Dope

Dope (pronounced dohp)

(1) Any thick liquid or pasty preparation, as a lubricant, used in preparing a surface.

(2) A combustible absorbent material (historically sawdust or wood-pulp), used to absorb and hold the nitroglycerine in the manufacture of dynamite (used also of the processes in the manufacture of other products).

(3) An absorbent material, such as sawdust or wood pulp, used to hold the nitroglycerine in dynamite

(4) In aeronautics (and other fields), any of various varnish-like preparations (made by dissolving cellulose derivatives in a volatile solvent) used for coating a fabric (wings, fuselage etc), in order to render it stronger and more taut, aerodynamic and waterproof.

(5) Any of a number of preparations, applied to fabric in order to improve strength, tautness, etc

(6) A chemically similar product used to coat the fabric of a balloon to reduce gas leakage.

(7) An additive used to improve the properties of something (such as the “anti-knock” compounds added to gasoline (petrol).

(8) A thick liquid (typically a lubricant), applied to a surface.

(9) In slang, any narcotic or narcotic-like drug taken to induce euphoria or some other desired effect (and eventually to satisfy addiction); now used most of cannabis although other terms are now more common.

(10) Any illicit drug.

(11) In sport, a “performance enhancing drug” (PED; steroids, peptides etc), taken by athletes.

(12) In horse racing, a narcotic or other drug given surreptitiously to a horse to improve or retard its performance in a race.

(13) In firearms, ballistic data on previously fired rounds, used to calculate the required hold over a target.

(14) In slang, information, data, knowledge or news (sometimes used especially of confidential information).

(15) In slang, someone thought unintelligent, stupid or unresponsive etc.

(16) In US slang (mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line, especially Appalachia), a carbonated, flavored and sweetened drink (used especially of cola-flavored sodas (soft drinks)).

(17) In US slang (East North Central Division of the Mid-West, especially Ohio), a sweet syrup used as a topping for ice cream.

(18) To affect with dope or drugs.

(19) To add a narcotic or other drug to something.

(20) To give a drug to (an athlete or horse), so as to affect performance in a race (for better or worse) or other competition.

(21) To take illicit drugs (in any context)

(22) In engineering to apply or treat a surface with dope.

(23) In electronics, to add or treat a pure semiconductor with a dopant.

(24) In slang, photographic developing solution

(25) In slang, great; excellent (always regionally variable and now les common).

1807: Apparently a creation of US English meaning “sauce, gravy; any thick liquid”, from the Dutch (dialectical) doop (thick dipping sauce), a derivative of dopen or doopen (to dip, baptize; deep), from the Middle Dutch dopen, from the Old Dutch dōpen, from the Frankish daupijan, from the Proto-Germanic daupijaną.  By extension, by the late nineteenth century it came generally to be used of any mixture or preparation of unknown ingredients producing a thick liquid.  The use of doop in the sense “narcotic drug” was derived ultimately from the viscous opium juice (the drug of choice of the well-connected in Ancient Greece) but in English was in use by at least 1899 and came from the smoking of semi-liquid opium preparations.  The verb use in the sense of “administer a drug to” appeared in print in 1889.  The idea of “insider information” was in use by at least 1901 and is thought to come from the knowledge of knowing which horse in a race had been doped (thus predicting it would run faster or slower than its form would suggest), this sense dating from 1900.  From this idea (inside information) developed the US slang “to dope out” (figure out, clarify).    The sense of “an unintelligent person” may have been used as early as the 1840s and came from the stupefying effects of opium, those intoxicated displaying obvious impaired cognitive facilities.  The word was related to the English dip and the German taufen (to baptize) but not to dopamine which came from chemistry, the construct being (DOPA (dihydroxyphenylalanine) +‎ -amine.

Unlike some constructions in English (eg domelessness (absence of a dome) or the informal gaynessness (“excessive” gayness)), there seems no recorded use of dopnessness.  For the commoly used “dopey”, the comparative is dopier and the superlative dopiest.  The use of “doper” to describe both: (1) someone who administers dope and (2) someone to whom dope is administered differs from the convention used in many words in English (eg payer vs payee) so the non-standard noun dopee can also be a synonym of doper.  Presumably, a useful distinction would be a dopee being one whose dope has been administered by another while a doper is one who self-administers.  Dope is a noun, verb & adjective, dopiness & dopeness are nouns, doper is a noun & adjective, doping is a noun & verb, doped is a verb & adjective and dopey (sometimes spelled dopy (the derived forms following this)) dopier & dopiest are adjectives, the noun plural is dopes.  Acronymfinder list eleven DOPEs, only two of which are narcotic related.

DOPE: Drug Overdose Prevention and Education (various organizations).
DOPE: Department of Public Enterprise.
DOPE: Data on Personal Equipment (sniper rifle data logging).
DOPE: Death or Prison Eventually (movie).
DOPE: Data on Previous Engagement (military sniper term).
DOPE: Drugs Oppress People Everyday.
DOPE: Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment.
DOPE: Director of Product Enhancements (Dilbert).
DOPE: Displacement of breathing tube, Obstruction, Pneumothorax, Equipment failure.
DOPE: Data Observed from Previous Engagements (ballistics).
DOPE: Director of Performance Enhancement (New York Yankees).

The use by the New York Yankees MLB (Major League Baseball) franchise seems daring given the existence of the Independent Program Administrator (IPA) of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program (JBTPT) which monitors the use of PEDs in the sport.  The JBTPT jointly is run by the MLB and the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players Association) and the IPA oversees all drug testing, collection and enforcement.  Pleasingly, the JBTPB often is referred to as the “Major League Joint Drug Program”.

Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams, published in 1995 on Bastille Day (14 July). 

