Tuft

Tuft (pronounced tuhft)

(1) A bunch or cluster of small, usually soft and flexible parts, as feathers or hairs, attached or fixed closely together at the base and loose at the upper ends.

(2) A cluster of short, fluffy threads, used to decorate cloth, as for a bedspread, robe, bath mat, or window curtain.

(3) A cluster of cut threads, used as a decorative finish attached to the tying or holding threads of mattresses, quilts, upholstery, etc.

(4) To furnish or decorate with a tuft or tufts; to arrange in a tuft or tufts.

(5) In the upholstery trade, to draw together (a cushion or the like) by passing a thread through at regular intervals, the depressions thus produced being usually ornamented with tufts or buttons.  Tufts are not merely decorative because they secure and strengthen mattresses, quilts, cushions et al; they act to hinder the movement of the stuffing.

(6) In botany, a small clump of trees or bushes.

(7) A gold tassel on the cap once worn by titled undergraduates at English universities, one of the more blatant class identifiers if the UK’s class system; the word tuft was also applied to those entitled to wear such as tassel and from this use evolved the slang "toff".

1350-1400: From the Middle English toft & tofte (bunch of soft and flexible things fixed at the base with the upper ends loose), an alteration of earlier tuffe (which endures in the Modern English tuff), from the Old French touffe, tuffe, toffe & tofe (tuft of hair (and source of the modern French touffe)), from the Late Latin tufa (a crest on a helmet (also found in Late Greek toupha) and probably of Germanic origin (the Old High German was zopf and the Old Norse was toppr (tuft, summit).  The earlier European forms were the Old English þūf (tuft), the Old Norse þúfa (mound), the Swedish tuva (tussock; grassy hillock), from the Proto-Germanic þūbǭ (tube) & þūbaz.  It was akin to the Latin tūber (hump, swelling) and the Ancient Greek τῡ́φη (tū́phē) (cattail (used to stuff beds)).  The excrescent t (as in against) was an English addition and tuft was used as a verb from the 1530s.  In some contexts, bunch, cluster, collection, cowlick, group, knot, plumage, ruff, shock, topknot & tussock can impart a similar meaning but tuft is better for its specific purpose.  Tuft is a noun and verb, tufter is a noun and tufty an adjective.  The noun plural is tufts, the present participle tufting and the past participle tufted.

The 1550s noun tuffet (little tuft) was from the Old French touffel (the diminutive suffix -et replacing the French -el) which was a diminutive of touffe.  In English the word is obsolete except for the use in the nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet which seems to have first appeared in print in 1805 although it (and variations) may have been circulating much earlier.

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Little Miss Muffet in Hell.

Etymologists believe Little Miss Muffet’s tuffet was a grassy hillock or a small knoll in the ground (a variant spelling of an obsolete meaning of tuft).  The latter-day use to refer to a hassock or footstool is an example of how (usually obscure) words can acquire meanings if erroneous definitions are often repeated and come to serve some purpose.  Tuffet for example became a favorite of antique dealers who are apt to call both footstools and low seats “tuffets”, a handy practice perhaps when provenance is doubtful.

Nobleman in full dress at Cambridge (1815) with golden tuft.

The noun toff began as mid nineteenth century lower-class London slang for "a stylish dresser, a man of the smart set.  It was an alteration of tuft, which was a mid-eighteenth century English university (Oxford & Cambridge) term for students who were members of the aristocracy, a reference to the gold ornamental tassel (or tufts) worn on the academic caps (mortarboards) of undergraduates.  Throughout the “long eighteenth century” (a historian’s term which refers for the epoch running from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (the “long nineteenth” being 1815-1914 and the “long twentieth” 1914-2001 (ie 9/11))), undergraduates at both Oxford and Cambridge were differentiated into four classes: (1) noblemen, (2) gentlemen, (3) commoner-scholars (fellow-commoners at Cambridge) & (4) servitors (sometimes known at Cambridge as sizars and at Oxford as battelers).  Each of these classes of undergraduates was entitled to a different form of dress, noblemen since 1490 (further clarified in 1576) entitled to wear silk and brocaded gowns of bright colors. Such rich materials emphasized noble status, as did the costly dyes. The gowns had flap collars, Tudor bag sleeves with gold lace decorations (akin to the black lace decorations used today on Oxford gimp gowns) and a velvet round cap with a gold tassel (or tuft) was worn.  Noblemen were technically (if misleadingly) nobiles minorum gentium and included the sons of bishops, knights and baronets and, by resolution of Convocation, could include heirs of esquires.

The right to wear the golden tuft was briefly restricted to those with fathers entitled to sit in the House of Lords while those less blue-blooded were allowed only to a plain black tassel but things gradually became less exclusive until the practice was abandoned in the late nineteenth century but the transfer of sense was inevitable: wearers of golden tufts came to be known as tufts.  Those toadies or sycophants (and there were many) who were slavish followers of the tufts were tufthunters and their antics, tufthunting, such individuals and their habits quite identifiable to this day.  By the 1850s, under the influence of the cockney accent, the word had been transformed into toff (some dictionaries of slang noting toft co-existed in the 1850s but this may have been a mishearing) which endures to refer to anyone rich and powerful although the original sense was of someone apparently well-bred.

