Riband

Riband (pronounced rib-uh-nd)

(1) A decorative ribbon, especially one awarded for some achievement.

(2) A flat rail attached to posts in a palisade

(3) In heraldry, a narrow diminutive of the bend, thinner than a bendlet.

(4) An archaic form of ribbon with excrescent -d.

1350–1400: From the Middle English ribane, (the spelling ryban does exist in the record but it seems not to have attained much currency and may simply have been a mistake which briefly spread) from the Old French riban (ribbon), a variant of reuban & ruban, probably from a Germanic compound.  The spelling riband endures as descriptor of awards, often in polo or other equestrian hobbies of the horsey set although the informal phrase “blue riband event” is applied also to what is considered the premier contest in a particular competition.  This includes things like the men’s 100 metre sprint at the Olympics, the Melbourne Cup during the Spring Racing Carnival or the Monaco Grand Prix in Formula One's calendar.  The origin of this use is in the wide blue ribbon worn by members of the highest order of knighthood, L'Ordre des chevaliers du Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henri III (1551–1589; King of France 1574-1589) in 1578, an order colloquially known as “Le Cordon Bleus” (the Blue Ribbons).  From this the world of cooking adopted Cordon Bleu, the famous French cooking school, founded in 1895, where chefs wear blue cord on their aprons, a color scheme still seen in many chefs’ uniforms.  Ribband & ribbandry are nouns; the noun plural is ribbands.

Lindsay Lohan in Phillip Lim (b 1973) Runway Tiered Ribbon Shell, Apple Lounge Grand Opening, West Hollywood, California, August 2008

Tiered ribbon constructions are based on the idea of successive layers of ribbons assembled (usually horizontally) and stitched to create a fabric that can be used for a variety of designs.  Because of the modularity, the layering makes possible multi-coloring or shifts in the texture but most designers using the technique seem to prefer solid colors in the same material.  The tiered ribbon concept produces a look similar to that seen on the bandage dress (a subset of the bodycon motif) except that, emulating ribbons, the layers tend to be of lesser depth and the construction not "body hugging" in the way the bandage generates its effect.  The term is used also in the wedding cake business where a thick ribbon is used to encircle each layer of the cake, the idea thematically to in some way tie in with the ceremony's optics, bridesmaid's dresses or table napkins often the match.  With the bride's gown, table cloths and cake icing all in white, Prussian blue is a good choice.

Young lady with tiered (panelled) dress.  The car is a first generation (1966-1969) 1967 Chevrolet Camaro SS Sport Coupe; this was the last season cars could be sold in the US without side-marker lights and the Camaro’s final appearance with quarter-vent windows, the 1968 range introducing the “Astro Ventilation” system, Chevrolet’s “groovy” term for “flow-through ventilation”.

In dressmaking, although tiered (panelled), bandage and ribbon dresses use variations of the same visual effect (and often the same technique of construction), the term “ribbon” is, by convention, restricted to designs in which the successive “layers” are narrow enough to suggest an aspect ratio similar to the ribbons typically used in the wrapping of presents or to tie plaits, pony-tails and such.  What all three types have in common is that despite the appearance, not all are built with separate pieces of fabric, some a single length of material with an illusion of “separateness” (specifically un-gathered horizontal tiers (also referred to as horizontal piecing or banded construction)) created by strategic stitching.  Although the concept is simple, execution of any of these demands precision because each seam (or its emulation) needs exactly to be parallel with  all others regardless of the detail differences.  While most tiered dresses gather each lower band for volume, a “straight column” or “sheath” skirt can be built from successive horizontal panels sewn together edge-to-edge. This creates visible horizontal seam lines down the length of the garment, the advantage of this being the line is preserved without additional fullness.  Although it may seem “fussy detailing”, designers often use tiers on straight skirts because the horizontal bands creates an “architectural structure”, the “visual breaks” in the long, narrow silhouette there for the same reason such things appear on buildings or cars with a large expanse of otherwise flat panel-work.  Done well, it can demand a close inspection to determine whether the seamstress has used separate pieces of fabric or emulated the look with ticked or lapped seams.  The bandage dress is quite specific to the “bodycon” genre but, as a general principle, the tiered technique can be used for just about any style of skirt or dress although designers caution that with any accessories, it’s usually better to conform to the “horizontal motif”.  For those wishing to use the effect to the greatest the empire-line is recommended.

Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (b 1960, formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Admiral, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (an order of chivalry founded in 1348)).  Because of some "unpleasantness", he's now prohibited from donning his many military uniforms but remains entitled to wear his medals or the associated ribbon bars (although the latter are usually not paired with civilian dress).

