Digit

Digit (pronounced dij-it)

(1) In anatomy and zoology, a jointed body part at the end of the limbs of many vertebrates. The limbs of primates end in five digits, while the limbs of horses end in a single digit that terminates in a hoof.  In humans, digit is an alternative name for a finger or toe; dactyl.

(2) In zoology, a similar or similar-looking structures in other animals.

(3) As a historical unit of lineal measure, a unit of length notionally based upon the width of an adult human finger, standardized differently in various places and times (and still used as a measure in certain alcoholic spirits and among those fitting bras who recommend the finger as the gauge of the space between skin & fabric).  The most frequently cited is the English digit of 1/16 of a foot (about 19mm).  Prior to standardization, digit was used as a synonym of inch (the synonyms including “finger”, “fingerbreadth” & “fingersbreadth”).

(4) In modern mathematics, the whole numbers from 0 (zero) to 9 and the Arabic numerals representing them, which are combined to represent base-ten numbers; a position in a sequence of numerals representing a place value in a positional number system (ie any of the symbols of other number systems).

(5) In astronomy, the twelfth part of the sun's or moon's diameter; used often to express the magnitude of an eclipse.

(6) In geometry, a synonym for degree (1/360 of a circle) (obsolete).

(7) An index (obsolete).(7) An index (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English digit, from the Latin digitus (a fingerbreadth; a number); doublet of digitus.  The Latin from the primitive Indo-European deyǵ- (to show, point out, pronounce solemnly), a variant of the root deyḱ- & deik (to show; pronounce solemnly) from which Latin also gained dīcō (I say, speak talk) & dicere (to say, speak) and English picked up toe.  Fingers were thus “pointers & indicators” and digit gained the meanings related to mathematics and numbers; fingers were used for counting up to ten (and, with recycling beyond).  The finger or toe sense in English is documented from the 1640s but the date of origin is speculative.  Indo-European cognates include the Sanskrit दिशति (diśáti) (to show, point out), the Ancient Greek δείκνυμι (deíknumi) (to show) & δίκη (díkē) (manner, custom), the Old English tǣċan (to show, point out (source of the English teach)) and tācen (the English token).  Digit is a noun & verb, digitize is a verb and digital & digitigrade are nouns & adjectives; the noun plural is digits.

Great moments in digits

The phalanx of the ten digits of two human hands are presumed to have been the integers of the hand-held calculator and in this use it would have predated formal structures of language, the concepts of “one” and “two” the origin of mathematics.  All humans naturally having ten digits, the decimal (Base-10) numeral system emerged (apparently independently) in many ancient cultures although there was some intellectual transfer, the Greeks gaining the system from Egypt although neither the Greeks or Romans exclusively used Base-10, some industry-specific methods of calculation based on the capacity of the containers in traditional use.  In China, there’s evidence of use from the first century BC.  The familiar numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 0) which underpin all mathematics were developed by Arabic and Indian scholars although the elusive “0” wasn’t in widespread use until the ninth century. 

Zero though had a long history and texts from circa 300 BC detailing Babylonian mathematics display a placeholder symbol for zero in their positional numeral system (without which the representation of big numbers would practically have been impossible) although there is no evidence of the concept of zero existing as a stand-alone number.  Around the fifth century AD, Indian mathematicians documented why zero was so essential although it was a big country and there was no standardization in the symbolic representation of the value; the math however remains recognizably identical as one would expect.  Whether through the exchange of texts or (as many suspect is more likely) through the trade routes, the zero travelled east to the Islamic world where both Persian and Arabic mathematician published works explaining the implications of the still novel digit.  In the Medieval West, translations of the texts appeared but zero’s path to acceptance in Europe was slow and resisted, both by merchants and the Church, institutions with their own system, mastery of which was in the hands of an educated few.  However, so compelling were the advantages offered by adoption that by the thirteenth century, it was clear zero was here to stay.

