Snarge

Snarge (pronounced snn-arj)

(1) In military & civil aviation, slang, the remains of a bird after it has collided with an airplane (ie bird strike), originally of impacts with turbine engines but latterly applied also to residue left on wings, fuselages etc.

(2) By adoption, the remains of birds and insects left on the windscreens of trains, cars, motorcycle fairings etc,

Early 2000s (probably): A portmanteau word, a blend of sn(ot) + (g)ar(ba)ge.  Snot (used here in the usual sense of “mucus, especially that from the nose”) was from the Middle English snot & snotte, from the Old English ġesnot & snott, from the Proto-West Germanic snott & snutt, from the Proto-Germanic snuttuz (nasal mucus), from the same base as snout and related to snite.  It was cognate with the North Frisian snot (snot), the Saterland Frisian Snotte (snot), the West Frisian snotte (snot), the Dutch snot (snot), the German Low German Snött (snot), the dialectal German Schnutz (snot), the Danish snot (snot) and the Norwegian snott (snot).  Trans-linguistically, “snot” is commendably consistent and its other uses (a misbehaving (often as “snotty”) child; a disreputable man; the flamed-out wick of a candle all reference something unwanted or undesirable).  That said, snot (mucus) is essential for human life, being a natural, protective, and lubricating substance produced by mucous membranes throughout the body to keep tissues moist and act as a barrier against pathogens and irritants like dust and allergens, working to trap foreign particles; it also contains antimicrobial agents to fight infection.  So, when “out-of-sight & out-of-mind” it’s helpful mucus but when oozing (or worse) from the nostrils, it’s disgusting snot.

Garbage (waste material) was from the late Middle English garbage (the offal of a fowl, giblets, kitchen waste (though in earlier use “refuse, that which is purged away”), from the Anglo-Norman, from the Old French garber (to refine, make neat or clean), of Germanic origin, from the Frankish garwijan (to make ready).  It was akin to the Old High German garawan (to prepare, make ready) and the Old English ġearwian (to make ready, adorn).  The alternative spelling was garbidge (obsolete or eye dialect).  Garbage can be used of physical waste or figuratively (ideas, concepts texts, music etc) judged to be of poor quality and became popular in computing, used variously to mean (1) output judged nonsensical (for whatever reason), (2) corrupted data, (3) memory which although allocated was no longer in use and awaiting de-allocation) or (4) valid data misinterpreted as another kind of data.  Synonyms include junk, refuse, rubbish, trash & waste.  Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) used “Herr Garbage” as the name of the character who in The Great Dictator (1940) represented Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945).  Snarge is a noun and no derived forms have ever been listed but a creature which has become snarge would have been snarged and the process (ie point of impact) would have been the act of snarging.  Snarge is inherent the result of a fatality so an adjective like snargish is presumably superfluous but traces of an impact which may not have been fatal presumably could be described as snargelike or snargesque.

Dr Carla Dove at work in the Smithsonian's Feather Identification Laboratory, Washington DC.

The patronymic Dr Carla Dove (b 1962) is manager of the Feather Identification Laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC where she heads a team identifying the types or species of birds that collide with military and civil aircraft.  She calls snarge “a term of art” (clearly she’s of the “eye of the beholder” school) and notes that although the scientific discipline of using snarge to determine the species involved in bird strikes began at the Smithsonian in 1960, the term doesn’t seem to have been coined there and its origin, like much slang with a military connection, is murky.  Although a 2003 article in Flying Safety magazine is sometimes cited as the source of the claim the word was “invented at the Feather Identification Laboratory”, Dr Dove is emphatic the staff there “borrowed it” from preparators (the technicians who prepare bird specimens for display or other uses by museums).  It certainly seems to have been in general use (in its specialized niche in military & aviation and wildlife safety circles) by at least the early-to-mid 2000s and the zeitgeisters at Wired magazine were in 2005 printing it without elaboration, suggesting at least in their editorial team it was already establish slang.  So, it may long have been colloquial jargon in museums or among those working in military or civil aviation long before it appeared in print but there no documentary evidence seems to exist.

The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne (2025) by Chris Sweeney.

The origin of the scientific discipline is however uncontested and the world’s first forensic ornithologist was the Smithsonian’s Roxie Laybourne (1910–2003).  In October, 1960, a Lockheed L-188 Electra flying as Eastern Airlines Flight 375 out of Boston Logan Airport had cleared the runway by only a few hundred feet when it flew into a flock of birds, the most unfortunate of which damaged all four engines, resulting in a catastrophic loss of power, causing the craft to nosedive into Boston Harbor, killing 62 of the 72 aboard.  Although the engines were turbo-props rather than jets, they too are highly susceptible to bird-strike damage.  At the time, this was the greatest loss of life attributed to a bird-strike and the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) ordered all avian remains be sent to the Smithsonian Institution for examination.  There, Ms Laybourne received  the box of mangled bone, blood & feathers and began her investigation, her career taking a trajectory which would include not only the development of protocols designed to reduce the likelihood of bird strikes damaging airliners but also involvement with the USAF (US Air Force) & NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).  Additionally, her work with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and various police forces proved forensic ornithology could be of use a diagnostic tool in crime-solving; her evidence helping to convict murderers, kidnappers and poachers.  In 2025, journalist Chris Sweeney published The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne, a vivid telling of the tale of a woman succeeding in a world where feminism had not yet wrought its changes.

Snarge on the nosecone of a Cessna Citation, Eisenhower Airport, Wichita, Kansas, July 2021.  The dent indicates the point of impact, the airflow holding the corpse in place.  By the time of landing, the leaked body fluids had congealed to act as a kind of glue.

