Intertwingle

Intertwingle (pronounced in-tur-wing-guhl)

(1) To confuse or entangle together; to enmesh, to muddle.

(2) As intertwingularity, in computing and systems analysis & organization (of documents, data etc), to interconnect or interrelate in a complex way which appears to a user simple and lineal.

Late 1800s: Thought to be a portmanteau word, the construct being a blend of intertw(ine) + (interm)ingle and of interest to students of linguistics because it appears independently to have been coined at different times in different places.  The prefix inter- was from the Latin inter- (between, amid), a form of the prepositional inter (between).  Twine was from the Middle English twyn, twine & twin, from the Old English twīn (double thread, twist, twine, linen-thread, linen), from the Proto-West Germanic twiʀn (thread, twine), from the primitive Indo-European dwisnós (double), from dwóh (two).  The construct of mingle ming (from the From Middle English mingen & mengen, from the Old English mengan (to mix, combine, unite, associate with, consort, cohabit with, disturb, converse), from the Proto-West Germanic mangijan (“to mix, knead”), from the primitive Indo-European menk- (to rumple, knead)). It was cognate with the Dutch mengen (to mix, blend, mingle), the German mengen (to mix), the Danish mænge (to rub), the Old English ġemang (mixture, union, troop, crowd, multitude, congregation, assembly, business, cohabitation)) +‎ -le (a frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness).  It was cognate with the Dutch mengen (to mingle, mix) and the German mengen (to mingle, mix).  Interwingle is a noun & verb, intertwingling & intertwingularity are nouns and intertwingled is an adjective; the noun plural is intertwingularities.  By implication, the nouns intertwinglism & intertwinglist should exist but seem not to have been used.

Lindsay Lohan, who has led an intertwingled life.  The publicity shot for Just My Luck (2006) was wholly serendipitous and did not come from a session.

Intertwingle was used by Manmatha Nath Dutt (1855–1912) in The Dharma Sastra (Volume 1, 1896), one of his collections of translations into English of ancient Sanskrit & Hindu texts; under the Raj, he was a prolific translator and author and his use appears to the first known coining.  As a comic device, it was used by Montgomery Gordon Rice of Bradley Polytechnic Institute in a performance of Esmeralda (a fictional character in Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) novel Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482 (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831)) conducted during the April 1901 graduation ceremony and many instances of use have been jocular.  As a noun, the author Henry James (1843–1916) applied it as a nickname for a group of his Emmet female cousins (all of who were painters) and the use in that sense was in the vein of the way Admiral Lord Charles Beresford (1846-1919) would use “the souls” of some female acquaintances he thought discussed their feelings entirely too much.  For the US portraitist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) it was his nickname for his early twentieth century genre paintings of his nieces, the Ormond sisters.  Sargent’s reference was to “element interchangeability”: his use of shawls as a motif and the easy substitution of one model for another, their artistic presence defined less by individual identity than the convoluted poses.  Coincidentally, as well as being one of Henry James’ “intertwingles”, the US artist Jane Emmet de Glehn (1873–1961) was one of Sargent’s muses. )

As the twentieth century progressed and in a number of fields there emerged a new literature exploring the concept of “everything being connected to everything else” and Tracy Baldwin Augur (1896-1974) found it handy (apparently as an eye-catching linguistic novelty) in a 1954 paper discussing urban planning, a discipline where truly there is much intertwingling.  Between 1933-1948 Augur had been principal planner for the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and by the 1950s he was working for the URA (Urban Renewal Administration) and HHFA (Housing and Home Finance Agency), the proliferation of the alphabet soup of acronyms which had begun under the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) not slowing in the post-war years.  In the discipline of town-planning the phrase “inextricably intertwined” was used in many contexts so perhaps the appearance of intertwingle was inevitable.

The use in IT and the analysis & organization of documents, data and such was in 1974 described as “intertwingularity” and defined as the deep and complex interconnection or interrelation of digital objects of any kind, and in a teleological sense the purpose was to make the connections permanently stable and accessible to users in a way which would seem seamless and lineal.  The noun intertwingularity was coined by US sociologist Dr Theodor Holm "Ted" Nelson (b 1937) and it appeared first in his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) which discussed the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.  Dr Nelson’s most enduring legacy is Project Xanadu which, remarkably, has been in development since 1960, the objective (which evolved eventually) being a kind of macro-network, unifying all data, accessible through a simple, intuitive user interface.  Conceptually, that does of course sound like the vision imagined when the www (world wide web) was bolted onto to the internet but Dr Nelson’s critique of that sprawling, ubiquitous thing is that its “web page” approach is inherently flawed because, as IRL (in real life) when pages can be thrown away, deleting a page means a dozen or a billion hyperlinks once active around the planet are rendered instantly “broken”; what’s lacking is global content management to keep track of it all.  The project’s roots in 1960 envisages what would later be understood as hypertext but acceptance of Dr Nelson’s ideas took some time because he was speculating about hardware and software which did not then exist and would not for decades attain critical mass and the landmark Computer Lib/Dream Machines, while fleshing out the details, did so in a discursive manner better suited to modernist experimental fiction.

Conceptual illustration of intertwingling from Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974).

Dr Nelson seems always to have liked the word “everything” (although he does allow that for some things, “most” is better”) and the most intriguing speculation, built on the notion of “everything being intertwingled”, was tied up with quantum entanglement which suggests connectivity need not be based on proximity or visible connection.  In this theory, what is now described as “dark energy” (the thus far undetectable stuff in the universe which the math of what has been detected suggests must exist) is thought potentially to be “time” itself, the universe’s most fundamental framework where it’s not so much that everything is “entangled” but that everything is (on a grand scale) a singularity and everything is happening at the same time with only the operation of (distance-based) relativity creating an observer’s perception of difference.

Applied Intertwingling: In fields like political science or organizational behaviour, the intertwingling of objects is often illustrated in ways which depict not only the existence but also the nature of a relationship.

Intoxicatingly simple in concept, the practical implications of the Xanadu resulted in something which became more complex as layers were implemented because each made obvious that more layers still were needed.  Lacking resources, Dr Nelson, cognizant of developments in computer networking, announced Xanadu should be thought a mechanism for handing information (regardless of physical location) as if existed in a unified repository.  While he didn’t use the phrase “virtual library” that seems to be how it would now be understood and in an interesting harbinger of how Facebook would in the twenty-first century describe its curated macro-space, he described Xanadu as a “docuverse”.  That was an interesting vision but development required cubic money and it wasn’t until the early 1980s when the adoption by business of the original IBM PC (1981) as a kind of corporate standard that funding was found, building on a file addressing system based on “tumblers” which were an implementation of transfinite numbers.  Transfinite numbers exist in the branch of set theory, a fundamental area of mathematical logic that studies collections of objects; set theory is the formal framework onto which infinity can be mapped.  For Xanadu to be scalable to an infinite number of documents, the numbers in use needed to be infinite but because one layer of the process was indexing, those numbers needed to be distinct in size and order, thus the utility of the transfinite.  Except in some vague conceptual sense, it’s really only (some) mathematicians who understand all this.

Xanadu’s original 17 rules

(1) Every Xanadu server is uniquely and securely identified.

(2) Every Xanadu server can be operated independently or in a network.

(3) Every user is uniquely and securely identified.

(4) Every user can search, retrieve, create and store documents.

(5) Every document can consist of any number of parts each of which may be of any data type.

(6) Every document can contain links of any type including virtual copies (“transclusions”) to any other document in the system accessible to its owner.

(7) Links are visible and can be followed from all endpoints.

(8) Permission to link to a document is explicitly granted by the act of publication.

(9) Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies (“transclusions”) of all or part of the document.

(10) Every document is uniquely and securely identified.

(11) Every document can have secure access controls.

(12) Every document can be rapidly searched, stored and retrieved without user knowledge of where it is physically stored.

(13) Every document is automatically moved to physical storage appropriate to its frequency of access from any given location.

(14) Every document is automatically stored redundantly to maintain availability even in case of a disaster.

(15) Every Xanadu service provider can charge their users at any rate they choose for the storage, retrieval and publishing of documents.