1912 Stutz Bear Cat (1912-1934); after 1913 they would be dubbed Bearcat (left) and 1915 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (Chassis 2BD, 40/50; 1906-1926) limousine by H.A. Hamshaw (right).

One of the fastest and most admired American cars of the early era, the Stutz Bearcat assumed such a place in popular culture, apocryphally it was was claimed that should anyone die at the wheel of a Stutz Bearcat, they were granted an obituary in the New York Times (NYT).  The origin of the romantic myth is thought to be related to the Bearcat being a symbol of wealth, adventure, and daring, owned by the sort of chaps (such a lifestyle at the time was most associated with men although women adventurers were not unknown) who would likely anyway warrant an NYT obituary.  The Bear Cat's tufted leather upholstery was typical (though not universal) of the high priced automobiles of the time although already, elaborate fabrics were appearing in vehicles with enclosed passenger compartments which afforded protection from the elements.  The appointments of 1915 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost were opulent even by the coachbuilding standards of the day (the Edwardian traditions still maintained) but the chauffeur's compartment lacked a roof (the body style really a Sedanca de Ville as were many of the early English "limousines") so was still trimmed in tufted leather.  The more sheltered passengers enjoyed carved ivory door handles, beveled glass windows, cut crystal lamps, an inlaid wood folding table, two jump seats, and door pockets, communications to the chauffeur via a tubular intercom.  The lavish upholstery in the rear was tufted, beige West-of-England cloth with embroidered silk window pulls and trim-work, including rear compartment shades and sliding divider although what usually attracts most comment is the elegant, pleated, cloth rosette headliner with its cloudlike billows.   To make journeys more pleasant, a set of leather-wrapped flasks was mounted in the right rear armrest.      

1972 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Regency advertising.

Tufted leather upholstery was common in early automobiles, the seating often exactly the same as those used in horse-drawn carriages, houses or commercial buildings (and certainly gentlemen's clubs).  The practice faded as production volumes increased and as early as the late 1920s was coming to be restricted to only the most expensive models.  This exclusivity tended to prevail until 1972 when Oldsmobile introduced the Regency option for its full-sized Ninety-Eight (sometimes as "98") models, a package, the visual highlight of which was tufted "loose-pillow" velour upholstery (although unlike the use in furniture where the "pillows" were detachable for cleaning, in the Ninety-Eight they were fixed permanently to the seats.  Suddenly, solidly middle-class Oldsmobile (right in the middle of General Motors’ (GM) five-step (Chevrolet-Pontiac-Oldsmobile-Buick-Cadillac) hierarchy; the so-called "Slone ladder" designed to both facilitate and encourage "upward automotive mobility" conceived by Alfred P Sloan (1875–1966;  president of General Motors (GM) 1923-1937 and Chairman of the Board 1937-1946)) had brought both velour and loose-pillow seating to the masses.  The velour was at the time admired by most buyers (though derided by some critics of design) and as tufted upholstery began to proliferate in the industry it was usually offered as a cheaper alternative to leather.  In some climates the velour was probably the better choice and was welcomingly comfortable although in some of the more strident shades of red could recall the popular idea of how a bordello might be furnished.  Presumably, those who'd never enjoyed a visit to a bordello were more disconcerted than regular customers.

1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (left) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “fine Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos.  While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the motif.

1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman.

Oldsmobile's move was as audacious and influential as Ford’s introduction in 1965 of the up-market LTD which, like the Regency package, had the effect of cannibalizing sales from other divisions within the same corporation.  Cadillac, although with a range priced considerably above Oldsmobile, offered nothing with such an ostentatious interior though when it did in 1974 respond with its Talisman package (1974-1976), it made sure it did so with more tufted extravagance still, in 1974 offering leather as well as velour.  The trend the Regency package started would last over twenty years and is remembered especially for the tufted fittings used in Imperials, Chryslers and Dodges, the hides used in the Cordoba range (1975-1983) said to be "fine Corinthian leather", an advertising agency creation which meant nothing in particular but sounded vaguely European and therefore expensive.  Cadillac called the fabric in the Fleetwood Talisman "Medici crushed velour" which had about the same relationship to historic truth as "fine Corinthian leather" but the package sold well over the three seasons it was offered, despite the option costing almost as much (and the leather significantly more) as some new cars.  Among collectors, the holy grail is a 1974 Fleetwood Talisman trimmed in blue leather; although it was on the option list, none has ever been sighted and the factory's records don't breakdown production between the blue and the alternative "medium saddle" (a medium tan), some of which have been verified.

1985 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz (left), 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham (centre) and 1989 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham d' Elegance (right).  Color choice made a big difference to the perception of the "tufted look", more subdued hues like green and blue less confronting than the "bordello red" which became emblematic of the industry's phase.

