Syzygy

Syzygy (pronounced siz-i-jee)

(1) In astronomy (actually borrowed from astrology!), the descriptor for either of the two positions (conjunction or opposition) of a celestial body when sun, earth, and the body lie in a straight line (since applied to the "straight-line configuration" of firstly three and later any number of celestial bodies in a gravitational system.

(2) Any two related things, either alike or opposite (obsolete except for historic references).

(3) In classical prosody, a group or combination of two feet, sometimes restricted to a combination of two feet of different kinds.

(4) In biology (especially zoology), the aggregation in a mass of certain protozoans, especially when occurring before sexual reproduction but can be used also when describing the asexual exchange of genetic material.

(5) In psychology, an archetypal pairing of contra-sexual opposites, symbolizing the communication of the conscious and unconscious minds.

(6) In mathematics, a relation between generators of a module.

(7) In medical pathology, a fusing of some or all of the organs.

(8) In genetics, the pairing of chromosomes in meiosis

1650-1660:  From the Late Latin sȳzygia (conjunction), from the Ancient Greek συζυγία (suzugía) (yoke of animals, pair, union of two, conjunction), from syzygein (to yoke together), the construct being an assimilated form of syn- (together) + zygon (yoke), from the primitive Indo-European root yeug- (to join).  In the Greek, the word produced also zeugnýnai (to yoke together), sometimes simplified in English transcription as synzugon.  In English, syzygy was adopted by astronomy in 1847.  In science there are a number of terms of classification based on syzygy, the most attractive of which is probably Syzygium samarangense (a taxonomic species within the family Myrtaceae (wax apple or Javan rose apple).  

In progress.

Syzygy was one of those words from the once respectable field of astrology later adopted by a number of scientific disciplines (astronomy, genetics, psychiatry, mathematics, zoology) and retained, even after astrology became widely regarded as disreputable.  In mathematics and the physical sciences, it was a handy descriptor of things which became paired or, however briefly, were in alignment although historically the emphasis was on "pair", a syzygy as able to be applied to an identical pair as two diametric opposites.  That permissiveness is now listed by most dictionaries as obsolete but is something to be noted when reading historic texts.

The origin of the application of the word in disciplines like psychiatry and psychology (noted more by its appearance in literary works than professional or academic papers) is thought by some to have been triggered by Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyova (1853–1900) who used syzygy to denote “close union” and applied the concept in a variety of ways which influenced Russian writers not only in the nineteenth century but also those of the symbolist and neo-idealist movements of the later Soviet era and some critics agree Solovyov was at least one of the sources for Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1821–1881) characters Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov (1880).  Very much in the tradition of   More controversial is the idea his book, The Meaning of Love (1892) (in which syzygy was introduced) is one of the philosophical sources of Leo Tolstoy's (1828-1910) much discussed The Kreutzer Sonata (1889); critics remain divided and opinions are argued with vigour although unusually united was the critical industry built around Carl Jung (1875–1961) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) (particularly the former's theories of the collective unconscious and the balancing of conscious and unconscious elements within an individual's psyche, although this was metaphorical and abstract compared to the use in astronomy and other sciences) which found strands of syzygy in the many themes of the self which so permeates their work.  Given the overarching concepts of (1) the individuation process and (2) the unions of individuals, especially of male and female tending to a totality, even a unity, it’s a word with some appeal to those who seem to value having something with such a range of adaptable meanings to use in works of speculative vagueness.

Listicle

Listicle (pronounced lis-ti-kuhl)

A published article (print or on-line) which differs from a simple list in that the entries are augmented with some additional content (text, links or images).

2000–2005: A portmanteau word, a blend of list + (art)icle.  List (in this context) was from the Middle English lī̆st & lī̆ste (band, stripe; hem, selvage; border, edge, rim; list, specification; barriers enclosing area for jousting, etc), from the Old English līste (hem, edge, strip) or the Old French liste & listre (border; band; strip of paper; list) or the Medieval Latin lista, all from the Proto-West Germanic līstā, from the Proto-Germanic līstǭ (band, strip; hem, selvage; border, edge) which may have been from the primitive Indo-European leys- (to trace, track). It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Lieste (margin, strip, list), the Dutch lijst (picture frame, list), the German Low German Liest (edging, border), the German Leiste (strip, rail, ledge; (heraldry) bar), the Swedish lista (list), the Icelandic lista & listi (list), the Italian lista (list; strip), the Portuguese lista (list), the Spanish lista (list, roll; stripe), the Galician lista (band, strip; list) and the Finnish lista ((informal) list; batten).  Article was from the Middle English article, from the Old French article, from the Latin articulus (a joint, limb, member, part, division, the article in grammar, a point of time), from the Classical Latin artus, from the primitive Indo-European hértus (that which is fit together; juncture, ordering), from the root huer- (to join, fit (together)).  The adoption to describe “pieces of written text” was based on the “joining” function in grammar.  Listicle is a noun; the noun plural is listicles.

