Skeg

Skeg (pronounced skeg)

(1) In shipbuilding, a fin-like projection supporting a rudder and protecting the propeller(s) at its lower end, located abaft a sternpost or rudderpost.

(2) In the design of smaller boats, an extension of the keel, designed to improve steering.

(3) In the slang of naval architects (in certain contexts), a stump or branch (the after-part of a ship's keel).

(4) In the slang of the General Motors (GM) stylists, a “lower fin”, matching the upper on the rear of 1961-1962 Cadillacs.

(5) The fin which acts as a stabilizer on a surfboard.  To suffer some injury after being hit by one of these fins is to be “skegged”.

(6) In Australian slang, a surfer; a person who leads the lifestyle of a surfer (used also derisively in the form “fake skeg” of those who adopt the style an appearance without actually surfing.

(7) A type of wild plum (obsolete).

(8) A kind of oat (obsolete).

(9) In Northern English dialectal use, a look or glance.

(10) In many cultures, a slang term applied to youth suggesting slovenliness, a predilection to petty crime and other anti-social behavior; also used widely in Scottish slang for a surprising variety of purposes including legs, trousers, dirt, scotch eggs, sex and women of loose virtue.

1590–1600: From a dialectal term for a stump, branch, or wooden peg, from the Dutch scheg (cutwater), of Scandinavian origin and related to the Swedish skog and the Old Norse & Icelandic skegg (projection on the stern of a boat).  In some Nordic languages, skegg means “beard” and was from the Old Norse skegg, from the Proto-Germanic skaggiją, from the primitive Indo-European skek, kek-, skeg & keg- (to jump, skip, move, hurry).  The name of the English coastal town of Skegness is though a construct of the Old Norse skegg (beard) + -nes (headland) and was thought a reference to the geography, the original settlement situated farther east at the mouth of The Wash (thus jutting out like a beard from a face).  A link with the Old Norse name Skeggi is thought unlikely.  The skegs of nautical architecture should not be confused with the homophone Sceggs, the acronym for students of Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar school (S.C.E.G.G.S.), seen also in the adjectival forms sceggesque & sceggish (one whose style suggests something similar to the stereotypical student of the school).  Skeg is a noun; the noun plural is skegs.

Lindsay Lohan in wet suit, with surfboard, Malibu, 2011.  The stabilizing skeg is the black protrusion at the back of the board.

On nautical vessels, skegs where they exist fulfill a significant function but they are not an essential part of hull design.  A skeg is an external structural feature, a vertical tapering projection permanently fixed at the aft, usually close to the centre-line.  Most are located in front of the rudder and structurally can often be considered a sternward extension of the keel (the internal, longitudinal members which lend much strength of the hull).  Although in military vessels there are additional functions, the moist significant contribution of a skeg is in hydrodynamics, a skeg designed to influence the flow patterns and thus affecting the dynamics of both the rudder (which is usually in line with the skeg) and propeller(s).  The design is thus a finely tuned equation because while a skeg inherently induces drag, the way it alters the flow pattern can reduces the drag and resistance suffered by the rudder and propeller(s), essentially by transforming the turbulent characteristics of the flow to laminar at the stern.  Historically, skegs were a vital component in maintaining a course and that’s still an important consideration in smaller vessels but in larger craft, improved rudder and advanced navigational as well as stabilization technologies like thrusters have meant skegs are no longer of the same significance in maintaining directionality.

An US Navy Iowa class battleship, showing the inner set of propeller shafts wholly enclosed in a pair of skegs.  On the big ships, the skegs were designed also as load-bearing supports while in dry-dock.

In the modern age, skegs became an unusual feature on warships, a relative few so equipped and the designs varied, some with only a few of their shafts inside skegs while others encased all.  While the traditional design imperatives were shared with other ships, for navies, they also offered the advantage of affording some degree of protection for rudders and propellers against torpedo attack.  Historically, another important attribute of skegs was what they add to a hull’s structural strength, making the (inherently weaker) stern resistant to outside forces and all the last of the US Navy’s dreadnoughts featured skegs.  Their hulls narrowed towards the stern and to save weight lacked the sternpost plates the British, German and Japanese navies always fitted to their battleships and the skegs compensated for this, offering a hull with similar rigidity.

The US Navy’s South Dakota class battleships were fitted with an unusual set of skegs, the design dictated by the relatively short hull, the large outboard skegs helping to reduce the adverse effects of fluid dynamics induced by the hull’s abrupt end.

