Tea Tray

Tea Tray (pronounced tee-trey)

(1) A tray used to carry a tea service.

(2) A tray of this type used for related purposes.

(3) The accepted descriptor of certain rear spoilers on some Porsches.

Mid-late 1600s: Trays in one form or another are probably one of mankind’s earliest inventions and the creation of the “tea tray” reflected the popularity of the brewed leaf and the place it assumed in polite society as the rich were able to purchase elaborate “tea services” (cups, saucers, milk jugs, tea pots, strainers et al).  In England and Europe, the “taking of tea” in such circles was sometimes formalized    

The noun tea entered English in the late sixteenth century, from the Dutch thee, from the Amoy (Xiamen) dialect of Hokkien 茶 (written both as “tê” & “t’e”), akin to the Chinese chá, from Old Chinese, thought ultimately from the primitive Sino-Tibetan s-la (leaf, tea).  It was the merchants of the Dutch East India Company (based in what is modern-day Indonesia) who after 1610 brought the leaf (and thus the word “tea”) to England and other parts of Western Europe.  The traders obtained the leaf in Amoy (the Malay teh was shipped along the same trade routes). The doublets chai and cha are from the same root.  Served in Paris by at least 1635, tea was introduced in England by 1644.  The spelling “tea” wasn’t at first the default, the variations including tay, thea, tey & tee and the popular early pronunciation seem to have been to rhyme with obey, the familiar modern tee not predominate until the late eighteenth century.  The Russian chai, the Persian cha, the Greek tsai, the Arabic shay and the Turkish çay all came overland from the Mandarin form.  The meaning “afternoon meal at which tea is served” dates from 1738 and is still used in certain regions to mean “evening meal” in the sense other use “dinner” (historically, for these folk “dinner was served around midday).  In US use, tea was slang for “marijuana” during the 1930s (apparently an allusion to it being often brewed in boiling water) but an onrush of newer slang rendered it obsolete as early as the early 1950s.

Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap (1998) with silver tea tray.

Tray (a small, typically rectangular or round, flat, and rigid object upon which things are carried) predates the eleventh century and was from the Middle English treye, from the Old English trēġ & trīġ (flat wooden board with a low rim), from the Proto-West Germanic trauwi, from the Proto-Germanic trawją or traujam (wooden vessel), from the primitive Indo-European dóru, a variant of the root drewo- (be firm, solid, steadfast (with also the specialized senses  “tree; wood” and derivatives referring to objects made of wood. The primary sense may have been “wooden vessel”).  It was cognate with the Old Norse treyja (carrier), the Old Swedish trø (wooden measure for grain & corn), the Low German Treechel (dough trough), the Ancient Greek δρουίτη (drouítē) (tub, vat) and the Sanskrit द्रोण (droṇa) (trough); trough and tree were influenced by the same sources.  The alternatives teatray and tea-tray are both accepted as standard forms but both are usually listed as “rare”, the former especially so.  Tea tray is a noun; the noun plural is tea trees.

George IV sterling silver tea set, hallmark from the silver workshop of Rebecca Emes (widow of silversmith John Emes (circa 1765-1810)) & Edward Bernard who were in partnership between 1808-1829.

The pieces are rendered in a melon shaped form with a textured leaf inspired frieze at the top register, rising from embellished shell form feet.  Originally a four piece set (teapot, coffee pot, cream jug and open sugar bowl) more than a century later a Canadian owner commissioned (through Birks (Canada)) a matching muffin dish.  The trademark on the muffin dish is that of Ellis & Co, Empire Works, Great Hampton Street & Hall Street, Birmingham (hallmarked 1937).  The tea tray is a sterling silver “George III” tea tray by Solomon Hougham,

High tea at the Savoy, London: High teas are events where ladies meet to talk about their feelings.

Although there are some striking modernist creations, the most sought after teas sets are those of porcelain or sterling silver, antique versions of the latter more common simply because they are less fragile, lasting centuries with only minimal care.  The first tea sets seem to have been the simple porcelain containers made in China during the Han Dynasty (206–220 BC).  From these humble, functional beginnings came eventually the intricately designed services of the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries which included not only the teapot and tea tray but also cups, sugar bowls with tongs, milk jugs, small plates for lemon slices and a remarkable variety of strainers and sieves to filter out pieces of the leaves.  In the sixteenth century porcelain tea sets arrived with the leaf and like many innovations from the East, consumption was originally limited to the rich who soon began to object to scalding their fingers on the handle-less cups; cups with handles (surely a marker of civilization) soon became essential in any drawing room.  Less pleasingly, adding milk and sugar also became fashionable so sugar bowls and milk jug (creamers) were added to sets along with the necessary teaspoons.  The tea craze thus influenced furniture, the “tea table” the item on which tea was served, sometime a place for the tea tray to sit but used also for more elaborate events which included cakes and such; this was the origin of the modern “high tea” which became such a profitable side-line for hotels.  Sterling silver tea sets began to appear in the late eighteenth century although it would be some decades before they attained great popularity, aided by Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) fondness for tea and although the influence of the British royalty on the fashions of society was often negligible, in this she seems to have led the way.

