Cinque

Cinque (pronounced singk)

(1) In certain games (those using cards, dice, dominoes etc), a card, die, or domino with five spots or pips.

(2) As cinquefoil (1) a potentilla (flower), (2) in heraldry, a stylized flower or leaf with five lobes and (3) in topology, a particular knot of five crossings.

1350–1400: From the Middle English cink, from the Old French cinq (five), from the Vulgar Latin cinque, from the Latin quīnque (five).  The archaic spelling cinq was from the modern French cinq, whereas the standard spelling probably emerged either under the influence of the Italian cinque or was simply a misspelling of the French.  In typically English fashion, the pronunciation “sank” is based on a hypercorrect approximation of the French pronunciation, still heard sometimes among what use to be called “the better classes”.  The alternative forms were cinq (archaic), sinque (obsolete) and sink & sank (both misspellings).  The homophones are cinq, sink, sync & synch (and sank at the best parties); the noun plural is cinques.

Cinque outposts, attested since the 1640s was a term which referred to the five senses.  The noun cinquecento (written sometimes as cinque-cento) is used in (as noun & adjective) criticism & academic works when describing sixteenth century Italian art and literature.  It dates from 1760, from the Italian cinquecento (literally “500”) and was short for mil cinquecento (1500).  The use to describe "a group of five, five units treated as one," especially at cards or dice, dates from the late fourteenth century and in English was borrowed directly from the French cinq, a dissimilation from Latin quinque (five) which in Late Latin also picked up the familiar spelling cinque.  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European penkwe (five).

Cinquefoil housing stained glass (leadlight) window.

In architecture, a cinquefoil is a ornament constructed with five cuspidated divisions, the use dating from the late fifteenth century, from the Old French cinqfoil, the construct being cinq (five) + foil (leaf).  The basis for the French form was the quinquefolium, the construct being quinque (five) + folium (leaf), from the primitive Indo-European root bhel- (to thrive, bloom).  In Gothic tracery, there was a wide use of circular shapes featuring a lobe tangent to the inner side of a larger arc or arch, meeting other lobes in points called cusps projecting inwards from the arch and architects defined them by the number of foils used, indicated by the prefix: trefoil (3), quatrefoil (4), cinquefoil (5), multifoil etc.  Although used as stand-alone fixtures, bands of quatrefoils were much used for enrichment during the "Perpendicular Period" (the final phase of English Gothic architecture, dated usually between circa 1350–1550; it followed the "Decorated Style" and was characterized by strong vertical lines, large windows with intricate tracery, and elaborate fan vaulting) and, when placed with the axes set diagonally, quatrefoils were called cross-quarters.

Porsche "phone-dial" wheels, clockwise from top left: 1981 911SC, 1988 924S, 1987 944S & 1985 928S.  With a myriad of variations, the cinquefoil motif was a style for wheels used by a number of manufacturers, the best known of which were the ones with which Porsche equipped the 911, 924, 944 & 928 where they were known as the “phone-dial”, a reference which may puzzle those younger than a certain age.  Because these have five rather than ten holes, they really should have picked up the nickname "cinquefoil" rather than "phone-dial" but the former was presumably too abstract or obscure so the more accessible latter prevailed.

Fiat 500 (2023), watercolor on paper by Monika Jones.  While the artist hasn't provided notes, it's tempting to imagine the inspiration was something like “Lindsay Lohan in white dress during summer in Rome, leaning on Fiat 500, painted in the tradition of Impressionism.”

A classic of the La Dolce Vita era, the rear-engined Fiat 500 was in continuous production between 1957-1975 and was the successor to the pre-war Fiat 500 Topolino, an even more diminutive machine which proved its versatility in roles ranging from race tracks to inner-city streets to operating as support vehicles used by the Italian Army in the invasion of Abyssinia (1935).  Almost 3.9 million of the post-war 500s (dubbed the Nuova Cinquecento (New 500)) were produced and as well as the two-door saloon (almost all fitted with a folding sunroof) there were three-door station wagons (the Giardiniera) & panel vans.  Although not all wore the 500 badge, in the home market, universally Italians called them the Cinquecentro.  There was also the unusual 500 Jolly, a cut down version built by Carrozzeria Ghia which featured wicker seats and a removable fabric roof in the style of the surrey tops once used on horse-drawn carriages.  The Jolly was intended as “beach car”, some carried on the yachts of the rich and although Ghia built only 650 originals, many 500s have since been converted to “Jolly Spec”, one of coach-building’s less-demanding tasks.  Being an Italian car, there were of course high-performance versions, the wildest of which was the Steyr-Puch 650 TR2 (1965-1969) which ran so hot it was necessary to prop open the engine cover while it was in use.  The Nuova 500’s successors never achieved the same success but such was the appeal of the original that in 2007 a retro-themed 500 was released although, al la Volkswagen’s “new Beetles” (1997-2019), the configuration was switched to a water-cooled front-engine with FWD (front-wheel-drive).