However, advantages in engineering and metallurgy meant much of the functionality afforded by skegs could be achieved in other ways and skegs became unfashionable in naval architecture.  The modeling and simulations made possible by supercomputers meant hull designs could be rendered which mastered the turbulence caused by fluid dynamics so rudders and propellers were less affected so the skeg was in many cases a source of performance-sapping skin-friction drag with little compensating benefit.  Indeed, not only did this hamper performance, in some cases excessive vibration was caused, something which could only to a degree be ameliorated by changes to the propellers’ configurations.

Cadillac’s Skegs, 1961-1962

Cadillac Coupe DeVille, (1959, left & 1960 right).

The 1959 Cadillac’s tail-fins are the best remembered and most emblematic of the brief, extraordinary era during which the absurdly macropterous flourished.  They’re rightly known as “peak-fin” but it’s a myth they were the tallest because, measured from the ground, those on the 1961 Imperial are just under an inch (25 mm) more vertiginous.  The attractions of the style however were fading and in 1960, Cadillac and Chrysler (Ford never really got involved) began to tone them down.  Another cultural phenomenon is that because of the large number of pink 1959 Cadillacs which now exist, many assume they were a common sight when new, the things perhaps made memorable by the sight of the one owned by the admirable Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967).  However, the factory never made a pink 1959 Cadillac and in the era, it was only in 1956 such a color was on the option list and Ms Mansfield had one of those while her 1959 convertible received a custom re-paint.

Cadillac Coupe de Ville, (1961, left & 1962 right).

For the 1961 & 1962 range the fins became lower still but in compensation, the design staff added a lower fin and these, informally they called “skegs”.

1961 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, (left), one of the design proposals for 1961 (centre) & captured German V2 rocket (right).

While of course an extravagance, the skegs could have part of something even wilder because among the design proposals which emerged from the General Motors Advanced Design Studios was one which clearly was the ultimate expression of the motif of the 1950s which borrowed so much from the aerospace industry,  The proposed fins essentially were those of ballistic missiles which for decades were an evolution from the German Vergeltungswaffen zwei (V-2), developed first by the German military with the code name Aggregat 4 (A4).  Vergeltungswaffen is translated variously as "retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons" but in English use is often written as “vengeance weapons”.  Aerodynamically, presumably the proposal has something to commend it and it proceeded far enough into the selection for an expensive, full-sized clay model to be rendered (one wonders what the rejected sketches looked like) but ultimately the longer though somehow more restrained skegs were preferred.

The 1961 Cadillac: The long (left) and slightly less long (right) of it.

One quirk of Cadillac’s brief embrace of the skeg was there were two iterations: skeg long and skeg short.  Whether in response to or in anticipation of some owners preferring their Cadillac in a more conveniently sized package, between 1961-1963 a “short-deck” option was made available on certain body styles.  Offered first on the six-window Sedan de Ville, an encouraging 3,756 were built so the option was in 1962 offered on the four-window Sixty Two Town Sedan but sales actually dropped to 2600, the decline in interest confirmed the next year when only 1575 of the four-window Park Avenue Sedan de Ville were sold.  Using the same 129.5 inch (3289 mm) wheelbase as the regular models but eight inches (200 mm) shorter in overall length (215 vs 223 inches (5461 vs 5664 mm)), space utilization was obviously a little better but the market had spoken.  With fewer than eight-thousand of the short-deck models sold across three seasons while the standard editions shipped in the tens of thousands, the flirtation with (slightly) more efficient packaging was abandoned for 1964; in the course of the following decade, Cadillacs would grow another seven inches (178 mm) and gain over 400 lb (181 kg).

For 1963, the short-deck models returned for another dismal season but the skegs were abandoned, never to return.  The fins however the design studio found harder to forsake, conscious perhaps it was on the 1948 Cadillac they’d first appeared.  Then, modestly sized, they’d been an allusion to the tail-planes used on the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939) but the fashion had passed and the fins had to go so, inch by inch, there was a retreat from the heights and exuberance of 1959 until in 1966 the fins were vestigial, a hint which for decades would be retained.

A gang of four Sceggs, Sydney, Australia.

Sanction

Sanction (pronounced sangk-shuhn)

(1) Authoritative permission or approval, as for an action.

(2) Something that serves to support an action, condition, etc.

(3) Something that gives binding force, as to an oath, rule of conduct, etc.

(4) In (usually contract) law, a provision of a law enacting a penalty for disobedience or a reward for obedience.

(5)  A penalty or reward.

(6) In international law, action by one or more states (or a multi-national institution) toward another state, institution or individual(s), calculated to force it compliance with certain obligations.

(7) To authorize, approve, or allow; to ratify or confirm.

