Scrofulous

Scrofulous (pronounced skrof-yuh-luhs)

(1) In pathology, pertaining to, resembling, of the nature of, or affected with scrofula.

(2) In figurative use, degraded, morally tainted or degenerate.

(3) In figurative use, Having an unkempt, unhealthy appearance.

1605–1615: The construct was scroful(a) + -ous.  Scrofula (primary tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands, especially those of the neck) dates from 1350–1400, from the Middle English scrofula (the plural), from the Medieval Latin scrophulosus & scrōfulae (swollen glands in the neck (literally “little sows”)), the construct being scrōf(a) (a sow) + -ulae (the plural suffix), the derivation explained by the belief breeding sows were particularly susceptible to the disease.  Scrofula is most common in children and is usually spread by unpasteurized milk from infected cows; No longer in technical use, scrofula was also known as “the king’s evil”; as part of the mystique of monarchy, the kings of England and France long pretended to possess the power of curing scrofula by touching the sore, a belief which endured and as late as the eighteenth century, there were still doctors who believed the only cure was to be touched by a member of a royal family.  Improvements in social conditions and treatment meant scrofula became a less common disease in adults by mid- twentieth century although it persisted in children.  With the spread of HIV-AIDS reaching critical mass in the 1980s, there was a resurgence in scrofula and it’s been linked also with monkeypox.  Despite the similarity is spelling, the word scruff is unrelated, being an Old English term for dandruff, the generalized sense of someone who is “rough and dirty” (and thus scruffy) dates from 1871.  Scrofulous is an adjective, scrofulously is an adverb and scrofulousness & scrofuloderma are nouns

The –ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from the Old French –ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of); a doublet of -ose in an unstressed position.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance.  In chemistry, it has a specific technical application, used in the nomenclature to name chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a lower oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ic.  For example sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).

Scott Morrison's five other jobs

Prime-Minister Scott Morrison in parliament while also holding five ministerial appointments.

The revelation former Australian prime-minister Scott Morrison (b 1968; prime minister of Australia 2018-2022), in much secrecy, had himself appointed himself to five ministerial roles in addition to being the head of government attracted some interest.  The public reaction was muted given the rather arcane administrative mechanisms involved but the usual suspects (journalists and political commentators) seemed to think it a great scandal, an opinion loudly and repeatedly expressed by Her Majesty’s loyal opposition who seemed most interested of all.  Others who had their attention stirred were those of his former colleagues (including the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)) who were unaware they were job-sharing with the prime-minister until they read about it in the Murdoch press.

Between March 2020 and May 2021, Mr Morrison, on paper, appeared to centralize power in his office by becoming Australia's minister of health, finance, resources, home affairs and the treasury.  In practice, the powers accrued seem to have been exercised only once but that was in a way which appears to violate the agreement between the Liberal and National parties which provides the parameters for the coalition arrangements maintained in government.  Even that, whatever the political implications, doesn’t seem to suggest anything unlawful and the general conclusion which has emerged is that the additional appointments were constitutional.  Whether there are technical reasons which operate to mean the parliament should have been informed is a matter for debate but unarguably, to do so is at least a convention.

Minister for Health #1 & Minister for Health #2 (#2 a replica rather than a fake or imitation).

The This uncertainty and the opposition’s inability to cite specific unlawfulness is why the attack on Mr Morrison was received, outside of the usual suspects, with such indifference, the suggestion of a general moral scrofulousness hardly the same thing as a smoking gun.  What the strange tale did provide was an opportunity for the amateur psychoanalysts to ponder Mr Morrison’s motives and map them onto his well-known world view which is that of an evangelical, born-again Christian.  In justifying his actions because the COVID-19 pandemic meant “these were unprecedented times which required extraordinary measures” and that “no prime-minister… had faced the same circumstances” and added that "there was a clear expectation established in the public's mind, certainly in the media's mind, and absolutely in the mind of the opposition… that I, as Prime Minister, was responsible pretty much for every single thing that was going on".  It was an interesting observation given that almost immediately the pandemic was declared an ad-hoc “national cabinet” was convened, consisting of the prime-minister and the eight premiers & chief-ministers and there was at least as much focus on that eight as there was on the prime-minister.

That was of course inevitable because of the way the Australian constitutions divides the heads of power between the Commonwealth and the states and Mr Morrison, during the pandemic, showed little hesitation in ascribing responsibility for many unpopular measures to the premiers.  In that he was quite correct and there is little to suggest there was a public perception focused wholly on him.  Indeed, what the operations of governments during the pandemic did illustrate was just how extensive are the residual powers of the states, despite a century or more of centralization of power by the actions of the Commonwealth and decision of the High Court.  Still, Mr Morrison says he felt the way he did and was presumably content to be the savior of the nation at its moment of need, an intoxicating prospect for any politician.