Lindsay Lohan in bed with tufted bedhead.  Critics of interior design tend not to approve of padded or tufted headboards and the shinier or more pillowy the effect, the greater will be the disparagement.  Such critics probably tend to prefer a minimalist aesthetic and condemn anything which doesn’t conform as outdated, excessive or just in poor taste but that aside, there are practical reasons to avoid the padding because the material can over time collect dust, dirt, and oils, something of concern to allergy sufferers.  The designs can also provide hiding places for the dreaded bed bugs.  Still, there are some who like the “generic luxury hotel room” look and argue they’re a kind of safety feature, banging one’s head on some tufted padding a less troubling event than an impact with one of Ikea’s hard, flat surfaces.

Cutthroat

Cutthroat (pronounced kuht-throht)

(1) Slang for a murderer (regardless of chosen method) or one thought capable of murder.

(2) Ruthless in competition.

(3) In games of cards where the rules permit each of three or more persons to act and score as an individual.

(4) In billiards, a three person game where the object is to be the last player with at least one ball still on the table.

(5) The Cutthroat eel, a family, Synaphobranchidae, of eels found worldwide in temperate and tropical seas.

(6) The Cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii), a species of freshwater fish in the salmon family of order Salmoniformes.

(7) The Cutthroat finch, a common species of estrildid finch found in Africa.

(8) The Cutthroat razor, a reusable knife blade used for shaving hair.

1525–1535: A compound word: cut + throat.  Cut (1175–1225) is from the Middle English cutten, kitten, kytten & ketten (to cut), from the Old English cyttan (related to the Scots kut & kit (to cut)), probably of North Germanic origin, from the Old Norse kytja & kutta, from the Proto-Germanic kutjaną & kuttaną (to cut), of uncertain origin, perhaps related to the Proto-Germanic kwetwą (meat, flesh). It was akin to the Middle Swedish kotta (to cut or carve with a knife), the Swedish kuta & kytti (a knife)), the Norwegian kutte (to cut), the Icelandic kuta (to cut with a knife), the Old Norse kuti (small knife) and the Norwegian kyttel, kytel & kjutul (pointed slip of wood used to strip bark).  Descent from the Old French coutel (knife) is thought improbable.  It displaced the native Middle English snithen (from Old English snīþan (related to the German schneiden)), which still survives in some dialects as snithe.  Throat (pre-900) is from the Middle English throte, from the Old English throtu, þrote, þrota & þrotu (throat), from the Proto-Germanic þrutō (throat), from the primitive Indo-European trud- (to swell, become stiff).  It was cognate with the Dutch strot (throat), the German drossel (throttle, gorge of game (wild animals)), the Icelandic þroti (swelling) and the Swedish trut.  The Old English throtu was related to the Old High German drozza (throat) and the Old Norse throti (swelling).

Words with a similar meaning, include ferocious, vicious, savage, barbarous, bloodthirsty, cruel, dog-eat-dog, merciless, pitiless & relentless, unprincipled.  The alternative form is cut-throat although dictionaries note the rare use of cut throat.  Cutthroat is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is cutthroats.

The cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) is of the family Salmonidae and is native to a number of North American cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean and Rocky Mountains.  The common name "cutthroat" is derived from the coloration on the underside of the lower jaw.

Sporange

Sporange (pronounced spawr-inj, spuh-ange or spor-inj)

In botany & mycology, a cell or structure within any organ (most especially fungi, Ferns, mosses, and algae) in which asexual spores are produced in indefinite numbers by progressive cleavage; also called spore case.

1880: Originally verbal shorthand between scientists; borrowed from the French as if derived from and sharing meaning with the correct term sporangium (plural sporangia, sporangial the adjective); now regarded also as a colloquial term (plural sporanges).  The original Late Latin sporangium dates from 1821 and was from the Ancient Greek σπόρος (sporos) (spore) or σπορά (sporá) (seed) + ἀγγεῖον (angeîon) (vessel).

A sporange (sporangium) is an enclosure in which spores are formed.  It can be composed of a single cell or can be multi-cellular and all plants, fungi, and many other lineages, form sporangia at some point in their life cycle.  Sporanges (sporangia) can produce spores by mitosis (the division of a cell nucleus in which the genome is copied and separated into two identical halves, normally followed by cell division), but in nearly all land plants and many fungi, sporangia are the site of meiosis (cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid (a cell having a single set of unpaired chromosomes cells) which develop to produce gametes (a reproductive cell (sperm in males or eggs in females), having only half of a complete set of chromosomes).

Perfect, half & fake rhymes

Like the word silver, orange has almost no perfect rhymes but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists sporange, a rare alternative form of sporangium, as orange’s only perfect rhyme.  Sporange was a nineteenth century adoption from the French and from the medieval record, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) also discovered the rare chilver (ewe-lamb, ie a female lamb), (now an almost extinct northern English dialectal form assumed to be Middle English, from the Old English cilfor (lamb), akin to the Old High German kilbur & kilburra (ewe lamb) and related to the Old English cealf (calf)).  Chilver appears to be silver’s only perfect rhyme so both it and orange are phonetically unusual, given English contains at least six-hundred thousand words (albeit not even a fifth of which are in common use).  Both orange and silver do however enjoy half-rhymes, the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary (ORD) listing “lozenge” for orange and “salver” for silver.

