Parsec

Parsec (pronounced pahr-sek)

A unit of astronomical length, based on the distance from Earth at which a star would have a parallax of one second of arc which is equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun or 3.26 light-years.  Its lineal equivalent is about 19.1 trillion miles (30.8 trillion km).

1913: The construct was par + sec, derived from parallax + second.  Parallax is from the Middle French parallaxe, from the Ancient Greek παράλλαξις (parállaxis) (alteration) from παραλλάσσω (parallássō) (to cause to alternate) from ἀλλάσσω (allássō) (to alter) from ἄλλος (állos) (other).  Second, in the sense of time, is from the Middle English secunde & seconde, borrowed from the Old French seconde, from the Medieval Latin secunda, short for secunda pars minuta (second diminished part (of the hour)). Parsec is a noun; the noun plural is parsecs.

Distance in space

The parsec (pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System.  A parsec is defined as the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arc second, which corresponds to 648000 astronomical units.  The nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) from the Sun.

The parsec unit appears first to have been suggested in 1913 by the English astronomer Professor Herbert Hall Turner (1861-1930).  It was invented to permit calculations of astronomical distances using only raw observational data and is thus the default unit of measure in astronomy and astrophysics although the more-easily understood light-year is preferred by lay-persons.  While useful to describe the comparatively short distances within the Milky Way, multiples of parsecs are needed to map the wider universe including kiloparsecs (kpc) for objects immediately beyond the Milky Way and megaparsecs (Mpc) for more distant galaxies.  Gigaparsecs (Gpc) are used to measure the quasars and galaxies which exist at the extreme edge of the known universe; the particle horizon (the boundary of the observable universe) has a radius of about 14.0 Gpc (46 billion light-years).

Although in use for more than a century, the parsec wasn’t formally defined until August 2015 when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which, as part of the definition of a standardized absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scale, noted the existing explicit definition of the parsec as exactly 648000 astronomical units, or approximately 3.08567758149137×10¹⁶ metres.

Hubble telescope image of star-forming region in the Carina Nebula.  As photographed, the gas and dust cluster is about .889 of a parsec (2.9 light-years) tall.

Stratosphere

Stratosphere (pronounced strat-uh-sfeer)

(1) The region of the upper atmosphere extending between the tropopause and mesosphere to about 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the earth, characterized by little vertical change in temperature.

(2) In historic documents, all of the earth's atmosphere lying outside the troposphere (obsolete).

(3) Any great height or degree of anything, as the highest point of a graded scale.

(4) In geology, collectively, those layers of the Earth’s crust which primarily comprise stratified deposits (obsolete).

1908: From the French stratosphère, the construct being strato + sphère (literally "sphere of layers").  It was coined by French meteorologist Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (1855-1913).  Strato was an inflected form of strātus (a spreading out), the perfect passive participle of sternō (spread) and past participle stem of sternere (to spread out) from the primitive Indo-European root stere- (to spread).  Sphere was from the Middle English spere, from the Old French sphere, from the Medieval Latin sphēra, from the Classical Latin sphaera (ball, globe, celestial sphere), from the Ancient Greek σφαῖρα (sphaîra) (ball, globe) of unknown origin and despite the apparent similarity, not related to the Persian سپهر‎ (sepehr) (sky).  The earlier use of the word, attested in English 1908 and coined in German 1901, was a geological term for part of the Earth's crust and has long been wholly obsolete.  The second major layer of Earth's atmosphere, the stratosphere sits above the troposphere and below the mesosphere.  Itself stratified, the stratosphere’s cooler layers are closest to the Earth’s surface, the higher layers warmed by the absorption of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation in the ozone layer, a reversal of the process in the troposphere where temperature decreases with altitude.  Stratosphere is a noun, and stratospheric & stratospherical are adjectives; the noun plural is stratospheres.

Layers

It was once thought the first living things to enter the stratosphere were some fruit flies, sent there by the US Air Force aboard one of the V-2 rockets seized from the German's wartime missile programme.  Launched in February 1947 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the purpose of the flight was to explore the effects of radiation exposure at these then novel high altitudes; the V2 attained a height of 68 miles (109 kilometres) and all fruit flies survived the trip.  It was soon appreciated however that some bacteria or viruses must have been present in or on the V2s launched by the Germans between 1944-1945 and many of these would, at least briefly, have entered the stratosphere but even these appear not to have been the first living (and viruses are in some sense “alive”) things there.