First published in 1989, the once widely-syndicated "corporate life" Dilbert cartoon strip dealt with engineers, programmers and such working in a corporation run by those without a technical background, the exemplar of the latter being the “pointy haired boss”.  The cartoon was the work of Scott Adams (b 1957) who in 2023 was “cancelled” after posting a video in which he called “Black Americans”, critical of the slogan “It's okay to be white” because of its association with white supremacist ideology, a “hate group”, suggesting “White Americans” should “get the hell away from” them.  Mr Adams later disavowed racism and moved his output on-line.

On the Dilbert website, Mr Adams stated: “No news about public figures is ever true and in context” and explained his cancellation thus: “If you believe the news, it was because I am a big ol' racist.”  Fleshing that out, he added: “If you look into the context, the point that got me cancelled is that CRT [Critical Race Theory], DEI [Diversity, Equity & Inclusion] and ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] all have in common the framing that White Americans are historically the oppressors and Black Americans have been oppressed, and it continues to this day.  I recommended staying away from any group of Americans that identifies your group as the bad guys, because that puts a target on your back.  I was speaking hyperbolically, of course, because we Americans don't have an option of staying away from each other. But it did get a lot of attention, as I hoped.  (More than I planned, actually).”  Dlibert devotees prepared to separate art from artist were advised: “Disgraced and canceled cartoonist Scott Adams has moved his work and upgraded it to a spicier version entitled Dilbert Reborn.”

A "Dope Mobile Bookstore" is scheduled to go on-line in December 2025 and there really was briefly a "Dope Mobile" (left) which was an on-line store for mobile phone accessories and should not be confused with a "dopemobile" which is a "dope dealer's" car.  Especially in black, a Chrysler 300 (2005-2023) is almost a cliché as a dopemobile and this 2009 model (on flatbed truck, right) was seized by New Zealand police from the estate of a deceased "dope dealer" (a profession with an unusually high death rate).  The informal term "dopemoble" can mean either (1) a vehicle in which a "dope dealer" transacts "dope deals" or (2) a vehicle believed or proved to have been purchased using the proceeds of "dope dealing".  

Purple Haze, Blue Cheese and more.  The proprietors of Amsterdam’s coffee shops have always come up evocative and fanciful names for dope.  One has to have the coffee one drinks and one has to have the weed one smokes.

In derived terms and idiomatic use, “dope” appears often but because of the dual meaning (narcotics and a varnish-like substance), the same term can mean very different things so context must be noted when assessing a meaning.  A “dope stick” (also as dopestick) can describe (1) a stick or applicator for spreading dope (a viscous liquid or paste used in preparing a surface) on a surface or, in slang (2) a cigar or cigarette, (3) a pipe, (4) a marijuana joint or something similar laced with cocaine or other drug or (5) a penis suffering from priapism (a condition in which the erect penis does not return to its flaccid state despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation) as a result of the use of cocaine or heroin.  The condition may sound desirable but is both potentially painful and risks long-term tissue damage.

Color chart, circa 1940. Some of the pigments available for Berry Brothers "Berryloid Pigmented Dopes".

“Dope dick” (impotence induced by heavy drinking or other substance abuse) is a synonym of other slang forms including “coke dick”, “crystal dick”, “whisky dick” & “brewer's droop”.  A “dope whore” is someone addicted to narcotics who finances the habit through prostitution, the synonyms being “coke whore”, “smack slut”, “crack whore” etc.  To “smoke one's own dope” means “to believe one’s own publicity, propaganda, lies or posturing; the synonym is “to drink one's own Kool-Aid”.  For those who like to make such connections, Kool-Aid is the official soft-drink of the US state of Nebraska, otherwise famous only for being the home of billionaire investor Warren Buffett (b 1930).  To “dope out” means “to figure out, to find out, find, decipher”, something Mr Buffet certainly did of investing for profit although wryly, he notes that often when folk ask him the “secret of his success” and he tells them how his strategy worked over decades, there’s an obvious sense of disappointment because what people really want to know is “how can I get rich overnight?”  He assures all he doesn’t “have the dope” on that.

Punters dope sheet (form guide), 2024 Melbourne Cup.

A “dope sheet” is a summary (ordinarily in the form of a codified, printed or digital document), containing salient facts and background information concerning a person, activity, or other subject matter.  The origin is thought to be the publications associated with horse racing (the name derived from the suspicion the most accurate indicator of a horse’s performance was whether or not it had been doped with some substance to make it run faster or slower) in which was summarized information about the horses running in certain races.  Such publications are now known variously as scratch sheets, tip sheets, firm guides, best bets etc.  Beyond gambling, “dope sheets” (a term which became misleading because some publications could be quite thick volumes) came to be used in fields as varied as automotive repair and especially in photography, film & animation; in the latter were listed the designer’s detailed instructions for artists & editors (known also as an “exposure sheet”).

Lindsay Lohan gives CNN the dope on dope use during her "troubled starlet" phase.

In the world of narcotics users (there really are many quite separate populations in “doperdom”) dope is sold by a “dope dealer”, “dope-runner”, “dope-pedlar”, “dope-pusher”, “dope-seller” or “dope-man”, sometimes from a “dope-house” whereas a “dopester” is a “street-level” trader who may be operating independently but is typically an agent on commission (paid sometimes “in kind”) and often operating from a "dopemobile").  Both retailers sell to “dope fiends”, “dope chicks”, “dope heads” etc (those who variously use or abuse) while a “dope dog” is a canine used by law enforcement officers to “sniff-out” dope.  The “dope house” must however not be confused with the “dope-shop” which was the part of the factory (typically one manufacturing aircraft) where dope was applied to the fabric laid over the spars of an airframe.  In the “dope house” was employed the “doper” who applied the dope to the fabric (dated) and again the meaning is shared with those involved with narcotics or PEDs.  If the “dope deal” couldn't for whatever reason be executed, the customer was left “dopeless” and those who over-consume could become “dope sick” (in withdrawal from “dope use”) which is different from the potentially fatal “dope overdose”.  “Dope time” & “doper time” both reference the way one’s perception of the passing of time changes when one is under the influence of narcotics.  It’s along the lines of “country mile” (typically somewhat longer than 1760 yards) or “Microsoft minutes” (referencing the dialog boxes which appeared in MS-Windows during certain operations saying something like “17 minutes remaining” which could mean anything from a few seconds to many hours).

