Regalia

Regalia (pronounced ri-gey-lee-uh or ri-geyl-yuh)

(1) The emblems, symbols, or paraphernalia indicative of royalty or any other sovereign status; such as a crown, orb, sceptre or sword.

(2) The decorations, insignia, or ceremonial clothes of any office or order.

(3) A casual term for fancy, or dressy clothing; finery.

(4) Royal rights, prerogatives and privileges actually enjoyed by any sovereign, regardless of his title (emperor, grand duke etc).

(5) Sumptuous food (obsolete except in the odd literary novel).

(6) A large cigar of the finest quality (obsolete except in the odd literary novel). 

1530–1540: From the Medieval Latin rēgālia (royal privileges; things pertaining to a king), noun use of neuter plural of the Latin rēgālis (regal).  The word stems from the Latin substantivation of the adjective rēgālis, itself from rex (king).  Regalia is a Latin plurale tantum (plural as such, plural only) word that has different definitions. In one ancient (but now rare) definition, it refers to the exclusive privileges of a sovereign, a concept which remains codified in Scots law as Inter regalia (something inherently that belongs to the sovereign) and this may include property, privileges, or prerogatives.  The term is a direct borrowing from the Latin inter (among) and regalia (things of the king).  In Scots law, the division is between (1) regalia majora (major regalia), which are inseparable from the person of the sovereign and (2) regalia minora (minor regalia), which may be conveyed to a subject.  The word originally referred to the formal dress of a sovereign, but is now used of any type of elaborate formal dress or accessories and is applied especially to academic and ecclesiastical robes.  Although regalia is a Latin plurale tantum (plural as such, plural only) which, in the grammar of Latin is a noun (in any specific sense) that has no singular form (eg scissors) in most usage, in Modern English, it’s sometimes used in the singular: regale.  Further to complicate, the plural form of the grammatical descriptor is pluralia tantum.  Regalia is a noun and regalian is an adjective; the noun plural is regalias.

Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) in ecclesiastical regalia (left) and a deconstruction of the layers (right).  The nature of the garments' layers assumed significance in the matter of the cardinal's trial on charges of sexual abuse of a minor, a discussion about the ease and speed with with "accessibility" was physically possible (within the constraints of time and place) being among the evidence offered in defense.

In his original trial the cardinal was convicted, the verdict upheld on appeal to a full bench of the Court of Appeal.  However, upon final appeal to the High Court of Australia (HCA), the conviction was quashed, the judges ruling that the Crown had not beyond reasonable doubt proved the acts alleged happened as described, in the circumstances, in the place and at the time mentioned in the indictment.  Quash means to nullify, void or declare invalid and is a procedure used in both criminal and civil cases when irregularities or procedural defects are found.  In a unanimous (7-0) judgment (Pell v The Queen [2020] HCA 12)) quashing Cardinal Pell’s conviction in the Supreme Court of Victoria (Pell v The Queen [2019] VSCA 186), the High Court set aside the verdict and substituted an acquittal; in a legal sense it is now as if the original verdict never happened. 

Lindsay Lohan being adorned with prom queen regalia (Mean Girls (2004)).

A depiction of Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) in the regalia of a Freemason Grand Master (digitally altered image).

Although no documentary evidence has ever emerged, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.  Masonic Grand Masters wear specific regalia signifying their high rank within the cult.  The details of the garments & accessories vary between the sects of Freemasonry but the core elements are:

Apron: The Grand Master wears an ornate apron which historically was fabricated from natural fibres such as silk or lambskin but it may be some now use modern synthetics which offer some advantages although they lack the same quality of tactility.  The aprons feature intricate embroidery, including Masonic symbols such as the Square and Compasses and may feature gold or silver fringes are common.

Collar: A grand and elaborate collar made of a wide ribbon is worn around the neck, often with a grand master's jewel or other symbol of office attached.  Most ribbons are still the traditional blue with gold or silver embroidery & embellishments.

Jewel: A grand master's jewel is a distinctive medallion or emblem (usually attached to the collar) which includes symbols denoting the authority of the office such as the square, compass, eye or other Masonic insignia.

Gloves: White gloves are a standard part of Masonic regalia (worn not only by a grand master).  The origin of the white gloves was their (alleged) use by stone masons when working on porous materials such as marble, symbolizing purity and the craftsman's clean hands.

Sash or Girdle: In some Masonic temples, grand Masters wear a sash or girdle around the waist, again, often adorned with the cult’s symbols and colors.  Some temples don’t use sashes as part of the regalia because it’s said to be a modern addition with no real link to Masonic tradition.

Hat: The hats, while distinctive, seem to be a fashion choice more than a general tradition.  The most popular seem to be tricorn, bowler or top-hats although evidence suggest regional factors may influence the choice, a wide array of ceremonial caps existing in the photographic record.  In some sects, a specific, unique hat is reserved for use by the Grand Master who may wear it only during ceremonies and rituals.

Youth

Youth (pronounced yooth)

(1) The state (imprecisely defined) of being young.

(2) The appearance, freshness, vigor, spirit etc, characteristic of one who is young (usually as youthful or youthfulness).

(3) The time of being young; early life (figuratively applied also to institutions, ideas, movements etc to describe the first or early period.)

(4) The period of life from puberty to the attainment of full growth (nominal adulthood), sometimes used as a (vague) synonym for adolescence.

