Hoodoo

Hoodoo (pronounced who-do)

(1) A set of spiritual practices and traditions created and concealed from slave-owners by enslaved Africans in North America, based on traditional African beliefs.  Practiced predominantly in the south-east US, its identifiable features include folk magic, rituals of protection, herbal medicine, charming of objects, and ancestor veneration.

(2) In casual use, bad luck, or a person or thing that brings bad luck, not necessarily associated with the supernatural; to jinx, to bring bad luck or misfortune.

(3) In geology, a pillar of rock, created by various forces of erosion (also known as spires of rock, fairy chimneys, earth pyramids (and in particular formations) tent rocks).

1870: A creation of US English meaning "one who practices voodoo", apparently a variant of Voodoo.  The meaning "something that causes or brings bad luck" seems to have emerged in the 1880s and it was being used as a verb by 1886.  Interestingly, in 2002, it was documented also as a distinctly non-religious American folk magic.  Until the late twentieth century, hoodoo was spelled with & without an initial capital letter in a most inconsistent matter, both forms sometimes appearing in the one document.  The modern practice (which seems compelling) is to capitalize in when the word is used in the context of the spiritual practice or the cultural identification but to use all-lowercase when referring to the geological formations or used as casual slang (perhaps surprisingly, there’s been little apparent interest in proscribing hoodoo in this sense on the grounds of cultural appropriation).  Hoodoo is a noun & verb, hoodooed & hoodooing are verbs and hoodooism is a noun; the noun plural is hoodoos.

The first known instance of Hoodoo in English was in 1870 but the origins are wholly speculative, etymologists concluding it was probably an alteration of voodoo, a word drawn from the Ewe and Fon languages of Ghana and Benin which reference a divinity although the Akan odu (medicine) may be related and there’s also the possibility of a link to the Hausa hu'du'ba (resentment and retribution).  Less likely, but not impossible is that it’s from the variant Hudu (spirit work) in the Ewe language spoken in Ghana and Togo.  The link with Voodoo however is most convincing because Hoodoo was as early as the late nineteenth century identified as an African dialect with practices similar to the mysteries of Obi (Obeah) in the Caribbean.

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  Lindsay Lohan demonstrates. 

Pre-dreadnought battleship, USS Texas ("Old Hoodoo"), 1898.  Note the sailors' washing hanging from the railings, a long naval tradition.   

Sailors are said to be notoriously superstitious and probably didn’t need much persuasion to call the USS Texas “Old Hoodoo”.  The US Navy’s first (pre-dreadnought) battleship, she was commissioned in response to the naval arms race which developed in the Americas in the late nineteenth century although, despite the tensions, construction was undertaken as what would seem a leisurely pace; ordered in 1886, it wasn't until 1889 the keel was laid down and when finally commissioned in 1895, although not yet obsolescent, she was hardly in the forefront of naval architecture.  The ship's accident-prone reputation was well deserved and had started early with incidents of grounding, flooding (drowning three of the crew) and a collision with a dock.  However, she rose to the occasion and provided sterling service during the Spanish–American War (1898) but, ironically, her reputation was such that the Navy decided to use the now storied name for a new dreadnought, the USS Texas (BB-35), commissioned in 1914 and later declared a national historic landmark (and now the last surviving World War I (1914-1918) era dreadnought).  As sailors know, it’s bad luck to change the name of a ship and now named the USS San Marcos, the old Texas proved it so.  Towed as a hulk to shallow waters in Chesapeake Bay, resting on the bottom, she became an increasingly battered target ship, the US Navy using her for gunnery practice until the late 1940s.  Increasing water traffic however meant the hulk had become a navigational hazard and most of the remains were removed as scrap in 1959.

Hoodoos short (left), tall (centre) and clustered (right), Arizona, south-west US.

