Abduct

Abduct (pronounced ab-duhkt)

(1) To carry off or lead away (a person) illegally and in secret or by force, especially to kidnap.

(2) In physiology (as a back-formation from adduction), of certain muscles, to pull (a leg, arm etc) away from the median axis of the body.

1825–1835: From the Latin abductus, past participle of abdūcere (to abduce; to lead away) and perfect passive participle of abdūcō (to lead away), the construct being ab- (from, away from) + dūcō (lead).  The sense of the verb “abduct” meaning “to kidnap” was in use by 1834 (almost certainly as a back-formation from abduction and may be compared with the earlier transitive verb “abduce”, from abdūcō.  Abduct & abducting are verbs, abductor, abductee & abduction are nouns, abducting is a verb, & abducted is a verb & adjective, abductive is an adjective and abductively is an adverb; the common noun plural is abductions.

The noun abduction (a leading away) was in use by the 1620s and was from the Latin abductionem (a forcible carrying off, ravishing, robbing), the noun of action from past-participle stem of abducere (to lead away, take away, arrest (in use a sense of “by force” often implied although in Roman humor it seems the word was used when men approvingly discussed (legitimate, non-violent) acts of seduction)).  The construct was ab- + ducere (to lead), the latter element from the primitive Indo-European deuk- (to lead).  The modern idea of abduction as “the criminal act of forcibly taking someone (ie a kidnap) was in use by 1768, the previous uses in medicine and logic continuing, confusion avoided because the contexts were so different

In English, the sixteenth century abduce conveyed the same notions as the later abduct :(1) to conduct away; to take away; to withdraw; to draw to a different part & (2) to move a limb out away from the centre of the body but became obsolete when the alternative was preferred although it retains to this day the abstract meaning “to draw a conclusion”, used in specialized fields to describe the results of metanalysis.  In applied statistics, metanalysis is a systematic procedure (there are many) used to analyse data from two or more sources although, casually, the term is sometimes used of any analysis undertaken at a higher level of abstraction than running the numbers through a “standard analytical model”.  For those not practitioners in the field(s), what is abduced appears to be the same as what is “deduced” from the data and the difference between the terms is that abduce describes a process.

El rapto de Europa (The Rape of Europa (1628-1629)), oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Prado Museum, Madrid (left).  It follows a 1562 work in the same vein by Tiziano Vecelli (circa 1489-1576 and known in English as Titian).  Ratto di Proserpina (The Rape of Proserpina, 1621-1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) (right).

In modern use, few words in English have, in a historical context, been as misunderstood as “rape” because the modern understanding has become so pervasive.  Rape is now (in most Western jurisdictions) held to mean “a penetrative sexual act forced upon another in the absence of their consent” (although some feminist schools of thought argue the vista should be wider) but the use of the word “rape” (sometimes retrospectively) in so much art and sculpture from Antiquity and the Middle Ages is the cause of much misunderstanding among modern audiences.  Both the French noun and verb ultimately came from the Latin rapina (act of robbery, plundering (related to rapine and the source of much modern confusion because “rape” was long used in the sense of “pillage” or “kidnapping”)) with sense development influenced by the Latin rapidus (rapid).  In the sense of “carrying off”, the English use was in parallel with the Middle French rapture with the meaning drawn from the Medieval Latin raptura (seizure, rape, kidnapping, carrying off, abduction, snatching away) and the word rape is a cognate of this.

The verb rape was from the late fourteenth century rapen (seize prey; abduct, take and carry off by force) from the noun rape and the Anglo-French raper, from the Old French rapir (to seize, abduct) which was the standard legal term, probably directly from the Latin rapere (seize, carry off by force, abduct).  The meaning “to rob, strip, plunder (a place and, more latterly, an institution)” dates from the 1720s and was a partial revival of the old sense but applied to objects rather than people; in this sense it is still used, not because there aren’t other terms to convey the meaning but because of the special force the word “rape” exerts.  Of course, in the literature and art of the Classical world and for centuries after depictions of the “rape” of women (in the sense of being abducted) likely were anyway representations of what was a prelude to sexual violation, trophies being taken for a reason so the distinction is one of linguistic practice rather than changes in the conduct of men.  Other related words have also had similar meaning shifts.  The adjective “ravishing”, dating from the mid fourteenth century and meaning “enchanting, exciting rapture or ecstasy” (present-participle adjective from the verb ravish) is now probably associated with Mills & Boon romances but the origin was sacred, the figurative notion being “carrying off from earth to heaven”.  The term “rape” is thus now obsolete in the sense of “carry off” and replaced by “abduct”, the synonyms (used variously) including drag away, kidnap, run away with, seize, spirit away etc.

Deduction, induction & abduction

A reproduction of an early edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles with illustrations by Sidney Paget (1860–1908).  It was Paget who gave Holmes the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape which became so associated with him; neither were ever mentioned by Conan Doyle.

Some subtle differences in the meanings of the sometimes confused induction & deduction were recently discussed on the BBC’s (British Broadcasting Corporation) World Book Club in an exchange between presenter Harriett Gilbert and Dr Mark Jones, co-presenter of The Doings of Doyle podcast and editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal.  The focus of the programme was The Hound of the Baskervilles, the third of the four crime novels by British author & physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), the work featuring the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick Dr Watson.  Later published in a single edition, it originally serialised in The Strand Magazine between August 1901 and April 1902, something which accounts for the structure including a number of “cliff hanger” last sentences in chapters, a creative tension which would have worked well when readers eagerly were waiting seven days for the next instalment but which produces an unusual narrative effect when printed as a consolidated work.  The gothic Hound of the Baskervilles, which remains the best regarded of Conan Doyle’s novels, was set in the gloomy fog of Dartmoor in England’s West Country and was the tale of the search for a “fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin”.  As a footnote the author's name is an example of how conventions of use influence things.  He's long been referred to as “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle” or “Conan Doyle” which would imply the surname “Conan Doyle” but his surname was “Doyle” and he was baptized with the Christian names “Arthur Ignatius Conan”, the “Conan” from his godfather.  Some academic and literary libraries do list him as “Doyle” but he's now referred to almost universally as “Conan Doyle” and the name “Arthur Doyle” would be as un-associated with him as “George Shaw” would with George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950).  A popular perception probably is that immediately after uttering the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson”, Holmes will go on to explain how, through a process of induction or deduction, how he solved whatever was the riddle.  Interestingly, although he had Holmes say both “elementary” and “my dear Watson”, Conan Doyle never used the two as a single text-string, the phrase appearing first in the US film The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929).  The detective does however at various times use techniques of deduction, induction abduction.