(5) Young persons, collectively.

(6) A young person, by convention usually male (which some etymologists suggest is the only correct use).

(7) As a locality name, the Isle of Youth (Isla de la Juventud in the Spanish and formerly the Isle of Pines), an island in the Caribbean, a municipality in southern Cuba.

Pre 900: From the Middle English youthe, youghte & ȝouþe, from the Old English geoguth or ġeoguþ (the state of being young; young people, junior warriors; young of cattle (and related to geong (young)), from the Proto-West Germanic juwunþa, from the Proto-Germanic jugunþō & jugunþiz (youth) and related to the Old Saxon juguth, the Old Frisian jogethe, the Middle Dutch joghet, the Old High German iugund, the Gothic junda and the Latin juventus.  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Juugd, the Gothic junda, the German Low German Jöögd, the West Frisian jeugd, the Dutch jeugd and the German Jugend.  The ultimate source of the Germanic forms was a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root yeu- (vital force, youthful vigor) + the Proto-Germanic abstract noun suffix –itho.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Proto-Germanic form apparently was altered from juwunthiz by the influence of its contrast dugunthiz (ability (source of the Old English duguð)).  In Middle English, the medial “g” became a yogh (a Middle English letter (ȝ) used mainly where modern English has gh and y), which then disappeared.  The alternative forms yought & youthe are obsolete.  The Middle English youthhede (youthhood, the synonyms being yonghede, yongthe & youthe) was an example of an early nuancing as it described the part of life which followed childhood and is thus the equivalent of the modern adolescence although it’s clear it was also used of youth generally.  Youth, youthism & youthfulness are nouns, youthy is a noun & adjective (both obsolete), youthwards is an adverb and youthful & youthless are adjectives; the noun plural is youths (collectively as youth).

Synonyms are easy to list but harder to use like youth, the meanings tend to be loaded, some working in some contexts but not others and the list includes: juvenility, youngness & youngth (both archaic), youthfulness, immaturity, minority, adolescence, child, childish, kid, lad, teen, teen-ager, youngster, young  minority, immaturity & stripling.  The classic antonym is adulthood but in some contexts old-age, senility and dotage (the one favoured by Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) to disparage Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) before they fell in love) may be applied.

Lindsay Lohan as an 11 year old youth and at a youthful 36.

The adjective youthful dates from the 1560s and much earlier, Old English had geoguðlic and other words formerly used in the same sense were youthlike, youthly, youthsome & youthy.  Yippie was first reported in 1968 and was the “marketing” name of the (not wholly fictitious) "Youth International Party" (modelled on the then commonly used “hippie”), “founded” by counter culturalists Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989), Jerry Rubin (1938–1994), Nancy Kurshan (b 1944) & Paul Krassner (1932–2019).  Youth can be a modifier (youth culture, youth crime, youth worker, youth hostel, youth market, youth justice et al) and be modified (middle youth, troubled youth) while “youthism” (discrimination against the young) is the companion term to ageism (discrimination against the old) although the former is, at law, not an inherently “suspect category” in most systems where the appropriate framework exists; that’s why five year olds can’t sue for the right to hold drivers licences although if someone that youthful in somewhere like Florida or Texas petitioned the US Supreme Court for the right to carry an AR-15, given the composition of the bench, it’s far from certain there wouldn’t be at least a few dissenting opinions supporting his or her right and as a piece of black letter law, under current interpretations, it could be argued a five year old with an AR-15 wouldn’t be any less representative of a “well-regulated militia” than anyone else who now enjoys the right.

Ever inventive, English has coined new derivations as required, the spread encouraged by the emergence of social media.  A “youthemism” is a particular form of euphemism, describing the phrases and photographs used in advertising to make older individuals feel a little young younger; youthemisms appear in the slogans and marketing campaigns for everything from pairs of jeans to “mid life crisis” motor cycles.  Also from advertising (sometime seeking votes as well as sales) is “youthenize” which describes making someone or something more appealing to a younger market; as a transitive verb it can be used to mean “to make youthful or younger; to rejuvenate”.  By obvious analogy with earthquake, “youthquake” seems first to have appeared in Vogue magazine in 1965 and was a reference to the cultural changes being wrought by the youthful baby boomers who were (uniquely in history) both in a critical mass and an economic force by virtue of their unprecedented (for youth) levels of disposable income.  The phrase “fountain of youth” is an allusion to some of the tales from antiquity and is used to refer to any product, exercise regime or other activity which promises to restore or prolong youthfulness.  The non-standard spelling “yoof” is a colloquialism from England which first gained currency during the 1980s, often as “yoof kulture” and in Thatcher-era England was a way of disparaging the behaviour and sloppy language standards among the young.  Like other words intended to offend, there were sub-cultures which adopted yoof as a form of group identity and solidarity, use prevalent among the then emerging “ravers” and the “acid house” scene.

Hitler Youth & Band of German Maidens members on camp together, circa 1937. Sometimes, the boys & girls got to know one another.