That a listicle can be all or substantially made up of text, links or images in any mix is a familiar concept but if the piece is either exclusively or substantially focused on charts (usually in the statistical rather than admiralty sense although an "informational graphic" counts as a “chart” for this purpose), then it can be referred to with the companion term "charticle" (plural charticles), another portmanteau word, a blend of chart + (art)icle.  Charticle is fun but seems an unnecessary word and a needless layer of differentiation; like many modern coinings, it ends up in lists (which can sometimes be listicles) of unusual or rare words with little evidence of actual use; were it not for the on-line world, charticle would likely have died a quick death.

Listicle is really less a description than a slur, an encapsulated critique of “pseudo-journalism”, the accusation being that the structure of a piece is provided by a “paint-by-numbers” approach and is fundamentally a PowerPoint slide (sometimes even the bullet points are included) with annotations (usually images or text) added as desired.  Sometimes, the criticism implies the whole thing is a “cut & paste” job.  It can be a valid objection if the format is inappropriate for the content but not every article needs to be anything like one of Susan Sontag’s (1933—2004) essays and a well-written listicle can present information in a concise and easily digestible format; indeed in many longer form pieces (including academic papers), summary-type appendices (abstracts or executive summaries) often are in the form of a listicle and thire brevity is much appreciated.

Illustrative examples of the three basic types include (1) Harper’s Bazaar's “Eleven of Lindsay Lohan’s Best Style Moments” (just a summary paragraph and captioned photographs), (2) People’s “Lindsay Lohan’s Most Iconic Early Looks” (a summary paragraph and annotated photographs) and (3) The Guardian’s “Ranking of US Presidents” (text only and a listicle disguised as an article, the content of which was so predictable it would have delighted their devoted readers).

So the form of the listicle can be useful.  The objection to them seems to focus on (1) the (allegedly increasingly accelerating) proliferation of the things, (2) that many are “fake journalism” in that they are merely a “padded list”, a PowerPoint slide disguised as prose and (3) many are little more than click-bait used but build the nominal engagement count and drive website traffic.  In some cases, the more strident criticism is of journalism which at first glance seems to be an “article” (in the accepted sense of the word) but if subject to structural analysis (a popular thing to do in media studies classes), it can be reduced to a listicle, even to the point of it being obvious where the bullet points should appear.  This is good sport as a form of attack on newspaper columnists who espouse the “wrong” politics but in cases where word limits are imposed, it’s likely the format is used for utilitarian reasons: it’s just an efficient way to order and impart information.

It’s no longer necessary to read Machiavelli’s (Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, 1469–1527) Il Principe (The Prince; (1532)) because everything is now explained in in listicles.  There are free quotes.

The occasionally discussed matter of whether listicles are “real” journalism is something subjective and really depends on how one defines journalism (another significantly pointless exercise in this context, however vital it may be in a court of law).  The listicle is just another format and a well-written, information-dense listicle will contain journalistic elements, such as research and analysis and can be a more valuable thing than a piece, however conventional which is poorly-written, repetitive, or says very little.  All content should be judged on its merit rather than dismissed because of the form in which it's presented and it’s hard to escape the feeling they arouse such antagonism because they’re so often associated with entertainment and other parts of pop-culture.  There’s also the way listicles disproportionately populate the blogosphere and this one is probably as illustrative as any of the cynical way the format can be used for content creation.

Cavitation

Cavitation (pronounced kav-i-tey-shuhn)

(1) The formation of pits on a surface.

(2) In fluid dynamics, the rapid formation and collapse of vapor pockets in a flowing liquid in regions of very low pressure (associated especially with devices such as rotating marine propellers or the impellers used in pumps.

(3) Such a pocket formed in a flowing liquid; the formation of cavities in a structure.

(4) In biology, the formation of cavities in an organ (used originally to describe those appearing in lung tissue as a result of consumption (tuberculosis)).

1868: The construct was cavit(y) + -ation.  Cavity was a mid-sixteenth century borrowing from Middle French cavité or the Late Latin cavitās, from the Classical Latin cavus (hollow, excavated, concave), the construct being cav +‎-ity (the nominal suffix).  The suffix -ation was from the Middle English -acioun & -acion, from the Old French acion & -ation, from the Latin -ātiō, an alternative form of -tiō (thus the eventual English form -tion).  It was appended to words to indicate (1) an action or process, (2) the result of an action or process or (3) a state or quality.  Cavitation is a noun, cavitate, cavitated & cavitating are verbs and cavitatory & cavitatory are adjectives; the noun plural is cavitations.