The process of deduction moves from general rules, laws, premises, principles etc to specific conclusions on the basis if the assumptions are true and the reasoning valid, the conclusion must be true, thus the standard example cited in Philosophy 101 lectures: (1) premise 1: all humans are mortal; (2) premise 2: Socrates is a human, thus (3) the conclusion: Socrates is mortal.  What deduction relies upon is necessity (the conclusion follows with certainty).  The process of induction describes drawing conclusions from specific observations or facts so that general rules or principles can be developed.  The significance of induction is that conclusions cannot be guaranteed to be true and are assessed in terms of probability and efficacy is judged by the degree to which things tend towards certainty.  An example would be: (1) observation: every day in known history the sun has risen in the east thus (2) the conclusion: tomorrow the sun will rise in the east.  While the conclusion goes beyond observed facts (ie there is no way to view “tomorrow”), the conclusion seems probable.

Induction systems: 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé (left), 1961 Chrysler 300G Convertible (with “long ram” Sonoramic tubes, centre) and 1993 Mercedes-Benz 600 SEC (right).

Before they became almost universally covered with bland plastic moldings, the more photogenic induction systems fitted to ICEs (internal combustion engine) exerted on some a real fascination, the straight or curved tubular structures recalling architectural traditions from the baroque to brutalism.  What the tubes did was deliver the fuel/air mixture to the combustion chambers and their exaggerated length was to exploit an aspect of fluid dynamics related to Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) first law of motion, more commonly known as the law of inertia: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion” and it’s the second part for which the tubes were designed.  During the intake cycle of an engine, the fuel-air mix flows through the intake manifold, past the intake valve, and into the cylinder, then the intake valve shuts.  At that point, the law of inertia comes into play: Because the air was in motion, it wants to stay in motion but can’t because the valve is shut so it piles up against the valve with something of a concertina effect.  With one piece of air piling up on the next, the air becomes compressed and, being under pressure, this stuff has to go somewhere so it turns around and flows back through the intake manifold in the form of a pressure wave.  This pressure wave bounces back and forth in the runner and if it arrives back at the intake valve when the valve opens, it’s drawn into the engine.  This bouncing pressure wave of air and the proper arrival time at the intake valve creates a low-pressure form of supercharging but for this to be achieved all variables have to be aligned so the pressure wave arrives at the intake valve at the right time.  This combination of synchronized events is known as the “resonant conditions”.  All that physics is of course interesting but even those bored by the details can sometimes just admire the lines of the more exotic induction systems

The process of abduction sometimes is described as “drawing an inference to reach the most plausible explanation” which sounds a bit wishy-washy but it’s an essential element in the analytical toolbox.  In use, abduction means moving from an observation (or a opinion, which need not represent an orthodox view) to develop a hypothesis to explain it.  In this process, there should be symmetry, such as in an expression like: (1) if A were true, (2) B would be expected. (3) If B is observed, (4) A thus might be true.  So the observation “the car is covered in raindrops” means the hypothesis “it must have rained” seems reasonable.

Dr Barrett was joking.

For reasons uncertain (though there's been much speculation), since the early 1960s there have been many claims of “alien abduction”.  Many theories exploring the phenomenon come from the mental health community and discuss the effects of dreams, false memory syndrome and such but of note is the trend emerged only after the “space race” had begun and tales of “flying saucers” had for some time been part of popular culture.  The fondness alien abductors clearly have for examining abductees with “anal probes” seems to have been identified only in the 1980s and the volume of published accounts must have encouraged the trend; the devices in this context became a staple of comedy routines.

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is most associated with deduction but at times used all three reasoning methods and the boundaries between them are not always rigid, one sometimes blurring into another because a deduction can be dependent on a prior induction or abduction.  In The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1892) there is a clear example of the deductive (general > specific > necessary conclusion) process.  In that short story, Holmes began with the premise a person cannot from the outside unlock a locked bedroom door if one does not have the key and because the victim’s door was locked from the inside and the only key was with them in the bedroom, the murderer must have entered by some other means (which turned out to be the ventilator).  In the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887), the example of the inductive method is illustrated by Holmes astonishing knowledge of the nature of the ashes left by cigars, the detective’s explanation being that by “repeated experiments”, his study of the material allowed him to identify vital characteristics, different tobaccos leaving different ashes.  From this emerged the general rule that ashes can identify the source tobacco and thus perhaps also the smoker.  In The Hound of the Baskervilles, although there are many examples of deduction, they ultimately are contingent upon one fundamental product of the inductive method: There is no such thing as the supernatural so there can be no spectral hound stalking the moors.  From this it follows there must be a mortal flesh & blood dog, albeit one large and frightening.  It’s the simplest explanation, even though one not certain until tested by the beast being hunted down and killed.

Doily

Doily (pronounced doi-lee)

(1) A small ornamental mat, historically in embroidery or of lace (the style later emulated in plastic or paper), placed under plates, vases etc.  In addition to any decorative value, their function is to protect surfaces (such as timber) from spills and scratches.

(2) A small napkin, intended to be used for the dessert course (archaic).

(3) A visually similar circular piece of lace, worn as a head-covering by some Jewish & Christian women.

