Dazzle

Dazzle (pronounced daz-uhl)

(1) To overpower or dim the vision of by intense light.

(2) Deeply to impress, to astonish with delight

(3) To awe, overwhelm, overpower, stupefy.

(4) To shine or brilliantly reflect.

(5) To excite admiration by a display of brilliance.

(6)To be overpowered by light.

(7) Something that dazzles.

(8) A form of camouflage used on early-mid twentieth century warships.

(9) The collective noun to describe zebras.

1475-1485: A frequentative of daze, the construct being daze + le, from the Middle English dasen, from the Old Norse dasa (as in dasask (to become weary)) and related to the Danish dase (to doze, mope).  1475-1485: Daze was a Middle English, back-formation from the Middle English dazed, from the Old Norse dasaðr (weary) & dasask (to become weary), from the Proto-Germanic dasōjan-, from the adjective daza-, which may have been a variant of the primitive Indo-European der- (to hold, support) and related to the Armenian դադարել (dadarel) (to settle, stop, end).  The -le suffix was a frequentative form from the Middle English -elen, -len & -lien, from the Old English -lian (the frequentative verbal suffix), from the Proto-Germanic -lōną (the frequentative verbal suffix) and was cognate with the West Frisian -elje, the Dutch -elen, the German -eln, the Danish -le, the Swedish -la and the Icelandic -la.  It was used as a frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness.

The original, fifteenth century, meaning was “be stupefied, be confused” which many dictionaries list as obsolete but there are certainly at least echoes of that sense in the modern use.  Originally intransitive; the transitive sense of “overpower with strong or excessive light” dates from the 1530s while the figurative sense of “overpower or excite admiration by brilliancy or showy display” is from the 1560s.  As a noun in the sense of “brightness, splendour”, it’s been known since the 1650s.  The verb bedazzle (to blind by excess of light) emerged in the 1590s but is now far more common in figurative use.  The late nineteenth century coining of “razzle-dazzle” originally suggested “bewilderment or confusion, rapid stir and bustle, riotous jollity or intoxication etc but came soon to be used of “deception, fraud; extravagant or misleading claims”.  At the turn of the twentieth century it was used also to mean “a state of confusion” but the modern trend is to use “razzle-dazzle” to mean anything flashy, especially unstructured, inventive performances on the sporting field.  Forms such as overdazzle, outdazzle, outdazzling, overdazzle, overdazzled, overdazzling, redazzle & undazzled have been coined as required.  The adjective antidazzle is commonly used in commerce (often as anti-dazzle).  Dazzle is a noun & verb, endazzlement, dazzlement & dazzler are nouns, bedazzle & (the archaic) endazzle are verbs, adazzle is an adjective, dazzling & dazzled are verbs & adjectives and dazzlingly is an adverb; the noun plural is dazzles.

Dazzling: Lindsay Lohan in zebra-print dress from Balmain's autumn-winter 2013 collection, GQ Men Of The Year Awards, London, September 2014.  Cohort, crossing, harem, herd and zeal have all been cited as the collective noun for zebras but most zoologists seem to prefer dazzle.

Developed first by the Royal Navy during World War I (1914-1918) to counter the German U-Boat (submarine) threat, dazzle camouflage for ships was a counterintuitive adaptation of techniques known to have been used during antiquity, the fleets of both the Greeks and Romans having been painted in shades of green and blue to blend with the surface and horizon.  The modern approach however was rather than concealment, the vessel would be exposed to the enemy.

View through periscope, with and without dazzle.

The British Admiralty adopted the scheme as an experiment.  It had been suggested in 1917 by a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) lieutenant commander with a pre-war background in painting, his argument being that while it wasn’t possible actually to conceal a ship, a suitable paint scheme should make difficult the task of a submarine captain trying to estimate a vessel’s speed and direction while viewing through a periscope for a limited time and that was no easy task in 1917.  A U-Boat captain, while maintaining a distance from his target between around a quarter mile (400m) and a mile (1600m), had to predict the speed and direction of the target’s travel while factoring in ocean currents which could affect a torpedo’s travel, all within the short time he could risk his periscope being visible above the surface.  The dazzle concept of camouflage differed from traditional methods of concealment in that it sometimes made the target actually easier to see but tried instead to make it harder to sink.  A U-Boat carried very few torpedoes and they couldn't be wasted.  The captain had to hit a moving target, often in a rolling sea and to maximize the chance of success, needed the torpedo to hit the ship in her most vulnerable spots and this was done by aiming not at where the target was, but where the target would be more than half a minute later.  The idea of the dazzle was not to hide the ship but to make it even harder for a U-Boat commander to estimate variables like direction and speed of travel.    