Ten digit human hands might have been (more or less) universal but historically, Base-10 was not.  The Maya civilization used a vigesimal system (Base-20) and vigesimal components were in the counting systems of the Aztecs and some African cultures, the latter presumably an independent development.  The assumption of anthropologists is the Base-20 is a “fingers & toes” system and it does seem to be something restricted to warm climates where the removal of footwear doesn’t risk frostbite.  Nor were the hands always dealt with in multiples of five, the Yuki language of what is modern California uses Octal (Base-8) which counted the spaces between the fingers rather than the digits.  The ancient Mesopotamians (most famously the Babylonians & Sumerians) had a Sexagesimal (Base-60) system and that endures to this day in the measurement of time (60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour) although there was an attempt to change that during the French Revolution (1789), the new republic introducing decimal time in 1793, seen as an act of democratic modernization which would include a programme to decimalize all units of measurement; the day became 10 hours long, an hour was 100 minutes and a minute 100 seconds.  However, the experiment did not prove a success, the critical mass of the old ways too embedded in the culture and the idea was abandoned in 1795 although the metric system did debut in 1799 and thrived, eventually world-wide (except in the US and a couple of quixotic hold-outs).  The Duodecimal (Base-12) system was used by the Mayans and in ancient Egypt and it too persists in commerce in the measures like dozen (12) and gross (12 dozen (144).  Binary (Base-2) of course runs the modern world because that is how (non-quantum) computers work, “0” & “1” being “on” & “off” respectively, most of what a computer does able ultimately to be reduced to a rapid succession of on/off transactions.  Nerds like Hexadecimal (Base-16) which uses the digits 0-9 and the letters A-F, representing values from 0 to 15.  Not the most unambiguous system, developers use hexadecimal numbers because in certain circumstances they make available an easier way to represent binary-coded values.

During an Aegean cruise in October 2016, Lindsay Lohan suffered a finger injury.  In this dreadful nautical incident, the tip of one digit was severed by the boat's anchor chain but details of the circumstances are sketchy although there was speculation that upon hearing the captain give the command “weigh anchor”, she decided to help but, lacking any background in admiralty jargon, misunderstood the instruction.

Detached chunk of the ring-finger's distal digit was salvaged from the deck and expertly re-attached by a micro-surgeon ashore, digit and the rest of the patient said to have both made full recoveries.  Despite the injury to the ring-finger, Ms Lohan still managed to find a husband so all's well that ends well.

Palindrome

Palindrome (pronounced pal-in-drohm)

(1) A word, line, verse, number, sentence etc, reading the same backward as forward.

(2) In biochemistry, a region of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides is identical with an inverted sequence in the complementary strand.

1638: From the Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palindromos) (running back again; recurring, literally “literally "a running back”) the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + δρόμος (dromos) (direction, running, race, racecourse).  Pálin was from the primitive Indo-European kwle-i-, a suffixed form of the root kwel- (revolve, move round) (kw- becomes the Greek p- before some vowels.  The word palindrome was first published by Henry Peacham (1578-circa 1645) in The Truth of Our Times (1638).  Although derived from the Greek root palin + dromos, the Greek language uses καρκινικός (carcinic, literally “crab-like”) to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.  The related palinal (directed or moved backward, characterized by or involving backward motion) dates from 1888.  The noun palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire) dates from the 1590s and was from either the sixteenth century French palinod or the Late Latin palinodia, from the Greek palinōidia (poetic retraction), again from pálin; the related form were palinodical & palinodial.  The word palinode was sometimes applied to the apologies artists and others in the Soviet Union were compelled to publish, often after being accused of formalism or something just as heinous.  Palindrome & palindromist are nouns, palindromically is an adverb and palindromic an adjective.

Pierre Laval (1883–1945; Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944).

Even before he spent the final years of his political career as a senior official in the collaborationist regime of Vichy France under Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), the palindromic Laval was already notorious for his dubious financial dealings while in government and being a party to the Hoare–Laval Pact (1935), concocted with the then British Foreign Secretary Samuel “Slippery Sam” Hoare (1880-1959) with which the pair sought to end the tiresome Second Italo-Ethiopian War (the last of the colonial land-grabs in the era of European colonization) because it was “bad for business”.  Something of a precursor to the 1938 Munich Agreement in which the UK and France acquiesced to the Nazi’s dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in exchange for what, delusionally, they believed would be Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) final territorial claim in Europe, what the Hoare–Laval Pact offered was a partition of Abyssinia, something which in retrospect would have been merely the first step to Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) absorbing the whole country as a colony of Imperial Italy.  Even for the, by then jaded, people of France and the UK the cynicism was too blatant and the reaction when the details were made public ensured both ministers were dismissed.

Otto Abetz (1903-1958; de facto German ambassador to Paris 1940-1944, left) shaking hands with Marshal Pétain (right), Paris, November 1941.

Pétain had little faith in the arrangements his regime negotiated with the Germans honored, telling colleagues after one meeting: "It will take six weeks to work out all the details and six months for the Germans to forget all about them."  Because Berlin didn't formerly created diplomatic relations with France after the defeat in 1940, Otto Abetz was never properly credentialed as ambassador but wholly he discharged the duties.  His great nephew is Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, Treasurer of Tasmania since 2024).