(4) A wool fabric (obsolete).

Circa 1714:  The small, decorative mats were named after the linen drapery on London’s Strand, run by the Doily family in the late seventeenth century.  They were doubtless one of many products offered in the shop (and probably a minor line) but for whatever reason they were the one which picked up the name and remain admired by some while dismissed by others as kitsch.  Doily is a noun (and historically an adjective); the noun plural is doilies.

Traditionally, most doilies were circular in shape and white or beige but many which were bleached white became beige or grey after repeated launderings.  Hotels and cafés often use the paper versions atop plates on which sandwiches, slices of cake and such are served,  This isn't always ideal because paper chaff (from stamping the holes) sometimes remains partially attached (al la the "hanging chads" made infamous in the Florida vote-count during the 2000 US presidential election), only to become detached and end up in the food.      

The alternative spellings were (and in some cases still are) doiley, doilie, doyly, or doyley, sometimes used deliberately as trade-names.  Various sources claim the family name of those running the eponymous London linen drapery was Doily or Doyly but there’s evidence to suggest it really was Doily, one example from Eustace Budgell (1686–1737), an English politician & writer who was a cousin of Joseph Addison (1672–1719), poet, playwright, essayist and fellow parliamentarian, remembered as the co-founder of The Spectator (1711-1712) magazine.  Budgell wrote dozens of pieces for the magazine (unrelated to the current The Spectator published since 1828 which borrowed the name) and in 1712 one (capitalized as originally printed) recorded:

“The famous Doily is still in everyone’s Memory, who raised a Fortune by finding out Materials for such Stuffs as might at once be cheap and genteel”.

That was a reference to the summer-weight woolen clothing which was much favored at the time because it was comfortable, inexpensive and stylish, a combination of virtues which sometimes still eludes manufacturers of many products.  Doily was attached as an adjective to the distinctive garments in the 1780s as “doily suit” & “doily stuffs” and it was only in 1711 the term was picked-up for the small ornamental napkins used at formal dinners when dessert was served.  The “doily-napkins” were literally sold as such (there were many others but the term became generic) and were available in a variety of forms, some quite elaborate and because these resembled the small mats the shop also sold, they came to lend their name to the style, regardless of whether or not purchased from Mr Doily’s shop.  The doilies in their familiar modern form seem first to have been so described in 1714 although it may be they’d been on sale for many years. 

Doilyed-up: Lindsay Lohan in doily-themed top over pink bikini, Mykonos, Greece, August 2014.

Addison is remembered for many reasons, one of which was his once widely performed play Cato (1712) which, based on the final days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (known variously in history as “Cato the Younger” & “Cato of Utica”), a conservative Roman senator in the late Republic who died by his own hand, explored issues such as the conflict between individual liberty and the powers of the state.  The work suited the zeitgeist of pre-revolution America and many of its lines became phrases the revolutionaries would make famous in the War of Independence (1775-1783).  Cato enjoyed a macabre coda when Budgell, beset with problems, took his own life by throwing himself into the Thames, his suicide note reading: “What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.”

Because plates come in different shapes, so do doilies and there’s no inherent limitation in design although at some point, a construction ceases to be a doily and becomes a tablecloth.

Visually, doilies are strikingly similar to the head-coverings used in a number of Jewish traditions which some Christian women wear in accordance with scriptural dictate:

1 Corinthians 11:1-13: King James Version (KJV 1611)

1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

2 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.

3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.

5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man.

9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.

11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.

12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.

13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?

It’s not one of biblical passages much approved by feminists and nor do they like 1 Corinthians 14:34–35: As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches.  For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.  For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Designer colors are also available and because doilies are a popular thing with hobbyists, the available spectrum is close to limitless and some are variegated.

The origin of the surname Doily was Anglo-Norman, from d'Œuilly (Ouilly), the name of several places in Calvados in the Normandy region, from Old French oeil (eye) and Doiley, Doilie, Doyly & Doyley were all Englishized forms of d'Ouilly and its French variants.  In England, apart from the noted draper, the best known was Richard D'Oyly Carte (1844–1901), the theatrical impresario who for years produced the collaborative works of WS Gilbert (1836-1911) & composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) which came to be known as “Savoy operas”, the name derived from Carte’s Savoy Theatre in which many were first performed.  The D’Oyly part of his name was a forename (he was christened Richard D’Oyly Carte) which he used because his father, Richard Carte (1808-1891), was already well-known in the theatrical business and “Dick Carte” presumably wasn’t thought appropriate but “D’Oyly Carte” anyway became cockney rhyming slang for “fart” and in informal use it was later joined by “doily dyke” a synonym of “lipstick lesbian”, the alliterative terms used to contrast a feminine lesbian with those not (described variously as "bull dykes", "butch lesbians", "heavy-duty lesbians" etc).  Except within certain sub-sets of the LGBTQQIAAOP community, both are now proscribed as microaggressions.  The rhyming slang may still be used.

"Japanese car doilies" (more correctly antimacassars & side-curtains) in Toyota Century V12s.

Apparently as culturally obligatory in Tokyo taxis as white gloves used to be for the drivers (though many still follow the tradition), the inevitably white partial seat covers are often referred to as “Japanese seat doilies” but technically, when used to protect the surfaces of chairs, they are antimacassars, the construct being anti- (from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of")) +‎ macassar (an oil from the ylang ylang tree and once used to style the hair, the original sources of which were the jungles of the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), the product shipped from the port of Macassar.

Fifty years of “continuity with change”: 1967 Toyota Century V8 (left) and 2017 Toyota Century V12 (right).