1985 Ferrari Testarossa “monospecchio-monodado”.

The early Testarossas were fitted with centre-lock magnesium-alloy wheels, chosen for their lightness.  Responding to feedback from the dealer network, as a running-change during 1988, these were substituted for units with a conventional five-bolt design.  The centre-lock wheels were called monodado (one nut) while the five lug-types were the cinquedado (five nut) and because of the time-line, while all the monospecchio cars are also monodado, only some of the monodaddi are monospecchi.  Monospecchi (literally "one mirror") is an unofficial designation for the early cars fitted with a single external mirror, mounted unusually high on the A-pillar, the location the product of Ferrari's interpretation of the EU's (European Union) rearward visibility regulations.  The Eurocrats later clarified things and Testarossas subsequently were fitted with two mirrors in the usual position at the base of the A-pillar. 

Plastic wheelcover for the Ford (Australia) Fairmont XE (1982-1984, left), a circa 1949 British GPO standard telephone in Bakelite (centre) (globally, the most produced handset in this style was the Model 302, which, with a thermoplastic case, was manufactured in the US by Western Electric between 1937-1955 and plastic wheelcover for the Ford (Australia) Fairmont XF (1984-1988, right).  Telephones with larger dial mechanisms usually didn't use all the available space for the finger-holes.

Probably some are annoyed at the “five-hole” wheel design coming to be known as the “phone-dial” because of course the classic rotary-dial mechanism had ten holes, one for each numeral.  Ford Australia actually stuck to the classics when designing a plastic wheel-cover for the XE Fairmont (then the next rung up in the Falcon's pecking order) because it featured the correct ten holes and it was re-allocated as a “hand-me-down” for the Falcon when the XF was introduced, the Fairmont now getting an eight-hole unit.  None of these seem ever to have been dubbed “phone-dials”, probably because plastic wheel–covers have never been a fetish like the older metal versions or aluminium wheels (often as “rims” in modern usage, a practice which also annoys some).  The XE hubcap may be thought a decemfoil (10 leaf) and the XF unit a octofoil (8 leaf).

1971 Ford (South Africa) XY Fairmont GT with the GS Pack wheel covers.

The South African Fairmont GTs were never fitted with the "five slot" wheels used in Australia, getting instead the chromed wheel cover which in Australia was part of the "GS Pack", a collection of "dress-up" options designed to provide much of the look of a GT without the additional costs to purchase or insure one.  The GS Pack wheel covers were first seen in Australia on the 1967 XR Falcon GT and came from the Mercury parts bin in the US where they'd appeared on the 1966 Mercury Comet Cyclone GT; they were designed to look like a chromed, naked wheel, the idea a tribute to the Californian hot rod community in which the motif originated.

1971 Ford (Australia) XY Falcon GT with “five slot” wheels.

Although scholars of Latin probably haven’t given much thought to the wheels Ford used in the 1960s & 1970s, their guidance would be helpful because the correct Latin form for “slot” depends on context, the words being (1) Fissura: “crack, split or narrow opening”, (2) Rima: “narrow gap or slit”, (3) Foramen: “opening, hole or perforation” and (4) Scissura “cleft or division”.  So a XY GT’s wheel would be a cinquefissura, cinquerima, cinqueforamen or cinquescissura.  The scholars would have to rule but cinquerima seems best, tied in nicely with the modern (albeit contested) use of “rim” to mean wheel.      

