Etceterini

Etceterini (pronounced et-set-er-rhini)

One or all of the sports cars & racing cars produced in small volumes by a number of “boutique” Italian manufacturers during the quarter-century-odd following World War II (1939-1945).

1980s (though not attaining wide currency until publication in 1990): A portmanteau word, the construct being etcetera(a) + ini.  Etcetera was from the early fourteenth century Middle English et cetera (and other things; and so forth), from the Latin et cētera (and the other things; and the rest of the things), the construct being et (and) + cetera (the other things; the rest).  Et was from the Proto-Italic et, from the primitive Indo-European éti or heti and was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἔτι (éti), the Sanskrit अति (ati), the Gothic iþ (and, but, however, yet) and the Old English prefix ed- (re-).  Cētera was the plural of cēterum, accusative neuter singular of cēterus (the other, remainder, rest), from the Proto-Italic ke-eteros, the construct being ke (here) +‎ eteros (other).  The Latin suffix -īnī was an inflection of -īnus (feminine -īna, neuter -īnum), from the Proto-Italic -īnos, from the primitive Indo-European -iHnos and was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ινος (-inos) and the Proto-Germanic -īnaz.  The suffix was added to a noun base (particularly proper nouns) to form an adjective, usually in the sense of “of or pertaining to and could indicate a relationship of position, possession or origin”.  Because the cars referenced tended to be small (sometimes very small), some may assume the –ini element to be an Italian diminutive suffix but in Italian the diminutive suffixes are like -ino, -etto, -ello & -uccio but etceterini works because the Latin suffix conveys the idea of “something Italian”.  It was used substantively or adverbially.  Until the early twentieth century, the most common abbreviation was “&c.” but “etc.” (usually with a surely now superfluous period (full-stop)) has long been the standard form.   Etcetera is a noun; the noun plural is etceteras

The word “etcetera” (or “et cetera”) fully has been assimilated into English and (except when used in a way which makes a historic reference explicit) is for most purposes no longer regarded as “a foreign word” though the common use has long been to use the abbreviation (the standard now: “etc”).  If for whatever reason there’s a need for a “conspicuously foreign” form then the original Latin (et cētera (or even the Anglicized et cetera)) should be used.  There is no definitive date on which the assimilation can be said to have been completed (or at least generally accepted), rather it was a process.  From the 1400s, the Middle English et cetera was used and understood by educated speakers, due to Latin's prominence in law, science, religion and academia with it by the mid-eighteenth century being no longer viewed as a “foreignism” (except of course among the reactionary hold-outs with a fondness for popery and ecclesiastical Latin: for them, in churches and universities, even in English texts, et cētera or et cetera remained preferred).  Scholars of structural linguistics use an interesting test to track the process of assimilation as modern English became (more or less) standardized: italicization.  With “et cetera” & “etcetera”, by the mid-eighteenth century, the once de rigour italics had all but vanished.  That test may no longer be useful because words which remains classified as “foreign” (such as raison d'être or schadenfreude) often now appear without italics.

The so-called “pronunciation spellings” (ekcetera, ekcetra, excetera & exetera) were never common and the abbreviations followed the same assimilative path.  The acceptance of the abbreviated forms in printed English more widespread still during the 1600s because of the advantages it offered printers, typesetters much attracted by the convenience and economy.  By early in the eighteenth century it was an accepted element (usually as “&c” which soon supplanted “et cet”) in “respectable prose”, appearing in Nathan Bailey’s (circa 1690-1742) An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and gaining the imprimatur of trend-setter Anglo-Irish author & satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).  Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) made much use of “&c” in his A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and although Bailey’s dictionary was influential in the breadth of its comprehensiveness and remained, over 30 editions, in print until 1802, it’s Dr Johnson who is better remembered because he was became a “celebrity lexicographer” (a breed which today must sound improbable.)

One of the implications of linguistic assimilation is the effect on the convention applied when speaking from a written text.  Although wildly ignored (probably on the basis of being widely unknown), the convention is that foreign words in a text should be spoken in the original language only if that’s necessary for emphasis or meaning (such as Caudillo, Duce or Führer) or emphasis.  Where foreign terms are used in writing as a kind of verbal shorthand (such as inter alia (among other things)) in oral use they should be spoken in English.  However, the convention doesn’t extent to fields where the terms have become part of the technical jargon (which need not influence a path of assimilation), as in law where terms like inter alia and obiter (a clipping of obiter dictum (something said by a judge in passing and not a substantive part of the judgment)) are so entrenched in written and oral use that to translate them potentially might be misleading.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, left), Britney Spears (b 1981, centre) & Paris Hilton (b 1981, right), close to dawn, Los Angeles, 29 November 2006; the car was Ms Hilton's Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).  This paparazzo's image was from a cluster which included the one used for the front page on Rupert Murdoch's (b 1931) New York Post with the still infamous headline “BIMBO SUMMIT”.  Even by the standards of the Murdoch tabloids, it was nasty.

So, the text written as: “Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears et al recommend that while a handbag always should contain “touch-up & quick fix-up” items such as lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner, the more conscientious should pack more including, inter alia, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, concealer, a powder compact, a small brush set & comb etc.” would be read aloud as: “Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and others recommend that while a handbag always should contain “touch-up & quick fix-up” items such as lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner, the more conscientious should pack more including, among other things, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, concealer, a powder compact, a small brush set & comb etcetera.”  Despite the cautions from purists (including just about every grammar text-book and style guide on the planet), the “choice” between “etc” and “et al” does seem to becoming blurred with many using seemingly using the two interchangeably.  The rules are (1) “etc” (and other things) is used of things (and according to the style guides should always appear with a period (full-stop) even though such use is archaic and another of those “needless tributes to tradition”) and (2) “et al” (and others) is used of people (especially in citations and again, always with a period).  So, “et al” can’t be used for things; strictly, it’s for things; it’ll be interesting to see if these rules survive into the next century.  Really, it's a silly rule and because it's hardly difficult to distinguish between a text string of "people" and one of "things", if used interchangeably, the two abbreviations are unlikely to confuse.  Et al was the abbreviation of the Latin et aliī (and others).

A Unix /etc directory.

