Legside

Legside (pronounced leg-sahyd)

(1) In the terminology of cricket (also as onside), in conjunction with “offside”, the half of the cricket field behind the batter in their normal batting stance.

(2) In the terminology of horse racing, in conjunction with “offside”, the sides of the horse relative to the rider.

Pre 1800s: The construct was leg + side.  Leg was from the Middle English leg & legge, from the Old Norse leggr (leg, calf, bone of the arm or leg, hollow tube, stalk), from the Proto-Germanic lagjaz & lagwijaz (leg, thigh).  Although the source is uncertain, the Scandinavian forms may have come from a primitive Indo-European root used to mean “to bend” which would likely also have been linked with the Old High German Bein (bone, leg).  It was cognate with the Scots leg (leg), the Icelandic leggur (leg, limb), the Norwegian Bokmål legg (leg), the Norwegian Nynorsk legg (leg), the Swedish lägg (leg, shank, shaft), the Danish læg (leg), the Lombardic lagi (thigh, shank, leg), the Latin lacertus (limb, arm), and the Persian لنگ (leng).  After it entered the language, it mostly displaced the native Old English term sċanca (from which Modern English ultimately gained “shank”) which was probably from a root meaning “crooked” (in the literal sense of “bent” rather than the figurative used of crooked Hillary Clinton).  Side was from the Middle English side, from the Old English sīde (flanks of a person, the long part or aspect of anything), from the Proto-Germanic sīdǭ (side, flank, edge, shore), from the primitive Indo-European sēy- (to send, throw, drop, sow, deposit).  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Siede (side), the West Frisian side (side), the Dutch zijde & zij (side), the German Low German Sied (side), the German Seite (side), the Danish & Norwegian side (side) and the Swedish sida (side).  The Proto-Germanic sīdō was productive, being the source also of the Old Saxon sida, the Old Norse siða (flank; side of meat; coast), the Danish & Middle Dutch side, the Old High German sita and the German Seite.  Legside is an adjective.

A cricket field as described with a right-hander at the crease (batting); the batter will be standing with their bat held to the offside (there’s no confusion with the concept of “offside” used in football and the rugby codes because in cricket there’s no such rule).

In cricket, the term “legside” (used also as “leg side” or “on side”) is used to refer to the half of the field corresponding to a batter’s non-dominant hand (viewed from their perspective); the legside can thus be thought of as the half of the ground “behind” the while the “offside” is that in front.  This means that what is legside and what is offside is dynamic depending on whether the batter is left or right-handed and because in a match it’s not unusual for one of each to be batting during an over (the basic component of a match, each over now consisting of six deliveries of the ball directed sequentially at the batters), as they change ends, legside and offside can swap.  This has no practical significance except that because many of the fielding positions differ according to whether a left or right-hander is the striker.  That’s not the sole determinate of where a fielding captain will choose to set his field because what’s referred to as a “legside” or “offside” field will often be used in deference to the batter’s tendencies of play.  It is though the main structural component of field settings.  The only exception to this is when cricket is played in unusual conditions such as on the deck of an aircraft carrier (remarkably, it’s been done quite often) but there’s still a legside & offside, shifting as required between port & starboard just as left & right are swapped ashore.

The weird world of cricket's fielding positions.

Quite when legside & offside first came to be used in cricket isn't known but they’ve been part of the terminology of the sport since the rules of the game became formalized when the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) first codified the "Laws of Cricket" in what now seem a remarkably slim volume published in 1788, the year following the club’s founding.  There had earlier been rule books, the earliest known to have existed in the 1730s (although no copies appear to have survived) but whether the terms were then is use isn’t known.  What is suspected is legside and offside were borrowed from the turf where, in horse racing jargon, they describe the sides of the horse relative to the rider.  The use of the terms to split the field is reflected also in the names of some of the fielding positions, many of which are self-explanatory while some remain mysterious although presumably they must have seemed a good idea at the time.  One curious survivor of the culture wars which banished "batsman" & "fieldsman" to the shame of being microaggressions is "third man" which continues to be used in the men's game although in women's competition, all seem to have settled on "third", a similar clipping to that which saw "nightwatch" replace "nightwatchman"; third man surely can't last.  The ones which follow the dichotomous description of the field (although curiously “leg” is an element of some and “on” for others) including the pairings “silly mid on” & silly mid off” and “long on & long off”, while in other cases the “leg” is a modifier, thus “slip & leg slip” and “gully & leg gully”.  Some positions use different terminology depending on which side of the field they’re positioned, “point” on the offside being “square leg” on the other while fractional variations in positioning means there is lexicon of terms such as “deep backward square leg” and “wide long off” (which experts will distinguish from a “wideish long off”).

Leg theory

Leg theory was a polite term for what came to be known as the infamous “bodyline” tactic.  In cricket, when bowling, the basic idea is to hit the stumps (the three upright timbers behind the batter), the object being to dislodge the bails (the pair of small wooden pieces which sit in grooves, atop the three).  That done, the batter is “dismissed” and the batting side has to send a replacement, this going on until ten batters have been dismissed, ending the innings.  In essence therefore, the core idea is to aim at the stumps but there are other ways to secure a dismissal such as a shot by the batter being caught on the full by a fielder, thus the attraction of bowling “wide of the off-stump” (the one of the three closest to the off side) to entice the batter to hit a ball in the air to be caught or have one come "off the edge" of the bat to be “caught behind”.  It was realized early on there was little to be gained by bowling down the legside except restricting the scoring because the batter safely could ignore the delivery, content they couldn’t be dismissed LBW (leg before wicket, where but for the intervention of the protective pads on the legs, the ball would have hit the wicket) because, under the rules, if the ball hits the pitch outside the line of the leg stump, the LBW rule can’t be invoked.

