Thermidor

Thermidor (pronounced thur-mi-dawr or ter-mee-dawr (French))

(1) In the French Revolutionary calendar, the eleventh month of the year (19 (or 20) July to 17 (or 18) August); it was also called Fervidor (both terms now only of historic interest).

(2) As Thermidorian Reaction, a counterrevolution or coup d'état in some way recalling the events in Paris in July 1794.

(3) As lobster thermidor (both elements sometimes capitalized), a method of preparing the unfortunate crustacean for consumption.

Borrowed from French thermidor, from the Ancient Greek θέρμη (thérmē) (hot; heat) + δῶρον (dôron) (gift), the construct thus construct being thérm(ē) + (i) + dôr(on).  Thermidor is a noun & proper noun, thermion is a noun, thermidorien & thermidorian are nouns & adjective and thermionic is an adjective; the noun plural is thermidors.

In the history of revolutionary France, the noun thermidorian is used to refer to (1) a member of the politically moderate (a relative term) group who participated in the events of the 9th Thermidor (27 July 1794) and (2) a supporter of the reactionary movement following the coup d'état.  The use in political discourse was named after the play Thermidor (1891) by Victorien Sardou (1831–1908), itself named for the eleventh month of the French Republican Calendar.  The Coup d'état of 9 Thermidor (remembered in many reports as “the Fall of Maximilien Robespierre” (1758–1794)) was triggered by Robespierre's address to the National Convention on 26 July 1794), a speech which prompted his arrest the next day and his death on the guillotine the day after.  Due process is a quick business in revolutionary times.  Robespierre’s fateful words included a reference to “internal enemies, conspirators, and calumniators” within revolutionary movement but he declined to name names, giving rise among his colleagues to fears he was plotting another great purge of their numbers.

Comrade Stalin (left), an ice axe (centre) and comrade Trotsky (right).  The standard-length ice axe is ideal for its intended purpose but to large easily to be concealed under clothing and too cumbersome to comfortably to wield in a confined space. 

Comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940; founder of the Fourth International) in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936) had a feeling for a memorable phrase and labelled the state created by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) a “Soviet Thermidor” because although the Tsarist era mix of feudalism and proto-capitalism wasn’t re-created (a la the monarchy in France not being restored in the 1790s), the combination of a bureaucracy supporting a personality cult (even if the latter was in 1936 still somewhat disguised) was “a counterrevolutionary regression” which betrayed what was achieved by comrade Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; leader of Russia or the Soviet Union 1917-1924).  The vivid phrases caught the imagination of many, notably those in the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (The POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), a non-communist Marxist party (a surprisingly populated fork of left-wing thought) which comrade Stalin correctly associated with Trotskyism.  The POUM was highly productive in thought but drifted increasingly far from the moorings of political reality although rhetoric which included polemics like “Stalinist Thermidorians have established in Russia the bureaucratic regime of a poisoned dictator.”  Agents of the Narodný komissariat vnutrennih del (NKVD, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and one of the many predecessors to the KGB), answerable only to comrade Stalin, killed dozens of POUM’s Central Committee which ended the organization’s effectiveness for a generation.  In his prodigious memory, comrade Stalin filed away phrases he found variously annoying, tiresome or threatening and in 1940 had comrade Trotsky murdered.  The murder weapon was what would become history's most famous ice axe.

Even by the standards of political assassinations (a long tale of the brutal and bizarre), the events surrounding Trotsky’s death were unusual.  Although, living in exile in Mexico, comrade Trotsky’s influence on those in the Soviet Union (or anywhere else) was negligible, not only was comrade Stalin a great hater who nursed his many grudges until circumstances permitted a good opportunity for vengeance but he also thought ahead; concerned Trotsky and his heretical writings might one day be a real threat, years before the assassin’s visit, he’d decided his erstwhile associate must die.  The NKVD had already succeeded in killing Trotsky’s son (imaginatively disguised as “medical misadventure” during a routine appendectomy) and, more dramatically, had decapitated his secretary in his Paris apartment but operations beyond Europe were more complex and the agent allocated the task was the Moscow-trained Spanish communist Ramón Mercader (1913–1978), also living in exile in Mexico City under the pseudonym Frank Jacson.  Diligently watching his residence and researching the habits of his target, comrade Mercader posed as the lover of Trotsky's courier and was convincing enough to be welcomed into the impressively fortified villa on the city’s outskirts.  Either the NKVD’s training in such matters was first-rate or Mercader had a flair for the business because, after bringing Trotsky’s grandchildren presents and playing games with them in the garden, over the course of weeks, he became a valued house-guest, often engaging his intended victim in earnest discussions about politics and international affairs, careful always to ensure his host could assume the role of wise oracle.

Early on Tuesday, 20 August 1940, on the pretext of asking if an article he’d drafted was ready for publication, the assassin handed over the manuscript which Trotsky took to his desk and began reading, his back to the author.  Although also carrying a dagger and revolver, Mercader choose as the murder weapon the ice axe he’d be able to conceal under his raincoat by shortening it (sawing off half the wooden handle), his reasonable rationale being (1) it should be more effective than the knife and (2) it would be quieter than discharging the gun.  In seconds, Mercader drove the pick into the back of Trotsky’s skull and although the injury would prove mortal, it was not instantly fatal, the immediate aftermath described by the killer during a subsequent police interview: “[He] screamed in such a way that I will never forget it as long as I live. His scream was Aaaaa . . . very long, infinitely long and it still seems to me as if that scream were piercing my brain. I saw Trotsky get up like a madman.  He threw himself at me and bit my hand…”  Mercader would likely have been beaten to death by Trotsky’s bodyguards but was saved by the dying man ordering them to stop because he wanted to have him admit his evil deed had been done on the orders of comrade Stalin.  The next day, in hospital, he succumbed to a traumatic brain injury but not before cursing Stalin as his killer.