The study of aviation bird strikes is obviously a specialized field but snarge has come also to be used in the matter of insect deaths, specifically what has come to be called the “windscreen phenomenon” (also as “windshield phenomenon” depending on linguistic tradition).  What that refers to is the increasingly common instances of people reporting they are seeing far fewer dead insects on the windscreens of their cars, many dating the onset of the decline to the late 1990s and the most common explanations offered for this are (1) climate change, (2) habitat loss and (3) the increasing use (or potency) of pesticides.  Individual observations of one’s windscreen now tending to accumulate less snarge than in years gone by is of course impressionistic and caution must be taken not to extrapolate the existence of a global trend from one piece of glass in one tiny part of the planet: what needs to be avoided is a gaboso (the acronym for Generalized Association Based On Single-Observation (also as the derived noun & verb) which is the act of taking one identifiable feature of someone or something and using it as the definitional reference for a group (it ties in with logical fallacies).  However, the reports of increasingly snargeless windscreens were widespread and numerous so while that didn’t explain why it was happening, it did suggest that happening it was.

There was also the matter of social media platforms which have meant the volume of messages about a particular topic in the twenty-first century is not comparable with years gone by.  It’s simply impossible to calculate the extent to which these mass-market (free) platforms have operated as an accelerant (ie a force-multiplier of messaging) but few doubt it’s a considerable effect.  Still, it is striking the same observations were being made in the northern & southern hemispheres and the reference to the decline beginning in the late 1990s was also consistent and a number of studies in Europe and the US have found a precipitous drop in insect populations over the last three decades.  One interesting “quasi theory” was the improved aerodynamic efficiency of the modern automobile meant the entomological slaughter was reduced but quickly aeronautical engineers debunked that, pointing out a slippery shape has a “buffer zone” very close to the surface which means "bugs" have a greater chance of being sucked-in towards the speeding surface because of the differential between negative & positive pressure.  However, on most older vehicles, the “buffer zone” could be as much as 3 feet (close to a metre) from the body.  A bug heading straight for the glass would still be doomed but the disturbed air all around would have deflected a few

Lindsay Lohan with Herbie in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

Herbie was a 1963 Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle, 1938-2003) and despite the curves which made it look streamlined, its measured Cd (drag coefficient) was typically around 0.48-0.50, some 8% worse than contemporary vehicles of comparable frontal area.  What that meant was its buffer zone would extend somewhat further than the “New Beetle” (1997-2011) which had a Cd between 0.38-0.41, again not as good as the competition because it was compromised by the need to maintain a visual link with the way things were done in 1938.  On the 1963 models (like Herbie) the flat, upright windscreen created significant drag and was obviously a good device for “snarge harvesting” but the later curved screen (introduced in 1973 with the 1303) probably didn’t spare many insects.

Dr Manu Saunders' graphic example of insect snarge on a windscreen during the 2010 "locust plague" in western NSW (New South Wales), Australia, April 2010.

Dr Manu Saunders is a Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Biology and the School of Environmental and Rural Science in Australia’s UNE (University of New England) and she pointed out that “anecdata is not scientific evidence” and just because anecdotes are commonly presented as “evidence of global insect decline” (the so-called “insectageddon”), that doesn’t of necessity make locally described conditions globally relevant.  The problem she identified was that although there have been well-conducted longitudinal studies of snarge on windscreens using sound statistical methods, all have used data taken from a relatively small geographical area while around the planet, there are more than 21 million km (13 million miles, (ie more than 80 round trips to the Moon) of “roads”).  Dr Saunders does not deny the aggregate number of insects is in decline but cautions against the use of one data set being used to assess the extent of a phenomenon with a number of causal factors.

Still snarge-free: The famous photograph of the 25 917s assembled for inspection outside the Porsche factory, Stuttgart, 1969.  The FIA’s homologation inspectors declined the offer to test-drive the 25 which was just as well because, hastily assembled (secretaries, accountants and such drafted in to help), some of were capable of driving only a short distance in first gear.

Fortunately for Porsche, in 1969, although the decline in global insect numbers may already have begun, they were still buzzing around in sufficient numbers to produce the snarge which provided the necessary clue required to resolve the problem of chronic (and potentially lethal) instability which was afflicting the first 917s to be tested at speed.  In great haste, the 917 had been developed after the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation and world sport's dopiest regulatory body) “relaxed” the rules which previously had set a threshold of 50 identical units for cars classified as Group 4 (5 litre (305 cubic inch)) sports cars, reducing this to a minimum of 25.  What that meant was Porsche needed to develop both a car and a twelve cylinder engine, both items bigger and more complex than anything they’d before attempted, things perhaps not overly challenging had the typical two years been available but the factory needed something which would be ready for final testing in less than half the time.  Remarkably, they accomplished the task in ten months.

Porsche 917 LH Chassis 001 in the livery of the IAA (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (International Automobile Exhibition)) used for the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The brief gestation period was impressive but there were teething problems.  The fundamentals, the 908-based space-frame and the 4.5 (275 cubic inch) litre air-cooled flat-12 engine (essentially, two of Porsche’s 2.25 (137 cubic inch) litre flat-sixes joined together) were robust and reliable from the start but, the sudden jump in horsepower (HP) meant much higher speeds and it took some time to tame the problems of the car’s behaviour at high-speed.  Aerodynamics was then still an inexact science and the maximum speed the 917 was able to attain on Porsche’s test track was around 180 mph (290 km/h) but when unleashed on the circuits with long straights where over 200 mph (320 km/h) was possible the early 917s proved highly unstable, the tail “wandering from side-to-side” something disconcerting at any speed but beyond 200 mph, frightening even for professional race drivers.

On Mulsanne Straight, Le Mans: The slippery 917 LH (left) which proved "unsafe at high speed" (left) and the (slightly) slower 917 K (right) which, in the hands of experts), was more manageable.