In computing, Unix-based operating systems (OS) feature a directory (the word “folder” thought effete by the Unix community, most of whom are at their happiest when typing arcane commands at the prompt) called “etc” (along with /root, /boot, dev, /bin, /opt etc) which is used as a repository for system-wide configuration files and shell scripts used to boot and initialize the system.  Although there are many variants of the OS, typically an /etc directory will contain (1) OS configuration files (/etc/passwd; /etc/fstab; /etc/hosts), (2) system startup scripts (/etc/init.d or /etc/systemd/, (3) network configuration, (4) user login & environment configuration files and (5) application configuration files.  Originally (sometime in 1969-1970), the “etc” name was adopted because it was “an et cetera” in the literal sense of “and so on”, a place to store files which were essential but didn’t obviously belong elsewhere, a single “general purpose” directory used to avoid needless proliferation in the structure.  Rapidly Unix grew in complexity and configurability so the once “place for the miscellaneous” became the canonical location for configuration files, the original sense displaced but the name retained.  It is pronounced et-see (definitely not ee-tee-see or et-set-er-uh).  Despite their reputation, the Unix guys do have a joke (and there are unconfirmed rumors of a second).  Because so many of the files in /etc can be modified with any text-editor, in some documents earnestly it’s revealed /etc is the acronym of “Editable Text Configuration” but as well as a bad joke, it's also fake news; ETC is a backronym.

The Etceterini: exquisite creations with names ending in vowels

1954 Stanguellini 750 Sport.

In the tradition of mock-Latin, the word etceterini was a late twentieth century coining created to refer to the ecosystem of the numerous small-volume Italian sports & racing cars built in the early post-war years.  A portmanteau word, the construct being etceter(a) + ini, the idea was a word which summoned the idea of “many, some obscure” with an Italianesque flavor.  Credit for the coining is claimed by both automotive historian John de Boer (who in 1990 published The Italian car registry: Incorporating the registry of Italian oddities: (the etceterini register) and reviewer & commentator Stu Schaller who asserts he’d used it previously.  Whoever first released it into the wild (and it seems to have been in circulation as least as early as the mid-1980s) can be content because it survived in its self-defined niche and the evocative term has become part of the lexicon used by aficionados of post-war Italian sports and racing cars.  Being language (and in this English is not unique), it is of course possible two experts, working in the same field, both coined the term independently, the timing merely a coincidence.  Etceterini seems not to have been acknowledged (even as a non-standard form) by the editors of any mainstream English dictionary and surprisingly, given how long its history of use now is, even jargon-heavy publications like those from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) haven’t yet added it to their lexicons.  It does though appear in specialist glossaries, car-model registry websites and niche discussion forums, especially those tied to classic Italian car culture (OSCA, Moretti, Stanguellini, Siata, Bandini, Ermini etc).  So, as a word it has sub-cultural & linguistic clarity but no status among the linguistic establishment.

1953 Siata 208S Barchetta.

John De Boer’s comprehensive The Italian car registry: Incorporating the registry of Italian oddities: (the etceterini register) was last updated in 1994 and remains the best-known publication on the many species of the genus etceterini and included in its 350-odd pages not only a wealth of photographs and cross-referenced details of specification but also lists chassis and engine numbers (priceless data for collectors and restoration houses in their quests for the often elusive quality of “originality”).  Nor are the personalities neglected, as well as some notable owners the designers and builders are discussed and there are sections devoted to coach-builders, a once vibrant industry driven almost extinct by regulators and the always intrusive realities of economics.  One thing which especially delights the collectors are the photographs of some of the obscure accessories of the period, some rendered obsolete by technology, some of which became essential standard-equipment and some seriously weird.  Mr De Boer’s book was from the pre-internet age when, except for a pampered handful in a few universities, “publication” meant paper and printing presses but such things are now virtualized and “weightless publication” is available instantly to all and there are small corners of the internet curated for devotees of the etceterini such as Cliff Reuter’s Etceteriniermini, a title which certainly takes some linguistic liberties.  Some trace the breed even to the late 1930s and such machines certainly existed then but as an identifiable cultural and economic phenomenon, they really were a post-war thing and although circumstances conspired to make their survival rare by the mid 1960s, a handful lingered into the next decade.

1957 Bandini 750 Sport Saponetta.

That the ecosystem of the etceterini flourished in Italy in the 1950s was because the country was then a certain place and time and while the memorable scenes depicted in La Dolce Vita (1960) might have been illusory for most, the film did capture something from their dreams.  After the war, there was a sense of renewal, the idea of the “new” Italy as a young country in which “everybody” seemed young and for those who could, sports car and racing cars were compelling.  However, while there was a skilled labor force ready to build them and plenty of places in which they could be built, economics dictated they needed to be small and light-weight because the mechanical components upon which so many relied came from the Fiat parts bin and the most significant commonality among the etceterini were the small (often, by international standards, tiny) engines used otherwise to power the diminutive micro-cars & vans with which Fiat in the post-war years “put Italy on wheels”.  It was no coincidence so many of the small-volume manufacturers established their facilities near to Fiat’s factory in Torino, the closest thing the nation had to a Detroit.  In the early years, it wasn’t unknown for a donkey and cart carrying a few engines to make the short journey from the Fiat foundry to an etceterini’s factory (which was sometime little more than a big garage).  However, just because the things were small didn’t mean they couldn’t be beautiful and, being built by Italians, over the years there were some lovely shapes, some merely elegant but some truly sensuous.  Lovely they may appear but the Italians were not reverential when making comparisons with other objects.  Of the Bandini 750 Sport, Saponetta translates as literally as "little soap", the idea being the resemblance to a bar of soap as the ends wear away with use although of the nine 750 Sports made, some had an abbreviated Kamm tail which offered aerodynamic advantage at high speed but was less soapbaresque in shape.  Despite only nine 750 Sports being made, it was something of a volume model for the marque, for in the 45 years between 1946-1992, only 75 cars emerged from Ilario Bandini's (1911–1992) tiny workshop in Forlì, a municipality in the northern Italian city of Emilia-Romagna.  Bathrooms clearly were a thing in the Italian imagination because they dubbed the OSCA S187 (750S) the tubo di dentifricio (toothpaste tube), illustrating yet again how everything sounds better in Italian.   

