Skeg

Skeg (pronounced skeg)

(1) In shipbuilding, a fin-like projection sometimes supporting a rudder and protecting the propeller(s) at its lower end, located abaft a sternpost or rudderpost.

(2) In the design of smaller boats, an extension of the keel, designed to improve steering.

(3) In the slang of naval architects (in certain contexts), a stump or branch (the after-part of a ship's keel).

(4) In the slang of the GM (General Motors) stylists, a “lower fin”, matching the, seen in embryonic form on the 1959 Pontiac and used on certain 1961 Oldsmobiles and the 1961-1962 Cadillacs.

(5) The fin which acts as a stabilizer on a surfboard.  To suffer some injury after being hit by one of these fins is to be “skegged”.

(6) In Australian slang, a surfer; a person who leads the lifestyle of a surfer (used also derisively in the form “fake skeg” of those who adopt the style an appearance without actually surfing.

(7) A type of wild plum (obsolete).

(8) A kind of oat (obsolete).

(9) In Northern English dialectal use, a look or glance.

(10) In some cultures, a slang term applied to youth suggesting slovenliness, a predilection to petty crime and other anti-social behavior; also used widely in Scottish slang for a surprising variety of purposes including legs, trousers, dirt, scotch eggs, sex and women of loose virtue.

1590–1600: From a dialectal term for a stump, branch, or wooden peg, from the Dutch scheg (cutwater), of Scandinavian origin and related to the Swedish skog and the Old Norse & Icelandic skegg (projection on the stern of a boat).  In some Nordic languages, skegg means “beard” and was from the Old Norse skegg, from the Proto-Germanic skaggiją, from the primitive Indo-European skek, kek-, skeg & keg- (to jump, skip, move, hurry).  In English slang, skeggy is (1) the coastal Lincolnshire town of Skegness or (2) an inhabitant of Skegness.  The name of the Skegness is though a construct of the Old Norse skegg (beard) + -nes (headland) and was thought a reference to the geography, the original settlement situated farther east at the mouth of The Wash (thus jutting out like a beard from a face).  A link with the Faroese skegg (to jump, skip, move, hurry (and source of the given name "Skeggi")) is thought unlikely.  Skeg is a noun and skegged is an adjective; the noun plural is skegs.

A gang of four Sceggs, Sydney, Australia.

The skegs of nautical architecture should not be confused with the homophone Sceggs, the acronym for students of Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School (S.C.E.G.G.S.), seen also in the adjectival forms sceggesque & sceggish (one whose style suggests something similar to the stereotypical student of the school); Those adjectives exist because Scegg is also "a look" and there are students from schools other than S.C.E.G.G.S so described, often in the form "she's such a scegg".  

Lindsay Lohan in wet suit, with surfboard, Malibu, 2011.  The stabilizing skeg is the black protrusion at the back of the board.

On nautical vessels, skegs where they exist fulfil a significant function but they are not an essential part of hull design.  A skeg is an external structural feature, a vertical tapering projection permanently fixed at the aft, usually close to the centre-line.  Most are located in front of the rudder and structurally can often be considered a sternward extension of the keel (the internal, longitudinal members which lend much strength of the hull).  Although in military vessels there are additional functions, the most significant contribution of a skeg is in hydrodynamics, a skeg designed to influence the flow patterns and thus affecting the dynamics of both the rudder (which is usually in line with the skeg) and propeller(s).  The design is thus a finely tuned equation because while a skeg inherently induces drag, the way it alters the flow pattern can reduces the drag and resistance suffered by the rudder and propeller(s), essentially by transforming the turbulent characteristics of the flow to laminar at the stern.  Historically, skegs were a vital component in maintaining a course and that’s still an important consideration in smaller vessels but in larger craft, improved rudder and advanced navigational as well as stabilization technologies like thrusters have meant skegs are no longer of the same significance in maintaining directionality.

An USN (US Navy) Iowa class battleship, showing the inner set of propeller shafts wholly enclosed in a pair of skegs.  On the big ships, the skegs were designed also to be load-bearing supports while in dry-dock.

In the modern age, skegs became an unusual feature on warships, a relative few so equipped and the designs varied, some with only par of their shafts inside skegs while others encased all.  Although the traditional design imperatives were shared with other ships, for navies, they offered the advantage of affording some degree of protection for rudders and propellers against torpedo attack.  Historically, another important attribute of skegs was what they added to a hull’s structural strength, making the (inherently weaker) stern resistant to outside forces and all the last of the US Navy’s dreadnoughts (Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri & Wisconsin, launched 1943-1944 and in commission variously until in 1992 the last was struck the Naval Vessel Register) featured skegs.  Their hulls narrowed towards the stern and to save weight lacked the sternpost plates the British, German and Japanese navies always fitted to their battleships; the skegs compensated for this, offering a hull with similar rigidity.

The US Navy’s South Dakota class battleships (South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts & Alabama, launched 1941-1942 and in commission 1942-1947) were fitted with an unusual set of skegs, the design dictated by the relatively short hull, the large outboard skegs helping to reduce the adverse effects of fluid dynamics induced by the stern's abrupt end.

However, advantages in engineering and metallurgy meant much of the functionality afforded by skegs came to be achieved in other ways so skegs became unfashionable in naval architecture.  The modeling and simulations made possible by supercomputers meant hull designs could be rendered which mastered the turbulence caused by fluid dynamics so rudders and propellers were less affected, making skegs in many cases a source of performance-sapping skin-friction drag with little compensating benefit.  Indeed, not only did this hamper performance, in some cases excessive vibration was caused, something which could only to a degree be ameliorated by changes to the propellers’ configurations.

