Gray

Gray (pronounced grey)

(1) Of a spread of colors between white and black; having a neutral hue; any achromatic color; any color with zero chroma, intermediate between white and black.

(2) Something in or of this color, applied particularly to horses (and sometimes of a horse that appears white but is not an albino).

(3) Conveying a sense of the dark, dismal, or gloomy.

(4) Conveying a sense of the dull, dreary, or monotonous.

(5) In informal use, of older people; pertaining to old age (related to having gray hair; being gray-headed), sometimes expressed as graybeard.

(6) In demography (originally slang but now often used formally), of the aging of a whole population or those in a certain sector or geographic region (such as “the graying of the Freemasons”).

(7) In economics, as “gray dollar” (the purchasing power of older consumers), “gray collar” (the workforce participation of older workers) & “gray market” (a (usually) lawful but unofficial state where goods are produced or imported outside of the usual channels (ie between the (white) market and the “black market”).

(8) As “gray matter” an informal reference to (1) the physical brain, (2) levels of intelligence or (3) thought processes.

(9) Something indeterminate and intermediate in character, often as “gray area” (ie neither black or white; neither one thing or another; a state of uncertainty).

(10) In certain industrial production, an unbleached and un-dyed condition.

(11) In metallurgy and industrial production, the color of freshly broken cast iron.

(12) Documented since 1863 (the oral use presumably earlier), a member of the Confederate (southern) army in the American Civil War or the army itself (based on the standard uniform color, compared with the Union (northern) forces which wore blue, the idea used also in the description of the World War II (1939-1945) German army (Heer) as the Feldgrau (field gray), a later variation in the GDR (the German Democratic Republic, the Old East Germany) being Steingrau (stone-grey) for the National People's Army,

(13) In physics, the standard unit of absorbed dose of radiation (such as x-rays) in the International System of Units (SI), equal to the amount of ionizing radiation absorbed when the energy imparted to matter is 1 J/kg (one joule per kilogram) and a gray is equivalent to 100 rads.  The unit was first used in 1975 and was created in honor of English radiobiologist Louis Harold Gray (1905–1965).  The standard abbreviation is Gy.

(14) In film-stock photography, to give a soft effect to (a photograph) by covering the negative while printing with a ground-glass plate (now emulated in software in digital photography).

(15) In the (mostly US) discipline of ufology (an umbrella term which encompasses all which evolved from the flying saucer sightings of the 1950s), an extraterrestrial humanoid with grayish skin, bulbous black eyes and an enlarged head with an unchanging, serious expression (who sometimes carries an anal probe).

(16) In gambling, a penny with a tail on both sides, used for cheating in the game of two-up (US).

(17) In wastewater management, as “gray water”, household waste water not suitable for human consumption but able to be re-used for some purposes without purification (such as garden irrigation), and thus contrasted with black water (wastewater from toilets, garbage disposal, and industrial processes which demands treatment prior to reintroduction to the environment).

(18) In computing, as "grayed-out", the practice in graphical user interfaces (GUI) to display a non-available menu option in a shade of gray, the choice reverting to a different color when available for selection. 

(19) To make or become gray.

Pre 900: From the Middle English gray, grei & grai (of a color between white and black; having little or no color or luminosity), from the Old English grǣg & grēg, and the Mercian grei, from the Proto-West Germanic grāu, from the Proto-Germanic grewa & grēwaz, from the primitive Indo-European ǵreh- (to green, to grow) and cognate with the German grau, the Old Norse grār & grár, the Dutch grauw, the Latin rāvus (grey), the Old Church Slavonic зьрѭ (zĭrjǫ) (to see, to glance), the (archaic) Russian зреть (zret) (to watch, to look at) and the Lithuanian žeriù (to shine).  There appear to be no certain connections outside Germanic and the French gris, the Spanish gris, the Italian grigio and the Medieval Latin griseus are all loan-words from Germanic. The adjective form was the first, the noun emerging as a derivative circa 1200 while the verb with the sense of “become gray, wither away” came into use in the 1610s although etymologists note there is a single instance of gray as a verb in a late fourteenth century text, an example of the way in which innovations in English don’t always immediately flourish.  As a color, there’s no direct synonym (although silvery, silver & ash inhabit a kind of gray area) but related words in the figurative sense include drab, dusty, clouded, dappled, heather, iron, lead, neutral, oyster, pearly, powder, shaded, silvered, slate, stone, ashen & dingy.  Gray is a noun, verb & adjective, greyness is a noun, greyed is a verb, grayer, grayish & grayest are adjectives, grayly is an adverb; the noun plural is grays.

Lindsey Lohan in Lavish Alice gray suit.

Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word and the meanings are the same for both (except where based on a proper noun such as a surname so a product like Earl Grey Tea is always spelled thus) although there are conventions of use and historic practices should usually be followed.  Except with brand-names or in the SI unit measuring radiation, the spellings can interchangeably be used without causing confusion although use should always be consistent.  In commercial use, there was in the early twentieth century an attempt to create a functional distinction between gray and grey, the former a mixture of “blue & white”, the latter of “black & white” and there are manufacturers who still use the convention but it hasn’t been widely adopted.  The spelling gray is more common in American English, while grey is sometimes preferred in British English despite Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and just about every English lexicographer since insisting it should for all purposes be gray.

Lindsay Lohan color image rendered in 8-bit gray scale.

