Pitcher

Pitcher (pronounced pich-er)

(1) A jug-like container, usually with a handle and narrow-necked spout or lip, for holding and pouring liquids; historically of earthenware, they now can be made of many materials (glass, plastic, metal etc).

(2) In botany, a pitcher-like or flask-shaped organ or appendage of a plant or its leaves; any of the urn-shaped leaves of the pitcher plant.

(3) In zoology, one of the former genus Ascidium of simple ascidians (sea squirts).

(4) In the sport of golf, a club with an iron head the face of which has more slope than a mashie but less slope than a pitching niblick (known also as a seven iron). 

(5) In stone-masonry, a granite stone or sett used in paving (known also as a sett).

(6) An adaptation of a crowbar, used for digging (obsolete).

(7) In slang, a drug dealer (usually one at the lowest (street level) level of the supply chain).

(8) In slang (UK criminal class), one who is the final link in the chain (ie the one handing the notes) to the retailer etc) putting counterfeit currency into circulation (obsolete).

(9) In slang, a street vendor, a “fly-pitcher” being an illicit street trader (one operating without permission or a license).

(10) In publishing, film or music production etc, an individual who delivers the pitch (the proposal) to secure funding, publishing contract etc; by extension a person who advocates an idea, concept or plan).

(11) A person who throws, tosses, casts etc something.

(12) In the sports of baseball, softball & pesäpallo, the player who throws (ie pitches) the ball to the opposition’s batters.

(13) In the slang (originally US) of the (male) gay community, the “top” (the “dominant” (in the penetrator)) partner in a homosexual encounter between two men, the other being the “catcher” (ie the “bottom”) (the “pitcher-catcher” comparison from the sport of baseball).

1250–1300: From the Middle English picher, from the Old French bichier, pichier & pechier (small jug) (which endures in modern French as pichet), from the Late Latin &  Medieval Latin picārium, a variant of bicārium (beaker), possibly from bacarium & bacar or from the Ancient Greek βῖκος (bîkos).  The use in the sense of “throwing something emerged between 1700-1710, the construct being pitch + -er.  The noun pitch (in the sense of throw, toss, cast etc) was from the Middle English picchen & pycchen (to thrust in, fasten, settle), from the Old English piċċan, from the Proto-West Germanic pikkijan, a variant of the Proto-West Germanic pikkōn (to pick, peck), from which Middle English gained pikken & picken (to pick, pierce) and modern English, pick.  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.  In botany, user have the pleasure of the adjective urceolate (comparative more urceolate, superlative most urceolate) meaning “having an urceolus (shaped like an urn), the word from the Latin urceolus (a little pitcher, more familiar as urceolatus), diminutive of urceus (any urn-shaped organ of a plant.).  Pitcher & pitcherful are nouns and pitcherlike & picchered are adjectives; the noun plural is pitchers.

Nepenthes holdenii, a tropical, meat-eating pitcher plant endemic in western Cambodia.  For carnivorous plants, the "pitcher" structure confers advantages in harvesting so the process of natural selection is ideal, the advantages conferred by the shape thus favored by natural selection.  

In idiomatic use a “little pitcher” was “a small child” and the phrase “little pitchers have big (sometimes “long”) ears” meant adults should exercise caution when talking in the presence of children because what is said may over overheard and understood or misunderstood (both, for different reasons, potentially leading to bad outcomes).  The “ears” in the phrase was an allusion to the ear-shaped handles common on pitchers used for serving liquids.  “Pitcher-bawd” was old sailor’s slang for an old or at least semi-retired prostitute (ie “past her best”) who worked in a tavern fetching pitchers of beer for patrons.  A “rinse-pitcher” was a notorious drunkard while the proverb “the pitcher goes so often to the well that it is broken at last” (expressed also as “the jug goes to the well until it breaks” meant “if even the best article is used often enough, eventually it will wear out or break down.

