Bang

Bang (pronounced bhang)

(1) A loud, sudden, explosive noise (such as the discharge of a firearm).

(2) A resounding stroke or blow.

(3) In informal, use, a sudden movement, show of energy or instance of something suggesting great value, energy, vitality or spirit (source of many idiomatic forms such as “started with a bang”, “went off with a bang”, “great bang for the buck” etc).

(4) Suddenly and loudly; abruptly or violently.

(5) In figurative use, precisely; directly; right (such as “bang on” or “bang in the middle” (ie exactly correct” or “bang to rights” (caught red-handed; guilty as sin).

(6) In informal use, a sudden or intense pleasure; thrill or excitement (now less common).

(7) In slang, various senses of precision such as “bang off” (instantly; right away) or “bang on” (marvelous; perfect; just right).

(8) In vulgar slang, the act or instance of sexual intercourse (with many variants, the most infamous the gangbang).

(9) In the jargon of mining, civil engineering etc, the physical explosive product.

(10) In the slang of drug users, an injection or other form of dose of a narcotic; a shot of heroin which proved lethal.

(11) In US criminal class clang, to participate in street gang criminal activity.

(12) In the slang of typology & the printing trade, an exclamation point, a variant being the interrobang (a punctuation mark (‽) which merges the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!) to indicate a query made as an interjection).

(13) In Irish slang, a strong smell (often used of halitosis (chronic bad breath)).

(14) In regional slang (limited apparently to the New England region in the US), an abrupt left-turn by a road-user (Boston, Massachusetts) or a left, right or U-turn (more generalized); the typical use is “bang a left/right/uey”. The equivalent use in Australia & New Zealand is “hang a left/right/uey” although there a U-turn is known also as a “U-bolt”.

(15) In regional slang (limited apparently to urban areas in Nigeria), to fail an exam.

(16) In mathematics, a factorial (on the basis the factorial of n is often written as n!)

(17) In the jargon of financial markets, rapidly or in high volumes suddenly to sell (an equity, commodity, currency etc), causing prices to fall.

(18) In the jargon of hairdressing, as bangs, a number of variants of the fringe.

(19) In reggae music, an offbeat figure played usually on guitar and piano.

(20) In vulgar slang, to have sexual intercourse with (sometimes with the implication of “without consent”.

(21) To strike or beat resoundingly; to pound; to strike violently or noisily.

(22) To hit or painfully to pump.

(23) To throw or set down roughly; to slam.

1540-1550: From the Middle English bangen, from the Old English bangian or borrowed from the Old Norse banga (to pound, hammer), both from the Proto-Germanic bangōną (to beat, pound), from the primitive Indo-European ben- (to beat, hit, injure).  It was cognate with Scots bang & bung (to strike, bang, hurl, thrash, offend), the Icelandic banga (to pound, hammer), the Old Swedish bånga (to hammer (from which modern Swedish gained banka (to knock, pound, bang), the Danish banke (to beat) & bengel (club), the Low German bangen, & bangeln (to strike, beat) (the German dialect banken may originally have been imitative), the West Frisian bingel & bongel, the Dutch bengel (bell; rascal) and the German Bengel (club) & bungen (to throb, pulsate).  Bang is a noun, verb & adverb, banged is a verb & adjective, banger is a noun, banging is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is bangs.

Of the universe

The origin of the term “Big Bang Theory” (which describes a model accounting for the origin and most of the dynamics of the (present) universe during the last 14 billion years-odd) is traced to a chance remark by English astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) on BBC Radio in 1949 but it wasn’t until the late 1960s it came widely to be used in scientific circles and a few more years before it was part of the common public language.  Hoyle always denied he’d intended to be disparaging of what was then a theory some 30 years old and this most historians came to accept although certainly he was unconvinced of the idea’s soundness and for some decades clung to his preferred “steady state” model of the universe.  The steady state position is sometimes misunderstood as something like “twas ever thus” but is better understood as “constant process”, the crucial difference that while the steady staters held matter constantly was being created as the universe expands, the big bangers believed the distance between the matter which came into existence a fraction of a second after the big bang increased as the universe expanded from its one-time singularity.  Hoyle never quite became a big banger but as the evidence mounted, he modified his model to become what was dubbed “a quasi steady stater” although his increasingly convoluted explanations forcing observations to somehow fit his belief convinced few.  The criticism of Hoyle was he made cosmology into a kind of theology.

Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) 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.  For golfers, she has posted a set of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies which are guides for both the experienced wishing to hone their techniques and those taking up the sport.  Being highly qualified, she filled one gap in the instructional market with a collection of tips for “busty golfers” (specific weight distribution a significant element as the body pivots when swinging a club).  On Instagram, in less than 24 hours, the clip garnered over 2.6 million views.

Hoyle's use of the term “big bang” while it did graphically emphasise the difference of opinion between the two schools of thought, was unfortunate as a contribution to public understanding because of the connotations of the words  “big” & “bang”, most imagining the origins of the universe as starting with a huge, noisy explosion whereas what was envisaged by the theorists was a sudden “cosmic inflation” (of space), a process which continues and was in the 1990s found to be accelerating although not everywhere equally.  The big bang theory is now the orthodoxy in the mainstream scientific community though some questions remain unanswered including the mystery of why, based on a number of calculations which explain many other things, over 90% of the universe’s matter is “missing” (or at least can’t be observed).  The fudge to “explain” that has been the twin concepts of “dark matter” and “dark energy” which are more “speculative concepts” than a theoretical model and best understood as an elegant way of saying “don’t know”.  There have been a number of suggestions to account for the “missing matter”, the most intriguing being the notion the calculated “matter number” might be too high because of “drag effect” created by the operation of time itself.  Time obviously is important otherwise everything would happen at the same time and who knows what else it does; recently, particle physicists reported having witnessed pinpricks of darkness moving faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of relativity so there's much still to be understood.