The German form jugend became notorious because during the Third Reich (1933-1945) the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth, 1926-1945 and abbreviated as HJ) was the Nazi Party organization for boys (10-18), intended to instil a sense of nationalism, prevent any from drifting towards delinquency and, more controversially, prepare them for military training proper.  The Bund Deutscher Mädel (Band of German Maidens) was the girls' wing of the Hitlerjugend and, abbreviated as BDM, its purpose was to prepare girls for their traditional role of motherhood.  Perhaps unfortunately, some mixed activities such as the HJ and the BDM going on camps together resulted in much practical preparation for motherhood, revelations of this promiscuity leading Germans to conclude BDM might be better understood as Bund Deutscher Matratzen (Band of German Mattresses).

The word youth has long been applied to the young of both sexes (and now of all genders) but there was (especially among classists) an argument that while anyone could be youthful or possess the quality of youthfulness, only a young male could be described as a youth.  That was skating on etymologically thin ice although it does seem likely the view did reflect the conventions of use in earlier centuries and that was another example of the reverence for antiquity which so flourished in the post medieval-period.  Those who translated the myths from Rome and Greece of course wrote often of the beautiful boys and young men who litter the tales but the girls and women were never youths; they were nymphs, waifs, pixies, sprites, fairies or naiads and this tradition infected academia, more than one professor insisting a youth could be only male.

But now it’s used of anyone young though context still matters.  In clinical medicine for example there are two distinct fields: paediatric medicine and adolescent medicine, puberty the point of delineation.  As a technical distinction in hospitals that’s uncontroversial but other words within the rubric of youthfulness can carry baggage, juvenile for example being innocuous when used in zoology to describe the young of a species but potentially incendiary when applied to people, such remains the influence of the phrase “juvenile delinquency”, popular since the 1960s whenever there’s a need to create a moral panic about the behaviour of youth (complaints about which by older generations have been documented since Antiquity).  Adolescent too has suffered because of phrases like “adolescent humor”, “adolescent behavior” etc which rarely suggest anything positive.

Teenage fencing.

Then of course there is teen-age which true pedants will always distinguish from teenage (pronounced teen-ige) which is a technical herm of fence-builders to describe a technique of weaving which interleaves brushwood to produce a type of fencing called wattle, the weave effected usually horizontally around vertical uprights planted in the ground.  The use to refer to those aged 13-19 dates from 1911 and was used originally of Sunday school classes with the adjective teen-aged first noted 1922 although it wasn’t until the 1950s that an identifiable “teen-age culture” could be said to exist, something of which many (then and now) disapproved but modern capitalism, generally neutral on low-intensity cultural squabbles, identified a new market and in music, clothing, film and just about every aspect of pop-culture, teens have since been a valuable segment, spending either other people’s money (OPM) or their own.  Being teen-aged of course stops with one’s 20^th birthday but youth for some time persists although there’s no general agreement for how long.  A helpful guide though may be the criterion enforced by New Zealand-based tour operator Contiki Tours, long renowned for their innovative model of alcohol-fueled packaged tourism for amorous youth although it seems they now also cater for those who drink rather less enthusiastically than the average Antipodean.  Contiki restrict their tours to those aged 18-35, presumably because at 18 sex is lawful in all countries visited and 35 is the upper limit at which it's (in some cases) plausible for men to hook-up with 18 year old women.  The days when a 21^st birthday was of legal significance have gone but there’s a wide range of ages which (somewhat arbitrarily) are used to at least imply a suggestion of adulthood including matters of sexuality activity (generally 14-18 depending on jurisdiction), obtaining a drivers licence (14-23), voting (15-20), consuming alcohol (5 (with parental supervision) –20), being responsible for criminal acts (8-14) or becoming President of the United States (35).  Lindsay Lohan, having thus attained the statutory age of political adulthood on 2 July 2021, may now seek to become POTUS; that would MAGA.

A montage of images of a teen-aged Lindsay Lohan.  

Legal rights and responsibilities however really don’t define the end of youth because it’s a cultural construct and probably most would accept 25 or even 29 as the end although of course many even beyond this can remain “youthful” and the distinction between someone thought a “youth” or a “young adult” is likely more a judgment of the individual than anything much to do with their age and in casual use, youth, inherently a relative term, can also be applied to the middle aged.  When it was noticed during the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) that certain defendants were being influenced during the communal lunches by the most recalcitrant of the Nazis, it was decided to serve the meals to a number of separate tables and the one allocated to Walther Funk (1890–1960; Nazi economics minister & central bank president) (then aged 56), Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist) (46), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) (41) & Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 and Gauleiter (district party leader) & Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945) (38) was referred to by jailers and prisoners alike as der Tischjugend (the youth table), the average age of the diners at the other tables much older.  The troublemaker who was the reason the seating plans were changed was Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) (52) who was put in a room to eat alone which he did, most unhappy at being denied his audience.

Crumb

Crumb (pronounced kruhm)

(1) A small particle of bread, cake, biscuit etc that has broken off.

(2) A small particle or portion of anything; fragment; bit.

(3) The soft inner portion of a bread, as distinguished from the crust (archaic).

(4) In the plural crumbs, a cake topping made of sugar, flour, butter, and spice, usually crumbled on top of the raw batter and baked with the cake.

(5) In slang, a nobody; a contemptibly objectionable or worthless person (rare).

(6) In cooking, to dress, coat or prepare with crumbs or to remove crumbs from (literally to de-crumb).

(7) To break into crumbs or small fragments.

(8) In the industrial production of food, a mixture of sugar, cocoa and milk, used to make bulk cooking chocolate.