(16) Every transaction is secure and auditable only by the parties to that transaction.

(17) The Xanadu client-server communication protocol is an openly published standard. Third-party software development and integration is encouraged.

By the early 1990s it was clear Xanadu “worked”, at least at the scale existing hardware made possible but the emergence of the www (World Wide Web) diverted the industry’s attention and by 1995 when it was clear the Web had gained critical mass, the view seemed to be Xanadu might be a slightly better or slightly worse mousetrap and soon comparisons were being with the “OS (operating system) war” between Microsoft’s Windows NT and IBM’s OS/2.  Dr Nelson however was not deterred and successive releases of implementations of parts of the Project Xanadu model were in the twenty-first century released until OpenXanadu was in 2014 made available on the Web.  Explaining how it differed from hypertext as it was done on the Web, Dr Nelson claimed HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) was inherently flawed because, the metaphor being one of bound pages, it was so prone to broken links as one page was torn off, that meaning collectively an array of dozens (or millions, trillions etc) of dead links to other dead pages.  What tumblers did was provide an address able to maintain linkages to not merely a single object (which HTTP envisages as a “piece of paper”) but an infinite set of links, achieved because transfinite numbers can handle what can be visualized as a cascade of information, the linkages between which are unlimited; this was the inheritance of the “docuverse”.  Those impressed by both the potential and drawbacks of the Blockchain will be struck by the overlaps.

Knowledge Nation, which at the time seemed a good idea but wasn’t suited to the banality of modern politics.

For the 2001 federal election in Australia, a part of the opposition Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) platform was “Knowledge Nation”, a summary of its education policy, developed by polymath and former minister for science Barry Jones (b 1932).  During the campaign, what was substantive in Knowledge Nation was little discussed because the government immediately attacked the illustrative chart which was a representation of the many components connected within the education system.  Derided as “Noodle Nation”, it was an example of why it’s no longer wise for politicians to offer anything much beyond a TWS (three word slogan).  The reaction today to a political party circulating something like The Federalist (a collection of 85 articles and essays (1787-1788) advocating the ratification of the Constitution of the United States) would be something like the “noodle nation moment”.  These days, intertwingling is best neither seen nor heard.

Accidie

Accidie (pronounced ak-si-dee)

Sloth; apathy, in the sense of both (1) a general listlessness and apathy and (2) spiritual torpor.

1200–1250: From the Middle English accidie, from the Anglo-Norman accidie, from the Old French accide & accidie, from the Medieval Latin accidia (an alteration of Late Latin acedia (sloth, torpor), from the Ancient Greek ἀκήδεια (akḗdeia) (indifference), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (in the sense of “not”) +‎ κῆδος (kêdos).  It was a doublet of acedia, still cited as an alternative form and replaced the Middle English accide.  The word was in active use between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries and was revived in the nineteenth as a literary adornment.  Accidie and acediast are nouns and acedious is an adjective; the noun plural is acediasts.

The alternative literary words include (1) ennui (a gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression), an unadapted borrowing from the French ennui, from the Old French enui (annoyance), from enuier (which in Modern French persists as ennuyer), from the Late Latin inodiō, from the Latin in odiō (hated) and a doublet of annoy, (2) weltschmerz, used as an alternative letter-case form of the German Weltschmerz (an apathetic or pessimistic view of life; depression concerning or discomfort with the human condition or state of the world; world-weariness), the construct being Welt (world) + Schmerz (physical ache, pain; emotional pain, heartache, sorrow) and coined by German Romantic writer Jean Paul (1763–1825) for his novel Selina (published posthumously in 1827) and (3) mal du siècle (apathy and world-weariness, involving pessimism towards the current state of the world, often along with nostalgia for the past (originally in the context of French Romanticism) (literally “disease of the century”) and coined by the French writer Alfred de Musset in his autobiographical novel La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century (1936)).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

In Antiquity, the Greeks seemed to have refined accidie (which translated literally as being in “a state so inert as the be devoid of pain or care”) to be used of those who has become listless and no longer cared for their own lives or their society, thus distinguishing it from other conditions of melancholy which tended to be individually focused although in surviving medical texts, what’s being diagnosed was something like what might now be called “depression”.  Predictably, when adopted by moral theologians in Christian writing, it was depicted as a sin or at least a personal flaw.  Others wrote of it as a “demon” to be overcome and even a temptation placed by the Devil, one to which “young men who read poetry” seem to have been chronically prone.  It can be thought of as falling into the category of sloth, listed in the Medieval Latin tradition as of the seven deadly sins and appeared in Dante Alighieri’s (circa 1265–1321) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)) not only as a sin worthy of damnation & eternal punishment but the very sin which led Dante to the edge of Hell.  In his unfinished Summa Theologiae (literally Summary of Theology), the Italian Dominican friar, philosopher & theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) noted accidie was a spiritual sorrow, induced by man’s flight from the Divine good, “…on account of the flesh utterly prevailing over the spirit”, the kind of despair which can culminate in the even greater sin of suicide.

Google ngram: Accidie 1800-2020.

Google ngram: Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Etymologists note that between the mid sixteenth and mid nineteenth centuries the word acedia was close to extinct and whether it was the revival of interest in the Romantic poets (often a glum lot) or the increasing number of women becoming novelists, there was in the late 1800s a revival with the term, once the preserve of theologians, re-purposed as a decorative literary word; in the “terrible twentieth century” there was much scope for use and it appears in the writings of Ian Fleming (1908–1964), Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989).  Intriguingly, in The Decline and Fall of Nokia (2014), Finnish-based expatriate US writer David J Cord introduced the concept of corporate acedia, citing the phenomenon as one of the causes of the collapse of Nokia's once dominant mobile device unit.

Joan Didion (1934-2021) and cigarette with her Daytona Yellow (OEM code 984) 1969 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray (on the C2 Corvette (1963-1967) and in 1968 the spelling had been "Sting Ray”).  The monochrome image was from a photo-session commissioned in 1970 by Life magazine and shot by staff photographer Julian Wasser (1933-2023), outside the house she was renting on Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills.  To great acclaim, her first work of non-fiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), had just been published.

Writing mostly, in one way or another, about “feelings”, Joan Didion’s work appealed mostly to a female readership but when photographs were published of her posing with her bright yellow Corvette, among men presumably she gained some “street cred” although that might have evaporated had they learned it was later traded for a Volvo; adding insult to injury, it was a Volvo station wagon with all that implies.  She was later interviewed about the apparent incongruity between owner and machine and acknowledged the strangeness, commenting: “I very definitely remember buying the Stingray because it was a crazy thing to do.  I bought it in Hollywood.”  Craziness and Hollywood were then of course synonymous and a C3 Corvette (1968-1982) really was the ideal symbol of the America about which Ms Didion wrote, being loud, flashy, rendered in plastic and flawed yet underpinned by a solid, well-engineered foundation; the notion of the former detracting from the latter was theme in in her essays on the American experience.

A 1969 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray in Daytona Yellow.

Disillusioned, melancholic and clinical, Ms Didion’s literary oeuvre suited the moment because while obviously political it was also spiritual, a critique of what she called the “accidie” of the late 1960s, the moral torpor of those disappointed by what had followed the hope and optimism captured by “Camelot”, the White House of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963).  In retrospect Camelot was illusory but that of course made real the disillusionment of Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) leading the people not to a “great society” but deeper into Vietnam.  Her essays were in the style of the “new journalism” and sometimes compared with those of her contemporary Susan Sontag (1933-2004) but the two differed in method, tone, ideological orientation and, debatably, expectation if not purpose.

Susan Sontag (1962), monochrome image by Village Voice staff photographer Fred McDarrah (1926–2007).