1555–1565: From the Latin sānctiōn- (stem of sānctiō (the establishment of an inviolable decree)), genitive sānctiōnis, the construct being sānct(us) (past participle of sancīre (to prescribe by law; to make law by decree) + -iōn (from the Latin suffix -iō (genitive -iōnis), appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action).  The Middle English borrowing came directly from the French sanction and the usual early form in English meant "confirmation or enactment of a law" and was sometimes used interchangeably with the Latin sanctionem (nominative sanctio) (“act of decreeing or ordaining” or “decree, ordinance" the noun of action from the past-participle stem of sancire (to decree, confirm, ratify, make sacred)) which was used especially of ecclesiastical decrees.  The verb form in the sense “confirm by sanction, make valid or binding” dates from 1778 and by 1797 it meant also “authoritatively to permit”, both derived from the noun.  The seemingly contradictory meaning "impose a penalty on" was first used in 1956 but is rooted in an old legalistic sense of the noun and, when deconstructed, the ambiguity dissolves, this use in international diplomacy first documented in 1900 as a plural of the noun sanction in the sense of "part or clause of a law which spells out the penalty for breaking it", a meaning which can be traced back to the 1650s.  From the Latin, influenced by the spread of Roman civil law, derivatives appear in many languages including Catalan (sanció), French (sanction), Galician (sanction), Italian (sanzione), Piedmontese (sansion), Portuguese (sanção), Russian (санкция (sankcija)) and Spanish (sanction).  Sanction & sanctioner are nouns, sanctioned & sanctioning are verbs and sanctionable, sanctionless & sanctionative are adjectives; the noun plural is sanctions.

Sanction busting

Although in some ways a simple language to learn, English has some quirks, notably a massive vocabulary in which one word can have many meanings and multiple words can mean the same thing.  There are also cases where a word can seem simultaneously to sustain two diametrically opposite meanings and these are called auto-antonyms (or contronym or Janus words), the technical term for the phenomenon being enantiosemy ((from the Ancient Greek ἐναντίος (enantíos) (opposite)).  Sanction can convey opposite meanings, depending on context, the Janus-faced nature more evident when used as a noun.  The noun historically referred to the "action of ordaining as inviolable under a penalty" but, in a manner not unfamiliar in English, it evolved in opposite directions, one relating to legal or ethical rules, the other to the penalties imposed for violating these rules.  From the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the verb tended to the positive, the negative meaning "penalize" in general use until the 1950s.  Sanction in this sense is most commonly used in official (though not exclusively governmental) contexts, most often when one government imposes economic measures on another to try to force it to comply with laws or expectations.  The linguistic evolution wasn’t deliberate because that’s not how English usually works; instead it was an adoption of the verbal shorthand of the world of diplomacy.

The Kim Dynasty's new (used) cars

Like his grandfather Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1948-1994), and father Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1994-2011), Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011), is a great admirer of big Mercedes and the regime is believed still to be the only outfit on earth owning a brace of long-roofed (presidential in collector slang) Mercedes-Benz 600s (W100, 1963-1981) Pullman Landaulets (only twelve of which were built).  The Supreme Leader however must have decided to update and it appears that in 2018, several "special" Mercedes-Benz were shipped from the Dutch Port of Rotterdam, via China and five other countries, to the DPRK.  The cars appear to be from the factory's "Guard" programme and there’s an unconfirmed rumor a toilet is installed in at least one for the Great Leader’s convenience.

The Great Leader's motorcade on the way to meet with Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999), Mercedes Maybach S600 Pullman Guard in front, Mercedes Maybach S62 following, Vladivostok, Russia, April 2019. 

The “Guard” range of vehicles are produced on a special post-production assembly line to meet the demand from heads of state, royalty, oligarchs and leading figures in organized crime for a vehicle which retains the traditional aura of a limousine while affording the levels of protection associated with the smaller armored personnel carriers (APC) & troop carriers used by the military.  The most expensive in the range is based on the opulent Mercedes-Maybachs and meet VR10 protection standards (defined under Directive BRV 2009 v2.0, only some of the specifications of which publicly are disclosed) but it’s known additional steel-alloy & composite panels are installed between the unibody and outer body panels, overlapped at key points to provide what’s described as “comprehensive ballistic protection”, a similar approach applied to the floor to deflect the blast from explosives (conforming to the ERV 2010 protocol).  The windows are thicker and coated with polycarbonate to prevent splintering with the panes permanently fixed (that approach may have been thought not suitable if the rumors of the toilet are true and the Great Leader's car is the previous version with an opening window).  Although the Guard has a wheelbase eight inches (200 mm) longer than the Standard Mercedes-Maybach platform and weights (presumably much) more, the factory lists the power-train as identical to the base vehicle, the 5.5 litre (365 cubic inch) twin-turbocharged V-12 rated at 523 horsepower and 612 lb-ft of torque.