Cadillac’s Skegs, 1961-1962

Cadillac Coupe DeVille: 1959 convertible (left) & 1960 hardtop (right).

The 1959 Cadillac’s tail-fins are the best remembered and most emblematic of the brief, extraordinary era during which the absurdly macropterous flourished.  They’re rightly known as “peak-fin” but it’s a myth they were the tallest because, measured from the ground, those on the 1961 Imperial are about a half-inch (12 mm) more vertiginous.  The attractions of the style however were fading and from 1960, GM began to tone things down, Chrysler following the lead (Ford and AMC (American Motors Corporation) never really got involved in the big fin business).  Another cultural phenomenon is that because of the large number of pink 1959 Cadillacs which now exist, many assume they were a common sight when new, the things perhaps made memorable by the sight of the one owned by the admirable Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967).  However, the factory never made a pink 1959 Cadillac and in the era, it was only in 1956 such a color was on the option list and Ms Mansfield had one of those while her 1959 convertible received a custom re-paint.

An inspiration, a step in the evolution and the result: A captured German V2 rocket (1945, left), a full-size clay mock up of a design proposal for the 1961 Cadillac (1958, centre) and 1961 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible (left).  The V2 is on display at the Australian War Museum, Canberra, Australia and the clay mock-up Cadillac was photographed at the General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan.

For the 1961 range, Cadillac further pruned the fins but as compensation, the design staff added a "lower fin" and these, informally, they called “skegs”.  While in a sense just another of the era's many extravagances, the outgrowths could have been part of something even stranger because among the design proposals which emerged from the GMADS (GM Advanced Design Studios) was one which clearly was the ultimate expression of the motif of the 1950s which borrowed so much from the aerospace industry.  The proposed fins essentially were those of ballistic missiles which for decades were an evolution from the German Vergeltungswaffen zwei (V-2), developed first by the German military with the code name Aggregat 4 (A4).  Vergeltungswaffen is translated variously as "retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons" but in English use is often written as “vengeance weapons”.  Aerodynamically, what was proposed by the ADS may have had something to commend it and certainly, such was the placement and size of the fins they'd have in some way interacted with the air-flow.  Whether the design was ever subjected to wind-tunnel testing (this was years before computers could emulate such research) isn't know but the look was sufficiently favored for an expensive, full-sized clay model to be rendered.  Ultimately the longer, though perhaps more restrained, skegs seen on the 1961 & 1962 cars were preferred.

1959 Buick Invicta Concept.

Detroit's stylists in the 1950s not only sketched a car with a big dorsal fin but authorization was granted to build one to test public reaction.  There was a precedent for the "third fin" because the Czech manufacturer Tatra had for years used them (out of necessity) and they'd provided essential stability for many LSR (land speed record) vehicles.  The Invicta concept didn't proceed to production.

Those who think Detroit's cars of the late 1950s & early 1960s were sometimes bizarre should look at the design proposals that were rejected.  Despite the clear exuberance in the the imagination, there's never been anything to suggest the stylists were stimulated by anything stronger than an after work martini.  Compared with some of the clay mock-ups, what emerged from the production lines hinted at rather than emulated missiles but should it be thought what was rendered in clay was wild, the archives of the GMTC (GM Technical Center) contain a wealth of sketches of truly bizarre design studies which didn't make the cut to reach the hands of the modelers.  Presumably, those sketches which survive are those the stylists thought deserved to be remembered and there must of been those which even the designer concluded needed to be shredded.  As the archives also demonstrate, those who criticize the fins and "bullet" taillights on the 1959 Cadillac have reasons to be grateful even stranger things were rejected.

Cadillac’s “skeg years”: 1961 (left) and 1962 (right).  There was a time when this sort of thing was just part of commercial orthodoxy. "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

It was an era of annual styling changes and switching the orientation of taillights from the horizontal to vertical was typical of what stylists each season did to “refresh” the line, a process which came to be known as “facelifting” (ie a figurative use from cosmetic plastic surgery: altering the appearance while retaining the underlying structure).  Although this basic body would have a four-year life (1961-1964), the abandonment of the skegs for its final two seasons was, by facelift standards, a quite major update, one prompted by a change at the top of GM’s design’s studios.  Also of note is the roofline on the 1961 Cadillac four-window Sedan DeVille ((Body Style 6239, top left) which used an implementation of GM’s so-called “flat-top”.

1959 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan (Flat Top).  This was the year of the "bat-wings" and "cats eyes" taillights.

Along with the contemporary “bubbletop”, in its pure form, GM’s flat-top lasted only two seasons (1959-1960) but the two are now Detroit’s most admired rooflines of the post-war years.  The “bubbletop” was a direct tribute to fighter aircraft but the flat-top (it was also dubbed “Flying Wing” but GM internally referred to the blade-like structure as the “cantilevered top configuration”) was mid-century modernism.  Available exclusively on the four-door hardtops, each GM division (Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac & Cadillac) offered the dramatic look (production-line rationalization made economically viable by all five sharing a single, core structure) although there were several designations.