Despite the frequency with which it’s used, no edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has ever used the term "messiah complex" (a desire and compulsion to redeem or save others or the world, a form of megalomania in which the individual experiences delusions of grandeur) although other diagnosis are listed which contain at least some of the elements which are understood as being identified with the syndrome.  Of course, there was also the matter of him not trusting some of his ministers to be sufficiently competent to deal with a genuine crisis and it has to be admitted some of his more average ministers (some of them very average) didn’t inspire confidence.

In the chair: Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference.  A Peace Conference at the Quai d’Orsay (1919), oil on canvas by William Orpen (1878–1931).

Those who believe in God, miracles, and that divine providence has chosen them for a special role probably don’t often trouble themselves with tiresome details, something the British diplomat Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) noted of Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924; US president 1913-1921) at the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920): “That spiritual arrogance which seems inseparable from the harder form of religion had eaten deep into his soul”.  “This intellectual disability rendered him blindly impervious, not merely to human character, but also shades of difference.  He possessed no gift for differentiation, no capacity for adjustment to circumstances.  It was his spiritual and mental rigidity which proved his undoing.  It rendered him as incapable of withstanding criticism as of absorbing advice.  It rendered him blind to all realities which did not accord with his own preconceived theory, even to the realities of his own decisions”.

Most interesting perhaps is that the revelation of this matter is a story in itself and one which seems to confirm Mr Morrison’s sincerity of purpose in originally having himself created minister of this and that.  Because, in constitutional theory, ministers exercise the powers of the sovereign and many of those powers are limited to a particular minister, in a time of crisis, it can make things worse if a minister is unavailable.  Mr Morrison says he thought at the time the pandemic was declared, the information from overseas was dire and it wasn’t impossible that were the virus to take hold in Australia, it was not impossible ministers might drop dead (the Lord forbid, obviously) and it was thus a sensible precaution to have a backup for ministers serving in critical areas.  Not wishing to burden others, he assumed the duties himself.

Prime-ministerial intrusions into matters beyond their remit have over the years been a thread in a number of memoirs by members of cabinets who at times felt usurped but Mr Morrison's actually cloning and in parallel assuming another's constitutional authority was most unusual.  Some however were interested in other fields and, responding to accusations prime-minister Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) was too activist in the conduct of the war and too inclined to interfere in military tactics and strategy, the political cartoonist David Low (1891-1963) in 1942 commented by depicting the PM as a politician-cum-general-cum-admiral-cum-air-marshal.  There was something in the criticism in that much like Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and others not professional soldiers, Churchill was interested in grand strategy and the minutiae of detail like the calibre of shells but not the vast logistical & organizational operations which tend ultimately to determine success or failure.  Churchill certainly tried to exert influence on his military advisors in favor of his pet projects (of which there were many) and while some were inspired and (especially in the early stages of US involvement in the conflict) wise, the war effort was undoubtedly aided by the chiefs of staff resisting some of his more Napoleonic visions of battle, ensuring Quixotic ventures in the Baltic or the Far East never proceeded.                 

The multiple ministries Mr Morrison discussed some two years ago, in a matter-of-fact manner, with two journalists writing a book about the pandemic.  That this wasn’t revealed for two years seems to be simply because it was a good, juicy bit of the book which the authors didn’t wish to reveal in advance.  When it was published, it was mentioned just as an interesting aspect of pandemic management with not a hint it might be thought improper or even unusual, the secrecy mentioned but only in the sense of it be just one of the many things governments keep secret, so as not to frighten the horses.  It made the front page of the national daily but not as the headline, only a “color” piece rather than the lede, the details on page 2 while the main story was within, a discussion of the book.  Intriguingly for students for media management and the generation of moral panics, the media essentially ignored the story for two days before joining the opposition’s bandwagon attempting to paint the former prime-minister as morally scrofulous.  At that point it did get more interesting, Mr Morrison having appointed himself to five portfolios rather than the two he mentioned and that he’d actually once exercised the powers secretly vested and in a matter which had nothing to do with the pandemic.  What may be of interest is what's not (yet) known.  Whether the power Mr Morrison enjoyed as being minister of this and that was exercised to allocate public money for some purpose isn't known but if such allocations did in secret happen would be a matter pursue.  If the appointments were lawful (as all assume) there presumably any exercise of ministerial power would presumably also be lawful, however politically toxic it may retrospectively prove.  Case law will be of no guide because there have never been, as far as is known, any such cases.    

A quizzical look.  Mr Morrison, who still can't see what all the fuss is about.

