Bombast & Bluster

Bombast (pronounced bom-bast)

(1) Speech deemed pompous for the occasion or context; pretentious or grandiloquent language.

(2) Cotton or cotton wool (archaic).

(3) Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments or upholstery; padding.

1560-1570: A corruption of the earlier bombase (raw cotton), from the Old French bombace (cotton, cotton wadding), from the from the Medieval Latin bombācem, accusative of the Late Latin bombāx (cotton; linteorum aut aliae quaevis quisquiliae (towels or any other rubbish (rags))), a corrupted variant use of bombyx (silk; silkworm (which in Medieval Greek came to mean “cotton”)), from the Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux) (silkworm) and perhaps connected with both certain oriental words and the Middle Persian pambak (cotton), possibly related to a primitive Indo-European root meaning “to twist, wind”.  From the same source came the Swedish bomull, the Danish bomuld (cotton) and, (via Turkish forms), the Modern Greek mpampaki, the Rumanian bumbac and the Serbo-Croatian pamuk.  The German Baumwolle (cotton) is thought likely to be the Latin word altered by folk-etymology to look like “tree wool”.  Both the Lithuanian bovelna and the Polish bawełna are partial translations from the German.  The earliest known appearance in print of the adjective bombastic was in 1704.  The synonyms include fustian, grandiloquence, purple prose, overblown, pretentious and the now obsolete aureation.  Bombast is a noun, verb & adjective, bombaster & bombastry are nouns, bombastic & bombastical are adjectives and bombastically is an adverb; the noun plural is bombasts.

In English, the word “bombase” was used of raw cotton as early as the 1550s and the sense of “stuffing and padding for clothes or upholstery” would have begun as the verbal shorthand of tailors, seamstresses and artisans making clothing, furniture and such.  Remarkably quickly, the idea of what was done with chairs and garments (padding them out) was co-opted to mean “pompous, empty speech”, that sense in use as early as the 1580s.  The idea was just as cotton (soft, loose, insubstantial) was used to “swell” clothing or upholstery to provide the illusion of something more substantial, so it was used of speech and writing judged as “swollen by extravagant sentiments and expressions which add nothing to the meaning”.  Also by extension, “fustian” was used as a synonym, that being a type of cloth that lend garments a “stiff expansive character”, the similarity to “fuss” & “fuss” thought to have added to the appeal.  The old press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) used the term “highfalutin nonsense” whenever he detected bombast in anything his editors were proposing to publish.

The literary term bathos (from the Ancient Greek βάθος (bathos) (depth) is used of types of writing which may include the bombastic.  That was a contribution by the English poet & satirist Alexander Pope (1688-1744) who, in the mock critical treatise Peri Bathous or, Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728), assured his readers he would “…lead them as it were by the hand… the gentle downhill way to Bathos; the bottom, the end, the central point the non plus ultra [nothing further beyond], of true Modern Poesy!”  Bathos is attained when a striving at the sublime, over-reaches and “topples into the absurd”, a classic collection of the bathetic was published in The Stuffed Owl (1930), compiled by the English authors Dominic Bevan “D.B.” Wyndham Lewis (1891–1969) & Charles James Lee (1870–1956).  Lewis should not be confused with the English painter, writer & critic (Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), best remembered for his seminal contribution to short-lived Vorticist movement in art that was extinguished by the blast of World War I (1914-1918).  Although the usual suspects from poetaster’s (bad poets) role of infamy appear in The Stuffed Owl including the American Julia Ann Moore (1847–1920) and Scotland’s notoriously inept William McGonagall (1825-1902), Lewis & Lee didn’t defer to reputations or the canon and among the entries were lines by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Lord Byron (1788–1824), John Dryden (1631–1700), Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) and Robert Browning (1812–1889). Curiously, while the noun bombaster (a bombastic speaker or writer) exists, there’s no such thing as a bombastee (one compelled to listen to read the words of a bombaster).

I Am Charlotte Simmons (20004) by Tom Wolfe (1930–2018), a hefty 688 pages, it "won" the Literary Review's 2004 Bad Sex Award but was said to be a favorite of George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009) so there was that.

Lewis & Lee took to their work with a light touch.  Rather than condemnation, it was admitted: “Bad verse has its canons, like good verse” and the selection of the “bad” was no less difficult than the challenges in assembling the “best” for a more conventional anthology.  As their argument went, “good” bad Verse has “an eerie, supernal beauty comparable in its accidents with the beauty of good verse” and it was likely as difficult to write a genuinely “good” bad poem as it is to write a good poem.  That was a generous view but there was also an audience for the bad, William McGonagall often engaged to give recitals of his work, always including the infamous The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), its place in literary history assured by appearing usually in lists of the “worst ever poems”.  That “monetizing of awfulness” happens also in music.  The Portsmouth Sinfonia (1970-1979) was an English orchestra open to “musicians” with neither skill nor training and their idiosyncratic performances were well attended, as were those of Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944).  Ms Foster Jenkins (who was first married at 15, the age of consent in Pennsylvania then ten despite it being north of the Mason-Dixon Line) was rich enough to indulge her hobby which was singing Opera and that she did, giving public performances so awful that word spread and most were sold-out.  In literary use, there was also (between 1993-2019) the “Bad Sex Award”, described by organizing committee as “Britain’s most dreaded literary prize”.  Conferred every winter by the London-based Literary Review, it was awarded to the author judged to have penned the worst sex scene published in the previous twelve months.  It was established in 1993 by the magazine’s former editor, Auberon Waugh (1939–2001).

1938 Mercedes-Benz 320 (W142, 1937-1942) Cabriolet B in a factory promotional image.  As well as the upholstery, the folding soft-top contained horse-hair bombast. 

European manufacturers and coach-builders used “cabriolet” to distinguish certain convertibles from the more rakish, sporty roadsters although the English had to be different and decided they were DHCs (drop-head coupés) which meant a convertible version of a FHC (fixed-head coupé).  Cabriolets were for decades a fixture in the catalogues (low-priced vehicles as well as the better-remembered exotics) but in the late 1920s (with typically Teutonic attention to detail), Daimler-Benz codified the naming conventions for cabriolets built by Mercedes-Benz:

Cabriolet A: A cabriolet with two doors and room for two passengers.

Cabriolet B: A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers, fitted with a rear-quarter window for the rear seat.

Cabriolet C: A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers with no rear quarter window.

Cabriolet D: A cabriolet with four doors and room for four to six passengers.

Cabriolet F: A cabriolet with four doors, built on an extended wheelbase, usually for state or formal use with room for six or more passengers.