In production over six generations between 1965-2008 the Fairmont was a "blinged-up" version of the Australian Ford Falcon (1960-2016), a car based on the US compact (1960-1969) Ford of the same name (the one-off 1970 US Falcon an entry level model in the intermediate Torinio (formerly Fairlane) range).  Ford in the US would also use the Fairmont name for a compact (1978-1983) but the most quirky use was that between 1969-1971, Ford South Africa sold a car substantially similar to the Australian Falcon GT but badged it "Fairmont GT".  Assembled (with some local components) in South Africa from CKD (completely knocked down) packs imported from Australia, the Fairmont name was chosen because US Falcons (assembled from Canadian CKD packs) had been sold in South Africa between 1960-1963 but had gained such a bad reputation (Ford Australia had to do much rectification work after encountering the same fragility) the nameplate was decreed tainted.  In the technical sense, "Fairmont GT" would have been a more accurate name in Australia too because the Falcon GTs were, with the bling, built on the Fairmont assembly line; the choice of "Falcon GT" was just a desire by the marketing team to create a "halo" machine for the mainstream range, something which succeeded to an degree which probably surprised even those ever-optimistic types.  Ford South Africa never offered a Fairmont GTHO to match the Falcon GTHOs produced in Australia to homologate certain combinations of parts for competition.

Lamborghini has used the phone-dial since the first incarnation appeared on the Silhouette in 1976 and it likes it still, left to right: Huranan, Gallardo, Countach, Diablo and Silhouette.  With five "holes", these are true cinquefoils.

Despite being often called a "hubcap", what appeared on the South African Fairmont GTs really was a "wheel cover".  The origin of the hubcap was, fairly obviously, “a cap for hub”, something which dates from the age of horse-drawn carts.  Although they would later become something decorative, hubcaps began as a purely function fitting designed to ensure the hub mechanism was protected from dirt and moisture because removing a wheel when the hub was caked in mud with bolts “rusted on” could be a challenge.  In the twentieth century the practice was carried over to the automobile, initially without much change but as wheels evolved from the wooden-spoked to solid steel (and even in the 1920s some experimented with aluminium), the hubcaps became larger because the securing bolts were more widely spaced.  This meant they became a place to advertise so manufacturers added their name and before long, especially in the US, the humble hubcap evolved into the “wheel-cover”, enveloping the whole circle and they became a styling feature, designs ranging from the elegant to the garishly ornate and some were expensive: in 1984 a set of replacement “wire” wheel covers for a second generation Cadillac Seville (the so-called “bustle-back”, 1980-1985) listed at US$995.00 if ordered as a Cadillac part-number and then that was a lot of money.  By the late 1980s, most wheel covers were plastic pressings, other than in places like the isolated environments behind the Iron Curtain.

Beltless: Lindsay Lohan in 2004 using touch-dial wall-phone, note the hooking of the thumbs in the belt loops.

Remarkably, although touch-dial (ie buttons) handsets appeared in the consumer market as early as 1963 and soon became the standard issue, in 2024 it’s possible still to buy new, rotary-dial phones although only the user experience remains similar; internally the connections are effected with optical technology, the “sound & feel” emulated.  There’s also a market for updating the old Bakelite & Thermoplastic units (now typically between 70-90 years old) with internals compatible with modern telephony so clearly there’s some nostalgia for the retro-look, if not the exact experience.  Even after the touch-dial buttons became ubiquitous the old terminology persisted among users (and in the manufacturers' documents); when making calls users continued to "dial the number".  The same sort of linguistic legacy exists today because ending a call is still the act of "hanging up" and that dates from the very early days of telephony when the ear-piece was a large conical attachment on a cord and at a call's conclusion, it was "hung up" on a arm, the weight of the receiver lowering the arm which physically separated two copper connectors, terminating the link between the callers.  

Ms Justine Haupt with custom rotary-dial cell phone in turquoise.

Ms Justine Haupt (b 1987), an astronomy instrumentation engineer at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory went a step further (backwards, or perhaps sideways, some might suggest) and built a rotary-dial cell phone from scratch because of her aversion to what she describes as “smartphone culture and texting”, something to which many will relate.  In what proved a three year project, Ms Haupt used a rotary-dial mechanism from a Trimline telephone (introduced in 1965 and produced by Western Electric, the manufacturing unit of the Bell System), mounted on a case 4 x 3 x 1 inches (100 x 75 x 25 mm) in size with a noticeably protuberant aerial; it used an AT&T prepaid sim card and has a battery-life of some 24-30 hours.  Conforming to the designer’s choices of functionality, it includes two speed-dial buttons, an e-paper display and permits neither texting nor internet access.  

Designer colors: Available in black, white, turquoise, beige and the wonderful Atomic Hotline Red.  The "atomic" in the name is an allusion the hotline's origin in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) which was all about nuclear weapons.