The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade by Professor Benjamin T. Smith.

The title's play on words is this being “the dope” on “the dope trade” out of Mexico.  In the well-populated sub-culture of narcotics use (illicit and not), there exists a bewildering array of names, vernacular and slang, some now registered trade-marks as many jurisdictions have relaxed the prohibition on “soft drugs’ but “dope” remains the most useful generic “cover-all” term.  Nor is the use of “dope” as a generic new, Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; president of the Royal College of Physicians 1941-1949, personal physician (1940-1965) to Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) in his diary (Churchill taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (1966)) noting on 2 December 1952, during a trans-Atlantic flight:

“This may be my last journey with Winston.  We began life humbly enough, in an unheated Lancaster bomber, and end it, twelve years later, in high state in the strato-cruiser Canopus. Messages no longer pass to the captain asking at what height we are flying; 18,000 feet or 11,000 feet (both were recorded last night), it is all one to us, pressurized at 5,000 feet.  Most of the seniors and quite a number of the juniors came to me last night for sleeping pills - this weak kneed generation that needs dope for a few hours in the air.”

Boeing 377 Stratocruiser in United Airlines livery in 63-passenger configuration including sleeping berths, a state room and lounge bar.

Lord Moran was of course well-acquainted with dope, having for years suppled Churchill with “downers” (barbiturates) to help him sleep and “uppers” (amphetamines, then commonly called “pep pills”) to perk him up, Churchill ignoring the apothecary’s descriptions and dubbing the various tablets with terms from his own ad-hoc pharmacological vocabulary including “Lord Morans”, “majors”, “minors”, “reds”, “greens”, “babies” and “midgets”, all based either on the pill’s appearance or its potency, the latter established empirically.   In fairness to the Lord Moran's doped airline passengers, with a cruising speed (depending on conditions) between 300–340 mph (480–550 km/h), trans-Atlantic flight time for the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was typically 10 hours (eastbound) to 11-12 hours (westbound), a duration compelling until the new generation of jetliners cut the trip to 6–7 hours.  A civilian version of the C-97 Stratofreighter military heavy-transporter (developed from the B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber), the Stratocruiser was, when its first test-flight was undertaken in 1947, the world biggest airliner and could carry up to 100 passengers in a multi-deck configuration although most were configured for fewer and outfitted with the luxuries which appealed to the demographic then able to afford to travel by air.  Very modern when first it flew, there were no "doped fabric" surfaces on the Stratocruiser, the fuselage, wings and tail made almost wholly from an aluminum alloy (mostly duralumin); it was thus, in the parlance of the day, an "all metal" craft.  However, despite extensive development, the problems with the 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney radial engines were never wholly resolved and while they came to be practical for military use, they remained maintenance-intensive so operating costs were high and between 1949-1963 only 55 Stratocruisers were ever in service.

Berry Brothers advertising (1929) of their Berryloid Pigmented Dope, illustrated by applying avian coloring to aircraft.  This was Number 10 of the series and depicts the Mono Aircraft Corporation's Monocoupe, doped in the color scheme of the sexually dimorphic red winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus).  Only the males feature the distinctive red shoulder and yellow wing bar over black, the female's feathers a nondescript dark brown.

“Pipe dope”, despite the name, is not used of the drug-smoking devices and refers to any of the many lubricants and sealants used to make a pipe thread joint leak-proof and pressure-tight.  In US military slang, a “scope dope” was the officer responsible for radar or a radar operator.  The technical terms “photodope”, “photodoping” & “photodoped” come from materials science and described the process of removing a dopant (a substance added in small amounts to a pure material, such as semiconductor, to alter its original electrical or optical properties).  In electronics, impurities are added to semiconductors as a way of (1) producing a desired result or (2) modifying its properties.  In the tuning of stringed musical instruments, “peg dope” is a substance used to lubricate the pegs of an instrument and to provide the desired friction between pegs and strings.  Use seems not to have extended to other fields but conceivably it could be a helpful (and even lucrative) product for those who enjoy the sexual practice of “pegging” (women using “strap-ons”) an activity Urban Dictionary’s contributors gleefully detail, there being many nuances in use.

Automotive Digest's Dope-Master (1948, left and 1951, right).

Annually updated, Automotive Digest for years published their "Dope Masters", containing the specifications and information (ie "all the dope") required to service or "tune up" most of the automobiles sold in the US.  They were valued by mechanics but also used by many owners, cars then being mostly mechanical devices with some wiring so servicing at home with basis tools was possible in a way unthinkable with modern machines with their high electronic and software content.  In boxing, the phrase “rope-a-dope” described a technique in which the boxer assumes a defensive stance against the ropes, absorbing an opponent's blows, hoping to exploit eventual tiredness or a mistake.  Figuratively, use can be extended to any strategy in which a seemingly losing position is maintained to “lull an opponent into a false sense of security” in the hope of securing eventual victory; in the vernacular, it’s to exhaust them by “stringing them along”.  “Dope slap” is a jocular term which describes “a light slap to the back of the head”, used as a disciplinary measure for some minor infraction (ie imposed for someone being "a bit dopey") while a more severe corporal punishment would be imposed for a more a serious offence.  “Dope glass” (a synonym of “carnival glass”) was a type of glassware dating from the early twentieth century, notable for possessing lustrous colors.  Known variously as “aurora glass”, “iridescent ware”, “Iridill” “poor man's Tiffany”, “rainbow glass” & “taffeta glass”, it was initially declared by the style police to be attractive but, cheap and mass-produced, it soon came to be used to make objects judged “not in the best taste” and, being much associated with the Great Depression years of the 1930s (it was dubbed also “depression glass”), it became unfashionable.