The jump in the factory's designations from "D" to "F" obviously skipped "E" and because that didn't seem the German way of doing things, there was speculation another type of open coachwork had been planned but which was never built because of the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945).  That's not impossible (some records were lost during the war) but the archives for the period have revealed nothing which supports the theory and the sometimes repeated assertion the "Cabriolet F" label was an allusion to "Führer" (the car's most infamous customer) is simply wrong because the designation was first used in the 1920s, prior to the Nazis gaining power and creating the Third Reich (1933-1945).  Quite what would have been the configuration of the allegedly “missing Cabriolet E” is purely speculative and those who have written on the subject have concluded it’d likely have been either (1) a four-door body distinguished only from a Cabriolet D by a longer wheelbase or different side-window treatment or (2) the intended differentiation of a Cabriolet F without the rear-quarter window (as some were built but never uniquely designated).

Bombast, in its original sense, could prove fatal.

Bomb-blasted: the Mercedes-Benz 320 Cabriolet B in which SS-Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) was being driven on the day of the assassination attempt.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had in 1938 appointed Baron Konstantin von Neurath (1873–1956; Foreign Minister of Germany 1932-1938) as Reichsprotektor (a sort of proconsul (from the Latin prōconsul, a shortened form of prō consule (one acting on behalf of the consul))) of occupied Bohemia and Moravia (a region of Czechoslovakia).  Hitler did not make the appointment because of any great regard for the baron’s administrative or diplomatic skills but because (1) he wanted the more obsequious Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) as his cipher in the Foreign Ministry and (2) he thought von Neurath’s reputation in international circles as a “moderate” would mollify the outrage expressed about the brutish and cynical tactics employed by the Nazis in their takeover of the Czech lands.  To an extend the political window dressing worked, not because von Neurath’s delegated rule was benign but because news of much of what was being done was suppressed and international attention had already turned to events elsewhere as concerns grew over Hitler’s next target.

With the outbreak of World War II, von Neurath’s regime became harsher with an increased rate of imprisonment in concentration camps, more executions and less restrained persecution of Czech Jews (the last measure not wholly without support from sections of Czech society).  However, bloody though it was, what the Reichsprotektor did was mild compared with what was done in other conquered territories (notably Poland and later in the Soviet Union when the Nazis turned to genocide as a “final solution”) and, not best pleased, late in 1941 Hitler appointed SS General Reinhard Heydrich as von Neurath’s nominal deputy although Heydrich assumed full executive authority, leaving the Reichsprotektor as a figurehead, the Nazis assuming his veneer of (relative) respectability remained useful.  Hitler knew the murderous Heydrich would not be troubled by the notions of humanity or residual decency that had constrained von Neurath and he wasn’t disappointed in his latest appointment for within days martial law had been imposed on the protectorate with thousands and arrested and hundreds executed.  When Hitler wanted something done, if possible, he’d allocate the task to the SS.

The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc)) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Hitler.  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than a million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 800,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Konstantin von Neurath.  At the first Nuremberg Trial (1946-1946) he received a 15 year sentence but was released in 1954 because of ill health, dying within two years.  Had Heydrich lived to be tried, he'd have been hanged.

Just as Heydrich understood Hitler’s language, so the Czechs understood his and rapidly the once troublesome protectorate was pacified.  Heydrich was however there not merely to impose and maintain order but also to ensure the agricultural and industrial capacity efficiently was exploited to benefit the German economy and war machine; rapidly his “carrot & stick” approach produced dividends with production rising and resources re-allocated within the Czech economy towards the needs dictated by Berlin.  Heydrich proved remarkably successful in his role, his “cut the head off the snake” (ie identifying and what would now be called “neutralizing” those likely to be troublesome) approach ending acts of sabotage or other resistance while his increases in the allocation of food and consumer goods to the population resulted in a workforce which, it not exactly “happy”, was at least compliant and productive.  Having witnessed the crackdowns and collective punishments that had characterized the early days of his rule, the Czech population had little taste for resistance, knowing retribution would be swift, brutal and widespread, meaning the place soon became peaceful.  Heydrich however regarded his tactics as a temporary measure and planned with the end of the war to engage in wholesale ethnic cleansing to “Germanize” the whole region.

That goal was known to Czech resistance based in London and for reasons both political and military, wished to do something to encourage acts of disobedience, despite knowing the consequences that would be visited upon the population.  The British authorities did nothing to discourage this view and believed resistance in occupied territories was a vital element in their plan to “set Europe ablaze” with ferment against Nazi rule.  Accordingly, a team of London-based Czech assassins was assembled and smuggled back into Prague with the audacious plan to assassinate Heydrich.  Code-named Operation Anthropoid (a word translated variously as (1) a non-human creature with some of the physical characteristics of a human or (2) a creature with the characteristics of an ape), Heydrich made their task easier because, so assured did he think was his pacification of his domain that routinely he was driven to his office in an un-armored, open-top car with no escort or security detail.

The aftermath.   A 320 Cabriolet B reputed to be this car now sits in a museum in Denmark.

On 27 May, 1942, the two Czech operatives waited at a corner where the Mercedes-Benz cabriolet had to slow to negotiate a tight turn and although mechanical failures meant Operation Anthropoid didn’t go to plan, the wounds which finally killed Heydrich were inflicted by a grenade.  The tossed grenade actually missed ending up in the rear compartment where the target was sat and instead exploded outside, just ahead of the right-side rear wheel.  What happened was shrapnel from the device passed through the cushion of the rear seat and entered Heydrich’s torso and it’s believed it took with it some of the horsehair used as the upholstery’s bombast.  The most common theory to account for his death (nine days after the blast) is the horsehair caused a systemic infection, trigging sepsis and putting his body into shock.  For the Czechs, the consequences were severe with the deaths and deportations in the thousands and never again did the Czechoslovak government-in-exile order such an operation.  In his honor, the programme to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland was named Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) and this was the start of what came to be called “the Holocaust”.  The circumstances of the loss of a man he regarded as “irreplaceable” appalled Hitler who found inexplicable the idea his representative would travel around occupied territory unescorted and in an un-armored, open-top car.  Accordingly, Mercedes-Benz was commissioned to build a run of armoured sedans to be allocated to the Nazi party.  This included the last 20 770Ks (W150, 1938-1943) and 37 two-door 540Ks (W29, 1936-1940) built on the already completed chassis and delivered between 1942-1944.

Bluster (pronounced bluhs-ter)

(1) Noisy, swaggering, empty threats or protests; inflated talk (often in the phrase “bluff and bluster”).