1960 Stanguellini Formula Junior.

Among the etceterini, there was a high churn rate but many for years flourished and developed also lucrative “sideline” businesses producing ranges of speed equipment or accessories for majors such as Fiat or Alfa Romeo and, as has happened in other industries, sometimes the success of these overtook the original concern, Nardi soon noticing their return on capital from selling their popular custom steering wheels far exceeded what was being achieved from producing a handful of little sports cars, production of which quickly was abandoned with resources re-allocated to the accessory which had become a trans-Atlantic best-seller.  Whether things would have gone on indefinitely had the laissez-faire spirit of the time been allowed to continue can’t be known but by the 1960s, traffic volumes rapidly were increasing on the growing lengths of autostrade (the trend-setting Italian motorway system begun during the administration of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) with accident rates & the death toll both climbing.  Italy, like many jurisdictions began to impose safety regulations which before long made small-scale production runs unviable but by then rising prosperity meant people were able to purchase their own Fiat or Alfa-Romeo and the etceterini faded into fond memory.  It is of course unthinkable such a thing could again happen because the EU (European Union) is now staffed by divisions of Eurocrats who spend their days in Masonic-like plotting and scheming to devise new reasons to say no, non, nein, nee, nein, não etc.  Had these bloodless bureaucrats existed in the 1940s, not one etceterini would ever have reached the street.

The Auto Sputnik

Italian comrades admiring Auto Sputnik, Rome, Italy, April 1958.

Although it’s the slinky sports and racing cars which are celebrated as the etceterini, from the then vibrant ecosystem of Italian coach-building, a wide range of body types emerged including larger coupés & cabriolets, station wagons, vans, ambulances, hearses and more.  In post-war Italy, if a manufacturer wanted a run of a few dozen or hundred, there was a factory to fulfil the contract and for those who wanted some sort of low-volume model or even a one-off needed for a specific purpose, if need be, there would be a man in a shed who could form the metal.  Again, it was availability of versatile, mass-produced platforms which made the re-purposing possible and a genuine one-off was the Auto Sputnik (Sputnik-car), built for the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano, the Communist Party of Italy, 1921-1991) as a propaganda vehicle to travel around the land in the run-up to the 1958 general election.  Centre of attention was a model of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October, 1957, an event which had shocked many in the West because it seemed to illustrate how much more advanced was Soviet science compare to that in the West.  What it heightened was the fear the communist "planned economy" was proving more efficient in producing advanced technology while in the West excessive resources were being absorbed by things like annual changed to the styling of washing machines or making the tailfins on cars rise higher.  That feeling rippled around the US Congress, causing great concern although the scientific and military establishment, better acquainted with relative industrial capabilities, were more sanguine.  Politicians however find it often more rewarding to respond to perceptions rather than reality and it was the launch of Sputnik which triggered the “space race”, the first round of which culminated with the US manned landing on the moon in 1969.

Italian and Soviet design sensibilities, circa 1958: Auto Sputnik, colorized (left) and 1958 Soviet UAZ-450 (right).  Mechanically somewhat updated (though stylistically, not by much) , the UAZ is still being made and is believed to be the oldest vehicle design still in series production, the blueprints delivered to the factory in 1957.

Although just by achieving orbit Sputnik 1 was a landmark in space flight, as it circled the Earth every 96 minutes, despite much wild speculation, all the 580 mm (23 inch) wide metal sphere did was transmit “beeps” which could be received by ground-based radios but the PCI’s model on the Auto Sputnik was, in a sense, more ambitious because it included an integrated loudspeaker for broadcasting campaign messages (ie communist propaganda).  Having the Sputniks to use as propaganda tools was certainly a tribute to Soviet design prowess and industrial capacity but it was good that for Auto Sputnik the PCI turned to Italian rather than Soviet coach-builders.  There was at the time something in the souls of Italian designers which stopped them drawing an ugly line so the Auto Sputnik, despite its utilitarian purpose, was a stylish piece of mid-century modernism, characterized by the mix of fuselage-like flanks, topped with a formed in sensuously shaped Perspex.  The eye-catching design may be compared with what can be imagined had a Russian contractor been granted the commission.  What would have been delivered would have been heavy, robust (if not especially well-finished) and “done the job” but it would not have been stylish.  For that, it was best to get an Italian and in the 1960s, the UK industry would do exactly that, Michelotti among several doing good business there.

1957 Fiat 600 Multipla (left) and the prototype 1957 600 Marinella (right) by Giovanni Michelotti (1921–1980), the latter a classic example of the adaptability of the 600 platform, one of a number used by those who created the Etceterini.

In a nice touch, a dog (various real or a stuffed toy) was also carried, a tribute to Laika, the “Soviet space dog” who was the first animal to orbit the planet when Sputnik 2 flew into low orbit on 3 November 1957.  The  Perspex windows on the model of Sputnik certainly weren’t on the original sphere and were installed just so the dog could be seen and even that was an attempt to manipulate voters through “associative cognition”, people trusting dogs in a way they don't trust politicians.  Unfortunately for Laika, the technology of the era precluded a return-flight and some hours into the mission, she died of hyperthermia.  Like the doomed dog, Auto Sputnik did not survive and although there seem to be no details of either the coach-builder or platform used, historians of the etceterini are certain it was based on a Fiat 600 Multipla (1956–1967) and not the 600T because the latter variant was in production only between 1961-1968.  An exercise in pure functionalism, the prime directive of the 600 Multipa (literally “multiple”) was the optimal utilization of interior space.  The object was a vehicle in which the maximum possible payload (people or objects) could be carried within the smallest possible external dimensions, powered by a drive-train which would do it all at the lowest possible cost.  Countless Italians found the Multipla lived up to the name but the PCI’s use must be among the more unusual.

Flag of the Italian Communist Party (hammer & sickle in yellow on red background (left) and the highly regarded “Italian Hot Dogs” sold at Jimmy Buff's.

No color images of the Auto Sputnik seem to exist but one monochrome photograph has been colorized, the software confirming it was finished in red & yellow.  These were the colors of the PCI’s flag so the choice had nothing to do with the ketchup and mustard of the “Italian Hot Dog”, the invention of which is credited to Jimmy “Buff” Racioppi, founder of Jimmy Buff's in Newark, New Jersey where the first “Italian Hot Dog” was sold in 1932.

TELEPHOTO image with explanatory caption, distributed to newspapers by wire services, April 1958.

