Cyclops

Cyclops (pronounced sahy-klops)

(1) In Greek Mythology, a member of a family of giants having a single round eye in the middle of the forehead.  They forged thunderbolts for Zeus, built the walls of Mycenae and were encountered by Odysseus in The Odyssey.

(2) A freshwater copepod of the genus Cyclops, having a median eye in the front of the head (used with lower-case).

(3) A nickname (the literal translation of Antigonos ho Monophthalmos (382-301 BC) (Ἀντίγονος ὁ Μονόφθαλμος) being “Antigonus the one-eyed”) for Antigononso, a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great.

(4) A slang term for the brief (1940s-1950s) fashion for cars having a third, central headlamp.

1510s: From the Latin Cyclōps, from the Ancient Greek Kýklōps (round-eye), the construct being kýklo(s) (a circle, round) + ṓps (eye); the similar Latin construction was kuklos (circle; circular body) + ōps (eye).  The Greek and Latin forms for “round” were both from the primitive Indo-European root kwel (revolve, move around) while the words meaning “eye” were from the primitive Indo-European root okw (“to see”).  Among classics scholars, there is a faction which suggests the word is derived from an older source which originally meant “sheep thief.”  Both etymologies describe the Cyclopes suspiciously well and it’s not impossible the very name of the Cyclopes may have influenced and even distorted their original portrayal.

The adjectives cyclopean & cyclopic (of or characteristic of the legendary Cyclopes of Greek mythology) were from the 1640s and came to be applied in architecture and engineering to designs with a centrally located lamp or light although it was for a time in the nineteenth century used also to refer to vast or fabled gigantic structures of ancient masonry, irregular or unhewn, associated with the legends of the works created by the Thracian race of giants.  The plural form of cyclops has long caused disputes in English and modern style guides recommend using cyclops as both singular & plural.  Pendants of course ignore this and, depending on inclination make a point of using the unfortunate cyclopses but those who really want to display their learning will double down by using Cyclō’pes if writing of the creatures of the myths and cyclopes for all other purposes.

The so-called cyclopes cars were those (produced mostly in the late 1940s & early 1950s) with a centrally mounted headlamp, one of the many styling fads which flourished briefly.  Aesthetically, it didn’t work as well as the various arrangements with four headlamps and probably for that reason it’s never attracted designers looking for a retro-project.  On the 1948 Tucker 48 (Torpedo), the cyclopes light was connected to the steering a turned as the front wheels changed direction, an idea seen on the Cord L-29 as early as 1929 and which would be revived by Citroën in 1967 when the DS (1955-1975) was updated.

The Legend of the Cyclopes

The Cyclopes (the more familiar Cyclops is the singular) were gigantic, one-eyed beings with enormous strength. Originally, there were three of them: Arges (Thunderer), Steropes (Lightner), and Brontes (Vivid); blacksmiths the sons of Uranus and Gaea and the brothers of the Hecatoncheires and the Titans.  They were imprisoned by Cronus but released by his son Zeus, for whom they forged his famous thunderbolt as a sign of gratitude. However, later, poets would speak of a different type of Cyclopes, a race of dim-witted and violent one-eyed shepherds dwelling in the caves of the island of Sicily, the most famous of whom was Polyphemus, the Cyclops who fell in love with Galatea and was eventually blinded by Odysseus.

Rover 75 (P4) 1949-1953 (left) & 1950 JET1 gas turbine test bed.  The P4 in various versions was produced 1949-1964 but only the original 75 and the gas turbine test car were fitted with the cyclops headlamp.

Hesiod: Cronus and the Cyclopes

Fragment of wall painting in the ruins of Pompeii depicting the Cyclop Polyphemus and the Nymph.

Incited by his mother Gaea, the youngest of the Titans, Cronus, castrated and overthrew his father Uranus, establishing himself as the supreme ruler of all gods.  Fearing the might of his brothers, he imprisoned both the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires in Tartarus, setting the dragoness Campe to guard them for all eternity.  Terrified of his children as well, Cronus tried devouring each of them as soon as they were born.  There were various tellings of the Hesiodic legend but what is common to all is that there were three Cyclopes of the race of Titans, sons of Uranus and Ge, who forged the thunderbolts of Zeus, Pluto's helmet, and Poseidon's trident, and were considered the primeval patrons of all smiths. Their workshops were afterward said to be under Mount Etna.

Zeus, the Cyclopes, and the Titanomachy

Polypheme (circa 1880) by Gustave Moreau (1826-1898).

In time however, the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires were released from Tartarus by the only one of Cronus’ children not to be eaten by him at birth: Zeus.  Zeus did this at the advice of Gaea, who had informed him that he wouldn’t be able to depose Cronus without their help.  True to Gaea’s words, the Cyclopes played a crucial part during the Titanomachy.  Not only did they side with Zeus in his war against the Titans, but they also forged Zeus’ mighty thunderbolt, along with a trident for Poseidon and a helmet of invisibility for Hades.  With the help of these weapons, Zeus and his party emerged triumphant from the Titanomachy, banishing the Titans to Tartarus once and for all.