Because sanctions imposed by the United Nations as punishment for Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development are supposed to bar companies and individuals from selling luxury goods to North Korea, technically, The Supreme Leader shouldn’t have be able to buy them.  It’s however estimated that since 2015, some US$440 million in luxury goods have been imported by the DPRK, sourced from some ninety countries, almost all in violation of UN sanctions.  In response to questions, Daimler, which manufactures Mercedes-Benz, a spokesperson said they had "...no indication on how the mentioned vehicles were delivered and where they come from", later issuing a statement:

"For Daimler, the correct export of products in conformance with the law is a fundamental principle of responsible entrepreneurial activity.  Our company has had no business connections with North Korea for far more than 15 years now and strictly complies with EU and US embargoes.  To prevent deliveries to North Korea and to any of its embassies worldwide, Daimler has implemented a comprehensive export control process. Sales of vehicles by third parties, especially of used vehicles, are beyond our control and responsibility."

Although Daimler seemed to imply The Supreme Leader was now reduced to buying used cars (something never suggested of The Great Leader or The Dear Leader), neither Berlin nor Pyongyang commented on the diplomatic slight.

In the matter of Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018), New York’s highest appellate court dismissed Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V and rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.  Take-Two Interactive Software had requested sanctions be imposed, claiming “Lindsay Lohan complains that her image and persona have been wrongfully used by Take-Two in the video game Grand Theft Auto V, but her claim is so legally meritless that it lacks any good-faith basis and can only have been filed for publicity purposes” and was thus an abuse of process.  Both the trial and appellate judges declined to impose sanctions.

In civil legal proceedings, it's possible in some jurisdictions for a party to request a judge to “sanction” the opposing side by imposing a penalty or punishment for some form of misconduct or violation of the rules of the court.  Typically, sanctions are sought when one party believes the other has engaged in improper behavior, such as failing to comply with discovery obligations, disobeying court orders, or engaging in frivolous or abusive litigation tactics including using the administrative processes of the court to "string out" the length of the hearing, usually in the hope of exhausting an opponent's financial resources, compelling them to discontinue the action.  In most jurisdictions this technically doesn’t extend to “vexatious litigation” (the determination of which remains the preserve of the court) but counsel may raise essentially the same issue as “an abuse of process”.  The mechanism of the sanction is to promote equity of access, fairness of procedure, ensure compliance with court rules, and deter inappropriate conduct during proceedings. The specific sanctions available depend on the jurisdiction and the rules of the court.  Some common types of sanctions include:

(1) Fines may be imposed (payable to the court) or compensation to the other party might be ordered.

(2) Orders may be issued restricting or limiting a party's ability to present certain evidence or arguments related to the issues in the case.  This sanction is invoked where attempts are made to introduce material which is irrelevant, repetitive or in excessive volume.  Pleadings or statements of claim may also be excluded.

(3) In extreme cases of willful or deliberate misconduct, a judge may find the party in contempt of court and this may result in the imposition of fines or even terms of imprisonment. 

Migraine

Migraine (pronounced mahy-greyn or mee-greyn)

(1) An extremely severe paroxysmal headache, usually confined to one side of the head and often associated with nausea; hemicrania.

(2) A neurological condition characterised by such headaches

1325–1375: From the Middle English, from the Old French migraigne, from (as an imperfect echoic) the Medieval Latin hēmicrānia (pain in one side of the head, headache) and the Greek hemikrania, the construct being hemi (half) + kranion (skull).  The earliest form in English was megrim or mygrame with the spelling revised in 1777 to adopt the French form.  It’s never been clear if any of the European forms are a calque of the Egyptian gs-tp (headache), a construct of gs (half) + tp (head); the link between the Egyptian magical papyri and the Greek hēmikranía (ἡμικρανία) is undocumented and could be coincidental.  The corrupt form megrim was in common use between the fifteenth & early twentieth centuries is now obsolete although it did for a while endure in its secondary senses of "depression; low spirits" (and curiously, "a whim or fancy").  The pronunciation mee-greyn is said to be most prevalent in Scotland.  Migraine is a noun and migrainoid & migrainous are adjectives; the noun plural is migraines.