(2) Boisterous noise and violence.

(3) Of the wind, noisy; gusty; tumultuous.

(4) To speak or say loudly or boastfully

(5) To act in a bullying way

(6) To force or attempt to force (a person) into doing something by behaving thus

1520-1530: From the Middle English blusteren (aimlessly to wander about), the modern sense perhaps gained from the Middle Low German blustern & blüstern (to blow violently) (which may be compared with the later Low German blustern & blistern).  The obviously related words were blow and blast and it seems likely there was some connection with the East Frisian blüstern (to bluster), the Old Norse blāstr (blowing, hissing) and the Saterland Frisian bloasje (to blow) & bruusje (to bluster).  In English, the use in the context of the weather had emerged by at least the 1540s and the sense of bluster being “a storm of violent wind” (directly from the circa 1400 verb) was in general use by the 1580s.  The meaning “noisy, boisterous, inflated talk” appeared in print in 1704 but may long have been in oral use.  The adjective blustery dates from the 1730s and seems to be used first of persons in the sense of “noisy, swaggering” and may not have been applied to the weather (rough & stormy) for some decades.  Bluster is a noun & verb, blusterer, blusteration & blustrification are nouns, blustering is a noun, verb & adjective, blustered is a verb, blustersome, blusterous, blustery & blustery are adjectives and blusterously & blusteringly are adverbs; the noun plural is blusters.

Wind-blown: Lindsay Lohan at the beach on a blustery day.

Blustering was in use by the 1510s to imply “someone stormy or tempestuous” and by the 1650s it was applied to “boastful, swaggering people”.  In the (possibly co-authored) Pericles, Prince of Tyre (circa 1608), William Shakespeare (1564–1616) uses blusterous: “Now may your life be mild, for a blusterous birth had never babe!” (Act 3, Scene 1) and of course in Coriolanus and Sir John Falstaff he created archetypes of the loud, swaggering blustering character.  Bluster’s synonyms include boast, brag & rant.  There are a remarkable number of phrases meaning much the same thing as “all bluff and bluster” (full of talk but lacking substance) including: “all bark and no bite”, “all foam, no beer”, “all fur coat and no knickers”, “all garnish and no meat”, “all hat and no cattle, “all icing, no cake”, “all lime and salt, no tequila”, “all mouth and no trousers”, “all shot, no powder”, “all show, no go, “all sizzle and no steak and “all talk and no action”.

Bombast and bluster are much associated with politicians although, if anything, those tendencies are now seen less as the trend from at least the mid-twentieth century has been towards simplicity and repetition (the most effective form clearly believed to be the 3WS (three word slogan)).  In political rhetoric however, bombast and bluster did have a long and sometimes ignoble history and among critics the terms often were used interchangeably because, despite the subtle differences in meaning, very often there’d be elements of both in the one speech.  They are different faults: Bombast refers to inflated, grandiose, pompous language. The criticism is that the speaker's words are overly elaborate or impressive-sounding relative to their actual substance; after listening for a while to some of Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) carefully crafted phrases, Aneurin “Nye” Bevan (1897–1960) responded by saying: “The majesty of his words conceals the poverty of his thoughts.”.  Bluster is different in that it refers to loud, aggressive, boastful, or threatening talk, often with the implication there is more noise than action.  Bluster is a label applied to the speaker's swaggering manner rather than their vocabulary or phraseology.  So, bombast is a thing of style & language while bluster is about tone and attitude but there are many instances of speeches contain both bombast (grandiose language) with bluster (aggressive attitude); the preferred collective term is “hot air”.  That of course reflects the different etymology, bombast (originally “padding or stuffing” in its figurative sense meaning “stuffed excessively with words” while bluster (originally of stormy wind conditions) suggesting “noisy or overbearing speech”.  So, in as few words as possible: bombast is verbal inflation; bluster is verbal intimidation.

Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) at the UN, September 2025.

Mr Trump often is described as “bombastic” but that really is a misuse, albeit a common one among those commenting on politics and politicians.  Whether or not one concurs with his views, Mr Trump usually expresses himself in commendably succinct terms which readily can be understood by most, eschewing the use of long, unusual or obscure words.  It’s an example of how the meaning of bombast has shifted but what critics really mean to say is Mr Trump is inclined to bluster and prone to exaggerate; he does not however “pad out” his sentences with decorative phrases or words inserted mere to prove his erudition.  Instead, his language is direct and simple and while someone like the classically educated Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) sometimes couldn’t resist delighting at least some in his audience with the odd linguistic flourish, Mr Trump likes simple, punchy words and some fragments from his address to the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) in September 2025 illustrate his approach: “One year ago, our country was in deep trouble.  But today, just eight months into my administration, we're the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close.”; “This is the greatest administration in US history.  We have strongest borders, military and relationships around the world.”; “What is the purpose of the United Nations?  It has such tremendous, tremendous potential.  But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential.  For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly-worded letter and then never follow that letter up.  It's empty words and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”; “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.”; “Europe has to step it up.  They can't be doing what they're doing.  They're buying oil and gas from Russia while they're fighting Russia.  It's embarrassing to them.”; “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should, too often it's actually creating new problems for us to solve.  The best example is the No. 1 political issue of our time, the crisis of uncontrolled migration. It's uncontrolled. Your countries are being ruined.  Your countries are going to hell.”; “Climate change is the greatest con job ever.  If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”  There are grounds on which Mr Trump can be criticized but he uses plain, simple words and his meaning is always clear and that approach may be compared with that of Kamala Harris (b 1964; VPOTUS 2021-2025), his opponent in the 2024 election and it wasn't only Fox News that liked to describe her speech as a “word salad”.  In fairness, what Ms Harris did wouldn’t have met the clinical threshold of what in psychiatry used to be called schizophasia (a severe form of disorganized speech consisting of a confused, unintelligible mixture of seemingly random, unconnected words and phrases; while the words themselves may be grammatically correct, they lack logical or semantic meaning, making the speech impossible for a listener to understand) but it could be a challenge to gain meaning from her words.  At least Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 and POTUS 2021-2025) had an excuse for his mumbling and incoherence; he was senile.

Palindrome

Palindrome (pronounced pal-in-drohm)

(1) A word, line, verse, number, sentence etc, reading the same backward as forward.

(2) In biochemistry, a region of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides is identical with an inverted sequence in the complementary strand.

