Porch

Porch (pronounced pawrch or pohrch)

(1) In architecture, an exterior appendage to a building, forming an approach to a doorway, now usually with a roof which may be separate or an extension of that of the main structure; if walls are included, a porch is said to be “vestibule-like”.

(2) An exterior roofed gallery, often partly enclosed; a veranda.

(3) As “the Porch”, the portico or stoa in the agora of ancient Athens, where the Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium and his followers met.

(4) Applied loosely (often in commerce, especially the real estate business), similar structures such as porticos, balconies, decks, verandas and such.

(5) In aerospace engineering, the platform outside the external hatch of a spacecraft.

1250–1300: From the Middle English porche (covered entrance; roofed structure, usually open on the front and sides, before an entrance to a building), from the Old French porche (porch, vestibule), from the Latin porticus (covered gallery, covered walk between columns, arcade, portico, porch), from porta (city gate, gate; door, entrance), from the primitive Indo European root per- (to lead, pass over).  In the Old English the Latin form was borrowed as portic.  By the late fourteenth century, a porche was understood as a “covered walk or colonnade on the front or side of a building”; by the early 1830s it was used in the US for the structures described in the UK as verandas.  Porch and porchful are nouns, porchless, porchlike & porched are adjectives; the noun plural is porches.

Porch swingers.

Vice-Admiral William Raborn (1905-1990; Director of Central Intelligence, 1965-1966, left) and Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; POTUS 1963-1969, right), sitting on porch swing on the porch of LBJ's boyhood home near Stonewall, Texas, 1965.  Admiral Raborn was a gallant sailor with a fine record but wholly was unsuited handling the politics demanded in the role of heading the CIA and served as the nation's chief spy for little more than a year.  If LBJ appears happy, it's likely because recently he'd been elected POTUS in one of the largest landslides recorded and the troubles caused by the war in Vietnam have yet to consume his presidency.

Some variants of porch are obvious: A “back porch” is a porch at the back of a structure (typically a house) while a “front porch” is at the front; any building with a porch may be described as “porched” (used usually as a modifier).  In architecture there are also what might be called “side porches” but the term is not in general use.  A structure is “porchless” if designed or built without a porch while an “outporch” is a now archaic term meaning “an exterior porch”; it’s of minor interest to historians of architecture because it suggests there was a time free-standing structures also were thought of as porches.  A “porchful” is “the quantity of stuff said to “fill a porch”, those items typically being “porch chairs” or “porch swing” (a seat with armrests and a back, built usually for two, and suspended from the ceiling with hooked chains (or cables) enabling it to rock back & forth.  Collectively such items could be styled “porch furniture” although “patio furniture”, “deck furniture” & “outdoor furniture are now in more common use.  All these pieces might be illuminated by a “porch light” (also as “porch-light” & “porch lamp”, a wall or ceiling-mounted light, often fitted with a protective grill).  Once such accessories have been placed, that constitutes one’s “porchscape” and although tables are not uncommon on larger porches, the term “porch table” seems not to be a thing.

A house with “wrap-around porch”, part of which (left) has been converted to a “sunporch” by the addition of glass panes.

The term “porchway” did not (as the name might suggest) describe an “extended or elongated porch” but was simply a synonym of porch; use is now thought archaic.  A “snow porch” was an enclosed but un-heated structure which was a feature in arctic areas or other places with very cold climates.  Snow porches were accessible from within a dwelling and typically used as storage for firewood and such, the advantage compared with an outside shed being those within didn’t have to walk outside in the cold to fetch a load.  Unlike a “sunroom” (a windowed room optimized for receiving natural light), a “sunporch” was a conventional porch to which windows (sometimes able to be opened) had been added.  In nautical use, a “wetporch” (also called a “moon pool”) was a feature in the hull of a vessel used for lowering equipment into the sea below.  Although used in a number of sub-surface environments and underwater habitats, the structures are most associated with off-shore mining and oil extraction, frequently seen on marine drilling platforms.

117 South Hervey Street, Hope, Hempstead County, Arkansas.

This is the house in which Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) spent the first four years of his life.  In June 1997, it was opened to the public as President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site which was a little opportunistic, his actual birth happening at Hope's now-demolished Julia Chester Hospital, the site now occupied by a funeral home.  The house's porch would be called a “front porch” and although when young Mr Clinton doubtless spent much time “on the porch”, later in life he didn't always “stay on the porch”.

A variant style was the stoop (raised open platform before the entrance of a house, approached by steps and thus neither a veranda nor a porch) and elements of the concept can be seen even in the dwellings uncovered in archaeological digs of prehistoric settlements but stoops seem first to have been so named in the mid eighteenth century to describe the feature in wooden houses in North America (including Canada which shared many of the building styles of the north-eastern US).  Stoop was from the Dutch stoep (flight of steps, doorstep, threshold), from the Middle Dutch, from Proto-Germanic stap- (step).  The Dutch form evolved in South African English as stoep, first recorded in 1797 although oral use may pre-date this.  Stoep was an element of the slur “stoep-sitter” which described a “habitually idle person who spends all day lounging on his stoep”.  Despite being a South African coining, it seems not to have been directly exclusively towards the non-white population, unlike the equivalent form from the US: “porch monkey” (a lazy black person characterized as idling away the hours sitting on a porch).  A modern coining was “porch pirate” (a criminal who practices “porch piracy”, stealing from porches packages delivered by a courier).  Although not a new class of crime, instances have soared with the increasing popularity of on-line shopping and the pattern seems mostly to be opportunistic; porch pirates driving around high-income neighborhoods and stealing whatever cartons are observed, a risky approach in the age of ubiquitous domestic CCTV systems.  However, law enforcement agencies have revealed their analysis indicates some porch piracy may be facilitated by “inside information” with porch pirates “tipped off” (by those somewhere in the supply chain) about desirable or high-value deliveries.

What used to be Standard Christian church architecture.  A narthex is a particular type of porch, many churches having a narthex and one or more porches. 