Ten years after: rootless cosmopolitan comrade Trotsky (left) talking to comrade Stalin (right), Moscow, 1930 (left) and Mexican police showing the "sawn-off" ice axe used in the murder (right).

By the standards of NKVD “wet operations” (clandestine, “authorized” executions) the “Mexico business” was messy with (1) the assassin arrested, (2) the murder weapon taken as evidence, (3) the body not disposed of and (4) the cause of death certainly not able to be classed as “an accident”, “misadventure” or “natural causes”.  The suspect however did not implicate the NKVD, initially claiming he’d killed Trotsky over a dispute they were having on a doctrinal matter relating to Marxist interpretation and later changing the story to allege it was over something more personal; this he maintained while serving his 20 year sentence in a Mexico prison; Moscow denied having anything to do the matter, even expressing condolences to the family.  That was of course is an MRDA in the spirit of: “Something cannot be thought proven true until the Kremlin denies it” which, as the later events would confirm, remains a dictum valid still in this century.  Still, analysts today conclude comrade Stalin may not have been wholly unhappy at the “botched” operation because (1) he had “plausible deniability” of involvement and (2) the murder made headlines around the word so those likely to be “trouble-makers” would know NKVD agents were capable of liquidating high-level, well-protected targets, well beyond the borders of the Soviet Union.  So there was a silver lining, unlike the later “botched” dispatch of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi (1958-2018) in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Unannounced and for decades not revealed, comrade Stalin decorated comrade Mercader in absentia, presumably for “services to the state” although publicly he denounced him as a “dangerous Trotskyist”, disavowing any involvement in the crime.  After serving nearly all his sentence, Mercader was released, in 1961 returning to the Soviet Union after a brief sojourn in Cuba, then under new management following comrade Fidel Castro’s (1926–2016; prime-minister or president of Cuba 1959-2008) communist revolution.  In Moscow, the KGB presented him with the nation’s highest awards (Hero of the Soviet Union & the Order of Lenin), after which he enjoyed two decades odd of comfortable semi-retirement in a number of sinecures in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  It was only after dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 when, for a brief few years the state’s archives were open to Western researchers, that documents were discovered confirming the assassination had been a NKVD operation authorized “at the highest level in Moscow” (ie comrade Stalin signed the death warrant, his hand well-practiced at such things).

The Dendrobates tinctorius “Giant Orange”.  The common name (Dyeing Poison Dart Frog) was derived from reports by European explorers that in regions where it was endemic, indigenous inhabitants used brightly colored frogs to dye feathers & fabrics.  The collective noun for frogs is a group of frogs is army, colony or knot.

Described by retailers as a “great beginner frog” (the reason for that presumably understood by collectors) and “best kept in pairs”, a typical RRP (recommended retail price) in the US seems to range between US$79-99.  The adjective tinctorious (from the noun tincture) dates from the late eighteenth century and appears first to have been used of colorful plants.  Even in horticulture it has become rare but an echo survives in the Dendrobates Tinctorius, a frog much prized by collectors and photographers for its striking colors and patterns.  Unsurprisingly referred to by the standard abbreviation “tincs”, Dendrobates Tinctorius is one of the largest species of poison dart frogs, although in global terms still hardly large, the largest some 2 inches (50 mm) length. They are native to the rainforests of South America and appear in dramatic color combinations including hues of blue, black, yellow and orange but safely can be kept by hobbyists because in captivity they're not poisonous, the toxicity in the wild by virtue of their preferred diet of small invertebrates, not consumed in a captive environment.  Prices of adults in the most desired color mixes can exceed US$200.

Although prized by batrachophiles (frog enthusiasts) and giggers (those who collect or hunt wild frogs (by hand for those wanting live specimens; others resorting usually to a pronged spear), the Dart frog mostly had been obscure amphibians until, in February 2026, a collective statement by the intelligence agencies of four European nations (France, Germany the Netherlands & Sweden) and the UK) released the results of an inquiry which found Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (1976-2024) had been murdered by the use of a deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuadorian dart frogs (epibatidine).  The investigators concluded the murder was committed by an agent or agents of the Russian state, Mr Navalny dying while imprisoned in a remote Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence; tissue samples from his body were secured prior to his burial and it was these which were analysed in Western laboratories.  A statement from the British government added that as well as the “barbaric” assassination, the use of a toxin was a “…flagrant violation by Russia of the CWC” (chemical weapons convention) and it would be lodging a report with the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons).

Alexei Navalny (standing, centre) in a screen capture from CCTV footage of a court session, IK-2 penal colony, Vladimir region, Russia, February, 2022.