In geology, a hoodoo (also known as spires of rock, fairy chimneys, earth pyramids (and in particular formations) tent rocks) is a tall, typically thin, spire of rock formed by the processes of erosion (wind, rain, floods) and are forms usually of a relatively soft rock (such as sandstone) topped by harder stone which better resists the forces of nature.  Mostly, they exist within sedimentary rock and volcanic rock formations.  Hoodoos can be only a few feet high or exceed the level of multi-storey buildings and the shape they assume is wholly dictated by the composition of the rocks from which they’re formed, the erosional patterns differing according to the hardness of the material.  The introduction of the word hoodoo to geology seems to have happened in the late nineteenth century at the time when it had entered the vernacular to describe both the rituals of certain folk magic and the sense of doom or bad luck.  As the more remote regions of the western US were explored, the rocky structures were noted to be of not dissimilar spiritual significance to First Nations peoples and in some cases literally to be the petrified remains of those punished by the gods for their transgressions.

In the natural environment, temperature can also create structures with a hoodoo-like appearances.  Trees in Finland (left), a frozen fountain in Shevchenko Garden, Kharkiv, Ukraine (centre) and frozen Geyser in Letchworth State Park, New York with volcano-like flow maintained at the top (right).

Piste

Piste (pronounced peest)

(1) In skiing, a downhill trail or run.

(2) In competitive fencing, the internationally recognized regulation-size strip, 2 m (6’ 6”) in width and 14 m (46’) long.

(3) A track left by somebody riding a horse (archaic).

(4) A spoor made by a wild animal.

1727: From the Old French piste (beaten track of a horse or other animal) from the Italian pista (via (a beaten track)) a variant of pesta (footprint).  Pesta was a deverbal of pistare & pestare (to pound, crush) a Vulgar Latin frequentative of the Latin pīnsere, pistus the past participle.  Other languages picked up piste from the French.  Like English, Lithuanian, Dutch and German used the same spelling (the Germans capitalizing the noun) while there’s also the Catalan pista, the Greek πίστα (písta), the Persian: پیست‎ (pist) and the Turkish pist.  The alternative spelling pist is now rare.  Piste is a noun; the noun plural is pistes.

In Dutch, a piste (diminutive pistetje) is (1) a downhill ski run, (2) a track used in competitive athletics, or (3) a ring in a circus.  In Finnish, piste was originally a synonym of pisto (sting; prick, puncture).  In examples of linguistic innovation it was used in typography to mean "period, full stop, dot", use later extending to the sense of “mark or stroke above a letter” and a “unit of font size or spacing”.  In geometry it meant "point", thus the general sense in mathematics of it being the representation of a dimensionless object in space and thus a specific location and in figurative (though obviously inaccurate) use, piste came mean “tiny; something infinitesimally small”.  The idea of small was picked up in the scoring systems of various sports, a piste being (in the familiar sense of “a point”) the smallest unit a team or player could be awarded.

In French, the phraseology provides the descriptive nuances which indicate whether piste is being used in the literal sense of physical geography or figuratively thus: Une piste automobile dans le desert (track left in the desert sand by a car); piste cyclable (a bicycle path); La police est sur la piste d’un complot (the police are following a lead in their investigation of a conspiracy); piste d’atterrissage (an airport runway); piste de danse (a dance floor).  English adds modifiers to trail, track etc in the same manner.  In the sense in which piste is used in English, the French also use it to refer to ski slopes in general but also in more elaborated forms to differentiate where necessary: piste de ski (ski slope, ski trail); piste de luge (sled or sledge track).  Use in Italian follows the French but, noting the quality of snow as a white powder, imaginatively adds piste as the street slang for a line of cocaine and it’s a word which in this sense might see a goodly amount of use because the 2019 Global Drug Survey identified Italy as the world’s second largest consumer of the narcotic.

On the Piss

Piste is pronounced peest and the usual phrase when speaking of skiing is “on the piste” so care must be taken it’s not confused with another phrase, often used in parts of the English-speaking world, the operative word there pronounced pis.

On the piss: Crooked Hillary Clinton enjoys a quick belt of Crown Royal Bourbon Whiskey, Bronko's restaurant, Crown Point, Indiana, Saturday 12 April, 2008.

On the piss: Boris Johnson enjoying champagne, port and a pint.  It's not known if these photographs were all taken the same day.

On the piste

On the piste: An assured Lindsey Vonn (b 1984), four-time World Cup alpine ski champion and Olympic gold medallist.