Although she intended the device as a one-off for her own use, Ms Haupt was surprised at the interest generated and in 2022 began selling a kit (US$170) with which others could build their own, all parts included except the rotary-dial mechanism which would need to be sourced from junk shops and such.  Unlike the larger mechanism on the traditional desk or wall-mounted telephone, the holes in the Trimline’s smaller rotary-dial used the whole circle so the ten-hole layout is symmetrical and thus the same as the XE Fairmont’s wheelcover, something doubtlessly wholly coincidental.  Unfortunately, Ms Haupt encountered many difficulties (bringing to market a device which connects to public telephony networks involves processes of greater complexity than selling mittens and such) but the project remains afoot.

The rough-fruited cinquefoil or sulphur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta).

In botany, the potentila is a genus containing some three-hundred species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the rose (rosaceae) family.  Since the 1540s it’s been referred to as the cinquefoil (also “five fingers” or “silverweeds”), all distinguished by their compound leaves of five leaflets.

The Confederation of Cinque Ports was a group of coastal towns in Kent, Sussex and Essex, the name from the Old French which means literally “five harbors”.  The five were Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe, all on the western shore of the English Channel, where the crossing to the continent is narrowest.  Because of (1) their importance in cross-channel trade and (2) being in the region ,most vulnerable to invasion, they were granted special privileges and concessions by the Crown in exchange for providing certain services essential for maritime defense, dating from the years prior to the formation of the Royal Navy in the fifteenth century.  The name was first used in the late twelfth century in Anglo-Latin and the late thirteenth in English.

An early version of a PPP (public-private partnership), with no permanent navy to defend it from sea-borne aggression, the crown contracted with the confederation to provide what was essentially a naval reserve to be mobilized when needed. Earlier, Edward the Confessor (circa 1003–1066; King of England 1042-1066) had contracted the five most important strategically vital Channel ports of that era to provide ships and men “for the service of the monarch” and although this was used most frequently as a “cross-Channel ferry service” and was not exclusively at the disposal of the government.  Under the Norman kings, the institution assumed the purpose of providing the communications and logistical connections essential to keeping together the two halves of the realm but after the loss of Normandy in 1205, their ships and ports suddenly became England’s first line of defense against the French.  The earliest charter still extant dates from 1278 but a royal charter of 1155 charged the ports with the corporate duty to maintain in readiness fifty-seven ships, each to be available each year for fifteen days in the service of the king, each port fulfilling a proportion of the whole duty.  In return the ports and towns received a number of tax breaks and privileges including: An exemption from tax and tolls, limited autonomy, the permission to levy tolls, certain law enforcement and judicial rights, possession of lost goods that remain unclaimed after a year and of flotsam (floating wreckage and such) & jetsam (goods thrown overboard).  Even at the time this was thought to be a good deal and the leeway afforded to the Cinque Ports and the substantial absence of supervision from London led inevitability to smuggling and corruption although in this the Cinque Ports were hardly unique.

The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was something like a viceroy and the office still exists today but is now purely ceremonial and, although technically relict, remains a sinecure and an honorary title, regarded as one of the higher honors bestowed by the Sovereign and a sign of special approval by the establishment which includes the entitlement to the second oldest coat of arms of England.  The prestige it confers on the holder is derived from (1) it being the gift of the sovereign, (2) it being England’s most ancient military honor and (3), the illustrious standing of at least some of the previous hundred and fifty-eight holders of the office.  It is a lifetime appointment.

William Lygon (1872-1938), seventh Earl Beauchamp, in uniform as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

The office of lord warden has not been without the whiff of scandal.  William Lygon, who in 1891 succeeded his father as the seventh Earl Beauchamp, was at twenty-seven appointed governor of New South Wales, a place to which he would later return, happily and otherwise.  In 1913, Lord Beauchamp, well-connected in society and the ruling Liberal Party’s leader in the House of Lords, was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and, fond of pomp, ceremony and dressing-up, he enjoyed the undemanding role.  However, in 1930, he embarked on a round-the-world tour which included a two-month stint in Sydney, where he stayed, accompanied by a young valet who lived with him as his lover.  This, along with other antics, did not go unnoticed, and the Australian Star newspaper duly reported:

“The most striking feature of the vice-regal ménage is the youthfulness of its members … rosy cheeked footmen, clad in liveries of fawn, heavily ornamented in silver and red brocade, with many lanyards of the same hanging in festoons from their broad shoulders, [who] stood in the doorway, and bowed as we passed in … Lord Beauchamp deserves great credit for his taste in footmen.”