Stating what was, given Mr Navalny’s incarceration in the arctic, the obvious, the statement made the point: “Only the Russian state had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin to target Navalny during his imprisonment in a Russian penal colony in Siberia, and we hold it responsible for his death.  Epibatidine can be found naturally in dart frogs in the wild in South America.  Dart frogs in captivity do not produce this toxin and it is not found naturally in Russia.  There is no innocent explanation for its presence in Navalny’s body.”  Additionally, it was noted each little frog had in its skin little more than a microgram of the toxin and a laboratory would need to have harvested hundreds of them to extract the volume sufficient to produce a deliverable dose of sufficient potency to kill a healthy, adult human.  Even had Mr Navalny been permitted to keep in his cell a colony of a dozen Dart frogs which he force-fed with small invertebrates, they’d not have posed a danger.  Although the KGB (including its precursor organizations and various franchises within the Warsaw Pact) once favored traditional murder weapons (clubs, bullets, ice axes, daggers, bare hands etc), of late they’ve gone more “high tech” and as well frog toxins, use has extended to (1) ricin (a highly toxic protein derived from castor beans) delivered by a dart gun (disguised as a umbrella!) which was used to kill dissident author Georgi Markov (1929-1978), (2) radioactive polonium served (in a cup of tea!) to defector Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006) and (3) the Russian-developed Novichok (nerve agent) although former KGB spy Sergei Skripal (b 1951) survived that attempt on his life.  All three of those incidents occurred in London, the KGB liking to remind dissidents, defectors and other trouble-makers that they’re safe nowhere.  Despite the history, the Kremlin continued to maintain Mr Navalny died from “natural causes” and claimed the allegations were just: “A planted story and attempt by Western governments to distract attention from their many problems.”  The denial from Moscow was treated by western analysts as a tacit admission of guilt on the basis of the Cold War dictum: “Something cannot be thought proven true until the Kremlin denies it.”

Replica of “Umbrella gun” produced by the KGB’s Moscow laboratory, 1978, International museum of spying.  One of the most commonly carried accessories in London, a “special” umbrella was an ideal murder weapon in that city, able to be “hidden in plain sight” whereas an an ice axe might be conspicuous.  This is one of the best-known dart guns.    

Russians famously enjoy dark humor but it’s not known if they chose to deliver the Dart Frog toxin with a dart gun although that would have been a fitting nod to “special umbrella” used in 1978 to target Georgi Markov as crossed the Thames, walking across Waterloo Bridge; there was a time when the notion of “dart frog juice in a dart gun” would much have pleased those in the Lubyanka but perhaps things are now more corporatized.  However it was done, the death of Alexei Navalny is one chapter in the long (and still growing) list of assassinations by the Russian or Soviet State and, as a piece of applied statecraft, the practice dates from at least Russia's early monarchical era which began in the 860s.  It was however under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) that state-sanctioned murder was undertaken on an industrial scale (indeed, so large was the death toll most historians estimate the body-count only by rounding (usually up) to the closest million) and of the many victims, it's comrade Trotsky who remains the most celebrated.

Lobster Thermidor

Lobster Thermidor is a creamy, cheesy mixture of cooked lobster meat, egg yolks, and cognac or sherry, stuffed into a lobster shell and served usually with a an oven-browned cheese crust.  In restaurants, it’s an expensive dish because lobsters are now high-priced (there was a time when they were eaten almost only by the working class) but especially because it’s something with a high labor component.  Cooked at home, without the need to charge out labor, it’s a form of extravagance on a budget and it’s a favorite among the dinner party set and the ideal thing to serve as a prelude to discussions about house prices.

Ingredients

2 lobsters
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons minced shallots
½ teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cognac or brandy
¾ cup milk
¼ cup heavy cream
¾ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground white pepper
½ cup finely grated Parmesan, plus 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon dry mustard powder
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon leaves
2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley, plus additional for garnish
¼ cup shredded gruyere cheese

Lobster Thermidor is a signature dish at Texas-based Prime Steak & Seafood and their web-site includes photographs to encourage bookings.

Instructions (cooking lobster)

(1) Fill a large, deep stock pot with about 3-4 inches (75-100 mm) of water and add enough sea-salt to make it as salty as sea-water.  Some add aromatics like herbs or lemon to enhance the flavor but thermidor purists insist thing shouldn’t be done and that all such work must be done by the sauce.  Only ever cook live lobsters.  If this is not practical, pre-cooked lobsters are available.

 (2) Once the water has been brought to the boil, add the lobsters (head first) to the pot.  Steaming is the best way to cook lobster because the meat becomes less waterlogged and less flavor in lost to the liquid.

(3) Cover tightly and steam lobsters for 8 minutes per pound (.454 kg), for the first pound and then an additional 3 minutes per pound.  Thus, if the total weight being cooked is 2 lb, cooking time will be about 10 minutes.

(4) Using tongs, remove lobsters from the pot and check to ensure they are cooked.  A fully cooked lobster will register 135-140˚F (57-60˚C) when a quick-read thermometer is inserted into the thickest part of the tail (always insert device into the tail’s underside).

Instructions (lobster thermidor)

(5) Preheat oven to 375˚F (190˚C).

(6) Line a baking sheet with aluminium foil and set aside.

(7) Cut lobsters in half (length-wise and a sharp blade will be needed) and remove the tail meat.

(8) Gently twist claws from the body and gently crack with the back of a heavy knife to remove the meat.  Gently pull the front legs from the shell and discard (some retain them for decorative purposes.

(9) Chop the tail meat and claw meat into bite sized pieces and set aside.

(10) Place the halved lobster shells on the baking sheet and set aside.

(11) Melt butter in a deep skillet over medium heat.  Add shallots and garlic, stirring, until fragrant (about 30 seconds).  Add the flour and whisk to combine.

(12) Cook the flour mixture, stirring constantly to make a light roux (approximately 2 minutes).

(13) Add cognac and cook for 10 seconds, stirring constantly.

(14) Slowly add milk, stirring constantly until combined.  Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (approximately 2-3 minutes).

(15) Slowly add cream, stirring constantly, until thoroughly combined.  Continue cooking while stirring over medium heat for 1 minute (done correctly, this will have produced a very thick mix.  Season with salt and pepper.