In pink, on the piste: A less assured Lindsay Lohan, on skis during filming of Netflix’s Falling for Christmas.  The pink jumpsuit and pink fluffy vest are available on-line.

Lilo

Lilo (pronounced lahy-loh)

(1) The trademark for a type of inflatable plastic or rubber mattress, often used when in lakes, swimming pools etc.

(2) As a generic term, any inflatable mattress, especially those used recreationally in lakes, swimming pools etc).

(3) The portmanteau slang synonym for Li(ndsay) Lo(han); it was also applied as the name of a dance Ms Lohan performed ad-hoc on the Greek island of Mykonos in 2018.

(4) As LILO, the acronym for Li(nux) Lo(ader), an early (1991-2015) boot loader for the Linux operating system.

(5) As LILO, in computing, organizational management, accountancy and behavioral science, as the acronym for L(ast) I(n), L(ast) O(ut), a companion unit descriptor to FIFO (First In, First Out) & FILO (First in Last Out), all methods with which to organize the manipulation of data structures.  Under LILO, the last object in a queue is the last object to leave the queue.

1944: The trademark name Lilo (originally Li-Lo) registered by the company which made inflatable air-mattresses of rubberized canvas dates from the 1940s (1944 in the UK; 1947 in the US) and was a sensational spelling based on the phonetic “lie low”.  Lilo also exists in other languages: In the Philippines, in the Cebuano language a lilo is a swirling body of water or a large and violent whirlpool (a maelstrom) while in Tagalog it’s an adjective meaning disloyal; unfaithful; traitorous; treacherous (the synonyms being taksil, sukab, mapagkanulo & traydor).  In Hawaiian, Lilo is a feminine given name meaning “generous one” although in some traditions in the islands it can be translated as “lost” so the song He Mele No Lilo translates (loosely) as “Lullaby of the Lost”.  Lilo is a noun, the noun plural is lilos.

The Li-Lo Kayak, 1960.  The car depicted is a stylized rendition of an early version of one from the Rootes Group's "Audax" range (1956–1967).

The technology of the lilo was adaptable and able to assume various shapes, the LiLo company dabbling in a number of market niches including furniture, packaging and inflatable canoes.  The Kayak however was complex in construction so its production was thus labor intensive so it never sold in the numbers required to achieve the economies of scale which could have lowered the price and at Stg£25 (over Stg£500 in 2022 values) it was too expensive to succeed.  The idea has however been revived in the twenty-first century and "lilo & inflatable kayak" adventure tourism is now a thing.

The Bravissimo Lilo

The joke which buyers took seriously: the Bravissimo Lilo.

Bravissimo's Lilo appeared originally in 2018 as an April Fools' prank but such was the demand it was put into production and is now Bravissimo part-number SW571, available exclusively in hot pink.  Although there have since the 1940s been improvements in materials (lilos are made usually from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or textile-reinforced urethane plastic or rubber), the innovation on Bravissimo's is the first structural change in design in seventy-five years.  Integrating what the manufacturer calls “cup holders” the unique feature is a one-size-fits-all lacuna at the appropriate position so the breasts may comfortably rest un-squished when a woman is supine, lying face-down

Room to move: One size fits all.

Even Bravissimo, an underwear company which specializes in the niche of bigger boobs, admits they really should have thought of this before, given the discomfort suffered by lilo-using women tends to increase in direct proportion to cup-size.  It’s available in-store in some Bravissimo outlets and on-line at Stg£28 (US$45).

No longer one size fits all: Crash test dummies (CTD) now more inclusive.

Perhaps Bravissimo being nudged into making available a lilo which took account of women's unique anatomical differences inspired others because, some fifty years after they came into use, Swedish engineers have at last developed a crash-test dummy (CTD; "seat evaluation tool" the technical term) representative of the body of a typical woman.  Until now, almost all CTDs have been based on the build and weight of a typical adult male.  In most markets however, women however have long represented about half of all drivers and passengers yet the CTD manufacturers and regulators used in testing as a proxy for women was a scaled-down version of the male one, roughly the size of a typical girl of twelve and at 1.49m (4', 8") and weighing 48kg (106 lb), in accord with only the smallest 5% of women by the standards of the mid-1970s.  The new CTD is a more representative 1.62 m (5', 3") tall, weighing in at 62kg (137 lb) so it's another DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) building block. 

