Prepone & Postpone

Postpone (pronounced pohst-pohn or pohs-pohn)

(1) To put off to a later time; to defer.

(2) To place after in order of importance or estimation; to subordinate in a hierarchy (rare, probably obsolete).

1490–1500: From the Latin postpōnere (to put after, esteem less, neglect, lay aside), the construct being post- (after) + pōnere (to put, to place) and postpōnō (I put after; I postpone), the construct being post (after) + pōnō (I put; I place).  The usual meaning in Latin was the one now rare (to place something lower in importance); the now almost universal sense of an "act of deferring to a future time" is from 1770, the common form since then postpone + -ment.  Earlier, Dr Johnson in 1755 listed postponence.  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  Judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.  Postpone (used with object) is a verb; postponed & postponing are verbs, postponed & postponable are adjectives and postponement & postponer are nouns.  Synonyms include adjourn, defer, delay, forestay, hold up, shelve, suspend, put on ice, pigeonhole, prorogue, posticipate, table, carry over, carry forward, cool it, procrastinate, hang fire, hold off, hold over, lay over, put back & put on hold.

Noting the twentieth anniversary of the body-swap comedy Freaky Friday (2003) staring Lindsay Lohan & Jamie-Lee Curtis (b 1958), it was in early 2023 reported a sequel was in the works with work on the screenplay "well-advanced".  Both actors were reportedly expected to reprise their roles but the project has been postponed because of co-ordinated strike action by the actors and screen writers.

Prepone (pronounced pree-pohn)

To reschedule to an earlier day or time.

Pre 1550: From Middle English, the construct being pre- (before) + (post)pone.  A back formation modeled on postpone, it’s now an antonym of the source.  The modern is patterned on the same basis as the circa 1972 prequel (from sequel).  The prefix pre- was from the Middle English pre-, from the Latin prae-, from the preposition prae (before) (prae- & præ- although archaic, still in occasional use for technical or pedantic purposes).  In most cases, it's usually prefixed to words without a hyphen (prefix, predate et al) but a hyphen is used where (1) excluding a hyphen would be likely to lead to a mispronunciation of the word because "pre" appears not to be a complete syllable, (2) (in British English) before the letter e, (3) (often in British English) before other vowels and (4) before a character other than a letter.

Many dictionaries list the origin of prepone as a creation of Indian English in the early 1970s but the first known instance in the sense of “to set before” predates even the Raj, the first known instance from ecclesiastical writing in 1549.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) credits the first use to Puritan clergyman and polemicist Robert Crowley (1517–1588), who in 1549 wrote: “I do prepone and set the Lord alwaye before myne eyes.”  However, it seems to have gone dormant, apparently not seen in print until published in December 1913 by the New York Times (NYT), in a letter to the editor in which a Mr John D Trenor advised he had decided to “…coin the word prepone as a needed rival of that much revered and oft-invoked standby, postpone.”  A useful word certainly but what the Mr Trenor actually had done was take Mr Crowley’s word and vest it with a new meaning: an antonym of postpone.  Prepone, a back-construction from postpone seems a good word to those who value the elegance of sparseness in sentences.  One can prepone something more effortless than can one “move that appointment earlier” or “advance that deadline” or “bring it forward to an earlier date”.  Nor should it suffer from overuse; given we probably are all prone more to procrastinate than persevere, postponements seem likely to remain more prevalent than preponements.

The idea of prepone being an invention of modern Indian English appears based on a spike in use in the early 1970s after what was probably an independent coining of the word rather than a revival of something from the NYT decades before.  Interestingly, there’s a streak of the linguistic puritanical among some English-speaking Indians.  Prepone, a most useful word, has been a part of Indian English for decades but is shunned by many, particularly the more educated and while it appears in the odd newspaper, it’s almost absent from books, teachers often emphasizing its lowly status.  It’s a curious phenomenon.  While native English speakers delight in adopting Indian-inspired contributions to English (bungalow; pyjamas et al), among highly-educated Indian speakers of English, there is a prejudice against local creations, the phrase “as we say in Indian English” often added, sometimes almost in apologia.  It’s certainly not an aversion to the new, Indians as quick as anyone else to pick up “selfie”, “sext” and of course, “avatar” (actually from Hindu mythology).

Prepone: Not all Indians approve.

Informally (but most stridently), India has an English Language "establishment" which speaks English with a clipped precision now rare in the West.  Not a humorous lot, they're dedicated to the task of ensuring Indian English doesn't descend to the debased thing it so often is in less civilized places (the UK, Australia, the US etc) and they publish much material to correct use by errant Indians and admonish the linguistically unhygienic.  It's the empire striking back and prepone is on their (long) list of proscribed barbarisms which is a shame because it's an attractive and useful word and surely Shakespeare would have approved.

