Pit

Pit (pronounced pit)

(1) A naturally formed or excavated hole or cavity in the ground.

(2) A covered or concealed excavation in the ground, serving as a trap for animals.

(3) In extractive mining, an excavation made in exploring for or removing a mineral deposit (also known (at scale) as “open-cut” as opposed to “underground” (although in casual use sometime used also of the mineshafts used in underground operations.  It can in mining slang also refer to an entire mine site, regardless of the mode of extraction.

(4) The stone of a fruit (cherry, peach, plum etc) and technically, the hard, inner layer (the endocarp) of certain drupes.

(5) The abode of evil spirits and lost souls; hell; the depths of Hades.

(6) In slang (as “the pits”) an extremely unpleasant, boring, or depressing place, condition, person, etc; the absolute worst (used also as a clipping of armpits).

(7) A hollow or indentation in a surface (in substances like glass or when referring to surfaces (paint, varnish etc), treated usually as an imperfection).

(8) In physiology, natural hollow or depression in the body, organ, structure or part; fossa (used most often of the small of the back).

(9) In medicine, a small, indented scar, as one of at the site of a former pustule after smallpox, chicken pox or similar diseases; a pockmark.

(10) In music, a section of the marching band containing mallet percussion instruments and other large percussion instruments too large to march, such as the tam tam; the area on the side-lines where these instruments are placed.

(11) In botany, any of various small areas in a plant cell wall that remain un-thickened when the rest of the cell becomes lignified (used especially of the vascular tissue).

(12) In archaeology, a hole or trench in the ground, excavated according to grid coordinates, so that the provenance of any feature observed and any specimen or artefact revealed may be established by precise measurement.

(13) An enclosure, usually below the level of the spectators, as for staging fights between dogs, cocks, or, formerly, bears (as cockpit later extended to aircraft, cars, boats etc).

(14) In physical markets (such as a commodity exchange), a part of the floor of the exchange where trading is conducted (known in some places as “as open outcry pits” because transactions were done by traders shouting offers & acceptances at each other).

(15) In architecture, all that part of the main floor of a theatre behind the musicians (in UK use also the main floor of a theatre behind the stalls); sometimes used as “orchestra pit” (the area that is occupied by the orchestra in a theatre, located in front of the stage)

(16) In a hoist-way, a space below the level of the lowest floor served.

(17) In motorsport, an area at the side of a track, for servicing and refueling the cars (the use later adopted by cycle racing).

(18) In ten-pin bowling, the sunken area of a bowling alley behind the pins, for the placement or recovery of pins that have been knocked down.

(19) In track athletics,  the area forward of the take-off point in a jumping event, as the broad jump or pole vault, that is filled with sawdust or soft earth to lessen the force of the jumper's landing.

(20) In casinos, the area or room containing gambling tables.

(21) In aviation, the part of the aircraft (usually the bottom of the fuselage) given over to freight; a luggage hold.

(22) In American football, the centre of the line.

(23) In hospital slang, the emergency department.

(24) Literally, the bottom part (lowest point) of something; figuratively an undesirable location (especially if dirty, dangerous etc).

(25) In military slang, a bed (some evidence also of civilian (presumably ex-military) use).

(26) In nuclear physics, the core of an implosion nuclear weapon, consisting of the fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it.

(27) To mark or indent with pits or depressions.

(28) In medicine, to scar with pockmarks.

(29) In physiology (of body tissue) temporarily to retain a mark of pressure, as by a finger, instrument, etc.

(30) To place or bury something in a pit, as for storage.

(31) To set in opposition or combat, as one against another (usually in the forms “pit against” or “pitted against”).

(32) In motorsport, to exit from the track, entering the pits, to permit the pit-crew to effect a pit-stop.

(33) To remove the stone of a fruit (cherry, peach, or plum), sometimes with the use of a pitter (if something done vocationally, by a pitter, usually with the use of a pitter).

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun pit, pittle, pite, pute, put & putte, from the Old English pytt (natural or man-made depression in the ground, water hole, well; grave (the Kentish variation was “pet”), from the Proto-West Germanic puti, from the Proto-Germanic putt- (pool, puddle) which was the source also of the Old Frisian pet, the Old Saxon putti, the Old Norse pyttr, the Middle Dutch putte, the Dutch put, the Old High German pfuzza and the German Pfütze (pool, puddle), an early borrowing from Latin puteus (pit, trench, shaft) (etymologists noting the phonetic difficulties which exist also in the speculated relationship between puteus and the primitive Indo-European root pau- (to cut, strike, stamp).  Because the short u makes it unlikely puteus was from paviō (to strike), it might instead be linked to putāre (to prune) but the distance between the meanings makes etymologists just as sceptical and some suggest puteus may be a loanword though the spelling might be mysterious.  The use in the context of stone fruit was an Americanism dating from 1841, from the Dutch pet (kernel, seed, marrow), from the Middle Dutch pitte & pit (kernel, core (and cognate with pith)), from the Proto-Germanic pittan (the dialectal German Pfitze (pimple) was an oblique of the Proto-Germanic piþō), from the Proto-Germanic pithan- (source of pith).  Like the use in other contexts, each instance of the verb was derivative of the noun.  Pit is a noun & verb, pitter is a noun and pitted & pitting are verbs; the noun plural is pits.

