Gaffer & Duct

Gaffer (pronounced gaf-er)

(1) The chief electrician on the set of a movie or television show.

(2) In informal use, a boss, supervisor, or manager.

(3) In informal use, an old man, especially one living in the country (often used affectionately or patronizingly).

(4) A foreman or overseer in charge of a group of physical laborers; the coach or manager of a sports team.

(5) In glassmaking, a master glassblower responsible for shaping glassware.

(6) Slang for boy or youth (unique to Ireland); used in maritime regions to refer to the baby of the house.

(7) A type of tape used usually as a safety device to tape-down cables to reduce the risk of tripping hazards (technically gaffer’s tape).

(8) In slang, as “to gaff”, “gaffered” or ”to gaffer”, a description of some temporary or roughly improvised repair using gaffer tape or some other quick and dirty method; “to make a gaff” as a description of a mistake is a variation of this.

1565–1575: Thought likely to be a contraction of godfather, but with the vowels influenced by grandfather.  The use to describe “an elderly rustic" was apparently based on continental analogies (compare gammer and the related French compère and German Gevatter).  It seems originally to have been a term of respect, also applied familiarly; from "old man" and was by 1841 extended to foremen and supervisors generally.  In UK police forces, it’s common slang to describe the officer in charge of a particular section or squad and in Association Football (soccer), the head coach or manager.

In the early twentieth century, it was carried over to the electrician or technician in charge of lighting on a film set because the natural lighting on early film sets was adjusted by opening and closing flaps in the tent, these cloths called gaff cloths or gaff flaps.  Because the technician used a long pole with a hook known as a “gaff hook”, he came to be known as a “the gaff hooker” and, as English does when users find there are too many syllables, this was truncated to “the gaffer”.  The tape later used for electrical cables was almost exclusively in the gaffers' toolboxes and thus became “gaffer’s tape”.  Now it’s known almost always as “gaffer tape”.

Duct (pronounced duhkt)

(1) Any tube, canal, pipe, or conduit by which a fluid, air, or other substance is conducted or conveyed.

(2) In anatomy and zoology, a tube, canal, or vessel conveying a body fluid, especially a glandular secretion or excretion.

(3) In botany, a cavity or vessel formed by elongated cells or by many cells.

(4) In the infrastructure of electricity, a single enclosed runway for conductors or cables.

(5) In a printing press, the reservoir for ink.

(6) Guidance; direction; quotation (obsolete).

1640-1650: From the Latin ductus (conveyance of water; a leading, a conduit pipe), noun use of the past participle of ducere (to lead) from dūcō (I lead, draw), from the primitive Indo-European root deuk (to lead).  Use has endured in the Medieval Latin aqueduct and the high rank of aristocracy, duke, drawn from the past participle of ducere (to lead); the construct was duc (variant stem of dūcere (to lead)) + tus (suffix of verbal action).  The meaning in an anatomical sense (vessel of an animal body by which blood, lymph etc, are conveyed) was first noted in the 1660s while that of a "conduit or channel" dates from 1713.  Use in a variety of architectural and engineering contexts to describe "tubes in a structure" developed after the use to describe an "air tube" in 1884.

Duct tape was in 1894 originally sold under the name duck tape, long, non-adhesive strips of plain cotton duck cloth used in various mechanical processes.  The name was transferred to a plastic-coated adhesive tape used by U.S. soldiers in World War II, probably because of its waterproof qualities (ie the sense of "water off a duck's back").  It continued in civilian use after the war, and the name shifted to duct tape by 1958, perhaps because the most common use was in air ducts, which also accounts for its still standard silver-gray color.

Duct and Gaffer Tape

Duct tape scene: Lindsay Lohan as Tess Conway in Freaky Friday (2003).

Often casually regarded as interchangeable, duct and gaffer tapes are constructed differently because they’re intended for different purposes.  Indeed, using one for the intended application of the other can cause messy or worse results.  They’re similar in that both are hand-tearable, conform well to uneven surfaces and tend to be sold in the same packaging and sizes.  Duct tape is constructed with a polyethylene (PE) cloth backing, a material that makes it waterproof and contains an aggressive, rubber-based glue, allowing it easily to adhere to many of surfaces.   Duct tape has (1) a shiny, reflective backing, (2) is for semi-permanent or permanent applications and (3) tends to leave an adhesive residue when removed.  A specialized variation is a heat-resistant foil (not cloth) duct tape, useful for sealing heating and cooling ducts.  For decades silvery gray, it’s now available in colors and even printed designs.

