) can be re-defined to “performance breakdown”.  The market will decide.

There was also a neologism, “Frazonic” emblazoned on the rear valance; it turned out that adjective referred to the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” (piped “engine noise”, replicating in tone and dB (decibels) the song of a Hellcat V-8; the adverb presumably “Fratzonically”).  Just as government regulations had by the early 1970s contributed to the demise of the first muscle car era (although the insurance companies did their bit), so it seemed clear that five decades on, government edicts might also drive extinct at least the V8-powered monsters of the new generation, production of such things no longer viable given the new fleet fuel efficiency mandate.  However, as things turned out, there may be a stay of execution, internal documents “obtained” by various sites appearing to confirm Dodge’s EV ranges may in 2028 be augmented by a Charger running the supercharged 6.2-liter (376 cubic inch) Hemi Hellcat V8 in a RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration.  The internal designation appeared as “HEV” though that stood for not the by now common “Hybrid EV” but the wholly more subversive “Hellcat Equipped Vehicle”; that repurposing may not have been mischievous but someone at Dodge may have been trying to annoy Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  So Dodge is gearing up for what may be one last hard ride for those who can remember the way things used to be done (when noise was organic and not Fratsonic) but within the Stellantis product planning department, the only poem much read is likely to be To a mouse (1785) by Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) with focus on the two famous lines: “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley” (ie however well-planned, things can go awry).  Corporate America has found Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) second administration more accommodating than its immediate predecessor but, like many, keenly they’ll be watching the returns from the 2026 mid-term elections.

Inflammable & Flammable

Inflammable (pronounced in-flam-uh-buhl)

(1) Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable (recommended only for figurative use).

(2) Easily aroused or excited, as to passion or anger; irascible; fiery; volatile, choleric.

1595–1605: From the Medieval Latin inflammābilis, the construct being the Classical Latin inflammā(re) (to set on fire) + -bilis (from the Proto-Italic -ðlis, from the primitive Indo-European i-stem form -dhli- of -dhlom (instrumental suffix).  Akin to –bulum, the suffix -bilis is added to a verb to form an adjectival noun of relationship to that verb (indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).  The construct of the Classical Latin inflammare (to set on fire) was -in (in, on) + flamma (flame).  As an indication of shifts in use, the verb inflame & noun inflammation are now most commonly used in clinical medicine to describe swellings, a site especially "reddish" often called "angry".  Inflammable is a noun & adjective, inflammation, inflammableness & inflammasome & inflammability are nouns, inflammatory is an adjective and inflammably is an adverb; the noun plural is inflammables. 

Flammable (pronounced flam-uh-buhl)

Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable (technically a back-formation from inflammable).

1805–1815: From the Classical Latin flammā(re) (to set on fire) + -ble (the Latin suffix forming adjectives and means “capable or worthy of”).  Flammable is an adjective, flammability is a noun and flammably is an adverb; the noun plural is flammabilities.

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

Need for standardization

Flammable and inflammable came to the same thing.  English, a mongrel vacuum-cleaner of a language, has many anomalies born of the haphazard adoption of words from other tongues but the interchangeability of flammable and inflammable is unfortunate because of the use in signs to warn people of potentially fatal danger.

Using flammable and inflammable to mean the same thing is confusing and at least potentially dangerous and the recommended use is flammable (things prone to catching fire) and non-flammable (things not).  To add another layer of meaning less language-dependent, borrowing from semiotics, danger should be indicated with red, safety with green.

In- often is used as a prefix with adjectives and nouns to indicate the opposite of the word it precedes (eg inaction, indecisive, inexpensive etc).  Given that, it would seem reasonable to assume inflammable is the opposite of flammable and the reason for the potentially deadly duplication is historic.  Inflammable actually pre-dates flammable, the word derived from the Latin verb inflammare (to set on fire), this verb also the origin of the modern meaning “to swell or to provoke angry feelings”, hence the link between setting something on fire and rousing strong feelings in someone.  So, at a time when Latin was more influential, inflammable made sense.  However, as the pull of Latin receded, words with in- (as a negative prefix) became a bigger part of the lexicon and the confusion was created; by early in the 1800s, flammable increasingly came to be used and in the next century, as the use and storage of flammable substances grew, use was widespread.  The modern convention is (or should be) to use flammable literally (to refer to things which catch fire) and inflammable figuratively (to describe the arousal of passions, the swelling of tissue etc.  Surprisingly, the rules applying to warning signs have yet to adopt this standardization.

