Daughter

Daughter (pronounced daw-ter)

(1) A female child or person in relation to her parents.

(2) Any female descendant (now rare).

(3) A person said to be related to an institution as if by the ties binding daughter to parent (daughter of the church; Daughters of the American Revolution et al).

(4) Any female (archaic in the English-speaking world but used sometimes by some cultures to indicate some closeness of family relationship, rather as aunt & uncle are sometimes used in the West).

(5) Any institution or other thing personified as female and considered with respect to its origin (eg Australia is the daughter of the six colonies).

(6) In chemistry & physics (of a nuclide), an isotope formed by radioactive decay of another isotope.

(7) In biology, pertaining to a cell or other structure arising from division or replication (eg the daughter cell; daughter DNA).

(8) As daughterboard, IBM’s original descriptor for boards (now called piggyback boards, riser cards or mezzanine boards) which directly (usually by soldering) connect to motherboards (now called main or system boards).

(9) In historical linguistics, as daughter language (known also as a descendant language), a language descended from another (its mother language) through genetic descent as opposed to a "sister language" which is one which also evolved from the proto- mother language but formed a separate branch.  The model is that of a tree where the mother language is the trunk and the branches the daughters and sisters (each of which can have their own daughters and sisters).  The image of the tree represents the diversification of languages from a root source.

Pre 950: From the Middle English goghter & doughter, from the Old English dohtor (female child considered with reference to her parents; daughter) from the Proto-West Germanic dohter, from the Proto-Germanic dokhter and the earlier dhutēr, from the primitive Indo-European dughtḗr, source also of the Sanskrit duhitā & duhitar-, the Avestan dugeda-, the Armenian dustr, the Old Church Slavonic dušti, the Lithuanian duktė and the Ancient Greek thygátēr & thugatēr).  The Proto-Germanic forms were the source also of the Old Saxon dohtar, the Old Norse dóttir, the Old Frisian and Dutch dochter, the Old High German tohter, the German Tochter and the Gothic dauhtar.

Dutiful daughter: Donald (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) & daughter Ivanka Trump (b 1981;  senior advisor in the Trump administration 2017-2021) in an extended (stretch) Lincoln Continental limousine, New York City, circa 1992.

The common Indo-European word was lost in Celtic and Latin; the Latin filia (daughter) is the feminine form of filius (son), the most obvious connection in Modern English being young female horses: a filly is a beast under four and thus too young to be a mare and filly is still used as humorous and affectionate slang to refer to a lively girl or young woman.  The modern spelling evolved in the sixteenth century in southern England.  In late Old English, the form also emerged of a "woman viewed in some analogous relationship" (to her native country, church, culture etc and that use persists to this day) and from circa 1200 could be used to describe anything regarded as feminine.  Daughter-in-law is attested from the late fourteenth century.  The noun plural is daughters, the long archaic form being daughtren and the last surviving obsolete spelling was dafter.  The adjective daughterly (relating to or characteristic of a daughter) is technically neutral but has long denoted “dutiful (towards parents)”, the “dutiful daughter” a frequent reference in English literature.  As well as dutiful, daughters can be difficult and Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) was once asked by some Republican Party apparatchiks to "control his daughter" (Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980) who had a mind of her own)  He replied he "could be president of the United States or he could control Alice but he could not do both."  

The noun step-daughter was from the Old English stepdohtor, the formation aligned with the German Stieftochter.  Grand-daughter, like the related forms to describe recent ancestors and relations dates from 1610.  The noun god-daughter (female godchild, girl one sponsors at her baptism) was adopted in the mid-thirteenth century as a modification of the Old English goddohtor.  The noun filicide (action of killing a son or daughter) dates from the 1660s, the construct being the Latin filius/filia (son/daughter) + -cide (a killing), the meaning extended after 1823 to "one who kills a son or daughter", filicidal appearing shortly after.  Bathsheba was the Biblical wife of King David, mother of Solomon, from the Hebrew Bathshebha (literally "daughter of the oath" from bath (daughter).

Lindsay Lohan: Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father).