Although the tropopause (the uppermost layer of the troposphere) is thought a barrier to the upward movement of particles, volcanoes are an obvious means by which this could occur although such eruptions are rare.  Bacterial life does however survive in the stratosphere, making it technically, part of the biosphere and, in 2001, dust was collected at a height of 25 miles (41 kilometres) which, upon analysis, was found to contain bacteria of surprisingly large size.  The discovery excited speculation that such large bacterial masses may be incoming to Earth, the suggestion being that (1) the bacteria may have arrived in the stratosphere from space and (2) the possibility that the transfer of bacteria from the Earth to the highly mutagenic stratosphere may have played a role in bacterial evolution.  Among the scientific community, enthusiasm for these theories was restrained.

Lambeth

Lambeth (pronounced lam-bith)

(1) A south London suburb, the location of Lambeth Palace, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

(2) A slang term for the hierarchy of the Church of England.

The name Lambeth embodies hithe, a Middle English word for a landing on the river.  Lambeth Palace has for some eight-hundred years been the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  It sits on the south bank of the Thames, a quarter mile (400m) south-east of the Palace of Westminster, which contains the houses of parliament, on the opposite bank.

Rowan Williams (b 1950; Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-2012) and Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) chat at Lambeth Palace.

The Lambeth Conference

The Lambeth Conference is a (nominally) decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  There have been fourteen Lambeth Conferences, the first in 1867.  The Anglican Communion is an international association of autonomous national and regional churches, not a governing body and the office of Archbishop of Canterbury is in no way analogous with the Roman Catholic Pope.  The conferences serve a collaborative and consultative function and are said to express “…the mind of the communion" on issues of the day. Resolutions passed at a Lambeth Conference are without legal effect, but can be influential.

Conferences were never the pure and high-minded discussions of ethics, morality and theology some now appear to believe characterized the pre-modern (in this context those held prior to 1968) events.  Agenda and communiqués from all conferences have always included the procedural, administrative and jurisdictional although in recent years, they’ve certainly reflected an increasingly factionalized communion rent with cross-cutting cleavages, first over the ordination of women and of late, homosexual clergy.  During the 1998 conference, Bishop Chukwuma (b 1954) of Nigeria attempted to exorcise "homosexual demons" from the soul of Nigerian-born Richard Kirker (b 1951), a British priest and general secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.  Recalling probably Ephesians 4:32 or perhaps the more cautionary Matthew 6:15, Kirker forgave him.

The spirit of Kirker notwithstanding, at this point, the disagreements seem insoluble.  The poisonous atmosphere at, and in the aftermath of, the last conference in 2008 did not enhance the image of the church and a typically Anglican solution to avoid a repetition in 2018 seemed to have emerged.  In 2014, in answer to the suggestion he had cancelled the 2018 conference, Archbishop Justin Welby (b 1956; 105th Archbishop of Canterbury 2013-), in a statement worthy of any of his predecessors, responded by stating, "As it hasn’t been called, it can’t have been cancelled."

A communiqué issued after the primates' meeting in January 2016, noted the bishops had accepted the archbishop’s proposal the fifteenth conference should be held in 2020.  However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was in March 2020 decided to postpone the conference to the summer of 2021 but the virus proved elusive and by July, the delay had been extended to 2022.  The first epistle of Peter has been chosen as the biblical focus for the conference, the theme of which is said to be what it means to be “God’s Church for God’s World”.  The apostle Peter wrote this epistle to give comfort to Christians suffering persecution from non-believers, hoping to encourage them to live pure lives despite their vicissitudes.

#lambeth got tagged in Lindsay Lohan's political commentaries on the dramatic night of the Brexit referendum in 2016.  She was a part of Team %remain.  

Peter didn’t sugar-coat the message (1 Peter 4:12-19), making it clear that for Christians, suffering is actually a participation in the sufferings of Christ and is an occasion for rejoicing, helpfully adding that in the midst of the suffering, the Holy Spirit rests upon those who are suffering, this being a great consolation.  He further explains that God uses suffering to purify the Christian community, God's household.  God uses the abuse that pagans unjustly heap on Christians to prepare his people for the return of Christ and warns people not to be surprised at the fiery ordeal that will come upon them as followers of Jesus.  Actually, they should be both grateful and happy and thus glorify God, for if they share in Christ’s sufferings it means they will also share in his glory.