Routinely in use in the West since the late 1930s, (and known also as “wirephotos”), TELEPHOTOs literally were “photographs transmitted using telegraph wire infrastructure” and although receiving an image could take some minutes, for newspapers it was a revolutionary service because for those in daily production cycles, it was effectively “real-time”.  The TELEPHOTO was one of many steps on the technological ladder to the contemporary world of instantaneous communication.  When in 1865 Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; POTUS 1861-1865) was assassinated, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest clipper had crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.  By the time of William McKinley's (1843–1901; POTUS 1897-1901) assassination, the news was within minutes transmitted around the world through undersea cables (thus the still sometimes heard use in this context of “cable” and “cabled”).  In 1963, while news of John Kennedy's (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963) death was close to a global real-time event, those many miles from Dallas had to wait sometimes 24 hours or more to view footage, the physical film stock delivered in canisters by land, sea or air.  By 1981, when an attempt was made on Ronald Reagan’s (1911-2004; POTUS 1981-1989) life, television stations around the planet were, sometimes within seconds, picking up live-feeds from satellites.

The text on the vehicle: "VOTA COMUNISTA", translates as “Vote Communist” and the 1958 election was unexpectedly difficult for the party because there had been schisms and defections after (1) the Red Army's crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising (tellingly, the Kremlin made no attempt to augment their forces with troops from other Warsaw Pact signatories) and (2) comrade Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “secret” speech in February that year denouncing the personality cult and excesses of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  Still, the party maintained its support, gaining 22.7% of the vote against the 22.6% received in 1953, the loss of three seats (from 143 to 140) the consequence of electoral redistributions and some changes in the allocation of seats between the various mechanisms.  With that, the PCI remained the country’s second-largest party in Italy although the Democrazia Cristiana (DC, the Christian Democrats) remained dominant and the communists still were excluded from government.  Essentially then, the 1958 election maintained the “status quo” but what had changed since the late 1940s was that agents of the US government (not all of whom were on the payroll of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)) no longer wandered cities and the countryside with the suitcases of US dollars thought (correctly) to be the most useful accessory when seeking to influence elections.  When Washington complains about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and others using this method or that to try to “influence” elections in the US, they know what they’re talking about; while the tactics of the influencers have changed, the strategy remains the same.

Veavage

Veavage (pronounced vee-vig)

(1) The expanse of bare skin a woman displays when wearing a dress (or top) with a neckline cut in a deep (often called plunging) “V”, the vertex (the bottom junction where the two diagonal strokes meet) typically reaching the midriff but the lines can intersect as low as the waist or even the hipline.  As a design, it’s the familiar “V-neckline” taken to its logical conclusion although much the same can be achieved with what technically are “scalloped necklines” or “U-plunges”.

(2) As “veavage dress”, “veavage top” etc, a garment so designed.

2026 (2010 for an earlier, now extinct purpose): A portmanteau word, the construct being ve(e) + (cle)avage.  In English, vee had a long history as an illustration of the pronunciation for the letter “V” but it was in US English in the mid-1860s it began widely to be used in building, architecture and engineering to describe various structures, components or configurations.  Because of the attractive properties of triangles, the “V-shape” would for millennia have been part of the man-made environment (indeed, it exists in botany, animals and geology) but the form “vee” appears in this context to have been well documented only from the mid-nineteenth century and use as a direct substitute for the Latin script letter “V/v” is documented from 1869.  In internal combustion engines, “vee” seems first used of piston engines in this configuration by 1915 although the first known V-twin was built in 1889 and the first V8 in 1903.  Although common as a descriptor of shapes or physical objects, the more abstract re-purposings included (1) a polyamorous relationship between three people, in which one person has two partners who are not themselves romantically or sexually involved and (2) in the (male) gay community, “a Vee” is a verbal shorthand for “a versatile” (one who is not exclusively “a top” (or “pitcher”) or “a “bottom” (or “catcher”) but indulges in both practices.  The coining is too recent for derived forms to have emerged but the possibilities include veavaged, veavaging and veavesque.  Veavage is a noun (and potentially a verb & adjective); the noun plural is veavages.

Of Vee

Cricket's “vee”, recommended for “high-percentage” shots.

Teevee was a respelling of the abbreviation TV (for television) so the two are synonymous but the former (with its four superfluous vowels) survived only as a “niche word”.  In the era between the early post-war years and services like YouTube and its many imitators becoming mainstream, a “teeveen” was a young person who “watched too much TV”.  In SF (sci-fi, science fiction) a three-vee was a screen able to display in three-dimensions; authors used also “3v”, “tri-v” “tri-vid”, “tri-d”, “trideo” & “tridim” and although they didn’t show quite the disdain for capitalization as later would emerge in the business of computer hardware & software, the literary preference seems to have tended to the lower case.  The humorists of the 1980s used a mix of upper and lower when creating shorthand critiques of the US cable television channel (1981) MTV (pronounced emm-tee-vee and an initialism of “Music Television”).  Claiming the channel’s programming was banal, they conjured up “eMpTyV”, “empty-vee”, “Empty-V”, “Emptyv”, “emptyV” & “eMpTy V”, all to be pronounced emp-tee-vee.  That was a variant of the technique used to produce rebus abbreviations (in structural linguistics technically a “gramogram”) such as “NRG” for “energy” or “XLR8” for “accelerate”.  All worked best when written because although non none possessed classic phonetic assimilation, sloppiness in real world use, sloppiness in pronunciation probably often rendered the sound of emm-tee-vee vs emp-tee-vee indistinguishable.  In cricket, the “vee” describes the arc of the field, forward of the batter, from cover to midwicket, in which drives classically are played (a shape better visualized as an “L” because, like many “vee” engines, the vertex is a 90^o angle) and coaches still instruct batters to “play in the vee” because that’s most productive for “high percentage” (ie more runs, fewer dismissals) shots but in the newer, shorter forms of the game, that’s now less relevant.  Whether “veagage” catches as jargon for coaches advocating “playing in the vee” remains to be seen.

Playing in the vee.  Australian cricketer Ellyse Perry (b 1990) with the trophies of the two Cricket Australia (the new name for the old Board of Control) Cricketer of the Year awards she won in 2023 (in the T20 and ODI (One Day International) categories). Note the splendid shoulder & upper-arm muscle definition.

In typography & computing, typography, a “vee” was a unit of vertical spacing, typically corresponding to the height of an ordinary line of text.  In machinery, a vee-belt (often as v-belt) was a drive-belt of reinforced rubber or other compounds which was mounted on drive wheels or pullies, the name gained from the V-shaped cross-section (some with notches which were called “toothed belts”).   “Vee Dub” was a slang term for a vehicle produced by Volkswagen (VW) and a “Vee Dubber” was a VW fan boy (some of whom were girls).  A “veejay” was the host of a television programme who presented videos, based on the earlier “DJ” (disc jockey, a radio presenter who introduced music broadcast by playing tracks from discs, a use which has survived many DJs now operating without discs).  A VJ was also a “vertical joist” which was a length of timber used as a vertical upright for structural support.  In vulgar slang, “VJ” also was a term for the vulva or vagina and the user-generated Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2010 listing “veavage” with the construct v(aginal) + (cl)eavage (ie the infamous “camel toe”) but that attracted negligible support.  A veep is “a vice-president”, a form popular use has made associated mostly with the VPOTUS (vice-president of the US).  