The Works of the Cyclopes

Now that Zeus had become the ruler of the world, the Cyclopes could dedicate themselves fully to their talents.  They installed themselves in the forges of the divine artificer Hephaestus (under the volcanic Mount Etna in Sicily), and, under his direction, they went on forging Zeus’ thunderbolts in addition to fashioning pieces of some of the other gods’ equipment (Athena’s armor, Ares’ chariot).  The Cyclopes were also believed to have built numerous monumental works all around Greece and Italy. Among the famous buildings attributed to them were the immense walls of Tiryns and the Lion Gate at Mycenae.

Death of the Cyclopes

It seems all three of these original Cyclopes met an untimely death at the hands of the Olympians.  First Arges was killed by Hermes while guarding Io against the lust of Zeus; then Apollo killed both Steropes and Brontes in an act of vengeance for the death of his beloved son, Asclepius.  In truth, the Cyclopes had nothing to do with his death, other than forging the thunderbolt which Zeus hurled in the direction of Asclepius.  But, obviously enough, Apollo couldn’t exact his revenge on Zeus himself, so Steropes and Brontes had to suffer his wrath in Zeus’ stead.

1948 Tucker 48 (Torpedo) (left), 1938 Tatra 87 (1936-1950) (centre) & 1951 Maserati A6G2000 Spider by Frua (right).

Homer’s Cyclopes

Homer’s Cyclopes were a race of unintelligent, ferocious (and not infrequently cannibalistic shepherds living on the island of Sicily (that’s not undisputed but it’s what’s inferred from the Odyssey and the later works it inspired). The most famous among them was their chief, Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa, and he had a famous encounter with Odysseus.

Portrayal

Cyclope (1924) by Francis Picabia (1879–1953).

Even though they also had only one eye and were as gigantic as Hesiod’s Cyclopes, Homer’s Cyclopes were neither blacksmiths nor obedient. Usually portrayed as violent cannibals, they led an unruly life, possessing neither social manners nor fear for the gods.  The chief representative of Homer’s Cyclopes was the man-eating monster Polyphemus, described by Homer as having been blinded and outwitted by Odysseus. Later authors make him a would-be lover of the nymph Galatea.  Predictably, it was the Nymph who attracted so many painters from the late Medieval period until well into the nineteenth century.

Polyphemus and Galatea

Long before being blinded by Odysseus, Polyphemus had fallen in love with a beautiful nymph called Galatea.  However, as it may be supposed, his actions were neither graceful nor acceptable to the fair maiden, who rejected them in favour of a youth named Acis, the handsome son of Faunus and the river-nymph Symaethis. Polyphemus, enraged and with his usual barbarity, killed his rival by throwing upon him a gigantic rock.  The blood of the murdered Acis, gushing from the rock, formed a stream which bears his name to this very day.

Polyphemus and Odysseus

Upon landing on the island of the Cyclopes, Odysseus and his sailors found themselves entrapped in the cave of Polyphemus.  The Cyclops ate six of Odysseus’ men, and Odysseus had no option but to devise a quick escape plan.  So, one night, he intoxicated Polyphemus and pierced his eye with a wooden stake; the next morning, he told his men to hide under the bellies of Polyphemus’ sheep, and thus he managed to smuggle them out of the cave. It was because of this act that Poseidon, Polyphemus’ father, held a decade-long grudge against Odysseus, keeping him away from Ithaca and his beloved wife, Penelope.

1951 ZIL-112/1 Cyklon (experimental Russian car) (left), 1953 Ferrari 166MM/53 Spider by Abarth (centre) & 1958 Volkswagen Microbus (Type 2) with after-market central headlamp.

The texts

Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus (1635) by Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens (1593–1678).

Hesiod’s Cyclopes are first described in the Theogony where their role in the Titanomachy is also briefly related.  Homer’s Cyclopes and the encounter between Polyphemus and Odysseus is told in full in the ninth book of the Odyssey. In the Aeneid, Virgil describes beautifully the Cyclopes’ workshop, and Euripides has written a whole comedy about the unruly Cyclopes (the only complete satyr play to have survived).

The Rolex Cyclops

Lindsay Lohan with Rolex Datejust; note the blue eyes.

Rolex regard their Cyclops date window magnifier as among the most iconic and quintessential of their design language characteristics although it began as just another example of normal product development, an innovation which enhanced the functionality of an earlier innovation, the realization the date aperture window could be hard to see and adding a 2.5 times magnifier to the crystal would make it much easier to read.  Introduced in 1945, the Rolex Datejust was the first wristwatch to feature a date aperture window complication and included also the Jubilee bracelet so named because it marked the company’s 40th year in business, the model also the Rolex to feature solid end-links although Datejust didn’t at first appear as a dial designation.  The feature was appreciated but the scale was, of necessity, small and for anyone with less than perfect eyesight, it could be a challenge to distinguish numerals; a 23 from a 28 for example.  The solution was simple but inspired, the “Cyclops” magnifier lens appearing on a new Datejust model, released at the 1948 Basel Fair, the name a borrowing from the one-eyed monster from Classical mythology.

Anatomy of the Rolex Cyclops magnifier lens.    

