Buffalo

Buffalo (pronounced buhf-uh-loh)

(1) An animal from the subtribe Bubalina, also known as true buffalos, such as the Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer, or the water buffalo, Bubalus bubalis.

(2) A related North American animal, the American bison (zoologically incorrect but in use thus since the 1630s).

(3) An ellipsis of buffalo robe.

(4) As the buffalo fish, the Ictiobus spp.

(5) In numismatic slang, a clipping of Buffalo nickel (a copper–nickel five-cent piece struck by the US Mint 1913-1938) and still (rarely) used of nickels.

(6) In numismatic slang, a clipping of “American buffalo” (a gold bullion coin), still used by collectors.

(7) A locality name most prevalent in North America, the Lake Erie port in western New York, the best-known,

(8) A shuffling tap-dance step (associated with the popular song “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”, from the musical film 42^nd Street (1933).

(9) As “buffaloed by”, to be puzzled or baffled; to be confused or mystified.

(10) As “to buffalo”, to impress or intimidate by a display of power, importance etc.

(11) To hunt buffalo (archaic).

(12) To assault (historically, to “pistol-whip”).

1535–1545: An early Americanism (replacing buffel, from the French, noted since the 1510s), from the Spanish or Portuguese búfalo (water buffalo), from the Italian buffalo, from Late Latin būfalus (an alteration of the Classical Latin būbalus (wild ox)), from the Ancient Greek βούβαλος (boúbalos).  The Greek form was originally the name of a kind of African antelope, later used of a type of domesticated ox in southern Asia and the Mediterranean lands.  I’s a word of uncertain origin and the elements may include bous (ox, cow, from the primitive Indo-European root gwou- (ox, bull, cow) but it may be a Greek folk-etymology.  The use of “buffalo” to describe the American bison is a mistake dating from the 1630s and it has endured so long as to become institutionalized.  The other Germanic words (the Dutch buffel, the German Büffel, the Danish böffel etc) are from the French while the Russian buivolu, the Polish bujwoł and the Bulgarian bivol came from the Medieval Latin.  The “Buffalo gnat” was first recorded in 1822 while the term “Buffalo chip” (dung of the American bison used as a fuel) was in use by at least the 1840s.  The origin of the name of the city Buffalo in western New York is disputed, not least because there were never any bison in close proximity to the place.  It may have been based on the name of a native American (ie Red Indian) chief or a corruption of the French beau fleuve (beautiful river).  The use of “buffalo” as a verb meaning “alarm” was documented early in the twentieth century and is probably related to the tendency of the beasts to mass panic.  In many fields, “buffalo” is used as a modifier for many words.  The old synonym buffle is extinct.  Buffalo is a noun & verb, buffaloed & buffaloing are (informal) verbs and buffaloish (non-standard) & buffalo-like are adjectives; the noun plural is buffaloes or buffalos but if used collectively (ie of a herd) buffalo is the usual spelling.  The common collective noun for a group of buffalo is “herd” although “gang” is a recorded US regionalism and some prefer the more evocative “obstinacy”, the label gained by virtue of the beast’s well-documented quality of stubbornness.

Classy Leather’s illustration of the difference in texture between bison and buffalo leather.

The clipping “buff” also tracked a varied path.  Predictably, the word seems first to have been simply a short form of “buffalo” but by the 1560s traders were using it to describe the thick, soft leather obtained from the hides of the creatures which were being slaughtered by the million although then it was almost always spelled “buffe” (ie as “buffe leather”) from the French buffle.  Buff was by the 1780s used generally to describe a “light brownish-yellow” color, based on the hue assume by the buffalo leather in its process form and as early as circa 1600 the old association of “hide” with “skin” led to the phrase “in the buff” (naked), strengthened by buff leather and pale human skin being similar in hue.  Over time, “buff naked" emerged and this morphed into "buck naked," possibly influenced by use of the word “buck” which, in American slang, had been used to refer to male deer, Native Americans, or African-American men in certain contexts. The exact etymological connection is debated, but “buck” here may have been used to evoke an image of primal or raw naturalism.  The evolution continued and by the early nineteenth century there was also “butt naked” obviously more explicit and descriptively accessible to a modern audience, emphasizing the state of stark nudity by referencing the buttocks.  It’s now the most popular of the three slang forms.  All three are unrelated to the use of “buff” to mean “polish a metal to a high gloss”, that based on the original “buffing cloths” being off-cuts of a “buff-coat” (a military overcoat originally made from the hide).  A tool for this purpose is often still called “a buff”.  The noting of “polishing up” by “buffing” was taken up in video gaming (especially role-playing) where it meant “to make a character or an item stronger or more capable”.

