Pith (pronounced pith)
(1) In
botany, the soft, spongy central cylinder of parenchymatous tissue in the stems
of dicotyledonous plants such as the soft, albedo, fibrous tissue lining the
inside of the rind in fruits such as orange and grapefruit (also called medulla
or marrow although both are now rare).
(2) In
zoology (by extension), the soft tissue inside a human or animal body or one of
their organs; specifically, the spongy interior substance of a hair, a horn or
the shaft of a feather (also called medulla).
(3) In
pathology, the spinal cord or bone marrow (archaic).
(4) In the
veterinary sciences, the soft tissue inside a spinal cord; the spinal marrow;
also, the spinal cord itself (also called medulla).
(5) A synonym
of diploe (the thin layer of soft, spongy, or cancellate tissue between the
bone plates which constitute the skull) (obsolete).
(6) The
soft tissue of the brain (so rare some dictionaries site it as having “never
come into technical use” and now in this context extinct).
(7) The
soft inner portion of a loaf of bread (a regionalism associated with Ireland,
Southern England and the West Country).
(8) As pith
hat or pith helmet, a type of headgear made from the fibre sholapith, worn by
during the nineteenth century by European explorers and imperial administrators
in Africa, Asia and the Middle East before being adopted by military officers,
rapidly becoming a symbol of status or rank, latterly re-defined as a symbol of
oppression, especially because of their association with the British Raj in the
Indian sub-continent.
(9) In mathematics,
the ordinal form of the number pi (3.14159…) (the pith root of pi is 1.439…).
(10) By
analogy, the important or essential part; essence; core; heart (synonymous with
crux, gist, heart and soul, inwardness, kernel, marrow, meat, medulla,
nitty-gritty, nub, quintessence, soul, spirit, substance etc).
(11) By
analogy, significant weight; substance; solidity (now rare).
(12) Figuratively,
physical power, might, strength, force, or vigor; mettle (archaic).
(13) Figuratively,
a quality of courage and endurance; backbone, mettle, spine.
(14) In the
veterinary sciences, to sever or destroy the spinal cord of a vertebrate
animal, usually by inserting a needle into the vertebral canal.
(15) To
extract the pith from (something or (figurative) someone).
Pre 900: From the Middle
English pith & pithe (soft interior; pith, pulp) from
the Old English piþa or pitha from the Proto-Germanic piþô, cognate with the West Frisian piid (pulp, kernel), the Dutch peen (carrot) & pitt and the Low German peddik
or pedik (pulp, core). All were derived from the earlier piþō (oblique pittan), a doublet of pit
(in the sense of “seed or stone inside a fruit”). Both the Old English piþa (pith of plants) and the Germanic variations enjoyed the same
meaning but the figurative sense (most important part(s) of something) existed
only in the English form. The pith
helmet dates from 1889, replacing the earlier pith hat (first recorded in 1884),
both so called because they were made from the dried pith of the Bengal
spongewood. The verb meaning from the
veterinary sciences (to kill by cutting or piercing the spinal cord) was first documented
in the technical literature in 1805 but in livestock management it was an
ancient practice. The Middle English verb
pethen (to give courage or strength)
was derived from the noun pith but did not make the transition to modern
English. Pith is a noun, verb &
adjective and pithlike, pithy, pithing & pithed are verbs and pithful &
pithless are adjectives; the noun plural is piths.
The
Pith Helmet
Headwear from the Raj.
The
pith helmet, known also as the sun helmet, safari helmet, topi, topee,
or sola topee was a lightweight cloth-covered piece of headgear made of the pith
of the sola or shola (Indian spongewood) plant, covered with white cotton and
faced with cloth (usually white, cream, biege or green). Topee (pith helmet) was from the Hindi टोपी (
ṭopī) (hat) and the Urdu ٹوپی (
ṭōpī) (hat). The form has some linguistic overlap, the long -e phonetic suffix (variously and inconsistently as -e, -ie, -ee) often appended to create slang forms, affectionate diminutives or to indicate something was a smaller version of an original. In Indian English for example, a
coatee was a hook upon which one hangs one's coat, something unrelated to the original use in English where a coatee was a coat with short flaps, a mid-eighteenth century Americanism, the formation modeled on goatee, a style of beard at the time especially popular south of the
Mason-Dixon Line. Among the colonists and colonial administrators, by the early twentieth century, the most popular word to use was the Hindu
topi.
