Cinque (pronounced singk)
(1) In
certain games (those using cards, dice, dominoes etc), a card, die, or domino
with five spots or pips.
(2) As
cinquefoil (1) a potentilla (flower), (2) in heraldry, a stylized flower or
leaf with five lobes and (3) in topology, a particular knot of five crossings.
1350–1400:
From the Middle English cink, from
the Old French cinq (five), from the Vulgar
Latin cinque, from the Latin quīnque (five). The archaic spelling cinq was from the modern French cinq,
whereas the standard spelling probably emerged either under the influence of
the Italian cinque or was simply a
misspelling of the French. In typically
English fashion, the pronunciation “sank”
is based on a hypercorrect approximation of the French pronunciation, still
heard sometimes among what use to be called “the better classes”. The alternative forms were cinq (archaic), sinque (obsolete) and sink
& sank (both misspellings). The homophones are cinq, sink, sync &
synch (and sank at the best parties); the noun plural is cinques.
Cinque
outposts, attested since the 1640s was a term which referred to the five
senses. The noun cinquecento (written
sometimes as cinque-cento) is used in (as noun & adjective) criticism &
academic works when describing sixteenth century Italian art and literature. It dates from 1760, from the Italian
cinquecento (literally “500”) and was short for mil cinquecento (1500). The use to describe "a group of five,
five units treated as one," especially at cards or dice, dates from the late
fourteenth century and in English was borrowed directly from the French cinq, a dissimilation from Latin quinque (five) which in Late Latin also picked
up the familiar spelling cinque. The ultimate root was the primitive
Indo-European penkwe (five).
Cinquefoil housing stained glass (leadlight) window.
In
architecture, a cinquefoil is a ornament constructed with five cuspidated
divisions, the use dating from the late fifteenth century, from the Old French cinqfoil, the construct being cinq (five) + foil (leaf). The basis for the French form was the quinquefolium, the construct being quinque (five) + folium (leaf), from the primitive Indo-European root bhel- (to thrive, bloom). In Gothic tracery, there was a wide use of circular
shapes featuring a lobe tangent to the inner side of a larger arc or arch,
meeting other lobes in points called cusps projecting inwards from the arch and
architects defined them by the number of foils used, indicated by the prefix: trefoil
(3), quatrefoil (4), cinquefoil (5), multifoil etc. Although used as stand-alone fixtures, bands
of quatrefoils were much used for enrichment during the "Perpendicular Period" (the final phase of English Gothic architecture, dated usually between circa 1350–1550; it followed the "Decorated Style" and was characterized by strong vertical lines, large windows with intricate tracery, and elaborate fan vaulting) and, when placed with the axes set diagonally, quatrefoils were called
cross-quarters.
Porsche
"phone-dial" wheels, clockwise from top left: 1981 911SC, 1988 924S,
1987 944S & 1985 928S. With a myriad
of variations, the cinquefoil motif was a style for wheels used by a number of manufacturers,
the best known of which were the ones with which Porsche equipped the 911, 924,
944 & 928 where they were known as the “phone-dial”, a reference which may
puzzle those younger than a certain age. Because these have five rather than ten holes, they really should have picked up the nickname "cinquefoil" rather than "phone-dial" but the former was presumably too abstract or obscure so the more accessible latter prevailed.
Fiat 500 (2023), watercolor on paper by Monika Jones. While the artist hasn't provided notes, it's tempting to imagine the inspiration was something like “Lindsay Lohan in white dress during summer in Rome, leaning on Fiat 500, painted in the tradition of Impressionism.”
A classic of the La Dolce Vita era, the rear-engined Fiat 500 was in continuous production between 1957-1975 and was the successor to the pre-war Fiat 500 Topolino, an even more diminutive machine which proved its versatility in roles ranging from race tracks to inner-city streets to operating as support vehicles used by the Italian Army in the invasion of Abyssinia (1935). Almost 3.9 million of the post-war 500s (dubbed the Nuova Cinquecento (New 500)) were produced and as well as the two-door saloon (almost all fitted with a folding sunroof) there were three-door station wagons (the Giardiniera) & panel vans. Although not all wore the 500 badge, in the home market, universally Italians called them the Cinquecentro. There was also the unusual 500 Jolly, a cut down version built by Carrozzeria Ghia which featured wicker seats and a removable fabric roof in the style of the surrey tops once used on horse-drawn carriages. The Jolly was intended as “beach car”, some carried on the yachts of the rich and although Ghia built only 650 originals, many 500s have since been converted to “Jolly Spec”, one of coach-building’s less-demanding tasks. Being an Italian car, there were of course high-performance versions, the wildest of which was the Steyr-Puch 650 TR2 (1965-1969) which ran so hot it was necessary to prop open the engine cover while it was in use. The Nuova 500’s successors never achieved the same success but such was the appeal of the original that in 2007 a retro-themed 500 was released although, al la Volkswagen’s “new Beetles” (1997-2019), the configuration was switched to a water-cooled front-engine with FWD (front-wheel-drive).