Produced over three generations (1967-1996; 1997-2017 & since 2018), the Toyota Century is the company’s flagship in the Japanese domestic market (JDM).  Although the Lexus marque was invented to rectify the perception of a “prestige deficit” in the RoW (rest of the world), models from the range were introduced in the home market only in 2005 and the Century has maintained its position at the top of the Toyota tree.  The first generation used a number of Toyota V8 engines which grew in capacity to reach an untypically large (for the JDM) 4.0 litres (245 cubic inch) but the most admired were the 1997-2017 cars (a few hundred of 9500-odd built exported) which used a 5.0 litre (305 cubic inch) V12 unique to the Century.  For political reasons, the factory under-rated the power output of the V12 but it was anyway designed and tuned for smoothness and silence, achieving both to an extent few have matched.  Like the memorable “suicide door” Lincolns of the 1960s, the Century’s external appearance changed little and although there were updates, it needed a trained eye to tell one from another and the 2023 cars still maintain a distinct resemblance to the 1967 original although for various reasons, since 2018 there’s been a reversion to eight-cylinder engines, a 5.0 litre version of the Lexus V8 fitted, augmented with electric motors.  Offered with a choice of leather or cloth interior trim, “Japanese seat doilies” are regularly seen in the Century.

2006 Toyota Century Royal (left) and the 2019 Toyota Century four-door cabriolet built for the Japanese Imperial Household (right).  

The Japanese Imperial Household in 2006 requested Toyota provide a fleet of cars for the royal family and four limousines and one hearse were constructed.  Based on the second generation Century (G50), the range was known as the Century Royal and received the special designation G51.  Following traditional English coach-building practice, the rear compartment was trimmed in a wool cloth while the front used leather and an unusual touch was the fitting of internal granite steps.  The factory released a number of details about the construction but were predictably vague about the “security measures” noting only they were an "integral" part of the design and it’s believed these included Kevlar & metal internal skins (as protection from gunfire or explosive devices) plus a multi-laminate, bullet-proof glass.  Another Century was added to the royal mews in 2019, this time a one-off four-door cabriolet parade car (both Toyota and the palace preferred "convertible").  Although of late heads of state have tended to avoid open-top motoring, while there’s a long Japanese tradition of assassinating politicians, during the last few hundred years emperors have been safe (the rumors about the death in 1912 dismissed by most historians) so the palace presumably thought this a calculated risk.  All the same, it’s doubtful a prime-minister will be invited to sit alongside while percolating through city streets, their faith in Japanese marksmanship unlikely to be as high as their belief His Majesty won't be the target.  It’s believed the ceremonial fleet of the royal mews is now made exclusively by Toyota, ending the use of foreign manufactured cars such as the Mercedes-Benz 770Ks (W07, 1930-1938) and a Rolls-Royce Corniche (1990), the latter the previous open-top parade vehicle.  When in use, the royal cars do not display number plates but are instead adorned with a gold-plated, stylized chrysanthemum, the symbol an allusion to the Chrysanthemum Throne (皇位, kōi (imperial seat)), the throne of the Emperor of Japan.  As far as is known, the cars in the royal mews are not fitted with “Japanese seat doilies”.

Blowout

Blowout (pronounced bloh-out)

(1) A sudden puncturing of a pneumatic tyre.

(2) A sudden release of oil and gas from a well.

(3) In geology, a sandy depression in a sand dune ecosystem caused by the removal of sediments by wind.

(4) An extreme and unexpected increase in costs, such as in government estimates for a project (a popular Australian use although the budgetary outcomes are familiar just about everywhere).

(5) In medical slang, an act of defecation in which an incontinent person (usually an infant or toddler) produces a large amount of excrement that causes their diaper to overflow and leak (the companion slang the “poonami”).

(6) In engineering, the cleaning of the flues of a boiler from scale etc by blasting the surfaces with steam.

(7) In body-piercing, an unsightly flap of skin caused by an ear piercing that is too large.

(8) An instance of having one's hair blow-dried and styled.

(9) In tattooing, the blurring of a tattoo due to ink penetrating too far into the skin and dispersing.

(10) In woodworking, the damage done to the exit side of a drilled hole or sawn edge when no sacrificial backer-board is used during the drilling or sawing: the drill bit's or saw blade's exit on the far side causes chips of wood to be broken from the edge (sometimes called a “tearout”).

(11) In slang, a social function, especially one with extravagant catering.

(12) In slang, a large or extravagant meal.

(13) In slang, a sporting contest in which one side wins by an untypically wide margin; an overwhelming victory.

(14) In slang, an argument; an altercation.

(15) In Filipino slang, a party or social gathering.

1825: A creation of US colloquial English (the construct being blow + out) in the sense of “outburst, brouhaha” (and in a subtle linguistic shift such events would now, inter alia, be called a “blow-up”), from the verbal phrase, the reference being to pressure in a steam engine.  The elements “blow” and “out” both have many senses and the compound blowout is formed from the verb “blow” in the sense of “burst” or “explosion” plus the verb “out” in the sense of “eject or expel; discharge; oust”.  The verb blow was a pre-1000 form from the Middle English verb blowen, from the Old English blāwan (to blow, breathe, make a current of air, inflate, sound), from the Proto-West Germanic blāan, from the Proto-Germanic blēaną (to blow), from primitive Indo-European bhleh- (to swell, blow up) and may be compared with the Old High German blāen, the Latin flō (to blow) and the Old Armenian բեղուն (bełun) (fertile).  The verb out was from the pre-900 Middle English adverb out, from the Old English ūt (out, without, outside).  It was cognate with the Dutch uit, the German aus, the Old Norse & Gothic ūt and was akin to the Sanskrit ud-.  The Middle English verb was outen, from the Old English ūtian (to put out) and cognate with the Old Frisian ūtia.  Blowout is a noun; the noun plural is blowouts and the use as a verb non-standard.

The blowout as a source of irony.