Even for those not convinced by the “language of Shakespeare and Milton” shtick, there are persuasive reasons to learn English.  That may not extend to the playwrights or lyric poets and in truth, most native English-speakers are probably acquainted with the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and John Milton (1608–1674) only through filmed adaptations or the odd (sometimes misquoted or wrongly attributed) phrase but both remain a still influential part of the language’s lineage.  Students new to the tongue probably appreciate some of English’s structural simplicity and come to value the flexibility and wide vocabulary but what must mystify them is the way certain words (with the same pronunciation or spelling (or both)) can enjoy a multiplicity of meanings; indeed some words can appear in the same sentence with one instance meaning one thing and one another.  Apparently this does happen in other languages but in English the phenomenon is thought to be more frequent and the paradox is that despite the huge word count, there are many of these dualities (and beyond) of meaning.

Lindsay Lohan has of late proved a prolific pitcher of products including Pure Leaf Tea.

When being taught the word “pitch”, students surely must think the scope of meanings bizarre.  As a noun “pitch” can be (1) a surface (such as that upon which cricket or other games are played), (2) a relative point, position, or degree (such a “high pitch of excitement”), (3) the highest point or greatest height, (4) in music, speech, etc, “the degree of height or depth of a tone or of sound, depending upon the relative rapidity of the vibrations by which it is produced, (5) in acoustics, the apparent predominant frequency sounded by an acoustical source, (6) the act of throwing, tossing etc or the manner of so doing, (7) in nautical use the movement or forward plunge of a vessel, (8) the extent of the upward or downward inclination of a slope or the slope itself, (9) the advocacy of something for some purpose (often as “sales pitch”), (10) the specific location allotted to or assigned for some person, object or purpose, (11) in aeronautics, the nosing of an airplane or spacecraft up or down about a transverse axis or the distance a given propeller would advance in one revolution (hence there being “variable pitch” and “fixed pitch” propellers, (12) in the flight of rockets or missiles, either the motion due to pitching or the extent of the rotation of the longitudinal axis involved in pitching, (13) in geology, the inclination (from the horizontal) of a linear feature (as the axis of a fold or an ore-shoot) (also called “the plunge”, (14), in mechanical engineering, (14a) the distance between the corresponding surfaces of two adjacent gear teeth measured either along the pitch circle circular pitch or between perpendiculars to the root surfaces normal pitch; (14b) the ratio of the number of teeth in a gear or splined shaft to the pitch circle diameter (expressed in inches or fractions of an inch) or (14c) the distance between any two adjacent things in a series (as screw threads, rivets, holes drilled etc), (15) in carpet weaving) the weft-wise number of warp ends, usually determined in relation to 27 inches (686 mm), (16) in stone masonry, a true or even surface on a stone, (17) in typography, a unit of measurement indicating the number of characters to a horizontal inch, (18) in cards, an alternative name for “all fours” (known also as “high-low-jack”, “old sledge” & “seven-up”), (19) in golf (as a clipping of “pitch shot”), an approach (to the green) shot in which the ball is struck in a high arc, (20) any of various heavy dark viscious substances obtained as a residue from the distillation of tars (often as coal-tar pitch); any of various similar substances, such as asphalt, occurring as natural deposits; any of various similar substances obtained by distilling certain organic substances so that they are incompletely carbonized and (21) crude turpentine obtained as sap from pine trees.

A picture of Lindsay Lohan with pitcher of milk making a “dirty soda” during her pitch for PepsiCo's Pilk promotion.  It was recommended a pilk be enjoyed with a cookie (“biscuit” to those in certain places) but opinion remains divided on the combo.

Once students have begun to master how many forks and layers of meaning can co-exist in “pitch” & “pitcher”, they can then ponder the latter’s homophone: “picture”.  Although it also enjoys other meaning, the core understanding of “picture” is as a representation of anything or anyone and one can exist as a painting, a print, a photograph, a drawing etc with the only definitional constraint probably that it should be on a flat surface; anything beyond that a it becomes an “installation” or something else.  A “three-dimensional picture” remains a picture if the effect is achieved with multi-layer technology but if it becomes topographic beyond the thickness of the paint, it’s probably an installation, model or something else.  Picture was from the Middle English pycture, from the Old French picture, from the Latin pictūra (the art of painting, a painting), from pingō (I paint).  The pitcher vs picture thing is an example (like sealing vs ceiling”) of how words with different spellings and meanings yet the same pronunciation independently can evolve and there are also words with the same spelling and pronunciation meaning different (sometimes even opposite) things (consider “sanction”).