1985 Ferrari Testarossa “monospecchio-monodado”.
The early Testarossas were fitted with centre-lock magnesium-alloy wheels, chosen for their lightness. Responding to feedback from the dealer network, as a running-change during 1988, these were substituted for units with a conventional five-bolt design. The centre-lock wheels were called monodado (one nut) while the five lug-types were the cinquedado (five nut) and because of the time-line, while all the monospecchio cars are also monodado, only some of the monodaddi are monospecchi. Monospecchi (literally "one mirror") is an unofficial designation for the early cars fitted with a single external mirror, mounted unusually high on the A-pillar, the location the product of Ferrari's interpretation of the EU's (European Union) rearward visibility regulations. The Eurocrats later clarified things and Testarossas subsequently were fitted with two mirrors in the usual position at the base of the A-pillar.
Plastic
wheelcover for the Ford (Australia) Fairmont XE (1982-1984, left), a circa 1949 British GPO standard
telephone in Bakelite (centre) (globally, the most produced handset in this
style was the Model 302, which, with a thermoplastic case, was manufactured in the US by Western Electric between
1937-1955 and plastic wheelcover for the Ford (Australia) Fairmont XF (1984-1988, right). Telephones with larger dial mechanisms usually didn't use all the available space for the finger-holes.
Probably some are annoyed at the “five-hole” wheel design coming to be known as the “phone-dial” because of course the classic rotary-dial mechanism had ten holes, one for each numeral. Ford Australia actually stuck to the classics when designing a plastic wheel-cover for the XE Fairmont (then the next rung up in the Falcon's pecking order) because it featured the correct ten holes and it was re-allocated as a “hand-me-down” for the Falcon when the XF was introduced, the Fairmont now getting an eight-hole unit. None of these seem ever to have been dubbed “phone-dials”, probably because plastic wheel–covers have never been a fetish like the older metal versions or aluminium wheels (often as “rims” in modern usage, a practice which also annoys some). The XE hubcap may be thought a decemfoil (10 leaf) and the XF unit a octofoil (8 leaf).
1971 Ford (South Africa) XY Fairmont GT with the GS Pack wheel covers.
The South African Fairmont GTs were never fitted with the "five slot" wheels used in Australia, getting instead the chromed wheel cover which in Australia was part of the "GS Pack", a collection of "dress-up" options designed to provide much of the look of a GT without the additional costs to purchase or insure one. The GS Pack wheel covers were first seen in Australia on the 1967 XR Falcon GT and came from the Mercury parts bin in the US where they'd appeared on the 1966 Mercury Comet Cyclone GT; they were designed to look like a chromed, naked wheel, the idea a tribute to the Californian hot rod community in which the motif originated.
1971 Ford
(Australia) XY Falcon GT with “five slot” wheels.
Although scholars of Latin
probably haven’t given much thought to the wheels Ford used in the 1960s &
1970s, their guidance would be helpful because the correct Latin form for “slot”
depends on context, the words being (1) Fissura:
“crack, split or narrow opening”, (2) Rima:
“narrow gap or slit”, (3) Foramen: “opening,
hole or perforation” and (4) Scissura
“cleft or division”. So a XY
GT’s wheel would be a cinquefissura, cinquerima, cinqueforamen or cinquescissura. The scholars would have to rule but cinquerima
seems best, tied in nicely with the modern (albeit contested) use of “rim” to
mean wheel.