In church architecture, although Christian churches often had one or more porches, a special case was the narthex, an enclosed passage at the west end of a basilica or church, usually at right angles to the nave and located between the main entrance and the nave.  Theologically (and historically, thus socially), the significance of the narthex in many early Christian and Byzantine basilicas & churches was as well as being a conventional “lobby area”, it was place penitents were required to remain.  Although the archaeological record suggests there may have been some early churches with annexes or even small separate structures located nearby which fulfilled the latter function, narthexes seem quickly to have been integrated.  That means that structurally and architecturally, a narthex was part of the building but theologically was not, its purpose being to permit those not entitled to admission as part of the congregation (mostly catechumens and penitents) nevertheless to hear the service and (hopefully) be encouraged to reform their ways and pursue communion.  For ceremonies other than services, the narthex was otherwise a functional space, the church’s baptismal font often mounted there and in some traditions (both Eastern & Western) worshipers would sometimes anoint themselves and their children with a daub of holy water before stepping foot in the nave; some branches of the Orthodox Church use the narthex for funeral ceremonies.  There were also architectural variations in the early churches which persisted in larger building and cathedrals, the narthex divided in two, (1) an esonarthex (inner narthex) between the west wall and the body of the church proper, separated from the nave and aisles by a wall, trellis or some other means and (2) an external closed space, the exonarthex (outer narthex), a court in front of the church façade with a perimeter defined by on all sides by colonnades.

In the Western Church, reforms removed the requirement to exclude from services those who were not full members of the congregation which of course meant the narthex technically was rendered redundant.  However, the shape churches had assumed with a narthex included had become part of Church tradition so architects continued to include the space, both as part of the nave structure and something semi-separated.  They attracted a number of names, borrowed mostly from secular buildings including vestibule, porch, foyer, hallway, antechamber, anteroom, entrance, entry, entryway, gateway, hall, lobby, portal & portico, the choice dictated sometimes by local tradition, sometimes by the nature of construction and sometimes the choice seems to have been arbitrary.  In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the esonarthex and exonarthex retained distinct liturgical functions, some rituals terminating in the exonarthex while services still exclusively penitential services are usually chanted in the esonarthex.  In dialectal northern English, the casual term for the penitents forced to remain in the narthex was “the narts”.

A example of a portico: 1500 San Ysidro Drive, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.  Lindsay Lohan livered here for a while during “troubled starlet” phase.

Because there are so many ways porchlike structures can be described, word nerds with a fondness for architecture do like to correct the linguistically sloppy.  In a diary note of 28 June, 1954, documenting an evening in the British Embassy in Washington DC, Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) doctor (Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; president of the Royal College of Physicians 1941-1949, personal physician to Winston Churchill 1940-1965) recorded telling his patient: “I hope you did not get cold sitting on the balcony in the chill night air.”  “Portico, not balcony, Charles.” he was corrected with a “mischievous smile”.

Porte-cochère of the Jing An Shangri-La Hotel, Shanghai, PRC.  This porte-cochère features what may be the ultimate porch light.  Such lighting structures have been made possible by LED (light emitting diode) technology; before LED's such a thing would have been too maintenance-intensive because of the limited life of bulbs or tubes. 

If a portico sits above a space where vehicles draw up for passengers to alight it becomes a porte-cochère, something now most associated with hotels or the forecourts of commercial buildings.  If a walkway is of any length with a roof supported by rows of pillars, that is a colonnade.  The car is a Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W221, 2005-2013, specifically, a “facelift” version (2009-2013)).  A special version of the W221 (S 300 L) was produced for markets in the Far East which combined the LWB (long wheelbase) platform with the 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) V6; it was essentially a LWB version of the S 280 (which also, despite the name used the 3.0 V6) sold in many other markets.  The S300 L was produced for the hotel trade and other operators of limousines who didn't want either thirsty V8s or V12s or the less refined diesels.

Lindsay Lohan on a balcony.  Although in general use the terms for such structures are applied loosely, in architecture, a balcony is accessible structure extending from a building and without roof.  Even if a balcony party is covered by a small eave, it is still not a porch.

A portico is best described as an “architectural porch leading to the entrance of a building” so not exactly a “big porch” although most tend to be large scale.  A noted feature of the buildings of Antiquity, a portico is defined by having a roof structure atop a walkway and although many architecture guides insist this must be supported by supported or enclosed within walls, a roof protruding from a building with no such ground-based anchorage (a favourite trick of architects in the mid-twentieth century) can be thought a portico if there’s some sort of walkway beneath.  The essential feature is the provision of shelter from the elements.  Those seeking a bit of visual grandeur (not only the McMansion crew) sometimes will add a pediment (a triangular upper part) atop but architects caution this can look absurd or pretentious on smaller structures because the sense of proportion works best at scale.

The colloquial phrase “hard dog to keep on the porch” is a lament used (perhaps often resignedly) by women of their husband’s or boyfriend’s chronic infidelity, describing men who are unfaithful and generally “difficult to keep an eye on.”  Although long in idiomatic use in the Southern US, in 1999 it came to wider attention when used by crooked Hillary Clinton of her husband, serial philander Bill Clinton.  Crooked Hillary must have picked up the expression while living in Arkansas; she began her ascent of the political and financial ladder by marrying Bill Clinton and with every election of him there as attorney-general (1977-1979) or governor (1979-1981 & 1983-1992), voters received a free copy of crooked Hillary.  When he became POTUS, she remained part of the package as FLOTUS 1993-2001, the consensus among political scientists that “he’d never have made it without her and vice-versa”.  Wives often of course do sometimes leave husbands who refuse to “stay on the porch” but crooked Hillary stayed and that was a defensible decision because, like many transactional relationships, the choice of “stay or go” is a thing of cost-benefit analysis; in a marriage, like most of life, for everything you do there’s a price to be paid.  

Problem-solver crooked Hillary finds a solution.

