Kestrel

Kestrel (pronounced kes-truhl)

(1) In ornithological taxonomy, a common small falcon (especially the Falco tinnunculus), of northern parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, notable for hovering in the air with its head to the wind, its primary diet the small mammals it plucks from the ground.

(2) Any of a number of related small falcons.

(3) A brand-name, used severally (initial upper case).

1400–1450: From the late Middle English castrell, from the Middle English castrel & staniel (bird of prey), from the Middle French cresserelle & quercerelle (bird of prey), a variant of the Old French crecerelle, from cressele (rattle; wooden reel), from the unattested Vulgar Latin crepicella & crepitacillum, a diminutive of crepitāculum (noisy bell; rattle), from the Classical Latin crepitāre (to crackle, to rattle), from crepāre (to rustle). The connection with the Latin is undocumented and based on the folk belief their noise frightened away other hawks.  However, some etymologists contest the connection with the Latin forms and suggest a more likely source is a krek- or krak- (to crack, rattle, creak, emit a bird cry), from the Middle Dutch crāken (to creak, crack), from the Old Dutch krakōn (to crack, creak, emit a cry), from the Proto-West Germanic krakōn, from the Proto-Germanic krakōną (to emit a cry, shout), from the primitive Indo-European gerg- (to shout).  It was cognate with the Old High German krahhōn (to make a sound, crash), the Old English cracian (to resound) and the French craquer (to emit a repeated cry, used of birds).  All however concur the un-etymological -t- probably developed in French.  Kestrel is a noun; the noun plural is kestrels.

In taxonomy, the variations include the American kestrel (Falco sparverius), the banded kestrel (Falco zoniventris), the common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), the greater kestrel (Falco rupicoloides), the grey kestrel (Falco ardosiaceus), the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), the nankeen kestrel (Falco cenchroides), the Seychelles kestrel (Falco araeus) and the spotted kestrel (Falco moluccensis).  Although the bird had earlier been described as the castrell, in the early seventeenth century the small falcons were more commonly known as windhovers, the construct being wind + hover, reflecting the observations of the ability of the birds literally to hover when facing into the wind.  A now more memorable term however was the one dating from the 1590s: The windfucker (or the fuckwind).  In English, for almost two centuries, any use of the F-word could be controversial and its very existence seemed to make uncomfortable one faction of lexicographers who at one point managed to strike it from almost all dictionaries of English.  They were also revisionists of historical interpretation and claimed windfucker & fuckwind were errors in transcription, the original folk-names being windsucker & suckwind.  To give theis theory a bit of academic gloss, they assembled charts of regionally specific pronunciation in the Late Middle and early Modern English to illustrate the extent to which the archaic long S character ( ſ ) often took the place of an < s > at both the beginnings and middle of words, the argument being the long S was misread as a lowercase ( f ).

It was an intellectually clever way to attempt to remove vulgarity from English but etymologists today give little credence to the theory, noting that the undisputed French sources provide no support.  It may be assumed kestrels came to be called windfuckers & fuckwinds because when displaying their expertise at hovering in the air when facing into the wind, the movements of their bodies does make it look as if airborne copulation is in progress.  Of note too is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the same disapprobation didn’t always attach to “fuck” which, although there was a long history of meaning “fornication”, it had also been in figurative use to describe anything from “plough furrows in a field” to “chop down a tree”.  Fuck was from the Middle English fukken and probably of Germanic origin, from either the Old English fuccian or the Old Norse fukka, both from the Proto-Germanic fukkōną, from the primitive Indo-European pewǵ- (to strike, punch, stab).  It was probably the popularity of use as well as the related career as a general-purpose vulgar intensifier which attracted such disapproval.  By 1795 it had been banished from all but the most disreputable dictionaries, not to re-appear until the more permissive 1960s.

Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, Gran Sasso d'Italia massif, Italy, during the mission to rescue Mussolini from captivity, 12 September 1943.  The Duce is sitting in the passenger compartment.

Windfucker thus became archaic but not wholly extinct because it appears in at least one British World War II (1939-1945) diary entry which invoked the folk-name for the bird to describe the German liaison & communications aircraft, the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (stork), famous for its outstanding short take-off & landing (STOL) performance and low stalling speed of 30 mph (50 km/h) which enabled it almost to hover when faced into a headwind.  The Storch’s ability to land in the length of a cricket pitch (22 yards (20.12 m)) made it a useful platform for all sorts of operations, the most famous of which was the daring landing on a mountain-top in northern Italy to rescue the deposed Duce (Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943).  So short was the length of the strip of grass available for take-off that even for a Storch it was touch & go (especially with the Duce’s not inconsiderable weight added) but with inches to spare, the little plane safely delivered its cargo.