The original use of cavitation dates from 1868 and appeared in the literature of human pathology, describing “the formation of cavities in the body”, especially those appearing in lung tissue as a result of consumption (tuberculosis).  The use in fluid dynamics (particularly pumps and marine engineering) emerged in circa 1895 although oral use may have predated this: the verb cavitate (to form cavities or bubbles (in a fluid)) documented since 1892 so it was either a back-formation from cavitation or the construct was cavit(y) + -ate.  The related verbs were cavitated & cavitating.  The suffix -ate was a word-forming element used in forming nouns from Latin words ending in -ātus, -āta, & -ātum (such as estate, primate & senate).  Those that came to English via French often began with -at, but an -e was added in the fifteenth century or later to indicate the long vowel.  It can also mark adjectives formed from Latin perfect passive participle suffixes of first conjugation verbs -ātus, -āta, & -ātum (such as desolate, moderate & separate).  Again, often they were adopted in Middle English with an –at suffix, the -e appended after circa 1400; a doublet of –ee.  The noun supercavitation was a creation of plasma physics and described an extreme form of cavitation in which a single bubble of gas forms around an object moving through a liquid, significantly reducing drag.  As observational technology & techniques improved, the form ultracavitation also appeared to describe instances where instances of the phenomenon meant drag tended as close to zero as was possible.

Cavitation is an interesting aspect of fluid dynamics but it’s studied because it’s something which can cause component failure in devices like the pumps used for liquid, fluid & gas which can have catastrophic consequences for both connected equipment and people in the vicinity and beyond.  Such components typically feature robust construction but cavitation is a function of sustained operation (often 24/7) at high speeds and some vulnerable parts may be heavy and the fragmentation at high velocity of a heavy, reciprocating mass is obviously a serious problem.  Technically, it’s the formation of vapour- or gas-filled cavities in a flowing liquid when tensile stress is superimposed on the ambient pressure and one novelty in the science of cavitation was in 2021 noted by researchers in an oncology laboratory.  Using a gassy, explosive bacteria to destroy cancer cells by bombardment, the strikes were observed to produce a brief sonoluminescence (in physics, the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound), the cavitation bubbles producing a brief flash of light as they collapsed.

In the specific case of “pump cavitation”, the problem typically occurs when a hydraulic pumps which pumps liquids suffers a partial pressure drop.  What the change in pressure can induce is the formation of air bubbles, leading to cavity creation.  Inside the pump, the pressure shift transforms the liquid into a vapor which is then converted back to liquid by the spinning impellers.  The air bubbles thus are constantly moving inside the housing and as they implode during pressure changes, the surfaces of the impeller are eroded and it’s the creation of these tiny cavities which can accumulate sufficiently to weaken the structure to the point of failure.  The issue particularly affects centrifugal pumps but can occur in submersible devices.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying the effects of fluid dynamics.

Although something identified by engineers in the nineteenth century, the exact nature of cavitation wasn’t fully understood until the application in the 1950s of high-speed photography and the mathematical models developed then were later confirmed as close to exactly correct by computer simulations later in the century.  What was found was two causes of cavitation : (1) Inertial Cavitation in which a shock wave is produced by the collapse of bubble or void present in a liquid and (2) Non-inertial Cavitation which is initiated when a bubble in a fluid undergoes shape alterations due to an acoustic field or some other form of energy input.  Also observed were two behaviors of cavitation: (1) Suction Cavitation induced by high vacuum or low-pressure conditions which reduce the flow of fluid, bubbles forming near the eye of an impeller eye; as these bubbles move towards the pump’s discharge end, they are compressed into liquid, and they will implode against the impeller’s edge and (2) Discharge Cavitation which occurs when the pump’s discharge pressure becomes abnormally high, altering the flow of fluid, leading to internal recirculation, the liquid becoming “stuck” in a pattern between the housing (and the impeller) thereby creating a vacuum which in turn creates the air bubbles which will collapse and cavitate the impeller.

Representation of fluid dynamics under specific resonant conditions.