(9) In (predominately historic military) slang, a body louse (Pediculus humanus).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English crome, cromme, crumme & crume, from the Old English cruma (crumb, fragment), from the Proto-Germanic krumô & krūmô (fragment, crumb), from the primitive Indo-European grū-mo- (something scraped together, lumber, junk; to claw, scratch), from ger- (to turn, bend, twist, wind).  It was cognate with the Dutch kruim (crumb), the Low German Krome & Krume (crumb), the Middle High German krūme & German Krume (crumb), the Danish krumme (crumb), the Swedish dialectal krumma (crumb) & the Swedish inkråm (crumbs, giblets), the Icelandic krumur (crumb), the Latin grūmus (a little heap (usually of earth) and the Ancient Greek grumea (from ψιχίον (psichion)) (bag or chest for old clothes).

The un-etymological -b- appeared in the mid-fifteenth century as in limb & climb to match crumble and words like dumb, numb & thumb although there may also have been the influence of French words like humble (where it makes sense, unlike in in English where it’s just silly given crumb should be spelled “crum” or “krum”.  The slang meaning "lousy person" dates from 1918, linked to US troops who had picked up crumb as a word to describe the body-louses well known in the trenches on the Western Front in France.  The use to refer to louses, base on the resemblance, was from another war, attested from 1863 during the US Civil War.  The obsolete alternative spelling was the dialectal crimb.  Crumb, crumbling, crumbler, crumbling & crumble are nouns & verbs, crumbled is a verb, crumbly is a noun & adjective and crumbable is an adjective; the noun plural is crumbs.

The adjective crummy dates from the 1560s in the sense of “easily crumbled" but within a decade had come also to mean "like bread", the slang adoption of which to suggest "shoddy, filthy, inferior, poorly made" in use by 1859, either from the earlier sense or influenced by the more recent used to refer to the louse.  In one curiosity thought probably related to the resemblance to certain loaves of bread, crummy was briefly (although dialectical use did persist) used in the eighteenth century to describe a woman, "attractively plump, full-figured, buxom" although any link with Robert Crumb’s later work Stormy Daniels is mere coincidence.  The related forms are crummily & crumminess.  The adjective crumby (full of crumbs) is from 1731 and while it overlapped with crummy, it seems almost always to have been applied literally.

The verb crumble is from the late-fifteenth century kremelen (to break into small fragments (transitive)), from the Old English crymelan, thought to be the frequentative of gecrymman (to break into crumbs), from cruma; the intransitive sense of "fall into small pieces" dating from the 1570s.  As a noun, crumb has meant "a fragment" at least since the 1570s but as a cake or dessert-topping (made of sugar, flour, butter, and spice, usually crumbled on top of the raw batter and baked with the dish), the first known reference is in English newspapers in 1944, one of the techniques recommended as a culinary innovation during the wartime food rationing, the best remembered of which is the vegetarian “Woolton Pie”, named after Lord Woolton (1883-1964; UK Minister of Food 1940-1943)

Stormy Daniels (2019) by Robert Crumb.

Robert Crumb (b 1943) is an US cartoonist, associated since the 1960s with the counter-culture and some strains of libertarianism; he was one of the most identifiable figures of the quasi-underground comix movement.  There is a genre-description of the long-typical women in his work as “Crumb women” based on the depiction of the physical characteristics he most admired although, for reasons he’s widely discussed, he no longer feels the need to draw women in that manner.  He still draws women but the work is now more literally representational, his portrait of pornographic actress & director Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory Clifford; b 1979) a more sympathetic interpretation than Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) ungracious description of her as “horse face”.  Really, President Trump should be more respectful towards a three-time winner of F.A.M.E.'s (Fans of Adult Media and Entertainment) much coveted annual "Favorite Breasts" Award.

Handed down on Tuesday 30 November 2021, Set the Standard is a report by sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins (b 1968) on behalf of the Human Rights Commission, exploring bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault experienced by those working in commonwealth parliamentary workplaces in Australia.  The report recommends (1) codes of conduct which should apply to both parliamentarians and their staff and (2) standards of conduct within the parliamentary space.  The printed version includes evidence from some seventeen hundred individuals, including almost 150 current or former parliamentarians and some 900 current or former staffers.  At this time, it appears the only restriction placed on politician’s behavior is the so-called “bonk-ban”, the proscription of ministers and their staff enjoying sex together, a thing imposed in the wake of the revelation of Barnaby Joyce's (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime-minister of Australia 2016-2022) adulterous affair with the taxpayer-funded help.  The way around that is apparently for ministers to arrange staff-swaps with other offices because the bonk-ban doesn’t extend to sex with other people’s staff and it’ll be fun to see what tricks and techniques are adopted as work-arounds to avoid what little will be done between the three months it takes for the Jenkins’ report to work its way through the system and the following three weeks it takes to forget about it.  The politicians like things the way they are; expect more of the same.

Although it didn’t make it into the report, one group of enablers of poor conduct subsequently identified were the “crumb ladies”, the female politicians who are doughty defenders of the predatory male politicians who are the perpetrators of abuse inflicted on women, the reference to crumbs being the pathetic and insignificant rewards tossed their way by the male establishment who divide the spoils of office mostly among themselves.  While the men enjoy the important jobs, the most lucrative perks and the best travel to civilized spots, the "crumb ladies", knowing their place and toeing the line, might pick up the odd appointment as an "assistant something" or a holiday (disguised as a study trip) to somewhere where (usually) it’s safe to drink the water.  The existence of the parliament’s “crumb ladies” alludes to the use of crumbs as a device in the New Testament.  Crumbs which fall from the table appear in an increasing number of translations and of particular theological interest are Matthew 15:27 and Mark 7:28.  However, the best illustration in this context is probably Luke 16:21: "...and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table".

