Colossus

Colossus (pronounced kuh-los-us)

(1) A statue of gigantic size.

(2) Anything colossal, gigantic, or very powerful.

(3) The internal name for Google's file system, introduced in 2010 and optimized for use in big-machine databases stored in multiple server clusters.  

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the Latin colossus (statue larger than life), from the Ancient Greek κολοσσός, (kolossós) (statue or image, origin uncertain but thought most likely from a pre-Hellenic Mediterranean language) and the word was used by Herodotus to describe large Egyptian statues.  The figurative sense "anything of awesome greatness or vastness" is from 1794, taken from the adjective colossal (of extraordinary size, huge, gigantic), in use since 1712 although, colossic in the same sense is noted from circa 1600 and there are instances of colossean in the seventeenth century, both from the French colossal, from colosse, all forms from the Latin colossus from the Greek kolossós. The noun Colosseum dates from the 1560s, replacing the earlier Coliseum, the name in Medieval Latin for the classical Amphitheatrum Flavium (begun circa 70), noun use of the neuter of the adjective colosseus (gigantic), thought perhaps a reference to the big statue of Nero that for so long stood nearby. Colossus is a noun' the noun plural is colossi or colossuses.

The plural of colossus doesn't often come up in conversation but when it does, the choice is between colossi and colossusus, the latter there to be used by anyone who finds unwelcome, for whatever reason, the adoption in English of classical plural forms.  Not all words from Greek with a Latinised ending -us take the same pluralisation and there's no objection either to colossuses or the Latinized colossi; those who object to either probably suffer the condition known as hyper-correctionism and it is a real phenomenon (the squabble about octopuses, octopodes and the charming octopi) and is ongoing.  All that can be recommended is consistency; in a document, either adopt the English plural forms or use the classical form but don't mix.

Vaguely plausible rendering of how The Colossus of Rhodes may have appeared.

The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  It was a very big statue, erected somewhere near the port of the city of Rhodes, the biggest settlement on what is the one of the larger Greek islands of the same name which lies off what is now Turkey’s Aegean coast.  Taking a dozen years to complete, the statue, construction of which began in 292 BC, was erected to honor Elios, the God of the Sun, who brought the inhabitants victory over Demetrius Poliorcetes (Demetrius I of Macedon; “The Besieger" 337–283 BC) who laid siege to Rhodes in 305-304 BC.  It stood for only sixty-odd years, collapsing during a severe earthquake which struck in 226 BC, contemporary reports indicating the structure fractured at both knees before toppling.  Remarkably, the mostly bronze wreckage was left substantially undisturbed for some eight-hundred years, becoming something of a tourist attraction before, in 654, it was salvaged by Arab invaders under the Muslim caliph Mu'awiya I (معاوية بن أبي سفيان‎, Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān; circa 600–680) who sold it to someone described as “a Jewish merchant from Damascus” who is said to have carted it off on a camel train of almost “a thousand beasts”.

Demetrios the Besieger had a scandalous private life but had a flair for military matters, noted too for innovations in engineering such as the machines and devices built by his armies as siege engines.  However, even the forces he was able at deploy in 305-304 BC weren’t sufficient to defeat the fortifications of Rhodes and eventually, Demetrios was compelled to retreat, abandoning the siege machinery on the island.  To give thanks to the Sun God, the Rhodians granted the commission to build a triumphal statue to Helios to the sculptor Chares of Lindos (Χάρης ὁ Λίνδιος, circa 330 BC-circa 280 BC), a pupil of Lysippos (Λύσιππος; fourth century BC) and, in the dozen years between 304-292 BC, he supervised the construction.

Digitally generated image of statue of Zeus by Phidias,

Before the Colossus, Rhodes had long been famous for its statues, the contemporary accounts probably as unreliable as any Roman histories but even if Pliny’s count of some three-thousand was an exaggeration, the writing of others do suggest there were doubtlessly a lot, many in stone, some in bronze, but nothing on the scale of the Colossus had even been attempted.  There was a titanic statue, as they’re now known, in Olympus, a chryséléphantine (one made from Gold and ivory) study of Zeus some 13 m (42 feet) high, another of the seven wonders although the sculptor Phidias (Φειδίας, circa 480–430 BC) had avoided the fragility inherent in a standing figure by having Zeus sit in a chair.  He had also built a chryshephantine statue of the goddess Athena but that stood but 9m (30 feet) high; by any standards, the titanic Colossus was truly colossal.

Logo of Lindsay Lohan's Rhodes Beach House.

Beach Structurally, the build was executed along the well-understood engineering principles of the age, the base of white marble first installed to which were affixed the feet and ankles, an iron and stone framework gradually formed as scaffolding and structure proceeded in unison upwards.  To permit the workers to reach the highest levels, an earth ramp was built because the heights involved meant a free-standing system of scaffolding would lack the needed stability; when the work was complete, the earth ramp was demolished and the soil carted off.  While the superstructure was built, workers cast the outer skin in bronze using plates, the metal formed with copper melted in large ovens, to which iron, making 10-20% of the mix, was added.  Then the mouton metal mixture was moved in large ladles to be distributed in clay molds, flat structures used to form sheets varying in thickness according to need. Once cast, the rough edges were ground away and the plates polished before they were transported to the building site where they were hammered to the desired shape to be attached to the iron structure,  The thickest and heaviest plates were those rendered for the feet and ankles, complex in the shape of their curves and needing more mass to afford greater stability.  Thus for a dozen years, the thin bronze skin was added to the growing body of stone, each plate fixed to the iron frame and then to the neighboring plate.  Once finished, it was polished to reflect the rays of the Sun so it would shine as intensely as possible, better to honor Helios. 

How engineers would today build a 122 m (400 feet) high Colossus using modern techniques of structural engineering.  An interesting exercise although the Greek exchequer may have other fiscal priorities.

From the laying of the first stone to its toppling, building its destruction lies a time span of but sixty-seven years but the Colossus ranks as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world with Great Pyramid of Giza which still stands after almost five-thousand.  Such was the scale of the Colossus that the ruins still impressed, “…even lying on the ground, it is a marvel" wrote Pliny the Elder (24-79) who noted few men could wrap their arms around the fallen thumb and each finger alone would have stood taller than most other statues.  The earthquake which so damaged the city 226 BC broke the Colossus at its narrowest and thus weakest points, the knees, and given the mass which existed above, there was no chance it could survive.  Although it would be centuries before the list of the seven wonders would exist as the codified canon now familiar, the stature was already famous and the an offer to the pay the cost of restoration was extended by Ptolemy III Euergetes (Πτολεμαῖος Εὐεργέτης, Ptolemy the Benefactor; circa 280–222 BC) of Egypt.  However, an oracle was consulted and their judgement forbade any re-construction so the offer was declined.  Details of the oracle’s pronouncement are lost but it’s speculated the conclusion may have been the earthquake was the act of a wrathful Helios and the ruins should be left where they fell, lest anger again be aroused.  There is no otherwise compelling explanation to account for why so much valuable bronze wouldn’t for centuries be recycled.

A (fanciful) engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes (circa 1540) by Martin Heemskerck (1498-1574).