Of cars

Big banger and old banger: John Greenwood (1945-2015) in “Spirit of ’76” Chevrolet Corvette, Le Mans 24 Hour, June 1976 (left) and a despondent Lindsay Lohan with Herbie while in “old banger” state, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), the Corvette an “8-banger” and the Beetle a “4-banger”.  The Corvette was powered by a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block V8 and although forced to retire after a failure in the fuel delivery system, while it was running, nothing in the field could match the mark of 222 mph (354 km/h) it set thundering down the then 6 km (3.7 mile) Mulsanne straight.  In 1976, Mulsanne had yet to be distorted by the silly chicanes added in 1990 at the behest of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation, world sport's dopiest regulatory body)).

With cars, “banger” proved productive.  Because an ICE (internal combustion engine) always includes a “power stroke” (or its equivalence), in which the fuel-air mix explodes (the combustion causing “a bang” which sequentially is the sound from the exhaust system; to aficionados sometimes a pleasing tone, sometimes not), in slang, vehicles came to be described by the cylinder count thus (most frequently “4-banger”, “6-banger” or “8-banger”).  However, a car could also be a “big banger” (one with a large displacement ICE, usually a V8 with the appellation coming from the “big-block” era of the post-war years when Detroit mass-produced engines with pistons the size of paint cans) or an “old banger” (one old, worn out or battered”.  Old banger was synonymous with “clunker”, “beater”, “hooptie”, “jalopy”, “wreck”, “crock”, “shitbox”, “rustbucket” etc and the dubbing came either from the appearance (“banged up” in the sense of being dented or damaged) or the “banging” noise (backfiring, a damaged exhaust system etc) the dilapidated machines emanated.

Of sausages and such

Bangers & Mash by the Daring Gourmet.  Not everyone garnishes their B&M with chopped parsley.

Unrelated to ICEs, a banger could be (1) one who bangs (in any sense (sex, violence etc), (2) the penis (3) a sausage (the use reputedly based originally not on any resemblance to a penis but, dating from the time when they were produced by encasing the contents in the intestine casings of slaughtered animals (often sheep), the combination of excess water in the mix and the impervious skin making them susceptible to exploding if not punctured prior to being cooked), (4) the breasts of a female (and thus usually in the plural) and (5) in popular music a highly rated song (some of which would be enjoyed by (6) headbangers (that subset of music fans who “dance” by violently shaking their heads in time to the music)).

Rolling Stone magazine No.169, September 12, 1974.  Rolling Stone and Playboy magazine in the 1960s & 1970s attracted a large audience of the market segments attractive to advertisers and alongside the content with which both most were associated, they attracted respectable authors to write about politics and interview subjects such as celebrity philosophers and Nazi war criminals.

As well as being a noun plural “Bangs” is also a proper noun as a surname, the most noted being Lester Bangs (1948–1982) who in the late 1960s began to write reviews of popular music, prompted by an advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine inviting reader submissions.  He wouldn’t have thought what he criticized was “pop” and Rolling Stone magazine (first published in 1967) was one of a number of titles that created an ecosystem in which classifications proliferated with clear “hierarchies of respectability” evolving among those who regarded “pop” as a serious musical form and Bangs definitely was one of them; before the mid-1960s, popular music usually wasn’t written about with the tone of reverence afforded to jazz, opera, the avant-garde and such.  Bangs died a drug-related death although not the traditionally “messy” one associated with the field he critiqued.  Having contracted influenza, he was self-medicating with an opioid analgesic and a benzodiazepine; his overdose was ruled “accidental”.

Of hair

In hairdressing, the noun “bangs” is used to describe a number of variants of the fringe (or sections of hair) cut straight across the forehead, the derived verb used as “to bang the hair”.  Sometimes there are “left and right” bangs but even when a style wholly is a conventional fringe the convention is to speak of “bangs”, although hairdressers, especially when constructing something asymmetric, will refer to the “left” or “right” bang.  Although there are on the internet claims the use is based on the notion of a clipped hair “bursting out” (ie “explosively” in a figurative sense and thus based on “bang” in the sense of something sudden), verified evidence confirms “bangs” joined the rich jargon of hairdressing late in the nineteenth century as a clipping (get it?) of “bang-tail”, a term then used for decades in used in equestrian circles to described a horse’s tail being allowed to grow long and then cut (docked) straight across (the painless cut called a “bang-off”).  Apparently with origins in Scotland before spreading south and across the Atlantic, it joined “gee-up” as a phrase with equine roots enjoying a re-purposing for wider use.  The OED cites the first use of “bang” for the cutting of human hair to 1878 and within half-a-decade US newspapers and periodicals had adopted the plural form “bangs” when referring to a straight-across cut of hair on the forehead.  It was in the late 1880s the imaginative use “lunatic fringe” was coined (a century later to become a popular name for hairdressing salons) and “fringe” remained the dominate use in the UK and much of the Commonwealth while the US opted for the punchier “bangs”.  As a tool of US linguistic imperialism, the internet in the twenty-first century did its job and throughout the English-speaking world, bangs now peacefully co-exists with fringe with youth tending to the former.

Takes on Cleopatra with bangs long & short.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) in Cleopatra (1963, left) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) in Liz & Dick (2012).  Based on period sculptures, it seems likely the queen had curly hair but because of the prevalence of their appearance on women in surviving art from Ancient Egypt, bangs became entrenched in the public’s imagination of Cleopatra and film directors accordingly complied.  While it's true that the look (on men and women) does appear on much surviving imagery from Ancient Egypt it must be remembered that then, as now, public art was not necessarily representative of the appearance of the wider population although it probably did align with that of the elites.  Also, the as the archaeological records make clear, the consistency of style (straight-cut bangs (ie a horizontal fringe) across the forehead with hair apparently perfect (often shoulder-length and symmetrical) which appears dense, geometric, and highly regular was achieved with the use of wigs of human hair, wool, or plant fibres.  Carefully constructed and styled into clearly repeatable forms, the blunt bangs, at least among certain parts of society, must have been an enduring fashion statement.

The “bang” technique with origins in equine grooming is used with ponytails and is called the “straight blunt cut”; for this purpose the only substantive difference between a “pony's tail” and a “ponytail” is scale.