According to the official company history, it was the Rolex founder himself, Hans Wilsdorf (1881–1960), who developed the Cyclops because his second wife, Betty Wilsdorf-Mettler (1902-1989), found the small numerals “too hard to read”.  That may be true but Herr Wilsdorf was famously adept at marketing and may not have been adding his own myth to the one he’d borrowed from Antiquity.  If so, he certainly embellished the tale as imaginatively as the medieval scribes who invented their own stories about the ancient gods, the story being the solution presented itself one morning in his bathroom when a drop of water landed on his Rolex Datejust crystal directly over the date aperture window and he noticed it magnified the date.  Shouting “I got it, I got it!!!” to his wife, that day he had one of his craftsmen glue a tiny magnifying glass over the date wheel, and with that single prototype, the Rolex Cyclops Date window magnifier was created and almost as soon as patent application CH 298953 was granted, it was followed by a cautionary press release: “To all watchmakers: we draw your attention to the fact that the watch crystal with the specially shaped magnifying glass lens is a Rolex exclusivity protected in Switzerland and abroad. We will not hesitate to instigate legal proceedings against any counterfeiting.”  Proving that celebrity product placement is nothing new, Rolex had in 1948 presented Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961 and then US Army Chief of Staff) with the 150^th officially certified Swiss Chronometer and when it was returned to the then president in 1953 after being serviced, it had been fitted with both an updated dial and a Cyclops magnifier window.

Patent 298953, 2 August 1954.

Structurally, there have been changes as improvements in materials have made new engineering possible.  Vintage Rolex crystals were fashioned from an acrylic with the Cyclops lens molded into the form, rendering it thus unmovable but when the company switched to a synthetic sapphire crystal, the Cylops lens could be manufactured separately and then attached with a “space-age” glue, the last notable refinement being the addition of an anti-reflective coating on the bottom surface, making it visible under a wider range of lighting.  The Cyclops is now fitted almost universally to Rolex professional watches with a date aperture window, the only exception being the Deep Sea See-Dweller.

Ranga

Ranga (pronounced rang-ah)

In Australian slang, a person with red (ginger, auburn etc) hair

1990s: Based on the name orang-utan (pronounced aw-rang-oo-tan, oh-rang-oo-tan or uh-rang-oo-tan), either of two endangered species of long-armed, arboreal anthropoid great ape, the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae, inhabiting Borneo (Pongo pygmaeus) and Sumatra (P. abelii).  The alternative spellings are orangutan, orangutang & orangoutang, all of which are used with the same pronunciation variation as the standard form.  In Western zoology, the orang-utan was added to the taxonomic classifications in the 1690s, from the Dutch orang outang, apparently from the Malay ōrang hūtan and translating literally as “forest man”, the construct being ōrang (man, person) + hūtan (forest).  Found in the forests of Sumatra and Borneo, it was noted immediately for its shaggy, reddish-brown hair and this coloration is the source of the Australian slang.  Ranga is a noun; the noun plural is rangas.

A ketchup of gingers?  Roodharigendag in the Netherlands.

Since 2005 (except in 2020 when COVID-19 stopped such things), the Netherlands has hosted what is described as the "world's largest gathering of redheads".  Unadventurously, the three-day festival (which attracts participants from over eighty nations) is known as Roodharigendag (Redhead Day).  There are a variety of events including lectures and pub-crawls; presumably, coffee shops are visited.

An Orangutan in Sumatra.  International Orangutan Day is 19 August.

Because, once deconstructed, to call someone a ranga is to compare them to a sub-human primate, it would seem the word probably would be thought offensive but it remains widely used and is one of the additions to English which has spread from Australia.  It certainly can be offensive and is often (though apparently mostly by children) used that way but it can also be a neutral descriptor or a form of self-identification by the redheaded.  It may be that many of those who deploy ranga (for whatever purpose) are unaware of the origin with a sub-human primate and treat it as just another word and in that sense it’s actually less explicit than some of the many alternatives with a longer linguistic lineage including ginger minge, firecrotch, carrot top, fanta pants, rusty crutch, & blood nut.  There was also the curiously Australian moniker “blue” (and the inevitable “bluey”) to describe the redheads, an adoption in the tradition of “lofty” sometimes being applied to the notably short.  Whether ranga is more or less offensive than any of those (none of which reference apes) is something on which not all redheads may agree but in 2017 (some months on from ranga being added to the Australian Dictionary), presumably so there was a forum to discuss such matters, RANGA (the Red And Nearly Ginger Association) was formed, finding its natural home on social media where it operates to provide social support rather than being a pressure group.

Ginger, copper, auburn & chestnut are variations on the theme of red-headedness: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the possibilities.  Red hair is the result of a mutation in the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene responsible for producing the MC1R protein which plays a crucial role also in determining skin-tone. When the MC1R gene is functioning normally, it helps produce eumelanin, a type of melanin that gives hair a dark color.  However, a certain mutation in the MC1R gene leads to the production of pheomelanin which results in red hair.  Individuals with two copies of the mutated MC1R gene (one from each parent) typically have red hair, fair skin, and a higher sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) light, a genetic variation found most often in those of northern & western European descent.