Portrait

Portrait (pronounced pawr-trit, pawr-treyt, pohr-trit or pohr-treyt)

(1) A likeness of a person, especially of the face, as a painting, drawing, or photograph (when used as a modifier: a portrait gallery).

(2) A verbal description of someone or something, especially if pertaining to an individual’s character.

(3) Relating to or producing vertical, upright orientation of computer or other digital output, with lines of data parallel to the two shorter sides of a page or screen (as opposed “landscape” in which the relationship is inverted).  The use was formalized in digital technology as applied to aspect ratios (page layouts, images, monitors etc).

(4) In printing (of a publication or an illustration in a publication), being of greater height than width.

1560–1570: From the Middle English portrait (a figure, drawn or painted), either a back formation from portraiture or directly from the French portrait, from the Middle French portraict & pourtraict (a drawing, image, etc), the noun use of the past participle of portraire (to portray), from the thirteenth century Old French portret, from the Latin prōtrahō.  Wherever used, the various forms were always applied especially to pictures or representation of the head and face of a person drawn from life.  The spelling pourtraict is obsolete.  Portrait is a noun, verb & adjective, portraitist & portraiture are nouns and portraiting & portraited are verbs and portraitlike & portraitesque are adjectives; the noun plural is portraits.

An image of Lindsay Lohan, digitally rendered in the style of an oil on canvas portrait.

Artists painting their own image had been a part of art for centuries but the term “self-portrait” entered English in 1821, a direct translation of the German Selbstbildnis (the construct being selbst +‎ Bildnis).  The portraiture (the art of making portraits; a painting, picture, or drawing) emerged in the late fourteenth century and was from the twelfth century Old French portraiture (portrait, image, portrayal, resemblance).  The term Fayum (a city in Egypt, and the associated region) portrait (also known as the "mummy portrait" or "Faiyum portrait" describes the class of naturalistic portraits rendered on the wooden boards attached to mummies from the Coptic period.  Produced between the first & third centuries AD, they were a sub-set of the school of panel painting popular in late Antiquity and have been an invaluable source of information for historians, revealing much about fashion, social structures and aspects of religious beliefs and the associated politics.  Fayum was from the Arabic الفَيُّوم‎ (al-fayyūm), from the Coptic (ph̀iom) (the sea, Fayum), from the Egyptian pꜣ ym (Lake Moeris (literally “The Lake”), the construct being pꜣ (the) + ym (lake).  The term “swagger portrait” is one of the informal terms used to describe a work (not of necessity a portrait as one is now conventionally understood) which is rendered in a style deliberately to emphasize their wealth, status or importance.

The portrait versus landscape aspect ratio was much discussed in the early days of televising live sport on television, the producers concluding there were "landscape sports" and "portrait sports".  Human vision is naturally in a landscape aspect which is why the 16:9 (width x height) ratio works so well in computer monitors and it's said to explain why architecture which follows the dimensionality of the DL envelope is thought to be so pleasing; almost all  the early television screens were in a landscape shape (typically 4:3 or 6:4).  Thus, sports like most football codes (covered with cameras on the long sides and played on a rectangular field) were thought "landscape" and worked best on TV while the forms played on ovals involving much high kicking (such as Australian Rules) was inherently portrait.  Some portrait sports were suitable however because of their small scale.  Tennis was a portrait sport which had to be covered from the small ends but the rectangular courts were small and with attention to camera angles, could be made to work well.  Cricket was (sort of the same) although much panning was involved to cover the rest of the ground when required.     

“Portrait bust” in marble (circa 1895) of Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) by the German Sculptor Reinhold Begas (1831-1911).

In early 1939, during construction of the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, workmen dropped one of the Begas busts of Bismarck which had for decades stood in the old Chancellery, breaking it at the neck.  The architect Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945), knowing that the superstitious Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) regarded the Reich Eagle toppling from the post-office building right at the beginning of World War I (1914-1918) as a harbinger of doom, kept the accident secret and had architect and sculptor Arno Breker (1900–1991) carve an exact copy.  To give the fake the necessary patina, it was soaked for a time in strong, black tea, the porous quality of marble enabling the fluid to induce some accelerated aging.