In a world beset by fire, flood, pestilence and plague, 1 Peter seems a good theme to loom over a Lambeth Conference.  Whether or not Christians beyond the Kent conference rooms will long note the message, it probably will resonate with Archbishop Welby’s predecessor, Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth, b 1950; 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, 2002-2012).  During his tenure at Lambeth, Dr Williams probably felt more ignored than persecuted by non-believers, finding the internecine squabbles of the believers in the Anglican factions rather more tiresome.  Declaring the problems in the church “insoluble” he seemed not unhappy to be leaving Lambeth to return to his study and write about Dostoevsky.  A generous spirit, he will have wished his successor well.

Cabotage

Cabotage (pronounced kab-uh-tij or kab-uh-tahzh)

(1) In seafaring, navigation or trade along the coast.

(2) In aviation, the legal restriction to domestic carriers of air transport between points within a country's borders (with certain exceptions).

(3) The transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country; the exclusive right of a country to control such transport.

(4) In law, the right to engage in such transport.

1825–1835: A borrowing from the French cabotage (coasting trade) from the French caboter (to sail coastwise; to travel by the coast), a verbal derivative of the Middle French cabo & the Spanish cabo (headland; cape).  Ultimate root is the Latin caput (head).  Word was first used in sixteenth century France to reference the restrictions which permitted only French ships to trade or transport between French ports. Other countries adopted the concept, later extending it to land and air travel.  Cabotage is a noun; the noun plural is cabotages.

Rights

Example of a cabotage arrangement.

Originally a term applied exclusively to shipping along coastal routes, cabotage can now refer also to aviation and land transport.  It is the transport of passengers and/or goods between two places in one country, undertaken by vessels from a different country.  Cabotage rights are those which define the extent to which transport operators from one country can trade in another and many arrangements exist.  In aviation, it is the right to operate within the domestic borders of another country; most states don’t permit aviation cabotage, and strict sanctions exist, historically either for reasons of economic protectionism, national security, or public safety.  One exception is the European Union, the member states of which grant cross-vested rights to all others, cabotage rights remaining otherwise rare in passenger aviation.  The Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation prohibits member states from granting cabotage on an exclusive basis, which has meant it’s not been used in bilateral aviation negotiations and is not granted under most open skies agreements.  The Closer Economic Relations agreement between Australia and New Zealand permits Australian carriers to fly domestically and internationally from New Zealand and vice versa. Additionally, there are limited rights for the airlines to service domestic routes within both countries.

Hangry

Hangry (pronounced hang-gree)

Feeling irritable or irrationally angry because of hunger.

1915-1920: A portmanteau word, the construct being from h(ungry) + angry.  Hungry is from the Middle English hungry, from the Old English hungriġ & hungreġ (hungry; famishing; meager), from the Proto-Germanic hungragaz (hungry).  It was cognate with the Dutch hongerig, the German hungrig and the Swedish hungrig, all of which meant “hungry”.  Anger is from the Old Norse angr (affliction, sorrow).

Hungry (pre 950) was from the Middle English hungry & hungri, from the Old English hungriġ & hungreġ (hungry; famishing; meager) which existed also in the Common West Germanic and was from the Proto-Germanic hungragaz (hungry).  It was cognate with the German hungrig, the Old Frisian hungerig, the Dutch hongerig, the German hungrig and the Swedish hungrig, all of which meant “hungry”.  The use as a figurative form is noted from circa 1200.

Angry (1350-1400) in the sense of "hot-tempered, irascible; incensed, openly wrathful" is a construct of the earlier noun anger + -y,  The Old Norse adjective was ongrfullr (sorrowful) (the Old Norse angr meant “affliction, sorrow”), from the mid thirteenth century a Middle English form was angerful (anxious, eager).  The “angry young man” dates from 1941 but became a popular form only after John Osborne's (1929-1994) play Look Back in Anger was performed in 1956 although the exact phrase does appears nowhere in the text.  The rare related form is angriness.

