Succinite

Succinite (pronounced suhk-sinn-ite)

(1) In mineralogy, Baltic (or “true”) amber, so called because of the succinic acid in the fossil resin: often incorrectly applied to fossilized resin (amber) generally.

(2) In non-technical use, a garnet of amber, especially fossilized resin.

(3) In non technical use, an substance resembling amber.

(4) The color amber.

1816: A creation for scientific purposes in modern English with the sense of “amber-colored mineral”, from the Latin succinum (amber) a variant of sūcinum, the construct being succin +‎ -ite.  The root of succus was the primitive Indo-European sewg & sewk; cognate with sugō (juice; sap of a plant).  The Classical Latin is said to be from a Northern European language and was assimilated in form to the Latin succus & sucus (juice, sap) and related to succinic (in organic chemistry, of or pertaining to succinic acid), from the French succinique.  It was a synonym of ambra (amber).  The -ite suffix was from the French -ite, from the Old French, from the Latin -ītēs, from the Ancient Greek -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs).  It had a wide application including (1) the formation of nouns denoting the followers or adherents of a individual, doctrine or movement etc, (2) the formation of nouns denoting descendants of a certain historic (real or mythical) figure (widely used of biblical identities), (3) the formations of demonyms, (4) in geology the formation of nouns denoting rocks or minerals, (5) in archeology, the formation of nouns denoting fossil organisms, (6) in biology & pathology to form nouns denoting segments or components of the body or an organ of the body, (7) in industry & commerce to form nouns denoting the product of a specified process or manufactured product & (8) in chemistry to form names of certain chemical compounds (historically especially salts or esters of acids with names with the suffix -ous.

There’s also the rare adjective succiniferous used with the senses (1) yielding amber, (2) of or pertaining to amber or the plant yielding it & (3) in organic chemistry, of or pertaining to succinic acid.  Ferous (or gerous) are from the Latin ferre & gerere, both meaning “to bear” and surviving in English are over two-hundred words ending in ferous; most of them now obscure and used only in a technical context.  In an illustration of linguistic overlap, the Latin verb succinite was the second-person plural present active imperative of succinō, the construct being sub- (under; below) +‎ canō (sing).  It had the meanings (1) to sing to, to accompany in song & (2) to accord, in agreement with.  Succinite is a noun; the noun plural is succinites.

Succiniferous: Lindsay Lohan wearing Baltic Amber pendant.

The word succinite is sometimes used casually of amber, things which resemble amber or even shades of the color.  Geologists use the more with more precision and within the community there was a long dispute about succinite (Baltic amber), its botanical origin, and methods of distinguishing it from other fossil resins.  The questions were resolved by advances such as infrared spectrometry and speculation about a link with other acids are now held to be unsustainable, the consensus now that amber is coniferous in origin, not as had been suggested in the nineteenth century, from the tree Pinites succinifer.  It seems now clear that the extant Baltic amber came from several species of conifers of the family Sciadopityaceae.  Baltic amber is not a polymer but has a complex, cross-linked  macromolecular structure with the pores filled by components of the structure, an arrangement chemists call a supramolecule, something which both hardens the substance and increases density, accounting for its extraordinary longevity, ancient samples notable for their encapsulated, perfectly preserved plant and animal samples.

Amber alerts.

The term “Amber Alert” is a defined part of public information messaging and analogous with the red/amber/green lights used in traffic signals, amber meaning essentially “proceed with heightened caution and awareness”.  Noting the evidence provided in the well publicized defamation case (John C Depp II v Amber Laura Heard (CL-2019-2911; Fairfax County Circuit Court)), the meme-makers responded.

Most succiniferous: The Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 1917.  This is the only known color image of the room.

Last seen (in crates) in 1945, it was either destroyed in the last days of World War II (1939-1945) or dissembled and hidden somewhere or otherwise disposed of.  Between 1979-2003, with early funding from the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, the old West Germany), a replica was built and installed in the Catherine Palace.  The golden, jewel-encrusted creation, rendered by artisans and craftsmen from tons of amber, was a gift to Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) in 1716, celebrating the conclusion of an alliance between Russia and Prussia.  Much admired during the centuries in which it endured wars, pandemics and revolutions, it was looted by the Nazis in the final months of the war, packed into crates which subsequently vanished.  Either they were lost or destroyed in the chaos or hidden away.

Originally installed in the Charlottenberg Palace of Friedrich I (1657–1713; King of Prussia 1701–1713), the Amber Room was a genuine multi-national venture, the design by Andreas Schlüter (1659–1714), a German sculptor in the baroque tradition, the bulk of the construction by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolfram (1646-1716), already famous for his skill in rendering amber.  It took over a decade to build and upon completion, Peter the Great expressed his wonderment and in 1716, Frederick William I (1688–1740; King of Prussia 1713-1740) presented it to the Tsar, part of his diplomatic effort to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.  Accordingly, along with a selection of paintings, the room was crated and shipped to Saint Petersburg where it remained until in 1755 it was moved to the Catherine Palace (Tsarskoye Selo (Tasar's Palace)) in Pushkin.  Now installed in a larger space, the Italian designer Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was engage to remodel the assembly to suit, addition amber panels shipped from Berlin.  Renovations and refinements continued to be undertaken during the eighteenth century and when complete, the room covered some 180 square feet (16.7 m³) and contained some six tons (6100 kg) of amber, semi-precious stones and gold leaf.  At the time, it was thought one of the wonders of the modern world.