Ms Didion’s used accidie to describe a society which the troubled 1960s seemed to have bludgeoned into a state not of acquiescence but indifference, a moral exhaustion.  Her writings were observational (and, as she admitted, sometimes “embellished” for didactic purposes), sceptical and cool, her conception of the failure of contemporary politics a matter of describing the disconnect between rhetoric and reality, understanding the language of theatre criticism was as appropriate as that of the lexicon of political science.  In a sense, 'twas ever thus but Ms Didion captured the imagination by illustrating just how far from the moorings of reality the political spectacle of myth-making had drifted.  Ms Sontag’s tone was declarative and distinctly authoritative (in the way of second-wave feminism), tending often to the polemic and the sense was she was writing in opposition to a collective immorality, not the kind of moral indifference Ms Didion detected.  Both were students of their nation’s cultural pathology but one seemed more a palliative care specialist tending a patient in their dying days while the other offered a diagnosis and suggested a cure which, while not something to enjoy: "would be good for them".  While Ms Didion distrusted ideological certainty, Ms Sontag engaged explicitly with “isms”, not in the sense of one writing of the history of ideas but as a protagonist, using language in an attempt to shape political consciousness, the former a kind of secular moral theologian mourning a loss of coherence in American life while the latter was passionate and wrote often with a strident urgency, never losing the sense that whatever her criticisms, things could be fixed and there was hope.  The irony of being an author to some degree afflicted by the very accide she described in others was not lost on Ms Didion.

Susan Sontag, circa 1971, photographed by Jim Cartier.  The pop-art portrait of comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1949-1976) was a print of Roy Lichtenstein's (1923–1997) Mao (1971) which had been used as the cover for US author Frederic Tuten's (b 1936) novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971).  Ms Sontag had written a most favourable review of the book and the framed print was reputedly a gift.

Joan Didion with Corvette, another image from Julian Wasser’s 1970 photo-shoot.  The staging in this one is for feminists to ponder.

While a stretch to say that in trading-in the Corvette for a Volvo station wagon, Ms Didion was tracking the nation which had moved from Kennedy to Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), it’s too tempting not to make.  Of the Corvette, she used the phrase: “I gave up on it”, later recounting: “the dealer was baffled” but denied the change was related to moving after eight years from Malibu to leafy, up-market suburban Brentwood.  While she “…needed a new car because with the Corvette something was always wrong…” she “…didn’t need a Volvo station wagon” although did concede: “Maybe it was the idea of moving into Brentwood.”  She should have persevered because as many an owner of a C3 Corvette understands, the faults and flaws are just part of the brutish charm.  Whether the car still exists isn't known; while Corvette's have a higher than average survival rate, their use on drag strips & race tracks as well as their attractiveness to males aged 17-25 has meant not a few suffered misadventure.

Joan Didion with Corvette, rendered as oil on canvas with yellow filter.

The configuration of her car seems not anywhere documented but a reasonable guess is it likely was ordered with the (base) 300 horsepower (hp) version (ZQ3) of the 350 cubic inch (5.7 litre) small-block V8, coupled with the Turbo-Hydramatic 400 (TH400) (M40) three-speed automatic transmission (the lighter TH350 wouldn't be used until 1976 by which time power outputs had fallen so much the robustness of the TH400 was no longer required).  When scanning the option list, although things like the side-mounted exhaust system (N14) or the 430 hp versions (the iron-block L88 & all aluminium ZL1, the power ratings of what were barely-disguised race car engines deliberately understated, the true output between 540-560 hp) of the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block V8 would not have tempted Ms Didion, she may have ticked the box for the leather trim (available in six colors and the photos do suggest black (402 (but if vinyl the code was ZQ4)), air conditioning (C60), power steering (N40), power brakes (J50), power windows (A31) or an AM-FM radio (U69 and available also (at extra cost) with stereo (U79)).  Given she later traded-in the Corvette on a Volvo station wagon, presumably the speed warning indicator (U15) would have been thought superfluous but, living in Malibu, the alarm system (UA6) might have caught her eye.

An emo with 1977 Volvo 245 station wagon; if she had a Corvette to pose with she’d be smiling because Corvettes can make even emos happy.  This is Emma Myers (b 2002) as Pippa "Pip" Fitz-Amobi in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (Netflix, 2024).

Quintessential symbols of France, Bridget Bardot (b 1934), Citroën La Déesse and a lit Gitanes.

The combination of a car, a woman with JBF and a cigarette continued to draw photographers even after smoking ceased to be glamorous and became a social crime.  First sold in 1910, Gitanes production in France survived two world wars, the Great Depression, Nazi occupation but the regime of Jacques Chirac (1932–2019; President of France 1995-2007) proved too much and, following the assault on tobacco by Brussels and Paris, in 2005 the factory in Lille was shuttered.  Although Gitanes (and the sister cigarette Gauloise) remain available in France, they are now shipped from Spain and while in most of the Western world fewer now smoke, Gitanes Blondes retain a cult following.

Emily Labowe with Mercedes-Benz 300 TD (S123), photographed by Kristin Gallegos.

An image like this illustrate why, even if no longer quite as glamourous, smoking can still look sexy.  The 300 TD is finished in Manila Beige and for the W123 range Mercedes-Benz also offered the subdued Maple Yellow and the exuberant Sun Yellow which was as vivid as the Corvette's Daytona Yellow. 

No images seem to exist of Ms Didion with her Volvo station wagon but Laurel Canyon's Kristin Gallegos (b 1984) later followed Julian Wasser’s staging by photographing artist Emily Labowe (b 1993) with a Mercedes-Benz 300 TD station wagon and that once essential accessory: a cigarette.  One of the last of the “chrome Mercedes”, the W123 range was in production between 1975-1986 and the station wagon appeared in 1977 with the internal code S123 (only nerds use that and to the rest of the world they’re “W123 wagons”).  The designation was “T” (the very Germanic Tourismus und Transport (Touring and Transport)) or TD for the diesel-powered cars and the S123 was the company’s first station wagon to enter series production, previous such “long roof” models coming from coach-builders including many hearses & ambulances as well as station wagons.  The English still call station wagons "estates" (a clipping of "estate car") although a publication like Country Life probably still hankers after "shooting brake" and the most Prussian of the German style guides list the compound noun Kombinationskraftwagen which for decades has usually been clipped to the semi-formal Kombiwagen, (plural Kombiwagen or Kombiwägen) or, in general use: Kombi.

1978 Mercedes Benz 280 TE (S123).

That Mercedes-Benz in the mid-1970s decided their first station wagon in regular production should be a “T” (and understood as a Tourenwagen (touring car) rather than a “K” (ie Kombiwagen, the designation used by other manufacturers) reflected the prevailing German view of such cars.  Unlike the US where station wagons had long been emblematic of middle-class respectability (often as a family’s second car for the wife & mother) or England where the style enjoyed an association with the upper class HFS (huntin’, fishin’ & shootin’) set, to Germans the utilitarian long-roofs had a down-market image, bought only by those unable to afford separate vehicles for business & pleasure.  Coach-builders had of course used Mercedes-Benz saloons as the basis for station wagons, ambulances and hearses but these were always expensive and thus not tainted by association with thriftiness by necessity.  In their alphanumeric soup of model designations, Mercedes-Benz had previously used “K” to mean either Kompressor (supercharged) (eg 770 K) or Kurz  (short) (eg SSK) and other letters had also done double-duty, “L” standing for either Lang (long) (eg 500 SEL) or Licht (light) (eg SSKL) and “S” could mean both Super (300 SL) or Sports (300 SLR) so for the S123 “K” wasn’t avoided because of fears of confusing folk; it was just an image thing: "Don't mention the kombi".  That all changed in the 1980s when the Germans decided wagons were sexy after all, the high performance arms of Audi, BMW & Mercedes-Benz all producing some remarkably fast ones.   

Mercedes-Benz G4s: Gepäckwagen (baggage car, top left) & Funkauto (radio car, top right) and 300 Messwagen (bottom left) at speed on the test track, tethered to a W111 sedan (1959-1968, bottom right).