A batter can however be caught from a legside delivery and as early as the nineteenth century this was known as leg theory, practiced mostly the slow bowlers who relied on flight in the air and spin of the pitch to beguile the batter.  Many had some success with the approach, the batters unable to resist the temptation of playing a shot to the legside field where the fielders tended often to be fewer.  On the slower, damper pitches of places like England or New Zealand, the technique offered little prospect for the fast bowlers who were usually more effective the faster they bowled but on the generally fast, true decks in Australia, there was an opportunity because a fast, short-pitched (one which hits the pitch first in the bowlers half of the pitch before searing up towards the batter) delivery with a legside line would, disconcertingly, tend at upwards of 90 mph (145 km/h) towards the batter’s head.  The idea was that in attempting to avoid injury by fending off the ball with the bat, the batter would be dismissed, caught by one of the many fielders “packed” on the legside, the other component of leg theory.

Leg theory: Lindsay Lohan’s legs.

For this reason it came to be called “fast leg theory” and it was used off and on by many sides (in Australia and England) during the 1920s but it gained its infamy (and the more evocative “bodyline” label) during the MCC’s (the designation touring England teams used until the 1970s) 1932-1933 Ashes tour of Australia.  Adopted as a tactic against the Australian batter Donald Bradman (1908–2001) against whom nothing else seemed effective (the English noting on the 1930 tour of England he’d once scored 300 runs in a day off his own bat at Leeds), bodyline became controversial after a number of batters were struck high on the body, one suffering a skull fracture (this an era in which helmets and other upper-body protection were unknown).  Such was the reaction the matter was a diplomatic incident, discussed by the respective cabinets in London and Canberra while acerbic cables were exchanged between the ACBC (Australian Cricket Board of Control) and the MCC.

Japanese leg theory: Zettai ryōiki (絶対領域) is a Japanese term which translates literally as “absolute territory” and is used variously in anime gaming and the surrounding cultural milieu.  In fashion, it refers to that area of visible bare skin above the socks (classically the above-the-knee variety) but below the hemline of a miniskirt, shorts or top.

Japanese schoolgirls, long the trend-setters of the nation's fashions, like to pair zettai ryouiki with solid fluffy (also called "plushies") leg warmers.  So influential are they that the roaming pack in this image, although they've picked up the aesthetic, are not actually real school girls.  So, beware of imitations: Tokyo, April 2024.

High-level interventions calmed thing sufficiently for the tour to continue which ended with the tourists winning the series (and thus the Ashes) 4-1.  The tour remains the high-water mark of fast leg theory because although it continued to be used when conditions were suitable, the effectiveness was stunted by batters adjusting their techniques and, later in the decade, the MCC updated their rule book explicitly to proscribe “direct attack” (ie deliveries designed to hit the batter rather than the stumps) bowling, leaving the judgment of what constituted that to the umpires.  Although unrelated and an attempt to counter the “negative” legside techniques which had evolved in the 1950s to limit scoring, further rule changes in 1957 banned the placement of more than two fielders behind square on the leg side, thus rendering impossible the setting of a leg theory field.  Despite all this, what came to be called “intimidatory short pitched bowling” continued, one of the reasons helmets began to appear in the 1970s and the rule which now applies is that only one such delivery is permitted per over.  It has never been a matter entirely about sportsmanship and within the past decade, the Australian test player Phillip Hughes (1988-2014) was killed when struck on the neck (while wearing a helmet) by a short-pitched delivery which severed an artery.

Mutual & Common

Mutual (pronounced myoo-choo-uhl)

(1) Possessed, experienced, performed, etc by each of two or more with respect to the other; reciprocal.

(2) Having the same relation each toward the other.

(3) Of or relating to each of two or more; held in common; shared.

(4) In corporate law, having or pertaining to a form of corporate organization in which there are no stockholders, and in which profits, losses, expenses etc, are shared by members in proportion to the business each transacts with the company:

(5) In informal use, an entity thus structured.

1470–1480: From the Middle English mutual (reciprocally given and received (originally of feelings)), from the Old & Middle French mutuel, from the Latin mūtu(us) (mutual, reciprocal (originally “borrowed”)), the construct being mūt(āre) (to change (source of the modern mutate (ie delta, omicron and all that))) + -uus (the adjectival suffix) + the Middle French -el (from the Latin –ālis (the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) and rendered in English as –al.  Root was the primitive Indo-European mei- (to change, go, move).  The alternative spelling mutuall is obsolete.  Derived forms used to describe ownership structures such as quasi-mutual and trans-mutual are created as required.  Mutual & mutualist are nouns & adjectives, mutuality, mutualization, mutualism & mutualness are nouns, mutualize, mutualizing & mutualized are verbs and mutually & mutualistically are adverbs; the noun plural is mutuals.

