Dreadnought

Dreadnought (pronounced dred-nawt)

(1) A type of battleship armed with heavy-calibre guns in turrets: so called from the British battleship HMS Dreadnought (1906); a name used by the Royal Navy for many ships and submarines.

(2) A garment made of thick woolen cloth that can defend against storm and cold.

(3) A thick cloth with a long pile (known also as fearnought).

(4) Slang a heavyweight boxer in the heavyweight class.

(5) By extension, something the largest or heaviest in a given field.

(6) A person who fears nothing; something that assures against fear.

(7) A type of acoustic guitar with a very large body and a waist less pronounced than in other designs, producing a deep, "bold" sound.

1800-1810: The construct was dread + nought.  Dread was from the Middle English dreden, from Old English drǣdan (to fear, dread), aphetic form of ondrǣdan (to fear, dread), from and- +‎ rǣdan (from which English picked up read); corresponding to an aphesis of the earlier adread.  The Old Saxon was antdrādan & andrādan (to fear, dread), the Old High German was intrātan (to fear) and the Middle High German entrāten (to fear, dread, frighten).  Nought was from the Middle English nought & noght, (noȝt), from the Old English nōwiht & nāwiht (the construct being nay +‎ a +‎ wight), which in turn came from ne-ā-wiht, a phrase used as an emphatic "no", in the sense of "not a thing".  In the transition to Modern English, the word reduced gradually to nought, nawt and finally not; a doublet of naught.  The alternative spelling (though never used by the Admiralty) is Dreadnaught.  Dreadnought is a noun; the noun plural is dreadnoughts.

The dreadnoughts

HMS Dreadnought, 1906.

Launched in 1906, HMS Dreadnought is often said to have revolutionized naval power, the design so significant it proved the final evolution of what had, by the late nineteenth century, evolved into the battleship.  Subsequent vessels would be larger, faster, increasingly electronic and more heavily armed but the concept remained the same.  HMS Dreadnought rendered instantly obsolete every other battleship in the world (including the rest of the Royal Navy) and all other battleships then afloat were immediately re-classified as pre-dreadnoughts.  In naval architecture, so epoch-making was the ship that it changed the nomenclature in navies world-wide: after 1906 there would be pre-dreadnoughts, semi-dreadnoughts, demi-dreadnoughts & super-dreadnoughts (hyphenated and not),  The adjective dreadnoughtish was non-standard but was used to describe ships of a design beyond that of the orthodox battleship of the late nineteenth century but with only some of a dreadnought's distinguishing characteristics.  Presumably someone in the Admiralty would have coined dreadnoughtesque but no document seems to have survived as proof.    

HMS Dreadnought.

Her main design features were speed, armor, steam turbine propulsion and, especially, firepower almost exclusively of weapons of the largest caliber.  In the decades after her launch, British, German, American, Japanese and other navies would build larger and heavier dreadnoughts until, during world war two, their utility was finally seen to been eclipsed by both aircraft carriers and submarines.  The last dreadnought, HMS Vanguard, launched in 1946, was scrapped in 1958 but the US Navy maintained until 2004 (on either the active or reserve list), at least one of the four battleships it retained from World War II (1939-1945) when the last was decommissioned.

HMS Dreadnought, 1908.

That it was the Royal Navy which first launched a dreadnought doesn’t mean the British Admiralty was alone in pursuing the concept.  Naval strategists in several nations had noted the course of battle between the Russian and Japanese fleets in 1905 and concluded the immediate future of naval warfare lay in the maximum possible deployment of big guns, able to launch attacks from the longest possible range, subsidiary smaller caliber weapons seen even as a disadvantage in battle.  That the Royal Navy was the first with such a ship afloat was a testament to the efficiency of British designers and shipbuilders, not the uniqueness of its plans.

Much read in palaces, chancelleries and admiralties around the word was a book released in 1890 called The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 by US naval officer and theorist Captain Alfred Mahan (1840-1914).  Published in what, in retrospect, was a historical sweet-spot (technologically and politically) for the views it espoused, it brought Mahan great fame and exerted an extraordinary influence on diplomacy, military planning and the politics of the era.  The book was not alone the cause of the naval arms-race in the decade before World War I (1914-1918) but was at least a sharp nudge, push or shove depending on one’s view.  Curiously though, although a work primarily about naval strategy, while many of the maritime powers seemed convinced by Mahan’s arguments about the importance of naval sea power in geopolitics, not all admiralties adopted the strategic template.  What all agreed however was they needed more ships.

