Breakdown

Breakdown (pronounced breyk-doun)

(1) Of machines, a breaking down, wearing out, or sudden loss of ability to function efficiently; something, typically a vehicle or other machine that has experienced mechanical failure.

(2) In political science (of societies), economic collapse, societal fracturing etc.

(3) In mental or physical health, a form of collapse (figurative & literal), associated typically (1) with a sudden worsening of physical health (although that may be the culmination of long-existing issues) or (more commonly) mental stability, resulting in an inability to carry on normal activities; an instance of these manifestations.

(4) In relationships (personal or institutional), a fracturing of previous feelings or arrangements between parties; a failure of or within a relationship; often as a prelude to a “break-up”; a failure or loss of organization in a system.

(5) An analysis or classification of something; division into parts, categories, processes etc; a separation of a thing into components; decomposition, fragmentation.

(6) The detailed categorization, itemization or listing of the components of a thing (usually in printed or digital form).

(7) In biology & chemistry, the natural process of decomposition; specifically in chemistry, the breaking of chemical bonds within a compound to produce simpler compounds or elements; an instance of this.

(8) In physics, the sudden (sometimes damaging) transition of an electrical insulator to a conductor when subjected to a sufficiently strong voltage, caused by the partial or complete ionization of the insulator; an instance of this; also, the minimum voltage at which this occurs.  The classic example is an electric discharge passing through faulty insulation or other material used to separate circuits or passing between electrodes in a vacuum or gas-filled tube.

(9) In bodybuilding, gym routines etc, the “drop set” (a weight training technique).

(10) In veterinary use (equine medicine), injury to a horse's leg causing lameness; an instance of this.

(11) In rugby union, the short period of open play immediately after a tackle and before and during the ensuing ruck (and, to some extent, the maul). 

(12) In film, television (and such) production, a detailed description of a forthcoming project or screenplay which identifies all the required elements, such as the cast, costumes, equipment, props, special effects etc (separate from financing aspects likely also to involve multiple breakdowns, often on spreadsheets).

(13) In forestry, an act of splitting logs of wood using a large saw in a sawmill; the saw used or (rarely) the building in which the process is carried out (use of the term uncommon outside New Zealand.

(14) In music, a part of a piece of a composition that differs from other parts in that it features improvisation or is stripped down (played using fewer instruments or performed by a soloist).

(15) In music, a synonym of “percussion break” (a percussion-focused segment of a song, interpolated through cutting, mixing, and other techniques in order to create “rhythmic music”).

(16) In music, (especially the ominous-sounding sub-genres metalcore, grindcore, & deathcore (the distinction best explained by experts)), a section of a song, characterized by a lower tempo, greater “heaviness” and intensity of sound.

(17) In music, a loud, lively dance from folk traditions, historically conducted usually in a rural setting, most prevalent in the US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line; the terms  “hoedown” & “shindig” are related; a piece of music played for such an event, historically especially the rapid bluegrass tunes featuring the five-string banjo.

1832: The construct was break + down.  Break was From the Middle English breken, from the Old English brecan (to divide solid matter violently into parts or fragments; to injure, violate (a promise, undertaking etc.), destroy, curtail; to break into, rush into; to burst forth, spring out; to subdue, tame (the past tense of bræc & past participle of brocen), from the Proto-West Germanic brekan, from the Proto-Germanic brekanan (source also of the Old Frisian breka, the Dutch breken, the Old High German brehhan, the German brechen and the Gothic brikan), from the primitive Indo-European root bhreg- (to break).  There evolved strong linguistic links with brick, brake & breach.  The thirteen century past tense “brake” became archaic but the past participle “broken” endured, the shortened form “broke” in use by at least the mid 1300s and said by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) to be “exceedingly common” during the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries.  The alternative form is the hyphenated break-down and in scientific use the two spellings can be applied for different purposes.  Breakdown is a noun; the noun plural is breakdowns.

Poster for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1989).

The early nineteenth century use was in the sense of “a collapse, a falling apart”, and was of machinery or mechanical processes; the use in metal health (as “nervous breakdown”) documented in the medical literature since 1866 but clinical or oral use may have a longer history.  As a transitive verb, the phrase “break down” was in use by at least the late fourteenth century (in the sense “take down by breaking” while as an intransitive verb (“come down by breaking”), use seems to have emerged in the late 1820s.  As early as 1856 the use is attested in the sense of “to fail through incapacity, excess emotion etc” and this presumably influence the adoption a decade later in the context of discussing mental health (it was in the mid nineteenth century something recognizable as “psychiatry” (in the modern understanding) began to evolve.  The noun (specifically of machinery) was in use by at least 1838 while the meaning “an analysis in detail” emerged in US management jargon in the mid 1930s, based on the notion of “breaking a process into its component parts to permit better analysis of both the pieces and the whole” (an extension of the verbal phrase in use earlier in the decade in the sense of “analyze, classify”.  The American folk dance tradition of “a noisy, lively dance sometimes accompanied by singing” was documented by 1864 but historians suggest the musical form dated back decades and was recorded in writing only when witnesses from the North were documenting conditions in the South towards the end of the US Civil War (1861-1865).  Breakdown became a common element in formation (breakdown crane, breakdown lane, breakdown lorry, breakdown truck, breakdown point, breakdown voltage, climate breakdown, electrical breakdown, mental breakdown, nervous breakdown, organizational breakdown, structural breakdown, supply-chain breakdown etc.

World Rugby's Laws of Rugby Union (2026 edition).  Although the word “breakdown” is not used, the rules (14, 15 & 16) regulating the well-known concept are detailed on pages 68-80.

Because just about any object could be broken, “break” widely was adapted, even serving (of paper & fabric) a la the later senses of “cut”, “tear” or “divide” although in Old English the sense of a broken bone was always “brecan”.  The intransitive sense of “be or become separated into fragments or parts under action of some force” dates from the late twelfth century, extending within decades to “make a first and partial disclosure” while the idea of “lessen, impair” was current by the late 1400s.  The sense of in some way to “destroy continuity or completeness” was from at least the 1740s while in 1882 the phrase “to break” is recorded in reference to physical currency (ie convert large denomination banknotes or coins into smaller units of the same total value).  Although in principle rugby union remains a simple game (once with a four-page rule book), under the auspices of the wise men of the IRB (International Rugby Board, 1886-2014) and later the equally diligent men & women of World Rugby (since 2014), the core rule book is now a hefty 100-odd pages so while it remains simple (relatively speaking; it’s a game of “shapes” rather than “angles”) to play, it’s quite a challenge for referees and as an example, during a breakdown, one referee might find a half-dozen transgressions to penalize while another would “allow the game to flow”, the latter approach preferred by most spectators.  In those hundred pages, the word “breakdown” doesn’t appear but that aspect of the game is covered by rules 14 (Tackle), 15 (Ruck) & 16 (Maul).

The figurative sense of “breaking someone’s heart” (although in modern medicine it’s now acknowledged people can “die from (figuratively) broken heart”) was in use by the late 1300s and other such adaptations included “break bread together” (share food) (late 1300s); “break ground" (to dig or plough land for agricultural purposes) (1670s and by 1710 that literal use was extended figuratively to mean “begin to execute a plan”)."  To break the ice as to “overcome the feeling of restraint in a new acquaintanceship” and was from the late 1500s, the reference being to the “coldness" of encounters of strangers.  The familiar break wind (the sanitized form of “a fart”) was documented in the 1550s but, farts being more ancient, use could have predated that.  The also familiar “to break (something) out” could come from anywhere but was recorded in the 1890s as dock-worker’s slang describing freeing cargo prior to unloading.  The ironic theatrical good luck incantation “break a leg” was definitely in use early in the twentieth century and similar forms exist also in Italian & German.  According to some sources, in the seventeenth century it was used euphemistically (of a woman) to convey “to have a bastard child.”

Cup of char.  Under the Raj, the ritual of the "tea break" in the Indian Civil Service became codified (time span; size of cup according to the official's grade of employment).