In sculpture, what was known as the “portrait statue” after the 1690s came to be known as the “portrait bust”, both meaning “sculpture of upper torso and head”.  Bust was from the sixteenth century French buste, from the Italian busto (upper body), from the bustum (funeral monument, tomb (originally “funeral pyre, place where corpses are burned”)) which may have been a shortened form of ambustum, the neuter of ambustus (burned around) and past participle of amburere (burn around, scorch), the construct being ambi- (around) + urere (to burn).  The alternative etymology suggests a link with the Old Latin boro, the early form of Classical Latin uro (to burn) and the sense development in Italian is thought related to the Etruscan custom of keeping the ashes of the dead in an urn shaped like the person when alive.  After the mind-1720s, it was used as a term to describe the “trunk of the human body above the waist” and it’s for this reason it was in the 1880s adapted to mean “the bosom; the measurement around a woman's body at the level of her breasts”.

The Supreme Leader presides over the Fifth Enlarged Meeting of the Eighth Central Military Commission of the WPK, 12 March 2023, the task of the generals & admirals being to write down his every word.  The portraits behind the Supreme Leader (both in landscape aspect) are of the Great Leader (left) and the Dear Leader (right).  Preserving the images of the photographers in the (portrait aspect) mirror was a nice, post-modern, touch.

In August 2023, with tropical storm Khanun bearing down on the DPRK (North Korea) coast, the state media issued instructions that citizens must “with urgency” and “at any cost” focus on “ensuring the safety” of items depicting the three members of the Kim dynasty: Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994); Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK since 2011).  Presumably because they would be more susceptible to the storm’s heavy rain and strong winds than sturdier objects like statutes, the Rodong Sinmun (official newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK)) emphasized citizens’ “foremost focus” must be ensuring the preservation of portraits of the Kims although they did caution the need also to safeguard the large number of statues, mosaics, murals and other monuments to the Kim dynasty which has ruled North Korea since its foundation in 1948.

Meeting of the WPK to commemorate the Supreme Leader’s tenth anniversary of his assumption of leadership of the party, Pyongyang, April 2022.  The Supreme Leader’s portrait is displayed in an oval which is not unusual in DPRK Kim iconography.

The order was an interesting insight into the way the regime regards the symbolism of representational objects as a part of its legitimacy but they have set the population an onerous task given the sheer volume of portraits which exist.  At least one each of the Great Leader & Dear Leader are known to hang in every house, café, bus, train carriage or shop and in public buildings there might literally be dozens.  In recent years, it’s been noted portraits of the Supreme Leader have also been more frequently seen and analysts have for years regarded the Kim dynasty’s mode of operation as something like a theocratic state in which the leader and his ancestors are worshiped.  Implicit in that is that statues and portraits are beyond being merely symbolic but are really sacred icons; just as every citizen must be willing (anxious even) to die protecting the leader, so must they be prepared to sacrifice themselves to save his portrait.  It's never been revealed whether any of the Kims read Oscar Wilde's (1854–1900) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) but if so, they've learned well.

DPRK citizens during flooding in 2022 (left) & 2012 (centre & right), searching for portraits of the Great Leader, Dear Leader & Supreme Leader that they might be able to save.

Lament

Lament (pronounced luh-ment)

(1) To feel or express sorrow or regret for.

(2) To mourn for or over.

(3) An expression of grief or sorrow.

(4) A formal expression of sorrow or mourning, especially in verse or song; an elegy or dirge.

1520-1530: Ultimately, the noun was from the Latin lāmentum (plaint) and the verb from the Latin lāmentārī (to wail, moan, weep, lament), a derivative of lāmentum (a wailing, moaning, weeping).  In English, lament was a backformation from lamentation or else from the fourteenth century Middle French lamenter (to moan, to bewail" or directly from the Latin lāmentārī (from lāmentum).  The other formation in Latin was lāmentor (I wail, I weep”), from lāmenta (wailings, laments, moanings), the construct being la- (thought likely imitative) + the formative –mentum in the sense of “to project”.  

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

The adjective lamented in the sense of "mourned for" is from 1610 and the use as a form of mourning or lyric poetry dates from the 1690s.  Given the nature of man, the adjective unlamented, attested since the 1590s, is often used.  Lament & lamenting are nouns & verbs, lamentations & lamenter are nouns, lamentable and (the unpleasingly rare) lamentful are adjectives, lamentingly is an adverb and lamented is a verb & adjective; the common forms of the noun plural are is laments & lamentations.

Destruction of Temple of Jerusalem (1867) by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882).