Riley was one of the storied names of the British motor industry, beginning as a manufacturer of bicycles in 1896, an after some early experiments as early as 1899, sold its first range of cars in 1905.  Success followed but so did troubles and by 1938, the company had been absorbed into the Nuffield organization.  Production continued but in the post-war years, Riley joined Austin, Morris, Wolseley and MG as part of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) conglomerate and the unique features of the brand began to disappear, the descent to the era of “badge engineering” soon complete.  The last Rileys were the Elf (a tarted-up Mini with a longer boot which was ascetically somehow wrong) and the Kestrel (a tarted-up Austin 1300), neither of which survived the great cull when BMC was absorbed by the doomed British Leyland, marque shuttered in 1969, never to return.  The rights to the Riley brand name are now held by BMW which has never even hinted there may be a revival, their unhappy (and costly) experience with Rover presumably a cautionary tale still told in Bavaria. 

Pre-war Riley Kestrels: 1938 1½ litre four-light Kestrel Sports Saloon (left), 1939 2½ litre Kestrel fixed head coupé (with post-war coachwork) (centre) and 1937 1½ litre 12/4 Kestrel Sprite Special Sports (right).

It was a shame because the pre-war cars in particular had been stylish and innovative, noted for an unusual form of valve activation which used twin camshafts mounted high in the block (thus not “overhead camshafts (OHC)”) which provided the advantages of short pushrods & optimized valve placement offered by the OHC arrangements without the weight and complexity.  Also of interest were their pre-selector transmissions, a kind of semi-automatic gearbox.  Among the most admired had been the 1½ & 2½ litre Kestrels (1934-1940), most of which wore built with saloon coachwork in four or six-light configurations although there were also fixed head (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC) as well as a few special, lightweight roadsters.

The Kestrel Beer Company's "Flying Kestrel", built by Webster Race Engineering.

Of late, one 1935 Riley Kestrel has enjoyed an unusual afterlife.  In 2020, Scotland’s Kestrel Beer Company commissioned the UK’s Webster Race Engineering to create from one something to use as a land speed record (LSR) contender.  Dubbed “Flying Kestrel”, it’s powered by a turbocharged 2.5 litre (151 cubic inch) Audi TSI inline-five attached to an Audi A6 manual transmission, the power delivered to a Ford 9-inch differential, for decades a mainstay of drag-racing and anywhere else big power and torque needs to be handled.  After setting seven records during a 2021 campaign, the Flying Kestrel returned to Webster for fine-tuning including a new exhaust manifold, turbocharger blanket, and nitrous system for boost and cooling, a key gaol to reduce engine-bay heat.  On the dynamometer, the inline-five registered 991 horsepower (739 Kw) & 753 foot-pounds of torque (1022 Nm) and thus configured an attempt will be made on 17 June 2024 to achieve 200 (322 km/h).  LSR vehicles with much less power have often exceeded 200 mph but typically they have used bodywork with aerodynamic properties more obviously suited for the purpose.  It’s not clear if Webster’s Riley has been subject to much wind-tunnel testing but it may be assumed the shape is far from ideal as an LSR competitor and for some runs it has been fitted with rear fender skirts (spats), a trick in use since the 1920s.

Flying Kestrel with rear spats fitted during 2021 campaign.  Note the holes in the fenders which were added, not as a weight-saving measure (a la the frame of the Mercedes-Benz SSKL (1929-1932)) but to reduce lift at speed, the fenders tending otherwise to act as "parachutes".  The same technique was used by Zora Arkus-Duntov when trying to counter the alarming tendency of the front end of the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport (GS, 1962-1964) to "take off" as it approached 150 mph (240 km/h).  For reasons unrelated to aerodynamics, the GS programme proved abortive and of the planned run of 100-125 for homologation purposes, only five were built, all of which survived to become multi-million dollar collectables.      