Just as blonde women have long been objectified and derided as of limited intelligence (ie the "dumb" blonde), redheads have been stereotyped as sexually promiscuous (women) or having fiery tempers (men & women) but there is no evidence supporting any relationship between hair color, personality type or temperament.  The sample sizes are inherently small (redheads less than 2% of the global population) but there are populations in which the predominance is higher, so further research would be interesting but such questions are of course now unfashionable.  Most style guides list "red-haired”, “redhead” & “redheaded” as acceptable descriptors but the modern practice is wherever possible to avoid references which apply to physical characteristics, much as the suggestion now is not to invoke any term related to race or ethnic origin.  That way nothing can go wrong.  If it’s a purely technical matter, such as hair products, then descriptors are unavoidable (part-numbers not as helpful at the retail level) and there’s quite an array, ranging from light ginger at the lighter end to chestnuts and and auburns at the darker and there was a time when auburn was used as something of a class-identifier.

Jessica Gagen, Miss England, 2022.

Recently victorious in the Miss England 2022 pageant, Jessica Gagen (b 1995) is the first redhead to take the title.  Having been subject to bullying as a child, Ms Gagen has indicated she’ll be using her platform to spread a positive message to those who have also suffered cruel taunts about being red-headed and she’ll represent England at the 71st Miss World in the (northern) spring of 2023.  After leaving school, Ms Gagen discovered one advantage of her hair color was it attracted modeling agencies and she pursued a lucrative international career.  Now studying for a masters degree in aerospace engineering at Liverpool University, she’s involved in a programme to encourage girls to take up the study of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects and notes her engineering course has made her aware of the extent to which these fields remain male-dominated.

Peak Jessica: Jessica Gagen pictured cooling off during England’s recent heat-wave when temperatures reached a record 42^o C (108^o F), something long thought impossible because of the interplay of the movement of seawater and sea currents around the British Isles.  It's an urban myth that redheads (being "hot-headed" in the popular imagination) need to "cool down" more than most in some conditions. 

Interestingly, Ms Gagen says her participation in beauty contests changed her perception of them as sexist displays, regarding that view as archaic, noting the women involved all seemed to have their own motives, usually involving raising awareness about something of great personal interest.  Being part of the cohort likely to do well in beauty contests is of course just a form of comparative advantage in the way some have a genetic mix which makes them suitable to play basketball.  The beauty contest is thus an economic opportunity and choosing to participate in one can be a rational choice in that one's allocation of time and resources can yield greater returns than the alternatives.  Another notable thing about Jessica Gagen is that being born in 1995, she is part of that sub-set of the population called “peak Jessica”, the cohort which reflected the extraordinary popularity of the name between 1981-1997, overlapping slightly with “peak Jennifer” which occurred between 1970-1984.

Anchorite

Anchorite (pronounced ang-kuh-rahyt)

A person who has retired to a solitary place, traditionally for a life of religious seclusion; a recluse or hermit.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English anchorite & ancorite, (hermit, recluse, one who withdraws from the world for religious reasons (and applied especially in reference to the Christian hermits of the Eastern deserts in the two centuries after circa 300 AD.)), a conflation of the Middle English ancre (from the Old English ancra & ancer) and the Old French anacorite or the Medieval Latin anachōrīta & anchōrīta and the Late Latin anchoreta from the Late Greek anachōrētḗs (literally "one who has retired"), the construct being ana- (back), from anachōrē- (stem of anachōreîn (anakhōrein) (to withdraw)) + khōreîn (to withdraw, to give place), a verbal derivative of chôros (khōra) (place, space, free space, room), from the primitive Indo-European root ghē- (to release, let go; be released) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Old English and the Old Irish ancharae were from the Late Latin anachōrēta, from the Late Greek.  The word replaced the Old English ancer, from the Late Latin anchoreta.  Anchoritic is an adjective, anchoritically is an adverb, anchoritism is a noun; anchoress is the feminine noun form.  Synonyms include hermit, recluse, solitary, cenobite, ascetic, monastic, eremite, vestal, postulant & solitaire.

The last papal resignation but one.

Pietro Angellerio (1215-1296) was for five months between July and December 1294 installed as Pope Celestine V.  His resignation from the office was the last until Joseph Ratzinger (b 1927; Pope Benedict XVI 2005-2013; pope emeritus since) in 2013 retired from his eight-year pontificate to become (uniquely) pope emeritus.

Prior to being created pope, Celestine had for decades been a monk and hermit, living a anchorite existence in remote caves and subsisting on little more that wild vegetables, fruits, honey and the occasional locust, his unworldly background meaning he emerged as the ultimate compromise candidate, declared pope after a two-year deadlock in the church’s last non-conclave papal election.  The cardinals had been squabbling for all those two years which so upset the hermit in his cave that he wrote them a letter warning divine retribution would be visited upon them if they didn't soon elect a pope.  Realizing he was entirely un-political, without enemies and likely pliable, the cardinals promptly elected him by acclamation.