The thirteenth century noun use (act of breaking, forcible disruption or separation) came from the verb but apparently not until the late 1500s was it customary to speak of “daybreak” or “break of day” but that notion was by the 1720s in use with the meaning “a sudden, marked transition from one course, place, or state to another”.  The first meal of the day (ie when one “breaks one’s overnight fasting)” was by the mid fifteenth century routinely called “breakfast”.  The sense of a “short interval between spells of work” began in schools in the 1860s and the concept came widely to be applied (sport, employment etc) and was sometimes codified in rigid forms (by the Indian Civil Service’s “tea break” in 1911 and the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in broadcasting in 1940).  The meaning “stroke of luck” (widely used: “lucky break” or “give me a break”, “never give a sucker an even break” etc) is believed derived from billiards (a game in which the “opening break” (first shot) scatters the ordered balls and is attested from 1865).  The use in music began in the 1920s when jazz musicians began to refer to “improvised passages or solos” thus, the idea being something that was a “break” between structured sections.  The original dance form called “breakdown” (defined by the OED as “a riotous dance, in the style of the negroes”) was probably from some time in the nineteenth century but definitely was from south of the Mason-Dixon Line although element of the style probably can be identified in the folk traditions of many cultures.

Raygun Breaking.

Australian breakdancer (breaker) Dr Rachael “Raygun” Gunn (b 1987), during her much-discussed “highly original” performance at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.  Between 2020-2026, Dr Gunn was a lecturer in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language & Literature at Macquarie University Faculty of Arts, Sydney, Australia.  Her Ph.D thesis (2017) was titled Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl's Experience of B-boying in which she explored “The intersection of gender and Sydney's breaking culture”.  The Ph.D was in the (obviously wide) field “cultural studies” but after her appearance in Paris was publicized, on X (formerly known as Twitter) there was much comment about universities conferring “doctorates in break dancing” being a sign of decline in academic standards.   

The more modern “breakdance” seems to have begun in New York City in the 1970s; it was when DJs (disc jockey) played exclusively the “rhythmic break sections from pop-dance songs” and crowds danced accordingly, originally presumably impromptu but the discipline later evolved into choreographed structures.  If, upon entering a room, one sees breakdancing in progress, one’s comment to one’s companion should be: “We are among barbarians.”  Break dancing was included as a “sport” in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris although the participants are said to prefer it be called “breaking” and the appearance in Paris is thought to have been an attempt to seek the younger demographic not attracted by the charms of “Olympic traditions” such as Greco-Roman wrestling.  The reaction was mixed and, at this time, Breaking is not on the schedules of either the 2028 (Los Angeles) or 2032 (Brisbane) games.   

Although “down” can be used also as a noun, verb, adjective & preposition, as an element in the noun “breakdown”, it operates as an adverbial particle.  What it does is modify the meaning of the verb “break” (in this sense “indicating separation or failure” to create the new noun.  In this context (in a descending direction, from a higher to a lower place, degree, or condition), the pre 1000 down was from the Middle English doun & doune (down), from the Old English dūne (down), an aphetic (loss of a word's initial unstressed vowel) form of adūne (down, downward), from the earlier ofdūne (down (literally “off the hill”), the construct being of- (of, off) + -dūn(e) (hill, mount, dune, down).  Influencing the development from directional phrases to prepositions were the Old Frisian adverb dene (down (literally “(to the) floor”)), the Middle Low German dāle (down, downwards (literally “(in/to the) dale/valley”) from which the German Low German gained dal (down).  The form was cognate with the Scots doon (down) and can be compared with the Saterland Frisian deel (down (literally “to/into the dale”)) and the West Frisian del (down).  The familiar meaning “in a descending direction, from a higher to a lower place, degree, or condition” was inherited from a late development in the Old English that produced a shortened form of the earlier ofdune.  While in general Germanic, this sense development of “hill" uniquely was English.  As a preposition used to mean “in a descending direction upon or along”, use dates from at least the late fourteenth century.  As an idiomatic form, the uses in English of “down” (both literal and figurative) are legion.

Satirical engraving LADIES! LADIES! Mystery of Modern Modesty, Fun magazine, 12 March, 1870.  At the time there was a national debate about the operation of the Matrimonial Causes Act (1857) and the Women's Property Act (1870).

The 1857 Act created a Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes and it was in many ways an advance in women’s rights in that it made divorce more accessible but there was an inherent unfairness (something perhaps not surprising in a law emerging from an all-male parliament).  While, as before, men could divorce their wives on the basis of adultery alone, a woman was compelled to prove not only her husband’s adultery but also an additional cause (one or more of cruelty, desertion, incest, rape, sodomy or bestiality).  It was a sexual double standard, the origins of which can be traced to Biblical scripture and reinforced in law the notion a woman's infidelity was inherently worse than that of a man.  Despite that hurdle, the acts did make things slightly better for women in that for the first time there was statutory protection ensuring a divorced woman’s future earnings and property were shielded from claims by an ex-spouse.  Gradually, other reforms further improved things but what didn’t change until the “no fault” principle to some degree civilized divorce proceedings was that the act made “break-ups after break-downs” into a spectator sport and there were tabloid newspapers with sometimes pages of coverage of the antics of the famous or the more salacious conduct by others.

Breakdownism is legal slang referencing the “no-fault” principle existing in many jurisdictions as grounds for divorce.  First becoming popular during the 1970s, it essentially created “divorce on demand”, a reform that has had far-reaching effects (both good and ill) and is thus far thought the “final state” of Western divorce law; certainly it’s an advance “contested” divorces (often highly entertaining matters for others than the parties whose infidelities were being publicized, sometimes with appropriate photographic evidence.  The classic “contested divorce” was a creature of the old Matrimonial Causes Act (1857); prior to that a “complete divorce” permitting remarriage almost always required a private Act of Parliament, a procedure expensive and highly public.  It was also time-consuming, demanding (1) proceedings in an ecclesiastical court seeking an order of separation, (2) in the case of a husband seeking divorce, a successful action for “criminal conversation” (damages against the adulterer) in a common-law court, (3) a correctly drafted private divorce bill introduced into the House of Commons (“first reading”), (4) debate(s) on the bill (“second reading”) that might see the matter (5) “referred to committee for consideration”, (5) a vote in on the bill (“third reading”) that, if passed would see the bill (proposed law) sent to “the other place” (House of Lords) for (6) three readings, possible committee stages and a vote.  If the bill survived all that, it became an act and upon (7) royal assent being granted (by a monarch or their representative (governor, governor-general etc) it was valid law and the divorce had happened.  The subsequent (8) “gazetting” (publication in the Government Gazette) was merely procedural.

So one really had to want a divorce and have the means to obtain one; given all that, it’s not surprising wives and husbands were sometimes murdered as a “work-around”.  One handy solution was however available to certain colonial administrators resident in places where the Islamic Sharia courts operated, applicants often finding the judges much more sympathetic to men wishing quickly to rid themselves of now unsatisfactory wives.  The concept of “breakdownism” ended most of the legal entertainment and the notion of “irreconcilable differences” became the standard expression cited as grounds for divorce.  Regrettably, the tale of one eighteenth century bishop “bribing or persuading" a parliamentary draftsman to insert in an innocuous (and thus not diligently scrutinized) bill the line: “the Bishop of xxx is declared divorced” appears to be apocryphal and may have begun as an illustrative example of the supremacy of parliament over sovereign & church before becoming a “legal legend”.  It probably is a good thing members of the House of Lords no longer debate whether or not to grant someone a divorce because that would at times have meant Lord Peter “Mandy” Mandelson (b 1953) having a vote and the thought of him opining on matters of the conduct and personal morality of others is something to ponder.  The term “meltdownism” is non-standard and used of those for whom “having meltdowns” seems a calling or who obviously “stage” them as a tactic.

Barnes Auto advertising, circa 1939.