The term "mutually exclusive" is widely used (sometimes loosely) but has a precise meaning in probability theory & formal logic where it describes multiple events or propositions such that the occurrence of any one dictates the non-occurrence of the other nominated events or propositions.  The noun mutualism is used in fields as diverse as corporate law, economic theory, materials engineering, political science and several disciplines within biology (where variously it interacts with and is distinguished from symbiosis).  The phrase "mutual admiration society" is from 1851 and appears to have been coined by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) to describe those who habitually were in agreement with each-other and inclined to swap praise.  The "mutual fund", although the structure pre-existed the adjectival use, is from 1950 and these soon came to be known simply as “mutuals”, the word appearing sometimes even in the registered names and the best known of the type were the building societies & benevolent (or friendly) societies, the core structural element of what was the ownership being held in common by the members rather than shareholders.  The concept of the mutual structure is of interest in some jurisdictions because of the suggestion the large assets held by chapters of the Freemasons may be so owned and, with the possibility the aging membership may ultimately result in these assets being dissolved and the proceeds distributed.  If, under local legislation, the structure was found to be mutual, membership might prove unexpectedly remunerative.

The Cold War's "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) is attested from 1963 (although it wasn’t until 1966 it entered general use) and was actually a modification of the Pentagon’s 1962 term “assured destruction” which was a technical expression from US military policy circles to refer to the number of deliverable nuclear warheads in the arsenal necessary to act as a deterrent to attack.  In the public consciousness it was understood but vaguely defined until 1965 when Robert McNamara (1916–2009; US Secretary of Defense 1961-1968) appeared before the House Armed Services Committee and explained the idea was "the minimum threat necessary to assure deterrence: the capability in a retaliatory nuclear attack to exterminate not less than one third the population of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)”.  The “mutual” was added as the number of deployable Soviet warheads reached a critical strategic mass.  The mastery of statistical analysis served McNamara well until the US escalation of the war in Vietnam when the Hanoi regime declined to conform to follow his carefully constructed models of behavior. 

In social media, a mutual is a pair of individuals who follow each other's social media accounts, whether by agreement or organically and there’s something a niche activity is working out the extent to which the behavior happens between bots.  Mutuality (reciprocity, interchange) was from the 1580s.  Mutually (reciprocally, in a manner of giving and receiving), was noted from the 1530s and the phrase mutually exclusive was first recorded in the 1650s.  The specialized mutualism (from the Modern French mutuellisme) dates from 1845, referring to the doctrine of French anarchist-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) that individual and collective well-being is attainable only by mutual dependence.  In the biological sciences, it was first used in 1876 to describe "a symbiosis in which two organisms living together mutually and permanently help and support one another" although there are those who differentiate mutualism (a type of co-existence where neither organism is directly affected by the other but the influence they exert on other organisms or the environment is of benefit to the other) from symbiosis (where there’s a co-dependency).

Parimutuel betting is from the French invention pari mutuel (mutual betting), the construct being pari (wager, from parier (to bet) from the Latin pariare (to settle a debt (literally “to make equal”)) from par, from paris (equal) + mutuel (mutual).  It describes a gambling system where all bets of a particular type are pooled and from this (gross-pool), taxes and the vigorish (from the Yiddish וויגריש‎ (vigrish), from the Russian вы́игрыш (výigryš) (winnings), the commission or “hose-take" are deducted.  The dividends are then calculated by dividing the remainder (net pool) by all winning bets.  In many jurisdictions it’s called the Tote after the totalisator, which calculates and displays bets already made; in Australia and New Zealand it’s the basis of the original agency structure of the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB).

The adoption of mutual as a synonym for "common" is from 1630s and was long condemned as being used “loosely, improperly and not infrequently, often by those who should know better”; “mutual friend" seemed the most common offence.  The view was that “mutual” could apply to only two objects and “common” should be used if three or more were involved.  Opinion has thankfully since softened.  Mutual and common (in the sense of the relation of two or more persons or things to each other) have been used synonymously since the sixteenth century and the use is considered entirely standard.  Objections are one of those attempts to enforce create rules in English which never existed, the only outcome being the choice of use treated as a class-identifier by those who care about such things and either ignored or un-noticed by most.  Tautologous use of mutual however should be avoided: One should say co-operation (not mutual co-operation) between two states.

Common (pronounced kom-uhn)

(1) Belonging equally to, or shared alike by, two or more or all in question (as in common property; common interests etc).

(2) Pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community, nation, or culture; public (as in common language; common history etc).

(3) Joint; united.

(4) Prevailing; Widespread; general; universal (eg common knowledge).

(5) Customary, habitual, everyday.

(6) In some jurisdictions a tract of land owned or used jointly by the residents of a community, usually a central square or park in a city or town (often as “the commons” or “the common”).

(7) In domestic & international law, the right or liberty, in common with other persons, to take profit from the land or waters of another, as by pasturing animals on another's land (common of pasturage ) or fishing in another's waters (common of piscary).  Of interest to economist and ecologists because of the disconnection between the economic gain from the commons and the responsibility for its care and management.

(8) Vulgar, ordinary, cheap, inferior etc (as a derogatory expression of class, often in phrases such as “common as muck” or “common as potatoes”, the back-handed compliment “the common-touch” applied to politicians best at disguising their contempt for the voters (or, as they refer to us: “the ordinary people”).