1638: From the Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palindromos) (running back again; recurring, literally “literally "a running back”) the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + δρόμος (dromos) (direction, running, race, racecourse).  Pálin was from the primitive Indo-European kwle-i-, a suffixed form of the root kwel- (revolve, move round) (kw- becomes the Greek p- before some vowels.  The word palindrome was first published by Henry Peacham (1578-circa 1645) in The Truth of Our Times (1638).  Although derived from the Greek root palin + dromos, the Greek language uses καρκινικός (carcinic, literally “crab-like”) to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.  The related palinal (directed or moved backward, characterized by or involving backward motion) dates from 1888.  The noun palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire) dates from the 1590s and was from either the sixteenth century French palinod or the Late Latin palinodia, from the Greek palinōidia (poetic retraction), again from pálin; the related form were palinodical & palinodial.  The word palinode was sometimes applied to the apologies artists and others in the Soviet Union were compelled to publish, often after being accused of formalism or something just as heinous.  Palindrome & palindromist are nouns, palindromic is an adjective and palindromically is an adverb; the noun plural is palindromes.

Pierre Laval (1883–1945; Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944).

Even before he spent the final years of his political career as a senior official in the collaborationist regime of Vichy France under Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), the palindromic Laval was already notorious for his dubious financial dealings while in government and being a party to the Hoare–Laval Pact (1935), concocted with the then British Foreign Secretary Samuel “Slippery Sam” Hoare (1880-1959) with which the pair sought to end the tiresome Second Italo-Ethiopian War (the last of the colonial land-grabs in the era of European colonization) because it was “bad for business”.  Something of a precursor to the 1938 Munich Agreement in which the UK and France acquiesced to the Nazi’s dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in exchange for what, delusionally, they believed would be Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) final territorial claim in Europe, what the Hoare–Laval Pact offered was a partition of Abyssinia, something that, in retrospect, would have been merely the first step to Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) absorbing the whole country as a colony of Imperial Italy.  Even for the by then jaded people of France and the UK the cynicism was too blatant and the reaction when the details were made public compelled the dismissal of both ministers.

Sir Samuel Hoare ice-skating, October 1935.

An expert skater, Hoare broke his nose while skating in Switzerland at the time of the furore surrounding the Hoare-Laval Pact; in editorial offices around the world, photographs were captioned: “Hoare skating on thin ice”.  When told of the broken nose, Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) responded: “Pity it wasn't his neck.”  Meeting his unhappy ex-minister after his dismissal, George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) (who had urged the British government to endorse the pact) tried to cheer him up by repeating a joke doing the rounds of the London clubs: “No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.”  He was disappointed when Sir Samuel didn’t laugh.

In the way things are done in politics, after serving their brief time in the penalty box (sin-bin in some sports), both made comebacks although Laval's ended not well.  Slippery Sam found a niche as the UK's ambassador to Spain (1940-1944) where his talents proved invaluable for his dual role (bribing generals and persuading Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) not to get too involved in the war).  Created Viscount Templewood upon his return to the UK, he was an active member of the House of Lords and wrote a number of books but his later life was lived in the shadow of the 1930s, remembered always as one of the 15 “guilty men” portrayed in the 1940 book of the same name, co written by three politically-aligned journalists (Frank Owen (1905-1979, Liberal), Michael Foot (1913-2010, Labour) and Peter Howard (1908-1965, Conservative).  Hoare’s own memoir of the 1930s (Nine Troubled Years (1954)) was an apologia for the appeasement policies of the decade and although if sympathetically read (those were, as he said, “troubled years”) his “guilt” emerges somewhat mitigated, his reputation never recovered.

Otto Abetz (1903-1958; de facto German ambassador to Paris 1940-1944, left) shaking hands with Marshal Pétain (right), Paris, November 1941.

Pétain had little faith in the arrangements his regime negotiated with the Germans honored, telling colleagues after one meeting: "It will take six weeks to work out all the details and six months for the Germans to forget all about them."  Because Berlin didn't formerly created diplomatic relations with France after the defeat in 1940, Otto Abetz was never properly credentialed as ambassador but wholly he discharged the duties.  His great nephew is Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, Treasurer of Tasmania since 2024).

Laval, sniffing the winds of French defeat in 1940, became a convinced fascist, serving in the Vichy regime between July 1940-August 1944 variously as vice-president of the Council of Ministers and head of government.  He fled to Spain after the Liberation of France but was extradited and put on trial for plotting against the security of the state and collaborating with the Nazis; found guilty, he was executed by firing squad in October 1945.  Old Marshal Pétain fared a little better.  Although also sentenced to death for his role during the occupation, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969), then serving as Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, couldn’t bring himself to sign the death warrant for one of the country’s heroes of World War I (1914-1918) and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, officially on the grounds of “age”.

Perhaps surprisingly, the longest known palindromic word is not German despite their fondness for lengthy compounds.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records the record is held by the 19 character saippuakivikauppias which is Finnish for “a travelling salesman who sells lye (caustic soda)”.  It’s said not often to come up in conversation and seems to exist only a curiosity used in lists of long palindromes where it's the undisputed number one.  In English, palindromes of a few characters are common but examples with more than seven letters are rare.  Tattarrattat (the sound made by knocking on a door), as it’s usually spelled, has 12 characters but is a bit of a fudge because it’s also an onomatopoeia so some lexicographers insist it doesn’t count.  Also cheating but clever is the 11 letter aibohphobia meaning a fear of palindromes, the construct being the suffix -phobia written in reverse + phobia.  Adding to the charm is that while doubtlessly a non-existent condition, it's suspected there are anyway a few of those in the literature of psychiatry; certainly there's a goodly number in the many "phobia lists".  From India, there's kinnikinnik, a smoking mixture of bark & leaves (but no tobacco).  English’s longest “real” palindrome appears to be detartrated, the past participle of detartrate (to remove tartrates (salts of tartaric acid)), especially from fruit juices and wines, in order to reduce tartness or sourness).  Not only is it a real word but it describes a common process in the industrial production of foods and beverages.

Announced on an auspicious date.

On 2 February 2020, Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), in a now deleted Instagram post, for the first time publicly acknowledged her relationship with Bader Shammas (b 1987), a group photograph from Dubai, including the couple and her sister Aliana (b 1993), captioned: "@aliana lovely night with sister and my boyfriend bader💗".  The couple would later marry.  2 February 2020 (02-02-2020) was the twenty-first century’s only eight-digit global palindrome (ie it works with either the MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY convention).  The last eight-digit global palindrome happened 908 years earlier on the even more numerically symmetrical 11 November 1111 (11-11-1111) and the next one will be 908 years hence on 3 March 3030 (03-03-3030).  Six and seven digit palindromes are more common.