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; FLOTUS 1993-2001, far left), Chelsea Clinton (b 1980; FDOTUS 1993-2001, centre left), Bill Clinton, centre right) and Buddy (1997-2002; FD²OTUS 1997-2001, far right), strolling over the White House lawn, prior to a two-week vacation at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, 18 August 1998.  Unfortunately, crooked Hillary's expectation she'd found a companion loyal enough to “stay on the porch” wasn't realized, Buddy killed in a road accident outside the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York after running off to chase a car (though the vehicle wasn't one of the rare Monica 560s).  Whether to this day crooked Hillary blames her husband for “giving Buddy ideas” isn't known but certainly, he set the dog a bad example. 

What Can I Say (1983), original vinyl pressing by Gail Davies.  Record store staff weren’t always fastidious when applying the adhesive promotional stickers.

South of the Mason-Dixon Line, the expression must also have had some currency in the form “hard dog to keep under the porch” which indicates, at least in some cases or places, the particular significance of the architectural space was the roof rather than the floor.  The C&W (Country & Western) song You're a Hard Dog (To Keep Under the Porch) was co-written by Susanna Clark (1939–2012) and the extraordinarily prolific (credited with over 4000 C&W songs) Harlan Howard (1927-2002); it was first recorded by Gail Davies (b 1948) and released on What Can I Say (1983), her fifth studio album (a question mark not used in the album’s title).

Porch joke

An unemployed man went door-to-door, seeking jobs.  Impressed by the work-ethic, after agreeing an hourly rate, one resident handed him a brush and two large cans of green paint, telling him: “You can go and paint the porch out back.”  Three hours later the man returned and said: “I done finished the painting mister and I done a good job but I swear to you sir, that ain’t no Porsh, it be a Ferrari.”  In the original German, Porsche is pronounced with two syllables (Paw-shuh), not the sometimes heard, single syllable Porsh.  In German, the final “e” is pronounced as a short uh.

Some paint required: 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial, as sold (top left) and on-track in period (top right) and 1972 Dino 246 GT, fire damaged (bottom left) and a 1972 246 GT in Medium Green Metallizzato over Nero leather (bottom right).  It's believed the factory finished only 21 of the 2,295 246 GTs coupés or 1,274 246 GTS spyders (targas) in Medium Green Metallizzato but another shade of green, Verde Medio Nijinsky, was rarer still, only three of those leaving the line.  The Dino was advertised for sale at US$129,500 and was sold although the price paid was not disclosed.  The wrecked 500 Mondial (the second one built and one of 13 examples with Pininfarina spider coachwork) at auction in August 2023 realized US$1.875 million.  It has yet to resurface, restored or otherwise.

A classic Queenslander with the porches the locals tend to call verandas.  Many Queenslanders were built on stilts: (1) to encourage natural cooling, (2) as a form of flood mitigation, (3) to facilitate easier pest and termite control and (4) to make hilly sites adaptable to house construction.

The term “vernacular architecture” entered the jargon of the profession in 1964 after being coined by Austrian-born US architect Bernard Rudofsky (1905–1988).  It describes indigenous designs or methods of construction that evolved organically to suit local climates, available construction materials, social traditions and specific human needs.  In Queensland, Australia, the signature “vernacular architecture” was and remains the “Queenslander” although they’re less common than in their heyday.  In its classic form, a Queenslander can be imagined as a “house with a wrap-around porch” although the local term has long been “veranda”.  At scale, the style seems to have emerged in the 1840s as the optimal way, for a given footprint, to maximize air-flow and reduce internal temperatures, things of consequence in the sub-tropics and, in the age before electricity (let alone air-conditioning) much appreciated by British & European migrants from more temperate, less humid regions.  Much of Queensland also was subject to hard rain and the verandas provided expansive living, eating and even sleeping spaces which could be used rain, hail or shine.  Snow and ice rarely was an issue.

The Erechtheion and the Caryatid Porch

The Erechtheion on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece.

One of the world’s most famous porches is the most striking feature of the Erechtheion (from the Ancient Greek Ἐρέχθειον (Erékhtheion)), an Ancient Greek Ionic temple-telesterion on the north side of the Acropolis, dedicated to the goddess Athena.  Built late in the fifth century BC, the Erechtheion was one of the first major projects following the devastation of the Greco-Persian Wars, the re-building of the Acropolis thus vested with all the symbolic ambition of a “civilization reborn”.  Given that, while the mathematically precise lines of the Parthenon impart a projection of order, rationality, and imperial confidence, the Erechtheion seems architecturally anarchic but it too was a piece of messaging, preserving ancient, sacred traditions within the new Classical architectural.  Unlike so many of the neat, consistent, often symmetrical structures which have survived from Antiquity, the Erechtheion is an architectural outlier because the design needed simultaneously to solve several political, religious and topographical problems.  Even today, it would be a challenge on the site to fulfil the demands while achieving the symmetrical perfection normally associated with Classical Greek temples.  For those reasons, anyone undertaking a tour of Roman and Greek ruins would, on first sight, find the Erechtheion startling, the look fragmented and seemingly so improvised many might assume additions have over the years been “tacked-on”.  The irregularity was deliberate, the location not being dedicated to a single deity; as well as honoring King Erechtheus, the architects were compelled to incorporate several ancient cult sites and sacred objects associated with Athena, Poseidon, and a grab-bag of local heroes and ancestral cults.

From the right angle, on the right day the Erechtheion can make a memorable photograph.

Mostly though, despite the name, the myth most celebrated was the legend of the site being the place where Athena and Poseidon competed for patronage of Athens, dedicated cultists holding the soil contained physical remnants of the epic contest including a sacred salt-water spring, Poseidon’s trident mark etched in the rock and Athena’s olive tree.  Because these relics of the past were in architecturally inconvenient places, the structure of the Erechtheion had to be “built around them”, thus precluding the simple rectangular floor plan and associated motifs which are such a marker of the temples from Antiquity.  The topography was also significant, the Acropolis rock beneath sloping sharply, meaning the surface was uneven.  As a piece of civil engineering this could of course have been levelled (if one had enough time and slaves, mountains could be moved) but that would have disturbed the relics so the work proceeded on what was a most irregular surface.  That made construction more of a challenge but did result in one of Antiquity’s most striking temples, the east and west sides at different heights, the interior chambers located on floors and varied levels and porches are placed asymmetrically, one consequence being it emerging as a complex of interconnected sanctuaries rather than the more familiar, single unified hall.