The exact location remains uncertain but the notion the Colossus straddled the entrance to Rhodes harbor with ships passing between its legs was a figment of medieval imagination, a thing famously vivid.  Given its method of construction, such a thing would have collapsed under its own weight even before it was complete and, had it stood over the water, not only would construction have been challenging but when it fell, it would have blocked the entrance to the Mandraki harbor.  Despite that, in the early 1980s when a large piece of rubble was discovered in the water, there were still romantics who hoped this might vindicate the medieval theory.  There’s little doubt the story of a 60m (200 feet) tall Colossus straddling the entrance to the harbor was the work of opportunist poets and artists, the engineers and architects of the time sufficiently acquainted with physics and metallurgy to have assured all of the impossibility of their vision yet it seems long to have captured the medieval imagination.  Despite all that, it still influenced many even at the dawn of modernity, being one of the inspirations for the Statue of Liberty but that was designed in a way to ensure greater strength and stability, the weight distribution and the dimensions of the base entirely different.  There’s no doubt the statue stood somewhere in the proximity of Rhodes harbor but archaeological excavations have thus far revealed nothing, not unsurprising given the footprint of a vertical structure is much less than a temple or other building, and the urbanization of Rhodes over two millennia mean the site may long ago have been built-over.  The Colossus though would have shared one noted characteristic with the Statue of Liberty: When copper rubs on iron, it creates electricity, especially in a costal environment with salty air.  Like Liberty, the Colossus of Rhodes made its own electricity.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (1911–2005; Premier of Queensland 1968-1987) (left), Russ Hinze (1919–1991; Minister for this and that in Queensland state government, 1974-1988) (centre) & Bob Hawke (1929–2019; Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) (right).  Russ Hinze was a politician who served in the state parliament of Queensland, Australia between 1966-1988.  He held many portfolios, often simultaneously, one of which was minister for roads.  In honor of his impressive girth, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads.

Wartime photograph of Colossus.

Colossus was the name of the world’s first electronic device which truly could be described a computer (being programmable, electronic and digital although the instructions were effected by switches, not stored programs).  It was built by the British in 1943 to break German military codes and was one of the mechanisms which provided the allies with the ultra decrypts, the importance of which to the war effort was of critical significance or merely helpful depending on the historian consulted.  During the war, twelve of the machines were assembled (which functioned independently; clusters and farms then an engineer's dream) but two didn't become functional until after the end of hostilities.  Colossus and the whole code-breaking operation remained a well-kept secret until the mid-1970s and the revelation induced some re-assessment of the strategic and tactical acuity of a number of political and military leaders, many of their decisions once through based on intuition or brilliance now understood as merely the use of good intelligence (ie "reading the enemy's mail").

Wonder

Wonder (pronounced wuhn-der)

(1) To think or speculate curiously.

(2) To be filled with admiration, amazement, or awe; marvel (often followed by at).

(3) Something strange and surprising; a cause of surprise, astonishment, or admiration.

(4) The emotion excited by what is strange and surprising; a feeling of surprised or puzzled interest, sometimes tinged with admiration.

(5) A miraculous deed or event; remarkable phenomenon.

(6) As a modifier, exciting wonder by virtue of spectacular results achieved, feats performed etc; wonder drug; wonder horse; seven wonders of the ancient world etc.

Pre 900: A Middle English nouns wonder & wunder from the Old English wundor (marvelous thing, miracle, object of astonishment), from the Proto-Germanic wundrą.  It was cognate with the Scots wunner (wonder), the West Frisian wonder & wûnder (wonder, miracle), the Dutch wonder (miracle, wonder), the Low German wunner & wunder (wonder), the German Wunder (miracle, wonder), the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish under (wonder, miracle), the Icelandic undur (wonder) and the Old Norse undr (wonder).  In Middle English, by the late thirteenth century, it came also to mean the emotion associated with such a sight.  The original wonder drug (1939) was Sulfanilamide, one of the first generation of sulfonamide antibiotics and best known as M&B (after the British manufacturer May & Baker); it was later largely superseded by penicillin and other sulfonamides.  The verb (derivative of the noun), was from the Middle English wondren & wonderen, from the Old English wundrian (be astonished; admire; make wonderful, magnify), from the Proto-Germanic wundrōną.  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian wunnerje, the West Frisian wûnderje, the Dutch wonderen, the German Low German wunnern, the German wundern, the Old High German wuntaron and the Swedish & Icelandic undra.  The sense of "entertain some doubt or curiosity" dates from the late thirteenth century.

Exactly or vaguely synonymous are conjecture, meditate, ponder, question, marvel, surprise, amazement, bewilderment, awe, scepticism, reverence, fascination, confusion, shock, admiration, doubt, astonishment, curiosity, uncertainty, surprise, fear, phenomenon, oddity, miracle, spectacle & speculate.  The noun wonderment is a noun has been in use since the 1530s while wonderful was drawn from the late Old English wunderfoll and wondrous emerged circa 1500, derived (it would seem) from the Middle English adjective wonders which was first noted in the early fourteenth century, originally genitive of the noun wonder, the suffix altered by the influence of such as marvelous etc; it existed as an adverb from the 1550s, the evolution related to wondrously & wondrousness.  Wonder is a noun & verb, wonderer & wonderment are nouns, wonderless is an adjective, wondrous is an adjective & adverb, wonderful is an adjective & adverb (and a non-standard noun) and wondrously is an adverb; the noun plural is wonders. 

The Wonderbra

Wonderbra advertisment.

The “wonder” in the portmanteau word Wonderbra underwent a bit of a meaning shift, decades after the product was released.  Although best-known for the illusory enhancement the structural engineering made possible, the “wonder” element was originally an allusion to the comfort offered compared with the usually more uncompromising alternatives of the time.  Wonderbra, marketed with an emphasis on the practicality and comfort made possible by innovations in construction, was first trademarked in 1939 by the Canadian Lady Corset Company and was for some years available only in Canada.  Not trademarked in the US until 1955, it wasn’t until 1961 (with the model 1300) that the now familiar, seemingly gravity-defying design was released.

Even then, although the 1300 became the brand’s most popular product, it was thirty years before worldwide success was realized; although it had been on sale in the UK since 1964, sales boomed only in 1992, a success repeated in Europe the next season.  The Wonderbra was launched in the US in 1994 and, assisted by a minimalist advertising campaign featuring Czech model Eva Herzigová (b 1973), became not only a best-seller but part of the cultural lexicon.  The engineering of the Wonderbra wasn’t difficult to emulate and other manufacturers released clones, each with a portmanteau at least as suggestive of “wonder” as it had come to be understood in this context, Gossard offering an Ultrabra and Victoria's Secret a Miracle Bra.  Wonderbra responded to the competition with a novel technical innovation, the Air Wonder, inflatable for "high altitude cleavage".  Included with the Air Wonder was a mini-pump, small enough to fit in a handbag and be thus available for adjustments as circumstances demanded.

Sydney Sweeney, “cleavage hack” PSA, October, 2025.

In addition to her movie work and promotional activities, actor Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) also does PSAs (public service announcements) and in October 2025 posted to Instagram what she described as a “cleavage hack”.  What she did was apply in three dimensions the chiaroscuro technique artists use in two.  In painting, chiaroscuro describes the use of deep variations in and subtle gradations of light and shade in color; what it does is enhance the delineation of character, adding to the dramatic effect.  What the admirable Ms Sweeney did was selectively apply make up to strategic points on her décolletage, the interplay of darker and lighter skin emphasising the effects naturally created by her curves.  Of course, as we know from American Eagle’s recent campaign, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”, one aspect of her genetic luck is she’s less in need than many of a “cleavage hack” but the trick works with flesh in just about any dimensions.  For those without her advantages, the chiaroscuro effect can further be enhanced by using a “wonderbra” of some type and experts caution that because what’s being sought is contrast, users may need to experiment with different colors to determine which best suits the skin tone.  Expertly done (practice makes perfect), a bronzer or highlighter in the right shade will optimize the contours and produce a sculpted look.