Mr Morrison did call a press conference and there the evasive answers and obfuscation began.  His response to his actual exercise of one minister’s nominal authority was so carefully lawyered it should be a model answer for any law student explaining what a minister must do to conform with the demands of administrative law and in claiming he would publicly have advised of his appointment(s) had he exercised the power(s) was simply an untruth.  When asked why he’d vetoed something within the remit of the resources minister, he’d responded that it was within his power as prime-minister.  Still, however economical with the truth he may have been, all appears to have been lawful and presumably if God was that concerned about lying, he’d have added an eleventh commandant.

Cyrillic

Cyrillic (pronounced si-ril-ik)

(1) Noting or pertaining to a script derived from Greek uncials and traditionally held to have been invented by Saint Cyril, first used for the writing of Old Church Slavonic and adopted with minor modifications for the writing of Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and some non-Slavic languages of Central Asia.

(2) Of or relating to Saint Cyril.

1842: From the Medieval Latin Cyrillicus, the construct being Cyrill(us) (Saint Cyril) + -icus or –ic (the Latin suffix added to a noun, adjective, verb, etc to form an adjective.  From an i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original case and later used freely. It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic -igaz, the Old High German & Old English -ig, and the Gothic -eigs).  The name Cyril is from the Medieval Latin Cyrillicus & Cȳrillus was from the Ancient Greek Κῡ́ρῐλλος (Kū́rillos or Kyrillos) (literally "lordly, masterful”) and related to kyrios (lord, master).  The name Cyril is from the Late Latin Cyrillus, from the Ancient Greek Kyrillos (literally "lordly, masterful) and related to kyrios (lord, master).

From the Balkans to Moscow

Saints Cyril and Methodius (1912), oil on canvas, by Uroš Predić (1857-1953).

Dating from the ninth century, the early Cyrillic replaced the Glagolitic script earlier created by Saints Cyril and Methodius as something easier for the copyist to write and for the foreigner to acquire and the same disciples that created the new Slavic script in Bulgaria.  Becoming the official Bulgarian script after being brought into general use by St. Cyril's pupil, Clement (first bishop of Bulgaria) in 893, Cyrillic became the basis of alphabets used in various languages, especially those of Orthodox Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian.  Today, it’s used by some two-hundred and fifty million people in Eurasia as their official alphabet, Russians accounting for about half of them.  With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union in 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following Latin and Greek.

Lindsay Lohan in Moscow for the FIA Formula E ePrix, June 2015.  In Cyrillic Russian, Lindsay Lohan is spelled Линдси Лохан.

Cyrillic is a derivative of the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures, letters used in Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who earlier had created the Glagolitic alphabet; despite the name and some Medieval myth-making, the script was conceived and popularized by the followers of Cyril and Methodius, rather than the saintly brothers; the name Cyrillic denotes homage rather than authorship.  In the early eighteenth century, the Cyrillic script used in Russia was modernized by Peter, the new letterforms being closer to the Latin alphabet with several archaic letters removed and some new ones personally designed by the Tsar himself, the best known of which is Я, inspired by the Latin R.

Resin

Resin (pronounced rez-in)

(1) Any of a group of non-volatile solid or semisolid organic substances & compounds (that consist of amorphous mixtures of carboxylic acids), obtained directly from certain plants as exudations of such as copal, rosin & amber (or prepared by polymerization of simple molecules) and used typically in pharmaceuticals, plastic production, lacquers, adhesives and varnishes.

(2) A substance of this type obtained from certain pine trees (also called rosin).

(3) To treat, rub or coat with resin.

(4) A precipitate formed by the addition of water to certain tinctures.

(5) Any of various artificial substances, such as polyurethane, that possess similar properties to natural resins and used in the production of plastics; any synthetic compound with similar properties.

1350–1400: From the Middle English resyn & resyne (hardened secretions of various plants), from the Old French resine (gum, resin), from the Latin rēsīna (resin), from the Ancient Greek rhētī́nē (resin of the pine tree), both probably from a non-Indo-European language.  In chemistry, the word came to be applied to synthetic products by after 1883.  The verb resinate (impregnate with resin) dated from 1756.  The adjective resinous (of the nature of, pertaining to, or obtained from resin) is documented since the 1640s, from the Latin resinosus; the earlier adjective was resiny (having a character or quality like resin), noted since the 1570s.  The related (and now rare) noun rosin (distillate of turpentine (especially when in a solid state and employed for ordinary purposes)) dates from the late thirteenth century and was from the Old French raisine & rousine, both variants of résine; it was used as a verb after the mid-fifteenth century.  The later adjectives resiniferous & resinless appear never to have been used except in chemistry or technical literature in relevant industries, the more common forms in general use being resin-like or resinous.  Because the word resin covers a wide field of substances, it usually appears in modified form (acaroid resin, acrylic resin, epoxy resin, phenolic resin, polyresin, polyvinyl resin etc).  The present participle is resining and the past participle resined.  Resin, resinousness & resinite are nouns, resinously is an adverb and resinify is a verb; the noun plural is resins.