Lindsay Lohan in duct tape cocktail dress.  Tape is 3M Utility Duct Tape 2929 (Silver).  Shoes are Jimmy Choo Patent Leather Sandals.

Gaffer tape is made with a coated cloth backing and a synthetic, rubber-based glue.  Because it doesn’t have the PE backing, gaffer tape is not waterproof but, the barrier properties in the backing make it moisture resistant in most cases.  This means it shouldn’t be used for waterproofing but is suitable for temporary use in high-humidity and moist environments. The adhesive on gaffer tape is less aggressive than duct tape, rendering it more easily removed when temporary need is over.  Because of its origins in the theatre, gaffer tape traditionally had a matte white or black backing to reduce the reflection of light but is now available in colored gloss finishes.

Album

Album (pronounced al-buhm)

(1) A bound or loose-leaf book consisting of blank pages, pockets, envelopes etc, for storing or displaying photographs, stamps, or the like, or for collecting autographs.

(2) A digital collection of photographs, stored on a computer or mobile device for viewing, displaying, or sharing.

(3) A record or set of records containing several musical selections, a complete play or opera etc.

(4) The package or container for such a record or records:

(5) A collection of audio recordings released together as a collected work:

(6) A printed book containing an anthology of writings, reproductions of photographs or artwork, musical compositions etc.

(7) In Ancient Rome, a white tablet or register on which the praetor's edicts and other public notices were recorded.

1645–1655: From the late Middle English albo (souvenir book), from the Classical Latin album (a board calked or painted white, onto which was inscribed in black, certain public notices, most notably the Annales Maximi, compiled by the Pontifex Maximus, high priest of the Collegium Pontificum (College of Pontiffs) which listed the year’s most significant events and appointments).  In Latin, the literal meaning of album was "white in color; whiteness", a noun use of the neuter of the adjective albus (white).

Album of Frederick Handel's (1685-1759) Messiah (1741) on 18 x 78 rpm shellac records; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), RCA Victor, 1947. 

The word was revived in Prussia circa 1645 by German scholars whose custom was to keep an album (amicorum) of colleagues' signatures, the meaning later expanded to include "book with blank leaves meant to collect signatures and other souvenirs" and according the entry in Samuel Johnson’s (1709-1784) A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the album was "…a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert autographs of celebrated people."  Photographic albums (in which people mounted photographs) were first advertised in 1859 and in 1882, the publisher Stanley Gibbons added to their catalogue the “stamp album” to meet the demand from the increasingly popular (and sometime profitable) hobby of philately.  The word became the popular descriptor of the (twelve-inch (300 mm)) 33⅓ rpm LP (long-playing) record in the 1950s although the term had earlier been used of (what would later be known as “boxed sets”) the bundled collections of 78 rpm records which, for certain recordings, demanded dozens of disks.  The use of “album” was an allusion to the resemblance of the paper sleeves, in which the shellac (and later polyvinyl chloride (PVC and usually called “vinyl”)) disks were stored, to the pages of autograph or stamp albums.

Lindsay Lohan's discography: Speak (Casablanca, 2005) & A Little More Personal (Raw) (Casablanca, 2005).

The Grateful Dead, Anthem of the Sun (1968).

The twelve-inch vinyl LP was an ideal format for commercial music distributors because it allowed 40-50 minutes of product to be packaged on the one disk, thereby permitting even long opera performances to be released as an album which required usually no more than 3-4 disks.  In popular music, the 50 minute limit (which technology did later permit to be extended to about an hour) was perfect and there many releases which barely troubled the lower end of the limit, format allowing acts to release several albums a year, each with perhaps a dozen songs (“tracks” as they came to be called).  This corresponded well with both creative output and the occasional release of a live performance and when required, double albums could be recorded and by the 1970s, there were even some triple and quadruple-disk albums.

The Incredible String Band, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (1967).