Hoare was an accomplished ice-skater and made a political comeback as did Laval who, sniffing the winds of French defeat in 1940, became a convinced fascist, serving in the Vichy regime between July 1940-August 1944 variously as vice-president of the Council of Ministers and head of government.  He fled to Spain after the Liberation of France but was extradited and put on trial for plotting against the security of the state and collaborating with the Nazis; found guilty, he was executed by firing squad in October 1945.  Old Marshal Pétain fared a little better.  Although also sentenced to death for his role during the occupation, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969), then serving as Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, couldn’t bring himself to sign the death warrant for one of the country’s heroes of World War I and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, officially on the grounds of “age”.

Perhaps surprisingly, the longest known palindromic word is not German despite their fondness for lengthy compounds.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records the record is held by the 19 character saippuakivikauppias which is Finnish for “a travelling salesman who sells lye (caustic soda)”.  It’s said not often to come up in conversation and seems to exist only a curiosity used in lists of long palindromes where it's the undisputed number one.  In English, palindromes of a few characters are common but examples with more than seven letters are rare.  Tattarrattat (the sound made by knocking on a door), as it’s usually spelled, has 12 characters but is a bit of a fudge because it’s also an onomatopoeia so some lexicographers insist it doesn’t count.  Also cheating but clever is the 11 letter aibohphobia meaning a fear of palindromes, the construct being the suffix -phobia + its reverse.  Adding to the charm is that it’s doubtless a non-existent condition, but it’s suspected there are anyway a few of those in the literature of psychiatry.  From India, there's kinnikinnik, a smoking mixture of bark & leaves (but no tobacco).  English’s longest “real” palindrome appears to be detartrated, the past participle of detartrate (to remove tartrates (salts of tartaric acid)), especially from fruit juices and wines, in order to reduce tartness or sourness).  Not only is it a real word but it describes a common process in the industrial production of foods and beverages.

Announced on an auspicious date.

On 2 February 2020, Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), in a now deleted Instagram post, for the first time publicly acknowledged her relationship with Bader Shammas (b 1987), a group photograph from Dubai, including the couple and her sister Aliana (b 1993), captioned: "@aliana lovely night with sister and my boyfriend bader💗".  The couple would later marry.  2 February 2020 (02-02-2020) was the twenty-first century’s only eight-digit global palindrome (ie it works with either the MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY convention).  The last eight-digit global palindrome happened 908 years earlier on the even more numerically symmetrical 11 November 1111 (11-11-1111) and the next one will be 908 years hence on 3 March 3030 (03-03-3030).  Six and seven digit palindromes are more common.

Palindromic sentences are often created and these are judged not by length but by their elegance.  Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a word nerd and recreational mathematician who devised the classic "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and this approach was in the 1980s taken to its logical extreme in two novels, Satire: Veritas (1980, 58,795 letters) by David Stephens and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo (1986, 31,954 words) by Lawrence Levine, both said to be palindromically perfect and wholly nonsensical.  Shorter, but of admirable clarity, are the many baptismal fonts in Greece and Turkey which bear the circular 25-letter inscription NIYON ANOMHMATA MH MONAN OYIN (Wash (my) sins, not only (my) face).  This appears also in several English churches.

Sixteenth century German "oath skull" on which defendants swore their oaths in the Vehmic courts (the Vehmgericht, Holy Vehme or Vehm, the alternative spellings being Feme, Vehmegericht & Fehmgericht), a tribunal system established in Westphalia during the late Middle Ages.

Created essentially because of the inadequacies of the official justice system, they're now often referred to as "proto-vigilante" courts but for centuries they filled a niche before they came increasingly to be associated with injustice and corruption before finally being abolished in 1811, a half-decade after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the source of their original authority.

The pattern on the skull was based on a multi-directional palindromic grid created by some word nerds in Ancient Rome.  Later re-discovered etched onto a wall in the doomed city of Herculaneum, it reads Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas (The sower, Arepo, makes the wheel work) and it works whether read vertically, horizontally, or in the diagonal.  These types of palindromic squares are called pentacles and the SATOR was the most commonly found in the Western Esotericism of late antiquity.  They were used by Kabbalists, Gnostics, alchemists and other pre-medieval mystics in the creation of magic spells, amulets, potions etc and were thus often seen in the shops of apothecaries.

sator: sower/planter
tenet: he/she/they/it holds/has/grasps/possesses
opera: work/exertion/service
rotās: wheels

There has been speculation about the the meaning of this pentacle, some a little fanciful, but the consensus is things were made up just to fit, rather as "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined to use each letter in the alphabet and "DICK HOOD DID EXCEED" serves no purpose other than to appear the same if inverted and viewed in a mirror.  The truly palindromic “never odd or even” spelled backwards remains “never odd or even”.    

Phalanx

Phalanx (pronounced fey-langks or fal-angks)

(1) In Hellenic Greece, a group of heavily armed infantry formed in ranks and files close and deep, with shields joined and long spears overlapping.

