Harlequin

Harlequin (pronounced hahr-luh-kwin or hahr-luh-kin)

(1) A stock comic character, depicted usually wearing a black mask and dressed in multicolored, diamond-patterned tights, often with a wooden sword or magic wand (often with initial capital)

(2) In theater, the most famous of the zanni (the comic servant characters) from the Italian commedia dell'arte (from the Italian Arlecchino or one of its many variants (Arlechin, Arlechì etc) which was associated with the city of Bergamo.  In English the character is best known as the foppish lover of Columbine in the English harlequinade.  The original spelling in Italian was Harlicken.

(3) A jester; a buffoon or oaf-like character; the pantomime fool.

(4) Any of various small snakes having bright diamond-pattern scales.

(5) Anything fancifully varied in color, decoration etc and in commerce sometimes of a specific product (such as harlequin ice-cream) and the eighteenth century English adjective particoloured is a reference to the absurdity of a Harlequin’s costume.

(6) Of a greenish-chartreuse color (a specialized use in certain industries and used sometimes both as harlequin-green & harlequin-yellow).

(7) A clipping of “harlequin's mask”.

(8) In writing, something comic, ludicrous or absurd.

(9) In geology, a classification of opal,

(10) In fashion, the use of multi-color combinations in other than an obviously discernible pattern.

(11) In medicine, as harlequin-type ichthyosis, (also clipped as harlequin ichthyosis), a severe genetic disorder that results in thickened skin over nearly the entire body at birth (“harlequin baby” & “harlequin foetus” the historic medical slang although use of both is now often discouraged.

(12) In zoology (as a modifier in the names of certain animals) having a white or light-hued coat with irregular patches of black or other dark colors including various snakes, ducks (used informally), a bat, a moth, a species of darter fish, the mantis shrimp, some insects & beetles and any of various riodinid butterflies of the genera Taxila and Praetaxila.

(13) To remove or conjure away, as if by a harlequin's trick; to perform antics or play ludicrous tricks.

1580–1590: From the French harlequin, from the Middle French arlequin & harlequin, semantically (and in part phonetically), from the Italian arlecchino, from the Middle French, phonetically continuing unattested the Old French mesniee Herlequin (more often appearing as la maisnie Hellequin (the household of Hellequin) although the spellings Harlequin, Halequin, Herlequin, Hierlekin & Hellekin also appear) (a malevolent spirit; leader of band of demon horsemen who rode at night (literally “Hellequin's escort”)), perhaps from the Middle English Herle (the (unattested) King Herle, a figure of legend identified with Woden), from the Old English Herla Cyning (or Herela Cyning; Helle cyn) (King Herle), rendered in the Anglo-Latin as Herla rex and related to the Middle English Hurlewain (a mischievous sprite or goblin).  Although it’s uncertain, etymologists think it likely the Old English forms were related to the Old Frisian helle kin and the Old Norse heljar kyn (the kindred of Hell).  One quirk noted in the theatrical history is the earliest known depictions of Harlequin are of a crass and bumbling servant rather than the amusing and magical hero familiar in the nineteenth century which would imply the accepted story of the origin being with the world of demonic horsemen and dark spirits might be suspect.  The other curiosity is the earliest known reference in a French text but it lists him among Italian characters, so the Italian origin remains probable.  .  Because of its origin in the name of an Italian theatrical character, Harlequin is often used as a proper noun (although the appearance of the initial capital is often incorrect).  Harlequin is a noun & adjective, harlequinade, harlequinery & harlequinism are nouns, harlequining & harlequined are verbs and harlequinesque & harlequin-like are adjectives; the noun plural is harlequins.

The logo and home-kit colors of Harlequin Football Club (1866).  A rugby union club and usually referred to as “Harlequins”, they're based at the Twickenham Stoop in south-west London.

The Germanic links includes the Old High German Herilo (a personal name, derivative of heri (armed forces) and the ultimate source of the Modern German Herres (Army), thus the World War II (1939-1945) institution OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres; the army high command), the companion structures being OKL (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe: the air force high command) & OKM (Oberkommando der Marine: the navy high command), all three structurally subordinate to OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht: the armed forces high command).  To the Allies that was a familiar military structure and it was only after the war it came to be understood how little coordination was imposed by OKW.

Clockwise from main image: Arlecchino, Arlequine, Arlequin & Colombine.  Commedia dell'arte costumes from Maurice Sand's Masques et Bouffons (Masks & Jesters), Paris 1860.

The English comic theatrical genre harlequinade evolved between the seventeen & nineteenth centuries and was a form in which clowns (not all of them in traditional harlequin garb) were the principal protagonists & antagonists.  Originally a physical form of comedy very much in the tradition of the Italian commedia dell'arte in which there were five main characters, the most celebrated of which were Harlequin and his lover Columbine, it evolved from a mime performance with music and a form of dance which, although choreographed, was designed to appear to the audience as unstructured and sometimes chaotic.  Dialogue was introduced as the appeal began to wane but the focus was always on the colorful visual spectacle, usually as relatively brief, intense performances being staged as a prelude to longer musicals, operas or even ballet.  In English theatre, the popularity of harlequinade endured until World War I (1914-1918), historians of theatre noting its successful adaptation to changing conditions in what was becoming a more crowded environment by incorporating increasingly elaborate stage effects.  The advent of cinema in the 1920s was the death knell for harlequinade which, labor-intensive and demanding a large inventory of props and equipment, had become an expensive production although the legacy lingers in the some aspects of the Christmas pantomimes which in the UK remain popular annual events.  The words pantomime entered English in the sixteenth or seventeenth century and was from the Latin pantomīmus, from the Ancient Greek παντόμιμος (pantómimos), the construct being πᾶς (pâs), (each, all) + μιμέομαι (miméomai) (I mimic), thus analyzed as “all on stage miming”, the name persisting as a generic description even after dialogue had been introduced to the performances.