The eight-track cartridge and the much more successful cassette tape proved handy as portable media but operated less as a competitor than an adjunct to the vinyl product and it wasn’t until the compact disc (CD) gained critical mass in the mid-1980s that the 12 inch format came to be supplanted.  The CD was another format which proved ideal for the industry, particularly during the first decade-odd of its existence when the duplication hardware was for most (unlike cassette decks which were bundled with mainstream (3-in-1) stereo systems), prohibitively expensive.  The CD didn’t add greatly to the duration available for recording but the sound quality was superior (some vinyl audiophiles still dispute that), unit production and distribution costs were lower and windfall profits were raked in as the early CDs were sold at high prices and many consumers actually duplicated at least some of their vinyl collection as well as buying new releases.  Thus the “album age” lasted until displaced by the digital era which made possible the consumer’s (probably long-standing) preference to purchase the individual tracks they prefer.

Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968).

Until largely displaced by the smaller CD, the twelve inch album sleeve existed as a form of pop-art which attracted its own school of criticism.  Between the mid-1960s and late 1980s, small industries arose to create the artwork and there was even a niche in specialist publishing which produced compilations, the more psychedelic efforts especially popular and the “gatefold covers” used for the double and triple albums even permitted a wider vista; the results sometimes good, sometimes not.  The so-called “concept album” appeared to have had little effect on the album cover artwork which is surprising given it was such an obvious way to encapsulate a “concept”.  However, the definition of the “concept album” was always vague and while there were plenty with some discernible theme, it could with others be difficult to work out just what the “concept” was supposed to be.  Still, it was a word which suggested ambitions beyond a collection of three-minute singles and in the 1960s there was a growing industry of earnest critics, anxious to find meanings and ready to fill in the gap if none was immediately obvious.  Sometimes they would write as if influenced by TS Elliot, sometimes they'd just gush and if the idea had been delayed a generation, they would probably have called them "paradigm albums".     

There were great moments in album covers but, unfortunately, the memorable cover for Svetlana Gruebbersolvik's My Lips are for Blowing was a fake.  Beginning in the 1960s, the album cover with its standardized 12 x 12 inch (300 x 300 mm) format became a sub-genre of pop-art, the movement lasting until the smaller media of the CD rendered the packaging obsolete.  The twelve inch format has enjoyed something of a twenty-first century revival but the volumes are too low to support the scale of graphic-art industry which once flourished. 

Megaphone

Megaphone (pronounced meg-uh-fohn)

(1) A cone-shaped device for magnifying or directing the voice, used mostly outdoors when addressing large audiences.

(2) In the figurative sense, suggesting a mouthpiece or promoter; one who speaks for or publicizes on behalf of another.

(3) As megaphone diplomacy, a criticism of international relations conducted inappropriately in public.

1878: An Americanism and a compound word, the construct being mega- + -phone.  Mega was from the Ancient Greek μέγας (mégas) (great, large, mighty), from the primitive Indo-European meǵhs (great). It was cognate with the Latin magnus, the Sanskrit मह (maha) (great, massive, large-scale, epic), and with the various Germanic forms, the Gothic (mikils), the Old English micel, the Middle English muchel, the English much, the Old High German mihhil, the Old Norse mikill and the Danish meget.  Phone was from the Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) (sound), from the primitive Indo-European bhohneh, from bheh- (to speak), related to fame.  The modern device for assisting hearing by the magnifying of the voice was invented by Thomas Edison although un-powered instruments with a funnel-like shape had been used at least since Antiquity; in Ancient Greece, megalophonia meant "grandiloquence" and megalophonos, “loud-voiced."  Although the industry notes detail differences, the terms loud-hailer, blowhorn and bullhorn are often used interchangeably.  Megaphone is a noun & adjective, megaphoned & megaphoning are verbs, megaphonic is an adjective and megaphonically is an adverb; the noun plural is megaphones.

Diminutive weather forecaster Greta Thunberg (b 2003) with megaphone.

Ms Thunberg's resort to the megaphone to raise the world's interest in the matter of climate change induced by human activity was an example of an attempt to achieve what letters to the editor, press releases and academic papers had failed to effect.  If she's disappointed in what's happened since she became involved that's understandable but she has achieved more than most.  Probably resigned to the sad fact nothing fundamental is likely to change until the crisis hits the point at which the rich start to die or suffer significant financial loss, she'll at least have the satisfaction of being able to say "I told you so" although doubtlessly would have preferred a better outcome.