Gray (and grey for those who prefer the spelling) is often used figuratively, either as an allusion to the color or to illustrate some degree of uncertainty (ie that zone between the absolutes of black & white).  In economics, the “gray dollar” expresses the purchasing power of older consumers, the “gray collar” the workforce participation of older workers & “gray market” the (usually) lawful but unofficial state where goods are produced or imported outside of the usual channels (ie between the (white) market and the “black market”).  Then classic gray market is that for cars not officially available in a certain market but imported by third-parties (sometimes with the need to modify them to meet local regulations) and re-sold.  The practice was especially prevalent in the US during its more restrictive times in the 1980s and the gray market for desirable (ie usually more powerful) models from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and others sold elsewhere in the world saw an industry emerge to meet the need, the processes involved in making gray market vehicles compliant with US regulation known as “federalization”.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) was the first erotic novel in a trilogy by EL James (b 1963).  Being English, she spelled the word grey and either for publication in the US or the film adaptation it wasn't changed to gray, the assumption presumably that all would cope.

As an adjective it’s widely used.  In wastewater management, “gray water” is household waste water not suitable for human consumption but able to be re-used for some purposes without purification (such as garden irrigation), and thus contrasted with black water (wastewater from toilets, garbage disposal, and industrial processes which demands treatment prior to reintroduction to the environment).  “White water” is not used in this context because of specific meanings elsewhere, either as “frothy water as in river rapids” or “white water” (and “whitewater”) navy, part of an admiralty hierarchy describing the capabilities of naval forces: (1) a brown water force restricted to rivers and estuaries, (2) a white water force able to operate close to coastlines and (2) a blue water force which can ply the open seas.  In wastewater management, instead of white water, the preferred term is “potable”.

Grayness at the margins: In fashion the distinction between gray, silver & ash varies between manufacturers.

The use with animals is usually literal (gray fox, gray elephant, gray squirrel, gray hare, gray wolf, gray whale etc) but a special use derived from zoology is the “gray mare”, an expression adapted in the 1540s (from “the gray mare is the better horse”) to refer to households in which the husband was dominated by the wife.  The use in this context has long been extinct and was unrelated to the nineteenth century US folk song “The Old Gray Mare”.  In equine classification, a gray horse is a horse with a coat color which appears gray, but is actually a combination of white hairs mixed with hairs of other colors.  Gray horses can be born with a dark coat color that gradually lightens as they age or they can be born with a light-colored coat that darkens over time.  The range of “gray” colorations is not uncommon in horses and such is the variations some are sometimes described as “blue”.

Iowa-class battleship USS Missouri (BB-63, 1944-1992) in battleship gray.

In demography, the use of “gray” as an synecdoche of “aging” (an allusion to gray hair) began as slang but has become so accepted by economists and others it probably should now be thought formal.  It can be used to describe aging of a whole population (the “graying of China”) or those in a certain sector or geographic region (“the graying of the priesthood”).  Still a slang form is “graybeard”, a reference to an older man, one who presumably needs to be bearded if an individual but when applied collectively (“the graybeards”) it’s based on the age of the group rather than any particular hirsuteness.  The phrase “giving me gray hair” is used as a complaint that someone is so troublesome the stress they induce is causing one prematurely to age.  In some cases, stress can literally cause premature aging.  Battleship gray is a (narrow) range of dull, matt shades of gray often used for warships, it being the compromise which worked best as a form of camouflage against the variations in sea color.  Modern paints used of warships still use battleship gray but with special (stealth) treatments to reduce susceptibility to detection by radar or other electronic systems.

Gray hair as a thing: Some now dye their hair gray but as a look it succeeds only in the young and it's one of those rare things which succeeds when it's obvious it's fake.  In older women, for whom grayness is a thing of the passing of time, the choice is to conceal or embrace, the latter group growing but still a feminist, anti-ageist niche.

In politics an éminence grise (gray eminence) is an influential “backroom operator” who functions as a “power behind the throne”.  The classic éminence grise is someone known to few who influences (in some cases rumored to dictate) the decisions made by someone in a powerful position.  An éminence grise differs from a “king maker” in that the latter is usually much better known and tends to ensure who is appointed to positions of authority rather than being involved in the discharge of their duties.  The first so described as an eminence grise was François Leclerc du Tremblay (1577–1638), an aide to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642; chief minister (chancellor or prime-minister) to the King of France 1624-1642).  The cardinal wore the customary and conspicuous scarlet while the monk Leclerc was attired in a habit described at the time as gray although evidence suggests it would now be thought beige.  His influence on matters of church & state was understood to be great though he was hardly ever seen.  In Nazi Germany, the idea of the eminence grise was picked up in the 1940s by party members who resentfully noted the undue influence of Martin Bormann (1900–1945) on Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), despite him being nominally only the Führer’s secretary.  He was known as the der braune Schatten (literally “the brown Shadow” but translated in English as “brown eminence”), an allusion to the golden-brown party uniform he habitually wore.  The party uniform also provided cynical citizens with the basis of their description of high-ranking party functionaries as Goldfasan (golden pheasants), a sly reference to them always looking well-fed, regardless of the state of rationing imposed during times of food shortages.

Battery

Battery (pronounced bat-rhee or bat-uh-ree)

(1) A combination of two or more cell electrically connected to work together to store electric energy (also called galvanic battery or voltaic battery); another name for accumulator

(2) Any large group or series of related things; a group or series of similar articles, machines, parts etc.