The Old Testament’s Book of Lamentations (from אֵיכָה‎, (‘Êykhôh) (how) in the Hebrew), written probably during the sixth century BC, commemorates in five poems the destruction in 586-587 BC of Jerusalem by the neo-Babylonians.  By this time, the language of lament already enjoyed a rich tradition in the writings of the Israelite religion, borrowing from a genre known in ancient Mesopotamian practices and continuing to late biblical times.  Lamentations is a bleak work which documents undeserved suffering and focuses on the dead and those who mourn their loss.  It seems clear that for those forsaken by God, hopes of redemption are scant although, despite it all, it’s clear that even if God has tired of Israel, the Israelites must keep the faith and hope one day for His grace.  There’s an exploration too of guilt, the Book of Lamentations drawing from ancient texts the teaching that the destruction of the holy city was God’s retribution for the sin and wickedness of the inhabitants.

The biblical message thus is: (1) There are consequences for sin and if repentance is refused even if offered time and again, God will deliver the appropriate judgment.  (2) Lamentation is the way to express grief and one good for the soul for in life there must be sadness. (3) Beyond despair there is always hope.  Although the people of Judah had defied God, committed idolatry, been adulterous and performed abominations and thereby deserved their just punishment, even in his judgment, God offers hope with the dawning of each new day.

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855).

Some anthologies include Charlotte Brontë’s poem Life (1846) among the laments but that may be the lingering effect of Elizabeth Gaskell's (1810–1865) 1857 biography, a very Victorian work which managed to portray the author of the deliciously depraved Jane Eyre (1847) as the doomed, saint-like victim of the circumstances which crushed her and the consumption which stalked her.  Gaskell’s crafted miserabilia of course created a legend of its own, a kind of death cult for those for whom victimhood isn’t quite enough so she’s long been on the emo reading list.  She deserves better.  Life is a poem which notes why one might lament the vicissitudes of existence but doesn’t long dwell on it and one suspects Charlotte Brontë found life on Earth enchanting.  As one might gather from Jane Eyre, she thought it better to better to lust for life than long lament losses.

Life (1846) by Charlotte Brontë

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly!

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway?

Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!

Dump

Dump (pronounced duhmp)

(1) To drop something or let fall in a mass; fling down or drop heavily or suddenly.

(2) To empty the contents of something (by tilting, overturning etc).

(3) To dismiss, fire, or release from a contract.

(4) In informal (and very common) use, to end a relationship with someone (especially a romantic partner), used mostly when the action is one-sided although there are many mutual dumpings, even if some are technically retrospective.

(5) Suddenly to transfer or rid oneself of some responsibility, task or duty.

(6) In the slang of boxing (1) to knock down an opponent & (2) intentionally to lose a match.

(7) In commerce (1) to put (goods or securities) on the market in large quantities and at a low price without regard to the effect on market conditions or (2) deliberately to offer goods in large quantities or at prices below the cost of production & distribution in an attempt to drive out competition.

(8) In international trade, to sell (goods) into foreign markets below cost in order to promote exports or damage foreign competition.

(9) In computers, (1) to print, display or record on an output medium the contents of a computer's internal storage or the contents of a file, often at the time a program fails, later to be used to debug or determine the cause or point of failure or (2) as screen dump, to print or create an image file of the screen’s display.

(10) Of precipitation (rain, hail & (especially) snow), heavy downfalls.

(11) In historic use, a small coin made by punching a hole in a larger coin (called a holey dollar and issued in both Canada and Australia).

(12) A deep hole in a river bed; a pool (a northern England regionalism).

(13) In slang, to kill; to arrange or commit murder.

(14) To fall or drop down suddenly.

(15) To throw away, discard etc something.

(16) In informal use, to complain, criticize, gossip, or tell another person one's problems (often as “to dump on”); to treat with disrespect, especially to criticize harshly or attack with verbal abuse.

(17) In vulgar slang, an evacuation of the bowels; to defecate (often as “take a dump”; men especially fond of the phrase “huge dump”).

(18) An accumulation of discarded garbage, refuse etc; a tip or landfill site, also called a dumpsite or dumping-ground.

(19) In military use, a collection of ammunition, stores, etc, deposited at some point, as near a battlefront, for distribution (ammo dump, fuel dump etc).

(20) In mining, a runway or embankment equipped with tripping devices, from which low-grade ore, rock etc., are dumped; the pile of stuff, so dumped.

(21) In informal use, a place, house or town (even a state or entire country according to some) that is dilapidated, dirty, or disreputable.

(22) In merchandising, a bin or specially made carton in which items are displayed for sale.

(23) In surfing (of a wave) to hurl a swimmer or surfer down.

(24) To compact bales of wool by hydraulic pressure (Australian and New Zealand).

(25) A mournful song; a lament; a melancholy strain or tune in music; any tune (obsolete).

(26) A sad, gloomy state of the mind; sadness; melancholy; despondency (usually in the form “down in the dumps”).