The instability needed to be rectified because the 917 had been designed with "a bucket of Deutsche Marks in one hand and a map of the Le Mans circuit in the other" and these were the days before the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation and world sport's dopiest regulatory body)) started insisting chicanes be spliced into any straight where high speeds beckoned and the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans was then an uninterrupted 6 km (3.7 mile) straight line.  There, the test results and slide-rule calculations predicted, the 917s would achieve in excess of 360 km/h (224 mph).  Serendipitously, physics and nature combined to show the team where the problem lay: After one alarming high speed run, it was noticed that while the front and central sections of the bodywork were plastered with bloodied snarge, the fibreglass of the rear sections remained a pristine white, the obvious conclusion drawn that while the airflow was inducing the desired degree of down-force on the front wheels, it was passing over the rear of body, thus the lift which induced the wandering.  Some rapid improvisation with pieces of aluminium and much duct tape (to this day a vital tool in the business) to create an ad-hoc, shorter, upswept tail transformed the behaviour and was the basis for what emerged from the factory's subsequent wind-tunnel testing as the 917 K (K for Kurzheck (short-tail).  The rest is history.

Dodge Public Relations announces the world now has "spoilers".  Actually they'd been around for a while but, as Dodge PR knew, until it happens in America, it hasn't happened.

What happened to the 917 wasn’t novel.  In 1966, Dodge had found the slippery shape of its new fastback Charger had delivered the expected speed on the NASCAR ovals but it came at the cost of dangerous lift at the rear, drivers’ graphically describing the experience at speed as something like “driving on ice”.  The solution was exactly what Porsche three years later would improvise, a spoiler on the lip of the trunk (boot) lid which, although only 1½ inches (38 mm) high, at some 150 mph (240 km/h) the fluid dynamics of the air-flow meant sufficient down-force was generated to tame the instability.  Of course, being NASCAR, things didn’t end there and to counter the objection the spoiler was a “non-stock” modification and thus not within the rules, Dodge cited the “safety measure” clause, noting an unstable car on a racetrack was a danger to all.  NASCAR agreed and allowed the device which upset the other competitors who cited the “equalization formula clause” and demanded they too be allowed to fit spoilers.  NASCAR agreed but set the height at maximum height at 1½ inches and specified they could be no wider than the trunk lid.  That left Dodge disgruntled because, in a quirk of the styling, the Charger had a narrower trunk lid than the rest of the field so everybody else’s spoilers worked better which seemed unfair given it was Dodge which had come up with the idea.  NASCAR ignored that objection so for 1967 the factory added to the catalogue two small “quarter panel extensions” each with its own part number (left & right); once installed, the Charger gained a full-width spoiler.

Rumble

Rumble (pronounced ruhm-buhl)

(1) A form of low frequency noise

(2) In video game controllers, a haptic feedback vibration.

(3) In the jargon of cardiologists, a quality of a "heart murmur".

(4) In the slang of physicians (as "stomach rumble"), borborygmus (a rumbling sound made by the movement of gas in the intestines).

(5) In slang, a street fight between or among gangs.

(6) As rumble seat (sometimes called dickie seat), a rear part of a carriage or car containing seating accommodation for servants, or space for baggage; known colloquially as the mother-in-law seat (an now also used by pram manufacturers to describe a clip-on seat suitable for lighter infants).

(7) The action of a tumbling box (used to polish stones).

(8) As rumble strip, in road-building, a pattern of variation in a road's surface designed to alert inattentive drivers to potential danger by causing a tactile vibration and audible rumbling if they veer from their lane.

(9) In slang, to find out about (someone or something); to discover the secret plans of another (mostly UK informal and used mostly in forms such as: "I've rumbled her" or "I've been rumbled").

(10) To make a deep, heavy, somewhat muffled, continuous sound, as thunder.

(11) To move or travel with such a sound:

1325-1375: From Middle English verbs rumblen, romblen & rummelyn, frequentative form of romen (make a deep, heavy, continuous sound (also "move with a rolling, thundering sound" & "create disorder and confusion")), equivalent to rome +‎ -le.  It was cognate with the Dutch rommelen (to rumble), the Low German rummeln (to rumble), the German rumpeln (to be noisy) and the Danish rumle (to rumble) and the Old Norse rymja (to roar or shout), all of imitative origin.  The noun form emerged in the late fourteenth century, description of the rear of a carriage dates from 1808, replacing the earlier rumbler (1801), finally formalized as the rumble seat in 1828, a design extended to automobiles, the last of which was produced in 1949.  The slang noun meaning "gang fight" dates from 1946 and was an element in the 1950s "moral panic" about such things.  Rumble is a noun & verb, rumbler is a noun, rumbled is a verb, rumbling is a noun, verb & adjective and rumblingly is an adverb; the noun plural is rumbles.

Opening cut from studio trailer for Lindsay Lohan's film Freakier Friday (Walt Disney Pictures, 2025) available on Rumble.  Founded in 2013 as a kind of “anti-YouTube”, as well as being an online video platform Rumble expanded into cloud services and web hosting.  In the vibrant US ecosystem of ideas (and such), Rumble is interesting in that while also carrying non-controversial content, it’s noted as one of the native environments of conservative users from libertarians to the “lunar right”, thus the oft-used descriptor “alt-tech”.  Rumble hosts Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) Truth Social media platform which has a user base slanted towards “alt-this & that” although to some inherently it’s evil because much of its underlying code is in Java.

The Velvet Underground and Nico

Link Wray’s (1929-2005) 1958 instrumental recording Rumble is mentioned as a seminal influence by many who were later influential in some of the most notable forks of post-war popular music including punk, heavy-metal, death-metal, glam-rock, art-rock, proto-punk, psychedelic-rock, avant-pop and the various strains of experimental and the gothic.  Wray’s release of Rumble as a single also gained a unique distinction in that it remains the only instrumental piece ever banned from radio in the United States on purely “musical” grounds, the stations (apparently in some parts “prevailed upon” by the authorities) finding its power chords just too menacing for youth to resist.  It wasn't thought it would “give them ideas” in the political sense (many things banned for that fear) but because the “threatening” sound and title was deemed likely to incite juvenile delinquency and gang violence.  “Rumble” was in the 1950s youth slang for fights between gangs, thus the concern the song might be picked up as a kind of anthem and exacerbate the problems of gang culture by glorifying the phenomenon which had already been the centre of a "moral panic".  There is a science to deconstructing the relationship between musical techniques and the feelings induced in people and the consensus was the use of power chords, distortion, and feedback (then radically different from mainstream pop tunes) was “raw, dark and ominous”, even without lyrics; it’s never difficult to sell nihilism to teenagers.  Like many bans, the action heightened its appeal, cementing its status as an anthem of discontented youth and, on sale in most record stores, sales were strong.