In fluid dynamics, a flow becoming “stuck” is often something to avoid but an aspect of the behavior can be exploited and it was a specific instance of certain “resonant conditions” Chrysler’s engineers exploited in 1959 when designing their Sonoramic induction system.  The idea wasn’t new, the math explained as early as 1863 and in racing cars it had been used for years but what Chrysler did was make it a focal point.  Sonoramic was an implementation of Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) first law of motion, more commonly known as the law of inertia: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion” and it’s the second part which was exploited.  During the intake cycle of an engine, the fuel-air mix flows through the intake manifold, past the intake valve, and into the cylinder, then the intake valve shuts.  At that point, the law of inertia comes into play: Because the air was in motion, it wants to stay in motion but can’t because the valve is shut so it piles up against the valve with something of a concertina effect.  With one piece of air piling up on the next, the air becomes compressed and this compressed air has to go somewhere so it turns around and flows back through the intake manifold in the form of a pressure wave.  This pressure wave bounces back and forth in the runner and if it arrives back at the intake valve when the valve opens, it’s drawn into the engine.  This bouncing pressure wave of air and the proper arrival time at the intake valve creates a low-pressure form of supercharging but for this to be achieved all variables have to be aligned so the pressure wave arrives at the intake valve at the right time.  This combination of synchronized events is known as the “resonant conditions”.

Representation of cavitation in mechanical gears.

The behavior in pumps is now well understood and both design parameters and maintenance schedules are usually cognizant of cavitation and its potential consequences.  However, instances remain not infrequent, especially when pumps are fitted into systems by non-specialists, the most common causes being (1) low fluid pressure, (2) insufficient internal diameter of suction pipes, (3) excessive distances between a fluid source and a pump’s impeller(s), (4) pumps being run at too high a speed (which may be within a manufacturer’s recommendations but inappropriate for the system in which it’s installed), (5) too many fittings added to a suction pipe and (6) debris intrusion (often a consequence of inadequate filter cleaning & maintenance).  Cavitation is a function of speed and in devices such as slow-speed propellers (such as those in many marine applications), cavitation is not an issue, thus the frequent use of light, efficient, thin blades.

Bonk

Bonk (pronounced bongk)

(1) A bump on the head (usually not severe).

(2) To hit, strike, collide etc; any minor collision or blow.

(3) In slang, a brief intimacy between two people, usually with a suggestion of infidelity; often modified with the adjective quick and only ever used where the act is consensual (less common in North America).

(4) In sports medicine, a condition of sudden, severe fatigue in an endurance sports event, typically induced by glycogen depletion (also in the phrase “hit the wall”).

(5) In snowboarding, to hit something with the front of the board, especially in midair.

(6) In zoology, an animal call resembling "bonk" (such as the call of the pobblebonk (any of various Australian frogs of the genus Limnodynastes)).

1931: A creation of Modern English, the origin remains uncertain but most suspect it was likely imitative of sounds of impact (like bong, bump, bounce or bang) and thus onomatopoetic.  As a slang term for an affaire de coeur, use was first noted in 1975 and has always, depending on context, carried an implication of something illicit or quickly done; purely recreational though always consensual.  The use in sports medicine describing the condition of glycogen depletion references a metaphorical impact as in “hitting the wall”, the first known use in 1952 in endurance sports medicine.  Bonkee, as a descriptor for a "woman of loose virtue", appears to have been a 2014 creation which never caught on which is a shame because there are all sorts of cases where the companion terms "bonker" & "bonkee" might have been handy .  The form "bonkers", referring to the deranged, dated from circa 1957 and was apparently unrelated to the earlier naval slang for “drunk” but alluded rather to what could be the the consequence of a “bonk on the head”.  The third-person singular simple present is bonks, the present participle, bonking and the simple past and past participle, bonked.  Bonk & bonking are nouns & verbs, bonker is a noun, bonky is an adjective, bonked is a verb and bonkers is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bonks.

Bonkers: "Last Call" 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 in "plum crazy" (one of the retro colors which reprised those used by Chrysler in the "psychedelic era" of the late 1960s).  3300 were produced, many of which are now being advertised for sale at well above the RRP (recommended retail price).

The Demon 170 was released as part of Dodge’s “Last Call” programme which marked the end of the corporation's run of high-performance V8s, a tradition dating from the early 1950s.  Offered in a bewildering array of configurations in a process which was something like Nellie Melba's (1861-1931) "farewell" tours, the SRT Demon 170 was the most bonkers of a generally bonkers lot.  Rated at 1,025 hp (764 kW), the factory claimed it could accelerate from 0-60 mph (100 km/h) in 1.66 seconds with an elapsed time in the standing ¼ mile (400 metres for those who insist) of 8.91 seconds (terminal speed 151 mph (243 km/h)), setting the mark as the worlds quickest ever standard production car, a reasonable achievement for something weighing 4275 lbs (1939 kg).  By world standards it was also very cheap and on the basis of cost-breakdown vs performance, there was nothing like it on the planet.  In British (and other English-speaking regions although rare in the US) use, "bonkers" can and often is used in an entirely non-pejorative way to suggest something or someone verging on the irrational but in some way astonishing, admirable or inspiring.  Road cars with 600+ horsepower V8 & V12 engines are of course bonkers but we'll miss them when they're gone and it would seem the end is nigh.  Greta Thunberg (b 2003) has expressed no regret at the extinction of this species.  