The spats are one of the rare instances where adding weight increases speed, attested by the tests conducted during the 1930s by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union, both factories using spats front and rear on their LSR vehicles, extending the use to road cars although later Mercedes-Benz would admit the 10% improvement claimed for the 1937 540K Autobahn-kurier (highway cruiser) was just “a calculation” and it’s suspected even this was more guesswork than math.  Later, Jaguar’s evaluation of the ideal configuration to use when testing the 1949 XK120 (1948-1954) on Belgium roads revealed the rear spats added about 3-4 mph to top speed though they precluded the use of the lighter wire wheels and did increase the tendency of the brakes to overheat in severe use so, like many things in engineering, it was a trade-off.  More significantly perhaps, when travelling at speeds around 200 mph, “lift” is an issue and one which has afflicted many cars which have adhered well to the road at lower speeds.  Succinctly, the problem was in a 1971 interview explained by the General Motors’ (GM) engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov (1909-1996) who described the 1962-1967 (C2) Chevrolet Corvette as having “just enough lift to be a bad airplane.”  At speed, it’s another trade-off: the desire to lower aerodynamic drag versus the need for sufficient downforce for the tyres to remain sufficiently in contact with the earth’s surface for a driver to retain control, those few square inches of rubber the difference between life & death, especially at around 200 mph.  It’s hoped the “Flying Kestrel” proves a "windfucker" and lives up to the name figuratively, but not literally.

1935 Riley 1½ litre Kestrel (Chassis 22T 1238, Engine SL 4168) with custom coachwork (2004)

The intriguing mechanical specifications and the robust chassis has made the pre-war cars attractive candidates for re-bodying as an alternative to restoration.  Not all approve of such things (the originality police are humorless puritans as uncompromising as any Ayatollah) but some outstanding coachwork has been fashioned, almost always the result of converting a saloon or limousine to a coupé, convertible or roadster.  The 1935 1½ litre Kestrel above began life as a four-door saloon which was converted to a DHC during 2004 and the lines have been much-admired, recalling (obviously at a smaller scale) some of the special-bodied Mercedes-Benz SS (1928-1933), the more ostentatious of the larger Buccialis (1928-1933) and the Bugatti Royale (1927-1933).

A kestrel windfucking.

Debunk

Debunk (pronounced dih-buhngk)

(1) To expose or excoriate (a claim, assertion, sentiment, etc.) as being pretentious, false, or exaggerated.

(2) To disparage, ridicule, lampoon.

1920–1925: An invention of US English, the construct being de- + bunk.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix)).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  Like dis-, the de- prefix was used to form a complex verb with the sense of undoing the action of a simple one and the handy device has been most productive, English gaining such useful words as demob, degauss and, of course, the dreaded deconstruct & the lamentable decaffeinate.  It’s obviously valuable but the more fastidious guardians of English were of course moved to caution it shouldn’t be used because one was too indolent to find the existing antonym although it was conceded that some coinings were necessary to convey some special sense such as “decontaminate”, needed in those situations when something like “cleanse” is inadequate.  Bunk in this context was etymologically un-related to other forms of “bunk” and was a and was a clipping of bunkum (pronounced buhng-kuhm) which meant (1) insincere speechmaking by a politician intended merely to please local constituents and (2) insincere talk; claptrap; humbug.  Debunk is (a transitive) verb and debunker is a noun.

Although the exact date in unclear, during sittings of the sixteenth United States Congress (1819-1821), a long, torturous debate ensued on the difficult matter of the Missouri Compromise, something which would later return to haunt the nation.  Well into discussions, Felix Walker (1753–1828; representative (Democratic-Republican (sic)) for North Carolina 1817-1823), rose and began what was apparently, even by the standards of the House of Representatives, a long, dull and irrelevant speech which, after quite some time, induced such boredom that many members walked from the chamber and other attempted to end his delivery by moving that the question be put.  Noting the reaction, Representative Walker felt compelled to explain, telling his colleagues “I’m talking for Buncombe”, referring to his constituents in Buncombe County.  Delivered phonetically, the phrase entered the political lexicon as “talking to (or for) Bunkum” and this was soon clipped to “bunk” meaning “speech of empty thoughts expressed with inflated or pretentious language”.  Later, the sense of bunk was extended to mean “anything wrong or worthless”.

Bunk in the sense of “wrong, worthless” probably gained its popularity from the phrase “history is bunk”, attributed to Henry Ford (1863–1947), famous for being founder of the Ford Motor Company and infamous for some of his more odious opinions.  His words first appeared in print in an interview, publishing in 1916, the context being his opposition to US involvement in the war in Europe:

"History is more or less bunk.  It is tradition.  We don’t want tradition.  We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.  That’s the trouble with the world.  We’re living in books and history and tradition.  We want to get away from that and take care of today.  We’ve done too much looking back.  What we want to do and do it quick is to make just history right now."