The Mean Girls (2004) Burn Book (left) and Lindsay Lohan burning an “inflammatory” tabloid magazine, Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, GQ Magazine, October 2006.

Uses figurative and literal: In Mean Girls, the Burn Book gained its notoriety from being packed with inflammatory comments.  Lindsay Lohan in 2006 picked up the concept in a photo-shoot by Terry Richardson (b 1965) for GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) magazine.  Titled Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, the theme was her as a case-study of the way “tabloid publications” handled celebrity culture, the joke being a magazine with “inflammatory content about her” being literally set aflame, the glossy paper of course being flammable.  It’s appears a consensus in the “media studies” crew that this aspect of “tabloid culture” peaked in the first dozen-odd years of the twenty-first century, the reasons for that including (1) the period having an exceptionally large cast of suitable subjects, (2) smart phones with HD (high-definition) cameras becoming consumer items meaning potential content proliferated (ie what once would not have been photographed now became available to editors as low cost images) and (3) social media sites not having attained critical mass, all factors which at the time enabled the lower-end glossies to flourish.  Of course, what's not certain is the math of the "cause & effect".  Was what at the time seemed an "exceptionally large cast of suitable subjects" a fluke of history which encouraged the taking of photographs and their subsequent publication or did the growth in number of down-market glossies mean more "celebrities" had to be "manufactured" to provide the content?   

1972 Ford Ranchero 500 (left) and a circa 1972 Ford Pinto (right).

“Hot Rod Flames” first became popular when the West Coast hot rod community began adding them to their modified machines.  Rendered usually in red, orange and yellow to emulate actual flames, in the decades since they’ve appeared in many colors, sometimes in hues which would never be seen in nature and they’re now a commodity with templates and adhesives widely available; the motif was also picked up by the tattoo community.  Traditionally, when applied to a hot rod or other modified vehicle, the placement of the lick of the flames was quasi-realistic in that the effect was intended to be that of a flaming car in motion.  One widely circulated image however was of a Ford Pinto (1970-1980) with the flames travelling “the other way”: from the back towards the passengers.  The artwork was a sardonic comment on the Pinto’s reputation for bursting aflame if struck from behind by another vehicle, the allegation being Pintos were unusually flammable (the media tended to prefer the more dramatic “explosive”) in such cases because of the placement of the gas (petrol) tank and design of the fuel system.  In truth the Pinto’s susceptibility probably was little different from that of many other vehicles with a similar layout but what gained the modest machine notoriety was the discovery of “inflammatory” comments in internal corporate memoranda in which executives discussed the relative costs of rectifying the problem compared with the likely costs of legal settlements compensating incinerated victims and their families.

Combustibles magazine (4 December, 1972).

The troubling duplicity of meaning was explored by the editors of Combustibles magazine in their edition of 4 December, 1972.  There never was a Combustibles magazine (which may suggest a gap in the market for the entrepreneurial) but an archive of the (factitious) covers is maintained in the Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection.  Ms Mountweasel (1942-1973) was a creation of Karen Tweedy-Holmes (b 1942), then an editor at the New Columbia Encyclopedia who, for the publication's 1975 edition, needed a bogus entry to be inserted as a "copyright trap", the idea being that were the "facts" included to appear in any other publication, they'd obviously been plagiarized because the sad tale of Ms Mountweazel's life and demise appeared nowhere else.  The entry read: “Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942–1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio.  Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964.  She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes.  The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972).  Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”  That same year, writing in The New Yorker, Henry Alford (b 1962) suggested "mountweasel" as a term to be used for copyright traps and dictionaries agreed; to this day it remains the preferred generic form and for this purpose, (unlike when used of the doomed heroine), mountweasel is used without an initial capital.

Combustibles magazine (Special Issue, 4 June, 1973).