While, whether of human fringes or horses' tails, “bangs” might be a nineteenth century coining, the hair style is as ancient as humanity, the prehistoric origins doubtlessly a simple expedient to keep the hair from dangling in the eyes, the trim presumably a tiresome task in the era before scissors.  From that humble beginning evolved eventually the array of styles now available, at least some of which allegedly have been a political statements of group solidarity.  A fine “brief history of bangs” is maintained by Odele Beauty (their “Rinse Blog” an indispensable source of technical information) and there it’s claimed Cleopatra’s (Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ (“Cleopatra father-loving goddess” in the Koine Greek); circa 69 BC–circa 10 BC, Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51-30 BC and the last active Hellenistic pharaoh) “famous fringe is apparently a myth” although on the basis of surviving art, it seems likely Ancient Egyptians “wore blunt-cut bang wigs as early as 3000 BC” and whether or not they were the “influencers”, the look spread north to the Greece and Rome of Antiquity, Odele Beauty noting Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (known also as Octavianus (Octavian)); 63 BC-14 AD, founder of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) and first Roman emperor 27 BC-14 AD) “wore his hair combed into a short, forehead-framing fringe, setting a new trend (later dubbed the “Caesar cut”) that future emperors would follow.”  

Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc, 1901), oil on canvas by Albert Lynch (1860–1950).  The short bangs were always present in older paintings of Joan of Arc but it wasn't unusual for modern artists to be influenced by contemporary trends.  Monsieur Lynch left no notes so it's not known if he had in mind the circa 1901 style what of what later would come to be known as a “bloshie young woman”.  Joan of Arc (circa 1412–1431) sometimes was depicted bangs blunt and not but artists had her variously blonde or brunette and with hair wild or coiffed and their images may reflect what male artists thought such a woman should look like.

Surviving European art from the Medieval to Modernity confirms bangs seem never to have gone away and the emergence of the word late in the 1800s suggests they must then have been a quite a thing.  By then, bangs had survived seventeenth century disapprobation of the church, priests finding fashion trends symbols of ungodly vanity and inappropriate for modest, pious women.  However what cemented bangs in their cultural place seems to have been the social ripples from World War I (1914-1918), the so called flappers of the “roaring twenties” taking to them as an adjunct to the other forms of fashion minimalism they adopted as earlier, restrictive conventions were shrugged-off.  Although it had earlier also enjoyed some less pleasing connotations, “flapper” in the sense of the “bright young things” of the era is thought a re-adaptation of the nineteenth century Northern English slang meaning “teen-age girl” and it referenced the hair not routinely being “put-up” in the adult manner and instead kept in plaits or braids, left to “flap about” as she moved.  The 1920s re-cycling of “flapper” retained the connection with “lively young girl” and had nothing to do with hair; bangs had been around for millennia before the flappers but they made them one of their signature looks.  Since the 1920s, trends have ebbed and flowed in the cyclical way fashion works and bangs variously have been softened, blunted, gained wispy curls (not to be confused with the dreaded “fly-away bits”), bulked up as “bumper bangs”, trimmed back to be the “baby bangs” of pixie cuts and evolved in the twin streams of the “curtain bangs” which seductively would drape over the eyes and the dramatic, “set piece installations” made famous by Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009) which for years provided hairdressers with a solid income stream as young ladies everywhere demanded the same thing.

Although it’s not uncommon to see headlines like “Bangs are back”, that’s misleading because they never went away; like hairdressers, headline writers have their own methods of operation.  It would be more accurate were the sites to headline which bangs are trending and that’s now a global thing because it matters not whether a trend is noted as happening in Seoul, Sydney, Seattle and Santiago because on the internet everything is happening at the same time and looks now wax, wane or die in global unison and while the imaginative can doubtless describe some variants, beyond than the basic, self-explanatory forms (short, straight, blunt), there are really five distinct bangs:

Air bangs (seen here in conjunction with long side bangs also favored by goths).

(1) Air bangs are characterized by being light and sparse.  First defined as an element of K-beauty (the aesthetic of South Korea which encompasses hair, clothes, cosmetics music) etc these are known also as “Korean bangs” but their alternative name (see-through bangs) better describes the look.  Despite the name, they are not ideally suited to those with thin or wispy hair and like just about every style, work best with thick locks which provide a better contrast and more scope for styling.  Professional stylists caution those at home crafting air bangs from a conventional fringe to do the process slowly because it's easy to over-estimate to much need to be cut (specialized tools are available).  One advantage of air bangs compare with a straight cut is that in using unequal-length strands, that aspect of precision is avoided but the look does work best if there's a perception of consistency in the spacing. 

Baby bangs: On Pinterest, this was described as a “statement cut” and on that the content provider didn't expand but one suggested statement might be: “admission of guilt”.  Still, the bangs do mean attention is drawn to her lovely sanpaku eyes so there's that.

(2) Baby bangs are short, straight or blunt-edged bangs which are used usually in coordination with the shorter flavours of bob, the reason for that being that if paired with more voluminous cuts, the bangs tend to “get lost” or worse, look like mistakes.  Micro bangs are also “bangs writ small” but differ in that the look is used with styles other than bobs and is identified by being ; not usually considered conventionally attractive, it appears more on catwalks and in photo-shoots than on the street although some do (unwisely) pick up the look.  Baby bangs really suit only a tiny sub-set of the population (most of whom are aged under 15) and should be thought the Pontiac Aztec (2001-2005) of hair-styles in that they're functional, offer good visibility and undeniably are distinctive but are ugly.  All that can be said for both is that on the inside, looking out, one doesn't have to see them. 

Lindsay Lohan with curtain bangs, done in the “twin-hemispheric” or “double polyspheric mode”.

(3) Curtain bangs are long bangs, parted in the centre (although there have been asymmetric interpretations) and designed to resemble a two-drape curtain tied at the side, partially to reveal the face.  The leading edges of the most artfully styled sit just at the point where the eye color is visible and devoted fashionistas wear them with a “curtain reveal top” in which the curve of the garment matches that of the bangs, something which can be as hard to achieve as it sounds.  With a change of as little as a half inch (12.5 mm), stylists can use curtain bangs to change the perception of the shape of a face, the most popular visual trick being elongation, making a “round” face appear something more sought (heart, diamond or inverted triangle).  Combined with skilfully applied makeup, the transformation can be dramatic. 

