Establishment

Establishment (pronounced ih-stab-lish-muhnt)

(1) The act or an instance of establishing.

(2) The state or fact of being established.

(3) Something established; a constituted order or system.

(4) The existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority (ie “the Establishment” in the popular imagination which in this context should be used with an initial capital).  “The Establishment” is a nuanced synecdoche for “ruling class” with the emphasis on a dedication to the preservation of the status quo.

(5) As a modifier, belonging to or characteristic of “the Establishment” (the dominant or hegemonic “power elite” in a field of endeavor, organization etc (“the political establishment”, “the literary establishment” etc) or their “world view” (the “establishment interpretation of history”).

(6) A household; place of residence including its furnishings, grounds etc; a body of employees or servants

(7) A place of business together with its employees, merchandise, plant, equipment etc.

(8) A permanent civil, military, or other force or organization (often used to describe the defined number of personnel, in aggregate or sectionally, the “establishment” being the approved size, composition, and equipment of a unit.  In the military, the word is often modified (peacetime-establisnment, war-establishment, overseas-establishment etc).

(9) Any institution (university, hospital, library etc).

(10) The recognition by a state of a church as the state church.  In Christianity, the church so recognized, the term most associated with the Church of England (and historically the Church of Wales and Church of Ireland).

(11) A fixed or settled income (archaic).

1475–1485: A compound word, the construct being establish + -ment, from the Middle English establishment, stablishment & stablisshement, from the Old French establissement (which endures in Modern French as établissement), from the verb establir.  The noun establishment was from the late fourteenth century verb establish, from the Old French establiss-, the present participle stem of the twelfth century establir (cause to stand still, establish, stipulate, set up, erect, build), (which endures in Modern French as établir), from the Latin stabilire (make stable), from stabilis (stable).  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  In modern use, judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.  Establishment is a noun; the noun plural is establishments.

The noun establishmentarian describes “an adherent of the principle of an established church” dates from 1839 which of course begat the noun establishmentarianism (the doctrine of the establishmentarians).  What came first however was antidisestablishmentarianism, every schoolboy’s favorite long word although in scientific English there are constructions longer still and even the most alphabetically prolifically forms in English are short compared to those in languages such as Welsh, German and Maori.  It’s not clear who coined antidisestablishmentarianism but William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) used the word in his two volume work The state in its relations with the church (1841), a critique of “the ecclesiastical system established by law” and specifically the status of Church of England; it was a discussion of the implications of disestablishment (the act of withdrawing the church from its privileged relation to the state).  As words, neither establishmentarianism nor antidisestablishmentarianism now much disturb the thoughts of many in England and the only role for the latter has long been as a entry in the internet’s many lists of long, obscure or weird words.  In the narrow technical sense, the curious beast that is the Church of England became “an established church” only after the Act of Settlement (1701) and the subsequent Acts of Union (1707) which formalized the status of the institution, first in England and later Great Britain.  Functionally however, the English church can be considered “established” since the Act of Supremacy (1534) which abolished papal authority in England and declared Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) Supreme Head of the Church of England, the culmination of a process the king had triggered in 1527 when Clement VII (1478–1534; pope 1523-1534) proved tiresome in the matter of divorce law.  Although other sixteenth century statutes (notably the Act of Supremacy (1558) & Act of Uniformity (1558) which usually are referred to collectively as the “Elizabethan Religious Settlement”) added to the framework, the changes were mechanistic and procedural rather than substantive and simply built upon what had since 1534 been the established “state church” while the eighteenth century acts were essentially codifications which formalized the position in constitutional law.  Legally, little since has changed and 26 Church of England bishops (all appointed by the prime-minister (on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury)) continue (as the “Lords Spiritual”, their lay colleagues being the “Lords Temporal”) to sit in the House of Lords.

In English, establishment's original fifteenth century meaning was “a finalized and settled arrangement” (ie of income or property) while the sense of “the established church” entered the language in 1731, reflecting what had been the legal position since 1534.  The sense of “a place of business” emerged in the early 1830s while the idea of “a social matrix of ruling people and institutions” was in use as early as the mid 1920s although the phrase “the Establishment” (in the socio-political sense) didn’t enter popular use until the late 1950s, influenced by the publication in 1956 of The Power Elite by US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962 and usually styled C Wright Mills).  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions work to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.

When the establishment fractured: Republican (for Goldwater, left) & Democratic (against Goldwater, right), 1964 presidential campaign buttons, 1964.  This was before the color coding (Republican red, Democratic blue) was standardized in 2000 by the arbitrary choice of the TV networks.

The term “Establishment Republican” (a “moderate” or “liberal” member of the US Republican Party (as opposed to the right-wing fanatics who staged a hostile take-over) emerged in the 1980s to replace “Rockefeller Republican”.  Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977) was the archetype of the “liberal republican” in the decade between crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) losing the 1964 presidential election and crooked old Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) in 1974 resigning from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  It was in those years the right-wing began their “march through the party establishment”, a process accelerated during the Reagan (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) years and the moderates came to prefer the term “Establishment Republican” because Rockefeller was tainted by his association with the north-east, something with less appeal as the party’s centre of gravity shifted to the Mid-West and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The few surviving Establishment Republicans are now derided by the right wing fanatics as RINOs (Republicans in name only) and in 2024 the more useful descriptors are probably “pre-Trump Republican” & “post-Trump Republican”.  That linguistic moment may pass but the party at this time shows little inclination of seeking to find the centre ground, a wisdom advocated even by Richard Nixon.  In the pre-Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990)) UK, where the existence of “the Establishment” was quite obvious, it was the journalist Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) who popularized the term, explaining the concept as a kind of individual & institutional symbiosis by which “the right chaps” came to control the country’s “levers of power, influence and social authority”, exercised through social connections established between families or at the elite schools such men attended: “By the 'Establishment' I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.”