Shocked, the hermit declined the appointment, only to have his own arguments turned on him, the cardinals insisting if he refused the office he would be defying God himself; trapped, he was crowned at Santa Maria di Collemaggio in Aquila, taking the name Celestine V.  The anchorite, lost in the world of power politics and low skullduggery was utterly unsuited to the role and within months issued an edict confirming the right of a pope to abdicate.  That done, he resigned, intending to return to his cave but his successor, Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani, circa 1231-1303; pope 1294-1303) had no wish to have such a puritanical loose canon at large and imprisoned him in an agreeable castle where, within months, he died.  In 2013, Benedict XVI fared better, retiring to a sort of papal granny flat in the Vatican.

Allegory of the Coronation of Celestine V, Musée di Louvre, Paris.

The painter is unknown but the work has been dated to the sixteenth century.  There was long a story, published in both the 1967 forgery Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau (Secret Files of Henri Lobineau) and the almost equally dubious 1968 book Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château (The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Château) by Géraud-Marie de Sède (1921–2004), that the painting was one allegedly brought by controversial priest François-Bérenger Saunière (1852–1917) from the Louvre, circa 1891, but this was later disproved.  It wasn’t until 1923 it was recognized and subsequently classified as being of Celestine V.

Frazil

Frazil (pronounced frey-zuhl, fraz-uhl, fruh-zeel, frey-zil, fraz-il or fruh-zil (regionally variable)).

Ice crystals formed in turbulent water, as in swift streams or rough seas (moving enough to prevent the formation of a sheet of ice).

1885-1890: A borrowing in US English, from the Canadian French frasil, frazil & fraisil, from the French fraisil (forge (or coal) cinders), from the Old French faisil, ultimately from the Latin fax (torch, firebrand; fireball, comet; cause of ruin, incitement), from the primitive Indo-European ǵhwehk- (to shine) and cognate with facētus (elegant, fine; courteous, polite; witty, jocose, facetious) and the Lithuanian žvakė (candle) and there’s also a speculative link to the Etruscan word for face (which may also have meant torch).  Frazil is a noun and adjective and has been used as a (non-standard) verb; the noun plural is frazils.

The freezing point of water is 273.15 K (32^o F (0^o C)), but it can be super-cooled to almost 231 K if there are no nuclei for the ice crystals (ie the water is very pure).  Frazil ice forms in turbulent, very cold water and consists of small discs of ice as small as 1-4 millimeters in diameter and 1-100 microns in thickness (there can be one million ice crystals per m3 of water).   As the crystals grow, they will stick to objects in the water, tending to accumulate on the upstream side of objects and this can cause ice dams to form and serious flooding can result in unpredictable places because creeks and other waterways can change directions in response to the movement and accumulation of frazil ice.  Lovely to watch, frazil ice can pose a problem for hydroelectric power-plants because, in bulk, it can block turbine intakes or freeze open gates.   Fish can also suffer and in oceans, frazil ice forms around coastlines or ice packs found in open seas and the behavior of the substance (in this context an aspect of fluid dynamics) has required the development of protocols by the oil and gas industry for use when working in arctic regions.  For those who struggle to visualize frazil, it’s something like the slushies sold in convenience stores.

Available in more than a dozen flavors, Frazil is a brand-name of the slushie sold by US frozen drinks company Freezing Point.

As the crystals grow, they will stick to objects in the water, tending to accumulate on the upstream side of objects and this can cause ice dams to form and serious flooding can result in unpredictable places because creeks and other waterways can change directions in response to the movement and accumulation of frazil ice.  Lovely to watch, frazil ice can pose a problem for hydroelectric power-plants because, in bulk, it can block turbine intakes or freeze open gates.   Fish can also suffer and in oceans, frazil ice forms around coastlines or ice packs found in open seas and the behavior of the substance (in this context an aspect of fluid dynamics) has required the development of protocols by the oil and gas industry for use when working in arctic regions.  The actions of waves and currents creates a turbulent state which causes the water column to become super-cooled by the process of heat exchange between air and water, the temperature dropping below its freezing point.  In rivers and creeks, the vertical mixing induced by the turbulence generates sufficient energy to overcome the crystals' buoyancy, thus keeping them from floating to the surface while in oceans, the winds, waves and cold air combine to create a super-cooled layer.

Frazil ice, Yosemite National Park.

Milieu

Milieu (pronounced mil-yoo, meel-yoo or mee-lyœ (French))

(1) Surroundings, medium, environment, especially of a social or cultural nature.

(2) A group of people with a common point of view; a social class or group.

(3) In psychotherapy, as "milieu therapy" a controversial form of community-based psychotherapy in which patients are encouraged to take responsibility for themselves and others within the unit, based upon a hierarchy of collective punishments.

(4) In linguistics & human communications, as "milieu control", tactics that control environment and human communication through the use of peer pressure and group language.

1795-1805: From the twelfth century French milieu (physical or social environment; group of people with a common point of view (literally “middle place”)), from the Middle French milieu, meilleu, & mileu, from the Old French milliu, meillieu & mileu (middle, medium, mean),  from the Latin medius, formed under the influence of the primitive Indo-European root medhyo (middle) + lieu (place), thus understood as the Latin medius (half; middle) + locus (place, spot; specific location) and the French construct mi- (mid) +‎ lieu (place) mirrors that.  English speakers have used milieu for the environment or setting of something since the early-1800s but other "lieu" descendants are later including lieu itself and lieutenant, in use since the fourteenth century.  By the mid-nineteenth century milieu was in use in English in the sense of “surroundings, medium, environment: and had become a fashionable word among scholars and writers.  A micromilieu is a subset of a milieu.  Milieu is a noun; the noun plural is milieux or milieus.