Quite what Mr Ford meant has been much discussed over the years and the man himself did later discuss it, although there are inconsistencies in his explanations.  Historians have concluded he was expressing scepticism at the value of history as it is taught in schools and other educational institutions; his feeling being there was too much emphasis on kings & emperors, wars & empires, politics & philosophy and entirely too little on the lives of ordinary people who, in a sense, actually “made the history”.  Ironically, given his critique of what’s known as the “great man” school of history, he is regarded as one of the great men whenever histories are written of the early automobile and the development of assembly-line mass-production.

The verb “debunk” actually emerged from a work of what would now be called popular revisionist history.  In 1923, novelist William Woodward (1874-1950) published the best-selling Bunk, the blurb suggesting his purpose being to “take the bunk out of things” and debunk was soon adopted by academic historians who in the 1920s made something of an industry in writing books and papers debunking the myths and puff-pieces the propaganda of World War I (1914-1918) produced in abundance.  An obviously useful word, it was soon in vogue throughout North America and quickly made its way across the Atlantic and to the rest of the English-speaking world.  Pedants in England, rarely happy with anything new, of course objected to a short punchy word intruding where they might use a paragraph but debunk made itself at home and never left.

A more recent coining was "prebunk", used as both noun and verb.  The act of prebunking involves issuing warnings about disinformation or misinformation before dissemination and once done, the fake news is said to have been prebunked (in political warfare it's a pre-emptive strike and thus differs from something like an injunction which is preventive).  Very much a word of the era of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), "prebunk" seems not to have been used until 2017, sometime after a spokesperson for the Trump administration formalized the concept of "alternative facts".  "Alternative facts" was not something new and had been part of the language of government probably as long as there have been governments but the Trump White House was the first blatantly to admit use.  Mothers with young children are familiar with "alternative facts" such as "Santa Claus" or "the tooth fairy" and the idea worked so well under Trump it became a core part of the Biden administration's media management although, if coming from Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) himself, it was hard to tell where "alternative facts" end and senility began.

Servergate, the scandal about crooked Hillary Clinton's (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) home-brew mail server was as much about the cover-up which was her attempt to debunk the facts as it was about her initial wrongdoings.  For cartoonists, crooked Hillary was the gift which kept giving.   

Conspiracy theories have probably been around as long as human societies have existed but as means of communications have expanded, their spread has both extended and accelerated, social media just the latest and most effective vector of transmission.  Debunking conspiracy theories is also a thing although in this, there’s doubtlessly an element of preaching to the converted, the already convinced dismissing the debunkers as part of the conspiracy.  However, debunking can in itself be something of a conspiracy such as the wholly unconvincing stories concocted to try to explain away the curious business surrounding crooked Hillary Clinton’s home-brew mail server.  Trying to dismiss concerns about that as the stuff of conspiracy theorists was less a debunking than a cover-up.

Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap (1998).

A more conventional debunking was published by Nicki Swift which detailed the truly bizarre conspiracy theories about Lindsay Lohan’s “twin sister”.  It began after the release of the 1998 film The Parent Trap in which twins Hallie Parker and Annie James meet at summer camp after being separated at birth and, having been re-united, the pair embark upon a series of adventures in an attempt to bring back together their divorced parents.  Lindsay Lohan played both parts including many scenes in which the twins appeared together and while there had been advances in technology since Hayley Mills (b 1946) undertook the role in the 1961 original, the film was thought an impressive achievement in editing and stage direction, the body-double being Erin Mackey (b 1986, about a fortnight before Lindsay Lohan).

The conspiracy theory was that Lindsay Lohan didn’t play both parts and that she actually had a co-star: her twin sister Kelsey Lohan, variations of the explanation for the now absent spouse including that she was murdered immediately prior to the film’s debut while others say she was killed in 2001 after a mysterious (and well-concealed) disappearance.  BuzzFeed included an entry about this in one of their pieces about celebrity conspiracies, documenting the story of how after Kelsey died in a car accident (which, given her “sister’s” driving habits when young, was at least plausible) the Disney corporation “covered their tracks” by saying Lindsay portrayed the twins, her family corroborating this due to their obsession with celebrity.  Whether there was an intention to suggest Disney was in some was involved in the “death” wasn’t made clear but the wording certainly hints at the implication.