Technically, a migraine is a severe, often recurring, headache, usually affecting only one side of the head, characterized by sharp pain and often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, and visual disturbances.  Vasodilation in the brain causes inflammation which results in pain, but the exact cause of migraine remains unknown.  In casual use there’s a tendency, not restricted to hypochondriacs, to use word to describe even mild headaches.

Donald Trump, Crooked Hillary Clinton & Boris Johnson demonstrate the single-handed reaction to a migraine.

Despite advances, the exact causes of migraines are yet fully to be understood and although there's a consensus migraines are complex neurological conditions triggered by various factors, it may be they are inherent to the nature of being human and while treatments may improve, many neurologists have cautioned there may never be a “cure” although it’s noted a susceptibility to migraines seems to run in families, suggesting there may be a genetic predisposition.  At the physical level, abnormalities in the brain's nerve pathways and chemical signaling are believed to be involved, changes in the levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine suggested as causative agents.  The triggers appear to vary between individuals although the most commonly mentioned include foods such as aged cheeses, chocolate, caffeine, and artificial sweeteners, alcohol, stress, hormonal changes (seemingly only in women), changes in sleep patterns, sensory stimuli (bright lights, loud noises, strong odors), weather changes, and certain medications.  Critical too appear to be (1) abnormalities in the brainstem and its interactions with the trigeminal nerve (a major pain pathway) and (2) fluctuations in blood flow to the brain, including constriction and dilation of blood vessels.  Interestingly, as varied as the causes may be, so too is the effectiveness of the treatments and doctors frequently report a regimen some patients finds most efficacious might achieve nothing on others reporting the same symptoms, and possible triggers.

Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the two-handed reaction to a migraine although, given the migraine typically afflicts only one side of the head, this may be a more common response to the (usually) less severe but more widespread headache.

The Migraine Pose

A staple of portrait photography for decades, the migraine pose isn’t new but Instagram is a big-machine database and it’s now easy to identify trends and spikes in techniques.  The migraine look seems to have peaked in late 2018 and although still often posted, the historic moment of the trend seems to have passed.  The pose is achieved by using one hand to pulling the face up by the temples, a look reminiscent of someone suffering a migraine.  Classically done with one hand because the headache from which it borrows the name usually is localised to one side of the head, models adopt the look because it tightens the face, renders cheekbones more prominent and lifts the brows, a kind of instant facelift.  The hand may be placed on the temples, forehead or crown but should be done with a light touch, not a gripping of the head or hair.  Models also caution neophytes not to neglect the hands and nails because nothing spoils even a perfectly composed photograph like a poor manicure.

Gigi Hadad: The perfect migraine pose by a professional model.  With that bone structure and flawless skin, she doesn't need the artifice the technique can lend those falling short of her structural ideal but the pose adds variety to a photo shoot and photographers still like it.

Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022):  Although Mr Joyce seems frequently to adopt the migraine pose, the consensus is it's not an attempt to make himself more attractive in photographs and it's likely he actually suffers headaches.  These could be caused by many things.

Of course, Mr Joyce may also have been the cause of migraines in a few of his colleagues.  He's pictured here in 2018 with Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime-minister 2015-2018).

Cheugy

Cheugy (pronounced chew-gee)

A specialized form describing the un-cool: either (1) out of touch with current coolness and continuing to adhere to fashions or following trends which have become unfashionable or (2) trying too hard to be trendy.

2013: Coined by Gaby Rasson (b 1998) of Los Angeles, California while a student in a Beverly Hills high school although a normally reliable source (urbandictionary.com) includes the claim cheugy was “a technical term used by software engineers beginning in the mid-2000's meaning poorly maintained, damaged but narrowly functional, full of security holes, or quaintly obsolete and probably broken”.  Cheugy, cheugier & cheugist are adjectives and cheug is a noun and; the noun plural is cheugs.  Cheugyness & cheuginess have been said to exist (as non-standard noun variations of the adjective) but not all lexicographers agree cheugy or any of its derivations are “real” words although none would deny they’re slang.  The objection is that other than multiple instances of definitions and deconstructions, there’s scant evidence the word is actually in real-world use.  Most of the interest in the word seems to have been to disparage (1) those using it (rare as such folk seem to be) and (2) those who comment on those who use it (some noting the irony, some not).