The –y suffix is from the Middle English –y & -i, from the Old English -iġ (-y, -ic), from the Proto-Germanic -īgaz (-y, -ic), from the primitive Indo-European -kos, -ikos, & -iḱos (-y, -ic).  It was cognate with the Scots -ie (-y), the West Frisian -ich (-y), the Dutch -ig (-y), the Low German -ig (-y), the German -ig (-y), the Swedish -ig (-y), the Latin -icus (-y, -ic) and the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós); a doublet of -ic.  The –y suffix was added to (1) nouns and adjectives to form adjectives meaning “having the quality of” and (2) verbs to form adjectives meaning "inclined to".

The cats Hillary & Bill: a question understandably frequent in some marriages.

Etymologists list hangry as a humorous invention in US English dating from circa 1915-1920 but use soon died out, not to be revived until 1956 when it was mentioned in the US psychoanalytic journal American Imago in a discussion about various kinds of deliberate and accidental wordplay.  Hangry, unlike some of contractions or elisions documented, survived (or was again revived) in the internet age, becoming popular from the mid-1990s and achieved sufficient linguistic critical-mass for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to accept it as a word in their 2018 update.  Even among those who dismiss hangry as slang, the usual rules of English should apply so the comparative is more hangry, the superlative most hangry, and the adjectives hangrier and hangriest.

Hangriness can lead to "diva-like behavior".  The Australian New Idea is a "women's magazine" offered still in a print edition as well as on-line.  Locally, the slang for the publication is "The No Idea".

Some dictionaries still resist, apparently not convinced it’s yet a proper word despite the usually authoritative imprimatur of the OED.  For those who side with the OED, of note is that hangry thus becomes only the third word in English to end in –gry, the other two being, predictably, angry and hungry.  There is the odd instance in the historic record of puggry (a light scarf wound around a hat or helmet to protect the head from the sun) but etymologists overwhelmingly say this is a mistake, a Raj-era corruption of the correct puggaree, from the Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi pagṛī (turban), related to the Punjabi pagg (turban) and Kashmiri pag (turban), all of unknown origin.  Angry, hungry & hangry are the only words in English ending in "gry". 

Bacchanal

Bacchanal pronounced (bah-kuh-nahl, bak-uh-nal, bak-uh-nl (noun) or bak-uh-nl (adjective))

(1) A follower of Bacchus.

(2) A drunken reveler.

(3) An occasion of drunken revelry; orgy; riotous celebration.

(4) Of or pertaining to Bacchus; bacchanalian.

1530-1540: From the Latin Bacchānālis (having to do with Bacchus) & Bacchānālia (feast of Bacchus), plural of Bacchānal (a place devoted to Bacchus), from Bacchus (the god of wine), from the Ancient Greek Βάκχος (Bákkhos).  By extension, the meaning "riotous, drunken roistering or orgy" dates from 1711.  Bacchus, known also as Dionysus (Διόνυσος) (Dionysos) was in Greek Mythology the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy.  In Antiquity, most attention focused on wine and given consumption was both high and enthusiastic, the worship of Bacchus became firmly established.  A quirk of Bacchus’ place in the pantheon of gods is that, uniquely, he was born of a mortal mother.  The Romans adopted the name bacchanal (a woman given to such things was a bacchante) and named the behavior of those who had taken too much strong drink: bakkheia.  Bacchanal is a noun & adjective, Bacchanalia is a noun; the noun plural is bacchanals.

Bacchus and Ariadne

Bacchus and Ariadne (1717) by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741).

In Greek mythology, Ariadne was the clever, though perhaps naïve, daughter of King Minos of Crete and she aided the hero Theseus in his mission to slay the Minotaur.  To say naïve might be understating things: poor sweet Ariadne was an emo and a bit of a dill.  On the island of Crete, there was a great labyrinth that housed a fearsome beast, the Minotaur, half human, half bull.  King Minos, in retaliation for his son's death at the hands of an Athenian, required the people of Athens every nine years to send seven young men and seven young virgins to be sacrificed to the beast, the alternative the destruction of their city.  One year, Theseus volunteered to be sent to Crete as part of the awful pact, planning to kill the Minotaur and thereby release his people from their plight.  When he stepped ashore in Crete, Ariadne spotted him and at once fell in love, as emos often do; running to Theseus, she offered to help him defeat the monster if he would marry her.  Theseus naturally agreed so Ariadne gave him a sword and a ball of red thread with which to mark his path so he could find his way out of the labyrinth.  The plan worked to the extent that Theseus slayed the Minotaur but certainly had no intention of marrying Ariadne.  While the couple traveled to Athens, during a brief stop on the island of Naxos, he sailed away, abandoning her while she slumbered on the beach.  Ariadne may have been an emo but Theseus was a cad.  Distraught by being deserted by the one she loved, Ariadne was still sobbing on the shore Bacchus appeared with a procession of his followers.  They spoke a few words and within moments had fallen in love, soon to marry.  In some tellings of the myths, after their wedding, Bacchus placed Ariadne's sparkling diadem in the sky as the constellation Corona, thus making her immortal.