Ford GT40 pit-stop, Sebring 12 Hours, International Championship for Makes, Sebring, March 1966.

The meaning “abode of evil spirits, hell” dates from the late twelfth century, one of the many means in the medieval world of referring to hell.  The meaning “very small depression or dent in the surface of an object” was in use by the early 1400s, the anatomical sense of “natural depression or hollow in some part of the body” from more than a century earlier.  The “pit of the stomach” was in the literature by the 1650s and it was so-called from the slight depression there between the ribs; the earlier terms used by doctors were the late fourteenth century breast-pit and heart-pit from circa 1300.  The meaning “part of a theatre on the floor of the house, lower than the stage” was known by the 1640s while in market trading, the sense of “that part of the floor of an exchange where business is carried on” was first documented in 1903 as a coining in US English.

One of the high-water marks of the analog era: cockpit of the Anglo-French Concorde.

The phrase money-pit in the sense of “an edifice or project requiring constant outlay of cash with little to show for it” is quite modern, dating only from 1986 and assumed derived from the popular movie of the same name of the same name released that year (though it’s not impossible it had earlier been in regional use).  The prior use had been in the 1930s when it was used of the shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia which legend suggested would lead one to treasure buried by Captain Kidd or some other pirate.  Popular Mechanics magazine in September noted wryly the term might better refer to the millions spent trying to get the treasure out than the hoard of gold itself and in 2022, entrepreneurial engineer Elon Musk (b 1971) produced a variation, describing the factories in Europe building the electric Tesla cars as “money furnaces”.  The ash-pit (repository for ashes, especially the lower part of a furnace) dates from 1797 and it replaced the earlier (1640s) ash-hole, reflecting the implications of industrialization as forges and furnaces grew larger.  The venomous snake the pit-viper was so-named in 1872 because of the characteristic depression between the eyes and nose.  In commercial forestry, the pit-saw was first described in the 1670s, referring to a large saw operated by two men, one (the pit-sawyer) standing in the pit below the log being sawed, the other (the top-sawyer) standing atop.  Pitman was one of a wealth of vocationally-derived surnames which began to appear late in the twelfth century and it referred to one who dwelled literally “in or by a pit or hollow”, the use to describe someone who “works in a pit or mine” not documented until 1761.  Pitman shorthand, a popular form of hand-written transcription of spoken-word text which could later be read by a typist (often the “shorthand-taker) came into use in the 1860s, having been devised by English teacher & publisher (and devoted vegetarian) Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) in 1837.  The phrase “flea-pit” dates from the 1920s and was used of cinemas, an allusion to the seats being infested with fleas or other bugs.

A Lindsay Lohan pit-stop from the blooper tape, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

The noun armpit was a mid-fourteenth century description of the “hollow place under the shoulder” and it ran in parallel with the earlier arm-hole although the latter use faded as it came to be used of clothing and as an anatomical descriptor it was obsolete by the mid seventeenth century.  There was also the early fifteenth century asselle, from the Old French asselle, from the Latin axilla but armpit prevailed.  The colloquial phrase “armpit of the nation” was used as a term of derision for any place thought ugly and disgusting and it’s not clear when it emerged but it was well-documented from the early 1960s.  The general term “the pits” was a variation and from late in the twentieth century applied to anything or anyone thought the worse possible of their type (ie based on something hairy, smelly and ugly).  Infamously, it was used by the US tennis player John McEnroe (b 1959) who at Wimbledon in 1981 called an umpire “the pits of the world” during one of their discussions.  The noun pitter (curved instrument for removing stones from cherries and other fruit” appeared in 1868 when pitters were made available as a commercial product (doubtlessly they had for centuries been improvised or adapted from other utensils) and where they were used vocationally, the user was also called a pitter, the same linguistic process which produced the dual use of shucker in the oyster business (the termed adopted also by others).  Pit-a-pat & pitter-pat, being imitative, are wholly unrelated and date from the 1520s, the noun emerging in 1580.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner cockpit.

The original cockpits were first described in the 1580s and were a “pit or enclosed space for fighting cocks”, the use soon extended to any space in which animals were set to fight to the death, the audience betting on the outcome.  From this came the verb use “to pit against” which meant “to put or set in or into a pit” and this soon extended to boxing; by the eighteenth century in figurative use it was used on any conflict, argument or rivalry.  The general verb use (make pits in; form a small pit or hollow) had been in used (as pit, pitted & pitting) by the late fifteenth century.  The dog breed pit-bull dates from 1922 and was short for pit-bull terrier (first registered in 1912), a type noted for its aggression a fighting abilities.  Cockpit was used of ships early in the eighteenth century of midshipmen's compartment below decks and in some cases was later applied also to the enclosed cabins located towards the centre of the deck began to replace the steerage systems at the stern (later universally known as the “bridge”).  It was picked up for the pilot’s compartment in aircraft in 1914 and (by extension) was used in racing cars in the 1930s.  The word cesspit was created in the 1860s because advances in plumbing meant something was needed to distinguish more modern systems handling sewerage from the earlier cesspool, in use since the 1670s.  The mid fourteenth century pitfall (concealed hole into which a person or animal may fall unawares) was a description of a physical danger which came into figurative in the early 1600s to refer to “any hidden danger or concealed source of disaster.  In mining, a pitfall could also be literally a collapse of the internal structure of a mineshaft, sometime because of the catastrophic failure of pit-props (the timbers which provided the structural integrity of a shaft).  Sometimes a mile or more deep, pitfalls frequently were fatal and the death-toll among miners was high, the phrase “pit-hell” often heard.

The original pits at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1913. 

It was difficult and expensive (and often impossible) to lift heavy machinery to allow mechanics to work on engines or other components so, where possible, it was better to construct a pit underneath from which people could work.  The concept was well documented in workshops by 1839 and the term was by 1912 picked up in motorsport to describe the “area at the side of a track where cars are serviced and repaired” and the early pits were often holes in the ground with waist-high surrounds in which the crew could stand.  They were used also to store spare tyres, parts lubricants etc.  As the sport boomed, the pits quickly became fully enclosed service areas and even garages, built along pit-lane.  When a driver brought his car into the pits (located on the stretch of track called pit-straight), they were said to be pitting to be worked on by the pit crew who might during the pit-stop make repairs, re-fuel or change tyres, either in front of or behind the pit-wall.  Pit crew became a popular term beyond the tracks, used of airline baggage handlers, sea-port staff etc.

The pit-babes from the era of (obvious) sponsorship by tobacco companies: Coming or going, they always looked good.

In motorsport, a pit-babe is an attractive young lady who is in the pits for some reason, not necessarily directly related to the competition.  The companion term was Grid-Girl, equally attractive specimens with the role of (1) looking good and (2) appearing on the grid while the cars were assembled prior to the start, shielding the driver from the elements with a large umbrella, festooned with corporate logos.  It was nice work if you could get it but the Grid-Girls are now rarely seen in Formula 1.  In 2017, Liberty Media (owners of Formula 1) announced that with the coming of the 2018 season, the Grid-Girls would be replaced by “Grid-Kids” (boys and girls competing in junior and “entry level” categories such as karting, the explanation being the practice of using Grid-Girls was “not aligned with modern societal norms and F1's brand values.”)  F1’s “brand values” are however underpinned by “dollar values” and in the years since, Grid-Girls (officially "promotional personnel") have sometimes been allowed to adorn the grid.

Comrade Grid-Girls, Hungarian Grand Prix, 1986.  

Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1973-1977) once recalled his most pervasive memory of life behind the iron curtain being one of “dull grayness and the smell of boiled cabbage”.  Clearly, old Henry didn’t get a pit pass to the 1986 Hungarian Grand Prix where things were bright and colourful.  The 1986 Hungarian Grand Prix was notable because it was the first such event in the country for half a century and the first as a top-flight race, the 1936 Grand Prix not being part of the European championship and run under Formula Libre rules (there should be more Formula Libre events).  Not in Hungry or anywhere else in 1936 were there pit-babes or Grid-Girls but on that sunny June day, a woman had been entered for the event, England’s Eileen Ellison (1910–1967) listed for the field driving a 3.0 litre, straight-8 Maserati 8CM.  Unfortunately, there was what would now be called a “supply chain interruption” and her Maserati was a DNA (Did not Appear) so Ms Ellison appears in the race record as a DNS (Did not Start).

End of an era: Grid-Girls in Marlboro livery at the Hungarian Grand Prix, 2005.

In 1936 it turned out to be a bad day for the Mercedes-Benz team, the W25 which had in 1934 been revolutionary now outclassed and all three were DNFs (Did not Finish), the race won by the mercurial Italian Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953) in a 3.8 litre straight-8 Alfa Romeo 8C 35, entered by Scuderia Ferrari.  Held in August as the eleventh race of the 1986 series, that year’s Hungarian Grand Prix was the first in the country since 1936 and the first Formula 1 World Championship (contested since 1950) race to be held behind the Iron Curtain; it was attended by some 200,000 spectators (drawn substantially from around the Eastern Bloc), a number not seen since the inter-war years and a mark not exceeded until the 1995 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide.  The race was won by Nelson Piquet (b 1952; Formula One Champion 1981, 1983 & 1987) in a Williams Honda FW11.  The Hungarian Grand Prix returned to the record books in 2005 when the “XXI Marlboro Magyar Nagydij” became the last Grand Prix to be sponsored by a tobacco company, half the field running in the livery of the tobacco industry, West, Mild Seven, Lucky Strike, Malboro and Benson & Hedges all colourfully represented.  With the EU’s (European Union (1993)), the multi-national aggregation which evolved from the EEC (European Economic Community), the Zollverein formed in 1957) ban of tobacco advertising coming into force on 31 July, 2005 (race day!), there ended over four decades of cigarette sponsorship in Formula 1, most teams keeping the livery until the last possible moment, the stickers appearing during qualifying and peeled off only shortly before the machines were wheeled to the starting grid (although Ferrari, Renault and Jordan rebelled and kept the logos without consequences).  Of course, the EU’s law-change meant the pit-babes and Grid-Girls also got new outfits although cunningly, the designs often featured shapes and colors recalling the distinctive packaging used for cigarette cartons so the message got through, and ways were explored to find techniques so the cars could also continue as moving billboards.    

Bastard

Bastard (pronounced bas-terd, br-sted, or bar-stad)

(1) A person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate child (technically gender-neutral but historically applied almost exclusively to males).  Use is now mostly in a historic context.

(2) In slang as a term of disparagement, a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person.

(3) In slang, an expression of sympathy for a man who has suffered in some way (unlucky bastard, poor bastard etc).

(4) In slang, an expression used of someone who has been fortunate (lucky bastard).

(5) In jocular slang, a term of endearment (chiefly Australia & New Zealand).

(6) Something fake, phony, irregular, inferior, spurious, or unusual; of abnormal or irregular shape; of unusual make or proportions (now rare).

(7) In engineering, politics, architecture etc, something which is a mixture of inputs as opposed to pure versions.

(8) In metalworking & woodworking, a type of file.

(9) In informal use an extremely difficult or unpleasant job or task.

(10) In animal breeding, a mongrel (biological cross between different breeds, groups or varieties) (now rare).

(11) A sword midway in length between a short-sword and a long sword.

(12) In sugar refining, (1) an inferior quality of soft brown sugar, obtained from syrups that have been boiled several times or (2) a large mold for straining sugar.

(13) A very sweet fortified wine, often with spices added.

(14) In commercial printing, paper not of a standard size.

(15) In theatre lighting, one predominant color blended with small amounts of complementary color; used to replicate natural light because of their warmer appearance.

(16) In theology, a heretic or sinner; one separated from one's deity (archaic).

(17) In biology, a botanical tendril or offshoot (rare and used only in the technical literature).

(18) In linguistics, any change or neologism in language that is viewed as a degradation.

1250–1300: From the Middle English bastarde, basterd & bastart, from the Anglo-Norman bastard (illegitimate child), from the eleventh century Medieval Latin bastardus of unknown origin but perhaps from the Germanic (Ingvaeonic) bāst- (related to the Middle Dutch bast (lust, heat)), a presumed variant of bōst- (marriage) + the derogatory Old French –ard (the pejorative agent noun suffix), taken as signifying the offspring of a polygynous marriage to a woman of lower status (ie the acknowledged child of a nobleman by a woman other than his wife), a pagan Germanic custom not sanctioned by the Christian church.  The Old Frisian boask, boaste & bost (marriage) was from the proto-Germanic bandstu- & banstuz (bond, tie), a noun derivative of the Indo-European bhendh (to tie, bind).  It was cognate with the French bâtard (bastard), the West Frisian bastert (bastard), the Dutch bastaard (bastard), the German Bastard (bastard) and the Icelandic bastarður (bastard).  Etymologists caution that charming as it is, the traditional explanation of Old French bastard as derivative of fils de bast (literally “child of a packsaddle”, the source of this the idea of a child conceived on an improvised bed (medieval saddles often doubled as beds while traveling)) is dubious on chronological and geographical grounds.  The Medieval Latin Bastum (packsaddle) is of uncertain origin.

One etymologist noted that while the origin of bantling (a young child known or believed to be "a bastard") was uncertain, it could be from the German Bänkling (bastard-child) which was from the Luxembourgish Bänk, from the Middle High German and Old High German bank, from the Proto-West Germanic banki, from Proto-Germanic bankiz (and cognate with the German Bank, Dutch bank, English bench, Swedish bänk and Icelandic bekkur.  The alleged link with bastard offspring is that conception took place on "a bank" rather than in a bed where responsible & respectable folk did such things.  In music, a song titled Lindsay Lohan List was released by an artist named That Trending Bastard.  The noun bastarditis is pseudo-Latin used (usually in an offensive or derogatory way) to suggest some tendency to act like a bastard; the formation of the word hints the behavior may be due to disease or affliction (the -itas suffix was from the Proto-Italic -itāts & -otāts (-tās added to i-stems or o-stems, later used freely) and ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -tehats.  There are literally dozens of uses of "bastard" as a modifier and it has been applied to plants animals and devices but it has also proved one of English's more productive nouns:  Bastard is a noun, verb & adjective, bastardliness, bastardizatio, bastardness, bastardy, bastardship, bastardism, bastardhood & bastardling are nouns, abastard, abastardized, abastardizing, bastardise & bastardised are verbs, bastardish, bastardous, bastardly, bastardless & bastardlike are adjectives and bastardly is an adjective & adverb; the noun plural is bastards.

US film star James Dean (1931–1955) with 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder (chassis 550-0055) shortly before his death.

The 1955 Ford Country Squire with tandam-axle trailer (behind Little Bastard) was the the team’s tow vehicle while the Cadillac to the right was a 1953 model.  Beyond both having four wheels and running on gas (petrol), one of the few things the Cadillac had in common with the Porsche was the availability of a manual transmission (Porsche at the time offered no self-shifting choice).  The black Cadillac was probably fitted with the company's four-speed Hydra-Matic automatic transmission although, after a fire destroyed the factory, almost 30,000 were in 1953 equipped with Buick's famously smooth but inefficient two-speed Dynaflow.  After the end of production of the 1953 Series 75, almost three decades would pass before Cadillac again offered a model with a manual transmission although that didn't end well (among the Cadillac crowd the Cimarron (1982-1988) is never spoken of except in the phrase "the unpleasantness of 1982") but in a much more convincing way the option returned to the list in 2004 and by 2013, while one could buy a Cadillac with a clutch pedal, one could not buy such a Ferrari.  For most of the second half of the twentieth century, few would have thought that anything but improbable or unthinkable.

The Little Bastard being serviced.

James Dean was pronounced dead on 30 September, 1955, shortly after crashing the Porsche 550 Spyder he'd bought for use as a race car.  Like the prototype Porsche 356/1 of 1948 the 550 was mid rather than rear-engined as all Porsches had to that point been and while an ideal configuration for racing, it did possess quirks which meant it was best handled by experts.  It was never envisaged as a road car and had few of the then rudimentary safety features which were beginning to appear in series production models.  Dean clearly was a gifted driver and had enjoyed some success but since his death, a minor industry has existed to create or perpetuate myths about the Porsche and it's not certain why the Little Bastard nickname was bestowed (the stories differ) thought it may not be related to the car's handling characteristics.  What is agreed is the name was painted in black script on the 550's tail by Dean Jeffries (1933–2013) who divided his time between stunt work for film production and customizing cars.

The crash aftermath.

The crash happened on SR (South Route) 466 (now SR 46) near Cholame, California, en route to October’s upcoming Salinas Road Races and Mr Dean was driving to familiarize himself with the machine.  In the dimming light of the late afternoon, the Porsche collided with the passenger-side of a 1950 Ford Tudor (two-door sedan) which had just entered the highway, driven by California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed (1932-1995).  Mr Turnupseed (later cleared by authorities of any blame) suffered only minor injuries while Mr Dean, less than an hour later, was pronounced DoA (dead on arrival) at hospital.  The wreck of Little Bastard was sold and parts were used in other race cars and although the legend of the Little Bastard curse remains entrenched in US urban mythology, the extent of its links to other racing accidents seems overstated and although there was certainly one confirmed death, more then than today, motorsport was a dangerous business and in some seasons it wasn't unknown for drivers to attend a couple of funerals. 

Little Bastard's salvaged transaxle in display frame mounted on wheels.

There is a corner of the collector market which focuses on the trade in macabre items and while a big event like the sinking of RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912 has provided a wealth of memorabilia (watches, menus, crockery, flatware etc), the death toll need not be in the dozens for collectors to be drawn to relics associated with tragedy; one celebrity can be enough.  In 2021, the four-speed transaxle from film star James Dean’s 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder (550-0055) sold in an on-line auction for US$382,000.  Again, based on the serial number (10 046) & part number (113 301 102), factory verified the authenticity and of the auction lot and it was only the transaxle which had been salvaged from the wreck, the display stand and peripheral bits & pieces (axles, axle tubes, brake assemblies etc) all fabricated.

The bastard son of a hundred maniacs: Mr Krueger with glove.

Freddy Krueger, the fictional antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror film franchise (first seen in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) was best known for his gloved hand with "built-in" blades.  In the third and best of the series (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), Mr Kruger's origin was revealed as the son of a nurse in a lunatic asylum who, because of a filing error or some other oversight, was for a long weekend locked in a ward with hundreds of the worst of the criminally insane, the consequences predictable.  Thus was Mr Kruger known as "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs".

In pre-modern Europe, being born to unmarried parents was not always regarded as a stigma although the Church in canon law prohibited bastards from holding clerical office without an explicit papal indult.  Royalty and the aristocracy, famously prolific in the production of bastards, seemed often unconcerned, Norman duke William, the Conqueror of England, is referred to in state documents as "William the Bastard" and one Burgundian prince was even officially styled “Great Bastard of Burgundy”.  From this, came the idea of something bastardized being associated with the creation of an inferior copy or version of something, hence the sense of corruption, degradation or debasement, hence the association with words like counterfeit, fake, imperfect, irregular, mongrel, phony, sham, adulterated, baseborn, false, impure, misbegotten, mixed & spurious, the adjectival form common by the late fourteenth century.  However, the word eventually became used to describe things deliberately designed to be variations of something, typically between two established types.  Thus emerged bastard agrimony, the bastard alkanet, bastard bar, bastard hartebeest, bastard file, bastard hemp, bastard hogberry, bastard pennyroyal, bastard pimpernel, bastard quiver tree, bastard tallow-wood, bastard tamarind, bastard teak, bastard musket, bastard culverin, bastard gemsbok, bastard mahogany, bastard toadflax, bastard trumpeter, bastard cut, bastard eigne & bastard amber.

All Men are Bastards diary, 1995.

Variations of the word existed in many languages including the Scots bastart & bastert, the French bâtard, the Old French bastardus, the Galician bastardo, the Middle Dutch bastaert, the Dutch bastaard, the Italian bastardo, the Late Latin bastardus, the Indonesian bastar, the Saramaccan bása, the Sranan Tongo basra, the Middle English bastard, bastarde, basterd & bastart.  Use as a generic vulgar term of abuse for a man appears to date from circa 1830 although presumably it may have be slanderously applied in the past.  The early fourteenth century noun bastardy (condition of illegitimacy) was from the Anglo-French and Old French bastardie and appears from the 1570s in contemporary documents in the sense of "begetting of bastards, fornication".  The early seventeenth century verb bastardize meant "to identify as a bastard", predated by the figurative sense, "to make degenerate, debase" which dates from the 1580s, probably because bastard since the 1540s had also served as a verb meaning "to declare illegitimate".  The later use of bastardize, bastardized, bastardizing & bastardization to mean “rituals and activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation as a way of initiating a person into a group or organization” was associated with the military, crime gangs and university fraternities, (ie structures where the membership is predominately made up of males aged 17-25.  The terms hazing, initiation, ragging & deposition were synonymous and all began as regionally-specific but soon tended towards the internationalism which marks modern English.  The once useful phrase “political bastardry” is still seen but is now rare, a victim of association; as children born out of wedlock are now no longer described as bastards, the word is also being banished from some other contexts, including political discourse which is also losing many gender-loaded expressions.

One of the opening sequences used for Alexei Sayle's Stuff, a comedy sketch show that, over 18 episodes, was shown on BBC2 for three seasons (1988-1991).  Alexi Sayle (b 1952) was a left-wing comedian and one of the show's signature lines was "Who is that fat bastard?"

Notable bastards include Confucius (circa 551-479 BC), William the Conqueror (circa 1028-1087), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935), Eva Peron (1919-1952), Fidel Castro (1926-2016) & Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962).  There was once some sensitivity to any admission of the status and as late as 1971, in The Gorton Experiment (a study of the prime ministership of Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; prime-minister of Australia 1968-1971)), the journalist Alan Reid (1914-1987) mentioned his subject was "A bastard by birth" but added the footnote: "Normally, I would ignore as irrelevant the circumstances of Gorton’s birth, but Alan Trengrove [1929-2016] in a biography of Gorton, written with Gorton’s full cooperation, recorded the facts until then unknown even to Gorton intimates."  He noted also: "Trengrove suggests that the mature Gorton can be understood fully only in the light of Gorton’s childhood 'insecurity' which was the product of his illegitimacy."  Journalists still find it hard to resist acting as amateur psychologists. 

The bastard file.

A bastard file is a half-round file.  It gained the name from being rendered with an intermediate cut, neither very coarse nor very fine and was thus neither one thing nor the other; it was something impure.  The concept of things in engineering, architecture, literature etc being thought bastardized versions if in any way hybrids or deviations from established forms can apply also to proper nouns.  Bob Cunis (1941-2008) was a New Zealand cricketer described as a “medium pace bowler”.  That may have been generous though he also extracted little movement from the ball without ever being classed a a spinner.  Still, between 1964-1972 he played in 20 test matches and coached the national side for three seasons in the late 1980s.  His contribution to the list of linguistic amusements came when BBC Radio commentator John Arlott (1914-1991), unimpressed by the bowler’s pedestrian deliveries commented: “Cunis, a funny sort of name, like his bowling, neither one thing nor the other."  It passed into the sporting annals but may have be plagiarized, apparently appearing in an earlier newspaper report on a match the tourists played against a county side and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) had sometime before 1952 used the line after learning the name of a MP (member of parliament) was Alfred Bossom (1881–1965).

Orchid

Orchid (pronounced awr-kid)

(1) Any terrestrial or epiphytic plant of the family Orchidaceae, often having flowers of unusual shapes and beautiful colors, specialized for pollination by certain insects and associated with of temperate and tropical regions.

(2) The flower(s) of any of these plants.

(3) A bluish to reddish purple.

1845: It was English botanist John Lindley (1799–1865) who in School Botanty (1845) coined the word orchid from the New Latin Orchideæ & Orchidaceae (Linnaeus), the plant's family name, from the Latin orchis (a kind of orchid), from the Ancient Greek orkhis (genitive orkheos) (orchid, literally "testicle") from the primitive Indo-European orghi-, the standard root for "testicle" (and related to the Avestan erezi (testicles), the Armenian orjik, the Middle Irish uirgge, the Irish uirge (testicle) and the Lithuanian erzilas (stallion).  The plant so called because of the shape of its root was said so to resemble testicles.  The earlier English (in Latin form) was orchis (1560s) and in the thirteenth century Middle English it was ballockwort (literally “testicle plant” and source of the more recent ballocks).  The extraneous -d- was added in an attempt to extract the Latin stem.  The construct was orch(is) (a plant) + -idae.  The irregular suffix –idae is the plural of a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek -ίδης (-ídēs), a patronymic suffix.  In Medieval writing, it was sometimes interpreted as representing instead the plural of a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek adjectival suffix -ειδής (-eidḗs) from εἶδος (eîdos) (appearance, resemblance).  It was adopted in 1811 at the suggestion of British entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850), to simplify and make uniform the system of French zoologist Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833) which divided insect orders into sections; in taxonomy, it’s used to form names of subclasses of plants and families of animals.  Orchid is a noun & adjective, orchidology, orchidophile, orchidelirium, orchidomania, orchidomania, orchidist & orchidologist. are nouns, orchidaceous, orchidlike & orchidean & orchideous are adjectives; the noun plural is orchids.

Lindsay Lohan in pink orchid veavage swimsuit next to potted pink orchid, Phuket, Thailand, December, 2017.  It was during this holiday the wire services reported “Lindsay Lohan bitten by snake on holiday in Thailand”; almost instantly, the grammar Nazis tweeted on X (then known as Twitter) demanding proof the snake really was on holiday; standards have fallen since the demise of sub-editors.  Ms Lohan made a full-recovery; there was no word on the fate of the (presumably non-venomous) serpent.

The standard adjectival form (of or pertaining to orchids) is orchidaceous (the comparative “more orchidaceous”, the superlative “most orchidaceous”) but orchidean & orchideous are also used, all conveying the sense of “exotic in a rare, mysterious, alluring or sensual way”.  Through no fault of its own, the Schizanthus pinnatus (butterfly flower) is known as the “poor man's orchid”, dubbed thus because although orchid-like in appearance, its colors are less dramatic and its shape less alluring.  Despite the name, Hooker's orchid is not vulgar slang for the female genitalia but the common name for the Platanthera hookeri, a perennial wildflower found in temperate regions of North America between Iowa and Newfoundland.  It was named after the English botanist William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) who in 1841 became the first director of Kew Gardens.  The study of orchids is called orchidology and one who works in the field is an orchidologist.  One who cultivates orchids is an orchidist, many of whom are orchidophiles (orchid enthusiasts).  The most obsessive orchidophiles are orchidomaniacs (those passionate about collecting or raising orchids) afflicted with orchidomania (an obsession with orchids; enthusiasm for raising or collecting orchids).  Orchidomania was first documented in the Victorian era (1837-1901) and there were tales of intrigue, low skulduggery (and even an alleged murder) among those who wandered the planet in search or rare or unique specimens.  In medical use, there is macroorchidism (having abnormally large testes) and macroorchidism (having abnormally small testes), monorchidism (having only one testicle within the scrotum), polyorchidism (possessing more than two testes), triorchidism (possessing three testes) and cryptorchidism (having one or two undescended testicles).  The surgical procedures include orchidectomy (also as orchiectomy) (the surgical removal of one or both testes; the alternative testectomy tends to be used only when both are removed (ie in a castration)) and orchiopexy (also as orchidopexy) (the fixation of a testis (ie to rectify cryptorchidism by moving an undescended testicle into the scrotum and keeping it there)).  

Plant porn

A lovely purple orchid in vase.

The lure of the orchid seems to attract a certain sort of obsessive, drawn by the beauty of the flowers and their sensual fragrance, they speak of its blatant sexuality and leaf slowly through the specialized catalogues which, to them, is botanical pornography.  It’s also a business and a cut-throat one, the retail value of the trade estimated at US$9 billion annually and, with some of the natural habitats under threat, the rarest are becoming more expensive.  Governments and quangos too have become involved, imposing regulations and limits on harvesting, the Geneva-based CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) rumored to be threatening to seek the power to raid even the private greenhouses of amateur collectors who may have violated their rules.  The idea of squads of international bureaucrats, escorted by local police, turning up outside the potting shed and demanding to inspect plants may sound Kafkaesque but lawyers have warned there are international treaties that, if ratified and recognized in domestic law, might permit exactly that.  It's of particular interest in countries with a federal constitutional arrangement in which sub-national governments (states & provinces etc) guarantee certain protection.  In those systems, (1) international treaties are sometimes entered into by national governments which tend to be vested with the head of power encompassing foreign affairs and (2) federal constitutions usually provide that when any conflict exists between national and sub-national laws, the former shall prevail.

A blue orchid.

More than just about any other (non-narcotic) plants, orchids seem to exert on people an attraction beyond what may be said to be a “normal” interest in houseplants.  Papers have been written exploring the reasons for this and the consensus seems to be there are six factors which contribute most to the interest becoming obsessive: (1) The technical challenge.  Removed from their very specific natural environment, orchids can be difficult to grow, light, humidity, irrigation and temperature all critical and the combination letting one orchid flourish may kill another.  They can take a long time to flower and for the obsessive, this builds anticipation so when finally a bloom finally appears, there’s a feeling of real achievement.  (2) Beauty.  The almost “sexual” attractiveness of orchids shouldn’t be overstated but they certainly don’t look like “typical” flowers, some mimicking insects, animals, or even faces.  This can of course be an adaptation to attract pollinators but the beauty is undeniable.  (3) The diversity.  With over 25,000 species identified thus far (and many more hybrids), Orchidaceae is one of the largest plant families on Earth; for collectors, such variety is a magnet because there is always some new color, shape or species to hunt (and, these days, post on Instagram). (4) Community and culture.  Orchid societies and clubs are vibrant and create strong social bonds (although there are also factions that are highly competitive).  (5) Rarity.  The most prized orchids genuinely are rare and, for collectors of anything (coins, stamps, Ferraris etc) there is prestige and social status in ownership.  (6) Fragrance.  Lurking behind the stunning visual appeal, some orchids (and not necessarily the most colourful) have complex fragrances (from sweet to spicy) and one attraction may be they remind many of chocolate, another substance known to attract obsessives.

A Lindsay Lohan selfie with pink and white orchid, October, 2014.

Useful introductions to the weird world of the orchid-obsessed include The Orchid Thief (2000) by Susan Orlean (b 1955), Orchid:A Cultural History (2016) by Jim Endersby (b 1972) and Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy (2000) by Eric Hansen (b 1948).  Photographs can only hint at their sensual beauty but the obsessed differ on the best way to experience orchids, some saying nothing compares to their natural environment while others like to mix with them en masse, in a humid hothouse with sufficient air-flow to make them happy and permit the scent of the flowers to waft about.