Teflon

Teflon (pronounced tef-lon)

(1) The trademark for a fluorocarbon polymer with slippery, non-sticking properties; the (chemically correct) synonym is polytetrafluoroethylene.

(2) In casual use, facetiously to denote an ability to evade blame, applied usually to certain politicians, those characterized by imperviousness to criticism, often as “teflon president etc”.

1945: The proprietary name registered in the US by the du Pont corporation, from the chemical name (poly)te(tra)fl(uoroethylene) + the –on.  The use of the -on suffix in science is often described by etymologists as “arbitrary” and in the narrow technical sense the point is well made but there is history.  In physics it was applied on the model of the “on” element in electron, something lent linguistic respectability by the Ancient Greek -ον (-on), used to end neuter nouns and adjectives.  In chemistry, it followed the “on” in carbon, applied to form names of noble gases and certain non-metal elements (creating first boron and then silicon).  In physics, mathematics and biology, it was appended to form nouns denoting subatomic particles (proton), quanta (photon), molecular units (codon), or substances (interferon).  In biology and genetics, it was used to form names of things considered as basic or fundamental units (such as codon or recon).  The derived forms teflonish, tefleony etc are late twentieth century creations from critical political discourse.

Teflon was a serendipitous discovery which was delivered by research on refrigeration gases being undertaken by the Du Pont Company in 1938.  Some of the experiments being performed involved an analysis of the behavior of various compounds of Freon in cylinders and, observations indicated that while the gas appeared to disappear from the cylinders, weight measurements suggested it remained present and, upon inspection, what was found in the cylinders was a white, waxy substance of no use in the process of refrigeration.  The substance did however have remarkable properties, being friction-free (described as being like rubbing wet ice against wet ice) and impervious both almost all solvents and temperature variations between -273–250^o c (-169–121^o f).  Chemically the substance was a form of polytetrafluoroethylene, thankfully shortened to "Teflon" ((poly)te(tra)fl(uoroethylene)).  The significance of Teflon wasn’t initially understood and Du Pont’s major product release that year was anyway nylon, finally available as a commercial substance after thirteen years of development.

Teflon did however soon have an impact in one of the century’s most significant scientific and engineering projects, those attached to the Manhattan Project developing the atom bomb finding it the only coating which worked as seals for the canisters housing the most volatile elements.  However, because of the secrecy which enveloped the Manhattan Project, some aspects of which would not for many decades be declassified, Teflon didn’t enter the public consciousness until the late 1950s, the timing ensuring it came to be associated with the nascent space programme rather than the A-bomb, a perception the military-industrial complex did little to discourage.  Because of the state of the analytical tools then available, it had taken a long time fully to understand the stuff and it transpired the slipperiness came from a unique molecular structure, the core of carbon atoms being surrounded by fluorine atoms, creating a bond so strong that any other interaction was repelled, the chemical mix also accounting for the high degree of invulnerability to solvents and extremes in temperature.

The first extensive use was in electronics industry, first as insulation and corrosion protection for the copper wires and cables which carried the data for telephony and later computer networks but, as an example of the novel products it enabled, shatter-proof, Teflon-coated light bulbs went on sale but most far-reaching, revolutionary actually, was that it was Teflon which was used to hold the new and tiny semiconductor chips.  All those uses played a part in transforming the world but it was the simultaneous (and well-publicized) use in the Apollo Moon programme and the commercial release of the Teflon fry-pans which so cemented the association in public consciousness.  For some years, mystery shrouded how Du Pont managed to get the Teflon to stick to the aluminum or stainless steel with which fry-pans are made but, after the patents expired, it was revealed the classic trick was to sandblast the metal surfaces which left tiny indentations with irregular edges which worked like the clasps jewelers use to secure stones.  Once these tiny impressions were filled with Teflon, the final layer had something to which to adhere; Teflon attracting itself and repelling all else.  That was an wholly mechanical process but chemical processes were also developed to induce attachment to metal.

While some half a billion Teflon fry-pans were being sold, the slippery substance went on extensively to be used in architecture where its qualities of flame resistance and translucence were much appreciated and it proved uniquely suited to solving a problem which had for decades plagued engineers, the need for an insulator to prevent the corrosion endemic between the steel framework and copper skin of the Statue of Liberty.  Living structures also benefited, Teflon of great utility in the medical device industry because of its compatibility with living tissue, proving an ideal substance with which to construct artificial veins and arteries, heart patches and replacement ligaments although most inventive was probably the Teflon powder injections used to restore the function of vocal-cords.  Early in the twenty-first century, concerns were raised after the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), used in the production of Teflon, was found to be potentially carcinogenic.  The research didn’t produce direct evidence that it's harmful to humans but it was anyway replaced with a substitute, the wonderfully named GenX but this too has attracted concerns.

Teflon resistant: Although described by Representative Pam Schroeder (Democrat, Colorado) as “Teflonish”, one object did stick to Bill Clinton no matter what (and there was much "what").

The word Teflon is used also to refer to that small class of politicians to whom no blame, however well-deserved, seems to attach; whatever mud is slung, none of it ever sticks.  It seems first to have been used by Pat Schroeder (b 1940; Democrat Representative for Colorado in the House 1973-1997) who in a speech on the floor of the House in 1983 denouncing President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; US president 1981-1989) said “He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency: He sees to it that nothing sticks to him.”  Schroeder later said that the expression came to her while frying eggs in a Teflon fry-pan.  In a display of feminist bi-partisanship, she would in a later interview with CNN note that President Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) was very “Teflonish” and the phrase has come to be used to describe the political phenomenon of the willingness in voters to excuse in some the shortcomings they wouldn’t accept in most.  The linguistic adaptation didn’t please Du Pont which greatly valued their trademark, issuing a press release insisting that when used in print, the media should always put the trademark symbol next to the word and that ”It is not, alas, a verb or an adjective, not even when applied to the President of the United States!”  Their demands were ignored and English proceeds along its inventive ways.  There is nothing to suggest Teflon sales ever suffered by association.

