Jazz

Jazz (pronounced jaz)

(1) A style of music of African-American origin, said to have emerged in New Orleans early in the twentieth century.

(2) A style of dance music, popular especially in the 1920s, arranged for a large band and marked by some of the features of jazz.

(3) Dancing or a dance performed to such music, as with jerky bodily motions and gestures.

(4) In slang (1) liveliness; spirit; excitement, (2) insincere, exaggerated, or pretentious talk & (3) similar or related but unspecified things or activities (often in the form “…and all that jazz”) which can be used negatively if referring to rigmarole, red-tape etc.

(5) Of or relating to or characteristic of jazz; to play (music) in the manner of jazz.

(6) To excite or enliven; to accelerate (often in the form “jazz up”).

(7) In vulgar slang, copulation.

1912: An invention of US English of uncertain origin.  Until around the end of the World War I, the alternative spellings jaz, jas, jass & jasz were used.  The first documented use of the word jazz was in 1912 in the context of writing about baseball baseball, the use extending to the musical form in 1915 when it was used in reference to Tom Brown's all-white band out of New Orleans (although there are sources which date it either from a 1917 advertisement in a Chicago newspaper for Bert Kelly's Jaz Band).

Lindsay Lohan watching NBA game between Utah Jazz and LA Lakers, Los Angeles November, 2006.

The etymology has attracted much research but the findings have been inconclusive, the most popular theory being jazz was a variant of jism & jasm (from 1842 & 1860 respectively), archaic nineteenth century US slang meaning “zest for accomplishment; drive; dynamism”, the qualities apparently most often ascribed to women), also words of unknown origin.  That evolutionary path is tangled up with the sexual connotations once associated with the word jazz and etymologists stress the sequence is important.  At the turn of the twentieth century, "gism" certainly meant "vitality" but also "virility" and this (by 1899) led to the slang use for "semen" but, the etymologists caution, while a similar evolution happened to the word "jazz" (which became slang for the act of sex), that use was unknown prior to 1918 so any sexual connotation wasn’t attached at the point of origin but acquired later.  The use in reference to baseball is thought to have been among white Americans and this may also have been the case in the earliest uses with the musical form.  Overlaying all this, nor is it known whether the evolution to jazz was organic, an invention or an imperfect echoic.

Duke Ellington, Ellington At Newport (1956).

While ethno-musicologists note the way the form has evolved over a century as diverse influences have variously been absorbed, assimilated or interpolated, the profession regards the core of Jazz to be a form rooted in West African cultural and musical expression which borrowed from the unique African American blues tradition.  Technically, the most distinct characteristics are blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms and, most celebrated of all, improvisation.  As jazz was influenced, so jazz influenced and there was no musical form so associated with the “fusion movement” (better understood as a number movements) which was a feature of the experimental (and increasingly commercial) output of the decades after the World War II, a trend which produced an array of labels including acid jazz, cool jazz, jazzbo, jazz-funk, jazz fusion, trad-jazz, jazz-rock and more.

Count Basie And His Orchestra, April In Paris (1957).

In idiomatic use context matters much because to jazz something can mean “to destroy” whereas to “jazz up” is to enliven, brighten up, make more colorful etc but this can be good or bad, the familiar phrase “don’t jazz it up to much” a caution against excessive bling or needless complication.  The use in vulgar slang is now listed by most dictionaries as either archaic or obsolete but when it use it covered a wide range from (1) the act of copulation, (2) to prostitute oneself for money & (3) semen.  As an intransitive verb it meant to move about in a lively or frivolous manner or “to fool around”, the origin of this assumed to be the uninhibited style of dancing sometimes associated with the genre.  To jazz someone can also be to distract or pester them or provide misleading or incorrect information (which can be referred to using the noun “the jazz”).  As applied simply to music, it can mean either to play jazz music (in some set form or in a jam) or to dance to jazz music

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959).

The meaning "rubbish, unnecessary talk or ornamentation" dates from 1918, a use reflecting the snobby attitude many had towards a form of music which sometimes didn’t observe the usual conventions of structure.  The term “all that jazz” (sometimes cited as a synonym for “et cetera” but actually extending to ”similar or related but unspecified things or activities" was first recorded in 1939 although the extent of its history in oral use is unknown.  The verb jazz in the sense of “to speed or liven up” dates from 1917 and was used often as “jazzed” or “jazzing”.  The “jazz age” was first described in 1921 and soon popularized in the writings of F Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and the era is usually regarded as the years between the end of World War I (1918) and the Wall Street crash of 1929.  The phrase captures both what was seen as the accelerating pace of life in 1920s America and the popularity of the music.

Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um (1959).

The noun razzmatazz was interesting because it was used in the late nineteenth century to mean various things (most often something fanciful and showy) and thus obviously pre-dated jazz but, presumably because of the rhyming quality it picked up early associations with jazz which by the 1930s had become a disparaging critique ("old-fashioned jazz" especially in contrast to the newer “swing”).  Dating from 1917, the noun jazzbo (low, vulgar jazz) was a disparaging term to describe both the music and musicians; later in the twentieth century it was applied as derogatory term for African-Americans (and others with dark skins) but use soon died out.  The adjective jazzy (resembling jazz music) dates from 1918 and was often used in the forms “jazzily” & “jazziness”, use quickly extending from music to a general term suggesting “spirited, lively; exciting”.  The noun jazzetry (poetry reading accompanied by jazz music) came into use in 1959 and was part of the cultural ephemera of the beat generation.  The noun Jazzercise (the construct being jazz + (ex)ercise) was originally a proprietary name from the commercial fitness industry which, despite the implications, was used to describe routines using just about any form of music.

Lotus Jazz, 1985.

So unsuccessful was the marketing strategy used for Lotus Jazz that it’s said to rate with Ford’s Edsel and Coca-Cola's New Coke among the most popular case studies chosen by students of the discipline to illustrate corporate ineptitude.  Jazz was designed to run only on Apple’s Macintosh 512K and was an integrated suite which included a word processor, spreadsheet, database, graphics, and communication software.  It was a corporate companion of Lotus Symphony which was a suite which ran on IBM compatible PCs under PC/MS-DOS but not too much should be read into the musical nomenclature; both were integrated suites which ran under different operating systems on different hardware.  Lotus 1-2-3 wasn’t the first spreadsheet but it was the one which became the so-called “killer app” which legitimized the IBM PC for business use and, noting the small-scale successes being enjoyed by some of the early suites, Symphony was concocted as something which would rely on the reputation of 1-2-3 for its success.  Although never a big seller on the scale of 1-2-3, Symphony in the 1980s found a niche.

Jazz was supplied on four 400K floppy diskettes and Lotus thoughtfully supplied a sticky label users could use for their data diskette (which wasn’t included).

Jazz, introduced in 1985 was an attempt to replicate on the Mac the company’s success on the IBM-PC though why the decision was taken to introduce a suite instead of a version of 1-2-3 puzzled observers at the time given the Symphony name had nothing like the name-recognition of the Lotus spreadsheet.  Added to that, Jazz was expensive, limited in functionality by the memory constraint of the Mac 512 and clumsy in operation, users forced frequently to swap floppy diskettes (start-up, program & data) with the additional drawback that only a single floppy drive could be used with Jazz, neither dual floppy or hard-drives supported.  A critical and commercial failure, so toxic did the Jazz brand quickly become that plans to release an improved version in 1988 (called Modern Jazz) were abandoned and development resources were shifted to a version of 1-2-3 for the Mac.  That was of course what should have been done from the start and 1-2-3 for the Mac, released in 1991, was well received but months later Microsoft released Windows 3.1 and the universe shifted, Excel and the companion MS-Office becoming a juggernaut; Symphony and 1-2-3 were just two of the many victims.

Palindrome

Palindrome (pronounced pal-in-drohm)

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

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

1638: From the Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palindromos) (running back again; recurring, literally “literally "a running back”) the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + δρόμος (dromos) (direction, running, race, racecourse).  Pálin was from the primitive Indo-European kwle-i-, a suffixed form of the root kwel- (revolve, move round) (kw- becomes the Greek p- before some vowels.  The word palindrome was first published by Henry Peacham (1578-circa 1645) in The Truth of Our Times (1638).  Although derived from the Greek root palin + dromos, the Greek language uses καρκινικός (carcinic, literally “crab-like”) to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.  The related palinal (directed or moved backward, characterized by or involving backward motion) dates from 1888.  Palindrome & palindromist are nouns, palindromically is an adverb and palindromic an adjective.

The noun palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire) dates from the 1590s and was from either the sixteenth century French palinod or the Late Latin palinodia, from the Greek palinōidia (poetic retraction), again from pálin; the related form were palinodical & palinodial.  The word palinode was sometimes applied to the apologia artists and others in the Soviet Union were compelled to publish, were they accused of formalism or something just as heinous.

Pierre Laval (1883–1945), the palindromic Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944.  He was executed by a French firing squad in 1945.

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

Announced on an auspicious date.