Of Veagage

Actor Keira Knightley (b 1985) in a classic black veavage dress, illustrating how the emphasis has shifted to skin rather than cleavage, the latter the traditional focus of the deeper “V-necklines”, things now done with “a hint”: less is more.

With due acknowledgment of the use in 2010 (documented by Urban Dictionary) which never gained traction, “veavage” is a new word but what it describes is not new though the emphasis genuinely is a variation of an old theme.  Veagage is a deeply plunging V-shaped cut in a garment which displays some of the chest & midriff down sometimes as far as the hipline although most stop at the waist.  Obviously something best worn on red carpets or for photo-shoots in controlled environments (light, surface irregularities, wind-speed & direction, crowds etc), it differs from the traditional approach to the female chest in that emphasis is on the skin rather than the breasts, the veagage look de-emphasising those glands so the cut is ideal for those able to summon much of a cleavage only with structural engineering such as a bra or Hollywood Tape (better known by the more evocative “tit-tape”).  So it can be a good, eye-catching choice for those without the anatomical advantage demanded by outfits optimized for “peak cleavage” but it has been criticized as a form of “privilege-dressing”, said to carry the whiff of “white feminism”.

Controversial and not accepted by all as something “real”, “white feminism” is said to be a fork of feminism concerned almost exclusively with concerns of white, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual women, the problems of women not ticking those boxes ignored.  It’s thus an individualistic strain of feminism which aims to maximize one’s advantage within existing systems rather than seeking systemic reform for the collective benefit.  From there it may seem a bit of a leap to veagage as marker of political exclusion but it’s true a link can be constructed if one wishes to find such a connection (the notion of v=(c+p) (cleavage + privilege = veavage)) in that while it accommodates at least some on the spectrum of breast size, slenderness is essential and for those not genetically lucky or disciplined, there are the GLP-1 (Glucagon-like peptide-1) drugs and overwhelmingly, they remain a tool for those who are (in global terms) “rich”.  Like everything else, the frock is political.

Lindsay Lohan, Olympus Fashion Week, Bryant Park, Manhattan, February 2006.  Although Ms Lohan is more associated with the traditional use of the V-neckline, this is archetypical veavage.

Unlike some “straight-line letters” such as “W” or “X”, the letter “V” is almost always rendered with straight lines but fashion editors are more forgiving than geometers (since the time of the third century BC mathematician of Ancient Greece Euclid, the historic term for those whose primary research field was geometry) who would insist the plunging neckline of Ms Lohan’s red dress is not a “V” but a “curvilinear angle” (an angle with sides of curves rather than straight line segments).  In elementary geometry, the classic angle consists of two straight rays meeting at a vertex, whereas in a curvilinear angle the sides are arcs or other curves intersecting at a point.  In fashion, up to a certain stage, a “curvilinear angle” is still a “V-neckline” because the visual effect is so close but, as the curves become more curved, at some point the cut becomes closed to a “scallop” or “scoop” and is so described.

Model & writer Hari Nef (b 1992) in Schiaparelli.  Like the trade-off in warship design between armor & speed, less gland means more veavage so those not best suited to cleavage in a V-neckline have an alternative.

So with V-shaped necklines descending to the navel (or a little beyond) hardly a novelty given their not infrequent appearances over the last two-decades-odd, why did the word “veavage” suddenly make an appearance in 2026?  The obvious answer is of course “click-bait” but that’s not of necessity a bad thing because, in a sense, that trick is supply anticipating demand and there are aspects of the internet (which at least for now seem to have become structural) that should arouse more concern.  It’s a good word and a welcome addition to the fashion business; presumably an industry commentator noted a spike in the “deep vee” showing up on the catwalks or red carpets and, things “on trend” needing a tag, conjured up (or re-purposed) “veagage”.  The speculative link to the look becoming more prevalent because GLP-1s have rendered more women with physiques suitable for such things is intriguing but wholly impressionistic and trends anyway tend to wax and wane although, in its niche, veagage seems here to stay.

Of Cleavage

Actor Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) with a more traditional implementation of the V-neckline.  Empirically, this look is likely to remain the dominant approach although, as it has for years, the veavege will run in parallel. 

The noun cleavage seems first to have appeared in the 1805, the construct being cleave + -age.  It was used first in geology and mineralogy to describe “the tendency (of rocks or gems) to break cleanly along natural fissures” with the generalized meaning “action or state of cleaving or being cleft” emerging in the mid 1860s.  Although the artistic record confirms the popularity of the look had over the centuries come and gone in the cyclical way fashion behaves, use of “cleavage” in the sense of the “the hollow between a woman's breasts (usually when artificially supported), especially as exposed by a low-cut garment” appears not to have been seen in print prior to the use in an article in Time magazine discussing the (nominally) self-censorship codes of practice adopted (not entirely willingly) by the Hollywood film studios.  In finding a single word, Time’s editors proved good practitioners of journalistic succinctness because what they were reducing to a word had been described in the industry’s bureaucratese as “the shadowed depression dividing an actress' bosom into two distinct sections.”  Cleavage caught on although to this day the more up-market fashion glossies still hanker after the French décolletage.

Variations on a theme of Vee: Lindsay Lohan (during blonde phase) in V-neckline, V Magazine's Black and White Ball, Standard Hotel, New York City, September 2011.

Cleave was in use prior to 950 and was from the Middle English cleven, from the Old English strong verb clēofan (to split, to separate), from the Proto-West Germanic kleuban, from the Proto-Germanic kleubaną, from the primitive Indo-European glewb- (to cut, to slice).  It was a doublet of clive and cognate with the Dutch klieven, the dialectal German klieben, the Swedish klyva, the Norwegian Nynorsk kløyva; it was akin to the Ancient Greek γλύφω (glúphō) (carve) and the Classical Latin glūbere (to peel).  Given the time and place of cleave’s emergence, etymologists suspect the original sense was likely related to the handling of timber (ie to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood).  The suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.  The French suffix -age was from the Middle & Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum, (greatly) extended from words like rivage and voyage.  It was used usually to form nouns with the sense of (1) "action or result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X" or (2) "state of being (a or an) X".  A less common use was the formation of collective nouns.  Historically, there were many applications (family relationships, locations et al) but use has long tended to be restricted to the sense of "action of Xing".  Many older terms now have little to no connection with their most common modern uses, something particularly notable of those descended from actual Latin words (fromage, voyage et al).