The Rover P5B, the car of the Establishment

In the UK, the Establishment had survived two world wars, the Great Depression, an abdication and even a couple of Labour governments but, by the 1960s, the acceptance of its once effortless hegemony was being challenged, not because people were becoming convinced by the writings of political theorists but as a consequence of the antics of those from the very heart of the Establishment (the Profumo scandal, the “Cambridge Five” spies et al).  In retrospect, it was the ten-odd years prior to 1973 that were the last halcyon days of the “old Establishment” for after that the UK’s anyway troubled “old” economy stagnated, triggering a series of events, notably the assault on the system from within by the improbable anti-Establishment figure of Margaret Thatcher.  The changes wrought in the last five decades shouldn’t be overstated because what happened was one Establishment was replaced by another and there was a substantial overlap in institutional and individual membership but it’s a very different apparatus from that of the 1960s.

Rover 3.5 Coupé.  Establishment figures preferred the saloon, the (four door) coupé more what used to be called a “co-respondent's” car (ie the sort of rakish design which would appeal to the sort of chap who slept with other men’s wives, later to be named as “co-respondent” in divorce proceedings).

One charming Establishment symbol from those years which are for most not in living memory was the ultimate “Establishment car”, one which while not the biggest, fastest, or most expensive available, possessed the qualities to appeal to the “right chaps”.  The Rover P5 was in production between 1958-1973, running from around the time that old patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) told the working class “…most of you have never had it so good” to the last days before the first oil shock ended the West’s long, post-war economic prosperity (although the British experience of that was patchy).  The P5’s presence throughout was somehow reassuring because from its debut it embodied the virtues for which Rovers had during the 1950s come to be valued: solidity, quality, comfort and an indifference to fashions and fads.  The P5 was a presence also in parts of the old British Empire and it enjoyed a following in both Australia & New Zealand, valued because it had an “Establishment air” yet was not flashy like a Pontiac or Jaguar (the mostly badge-engineered Daimlers a remarkably effective piece of product differentiation) or a statement of wealth like a Mercedes-Benz would by the mid-1960s become.

Rover 3 Litre engine schematic.

The P5 was sold originally as the 3 Litre in three releases (Mark 1, 1958-1962; Mark II, 1962-1965 & Mark III 1965-1967), using a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) straight-six with an implementation of the “F-head” design in which the inlet valve sat at the top of the combustion chamber with a side-mounted exhaust valve, an arrangement which offered some advantages when designing combustion chambers suited to the lower octane fuel then used in many markets and allowed the use of larger valves than would have been possible with a conventional OHV (overhead valve) arrangement).  The latter was a matter of some significance because the Rover six came from a time when the taxation regime was based on bore diameter, something which resulted in generations of British small bore, long-stroke engines and the 3 litre six was a famously smooth device, the advertising sometimes showing a circular coin sitting (on its edge) on the air-cleaner with the engine running, the coin not even vibrating.  Technologically though, for passenger vehicles, it was a cul-de-sac and more modern power-plants from the US, Europe (and even the UK) were out-performing the old F-Head.

What transformed the P5 was the adoption of the 3.5 litre (215 cid) V8 which Rover had purchased from General Motors (GM) which, in versions made by Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac (BOP), had been used for the new compact lines between 1961-1963.  The UK’s industry made many mistakes in the post-war years but what became the Rover V8 was an inspired purchase, remaining in production in displacements between 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) and 5.0 (305) from 1967 until 2006, powering everything from the original Range Rovers to executive sedans and sports cars  It was related also to the Oldsmobile version (Rover used Buick’s variant) on which Repco in Australia based the 3.0 litre (193 cubic inch) SOHC (single overhead camshaft) V8 the Brabham team would use to secure the Formula One drivers & constructors championships in 1966 & 1967.

Look of the past; glimpse of the future: 1967 Rover 3.5 Saloon (left) and 1967 NSU Ro80 (right).

It was in late 1967 the Rover 3.5 was released and the press reception was generally favourable, the improvements in performance and fuel consumption (not something often achieved when adding cylinders and displacement) attributed to a combination of greater mechanical efficiency and reduced weight, the all-aluminum V8 some 200 lb (90 kg) lighter than the hefty old six although some did note the new engine couldn’t quite match the smoothness of the old.  By 1967 however the testers seemed to be aware that whatever its charms, it was a design from the mid-1950s and the world had moved on although to be fair Rover had too, it’s P6 (2000), released in 1963 was very much a modernist take (and one which would in 1968 also be transformed by the V8, becoming the 3500 (1968-1976)).  Between 1967 and the end of production in 1967, the flavor of the press commentary about the 3.5 was very much: “outmoded but satisfying”.

Released in September 1967: Rover 3.5 saloon (left) and NSU Ro80 (right), partially exposed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October.

Like the 3.5, the NSU Ro80 had been released in September that year and the contrast was obviously between the past and the future, the German car influencing design for more than a generation (with the obvious exception of the ill-fated Wankel engine) while what the Rover represented was already almost extinct, few of the others in its market segment (the Vanden Plas Farinas, the Humber Super Snipe, the Vauxhall Viscount, the Daimler Majestic Major and the Austin 3 Litre) to see the 1970s.  Nor did other manufacturers make much effort to compete for buyers who clearly wanted something lighter and more modern although, after taking over Rootes Group, to replace the defunct Super Snipe and Imperial, Chrysler did embark on a quixotic venture to prove demand still existed by taking advantage of the old Commonwealth tariff preference scheme by importing the Australian-built Valiant (built on the US A-Body) in both straight-six & V8 form.  It registered barely a blip on the sales charts although, remarkably, both remained available until 1976 by which time the writing was on the wall for Chrysler’s entire European operation.