(3) In army jargon, two or more pieces of artillery used for combined action or a tactical unit of artillery, usually consisting of up to six guns together with the artillerymen and equipment required for their operation.

(4) A parapet or fortification equipped with artillery (mostly historic).

(5) In baseball, the pitcher and catcher considered as a unit (obsolete).

(6) In Admiralty use, a group of guns, missile launchers, searchlights, or torpedo tubes on a warship having the same caliber or used for the same purpose; the whole armament of a warship.

(7) In psychology, a series of tests yielding a single total score, used for measuring aptitude, intelligence, personality etc.

(8) The act of beating or battering; an instrument used in battering.

(9) In law, an unlawful attack upon another person by beating or wounding, or by touching in an offensive manner; In common law countries, the meaning varies in civil and criminal law.

(10) In orchestral music, the instruments comprising the percussion section of an orchestra (also known as the batterie).

(11) Any imposing group of persons or things acting or directed in unison.

(12) In agribusiness, a large group of cages for intensive rearing of poultry.

(13) In chess, two pieces of the same colour placed so that one can unmask an attack by the other by moving.

(14) An apparatus for preparing or serving meals (archaic).

1525-1535: From the Middle French batterie, from twelfth century Old French baterie (beating, thrashing, assault) from the Latin battuere and battuō (beat) & batre (to beat).  The ultimate source was the Gaulish.  The sense in law (the unlawful beating of another) was adapted by the military, the meaning in French shifting from bombardment (heavy blows upon city walls or fortresses) to "unit of artillery", a sense recorded in English army records in the 1550s.  It was first extended to the "electrical cell in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), his thoughts undocumented but presumably analogous with artillery: force being stored in a manner able to be discharged upon demand.  In Middle English, bateri meant only "forged metal ware". In US baseball jargon, in 1867, battery was a term for the pitcher (again drawing on the imagery of artillery) and later for both pitcher and catcher considered as a unit, again presumably drawing a military connection; the term is long obsolete.  As applied to cooking, the meaning emerged because batter needed to be beaten.  Battery is a noun and batteried an adjective; the noun plural is batteries.

In Law

Although the terms assault and battery have for centuries been used in criminal law, their origins are as two of the most ancient common law torts, classified now as one of the trespass to the person torts, all of which are known as intentional torts.  Both assault and battery are actionable per se (without proof of damage) although, if the wrongful act does result in injury, damages can be recovered for that injury as well.  In malicious prosecution proceedings however, it’s necessary to assert and prove damage.

An assault is any direct and intentional threat made by a person that places the plaintiff in reasonable apprehension of an imminent contact with the plaintiff’s person, either by the defendant or by some person or thing within the defendant’s control.  The effect on the victim’s mind created by the threat is the crux, not whether the defendant actually had the intention or means to follow it up.  The intent required for the tort of assault is the desire to arouse an apprehension of physical contact, not necessarily an intention to inflict actual harm.  Although words are often a feature in threats which constitute an assault, actions alone may suffice if they place the plaintiff in reasonable apprehension of receiving an imminent (though not of necessity an immediate) battery.

A battery is a voluntary and positive act, done with the intention of causing contact with another that directly causes that contact.  The requisite intention for battery is simply that the defendant must have intended the consequence of the contact with the plaintiff; the defendant need not know the contact is unlawful and they need not intend to cause harm or damage as a result of the contact.  Not every contact is a battery.  Those in crowded trains are implied to have consented to most contacts, as has a rugby player who may have consented in writing although, even then, limitations exist and beyond tort, the criminal law can intervene if the degree of the contact exceeds that to which could reasonably thought to have been consented, a distinction influenced on technical grounds by those engaged in professional sport being in a workplace.  Where such things are contested, as a general principle, it will be the responsibility of the defendant to raise a defense of consent and prove it.

The early development of rockets in military aviation

Battery of wing-strut mounted Le Prieur rockets on Nieuport 11 (1917).

Although it became well-known only late in World War II (1939-1945), the ground-attack rocket had a surprisingly long history in military aviation, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC; 1912-1918, predecessor of the Royal Air Force (RAF; 1918-)) using wing-strut mounted Le Prieur solid-fuel rockets previously used by the French army on the battlefield.  Severely limited as an infantry tactical weapon because of inaccuracy and an effective range of barely 100 m (330 feet) (although 150 m (330 feet) was quoted based on experimental firings in ideal, controlled conditions), when used in the air, the latter drawback could somewhat be mitigated if a pilot could maneuver into a position at a helpful height and angle above the target.  Altitude though brought its own problems, the rocket’s trajectory affected by winds and the inaccuracy meant it was something which could only ever be effective against large, slow moving targets like observation balloons.  Against these, the RFC enjoyed some success, but the rockets were never popular with pilots because, depending on the capacity of the airframe, batteries of between six and twelve were used and, although all were triggered simultaneously, actual ignition could vary between rockets by one or two seconds, during which, the airplane had to maintain travelling in the direction of the target.

Ground-based test-firing of Le Prieur rocket (1917).