The factory did though over the decades build a handful including a brace of the three-axle G4s (W31, 1934-1939), one configured as a Gepäckwagen (baggage car), the other a Funkauto (radio car).  In 1960 there was also the Messwagen (measuring car), a kind of “rolling laboratory” from the era before technology allowed most testing to be emulated in software.  The capacious Messwagen was based on the W189 300 “Adenauer” (W186 & W189 1951-1962) and was then state of the art but by the 2020s, the capabilities of all the bulky equipment which filled the rear compartment could have been included in a single phone app.  Students of design will admire the mid-century modernism in the curve of the rear-side windows but might be surprised to learn the muscle car-like scoop on the roof is not an air-intake but an aperture housing ports for connecting the Messwagen’s electronic gear with the vehicle being monitored, the two closely driven in unison (often at high speed) on the test track while being linked with a few metres of cabling and although we now live in a wireless age, real nerds know often a cable is preferable, the old ways sometimes best.  The Messwagen remained in service until 1972 and is now on display at the factory’s museum in Stuttgart.   

1956 Mercedes-Benz 300c (W186 "Adenauer") Estate Car by Binz.

The factory's Messwagen wasn't the first use of the big W186/W189 for long-roof variants, hearses and ambulances having appeared in several European countries and there was at least one station wagon, proving consumption can be conspicuous yet still subtle, achieved usually if a bespoke creation is both expensive and functional.  The 300 saloons and four-door cabriolets were large, stately and beautifully built, the 1956 example pictured was delivered to a customer in the US who for whatever reason prized exclusivity over capacity or speed, all the major US manufacturers at the time offering station wagons able to accommodate more people and more more luggage while going much faster.  The 300 certainly would have delivered better fuel economy but that wouldn't have crossed the mind of the purchaser who would have been deterred from something like a Chrysler New Yorker or Ford Country Squire because they were, by comparison with her one-off, cheap and common whereas a custom built 300 “dripped money”; even to the uninformed they would obviously have been expensive and it was thus a classic "Veblen good" a quirk in the supply & demand curve of orthodox economics in that for a certain (ie the "1%") demographic demand for an item can increase as its price rises.  The car still exists, traded between collectors to be exhibited at concours d'elegance.

1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser (left), details of the apparatuses above the windscreen (centre) and the Breezeaway rear window lowered (right)

The 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser was notable for (1) the truly memorable model name, (2) the “Breezeway" rear window which could be lowered and (3) having a truly bizarre assembly  of “features” above the windscreen.  There’s no suggestion that when fashioning the 300 Messwagen the engineers in Stuttgart were aware of the Turnpike Cruiser but had they looked, it could have provided an inspiration for the way access to ports in the roof could have been handled.  Unfortunately, the pair of “radio aerials” protruding from the pods at the top of the Mercury’s A-pillars were a mere affectation, a “jet-age” motif embellishing what were actually air-intakes.  They were though a harbinger of the way in which future “measuring vehicles” would be configured when various forms of wireless communication had advanced to the point at which a cable connection was no longer required.  

Cup

Cup (pronounced kuhp)

(1) A small, open container now manufactured usually using ceramics, plastic, glass or metal, typically with a single handle and used as a receptacle from which to drink fluids (tea, coffee, soup etc) and often categorized by design according to their nominal use (tea cup, coffee cup etc); many cups are supplied in sets with a saucer on which the cup sits protecting surfaces from spillage and offer a place on which a stirring spoon may sit.  A cup can be made from glass but may not be a “glass” while a glass made from glass may also have a handle while mugs are essentially cups but called something else.

(2) The bow-like part of a goblet or the like.

(3) A cup with its contents (“a cup of tea” etc).

(4) The quantity contained in a cup (which can be a general reference to any cup or a precisely defined measure).

(5) As a customary unit of measure, a defined unit of capacity frequently used in cooking, the quantum of which varies between (and sometimes within) markets but historically based on a half pint (now usually expressed as 220-250 ml or 14-20 tablespoons).  Measuring cups are available with graduations.

(6) An ornamental bowl, vase, etc especially of precious metal, offered as a prize for a contest (the use of “cup” often persisting even when trophies have been re-designed in a different form); a sporting contest in which a cup (or some other trophy) is awarded to the winner (collective known as the “cup competitions”).

(7) Any of various mixed beverages with one ingredient as a base and historically served from a bowl (claret cup burgundy cup, gin cup, cider cup etc).

(8) In Christianity, the chalice used in the Eucharist (used also of the consecrated wine of the Eucharist).

(9) Something to be partaken of or endured; one's portion, as of joy or suffering.

(10) In many fields, any cup-like utensil, organ, part, cavity etc; anything resembling a cup in shape or function.

(11) In botany, parts such as the flower base of some plants.

(12) In women’s underwear, the two forms containing the breasts in a bra or other garment in which an apparatus with a similar function is integrated (camisoles, bathing suits etc).

(13) In certain sports, a concave protective covering for the male genitalia, reinforced with usually with rigid plastic or metal (in some markets called a “box”, “cup” the common form in North America).

(14) In golf-course construction, the metal receptacle within the hole or the hole itself.

(15) In astronomy, a constellation or a crater.

(16) In pre-modern medicine, as “cupping glass”, a glass vessel from which air can be removed by suction or heat to create a partial vacuum, formerly used in drawing blood to the surface of the skin for slow blood-letting (also called the “artificial leech”).  The concept (cupping) remains in use (though without the blood-letting) in certain beauty treatments popular in East-Asia.

(17) In metalworking, a cylindrical shell closed at one end, especially one produced in the first stages of a deep-drawing operation; to form (tubing, containers etc) by punching hot strip or sheet metal and drawing it through a die.

(18) In mathematics, the cup-like symbol ∪, used to indicate the union of two sets.

(19) As CUP, the international standard (ISO 4217) currency code for the Cuban peso.

(20) In tarot card reading, a suit of the minor arcana or one of the cards from the suit.

(21) In ultimate frisbee competition, a defensive style characterized by a three player near defense cupping the thrower (or those three players).

(22) A flexible concave membrane used temporarily to attach a handle or hook to a flat surface by means of suction (the “suction cup”, the origins of which were in biomimicry (octopodes et al)).

(23) To take or place in, or as in, a cup.

(24) To form into a cuplike shape.

Pre-1000: From the Middle English cuppe & coppe, created by a blending of the Old English cuppe (cup) and the & Old Northumbrian copp (cup, vessel), from the Late Latin cuppa which etymologists list as being of uncertain origin but thought probably a variant of the earlier cūpa (tub, cask, tun, barrel) which may have been cognate with the Sanskrit kupah (hollow, pit, cave), the Greek kype (gap, hole; a kind of ship), the Old Church Slavonic kupu, the Lithuanian kaupas, the Old Norse hufr (ship's hull) and the Old English hyf (beehive).  Etymologists are divided on whether the source of the original Latin was the primitive Indo-European kewp- (a hollow) or the non Indo-European loanword kup- which was borrowed by and from many languages.  The Old English copp was from the Proto-West Germanic kopp (round object, bowl, vessel, knoll, summit, crown of the head), from the Proto-Germanic kuppaz, from the primitive Indo-European gew- (to bend, curve, arch), the source also of the obsolete English cop (top, summit, crown of the head) and the German Kopf (top, head).  The Middle English word evolved also under the influence of the Anglo-Norman cupe & the Old French cope & coupe.  The Late Latin cuppa begat many words meaning “cup” including the Old French coupe, the Saterland Frisian & West Frisian kop, the Old Frisian kopp, the Italian coppa, the Middle Dutch coppe, the Dutch kop & kopje, the Middle Low German kopp, the German Low German Koppke & Köppke, the Danish kop, the Spanish copa and the Swedish kopp.  It was a doublet of coupe, hive and keeve.  The German cognate Kopf now means exclusively “head”.  The first cups doubtlessly were formed by a “cupping” of the hands in order to drink and that action would have been pre-human and an important evolutionary step in the development of the brain.  Later, whatever fell conveniently to hand (sea-shells, the shells of nuts etc) would have been used before drinking vessels came to be fashioned from clay, wood or other materials.  Cup is a noun & verb, cupped & cupping are verbs; the noun plural is cups.

Art Deco and the coffee cup.