Within are several shrines, the eastern section dedicated to Athena Polias (Athena of the City), while the western portions were associated with Poseidon-Erechtheus and hero cults (best thought of as “best supporting actors” in Academy Award (Oscar) terms) meaning the entrances and their associated porches and portici served different ritual functions.  Although the layout and form were dictated by circumstances, in many ways, what was done proved a harbinger for much of public architecture in the centuries to come as the shape of “multi-function” buildings began increasingly to include physical segregation between spaces in both the horizontal and vertical with separate provisions for ingress and egress.  So while not “geometrically pure” in the Greek way, there’s an organic charm to the Erechtheion although Athenian citizens upon a first sight must have thought it peculiar or even weird architecture; the “shock of the new” is not unique to modernity.

The Caryatid Porch, the Porch of the Maidens.

The structure’s most famous and oft-photographed feature is the south porch, supported by a half dozen sculpted female figures: the Caryatids.  Caryatids was from the Middle French cariatide, from the Latin caryatides, from the Ancient Greek Καρυάτιδες (Karuátides), the noun plural of Καρυᾶτις (Karuâtis) (a priestess of Artemis, female figures used as bearing-shafts), from καρυατίζω (karuatízō) (dance the Karyatid festival dance) from Καρύαι (Karúai) (a town in Laconia with a temple of Artemis and the site of festivals in her honor).  The orthodox etymology is disputed by some scholars but the literal translation of karyatides is “maidens of Karyai” (an ancient Peloponnese settlement) and the young ladies from there were legendarily beautiful & healthy (and thus ideal “breeding stock”, good genes then as sought in mothers as they were in livestock).  In the language of architecture, caryatids were sculpted female figures used as supports in the manner of a column or pillar.  By necessity of physics, most caryatids supported the entablature (all of that part of a classical temple above the capitals of the columns; includes the architrave, frieze, and cornice but not the roof) on the head rather than the raised arms often seen in free-standing statutes, this done for reasons of structural integrity rather than aesthetics although it was a nod also to the notion of the girls of Karyai often being depicted as a canephora (basket-bearer), carrying to feasts of the goddesses Athena and Artemis fruits, nuts or sacred objects in woven cane baskets they placed on their heads.

The Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece.

The Parthenon is the classic example of the Greek temple and more representative of the type than the Erechtheion.  It was proto-second wave feminist comrade Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong 1893–1976; chairman of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) 1949-1976) who reminded Chinese men “Women hold up half the sky” although he made the famous remark in 1968 at the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) which makes for an amusing historical juxtaposition.  Still, it does suggest that even if contemporary Athenians might have thought the Erechtheion a bit weird, the sight of a half-dozen young ladies holding up a roof built by a culture which was patriarchal (as was then the way) would have pleased the comrade Chairman who’d have felt assured the architects were good Maoists, the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) first constitution (1954) implying gender equality in Article 85 (Citizens of the People's Republic of China are equal before the law) and made explicit in Article 86 (Citizens of the People's Republic of China are equal before the law) & Article 96 (Women in the People's Republic of China enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of political, economic, cultural, social and domestic life).  Reading the PRC’s 1954 constitution, it clear the place was as much as a paradise for citizens as the Soviet Union must have been based on comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) 1936 constitution although in Article 86 of the PRC’s document it was mentioned rights could be denied to those the state declared “insane”, a clause which proved handy over the years, as did a similar provision in the USSR.

The Parthenon, Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee.

Designed by architect William Crawford Smith (1837–1899), the Parthenon which stands in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee, was built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition.  A full-scale reproduction of the original, it's now an art museum and in the Treasury Room are displayed plaster replicas of the Parthenon Marbles, cast from the original sculptures.  In the nineteenth century, Nashville was one of a number of cities around the world often styled "the Athens of the South" and this doubtless had some influence on the choice of the building as the exposition's centrepiece but while some of the other structures erected for the event were in the style of buildings from antiquity, the Parthenon was the only one to use exact dimensions.  The 1897 structure was intended to last only for the duration of the exposition and was thus built with plaster, wood & brick but such was the local support for its retention it was left standing, soon beginning to deteriorate.  By 1920 however it was a noted tourist attraction and had become accepted as a feature of the city so, on the same foundations, it was rebuilt in concrete, the project completed in 1931.  Concrete however doesn't possess the same qualities of durability as granite and marble so for the replica to maintain its appearance and structural integrity, progressive replacements of components will be required, engineers noting the essentially modular nature of the construction means it may never need wholly to be re-built.  If it endures long enough, it may end up as something of a Ship of Theseus.

The new headquarters of the state media’s China Daily during construction.  When finished if looked less confronting but one can see why the President Xi knew there had to be a good, hard crackdown on “weird architecture” being erected.

Much in the PRC has of course changed since comrade Chairman Mao’s time although gender equality remains constitutionally entrenched and that no women ever have made it to the Politburo’s ruling Central Committee may simply reflect them not trying hard enough, after all, during all those decades the One-Child Policy (1980-2016) was in effect, it’s not as if they could complain about the demands on their time made by raising a large family.  Still, the spirit of “Women hold up half the sky” must remain current thought in Beijing but whether President Xi Jinping (b 1953; General Secretary of the CCP & paramount leader of the PRC since 2012) would have approved of either the maidens of the Caryatid Porch "holding up all the roof" or the Erechtheion’s many other architectural idiosyncrasies may be doubtful.  As early as 2014, not best pleased by the stylistic exuberance seen in China's recent skyscrapers, Mr Xi called for an end to what he called “weird architecture”, telling planners buildings should be “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye” rather than “oversized, xenocentric & weird”.  It might be concluded that while he’d have admired the elegant simplicity of the lines of the Parthenon, Mr Xi would have used of the Erechtheion the same critique he may (in words echoing an earlier critic of aesthetics) have levelled at what he was seeing on the Beijing skyline: “muddle, chaotic, dissonant, confused and intentionally ugly”.  China’s architects he may have accused of building stuff that was “weird” but, well-skilled at reading between the CCP's lines, they’d have understood they’d just been labeled “formalists”.  Carefully, they took note.