(16) Remove from heat and stir in the parmesan cheese, mustard, tarragon, and parsley.  Fold in the lobster meat.

(17) Divide the mixture among the lobster shells and place stuffed side up on a clean baking sheet.

(18) Sprinkle the top of each lobster with the gruyere and broil until the top is golden brown (should take 5-6 minutes).

(19) Place 1 lobster half on each plate, garnish with additional parsley, and serve immediately.

Lindsay Lohan rescues a lobster from the ice, saving it from becoming lobster thermidor (the crustacean’s ultimate fate is unknown).  Lohan Beach Club, 2019.

Triptych

Triptych (pronounced trip-tik)

(1) In fine art, a set of three panels or compartments side by side, bearing pictures, carvings, or the like.  Panels are sometimes hinged so the two wing panels fold over the larger central one; historically, they were often used as altarpieces.

(2) By extension, any group of three people or things, if representative of a particular field or theme.

(3) A hinged, three-leaved tablet, written on, in ancient Greece and Rome, with a stylus.

(3) In philately, a set of three se-tenant (from the French se tenant (holding each other), the present participle of se tenir (to hold each other) postage stamps that form a composite picture.

(4) In film production, a film or video sequence intended to be shown on a triple screen with the use of linked projectors.

(5) In figurative use, any set of three closely connected ideas or concepts with a constant thematic link.

1731: From the Ancient Greek τρίπτυχος (tríptukhos) (consisting of three layers, threefold; of three plates), the construct being τρι- (tri-) (three) + ptych (stem of ptýx) (plate) and ptykhos, genitive of ptyx, (fold or layer) (and influenced by πτυχή (ptukhḗ) (a fold).  The use to describe three-part altar-piece carvings or pictures hinged together was first noted in 1849 and was based on the Italian triptica (which substituted tri- (three) on model of diptych (from the Late Latin diptycha (plural), from the Ancient Greek, neuter plural of δίπτυχος (díptukhos) (folded; double), the construct being δι- (di-) + πτυχή (ptukhḗ) (fold, layer).

The Descent from the Cross (1614) by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

A triptych is a specific form of the polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works.  Traditionally, the centre is the largest but works can be constructed from identically sized pieces or may be wholly asymmetric.  Triptychs can be an integrated work, thematically connected in some other way, or three unrelated panels.  Origin of the layout is in the sacred art of the early Christian church, and triptychs attained great popularity in the medieval Byzantine church.  Artistic merit aside, the hinged-triptychs were a good design because they could be folded into a type of self-contained packing crate for ease of transportation, probably the main reason for the common 25/50/25% aspect ratio.  The format migrated, first to Islam and Buddhism, later to secular art including sculpture and jewelry.  Structurally, the critical point about the triptych is that it should be displayed with the three components joined together.  If their pieces are intended to be shown together but hung with a gap between, that properly is called "sectional art". 

Yes, Yessongs (1973), polyptych created with two diptychs 

In the era of the 12 inch vinyl long-playing (LP) album, record album, the covers were a sub-genre of pop-art and gatefold covers (two sleeves hinged at the centre) were sometimes used, even when the product shipped as a single piece of vinyl.  Sometimes there were even triple albums (finding that not enough, Chicago issued a set of four), described sometimes by critics as the "dreaded triple album" but in the era, there was little attempt to take advantage of the inherent structure of the packaging to create triptychs, something which seems surprising given the emphasis which was put on the cover art.  Yes, with the release of Yessongs (1973) was one of the few to take up the idea but they used four-fold packaging, creating a sort of polyptych with a pair of diptychs.

Studies in monochrome in three aspects of Lindsay Lohan smoking (2014).

New Zealand photographer Jane Trotter deconstructed the history of the triptych and identified four categories by which they may be classified.  The first is the Three Part Narrative, there images telling a story, the implication of course the beginning, middle and end of the three-act play.  Such a triptych is inherently sequential with each panel contingent upon the other, the whole story not fully revealed unless all three are viewed together.  The second category is Transformation, often the representation of the passing of time or a depiction of something symbolic.  A typical example is the one flower shown as a bud, in full bloom and finally withered, a metaphor of life and death, the transience of beauty and impermanence of life.  Third is what she calls Reconstruct to give New Meaning.  It sounds ominously post-modern but it really describes giving the viewer a new perspective of perhaps familiar objects by using fragments of a whole and re-assembling them in a novel way or having them juxtaposed with something unexpected.  Once something is reconstructed to give new meaning, it is possible some of the new meaning will come from the viewer and that it may differ between individuals who might see different connections between objects or afford some a prominence to the extent others are ignored.  Her final category is Expand Visual Connections.  Sometimes, she notes, a single image isn’t enough to encapsulate or complete the whole visual conception of a work.  This can be done by using three images to create something unified or they can act as agents of disassociation, depending on the effect the artist is trying to achieve.

The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450–1516)

One of the best known triptychs is the much re-produced The Garden of Earthly Delights (believed to have been painted between 1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch; the title is a modern designation and nothing has survived which gives any clue about what the artist intended it to be called.  The three panels represent (1) the Garden of Eden, (2) a fantastical imagining of life which is not Earth yet not quite Heaven and often thought to be the artist’s conception of a utopia and (3) Hell, a subject which Bosch painted several times.  Theologians, art critics, psychoanalysts and others have over the centuries written extensively on the work and while opinion will vary about what their thoughts reveal about the intent of the artist, their pieces can be an insight into their own world view. 