In the milieu of the industrial baroque, Lohan Nightclub, Iera Odos 30-32 | Kerameikos, Athens 104 35, Greece.

In the twentieth century, milieu was adopted by the emerging discipline of sociology as a technical term.  The US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962; professor of sociology at Columbia University 1946-1962) contrasted the immediate milieu of an individual’s life with the over-arching social, political and economic structure, highlighting the distinction between "the personal troubles of milieu" and the "public crises of social structure".

Mills' best known work was the much criticized but also influential The Power Elite (1956), a work much focused on the construct of the milieu which is the repository of power in the modern capitalist West.  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions works to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.  Had he lived, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) probably wouldn't much have differed from Mills but in his era he was more concerned with an individual's personal formation and the relationship of that to the enveloping milieu in which they existed.  He described the "big" structure as the milieu social, asserting it contained internalized expectations and representations of social forces & social facts which, he argued, existed only in the imaginations of individuals as collective representations.  Phenomenologists, structuralists at heart, built two models: society as a deterministic constraint (milieu) or a nurturing shell.

Kamikaze

Kamikaze (pronounced kah-mi-kah-zee or kah-muh-kah-zee)

(1) A member of a World War II era special corps in the Japanese air force charged with the suicidal mission of crashing an aircraft laden with explosives into an enemy target, especially Allied Naval vessels.

(2) In later use, one of the (adapted or specifically built) airplanes used for this purpose.

(3) By extension, a person or thing that behaves in a wildly reckless or destructive manner; as a modifier, something extremely foolhardy and possibly self-defeating.

(4) Of, pertaining to, undertaken by, or characteristic of a kamikaze; a kamikaze pilot; a kamikaze attack.

(5) A cocktail made with equal parts vodka, triple sec and lime juice.

(6) In slang, disastrously to fail.

(7) In surfing, a deliberate wipeout.

1945: From the Japanese 神風 (かみかぜ) (kamikaze) (suicide flyer), the construct being kami(y) (god (the earlier form was kamui)) + kaze (wind (the earlier form was kanzai)), usually translated as “divine wind” (“spirit wind” appearing in some early translations), a reference to the winds which, according to Japanese folklore, destroying Kublai Khan's Mongol invasionfleet in 1281.  In Japanase military parlance, the official designation was 神風特別攻撃隊 (Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai (Divine Wind Special Attack Unit)).  Kamikaze is a noun, verb & adjective and when used in the original sense should use an initial capital, the present participle is kamikazeing and the past participle, kamikazed; the noun plural is kamikazes.

HESA Shahed 136 UAV.

The use of kamikaze to describe the Iranian delta-winged UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, popularly known as “drones”) being used by Russia against Ukraine reflects the use of the word which developed almost as soon as the existence of Japan’s wartime suicide bomber programme became known.  Kamikaze was the name of the aviators and their units but it was soon also applied to the aircraft used, some re-purposed from existing stocks and some rocket powered units designed for the purpose.  In 1944-1945 they were too little, too late but they proved the effectiveness of precision targeting although not all military cultures would accept the loss-rate the Kamikaze sustained.  In the war in Ukraine, the Iranian HESA Shahed 136 (شاهد ۱۳۶ (literally "Witness-136" and designated Geran-2 (Герань-2 (literally "Geranium-2") by the Russians) the kamikaze drone have proved extraordinarily effective being cheap enough to deploy en masse and capable of precision targeting.  They’re thus a realization of the century-old dream of the strategic bombing theorists to hit “panacea targets” at low cost while sustaining no casualties.  Early in World War II, the notion of panacea targets had been dismissed, not because as a strategy it was wrong but because the means of finding and bombing such targets didn’t exist, thus “carpet bombing” (bombing for several square miles around any target) was adopted because it was at the time the best option.  Later in the war, as techniques improved and air superiority was gained, panacea targets returned to the mission lists but the method was merely to reduce the size of the carpet.  The kamikaze drones however can be pre-programmed or remotely directed to hit a target within the tight parameters of a GPS signal.  The Russians know what to target because so many blueprints of Ukrainian infrastructure sit in Moscow’s archives and the success rate is high because, deployed in swarms because they’re so cheap, the old phrase from the 1930s can be updated for the UAV age: “The drone will always get through”.

Imperial Japan’s Kamikazes

By 1944, it was understood by the Japanese high command that the strategic gamble simultaneously to attack the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor and territories of the European powers to the south had failed.  Such was the wealth and industrial might of the US that within three years of the Pearl Harbor raid, the preponderance of Allied warships and military aircraft in the Pacific was overwhelming and Japan’s defeat was a matter only of time.  That couldn’t be avoided but within the high command it was thought that if the Americans understood how high would be the causality rate if they attempted and invasion of the home islands, that and the specter of occupation might be avoided.