A full and stressed rhyme (eg hand / stand) or even an unstressed rhyme (handing / standing) contain vowels common to both words, while a half-rhyme like orange / lozenge or silver / salver has obvious differences between the vowels in certain syllables. The technical term for a half-rhyme is pararhyme.  A variation of the pararhyme seen often in modern poetry and popular culture is the slant rhyme, a trick which works through changing the pronunciation of two words slightly, forcing the rhyme.  Some fastidious critics refuse to call this a literary device and suggest they’re just “lazy” rhymes because they’re fake; close but fake.  A true rhyme pairs “bat” with “cat” while an example of slant rhyming is "door hinge” with “orange”.

2016 Dodge Viper (8.4 litre V10) ACR with Extreme Aero Package in Dodge Yorange (PY5/KY5).

Although there’s nothing to suggest there was interest in the adding to the language's rhythmic possibilities, Chrysler in the early twenty-first century did add Dodge Yorange to the color charts for some models, the construct being y + orange to suggest a shade of orange with a hint of yellow.  The recommended pronunciation was apparently yor-inj and it was most popular on SUVs and high-performance models.  Like the other manufacturers, Chrysler had some history in the coining of fanciful names for colors dating from the psychedelic era of the late 1960s when the choices included Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told is that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape.

Ali Lohan (b 1993, left) photographed with her pregnant sister (right) wearing Sandal-Malvina Fringe Tank Dress in (unattributed) Dodge Yorange (left).  The shoes are Alexandre Birmen Clarita Platforms.

Ampersand

Ampersand (pronounced am-puhr-sand or am-per-sand)

The logogram “&” now representing the conjunction "and"; it originated as a ligature of the letters of the Latin et (and).

1830-1835: A contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself is 'and'" (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English); an earlier form was the colloquial ampassy (1706).  It seems now curious, even nonsensical, but made complete sense given the way language was used as late as the nineteenth century.  The form emerged to create a distinction to help avoiding confusion with “&” in such formations as “&c.”, a once common way of writing “etc.” (the et in et cetera is Latin for "and").  Also, the letters “a”, “I”, and “o” were, as recently as the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries written “a per se”, “I per se” etc, especially when standing alone as words.

The symbol is based on the Latin et (and) and comes from an old Roman system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti.  It is not from the notae Tironianae (Tironian notes or Tironian shorthand) (a system of shorthand invented circa 60 BC by Marcus Tullius Cicero's slave and personal secretary Tiro which consisted of about four thousand symbols which, in classical times, was extended by another thousand) although a variety of sources have maintained the myth for hundreds of years.  The confusion has lasted centuries because some medieval scribes, including Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, sprinkled their works with a symbol like a numeral 7 to indicate the word “and”.  Technically, the ampersand is a mondegreen (a kind of imperfect echoic) of "and per se and".

Variations on the theme: Some of the most sexy ampersands. 

In many nineteenth century schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and by the 1880s, the word ampersand had become schoolboy slang for "posterior, rear end, hindquarters", a use that faded in the twentieth century as the word assumed its standardized meaning and schoolboys found English offered many callipygian alternatives.  The form in which it appeared at the end of listings of the alphabet was “…X, Y, Z and per se and."  This eventually became "ampersand", the term in common English use by around 1837 although, in contrast to the surviving twenty-six letters, the ampersand does not represent a speech sound, unlike other characters that earlier dropped from the English alphabet such as the Old English thorn, wynn, and eth.

Curiously, given it had for centuries been in the sets of typefaces used by printers (the advantage being the use of one rather than the spaces "and" absorbs, thereby saving space and ink, the latter a measurable financial saving in large print runs because of the frequency with which "and" needs to be expressed), the ampersand symbol (&) wasn't included in many early typewriters.  Instead, typist were compelled to improvise their own ampersands by typing an "e", then back-spacing and adding a "t" atop.  The manufacturers of the early typewriters limited the character sets included because the early devices were so prone to jamming and one way to reduce instances of this was to increase the space between the metal "arms" to which the "type bars" (also known as "strikers"; the upright ends of the bars which are molded as the "head" with the embossed letter, number or symbol) were attached.  Increasing the gap between the arms limited the number which could be installed so on the essentials were included.  As technology improved, the character sets were enlarged and the by the early twentieth century, the ampersand was de rigueur.

The Plastics Mean Girls Unisex Ampersand Sweatshirt, available in Thursday to Tuesday (left) & Wednesday (right) editions.

Burl & Burr

Burl (pronounced burl)

(1) A small knot or lump in wool, thread, or cloth.

(2) A dome-shaped growth on the trunk of a tree; a wart-like structure which can be 1 m (39 inches) or more across and .5 m (19 inches) or more in height; typically harvested and sliced to make the intricately patterned veneers used in furniture or car interiors.

(3) To remove burls from (cloth) in finishing (which technically means the same as to de-burl).