I wait for the postman to bring me a letter

I wait for the good Lord to make me feel better

And I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders

A family in crisis that only grows older

Why'd you have to go

Why'd you have to go

Why'd you have to go

Daughter to father, daughter to father

I am broken but I am hoping

Daughter to father, daughter to father

I am crying, a part of me is dying and

These are, these are

The confessions of a broken heart

And I wear all your old clothes; your polo sweater

I dream of another you the one who would never, never

Leave me alone to pick up the pieces

A daddy to hold me, that's what I needed

So why'd you have to go

Why'd you have to go

Why'd you have to go

Daughter to father, daughter to father

I don't know you, but I still want to

Daughter to father, daughter to father

Tell me the truth, did you ever love me'

Cause these are, these are

The confessions of a broken heart, of a broken heart

I love you

I love you

I love you

I, I love you

Daughter to father, daughter to father

I don't know you, but I still want to

Daughter to father, daughter to father

Tell me the truth, did you ever love me'

Did you ever love me?

These are

The confessions of a broken heart, oh yeah

And I wait for the postman to bring me a letter

Songwriters: Kara Dioguardi, Lindsay Lohan & William Wells.  Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music.  From the album A Little More Personal (Raw) (2005).

IBM: Mothers and daughters but not sisters

IBM PC-1 (1981).

IBM didn’t invent the motherboard.  It evolved into the form in which it became well-known in the early 1980s because advances in technology had reduced the size of certain components (CPU, memory etc) which used to be separate devices which were wired together to run as a unit.  When IBM released the original PC-1 in 1981, it was built around a motherboard which contained slots into which expansion boards could be plugged and various connectors with which compatible devices could be connected.  Given there were motherboards, IBM, in the innocent age of the 1980s, decided other peripheral components, those usually directly embedded through soldering to the motherboard, should be called daughterboards.  Quite how the nomenclature was chosen is either not known or IBM has suppressed the records and the fanciful notion that it’s because the early motherboards contained more female than male connections is just an industry myth.  In the literature, there’s also the odd reference to sisterboards though the name never caught on and "daughter-board" was sometime used to describe cards which plugged-into expansion cards but such devices were rare.

IBM PC-1 motherboard (1981), expansion slots at the top right; it seemed small at the time.

A daughterboard was a circuit board which extends the circuitry of the motherboard and, being soldered, was connected directly, unlike the inherently swappable expansion cards which plugged-in using the bus or other (most often serial, parallel or SCSI (small computer system interface)) interfaces.  Like a motherboard, daughterboards had sockets, pins, plugs and connectors to permit connection to other boards or other devices and have been both part of initial product releases and post-launch updates, the best known example of which were the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) daughterboards used to add functionality to a sound card.  Except for the odd special build for someone really nerdy, modern personal computers now rarely have daughterboards although they’re still often seen on servers.

1984 Apple Macintosh 128 kb motherboard with SCSI daughterboard (right) and additional RAM daughterboard (left).  A machine with 1 MB RAM was impressive in 1984.

Even before the twenty-first century interest in gender and gendered pronouns, IBM had renamed everything in the corporation which could in anyway be thought sexist, racist etc.  By the late 1990s, although the term motherboard continued widely to be used, IBM had started calling them them variously main-boards or system-boards; daughterboards became piggyback or mezzanine boards.  Interestingly, as part of the linguistic sanitation, IBM started calling hard disk drives "hard files" which was either looking forward to solid-state storage or just one of those inexplicable things which happens when projects assume their own inertia; whatever the reason, the "hard file" never caught on.  The terms male and female for connections (modeled on human anatomy and used in everything from plumbing to the space programme) were retained because their use was universal and convenient or mnemonic gender-neutral substitutes eluded even IBM's language police.  Male and female connectors may be about the only gender-loaded terms which will escape being labelled "micro-aggressions".

Interpolate & Extrapolate

Interpolate (pronounced in-tur-puh-leyt)

(1) To introduce (something additional or extraneous) between other things or parts; interject; interpose; intercalate; to make additions, interruptions, or insertions.

(2) In mathematics, to estimate (a value of a function) between the values already known or determined.

(3) To alter a text by the insertion of new matter (with a long history of being applied especially if done deceptively or without authorization but technically a neutral term and can be used either way).

(4) To insert (additional or spurious material) in this manner.