A one-two second delay sounds not critical but, even at the relative closing speed (typically not more than 80 mph (130 km/h)), because firing had to be at close range, it was enough significantly to increase the risk of collision.  That the RFC’s pilots managed to bring down some fifty balloons without loss may suggest some caution was exercised.  Strangely, despite the big airships being tempting targets, there’s no record of rockets downing a Zeppelin although even when using more conventional munitions, the defenses enjoyed only what was at the time thought limited success.  Of the dozens of Zeppelins the Germans lost, only a handful were destroyed by aircraft, more were the victims of ground-fire or, overwhelmingly, accidents.  It was only after the war the British fully understood the difficulties of mounting fighter defenses against bomber attack; of the biggest bombers used in the war by the Germans, not one would be lost and the experience allowed “the bomber will always get through” doctrine to shape the policies of many European nations during the inter-war years.

Modern (cosmetic) replica of Le Prieur rocket battery.

The sometimes stuttering rate of fire was a product of the construction.  The rocket was made by filling a cardboard tube with 200 g (6 ½ oz) of black powder, topped with a conical, 75 mm (3 inch) steel-tipped, wooden head.  Cardboard being porous, the black powder was prone to moisture infiltration and this happened at different rates, hence the delay sometime encountered in firing.  Directional assistance was limited to a 1.5 m (5 foot) wooden stick taped to the cardboard; they were essentially a big firework of the kind still made today.  Their limitations made them impractical for air-to-air combat although there is a record of a German fighter succeeding in forcing a RFC aircraft to crash-land after inflicting damage in a rocket attack but the rarity of the event does suggest it might have been a lucky shot.  Despite that one-off-victory, no effort seems to have been made to improve the technology and as soon as tracer rounds and incendiary-tipped bullets became available, they were replaced, the RFC’s last rocket-equipped sortie flown early in 1918.

Lindsay Lohan portable battery charger.

Feuerlile AA Missile.

During the inter-war years, no air force seems much to have explored aircraft-mounted rockets although advances in the propulsion systems did see them developed as ground-based anti-aircraft batteries.  The early British devices were simple but a useful augmentation to the anti-aircraft guns which were only ever marginally effective in high-altitude attacks.  The German efforts, typically, were technically intriguing but never reached the point of being decisive weapons, all the projects falling victim to the usual bureaucratic inertia and squabbles between competing interests.  Although, both the Henschel Hs 117 Schmetterling (Butterfly) and the two Feuerlilie (Fire lily) rockets needed development beyond what was within the economic and industrial capacity of the Nazi state, the Wasserfall (waterfall) could by 1944 have been deployed had the resources been made available although military analysts doubt it would have been effective without the proximity fuses that Germany lacked.  Lacking the Wagnerian flavor he preferred, it's doubtful Hitler's approval was sought for the code-names.

Battery of RP-3 rockets.

Allied interest in the rocket was revived early in the war when its potential as a ground attack weapon was realised.  Early attempts to create the so-called “tank-buster” fighters by equipping the Hawker Hurricane (IV) with a pair of 40 mm canons had been partially successful but more firepower was needed to disable the heavier tanks and there were limits to the weight and calibre of canon a fighter could support.  The solution lay in the adoption of batteries of the RP-3 (Rocket Projectile 3 inch (75 mm)) which proved a versatile weapon.  Equipped with a 60-pound (27 kg) warhead, it was used against moving and static targets on both land and sea, proving effective even against submarines.

Single-rack mount (four rockets per wing) RP-3 battery on Hawker Typhoon Mark 1B (1943).

As the war dragged on, the ground-attack aircraft with rocket batteries became an increasingly important tactical weapon, able to deliver a destructive load with a speed and accuracy otherwise unattainable and at minimal cost in manpower and machinery.  The effectiveness of the rocket batteries also played a role in saving an aircraft on the verge of being abandoned,  turning it into one of the more important fighters of the later stages of the conflict.  The Hawker Typhoon (1941-1945) had been intended as the Hurricane’s replacement but the performance at altitude was disappointing and production seemed unlikely.  However, it was rushed into service because, whatever it’s failings, at low altitude it was the fastest thing the RAF possessed and, in 1941, changes in the nature of the Luftwaffe’s attack meant that was where the need lay.  It didn’t go well for the Typhoon, the exposure to combat revealing basic problems with the wing design and weaknesses in the fuselage which sometimes resulted in catastrophic structural failure.  The whole project was going to be scrapped.

Double-rack mount (six rockets per wing) RP-3 battery on Hawker Typhoon Mark 1B (1945).

Hawker however persisted and rectified the faults to the point where it was a useful part of the fleet, though it would never be the high-altitude interceptor originally intended.  By 1943 however, the nature of the Allied war effort was shifting to attack and the robust wing of the Typhoon was adapted to carry batteries of the RP-3 rockets and it proved a devastating combination.  One early drawback however was the misleading intelligence gained early in the Typhoon’s second career in ground-attack, subsequent reconnaissance revealing the pilots' reports of destruction being exaggerated sometime by a factor of hundreds.  It was perhaps understandable given the lack of visibility inherent in such operations and, after the war, it was realised the rocket attacks had a military effectiveness well beyond the actual damage caused.

Sump

Sump (pronounced suhmp)

(1) A hollow or pit into which liquid drains, such as a cesspool, cesspit or sink (sump a common alternative name for a cesspool).

(2) In machinery, a chamber at the bottom of a machine, pump, circulation system, etc, into which a fluid drains before recirculation or in which wastes gather before disposal.

(3) In internal combustion engines, the lowest (except in dry-sump systems) part of the crankcase of an internal-combustion engine, into which lubricants drain to form a reservoir.

(4) In mining or other extractive industries, a space where water is allowed to collect at the bottom of a shaft or below a passageway; the lowest part of a mineshaft into which water drains.