The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967).

Lou Reed (1942-2013) said he spent days listening to Rumble before joining with John Cale (b 1942) in New York in 1964 to form The Velvet Underground.  Their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, included German-born model Nico (1938-1988) and was, like their subsequent releases, a critical and commercial failure but within twenty years, the view had changed, their work now regarded among the most important and influential of the era, critics noting (with only some exaggeration): "Not many bought the Velvet Underground's records but most of those who did formed a band and headed to a garage."  The Velvet Underground’s output built on the proto heavy-metal motifs from Rumble with experimental performances and was noted especially for its controversial lyrical content including drug abuse, prostitution, sado-masochism and sexual deviancy.  However, despite this and the often nihilistic tone, in the decade since Rumble, the counter-culture had changed not just pop music but also America: The Velvet Underground was never banned from radio.

Rumble seat in 1937 Packard Twelve Series 1507 2/4-passenger coupé.  The most expensive of Packard's 1937 line-up, the Twelve was powered by a 473 cubic-inch (7.7 litre) 67^o V12 rated at 175 horsepower at 3,200 RPM.  It was best year for the Packard Twelve, sales reaching 1,300 units.  The marque's other distinction in the era was the big Packard limousines were the favorite car of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), a fair judge or machinery.

The rumble seat was also known as a dicky (also as dickie & dickey) seat in the UK while the colloquial “mother-in-law seat” was at least trans-Atlantic and probably global.  It was an upholstered bench seat mounted at the rear of a coach, carriage or early motorcar and as the car industry evolved and coachwork became more elaborate, increasingly they folded into the body.  The size varied but generally they were designed to accommodate one or two adults although the photographic evidence suggests they could be used also to seat half-a-dozen or more children (the seat belt era decades away).  Why it was called a dicky seat is unknown (the word dates from 1801 and most speculation is in some way related to the English class system) but when fitted on horse-drawn carriages it was always understood to mean "a boot (box or receptacle covered with leather at either end of a coach, the use based on the footwear) with a seat above it for servants".  On European phaetons, a similar fixture was the “spider”, a small single seat or bench for the use of a groom or footman, the name based on the spindly supports which called to mind an arachnid’s legs.  The spider name would later be re-purposed on a similar basis to describe open vehicles and use persists to this day, Italians and others sometimes preferring spyder.  They were sometimes also called jump-seats, the idea being they were used by servants or slaves who were required to “jump off” at their master’s command and the term “jump seat” was later used for the folding seats in long-wheelbase limousines although many coach-builders preferred “occasional seats”.

Rumble seat in 1949 Triumph 2000 Roadster.  The unusual (and doubtless welcome) split-screen was a post-war innovation, the idea recalling the twin-screen phaetons of the inter-war years.  Had they been aware of the things, many passengers in the back seats of convertibles (at highway speeds it was a bad hair day) would have longed for the return of the dual-cowl phaetons.  

The US use of “rumble seat” comes from the horse & buggy age so obviously predates any rumble from an engine’s exhaust system and it’s thought the idea of the rumble was literally the noise and vibration experienced by those compelled to sit above a live axle with 40 inch (1 metre-odd) steel rims on wooden-spoked wheels, sometimes with no suspension system.  When such an arrangement was pulled along rough, rutted roads by several galloping horses, even a short journey could be a jarring experience.  The rumble seat actually didn’t appear on many early cars because the engines lacked power so weight had to be restricted, seating typically limited to one or two; they again became a thing only as machines grew larger and bodywork was fitted.  Those in a rumble seat were exposed to the elements which could be most pleasant but not always and they enjoyed only the slightest protection afforded by the regular passenger compartment’s top & windscreen.  Ford actually offered the option of a folding top with side curtains for the rumble seats on the Model A (1927-1931) but few were purchased, a similar fate suffered by those produced by third party suppliers.  US production of cars with rumble seats ended in 1939 and the last made in England was the Triumph 1800/2000 Roadster (1946-1949) but pram manufacturers have of late adopted the name to describe a seat which can be clipped onto the frame.  Their distinction between a toddler seat and a rumble seat is that the former comes with the stroller and is slightly bigger, rated to hold 50 lbs (23 KG), while the former can hold up to 35 (16).

1935 MG NA Magnette Allingham 2/4-Seater by Whittingham & Mitchel.  Sometimes described by auction houses as a DHC (drophead coupé), this body style (despite what would come to be called 2+2 seating) really is a true roadster.  The scalloped shape of the front seats' squabs appeared also in the early (3.8 litre version; 1961-1964) Jaguar E-Types (1961-1974) but attractive as they were, few complained when they were replaced by a more prosaic but also more accommodating design.

Although most rumble (or dickie) seats were mounted in an aperture separated from the passenger compartment, in smaller vehicles the additional seat often was integrated but became usable (by people) only when the hinged cover was raised; otherwise, the rear-seat cushion was a “parcel shelf”.  The MG N-Type Magnette (1934-1936) used a 1271 cm³ (78 cubic inch) straight-six and while the combination of that many cylinders and a small displacement sounds curious, the configuration was something of an English tradition and a product of (1) a taxation system based on cylinder bore and (2) the attractive economies of scale and production line rationalization of “adding two cylinders” to existing four-cylinder units to achieve greater, smoother power with the additional benefit of retaining the same tax-rate.  Even after the taxation system was changed, some small-capacity sixes were developed as out-growths of fours.  Despite the additional length of the engine block, many N-type Magnettes were among the few front-engined cars to include a “frunk” (a front trunk (boot)), a small storage compartment which sat between cowl (scuttle) and engine.