(27) Absence of mind; reverie (now rare).

(28) Heavily to knock; to stump (Scottish, obsolete).

(29) A thick, ill-shapen piece (UK, archaic).

(30) A lead counter used in the game of chuck-farthing (UK, archaic).

(31) A type of dance (obsolete).

1300–1350: From the Middle English dompen & dumpen (to fall suddenly, plunge), from the Old Norse dumpa (to thump, strike, bump).  The modern senses of the transitive verb and noun are unknown prior to the nineteenth century and may either be from another source or are an independent expressive formation.  There may have been some Scandinavian influence such as the Norwegian dumpa (suddenly to fall) which may also be linked with other Germanic forms such as the Middle Low German dumpeln (to duck) and the Danish dumpe (suddenly to fall).  The use in the sense of “hole used for the disposal of unwanted items by burying” was a development of the Scots dump (hole in the ground), the Norwegian dump (a depression or hole in the ground), the German Low German dumpen (to submerge) and the Dutch dompen (to dip, sink, submerge), something obviously not unrelated to the early fourteenth century meaning “throw down or fall with force, drop (something or someone) suddenly” which didn’t exist in Old English.  The modern use is actually most modern, the sense “unload en masse, cause to fall out by tilting up a cart etc” not recorded until it emerged in American English by 1784 while that of “discard, abandon” dates from 1919.  The use in economics to describe “export or throw on the market in large quantities at low prices” was first noted in 1868 in the context of anti-competitive practices.  A dumping ground was first documented in 1842 although the term may earlier have been in oral use.  Dump & dumping are nouns & verbs, dumped is a verb, dumper & dumpage are nouns and dumpy is an adjective; the noun plural is dumps.

By 1865, the noun dump was understood as place “where refuse is dumped, piled or heaped; a repository of refuse matter” and applied originally to extractive mining as a development of the verb, the use extending to sites for discarding domestic rubbish by 1872, the earlier “dumping-ground” common by 1857.  The meaning “any shabby or dilapidated place” dates from 1899 while the use by the military to describe places for the “collection of ammunition, equipment etc, deposited at a convenient point for later distribution” was a product of World War I (1914-1918), noted first in 1915 and possibly a development from soldiers’ slang although the later war-time slang to mean “act of defecating” appears to be of civilian origin, noted first in the US in 1942.  The dump-truck was first so described in 1930s and although truck had for decades been used to dump stuff, the name was derived from the use of hydraulic rams to enable to load more quickly to be emptied by raising the load bed or freight compartment at an acute angle.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

The “Dempster-Dumpster trash-hauling mechanism” remains familiar as the modern “dumpster”, a large, mobile container designed to be removed by a truck and taken away so the contented could be dumped in a dump, the container quickly reused.  It was patented by the Dempster brothers of Knoxville, Tennessee who ran an operation manufacturing waste collection vehicles (which would eventually include the Dempster Dumpmaster and Dempster Dinosaur).  The Dempster-Dumpster system achieved success by creating a system of mechanically emptying standardized metal containers which had been perfected between 1935-1937.  The concept of the dumpster (a standardized design able to be stored, re-used and transported efficiently) later influenced the development of container shipping.  The name dumpster became generic and was itself linguistically productive: “dumpster diving” (1979) described the practice of scavenging from dumpsters while “dumpster fire” was a figurative reference to a situation at once calamitous, foul and either insoluble or, if fixable, not worth the effort.  In use, a “dumpster fire” is similar to a “train wreck” or “shit show” but different from a “hot mess”, hot messes worth fixing because they remain in essence, desirable.  The use of “dumpster fire” spiked in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, used not only by both camps but also disillusioned neutrals.

The noun landfill dates from 1916 was a euphemism for dump although unlike some of the breed, it was at least literally true.  The adjective dumpy (short and stout) was from circa 1750 and the origin is undocumented but many etymologists assume it was linked to dumpling (mass of boiled paste (also “a wrapping in which something is boiled”)) which dates from circa 1600 and was from the Norfolk dialect, again of uncertain origin but the source may be Germanic or simply from “lump” (and there are those who argue dumplings were probably originally “lumplings”).  Lump was from the Middle English lumpe, from a Germanic base akin to the Proto-Germanic limpaną (to glide, go, loosely to hang).  “Humpty Dumpty” was a French nursery rhyme hero (it seems first to have been translated into English in 1810) and in the late eighteenth century it had been used to mean “a short, clumsy person of either sex”, presumably a reduplication of Humpty (a pet form of Humphrey (which was used of mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby in the BBC Television comedy Yes Minister) although a humpty-dumpty in the 1690s was originally was a drink, a cocktail of “ale boiled with brandy” which probably tasted better than it sounds.  The construction was based presumably on hump and dump but the basis has eluded researchers.  In the late twentieth century, “hump & dump” was repurposed to describe the practice (habit, calling, tactic, whatever) of enticing a woman in order to enjoy sex and immediately afterwards leaving, never to ring or call.  It’s subsequently be claimed by bolshie women for much the same purpose; the variations included “fuck & chuck”, “pump & dump:, “jump and dump” and “smash and dash”.