In business before World War I (1914-1918) Barnes Auto operates a towing business in Brisbane, Australia, their trucks still adorned in striking blue and orange stripes.  Around 1937, the decision was taken to build a “streamlined breakdown lorry” and while designers in Europe and the US had for some years been applying aerodynamic techniques to heavy trucks, most were produced to improve average speeds and lower fuel consumption on (relatively) high-speed, long-distance routes.  Influenced by advances in aviation, streamlining since the 1920s increasingly had appeared on vehicles on both sides of the Atlantic, the best remembered the grand prix and LSR (land-speed record) machines but stylists (with and without wind-tunnel data), applied the techniques both to mass-market and expensive vehicles so trucks were a logical subject for study given the importance to operators of time and running costs.  Whether Barnes Auto’s 78 HP (horsepower) breakdown lorry, geared as it was to suit its purpose, would often have attained speeds at which the presumed aerodynamic advantages would have rendered either better performance or economy is dubious and the shape may have been more an art deco inspired “rolling advertisement” rather than a piece of functionalism but, if that was the case, it worked because it appears to be the only Brisbane “tow truck” of the era to have survived as a feature in the photographic record.  Certainly, compared with other trucks at the time on the road, the blue & orange striped machine must have been eye-catching.

Barnes' Breakdown Lorry fully loaded, three behind, one in front.

Lorry is of uncertain origin but thought most likely from the dialectal English lurry (to lug or pull about, to drag).  The use emerged in the early to mid-nineteenth century and was applied initially small carts or wagons (both hand propelled and horse-drawn), use quickly extending to the open carriages used on railroads to haul goods or commodities.  In much of the English-speaking world, from the early twentieth century, use transferred to motorized vehicles used for the same purpose and that made sense because the earliest powered lorries literally were the same “carriages” with an engine and drive-train added.  “Lorry” in that sense endures in some places in the old British Empire (notably in India & Pakistan where the linguistic inheritance of the Raj remains strong) but in many places (certainly North America), “truck” (and other specialized forms) became preferred.  Even in some places where use of “lorry” lingers, it's now often a sometimes rare niche word describing freight-vehicles larger than “pick-ups” but smaller than “trucks”.  In Australia and New Zealand, it's possible “lorry” may go extinct as those who grew up with the word age and die.

“Tugboat Annie”, waiting for a breakdown needing a tow, Mankato, Minnesota, US, 1937.

The coach-built body was created by (the still operating) Watt Brothers of Wolloongabba on a 1938 Dodge two-ton truck chassis, shortened, reinforced and converted to full forward control.  Although new to Brisbane, similar lines had been seen in US, notably on “Tugboat Annie”, built in Mankato, Minnesota and based on a 1937 International cabover tow truck; presumably such things provided the template followed by the Watts.  The 78 HP, six cylinder engine (one of the variants of Chrysler’s long-serving “flathead six, 1924-1963), was connected through a series of reduction gears via a double-faced clutch to a double jib hoist capable of a ten-ton lift with the lifting and trailing gear arranged so four vehicles simultaneously could be towed: three at the rear, one in front, an apparatus now unlikely much to impress Australian regulatory.  There doesn’t appear to be footage of the breakdown lorry on the move with four broken–down cars attached (three to the rear, one in front) but it would have required a driver with skill and experience, especially to handle the behaviour of the one ahead, the whole ensemble presumably acting like something centrally “hinged”.  On aspect that would have assisted in that was the outstanding visibility the styling afforded a driver, the extremities of the load being a critical thing to monitor.  Because of the four-vehicle capacity, an impressive 600 feet (183 metres) of wire rope was carried, the location of the connection-points on the towed vehicles an important factor in maintaining directional control while in movement.  The Breakdown Lorry served throughout World War II (1939-1945) and wasn’t replaced (by a conventionally styled, English-built, crew cab Dodge) until the mid 1950s.  Regrettably, Barnes proved unsentimental about retired equipment and once deemed obsolete, Breakdown Lorry was sent to a local rubbish dump, meaning an improbable piece of art deco history was lost but, because of the evidence in photographic archives, the distinctive lines attracted the model-makers, Autocult releasing one in 1:43 scale.

The Breakdown Lorry with Douglas DC-3, Brisbane International Airport, circa 1942 (colorized image).

In Australia, the DC-3 was operated by the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force), Ansett Airlines, TAA (Trans Australia Airlines, ANA (Australian National Airways) and a myriad of smaller operators.  Produced mostly between 1936-1945, over 600 were built; robust, economical to operate and with an admirable safety record, it was for years a mainstay of civil aviation and General Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; POTUS 1953-1961), who often travelled in one while Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces (1943-1945), reckoned the DC-3 was one of the tools (others including the bazooka and Jeep) that made Allied victory in World War II possible by 1945.  The DC-3 in the photograph is "Kyilla" (registered as VH-UZJ), the first one imported into Australia (the invoiced cost Aus£41,000).  Delivered in November 1937, it flew with AoA (Airlines of Australia, an operator that in 1931 originally traded as NEA (New England Airlines) before in 1942 being absorbed by ANA).  Between 1939-1940, Kyilla was leased (“temporarily impressed” the wartime terminology) to the RAAF to cover a “delivery gap” and in 1943 it commenced regular service in ANA.

Autocult's 1:43 scale model.

Trucks in the era were anyway low-geared (in some jurisdictions, above a certain gross weight, maximum speeds as low as 30-40 mph (50-70 km/h) sometimes were imposed but the gearbox in the Barnes Breakdown Lorry had an unusually low ratio first-gear (a so-called “stump puller” of the type often seen in agricultural vehicles), enabling it to ascend even the steepest grades, allowing vehicles to be recovered from hilly terrain.  The apparatus used for the double jib hoist must have been intriguing to see and the mechanism, developed in-house by Barns was fine piece of engineering, combining intricacy with robustness while eschewing needless complexity.  In that it followed the maxim on design and problem-solving coined by German architect Professor Heinrich Tessenow (1876-1950): “The simplest form is not always the best, but the best is always simple.”  That was a refinement of novacula Occami (Occam's razor), a principle attributed to the English Franciscan friar, theologian & philosopher Guillelmus de Ockham (William of Ockham circa  1287–1347).  Occam’s razor (the idea one of “cutting away the unnecessary”) recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements; on that basis it was styled also as lex parsimoniae (law of parsimony), often glossed as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitate (Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity).  Even today the mechanism on a tow truck is a fine example of Professor Tessnow’s maxim being applied with brutish efficiency although modern regulations mean something as intriguing as Barnes’ “four strand” arrangement can no longer be used.

One of the many curiosities in English is despite “up” & “down” being diametric opposites, “break down” and “break up” can mean the same thing.  In human relationships, it’s not uncommon for a “break-up” of a couple to follow a “break-down” in their relationship but when applied to physical objects, some are said to be “broken down” while others are “broken up”, despite the processes being conceptually much the same.  The apparent anomaly is explained by the history of the industries involved and conventions of English.  As a general principle, of objects, “break down” means “to dismantle something into its constituent parts or to reduce it to a simpler state”, meaning the term is used to emphasize fragmentation, destroying the integrity of something as a single object.  Despite that, the convention in the business of “shipbreaking” (literally “cutting apart” vessels and using the metal as “scrap”) is of being “broken up”.  The origin of shipbreaking dates from the nineteenth century when the iron and later steel that had come to be used for the structures was valued as scrap metal after a vessel’s economic life had ended.  This involved sometimes dozens of workers stripping fittings from hulls before progressively cutting or demolishing what remained, section by section, until nothing recognizably nautical remained.  In the industry and in news reports, even then the process routinely was referred to as “breaking up”. 

Putting up a final struggle: HMS Vanguard aground on the way to the wrecker's yard to be broken up, Portsmouth Harbour, England, 4 August, 1960.

Launched in 1946, Vanguard was the RN's (Royal Navy) last dreadnought and no nation has since commissioned a battleship.  In the space of a half-century, the battleship shifted from the most powerful military weapon on earth to a white elephant and despite use of the word “battleship” during Donald Trump's (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) recent mention that the USS Defiant would be the first of the new “Trump Class” of surface warships, the USN (US Navy) will not be launching any true “battleships”, the service having in 1992 struck from the list the last of the four Iowa Class ships commissioned between 1943-1944.