Forks in evolution: The ducktail, the whale tail and the tea tray

There was much thoughtful engineering which made the 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 such a formidable car in competition both in terms of what was taken out (most creature comforts) and what was put in (horsepower, light weight components and a braking system said to cost about as much as a new Volkswagen Beetle) but what caught the eye of most were the lurid graphics along the sides (Yellow, Blue, Green, Red and Blood Orange among the choices) and the spoiler which sprouted from the rear; it came to be called the “Ducktail” (bürzel in German) and was the subject of Patent 2238704: “The invention relates to a passenger car with a rear spoiler – one preferably mounted between side panels - and an aerodynamic device in the rear to increase the dynamic rear wheel pressure.”

1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 during wind tunnel testing of the Ducktail spoiler (left) and a production version with blue graphics (right).

The 911 Carrera RS 2.7 was a homologation special and Porsche planned to build only the 500 identical road-legal versions examples demanded to qualify the thing to be eligible competition under the Group 4 (Gran Turismo) regulations.  Although its 210 hp (156 kW) doesn’t sound impressive fifty years on (and even in the era there were many more powerful machines), weighing a svelte 960 KG (3086 lb), it could reach 100km/h (60 mph) in 5.8 seconds and touch 245 km/h (152 mph).  Given the performance, the Ducktail was a necessity to ensure there was at speed no dangerous lift at the rear but the factory was soon compelled to issue a bulletin warning that anyone fitting a ducktail to any other 911 would also have to fit the factory's front spoiler because, without the front unit, the rear down-force would become “excessive”, lifting the nose, the result: instant instability.  As it turned out, demand was greater than expected and eventually 1580 cars were built, many with a few of the creature comforts restored and today the 1973 Carrera is among the most collectable of the 911s; sales over US$2 million have been recorded.

1974 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 3.0 with whale tail.

The delicate lines of the 911 were spoiled when the 1974 models were released, the “impact” bumpers grafted on to satisfy US regulations an unhappy addition but in fairness to Porsche, their implementation was aesthetically more successful than many, notably their Stuttgart neighbors Mercedes-Benz which appeared to have taken for inspiration the naval rams once fitted beneath the waterlines of battleships and there to sink smaller vessels by ramming; at least on warships they couldn’t be seen.  The Ducktail however survived the legislative onslaught and became available on the new Carrera coupe (fitted as standard in North American markets) which was a pure road car without any of the compromises which made its raw-boned predecessor so engaging.

Later in the year however, a variant of the rear spoiler evolved for the 911 Carrera RS 3.0, this time rendered as a larger, flatter piece with rubber edges, the trailing edge rakishly upturned; it came to be called the “Whale Tail.”  Actually to speak of the Whale Tail as an item is a little misleading because the evolution continued and it was only the early examples which used the simple construction with a recessed grille which tracked the line of the engine cover, blending into the uninterrupted flat expanse of the spoiler itself.  By 1976 the (pre-intercooler) Turbo Carrera (the 930, the so-called “widow-maker”) was fitted with a Whale Tail with a second grille inset into the spoiler itself and to complicate the parts catalogue further, the secondary grille on the RoW (rest of the world) cars was smaller than that fitted to vehicles destined for North America; again the increasingly rigid US regulations the cause.  As the years went by, the Whale Tail continued to change.

The Whale Tail (left) and the Tea Tray (right)

By 1978, there was another evolutionary fork, the 911 Turbo’s spoiler becoming the “Tea Tray”, distinguished by a continuous raised rubber lip around the sides and rear edge.  The recessed grilles were replaced by a large, inset louvered plastic grille, needed to accommodate the additional height of the intercooler while the base of the assembly became a wide pedestal mounted through the engine cover and although there were detail changes, the Tea Tray was fitted to 930s (and atmospheric cars with the M491 option) until the retirement of the long-serving (the 1974-1989 911s often called “G Series” although technically that should apply only to the 1974 model year production but such is the visual similarity the use persists) platform in 1989.

Herr Professor Ferdinand Porsche (1875–1951) explaining the Volkswagen (which as the range proliferated would come to be called the "Type 1") Beetle to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) during the ceremony marking the laying of the foundation stone at the site of the Volkswagen factory, Fallersleben, Wolfsburg in Germany's Lower Saxony region, 26 May 1938 (which Christians mark as the Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus Christ, commemorating the bodily Ascension of Christ to Heaven) (left).  The visit would have been a pleasant diversion for Hitler who was at the time immersed in planning for the Nazi's takeover of Czechoslovakia and later the same day, during a secret meeting, the professor would display a scale-model of an upcoming high-performance version (right). 

Tea Tray on 930 Turbo Cabriolet (left) and Taco on 996.1 GT3 (right)

The Ducktail, Whale Tail and Tea Tray remain the best known of the Porsche spoilers but there were others including the “Swan Neck” but the most photogenic was the “Taco”.  It was introduced on the 911 GT3 (RoW 996.1) and was so admired the factory later made it available as part of an optional aero-kit.  The nickname is of course an allusion to the Mexican culinary staple, the resemblance quite obvious when viewed in profile although it has also been dubbed the “Pacman”.  The 996.1 GT3, production of which was limited to 1868 units, was first displayed at the 1999 Frankfurt Motor Show and was one of the dual-purpose 911s (for road and track, the GT3 badge appearing several times since) and like all the spoilers, the Taco was functional and it needed to be, the 300 lbs (136 KG) downforce generated at the top speed of 304 km/h (189 mph) required to ensure the thing remained in contact with planet Earth.