Lindsay Lohan MH Crumble Cake #'d Tobacco cards 462 (left) & 463 (right).

Rhubarb & Apple Crumble

All crumble recipes are forks of apple crumble and the same instructions can be used with just about any combinations of fruit.  Crumbles can be assemble to emphasize tartness, sweetness or a blend of the two.  Among the favorites to mix and match are rhubarb, apple, pineapple, apricot, peach, boysenberry, & strawberry.  The extent of the sweetness can further be enhanced by adding more sugar (brown sugar is recommended) although many prefer to use honey.

Core Ingredients

450g rhubarb, cut into 1 inch (25 mm) slices.
350g apples (Granny Smith recommended), peeled and cut into 1 inch (25 mm) chunks.
1 vanilla pod, split open (or 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract).
120g golden caster sugar.
Ice cream, custard or thickened cream (as preferred) to serve.

Topping Ingredients

200g plain flour.
1 tsp ground ginger (optional).
100g cold salted butter, chopped.
70g light soft brown sugar

Instructions

(1) Pre-heat oven to 200^oC / 390^oF (180^oC / 360^oF if fan forced).

(2) Place rhubarb, apples, vanilla and sugar together in an ovenproof dish and toss to ensure vanilla & sugar coating is consistent.

Roast for 10 minutes.

(4) Place flour in a large bowl, mixing in ginger if it’s being used.  Using fingertips, rub in butter to create a chunky breadcrumb-like textured mixture.

(5) When texture is achieved, stir through the sugar (creating the crumble).

(6) Sprinkle crumble topping onto the fruit and cook for a further 30-35 minutes or until the topping is a light, golden brown.

(7) Serve with ice cream, custard or thickened cream as preferred.

Squad

Squad (pronounced skwod)

(1) In modern military use, a small number of soldiers (typically between 4-10), under the authority of a corporal or staff sergeant, usually a sub-set of a platoon and the smallest operational unit recognized by the military.

(2) In law enforcement, a group of police officers or other officials, especially one organized to deal with a particular area of law enforcement or a particular event or situation.

(3) Any small group or party of persons engaged in a common enterprise.

(4) In sport, group of players from which a team is selected.

(5) In slang, any group of people with some identifiable connection (especially one’s friends, taken collectively).

(6) In zoology, an (informal) collective noun for a group of squid.

(7) To form into squads (rare except in technical use).

(8) To assign to a squad (rare except in technical use).

(9) In some dialects (UK, dating from the mid-seventeenth century), sloppy mud, of uncertain origin.

1640–1650: From the French escouade, from the Old French esquade, an alteration of esquadre, from the Italian squadra (battalion, literally “square” (from which French gained escadre), from the Spanish escuadra (square (so called from square shape of the formation)), from the Old Spanish, from escuadrar (to square (from the square formations used)), from the from Vulgar Latin exquadra (to square), from the Latin  squadra (a square), the construct being ex- (out) + quadrare (make square), from quadrus (a square), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer- (four).  Squad is a noun & verb, squaddie & squadron are nouns and squadded & squadding are verbs; the noun plural is squads.

Before advances in ballistics extended the range of firepower, infantry troops tended to fight in a square formation because it was the most effective to repel cavalry or superior forces. And from this came the idea of the squad as a basic military formation, the Latin squadra meaning “square” although that doesn’t imply Roman squads could number as few as four (as is the modern practice, reflected in the slang term for private soldiers (the army’s lowest rank (technically non-ranked)) in some armies being “squaddie”.  In historic (army) use, a squadron was a body of cavalry comprising two companies or troops, averaging from one hundred and twenty to two hundred soldiers.  Probably the best known military squad is the firing squad, a traditional method of military execution and regarded as among the most honorable forms of dispatch.  By the early nineteenth century the word was extended to any small party or group of persons and the use in sports is traced to 1902.  With the evolution of sporting competitions to become professional, larger groups of players were needed to be on stand-by for selection (to cover injury, illness etc) and these groups came to be called squads.

The use by police forces as both standing institutions dedicated to certain duties (drug squad, dog squad, vice squad, bomb squad et al) and ad hoc formations for a one-off purpose (essentially task forces: royal visit squad, test match squad et al) appears to have begun in 1905 and is now institutionalized.  In police use “squad car” can probably has been applied to any vehicle but is most associated with a marked patrol car.  God squad is a casual terms for those spreading the word of God and is usually reserved for especially devoted lay members of a church.  A cheer squad can either be a formal group of attractive young women employed (cheerleaders) to dance and wave pom-poms in support of sporting teams (their numbers diminishing as attitudes to this and that change) or a description of those who (in a usually unorganized fashion) offer unquestioning and often vocal support to someone (Donald Trump, crooked Hillary Clinton et al) or some idea or institution.  In recent US political use, “The Squad” is the collective term for nine (originally four bolshie women of color) Democrat Party members of the US House of Representatives who self-identify as “progressive” and are labeled by Fox News etc as “socialist” or worse.  It was one of the squad members who coined the term “The Squad” although it’s not believed the inspiration was the Irish Republican Army (IRA) of the same name which was tasked with the assassination of political opponents but that’s probably crossed the mind of many of the old, white men who have dominated US politics for centuries.