The Citroën SM and Michelin's resin wheels

1972 Citroën SM with Michelin RR wheels. 

Although sometimes referred to as being made from “carbon fibre”, materials engineers insist the optional wheels offered on the Citroën SM must be described as “synthetic resin reinforced with long-strand carbon fibre”.  Notable as the first composite road wheel offered for public sale, they were developed by Michelin, the tyre-maker which since 1934 had been Citroën’s parent corporation and the innovation was an appropriate accessory for the SM which, upon release in 1971, was immediately recognized as among the planet's most intricate and intriguing cars.  A descendant of the DS which in 1955 had been even more of a sensation, it took Citroën not only up-market but into a niche the SM had created, nothing quite like it previously existing, the combination of a large (in European terms), front-wheel-drive (FWD) luxury coupé with hydro-pneumatic suspension, self-centreing (Vari-Power) steering, high-pressure braking and a four-cam V6 engine, unique in the world.  The engine had been developed by Maserati, one of Citroën’s recent acquisitions and the name acknowledged the Italian debt, SM standing for Systemé Maserati.  Although, given the size and weight of the SM, the V6 was of modest displacement to attract lower taxes (initially 2.7 litres (163 cubic inch)) and power was limited (181 HP (133 kW)) compared to the competition, such was the slipperiness of the body's aerodynamics that in terms of top speed, it was at least a match for most.

Michelin RR wheel on Citroën SM.

However, lacking the high-performance pedigree enjoy by some of that competition, a rallying campaign had been planned as a promotional tool.  Although obviously unsuited to circuit racing, the big, heavy SM didn’t immediately commend itself as a rally car; early tests indicated some potential but there was a need radically to reduce weight.  One obvious candidate was the steel wheels but attempts to use lightweight aluminum units proved abortive, cracking encountered when tested under rally conditions.  Michelin immediately offered to develop glass-fibre reinforced resin wheels, the company familiar with the material which had proved durable when tested under extreme loads.  Called the Michelin RR (roues resin (resin wheel)), the new wheels were created as a one-piece mold, made entirely of resin except for some embedded steel reinforcements at the stud holes to distribute the stresses.  At around 9.4 lb (4¼ kg) apiece, they were less than half the weight of a steel wheel and in testing proved as strong and reliable as Michelin had promised.  Thus satisfied, Citroën went rallying.

Citroën SM, Morocco Rally, 1971.

The improbable rally car proved a success, winning first time out in the 1971 Morocco Rally and further success followed.  Strangely, the 1970s proved an era of heavy cruisers doing well in the sport, Mercedes-Benz winning long-distance events with their 450 SLC 5.0 (1977-1980) which was both the first V8 and the first car with an automatic transmission to win a European rally.  Stranger still, Ford in Australia re-purposed one of the Falcon GTHO Phase IV race cars which had become redundant when the programme was cancelled in 1972 and the thing proved surprisingly competitive during the brief periods it was mobile, the lack of suitable tyres for the large, heavy machine meaning the sidewalls repeatedly failed.  The SM, GTHO & SLC proved a quixotic tilt and, for better (Group B, 1982-1986) and worse (everything else), the sport went a different direction.  On the SM, the resin wheels had proved their durability, not one failing during the whole campaign and, encouraged by customer requests, Citroën in 1972 offered them as a factory option although only in Europe; apparently the thought of asking the US federal safety regulators to approve "plastic wheels" (as they’d already been dubbed by the motoring press) seemed to the French so absurd they never bothered to submit an application.

Reproduction RR wheel in aluminum. 

Michelin ceased to make the RR when SM production ended in 1975 but did provide another batch for sale in the mid 1980s and this was said to be a new production run rather than unsold stock.  A cult accessory for a cult car, perfect examples now sell for around US$2000 each which does sound expensive but, given what it can cost to restore (or even maintain) a SM, it’s not a significant sum and, unlike much of the rest of the machine, the RRs are at least trouble-free.  Michelin are not said to be contemplating resuming production but another company has produced visually identical wheels made from aluminum; these only slightly heavier.  Despite the success and the fifty-year history of robustness, Citroën didn’t persist and the rest of the industry never adopted the resin wheel.  The reason was two-fold: (1) Even if economies of scale operated to lower the unit cost, the technology was always going to be more expensive than using aluminum and advances in alloys meant the metal units can provide similar strength with only a slight weight penalty and (2) the resin was always susceptible to high temperatures, something not encountered on the SM which used inboard brakes.  Most cars don’t use inboard brakes and as Ford found when testing resin wheels during Lincoln's downsizing programme in the mid-1970s, although the weight reduction was impressive, almost the same was possible with aluminum at much lower cost and the problems caused by heat-soak from the brakes were insoluble.  So it proved until the late 1980s when, with the development of new, heat-resistant materials, reinforced composite wheels were made available on the limited-production Dodge Shelby Shadow CSX-VNT.