Mandii Vee (b 1996), for whom the truth is out there.

The idea of the Walt Disney Company as somehow evil has been around for decades and was the undercurrent in the helpful video posted on Mandii Vee’s YouTube channel, her explanation for the scandal being that Kelsey "mysteriously died" prior to the film's release and that put Disney in a predicament because they didn't want to release a movie starring a now dead girl.  Such things have been done before and sometimes with notable commercial success but according to Mandii Vee, Disney thought it would bring “bad juju” (a noun or adjective meaning “something cursed or haunted by a dark aura”).  Disney’s solution was said to be a high-finance version of comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953) “un-personing” or the techniques of erasure George Orwell (1903-1950) detailed in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), paying Lindsay Lohan's parents millions in hush money to keep the secret, never speaking of the unfortunate Kelsey again and denying she ever existed.  At that point, Disney would have pulped and re-printed all the film’s promotional collateral, re-shot the credits and publicized the story that Lindsay Lohan played both roles.  Finding the idea one actor could do both at the same time improbable, Mandii Vee delved a bit into physics and pondered whether such things were technically even possible.

The Edsel

1958 Edsel Citation convertible.

It has been suggested some debunking needs to be applied to some possibly mythical aspects of the story of the doomed Edsel.  The name “Edsel” has become a byword for commercial failure, based on the sad story of the Edsel car, a brand introduced in 1958 by the Ford Motor Company and so poorly received that the whole Edsel division was shuttered within three years.  The product was said to have failed because:

(1) It was just another variation of the existing large cars sold by the corporation under the Ford and Mercury brands while the increasing public appetite was for smaller, imported models (and within a few years Ford’s own and smaller Falcon, Fairlane & Mustang).

(2) It was introduced into a market where automobile sales were in decline because of the brief but sharp recession of 1958, the mid-price sector where sat the Edsel especially affected.

(3) It had for more than two years been over-hyped as something genuinely innovative whereas it was little different from a 1958 Ford or Mercury.

(4) The build quality was patchy, as was the factory’s support for dealers.

(5) The styling was judged unattractive.  There was much clumsiness in the detailing (although almost the whole US industry was similarly afflicted in 1958) but the single most polarizing aspect was the vertical grill assembly, controversial not because it was a regression to something which had become unfashionable in the “longer, lower, wider” era where things tended to the horizontal but because of the shape which to some suggested a woman’s vulva.  Some used the words “vagina” or “genitalia” but in those more polite times some publications were reluctant to use such language in print and preferred to suggest the grill resembled a “horse collar” or “toilet seat” although the latter was (literally) a bit of a stretch and anyway already used of some of the trunk (boot) lids on Chryslers styled to excess by Virgil Exner (1909–1973); more memorable was Time magazine’s “an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon”.  Some found the debate amusing and some disturbing but few found the look attractive.  The anthropomorphic implications of the grill were toned-down when the range was restyled for the 1959 range and vanished completely for the short-lived 1960 season but by then the damage was done.

Too much, too soon and too little, too late: 1958 Edsel Corsair (left), 1959 Edsel Corsair (centre) and 1960 Edsel Ranger (right).

The failure is a matter of record but one figure that has often puzzled analysts is that Ford booked a loss of over U$250 million on the programme at a time when a million dollars was still a lot of money and, depending on how the conversion is done, that would in 2022 dollars equate to between 2-3 billion.  The extent of the loss would be understandable if the Edsel had been as genuinely new as claimed but it’s difficult to see where all the money went given that all the expensive components were borrowed from the existing Ford and Mercury line up:

(1) The engines, although some were of a unique displacement, were just variations of the existing corporate line-up used in Ford, Mercury & Lincoln models (the Mileage-maker straight-six and the Y-Block, FE (Ford-Edsel) & MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8s).

(2) The platform, transmissions and suspensions were shared with Ford & Mercury, the wheelbase the only difference.

(3) No dedicated factories were built for the Edsel, the cars assembled on the same assembly lines used by Ford and Mercury.

So the costs involved in the development were relatively less expensive endeavors such as body panels and interior trim.  The marketing expenses were presumably high and there were costs associated with the dealer network but the suspicion has long been that the infamous quarter-billion dollar loss was Ford taking advantage of accounting rules, perhaps booking against the Edsel most of the development costs of things like the FE engine, something which would remain in production until 1976.  That the Edsel was a big failure is disputed by nobody but financially, the losses may have been both over-stated and to some extent transferred to the taxpayer.