Jessica Simpson.

The use of buff to mean “an enthusiast for something with a great knowledge of the topic” (eg Ferrari buff (a very devoted crew); film buff (an obsessive lot who take things very seriously); Lindsay Lohan buff (a calling for some)) was related to the color.  Since the 1820s New York City’s volunteer fire-fighters since had been issued buff-colored protective clothing and their image of daring with more than a whiff of danger in the 1890s attracted a following among young men who cherish ambitions to be firemen some day.  This manifested them rushing to the sites of fires at any time of the day or night, just so they could watch the firemen at work, fighting the fire.  There is something about fire which attracts some and in Australia, where bush firs have always been a feature of the hot, dry seasons, there have been cases of volunteer fire-fighters starting fires, apparently just so they can experience the thrill of extinguishing them; fire being fire, sometimes things end very badly.  As early as 1903 the New York Sun was referring to these enthusiasts (had it been later they might have been called “fire groupies”) as “the buffs” and from this use cam the idea of a “buff” being someone devoted to anything although there’s now more often the implication of “great knowledge of the topic).  In the UK military (mostly in plural) a “Buff” was a member of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment (1572-1961)) and in numismatic slang, a “buff” was a clipping of Buffalo nickel (a copper–nickel five-cent piece struck by the US Mint 1913-1938.).  In UK slang, Buff also meant “a member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes” (which is sort of like the Freemasons but without the plotting and scheming”).  The finger food “Buffalo wings” made famous by the admirable Jessica Simpson (b 1980) gained the name because they were first served in 1964 at Frank & Teressa's Anchor Bar on Main Street, Buffalo.  Ms Simpson’s confusion about the dish (made with chicken wings) may have been caused by them often appearing on menus as “buffalo wings) with no initial capital.

The BUFF.

In USAF (US Air Force) slang, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service) is the BUFF (the acronym for Big ugly fat fellow or Big ugly fat fucker depending on who is asking).  From BUFF was derived the companion acronym for the LTV A-7 Corsair II (1965-1984, the last in active service retired in 2014) which was SLUFF (Short Little Ugly Fat Fellow or Short Little Ugly Fat Fucker).  In rail-transport, a “buff” describes the compressive coupler force that occurs during a slack bunched condition (and is related in that sense to “buffer” which is a physical barrier placed to halt the progress of a train to prevent damage to a structure).  In the slang of the dealers of street drugs, “buff” is any substance used to dilute drugs (by volume) in order to increase profits.  The noun “buffware” is not an IT term (although SysAdmins (system administrators) could probably think of a few products which should be so described); it describes pottery in a buff color. 

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996) in leather braces (unlikely to be of buffalo hide).

As is done in her profession, Busty Buffy appears sometimes “in the buff” which means “in the nude” although, among the more fastidious, there are those who insist porn stars can only ever be “naked”, a “nude” something more respectable.  According to Gary Martin’s authoritative site which traces the origins of phrases, “in the buff” was derived from the “buff coat”, a “light leather tunic worn” by English soldiers (mostly by cavalry and officers and thus something of a precursor of the trench coat) until the seventeenth century and originally, to be “in the buff” was to be wearing one’s coat.  A practical field-garment (it offered some degree of protection against glancing blows from edged weapons and even musket-balls fired at long range), the name was derived from the buffalo or ox hide from which usually it was made.  In The Comedy of Errors (circa 1591), William Shakespeare (1564–1616) makes a reference to the garment, using the word “suit” in two of its senses: (1) clothing and (2) an action filed in a court of law:

ADRIANA: What, is he arrested? Tell me at whose suit.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;

But he’s in a suit of buff which ‘rested him, that can I tell.