(5) In drilling, a pilot shaft or tunnel pushed out in front of a main bore.

(6) A synonym for crankcase (pre-war British-English, now obsolete).

(7) In certain British-English dialects, a swamp, bog, or muddy pool (now mostly obsolete except for historic references).

(8) In construction, an intentional depression around a drain or scupper that promotes drainage.

(9) In nautical use, the the pit at the lowest point in a circulating or drainage system.

(10) In spelunking, a completely flooded cave passage, sometimes passable by diving.

1375-1425: From the Middle English sompe, (marsh, morass) from either the Middle Dutch somp or the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch sump (cognate with German Sumpf), from the Old Saxon sump, from the Proto-West Germanic sump, all Germanic forms ultimately from the Proto-Germanic sumpaz (linked also to swamp), from the primitive Indo-European swombho- (spongy).  Variations of the Middle English forms (related to marshes and swamps) had been used in locality names since the mid-thirteenth century but, untypically, this appears not to have led to their adoption as surnames based on a family's proximity to such places.  That's presumably because of the historical aversion to such dank, smelly sites, moistness rarely viewed favorably where water is stagnant.    The meaning "pit to collect water" was first noted in the 1650s and in English the most common meaning (a reservoir of fluid to lubricate machinery) was picked up by analogy and the first sump-pump was installed for mine-drainage in 1884.  The alternative spelling was sumph, obsolete since the seventeenth century.  Sump is a noun & verb, sumped is a verb; the noun plural is sumped.

The dry sump

A dry sump schematic. 

The somewhat misleadingly-named dry sump is a system for lubricating engines with oil drawn from a remote reservoir rather than a pan mounted at the lowest point beneath the engine.  Advantages are (1) increased power through lower crankshaft friction, (2) larger oil capacity, (3) consistent oil-pressure through removal of g-force effects, (4) reduced centre of gravity through lower mounting of the engine and (5) simplified oil-pump maintenance (the accessibility improved by the external mounting).  Disadvantages are (1) cost, (2) complexity and (3) a slight increase in weight.

Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 (W109, 1968-1972, left) & 450 SEL 6.9 (W116, 1975-1981, right)

When Mercedes-Benz developed the 450 SEL 6.9 to replace the 300 SEL 6.3, the engine’s (the M-100) wet sump was changed to dry.  This wasn’t to gain the dry-sump’s traditional benefits but an engineering necessity imposed by the new model’s lower hood (bonnet)-line.  With the wet sump installed, the big V8 simply wouldn’t fit.  The term "wet sump" is usually tautological but is used when discussing engines equipped variously with both simply to ensure there's no confusion.

Of sumps and sumptuousness  

Lindsay Lohan in 2011 Maserati Gran Turismo, Los Angeles, 2011.  Especially since the 1980s, Maseratis have been noted for their sumptuous interior appointments, the timberwork and soft leather making an inviting cabin.  Most version of the Gran Turismo (2007-2019) used a conventional wet sump but the Gran Turismo MC Stradale (2011-2015), a high-performance version of the Gran Turismo S (2008-2012), was dry sumped.

Linguistically promiscuous, English is a slut of a language which has picked up words from around the world, keeping them if they seem useful (even assimilating them as English words) and discarding them as they fall from use or can be replaced by something better.  This has advantages in flexibility and avoids the duplication which would ensue were new forms created.  It can however be confusing for those learning English because different traditions use varied spelling and phonetic conventions so what one root or element borrowed by English for one purpose might appear in conflict with another.  For someone learning English it would be reasonable to assume the meaning of the adjective "sumptuous" would be “of or pertaining to the design or construction of sumps” whereas it’s actually used to demote something “magnificent, lavish, splendid or luxurious”.  There are few images more disparate than a sump and something sumptuous.  Sumptuous was from the French somptueux, from the Latin sumptuōsus, from sūmptus (costly, very expensive; lavish, wasteful), the construct being sumō (I take) +‎ -tus (the noun forming suffix), the past participle of sumere (to borrow, buy, spend, eat, drink, consume, employ, take, take up), a contraction of subemere, the construct being sub- (under) + emere (to take, buy) from the primitive Indo-European root em- (to take, distribute).  The most common derived forms are the noun sumptuousness and the adverb sumptuously.

Nothing

Nothing (pronounced nuhth-ing)

(1) No thing; not anything; naught.

(2) No part, share, or trace (usually followed by of).

(3) Something that is nonexistent; non-existence; nothingness.

(4) Something of no importance or significance.

(5) A trivial action, matter, circumstance, thing, or remark.

(6) A person of little or no importance; a nobody.

(7) Something that is without quantity or magnitude.

(8) A cipher or naught; the quantity or quality of zero.  The value represented by the numeral zero (and the empty set: {}).

(9) As “think nothing of it” and related forms, a procedural response to expressions of thanks.

(10) In no respect or degree; not at all.

(11) Amounting to nothing, as in offering no prospects for satisfaction, advancement, or the like.

(12) In architecture, the contents of a void.