Some of "the squad", who seem often angry about something, House of Representatives, Washington DC.

Navies in the 1580s picked up the idea of the squadron (from the Italian squadrone, from the Latin squadra (a square) but that does not imply naval squadrons were either originally or even typically of four ships.  The squadron was simply analogous with the army’s platoon / company / regiment / brigade / division arrangements whereby several squadrons made up a flotilla and several flotillas a fleet (confusingly, several fleets could be assembled into a fleet so to make things clearer tags like “home fleet”, grand fleet” et al emerged and squadrons also attracted specific designations such as “China squadron”, “East Africa squadron et al.  Air forces by 1912 began to use the squadron as the basic formation upon which organizational arrangements pivoted.  Over the years the number varied greatly but classically a squadron consisted of twelve aircraft, made up of four “flights” of three.  Squadrons were organized into “wings”, a collection of which was a “group” and beyond that point the arrangements and naming conventions varied.   In the US military’s recently constituted Space Force, multiple squadrons make up an operations delta or a support garrison.

Suicide Squads

HH Asquith (1852-1928) and his young friend Venetia Stanley (1887–1948).

Although few were quite as vituperative as Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who once describes the members of the Australian Senate as "unrepresentative swill", governments in the twentieth century often found upper houses to be such a nuisance they schemed and plotted ways to curb their powers or, preferably, do away with them entirely.  As the electoral franchise was extended, governments were sometimes elected with what they considered a mandate to pursue liberal or progressive policies while upper houses, by virtue of their composition and tenure (some with life-time appointments) often acted as an obstruction, rejecting legislation or imposing interminable delays by sending proposed laws to be “discussed to death” in committees from which “nothing ever emerged”.  This was the situation which confronted the glittering Liberal Party cabinet of HH Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916) which in 1909 found the Lords, in defiance of long established convention, blocking passage of the budget.  The Lords was wholly unelected, its membership mostly inherited, sometimes by virtue of some service (virtuous or otherwise) by an ancestor hundreds of years before.  Successive elections didn’t resolve the crisis and Asquith resolved to pursue the only lawful mechanism available: the creation of as many peers as would be necessary (in the hundreds) to secure the passage of his legislation.

That of course required royal ascent and the newly enthroned George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), while making his reservations clear, proved a good constitutional monarch and made it known he would follow the advice of his prime-minister.  As it turned out, the “suicide squad” wasn’t required, their Lordships, while not at all approving of the government, were more appalled still at the thought of their exclusive club being swamped with “jumped-up grocers” in “bad hats” and allowed the legislation to pass.  Actually, “castration squad” might have been a more accurate description because while the Lords survived, Asquith ensured it would be less of an obstacle, substituting the road block of its power of veto with a speed-bump, a right to impose a two-year delay (in 1949 reduced to six months).  The New Labour administration (1997-2010) introduced further reforms which were designed eventually to remove from the Lords all those who held seats by virtue of descent and even the Tories later moved in that direction although the efforts have stalled and a few of the hereditary peers remain.  As things now stand, the last remaining absolute veto the Lords retain is to stop an attempt by a government to extend a parliament's life beyond five years. 

The preserved Legislative Council Chamber in the Queensland Parliament.

Some upper house assassins however truly were a suicide squad.  In Australia, the state of Queensland followed the usual convention whereby the sub-national parliaments were bicameral, the Legislative Council the upper house and like the others, it was a bastion of what might now be called "those representing the interests of the 1%" and a classic example of white privilege.  Actually, at the time, the lower houses were also places of white privilege but the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had long regarded the non-elected Legislative Council (and upper houses in general) as undemocratic and reactionary so in 1915, after securing a majority in the Legislative Assembly (the lower house) which permitted the party to form government, they sought abolition.  The Legislative Council predictably rejected the bills passed by the government in 1915 & 1916 and a referendum conducted in 1917 decisively was lost; undeterred, in 1920, the government requested the governor appoint sufficient additional ALP members to the chamber to provide an abolitionist majority.  In this, the ALP followed the example of the Liberal Party in the UK which in 1911 prevailed upon the king to appoint as many new peers as might be needed for their legislation to pass unimpeded through an otherwise unsympathetic House of Lords.  That wasn’t needed as things transpired but in Queensland, the new members of the Legislative Council duly took their places and on 26 October 1921, the upper house voted in favor of abolition, the new appointees known forever as "the suicide squad".  Despite the success, the trend didn't spread and the Commonwealth parliament and those of the other five states remain bicameral although the two recent creations, established when limited self-government was granted to the Northern Territory (NT) and Australian Capital Territory (ACT), both had unicameral assemblies.

Lindsay Lohan in costume as Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn (a comic book character created by DC Comics), "Halloween bash", Albert's Club, South Kensington, London, October 2016.