The nineteenth century of Pax Britannica ("British Peace", echoing the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire), describes the century of relative great-power stability between the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) and the outbreak of war in 1914 encompasses the idea of British Empire as the global hegemon, a role possible only because the Royal Navy enjoyed an unchallenged ability to patrol and protect the key maritime trade routes.  The effective control of these transport corridors not only guaranteed the security of the British Empire but it meant also the British effectively controlled maritime access to much of Asia, the Americas, Oceania the south Pacific, although, one factor in the success was it was that London ran things essentially in accordance with US foreign policy, assisting Washington in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine which upheld the US preponderance of interest in the Americas.  It can be argued the roots of the so-called "special relationship" took hold here.

The British Empire, in terms of the impression created by a map of the world on which its colonies and dependencies were colored usually in some shade of red, was deceptive, the remit of the local administrators sometimes extending little beyond the costal enclaves, even the transport links between towns not always entirely secure.  Never did the Empire posses the military resources to defend such vast, remote and disparate territories but it was the control of the sea, uniquely in history, which allowed the British for centuries to maintain what was, with no disparagement intended, a confidence trick.  The reason the empire could be maintained was not because of control of big colonies, it was all the little islands dotted around the oceans which enabled the navy to operate outposts which housed the ports and coaling stations from which ships could make repairs or provision with fuel, food and water.  All those little dots on the map were the "keys to the world".  Mahan’s book had drawn its influential conclusions from his study of the role of sea power during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; what the British did was take advantage of the circumstances of the nineteenth century and deploy their sea power globally, in competition when necessary, in cooperation when possible and in conflict when required.  The practical expression of all this was British naval policy: that the Royal Navy must be of sufficient strength simultaneously to prevail in war against the combined strength of the next two biggest navies, either in separate theatres or as a massed fleet.

By the early twentieth century, economic and geopolitical forces combined to render the policy impossible to maintain, Britain no longer able to operate in “splendid isolation” (another somewhat misleading phrase of the era), needing alliances to spread the load of imperial defense.  It wasn’t just the rapid growth of the German fleet which had changed the balance of power but that alone was enough for the British and the French to reach an accommodation which is remembered as the Entente Cordiale (Cordial Agreement) of 1904 which may or may not have been an alliance but was enough of one for the admiralties in Paris and London cooperatively to organize the allocations of their fleets.  It certainly illustrated Lord Palmerston's (1784–1865) doctrine that the country had neither eternal allies nor perpetual enemies but only permanent interests for despite the centuries of enmity between Britain and France, the self-interest of both dictated the need to align against the German threat.

Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS New Zealand, 1911.

It was in this atmosphere the great naval arms race took place, plans for which were laid before the Wright brothers had flown a hundred–odd feet, barely off the ground, torpedoes were in their infancy and submarines were little threat more than a few miles from the coast.  The measure of a fleet was its battleships and their big guns and whichever side could put to sea the most firepower was winning the race.  It intrigued the navalists, strategists and theorists who knew from history that such a race, if left to run, could end only in war, the great, decisive set-piece battle of which would be the clash of massed fleets of battleships on the high seas, trading shell-fire at a range of twenty miles (32 km), before closing for the kill as the battle climaxed.  Dreadnought was one strand of the theorists’ imagination but there were others.  There was a school of thought which favored an emphasis on radio communications and a greater attention to the possibilities offered by the torpedo and, most influentially, what seems now the curious notion of a complimentary range of faster capital ships, essentially battleships with the big guns but little armor, the loss of protection off-set by the few knots in speed gained; these ships were called battlecruisers.  The argument was they could fight at such range nothing but a battleship would be a threat and those the battlecruiser could outrun because of their greater speed.  It seemed, to many, a good idea at the time.

Super-Dreadnought: HMS Iron Duke, Port Said, 1921.