Lindsay Lohan in a yacht's galley, cooking with non-stick frypan, Cannes, May 2017.

Teflon is produced from a mix of certain chemicals which are part of a large family of substances called perfluoroalkyl & polyfluoroakyl (PFAS) and research has linked human exposure to a number of conditions including some cancers, reproductive issues, and elevated cholesterol levels.  Given that, on the basis of the experience of litigation and legislative response to other once common materials found to be at least potentially dangerous, it might be expected an intensive research effort has at least quantified the extent of the problem.  However, it transpired it’s effectively impossible to measure the risks of the use of PFAS in non-stick, simply because for decades the chemicals have been so ubiquitous in domestic environments because of their role providing water & stain-resistance in everything from raincoats, carpets and car upholstery.  That means PFAS chemicals have long since become part of the environment, detected everywhere from the seabed to mountain tops.  For the human and animal population, the presence in the water supply is of significance and in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2020 published guidelines for the acceptable level of certain PFAS in drinking water, a document which attracted great interest because it appears about the same time as a study which indicated a correlation between exposure and a disturbing “millions of deaths”.  Among the general population, it’s the cookware which came quickly to attract the most concern, not because there’s any evidence to suggest the stuff is a more productive vector of transfer than carpet, curtains or any other source but because of the intimacy of contact; it’s from those non-stick frypans we eat.  It’s also in dental floss but the psychological threshold of swallowing is real.

Lindsay Lohan using non-stick frypan.  Note the metal fork; Ms Lohan is a risk-taker.

Not all PFAS are identical in the critical areas assessed although they all share the characteristic of being stable, something which has seen then dubbed the “forever chemicals”, something potentially useful for science although it’s the implication that once released, the stuff will persist in the environment for millions of years which disturbs.  Some have been identified as especially dangerous and two (PFOS & PFOA) have already been phased out of industrial use, notably because of a risk posed to the human immune system and encouragingly, testing revealed that after FOS use ceased in 2000, levels in human blood declined significantly.  Those who ensure they use only soft kitchen utensils when using the non-stick products shouldn’t be too assured because injecting a big chunk of the stuff historically hasn’t been the issue; it’s the micro-sized bits entering the body and while manufacturers claim any coating swallowed is inert, the concerns remain.  In the absence of relevant data, there are nuanced positions on non-stick pans. The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) continues to permit the use in cookware while the EPA maintains exposure can lead to “adverse health effects” and in 2022 proposed a labeling protocol which would require certain PFAS to be listed as “hazardous substances”.  Another branch of the administration, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) maintains the health effects of low exposure remain “uncertain.”

Cinque

Cinque (pronounced singk)

(1) In certain games (those using cards, dice, dominoes etc), a card, die, or domino with five spots or pips.

(2) As cinquefoil (1) a potentilla (flower), (2) in heraldry, a stylized flower or leaf with five lobes and (3) in topology, a particular knot of five crossings.

1350–1400: From the Middle English cink, from the Old French cinq (five), from the Vulgar Latin cinque, from the Latin quīnque (five).  The archaic spelling cinq was from the modern French cinq, whereas the standard spelling probably emerged either under the influence of the Italian cinque or was simply a misspelling of the French.  In typically English fashion, the pronunciation “sank” is based on a hypercorrect approximation of the French pronunciation, still heard sometimes among what use to be called “the better classes”.  The alternative forms were cinq (archaic), sinque (obsolete) and sink & sank (both misspellings).  The homophones are cinq, sink, sync & synch (and sank at the best parties); the noun plural is cinques.

Cinque outposts, attested since the 1640s was a term which referred to the five senses.  The noun cinquecento (written sometimes as cinque-cento) is used in (as noun & adjective) criticism & academic works when describing sixteenth century Italian art and literature.  It dates from 1760, from the Italian cinquecento (literally “500”) and was short for mil cinquecento (1500).  The use to describe "a group of five, five units treated as one," especially at cards or dice, dates from the late fourteenth century and in English was borrowed directly from the French cinq, a dissimilation from Latin quinque (five) which in Late Latin also picked up the familiar spelling cinque.  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European penkwe (five).

Cinquefoil housing stained glass (leadlight) window.

In architecture, a cinquefoil is a ornament constructed with five cuspidated divisions, the use dating from the late fifteenth century, from the Latin quinquefolium, the construct being quinque (five) + folium (leaf), from the primitive Indo-European root bhel- (to thrive, bloom).  In Gothic tracery, there was a wide use of circular shapes featuring a lobe tangent to the inner side of a larger arc or arch, meeting other lobes in points called cusps projecting inwards from the arch and architects defined them by the number of foils used, indicated by the prefix: trefoil (3), quatrefoil (4), cinquefoil (5), sexfoil (6), multifoil etc.  Although used as stand-alone fixtures, bands of quatrefoils were much used for enrichment during the Perpendicular period and, when placed with the axes set diagonally, quatrefoils were called cross-quarters.

Porsche "phone-dial" wheels, clockwise from top left: 1981 911SC, 1988 924S, 1987 944S & 1985 928S.  With a myriad of variations, the cinquefoil motif was a style for wheels used by a number of manufacturers, the best known of which were the ones with which Porsche equipped the 911, 924, 944 & 928 where they were known as the “phone-dial”, a reference which may puzzle those younger than a certain age.  Because these have five rather than ten holes, they really should have picked up the nickname "cinquefoil" rather than "phone-dial" but the former was presumably too abstract or obscure so the more accessible latter prevailed.  

Lamborghini likes the phone-dial still, Left to right: Huranan, Gallardo, Countach, Diablo and Silhouette.