Spoilers and other aerodynamic aids can be re-purposed.  A young lady with a tea tray (with coffee pot) (left) and laundry hanging on a the wing of a 1969 Dodge Daytona (right).  In period, between stints on the tracks, drivers would hang their sweat-laden racing suits on the wings of Daytonas and Plymouth Superbirds.

Shturmovik

Shturmovik (pronounced sturm-oh-vic)

The Russia word used to mean “Ground Attack Aircraft”.

1939-1941: From the Cyrillic штурмовик (shturmovík) which in English is written sometimes as the simplified (phonetic) Stormovik or Sturmovik.  The word is a shortened form of Bronirovanni Shturmovik (Bsh) (armed stormtrooper) and was the generic term in Russia for aircraft designed for this role; in English it was a synecdoche for the Ilyushin Il-2.

A flight of Ilyushin Il-2s.

The definitive Shturmovik was the Илью́шин Ил-2 (Ilyushin Il-2), a remarkable platform which provided a template for future airframes of its type.  Over 36,000 were produced, an all-time record for combat aircraft and one more impressive still if the 7000-odd of its closely related successor (Ilyushin Il-10) are included, the family total thus close to 43,000.  Although not as ascetically unhappy as the infamously ungainly French bombers of the era, the Il-2 was not a delicate, elegant thing in the style of something like the Supermarine Spitfire or a muscular form like the North American P-51 Mustang and one popular nickname adopted by the Soviet infantry viewing from below was “hunchback” although those better acquainted with its construction and purpose preferred “Flying Tank”.

The idea of “flying tank” is a useful one to explore.  Many theorists in the early 1930s had advocated the use of low-altitude aircraft, flying at relatively slow speeds as the most effective weapon which could deliver ordinance with sufficient accuracy to neutralize tanks and other armored vehicles in battlefield conditions.  That implied the need for an airframe to both carry heavy weaponry and sufficient armor to resist attack from the ground and air, a combination judged impossible to produce because the engines at the time lack the power needed for such heavy machine.  The engines did during the 1930s became more powerful but the conceptual breakthrough was in the design of the airframe.  Previously, designers had done essentially what the nineteenth century naval architects did to make the early “ironclads”: attach additional metal plates over an existing lightweight structure.  Even at sea that limited performance but did (for a while) make the craft close to impregnable; it couldn’t however produce a military aircraft with its need for specific performance over different ranges.  The solution was to make the armor an integral part of the shell, protecting the crew, engine and fuel tank, the weight of this central unit some 700 kg (1540 lb), a number offset by not having also to support the weight of a conventional fuselage, the steel part of that having little supporting structure inside, the armor used as a structural member.  It was an approach which in the post-war years would be implemented in cars as the “safety-cell”, the central passenger compartment onto which the other components would be added.

Ilyushin Il-2 with 37 mm ShFK-37 cannons.

Early in July 1941, some two weeks into Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union), the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) first became aware of the Shturmovik which initially they compared to the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) Junkers Ju 87 (Stuka) dive-bomber which had been such an effective ground-forces support weapon in the conquest of Poland and then Western Europe, its limitations not exposed until it was deployed in the early days of the Battle of Britain (July-October 1940).  The Ju 87 could support a heavier bomb-load than the Il-2 but, equipped with automatic cannons, rockets, machine guns, and bombs, the Russian aircraft was much more lethal.  The Germans however quickly identified the weak points and that most had been rushed into service with pilots provided with neither adequate training or the tactics needed to protect each other in flight, especially during attacking runs.  Moreover, they lacked the optical sights needed accurately to aim their weapons and while the thick armor surrounded the pilot and engine, the structure behind the cockpit was plywood, highly susceptible to damage (tail-gunners suffered a death rate seven times that of the pilots because the gunner’s portion of the airframe was mostly of plywood).

Literally hundreds of Il-2s were lost to anti-aircraft fire or attacks by fighters, usually from the rear during bombing runs but, defying the expectations had infected the highest levels of the German political and military command, the Soviets were able to make good their losses of Shturmoviks and pilots, just as they were able to re-equip armored divisions with tanks, exceeding the capacity of the Germans ability to destroy formations.  As the war proceeded, the Shturmoviks increasingly came in waves and although the attrition remained high (the losses at a rate other allied forces would never have countenanced), the sheer weight of numbers meant the Soviets could overwhelm what were increasingly numerically inferior formations.  Noting the robustness of the Il-2, the Germans nicknamed them Betonflugzeug (concrete plane), acknowledging the ability to absorb punishment; others preferred Der Schwarze Tod (the Black Death).  The ability of the Soviet industrial machine to first maintain and later vastly increase production of things like aircraft and tanks was because of decisions taken by the Germans during the 1930s which afforded priority to create an air-force best suited to supporting brief, high-intensity conflicts (which came to be known as blitzkrieg (lightning war), thus the mass-production of small dive-bombers, medium-range light bombers and fighters rather than long-range strategic, heavy bombers.  As the Soviets moved their plant & equipment eastward (itself a remarkable achievement), the factories became immune from air attack as they were beyond the range of the Luftwaffe.  However, as the German advance stalled, production in Moscow resumed, increasing the available numbers and innovations appeared, one prototype even tested with a flame-thrower mounted in the nose.