Volkswagen and the Harlekin

1960s Volkswagen advertising in the US: inverted snobbery.

In a brief era of unprecedented and not since repeated general affluence, Volkswagen in 1960s America wasn’t able to compete with the domestic manufacturers with advertising emphasizing the qualities they liked to project: power, speed, style and in some cases, sheer size.  Instead they used a technique the industry called “inverted snobbery” which wasn’t new but the Volkswagen advertising of the time is thought still a classic example of the type.  Knowing the Beetle had a reputation for being slow, small and anything by stylish, the campaign took those perceptions and presented them as virtues, with wry humor emphasizing practicality and economy of operation.

1960s Volkswagen advertising in the US, the first VW “Harlequin” (the term not then used).

Also, at a time when Detroit made annual changes, often with no purpose other than to ensure the new cars in the showrooms looked different for last year’s model so status-conscious buyers would be stimulated to update, Volkswagen made a point of the Beetle looking much the same from season-to-season, one from 1954 barely distinguishable from the 1964 model.  For a number of reasons, the company choose usually to run the copy in black & white but there was one which really had to be in color: it featured a Beetle assembled with various panels from models made over five years, each in a different color, the harlequinesque effect said to have been achieved with physical paint on metal rather than air-brushing a photograph (doubts have be cast).  As well as the subliminal messaging about timelessness, there was the practical aspect of parts interchangeability which, so it was asserted, made spare parts more readily available, something which should presumably was intended to work in unison with the advertisement suggesting the most likely need for those parts would be if one let one’s wife drive.  That one might not be published today.

Der Polo Harlekin: Home market propaganda, 1995.

Whether carefully bolted together or just an air-brushed photograph, the harlequinesque Beetle might have remained a footnote in the annals of advertising had not something apparently unrelated appeared in the 1990s.  It’s all a bit murky but it’s clear that somewhere within Volkswagen (the tales vary), as an allusion to the soon to be announced “block construction” concept (green=paintwork; blue=engines & chassis; yellow=interior; red=special equipment), ten of the new VW Polos were built using panels of four different colors (Chagallblau (Chagall Blue, LD5D), Flashrot (Flash Red, LP3G), Ginstergelb (Ginster Yellow, L132) & Pistazie-grün (Pistachio Green, LD6D) for use as promotional vehicles.  A popular attraction after first appearing at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the much photographed cars generated so much publicity a further ten were built the following year to meet the demand from dealers who wanted one to display in their showrooms.  Selfies weren’t then a thing but many turned up to be snapped by a camera wielding companion and, most unexpectedly, dealers were reporting customers actually wanting to buy one.

Polo Harlekin color chart.

Despite this, Volkswagen’s corporate management wasn’t convinced there would be sufficient demand to make a production run viable but the inquiries from the public continued so a market study was conducted which confirmed the cult was real and it was announced that if 1000 were ordered, 1000 would be produced.  As a novelty, there were also 1000 key-chains with numbered certificates and this was to rationalize the production process because the buyers couldn’t choose the base color (ie the core structure to which was added doors and such).  The color of the "chassis" was identified by the roof, C-pillars, rocker panels & what lay beneath the plastic moldings, carpets and engine bay which was of some legal significance because the base color was associated with the title of ownership title and VIN (Vehicle Identification Number).  The 1000 were thus produced but in a what sounds a remarkably inefficient way, each Polo Harlekin painted as used on the standard production-line in the base color and then, by hand, disassembled and reassembled in accordance with the schedule of the Polo Harlekin color chart, the trick being that no two removable panels of the same color were touching.  In the 1960s, the colors had been an allusion to production-line standardization; by the 1990s, it was all about art (and commerce), though in a Prussian way (although the Harlekins were built in the south west), there being nothing random about which color went where.

Polo Harlekin brochure.  The look does seem something which wouldn't appeal to the stereotypical German; it may be they sold well to Bavarians, it being hard to imagine a Prussian driving one.  Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; chancellor of the German Empire (the so-called “Second Reich”) 1871-1890) described a Bavarian as “halfway between an Austrian and a human being” and had the "blood & iron chancellor" lived to see der Polo Harlekin he'd have said something like “Es ist sicherzustellen, dass sämtliche Paneele die gleiche Farbgebung aufweisen” (It must be ensured that all panels have the same colour scheme).    

Harlekin thematics: The colorful decal & shifter knob.