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

Palindromic sentences are often created and these are judged not by length but by their elegance.  Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a word nerd and recreational mathematician who devised the classic "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and this approach was in the 1980s taken to its logical extreme in two novels, Satire: Veritas (1980, 58,795 letters) by David Stephens and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo (1986, 31,954 words) by Lawrence Levine, both said to be palindromically perfect and wholly nonsensical.  Shorter but of admirable clarity are the many baptismal fonts in Greece and Turkey which bear the circular 25-letter inscription NIYON ANOMHMATA MH MONAN OYIN (Wash (my) sins, not only (my) face).  This appears also in several English churches.

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

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

The pattern on the skull was based on a multi-directional palindromic grid created by some word nerds in Ancient Rome.  Later re-discovered etched onto a wall in the doomed city of Herculaneum, it reads Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas (The sower, Arepo, makes the wheel work) and it works whether read vertically, horizontally, or in the diagonal.  These types of palindromic squares are called pentacles and the SATOR was the most commonly found in the Western Esotericism of late antiquity.  They were used by Kabbalists, Gnostics, alchemists and other pre-medieval mystics in the creation of magic spells, amulets, potions etc and were thus often seen in the shops of apothecaries.

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

There has been speculation about the the meaning of this pentacle, some a little fanciful, but the consensus is things were made up just to fit, rather as "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined to use each letter in the alphabet and "DICK HOOD DID EXCEED" serves no purpose other than to appear the same if inverted and viewed in a mirror.  The truly palindromic “never odd or even” spelled backwards remains “never odd or even”.    

Gild

Gild (pronounced gild)

(1) To coat with gold, gold leaf, or a gold-colored substance.

(2) To render something with a bright, pleasing, or specious aspect; having the color or appearance of gold.

(3) Smear with blood; to make red, as with blood (archaic except in historic reference).

(4) To adorn in some way.

(5) In cooking, to render some surface with a golden appearance.

(6) To make appear drunk (now rare).

1300–1350: From the Middle English gilden & gulden (to gild, to cover with a thin layer of gold), from the Old English gyldan (akin to gold) and related to the Old Norse gylla (to gild), the Old High German ubergulden (to cover with gold) (the verb from gultham (gold)) and the Middle High German vergülden, from the Proto-West Germanic gulþijan, from the Proto-Germanic gulþijaną, from gulþą (gold).  In historic UK use, the noun gildsman was an alternative spelling of guildsman (a man who is a member of a guild).   Gild is a noun & verb, gilding is a verb & adjective, gilded is a verb, begild is a verb & adjective and begilded & gildable is an adjective.

1967 Cadillac Eldorado.

The figurative use of gild apparently began in the late sixteenth century.  The noun gilding (golden surface produced by gilding (the verb)" was from the mid fifteenth century, the verb pre-dating the form by some two decades.  The adjective gilded emerged 1400 as the past participle of the Middle English gilden and by the early fifteenth century was used also as a noun with the sense of "gilding".  The noun eldorado entered English in the 1590s from the Spanish El Dorado (the golden one ( the name given in the sixteenth century to the country or city laden with gold believed to lie in the heart of the Amazon jungle)); it was derived from the past participle of dorar (to gild), from Latin deaurare (to gild, to gild over), the construct being de- (probably used here as an intensifier) + aurare (to gild), from aurum (gold).  The legend began with the tales of early Spanish explorers and, regarding gold, there would once have been some truth in the story but, in the way of such things, there was embellishment (gilding the story as it were) until Eldorado was thought a city where the “streets were paved with gold” and for two centuries this drew explorers and adventurers.

Cartoon with a modern feeling: Chicago Labor Newspaper's (1894) critique of the policies of the Pullman railroad company.

The terms “gilded age” and “golden age” are sometimes confused, the former coined by Mark Twain (1835-1910) and Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) as the title of their 1873 novel.  The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today was a novel which satirized greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America and it lent the name to the period of US history (circa 1870-circa 1900) immediately prior to the era of progressivism and reform when something was done about political corruption and economic exploitation by the trusts (rail, steel etc).  A gilded age is thus suggestive of a time in which things seem superficially attractive and there is prosperity but the activity conceals the squalor and ugliness beneath.  Whenever there are periods of great social and economic inequality such as that which has evolved in the West over the last four-odd decades (trickle-down economics and its better disguised successors) with aggregated wealth high but disproportionately held by a tiny minority, the term gilded age is often suggested as a descriptor: Gilded age 2.0 in the fashionably modern parlance).  A golden age differs in that it’s associated with a period of peace, prosperity and progress, often expressed by historians in phrases such as the “golden age of the Gupta dynasty” which referred to the Gupta Empire in India which existed between the fourth and sixth centuries.