An emo selfie with classic emo bangs.  The expression is emoesque but the vibrancy of the colors on clothes and bandana is untypical, emos tending more to goth-flavored looks with black and gray although purple seems now less of an emo thing.

(4) Emo bangs are less concerned with shape and symmetry, the important thing being the sweep of hair from the forehead fully covering at least one eye and maybe partially obscuring the other.  Amateur psychiatrists and other students of the emo (a distinct sub-set of humanity) probably have their own thoughts on whether the emo’s goal is to limit what they see of the world or to limit how much others see of them.  Emos are however pragmatic and although their have the honor of an eponymous style, they're also sometimes seen with various bangs. 

There seems little to suggest bangs are a reliable marker of TERFdom and those wishing to assert where they stand on TERFness should probably don an appropriate T-shirt.

(5) Not all agree TERF bangs should be thought a distinct class but they are short, straight, blunt-edged bangs seen usually with shorter cuts (not necessarily bobs).  The term is said to have originated on the microblogging platform Tumblr (which vies with MySpace for as the social media site to have suffered the greatest loss between its high-valuation and most recent sale) when in 2014 a user posted the suggestion such bangs seemingly were exclusive to TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists).  That obviously was impressionistic and it was never clarified whether the suggestion was intended humorously but if not, it’s an example of a gaboso (pronounced gah-boh-so).  A gaboso (Generalized Association Based On Single Observation) (also as the verb gabosoed) is the act of taking one identifiable feature of someone or something and using it as the definitional reference for a group; it ties in with logical fallacies.  While it’s doubtful many professional hairdressers have TERF bangs in the lexicon, it seems novel enough to warrant a mention.

Mile

Mile (pronounced mahyl)

(1) A unit of a unit of distance on land, derived from the 1593 English statute mile (equal to 8 furlongs) and still in use in some English-speaking countries.  In 1959, in a treaty established by a number of Anglophone nations (and subsequently ratified by most), it was defined as distance equal to 5,280 feet (1,760 yards; 1.609.344 metres).

(2) Any of many customary units of length derived from the Roman mile (mille passus) of 8 stades (5,000 Roman feet).

(3) Any of a variety of other units of distance or length, used at different times in different countries.

(4) In athletics and horse racing (as “the mile”), a race run over that distance.

(5) In idiomatic use (in both the singular and plural), a notable distance or margin.

(6) As “air miles”, a unit in an airline’s frequent flyer program.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English myle & mile, from the Old English mīl, from the Proto-West Germanic mīliju, from the Latin mīlia & mīllia (plural of mīle & mīlle (mile)) which translates literally as “thousand” but was a commonly used short-form of mīlle passus (a thousand paces), thus the derived mīlia passuum (thousands of steps), duo milia passuum (two thousand paces (ie “two miles’) etc).  The origin of the Latin word is unknown and was the source also of the French mille, the Italian miglio and the Spanish milla whereas the Scandinavian forms (the Old Norse mila etc) came from English.  The West Germanic word was the source also of the Middle Dutch mile, the Dutch mijl, the Old High German mila and the German Meile.  The spelling of the German forms came about because the Latin milia (a neuter plural) was mistakenly thought a feminine singular.  Mile & mileage are nouns and miles is an adverb; the noun plural is miles.

Fuel economy for the 2017 Dodge Viper GTC, estimated according the the method mandated by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).  The 14 mpg (miles per gallon) was calculated using a weighted formula on the basis of 12 city; 19 highway and isn't as thirsty as it may sound because a US gallon (3.785412 litres) is smaller than an imperial gallon (4.546092 litres).  The inclusion of a “gallons per 100 miles” number is unique to the US.  How many Viper owners achieved this level of economy isn't known and if one is at the controls of an 8.4 litre (513 cubic inch) V10 generating 645 horsepower (HP), the temptation exists to drive in a manner Greta Thunberg (b 2003 and not a Viper owner) would condemn; the Viper GTC was fitted with a speedometer graduated to 220 mph (355 km/h).  With the governor disabled (a simple and popular task), the top speed of a 2017 Viper GTC was 196 mph (315 km/h) but for use in competition (or on the street by the lunatic fringe), modified versions could be made to exceed 220 mph ("wind the needle off the dial" in the accepted slang).  In the matter of fuel economy, at all times it's a matter of YMMV (your mileage many vary) but once a Viper was travelling much beyond 100 mph, the EPA's 14 mpg average was a distant memory.  

YMMV: 2014 SRT Viper TA 1.0 in TA Orange over TA Black leather and cloth.

The noun mileage (which appeared also as milage and although the “mute e” rule would suggest this was correct it never caught on) was in use by at least 1754 in the sense of “allowance or compensation for travel or conveyance reckoned by the mile” and that was so politicians in the North American colonies could calculate how much they could claim for travel undertaken in the course of their word.  To this day, “travel allowances” remain the “entitlements” most valued by politicians looking to “rort the system”.  From the mid 1830s, the idea of mileage as “a fixed rate per mile” came into use in railroad system charging.  The meaning “a total number of miles” (of a way made, used, or traversed) was from the 1860s while the figurative use (usefulness, derived benefit) emerged at much the same time.  The long familiar mpg (miles per gallon) was a measure of fuel economy (miles driven per gallon of fuel consumed) and came into use between 1910-1912.  When the metric system was introduced to jurisdictions previously using imperial measurement, instead of replacing mpg with kpl (kilometres per litre), the measure used was L/100 km (litres per 100 km).  According to engineers, L/100 km was preferable because it emphasised consumption and thus aligned with other measures expressed to consumers (such as electricity or emissions), the argument being the psychology of “the lower the number the better” would be standardized.  So, whereas the higher the MPG the lower was the fuel consumption whereas with L/100, greater efficiency was implied by a lower number.  In a practical sense, because Continental Europe adopted L/100 km long before widespread metrication in English-speaking countries, a convention had been established so it would not have been logical to create another expression; thus except in the US & UK, consumption follows the industry’s preferred “input per output” method.