(2) A body of troops in close array.

(3) A compact or closely massed body of persons, animals or things, usually united or aligned for a common purpose.

(4) A radar-controlled 20mm Gatling-type gun deployed on US Navy ships as a last line of defense against cruise missiles.

(5) In Fourierism, a group of about 1800 persons, living together and holding their property in common.

(6) In anatomy and zoology, any of the bones of the fingers or toes (the related adjective phalangeal).

(7) In printing, to arrange the distribution of work in a production house as evenly as possible.

(8) In botany, a bundle of stamens, joined together by their stalks (filaments).

(9)A form of vegetative spread in which the advance is on a broad front, as in the common reed.

1550s: From the Latin phalanx from phalangis & phalangem (compact body of heavily armed men in battle array) derived from Greek phalanx (genitive phalangos) (line of battle, battle array).  The origin of the use as a descriptor of finger or toe bone (originally "round piece of wood, trunk, log”) is unknown, most often thought to be from the from Old English balca (balk), from the primitive Indo-European root bhelg (plank, beam).  In anatomy, a phalanx was originally the whole row of finger joints, which fit together like infantry in close order.  The rare adjectival forms were phalangeal & phalangic.  The figurative sense of "number of persons banded together in a common cause" is attested from 1600, the most recent adaptation probably the 1937 Spanish Falangist, (a member of the fascist organization founded in 1933), from the Spanish Falange (Española) (Spanish), from the Latin phalanx.

Phalanx terminology.

The Macedonian military formation known as a phalanx consisted in theory of fifty close files, sixteen ranks deep, the men clad in armor, bearing shields, armed with swords and spears between 21 - 24 feet (6.4-7.3 m) in length.  In array, the shields formed a continuous bulwark, the ranks placed at such intervals that five spears which were borne pointed forward and upward protected every man in the front rank.  Properly handled, on level ground and with its flanks and rear adequately protected, the phalanx was a formidable formation but was cumbrous and slow in movement, and if once broken could only with great difficulty be reformed.  It was thus dependent on high-quality leadership and highly-trained troops and was notably vulnerable when, as inevitably happens under battlefield conditions, it was assembled, sometimes hastily, with whatever resources were available.

Phalanx live fire test, USS Monterey, November 2008.

Designed essentially to meet any incoming missile with a “wall of metal”, the Phalanx CIWS began life as a close-in weapon system installed on naval warships as defense against anti-ship missiles. Developed and manufactured by the General Dynamics Corporation’s Pomona Division (now a part of Raytheon), it’s based around a radar-guided 20 mm (0.79 in) Vulcan cannon mounted on a swiveling base and is used by more than a dozen navies on every class of surface combat ship.  The reliability and flexibility attracted wider interest and a land based variant known as C-RAM has been developed, deployed in a short range missile defense role to counter incoming rockets and even artillery fire.  The early models were (hydraulic driven) with a fire rate of 3,000 rounds per minute (rpm) and the magazine drum had a capacity of 989 rounds while the later, pneumatically driven modes fire at a rate of 4,500 rpm from a 1,550-round magazine.  Each round costs about US$30 and typically between 100-200 are expended during each targeting.  A combination of the appearance of the distinctive, barrel-shaped, radar dome (radome) and the automated operation, meant the Phalanx CIWS units soon attracted the nicknamed "R2-D2", named after the droid from the film Star Wars (1977).

Lindsay Lohan's fractured Phalanx

During an Aegean cruise in October 2016, Lindsay Lohan suffered a finger injury.  In this dreadful nautical incident, the tip of one digit was severed by the boat's anchor chain but details of the circumstances are sketchy although there was speculation that upon hearing the captain give the command “weigh anchor”, she decided to help but, lacking any background in admiralty jargon, misunderstood the instruction.

Detached chunk of a distal digit was salvaged from the deck and expertly re-attached by a micro-surgeon ashore, digit and the rest of the patient said to have both made full recoveries.  Despite the injury, Ms Lohan still managed to find a husband so all's well that ends well.

Tranche

Tranche (pronounced trahnch, trahnsh, or trahnsh (French))

(1) One part or division of a larger unit; a slice, section or portion.

(2) A group of securities that share a certain characteristic and form part of a larger offering.

(3) Any part, division, or instalment.

(4) In finance, to divide into parts, applied especially to loans and share issues.

(5) In insurance, a distinct subdivision of a single policyholder's benefits, typically relating to separate premium increments.

(6) In pensions, a scheme's or scheme member's benefits relating to distinct accrual periods with different rules.