Palindromic sentences are often created and these are judged not by length but by their elegance which is why “never odd or even” often is cited as an example.  Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a word nerd and recreational mathematician who devised the classic "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and this approach was in the 1980s taken to its logical extreme in two novels, Satire: Veritas (1980, 58,795 letters) by David Stephens and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo (1986, 31,954 words) by Lawrence Levine, both said to be palindromically perfect and wholly nonsensical.  Shorter, but of admirable clarity, are the many baptismal fonts in Greece and Turkey which bear the circular 25-letter inscription NIYON ANOMHMATA MH MONAN OYIN (Wash (my) sins, not only (my) face).  This appears also in several English churches.  Originally specific to poetry, a palindromic verse (one reading the same forwards or backwards) was in literary criticism described as cancrine, from the Latin cancer (crab) + -īnus (the suffix added to a noun base (especially a proper noun) to form an adjective in the sense of “of or pertaining to”), the notion being “cancrīnus”, the image based on most species of crab being able to walk sideways (both left & right).  In general use, by extension, the world came to be used to mean “reading something backwards”.

Sixteenth century German "oath skull" on which defendants swore their oaths in the Vehmic courts (the Vehmgericht, Holy Vehme or Vehm, the alternative spellings being Feme, Vehmegericht & Fehmgericht), a tribunal system established in Westphalia during the late Middle Ages.

Created essentially because of the inadequacies of the official justice system, they're now often referred to as "proto-vigilante" courts but for centuries they filled a niche before they came increasingly to be associated with injustice and corruption before finally being abolished in 1811, a half-decade after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the source of their original authority.

In linguistics, these “grid of letters” are called “acrostics”.  Acrostic was from the Middle French acrostiche & acrostique (persisting in modern French as acrostiche) and its etymon the Late Latin acrostichis, from the Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), the construct being ἄκρο- (ákro-) (the prefix indicating, inter alia, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos) (row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse) (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European steyg- (to climb, go)).  They remain still a popular form for the “word puzzles” appearing in the surviving newspapers and magazines.  In verse, an acrostic is a poem in which the initial letters of each line make a word or words when read downwards (the mesostich (middle) or telestich (final) letter of each line might also be used) whereas in prose the first letter of each paragraph or sentence might make up a word.  It’s speculated the earliest acrostic may have been created as a mnemonic device and used as a tool to aid oral transmission and most of the acrostics in the Old Testament are of the alphabetical or abecedarian (in this context “a work which uses words or lines in alphabetical order”) kind.  For poets however it may have been just an intellectual exercise (or perhaps “a gimmick” if not well-received by certain critics).  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) used a simple acrostic device in ABC, a twenty-four stanza poem in which the first letter of the first word in each stanza is the appropriate letter of the alphabet, from A to Z.  The dramatist Benjamin Jonson (circa 1572–circa 1637) in his Argument (prefacing The Alchemist (1610)) used an acrostic verse (“argument” a technical term meaning “the abstract” or “plot summary”).

The palindromic (or “all-round”) acrostic seen on the oath skull is known as the “Sator square” or the “Cirencester word square” because a copy was in 1868 discovered on a painted wall plaster in what is now Victoria Road in the English town of Cirencester in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire.  At the time of the inscription, during the Roman occupation of Britain, the settlement was called Corinium.  The best documented of the early examples was one etched onto a wall in the doomed city of Herculaneum, the conclusion of most being Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas should be understood as “The sower, Arepo, makes the wheel work”), the trick being it can be read vertically, horizontally, or in the diagonal.  Known also as pentacles, the “SATOR” was the most commonly found in the Western Esotericism of late antiquity, used by Kabbalists, Gnostics, alchemists and other pre-medieval mystics in the creation of magic spells, amulets, potions etc and were thus often seen in the shops of apothecaries.  For deconstructionists, the translations are:

sator: sower/planter
tenet: he/she/they/it holds/has/grasps/possesses
opera: work/exertion/service
rotās: wheels

There has been speculation about the meaning of this pentacle, some a little fanciful and it’s not impossible things were made up just to fit, rather as "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined to use each letter in the alphabet and "DICK HOOD DID EXCEED" serves no purpose other than to appear the same if inverted and viewed in a looking glass.

ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR

The one on the skull was a second form, copied from an Egyptian papyrus of the late fourth or early fifth century AD:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

Among professionals and amateurs alike, there has been much debate about the possible meaning(s) and although there are a number of permutations, most hint at something like “the sower Arepo holds the wheels carefully”, indicating the care required when sowing the seeds for next season’s crop.  The form may however in some places have been vested with magical or religious significance.  In sixth century Ethiopia, the five words (corrupted to Sador, Alador, Danet, Adera and Rodas), were used as the names of the five nails of Christ's Cross.  In France, the word square was known to have been used as a form of lucky charm and reputedly, one fortunate inhabitant of Lyon was cured of madness by eating three crusts of bread (each inscribed with the square) while making five recitations of the Pater Noster in remembrance of the five wounds of Christ and the five nails.  Presumably encouraged by such an event, Spanish and Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries took these charms to South America where they were said variously to protect folk from snake bites and aid childbirth.

Corinthian

Corinthian (kuh-rin-thee-uhn)

(1) Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Corinth, the ancient Greek city-state.

(2) An native, inhabitant or resident of Corinth, and its suburbs.

(3) Something with origins in Corinthia.

(4) One of the five styles of classical architecture in Ancient Greece (the others being Doric, Composite, Tuscan & Ionic).

(5) Something ornate and elaborate; something luxurious or extravagantly trimmed

(6) In literacy criticism, an ornate style (an alternative to describing such writing as "rococo" or "baroque" but distinct from "purple").

(7) Someone given to living luxuriously; dissolute.

(8) A worldly, fashionable person, accepted in society although thought by some to be raffish.

(9) An amateur sportsman; an accomplished amateur athlete (archaic).

(10) A sailboat owner who helms his or her own boat in competitive racing.

(11) A phony descriptor of a type of leather used by Chrysler Corporation in the US during the 1970s.