Gilding the lily: 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible with after-market accessories (1) rear fender skirts (spats) and (2) “Continental” spare tyre kit.  The “Continental” alluded to was the Ford Motor Company’s original Lincoln Continental (1940–1942 & 1946–1948), first seen in 1939 in the one-off vehicle commissioned for his personal use by Edsel Ford (1893–1943; president of the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) 1919–1943).  The Continentals included both features but use of skirts was common whereas the externally mounted spare type housing had become unusual and it became for decades a signature motif of Lincolns and much beloved for just as long by the after-market industry, “Continental kits” appearing on some most improbable cars. 

To refer to the 1959 Chevrolet as a “lily” is a bit of a stretch although the “batwing” rear fins (General Motors (GM) at the time preferred “seagull wings”) and the “cat’s eyes” tail-lamps remain memorable.  The 1959 GM bodies were actually a rush job because the 1958 range was thought staid, bloated and old fashioned compared with the sleek lines of the lines Chrysler had for 1957 ushered in with the slogan “Suddenly it’s 1960s”.  Accordingly (and uniquely), GM’s 1958 bodies were a one-off.  However, whatever one’s opinion of the 1959 Chevrolet, most seem to agree that adding the “Continental” spare-wheel kit and the fender skirts over the rear wheels is gilding the lily but a remarkable number appear in the auction houses so outfitted and almost all the additions are modern re-productions rather than those purchased when the cars were new, or at least young and the photographic record of the era does appear to confirm these accessories were, in period, rare indeed.  It’s thus gilding the lily and an example of the way perceptions of the past can be shaped.

The phrase “gilding the lily” is used to describe the act of adding unnecessary adornment to something already beautiful, the implication being the embellishments are beyond superfluous to the point of detracting from the perfection.  So it's used to mean "unnecessarily to adorn something already beautiful, either in poor taste (a modern expression of which is “bling”) or in an attempt to make something appear more valuable (it has also been used (though less satisfactorily) to mean “inordinately to praise someone”).  It’s of Shakespearian origin although the exact text-string “gilding the lily” appears nowhere in his works, the modern idiom a mis-quote and Lord Salisbury's words were:

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

King John (circa 1594), Act IV, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1564–1616).

The phrase “gilded cell” seems first to have been used in the early 1980s in the US to describe the unusually pleasant conditions (compared with mainstream jails) often afforded to celebrities or the rich who have been sentenced to a form of confinement for some offence.  In use, “gilded cell” is applied to those serving sentences “in the community” rather than a jail, often when fitted with that latter-day status symbol, the “ankle bracelet” monitor.  In the US, the companion phrase used of those put in federal government jails less unpleasant than most is the usually derisive “Cub Fed” a play on the brand “Club Med”, a well-known chain of all-inclusive beach resorts.  Although the conditions in “Club Fed” institutions are more lenient, that really is a relative measure and these remain minimum-security prisons (technically usually styled Federal Prison Camps (FPC) and nothing like a luxury resort; while these prisons do have dormitory housing, minimal perimeter security, and a lower staff-to-inmate ratio, they still enforce strict routines and restrictions, along with recreational and educational programs.  Despite the public perception, the the inmate population at Club Fed is said to be quite diverse.

In idiomatic use, the use as “gilded cage” refers to a place (and, by extension, a situation) which is superficially attractive but nevertheless restrictive (a luxurious trap) and appears to have been coined by the writers of the popular song A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900).  In the slang of apothecaries, there was also “gild the pill”, the history of which is murky but it’s said to refer to the ancient practice of coating bitter tasting pills with a thin layer of metal, the modern version of the phrase being “sugarcoat the pill”.  The phrase “gilded cage” refers to a situation where someone is in a luxurious or privileged environment but feels trapped or restricted, the image being an elaborate golden cage which is exquisitely made but a cage none the less.  Those said to live in gilded cages include (1) celebrities who may enjoy lavish surroundings and many luxuries but exist under the “media spotlight” and lack privacy, (2) those in unhappy marriages with someone rich; while they may have all the material comforts this brings, the relationship may be loveless, sexless and constrained by expectations and limitations imposed by a spouse, (3) those in high paid jobs which they don’t enjoy (or may hate); it may be the long hours, stress or travel but it’s also often the case that expectation of lifestyle (and thus expenses) rise to meet income, thus trapping them in the job, (4) members of royal families who are restricted in what they can say, do or wear and (5) politicians, who may disagree with party platform or a decision of cabinet but are compelled to “toe the line”.  The point about the idiomatic “gilded cage” is that at any time, one can escape the confines but to do so means to sacrifice much; it’s all a question of what one wants from life.

