Weltanschauung

Weltanschauung (pronounced velt-ahn-shou-oong)

A worldview.

1868 (in English): From the German Weltanschauung, the construct being Welt (world) + anschauung (view, conception, perception).  Welt was from the Middle High German wëlt, an assimilative contraction of the older wërlt, from the Old High German weralt, from Proto-the West Germanic weraldi, from the Proto-Germanic weraldiz; it was cognate to the English world, the Dutch wereld and the Swedish värld.  Anschauung was from the Middle High German anschouwunge, a calque of the Latin vīsiō (seeing, sight, vision, view); the construct being ansch(auen) (to look at; to behold; to observe (visually); to view) +‎ (a phonetic) -ouwu- + -ung (the suffix used to form nouns from verbs).  Weltanschauung is a noun and weltanschaulich is an adjective; the noun plural is plural Weltanschauungen.

In English, the word is used as an un-adapted borrowing from the German (although often without the initial capital German nouns demand), the descendants from the German in other languages including the Afrikaans wêreldbeskouing (calque), the Bulgarian светоглед (svetogled) (calque), the Estonian maailmavaade (calque), the Finnish maailmankatsomus (calque), the Hungarian világnézet (calque), the Japanese 世界観 (calque), the Chinese 世界觀／世界观 (shìjièguān), the Korean 세계관 (segyegwan), the Vietnamese thế giới quan, the Polish światopogląd (calque), the Romanian weltanschauung, the Russian мировосприя́тие (mirovosprijátije) (calque), the Swedish världsåskådning (calque) and the Ukrainian світосприйняття́ (svitospryjnjattjá) (calque).

One of those compound nouns at which Germans excel in forming, Weltanschauung seems first to have been used by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) in Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment (1790)).  Kant used the word (which translates literally as “worldview”) to describe the capacity of man to achieve a unified perspective on the world; to illustrate the concept he referenced the matter of aesthetic judgment and the contemplation of nature, emphasizing how aesthetic experience enables people to form a coherent and meaningful view of the world as a whole.  For Kant, a Weltanschauung was essential were an individual to experience the sublime and the role of imagination & reason in aesthetic experience but the term doesn’t dominate the text, acting instead as a kind of structural underpinning, providing the framework with which people can move beyond fragmented sensory impressions to grasp a harmonious vision of nature and the cosmos.  For Kant, the very purpose of philosophy was a uniting of the faculties of understanding, reason, and sensibility, itself a worldview which makes his work at once so rewarding and so difficult.

His examples though were compellingly simple: It was through encounters with the sublime (the stars above, the deep forest, the grandeur of the mountains etc) that humans could transcend their limited empirical experiences and begin to sense unity and order (though perhaps not purpose, Kant inclined to sit on the fence on that one) in nature.  Importantly though, Kant did explain this was a serious business and one’s Weltanschauung was a thing to be arrived at through a process of reflecting upon the relationship between humanity, nature and the infinite; it was not something upon which one just stumbled.  So it was a matter of human imagination and reason operating together to synthesize sensory data and from this process would emerge a conception of universal principles: the world as an ordered and meaningful whole.  Kant not only asked much from the universe, he expected much from us.

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

Despite his reputation (especially, one imagines, among puzzled students), Kant was not devoted to abstractions and was a practical philosopher; his intent was to write the sort of texts the philosophers of antiquity might have produced in an attempt to help people live better lives.  Kant wrote with moral and sometimes teleological themes and he was a great influence on later German philosophers including Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)) and it was his use of Weltanschauung in Critique of Judgment which provided the early foundation for the term.  His focus was on neither a subjective or cultural worldview but rather the universal human capacity to achieve a harmonious and meaningful perception of the world, grounded in aesthetic and teleological judgment.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1906), posthumous oil on canvas by Edvard Munch (1863-1944).  In the popular imagination, Nietzsche's Weltanschauung remains probably the best remembered German worldview of the nineteenth century.