Crooked Hillary dumping on deplorables, Georgia, 2016.

Big buses have long been used by politicians for their campaign tours.  They offer lots of advantages, being offices and communications centres with at least some of their running costs offset by a reduction in staff travel expenses.  Additionally, with five large, flat surfaces, they are a rolling billboard although that can be good or bad.  In 2016, one of crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses was photographed in Lawrenceville, Georgia dumping a tank full of human waste onto the street and into a storm drain.  The local news service reported that when police attended the street was “…was covered in toilet paper and the odor was noxious”.  Hazmat crews were called to clean up the scene and the matter was referred to the environmental protection division of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) later issued an apology, claiming the incident was “an honest mistake.”  Using the word “honest” in any statement related to crooked Hillary Clinton is always a bit of a gamble and there was no word on whether the dumping of human excrement had been delayed until the bus was somewhere it was thought many deplorables may be living.  If so, that may have been another “honest mistake” because Gwinett County (in which lies Lawrenceville) voted 51.02% Clinton/Kaine & 45.14% Trump/Pence although the symbolism may not have been lost on much of the rest of Georgia; state wide the Republican ticket prevailed 50.38% to 45.29%.

Dump has been quite productive.  A “dump-pipe” is part of the exhaust system in an internal combustion engine; a “brain dump” or “info dump” is the transfer of a large quantity of information or knowledge from one person (or institution) to another, although it’s also used in the slang of those working in the theoretical realm of the digitizing of human consciousness; a block dump was an image contains the sectors read from an original floppy diskette or optical disc; “dump months” are those periods during which film distributers & television programmers scheduled content either of poor-quality or of limited appeal; a “dump job” was either (1) the act of moving a corpse or some incriminating material from the scene of the crime to some un-related place, preferably remote & deserted or (2) the abandonment of an unfinished task for which the abandoner might be expected to take responsibility, especially in a fashion that makes it likely that one or more colleagues will take on its completion; the “mag dump” was military slang for the act of firing an entire magazine-full of ammunition from a fully-automatic weapon in a single burst; “dumpsville” could be either (1) the figurative location of a person who has been dumped by a lover or (2) a description of an undesirable town or other locality; to be “down in the dumps” is to be depressed, miserable and unhappy.

An electrically controlled exhaust system "cut-out", the modern version of the old, mechanical, "by-passes".  All dump-pipes work by offering exhaust gasses a "shortcut" to the atmosphere.

In internal combustion engines (ICE), there are both down-pipes and dump-pipes.  Their functions differ and the term down-pipe is a little misleading because some down-pipes (especially on static engines) actually are installed in a sideways or upwards direction but in automotive use, most do tend downwards.  A down-pipe connects the exhaust manifold to exhaust system components beyond, leading typically to first a catalytic converter and then a muffler (silencer), most factory installations designed deliberately to be restrictive in order to comply with modern regulations limiting emissions and noise.  After-market down-pipes tend to be larger in diameter and are made with fewer bends to improve exhaust gas flow, reduce back-pressure and (hopefully) increase horsepower and torque.   Such modifications are popular but not necessarily lawful.  Technically, a dump-pipe is a subset of the down-pipes and is most associated with engines using forced aspiration (turbo- & some forms of supercharging).  With forced-induction, exhaust gases exiting the manifold spin a turbine (turbocharger) or drive a compressor (supercharger) to force more of the fuel-air mixture into the combustion chambers, thereby increasing power.  What a dump-pipe does is provide a rapid, short-path exit for exhaust gases to be expelled directly into the atmosphere before reaching a down-pipe.  That makes for more power and noise, desirable attributes for the target market.  A dump pipe is thus an exit or gate from the exhaust system which can be opened manually, electronically, or with a “blow-off” valve which opens when pressure reaches a certain level.  In the happy (though more polluted) days when regulations were few, the same thing was achieved with an exhaust “by-pass” or “cut-out” which was a mechanical gate in the down-pipe and even then such things were almost always unlawful but it was a more tolerant time.  Such devices, lawful and otherwise, are still installed.