1959 Cadillac Four Window Sedan (upper) and 1959 Pontiac Vista (lower).

Up-market Buick (Four-Door Hardtop), and Cadillac (Four Window Sedan) weren’t very imaginative while Chevrolet and Oldsmobile choose Sport Sedan; only Pontiac showed much imagination in picking Vista, an allusion to the unusually good 360^o visibility the style afforded (although the curves in the glass did produce some distortions).  Shamelessly, even after ceasing to offer flat-tops, Pontiac continued to use the Vista name.  Cadillac’s final flat-top fling came in 1961 with a modified version using less rear overhang but the market impact was muted, the more conventional six-window four-door outselling it by more than five-to-one margin as preferences shifted towards for formal lines.  However, the look didn’t at once die because it lingered on the four-door Chevrolet Corvair until 1965 and between 1962–1978 the motif appeared on the Alfa Romeo Giulia.

Cadillac’s take on the “long & slightly less long” of it: 1961 Cadillac Six Window Sedan de Ville (Body Style 6329L, left) and 1961 Cadillac Town Sedan (Body Style 6399C, right).  In the brochures, the terms “Town Sedan” and “Short Deck” both were used.

One quirk of Cadillac’s brief embrace of the skeg was there were two iterations: skeg long and skeg short.  Whether in response to dealer feedback or in anticipation of some owners preferring their Cadillac in a more conveniently sized package, between 1961-1963 a “short-deck” option was made available on certain body styles.  Offered first on the six-window Sedan de Ville (as the “Town Sedan”), an encouraging 3,756 were built so the option was in 1962 offered on the four-window de Ville Sedan (Body Style 6398 and now called “Park Avenue”) but sales dropped to 2600.  The coming of the 1963 models marked the retirement of the short-lived skegs which thus ended their brief moment as something decorative although they continued the functional role in marine architecture.

1963 Cadillac Four-Window Sedan de Ville (Body Style 6239, left) and 1963 Cadillac Sedan de Ville Park Avenue (Body Style 6398, right).

Although smaller cars were selling well in other market sectors, among Cadillac buyers, the decline of interest in anything smaller was confirmed in 1963 when only 1575 of the Park Avenues were sold.  The 129.5 inch (3289 mm) wheelbase was common to the whole Sedan de Ville range but the “short deck” models were shorter by 7 inches (178 mm) for the first two seasons and an even more obvious 8 inches (203 mm) in 1963.  Space utilization was obviously a little better but the market had spoken; fewer than 8,000 of the short-deck models sold while the standard editions shipped in the tens of thousands, the flirtation with (slightly) more efficient packaging abandoned for 1964; in the course of the following decade, the Sedan de Ville would grow another seven inches (178 mm) and gain over 400 lb (181 kg).  It should be noted that by international standards, the truck capacity of even the abbreviated models was still quite generous, able effortlessly to accommodate two sets of golf clubs, something which later became something of a de-facto standard used in assessing the practicality of sports cars.  Jaguar used this feature as a selling point when the XK8 (1996-2006) was introduced because it wasn’t possible with all versions of the old E-Type (1961-1974).

1958 Cadillac Series 62 : Extended Length Sedan (Body Style 6239EDX, left) and the standard Sedan (Body Style 6239, right).

There was in the early 1960s much criticism that “full-size” US cars had become too big but the “short deck” venture was a departure for Cadillac which had for some years been making things bigger and in 1958 the company had even included the “Series 62 Extended Length Sedan”.  The Series 62 Sedan was already an impressive 216.8 inches (5.5 m) long but the Extended Length version measured an even more imposing 225.3 (5.7), the additional 8.5 inches (216 mm) all in the rear deck, creating a more capacious trunk (boot).  Whether buyers just liked the look or there really were a lot of them with much luggage, the elongated sedan sold well, some one in five of the sedans having the big trunk and there was of course a healthy industry in jokes about Mafia functionaries and other figures in organized crime grateful finally to have more space to transport the corpses.  Surprisingly perhaps, despite mafia hit men contributing to to sales numbers of 20,952 of the 103,455 (excluding Eldorados and “chassis only” sales) Series 62s produced in 1958 (some 20%), the Extended Length Sedan proved a single-season one-off.

For 1963, the short-deck models might have re-appeared for another dismal season but the skegs were abandoned, never to return.  The fins the design studio found harder to forsake, conscious perhaps it was on the 1948 Cadillac they’d first appeared.  Then, modestly sized, they’d been an allusion to the tail-planes used on the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939) but the fashion had passed and the fins had to go so, inch by inch, there was a retreat from the heights and exuberance of 1959 until in 1966 they were vestigial, a hint which for decades would be retained.

1961 Oldsmobile Super 88.  The rear skegs were thought necessary to offset the “pointed-look” of the fenders and the front ones (the closest equivalent in nautical use being hydrofoils) were there just so the front bumper matched the lines of the rear, emulating Pontiac’s approach in 1959.

Within GM, the skegs were not exclusive to Cadillac, appearing also on the 1961 full-sized Oldsmobile 88 & 98 although the motivation of the designers differed.  What Cadillac in 1961-1962 did was nothing more than a styling gimmick, concocted at a time when it was obvious the moment of the big fins was passing but the motif still exerted such a pull that they were re-interpreted on the path to extinction.  In the Oldsmobile design office, the skeg had a different purpose, the protrusions deemed necessary as a device to counterbalance the rearward point of the quarter panel that terminated in a “cigar-shape”.  Mercedes-Benz had used a (more conventional) variation of the idea of a “balancing appendage” when in 1957 the 300d (W189, 1957-1962) appeared with rear fenders enlarged and re-shaped to disguise the pre-war style of the coachwork used on the W186 (300, 300b & 300c; 1951-1957) which came to be referred to as the "Adenauer" because several were used as state cars by Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967; chancellor of the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990).