It spread too to the English-speaking world and the influence on British & US writers of eighteenth & nineteenth century German philosophers was profound, tied to a shared concern with romanticism and idealism which was a challenge to the English tradition of empiricism.  In 1868, the US philosopher & psychologist William James (1842–1910) used weltanschauung in an essay titled The Sentiment of Rationality, published in The North American Review.  Very much in the tradition of Kant’s “worldview”, the essay explored the nature of belief, rationality and the human tendency to seek coherent perspectives on existence: intellectual commitments, emotional and practical needs.  What James wrote would have been familiar to those schooled in Kant but he expressed things in a more accessible way, explaining a worldview as the product of one’s quest for an intellectual unity which resolves apparent contradictions or ambiguities in one’s understanding of the world.  The essay in 1868 was an early work but James’ concept of Weltanschauung appears also in his major works including The Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902); his interest in how individuals and societies construct meaning was life-long.  Probably, in English, the use of weltanschauung usually isn’t necessary because unlike other German borrowings like Zeitgeist (spirit of the age) or schadenfreude (taking pleasure form another's misfortune) which express in one word what in English takes a phrase, the literal translation “worldview” does the job.  However, it’s handy for those who wish to suggest and an outlook something in the vein of nineteenth century German philosophical thought, especially if accompanied by an apprehension of dread though definitely it doesn’t convey: “a certain Teutonic je ne sais quoi”.

Whitewall

Whitewall (pronounced hwahyt-wawl or wahyt-wawl)

(1) A tyre (or tire), almost always pneumatic, with a sidewall with a white circular line of varying widths.

(2) Having white sidewalls (of a tyre).

(3) In US military use, a hair cut with a closely cropped back and sides and the hair on the top of the head left longer.

(4) In UK dialect (Northamptonshire), the spotted flycatcher (the bird so-called because of the white color of the under parts).

1950–1955: The construct was white + (side)wall.  White pre-dates 900 and was from the Middle English whit & hwit, from the Old English hwīt (whiteness, white food, white of an egg (and in late Old English “a highly luminous color devoid of chroma”)), from the Proto-West Germanic hwīt, from the Proto-Germanic hwītaz, from the primitive Indo-European ḱweydós, a by-form of ḱweytós (bright; shine). It was cognate with the German weiss, the Old Norse hvītr and the Gothic hweits; akin to wheat.  The idea of the “whites of the eye” was known in the late fourteenth century while the use of the term “white man” emerged in the late 1600s.  Wall pre-dates 900 and was from the Middle English wal, from the Old English weall (wall, dike, earthwork, rampart, dam, rocky shore, cliff), from the Proto-West Germanic wall (wall, rampart, entrenchment), from the Latin vallum (wall, rampart, entrenchment, palisade), from vallus (stake, post), from the primitive Indo-European welH- (to turn, wind, roll).  It was likely conflated with waw (a wall within a house or dwelling, a room partition), from the Middle English wawe, from the Old English wāg & wāh (an interior wall, divider).  It was cognate with the North Frisian wal (wall), the Saterland Frisian Waal (wall, rampart, mound), the Dutch wal (wall, rampart, embankment), the German Wall (rampart, mound, embankment) and the Swedish vall (mound, wall, bank”).  The forms white wall & white-wall are also used.  Whitewall is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is whitewalls.

Wide whitewalls on 1953 Packard Caribbean Convertible (left), narrow whitewalls on 1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (centre) and triple whitewalls on 1966 Cadillac Coupe De Ville (right) (there were also double whitewalls).

Whitewall tyres became available in the early years of the twentieth century but it wasn’t until the 1930s they became a noted feature on luxury cars sold in the US and, in the way these things work, they were soon also an option on lower-priced models although, being relatively expensive and offering no functionality, the take-up rate was low.  The very existence of the whitewall was, stylistically, something of a throwback because the earliest pneumatic tyres were an off-white, the color of the natural rubber formula and the manufacturers soon added a zinc oxide to the mix for no reason other than producing a bright white which was more appealing in showrooms.  Given the unsealed roads of the era, the stark white didn’t long last in use and tyres quickly degenerated to a “dirty beige” and although “tyre cleaning” products were available, it was a sisyphean task and presumably few persisted.  In 1910 the BF Goodrich Company began adding carbon black to its various formulae after tests confirmed this added strength and durability to the rubber.  Rapidly the technique was adopted by the industry although because carbon black was an additional input cost, some tyres were produced with the additive used only for the portion of the rubber used for the tread surface, meaning the sidewalls remained white.  The first whitewalls were thus a product of cost-cutting and it’s an irony the look would more than a decade later be picked up as a marker of wealth and luxury although the commercial “whitewalls” would be a strip of white rubber added during the manufacturing process to an all-black carcass.  As a “discovery” the whitewall can be thought serendipitous.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Whitewall magazine, Fall / Autumn 2012 edition.  The photograph was Lindsay Lohan V by Richard Phillips (b 1962).  By magazine standards, the predominately black & grey cover was unusually dark but this was a deliberate editorial choice.  New York-based Whitewall magazine was founded in 2006 by Michael Klug (b 1978) who remains publisher & editor at large.  Whitewall is described as a publication for creative communities, bringing together art, design, fashion & lifestyle, with a focus on sustainability and diversity, offering a platform for the queer, trans and those identifying as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color).