1605–1615: From the Latin interpolātus, past participle of interpolātus & interpolāre (to make new, refurbish, touch up; to give a new appearance to), the construct being inter- (between, among, together) + -polā- (verb stem (akin to polīre (to smooth or polish) + -tus (the past participle suffix) from polare, from the primitive Indo-European root pel- (to thrust, strike, drive), the connecting notion being "to full cloth".  The sense evolved in Latin from the neutral "refurbish" to the slightly more loaded "alter appearance of" to the actually accusative "falsify” (especially or specifically by adding new material".  By the early fifteenth century Middle English had gained interpolen in a similar sense and by the 1650s also interpolator, from the Late Latin interpolator (one who corrupts or spoils), agent noun from past participle stem of Latin interpolāre.  The noun interpolation (that which is interpolated) dates from the 1670s and appears to have evolved both from the seventeenth century French interpolation and directly from the Latin interpolationem (nominative interpolatio) from the past participle stem of interpolāre.  Interpolate, interpolated & interpolating are verbs, interpolater (or interpolator) & interpolation are nouns, interpolable, interpolatory, interpolative are adjectives and interpolatively is an adverb.

Extrapolate (pronounced ik-strap-uh-leyt)

(1) To infer (an unknown) from something that is known; an evidence-based conjecture.

(2) In statistics, to estimate (the value of a variable) outside the tabulated or observed range.

(3) In mathematics, to estimate (a function that is known over a range of values of its independent variable) to values outside the known range.

(4) To perform extrapolation.

1830s: The construct was extra- + -polate (extracted and borrowed from interpolate).  The verb extrapolate in the sense of “make an approximate calculation by inferring unknown values from trends in the known data" became popular among astronomers, statisticians, economists & mathematicians after appearing in an 1862 Harvard Observatory account of Comet Donati (Donati's Comet (C/1858 L1 & 1858 VI)) in 1858).  In contemporary accounts, it was said to have been a word used since the 1830s by English mathematician and astronomer Sir George Airy (1801-1892).  Extrapolation (an approximate calculation made by inferring unknown values from trends in the known data) dates from 1867 and was the noun of action from extrapolate by analogy with the long-established interpolation although the original sense was "an inserting of intermediate terms in a mathematical series", the transferred sense of "drawing of a conclusion about the future based on present tendencies" adopted since 1889.  Extrapolate, extrapolated & extrapolating are verbs, extrapolater (or extrapolator) & extrapolation are nous, extrapolable, extrapolatory, extrapolative are adjectives and extrapolatively is an adverb.

Extrapolation and Interpolation

The common root of the words is the Latin verb (polīre) meaning “to polish” which in this context means “adding finish” to a data-set by adding what’s missing but the prefix is most useful in distinguishing between the two, inter- meaning “between” or “among,” and extra-, “outside” or “beyond”.  The two words look similar and at first glance it’d be not unreasonable to assume they might be antonyms but, although related in use and tangled in history, they are used in different ways and, one highly nuanced and the other sometimes applied correctly but inducing the drawing of erroneous or at least misleading conclusions.  Interpolation refers to inserting something between other things, while extrapolation is the act of drawing conclusions about something unknown based on what is known.  In mathematics, the meanings are uncontroversial in that interpolation is the process of determining an unknown value within a sequence based on other points in that set, while extrapolation is the process of determining an unknown value outside of a set based on the existing data (often expressed as a “curve”).  Interpolation is a commonly used tool of mathematicians, statisticians and others in the data-based sciences where it’s necessary to determine a function’s value based on the value of other points, an unknown value within the sequence is determined based on what else is in the sequence.

Interpolation, used beyond mathematics can be a loaded word because it’s the act of introducing something (additional or extraneous) between other parts, usually in text or musical notation and thus the technical equivalent of “insert” or (sometimes) “interject or interpose”.  Interpolation can thus be a merely neutral description but because of the history of the word (in Latin it evolved from the neutral "refurbish" to the slightly more loaded "alter appearance of" to the actually accusative "falsify” (especially or specifically by adding new material"), can imply that what has been inserted is spurious, false, misleading or done with some other nefarious purpose.  It’s thus a word which needs to be used with caution lest implications be drawn where no inference was intended.