In political activism the megaphone can be a helpful tool but in international relations (IR), those matters transacted between governments, "megaphone diplomacy" is a term usually of derision because it so often tends to be pointless or worse, counter-productive.  It's something too often seen when those with no background or training in IR get involved, thinking the tactics learned in domestic politics can be appropriate when dealing with other countries.  When early in 2020, Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime-minister 2018-2022) publicly called for an investigation into the origin of COVID-19, he suggested recruiting independent investigators akin to “weapons inspectors” to determine the source of major disease outbreaks and said this was "...a very reasonable and sensible course of action”.  In this he was of course correct and had he pursued the matter through normal diplomatic channels, international support might have ensued but using the megaphone did little but anger Beijing which, of course, retaliated by imposing trade sanctions.  That had real consequences for the people Mr Morrison represents and in terms of finding out anything about COVID-19, achieved nothing.  Anyone with a sophisticated understanding of IR could have explained that was what would happen (had they been asked) but Mr Morrison presumably got to go to his church and, between the clapping, singing and strumming of guitars, told the congregation he'd stood up to the Godless atheistic Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so there was that.       

Viscous

Viscous (pronounced vis-kuhs)

(1) Of a glutinous nature or consistency; sticky; thick; adhesive; having relatively high resistance to flow; Having a thick, sticky consistency between solid and liquid.

(2) Having the property of viscosity; of or pertaining to viscosity.

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Middle French visqueux and the Late Latin viscōsus, the construct in Latin being visc(um) (mistletoe, birdlime (made with mistletoe berries)) + -ōsus.  The –ōsus suffix (familiar in English as –ous) was from Classical Latin from -ōnt-to-s from -o-wont-to-s, the latter form a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes: -went & -wont.  Related to these were -entus and the Ancient Greek -εις (-eis) and all were used to form adjectives from nouns.  In Latin, -ōsus was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun.

Lindsay Lohan assessing the viscosity of engine oil in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

Viscous is a word widely used in many fields to impart the idea of stuff which (literally or figuratively) tends to stick together, usually in comparison with other stuff which in similar circumstances to some extent separates.  One of the most established instances of use is in clinical psychology where its used to refer to the behavioural tendency in patients repetitively and circumstantially to talk about a restricted range of topics, something identified as common in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).  These patients are said also to exhibit heightened levels of social cohesion and the tendency to become "interpersonally clingy" which manifests in prolonging interpersonal encounters.  Clinicians have as a tool the Bear-Fedio self-report viscosity scale although it appears to be something which may be of most use when results are aggregated as a large data set because while one study found a laterality effect (left TLE patients exhibited greater viscosity than right TLE patients), other investigators using Bear-Fedio found no effect.  It’s thought the contradictory findings may be a result of the small (five) number of items on the scale and Bear-Fedio fails to discriminate repetitive circumstantial speech from increased social cohesion so it may be that laterality effects, when observed, are associated with one of these behaviors and not the other.

Lindsay Lohan in Herbie: Fully Loaded: Viscosity in action.

Synonyms include slimy, gooey, syrupy, adhesive, clammy, gelatinous, stiff, tenacious, thick, tough, glutinous, mucilaginous, viscid, gluey and ropy and the antonym is inviscid.  Although the comparative is more viscous and the superlative most viscous, in chemistry, engineering and physics, technical terms line extraviscous semiviscous and hyperviscous abound.  In science and engineering the derived terms include hyperviscous, pseudoviscous, elastoviscous, electroviscous, gyroviscous, isoviscous, nonviscous, semiviscous, ultraviscous, viscous damper, viscousless & viscosimeter.  Viscous, viscid, viscoid & viscoidal are adjectives, viscously is an adverb, viscousness, viscosity, viscose & viscidity are nouns.   

Kim Jong-un (b 1983), Supreme Leader of DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)), admiring the viscosity of industrial lubricant.

In the physics of fluid dynamics, viscosity is the quantity expressing the magnitude of internal friction in a fluid, as measured by the force per unit area resisting uniform flow.  Many industrial lubricants have high viscosity and low viscosity lubricants typically are used in light-duty applications where lower loads (and consequently lower temperatures) are present.  Viscosity is a measure of the frictional force between adjacent layers of fluid in motion.  A fluid with no resistance is called an ideal (or inviscid) fluid but such substances exist only in controlled laboratory conditions because the second law of thermodynamics requires all fluids to have positive viscosity.  Fluids with a high viscosity, such as pitch (aka bitumen, asphalt or tar), can appear to be a solid but experiments, conducted over decades, confirm their flow.