Obviously, shipbreaking, while in a sense a well-planned and careful “disassembly”, was an act of “total and final destruction”, the many pieces of metal sent to be “melted down” before being transformed into something else (not necessarily another ship).  That use of the term was different from the process undertaken by mechanics or technicians when “breaking down” a piece of equipment. Something done typically to effect repairs or maintenance, the emphasis very much on a carefully ordered process, disassembly most systematic because all or some of the components removed would need to be restored to their original positions when the thing was “put back together”.  So that’s how the conventions emerged: (1) “breaking up” a destructive process and (2) “breaking down a step in processes of repair, maintenance or upgrades.  Deconstructing the elements at the etymological level, there’s no reason why the terms couldn’t have been applied the other way round but, by patterns of use, the idiomatic forms became fixed.

A Lindsay Lohan “meltdown scene”, The Canyons (2013).

In the furnaces fed by the shipbreakers, to “melt down” was literally to bring scrap metal to its melting point, meaning it flowed like a liquid and could be cooled to form into shapes able to be re-used (plates, bars, beams etc).  In the post-war years, “meltdown” (first in this context recorded in 1963) ominously became familiar as the graphical encapsulation of what would happen to at least a large part of the core of a nuclear-reactor were the fuel elements subject to inadequate cooling.  The idea was the highly radioactive core would become so hot it would “melt down”, through the floor to the earth below.  Depending on the thickness of the facility’s concrete floor a core could in theory do exactly that but extending the idea to the popular description “China syndrome” was fanciful.  That idiom was based on the notion that if one (in Europe) kept digging a hole, eventually they’d dig “all the way to China” (“China” a synecdoche for “other side of the world”).  In many places the geography would have been dubious but so too the geology; even by 2026 the deepest hole ever dug remains Hole SG-3 (Kola Superdeep Borehole) in Russia’s Murmansk region.  Begun as a Soviet scientific project in 1970, by 1989 it achieved a vertical depth of 12.7 kilometres (7.6 miles) into the Earth's continental crust at which point the project had to be abandoned because temperatures at the drill bit had reached 180°C (356°F), much hotter than the expected 100°C (356°F).  At that level, rock becomes too soft successfully to drill.  Technically, the 12.7 km depth was a remarkable piece of applied engineering but to put the “China Syndrome” into perspective that’s around 0.2% of the way to the planet’s centre (the Earth's radius is some 6,371 kilometres (3959 miles)).

The “Elephant's Foot”, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine.  It came more to resemble a boot but when first identified, it was though to be more “pachydermish”.

So, in a nuclear meltdown, a core would have a long way to go and, in the most infamous example to date, the core didn’t get even to the Earth’s surface.  In April 1986, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (in Ukraine, then one of the constituent SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union (1922-1991)) exploded after a serious of procedural errors in what was, with the darkest irony, supposed to be a routine “safety test”.  When the heat of the core passed the “critical point of no return” the meltdown started, the core (a molten, toxic, lava-like mixture of uranium fuel, graphite, steel and concrete (“corium” in the jargon) melted through the bottom of the reactor vessel, flowing through pipes, corridors, and steam suppression pools inside the building.  The core did however stay completely within the facility’s basement levels (made from thick concrete) and it remains radioactive although it has now cooled to the point where it’s possible to stand relatively close without receiving a dangerous dose although, uranium being almost inert, if left undisturbed, when (10 billion years from now) our Sun expires (having “burned up” the fuel sustaining its nuclear fusion) some 25% of it will remain extant and the Elephant's Foot will be about as radioactive as its weight in bananas.  A banana contains Potassium-40 and is about as radioactive as a typical carrot or potato but other foods are more so, Brazil nuts by a factor of more than three.

Bruno Ganz’s “Hitler’s meltdown scene” in Downfall (2004).

In informal use, “meltdown” is used of sudden declines in stock prices or other undesirable “sharp market corrections” but the most popular use is of “dramatic performances” (of grief, rage, despair etc) consequent upon a sudden loss of control over one’s feelings or behavior.  Mothers will be familiar with meltdowns by their toddlers, typically over life-changing issues such as not getting an ice cream or the television being switched-off.  On screen, one of the most famous depictions of a meltdown was the performance of Swiss actor Bruno Ganz (1941-2019) as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) in Downfall (2004), a study of the characters in the Führerbunker during the “last days of the Third Reich”.  The performance inspired an entire genre of “Hitler Rant Parodies”, the quality of which is “patchy”.  Hitler’s meltdown came during a military briefing after learning Waffen-SS (Armed SS) Obergruppenführer (general) Felix Steiner (1896–1966) had failed to assemble the forces to launch a relieving attack Hitler had ordered against the Red Army formations besieging Berlin.  That was by then militarily impossible but the unwelcome news induced in Hitler a legendary rant of several minutes during which he ranged against those he thought responsible for his predicament, notably the army’s officer corps and even the previously trusted SS.

The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 900,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Towards the end of the meltdown, Hitler, with tears in his eyes, admitted the war was “lost”, something that was by then (or should have been) obvious to all in the bunker.  Although only two of those who witnessed the meltdown survived the war to tell the tale (Generaloberst (Colonel General) Alfred Jodl (1890–1946, chief of the OKW operations staff 1939-1945 and Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel (1882–1946; chief of OKW 1938-1945)), such was the volume it was heard by many in an adjoining room and historians agree Ganz’s performance captured the moment.

Witch

Witch (pronounced wich)

(1) A person, historically either male or female but now especially a woman, who professes or is supposed to practice magic or sorcery; a sorceress (especially popular in mythology and fiction but also associated with certain societies and historical periods and still current in some countries).

(2) In the weird world of the "new age movement", a practitioner of a nature-based religion founded on ancient beliefs, which honors both a male and female divine principle and includes the practice of magic (associated especially with healing).

(3) An informal and derogatory term for an ugly, mean or wicked old woman; a hag.

(4) Used selectively, a fascinating or enchanting woman (usually in the (figurative) sense of "bewitching").

(5) A person who uses a divining rod; dowser (archaic).

(6) In the sense of "witch-hunt", an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty or the like, based usually on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.

(7) A flatfish, Pleuronectes (or Glyptocephalus) cynoglossus, of North Atlantic coastal waters, having a narrow greyish-brown body marked with tiny black spots.  The family group is Pleuronectidae (plaice, flounders etc)

(8) In geometry, a certain curve of the third order, also known as versiera.

(9) In entomology, the Indomalayan butterfly Araotes lapithis, of the Lycaenidae family.

Pre 900: From the Middle English wicche from the Old English wicce (sorceress, witch (female)), the feminine forms existing in conjunction with wicca (witch, sorcerer, wizard), the masculine deverbative from wiccian (to practice sorcery) from the Proto-Germanic wikkōną.  Related were the West Frisian wikje, wikke (to foretell, warn), the Low German wicken (to soothsay) and the Dutch wikken, wichelen (to dowse, divine).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wik-néh, derivation of weyk- (to consecrate; separate); akin to the Latin victima (sacrificial victim), the Swedish vicka (to move to and fro), the Lithuanian viẽkas (life-force) and the Sanskrit विनक्ति (vinákti) (to set apart, separate out).  Witch, witchcraft, witcher & witchery are nouns; witching is a verb & adjective and witchy is an adjective, the noun plural is witches.

The homophones “witch” & “which” are yet another pair that must make those learning English wonder how a language with so many curious anomalies became something of the planet’s lingua franca.  Which was from the Middle English which, hwic, wilche, hwilch, whilk & hwilc, from the Old English hwelċ (which), from the Proto-Germanic hwilīkaz (literally “like what” and used in the sense of “what kind”), from hwaz.  It was cognate with the Scots whilk, the West Frisian hokker, the Dutch welk, the Low German welk, the German welcher, the Danish hvilken, the Swedish vilken, the Norwegian hvilken and the Icelandic hvílíkur, all of which convey the sense of the English “which”.  “Which” is used (1) as an interrogative (seeking a choice from a limited number or group implied to be a closed set), (2) as a relative pronoun (either adding introducing clauses or referring to a whole statement or (3) as conditional or indefinite (whichever) operator used to mean any one or whichever option from a group.