Despite the labor intensive nature of production, presumably the accountants would have calculated things and worked out it was less expensive than disrupting the production lines, the same conclusion reached by the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) when arranging two small runs of Mustangs (857 in 1969 & 499 in 1970) with the Boss 429 engine.  In the manner typical of such “specials”, added touches included a bright blue leather for the steering wheel, “Joker” plaid upholstery for the sport seats (so admired it would later appear in the “Joker” edition Polo), a Harlekin sticker on the hatch, blue piped floor mats, and Harlekin gear-shift knob.  The other options were the usual array for the Polo, the only surprise for one being which of the four color combinations one would receive when arriving to collect one’s Polo Harlekin.  The 1000 however didn’t satisfy demand so a further 2806 ended up being built, some even with right-hand-drive (RHD), all of which appear to have been sold in the UK, buyers in Australia, Japan and New Zealand denied the pleasure of their own Polo Harlekin.

1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin (US market).  The Americans didn't take to the cult as the Europeans had.

Inspired by the European’s embrace of the Harlekin concept, Volkswagen’s North American operation decided the new world too shouldn’t be denied the particoloured treat and in 1996, 264 Mark 3 Golfs (the VW formerly and briefly later known as the Rabbit) were produced for sale in the US, all of course configured with left-hand-drive (LHD), the main visual difference being the use of Tornadorot (Tornado Red, LY3D) while in accordance with local habits, most had automatic gearboxes.  Demand never went close to matching that in Europe and some sat unwanted in showrooms, one dealer in Georgia with eight on his hands had them re-made into single-color cars to attract buyers, the only remaining hint of difference the unique pattern in the grey upholstery.  That echoed what some Plymouth dealers resorted to in 1970 & 1971 to shift the remaining, outlandish Superbirds (now expensive collectables), buyers of the standard Road Runner then easier to find.  The Golf Harlequins haven’t attained quite that status but the oddballs have a following among VW enthusiasts and seem now to command a small price premium.

Made in Mexico: 1996 Volkswagen Beetle Harlequin.  All were originally LHD, this one converted in the UK to RHD.  

There was one more Volkswagen Harlequin and it was the rarest of all.  Although production in Germany ended in 1978 (the last cabriolets sold in the US the following year), Beetle production in Brazil lasted until 1996 and in Mexico until 2003.  Officially, all of the Beetle Harlequins (all of which were fitted with Digifant fuel injection) were produced in VW's Puebla plant and sold in the the home market, hand painted on Ginster Yellow bases.  Some have been photographed in Brazil but the factory denied involvement and, given Brazil’s long tradition of improvisation in such matters, it’s likely they were efforts by enterprising owners although it’s not impossible at least some were imported Mexican originals.

Margot Robbie (b 1990) in costume as Harley Quinn (a comic book character created by DC Comics), Suicide Squad (2016. left) and General Ratko Mladić (b 1942) admires the quiff of Dr Radovan Karadžić (b 1945; President of Republika Srpska 1992-1996) (right).  In the Balkans, this hairstyle is now called “The Karadžić”.

In Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn (the name a play on words based on the harlequins from the Italian theater commedia dell'arte) was a psychiatrist in an asylum for the criminally insane, led astray by one of her patients, later joining him in a life of crime.  In fiction, there have been depictions of frightening psychiatrists, notably Dr Hannibal Lecter, created by US novelist Thomas Harris (b 1940) and made infamous in the film The Silence of the Lambs (1991) but IRL (in real life), there have also been some less than admirable practitioners.  Dr Radovan Karadžić was a practicing psychiatrist before taking up politics and, after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), is now serving a life sentence.  His military commander, General Ratko Mladić was convicted on the same charges and received the same sentence.  As a region the Balkans is unusual in that while most parts of the world have been places where war occasionally breaks out, in the Balkans there are really just intervals between wars.  Students of such things can decide whether Harley Quinn was a worse character than Dr Karadžić but as far as is known she never wrote dull poetry so there’s that to be said for her.

Sonia Delaunay: The colors and shapes of orphism 

Nu en Jaune (Nude in Yellow (1908)), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay, Musée d'Arts de Nantes (The Museum of fine arts, Nantes, France).

In the sense the colourful Volkswagens are understood, “harlequin” cars predate not only the ventures of the 1990s which came at the dawn of the internet as a mass-market commodity but even the advertisement of 1960.  French artist Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) was born in Odessa but was adopted by a rich uncle, became multi-lingual, toured the great capitals of Europe and at 18 entered the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe State Academy of Art) in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.  After two years, she enrolled at the Académie de La Palette (The Palette Academy; 1888-1925) in Paris which had begun as a progressive art school but early in the century it evolved into a kind of finishing school (an “un foutu terrain de reproduction” (a damned breeding ground) according to some critics) for the avant-garde; the alumni of this short-lived institution is a notable list.

The Ball (1913 and originally Le Bal Bullier (the name of a Parisian ballroom)), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay, Centre Pompidou, Paris.  Some 3½ m (12 feet) wide, it is a classic piece in the school of Orphism.

Delaunay’s early work reflected both her academic training and the influences swirling around her but what was always striking was her use of color and a reluctance to adhere to the naturalistic.  These tendencies manifested especially in her role as one of the leading practitioners of Orphism, a fork of Cubism which usually is described as an exercise in pure abstraction rendered in vivid colors.  It was in part a reaction to the focus of the mainstream cubist artists on substantive subjects such as people or physical objects and their obvious aversion to using multiple color but as often seems to happen, Orphism did seem to evolve into of l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake).  Orphism seems to have been the at least the conduit through which Delaunay left the world of fine art an applied her talents to fashion, publications, fabrics, wallpaper industrial structures and machines, some of the most memorable of which were cars.