Ms Rasson said she coined cheugy for the perfectly reasonable reason that the word she needed didn’t exist.  At the time, she wanted a single word descriptor for those schoolmates trying without success “to be trendy” and “…there was a missing word that was on the edge [sic] of my tongue and nothing to describe it and cheugy came to me.  How it sounded fitted the meaning.”  Ms Rasson didn’t expand on the process but it may have been a thing of phonetic association with an expression like “eww” and a word like “ugly”.  Whatever the inspiration(s), cheugy seems not to have circulated beyond the inventor’s circle of acquaintances until 2021 when it went viral in the now traditional way: appearing in a TikTok video.  In the clip, cheugy was said to be the perfect word to describe those who posted TikTok videos in hopes of being thought cool or edgy but whose content was just cringeworthy (cringey in TicTok talk).  By mid-May #cheugy had gained over 10 million views, trending on Twitter within a year and clearly feeling proprietorial, Ms Rasson tweeted that she’d “…decided to do the cheugiest thing possible and make an NFT out of the word cheugy”, entreating “place your bids cheugs.”

The Gucci Double-G belt appears on most lists of cheugy stuff.

Similar terms of derision had before existed in slang (basic, normie et al) but they didn’t convey quite the same thing so, as long as it attains critical mass, cheugy might find a niche.  It’s too soon to tell whether the word will survive in democratic, unforgiving English but there’s definitely a cheugy aesthetic or, more correctly, a number of lists of the practices, preferences and proclivities of others judged to be cheugy.  The lists were presumably predictable to those immersed in the minutiae of such things and perhaps baffling to others.  More interesting was that cheuginess appeared to be (1) a weaponized label with which GenZ and the millennials could exchange cultural blows and (2) another way to disparage women, an arsenal already large.  There will be obsessives who will read the lists and worry but it’s hard to take seriously any list which condemns lasagna.

A thousand years shall pass and lasagna will never be cheugy.

It didn’t take long for the zeitgeisters wearily to observe that the very spike in the use of cheugy meant it had itself become cheugy, enjoying a brief, shining moment of newness, before becoming dated.  In linguistics the process is known as "the snake eating its tail", a fate which the coiner of "bedint" noted was probably the fate of his creation.  Technically then, cheugy is an auto-antonym or contronym, a word with multiple meanings, one of which is defined as the reverse of one of its other meanings (a phenomenon which in structural linguistics is called enantiosemy, enantionymy or antilogy).  The common way of expressing this is “Janus word”, the name derived from Roman mythology, Janus a god of doorways (and thus also of beginnings), and of the rising and setting of the sun, usually represented as having one head with two bearded faces back to back, looking in opposite directions, historically understood as the past and the future (and adopted in linguistics to describe a word with two, opposed meanings).  Still, the word is there to be used and, some cheugs being more cheugistic than others, the comparative is "more cheugy" (or cheugier) and the superlative "most cheugy" (or cheugiest).

Cheugy has "happened" but may or may not become embedded in English, something which relies on sustained use by a critical mass.  The size of the mass can vary, some embedded words used by a relatively small sub-set while other innovations (like "okay") are more widely adopted, sometimes even beyond English.  Fetch never happened (Mean Girls (2004)) although, as a convenient clipping of “fetching” (usually in the form quite fetching or very fetching and meaning “charming; captivating; compelling”), it might have had "fetching" not already having descended into the category of "dated".  By the early twenty-first century, "fetching" wasn't cheugy because it was so rare.

Ash

Ash (pronounced ash)

(1) The powdery, nonvolatile products and residue formed when matter is burnt; that which remains after burning; any of certain compounds formed by burning.

(2) In geology, finely pulverized lava thrown out by a volcano in eruption (technically volcanic ash).

(3) In chemistry, the non-aqueous remains of a material subjected to any complete oxidation process.

(4) Human (or animal) remains after cremation and either buried, scattered or stored in a crypt or container (usually styled as an “urn” regardless of style (always in the plural).

(5) Figuratively, mortal remains in general (always in the plural).

(6) Figuratively, the residue of anything (structures, institutions, movements, ideas, hopes etc), especially following disasters or catastrophes.

(7) In arboreal classification, any of the various oleaceous trees of the genus Fraxinus, of the olive family (especially F. excelsior of Europe and Asia or F. americana (white ash) of North America), having opposite, pinnate leaves, winged seeds and purplish flowers in small clusters.

(8) In arboreal classification, any of several trees resembling the ash, such as the mountain ash (and in Australia, any of several trees resembling the ash, especially of the eucalyptus genus).

(9) The tough, straight, close-grained wood of any of these trees, highly valued as timber because of its durability, widely used for the handles of tools (shovels, pick-axes etc) and once the choice material for the frames of many early automobiles.

(10) The largely archaic æsc (the symbols Æ & æ) (ash) from the Old English (the plural æscas).  The digraph æ represents a front vowel approximately like that of the “a” in the Modern English “hat” and the character is used also used to represent this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

(11) A light silvery grey colour, often with a brownish tinge.