Blowout is used as a modifier.  In retail commerce, a “blowout sale” is an event advertised as offering greater than usual discounts, with a real or notional intent to deplete the inventory.  Unlike the various uses in hairdressing, blowouts can be undesirable events and devices have been devised which prevent their unwanted occurrence: In electrical engineering a blowout coil (carrying an electric current) serves to deflect and thus extinguish an arc formed when the contacts of a switch part to turn off the current and in the messy business of drilling for oil, a “blowout preventer” is placed at the surface interface of an oil well to prevent blowouts by closing the orifice, allowing material to flow from the oil reservoir out through the shaft.  By contrast, in hairdressing, variants of the blowout deliberately are part of the process and in one use blowout is a generic descriptor of the taper fade (of which there are several variants.  There’s also the Brazilian blowout, a method temporarily to achieve straightening the hair by sealing a liquid keratin and preservative solution into the hair with a styling wand (hair iron).

1969 Ford Falcon GTHO #60 (Fred Gibson (b 1941) & Barry “Bo” Seton (b 1936)) on its roof after a blowout of the right-rear tyre, Mount Panorama, Bathurst, Australia. 

In motorsport there have been some famous tyre blowouts and in Australia, in 1969, it was exactly that which doomed the first appearance at Bathurst of the Falcon GTHO, a car purpose-built for the event with “a relief map of the Mount Panorama circuit in one hand and a bucket of Ford’s money in the other”.  As it would prove in subsequent years, the GTHO was ideal for the purpose but in 1969 the choice of some then exotic US-made Goodyear racing tyres proved an innovation too far, one of several blowouts resulting in a Ford works car ending on its roof.  Being an anti-clockwise circuit, it was the right-had tyres which were subject to the highest loads and, built for racing, the Phase I GTHOs were set-up to oversteer, further increasing the wear.  For next year, Ford doubled down, the Phase II GTHOs famous for their prodigious oversteer but this time the suspension was tuned to suit the tyres.

As a routine procedure, a “steam blowout” is carried out to remove the debris from superheaters and re-heaters that accumulate during manufacturing and installation, the purpose being to prevent damage to turbine blades and valves.  In the usual course of operation, a “blowout” is the release of excessive steam (ie pressure) via a “blow-off valve”.  The meaning “abundant feast” dates from 1824 while that of “the bursting of an automobile tire” was in use by at least 1908.  The alternative forms blow-out & blow out are also in use, especially when applied to tyres and the un-hyphenated from was chosen for the title of Blow Out (1981), a movie by US director Brian De Palma (b 1940)in which the plot hinged on whether it was a gunshot which caused a tyre to blow out.

Manfred von Brauchitsch in Mercedes-Benz W25B (#7) in front of the pits at the end of 1935 German Grand Prix, Nürbugring, 28 July 1935.  The left-rear tyre which suffered a last-lap blowout has disintegrated, the car driven to fourth place on the rim for the final 7 km (4.4 miles).

The most famous blowout however was that which happened on the last lap of the 1935 German Grand Prix, run before 220,000 spectators in treacherously wet conditions on the Nürbugring circuit in the Eifel mountains, then in its classic and challenging pre-war configuration of 22.7 km (14.1 miles).  The pre-race favourites were the then dominant straight-8 Mercedes-Benz W25s and V16 Auto Union Type Bs (both generously subsidized by the Nazi state) but, powerful, heavy and difficult to handle in wet conditions, their advantages substantially were negated, allowing what should have been the delicate but out-classed straight-8 Alfa Romeo P3s to be competitive and in the gifted hands of the Italian Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953), one won the race.  The last lap was among the most dramatic in grand prix history, the Mercedes-Benz W25B of Manfred von Brauchitsch (1905–2003) holding a winning lead until a rear-tyre blowout, the car limping to the finish-line on a bare rim to secure fourth place.  Von Brauchitsch was the nephew of Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch (1881–1948), the imposing but ineffectual Oberbefehlshaber (Commander-in-Chief) of OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres (the German army's high command)) between 1938-1941.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, May 2025, photographed by the Morelli Brothers.

That there should be a Vogue Czechoslovakia despite the state of Czechoslovakia ceasing to be after 31 December 1992 may seem strange but the publication does exist and is sold in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  Launched in 2018, it was the first edition of Vogue published in either country and the title was an obvious choice for Condé Nast because in addition to the shared cultural heritage, there were no negative associations with the name “Czechoslovakia”; so amicable was the 1992 separation of the two states it was styled the “Velvet Divorce”.  Other attractions included branding & recognition (“Czechoslovakia” still enjoying strong international recognition because the component elements of the name have been retained by the new states so it has not passed into history like “Yugoslavia” when it broke up amidst war and slaughter) and the economies of scale gained by producing a single edition for two markets.  That reflects a general industry trend, the Czech Republic & Slovakia often treated as a single media market because of their (1) linguistic similarity, (2) cultural overlap and shared (though often troubled) history.  It worked out well for Conde Nast because they got a retro-modern identity evocative of a culturally rich past with a contemporary twist.

Lindsay Lohan’s Almond Milk Upper East Blowout hairstyle, Vogue Czechoslovakia, May 2025.

Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs was dissolved and in this form it existed until dismembered progressively, beginning with the well-intentioned but shameful Munich Agreement in 1938.  After World War II (1939-1945), Czechoslovakia was re-established under its pre-1938 borders (with the exception of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of Soviet Union) but its fate was sealed when in 1948 the Communist Party (approved by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) staged a coup and seized power, integrating the country behind the Iron Curtain into the Moscow-centric Eastern Bloc joining Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, a kind of “Marshall Plan by rubles”) in 1955 and the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet’s counterpoint to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in 1955.  An uprising in 1968 (the so called “Prague Spring”) seeking political & economic liberalization ruthlessly was crushed by Russian tank formations sent by Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982) and it wasn’t until 1989, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the people peacefully overthrew Communist Party rule in what was labelled the “Velvet Revolution”, thus the adoption of “Velvet Divorce” to describe the unusually quiet (and not at all bloody) constitutional separation of the two sovereign states.

Lindsay Lohan in halter neck black dress with white bodice and stylized bow, her Upper East Blowout under an outrageously extravagant tulle hat, Vogue Czechoslovakia, May, 2025.