For very good, practical reasons, an artist will often focus more on their relationships with their patron or their critics and less on the viewers of their works.  However, modern technology now allows an objective measure of at least one aspect of the viewers’ reaction to art and a heat-map of the public exhibition space in the gallery of the Prado museum in Madrid The Garden of Earthly Delights revealed visitors spent most time looking at right-hand panel: Hell.  Clearly, eternal damnation draws the eye more than the paradise of prelapsarian Eden or the pleasantly sinful life of man in the world after the fall.  A reasonable conclusion of the meaning of the triptych is that “for everything one does there’s a price to be paid” and it may have been this theme which focused the mind.

Researchers from the Miguel Hernández University in Alicante used spectacles with sensors to track eye movements and responses in a sample of 52 visitors and found that on average, 16 seconds per square metre were devoted to the left panel, 26 seconds per metre to the centre and a winning 33.2 seconds to each square metre of Hell.  The work typically absorbed four minutes of each viewer’s time.  What was also discovered was that the pupils of females contemplating the Eden panel swelled from 5.2 to 5.4 mm when observing the delights panel and reached 5.8 when contemplating Hell.  In contrast, the pupils of men reacted in a different way, at their most dilated (8.6mm) when looking at the delights, followed by the Hell which scored 6.8 and Eden at 6.4.

Three studies of Isabel Rawsthorne (1966) by Irish artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992).

Dazzle

Dazzle (pronounced daz-uhl)

(1) To overpower or dim the vision of by intense light.

(2) Deeply to impress, to astonish with delight

(3) To awe, overwhelm, overpower, stupefy.

(4) To shine or brilliantly reflect.

(5) To excite admiration by a display of brilliance.

(6)To be overpowered by light.

(7) Something that dazzles.

(8) A form of camouflage used on early-mid twentieth century warships.

(9) The collective noun to describe zebras.

1475-1485: A frequentative of daze, the construct being daze + le, from the Middle English dasen, from the Old Norse dasa (as in dasask (to become weary)) and related to the Danish dase (to doze, mope).  1475-1485: Daze was a Middle English, back-formation from the Middle English dazed, from the Old Norse dasaðr (weary) & dasask (to become weary), from the Proto-Germanic dasōjan-, from the adjective daza-, which may have been a variant of the primitive Indo-European der- (to hold, support) and related to the Armenian դադարել (dadarel) (to settle, stop, end).  The -le suffix was a frequentative form from the Middle English -elen, -len & -lien, from the Old English -lian (the frequentative verbal suffix), from the Proto-Germanic -lōną (the frequentative verbal suffix) and was cognate with the West Frisian -elje, the Dutch -elen, the German -eln, the Danish -le, the Swedish -la and the Icelandic -la.  It was used as a frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness.

The original, fifteenth century, meaning was “be stupefied, be confused” which many dictionaries list as obsolete but there are certainly at least echoes of that sense in the modern use.  Originally intransitive; the transitive sense of “overpower with strong or excessive light” dates from the 1530s while the figurative sense of “overpower or excite admiration by brilliancy or showy display” is from the 1560s.  As a noun in the sense of “brightness, splendour”, it’s been known since the 1650s.  The verb bedazzle (to blind by excess of light) emerged in the 1590s but is now far more common in figurative use.  The late nineteenth century coining of “razzle-dazzle” originally suggested “bewilderment or confusion, rapid stir and bustle, riotous jollity or intoxication etc but came soon to be used of “deception, fraud; extravagant or misleading claims”.  At the turn of the twentieth century it was used also to mean “a state of confusion” but the modern trend is to use “razzle-dazzle” to mean anything flashy, especially unstructured, inventive performances on the sporting field.  Forms such as overdazzle, outdazzle, outdazzling, overdazzle, overdazzled, overdazzling, redazzle & undazzled have been coined as required.  The adjective antidazzle is commonly used in commerce (often as anti-dazzle).  Dazzle is a noun & verb, endazzlement, dazzlement & dazzler are nouns, bedazzle & (the archaic) endazzle are verbs, adazzle is an adjective, dazzling & dazzled are verbs & adjectives and dazzlingly is an adverb; the noun plural is dazzles.

Dazzling: Lindsay Lohan in zebra-print dress from Balmain's autumn-winter 2013 collection, GQ Men Of The Year Awards, London, September 2014.  Cohort, crossing, harem, herd and zeal have all been cited as the collective noun for zebras but most zoologists seem to prefer dazzle.

Developed first by the Royal Navy during World War I (1914-1918) to counter the German U-Boat (submarine) threat, dazzle camouflage for ships was a counterintuitive adaptation of techniques known to have been used during antiquity, the fleets of both the Greeks and Romans having been painted in shades of green and blue to blend with the surface and horizon.  The modern approach however was rather than concealment, the vessel would be exposed to the enemy and the British Admiralty adopted the scheme as an experiment.  It had been suggested in 1917 by a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) lieutenant commander with a pre-war background in painting, his argument being that while it wasn’t possible actually to conceal a ship, a suitable paint scheme should make difficult the task of a submarine captain trying to estimate a vessel’s speed and direction while viewing through a periscope for a limited time and that was no easy task in 1917.  A U-Boat captain, while maintaining a distance from his target between around a quarter mile (400m) and a mile (1600m), had to predict the speed and direction of the target’s travel while factoring in ocean currents which could affect a torpedo’s travel, all within the short time he could risk his periscope being visible above the surface.  The dazzle concept of camouflage differed from traditional methods of concealment in that it sometimes made the target easier to see; the object was to make it harder to sink; it's thus better thought of as "subterfuge" rather than "camouflage".  A U-Boat carried very few torpedoes and they couldn't be wasted.  The captain had to hit a moving target, often in a rolling sea and to maximize the chance of success, needed the torpedo to hit the ship in her most vulnerable spots and this was done by aiming not at where the target was, but where the target would be more than half a minute later.  The idea of the dazzle was not to hide the ship but to make it even harder for a U-Boat commander to estimate variables like direction and speed of travel.    