(9) In some (particularly Germanic) languages, of the gender originating from the coalescence of the masculine and feminine categories of nouns.

(10) In grammar, of or pertaining to common nouns as opposed to proper nouns.

(11) In the vernacular, referring to the name of a kind of plant or animal but its common (ie conversational) rather than scientific name (the idea reflected in the phrase “common or garden”).

(12) Profane; polluted (obsolete).

(13) Given to lewd habits; prostitute (obsolete).

(14) To communicate something; to converse, talk; to have sex; to participate; to board together; to eat at a table in common (all obsolete vernacular forms).

1250–1300: From the Middle English comun (belonging to all, owned or used jointly, general, of a public nature or character), from the Anglo-French commun, from the Old French, commun (Comun was rare in the Gallo-Romance languages, but reinforced as a Carolingian calque of the Proto-West Germanic gamainī (common) in the Old French and commun was the spelling adopted in the Modern French) (common, general, free, open, public), from the Latin commūnis (universal, in common, public, shared by all or many; general, not specific; familiar, not pretentious), thought originally to mean “sharing common duties,” akin to mūnia (duties of an office), mūnus (task, duty, gift), from the unattested base moin-, cognate with mean.  The Latin was from a reconstructed primitive Indo-European compound ḱom-moy-ni-s  (held in common), a compound adjective, the construct being ko- (together) + moi-n- (a suffixed form of the root mei- or mey (to change, go, move (hence literally "shared by all").  The second element of the compound was the source also of the Latin munia (duties, public duties, functions; specific office).  It was possibly reinforced in the Old French by the Germanic form of ḱom-moy-ni-s  (ko-moin-i) and influenced also the German gemein, and the Old English gemne (common, public).  Comun and its variations cam to displace the native Middle English imene & ȝemǣne (common, general, universal (from the Old English ġemǣne (common, universal)), and the later Middle English mene & mǣne (mean, common (also from the Old English ġemǣne)) and the Middle English samen & somen (in common, together (from the Old English samen (together)). A doublet of gmina.  Common is a noun, verb & adjective, commoner is a noun & adjective, commonality is a noun and commonly is an adverb; the noun plural is commons.

Common has been used disparagingly of women and criminals since at least the fourteenth century and snobs have added categories since as required.  The meanings "pertaining equally to or proceeding equally from two or more" & "not distinguished, belonging to the general mass" was from circa 1400 whereas the sense of "usual, not exceptional, of frequent occurrence" & "ordinary, not excellent" dates from the late fourteenth century.  Common prayer was that done in public in unity with other worshipers as contrasted with private prayer, both probably more common then than now.  The Church of England's Book of Common Prayer was first published in 1549 and went through several revisions for reasons both theological and political.  The 1662 edition remains the standard collection of the prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and while many churches now use versions written in more modern English, there remain traditionalists who insist on one of the early editions.

The common room was noted first in the 1660s, a place in the university college to which all members were granted common access.  The late fourteenth century common speech was used to describe both English and (less often) vernacular (which came to be called vulgar) Latin.  From the same time, the common good was an English adoption of the Latin bonum publicum (the common weal).  Common sense is from 1839 and is U whereas, because of the tortured grammar, 1848’s common-sensible is thought non-U.  The idea of common sense had been around since the fourteenth century but with a different meaning to the modern: The idea was of an internal mental power supposed to unite (reduce to a common perception) the impressions conveyed by the five physical senses (sensus communisin the Latin, koine aisthesis in the Ancient Greek). Thus it evolved into "ordinary understanding, without which one is foolish or insane" by the 1530s, formalised as "good sense" by 1726 with common-sense in the modern sense the nineteenth century expression.

The mid-fourteenth century common law was "the customary and unwritten laws of England as embodied in commentaries and old cases", as opposed to statute law.  Over the years, this did sometimes confuse people because in different contexts (common law vs statute law; common law versus equity; common law vs civil law) the connotations were different.  The phrase common-law marriage is attested from a perhaps surprisingly early 1909.  In the English legal system, common pleas was from the thirteenth century, from the Anglo-French communs plets (hearing civil actions by one subject against another as opposed to pleas of the crown).  In corporate law, common stock is attested from 1888.  The late fourteenth century commoner is from the earlier Anglo-French where in addition to conveying the expected sense of "one of the common people” also had the technical meaning “a member of the third estate of the estates-general".  In English it acquired the dual meaning as (1) of non-royal blood and (2), since the mid-fifteenth century “a member of the House of Commons”.  Commonly the adverb is from circa 1300 and commonness the noun from the 1520s though it originally meant only "state or quality of being shared by more than one", the idea of something of "quality of being of ordinary occurrence" not noted until the 1590s.  The adjective uncommon assumed a similar development, in the 1540s meaning "not possessed in common" and by the 1610s meaning "not commonly occurring, unusual; rare".

Last thoughts on a non-rule

The distinction between mutual (reciprocal; between two) and common (among three or more) probably once was, at least to some extent, observed by educated writers, Dr Johnson (1709-1984) in his A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) allowing but one definition: MUTUAL a. Reciprocal; each acting in return or correspondence to the other.

G K Chesterton.