Bunker

Bunker (pronounced buhng-ker)

(1) A large bin or receptacle; a fixed chest or box.

(2) In military use, historically a fortification set mostly below the surface of the ground with overhead protection provided by logs and earth or by concrete and fitted with above-ground embrasures through which guns may be fired.

(3) A fortification set mostly below the surface of the ground and used for a variety of purposes.

(4) In golf, an obstacle, classically a sand trap but sometimes a mound of dirt, constituting a hazard.

(5) In nautical use, to provide fuel for a vessel.

(6) In nautical use, to convey bulk cargo (except grain) from a vessel to an adjacent storehouse.

(7) In golf, to hit a ball into a bunker.

(8) To equip with or as if with bunkers.

(9) In military use, to place personnel or materiel in a bunker or bunkers (sometimes as “bunker down”).

1755–1760: From the Scottish bonkar (box, chest (also “seat” (in the sense of “bench”) of obscure origin but etymologists conclude the use related to furniture hints at a relationship with banker (bench).  Alternatively, it may be from a Scandinavian source such as the Old Swedish bunke (boards used to protect the cargo of a ship).  The meaning “receptacle for coal aboard a ship” was in use by at least 1839 (coal-burning steamships coming into general use in the 1820s).  The use to describe the obstacles on golf courses is documented from 1824 (probably from the extended sense “earthen seat” which dates from 1805) but perhaps surprisingly, the familiar sense from military use (dug-out fortification) seems not to have appeared before World War I (1914-1918) although the structures so described had for millennia existed.  “Bunkermate” was army slang for the individual with whom one shares a bunker while the now obsolete “bunkerman” (“bunkermen” the plural”) referred to someone (often the man in charge) who worked at an industrial coal storage bunker.  Bunker & bunkerage is a noun, bunkering is a noun & verb, bunkered is a verb and bunkerish, bunkeresque, bunkerless & bunkerlike are adjectives; the noun plural is bunkers.

Just as ships called “coalers” were used to transport coal to and from shore-based “coal stations”, it was “oilers” which took oil to storage tanks or out to sea to refuel ships (a common naval procedure) and these STS (ship-to-ship) transfers were called “bunkering” as the black stuff was pumped, bunker-to-bunker.  That the coal used by steamships was stored on-board in compartments called “coal bunkers” led ultimately to another derived term: “bunker oil”.  When in the late nineteenth century ships began the transition from being fuelled by coal to burning oil, the receptacles of course became “oil bunkers” (among sailors nearly always clipped to “bunker”) and as refining processes evolved, the fuel specifically produced for oceangoing ships came to be called “bunker oil”.

Bunker oil is “dirty stuff”, a highly viscous, heavy fuel oil which is essentially the residue of crude oil refining; it’s that which remains after the more refined and volatile products (gasoline (petrol), kerosene, diesel etc) have been extracted.  Until late in the twentieth century, the orthodox view of economists was its use in big ships was a good thing because it was a product for which industry had little other use and, as essentially a by-product, it was relatively cheap.  It came in three flavours: (1) Bunker A: Light fuel oil (similar to a heavy diesel), (2) Bunker B: An oil of intermediate viscosity used in engines larger than marine diesels but smaller than those used in the big ships and (3) Bunker C: Heavy fuel oil used in container ships and such which use VLD (very large displacement), slow running engines with a huge reciprocating mass.  Because of its composition, Bucker C especially produced much pollution and although much of this happened at sea (unseen by most but with obvious implications), when ships reached harbor to dock, all the smoke and soot became obvious.  Over the years, the worst of the pollution from the burning of bunker oil greatly has been reduced (the work underway even before the Greta Thunberg (b 2003) era), sometimes by the simple expedient of spraying a mist of water through the smoke.

Floor-plans of the upper (Vorbunker) and lower (Führerbunker) levels of the structure now commonly referred to collectively as the Führerbunker.

History’s most infamous bunker remains the Berlin Führerbunker in which Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) spent much of the last few months of his life.  In the architectural sense there were a number of Führerbunkers built, one at each of the semi-permanent Führerhauptquartiere (Führer Headquarters) created for the German military campaigns and several others built where required but it’s the one in Berlin which is remembered as “the Führerbunker”.  Before 1944 when the intensification of the air raids by the RAF (Royal Air Force) and USAAF (US Army Air Force) the term Führerbunker seems rarely to have been used other than by the architects and others involved in their construction and it wasn’t a designation like Führerhauptquartiere which the military and other institutions of state shifted between locations (rather as “Air Force One” is attached not to a specific airframe but whatever aircraft in which the US president is travelling).  In subsequent historical writing, the term Führerbunker tends often to be applied to the whole, two-level complex in Berlin and although it was only the lower layer which officially was designated as that, for most purposes the distinction is not significant.  In military documents, after January, 1945 the Führerbunker was referred to as Führerhauptquartiere.

Führerbunker tourist information board, Berlin, Germany.

Only an information board at the intersection of den Ministergärten and Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße, erected by the German Goverment in 2006 prior to that year's FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football)) World Cup now marks the place on Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse 77 where once the Führerbunker was located.  The Soviet occupation forces razed the new Reich Chancellery and demolished all the bunker's above-ground structures but the subsequent GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic; the old East Germany) 1949-1990) abandoned attempts completely to destroy what lay beneath.  Until after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) the site remained unused and neglected, “re-discovered” only during excavations by property developers, the government insisting on the destruction on whatever was uncovered and, sensitive still to the spectre of “Neo-Nazi shrines”, for years the bunker’s location was never divulged, even as unremarkable buildings (an unfortunate aspect of post-unification Berlin) began to appear on the site.  Most of what would have covered the Führerbunker’s footprint is now a supermarket car park.