In production over six generations between 1965-2008 the Fairmont was a "blinged-up" version of the Australian Ford Falcon (1960-2016), a car based on the US compact (1960-1969) Ford of the same name (the one-off 1970 US Falcon an entry level model in the intermediate Torinio (formerly Fairlane) range). Ford in the US would also use the Fairmont name for a compact (1978-1983) but the most quirky use was that between 1969-1971, Ford South Africa sold a car substantially similar to the Australian Falcon GT but badged it "Fairmont GT". Assembled (with some local components) in South Africa from CKD (completely knocked down) packs imported from Australia, the Fairmont name was chosen because US Falcons (assembled from Canadian CKD packs) had been sold in South Africa between 1960-1963 but had gained such a bad reputation (Ford Australia had to do much rectification work after encountering the same fragility) the nameplate was decreed tainted. In the technical sense, "Fairmont GT" would have been a more accurate name in Australia too because the Falcon GTs were, with the bling, built on the Fairmont assembly line; the choice of "Falcon GT" was just a desire by the marketing team to create a "halo" machine for the mainstream range, something which succeeded to an degree which probably surprised even those ever-optimistic types. Ford South Africa never offered a Fairmont GTHO to match the Falcon GTHOs produced in Australia to homologate certain combinations of parts for competition.
Lamborghini has used the phone-dial since the first incarnation appeared on the Silhouette in 1976 and it likes it still, left to right: Huranan, Gallardo, Countach, Diablo and Silhouette. With five "holes", these are true cinquefoils.
Despite being often called a "hubcap", what appeared on the South African Fairmont GTs really was a "wheel cover". The origin of the hubcap
was, fairly obviously, “a cap for hub”, something which dates from the age of
horse-drawn carts. Although they would
later become something decorative, hubcaps began as a purely function fitting
designed to ensure the hub mechanism was protected from dirt and moisture
because removing a wheel when the hub was caked in mud with bolts “rusted on”
could be a challenge. In the twentieth
century the practice was carried over to the automobile, initially without much
change but as wheels evolved from the wooden-spoked to solid steel (and even in
the 1920s some experimented with aluminium), the hubcaps became larger because
the securing bolts were more widely spaced.
This meant they became a place to advertise so manufacturers added their
name and before long, especially in the US, the humble hubcap evolved into the
“wheel-cover”, enveloping the whole circle and they became a styling feature,
designs ranging from the elegant to the garishly ornate and some were
expensive: in 1984 a set of replacement “wire” wheel covers for a second
generation Cadillac Seville (the so-called “bustle-back”, 1980-1985) listed at
US$995.00 if ordered as a Cadillac part-number and then that was a lot of
money. By the late 1980s, most wheel covers
were plastic pressings, other than in places like the isolated environments
behind the Iron Curtain.
Beltless: Lindsay Lohan in 2004 using touch-dial wall-phone, note the hooking of the thumbs in the belt loops. Remarkably,
although touch-dial (ie buttons) handsets appeared in the consumer market as
early as 1963 and soon became the standard issue, in 2024 it’s possible still to buy new, rotary-dial phones although only the user experience remains similar;
internally the connections are effected with optical technology, the “sound
& feel” emulated. There’s also a
market for updating the old Bakelite & Thermoplastic units (now typically between
70-90 years old) with internals compatible with modern telephony so clearly
there’s some nostalgia for the retro-look, if not the exact experience. Even after the touch-dial buttons became ubiquitous the old terminology persisted among users (and in the manufacturers' documents); when making calls users continued to "dial the number". The same sort of linguistic legacy exists today because ending a call is still the act of "hanging up" and that dates from the very early days of telephony when the ear-piece was a large conical attachment on a cord and at a call's conclusion, it was "hung up" on a arm, the weight of the receiver lowering the arm which physically separated two copper connectors, terminating the link between the callers.
Ms Justine
Haupt with custom rotary-dial cell phone in turquoise.
Ms Justine
Haupt (b 1987), an astronomy instrumentation engineer at New York’s Brookhaven National
Laboratory went a step further (backwards, or perhaps sideways, some might suggest) and built a rotary-dial
cell phone from scratch because of her aversion to what she describes as “smartphone
culture and texting”, something to which many will relate. In what proved a three year project, Ms Haupt
used a rotary-dial mechanism from a Trimline telephone (introduced in 1965 and produced
by Western Electric, the manufacturing unit of the Bell System), mounted on a
case 4 x 3 x 1 inches (100 x 75 x 25 mm) in size with a noticeably protuberant
aerial; it used an AT&T prepaid sim card and has a battery-life of some 24-30
hours. Conforming to the designer’s
choices of functionality, it includes two speed-dial buttons, an e-paper
display and permits neither texting nor internet access.
Designer colors: Available in black, white, turquoise, beige and the wonderful Atomic Hotline Red. The "atomic" in the name is an allusion the hotline's origin in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) which was all about nuclear weapons.