Plastic wheelcover for the Ford Fairmont XE (left), a circa 1949 British GPO standard telephone in Bakelite (centre) (globally, the most produced handset in this style was the Model 302, manufactured in the US by Western Electric between 1937-1955 with a thermoplastic case) and plastic wheelcover for the Ford Fairmont XF (left).

Probably some are annoyed at the “five-hole” wheel design coming to be known as the “phone-dial” because of course the classic rotary-dial mechanism had ten holes, one for each numeral.  Ford Australia actually stuck to the classics when designing a plastic wheel-cover for the XE (1982-1984) Fairmont (the next rung up in the Falcon's pecking order) because it featured the correct ten holes and it was re-allocated as a “hand-me-down” for the Falcon when the XF (1984-1988) was introduced, the Fairmont now getting an eight-hole unit.  None of these seem ever to have been dubbed “phone-dials”, probably because plastic wheel–covers have never been a fetish like the older metal versions or aluminium wheels (often as “rims” in modern usage, a practice which also annoys some).

The origin of the hubcap was, fairly obviously, “a cap for hub”, something which dates from the age of horse-drawn carts.  Although they would later become something decorative, hubcaps began as a purely function fitting designed to ensure the hub mechanism was protected from dirt and moisture because removing a wheel when the hub was caked in mud with bolts “rusted on” could be a challenge.  In the twentieth century the practice was carried over to the automobile, initially without much change but as wheels evolved from the wooden-spoked to solid steel (and even in the 1920s some experimented with aluminium), the hubcaps became larger because the securing bolts were more widely spaced.  This meant they became a place to advertise so manufacturers added their name and before long, especially in the US, the humble hubcap evolved into the “wheel-cover”, enveloping the whole circle and they became a styling feature, designs ranging from the elegant to the garishly ornate and some were expensive: in 1984 a set of replacement “wire” wheel covers for a second generation Cadillac Seville (the so-called “bustle-back”, 1980-1985) listed at US$995.00 if ordered as a Cadillac part-number and then that was a lot of money.  By the late 1980s, most wheel covers were plastic pressings, other than in places like the isolated environments behind the Iron Curtain.

Lindsay Lohan in 2004 using touch-dial wall-phone.

Remarkably, although touch-dial (ie buttons) handsets appeared in the consumer market as early as 1963 and soon became the standard issue, in 2024 it’s possible still to buy new, rotary-dial phones although only the user experience remains similar; internally the connections are effected with optical technology, the “sound & feel” emulated.  There’s also a market for updating the old Bakelite & Thermoplastic units (now typically between 70-90 years old) with internals compatible with modern telephony so clearly there’s some nostalgia for the retro-look, if not the exact experience.  Even after the touch-dial buttons became ubiquitous the old terminology persisted among users (and in the manufacturers' documents); when making calls users continued to "dial the number".  The same sort of linguistic legacy exists today because ending a call is still the act of "hanging up" and that dates from the very early days of telephony when the ear-piece was a large conical attachment on a cord and at a call's conclusion, it was "hung up" on a arm, the weight of the receiver lowering the arm which physically separated two copper connectors, terminating the link between the callers.  

Ms Justine Haupt (b 1987) with custom rotary-dial cell phone in aquamarine.

Ms Justine Haupt, an astronomy instrumentation engineer at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory went a step further (sideways, some might suggest) and built a rotary-dial cell phone from scratch because of her aversion to what she describes as “smartphone culture and texting”, something to which many will relate.  In what proved a three year project, Ms Haupt used a rotary-dial mechanism from a Trimline telephone (introduced in 1965 and produced by Western Electric, the manufacturing unit of the Bell System), mounted on a case 4 x 3 x 1 inches (100 x 75 x 25 mm) in size with a noticeably protuberant aerial; it uses an AT&T prepaid sim card and has a battery-life of some 24-30 hours.  Conforming to the designer’s choices of functionality, it includes two speed-dial buttons, an e-paper display and permits neither texting nor internet access.  Although she intended the device as a one-off for her own use, Ms Haupt was surprised at the interest generated and in 2022 began selling a kit with which others could build their own (US$170 (Stg£130)), all parts included except the rotary-dial mechanism which would need to be sourced from junk shops and such.  Unlike the larger mechanism on the traditional desk or wall-mounted telephone, the holes in the Trimline’s smaller rotary-dial used the whole circle so the ten-hole layout is symmetrical and thus the same as the XE Fairmont’s wheelcover, something doubtlessly wholly coincidental.

The rough-fruited cinquefoil or sulphur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta).

In botany, the potentila is a genus containing some three-hundred species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the rose (rosaceae) family.  Since the 1540s it’s been referred to as the cinquefoil (also “five fingers” or “silverweeds”), all distinguished by their compound leaves of five leaflets.

The Confederation of Cinque Ports was a group of coastal towns in Kent, Sussex and Essex, the name from the Old French which means literally “five harbors”.  The five were Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe, all on the western shore of the English Channel, where the crossing to the continent is narrowest.  Because of (1) their importance in cross-channel trade and (2) being in the region ,most vulnerable to invasion, they were granted special privileges and concessions by the Crown in exchange for providing certain services essential for maritime defense, dating from the years prior to the formation of the Royal Navy in the fifteenth century.  The name was first used in the late twelfth century in Anglo-Latin and the late thirteenth in English.

An early version of a public-private partnership, with no permanent navy to defend it from sea-borne aggression, the crown contracted with the confederation to provide what was essentially a naval reserve to be mobilized when needed. Earlier, Edward the Confessor (circa 1003–1066; King of England 1042-1066) had contracted the five most important strategically vital Channel ports of that era to provide ships and men “for the service of the monarch” and although this was used most frequently as a “cross-Channel ferry service” and was not exclusively at the disposal of the government.  Under the Norman kings, the institution assumed the purpose of providing the communications and logistical connections essential to keeping together the two halves of the realm but after the loss of Normandy in 1205, their ships and ports suddenly became England’s first line of defense against the French.