A big word with lots of syllables, interpolate may be unfamiliar to many and that’s maybe why sometimes it’s been used apparently in an attempt to impart some sense of gravitas or perhaps disguise what’s really happening.  In pop music, sampling, the interpolation of other people’s music into one’s own is now probably a sub-genre and it’s well understood although, despite the involvement of courts and copyright lawyers, the distinctions between sampling, interpretation and actual appropriation although well-trimmed, remain frayed at the margins and all three can be interpolated.  One derided as a form of plagiarism, sampling seems to have gained respectability, at least among those who practice the art, the critical legal device apparently being to sample by using a fragment from a previously recorded song, but re-recording rather than directly copying the original.  The origin of the practice appears to be as the work-around for when the copyright holder refuses to license the original for sampling purposes.  Use in this way, only a publisher’s permission is required although in some common-law jurisdictions, the original can be subject to a compulsory licensing regime.

Extrapolation is related to deduction, an act of drawing a conclusion about something unknown based on what is known so the verb extrapolate is often used synonymously with infer and deduce.  However, in mathematics, while the act of interpolation involves a closed data set with defined low and high values, extrapolation involves estimating the value of a variable or function outside an observed range so it can be necessary to understand the context (social, economic etc) of the numbers being used in the exercise.  A Roll-Royce dealership which has a good month and sells ten cars should probably not from that data-set extrapolate that in the year ahead they will sell 120; other factors need to be considered beyond the simple math.

Xanax (Alprazolam), a fast-acting benzodiazepine.  It is marketed as anti-anxiety medication.

Lindsay Lohan released the track Xanax in 2019.  With a contribution from Finnish pop star Alma (Alma-Sofia Miettinen; b 1996), the accompanying music video was said to be “a compilation of vignettes of life”, Xanax reported as being inspired by Ms Lohan’s “personal life, including an ex-boyfriend and toxic friends”.  Structurally, Xanax was quoted as being based around "an interpolation of" Better Off Alone, by Dutch Eurodance-pop collective Alice Deejay, slowed to a Xanax-appropriate tempo.

Lindsay Lohan risked going straight to Hell by creating a promotional meme featuring Pope Francis (b 1936; Roman Catholic Pope since 2013).  Cryptically captioned Blessed Be The Fruit, it included an image of the art-work used for her debut album Speak (2004).  Given the problems he's expected to manage, solve or conceal (depending on the circumstances), most would forgive the pope if he popped the odd Xanax.

The original photograph (top left) was taken in 2013 during a mass conducted in the Catedral Basílica do Santuário Nacional de Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Cathedral Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady Aparecida) in Aparecida, Brazil.  His Holiness was at the time administering communion.  It has since proved a popular photograph for meme-makers interpolating optical discs.

Xanax by Lindsay Lohan

I don't like the parties in LA, I go home

In a bad mood, pass out, wake up alone

Just to do it all over again, oh

Looking for you

Only one reason I came here

Too many people, I can't hear

Damn, I got here at ten

Now it's 4 AM

I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care about us

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe

No, I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care 'bout us

 

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe, yeah

 

But you're like Xanax to me

When you kiss me, I can't breathe

 

I try to stay away from you, but you get me high

Only person in this town that I like

Guess I can take one more trip for the night

Just for the night

 

Only one reason I came here

Too many people, I can't hear

Damn, I got here at ten

Now it's 4 AM

 

I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care about us

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe

No, I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care 'bout us

 

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe, yeah

 

But you're like Xanax to me

When you kiss me, I can't breathe

 

But you're like Xanax to me

When you kiss me, I can't breathe

Xanax lyrics Universal © Music Publishing Group

Whet

Whet (pronounced hwet or wet)

(1) To sharpen (a knife, tool, etc) by grinding or friction.

(2) To make keen or eager; stimulate:

(3) To stimulate one’s curiosity (usually in the phrase “to whet the appetite”)

(4) The act of whetting or a person or device which whets.

(5) Something that makes more keen or intense; an appetizer or aperitif.

(6) A spell of work; a short period of time (US slang, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, such as the phrase “to talk a whet”).

(7) To preen (obsolete).