American Gothic (1930), oil on beaverboard by Grant Wood (1891-1942), Art Institute of Chicago.

One of the most discussed, analysed and parodied paintings in twentieth century US art, every aspect of element in American Gothic has likely appeared in at least one earnest thesis and the pitchfork has been held to be as highly symbolic as well an interesting compositional feature.  Structurally, the pitchfork’s vertical shaft functions as a formal echo of other vertical and pointed elements (the architecture and the upright rigidity of the subjects) with the tool’s three tines parallel with both the elongated Gothic window behind and the seams and patterns of the clothing.  The technique lends the work a geometric coherence.  Symbolically, the visual austerity hints at the qualities stereotypically associated with rural Protestant rectitude and obviously, a pitchfork is emblematic of the manual agricultural labor which fulfilled such a vital role in the pre-industrial US.  Tellingly, Wood painted the work just as the effects of the Great Depression were beginning to be felt, threatening rural self-sufficiency and traditional American farming life.  That’s why critics think it significant the farmer’s grip on the handle seems so assertively tight, holding, as it were, onto a way of life which suddenly felt vulnerable, the message one of defiance, the pitchfork a barrier between subjects and viewers.

The picture has always been regarded as a snapshot (however inaccurately) of world-view of those of the Midwestern agrarian population, conveying sternness, frugality, guardedness, moral vigilance, thrift and an abiding suspicion of outsiders, thus the imagining of the pitchfork as a symbolic weapon rather than an emblem of pastoral warmth.  This is not a sentimental piece as so many depictions of rural scenes have been and whether the artist intended American Gothic to be ironic, satirical or a homage has never been certain because Wood at times gave interviewers different hints so it’s there for viewers to make of it what they will but it’s not hard to interpret the pitchfork as the visual spine, both compositionally and symbolically.

Portrait of the Irish playwright and Nobel laureate in literature, George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950), oil on canvas by the Welsh artist Augustus John (1878–1961), Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire.  In a long life, GBS pitched many things including Esperanto and, as one of the “useful idiots” (the crew contemptuously acknowledged by comrade Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or Soviet Union 1917-1924)), the Soviet Union of comrade Joseph Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).

In Modern English, as many as 175,000 words are thought to be “the core” (those in general, common use) while the count may be over 600,00 if historic, archaic forms are included and it’d go over a million if scientific and technical coinings were added.  There are of course reasons for this, the obvious one being English was a product of a long evolution with roots in Ancient Greek, Latin, French, various Germanic dialects and more and even when it (sort of) forked into something recognizably “English”, evolution was still often regional with spelling and meanings existing in parallel, centuries before mass-produced dictionaries emerged to begin the path towards standardization.  That messiness was avoided by the Esperantoists of the late nineteenth century who were able to craft their “international auxiliary language” freed from the constraints of existing use and thus achieve a lexicon characterized by words with exclusivity of meaning.  That sounds like it’d make it an attractive alternative to untidy English but English has the unique advantage of a global critical mass, something achieved by (1) the cultural imperialism first of the British Empire and later the United States and (2) being the “native” language of computing, the internet and all that.  Apart from the Greek, Latin and other sources, English proved linguistically a slut, because as explorers, soldiers, traders and colonialists spread globally (variously to explore, battle, trade, exploit, occupy etc), not only did they steal people, resources and land, shamelessly they also absorbed words from Africa, the Middle East and, most numerously, the Indian sub-continent during the British Raj.

This is a representation of “pitch black”.  Although used loosely to mean something like “very dark”, strictly speaking, “pitch black” should be used only to covey the idea of an “absence of light”, the allusion to tar, a black, oily, sticky, viscous substance, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons derived from organic materials such as wood, peat, or coal.