That old curmudgeon G K Chesterton (1874-1936) was certainly convinced.  Writing about Charles Dickens (1812–1870) novel Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865), he claimed the title was the source of the phrase in general speech, snobbily noting of it was the “…old democratic and even uneducated Dickens who is writing here. The very title is illiterate. Any priggish pupil teacher could tell Dickens that there is no such phrase in English as 'our mutual friend'.  Anyone could tell Dickens that 'our mutual friend' means 'our reciprocal friend' and that 'our reciprocal friend' means nothing. If he had only had all the solemn advantages of academic learning (the absence of which in him was lamented by the Quarterly Review), he would have known better. He would have known that the correct phrase for a man known to two people is 'our common friend'."

The phrase in the English novel however pre-dated Dickens, Jane Austen (1775-1817) using it in both Emma (1816) and Persuasion (1818) and long before 1864, Mary Shelley (1797–1851), Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), Herman Melville (1819–1891), James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) and Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) all had “mutual friend” in their text.  Dickens, with the prominence afforded by the title and serialized in the press, doubtless popularized it and, as Chesterton well knew, literature anyway isn’t necessarily written in "common speech".  Whoever opened the floodgates, after 1864, mutual friends continued to flow, the writers George Orwell (1903-1950), Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Jerome K Jerome (1859–1927), Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), Henry James (1843–1916), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) and Church of England (broad faction) priest & historian Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) all content with "mutual friend" so those condemned by Chesterton are in good company.  The old snob probably did ponder if calling someone a “common friend” might create a misunderstanding but then, good with words, he’d probably avoid that by suggesting they were “rather common” or “a bit common" if that was what he wanted to convey, which not infrequently he often did.

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

TikToker

TikToker (pronounced tik-tok-ah)

(1) One who is a regular or frequent viewer of the content posted on the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can in certain circumstances now be up to sixty (60) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com.

(2) One who is a regular or frequent content provider on the TikTok platform.

(3) With a variety of spellings (ticktocker, tictoker, tiktoka etc), a slang term for a clock or watch, derived from the alternating ticking sound, as that made by a clock (archaic).

(4) In computing, with the spelling ticktocker (or ticktocker), slang for a software element which emulates the sound of a ticking clock, used usually in conjunction with digitals depictions of analogue clocks.

2018: The ancestor form (ticktock or tick-tock) seems not to have been used until the mid-nineteenth century and was purely imitative of the sound of mechanical clocks. Tick (in the sense of "a quiet but sharp sound") was from the Middle English tek (light touch, tap) and tock was also onomatopoeic; when used in conjunction with tick was a reference to the clicking sounds similar to those made by the movements of a mechanical clock.  The use of TikToker (in the sense of relating to users (consumers & content providers) of the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can be up to ten (10) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com probably began in 2018 (the first documented reference) although it may early have been in oral use.  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.  TikToker is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is TikTokers (the mixed upper & lower case is correct by commercial convention but not always followed).  The PRC- (People’s Republic of China) based holding company ByteDance is said to have chosen the name “TikTok” because it was something suggestive of the “short, snappy” nature of the platform’s content; they understood the target market and its alleged attention span (which, like the memory famously associated with goldfish might be misleading).

A blonde Billie Eilish, Vogue, June, 2021.

Those who use TikTok (whether as content providers or consumers) are called “tiktokers” and the longer the aggregate duration of one’s engagement with the platform, the more of a tiktoker one can be said to be.  The formation followed the earlier, self-explanatory “YouTuber” and the use for similar purposes (indicating association) for at least decades.  So, the noun tiktoker can be a neutral descriptor but it can be used also as a slur.   In February 2024, at the People’s Choice Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles, singer Billie Eilish (b 2001) was filmed leaning over to Kylie Minogue (b 1968), remarking sotto voce:“There’s some, like, TikTokers here…” with the sort of distaste Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) might have displayed if indicating to her companion the unpleasing presence of peasants.  The clip went viral on X (formerly known as Twitter) before spreading to Tiktok.  Clearly there is a feeling of hierarchy in the industry and her comments triggered some discussion about the place of essentially amateur content creators at mainstream Hollywood (and such) events.  That may sound strange given a platform like TikTok would, prima facie, seem the very definition of the “people’s choice” but these events have their own history, associations and connotations and what social media sites have done to the distribution models has been quite a disturbance.  Many established players, even some who have to some extent benefited from the platforms, find disquieting the intrusion of the “plague of TikTokers”.

Pop Crave's clip of the moment, a brunette Billie Eilish & Kylie Minogue, People's Choice Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, February 2024.

There will be layers to Ms Eilish’s view.  One is explained in terms of mere proximity, the segregation of pop culture celebrities into “A List”, B List, C List” etc an important component in the creation and maintenance of one’s public image and an A Lister like her would not appreciate being photographed at an event with those well up (ie down) the alphabet sitting at the next table; it cheapens her image.  Properly managed, these images can translate into millions (and these days even billions) of dollars so this is not a matter of mere vanity and something for awards ceremonies to consider; if the TikTokers come to be seen as devaluing their brand to the extent the A Listers ignore their invitations, the events either have to move to a down-market niche or just be cancelled.  Marshall McLuhan’s (1911-1980) book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) pre-dates social media by decades but its best-remembered phrase (“The medium is the message”) could have been coined for the era, the idea being the medium on which content is distributed should be the first point of understanding its significance, rather than actual content, the theory being the initial assessment of the veracity or the value of something relies on its source.  In the case of pop music, this meant a song distributed by a major label possessed an inherent credibility and prestige in a way something sung by a busker in a train station did not.  What the existence of YouTube and TikTok meant was the buskers and the artists signed to labels began suddenly to appear on the same medium, thus at some level gaining a sort of equivalency.  Viewing TikTok on a phone, tablet or laptop,  sharing the same screen-space, in a sense, all are rendered equal.