1969 Alfa Romeo Spider (Duetto).

Interesting, between 1966-1969, the Alfa Romeo Spider (Type 105/155 and known informally known as the Duetto) featured the memorable Osso di Seppia (round-tail, literally “cuttlefish”) coachwork which resembled what Oldsmobile did in 1961.  After 1970 and until the end of production in 1994, the Spider used variants of the Kamm tail which increased luggage capacity and presumably also conferred some aerodynamic advantage.  A professional designer could write a long, learned essay explaining why the later Kamm tail was a more accomplished achievement which avoided the Osso di Seppia's flaws but in the collector market it's the cigar-shaped original the purists covet.  Had the Italians added skegs as Oldsmobile did, they’d have had more about which to complain.

1959 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible.  In 1959 Pontiac’s big news was the “split grill” which would for decades be a brand signature and the five inch (125 mm) increase in the track, lending the division that year’s most memorable slogan: “Year of the Wide Track”.  Given all that, the modest skegs weren’t much noticed, especially because, at the rear, eyes were drawn to the pair of small blades adorning the upper surface.  The idea was first seen on the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette (where they’d appeared on the taillight nacelles (pods)) and although often referred to as “finettes”, in the documents of the GM Design Studio they were “taillight bezels” or “ornamental finlets”.

1959 Pontiacs: Bonneville (left) and Catalina (right).

The skegs were less noticeably skeggish than the later implementations by Oldsmobile and Cadillac because they were smaller and, at the rear, installed in the horizontal rather than the acute angle which made them so obvious on Cadillacs.  At the front, the angle was less than adopted by Oldsmobile.  Pontiac also used the “long rear deck” as a marker of a model’s place in the hierarchy, the Bonneville at 220.7 in (5,606 mm) in length being seven inches longer than the lower-priced Catalina at 213.7 in (5,428 mm).  While two inches (25 mm) of the difference was absorbed by the Bonneville’s longer wheelbase (124 in (3,150 mm) vs 122 inches (3,099 mm), the remaining bulk was found in eth rear deck.  However, unlike the Cadillacs, there were no “short & long skegs”, the bumpers of both Pontiacs being identical although there were other markers of “pricetaggery”, the Bonneville’s elliptical taillights noticeably elongated.

1955 Ford La Tosca.

A half-decade before Cadillac decided their customers needed skegs, Detroit had pondered the idea.  Shown in 1955, Ford’s La Tosca (named apparently after Giacomo Puccini’s (1858–1924) three act opera Tosca (1900) although the intended connection seems to have been a general sense of the “emotional and dramatic” rather than the fate of the doomed protagonist) was unusual in that it appeared not as a full-scale “concept car” but in the form of a ⅜ scale model, used to demonstrate the possibilities offered by a remote-controlled chassis, directed through the medium of radio waves.  To achieve this, rather than build custom components (as the Pentagon would have done), Ford’s engineers dipped into the corporate parts bin and wired together the regulator and relay from a power window apparatus, the electric motor used to lower a convertible’s soft-top, a power seat mechanism and a standard, 12 volt car battery.  The system worked flawlessly and, depending on the topography, La Tosca could remotely be controlled at distances greater than a mile (1.6 km).  According to Ford records, the project began simply as an “…internal exercise to show students in the Advanced Studio how hard it was, even for professional designers, to design a car” but so long did the model take to complete (the complex curves and canted structures challenging to render in what was then the still novel fibreglass) that “mission creep” intruded, thus the radio-controlled chassis.

1954 Lincoln Futura (1954) and Ford Mystere (1955).  In Detroit, these were at the time typical of what was authorized to be built as "concept cars", machines destined for the show circuit to gauge public reaction.  If they now seem rather wild, much of what never left the stylists' (they weren't yet "designers") sketch pads and drawing boards truly was bizarre.  

Stylistically, La Tosca was in the vein of the corporation’s other concept vehicles of the era such as the Lincoln Futura (1954) and Ford Mystere (1955), the trio reflecting the way the industry was applying motifs from missiles and jet-propelled aircraft such as Perspex bubble-tops, tubes, fins and exhaust nacelles.  Most of these proved to be brief, though memorable, fads of jet-age aesthetics although elements were easily recognizable in the 1958 Lincoln and GM of course would later take up the skegs.  The remote-control concept was ahead of its time though it did find a niche in model cars and aircraft.  In the twenty-first century, new versions of the technology are now mainstream with cranes, trucks and trains routinely operated from sometimes thousands of miles away although usually on mine-sites and other remote locations (experiments with vehicles on public roads are being undertaken).  Despite these advances, the industry regards the technology as transitional and intends as soon as practicable to remove the human (and thus costly and unreliable) element completely, re-allocating control to an entirely autonomous AI (artificial intelligence) model which, without complaint or toilet breaks, can be worked 24/7/365.

Soccer

Soccer (pronounced sok-er)

(1) A form of 11-a-side football played between two teams, in which the spherical ball may be advanced by kicking or by bouncing it off any part of the body (excluding the arms and hands unless re-starting the game by throwing in the ball from the sideline), the object being to score points by putting the ball in the opponent’s goal-net. The special position of goalkeeper may, within certain positional limitations, use their arms and hands to catch, carry, throw, or stop the ball.