The need for a range of CTD with characteristics covering most of the population was discussed in the 1960s when US regulators began to write the first standards for automotive safety but industry lobbyists did their work and ensured crash-testing would be done as cheaply as possible, hence the standard, one-size-fits-all male analogue.  Despite years of convincing research which confirmed women were disproportionately injured in crashes (height rather than weight apparently the critical variable in the interaction of their smaller frames with seat-belts and air-bags), it wasn't until 2011 that US federal regulators required manufacturers to use more petite CTDs in frontal automotive crash tests.  It's hoped the new, Swedish-developed CTD will improve outcomes and the data from physical testing will soon be available for use in the increasingly important computer emulations, a field in which artificial intelligence (AI) is proving useful.

Lindsay Lohan: Studies of Lilo lying low in three aspects.

Lindsay Lohan’s moniker LiLo is a blend, the construct being Li(ndsay) + Lo(han).  Being based on proper nouns, in linguistics this would by most be regarded a pure blend, although some would list it as a portmanteau which is a special type of blend in which parts of multiple words are combined into a new word (and some insist that in true portmanteaus there must be some relationship between the source words and the result).

Slap

Slap (pronounced slap)

(1) A sharp blow or smack, especially with the open hand or with something flat; a sound made by or as if by such a blow or smack.

(2) By analogy, a sharply worded or sarcastic rebuke or comment.

(3) To put or place something promptly and sometimes haphazardly (often followed by on; if haphazard, often described as slapdash).

(4) As slap on the wrist, relatively mild criticism or censure, often used critically when more onerous punishments are available.

(5) A gap or opening, as in a fence, wall, cloud bank, or line of troops; a mountain pass; a wound or gash (now rare).

(6) As slap-sole, an additional sole affixed between the heel and sole of a high-heeled shoe. 

(7) In slang, make up (based on the notion "that which is slapped on").

(8) In slang, a poster (based on the notion "slapped onto the wall").  

Origin uncertain: It’s been linked to the (1325–1375) Middle English slop from the Middle Dutch or Middle Low German (cognate with German Schlupf (hiding place)) though with little support.  The seventeenth century Middle English slappen is of uncertain origin and probably imitative, drawing from the Low German Slapp & Slappe (slap) from which Modern German gained Schlappe (defeat).  Most suggest the verb use (in the sense of “strike with an open hand”) began in the late fifteenth century, became an adverb in the 1670s, and picked up the meanings “suddenly” or “directly” in 1829.  The noun form dates from the mid fifteenth century, again apparently of imitative origin, similar to the various German forms slappe & Schlappe.  The figurative meaning "insult, reprimand" is attested from 1736; the now probably obsolete “slap-happy” (1936) originally meant "punch-drunk and “slap on the wrist” meaning "very mild punishment" dates from 1914.  The modern acronym SLAPP is unrelated.  Slap is a noun, verb & adverb, slapping is a noun, slapper is a noun, verb & adjective, slapped is a verb and slappy is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is slaps.

Slap soles

Although they became high (and occasionally extreme) fashion items, slap soles began as a purely functional addition to men’s boots.  In the seventeenth century, men of a certain class, upon dismounting their horses, would slip a flat-soled mule over their riding boots to stop their heels sinking into the ground.  Presumably seeing a gap in the market, cobblers began to attach an additional sole, extending from tip to heel but not actually attached to the heel, a design which when walking, produced a clacking, slapping sound.  The apparently strange design existed so that riding boots would still fit securely in the stirrups and not interfere with the spurs.

Men in slap-soled boots.  Portrait of Lord John Stuart and his brother Lord Bernard Stuart (circa 1638), oil on canvas by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641).

Seventeenth century women's slap-soled shoes.