After encouraging findings in small-scale tests, the admiralty authorised trials and artists experimented with both colours and shapes, intending usually to distort the perception of the shape of the bow and stern, disrupting perspective and falsely suggesting a ship’s smokestacks or superstructure pointed in a different direction than truly it sat on the water.  Many of the ideas were shamelessly borrowed from modernist art, especially the concepts of cubism, a theft so blatant that Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), in conversation with the American poet and novelist Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), observed the Cubist movement deserved some credit from the Admiralty.

A Dazzled dreadnought, 1919.

The programme spread to merchant vessels and then across the Atlantic.  Soon thousands of ships were painted in lurid colour schemes but unfortunately, the extensive archive of photographs from this era are mostly monochrome which not only fail fully to capture the vivid variety of the artists’ work but also don’t convey the contrasts created by the blues, reds, greens, purples and greys light & dark which created the optical illusions.  Both navies undertook analysis of the losses in shipping to evaluate the effectiveness of dazzle but the results, so impressive in laboratory conditions, were inconclusive, it being statistically impossible to account for external factors but U-Boat captains interviewed after the war attested to the problems dazzle created for them.

RMS Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic in dazzle, Pier 2 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1918.  Painting by Arthur Lismer (1885–1969)

Despite there being no consensus about the advantage of dazzle, allied naval authorities continued to employ it on both some warships and merchant fleets in World War II (1939-1945).  The Imperial German Navy had shown little interest in camouflaging ships during the Great War but did adopt a variation of dazzle early in World War II although OKM’s ((Oberkommando der Marine, High Command of the Kriegsmarine (Navy)) designs were intended to disguise the identity of a ship from surface and air observation rather than raise doubts about speed or direction.  It’s not documented why this was abandoned by OKM but, after 1941, all naval assets were repainted in regulation shades of grey.

Although never as widely used as in 1917-1918, allied navies retained faith in the subterfuge throughout the war although this time it was the Americans who were much more systematic and it wasn’t until late in 1942 the Admiralty released their Intermediate Disruptive Pattern and not until 1944 was a Standard Scheme promulgated.  Wartime developments in radar were already reducing the effectiveness of dazzle and this was accelerated by post-war advances in range-finding which rendered dazzle wholly obsolete.  For decades after 1946, no dazzle schemes were commissioned but (much toned-down) aspects of the idea have in recent years been interpolated into modern "stealth" naval architecture.

Tumult

Tumult (pronounced too-muhlt or tyoo-muhlt)

(1) Violent and noisy commotion or disturbance of a crowd or mob; uproar.

(2) A general outbreak, riot, uprising, or other disorder.

(3) Highly distressing agitation of mind or feeling; turbulent mental or emotional disturbance.

1375–1425: From the late Middle English tumult(e), from the twelfth century Old French tumult from the Latin tumultus (an uproar; commotion; bustle; uproar; disorder; disturbance), akin to tumēre to (to be excited; to swell), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European root teuə - (& teu) (to swell).  Teuə- was a productive root, forming all or part of: butter; contumely; creosote; intumescence; intumescent; protuberance; protuberant; psychosomatic; -some; soteriology; thigh; thimble; thousand; thole; thumb; tumescent; tumid; tumor; truffle; tuber; tuberculosis; tumult & tyrosine.  It’s the hypothetical source of (and certainly evidence for its existence is provided by): the Avestan tuma (fat), the Ancient Greek tylos (callus, lump); the Latin tumere (to swell), tumidus (swollen) & tumor (a swelling); the Lithuanian tukti (to become fat), the Old Church Slavonic & Russian tuku (fat of animals) and the Old Irish ton (rump).  Tumult is a noun & verb, tumultuate, tumultuating & tumultuated are verbs tumultuously is an adverb and tumultuous is an adjective; the noun plural is tumults.  

Nothing good ever came from the DLP:  One of tumult’s few linguistic niches is the phrase “the tumult & the shouting”, clearly a favorite of publishers given the number of books enjoying the title.  One was the 1977 political memoir of Frank McManus (1905–1983), an Australian senator who was briefly leader of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in the dying days of its first and longest incarnation.  While of no great literary merit, it’s an amusing mix of apologia and vicious character assassination, capturing vividly the hatreds which for a generation or more poisoned the Victorian Labor Party following the 1955 split.

Tumult is an example of a word in English where the root has become rare but a derived form remains in common use, the adjective tumultuous more frequently seen (tumultuous noted first in English in the 1540s).  It’s was a borrowing from the Middle French tumultuous (tumultueux in Modern French), from the Latin tumultuosus (full of bustle or confusion, disorderly, turbulent), from tumultus which also provided tumult. Like tumult, the adverb tumultuously and the noun tumultuousness are less common.