In the Nazi mind, not only was the Amber Room of German origin but such treasures anyway belonged only in the Reich and it was added to the (long) list of artworks to be looted as part of Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union).  As the Wehrmacht advanced on Pushkin, the Russian curators began to attempt to disassemble the panels but their fragility was such it was quickly realized any work done in haste would cause only destruction.  Accordingly, they had carpenters construct a frame over which was glued wallpaper, there not being time even to construct a false wall.  Not fooled, the Nazi looters removed the entire structure, shipping it to be installed in the Königsberg Castle Museum (now in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) on the Baltic coast.  However, the tide of the war turned and in 1943 the museum's director received from Berlin instructions to return the room to crates and this had be accomplished by August 1944 when allied bombing raids severely damaged the castle.  Quite what happened to the crates remains unknown.  It may be they were destroyed during the war or were in the hold of a ship sunk in the Baltic but the tales of them being hidden somewhere has never gone away and continues to tantalize, a solitary panel actually found in Bremen in 1997.  The replica room, dedicated in a ceremony in 2004 by Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) and Gerhard Schröder (b 1944, Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005) remains on public display at the Tasrskoye State Museum Reserve outside Saint Petersburg.

Amber

Amber (pronounced am-ber)

(1) A pale yellow, sometimes reddish or brownish, brittle, translucent fossil resin of extinct coniferous trees that occurs in tertiary deposits; capable of gaining a negative electrical charge by friction and a fine insulator.

(2) The yellowish-brown color of amber resin; of the color of amber; yellowish-brown (not applied to the variety “blue amber” which appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight).

(3) To perfume or flavor with ambergris (rare and used only in the industrial production of scents).

(4) To cause to take on the yellowish-brown colour of amber (now rare and used only as a literary or poetic device).

(5) Certain objects made of amber (jewelry; ornamental articles; relics; fossilized creatures contained within the resin etc).

(6) The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection when safe to do so (green indicating “go” and red “stop”).  In some places the amber is referred to as “orange”.

(7) By extension from the use in traffic management, an indication in other contexts that one should hesitance to proceed or proceed only with caution (sometimes as “amber light”).

(8) As “amber alert”, a public notification of a child abduction (North America), named in memory of Amber Rene Hagerman (1986–1996); technically AMBER Alert, referencing the backronym America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.

(9) In biology, genetics & biochemistry, the stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.  UAG is named “amber” because the first to isolate the mutation was then California Institute of Technology (Caltech) graduate student Harris Bernstein (b 1961), whose surname is the German word for the resin known as amber.

(10) A female given name.

(11) In automotive lighting (often as “the ambers”), the lights of that color mounted so to be visible at all corners or an automobile which flash sequentially in indicate a driver’s intention to turn, change lanes etc (thus known various as “flashers”, “turn-signals” and even “trafficators” (the (originally mechanical) semaphore signals which when activated protruded from the bodywork of a vehicle to indicate an intention to turn in the direction of the illuminated device).  They’re used also as warning lights (four-way flashers) when all flash in unison.  Since the late 1950s, in most markets their positioning, luminosity and rate of flashing has been regulated (sometimes in unfortunately contradictory ways.

1350–1400: From the Middle English ambre & aumbre, from the Old French, from the Medieval Latin ambra, from the Arabic عَنْبَر‎ (ʕanbar) (ambergris), from the Middle Persian ʾnbl (⁠ambar⁠) (ambergris).  It displaced the Middle English smulting (from the Old English smelting (amber)) and the Old English eolhsand (amber), glær (amber) and sāp (amber, resin, pomade).  The seemingly strange confusion between the fossilized tree resin and the ash-colored secretion of the sperm whale’s intestine (ambergris) is assumed to have arisen because the dissimilar substances both were rare, valuable and found on the seacoast.  The word ambergris came into use in the West during the Crusades.  In English, amber came to be used as an adjective by circa 1500 and it was in use as the name of a color by 1735.  Amber is a noun, verb & adjective, amberlike, ambery, anberish, amberesque & amberous are adjectives, ambering & ambered are verbs; the noun plural is ambers.

Actor Amber Heard (b 1986) who seems to have a thing for 1968 Ford Mustangs.