The report found its way to London when Beauchamp’s brother-in-law, the second Duke of Westminster (1879–1953), hired detectives to gather evidence, hoping to destroy him and damage the Liberal Party, the Tory duke hating both.  Evidence proved abundant and not hard to find so in 1931 Westminster publicly denounced Beauchamp as a homosexual to the king (George V 1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), who was appalled and responded that he “…thought men like that always shot themselves.”  Westminster insisted a warrant be issued for Beauchamp’s arrest and that forced him into exile.

Lady Beauchamp seems to have shown some confusion upon being informed of her husband’s conduct.  Although he had enjoyed many liaisons in their (admittedly large) residences (his partners including servants, socialites & local fishermen) and his proclivities were an open secret known to many in society, his wife remained oblivious and expressed some confusion about what homosexuality was.  Leading a sheltered existence, Lady Beauchamp had never been told about the mechanics of "the abominable crime of buggery" and baffled, thought her husband was being accused of being a bugler.  Once things were clarified she petitioned for divorce, the papers describing the respondent as:

“A man of perverted sexual practices, [who] has committed acts of gross indecency with male servants and other male persons and has been guilty of sodomy … throughout the married life … the respondent habitually committed acts of gross indecency with certain of his male servants.”

Beauchamp decamped first to Germany which would once have seemed a prudent choice because, although homosexual acts between men had been illegal since the unification of Germany in 1871, under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), enforcement was rare and a gay culture flourished blatantly in the larger German cities, the Berlin scene famous even then, the writer Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) describing things memorably although it wasn't until his diaries were later published one fully could "read between the lines".  After the Nazis gained power in 1933, things changed and Beauchamp contemplated satisfying George V’s assumption but was dissuaded, instead spending his time between Paris, Venice, Sydney and San Francisco, then four of the more tolerant cities and certainly places where wealthy gay men usually could bribe their way out of any legal unpleasantness.

Sir Robert Menzies in uniform as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) was one of the more improbable appointments as lord warden.  In the office (1965-1978), he replaced Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) on whom the hardly onerous duties had been imposed in 1941.  The old soldier Churchill had spent a lifetime appearing in military uniforms (his RAF (Royal Air Force) Air Commodore's outfit adorned with "pilot's wings" (aviator badge), apparently "self-awarded" on the basis of flying lessons (concluded after a non-fatal crash) he'd undertaken at the Royal Naval Flying School at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915)) and wore it well but the very civilian Menzies looked something like one of the characters from a Gilbert and Sullivan (Sir William Gilbert (1836–1911) & Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) comic opera.  That he was made lord warden rather than being granted a peerage was thought by some emblematic of the changing relationship between the UK and Australia.

After the death of George V, the warrant for Beauchamp’s arrest was lifted and, in July 1937, he returned to England.  What did come as a surprise to many was that soon after his arrival, invitations were issued for a Beauchamp ball, ostensibly a coming-of-age celebration for Richard Lygon (1916-1970; the youngest son) but universally regarded as an attempt at a social resurrection.  In a sign of the times, much of London society did attend although there were those who declined and made it known why.  Still, it seems to have appeared a most respectable and even successful event, Henry "Chips" Channon (1897-1958) noting in his diary it was a bit dull, the “only amusing moment when Lord Beauchamp escorted… a negress cabaret singer into supper.  People were cynically amused but I was not surprised, knowing of his secret activities in Harlem.  It is never a long step from homosexuality to black ladies.”  Lord Beauchamp didn’t long enjoy his return to society, dying within a year of the ball but the vicissitudes of his life were helpful to Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) when writing Brideshead Revisited (1945), the character of Lord Marchmain based on Beauchamp himself while the ill-fated Sebastian Flyte was inspired by Beauchamp’s son Hugh (1904-1936) who shared and (with some enthusiasm) pursued some of his father’s interests.  Despite it all, an appointment as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is for life and Lord Beauchamp remained in office until his death.

Charrette

Charrette (pronounced shuh-ret)

A final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline (historically most associated with architecture & students of the subject); it’s applied particularly to group work and other collaborative efforts.

1400s: From the French charrette (small cart), from the Middle French charrete, from twelfth century Old French charrete (wagon, small cart), a diminutive of charre, from the Latin carrum & carrus (wagon), the construct being char (chariot; wagon) + -ete (the diminutive suffix).  The sense of “work to meet a deadline” came from French, the conventional explanation of the origin being the use by groups of students of architecture who, after working all night, loaded their drawings, plans and sketches into a cart (pulled the legend suggests by the youngest member) into a small cart (pulled by the youngest member) on the day of the presentation of their work to the professor.  The alternative spellings are charette & charret.  Charrette is a noun; the noun plural is charrettes.