1400s: From the French tranche, (a cutting (literally, “a slice”)), a form of trancher (to cut, to slice), from Old French trenchier, trancher & trancher (cut, make a cut), possibly from the Vulgar Latin trinicāre (cut in three parts). It was cognate with the English trench.  The specific uses in economics and finance didn’t emerge until 1930.  The form in Modern French is tranché (feminine tranchée, masculine plural tranchés, feminine plural tranchées), the past participle of trancher (clear-cut, marked, bold, distinct (and in heraldry: per bend)).  Tranche is a noun & verb and tranched & tranching are verbs; the noun plural is tranches.

Tranches in a collateralised debt structure.

Tranche has become so associated with matters financial that the word is now seldom used in other contexts, probably a good thing given it’s likely only to confuse.  In finance, a tranche is a portion of a security (loans, mortgages, stocks, bonds etc) that can be packaged for sale to investors; Securities are broken to be reassembled in different forms for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is to make them easier to sell.  Because investors base their decision to purchase on factors such as risk, time and the quality of asset backing, tranches prepared for sale vary in the emphasis placed on these factors to attract buyers with different priorities.

Slicing the cake.

Since the global financial crisis (GFC) began in 2008, the perception probably is that packaging is most associated with residential mortgages, the money banks and others loan to people to buy houses as homes or investments.  That’s not entirely true but it has been a big part of the market.  Typically, mortgages are repaid over fifteen to thirty years but the lenders prefer to churn, banks, rather than waiting decades to get the money, on-sell mortgages to investors, thereby gaining the funds to lend for more mortgages.  Because of the limited number of number of investors, individuals and institutional, willing to buy thirty year mortgages, banks create tranches, some including the first three years of each mortgage, some the five years while a few will run for the whole term.

This spread of products appeals to a spread-out market.  Some investors will prefer the low-risk tranche of three-year mortgages and accept the lower interest rate while others will opt for the riskier long-term tranche, attracted by the higher rate.  Tranching is thus a device which maintains the liquidity of the loan pool and provides a differentiated securities market in which investors can adjust their exposure according to their own risk versus reward calculation.

Pick your tranche; you pay your money, you take your choice.

The particular, celebrated case of the sub-prime mortgage crisis which began to manifest in 2008-2009 involved mostly tranches of CMOs (collateralized mortgage obligations) and the problems then were not a product of the structural design of tranching but the quality of what was being tranched.  Essentially, like many of the periodic crises in capitalism, the GFC was triggered by over-production.  The traditional mortgage market consisted of borrowers judged to be capable of repaying the loan but, various things having combined to mean the lenders had run out of them, they resorted to lending to people who would never be able to repay.  That required some clever contractual engineering to ensure (1) the credit-rating agencies would grant investment-grade ratings to what were junk securities so (2) the risk would be quickly on-sold.  The rationale for all of this was that the tranching was done in such a way that the spread of the risk was so diversified that whatever defaults occurred would present no systemic threat.  There are interesting stories about (1) & (2).

Lots lost lots in the GFC but there were also quite a number who made much and very quickly.  So profitable for those few in the right place at the right time was the loaning of money to those with no capacity to repay that it’s hard to believe it won’t, at scale, happen again and there are suggestions it may be happening now.  The unusual combination of borrowing at historically high multiples against static or falling incomes for assets at historically high valuations has happened in an era of historically low interest rates.  Movements downwards in asset values or upwards in interest rates will have a multiplier effect on each-other and those movements, if sufficient, will essentially render much mortgage debt functionally sub-prime and there were those who predicted the extraordinary increase in the global money-supply playing out this way.

The headline in the French language which in 2016 announced: Lindsay Lohan s'est tranché le doigt en deux (Lindsay Lohan sliced her finger in half).

Actually "sliced her finger in half" was a bit sensationalist (one might even say Anglo-Saxon style click-bait).  In October 2016, during an Aegean cruise, there was a nautical incident, the tip of one of her fingers severed by the boat's anchor chain but details of the circumstances are sketchy.  It may be that upon hearing the captain give the command “weigh anchor”, she decided to help but, lacking any background in admiralty terms and phrases, misunderstood the instruction.  The detached piece of digit was salvaged from the deck and ashore, soon re-attached by micro-surgery.  Digit and the rest of the patient are said to have made full recoveries, something especially significant because it was the ring finger which was “tranched” but, thanks to the surgeon’s skill in fixing the gruesome injury, she managed later to find husband and the finger now displays engagement and wedding rings.  All’s well that ends well.

Fix

Fix (pronounced fiks)

(1) To repair or mend; to rectify a fault.

(2) To put in order or in good condition; to adjust or arrange.

(3) To make fast, firm, or stable; to place definitely and permanently.

(4) To settle definitely; to determine (place, value etc); to make rigid; to mount or secure in place.