Bonking Boris

Hand-turned fish bonkers on sale in Jaffray, a village in the south-western Canadian province of British Columbia (left) and the front page of The Sun (7 September 2018; right), a tabloid which rarely lets an alliterative opportunity pass by.  

The noun bonker is (1) a short, blunt hardwood club used by fishers efficiently to dispatch (ie bonking them dead) just-caught fish and (2) according to the Murdoch tabloid The Sun, the adulterous Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).  A bonk by Boris or the club and a not wholly dissimilar outcome ensues; a one-time employer called bonking Boris "ineffably duplicitous" and the estranged (now former) Mrs Johnson presumably agreed.  At the time, the former prime minister had "a bit of previous" in extra-marital bonking and when this one was announced, it was with an alliterative flourish not seen since the headline “BORIS BACKS BREXIT”.  His resignation from Theresa May's (Lady May, b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) government was unrelated to bonking (as far as is known) and came, in July 2018, three days after a cabinet meeting at Chequers (the prime-minister's country house), where agreement was reached on Mrs May’s Brexit strategy, a document compromised by the need to make a nonsensical impossibility look like good policy.  That can be done but it requires rare skill to be in Downing Street and it's been some time since that could be said. 

Freed by his resignation from the burdens of the Foreign Office, bonking Boris was clearly unconcerned at rumors his opponents in the party were assembling a dossier of some four-thousand words detailing his cheating ways, fondness for cocaine and failings of character and turned his attention to a campaign for the Tory leadership.  As wonderfully unpredictable as the politics of the time were fluid, nobody was quite sure whether he’d go into the inevitable election or second referendum as "leave" or "remain"; it would depend on this and that.  In the end, he remained a leaver and things worked out well, his election victory meaning that for one, brief, shining moment, the three world leaders with the best hair all had nuclear weapons at the same time.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021; left), Boris Johnson (centre) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011; right).

Some hairstyles are more amenable than others to a quick post-bonk rectification.  Kim Jong-un's cut is probably quite good and would bounce back from a bonk with little more than a run-through with the fingers.  Donald Trump however would likely need both tools and product for a post-bonk fix.  Mr Trump usually appears well-fixed unless disturbed by breezes any higher than 2 on the Beaufort scale and even a perfunctory bonk is probably equal to at least 4 on the scale so it would have been interesting to see if Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) lived up to her (stage) name although Mr Trump has denied that bonk ever happened.  Mr Johnson's hair so often looks post-bonk that either his conquests are more frequent even than has been rumored or he asks for a JBF with every cut.  One UK publication suggested exactly that, hinting his instruction was "not one hair in place".  That has the advantage for Mr Johnson in that it's a style essentially the same pre-bonk, mid-bonk and post-bonk and thus pricelessly ambiguous in that merely by looking at him, one couldn't tell if he was going to or coming from a bonk although, one assumes, whichever it was, a bonk would never be far from his mind.  Whatever the criticisms of Mr Johnson's premiership (and there were a few), it's to his eternal credit that in his resignation honours list Ms Kelly Jo Dodge (for 27 years the parliamentary hairdresser) was created a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for "parliamentary service".  In those decades, she can have faced few challenges more onerous than Mr Johnson’s hair yet never once failed to make it an extraordinary example in the (actually technically difficult) “not one hair in place” style.  Few honours have been so well deserved.

A bandaged Lindsay Lohan waking dazed and confused after a bonk on the head in Falling for Christmas (2022; left) and on the move in Irish Wish (2024).   

In May 2021, Netflix & Lindsay Lohan executed what became a three movie deal, the first (Falling for Christmas) released in the northern winter of 2022, just in time for the season.  She played the protagonist, a pampered heiress who loses her memory after suffering a bonk on the head, waking up to a new life.  The second Netflix release opens in February 2024 and in Irish Wish, the plotline involves her spontaneously wishing for something, subsequently waking up to find the wish granted.  So it’s a variation on the theme of the first (though without the bonk on the head), the twist being in the theme of “be careful what you wish for”.

Bonking Barnaby and the bonk ban

Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime-minister of Australia 2015-2018), a student of etymology, was as fond as those at The Sun of alliteration and when writing his memoir (A Bigger Picture (2020)) he included a short chapter entitled "Barnaby and the bonk ban".  As well as the events which lent the text it's title, the chapter was memorable for his inclusion of perhaps the most vivid thumbnail sketch of Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022) yet penned:

"Barnaby is a complex, intense, furious personality.  Red-faced, in full flight he gives the impression he's about to explode.  He's highly intelligent, often good-humoured but also has a dark and almost menacing side - not unlike Abbott (Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015)) - that seems to indicate he wrestles with inner troubles and torments."

Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce in parliament, House of Representatives, Canberra, ACT.

The substantive matter was the revelation in mid-2017 the press had become aware Mr Joyce (a married man with four daughters) was (1) conducting an affair with a member of his staff and (2) that the young lady was with child.  Mr Turnbull recorded that when asked, Mr Joyce denied both "rumors", which does sound like a lie but in the narrow sense may have verged on "the not wholly implausible" on the basis that, as he pointed out in a later television interview, the question of paternity was at the time “...a bit of a grey area”.  Mr Joyce and his mistress later married and now have two children so all's well that end's well (at least for them) and Mr Turnbull didn't so much shut the gate after the horse had bolted as install inter-connecting doors in the stables.  His amendments to the Australian Ministerial Code of Conduct (an accommodating document very much in the spirit of Lord Castlereagh's (1769–1822; UK foreign secretary 1812-1822) critique of the Holy Alliance) banned ministers from bonking their staff which sounds uncontroversial but was silent on them bonking the staff of the minister in the office down the corridor.  So the net effect was probably positive in that staff having affairs with their ministerial boss would gain experience through cross-exposure to other portfolio areas although there's the obvious moral hazard in that they might be tempted to conduct trysts just to engineer a transfer in the hope of career advancement.  There are worse reasons for having an affair and a bonk for a new job seems a small price to pay.  It's been done before.

Bonk in progress, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, May 2024.

Bonk in the sense of “a blow to the head” was in May 2024 adapted for use in memes and other publicity tools associated with the protests staged on US university campuses demanding the institutions’ administrators divest from economic and other engagements with Israel and in support of the cause of the Palestinian people for (variously) statehood or freedom from repression.  The scenes were reminiscent of Vietnam War era protests but the emergence of the water-cooler jug as an icon of political dissent was an unexpected moment of levity.  The origin of that was a viral (“bonk, bonk, bonk”) video clip showing an unidentified protester at the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt bonking a uniformed law-enforcement officer on the helmet with an empty jug (believed to be a capacity of 5 US gallons (19 litres)) of the type which sits atop a water cooler.

Although recalling the similarly alliterative “burn baby, burn” slogan chanted during the Watts race riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the “bonk, bonk, bonk” was more a symbol of, if not exactly passive resistance, then certainly something short of actual violence although in a legal sense it may have been an instance of both assault and battery as well as other offences.  Around the country, stickers, posters and the inevitable T-shirts appeared within hours with slogans such as “Water Jug, Come and Take It” and “This machine bonks fascists”, a reference to the “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” message the left-wing US folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) wrote on his guitars.  Whether the water jug (bonking and not) will endure as a symbol of protest will depend, like many aspects of language, on whether it gains a sustained critical mass of use.

The "bonk, bonk, bonk" viral video.  In the conventional sense the production values weren't high but that very quality of authenticity accounted for its success.

Waterfall

Waterfall (pronounced waw-ter-fawl or wot-er-fawl)

(1) A steep fall or flow of water in a watercourse from a height, as over a precipice; a cascade of falling water where there is a vertical or almost vertical step in a river.

(2) A hair-style using long, loose “waves”.

(3) As “waterfall development”, “waterfall management” and “the waterfall model”, descriptions of product research & development (R&D) (especially in tech) including sequential stages, from conception and design through testing and implementation, hopefully to result in a final delivered product.

(4) Figuratively, any waterfall-like outpouring of liquid, smoke etc.

(5) In slang (originally US but now widespread), the action of drinking from a vessel without touching it with the lips (a sanitary precaution with shared vessels).

(5) In the smoking of weed, a particular design of bong.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English waterfal & waterfalle, from the Old English wæterġefeall (waterfall) and cognate with the Old Norse vatnfall, the West Frisian wetterfal (waterfall), the Dutch waterval (waterfall), the German Wasserfall (waterfall) and the Swedish vattenfall (waterfall).  The colloquial use to describe (1) a necktie, (2) a cravat, (3) a chignon (in hair-styling, a low bun or knot positioned at or close to the nape of the neck) or (4) a beard are now effectively extinct.  Waterfall’s synonyms in general use (though hydrologists are more precise) include cascade, cataract, sault (old Canadian slang more often used of river rapids) and the clipping falls.  Waterfall is a noun verb & adjective and waterfalling & waterfalled are verbs; the noun plural is waterfalls.