So, it needs to be explained why the phrase “in the buff” shifted from meaning “wearing a coat” to “wearing nothing”.  That was because the hide used for the coats was a light, brownish yellow and thus similar to what was then the almost universal English skin-tone.  Mr Martin cites the play Satiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1601) by the English writer Thomas Dekker (circa 1572–1632) as one of the first known references to the newer meaning, “in buff” likened to “in stag”, then popular slang for “naked”: “No, come my little Cub, doe not scorne mee because I goe in Stag, in Buffe, heer’s veluet too.”  From that ultimately came expressions like “well buffed” or “buffed up” to describe fit types with admirable muscle definition and derived from that came the special use among role-playing video-gamers, “to debuff” being an effect used to make a character weaker (a “negative status” effect.

A “buffster” is someone who is “buffed” (lean, physically fit) and that use of the word emerged from gym culture during the 1980s, under the influence of buff in the sense of “polish to perfection”.  That influenced also the use of buff to mean “physically attractive; desirable” which began in MLE (Multicultural London English) before spreading to other linguistic tribes; the adverb buffly (in a buff manner; attractively or muscularly) can be used of a buffster (one who is fit and with good muscle definition).  In hospital slang, “to buff” means “to alter a medical chart, especially in a dishonest manner”, something which hints there may be something in Evelyn Waugh’s (1903-1966) warning the greatest risk to one in hospital is “being murdered by the doctors”.  In the slang of graffiti writers (the term “graffiti artist” does now seem accepted by the art market) a “buff” is the act of remove a piece of graffiti by someone other than the creator.  Buffy is an adjective meaning “of or tending to a buff color” (the comparative buffier, the superlative buffiest) but it’s probably now most associated with the eponymous pop-culture character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which seems to have made it a popular name also for porn stars).  Of the color, “buffish” is the alternative adjective.

The phrase “It’ll buff out” is a joke-line in the collector car market which references attempts to downplay the extent or significance of damage.  It ranks in the trade with “ran when parked”, “only surface rust” and “air-conditioning just needs a recharge” among the least believed claims.

In 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 400 (175 for the US market, 225 for the RoW (rest of the world)) of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a permanent fixed-roof.  A production number of 350 is sometimes quoted but those maintaining registers insist it was 400.

Classy Leather’s “Buffalo Hunter”.

Buffalo leather isn’t suitable for all purposes but it is greatly valued because of the combination of its thickness (compared to cow or goat leather or pig skin) and the unique and different grain patterns.  It’s the thickness which adds to the durability of buffalo leather but despite that it remains soft and flexible, making it an ideal material for premium leather goods such as leather bags, leather accessories, jackets etc.  The Classy Leather operation published an informative guide to buffalo leather and included technical information including what must have be a revelation to some: Although the terms “buffalo” and “bison” tend interchangeably to be used in North America, the leathers are quite distinct and what the industry calls “buffalo leather” usually means leather derived from the Asian Water Buffalo.  Buffalo leather comes from domestic buffalos (almost always Asian Water Buffalo) which mostly are raised for milk or meat; at the end of their productive life, the hides are used to make leather and a variety of processing methods are used, designed to suit the skin structure which has large pores.

The “Water Buffalo”: 1974 Suzuki GT750.  The front twin disc setup was added in 1973 and was one of the first of its kind.

The Suzuki GT750 was produced between 1971-1977 and was an interesting example of the breed of large-capacity two-stroke motorcycles which provided much excitement and not a few fatalities but which fell victim to increasingly stringent emissions standards and the remarkable improvement in the performance, reliability and refinement of the multi-cylinder four-stroke machines of which the Honda CB750 (1969-2008) and Kawasaki Z1 900 (1972-1975) were the exemplars.  Something of a novelty was the GT750's water-cooling, at the time rarely seen although that meant it missed out on one of Suzuki’s many imaginative acronyms: the RAC (ram air cooling) used on the smaller capacity models.  RAC was a simple aluminium scoop which sat atop the cylinder head and was designed to optimize air-flow.  It was the water-cooling of the GT750 which attracted nicknames but, a generation before the internet, the English language tended still to evolve with regional variations so in England it was “the Kettle”, in Australia “the Water Bottle” and in North America “the Water Buffalo”.  Foreign markets also went their own way, the French favoring “la bouillotte” (the hot water bottle) and the West Germans “Wasserbüffel” (water buffalo).  Suzuki called those sold in North America the "Le Mans" while RoW (rest of the world) models were simply the "GT750".