(4) In Scottish, Australian and NZ slang (1) an attempt; to try (especially in the phrases “give it a burl” & (2) “going for a burl” (going for a drive in a car) (both largely archaic and the latter restricted to the antipodes).

1400–1450: From the late Middle English burle (a small knot or flaw in cloth), from the Old French bouril & bourril (flocks or ends of threads which disfigure cloth), from the Old French bourre & burle (tuft of wool) and akin to the Medieval Latin burla (bunch, sheaf), from the Vulgar Latin burrula (small flock of wool), from the Medieval Latin burra (flock of wool, fluff, coarse hair; shaggy cloth).  The source of the Latin forms is unknown.  The slang forms are probably from the Scottish birl (a twist or turn) but use in this sense seems now to be restricted to Scotland and the South Island of New Zealand.  The large, rounded outgrowth on the trunk or branch of a tree can be highly prized if on a species (most famously walnut) where the timber of a burl develops the swirling, intricate patterns which are used as thinly sliced veneers in the production of furniture and other fine products, notably in car interiors.  Burls develop from one or more twig buds, the cells of which continue to multiply but never differentiate so the twig can elongate into a limb.  In American English, burl has been used to describe "a knot or excrescence on a walnut or other tree" since 1868 but burr is now often used interchangeably.  Burls rarely cause harm to trees but careless (often unlawful) harvesting can cause damage.  The related noun is burler; the noun plural is burls.  The present participle is burling, the simple past and past participle burled.

Burl was productive in English although some forms have a tangled history.  The adjective burly is derived from the circa 1300 borlich (excellent, noble; handsome, beautiful), probably from the Old English borlice (noble, stately (literally "bowerly", ie fit to frequent a lady's apartment)).  The sense evolved by circa 1400 to mean "stout, sturdy" and later "heavily built".  Some etymologists also suggest a connection between the Old English and the Old High German burlih (lofty, exalted) which was related to burjan (to raise, lift).  In Middle English, it was applied also to objects (even transitory things like cloud formations) but has long been restricted to people. 

The noun burlesque (piece composed in burlesque style, derisive imitation, grotesque parody) had been in use since the 1660s, the earlier adjective (odd, grotesque), from the 1650s, from the sixteenth century French burlesque, from the Italian burlesco (ludicrous), from burla (joke, fun, mockery), presumably from the Medieval Latin burra (trifle, nonsense (literally "flock of wool" and thing something light and trivial)).  The more precise adjectival meaning "tending to excite laughter by ludicrous contrast between the subject and the manner of treating it" is attested in English by 1700.  Comedy and burlesque represent the two great traditions of representational ridicule, the former draws characters in conventional form, the latter by using a construct quite unlike themselves.  As long ago a 1711, one critic described burlesque as existing in two forms, the first represents mean persons in accoutrements of heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people.  By the late nineteenth century, it typically meant "travesties on the classics and satires on accepted ideas" and vulgar comic opera while the modern sense of something risqué ("a variety show featuring striptease) is an invention of American English which co-evolved during the same era and became predominant by the 1920s..

The noun burlap (coarse, heavy material made of hemp, jute, etc., used for bagging) dates from the 1690s, the first element probably from the Middle English borel (coarse cloth), from the burel or the Dutch boeren (coarse), although there may have been some confusion with boer (peasant).  The second element, -lap, meant "piece of cloth".  There has been debate about the noun hurly-burly (originally hurlyburly) (commotion, tumult) which in the 1530s was apparently an alteration of the phrase hurling and burling, a reduplication of the fourteenth century hurling (commotion, tumult), from the verbal noun of hurl.  Shakespeare had hurly (tumult, uproar) and the early fifteenth century hurling time was the name applied by chroniclers to the period of tumult and commotion around Wat Tyler's (circa 1341–1381; a leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England) rebellion.   In the early nineteenth century a hurly-house was said to be a "large house in a state of advanced disrepair" and there is presumably some connection with the dialectal Swedish hurra (whirl round) but it’s all quite murky and whether burly in this context is related to burl in the sense of something rough or merely coincidental a rhyme is uncertain.

Burr (pronounced bur)

(1) A rough or irregular protuberance on any object, as on a tree (spelled also as burl).

(2) A small, handheld, power-driven milling cutter, used by machinists and die makers for deepening, widening, or undercutting small recesses (technically called burr grinders which, with a revolving disk or cone with abrasive surfaces are used to smooth burr holes).

(3) In metal fabrication, a protruding, ragged edge raised on the surface of metal during drilling, shearing, punching, or engraving (spelled also as buhr); a blank punched out of a piece of sheet metal.

(4) A washer placed at the head of a rivet.

(5) In ceramics, a fragment of brick fused or warped in firing.

(6) In any form of engineering, to form a rough point or edge on.

(7) In structural phonetics, (1) a pronunciation of the r-sound as a uvular fricative trill, as in certain Northern English dialects (of which the Northumberland is an exemplar) or the retroflex r of the West of England, (2) a pronunciation of the r-sound as an alveolar flap or trill, as in Scottish English or (3) any pronunciation popularly considered rough or nonurban.