Nerf

Nerf (pronounced nurf)

(1) A device, traditionally metal but of late also rubber or plastic, attached to the front or corners of boats or road vehicles for the purpose of absorbing impacts which would otherwise damage the device to which they’re attached.

(2) A slang term in motorsport which describes the (intentional) use of part of a vehicle to nudge another vehicle off its course; used also to describe the almost full-length protective bars used in some forms of dirt-track (speedway) racing (although the term may have be retrospectively applied, based on the use on hot-rods).

(3) As a trademark, the brand name of a number of toys, often modeled on sports equipment but made of foam rubber or other soft substances.

(4) In video gaming, a slang term for reconfigure an existing character or weapon, rendering it less powerful.

(5) By extension from the original use at the front and rear of 1950s hot rod cars and in motorsport, the name adopted (as nerf bar) for a step to ease entry and exit on pickup trucks or sport utility vehicles (SUV) and known also as step rails, step tubes, step bars or truck steps; also sometimes used to describe the extended foot-rests used on some motorcycles.

(6) As "nerf gun", a toy which fires foam darts, arrows, discs, or foam balls; the class is based on the original "Nerf Blaster" by Hasbro.

Circa 1955: Apparently an invention of US (specifically 1950s Californian hot-rod culture) English, the source of the word being speculative.  The later use, in computer-based gaming, etymologists trace (though there is dissent) from the primitive Indo-European mith- (to exchange, remove) from which Latin gained missilis (that may be thrown (in the plural missilia (presents thrown among the people by the emperors)), source (via the seventeenth century Middle French missile (projectile)) of the English missile ((1) in a military context a self-propelled projectile whose trajectory can sometimes be adjusted after it is launched & (2) any object used as a weapon by being thrown or fired through the air, such as stone, arrow or bullet).  Nerf is a noun & verb, nerfed is a verb & adjective, nerflike is an adjective and nerfing is a verb; the noun plural is nerfs.  The adjectives nerfish & nerfesque are non-standard.

In English, the meaning of words has much been influenced by them being re-purposed or adapted.  It was a democratic form of linguistic evolution and like the animal and vegetable species which have inhabited Earth, some meanings flourished, some survived only in a tiny niche and others went extinct; it was all determined by popular use.  Being historically an oral process, much of the churn over the centuries was lost but a still unappreciated aspect of the Urban Dictionary project is that it’s creating a record of how people are using words in novel ways.  The definitions are submitted by users and while some variously are (1) fanciful, (2) speculative or (3) an attempt to make a slang meaning “happen” (in the “fetch” sense), as in biological evolution, a small number will “catch on” and, at least for a while, enter the vernacular of a sub-set of the population.  Urban Dictionary’s definitions of “nerf” includes the many related to gaming but users claim the word can also mean (1) an individual is “hot”, (2) an individual is “cool” (those can mean much the same), (3) an individual is ugly or socially undesirable, (4) to make worse or weaken (apparently from the use in gaming (especially of weapons) but extended now to “mechanical devices, or personal powers within a business framework”, (5) the act of “cumming up your partner's nostrils after anal copulation” and (6) an individual “sexually attracted to turtles”.  Time will tell how many nerf’s more recent definitions will survive but for sociologists and students of the language, Urban Dictionary will one day be a valuable database. 

Lindsay Lohan holding Herbie's nerf bar, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) premiere, El Capitan Theater, Hollywood, Los Angeles, 19 June 2005.

In the US, nerf bars were often fitted to cars with bumper bars mounted lower than were typically found on domestic vehicles.  What these nerf bars did was provide a low-cost, sacrificial device which would absorb the impact the bodywork would otherwise suffer because the standard bumper would pass under the bumper of whatever was hit in an accident.  On a large scale, the idea was in the 1960s implemented on trucks as the "Mansfield Bar", a (partial) solution to the matter (understood since the 1920s) of cars crashing into the rear of trucks, tending increasingly (as bodywork became lower) to “pass under” the rear of a truck's chassis, meaning it was the passenger compartment (at the windscreen level) which suffered severe damage.  The death toll over the decades was considerable and Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) the most famous victim, hence the eponymy.  Design rules and regulations began to proliferate only in the late 1960s and remarkably as it must seem in these safety conscious times, in the US it wasn't until the early 1970s that cars were required to be built with standardized bumper-bar heights, front & rear.

Nerf bars on a hot-rod.

The suggested etymology is said to account for the application of nerf to gaming where it means “to cripple, weaken, worsen, deteriorate or debuff” (“debuff” a linguistic novelty attributed to gamers) a character, a weapon, a spell etc.  The idea is apparently derived from the proprietary “Nerf” guns, large-scale (often realized in 1:1) toys which fire extremely soft (and therefore harmless) projectiles (al la missilis from the Latin); the Nerfball in 1970 apparently the first.  It doesn’t however account for the use either in motorsport or on hot-rods but the evidence suggests it was the hot-rod crew who used it first, based on an imperfect echoic, thinking the dirt-track (speedway) drivers using the protective bars running along the outside of the bodywork of their vehicles to nudge other competitors off the track and onto the grass were saying “to nerf” whereas they were actually saying “to turf”.  Because the hot-rods became widely known as part of the novel “youth culture” of the 1950s, the specifics of their slang also sometimes entered the wider vocabulary and the bars of the speedway cars, in an example of back-formation, also became “nerf bars”.

A replica AC Shelby American Cobra 427 with naked nerf bars (top) and a real one with over-riders fitted (bottom).