Detail of the unusual 4-3 system: The early version with the ECTS (left), the bifurcation apparatus for the central cylinder's header (centre) and the later version (1974-1977) without the ECTS (right).  Motorcyclists have long had a fascination with exhaust systems and the holy grail may be the Italian straight-six Benelli 750 & 900 Sei (six) (1972-1978) which was offered variously with a 6-into-6 and 6-into-1, both constructions inspiring awe.  

The GT750 shared with the other two-stroke three-cylinder Suzukis (GT380 & GT550) the novelty of an unusual 4-into-3 exhaust system (the centre exhaust header was bifurcated (sometimes referred to as "saimesed")), the early versions of which featured the additional complexity of what the factory called the ECTS (Exhaust Coupler Tube System; a connecting tube between the left & right pipes), designed to improve low-speed torque.  The 4-into-3 existed apparently for no reason other than to match the four-pipe appearance on the contemporary four stroke, four cylinder Hondas and Kawasakis, an emulation of the asymmetric ducting used on Kawasaki's dangerously charismatic two-strokes perhaps dismissed as "too derivative".

Dreadnought

Dreadnought (pronounced dred-nawt)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dreadnoughts

HMS Dreadnought, 1906.

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

HMS Dreadnought.

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

HMS Dreadnought, 1908.

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

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

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

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

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

Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS New Zealand, 1911.

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

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

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

Imperial German Navy battlecruiser SMS Goeben, 1914.

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

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

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

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

Dreadnought coats

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

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

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

Tank

Tank (pronounced tangk)

(1) A large receptacle, container, or structure for holding a liquid or gas.

(2) A natural or artificial pool, pond, or lake (a now rare British and US dialectical form).

(3) A light-proof container inside which a film can be processed in daylight; any large dish or container used for processing a number of strips or sheets of film.

(4) In the military, an armored, self-propelled combat vehicle, armed with cannon and machine guns and moving on a caterpillar tread.

(5) Slang term for a prison cell or enclosure for more than one occupant, as for prisoners awaiting a hearing.

(6) In fashion, as tank top, a type of sleeveless shirt.

(7) To do poorly or rapidly to decline rapidly; to fail.  In competitive sport (as tanking), intentionally to fail.

(8) As belly tank racer, a specialised class of motorsport using vehicles constructed using WWII surplus auxiliary under-belly aircraft fuel tanks.

1610-1620: A Portuguese import from India, from the Gujarati Hindi ટાંકી (tānkh & ṭāṅkī) (artificial lake; cistern, underground reservoir for water) or the Marathi टाकी (ṭākī, tanken & tanka), the Indian forms possibly from the Sanskrit tadaga-m (pond, lake pool) and reinforced in the later (1680s) sense of "large artificial container for liquid" by the Portuguese tanque (reservoir), contraction of estanque (pond, literally “something dammed up”), derivative of estancar (hold back a current of water; to dam up; block; stanch, weaken (related to the modern English stanch)), possibly (unattested) from the Vulgar Latin stanticāre (to dam up; block; stanch, weaken).  That’s not conclusive, some sources even suggesting the Portuguese word is the source of those in the Indian dialects.  While, at this distance, cause and effect can be difficult to determine, there were links also to languages in west Asia, and the Gujarati, Marathi and other Indian forms may be compared with the Arabic verb اِسْتَنْقَعَ‎ (istanqaʿa) (to become stagnant, to stagnate).  Synonyms include vessel, container, pond, pool, reservoir, keg, cask, cistern, basin, receptacle, vat, cauldron, tub & aquarium.

#Free Britney tank top.

Tank proved an adaptable verb.  The most obvious sense (to pour or put into a tank) was noted first in 1900 but may earlier have been in oral use.  Perhaps surprisingly, the meaning in sporting competition "deliberately to lose” is documented only from 1976 when it was used in a magazine interview by a female professional tennis player noting the practice among the men on the tour.  It’s been suggested use in boxing may have pre-existed this but no evidence has been offered.  As an adjective, “tanked” has been used to describe the inebriated since 1893.