Red Army Air Force Yakovlev Yak 9B dropping PTABs.

Another innovation first delivered by the Shturmovik was the Protivo-Tankovaya Avia Bomba (Anti-Tank Air-Bomb; the PTAB), one of the predecessors of modern cluster munitions and similar in concept to the contemporary German two-kilogram Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD-2) (butterfly-bomb).  In Mid-1943, knowing the Wehrmacht’s Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) against Soviet forces in the Kursk salient was imminent, the Russians stockpiled the PTABs, producing almost a million of the 2 Kg devices, designed specifically so a Shturmovik could carry almost 200, each with a “shaped charge” warhead able to penetrate the armor of even the best protected tanks.  The battle of Kursk (July 1943) was the biggest tank engagement ever fought and for days some 8000 tanks (3000 German, 5000 Soviet) ranged around a vast battlefield of swirling heat, dust and death and although visibility at times restricted the use of air-power, the PTAB equipped Shturmoviks damaged or immobilized a verified 419 enemy vehicles.

RAF Hawker Hurricane IID with a 40mm Vickers anti-tank cannon fitted under each wing.  The pilots noted the "tank buster" moniker but preferred "Flying Can Openers".

The Shturmovik concept was quickly adopted by other air forces and one was rapidly improvised by the UK’s Royal Air Force to counter the threat posed by tanks in the North African campaign.  By 1941 it was apparent the Hawker Hurricane was no longer suitable in its original role as an interceptor and fighter but it was a robust, reliable and easily serviced platform and it proved adaptable to the ground attack role.  By early 1942 deliveries had begun of the Mark IID Hurricane and equipped with a pair of under-wing mounted 40mm (1.6 inch) canon, it proved an effective counter to the Africa Corps’ tanks in the Western Desert as well as fulfilling a similar role in the Burma theatre against the even more vulnerable Japanese armor; in both places they were dubbed, with some accuracy: “tank busters”.  The effect of the 40 mm canons was such that when fired, they perceptibly slowed the plane in flight but pilots learned techniques to compensate.  So convincing were the results that a generation of heavy fighters either designed for or able to be adapted for the purpose, Hawker’s Typhoon & Tempest and Republic’s huge P-47 Thunderbolt all as famed as “tank busters” as for any other part they played in the war, especially noted for their role in the development of air-to-ground rockets.

Lindsay Lohan in body armor.

Despite progress, notably the use of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, often casually referred to as “drones”) Shturmoviks have remained an important component of military inventories and some years after the end of the First Gulf War (1990-1991), one of the first conspiracy theories to appear on the then novel WorldWideWeb concerned them.  It was claimed a study the Pentagon conducted (using as targets Iraqi tanks abandoned in the Kuwaiti desert) concluded blocks of concrete dropped from aircraft were just as accurate as bombs as well as being cheaper and easier to produce, while equally effective in disabling a tank.  The conspiracy theory claimed that suggestions the concept be pursued was vetoed by the “military-industrial complex” which made much money out of building anti-tank bombs.

Diaspora

Diaspora (pronounced dahy-as-per-uh or dee-as-per-uh)

(1) The scattering of the Jews among the Gentiles living beyond Palestine after the sixth century BC Babylonian captivity and the later Roman conquests of Palestine (the historic origin; usually capitalized).

(2) The body of Jews living in countries outside Israel.

(3) In the New Testament, the those Christians living outside Palestine

(4) Any group which involuntarily has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland.

(5) Any group migration or from a country or region.

(6) Any religious group living as a minority among people of the prevailing religion (not a definition accepted by all).

(7) By extension, the spread or dissemination of something originally confined to a local, homogeneous group (language, cuisine, an economic system et al).

(8) A collective of niche social media communities, run under the auspices of diasporafoundation.org.

1690-1700: From the Ancient Greek διασπορά (diasporá) (scattering; dispersion), from διασπείρω (diaspeírō) (I spread about; I scatter), derived from διά (diá) (between, through, across) + σπείρω (speírō) (I sow), the modern construct being diaspeirein (dia + speirein) (to scatter about, disperse) and διασπορά (diaspora) was thus understood as “a scattering".  Diaspora & diasporite are nouns, diasporan & diasporal are nouns & adjectives, diasporic is an adjective; the noun plural is diasporae, diasporai or diasporas.

The word diaspora must be lexicographically sexy because it has over many years attracted much interest from historians and etymologists, the conclusion of many that there may be “missing links” (ie, lost texts), this accounting for the murkiness of the transition from the verb of Antiquity to the idea of “diaspora” as it came to be understood.  There is confusion over the exact process of derivation from these old verbs to the contemporary concept(s) and although the Athenian historian and general Thucydides (circa 460–circa 400 BC) was for a long time cited as the first to use the word, this later was found to be a medieval misunderstanding (something not unusual) of his use of the verb σπείρω (speíro) (to sow).  The Greek word does appear in the Septuagint (the earliest extant Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew):

ἔσῃ ἐν διασπορᾷ ἐν πάσαις ταῖς βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς, esē en diaspora en pasais tais basileiais tēs gēs ("thou shalt be a dispersion in all kingdoms of the earth"). (Deuteronomy 28:25).  The word in the Hebrew was galuth (exile) although the translation in the King James edition of the Bible (KJV 1611) read: “The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth”.