An illustrative example was Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; Prime Minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) leaving a cocktail party after having been introduced to a number of visiting dignitaries from the Balkans, confessing to his companion he’d be unlikely to recall: “which ‘vitch’ was which”.  In English, the choice between “that” and “which” often baffles but the convention is “that” is used when introducing a restrictive (essential) clause and “which” when the clause is non-restrictive.  To illustrate that (1): “The car that has the red interior is mine” (the clause identifies which car) and (2) “The car, which has a red interior, is mine” (identity of car already certain).  However, “which vs that” is more a convention of style than a hard grammatical “law” and a handy rule of thumb is (1) if “that” can be removed from a sentence without compromising meaning, it should be removed, (2) if a comma exists, use “which” and (3) if there’s no comma, used “that”.  That will please most people most of the time.

An obviously guilty witch haranguing the court, lithograph of a witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts, circa 1692.

The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) does note the generally accepted etymology is not without phonetic or semantic difficulties and suggests some connection with the Old English wigle (divination) and wig & wih (idol), the nouns representing a Proto-Germanic wikkjaz (necromancer) (one who wakes the dead) from the primitive Indo-European weg-yo from weg (to be strong, be lively).  That wicce once had a more specific sense than the later general one of "female magician, sorceress" is suggested by the presence of other words in Old English describing more specific kinds of magical craft.  “Witch doctor” is from circa 1715; from the mid 1830s it was applied to African “healers by means of spells & potions”, soon becoming interchangeable with “medicine man”.  The fear of witches and witchcraft is described as wiccaphobia and neither phobia nor subject has ever been mentioned in the APA’s (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) although that’s not unusual, the DSM not listing phobias as distinct diagnostic identities but instead providing diagnostic criteria for categorizing phobias listed under five headings: (1) animal type, (2) natural environment type, (3) blood-injection-injury type, (4) situational type & (5) other types.  Depending on the patient's circumstances, a clinician presumably would place their wiccaphobia in either (4) or (5).

Poster for the movie Warlock (1989).  In Hollywood, warlocks are men and witches are women.

However, although "witchcraft" and "witch" may not appear in the DSM, both terms did once make frequent appearances in the literature of medicine and psychiatry.  Historically, at least some of those accused of practicing witchcraft in the Middle Ages and early modern period are thought to have been experiencing conditions such as severe depression, epilepsy, or psychosis; rather than being condemned as witches, they’d now be diagnosed with a neurological or mental illnesses.  In the modern era, clinicians are trained to detect the difference between true psychotic delusions (a manifestation of irrational phobias) and beliefs a product of cultural or religious conditioning.  Sometimes seriously and sometimes less so, there have been scholars and other critics (including ex-patients) of modern psychiatry who have compared the DSM to the old “witch-hunting” texts, the classic example the Malleus Maleficarum.  Written by German Dominican friar and inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (circa 1430-1505), the widely-read treatise Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches, 1487), not only described the rituals of witchcraft but was also a manual for the identification of witches, documenting methods by which their guilt could be proven (as a prelude to execution).  Scholars now regard Malleus Maleficarum not as original but a kind of “review of the classics” and a codification of many previous works but the publication long exerted much influence on the witch trials of the early modern period.  Kramer was on sound theological and political ground because early as the tenth century the Church had published Canon Episcopi (Canon Law) in which it was made explicit witchcraft and magic were delusions and practitioners (or even believers) were suffering “possession by the Devil”.

To gain a flavour of the Malleus Maleficarum, consider the representative extract: “What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted in fair colors...The word woman is used to mean the lust of the flesh, as it is said: I have found a woman more bitter than death, and a good woman more subject to carnal lust...Women are naturally more impressionable...Women are intellectually like children...She is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations...Therefore a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft...”  One does suspect copies of the Malleus Maleficarum might sit well-thumbed on the bedside tables of Talibs in Kabul and ayatollahs in Tehran.  They know the old ways are best.

The old ways are best: Malleus Maleficarum.

The comparison between Malleus Maleficarum and the DSM is the claim both are guidebooks used by an elite to label and classify nonconformity or social deviance as “abnormal” and thus to be “treated” (sometimes by incarceration).  Structuralists note one interesting aspect of this is the “imprimatur of veracity” provided by the written word, both Kramer’s text and the DSM gaining their authority from being hefty published works.  While Malleus Maleficarum faded from use, the DSM’s seven decade evolution from DSM-I (1952: 130 pages listing 106 mental disorders) to DSM-5-TR (2022: 1152 pages and 298 disorders) has been one of increasing influence to the point that, in the minds of many, it is definitive.  The “mission creep” of the DSM has attracted comment and while whether there’s now “more madness” or what there now is more readily identified and better treated can be debated, the growth of the profession also accounts for some of the spread, doctors sometimes in demarcation disputes about who gets to treat whom: With each addition to the DSM the psychiatrists get to stake their claim to another market segment and in the twenty-first century, the DSM seems as canonical a text as was Malleus Maleficarum in the sixteenth.

Nylon, 30 January, 2015.

In 2015, Nylon ran the story Lindsay Lohan had taken up witchcraft and wished to be consecrated by a coven as a white witch.  Nylon did caution the source of the story was the National Enquirer, a publication sometimes referred to as a NRS (normally reliable source) with some irony; a representative for Ms Lohan released a statement denying she practiced witchcraft.  Published continuously since 1926, since the early 2000s the National Enquirer has been a good source of Lohanic content, its coverage extending to her weight (suggestions of anorexia during “thin phase”), driving history (patchy), being stalked by the Freemasons (verified), feuds (frequent), legal issues (since resolved), family squabbles (legion), hair care (highly recommended), shoe & handbag collections (much envied) and, of course, aspiration to be admitted to a coven of witches (dubious).  

Women being burned at the stake (circa 1580), engraving by Dutch illustrator Jan Luyken (1649–1712).  Widely practiced in parts of Europe, in England, burnings at the stake tended to be restricted to those convicted of heresy, convicted witches usually hanged (if they survived the various "trials by ordeal" used to establish guilt).

The glossary of the Laws of Ælfred (circa 890) translates the Latin necromantia (demonum invocatio) as galdre or wiccecræft and in the Anglo-Saxon poem Men's Crafts, wiccræft appears to mean "skill with horses" so the OED is right to note the contested history but, in the history of the British Isles, the mention in the Laws of Ælfred of witchcraft being exclusively female activity is unique although that sense clearly endured and by the early 1600s, the feminine form was so dominant that the forms "men-witches" or "he-witches" came into use.  Warlock was never a universally accepted masculine form of witch despite the notion in modern popular culture and it’s from wicca that English ultimately gained both wizard and wicked.  Even in the sixteenth century, the implications were blurred, Reginald Scot in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) asserting it was synonymous in the English tongue to say either “she is a witch” or “she is a wise woman”.  In the popular imagination there's still a widespread perception witches were burned at the stake and while that was the case in many places (along with other methods of dispatch), in the English-speaking world, because witchcraft was a felony in both England and the American colonies, witches were hanged and not burned.  Witches’ bodies were burned in Scotland, although, just to be sure, they were first strangled to death.  The confusion may have arisen because there were cases of witches being burned at the stake but that was because they'd been convicted also of heresy.

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) has never denied practicing witchcraft (digitally altered image).