Cravat

Cravat (pronounced kruh-vat)

(1) A cloth, usually of wool or silk and trimmed with lace, worn about the neck by men; especially popular in the seventeenth century.

(2) A decorative fabric band or scarf worn around the neck by women (obsolete).

(3) In modern use, a type of necktie worn by men, having long ends hanging in front, the most elaborate form of which is the “dress cravat”, “Ascot band” or “Ascot tie”.

(4) In medicine, a bandage made by folding a triangular piece of material into a band, used temporarily for a fracture or wound.

(5) As “hempen cravat” a euphemism for the hangman’s noose (hemp a fibre used to make rope.

1650-1660: From the French cravate, an appellative use of the French Cravate (Croat), from the Dutch Krawaat, from the German Krawatte, from the Serbo-Croatian/Хр̀ва̄т (Hr̀vāt) (Croat).  The name was adopted because the neck adornments were worn by Croatian mercenaries serving in the French army during the Thirty Years' War and was quickly absorbed into French fashion.  Cravat is a noun, cravatting is a verb and cravatted is an adjective (both verb & adjective are now rare); the noun plural is cravats.

Military influences in fashion are not unknown and cravats came into fashion in France in the mid-seventeenth century in imitation of linen scarves worn by the Crabats, formations of light cavalry forces which as mercenaries were attached to forces which fought on the side of the Catholic League in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).  The word cravates in French meant “Croatians” and the name in this context has come to be thought an ethnic label but in the narrow technical sense it was a generic designation of the light cavalry from the Hapsburg Military Frontier, which included Croats, Hungarians, Serbs, Wallachians, Poles, Cossacks and Tatars.

Methods of tying a cravat in eighteenth century France,

When first it came into use in French fashion, it was commonly made of lace & linen or muslin edged with lace, the long flowing ends tied in a variety of ways and it has evolved, the modern cravat more of a necktie, passed once round the neck, and tied in front in a bow although in popular culture one of the most popular depictions seems to be the style popular in the early-mid nineteenth century: a triangular silk kerchief (usually black), wrapped twice round the neck, in imitation of the stock; prior to that, starched linen cravats were worn by gentlemen (an those aspiring to be thought one) and a perfectly tied example was thought one of the markers of the class.  The cravat differs from the scarf which, whether tied, passed through a ring, or held by a pin, hangs down over the shirt front and in some ways is functionally similar to a muffler.

Like many of the symbols of civilizations associated with Europe, the cravat’s antecedents lie to the east, similar arrangements in cloth used as signifiers of high social status in both Ancient Egypt and China while in the art of the Rome of Antiquity, there are many depictions of jewels and other decorative constructions appearing around the neck which strikingly resemble the later cravats.  Throughout Europe too, a scarf around the neck was an old custom and part of the costumes of many European nations, worn in all climates although those in colder places were obviously thicker and often purely functional.  The tied scarf was well known as a visible part of national costumes in various Croatian provinces: In Omišalj it was the facol (which the Ancient Romans called the focale), in Baranja in the east it was the poša, and in the north the rubec.  Cultural anthropologists trace the earliest know reference to such garments in the region to the area surrounding of the village of Turopolje where they were known as podgutnica or podgutnjak.

The legend is that girls and women would give their scarves to boyfriends and husbands going to war and when tied around their necks, they represented ownership papers by which a man would display his loyalty.  This apparently did happen in some villages but seems not to have been a national tradition and quite how long a young man’s promise of fidelity lasted once the troops had marched isn’t known but the idea proved useful to military commanders who came to value a distinctive scarf as a way of distinguishing one soldier from another in the clatter of battle.  Europe being for centuries a blood-soaked place, the black and red colors of the Croatian scarfs became well-known on European battlefields because the Croats were highly-valued mercenaries in the Habsburg, Bavarian, Spanish, Danish and French armies, noted for their efficiency, innovations in tactic and tight discipline.  Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), a fair judge of such things, said more than once “I never had more braver and better soldiers.  Croats, they are the best soldiers in the world.  If I had only 100,000 Croats, I would conquer the entire world!”