The ultimate hot-rod was the AC Shelby Cobra (1962-1967) of which fewer than a thousand were made, a number exceeded more than fifty-fold by the replica industry which has flourished since the bulge-bodied original was retired in 1967, looming regulations proving just to onerous economically to comply with.  The first Shelby Cobra street cars used nerf bars as attachment points for chrome over-riders but, as a weight-saving measure, the latter were usually removed when the vehicles were used in competition, leaving the raw nerf bars exposed.  The raw look has become popular with customers of the replica versions and, surprisingly, the authorities in some jurisdictions appear to allow them to be registered in this state for street use.

Bumperettes, top row left to right: 1970 MGB Roadster, 1972 De Tomaso Pantera L, 1974 Ford (England) Capri RS3100 and 1968 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 N.A.R.T. Spider.  Bottom row: 1963 Jaguar E-Type Coupé, 1973 Ford (England) Escort RS2000, 1968 Chevrolet Corvette L88 Coupe and 1964 Mercedes-Benz 230 SL.

On production vehicles, what are sometimes mistakenly called nerf bars are actually “bumperettes”, cut-down bumpers which in their more dainty iterations were sometimes little more than a decorative allusion to the weight-saving techniques used on genuine competition cars.  In the days before there were regulations about just about everything, bumperettes were often fitted because they were lighter than full-width units, indeed, Ferrari on some cars built for competition had “fake” bumperettes, thin structures which emulated the appearance of those used in road-going models but which attached directly to the bodywork with no supporting structure beneath.  Ford was one of a number of manufacturers which fitted bumperettes to high-performance variants; they were as much as a styling feature as a genuine weight-saving measure.

Front & rear nerf bars on 1965 Jaguar E-Type in Carmen Red.

The bumperettes on the E-Type were of course attractive but left the curvaceous bodywork vulnerable and the steel fittings were a popular accessory.  The factory never fitted nerf bars to the Series 1 (S1, 1961-1968) cars but a full-width rear bumper appeared on the S2 (1968-1971) and in 1973, for the final seasons in North American (NA) models,  large rubber "dagmars" were grafted (rather unhappily) to the the S3 (1971-1974) but, fortunately for the aesthetic memory, production ceased before British Leyland further disfigured the thing with the sort of battering-ram like structures used for the last years of the MGB and Triumph Spitfire. 

1970 NA model MGB Roadster in BRG (British Racing Green) with after-market 14″ Minator wheels.

The 1970 MGB & MGB GT were unusual in that models exported to NA featured a unique “split” rear bumper (as opposed to purpose-built bumperettes).  The change was a Q&D (quick & dirty) way to comply with new US rules requiring  the license plate (and its lights) be raised to a certain height above the road but on the MGB, the standard, full-width chrome bumper sat exactly where the plate needed to be.  Rather than resign the rear body pressing (an expensive business) British Leyland (then in control of MG) fitted two bumperettes, leaving a gap at the right height for the plate.  The RoW (rest of the world) MGBs continued to use the full-width bumper and NA models in 1971 reverted to one when a solution was devised.  Things would get worse for the MGB for in 1974, globally it was fitted with heavy, ungainly black-rubber faced bumpers, the only (cheap) way the car could be made to comply with US front & rear impact standards.  Because the MGB was by then more than a decade old it was thought it wouldn't remain in production long enough to amortize the investment which would have been required to engineer a more elegant solution but although after 1974 the MGB was heavier, slower and uglier, it remained remarkably popular and the end didn't come until 1980 after more than half-a-million had been built.

The concept of nerf bars as used on hot-rods existed long before the term became popular and can be found in depictions of Greek and Roman ships from antiquity and remain a common sight today, either as a specifically-designed product or simply as old car-tyres secured to the side of the hull and used especially on vessels such as tug-boats which need often to be maneuvered in close proximity to others.  The correct admiralty term for these is "fender" (ie in the sense of "fending-off" whatever it is the vessel has hit).  Manufactured usually from rubber, foam or plastic, there are also companion products, “marine fenders”, which are larger and permanently attached to docks on quay walls and other berthing structures.  Much larger than those attached to vessels, they're best thought of as big cushions (which often they resemble).  The construct was fend + er (the suffix added to verbs and used to form an agent noun); fend was from the Middle English fenden (defend, fight, prevent), a shortening of defenden (defend), from the Old French deffendre (which endures in modern French as défendre), from the Latin dēfendō (to ward off), the construct being dē- (of, from) +‎ fendō (hit, thrust), from the primitive Indo-European ghen- (strike, kill).

Blurb

Blurb (pronounced blurb)

(1) A brief promotional piece, almost always laudatory, used historically for books, latterly for about any product.

(2) To advertise or praise in the manner of a blurb.

1907: Coined by US graphic artist and humorist Gelett Burgess (1866–1951).  Blurbs are a specific type of advertisement, similar exercises in other contexts known also as “puff pieces”, “commendations” or “recommendations”.  The use of "puff" is thought based on the character "Mr Puff" in the burlesque satire The Critic: or, a Tragedy Rehearsed (1779) by the Anglo-Irish Whig playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816).  Generally, blurbs contain elements designed to tempt a buyer which may include a précis (something less than a detailed summary), a mention of the style and a recommendation.  The term was originally invoked to mock the excessive praise printed on book jackets and was often parodied in a derisively imitative manner and is still sometimes critically used thus but it’s also now a neutral descriptor and an accepted part of the publishing industry.  Blurb is a noun & verb, blurbing & blurbed are verbs, blurbist is a noun and blurbish is an adjective; the noun plural is blurbs.

The blurb has apparently existed for some two-thousand–odd years but the word became well-known only after a publishing trade association dinner in 1907, Gelett Burgess displaying a dust jacket printed with the words “YES, this is a “BLURB”!”, featuring the (fictitious) Miss Belinda Blurb who was said to have been photographed “...in the act of blurbing”, Burgess adding that to blurb was “… to make a sound like a publisher…” and was “…a check drawn on fame, and it is seldom honoured”.  There are sources claiming the word was coined by US academic and literary critic Brander Matthews (1852–1929) in his essay American Character (1906) but Professor Matthews acknowledged the source genuinely was Burgess, writing in the New York Times (24 September 1922): “Now and again, in these columns I have had the occasion to employ the word “blurb”, a colourful and illuminating neologism which we owe to the verbal inventiveness of Mr Gelett Burgess”.