In Europe, the word amber was picked up to describe the fossil resins found on the shores of the Baltic first in the late thirteenth century in Anglo-Latin which, by the turn of the fifteenth had entered English.  Over time, this meaning prevailed and ambergris came to be restricted to the whale’s secretions although there has long been a faction of the etymology community which has suggested it’s not impossible amber is an unrelated word of unknown origin.  Once they were distinguished as white or yellow amber for the Baltic fossil resin and gray amber for the whale’s contribution, French distinguishing between the two as ambre jaune and ambre gris.

Among her inventory of beauty care essentials, Lindsay Lohan lists the long-serving Dior Backstage Eyeshadow Palette in Amber Neutrals as her “favorite eye palette”

In a chemical coincidence, the solidified tree resin possesses remarkable static electricity properties and Baltic amber was known to the Romans as electrum, able to gain a negative electrical charge merely through friction and although rarely used as such, it’s a fine insulator.  In the Old Testament the Hebrew חַשְׁמַל (chashmal) is translated variously as “a shining metal” or “the gemstone amber” but as the light plays upon amber it can recall fire or lightning, the impression strengthened when the substance is stimulated to spark and crackle with static electricity.  The prophet Ezekiel clearly had witnessed the electrical phenomenon and although he'd not have understood the science, in his vision of God’s throne, Ezekiel wrote:

“On this throne high above was a figure whose appearance resembled a man. From what appeared to be his waist up, he looked like gleaming chashmal, flickering like a fire.  And from his waist down, he looked like a burning flame, shining with splendor.”  (Ezekiel 1:26–27)

It was the Lithuania-born journalist Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda (1858–1922) who re-established the Hebrew language as living tongue to be used in everyday life.  In the late nineteenth century, except for a handful of scholars, Hebrew was used only as a Holy language, restricted to prayer and worship in the synagogue, Yiddish the only recognizably Jewish language spoken on the street or in the home.  Something of a prophet himself, he created the first Israeli Hebrew newspaper and dictionary and to make it useful in the modern age, he had to create many new words and one was needed to describe electricity, then a concept understood for little more than a century.  He chose chashmal.  When the Hebrew Scriptures were first translated into Greek some 2,100 years ago, the Hebrew chashmal became the Ancient Greek ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron) and could be used to refer to the gemstone but was used also in the manner of the Phoenician elēkrŏn (shining light).  Seventeenth century English scientists who conducted some of the earliest experiments which began to explain the phenomenon called it electrikus (like amber) and from this came the Modern English electricity.  Ben‑Yehuda’s work was popularized by Judah Leib Gordon (1830-1892), a leading poet of the nineteenth century Jewish Enlightenment whose words were more lyrical than the dry, journalistic lists of Ben-Yehuda would write: “The light, the heat, the steam, and the electricity (chashmal), all nature’s forces are the angels above.”  He added in an explanatory footnote: “By chashmal (hash-ma-LA), I mean the natural force that is electritzitat, since the Greek translation of chashmal is elektrika.”

Immortality of sorts: An unfortunate gecko, trapped in amber 54 million years ago.

The first AMBER Alert, 1996.

The amber alert is a system used in North America to provide public notification of a child abduction (North America), named in memory of Amber Rene Hagerman (1986–1996).  Technically it’s AMBER Alert, referencing the backronym of America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.  Then aged nine, Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in 1996 and a campaign was organized which demanded protocols be established to alert the local population of details which might assist in finding the child (description of suspects, vehicle registration numbers etc).  Initially, the vectors of transmission were local radio and television stations but as technology evolved, other were added including platforms on the internet such as e-mail & social media, electronic traffic-condition signs, advertising billboards and SMS text messages delivered to cell phones.

Most succiniferous: The Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 1917.  This is the only known color image of the room.

Last seen (in crates) in 1945, it was either destroyed in the last days of World War II (1939-1945) or dissembled and hidden somewhere or otherwise disposed of.  Between 1979-2003, with early funding from the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, the old West Germany), a replica was built and installed in the Catherine Palace.  The golden, jewel-encrusted creation, rendered by artisans and craftsmen from tons of amber, was a gift to Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) in 1716, celebrating the conclusion of an alliance between Russia and Prussia.  Much admired during the centuries in which it endured wars, pandemics and revolutions, it was looted by the Nazis in the final months of the war, packed into crates which subsequently vanished.  Either they were lost or destroyed in the chaos or hidden away.

Originally installed in the Charlottenberg Palace of Friedrich I (1657–1713; King of Prussia 1701–1713), the Amber Room was a genuine multi-national venture, the design by Andreas Schlüter (1659–1714), a German sculptor in the baroque tradition, the bulk of the construction by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolfram (1646-1716), already famous for his skill in rendering amber.  It took over a decade to build and upon completion, Peter the Great expressed his wonderment and in 1716, Frederick William I (1688–1740; King of Prussia 1713-1740) presented it to the Tsar, part of his diplomatic effort to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.  Accordingly, along with a selection of paintings, the room was crated and shipped to Saint Petersburg where it remained until in 1755 it was moved to the Catherine Palace (Tsarskoye Selo (Tasar's Palace)) in Pushkin.  Now installed in a larger space, the Italian designer Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was engage to remodel the assembly to suit, addition amber panels shipped from Berlin.  Renovations and refinements continued to be undertaken during the eighteenth century and when complete, the room covered some 180 square feet (16.7 m³) and contained some six tons (6100 kg) of amber, semi-precious stones and gold leaf.  At the time, it was thought one of the wonders of the modern world.