Impressed by Ms Tweedy-Holmes' (there can have been few finer names for a lexicographer) creation, the curators of the Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection fleshed-out the tale of the life and death of the tragic American fountain designer turned photographer, most noted for her Flags Up! project, a commissioned series of images of the mailboxes of rural America.  Her other assignments included “The Cemeteries of Paris”, “The Whimsical History of Fireworks” and “Disturbing Revelations” about Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) who in 1945 had been employed by the US government, suddenly rather more interested in the missiles the German could help them build rather than his wartime use of slave labor.  A darker side also was revealed: Flags Up!, although promoted as the USPS (US Postal Service) using “captivating imagery” to demonstrate how the new ZIP codes enhanced “the efficiency and modernization of the postal system”, actually was funded by the CCF (Congress for Cultural Freedom), a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) “front organization” used during the Cold War to produce anti-Soviet propaganda.  The “messaging” in Flags Up! was to show the way freedom of thought and the expression of ideas was allowed freely to flow between Americans, however remote they might be.  Of course, also included is the “special issue” of Combustibles (4 June, 1973) in which was announced the death the previous day of Ms Mountweazel, killed in the crash of a Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 SST (supersonic transport) passenger airliner during the 1973 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport.  In the accident, all six crew members died along with eight in the nearby village of Goussainville, Val-d'Oise where Ms Mountweasel had been researching “the negative health effects of sound pollution in communities near major international airports.”  After her death, photojournalism scholar Pierre Menard, acknowledged Ms Mountweazel as “one of the most important in the world of pyromaniac publishing.”  Pierre Menard was also factitious, the name borrowed from Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)), a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

Fishtail

Fishtail (pronounced fish-teyl)

(1) As "to fishtail" or "fishtailing", to swerve or skid from side to side, as the rear end of a car (an oversteering sequence).

(2) In aviation, to slow an airplane by causing its tail to move rapidly from side to side; such a maneuver.

(3) A gas burner having two jets crossing each other so as to produce a flame resembling a fish's tail.

(4) A device having a long, narrow slot at the top, placed over a gas jet, as of a Bunsen burner, to give a thin, fanlike flame.

(5) In nautical design, a propeller consisting of a single blade that oscillates like the tail of a fish while swimming.

(6) In jewelry design, a setting consisting of four prominent triangular corner prongs to hold the stone.

(7) In dance, a step in ballroom dancing in which the feet are quickly crossed

(8) In fashion design, a dress or skirt with a flowing, scalloped hemline sometimes longer at the back than at the front, flaring usually from about the knee.

(9) A kind of chisel with a flared blade.

(10) In hair-styling, a two-stranded braid.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English, the construct being fish + tail.  Fish the noun (strictly a vertebrate which has gills and fins adapting it for living in the water but the word came to be more widely applied, zoologically) was from the Middle English fisch, from the Old English fisċ (fish), from the Proto-West Germanic fisk, from the Proto-Germanic fiskaz (fish) (source also of the Old Saxon, the Old Frisian & the Old High German fisc, the Old Norse fiskr, the Middle Dutch visc, the Dutch vis, the German Fisch & the Gothic fisks) and related to the West Frisian fisk, the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish fisk, the Irish iasc & the Latin piscis; Root probably either the primitive Indo-European peysḱ- (fish) or pisk (a fish) but at least one etymologist, on phonetic grounds, has suggested it might be a northwestern Europe substratum word.  Fish the verb is from the Old English fiscian (to fish, to catch or try to catch fish), and was cognate with the Old Norse fiska, the Old High German fiscon, the German fischen & the Gothic fiskon, all derived from the noun.  In popular use, since Old English, fish has been used to apply to "any animal that lives entirely in the water," hence shellfish & starfish although, in English there’s an early fifteenth century document which describes fishes bestiales as "water animals other than fishes").  Today, aquatic mammals like dolphins are presumed fish by some.  The plural is fishes, but in a collective sense, or in reference to fish meat as food, the singular fish is commonly used as a plural so, except for the pedants, that battle is lost.  Regarding the heavens, the constellation Pisces is from the late fourteenth century.  The hyphenated form fish-tail is common.  Fishtail is a noun & verb and fishtailing & fishtailed are verbs; the noun plural is fishtails.  Presumably, were one to be employed to chop the tails off fish, one would be called a "fishtailer" but the term seems never to have been used. 

An artist's depiction of Lindsay Lohan as mermaid.