On trend: Lindsay Lohan announces she is now a Tiktoker.

Ms Eilish and her label have been adept at using the social media platforms as tools for this and that so presumably neither object to the existence or the technology of the sites (although her label (Universal Music) has only recently settled its dispute with TikTok over the revenue sharing) but there will be an understanding that while there’s now no alternative to, in a sense, sharing the digital space and letting the people choose, that doesn’t mean she’ll be happy about being in the same photo frame when the trophies are handed out.  Clearly, there are stars and there are TikTokers and while the latter can (and have) become the former, there are barriers not all can cross.

The Tic-Toc Tach

1967 Jaguar 340 (left), 1980 Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC 5.0 (centre) and 1970 Plymouth Superbird (right).  Only the Americans called the shared tachometer/clock a “Tic-Toc Tach”.

Jaguar had long been locating a small clock at the bottom of the tachometer but in 1963 began to move the device to the centre of the dashboard, phasing in the change as models were updated or replaced.  By 1968 the horological shift was almost complete (only the last of the Mark IIs (now known as 240, 340) and & Daimler V8 250 models still with the shared dial) and it was then Chrysler adopted the idea although, with a flair the British never showed, they called it the "Tic-Toc-Tachometer.  Popularly known as the “Tic-Toc Tach”, it was also used by other US manufacturers during the era, the attraction being an economical use of dash space, the clock fitting in a space at the centre of the tachometer dial which would otherwise be unused.  Mercedes-Benz picked up Jaguar's now abandoned concept in 1971 when the 350 SL (R107) was introduced and it spread throughout the range, almost universal (in cars with tachometers) after 1981 when production of the 600 (W100) ended; Mercedes-Benz would for decades use the shared instrument.  A tachometer (often called a “rev counter”) is a device for measuring the revolutions per minute (RPMs) of a revolving shaft such as the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine (ICE) (thus determining the “engine speed”).  The construct was tacho- (an alternative form of tachy-, from the Ancient Greek ταχύς (takhús) (rapid) + meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices).

1967 Oldsmobile 4-4-2.

Nobody however crammed more into a tic-toc-tach than Oldsmobile which during the first generation (1964-1967) of its 4-4-2 also included a temperature gauge, ammeter and oil pressure gauge, something necessitated because the instrument panel the stylists were compelled to use contained only two pods.  When the second generation (1968-1972) was released, the dash included a third pod so the ancillary gauges were given their own space and a true tic-toc-tach was used.  Thankfully, nobody seems ever to have attempted to coin a term for five-function device on the early 4-4-2s so those who worry about such things must content themselves with choices like “enhanced tic-toc-tach” or “augmented tic-toc-tach”.  Buyers got the instrument with its “perimeter auxiliary gauges” by choosing option code U21 (Rallye Pac with Tachometer and Clock) for US$84.26 which sounds modest but at the time the bikini-clad and neoprene-tailed “mermaids” who splashed around the coral reef in the middle of Submarine Lagoon at California’s Disneyland Resort were paid US$65 week.  Making a virtue of necessity, Oldsmobile described the cluttered device as a “compact instrument cluster [which] lets driver monitor engine performance at a glance”, not burdening brochure readers with the fact the Rallye Pac wasn’t planned as part of the range and with only two pods on the dash, there was no other way elegantly to cram it all in.

1967 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 Holiday Coupe W-30.

The 4-4-2 was Oldsmobile’s response to the Pontiac GTO, introduced in 1964 by the companion GM (General Motors) division.  The GTO (Pontiac shamelessly “borrowing” the name from Ferrari’s 250 GTO (Gran Turismo Omologato (ie car homologated for competition in the GT (grand-touring) category) was the template for the “muscle car” genre of the 1960s in that it used a big V8 from the full-sized range in the smaller, lighter, intermediate platform.  It was actually an old idea practiced on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1920s but the GTO institutionalized the concept and made it a commercial proposition on a scale never before known because of the then unique conjunction in 1960s America of a large cohort of males aged 17-25 with enough disposable income (or credit-worthiness) to pay for such things.  The GTO existed because Pontiac threaded the configuration through a loophole in the GM corporate rules designed to prevent such things being produced for road use but it sold in such volume at a pleasing profit margin that management’s scruples rapidly were discarded and the crazy years of the muscle car began.  The GTO of course encouraged imitators from Ford, Chrysler and (eventually) even AMC but it also compelled three of GM’s other divisions (Chevrolet, Buick & Oldsmobile) to do their own interpretations.  Only Cadillac stood aloof but in 1970 they did put a 500 cubic inch (8.2 litre) V8 rated at 400 HP (gross horsepower) in the FWD (front-wheel-drive) Eldorado which sounds a daft idea but the engineers disguised its inherent tendencies very well and the delivery of the 400 HP was a very different experience than something like that of the 375 Ford in the same year modestly claimed for the Boss 429 Mustang.