(8) To speak with a burr (to speak roughly, indistinctly, or inarticulately) (can be applied neutrally or as a (usually class-loaded disparagement).

(9) A whirring sound or rough, humming sound.

(10) In the sense of a broad ring on a spear or tilting lance (placed below the grip to prevent the hand from slipping), a variant of burrow (in obsolete sense: borough) (dating from the sixteenth century and now rare except in historic reference).

(11) In geology, a mass of hard siliceous rock surrounded by softer rock.

(12) A sharp, pointy object, such as a sliver or splinter (regionally specific).

(13) As bur; a seed pod with sharp features that stick in fur or clothing.

(13) In anatomy, the ear lobe (archaic).

(14) In zoology, the knot at the bottom of an antler (analogous with the burrs (or burls) on trees.

1375–1425: From the late Middle English burre (possibly related to the Old English byrst (bristle)), burrewez (plural) & buruhe (circle), a variant of brough (round tower), an evolutionary fork of which became the Modern English broch.  It was cognate with the Danish burre & borre (burdock, burr) and the Swedish borre (sea-urchin).

The spelling burr was a variant of the original bur, the addition probably a tribute by the written to the spoken long R sound, the use in phonetics noted from the 1750s, presumably both imitative and associative, the sound being thought of as rough like a bur; the onomatopoeic form may be compared with the French bruire.  The original idea of "rough sound of the letter -R" (especially that common in Northumberland) was later extended to "northern accented speech" in general and was soon integrated into the English class system as one of many class identifiers.  It may be the sound of the word is imitative of the speech peculiarity itself, or it was adapted from one of the senses of bur (the late fourteenth century phrase “to have a bur in (one's) throat” was a figure of speech suggesting the choking sensation or huskiness associated with having something rough caught in the windpipe) but the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that despite the similarity, the Scottish -r- is a lingual trill, not a true burr.

The circa 1300 bur (prickly seed vessel of some plants) from the Middle English burre was from a Scandinavian source, either the Danish borre, the Swedish hard-borre or the Old Norse burst (bristle), from the primitive Indo-European bhars.  In the 1610s, it was transferred to refer to a "rough edge on metal" which led ultimately to the use in phonetics and the name give to various tools and appliances.  The noun burstone dates from the late thirteenth century and was an adaptation from the Middle English burre, the stone so-named presumably because of its roughness.  Aaron Burr (1756–1836, US vice-president (1800–1804)) fled after killing a political rival in a duel and plotted to create an independent empire in the western US.  In 1807 he was acquitted on a charge of treason.  To remove a burr (typically in engineering or carpentry) is to deburr (or debur).  The noun plural is burrs, the present participle burring and the simple past & past participle burred.  The homophones are Bur & brr.

The noun rhotacism dates from 1830 in the sense of “an extensive or particular use of 'r'”, from the Modern Latin rhotacismus, from the Ancient Greek rhotakizein, from rho (the letter -r-), from the Hebrew or Phoenician roth.  A technical adaptation from 1844 was the use to describe the conversion of another sound, usually "s" to "r" (as in Aeolian Greek, which at the end of words changed -s to –r, the related forms being rhotacize & rhotacization.

European burr (or burl) walnut with extensive “bud eyes”.

Regarding timber veneers, the conventional wisdom is that burl is American English while burr is used in the rest of the English-speaking world.  That’s not accurate although burl in this sense is an American innovation from 1868 and probably a useful one.  In the specialized arboreal branch of botany, the words cancer and canker were also once used to describe the growths on trees but these uses seem never to have extended beyond the profession.

Burr (or burl) walnut interior detailing on 1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) Landaulet (top) and 1963 & 1965 Jaguar Mark Xs (bottom).

In another specialized field, those in carpentry concerned with fine veneers, there are further distinctions, some defining a burr as an English word meaning a type of growth on a side of a tree which is full of “bud eyes” (the most distinctive pattern associated with expensive veneers) while burl is of US origin and refers to any type of growth on the side of a tree, including burrs.   That would seem to suggest burl would thus include the healing growth over surface damage or broken branches.  Others, notably timber merchants seem most often to regard burls as any highly figured wood with twisted and contorted grain regardless of whether it comes from a growth on the side of a tree, root, stump, or has grown all the way up the trunk, and whether it contains bud eyes or not.  In commerce, this is doubtlessly useful because people buy timber for veneering on the basis of appearance rather than where it happened to grow.  It would of course be useful if one word could be accepted to mean the growth on a tree and the other the harvested timbers from these growths but, being English, such things never happen.

Burrs (or burls) on a tree.  Burls should not be confused with galls which are small and form along twigs and leaves.  Burls are much larger and form on trunks and branches as an integral part of the tree.  Galls grow outside and are independent of the tree.

Sponson

Sponson (pronounced spon-suhn)

(1) In naval architecture, a structure projecting from the side or main deck of a vessel to support a gun or the outer edge of a paddle box.