Wonderment with no wonderbra required: Lindsay Lohan as an enhanced Hermione Granger (a fictional character in JK Rowling's (b 1965) Harry Potter series), Saturday Night Live (season 29 episode 18), 1 May 2004.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

A pyramid today: They are the only of the seven wonders which still stand.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in 2570 BC and still stands, debate continuing about how it was built, how long the construction took and how many workers were required.  Built as a tomb for the fourth dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Khufu, it was part of a complex which included temples and many smaller pyramids.  Originally, the outermost stones were a highly polished white limestone, many of which were loosened by an earthquake some 600 years ago and over time, all were removed and used in the structures of cities and mosques.  As well as being of interest to architects, Egyptologists and archaeologists in general, the Great Pyramid has attracted cosmologists and mathematicians because of references to the Moon, the Orion constellation, continental gravity and other features of the heavens.  Each side of the pyramid is almost perfectly aligned with the four cardinal points of the compass while the dimensions convert to a ratio that equates to 2π with nearly perfect accuracy.

In the absence of evidence, artists can make of the gardens what they will.

According to legend, the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built in 600 BC and stood until destroyed by earthquake in 226 BC but among historians there has long been debate about (1) whether the gardens ever existed and (2) if they did could they possibly have been the form usually described.  None of that ever bothered medieval story-tellers or poets, some of whom embellished the legend as they went.  Most tales recount how they were by King Nebuchadrezzar II because his wife missed the lush, green gardens of her home and in the medieval imagination they were represented sometimes as a cascading series of rooftops and sometimes dangling from structures built into the walls of the royal palace.  A more recent theory, noting the difficulties which would have existed in creating an irrigation system speculate that the myth may be based on gardens planted not in Babylon but close to Sennacherib at the eastern bank of the river Tigris.

Zeus: Because of the well documented contemporary descriptions, the renditions since are at least conceptually accurate.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (Δίας μυθολογία) was built in 430 BC and was destroyed by fire in 426 AD. Carved from ivory, on a throne of cedarwood, the statue in its right hand held a life-size statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, and in its left a large sceptre topped with an eagle. Said to be some 12 metres (40 feet) tall, contemporary accounts say it occupied the whole width of one of the temple’s aisles, its head reaching to the ceiling.  Debate has long surrounded the fate of the statue, some saying the structure was lost in the fire while others had it moved to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) where if remained for decades before being destroyed.  Evidence about its appearance is fragmentary and unreliable; although there’s no doubt many copies at various scales were created during the 800-odd years it stood, none are known to have survived.

Before the fire: The Temple of Artemis is a popular model for modern re-creations.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Ἀρτεμίσιον) was built in 550 BC and was destroyed by fire in 356 BC though as was the practice then, the structure was rebuilt several times over the centuries.  Unusually by the architectural conventions of the time, it was built substantially of marble and glittered with gold. The scale was impressive: from the high platform over a hundred sculptured columns supported the roof and being at least twice the size of the Parthenon, it was so breathtaking it was said to “rise to the clouds” which literally was rarely true but an example of how exaggeration in social media is nothing new.  The temple functioned also as an art gallery but the centrepiece was of course the statue of Artemis and if the legends are believed it was covered with gold and colourful stones, the legs adorned with carving of bees and animals with the top of the body adorned with breasts, symbolizing fertility.  It was destroyed in an act of arson by a malcontent called Herostratus who wished to secure a place in history by any means and the word herostatic (one who seeks fame at any cost) has endured.  Although made of marble, like the steel & glass Crystal Palace in London, the structure was packed with flammable materials and oils so it burned well.  There exists also a conspiracy theory that the act was a kind of inside job by the temple’s priests who had their own reasons for wanting a new building but neither that nor a reference to the writings of Aristotle which offers a lightning strike as the catalyst for the conflagration have much support among historians.

How to be remembered: The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Μαυσωλεῖον Ἁλικαρνασσεύς), built as a tomb for Mausolus, a governor in the Persian Empire, was constructed in 352 BC and destroyed by earthquake in 1404 AD.  Said to be extravagant even by the standards of personal aggrandizement known throughout antiquity, the work included sculptural reliefs for each of the four sides of the building, commissioned from the leading Greek architects and artists; these soon became something of a tourist attraction.  Almost perfectly square and some 14 stories tall, the base covered some 10,000 square feet (900+ m²) while on each side of the tomb stood nine massive columns supporting a stepped pyramid on which stood by a four-horse marble chariot in which sat carvings of Mausolus and his Artemisia (who supervised the construction).  So famous was the tomb that Mausolus's name became the root for the word for large tombs in many languages.

Pleasing lines: The Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria (ὁ Φάρος τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας) was built in 280 BC and was destroyed by earthquake in 1323 AD.  It sat on the island of Pharos in the harbor of Alexandria and was the world’s first “famous lighthouse” although it was architecturally different to modern structures, built in three stages, all sloping inward.  Built with marble blocks suing lead as mortar, the lowest was square, the middle octagonal and the top cylindrical.  Within the lighthouse was a ramp and “dumb-waiter” used to transport the wood for the fire which burned during the night.  On the lantern floor, a large, curved mirror reflected the sunlight during the day and the fire at night and in clear weather it’s said seafarers could see the light even at a distance of 50 kilometres (30 miles).  The earth’s curvature makes this seem improbable but under certain atmospheric conditions (such as the light reflecting from clouds), it may have been possible.  Also plausible is the legend the light generated by the mirror was so bright and hot it could be used as a weapon of coastal defense to set fire to an enemy’s ships.  Under controlled conditions, because such ships were sometimes coated with flammable, tar-like substances (for water-proofing & timber preservation), it might have been possible but it would have been challenging to achieve this against a moving target.  Such was the power of the legend of the Pharos that the word remains the root for “lighthouse” in a number of languages.

Vaguely plausible rendering of how The Colossus of Rhodes may have appeared.

The Colossus of Rhodes was a very big statue, erected somewhere near the port of the city of Rhodes, the biggest settlement on what is the one of the larger Greek islands of the same name which lies off what is now Turkey’s Aegean coast.  Taking a dozen years to complete, the statue, construction of which began in 292 BC, was erected to honor Elios, the God of the Sun, who brought the inhabitants victory over Demetrius Poliorcetes (Demetrius I of Macedon; “The Besieger" 337–283 BC) who laid siege to Rhodes in 305-304 BC.  It stood for only sixty-odd years, collapsing during a severe earthquake which struck in 226 BC, contemporary reports indicating the structure fractured at both knees before toppling.  Remarkably, the mostly bronze wreckage was left substantially undisturbed for some eight-hundred years, becoming something of a tourist attraction before, in 654, it was salvaged by Arab invaders under the Muslim caliph Mu'awiya I (معاوية بن أبي سفيان‎, Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān; circa 600–680) who sold it to someone described as “a Jewish merchant from Damascus” who is said to have carted it off on a camel train of almost “a thousand beasts”.

Demetrios the Besieger had a scandalous private life but had a flair for military matters, noted too for innovations in engineering such as the machines and devices built by his armies as siege engines.  However, even the forces he was able at deploy in 305-304 BC weren’t sufficient to defeat the fortifications of Rhodes and eventually, Demetrios was compelled to retreat, abandoning the siege machinery on the island.  To give thanks to the Sun God, the Rhodians granted the commission to build a triumphal statue to Helios to the sculptor Chares of Lindos (Χάρης ὁ Λίνδιος, circa 330 BC-circa 280 BC), a pupil of Lysippos (Λύσιππος; fourth century BC) and, in the dozen years between 304-292 BC, he supervised the construction.