The construct was water + fall and the Modern English spelling appears to have been a re-formation from around the turn of the sixteenth century.  The noun “water” was from the Old English wæter (water), from the Proto-West Germanic watar, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The verb “water” was from the Middle English wateren, from the Old English wæterian, from the Proto-Germanic watrōną & watrijaną, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The noun “fall” was from the Middle English fal, fall & falle, from the Old English feall & ġefeall (a falling, fall) and the Old English fealle (trap, snare), from the Proto-Germanic fallą & fallaz (a fall, trap).  It was cognate with the Dutch val, the German Fall (fall) & Falle (trap, snare), the Danish fald, the Swedish fall and the Icelandic fall.  The verb “fall” was from the Middle English fallen, from the Old English feallan (to fall, fail, decay, die, attack), from the Proto-West Germanic fallan (to fall), from the Proto-Germanic fallaną (to fall).  It was cognate with the West Frisian falle (to fall), the Low German fallen (to fall), the Dutch vallen (to fall), the German fallen (to fall), the Danish falde (to fall), the Norwegian Bokmål falle (to fall), the Norwegian Nynorsk falla (to fall), the Icelandic falla (to fall), the Albanian fal (forgive, pray, salute, greet) and the Lithuanian pùlti (to attack, rush).

Two views of Niagara Falls:  Between June-November 1969 (left), a temporary dam was built to stem the usual flow so geological studies could be conducted to ascertain the condition of the rocks and assess the extent of erosion.  After rectification work was carried out, the temporary structure was dynamited, an event promoted as a tourist attraction.  In 1885 (right), the falls underwent one of its occasional freezes.  Usually, these are what hydrologists call "partial freezes" (of late there have been a few: 2014, 2017 & 2019), the only (almost) "total freeze" recorded in 1848 although that was induced by the accumulation of ice on Lake Erie which caused a "natural dam" to form, stopping the flow of water to the Niagara River.  It was this rather than a "total freeze" of the falls which caused the phenomenon.

Lindsay Lohan with waterfall, Guanacaste Gold Coast, Costa Rica, January 2016.

For most of us, we know a waterfall when we see one: it’s a point in a waterway (usually a river) where the water falls over a steep drop that is close to literally vertical.  However, among hydrologists, there’s no agreed definition about the margins such as when something ceases to rapids and becomes a waterfall, some insisting that what lay-people casually call “waterfalls” are really “cataracts” or “cascades”.  To most of us there to admire the view, it’s a tiresome technical squabble among specialists but among themselves they seem happy for the debate to continue and some have even suggested precise metrics which can be mapped onto any formation.

Wasserfall (Waterfall), the embryonic SAM

Wasserfall (project Waterfall) was an early SAM (surface to air missile) developed by the Nazi armaments industry.  Although never used, it was highly influential in the post-war years.  In his memoirs (Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) discussed both the weapons systems with which he as minister was usually in some way connected and the political in-fighting and inter-service rivalries which hampered their development.  Although his writings are not wholly reliable (there was much he choose not to say on his contribution to anti-Jewish measures and his knowledge of the holocaust), on industrial and technical matters historians regard his account as substantially accurate (if incomplete).  Interestingly, after reading in Spandau prison a smuggled copy of the memoir (Ten Years and Twenty Days (1958)) of Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; as Grand Admiral head of the German Navy 1943-1945, German head of state 1945) who had been a fellow prisoner for the first decade of Speer’s twenty-year sentence, without any sense of irony, he remarked in his (extensively edited) prison journal (Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1975)):

“Where he discusses military operations and the questions of armaments, the book is interesting and probably also reliable.  His political attitude, on the other hand, his relationship to Hitler, his childish faith in National Socialism – all that he either wraps in silence or spins a veil of sailor’s yarns.  This is the book of a man without insight.”

Speer re-invented himself by wrapping in veils of silence anything too unpleasant to admit and spun plenty of veils so appealing that for decades there were many who, for various reasons, draped them over his past.  He wasn’t a man without insight but compared with Dönitz, he had much more guilt to conceal and thus more need of selective silence & spin.

Speer regarded the regime’s failure to devote the necessary resources to the Wasserfall project as one of Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945)  many strategic blunders which, by 1943, had made defeat inevitable.  Having delayed development of the revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter (deployed at scale mass it would have been a devastating weapon against the Allied bomber fleets then laying waste to German cities and industry), Hitler took the decision to afford the highest priority to the A4 (better known as the V2) rocket to retaliate against English cities; psychologically, Hitler always wanted to be on the offensive and would later appal the experts by demanding the Me 262 be re-designed as a fast, light bomber.  As a delivery system the V2 was a decade ahead of its time and there was then no defense against the thing but it was a hugely expensive and resource-intensive way to deliver an explosive load under a tonne.  As Speer noted, even if it became possible to produce and fire the projected 900 a month, that would mean a daily bomb-load of some 24 tonnes falling on England and that at a time when the Allied bomber groups were on average dropping some 3000 tonnes a day on German targets.  Hitler wasn’t wrong in predicting the use of the V2 against civilian targets would have an effect well beyond the measure of the tonnage delivered and the historians who claimed the disruption to the allied war effort caused by the V1 (an early cruise missile) & V2 was “negligible” were simply wrong but to have been an effective strategic weapon, at least hundreds of V2s a day would need to have found their targets.