The earliest charter still extant dates from 1278 but a royal charter of 1155 charged the ports with the corporate duty to maintain in readiness fifty-seven ships, each to be available each year for fifteen days in the service of the king, each port fulfilling a proportion of the whole duty.  In return the ports and towns received a number of tax breaks and privileges including: An exemption from tax and tolls, limited autonomy, the permission to levy tolls, certain law enforcement and judicial rights, possession of lost goods that remain unclaimed after a year and of flotsam (floating wreckage and such) & jetsam (goods thrown overboard).  Even at the time this was thought to be a good deal and the leeway afforded to the Cinque Ports and the substantial absence of supervision from London led inevitability to smuggling and corruption although in this the Cinque Ports were hardly unique.

The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was something like a viceroy and the office still exists today but is now purely ceremonial and, although technically relict, remains a sinecure and an honorary title, regarded as one of the higher honors bestowed by the Sovereign and a sign of special approval by the establishment which includes the entitlement to the second oldest coat of arms of England.  The prestige it confers on the holder is derived from (1) it being the gift of the sovereign, (2) it being England’s most ancient military honor and (3), the illustrious standing of many of the previous hundred and fifty-eight holders of the office.  It is a lifetime appointment.

William Lygon (1872-1938), seventh Earl Beauchamp, in uniform of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

The office of lord Warden has not been without the whiff of scandal.  William Lygon, who in 1891 succeeded his father as the seventh Earl Beauchamp, was at twenty-seven appointed governor of New South Wales, a place to which he would later return, happily and otherwise.  In 1913, Beauchamp, well-connected in society and the ruling Liberal Party’s leader in the House of Lords, was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and, fond of pomp, ceremony and dressing-up, he enjoyed the job.  However, in 1930, he embarked on a round-the-world tour which included a two-month stint in Sydney, where he stayed, accompanied by a young valet who lived with him as his lover.  This, along with other antics, did not go unnoticed, and the Australian Star newspaper duly reported:

“The most striking feature of the vice-regal ménage is the youthfulness of its members … rosy cheeked footmen, clad in liveries of fawn, heavily ornamented in silver and red brocade, with many lanyards of the same hanging in festoons from their broad shoulders, [who] stood in the doorway, and bowed as we passed in … Lord Beauchamp deserves great credit for his taste in footmen.”

The report found its way to London when Beauchamp’s brother-in-law, the second Duke of Westminster (1879–1953), hired detectives to gather evidence, hoping to destroy him and damage the Liberal Party, the Tory duke hating both.  Evidence proved abundant and not hard to find and in 1931 Westminster publicly denounced Beauchamp as a homosexual to the king (George V 1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), who was appalled and responded that he “…thought men like that always shot themselves.”  Westminster insisted a warrant be issued for Beauchamp’s arrest and that forced him into exile.

Lady Beauchamp seems to have shown some confusion upon being informed of her husband’s conduct.  Although he had enjoyed many liaisons in their (admittedly large) residences, his partners including servants, socialites & local fishermen and his proclivities were an open secret known to many in society, his wife remained oblivious and expressed some confusion about what homosexuality was.  Leading a sheltered existence, Lady Beauchamp had never been told about the mechanics of "the abominable crime of buggery" and baffled, thought her husband was being accused of being a bugler.  Once things were clarified she petitioned for divorce, the papers describing the respondent as:

“A man of perverted sexual practices, [who] has committed acts of gross indecency with male servants and other male persons and has been guilty of sodomy … throughout the married life … the respondent habitually committed acts of gross indecency with certain of his male servants.”

Beauchamp decamped first to Germany, a prudent choice given that although homosexual acts had been illegal since the unification of Germany in 1871, under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), enforcement was rare and a gay culture flourished blatantly in the larger German cities, the Berlin scene famous even then.  After the Nazis gained power in 1933, things changed and Beauchamp contemplated satisfying George V’s assumption but was dissuaded, instead spending his time between Paris, Venice, Sydney and San Francisco, then four of the more tolerant cities and certainly places where wealthy gay men could usually bribe their way out of any legal unpleasantness.

After the death of George V, the warrant for Beauchamp’s arrest was lifted and, in July 1937, he returned to England.  What did come as a surprise to many was that soon after his arrival, invitations were issued for a Beauchamp ball, ostensibly a coming-of-age celebration for Richard Lygon (1916-1970; the youngest son) but universally regarded as an attempt at a social resurrection.  In a sign of the times, much of London society did attend although there were those who abstained and made it known.  Still, it seems to have appeared a most respectable and even successful event, Henry "Chips" Channon (1897-1958) noting in his diary it was a bit dull, the “only amusing moment when Lord Beauchamp escorted… a negress cabaret singer into supper.  People were cynically amused but I was not surprised, knowing of his secret activities in Harlem.  It is never a long step from homosexuality to black ladies.”  Beauchamp didn’t long enjoy his return to society, dying within a year of the ball.  The vicissitudes of his life were helpful to Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) when writing Brideshead Revisited (1945), the character of Lord Marchmain based on Beauchamp himself while the ill-fated Sebastian Flyte was inspired by Beauchamp’s son Hugh (1904-1936) who shared and (with some enthusiasm) pursued some of his father’s interests.  Despite it all, an appointment as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is for life and Lord Beauchamp remained in office until his death.

Cash

Cash (pronounced kash)

(1) Money in the form of coins or banknotes, historically that issued by a government or a bank or other financial institution operating with the approval of a government.

(2) Money or an equivalent paid at the time of making a purchase.

(3) Immediate payment, in full or part, for goods or services, even if not paid in physical cash (ie as distinct from the various forms of time (delayed) payment).

(4) To give or obtain cash for a check, money order, bill of exchange etc.