Shelby Shadow CSX-VNT (1987 Shelby American publicity still (left) and MWC Fiberrides wheel on 1989 model (right)): “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper” (the concluding line of T.S. Eliot’s (1888-1965) poem The Hollow Men (1925)).

After the Sturm und Drang of Shelby American’s Cobras and Mustangs, that the Shadow CSX-VNT (1987-1989 and based on the Dodge Shadow (1986-1994)) was the last production car built by the operation meant things at the storied facility ended “not with a bang but a whimper” but Carroll Shelby (1923–2012) did for his personal use retain Shadow CSX-VNT Number 001 (of the 500 built) and he was a fair judge of what was good to drive.  Shelby’s team designed the composite wheels (dubbed “Fiberrides”) with manufacturing handled by MWC (the Motor Wheel Corporation).  Although conceptually similar to the Michelin RR wheel in being a lightweight, composite unit that lighter than an aluminium wheel of the same dimension, the Fiberrides differed in the materials used and the technique of construction.  Despite appearing a generation earlier, the Michelin RR’s resin system was more advanced than what MWC did which was to use familiar glass-fiber reinforced plastic; Michelin’s approach offered some advantages but the tooling for mass-production was expensive and the costs would never have been amortized in the run of fewer than 3,000 needed for Shelby’s project.  While not a Cobra, the CSX-VNT is genuinely “a Shelby” and although not much sought by collectors, there is a minor following because they remain competitive machines in autocrossing although the guides now caution the plastic wheels are over three decades old and there have been reports of cracks being detected; the advice is, if being used in competition, switch to metal wheels and keep the Fiberrides for display.  The composite wheels have never been re-produced so the planet’s stock of them is static and thus, because nothing lasts forever, slowly diminishing.

1973 Citroën SM with reproduction RR wheels in aluminium. 

True carbon fibre wheels have had a little more success, although only at the top-end of the market, Koenigsegg in 2013 manufacturing carbon fibre single-piece wheels which it offered as a US$40,000 option; a number which needs to be considered in the context of the US$2 million price tag for one of their cars.  Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari and Ford have all flirted with carbon fibre wheels and some manufactures are interested in the possibilities offered by hybrid designs which use aluminum for some components and carbon fibre for others, an idea familiar from earlier steel/aluminum combinations and unrelated to the "polycast" units of the 1970s & 1980s which used a conventional wheel to which a decorative plastic centre was bonded.  Regulatory authorities are apparently still pondering things.

The SM V8

1974 prototype Citroën SM with 4.0 V8.

Ambitious as in 1971 it so obviously was, circumstances combined in a curious way that might have made the SM more remarkable still.  By 1973, sales of the SM, after an encouraging start, had for two years been in decline, a reputation for unreliability already tarnishing its reputation but the first oil shock dealt what appeared to be a fatal blow; from selling almost 5000 in 1971, by 1974 production numbered not even 300.  The market for fast, thirsty cars had shrunk and most of the trans-Atlantic hybrids (combining elegant European coachwork with large, powerful and cheap US V8s), which had for more than a decade done good business as alternative to the highly strung Italian thoroughbreds, had been driven extinct.  Counter-intuitively, Citroën’s solution was to develop an even thirstier V8 SM and that actually made sense because, in an attempt to amortize costs, the SM’s platform had been used as the basis for the new Maserati Quattroporte but, bigger and heavier still, performance was sub-standard and the theory was a V8 version would transform both and appeal to the US market, then the hope of many struggling European manufacturers.

Recreation of 1974 Citroën SM V8 prototype.

Citroën didn’t have a V8; Maserati did but it origins were in racing and while its (never wholly tamed) raucous qualities suited the character of the sports cars and saloons Maserati offered in the 1960s & 1970s, it would have been less than ideal for something like the SM.  However, the SM’s Maserati V6 was a 90^o unit and thus inherently better suited to an eight-cylinder configuration.  Therefore, in 1974, a 4.0 litre (244 cubic inch) V8 based on the V6 (by then 3.0 litres (181 cubic inch)) was quickly built and installed in an SM which was subjected to the usual battery of tests over a reported 20,000 km (12,000 miles) during which it was said to have performed faultlessly.  Unfortunately, bankruptcy (to which the SM, along with some of the company's other ventures, notably the GZ Wankel programme, contributed) was the death knell for SM production and the one-off V8 prototype was scrapped while the unique engine was removed and stored, later used to create a replica of the 1974 test mule.

The abortive Traction Avant V8

Citroën Traction Avant (TA) 22 (V8), Paris Motor Show, 1934 (the Coupé below, a Berline on the raised platform).  The frontal styling with fared-in headlights would have been exclusive to selected body-styles offered with the V8.