Bella Hadid (b 1996, right), Cannes Film Festival, 2021.

A veavage can of course be an eye-catching billboard and the obvious stuff to advertise is jewellery (left).  Model Bella Hadid showed how it could be done with scalloped neckline, wearing a black Schiaparelli gown (cut for the purpose with an untypically wide aperture) used to frame a sculptural piece, fashioned in gilded brass to resemble an anatomical cast of the lungs’ bronchi (the paired series of cartilaginous, tube-like airways branching from the trachea into each lung, acting as the primary passage for air distribution).  However, in while in commerce a handy advertising space, those adopting a veavage seem most inclined to restrict adornments to earrings or other accessories which don't interrupt the line of skin between neck and waist, the trick being to achieve a “lengthening effect”  

Golfer and multi-media personality Paige Spiranac (b 1993).

Despite the etymological implication, a veagage is about the display of skin and is not dependent on being framed in a “V” but the point about it is the de-emphasis of the breasts (and thus the cleavage).  What Paige Spiranac wore to Sports Illustrated 60^th anniversary event could (with some strategically placed double-sided tape) be used for the purpose but technically the ensemble was a variant of the “curtain reveal” motif (in “open” mode).  Whether it would produce a veagage or a cleavage would depend on the wearer.

In the 1980s, US political scientists used the term “cross-cutting cleavages” to describe what had been revealed as a phenomenon both increasing frequency and spreading demographically and geographically.  The term referred to a social structure in which different lines of division in society intersect rather than coincide (ie groups created by one social division are mixed across the groups created by another division, instead of aligning with them).  In the West, as an identifiable trend, this likely was something that had ebbed and flowed since the decline of feudalism but in the post-war years it became of interest to political scientists because it was clearly something influencing social conflict and voting behaviour, the issue-by-issue alignment within and between sectional classifications no longer as predictable.  What had become obvious was the membership of groups in one dimension was overlapping with multiple groups in another.

Influencer Sophadophaa (she stresses : “It’s Sophia not Sophie”) in red gown with plunging vee.

Because the veagage effect is most effective when at its most 2D (two dimentional), when that’s what’s wanted, the usual approach is to have the fabric cling to the skin (with double-sided tape as required) but V-necklines can be executed differently for other outcomes; the double-sided tape is still applied but in different places.

Overlap was not new in that “coalitions of interest or concern” had long been known to be subject to these “crossovers” (especially at the margins) but in the days before big machine databases transformed this into something political parties could not merely manage but exploit, it was a genuine problem.  The more optimistic academics suggested cross-cutting cleavages operated to stabilize democracy because, with individuals simultaneously belonging to many groups (class, religion, occupation, region), the overlap prevented politics from collapsing into a series of polarized conflicts, what some called “the Balkanization of society”.  The argument was the behaviour compelled political parties to build broad coalitions across multiple groups, moderating the inherent tendency to conflict and reducing the likelihood of groups becoming the captives of extremist positions.  There may have been something in this because in the US, between the 1930s & 1980s it was those broad (notably geographical) coalitions which characterized US politics; political conflict didn’t go away but it was diffuse rather than binary.  In operation, that mid-century model was very different from Europe.  There, “cleavage theory” was a descriptive model of the way several centuries of major (and often bloody) social conflicts (cleavages) worked finally as the catalyst for state formation and industrialization.

Wonderbra New Deep Plunge Bra.

The manufacturers have for decades noted the appeal of the V-neckline and have created a vibrant market in accessories and devices.  Up to a point, the conventional cantilever method works but there are practical limits.  However, while physics can’t be fooled, optics can and what Wonderbra did for the New Deep Plunge Bra was replace the conventional fabric-covered gore with one of translucent plastic, thus creating a “one skin tone fits all” fitting.  Except on close inspection, it was close to invisible.

The West (and especially the US) is of course now in the age of “mega identity politics” and the parameters of those identities are in the effective control of a relative handful of extremists (“absolutists” or “purists” the more polite forms) who have the historically unique (in reach, immediacy and scope) platform of social media set agendas and cancel transgressors; even in groups originally created because of oppression, now routinely oppress heretics who depart from the orthodoxy.  This does not imply political parties have become “single issue” operations but substantially they are tending towards the ideologically monolithic as aggregations of what scholars have labelled “stacked identities” and the process of “purification” is not organic: within the party machines, those seeking absolute control undertaking purges, witness the gradual preponderance within the Republican Party of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) over those condemned as “pseudo conservatives”, the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).  In the Democratic Party, identities have come to trump (the verb) all else and few now dare to raise the matter of trans-females competing in sporting competitions for women because the “trans rights” have become a litmus-paper test of adherence to orthodoxy.  So, the machinery which decades ago assembled coalitions of interest now creates tribes with much of what that word implies, political scientists sanitizing things a bit with the tag “affective polarization”.  While the cause-and-effect processes in all this were not wholly binary, it has rendered conflict now identity-based in that conflicts are between world views and way of life rather than the minutiae of policies.

Ultradeep U-Plunge.  Where the vee didn't plunge so deep, a more conventional construction could be used although many did include "clear" shoulder straps, made of the same kind of material as sometimes used for the gore.

So, whereas the national and state legislatures once thrashed things out and often managed to achieve compromises, that’s now less common because a “compromise” is seen as a “surrender” or “betrayal” and the consequences for that included being “cancelled” or “primaried”, two weaponized devices able successfully to be deployed by a remarkably small number of committed extremists.  None of this is any secret but there’s no obvious solution because the simple fix (mass active participation of the electorate (the so-called “sensible centre”) in party politics) has little appeal for either the voters or those running the party machines, both groups for their own reasons appalled by the notion.  The days are gone when the Republicans had their “moderate” faction (the so-called Rockefeller Republicans (named after Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977 and who earned immortality by having “died on the job”) and the Democrats their “Southern Conservatives” (the so-called “Dixiecrats” in the not always attractive tradition of figures like old Strom Thurmond (1902-2003; senator for South Carolina 1954-2003)).  By the 2020s, that overlap has almost completely disappeared with politics now more polarized than at any time in living memory and political scientists lament the shift but they should recall a remark in the paper Toward a More Responsible Two‑Party System (1950), published by the APSA (American Political Science Association): “The two parties do not differ enough.”  Expanding on that, the authors added: “Alternatives between the parties are defined so badly that it is often difficult to determine what the election has decided even in broadest terms.”  As a critique this came to be called the “Tweedledum & Tweedledee problem” (two characters in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) who had different names but look the same and behave in identical ways.