(5) In some games of cards, (1) to win (a trick) by leading an assured winner or (2) to lead (an assured winner) in order to win a trick.

(6) Any of several low-denomination coins of China, Vietnam, India, and the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), especially the Chinese copper coin.

1590–1600: From the Portuguese caixa, from the Tamil காசு (kācu) (a copper coin), from the Sanskrit karṣa (a weight (of precious metal such as silver or gold)).  There was also the sixteenth century Old Italian cassa (money box) from the Latin capsa (case).  Variation of cash appear in many languages including the Japanese: キャッシュ (kyasshu), the Serbo-Croatian (kȅš & ке̏ш) the Romanian cash and the Swedish cash.

Cashable is an adjective, cashability & cashableness are nouns.  The noun plural is cash (except for the proper noun; the surname’s plural being Cashes).  The homophone of cash is cache, often mispronounced as kaache although cache’s adoption as a technical term in computing has led some to suggest kaache should be the use in the industry with kash for all other purposes and there’s much support for the view which does make sense, even if, given the specificity of the context, confusion is unlikely.  The verb cashier (and the related cashiering & cashiered) is (1) the simple past tense and past participle of cashier and (2) the apparently curious term for the dismissal of a military officer, cashiered in this context from the Dutch casseren & kasseren, from the Old French casser (to break (up)).  During a ceremonial cashiering, the break of his link with the military was sometimes symbolized dramatically by literally breaking the officer’s sword (which had in advance been partly sawn through).   

The surname appears to be an American variant of Case, the records indicating it was first adopted by in the US by German immigrants named Kirch and Kirsch, an example of the Anglicization of names once a common of those migrating to the English-speaking world.  In rare cases it has been used a male given name, often as a second name reflecting the mother’s maiden name.  A cashier (person in charge of money), dates from the 1590s, from the French caissier (treasurer), from caisse (money box), the immediate source of the English word perhaps the Middle Dutch kassier.

Lindsay Lohan themed cash.  Unfortunately, these Lohanic notes are not issued by the US Federal Reserve and thus neither legal tender nor readily convertible (at least at face-value) to other currencies.  However, Lindsay Lohan is dabbling in the embroynic world of the NFT (non fungible token) which may evolve to have some influence on the development of how cash is stored and exchanged (if not valued).   

In idiomatic use, cashing-in one’s chips means literally to take one’s winnings and leave the casino but is also used to mean “to die” whereas cashing-up is a technical term from business referring to the end-of-day audit & balancing procedures.  A moneybags (ie bags full of cash) is someone (usually conspicuously) rich.  A cash-cow is a product or service which dependably provides the owner or operator a lucrative profit.  A cash-crop (agricultural product grown to sell for profit) is attested from 1831 and was distinct from one with some other primary purpose (such as for self-sustenance or stock-feed).  A cash-back is a trick in advertising and a form of discount.  The phrase cold, hard cash is another way of emphasizing the primacy of money.  A cash-book (which historically were physical ledgers but most are now electronic) was a transactional register.  To cash was “to convert (a cheque (the US check) or other bill of exchange) to cash", known since 1811 as a variation of the noun and the now-extinct encash from 1865 was also used as a piece of specialized jargon meaning exactly the same thing; it was replaced as required by cashed & cashing.  The cash-box (also called money-box), dating from the 1590s, was (and remains) a box for the safe-keeping physical cash and was from the sixteenth century French caisse (money box), from the Provençal caissa or the Italian cassa, from the Anglo-Norman & Old French casse (money box), from the Latin capsa (box, case) ultimately from capiō (I take, I seize, I receive), from the primitive Indo-European kehp- (to grasp) (which also led to the Spanish caja (box); the original sense was literally the wooden or metal box by the eighteenth century, the secondary sense of the money began to run is parallel before, for most purposes, becoming the sole meaning.  To cash in is to profit from something, applying it one's advantage.  A cash-register, dating from 1875, was historically a mechanical device used to record transactions and issue receipts, such machines now mostly electronic and increasingly linked to centralized (even international) databases; in Jewish humorous use, a cash-register was “a Jewish piano”.  Cash-flow (which surprisingly seems to date only from 1954) refers to a specific characteristic of business and means the periodic accumulation of disposable revenue to permit the operations always to meet its obligations and continue trading; it’s not directly related to long-term profitability in that something with a good cash-flow can continue indefinitely while only breaking even while a profitable concern with a poorly managed cash-flow can flounder.  In commerce, use is common such as cash-and-carry, cash account, cash-only, discount for cash etc although transaction handling costs have affected the last: where once it was common for businesses to offer a discount to customers paying with physical cash (sometimes because it offered the possibility of a hidden (ie un-taxed) transaction, it’s now not uncommon for a fee to be imposed, reflecting the difference in processing costs for weightless (electronic) payments compared with the physical (notes & coins).  In criminal slang, "cash" is said to be a euphemism for “to do away with, to kill” the word "disband" also carrying this meaning and both “cash” and “disband” are reputed to be used on the dark web as code by those offering contract killing although such things are hard to verify and may be an internet myth. Cash on delivery (COD) dates from 1859 and was an invention of American commerce designed to encourage sales from businesses previously unknown to the individual consumer.  Cashless (often as cashless-society or cashless transaction) refers usually to the elimination of physical money (ie notes and coins), something sought by many bureaucrats for various reasons although of concern to civil libertarians.

According to anthropologists, the word cash (money and all that) is really derived from the word kash, a beer brewed in Ancient Egypt which was used to pay workers (including the builders of the Great Pyramids).  Stone cutters, slaves, architects, and even public officials were often paid (at least in part) with beer, two containers of kash often set as the minimum wage for an Egyptian laborer’s day of work.  At the time, there was quite a brewing industry, the Egyptians known to be distributing at least six varieties of beer by 3,000 BC and there is evidence it played a part in the social conventions of the age: in some circumstances if a man offered a lady a sip of his beer, they could be held to be betrothed so dating could be minefield for those who’d drunk too much.