The terms “pitch black”, “pitch darkness” etc are a reference to the blackness of pitch in the sense of “tar” and in mineralogy, pitchblende is a naturally-occurring uranium oxide, a variety of the mineral uraninite.  As a verb, pitch can be used variously as “to pitch a tent” (ie erect one’s tent, that use based on an obsolete use of pitch to mean “firmly to fix (embed) in the ground”), “make a pitch for something” (suggest some course of action or try to sell something”), pitch (throw) a ball (most associated with baseball), cut a stone with a chisel.  In (now obsolete) historic military jargon, “to pitch” was “to arrange the field of battle” and although the term has fallen from use, the practice persists although few field commanders would now suggest the object is (as once did Field Marshal Lord Bernard Montgomery, 1887–1976) to make things “clean and tidy”.  Also now obsolete is the use of “to pitch” meaning “to settle down (in one place); to become established”; that had been based on the old use meaning “firmly to fix (embed) in the ground”.

Comrade Fidel Castro (1926–2016; prime-minister or president of Cuba 1959-2008, left) and Jimmy Carter (b 1924; POTUS 1977-1981), Estadio Latinoamericano (Latin American Stadium), Havana, Cuba, May 2002.  In Mr Carter's right hand is the baseball he's about to pitch.

In baseball, the “ceremonial first pitch” is a “symbolic pitch” (ie one with no consequence in the game) staged as a prelude to the game proper.  POTUESes and others have been among the celebrities engaged as “ceremonial pitchers” and some have proved more adept than others.  Jimmy Carter in 2002 made a private visit to Havana with the hope of improving relations between Cuba and the US, strained since the Cuban revolution in 1959.  In the short term, little that could be called substantive would be achieved but what would now be called “the optics” were good, comrade Castro inviting the former president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a Cuban League All-Star Game in Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano.  Apparently, baseball fan comrade Castro personally provided training in “making the perfect pitch” but, just to be sure, Mr Carter also had a few sessions with his Secret Service detail, reportedly on the roof of his hotel.  On the night, he threw what was described as “a good pitch” and it was well received by the capacity crowd, the event in the history books as a rare example of diplomacia del beisbol (baseball diplomacy) and the sport does appear in the odd footnote in presidential histories.  On the opening day (13 April) of the 1964 MLB (Major League Baseball) season at Washington DC’s District of Columbia Stadium (now the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium), Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1969-1969) set the record for the most hot dogs eaten by a president on Opening Day, all four scoffed down in the approved manner (ie without resort to knife & fork).  The record still stands, something which must not have been brought to the attention of Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) because, if he knew, there would have been a post on Truth Social correcting the record by revealing he'd once eaten five.

Baseball has variants of the position of pitcher (the player who throws the ball to the opposition batter) including “non-pitcher” (team member who does not pitch and is thus obliged to bat, “relief pitcher” (a pitcher who takes the place of the “starting pitcher” (or another relief pitcher) in cases of injury, ineffectiveness, ejection from the game or fatigue, “switch pitcher” (a pitcher who play ambidextrously (pitches both right & left-handed), “setup pitcher” (a relief pitcher who pitches usually in the 8^th inning to maintain a lead, serving as the bridge to the closer in the 9^th, “middle relief pitcher” (MRP) (a relief pitcher who pitches usually the 5^th, 6^th or 7^th innings to bridge the gap between the starting pitcher and late-inning relievers (setup or closer pitchers) and “closer pitcher” (A specialist relief pitcher skilled in securing the final outs, typically in the 9^th inning, to protect a narrow lead or ear a “save”.

Sandwedge

Sandwedge (pronounced sand-wej)

(1) As Operation Sandwedge, a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the political enemies of US president Richard Nixon.

(2) As sand wedge, a specialized golf club, an iron with a heavy lower flange, the design of which is optimized for playing the ball out of a bunker (sand trap).