A bacchante illustrating the consequences of what the Ancient Romans called bakkheia: Lindsay Lohan in a Cadillac Escalade, resting after dinner, Los Angeles, May 2007.

Inflammable & Flammable

Inflammable (pronounced in-flam-uh-buhl)

(1) Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable (recommended only for figurative use).

(2) Easily aroused or excited, as to passion or anger; irascible; fiery; volatile, choleric.

1595–1605: From the Medieval Latin inflammābilis, the construct being the Classical Latin inflammā(re) (to set on fire) + -bilis (from the Proto-Italic -ðlis, from the primitive Indo-European i-stem form -dhli- of -dhlom (instrumental suffix).  Akin to –bulum, the suffix -bilis is added to a verb to form an adjectival noun of relationship to that verb (indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).  Construct of the Classical Latin inflammare (to set on fire) is -in (in, on) + flamma (flame).

Flammable (pronounced flam-uh-buhl)

Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable

1805–1815: From the Classical Latin flammā(re) (to set on fire) + -ble (the Latin suffix forming adjectives and means “capable or worthy of”).

Need for standardization

Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.  English, a mongrel vacuum-cleaner of a language, has many anomalies born of the haphazard adoption of words from other tongues but the interchangeability of flammable and inflammable is unfortunate because of the use in signs to warn people of potentially fatal danger.

In- is often used as a prefix with adjectives and nouns to indicate the opposite of the word it precedes (eg inaction, indecisive, inexpensive etc).  Given that, it’s reasonable to assume inflammable is the opposite of flammable and that objects and substances should be so-labeled.  The reason for the potentially deadly duplication is historic.  Inflammable actually pre-dates flammable, the word derived from the Latin verb inflammare (to set on fire), this verb also the origin of the modern meaning “to swell or to provoke angry feelings”, hence the link between setting something on fire and rousing strong feelings in someone.  So, at a time when Latin was more influential, inflammable made sense.  However, as the pull of Latin receded, words with in- (as a negative prefix) became a bigger part of the lexicon and the confusion was created.  By the early nineteenth century, flammable had become common usage, and by the twentieth was widespread.  The modern convention is to use flammable literally (to refer to things which catch fire) and inflammable figuratively (to describe the arousal of passions, the swelling of tissue etc.  Surprisingly, the rules applying to warning signs have yet to adopt this standardization.

Using flammable and inflammable to mean the same thing is confusing.  The preferred wording is flammable and non-flammable.  Borrowing from semiotics, danger should be indicated with red, safety with green.

Portmanteau

Portmanteau (pronounced pawrt-man-toh)

(1) A case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, made usually from stiff leather, hinged at the back so as to open out into two compartments

(2) A word created by blending two or more existing words.

1580s (for the travelling case (flexible traveling case or bag for clothes and other necessaries)): From the Middle French portemanteau (travelling bag, literally "(it) carries (the) cloak").  The original meaning from the 1540s was “court official who carried a prince's mantle" from porte, (imperative of porter (to carry) + manteau (cloak)).  The correct plural is portmanteaux but in modern English use, portmanteaus (following the conventions for constructing plurals in English) is now more common.  In the nineteenth century, the word was sometimes Englished as portmantle, a use long extinct.  The notion of the portmanteau word (word blending the sound of two different words) was coined by Lewis Carroll (pen-name of Charles L. Dodgson; 1832-1898) in 1871 for the constructions he invented for Alice Through the Looking-Glass such as Jabberwocky, his poem about the fabulous beast the Jabberwock.  Portmanteau in this sense has existed as a noun since 1872.

Vintage Louis Vuitton Portmanteau, typically circa US$50-80,000 depending on condition.