Pre 900: From the Middle English nothyng, noon thing, non thing, na þing, nan thing & nan þing, from the Old English nāþing, nān þing & naðinc (nānthing & nathing) (nothing (literally “not any thing”), the construct being nān- (not one (source of the modern none)) + þing (thing).  The earlier Old English was nāwiht (nothing (literally “no thing”), related to the Swedish ingenting (nothing (literally “not any thing, no thing”).  The ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European ne- (not).  In slang and dialectical English there have been many non-standard forms including nuffin, nuffink, nuttin', nuthin, nuthin', nowt, nuthing & nothin'.  Slang has been productive (jack, nada, zip, zippo, zilch, squat, nix) as has vulgar slang (bugger all, jack shit, sod all, fuck all, dick).  Nothing is a noun & adverb and nothingness is a noun; the noun plural is nothings.

Lindsay Lohan wearing nothing (shoes don't count; everybody knows that).  Playboy magazine pictorial, January / February 2012.

The meaning "insignificant thing, a thing of no consequence" emerged circa 1600 (although as an adverb (not at all, in no degree), it was known in late Old English) whereas nothing in the sense of "not at all" had existed since circa 1300.  Phrases in the twentieth century were created as needed: “Nothing to it”, indicating something easily accomplished was noted from 1925 and “nothing to write home about” was really literal, recorded first and with some frequency by censors monitoring the letters written by soldiers serving at the front in Word War I (1914-1918); it appears to date from 1917, the extent of use apparently encouraged by it being a useful phrase exchanged between soldiers by word-of-mouth.  Nothing seems not to have been an adjective until 1961, an evolution of use (or a decline in standards depending on one’s view) which saw words like “rubbish” re-applied in a similar way.  A do-nothing (an idler) is from the 1570s, the noun an adoption from the from the verbal phrase and as an adjective to describe the habitually indolent, it’s noted from 1832.  The adjective good-for-nothing (a worthless person) is from 1711.  The term know-nothing (an ignoramus) is from 1827 and was later applied (though not deliberately) to the US nativist political party, active between 1853-1856, the bulk of which eventually migrated to the Republican Party.  The noun nothingness (non-existence, absence or negation of being) was first used in the 1630s but is most associated with the ideas around nihilism, the exploration of which became a mainstream part of philosophy in the nineteenth century.  Nothingness is distinct from the noun nothingarian which references "one who has no particular belief," especially in religious matters, a descriptive dating from 1789.  It's striking how often in religion, even when factions or denominations are in disputes with one another (sometime actually at war), one thing which seems to unite them is the feeling that whatever their differences, the nothingarians are the worst sinners of all.

The noun nihilist, in a religious or philosophical sense, is from the French nihiliste, from the Latin nihil (nothing at all).  Nihilism, the word first used in 1817, is “the doctrine of negation", initially in reference to religion or morals but later extended universally.  It’s from the German Nihilismus, from the Latin nihil (nothing at all) and was a coining of German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819).  In philosophy, it evolved quickly into an extreme form of skepticism, the political sense of a "rejection of fundamental social and political structures", first used circa 1824 by the German journalist Joseph von Görres (1776-1848).  Most associated with a German school of philosophical thought including (rather misleadingly) GWF Hegel (1770–1831) and (most famously) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the particular Russian strain was more a revolutionary political movement with something of a premium on violence (that would much influence Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)).  Thus with an initial capital, Nihilism (Nigilizm in the Russian) as used in this context is specific to the movement of Russian revolutionary anarchism 1863-1917 and limited in that the meaning refers to the participants’ disapproval of all social, economic & political possibilities in pre-Soviet Russia; the sense they viewed “nothing” with favor.

A probably inaccurate representation of nothing.  

The idea of nothing, in a universal sense in which literally nothing (energy, matter, space or time) exists is difficult to imagine, imaginable presumably only as infinite blackness, probably because that’s the closest to a two-dimensional representation of the absence of any sense of the special, white implying the existence of light.  That nothingness is perhaps impossible to imagine or visualize doesn’t however prove it’s impossible but the mere fact matter, energy and time now exist in space does imply that because, were there ever nothing, it’s a challenge to explain how anything could have, from nothing, come into existence.  Some have mused that there are aspects of quantum theory which suggest even a state of nothingness can be inherently unstable and where there is instability there is the possibility of an event.  The argument is that under quantum theory, if long enough is allowed to pass (something which, bewilderingly, apparently can happen even if there is no time) then every possible event may happen and from this may evolve energy, matter space or time.  To speak of a time scale in all of this is irrelevant because (1) time may not exist and (2) infinity may exist but it can for administrative purposes be thought of as a very long time.  The intriguing link between time starting and energy, matter or space coming into existence as a consequence is that at that point (in time), it may be the only time “now” could exist in the absence of the past and future so everything would happen at the same time.  Clearly, the conditions operative at that point would be unusual so, anything could happen. 

That is of course wholly speculative but in recent decades, the “string theorists” have extended and refined their mathematical models to a degree which not long ago would have been thought impossible so some modelling of a unique point of “now” in nothing would be interesting and the basic framework of that would seem to demand the mathematics of a model which would describe what conditions would have to prevail in order for there truly to be nothing.  That may or may not be possible but might be an interesting basis from which to work for those trying to explain things like dark matter & dark energy, either or both of which also may or may not exist.  Working with the existing universe seems not to be helpful in developing theories about the nature of all this supposedly missing (or invisible) matter and energy whereas were one, instead of working backwards as it were, instead to start with nothing and then work out how to add what seems to be missing (while remaining still not visible), the result might be interesting.