The meaning "fuel container" is recorded from 1902 and came to be applied to just about every transportation vehicle or platform using liquid or gaseous fuels (cars, trains, aircraft, rockets, missiles etc) and even missiles using solid fuels.  Exceptions seemed to be made for novel technologies such as nuclear-powered devices and hydrogen where “cell” seems preferred if the storage tank is exchangeable although tank is still used for fixed hydrogen storage.  It’s tempting to suspect “fuel tank, gas tank or petrol tank” may have been in use prior to 1902 because oil tank is documented from 1862 but all sources quote 1902 as the first recorded instance although the first use of tanker to describe a ship designed to carry oil or other liquid cargo was in 1900.  The railroad tank-car is attested from 1874 and the slang term for a jail-cell is from 1912.

Lindsay Lohan in Gucci tank top.

Two certainly unrelated aquatic terms emerged about the same time.  The first fish-tanks, for hobbyists or as ornamental objects, were advertised in 1921, a year after the tank suit (one-piece bathing suit), so named because it was worn in a swimming tank, a slang term for swimming pools since circa 1890.  The tank top, an item of women’s casual-wear which blended the styling of the tank suit with a tee-shirt was released in 1968.  The first think-tank (in the sense of a formal research institute) established was the Centre for Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California in 1959.  Think-tank is widely used in colloquial language and the formally established think-tanks have become so associated with political agendas they’ve long habitually needed a modifier (left-wing, liberal, conservative etc).

Another adjectival example has (predictably) ancient roots: the septic tank.  Septic (septic circa 1600) was from the Latin septicus (of or pertaining to putrefaction) from the Greek septikos (characterized by putrefaction) from sepein (make rotten or putrid, cause to rot).  The septic tank is attested from 1902 and was used even in UK rhyming slang as “the septics” to refer to Americans (ie the tank in septic tank rhyming with “yank”).

The sardonic humor of war: March 2022, a young lady from Ukraine in a tank turret.

Johnson and Shipley Belly Tank Racer (1955), Bonneville Salt Flats, circa 1963.

Belly tank racers were built in the post-war years using World War II (1939-1945) era surplus auxiliary under-belly aircraft fuel tanks as bodies, mated to whatever suitable engines fell conveniently to hand.  Because the tanks were designed to have optimal aerodynamic properties to minimise drag during flight, they were ideal for straight line speed and most belly tank racers were used for top-speed record attempts at venues like the Bonneville Salt Flats where runs of several miles were possible.  The auxiliary fuel tanks had a profound influence on course the war because they made possible for relatively short-range interceptors like the North American P51D Mustang and ground-attack platform like the Republic P47D Thunderbolt to gain the range required to escort the Allied heavy-bomber fleets to Berlin and other targets in Central Europe.  Not only did this inflict upon the Luftwaffe's dwindling fighter resources losses from which it never recovered, the growing number of raids compelled the Nazis to allocate for home defence large numbers of the 88 mm canons as anti-aircraft flak, meaning they couldn't be used in the anti-tank role on the Eastern Front where the need was so great.  Beyond this, it was the success of the drop-tank (so called because the tanks could be jettisoned as soon as the fuel was expended, thereby reducing weight and gaining aerodynamic advantage) equipped Mustangs & Thunderbirds in decimating the Luftwaffe which meant the Allied control of the skies during the Normandy campaign following the D-Day landings was barely contested.  In an example of war-time innovation, some of the drop-tanks were made from waxed cardboard which had the advantages of (1) being cheaper to produce, (2) not absorbing strategic materials and (3) denying the enemy scrap metal which could be salvaged from jettisoned tanks.   

One outlier is the tankard.  Despite being something used to hold liquids, it’s said to be a phonetic coincidence, tankard apparently unrelated to tank which it long pre-dated.  The origin of tankard (large tub-like vessel) is uncertain, like corresponding Middle Dutch tanckaert.  One suggestion is it’s a transposition of kantard, from the Latin cantharus (a large drinking cup with two handles or a fountain or basin in the courtyard of a church used by worshippers to purify prior to entry) and another ponders a link with the French tant quart (as much as a quarter).  The meaning "drinking vessel" was first noted in the late fifteenth century.

Lindsay Lohan in tank top.