A portmanteau word, a linguistic blend, differs from contractions and compounds.  Contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do + not to make don't, whereas a portmanteau word is joins two or more words that relate to the one contractual theme.  A compound word is merely the joining for words in their original form (eg under + statement) without any truncation of the blended words.  Portmanteau words (eg breakfast & lunch to create brunch) always modifies at least one of the original stems.

Lindsay Lohan's handy moniker Lilo (the construct being Li(ndsay) + Lo(han) and it's used sometimes as LiLo) is a portmanteau word.

The word portmanteau was first used in this sense by Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1871) where the concept is helpfully explained by Humpty Dumpty.  Less erudite but just as amusing was the creation of refudiate by Sarah Palin when she got confused and conflated refute and repudiate although it’s unclear whether she knew the meaning of either.  Even those created or used by more literate folk are not always accepted.  Irregardless (portmanteau of regardless and irrespective) seems to stir strong feelings of antipathy in pedants who generally won’t accept it even as a non-standard form and insist it’s simply wrong.  Other languages also create blended forms as needed.  The title of Emile Habibi’s 1974 novel was translated from Arabic utashaʔim (pessimist) + mutafaʔil (optimist) into English as The Pessoptimist.  Arabic linguistic traditions however prefer acronyms and compounds which sometimes overlap.  The group known variously as ISIL or ISIS (although they came to prefer "caliphate" or "Islamic State" (IS)) first adopted the name ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām (Islamic State if Iraq and the Levant) which is usually written as Daesh or Da'ish.  IS think this derogatory as it resembles the Arabic words daes (one who tramples underfoot) and dāhis (those who sows discord).  IS threatened to punish those who use Daesh or Da'ish with a public flogging; repeat offenders promised the cutting out of the tongue.

In the manufacture of big words, English is unlikely ever to match the Germans.  Until changes in EU regulations rendered it obsolete, the longest word in the Fourth Reich was rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz (law delegating beef label monitoring).  Currently, the longest word accepted by German dictionaries is kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (automobile liability insurance), editors rejecting donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe (widow of a Danube steamboat company captain) because of rarity of use.

Strudel

Strudel (pronounced strood-l or shtrood-l (German))

(1) A pastry, usually consisting of a fruit, cheese, or other mixture, rolled in multiple layers of paper-thin sheets of dough and baked.

(2) In the slang of computing, the “at” symbol (@).

(3) In oceanography, a vertical hole in sea ice through which downward jet-like, buoyancy-driven drainage of flood water is thought to occur.

(4) In engineering and graphic design, a general descriptor of spiral shaped objects.

1893: From the German Strudel (literally “eddy, whirlpool”), from the Middle High German strodel (eddy, whirlpool), from the Old High German stredan (to bubble, boil, whirl, eddy), from the Proto-Germanic streþaną, from the primitive Indo-European verbal stem ser- (to flow) from serw (flowing, stream).  The dish was so-called because of the way the pastry is rolled.  Strudel is a common dish throughout European and languages as diverse as the Norwegian Bokmål, Polish and Portuguese borrowed the German form directly.  In Hebrew colloquial speech, the @ symbol (famous from the use in email addresses) is known as the שטרודל (shtrudel), an allusion to the traditionally spiral form of strudels.  Hebrew is a centrally controlled language and the official word for the @ symbol is כרוכית (keruchith) which is used for the pastry although the loan-word from German is not uncommon in colloquial speech.  To a pâtissier, a strudel is something quite specific but to the less skilled the word is often applied to a variety of cakes, filled croissants, phyllo creations, pies & dainties, patisseries, tarts, turnovers, éclairs and panettone.  The noun plural is strudels. 

Most associated with sweet fillings, most famously apple and cherry, there are also savory strudels which have always been especially popular in Eastern Europe, constructed often with a heavier pastry.  Although the name strudel has been recorded only since 1893, it’s an ancient recipe which has probably been used since thin bread or pastries were used to encase and cook fruit, probably sweetened with honey.  Recipes from the seventeenth century still exist and historians have noted the cross-cultural exchanges with the cuisine from West Asia and the Middle East, such as the influence of the baklava and some Turkish sweets.  Early in the eighteenth century, strudels became signature items in many Vienna pâtisseries and from there became popular throughout the Habsburg Empire and beyond, noted particularly in the north of Italy.  In addition to apples (often with raisins) and cherries (sour, sweet & black), other popular fillings include plums, apricots and rhubarb, the French and English making a specialty of the latter.  Many strudels, especially the apple-based, are also augmented with a variety of creamy cheeses.