In the Nazi mind, not only was the Amber Room of German origin but such treasures anyway belonged only in the Reich and it was added to the (long) list of artworks to be looted as part of Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union).  As the Wehrmacht advanced on Pushkin, the Russian curators began to attempt to disassemble the panels but their fragility was such it was quickly realized any work done in haste would cause only destruction.  Accordingly, they had carpenters construct a frame over which was glued wallpaper, there not being time even to construct a false wall.  Not fooled, the Nazi looters removed the entire structure, shipping it to be installed in the Königsberg Castle Museum (now in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) on the Baltic coast.  However, the tide of the war turned and in 1943 the museum's director received from Berlin instructions to return the room to crates and this had be accomplished by August 1944 when allied bombing raids severely damaged the castle.  Quite what happened to the crates remains unknown.  It may be they were destroyed during the war or were in the hold of a ship sunk in the Baltic but the tales of them being hidden somewhere has never gone away and continues to tantalize, a solitary panel actually found in Bremen in 1997.  The replica room, dedicated in a ceremony in 2004 by Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) and Gerhard Schröder (b 1944, Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005) remains on public display at the Tasrskoye State Museum Reserve outside Saint Petersburg.

The "tombstone" headlamps on the 1959 Mercedes-Benz W111 sedans (the so-called Heckflosse) were a variation of the style introduced in 1957 on the 300 SL roadsters (W198) and while much admired, were not lawful for use in the US so a "stacked" arrangement was devised which came informally to be known as "Californian".  So attractive was it found in Europe that ultimately it became available in the rest of the world (RoW) but with one difference: the  factory's solution of integrating the amber turn-signal indicators (the "ambers" or "flashers" to many) and side-marker lamps into the assembly was elegant but didn’t comply with the rules.  As explained by automotive lighting expert Daniel Stern, the lit area was probably compliant (the rules specified a minimum 3½ square inches (22.5 cm²) but the intensity and inboard visibility angles would have been inadequate.  A turn signal with its centre 4 inches (100 mm) or closer to the low-beam lamp had to provide at least 500 candela on-axis, which would be close to impossible for a lamp with this construction; turn signals more than 4 inches from the low-beam needed only to provide at least 200 candela.  The RoW cars (left) were supplied with the original design while for the US market some rather ugly after-market lamps were crudely added to the gaps next to the grill (centre).  Late in the 1960s, the aesthetics were improved somewhat by using a larger unit (right) which emulated the look of a fog-lamp, the US cars by then also suffering the addition of side-marker lights front & rear.

Ambergris

Ambergris (pronounced am-ber-grees or am-ber-gris)

The waxy, sometimes opaque (the color from ash-gret to jet black) morbid secretion of the sperm whale intestine, usually found floating on the ocean or washed ashore: used in perfumery and (historically), in cooking & folk medicine.

1375–1425: From the Old & Middle French ambre gris (literally gray amber) which replaced the Middle English imbergres.  The construct was thus amber + gris.  Amber was from the Middle English ambre & aumbre, from the Old French aumbre & ambre, from the Arabic عَنْبَر‎ (ʿanbar), (ambergris), from the Middle Persian anbar & ambar (ambergris).  The word displaced the Middle English smulting (from Old English smelting (amber)), the Old English eolhsand (amber), the Old English glær (amber), and the Old English sāp (amber, resin, pomade).  Most etymologists seem to conclude the Arabic anbar entered European languages via Medieval Latin.  Gris was from the Old French or the Old Occitan gris (grey), both from the Frankish grīs, from the Proto-Germanic grīsaz (grey) and was akin to the Old High German grīs (grey) (source of the modern German greis) and the Dutch grijs (grey).  The now largely obsolete spellings were amber-gris & amber gris and the latter was for centuries the usual form, the single-word spelling not predominate until the nineteenth century.  During the seventeenth century, folk etymologies interpreted the form as “amber grease” or “amber of Greece” and regionally both were for some time in common use.  Until the twentieth century, the clipping “amber” was also in use and this was the original form, the “grey” element appended in the fourteenth century as a point of differentiation after the adoption in Romance languages of “amber” as the term to describe Baltic amber (the resin associated with fossils) and gradually, that use came to replace “yellow amber” (ambre jaune).  In modern use, amber is understood as the color and the resin white ambergris is the whale secretion.  Ambergris is a noun; the noun plural is plural ambergrises (although ambergris is in common use).