Logo of Lindsay Lohan's Beach House at Rhodes.

Structurally, the build was executed along the well-understood engineering principles of the age, the base of white marble first installed to which were affixed the feet and ankles, an iron and stone framework gradually formed as scaffolding and structure proceeded in unison upwards.  To permit the workers to reach the highest levels, an earth ramp was built because the heights involved meant a free-standing system of scaffolding would lack the needed stability; when the work was complete, the earth ramp was demolished and the soil carted off.  While the superstructure was built, workers cast the outer skin in bronze using plates, the metal formed with copper melted in large ovens, to which iron, making 10-20% of the mix, was added.  Then the mouton metal mixture was moved in large ladles to be distributed in clay molds, flat structures used to form sheets varying in thickness according to need. Once cast, the rough edges were ground away and the plates polished before they were transported to the building site where they were hammered to the desired shape to be attached to the iron structure,  The thickest and heaviest plates were those rendered for the feet and ankles, complex in the shape of their curves and needing more mass to afford greater stability.  Thus for a dozen years, the thin bronze skin was added to the growing body of stone, each plate fixed to the iron frame and then to the neighboring plate.  Once finished, it was polished to reflect the rays of the Sun so it would shine as intensely as possible, better to honor Helios. 

How engineers would today build a 122 m (400 feet) high Colossus using modern techniques of structural engineering.  An interesting exercise although the Greek exchequer may have other fiscal priorities.

From the laying of the first stone to its toppling, building its destruction lies a time span of but sixty-seven years but the Colossus ranks as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world with Great Pyramid of Giza which still stands after almost five-thousand.  Such was the scale of the Colossus that the ruins still impressed, “…even lying on the ground, it is a marvel" wrote Pliny the Elder (24-79) who noted few men could wrap their arms around the fallen thumb and each finger alone would have stood taller than most other statues.  The earthquake which so damaged the city 226 BC broke the Colossus at its narrowest and thus weakest points, the knees, and given the mass which existed above, there was no chance it could survive.  Although it would be centuries before the list of the seven wonders would exist as the codified canon now familiar, the stature was already famous and the an offer to the pay the cost of restoration was extended by Ptolemy III Euergetes (Πτολεμαῖος Εὐεργέτης, Ptolemy the Benefactor; circa 280–222 BC) of Egypt.  However, an oracle was consulted and their judgement forbade any re-construction so the offer was declined.  Details of the oracle’s pronouncement are lost but it’s speculated the conclusion may have been the earthquake was the act of a wrathful Helios and the ruins should be left where they fell, lest anger again be aroused.  There is no otherwise compelling explanation to account for why so much valuable bronze wouldn’t for centuries be recycled.

A (fanciful) engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes (circa 1540) by Martin Heemskerck (1498-1574).

The exact location remains uncertain but the notion the Colossus straddled the entrance to Rhodes harbor with ships passing between its legs was a figment of medieval imagination, a thing famously vivid.  Given its method of construction, such a thing would have collapsed under its own weight even before it was complete and, had it stood over the water, not only would construction have been challenging but when it fell, it would have blocked the entrance to the Mandraki harbor.  Despite that, in the early 1980s when a large piece of rubble was discovered in the water, there were still romantics who hoped this might vindicate the medieval theory.  There’s little doubt the story of a 60m (200 feet) tall Colossus straddling the entrance to the harbor was the work of opportunist poets and artists, the engineers and architects of the time sufficiently acquainted with physics and metallurgy to have assured all of the impossibility of their vision yet it seems long to have captured the medieval imagination.  Despite all that, it still influenced many even at the dawn of modernity, being one of the inspirations for the Statue of Liberty but that was designed in a way to ensure greater strength and stability, the weight distribution and the dimensions of the base entirely different.  There’s no doubt the statue stood somewhere in the proximity of Rhodes harbor but archaeological excavations have thus far revealed nothing, not unsurprising given the footprint of a vertical structure is much less than a temple or other building, and the urbanization of Rhodes over two millennia mean the site may long ago have been built-over.  The Colossus though would have shared one noted characteristic with the Statue of Liberty: When copper rubs on iron, it creates electricity, especially in a costal environment with salty air.  Like Liberty, the Colossus of Rhodes made its own electricity.

Meek

Meek (pronounced meek)

(1) Humbly patient or docile, as under provocation from others.

(2) Overly submissive or compliant; spiritless; tame.

(3) Gentle; kind (obsolete).

(4) As meeked, to take a stallion from a state of wild rebellion and make it completely loyal to, and dependent upon, his master (obsolete).

1150-1200: From the Middle English meek, meke & meoc, a borrowing from the Old Norse mjūkr (soft; mild; meek; amenable), from the Proto-Germanic meukaz & mūkaz (soft; supple), from the primitive Indo-European mewg- & mewk- (slick; slippery; to slip).  It was cognate with the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk mjuk (soft), the Norwegian Bokmål (myk) (soft), the Danish myg (supple), the Dutch muik (soft, overripe) and the dialectal German mauch (dry and decayed; rotten).  It can be compared with the Old English smūgan (to slide, slip), the Welsh mwyth (soft, weak), the Latin ēmungō (to blow one's nose), the Tocharian A muk- (to let go, give up), the Lithuanian mùkti (to slip away from), the Old Church Slavonic мъчати (mŭčati) (to chase), the Ancient Greek μύσσομαι (mússomai) (to blow the nose) and the Sanskrit मुञ्चति (muñcati) (to release, let loose).  Meek is a verb & adjective, meeker, meeking, meeked & meeken are verbs, meekish & meekest are adjectives, meekly is an adverb and meekness is a noun; the noun plural is meeknesses.  Despite the occasional appearance, meaknessness remains a non-standard noun.  

Blessed are the meek

The positive sense of meek implies someone is able to remain calm and subdued even when being provoked. Its negative use is more common and describes someone too passive; the sense of “gentle and kind” is long obsolete.  The word meek is often associated with Christian virtue because it became famous due to its use (Matthew 5:5) in the Biblical Beatitudes (the construct being the Latin beatus (very simple, happy) + the Latin abstract noun suffix to produce beatitudo; the beatitudes thus literally “the happiness”), a collection of practical ethical statements to help one live a happy life.  Matthew 5:5 is the third verse of the Sermon on the Mount (and the third of the Beatitudes).  In the King James Version (KJV, 1611) of the Bible, the text reads “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” whereas newer translations tend to prefer “Blessed are the gentle for they shall inherit the earth”, an example of the way translators need to update texts to ensure meaning is maintained, their techniques cognizant of sense-shifts in words. 

The translator’s choice of “meek” in the KJV has been the cause of angst for centuries, especially among those who favour a more muscular Christianity.  Swiss Biblical scholar Eduard Schweizer (1913–2006) held that rather than meaning ”humble or modest”, "meek" should be understood to mean “powerless” and there were antecedents to that view. Theologian James Strong (1822–1894) argued the Greek word praus (πραεῖς) means "mild or gentle" but this does not imply weakness, instead referencing the way in which power is handled; it is "strength under control", the demonstration of power without undue harshness.  The English language has no one word or even convenient phrase conveying both gentleness and power together, a point noted by many scholars to explain the frequency with which "mercy" and "merciful" appear in scripture.