It’s not a new discussion.  The thinkers from Antiquity were known to ponder the philosophers’ traditional concerns such as “why are we here?” and “what is the meaning of life?” but they also realized a more basic matter was “why does anything exist instead of there being nothing?” and for thousands of years this has been “explained” as the work of gods or a god but that really not a great deal of help.  In the Western tradition, this basic question seems not to have bothered angst-ridden Teutonic philosophers, the German Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) writing on the subject, as later would the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951).  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976, who was only briefly a Nazi) called it the “fundamental question of metaphysics”.  The English-speaking school, more tied to the empirical, noted the matter.

Ooze

Ooze (pronounced ooz)

(1) Of moisture, liquid etc, to flow, percolate, or exude slowly, as through holes or small openings.

(2) To move or pass slowly or gradually, as if through a small opening or passage:

(3) The act of oozing, to make by oozing; to exude (moisture, air etc) slowly.

(4) Something that oozes; the product or the result from oozing.

(5) In geology, the technical word for a calcareous or siliceous mud composed chiefly of the shells of one-celled organisms, covering parts of the ocean bottom; a soft thin mud found at the bottom of lakes and rivers

(6) In commercial tanning, an infusion of vegetable matter, such as sumach or oak bark.

(7) Secretion, humor (said now to be rare).

(8) Juice, sap (obsolete except when used as a verb describing process).

(9) Of something abstract, such as information or confidence, to appear or disappear slowly or imperceptibly (often followed by out or away).

Pre 900: The noun wass from the Middle English wose (sap), from the Old English wōs (sap, froth, juice, moisture) and wāse (soft mud, mire), from the Proto-Germanic wōsą & wosan (related to the Middle Low German wose (scum), the Old High German wasal (rain) and the Old Swedish os & oos), from the primitive Indo-European wósehz (sap) (related to the Sanskrit वसा (vásā) (fat)).  Also of influence was the Old English wāse (mud), related to the Old French wāse and the Old Norse veisa.  The other Proto-Germanic link was waison (source also of the Old Saxon waso (wet ground, mire) and the Old Norse veisa (pond of stagnant water), probably from a primitive long-lost Indo-European root meaning "wet".  The modern spelling is from the mid-1500s.  The verb form meaning (1) "to flow as ooze, percolate through the pores of a substance" (intransitive) and (2) "to emit in the shape of moisture" (transitive) emerged in the late fourteenth century.  Wosen (the Old English verb was wesan) was a verbal derivative of the Old English noun wos (sap, froth, juice, moisture)," from Proto-Germanic wosan from same source as the noun ooze (n.).  The modern spelling is from the late sixteenth century.  Ooze is a noun & verb; oozed, oozle & oozing are verbs and oozy is an adjective; the noun plural is oozes.

Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) watching industrial lubricant ooze into a 209 litre (the old 44 gallon (Imperial)) drum.

Lindsay Lohan having just had her T-shirt oozed upon in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

The adjective was oozy which existed in Old English as wosig (juicy, moist) but the original sense is long obsolete, the meaning "containing or resembling fine soft mud; having the consistency of wet mud or slime" is from 1560s and the related form, ooziness, though rare, remains in occasional use.  Ooze and its derivatives are, to some degree, associated with words such as slime, mud, muck, sludge, marsh, bog, goo, silt, gunk, drain, seep, leak, dribble, percolate, trickle, exude, bleed, mire, fluid, gook, glop & alluvium yet none of them appear to evoke the same distaste as what is said to be the most disliked word in English: “moist”.

Calcareous-siliceous sediment distribution: The worldwide distribution of ooze.

Esurient

Esurient (pronounced ih-soo-r-ee-uhnt)

(1) The state of being hungry; greedy; voracious.

(2) One who is hungry.

1665–1675: A borrowing from the Latin ēsurient & ēsurientem, stem of ēsuriēns (hungering), present participle of ēsurīre (to be hungry; to hunger for something), from edere (to eat), the construct being ēsur- (hunger) + -ens (the Latin adjectival suffix which appeared in English as –ent (and –ant, –aunt etc) and in Old French as –ent).  The form ēsuriō was a desiderative verb from edō (to eat), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European hédti (to eat and from the root ed-) + -turiō (the suffix indicating a desire for an action).  English offers a goodly grab of alternatives including rapacious, ravenous, gluttonous, hoggish, insatiable, unappeasable, ravening, avaricious, avid and covetous.  Esurient is a noun & adjective, esurience & esuriency are nouns and esuriently is an adverb; the noun plural is esurients.

A noted Instagram influencer assuaging her esurience.

For word-nerds to note, a long vowel in the Proto-Italic edō from the primitive Indo-European hédti is illustrative of the application of Lachmann's law (a long-disputed phonological sound rule for Latin named after German philologist and critic Karl Lachmann (1793–1851)).  According to Lachmann, vowels in Latin lengthen before primitive (and the later proto-) Indo-European voiced stops which are followed by another (unvoiced) stop.  Given the paucity of documentary evidence, much work in this field is essentially educated guesswork and Lachmann’s conclusions were derived from analogy and the selective application of theory.  Not all in this highly specialized area of structural linguistics agreed and arguments percolated until an incendiary paper in 1965 assaulted analogy as an explanatory tool in historical linguistics, triggering a decade-long squabble.  This polemical episode appeared to suggest Lachmann had constructed a framework onto which extreme positions could be mapped, one wishing to attribute almost everything to analogy, the other, nothing.  With that, debate seemed to end and Lachmann’s law seems now noted less for what it was than for what it was not.