οἰκοδομῶν Ἰερουσαλὴμ ὁ Kύριος καὶ τὰς διασπορὰς τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ ἐπισυνάξει, oikodomōn Ierousalēm ho Kyrios kai tas diasporas tou Israēl episynaxē ("The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel"). (Psalms 147.2)

When the Bible was translated into Greek, the word was used of (1) the Kingdom of Samaria, exiled from Israel by the Assyrians between 740-722 BC, (2) Jews, Benjaminites and Levites exiled from the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians (587 BC) and (3) Jews exiled by the empire from Roman Judea (72 AD).  From that use can be traced the development of the word to its modern form when it can be used not only of populations of one land living in another but linguistic novelties such the “diasporic capitalism” which found it’s natural home under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and “diasporic cuisine” (such as the ubiquitous sushi which has colonized takeaway outlets east & west).  In the English-speaking world, the convention is that when capitalized, Diaspora refers specifically to the Jews (no longer does there seem to be a faction which insists it can be only of the event in 72 AD) while the word is un-capitalized for all other purposes.  Even then, controversy remains.  Because of the origins in which exile and expulsion were central to the experience, it is by some held that properly to be thought a diasporic, one must have been forced from one’s homeland but that seems now a minority position, someone in self-imposed exile, an economic migrant or a “mail order” bride all able to be included.  The foreign element does though remain essential; a refugee can be part of a diaspora whereas an IDP (internally displaced person) cannot, even if geographically, religiously or ethnically segregated, if in their homeland, they remain (an unfortunate) part of that community.  The first known instance of “diaspora” in an English text is thought to appear in 1594 in John Stockwood's (circa 1545-1610) translation of Commentarius in XII prophetas minores (Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets (1594)) by French theologian. Lambert Daneau Lambert Daneau (circa 1530-1595): “This scattering abrode of the Iewes, as it were an heauenly sowing, fell out after their returne from the captiuitie of Babylon. Wherevpon both Acts. 2. and also 1. Pet. 1. and 1. Iam. ver. 1. [sic] they are called Diaspora, that is, a scattering or sowing abrode.”  The word was used in 1825 in reference to Moravian protestants and in 1869 in reference to the dispersion of the Jews although in English, the word earlier used to convey the concept was the late fourteenth century Latinate dispersion.

Google Ngram for diaspora.  Google’s Ngrams are not wholly reliable as a record in the trend-line of a word’s use because (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI might improve).  Despite that, the trend of disapora’s increasing use in the post-war years seems solid.  In the nineteenth and into the twentieth century the word was used in theological and academic writing and there doesn’t appear to have been a great volume of argument about whether it exclusively should be of Jews and nor was that aspect of the history controversial in the post-war years when use of the word spiked, a product presumably of (1) the vast increase in migration from European nations, both within the area and to countries beyond and (2) the rapid expansion of the university sector in the West, a new cohort of academics suddenly available (and anxious) to study these populations and the effects, both on their homelands and the places in which they became resident.

The classical etymology and the idea of something leaving its original site and travelling to other places meant “diaspora” appealed to scientists coining technical terms.   In geology, the noun diaspore describes a natural hydrate of aluminium (also as diasporite, tanatarite, empholite or kayserite) which in addition to its other properties is famed for its stalactites and in crystal form, it exists as a gemstone.  Diaspore is a major component in the ore bauxite which is smelted into aluminium and the name was chosen to suggest “scatter”, an allusion to its decrepitation when heated.  In petrology (the study of certain rocks and their transformative processes), the related noun diasporite refers to the metamorphic rock containing diaspore.  In botany, diaspore is used to refer to seeds and fruit which operate in unison as a dispersal unit.

A very modern diasporic: Living in the United Arab Emirates, island designer Lindsay Lohan (pictured here in an empire line dress), is part of the western diaspora in Dubai.

A diasporite is a member of a diaspora (although the adjective diasporic has been used as a (non-standard) noun, the usual plural in English being diasporas, the alternatives diasporae & diasporai.  It’s certainly a loaded word, something perhaps based in the idea of exile in some form, a particular form of migration, displacement, scattering, exodus or dispersal although one also associated with the “escape” of the refugee.  In use, the connotation seems to be different from “expatriate” (often clipped to “expat”), another example of someone living in a foreign land and it’s hard to escape the impression the modern “diaspora” has become a Western construct and one which applies (almost) exclusively to religious, cultural or ethnic minorities and although diasporites increasingly are where they are by choice rather than an act of expulsion, the distinction remains and sometimes there are ethnic-specific adaptations such as Afrodiaspora (those of African extraction (and not necessarily birth)) living in other places.

Although the irregular immigration northward from South & Central America is trending up, the Indian diaspora remains the largest. 