Lindsay Lohan in an advertisement for FCUK (French Connection UK).  According to FCUK, their fragrances have never used ambergris in the mix.

Curiously, the knowledge of the origin of ambergris was for centuries lost to European science.  Notes about the relationship of the substance to whales were later found in the papers of the eleventh century physician Constantinus Africanus (a Muslim of North African origin who spent the latter part of his life practicing his profession in Italy) but as late as the eighteenth century the matter was still subject to speculation, some of the theories as bizarre as anything contemplated during Antiquity to explain the existence of the mysterious eel and others were also baffled; both the Malays and the Chinese attributed the source of ambergris to either sea-dragons or sea-serpents.  It was though prized for its scent and authors noted the relationship between color and fragrance: the darker the less pleasing one was to the nose.  However, chefs had to be cautious because as noted by the English poet & satirist Alexander Pope (1688-1744): A little whiff of it, by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to his nose, it is a stink and strikes you down”.  It was thus much enjoyed but only in small doses and rather as a little truffle might be grated today over a plate of scrambled eggs, so was ambergris once used, eggs with a dusting said to be the favorite dish of Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of Scotland, England and Ireland 1660-1685).

Chanel No.5 concentrate.

That a waxy substance which is a mixture of steroid derivatives (consisting mainly of cholesterol) and secreted by the intestinal tract of the sperm whale should be a prized ingredient of the most expensive scents amuses many, some of who enjoy telling those daubed with the stuff they’re wearing “whale shit”, “whale vomit” or “whale snot”.  That’s of course not correct and in some cases, there’s not even a direct connection with the big mammals, even some high-end perfume houses using a synthetic ambroxide rather than ambergris and recent research has determined a gene from balsam fir is a most efficient producer of ambroxide so use of the traditional ingredient might become more rare still.  There’s long been speculation about whether the famous Chanel No.5 even included ambergris and the conclusion of most is that certainly once it did but now nobody is quite sure; Chanel have always declined to comment.  Both the natural and synthetic compounds produce an apparently unique chemical called ambrein and while the fragrance is the most obvious property, the perfume houses prized it also as a fixative, something which extends the endurance of the potency of the fluid (and thus the appeal to the olfactory senses) by reducing the natural propensity to evaporate.  In some jurisdictions the trade in (and even the gathering of) ambergris is prohibited, a reflection of the practice applied to trade in the body parts of other threatened species but the ban has be criticized because no whale is harmed (or even approached) in the harvesting process.

Three shades of grey: White, brown & black ambergris.

Ambergris is expensive for the most obvious reason in a world of supply and demand: rarity.  For reasons not understood, it appears fewer than 2% of sperm whales produce the substance and chunks of it can drift for years in the ocean currents before washing ashore to be collected, either by a lucky beachgoer or (more probably) by professional harvesters who study tidal charts and the migration patterns of whale herds to determine the most likely spots for a crop.  It can certainly be a lucrative business, brokers or perfumers paying thousands of dollars a kilogram and it’s the color (there are three color-based grades) and quality which determines the value, not the volume.  The white ambergris is the highest grade and thus the most expensive, possessing what aficionados describe as a “well-rounded, delicately soft, sweet, marine scent” and one which intensifies with age, an ambergris left undiscovered for years will “cure” finally to mature as a dusty, bright white chunk.  While less exalted, brown ambergris is the most versatile of the three and adaptable for use in more variations of scent, straddling the qualities and characteristics of the white and black.  Brown ambergris is noted for its woodier, tobacco-like fragrance and is probably closest in nature to musk.  Black ambergris is said by some to be almost brutish but, lack the delicate tones of the light shades, this can be an advantage for those formulating something like an aromatherapy oil which will be dispersed over a large space.  Noted for a pungent smell, it uses are limited because to most it seems more faecal than brown or white ambergris, but it’s very primitiveness makes it attractive for the niche market it serves.  In a sense it’s just another commodity so the retail prices do bounce around but the lighter shades tend to sell for as much as US$35 a gram.

Sherry

Sherry (pronounced sher-ee)

(1) A fortified, amber-colored wine, originally from the Jerez region of southern Spain or any of various similar wines made elsewhere; usually drunk as an apéritif.  Technically, a white wine.

(2) A female given name, a form of Charlotte.

(3) A reddish color in the amber-brown spectrum.

1590-1600: A (mistaken singular) back formation from the earlier sherris (1530s), from the Spanish (vino de) Xeres ((wine from) Xeres).  Xeres is now modern-day Jerez (Roman (urbs) Caesaris) in Spain, near the port of Cadiz, where the wine was made.  The official name is Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, one of Spain's wine regions, a Denominación de Origen Protegida (DOP).  The word sherry is an anglicisation of Xérès (Jerez) and the drink was previously known as sack, from the Spanish saca (extraction) from the solera.  In EU law, sherry has protected designation of origin status, and under Spanish law, to be so labelled, the product must be produced in the Sherry Triangle, an area in the province of Cádiz between Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María.  In 1933 the Jerez denominación de origen was the first Spanish denominación officially thus recognized, named D.O. Jerez-Xeres-Sherry and sharing the same governing council as D.O. Manzanilla Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

In hair color and related fields, "sherry red" (left) is a rich hue on the spectrum from amber to dark brown: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates, Liz & Dick premiere, Los Angeles, 2012.