In military use (to describe the armored vehicle moving on continuous self-laying articulated tracks and with mounted canon), the word is from 1915.  The development of the tank proceeded initially under the auspices of the Royal Navy which probably seems strange but happened that way because the organization with the most expertise in the steel fabrication and with the heavy engines needed was the navy which formed the Admiralty Landships Committee to coordinate the operation.  On Christmas eve 1915, the Committee of Imperial Defense, reviewed the proposal for what was then called the "caterpillar machine-gun destroyer" and approved it “for secrecy” being a project of the “Tank Supply Committee”.  Charmingly, it seems both "cistern" and "reservoir" also were proposed a cover names, all based on the physical similarity, early in production, between the armored vehicles and the navy's water-storage tanks; the admirals preferred the punchier, monosyllabic "tank".

First used in action during World War I (1914-1918) on the Western Front (Pozieres Ridge, 15 September 1916), the name quickly was picked up by soldiers and has been part of military jargon since, including derived forms: the tank-trap (ditch, sometime with steel structures) attested from 1920, the tank-destroyer (a kind of propelled grenade, later versions including the bazooka and the famous late World War II German Panzerfaust) from 1928 and the tank-buster (ground-attack fighter aircraft with 40mm canon) in 1942.  In 1940, a French general described the English Channel as “a good tank ditch” and suggested he was more optimistic than most of his colleagues that the British could resist invasion.  So it proved, the scale required for the triphibious force assembled in 1944 for the D-Day (6 June 1944) operation an indication of just how good a tank ditch it was.

British Mark I, 1916.

The first tank (150 built) used in combat, the Mark I was deployed in an attempt to break the stalemate of trench warfare.  Protected from small arms fire and able to crush barbed wire emplacements, the early tactical use was as a device to clear a pathway for infantry assaults but although the first effects were dramatic, counter-measures were soon developed and it wasn't until later in the war it became clear the tank had to be used en masse, as a strategic weapon.  The  rhomboidal shape, unusual by later standards, meant the twin 57mm (2.25 inch) canons had to be side mounted; a turret arrangement would have resulted in a centre of gravity which would have rendered the structure unstable.  By war's end, the British had built more than two-thousand tanks but the design which would most influence future development was probably the French FT.

The German's versatile Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III; 1940-1945) self-propelled gun.

Tanks and self-propelled guns (SPG) are visually similar and sometimes confused.  The difference is that a SPG doesn’t have the rotating gun-turret which gives the tank such a flexible range of fire, SPGs having a range of barrel adjustment usually only in the vertical plane.  They are also almost always less armored, often slower and either with lighter or no subsidiary defenses.  In some ways, the SPG may be compared with a tank in the same way a battlecruiser differed from a battleship.

Soviet era T-34 medium tank (1940-1967 (USSR) still in use by some armed forces)).

The T-34 was one of the outstanding tanks of WWII, its superiority over the German Panzers a shock to the invading Wehrmacht in 1941.  It used a powerful 76.2 mm (3 inch) canon which for years out-gunned almost everything ranged against it but perhaps its most clever feature was a simple design trick, armor sloped at a tumblehome 60^o which afforded a high degree of protection against anti-tank weapons, shells tending to glance off rather than penetrate or explode.  Such was its influence, aspects of the concept and details of design were copied by both by allies and the enemy and, early in the war, there was no better battlefield weapon.  The T-34 had a lasting impact on tank design and there's more of a lineal path from the T-34 to the later Panzers (the Panther and Tigers) than from earlier German designs.

German Panther: PanzerKampfwagen V (1943-1945 (Germany); 1944-1949 (France)).

Neither as heavily gunned or armored as the better known Tiger family, the Panther was rushed into production to counter the Soviet T-34.  It was immediately effective but the lack of time fully to develop the design meant problems of reliability and field maintenance were never wholly solved.  Like any tank, a compromise between cost, performance, range, firepower, mobility and protection, the Panther was fine machine in the circumstances and its performance in open country and for long-range deployments was outstanding.  Had the Panthers been fully developed and available in strategic numbers earlier in the war, many battles might have taken a different path and, like the "revolutionary" submarines developed late in the war, it was a case of what Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021: US defense secretary 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) would later call a "unknown known"; even in 1939 the Germans had the technology to build the Panther and had resource allocation been more efficient, there would also have been the industrial capacity for production to achieve the scale needed for them to be deployed as a strategic weapon.