By implication too, a disapora, sharing a common origin, culture or ethnicity tends to be thought a group which maintains a strong connection to the “homeland”, its culture and heritage. They may engage in cultural, social, or economic activities that tie them back to their original community.  By contrast, an expat seems almost always to be white and in some well-paid job, there perhaps for the long-term but probably still temporarily; the British lawyers and accountants in Hong Kong before the handover (1997) were “expats” whereas the workers from the Philippines employed as domestic help were a “diaspora”.  It’s a distinction which would have seemed both understandable and unremarkable under the Raj and it's hard to see its origin as based in anything but racialism.

Gore

Gore (pronounced gawr or gohr)

(1) Blood when shed, especially in volume or when coagulated.

(2) Murder, bloodshed, violence etc, often in the context of visual depictions (film, television etc) and frequently an element in the “pornography of violence”.

(3) Dirt; mud; filth (obsolete except in some regional dialects and obviously something of which to be aware when reading historic texts).

(4) In cartography, the curved surface that lies between two close lines of longitude on a globe (or the as represented in the segmented two-dimensional depiction in certain maps or charts.

(5) In nautical design, a triangular piece of material inserted in a sail to produce a greater surface areas or a desired shape.

(6) In apparel, one of the panels, usually tapering or triangular in shape, making up a garment (most often used with skirts) or for other purposes such as umbrellas, hot-air balloons etc.

(7) In a bra (sometimes (tautologically) as “centre gore”), the panel connecting the cups and houses centre ends of the underwires (if fitted).

(8) On cobbling, an elastic gusset for providing a snug fit in a shoe.

(9) A triangular tract of land, especially one lying between larger divisions; in the jargon of surveying, a small patch of land left unincorporated due to unresolved competing surveys or a surveying error (also know in the US as “neutral area” and in the UK as “ghost island”).

(10) In road-traffic management, a designated “no-go” area at a point where roads intersect.

(11) In heraldry, a charge delineated by two inwardly curved lines, meeting in the fess point and considered an abatement.

(12) To create, mark or cut (something) in a triangular shape.

(13) Of an animal, such as a bull, to pierce or stab (a person or another animal) with a horn or tusk.

(14) To pierce something or someone (with a spear or similar weapon), as if with a horn or tusk.

(15) To make or furnish with a gore or gores; to add a gore.

Pre 900: From the Middle English gorre & gore (filth, moral filth), from the Old English gor (dung, bull dung, filth, dirt), from the Proto-Germanic gurą (half-digested stomach contents; faeces; manure) and the ultimate source may have been the primitive Indo-European gher- (hot; warm).  It was cognate with the Dutch goor, the Old High German gor (filth), the Middle Low German göre and the Old Norse gor (cud; half-digested food).  The idea of gore being “clotted blood” dates from the 1560s and was applied especially on battlefields; the term gore-blood documents since the 1550s.

The noun gore in the sense “patch of land or cloth of triangular shape” dates also from before 900 and was from the Middle English gor, gore, gar & gare (triangular piece of land, triangular piece of cloth), from the Old English gāra (triangular piece of land, corner, point of land, cape, promontory) the ultimate source thought to be the Proto-Germanic gaizon- or gaizô.   It was cognate with the German Gehre (gusset) and akin to the Old English gār (spear).  The seemingly strange relationship between spears, pieces of fabric and patches of land is explained by the common sense of triangularity, the allusion being to the word gore used in the sense of “a projecting point”, the tip of a spear visualized as the acute angle at which two sides of a triangle meet.  From this developed in the mid-thirteenth century the use to describe the panel used the front of a skirt, extended by the early 1300s just about any “triangular piece of fabric”.

Al Gore (b 1948; US vice president 1993-2001) with crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  Al Gore used to be “the next President of the United States” and when this photo was taken at Miami Dade College, Florida during October 2016, crooked Hillary was also TNPOTUS.  They have much in common.

Al Gore's oft-repeated (and much derided) "quote" that he "invented the internet" is a misrepresentation of his actual statement, made on 9 March 1999 during an interview with CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer (b 1948): "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."  By this, Gore meant that while a member of the Senate during the 1980s, he was an advocate of the roll-out of high-speed telecommunications and network infrastructure.  He introduced legislation that led to the increased funding for and and expansion of the ARPANET (the US Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, the first public packet-switched computer network which operated between 1969-1989; the precursor to the modern internet, it was used mostly by the academic institutions and the military).  The High Performance Computing and Communication Act (1991) was known as the "Gore Bill" and it provided the framework for the national infrastructure.  However one looks at things, he achieved more than crooked Hillary.

Gore entered the jargon of surveying in the 1640s, adopted in the New England region of the American colonies to describe “a strip of land left out of any property by an error when tracts are surveyed”.  Such errors and disputes were not uncommon (there and elsewhere), the most famous resolved by the Mason-Dixon Line, the official demarcation defining the boarders of what would become the US states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (which was until 1863 attached to Virginia).  The line was determined by a survey undertaken between 1763-1767 by two English astronomers Charles Mason (1728–1786) & Jeremiah Dixon (1733–1779), commissioned because the original land grants issued by Charles I (1600–1649; King of England, Scotland & Ireland 1625-1649) and Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of Scotland, England and Ireland 1660-1685) were contradictory, something not untypical given the often outdated and sometimes dubious maps then in use.  Later, "Mason-Dixon Line" would enter the popular imagination as the border between "the North" and "the South" (and thus "free" & "slave" states) because the line, west of Delaware, marked the northern limit of slavery in the United States.  Even though the later abolition of slavery in some areas rendered the line less of a strict delineation for this purpose, both phrase and implied meaning endured.