A UK government 3.5 waiting outside No 10 Downing Street (left) and Harold Wilson about to enter his (right).

For many however, the Rover’s reassuring presence was more appealing than modernity (although the rakish Rostyle wheels may have been a shock for some).  It certainly appealed to those at the heart of the establishment and the first prime minister to have been driven in one was the pipe-smoking Harold Wilson (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) who, although he’d once promised to revitalize the economy with the “white heat of technological change”, was a cautious and conservative character; the car suited him and he appreciated the custom-built ashtray which held his pipe.  Edward "Ted" Heath (1916-2005; UK prime-minister 1970-1974), James "Jim" Callaghan (1912–2005; prime minister of the UK 1979-1979) and Mrs Thatcher followed him into the backseat, something made possible because the Ministry of Supply (advised production was ending in 1973), purchased a batch from the final run, stockpiling them for future VIP use, the same tactic some police forces would later adopt to secure warehouses full of Rover SD1s (another recipient of the ex-Buick V8), the front wheel drive (FWD) replacements they knew were in the pipeline not a compelling choice for the highway patrol.  Not until 1981 was Mrs Thatcher's Rover retired and replaced with a Daimler.

A tale of two rooflines: the “Establishment” 3.5 Saloon (left) and the rakish 3.5 Coupé (right).

In automobiles, by the 1960s, the English-speaking world had (more or less) agreed a coupé was a two door car with a fixed roof and (if based on a sedan), often a shorter wheelbase, designed put a premium on style over utility.  There were hold-outs among a few UK manufacturers who insisted there were fixed head coupés (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC), the latter described by most others as convertibles or cabriolets but mostly the term had come to be well-understood.  It was thus a surprise when Rover in 1962 displayed a “four-door coupé”, essentially their 3 Litre sedan with a lower roof-line and a few “sporty” touches such as a tachometer and a full set of gauges.  One intriguing part of the tale was why, defying the conventions of the time, the low-roof variation of the four-door was called a coupé (and Rover did use the l'accent aigu (the acute accent: “é”) to ensure the “traditional pronunciation” was imposed although the Americans and others sensibly abandoned the practice).  The rakish lines, including more steeply sloped front and rear glass were much admired although the original vision had been more ambitious still, the intention being a four-door hardtop with no central pillar.  Strangely, although the Americans and Germans had managed this satisfactorily, a solution eluded Rover which had to be content with a more slender B-pillar.

Lindsay Lohan with Porsche Panamera 4S four-door coupe (the factory doesn't use the designation but most others seem to), Los Angeles, 2012.

The etymology of coupé is that it’s from couper (to cut off) but the original use in the context of horse-drawn coaches referred to the platform being shortened, not lowered.  Others too have been inventive, Cadillac for decades offering the Coupe De Ville (they used also Coupe DeVille) and usually it was built to exactly the same dimensions as the Sedan De Ville, differing on in the door count.  So Rover probably felt entitled to cut where they preferred; in their case it was the roof and in the early twentieth century, the four-door coupe became a thing, the debut in 2004 of the Mercedes-Benz CLS influencing other including BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi.  The moment for the style clearly hasn’t passed because when CLS production ended in August 2023, the lines were carried over to the new E-Class (W214, 2023-) but there are no longer references to a “four-door coupé”.

One of Elizabeth II’s P5B Saloons outside the gates of Windsor castle (left) and Her Majesty at the wheel (right), leaving the castle, reputedly on the way to church so while one of her 3.5s won’t quite be “only driven to church on Sunday by little old lady”, being in the Royal mews, it would have been well-maintained.

Although for almost 20 years a fixture outside No 10 Downing Street, the most famous P5B owner was Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) who upgraded from a 3 Litre in 1968 and, although not noted for being sentimental about machinery, until 1987 ran one of the several maintained in the Royal Mews during her reign.

Rover P5B headrests (left & right) and the mounting assembly for the reading lamps in the front units (centre).

Most of the focus on the Rover 3.5 has always been about the engine and the illustrious passengers but one detail of note is the bulk of the headrests, optional fittings in most markets.  Quite why they were so big isn’t clear although the shape of the rear units presumably made for an easier mounting on the parcel shelf, meaning the seat's frames & covers needed no modification, but it’s apparently not an urban myth some used by the British government had a bullet-proof panel inserted; there was certainly the space to accommodate even a thick metal plate.  The front headrests were used also to house the optional reading lamps, the wiring harness well concealed within.

Refusenik

Refusenik (pronounced ri-fyooz-nik)

(1) In (originally) informal use, a citizen of the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922-1991), a Soviet citizen (usually Jewish) who was denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union (usually to Israel).

(2) By extension, a person who refuses to cooperate with a system or comply with a law as a matter of political principle or because of a moral conviction.