Captured blueprints and photographs from the Wasserfall project's development. 

Speer admitted he “…not only went along with this decision on Hitler's part but also supported it. That was probably one of my most serious mistakes.  We would have done much better to focus our efforts on manufacturing a ground-to-air defensive rocket.  It had already been developed in 1942, under the code name Wasserfall (Waterfall), to such a point that mass production would soon have been possible, had we utilized the talents of those technicians and scientists busy with [the V2] under Wernher von Braun (1912–1977).”

He added that von Braun’s team was employed to develop weapons “…for the army, whereas air defense was a matter for the air force.  Given the conflict of interests and the fierce ambitions of the army and the air force, the army would never have allowed its rival to take over the installations it had built up…”  The difference in resource allocation was stark, more than ten times the number of technical staff working on the V2 compared to Waterfall and other anti-aircraft rocket projects (such as the small Taifun (Typhoon)).  The attraction of the anti-aircraft rockets was obvious as Speer noted: “Waterfall was capable of carrying approximately six hundred and sixty pounds of explosives along a directional beam up to an altitude of fifty thousand feet and hit enemy bombers with great accuracy.  It was not affected by day or night, by clouds, cold, or fog. Since we were later able to turn out nine hundred of the offensive big rockets monthly, we could surely have produced several thousand of these smaller and less expensive rockets per month. To this day I think that this rocket, in conjunction with the jet fighters, would have beaten back the Western Allies' air offensive against our industry from the spring of 1944 on.  Instead, gigantic effort and expense went into developing and manufacturing long-range rockets which proved to be, when they were at last ready for use in the autumn of 1944, an almost total failure [a comment which, combined with Allied propaganda and disinformation, influenced for decades many post-war historians].  Our most expensive project was also our most foolish one. Those rockets, which were our pride and for a time my favorite armaments project, proved to be nothing but a mistaken investment. On top of that, they were one of the reasons we lost the defensive war in the air.”

Whether a mass-produced Waterfall would have been an effective weapon against the mass-bomber formations has divided analysts.  While the technology to produce a reliable directional mechanism had been mastered, what Germany never possessed was a proximity fuse which would have enabled the explosive charge to be triggered when a bomber was within range; instead the devices relied on impact or pre-set detonators.  Presumably, had other projects been suspended and the resources re-directed to Waterfall, mass production may have been possible and even if only partially successful, to disrupt a bombing offensive it was necessary only to inflict an ongoing 5-10% loss rate to make the campaign unsustainable.  Given the inevitable counter-measures, even that would likely have proved challenging but economic reality meant Waterfall probably did offer a more attractive path than the spectacular V2 and given the success in related fields, it was not impossible that had priority been granted, proximity fuses and other technical improvements may rapidly have appeared.  As it was, Waterfall (like Typhoon, Me 262, V2 and an extraordinary range of other intriguing projects) was the subject of a post-war race between the Russians, the Americans and the British, all anxious to gather up the plans, prototypes, and personnel of what were clearly the next generation of weapons.  As a proof of concept exercise Waterfall was convincing and within years SAMs were a vital component of defensive systems in most militaries.

The waterfall motif: Grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe (left) and the Liebian International Building in China (right).

In design, "waterfall" can be a motif such as used for the grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe.  It can also be literal and architects have many times integrated water-flows as an external design element but at 108 metres (354 feet) high, the one on the façade of the Liebian International Building in south-west China is easily the world’s tallest.  An eye-catching sight, the waterfall isn't run all that often (which must disappoint influencers who turn up with cameras ready) because it’s said to cost some 900 yuan (US$125) per hour just to pump the water to the top and, with the downturn in the property market, the building's revenues have fallen short of expectation.  When completed and displayed in 2016, the waterfall attracted some criticism on environmental grounds, water shortages far from unknown in China although the builders (Ludi Industry Group) pointed out the signature feature uses storm-water runoff, rainwater and groundwater, all stored in vast underground tanks.  It may for a while be the last example of exuberance to show up among China's skyscrapers, Xi Jinping (b 1953; general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013) in 2014 calling for an end to what he called "weird architecture".  Mr Xi thinks buildings should be "suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye" rather than "oversized, xenocentric & weird".  Those skilled at reading between the CCP's lines decided the president had called the architects "formalists".  They would have taken note.

On TikTok, a small but active community of those who find waterfalls mesmerizing post video clips.