Ribbon dates from the 1520s and was from the English riban, ryban & ryband, from Old French riban & ruban (persisting in modern French as ruban).  The origin is murky but etymologists suspect the source was likely from a Germanic compound with a second element cognate with English band (the Middle Dutch ringhband (necklace) translates literally as “ring-band”.  The Middle English forms displaced the native Old English þwǣle (strip, ribbon).  The modern spelling was (more or less) standardized in the sixteenth century, describing a “stripe in fabric”, the sense of a "narrow woven band of some find material" for ornamental or other purposes known by the 1520s while the familiar meaning (long, thin, flexible strips) dates from 1763.  The use to describe the "ink-soaked strip wound on a spool for use on a typewriter" was from 1883 and the idea of a “torn strip of anything” was in use by 1820 while the sense as a verb (adorn with ribbons) was in use by at least 1715.  The custom of wearing colored ribbon loops on the lapel to declare support for a cause (pink for breast cancer, copper for herpes etc) began is 1991 with AIDS red ribbons and there’s now such an array that of the hundreds of causes now ribboned, there are many duplications so the fabric (or its representation) sometimes include text, the other differentiation being to use multiple colors, teal & purple for example claimed by the suicide awareness community.  In military use, "ribbon bars" (or "military ribbons) are small, mounted fabric representations of military medals, decorations, or service awards worn on uniform dress shirts or service coats when full-sized medals are not appropriate.  The ribbon bars are a "slice" of the full ribbon used to connects the suspension to the brooch; made originally of silk synthetic materials such as polyester are now common.

Over 500-odd years, words fall in and out of fashion.

Google Ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their Ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, Ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts (typically a scanner might misread an “f” for a long “s” or a “u” for an “n”) of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI (artificial intelligence) should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested. 

SS United States.

Although not formalized until 1935, the Trans-Atlantic Blue Riband is the honor awarded to the passenger liner in regular service crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the fastest time (and thus the highest average speed).  Over more than a century, 35 liners have held the record, the accolade first (retrospectively) won by the British SS Sirius which, in May 1838, took 15 days to cross at 7.31 knots (13.54 km/h), the last by the SS United States which in 1952 made 35.59 knots (65.91 km/h).  The 1952 mark (set over 3 day, 10 hours, 40 minutes) remains unbroken; those vessels that subsequently have achieved higher speeds have not been ocean liners and the fastest have been built specifically to set the record.  Other awards have been created to acknowledge the absolute speed records in various classes of competition so the Blue Riband remains historically unique.  Once both the fastest, safest and most economical way to make the crossing, it was the advent of the jet-age that doomed the fast ocean-liner.  The Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8 both began regular trans-Atlantic services in 1958 and the business of the big ships went into decline, revived periodically during periods of economic buoyancy as cruise liners with an emphasis on packaged tourism for the middle-class and luxury for the rich rather than speed so the record of the SS United States seems unlikely to be broken.  Although as early as the mid-1950s piston-engine aircraft had eroded the market, by 1960 the jets made it clear the universe had shifted and the days of the mass-market trans-Atlantic liners were almost done. 

A “ribbon braid” and hoodie combo in (of course) pink.  Babes in Hairland provides detailed instructions for constructing (that really is the best word) a ribbon braid.  The concept is simple but execution demanding; it takes much practice to produce a result as accomplished as this.

Without the need for speed, the cruise ships have got bigger and what were once called “floating hotels” are now better imagined as “floating towns”, some with a capacity of close to 10,000 passengers and crew (including a maximum 7,600 passengers although most go to sea with fewer than 6,500).  The term “big ship” certainly has assumed a new significance in the twenty-first century, the largest maintained by the cruise operators measuring 1,198 feet (365 metres or close to ¼ mile) stem to stern with a gross displacement over a quarter-million tons.  By comparison, the largest Dreadnought (battleship) ever launched was the IJN’s (Imperial Japanese Navy) 大和 (Yamato, 1940-1945) and she was 863 feet (263 metres) in length, displacing 72,000 tons.  The biggest of the modern cruise ships are rated for some 23 knots (42 km/h) and while as an exercise in nautical architecture it would in theory be possible to build an ocean liner able (under ideal conditions) to cross the Atlantic at 50 knots (93 km/h) or more while carrying at least as many passengers as the SS United States (around 2,000), such a venture would not be economically viable because demand at the price point(s) required to ensure profitability would not exist.

Last days afloat for USS United States: Moored in Florida awaiting scuttling.