Although she intended the device as a one-off
for her own use, Ms Haupt was surprised at the interest generated and in 2022 began
selling a kit (US$170) with which others could build their own, all
parts included except the rotary-dial mechanism which would need to be sourced
from junk shops and such. Unlike the
larger mechanism on the traditional desk or wall-mounted telephone, the holes
in the Trimline’s smaller rotary-dial used the whole circle so the ten-hole
layout is symmetrical and thus the same as the XE Fairmont’s wheelcover,
something doubtlessly wholly coincidental. Unfortunately, Ms Haupt encountered many difficulties (bringing to market a device which connects to public telephony networks involves processes of greater complexity than selling mittens and such) but the project remains afoot.
The rough-fruited cinquefoil or sulphur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta).
In botany, the potentila is a genus containing some
three-hundred species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering
plants in the rose (rosaceae) family. Since
the 1540s it’s been referred to as the cinquefoil (also “five
fingers” or “silverweeds”), all distinguished by their compound leaves of five
leaflets.
The
Confederation of Cinque Ports was a group of coastal towns in Kent, Sussex and Essex,
the name from the Old French which means literally “five harbors”. The five were Hastings, Sandwich, Dover,
Romney, and Hythe, all on the western shore of the English Channel, where the
crossing to the continent is narrowest.
Because of (1) their importance in cross-channel trade and (2) being in
the region ,most vulnerable to invasion, they were granted special privileges and
concessions by the Crown in exchange for providing certain services essential
for maritime defense, dating from the years prior to the formation of the Royal
Navy in the fifteenth century. The name
was first used in the late twelfth century in Anglo-Latin and the late
thirteenth in English.
An
early version of a PPP (public-private partnership), with no permanent navy to defend
it from sea-borne aggression, the crown contracted with the confederation to
provide what was essentially a naval reserve to be mobilized when needed.
Earlier, Edward the Confessor (circa 1003–1066; King of England 1042-1066) had
contracted the five most important strategically vital Channel ports of that era
to provide ships and men “for the service of the monarch” and although this was
used most frequently as a “cross-Channel ferry service” and was not exclusively
at the disposal of the government. Under
the Norman kings, the institution assumed the purpose of providing the
communications and logistical connections essential to keeping together the two
halves of the realm but after the loss of Normandy in 1205, their ships and
ports suddenly became England’s first line of defense against the French. The
earliest charter still extant dates from 1278 but a royal charter of 1155 charged
the ports with the corporate duty to maintain in readiness fifty-seven ships,
each to be available each year for fifteen days in the service of the king, each
port fulfilling a proportion of the whole duty. In return the ports and towns received a
number of tax breaks and privileges including: An exemption from tax and tolls,
limited autonomy, the permission to levy tolls, certain law enforcement and
judicial rights, possession of lost goods that remain unclaimed after a year
and of flotsam (floating wreckage and such) & jetsam (goods thrown
overboard). Even at the time this was
thought to be a good deal and the leeway afforded to the Cinque Ports and the substantial
absence of supervision from London led inevitability to smuggling and
corruption although in this the Cinque Ports were hardly unique.
The
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was something like a viceroy and the office
still exists today but is now purely ceremonial and, although technically relict,
remains a sinecure and an honorary title, regarded as one of the higher honors
bestowed by the Sovereign and a sign of special approval by the establishment
which includes the entitlement to the second oldest coat of arms of England. The prestige it confers on the holder is
derived from (1) it being the gift of the sovereign, (2) it being England’s most
ancient military honor and (3), the illustrious standing of at least some of the
previous hundred and fifty-eight holders of the office. It is a lifetime appointment.
William Lygon (1872-1938), seventh Earl Beauchamp, in uniform as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
The
office of lord warden has not been without the whiff of scandal. William Lygon, who in 1891
succeeded his father as the seventh Earl Beauchamp, was at twenty-seven
appointed governor of New South Wales, a place to which he would later return,
happily and otherwise. In 1913, Lord Beauchamp, well-connected in society and the ruling Liberal Party’s leader in
the House of Lords, was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and, fond of pomp,
ceremony and dressing-up, he enjoyed the undemanding role.