Lindsay Lohan

The name "sherry" continues to be used by US producers where, to conform to domestic legislation, it must be labeled with a region of origin such as Oregon Sherry but can’t be sold in the EU because of their protected status laws.  Both Canadian and Australian winemakers now use the term Apera instead of Sherry, although customers seem still to favor the original.

The Sherry Party

For the upper-middle-class and beyond, sherry parties were a fixture of late-Victorian and Edwardian social life but the dislocations of the First World War seemed to render them extinct. It turned out however to be a postponement and sherry parties were revived, the height of their popularity being enjoyed during the 1930s until the Second World War succeeded where the first had failed.

For Sherry and Cocktail Parties, trade literature by Fortnum and Mason, Regent Street, Piccadilly, London, circa 1936.  The luxury department store, Fortnum & Mason, used the services of the Stuart Advertising Agency, which employed designers to produce witty and informative catalogues and the decorative art is illustrative of British commercial art in this period.

For the women who tended to be hostess and organizer, there were advantages compared with the tamer tea party.  Sherry glasses took less space than cups of tea, with all the associated paraphernalia of spoons, milk and sugar and, it being almost impossible to eat and drink while balancing a cup and saucer and conveying cake to the mouth, the tea party demanded tables and chairs.  The sherry glass and finger-food was easier for while one must sit for tea, one can stand for sherry so twice the number of guests could be asked.  Sherry parties indeed needed to be tightly packed affairs, the mix of social intimacy and alcohol encouraging mingling.  They also brought more men, tea holding little attraction for many.  The traditional timing between six and eight suited the male lifestyle of the time and they were doubtless more attracted to women drinking sherry than women drinking tea.

Novelist Laura, Lady Troubridge (1867–1946), who in 1935 published what became the standard English work on the topic, Etiquette and Entertaining: to help you on your social way, devoted an entire chapter to the sherry party.  She espoused an informal approach as both cheap and chic, suggesting guests be invited by telephone or with “Sherry, six to eight” written on a visiting card and popped in an envelope.   She recommended no more than two-dozen guests, half a dozen bottles of sherry, a couple of heavy cut-glass decanters and some plates of “dry and biscuity” eats: cheese straws, oat biscuits, cubes of cheddar.  This, she said, was enough to supply the makings of a “…jolly kind of party, with plenty of cigarettes and talk that will probably last until half past seven or eight.”

Semaphore

Semaphore (pronounced sem-uh-fawr or sem-uh-fohr)

(1) A “line-of-sight” apparatus (mechanical, hand-held or activated and now even electronic) for conveying information by means of visual signals (typically flags or lights, the positions of which are changed as required).

(2) Any of various devices for signaling by changing the position of a light, flag or other identifiable indicator.  Historically, a common use of “semaphore” was as a noun adjunct (also called a noun modifier or attributive noun) including “semaphore flag”, “semaphore chart”, “semaphore operator et al.

(3) A codified system of signaling, especially a system by which a special flag is held in each hand and various positions of the arms denoting specific letters, numbers etc.  It remains part of Admiralty signals training.

(4) In biochemistry (as semaphoring), any of a class of proteins that assist growing axons to find an appropriate target and to form synapses.

(5) In biology (as semaphoront), an organism as seen in a specific time during its ontogeny or life cycle, as the object of identification or basis for systematics.

(6) In botany (as semaphore plant), a synonym for the telegraph plant (Codariocalyx motorius), a tropical Asian shrub, one of the few plants capable of rapid movement and so named because the jerking motions of the leaves recalled in observers the actions of the arms of Admiralty signallers and the name dates from the Raj.

(7) In programming, a bit, token, fragment of code, or some other mechanism which is used to restrict access to a shared function or device to a single process at a time, or to synchronize and coordinate events in different processes, the thread increments the semaphore to prevent other threads from entering the critical section at the same time.

(8) In figurative use (in human and animal behavior), certain non-verbal communications, used consciously and unconsciously, the concept often explored as a literary device.

(9) To signal (information) by means of semaphore

1814: From the French sémaphore, the construct being the Ancient Greek, σῆμα (sêma) (mark, sign, token) + the French -phore (from the Ancient Greek -φόρος (-phóros), the suffix indicating a bearer or carrier) and thus understood as “a bearer of signals”.  The Greek –phóros was from pherein (to carry), from the primitive Indo-European root bher- (to carry).  The verb was derived from the noun.  Semaphore is a noun & verb, semaphorist, semaphoront & semaphorin are nouns, semaphored is a verb, semaphoring is a verb & adjective, semaphoric & semaphorical are adjectives and semaphorically is an adverb; the noun plural is semaphores.  The noun semaphorism is non-standard but is used in behavioral linguistics to describe patterns of language used to convey meaning in a “coded” form which can be deconstructed for meaning only by sender and receiver.  The form semaphoreology seems not to exist but if anyone ever makes a discipline of the study semaphore (academic careers have been built from some improbable origins), presumably there will be semaphoreologists.