1970 Oldsmobile 442 Convertible, Official Pace Car (Indianapolis 500) Edition.

Though not original, GTO was of course a great name and the best Oldsmobile’s product-planners could come up with was 4-4-2, an allusion to the configuration (front to rear) of a four barrel carburetor, a four-speed manual gearbox and dual-exhausts.  Once explained it made sense but it remained a flaky name, something suffered by later imitators, Dodge’s “Super Bee” as good a car as Plymouth’s Road Runner but with nothing like the same brand-appeal.  Like Pontiac’s GTO, the 4-4-2 was originally an option package but such was the market response both became regular production models.  As it turned out, 4-4-2 was “just a name” rather than a promise because in 1965 when, in order to be advertise the things at a lower base-price, a three-speed gearbox became standard with the four-speed moved to the option list but there was no 4-3-2: 4-4-2 they all remained which made sense because at various times it could be ordered also with two or three-speed automatic gearboxes, none of which ever were dubbed 4-2-2 or 4-3-2.  However, in an inconsistency at the time not untypical in the industry, although in 1968 the badge was changed from “4-4-2” to “442”, both descriptions continued for years to appear in documents and sales literature.

Conventions in English and Ablaut Reduplication

In 2016, the BBC explained why we always say “tick tock” rather than “tock-tic” although, based on the ticking of the clocks at the time the phrase originated, there would seem to be no objective reasons why one would prevail over the other but the “rule” can be constructed thus: “If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O.  If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O which is why we enjoy mish-mash, chit-chat, clip-clop, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong & ping pong.  Obviously, the “rule” is unwritten so may be better thought a convention such as the one which dictates why the words in “Little Red Riding Hood” appear in the familiar order; there the convention specifies that in English, adjectives run in the textual string: opinion; size; age; shape; colour; origin; material; purpose noun.  Thus there are “little green men” but no “green little men” and if “big bad wolf” is cited as a violation of the required “opinion (bad); size (big); noun (wolf)” wolf, that’s because the I-A-O convention prevails, something the BBC explains with a number of examples, concluding “Maybe the I, A, O sequence just sounds more pleasing to the ear.”, a significant factor in the evolution of much that is modern English (although that hardly accounts for the enduring affection some have for proscribing the split infinitive, something which really has no rational basis in English, ancient or modern.  All this is drawn from what is in structural linguistics called “Ablaut Reduplication” (the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated vowel is a low vowel) but, being English, “there are exceptions” so the pragmatic “more pleasing to the ear” may be helpful in general conversation.

Rolls-Royce, the Ford LTD and NVH

Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II, 1959.  Interestingly, the superseded Silver Cloud (1955-1958) might have been quieter still because the new, aluminium 6¼ litre (380 cubic inch) V8 didn’t match the smoothness & silence of the previous cast iron, 4.9 litre (300 cubic inch) straight-six, despite the V8 being remarkably heavy for something made substantially from "light metal".

The “tick-tocking” sound of a clock was for some years a feature of the advertising campaigns of the Rolls-Royce Motor Company, the hook being that: “At 60 mph (100 km/h) the loudest noise in a Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”.  Motoring journalists did verify the claim (at least in ideal conditions) but given electric clocks can be engineered silently to function, the conclusion was the company deliberately fitted time-pieces which emitted an untypically loud “tick-tock”, just to ensure the claims were true.  The Silver Clouds were, by the standards of the time, very quiet vehicles but in the US, Ford decided they could mass-produce something quieter still and at the fraction of the cost.  Thus the 1965 Ford LTD, a blinged-up Ford (the add-on "gingerbread" in pre-bling days known as "gorp") advertised as: “Quieter than a Rolls-Royce”.

The test conditions were recorded as: “Dry, level, moderately smooth concrete divided highway; light quartering winds.  All cars operated at steady 20-, 40- and 60- mph with all vents closed”.  The two Rolls-Royces were both standard wheelbase Silver Cloud III saloons with the 6¼ litre (380 cubic inch) V8 and four-speed automatic transmissions while the three Fords (a Galaxie 500 LTD, a Galaxie 500/XL and a Galaxie 500 Four-Door Sedan) were all fitted with the 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8 and three-speed Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission.  The test results were certified by the USAC (United States Auto Club).

To ensure what must at the time have seemed an audacious claim couldn't be dismissed as mere puffery, J. Walter Thompson, then Ford’s advertising agency commissioned acoustical consultants Boldt, Beranek and Neuman to run tests, two brand new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III saloons purchased for the project.  What the engineer’s decibel (dB) meters revealed was that, under conditions that were controlled but representative of much of the driving experience in the US, the Galaxies were indeed quieter inside than a Rolls-Royce.  Because of the way the dB scale works, the differences (as great as 5.5 dB) were quite large and obvious to the human ear.  It was a reasonable achievement in engineering and Ford, anticipating the ensuing controversy, was uncharacteristically modest in claiming their 2.8 dB advantage at 60 mph was only “slight”, the numbers making the point with no need for exaggeration.  Ford didn’t mention the tick-tock of the clock.

Ford Galaxie 500/XL advertising, 1965.  In the West, advertising has long been an exception to the general prohibition of the use of "child labor" (Lindsay Lohan was signed to Ford Models at the age of three and soon got her first gig!).