Pre 900: From the Middle English verb whetten & noun whete, from the Old English verb hwettan (to whet, sharpen (and figuratively "to incite or encourage”) and noun hwǣte, a derivative of hwæt (bold) and related to hvæt (sharp), from the Proto-West Germanic hwattjan, from the Proto-Germanic hwatjan & hwatjaną (to incite, sharpen), from the primitive Indo-European kehid (sharp).  It was cognate with Dutch wetten (“to whet, sharpen”), the German wetzen (“to whet, sharpen”), the Icelandic hvetja (“to whet, encourage, catalyze”) and the dialectal Danish hvæde (“to whet”).  The Proto Germanic hwatjan & hwatjaną which was from the primitive Indo-European root kwed- (to sharpen), source also of the Sanskrit codati (incites (literally "sharpens")), the Old English hwæt (brave, bold) and the Old Saxon hwat (sharp) was the source also of the Old Norse hvetja (to sharpen, encourage), the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch wetten, the Old High German wezzan, the German wetzen (to sharpen) and the Gothic ga-hvatjan (to sharpen, incite).  Whet is a noun and verb, whetted & whetting (used with object) are verbs, whetter a noun and whetted an adjective.  The noun plural is whets and the homophone wet (in accents with the wine-whine merger).

The Modern English words wet and whet are etymologically unrelated but for a number of reasons are sometimes, understandably, confused.  Nor is the whet/wet thing an isolated example and the reason for much confusion lies in the terminology familiar to historians, translators and etymologists: the source of most modern English being conveniently traced back to Ancient Greek and the surprisingly large number of forks of Latin, through the filter of Old and Middle English.  The Greek & Latin is obviously foreign and for most, words can be recognized only by their similarity to what is now familiar but Middle English is (at least substantially) readable to a modern English-speaking audience prepared to guess a little and pick up wherever possible from the context or sentence structure.  Old English (which once was the “Olde English” which better captures the idea) however really is a misnomer and is almost wholly unrecognizable and is better thought of as pre-English and probably only the most structurally oriented etymologists would regard it as a proto-form.  Indeed, many prefer the alternative “Anglo-Saxon” as a description because it was introduced to the British Isles by the Germanic peoples who settled in the mid-fifth century, a timing which meant it was in that language that were written what came to be regarded as the first works of Literature “in English”.

One suspects that were an anthropologist now to discover the old texts as a novel form, it’s unlikely they’d be labeled as any form of “English”, something which may have happened because of a desire (which long persisted in the study of “English” history) to make Englishness as ancient as possible, historians long seduced by their constructions of all that stretched back to the island’s links with the classical age.  Except when treated as aberrations, uncivilized barbarians and pockets of violent backwardness, much of the non-English contribution to the history of life on the British Isles tended until recently to be neglected or devalued by historians and the attitude to language reflects this but that Modern English contains both wet and whet, pronounced the same yet meaning different things hints at the tangle, an additional twist being that some “whets” and distinguished from others by being used “wet”.

In English use, this meshing of sound and overlap of meaning does produce the odd tendency to error.  For example, a Parthian shot (Parthian an Iranian language of the people of ancient and medieval Parthia) is a metaphor used to describe a barbed insult, delivered as the speaker departs, the construction based on a military tactic used by Parthian mounted cavalry.  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the archers would turn their bodies back in full gallop to shoot at the pursuing enemy, quite a trick which demanded fine equestrian skills given that the riders’ hands were occupied by his bows and arrows.  It was more admirable still because the Parthian military used neither stirrups nor spurs, riders relying solely on the pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping beasts.  However, the literal “Parthian shot” was literally also something of a “parting shot” given the way it was delivered and among English speakers is often rendered as “parting shot”, a use so frequently encountered that many dictionaries now accept it as a legitimate alternative form as long as the correct meaning is conveyed: Whichever word is used, the metaphor refers not merely to an effectively made comment, the essence being that it is delivered at the point of departure.

Part in this sense was from the Old French departir, from the Late Latin departiō (to divide), the construct being dē- (away from) +‎ partiō (part, divide).  Interestingly, “part” (in the sense of “piece of something) existed in Old English and is an example that the relationship with the more recent Middle & Modern English is occasionally recognizable.  Part was from the Middle English part, from the Old English part (part) and the Old French part (part), both from the Latin partem, accusative of pars (piece, portion, share, side, party, faction, role, character, lot, fate, task, lesson, part, member), from the primitive Indo-European par- & per- (to sell, exchange).  It displaced the Middle English del & dele (part), from the Old English dǣl (part, distribution).

Lindsay Lohan wetting her whistle during a fishing trip with Hofit Golan (b 1985, Israeli media personality), July 2016.