Circa 1975: The construct was refuse + -nik.  The Russian отказник (otkáznik), the construct of which was отка́з (otkáz) (refusal, denial, repudiation, rejection, nonsuit; renunciation, disavowal; breakdown, failure) +‎ -ник (-nik) was a synonym of refusenik.  The -ник suffix was from the Proto-Slavic -ьnikъ, created originally by a nominalization of the adjectives in -ьnъ with the suffix -ikъ (from -ик (-ik)).  The suffix and was used to form masculine nouns, usually denoting adherents etc, the use illustrated by forms such as the dialectal Lithuanian lauk-inykas (peasant, farmer), from laũkas (field) and the Old Prussian lauk-inikis (vassal).  Refuse (in the sense of “to decline a request or demand” was from the Middle English refusen, from the Old French refuser, from the Vulgar Latin refūsāre, a blend of Classical Latin refūtāre (the source also of “refute”) and recūsāre (the source also of recuse).  The use in the sense of “items or material that have been discarded; rubbish, garbage, trash) was a late Middle English borrowing of the Middle French refusé, past participle of refuser (to refuse) which displaced the native Middle English wernen (to refuse).  In English, “refusenik” began as a calque of the Russian отка́зник (otkáznik) and from the mid-1970s, “refusenik” came to be used of someone who refused to do something (usually some law with which most complied), often either as a protest against government policy (conscription) or as a matter of personal autonomy (mandated vaccination).  While the construct of the word was an amusing novelty, the idea conveyed had a long tradition, the English agent noun refuser documented since the late fifteenth century.  The alternative spelling refusnik was not uncommon.  Refusenik is a noun; the noun plural is refuseniks.  Forms like refuseniking & refuseniked are non-standard but used for humorous effect as required.

Technically the –nik suffix corresponds approximately to the English –er in that nearly always it denotes an agent noun (ie it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the suffix is attached).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The connotation however is different in that –er is linguistically neutral (ie the value in the word “murderer” is carried by the “murder” element) whereas a –nik word is usually loaded and that can be negative, positive and often jocular. 

In structural linguistics, the process of creating words by adding a foreign suffix (such as refusenik) is known as “suffix borrowing” (or “affix borrowing”, “prefix borrowing” the obvious companion term).  Refusenik was thus a fork of the phenomenon known as “neoclassical blending” or “neoclassical compounding”, where a foreign morpheme is combined with a native or other language base.  The forms are described as “neologisms created through affixation” and many are coined for jocular effect, the “-nik” subset used to imply a person associated with something, often in a somewhat negative sense, other noted examples including “beatnik” (a member of the “beat” generation of the 1950s, an early example of what would in the 1960s come to be called the “counter culture” and a kind of proto-hippie), “peacenik” (one opposed to war and coined originally to describe those associated with the anti-war movement in the US and opposed to US participation in the conflict in Indochina), “warnick” (the response of the peaceniks to those who supported US policy (which wasn’t picked up by the establishment, unlike “dry”, used originally as a slur by the those who had been labeled “wet” (higher taxes, more social spending etc); the “drys” (smaller government, deregulation etc) liked the term and adopted it although their attempt to give it a little more appeal as “warm & dry” never caught on), “appeasenik” (used in a derogatory sense to describe those who prefer a policy of appeasement to a more robust foreign policy response), “contranik”, (used in a derogatory sense to describe those in the US supporting the right-wing Contras (from the Spanish la contrarrevolución (literally “the counter-revolution”) who between 1979-1990 staged an insurgency against Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinista Junta), “nogoodnik” (someone disreputable), “neatnick” (someone thought obsessively tidy in their habits), “kibbutznik” (In Israel, a member of a kibbutz (and not necessarily a Russian émigré)), “sweetnik” (one’s sweetheart (male or female), “noisenik” (a musician who produces harsh, discordant music (with deliberate intent rather than through lack of skill) and “nudenik” (a advocate of nude sunbathing).

A 1961 guide to the beatnik world view.

The difference between a “beatnik and a “beat” was that the “Beats” were members of the “Beat Generation” a literary and cultural movement which emerged in the late 1940s and popularized by the writers Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), William S Burroughs (1914–1997) a Neal Cassady (1926-1968).  Kerouac would describe the Beat state as being “beaten down, exhausted, but also in touch with the raw, spiritual, and authentic experiences of life” and they were a harbinger of the counter-culture of the 1960s.  There were at the time claims there was a distinct “Beat philosophy” but there were so many claims about this that it really can’t be said there was ever a coherent “philosophy” beyond a sense of rebellion against mainstream culture, materialism, and the alleged conformity on post-war America life, the latter something which in later decades would exert a strong nostalgic pull, exploited by a number of politicians.  The term “beatnik” was more about the stereotyped. Superficial elements associated with those who followed what they thought was the “beat lifestyle”.  It’s not fair to say the beatniks were “the Beat’s groupies” but that probably was the public perception, one which imagined them sitting in coffee shops, wearing berets and listening to poetry readings.

The “nik” words belong to a broader class of borrowed affixed words or loanword derivatives, the best known of which are the neoclassical compounds, formed by combining elements (usually prefixes or suffixes) from classical languages, particularly Greek and Latin, with existing words or roots from other languages (or simply combining Greek & Latin elements, something of which some purists don’t approve).  These compound words are common both in general use and specialized or technical fields such as science, medicine, and philosophy.  Well known examples include: “television” (the construct being tele- (from the Greek tēle (far)) + vision (from the Latin videre (to see)), “automobile”, the construct being auto- (from the Greek autos (self)) + mobile (from the Latin mobilis (movable)), “astronaut” (the construct being astro- (from the Greek astron (star)) + -naut (from the Greek nautēs (sailor)), “bicycle”, the construct being bi- (from the Latin bis (twice)) + cycle (from the Greek kyklos (circle; wheel)).

There has never been an authenticated Lindsaygate or Lohangate so, deductively, Lindsay Lohan has lived a scandal-free life although she does have some history of refusenikism.