Burgess had released Are You a Bromide? in 1906 and while sales were encouraging, he suggested to his publishers (BW Huebsch) that each of the attendees and the upcoming industry dinner should receive a copy with a “special edition” dust cover.  For this, Burgess used the picture of a young lady who had appeared in an advertisement for dental services, snapped in the act of shouting.  It was at the time common for publishers to use pictures of attractive young ladies for book covers, even if the image was entirely unrelated to the tome’s content, the object being to attract a male readership.  Burgess dubbed his purloined model “Miss Belinda Blurb” and claimed she had been photographed “in the act of blurbing”; mid-blurb as it were.

Are you a Bromide? (Publisher's special edition, 1907).

The dust cover was headed with the words “YES, this is a “BLURB”! All the Other Publishers commit them. Why Shouldn’t We?” and knowing a blurb should not in moderation do what can be done in excess, went on to gush about the literary excellence of his book in rather the manner a used car salesman might extol the virtues of some clapped-out car in the corner of the yard.  His blurb concluded “This book is the Proud Purple Penultimate!”  The industry must have been inspired because the blurb has become entrenched, common in fiction and non-fiction alike and the use of the concept can be seen in film, television, social media and just about anywhere there’s a desire to temp a viewer.  Indeed, the whole idea of “clickbait” (something which tells enough to tantalize but not enough to satisfy without delving deeper) is a functional application of a blurb.  Depending on the source, the inspiration for the word came from either (1) the sound made by a book as it falls to the floor, (2) the sound of a bird chirping or (3) an amalgam of “burp” & “blather”.  The author left no clue.

In his book, Burgess innovated further, re-purposing the word "bromide".  In inorganic chemistry, a bromide is a binary compound of bromine and some other element or radical, the construct being brom- (an alternative form of bromo- (used preceding a vowel) which described a substance containing bromine (from the French brome, from the Ancient Greek βρῶμος (brômos) (stink)) + ide (the suffix used in chemistry to describe substances comprising two or more related compounds.  However, early in the twentieth century, Bromide was a trade name for a widely available medicine, taken as a sedative and in some cases prescribed to diminish “an excessive sexual appetite”.  It was the sedating aspect which Burgess picked up to describe someone tiresome and given to trite remarks, explaining “a bromide” was one “…who does his thinking by syndicate and goes with the crowd” and was thus boring and banal.  A bromine’s antonym was, he helpfully advised, a “sulphite”.  Unfortunately, while blurb flourished, bromide & sulphites as binary descriptors of the human condition have vanished from the vernacular.

Lindsay Lohan with body double during shooting for Irish Wish (Netflix, due for release in 2023).  The car is a Triumph TR4.

Nteflix's blurb for Irish Wish: Always a bridesmaid, never a bride — unless, of course, your best friend gets engaged to the love of your life, you make a spontaneous wish for true love, and then magically wake up as the bride-to-be.  That’s the supernatural, romantic pickle Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls, The Parent Trap) finds herself in upcoming romantic comedy, Irish Wish.  Set in the rolling green moors of Ireland, the movie sees Lohan's Maddie learn her dreams for true love might not be what she imagined and that her soulmate may well be a different person than she originally expected. Apparently magic wishes are quite insightful.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm (2023, distributed by Simon & Schuster).

Louise Willder (b 1972) has for a quarter century been a copywriter for Penguin, in that time composing some 5000 blurbs, each a two-hundred-odd word piece which aims both to inform and tempt a purchase.  Her non-fiction debut Blurb Your Enthusiasm is not only a review of the classic blurbs (the good, the bad and the seriously demented) but also an analysis of the trends in the structure of blurbs and the subtle shifts in their emphasis although, over the centuries, the purpose seems not to have changed.  Ms Willder also documents the nuances of the blurb, the English tendency to understatement, the hyperbolic nature of Americans and the distaste the French evidently have of having to say anything which might disclose the blurb’s vulgar commercial purpose, tracing over time how changing attitudes and societal mores mean what’s now written of a nineteenth century classic is very different to when first it was published.  Inevitably too, there are the sexual politics of authorship and publishing and blurbs can reveal as much by the odd hint or what’s left unsaid than what actually appears on a dust cover.  Academics and reviewers have perhaps neglected the blurb because traditionally they've often been dismissed as mere advertising but, unless the author’s name or the subject matter is enough of a draw, even more than a cover illustration or title, it’s the blurb which can close the sale and collectively, they’re doubtlessly more widely read than reviews.  Blurb Your Enthusiasm is highly recommended.

Founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L Simon (1899–1960) & Max Lincoln Schuster (1897–1970), Simon & Schuster was in 2023 acquired by private equity company KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co).

In 2025, there emerged an indication there was, at least in one corner of the publishing industry a push-back against what might be called the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” blurb with the  publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint in the US announcing it will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.  Revealed in an essay in Publishers Weekly, it was explained that while Simon & Schuster never had “a formal mandatory policy” about the matter, a culture had evolved to make blurbs “tacitly expected” and the responsibility of harvesting them from famous writers, celebrities and such devolved upon authors, their agents & editors.  The publishing house rejected the notion the blurb “production line” is “what makes the book business so special: the collegiality of authors and their willingness to support one another”, arguing the very ubiquity of the things had become “…incredibly damaging to what should be the industry’s ultimate goal: producing books of the highest possible quality.”  Memorably, Simon & Schuster’s critique of “authors feeling obliged to write blurbs for their friends” was summed up in the phrase: “an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.”  Students of the blurb will of course be disappointed if this becomes a trend and among authors it must have been fun to cast an eye over new releases just to try to work out if one individual was no longer on speaking terms with another but more practically, others did observe that while blurbs may be of marginal interest to those browsing the shelves, it was understood booksellers could be influenced to increase their orders if a book seems “well-blurbed”.  However, even if Simon & Schuster are no longer giving authors a tacit “nudge”, it may be many remain prolific blurb writers because it's a very cheap way to keep one’s brand-recognition on the shelves and up to date.