Escarpins (Court Shoes) (1925) by Sonia Delaunay, Musée de la mode et du textile, Paris (Museum of Fashion and Textiles, 1905-1986) (left) and Propeller (Air Pavilion) (1937), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay, a wall-sized work painted for the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques (International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life) (right). 

From Orphism she brought what she called “simultaneity”, the exercise of the interplay of colors, shapes and textures within the one visual space", a dynamic she would play with when posing with some of her creations, wearing clothing also rendered in the “simultaneity” style.  Even early in the century there had been “stunts” and debates about “what is art” and there is much in what Delaunay produced which can be seen as a precursor to later movements like surrealism and pop art although for those who want to deconstruct as reductively as the record allows, in a sense the path from some elements in prehistoric cave drawings to Dame Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022)  is lineal (with the odd diversion).

Vogue, January 1925, cover art by Georges Lepape.

Cars were among the many machines Delaunay decorated.  Triangles (and the diamond shapes they could combine to create) were one of the notable motifs of the art deco era.  From the start, Vogue was of course about frocks, shoes and such but its influence extended over the years to fields as diverse as interior decorating and industrial design.  The work of Georges Lepape (1887-1971) has long been strangely neglected in the history of art deco but he was a fine practitioner whose reputation probably suffered because his compositions have always been regarded as derivative or imitative which seems unfair given there are many who are more highly regarded despite being hardly original.  His cover art for Vogue’s edition of 1 January 1925 juxtaposed one of Delaunay’s (1885–1979) "simultaneous" pattern dresses and a Voisin roadster she'd decorated with an art deco motif.

1927 Voisin C14 Lumineuse.

One collector in 2015 was so taken with Pepape’s image that when refurbishing his Voisin C14 Lumineuse (literally “light”, an allusion to the Voisin’s greenhouse-inspired design which allowed natural light to fill the interior), he commissioned Dutch artist Bernadette Ramaekers to hand-paint a geometric triangular pattern in sympathy with that on the Vogue cover in 1925.  Ms Ramaekers took six months to complete the project and in 2022 the car sold at auction for £202,500 (US$230,000).  Produced during the whole inter-war period (1919-1939), the Voisin cars were among the most strikingly memorable of the era although for a variety of reasons, commercial viability was often marginal.  The demise was unfortunate because a manufacturer which once contemplated production of a straight-twelve engine deserved to survive.

Making the strange stranger.

There have been a few French cars which looked weirder than the Matra 530 (1967-1973 and not to be confused with the rather faster Matra R.530 air-to-air missile after which it was named) but the small, mid-engined sports car was visually strange enough although, almost sixty years on, it has aged rather well and the appearance would by most plausibly be accepted as something decades younger.  In 1968, Matra's CEO Jean-Luc Lagardère (1928–2003) commissioned Delaunay to use a 530 as a canvas and she delivered a harlequinesque creation.  Her take on the 530 is sometimes displayed though it wasn’t an exhibit at the Sonia Delaunay Tate Modern retrospective (April-August 2015), remarkably the first time her work had been showcased by an English gallery.  Had she been a man, it’s likely she’d be more celebrated.

Four Citroën GS “Drapeaux” on the 400 metre athletics track at the Olympic Stadium, Munich, FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990) for the 1971 “The Car Without Borders” press event.

A variant of the harlequin idea is the use of national flags and while that’s done usually with badges, the bunting represented either in the singular (including the Triumph TR6 (1968-1976)) or in multiples for that “international flavour” (such as Cutlass Ciera emblem used by Oldsmobile between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s) but in 1971 Citroën used the whole car as a canvas.  Based on mechanically standard GS hatchback and station wagon (Break) models, the flags which adorned the bodywork were those of the twelve nations which participated in voting for the 1971 (ECotY) European Car of the Year, won by the GS.  As well as the four created for the event in Munich, a number of replica GS Drapeaux were built (it’s not clear how many but it may have been as many as 24) for a continent-wide promotional tour, co-ordinated with Citroën dealers.  The voting for the 1971 ECotY was undertaken by a jury of 44 journalists and while not exactly a kind of “automotive Eurovision”, when the numbers were tallied the GS had received a majority in Czechoslovakia, Denmark, the FRG, the Netherlands and the UK, enough to take the title.  The French drapeaux was the plural of drapeau (flag), from the Old French drapel.  In the French dialectical form spoken in Louisiana, a drapeau was a diaper (nappy).

1971 Citroën GS 1220 Club Break in “Drapeaux” trim.

That the ECotY’s jury is made up of specialist automotive journalists has always tended to slant things towards the technically interesting which accounts for winners or place-getters including the NSU Ro80 (1967-1977 and the Wankel-engined winner in 1968 which effectively bankrupted its maker), the Jensen FF (1966-1974 and the first production road car with ABS & AWD (all-wheel-drive and then still called 4WD (four-wheel-drive)) and third in 1967) and the Oldsmobile Toronado (1965-1978 in its original configuration and third in 1966 despite using a 425 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 with FWD! (front-wheel-drive) and being as unsuited to the European market as just about anything ever made)).  The ECotY award winners haven’t always been a success in the market but did reflect the sort of machines which appealed to the particular profile of automotive journalists, a breed quite different from those who actually buy new cars.  Nor were the winners necessarily the “best” (admittedly a difficult quality to define), illustrated by the 1990 award when the outstanding Mercedes-Benz R129 (1988-2001) was runner up to the dreary Citroën XM (1989-2000).  By historic standards the GS (1970-1986) was a pretty good choice because not was it only an inspired design but also one which proved a success over a long period, unlike the runner up Volkswagen K70 (1970-1974) and third-placed Citroën SM (1970-1975).  The K70 had actually been inherited by VW when the moribund NSU was absorbed but the many troubles of the SM contributed to Citroën’s bankruptcy though probably not to the same extent as the GS Birotor (1973-1975 and known also as the CX) which used a Wankel engine.  