The traditions associated with kash spread.  In Mesopotamia, tavern owners found guilty of overcharging patrons for beer could be sentenced to death by drowning in the Tigris or Euphrates rivers (depending on where the establishment was located) although most punishments were apparently commuted to fines.  The Ancient Babylonians, serious about beer making, to regulate quality decreed that any commercial beer maker who sold unfit beer was to be drowned in that very impure libation although no records exist which confirm how many were actually suck in their own dodgy brew.  The most attractive Babylonian tale (although not one all historians accept) is that more happily, a bride’s father would supply all the “honey" kash (a form of kash to which honey and sweet herbs were added) the groom could drink for one month after the wedding.  Because the calendar was lunar based, this month was referred to as the “honey moon”.

Press

Press (pronounced pres)

(1) To act upon with steadily applied weight or force.

(2) To move by weight or force in a certain direction or into a certain position.

(3) To compress or squeeze, as to alter in shape or size.

(4) To hold closely, as in an embrace; clasp.

(5) To flatten or make smooth, especially by ironing.

(6) To extract juice, sugar, etc from by pressure.

(7) To manufacture (phonograph records, videodiscs, or the like), especially by stamping from a mold or matrix.

(8) To exert weight, force, or pressure.

(9) In weightlifting, to raise or lift, especially a specified amount of weight, in a press.

(10) To iron clothing, curtains, etc.

(11) To bear heavily, as upon the mind.

(12) To compel in another, haste, a change of opinion etc.

(13) Printed publications, especially newspapers and periodicals.  Collectively, all the media and agencies that print, broadcast, or gather and transmit news, including newspapers, newsmagazines, radio and television news bureaus, and wire services.

(14) The editorial employees, taken collectively, of these media and agencies.

(15) To force into military service.

1175-1225: From the Middle English press & presse (throng, trouble, machine for pressing) from the Old French, from presser (to press) from the Latin pressāre, frequentative of premere (past participle pressus).  In Medieval Latin it became pressa (noun use of the feminine of pressus).  The noun press (a crowd, throng, company; crowding and jostling of a throng; a massing together) emerged in the late twelfth century and was from the eleventh century Old French presse (a throng, a crush, a crowd; wine or cheese press), from the Latin pressare.  Although in the Late Old English press existed in the sense of "clothes press", etymologists believe the Middle English word is probably from French.  The general sense of an "instrument or machine by which anything is subjected to pressure" dates from the late fourteenth century and was first used to describe a "device for pressing cloth" before being extended to "devices which squeeze juice from grapes, oil from olives, cider from apples etc".  The sense of "urgency, urgent demands of affairs" emerged in the 1640s.  It subsequently proved adaptable as a technical term in sports, adopted by weightlifting in 1908 while the so-called (full-court press) defense in basketball was first recorded in 1959.

The specific sense "machine for printing" was from the 1530s, extended by the 1570s to publishing houses and to publishing generally (in phrases like freedom of the press) from circa 1680 although meaning gradually shifted in early 1800s to "periodical publishing, journalism".  The phrase “the press” meaning "journalists collectively" is attested from 1921 but this has faded from use with the decline in newspapers and the preferred reference has long been “the news media”.  The first gathering called a press conference is attested from 1931, though the thing itself had been around for centuries (and in some sense formalized during the First World War (1914-1918) although a politician appears first to have appointed a “press secretary” as late as 1940.  The term “press release” (an official statement offered to a newspaper and authorized for publication) is from 1918.

The sense "force into military (especially naval) service" emerged (most famously in the “press-gang” (a detachment under command of an officer empowered to press men into public service)) in the 1570s, an alteration (by association with the verb press) of the mid-fourteenth century prest (engage by loan, pay in advance (especially in reference to money paid to a soldier or sailor on enlisting), from the Latin praestare (to stand out, stand before; fulfill, perform, provide), the construct being prae- (before) + stare (to stand), from the primitive Indo-European root sta- (to stand, make or be firm).  The verb was related to praesto (ready, available).

Most meanings related to pushing and exerting pressure had formed by the mid-fourteenth century and this had been extended to mean "to urge or argue for" by the 1590s.  The early fourteenth century pressen (to clasp, hold in embrace) extended in meaning by the mid century also to mean "to squeeze out" & "to cluster, gather in a crowd" and by the late 1300s, "to exert weight or force against, exert pressure" (and also "assault, assail" & "forge ahead, push one's way, move forward", again from the thirteenth century Old French presser (squeeze, press upon; torture)", from the Latin pressare (to press (the frequentative formation from pressus, past participle of premere (to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress), from the primitive Indo-European root per- (to strike)).  The sense of "to reduce to a particular shape or form by pressure" dates from the early fifteenth century while the figurative (“to attack”) use was recorded some decades earlier.  The meaning "to urge; beseech, argue for" dates from the 1590s.

The letter-press referred to matter printed from relief surfaces and was a term first used in the 1840s (the earlier (1771) description had been "text," as opposed to copper-plate illustration.  The noun pressman has occasionally been used to refer to newspaper journalists but in the 1590s it described "one who operates or has charge of a printing press" and was adopted after the 1610s to refer to "one employed in a wine-press".  A similar sharing of meaning attached to the pressroom which in the 1680s meant "a room where printing presses are worked" and by 1902 it was also a "room (in a courthouse, etc.) reserved for the use of reporters".  To press the flesh (shake hands) came into use in 1926 and a neglected use of “pressing” is as a form of torture.  Under a wide variety of names, pressing was a popular method of torture or execution for over four-thousand years; mostly using rocks and stones but elephants tended to be preferred in south and south-east Asia.  It’s a medieval myth that Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) invented pressing but he certainly adopted it as a method of torture with his usual enthusiasm.  Across the channel, under the French civil code, Peine forte et dure (forceful and hard punishment) defined pressing.  Used when a defendant refused to plead, the victim would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the subject to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

Pressed Duck

The sequence of pressing a duck: The duck press (left), pressing the duck (centre) & pressed duck (right).