Arizona Department of Transport’s conceptual illustration of a gore used in traffic management.  The gore area is (almost always at least vaguely triangular) space at a point where roads in some way intersect and depending on the environment and available space, a gore may be simply a designated space (often painted with identifying lines of various colors) or a raised structure, sometime large and grassed.  The purpose of a gore is to ensue (1) the visibility of drivers is not restricted by other vehicles (most important with merging traffic) and (2) vehicle flow is in a safe direction and for this reason gores are designated “no go” areas through which vehicles should neither pass nor stop; something often enforced by statute.

The verb (in the sense of “to pierce, to stab”) emerged in the late fourteenth century (although use seems to have been spasmodic until the sixteenth) and was from the Middle English gorren & goren (to pierce, stab) which was derived from gōre (spear, javelin, dart), from the Old English gār (spear, shaft, arrow).  The adjective gory (covered with clotted blood) dates from the late fifteenth century and developed from the noun and the derived noun goriness is now a favorite measure by which produces in the horror movie genre are judged, some sites offering a “goriness index” or “goriness rating” for those who find such metrics helpful (the noun gorinessness is non-standard but horror movie buffs get the idea).  “To gore” also meant “add a gore (to a skirt, sail etc)” but surprisingly given the profligate ways of English degore or de-gore (removing a gore form a skirt, sail etc) seems never to have evolved.  Gore is a noun & verb, gory is an adjective, gored is a verb & adjective, goriness is a noun and goring is a verb; the noun plural is gores.

Shyaway’s diagram detailing how even mainstream bras can have as many as 16 separate components although more individual parts are used in the construction; some (obviously) at least duplicated.  Who knew?

The gore (sometimes (tautologically) as “centre gore”) fits in the space between breasts, the panel connecting the cups and providing locating points for the centre ends of the underwires (if fitted).  Because there are so many types of design, the height of gore varies greatly, one fitted to a full support bra rising higher than that used by a plunge bra but the general principle is the panel should lie flat between the breasts, aligned with the skin, the gore's purpose as a piece of structural engineering being to provide separation.

HerRoom's deconstruction of the art and science of the gore.

According to HerRoom.com, the significance of the gore sitting firmly against the sternum is it provides an indication of fit.  If a gap appears between skin and gore, that suggests the cups lack sufficient depth and the user should proceed up the alphabet until snugness is achieved.  Where the gap is especially obvious (some fitters recommending a standard HB pencil as a guide while others prefer fingers, the advantage with the pencil being that globally it's a uniform size), it may be necessary to both go up more than one cup letter and decrease the band-size although there are exceptions to the gore-sternum rule and that includes “minimizers” (which achieve their visual trick by a combination of reducing forward protection and redistributing mass laterally) and most “wireless” (or “wire-free”) units (except for the smaller sizes).  The design of the gore also helps in accommodating variations in the human shape; although almost all gores are triangular and the difference in their height is obvious (and as a general principle: the greater the height, the greater the support) a difference in width will make different garments suitable for different body-types.

Gory: Lindsay Lohan was photographed in 2011 & 2013 by Tyler Shields (b 1982) in sessions which involved knives and the depiction of blood.  The shoot attracted some attention and while the technical achievement was noted, it being quite challenging to work with blood (fake or real) and realize something realistic but it was also criticized as adding little to the discussion about the pornography of violence against women.

Callosity

Callosity (pronounced kuh-los-i-tee)

(1) In pathology, an alternative name for a callus.

(2) In botany, a hardened or thickened part of a plant.

(3) In zoology, as ischial callosity, a large callus on the butts of certain animals.

(4) In the human condition, being of a callous demeanor; insensitivity or hard-heartedness

1375–1425: From the late Middle English calosite, from the Late Latin callōsitās, the construct being callōs(us) (callous) (from callum (hardened skin) +‎ -ōsus (the suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun)) + -itās which in English was rendered as callus + -ity, the substitute “o” a familiar device.  The –ity suffix was from the French -ité, from the Middle French -ité, from the Old French –ete & -eteit (-ity), from the Latin -itātem, from -itās, from the primitive Indo-European suffix –it.  It was cognate with the Gothic –iþa (-th), the Old High German -ida (-th) and the Old English -þo, -þu & -þ (-th).  It was used to form nouns from adjectives (especially abstract nouns), thus most often associated with nouns referring to the state, property, or quality of conforming to the adjective's description.  Callosity is a noun; the noun plural is callosities.