Refusenik though belongs to the subset of the type coined usually for humorous effect or a commercial purpose and they include the “-zillas” (stormzilla, bridezilla, bosszilla et al), the suffix from the fictional Godzilla and appended to imply something or someone is excessively large, powerful, or monstrous, usually in an exaggerated or absurd way, the “-aholics” (shopaholic, chocoholic, workaholic et al) the suffix appended to The suffix -aholic (from alcoholic) is often humorously attached to nouns to describe someone addicted to or obsessed with something, the “fests” (geekfest, nerdfest, laughfest, foodfest et al, the –fest suffix from the German Fest (festival), appended to describe and event involves much of a certain thing or theme or will attract those of a certain type, the “-o-ramas” (snack-o-rama, fright-o-rama, book-o-rama et al, the -orama suffix from panorama (a wide view) and appended to suggest an abundance or spectacle of something and of course the “-gates” (pizzagate, whitewatergate, snipergate, servergate, benghazigate et al (all in some way related to crooked Hillary Clinton which is interesting), -gate suffix from the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.  The use of the –gate scandal is an example of what’s called “transferred, implied or imputed meaning” and because it creates form which are “mock-serious”, the words can straddle a range of senses, unlike something like “chocoholic” which, whatever might be the implications for an individual’s health, is always jocular.

In English, the use of the –nik suffix spiked after the USSR in October 1957 launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth although the earlier Yiddish forms (in Yinglish, the words contributed by Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe) may also have exerted some regional influence, notably in New York where as early as the 1930s nudnik (an annoying person; a pest, a nag, a jerk) had spread beyond the Jewish community.  The association of with Sputnik created a minor industry among headline writers looking for words to describe the failures, explosions and crashes which were a feature of the launches in the early days of the US space program after the Russian’s satellite had so shocked the Americans.  The terms like kaputnik, dudnik and flopnik became briefly famous and contributed to the impression the Soviets were much more advanced in rocketry and related technology but that was misleading because the Russians had suffered just as many failures but theirs were a state secret and therefore unknown outside official circles while for the US launches were televised nationally on network television.  The perceptions generated by kaputnik, dudnik and flopnik also created a political ripple which would play out in the 1960 US presidential election and beyond.  Although Sputnik gave things quite a shove, the suffix had a long history in English and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes raskolnik (a bit of a rascal) was in use by at least 1723.  After following the British Empire to the other side of the world, raskol washed up in PNG (Papua New Guinea) as a noun meaning “a criminal, operating sometimes as part of a gang”.  IN PNG, raskol was from the English rascal (a rogue, a scoundrel, a trickster) and entered Tok Pisin (“talk + pidgin”, one of PNG’s official languages and a creole of Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian and Trans-New Guinean languages (principally English and Kuanua).  In later editions of The American Language (first published in 1919), the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956 and a fair scholar of the tongue) credited the popularity of the practice of appending -nik to the ends of adjectives to create nouns to US Cartoonist Al Capp (1909–1979) who put a few of them in his syndicated Li'l Abner cartoon (1934-1977), Sputnik (1957) & beatnik (1958) respectively an accelerant or product of the process.

While it often was applied humorously, it also was used of those in Israel who refused to participate in military operations conducted by the Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisra'el (the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)) in the occupied Palestinian territories (which the government of Israel calls “disputed territories” which the refuseniks regards as unlawful under international law.  Language matters much in the Middle East and some still use “Tel Aviv” as the synecdoche for “government of Israel” because recognition Jerusalem (another “disputed” space” as the capital is so limited.  Tel Aviv briefly was the capital between May 1948-December 1949 and a time when ongoing military conflict rendered Jerusalem too unstable for government operations.  Jerusalem was declared the capital in December 1949 and by mid-1950, most of the state’s administrative apparatus was based there but its status as a national capital is recognized by only a handful of nations.

Books (left & centre), academic journals and magazines used the title “Refusenik” in its original sense of “a Soviet citizen (usually Jewish) who was denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union (usually to Israel), something which was a feature of the Brezhnev-era (Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982)) USSR but it was later adopted (by extension) in the English-speaking world to refer to those refusing to cooperate with a system or comply with a law as a matter of political principle or because of a moral conviction.  Edited by self-described refusenik (in the later sense) Peretz Kidron (1933–2011) and published in 2013 by Bloomsbury, Refusenik (right) applied the word in the later sense of “those who refuse” rather than the original “those who were refused”.  With a blurb including a quote from linguistics theorist & public intellectual Professor Noam Chomsky (b 1928) and a foreword by author and essayist Susan Sontag (1933—2004), it’s likely a few reviews were written before a page was turned.

Simulacrum

Simulacrum (pronounced sim-yuh-ley-kruhm)

(1) A slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance; a physical image or representation of a deity, person, or thing.

(2) An effigy, image, or representation; a thing which has the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities; a thing which simulates another thing; an imitation, a semblance; a thing which has a similarity to the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities

(3) Used loosely, any representational image of something (a nod to the Latin source).

1590–1600: A learned borrowing of the Latin simulācrum (likeness, image) and a dissimilation of simulaclom, the construct being simulā(re) (to pretend, to imitate), + -crum (the instrumental suffix which was a variant of -culum, from the primitive Indo-European –tlom (a suffix forming instrument nouns).  The Latin simulāre was the present active infinitive of simulō (to represent, simulate) from similis (similar to; alike), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sem- (one; together).  In English, the idea was always of “something having the mere appearance of another”, hence the conveyed notion of a “a specious imitation”, the predominant sense early in the nineteenth century while later it would be applied to works or art (most notably in portraiture) judged, “blatant flattery”.  In English, simulacrum replaced the late fourteenth century semulacre which had come from the Old French simulacre.  As well as the English simulacrum, the descendents from the Latin simulācrum include the French simulacre, the Spanish simulacro and the Polish symulakrum.  Simulacrum is a noun and simulacral is an adjective; the noun plural is simulacrums or simulacra (a learned borrowing from Latin simulācra).  Although neither is listed, by lexicographers, in the world of art criticism, simulacrally would be a tempting adverb and simulacrumism an obvious noun.  The comparative is more simulacral, the suplerative most simulacral.