1350–1400: From the Middle English Corinthi(es) (the men of Corinth) from the Latin Corinthiī from the Greek Korínthioi.  The sense “of or pertaining to Corinth" (the ancient Greek city-state) is from the 1590s and gradually, it replaced the mid-fifteenth adjective Corynthoise.  The sense as a classification in what was becoming a formalised architectural order is from the 1650s.  The noun meaning literally "inhabitant of Corinth" dates from the 1520s; Corinthies was attested from the late fourteenth century.  During Antiquity, other Greek cities regarded the inhabitants of Corinth as a bit gauche, noting their preference for ornate, almost ostentatious architecture and their notorious fondness for luxury and licentiousness.  There was intellectual snobbery among the Athenians too, the Corinthians thought too interested in commerce and profit and not sufficiently devoted to thought and learning.  Corinthian the noun and adjective thus, in various slang or colloquial senses in English, came to be associated with extravagance, sin and conspicuous consumption, especially in the decades after the 1820s.  Corinthian is a noun & adjective, Corinthianism is a noun and Corinthianize, Corinthianizing & Corinthianized are verbs; the noun plural is Corinthians.

The dapper Franz von Papen while serving as Germany's ambassador to Turkey (1939-1944).

In a nod to Paul's writings in the New Testament, the verb Corinthianize came to mean “to be licentious or sexually immoral” while the companion noun Corinthianism described licentious or sexually immoral behaviour.  Softened a little, by the eighteenth century, “a Corinthian” could be used also of a chap a bit raffish but verging on socially respectable and welcomed in at least some polite circles.  Presumably by association, the word came to be used also of sporting events (originally horse racing and yachting) which were restricted to “gentleman amateurs”.  Thus the old rogue Franz von Papen (1879-1969; Chancellor of Germany 1932 & vice chancellor 1933-1934), an accomplished amateur jockey, could have been called “a Corinthian” and the sly fox demonstrated his defensive skills when he gained one of three acquittals handed down the IMT (International Military Tribunal) during the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946).  Although unrelated to the verdict, the journalists accredited to the trial voted him “best-dressed defendant”.

A tattoo Lindsay Lohan tattoo (inked in 2013), inspired by 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

In scripture, the implications of that association were later reflected in the New Testament, most memorably in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1).  The second letter is thought to have been written circa 56 AD, shortly after he penned the first and was addressed to the Christian community in city of Corinth, a major trading centre which, although by then noted for its rich artistic and philosophic traditions, was a place also of vice and depravity.  It was this last aspect that compelled Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church and in it he sharply rebuked them for permitting immoral practices in the community.  In response, the Corinthians had cracked-down on some of the worst excesses and Paul wrote his second letter to congratulate them on their reforms and even commended forgiving sinners and welcoming them back to the flock.  Harsh though his words could be, Paul’s preference is always restoration, not punishment.  The letter then discusses some sometimes neglected characteristics of the Christian church such as generosity to others and devotes some time to defending himself against attacks on his ministry, reminding the Corinthians both of his own poverty and the harsh reality of what it meant to be a minister of Christ in the Roman empire: beatings, imprisonment, hunger, and the constant threat of death.  In the King James Version (KJV; 1611) 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 read:

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

Most quoted now are modern translations which are more accessible such as the International Bible Society's (now Biblica) New International Version (NIV; 1978):

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

In Paul’s prescriptive way, verses 4-7 details the workings of love in three steps.  There are firstly the positive aspects of love being patient and kind but then elaborated are the eight negatives love must never be: not jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable or resentful, nor does it insist upon its own way or gloat at wrong.  Finally, Paul notes the five positive ways in which love reacts, joining in rejoicing at truth, supports, believes, hopes and endures all things.  Verse 8 returns to the theme of superiority of love but explicates the contrast between love and spiritual gifts as the contrast between permanence and transience; spiritual gifts which are incomplete will pass when wholeness comes whereas love will not.  The contrast is thus between the perfect and imperfect.

United States Supreme Court Building (1935), looking towards the West Pediment.

The Corinthian style of architecture was one of the five classical orders created in Ancient Greece.  Similar in many ways to the Ionic, the points of difference were (1) the unusually slender proportions, (2) the deep capital with its round bell, decorated with acanthus leaves and a square abacus with concave sides.  The Corinthian capital typically has two distinct rows of acanthus leaves above which appear eight fluted sheaths, from each of which spring two scrolls (helices), one of which curls beneath a corner of the abacus as half of a volute while the other curls beneath the centre of the abacus.  The marble pillars used on the east and west pediments of the United States Supreme Court Building, constructed between 1932-1935, are a fine example of the Corinthian style.

United States Supreme Court Building, East Pediment.

Much less known than the more frequently photographed West Pediment, the East Pediment of the Supreme Court Building is at the rear of the structure and is much admired by architects because of the elegance of the thirteen symmetrically balanced allegorical figures in the sculptural group designed by Hermon A MacNeil (1866–1947).  The ornate details in the two rows of acanthus leaves are the defining characteristic of the Corinthian pillar.

Manuel Esteve Guerrero (1905-1976) in Corinthian helmet, 1938.  The casual pose, cigarette in hand, a cloak (resembling a Greek chlamys) slung over one shoulder, indicates the image was for “non-professional” use.

Manuel Esteve Guerrero had begun his academic studies at the University of Granada studying law but such was his interest in archaeology he switched disciplines, taking a degree in philosophy and literature, specializing in art history.  After working for some years as a teacher at the Padre Luis Coloma Institute, he was in 1931 appointed director of the Jerez Municipal Library (1873) when he remained until retirement in 1975, his most controversial duty in the role the period in the 1930s & 1940s when he was vested with responsibility for enforcing the strict censorship policies imposed by the newly established fascist regime Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975).  That would have been no small task because, under the caudillo, the index of proscribed texts was long.  As librarian, he was also, ex officio, municipal archaeologist and in 1938 his team made the remarkable discovery of a well-preserved Corinthian helmet, unearthed some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the mouth of the Guadalete River, near the now-decommissioned irrigation dam known as La Corta, close to El Portal in the municipality of Jerez.  The significance of the artefact (widely publicized on both sides of the Atlantic as “Discovery of a Greek Helmet in the Guadalete”) was the confirmation of the long-suspected Greek presence in Andalusia during the seventh & sixth centuries BC.

Publicity shot for Chrysler Corporation's 1974 Imperial LeBaron Four-Door Hardtop, trimmed in chestnut tufted leather.

The hide in the 1974 Imperials wasn't described as “rich Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos.  While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the motif.  Although Chrysler mostly used the term “rich Corinthian leather” in the sales material for the Cordoba, after it appear in the brochures for the last (for a while) Imperial, it became common to refer thus to the leather in any of the corporation's cars of the era.  Some did with a sense of irony while some innocent souls actually believed it.  Manufacturers do like words which might evoke a "certain something" and in the 1970s Rolls-Royce advertised their timber veneer as "Circassian walnut cut from century-old trees" which was a correct term for Juglans regia (a species of walnut) but the stuff was more typically called "English walnut" or "common walnut".  Neither would have been though suitable and for Rolls-Royce to use "common" about any of their products would have been unthinkable.