Raised-letter tyre on 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 (left) and red-line (later, there would be blue-line, yellow-line etc) tyre on 1966 Pontiac GTO (right).  The BF Goodrich Radial T/A (left) was valued by road-racers because it was discovered as the tread wore it behaved with characteristics which were similar to a racing "slick".  For a while, worn T/A Radials became a handy revenue earner for tyre shops.

The whitewall became more popular in the late 1940s until the Korean War (1950-1953) caused a squeeze on rubber supplies but once the peacetime returned, so did the whitewall and the width grew, often measuring 2½-3 inches (65-75 mm), something made possible by the physical size of tyre sidewalls increasing during the 1950s.  The perception now is the fashion was very much a US taste and while there’s some truth in that, American culture in the 1950s exerted a great influence and whitewalls were seen in Europe, Australia and Japan and for some reason the Italian fashion magazines seemed particularly taken with them for their photo-shoots.  Curiously, the US industry seemed to lose interest in whitewalls between 1961-1963, just as the wild fins of the era suddenly vanished although there was a period of transition, the “standard” whitewall shrinking to a width of 1 inch (25 mm) and sometimes less.  During the 1960s, although whitewalls remained a fixture on the more up-market mainstream vehicles the preferred look for high-performance machinery (it was the “muscle-car” era) was the “raised letter” tyre which spelled out the manufacturer’s name and often model of tyre, the free advertising greatly pleasing.  At the same time, the muscle car circle developed a taste for “red-line” tyres” which featured a thin red strip.

US actress Mamie Van Doren (b 1931) cleaning her Jaguar XK120 OTS (open two seater (ie roadster) 1948-1954), paying special attention to the whitewall tyres.  For those who need advice on such matters, Longstone Tyres has published a guide.

In the collector community there are factions for whom whitewalls are a thing (for some, verging on a fetish) and according to these experts, the most common mistake is to use a product like ArmorAll’s various tyre cleaners (ArmorAll’s stuff usually a good choice for many surfaces) which, because of the chemical composition, tend to draw the carbon from the black rubber of the tyres, permanently staining the whitewalls with a yellowish hue.  For generations the preferred cleaning product was Westley’s Bleche Wite but, after a corporate takeover, the ingredients were in some way changed and the reputation suffered, the product later replaced.  Among disgruntled ex-customers, the theories explaining all this included corporate greed and some (unspecified) intervention by the EPA (Environmental protection Authority).  Containers of Westley’s Bleche Wite (those with the original chemical composition) now trade on the internet at multiples of their original price, in the manner of bottles of “original” Absinthe dating from the days when it was in many places banned although, unlike the “green fairy”, most of the cleaning spray is probably authentic.  There seems not now a consensus about what’s the nest cleaning product and some even suggest good results can be obtained by using a mix of baking soda or plain white toothpaste with warm water.

Sir William Lyons (1901–1985) presenting the Jaguar E-Type to the press pack, Geneva, March 1961 (left) and a 1961 publicity shot for the US market release (right).  In the US market, Jaguar had long made the whitewalls optional for the XK sports cars but there, most of the E-Type's (often called XK-E or XKE in the US) publicity material featured whitewalls.  The fad soon faded although narrow whitewalls were still available until 1975 when the last E-Types were sold.

Using one of his trademark outdoor settings, Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) photographed model Suzanne Kinnear (b 1935) adorning a Daimler SP250, wearing a Kashmoor coat and Otto Lucas beret with jewels by Cartier.  The image was published on the cover (left) of Vogue's UK edition in November 1959, the original's (right) color saturation being "enhanced" in pre-production editing; Vogue's artists made models thinner and cars shinier.  Although never quite as popular in Australia, the UK & Europe as they were in the US, whitewalls until the 1980s were not a rare sight in these places and buyers were seduced also by that other American intrusion, the vinyl roof, something more of a crime against good taste than any whitewall.

1952 Ferrari 212 (which the factory supplied with an up-rated 225 engine) Barchetta by Touring Superleggera (left) and 1974 Mercedes-Benz R107 (450 SL).