The phrase “she's got a few miles on the clock” referred either to (1) a machine which was old or had been much used or (2) a woman either (2a) older than she represented herself to be or (2b) with a past including many sexual partners.  The “few” in this phrase is used ironically whereas if a dealer in second-hard hand cars claims a vehicle “has done only a few miles”, the clear implication is “low mileage” and the “few” must be read literally.  A car’s mileage is recorded on its odometer which historically was a mechanical device unscrupulous second-hand car salesmen (an often tautological text-string) were notorious for “tampering with” so a vehicle could be represented as “less used” and thus sold for a higher price.  Odometers are now electronic so while the tampering methods have changed, the motivations have not.  A classic example of the legal principles involved in such matters is Dick Bentley Productions Ltd v Harold Smith (Motors) Ltd [1965] EWCA Civ 2, an English contract law case concerning the purchase by the Australian-born comedian Charles Walter "Dick" Bentley (1907–1995) of a used Bentley motor car.

1939 Bentley 4¼-Litre Sedanca Coupé in the style of French coachbuilder Henri Chapron (1886-1978).

This is not the car involved in the Dick Bentley v Harold Smith case which was a 1939 Bentley 4¼-Litre DHC (Drophead Coupé) by Park Ward which had anyway been re-bodied by the time of the sale which became a matter of dispute.  At any time a 1939 Bentley DHC would have been a genuine rarity.  The pre-war production records which remain extant are fragmentary and don't detail the builds down to body-type by year but marque specialists believe Park Ward in 1939 may have built as few as four DHCs (the then usual English term for as Cabriolet) and it's known two survive. 

Dick Bentley Productions had informed Harold Smith (Motors) Ltd (a dealer in “prestige” used cars) the company wished to buy a “well vetted” Bentley and the dealer offered one they represented as “having done only 20,000 miles [32,000 km]” since a replacement engine had been fitted.  However, after purchase, it was discovered the Bentley had “done some 100,000 miles [160,000 km]” since the engine and gearbox had been replaced.  Dick Bentley sued Harold Smith for a breach of warranty and succeeded on the basis of the difference between “a representation” and “an essential term of a contract”.  Because the dealer was trading on the basis of possessing expertise in the matter of such cars, representations made by the dealer about critical matters (such as mileage) constitute “a warranty” and a bona fide consumer purchasing the product for fair value is entitled to rely on the word of such a dealer.  Dick Bentley succeeded at first instance and the case went on appeal where the dealer was found to be liable because (1) given they were in the business of trading in such vehicles and represented themselves as “experts”, either (1) they knew the mileage claim was false, (2) should have determined the claim was false or (3) were anyway in a better position than the consumer to make that determination.  The dealer thus either possessed or should have possessed “superior knowledge” compared to any non-expert consumer.  What this means is a dealer would likely always be held to have offered “a warranty” if making such a claim but the proverbial “little old lady” knowing nothing of engines and gearboxes making the same claim on the basis of what she’d been told would not be held to the same standard.  Her statement would, prima facie, be “an innocent misrepresentation”.

The terms milepost and milestone were from the mid eighteenth century and described respectively (1) a post permanently set in the ground next to a roadway to mark the distance to or from a locality and (2) a stone permanently set in the ground and engraved for the same purpose.  The now obsolete adjective milliary (of or relating to a mile, or to distance by miles; denoting a mile or miles) dates from the 1640s and was from the Latin milliarius, from mille.  The blended noun kilomile (on the model of kilometre) was a unit of length equal to 1,000 miles and seems to have existed because it could be done; it has no known use.  In physics, the light-mile is the time taken for light to travel one mile (approximately five microseconds).  The light mile has never been part of the standard set of measures in physics and probably it also was calculated by someone because it could be done; it is of no known practical use although it may have some utility in comparative tables.

Gatefold cover of Miles of Aisles.

Miles of Aisles was the first live concert album released by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (b 1943).  Released in 1974 on the Asylum label, it was a double album in the usual gatefold sleeve, the recordings from a number of concerts which were part of her tour promoting the recently released Court and Spark (1974) album.  The performances on Miles of Aisles came variously from three venues in Los Angeles: the Universal Amphitheatre, the Los Angeles Music Center and the Berkeley Community Theater.  The album’s cover art was a photograph of the Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan.  While Miles of Aisles was a thoughtful title for a live concert album, the most famous Miles in music was the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926–1991); his output was prolific but his albums Kind of Blue (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960) were his finest and two seminal moments in the evolution of jazz.

The “Chinese mile” was the li, a traditional Chinese unit of distance equal to 1500 Chinese feet or 150 zhangs; sensibly, under the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the li was standardized as a half-kilometre (500 metres).  The “Scandinavian mile” began in 1649 as the “Swedish mile” and was set at a distance of 10,688.54 metres before in 1889 being defined as 10 kilometres.  The “Irish mile” was equal to 2240 yards (2048.256 metres; 1.272727 miles).  The “Italian Mile” (sometimes left untranslated as miglio (miglia the plural)) was a calque of the Italian miglio (mile), with the qualifier appended to distinguish it from other miles.  Although the best remembered from the peninsular (assisted by an appearance in the diaries of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)), the miglio was one of many such regionalisms including the Genovese and Roman miles.  Italy’s shift from traditional “Italian miles” to the metric system happened gradually and unevenly over the nineteenth century, the process beginning in the period 1806-1814 as a consequence of the Kingdom of Italy being a client state of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815)).  That however proved abortive because after Napoleon’s fall in 1814, many Italian states reverted to their traditional local units (miles, braccia, libbre etc) and not until after Italian unification in 1861 was the metric system officially adopted throughout the kingdom, becoming the legally mandated system of weights and measures.  In a act of administrative efficiency which might astonish observers of the modern Italian state, a definitive law of enforcement was passed in 1862 and, by the 1870s, successfully metrics had become the standard for administration, trade, and education.

However, this was Italy and among parts of the population, the “Italian mile” remained in informal use well into the twentieth century and although the miglio generally was around 1.85 km (1.15 miles), there were many regional variants including (1) the Florentine (Tuscany) Miglio Fiorentino (1.74 km (1.08 miles)) used in Galileo’s era, (2) the Venetian Miglio Veneto (almost identical to the Florentine, (3) the Roman Miglio Romano (1.48 km (.92 miles) which was essentially the old “Roman mile”, (4) the Neapolitan Miglio Napoletano (1.852 km (1.15 miles) which was the Mediterranean state’s contribution to the development of the nautical mile and (5) the Milanese Miglio Milanese which, at 1.85 km (1.495 miles) was close to the English nautical mile.  What also remained was the nostalgic, romantic attraction of the old words and although in 1927 when the Mille Miglia (Thousand Miles) road race was established, Italy had for decades fully “been metric”, the name was used to evoke the idea of a long tradition of endurance.  The memorable phrase “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” is the opening line in the novel The Go-Between (1953) by the English writer L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) and to illustrate his point there is the old Mille Miglia, still in living memory.