In the late nineteenth century, just before the deadline, the authorities of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris would send to a designated place on campus a charrette (a small cart) into which students of architecture would deposit their final drawings and models.  As every student and ex-student knows, it’s the final few hours before the deadline during which much of the work is done and the young Parisian scholars so associated the impending arrival of the little cart with this frenzied activity that the term “charrette” came to signify this burst of sudden enthusiasm.  .  Most sources suggest the use of charrette & charette (in this context) appeared in English only in either (1) the mid-1960s when adopted by university students as a verb meaning “an intense effort to compete a project before the deadline expires” or (2) sometime in the next decade when architects in Chicago added it to their project planning timelines; it’s now also used of any activity which is increased to meet a deadline.  Inevitably, charrette (used as noun & verb) has entered the jargon of management-speak to describe “intensive workshops”, “brainstorming sessions” and such where people gather to solve problems (which the management gurus often insist should be called “challenges” or “opportunities”), develop concepts and such.  The essence of the corporate charrette is said to be collaboration, creativity and a rapid arrival at decisions.

In French, the noun charrette was coined simply to describe “any cart smaller that that usually deployed for whatever purpose” and specific terms evolved to refer to devices of a certain design or function.  A charrette à bras was “a hand cart” (the French bras meaning “arm”) and described a cart propelled by a person rather than pulled by some beast of burden.  The best known of the variants was the charrette des condamnés (the cart of the doomed (ie those condemned to die) and it was in these those convicted of this and that were taken to their execution.

Execution of Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792), 16 October 1793 (unknown artist).

The charrette des condamnés famously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (the period in the mid-1790s after the declaration of the First Republic, marked by massacres, public executions, anti-clericalism and internecine political struggle) were properly called tumbrels although many illustrations of scenes at the guillotine depict the use of four-wheeled carts rather than tumbrels.  Presumably both types were used but historians generally believe it was usually the tumbrel because the revolutionaries preferred the symbolism of something usually used for moving dung or rubbish while artists choose the four-wheelers for compositional reasons.  The noun tumbrel (two-wheeled cart for hauling dung, stones etc) was from mid-fifteenth century French, a name, curiously perhaps, used in the early thirteenth century to describe what some eighteenth century dictionaries described as a mysterious “instrument of punishment of uncertain type” but which turned out to be (1) a name for the cucking stool used, inter alia, to conduct the dunking in water of women suspected of this and that and (2) was a type of medieval balancing scale used to weigh coins.  It was from the Old French tomberel (dump cart) (which exists in Modern French as tombereau), from tomber ((let) fall or tumble), possibly from a Germanic source, perhaps the Old Norse tumba (to tumble), the Old High German tumon (to turn, reel).

In English the charrette des condamnés was called the tumbril (the alternative spellings tumbrel & tumbrill), the English as content to pilfer other languages for words as their Empire builders would be to steal the lands of others (the Anglo-Latin was tumberellus), from tomber & tumber (to fall).  As well as being (1) the cart used to carry prisoners to the gallows, the tumbril was also (2) a cucking stool (actually based on a medieval torture device used, inter alia, to “detect” witches), used as a tool of punishment and humiliation (miscreants (usually women) accused of “social” offences such as “gossiping” or “trouble-making” strapped to the stool which was by some sort of mechanical apparatus “dunked” into a pond or river), (3) a cart designed for “dumping” its load, with a single axle and sometimes with a hinged tray or tailboard (ie the antecedent of the modern dump-truck), (4) a type of balancing scale used in medieval times to check the weight of coins and (5) a basket or cage of osiers, willows, or the like, to hold hay and other food for sheep (long extinct).

In a transition which would please historians and social theorists, the tumbrel began life as two-wheeled cart or wagon hauled usually by a single horse or ox and their most common use was the carrying of manure (horse shit, cow shit etc) and later was re-purposed to carry the “excrement” of society (criminal condemned to death).  The use of the word to describe the dunking stool is also indicative of the attitude of the establishment to another undesirable class: talkative women.  The point of the cucking stool was not to drown but simply publically to humiliate offenders and hopefully change their behavior.  It can be thought a kind of pre-modern community service order.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

La Charrette Anglaise (The English Dog Cart (1897)) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), lithograph on wove paper.