The only traditional ocean liner still sometimes used for the crossing is the RMS Queen Mary 2 (in service since 2004) and although in sea trials able to achieve 30 knots (56 km/h), her usual operating maximum is 26 knots (48 km/h).  In truth, even the Blue Riband winning run in 1952 was not typical of trans-Atlantic operations, the speed achieved at the cost of fuel consumption, the excess volume carried and burned over the 3½ days unsustainable in any commercial operation; the one-off sprint for the ship's maiden voyage was a publicity stunt to ensure the US regained the title from the British, the RMS Queen Mary between 10-14 August, having crossed in 3 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes at 31.69 knots (58.69 km/h).  Because most mail transported over distances is now carried by air, “RMS” (Royal Mail Ship) is now mostly a historic relic with the UK’s Royal Mail usually granting warrants for the prefix to be used only on the handful of vessels still used for the purpose.  Despite no longer being a mail carrier, Cunard’s Royal Mary 2 was granted an “RMS” because of the line’s long tradition.  When introduced in the nineteenth century the “SS” prefix stood for “Single-screw steamship” but, as technology evolved, use was clipped to a generic “steam ship”.  As a footnote, the tale that in 1945 the board of S.S. Cars in England voted to change the company’s name to “Jaguar” because of unpleasant memories of the Nazi era SS is an urban myth, the re-branding made just to achieve distinctiveness in the marketplace (ie product differentiation).

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 Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  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 two 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; it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 that triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 700,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS widely was implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

SS United States (upper) and SS America (lower), New York Harbor, 7 April, 1963 with the Manhattan skyline in the background.  This was a postcard issued by the Steelograph Company, One Broadway, New York City.

SS America had a desultory and often unhappy career after in 1964 being sold by USL (United States Line), her end coming in 1994 when she ran around in the Canary Islands while under tow to Thailand where a refit as a floating hotel was planned.  Over the decades, rough seas broke up the wreck and by 2026, even at low tide, nothing remained visible.  SS United States remained in trans-Atlantic service even after ceasing to be profitable and, in a sigh of the times, USL struck it from their active list in 1969, the year in which the Anglo-French SST (supersonic transport) Concorde and Boeing 747 “jumbo-jet” undertook their maiden flights.  Between 1969 and 2026, remarkably, she never re-entered service or fulfilled any commercial purpose, instead passing between owners who had a variety of plans, all of which were abandoned once accountants, with due diligence, ran the numbers.  Finally, after all those peripatetic years moving from port to port, on Wednesday 11 November, 2026 (a day ahead of schedule to avoid bad weather), she was taken in tow and scuttled some 22 nautical miles north-west of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida, creating (at 990 feet (302 metres) stem to stern) the planet's largest artificial reef, open as a shared space to both fish and divers.  The latter are able to use coordinates 30^o 07.148' N, 86^o 46.755' W (30.119133° N, 86.779250° W in decimal degrees) to locate the wreck's offshore deployment site, the former left to their own devices.  The event was live-streamed.

Flookerang & Fratzog

Flookerang (pronounced flook–ah-rang)

A corporate logo adopted in 1957 by Chrysler Corporation for use in promoting the dramatically restyled versions of the company’s “Forward Look” designs (1955-1956).

1957: The construct was flook + (boom)erang.  Now mostly obsolete, flook was an alternative spelling of fluke (in the sense of “blade at the end of an anchor”).  In wide nautical use, flook (fluke) was used of any of the triangular blades at an anchor’s end, the appendages there to “catch” on the seabed or riverbed, keeping the vessel moored in position (ie not drifting away with the tide).  In armaments design, the flook was a metal hook that appeared close to the tip of many staff weapons (such as a bill) with the effect in combat depending on use; if thrust, could be penetrative (armor or flesh as need be) while if swung it could work as a “grappling hook”.  Fluke & flook are old words, documented since at least the tenth century although, anchors, staff weapons, arrowheads and such having by then been in use for millennia, the forms may well be more ancient.  The origin was the Middle English flok, fluke & flewke, from the Old English flōcand and cognate with the Old Norse flōki; it may be compared with the Old High German flah (flat (source of the modern German flach)), from the Proto-Germanic flakaz although for technical reasons related to the phonetics, etymologists seem to prefer a link with the Middle Low German vlögel (wing) and the Germanic vlōch & vlucht (used in the sense of both “wing” & “flight”) or even vlunke (the modern Low German Flunk (wing, pinion)).  The modern use in German of fluke to describe the tail of whales and such is thought borrowed from English.  The use of sea creatures came from the Old English flōc (flatfish), of Germanic origin, related to the German flach (flat), the Old Saxon flaka (sole), the Old High German flah (smooth) and the Old Norse floke (flatfish, flounder, flak, floe; disk), all ultimately from Proto-Germanic flakaz, from the primitive Indo European root plak- (to be flat).  The parasitic worm was so named in the 1660s by virtue of the distinctive (flat) shape.