The Ferrari was a gift from Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) to Henry Ford II (1917–1987) and was the last non-racing Ferrari bodied by coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera.  The whitewall tyres were fitted especially for US delivery and Ford used the car during its evaluation process for the 1955 Thunderbird which picked up styling cues including the hood (bonnet) scoop and egg crate grille.  The Mercedes-Benz 450 SL illustrates just how jarring whitewalls can be if used on vehicles not suited to their presence.  On the early R107s (1971-1989) and C107s (the SLC, 1971 1981), thin whitewalls were sometime fitted to US market cars and even then there was comment about they really didn’t suit.  On the 450 SL pictured, the error is compounded by the fitting of the “chrome” wheel arch trims.  This was an unfortunate trend (which spread also to Jaguar, BMW and beyond) which began with their appearance in 1963 on the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) but on the original they were of metal whereas the aftermarket ones were almost always anodized plastic. 

Apestail

Apestail (pronounced eypse–teyl)

A name for the symbol “@”, adapted from its Dutch name.

1990s: An adaptation of the Dutch word aapestaartje (literally “little monkey's tail”, coined as a jocular term for the @ symbol, the etymology reflecting the symbol's spiral or curled shape, said to resemble the tail of a monkey, the construct being aap (monkey) + staart (tail) + -je (indicating something small or endearing).  Unlike German, the Dutch language has a tradition of humorous descriptive terms although the Germans did retaliate with Klammeraffe (spider monkey.  Other forms have included the Italian chiocciola (snail), the Polish małpa (monkey) and the Hebrew shtrudel (strudel pastry).  An English alternative was ampersat, the construct being ampersa(nd) + at.  Apestail is a noun; the noun plural is apestails.

Apestail in the Algerian font.

One of the curious linguistic paradoxes produced by the internet is that the “@” symbol, although one of the most widely used of those on the standard keyboard, it has never gained a universally accepted “official” name (such as “ampersand” for the “&”).  In English, when referred to it’s usually as “at”.  It was of course its adoption as the divider between the user name and the domain (UserName@domain.x) in email addresses which meant the once neglected key on the keyboard became widely used and although the rise of SMS (short message service), social media platforms, instant messaging services and such has meant there are now many alternatives for electronic communications, so entrenched in corporate life is the email protocol that it’s estimated that every day in 2024, over 350 billion emails are sent, an increase of some 4% from the previous year.  That does make modern capitalism sound industrious but the same researchers also reckoned some 85% of the volume was spam.  As early as the 1960s there had been forms of electronic messaging but all were parochial and it wasn’t until 1971 when programmer Ray Tomlinson (1941–2016) included the @ symbol in ARPANET’s (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network; the operation which created the underpinnings of what became the modern internet) implementation and although much has changed in terms of packets and protocols, the @ endures.  From the very start, it was understood to mean “at” thus lindsaylohan@disney.com would universally be understood to mean “Lindsay Lohan at Disney Corporation”.  There was a element of chance in the choice, Mr Tomlinson selecting @ because it was one of the least used ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters and one thus unlikely to conflict with objects elsewhere in code or operating system routines.

Apestail in the Agency FB font.

So the basic syntax of the email address predated the development of the familiar PC or laptop keyboard but in that context it was of very little use because it wouldn’t be until well into the 1990s that email achieved a critical mass of users.  Despite that, from the very first, the @ appeared on most keyboards and that was because substantially they emulated the layout of those which had become familiar on typewriters.  Probably few typewriter users had much need for the symbol either but for those who did it was essential and its long history in typography and commercial transactions justified a key although often it wasn’t included on smaller, cheaper typewriters aimed at the consumer market and even in the computer industry, it wasn’t until @ was included in the ASCII character set that computer keyboards were (more or less) standardized.  In commerce, by the sixteenth century “2” widely was used by merchants to signify a rate or price, such as “7 jars of olives @ 5 drachmas” was understood as 7 x 5 =35 so it was 35 drachmas for 7 jars of olives.  Like the Arabic numeric system, the commercial use spread across Europe and became a standard notation, facilitating a certainty of trading terms between those who shared neither a language now spoke the lingua franca.  Because of its importance and utility in bookkeeping and commerce, it was included on keyboards for the convenience of businesses.  Occasionally, @ would appear in specific academic or technical applications but these instances were rare, localized and none seem to have endured although, for all we know, it may have some secret meaning in Freemasonry.  Some jurisdictions have banned the use of “@” and an element when registering the name of an infant, the implication of that being that some parents must have tried.

Apestail in the Berlin Sans font.