Whet and wet are subject to the same linguistic clatter.  To “whet one’s appetite” and “wet one’s whistle” can both mean “to imbibe an aperitif” although there are differences of nuance, the former meaning “to sharpen the desire for more” while the latter references the usefulness of alcohol as a social lubricant.  The occasional mistake is thus understandable and those learning English must think such things surely unnecessary but, as a noun, things don’t improve.  The English whet is a word about sharpening things and a whetstone is a literally a piece of stone, most frequently in the shape of a rectangular cuboid (although there are specialized shapes optimized to sharpen different devices with more complex curves) against which the edges of a blade are worked at an acute angle until sharp.  That’s fine but whetstones are often used with a cutting fluid (water or an oil), both to enhance the sharpening and carry away swarf (the tiny fragments of metal lost from a blade).  A whetstone may thus be used wet or dry but fortunately, the term “wet whetstone” has always been avoided and the variations are instead styled water stones (also waterstones) or oil stones (also oilstones).

Japanese Natural Whetstone.

Whetstones may be cut wholly from natural stone or modern composites.  The natural product (an there are cults among the advocates of the various types), is formed usually of some form of quartz, and documented since antiquity are the locations of the quarries which produce the whetstones able to provide a blade with the sharpest edge although recent research seems to indicate there’s little difference in the results it’s possible to achieve but a huge gulf in the efficiency with which one does the job compared with another and it’s thought the ease of operation was as much a factor in historic preferences as the fineness of the edge.  The classical whetstones, being a natural product were subject also to much variation in appearance and the more pleasing or rare have always been prized, some now collector items, bought to be displayed rather than used for their historic purpose.

The synthetic composites are made usually with a type of ceramic such as silicon carbide (carborundum) or aluminum oxide (corundum), held together with a bonded abrasive.  Popular in industry and commerce because they offer a faster cutting action than natural stone, they have the advantage of being able to be fabricated as a double-block, coarse grit on one side, fine on the other, thus enabling the one reversible piece to be used instead of two.  Unlike a natural stone, the consistency of particle size, distribution and density can be almost perfectly replicated throughout and although artisans may still hanker for the look and feel of real stone, it’s admitted the modern synthetics are usually now superior; the ability to integrate nano-sized particles meaning the construction of composites is now almost infinitely variable.

Dalstrong’s summary of sharpening techniques when using their synthetic composite whetstones.

Épatant

Épatant (pronounced a-pat-on)

Something startling or shocking, especially if unconventional

Circa 1910s: An adjective in French formed from the present participle of épater (to flabbergast), the construct being é- +‎ patte (paw) +‎ -er.  The é- prefix is from the Old French es-, from the Latin ex- & ē- and was used to indicate away or moving away from.  Patte is from the Middle French, from the Old French pade & pate (paw, foot of an animal), from the Vulgar Latin patta (paw, foot), borrowed from the Frankish patta (paw, sole of the foot), from the Proto-Germanic pat- & paþa- (to walk, tread, go, step), of uncertain origin and relation.  Possibly it was from the primitive Indo-European (s)pent- & (s)pat- (path; to walk), a variant of the primitive Indo-European pent- & pat- (path; to go).  It was cognate with the Dutch poot (paw) and the Low German pedden (to step, tread); it's related to both pad & path.  The suffix -er is from the Latin -āre, used to form infinitives of first-conjugation verbs (many of these verbs directly descended from Latin, rather than from stem + suffix).

Cubism

It’s probably no longer possible for a style of visual art to shock.  That may be because everything possible has been done or that the representational promiscuity of the last century has dulled collective sensitivity, certainly among Western audiences.  Put simply, new being no longer possible, nor is the shock of the new (Shock of the New (1972) is a strangely neglected book by art critic Ian Dunlop (b 1940), exploring seven exhibitions of the modern period, from the Salon des Refuses (Paris, 1863) to Joseph Goebbels’ Degenerate Art show (Munich, 1937); the title later re-used by Australian art critic Robert Hughes (1938–2012) for his 1980 TV show).