Lindsay Lohan in harlequin mode.  How fashion critics will react to anything beyond the defined parameters of what's thought within their range of "right" is hard to predict: most seemed to like this.

Lindsay Lohan in November 2022 appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to promote the Netflix movie, Falling for Christmas.  What caught the eye was her outfit, the harlequinesque suit in a gallimaufry of colors from Law Roach’s (b 1978) Akris’ fall 2022 ready-to-wear collection, the agglomeration including a wide-lapelled jacket, turtleneck and boot cut pants fabricated in a green, yellow, red & orange drei teile (three parts) print in an irregular geometric pattern.  The distinctive look was paired with a similarly eclectic combination of accessories, chunky gold hoop earrings, a crossbody Anouk envelope handbag, and Giuseppe Zanotti platform heels.  The enveloping flare of the trousers concealed the shoes which was a shame, the Giuseppe Zanotti (b 1957) Bebe-style pumps in gloss metallic burgundy leather distinguished by 2-inch (50 mm) soles, 6-inch (150 mm) heels, open vamp, rakish counters and surprisingly delicate ankle straps.  The designer's desire for the cut of the trousers to reach to the ground is noted but the shoes deserved to be seen.

Bug

Bug (pronounced buhg)

(1) Any insect of the order Hemiptera, especially any of the suborder Heteroptera (a hemipteran or hemipteron; a hemipterous insect), having piercing and sucking mouthparts specialized as a beak (rostrum) and known loosely as the “true bug”.

(2) Any of various species of marine or freshwater crustaceans.

(3) In casual use, any insect or insect-like invertebrate (ie used often of spiders and such because of their supposed “bug-like” quality).

(4) In casual use, any micro-organism causing disease, applied especially to especially a virus or bacterium.

(5) An instance of a disease caused by such a micro-organism; a class of such conditions.

(6) In casual (and sometimes structured) use, a defect or imperfection, most associated with computers but applied also to many mechanical devices or processes.

(7) A craze or obsession (usually widespread or of long-standing).

(8) In slang, a person who has a great enthusiasm for such a craze or obsession (often as “one bitten by the bug”).

(9) In casual (and sometimes structured) use, a hidden microphone, camera or other electronic eavesdropping device (a clipping of bugging device) and used analogously of the small and effectively invisible (often a single-pixel image) image on a web page, installed usually for the purpose of tracking users.

(10) Any of various small mechanical or electrical gadgets, as one to influence a gambling device, give warning of an intruder, or indicate location.

(11) A mark, as an asterisk, that indicates a particular item, level, etc.

(12) In US horse racing, the five-pound (2¼ kg) weight allowance able to be claimed by an apprentice jockey and by extension (1) the asterisk used to denote an apprentice jockey's weight allowance & (2) in slang, US, a young apprentice jockey (sometimes as “bug boy” (apparently used thus also of young female jockeys, “bug girl” seemingly beyond the pale.)).

(13) A telegraph key that automatically transmits a series of dots when moved to one side and one dash when moved to the other.

(14) In the slang of poker, a joker which may be used only as an ace or as a wild card to fill a straight or a flush.

(15) In commercial printing, as “union bug”, a small label printed on certain matter to indicate it was produced by a unionized shop.

(16) In fishing, a any of various plugs resembling an insect.

(17) In slang, a clipping of bedbug (mostly UK).

(18) A bogy; hobgoblin (extinct).

(19) In slang, as “bug-eyed”, protruding eyes (the medical condition exophthalmos).

(20) A slang term for the Volkswagen Beetle (Type 1; 1938-2003 & the two retro takes; 1997-2019).

(21) In broadcasting, a small (often transparent or translucent) image placed in a corner of a television program identifying the broadcasting network or channel.

(22) In aviation, a manually positioned marker in flight instruments.

(23) In gay (male) slang in the 1980s & 1990s as “the bug”, HIV/AIDS.

(24) In the slang of paleontology, a trilobite.

(25) In gambling slang, a small piece of metal used in a slot machine to block certain winning combinations.

(26) In gambling slang, a metal clip attached to the underside of a table, etc and used to hold hidden cards (a type of cheating).

(27) As the Bug (or Western Bug), a river in Eastern Europe flows through Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine with a total length of 481 miles (774 km).  The Southern Bug (530 miles (850 km)) in south west Ukraine flows into the Dnieper estuary and is some 530 miles (850 km) long.

(28) A past tense and past participle of big (obsolete).

(29) As ISO (international standard) 639-2 & ISO 639-3, the language codes for Buginese.

(30) To install a secret listening device in a room, building etc or on a telephone or other communications device.

(31) To badger, harass, bother, annoy or pester someone.