It was a shame because, despite being most associated with the US industry, it was the French engineer Léon Levavasseur (1863–1922) who in 1904 created the first V8 engine and at the 1934 Paris Motor Show, Citroën displayed their “TA 22”, a variation of their Traction Avant model but fitted with a 3.8 litre (233 cubic inch) V8, created by joining on a common crankcase two of their 1.9 litre (117 cubic inch) four-cylinder units.  At the show, several models were displayed and the promotional material confirmed the 22 would be available with a choice of coachwork including the Berline (four-door saloon), Familiale (long wheelbase (LWB) nine-passenger, four-door saloon with three rows of seats), two-door Coupé and Décapotable (two-door cabriolet).  Looming bankruptcy however halted the project and Michelin, having just taken corporate control, insisted the company concentrate on the best-selling, most profitable lines.  A reputed two dozen-odd 22s were built before the Michelin Man dropped his axe and it's never been clear if any passed into private hands in V8 form, most of the pre-production run having been re-fitted with standard 11 CV four cylinder engines under the usual hood (bonnet) and wings before being sold as TA 11s.  Inevitably, rumours abound, the most persistent being (1) an unnamed doctor or dentist in Brittany or Gascony locked a TA 22 in a barn where it remains, perfectly preserved and (2) there's one in a "secret garage" hidden somewhere in the Far-East, a remnant of the French colonial presence in Indo-China.  There's also the tale that one of the pre-production run displayed at the Paris Motor Show was stored in an underground car-park (in a "bricked-up room" to conceal it from the Nazi occupation forces which had a great fondness for the Traction Avant) in the Javel district of Paris (close to the Citroën factory) and it survived the war, only to be "destroyed" by Pierre "PJB" Boulanger (Pierre-Jules Boulanger, 1885–1950; chairman of Citroën 1935-1950).  Monsieur Boulanger was killed in an accident at the wheel of a TA 15-Six but, like the other legends, there's no documentary evidence of any of the V8 cars existing after 1935.  In recent years, some aficionados have built V8 TAs in the style of the 22 CVs, most fitted with contemporary Ford flathead V8s, an engine produced in several versions in France during the 1930s.   

1938 Citroën 11B Traction Avant coupé, one for four built in 1938 from a total production of 15.  Lovely though the art deco lines were, the 11B’s performance was rendered mediocre by the use of the even then rather agricultural 1.9 litre four-cylinder engine which, despite the fitting of twin downdraft carburetors, generated only 46 horsepower (hp) at a 3800 RPM of some harshness.  In the US, the memorable coffin-nose Cord 810 & 812 had already proved a power-train which combined a V8 with FWD could work and such a powerplant for the Traction Avant would have been transformative.  That the project was abandoned was one of many entries in the company’s long list of missed opportunities.

1937 Cord 812 Phaeton (left) and 1967 Cadillac Eldorado (right).

Thirty years apart, Cord and Cadillac demonstrated a big, FWD V8 could be made to work.  Rushed into production, the Cord had flaws but in a more buoyant economy might the resources might have been found to rectify the problems.  The Eldorado used an unusual chain-drive(!) version of the General Motors (GM) Turbo-Hydramatic automatic transmission which at the time raised the odd eyebrow but, coupled with engines as large as 500 cubic inches (8.2 litres which for 1970 briefly was tuned to a rated 400 hp), it proved robust and reliable.  Whatever happened later, in the 1960s, Cadillac's engineering could be said still to be the "standard of the world".

Lindsay Lohan in Tsubi Scooter Jeans, Andrea Brueckner Saddle Bag, L.A.M.B. Lambstooth sweater, Manolo Blahnik Butterfly sandals & Louis Vuitton Inclusion resin bangles, Los Angeles, April 2005.

Evidence does however suggest a V8 SM would likely have been a failure, just compounding the existing error on an even grander scale.  It’s true Oldsmobile and Cadillac had offered big FWD coupés with great success since the mid 1960s but they were very different machines to the SM and appealed to a different market.  Probably the first car to explore what demand might have existed for a V8 SM was the hardly successful 1986 Lancia Thema 8·32 which used the Ferrari 2.9 litre (179 cubic inch) V8 in a FWD platform.  Although well-executed within the limitations the configuration imposed, it was about a daft an idea as it sounds, the understeer prodigious when tested on racetracks although it seems to have been manageable when sensibly driven on the road.  Even had the V8 SM been all-wheel-drive (AWD) it would probably still have been a failure but so configured it would now be remembered as a revolution ahead of its time.  As it is, the whole SM story is just another of Citroën's many intriguing cul-de-sacs, albeit one which has become a minor cult.