Symbols of the Raj, the pith helmet and the G&T (gin & tonic). G&T was a great contribution to civilized life.
Most
associated with the military and civil services of the European powers during
the colonial period of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, pith helmets routinely were issued to or chosen by those going to hot climates. As a general principle, the army used dark
colours and civilians light (even white) helmets but under modern conditions,
the military found them not suitable for the battlefield; the British Army
withdrawing them from active use in 1948 although they continue to be worn on some ceremonial occasions (the famous plumed helmets are now seen less often). Widely
popular now only in Vietnam where it’s a remnant of French influence, its niche
now is in the nostalgia-fashion industry although, as a symbol of white colonialism, use can be controversial.
The Emperor and his viceroy in topis: George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) with Lord Hardinge (1858–1944; Viceroy of India 1910-1916), Government House, Calcutta, 1911. Of fashions under the Raj, the fictional depictions on screen in which white linen suits often predominate can be misleading; pith helmets, especially during the cooler
months, were paired with any daywear. Until December 1911, Calcutta (now Kolkata) was the capital of British India but since the nineteenth century it had emerged as a hotbed of nationalist movements opposed to British rule, the response of Lord Curzon (1859–1925; Viceroy of India 1899-1905 & UK foreign secretary 1919-1924) being the partition of Bengal which made things worse, a massive upsurge in political and religious activity ensuing. Had that manifested as letters to the editor or even "passive resistance" the British might have been sanguine but what happened was a boycott of British products and institutions and a spike in the assassinations of Calcutta-based officials. The British rescinded Curzon's act of partition and relocated the colonial government to New
Delhi, designating the city the new capital.
Over millennia, there have been many empires and the Raj and other European colonial ventures were just unusually large examples of a long tradition. While no two empires exactly were alike, nobody has better distilled their (almost always) unstated rationale than George Orwell (1903-1950) who settled on: "theft" [of other peoples' lands, resources, treasure, women etc] and in the history of the Raj, there are a number of inflection points which, in retrospect, came to be seen as markers on the road to "end of empire". The viceroy's retreat to New Delhi was one such moment and in the 35 years left to the Raj there were others so while the cumulative effects of the two World Wars (1914-1918 & 1939-1945) certainly rendered control of India (and much of the rest of the empire) financially unsustainable for the British, they were merely the Raj's death knell; what would come to be called the "winds of change" had for some time been blowing.
Sir
Philip Mitchell (1890–1964) in plumed pith helmet while Governor of Kenya, with
African tribal elders, awaiting the arrival of an aircraft during the 1952 royal tour, RAF Eastleigh
Aerodrome (Now Moi Air Base), Nairobi, Kenya, February 1952.
It was during this tour George VI (1895–1952; King of the United Kingdom 1936-1952) would die and his eldest daughter would be recalled from Kenya to London as Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022). George VI had been the last Emperor of India, the imperial style a bauble dreamed up in 1876 by Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, later First Earl of Beaconsfield; UK prime-minister Feb-Dec 1868 & 1874-1880), ostensibly as a means of cementing rule in India and emphasising the British Empire was a notch or two above the others in the geopolitical pecking order but also as a way of flattering Queen Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901), a form of "
monarch management" at which old Disraeli was most adept; his technique with royalty he described as "
laying it on with a trowel".
Serving earlier as Governor of Uganda
(1935–1940) and Governor of Fiji (1942–1944), Sir Philip Mitchell was a classic peripatetic
administrator of the type for decades sent here and there by the Colonial
Office and plumed pith helmets were one of the
symbols of viceroys, governors-general and governors, those with a military background tending to
wear them more assuredly.
Lord Lytton (Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1831–1891, Viceroy of India 1876-1880). As well as pith helmets, under the Raj, there was much dressing up.
By the time
World War II ended, few doubted Indian independence would soon be granted; it
was a matter just of working out the timing and the mechanism(s). Intriguingly, even then the pith helmet was
understood as something emblematic of colonial oppression and they had become
unfashionable, their relegation to a soon to be needed suitcase sometimes a
wise precaution, the archives of the India Office (1858-1947) in London
including reports of officials wearing them being abused in the streets and
even assaulted. The sociological
significance of the pith helmet was discussed in The Wrong Topi: Personal Narratives, Ritual, and the Sun Helmet as a
Symbol (1984) by academic folklorists Frank de Caro (1943–2020) and Rosan
Jordan (1939–2025) one anecdote illustrating how things had changed. The language skills of Indian-born General Hastings
“Pug” Ismay (1887–1965) and other officers in the British Army who had served
in India proved useful during the evacuation from France as they were able to
communicate in Hindi over open radio channels without fear of eavesdropping
Germans knowing what was being said.