1971: The name was chosen for a “dirty tricks” covert operation as a borrowing from golf, the sand wedge a club used to play the ball from a difficult position.  The construct was sand + wedge.  Dating from pre-1000, sand was from the Middle English sand, from the Old English sand, from the Proto-West Germanic samd, from the Proto-Germanic samdaz, from the primitive Indo-European sámhdhos, from sem- (to pour).  Wedge was a pre 900 from the Middle English wegge (wedge), from the Old English wecg (a wedge), from the Proto-Germanic wagjaz (source also of the Old Norse veggr, the Middle Dutch wegge, the Dutch wig, the Old High German weggi (wedge) and the dialectal German Weck (a wedge-shaped bread roll) and related to the Old Saxon weggi.  It was cognate with the dialectal German weck derived from the Old High German wecki and Old Norse veggr (wall).  The Proto-Germanic wagjaz is of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin vomer (plowshare).  Sandwedge is a noun; should the plural ever be needed, it would be sandwedges (ie phonetically a la the use in golf (sand wedges)).

In golf, when using a sand wedge (left), the player’s stance and the way in which the club addresses the ball differs from what’s done when using a conventional iron (right).  Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) demonstrates the difference although there may be some variations depending on an individual's weight distribution. 

Richard Nixon.

Operation Sandwedge was a covert intelligence-gathering operation intended to be conducted against the enemies (a long list which later became public) of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974).  Beginning in 1971, the early planning was done by Nixon's Chief of Staff HR Haldeman (1926-1993), his assistant for domestic affairs, John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) and Jack Caulfield (1929–2012), then attached to Ehrlichman’s White House staff “handling special assignments”; also involved (though paid not by the White House but from external campaign funds) was Tony Ulasewicz (1918-1997), later a bit-player in the Watergate affair.  The core of Caulfield’s plan was to target the anti-Vietnam War movement and those figures in the Democratic Party Nixon had identified as the greatest threat to his re-election in 1972, including Ted Kennedy (1932–2009; US senator 1962-2009), Ed Muskie (1914–1996; US senator 1959-1980), William Proxmire (1915–2005; US Senator 1957-1989) and Birch Bayh (1928–2019; US senator 1963-1981).  Of interest too was a settling of scores with those who had prevented G Harrold Carswell (1919–1992) being confirmed by the Senate as Nixon's nominee for the US Supreme Court and the president's net was internecine too, some of the targeted figures in his own Republican Party.

G Gordon Liddy.

Operation Sandwedge was intended to be clandestine but it wasn’t subtle and included physical and electronic surveillance, the intelligence of particular interest that which could be used either to feed damaging leaks to the press or for purposes of blackmail including dubious financial transactions, mental health records and (preferably “unnatural”) sexual proclivities.  However, the operation never proceeded beyond the planning stages because Haldeman and Ehrlichman thought the methods of Caulfield (a former New York City Police Officer) unsophisticated so transferred the project to G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021), a lawyer, one-time FBI agent and later one of the great characters of the Watergate affair.  Attached to Liddy's operation was former CIA operative Howard Hunt (1918–2007) who, under his name and many noms de plume, was a most prolific author of fiction and non-fiction, his bibliography extending to over 70 titles.  Caulfield had chosen the name sandwedge because, as a dedicated golfer, he knew the sand wedge was the club of choice when one was in a difficult spot;  if well-played, it was what could transform a bad situation into something good.  At the time, code-names were among the many imaginative things to emerge from the bunker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the one chosen for the squad to investigate leaks of information to the press was dubbed “the plumbers”.  One member later told his elderly grandmother one of his duties in the White House was “investigating leaks” and proudly she told him: “Your grandfather was a plumber”.   

Paige Spiranac's definitive guide to the correct handling of one's sand wedge, one of a series of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies.  They're an ideal guide for both experienced golfers wishing to hone their techniques and those taking up the sport.

The Watergate complex, Washington DC.

The Watergate affair was of course one of the best known (and among nihilistic political junkies the most celebrated) of the “dirty tricks” operations run out of (or at least connected with) the Nixon White House but it was far from unique.  Some strikingly immoral back-channel operations had been run even before the 1968 election but by 1971 the vista had expanded to include what would now be called fake news plants, the infiltration of the staff of political opponents, break-ins and burglary, among the most infamous of which was “the plumbers” (including Liddy) breaking into the office of the psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg (b 1931), the former Department of Defense (now known also as the Department or War) military analyst who had leaked the “Pentagon Papers” (something which was a reasonable achievement in the days when decamping with thousands of pages of classified material demanded not a few minutes copying data to a USB stick but many hours between midnight and dawn using the photocopier).  The doctor's Ellsberg file revealed nothing of interest but the burglary gained a place in history, being recorded by Ehrlichman (who approved the operation) as "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No 1".  There would be more.