Headline writers, whether in print or on-line, famously are fond of alliterations and puns, preferably combined.  It's also one of the few aspects of journalism in which clichés seem to be tolerated and even celebrated.  The breed also has favorite words and one is "tumultuous".  While there are many words which (depending on context), can convey much the same meaning including boisterous, hectic, raucous, histrionic, riotous, stormy, turbulent, violent, agitated, clamorous, disorderly, disorder, disturbed, excited, noisy, obstreperous, passionate, rambunctious, restless, rowdy, turmoil, maelstrom, upheaval, riot, agitation, commotion, pandemonium, strife, rumbustious, termagant, unruly, uproarious, vociferous affray, racket, revolt, revolution, mutiny, unrest, disturbance, hassle, fracas, ferment, turbulence, outcry, convulsion, quarrel & perturbation & vicissitudinous, none work quite as well to encapsulate feeling the and some are not words as widely understood.

For some lives, the only adequate adjective is tumultuous (although "stormy" must have been tempting for some of those writing of Mr Trump.

Hoop

Hoop (pronounced hoop)

(1) A circular band or ring of metal, wood, or other stiff material.

(2) Such a band for holding together the staves of a cask, tub, barrel etc.

(3) A large ring of iron, wood, plastic, etc., used as a plaything for a child to roll along the ground; the hula hoop was a later variation.

(4) A circular or ring-like object (apart, figure, component etc).

(5) In jewelry, the shank of a finger ring (the part of a finger ring through which the finger fits).

(6) In croquet, the wicket (the iron arches through which the ball is driven).

(7) In fashion, a circular band of stiff material used to expand and shape a woman's skirt (sometimes a hoop skirt or petticoat although technically, some don’t contain actual hoops).

(8) In basketball & netball, an informal term for the metal ring from which the net is suspended (the rim).  Also used to refer to the metal ring and net taken together (the basket) and (now less commonly) the game itself (always in the plural).

(9) In pottery (and the products of those which emulate the styles), a decorative band around a mug, cup bowl, plate etc.

(10) To bind or fasten with or as if with a hoop or hoops.

(11) To encircle; to surround.

(12) In circuses etc, a large ring through which performers or animals are trained to jump.

(13) In horse racing, slang for a jockey (Australia).

(14) A style of earring consisting of one or more circles of some substance (metal, plastic et al) and classically a single strand although some have several circles.  They’ve come to be associated with Gypsies (Roma; Romany; Travelers) but this may reflect depictions in popular culture).

(15) A variant spelling of whoop; a whoop, as in whooping cough; to utter a loud cry, or a sound imitative of the word, by way of call or pursuit; to shout (now rare).

(16) In cheese production (as cheese hoop), the cylinder in which the curd is pressed in making wheels of cheese.

(17) A circular band of metal, wood, or similar material used for forming part of a framework such as an awning or tent.

(18) A quart pot, so called because originally it was bound with hoops, like a barrel (used also as a measure of the portion of the contents measured by the distance between the hoops).

(19) A now obsolete (pre imperial system) measure of capacity, apparently between 1-4 pecks.  (In US customary use, a peck was equal to 8 dry quarts or 16 dry pints (8.80977 litres).  In the Imperial system, it was equal to 2 Imperial gallons or 8 Imperial quarts (9.09218 litres).)

(20) In embroidery, a circular frame used to support the thread.

(21) In sports (usually in the plural) a series of horizontal stripe on the jersey.

1125–1175: From the Middle English hope, hoope & hoop (circular band, flattened ring), from the late Old English hōp (mound, raised land; in combination, circular object), from the Proto-Germanic hōp (circular band, flattened ring) & hōpą (bend, bow, arch (which was related to the Saterland Frisian Houp (hoop), the Dutch hoep (hoop), the Old Church Slavonic кѫпъ (kǫpŭ) (hill, island), the Lithuanian kabẽ (hook) and the Old Norse hóp (bay, inlet)), from the primitive Indo-European kāb- (to bend).  Etymologists conclude the original meaning would have been “curve; ring” but the evolution is murky.  The verb was derived from the noun and emerged in the fifteenth century, apparently from the barrel-making business undertaken by coopers (who handled the timber) and hoopers (who fashioned the steel hoops).  Hoop is a noun & verb, hooper is a noun (the surname Hooper a proper noun), hooped is a verb & adjective hoopless, hooplike & unhooped are adjectives; the noun plural is hoops.

Lindsay Lohan wearing hooped earrings.