(5) To direct (the eyes, one’s attention, one’s gaze etc) steadily; To attract and hold (the eye, one’s attention, one’s gaze etc).

(6) To put into permanent form.

(7) To put or place the responsibility or blame for something upon a person or institution.

(8) To assign or refer to a definite place, time, event etc.

(9) To provide or supply with something needed or wanted, especially popular in narcotics transactions; the quantity supplied in that transaction; to inject oneself with a narcotic.

(10) In informal us, to arrange or influence the outcome or action of, especially privately or dishonestly (juries, sporting events, stock prices etc).

(11) To prepare a meal, snack, drink etc.

(12) In informal use, to put in a condition or position to make no further trouble.

(13) In informal use, to get even with; to visit vengeance upon (often as “fix right up).

(14) In informal use, to castrate an animal (used usually of domestic pets).

(15) In slang, to prepare or plan (followed usually by an infinitive as in “fixing to go”, (mostly US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line).

(16) In informal use, a position from which it is difficult to escape; a dilemma; a predicament (typically “in a fix”).

(17) In informal use, a repair, adjustment, or solution, usually of an immediate nature (sometimes in the form “quick & dirty fix”, expressed also in IT as “a Q&D”).

(18) In navigation, a charted position of a vessel or aircraft, determined by two or more bearings taken on landmarks, GPS location, stars etc.

(19) In navigation, the determining of the position of a ship, plane etc, by mathematical, electronic, or other means.

(20) A clear determination (often as “get a fix on”).

(21) A compulsively sought dose or infusion of something (such as “one’s morning caffeine fix”).

(22) In slang, a euphemism for the state of pregnancy (such as “she’s fixed-up”).

(23) In chemistry, to make stable in consistency or condition; reduce from fluidity or volatility to a more stable state.

(24) In photography, to render (an image) permanent by removing light-sensitive silver halides; in digital imaging, any form or correction.

(25) In microscopy, to kill, make rigid, and preserve for microscopic study.

(26) In cytology to kill, preserve, and harden tissue, cells etc for subsequent microscopic study.

(27) In industrial production, to convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen compounds, as in the manufacture of fertilizers or the action of bacteria in the soil.

(28) In biology, to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially carbohydrates, as occurs in photosynthesis in plants and some microorganisms.

(29) In foreign exchange (forex) trading, a benchmark exchange rate used to settle or fix the value of certain financial instruments or transactions.

1350–1400: From the Middle English fixen, from the Middle French fixer or the Medieval Latin fixāre, from the Latin fixus (fixed), past participle of fīgere (to fasten).  The sense of “to repair” may first have been used in the US in the eighteenth century but the first recorded used in England was in the early 1800s although, in the way of such things, it’s likely already to have been in oral use for some time.  The use to mean “to prepare” to plan ” is a uniquely American use, now heard mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line (“feel like I’m fixing to die” etc) although linguistic anthropologists note that until the mid twentieth century was a common form throughout the US eastern seaboard states.  Forms (sometimes hyphenated) like overfix, defix & refix are created as required and fixt (an archaic form of fixed) is still sometimes used in SMS messaging, advertising etc.  Fix & fixer are nouns & verbs, fixed, fixated & fixing are verbs, fixable is an adjective, fixative is a noun & adjective and fixability, fixer, fixator & fixation are nouns; the noun plural is fixes.

Depending on the context the synonyms can include dilemma, plight, quandary, mess, install, secure, set, settle, stabilize, define, establish, limit, resolve, solve, specify, work out, adjust, correct, overhaul, patch, rebuild, regulate, amend, fasten, stabilize.  In idiomatic use the word often appears.  To “fix someone right up” means to visit vengeance upon them (including killing them, sometime on behalf of others).  A “fix up” can mean (1) wrongly to implicate someone in a crime or other wrong-doing, (2) corruptly to interfere with a jury, the outcome of a sporting event, the operation of a market, the level of an interest-rate etc.  “Been fixed up” can refer to a young lady with child (in or out of wedlock), often with the implication the state may be unplanned or undesired.  To say “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” is cautionary advice hinting that if something functionally fulfils its purpose, attempting to improve it may make things worse.  To be in a fix (often as “a bit of a fix”) is to find one’s self in a position from which it is difficult to escape; a dilemma; a predicament.  For someone to be “a fixture” is to be seemingly a permanent part of something (a squad, a sporting team etc); it’s used also of institutions.  The “fixer-upper” is something (typically a house or car) in dilapidated condition but usually still in a fit state to inhabit, drive etc so thus suitable for those able to make their own repairs.