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430).

In the Greek literature of the period, “meek” most often meant gentle or soft but historians and etymologists of the age tend to agree the most accurate interpretation for this verse is “powerless”.  The modern debate long ago assumed a political flavour; Gandhi liked it, seemingly unconcerned whether translated as “meek” or “powerless” but Friedrich Nietzsche was sternly critical, both words to him encapsulating what he damned as the "slave morality" of Christ.  The angst seems however to be a modern thing.  The great theologian Saint Augustine of Hippo thought the beatitudes a self-portrait of Christ, the Gospels from beginning to end a demonstration of the meekness of Christ in its dual aspect of humility and patience, Jesus himself the model of meekness.  As in life so it had to be in death.  On the cross, St Augustine noted, the true victory does not consist in making victims of others but in making oneself a victim: Victor quia victim (victor becomes victim).  In the modern era, victimhood can for many reasons be a thing though the sense Augustine meant now has little appeal.  

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).

Theologically though, St Augustine must be right because, for Christianity to avoid internal contradiction there can be no other view.  That was never likely to appeal to Nietzsche who, even before he went mad (something of a calling among German philosophers), argued that in preaching humility and meekness, turning the other cheek, Christianity introduced a stultifying poison into humanity which destroyed its élan and mortified life.  After Auschwitz, something of an industry has existed to absolve Nietzsche from every accusation, many essentially suggesting he was not against Christ, only against Christians but some remained unconvinced.  French anthropological philosopher René Girard (1923–2015) still thought Nietzsche offered only the two absolute alternatives: paganism or Christianity, the former exalting the sacrifice of the weak for the benefit of the strong and the advancement of life, the latter the sacrifice of the strong for the benefit of the weak.

Augustine and Nietzsche may both have been wrong; it seems it is the geeks who have inherited the Earth: Mark Zuckerberg (b 1984, left), Bill Gates (b 1955, centre) and Elon Musk (b 1971, right).

The line "blessed are the geeks for they shall inherit the earth” is one of many variants of the Biblical phrase.  Appearing in her first collection The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), the last three stanzas of Sylvia Plath’s (1932-1963) poem Mushrooms reads:

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
 
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
 
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

The imagery in the work is of mushrooms silently emerging from the earth, stealthily and inexorably taking over the environment.  As an allegory that could of course have been something political and it certainly wasn’t about mycology, scholars concluding, being Sylvia Plath, it was a comment on the insidious nature of women's oppression, the triumph of the fungi dangling the possibility of resistance and liberation.  So female agency, suppressed by patriarchal hegemony, will be realized as the meek arise and quietly proliferate, the gradualism of the process meaning men won’t realize it’s happening until one day, the demand for equality proves irresistible.  Sylvia Plath had really bad luck in her choice of men.

Technically, Mushrooms was written in syllabic form, the meter determined by the number of syllables per line; in this case five, with two or three stresses and the structure (eleven three-lined stanzas (tercets)) was typical of her approach.  Most eye-catching was her use of enjambment, a technique in which a clause is split at the line or even stanza break to maintain the syllable count.  What enjambment did was continue a sentence from one verse line to the next without a punctuated pause, compelling the reader to scan on uninterrupted if the flow is to be preserved.  That sounds like a dictatorial edict imposed just so the math of the structure can be preserved but, done well, it means the narrative flow is continuous, allowing a leitmotif to be maintained over several lines, something which could be lost were conventional punctuation to be used; even over a few lines with a relative handful of words, a train of thought can be lost.  In Mushrooms, the metronomic effect is one of a quiet but relentless build-up to revolution.

Triple-Face Portrait by Sylvia Plath (circa 1951) tempera on paper, The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Although now commonly associated with modern, free-form poetry, enjambment is an old technique, appearing sometimes in the epic poems of Ancient Greece dating from as long ago as the eighth century BC and over the centuries, although the fashion for it came and went, as a deliberate stylistic tool it never vanished, poets seemingly like it as a piece of “light & shade”, contrasting with the more frequent end-stopping of the formal meter.  In the Medieval to Early Modern period, (especially in Latin and early vernaculars), because there was such an emphasis on meter and rhyme, instances of enjambment became less common but it was never wholly absent.  In the Renaissance there was a great revival of interest in the Classical world which led to early Modern English making greater use of enjambment in an attempt to emulate the fluid, expressive verse of the Ancients and this was something continued by the Romantic poets because of their quest for naturalistic rhythms of speech.  In the twentieth century, the modernists took to enjambment to create a long continuous flow which suddenly and jarringly would end, echoing what composers were doing with orchestral and later electronic pieces.

Of the variants, the best known may be: “The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights”, attributed to US oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty (1892-1976).  Like a few oft-quoted fragments from many, no primary source (speeches, recordings, documents etc) proving the words came from his pen or lips has ever been identified but the quote often is cited in dictionaries, history texts and biographies and certainly it was a dictum the oilman never disowned, few doubting it reflected his world view.  More troubling was: “Blessed are the meek, for they make easy targets” which appeared in the diary of a protagonist in the videogame Postal (1997) a TDS (top-down shooter, a sub-set of the class “Shoot 'em ups” (known also as STGs or shmups) and a sub-genre of action games) in which the central character commits mass-murder with a variety of weapons of increasingly lethality.  Even in 1997 it was a controversial game but whether a line like: “Blessed are the meek, for they make easy targets” still has the capacity to shock is doubtful because, in the US, mass-shootings of civilians (including young children in their classrooms) have become so frequent news of another has just become part of the orthodoxy of modern life, echoing the idea of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who, as the death toll in World War II (1939-1945) rose observed: “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

Defiant

Defiant (pronounced dih-fahy-uhnt)

Characterized by defiance or a willingness to defy; boldly resistant or challenging.

1830s: From the French défiant, from the Old French, present participle of the verb défier (to challenge, defy, provoke), the construct thus def(y) + “i” + -ant.  Defy dates from the mid thirteenth century and was from the Middle English defien, from the Old French desfier, from the Vulgar Latin disfidare (renounce one's faith), the construct being dis- (away) + fidus (faithful).  The construct in French was thus des- (in the sense of negation) + fier (to trust), (from the Vulgar Latin fīdāre, from the Classical Latin fīdere (fidelity),  In the fourteenth century, the meaning shifted from “be disloyal” to “challenge”.  The suffix –ant was from the Middle English –ant & -aunt, partly from the Old French -ant, from Latin -āns; and partly (in adjectival derivations) a continuation of the use of the Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from the Old English -ende ( the present participle ending).  Extensively used in the sciences (especially medicine and pathology), the agent noun was derived from verb.  It was used to create adjectives (1) corresponding to a noun in -ance, having the sense of "exhibiting (the condition or process described by the noun)" and (2) derived from a verb, having the senses of: (2a) "doing (the verbal action)", and/or (2b) "prone/tending to do (the verbal action)".  In English, many of the words to which –ant was appended were not coined in English but borrowed from the Old French, Middle French or Modern French.  The negative adjectival forms are non-defiant & undefiant although there is a kind of middle ground described by quasi-defiant, semi-defiant & half-defiant, the latter three sometimes used in military conflicts where, for whatever reason, it’s been necessary (or at least desirable) for a force to offer a “token resistance” prior to an inevitable defeat.  The adjective over-defiant refers to a resistance or recalcitrance, the extent or duration of which is not justified by the circumstances; in such cases the comparative is “more defiant” and the superlative “most defiant”.  Defiant is a noun & adjective, defiantness is a noun and defiantly is an adverb; the noun plural is defiants.