(1) Select a young, plump duck.

(2) Wringing the neck, quickly asphyxiate duck, ensuring all blood is retained.

(3) Partially roast duck.

(4) Remove liver; grind and season liver.

(5) Remove breast and legs.

(6) Take remaining carcass (including other meat, bones, and skin) and place in duck-press.

(7) Apply pressure in press to extract and collect blood and other juices from carcass.

(8) Take extracted blood, thicken and flavor with the duck's liver, butter, and Cognac.  Combine with the breast to finish cooking.  Other ingredients that may be added to the sauce include foie gras, port wine, Madeira wine, and lemon.

(9) Slice the breast and serve with sauce as a first serving; the legs are broiled and served as the next course.

The tabloid press: On 29 November 2006, News Corp's New York Post ran its front page with a paparazzi photo Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, the snap taken just prior to dawn in outside a Los Angeles nightclub.  Remembered for the headline Bimbo Summit, the car was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).

The term "tabloid press" refers to down-market style of journalism designed to enjoy wide appeal through an emphasis on scandals, sensation and sport, featuring as many celebrities as possible.  The word tabloid was originally a trademark for a medicine which had been compressed into a small tablet, the construct being tab(let) + -oid (the suffix from the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the ο being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached), from εἶδος (eîdos) (form, likeness)).  From the idea of the pill being the small version of something bigger, tabloid came to be used to refer to miniaturized iterations of a variety of stuff, newspapers being the best known use.  A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet but despite the name, there is no standardized size for the format but it's generally about half the size of a broadsheet.  In recent decades, economic reality has intruded on the newspaper business and there are now a number of tabloid-sized newspapers which don't descend to the level of tabloid journalism (although there has been a general lowering of standards).

Copper

Copper (pronounced kop-er)

(1) A malleable, ductile, metallic element having a characteristic reddish-brown color, occurring as the free metal, copper glance, and copper pyrites: used as an electrical and thermal conductor and in such alloys as brass and bronze.

(2) As a color, a metallic, reddish brown.

(3) A slang term for a coin (usually of a smaller denomination) composed of copper, bronze etc.

(4) A slang term for a hedge (archaic).

(5) A slang term for a police or other law-enforcement officer, now usually as the shortened “cop”.

(6) In lepidopterology, any of several butterflies of the family Lycaenidae, as Lycaena hypophleas (American copper), having copper-colored wings spotted and edged with black.

(7) In slang and informal use, a tool or any of the various specialized items made from copper, where the use of copper is either traditional or vital to the function of the item.

(8) In historic UK & Commonwealth use, a large kettle (now usually made of cast iron), used for cooking or to boil the laundry (archaic and functionally extinct); a once popular term for any container made of copper.

(9) To cover, coat, or sheathe with copper.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English coper & copper, from the Old English coper & copor, from the Late Latin cuprum (copper), from the Latin aes Cyprium (literally “Cyprian brass” (ie metal from the island of Cyprus)), from the Ancient Greek Κύπρος (Kúpros) (Cyprus).  It was cognate with the Dutch koper (copper), the Old Norse koparr (copper), the German Kupfer (copper) and the Icelandic kopar (copper).  The alternative spelling coper (a hangover from the Middle English) is obsolete.  Copper & are nouns, verbs & adjectives, copperas is a noun, coppered & coppering are verbs & adjectives and coppery, cupric, cupreous & cuprous are adjectives; the noun plural is coppers.

In the Ancient Greek there was khalkos (ore, copper, bronze), a direct borrowing of the primitive Indo-European word meaning "ore, copper, bronze" and familiar in the Sanskrit ayah and the Latin aes.  In Classical Latin aes originally was used of copper but as technology evolved, this was extended to bronze (its alloy with tin) and because bronze was used much more than pure copper, the word's primary sense shifted to the alloy and a new word evolved for "copper," from the Latin form of the name of the island of Cyprus, where the copper mines were located.  Cyprus being the birthplace of Aphrodite (Venus), this led (in the way mythology adapted to the times) to the association of by alchemists of Aphrodite with copper.  Aes passed into the proto-Germanic where originally no linguistic distinction existed between copper from its alloys while in English it became “ore”.  In Latin vernacular, aes was used also to mean “cash, coin, debt, wages” in many figurative expressions. The chemical symbol Cu is from cuprum, from the Ancient Greek Κύπρος (Kúpros) (Cyprus).

The use to describe coins made of (or appearing to be made of) copper dates from the 1580s while to refer to vessels (jars, tubs, pots etc) made from the metal it came into use in the 1660s, the adjective cupreous (consisting of or containing copper (from the Late Latin cupreus (of copper), from cuprum (an, alternative form of cyprum (copper)) emerging in parallel.   The adjectival use in the sense of “made from or resembling copper” emerged in the 1570, a development from the verb, in use since the 1520s.  The alloy copper-nickel was first used to mint coins in 1728.  The trade of coppersmithing, practiced by the coppersmith (artisan who works in copper), was a creation of the early fourteenth century and was, as was practice at the time, soon used as a surname.  The noun copperplate (also copper-plate) described a "plate of polished copper, engraved and etched" dates from the 1660s and was later used figuratively to describe designs (wallpaper, woodcuts, carvings, carpet etc) with some resemblance to the styled metal.  Perhaps surprisingly, the adjectival sense in the sense of an allusion to the reddish-brown color isn’t documented until the turn of the nineteenth century (“cupric” used thus in 1799 and "copper-colored" after 1804) although it may earlier have been part of one or more oral traditions.