(12) As the ash-blonde hair color, a spectrum expressed in solid and variegated forms which blends or interpolates various classic blondes, silver-greys, and the lighter shades of brown.

(13) The acronym for Action on Smoking & Health, non-governmental organizations (NGO) in eth UK, Ireland & New Zealand, chartered as a charities (though through interaction with government they function sometimes in a way similar to QANGOs).

(14) To removed the burned tobacco from the end of a burning cigar or cigarette (usually by “flicking”, “tapping” or tapping the unburned section on the rim of an ashtray  The used to describe emptying the ask from the bowl of an extinguished pipe is less common.

(15) In agriculture, to cover newly-sown fields of crops with ashes.

Pre 950: From the Middle English asshe & aisshe (powdery remains of fire), from the Old English asce & æsce, from the Proto-West Germanic askā, from the Proto-Germanic askǭ, from the primitive Indo-European hes-.  It was cognate with the Frisian esk, the Dutch asch, the Swedish aska, the Danish & Norwegian aske, the Old Norse & Old High German aska (from which German gained German Asche) and the Gothic azgo (from the unattested Germanic askōn- (though the evolution of the Gothic is murky).  It was akin to the Latin ārēre (to be dry) (from which English ultimately gained arid) and āra (altar), the Oscan aasaí (on the altar), the Tocharian ās- (dry out; to get dry), the Sanskrit ā́sa- (ashes) and the Hittite hassi (on the hearth), from the primitive Indo-European root as- (to burn, glow).  The Spanish and Portuguese ascua (red-hot coal) are Germanic loan-words.  Ash is a noun & verb, ashiness is a noun, ashed is a verb, ashing is a noun & verb, ashen is an adjective & verb and ashless is an adjective; the noun plural is ashes.  The UK dialectal plural axen was from the Middle English axen & axnen, from the Old English axan & asċan (ashes) and was the plural of the Old English axe or æsċe (ash).  Some dictionaries do list it as rare but for (non-historic) purposes it’s archaic.

The various trees gained the common name ash from the Old English æsc, which was related to the primitive Indo-European word for the tree, while the generic name originated in Latin from a primitive Indo-European word for birch.  Both words were also used to mean “spear” & “shaft” in their respective languages because the straight, tough and durable timber was ideal for such purposes.  From the Old High German asc was derived the German Esche, with an altered vowel from the adjectival derivative eschen (which in Middle High German was eschîn.  It was akin to the Latin ornus (wild mountain ash), the Welsh onnen, the Ancient Greek ὀξύα (oxúa) (beech), the Old Armenian հացի (hacʿi), the Russian yáseń, the Polish jesion, the Czech jasan, the Lithuanian úosis, the Armenian hatsi and the Albanian ah (beech), all ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ōs (ash (tree)).  Although the close-grained timber of the ash is tough, it also has outstanding elasticity which allows it to be formed into shapes so was the preferred wood for spear-shafts and later came to be favored by coach-builders, many of the early automobiles also constructed with ash frames.

Forms have been coined as needed (as a portmanteau or with or without the hyphen) including ash-gourd, ash-pan, ashtray, ashcan, ash-pit fly-ash, ash-borer, pearl-ash, pot-ash & soda ash.  Potash (a class of potassium minerals of similar applicability to potassium carbonate and widely used in the production of fertilizers) is one of the most extensively mined minerals in the world.  One inventive use was noted in 1945 when the US military designated their internment camp for suspected Nazi war criminals as “Ashcan”; impressed, the British dubbed their holding facility “Dustbin”.  The ash-bin (receptacle for ashes from a fire and other refuse) seems not to have been recorded until 1847 although such devices would have been in use for centuries.  Similarly, the word ash-tray (reusable receptacle for the the ashes of the tobacco of smokers) first appears only in 1851 although they were doubtlessly among the first companion products after tobacco was introduced to the Western world after the early European exploration of the Americas in the late fifteenth century.  The ash-heap (stack or pile of ashes or other refuse) dates from the 1640s and seems to have been invented by foundry workers, who presumably produced more ash than most, at a time when their processes were mostly wood-fired.  The ash-pit (repository for ashes, especially in the lower part of a furnace) was first recorded in 1797 and reflected the increasing size of furnaces technological progress made possible; it was the “big brother” to the earlier ash-hole, in use since the 1640s, which continued to be used to describe the architecture of smaller installations.  It’s not known if regional variations in pronunciation meant “ash-hole” sometimes cause problems.

Lindsay Lohan imagined as an ash-blonde.