Across the Tasman Sea, the New Zealand upper house lasted another three decades but it’s eventual demise came about not because of conflict but because the institution was increasing viewed as comatose, rejecting nothing, contributing little and rarely inclined even to criticize.  Unlike in England and Queensland, in New Zealand the abolition movement enjoyed cross-party support, left and right (although the latter in those days were pretty leftist), united in their bored disdain.  One practical impediment was the New Zealand parliament couldn’t amend the country’s constitution because no government had ever bothered to adopt the Statute of Westminster (1931) by which the Imperial Parliament had granted effective independence to the Dominions but in 1947 this was done.  Despite that, the Labour Party didn’t act and after prevailing in the 1950 general election, it was a National Party administration which passed the Legislative Council Abolition Act, its passage assured after a twenty-member “suicide squad” was appointed and the upper house’s meeting of 1 December 1950 proved its last.  Opposition from within the chamber had actually been muted, presumably because to sweeten the deal, the government used some of the money saved to pay some generous “retirement benefits” for the displaced politicians.  New Zealand since has continued as a unitary state with a unicameral legislature.

Venge

Venge (pronounced venj)

To avenge; to punish; to revenge (archaic).

1250–1300: From the Middle English vengen from the Old French venger & vengier (take revenge, avenge, punish) from the Latin vindicāre (assert a claim, claim as one's own; avenge, punish; vindicate). Also archaic were the related forms were vengefully, vengefulness venged & venging whereas the adjective vengeful, although rare, endured.  The noun vengeance, from the same era as venge, flourished.  Vengeance was from the Anglo-French vengeaunce, from twelfth century Old French vengeance & venjance (revenge, retribution).  Venge & avenge are verbs, revenge is a noun & verb, vengeance & vengefulness are nouns, vengeful is an adjective and vengefully is an adverb; the most common noun plural is vengeances. 

Venge long ago became archaic and is now extinct except when used in a historical context or for literary effect.  Venge is the verb transitive, venges the third-person singular simple present, venging the present participle and venged the simple past and past participle.  Synonyms include vindicate, avenge, chasten, punish, chastise, revenge, repay, redress, requite, square, return, get, fix, retort, reciprocate, score, defend, match, justify and payback.  Venge is one of the unusual words in English which went extinct while various derived forms (vengeance; vengeful; avenge) flourished and the translations of the Bible probably encouraged use, God being vengeful, there’s much vengeance in the Bible:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Paul to the Romans; Romans 12:19–21

The vengeance weapons

The V-weapons deployed by Germany late in the World War II (1939-1945) all began as conventional projects of the military or the armaments industry but became known as the Vergeltungswaffen ("retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons") after the label was in 1944 applied by Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933-1945) who used the word as a propaganda device, seeking to give civilians some hope there might be retaliation against (and perhaps even relief from) the area-bombing campaigns being conducted against cities all over the Reich.  The Allies generally translated Vergeltungswaffen as “vengeance weapons”, the best-known of the devices the V-1 & V-2. 

The terminology can be confusing, the vengeance weapons often conflated with the so-called Wunderwaffen (superweapons, or wonderweapons) of which there were literally dozens on drawing boards, in development or (occasionally) in use but the Vergeltungswaffen were just a highly-visible sub-set, although, being so well-publicized and relatively numerous, they do tend more to figure in the popular imagination.  Goebbels had been talking of the Wunderwaffen since 1943 and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader), German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had hinted at their existence since 1939 although there’s still debate about the technology to which he alluded.  Confusingly, historians writing in English also use the term “miracle weapons”, perhaps because Hitler, once he realized the war was lost (and the timing of this is debated, a vague consensus being he probably understood it couldn’t be won after the strategic failure of Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel or the Kursk offensive) in mid-1943 and that it was lost when the Ardennes Counteroffensive (Battle of the Bulge) was abandoned in early 1945) began increasingly to refer to the “Miracle of the House of Brandenburg”, a term coined by Frederick the Great (Frederick II, 1712–1786; King of Prussia 1740-1786) to describe the fortuitous series of political and military events which saved Prussia from defeat during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763).

By the latter stages of the war, German civilians were noted in the remarkably frank reports compiled by the SD (the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS), the internal intelligence agency of the SS and Nazi Party) as being increasingly skeptical about the Wunderwaffen, using words like “wonder” and “miracle” with some degree of irony.  Despite the opinion of some today, Dr Goebbels understood the limits of propaganda and had by 1945 already toned-down the emphasis on the weapons and had switched the focus to matters at least slightly less implausible.  In the post-war German language, Wunderwaffe has survived as a (usually derisive) reference to any universal solution said to be something said (improbably) able to solve many or especially difficult problems.

The actual history of the Vergeltungswaffen became murky almost as soon as the war ended.  What are well documented are the V-1, V-2 & V-3 and there’s some evidence to suggest the V-4 label was, at least in some documents, applied to one or more weapon before the end of hostilities.  The confusion is thought to have been engendered by the normal military & industrial practice of using the "V" designation (denoting Versuchs (attempt, experimental)) plus a number to keep track of all the prototype or version numbers which had to be documented.  Although not mentioned in his dairies or elsewhere, Goebbels seemed just to have hijacked Versuchs (V) and done a rebrand, the word vengeance well-suited to the time and place to which the gangster Nazi state had delivered Germany.  He spoke in public only ever of the V-1 & V-2 and the V-3 is documented in the German military archive but for the V-4 and beyond, the application of the V-x nomenclature is speculative, V-4 having (after the war) been applied variously to a Nazi atomic bomb, the manned version of the V-1, a number of radiological devices and the A9/A10 rocket combination.