Tail was from the Middle English tail, tayl & teil (hindmost part of an animal), from the Old English tægl & tægel (tail), from the Proto-Germanic taglaz & taglą (hair, fiber; hair of a tail) (source also of the Old High German zagal, the German Zagel (tail), the dialectal German Zagel (penis), the Old Norse tagl (horse's tail) and the Gothic tagl (hair), from the primitive Indo-European doklos, from a suffixed form of the roots dok & dek- (something long and thin (referring to such things as fringe, lock of hair, horsetail & to tear, fray, shred)), source also of the Old Irish dual (lock of hair) and the Sanskrit dasah (fringe, wick).  It was cognate with the Scots tail (tail), the Dutch teil (tail, haulm, blade), the Low German Tagel (twisted scourge, whip of thongs and ropes; end of a rope), the dialectal Danish tavl (hair of the tail), the Swedish tagel (hair of the tail, horsehair), the Norwegian tagl (tail), the Icelandic tagl (tail, horsetail, ponytail), and the Gothic tagl (hair). In some senses, development appears to have been by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.  The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) suggested the primary sense, at least among the Germanic tongues, seems to have been "hairy tail," or just "tuft of hair," but already in Old English the word was applied to the hairless "tails" of worms, bees etc.  The alternative suggestion is that the notion common to all is that of the "long, slender shape."  It served as an adjective from the 1670s.  A long obsolete Old English word for tail was steort.

1952 Vincent Black Shadow with four-port “fishtail” exhaust extension.

An unmistakable look, the “fishtail tip” polarizes opinion; it really is a “love it or hate it” fitting but they retain great popularity in the Harley Davidson community, a crew as devoted to their machines as any.  There are many modern takes on the design; while all feature the characteristic vertical, narrow flare in the distinctive shape, many are upswept and some protrude from the back more than others.  As well as the look, fishtails often are advertised on the basis of their sound (loud) and internally, are tuned to create different resonances, the ears of Harley Davidson riders as sensitive to the variations as are collectors of Stradivarii.

1937 Norton Model 30 International with Brooklands Can (technically the Brooklands Silencer) (left) and 1934 MG Magnette 'K3' Specification Supercharged Roadster (right).

One of the world’s first dedicated venues for motorsports and aviation, England’s Brooklands motor racing circuit was built in 1907, predating the IndianapolisMotor Speedway by two years.  Located in what had until then been the quiet little hamlet of Weybridge in the county of Surrey, some 20 miles (12 km) south-west of London, it sits 9 miles (14.5 km) south of Heathrow Airport and a portion of the original outer circuit (originally 2.75 miles (4.4 km) in length with the banking in places rising almost 30 feet (9.1 m) high) still exists.  Then, as now, Motorsport was a very noisy business and as the sport boomed in popularity after World War I (1914-1918), the tolerance of the inhabitants of Weybridge must have been tested because there’s a record of complaints about the noise (especially on Sundays and during the 24 hour events sometimes run) and eventually, in September 1924, a group commenced in the High Court an action in the tort of nuisance.  By July 2025 (reasonably brisk by the standards of the legal system), a settlement was agreed which included a permanent injunction limiting the days and hours of operation and the creation of the novel “Brooklands Can”, a design of muffler which could be adapted to both cars and motorcycles.  Were it created today, it'd likely be dubbed the “Brooklands Nimby” (not in my backyard).

1937 Norton Model 30 International with Brooklands Can (Left), diagram of Brooklands Can for a number of contemporary 1930s MGs close to the Magnette NE (1934) specification (centre) and a Luminous White male Guppy (right).

What the High Court’s injunction required was even on those days when racing was allowed, noise levels had to be reduced and the obvious solution was a muffler (in England then known optimistically as “silencers”) and the case turned out to be influential as the century progressed, often cited as the way a court might balance technological progress, any public nuisance created and the right of individuals to the “quiet enjoyment” of life in their homes.  Interestingly, the French (silencieux) and Italians (silenziatore) followed the English practice while the more practical Germans adhered to the realistic literalness of the Americans with Schalldämpfer (sound damper).  All Brooklands cans had two distinguishing characteristics: a rhomboidal receptacle located close to the engines header pipes which emerge from the exhaust manifold and a fishtail tip (although those used on some smaller capacity cars did terminated in a straight “dump pipe” and depending on the displacement (and thus the volume of exhaust gasses), the dimensions of the apparatus varied.  The “silencer” didn’t make the machines “quiet” in the accepted sense of the word; just less noisy.

Tilly Shilling on her Norton N30 500, Brooklands, July 1935.  Note the fishtail Brooklands Silencer.