Finger fix: In October 2016, during an Aegean cruise, Lindsay Lohan suffered a finger injury.  In this nautical incident, the tip of one digit was severed by the boat's anchor chain but details of the circumstances are sketchy.  It may be that upon hearing the captain give the command “weigh anchor”, she decided to help but, lacking any background in admiralty terms and phrases, misunderstood the instruction.  The detached piece was salvaged from the deck and soon re-attached by a micro-surgeon ashore.  Digit and the rest of the patient apparently made a full recovery and despite the gruesome injury Ms Lohan later managed to find husband and recently announced she’s “fixed up” in the sense of being with child so all’s well that ends well.

The human race has a long tradition of fixing broken stuff but in the twentieth century manufacturers devoted much attention to try to dissuade consumers from fixing things, preferring instead they purchase a new one.  The origins of this were identified by historians in the inter-war years (1918-1939) but the economic conditions of the 1930s limited the effects and it was in the long economic boom of the post-war years that the trend developed in conjunction with the concept of “planned obsolescence”, the beginnings of an era in which it became typically less expensive to replace a broken something than have it fixed, a phenomenon influenced by factors such as increasing unit labor costs, the substitution of parts made from metal, wood, leather etc with plastics and designs deliberately intended to make fixes difficult to effect.  In recent years, particularly in the field of consumer electronics, the tricks have included “sealing for life” (said to be a water-proofing measure) and the use of screws or other fasteners which can be opened only with a special tool (either unavailable to the public or sold as a prohibitively expensive part-number).  One interesting reaction to this has been the “right to repair” movement, an on-line cooperative community which publishes manuals, repair guides and tricks & tips for those who wish to fix.

Fluctuations: Eurodollar LIBOR rates 1 July 1989-28 April 2023 (chart by FedPrimeRate.com). The LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) is the average interest rate at which (a basket of major) banks borrow funds from other banks in the London market (as defined).  Globally, the daily LIBOR fix is a widely used benchmark (or reference) rate for short term interest rates.

In foreign exchange (forex) trading, the term “a fix” most often used to refer to a benchmark exchange rate used to settle (or fix) the value of certain financial instruments or transactions and it’s commonly heard in the context of determining the daily or hourly exchange rates for major currency pairs.  The rate is used as a standard for settling various transactions, such as corporate hedging, portfolio valuation, or derivatives contracts and there are also interest-rate fixes such as the LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) which gained infamy following revelations of the insider-trading some used to manipulate to point at which it was fixed.  Reflecting the city’s history as a financial centre, the “London 4 pm fix” (known also as the “WM/Reuters” or “London” fix) is probably still the best-known daily fix; used as a benchmark against which many forex-related instruments are valued, it’s calculated from the aggregate of physical trades executed during a specific time-window and, as the name implies, that’s usually some defined period either side of 16:00 London time.  As a general principle fixes are set by aggregating and averaging the transactional traffic generated by major banks and financial institutions which, in theory, should ensure a fair and transparent process but there have been instances of malpractice (of which the one associated with the LIBOR was merely the most publicized) which have seen fines imposed and regulatory scrutiny increased.  The principle of the fix as used in forex markets is typical but in other areas of finance, the mechanisms can differ.

The colonial fix

The term “colonial fix” is used to describe the various trick and techniques the European colonial powers used to maintain and extend control in their empires, all of which, sometimes for centuries, used a relative handful of personnel to rule over millions and the best remembered are those practiced under the Raj.  Raj refers to British rule in India prior to 1947 (historians debate just when it can be said to have begun because the project predated the legal construct which formalized things in 1858-1859 although some, for convenience, have applied it to the whole empire.  Raj was a proprialisation of the Hindi noun raj (reign, rule), from the Hindustani राज & راج‎ (rāj), (reign, rule; empire, kingdom; country, state; royalty), from the Pali & Prakrit rajja, from the Sanskrit राज्य (rājyá) (empire, kingdom, realm; kingship, royalty, sovereignty; country), from rājati (he rules), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European h₃reǵ- (to right or straighten oneself; to govern, rule; just; right (with derivatives meaning “to direct in a straight line” and thus “to lead, to rule”)), source also of the German Reich.

A classic colonial fix was the Great Council of Chiefs (Bose Levu Vakaturaga) in Fiji which the British administrators created in 1878.  While it's true that prior to European contact, there had been meetings between tribal chiefs (turaga) to settle disputes and for other purposes, all the evidence suggests they were ad-hoc appointments with little of the formality, pomp and circumstance the British introduced.  Still, it was a successful institution which the chiefs embraced, apparently with some enthusiasm because the cloaks and other accoutrements they adopted for the occasion became increasingly elaborate and it was a generally harmonious form of indigenous governance which enabled the British to conduct matters of administration and policy-making almost exclusively through the chiefs.  The council survived even after Fiji gained independence from Britain in 1970 until it was in 2012 abolished by the military government of Commodore Frank Bainimarama (b 1954; prime minister of Fiji 2007-2022), as part of reform programme said to be an attempt to reduce ethnic divisions and promote a unified national identity.  The commodore's political future would be more assured had he learned lessons from the Raj.