After the war, there was a great profusion of often duplicated records spread all over the Reich and it was almost all on paper.  Project codes weren’t standardized even within industries or branches of the military but what was adhered to was the universal allocation of a system of version identifiers, usually as numbers.  A "V" to designate Versuchsmuster (prototypes) was almost always used, usually in conjunction with whatever was the current model designation (eg Ta 189 v1, Me 210 v2 et al) but within project teams, a lot of working documents circulated with just a version number listed; that being all that was required by the team focusing on the one model.  It’s that, at least in part, that’s thought to account for so many different things being described as V-4, V-7 etc, misinformation the expansion of the internet appears to have made more prevalent.

Ironically, the dozens of Wunderwaffen to which so many resources were allocated ultimately achieved more for the Allies than the Germans.  After the war, the British, the Americans and the Russians all took whatever they could grab of the German military and scientific research establishment (equipment and personnel), carted it off, reassembled what they had and put the scientists to work.  In ballistics, rocketry and advanced aviation, the victorious powers of the late 1940s essentially had in their hands what represented probably decades of peace-time research.  It’s not that developments like trans-Atlantic airliners, the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) or the moon landing wouldn’t have been possible without the windfall of the German research but these things almost certainly would have taken longer to achieve, presumably decades such was the pace of advancement during the war.

The Vergeltungswaffen eins (V-1) was the world’s first cruise missile.  One of the rare machines to use a pulse-jet, it emitted such a distinctive sound that those at whom it was aimed nicknamed it the “buzz-bomb” although it attracted other names including doodlebug.  In Germany, before Goebbels decided it was the V-1, the official military code name was Fi 103 (The Fi stood for Fieseler, the original builder of the airframe and most famous for their classic Storch (Stork), short take-off & landing (STOL) aircraft) but there were also the code-names Maikäfer (maybug) & Kirschkern (cherry stone).  Although not fast enough to be invulnerable either to air or ground-fire and insufficiently accurate to be used in precision attacks, it was nevertheless an outstandingly economical delivery system, able to carry a warhead of 850 kg (1,870 lb) to London at a tiny fraction of the cost of using manned aircraft for the same task with the priceless additional benefit of not risking the loss of aircrew.  While the Allied defenses against the V-1 did improve over time, it was only the destruction of the launch sites and the occupation of territory within launch range that ceased the attacks.  Until then, the V-1 remained a highly effective terror weapon but, like the V-2 and so much of the German armaments effort, bureaucratic empire-building and political intrigue compromised the efficiency of the project. 

The Vergeltungswaffen zwei (V-2) was developed first by the German military with the code name Aggregat 4 (A4) and was the first guided, long-range ballistic missile.  With a range of around 320 km (200 miles), it briefly entered the stratosphere (technically the mesosphere) on its trajectory towards the target and once in flight, there was no effective defense; falling to earth faster than the speed of sound, nor was there any warning.  Technologically, it was an extraordinary advance in delivery systems but it was a very expensive way (inaccurately) to deliver a relatively small payload of 725 kg (1,600 lb) of high explosive.  When nuclear warheads were developed, the economics of ballistic missiles were realized.  Deployed simultaneously too early in its development to be successful and too late in the war to realise its strategic purpose, the V2 was influential in the history of both ballistics and space exploration.  It (1) cost more to develop than the atom-bomb, (2) caused fewer casualties when deployed than died during its development and production (most of whom were slave-workers), (3) was the ancestor of the ICBMs and (4), saved the US one or two decades the of research required to produce both the ICBMs and the big Saturn rockets which powered the Apollo programme.  It’s a myth the V-2 had no strategic effect.  From the time the Allies were convinced the programme was a threat (and it took actual physical evidence to convince the British scientific establishment the V-2 was even theoretically possible), much attention was paid, even to the extent of diverting bomber command from their plans to instead concentrate some resources on the V-2.  As a terror weapon, the effectiveness was then unparalleled, the British government was forced to react to the effect on public morale.  Some historians still under-estimate just how many resources the Allies had to divert to deal with the V2s.

The Vergeltungswaffen drei (V-3) was a modern take on a very old-fashioned idea, the big-bore gun.  Essentially, the principle was of one barrel with the projectile launched with multiple charges, each successive propellant charge adding to the velocity and therefore the range.  The concept is something like that used in electronics whereby a signal transmitted along a wire is boosted at intervals by line-drivers to compensate for loses over distance.  To preserve secrecy during development, the project was known as the Hochdruckpumpe (High Pressure Pump or HDP) and, among engineers, it gained the nickname Fleißiges Lieschen (Busy Lizzie).  The idea in ballistics actually dates from the late nineteenth century and was conceived as a way of achieving a high-velocity, large calibre weapon while not requiting an excessively (and probably impossibly) large barrel.  Some of the V-3s were fired a brief operational life before the sites had to be abandoned because of the Allied advance and the two aimed at London were disabled in air attacks on their bunkers using 5,400-kilogram (11,900 lb) "Tallboy" deep-penetration “earthquake” bombs.  A number of claims have been made that certain weapons are the true Vergeltungswaffen vier (V-4) including a variety of missiles, nuclear devices and jet bombers but there’s no conclusive evidence any was ever labeled as such by either the German military or armaments industry.

The Pase Rock: Lindsay Lohan's Revenge.