Simulacrum had an untroubled etymology didn’t cause a problem until French post-structuralists found a way to add layers of complication.  The sociologist & philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote a typically dense paper (The Precession of Simulacra (1981)) explaining simulacra were “…something that replaces reality with its representation… Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” and his examples ranged from Disneyland to the Watergate scandal.  One can see his point but it seems only to state the obvious and wicked types like Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) said it in fewer words.  To be fair, Baudrillard’s point was more about the consequences of simulacra than the process of their creation and the social, political and economic implication of states or (more to the point) corporations attaining the means to “replace” reality with a constructed representation were profound.  The idea has become more relevant (and certainly more discussed) in the post-fake news world in which clear distinctions between that which is real and its imitations have become blurred and there’s an understanding that through many channels of distribution, increasingly, audiences are coming to assume nothing is real.

Advertising copy for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with graphical art by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum.

The work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman is the best remembered of the 1960s advertising by the US auto industry and their finest creations were those for General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac Motor Division (PMD).  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly took some artistic licence and created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than taken too literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan, it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (125 mm) because the 1958 frames were used for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  It certainly improved the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance also genuinely enhanced handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, their artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Fitzpatrick & Kaufman’s graphic art for the 1967 Pontiac Catalina Convertible advertising campaign.  One irony in the pair being contracted by PMD is that for most of the 1960s, Pontiacs were distinguished by some of the industry’s more imaginative and dramatic styling ventures and needed the artists' simulacral tricks less than some other manufacturers (and the Chryslers of the era come to mind, the solid basic engineering below cloaked sometimes in truly bizarre or just dull  bodywork).

This advertisement from 1961 hints also at something often not understood about what was later acknowledged as the golden era for both the US auto industry and their advertising agencies.  Although the big V8 cars of the post-war years are now remembered mostly for the collectable, high-powered, high value survivors with large displacement and induction systems using sometimes two four-barrel or three two-barrel carburetors, such things were a tiny fraction of total production and most V8 engines were tuned for a compromise between power (actually, more to the point for most: torque) and economy, a modest single two barrel sitting atop most and after the brief but sharp recession of 1958, even the Lincoln Continental, aimed at the upper income demographic, was reconfigured thus in a bid to reduce the prodigious thirst of the 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8.  Happily for country and oil industry, the good times returned and by 1963 the big Lincolns were again guzzling gas four barrels at a time (the MEL in 1966 even enlarged to a 462 (7.6)) although there was the courtesy of the engineering trick of off-centering slightly the carburetor’s location so the primary two throats (the other two activated only under heavy throttle load) sat directly in the centre for optimal smoothness of operation.  Despite today’s historical focus on the displacement, horsepower and burning rubber of the era, there was then much advertising copy about (claimed) fuel economy, though while then as now, YMMV (your mileage may vary), the advertising standards of the day didn’t demand such a disclaimer.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1650), oil on canvas by Samuel Cooper (1609-1672).

Even if it’s something ephemeral, politicians are often sensitive about representations of their image but concerns are heightened when it’s a portrait which, often somewhere hung on public view, will long outlive them.  Although in the modern age the proliferation and accessibility of the of the photographic record has meant portraits no longer enjoy an exclusivity in the depiction of history, there’s still something about a portrait which conveys, however misleadingly, a certain authority.  That’s not to suggest the classic representational portraits have always been wholly authentic, a good many of those of the good and great acknowledged to have been painted by “sympathetic” artists known for their subtleties in rendering their subjects variously more slender, youthful or hirsute as the raw material required.  Probably few were like Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) who told Samuel Cooper to paint him “warts and all”.  The artist obliged.

Randolph Churchill (1932), oil on canvas by Philip de László (left) and Randolph Churchill’s official campaign photograph (1935, right).

There have been artists for whom a certain fork of the simulacrum has provided a long a lucrative career.  Philip Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László) was a UK-based Hungarian painter who was renowned for his sympathetic portraiture of royalty, the aristocracy and anyone else able to afford his fee (which for a time-consuming large, full-length works could be as much as 3000 guineas).  His reputation as a painter suffered after his death because he was dismissed by some as a “shameless flatterer” but in more recent years he’s been re-evaluated and there’s now much admiration for his eye and technical prowess, indeed, some have noted he deserves to be regarded more highly than many of those who sat for him.  His portrait of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) (1932, left) has, rather waspishly, been described by some authors as something of an idealized simulacrum and the reaction of the journalist Alan Brien (1925-2008) was typical.  He met Churchill only in when his dissolute habits had inflicted their ravages and remarked that the contrast was startling, “…as if Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture for one day of the year.”  Although infamously obnoxious, on this occasion Churchill responded with good humor, replying “Yes, it is hard to believe that was me, isn’t it?  I was a joli garçon (pretty boy) in those days.”  That may have been true for as his official photograph for the 1935 Wavertree by-election (where he stood as an “Independent Conservative” on a platform of rearmament and opposition to Indian Home Rule) suggests, the artist may have been true to his subject.  Neither portrait now photograph seems to have helped politically and his loss at Wavertree was one of several he would suffer in his attempts to be elected to the House of Commons.

Portrait of Gina Rinehart (née Hancock, b 1954) by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira (b 1983), National Gallery of Australia (NGA) (left) and photograph of Gina Rinehart (right).