Chanel jacket with cravat.

At the time, the scarves worn by the military were called podgutnjak or podgutnica and mode of different materials ranging from the rough linen or wool items of ordinary soldiers, to the fine silk and cotton-wool of officers.  Whatever the construction, it quickly was adapted to become a functional piece of military kit which served purposes beyond identification because, attached to the neck by knot it also fulfilled the basic purpose of holding the rest of the clothes together, something vital in close combat.  Tied around the neck, it protected against cold and could be used to cover the lips, preventing dust from coming into his mouth while in the heat, it was protection from the sun and a rag with which to wipe away sweat.  Usefully too, the fabric protected a soldier’s neck from irritation, insect bites or scratches from rough military clothing (something which was quickly understood by fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain (1940) who soon discarded collars and ties for silk scarves) and for soldiers on horseback, silk in particular proved its worth in deflecting sabre strikes.  Finally, the scarf served also a tourniquet or field dressing.

Lindsay Lohan in Gucci Porcelain Garden Print Silk Gown featuring an all-over Dutch toile in blue and white with a high ruffled collar and bib, ruffles at the sleeve, pussy bow at the neck, and a blue and red patent belt at the high waist (Stg£4,040 (US$7,300)), One Family charity launch, Savoy Hotel, London, June 2017.  The cravat should not be confused with the pussy bow although visually, they can be similar.

The cavalry must have been a dashing sight because before the mid-seventeenth century the custom of the knotted scarf around the neck was unknown urban Europe and it was the acceptance and rapid adoption by the French court which lent the sartorial innovation the respectability needed for it to become a fashionable garment among the nobility.  They phrase at the time was a la Croate (in the Croatian way) which was the root of the French word cravate and such was the impression made that in 1643 a special regiment of Royal Cravates was formed, named after the Croats who were in its ranks, the first cravat officially presented in 1656.  Despite the military origins, the cravat eventually became a symbol of progress in France and during the French Revolution a black tie was worn as a sign of protest against backward, outdated ideas.  From there, although revolution was suppressed, the ties spread to the Belgians, the Dutch and the English and Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of England, Scotland and Ireland 1660-1685), upon on his return from exile uttered the words “Bring me a tie or I shall die”.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) with Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) (left) & Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1949; Israeli prime-minister 1996-1999, 2009-2021 & probably soon again) (right).  Fashionistas derided Donald Trump for his extravagantly long ties; he ignored them and does seem to have influenced the easily-led.

After this, the cravat became a cult and eventually a tie (the word derived from “to tie a cravat”).  The English had first favored white but as technology made things possible, colors and patterns became popular but in the nineteenth century, it was the Americans who made the notable structural change of cutting the fabric in three parts, then sewing them together, the advantage being they became both cheaper to produce and easier to tie.  According to two researchers from the University of Cambridge, theoretically there are 85 possible ways to bind a standard tie knot, assuming the number of “moves” is limited to nine (and it’s a scandal no Ignoble Prize was won for determining this).  One particular interesting finding which emerged from the mathematical modeling was that of the seven-dozen odd, only ten knots corresponded to conventional symmetry although most used with the modern tie are symmetrical including the plain knot, the double knot, the small knot, the classic Windsor, the semi-Windsor, the Albert knot and the American knot.  One convention is that ties should not be too long, something more-or-less observed until Donald Trump decided to pay tribute to the codpiece.  Ties of late have fallen from favor in the west although the Japanese remain big buyers, the uniform of the salaryman apparently still a lure and for those who wish to mark the tradition, international cravat day (Hrvatska in Croatian) is celebrated annually on 18 October.

Portrait of Ivan Gundulić (Dživo Franov Gundulić or Gianfrancesco Gondola in the Italian) (1589-1638), circa 1622-1630, oil on canvas by an unknown artist.  The most prominent of the Baroque poets from the Republic of Ragusa (now in modern-day Croatia), Gundulić is regarded as the Croatian national poet and this portrait is the oldest known image of a man wearing a cravatte (cravat).

Noted Instagram influencer, German-born Ivana Knoll (b 1992) was a finalist in the Miss Croatia competition in 2016 and the best-known fan to appear at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, always attired in a variety of outfits using the Croatian national symbol of the red and white checkerboard, matching the home strip worn by the team.  Her outfits were much admired and she was a popular accessory sought by Qatari men for their selfies but she missed an opportunity by not including a checkered cravat which, if strategically tied to drape in just the right way, would have been most photogenic.