The first time many computer users became aware of the mysterious @ was when it was included as the prefix for built-in functions in the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, the so-called “killer app” which in 1983 did so much to legitimize the personal computer in corporate life.  Released in 1979, VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet but it was the more capable Lotus 1-2-3 (soon laden with macros and add-ins) which captured the market and anyone familiar with VisiCalc would have found the transition relatively simple: whereas in VisiCalc SUM(B1:B10) would have calculated the sum of the range A1 to A10, in 1-2-3 it was @SUM(A1..A10). and statements like @IF(condition, value_if_true, value_if_false) were used for conditional logic.  The arrival of Microsoft Windows 3.x in 1990 and especially Windows 95 in 1995 shifted the universe and over time Excel captured the spreadsheet market and while it moved away from the use of @ as a universal function prefix, it does still exist in aome of Excel’s advanced functions such as structured references in arrays.  In many computer languages, @ is used for a variety of purposes.

Apestail in the Niagara Solid font.

The very origin of @ is murky but it seems to have appeared during the later medieval period when it was known in Spanish and Portuguese as arroba, from the Old Spanish arroua and the Old Galician-Portuguese arrova, from Andalusian Arabic and Arabic اَلرُّبْع (ar-rubʕ) (one-fourth), the reference to it making up one fourth of a quintal (the capacity of a standard amphora, a vessel used to store and transport liquids, cereals and other goods) The symbol was used as a shorthand form of the Latin ad (at; to) and one of a range of truncated or stylized forms which saved (1) the time of scribes, (2) ink and (3) paper, all commodities which cost money and some were expensive.  In countries where Spanish and Portuguese were spoken, arroba also referred to a measure of weight, typically around 11.5 kg (25 lb) although regional variations were common.  In that sense, by the operation of local custom, @ was a (regionally) standardized measure like a pood but unlike the pood, it never spread.

Buffalo

Buffalo (pronounced buhf-uh-loh)

(1) An animal from the subtribe Bubalina, also known as true buffalos, such as the Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer, or the water buffalo, Bubalus bubalis.

(2) A related North American animal, the American bison (zoologically incorrect but in use thus since the 1630s).

(3) An ellipsis of buffalo robe.

(4) As the buffalo fish, the Ictiobus spp.

(5) In numismatic slang, a clipping of Buffalo nickel (a copper–nickel five-cent piece struck by the US Mint 1913-1938) and still (rarely) used of nickels.

(6) In numismatic slang, a clipping of “American buffalo” (a gold bullion coin), still used by collectors.

(7) A locality name most prevalent in North America, the Lake Erie port in western New York, the best-known,

(8) A shuffling tap-dance step (associated with the popular song Shuffle Off to Buffalo, from the musical film 42^nd Street (1933).

(9) As “buffaloed by”, to be puzzled or baffled; to be confused or mystified (now rare).

(10) As “to buffalo”, to impress or intimidate by a display of power, importance etc (now rare).

(11) To hunt buffalo (archaic).

(12) To assault (historically, to “pistol-whip”).

1535–1545: An early Americanism (replacing buffel, from the French, noted since the 1510s), from the Spanish or Portuguese búfalo (water buffalo), from the Italian buffalo, from Late Latin būfalus (an alteration of the Classical Latin būbalus (wild ox)), from the Ancient Greek βούβαλος (boúbalos).  The Greek form was originally the name of a kind of African antelope, later used of a type of domesticated ox in southern Asia and the Mediterranean lands.  I’s a word of uncertain origin and the elements may include bous (ox, cow, from the primitive Indo-European root gwou- (ox, bull, cow) but it may be a Greek folk-etymology.  The use of “buffalo” to describe the American bison is a mistake dating from the 1630s and it has endured so long as to become institutionalized.  The other Germanic words (the Dutch buffel, the German Büffel, the Danish böffel etc) are from the French while the Russian buivolu, the Polish bujwoł and the Bulgarian bivol came from the Medieval Latin.  The “Buffalo gnat” was first recorded in 1822 while the term “Buffalo chip” (dung of the American bison used as a fuel) was in use by at least the 1840s.  The origin of the name of the city Buffalo in western New York is disputed, not least because there were never any bison in close proximity to the place.  It may have been based on the name of a Native American (ie “Red Indian” in the parlance of the time) chief or a corruption of the French beau fleuve (beautiful river).  The use of “buffalo” as a verb meaning “alarm” was documented early in the twentieth century and was probably related to the tendency of the beasts to mass panic.  In many fields, “buffalo” is used as a modifier for many words.  The old synonym buffle is extinct.  Buffalo is a noun & verb, buffaloed & buffaloing are (informal) verbs and buffaloish (non-standard) & buffalo-like are adjectives; the noun plural is buffaloes or buffalos but if used collectively (ie of a herd) buffalo is the usual spelling.  The common collective noun for a group of buffalo is “herd” although “gang” is a recorded US regionalism and some prefer the more evocative “obstinacy”, that label gained by virtue of the beast’s well-documented quality of stubbornness.