While some simulacrums can flatter to deceive, others are simply unflattering.  That was what Gina Rinehard (described habitually as “Australia’s richest woman”) felt about two (definitely unauthorized) portraits of which are on exhibition at the NGA.  Accordingly, she asked they be removed from view and “permanently disposed of”, presumably with the same fiery finality with which bonfires consumed portraits of Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), both works despised by their subjects.  Unfortunately for Ms Reinhart, her attempted to save the nation from having to look at what she clearly considered bad art created only what is in law known as the “Streisand effect”, named after an attempt in 2003 by the singer Barbra Streisand (b 1942) to suppress publication of a photograph showing her cliff-top residence in Malibu, taken originally to document erosion of the California coast.  All that did was generate a sudden interest in the previously obscure photograph and ensure it went viral, overnight reaching an audience of millions as it spread around the web.  Ms Reinhart’s attempt had a similar consequence: while relatively few had attended Mr Namatjira’s solo Australia in Colour exhibition at the NGA and publicity had been minimal, the interest generated by the story saw the “offending image” printed in newspapers, appear on television news bulletins (they’re still a thing with a big audience) and of course on many websites.  The “Streisand effect” is regarded as an example “reverse psychology”, the attempt to conceal something making it seem sought by those who would otherwise not have been interested or bothered to look.  People should be careful in what they wish for.

Variations on a theme of simulacra: Four AI (artificial intelligence) generated images of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.  The car depicted (centre right) is a Mercedes-Benz SL (R107, 1971-1989), identifiable as a post-1973 North American model because of the disfiguring bumper bar. 

So a simulacrum is a likeness of something which is recognizably of the subject (maybe with the odd hint) and not of necessity “good” or “bad”; just not exactly realistic.  Of course with techniques of lighting or angles, even an unaltered photograph can similarly mislead but the word is used usually of art or behavior such as “a simulacrum or pleasure” or “a ghastly simulacrum of a smile”.  In film and biography of course, the simulacrum is almost obligatory and the more controversial the subject, the more simulacral things are likely to be: anyone reading AJP Taylor’s study (1972) of the life of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) would be forgiven for wondering how anyone could have said a bad word about the old chap.  All that means there’s no useful antonym of simulacrum because one really isn’t needed (there's replica, duplicate etc but the sense is different) while the synonyms are many, the choice of which should be dictated by the meaning one wishes to denote and they include: dissimilarity, unlikeness, archetype, clone, counterfeit, effigy, ersatz, facsimile, forgery, image, impersonation, impression, imprint, likeness, portrait, representation, similarity, simulation, emulation, fake, faux & study.  Simulacrum remains a little unusual in that while technically it’s a neutral descriptor, it’s almost always used with a sense of the negative or positive.

Fluff

Fluff (pronounced fluhf)

(1) Light, downy particles, as of cotton.

(2) A soft, light, downy mass.

(3) In slang, a cloth diaper (nappy).

(4) In slang (New England region in the US), marshmallow crème, thus the local delicacy the “fluffernutter” (a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff), once a favorite of children’s school lunches but now likely to attract “mother shaming” on Instagram.

(5) In LGBTQQIAAOP slang, the passive partner in a lesbian relationship, known also as a “ruffle”.

(6) In slang, (Australia, New Zealand, Canada), a fart.

(7) In the slang of pop-culture fandom, fan fiction which (in whole or in part) is “sweet and feel-good” in tone, usually involving romance.

(8) In the slang (UK) of the role-playing game community, a form of role-playing which is inconsequential and not related to the plot and used sometimes in the context of (but not limited to) filling time.

(9) In UK slang short change deliberately given by a railway clerk (keeping the money for themselves), an example of a “deliberate fluff” (obsolete).

(10) Figuratively, something of no consequence; insubstantial.

(11) Figuratively (of literature, political argument, philosophy et al), a slight work or one of dubious artistic or intellectual value; unscholarly (used also as a polite euphemism for “bullshit (BS)” which is less explicit than “cattle feces” (“cattle faeces in non-US English).

(12) An error (flub, lapse, blooper, blunder, boo-boo, defect, error, fault, faux pas, gaffe, lapse, mistake, slip, stumble, brain-fart, brain-explosion), especially an actor's memory lapse in the delivery of lines (often in the form “fluffed their lines”.

(13) A young woman (often as “a bit of fluff”), the implication being of her providing a brief, amusing diversion rather than one sought for a permanent relationship)

(14) To make into fluff; shake or puff out (feathers, hair etc) into a fluffy mass (often followed by up).

(15) To make a mistake.

(16) To become fluffy; move, float, or settle down like fluff.

1780s: From the earlier (or perhaps contemporary) floow (woolly substance, down, nap, lint (which appeared also as flough, flue & flew)), possibly from the West Flemish vluwe (an imitative modification of floow), of uncertain origin but which may be from the French velu (hairy, furry), from the Latin villūtus (having shaggy hair), from villus (shaggy hair, tuft of hair) and may be compared with the Old English flōh (that which is flown off, fragment, piece), linked to the later “flaw”.  Although undocumented, etymologists generally conclude the word may have been a blend of flue +‎ puff.  “Fluffy stuff” is a common phenomenon in the natural world and descriptors existed in many European languages including the possibly onomatopoeic Middle Dutch vloe, the dialectal English floose, flooze & fleeze (particles of wool or cotton; fluff; loose threads or fibres), the Danish fnug (down, fluff) and the Swedish fnugg (speck, flake).  Traces of the sound of the word “fluff” are found in other languages including the Japanese フワフワ (fuwafuwa) (lightly, softly), the Hungarian puha (soft, fluffy), the Polish puchaty (soft, fluffy) and the Romanian puf (down; peachfuzz; soft hair of some animals; powderpuff).  Fluff & fluffing are nouns & verbs, fluffed is a verb, fluffiness & fluffer are nouns, fluffless & flufflike are adjectives, fluffy is an adjective (and non-standard) noun and fluffily is an adverb; the noun plural is fluffs.