History doesn’t record whether women were attracted to the style or just the idea of being able to wear their newly fashionable high-heels without also sinking into the soil but the concept was soon extended to women’s shoes.  However, when applied to women’s shoes, although the slap-sole name stuck, there was no slapping sound when walking because the sole was this time anchored at the heel as well.  It’s essentially the same concept used on a tank or bulldozer, a self-laying track which renders a more stable surface on which to move.  So bizarre was the appearance of these shoes that they have long been a collectable and the delicate, intricate detailing on many does suggest many of them must have been created purely as pieces of high-fashion.  Doubtless there were some women of the horsey set who used the genuine slapping-soles as did the men but on the (admittedly hardly representative) basis of the surviving depictions, more seem to have worn them far from muddy stable yards.

Usage guide for “slap”:  An example of a literal “slap” is being “slapped in the face” by the mother of the children one is attempting to “rescue from traffickers” on the streets of Moscow.  A figurative “slap” is being “slapped with a parking fine” for leaving one’s Cadillac Escalade parked next to a fire hydrant.  Overlap is possible because a parking ticket is in some places still a physical slip of paper or cardboard so one literally could be “slapped with a parking ticket”.  Instances of such presumably are rare but to avoid ambiguity the correct use is “slapped with a parking fine” (figurative) or “slapped with a parking ticket” (the literal assault & battery).

Reaper

Reaper (pronounced ree-per)

(1) A machine for cutting standing grain; reaping machine; a machine used to harvest crops.

(2) One who reaps; a person employed to harvest crops from the fields by reaping; a machine operator who controls a mechanical reaper.

(3) A short form of grim reaper (often capitalized), the personification of death as a man or cloaked skeleton holding a scythe.

(4) The recluse spider (Loxosceles and Sicarius spp).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English reper, repare & repere (a harvester, one who cuts grain with a sickle or other instrument) from the Old English compound rīpere (the agent-noun from the verb reap), the construct being reap (from the Middle English repen, from the Old English rēopan & rēpan, variants of the Old English rīpan (to reap), from the Proto-Germanic rīpaną and related to the West Frisian repe, the German reifsen (to snatch) and the Norwegian ripa (to score, scratch); source was the primitive Indo-European hireyb- (to snatch)) + -er (from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, probably borrowed from Latin –ārius and later reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European –tōr; the suffix was added to verbs to form an agent noun).  The agent noun meaning "a reaper" is from the 1590s whereas the sense of "a machine for cutting grain" dates from 1841 and that of a “machine for reaping and binding field crops" appeared in 1847.  Variations of the spelling including Riper, Ryper & Riper appear in pre-1000 parish records as surnames and the presumption is most would have had some sort of vocational relationship to “reap”; Repere was first noted as a surname in the early fourteenth century.  Reaper is a noun; the noun plural is reapers.

The Grim Reaper as often depicted.

The use as the name of a personification of death dates from 1818 and “grim reaper” was first attested in 1847 although the association of grim and death is document from at least the seventeenth century with actual common use probably much earlier; a Middle English expression for "have recourse to harsh measures" was “to wend the grim tooth” and has been found as early as the 1200s.  The adjective grim was from the Old English grimm (fierce, cruel, savage; severe, dire, painful), from the Proto-Germanic grimma- (source also of the Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old High German & German grimm (grim, angry, fierce), the Old Norse grimmr (stern, horrible, dire), the Swedish grym (fierce, furious), from the primitive Indo-European ghremno- (angry), thought to be imitative of the sound of rumbling thunder (and may thus be compared with the Greek khremizein (to neigh), the Old Church Slavonic vuzgrimeti (to thunder) and the Russian gremet' (thunder).  Grim by the late twelfth century had lost the worst of the earlier connotations of violence and foreboding, by then understood to impart a sense of "dreary, gloomy".  The verb form in the Old English was grimman (past tense gramm; past participle grummen), while the noun grima (goblin, specter) may also have been a proper name or attribute-name of a god, the source of its appearance as an element in so many place names.

The Grim Reaper: Public health initiative, Australia, 1987.