Symbol: Cu.
Atomic number: 29.
Atomic weight: 63.546.
Valency: 1 or 2.
Relative density: 8.96.
Specific gravity: 8.92 at 20°C.
Melting point: 1084.87±+0.2°C.
Boiling point: 2563°C

In an example of the way English must seem strange to speakers of more apparently logically languages, the use of “cop” as a slang term for “police or other law-enforcement officer” is a shortening of “copper” but that is etymologically unrelated to the metal, the use of “copper” to describe policemen (at a time all were men” derived from the English “cop”.  The construct was cop (to take, capture, seize) +‎ -er (the agent suffix).  Cop is of uncertain origin but the most likely link is with the Middle English coppen & copen, from the Old English copian (to plunder; pillage; steal) although some etymologists have also suggested the Middle French caper (to capture), from the Latin capiō (to seize, grasp) or the Dutch kapen (to seize, hijack), from the Old Frisian kāpia (to buy), source of the Saterland Frisian koopje and the North Frisian koope.  A perhaps related form was the Middle English copen (to buy), from the Middle Dutch copen.

New York's Statute of Liberty with the copper skin colored as it would have appeared in France, prior to being shipped to the US for erection in  in 1886 (left) and as it appeared decades later, the metal showing the effects of oxidization (right).  

The expression “to cop” was thus used in the sense of “to steal” but also (as a transitive verb) “to (be forced to) take; to receive; to shoulder; to bear, especially blame or punishment for a particular instance of wrongdoing”, hence the expressed notions of “cop the blame”, “cop an injury” etc.  It was the association with crime and violence which in the nineteenth century saw "copper" (one who cops (apprehends) the criminal) adopted in the UK (first documented in 1846) to describe what were then the still relatively novel (in the sense of a structured, publicly-funded force) policemen and as “cop”, the world spread world-wide.  Cop also had a mono-syllabic appeal to many sub-cultures who took up the sense of “to obtain; acquire; purchase”; it was used (1) by drug users to express acquisition of narcotics, (2) among anoraks (train-spotters, plane-spotters, bird-watchers etc) to mark the observation and recording of something unique or at least rare and (3) by those living off immoral earnings (pimps), to speak of the recruitment of a prostitute to the lineup.  There was also the alleged slang form “fair cop”, said to be used by criminals (to cops) when admitting guilt although whether this was as common in real life as it was in the imaginations of crime writers isn’t known although “bent copper” (a corrupt police officer) still enjoys some currency.

JTC Roofing in the UK provided a chart using the Statute of Liberty to illustrate the natural process by which copper gradually changes in color from the original reddish-brown to green, a chemical reaction between the metal and the oxygen in the atmosphere, something known as oxidation.  In an aesthetic sense, the transition to green is part of copper’s charming patina but it’s also functional, providing a protective coating which protects surface deterioration and in this it differs from a ferrous metal like iron which, under oxidation, becomes rusted, the rust eating into the material.  The result can be seen in the light bluish-green copper facades which adorn many copper rooftops and structures and the pallette evolves over years before the familiar green tint achieves a final hue, something influenced also by atmospheric and climatic conditions.

The patination of copper induced by oxidation can be emulated in hair colors: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates. 

Helpfully, World of Chemicals has explained the chemistry.  When in 1886 the Statute of Liberty was assembled and erected after being shipped from France, it was a quite dull brown, reflecting the process of oxidation which had already taken from the metal the shininess which the coppersmiths and engineers would have seen when first working on the pates in Paris and it would take another 30-odd years of weathering before the now familiar color settled.  This patination is fine if a structure for decades remains untouched but in some uses in architecture (especially roofs which are vulnerable to damage), it’s sometimes necessary to replace copper panels which can result in an unsightly patchwork of colors.  For this reason, the industry has developed processes of pre-patination which can render copper panels with specific degrees of patination to match a sample of the damaged item, thus providing a close color-match.

Because of its location and the era in which it has stood, the particular path to verdigris (from the French vert-de-gris (literally “green of Greece”)) assumed by the Statute of Liberty was influenced by the unique environmental conditions.  Although the process is linguistically encapsulated as “oxidation”, it's not a simple single reaction between copper and oxygen because the generated green oxide continues to react to make copper carbonates, copper sulphide, and copper sulphate.  Initially, the copper reacts with oxygen from the air in a redox reaction, the metal donating electrons to oxygen, which oxidises the copper and reduces the oxygen, the copper oxide continuing to react with oxygen to form copper oxide.  However, for many of the decades in which the statute stood, the atmosphere contained much sulphur from the burning of coal and this induced another reaction which produced copper sulphide (black) which reacts with atmospheric carbon dioxide and hydroxide ions from water vapour, forming three compounds all of which exist in shades of blue or green.  The speed at which the patina develops and evolution of the colour depends on factors like temperature, humidity and air pollution, not just the presence of oxygen and carbon dioxide and, in another time, in another place, things would have unfolded differently.

Statue of Liberty (1962), silkscreen print by Andy Warhol. 

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) produced a few depictions of the Statute of Liberty, mostly variations of the familiar theme made famous by his prints of Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) but one with a touch of something original was a silkscreen rendering in 1962 of multiple tiled images in 3D.  At auction by Christies (New York) in 2012, it sold for US$43.8 million, part of a collection of contemporary art that realized an encouraging US$412.3 million, regarded at the time as a sign the market was recovering from the shock of the global financial crisis (GFC); the US Federal Reserve (The Fed) must have been pleased to see all that quantitative easing being spent wisely.  Even so, it didn’t set a record for a Warhol, Eight Elvises sold in a private sale 2008 for a reputed US$100 million although the auction house did throw in a pair of 3D glasses with the catalogue so there was that.  In 2013, another Warhol from 1963 set a pop-art record which stands today, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) selling at auction for US$105.4 million.