Ismay had left India in 1936 to take up an appointment with the CID (Committee
of Imperial Defence) but when he returned in 1947 to become chief of staff to Lord
Louis Mountbatten (1900–1979; last viceroy and first governor-general of India
1947-1948) he found it a changed place:
“Ismay was met at
New Delhi airport by his old friend, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck
(1884–1981), then commander-in-chief of the Indian Army. As Ismay stepped down from the plane, he was
horrified to see what Auchinleck was wearing on his head: a beret. Deeply shaken, the only words Ismay could
stammer were: ‘My God, Claude! Where your
topi?’ When Ismay, years earlier, had
last been in India, the topi had been more than a mere hat. It had been a veritable icon. During its heyday from the late nineteenth
century to the late 1930s, no European would have thought of being abroad in
the noonday sun without a topi squarely planted upon his head, and to have
neglected to put one on would have been deemed both improper and unsafe. All of that had changed by the time of
Ismay's return, but the story testifies to the respect that was once accorded
to this obligatory headgear.”
Sir Arthur Porritt (1900-1994; Governor-General of New Zealand, 1967-1972), Government House, Wellington, New Zealand, November 1970.
Although New Zealand was not a place of oppressive heat and harsh sunshine, there too, there was a time when governors-general appeared in plumed pith helmets. A wartime military surgeon, Sir Arthur was a kind of transitional figure as the British Empire became a "Commonwealth of Nations", being New Zealand-born but resident in the UK, he was the country's first first locally born governor-general as all subsequent appointees have been. In another sign of changing times, Sir Arthur was the last governor-general to wear the full civil uniform and, upon retirement, was raised to the peerage, in 1973 taking his seat in the
House of Lords as Baron Porritt of Wanganui and Hampstead.
The exchange between Ismay and Auchinleck was a but footnote in the history of the Raj but seldom has such a brief, insignificant incident so well encapsulated a change so
profound and it struck many including the historian Leonard Mosley (1913–1992)
who discussed the implications in The Last
Days of the British Raj (1961).
Interestingly in Lord Ismay’s own memoirs (1960) the old soldier focused
on more the practical aspects of imperial fashion: “Having been brought up in the belief that
anyone who failed to wear a pith helmet while the Indian sun was still in the
sky was a lunatic, I blurted out, ‘Have you gone mad, Claude? Where is your topee?’ He replied that, on the contrary, we had all
been mad for a hundred years or more to wear such an un-comfortable and
unnecessary form of head-gear.”
The shift in sentiment did though appear in a passage in The Jewel in the Crown (1966), the first
part of the Raj Quartet (1966-1975) by
Paul Scott (1920-1978), set in India during the last years of the Raj. In the book, there’s a post-war scene in
which an officer shocks his more politically aware colleagues by continuing to
be attended by a young India manservant, the man blissfully unaware India has
moved on while he has not.
Although in
Hindi topi meant simply “hat”, by the end of the eighteenth century it had been
re-purposed as a synecdoche, Europeans in India habitually referred to by the
native inhabitants as “topi-wallahs” (ie
wearers of hats rather than turbans). From there, the term became more specialized
and by the mid-1800s, almost exclusively it had become associated with a
particular type of hat, the sun helmet which, with its relatively high crown
and a wider brim, became so emblematic of European colonialism it was used in
advertising and illustrations for many purposes. Not only that but in India it became for the
colonial administrators and many settlers a kind of uniform and a form of
cultural assertion, one recounting: “The topi was a fetish; it was a tribal symbol. If you did
not wear a topi you were not merely silly, you were a cad. You were a traitor. You had gone native.”
Lindsay Lohan in pith helmet with riding crop, rendered as a line drawing by
Vovsoft.