A Flookerang: Chrysler corporation brochure, 1958.

In general use, “fluke” has become familiar as the description of the two lobes of the tails of whales (or similar creatures) and whales “fluking” their tails (appearing above the surface just as a deep dive is about to begin) have long been an Instagram staple; once hunted close to extinction for their meat and oil, the charismatic beasts are now among nature’s most prolific content providers although their flukes do occasionally suffer the indignity of being labelled “fishtails”.  Being mammals, they belong to the order Cetacea and are within the zoological class Mammalia, not Pisces.  Interestingly, although “fluke” & “flook” were historically used of the barbed projections added to some arrowheads, the terms seemed to have vanished from modern specialist terminology, replaced by “barbed arrowhead”, the two projections (pointing backwards towards the shaft) designed to resist withdrawal after penetration (and doing victim much damaged during the extraction).  The link with (in this case unfortunate) whales is that the biggest of the barbs were on the biggest of the arrows (the harpoons on whaling ships).  The variant in Scots English was fluik, known to be in use by at least the early seventeenth century.  The way use evolved differently in specialist vocabularies does make sense with nautical jargon retaining fluke or flook for an anchor's broad, seabed-catching blades while in archery, the industry settled on “barb”, presumably because the purpose of the structures mirrored the natural world, barbs in animals and plants doing much the same job.  Boomerang entered English texts only in 1827 and was from būmariny (missile weapon used by Australian Aborigines (a historic term for the native tribes in the continent of Australia, now generally classified as “indigenous” or “first nations” peoples)), the recorded phonetic form of a word in one of the now extinct languages spoken by the Dharuk people native to an area in what is now NSW (New South Wales) and known to geographers as the Sydney Basin.  A word pronounced as wo-mur-rang was noted in NSW in 1798 and it may have been related but there’s no documentary evidence.  Flookerang is a noun, Fratzonic is an adjective and Fratzonically is an adverb; the noun plural is Flookerangs.

1957 Chrysler brochure with Flookerang.  While the 1957 cars were (for better and worse) immensely influential, Virgil's real masterpiece was the 1955-1956 “Forward Look”; frankly, there he should have paused for a few seasons.

Although the The Flookerang can best be described as a pair of stylized boomerangs, one with an especially acute angle overlaid atop another in a more conventional shape and it can be assumed Chrysler used flook in the sense of the appendages on weapons rather than the homophonic fluke’s sense of (1) a lucky or improbable occurrence unlikely to be repeated or (2) to by pure chance obtain a successful outcome (although, in retrospect, there was an element of both in the corporation’s 1957 ranges).  The shape obviously was abstract and did not represent one of Chrysler’s manufacturing divisions (in 1957: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler & Imperial) or a specific model or range.  It was instead a mid-century modernist allusion to the latest version of the company’s “Forward Look” design, introduced for the 1955 season and styled by Virgil Exner (1909–1973; vice president of styling, Chrysler Corporation 1957-1962).  The 1955-1956 Chryslers were for the corporation a watershed because although the mechanical engineering had always been sound (in some ways, often industry-leading), by the late 1940s the styling of the cars had become “frumpy”, a product of the design ethos of Kaufman Thuma “K.T.” Keller (1885–1966; president of Chrysler Corporation 1935-1950 and chairman of the board 1950-1956) who believed a car should be able to be “driven by a gentleman with his fedora or Stetson on”.  This resulted in cars that were tall & boxy; while comfortable to sit inside and drive, they looked old-fashioned and out of step with styling trends from Europe or elsewhere in Detroit.  Basic engineering was the message (“function over fashion” in the modern parlance) and although there were critics of the approach (including many within Chrysler), Keller was unmoved, quoted as saying that while none of the corporation’s cars would: “…knock your eyes out, neither will they knock your hat off as you enter or exit”.  He also had earthier ways of explaining his philosophy.

Flookerang variations: 1958 Plymouth Fury (left), 1961 Dodge Dart Phoenix (centre) and 1961 Plymouth Fury (right).