Spade & Splayd

Spade (pronounced speyd)

(1) A garden or farming tool for digging, having an iron blade adapted for pressing into the ground with the foot and a long handle commonly with a grip or crosspiece at the top, and with the blade usually narrower and flatter than that of a shovel.

(2) Some implement, piece, or part resembling this.

(3) A heavy metallic projection on the bottom of a gun trail, designed to dig into the earth to restrict backward movement of the carriage during recoil.

(4) To dig, cut, or remove with a spade.

(5) In four-suit card-games, , a black figure shaped like an inverted heart and with a short stem at the cusp opposite the point; a card of the suit bearing such figures.

(6) In slang, a disparaging and offensive term for a person with black skin (based on the spade in packs of cards) (obsolete).

(7) In nautical use, a type of oar blade that is comparatively broad and short (as opposed to a spoon).

(8) A cutting tool for stripping the blubber from a whale or skin from a carcass.

(9) As “in spades”, a term synonymous with the idiomatic “laying it on with a trowel” to indicate something done to excess or in an emphatic way.

(10) As “to call a spade a spade”, to be candid; to speak plainly without resort to euphemisms.

(11) As “to do the spadework” to be thorough in preparation.

(12) A hart or stag three years old (rare).

(13) A castrated man or animal (archaic).

Pre-900: From the Middle English noun spade, from the Old English spada, spade & spadu.  It was cognate with the the Proto-Germanic spadǭ, spadô & spadō, the Dutch spade, the Old Frisian spada, the Old Saxon spado, the Old High German spato, the German Spaten, the Old Norse spathi (spade), the Hunsrik Spaad and the Ancient Greek spáthē (blade; broad, flat piece of wood).  The ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European spe-dh-, from which the Ancient Greek gained σπάθη (spáthē) (blade), Hittite išpatar (spear), Persian سپار‎ (sopār) (plow), Northern Luri ئەسپار‎ (aspār) (diging) and Central Kurdish ئەسپەر‎ (esper) & ئەسپەرە‎ (espere) (cross-piece on shaft of spade to take pressure of foot).  More recent descendants include the Scottish Gaelic spaid and the Fiji Hindi sipi.  Sometimes confused with the shovel, derived forms include the adjective spadelike, the nouns spader, spadework & spadeful and the verbs spaded & spading.  

Pentagon-authorized playing cards, 2003.

The use on playing cards dates from 1590–1600, from the Italian, plural of spada the meaning of which was originally “sword”, from the Latin spatha, from the Greek spáthē.  Historically, the ace of spades is the highest card in the deck and, dating from the reign of James I (James Stuart, 1566–1625; James VI of Scotland 1567-1925 &  James I of England and Ireland 1603-1625), the law required the ace of spades to bear the insignia of the printing house.  This was to ensure the stamp duty was paid and the method to certify its payment on playing cards was a physical stamp on the highest card of the deck.  Beginning in the seventeenth century, card manufacturers started putting their identification marks on the ace of spades and it was soon an industry tradition, maintained even when the tax was no longer payable, the intricate designs now serving to protect them from illegal copying.  The ace of spades has a (somewhat dubiously gained) reputation as the death card but its become part of the folk lore attached to various organized crime operations and has been used by some militaries in psychological warfare, the US army ordering bulk supplies of ace of spades cards to scatter around although the belief the Viet Cong soldiers feared the card appears to have been untrue.

The Pentagon still liked the imagery however.  In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, thousands of packs of cards decorated with pictures of the most-wanted of Iraqi regime were printed.  The doubtful honor of being the ace of spades was of course granted to President Saddam Hussein but, unfortunately, the regime's final official spokesman, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (محمد سعيد الصحاف‎; b 1937), despite his memorable war-time press conferences (as a result of which he was dubbed Comical Ali or Baghdad Bob by the press corps) quickly making him the best known figure in the government except the president himself, didn't rate card, the Pentagon deeming him not worth even the two of clubs, an act of some ingratitude in the circumstances.

Drain spade with comfort step and D-grip with fibreglass handle; available at Walmart.