However, in 1930, he embarked on a round-the-world tour which included a
two-month stint in Sydney, where he stayed, accompanied by a young valet who
lived with him as his lover. This, along
with other antics, did not go unnoticed, and the Australian Star newspaper duly reported:
“The most striking feature of the vice-regal
ménage is the youthfulness of its members … rosy cheeked footmen, clad in
liveries of fawn, heavily ornamented in silver and red brocade, with many
lanyards of the same hanging in festoons from their broad shoulders, [who] stood in the doorway, and bowed as we
passed in … Lord Beauchamp deserves great credit for his taste in footmen.”
The
report found its way to London when Beauchamp’s brother-in-law, the second Duke
of Westminster (1879–1953), hired detectives to gather evidence, hoping to
destroy him and damage the Liberal Party, the Tory duke hating both. Evidence proved abundant and not hard to find
so in 1931 Westminster publicly denounced Beauchamp as a homosexual to the
king (George V 1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India
1910-1936), who was appalled and responded that he “…thought men like that always shot themselves.” Westminster insisted a warrant be issued for Beauchamp’s
arrest and that forced him into exile.
Lady
Beauchamp seems to have shown some confusion upon being informed of her
husband’s conduct. Although he had
enjoyed many liaisons in their (admittedly large) residences (his partners including
servants, socialites & local fishermen) and his proclivities were an open secret
known to many in society, his wife remained oblivious and expressed some
confusion about what homosexuality was. Leading a sheltered existence, Lady Beauchamp had never been told about the mechanics of "the abominable
crime of buggery" and baffled, thought
her husband was being accused of being a bugler. Once things were clarified she petitioned for
divorce, the papers describing the respondent as:
“A man of perverted sexual practices,
[who] has committed acts of gross
indecency with male servants and other male persons and has been guilty of
sodomy … throughout the married life … the respondent habitually committed acts
of gross indecency with certain of his male servants.”
Beauchamp
decamped first to Germany which would once have seemed a prudent choice because, although homosexual acts between men had been illegal since the unification of Germany in 1871, under the Weimar
Republic (1918-1933), enforcement was rare and a gay culture flourished blatantly in the larger German cities, the Berlin scene famous even then, the writer Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) describing things memorably although it wasn't until his diaries were later published one fully could "read between the lines". After the Nazis gained power in 1933, things
changed and Beauchamp contemplated satisfying George V’s assumption but was
dissuaded, instead spending his time between Paris, Venice, Sydney and San
Francisco, then four of the more tolerant cities and certainly places where wealthy gay men usually could bribe their way out of any legal unpleasantness.
Sir
Robert Menzies in uniform as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of
Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) was one of the more improbable
appointments as lord warden. In the
office (1965-1978), he replaced Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK
prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) on whom the hardly onerous duties had
been imposed in 1941. The old soldier
Churchill had spent a lifetime appearing in military uniforms (his RAF (Royal Air Force) Air Commodore's outfit adorned with "pilot's wings" (aviator badge), apparently "self-awarded" on the basis of flying lessons (concluded after a non-fatal crash) he'd undertaken at the Royal Naval Flying School at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915)) and wore it well
but the very civilian Menzies looked something like one of the characters
from a Gilbert and Sullivan (Sir William Gilbert (1836–1911) & Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) comic opera. That he was
made lord warden rather than being granted a peerage was thought by some emblematic of the
changing relationship between the UK and Australia.
After
the death of George V, the warrant for Beauchamp’s arrest was lifted and, in
July 1937, he returned to England. What
did come as a surprise to many was that soon after his arrival, invitations
were issued for a Beauchamp ball, ostensibly a coming-of-age celebration for
Richard Lygon (1916-1970; the youngest son) but universally regarded as an
attempt at a social resurrection. In a
sign of the times, much of London society did attend although there were those
who declined and made it known why. Still,
it seems to have appeared a most respectable and even successful event, Henry "Chips" Channon (1897-1958) noting in his diary it was a bit dull, the “only amusing moment when Lord Beauchamp
escorted… a negress cabaret singer into supper.
People were cynically amused but I was not surprised, knowing of his
secret activities in Harlem. It is never
a long step from homosexuality to black ladies.” Lord Beauchamp didn’t long enjoy his return to
society, dying within a year of the ball but the vicissitudes of his life were helpful to Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) when writing Brideshead Revisited (1945), the
character of Lord Marchmain based on Beauchamp himself while the ill-fated
Sebastian Flyte was inspired by Beauchamp’s son Hugh (1904-1936) who shared and (with some enthusiasm) pursued
some of his father’s interests. Despite
it all, an appointment as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is for life and Lord
Beauchamp remained in office until his death.