Paige Spiranac is active on Instagram and recently posted a “Life update” to her four million followers, advising “I have bangs now”.  Hopefully, she will keep us informed and there will be more to come.

Sandwedge had been envisaged as an intelligence gathering operation, the most novel aspect of which was that while the project documents presented an overview of something using conventional methods of surveillance and the compilation of publicly available material, privately, Caulfield admitted electronic surveillance would also (unlawfully) be used, something any expert presumably could have deduced from the impressive total of budget request.  Of greatest interest were financial records (relating particularly to tax matters), mental health conditions, undisclosed legal problems and sexual conduct, especially if illicit and preferably unlawful.  The idea greatly interested Haldeman and Ehrlichman but they had never been convinced by Caulfield’s “lack of background” by which they meant education, social skills (ie correct way to use knife & fork in polite company) and political experience.  Accordingly, Sandwedge and all intelligence matters were transferred to Liddy, the article of faith in the White House being anything run by a trained lawyer legally would be “bullet proof”, not a quality they associated with the schemes of ex-NYC police officers, a breed not always with a reputation for rectitude.

New York Times, Saturday 2 March 1974.

Liddy revelled in the role as the White House’s clandestine clearing house for “covert ops” and applied his own list of spy-like code names (Gemstone, Diamond, Ruby etc) to an range of activities expanded beyond Sandwedge including physical espionage, infiltration of protest groups, secret wire-taps, sabotage of opposition campaigns and, of course, “honey-pot traps” (the use of attractive young women as temptresses).  Even for Haldeman and Ehrlichman (behind their backs, known to White House staffers as “the Germans” or “the Prussians”) the implications of becoming essentially gangsters was too much but the shell of Liddy's structure was in 1972 approved and even that pared-down framework included a range of unlawful activities, including the one which would trigger the chain of events that culminated in Nixon’s resignation and see dozens of the conspirators (including Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Liddy) jailed: the break in and bugging of the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex.  As the affair unfolded, suspicion fell upon Caulfield until it was realised his role in Operation Sandwedge had ended before any dubious operations began and he’d never been part of Liddy’s more ambitious plans.  He was compelled to resign from government but was never prosecuted, maintaining to his dying day that if he’d been left to run Operation Sandwedge, there would have been no burglaries in the Watergate complex or anywhere else and thus none of the cascading scandals which at first paralysed and later doomed the second term of the Nixon administration.

On the golf course, Lindsay Lohan in bunker with sand wedge, rendered as a pen drawing by Vovsoft.

One attractive thing about the historic records of the US government is the relative openness and accessibility to the documents which can lay bare the operations of at least some of the machinery of government.  Things are of course not as open as they used to be but the US attitude to the classification of material is still preferable to that of institutions like the UK’s Cabinet Office or the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) both of which operate in an air of obsessive secrecy.  One treasure trove is the on-line archive of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum which includes a stash of transcripts of the White House tapes subpoenaed by the SSPF (Watergate Special Prosecution Force), including the famous (and politically fatal) “smoking gun tape”.  In some ways even more so than the audio tapes, the transcripts provide an insight into how politics actually is practiced and it’s useful to compare them with sanitized (and sometimes mendacious) memoirs or “official histories”.  On 21 March 1973, President Nixon met with John Dean (b 1938; White House Counsel to the President, 1970-1973) when “Operation Sandwedge” and its corrosive consequences were discussed:

DEAN:  I think, I think that, uh, there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got.  We have a cancer--within, close to the Presidency, that's growing.  It's growing daily.  It's compounding, it grows geometrically now because it compounds itself.  Uh, that'll be clear as I explain you know, some of the details, uh, of why it is, and it basically is because (1) we're being blackmailed; (2) uh, people are going to start perjuring themself very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people and the like. And that is just--and there is no assurance…

DEAN: Jack [Caulfield] had worked for John [John Mitchell (1913–1988; US attorney-general 1969–1972)] and then was transferred to my office.  I said, "Jack, come up with a plan that, you know, is a normal infiltration, I mean, you know, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing."  He did, he put together a plan.  It was kicked around, and, uh, I went to Ehrlichman with it.  I went to Mitchell with it, and the consensus was that Caulfield wasn't the man to do this. Uh, in retrospect, that might have been a bad call, 'cause he is an incredibly cautious person and, and wouldn't have put the situation to where it is today.