Although it’s clear hoops as playthings for children date back to antiquity, they weren’t again documented in Europe until the 1400s (where they were used in an early form of physiotherapy) and seem not to have been commercially available only after 1792.  The sport of basketball dates from 1891 and the term hoops (both for the physical components and the game itself) was certainly in use by 1893 although oral use may have preceded this.  The use in circuses (a large ring through which performers or animals are trained to jump) was noted in 1793 but there are journals from travelers in Spain, the Middle East and North Africa which confirm the same devices were being used to train military horses as early as the 1100s.  From this, developed the figurative form “jumping through hoops” which was used from circa 1915 to refer to the obstacles which must be overcome in order to proceed (one being forced to perform time-consuming, pointless tasks in order to gain a job, qualify for acceptance to something etc).

Structural engineering: How the hoop skirt is done.

The hoops (circular band serving to expand and shape the skirt of a woman's dress) used in fashion became popular in the 1540s but similar ideas in structural engineering has been used for thousands of years.  Until the twentieth century, the style never really went away but the size of the hoops certainly waxed and waned as tastes shifted.  The hoops were used for both skirts and petticoats and were fabricated variously from ratan, whalebone, bamboo and even steel and sometimes shapes beyond the purely circular were used, notably the bustle-back style which used the same technique of fabric over a framework.  The term hoop-petticoat appears to date from 1711 while the hoop-skirt is documented since 1856.  A hooptie (less commonly as hooptee or hoopty) is US slang for a dilapidated motor vehicle, dating from the 1920s but achieving popularity when used in hip-hop culture during the 1980s.

1958 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith touring limousine by Hooper.

The hoop snake, a native of the southern US & northern Mexico, was so named in 1784 in recognition of its ability to take its tail in its mouth and roll along like a hoop.  The phrase “cock-a-hoop” (delighted; very happy) was first noted in the sixteenth century and is of unknown origin but may be derived from either (1) the earlier “to set the cock a hoop” (prodigally to live) which implied (literally) “to put a cock on a hoop” (ie, a full measure of grain).  The surname Hooper (maker of hoops, one who hoops casks or tubs) dates from the thirteenth century and was the companion occupation of the cooper who made the barrels.  Hooper & Co (1805) was a UK coach-builder which in the twentieth century moved into the automobile business, catering for the top-end of the market including those supplied to the Royal Mews.  In the 1950s it was noted for its signature “knife-edge” style which, somewhat incongruously, applied one of the motifs of modernity to what was by then an antiquated design idea.  It was also associated with the extravagant Docker Daimlers but it was the end of an era because the move to unitary construction by the manufacturers meant the end for traditional coach-building and their production lines were closed in 1959 although business continued in various forms and in the 1980s, a few one-off Bentleys and Rolls-Royces were made.  Hoopla (also a hoop la) was a coining of US English (originally as houp-la) dating from the 1870s meaning “exclamation accompanying quick movement” and thought derived from the French phrase houp-là (“upsy-daisy” in the English sense), used in Louisiana.  It has come generally to mean “a great fuss”.

Official photograph issued by Celtic Football Club (The Hoops) showing team in traditional green-hooped livery (left) and Lindsay Lohan in a similar style (right) although her choice is presumed coincidental.

The Glasgow-based, Scottish football club Celtic is (along with Rangers) part of an effective duopoly which dominates the Scottish Premiership, the nation’s (FIFA says it’s a country) top-level competition.  The club was founded in 1887 and its first game was a “friendly” against Rangers.  In sport “friendly” is a technical term which means only that no trophy or competition points are at stake and (certainly in the crowd), there is never anything friendly about Celtic-Rangers contests.  As well as taking the majority of the cup competitions, since 1985-1986 either Celtic or Rangers have won each season’s top-flight trophy.  Reflecting their Irish-Catholic traditions, Celtic has always played in green and white and the distinctive hooped shirt was adopted in 1903, gaining them the nickname which endures to this day: The Hoops.

Lindsay Lohan recommends salt & vinegar (S&V) Hula Hoops.

Made from processed potatoes & corn (maize), Hula Hoops are fashioned in the short, hollow cylinders about one inch (25 mm) across.  They were first sold in the UK in 1973 and have been sold (under a variety of brands) in Europe, South America, Asia and throughout the English-speaking world (except North America).  Because the distribution model relied on sea transport  from centralized production facilities, the Hula Hoop business was greatly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and in some cases, supplies to some markets weren't wholly restored until 2022, a problem for HH addicts because apparently, there's nothing else quite like them.  The internet noted Ms Lohan's fondness for salt & vinegar (S&V) but the consensus seem to be the most popular flavor was BBQ Beef (Brown).

Hooters is a US cultural and culinary institution and one of its signature features is the beer being served by a hula-hooping waitress.  Hooters provides an instructional video, performed by Jordan from Georgia.