(2) In the slang of Australian Rules Football (AFL, the old VFL), to kick the football directly off the ground, without use of the hands.

1888: A coining in British English, a colloquial term for Association Football, the construct presumably (As)soc(iation football) +c+ -er.  The other forms were socker (1885) & socca (1889), the first known instance of "soccer" noted in 1888, the word coming into general use between 1890-1895 and it evolved from slang to a standard noun.  The special verb use (soccered & soccering) happens in Australian Rules Football and describes a player kicking the football directly off the ground, without the use of the hands.  The forms soccerer & soccerist both mean “a soccer player” but are now used only humorously.  Soccerplex (a sports complex with facilities for playing soccer but with other ancillary (other sports, training, gyms, commercial outlets etc) installations is a word unique to North America.  A Socceroo is a member of the Socceroos (the Australian national soccer team, the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roos.  Soccermania describes an intense enthusiasm for soccer which may manifest as an obsessive interest; the forms soccermananic and soccerology are both non-standard but have been used in the context of the afflicted.  Soccermania differs from soccer hooligan (or football hooligan, exemplified by the violent Italian “Ultras”) in that it doesn’t usually manifest as violent or anti-social behaviour.  Soccer is a noun & verb, soccerplex, soccermania, soccerer & soccerists are nouns, soccered & soccering are verbs and soccerlike is an adjective; the only noun plural in even occasional use is soccerplexes although plurals of the derived forms (soccer fields, soccer players, soccer balls, soccer clubs etc) are common.  

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  Usually, the –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun and if added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.  However, there was also the special case of the “slang –er”, which etymologists sometimes call the “Oxford –er” because of the association (though not the origin) of the practice with the university in the nineteenth century.  The slang –er was used as a suffix to make jocular or convenient formations from common or proper names and appears to first have been English schoolboy use in the 1860s before entering the vernacular via its introduction to Oxford University slang from Rugby School, the Oxford English Dictionary even identifying the first documented instance “at University College, in Michaelmas Term, 1875".  The first coining was probably rugger (the game of Rugby) and constructs on the same model include brekker (breakfast), fresher (freshman), leccer (lecture), footer (football), fiver (five-pound note) and tenner (ten-shilling note).  The practice continued in the twentieth century and some coinings endured in the plural such as preggers (pregnant), bonkers (behaving as if bonked on the head) and starkers (stark naked).  Given it was originally the work of schoolboys, some have expressed surprise they didn’t instead render a verbal shorthand of “Association Football” in a form using “ass” (although at Oxford briefly it was used as assoccer before quickly being truncated).

Football-type games have been documented for centuries and it seems likely something similar was probably played in prehistoric times on occasions when young people congregated but the point of Association Football was that in 1863 it codified a set of rules, allowing structured competitions to be formed.  Prior to that, clubs and schools played many variations of the game and this caused difficulties when the young men met at university, finding no general agreement on the rules.  Those at the University of Cambridge did create their own rule book but it was one of many, this proliferation leading to the formation of the association, the discussions eventually producing not only the rules of what would emerge as modern football (soccer) but also the schism which saw some schools and clubs go in another direction and play what became known first as rugby football and later simply rugby.  Later still, when it suffered its own schism and the professional code rugby league emerged, the name “rugby union” was used to distinguish the original and to this day the clipped terms “Rugby” & “Union” remain in use.

To most in the US, the word "football" means something different than in much of the world so it's not clear what Lindsay Lohan thought she was being invited to when Carolyn Radford (b 1982; Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mansfield Town Stags) extended the offer of a seat at a match.  It’s not known if Ms Lohan did manage to catch a game but the promise of her presence clearly inspired the players because the Stags, then languishing in the non-League (fifth level) division of the English football league system, in 2024 gained promotion to League One (the old third division).  

In most parts of the world, the game is known as football but in places where other forms of (closely or vaguely) similar ball sports had become popular and referred to either officially or casually as “football”, soccer was adopted as the preferred term for what was, at the elite level, a minority sport.  Thus in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Ireland the game came to be called soccer although, in New Zealand, beginning in the late twentieth century, “football” increasingly supplanted “soccer”, the assumption being that because the volume of overseas matches televised (with the native commentary) vastly exceeded that of local content, the word became accepted.  Additionally, because the rugby codes (historically rugby union and increasingly after the 1980s rugby league so dominated) and the common slang was “footy” rather than “football”, the latter in that sense never achieved the critical mass needed to entrench use.  Globally, the cultural and economic impacts of soccer have long been obvious.  Although Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; president of the Royal College of Physicians 1941-1949) thought England eventually would be remembered for her school of physics and lyric poets, the less romantic Sir Richard Turnbull (1909–1998; long serving UK colonial administrator) told Denis Healey (1917–2015; UK defence minister 1964-1970) that “…when the British Empire finally sank beneath the waves of history, it would leave behind it only two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression ‘fuck off’”.  