Ms Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling (1909-1990) was a pre-modern rarity, a female engineer and amateur racing driver.  Even before gaining a MSc (Master of Science) in mechanical engineering, Ms Shilling had been building and racing motorcycles and it was on her modified (at one point even fitting a supercharger) 490 cm³ Norton M30, she lapped the Brooklands track at 106 mph (171 km/h), a feat for which she was awarded the BMRC (British Motorcycle Racing Club) Brookland Gold Star; she remains only one of three women to have lapped the famous banked circuit “at the ton” before it was closed in 1939.  With the coming of war, she returned the Norton to road use, riding in this form until 1953.

Battle of Britain (1940) era Hawker Hurricane Mk IIA (upper) and Supermarine Spitfire Mk II (lower).

In 1940, while employed as an engineer at the RAE (Royal Aircraft Establishment) at Farnborough, Ms Shilling worked on the "fuel delivery problem" reported by RAF (Royal Air Force) Fighter Command pilots, the Rolls-Royce Merlin V12s in their Hurricanes and Spitfires "cutting out" for as long as 1½ seconds during a "negative G-force maneuver" (pitching the nose hard down), the fuel being forced upwards to the top of the carburetor's float chamber rather than into the combustion chamber, leading to a loss of power.  If the negative G continued, the fuel would collect in the top of the float chamber, forcing the float to the bottom. This in turn would open the needle valve to maximum, flooding the carburetor with fuel, drowning the supercharger with an over-rich mixture which would shut down the engine, a serious matter in aerial combat.  While 1½ seconds doesn't sound long, in combat at altitude, travelling at hundreds of mph, inches and seconds can be critical: the difference between life and death.  The complete solution for fuel starvation was a pressurized fuel system such as the direct injection used by Daimler-Benz 600-series inverted V12s as used in the German fighters but such a development would take months to design, test, manufacture and install.

RAE Anti "G" carburetor restrictor plate instruction sheet.

As a stop-gap measure, Ms Shilling designed a flow restrictor: a small metal disc with a central orifice, looking much like a plain metal washer.  The restrictor orifice was sized to accommodate just the fuel flow needed for maximum engine power, the setting usually used during dogfights and it solved the immediate, critical, problem of the engine shutdowns following flooding.  Officially named the RAE Restrictor or RAE Anti “G” Carburetor, the device proved popular with pilots, who much preferred to call it Miss Shilling's orifice or the Tilly orifice.  The simple and elegant solution proved effective until pressurized carburetors (essentially throttle-body injection, a simplified version of the Daimler-Benz direct fuel injection) were developed which permitted even inverted flight.  With a backpack of RAE Restrictors, she toured RAF airfields on the same Norton N30 500 on which she'd once lapped Brooklands at 100 mph, instructing and assisting the maintenance crews with the installation of the devices.  Ms Shilling was a serious engineer making an important contribution to the war effort and was not amused by the nicknames for her invention but, reportedly regarded it as something typical of minds of men, rolled her eyes and carried on with her work.  The orifice was but a footnote in the history of the Merlin and the Allied war effort but did typify the improvisation and speed with which British industry developed "quick & dirty" solutions, especially in the early days of the war.

1933 Napier-Railton.

Driven by John Cobb (1899–1952), this car in 1935 set the Brooklands lap record for the Outer Circuit at 143.44 mph (230.84 km/h) a mark which will stand for all time because after being appropriated in 1939 for military purposes, the facility never re-opened.  The Napier-Railton was powered by a W12 (the so-called “broad arrow”) aero engine of 24 litres (1,461 cubic inch) and because the configuration had the cylinders in three banks of four, three of the Brooklands Cans had to be fitted and, with each bank displacing some 8 litres (487 cubic inch), each system was among the largest ever built.  Away from the delicate ears and aspidistras of Surrey's respectable residents, the machine sometimes ran “unsilenced”, including on the Bonneville Salt Flats where it ran with nothing more open stack exhausts, setting a world 24 hour record at an average speed of 158.6 mph (242 km/h).

1937 Rudge Special 500; like their aquatic sources of inspiration, the fishtail exhausts came in both symmetrical and asymmetric forms.