The staff at Hooters of course use a traditional hula-hooping technique, not only to respect the history but because they pour beer while hooping.  However, for those able to perform in "hands-free" mode, the hoop can be made to rotate in any arc which movements of body-parts permit.

Dream

Dream (pronounced dreem)

(1) Mental activity, usually in the form of an imagined series of events, occurring during certain phases of sleep.

(2) The sleeping state in which this occurs.

(3) To have a dream.

(4) A sequence of imaginative thoughts indulged in while awake; daydream; fantasy.

(5) A vain hope; to suffer delusions; be unrealistic you're dreaming if you think you can win

(6) A cherished hope; ambition; aspiration.

(7) A descriptor of a theoretically possible, though improbable assembly or conjunction of people, things or events (dream team etc).

1200–1250:  From the Middle English dreem from the Old English drēam (joy, pleasure, gladness, delight, mirth, rejoicing, rapture, ecstasy, frenzy, music, musical instrument, harmony, melody, song, singing, jubilation, sound of music).  Cognate with Scots dreme (dream), the North Frisian drom (dream), the West Frisian dream (dream), the Low German and Dutch droom (dream), the German traum (dream), the Danish & Norwegian Bokmål drøm, the Norwegian Nynorsk draum, the Swedish dröm (dream), the Icelandic draumur (dream), the Old Saxon drōm (mirth, dream) the Old Norse draumr (dream) and the Old High German troum (dream), the Old English drēag (spectre, apparition), the Dutch bedrog (deception, deceit), the German trug (deception, illusion) and even the Ancient Greek thrulos.  The Old English was derived from the Proto-Germanic draumaz and draugmaz, the ultimate root being the primitive Indo-European dhrowgh from dhrewgh (to deceive, injure, damage).  The modern sense was first recorded in Middle English but most etymologists assume it must have been current in both in Old English and Old Saxon; the sense of "dream", though not attested in Old English, may still have been present (compare Old Saxon drōm (bustle, revelry, jubilation), and was reinforced later in Middle English by Old Norse draumr (dream) from same Proto-Germanic root.

However, among scholars there are pedants who insist the link is not established.  In Old English, dream meant only "joy, mirth, noisy merriment" and also "music" and much study has failed to prove the Old English dream is the root of the modern word for "sleeping vision," despite being identical in spelling.  Either the meaning of the word changed dramatically or "vision" was an unrecorded secondary Old English meaning of dream, or there really were two separate words.  The words for "sleeping vision" in Old English were mæting and swefn, the latter originally meant "sleep," as did a great many Indo-European "dream" nouns such as the Lithuanian sapnas, the Old Church Slavonic sunu, and the Romanic words: the French songe, the Spanish sueño and the Italian sogno all from the Classical Latin somnium, derived from the primitive Proto-European swepno, cognate with Greek hypnos from which Modern English ultimately picked up somnolence.  Dream in the sense of "ideal or aspiration" dates only from 1931, derived from the earlier sense of "something of dream-like beauty or charm", noted first in 1888.

From Aristotle to Freud

Philosophers and physicians have long discussed the nature of dreams and Aristotle (384–322 BC), a bit of both, included as one of three chapters discussing sleep, the essay  De Insomniis (On Dreams) in his Parva Naturalia (short treatises on nature).  Aristotle pondered (1) whether dreams are the product of thought or of sensations, (2) the nature of sleep, the effect upon the body and its senses and (3) how dreams are caused, concluding it’s the residual movements of the sensory organs that create their existence.  A practical Greek, he also noted some dreams appear to be cause by indigestion or too much strong drink.

Dream analysis: Lindsay Lohan on Sigmund Freud’s couch.

In western thought, not much was added for two thousand-odd years, the more cheerful of the philosophers happy to speak of dreams being the minds of men free to explore their imaginings while gloomier types like Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) thought them but things “caused by the distemper of some inward parts of the body.”  It wasn’t until Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) book The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), that a systematised attempt was made to include dreams as part of psychiatry within the discipline of modern medicine.  Freud acknowledged Aristotle's definition of dreams as "…the mental activity of the sleeper in so far as he is asleep..." was empirically superior to any suggestion of them being something supernatural or mystic, a view that advances in modern neurobiology haven’t challenged although Freud’s views have been much criticised.

Freud’s early thinking was that dreams were manifestations of the sleeper’s unconscious wish fulfilment, what he called the "royal road to the unconscious", made possible by the absence of the repressions of consciousness.  In order to conform to his other psychoanalytic theories, he argued our unconscious desires often relate to early childhood memories and experiences, dreams having both a manifest and latent content, the latter relating to deep unconscious wishes or fantasies while the former he dismissed as superficial and without meaning although he did add the manifest often disguises or obscures the latent.  What was never disguised was that Freud regarded most of the latent, regardless of the form it assumed, as inherently sexual but he later retreated from this, just as he did from his early emphasis on the primacy of unconscious wish fulfilment, noting in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle that trauma other experiences could influence both the existence and content of dreams.