View through periscope, with and without dazzle.

After encouraging findings in small-scale tests, the admiralty authorised trials and artists experimented with both colours and shapes, intending usually to distort the perception of the shape of the bow and stern, disrupting perspective and falsely suggesting a ship’s smokestacks or superstructure pointed in a different direction than truly it sat on the water.  Many of the ideas were shamelessly borrowed from modernist art, especially the concepts of cubism, a theft so blatant that Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), in conversation with the US poet and novelist Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), observed the Cubist movement deserved some credit from the Admiralty.  It's believed admiralties everywhere ignore the artists' claims.

French light cruiser Gloire (laid down 1933, launched 1935, commissioned 1937, scrapped 1958) in dazzle camouflage, off the North African coast, 1944.

The programme spread to merchant vessels and then across the Atlantic.  Soon thousands of ships were painted in lurid colour schemes but unfortunately, the extensive archive of photographs from this era are mostly monochrome which not only fail fully to capture the vivid variety of the artists’ work but also don’t convey the contrasts created by the blues, reds, greens, purples and greys light & dark which created the optical illusions.  Both navies undertook analysis of the losses in shipping to evaluate the effectiveness of dazzle but the results, so impressive in laboratory conditions, were inconclusive, it being statistically impossible to account for external factors but U-Boat captains interviewed after the war attested to the problems dazzle created for them.

RMS Olympic (RMS Titanic's sister ship) in in dazzle, Pier 2 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1918, oil on canvas by Arthur Lismer (1885–1969).

Despite there being no consensus about the advantage of dazzle, allied naval authorities continued to employ it on both some warships and merchant fleets in World War II (1939-1945).  The Imperial German Navy had shown little interest in camouflaging ships during the Great War but did adopt a variation of dazzle early in World War II although OKM’s ((Oberkommando der Marine, high command of the Kriegsmarine (Navy)) designs were intended to disguise the identity of a ship from surface and air observation rather than raise doubts about speed or direction.  It’s not documented why this was abandoned by OKM (which is surprising given most of the navy's records survived the war) but, after 1941, all naval assets were repainted in regulation shades of grey.

German Tirpitz Bismarck-class battleship Tirpitz, anchored in the Kåfjord, Norway, March 1943.  Launched in April 1939 and commissioned in February 1941, she was sunk by RAF (Royal Air Force) bombers in an attack on 12 November 1944 (left).  US Fletcher-class destroyer USS Bush (DD-529) in Measure 32 Camouflage Scheme, off mare Island Naval Shipyard, California June 1944.  Launched in October 1942 and commissioned in May 1943, she was sunk in a Kamikazes attack off Okinawa on 6 April 1945, one of 47 allied ships listed as “sunk by Kamikaze attack”.

Although never as widely used as in 1917-1918, allied navies retained faith in the subterfuge throughout the war although this time it was the Americans who were much more systematic and it wasn’t until late in 1942 the Admiralty released their Intermediate Disruptive Pattern and not until 1944 was a Standard Scheme promulgated.  Wartime developments in radar were already reducing the effectiveness of dazzle and this was accelerated by post-war advances in range-finding which rendered dazzle wholly obsolete.  For decades after 1946, no dazzle schemes were commissioned but (much toned-down) aspects of the idea have in recent years been interpolated into modern "stealth" naval architecture.

Rimbellisher

Rimbellisher (pronounced rhim-bell-lysh)

A decorative ring attached to the rim of a car's wheel.

1940s: A portmanteau word, the construct being rim +‎ (em)bellish +-er and originally a trademarked brand of the Ace company.  Rim was from the tenth century Middle English rim, rym & rime, from the Old English rima (rim, edge, border, bank, coast), from the Proto-Germanic rimô & rembô (edge, border), from the primitive Indo-European rem- & remə- (to rest, support, be based).   It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Rim (plank, wooden cross, trellis), the Old Saxon rimi (edge; border; trim) and the Old Norse rimi (raised strip of land, ridge).  Rim generally means “an edge around something, especially when circular” and is used in fields a different as engineering and vulcanology.  The use in political geography is an extension of the idea, something like “PacRim” (Pac(ific) + rim) used to group the nations with coastlines along the Pacific Ocean.  The use in print journalism referred to “a semicircular copydesk”.   The special use in metallurgy described the outer layer of metal in an ingot where the composition was different from that of the centre.  The word rim is an especially frustrating one for golfers to hear because it describes the ball rolling around the rim of the hole but declining to go in.