PRESIDENT: Yeah.

DEAN: All right, after rejecting that, they said, "We still need something," so I was told to look around for somebody that could go over to 1701 and do this.  And that's when I came up with Gordon Liddy, who-- they needed a lawyer. Gordon had an intelligence background from his FBI service.  I was aware of the fact that he had done some extremely sensitive things for the White House while he'd been at the White House, and he had apparently done them well. Uh, going out into Ellsberg's doctor's office.

PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah.

PRESIDENT: January of '72?

DEAN: January of '72.  Like, "You come over to Mitchell's office and sit in on a meeting where Liddy is going to lay his plan out."  I said, "Well, I don't really know as I'm the man, but if you want me there I'll be happy to."  So, I came over and Liddy laid out a million dollar plan that was the most incredible thing I have ever laid my eyes on.  All in codes, and involved black bag operations, kidnapping, providing prostitutes, uh, to weaken the opposition, bugging, uh, mugging teams. It was just an incredible thing.

PRESIDENT: But, uh..

DEAN: And--

PRESIDENT: ...that was, that was not, uh...

DEAN: No.

PRESIDENT: ...discussed with..

DEAN: No.

PRESIDENT: ...other persons.

DEAN: No, not at all. And--

PRESIDENT: (Unintelligible)

DEAN: Uh, Mitchell, Mitchell just virtually sat there puffing [on his pipe] and laughing. I could tell 'cause after he--after Liddy left the office I said, "That's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.  "He said, "I agree."  And so then he was told to go back to the drawing boards and come up with something realistic. So there was a second meeting. Uh, they asked me to come over to that. I came into the tail end of the meeting. I wasn't there for the first part. I don't know how long the meeting lasted. Uh, at this point, they were discussing again bugging, kidnapping and the like. And at this point I said, right in front of everybody, very clearly, I said, "These are not the sort of things that are ever to be discussed in the office of the Attorney General of the United States"--where he still was--"and I am personally incensed." I was trying to get Mitchell off the hook, uh, 'cause—

PRESIDENT: I know

DEAN: He's a, he's a nice person, doesn't like to say no under--when people he's going to have to work with.

PRESIDENT: That's right.

DEAN: So, I let, I let it be known. I said, "You all pack that stuff up and get it the hell out of here 'cause we just, you just can't talk this way in this office and you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you should re-examine your whole thinking." Came back-

PRESIDENT: Who else was present? Be-, besides you-

DEAN: It was Magruder, Magruder [Jeb Magruder (1934–2014; deputy director of Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP) in the 1972 election (better known as CREEP))]

PRESIDENT: Magruder.

DEAN: Uh, Mitchell, Liddy and myself. I came back right after the meeting and told Bob, I said, "Bob, we've got a growing disaster on our hands if they're thinking this way.'  And I said, "The White House has got to stay out of this and I, frankly, am not going to be involved in it."  He said, "I agree John."  And, I thought, at that point the thing was turned off. That's the last I heard of it, when I thought it was turned off, because it was an absurd proposal.

PRESIDENT: Yeah.

DEAN: Liddy-I did have dealings with him afterwards. We never talked about it. Now that would be hard to believe for some people, but, uh, we never did. Just the fact of the matter.

PRESIDENT: Well, you were talking about other things.

DEAN: Other things. We had so many other things.

PRESIDENT: He had some legal problems at one time.

Fork

Fork (pronounced fawrk)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cause and effect: The fork in the road.

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

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

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

Alice: “I don’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dining room of Huis Doorn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2004 Dodge Tomahawk.

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

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

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

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

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

Lieutenant General Nagaoka Gaishi san, Tokyo, 1920.

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