Freud’s technique of free association

Freud classified five separate processes that facilitate dream analysis.

(1) Displacement occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.

(2) Projection happens when the dreamer places their own personal desires and wants onto another person.

(3) Symbolization is illustrated through a dreamer’s unconscious allowing of repressed urges and desires to be metaphorically acted out.

(4) Condensation illustrates the process by which the dreamer hides their feelings and/or urges through either contraction or minimizing its representation into a brief dream image or event.

(5) Rationalization (also referred to as secondary revision) can be identified as the final stage of dream-work in which the dreaming mind intently organizes an incoherent dream into something much more comprehensible and logical for the dreamer.

Freud also held there was a universality of symbols in dreams and his list highlights socially undesirable behaviour in euphemistic forms, a subset of which is.

(1) Vagina - circular objects; jewelry.

(2) Penis and testicles - oblong objects; the number three.

(3) Castration - an action that separates a part from the whole (losing a tooth).

(4) Coitus - an action that resembles sexual behaviour (riding a horse).

(5) Urine - anything yellow in colour.

(6) Faeces - anything brown in colour; chocolate

Although, like much of his work, Freud theories on dreams have become less fashionable within the profession, in popular culture, dream interpretation services based on Freudian systems remain widely read and are a staple of self-help books, web pages and the dozens of dream interpretation apps.

After Freud: Not everything is about sex

Animals often represent the part of your psyche that feels connected to nature and survival. Being chased by a predator suggests you're holding back repressed emotions like fear or aggression.

Babies can symbolize a literal desire to produce offspring, or your own vulnerability or need to feel loved. They can also signify a new start.

Being chased is one of the most common dream symbols in all cultures. It means you're feeling threatened, so reflect on who's chasing you (they may be symbolic) and why they're a possible threat in real life.

Clothes make a statement about how we want people to perceive us. If your dream symbol is shabby clothing, you may feel unattractive or worn out. Changing what you wear may reflect a lifestyle change.

Crosses are interpreted subjectively depending on your religious beliefs. Some see it as symbolizing balance, death, or an end to a particular phase of life. The specific circumstances will help define them.

Exams can signify self-evaluation, with the content of the exam reflecting the part of your personality or life under inspection.

Death of a friend or loved one represents change (endings and new beginnings) and is not a psychic prediction of any kind. If you are recently bereaved, it may be an attempt to come to terms with the event.

Falling is a common dream symbol that relates to our anxieties about letting go, losing control, or somehow failing after a success.

Faulty machinery in dreams is caused by the language center being shut down while asleep, making it difficult to dial a phone, read the time, or search the internet. It can also represent performance anxiety.

Food is said to symbolize knowledge, because it nourishes the body just as information nourishes the brain. However, it could just be food.

Demons are sneaky evil entities which signify repressed emotions. You may secretly feel the need to change your behaviors for the better.

Hair has significant ties with sexuality, according to Freud. Abundant hair may symbolize virility, while cutting hair off in a dream shows a loss of libido. Hair loss may also express a literal fear of going bald.

Hands are always present in dreams but when they are tied up it may represent feelings of futility. Washing your hands may express guilt. Looking closely at your hands in a dream is a good way to become lucid.

Houses can host many common dream symbols, but the building as a whole represents your inner psyche. Each room or floor can symbolize different emotions, memories and interpretations of meaningful events.

Killing in your dreams does not make you a closet murderer; it represents your desire to "kill" part of your own personality. It can also symbolize hostility towards a particular person.

Marriage may be a literal desire to wed or a merging of the feminine and masculine parts of your psyche.

Missing a flight or any other kind of transport is another common dream, revealing frustration over missing important opportunities in life. It's most common when you're struggling to make a big decision.

Money can symbolize self worth. If you dream of exchanging money, it may show that you're anticipating some changes in your life.

Mountains are obstacles, so to dream of successfully climbing a mountain can reveal a true feeling of achievement. Viewing a landscape from atop a mountain can symbolize a life under review without conscious prejudice.

Nudity is one of the most common dream symbols, revealing your true self to others. You may feel vulnerable and exposed to others. Showing off your nudity may suggest sexual urges or a desire for recognition.

People (other dream characters) are reflections of your own psyche, and may demonstrate specific aspects of your own personality.

Radios and TVs can symbolize communication channels between the conscious and unconscious minds. When lucid, ask them a question.

Roads, aside from being literal manifestations, convey your direction in life. This may be time to question your current "life path".