The first part of the complex to be built was the Vorbunker (upper bunker or forward bunker), an underground facility of reinforced concrete intended only as a temporary air-raid shelter for Hitler and his entourage in the old Reich Chancellery.  Substantially completed during 1936-1937, it was until 1943 listed in documents as the Luftschutzbunker der Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery Air-Raid Shelter), the Vorbunker label applied only in 1944 when the lower level (the Führerbunker proper) was appended.  In mid January, 1945, Hitler moved into the Führerbunker and, as the military situation deteriorated, his appearances above ground became less frequent until by late March he rarely saw the sky,  Finally, on 30 April, he committed suicide.

Bunker Busters

Northrop Grumman publicity shot of B2-Spirit from below, showing the twin bomb-bay doors through which the GBU-57 are released.

Awful as they are, there's an undeniable beauty in the engineering of some weapons and it's unfortunate humankind never collectively has resolved exclusively to devote such ingenuity to stuff other than us blowing up each other.  That’s not a new sentiment, being one philosophers and others have for millennia expressed in various ways although since the advent of nuclear weapons, concerns understandably become heightened.  Like every form of military technology ever deployed, once the “genie is out of the bottle” the problem is there to be managed and at the dawn of the atomic age, delivering a lecture in 1936, the British chemist and physicist Francis Aston (1877–1945) (who created the mass spectrograph, winning the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his use of it to discover and identify the isotopes in many non-radioactive elements and for his enunciation of the whole number rule) observed:

“There are those about us who say that such research should be stopped by law, alleging that man's destructive powers are already large enough.  So, no doubt, the more elderly and ape-like of our ancestors objected to the innovation of cooked food and pointed out the great dangers attending the use of the newly discovered agency, fire.  Personally, I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power.  We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbor.”

The use in June 2025 by the USAF (US Air Force) of fourteen of its Boeing GBU-57 (Guided Bomb Unit-57) Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP) bombs against underground targets in Iran (twelve on the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant and two on the Natanz nuclear facility) meant “Bunker Buster” hit the headlines.  Carried by the Northrop B-2 Spirit heavy bomber (built between 1989-2000), the GBU-57 is a 14,000 kg (30,000 lb) bomb with a casing designed to withstand the stress of penetrating through layers of reinforced concrete or thick rock.  “Bunker buster” bombs have been around for a while, the ancestors of today’s devices first built for the German military early in World War II (1939-1945) and the principle remains unchanged to this day: up-scaled armor-piercing shells.  The initial purpose was to produce a weapon with a casing strong enough to withstand the forces imposed when impacting reinforced concrete structures, the idea simple in that what was needed was a delivery system which could “bust through” whatever protective layers surrounded a target, allowing the explosive charge to do damage where needed rtaher than wastefully being expended on an outer skin.  The German weapons proved effective but inevitably triggered an “arms race” in that as the war progressed, the concrete layers became thicker, walls over 2 metres (6.6 feet) and ceilings of 5 (16) being constructed by 1943.  Technological development continued and the idea extended to rocket propelled bombs optimized both for armor-piercing and aerodynamic efficiency, velocity a significant “mass multiplier” which made the weapons still more effective.

USAF test-flight footage of Northrop B2-Spirit dropping two GBU-57 "Bunker Buster" bombs.

Concurrent with this, the British developed the first true “bunker busters”, building on the idea of the naval torpedo, one aspect of which was in exploding a short distance from its target, it was highly damaging because it was able to take advantage of one of the properties of water (quite strange stuff according to those who study it) which is it doesn’t compress.  What that meant was it was often the “shock wave” of the water rather than the blast itself which could breach a hull, the same principle used for the famous “bouncing bombs” used for the RAF’s “Dambuster” (Operation Chastise, 17 May 1943) raids on German dams.  Because of the way water behaved, it wasn’t necessary to score the “direct hit” which had been the ideal in the early days of aerial warfare.

RAF Bomber Command archive photograph of Avro Lancaster (built between 1941-1946) in flight with Grand Slam mounted (left) and a comparison of the Tallboy & Grand Slam (right), illustrating how the latter was in most respects a scaled-up version of the former.  To carry the big Grand Slams, 32 “B1 Special” Lancasters were in 1945 built with up-rated Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engines, the removal of the bomb doors (the Grand Slam carried externally, its dimensions exceeding internal capacity), deleted front and mid-upper gun turrets, no radar equipment and a strengthened undercarriage.  Such was the concern with weight (especially for take-off) that just about anything non-essential was removed from the B1 Specials, even three of the four fire axes and its crew door ladder.  In the US, Boeing went through a similar exercise to produce the run of “Silverplate” B-29 Superfortresses able to carry the first A-bombs used in August, 1945. 

Best known of the British devices were the so called “earthquake bombs”, the Tallboy (12,000 lb; 5.4 ton) & Grand Slam (22,000 lb, 10 ton) which, despite the impressive bulk, were classified by the War Office as “medium capacity”.  The terms “Medium Capacity” (MC) & “High Capacity” referenced not the gross weight or physical dimensions but ratio of explosive filler to the total weight of the construction (ie how much was explosive compared to the casing and ancillary components).  Because both had thick casings to ensure penetration deep into hardened targets (bunkers and other structures encased in rock or reinforced concrete) before exploding, the internal dimensions accordingly were reduced compared with the ratio typical of contemporary ordinance.  A High Capacity (HC) bomb (a typical “general-purpose” bomb) had a thinner casing and a much higher proportion of explosive (sometimes over 70% of total weight).  These were intended for area bombing (known also as “carpet bombing”) and caused wide blast damage whereas the Tallboy & Grand Slam were penetrative with casings optimized for aerodynamic efficiency, their supersonic travel working as a mass-multiplier.  The Tallboy’s 5,200 lb (2.3 ton) explosive load was some 43% of its gross weight while the Grand Slam’s 9,100 lb (4 ton) absorbed 41%; this may be compared with the “big” 4000 lb (1.8 ton) HC “Blockbuster” which allocated 75% of the gross weight to its 3000 LB (1.4 ton) charge.  Like many things in engineering (not just in military matters) the ratio represented a trade-off, the MC design prioritizing penetrative power and structural destruction over blast radius.  The novelty of the Tallboy & Grand Slam was that as earthquake bombs, their destructive potential was able to be unleashed not necessarily by achieving a direct hit on a target but by entering the ground nearby, the explosion (1) creating an underground cavity (a camouflet) and (2) transmitting a shock-wave through the target’s foundations, leading to the structure collapsing into the newly created lacuna. 