Classy Leather’s illustration of the difference in texture between bison and buffalo leather.

The clipping “buff” also tracked a varied path.  Predictably, the word seems first to have been simply a short form of “buffalo” but by the 1560s traders were using it to describe the thick, soft leather obtained from the hides of the creatures being slaughtered by the million although then it was almost always spelled “buffe” (ie as “buffe leather”) from the French buffle.  Buff was by the 1780s used generally to describe a “light brownish-yellow” color, based on the hue assumed by the buffalo leather in its processed form and as early as circa 1600 the old association of “hide” with “skin” led to the phrase “in the buff” (naked), strengthened by buff leather and pale human skin being similar in hue.  Over time, “buff naked" emerged and this morphed into "buck naked," possibly influenced by use of the word “buck” which, in American slang, had been used to refer to male deer, Native Americans, or African-American men in certain contexts. The exact etymological connection is debated, but “buck” here may have been used to evoke an image of primal or raw naturalism (at the time, Europeans and white colonial settlers tended to divide the world's population into (1) civilized, (2) barbarians and (3) savages).  The linguistic evolution continued and by the early nineteenth century there was also “butt naked” obviously more explicit and descriptively accessible to a modern audience, emphasizing the state of stark nudity by referencing the buttocks.  It’s now the most popular of the three slang forms.  All three are unrelated to the use of “buff” to mean “polish a metal to a high gloss”, that based on the original “buffing cloths” being off-cuts of a “buff-coat” (a military overcoat originally made from the hide).  A tool for this purpose is often still called “a buff”.  The noting of “polishing up” by “buffing” was taken up in video gaming (especially role-playing) where it meant “to make a character or an item stronger or more capable”.  Of the color, “buffish” is the alternative adjective but that's rare.

The admirable Jessica Simpson.

The use of buff to mean “an enthusiast for something with a great knowledge of the topic” (eg Ferrari buff (a very devoted crew); film buff (an obsessive lot who take things very seriously); Lindsay Lohan buff (a calling for some)) was related to the color.  Since the 1820s, New York City’s volunteer fire-fighters had been issued buff-colored protective clothing and their image of daring with more than a whiff of danger in the 1890s attracted a following among young men with the cherished ambition to some day become firemen.  This manifested them rushing to the sites of fires at any time of the day or night, just so they could watch the firemen at work, fighting the fire.  There is a lure to fire that draws some and in Australia, where bushfires have always been a feature of the hot, dry seasons, there have been cases of volunteer fire-fighters starting fires, apparently just so they can experience the thrill of extinguishing them; fire being fire, sometimes things end very badly.  As early as 1903 the New York Sun was referring to these enthusiasts (had it been later they might have been called “fire groupies”) as “the buffs” and from this use came the idea of a “buff” being someone devoted to anything although there’s now more often the implication of “great knowledge of the topic”).  In the UK military (mostly in plural), a “Buff” was a member of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment (1572-1961)) and in numismatic slang, “buff” was a clipping a number several coins, most commonly the Buffalo nickel (a copper–nickel five-cent piece struck by the US Mint 1913-1938.).  In UK slang, Buff also meant “a member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes” (sort of like the Freemasons but reputedly without as much plotting and scheming”).  The finger food “Buffalo wings” made famous by the admirable Jessica Simpson (b 1980) gained the name because they were first served in 1964 at Frank & Teressa's Anchor Bar on Main Street, Buffalo.  Ms Simpson’s confusion about the composition of the dish (made with chicken wings) may have been caused by them often appearing on menus as “buffalo wings”) with no initial capital.

The BUFF.

In USAF (US Air Force) service-slang, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (produced 1952-1962 with some still in service) is the BUFF (the acronym for Big Ugly Fat Fellow or Big Ugly Fat Fucker depending on one's assessment of the delicacy of who asked).  From BUFF was derived the companion acronym for the LTV A-7 Corsair II (1965-1984, the last in active service retired in 2014) which was SLUFF (Short Little Ugly Fat Fellow or Short Little Ugly Fat Fucker).  Boeing and the USAF (US Air Force) are in the throes of upgrading the B-52H to B-52J, the letter "I" being skipped to avoid any confusion with "1" (ie the numeric "one"), the same rationale adopted by may including those naming models of cars and underwear manufacturers designating bra cup sizing.  In rail-transport, a “buff” describes the compressive coupler force that occurs during a slack bunched condition (and is related in that sense to “buffer” which is a physical barrier placed to halt the progress of a train to prevent damage to a structure).  In the slang of the dealers of street drugs, “buff” is any substance used to dilute drugs (by volume) in order to increase profit.  The noun “buffware” is not an IT term (although SysAdmins (system administrators) could probably think of a few products which should be so described); it describes pottery in a buff color.  