Grab from a Microsoft Windows system dump.  Although dumps contain much, of the thousands of lines one might contain, only a small string of text in one line might be relevant and users may need some assistance to interpret the result. 

In computing, a system dump is typically a commitment to a file of what exists in memory (random access memory (RAM) or on a paged volume) and they’re created usually at points of failure, creating essentially a snapshot of what was happening either at or immediately prior to the unfortunate event.  The contents of a system dump can be used to identify errors and debug programs.  A “stand-alone dump” program (a SAD or SADMP) produces a dump occupied by either (1) a system that failed or (2) a stand-alone dump program that failed.  Either the stand-alone dump program dumped itself (a self-dump) or the operator loaded another stand-alone dump program to dump the failed stand-alone dump program.  It’s less ominous than it sounds and together, the stand-alone dump program and the stand-alone dump together form what is known as the stand-alone dump service aid.  The significance of the element “stand-alone” is that the dump is performed separately from normal system operations and does not require a system to be in a condition for normal operation.  It means that except in cases of catastrophic failure (especially if involving the total loss of mains & UPS (uninterruptable power supply) power, it should be possible always to create a high-speed, unformatted dump of central storage and parts of paged-out virtual storage on a tape device or a direct access storage device (DASD).  The stand-alone dump supplies information which can be used to determine why the system or the stand-alone dump program failed.

Dual & Duel

Dual (pronunced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) Of, relating to, or denoting two.

(2) Composed or consisting of two people, items, parts, etc., together; twofold; double; having a twofold, or double, character or nature.

(3) In the formal grammar of Old English, Old Russian, Arabic and Ancient Greek, denoting a form of a word indicating that exactly two referents are being referred to (a form in the dual, as the Old English git (you two), as opposed to ge (you) referring to three or more.

(4) In mathematics and formal s logic (of structures or expressions) having the property that the interchange of certain pairs of terms, and usually the distribution of negation, yields equivalent structures or expressions

1535–1545: From the Latin duālis (containing two, relating to a pair), the construct being du(o) (two) + -ālis (-al) The Latin duo was from the primitive Indo-European root dwo (two).  The General sense of "relating to two, expressing two, composed or consisting of two parts" is from 1650s.  Dually is the adverb.  The general sense of "division into two" has been in use since 1831.  The noun duality (two-fold nature, state of being two or divided in two) is a late fourteenth century form from the Late Latin dualitas.

The noun dualism dates from 1755 as a term in philosophy, the sense being "a way of thinking which explains phenomena by the assumption of two independent and absolute elements," from the French dualisme (1754).  The theological adoption to describe the doctrine of “two independent divine beings or eternal principles” was first noted in 1847.

Duel Pronounced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) A prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure, especially to settle a private quarrel.

(2) Any contest between two persons or entities.

1585–1595: From the earlier English form duell (a single combat (also "a judicial single combat”), from the late thirteenth century Medieval Latin duellum (combat between two persons), a poetical variant of the old Latin form of bellum (war) (related to bellicose), probably maintained and given the sense “duel” by folk etymology with the Latin duo (two).  The Old Latin word was retained in poetic and archaic language, the fancied Medieval connection with duo organically creating the linguistic semi-coincidence.  In pre-Modern English, the Italian form duello was also used.  By the 1610s, the English word had taken on the specialized sense of "premeditated and pre-arranged single combat involving deadly weapons in the presence of at least two witnesses", the general sense of "any contest between two parties" dating from the 1590s.  The related verbs are duels, dueling & dueled , dueler & duelist are nouns and duelistic an adjective.  The US spelling favors the double “l”.

Dualism in Philosophy

In Metaphysics, dualism holds there are two kinds of reality: the physical world (material) and the spiritual world (immaterial).  In the philosophy of mind, Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate and that mental processes and phenomena are, at least in some respects, non-physical.  Both positions are radically different from even nuanced flavors of monism (which, at its most pure, maintains there is but the universe and that any form of division of the whole is artificial and arbitrary) and pluralism suggests there are many kinds of substance and not just dualism’s two.  In the pre-enlightenment age, dualism had some appeal but it’s now of only historic interest except as a device to train the mind to explore speculative paths.