The Grim Reaper was a 60 second-long television advertisement, run in 1987 as part of a public health campaign to increase awareness of the danger of HIV/AIDS.  It depicted the Grim Reaper of popular imagination in a ten-pin bowling alley, using a seven foot high (2.1 m) bowling ball to knock over men, women and child "pins", each of which represented a victim of the disease.  It was part of what would later be called a multi-media campaign which included radio broadcasts and printed material and certainly provoked a reaction, more sophisticated consumers of messaging thinking it at least banal and perhaps puerile while others found it disturbing and reported it scared their children.  The public response was hardly “hysterical” as has sometimes been claimed although the even then assertive gay community didn’t like that they were explicitly mentioned, fearing scapegoating although, given the publicity which by then had been documenting the track of AIDS for some four years, that horse had already bolted.  It was by the standards of the time confronting and criticism meant the government cancelled broadcasting, three weeks into a run which was intended to be twice the duration yet the public health community was pleased with the results and the programme was praised internationally, the direct Australian approach influencing others.  Some Australian state governments subsequently used even more graphic imagery in public health initiatives around matters such as smoking and road safety but it’s notable that attempts to use similar techniques to promulgate messages during the COVID-19 pandemic were thought a failure.  With various platforms having desensitized most to all but the most horrific sights, the public’s capacity to be shocked may have moved beyond what television advertising agencies can manage.

Blue Öyster Cult (Don't Fear) The Reaper (1976) © Donald Roeser (b 1947).

All our times have come

Here but now they're gone

Seasons don't fear the reaper

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be like they are

 

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper

Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper

We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper

Baby I'm your man

 

La, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la

 

Valentine is done

Here but now they're gone

Romeo and Juliet

Are together in eternity, Romeo and Juliet

40,000 men and women everyday, Like Romeo and Juliet

40,000 men and women everyday, Redefine happiness

Another 40,000 coming everyday, We can be like they are

 

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper

Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper

We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper

Baby I'm your man

 

La, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la

 

Love of two is one

Here but now they're gone

Came the last night of sadness

And it was clear she couldn't go on

Then the door was open and the wind appeared

The candles blew then disappeared

The curtains flew then he appeared, saying don't be afraid

 

Come on baby, and she had no fear

And she ran to him, then they started to fly

They looked backward and said goodbye, she had become like they are

She had taken his hand, she had become like they are

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper

Although they’d led a discursive existence since 1967, by the early 1970s, Blue Öyster Cult was in the crowded field of post-psychedelic acts blending quasi-classical motifs, mysticism, neck-snapping riffs and pop panache.  Coming from this milieu, the commercial success in 1976 of the single (Don't Fear) The Reaper was unexpected although more predictable was the controversy triggered by the lyrics being interpreted as advocating suicide.  It’s tempting to read the words that way, the eye drawn to the mention of Shakespeare's star-cross'd lovers, but the musician who wrote the lyrics claimed the song was about mortality and the inevitability of death, not its hastening and that in Romeo and Juliet he saw a couple with a faith in eternal love, not icons of a death cult.  The forty-thousand souls mentioned being taken by the reaper is way too high to refer to the daily suicide toll and actually references the total daily death take, the “forty thousand” being a bit of artistic license because the real number (125-135,000 at the time the lyrics were penned) would have too many syllables for the rhythm of the music.

Coming & going, dressed for the occasion.  Lindsay Lohan in Grim Reaper mode fulfilling a court-mandated community service order at LA County Morgue, October, 2011.

Minuteman

Minuteman (pronounced min-it-man)

(1) A member of a group of American militiamen just before and during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) who held themselves in readiness for rapid mobilization for military service (not always used with initial capital).

(2) A US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with three stages, powered by solid-propellant rocket engines.

(3) A variety of small, sometimes secretive paramilitary organizations formed in the US over many years with the aim of opposing variously defined threats (communist invasion; illegal immigration; election of Democratic Party administrations etc).

(4) Name for the Missouri Secessionist Paramilitaries, a pro-secession organization active in St Louis, Missouri, US between January-May 1861.

(5) In slang, a term used by women to describe men whose duration of activity during sex was unconscionably brief. 