(2) In nautical design, (1) a buoyant appendage at the gunwale of a canoe to resist capsizing, (2) a structural projection from the side of a paddle steamer for supporting a paddle wheel and (3) a float or flotation chamber along the gunwale of a boat or ship

(3) In aeronautics, (1) a protuberance at the side of a flying-boat hull, designed to increase lateral stability in the water or (2) a structural unit attached to a helicopter fuselage by fixed struts, housing the main landing gear and inflatable flotation bags.

(4) A semi-circular gun turret on the side of a tank.

1825–1835: Origin unknown but thought a variant of expansion, most likely a form of imperfect echoic related to the regional accents of workers in ship-building yards.  The first sponsons were the platforms on each side of a steamer's paddle wheels.  Sponson is a noun (and curiously so is sponsing because it's an alternative spelling), sponsoning & sponsoned are verbs.  All subsequent derivations are based on the original nautical form. 

Boeing 314 Clipper cutaway.

Re-using some of an earlier design for a bomber which failed to meet the military’s performance criteria, between 1938-1941, Boeing built twelve 314 Clippers, long-range flying boats with the range to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  Although used by the military during World War II, most of their service was with the two commercial operators Pan Am (Pan-American Airways) and BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation).  Very much a machine of the pre-war age, the last Clippers were retired from service between 1946-1948, the advances in aviation and ground infrastructure built during war-time rendering them obsolete and too expensive to maintain.

Passengers boarding Boeing 314 Clipper via port-side sponson.

The sponsons built into the hull structure at the waterline were multi-functional.  They provided (1) a gangway for passengers and crew boarding and departing, (2) a stabilizing platform for the craft while moored or at anchor, (3) were an integral part of the aerodynamics, providing additional lift and thus were a kind of mini-wing al la the biplane and (4) served as auxiliary fuel tanks, the craft carrying some 4,500 gallons (20,460 litres) of aviation spirit.

Lindsay Lohan ascending ladder attached to a yacht's sponson while off the Sardinian coast, July 2016.  Because of the proximity to the water's surface, sponsons are often used for purposes such as ladders and mooring points for dinghies.

On watercraft, a sponson is an architectural feature extending from the hull or other part of the superstructure to aid in stability while floating or as a securing point for equipment.  Sponsons add stability when underway or at rest but some designs, notably those on high-performance craft, are there to make possible sharper changes of direction as they “dig in” (which is probably not the best phrase to use) to the water on the inside of the turn.  On some vessels, sponsons can even be essential to ensure seaworthiness because they can be used to provide additional buoyancy.  In some specialized applications (notably those designed for canals or other internal waterways) there are hull designs which actually wouldn’t float unless fitted with sponsons.  Sponsons can be designed to act as a protective barrier, shielding main hull from damage.  Essentially, this is a structural version of the car tyres often seen strung over the sides of vessels, a useful precaution to prevent damage which might be caused during low-speed docking manoeuvres such as docking.  It may sound an extreme approach but it’s almost always easier & cheaper to repair or replace a sponson than a hull.  When moored, large sponsons can also be used as an ad-hoc addition to deck space and it’s not unusual for them to be used as diving platforms or places from which to fish.

Flaccid

Flaccid (pronounced flas-id or flak-sid)

(1) Soft and limp; not firm; flabby.

(2) Lacking force; weak.

(3) Slang for individuals or institutions tending towards indolence, indecisiveness or bloat.

(4) In the fitness industry, lacking muscle tone.

1610–1620: From the Latin flaccidus (flabby) from flaccus (flap-eared) a construct of flacc(ēre) (to grow weak, to languish) + -idus (the suffix used to denote “tending to” (-idus (feminine); -ida, (neuter)).  English borrowed the word from the French flaccide.  The linguistic process(es) by which the meaning evolved from “flap-eared” is undocumented and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggests it was imitative.  Flacid & flaccider are adjectives, flaccidity & flaccidness are nouns and flaccidly is an adverb.

Flaccidity in Surrealist Art

La persistència de la memòria (The Persistence of Memory) is Salvador Dalí’s (1904-1989) most reproduced and best-known painting.   Completed in 1931 and first exhibited in 1932, since 1934 it’s hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  In popular culture, the work is often referred to as the more evocative “melting clocks”.

Surrealism’s intellectual undercoating was patchy, some of the latter output being openly imitative but with Dalí, critics seemed often ready to find something.  His "theory of softness and hardness" has been called "central to his artistic thinking" at the time The Persistence of Memory was painted and some suggested the flaccidity of the watches is an allusion to Einstein's theory of special relativity, a surreal pondering of the implications of relativity on our once-fixed notions of time and space.  Dalí was earthier, claiming the clocks were inspired not by Einstein but by imagining a wheel of camembert cheese melting in the Catalan sun.

Floret

Floret (pronounced flawr-it or flohr-it)

(1) A small flower.

(2) In botany, one of the closely clustered small flowers that make up the flower head of a composite flower, as the daisy or sunflower.