By the late fourteenth century, “cup” had come to be used of just about in the shape of what is now understood as a cup, the sense of “quantity contained in a cup” emerging about the same time.  The sense of a “cup-shaped metal vessel offered as a prize in sport or games” dates from the 1640s, the origin thought to be the traditional ceremonial ritual of celebrating victory by drinking wine or some other alcoholic brew and while it’s speculative, anthropologists have suggested there may be some symbolic link with the idea of “drinking the blood of the vanquished”.  The idea obviously persists, and among the more disgusting versions is drinking from a shoe or boot worn by the victor during the event.  That particular form of podophilic mixology actually has a long history but of late it’s become something of a fetish on the podiums in motor-sport; the term “shoey” was coined in the barbarian nation of Australia.

The origin of the use of “one cup in life” is in the Biblical scripture: And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. (Matthew 26:39 (King James Version (KJV, 1611))).

The word cup appears in many scriptural verses which refer to God's judgment or a time of great suffering, Christ Himself asking James and John if they could "drink the cup" (Matthew 20:22) assigned to Him (by which he meant the suffering He soon would endure on the cross, experiencing God's judgment for the sins of humanity.  It’s an important theological point, emphasized (Hebrews 4:15) by Jesus seeming to be overwhelmed and saddened by the prospect and awfulness of his impending crucifixion, praying to God he be spared this fate.  Jesus was, although the son of God, also fully human and few humans wish to suffer humiliation, torture, and death so his prayer was natural but critically, almost at once he submits and resolves to obey the will of the Father.  Whatever his human anguish at what is to come, his absolute commitment was to obeying God.  The idea then is that “suffering is to be endured” was by the fourteenth century expressed in phrases like “the cup of life” and whatever may be the cup, it is “something to be partaken of” because it is the will of God.  In figurative use thus, “one’s cup” is that which is one’s lot to be endured; that which is allotted to one for good and bad whether it be paradise on Earth or nailed to the cross at Golgotha.

The daffodil (one of the common names of flowers of the genus Narcissus); as in many flowers, the alternative name for the corona is the cup.

To be in one's cups was to be “intoxicated”, a use dating from the 1610s which may have been a direct development from the mid-fourteenth century Middle English cup-shoten (drunk, drunken).  One’s “cup of tea” is what interests one and came into use in the 1930s of things or concepts although it’s documented from 1908 applying to persons; tellingly, the use of “not my cup of tea” is more common.  The “cup-bearer” was an early fifteenth century job description to describe the “attendant at a feast who conveys wine or other liquor to guests” but a more specialized use was of the court official who carried with him the cups, plates and other utensils to be used by those fearing poisoning (usually royalty or feudal barons).  The phrase “storm in a tea cup” refers to a fuss being made over a trivial matter and is in the same vein as “much ado about nothing”, “tempest in a teapot”, “storm in a teapot”, “lightning in a bottle” and “make a mountain out of a molehill”.

America's Cup (left), FIFA World Cup (centre) and William Webb Ellis Cup (left).

In sport, cups are a popular choice as trophies and they range from small ones in anodised plastic to large, heavy constructions plated in gold or silver.  The America's Cup is contested in yacht racing and, first awarded in 1870, is the oldest international sporting competition still running.  Informally, competitors call it the “Auld Mug”.  The Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football) World Cup was first contested in 1930 with the tournament since run at four year intervals (skipping 1942 & 1946 because of World War II (1939-1945)).  The name “World Cup” remains although the trophy hasn’t, in the conventional sense of the word, actually been a cup since 1974, the last year the finals were contested by 16 teams (there will be 48 in 2026).  The Webb Ellis Cup is the premier trophy in international rugby and since 1987 tournaments have been run every four years.  The cup is named after English Anglican clergyman William Webb Ellis (1806–1872) who, according to legend, while a pupil at Rugby School, Webb Ellis ignored the rules of the football game he was playing, picking up the ball and running with it “…thereby creating rugby.”  There’s no satisfactory evidence to support the tale and within the game there’s the joke what Webb Ellis invented was rugby's (some say Rugby School's) tradition of theft.

Example of the idiomatic use of cup in the phrase “one’s cup runneth over”: Model Adriana Fenice (b 1994) in 32G (10G or anything between 70-82G depending where sold) bra.

The verb use “to cup” was a part of pre-modern medicine by the fourteenth century, describing the use of something cup-like to press against the skin to draw blood closer to the surface prior to “slow blood-letting”.  Medical dictionaries note there were two modes of cupping: one in which the part is scarified and some blood taken away to relieve congestion or inflammation of internal parts (“wet cupping”, or simply “cupping”), the other in which there was no scarification no blood was abstracted (“dry cupping”).  The concept (as “cupping” and without the bleeding) is still used in certain beauty treatments popular in East-Asia.  The cupful (quantity; that a cup holds, contents of a cup) was known in late Old English and persists to this day, the phrase “cup runneth over” is used to refer an over-supply of anything and was from the Hebrew Bible (Psalms:23:5) where the message was “I have more than enough for my needs” and thus a caution against greed, or in the words of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): Ich habe genug (I have enough) an unfashionable view in a materialist age although one with which Ms Fenice might concur.  Modifiers are appended as required, hyphenated and not including the teacup (circa 1700), the egg-cup (used for making the eating of boiled eggs easier (1773)) and the cupcake (1828).  Cupcakes were “small cakes intended for one” and were an invention of US English, the name derived either from cup-shaped containers in which they were baked or from the small measures of ingredients used.  The slang use to describe an “attractive young woman” was another American innovation from the 1930s.

Art Deco and the tea cup: 1934 "Tango" trio by Royal Doulton in bone china, the cup with the classic pointed handle.

The use of “cup” in recipes is probably one of the less helpful uses of the word and for those not familiar with the conventions, they were probably baffled and wondering which of the various sized cups they had should be used.  The origin of “cup” as a measure lies in the old English unit which was ½ an imperial pint and thus (10 imperial ounces (284 ml), often later rounded to 300 ml.  Elsewhere, countries did their own thing: In Australia & New Zealand it was set at 250 ml after the conversion to metric measurements in 1973; In the US it was a liquid measure equal to 8 fluid ounces (237 ml which was usually rounded to 240); In Canada it was set at 8 imperial ounces (227 ml and rounded to 250).  The “metric cup” is now a universal 250 ml and for recipes this appears to be the preferred use even in North America.

Bra cups

Example of the idiomatic use of cup in the phrase "storm in a D Cup": Lindsay Lohan in demi-cup bra, from a photoshoot by Terry Richardson (b 1965) for Love magazine, 2012.

If in cooking "cup" has been (just about) standardized around the world, the bra cup, that other use of cup as an expression of volume is bafflingly diverse, anomalies appearing even within a manufacturer's catalogue.  The use of cup in the bra business seems to have begun in the 1930s although among historians of the bra (a surprisingly well populated niche in the discipline of the history of fashion) many differ in detail; the vague consensus seems to be the term was first used in this context in the early 1930s, was wide-spread by 1940 and almost universal by the early 1950s.  The principle of the cup size was compelling simple in that there were two variables (1) the torso and (2) the breasts.  The measurement of the torso was expressed by the bra band size (measured under the bust) in inches (or its metric equivalent) such as 30”, 32”, 34” etc, the graduations between the numbers handled by the fastening mechanism (usually a hook & eye arrangement) allowing a “tight” or “loose” fit so a 32” band could be worn by someone with a torso measurement in a 31-33 inch range.  The cup size range corresponded with the volume of the breast and (in ascending order) these were expressed in letters: A, B, C, D etc so when combined, the products were called 32B, 34C etc.  In theory, the two values worked progressively (up & down: alphabetically & numerically) so the cup size of a 32C was the same as a 30D and a 34B; in the industry, the concept is called "sister sizes", each cup the same dimensions but mounted on a different sized structure (defined by the back-band) and labelled accordingly.  That's the theory and within a manufacturer's single range it may often be true but there is no recognized definition for cup sizes so not only are any two 32Cs from different manufacturers likely to be a slightly different size, nor can it be expected the dimensions of the cup of any 30D will align exactly with that of any other 34B.  It may but it can't be predicted and the expectation should be it will likely "tend towards".

Maaree's graphical depiction of the "sister size" concept.  The point is that while band size is an absolute (expressed usually in inches or centimetres), cup size can be an absolute (within the same band size) or a comparative (when applied to different band sizes. 