Schools are common dream symbols in children and teenagers but what about dreaming of school in adulthood? It may display a need to know and understand yourself, fueled by life's own lessons.

Sex dreams can symbolize intimacy and a literal desire for sex. Or they may demonstrate the unification of unconscious emotions with conscious recognition, showing a new awareness and personal growth.

Teachers, aside from being literal manifestations of people, can represent authority figures with the power to enlighten you.

Teeth are common dream symbols. Dreaming of losing your teeth may mark a fear of getting old and being unattractive to others.

Being trapped (physically) is a common nightmare theme, reflecting your real life inability to escape or make the right choice.

Vehicles may reflect how much control you feel you have over your life - for instance is the car out of control, or is someone else driving you?

Water comes in many forms, symbolizing the unconscious mind. Calm pools of water reflect inner peace while a choppy ocean can suggest unease.

Rectilinear & Curvilinear

Rectilinear (pronounced rek-tl-in-ee-er)

(1) Forming or formed by straight lines.

(2) In geometry, as rectilinear grid, a tessellation by rectangles or rectangular cuboids (also known as rectangular parallelepipeds) that are not, in general, all congruent to each other.

(3) Of, pertaining to or characterized by straight lines.

(4) In, moving in, or characterized by a movement in a straight line or lines.

(5) In architecture, as the rectilinear style, the third historical division of English Gothic architecture.

1650–1660: From the post-Classical Latin, either from rectilīneāris or from rectilīneus (the source also of rectiline) + -ar, in either case the ultimate sources being rectus (straight) + līnea (line).  Rectus was from the primitive Indo-European root reg- (move in a straight line) with derivatives meaning "to direct in a straight line".  The suffix -ar is from the Latin from -ālis with dissimilation of “l” to “r” after roots containing an “l” thus āris and used to form adjectives (usually from a noun) to convey the sense of a relationship or “of; pertaining to”.  The English adjectival suffix –ar (of, near, or pertaining to) is widely appended, usually to nouns and is not restricted to those of Latin origin (the synonymous forms including -al, -an, -ary, -ese, -ic, -id, -ish, -like, -oid, -ory, -ous & -y).  Rectilinear came to be used in the sense of “a figure bounded by straight lines" by 1728, an evolution of the earlier meaning “straight lined”.  Rectilinear & rectilineal are adjectives, rectilinearity is a noun.

Curvilinear (pronounced kur-vuh-lin-ee-er)

(1) Consisting of or bounded by curved lines.

(2) Forming or moving in a curved line.

(3) Formed or characterized by curved lines.

(4) Of lines, having bends; curved.

(4) In mathematics, a set of coordinates determined by or determining a system of three orthogonal surfaces

1690s: From the Latin, derived from curvi (a combined form of the Latin curvus (crooked, bent, curved) + līneāris, from līnea (line).  The construct of līneāris was līnea (line) + -āris (the adjectival suffix).  The Latin curvus was ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sker & ker (to bend, curve, turn) + -wós (before it became associated with perfect stems, the suffixes -wós- & -us- had a more general function, forming athematic verb participles with the meaning "having x-en").  The earlier form was curvilineal, dating from the 1650s.  Curvilinear is an adjective, curvilinearity a noun and curvilinearly an adverb.

A juxtaposition of curvilinearity and rectilinearity: Lindsay Lohan, Vanity Fair shoot, October 2010.

In engineering, as in nature, matters of rectilinearity and curvilinearity tend to be products variously of inheritance, circumstance, economics or necessity.  In design however, sometimes fashion is allowed (indeed sometimes encouraged) to prevail over function and in automotive styling, the rectilinear (known in its most extreme form as knife-edge or razor-edge design) was a motif which came and went.  In the early days when things were truly little more than starkly functional, straight lines were dominant but the industry also inherited many of the traditions of the architecture of the horse-drawn carriage and embellishments could be quite curvaceous.  Line and curve co-existed in the inter-war years and as interest grew in streamlining to improve aerodynamics, the curves actually assumed a functional purpose.  At the same time, severity of line became itself a defined style, associated with formality and wealth, structurally because the straight lines tended to exaggerate size so the bigger cars appeared larger still and perhaps psychologically because they conveyed a message of casual disregard for something like streamlining, relying instead on power.  The big, bustle-backed limousines of the pre-war years were the exemplars.

Rolls-Royce Phantom IV (1950-1956 (left)), Triumph 1800-2000 Renown (1946-1954 (centre)) & Triumph Mayflower (1949-1953 (right)).