The Hairstyle used for Lindsay Lohan’s Vogue cover shoot is known as the “Upper East Blowout”, designed deliberately to evoke the glamour of the stars from the golden age of Hollywood (essentially the 1930s-1950s) and the particular one worn by Ms Lohan specifically was called an “Almond Milk Upper East Blowout”, a construct which seems an intriguing piece of subliminal marketing.  “Almond Milk” was a obviously an allusion to the color but the fluid is also a pleasingly expensive (an important association in product-positioning) and trendy alternative to the mainstream dairy offerings with obvious appeal to vegetarians, vegans and animal rights activists.  For some it can be a wise choice, nutritionists noting (unsweetened) almond milk is a good source of vitamin-E and is lower in calories, protein, sugar and saturated fat while cow’s milk is more nutrient-dense and higher in protein, naturally containing lactose and saturated fats.  Because of that, fortification is essential for almond milk to match dairy milk’s micro-nutrient content but for those choosing on the basis of their dietary regime (vegans, the lactose intolerant etc), unsweetened, fortified almond can be a healthy option.  The “Upper East Side” element is a reference to the neighborhood in the borough of New York City’s (NYC) Manhattan.  Because of the vagueness in NYC’s neighborhood boundaries (they’re not officially gazetted), opinions vary as to where the place begins and ends but in the popular (and certainly the international) imagination, “Upper East Side” is most associated with places such as Fifth Avenue and Central Park which lie to the west.  While New Yorkers may not always know exactly what the Upper East Side is, they have no doubts about which parts definitely are NOT UES.  Long regarded as the richest and thus most prestigious of the New York boroughs, by the late nineteenth century informally it was known as the “silk stocking district”, the idea reflected still in the desirable real estate, expensive shops along Madison Avenue and its cluster of cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and the Guggenheim Museum.

Jessica Rabbit in characteristic pose (left) and Lindsay Lohan with "almond milk Upper East Blowout" hairstyle in black leather corset with silk laces and stainless steel eyelets.

Technically, the hairstyle is a “blowout” because historically the look was achieved with a combination of product & blow dryer; that’s still how most are done.  Because the really dramatic blowouts demand significant volume (ideally of “thick” hair), it can’t be achieved by everyone in their natural state and for Ms Lohan’s cover shot celebrity hairstylist Dimitris Giannetos (b 1983, Instagram: @dimitrishair) engineered things using a wig by Noah Scott (b 1998, Instagram: @whatwigs) of What Wigs, the industry’s go-to source for extravagant hair-pieces.  The use of “almond milk” to describe a shade of blonde was a bit opportunistic and would seem very similar to hues known variously as “light cool”, “light golden”, “champagne”, “golden honey” & “light ombre” but product differentiation is there to be grabbed and it seems to have caught on so it’ll be interesting to see if it gains industry support and endures to become one of the “standard blondes”.  So the linguistic effect is intended to be accumulative, Mr Giannetos calling his “Upper East blowout” “an homage” to the New York of the popular imagination and some of the hairstyles which appeared in the publicity shots of golden age Hollywood stars, memorably captured by the depiction of Jessica Rabbit in Robert Zemeckis’s (b 1952) live/animated toon hybrid movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).  Think luxuriant waves meet old money.

However, a Vogue cover shot in a well-lit studio and created using a custom-made wig, styled by an expert hairdresser is one thing but to replicate the look IRL (in real life) is another because, despite what shampoo advertisements would have us believe, “high-gloss” rarely just happens and even with a wig, to achieve the required fullness and visual volume usually demands what needs to be understood as structural engineering.  Usually, this will necessitate “…extensions set in pin curls, then brushed out meticulously…” before being shaped with the appropriate product as a device.  Expectations need to be realistic because with each change in camera angle, it can be necessary to “re-blow and re-style”; while it’s not quite that each strand needs to be massages into place for each shot, that can be true of each wave and just because the hair looks soft and bouncy in the images on a magazine’s glossy pages, the use of fudge or moose to achieve the look can render locks IRL remarkable rigid.

Dreadnought

Dreadnought (pronounced dred-nawt)

(1) A type of battleship armed with heavy-calibre guns in turrets: so called from the British battleship HMS Dreadnought (1906); a name used by the Royal Navy for many ships and submarines.

(2) A garment made of thick woolen cloth that can defend against storm and cold.

(3) A thick cloth with a long pile (known also as fearnought).

(4) Slang a heavyweight boxer in the heavyweight class.

(5) By extension, something the largest or heaviest in a given field.

(6) A person who fears nothing; something that assures against fear.

(7) A type of acoustic guitar with a very large body and a waist less pronounced than in other designs, producing a deep, "bold" sound.

1800-1810: The construct was dread + nought.  Dread was from the Middle English dreden, from Old English drǣdan (to fear, dread), aphetic form of ondrǣdan (to fear, dread), from and- +‎ rǣdan (from which English picked up read); corresponding to an aphesis of the earlier adread.  The Old Saxon was antdrādan & andrādan (to fear, dread), the Old High German was intrātan (to fear) and the Middle High German entrāten (to fear, dread, frighten).  Nought was from the Middle English nought & noght, (noȝt), from the Old English nōwiht & nāwiht (the construct being nay +‎ a +‎ wight), which in turn came from ne-ā-wiht, a phrase used as an emphatic "no", in the sense of "not a thing".  In the transition to Modern English, the word reduced gradually to nought, nawt and finally not; a doublet of naught.  The alternative spelling (though never used by the Admiralty) is Dreadnaught.  Dreadnought is a noun; the noun plural is dreadnoughts.

The dreadnoughts

HMS Dreadnought, 1906.

Launched in 1906, HMS Dreadnought is often said to have revolutionized naval power, the design so significant it proved the final evolution of what had, by the late nineteenth century, evolved into the battleship.  Subsequent vessels would be larger, faster, increasingly electronic and more heavily armed but the concept remained the same.  HMS Dreadnought rendered instantly obsolete every other battleship in the world (including the rest of the Royal Navy) and all other battleships then afloat were immediately re-classified as pre-dreadnoughts.  In naval architecture, so epoch-making was the ship that it changed the nomenclature in navies world-wide: after 1906 there would be pre-dreadnoughts, semi-dreadnoughts, demi-dreadnoughts & super-dreadnoughts (hyphenated and not),  The adjective dreadnoughtish was non-standard but was used to describe ships of a design beyond that of the orthodox battleship of the late nineteenth century but with only some of a dreadnought's distinguishing characteristics.  Presumably someone in the Admiralty would have coined dreadnoughtesque but no document seems to have survived as proof.    

HMS Dreadnought.

Her main design features were speed, armor, steam turbine propulsion and, especially, firepower almost exclusively of weapons of the largest caliber.  In the decades after her launch, British, German, American, Japanese and other navies would build larger and heavier dreadnoughts until, during world war two, their utility was finally seen to been eclipsed by both aircraft carriers and submarines.  The last dreadnought, HMS Vanguard, launched in 1946, was scrapped in 1958 but the US Navy maintained until 2004 (on either the active or reserve list), at least one of the four battleships it retained from World War II (1939-1945) when the last was decommissioned.

HMS Dreadnought, 1908.

That it was the Royal Navy which first launched a dreadnought doesn’t mean the British Admiralty was alone in pursuing the concept.  Naval strategists in several nations had noted the course of battle between the Russian and Japanese fleets in 1905 and concluded the immediate future of naval warfare lay in the maximum possible deployment of big guns, able to launch attacks from the longest possible range, subsidiary smaller caliber weapons seen even as a disadvantage in battle.  That the Royal Navy was the first with such a ship afloat was a testament to the efficiency of British designers and shipbuilders, not the uniqueness of its plans.

Much read in palaces, chancelleries and admiralties around the word was a book released in 1890 called The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 by US naval officer and theorist Captain Alfred Mahan (1840-1914).  Published in what, in retrospect, was a historical sweet-spot (technologically and politically) for the views it espoused, it brought Mahan great fame and exerted an extraordinary influence on diplomacy, military planning and the politics of the era.  The book was not alone the cause of the naval arms-race in the decade before World War I (1914-1918) but was at least a sharp nudge, push or shove depending on one’s view.  Curiously though, although a work primarily about naval strategy, while many of the maritime powers seemed convinced by Mahan’s arguments about the importance of naval sea power in geopolitics, not all admiralties adopted the strategic template.  What all agreed however was they needed more ships.

The nineteenth century of Pax Britannica ("British Peace", echoing the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire), describes the century of relative great-power stability between the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) and the outbreak of war in 1914 encompasses the idea of British Empire as the global hegemon, a role possible only because the Royal Navy enjoyed an unchallenged ability to patrol and protect the key maritime trade routes.  The effective control of these transport corridors not only guaranteed the security of the British Empire but it meant also the British effectively controlled maritime access to much of Asia, the Americas, Oceania the south Pacific, although, one factor in the success was it was that London ran things essentially in accordance with US foreign policy, assisting Washington in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine which upheld the US preponderance of interest in the Americas.  It can be argued the roots of the so-called "special relationship" took hold here.

The British Empire, in terms of the impression created by a map of the world on which its colonies and dependencies were colored usually in some shade of red, was deceptive, the remit of the local administrators sometimes extending little beyond the costal enclaves, even the transport links between towns not always entirely secure.  Never did the Empire posses the military resources to defend such vast, remote and disparate territories but it was the control of the sea, uniquely in history, which allowed the British for centuries to maintain what was, with no disparagement intended, a confidence trick.  The reason the empire could be maintained was not because of control of big colonies, it was all the little islands dotted around the oceans which enabled the navy to operate outposts which housed the ports and coaling stations from which ships could make repairs or provision with fuel, food and water.  All those little dots on the map were the "keys to the world".  Mahan’s book had drawn its influential conclusions from his study of the role of sea power during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; what the British did was take advantage of the circumstances of the nineteenth century and deploy their sea power globally, in competition when necessary, in cooperation when possible and in conflict when required.  The practical expression of all this was British naval policy: that the Royal Navy must be of sufficient strength simultaneously to prevail in war against the combined strength of the next two biggest navies, either in separate theatres or as a massed fleet.

By the early twentieth century, economic and geopolitical forces combined to render the policy impossible to maintain, Britain no longer able to operate in “splendid isolation” (another somewhat misleading phrase of the era), needing alliances to spread the load of imperial defense.  It wasn’t just the rapid growth of the German fleet which had changed the balance of power but that alone was enough for the British and the French to reach an accommodation which is remembered as the Entente Cordiale (Cordial Agreement) of 1904 which may or may not have been an alliance but was enough of one for the admiralties in Paris and London cooperatively to organize the allocations of their fleets.  It certainly illustrated Lord Palmerston's (1784–1865) doctrine that the country had neither eternal allies nor perpetual enemies but only permanent interests for despite the centuries of enmity between Britain and France, the self-interest of both dictated the need to align against the German threat.

Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS New Zealand, 1911.

It was in this atmosphere the great naval arms race took place, plans for which were laid before the Wright brothers had flown a hundred–odd feet, barely off the ground, torpedoes were in their infancy and submarines were little threat more than a few miles from the coast.  The measure of a fleet was its battleships and their big guns and whichever side could put to sea the most firepower was winning the race.  It intrigued the navalists, strategists and theorists who knew from history that such a race, if left to run, could end only in war, the great, decisive set-piece battle of which would be the clash of massed fleets of battleships on the high seas, trading shell-fire at a range of twenty miles (32 km), before closing for the kill as the battle climaxed.  Dreadnought was one strand of the theorists’ imagination but there were others.  There was a school of thought which favored an emphasis on radio communications and a greater attention to the possibilities offered by the torpedo and, most influentially, what seems now the curious notion of a complimentary range of faster capital ships, essentially battleships with the big guns but little armor, the loss of protection off-set by the few knots in speed gained; these ships were called battlecruisers.  The argument was they could fight at such range nothing but a battleship would be a threat and those the battlecruiser could outrun because of their greater speed.  It seemed, to many, a good idea at the time.

Super-Dreadnought: HMS Iron Duke, Port Said, 1921.

But it was the Dreadnoughts which captured the imagination and defined the era.  Impressive though she was, HMS Dreadnought was not long unique as navies around the world launched the own and, as happens in arms races, the original was quickly out-classed and the next generation of ships, bigger and more heavily gunned still, came to be known as super dreadnoughts.  War did come but the grand battle on the high seas which the navalists had, for a quarter century been planning, never happened.  There were smaller clashes of squadrons but the imperative of the Royal Navy was more practical and traditionally British: avoid defeat.  As Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), then First Lord of the Admiralty (minister for the navy), emphasized to the First Sea Lord (the navy’s senior admiral), against a continental empire like Germany, while the Royal Navy couldn’t in a year win the war, because Britain’s empire was maritime, they could lose it in one afternoon.  Accordingly, the Royal Navy made no sustained attempts to induce a massed battle, focusing instead on a blockade, keeping the German fleet confined to its ports.  It was the German admirals who attempted to force the British to a set-piece battle, venturing into the North Sea in May 1916 with a fleet of nearly a hundred, including sixteen dreadnoughts and five battlecruisers.  Against this, the British assembled a hundred and fifty odd with twenty-eight dreadnoughts and nine battlecruisers.  The action came to be known as the Battle of Jutland.

Imperial German Navy battlecruiser SMS Goeben, 1914.

On paper, although the result described as inconclusive, it was a tactical success for the Germans but strategically, the British achieved their goal.  The dreadnoughts barely engaged, most of the action confined to the battlecruisers and, unlike the smaller Battle of Tsushima (May 1905) in the Far East, fought by pre-dreadnoughts a decade earlier between the Japanese and Russian fleets, there was no winner in the traditional sense of naval warfare.  The German's tactical success in retrospect was something of a Dunkirk moment but the strategic implications were profound.  British losses were heavier but their numeric advantage was such they could absorb the loss and had the financial and industrial capacity to restore the fleet’s strength.  Damage to the German fleet was less but they lacked the time or capacity to build their navy to the point it could be used as a strategic weapon and it remained confined to its ports.  Both sides learned well the inherent limitations of the battlecruiser.

WWI era German U-Boot (Unterseeboot (under-sea-boat)), anglicized as U-Boat.

After Jutland, the German admirals concluded that to venture again against the British Home Fleet would either be an inconclusive waste or lead to the inevitable, decisive defeat.  They accordingly prevailed on the politicians and eventually gained approval to use the only genuinely effective weapon in their hands, the submarine.  It was the consequences of unrestricted submarine warfare which would bring the United States into the war in 1917 as a belligerent and without that intervention, the war would certainly have followed a different course and reached perhaps a different conclusion.

Although HMS Dreadnought lent her name to an era and remains one of the most significant warships built, she's remembered for the geopolitical reverberations in the wake of her launching rather than any achievement at sea, missing even the anti-climatic Battle of Jutland (1916) because of a scheduled re-fit.  Indeed, her only achievement of note in combat was the ramming and sinking of German U-Boat SM U-29 on 18 March 1915 although that does remain a unique footnote in naval history, being the only time a battleship deliberately sank an enemy submarine.  Dreadnought was decommissioned in 1920 and scrapped the next year.  Later, under the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty which sought to prevent another naval arms race, most of the surviving dreadnoughts were scrapped or scuttled but many of the super-dreadnoughts remained in the fleets, some not scrapped until after World War II.  The name has a strong resonance in the halls of the Admiralty (now the Navy Command in the UK's Ministry of Defense) and has been chosen for the class of vessels to replace the existing Vanguard class ballistic nuclear-missile submarines.  Now under construction, the first of the nuclear-powered Dreadnought class boats is expected to enter service early in the 2030s.

Dreadnought coats

The term “dreadnought coat” was adopted by the UK’s garment industry in 1908 to refer to a heavy, durable and water-resistant overcoat.  It was an opportunistic “borrowing” that verged on what would now be called “ambush marketing” and took advantage on the extensive publicity the name attracted during the so-called “naval scare” during that decade, the attraction being the arms-race had done the hard word of “brand-name recognition”.  The reference point of the design was the heavy “pea coat” (the construct being the Dutch pij (cowl) + the English coat) issued to Royal Navy sailors (although similar garments were worn in many navies).  Typically, naval pea coats were made from a thick wool yarn, designed to protect against the harsh maritime weather encountered in coastal environments as well as on the high-seas.  Pea coats were of rugged construction, almost always double-breasted and featured large lapels (for extra warmth around the neck, often turned up in cold weather) and deep pockets.

A dreadnought pea coat by Triple Aught ("Dreadnaught Peacoat" the spelling used) (left), Lindsay Lohan in dreadnought coat (London, June, 2014, centre) and in trench coat (London, October 2015, right).

To facilitate ease of movement and avoid becoming entangled in the ropes and chains which are a feature of a ship’ deck, the classic naval pea coat was hip-length, unlike the ankle-length great coats used by armies.  When the double-breasted design was extended to the civilian market, the pea coat was almost unchanged (although many were of lighter construction and navy blue remained the most popular color.  When the style of a pea coat is extended to something calf or ankle-length, it becomes a “dreadnought coat” which should not be confused with a “trench coat” which is of lighter construction, traditionally beige and belted and, as all fashionistas know, the belt is always tied, never buckled.