Defiance in politics: use with caution

The commonly used synonyms include rebellious, direful, truculent, insolent, rebellious, recalcitrant, refractory, contumacious & insubordinate but in diplomacy, such words must be chosen with care because what is one context may be a compliment, in another it may be a slight.  This was in 1993 discovered by Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who labelled Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad (b 1925; prime minister of Malaysia 1981-2003 & 2018-2020) one of the “recalcitrant” when the latter declined to attend a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  For historic reasons, Dr Mahathir was sensitive to the memories of the imperialist oppressors telling colonized people what to do and interpreted Mr Keating’s phrase as a suggestion he should be more obedient (the most commonly used antonym of defiant, the others including obedient & submissive).  Things could quickly have been resolved (Dr Mahathir of the “forgive but not forget” school of IR (international relations)) but, unfortunately, Mr Keating was brought up in the gut-wrenching “never apologize” tradition of the right-wing of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party so what could have been handled as a clumsy linguistic gaffe was allowed to drag on.

Circa 1933 Chinese propaganda poster featuring a portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Chung-cheng).  Set in an oval frame below flags alongside stylized Chinese lettering, the generalissimo is depicted wearing his ceremonial full-dress uniform with decorations.

The admission an opponent is being “defiant” must also sometimes be left unsaid.  Ever since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) in 1949 fled mainland China, settling on and assuming control of the island of Taiwan, the status of the place has been contested, most dramatically in the incidents which flare up occasionally in the in the straits between the island and the mainland, remembered as the First (1954–1955), Second (1958) and Third (1995-1996) Taiwan Strait Crises which, although sometimes in retrospect treated as sabre rattling or what Hun Sen (b 1952; prime minister (in one form or another) 1985-2023) might have called “the boys letting off steam”, were at the time serious incidents, each with the potential to escalate into something worse.  Strategically, the first two crises were interesting studies in Cold War politics, the two sides at one stage exchanging information about when and where their shelling would be aimed, permitting troops to be withdrawn from the relevant areas on the day.  Better to facilitate administrative arrangements, each side’s shelling took place on alternate days, satisfying honor on both sides.  The other landmark incident was China’s seat at the United Nations (UN), held by the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) between 1945-1971 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (the mainland) since.

Jiefang Taiwan, xiaomie Jiangzei canyu (Liberate Taiwan, and wipe out the remnants of the bandit Chiang) by Yang Keyang (楊可楊) and Zhao Yannian (趙延年). 

A 1954 PRC propaganda poster printed as part of anti-Taiwan campaign during first Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-1955), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek depicted as a scarecrow erected on Taiwan by the US government and military. Note the color of the generalissimo’s cracked and disfigured head (tied to a pole) and the similarity to the color of the American also shown.  The artists have included some of the accoutrements often associated with Chiang’s uniforms: white gloves, boots and a ceremonial sword.  The relationship between Chiang and the leaders of PRC who defeated his army, Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong. 1893–1976; paramount leader of PRC 1949-1976) and Zhou Enlai (1898–1976; PRC premier 1949-1976) was interesting.  Even after decades of defiance in his renegade province, Mao and Zhou still referred to him, apparently genuinely, as “our friend”, an expression which surprised both Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) and Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1973 & secretary of state 1973-1977) who met the chairman and premier during their historic mission to Peking in 1972.

A toast: Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (left) and  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (right), celebrating the Japanese surrender, Chongqing, China, September 1945.  After this visit, they would never meet again.

Most people, apparently even within the PRC, casually refer to the place as “Taiwan” but state and non-governmental entities, anxious not to upset Beijing, use a variety of terms including “Chinese Taipei” (the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football) & its continental confederations (AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA)), “Taiwan District” (the World Bank) and “Taiwan Province of China” (the International Monetary Fund (IMF)).  Taiwan’s government uses an almost declarative “Republic of China” which is the name adopted for China after the fall of the Qing dynasty and used between 1912-1949 and even “Chinese Taipai” isn’t without controversy, “Taipei” being the Taiwanese spelling whereas Beijing prefers “Taibei,” the spelling used in the mainland’s Pinyin system.  There have been variations on those themes and there’s also the mysterious “Formosa”, use of which persisted in the English-speaking world well into the twentieth century, despite the Republic of Formosa existing on the island of Taiwan for only a few months in 1895.  The origin of the name Formosa lies in the island in 1542 being named Ilha Formosa (beautiful island) by Portuguese sailors who had noticed it didn’t appear on their charts.  From there, most admiralties in Europe and the English-speaking world updated their charts, use of Formosa not fading until the 1970s.

All that history is well-known, if sometimes subject to differing interpretations but some mystery surrounds the term “renegade province”, used in recent years with such frequency that a general perception seems to have formed that it’s Beijing’s official (or at least preferred) description of the recalcitrant island.  That it’s certainly not but in both the popular-press and specialist journals, the phrase “renegade province” is habitually used to describe Beijing’s views of Taiwan.  Given that Beijing actually calls Taiwan the “Taiwan Province” (sometimes styled as “Taiwan District” but there seems no substantive difference in meaning) and has explicitly maintained it reserves the right to reclaim the territory (by use of military invasion if need be), it’s certainly not unreasonable to assume that does reflect the politburo's view but within the PRC, “renegade province” is so rare (in Chinese or English) as to be effectively non-existent, the reason said to be that rather than a renegade, the island is thought of as a province pretending to be independent; delusional rather than defiant.  Researchers have looked into the matter when the phrase “renegade province” was first used in English when describing Taiwan.  There may be older or more obscure material which isn’t indexed or hasn’t been digitized but of that which can be searched, the first reference appears to be in a US literary journal from 1973 (which, it later transpired, received secret funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)).  It took a while to catch on but, appearing first in the New York Times in 1982, became a favorite during the administration of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) and has been part of the standard language of commentary since.  Diplomats, aware of Beijing's views on the matter, tend to avoid the phrase, maintaining the “delusional rather than defiant” line.

Picture of defiance: Official State Portrait of Vladimir Putin (2002), oil on canvas by Igor Babailov (b 1965).

The idea of a territory being a “renegade province” can be of great political, psychological (and ultimately military) significance.  The core justification used by Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) when explaining why his “special military operation” against Ukraine in 2022 was not an “invasion” or “war of aggression” (he probably concedes it may be a “state of armed conflict”) was that he denied Ukraine was a sovereign, independent state and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy (b 1978, president of Ukraine since 2019) was not a legitimate president.  In other words, Ukraine is merely a region of the modern Russia in something of the way it was once one of the 15 constituent SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union.  Although the Kremlin doesn’t use the phrase, in Mr Putin’s world view, Ukraine is a renegade province and he likely believes that applies also to the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia) and possibly other former SSRs.  Lake many, the CCP is watching events in Ukraine with great interest and, as recent “exercises” seem to suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have sufficiently honed their techniques to execute either a blockade (which would be an “act of war”) or a “quarantine” (which would not), the attention of Western analysts is now focused on the hardly secret training being undertaken to perfect what’s needed for the triphibious operations demanded by a full-scale invasion.  The US think-tanks which think much about this possibility have suggested “some time” in 2027 as the likely point at which the military high command would assure the CCP’s central committee such a thing is possible.  What will happen will then depend upon (1) the state of things in the PRC and (2) the CCP’s assessment of how the long-term “strategic ambiguity” of Washington would manifest were an attempt made to finish the “unfinished business” of 1949.