"Fuck off" has of course flourished in Australia and in some suburbs conversations without it being heard at least once are rare but the adoption of "soccer" was different.  It was different in Australia because of Australian Football which, while occasionally called “Aussie Rules” has long been commonly known as football (or footy) so the round-ball game became soccer and the name Socceroo (the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roo)) was adopted as the official name for the national team.  In Japan, where the dominant influence on the language in the twentieth century was the US, the most common form is サッカー(sakkā, from soccer).  In the US, a hybrid (with a few unique innovations) of rugby and association football emerged and was soon more popular than either.  The early name was “gridiron football” but in the pragmatic American way, that quickly became simply “football” although curiously, “gridiron” has survived among many foreign audiences.  Realizing the linguistic battle was lost, the USFA (United States Football Association), which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, in 1945 changed its name to the USSFA (United States Soccer Football Association) before deciding the advantages of product differentiation should be pursued, deleting entirely any use of “football”.  The other great US contribution to the language was the “soccer mom”, an encapsulation of a particular (usually white), middle-class demographic describing (1) a woman who often drives her school-age children to sporting activities and (2) in a quasi-disparaging sense, a white, middle-class woman who obsessively talks of her children’s successes and achievements.  There are derivative terms such as soccer dad & ballet dad but they’ve never achieved the same cultural traction.

At least some of those involved professionally with structural linguistics are football fans (maybe even afflicted by soccermania) and a number have discussed the soccer vs football phenomenon.  In most cases, the pattern of use easily is explained by the history of use in different parts of the world and the general tendency for “football” to be applied to the other sports in which kicking a ball is a part.  What however most interests those of a certain age is that the use in England of “soccer” seems now really to upset some people.  However, those old enough to remember the way things used to be done recal that as late as the 1970s, nobody seemed concerned about such things with “football” and “soccer” being used interchangeably.  All seem to agree the origin of “soccer” is uncertain but the use of the element “soc” from “association” is the most plausible explanation, despite the pronunciations not aligning.  Anyway, until there’s evidence of another origin, it’s thought to be soc(c) + -er and all agree the word definitely first was used at the University of Oxford as a coining by students.  By at least the mid-1880s it was appearing in print in various parts of England (the short-lived variant spelling “socker” thought a product of oral transmission and that may have seemed to make sense given socks are worn on the feet used to kick the ball), after which it spread to other parts of the English-speaking world.  The documentary evidence makes clear British newspapers preferred “football” but well into the 1980s “soccer” also often appeared, apparently without inducing many complaints.  So why in the twenty-first century is there among some in the UK an objection to hearing “their game” described as “soccer”?  Nobody seems to have linked that development to any specific event or social movement and it’s though just an example of (1) the English fans proprietorial attitude to the “world game” being “our game” and (2) a resistance to the “linguistic imperialism” of US English, a long established process greatly accelerated by the internet and social media.

The well connected Sepp Blatter (b 1936; President of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football) that, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN), 1998-2015) with people he has met.

(1) With Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023; prime minister of Italy 1994-1995, 2001-2006 & 2008-2011).

(2) With Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001).

(3) With Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022).

(4) With the FIFA World Cup trophy (which hasn’t been a "cup" since 1974 when the finals were contested by 16 teams (expanded to 24 1n 1982, 32 in 1998 and 48 in 2026)).

(5) With Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999).

(6) With Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1949; prime-minister of Israel 1996-1999, 2009-2021 and since 2022).

(7) With David Cameron (b 1966; UK prime-minister 2010-2016).

(8) With Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani (b 1988; chief of Qatar's 2022 World Cup Bid).

(9) With Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955, French president 2007-2012).

(10) With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; Turkish president or prime-minister since 2003).

(11) With Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).

(12) With Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & Jun-Sep 2013).

Unlike some sports where the influence of technology or improvements in this and that are so significant it verges on impossible usefully to compare players from different eras, probably few would disagree that among sports administrators, Sepp Blatter has achieved some of the most extraordinary things.  In office as president of FIFA between 1998-2015, Blatter devoted much of his time (and FIFA’s money) to building his power base among football’s influential in Asia and Africa.  This attracted some comment from the football community in places like Europe and South America but it was in May 2015 he really made the headlines when a joint operation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Swiss investigators staged a raid on the Zürich hotel where FIFA were about to conduct their annual congress.  Seven FIFA executives were arrested and charged with racketeering & money laundering while a further seven officials and sports-marketing figures were indicted by the US DoJ (Department of Justice) for offenses reaching back more than two decades.  Shortly afterwards, the DoJ revealed four other executives and two companies had already pleaded guilty in the international probe, which involved the payment of some US$150 million in what were alleged to be bribes and kickbacks.  Despite it all, two days after the arrests, Blatter was re-elected president by nearly a two-thirds majority of the 209-member FIFA voting body.  Contrary to the president’s expectations, a public outcry ensued which in just a few days escalated so rapidly that Blatter called for a special session of the FIFA congress to be convened, vowing to resign once a successor had been elected.  In October 2015, following the announcements of further investigations of Blatter’s conduct, FIFA’s ethics committee suspended him from the organization for 90 days, appointing an acting president.