Das U-boob Theorie.

Orla U-Plunge Backless Adhesive Bra in Black (left) and Salma Hayek (b 1966, right) demonstrates the uvage, Evening Standard Theatre Awards, London, November 2015.  Orla's “adhesive” is a reference to the side panels which adhere directly to the skin (using the same technology as surgical tape), allowing the bra to a achieve a “backless” effect.  Because the cut of some gowns obviously is a “U” rather than a “V”, the fashionistas might feel compelled to add “uvage” (pronounced yoo-vig, the construct being u + (clea)vage)) to the lexicon because, if the two styles appear together on the catwalk, single-word differentiation might be helpful.

Heart & wedge: Luciana Heart Cut Out Long Sleeve Mini Dress in black (left) and French content creator & author Léna Situations (Léna Mahfouf, b 1997), in Georges Hobeika (b 1962) black gown with inverted V-neckline (technically a wedge), Academy Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, March 2026.  Ms Mahfouf uses “Léna Situations” as an online pseudonym because that was the name of the fashion & lifestyle-focused blog she, as a teen-ager, created in 2012; it gained her a “brand identity” and was thus for some purposes retained in adulthood.  The blog would have seemed familiar to the members of the long defunct Situationist International because her concept was sharing fragments of her life in different “situations” which might be defined by the place, the outfit worn or what was being experienced so was thus a series of spectacles, able to be understood as individual relics of time & place or a series of narratives.  Using that model, platforms like Instagram have allowed just about everybody to become a situationist and while the original situationists would have recognized “social lives mediated by images, media & commodities”, they'd not have approved.

However, although tempting, being too specific about geometry might lead to a proliferation of terms because designers have proved inventive when shaping “cut-outs” in gowns.  A heart shape could perhaps attract “cardivage” (pronounced kar-dee-vig, the construct being cardi(ac) + (clea)vage) and an inverted vee could be called a “wedgeage” (pronounced wed-jige, the construct being wedge + (cleav)age).  In formal logic, the wedge symbol (∧) represents “AND” (the logical conjunction); in its opposite orientation (V) the symbol is called a “vee” and represents logical “OR”.  So, imposing precision may be a needless solution to a non-existent problem and the industry seems likely to continue to tolerate what Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) in 1906 called “terminological inexactitude” (used as a euphemism for the un-parliamentary “lie” and coined because in the House of Commons, Mr Speaker had long since proscribed use of  “mendacious”).  Beyond the "V", "U", "heart" and "wedge", there are more shapes so veavage seems likely to serve as a generic for all.

Charli XCX (stage-name of English singer-songwriter Charlotte Emma Aitchison (b 1992)) in a Christopher John Rogers (b 1993) white fit & flare dress with ruffled peplum, featuring a more conventional implementation of the V-neckline.

Ms Mahfouf's retention of a youthful online pseudonym is not unique, Charli XCX another example.  The star herself revealed the stage name is pronounced chahr-lee ex-cee-ex; it has no connection with Roman numerals and XCX is anyway not a standard Roman number.  XC is “90” (C minus X (100-10)) and CX is “110” (C plus X (100 +10)) but, should the need arise, XCX could be used as a code for “100”, on the model of something like the “May 35th” reference Chinese internet users, when speaking of the “Tiananmen Square Incident” of 4 June 1989, adopted in an attempt to circumvent the CCP's (Chinese Communist Party) “Great Firewall of China” censorship apparatus.  In 2015, Ms XCX revealed the text string was an element in her MSN screen name (CharliXCX92) when young (it stood for “kiss Charli kiss”) and, after appearing in the early publicity for her music, it gained critical mass so Charli XCX we still have.

In 1950, the political scientists had concluded there was “too great a degree of internal heterogeneity” in that, housing both liberal and conservative wings, the forces tended to “cancel each other out” with the consequence being party programmes which were vague and often similar, meaning voters found it hard to identify clear policy alternatives.  In a sense, that took the “science” out of “political science” and the academics didn’t like it, preferring clear battle-lines (Roundheads vs Cavaliers; democracy vs fascism and such) for without clear differences, there really was no politics; all that remained was the dreary business of management.  In retrospect, the APSA likely agrees people should be careful what they wish for and and many contemporary political scientists now argue the system has moved too far in the opposite direction, producing intense polarization and reinforcing cleavages.  Still, we may as well get used to the system because, with cleavages widening and edges hardening, most conclude it’ll likely get worse before it gets better.

Of Vee Engines

Ford FE V8 (left) and Y-Block (right). The frontal view of the FE engine illustrates both why the configuration is called a “vee” and why it would have been understandable had the 90^o engines been dubbed “L8s”.  Ford’s first OHV (overhead valve) V8 (for pick-up trucks & passenger vehicles) picked up the nickname “Y-Block” because the skirt extended to an unusually low point, the additional cast iron thus recalling the tail of the letter “Y”.

The “V” in certain engines (V4, V8, V16 etc) is a reference to the angle of the banks of the block’s cylinder banks when viewed along the line of the crankshaft and the configuration in ICE (internal combustion engines) was used within half-a-decade of the “first” automobile appearing on the roads in 1886, Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929) and Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) in 1889 installing a 565 cm³ (34 cubic inch) V-twin (ie two cylinder) unit in the Daimler Stahlradwagen (steel-wheeled car).  The Stahlradwagen’s V-twin used what was, by the standards of which would follow, a very narrow angle for the vee (quoted usually a 17^o but listed also “in the 20^o class”) and over the years, “vee” engines have appeared with angles ranging between 12.5 and 180^o (while the latter may seem a contradiction in terms, the 180^o vee (e a straight line) is accepted engineering jargon).  The first V8 (1903) & V12 (1904) appeared in what was for each the “ideal vee angle” (90 & 60^o respectively), the number dictated by desire for the even firing intervals to ensure the smoothest power delivery and those pioneers set the template which has tended since to be followed although there have been many exceptions.  Of course, a V8 in a 90^o configuration really should be a “L8” but because the Maybach & Daimler V-twin had established the terminological model, regardless of the angle, such things have always been “V-something”.  