Trouble was, in the unexpectedly prosperous US of the early 1950s, folk were becoming more interested in style and less in their hats and when Exner’s “Ford Look” appeared late in 1954, buyers responded to “longer, lower, wider” as predictably they would for most of the next two decades.  The lines were elegant, the dimensions well proportioned and, at least in the more expensive versions, there was nicely detailing and it was a direction the industry could have taken but the US of the mid 1950s had become something of a candy-store and there were lots of kids with pocket money; prosperity begat excess.  Exner’s 1957 range more than any was the one that ushered in mass-market fins and a half-decade of bloat in the American automobile; in retrospect, it was “the curse of plenty”.

Exner's masterpieces: 1955 Chrysler C-300 (left) and 1957 Imperial Crown Southampton (right).

Still, the macropterous era was among the most memorable era in an industry that’s had a few and, if excess there must be, it should be “laid on with a trowel”; that Exner’s re-styling for 1957 did but within a couple of seasons, compared with the ways GM (General Motors) outposts like Buick and Cadillac would explore the theme, the 1957 Chryslers appeared (almost) restrained.  By contrast with the extravagance seen on the cars the emblem was created to promote, the Flookerang was subtle, the overlaid shapes denoting (1) rapid forward progress and (2) the sweep of those big fins rearward.  As a conceptual link it was one of the more successful of its kind but, unfortunately, the species it referenced soon went extinct.  Chrysler in 1957 had announced the look in banner headlines reading “Suddenly, it’s 1960” and, in a period when the “futuristic” was everywhere in films, newspapers and fiction, the cars did seem to offer a glimpse of a bright, shiny new world.  The problem was however that once on the path of excess there is nowhere to go but “more excessive” and that’s what happened; by the time it really was “1960”, the moment had passed and the fins soon would be pruned, Exner fired (actually relegated to a face-saving consultancy) with the Flookerang in 1961 (mostly) abandoned, replaced by the mysterious Fratzog.

Flookercharger.

Chrysler’s use of the Flookerang was inconsistent, both in variations in shape and placement on vehicles, on some models appearing one season, vanishing the next, only to re-appear for an encore, perhaps explaining why it never really became culturally embedded as a symbol, its relatively short life contributing also.  It must though have appealed to at least one custom-builder who blended the tail-fins of a 1960 Plymouth Fury with a 1966 Dodge Charger, the Flookerangs left in place despite the tendency of those crafting such things to remove “extraneous detailing”.  The styling of the 1966-1967 Chargers was received with restrained enthusiasm (although, once a small spoiler had been added to the trunk (boot) lid to tame the “lift” encountered at high speed, the fastback lines proved aerodynamically efficient on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals) but few would have suggested grafting on a 1960 Fury’s fins would have improved the aesthetics.  That was however done by one visionary soul who didn’t stop at what clearly was thought a callipygous optimization, a 1967 interior used with the dashboard modified to house a remarkable 19 gauges, the four electroluminescent pods on the driver’s side matched by a symmetrical quartet to the right.  The engine was a 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 that may have been original although it included a Sonoramic cross ram induction system (most photogenic but never offered by the factory with the 440); the transmission a TorqueFlite 727 Automatic.  Given the configuration, adding five hood scoops seemed appropriate and the steering wheel boss retained its original Fratzog.  Unfortunately, the unique machine was damaged in a garage fire (one unkind comment on a Mopar site suggesting it may have attracted “the wrath of God”) and its fate is unknown.

Fratzog (pronounced frat-zog)

A corporate logo since 1961 used from time to time by Chrysler Corporation (and of late revived by Stellantis, the multi-national automotive manufacturing concern into which Fiat-Chrysler was in 2021 absorbed).

1960: According to industry legend, a wholly meaningless word made up on the spur of the moment by the shape’s designer.  If the designer (whose name remains unknown) had some inspiration for their choice, it seems never to have been documented but frequently it’s been assumed the construct was frat(ernity)+ zog.  Fraternity was from the Middle English fraternite, from the Old French fraternité, from the Latin frāternitās, ultimately from frāter (brother).  Although almost certainly unrelated to Fratzog, in the Albanian language, zog translates literally as “bird” (zogu (“the bird”, using the definite article)).  The Zogolli family’s (the construct being the root Zog + the Ottoman-Turkish patronymic suffix –oglu (son of)) most famous member was Zog I (Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli; 1895–1961); King of Albania 1928–1939) and in 1922 (after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved), he Albanized and shortened his surname to Zogu, six year later clipping the final “-u” and adopting the mononym King Zog as his royal title.  Fratzog also predates by some 16 years the acronym ZOG (used also as Zog) (Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government, or Zionist-Occupied Government), a term (dating from 1976) for the US government used by certain antisemitic conspiracy theorists claiming Jews secretly control the US government (a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda under the Third Reich (1933-1945) extended also to the UK government).  JOG (Jewish Occupational Government) has also been used but, historically, SOG was preferred it was thought to distinguish “Jewish subversive conduct” from “being Jewish” although that subtlety escaped most.  Fratzog is a noun; the noun plural is Fratzogs.