Lindsay Lohan, who has lived a life of defiance.

The objectification of women’s body parts has of course been a theme in Western culture since at least Antiquity but rarely can as much attention been devoted to a single fingernail as the one photographed on Lindsay Lohan’s hand in July 2010 (during her “troubled starlet” phase).  The text printed on the fingernail was sufficiently explicit not to need a academic deconstruction of its alleged meaning, given image was taken when she sitting in court listening to a judge sentence her for one of her many transgressions; the consensus was the text was there to send a “defiant message” the internet’s collective conclusion (which wasn’t restricted to entertainment and celebrity sites) presumably reinforced by the nail being on the middle finger.  Ms Lohan admitted to fining this perplexing, tweeting on X (then known as Twitter) it was merely a manicure and had “…nothing to do w/court, it's an airbrush design from a stencil.”  So, rather than digital defiance, it was fashion.  Attributing a motif of defiance to Ms Lohan wasn’t unusual during “troubled starlet” phase, one site assessing a chronological montage of her famous mug shots before concluding with each successive shot, “Lindsay's face becomes more defiant — a young woman hardening herself against a world that had turned her into a punch-line”.

The Bolton-Paul Defiant (1939-1943)

The Parthian shot was a military tactic, used by mounted cavalry and made famous by the Parthians, an ancient people of the Persian lands (the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979).  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the Parthian archers would, in full gallop, turn their bodies backward to shoot at the pursuing enemy.  This demanded both fine equestrian skills (a soldier’ hands occupied by his bows & arrows) and great confidence in one's mount, something gained only by time spent between man & beast.  To make the achievement more admirable still, the Parthians used neither stirrups nor spurs, relying solely on pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping mounts and, with varying degrees of success, the tactic was adopted by many mounted military formations of the era including the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Magyars, and Mongols.  The Parthian Empire existed between 247 BC–224 AD.  The Royal Air Force (RAF) tried a variation of the Parthian shot with Bolton-Paul Defiant, a single-engined fighter and Battle of Britain contemporary of the better remembered Spitfire and Hurricane.  Uniquely, the Defiant had no forward-firing armaments, all its firepower being concentrated in four .303 machine guns in a turret behind the pilot.  The theory behind the design dates from the 1930s when the latest multi-engined monoplane bombers were much faster than contemporary single-engined biplane fighters then in service. The RAF considered its new generation of heavily-armed bombers would be able to penetrate enemy airspace and defend themselves without a fighter escort and this of course implied enemy bombers would similarly be able to penetrate British airspace with some degree of impunity.

Bolton-Paul Defiant.

By 1935, the concept of a turret-armed fighter emerged.  The RAF anticipated having to defend the British Isles against massed formations of unescorted enemy bombers and, in theory, turret-armed fighters would be able approach formations from below or from the side and coordinate their fire.  In design terms, it was a return to what often was done early in the World War I, though that had been technologically deterministic, it being then quite an engineering challenge to produce reliable and safe (in the sense of not damaging the craft's own propeller) forward-firing guns.  Deployed not as intended, but as a fighter used against escorted bombers, the Defiant enjoyed considerable early success, essentially because at attack-range, it appeared to be a Hurricane and the German fighter pilots were of course tempted attack from above and behind, the classic hunter's tactic.  They were course met by the the Defiant's formidable battery.  However, the Luftwaffe learned quickly, unlike the RAF which for too long persisted with their pre-war formations which were neat and precise but also excellent targets.  Soon the vulnerability of the Defiant resulted in losses so heavy its deployment was unsustainable and it was withdrawn from front-line combat.  It did though subsequently proved a useful stop-gap as a night-fighter and provided the RAF with an effective means of combating night bombing until aircraft designed for the purpose entered service.

The Trump class "battleships"

In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon announced the impending construction of a “new battleship class” the first of the line (USS Defiant) to be the US Navy’s “largest surface combatant built since World War II [1939-1945]”.  The initial plans call for a pair to be launched with a long-term goal of as many as two dozen with construction to begin in 2030.  Intriguingly, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) revealed that while the Department of Defense’s (it’s also now the Department of War) naval architects would “lead the design”, he personally would be involved “…because I’m a very aesthetic person.”  That may sound a strange imperative when designing something as starkly functional as a warship but in navies everywhere there’s a long tradition of “the beautiful ship” and the design language still in use, although much modified, is recognizably what it was more than a century earlier.  The Secretary of the Navy certainly stayed on-message, announcing the USS Defiant would be “…the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans”, adding that components for the project would “be made in every state.”  It won't however be the widest because quirk of ship design in the US Navy is that warships tend to be limited to a beam (width) of around 33 metres (108 feet) because that’s the limit for vessels able to pass through the Panama Canal.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

By comparison with the existing surface fleet the 35,000 ton Defiant will be impressively large although, by historic standards, the largest (non-carrier) surface combatants now in service are of modest dimensions and displacement.  The largest now afloat are the 15,000-ton Zumwalt class destroyers (which really seem to be cruisers) while the 10,000 ton Ticonderoga class cruisers (which really are destroyers) are more numerous.  So, even the Defiant will seem small compared with the twentieth century Dreadnoughts (which became a generic term for “biggest battleship”), the US Iowa class displacing 60,000 ton at their heaviest while the Japanese Yamato-class weighted-in at 72,000.  Even those behemoths would have been dwarfed by the most ambitious of the H-Class ships in Plan-Z which were on German drawing boards early in World War II.  Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) could have entered World War II with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.  Germany indeed entered the war without a single aircraft carrier (the only one laid down never completed), such was the confidence the need to confront the Royal Navy either would never happen or was years away.

The US Navy in 1940 began construction of six Iowa class battleships but only four were ever launched because it had become clear the age of the aircraft carrier and submarine had arrived and the last battleship launched was the Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard which entered service in 1946.  Although the admirals remained fond of the fine cut of her silhouette on the horizon, to the Treasury (an institution in the austere, post-war years rapidly asserting its authority over the Admiralty) the thing was a white elephant, something acknowledged even by the romantic, battleship-loving Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who, when in November, 1953 planning a trip to Bermuda for a summit meeting with Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961), opted to fly because “it costs Stg£30,000 if we go by Vanguard, and only £3,000 by air.”  In 1959, Vanguard was sold for scrap and broken up the next year while the last of the Iowa class ships were decommissioned in 1992 after having spent many years of their life in a non-active reserve.  Defiant is of course a most Churchillian word and after World War I (1914-1918, he was asked by a French municipality to devise the wording for its war memorial.  He proposed:

IN WAR: RESOLUTION

IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE

IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY

IN PEACE: GOODWILL

At the time, old Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) wasn’t feeling much magnanimity towards the Germans and nor was he much in the mood to extend any goodwill so Churchill’s suggestion was rejected.  