The extended sense of “young woman or girl of bewitching aspect or manners” was in use by at least 1740 and although that sense has been used both admiringly (of “feminine charms) and as a warning (of the power of a seductress over men) it seems now usually positive and of “ways & means” rather than merely the Paris Hiltonesque “hot”.  It’s certainly more encouraging than the use in the Old Testament in which appears מְכַשֵּׁפָה (mekhashshepheh, in the Hebrew the feminine term for an “enchantress or sorceress”.  The word was from the root כשף (kashaph) and used to refer to those who whispered mystic formulas or cast spells, antics that attracted one of the more famous (and consequential) biblical injunctions: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus 22:18; King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611)).  A similar condemnation also appears in Deuteronomy 18:10-12:

10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

The verse “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” echoed through time, the Mosaic legal decree held to command the execution of those practicing sorcery or illicit magic.  In the archaic English of the KJV, “suffer” means “allow or permit”, thus the understanding “Do not allow a sorceress to live”.  However, scripture is open to interpretation and, for thousands of years, priests, theologians (amateur & professional), lawyers and charlatans (there’s some overlap between those categories) have done exactly that and adding to the tangle is the history of variations in translation and meaning-shifts in words.  In the ancient Septuagint (a translation in Ancient Greek), the Hebrew word was translated as pharmakos (a brewer of lethal potions, drugs, or poisons) leading some scholars argue the verse targeted “dark herbalists” (ie those who literally mixed poisons) while others held this was metaphorical and still explicitly proscribed (on pain of death) supernatural sorcery.  The latter (harsher) view is more in accord with the spirit of Deuteronomy in which it was made clear all must follow the teachings in the tradition of the prophet Moses, meaning all divination and magical techniques of enquire must be eliminated on the grounds such things were “spiritual treason”.  For the ancient Israelites, spells and magical incantations were attempts to bypass God's authority by manipulating spiritual forces or a summoning of pagan deities, sorcery thus a form of idolatry that threatened the purity of the community.  Of course the commentaries have always emphasised execution of transgressors must be judicial with the accused granted due process; neither in Exodus or Deuteronomy is licence granted for vigilantism or mob justice.

The historical legacy of Exodus 22:18 was profound and lingered long in Western culture.  It was James I (1566–1625;King of England 1603-1625) who commissioned the translation still influential as the KJV and he was a religious zealot both fearful of and somewhat obsessed with the dangers in witchcraft; translating mekhashepha specifically as “witch” reinforced the secular laws of his time and on both sides of the Atlantic, European inquisitors and American Puritans alike, cited Exodus 22:18 as the primary biblical justification to hunt, torture, and execute thousands (mostly women) accused of witchcraft.  Delivered mostly by the European colonialists, scripture (often selectively quoted) spread to other continents and to this day, Akan Christians in Ghana justify praying for the death and destruction of witches and wizards of the basis of “not suffering witches to live”.  In some places where the scriptural condemnation of witches became better embedded in culture than the companion notion of "due process before punishment", mobs not infrequently assemble and kill those accused of witchcraft, parts of Africa and PNG (Papua New Guinea) especially afflicted.  In some cases the killings are opportunistic and based on other motives including "blood feuds" and economics, inconvenient wives sometimes murdered so a family can gain title to her land.      

Peter Dutton, seemingly in one of his more cheerful moods, carrying volume one (of three) of his enemies list (volume two including a number of MFWs).

In Australia, Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party 2022-2025) had something of an unfortunate history with text messages (SMS, short message service) including sending one calling a journalist a “mad fucking witch”.  Unfortunately, he sent the "MFW text" to the target of his thoughts but, fortunately, the witch worked for Liberal Party supervisor Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) and thus had to cop it sweet which, with some aplomb, the witch did, even complimenting Mr Dutton for having been a minister who had made "a great contribution to government" (one way of putting things).  Mr Dutton's SMS was especially interesting because there's an extensively documented library of the links between Freemasonry and witchcraft and, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.  Whether it can be said Mr Dutton’s truly made "a great contribution to government" (examples don't readily come to mind), in coining “mad fucking witch” he certainly made a notable contribution to the political lexicon and, unlike most of what he said and did over his well-remunerated decades in public life, the phrase proved enduring, albeit as an “unintended consequence”.

In Australia, MFW (Mad Fucking Witches) is a political pressure group targeting media figures usually described as “right wing” and although the label can be misleading, those attracting the attention of the MFW generally are port of the “populist vibe”, a movement not sympathetic to the “progressive” issues though the preserve of the (again nominal) “left wing”.  The MFW approach comes from the playbook of BDS (boycott, divestment & sanctions) community and their preferred tactic since 2016 has been the “collective boycott”, a technique in which companies are pressured not to advertise on programmes or outlets that have attracted their disapproval.  So it’s an attempt at a kind of censorship but the MFW’s stated position is those using the media to advocate, support or at least “dog whistle” world views such as “sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of hate and bigotry” should not tolerated and have no right to claim the protection of the liberal concept of “free speech”.  Potential MFW supporters should note the coven's position is both men and women can be consecrated as witches and it'll be interesting to see if a kind of “anti-MFW” emerges from the  “manosphere” (a MFW enemy) as the “Mad Fucking Warlocks”.  On X (previously known as Twitter), #witches-vs-warlocks would be a battle worth following.   

MFW merchandise.  Rupert Murdoch too has feelings and must find the Tee-shirts hurtful.  Those concerned should send him an appropriate emoji.  

Presumably the MFW wouldn’t claim the quote attributed to French philosopher Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet; 1694–1778): “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is “wrong” but, on the basis “one has to draw the line somewhere” (a dictum with a long history in “free speech” matters), would maintain it is “wrong” for corporations financially to support individuals or media outlets disseminating “hate speech”.  Actually, the quote was a paraphrase of Voltaire’s views on the principle of freedom of speech and was coined by Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868–1956, who used the pseudonym Stephen “S.G.” Tallentyre), appearing in her book The Friends of Voltaire (1906); whether that history is enough for the coven to deny Ms Hall the status of “honorary Mad Fucking Witch” isn’t something discussed on their website (on which is merchandise available, including the “Fuck Murdoch” Tee-shirts made famous by #MeToo activist Grace Tame (b 1994 and at least a MFW fellow-traveller)).

The MFW will not be unaware of analysis suggesting at least some of the “hate spewing” commentators choose their content not out of political conviction but merely because it has proved the most lucrative and happily they’d shift to broadcasting something diametrically different if that path proved to be the “money trail”.  The outlets are in the business of producing a product (their audience) to sell (to advertisers) and if a bigger audience could be produced by running recordings of a philosopher and archbishop discussing the existence of God than what's generated by conspiracy theories and rants about this & that (immigrants, trans-people etc), that's what would be run.  However, the MFW is a coven of structural functionalists for whom motivation is irrelevant and what matters is content: “Every single advertiser who pays advertising dollars to a company which spreads dangerous anti-science rhetoric, hate speech, fake news and lies is complicit in the spread of that information … their responsibility is to ensure their money only goes to media organisations with morals and a social conscience.”  Pleasingly for pattern theorists (harder than it sounds), both Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) and the MFW seek to eradicate “fake news” although while some of their methods may be similar, the definitions and targets differ.  The MFW has pledged also to “rid the world of authoritarianism”, possibly with Mr Trump in the coven’s collective thoughts.

The MFW doesn't issue a “call to arms”; the coven calls witches: “To your brooms”.

Of course companies have for a long time been using either the withdrawal of advertising or the threat to do so as a weapon (sometimes deployed with subtlety, sometimes not) to influence “coverage of products” and governments have not been above directing their advertising to publications thought “sympathetic”.  There are terms for those methods but the MFW is an interesting case-study of the way blogs, social media and such have created a kind of “equivalency” between the new “micro-operations” and media outlets with storied histories in some cases dating back centuries.  What makes the MFW campaign(s) structurally different is they’re often focused on the “old media” of radio and terrestrial television, technologies possible only because they are licenced (by governments) exclusively to use a publicly-owned resource (the airwaves) and conditions are imposed on those so licenced, including the general concept of “responsible” use; many individuals and some institutions have views on the parameters of “responsible” (some even codifying things) and the MFW’s strident position is just one of many.  One “codified” document in Australia is commercial radio’s 31-page Code of Practice, a work highly-detailed, frequently ignored and often interpreted on the basis of: “Can we get away with it?”  The MFW have noted this and claim they exist only because the outlets refuse to “regulate themselves” and “regulators failing to discharge their statutory duties”.  Although there is something of the now familiar “agree with us or we’ll cancel you” approach about the MFW, many wish them success, not because they find their targets a political threat but because they’re such ghastly vulgarians. 