1960 Edsel Ranger.

However the accounting is deconstructed, there’s no dispute about the affair’s final contractual imbroglio which, remarkably, necessitated the company introducing a re-styled 1960 Edsel which was produced for only 34 days late in 1959.  Used sometimes as a case-study in contract law text-books, it appears as a cautionary tale.  Ford had intended to axe the brand after the 1959 production was completed but received advice from in-house counsel the contract with the dealer network (executed on 19 November 1956) included as an “essential term” an undertaking to provide Edsels for distribution for three seasons (which in the US don’t align exactly with calendar years, “model years” running traditionally from September to August).  The solution obviously was to cut the losses and buy-out the contracts and to that all but one dealer agreed.  What that meant was Ford faced the prospect of being sued for violating the terms of a contract it had written and the possibility a court could make an order for “specific performance”, meaning it would have to embark on a year’s production of a car selling dismally.  In the circumstances, that probably was unlikely but after the troubles of the previous few years, the last thing Ford wanted was a embarrassing court case so the decision was taken to do a minor re-styling of the 1960 Ford and offer a limited range badged as Edsels; while that sounds as cynical as it was, it was a quick & dirty way to (sort of) satisfy honor on both sides.  Thus to fulfil contractual obligations, the 1960 Edsel appeared, 2864 of which left what was by then a leisurely production-line between 15 October and 19 November 1959.  It was on that day the term of the contract expired and unilaterally it was terminated.

1960 Ford Fairlane 500.

Even that wasn’t the end of the company’s problems.  Although in recent years there had been successes such as the 1958 and 1959 Fords (which benefited from Chrysler’s quality control issues and the styling of GM cars in those years which respectively had been thought dated and polarizing), apart from the disaster which had been the Edsel, there was also the poor sales of the 1958-1960 Lincoln and the failure of the Continental brand which had been intended as a competitor not for Cadillac and Imperial but Rolls-Royce.  So hopes were high for the 1960 Ford until it occurred to someone it was 81½ inches (2045 mm) in width, meaning it would not be possible for buyers to register the things in those states which mandated 80 inches (2032 mm) as the maximum width for passenger cars.  To add insult in injury, being essentially a 1960 Ford, the 1960 Edsels were also affected.  Crony capitalism worked its magic and legal work-arounds were provided but it meant the 1960 body was a one-off, the next season’s cars coming in at exactly 80 inches.

A J.D. Vance meme with sofa (in US memes referred to usually as a "couch").

Memories of the Edsel’s grill were revived in 2024 during another debunking exercise.  In July that year, a post appeared on X (formerly known as Twitter) claiming there was a passage in J.D. Vance’s (b 1984; US vice president since 2025) book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016) in which the then Ohio senator (Republican) boasted of having enjoyed a sexual act with a latex glove, strategically placed between a sofa’s cushions.  It was fake news and nothing in the book even hinted at such an experience but quickly the post went viral; it once could take years for urban myths to spread around a few counties but in the social media age such things wiz around the planet in hours.  Quickly the tale was debunked but the sofa was a popular choice among the meme-makers.  It says something about US politics that so many really wanted to believe "couchgate" was true.

Dob & Snitch

Snitch (pronounced snich)

(1) To snatch or steal; pilfer.

(2) To turn informer; tattle.

(3) Among the criminal classes, a slang term for the nose.

(4) A tiny morsel of food (rare).

(5) A ball used in the fictional sport of Quidditch.

1785: The sense of “an informer" was probably from underworld slang meaning "the nose", a use dating from circa 1700, apparently a development of the earlier (1670s) meaning "fillip on the nose"; snitcher in same sense is from 1827.  The alternative etymology suggests a dialectal variant of sneak, perhaps even an imperfect echoic.  Sneak was from the Middle English sniken, from the Old English snīcan (to creep; to crawl).  The meaning "to steal, to pilfer" is attested from 1904 and is possibly a variant of snatch.

The nouns snitcher and snitch are synonymous with informer, other synonyms being blabbermouth, double-crosser, turncoat, sneak, squealer, source, fink, stoolie, betrayer, tattler, snitcher, tattletale, informant, rat, weasel, narc, whistle-blower, tipster, canary & nark although some are more weighted than others in the ways they’re used by the criminal classes.

Dob (pronounced dob)

(1) As the acronym DOB (DoB; D.O.B. etc), date of birth.