USS New Mexico (BB-40) hit by Kamikaze off Okinawa, 12 May 1945.

Although on paper, late in the war, Japan had over 15,000 aircraft available for service, a lack of development meant most were at least obsolescent and shortages of fuel increasingly limited the extent to which they could be used in conventional operations.  From this analysis came the estimates that if used as “piloted bombs” on suicide missions, it might be possible to sink as many as 900 enemy warships and inflict perhaps 22,000 causalities.  In the event of an invasion, used at shorter range against landing craft or beachheads, it was thought an invasion would sustain over 50,000 casualties to by suicide attacks alone.  Although the Kamikaze attacks didn't achieve their strategic objective, they managed to sink dozens of ships and kill some 5000 allied personnel.  All the ships lost were smaller vessels (the largest an escort carrier) but significant damage was done to fleet carriers and cruisers and, like the (also often dismissed as strategically insignificant) German V1 & V2 attacks in Europe, significant resources had to be diverted from the battle plan to be re-tasked to strike the Kamikaze air-fields.  Most importantly however, so vast by 1944 was the US military machine that it was able easily to repair or replace as required.  Brought up in a different tradition, US Navy personnel the target of the Kamikaze dubbed the attacking pilots Baka (Japanese for “Idiot”).

HMS Sussex hit by Kamikaze (Mitsubishi Ki-51 (Sonia)), 26 July 1945.

Although it’s uncertain, the first Kamikaze mission may have been an attack on the carrier USS Frankin by Rear Admiral Arima (1895-1944) flying a Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Allied codename Judy) and the early flights were undertaken using whatever airframes were available and regarded, like the pilots, as expendable.  Best remembered however, although only 850-odd were built, were the rockets designed for the purpose.  The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花, (Ōka), (cherry blossom)) was a purpose-built, rocket-powered attack aircraft which was essentially a powered bomb with wings, conceptually similar to a modern “smart bomb” except that instead of the guidance being provided by on board computers and associated electronics which were sacrificed in the attack, there was a similarly expendable human pilot.  Shockingly single-purpose in its design parameters, the version most produced could attain 406 mph (648 km/h) in level flight at relatively low altitude and 526 mph (927 km/h) while in an attack dive but the greatest operation limitation was that the range was limited to 23 miles (37 km), forcing the Japanese military to use lumbering Mitsubishi G4N (Betty) bombers as “carriers” (the Ohka the so-called "parasite aircraft") with the rockets released from under-slung assemblies when within range.  As the Ohka was originally conceived, with a range of 80 miles (130 km), as a delivery system to the point of release that may have worked but such was the demand on the designers to provide the highest explosive payload, thereby limiting both the size of the rocket and the fuel carried, restricting the maximum speed to 276 mph (445 km/h) which would have made the barely maneuverable little rockets easy prey.

Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka.

During the war, Japan produced more Mitsubishi G4Ms than any other bomber and its then remarkable range (3130 miles (5037 km)) made it a highly effective weapon early in the conflict but as the US carriers and fighters were deployed in large numbers, its vulnerabilities were exposed: the performance was no match for fighters and it was completely un-armored without even self-sealing fuel tanks, hence the nick-name “flying lighter” gained from flight crews.  However, by 1945 Japan had no more suitable aircraft available for the purpose so the G4M was used as a carrier and the losses were considerable, an inevitable consequence of having to come within twenty-odd miles of the US battle-fleets protected by swarms of fighters.  It had been planned to develop a variant of the much more capable Yokosuka P1Y (Ginga) (as the P1Y3) to perform the carrier role but late in the war, Japan’s industrial and technical resources were stretched and P1Y development was switched to night-fighter production, desperately needed to repel the US bombers attacking the home islands.  Thus the G4M (specifically the G4M2e-24J) continued to be used.

A captured Japanese Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (Model 11), Yontan Airfield, April 1945.

Watched by Luftwaffe chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946), Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) awards test pilot Hanna Reitsch the Iron Cross (2nd class), Berlin, March 1941 (left); she was later (uniquely for a woman), awarded the 1st-class distinction.  Conceptual sketch of the modified V1 flying bomb (single cockpit version) (right).

The idea of suicide missions also appealed to some Nazis (predictably most popular among those not likely to find themselves at the controls.  The idea had been discussed earlier as a means of destroying the electricity power-plants clustered around Moscow but early in 1944, the intrepid test pilot Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) suggested to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & of state 1934-1945) a suicide programme as the most likely means of hitting strategic targets.  Ultimately, she settled on using a V1 flying bomb (the Fieseler Fi 103R, an early cruise missile) to which a cockpit had been added, test-flying it herself and even mastering the landing, some feat given the high landing speed.  As a weapon, assuming a sufficient supply of barely-trained pilots, it would probably have been effective but Hitler declined to proceed, feeling things were not yet sufficiently desperate.  The historic moment passed.

Hispanic & Latino

Hispanic (pronounced hi-span-ik)

(1) Relating to, characteristic of, or derived from Spain or Spanish-speaking countries (applied especially to Spanish-speaking Latin America.

(2) A person whose primary or native language is Spanish.