Although a proliferation of modern hybrid designs for home gardeners has a little blurred the distinction, traditionally, a spade differs from a two-handed shovel mostly in the form and thickness of the blade.  The phase “to call a spade a spade" (using blunt language, call things by right names and avoid euphemisms) dates from the 1540s and was a translation of a Greek proverb (which was known to the Greek satirist and rhetorician Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανός ό Σαμοσατεύς; circa 125-Circa 185) ten skaphen skaphen legein (to call a bowl a bowl) but Dutch Catholic theologian Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (Erasmus of Rotterdam; 1466–1536) mis-translated, confusing the Greek skaphe (trough, bowl) for a derivative of the stem of skaptein (to dig) and the mistake has forever stuck, possibly because, at least in English, it better conveys the meaning.

The trowel used by Queen Victoria when laying the foundation stone of the new buildings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 17 May 1899, an act she managed to perform without leaving the comfort of her carriage.  A trowel is a kind of small hand-held spade, used in gardening and to apply the mortar in brick-laying.  The ornamental trowel was rendered in silver and enamel by the silversmith Nelson Dawson (1859-1941) and his wife Edith (1862-1928).

The phrase “in spades” (a suggestion of abundance) appeared first as recently as 1929 in a short story by US journalist and author Damon Runyon (1880-1946), a reference to the desirably of having many of the suit in bridge, spades the highest-ranking suit.  A similar phrase is that reported by the poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) and attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881; UK prime- minister 1868 & 1874-1880) who, when discussing the techniques he adopted during his audiences with Queen Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901), advised “everyone likes flattery and when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel”.

Dating from the 1520s, the spatula, now familiar as a kitchen tool used to scrape the contents of bowls, is derived from the early fifteenth century medical instrument, from the Latin spatula (broad piece), diminutive of spatha (broad, flat tool or weapon) from the Ancient Greek spathe (broad flat blade (used by weavers); the erroneous form spattular is attested from circa 1600.

Mid-twentieth century silver-plated cake server by Viners of Sheffield (left) & early twentieth century Danish silver-plated cake spades (right).

The cake spade was a curious alternative to the cake (or pie) server, the latter a utensil styled to conform to the size and shape of the typical domestic slice of cake or pie.  Where the cake spade differed was in the use of a regular or irregular trapezoid shape which, although it would make it difficult to maneuver something cut in the traditional, elongated triangle used with circular cakes or pies, offered advantages in stability for anything served is a squarer form including stuff like lasagna.  Horses for courses.

Splayd (pronounced splade)

An eating utensil combining the functions of spoon, knife and fork.

1943: The splayd was created by William McArthur of Sydney, Australia with manufacturing licensed to several manufacturers, the best known of which was Viners of Sheffield.  Although several variations of the spork (a utensil combining the functionality of spoon and fork) already existed, the splayd’s innovation was the refinement of two outer fork tines each having a hard, flat edge, suitable for cutting through soft food and they tended to have a geometric rather than a rounded bowl, with two longitudinal folds in the metal.  Mrs McArthur used and sold splayds in her Martha Washington Café in Sydney between 1943-1967 and in 1960 sold the manufacturing rights to the Stokes company which instituted some minor changes to the design, making them more easily mass-produced.

Set of six splayds plated in 24 carat gold; most splayds were rendered in 18-8 stainless steel although, especially in England, silver plate was also used in limited quantities.

Among some of the middle class seeking to add a layer of something to their dinner parties, splades were often seen and during its heyday of popularity during the 1950s and 1960s, they were a popular wedding gift.  The design also served a useful purpose in aged care and medical rehabilitation, recommended for those with feeding difficulties following or during treatment of the arm.  A range was manufactured with the Selectagrip system which featured customizable handles to assist people who had difficulties gripping or manipulating standard utensils.  

Lindsay Lohan's Royal Routine in spades in The Parent Trap (1998).

Cage

Cage (pronounced keyj)

(1) A boxlike enclosure having wires, bars, or the like, for confining and displaying birds or animals or as a protective barrier for objects or people in vulnerable positions (used in specific instances as battery cage, bird-cage, birdcage, Faraday cage, tiger cage, fish cage etc).

(2) Anything that confines or imprisons; prison and figuratively, something which hinders physical or creative freedom (often as “caged-in”).

(3) The car or enclosed platform of an elevator.

(4) In underground mining, (1) an enclosed platform for raising and lowering people and cars in a mine shaft & (2) the drum on which cable is wound in a hoisting whim.

(5) A general descriptor for any skeleton-like framework.

(6) In baseball (1) a movable backstop for use mainly in batting practice & (2) the catcher's wire mask.

(7) In ice hockey and field hockey, a frame with a net attached to it, forming the goal.

(8) In basketball, the basket (mostly archaic).

(9) In various sports which involve putting a ball or other object into or through a receptacle (net, hole), to score a goal or something equivalent.