The sense in common law of tail (limitation of ownership) which endures mostly in the law of real property began as a legal term in English in the early fourteenth century (late thirteenth in Anglo-French & Anglo-Latin); in almost all cases it was a shortened form of entail.  The verb tail dates from the 1520s and was derived from the noun, the sense originally "attach to the tail", the meaning "move or extend in a way suggestive of a tail" dating from 1781.  The meaning “secretly to follow" is a US colloquial creation from 1907, borrowed from the earlier sense of "follow or drive cattle”.  The saying "tail off” (diminish) was noted in 1854.  The tail of a coin (reverse side; opposite the side with the head, hence “heads or tails”) appears to have been first described that was in the 1680s.  The more predictable "backside of a person, buttocks" is recorded from circa 1300, the slang sense of "pudenda" is from the mid-fourteenth century and as a term to refer to an “act of copulation with a prostitute”, it was first noted in 1846.  From circa 1933 it was applied to mean "woman as sex object" is from 1933.  In printing and typography, tail was the technical term to describe the descending strokes of letters from the 1590s.  As “tails”, the formal dress for men (coat with tails), the first advertisements appeared in 1857.  The tail-race, the part of a mill race below the wheel is from 1776.  The phrase “to turn tail” (take flight) dates from the 1580s and was originally from falconry, later to be adopted by the Admiralty and the army.  The image of the “tail wagging the dog” (a minor or secondary part of something which is controlling or dominating the whole or the main part) is from 1907 and was part of the jargon of political science.

A whale fluking its fluke (left) and 1987 Ford Sierra RS Cosworth (1986-1992).

Among the most photographed “fish tails” are those of whales, once hunted for their meat and oil, they’re now charismatic creatures and among nature’s most prolific content providers, their tails “fluking” (appearing above the surface just as a deep dive is about to begin) long an Instagram staple.  Whales are however not fish, all being mammals, they’re thus within the zoological class Mammalia, not Pisces.  The “whale tail” spoiler first appeared on Porsches in 1974 and is best remembered for its use on the 911 Turbo (930, 1974-1989), a vehicle which gained the nickname “widow-maker” because, in unskilled hands, the quirky handling (the 930 wasn’t exactly a “250 horsepower VW Beetle” but the layout was the same and the inherent characteristics thus exaggerated although (up to a point), well-tamed) could lead to “fishtailing” and worse.  The “whale tail” later evolved into the “tea tray” although the original nickname remains more widely used, even of later variants.

English model & actor Cara Delevingne (b 1992), Met Gala 2026, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, May 2026.

The event's “dress code” for 2026 was “fashion is art” though at the Met Gala it's more “suggested theme” than enforced code and designers have always interpreted things liberally.  That liberality sometimes has assumed such a level of abstraction that Met Gala outfits have defied attempts to see a link with the code but Ms Delevinge’s fishtail gown with delicate appliqués was a tribute to the art of the seamstress.  Quite when a “fishtail” becomes a “train” may be in the eye of the beholder but a photographer staging shots on the Met’s staircase could arrange the fabric in ways to produce either effect.

Fish appears often in idiomatic use.  The figurative sense of “fish out of water” (a person in an unfamiliar and awkward situation) is attested from the 1610s, the use extended from circa 1750, usually with a modifier (strange fish, queer fish, cold fish) but from at least 1722 it was used in reference to a person considered desirable to “catch”, a sense preserved in the phrase “plenty more fish in the sea”, a form picked up by one dating site.  To “drink like a fish” (one with a habitually high consumption of alcohol) is from 1744 and the “fishy story” (an incredible or extravagant narration) was first noted in 1819, a US colloquial form based on the tendency of anglers to exaggerate the size of “the one that got away”.  Having “other fish to fry” (having other things which demand one’s attention) is from the 1650s.  In optics, the fish-eye lens was patented in 1959.  Fish-and-chips seem first to have been advertised in 1876 and fish-fingers were first sold in 1962.

Lindsay Lohan in fishtail dresses.  Herbie: Fully Loaded premiere, El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, June 2005 (left); Vanity Fair Oscar Party, Morton’s West Hollywood, Los Angeles, March 2006 (centre); Liz & Dick premiere, Beverly Hills Hotel, Los Angeles, November 2012 (right).

A fitted bodycon construction, the distinguishing feature of the fishtail dress is the flowing, scalloped hemline, often longer at the back and tending to flare from around the knee-line.  Because a successful implementation of the style depends most on length and volume, most fishtail dresses are floor length, many better described as gowns although some have tried shorter variations.  The bodice can vary but fitted waists are the most frequently seen.  The design was originally called the "fishtail train" and the early versions, first seen in the 1870s, all featured the asymmetric extension at the back and it wasn’t until the turn of the century the flaring lowered from mid-thigh to the knee.  Prior to the Victorian era, trains were not unknown but they were then worn only as evening gowns and were really an addition to existing garments.