1966 Dodge Charger.  In case people didn't “get the message”, Dodge added a fratzog to the hubcaps (top left), gas cap (top left) and grille (centre) while a Flookerang appeared on the C-Pillar (bottom left) with a pentastar behind the front wheel-arch (bottom right).

Using standard etymological deconstruction, a surface analysis of Flookerang reveals the portmanteau construction but all that’s known of the origin of Fratzog is the logo emerged in mid 1960 from Chrysler’s Highland Park styling studio, then under the direction of Elwood Engel (1917–1986; Chief Designer, Chrysler Corporation 1961-1973).  Whether it was the work of an individual or something of a team effort is unclear but, given the simplicity of the task, that it came from the hand of a single designer is quite plausible.  While never named, some sources have referred to the designer as “he” so it’s reasonable to assume it was a man (throughout Detroit the styling studios then an almost exclusively male domain although women had for decades being involved in color choices and interior detailing) but no documentary evidence has ever been sighted.  The meaning of Fratzog has long been a mystery with the industry legend being it was “made up on the spot” after someone in the marketing department sent a request asking how they should refer to the thing.  Having the punchy qualities of being short, memorable, phonetic, unique and needing only two syllables, it would have had some appeal to marketing types but whether they ever sent a “follow-up” asking what it meant, isn’t known.

Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity house, 107 Edgemoor Lane, Ithaca, New York.

Probably it was good they didn’t pursue the matter because the orthodoxy is “Fratzog” has no meaning, speculation focused usually on the “frat” element with the most popular theory being it may be a borrowing of the clipping of “fraternity” (a social organization of male students at a college or university) and familiar in forms such as “frat party” (much associated with drunkenness, frat houses to this day one of the most convenient paths to alcohol for those under 21 (in the US the minimum age at which alcohol may be purchased and consumed)).  Many of the designers at Highland Park would have been “frats” (members of a fraternity and habitués of frat houses) so it’s not impossible “fratzog” may have been slang among certain drunken students although that’s wholly speculative but there is a rich history of such constructs including “frat boy” & “frat rat” (members of a fraternity, the most obnoxious of the breed dubbed “fratholes”), “frat house” (a fraternity's building) and “frat flick” & “frat lit” (movies & books about fraternities or appealing to the frat boy stereotype (“fratire” the ultimate form of the literature, now understood as a stream of “toxic masculinity”)).  As might be predicted given the elements of frat house life (males aged 17-25, ample stocks of alcohol, disposable income and proximity to sorority houses (a source of female students aged 17-25)), behavior can be less than ideal and recent scandals at Cornell University have illustrated aspects of the culture.  Sorority was from the Renaissance Latin sorōritās, from the Classical Latin soror (sister), from the primitive Indo-European swésōr; the word may be compared with the Portuguese sororidade, the Spanish sororidad and the French sororité.

Lindsay Lohan “on theme” in the livery of the Cincinnati Bengals (a football team in the NFL (National Football League) as a member of the AFC (American Football Conference) North division (left) and 1968 Dodge Charger Bengal Edition (right).

The Dodge Charger Bengal Edition was created in 1968 by Cincinnati Dodge dealer to celebrate the formation of an NFL franchise for the city, arranging with Chrysler’s fleet supply staff to have the cars painted in orange and fitted with black vinyl roofs to match the team’s colors.  Amusingly, Chrysler had no such orange in the color charts for its passenger cars but a shade mixed for Michigan Department of Transportation's fleet proved a perfect match.  An order of 50 was required for the specialized run so 50 duly were ordered in a variety of mechanical configurations.  Reflecting Dodge’s usual build practice for 1968 Chargers, Fratzog logos were fitted on the grille and rear panel unless the R/T package also was ordered in which case R/T badges were substituted.  In either case, a Fratzog appeared on the steering wheel boss but mysteriously, some 1968 Charger R/Ts exist with a small Fratzog on the instrument panel while others have a miniature R/T.  “Special editions” like the Bengal Charger often appeared to stimulate sales of slow-selling models but the 1968 Charger was a hit from day one and although the product planners had projected sales that season of around 20,000, they were pleasantly surprised when more than 96,000 left the showroom, a second assembly line quickly added to meet demand.  It was a remarkable increase on its slab-sided predecessor (1966-1967) that in 1967 had struggled to achieve a volume of less than 15,000.