1645: An Americanism predating the Revolutionary War and a compound word, the construct being minute + man.  Minute was from the Middle English minute, minut & minet, from the Old French minute, from the Medieval Latin minūta (one-sixtieth of an hour; note); doublet of menu.  Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man), probably from the primitive Indo-European mon- (man) (men having the meaning “mind”); a doublet of manu.  The specific sense of “adult male of the human race” (distinguished from a woman or boy) was known in the Old English by circa 1000.   Old English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late in the thirteenth century, replaced by mann and increasingly man.  Man also was in Old English as an indefinite pronoun (one, people, they) and used generically for "the human race, mankind" by circa 1200.  It was cognate with the West Frisian man, the Dutch man, the German Mann (man), the Norwegian mann (man), the Old Swedish maþer (man), the Swedish man, the Russian муж (muž) (husband, male person), the Avestan manš, the Sanskrit मनु (manu) (human being), the Urdu مانس‎ and Hindi मानस (mānas).   Although often thought a modern adoption, use as a word of familiar address, originally often implying impatience is attested as early as circa 1400, hence probably its use as an interjection of surprise or emphasis since Middle English.  It became especially popular from the early twentieth century.  The ICBM was deployed first in 1962 but the name may have existed as early as 1958.  All uses of minuteman are derived from the idea of civilian-soldiers, the colonial and revolutionary era militiaman who promised to be ready to fight at " one minute's notice"; as military formations, they were mobile, rapid-deployment forces.  Minuteman is a noun; the noun plural is minutemen except when speaking of objects such as missiles in which case it should be minutemans but within the US military "minutemen" seems to be preferred.

Development of the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) began in 1958, immediately after the USSR successfully launched Sputnik, the military significance of which was at the time less the satellite than the big 8K71 rocket used to launch it into orbit.  Essentially a modified Soviet ICBM, the 8K71’s success proved the Russians had the ability to deliver their nuclear weapons to the continental US.  At this point, whatever the views of the military, US strategic policy still envisaged the nuclear deterrent as a retaliatory rather than a first-strike weapon but the US missiles were liquid-fueled and thus not able to be launched in less than two hours.  The warheads from a Russian first-strike would explode in the US within thirty minutes.  The Minuteman solved the tactical problems inherent in the early US ICBMs, the big, immensely complex, liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan rockets.  The Minuteman’s missile and launch-site components used stable solid fuels, were (relatively) small and used a (relatively) simple design able (relatively) easily to be mass-produced, thus providing a quick-reacting, (relatively) cheaply produced, highly survivable component for the nuclear arsenal.  In service now for almost sixty years, they’re not scheduled wholly to be replaced until 2027.

By 1962, the Minuteman thus became the centrepiece of US nuclear strategy, part of a long struggle between the army, navy and air force, all of which wanted to assume primary responsibility for the strategic element of the arsenal.  Inevitably, it became also the focus of disputes between the Pentagon, the White House and the Congress over cost which translated into squabbles about how many were needed and depending on how this was calculated could produce a big number because the analysts in the Pentagon based their mat on a first strike destroying (the term used in close to its literal sense) not only the major cities and military installations in the Soviet Union but also those in the PRC (People's Republic of China, under the rule of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) since 1949).  Despite the scale of that ambition, graphs and charts were produced to prove the use nuclear arsenal was the cheapest was to achieve the objectives with the fewest causalities (military & civilian).  The congressional hearings gave the generals the chance to prove they were as adept as the politicians at budgetary low skullduggery.  Surprising many, the top brass were surprisingly willing to compromise on the missile count but that was because  they knew the next generation of Minuteman warheads would be Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) which meant three (later MIRVs on other platforms would have ten) warheads per missile so, even after appearing to accede to requests for restraint, the Pentagon ended up with about the same number of warheads originally requested.  The generals didn't burden the politicians with tiresome details about the engineering of MIRVs.

The Minutemen EP43 revealed Lindsay Lohan's interest in playing Batgirl in the DCEU.  The DCEU (DC Extended Universe) is a US media franchise, an ecosystem described as “a shared universe”, built on the characters in the Warner Brothers “superhero” films which were derived from those in the comic books published by DC Comics.  The DCEU is a multi-media venture which extends to comic books, films, novels, video games and, importantly, merchandize. DC is an initialism for “Detective Comics”, the first editions of which were published in 1937.