English borrowed the word brassiere from the French brassière, from the Old French braciere (which was originally a lining fitted inside armor which protected the arm, only later becoming a garment), from the Old French brace (arm) although by then it described a chemise (a kind of undershirt) but in the US, brassiere was used from 1893 when the first bras were advertised and from there, use spread.  The three syllables were just too much to survive the onslaught of modernity and the truncated “bra” soon prevailed, being the standard form throughout the English-speaking world by the early 1930s.  Curiously, in French, a bra is a soutien-gorge which translates literally and rather un-romantically as "throat-supporter" although "chest uplifter" is a better translation.  The etymological origin of the modern "bra" lying in a single garment is the reason one buys "a bra" in the same department store from which one might purchase "a pair" of sunglasses or trousers, both of which, centuries ago, began as two separate items.

The authoritative Honeylove’s comprehensive guide to bras suggest the absolute minimum number a wearer should own is three on the basis of (1) one in the bra drawer, (2) one in the wash and (3) the one being worn; their recommended number is higher but three is the functional minimum.  That was based on essentially the same calculation used in 1939 (a time when the orthodoxy in German military circles was a general European war would not happen before 1942-1943 at the earliest), when the head of the Kriegsmarine's (German navy) Unterseeboote (submarine) arm (Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; head of the German Navy 1943-1945, German head of state 1945)) recommended that for the submarine to be an effective strategic weapon, at any time 100 would need to be deployed at sea.  That would demand a fleet of 300 because in addition to the 100 active, 100 would be either in transit to position or returning to base while another 100 would be in their pens being repaired, serviced or re-fitted.  Unfortunately for Dönitz, at the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945), his fleet numbered not even 60, fewer than half of which were suited to a campaign on the high seas but even then, the U-boats proved a potent weapon a great threat to the British, the critical dangers not overcome until 1942.  Had Germany entered the war with a fleet of even 150, the course of the Battle of the Atlantic would have been very different.       

Bra size multi-national conversion chart by Fredericks of Hollywood.

Like the footwear business, it seems an industry crying out for an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) but while something buyers might welcome, it seems unlikely industry would share the enthusiasm.  Sizing systems for shoes and bras evolved independently in different regions, based either on local traditions and preferences or just wholly arbitrary choice and there would be much commercial resistance to having to change long-established conventions, something which would necessitate updating labels, packaging & advertising, as well as re-educating initially baffled consumers.  Obviously, that would be costly and therefore lobbied against.  ISO 19407:2015 does provide guidelines for converting shoe sizes between regions but that’s more an acknowledgement of a problem (and a “sort-of”) work-around than a solution and the ISO seems never to have contemplated bras.  Probably, the only way such ISOs could successfully be imposed would be to give industry a long lead-time (perhaps 25-30 years) to permit an orderly and phased world-wide introduction but realistically, few are expecting progress.

Unfortunately the manufacturers complicated things in a number of ways.  Given the A,B,C,D ascending sequence, it would have been reasonable to assume E,F,G & H would follow and in some cases they did but not all, some adopting a double letter convention yielding DD, EE etc but these did not represent fractional sizing-steps between single letters; what was to some manufacturers a DD was an E to others and some were so taken with the idea they added triple lettered sizes so a 32DDD was nominally the equivalent of a 32F from another house.  Some quirks were understandable such as the one which explains the rarity of the I cup, the explanation being the character might be confused with a numeric "1" which, given the syntax of the system, seems improbable but one can see their point.  Although there are a few "I cup" bras, most manufacturers skip the letter and either leave a nominal gap between the "H" & "J" cups or include a "HH" cup in the range (although there are the odd few who stop at "G" and handle icremental increases in volume with "GG" & "GGG".  It's only the descriptions where there's a lacuna, the actual cup sizes on offer still graduated although it can be mystifying because, between manufacturers, the same size can actually be tagged as "H", "I", "HH", "J" or even "GGG" and while that can make in-store shopping merely time-consuming, for on-line shoppers it makes life especially difficult, the the attraction of an ISO.  

1962 Chrysler 300H (left) and 1963 Chrysler 300J (right).

Chrysler in the US, not wanting the market to think there was a "3001", was in 1963 guided by the same rationale when for the first time since 1956 a letter was skipped in the designation of the 300 “letter series” cars; there’s nothing to suggest the corporation ever pondered a “300HH”.

The BUFF: The new version of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (replacing the B-52H) will be the B-52J, not B-52I or B-52HH.   

The US Air Force also opted to skip “I” when allocating a designation for the updated version of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service).  Between the first test flight of the B-52A in 1954 and the B-52H entering service in 1962, the designations B-52B, B-52C, B-52D, B-52E, B-52F & B-52G sequentially had been used but after flirting with whether to use B52J as an interim designation (reflecting the installation of enhanced electronic warfare systems) before finalizing the series as the B-52K after new engines were fitted, in 2024 the USAF announced the new line would be the B-52J and only a temporary internal code would distinguish those not yet re-powered.  Again, the “I” was not used so nobody would think there was a B-521.  Although the avionics, digital displays and ability to carry Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM, a scramjet-powered weapon capable exceeding Mach 5) are the most significant changes for the B-52J, visually, it will be the replacement of the old Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines with new Rolls-Royce F130 units which will be most obvious, the F130 promising improvements in fuel efficiency of some 30% as well as reduction in noise and exhaust emissions.  Already in service for 70 years, apparently no retirement date for the B-52 has yet been pencilled-in.  In USAF (US Air Force) slang, the B-52 is the BUFF (the acronym for big ugly fat fellow or big ugly fat fucker depending on who is asking).  From BUFF was derived the companion acronym for the LTV A-7 Corsair II (1965-1984, the last in active service retired in 2014) which was SLUFF (Short Little Ugly Fat Fellow or Short Little Ugly Fat Fucker).

Under the A-B-C-D etc cup-sizing system, a given designation varies in dimensions (and thus volumetric capacity) according to the band size, the cup of a 28A smaller than that of a 32A (which should share size and shape with that used on a 30B).   

The theory: Individual results may vary.

Then there was the band size.  Most countries of course use the metric system so dimensions had to be converted but the convention for those advertised in inches was to use increments of 2 (28, 30, 32 etc) while for metric users it was in jumps of 5 cm (70, 75, 80 etc) which is close but not quite the same (28” = 71.12 cm; 30” = 76.2 cm; 32 = 82.28 cm).  More of a problem was that for the system to work, some math was required because the number from the under-bust measurement didn’t directly translate to the advertised bra size: What the buyer had to do was take the number and add 5 inches (12.7 cm) so if one’s under-bust measurement was 29” (73.7 cm), one (at least in theory) needed something with a 34” band (86.4 cm, the closest in the metric countries being the 85 cm range).  However, if the number was over 33” (83.8 cm), then one added only 3” (7.6 cm).  At that point, one needed to determine the appropriate cup.  This required a further measurement, one taken which represented the bust at its fullest projection, the somewhat misleadingly named “over-bust” number which was actually taken following the nipple line.  Many recommended taking it while wearing a bra but if that was a poor fit, that would hardly be helpful and the ideal method turned out to be (and usually this was necessary only if the volume was above a certain point) holding the breasts in place at the desired location while another did the measuring.  An ideal project then in which to involve one’s boyfriend or girlfriend, the only instructions needed being (1) the tape should rest lightly on the skin and (2) it should straight across the back, parallel to the floor.  The relationship between the over-bust measurement and the band size indicated the needed cup size: if the difference is 1” (2.54 cm) then it dictates an A cup; 2” (5.08 cm) and it’s a B cup and so on.  In many cases the simple under/over equation will work but not in all and some authorities have added additional measurements to be taken while in different positions, the 6 listed including lying flat on one's back and leaning forward so the breasts are perpendicular to the ground.  Definitely, the more dimensions which are taken, the more this seems a job for two.  

The math of cup sizes.