(10) In fashion, a loose, sheer or lacy overdress worn with a slip or a close-fitting dress.

(11) In ordnance, a steel framework for supporting guns.

(12) In engineering (1) various forms of retainers, (2) a skeleton ring device which ensures the correct space is maintained between the individual rollers or balls in a rolling bearing & (3) the wirework strainers used to remove solid obstacles in the fluids passing through pumps and pipes

(13) To put (something or someone) into some form of confinement (which need not literally be in a cage).

(14) In underwear design, as cage bra, a design which uses exposed straps as a feature.

(15) In computer hardware, as card cage, the area of a system board where slots are provided for plug-in cards (expansion boards).

(16) In anatomy (including in zoology) as rib-cage, the arrangement of the ribs as a protective enclosure for vital organs.

(17) In athletics, the area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.

(18) In graph theory, a regular graph that has as few vertices as possible for its girth.

(19) In killer Sudoku puzzles, an irregularly-shaped group of cells that must contain a set of unique digits adding up to a certain total, in addition to the usual constraints of Sudoku.

(20) In aviation, to immobilize an artificial horizon.

1175–1225: From the Middle English cage (and the earlier forms kage & gage), from the Old French cage (prison; retreat, hideout), from the Latin cavea (hollow place, enclosure for animals, coop, hive, stall, dungeon, spectators' seats in a theatre), the construct being cav(us) (hollow) + -ea, the feminine of -eus (the adjectival suffix); a doublet of cadge and related to jail.  The Latin cavea was the source also of the Italian gabbia (basket for fowls, coop).  Cage is a noun, verb and (occasional) adjective, caged & caging are verbs (used with object) and constructions include cage-less, cage-like, re-cage; the noun plural is cages.

The noun (box-like receptacle or enclosure, with open spaces, made of wires, reeds etc) typically described the barred-boxes used for confining domesticated birds or wild beasts was the first form and form circa 1300 was used in English to describe "a cage for prisoners, jail, prison, a cell".  The noun bird-cage (also birdcage) was in the late fifteenth century formed to describe a "portable enclosure for birds", as distinct from the static cages which came to be called aviaries.  The idiomatic use as “gilded cage” refers to a place (and, by extension, a situation) which is superficially attractive but nevertheless restrictive (a luxurious trap) and appears to have been coined by the writers of the popular song A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900).  To “rattle someone's cage” is to upset or anger them, based on the reaction from imprisoned creatures (human & animal) to the noise made by shaking their cages.  The verb (to confine in a cage, to shut up or confine) dates from the 1570s and was derived from the noun.  The synonyms for the verb include crate, enclosure, jail, pen, coop up, corral, fold, mew, pinfold, pound, confine, enclose, envelop, hem, immure, impound, imprison, incarcerate, restrain & close-in.

Wholly unrelated to cage was the adjective cagey (the frequently used derived terms being cagily & caginess), a US colloquial form meaning “evasive, reticent”, said to date from 1896 (although there had in late sixteenth century English been an earlier cagey which was a synonym of sportive (from sport and meaning “frolicsome”)).  The origin of the US creation (the sense of which has expanded to “wary, careful, shrewd; uncommunicative, unwilling or hesitant to give information”) is unknown and despite the late nineteenth century use having been attested, adoption must have been sufficiently hesitant not to tempt lexicographers on either side of the Atlantic because cagey appears in neither the 1928 Webster’s Dictionary nor the 1933 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

John Cage (1912–1992) was a US avant-garde composer who, inter alia, was one of the pioneers in the use of electronic equipment to create music.  He’s also noted for the 1952 work 4′33″ which is often thought a period of literal silence for a duration of that length but is actually designed to be enjoyed as the experience of whatever sounds emerge from the environment (the space, the non-performing musicians and the audience).  It was an interesting idea which explored both the definitional nature of silence and paralleled twentieth century exercises in pop-art in prompting discussions about just what could be called music.

The related forms jail and goal are of interest.  Jail as a noun dates from circa 1300 (although it had by then been used as a surname for at least a hundred years) and meant "a prison; a birdcage".  It was from the Middle English jaile, from the Old French jaiole (a cage; a prison), from the Medieval Latin gabiola (a cage (and the source also of the Spanish gayola and the Italian gabbiula)), from the Late Latin caveola, a diminutive of the Latin cavea.  The spellings gaile & gaiole were actually more frequent forms in Middle English, these from the Old French gaiole (a cage; a prison), a variant spelling thought prevalent in the Old North French, which would have been the language most familiar to Norman scribes, hence the eventual emergence of goal which emerged under that influence.  It’s long been pronounced jail and the persistence of gaol as the preferred form in the UK is attributed to the continued use in statutes and other official documents although there may also have been some reluctance to adopt “jail” because this had come to be regarded as an Americanism.