(2) In Australian slang, usually as “dob in”, to snitch or inform on someone.

(3) An acronym for many things: Date of Business; Department of Banking; Difficulty of Breathing; Data Object et al.

(4) In Northern Irish slang, to play truant from school.

(5) As dob (do one’s best), the accessory term to dib (from dyb (do your best)) in some of the rituals of the Boy Scout movement.

1950s: The etymology of dob as Australian slang for “to inform upon”; “to report someone’s transgression to the authorities”, is mysterious.  Unlike many forms, it seems to have emerged late, the fist known instance in print being from 1955.  It’s curious because the British dialect dob (to put down an article heavily or clumsily; to throw down; to throw stones at a mark) would doubtless have been known in Australia from the earliest days of white settlement (1788-on) but there’s no obvious connection.  Dictionaries of Australian slang do report other meanings including “to contribute money to a common cause”, and “impose upon someone a responsibility to perform and unwanted or unpopular task”, the former with some relation to the British forms, the latter something of a variation on “dobbing in” in its usual sense.  Also noted is the use in Australian Rules (VFL, ALF etc) football to mean “to kick (the ball) long and accurately; to kick (a goal)”, again with some relation to the British dialectical form relating to the throwing stones or certain actions in the game of marbles.

Lindsay Lohan, DoB: 2 July 1986.

The etymology of dob in Australia is regarded as unknown.  That dob (meaning a snitch) appears not to have been in use until the 1950s suggests many of the influences on the language which can account for some evolutions or innovations (US English, exposure to foreign languages during wartime) weren’t involved.  Nor was that other profound effect: television, which wasn’t introduced until 1956.  The 1950s was a time of high immigration to Australia, and for the first time by a large number of those for who English wasn’t their first language but no evidence of a connection has ever been offered.  That leaves the British dialectal dob as the likely origin and during the second half of the nineteenth century, the influence of these words on the local dialect was at its greatest so all that is needed to explain it is the etymological missing link.  The was also a historic use for dob as a companion word to dib (the phonetic form of the acronym DYB (do your best)), dob in this context standing for “do one’s best”, the abbreviated dib and dob used in certain chants in the rituals of the Boy Scout movement.  Once seen as an admirable institution to inculcate the values essentials in the development of youth, decades of scandal and critical analysis mean it’s now thought something between quaint and seriously weird.

Dobbed in, Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime-Minister of Australia 2013-2015), Manly Beach, Sydney, September 2021.

Mr Abbott was fined Aus$500 after a member of the public informed the police, providing photographic evidence as proof of him out and about in public without a mask, in violation of the rules.  Denying guilt, Mr Abbott claimed he was "well within the law, reasonably interpreted”, although he wasn't going to challenge the fine, not wishing to "waste police time".  He further added he thought the current regime "rather oppressive”.  While not greatly inconvenienced by the Aus$500 fine, Mr Abbott was concerned at the corrosive effect of the laws, saying that he "...never thought dobbing and snitching was part of the Australian character", and that he thought "...as soon as we can leave this health-police state mindset behind us, the better for everyone.”  Even before falling victim to snitchers and dobbers, Mr Abbott had delivered a speech in which he said there were "...aspects of contemporary Australia, which I personally find a little bit unsettling", noting especially "...the readiness of people to dob and snitch on their neighbours worries me a lot, frankly.”  He thought this something like the behavior of those in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic, the old East Germany) who dobbed in fellow citizens to the Stasi, the secret police.

As a victim of the fascist-pig state, Mr Abbott resorted to the dissident's trick of tautology to emphasise his point, "snitch" and "dob" in this context meaning the same thing.  There may be some nuances in that "snitch" probably more overtly reeks of criminality but technically, certainly regarding those reported for flouting public-health regulations, the words are synonymous.  It's not known how many informers the NSW Minister of Heath recruited to his mask-Stasi to dob and snitch on the unmasked but if Mr Abbott is right and it’s something like the Stasi, on the basis of estimates of those used in the GDR, in a state with the population of New South Wales, the number could have been anything between 250,000 and a million.

Dissidents conspire.

Fellow dissident, former deputy prime- minister Barnaby Joyce (b 1967, thrice deputy PM (between various unpleasantnesses) 2016-2022)) was in June fined Aus$200 after he was dobbed-in when masklessly buying fossil-fuel at an Armidale petrol station.  Unlike Mr Abbott, Mr Joyce admitted he was guilty as sin and copped it sweet.