King Zog I of Albania died in 1961 but there’s nothing to suggest Fratzog’s second element was inspired by or a tribute to the deposed monarch, by then living in France (the culmination of a peripatetic exile made comfortable by having looted the Albanian treasury of its gold reserves) where he would succumb to cancer, his 65 years a reasonable achievement for someone who reputedly smoked some 200 cigarettes a day (if true, assuming he slept the recommended eight hours, that’s a fag about every five minutes which does seem a heroic devotion to the art).  In the palaces and chancelleries of Europe, Zog was not highly regarded.  Although neither as vivid nor as entertaining as his diaries, when select documents from Count Galeazzo Ciano’s (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1943 (and the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) who ordered his execution)) time in the foreign ministry were published as Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers (1948), there were some shrewd observations from his travels, including Albania: “The king and royal family were highly unpopular; Zog was accused of nepotism, money-grubbing abd the flashy extravagance of his sisters as well as the high cost of the royal wedding.  The Albania people spoke of Zog in terms of the utmost contempt.”

Too good for King Zog: Bugatti Royale chassis 41141 (the “Kellner car”, unsold and retained by the factory).

Nor was it just the politicians who viewed his gaucheness with distaste.  Ettore Bugatti (1881-1947) refused to sell Zog a Bugatti Royale (Type 41, 1927-1933) on the basis “the man's table manners are beyond belief!”  That was quite a commercial sacrifice because, in the depths of the Great Depression, customers for the huge and expensive Royale had proved elusive; although a run of 25 had been planned, (kings & princes the target market) of the seven built, only three were sold (none to royalty).  Fortunately, some costs were amortized when unused examples of the Royale’s smooth, torquey, 12.8 litre (779 cubic inch) straight-8 engines were re-purposed by SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français (National Company of the French Railways, the state-owned rail operator)) to propel the newly-introduced high-speed railcars.  As a footnote, Zog should correctly be styled “Zog I”, despite there having never been a “Zog II”, that apparent anomaly explained by a monarch's ordinal a matter of nomination by the personage so, in strict historical and regnal terminology, Zog I it is.  It was though his second choice, his original idea being to become Skanderbeg III, associating himself with Albania's national hero Skanderbeg (George Kastrioti (circa 1405-1468)).

A Fratzog.

It’s intriguing to ponder whether being dubbed a “fratzog” was something good or bad but, whatever might be the history of the name (that might to some sound like something associated with the rituals in a Masonic Temple), the shape is no mystery to mathematicians, the Fratzog based on a Deltoid curve (the roulette created by a point on the circumference of a circle as it rolls without slipping along the inside of a circle with three or one-and-a-half times its radius).  Its year of debut came of course at the at the dawn of the space race but while the shape (three delta-forms arranged in an equilateral triangle) might be thought (at least vaguely) evocative of an aerospace theme, that would not much have encouraged more pessimistic types who saw only a “fractured deltoid”.  So, no translation, acronym or verified linguistic origin exists but despite that it certainly caught on, first appearing on the 1962 Dodge Polara 500 and Custom 880, before being applied to various Dodge and other Chrysler models until 1976 and in some places lingering until 1981 when, at the instigation of the new CEO, Lee Iacocca (1924–2019), the pentastar logo was standardized corporation-wide.

Fratzog on 1972 Australian Chrysler Valiant Charger 770 SE 340 (E55); not only the Americans had long model names.

Nor is it known if the Fratzog’s “triangular” theme was an allusion to the company’s original logo.  The Dodge brothers' (Horace (1868–1920) and John (1864–1920) engineering business had begun production of passenger cars just before World War I (1914-1918) and their first emblem had been a dual interlocking triangle that resembled a stylized Star of David.  The family was not Jewish and it’s believed the logo used representations of the Greek letter delta (in upper case use a triangle shape) meant to represent the two brothers who had always been close (John dying of pneumonia during the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic and Horace expiring the same year from cirrhosis of the liver).

Flookerang: 1966 Dodge Charger brochure.

Other logos would appear after Chrysler purchased Dodge in 1928 (following an abortive earlier attempt) but none were even vaguely Fratzogish so history is not much help in tracing the origin; the industry legend of a designer just “liking the shape” may really be true.  It did though have a longer and more diverse career than the Flookerang, serving variously as body badges & grille emblems and appearing also on gas (petrol) caps & horn buttons.  Despite the proliferation, the Fratzog never became thematic in print advertising the way the Flookerang had been used in the 1950s.  So that's it, both words (one a conventional portmanteau, the other possibly one but genuinely mysterious) emerging from a Detroit styling studio although, had anyone concluded Flookerang & Fratzog was likely either an unfinished novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) or a firm of Jewish accountants, that would have been understandable. 