Dualism in Carburetion

1967 Shelby C7zx dual quad-aluminum intake manifold for Ford 427 FE.

From the late 1950s, Detroit’s V8s, with a sudden and increasing rapidity, grew bigger and more thirsty, the most rapacious of the engines out-pacing the capacity of the carburetors brought from outside suppliers, with the result the only solution was to use two or even three carburettors.  The manufacturer did eventually produce units with sufficient throughput but it took a while for supply to meet demand.  For street use, triple induction was for some time quite a good solution because the three-in-a-row layout lent itself to a good compromise, the engine most of the time being fed only by the central two-barrel carburetor, the outer two used only when the throttle was pushed wide open.  It meant engines with great available power were actually surprisingly economical most of the time although the delicate business of tuning could be a challenge, especially in conditions where there were notable variations in temperature or humidity.  For the high performance engines however, the best cost-performance equation (ignoring the fuel consumption which was the customer's problem) was dual induction, two four barrel carburettors, mounted either in-line or side-by side, the air-flow dynamics of the latter delivering the optimal top-end-power.

Short & Long-Ram Sonoramic dual quad intake manifolds.  The difference was that the short versions had 15 inch (380 mm) tuned intake runners while the long rams had their entire 30 inch (760 mm) length tuned.  

Most dramatic in appearance of all the dual quad setups were the Sonoramics, offered by Chrysler on a handful of models between 1959-1963.  Sonoramic was a linguistic novelty but the engineering principles of tuned resonance in thermal dynamics had been known for decades, the trick being to create a shape which essentially caused the fuel-air mixture to “bounce around”, emulating a low-boost “ram-air” effect.  There were two different versions which looked externally similar but differed internally, the rare so-called “short-ram” tuned for top-end power, the “long-ram” for the mid-range torque which was ideal for street use because the additional performance was delivered in the speed-ranges at which highway passing manoeuvres typically were undertaken.

Jaguar E-Type 4.2 with triple SUs (top) & with dual Strombergs (bottom).

From its introduction in 1961, the Jaguar E-Type (XK-E for the cars delivered in North America) used triple SU HD.8 carburetors but in 1967, to conform to US emission control rules, the switch for the units delivered there was made to dual Stromberg 175 CD2SEs.  Unlike some manufacturers which arranged a separate specification for the US and other markets with more rigorous regulations, Jaguar applied the change to the entire range.  Power and torque dropped a bit, especially higher in the rev range, a prelude to the malaise which would affect so many in the 1970s.  The changes made by Jaguar to comply with the US regulations were marked by the change in designation from Series I to Series II and the most obvious modifications were (1) the carburetors, (2) the slight truncation of the cigar-shaped tail & the substitution of the elegant tail-lamps with rather more agricultural-looking units, (3) the use of safer, softer rocker switches on the dash instead of the stylish but sharp toggle switches and (4) the deletion of the lovely, fared-in head-lamp covers, the slightly elevated  replacements lending the car a slight bug-eyed look.  There were a host of other changes, most of which made the Series II a better car but it was just a bit slower and didn't look as good.

The lovely, pure lines of the Jaguar E-Type Series 1 (1961-1968, left).  It's not certain Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) really did say it was "the most beautiful car ever made" but he never denied it and he was a fair judge of such things.  The Series 2 cars (1968-1971, right) were a little more cluttered.

However, unlike the US manufacturers (and most of the Germans), even by 1967 there were cottage-industry aspects to some of Jaguar's production facilities and the E-Type changed from Series I to Series II in increments rather than one distinct movements and even then there were inconsistencies and these detail differences intrigue the E-Type cognoscenti, concerned as many are with originality.  For this reason, although the factory never used the designations, informally, what are thought “transitional cars” are often referred to as Series 1.25 or 1.5, base on the mix of earlier & later features present, the identification of which is sometime challenging because many later models were modified to make them appear partially or in whole “classic” Series 1 E-Types.  The first of the 1.25s are regarded as the models built for US delivery after January 1967 and fitted with the open head-lamps, this change not applied universally until phased in over June-July the same year.  The 1.5 designation is used of those built after August-October which in addition to certain detail changes received the dual Stromberg carburetors (if built for delivery to North America) and the rocker switches (the open head-lamps at this point slightly raised by the use of a different assembly) but the “teardrop” tail-lamps above the rear bumpers were retained.  Once the revisions were made to the tail and the tail-light, the transition to Series 2 was complete (the Series 2 cars also receiving slightly larger head-lamps).  However, in recent years the factory records have been reviewed and it’s clear some of the cars built in 1967 for delivery to North America had the covered head-lamps so these, combined with the Series 1.25 & 1.5 cars modified retrospectively, mean the task of verifying the originality of the later Series 1.X cars can be challenging.

Apparently, at the premiere of Disney’s The Parent Trap (1998), then CEO Michael Eisner (b 1942; chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company, 1984-2005), believing the central parts in the film had been played by identical twins asked her “Where's your twin?”.  She told him she didn’t have one and that she should have been paid double.