Bob

Bob (pronounced bobb)

(1) A short, jerky motion.

(2) Quickly to move up and down.

(3) In Sterling and related currencies, a slang term for one shilling (10c); survived decimalisation in phrases like "two bob watch", still used by older generations).

(4) A type of short to medium length hairstyle.

(5) A docked horse’s tail.

(6) A dangling or terminal object, as the weight on a pendulum or a plumb line.

(7) A short, simple line in a verse or song, especially a short refrain or coda.

(8) In angling, a float for a fishing line.

(9) Slang term for a bobsled.

(10) A bunch, or wad, especially a small bouquet of flowers (Scottish).

(11) A polishing wheel of leather, felt, or the like.

(12) An affectionate diminutive of the name Robert.

(13) To curtsy.

(14) Any of various hesperiid butterflies.

(15) In computer graphics (using "Bob" as a contraction of Blitter object), a graphical element (GEL) used by the Amiga computer (the first consumer-level computer which handled multi-tasking convincingly).  Technically, Bobs were hardware-generated objects which could be moved on the screen by the blitter coprocessor.  Bobs were an object of some veneration among the demosceners (the computer art subculture that produces and watches demos (audio-visual computer programs)), Bobs rated according to their the volume and dynamics of movement.

(16) In Scotland, a bunch, cluster, or wad, especially a small bouquet of flowers.

(17) A walking beam (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English bobben (to strike in cruel jest, beat; fool, make a fool of, cheat, deceive), the meaning "move up and down with a short, jerking motion," perhaps imitative of the sound, the sense of mocking or deceiving perhaps connected to the Old French bober (mock, deride), which, again, may have an echoic origin. The sense "snatch with the mouth something hanging or floating," as in bobbing for apples (or cherries), is recorded by 1799 and the phrase “bob and weave” in boxing commentary is attested from 1928.  Bob seems first to have been used to describe the short hair-style in the 1680s, a borrowing probably of the use since the 1570s to refer to "a horse's tail cut short", that derived from the earlier bobbe (cluster (as of leaves)) dating from the mid fourteenth century and perhaps of Celtic origin and perhaps connected in some way with the baban (tassel, cluster) and the Gaelic babag.  Bob endures still in Scots English as a dialectical term for a small bunch of flowers.  Bob is a noun & verb, bobber & boggy are nouns, bobbing is a noun & verb, bobbed is a verb & adjective, bobbish is an adjective and bobbingly & bobbishly are adverbs; the noun plural is bobs.  When used as a proper noun, there's an initial capital.

The group of bob words in English is beyond obscure and mostly mysterious.  Most are surely colloquial in origin and probably at least vaguely imitative, but have long become entangled and merged in form and sense (bobby pin, bobby sox, bobsled, bobcat etc).  As a noun, it has been used over the centuries in various senses connected by the notion of "round, hanging mass," and of weights at the end of a fishing line (1610s), pendulum (1752) or plumb-line (1832).  As a description of the hair style, although dating from the 1680s, it entered popular use only in the 1920s when use spiked.  As a slang word for “shilling” (the modern 10c coin), it’s recorded from 1789 but no connection has ever been found.  In certain countries, among older generations, the term in this sense endures in phrases like “two bob watch” to suggest something of low quality and dubious reliability.

UK Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 1830–1903; UK Prime Minister for thirteen years variously 1885-1902.  He was, in the words of of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955): "prime-minister since God knows when".

The phrase "Bob's your uncle" is said often to have its origin in the nepotism allegedly extended by Lord Salisbury to his favorite nephew Arthur Balfour (1848–1930; UK Prime Minister 1902-1905), unexpectedly promoted to a number of big jobs during the 1880s.  The story has never convinced etymologists but it certainly impressed the Greeks who made up a big part of Australia's post-war immigration programme, "Spiro is your uncle" in those years often heard in Sydney and Melbourne to denote nepotism among their communities there.

The other potential source is the Scottish music hall, the first known instance in in a Dundee newspaper in 1924 reviewing a musical revue called Bob's Your Uncle.  The phrase however wasn't noted as part of the vernacular until 1937, six years after the release of the song written by JP Long, "Follow your uncle Bob" which alluded to the nepotistic in the lyrics:

Bob's your uncle
Follow your Uncle Bob
He knows what to do
He'll look after you

Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937) notes the phrase but dates it to the 1890s though without attribution and it attained no currency in print until the post-war years.  Although it's impossible to be definitive, the musical connection does seem more convincing, the connection with Lord Salisbury probably retrospective.  It could however have even earlier origins, an old use noted in the Canting Dictionary (1725) in an entry reporting "Bob ... signifies Safety, ... as, It's all Bob, ie All is safe, the Bet is secured."

Of hair

A bob cut or bob is a short to shoulder-length haircut for women.  Historically, in the west, it’s regarded as a twentieth-century style although evidence of it exists in the art of antiquity and even some prehistoric cave-paintings hint it may go way back, hardly surprising given the functionality.  In 1922, The Times (of London), never much in favor of anything new, ran a piece by its fashion editor predicting the demise of the fad, suggesting it was already passé (fashion editors adore the word passé) although the photographic record for the rest of the decade does suggest it took the bright young things of the age a while to take the paper's hint.  Certainly, bobs were less popular by the difficult 1930s but in the 1960s, a variety of social and economic forces saw a resurgence which has never faded and the twenty-first century association with the Karen hasn't lessened demand (although the A-line variant, now known in the industry as the "speak to the manager" seems now avoided by all except those for whom there are few viable alternatives).  The connection with the Karen is the second time the bob has assumed some socio-political meaning; when flaunted by the proto-feminists of the 1920s, it was regarded as a sign of radicalism.  The popularity in the 1920s affected the millinery trades too as it was the small cloche which fitted tightly on the bobbed head which became the hat of choice.  Manufacturer of milliner's materials, hair-nets and hair-pins all suffered depressed demand, the fate too of the corset makers, victims of an earlier social change, a phenomenon which would in the post-war years devastate the industries supporting the production of hats for men.  In the 1970s, some optimists (some of whom may have been men), noting one well-publicized (though not widely practiced) aspect of second-wave feminism, predicted the demise of the bra but that garment endured and flourishes to this day.