Now replicas but, thousands of years on, still doing the job.

Although at the time the caryatids were a highly unconventional addition to a major temple, as an architectural motif, they were not unique as replacements for columns or pillars, the later male versions being the telamon or atlas; unlike the caryatids, the male analogues sometimes were carved on a vast scale.  Nor was the structural technique only anthropomorphic, roofs sometimes supported by renderings in the shape of swords, serpents, fish or other wildlife although what some Instagrammers may not realize is the figures today dutifully holding up the roof of the Erechtheion’s Caryatid Porch are immaculately rendered reproductions, the originals safely preserved as displays in the Acropolis Museum except for one which sits in the British Museum.  That one was “obtained” by Lord Elgin (1766–1841) during his expeditions to Greece between 1800-1803 when he “purchased” (disputed by the government of Greece which suggests something like “plundered”) what came to be known as the “Elgin Marbles”.

Press

Press (pronounced pres)

(1) To act upon with steadily applied weight or force.

(2) To move by weight or force in a certain direction or into a certain position.

(3) To compress or squeeze, as to alter in shape or size.

(4) To hold closely, as in an embrace; clasp.

(5) To flatten or make smooth, especially by ironing.

(6) To extract juice, sugar, etc from by pressure.

(7) To manufacture (phonograph records, videodiscs, or the like), especially by stamping from a mold or matrix.

(8) To exert weight, force, or pressure.

(9) In weightlifting, to raise or lift, especially a specified amount of weight, in a press.

(10) To iron clothing, curtains, etc.

(11) To bear heavily, as upon the mind.

(12) To compel in another, haste, a change of opinion etc.

(13) Printed publications, especially newspapers and periodicals.  Collectively, all the media and agencies that print, broadcast, or gather and transmit news, including newspapers, newsmagazines, radio and television news bureaus, and wire services.

(14) The editorial employees, taken collectively, of these media and agencies.

(15) To force into military service.

1175-1225: From the Middle English press & presse (throng, trouble, machine for pressing) from the Old French, from presser (to press) from the Latin pressāre, frequentative of premere (past participle pressus).  In Medieval Latin it became pressa (noun use of the feminine of pressus).  The noun press (a crowd, throng, company; crowding and jostling of a throng; a massing together) emerged in the late twelfth century and was from the eleventh century Old French presse (a throng, a crush, a crowd; wine or cheese press), from the Latin pressare.  Although in the Late Old English press existed in the sense of "clothes press", etymologists believe the Middle English word is probably from French.  The general sense of an "instrument or machine by which anything is subjected to pressure" dates from the late fourteenth century and was first used to describe a "device for pressing cloth" before being extended to "devices which squeeze juice from grapes, oil from olives, cider from apples etc".  The sense of "urgency; urgent demands of affairs" emerged in the 1640s.  It subsequently proved adaptable as a technical term in sports, adopted by weightlifting in 1908 while the so-called (full-court press) defense in basketball was first recorded in 1959.  Press is a noun & verb, pressingness is a noun, pressing is a noun, verb & adjective, pressed is a verb & adjective and pressingly is an adverb; the noun plural is presses.  The now archaic verb prest was a simple past and past participle of press.

Fleet Street's last "hot-metal" press, now a permanent exhibit at National Science Museum's Science and Innovation Park, Wroughton, England.

Installed originally in the 1930s to print the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, the apparatus is some 9 metres (29½ feet) high and 9½ metres (31 feet) long, weighing 140 tonnes (154 short tons).  Given the bulk, the museum's management have good reason to make this exhibit permanent.  Although considerably more intricate than the printing presses of 500 years earlier, the operators of those would still have recognized and understood the processes and mechanisms.

The specific sense "machine for printing" was from the 1530s, extended by the 1570s to publishing houses and to publishing generally (in phrases like freedom of the press) from circa 1680 although meaning gradually shifted in early 1800s to "periodical publishing; journalism".  Newspapers collectively came to be spoken of as "the press" simply because they were printed on printing presses and the use to mean "journalists collectively" is attested from 1921 but this has faded from use with the decline in print and the preferred reference has long been “the news media”, Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) helpfully distinguishing between the news media (those agreeing with him) and the fake new media (those not).  The first gathering called a press conference is attested from 1931, though the thing itself had been around for centuries (and in some sense formalized during World War I (1914-1918)) although a politician appears first to have appointed a “press secretary” as late as 1940; prior to that there was some reluctance among politicians to admit they had people on the payroll to "manage the press" but the role long pre-dates 1940.  The term “press release” (an official statement offered to a newspaper and authorized for publication) is from 1918 although the practice was of long-standing.  The sense "force into military (especially naval) service" emerged (most famously in the “press-gang” (a detachment under command of an officer empowered to press men into public service)) in the 1570s, an alteration (by association with the verb press) of the mid-fourteenth century prest (engage by loan, pay in advance (especially in reference to money paid to a soldier or sailor on enlisting), from the Latin praestare (to stand out, stand before; fulfill, perform, provide), the construct being prae- (before) + stare (to stand), from the primitive Indo-European root sta- (to stand, make or be firm).  The verb was related to praesto (ready, available).  The concept of "press ganging" to obtain men for military service is ancient but in the codified way it was done by the Royal Navy it remains the Admiralty's greatest contribution to HRM (human resource management).  

Rupert Murdoch (b 1931), Fleet Street, London, 1969.

Mr Murdoch is pictured with one of the first copies of the new The Sun newspaper, “hot off the press”, the print-run in November 1969 the first since his acquisition of the title.  Ownership of the The Sun proved handy because, after being compelled to close the long-running News of the World in the wake of the "phone hacking scandal", in 2012 Mr Murdoch created a Sunday edition of The Sun, meaning he needed to maintain only one 7-day tabloid rather than two (and the two titles were more similar than they were different); once again, following a crisis, things worked out rather well for Mr Murdoch.  It was Mr Murdoch who added the topless “Page 3 girls” to the Sun, prompting one media analyst to conclude: “Well, Rupert Murdoch has found a gap in the market, the oldest gap in the world”.

In 1969, the phrase “hot off the press” was literal because the old “hot type” presses used the heat in the hand-assembled metal plates to complete the chemical process by which ink end up on paper.  Prepared even to sustain loss-making mastheads if he thinks their continued existence fulfils some useful purpose (such as “influence” or “agenda-setting”), Mr Murdoch clearly retains some residual affection for the print titles on which he built his empire(s) but the old expression “printer's ink in his veins” now is nuanced because although his papers still consume much ink and paper, more than anyone he was responsible for the demise of the old “hot type” printing presses which had evolved over centuries.  Modern newspapers still are printed with a form of ink but, mostly using a process called web offset printing (a variant of offset lithography, optimized for speed and high throughput), that "ink" is so low in viscosity it’s better imagined as a paste.  Usually petroleum or soy-based, the substance is transferred from a metal plate to a rubber "blanket" and, as the newsprint (porous paper in continuous rolls) moves through the press, the ink is applied to the paper as shapes, text and images.  The ink’s chemistry is formulated to ensure absorption into newsprint is close to instantaneous; in this the mix differs from traditional inks which could take seconds or even minutes to dry to the point printed paper could be handled without smudging, drying now achieved almost wholly by absorption and evaporation, not heat-fusing.  To gain speed, there was a trade-off in quality in that being relatively thin, the ink produces less color saturation than is achieved by what’s used for glossy magazines (which is why newspaper images look softer or slightly grayish).  That is of course acceptable because newspapers have a short life, an idea encapsulated by the band the Rolling Stones that in 1967 sang “Who wants yesterday’s papers. Nobody in the world.” although the meaning of that track was better summed up in the line: “Who wants yesterdays girl.”

Cover girl Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) amply filling the cover of Cosmopolitan's “Love Edition”, January 2026; content providers like Ms Sweeny will help ensure the survival of at least some print titles.  A tablet computer and a printed glossy are just two different technologies and whether a magazine like Cosmopolitan or a newspaper like The Economist, reading the physical copy tends to be more pleasing, tactile experience.

However, just as Mr Murdoch was in the 1980s instrumental in consigning the old printing presses to the scrapheap (along with a substantial number of the unionized workforce previously employed to maintain and run them), he’s also seen technological advances impose not always welcome changes on his business model, some of the implications of which he discussed in 2006: “To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.”  He may have been too pessimistic because, in the 2020s, watching Mr Murdoch’s Fox News, it’s not immediately obvious the people have “taken control” and a more glum analysis suggests the elites merely have done what elites always have sought to do as conditions shift: keep the strategy, adjust the tactics.  Still, although printed newspapers no longer need to exist, nostalgic types who enjoy the ritualism of reading one spread on a table while taking a coffee (and maybe even a cigarette) will miss them when they’re gone so they at least will wish Mr Murdoch many more years of rude good health because whether the print titles will survive his (God forbid) death isn’t certain.  Despite that uncertainty, most analysts seem to believe print in its (possibly diminishing) niches will likely endure.  Some of the glossies continue to flourish and encouragingly, the pleasingly quirky automotive site Petrolicious (revived after being acquired by the duPont Registry Group in 2024) has brought back its printed, tabloid size monthly Petrolicious Post (US$9.00 cover price, US$108.00 annual subscription), the internet lowering the costs associated with such projects by permitting direct-to-customer distribution without the need to supply newsstands.

Most meanings related to pushing and exerting pressure had formed by the mid-fourteenth century and this had been extended to mean "to urge or argue for" by the 1590s.  The early fourteenth century pressen (to clasp, hold in embrace) extended in meaning by the mid century also to mean "to squeeze out" & "to cluster, gather in a crowd" and by the late 1300s, "to exert weight or force against, exert pressure" (and also "assault, assail" & "forge ahead, push one's way, move forward", again from the thirteenth century Old French presser (squeeze, press upon; torture)", from the Latin pressare (to press (the frequentative formation from pressus, past participle of premere (to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress), from the primitive Indo-European root per- (to strike)).  The sense of "to reduce to a particular shape or form by pressure" dates from the early fifteenth century while the figurative (“to attack”) use was recorded some decades earlier.  The meaning "to urge; beseech, argue for" dates from the 1590s.

The letter-press referred to matter printed from relief surfaces and was a term first used in the 1840s (the earlier (1771) description had been "text," as opposed to copper-plate illustration).  The noun pressman has occasionally been used to refer to newspaper journalists but in the 1590s it described "one who operates or has charge of a printing press" and was adopted after the 1610s to refer to "one employed in a wine-press".  A similar sharing of meaning attached to the pressroom which in the 1680s meant "a room where printing presses are worked" and by 1902 it was also a "room (in a courthouse, etc.) reserved for the use of reporters".  To press the flesh (shake hands) came into use in 1926 and a neglected use of “pressing” is as a form of torture.  Under a wide variety of names, pressing was a popular method of torture or execution for over four-thousand years; mostly using rocks and stones but elephants tended to be preferred in South and South-East Asia.  It’s a medieval myth that Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) invented pressing but he certainly adopted it as a method of torture with his usual enthusiasm for such things.  Across the channel, under the French civil code, Peine forte et dure (forceful and hard punishment) defined pressing.  Used when a defendant refused to plead, the victim would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the subject to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

Pressed for time: Giles Corey's Punishment and Awful Death (1692), a drawing held by the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC.  Watched by a presumably approving crowd, the technique was to place stones upon the board covering the unfortunate soul: The “straw which broke the camel’s back” principle.