Chart of the standard semaphore alphabet (top left), a pair of semaphore flags (bottom left) and Lindsay Lohan practicing her semaphore signaling (just in case the need arises and this is the letter “U”), 32^nd birthday party, Mykonos, Greece, July, 2018 (right).

Semaphore flags are not always red and yellow, but the colors are close to a universal standard, especially in naval and international signalling.  There was no intrinsic meaning denoted by the use of red & yellow, the hues chosen for their contrast and visual clarity, something important in maritime environments or other outdoor locations when light could often be less than ideal although importantly, the contrast was sustained even in bright sunshine.  Because semaphore often was used for ship-to-to ship signalling, the colors had to be not only easily distinguishable at a distance but not be subject to “melting” or “blending”, a critical factor when used on moving vessels in often pitching conditions, the operator’s moving arms adding to the difficulties.  In naval and maritime semaphore systems, the ICS (International Code of Signals) standardized full-solid red and yellow for the flags but variants do exist (red, white, blue & black seem popular) and these can be created for specific conditions, for a particular cultural context or even as promotional items.

L-I-N-D-S-A-Y-space-L-O-H-A-N spelled-out in ICS (International Code of Signals) semaphore.  One can never tell when this knowledge will come in handy.

Early automobiles were sometimes fitted with mechanical semaphore signals to indicate a driver’s intention to change direction; these the British called “trafficators” (“flippers” in casual use) and they were still being fitted in the late 1950s, by which time they’d long been illuminated to glow a solid amber.  What the mechanical semaphores did was use the model of the extended human arm, used by riders or drivers in the horse-drawn age to signal their intentions to others and although obviously vulnerable to damage, the devices were at the time a good solution although the plastics used from the 1930s were prone to fading, diminishing the brightness.  When electronics advanced to the point where sequentially flashing turn indicators (“flashers”) cheaply could be mass-produced the age of the semaphore signal ended although they did for a while persist on trucks where they were attached to the exterior of the driver’s door and hand activated.

Hand-operated semaphore signal on driver's door of RHD (right-hand-drive) truck (left), an Austin A30 with electrically-activated semaphore indicating impending leftward change of direction (centre) and electrically-activated right-side semaphore on 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Gurney Nutting Touring Limousine (right).

The A30 (1952-1956) was powered by an 803 cm³ (49 cubic inch) four cylinder engine while the Phantom III (1936-1939) was fitted with a 7338 cm³ (447 cubic inches) V12 (noted diarist Sir Henry “Chips” Channon (1897–1958) owned one) so the driving experience was very different but both used the same Lucas semaphore assembly.  Note the "BEWARE, TRAFFICATORS IN USE" notice in A30's rear window.  Because drivers are no longer attuned to look for the now archaic semaphores, some jurisdictions (while still allowing their operation), will permit road registration only if supplementary flashing indicators (now usually amber) are fitted.  In the 1960s many trafficator-equipped cars were modernized with flashers and it's now only collectors or restorers who prize the originality of the obsolete.

Left & right semaphore signals (trafficators): Lucas part number SF80 for one’s Austin A30, Morris Minor or Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith.  In the 1950s, the price may have varied between resellers.

Although the grim realities of post-war economics meant standardization began to intrude, even in the 1950s Rolls-Royce made much of things being “bespoke” and while that was still true of some of the coach-work, what lay beneath the finely finished surface was often from the industry parts-bin and the semaphore turn signals the company fitted to the Silver Wraith (1946-1958) and Silver Dawn (1949-1955) was Lucas part number SF80 and exactly the same component used by the humble Austin A30 and Morris Minor (1948-1971) where the functionality was identical.  Presumably were one to buy the part from Rolls-Royce one would have been charged more (perhaps they wrapped in more elaborate packaging) and that’s a well-understood industry phenomenon.  The internet has made it easier to trace such commonalities but in the 1980s there was a most useful publication which listed shared part-numbers which differed only in the prices charged, a switch for a Lamborghini which might retail for hundreds available from the Fiat parts counter (a busy place) for $12 while those aghast at the price quoted for a small linkage in a Triumph’s Stag’s induction system were pleased the same thing could be bought from a Ford dealer for a fraction of the cost.  Rolls-Royce fitted their last trafficator in 1958 and when Austin updated the A30 as the A35 (1956-1968) flashers were standard equipment, metal covering the apertures where once the semaphores had protruded while internally there was a panel concealing what had once been an access point for servicing.  The Morris Minor, the last of which wasn’t (in CKD (completely knocked down) form) assembled in New Zealand until 1974(!) switched from trafficators to flashers in 1961, the exterior and interior gaps concealed al la the A35.