Embellish dates from the early fourteenth century and was from the Middle English embelisshen from the Anglo-French, from the Middle French embeliss- (stem of embelir), the construct being em- (The form taken by en- before the labial consonants “b” & “p”, as it assimilates place of articulation).  The en- prefix was from the Middle English en- & in-.  In the Old French it existed as en- & an-, from the Latin in- (in, into); it was also from an alteration of in-, from the Middle English in-, from the Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in (in).  Both the Latin and Germanic forms were from the primitive Indo-European en (in, into) and the frequency of use in the Old French is because of the confluence with the Frankish an- intensive prefix, related to the Old English on-.) + bel-, from the Latin bellus (pretty) + -ish.  The –ish suffix was from the Middle English –ish & -isch, from the Old English –isċ, from the Proto-West Germanic -isk, from the Proto-Germanic –iskaz, from the primitive Indo-European -iskos.  It was cognate with the Dutch -s; the German -isch (from which Dutch gained -isch), the Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish -isk & -sk, the Lithuanian –iškas, the Russian -ский (-skij) and the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ίσκος (-ískos); a doublet of -esque and -ski.  There exists a welter of synonyms and companion phrases such as decorate, grace, prettify, bedeck, dress up, exaggerate, gild, overstate, festoon, embroider, adorn, spiff up, trim, magnify, deck, color, enrich, elaborate, ornament, beautify, enhance, array & garnish.  Embellish is a verb, embellishing is a noun & verb, embellished is a verb & adjective and embellisher & embellishment are nouns; the noun plural is embellishments.

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  Rimbellisher is a noun and the noun plural is rimbellishers.  All other forms are non-standard but a wheel to which a rimbellisher has been fitted could be said to be rimbellished (adjective) white the person doing the fitting would be a rimbellisher (noun), the process an act of rimbellishing (verb) and the result a rimbellishment (noun).

Jaguar XK120 with wire wheels (left), with hubcaps (centre) and with hubcaps and rimbellishers (right).

The Jaguar XK range (1948-1961) was available either with solid or wire wheels and while the choice was usually on aesthetic grounds, those using the things in competition sometimes had to assess the trade-offs.  The wire wheels were lighter and provided better cooling of the brakes (especially those connected to the rear wheels which were covered with fender skirts (spats) when the steel wheels were fitted.  In many forms of motor sport that was of course a great advantage but the spokes and the deletion of the skirts came at an aerodynamic cost, the additional drag induced by the combination reducing top speed by a up to 5 mph (8 km/h) and increasing fuel consumption.  It was thus a question of working out what was most valued and in the early days, where regulations permitted, some drivers used wire-wheels at the front and retained the skirts at the rear, attempting to get as much as possible of the best of both worlds (the protrusion of the hubs used on the wire wheels precluded them from fitting behind the skirts).  Jaguar XK owners would never refer to their wheels as “rims” although there may be some who have added “rims” to their modern (post Tata ownership) Jaguars.

Hofit Golan (b 1985) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) attending Summer Tour Maserati in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, July 2016.  The Maserati Quattroporte is a 1964 Series I, fitted with steel wheels and rimbellishers.

Among certain classes, it’s now common to refer to wheels as rims, and the flashier the product, the more likely it is to be called a “rim”.  Good taste is of course subjective but as a general rule, the greater the propensity to being described as a rim, the more likely it is to be something in poor taste.  That’s unless it actually is a rim, some wheels being of multi-part construction where the rim is a separate piece (and composed sometimes from a different metal).  In the early days of motoring this was the almost universal method of construction and it persisted in trucks until relatively recently (although still used in heavy, earth-moving equipment and such).  However, those dealing with the high-priced, multi-pieced wheels seem still to call them wheels and use the term “rim” only when discussing the actual rim component.

1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III four-door cabriolet with coachwork by German house Voll Ruhrbeck, fitted with the standard factory wire wheels (left) and 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III fixed head coupé (FHC) with coachwork by Belgium house Vesters et Neirinck, fitted with the “Ace Deluxe” wheel discs which fitted over the standard factory wire wheels (right).  The coupé, fabricated in Brussels, was unusual in pre-war coachbuilding in that there was no B-pillar, the style which would become popular in the US between the 1950s-1970s where in two & four-door form it would be described as a “hardtop”, the nomenclature which would over the years be sometimes confused with the “hard-tops” sometime supplied with convertibles as a more secure alternative to the usual “soft top”.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the first known instance of rimbellisher in print was in The Motor (1903-1988) magazine in 1949 although they seem first to have been so-described when on sale in England in 1948.  The rimbellishers were a new product for the Ace Company which in the 1930s had specialized in producing disk-like covers for wire-wheels.  That might seem strange because wire wheels are now much admired but in the 1930s many regarded them as old-fashioned although their light-weight construction meant they were often still used.  What Ace’s aluminium covers provided was the advantage of the lighter weight combined with a shiny, modernist look and they were also easy to keep clean, unlike wire wheels which could demand hours each month to maintain.

The Ace company's publicity material from the 1950s.

In the post-war years the rimbellishers became popular because they were a detail which added a “finished” look.  They were a chromed ring which attached inside the rim of the wheel, providing a contrasting band between the tyre and the centre of the wheel, partially covered usually by a hubcap.  Ace’s original Rimbellishers were secured using a worm-drive type of fastening which ensured the metal of the wheel suffered no damage but as other manufacturers entered the market, the trend became to use a cheaper method of construction using nothing more than multiple sprung tags and with the devices push-fitted into the well of the wheel, some scraping of the paint being inevitable.  Rimbellisher (always with an initial capital) was a registered trademark of the Ace company but the word quickly became generic and was in the 1950s & 1960s used to describe any similar device.  Interestingly, by the mid 1950s, Ace ceased to use “rimbellisher” in its advertising copy and described the two ranges as “wheel discs” and “wheel trims”.

The early versions did nothing more than produce a visual effect but the stylists couldn’t resist the opportunities and some rimbellishers grew to the extent they completely blocked the flow of air through the vents in the wheels and that adversely affected the cooling of the brakes, the use of some of the new generation of full-wheel covers also having this consequence.  The solution was to ensure there was some airflow but to maintain as much as possible of the visual effect, what were often added were little fins and for these to work properly, they needed to catch the airflow so there were left and right-side versions, an idea used to this day in the alloy wheels of some high-price machinery.