That
attitude illustrates the role of the pith helmet in a way a structural
functionalist would understand and may have more efficacy that Lord Ismay’s
view of it as an essential tool of sun protection. Even in the earlier days of the old East
India Company, the staff physicians had argued sunstroke was the result of a
rise in general body temperature and not necessarily from direct exposure to
the sun, some even arguing the head was not especially susceptible to heat;
they noted Indian adult males got along quite well with a different type of
head protection and Indian women and children generally wore little or none. While the pith helmet was not exclusive to
India, it had not widely been adopted in other hot parts of the British Empire
(such as outback Australia, the Americas or parts of Africa) and historians
have speculated the real importance was psychological, a reassuring symbol of
continuity. Certainly, recent research
has shown hats with wider brims provide much better protection from the sun but
there was a ritualism associated with the things, diaries of travellers noting
how passengers on ships routinely would put on their pith helmet after passing
through the Suez Canal on their way to India and barely taking it off until
entering the Mediterranean on the voyage home.
In short, it was a badge of Anglo-Indian identity.
In other
words, it was an assertion of Britishness or “whiteness” in that it was a type
of headgear worn by Europeans and very seldom by Indians. Tellingly, those of mixed European and Indian
ancestry, wore topis with even more enthusiasm than the English themselves;
with the zeal of the convert as it were.
Jokes about Eurasians wearing pith helmets at inappropriate times (such
as with pyjamas, in the bath or during moments of intimacy) became legion. One often neglected aspect of the pith helmet
shifting during the last days of the Raj from a symbol of authority to one of
shame was that the nature of the British presence in India changed dramatically
during the war as a consequence of the sub-continent’s strategic significance
to the Far East Theatre. During the conflict,
a huge number arrived from the UK (military and civilian) and they often were of
a different social class than those who had for a century made up the
Anglo-Indian community, the overwhelming majority of them of type who would in
pre-war conditions never have contemplated even a visit. Putting a pith helmet on them did not a topi-wallah
make and the old establishment knew the end was nigh, the demise of the hat not
a cause but a harbinger of a change which had begun long before “the stroke of the
midnight hour”.
Topi-wallah Melania Trump (b 1970; FLOTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) in pith helmet, on safari, Kenya, October, 2018.
In common with the more stylish FLOTUSes, Melania
Trump’s choice of clothing pften has been analysed in search of political meaning, a deconstruction her husband escaped except for the commentary about the length he chose to allow his ties to hang and those observations were more personal than political. Mrs Trump, doubtless well aware of the media's interest, wore a pith helmet while on safari near Nairobi, Kenya, attracting from the left criticism for donning a symbol of white colonial rule while from the right, approvingly it was observed a pith helmet had never looked so good.
Presumably,
even if unaware she was courting controversy (which is unlikely), the White
House would have spelled out the implications so the pith helmet must have been
worn to be provocative and the reaction wouldn’t have been unexpected because a
few weeks earlier, while visiting a migrant child detention centre, she choose
a Zara jacket (US$39) emblazoned across the back with the words “I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?” Clearly a garment for a photo-opportunity, it
was worn not while in the presence of the children but only when entering the
aircraft and helicopter used for the trip.
The press of course sought comment which elicited from the White House
the expected contradictory responses which from day one has typified the
media-management of the Trump administration.
Melania Trump in Zara jacket from the spring/summer 2016 collection, 2018.
The feeling among the press
was that whatever the origins of the approach, the “confected confusion” was a deliberate
strategy, unlike what prevailed under the previous administration of Joe Biden
(b 1942; US president 2021-2025) which was merely “confused”. Regarding the Zara jacket, the POTUS said the
message was there for the “fake news media” while the FLOTAS’s communications
chief insisted it was “just a jacket” and there was “no hidden message”. Mrs Trump herself later (sort of)
clarified things, telling ABC News the jacket “…was a kind of message, yes”,
adding it was obvious she “…didn't wear the jacket for the children” and it
was donned only “…to
go on the plane and off the plane.... It was for the people and for the
left-wing media who are criticizing me.
I want to show them I don't care. You could criticize whatever you want to
say. But it will not stop me to do what
I feel is right.” Mrs Trump
went on to reiterate her own critique of the media for being “obsessed”
with what she wears, noting it was only the jacket which attracted attention
rather than any matters to do with child detention or immigration more broadly:
“I would
prefer they would focus on what I do and on my initiatives than what I wear.” It might seem curious a former model would
express surprise at interest being taken in the clothes a woman wears but, well
aware nothing can be done about that, she has proved more adept at weaponizing messages
than most White House staff have managed.