Left-side semaphore on 1951 Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle).

The Latin sēmaphorum (the alternative form was sēmaphoru) is thought to be a calque of the Italian semaforo (traffic light), again borrowed from the French sémaphore in the literal sense of “signaling system”.  The modern Italian for “traffic light” is semaforo although (usually for humorous effect) sēmaphorum is sometimes used as Contemporary Latin.  Traffic lights have for over a century regulated the flow of vehicles in urban areas but the first semaphore signal predated motorized transport, installed in London in 1868.  It was introduced not because it would perform the task better than the policemen then allocated but because it was cheaper and was an example of the by then common phenomenon of machines displacing human labor.  The early mechanical devices were pre-programmed and thus didn’t respond to the dynamics of the environment being controlled and that applied also to the early versions of the now familiar red-amber-green “traffic lights” which began to proliferate in the 1920s but by the 1950s there were sometime sensors (weight-sensitive points in the road) which could “trigger” a green light if the pre-set timing was creating a needless delay.  Even before the emergence of AI (artificial intelligence) in the modern sense of the term, implementations of AI had been refining the way traffic light systems regulated vehicular flow and in major cities (China apparently the most advanced), cameras, sensors, face and number plate recognition all interact to make traffic lights control the flow with an efficiency no human(s) could match.

ASMR semaphore porn: 1955 Austin A30.  ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) describes the physical & psychological pleasure derived from specific stimuli (usually a sound).  For some this can be the sound of South Korean girls on TikTok eating noodles while for others it can come from hearing semaphore turn-signals being raised and lowered.

Whether it was the early semaphore signals or the soon to be ubiquitous illumined red-amber-green lights, what the system relied on was compliance; inherently, lacking physical agency, a piece of colored glass can’t stop a car but that almost always is the effect of a “red light”.  In behaviorism, this was described as discriminative stimulus (SD) in that the red light culturally is understood as a universal cue signalling a punishment might follow any transgression (ie “running the red light”), thus the incentive to obey the signal and avoid negative consequences (crashing or being fined).  What SD does is control behavior through learned association.  The use of red comes from semiotics and the color is culturally assigned to “stop” (as green is to “go”, these allocated by virtue of historical associations which long pre-date the technology in the same way semiotics are used (and red & blue) to denote “hot” & “cold” water when taps are labelled, meaning for travellers no knowledge of a local language is needed to work out which is which.  In the jargon, the red light is a “signifier” and the “signified” is stop.

Modern Mechanix magazine, January 1933.

Sir William Morris (1877-1963; later Lord Nuffield) held a number of troubling and even at the time unfashionable views and he’d been sceptical about producing the Morris Minor, describing the prototype as looking “like a poached egg”; in that he was right but the Minor proved a highly profitable success.  In the 1930s however, he did have the imaginative idea of adapting the by then familiar traffic light (in miniature form) to the automobile itself.  The concept was sound, Sir William’s proposed placement even anticipating the “eye level brake lights” of the 1980s and the inclusion of green in the code was interesting but the “mini traffic light” wasn’t taken up and lesson which should have been learned is that in the absence of legislation compelling change, the industry always will be most reluctant to invest and not until the 1960s would such mandates (for better and worse) begin to be imposed.

1947 Volvo P444 (1947-1958, left) and 2022 Volvo XC 40 (introduced 2017, right).  Volvo abandoned the semaphores years before the British but the designers clearly haven’t forgotten, the rear reflectors on the XC 40 using the shape.  Volvo also adopted the conventional flasher but not before the modernist Swedes had tried the odd inventive solution.

In idiomatic use, semaphore’s deployment tends to be metaphorical or humorous, the former used as a literary device, borrowed from behavioral psychology.  “To semaphore” can mean “wildly or exaggeratedly gesture” but can also convey the idea of a communication effected without explicitly stating something and that can either be as a form of “unspoken code” understood only between the interlocutors or something unconscious (often called body-language).  “Semaphoring a message” can thus be either a form of secret communication or something inferred from non-verbal clues.  Authors and poets are sometimes tempted to use “semaphore” metaphorically to describe emotional cues, especially across physical or emotional distance and one can imagine the dubious attraction for some of having “her sensuous lips silently semaphoring desire” or “her hungry eyes semaphored the truth”.  Among critics, the notion of “semaphoring” as one of the motifs of modernist literature was identified and TS Eliot’s (1888–1965) style in The Waste Land (1922) included coded fragments, often as disconnected voices and symbols, called by some an “emotional semaphore”, and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989 and another Nobel laureate) was noted for having his characters exchange their feelings with repetitive gestures, signals and critically, silences, described variously as “gestural semaphore” or the “semaphoring of despair”.