The Mille Miglia was a round trip from Rome to Brescia and back and by the mid 1950s the cars had become very fast (speeds of 180 mph (290 km/h) were recorded and the 1955 race was won by a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S) with an average speed close to 100 mph (160 km/h)).  At the time, that was dangerous enough even on a purpose-built circuit but the Mille Miglia was an event run on public roads which, while closed for the occasion, were poorly supervised and crowd control was in many places non-existent, people forming along the roadside to ensure the best view, literally inches from cars travelling at high speed.  Over thirty years, the race had claimed the lives of 30 souls but the eleven in 1957 would be the last because within days, the Italian government banned all motor racing on Italian public roads although since 1977 an event of the same name over much the same course has been run for historic vehicles which competed in the event in period (or were accepted and registered).  Now very much a social occasion for the rich, it's not a high-speed event.  The original event had been one of the classic events on the calendar in an era in which top-line drivers counted on attending a couple of funerals a year (possibly their own) and it’s the 1955 race to which a particular aura still lingers.

300 SLR (Moss & Jenkinson), Mille Migla, 1955.

Won by Stirling Moss (1929-2020) and Denis Jenkinson (1920-1996), their Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR technically complied with the sports car regulations but it was really the factory's formula one machine (W196R) with a bigger engine and a streamlined body with seats for two.  It wasn't exactly a "grand prix car with headlights" as some claimed but wasn't that far off; officially the W196S (Sports) in the factory register, for marketing purposes it was dubbed (and badged) as the 300 SLR to add lustre to the 300SL Gullwing coupé then on sale.  The race was completed in 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, a average speed of 157.650 km/h (97.96 mph) (the course was never exactly 1000 miles and that year was 1,597 km (992 miles) and at times, the 300 SLR touched almost 180 mph which enabled Moss to cover the last 340 km (211 miles) at an average speed of 265.7 km/h (165.1) mph.  The record set in 1955 will stand for all time because such a race will never happen again, the Italy which then existed now truly a “foreign country” in which things were done differently

Falstaff (Campanadas a medianoche (Chimes at Midnight, 1966) in the original Spanish) was a film written and directed by Orson Welles (1915–1985) who starred as the eponymous character.  Falstaff is a classic “miles gloriosus” and Welles considered him Shakespeare's finest creation; scholars will debate that but of all of the all, there was probably no role more suited to Welles the larger.

In literary use, the term “miles gloriosus” originated in a comedy by Plaurus (254-184 BC).  The miles gloriosus was a braggart soldier who, although a coward on the battlefield, boasts of heroic deeds in combat; he was the prototype of a stock character comic drama, the one whose true character is either notorious or discovered and is thus in the cast to be made a fool of by other players.  In English drama he first appeared eponymously in the five act play Ralph Roister Doister (circa 1552 although not published until 1567) by the English cleric & schoolmaster Nicholas Udall (1504-1556).  The play was something of a landmark in literature because it was one of the first works written in English which could be classed as a “comedy” in the accepted meaning of the word.  As a text it was of interest to the proto-structuralists because it blended the conventions of Greek & Roman comedies with the traditions of the English mediaeval theatre but the great innovation was the appearance of recognizably “middle class” characters as protagonists rather than the “supporting cast role” of doctors & lawyers who had played “second fiddle” to the mostly royal or aristocratic players.  That the “growth market” in theatre audiences came from this newly burgeoning class may at least in part accounted for the literary novelty and its development clearly is identifiable in some of the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616).  Bobadill in Ben Jonson's (circa 1572-1637) Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Captain Brazen in George Farquhar's (1677-1707) The Recruiting Officer (1706) were exemplars of the playwrights’ depictions of a braggart but just in case people didn’t get it, in his epic-length fantastical allegory The Faerie Queene (1590), the English poet Edmund Spenser (circa 1552-1599) called his creation Braggadochio.  The epitome of the breed was Shakespeare's Falstaff.  Sir John Falstaff was useful to Shakespeare who had him appear in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), Henry IV, Part 2 (circa 1598) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602).  He was also granted a posthumous reference in Henry V (circa 1599), in which it's reported he has died off-stage.

The “last mile” is a concept in urban planning, transport logistics and telecommunications.  In urban planning, it refers to the final leg of an individual’s journey (traditionally Monday-Friday) from their residence to their place of word in a city’s CBD (central business district).  In modern cities, it’s a matter of great significance because while it is possible for a great number of people to park their cars at train stations or other transport interchanges a mile or more from the CBD, it would be impossible to accommodate all these vehicles in the CBD.  In transport logistics, it describes the final stage of delivery of goods, etc, from a distribution centre to the consumer, often involving greater effort or expense.  In telecommunications, it’s a conceptual term assigned to those components of the infrastructure carrying communication signals from the main system to the end user's business or home, often involving greater expense to install and maintain, and lower transmission speeds.  The terms “final mile”, “last kilometre” etc are synonymous.  The companion term “first mile” is from transport logistics and refers to the initial stage of delivery of goods etc, from the seller or producer to a distribution centre, often involving greater effort or expense.  A “middle mile” is a piece of jargon from the IT industry and refers to the segment of a telecommunications network linking an operator's core network to the local network plant.  Real nerds like to explain it as something like the “middleware layer” between software and hardware but the analogy is weak.