In the early days of modernity, painting genuinely could shock as cubism did in the years before the First World War.  Essentially a simplification of form and deconstruction of perspective, cubism played with ideas of mass, time and space, distorting deliberating the techniques artists had honed over the centuries in creating the three dimensional illusions rendered on inherently flat canvases.  The early works were still recognizably representational but soon, the movement seemed to morph into something which existed to shock and the geometric touches grew in intensity, sometimes overwhelming the represented forms, some of the later work really pure visual abstraction, the sort of self-indulgent technical ecstasy Comrade Stalin would later, in a similar context, condemn as “formalism”.

The origin of cubism is generally traced back to Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a portrait of five prostitutes in a style influenced by the African tribal art which the artist had seen at the Palais du Trocadéro, a Paris ethnographic museum.  Curiously, Picasso chose to show the work only to fellow artists and it went unseen by the public until an exhibition in 1916.  Others certainly adopted its techniques, defining the first era of Cubism which came to be known as Analytical Cubism, marked by depictions of a subject from multiple vantage points at once, creating a fractured, multi-dimensional effect expressed usually with a small palette of colors.  The term cubism was used first in 1908 by French critic Louis Vauxcelles (1870-1943) but wasn’t widely employed until the press adopted in 1911 and it was then often used in a derogatory sense.  The reputation of both Picasso and cubism has since improved and when assessing the drip painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) could think of no higher compliment than him being “...the greatest painter since Picasso”.  Of course, many who thought their own eye for art quite well-trained didn't agree with Ms Guggenheim.  In 1945, just after the war, Duff Cooper (1890–1954), then serving as Britain's ambassador to France, came across Picasso leaving an exhibition of paintings by English children aged 5-10 and in his diary noted the great cubist saying he "had been much impressed".  "No wonder" added the ambassador, "the pictures are just as good as his".

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso.

Although it’s convenient to think of Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as the first cubist painting and thus the beginning of Cubism, art critics are a schismatic lot, some tracing the origin of the style to earlier decades while others suggest it was the first proto-Cubist work, containing enough of the essential elements of the genre to be linked yet not sufficiently distinct from earlier traditions to belong.  These critiques emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the dying days of modernity, a time when the post-war expansion of academic art criticism gave rise to an industry of revisionism so unrelenting that post-modernism was perhaps inevitable.

Coffin

Coffin (pronounced kof-in (U) or kaw-fin (non-U))

(1) The box or case in which the body of a dead person is placed for burial; in US use, usually called a casket.

(2) In veterinary science, the hollow crust or hoof of a horse's foot, below the coronet, in which is the coffin bone.

(3) In printing, the bed of a platen press; the wooden frame around the bed of an early wooden press.

(4) In cooking, a casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie (archaic).

(5) In fingernail art, one of the standard shapes.

(6) In cartomancy, the eighth Lenormand card.

(7) A type of basket (obsolete).

(8) Industry slang for a storage container for nuclear waste.

(9) A conical paper bag, used by grocers (obsolete).

(10) In engineering, an alternative name for a flask or casting mold, especially those used in sand casting.

1300-1350: From the Middle English cofin, from the Old Northern French cofin (sarcophagus (and earlier basket & coffer) from the Latin cophinus (basket, hamper), a loanword from the Ancient Greek κόφινος (kóphinos) (a kind of basket) of uncertain origin, the Latin the source also of the Italian cofano and the Spanish cuebano (basket).  The original meaning in fourteenth century Middle English was "chest or box for valuables", preserved in the modern coffer (see most frequently in the plural form coffers), meaning, inter alia, a specialized type of container for storing money or other valuables.  The funereal sense, "chest or box in which the dead human body is placed for burial" is from 1520s; before that the main secondary sense in English was "pie crust, a mold or casing of pastry for a pie" (late 14c.). The meaning "vehicle regarded as unsafe" is from 1830s; coffin nail (cigarette) is slang from 1880; the phrase "nail in (one's) coffin" (a thing that hastens or contributes to one's death) has been in use since 1792.

Shapes of boxes

Pope Francis (b 19362025; pope 2013-2025) at the funeral of Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023), St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican, January 2023.  The expression "nail down the lid" is a reference to the lid of a coffin (casket), the implication being one wants to make doubly certain anyone within can't possible "return from the dead". 