Actor Lily Collins (b 1989) in a semi-sheer white Calvin Klein ensemble, the cropped spaghetti-strap top and knee-length pencil skirt both embellished with scale sequins, New York Fashion Week,  New York City, September 2025.  Note the pleasing definition of the sinews (arrowed, centre).  The hair-style is a chin-length bob.

Variations on a theme of bob, Marama Corlett (b 1984. left) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right), Sick Note, June 2017.

Hairdressers have number of terms for the variations.  The motifs can in some cases be mixed and even within styles, lengths can vary, a classic short bob stopping somewhere between the tips of the ears and well above the shoulders, a long bob extending from there to just above the shoulders; although the term is often used, the concept of the medium bob really makes no sense and there are just fractional variations of short and long, everything happening at the margins.  So, a bob starts with the fringe and ends being cut in a straight line; length can vary but the industry considers shoulder-length a separate style and the point at which bobs stop and something else begins. Descriptions like curly and ringlet bobs refer more to the hair than the style but do hint at one caveat, not all styles suit all hair types, a caution which extends also to face shapes.

Greta Thunberg: BB (before-bob) and AB (after-bob).

The style received an unexpected imprimatur when Greta Thunberg (b 2003) opted for a bob (one straddling chin & shoulder-length).  Having gained fame as a weather forecaster, the switch to shorter hair appears to have coincided with her branching out from environmental activism to political direct action in the Middle East.  While there's no doubt she means well, it’s something that will end badly because while the matter of greenhouse gasses in the atmospheric can (over centuries) be fixed, some problems are insoluble and the road to the Middle East is paved six-feet deep with good intentions.  Ms Thunberg seems not to have discussed why she got a bob (and how she made her daily choice of "one braid or two" also remained mysterious) but her braids were very long and she may have thought them excessive and contributing to climate change.  While the effect individually would be slight, over the entire population there would be environmental benefits if all those with long hair got a bob because: (1) use of shampoo & conditioner would be lowered (reduced production of chemicals & plastics), (2) a reduction in water use (washing the hair and rinsing out all that product uses much), (3) reduced electricity use (hair dryers, styling wands & straighteners would be employed for a shorter duration) and (4) carbon emissions would drop because fewer containers of shampoo & conditioner would be shipped or otherwise transported.

Asymmetrical Bob: Another general term which describes a bob cut with different lengths left and right; they can look good but should not be applied to all styles.  The effect is often most dramatic when combined with some variant of the Shaggy (JBF).

A-line bob: A classic bob which uses slightly longer strands in front, framing the face and, usually, curling under the chin; stylists caution this doesn’t suit all face shapes.

Buzz-cut bob: Known also as the undercut (pixie) bob, and often seen as an asymmetric, this is kind of an extreme inverted mullet; the the usual length(s) in the front and close-cropped at the back.  It can be a dramatic look but really doesn’t suit those above a certain BMI or age (although the former seem often unable to resist the look).

Chin-length bob: Cut straight to the chin, with or without bangs but, if the latter is chosen, it’s higher maintenance, needing more frequent trims to retain the sharpness on which it depends.  Depending on the face shape, it works best with or without fringe.

Inverted bob: A variation on the A-line which uses graduated layers at the back, the perimeter curved rather than cut straight. Known also as the graduated bob, to look best, the number of layers chosen should be dictated by the thickness of growth.

Shaggy bob: A deliberately messy bob of any style, neatness depreciated with strategic cutting either with scissors or razor, a styling trick best done by experts otherwise it can look merely un-kept.  The un-kept thing can be a thing if that’s what one wants but, like dying with gray or silver, it's really suitable only for the very young.  Some call this the choppy and it’s known in the vernacular of hairdressing as the JBF (just been fucked).

Spiky bob: This differs from a JBF in that it’s more obviously stylised.  It can differ in extent but with some types of hair is very high maintenance, demanding daily application of product to retain the directions in which the strands have to travel.  Not all hair is suited to the look and while product can compensate for much, beyond a certain point, there is a law of diminishing returns. 

Shingle bob: A cut tapered very short in the back, exposing the hairline at the neck with the sides shaped into a single curl, the tip of which sits at a chosen point on each cheek.  This needs to be perfectly symmetrical or it looks like a mistake.

Shoulder-length bob: A blunt bob that reaches the shoulders and has very few layers; with some hair it can even be done with all strands the same length.  Inherently, this is symmetrical and a remarkably different effect is created depending on whether it's done with or without a fringe although hairdressers caution this is not a style best suited to "round" faces and with those it can be necessary to experiment, a fringe sometimes improving things, sometimes not.

Speak to the manager bob: Not wishing to lose those customers actually named Karen, the industry shorthand for the edgy (and stereotypically in some strain of blonde) bob didn’t become “Karen”.  The classic SttM is an asymmetric blonde variation of the A-line with a long, side-swept fringe contrasted with a short, spiky cut at the back and emblematic of the style are the “tiger stripes”, created by the chunky unblended highlights.  It's now unfashionable though still seen because it remains the "go to cut" for women of a certain age who have been persuaded the style they've stuck to since they were 19 is no longer flattering.