Two months later Blatter was found guilty of ethics violations and barred from football-related activities for eight years.  Some of the charges were pursuant to a US$2 million payment Blatter made in 2011 to Michel Platini (b 1955; president of UEFA (Union des associations européennes de football (Union of European Football Associations), the peak body controlling football in Europe) 2007-2015), the supporting documentation associated with the payment said to be about as extensive as what might be in the petty-cash tin, stapled to the receipt for a packet of biscuits.  Platini had long been assumed to be Blatter’s designated successor.  Blatter appealed the decision and in February 2016 FIFA’s appeals committee reduced the ban to six years, a ruling upheld by the CAS (Tribunal arbitral du sport (Court of Arbitration for Sport)) in December.  Under new FIFA President Gianni Infantino (b 1970; FIFA president since 2016), further investigations were undertaken and in December 2020, FIFA filed a criminal complaint against Blatter relating to his role in the FIFA Museum project before, in March 2021, citing financial wrongdoing in the payment of huge “bonuses”, imposing a fine of just over US$1 million and extending his ban from football for a further six years, beginning as soon as the original ban expired in October 2022.  That was bad enough but his life appeared to be getting worse when, in November 2021, Swiss authorities brought to trial fraud charges associated with the falsification of documents relating to the mysterious payments to Platini.  Some eight months later, Blatter and Platini were cleared of all charges.  Sepp Blatter has achieved extraordinary things.

Nerf

Nerf (pronounced nurf)

(1) A device, traditionally metal but of late also rubber or plastic, attached to the front or corners of boats or road vehicles for the purpose of absorbing impacts which would otherwise damage the device to which they’re attached.

(2) A slang term in motorsport which describes the (intentional) use of part of a vehicle to nudge another vehicle off its course; used also to describe the almost full-length protective bars used in some forms of dirt-track (speedway) racing (although the term may have be retrospectively applied, based on the use on hot-rods).

(3) As a trademark, the brand name of a number of toys, often modeled on sports equipment but made of foam rubber or other soft substances.

(4) In video gaming, a slang term for reconfigure an existing character or weapon, rendering it less powerful.

(5) By extension from the original use at the front and rear of 1950s hot rod cars and in motorsport, the name adopted (as nerf bar) for a step to ease entry and exit on pickup trucks or sport utility vehicles (SUV) and known also as step rails, step tubes, step bars or truck steps; also sometimes used to describe the extended foot-rests used on some motorcycles.

(6) As "nerf gun", a toy which fires foam darts, arrows, discs, or foam balls; the class is based on the original "Nerf Blaster" by Hasbro.

Circa 1955: Apparently an invention of US (specifically 1950s Californian hot-rod culture) English, the source of the word being speculative.  The later use, in computer-based gaming, etymologists trace (though there is dissent) from the primitive Indo-European mith- (to exchange, remove) from which Latin gained missilis (that may be thrown (in the plural missilia (presents thrown among the people by the emperors)), source (via the seventeenth century Middle French missile (projectile)) of the English missile ((1) in a military context a self-propelled projectile whose trajectory can sometimes be adjusted after it is launched & (2) any object used as a weapon by being thrown or fired through the air, such as stone, arrow or bullet).  Nerf is a noun & verb, nerfed is a verb & adjective, nerflike is an adjective and nerfing is a verb; the noun plural is nerfs.  The adjectives nerfish & nerfesque are non-standard.

In English, the meaning of words has much been influenced by them being re-purposed or adapted.  It was a democratic form of linguistic evolution and like the animal and vegetable species which have inhabited Earth, some meanings flourished, some survived only in a tiny niche and others went extinct; it was all determined by popular use.  Being historically an oral process, much of the churn over the centuries was lost but a still unappreciated aspect of the Urban Dictionary project is that it’s creating a record of how people are using words in novel ways.  The definitions are submitted by users and while some variously are (1) fanciful, (2) speculative or (3) an attempt to make a slang meaning “happen” (in the “fetch” sense), as in biological evolution, a small number will “catch on” and, at least for a while, enter the vernacular of a sub-set of the population.  Urban Dictionary’s definitions of “nerf” includes the many related to gaming but users claim the word can also mean (1) an individual is “hot”, (2) an individual is “cool” (those can mean much the same), (3) an individual is ugly or socially undesirable, (4) to make worse or weaken (apparently from the use in gaming (especially of weapons) but extended now to “mechanical devices, or personal powers within a business framework”, (5) the act of “cumming up your partner's nostrils after anal copulation” and (6) an individual “sexually attracted to turtles”.  Time will tell how many nerf’s more recent definitions will survive but for sociologists and students of the language, Urban Dictionary will one day be a valuable database. 

Lindsay Lohan holding Herbie's nerf bar, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) premiere, El Capitan Theater, Hollywood, Los Angeles, 19 June 2005.

In the US, nerf bars were often fitted to cars with bumper bars mounted lower than were typically found on domestic vehicles.  What these nerf bars did was provide a low-cost, sacrificial device which would absorb the impact the bodywork would otherwise suffer because the standard bumper would pass under the bumper of whatever was hit in an accident.  On a large scale, the idea was in the 1960s implemented on trucks as the "Mansfield Bar", a (partial) solution to the matter (understood since the 1920s) of cars crashing into the rear of trucks, tending increasingly (as bodywork became lower) to “pass under” the rear of a truck's chassis, meaning it was the passenger compartment (at the windscreen level) which suffered severe damage.  The death toll over the decades was considerable and Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) the most famous victim, hence the eponymy.  Design rules and regulations began to proliferate only in the late 1960s and remarkably as it must seem in these safety conscious times, in the US it wasn't until the early 1970s that cars were required to be built with standardized bumper-bar heights, front & rear.

Nerf bars on a hot-rod.