Pachyderm

Pachyderm (pronounced pak-i-durm)

(1) Historically, any of the thick-skinned, non-ruminant ungulates, such as the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros.

(2) General (non-scientific) term for an elephant and some other, impressively large creatures.

(3) In the idiomatic, a person not sensitive to criticism, ridicule, etc; a thick-skinned person.

1838: From the seventeenth century French pachyderme, from the New Latin Pachyderma, the assumed singular of Pachydermata, from the Ancient Greek pakhudermos (thick-skinned), the construct being of pakhus (thick, large, massive) + derma (skin (from the primitive Indo-European root der (to split, flay, peel) with derivatives referring to skin and leather)).  The more familiar form of derma was dérmata, neuter plural of dermatos (skinned).  Pachyderme was in 1797 adopted as a biological term in 1797 by French naturalist Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric (Baron (Georges) Cuvier, 1769–1832) and while the order Pachydermata has fallen into disuse in formal zoology, pachyderm remains in common use to describe elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses etc.  The related forma are pachydermal, pachydermous, pachydermic, pachydermoid & pachydermatous.

Elephants

In zoology, the original taxonomic order, Pachydermata (“thick skin” the construct from the Ancient Greek being παχύς (pachys) (thick) + δέρμα, (derma) (skin) is a now obsolete order of mammals, a grouping which once included thick-skinned, hoofed animals such as the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, elephant, pig and horse.  Being polyphyletic, the order is no longer used but is an illustrative cul-de-sac in the history of systematics.  The word “pachyderm” remains in use to describe elephants, rhinoceroses, tapirs, and hippopotamuses.

The original classification Pachydermata included three herbivorous families: Proboscidiana, Pachydermata Ordinaria, and Solipedes.  They were later reclassified as Proboscidea (among living species represented now only by three species of elephants), the Perissodactyla (odd-toed ungulates, including horses, tapirs and rhinoceroses), the Suina (pigs and peccaries), the Hippopotamidae, and the Hyracoidea (hyraxes).  It was advances in genetic analysis which allowed the others to be classified as wholly separate clades.

Interestingly, despite the name being a reference to the thickness of skin, the thin-skinned horse genus was an original inclusion, based apparently on the other shared characteristic: "mammals with hoofs with more than two toes".  Belying appearances, horses do exhibit a slight departure from a true monodactylous structure, every member of the family having vestiges of two additional toes under the skin.

A pachyderm playing polo.

Chrysler’s 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8 (1966-1971), was nicknamed “Elephant Motor”, an allusion to the bulky cylinder heads required to house the complex valve-train and their vague resemblance to ears of the beast.  The moniker was a piece of zoological one-upmanship on Chevrolet's mouse (small-block V8) and rat (big block V8).

Failures in verisimilitude in Mean Girls (2004):  One of the props was a framed photograph representing Cady Heron during her childhood in Africa, sitting atop an elephant.  The elephant of a different taxonomy, being an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) instead of the appropriate African savanna bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) known in Kenya.  The left hand's inadvertent srpski pozdrav (a three-fingered Serbian salute originally expressing the Holy Trinity and used in rituals of the Orthodox Church which has (like much in the Balkans) been re-purposed as a nationalist symbol) is a Photoshop fail.

Mall

Mall (pronounced mal or mawl)

(1) A clipping of shopping mall, a (usually) large retail complex containing a variety of stores and often restaurants and other business establishments housed in a series of connected or adjacent buildings or in a single large building.  Shopping centre is the usual alternative descriptor but market, plaza, marketplace & mart are also used.

(2) A large area, sometimes lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade (in some places called boulevard, boardwalk, esplanade, alameda, parade or walk).

(3) In urban business districts, a street from which motor-traffic has been excluded and given over entirely to pedestrians.

(4) A strip of land, usually planted or paved, separating lanes of opposite traffic on highways, boulevards etc (use restricted to certain US states).

(5) In the game of pall-mall, either (1) the game itself, (2) the mallet used in the game or (3) the place or alley where pall-mall was played.

(6) The game of polo (obsolete since the late seventeenth century).

(7) To beat with a mall, or mallet; to beat with something heavy; to bruise.

(8) In the jargon of US property development, to build up an area with the development of shopping malls

(9) In slang, (often as malling), to shop at the mall (the “mall rat” being one who frequents such places (usually in a pack) without necessarily intending to shop.

1737: From The Mall, a fashionable tree-lined promenade (then thought of as a “pall-mall alley”) in St James's Park, London where originally the game pall-mall was played.  The name of the game was also spelled palle-malle, paille-maille, pel-mell & palle-maille, pell-mell.  The noun plural is malls.

Eighteenth century woodcut of men playing pall mall.