A “nautical mile” is a unit of length corresponding approximately to one minute of arc of latitude along any meridian.  By international agreement it is exactly 1,852 metres (approximately 6,076 feet or 1.151 of a statute mile; the abbreviations variously used are NM, M, nmi & nm (the latter conflicting with nanometre symbol although confusion is unlikely).  The term “sea mile” is now rarely used but in its odd appearance it’s either (1) a synonym for “nautical mile” or (2) (usually as “sea miles”) a reference to the age of a ship or experience of a sailor.  The original “sea mile” was a now obsolete Scandinavian unit of distance (about 4 nautical miles), a calque of the Danish sømil, the Norwegian Bokmål sjømil and the Swedish sjömil, the construct being the Danish sø (sea, nautical, maritime) + mil (the Danish mile or league).  The geographical mile (a unit of length corresponding to exactly one minute of arc (1/60 of a degree) along the Earth's equator (about 1855.4 meters, 2029.1 yards, or roughly 8/7 international miles) was also used as (an inexact) synonym of “nautical mile”.

Eight Miles High, the Byrds (CBS EP (Extended Play).

Many critics list Eight Miles High (1966) by The Byrds as the first true psychedelic rock song and the band's claim it had nothing to do with drug use was about as creditable as the Beatles asserting their song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (1967) was not a thinly veiled reference to LSD (the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as “acid”).  The lyrics from Eight Miles High genuinely were inspired by the band's flight to London in 1965 but “eight” was chosen because it best suited the music, even though commercial airliners didn't fly at quite that altitude.  At the time, the typical flight paths for the New York-London route involved a ceiling somewhat lower: Boeing 707, 33,000-37,000 feet (6.25-7.00 miles); Douglas DC-8, 32,000-39,000 feet (6.06-7.39 miles); Vickers VC10, 33,000-40,000 feet (6.25-7.58 miles).  In the context of artistic licence, eight was “close enough for rock 'n' roll”.  The song by the Byrds was not an allusion to the “mile-high club”, an institution one (informally) becomes a member of by having sex while aboard an aircraft in flight.  Although now most associated with those who contrive to do the act(s) on a commercial flight, “membership” has been claimed by those who managed the feat in both private and military aviation and the first known reference to the concept dates from 1785, early in the age of the hot-air balloon although the threshold then was set to a more modest 1,000 feet (0.1893939 of a mile).

The “international mile” is the same as the “land mile” & “modern mile” (ie the internationally agreed definition of 1.609344 kilometres) and the rarely used terms were coined simply to remove ambiguity in legal or other documents because over the centuries “mile” had in different places described distances greatly differing in length.  The mysterious “US survey mile” (1609.347 metres) is slightly longer than the now almost universal “international mile” and that’s a product of it being 5,280 US “survey feet” (0.30480061 metres) in length, the latter also slightly longer than the familiar 12 inch (304.8 mm) “international foot”).  To make things really murky, in the US, in formal use, a “statute mile” refers to a “survey mile” despite the lengths being slightly different.  Because the variation is less than ⅛ inch (3.2 mm), for most purposes this is something of no significance but over very long distances, it can matter if things like boundaries or target vectors are being documented, thus the need for precision in certain aspects of mapping.  Being a federal system with a long tradition of “states rights”, even when in 1983 the revised North American Datum (NAD83) was compiled and published by the NGS (National Geodetic Survey, a part of the NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration under the Department of Commerce)), the states retained the right to determine which (if any) definitions of distance they would use.  So, despite all State Plane Coordinate Systems being expressed in metric measurements, eight of the 50 states opted out of the metre-based system, seven using “US survey feet” and one “international feet”.

A “sporting” pursuit which merges the traditions of athletic track & field competition with the drunken antics of university students, the “Beer Mile” is conducted usually on a standard 400 m (¼ mile) track as a 1 mile (1.6 km) contest of both running & drinking speed.  Each of the four laps begins with the competitor drinking one can (12 fl oz (US) (355 ml)) of beer, followed by a full lap, the process repeated three times.  The rules have been defined by the governing body which also publishes the results, including the aggregates of miles covered and beers drunk.  Now a sporting institution, it has encouraged imitators and there are a number of variations, each with its own rules.  The holder of this most prestigious world record is Canadian Corey Bellemore (b 1994), a five-time champion, who, at the Beer Mile World Classic in Portugal in July 2025, broke his own world record, re-setting setting the mark to 4:27.1.  That may be compared with the absolute world record for the mile, held by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj (b 1974) who in 1999 ran the distance in 3:43.13, his additional pace made possible by not being delayed by having to down four beers.

The respectable face of the University of Otago's Medical School, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Some variations of the beer mile simply increase the volume or strength of the beer consumed but in Australia & New Zealand, some were dubbed “Chunder Mile” (chunder being circa 1950s antipodean slang for vomiting and of disputed origin) on the not unreasonable basis that vomiting becomes increasingly more likely and frequent the more alcohol is consumed.  For some however, even this wasn’t sufficiently debauched and there were events which demanded a (cold) meat pie be enjoyed with a jug of (un-chilled) beer (a jug typically 1140 ml (38.5 fl oz (US)) at the start of each of the four laps.  Predictably, these events were most associated with orientation weeks at universities, a number still conducted as late as the 1970s and the best documented seems to have been those at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.  Even by the standards of a country producing abundant supplies of strong beer and weed, the students at Otago were notorious for retreating from civilized ways although, it was at the time the site of the country’s medical school, thereby providing students with practical experience of both symptoms and treatments for the inevitable consequences.  Whether the event was invented in Dunedin isn’t known but, given the nature of males aged 17-25 probably hasn’t much changed over the millennia, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn similar competitions, localized to suit culinary tastes, have been contested by the drunken youth of many places in centuries past.  As it was, even in Dunedin, times were changing and in 1972, the Chunder Mile was banned “…because of the dangers of asphyxiation and ruptured esophaguses.”  Undetred, the students found other amusements.

In idiomatic use, to say “a mile wide and an inch deep” suggests someone or something covering a wide array of topics but on only a very shallow level (thus analogous with “jack of all trades and master of none”.  Despite the negative connotations, the “mile wide, inch deep” model can in many fields be useful.  In informal use, a “neg mile” is a unit of “saved travel” (ie an expression of a distance not having to be travelled).  A “mile-a-minute” means literally “60 mph” but was an expression used generally to mean “fast”, dating on a time where such a pace really was fast and although the World’s LSR (land speed record) was in 1899 set at 65.79 mph (105.88 km/h) and cars capable of the speed were in volume production by the 1920s, until the development of freeway systems (which, at scale, really began only in the 1950s), a sustained 60 mph wasn’t an everyday reality for most.  Indeed, in 1957 the admittedly hardly state-of-the-art British railway system was described as offering “mile-a-minute” journeys and then, in most cases, point-to-point, it would have been the quickest method.