1615–1625: The original use was to describe insects, apparently as a variant of the earlier bugge (beetle), thought to be an alteration of the Middle English budde, from the Old English -budda (beetle) but etymologists are divided on whether the phrase “bug off” (please leave) is related to the undesired presence of insects or was of a distinct origin.  Bug, bugging & debug are nouns & verbs, bugged is a verb & adjective and buggy is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bugs.  Although “unbug” makes structural sense (ie remove a bug, as opposed to the sense of “debug”), it doesn’t exist whereas forms such as the adjectives unbugged (not bugged) and unbuggable (not able to be bugged) are regarded as standard.

Nerd humor.

The array of compound forms meaning “someone obsessed with an idea, hobby etc) produced things like “shutterbug” (amateur photographer) & firebug (arsonist) seems first to have emerged in the mid nineteenth century.  The development of this into “a craze or obsession” is thought rapidly to have accelerated in the years just before World War I (1914-1918), again based on the notion of “bitten by the bug” or “caught the bug”, thus the idea of being infected with an unusual enthusiasm for something.  The use to mean a demon, evil spirit, spectre or hobgoblin was first recorded in the mid-fourteenth century and was a clipping of the Middle English bugge (scarecrow, demon, hobgoblin) or uncertain origin although it may have come from the Middle Welsh bwg (ghost; goblin (and linked to the Welsh bwgwl (threat (and earlier “fear”) and the Middle Irish bocanách (supernatural being).  There’s also speculation it may have come from the scary tales told to children which included the idea of a bugge (beetle) at a gigantic scale.  That would have been a fearsome sight and the idea remains fruitful to this day for artists and film-makers needing something frightening in the horror or SF (science fiction) genre.  The use in this sense is long obsolete although the related forms bugbear and bugaboo survive.  Dating from the 1570s, a bugbear was in folklore a kind of “large goblin”, used to inspire fear in children (both as a literary device & for purposes of parental control) and for adults it soon came to mean “a source of dread, resentment or irritation; in modern use it's an “ongoing problem”, a recurring obstacle or adversity or one’s pet peeve.  The obsolete form bugg dates from circa 1620s and was a reference to the troublesome bedbug, the construct a conflation of the middle English bugge (scarecrow, hobgoblin) and the Middle English budde (beetle).  The colloquial sense of “a microbe or germ” dates from 1919, the emergence linked to the misleadingly-named “Spanish flu” pandemic.

Bugs: A ground beetle (left), a first generation der Käfer (the Volkswagen Beetle, 1938-2003) (centre) and an "New Beetle" (1997-2011).  Despite the appearance, the "New Beetle" was of front engine & front-wheel-drive configuration, essentially a re-bodied Volkswagen Golf.  The new car was sold purely as a retro, the price paid for the style, certain packaging inefficiencies.  Few have ever questioned why the original VW Beetle picked up the nickname “bug”.

Like the rest of us, even scientists, entomologists and zoologists generally probably say “bug” in general conversation, whether about the insects or the viruses and such which cause disease but in writing academic papers they’ll take care to be more precise.  Because to most of us “bugs” can be any of the small, creepy pests which intrude on our lives (some of which are actually helpful in that quietly and unobtrusively they dispose of the really annoying bugs which bite us), the word is casually and interchangeably applied to bees, ants, bees, millipedes, beetles, spiders and anything else resembling an insect.  That use may be reinforced by the idea of the thing “bugging” us by their very presence.  To the professionals however, insects are those organisms in the classification Insecta, a very large class of animals, the members of which have a three-part body, six legs and (usually) two pairs of wings whereas a bug is a member of the order Hemiptera (which in the taxonomic system is within the Insecta class) and includes cicadas, aphids and stink bugs; to emphasize the point, scientists often speak of those in the order Hemiptera as “true bugs”.  The true bugs are those insects with mouthparts adapted for piercing and sucking, contained usually in a beak-shaped structure, a vision agonizingly familiar to anyone who has suffered the company of bedbugs.  That’s why lice are bugs and cockroaches are not but the latter will continue to be called bugs, often with some preceding expletive.

9 September 1947: The engineer's note (with physical evidence) of electronic computing's "first bug".

In computing, where the term “bug” came to be used to describe “glitches, crashes” and such, it has evolved to apply almost exclusively to software issues and even if events are caused by hardware flaws, unless it’s something obvious (small explosions, flame & smoke etc) most users probably assume a fault in some software layer.  The very first documented bug however was an interaction recorded on 9 September 1947 between the natural world and hardware, an engineer’s examination of an early (large) computer revealing an insect had sacrificially landed on one of the circuits, shorting it out and shutting-down the machine.  As proof, the unfortunate moth was taped to the report.  On a larger scale (zoologically rather than the hardware), the problem of small rodents such as mice entering the internals of printers, there to die from various causes (impact injuries, starvation, heat etc) remains not uncommon, resulting sometimes in mechanical damage, sometimes just the implications of decaying flesh.

Revelle's Bug Bomb, 1970.