Fluffied: Lindsay Lohan in bikini embellished with faux fur, photo-shoot for the fifth anniversary of ODDA magazine, April 2017.

In idiomatic use there’s “fluff around” of “fluff about” (ineffectually to act or waste time”, “fluff off” (an affectionate form of “fuck off”), “fluff-ball” or “ball of fluff” (a fluffy kitten or puppy with the quality of “cuteness”), “bum fluff” or “belly-button fluff” (small particles the fabric of clothing which accumulates in body crevices), “fluffhead” (someone vague or confused (synonymous with “airhead”), “fluff up” (a polite version of “fuck up”).  The term “fluffy bunny” isn’t from lagomorphology (the scientific study of rabbits (small mammals in the family Leporidae)) although it may be assumed it’s often heard in pet shops.  Fluffy bunny (also as “fluff bunny” & “fluffbunny”) was an adaptable noun used to mean: (1) a synonym of chubby bunny (a competitive eating game in which contestants had to pronounce words or phrases (such as “Irish wristwatch”) while holding increasing numbers of marshmallows is their mouth), (2) in the strange world of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement which in theory can occur in theory never arises because of other physics and (3) a derogatory descriptor of a casual, naive practitioner of Wicca (or other neo-pagan religion), especially one deemed to have only a superficial understanding.  The slang “bit of fluff” (young woman with who one is enjoying or planning a brief affair) was first recorded in 1903 while the use to describe marshmallow confection seems to date from at least 1920, noted in Massachusetts.  The verb in the sense of “to shake into a soft mass” was in use by 1875 (directly from the noun) while the meaning “make a mistake” dates from 1884 as theater slang to refer to acts who had forgotten their lines.  The adjective fluffy (containing or resembling fluff) came into use in the 1820s.

Watergate Fluff

Watergate fluff is one of the alternative terms for the dish “Watergate Salad”, the others including Green Fluff, Green Goddess, Fluff Salad and Funeral Salad, the last picked up reputedly because it was so often served at wakes.  It’s not clear how the culinary delight came to be called “Watergate Salad” although there’s no doubt the use was triggered by some association the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s which revolved around attempts by the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) to “cover up” the involvement of operatives connected to the White House with the break-in in June 1972 of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate Building.  Interestingly, although the scandal (in the public perception although the legal proceedings would last longer) ended in August 1974 when Nixon resigned, the first known use of the term “Watergate Salad” dates from 1975 although in September 1974, Maryland's Hagerstown Daily Mail had published the recipe for “Watergate Cake”, also a similarly green-tinted dessert made with pistachio pudding in the mix and sometimes the icing.

The dish however predates the term.  Some claim the Kraft Foods Corporation deserves credit (apparently as a proud boast rather than an admission of guilt) as the creator because in 1975 they published a recipe called “Pistachio Pineapple Delight” as part of a promotional campaign to support the release that year of their “Pistachio Pudding Mix” (something with a long tradition, a whipped cream and pineapple concoction detailed in a Kansas newspaper in 1913, the year Richard Nixon was born).  At that point, history and myth become hard to separate, one story saying the food editor of the Chicago Tribune named it to stimulate interest, suggesting it was the ideal snack to enjoy while watching the televised hearings of proceedings pursuant to the scandal while another claimed it was associative because the Watergate Hotel (in the infamous building) served the salad on their popular weekend buffets; no menus appear to have survived to prove or disprove that one.  Best of was the link was because the salad was “full of nuts” (like the crew involved in the scandal, including the memorable lawyer and Watergate conspirator & burglary coordinator G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) who wasn’t really “a nut” but is often portrayed as one).  True or not, that’s the one which deserves to be accepted.

Aleita Dupree's Watergate Salad recipe

Ingredients

1 (3 ½ oz) box of instant pistachio pudding mix.
1 (20 oz) can of crushed pineapple with juice (most use sweetened).
1 (8 oz) container of cool whip, thawed.
1 heaped cup of miniature marshmallows.
½ cup of chopped pecan nuts.
Stemmed maraschino cherries for garnish (optional).

Instructions

(1) In glass serving bowl, mix crushed pineapple and juice with pistachio pudding mix.  Stir pudding until mix completely is dissolved and mixture is smooth.

(2) Fold in the thawed cool whip.  Gently fold until pudding and cool whip is completely blended.

(3) Add miniature marshmallows and pecans.  Cover and chill until salad is set (should take up to 30 minutes).

(4) To serve, garnish with stemmed cherries and extra chopped pecans (if desired).

Fluff in fashion

Fluffiness in fashion: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022, left) and in New York to promote Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024, right).  The fluffy cream coat is by David Koma (Davit Komakhidze (Georgian: დავით კომახიძე); b 1985)) a London-based, Georgian-born fashion designer (the label of his fashion house is stylized as DΛVID KOMΛ).  The crystal payette-embroidered layered cup bra hints at the profile of the customer base; it’s on sale at US$1250 (down from US$1750).  The fashion business is regarded by some as a bit “fluffy” (frocks and such) compared with “hard” industries such as heavy engineering or nuclear weapons construction but the annual turnover of the global fashion industry is substantial.  The numbers bounce around a bit because it difficult to determine where “fashion” ends and “commodities” begin but estimates between US$1.5-2.5 trillion are widely quoted (In financial use, one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 (one million million or 1,000 billion)).