The phrase “ashes to ashes” is from the Church of England’s (Anglican) burial ritual, mentioned first in the Book of Common Prayer (1549) as part of the service's committal: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother [or sister] here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  It’s an echo of biblical passage from Genesis 3:19: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  Over time, “ashes to ashes” transcended its religious origin and has come to be used to allude to the cyclical nature of life and the inevitability of death.  Long pre-dating Christianity, ashes, as a reminder of finality, had been an ancient symbol of grief or repentance, their presence a part of pagan rituals and the early Church picked this up, the tradition beginning when Pope Gregory I (circa 540–604; usually styled Saint Gregory the Great, pope 590-604) sprinkled ashes on the heads of penitents on the first day of Lent although it wasn’t formalized in the ecclesiastical calendar until the fourteenth century, “ashes” having come to mean “the mortal remains of a person” by at least the late thirteenth century and alluded to the ancient custom of cremation.  The use to refer to the finely pulverized lava ejected from volcanoes dates from the 1660s.

Craftspersons (and some these days are other than male) in the Morgan factory at Malvern Link, Worcestershire in the UK, fashioning & fabricating ash frames (left) and 1973 Morgan +8 (right).

With only detail changes, the appearance of the roadsters (and the underlying ash frame, the patterns for which haven’t changed since 1937) in 2023 has little changed since the 1950s and the ancestry of the machines from the 1930s is obvious, the similarities out-numbering the differences.  It’s a persistent myth that under the skin, the Morgan’s platform is made entirely of wood but the truth is the chassis has always been rendered in steel & aluminum onto which is mounted the ash frame, to which the aluminum external panels are attached.  Each roadster takes three weeks to complete.

The “Ashes obituary”, 1882.

The Ashes is the (usually biannual) test cricket series conducted between Australia and England (who toured as the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) until 1970).  The term “The Ashes” dates from a satirical obituary published in a UK newspaper in 1882, the day after Australia recorded its first test victory on English soil.  The “obituary” noted the death of English cricket and that “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”.  The idea caught on and as a prelude to the MCC’s next tour of Australia in 1882–1883, the press frequently mentioned the importance of regaining “those ashes”.  This the MCC’s captain vowed to do and after taking an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series the job was done and some ladies presented him with a small urn (of unknown provenance although it may have been used for scent) said to contain the ashes of a wooden bail, humorously referred to as “the ashes of Australian cricket”.  Although it took some years before the contest between the teams was institutionalized as “the Ashes” since the 1920s that’s how they’ve been known.

Former England captain Mike Brearley (b 1942) with the Ashes urn, 1977.

The actual “ashes”, the original urn which has rarely left the MCC Museum at Lord's Cricket Ground in London since being presented to the club in 1927, is tiny, just over four inches (105 mm) high which is remarkable for a trophy which is of such significance to both nations.  It’s something like the sense of English understatement expressed when one compares No 10 Downing Street to something like the Élysée Palace which isn’t a wholly fair juxtaposition but they are, in a sense, comparable national symbols.  Certainly, the modest Ashes urn (originally a mass-produced, terracotta item little different from the thousands sold at the time in seaside souvenir shops) has about it noting of the grandeur of something like the America’s Cup (known as the Auld Mug; 1.1m (43 inches) high and weighing in at a hefty 14 kg odd (30+ lb) or any number of trophies in sports like rugby, football, tennis et al.  As a consolation for the original remaining locked up the MCC, in recent series, larger trophies with designs which acknowledge the little urn are now awarded to the victorious team.

Sir Lewis Hamilton contemplating a "plastic" trophy, Silverstone, 2014.

So trophies don’t have to be imposingly large or obviously expensive to be sought after as long as they’re vested with an appropriate history.  However, there can be some expectation of bling for those won by those contesting one-off events of some significance and Formula One driver Sir Lewis Hamilton (b 1985), prompted apparently by being awarded a “plastic” trophy after winning the 2014 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, later suggested it looked like it might be worth about £10, rather less than the traditional RAC (Royal Automobile Club) Gold Cup (he was subsequently presented with the cup at a press conference).  Warming to the topic though, Sir Lewis said he’d noted an obvious decline in the quality of the trophies awarded to Grand Prix winners and that he’d brought the matter to the attention of the then head of the F1 Bernie Ecclestone (b 1930).  It’s estimated the Ashes urn in 1882 would have been purchased for less than whatever was the equivalent then of £10 in 2014 so history and aura can be worth more than bling.

Lindsay Lohan with some trophies.  Sir Lewis might reflect things could have been worse.