The etymology of camouflet has an interesting history in both French and military mining.  Originally it meant “a whiff of smoke in the face (from a fire or pipe) and in figurative use it was a reference to a snub or slight insult (something unpleasant delivered directly to someone) and although the origin is murky and it may have been related to the earlier French verb camoufler (to disguise; to mask) which evolved also into “camouflage”.  In the specialized military jargon of siege warfare or mining (sapping), over the seventeen and nineteenth centuries “camouflet” referred to “an underground explosion that does not break the surface, but collapses enemy tunnels or fortifications by creating a subterranean void or shockwave”.  The use of this tactic is best remembered from the Western Front in World War I, some of the huge craters now tourist attractions.

Under watchful eyes: Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (b 1939; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran since 1989) delivering a speech, sitting in front of the official portrait of the republic’s ever-unsmiling founder, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979-1989).  Ayatollah Khamenei seemed in 1989 an improbable choice as Supreme Leader because others were better credentialed but though cautious and uncharismatic, he has proved a great survivor in a troubled region.

Since aerial bombing began to be used as a strategic weapon, of great interest has been the debate over the BDA (battle damage assessment) and this issue emerged almost as soon as the bunker buster attack on Iran was announced, focused on the extent to which the MOPs had damaged the targets, the deepest of which were concealed deep inside a mountain.  BDA is a constantly evolving science and while satellites have made analysis of surface damage highly refined, it’s more difficult to understand what has happened deep underground.  Indeed, it wasn’t until the USSBS (United States Strategic Bombing Survey) teams toured Germany and Japan in 1945-1946, conducting interviews, economic analysis and site surveys that a useful (and substantially accurate) understanding emerged of the effectiveness of bombing although what technological advances have allowed for those with the resources is the so-called “panacea targets” (ie critical infrastructure and such once dismissed by planners because the required precision was for many reasons rarely attainable) can now accurately be targeted, the USAF able to drop a bomb within a few feet of the aiming point.  As the phrase is used by the military, the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant is as classic “panacea target” but whether even a technically successful strike will achieve the desired political outcome remains to be seen.

Mr Trump, in a moment of exasperation, posted on Truth Social of Iran & Israel: “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing."  Actually, both know exactly WTF they're doing; it's just Mr Trump (and many others) would prefer they didn't do it.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) claimed “total obliteration” of the targets while Grand Ayatollah Khamenei admitted only there had been “some damage” and which is closer to the truth should one day be revealed.  Even modelling of the effects has probably been inconclusive because the deeper one goes underground, the greater the number of variables in the natural structure and the nature of the internal built environment will also influence blast behaviour.  All experts seem to agree much damage will have been done but what can’t yet be determined is what has been suffered by the facilities which sit as deep as 80 m (260 feet) inside the mountain although, as the name implies, “bunker busters” are designed for buried targets and it’s not always required for blast directly to reach target.  Because the shock-wave can travel through earth & rock, the effect is something like that of an earthquake and if the structure sufficiently is affected, it may be the area can be rendered geologically too unstable again to be used for its original purpose.

Within minutes of the bombing having been announced, legal academics were being interviewed (though not by Fox News) to explain why the attacks were unlawful under international law and in a sign of the times, the White House didn't bother to discuss fine legal points like the distinction between "preventive & pre-emptive strikes", preferring (like Fox News) to focus on the damage done.  However, whatever the murkiness surrounding the BDA, many analysts have concluded that even if before the attacks the Iranian authorities had not approved the creation of a nuclear weapon, this attack will have persuaded them one is essential for “regime survival”, thus the interest in both Tel Aviv and (despite denials) Washington DC in “regime change”.  The consensus seems to be Grand Ayatollah Khamenei had, prior to the strike, not ordered the creation of a nuclear weapon but that all energies were directed towards completing the preliminary steps, thus the enriching of uranium to ten times the level required for use in power generation; the ayatollah liked to keep his options open.  So, the fear of some is the attacks, even if they have (by weeks, months or years) delayed the Islamic Republic’s work on nuclear development, may prove counter-productive in that they convince the ayatollah to concur with the reasoning of every state which since 1945 has adopted an independent nuclear deterrent (IND).  That reasoning was not complex and hasn’t changed since first a prehistoric man picked up a stout stick to wave as a pre-lingual message to potential adversaries, warning them there would be consequences for aggression.  Although a theocracy, those who command power in the Islamic Republic are part of an opaque political institution and in the struggle which has for sometime been conducted in anticipation of the death of the aged (and reportedly ailing) Supreme Leader, the matter of “an Iranian IND” is one of the central dynamics.  Many will be following what unfolds in Tehran and the observers will not be only in Tel Aviv and Washington DC because in the region and beyond, few things focus the mind like the thought of ayatollahs with A-Bombs.

Of the word "bust"

The Great Bust: The Depression of the Thirties (1962) by Jack Lang (left), highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996, who has never been accused of misleading advertising, centre) and The people's champion, Mr Lang, bust of Jack Lang, painted cast plaster by an unknown artist, circa 1927, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia (right).  Remembered for a few things, Jack Lang (1876–1975; premier of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) 1925-1927 & 1930-1932) remains best known for having in 1932 been the first head of government in the British Empire to have been sacked by the Crown since William IV (1765–1837; King of the UK 1830-1837) in 1834 dismissed Lord Melbourne (1779–1848; prime minister of the UK 1834 & 1835-1841).