The original Dodge Brothers logo, used between 1914 and 1930.  The oft-repeated story the logo was adopted to annoy the notoriously anti-Semitic Henry Ford (1863-1947) is now thought an urban myth.

Except among collectors or students of such things, by 2024, neither logo probably much registered in the public consciousness in the way of Chevrolet’s bow-tie or Ford’s “Blue Oval” (that font a hand-drawn rendition based on Henry Ford’s signature although PostScript and TrueType emulations variously are available (FordScript the closest, Fabiola Script & Neville Regular similar)) but despite the collective memory having faded, in 2024 Dodge announced the Fratzog would be revived as symbol of its new range of electric power-trains, assuring the world the constant advances in battery chemistry meant the days of thousand HP (horsepower) EVs with AWD (all-wheel-drive) and a 500 mile (800 km) range were nigh; burning rubber wasn’t going away, it’d just no longer require gas.  To make the historic link, there was CGI (computer generated graphics, generative AI (artificial intelligence) at that point not sufficiently refined) footage with Fratzogs, a rationale and lots of tyre smoke.  As things turned out, batteries continued to improve but Dodge’s announcement 2023 would be the end of the line for their gas-powered V8 muscle cars turned out to be premature though genuinely that was the intent.

1967 Wolseley Hornet (1961-1969, left) and 2022 Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV Concept (right).  Although six decades apart, there are still commonalities, both having four wheels and illuminated grille badges.

Keen-eyed observers of promotional material for the 2024 (EV) Charger Daytona noted Fratzog logos on the wheel hubs with the one in the centre of the grille being illuminated, a feature long associated with the English manufacturer Wolseley which, under a number of corporate umbrellas between 1901 and 1975 variously thrived, survived or struggled until finally becoming one of the many victims of the doomed British Leyland (1968-1986).  Wolseley never produced a muscle car but in the 1950s & 1960s was one of the "preferred suppliers" for many of the UK's metropolitan police forces.  The Wolseley trademark is now in the hands of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the state-owned SAIC Motor (formerly Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) acquiring it by virtue of the MG Rover Group having in 2005 been absorbed by SAIC subsidiary Nanjing Automobile.  Although Nanjing has since 2008 produced vehicles using the MG name, there has never been any indication the Wolseley marquee might be revived, presumably because unlike MG which retained strong “brand recognition” because of the following enjoyed by its pre-1980 sports cars, Wolseley has faded from the collective memory, most of its original customers now dead. 

EV: The future of Fratzog.  Dodge's EV shtick is that “people buy performance, not a mechanical specification”, a variant of the hardware store's “people don't want 20 mm drill bits, they want 20 mm holes); it'll be interesting to see if the “US muscle car model” (front-mounted V8, RWD (rear-wheel-drive)) can be re-defined to “performance breakdown”.  The market will decide.

There was also a neologism, “Frazonic” emblazoned on the rear valance; it turned out that adjective referred to the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” (piped “engine noise”, replicating in tone and dB (decibels) the song of a Hellcat V-8; the adverb presumably “Fratzonically”).  Just as government regulations had by the early 1970s contributed to the demise of the first muscle car era (although the insurance companies did their bit), so it seemed clear that five decades on, government edicts might also drive extinct at least the V8-powered monsters of the new generation, production of such things no longer viable given the new fleet fuel efficiency mandate.  However, as things turned out, there may be a stay of execution, internal documents “obtained” by various sites appearing to confirm Dodge’s EV ranges may in 2028 be augmented by a Charger running the supercharged 6.2-liter (376 cubic inch) Hemi Hellcat V8 in a RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration.  The internal designation appeared as “HEV” though that stood for not the by now common “Hybrid EV” but the wholly more subversive “Hellcat Equipped Vehicle”; that repurposing may not have been mischievous but someone at Dodge may have been trying to annoy Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  So Dodge is gearing up for what may be one last hard ride for those who can remember the way things used to be done (when noise was organic and not Fratsonic) but within the Stellantis product planning department, the only poem much read is likely to be To a mouse (1785) by Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) with focus on the two famous lines: “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley” (ie however well-planned, things can go awry).  Corporate America has found Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) second administration more accommodating than its immediate predecessor but, like many, keenly they’ll be watching the returns from the 2026 mid-term elections.