1969 Pontiac GTO with standard trim rings (left) and 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge supplied without trim rings (right).

Ace in the early 1950s had distributers in the US and both their rimbellishers and full-wheel covers were offered.  They took advantage of the design which enabled the same basic units to be used, made specific only the substitution of a centre emblem which was varied to suit different manufacturers.  Ace’s market penetration for domestic vehicles didn’t last because Detroit soon began producing their own and within a short time they were elaborate and often garish, something which would last into the twenty-first century.  The Americans soon forgot about the rimbellisher name and started calling them trim-rings and they became a feature of the steel “sports wheels” manufacturers offered on their high-performance ranges in the years before aluminium wheels became mainstream products.  The trim-rings of course had a manufacturing cost and this was built into the price when the wheels were listed as an option.  The cost of production wouldn’t have been great but interestingly, when General Motors’ Pontiac division developed the “Judge” option for its GTO to compete with the low-cost Plymouth Road Runner, the trim-rings were among the items deleted.  However, the Judge package evolved to the point where it became an extra-cost option for the GTO with the missing trim-rings about the only visible concession to economy.

Mercedes-Benz W111s: 1959 220 SE with 8-slot rimbellishers (left), 1967 250 SE with the briefly used solid rimbellishers (centre) and 1971 280 SE 3.5 with the later 12-slot rimbellishers which lacked the elegance of the 8-slots.

Like many companies, Mercedes-Benz used wheel covers as a class identifier.  When the W111 saloons (1959-1968) were released in 1959, the entry-level 220 was fitted with just hubcaps while the up market twin-carburetor 220 S and the fuel-injected 220 SE had rimbellishers (made by the factory, not Ace).  Within a few years, the use of rimbellishers was expanded but by the mid-1960s, the elegant 8-slot units mostly had been replaced with a less-pleasing solid metal pressing (albeit one which provided a gap for brake cooling).  That didn’t last and phased-in between 1967-1968, the company switched from the hubcap / rimbellisher combination to a one-piece wheel cover which included the emulation of a 12-slot rimbellisher.  There were no objections to the adoption of one-piece construction but few found the new design as attractive as the earlier 8-slot.

MG publicity photograph (left) showing MGA and Magnettes, the former fitted with the Cornercroft's Ace Rimbellishers which were a factory option.  The MGA (right) uses a different third-party rimbellisher which was physically bigger and overlapped the edge of the rim to a greater degree.  The factory-option is preferred by most because it better suits the MGA's delicate lines.

1958 Jaguar 3.4 (top) and 1960 MGA Coupé (bottom) with the relevant Ace-Mercury wheel discs.

As well as an after-market product sold through retail outlets and offered as a dealer-fitted accessory, the Ace-Mercury wheel discs were at various times a factory option, MG sometimes listing them for the MGA (1955-1962), ZA-ZB Magnettes (1953-1958) and early versions of both the MGB (1962-1980) & Midget (1961-1979).  For Coventry-based Cornercroft (manufacturer of the Ace Mercury range), the attraction was the (more or less) standardized shape of steel wheels meant it was possible to use the one basic design in a variety of diameters (13, 14 & 15 inch), able to be marketed for use with vehicles from different makers simply by changing the centre-cap to a fitting with the name of the relevant marque (others would also use the same technique).  Cornercraft also offered a (fake) eared spinner in the style of a knockoff nut but these seem never to have been factory options.  The Ace-Mercury was made from bright anodized aluminium and thus was both lightweight and corrosion-resistant but somewhat fragile if subjected to stresses which steel would easily cope.  Additionally, like many “big” wheel-covers, they could be prone to “popping-off” during hard cornering, a phenomenon familiar to students of the car chases in Hollywood movies between the 1960 and 1990s, the film pedants (of which there seem to be many) documenting instances where the “continuity girl” either failed to notice or ignore a wheel-cover inexplicably re-attached, mid-chase.  All of this meant the survival rate of Ace-Mercury is low and many were anyway discarded as subsequent owners preferred the sexier look of wire, alloy or styled-steel wheels.  That makes them now a valuable period-piece and it’s not unusual to see an MG, Riley or Jaguar driven to a show with bare wheels, the Ace-Mercurys put on only for the duration of the exhibition.

Crornercraft advertisement, 1957.

One difference from the usual practice was that unlike most hub-caps or wheel covers which tended to be the same for all four wheels, the Ace-Mercury’s small louvers operated as air scoops when the wheels were in rotation, ducting cooling air through the ventilation holes in the wheel to assist in cooling the brakes.  A set for four was thus supplied in left & right-hand pairs and needed to be installed with the louvers’ open edge “facing the breeze”.  That wasn’t unique but was untypical and the concept was sometimes made more intricate still, such as when the fourth-generation Chevrolet Corvette (C4, 1983-1996) was introduced with alloy wheels of a different width front & rear, meaning than for the cooling ducts to work there were four different wheels.  Another quirk of the Ace-Mercury was that although the visual similarities make them all barely distinguishable except for the diameter, in January 1959, MG changed the design of the MGA’s disc wheels, competing Cornercroft to re-design to the internal structure (the MGA version’s left/right part numbers changing from 97H675/97H676 to BHA4165/BHA4166.  Details like this litter the car restoration business which is why replicating exactly what was done decades ago can be both challenging and expensive.

1966 Jaguar Mark X with factory rimbellishers.