Colonial fixes took many forms, all designed to “fix” some tiresome local problem but they really can be reduced to two themes: (1) In any dispute between factions/tribes/families etc in the local population, always back the weakest, politically and militarily and (2) the most effective and efficient method of control is to align with a recognized and accepted local elite and strengthen their authority and status (knighthoods, visits to London to meet the queen, their own Rolls-Royce etc).  The idea of the colonial fix comes to mind when watching the squabble going on in Australia about the creation of a “Voice”, a institution of some kind (the structure uncertain, the details unclear) which would provide representatives (elected somehow, the details unclear) of the indigenous peoples of the continent (First Nations) now the preferred term) with a mechanism whereby they can make submissions to both the national parliament and executive government (where that begins and ends undefined, the details unclear) about matters which in any way involve or affect indigenous peoples (which is presumably everything, the details are unclear).  There will be a national referendum on the Voice late in 2023, required because of the desire to include the institution in the constitution.  That’s the only way to amend the constitution and the success rate of such referenda is low, only 8 of the 44 submitted gaining the necessary “double majority” of an absolute majority of “yes” votes nationally and a majority in each of the six states.  Because of the distribution of population, it’s possible to succeed in one but not the other in which case the proposal is rejected.  If the details of what’s proposed remain unclear, it’s possible still to predict the likely form a Voice will assume.

In the abstract it’ll be something like feminism in that most of the benefits will accrue to a small, urban, educated elite.  In the same way most female CEOs don’t give a lot of thought (or a pay rise) to the working-class women who serve their coffee and empty their trash bins compared with their efforts to secure quotas for women to be appointed to corporate boards, be given winnable seats in legislatures or seats in cabinet, those who serve on the voice will be most interested in cementing their own power and status and the most disadvantaged among the indigenous can expect little.  The phrase “First Nations” at least partly explains the dynamics of this because viewed from the comfort of the Voice, they’ll appear as inconveniently disparate as Karl Marx (1818-1883) found peasants who he compared to a sack of potatoes: “all the same, yet all different”.  Although the word is no longer fashionable (and is probably proscribed), the structure of the First Nations remains that of competing tribes with interests and priorities which sometimes conflict with others and the Voice cannot simultaneously advocate for both.  At that point, the government will back the weakest.  Practically, it will be a bureaucracy which the government will be sure richly to endow with the trappings of office (big cars, fancy titles, much business class travel and a dutiful secretariat which will produce mountains of reports few will read and those who do will ignore).

Quite why there’s such agitation in certain right-wing circles against the Voice is curious because the very existence of the body seems likely only to be one of their assets.  Although some are cautious, the constitutional lawyers have taken the view that there’s nothing in the amendment which would require a parliament or government to act upon the submissions a Voice might make, it saying only that the right to make them exists; they need to be heard and can be acted upon or ignored on a case-by-case basis.  Nor does there seem great potential that the Voice could seek judicial review if their proposals are declined although presumably the possibility does exist if a case can be made that the Voice is not even being listened to.  The concern about appeals to the courts was based on an earlier period in the life of the High Court of Australia (HCA; the nation’s final court of appeal which might in matters involving the relationship between the voice and the parliament & government be a court of first instance) when some judges were inclined to find that although some concepts weren’t written in the constitution, there was a construction under which they could be said to be “implied” and the court could thus proceed as if they were ink on paper.  That moment of judicial activism seems now to have passed although, even if it reappears, it would be quite a leap for a court to find a parliament or government is compelled to adopt a recommendation of an advisory body.  At the most, they would probably require a process which indicates the matter has been duly considered.  For the right-wing fanatics, the run-up to the vote has actually started well.  Already there’s dissention among the self-appointed elite of the First Nations, the view of the dominant faction being there’s only one permissible view and anyone who dares to express another view must be put down.  Politically that makes sense but it’d be better done behind closed doors.  Hopefully, the referendum will pass with a substantial majority so political junkies can enjoy watching the shark-feeding which will follow.  Unfortunately for the most disadvantaged of the indigenous peoples, the latest generations of those who have been marginalized and appallingly treated since white settlement, they can expect that a decade hence, things are likely to be much the same.  Still for those who can hop aboard the Voice gravy train, there’ll be expense accounts, five-star hotels and celebrity status when addressing the United Nations (UN) General Assembly so there’s that.