Ford did though “stack the deck”, a bit in configuring the Galaxies with their mildly tuned 289 V8 with a two-barrel carburettor; had the test included another variation on the full-size line which used the 427 (7.0) V8, the results would have been different, the raucous 427 side oiler offering many charms but they didn't extend to unobtrusiveness.  Still, the choice was reasonable because the tune of the 289 was more representative of what most people bought.  Amusingly, it wasn't the first time Rolls-Royce was surprised by the way things were done in Detroit.  Years earlier, the company had obtained a licence to manufacture Cadillac's four-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission, then the benchmark of its type.  Disassembling one, the Rolls-Royce engineers were surprised at the “rough finish” on some of the internal components and resolved their version would be built to their standards of precision.  That done, a lovingly built Hydramatic was installed in a car and tested, the engineers surprised to find it didn't work very well and offered nothing like the smooth operation of the original.  They contacted Cadillac and were told the prototype Hydramatics produced with universally fine tolerances had also misbehaved and the “roughness” of certain components deliberately was introduced to ensure the optimal frictional resistance was obtained.     

Ford Galaxie 500 LTD advertising, 1965.

Not much noticed at the time was another intrusion.  Although the trend had for years been creeping through the industry, what the 1965 LTD did was make blatant Ford's incursion into the market territory once reserved for the corporate stablemate, Mercury, the "middle class" brand between Ford & Lincoln.  This intra-corporate cannibalism (which had already seen Chrysler shutter its DeSoto division) would have consequences, one of which was Mercury's eventual demise, another being Ford's competitors, noting the LTD's success, bringing their own interpretations to the market, the most successful of which was the Chevrolet Caprice (which enjoyed the same relationship to the Impala as the LTD had to the Galaxie 500).  Notably, the Caprice contributed to the later extinction of the once highly popular Oldsmobile, squeezed from its niche by Chevrolet (from below) and Buick (from above).  What were once gaps in the market, catered to by specific brands, ceased to exist. 

1965 Ford LTD (technically a “Galaxie 500 LTD” because in the first season the LTD was a Galaxie option, not becoming a stand-alone model until the 1966 model year).

Even before the LTD was released the full-sized cars produced by the US industry featured the world's finest engine-transmission combinations and Ford justly deserves credit for what was achieved in 1965 because it wasn’t an exercise merely in adding sound insulation.  The previous models had a good reputation for handling and durability but couldn’t match the smoothness and ride of competitive Chevrolets so within Ford was created a department dedicated to what came to be called HVH (Noise, Vibration & Harshness) and this team cooperated in what would now be understood as a “multi-disciplinary” effort, working with body engineers and suspension designers to ensure all components worked in harmony to minimize NVH.  The idea was to craft a platform which, at least on the billiard table like surfaces of the nations freeways, would match the powertrains for smoothness and that was a task which would absorb much time and effort because the mildly-tuned V8 engines most customers bough were unobtrusive in their delivery and the automatic transmissions didn't so much change gears as slur effortlessly between ratios.

Ford Galaxie 500 LTD (with "Body/Chassis Puck") advertising with , 1965.

What emerged was a BoF (Body on Frame) platform (a surprise to some as the industry trend had been towards unitary construction) to ensure the stiffest possible structure but the combination of the frame’s rubber body-mounts (which Ford dubbed "pucks" because of their similarity in size and shape to the rubber disks used in ice hockey), robust torque boxes and a new, more compliant, coil-spring rear suspension delivered what even the competition's engineers (though probably not the sales staff) acknowledged was the industry’s quietest, smoothest ride.  To solve the problem of troublesome vibrations, the material had before come to the rescue, a rubber layer for the carburettor mountings proving the solution to the resonance which, at certain road speeds, affected the flow of the fuel-air mix in the MGA Twin-Cam, resulting in pistons melting.  Alas, the fix was discovered too late and the MGA was doomed.  Norton had better luck with their Isolastic, a rubber-based engine mounting which disguised the chronic vibration on the Commando's 750 cm³ parallel twin, allowing the company (as something of a last gasp) to extract a (sometimes profitable) decade from what was an antiquated design.

Ford LTD advertising, 1980.

In geopolitics and economics, much changed between 1965 and 1980.  Whereas Ford had once been able prove their Galaxie range (US$2,800-4,800) was quieter than a US$17,000 Rolls-Royce, by 1980 a LTD (the Galaxie name, dating from 1959 was retired after the 1974 season) sold typically for between US$6,400-8,000, reflecting the inflation which became entrenched during the 1970s.  That was representative of the effect on domestically produced cars but an "entry-level" (the concept really was used even of cars from the more exulted) Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow now listed for a minimum US65,000-odd and if that wasn't thought conspicuous enough consumption, there was the two-door Camargue with a price tag in six figures.  The LTD was looking even better value.  Ford in the era made a bit of a thing of comparing their locally produced machines with high-priced stuff from across the Atlantic, one campaign showing how closely the US Granada (1975-1982) resembled various Mercedes-Benz; these days it's the Chinese manufacturers which are accused of plagiarism although they often are more blatant in their copying.  Reckoning however what worked in 1965 would still work 15 years on, Ford re-ran their tests and, in a regulatory environment which was rather more harsh on advertising claims, asserted only that "The 1980 Ford LTD rides as quietly as a $65,000 Rolls-Royce".  The tic-tock of the clock still didn't rate a mention.