(3) As Hispanic-American (and the rarer Hispano-American), a citizen or resident of the United States who is of Spanish or Spanish-speaking Latin-American descent; often used to refer to non-Spanish speakers, except for technical use, it’s now often replaced by the more general Latino.

(4) The Iberian Peninsula, when under the control of Ancient Rome (now in historic reference only).

1575-1585: From the Latin hispānicus (Spanish), the adjectival derivation of the Classical Latin (and Ancient Greek) Hispania (Spain) and Hispanus/Hispanos (Spaniard), ultimately probably of Celtiberian origin.   In English the word is attested from the sixteenth century, spreading to American English) by the nineteenth.  The construct is hispania +‎ -icus.  Hispania was long thought derived from a Phoenician/Punic name ‘i shapan, (land of hyraxes), cognate to the Hebrew שָׁפָן‎ (shafan) (hyrax), supposedly applied because the Phoenicians thought the land's many rabbits resembled hyraxes.  This theory (or legend) was repeated by many Roman authors and may explain why Hispania is depicted with rabbits on some Roman coins.  Later scholars however have cast doubt on the story and suggested possible Phoenician etyma, the most supported is ‘i ṣapun ((is)land to the north).  The –icus suffix was added to a noun or verb to form an adjective.  It was from the i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original cases but later used freely.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic –igaz, the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic -eigs, the Proto-Slavic –ьcь, the last having long fossilized into a nominal agent suffix  but originally probably also served adjectival functions.  The words Spain, Spanish, and Spaniard are of the same etymology as Hispanus.

Latino (pronounced luh-tee-noh (U) or la-tee-noh (non-U))

(1) Of or relating to people of Latin American origin or descent, especially those living in the United States.

(2) A person of Latin American origin or descent, especially one living in the United States.

1939: A creation of American English borrowed from Spanish adjective latino, in this context short for latinoamericano (Latin American) and thus an ellipsis of that form, from the Latin latīnus (pertaining to Latium, the region of Italy around Rome), possibly from the primitive Indo-European base stela- (to spread, to extend, hence flat country as opposed to mountainous).  Latino was first attested as a prefix from 1939 as a combining form of Latin, from ablative of the Latin latīnus.  It began to enter common use in the US in 1945-1950 as Latino referring to the places or people with Latinate or Romance language in common, the construct essentially a truncated merging of Latin + americano, the adjectival sense of Latino-American (al la African-American) first noted in 1974.  In noun form it should be gender-neutral but has always tended to male association; Latina is the feminine form and there’s long been the gender-neutral Latinx but a more interesting recent invention is latin@, the @ said to resemble both the feminine ending/element “a” and the masculine “o”, though the vagaries of pronunciation probably escape all but native Spanish speakers.

Changes in conventions of use

Latino and Hispanic, though laden with associative connotations from decades of use in the US, refer only to a person's origin and ancestry; a Latin(o/a/x/@) or Hispanic person can be any race or color, the former coming from anywhere in the defined geographical space, the latter the Spanish-speaking sub-set.  Among etymologists and political geographers, there has long been debate about whether the Caribbean can in whole or in part be considered as Latino although some are certainly Hispanic. Some suggest those from French Guiana should be accepted as Latino because French shares linguistic roots with Spanish and Portuguese which does seem a tenuous point, little different about whether people from English-speaking Belize and Guyana and Dutch-speaking Suriname truly fit under the category since their cultures and histories are so distinct.

Latin America, extends from the US-Mexico border to the southern Chilean islands, encompassing many countries, most of them predominately Spanish-speaking, a legacy of colonization.  In the US, the terms Hispanic and Latino (Latina for women, sometimes written as the gender-neutral Latinx or Latin@) were adopted in an attempt, initially for administrative purposes, loosely to group immigrants and their descendants.  The early post-war use of the terms, mostly by statisticians, epidemiologists and other academics does indicate there was adherence to the technical meanings but this dissipated as the words, especially Hispanic, entered mainstream media and public discourse.  By the mid-1950s, Hispanic tended to be used to reference everything and everyone south of the US-Mexico border, regardless of language spoken but since revisions to statistical categories during the Nixon administration (1969-1974) (the change first reflected in the 1980 Census form), the blanket term has tended towards the more correct Latino, the trend accelerating in recent years.  Despite this, some do still use the terms interchangeably.

Lindsay Lohan alighting from helicopter, São Paulo Airport, Brazil, April 2013.

Hispanic is generally accepted as a narrower term that includes people only from Spanish-speaking Latin America, including those countries and territories of the Caribbean or from Spain itself.  Thus, a Brazilian could be Latino and non-Hispanic, a Spaniard could be Hispanic and non-Latino, and a Colombian could adopt both terms.  Perhaps seeking to clarify things, the 2010 US Census helpfully listed both terms specifically mentioning the Spanish-speaking areas of the Caribbean but somewhat vaguely excluded non-Spanish speaking countries.  Whether pragmatically or for other reasons, when filling-out the form, many Latin American immigrants and descendants simply stated their countries of origin.  It may be the case Hispanic is on the linguistic treadmill and should thus be avoided.