Toaster Strudel is a packaged convenience food, prepared by heating the frozen pastries in a domestic toaster, the icing included in a separate sachet.  There were in the 1950s attempts to create pastries which could be frozen and heated by consumers in toasters but it wasn't until the 1980s that advances in the manufacturing equipment and techniques used in the industrial production of food made mass-production and distribution practical.  Toaster Strudel is marketed under the Pillsbury brand operated by private equity investment house Brynwood Partners and has been on sale since 1985.  The core flavors are the original three, strawberry, blueberry and apple but twelve are currently on sale including a popular chocolate variety and from time to time, Pillsbury have offered different blends.  In the movie Mean Girls (2004), it was fictitiously claimed Gretchen Wieners' (Lacey Chabert (b 1982)) family fortune was due to her father's invention of Toaster Strudel; it was one of the script's running gags.

Still pink after all these years: Lacey Chabert.

In 2020, Pilsbury released a promotional version of Toaster Strudel, promoted by Lacey Chabert who is depicted reprising the famous line: “I don't think my father, the inventor of Toaster Strudel, would be too pleased to hear about this” although on the actual product it’s written as “…very pleased to hear about this", a change which seems not significant.  The limited-edition release came in Strawberry & Cream Cheese and Strawberry, the icing (of course) pink and the day of release (of course) a Wednesday.  As part of the promotion, Pillsbury announced The Most Fetch’ Toaster Strudel Icing Sweepstakes, in which contestants created a design on their toasted strudel using the pink icing and there were three grand prize winners, each of whom received a personalized video message from Ms Chabert, a year’s supply of Toaster Strudel and some Mean Girls merchandise.  The list of winners was announced on Twitter (#FetchSweepstakes) and Instagram (@ToasterStrudel) on 3 October 2020 which was (of course) National Mean Girls Day.

Black Cherry Strudel

To ensure the finest product, pâtissiers often insist on using only fresh fruit but canned or frozen black cherries work equally well in strudels and can be much easier to work with because there’s no need to macerate the fruit which may instead immediately be cooked.  This recipe can also be used with sour cherries in which case the lemon juice is omitted in favor of 150 g (¾ cup) of sugar.  It can be served warm or cold according to preference and the variations are many; the cranberries and almonds can be replaced with other dried fruits and nuts and there are the purists who insist on nothing but black cherries (although a few do add apricot brandy).  Traditionally, it’s served with a dollop of thickened cream.

Ingredients

800 g (3½ cups) fresh black cherries, cleaned and pitted
100 g (½ cup) granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
A dash of cinnamon
Juice and zest of 1 organic, un-waxed, scrubbed lemon
60 g (½ cup) dried cranberries
50 g (½ cup) slivered almonds
6 large sheets strudel or filo pastry
1 egg whisked with 1 tablespoon milk or water for brushing
Icing sugar for dusting

Instructions

Preparation: Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F).  Line a baking tray (or sheet) with baking (parchment) paper.

Cook cherry filling: In a small bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons of sugar and cornstarch until no lumps of cornstarch remain.  Add the cherries and the remaining sugar into another bowl and allow them to let macerate for an hour (it will take this long for the sugar to draw some liquid from the fruit).  Add the cherries, cranberries, almonds, cornstarch mixture, vanilla extract, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice into a saucepan and simmer over medium-high heat until the mixture starts to thicken, which should take 7 to 10 minutes.  Set the mix aside to cool to room temperature.

Roll strudel (pastry): Place the sheets of strudel or filo pastry on a clean, dry tea-towel (one with some embossing does make rolling easier).  Arrange the cherry filling lengthwise on the pastry leaving a 25 mm (1 inch) border along bottom and sides and then fold in the edges.  Use the tea-towel to lift and roll the pastry tightly, enclosing all the filling.  Tuck the ends in and transfer the strudel seam-side down onto the prepared baking tray.  If using filo pastry, brush each sheet with melted butter to prevent it drying out during the cooking.

Bake strudel:  Brush the top of the strudel with egg wash and bake for 25-35 minutes, until the pastry has become golden brown and obviously flaky.  Slice the strudel while still warm and dust with icing sugar; it’s traditionally served with custard, ice cream or a dollop of thickened cream.