Witches and ditches

Witch of the Ditch on broomstick.

Early Reader’s paperback edition of the children's book The Witch of the Ditch by by Steven Butler, illustrated by Nigel Baines.  The early reader series uses a hybrid format in being “stepping stones” designed for children transitioning from picture books to text, the method being associative (illustrations the young reader can identify orally, presented alongside the relevant written word(s)). Appropriately deconstructed, the book is a tale of political conflict, triggered when one witch (Hag of the Crag) moves in next door to another (Witch of the Ditch).  As is notorious, there is in every town room only for one witch so things are not going to go well.  Politicians may be tempted to mine The Witch of the Ditch in the quest for new 3WSs (three word slogans) because that's how political discourse is now done and they’ll find encouraging the publisher’s blurb noting the title is for a “Reading age: 5-7 years”, about the level of comprehension they appear to think most voters have attained.

Ditch Witch at work.

Described by the manufacturer as “The fastest way to drill”, CEA’s Ditch Witch JT21 replaces the previous JT20, the design improvements said to have been “engineered with direct input from contractors and drillers in the field.”  Drills of all types (from the smallest able to put holes in nano-sized objects to the largest used to carve through solid granite when excavating tunnels) are arranged in classes and CEA claim the JT21 “sets a new benchmark for performance, speed, and control in compact drilling”, its “35% faster carriage speed” able to operate at a “blazing 215 feet (66 metres) per minute”, making it “the fastest drill in its class”.  One measure likely novel to those familiar with HP (horsepower) in other contexts is the concept of DHP (downhole horsepower), a measure of the specific efficiency delivered at the critical point (the drill bit); in that it’s analogous with RWHP (rear-wheel horsepower), the traditional metric used by dynamometers quantifying power and a measure more indicative of performance potential than GHP (gross horsepower, what a engine generates in its raw configuration) or NHP (net horsepower, measured with an engine’s accessories attached).  Certainly the Ditch Witch’s stated ratings (21,000 lbs of pullback, 20,000 lbs of thrust, and 2,250 ft-lbs of torque) sound impressive.  The JT21 is also a most modern machine, featuring VAM (Virtually Assisted Make-up, a software-driven pipe handling apparatus that renders redundant floats or sensors).  Pleasingly for those brought up on video games, the JT21 is controlled by a multimode joystick and LCD (liquid crystal display) interface.

Digging a better trench.

Winston Churchill inspecting the progress of project White Rabbit No, 6, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, England, November 1941.

In “Ditch Witch” CEA came up with a catchy name, one that would have appealed to word-nerd Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), had there not been a need for secrecy.  The World War II (1939-1945) era White Rabbit No. 6 was an “trench digging” engineering project co-ordinated by the British Admiralty although, as a security measure, the official code-name was changed to “Cultivator No. 6” to make it sound less mysterious and more like just another a piece of agricultural equipment.  It was a military trench-digging machine, an example of the adage “generals are always preparing to fight the last war” and although designed exclusively for army use on (and at least partially under) land, it came under the auspices of the RN (Royal Navy) because it was one of the many “good ideas” from the brain of Churchill who, between the outbreak of war in 1939 and his assumption of the premiership some months later, served as First Lord of the Admiralty (the RN’s political head).  Trenches and artillery had been the two dominant features of World War I (1914-1918) and Churchill had spent some months (1915-1916) in one of the former under fire from the latter while commanding a battalion; before the implications of mechanization and the German’s Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics were apparent, he assumed the new war in France would unfold something like the old, thus the interest in something which would “revolutionize trench warfare”.

Clipart of sexy Halloween witches (PNG (portable network graphics) format, transparent, 300 DPI (dots-per-inch)) can be downloaded.

Trench warfare however wasn’t repeated so White Rabbit No.6 was soon realized to be already obsolete so the project was abandoned and although the most fully developed of the prototypes did perform according to the design parameters, whether it would have been effective remains doubtful; remarkably, work on these things wasn’t wholly abandoned until 1942.  The “White Rabbit” project codes came from Churchill’s sense of humor, his ideas flowing, as he said: “like rabbits I pull from my hat” and he supported many, some of which were of great military value while others, like the “floating runways” (artificial icebergs made with a mixture of shards of timber & frozen water), were quixotic.  The gestation of the White Rabbit was also an echo of World War I when, in an earlier incarnation as First Lord, Churchill had instructed the Admiralty to begin development of the first “tank”.  The word “tank” was adopted to create the impression the project was about “water tanks” and while it may seem strange to put admirals in charge of what was so obviously a “land weapon”, it was the navy that possessed the expertise in fabricating similar devices (the gun turrets used on warships) and the boat-sized engines that would be used to propel them.

Bronwyn Bishop (b 1942, left), Sophie Mirabella (b 1968) and Tony Abbott (right) at the infamous “Ditch the Witch” protest, 2011.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime Minister of Australia 2013-2015) rarely saw a 3WS he didn’t like and, in 2011, apparently had no compunction in being photographed in front of a placard with the words “Ditch the Witch”, the occasion a “No Carbon Tax” protest, called after Julia Gillard (b 1961; Prime Minister of Australia 2010-2013) had announced such a tax would be imposed, despite having earlier promised there’d be no such tax.  Clearly it must have been a "non-core promise", another Australian contribution to political jargon.  Also displaying the depth of the Australian linguistic imagination (if not grasp of the rules of punctuation) was one reading “Juliar….Bob Browns [sic] Bitch”.  The construct of Juliar was Ju(lia) + liar (alluding to the broken promise) and “Bitch” a reference to the allegation her government was too inclined to be influenced by the Green Party, then led by Dr Bob Brown (b 1944; senator for Tasmania (Australian Greens) 1996-2012, Green party leader 2005-2015).  “Bitch” was also a slur, a snide comment on Dr Brown’s homosexuality.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime Minister of Australia 2013-2015) agitprop.

Mr Abbott's combination of relentless negativity and repetition of 3WSs (three word slogans) contributed to his resounding victory in the 2013 general election although, in office, the results were mixed and it ended badly.  Recently resurrected as the Liberal Party's federal president (the institution's third “Lazerus with a triple bypass” after Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; Prime Minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) and John Howard (b 1939; Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007)), Mr Abbott unquestionably was one of history's most effective leaders of the opposition but as Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) remarked of Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895):  “He was essentially a opposition politician and behaved as such even when in government”.  With his long experience in the cabinets of two of the UK's more faction-ridden post-war Labour governments, of such matters, Jenkins was a fair judge.  It was Lord Randolph who made famous the dictum “The duty of an opposition is to oppose” but he proved was sometime neglectful in adhering to the obvious corollary defining the role of a government.  When in opposition, Mr Abbott followed the dictum with an unmatched muscular efficiency (during all those years he trained to be ordained a priest, the monsignors drummed into him the Catholic Church's world view (“thou shalt not”)) and even after he elected not to follow the calling, the lesson never departed his soul.  Mr Abbott as federal president of the party that axed him from the leadership before he'd completed a single term will be watched with interest by many, dread by some and quiet terror by those clinging to marginal seals (the latter now a big number).  In the pre-penicillin age, Lord Randolph died a dreadful death and whether Mr Abbott proves the Liberal Party's political penicillin will be determined by the patient's fate.             

“Witch Doctor” was  for several successful seasons campaigned in drag racing by Dr Keith Garner (b 1935), a Cherokee, Iowa-based physician.