Undulant

Undulant (pronounced uhn-juh-luhnt, uhn-dyuh-luhnt or uhn-duh-luhnt)

Something with the quality of undulating; wavelike in motion or pattern:

1820–1830: The construct was undul(ate) + -ant.  Undulate was from the Late Latin undulātus (undulated), from the unattested undula (small wave), from the Latin undulantem (nominative undulans), a diminutive of unda (wave), from the Proto-Italic unda- which some etymologists link to the Umbrian utur (water), implying the source (at least as an influence) may have been the primitive Indo-European wódr̥, from wed- (water) +‎ -r̥ (the so-called r/n-stem suffix (a class of neuters)).  The resemblance to the Proto-Germanic unþī (wave) is said to be mere coincidence, at most a semantic confluence.  The suffix –ant was from the Middle English –ant & -aunt, partly from the Old French -ant, from Latin -āns; and partly (in adjectival derivations) a continuation of the use of the Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from the Old English -ende (the present participle ending).  Extensively used in the sciences (especially medicine and pathology), the agent noun was derived from verb.  It was used to create adjectives (1) corresponding to a noun in -ance, having the sense of "exhibiting (the condition or process described by the noun)" and (2) derived from a verb, having the senses of: (2a) "doing (the verbal action)", and/or (2b) "prone/tending to do (the verbal action)".  In English, many of the words to which –ant was appended were not coined in English but borrowed from the Old, Middle or Modern French.

Words which (depending on context) can impart a similar meaning include hilly, rolling, coiled, curly, curved, sinuous, convolute, lurching, resounding, reverberating, waving, involuted, voluble, bumpy, flexuous, plangent & sinuate.  Although undulant has been used as a noun (referring to components in installation art), the use is non-standard.  Undulant is an adjective (and in Latin a verb), undulate is a verb & adjective, undulating is a verb & adjective, undulance is a noun, undulation is a noun and undulatory is an adjective.  In the curious way English evolved, undulant, undulatory & undulance remain rare while undulate, undulating & undulation are commonly used and one variation from the annals of physics was undulationist (plural undulationists), used to describe those who believed light was a wave.  In contemporary veterinary science, undulant fever is an alternative name for brucellosis (the archaic names being Malta fever & Mediterranean fever), a highly contagious zoonosis caused by ingestion of unpasteurized milk or undercooked meat from infected animals, or close contact with their secretions     

Of sculpture

The nature of marble made it idea for sculpture, the stone amenable to the rendering of curves and severe edges.  Of particular note are the works of Renaissance artists who paid attention to human anatomy to ensure their works had a life-like as well as a representational quality.

Ratto di Proserpina (The Rape of Proserpina, 1621-1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680).

Bernini achieved renown both as a sculptor and architect and details of his Ratto di Proserpina appear in many of the textbooks and histories of art of the period.  The statute depicts the god Pluto abducting Proserpina, the three-headed beast of a guard-dog Cerberus at his feet symbolizing the gateway to the underworld.  Under the influence of Medieval Latin, the word "rape" is now less nuanced.  Under Roman civil law, in what is now known as a state of co-habitation without benefit of marriage (a de-facto arrangement), the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“to sexually violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction" but in Medieval Latin meant also "forcible violation").  It’s in the sense of “abduction” that the “rape” of Proserpina should be understood.  What has always attracted the admiration of critics are details like the undulant impressions Pluto’s fingers make on the flesh of his victim’s thigh.

The human forearm.

In the human forearm there are twenty muscle groups, divided into posterior and anterior compartments and whenever a finger is moved, depending on the direction or the weight to be supported, some or all of these groups are required to enable the movement.  In this image, purple represents the extensor digiti minimi (part of the posterior compartment) and it’s an accessory extension to support the little finger's movement.

Mosè (Moses, circa 1515) by Michelangelo’s (1475–1564).

In Michelangelo’s Mosè, the detailing explores tiny, often barely perceptible features of human anatomy and Naren Katakam wrote an interesting study of this aspect of the artist’s work.  Most illustrative is the undulance on the forearm, Michelangelo sculpting the very small, usually invisible extensor digiti minimi which contracts only when the little (pinky) finger is raised.

Lindsay Lohan with undulant hair.