In memory of Tenuate Dospan

A seemingly permanent condition of late modernity is weight gain; the companion permanent desire being weight loss.  The human propensity to store fat was a product of natural selection, those who possessed the genes which passed on the traits more likely to achieve sexual maturity and thus be able to procreate.  Storing fat meant that in times of plenty, weight was gained which could be used as a source of energy in times of scarcity and for thousands of generations this was how almost all humans lived.  However, in so much of the world people now live in a permanent state of plenty and one in which that plenty (fats, salt & sugars) doesn’t have to be hunted, gathered or harvested.  Now, with only a minimal expenditure of energy, we take what we want from the shelf or, barely having to move from our chair, it’s delivered to our door.  In our sedentary lives we thus expend much less energy but our brains remain hard-wired to seek out the fats, salt & sugars which best enable the body to accumulate fat for the lean times.  Some call this the "curse of plenty".

For all but a few genetically unlucky souls, the theory of weight loss is simple: reduce energy intake and increase the energy burn.  For many reasons however the practices required to execute the theory can be difficult although much evidence does suggest that once started, exercise does become easier because (1) the brain rewards the body for doing it with what’s effectively a true “recreational drug”, (2) it becomes literally easier because weight-loss in itself reduces the energy required and (3) the psychological encouragement of success (some dieticians actually recommend scales with a digital read-out so progress can be measured in 100 gram (3½ oz) increments).  Still, even starting is clearly an obstacle which is why the pharmaceutical industry saw such potential in finding the means to reduce supply (food intake) if increasing demand (exercise) was just too hard.

Lindsay Lohan about to assuage her esurience.

For centuries physicians and apothecaries had been aware of the appetite suppressing qualities of various herbs and other preparations but these were usually seen as something undesirable and were often a side effect of the early medicines, many of which were of dubious benefit, some little short of poison.  Although the noun anorectic (a back formation from the adjective anorectic (anorectous an archaic form) appeared in the medical literature in the early nineteenth century, it was used to describe a patient suffering a loss of appetite; only later would it come to be applied to drugs, firstly those which induced the condition as a side-effect and later, those designed for purpose.  The adjective anorectic (characterized by want of appetite) appeared first in 1832 and was a coining of medical Latin, from the Ancient Greek ἀνόρεκτος (anórektos) (without appetite), the construct being ἀν- (an-) (not, without) + ὀρέγω (orégō) (a verbal adjective of oregein (to long for, desire) which was later to influence the word anorexia)).  The noun was first used in 1913.

Tenuate Dospan.  As an industry leader in promoting DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), Merrell was years ahead in the use of plus-size models.

In the twentieth century, as modern chemistry emerged, anorectic drugs became available by accident as medical amphetamines reached the black market as stimulants, the side effects quickly noted.  Those side effects however were of little interest to the various military authorities which during World War II (1939-1945) made them available to troops by the million, their stimulant properties and the ability to keep soldiers alert and awake for days at a time functioning as an extraordinary force-multiplier.  Not for years was fully it understood just how significant was the supply of the amphetamine Pervitin in the Wehrmacht’s (the German armed forces (1935-1945)) extraordinary military successes in 1939-1941.  In the post-war years, various types of amphetamine were made commercially available as appetite suppressants and while effective, the side effects were of concern although many products remained available in the West well into the twenty-first century.  Probably the best known class of these was amfepramone (or diethylpropion) marketed most famously as Tenuate Dospan which was popular with (1) those who wanted to be thin and (2) those who wanted to stay awake longer than is usually recommended.  Tenuate Dospan usually achieved both.

The regulatory authorities however moved to ensure the supply of Tenuate Dospan and related preparations was restricted, the concern said to be about the side effects although in these matters the true motivations can sometimes be obscure.  In their place, the industry responded with appetite suppressants which essentially didn’t work (compared with the efficient Tennuate Dospan) but sold for two or three times the price which must have pleased some.  The interest in restricting esurience however continued and one of the latest generation is Liraglutide (sold under various the brand names including Victoza & Saxenda) which started life as an anti-diabetic medication, the appetite suppressing properties noted during clinical trials, rather as the side-effects of Viagra (sildenafil) came as a pleasing surprise to the manufacturer.  Being a injection, Liraglutide is harder to use than Tenuate Dospan (which was a daily pill) and users report there are both similarities and differences between the two.

Liraglutide (Saxenda).  The dose increases month by month.

On Tenuate Dospan, one’s appetite diminished rapidly but food still tasted much the same, only the desire for it declined and being an amphetamine, energy levels were elevated and there were the usual difficulties (sleeping, dryness in the mouth, mood swings).  Dieticians recommended combining Tenuate Dospan with a high quality diet (the usual fruit, vegetables, clear fluids etc).  By contrast, although Liraglutide users reported much the same loss of interest in food, they noted also some distaste for the foods they had once so enjoyed and a distinct lack of energy.  It’s still early in the life of Liraglutide but it certainly seems to work as an appetite suppressant although in the trials, the persistent problem of all such drugs was noted: as soon as the treatment ceased, the food cravings returned.  Liraglutide does what the manufacturer’s explanatory notes suggest it does: it is a drug which can be used to treat chronic obesity by achieving weight-loss over several months, during which a patient should seek to achieve a permanent lifestyle change (diet and exercise).  It does not undo thousands of generations of evolution.  The early literature at least hinted Liraglutide was intended for obese adolescents for whom no other weight loss programmes had proved effective but anecdotal evidence suggests adults are numerous among the early adopters.