A genre scene in the tradition of post-impressionism, the original title was La Partie de Canpagne and is an example of works of Toulouse-Lautrec which would be influential in the development of art nouveau (modern).  The dog cart (also as dogcart & dog-cart) was a style of coach-building popular in England and described both (1) a small cart drawn by a dog and (2) A larger two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with two transverse seats back to back (an outgrowth of the original design in which the rear compartment was an enclosed (usually caged) box for carrying dogs used for hunting or other sports.  It’s not clear if the phrase “in the dogbox” was an allusion to this design.  The French phrase La Partie de Campagne translates to “A Day in the Country” and both titles continue to be used of the work.  So evocative was La Partie de Campagne of the outdoors, nature, fresh air (no small thing for those accustomed to the pollution and filth of the cities of the age) and the charming simplicity of rural life that the phrase appears often in French art and literature.  The idea appealed even to modernists, so often associated with things urban.

La Partie de Campagne (The Outing (1951)), lithograph on Arches paper by Fernand Léger (1881-1955).

Léger’s art wasn’t always political but it became so (“the century made me so” he claimed) and the stilted, robotic figures in this 1951 work represent his take on man’s place in capitalist society and a rural environment ravaged and debased.  A sculptor and filmmaker as well as a painter, he was a significant (if rather neglected in the English-speaking world) figure and his creation of a style of painting he called “tubism” was the basis of much of his later, figurative works and there are critics who maintain tubism was a seminal influence on both agitprop and pop art.

1897 Panhard & Levassor with charrette anglaise coachwork.

Powered by a 1648 cm³ (101 cubic inch) two-cylinder gas (petrol) engine rated at 6 (taxable), the car is a typical example of the automobile at the dawn of the twentieth century when new innovations in engineering were beginning to be added to what had for the first decade-odd of the new type been literally “horseless carriages” in that the technique had usually been to take existing coach or cat designs and add an engine.  The example on the left was built in 1897 and fitted originally with a tiller-steering mechanism (right) but steering wheels (still in use today) were even then becoming the new standard and this restored example was fitted with one in 1898.

Impressionism

Impressionism (pronounced im-presh-uh-niz-uhm)

(1) In fine art (an appropriated by others), a style of painting developed in the late nineteenth century, characterized by short brush strokes of bright colors in immediate juxtaposition to represent the effect of light on objects and a focus on everyday subject matters (by convention usually with an initial capital).

(2) A manner of painting in which the forms, colors, or tones of an object are lightly and rapidly indicated and there’s sometimes an attempt deliberately to include discordant subjects.

(3) In sculpture, a compositional style in which volumes are partially modeled and surfaces roughened to reflect light unevenly.

(4) In poetry, a style which used imagery and symbolism to convey the poet's impressions

(5) In literature, a theory and practice which emphasizes immediate aspects of objects or actions without attention to details.

(6) In musical composition, a movement of the late nineteen and early twentieth centuries (in parallel with the developments in painting) which eschewed traditional harmonies, substituting lush pieces with subtle rhythms, the unusual tonal colors used as evocative devices.

1880–1885: The construct was impression + -ism.  Impression was from the Old French impression, from the Latin impressio, from imprimo (push, thrust, assault, onslaught; squashing; stamping; impression), the construct being in- (the prefix which usually to some extent nullified but here in its rare form as an intensifier) +‎ premō (to press), from the Proto-Italic premō which may be linked with the primitive Indo-European pr-es- (to press), from per- (to push, beat, press).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Impressionism and impressionist are nouns; the noun plural is impressionisms.

The meanings of impressionism are wholly unrelated to impressionistic which is used to describe an opinion reached by means of subjective reactions as opposed to one which was the product of research or deductive reasoning (ie based on impression rather than reason or fact).  As a noun an impressionist is (1) one who in art, music or literature produced work in the tradition of impressionism or (2) an entertainer who performs impressions of others (a mimic).  Although by some used in philosophy since 1839, impressionism really isn’t a recognized field in the discipline, instead used metaphorically (and often critically) to describe certain tendencies which share similarities with the artistic movement.  Those who describe themselves as impressionist philosophers reject the idea that objective knowledge or absolute truths exist and instead stress the importance of individual perception and personal experience, arguing that individual (and debatably collective) understanding of the world is determined only by the wholly subjective: senses and emotions.  They’re thus much concerned with perception, consciousness, and the nature of reality.  In all that there’s obviously some overlap with earlier traditions and mainstream philosophers tend to be dismissive, some suggesting impressionism is less a philosophical school than a mode of which has been explored for millennia.