The use to describe a "shaded walk serving as a promenade" was generalized from The Mall, the name of a broad, tree-lined promenade in St. James's Park, London (the name dating from the 1670s and an evolution of the earlier (1640s) maill), so-called because it operated as open alley used to play the game of pall-mall, an ancestor of the modern croquet.  Pall-mall (although described as a “lawn game”) was played on a surface of compacted & leveled soil, boarded in at each side, using a wooden ball which was struck with a mallet to send it through an iron arch placed at the end of the alley, the winner the one who managed to do so with the fewest shots.  The game's name is from the French pallemaille, from the Italian pallamaglio, the construct being palla (ball) + maglio (mallet), from the Latin malleus (hammer, mallet), from the primitive Indo-European root mele- (to crush, grind).  The French and Italian forms (like the English pall-mall) both refer to a game something like croquet, played in Europe after the sixteenth century.

A View of St James Palace, Pall Mall (1763), oil on canvas by Thomas Bowles (1712-1791).

The mall in the sense of a street in an urban business district from which motor-traffic has been excluded and given over entirely to pedestrians dates from 1951.  The sense of an "enclosed shopping gallery" is from 1962 (although such structures in the US pre-date the descriptor and the mall rat (one who frequents a mall) wasn’t labeled as such until 1985.  Mall is the common term in North America but in many countries they’re called shopping centres, markets, plazas, marketplaces, marts or blends of these words.  Mall is still used in the original sense of a shaded walk but is now rare, plaza, esplanade (especially if riparian, costal etc) or boardwalk tending to be preferred whereas mall is most associated with suburban shopping centres or urban streets given over to pedestrians.  The strip mall is a smaller array of shops, assembled usually in a single line parallel with a major arterial road with parking for cars directly in front.  The Pavilion on the Mali in New York’s Central Park was used in the nineteenth century by the “Park Band:, the mali a paved path lined with trees.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying Wetzel's Pretzels, Americana Mall, Los Angeles, June 2009.

The concept of a large structure or area containing the outlets of many traders wasn’t new, recognizable forms identified in the archaeological record of many cultures across millennia.  What distinguished the modern mall was that it was inherently (1) suburban and (2) dependent on customers using private motor vehicles rather than walking or public transport.  It was these factors which enabled malls to develop at scale; the land being bar from city centres was cheap and the customer catchment was vast, needing only to be in driving range so thus could service an area of a hundreds square miles or more, something which explains why malls always had vast, often multi-layered car parks.  Urban geographers regard the Northland Center in Southfield, Michigan (which opened in 1954) as the first mall in the modern sense.  Immediately successful, it spawned imitators, immediately in the US and within a decade around the world, the building of malls tracking the development of road systems and the growth in car ownership.  One effect was the decline of commercial activity in city centres as traders followed their customers’ migration to the suburbs, a trend which really didn’t decline until the 1990s when the fashion for inner-city living returned.  This affected both the viability of malls and interest in developing new ones, something exacerbated by the arrival of the “big box” operations which were either single outlets at scale or thematic clusters of traders within the one geographical space.  For many customers, the clusters were attractive because, unlike the malls which tended to limit the number of similar businesses which could lease space, in a cluster one could find many shops servicing the same market centre, typically specialties such as home improvement or decorating.  Consequently, many malls had during the last quarter century been abandoned, demolished or re-purposed, the twenty-first century growth in on-line shopping accelerating the decline.

Pall Mall “Girl Watching” cigarette advertising, circa 1962.

Pall Mall menthol cigarette advertising, 1969.  By then called “the black demographic”, one of the first widespread uses of African-Americans in advertising published in mainstream media was for menthol cigarettes, reflecting the high market penetration of the product in that group.  Where there were profits to be had, commerce was a great supporter of DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion), long before the concept was imposed by governments.

The game Pall Mall was the subject of a number of contemporary paintings and sketches and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703; noted English diarist & Admiralty administrator) who had mentioned the game as early as 1661, in May 1663 noted in his diary: “I walked in the park… discoursing with the keeper of Pell Mell who was speaking of it; who told me of what the earth is mixed that do floor the Mall and that over all there is cockel-shells powdered.”  In an entry in 1665, Pepys referred to both street and game as Pell Mell.  There were many “Pall Mall” alleys in London and one of them became the street well known variously as a centre of artistic life, the home of many London clubs, the location of the War Office (when war offices were a thing) and a place on the Monopoly board.  Mall tends to be pronounced mawl in most of the world except in England where Pall Mall is pel mal although, even then, the phonetic influence of the US is such that mawl is often heard for uses other than the street.  In Australia, when the Queen Street Mall was in 1982 opened by Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (1911–2005; Country Party premier of Queensland, 1968-1987), he insisted it must be pronounced mawl because he had no wish to be reminded of Malcolm Fraser (1930–2015; Liberal Party prime minister of Australia 1975-1983).

A cluster of mall rats.