Essentially a thickening of the skin which forms in response to damage, a callus is one of the body’s protective mechanisms and example of how human skin have evolved to respond to a “fragile” area by replacing it with something “anti-fragile”.  The skin is a good barrier to much which would be dangerous if able to penetrate the surface but easily it can be cut and it’s prone to delimitation if exposed to repeated friction, something well known to gardeners digging holes, the skin on the palms of the hands soon “wearing off” at the points where the handle of the shovel repeatedly rubs.  That will be painful but the body will respond, replacing the dead skin with new skin which is thicker and harder, thus enabling the gardener to soon again pick up their shovel and return to their excavations.  This is an example of the general principle of healthy human physiology which responds to damage not by replacing things with something just as strong but something stronger, able to resist whatever force it was which caused the injury and it is the same with a bone fracture; when the bone knits back together, it will not be merely as strong as it was but a little stronger.  The new skin on the gardener’s hands will also be stronger and as the holes continue to be dug, the skin will become more robust still but the difference should not be thought of as fragile vs robust but as fragile vs anti-fragile, the point being that as pressure is applied, the material responds by becoming less-fragile.

Fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing.  In the narrow technical sense an expression of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of strength.  The traditions of language obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers.  It's true that on such a continuum a point could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other.  The opposite of fragile is actually anti-fragile (the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))).  The concept is well known in physiology and part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t happen.  It’s thus an act of anti-fragility, the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the skin blisters in response to work.  Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used according to emphasize the extent of strength; anti-fragile is the true opposite.

The idea of anti-fragile was introduced by Lebanese-born, US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability, the best-known and most influential was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007).  His work was thoughtful, intriguing and practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the texts agreed with that.  Apart from the ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many suppositions was also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our use of language to create.

Anti-callus devices (gloves the most common type) are used when the aim is to avoid the growth of a callus, the use of an “artificial callus” sometimes preferable to the natural.  A carpet layer in knee pads (left) and bra strap “cushions” (right).

When the new areas of skin are called calluses (calli the alternative plural), callus from the Latin callum (hard skin).  Most often used to describe the hardened areas of skin (typically on hands & feet) induced as a response to repeated friction, wear or use, in anatomy, the same word is applied to the initially soft or cartilaginous substance exuded at the site of a bone fracture which converts ultimately into bone, knitting the fragments into the one piece.  One the process fully is complete, if again exposed to the same stress, the bone will not break.  In botany, it’s used of the new formation over the end of a cutting. Callus is a noun & verb, the calluses, the present participle callusing and the past, callused.

In some professions, the callus can be close to essential; those whose life involves supporting weights on their shoulders form them on the pressure points, enabling them to ply their trade without undue pain or further damage.  However, not all whose shoulders might suffer welcome calluses, however beneficial they might be:  Women who wish to avoid what manufactures term the “shoulder grooving” caused by the pressure of their bra’s shoulder straps (the physics of this a product of (1) the weight supported and (2) its surface distribution which is dictated essentially by the width of the strap) can buy inserts for the straps which increase the surface area, thereby reducing the specific loading by re-distributing the downward pressure.  A variation on this idea is the “knee pad” worn by those who lay carpets, floor tiles and such.  These folk are compelled to work “on their knees” for hours at a time, often upon hard and sometimes rough surfaces and although, given time, calluses would form were the work to be performed unprotected, it would not be a pleasant experience and the degree of hardening needed would likely adversely affect normal mobility.  In zoology, calluses are a noted environmental adaptation among some species, (Old World) gibbons, monkeys and some chimpanzees having evolved notably large calluses on their butts (described as ischial callosities (the seventeenth century ischium (from the Latin ischium, from the Ancient Greek ἰσχίον (iskhíon) (hip joint)) describing the lowest of the three bones that make up each side of the pelvis).  On the animals so endowed, the advantage is the ability to sleep while sitting upright on thin branches, safe from both predators and the risk of falling.

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

In figurative use callosity came to be used to refer to one with a lack of feeling or capacity for emotion but the use when documented comes usually with the caveat that those so described are not “psychopaths” but merely the “hard-hearted”.  So it’s there to be used and if it seems not to suit, English offers has quite an array of choice when speaking of those lacking emotional range.  There is “heartless” & “hard-hearted”, both of which allude to the ancient idea of the special significance of the heart as the source of all that human feeling and character; even now it’s known to be a “just a pump”, the romantic notions persist in many culture and variations of the ❤ symbol are among the most frequently used emojis.  “Cold-blooded” is different in that although it’s blood the heart pumps, the operative word really is “cold”, implying decisions made or actions taken without emotion intruding and in idiomatic use, a “cold-blooded murder” (such as a contract killing done for payment) is viewed with less sympathy than a crime of passion (such murderers of said to have been “seeing the red mist” of “hot” blood at the time of their crime.  “Stolid” and “impassive” differs in that they can often be virtues and anyway suggest not an absence of capacity for feeling but its repression and one who wrote on how essential that was to civilization yet simultaneous damaging to individuals was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), his ideas later taken up by German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979).  Mankind probably didn’t surprise Freud but doubtless we disappointed Marcuse.  Finally, there is “stoic” which traces back to the Hellenic school of stoicism, a philosophy with a great following in Antiquity which was intended always to be practical, a way to help citizens live good lives rather than anything concerned with abstractions.  In its pure form it survives in that form but the modern re-purposing of the word means it’s now used to mean something like “suffering in silence”.  “Callosity” then is one of many ways to refer to the “unfeeling” and its use in this context is based on the use in medicine, a callosity (ie a callus) being “skin of abnormal hardness & thickness” which can be poked or pricked with the subject barely feeling the intrusion.  In that it’s subtly different from “thick skinned” which usually means “not easily offended”.