Retrospective

Retrospective (pronounced re-truh-spek-tiv)

(1) Directed to the past; contemplative of past situations, events etc.  Of, relating to, or contemplating the past.

(2) Affecting or influencing past things; retroactive

(3) Looking or directed backward; affecting or influencing past things; retroactive.

(4) In law, as “retrospective legislation”, retroactive statutes which can render unlawful, acts which were lawful at the time they were undertaken.

(5) An art exhibit showing an entire phase or representative examples of an artist's lifework.

(6) Any exhibition or series of showings or performances, as of painting or musical composition, representing the work of an artist or performer over all or a major part of a career.

1655-1665: A compound word, the construct being retro- + spect + -ive.  It was from the Classical Latin retrōspectus, perfect passive participle of retrōspiciō (I look back at).  The retro- prefix was from the French rétro, from the Latin retrō (backward, back, behind), from the Proto-Italic wretrō (probably taken from intrō and other similar adverbs).   It was used in loan-words (almost always from the Latin) to add the sense of “backward” (retrogress) and on this model was productive in English (eg retroactive, retrorocket etc).  Spect was from the Latin specio (to look at, perceive, or observe), from specere & spicere (to look, to see), from the Proto-Italic spekjō, from the primitive Indo-European spéḱyeti and was cognate with the Ancient Greek σκέπτομαι (sképtomai), the Avestan spasyeiti and the Sanskrit पश्यति (páśyati).  The –ive suffix was from the Anglo-Norman -if (feminine -ive), from the Latin -ivus.  Until the fourteenth century, all Middle English loanwords from the Anglo-Norman ended in -if (actif, natif, sensitif, pensif et al) and, under the influence of literary Neolatin, both languages introduced the form -ive.  Those forms that have not been replaced were subsequently changed to end in -y (hasty, from hastif, jolly, from jolif etc).  Like the Latin suffix -io (genitive -ionis), the Latin suffix -ivus was appended to the perfect passive participle to form an adjective of action.  Dating from the early fifteenth century, the antonym was prospective, from the late Middle English prospecte, from the Latin prōspectus (outlook, view), past participle of prospicere (to look forward”), the construct being pro- (before, forward) + spect.  Apart from the (often disapproving) use in legal discussion, dating from 1964, the now most familiar form is the noun “retrospective”, short for “retrospective exhibition”, first noted in 1908.  Retrospective is a noun & verb, retrospectivity & retrospectiveness are noun, retrospectively is an adverb; the noun plural is retrospectives.

Retrospective legislation

Since antiquity (with the odd interruption), a central tenant of western legal systems has been nullum crimen, nulla poema sine lege previa (There can be no crime and no punishment without a pre-existing law).  Laws described as ex post facto (after the event) are retrospective and, where found to exist (such as those created to try the surviving Nazi leadership and institutions at the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1949), are the subject of much discussion, some jurisdictions actually prohibiting retrospective laws from being applied to criminal matters but tending to be more permissive in civil matters.

Written with George III in mind, retrospectivity in law was expressly proscribed in the United States Constitution, this covering both Federal and state laws and in the United Kingdom, ex post facto laws are permitted by virtue of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty (although when the occasion arises, judges have been known to make their disquiet known).  Australia could have proscribed retrospective laws in the constitution but the notion appears never to seriously have been discussed.  Retrospective laws in Australia are rare, the most famous being those enacted in 1980 by the Fraser government (1975-1983) to outlaw the bottom of the harbour tax evasion schemes of the 1970s.  However, parliament must make the retrospectivity explicit in both meaning and extent because, wherever ambiguity has existed, judges have tended to “read-down” the suspect clauses.

Nine paintings from the Lucian Freud Retrospective, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2016).

Top row: Frances Costelloe (2003), Box of Apples in Wales (1939) & Louisa (1998); Middle row: Queen Elizabeth II (2001), Girl in a Fur Coat (1967) & Girl in a Dark Jacket (1947); Bottom row: Woman with Eyes Closed (2002), Self- portrait-Reflection (2004) & Self portrait with Black Eye (1978).

Three of the galleries at the Lindsay Lohan Retrospective by Richard Phillips (b 1962), Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street, New York, 11 September-20 October 2012.  The curator explained the retrospective was conducted as an example of the way collaborative forms of image production can reorder the relationship of Pop Art to its subjects, the staging and format used to render them realist portraits of the place-holders of their own mediated existence.  That seemed to explain things.