Phatic

Phatic (pronounced fat-ik)

In linguistics (as phatic communication), denoting speech used to convey any kind of social relationship (of speech, especially of conversational phrases) used to establish social contact and to express sociability rather than any substantive or even specific meaning.

1923: From the Ancient Greek φατός (phat, phatós) (spoken; capable of being spoken) from φημί (phēmí or phánai) (I speak; I say).  Phatic is a verbid of phánai, from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say), the construct being phat + -ic.  The suffix –ic is from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique from the Latin -icus from the primitive Indo-European -kos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos.  It was related to the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Sanskrit श (śa) & क (ka) and the Old Church Slavonic -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ) and was a doublet of -y.  It attached to noun-stems to convey the meanings “characteristic of; like; typical & pertaining to”; on adjectival stems it acted emphatically.  The term phatic communion (bonding by language) was coined by Polish-born British anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942) in his essay The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages (1923).  Phatic is an adjective and phatically is an adverb (the rare phaticesque is non-standard); in the technical use of structural linguistics, phatic can be a noun; the noun plural  being phatics.

Phatic communication at the bar table: Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

In linguistics, phatic communication is that which pertains to words in a perfunctory or procedural manner in accordance with social convention rather than to impart information or to convey some specific or explicit meaning.  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) in his novel 1985 (1978) used an unusual structure in that the first section contained a number of essays and dialogues discussing George Orwell's (1903-1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the deconstruction of some relevant etymology and as a period-piece from "winter of discontent" England, it remains an interesting read.  Burgess suggested the classic example of phatic communication was the frequent and familiar exchange "How are you?" & "Fine", the question not literally disclosing and interest in the well-being of another but merely an acceptable form of greeting.  The response is often far from true but is the correct social convention and merely an acknowledgement of the greeting.

Phatic communication at the bar.  Lindsay Lohan, Lohan Nightclub, Athens, 2017.

In the English-speaking world, phatic communication varies in form between social classes but is almost universally perfunctory.  In other cultures it is more formal and sometimes a part of social rituals.  The Persian تعارف‎ (Taarof or Tarof) is a quasi-codified system of etiquette which, ad hoc, creates social relationships based usually on social rank.  The Japanese use a collection of phatic expressions which, unlike in English, tend more frequently to re-occur during conversations; In Japan they fulfill an essentially structural role and are known as the aizuchi.

Malinowski, Phatics and Social Media

Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski introduced two concepts for the study of language: context of situation and context of culture onto which he mapped the three strands of his semantic theory.  The first was the context of linguistic data; the second concerns the range of meaning and the third the context of situation which may allow one to disambiguate semantically unclear sentences.  Malinowski’s theories were for decades controversial in both anthropological and linguistic circles but enjoyed a revival of interest with the rise of social media.  What was identified as phatic communication on these platforms turned out to be the remarkable volume of micro-posts which appear to have their origins in the human need for social upkeep.  Unlike earlier forms of digital messaging such as eMail or SMS, a much higher proportion of messaging imparted no substantive information and had no practical value beyond its symbolic value of maintaining social contact.

In Malinowski’s model, the three phatic functions are (1) a social function to establish and maintain social connections, (2) a communicative function to demonstrate that the channel of communication is open and present oneself as a potential communication partner and (3) a validation and recognition function to indicate recognition of one’s interlocutor as a potential communicative partner.  None of this was unique to social media but cotemporary theorists added layers.  There is now (4) indexical information for social categorization (ie to signal different aspects of social identity), (5)  to negotiate the relationship, especially particular relative status, roles and affectivity (manifesting clearly in the forms of greetings and address used according to social or affective relationships) and (6) to reinforce social structure.

Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942).

In linguistics, this construct came to be known as phatic culture, its social implication in everyday life being phatic function.  As has long been the nature of academic linguistics, something elegant and comprehendible (like Malinowski’s model) soon became a framework for smaller and smaller refinements including (7) the metalinguistic (verifying the code), (8) the emotive (expressing the sender’s state), (9) the conative (inciting the receiver’s response), (10) the phatic (maintaining contact with the receiver), (11) the referential (relating to a context) and (12) the poetic (existing as a construct for its own sake).