Promotional shot of the author for Fierce: The History of Leopard Print (2018) by Jo Weldon (b 1962), founder of the New York School of Burlesque.

Some in the industry refer to the “fishtail” as the “trumpet” or the more charming mermaid and there are those who insist on distinguishing between the three, based usually from the point at which the flare begins but the distinction escapes the many who use the terms interchangeably, regarding all as variations on a theme.  However described, the great advantage of the lines is that they create, on a suitable frame, an hourglass figure and one with a range of definition, all determined by the point at which the flare begins and the volume of material chosen for the fishtail; done properly it can render a feminine and flawless silhouette, perhaps the most persuasive reason it’s chosen by so many brides.  Some however are probably too easily persuaded, the fishtail really not suited to those either too short or too wide.  Successfully to wear a fishtail, it’s not necessary to be truly statuesque or actually thin but beneath a certain height, one starts to look like part of a condiment set; one must be realistic about what shapewear can achieve.  The recommendation is that the style can be worn by those of at least average height and it works best on those who are slim with small or medium size hips.  A good seamstress can adapt things to better suit other shapes but there’s a law of diminishing returns the more one is removed from the ideal; a deep but narrow cut can disguise only so much.

Fishtail braid in blonde.

The fishtail braid is a variation of the French braid, both with a smoothly woven appearance, the fishtail dividing the hair into two sections instead of the French three.  The technique essentially is that a small piece of each section is passed over to the other, the process repeated until the braid assumes its shape; in the nineteenth century this was known as the "Grecian braid".  The fishtail braid appears intricate because it's built with small strands but hairdressers say it's a simple, and essentially repetitive, nine-step process.  On great advantage of the fishtail is it lends itself well to a looser braid, one which over a couple of days will tend usually (and gradually) to deconstruct into a deliberately messy look, the attraction is technical as well as aesthetic: the messy fishtail is uniquely suited to act as a framework for hair extensions.

(1) Split the hair into two equal strands

(2) Pick up a small section of hair on the right side of the right strand

(3) Cross the small section over and add it to the left strand

(4) Pick up a small section of hair on the left side of the left strand

(5) Cross the small section over and add it to the right strand

(6) Pick up a small section of hair on the right side of the right strand

(7) Cross the small section over and add it to the left strand

(8) Pick up a small section of hair on the left side of the left strand

(9) Cross the small section over and add it to the right strand

(10) Repeat steps 2-9 until the end is reached.

Students and their mannequins, Pints & Ponytails, London, March 2026.  Presumably, there would be some inverse correlation between symmetry of braids and consumption of pints of beer.  As a quirk of English, while one doing the braiding is a braider, there is no companion word braidee for the one being braided; the same convention applies to plait.

Braiding and platting of hair has for some time been political because certain styles are claimed to have specific cultural or religious connections so anyone not of the background adopting those looks risk being accused of a gamut of offences ranging from microaggression to cultural appropriation.  Recently, the braid has also entered the “toxic masculinity” debate after self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate (b 1986 and dubbed by some the “high priest of toxic masculinity”) disapprovingly shared a video from a “Pints and Ponytails” event in London.  The novel P&Ps are conducted to train men in the art of creating their daughters’ braids, plaits and pony-tails, something which to most probably doesn’t look challenging until they make an attempt and find out it’s something of an art, the tresses just one component in a process which extends also to the mysteries of pins, brushes, detangler spray, leave-in conditioner and hair-ties.

A recent victim of inexpert braiding: More practice required.

To hairdressers, braids and plaits are a “basic style” taught to entry-level apprentices, but even for those familiar with tasks such as stranding cables, early results are likely to be disappointing; to assure those concerned, no daughter was damaged by the neophyte stylists, the P&P sessions conducted using the same mannequins salons use in their training.  The courses have proved popular with men as might be expected of any event including pints of beer but the serious rationale was an attempt to improve bonding between fathers and daughters as well as increasing the participation of men in child-raising chores.  As the organizers expected, the sessions also provided a time and place in which men could discuss the problems and challenges of fatherhood, the unique environment of drinking beer while learning to plait tending to encourage conversation on topics probably not often raised in situations where men gather; in other words, the sort of discussions familiar to young mothers.  Cultural critic Andrew Tate cast aspersions on the masculinity of the men taking part although one might have thought he’d see benefits in women being relieved of responsibility for the daily pony tail(s), thereby leaving them more time for cooking & cleaning.