In the post war-years, in Europe and US, designers were attracted to the new.  In Europe that meant the avant-garde while across the Atlantic it could mean anything from restrained formalism to macropterous absurdity.  In England however, there was still a hankering for the familiar and among the coachbuilders (and Rolls-Royce which had begun building its own “standard” bodies) it was “business as usual” and, barely updated, the razor-edged lines returned.  Remarkably, as a niche, the style would be produced in tiny numbers until the 1990s even as modernity overtook the land.  So clearly, on a big scale it worked for the small, exclusive market at which it was targeted, a rolling denotation of wealth and power and this was what attracted others to apply the rectilinear lines on a smaller scale, at a lower price.  The leading proponents were Standard-Triumph which in 1946 released their middle-class 1800 as a kind of shrunken (though no less angular) Rolls-Royce or Bentley.  Generally, it was judged an aesthetic success although it quickly became dated and before long, the company was emulating American cars, their shrunken versions of those rather less pleasing.  The 1800 however maintained sufficient popularity to remain in production for eight years and that encouraged the idea the motif might translate well to something even smaller.  Hence in 1949, the Triumph Mayflower, small, stubby and wholly unsuited to a style which worked only at scale; the only thing more absurd than its existence was that the company designed it with the US market in mind.  The advertising agency suggested advertising it as “the watch charm Rolls-Royce” but whether that was vetoed by threats from Rolls-Royce or watch charm makers isn’t recorded.  A failure in every market in which it was offered (conspicuously so in the US), it was replaced by an anonymous-looking blob which might have designed by someone French in an unimaginative moment or an Italian on a bad day.

1967 Cadillac Eldorado (left), 1971 Fiat 130 Coupé (centre) and 1983 Volvo 760 GLE (right).

Until the oil shocks of the 1970s forced just about everyone to take aerodynamics seriously, the rectilineal would come and go as a fashion trend.  Cadillac’s 1967 Eldorado was an outstanding example and has aged better even than its curvier companion, the Oldsmobile Toroando of a year earlier but probably the high point of the modern razor-edge was Pininfarina’s Fiat 130 Coupé, its dimensions a stylistic sweet-spot which proved as suited to the saloon and shooting brake the designer world later exhibit; regrettably, neither reached production and the coupé proved a commercial failure, albeit one much admired.  That wasn’t something often said of one of Europe’s less successful straight-edged ventures, the 1982 Volvo 700 series.  Looking something like an earnest but uninspired student at a technical college might have submitted for assessment, Volvo at the time claimed it would remain timeless over the years to come while the rounded shapes around it soon became dated.  In that they were certainly wrong, the competition becoming more curvilinear still and soon Volvos nip-and-tuck specialists were finding ways to smooth the corners, not an easy task given the shape the patient was in and something really not possible until the re-skinned 900 was released in 1990.  The 700 had, by Volvo’s standards, a short life but it’s remembered for a bon mot from another designer who mused that it “…might be a good-looking car when they take it out of the packing-case”.

1953 Jaguar C-Type (XK120-C) continuation (left), 1957 Jaguar XKSS (centre) & 1961 Jaguar E-Type (XK-E) (1961).

Curves can be mere styling devices and in the 1960s General Motors (GM) actually created a motif they called cokebottle, summoning the idea of a Coca-Cola bottle on its side, itself evocative of the female form supine.  Plans to trademark the word were abandoned when the lawyers assured everyone using a lowercase “c” and claiming it to be a portmanteau word would fool neither the Coca-Cola company nor the judge.  Sometimes though, the curves were functional, Jaguar in 1950 shaping the aluminum skin on the XK120-C (C-Type) simply to be as low and aerodynamic as possible, the curves bulging only where necessary to provide coverage for the wheels and tyres.  On the subsequent D-Type (and the road-going derivative the XKSS), the impression was that the curves had become exaggerated, bulging more sensually still.  It’s not entirely an optical illusion but the shape is wholly functional, the designers actually lowering the centre, a revised mounting of a now dry-sumped engine permitting a lower bonnet (hood) line and thus a smaller frontal area.  The wheels and tyres remained much the same height so the curvature of the skin enveloping them is so much more obvious on a body otherwise lower.  The remarkably small frontal area did the job at Le Mans; the D-Type nearly 20 mph (32 km/h) faster than Ferrari's far more powerful 375.  By the time the E-Type was released in 1961, it could actually have been done with a little less curvature but we should all be grateful it looks as it does.

1960s original (left), 2022 modern (centre) & 2022 retro (right).

Objects like refrigerators offer designers a little more scope given that a low drag coefficient hardly matters although the modern, rectilinear versions presumably optimize space efficiency, offering the highest internal volume relative to external dimensions.  That said, there’s clearly still some demand for fridges which emulate the rounded style most associated with the 1950s and 1960s, several manufacturers with a retro line and they’re available in the pastel shades of the era.