It does seem convincing the particular nature of phatic communication on the social is technologically deterministic.  In computing, the defining protocols used in messaging, notably SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and SIMPLE (Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) create the idea of “presence” as a signal to networks of users that communication is possible.  Historically, in social discourse, “presence” of someone which whom one has a relationship of some kind was physical and communication, phatic or otherwise, almost inevitable.  On the social, “presence” becomes both virtual and omnipresence.

Skullduggery

Skullduggery (pronounced skuhl-duhg-uh-ree)

(1) Dishonorable proceedings; mean dishonesty or trickery.

(2) An instance of dishonest or deceitful behavior; trickery.

(3) Underhand dealing.

(4) As sculdudrie or sculduddery, illicit fornication or something obscene respectively (archaic Scots dialectial forms).

1856: A creation in US English, it was a variant of earlier Scots sculdudrie or sculduddery (both of obscure origin) which had been in use in colonial America.  In Scotland, sculdudrie originally meant “adultery” or “illicit fornication” and, with the unexplained spelling variation sculduddery, by 1821 the meaning had extended to a general sense of “bawdry, an obscenity".  By from the late nineteenth century, as skullduggery, in most of the English-speaking world, it came to refer to dishonest or deceitful behaviour.  Skulduggery is a noun; the noun plural is skulduggeries or skullduggeries.

Skulduggery is general underhanded behaviour or trickery, usually secret or devious. The noun plural is skulduggeries or skullduggeries, though both are rarely used in this form because the reference tends almost always to be to behaviour in a general sense to begin with.  Everybody except Tony Blair seems to understand the profession of politics is a venal business of lies and squalid skullduggery.  By the time of his valedictory address to the House of Commons, he’d managed to forget noble causes like New Labour’s “ethical foreign policy” which lasted only until it was explained to him that the UK’s armaments manufacturers realized great profits by selling weapons to regimes with appalling human rights records:   

"Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall.  Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skullduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that... the end."

Hansard: Tony Blair’s last official words as prime-minister.  Prime Minister's Questions, 27 June 2007.

Tony Blair, Gordon Blair & Peter Mandelson (left).  In the early 1990s, detesting the Major government, the press were fawning in their admiration and dubbed the trio "the three musketeers" but they're now usually thought of as "the good, the bad and the ugly, a collective moniker which may be generous to at least one of them.  There is no truth in the rumor the three politicians provided the template for the personalities of the "plastics" in Mean Girls (2004, right) although the idea is tempting, reading left to right (works for either photograph): Karen Smith (sincere, well meaning, a bit simple); Gretchen Wieners (insecure, desperately wanting to be liked) and Regina George (evil and manipulative).  

There was plenty of low skulduggery during the New Labour government, led first by Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007) and later by Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) but to get a good flavour of it it’s necessary to read the memoirs by them both, then the diaries of Alastair Campbell (b 1957; Labour Party apparatchik) and finally Peter Mandelson’s (b 1953; sometime member of the New Labour governments) The Third Man.  The books are best read in that order because it makes easiest the reading between the lines to work out why each included certain things and left out other stuff (or spun it in some strange and inevitably self-serving way.  It’s quite a fun process and actually necessary because while Campbell’s diaries are lively, the other three would otherwise be a hard slog.  It’s now sometimes forgotten that in the distant past of the post-Thatcher, early 1990s, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson were seen as modernizing reformers and in the early years of government actually behaved in a way which suggested that was true.  It didn’t last however and Brown soon became consumed with jealously and eventually hatred for Blair who was denying him the premiership to which he thought himself entitled.  Mandelson meanwhile became resentful at being twice dismissed from office by Blair one grounds he thought unreasonable.  From this ensued what was pretty dirty business.

A practical manual of low skulduggery in four volumes:

Tony Blair, A Journey (2010), Random House, pp 624, ISBN 978-0-09-192555-0

Gordon Brown, My Life, Our Times (2017), The Bodley Head, pp 512, ISBN 978-2-78-739526-6

Alastair Campbell, The Blair Years (2007), Random House, pp 816, ISBN 0-09-179629-6

Peter Mandelson, The Third Man (2010), Harper Press, pp 584, ISBN 978-0-00-739528-6