Ferrparts schematic of crankcase parts for the 365 GT4 BB's 4.4 litre (270 cubic inch) flat-12.  According to engineers, this is a "flattened vee".

That’s fine because, conceptually, there’s always a vertex but according to Ferrari, the “Flat 12” engine fitted the various iterations of the Berlinetta Boxer (1973-1974) was also a type of “vee”, despite the two banks of six being horizontally opposed (ie at 180^o); they called it a “flattened vee” which, as Euclid would have told them, there being no vertex, that means they’re describing a “straight-line segment”.  The engineers would have acknowledged the wisdom of the geometers but argued the use was an established convention in engineering to distinguish the two types of “flat” engines (those with pistons which move in and out simultaneously (on the model of a boxer’s gloves) being “boxers” and those in which the pistons move in unison being “flattened vees” or “180^o vees”.  The Ferrari website explains all this while variously and cheerfully calling the engine a “flat 12”, “boxer-type” or “180^o V12”; so, take your pick.  It’s on that site the factory acknowledged the true story about how the original 365 GT4 BB (1973) picked up the “BB” designation and why “Berlinetta Boxer” was concocted as a cover story.

1930 Cadillac V16 452.

At one end of the spectrum, Lancia produced a range of what they described as “narrow-angle” small-displacement V4s and that was apt because the vee was set at 12.5^o, the compactness of the jewel-like power-plant permitting outstanding packaging efficiency.  Less obviously efficient was Cadillac which, for a brief, shining moment, made a 452 cubic inch (7.4 litre) V16 with the two banks eight arrayed in a 45^o vee; that made it a photogenic piece of machinery but it had the misfortune of being introduced in 1930, right at the onset of the Great Depression and although an encouraging 2,500 left the line in the first year of production, demand collapsed and it was only for reasons of prestige GM (General Motors) kept it in the catalogue.  By the time it was withdrawn from sale in 1938, not even a further 1400 had been ordered.  It was in that year replaced by a technically less intriguing 431 cubic inch (7.1 litre) V16 which, built with a 135^o vee, was even less successful, a reported 516 engines leaving the plant although it’s believed only 499 were installed in rolling chassis.  Also with a  vee was the most charismatic V16 of all, the BRM V16 (1947-1955) which was one of those “glorious failures” at which the British are so adept but no grand prix car since has sounded so good.

Factory cutaway diagram of Daimler-Benz DB 605 Inverted V12 as fitted to Messerschmitt Bf-109.

The DB 60X series was literally “an upside-down V12” but it was regarded thus only because the convention had been to mount them in the still familiar aspect.  Equipped with a dry-sump and direct fuel-injection, the angle assumed in flight made little difference to the engine, unlike the early Allied aero-engines which were carburetor-fed.  In combat, that was a great advantage for the German pilots who were fortunate the British didn't accept a spy's offer to supply them with a stolen example of the vital DB fuel pump.  As it was, the RAF (Royal Air Force) had to wait until Bendex developed a "pressurized carburetor" (a type of throttle-body fuel-injection) although the stop-gap "fix" which proved a remarkably effective partial amelioration was "Miss Shilling's orifice".   

In the first half of the twentieth century, the V12 engine held great appeal for the designers of military aircraft because the layout solved several critical aerodynamic and mechanical problems which would have remained insurmountable (and probably exacerbated) had the traditional in-line engines been further extended or enlargedused.  More cylinders meant more power and this the V12s achieved without the excessive length (and thus the dreaded “crankshaft flex”) which would have been suffered by an in-line 12.  The virtues the designers sought were (1) robustness, (2) lightness, (3) power and (4) compactness, the quest always for a better power-to-weight ratio and for this the V12 proved the “sweet-spot”.  The British industry in the inter-war years developed many V12 aero-engines (notably the Rolls-Royce Merlin which became famous by powering all the early Supermarine Spitfires) but because the Germans didn’t return to military aviation until the mid-1930s, they had the advantage of working on a “clean sheet of paper”, one of their many innovations being the “inverted V12”, the most numerous the Daimler-Benz DB 600 series.  In these, the crankshaft was above the cylinders so the cylinder banks pointed downward and this offered several advantages including (1) improved pilot visibility, (2) greater propeller ground clearance (meaning also the larger propellers became possible without needing longer landing gear), (3) easier access to accessories (fuel pumps, magnetos and such at atop, meaning mechanics could fix or replace components more quickly), (4) the fitting of a Motorkanone (a cannon firing through the propeller hub) became viable (5) shorter exhaust stacks and (5) the plumbing for the advanced MFI (mechanical fuel injection) system was both simplified and made more accessible.

Exhaust stubs of left-hand bank of a BRM V16.

Like the DB inverted V12s, some of the BRM V16 had low-mounted exhaust stubs but whether the flow of the gasses had any effect on aerodynamics was never studied although, the breathing must have been efficient because the 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) V16 could at 12,000 rpm generate up to 600 HP.  At full cry it produced the most glorious sound ever heard in Formula One but unfortunately it was at the threshold of pain for those standing close so the system was revised to use a pair of long "dump pipes".

Almost as a footnote, the German designers noted they were able also to exploit the location of the stubs to gain unanticipated benefits from the path of the inverted V12’s exhaust thrust and cowling flow.  It’s overstating things to call it a “jet thrust” effect but that’s how it can be visualized, high-velocity exhaust gases exiting the stacks producing a small rearward thrust component and the engineers experimented to find the optimum length and angle, calculating the “effective thrust” at between 50–150 lb (220–670 N) depending on the power setting and throttle used.  In real-world conditions, this translated into perhaps an additional 25-odd horsepower which may not sound significant in engines generating over a thousand but in combat, it could be the difference between life and death.  Additionally, the aeronautical engineers used an aspect of fluid dynamics to improve the “boundary-layer management” along the cowling (ie using the hot, high-energy exhaust stream flowing along the sides of the cowling to “energize” the boundary layer of air "attached" to the fuselage surface).  What this did was slightly delay any flow separation, reducing “draw” and providing a better flow over the wing’s critical root area.  The differences were slight and subtle but again, in combat happening at altitude, at hundred of mph, inches and seconds matter so it could be the difference between life and death.