1975 Imperial LeBaron Four Door Hardtop.

"Rich Corinthian leather" was a term coined by the Bozell advertising agency in 1975 to describe the tufted upholstery available as an alternative to the standard velour in the Chrysler Cordoba, the hides in corporation's products trimmed with the same leather produced by the Radel Leather Manufacturing Company of New Jersey described only as "leather" (except for the reference in certain advertising for the 1975 Imperial, then in its last days).  The "Corinthian" tag was chosen because something special was needed for the Cordoba, the first "small" (in the context of the company's mid 1970s line-up) Chrysler ever offered in the US and the name was thought successfully to convey the association with something rare, of high quality, luxurious and, doubtlessly, "European".  Religiosity in the US somewhat more entrenched than elsewhere in the West, it’s likely many were well-acquainted with the books of the New Testament book but for those less pious, Corinthian was one of those words which somehow carried the desired connotations, even among those with no idea of the links.  Perhaps it was because it sounded European that some assumed the leather came from Spain, Italy or some such place where many words end in vowels.  Richard Nixon (1913-1994; POTUS 1969-1974) noted that linguistic phenomenon when he discussed the circumstances in which Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; POTUS 1953-1961) was compelled to dismiss his chief of staff (Sherman Adams (1899-1986)), who had accepted as a gift, inter alia, a vicuña coat.  Nixon observed that while there was no doubt most Americans had no idea whether vicuña was animal, vegetable or mineral, just the perceived mystique was enough to convince them it was something expensive and therefore corrupting.

1976 Chrysler Cordoba advertisement.  When released as a 1975 model, Chrysler heralded the Cordoba as "the new small Chrysler".  The word "small" is relative, the significance being the departure from the corporation's long-standing policy of the Chrysler brand not appearing on anything except "full-sized cars" but economic reality was biting the 1970s and the big cars were in their last days.  Then (as now), to most of the rest of the world, the Cordoba seemed pretty big and at the time the appeal in the US was real, even those not greatly concerned about the increase in the price of gas (petrol) fretting about the prospect of shortages. 

Whether the association with the Cordoba's “rich Corinthian leather” generated many sales in Chrysler's other divisions (Plymouth, Dodge & Imperial) isn’t known but the the phrase certainly gained a remarkable traction amid the cacophony of exaggeration and puffery which sustains modern capitalism.  The Cordoba was introduced in 1975 as a "down-sized" model for consumers suddenly interested in fuel economy in the post oil-crisis world and the manufacturers knew those who felt compelled to buy smaller cars didn’t necessarily want them to be any less luxurious and that became the theme for the promotional campaign, led this time on television and fronted by a celebrity spokesperson, the actor Ricardo Montalbán (1920-2009).  Born in Mexico of Spanish descent, Montalbán looked distinguished and spoke in cultivated English with just enough of a Spanish accent to make plausible the link of “Corinthian leather” with cattle on the plains of Spain.  Mr Montalbán only ever spoke of "Corinthian leather" or "rich Corinthian leather" but in the print advertising "Corinthian leather" & "fine Corinthian leather" (sometimes with a plural "leathers" also appeared.  Despite that, the industry myth remains his TV advertisements all included "fine Corinthian leather".  

In the advertising, Mr Montalbán spoke of “the thickly-cushioned luxury of seats, available even in rich Corinthian leather” and although sometimes he’d call it “soft” instead, all people seemed to remember was the leather was Corinthian.  So successful was the campaign that Chrysler decided to make the Corinthian label exclusive to the Cordoba and when Mr Montalbán was later assigned to advertise other Chryslers, in the same mellifluous tone, he commended only the “rich leather".  Later, when interviewed on late night television, cheerfully he admitted that the term meant nothing but that wasn't quite true: it meant whatever people who heard it wanted it to mean and that made it a perfect word for advertising.  The agency definitely were proud of their appropriation and when the 1977 Cordoba's steering wheel gained a leather covering, this was celebrated in the brochure with: "...hand-stitched Corinthian leather-covered rim-tilt steering wheel.  Marvelous."

1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429 (left) in Grabber Blue (J) with “comfortweave” interior in Corinthian White (EW) interior and 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 (right) in Wimbledon White (M) with black interior (all 1969 Boss 429s were trimmed in black (DAA)).

Before Chrysler decided “Corinthian leather” was a thing, Ford had conjured up “Corinthian white”, using the description for both a paint code and the vinyl used for interior trim.  Ford’s Corinthian White was very close to their long used “Wimbledon White”, the latter slightly less stark and closer to an “eggshell white” although far from a “cream”.  The difference is apparent only if two vehicles are parked side-by-side and restoration houses say Corinthian White can be re-created by paint suppliers which achieve the effect by adding a small amount of a certain shade of blue to the mix.

The Rolls-Royce Camargue

Although it’s never been confirmed by the factory, one source claims that a consequence of Chrysler's agency in 1974 coming up with “rich Corinthian leather” was that Rolls-Royce was forced to abandon the idea of calling their new model the Corinthian, adopting instead Camargue, (a region on the Mediterranean coast in the south of France).  For Rolls-Royce, Camargue was probably a better choice, tying in with their existing Corniche two-door saloon (which many might have called a coupé) and convertible (by the 1970s factory (mostly) had ceased to use the historic terms FHC (Fixed-Head coupé) and DHC (Drop-Head Coupé (DHC) although there was in 2007 a nostalgic, one-off revival for the Phantom Drophead Coupé).  The French word corniche has certain technical meanings in geology and architecture but Roll-Royce used it in the sense of “a coastal road, especially one cut into the face of a cliff”, specifically using the imagery of the Grande Corniche on the French Riviera, just north of the principality of Monaco.  The factory had first used the Corniche name in 1939 for a prototype light-weight, high-performance car which could match the pace of the big, supercharged, straight-eight Mercedes-Benz able to explore Germany’s newly built autobahns at sustained high speeds never before possible.  The car was damaged during testing in France and was abandoned there after the outbreak of hostilities, only to be destroyed in a bombing raid although whether the Luftwaffe (the German air force) or the RAF (the UK's Royal Air Force) was responsible isn’t known.

1968 Bentley T1 Coupé Speciale by Pininfarina (chassis CBH4033).  After this, it wasn't as if the factory wasn't aware of how Italians thought a Rolls-Royce or Bentley coupé should look and the Speciale should have been a warning heeded although, to be fair, it was more accomplished than the Camargue.  Modernists, the Italians replaced the Circassian walnut veneer with black leather.