In practice it transpired the human body wasn’t so accommodating of production line rationalization but the system worked well enough for it to have endured for decades although only a percentage of women find an ideal fit without the help of an in-store fitter.  Quite what that number is depends on who is asked but it’s clear it’s a long way short of 100%.  The outcome for bra wearers wasn’t helped by the lack of standardization in either the labeling or the technical specification of the cup size.  The inches vs centimetres thing was manageable but even in some countries which had long switched to the metric system, bras sizes were often expressed in inches (a similar aberration to the (almost) universal use of inches for certain products including the wheels used on cars and computer monitors) and because of the internationalized nature of the market with so much imported product, in many countries, both sizing regimes simultaneously were on sale, often in the same shop.  Helpfully, many displayed wall charts with conversion tables.  For some reason, in Australia and New Zealand, the decision was taken to use the dress sizing standard used in the antipodes (8 = 30”, 10 = 32” etc), thus bra sizes like 8C, 10D etc which local users presumably adapted to but it seems a needless complication.  Additionally, regardless of what country one was in, there was no guarantee a given size from one manufacturer would exactly align with that from another and in England, a comparison by a consumer organization revealed band and cup size differences existed in stated sizes even between various styles produced by the same manufacturer; not all 32Ds were created equal.  Given that, it seems obvious it’s best to seek the assistance of a fitter but in the internet age, customers found capitalism offered a handy on-line, home delivered alternative, the trick being to order half a dozen bras of slightly different declared sizes (eg 32C, 30D, 32E etc), the ones not quite right being able to returned for credit at no cost, the site paying all the P&H (postage & handling).  That approach has attracted much criticism because of the environmental impact and it’s a significant cost to the distributor and some have now moved to restrict the practice.

Details of fifteenth century bras in Linen from Austria.

Although it wasn’t until well into the twentieth century the idea of cup sized was codified (though to this day not standardized), the concept turned out to be ancient, something confirmed in 2008 when, as part of her PhD research, Austrian anthropologist Beatrix Nutz was undertaking at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, retrieved from the dirt, wood and straw (all discarded stuff apparent used as insulation) of centuries ago in the foundations of an Austrian castle, four linen bras among some 4000 textile fragments.  What was striking was the medieval garment was the similarity to the version first patented in the United States in 1914 something perhaps unsurprising as there really is only one way to achieve the functional effect desired if a minimalist approach is pursued and that’s what was done, a few centuries apart.

Fifteenth century "longline" bra in Linen from Austria, the midriff-enveloping fabric originally extending beneath the cups.

The detailing on the garments would be familiar to those bra shopping in the twenty-first century, the lower ends decorated with finger-loop-laces, sown on with lace-stitches, resulting some simple needle-lace decoration.  There’s structural overlap too, one of the unearthed bras in the style of the “longline” bras which first became popular in the 1930s, both representing the practical expedient of combining a type of corset with a bra.  Clearly, while not necessarily something with wide commercial availability, garments in the style of the linen bras must have been well-known (at least in certain circles because in French texts as early as 1315 CE there are mentions of the “breast bags” or “shirts with bags” women used to support and restrain their breasts and one disapproving author called them “indecent” although it seems his objection was to “breasts too large” rather than the pre-modern lingerie used to minimize their appearance and the longest known surviving fragment in this vein is a verse from fifteenth century Vienna:

Ir manche macht zwen tuttenseck
Damit so snurt sie umb die eck,
Das sie anschau ein ieder knab,
Wie sie hübsche tütlein hab;
Aber welcher sie zu groß sein,
Die macht enge secklein,
Das man icht sag in der stat,
Das sie so groß tutten hab.

Translation:

Many a woman makes two bags for the breasts,
with them she roams the streets,
so that all the guys look at her,
and see what beautiful breasts she has got;
But whose breasts are too large,
makes tight pouches,
so it is not told in the city
that she has such big breasts.

Nursing bras use specialized cups: Lindsay Lohan inspects the apparatus in Labor Pains (2009).

The most obvious specialized cup is that used with nursing bras which feature an arrangement whereby most of the cup’s fabric can be semi-separated from the superstructure, enabling breast-feeding without the need to remove the whole garment.  Among bra manufacturers, there are different implementations by which the functionality of a nursing bra's apparatus is achieved and presumably chest-feeders (the preferred term among the woke to describe those who used to be called “breast-feeding women”) choose whichever best suits them; it may simply be that for manufacturers the production-line rationalization achieved by being able to adapt the specialized cups to the structures used for conventional bras is compelling, dictating the designs.  Which chest-feeders choose is of some significance given how often heard is the complaint the process is “tiring”.  To those who will never be chest-feeders it sounds more a pleasant and diverting relaxation rather than anything tiring but they all say it so it must be true.

The "push-up" bra (the best-known of which is the "Wonderbra") lives up to its name by using strategically placed padding which has the effect of "pushing up" the breast tissue (it has nowhere else to go), creating the visual effect of something bigger and higher.  Most padding is purely functional but there are also novelty items such as the one above which is variant of the "hand bra", also a thing.  

The cupless: A "special purpose" bra available in S, M, L & XL.

Other variations include the demi-cup (also called the half-cup ("semi-cup" not a recognized term)), the bullet cup, the adhesive cup (an enlarged & shaped adaptation of the so-called "tit-tape" technology), the padded cup and the seemingly paradoxical cupless (or open-cup), the last a niche market.  Those wanting to have "their cake and eat it too" who like to go braless while enjoying the benefit of some support can buy clothes with a "built-in bra" or a "shelf-bra" although the law of physics continue to operate and beyond a certain size (and more to the point: mass), these things simply: "don't work".  The cups of a "push-up bra" include thick padding towards the bottom of the structure, this having the effect of "pushing up" the breast tissue, lending things a higher, fuller look.  There are degrees to which this can be implemented: the more the padding, the greater the effect.

Vaquera’s crew neck T-shirt with trompe l'oeil underwear.  Despite the model’s expression (it’s part of their training for the catwalks), the look really should be worn for fun.  The skin-tone of the legs is because of tights, not Photoshopping.

Bra cups can even be virtualized.  The technique called tompe-l'œil (from the French and literally “trick the eye” describes an optical illusion created by rendering on a two-dimensional surface something which appears as a three-dimensional object and the trick had been around for millennia when first the term was used in 1800 by French artist Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) for a painting he exhibited in the Paris Salon.  While it wasn’t for a few decades trompe-l'œil (usually in English as trompe l'oeil) was accepted by the academy as a legitimate part of high-art, architects and interior decorators continued to exploit the possibilities and the term entered their lexicons.  It has of course for years also been used in the prints on T-shirts but of late this has extended to depictions of underwear.  For most of the twentieth century, the sight of an exposed bra strap was a social faux pas, Vogue and other dictators of fashion publishing helpful tips recommending (for the well-organized) sewing on Velcro strips and (for everyone else) the industry’s DLR (device of last resort): the safety pin.  By the 1980s things had changed and the bra emerged as a fashion piece which might in part (or even in whole) be displayed.  It’s a look which waxes and wanes in popularity but one which has never gone away although it’s one of those things where ageism remains acceptable: beyond a certain age, it shouldn’t be used.  Now, fashion houses are promoting trompe l'oeil bras, knickers and other underwear printed on T-shirts, one attraction being it’s possible to create depictions of garments appearing to possess an intricacy or delicacy either not financially viable or impossible IRL (in real life).

A mastectomy bra with prostheses (left) and with the prostheses inserted in the cups' pockets (centre & right).