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996) in leather braces (unlikely to be of buffalo hide).

As is done in her profession, Busty Buffy appears sometimes “in the buff” which means “in the nude” although, among the more fastidious, there are those who insist porn stars can only ever be “naked”, a “nude” something more respectable and seen usually hung in an art gallery.  According to Gary Martin’s authoritative site tracing the origins of phrases, “in the buff” was derived from the “buff coat”, a “light leather tunic worn” by English soldiers (mostly by cavalry and officers and thus something of a precursor of the trench coat) until the seventeenth century and originally, to be “in the buff” was to be wearing one’s coat.  A practical field-garment (it offered some degree of protection against glancing blows from edged weapons and even musket-balls fired at long range), the name was derived from the buffalo or ox hide from which typically it was made.  In The Comedy of Errors (circa 1591), William Shakespeare (1564–1616) makes a reference to the buff coat, using the word “suit” in two of its senses: (1) an action filed in a court of law and (2) a garment:

ADRIANA: What, is he arrested? Tell me at whose suit.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;

But he’s in a suit of buff which ‘rested him, that can I tell.

So, it needs to be explained why the phrase “in the buff” shifted from meaning “wearing a coat” to “wearing nothing”.  That was because the hide used for the coats was a light, yellowish beige and thus similar to what was then the almost universal skin-tone in England.  Mr Martin cites the play Satiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1601) by the English writer Thomas Dekker (circa 1572–1632) as one of the first known references to the newer meaning, “in buff” likened to “in stag”, then popular slang for “naked”: “No, come my little Cub, doe not scorne mee because I goe in Stag, in Buffe, heer’s veluet too.”  From that ultimately came expressions like “well buffed” or “buffed up” to describe fit types with admirable muscle definition and derived from that came the special use among role-playing video-gamers, “to debuff” being an effect used to make a character weaker (a “negative status” effect).

A “buffster” is someone who is “buffed” (lean, physically fit) and that use of the word emerged from gym culture during the 1980s, under the influence of buff in the sense of “polish to perfection”.  That influenced also the use of buff to mean “physically attractive; desirable” which began in MLE (Multicultural London English) before spreading to other linguistic tribes; the adverb buffly (in a buff manner; attractively or muscularly) can be used of a buffster (one who is fit and with good muscle definition).  In hospital slang, “to buff” means “to alter a medical chart, especially in a dishonest manner”, hinting there may be something in Evelyn Waugh’s (1903-1966) warning the greatest risk to one in hospital is “being murdered by the doctors”.  In the slang of graffiti writers (the term “graffiti artist” accepted by the art market if not all critics) a “buff” is the act of removing a piece of graffiti by someone other than the creator.  Buffy is an adjective meaning “of or tending to a buff color” (the comparative buffier, the superlative buffiest) but it’s probably now most associated with the eponymous pop-culture character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (that may have been an influence on it being adopted by porn stars as their pseudonym (the synonym “screen-name” more apt than “stage-name”)).

The phrase “It’ll buff out” is a joke-line in the collector car market which references attempts to downplay the extent or significance of damage.  It ranks in the trade with “ran when parked”, “only surface rust” and “air-conditioning just needs a recharge” among the least believed claims.

In 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 400 (175 for the US market, 225 for the RoW (rest of the world)) of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a permanent fixed-roof.  A production number of 350 is sometimes quoted but those maintaining registers insist it was 400.

Map illustrating the rapid nineteenth century decline in the regions of North America where buffalo roamed (left, from The Extermination of the American Bison (1889), by William Temple Hornaday (1854–1937) published in Washington DC by the USGPO (US Government Printing Office, since 2014 the US Government Publishing Office, the change a (belated) acknowledgement that digital output was exceeding that of printed material)) and a stack of Buffalo hides awaiting shipment, Dodge City, Kansas, 1874 (right).