Le pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil (The Railroad Bridge in Argenteuil (1873-1874)), oil on canvas by Claude Monet (1840-1926), Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

Impressionism was an art movement that emerged in France in the late nineteenth century and was a romantic form, the core of which was the capturing of a fleeting moment (ie an impression) in time and place, characterized by the play of light and color, rendered with what gave the impression of loose (even careless) brushwork, the paint often applied in brief, broken strokes.  Breaking from the intricacy and preciseness which had distinguished high art since the renaissance, the artists sought a feeling of spontaneity rather than the staged effect engendered by meticulously rendered details.  The whole idea was to “capture the moment” those transitory scenes one might view thousands of times a day and their subject matter so often were the vistas of everyday light, the apparent casualness of the composition an important psychological aspect because such visions are so often hazy because the mind tends to remember only the part which has captured the eye while in memory the peripheral surroundings are “burred” or even vaguely “filled in” from memory.  The artists wanted to represent the immediate sensory impressions of a particular moment rather than a polished and composition.  Given all this, it’s not surprising the Impressionists so frequently painted en plein air (ie outdoors) because there natural light and breezes made for an ever-changing environment, idea for a technique dedicated capturing the ephemeral.

The Church at Auvers (1890), oil on canvas by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

In the way of such things, from Impressionism, very late in the nineteenth century came post-impressionism.  Deliberately positioned as a reaction against what had come to be regarded as the strictures and limitations of Impressionism, it was noted especially for an expressive and symbolic use of color which neglected and sometimes even abandoned the link with naturalistic representation, the intensity of shade itself a vehicle of an artist’s personal interpretations.  It also distorted form and perspective, the exaggerations wildly beyond anything in the mannerist tradition and the influence upon the cubists who would follow is undeniable.  Something of a preview of post-modernism, the concerns were more with laying bare the underlying structure rather than showing anything directly representational.  However, despite the perceptions of some, technical innovation was rare and even the techniques most associated with the movement had been seen before although famously, the post-impressionists delighted in non-naturalistic color schemes.  While this was something which caught the eye, it again wasn’t exactly new and the claims it somehow created a heightened emotional impact have always seem hard to sustain although they certainly displeased the Nazis who decried paintings “green skies” and “blue dogs”.  Still, the work influenced Fauvism and Cubism and there are critics who maintain post-impressionism was the first discernible epoch in modern art.

The Seine at Courbevoie (1885), oil on canvas by Georges Seurat (1859-1891).

Although post-impressionism can be seen to some extent as something new, the companion neo-impressionism was really a fork.  The alternative name of the movement was Divisionism which hints at the scientific basis which underlay many of the works, most notably pointillism (the use of tiny dots which blended optically when viewed from a distance) which explored the principles of the physics of color and light by rendering paintings almost as a mathematical exercise and one far removed from the spontaneous brushwork of Impressionism.  Color under this regime came to be understood in itself as a theory, the concept of “simultaneous contrast” expressed in the placement of contrasting or complementary colors explored to exploit the way the brain processed the relationship by either “toning down” or making more luminous the visual experience.  The work was thus in the impressionist tradition of using light and color but it was different in that instead of representing an impression of how nature was seen, it deployed a scientific understanding of how the mind perceived and interpreted light and color to produce something which enhanced the effect.  In that sense it’s understood as a structuralist movement.

Separation (1896), oil on canvas by Edvard Munch (1963-1944), Munch Museum, Oslo.

Neo-impressionism should not be confused with Expressionism, a contemporary movement from Germany which some have characterized (not wholly unfairly” as “painting Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) nightmares”.  The expressionists sought to convey the subjective emotions, inner experiences and psychological states of the artist; the viewer was there simply to view and understand the feelings of the artist who seem frequently drawn to the darker aspects of human existence.  They used distorted and exaggerated forms, heavy brushwork, and non-naturalistic colors designed expressly to be discordant.  The classic example of Expressionism is Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893).

Lindsay Lohan (2012), oil on canvas by Lucas Bufi.

Florida-based Lucas Bufi describes himself as “modern Impressionist artist, guided by light and shadows”.  His take on Lindsay Lohan was based on one of the images from a 2011 photo-shoot for the January/February 2012 issue of Playboy magazine which featured her as the cover model.  It can be difficult to determine where impressionism ends and expressionism begins.