There are also bras for those who have lost a breast, the cups of which are “double-skinned” in that they feature internal “pockets” into which a prosthetic breast form (a prosthesis) can be inserted.  Those who have had a unilateral (or single) mastectomy (the surgical amputation of one breast) can choose a cup size to match the remaining while those who have lost both (a bilateral or double mastectomy) can adopt whatever size they prefer.  There are now even single cup bras for those who have lost one breast but opt not to use a prosthetic, an approach which reflects both an aesthetic choice and a reaction against what is described in the US as the “medical-industrial complex”, the point being that women who have undergone a mastectomy should not be subject to pressure either to use a prosthetic or agree to surgical reconstruction (a lucrative procedure for the industry).  This has now emerged as a form of advocacy called the “going flat” movement which has a focus not only on available fashions but also the need for a protocol under which, if women request an AFC (aesthetic flat closure, a surgical closure (sewing up) in which the “surplus” skin (often preserved to accommodate a future reconstructive procedure) is removed and the chest rendered essentially “flat”), that is what must be provided.  The medical industry has argued the AFC can preclude a satisfactory cosmetic outcome in reconstruction if a woman “changes her mind”  but the movement insists it's an example of how the “informed consent” of women is not being respected.  Essentially, what the movement seems to be arguing is the request for an AFC should be understood as an example of the legal principle of VAR (voluntary assumption of risk).  The attitude of surgeons who decline to perform an AFC is described by the movement as the “flat refusal”.

World map with the traditional Mercator projection (left), world map with land masses accurately to scale (centre) and world map with true size overlaid on the Mercator depiction (right).

In most of the world, women’s main issue with bras probably is finding one which fits and affords both support and comfort, the informal test being it should “feel like not wearing one”.  That can be a challenge (certainly after a long, hot day) and the inconsistencies in the sizing and labelling doesn’t make it easier but if tiresome, the problems are at least manageable.  In Africa, bras can be more of an issue and the continent is a big place (bigger indeed than the impression created by maps of the world which use the still popular Mercator projection which exaggerates the size of the land masses at more northern latitudes (Europe, Asia and North America)).  The are 54 sovereign states on the continent and the African Union recognizes also the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara), which is a disputed territory but it’s neither recognized by the United Nations (UN) as a member state nor granted observer status.  The African Union is a pan-African association comprised of the whole 55 entities although several currently are suspended because of military meddling in politics.

Nigeria’s Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) staff enforcing the “No Bra, No Entry” rule.

So geographically it’s big and also diverse politically, culturally, religiously and ethnically with different states in various stages of development, all of those factors having sometimes led to clashes with wars with other conflicts legion; the death toll over recent decades is in the millions.  Given all that, less lethal squabbles were perhaps inevitable but one source of disputes which may not have been predicted concerned that most Western of garments: the bra.  In June 2025, a viral video circulated showing (female) staff at Nigeria’s Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) in the south-western state of Ogun, frisking students to verify bras were being worn, enforcing the institution’s “No Bra, No Entry” rule for exam halls.  The backlash on social media was predictably swift with users condemning the act as “harassment” and a “violation of human rights”, pointing out women have “different reasons for not wearing bras” ranging from comfort to poverty.  A (male) representative for the university’s student union seemed unimpressed with the protests, posting on X (formerly known as Twitter) that: “No bra, no entry is not a new policy in Olabisi Onabanjo University”, adding that the institution promotes “modest dressing” to ensure a “distraction-free environment."  In case people didn’t get it, the post went on to clarify things, explaining the policy was enforced to prevent “indecent dressing capable of making the opposite sex unnecessarily lust after them.”  However, in conclusion, the representative did acknowledge the strength of feeling and said the union would hold discussions with university authorities to explore “more respectful and dignified” alternative methods of enforcement.  Like many institutions, the OOU seems to understand that if a problem is identified, women must be cause.

The Brady Bunch's Marcia (left) and Jan (right).

Lest it be thought making bras compulsory is something culturally specific, during the latter seasons of the US television sitcom The Brady Bunch (1969-1974), the director (physically!) would check the two young actresses (Maureen McCormick (Marcia, b 1956) & Eve Plumb (Jan, b 1958) to ensure bras were on, the method being a palm of the hand placed between the suspect’s shoulder blades, a detected strap a “pass”, its absence meaning a trip back to the dressing room.  The rationale for this was the show having a “wholesome, family-friendly image” and a concern the sight of a nipple intruding on fabric might jeopardize advertising revenue.  Going braless was an act of deliberate rebellion by the teen-aged pair and apparently they got away with it for a couple of episodes before being detected, triggering the “battle of the bras”.  Interestingly, unlike the protocols used at the OOU, the physical check was performed by a man, the show’s director, Lloyd Schwartz (b 1946), something which must seem remarkable to the #metoo generation but times have changed.

Being a big place of 54 sovereign jurisdictions, cultural standards in Africa vary from place to place and while bras may sometimes be compulsory in Nigeria, to the east they have in the past been banned.  In 2009, Reuters reported in the Somali capital Mogadishu, members of the hardline Islamist group al Shabaab had publicly whipped women for wearing bras, a garment they claim violates the rules of Islam by “constituting a deception”.  The news agency reported gunmen had been seen rounding up any woman whose appearance suggested the presence of a bra which they were instructed to remove and then “shake their breasts”.  One woman interviewed on condition of anonymity told Reuters: “Al shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts, my daughters have been whipped.  They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women's chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat."

Ladies Undergarments Fancy Bra Imported Bra & Panty, Shopkeeper number: 0313 5520532, Shop 36b, Al Ghaffar Mall, G 11 Markaz, Islamabad, Pakistan.

The very existence of such a place in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan would appal al-Shabaab which would declare the whole place Haraam on the grounds of promoting “deceptive and misleading conduct”.

Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (known usually as al-Shabaab and translated as “the youth”) remains active in and beyond Somalia although its presence in Mogadishu has been restricted to raiding activities with their effective control of territory limited to southern and central regions.  As a military and political formation based (notionally) on youth, al-Shabaab can be compared with the Pakistani Taliban (طالبان) which translates variously as “students”" or “seekers (of knowledge)” and is the plural of the Arabic-derived ṭālib (طالب) (“student” or “seeker”).  Formed in 2007, the origins of the Pakistani Taliban lay in the madrassas (Islamic seminaries) which produced graduates marked by a mix of youthful energy, a militant interpretation of Islam and a belief in violent jihad as a means of furthering the political end of imposing a rigorous form of Sharia law on the Islamic Republic of Pakistani.  The earlier product of the Pakistani madrassas was the Afghan Taliban which emerged in southern Afghanistan during the mid-1980s (though the name would not come into use for several years).  The students came mostly from Madrasses in the rather lawless border areas (notably Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), the funding for which came from Saudi and Western sources (with the active logistical support of the Pakistan military’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), the funders’ interest being to oppose the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Unlike the other great monotheist faiths (Christianity and Judaism) which (at least at certain stages) had standardized, codified rules, despite the existence of the Holy Quran, lacking centralized authority (such as the Roman Catholic pope) Islam’s precepts have long been open to interpretation (a trend the Anglicans picked up after the 1968 Lambeth conference) which is why al-Shabaab members were able to ponder whether a bra was haraam, halal or fard.  Haraam was from the Arabic حَرَام (ḥarām) and meant “forbidden by Islam; unlawful, sinful”.  Halal was from the Arabic حَلَال (ḥalāl) and meant “allowable, according to Muslim religious customs” (although in some places it’s now rather more prescriptive).  Fard (or fardh) was from the Arabic فَرْض (farḍ) (religious duty) and was from فَرَضَ (faraḍa) (to ordain, make obligatory, specify) and meant “obligatory for all Muslims”.  Although those three headings (forbidden; permitted; compulsory) are well known in the West, the Sharia is more nuanced and the key terms in Islamic jurisprudence include:

Halal (حلال): Permissible

Haraam (حرام): Forbidden

Fard (فرض): Obligatory or compulsory

Wajib (واجب): Also means obligatory but in use it seems now to apply to matters not strictly enforced

Mustahabb (مستحب): Recommended

Makruh (مكروه): Disliked, but not sinful

Mubah (مباح): Neutral or permissible (neither encouraged nor discouraged)

Nigeria’s Ogun state is not exclusively Islamic (estimates of the population breakdown vary, the Christians estimated between 35-70%) but the OOU’s student union clearly is convinced the wearing of a bra is Fard (at least when trying to sit an exam) whereas to al-Shabaab it’s definitely haraam.  While it can be predicted al-Shabaab will be uncompromising and not prepared to reclassify bras as Makruh, it remains to be seen whether the OOU union’s discussions with university authorities will result in the garment becoming merely Mustahabb or enforcement at least reduced to Wajib.