Viewed by those breathing the rather more censorious air of the twenty-first century, US hunter, taxidermist, zoologist, conservationist & author William Temple Hornaday is controversial because of his youthful pursuits, a few of the views he expressed and some the company he later in life would keep but, in an era when wildlife conservation and protection of the natural environment were not fashionable causes, he made seminal contributions to these fields.  Effected by the army and contractors operating with logistical support from the military's supply chains, the government’s “war on the bison” was an aspect of colonial policy in that it was an example of the “scorched earth” tactic adopted by retreating armies to deny invading forces any ability to “live off the land”, slowing down their advance and imposing strains upon their lines of supply.  In the nineteenth century the enemy were the various Native American (ie “Red Indian”) nations and the theory was that by exterminating the plentiful buffalo from their hunting grounds, their economies and way of life would collapse with all that implies.  The implications of that policy were understood by the US prosecution team at the first Nuremberg Trial (1946-1946) of two dozen-odd of the surviving Nazi civilian leadership & military high command of the Third Reich (1939-1945).  There,  scrupulously the US lawyers avoided the then novel word “genocide” (coined to describe the attempt by the Nazis to murder the entire Jewish population in Europe).  Although the judges of the IMT (International Military Tribunal) explicitly had disallowed the defense counsel the use of any form of Tu Quoque argument, the Americans were well-aware such discussions might ripple beyond the courtroom.  Historic estimates of pre-colonial Buffalo numbers in North America notoriously are unreliable but few scholars put the count at less than 30 million while some suggest it may have been double that.  However calculated, it was a big number but by 1884 the verified count had shrunk to a few hundred.

Classy Leather’s “Buffalo Hunter”.

Buffalo leather isn’t suitable for all purposes but is greatly valued because of the combination of thickness (compared to cow or goat leather or pig skin) and the unique and varied grain patterns.  It’s the thickness which adds to the durability of buffalo leather but, despite that, it remains soft and flexible, making it an ideal material for premium leather goods such as leather bags, leather accessories, jackets etc.  The Classy Leather operation published an informative guide to buffalo leather and included technical information including what must have be a revelation to some: Although the terms “buffalo” and “bison” tend interchangeably to be used in North America, the leathers are quite distinct and what the industry calls “buffalo leather” usually means leather derived from the Asian Water Buffalo.  Buffalo leather comes from domestic buffalos (almost always Asian Water Buffalo), raised mostly for milk or meat; at the end of their productive life, the hides are used to make leather and a variety of processing methods are used, designed to suit the skin structure with its large pores.

The “Water Buffalo”: 1974 Suzuki GT750.  The front twin disc setup was added in 1973 and was one of the first of its kind.

The Suzuki GT750 was produced between 1971-1977 and was an interesting example of the breed of large-capacity two-stroke motorcycles that provided much excitement (and not a few fatalities) but which fell victim to increasingly stringent emissions standards and the remarkable improvement in the performance, reliability and refinement of the multi-cylinder four-stroke machines of which the first generation Honda CB750 (1969-1978) and Kawasaki Z1 900 (1972-1975) were exemplars.  Something of a novelty was the GT750's water-cooling, at the time rarely seen although that meant it missed out on one of Suzuki’s many imaginative acronyms: the RAS (Ram Air System) used on the smaller capacity models.  The RAS was a simple aluminum scoop (designed to trap air-flow for upper-cylinder cooling) that sat bolted atop the cylinder head.  It was the water-cooling of the GT750 that attracted nicknames but, a generation before the internet, the English language tended still to evolve with regional variations so in England it was “the Kettle”, in Australia “the Water Bottle” and in North America “the Water Buffalo”.  Foreign markets also went their own way, the French favoring “la bouillotte” (the hot water bottle) and the West Germans “Wasserbüffel” (water buffalo).  Suzuki called those sold in North America the "Le Mans" while RoW (rest of the world) models were simply "GT750".

Detail of the unusual 3-into-4 exhaust system: The early version (left) with the ECTS (Exhaust Coupler Tube System), the bifurcation hardware for the central cylinder's header (centre) and the later version (1974-1977) without the ECTS (right).  Exhaust systems have long exerted on motorcyclists a fetish-like fascination and the holy grail may be the Italian straight-six Benelli 750 & 900 Sei (six) (1972-1978), offered variously with a 6-into-6 and 6-into-2, both constructions inspiring awe.  

The GT750 shared with the other two-stroke, three-cylinder Suzukis (GT380 & GT550) the novelty of a 4-into-3 exhaust system (the centre exhaust header was bifurcated (sometimes referred to as "saimesed")), the early versions of which featured the additional complexity of the ECTS connecting the three tubes; it was designed to improve low-speed torque.  The 3-into-4 apparatus existed apparently for no reason other than to match the four-pipe appearance on the contemporary four stroke, four cylinder Hondas and Kawasakis, an emulation of the asymmetric ducting used on Kawasaki's dangerously charismatic two-strokes perhaps dismissed as "too imitative", the four-pipe arrangement having previously been used by others and thus plasusibly an "industry standard".