Lindsay Lohan and Herbie: promotional poster for Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).  In the film, Herbie went faster than a “mile-a-minute”.

Although Herr Professor Ferdinand Porsche (1875–1951) wouldn’t have used the expression “mile-a-minute” when explaining to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) the dynamics of his KdF-Wagen, one of his claims was its ability to cruise “all day at 100 km/h” (ie a mile-a-minute) and that was true, the car unusual in being able to cruise at what was about its maximum speed.  That wouldn’t much have mattered were it not for the existence of the vast network of Autobahns Hitler was having constructed for a variety of reasons (job creation, military logistics, propaganda etc) but all those long roads and the KdF-Wagen were a perfect match.  The KdF-wagen (Kdf car) was notionally the product of the Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude (KdF, “Strength Through Joy”), the state-controlled organization which was under the auspices of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front) which replaced the independent labor unions.  The car was soon renamed the Volkswagen Type 1 (people’s car) and it became better known in the post-war years as the “Beetle”, 21,529,464 of which left assembly lines between 1938-2003.  In the spirit of the KdF, in 1938 a scheme was announced whereby Germans could buy a Type 1 for 990 RM (Reichsmark) on the basis of depositing 5 RM per week.  The 990 RM was a number unrelated to economic reality and just an example of the regime’s propaganda but as things turned out, during the Third Reich (1933-1945) not one Type 1 was delivered to a civilian customer with the factory’s entire output allocated to the military or the Nazi Party.  It wasn’t until the early 1960s there were settlements in the last of the cases brought by those Germans who dutifully had for years continued to make their 5 RM deposits.

Since the 1580s the word had been used generically to mean “a great distance” and it’s used also as an intensifier, sometimes rather loosely and an expression like “the new beer tastes miles better than the old” is along the lines of a well understood phrase like “heaps of water”.  Although in idiomatic use, “mile” tends to imply something large, if an actual distance is being referenced, context matters because something said to have “missed by a mile” might literally have “missed by an inch”.  Related to that is the expression “a miss is a good as a mile” which means if one misses the target, often it matters not whether one missed by a fraction of an inch or a thousand miles..  If it’s said “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” that means if someone is granted some slight right or concession, they will exploit that to take more.  In Middle English the word also was a unit of time, reckoned usually to mean “about 20 minutes”, reflecting how long it would take the typical, fit male to walk the distance.  The term "country mile" is an allusion to those those living in rural areas being allegedly prone to understating distances: when an inhabitant of somewhere remote referred to a place being "a few miles away", that could mean it was close by their standards of travel but it may well be twenty or more miles distant.  Phrases like "a couple of miles" or "a mile or two" were more encouraging but unlikely to suggest the "two miles" use in a city would imply.  Thus, "missed by a country mile" suggests being even more off target than "missed by a mile.   

A Chrysler Hemi-powered front-engined rail on California's Carlsbad Raceway's quarter-mile drag strip, 1964.  Operating between 1964-2004, the track was located six miles (10 km) inland from the Pacific Ocean in Carlsbad, on Palomar Airport Road at what is now Melrose Avenue.

The “quarter-mile” is literally one quarter of a statute mile (440 yards; 1,320 feet; 402.336 metres).  The emergence in the post-war United States of the sport of drag racing was a product of (1) dotted around the country there were a large number of tarmac airstrips which had become surplus with the end of World War II (1939-1945), (2) a large number of young men returned from service in the armed forces with sufficient disposable income to race cars and (3) a stocks of cars suitable to be “hotted-up” for use in acceleration tests.  The quarter-mile became the sport’s “standard distance” because of a mixture of cultural precedent and technical determinism (of the machines and the surfaces).  In the 1930s, even before “hot rodding” became a thing in the post-war years, young men were “street racing”, competing against each either from “light-to-light” or on semi-rural roads straight enough to be (1) suitable for purpose and (2) offering enough visibility to allow competitors to escape upon sighting a police car.  Many were informally measured (“tree-to-tree” for example) but some were better organized (air-strips even then used) and the quarter-mile was ideal because in the era a typical “well-set up” car could attain speed high enough to demonstrate its power and acceleration yet still be within the limits of safety imposed by most straight sections of road.  When the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) was founded in 1951 to provide an organizational structure to street racing (and “get it off the streets” where it was becoming controversial), there was no debate about the default distance: a ¼ mile it was because that’s what just about everybody had been doing.

AC Shelby American Cobra 289 CSX2357 with parachute deployed at the end of test ¼ mile (400 m) run.  In drag racing circles, this is called “dumping the laundry”.

The object in drag racing was, from a standing start, to beat one’s competitor (classically drag races were conducted on two parallel lanes) by reaching the end of the quarter mile is less time and the winner was the one with the lowest ET (elapsed time); it didn’t matter if one’s opponent was travelling faster when crossing the line; it was all decided by the ET.  The TS (terminal speed) was of interest and sometimes an indication gearing was too high (ie a differential ratio numerically too low) meaning initial acceleration was suffering.  The sport produced sometimes shockingly single-purpose machines which did little very well except the quarter mile sprint, the ability to turn corners something of an abstraction and while good brakes were required, the fastest cars needed to be fitted with parachutes because if relying on conventional brakes, there was often not enough space to slow down before encountering a fence, tree or other solid object; even runways were only so long.  So drag racing was a balancing act between performance and safety and as it evolved into a multi-classification sport with categories ranging from genuine, stock-standard road cars to purpose built “rails” which looked like no car which had ever before existed.  Speeds began to rise and while in the 1930s 100 mph (160 km/h) at the end of the quarter mile was rarely attained, within decades, going beyond 300 mph (480 km/h) became common so for the fastest classes in top-flight competition the distance was reduced to 1000 feet (304.8 metres, 0.19 miles) and ⅛ mile (201 metres, 660 feet) racing has also formed a niche.