So whether it was a minor ripple of chaos theory or the factory always intended to continue allusions to continental geography, in 1975 the Camargue was released with few technical innovations of interest other than the automatic, split-level climate control system which was an industry first and said alone to cost about as much to produce as a middle-class buyer might spend on a whole vehicle.  Other footnotes included it being the first Rolls-Royce designed and produced (except for the odd carry-over component) using metric measurements and the first with the famous grill inclined at (for mid-century Rolls-Royce), a rakish 7^o rather than the perfectly vertical aspect always before used.   Now noticeably lower and wider, the grill still was built using a variant of the technique the architects of Antiquity employed to create the optical illusion of the columns appearing, to the naked eye, to be of identical dimensions although it wasn't exactly the old math of entasis which made a viewer perceive a slightly curved Corinthian pillar as perfectly perpendicular.

The Pantheon Temple, Rome (left) and 1985 Rolls-Royce Camargue (right).

The Pantheon's Latin inscription M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT really isn't all that poetic and reads like a note the draftsman might have put on the blueprint (had there then been blueprints): it translates as "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made [this building] when consul for the third time", crediting the Roman statesman & general, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (circa 63 BC–12 BC) who in 27 BC commissioned the construction during his third consulship.  The Pantheon that stands today was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus, 76–138; Roman emperor 117-138) circa 126 AD after the original structure suffered severe damage in a blaze. Hadrian choosing to retain Agrippa's inscription as a tribute (not all the emperors were narcissists).  Since AD 609, the Pantheon has been a Roman-Catholic church and is known as the Basilica Santa Maria ad Martyres (Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs).

Despite the popular perception, what Rolls-Royce describes as their "Pantheon grill" doesn't feature a classic entasis (slight swelling in the middle of a column to counteract the illusion of concavity) but the design does incorporate a similar visual effect: There is a (very) slight curvature which in the factory's vernacular is known as the "waftline".  Although there are, understandably, many references to the grill being the "Parthenon grill" (and there is a well-reviewed Greek restaurant in Murfreesboro, Tennessee called the Parthenon Grille), the factory has never used the term and say the designed was inspired by "Rome’s imposing Pantheon temple", a structure "...purposefully built with wider middle sections so the human eye perceives each long pillar to be completely straight."  What the architects of Antiquity did was use use an optical illusion as a "corrective" to achieve perfect visual symmetry and the Rolls-Royce engineers replicated the approach, the grill's columns wider towards the edges.  The waftline is used elsewhere, notably the gentle, upswept sweep along the sill-line which Rolls-Royce says "creates a powerful, poised stance and makes the car appear to be moving when stationary...", creating the impression of "calm perfect motion and accelerating quickly without fuss".  They clearly like the word "waft" because they coined the neologism "waftability" which is said to be "the essence of the brand".

1973 Rolls-Royce Corniche Saloon (left) and 1975 Rolls-Royce Camargue (right).

In 1975 however, it wasn't the almost imperceptible rake of the grill or the adoption of metric measurements which attracted most comment when the Camargue made its debut.  What was most discussed was (1) it being the world’s most expensive production car and (2) the appearance.  At that end of the market, the 30%-odd cost premium against the mechanically similar Corniche wasn’t going to produce the same effects in the elasticity of demand as would be noted lower in automotive pecking order, indeed, the Veblen effect can operate to make the more expensive product more desirable.  The consensus was the Corniche, although by then a decade-old shape, was better balanced and more elegant so for success to ensue, Rolls-Royce really were counting on Veblen to exert its pull.

Lancia Florida II (1957, left), Fiat 130 Coupé (1971, centre) & Rolls-Royce Camargue (1975, right).  The origin of the shape is most discernible in Pininfarina’s Lancia Florida, a different approach to the big coupé than would be taken in the 1950s by the Americans.  The later Fiat 130 coupé was one of those aesthetic triumphs which proved a commercial failure while the Camargue is thought a failure on all grounds although, for those who prize some degree of exclusivity, it remains a genuine rarity.  As it was, between 1975-1986, only 531 Camargues were sold (including a one-off Bentley version which was a "special order") while the Corniche lasted from 1971 until 1995, 6,823 leaving the factory including 561 Bentleys, the latter now much sought.  In a sense, the Camargue was ahead of its time because Rolls-Royce in the twenty-first century began offering some quite ugly cars and they have sold well, the Veblen effect working well.  

Unfortunately, the Camargue, while it did what it did no worse than a Corniche saloon, while doing it, it looked ungainly.  Styled by the revered Italian studio Pinninfarina, the look was derided as dated, derivative and clumsy and it’s this which has usually been thought to account for production barely topping 500 over the decade-odd it remained available.  In the years since, some tried to improve things and a number have been made into convertibles, an expensive exercise which actually made things worse, the roof-line one of the few pleasing aspects.  One buyer though was sufficiently impressed to commission a one-off Bentley version, one of the few instances of a model which genuinely can be claimed to be unique. The same designer at Carrozzeria Pininfarina who signed off on the Camargue was also responsible for the earlier Fiat 130 coupé, something in the same vein but on a smaller scale and the Fiat is a rectilinear masterpiece.

Platform by Mercedes-Benz, coachwork by Pininfarina.  1956 300 SC (left), 1963 230 SL (centre) & 1969 300 SEL 6.3 (right).

Whether the knife-edged severity of the 130 coupé could successfully have been up-scaled to the dimensions Rolls-Royce required is debatable but Pininfarina had lying around a styling exercise done years earlier, based on a Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 and it was this which seems to have inspired the Camargue.  The Italian studio’s interest in Mercedes-Benz had in preceding decades produced some admired designs although the occasional plans for limited production runs were never realized.  In 1955, a coupé based on the 300b saloon had been shown, followed a year later by a 300 SC which most thought better executed, and certainly more contemporary, than the Germans' own effort.  The best though was probably the 1963 230 SL which lost both the distinctive pagoda roof and some of leanness for which the delicate lines are most remembered but it was thought a successful interpretation.  Mercedes-Benz should of course have produced a two-door 300 SE 6.3 because the W111/W112 two door body (1961-1971) was their finest achievement but the planet lost nothing by Pininfarina's take on the idea being rightly ignored.  In retrospect Rolls-Royce probably wished they too had "failed to proceed" and when the time came to do another big coupé, the job was done in-house, the Bentley Continental (1991-2003) an outstanding design and neither Rolls-Royce nor Bentley have since matched the timeless lines.