(3) One of the tightly clustered divisions of a head of broccoli, cauliflower. or similar vegetables

1350-1400: From the Middle English flouret & flourette (a little flower, a bud), from the Old French florete (little flower, cheap silk material), diminutive of flor (flower, blossom), from the Latin Latin flōrem, accusative singular of flōs, from the Proto-Italic flōs, from the primitive Indo-European bhel or bleh- (flower, blossom; to thrive, bloom), from bel- (to bloom).  The specific botanical sense "a small flower in a cluster" (as in something like a sunflower), dates from the 1670s.  The alternative spelling florette has been obsolete since the seventeenth century; in Italian the word became fioretto and in Dutch, floret.  Floret & floretum are nouns; the noun plural is florets.  

Cauliflower and Stilton Soup

Ingredients

80 gm butter, chopped
1 brown onion, coarsely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1¼ kg cauliflower, cut into florets
¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 litre of vegetable stock
200 gm Stilton, crumbled (for soup)
200 gm Stilton cheese (for toast)
1 cup full-cream milk
2 tablespoons double-whipped cream

Instructions

(1) Melt butter in a heavy-based saucepan, add onion, garlic and oregano, season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground white pepper, then stir over medium heat for five minutes or until onion is soft.

(2) Add cauliflower and parsley, then cook, stirring occasionally, for ten minutes. Add stock and simmer for fifteen minutes or until florets are tender, then reduce heat to low, add Stilton, and stir until well combined. Add milk and cook until just heated through.

(3) Ladle soup among bowls, top with a dollop of cream and serve with toast thickly spread with room-temperature Stilton cheese.

Serve with:

Small glass of Dry Sack Sherry before, glass of Pinot Noir after.

Floret fashion: Lindsay Lohan in an embroidered Valentino gown at the premiere of Netfilx’s Falling for Christmas (2022), Paris Theater, Manhattan, New York City (left) (the pairing of the gown with a metallic quilted shoulder bag was much admired) and strand of Delphinium in salmon pink (right).  The genus name was from the New Latin Delphinium, from the Ancient Greek δελφίς (delphís) from δελφίνιον (delphínion) (dolphin), the name adopted because the florets were thought to recall the shape of a dolphin’s back.  The name was chosen by the Swedish zoologist & physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778 and styled as Carl von Linné after 1761) who first codified binomial nomenclature (the system of naming organisms), thus gaining the tag “the father of modern taxonomy”.  The genus is within the family Ranunculaceae and in common use they’re often referred to by the Dutch name larkspur.

Confectionery & Confectionary

Confectionery (pronounced kuhn-fek-shuh-ner-ee)

(1) Confections or sweets collectively.

(2) The work or business of a confectioner.

Confectionary (pronounced kuhn-fek-shuh-ner-ee)

(1) A place where confections are kept, made or sold (obsolete except in retro-branding).

(2) A historic alternative spelling of confectionery (obsolete for centuries in this context).

1535–1545: Both words are constructs: confection + -ery or -ary.  Confection was from the Middle English confescioun, from the Old French confeccion, from the Late Latin cōnfectiōnem & cōnfectiōnārius (one who prepares things by means of combining ingredients according to method), (nominative cōnfectiō), from cōnfectus, past participle of conficere (to prepare), that construct being con- (with) + facere (to make, do).  Originally the meaning was "the making by means of ingredients"; the modern sense of "candy or light pastry" becoming predominant only in the early seventeenth century.  The use of confectionery to mean “excessive architectural ornamentation” dates from 1861 and was later used to condemn the excesses of 1950s US automobiles such as the Edsel although the confectionery played little part in its failure.  The adoption of “confected rage” in political discourse to describe "fake outrage" appears to have begun in the 1980s.  The use of confectioneress (a female confectioner; the plural confectioneresses) is dated and now rarely used but does still appear, apparently as a marketing gimmick including as the trading name of business outlets, their advertising usually featuring much chocolate. 

The suffix -ery was from the Middle English -erie, from the Anglo-Norman and Old French -erie, a suffix forming abstract nouns.  The suffix first occurs in loans from the Old French into the Middle English, but became productive in English by the sixteenth century, sometimes as a proper combination of -er with “y” (as in bakery or brewery) but also as a single suffix (such as slavery or machinery).  The suffix –ary (of or pertaining to) was a back-formation from unary and similar, from the Latin adjectival suffixes -aris and -arius; appended to many words, often nouns, to make an adjective form and use was not restricted to words of Latin origin.  Confectionery is a noun and confectionary are a nouns & adjectives, confectioner is a noun, confection is a noun & verb and confect & confected are verbs; the nouns plural are confectioneries and confectionaries.

Lindsay Lohan in a Michael Kors (b 1959) pussy-bow, polka-dot silk blouse with Valentino sneakers, enjoying a frozen hot chocolate, Serendipity 3 restaurant, New York, January 2019.  One visits a confectionary to admire, purchase or eat confectionery, confected by a confectioner.

1958 Buick Century Convertible: Laden with chrome and other ornamental detail, the 1958 Buicks were actually worse examples of excess than the more expensive Cadillacs of that season.  Although hardly restrained, in 1958 Cadillac laid it on with a smaller trowel than Buick.  Fortunately, 1958 proved "peak confectionery" year for General Motors (GM) although plenty of other excesses lay ahead.