Those learning English must think it at least careless things can both be (1) “razed to the ground” (totally to destroy something (typically a structure), usually by demolition or incineration) and (2) “raised to the sky” (physically lifted upwards).  The etymologies of “raze” and “raise” differ but they’re pronounced the same so it’s fortunate the spellings vary but in other troublesome examples of unrelated meanings, spelling and pronunciation can align, as in “bust”.  When used in ways most directly related to human anatomy: (1) “a sculptural portrayal of a person's head and shoulders” & (2) “the circumference of a woman's chest around her breasts” there is an etymological link but these uses wholly are unconnected with bust’s other senses.

Bust of Lindsay Lohan in white marble by Stable Diffusion.  Sculptures of just the neck and head came also to be called “busts”, the emphasis on the technique rather than the original definition.

Bust in the sense of “a sculpture of upper torso and head” dates from the 1690s and was from the sixteenth century French buste, from the Italian busto (upper body; torso), from the Latin bustum (funeral monument, tomb (although the original sense was “funeral pyre, place where corpses are burned”)) and it may have emerged (as a shortened form) from ambustum, neuter of ambustus (burned around), past participle of amburere (burn around, scorch), the construct being ambi- (around) + urere (to burn),  The alternative etymology traces a link to the Old Latin boro, the early form of the Classical Latin uro (to burn) and it’s though the development in Italian was influenced by the Etruscan custom of keeping the ashes of the dead in an urn shaped like the person when alive.  Thus the use, common by the 1720s of bust (a clipping from the French buste) being “a carving of the “trunk of the human body from the chest up”.  From this came the meaning “dimension of the bosom; the measurement around a woman's body at the level of her breasts” and that evolved on the basis of a comparison with the sculptures, the base of which was described as the “bust-line”, the term still used in dress-making (and for other comparative purposes as one of the three “vital statistics” by which women are judged (bust, waist, hips), each circumference having an “ideal range”).  It’s not known when “bust” and “bust-line” came into oral use among dress-makers and related professions but it’s documented since the 1880s.  Derived forms (sometimes hyphenated) include busty (tending to bustiness, thus Busty Buffy's choice of stage-name), overbust & underbust (technical terms in women's fashion referencing specific measurements) and bustier (a tight-fitting women's top which covers (most or all of) the bust.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) standing beside his “portrait bust” (1926).

The bust was carved by Swiss sculptor Ernest Durig (1894–1962) who gained posthumous notoriety when his career as a forger was revealed with the publication of his drawings which he’d represented as being from the hand of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) under whom he claimed to have studied.  Mussolini appears here in one of the subsequently much caricatured poses which were a part of his personality cult.  More than one of the Duce's counterparts in other nations was known to have made fun of some of the more outré poses and affectations, the outstretched chin, right hand braced against the hip and straddle-legged stance among the popular motifs. 

“Portrait bust” in marble (circa 1895) of (1815-1989; chancellor of the German Empire (the "Second Reich") 1871-1890) by the German Sculptor Reinhold Begas (1831-1911).

 In sculpture, what had been known as the “portrait statue” came after the 1690s to be known as the “portrait bust” although both terms meant “sculpture of upper torso and head” and these proved a popular choice for military figures because the aspect enabled the inclusion of bling such as epaulettes, medals and other decorations and being depictions of the human figure, busts came to be vested with special significance by the superstitious.  In early 1939, during construction of the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, workmen dropped one of the busts of Otto von Bismarck by Reinhold Begas, breaking it at the neck.  For decades, the bust had sat in the old Chancellery and the building’s project manager, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945), knowing Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) believed the Reich Eagle toppling from the post-office building right at the beginning of World War I had been a harbinger of doom for the nation, kept the accident secret, hurriedly issuing a commission to the German sculptor Arno Breker (1900–1991) who carved an exact copy.  To give the fake the necessary patina, it was soaked for a time in strong, black tea, the porous quality of marble enabling the fluid to induce some accelerated aging.  Interestingly, in his (sometimes reliable) memoir (Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)), even the technocratic Speer admitted of the accident: “I felt this as an evil omen”.

The other senses of bust (as a noun, verb & adjective) are diverse (and sometimes diametric opposites and include: “to break or fail”; “to be caught doing something unlawful / illicit / disgusting etc”; “to debunk”; “dramatically or unexpectedly to succeed”; “to go broke”; “to break in” (horses, girlfriends etc): “to assault”; the downward portion of an economic cycle (ie “boom & bust”); “the act of effecting an arrest” and “someone (especially in professional sport) who failed to perform to expectation”.  That’s quite a range and that has meant the creation of dozens of idiomatic forms, the best known of which include: “boom & bust”, “busted flush”, “dambuster”, “bunker buster”,  “busted arse country”, “drug bust”, “cloud bust”, belly-busting, bust one's ass (or butt), bust a gut, bust a move, bust a nut, bust-down, bust loose, bust off, bust one's balls, bust-out, sod buster, bust the dust, myth-busting and trend-busting.  In the sense of “breaking through”, bust was from the Middle English busten, a variant of bursten & bresten (to burst) and may be compared with the Low German basten & barsten (to burst).  Bust in the sense of “break”, “smash”, “fail”, “arrest” etc was a creation of mid-nineteenth century US English and is of uncertain inspiration but most etymologists seem to concur it was likely a modification of “burst” effected with a phonetic alteration but it’s not impossible it came directly as an imperfect echoic of Germanic speech.  The apparent contradiction of bust meaning both “fail” and “dramatically succeed” happened because the former was an allusion to “being busted” (ie broken) while the latter meaning used the notion of “busting through”.