The idea of a bug as a “defect, flaw, fault or glitch” in a mechanical or electrical device was first recorded in the late 1800s as engineer’s slang, the assumption being they wished to convey the idea of “a small fault” (and thus easily fixed, as opposed to some fundamental mistake which would necessitate a re-design).  Some sources suggest the origin lies with Thomas Edison (1847-1931) who is reported as describing the consequences of an insect “getting into the works”.  Programmers deploy an array of adjectives to "bug" (major, minor, serious, critical & non-critical etc) although between themselves (and certainly when disparaging of the code of others) the most commonly heard phrase is probably “stupid bug”.  The “debugging” (also as de-bugging) process is something with a wide definition but in general it refers to any action or set of actions taken to remove errors.  The name of the debug.exe (originally debug.com) program included with a number of (almost all 16 & 32-bit) operating systems was a little misleading because in addition to fixing things, it could be used for other purposes and is fondly remembered by those who wrote Q&D (quick & dirty) work-arounds which, written in assembler, ran very fast.  The verb debug was first used in 1945 in the sense of “remove the faults from a machine” and by 1964 it appeared in field service manuals documenting the steps to be taken to “remove a concealed microphone”.  Although the origin of the use of “bug” in computing (probably the now most commonly used context) can be traced to 1947, the term wasn’t widely used beyond universities, industry and government sites before the 1960s when the public first began to interact at scale with the implications (including the bugs) of those institutions using computerized processes.  Software (or any machinery) badly afflicted by bugs can be called “buggy”, a re-purposing of the use of an adjective dating from 1714 meaning “a place infested with bugs”.

Some bugs gained notoriety.  In the late 1990s, it wasn’t uncommon for the press to refer to the potential problems of computer code using a two-numeral syntax for years as the “Y2K bug” which was an indication of how wide was the vista of the common understanding of "bug" and one quite reasonable because that was how the consequences would be understood.  A massive testing & rectification effort was undertaken by the industry (and corporations, induced by legislation and the fear of litigation) and with the coming of 1 January 2000 almost nothing strange happened and that may also have been the case had nothing been done but, on the basis of the precautionary principle, it was the right approach.  Of course switching protocols to use four-numeral years did nothing about the Y10K bug but a (possible) problem 8000 years hence would have been of little interest to politicians or corporate boards.  Actually, Ynnn~K bugs will re-occur (theoretically with decreasing frequency) whenever a digit needs to be added.  The obvious solution is trailing zeros although if one thinks in terms of infinity, it may be that, in the narrow technical sense, such a solution would just create an additional problem although perhaps one of no practical significance.  Because of the way programmers exploit the way computers work, there have since the 1950s been other date (“time” to a computer) related “bugs” and management of these and the minor problems caused has been handled well.  Within the industry the feeling is things like the “Y2038 problem” will, for most of the planet, be similarly uneventful.

The DOSShell, introduced with PC-DOS 4.0; this was as graphical as DOS got.  The text-based DOSShell was bug-free and a reasonable advance over what came before but the power users had already adopted XTree as their preferred file handler.

Bugs can also become quirky industry footnotes.  As late as 1987, IBM had intended to release the update of PC-DOS 3.3 as version 3.4, reflecting the corporation’s roadmap of DOS as something of an evolutionary dead-end, doomed ultimately to end up in washing machine controllers and such while the consumer and corporate market would shift to OS/2, the new operating system which offered pre-emptive multi-tasking and access to bigger storage and memory addressing.  However, at that point, both DOS & OS/2 were being co-developed by IBM & Microsoft and agreement was reached to release a version 4 of DOS.  DOS 4 also included a way of accessing larger storage space (through a work-around with a program called share.exe) and more memory (in a way less elegant than the OS/2 approach but it did work, albeit more slowly), both things of great interest to Microsoft because they would increase the appeal of its upcoming Windows 3.0, a graphical shell which ran on top of DOS; unlike OS/2, Windows was exclusive to Microsoft and so was the revenue stream.  Unfortunately, it transpired the PC-DOS 4.0 memory tricks were “buggy” when used with some non-IBM hardware and the OS gained a bad reputation from which it would never recover.  By the time the code was fixed, Microsoft was ready to release its own version as MS-DOS 4.0 but, noting all the bad publicity, after some cosmetic revisions, the mainstream release was MS-DOS 4.01.  In the code of the earlier, bug-afflicted bits, there seems no substantive difference between MS-DOS 4.01 the few extant copies of MS-DOS 4.0.

Herbie, the love bug

Lindsay Lohan (left) among the bugs (centre) on the red carpet for the Los Angeles premiere of Herbie Fully Loaded (a 2005 remake of The Love Bug (1968)), El Capitan Theater, Hollywood, Los Angeles, 19 June 19, 2005.  The Beetle (right) was one of the many replica “Herbies” in attendance and, on the day, Ms Lohan (using the celebrity-endorsed black Sharpie) autographed the glove-box lid, removed for the purpose. 

In idiomatic and other uses, bug has a long history.  By the early twentieth century “bugs” meant “mad; crazy" and by then “bug juice” had been in use for some thirty years, meaning both “propensity of the use of alcoholic drink to induce bad behaviour” and “bad whiskey” (in the sense of a product being of such dubious quality it was effectively a poison).  A slang dictionary from 1811 listed “bug-hunter” as “an upholsterer”, an allusion to the fondness bugs and other small creatures show for sheltering in the dark, concealed parts of furniture.  As early as the 1560s, a “bug-word” was a word or phrase which “irritated or vexed”.  The idea of “bug-eyed” was in use by the early 1870s and that’s thought either to be a humorous mispronunciation of bulge or (as is thought more likely) an allusion to the prominent, protruding eyes of creatures like frogs, the idea being they sat on the body like “a pair of bugs”.  The look became so common in the movies featuring aliens from space that by the early 1950s the acronym BEM (bug-eyed monster) had become part of industry slang.  The correct term for the medical condition of "bulging eyes" is exophthalmos.