Remembered as a method use for torture and to extract confessions, the technique of pressing was known often as “crushing” if used in executions or the unfortunate victim of a pressing were to die.  Giles Corey was a farmer of 81 who lived in south-west Salem village, Massachusetts who had been accused of witchcraft, then a fashionable charge in Salem (despite the perception, it wasn't only women who were arraigned as witches).  He chose not to enter a plea and simply remained mute in court, prompting the judges to order the coercive measure peine forte et dure, an ancient legal device dating from thirteenth century Anglo-Norman law and which translated literally as “a long and hard punishment”; it was used to persuade those who refused to engage in process to change their mind (ie forcing an accused to enter a plea).  In the First Statute of Westminster (3 Edward I. c. 12; 1275) it stated (in Sir Edward Coke’s (1552–1634) later translation):  “That notorious Felons, which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in Enquests of Felonies that Men shall charge them with before the Justices at the King’s suit, shall have strong and hard Imprisonment (prisone forte et dure), as they which refuse to stand to the common Law of the Land.”

Prisone forte et dure came into use because of the principle in English law that a court required the accused voluntarily to seek its jurisdiction over a matter before it could hear the case, the accused held to have expressed this request by entering a plea.  Should an accused refuse to enter a plea, the court could not hear the case which, constructively, was an obvious abuse of process in the administration of justice so the work-around was to impose a “coercive means”.  The First Statute of Westminster however refers to prisone forte et dure (a strong and hard imprisonment) and it does seem the original intent was to subject the recalcitrant to imprisonment under especially harsh conditions (bread & water and worse) but at some point in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries there seems to have been a bit of mission creep and the authorities were interpreting things to permit pressing.  The earliest known document confirming a death is dated 1406 but it’s clear that by then pressing was not novel with the court acknowledging that if the coercive effect was not achieved, the accused certainly would die.  One who might have been pleased the law had moved on from torturing defendants who declined to enter a plea was Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941).  Appearing before the IMT (International Military Tribunal) in the first Nuremberg Trial which heard the cases against two dozen of the surviving leading Nazis, those in the dock all pleaded "not guilty" except Hess who stood at the microphone, said "nein" (no) and walked back to his place.  Dryly, the IMT's president responded:  "That will be recorded as a plea of 'not guilty'".  There was laughter in the court.  

Pressed Duck

Caneton à la presse, Aus$190 (US$122) at Philippe Restaurant (Melbourne).

Pressed duck (In the French the dish described variously as canard à la presse, caneton à la presse, canard à la rouennaise, caneton à la rouennaise or canard au sang) is one of the set-pieces of traditional French cuisine and the rarity with which it's now served is accounted for not by its complexity but the time-consuming and labor-intensive steps in its preparation.  Regarded as a specialty of Rouen, the creation was attributed to an innkeeper from the city of Duclair.  Expensive and now really more of a set-piece event than a meal, pressed duck in the twenty-first century rarely appears on menus and is often subject to conditions such as being ordered up to 48 hours in advance or accompanied with the pre-payment of at least a deposit.  Inevitably too there will be limits on the number available because a restaurant will have only so many physical duck presses and if that’s just one, then it’s one pressed duck per sitting and, given what’s involved, that means one per evening.  Some high-end a la carte restaurants do still have it on the menu including La Tour d'Argent in Paris, Philippe Restaurant in Melbourne, Ottos in London, À L'aise in Oslo, The Charles in Sydney (a version with dry-aged Maremma duck) and Pasjoli in Los Angeles lists caneton à la presse as its signature dish.

Pressed duck sequence of events: The duck press (left), pressing the duck (centre) & pressed duck (right).

Instructions

(1) Select a young, plump duck.

(2) Wringing the neck, quickly asphyxiate duck, ensuring all blood is retained.

(3) Partially roast duck.

(4) Remove liver; grind and season liver.

(5) Remove breast and legs.

(6) Take remaining carcass (including other meat, bones, and skin) and place in duck-press.

(7) Apply pressure in press to extract and collect blood and other juices from carcass.

(8) Take extracted blood, thicken and flavor with the duck's liver, butter, and Cognac.  Combine with the breast to finish cooking.  Other ingredients that may be added to the sauce include foie gras, port wine, Madeira wine, and lemon.

(9) Slice the breast and serve with sauce as a first serving; the legs are broiled and served as the next course.

Silverplate Duck Press (Item# 31-9128) offered at M.S. Rau Antiques (Since 1912) in New Orleans at US$16,850.

According to culinary legend, the mechanism of the screw-type appliance was perfected in the late nineteenth century by chefs at the Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris, the dish then called canard au sang (literally “duck in its blood”), a description which was accurate but presumably “pressed duck” was thought to have a wider appeal.  The example pictured is untypically ornate with exquisite foliate scrollwork and delicate honeycomb embossing on the base.  Although associated with the famous dish, outside of the serving period, chefs used duck presses for other purposes where pressing was required including the preparation of stocks or confits (various foods that have been immersed in a substance for both flavor and preservation).

Pressed duck got a mention in a gushing puff-piece extolling the virtues of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) which, in the pre-war years, was a remarkably fertile field of journalistic endeavour on both sides of the Atlantic.  William George Fitz-Gerald (circa 1970-1942) was a prolific Irish journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Ignatius Phayre and the English periodical Country Life published his account of a visit to the Berchtesgaden retreat on the invitation of his “personal friend” Adolf Hitler.  That claim was plausible because although when younger Fitz-Gerald’s writings had shown some liberal instincts, by the “difficult decade” of the 1930s, experience seems to have persuaded him the world's problems were caused by democracy and the solution was an authoritarian system, headed by what he called “the long looked for leader.”  Clearly taken by his contributor’s stance, in introducing the story, Country Life’s editor called Hitler “one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the century” and noted “the Führer is fond of painting in water-colours and is a devotee of Mozart.”