The suggested etymology is said to account for the application of nerf to gaming where it means “to cripple, weaken, worsen, deteriorate or debuff” (“debuff” a linguistic novelty attributed to gamers) a character, a weapon, a spell etc.  The idea is apparently derived from the proprietary “Nerf” guns, large-scale (often realized in 1:1) toys which fire extremely soft (and therefore harmless) projectiles (al la missilis from the Latin); the Nerfball in 1970 apparently the first.  It doesn’t however account for the use either in motorsport or on hot-rods but the evidence suggests it was the hot-rod crew who used it first, based on an imperfect echoic, thinking the dirt-track (speedway) drivers using the protective bars running along the outside of the bodywork of their vehicles to nudge other competitors off the track and onto the grass were saying “to nerf” whereas they were actually saying “to turf”.  Because the hot-rods became widely known as part of the novel “youth culture” of the 1950s, the specifics of their slang also sometimes entered the wider vocabulary and the bars of the speedway cars, in an example of back-formation, also became “nerf bars”.

A replica AC Shelby American Cobra 427 with naked nerf bars (top) and a real one with over-riders fitted (bottom).

The ultimate hot-rod was the AC Shelby Cobra (1962-1967) of which fewer than a thousand were made, a number exceeded more than fifty-fold by the replica industry which has flourished since the bulge-bodied original was retired in 1967, looming regulations proving just to onerous economically to comply with.  The first Shelby Cobra street cars used nerf bars as attachment points for chrome over-riders but, as a weight-saving measure, the latter were usually removed when the vehicles were used in competition, leaving the raw nerf bars exposed.  The raw look has become popular with customers of the replica versions and, surprisingly, the authorities in some jurisdictions appear to allow them to be registered in this state for street use.

Bumperettes, top row left to right: 1970 MGB Roadster, 1972 De Tomaso Pantera L, 1974 Ford (England) Capri RS3100 and 1968 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 N.A.R.T. Spider.  Bottom row: 1963 Jaguar E-Type Coupé, 1973 Ford (England) Escort RS2000, 1968 Chevrolet Corvette L88 Coupe and 1964 Mercedes-Benz 230 SL.

On production vehicles, what are sometimes mistakenly called nerf bars are actually “bumperettes”, cut-down bumpers which in their more dainty iterations were sometimes little more than a decorative allusion to the weight-saving techniques used on genuine competition cars.  In the days before there were regulations about just about everything, bumperettes were often fitted because they were lighter than full-width units, indeed, Ferrari on some cars built for competition had “fake” bumperettes, thin structures which emulated the appearance of those used in road-going models but which attached directly to the bodywork with no supporting structure beneath.  Ford was one of a number of manufacturers which fitted bumperettes to high-performance variants; they were as much as a styling feature as a genuine weight-saving measure.

Front & rear nerf bars on 1965 Jaguar E-Type in Carmen Red.

The bumperettes on the E-Type were of course attractive but left the curvaceous bodywork vulnerable and the steel fittings were a popular accessory.  The factory never fitted nerf bars to the Series 1 (S1, 1961-1968) cars but a full-width rear bumper appeared on the S2 (1968-1971) and in 1973, for the final seasons in North American (NA) models,  large rubber "dagmars" were grafted (rather unhappily) to the the S3 (1971-1974) but, fortunately for the aesthetic memory, production ceased before British Leyland further disfigured the thing with the sort of battering-ram like structures used for the last years of the MGB and Triumph Spitfire. 

1970 NA model MGB Roadster in BRG (British Racing Green) with after-market 14″ Minator wheels.

The 1970 MGB & MGB GT were unusual in that models exported to NA featured a unique “split” rear bumper (as opposed to purpose-built bumperettes).  The change was a Q&D (quick & dirty) way to comply with new US rules requiring  the license plate (and its lights) be raised to a certain height above the road but on the MGB, the standard, full-width chrome bumper sat exactly where the plate needed to be.  Rather than resign the rear body pressing (an expensive business) British Leyland (then in control of MG) fitted two bumperettes, leaving a gap at the right height for the plate.  The RoW (rest of the world) MGBs continued to use the full-width bumper and NA models in 1971 reverted to one when a solution was devised.  Things would get worse for the MGB for in 1974, globally it was fitted with heavy, ungainly black-rubber faced bumpers, the only (cheap) way the car could be made to comply with US front & rear impact standards.  Because the MGB was by then more than a decade old it was thought it wouldn't remain in production long enough to amortize the investment which would have been required to engineer a more elegant solution but although after 1974 the MGB was heavier, slower and uglier, it remained remarkably popular and the end didn't come until 1980 after more than half-a-million had been built.

The concept of nerf bars as used on hot-rods existed long before the term became popular and can be found in depictions of Greek and Roman ships from antiquity and remain a common sight today, either as a specifically-designed product or simply as old car-tyres secured to the side of the hull and used especially on vessels such as tug-boats which need often to be maneuvered in close proximity to others.  The correct admiralty term for these is "fender" (ie in the sense of "fending-off" whatever it is the vessel has hit).  Manufactured usually from rubber, foam or plastic, there are also companion products, “marine fenders”, which are larger and permanently attached to docks on quay walls and other berthing structures.  Much larger than those attached to vessels, they're best thought of as big cushions (which often they resemble).  The construct was fend + er (the suffix added to verbs and used to form an agent noun); fend was from the Middle English fenden (defend, fight, prevent), a shortening of defenden (defend), from the Old French deffendre (which endures in modern French as défendre), from the Latin dēfendō (to ward off), the construct being dē- (of, from) +‎ fendō (hit, thrust), from the primitive Indo-European ghen- (strike, kill).