Lindsay Lohan in promotional poster for Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

To “bug someone” in the sense of “to annoy or irritate” seems not to have been recorded until 1949 and while some suggest the origin of that was in swing music slang, it remains obscure.  The now rare use of “bug off” to mean “to scram, to skedaddle” is documented since 1956 and is of uncertain origin but may be linked to the Korean War (1950-1953) era US Army slang meaning “stage a precipitous retreat”, first used during a military reversal.  The ultimate source was likely the UK, Australian & New Zealand slang “bugger off” (please leave).  The “doodle-bug” was first described in 1865 and was Southern US dialect for a type of beetle.  In 1944, the popular slang for the German Vergeltungswaffen eins (the V-1 (reprisal weapon 1) which was the first cruise missile) was “flying bomb” or “buzz bomb”) but the Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots preferred “doodle-bug”.

The ultimate door-stop for aircraft hangers: Bond Bug 700.

The popularity of three wheeler cars in the UK during the post-war years was a product of cost breakdown.  They were taxed at a much lower rate than conventional four-wheel vehicles, were small and thus economical and could be operated by anyone with only a motorcycle licence.  Most were genuine (if not generous) four-seaters and thus an attractive alternative for families and, being purely utilitarian, there were few attempts to introduce elements of style.  The Bond Bug (1970-1974) was an exception in that it was designed to appeal to the youth market with a sporty-looking two-seater using the then popular “wedge-styling” and in its most powerful form it could touch 80 mph (130 km/h), faster than any other three wheeler available.  The bug was designed by Vienna-born British designer Tom Karen (1926–2022) who intended it as a “Ferrari for 16-year-olds” which may hint he knew more about cars than young males but in the 1970s such comparisons often were made, a tester in one magazine describing the diminutive Fiat 127 (1971-1983) as “the 0.9 litre Ferrari” which was journalistic licence writ large but people knew what he meant.

An infestation of Bugs.

However, the UK in 1973 introduced VAT (value-added tax, a consumption tax) and this removed many of the financial advantages three-wheelers offered (it also doomed much of the “kit-car” business in which customers could buy the parts and assemble them with their own labor).  In an era of rising prosperity, the appeal of the compromise waned and coupled with some problems in the early productions runs, in 1974, after some 2¼ thousand Bugs had been built, the zany little machine was dropped; not even the oil crisis of the time (which had doomed a good number of bigger, thirstier cars) and the nasty recession which followed could save it.  Even in its best years it was never all that successful, essentially because it was really a novelty and there were “real” cars available for less money.  Still, the survivors have a following in their niche at the lower end of the collector market and it's a machine truly like no other.

The business of spying is said to be the “second oldest profession” and even if not literally true, few doubt the synergistic callings of espionage and war are among man’s earliest and most enduring endeavors.  Although the use of “bug” to mean “equip with a concealed microphone” seems not to have been in use until 1946, bugging devices probably go back thousands of years (in a low-tech sort of way) and those known to have been used in Tudor-era England (1485-1603) are representative of the way available stuff was adapted, the most popular being tubular structures which, if pressed against a thin wall (or preferably a door’s keyhole) enabled one to listen to what was being discussed in a closed room.  Bugging began to assume its modern form when messages began to be transmitted over copper wires which could stretch for thousands of miles and the early term for a “phone bug” was “phone tap”, based upon the idea of “tapping into” the line as one might a water pipe.  Bugs (the name picked-up because many of the early devices were small, black and “bug-like”), whether as concealed microphones or phone taps, swiftly became part of the espionage inventory in diplomacy, commerce and crime and as technology evolved, so did the bugging techniques.

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr (1902–1985), US Ambassador to the UN (United Nations) at a May 1960 session of the Security Council, using the Great Seal bug to illustrate the extent of Soviet bugging.  The context was a tu quoque squabble between the Cold War protagonists, following Soviet revelations about the flight-paths of the American's U2 spy planes.  Lodge would be Richard Nixon’s (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) running mate in that year's presidential election.     

A classic bug of High Cold War was the Great Seal bug, (known to the security services as the thing), a Soviet designed and built concealed listening device which was so effective because it used passive transmission protocols for its audio signal, thereby rendering it invisible to conventional “bug-detection” techniques.  The bug was concealed inside large, carved wooden rendition of the US Great Seal which, in 1945, the Kremlin presented as a “gift of friendship” to the US Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman (1891-1986); in a nice touch, it was a group of Russian school children who handed over the carving.  Sitting in the ambassador’s Moscow office for some seven years, it was a masterpiece of its time because (1) being activated only when exposed to a low-energy radio signal which Soviet spies would transmit from outside, when subjected to a US “bug detection” it would appear to be a piece of wood and (2) as it needed no form of battery or other power supply (and indeed, no maintenance at all), its lifespan was indefinite.  Had it not by chance been discovered by a communications officer at the nearby British embassy who happened to be tuned to the same frequency while the Soviets were sending their signal, it may well have remained in place for decades.  Essentially, the principles of the Great Seal bug were those used in modern radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems.