Bubble

Bubble (pronounced buhb-uhl)

(1) A spherical globule of gas (or vacuum) contained in a liquid or solid.

(2) Anything that lacks firmness, substance, or permanence; an illusion or delusion.

(3) An inflated speculation, especially if fraudulent.

(4) The act or sound of bubbling.

(5) A spherical or nearly spherical canopy or shelter; dome.

(6) To form, produce, or release bubbles; effervesce.

(7) To flow or spout with a gurgling noise; gurgle.

(8) To speak, move, issue forth, or exist in a lively, sparkling manner; exude cheer.

(9) To seethe or stir, as with excitement; to boil.

(10) To cheat; deceive; swindle (archaic).

(11) To cry (archaic Scots).

(12) A type of skirt.

(13) In infection control management, a system of physical isolation in which un-infected sub-sets population are protected by restricting their exposure to others.

1350-1400: From the Middle English noun bobel which may have been from the Middle Dutch bubbel & bobbel and/or the Low German bubbel (bubble) and Middle Low German verb bubbele, all thought to be of echoic origin.  The related forms include the Swedish bubbla (bubble), the Danish boble (bubble) and the Dutch bobble.  The use to describe markets, inflated in value by speculation widely beyond any relationship to their intrinsic value, dates from the South Sea Bubble (a classic example of stock-price speculation) which began circa 1711 and collapsed in 1720.  In response to the collapse, the UK parliament passed The Bubble Act (1720), which required anyone seeking to float a joint-stock company to first secure a royal charter; interestingly, the act was supported by the South Sea Company before its failure.  Ever since cryptocurrencies emerged, analysts have been describing them as a bubble which will burst and while that has happened with hundreds of coins (the exchange collapses are something different), the industry thus far has continued with only with occasional periods of inflation and deflation; this makes cryptocurrencies highly volatile meaning there is much scope for profit and much risk of loss, the extent to which they're subject to insider trading an manipulation has been debated but only as a matter of degree.  Bubble & bubbling are nouns & verbs, bubbler is a noun, bubbled is a verb, bubbly is a noun & adjective, bubbleless & bubblelike are adjectives and bubblingly is an adverb; the noun plural is bubbles.

Tulips.  The collective noun police in the seventeenth century missed an opportunity in not declaring that henceforth the standard use would be: "a bubble of tulips".

However, although the South Sea affair was the first use of “bubble” to describe such a market condition, it wasn’t the first instance of a bubble, the most infamous of which was the Dutch tulpenmanie (tulip mania) which bounced during the 1630s, contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and wildly fashionable flower reaching extraordinarily high levels, the values accelerating from 1634 until a sudden collapse in 1637.  Apparently just a thing explained by a classic supply and demand curve, the tulip bubble burst with the first big harvest which demonstrated the bulbs and flowers were really quite common and easy to grow.  In history, there would previously have been many bubbles but it wasn’t until the economies and financial systems of early-modern Europe were operating that the technical conditions existed for them to manifest in the form and to the extent we now understand.  Interestingly, for something often regarded as the proto-speculative asset bubble and a landmark in economic history, twentieth-century revisionist historians have suggested it was more a behavioral phenomenon than anything with any great influence on the operation of financial markets or the real economy, the “economic golden age” of the Dutch Republic apparently continuing (mostly) unaffected for almost a century after the bottom fell out of the tulip market.  The figurative uses have been created or emerged as required, the first reference pre-dating the tulip affair, the usual motion being andything lacking a desired firmness, substance, or permanence; the first recorded used was in the 1590s but it was likely long established in oral use.  The soap-bubble dates from 1800, bubble-shell is from 1847, bubble-gum was introduced in 1935 and bubble-bath appears first to have be sold in 1937.  The slang noun variation “bubbly” was first noted in 1920, an invention of US English to describe a happy, talkative young lady.

Replica of Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI TE288, Harewood Airport, Christchurch, New Zealand.

The term "bubble top" (also briefly as "bubble-top") came into use in the 1940s after advances in materials and manufacturing techniques allowed the cockpit canopies of aircraft to be made using large Perspex moldings.  The concept had been around for decades but it was the combination of modern plastics and the demands of wartime which made possible the mass-production of large moldings.  The designers called them "bubble canopies" but pilots preferred the snappier "bubbletop".  Spitfire TE288 was built in May 1945 at Vickers Armstrong's Castle Bromwich factory but, with the end of hostilities in Europe it was only briefly in service, mostly in a training role.  Gifted in 1964 to the Canterbury branch of the Brevet Club, it was mounted on a plinth as a memorial outside the club's building but by 1984 had become so valuable it was moved to the RNZAF (Royal New Zealand Air Force) museum at Wigram.  During restoration, molds were taken and a fibreglass replica was constructed to be placed on the plinth.  Optimized for the low-altitude performance needed to counter the threat of the German V1 “Doodlebugs” (an early cruise missile), the Spitfire Mk XVI was a variant of the Mark IX and powered by the Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin 266 engine rated 1,720 HP (horsepower).  Entering production in October 1944, 1,054 were built and as well as serving as interceptors, they were used in the ground attack role, notably against the sites from which the V2 missiles (an early ballistic missile and the first major step on the path to ICBMs (inter-continental ballistic missile) and the big rockets used by the US in the Apollo programme) were launched.  The bubble canopy afforded outstanding visibility while the clipped wingtips improved responsiveness (notably the superior roll-rate) while sacrificing some performance above 15,000 feet (4,500 metres) but by then the demands of aerial combat had shifted lower in the sky.

1961 Pontiac Ventura Sports Coupe (Bubble Top).

The term (as bubble top) later was applied to cars with rooflines in a shape which recalled the use in aviation although the structures were of conventional metal & glass.  The classic examples were the full-sized two-door hardtops produced by GM's (General Motors) Chevrolet and Pontiac divisions in 1960-1962, the 1961 models the most collectable.  The 1961 Pontiac Ventura Sports Coupe (a sub-model of the Catalina) pictured is fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-Lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum to which the rim (in the true sense of the word) directly was bolted.  Introduced for 1960, the design was a fortuitous conjunction of fashion & function because as well as looking good, the heat dissipation qualities were outstanding, addressing one of the problems which plagued drum brakes.  Unfortunately, the design was not compatible with (outboard) disc brakes and as their fitment increased, sales of the option (circa US$125) fell and in 1968 production of the 8-Lug ceased.  

The word "bubble" spiked shortly after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Over time, use has expanded to encompass large-scale operations like touring sporting teams and even the geographical spaces used for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics but the original meaning was more modest: small groups based on close friends, an extended family or co-workers.  These small bubbles weren't supposed to be too elastic and operated in conjunction with other limits imposed in various jurisdictions; a bubble might consist of a dozen people but a local authority might limit gatherings to ten in the one physical space so two could miss out, depending on the details in the local rules.  The way most governments handled the pandemic was a bit muddled but in such events, as in most wars, much is a muddle.  Bubble thus began as an an unofficial term used to describe the cluster of people beyond one's household with whom one felt comfortable in an age of what was believed a highly infectious virus.  Bubbles were however a means of risk-reduction, not a form of quarantine.  In a bubble, risk still exist, most obviously because some may belong to more than one bubble, contact thus having a multiplier effect, the greater the number of interactions, the greater the odds of infection so staying home and limiting physical contact with others remained preferable, the next best thing to an imposed quarantine.  The more rigorously administered bubbles used for events like the Olympics are essentially exercises in perimeter control, a defined "clean" area, entry into which is restricted to those tested and found uninfected.  At the scale of something like an Olympic games, it's a massive undertaking to secure the edges but, given sufficient resource allocation can be done although it's probably misleading to speak of such an operation as as a "bubble".  Done with the static-spaces of Olympic venues, they're really quarantine-zones.  Bubble more correctly describes touring sporting teams which move as isolated bubbles often through unregulated space.

The Bubble Skirt

A type of short skirt with a balloon style silhouette, the bubble dress (more accurately described as a bubble skirt because that’s the bit to which the description applies) is characterized by a voluminous skirt with the hem folded back on itself to create a “bubble” effect at the hemline.  Within the industry, it was initially called a tulip skirt, apparently because of an at least vague resemblance to the flower but the public preferred bubble.  It shouldn’t be confused with the modern tulip skirt and the tulip-bubble thing is just a linguistic coincidence; there’s no link with the Dutch tulipmania of the 1630s.  Stylistically, the bubble design is a borrowing from the nineteenth century bouffant gown which featured a silhouette made of a wide, full skirt resembling a hoop skirt, sometimes with a hoop or petticoat beneath to provide structural support.  While bouffant gowns could be tea (mid-calf) or floor length, bubble skirts tend to truncate the look well above the knee; while calf-length creations are seen in collects, they're rare on the high street.  Perhaps with a little more geometric accuracy, the design is known also as the “puffball” and, in an allusion to oriental imagery, the “harem” skirt.  Fashion designer Christian Lacroix (b 1951) became fond of the look and a variation included in his debut collection was dubbed le pouf but, in English, the idea of the “poof skirt” never caught on although it was used by furniture makers.

Lindsay Lohan in Catherine Malandrino silk pintuck dress with bubble skirt, LG Scarlet HDTV Launch Party, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, April 2008.

It must have been a memorable sight in the still austere post-war world, a sheath dress made voluminous with layers of organza or tulle, the result a cocoon-like dress with which Pierre Cardin (1922-2022) and Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018) experimented in 1954 and 1958, respectively. A year later, Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) for Dior added the combination of a dropped waist dress and bubble skirt; post-modernism had arrived.  For dressmakers, bubble fashion presented a structural challenge and mass-production became economically feasible only because of advances in material engineering, newly available plastics able to be molded in a way that made possible the unique inner construction and iconic drape of the fabric.  For that effect to work, bubble skirts must be made with a soft, pliable fabric and the catwalk originals were constructed from silk, as are many of the high end articles available today but mass-market copies are usually rendered from cotton, polyester knits, satin or taffeta.

The bubble in the 1950s by Pierre Cardin (left), Givenchy (centre) & Dior (right).  Strikingly, while fashions can change, the preferred models remain much the same.

The bubble skirt was never a staple of the shows in the sense that it would be missing from annual or seasonal collections, sometimes for a decade or more and sales were never high, hardly surprising given it was not often a flattering look for women above a certain age (perhaps anyone aged over eight or nine).  Deconstructing the style hints at why: a hemline which loops around and comes back up (created sometimes by including a tighter bottom half with the bulk of additional material above), it formed a shape not dissimilar to a pillow midway through losing its stuffing.  For that reason, models caution the look works best when combined with a sleek, fitted top to emphasize the slimness of the waistline, cinched if necessary with a tie or belt of some sort to delineate when one thing starts and the other finishes.  The bubble needs to be the feature too, avoiding details or accessories which might otherwise distract; if one appears to be wearing a partially un-stuffed pillow, the point needs to be made it’s being done on purpose and the obvious way that's achieved is to ensure it's the focus piece.  Really, tempting though it may seem in the catalogue, it's a style for experts in a narrow BMI (body mass index) range.

US model Karlie Kloss (b 1992), Met Gala 2026, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, May 2026 (left) and a single, long-stemmed white tulip (right).  The event's “dress code” for 2026 was “fashion is art” though at the Met Gala it's more “suggested theme” than enforced code and designers long have interpreted things liberally.  That liberality sometimes has assumed such a level of abstraction that Met Gala outfits have defied attempts to see a link with the code but in a white, tulipesque bubble dress, Ms Kloss looked artistic enough to be thought commendably on-theme.

TikTok and Instagram influencer Ella Cervetto (b 2000) in Oh Polly Jessamy (an off-shoulder layered bubble hem corset mini dress) in True Red (available also in Ivory), Sydney, Australia, November 2024.

On the catwalks however, again seemingly every decade or so, the bubble returns, the industry relying on the short attention span of consumers of pop culture inducing a collective amnesia which allows many resuscitations in tailoring to seem vaguely original or at least a novel variation on the theme.  Still, if ever a good case could be made for a take on a whimsical 1950s creation to re-appear, it was the staging of the first shows of the 2020-2021 post-pandemic world and the houses responded, Louis Vuitton, Erdem, Simone Rocha and JW Anderson all with billowy offerings; even seen was an improbably exuberant flourish of volume from Burberry.  What appeared on the post-Covid catwalk seemed less disciplined than the post-war originals, the precise constraints of intricately stitched tulle forsaken to encourage rather more swish and flow, the look romantic rather than decadent.  Generally the reception was polite but for those who hoped for a more adventurous interpretation, history suggests the bubble will be back in a dozen-odd years.

Strapless, pale-pink bubble gown (Look 53) from Balenciaga's Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Paris Fashion Week, October 2025.

By using a structural bubble hem, the gown illustrates how a light-weight fabric can be made to emulate a selective rigidity.  The fashion critics said the oversized glasses were there as an evocation of futurism but the skinnytokers (said to be “the acceptable pro ana”) call it the “bug-eye look” and recommend them because the exaggerated size of the frames and lens creates the visual illusion of making the face appear thinner.  Most catwalk models are of course anyway splendidly slender but skinnytok's skinnysplainers would suggest they’d look good even on them; in such matters, the skinnytokers are the world's foremost experts.  The double-faced fabric was neo gazar (the original gazar a silk organza with a plain weave created by the house in 1957-1958), co-developed by Balenciaga and the textile company Lorma, incorporating a soft silk & wool lamiset weft.  The advantages neo gazar offers are said to be a capacity to maintain a shape without the same extent of internal framework, while being easier to work with than original, more rigid, silk gazar.

Although Look 53 may be a classic case study of the disconnect between what appears on catwalks in headline collections and stuff actually sold, that’s not a criticism because such pieces must be assessed on the basis of fulfilling their intended purpose and that this creation admirably did.  Pierpaolo Piccioli’s (b 1967) first collection for the house (after a long stint at Valentino) was much anticipated by critics, most of whom appear to have been impressed, noting the designer’s mastery handling of the distinctive “house codes” Balenciaga has over the decades made signatures.  So everybody liked the clothes but whether the show notes were of much help is uncertain, notably the text: “The meaning of Balenciaga is a methodology.  The process of creation as ideology, as identity, an expression of humanity and human invention.”  The collection deserved to be judged on its merits but what to make of the show notes?  It was grammatically coherent English and so laden with words and phrases with recognizable semantic associations that, in a strictly linguistic sense, the passage couldn’t be devoid of meaning but what would be concluded by those not students of textual deconstruction?  It was of course a delight for those students because it was an exemplar of what in literary theory is called “semantic inflation” (or “floating signifiers”), abstract nouns arranged in a way that might be used by sentences saying something profound while yielding no precise meaning.  Structurally, what each phrase did was substitute a metaphorical association for a concrete predication; nothing could be proved or falsified.

Walmart Mission and Vision Statement: No background in literary deconstruction required.

Just about every process of course has a “method” with “methodology” used just as a “fancy” way of making what seems an obvious point and while the process of creation certainly can be an expression of an ideology, something more specific in the text may have helped.  After all, what people create is by definition “an expression of humanity and human invention”, that applying equally to bubble dresses, hamburgers and nuclear weapons.  Still, while not as succinct a statement as something like E=mc², the show notes were not useless because earnest students of marketing effortlessly would identify the ritualistic, atmospheric prose as part of the discourse of luxury branding which needs to convey characteristics such as “edginess”, “avant-garde sensibility”, “intellectual seriousness” and a certain distance from the vulgar business of selling cheap clothes to the working class shopping at places like Walmart.  Between themselves, in expressions, gestures, clothing and more, the rich often communicate in intricate or elaborate codes not obvious to others.  Positioning the company in the cultural & economic milieu of those used to abstractions, Balenciaga would be assured the folk who buy their garments could (unlike the literalists at price-tag-focused Walmart), interpret connotative meaning despite the absence of denotative precision, the trick being to read not what is said but what is meant.  Indeed, so impressed might some of them have been by the show notes they may even have “sampled” chunks of the text for their next mission statement because it’s hard to improve on: “Recollection rather than tribute, shadows of Balenciaga’s architectonic shapes are embedded in the actuality of today—bold and disruptive volumes applied to clothes that define our modern wardrobe.  A vocabulary of contemporaneity, entirely transformed through approach.”

Bastard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Little Bastard being serviced.

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

The crash aftermath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Men are Bastards diary, 1995.

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

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

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

The bastard file.

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

Exquisite

Exquisite (pronounced ek-skwi-zit or ik-skwiz-it)

(1) Of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence and often associated with objects or great delicacy; of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship; beautiful, delicate, discriminating, perfect.

(2) Extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate.

(3) Intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain; keenly or delicately sensitive or responsive; exceeding; extreme; in a bad or a good sense (eg as exquisite pleasure or exquisite pain).

(4) Recherché; far-fetched; abstruse (a now rare early meaning which to some extent survives in surrealist’s exercise “exquisite corpse”).

(5) Of particular refinement or elegance, as taste, manners, etc or persons.

(6) A man excessively concerned about clothes, grooming etc; a dandy or coxcomb.

(7) Ingeniously devised or thought out (obsolete).

(8) Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact (now less common except as an adverb.

(9) Of delicate perception or close and accurate discrimination; not easy to satisfy; exact; fastidious (related to the sense of “exquisite judgment, taste, or discernment”.

1400–1450: From the Late Middle English exquisite (carefully selected), from the Latin exquīsītus (excellent; meticulous, chosen with care (and literally “carefully sought out”)), perfect passive participle of exquīrō (to seek out), originally the past participle of exquīrere (to ask about, examine) the construct being ex- + -quīrere, a combining form of quaerere (to seek). The construct of exquīrō was ex- +‎ quaerō (seek).  The ex- prefix was applied to words in Middle English borrowed from the Middle French and was derived from the Latin ex- (out of, from) and was from the primitive Indo-European eǵ- & eǵs-.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐξ (ex-, out of, from) from the Transalpine Gaulish ex- (out), the Old Irish ess- (out), the Old Church Slavonic изъ (izŭ) (out), the Russian из (iz) (from, out of).  Exquisite is a noun & adjective, exquisiteness & exquisitiveness are nouns and exquisitively & exquisitely are adverbs; the noun plural is exquisites.

1972 Lancia Fulvia 1600 HF Series II.  

Everything about the Lancia Fulvia (1965-1976) appeared exquisitely delicate but the little machine was tough and was for half-a-decade a dominant force in international rallying.  A Lancia legend is that when the hood was opened on one of the first to reach the US, a mechanic, brought up on a diet of hefty V8s, upon seeing the tiny, 1.2 litre (75 cubic inch) narrow-angle V4 is said to have remarked: “Don’t ask me, take it to a jeweler.”

The etymology of the Latin quaerō (seek) is mysterious.  It may be from the Proto-Italic kwaizeō, from the primitive Indo-European kweh (to acquire) so cognates may include the Ancient Greek πέπαμαι (pépamai) (to get, acquire), the Old Prussian quoi (I/you want) & quāits (desire), the Lithuanian kviẽsti (to invite) and possibly the Albanian kam (I have).  Some have suggested the source being the primitive Indo-European kwoys & kweys (to see) but there has been little support for this.  The authoritative Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs (LIV)), the standard etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European languages, suggests it’s a derivation of hzeys (to seek, ask), via the form koaiseo.  "Exquisite corpse" is a calque of the French cadavre exquis (literally “exquisite cadaver”).  Dating from 1925, it was coined by French surrealists to describe a method of loosely structured constructivism on the model of the parlour game consequences; fragments of text (or images) are created by different people according to pre-set rules, then joined together to create a complete text.  The name comes from the first instance in 1925: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (The exquisite corpse will drink new wine).  Exquisite corpse is noted as a precursor to both post-modernism and deconstructionist techniques.

Although not infrequently it appears in the same sentence as the word “unique”, exquisite can be more nuanced, the comparative “more exquisite, the superlative most exquisite” and there has certainly been a change in the pattern of use.  In English, it originally was applied to any thing (good or bad, art or torture, diseases or good health), brought to a highly wrought condition, tending among the more puritanical to disapprobation.  The common modern meaning (of consummate and delightful excellence) dates from the late 1570s while the noun (a dandy, a foppish man) seems first to have been used in 1819.  One interesting variant which didn’t survive was exquisitous (not natural, but procured by art), appearing in dictionaries in the early eighteenth centuries but not since.  The pronunciation of exquisite has undergone a rapid change from ek-skwi-zit to ik-skwiz-it, the stress shifting to the second syllable.  The newer pronunciation attracted the inevitable criticism but is now the most common form on both sides of the Atlantic and use seems not differentiated by class. 

The exquisite wimp: Baldur Benedikt von Schirach

Exquisite is used almost exclusively as an adjective, applied typically to objects or performances but it’s also a noun, albeit one always rare.  As a noun it was used to describe men who inhabited that grey area of being well dressed, well coiffured, well mannered and somewhat effeminate without being obviously homosexual; it was a way of hinting at something without descending to the explicit.  PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) applied it thus in Sam the Sudden (1925) and historians Ann (1938-2021) & John Tusa (b 1936) in The Nuremberg Trial (1983) found no better noun to apply to former Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, noting (as did his many enemies in the party) his feminine tastes in furnishings and propensity to pen poor poetry.  The companion word to describe a similar chap without of necessity the same hint of effeminacy is “aesthete”.  In The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992), Brigadier General Telford Taylor (1908–1998; lead US counsel at the Nuremberg Trial) wrote of him that: “at thirty-nine, was the youngest and, except perhaps for Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) and Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist), the weakest of the defendants.  If wimps had then been spoken of, Schirach would have been so styled.”

Nazi poetry circle on the terrace at the Berghof on the Obersalzberg.

Left to right: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), Martin Bormann (1900–1945), Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945), and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945)), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany, 1936.  Of much, the other three were guilty as sin and would (at the last possible moment) commit suicide but von Schirach would survive to die in his bed at 67.  There seems no record to confirm if that bed was in a “a snow white bedroom with delicate lace curtains” as the rougher types in the Nazi Party had once derided him for having.

Airey Neave (1916–1979) was the British military lawyer who served the indictments on the defendants at Nuremberg and in On Trial at Nuremberg (1978) he recalled the experience, cell by cell.  His first impression of von Schirach was that his appearance was “…bi-sexual and soft with thé dansant eyes [thé dansant was a dance held while afternoon tea was served and in idiomatic use “thé dansant eyes” suggested the coquettish fluttering of the lashes a flirtatious young lady might deploy]”, adding “He looked a man who might be dangerous to small boys.  At a second glance, I imagined him beneath the palms at Cannes in co-respondent shoes.”  In this context, Neave used “co-respondent” in the sense of the man cited in divorce proceedings as the one who slept with the adulterous wife and a “co-respondent shoes (or car, suit, tie etc)” were distinguished by flashiness rather than quality.

Von Schirach went on trial before the IMT (International Military Tribunal) in the first Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), an event the author Rebecca West (1892–1983) attended in her capacity as a journalist and among her impressions she wrote of him, admitting she was at first “startled” because “…he was like a woman in a way not common among men who look like women.  It was as if a neat and mousy governess sat there, not pretty but with never a hair out of place, and always to be trusted never to intrude when there were visitors: as it might be Jane Eyre.”  Although indicted also under Count 1 (conspiracy to commit crimes against peace), for his role as head (1931-1940) of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), von Schirach was convicted only under Count 4 (crimes against humanity) for his part in deporting Viennese Jews to the death camps while Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna.  Cunningly, and not without ostentation, he admitted some guilt for his role in “corrupting German youth” although by that he meant the political indoctrination to which he subjected them, rather than conduct many in the Nazi party liked to hint he enjoyed with the boys under his command; however defined, it’s certain he corrupted more youth than Socrates (circa 470–399 BC).  Applying common law principles, the IMT found his actions as head of the Hitlerjugend didn’t reach the threshold of “conspiracy” and thus acquitted him on Count 1, his 20 year sentence handed down for his conduct in Vienna.  The preparation for the trial had been rushed and had subsequently discovered evidence against him been presented at the trial, doubtlessly and deservedly he’d have been hanged.  Had that sentence been imposed, whether like Göring he’d have followed Socrates and taken hemlock will never be known.

Exquisite: A style guide

Lindsay Lohan in a Gucci Porcelain Garden Print Silk Gown with an all-over Dutch toile in blue and white, high ruffled collar and bib, flared sleeves, pussy bow and a blue and red patent leather belt around a high waist, Savoy Hotel, London, June 2017.

The gown was said to have a recommended retail price (RRP) of Stg£4,040 (US$7300).  The occasion was the launch of the charitable organization One Family, dedicated to combating child trafficking.  While there was a fussiness about the detailing, the quality of the construction was obvious and successfully to use, at this scale, a pattern of this intricacy is not easy and demands a skilled eye.  On the move, it swished around nicely and although the whims of critics can be hard to predict, on the night, most seemed to like this and it was a perhaps welcome relief from the expanses of skin of the "naked dress" movement, then beginning to dominate red carpets.

Designers find inspiration where it's found: Four dinner plates from Wedgewood's Enoch "Countryside Blue" collection, circa 1967.

Within the one critique, the word exquisite can appear, used as a neutral descriptor (an expression of extent), a paean to beauty and even an ironic dismissal.  A gown for example can be “exquisitely detailed” but that doesn’t of necessity imply elegance although that would be the case of something said to be an “exquisite design”.  That said, most were drawn to the Lindsay Lohan's Gucci gown in some way, the references to Jane Austen (1775–1817) many (although historians of fashion might note Gucci’s creation as something evocative more of recent films made of Ms Austen's novels than anything representative of what was worn in her era) and the fabric’s patterning & restraint in the use of color produced a dreamily romantic look.