A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation, although it’s increasingly common for elaborate and expensive coffins to be used only for the funeral ceremony with the dead actually buried or cremated in simple boxes made from cheaper timber or even reinforced cardboard.  Use for burial became two-pronged.  The Old French cofin, (basket), evolved into coffin in English whereas the modern French form, couffin, means cradle.  Within the English-speaking world, coffin is rare in the US where the preferred form is usually casket; elsewhere the words are used interchangeably.  However, some undertakers (now often gentrified as "funeral directors") do note detail differences between the two, a casket denoting a four or eight-sided (almost always a rectangular or long octagonal) shape, while a coffin tends to be six or twelve-sided (almost always an elongated hexagonal or elongated dodecagonal).

1937 Cord 812 Phaeton.

Probably because of the morbid association, the coffin has never been widely used as a design metaphor except where adoption is dictated by functional need.  It was however the most famous feature of the Cord 810/812 (1936-1937), known from its debut as the “coffin nose” and probably still the most memorable car of the art deco period.  Despite the elongated hood (bonnet) and coming from an era during which the configuration was widely used, the Cords were fitted not with straight-eight engines but used a 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) Lycoming V8, the generous length necessitated by something unusual for the time: front wheel drive.  This demanded additional space to achieve the desired lines so the semi-automatic four-speed gearbox was mounted in front of the engine.  In the improving economy of the mid-1930s sales were initially brisk but reliability problems dampened demand and the rectification programme proved so expensive production ceased in 1937, the recession of 1938 dooming hopes of any revival although the body dies were purchased in a fire-sale by two other troubled operations,  Graham-Paige and Hupmobile.  Making the distinctive lines rather more conventional in appearance, the companies created two substantially identical four-door sedans with an emphasis on ease of production and that meant the Cord's radical engineering was abandoned for something as conventional as the new look.  Now using Graham-Page's reliable but uninspiring straight-six engine driving the rear wheels, the cars were competent enough but the market was still difficult and there was insufficient capital to sustain operations during the inevitable delays caused by teething troubles early in the production process.  With fewer than 2000 having been built by late 1940, neither manufacturer's assembly lines lasted long enough to see passenger vehicle stopped after war was declared in 1941 but the plants were in 1942 re-opened for military production.  

Coffin-shaped fingernails painted in Dior 999 (left) and gloss-black (right).  With a distinctive curve which tapers to an obtuse end, the elegant and much-admired coffin is one of the standard shapes in fingernail art.  The name is also sometimes misapplied: If the tapering is more severe, the nail should properly be called an almond and if rounded, it’s an oval or squoval (although some manicurists list those variations as a pipe).  The alternative name for the coffin is "ballerina", a reference to the shape of the shoes in which the dancers perform.

Outtakes of Lindsay Lohan with and in casket during vampire-themed photo-shoot by Tyler Shields (b 1982).  The Life Is Not A Fairytale session, Los Angeles, May 2011.

Absquatulate

Absquatulate (pronounced ab-skwoch-uh-leyt)

To flee; abscond; decamp; run away.

1840: Absquatulate replaced the earlier absquotilate (attested from 1837), both being facetious coinages of pseudo-Latin: blendings of abscond +‎ squat +‎ perambulate with the middle portion probably influenced by -le (frequentative) and the dialectal term squattle (depart).  The source is contested.  It’s said to have been used on the London stage in the lines of the comical American character Nimrod Wildfire in the play The Kentuckian as edited by British author William Bayle Bernard (1807–1875) although there are references to it being in some editions of James Kirke Paulding’s (1778- 1860; US Secretary of the Navy 1838-1841) original script.  In an example of the language displacement caused by war (which would become more prevalent in the twentieth century), the US Civil War slang skedaddle replaced it; other synonyms in the sense of “quickly to leave” include abscond, decamp and the unfortunately rare vamoose.

Lunch aftermath: Lindsay Lohan in chunky platforms, absquatulating from the Café de Paris, Monte Carlo, June 2015.

Although absquatulate is wholly facetious, all agree the meaning has always been "to flee; abscond; decamp; run away" but the use to which it was put does hint that there was often some suggestion those absquatulating were doing so after stealing something or committing some other crime.  The word become sufficiently Latinized for a family of relations to emerge including absquatulation, absquatulated, absquatulater and absquatulative.  The latter-day creation abscotchalter was criminal-class slang describing someone hiding from the police; it seems now extinct except as a humorous literary device.

Election aftermath: Crooked Hillary Clinton in blue pantsuit absquatulates early, Washington DC, November 2016.