The cage bra

The single strap cage bra.

A cage bra is built with a harness-like structure which (vaguely) resembles a cage, encapsulating the breasts using one or more straps.  Few actually use the straps predominately to enhance support and the effect tends to be purely aesthetic, some cage bras with minimal (or even absent) cup coverage and a thin band or multi-strap back.  Designed to be seen, cage bras can be worn under sheer fabrics, with clothes cut to reveal the construction or indeed worn alone, the effect one borrowed from engineering or architecture where components once concealed (air conditioning ducting, plumbing, electrical conduits etc) are deliberately exposed.  It’s thus a complete reversal of the old rule in which the sight of a bra strap was a fashion-fail.  The idea has even been extended to sports bras which actually have long often used additional, thick straps to enhance support and minimize movement, especially those induced by lateral forces not usually encountered.  The cage bra's salient features include:

Lindsay Lohan in harness cage bra with sheer cups and matching knickers.

(1) The straps are a cage’s most distinctive feature.  The most simple include only a single additional strap across the centre while others have a pair, usually defining the upper pole of each cup.  Beyond that, multiple straps can be used, both at the front and back, some of which may have some functional purpose or be merely decorative.  Single strap cage bras are often worn to add distinctiveness to camisoles while those with multiple straps are referred to as the harness style and have the additional benefit (or drawback depending on one’s view) of offering more frontal coverage, the straps sometimes a framework for lace or other detailing; this is a popular approach taken with cage bralettes.

Front and back views of modestly-styled criss-cross cage bras.

(2) Many cage bras are constructed around a traditional back band, especially those which need to provide lift & support while those (usually with smaller cups) have a thin band (merely for location) or none at all.  In this acknowledgement of the laws of physics, they’re like any other bra.  Those with a conventional back band (both bras and bralettes) are often constructed as the V-shaped cage, the symmetrical straps well suited to v-necks or even square necks and paired with cardigans or more structured jackets or blazers, they’re currently the segment's best-sellers.  A more dramatic look is the criss-cross cage but fashionistas caution this works well only in minimal surroundings so accessories should be limited to earrings or stuff worn on the wrist or beyond.

Example of the cage motif applied to a conventional bra, suitable for larger sizes.

(3) As a general principle, the cage bras manufactured tend to be those with cup sizes in the smaller range, reflecting the anticipated demand curve.  However, even the nominal size (A, B C etc) of the cups of cage bras can be misleading because they almost always have less coverage than all but the most minimal of those used by conventional bras and should be compared with a demi cup or the three-quarter style of plunge bras.  That said, there are strappy designs which include molded cups with underwires suitable for larger sizes but it’s a niche market and the range is limited, the scope for flourishes being limited by the need to preserve functionality, a demand which, all else being equal, tends to increase with as mass grows.

Examples of designs used to fabricate harness cage bras which can be worn under or over clothing or, in some cases, to augment a more conventional bra or bralette.

(4) Despite the specialized nature of cage bras, some are multi-purpose and include padding with all the usual advantages in concealment and additional volume, permitting use as an everyday garment rather than one used exclusively for display.  Some include removable padding so the bra can be transformed into a see-through design.

Choker cage bra.

(5) The methods of closure type vary.  The most uncompromising designs actually have no closure mechanism; the idea being one would detract from the purity of the lines so this requires the wearer to pull it over the head.  Other types use both front and back closures, usually with conventional hook & clasp fittings (so standard-sized extenders can sometimes be used) but there are some which borrow overtly from the traditions of BDSM underwear (the origin of the cage bra motif) and use extravagantly obvious buckles and even the occasional key-lock.  The BDSM look is most obviously executed in the choker cage bra which includes a neck choker as a focal point to accentuate the neck and torso, something best suited to a long, slender neck.  Buyers are are advised to move around when trying these on because the origins of the BDSM motif lay in devices used in Medieval torture routines so a comfortable fit is important.

Cage bralette.

(6) Almost all cage bras continue to use the same materials as conventional garments, the fabrics of choice being nylon or spandex, their elasticity permitting some adjustments to accommodate variations in shape or location.  Sometimes augmented with lace, fabric, mesh or metal rings, straps can also be made from leather.

(7) Ricki-Lee Coulter in illusion dress, March 2022.

Although usually worn under or over clothing, the cage bra concept can be integrated and the gaps inherent in the use of straps mean the style is ideal for illusion clothing.