A 1970 Ford Torino Cobra, it was ordered from the factory explicitly configured to optimize performance over quarter-mile (402 metres) runs: 429 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Super Cobra Jet V8 (J-code), C6 automatic transmission & 3.91 Drag Pack 9 inch rear end (V code).  The styling cues were “borrowed” by Ford Australia for the two-door hardtop version of the Falcon (XA, XB & XC, 1972-1979), the lines proving aerodynamically efficient on even the fastest circuits.  Unfortunately, the second generation Torino (1970-1971), while untroubled on drag strips where speeds didn’t exceed 125 mph (200 km/h), on the big NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals where 200 mph (320 km/h) routinely was approached, the shape induced unexpectedly high drag, despite looking sleeker than its slab-sided predecessor (1968-1969); where possible, racing teams opted to run the old body.

In this, Ford was a victim of circumstances.  The plan had be to produce a run of 1970 Torinos with aerodynamics optimized for the ovals (as had been done with the previous generation (the 1969 Torino Talladega and corporate stablemate Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II) and three prototypes were built but the NASCAR regulators, not best-pleased their series for "showroom stock cars" (although it was a long time since the teams had used anything of the kind) was being "gamed" by manufacturers, changed the rules, rendering the so called "aero cars" uncompetitive by limiting them to a 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engine displacement while allowing the others to use the full 430 (7.0).  Visually, although highly effective, the modifications appearing on the Talladega were quite modest (as were those applied in 1969 on the Dodge Charger 500 that triggered the "aero wars") and had the manufacturers continued to exercise restraint and limit the changes to some subtle "tweaks", NASCAR might have allowed the fun to continue.  However, after the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona and 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird appeared with extravagant appendages front and rear (the elevated rear wings literally could be used to hang washing out to dry), the rule-makers cracked down, ending the "aero wars".        

Preaching to the converted: One-time seminarian Mr Abbott gets the message across.

Standing with Mr Abbott, Liberal Party luminaries Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Mirabella presumably regarded the words “witch” & “bitch” as “political” rather than “sexist”.  That view wasn’t shared by Ms Gillard who later remarked: “I wasn't shocked that some people had those sentiments…” but was, “…shocked that it was so visibly called forth into the public debate and that it didn't get the sort of odium from mainstream commentators that it should have.”  The signage also rated a mention in her strident “misogyny speech”, delivered in the parliament on 9 October 2012 as a reaction then opposition leader Mr Abbott accusing her of sexism.  Actually, she “had a bit of previous” with sexism (notably the “mincing poodle” affair) but the speech was a good performance and around the planet it went viral.  At the time of the “Ditch the Witch” rally, Ms Gillard of course received the expected support from her ALP (Australian Labor Party) party colleagues although Ms Bishop and Ms Mirabella seem to have been unmoved.  One at the time vocal in her condemnation of the signage was Penny Wong (b 1968), then serving in the Gillard cabinet and, as a woman, she would be expected to be sensitive to hints of misogyny.  Gillard of course had only that to resort to when weaponizing “an identity” whereas Wong could play (1) “the woman card”, (2) the “race card” (being of part-Asian extraction) or “the gay card” (being a lesbian).  Still her support must have been appreciated as gesture of feminist solidarity.  Unfortunately, Gillard’s problems got worse and the rest of the country noticed; so did her party colleagues and, in a leadership spill in June 2013, she lost the leadership, Ms Wong among those voting for the alternative.  Feminist solidarity goes only so far when there’s the threat of a big pay cut and the loss of perks.

Briefly in 2026, one of the few pleasures to be see when waiting to catching one's bus in Melbourne.

Genuinely a piece of Australian political history, the “Ditch the Witch” 3WS in 2026 made an unexpected return the streets of Melbourne, appearing on the sides of trucks trundling through the suburbs.  The target this time was Jacinta Allan (b 1973; premier of Victoria since 2023), the lucky recipient of the poisoned chalice of the state’s premiership, handed to her after the retirement of the long-serving Daniel Andrews (b 1972), premier of Victoria 2014-2023.  Several political junkies have been compiling reports with calculations attempting to work out just how much public money has been squandered / stolen / misappropriated / wasted (the terms vary with the author) during the life of the Andrews/Allan government.  While not all the various “incidents” suggest dishonesty (some being mere incompetence), the alleged losses variously are in the thousands, millions or billions.  Ms Allan has made little attempt to address substantive matters (such as the rising state debt) but was most vociferous in her objection to the revival of the “Ditch the Witch” 3WS with her scowling visage appended; within 48 hours the offending images had been banished from the streets although whether that was achieved with threats, persuasion or the premier casting a spell isn’t certain.  In an indication her government had a focus on “high priority issues”, it was announced Aus$134,000 (US$95,000) had been allocated to erect a bronze statue of Mr Andrews.

Despite the impression created by popular culture (especially film & television), the “witch = female, warlock = male” thing is quite modern and thus historically misleading; Ms Gillard and Ms Allan are clearly very modern, thus their equating “witch” with “woman” and its use as a slur as sexism.  For most of the history of the English language, a “witch” could be male or female although the record does suggest women were more often accused of witchcraft, while “warlock” often was not applied to male witches.  In the Old English (certainly before circa 1000), the most common forms were wicca (male practitioner of witchcraft) and wicce (female practitioner) both from the same Germanic root; by the late Middle English (and after the Norman Conquest (1066), gradually the forms merged in pronunciation, the spelling shifting to reflect this, “witch” coming to denote either sex.  That’s why there came to be no need for a separate masculine noun.

Macbeth and the three witches (1760), oil on canvas by Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788).  Completed during the artist's “first English period” (1752-1762), historians believe this to be the first European painting depicting theatrical characters in a landscape and in From Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting (1966), English art historian Sir Michael Levey (1927–2008; director of the National Gallery 1973-1986) notes the work as a fine example of “the beginnings of the Neo-Gothic under the influence of the theory of the sublime.”  When writing The Tragedy of Macbeth (Macbeth, circa 1606) William Shakespeare (1564–1616) had no doubts witches were women.

In the Laws of Ælfred, witchcraft explicitly was singled out as a woman's craft, the practitioners of which were not welcome to live among the Western Saxons but that can’t have been persuasive and it’s clear from later legal and theological writings (fields in which there was long cross-fertilization) that men were a capable as women of practicing witchcraft (the English Witchcraft Act (1604) refers only to “any person”).  Those accused (and sometimes executed) overwhelmingly were women and the numbers in Europe were striking (albeit with wide regional variations), the margin over decades sometimes as skewed as 90-10%.  Of course these are raw numbers from the surviving historic record so while there’s (probably not unreasonably) now the perception women disproportionately were targeted for prosecution, it’s not impossible there simply were more women than men practicing witchcraft.  Popular culture is just as divergent from history in the evolution of “warlock”.  Warlock was from the Old English wǣrloga (oath-breaker; traitor; deceiver) and was related to the notion of “belie one's pledge” rather than magic spells but because of the Biblical association of “deceiver” with Satan, in certain medieval religious texts, wǣrloga was used to mean “the Devil”.

Witches and Witchcraft in Victorian Britain by Emma Woodhouse is scheduled for publication in April 2027.  In Jane Austen's (1775-1817) novel Emma (1815), Emma Woodhouse was the titular protagonist of almost 21, described by the author as “a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.”

The origin of “warlock” being equated with “man practising witchcraft” seems to be in early sixteenth century Scots English but even there it was never the standard form with the church and court records of the time listing men so accused as “witches”, as was the case in England and Wales.  Charmingly, literary historians trace the emergence of “warlock” meaning “a male witch” to the rise of Gothic novel, a form which enjoyed a spike in popularity between the 1760s and 1820s; witches were mentioned in Gothic novel and Warlocks were not but from those beginnings came the “ghost” & “horror” genres and historians have concluded the Victorian writers, mining the occult, folklore, medievalism, picked-up “warlock” for no better reason than it sounded archaic and had the “picturesque” quality novelists like.  From this improbable beginning, “warlock” became vested with an almost wholly bogus “history” readers allowing themselves to be convinced stretched back a thousand years or more.  Victorian novels were however a niche and what’s thought most to have reinforced the popular perception was twentieth century cinema, an industry which cemented the witch/warlock dichotomy, adhered to in fantasy fiction, role-playing games, comics and popular culture of all forms.