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The conventional wisdom therefore was the days of the big warships were done and the Soviet Navy’s curious decision in the 1980s to lay down five (four of which were launched) Kirov class battlecruisers seemed to confirm the view.  Although the Kremlin called the ships тяжёлый атомный ракетный крейсер (heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers), admiralties in the West, still nostalgic lot, choose to revive the old name “battlecruiser”.  The battlecruiser (essentially a battleship with less armor) was a brainchild of the naval theorists of the early twentieth century but while the concept was sound (and in practice may have proved so if the theory had been followed at sea) but in service was a disappointment and none were commissioned after 1920 until the Soviets revived the idea.  As recently as 2018, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) sources were sceptical any of the Russian ships would ever return to service but in 2025 the Admiral Nakhimov (ex-Kalinin) emerged from a long and expensive re-fit & modernization to serve as the world’s biggest warship.  Although fast and heavily armed, concern remains about her vulnerability to missiles and torpedoes.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The US Navy seems confident about the protection afforded by the Trump class’s systems, claiming “the battleship [the Pentagon’s term] will be capable of operating independently, as part of a Carrier Strike Group, or commanding its own Surface Action Group depending on the mission and threat environment.”  In other words, unlike an aircraft carrier, the security of the vessel does not depend on a flotilla of destroyers and other smaller escort vessels.  The first of the Trump class is projected to cost between US$10-15 billion although, on the basis of experience, few will be surprised if this number “blows out”.  The Trump class will be the flagships for the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” initiative (an old naval term dating from days of the Spanish colonial Empire and nothing to do with Mr Trump’s fondness for the metal).  In an age in which small, cheap, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, usually referred to as drones) have revolutionized warfare (on land and at sea), the return of the big ships is as interesting as it was unexpected and analysts are already writing their assessments of the prospects of success.

Although the concept wasn’t new, it was late in the nineteenth century naval architects began to apply the word “class” systematically to group ships of the same design, the pioneers the Royal Navy but other powers soon adopted the practice.  It had long been the practice for warships to be constructed on the basis of substantially replicating existing designs and some truly were “identical” to the extent a series would now be called a “class” but before the terminology became (more or less) standardized, warships usually were described by their “Rate” or “Type” (first-rate ship of the line, corvette, frigate etc) but, in the usual military way, there was also much informal slang including phrases such as “the Majestic battleships” or “ships of the Iron Duke type”.  The crystallization of the “class” concept was really a result of technological determinism as the methods developed in factories which emerged during the industrial revolution spread to ship-building; steam power, hulls of iron & steel and the associated complex machinery made design & construction increasingly expensive, thus the need to amortize investment and reduce build times by ordering ships in batches with near-identical specifications.

Navies in the era were also becoming more bureaucratic (a process which never stopped and some believe is accelerating still) and Admiralties became much taken with precise accounting and doctrinal categorisation.  The pragmatic admirals however saw no need to reinvent the wheel, “class” already well-established in engineering and taxonomy, the choice thus an obvious administrative convenience.  The “new” nomenclature wasn’t heralded as a major change or innovations, the term just beginning to appear in the 1870s in Admiralty documents, construction programmes and parliamentary papers in which vessels were listed in groups including Devastation class ironclad turret ships (laid down 1869), Colossus class battleships (laid down 1879) and Admiral class battleships (1880s).  In recent history tests, warships prior to this era sometimes are referred to as “Ship-of-the-line class”, “Three decker class” etc but this use is retrospective.  The French Navy adopted the convention almost simultaneously (with the local spelling classe) with Imperial Germany’s Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) following in the 1890s with Klasse.  The US Navy was comparatively late to formalise the use and although “class” in this context does appear in documents in the 1890s, the standardization wasn’t complete until about 1912.

As a naming convention (“King George V class”, “Iowa class” etc), the rule is the name chosen is either (1) the first ship laid down, or (2) the lead ship commissioned.  According to Admiralty historians, this wasn’t something determined by a committee or the whim of an admiral (both long naval traditions) but was just so obviously practical.  It certainly wasn’t an original idea because the term “class” was by the late nineteenth century well established in industrial production, civil engineering, and military administration; if anything the tradition-bound admirals were late-adopters, sticking to their old classificatory habit long after it had outlived its usefulness.  With ships becoming bigger and more complex, what was needed was a system (which encompassed not only the ships but also components such as guns, torpedoes, engines etc) which grouped objects according to their defined technical specification rather than their vague “type” (which by then had become most elastic) or individual instances; naval architecture had entered the “age of interchangability”.

A docked Boomin' Beaver.

It’s good the US Navy is gaining (appropriately large) “Trump Class” warships (which the president doubtless will call “battleships” although they’re more in the “battlecruiser” tradition).  Within the fleet however there are on the register many smaller vessels and the most compact is the 19BB (Barrier Boat), a specialized class of miniature tugboat used deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  Over the last quarter century there have been a dozen-odd commissioned of which ten remain in active service.  Unlike many of the Pentagon’s good (and expensive) ideas, the Barrier Boats were a re-purposing of an existing design, their original purpose being in the logging industry where they were used to manoeuvre logs floating along inland waterways.  In that role the loggers dubbed them “log broncs” because the stubby little craft would “rear up like a rodeo bronco” when spun around by 180^o.  Sailors of course have their own slang and they (apparently affectionately) call the 19BBs the “Boomin’ Beaver”, the origin of that being uncertain but it may verge on the impolite.  It’s not known if President Trump is aware of the useful little BB19 but if brought to his attention, he may be tempted to order two of them renamed “USS Joe Biden” and “USS Crooked Hillary” although, unlike those reprobates, the Boomin’ Beavers have done much good work for the nation.

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (left), Donald Trump with model of his proposed arch, the White House, October, 2025 (centre) and a model of the arch, photographed on the president's Oval Office desk (right).  Details about the arch remain sketchy but it's assumed (1) it will be "big" and (2) there will be some gold, somewhere.

As well as big ships (and the big Donald J Trump Ballroom already under construction where the White House’s East Wing once stood), Mr Trump is also promising a “big arch”.  A part of the president’s MDCBA (Make D.C. Beautiful Again) project, the structure (nicknamed the “Triumphal Arch” and in the style of the Arc de Triomphe which stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly the Place de l’Étoile), the western terminus of the avenue des Champs-Élysées) is scheduled to be completed in time to celebrate the nation’s 250^th anniversary on 4 July 2026.  Presumably, on that day, it will be revealed the official name is something like the “Donald J Trump Sestercentennial Arch” which will appear on the structure in large gold letters.  The arch is said to be “privately funded”, using money left over from what was donated to build the ballroom, a financing mechanism which has attracted some comment from those concerned about the “buying of influence”.

Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) sketch of an arch (1926, left) and Hitler, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and others examining Speer's model of the arch, presented 20 April 1939 upon the occasion of the Führer’s 50^th birthday (right; note the pattern in carpet).

A model of Germania.  To give some indication of the scale, within the dome of the huge meeting hall (at top of image), St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome would have fitted several times over; its diameter of the dome would have been 250 metres (825 feet).

Commissioned to honor those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), construction of the Arc de Triomphe (officially the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile) absorbed 30-odd years between 1806-1836, as a piece of representational architecture the structure is thought perfectly proportioned for assessment by the human eye and perhaps for this reason it has been admired by many.  As early as 1926, Adolf Hitler sketched his vision of a grand arch for Berlin, while bitter experience taught him the big warships were a bad idea because of their vulnerability to air attack, he never lost his enthusiasm for megalomania in architecture and in Albert Speer he found the ideal architect.  Noting the dimensions in Hitler’s sketch, Speer responded with something in the spirit of their blueprint for Germania.  Hitler’s planned the rebuilding of Berlin to be complete by 1950, less than ten years after the expected victory in a war which would have made him the master of Europe from the French border to the Ural mountains (things didn’t work out well for him).  While the 50 metre (163 feet) tall Arc de Triomphe presented a monumental appearance and provided a majestic terminus for the Champs Elysees, Speer’s arch stood 117 meters (384 feet) in height but even though obviously substantial, it would have been entirely in scale with the rest of Germania, the whole place built in a way to inspire awe simply by virtue of sheer size.