Country Life, March 1936 (both Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945)   (1893–1946) and Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946; Reichsminister of War 1935-1938) (1878–1946) were then generals and not field marshals, von Blomberg raised to the rank in April 1936, Göring in February 1938).  Göring wearing the traditional southern German Lederhosen (leather pants) must have been a sight worth seeing.

Substantially, the piece in Country Life also appeared in the journal Current History with the title: Holiday with Hitler: A Personal Friend Tells of a Personal Visit with Der Führer — with a Minimum of Personal Bias”.  In hindsight it may seem a challenge for a journalist, two years on from the regime’s well-publicized murders of a least dozens of political opponents (and some unfortunate bystanders who would now be classed as “collateral damage”) in the pre-emptive strike against the so-called “Röhm putsch”, to keep bias about the Nazis to a minimum although many in his profession did exactly that, some notoriously.  It’s doubtful Fitz-Gerald visited the Obersalzberg when claimed or that he ever met Hitler because his story is littered with minor technical errors and absurdities such as Der Führer personally welcoming him upon touching down at Berchtesgaden’s (non-existent) aerodrome or the loveliness of the cherry orchid (not a species to survive in alpine regions).  Historians have concluded the piece was assembled with a mix of plagiarism and imagination, a combination increasingly familiar since the internet encouraged its proliferation.  Still, with the author assuring his readers Hitler was really more like the English country gentlemen with which they were familiar than the frightening and ranting “messianic” figure he was so often portrayed, it’s doubtful the Germans ever considered complaining about the odd deviation from the facts and just welcomed the favourable publicity.

So, those who complain about the early implementations of consumer generative AI (artificial intelligence) products "making stuff up" to "fill in the gaps" can be assured it's something with a long (if not noble) tradition among flesh & blood content providers whether they be the Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda or a working journalist hustling for a dollar.  Generative AI is likely for some time to remain in its "early implementation" phase so should be used with much the same approach as that taken by the inspection teams of the US & USSR when auditing the outcomes of various SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) agreements: "trust but verify".  As a working journalist, Fitz-Gerald became used to editing details so he could sell essentially the same piece to several different publications, cutting & pasting (then often literally done with scissors and glue-pot) as required, Current History’s subscribers spared the lengthy descriptions of the Berghof’s carpets, curtains and furniture enjoyed by Country Life’s readers who were also able to learn of the food served at der Tabellenführer, the Truite saumonée à la Monseigneur Selle (salmon trout Monseigneur style) and caneton à la presse (pressed duck) both praised although in all the many accounts of life of the court circle’s life on the Obersalzberg, there no mention of the vegetarian Hitler ever having such things on the menu.

Indeed, in Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled that belying the impression of excess created by the regime’s gaudy spectacles and monumentalist architecture, there was little extravagance at Hitler’s table, fresh vegetables his single gastronomic indulgence (although his weakness for sweet pastries and cakes has been well documented).  Describing things, Speer wrote: “The food was emphatically simple.  A soup, no appetizer, meat with vegetables and potatoes, a sweet.  For beverage we had a choice between mineral water, ordinary Berlin bottled beer, or a cheap wine.  Hitler was served his vegetarian food, drank Fachinger mineral water, and those of his guests who wished could imitate him.  But few did.  It was Hitler himself who insisted on this simplicity.  He could count on its being talked about in Germany.  Once, when the Helgoland fishermen presented him with a gigantic lobster, this delicacy was served at table, much to the satisfaction of the guests, but Hitler made disapproving remarks about the human error of consuming such ugly monstrosities. Moreover, he wanted to have such luxuries forbidden, he declared.  Göring seldom came to these meals.  Once, when I left him to go to dinner at the Chancellery, he remarked: ‘To tell the truth, the food there is too rotten for my taste.  And then, these party dullards from Munich!  Unbearable.’"

The tabloid press: On 29 November 2006, News Corp's New York Post ran its front page with a paparazzi photo of Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), Britney Spears (b 1981) and Paris Hilton (b 1981), the snap taken outside a Los Angeles nightclub, shortly before dawn.  Remembered for the classic tabloid headline Bimbo Summit, the car was Ms Hilton's Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).

The term "tabloid press" refers to down-market style of journalism designed to enjoy wide appeal through an emphasis on scandals, sensation and sport, featuring as many celebrities as possible.  The word tabloid was originally a trademark for a medicine which had been compressed into a small tablet, the construct being tab(let) + -oid (the suffix from the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the ο being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached), from εἶδος (eîdos) (form, likeness)).  From the idea of the pill being the small version of something bigger, tabloid came to be used to refer to miniaturized iterations of a variety of stuff, newspapers being the best known use.  A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet but despite the name, there is no standardized size for the format but it's generally about half the size of a broadsheet.  In recent decades, economic reality has intruded on the newspaper business and there are now a number of tabloid-sized newspapers (called "compacts" to distinguish them from the less reputable) which don't descend to the level of tabloid journalism (although there has been a general lowering of standards).

The Mean Girls (2004) Burn Book (left) and Lindsay Lohan burning an “inflammatory” tabloid magazine, Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, GQ Magazine, October 2006.

In Mean Girls, the Burn Book gained its notoriety from being packed with inflammatory comments.  In a visual critique of the tabloid press's "obsession" with her (admittedly incident-packed young) life, Lindsay Lohan in 2006 posed for a photo-shoot by Terry Richardson (b 1965) for GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) magazine.  Titled Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, the theme was her as a case-study of the way the “tabloid press” handled celebrity culture, the joke being a magazine with “inflammatory content about her” being literally set aflame, the glossy paper of course being flammable.  It’s appears a consensus in the “media studies” crew this aspect of “tabloid culture” peaked in the first dozen-odd years of the twenty-first century, the reasons for that including (1) the period having an exceptionally large cast of suitable subjects, (2) smart phones with HD (high-definition) cameras becoming consumer items meaning potential content proliferated (ie what once would not have been photographed now became available to editors as low cost images) and (3) social media sites not having attained critical mass, all factors which at the time enabled the lower-end glossies to flourish.