But it was the Dreadnoughts which captured the imagination and defined the era.  Impressive though she was, HMS Dreadnought was not long unique as navies around the world launched the own and, as happens in arms races, the original was quickly out-classed and the next generation of ships, bigger and more heavily gunned still, came to be known as super dreadnoughts.  War did come but the grand battle on the high seas which the navalists had, for a quarter century been planning, never happened.  There were smaller clashes of squadrons but the imperative of the Royal Navy was more practical and traditionally British: avoid defeat.  As Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), then First Lord of the Admiralty (minister for the navy), emphasized to the First Sea Lord (the navy’s senior admiral), against a continental empire like Germany, while the Royal Navy couldn’t in a year win the war, because Britain’s empire was maritime, they could lose it in one afternoon.  Accordingly, the Royal Navy made no sustained attempts to induce a massed battle, focusing instead on a blockade, keeping the German fleet confined to its ports.  It was the German admirals who attempted to force the British to a set-piece battle, venturing into the North Sea in May 1916 with a fleet of nearly a hundred, including sixteen dreadnoughts and five battlecruisers.  Against this, the British assembled a hundred and fifty odd with twenty-eight dreadnoughts and nine battlecruisers.  The action came to be known as the Battle of Jutland.

Imperial German Navy battlecruiser SMS Goeben, 1914.

On paper, although the result described as inconclusive, it was a tactical success for the Germans but strategically, the British achieved their goal.  The dreadnoughts barely engaged, most of the action confined to the battlecruisers and, unlike the smaller Battle of Tsushima (May 1905) in the Far East, fought by pre-dreadnoughts a decade earlier between the Japanese and Russian fleets, there was no winner in the traditional sense of naval warfare.  The German's tactical success in retrospect was something of a Dunkirk moment but the strategic implications were profound.  British losses were heavier but their numeric advantage was such they could absorb the loss and had the financial and industrial capacity to restore the fleet’s strength.  Damage to the German fleet was less but they lacked the time or capacity to build their navy to the point it could be used as a strategic weapon and it remained confined to its ports.  Both sides learned well the inherent limitations of the battlecruiser.

WWI era German U-Boot (Unterseeboot (under-sea-boat)), anglicized as U-Boat.

After Jutland, the German admirals concluded that to venture again against the British Home Fleet would either be an inconclusive waste or lead to the inevitable, decisive defeat.  They accordingly prevailed on the politicians and eventually gained approval to use the only genuinely effective weapon in their hands, the submarine.  It was the consequences of unrestricted submarine warfare which would bring the United States into the war in 1917 as a belligerent and without that intervention, the war would certainly have followed a different course and reached perhaps a different conclusion.

Although HMS Dreadnought lent her name to an era and remains one of the most significant warships built, she's remembered for the geopolitical reverberations in the wake of her launching rather than any achievement at sea, missing even the anti-climatic Battle of Jutland (1916) because of a scheduled re-fit.  Indeed, her only achievement of note in combat was the ramming and sinking of German U-Boat SM U-29 on 18 March 1915 although that does remain a unique footnote in naval history, being the only time a battleship deliberately sank an enemy submarine.  Dreadnought was decommissioned in 1920 and scrapped the next year.  Later, under the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty which sought to prevent another naval arms race, most of the surviving dreadnoughts were scrapped or scuttled but many of the super-dreadnoughts remained in the fleets, some not scrapped until after World War II.  The name has a strong resonance in the halls of the Admiralty (now the Navy Command in the UK's Ministry of Defense) and has been chosen for the class of vessels to replace the existing Vanguard class ballistic nuclear-missile submarines.  Now under construction, the first of the nuclear-powered Dreadnought class boats is expected to enter service early in the 2030s.

Dreadnought coats

The term “dreadnought coat” was adopted by the UK’s garment industry in 1908 to refer to a heavy, durable and water-resistant overcoat.  It was an opportunistic “borrowing” that verged on what would now be called “ambush marketing” and took advantage on the extensive publicity the name attracted during the so-called “naval scare” during that decade, the attraction being the arms-race had done the hard word of “brand-name recognition”.  The reference point of the design was the heavy “pea coat” (the construct being the Dutch pij (cowl) + the English coat) issued to Royal Navy sailors (although similar garments were worn in many navies).  Typically, naval pea coats were made from a thick wool yarn, designed to protect against the harsh maritime weather encountered in coastal environments as well as on the high-seas.  Pea coats were of rugged construction, almost always double-breasted and featured large lapels (for extra warmth around the neck, often turned up in cold weather) and deep pockets.

A dreadnought pea coat by Triple Aught ("Dreadnaught Peacoat" the spelling used) (left), Lindsay Lohan in dreadnought coat (London, June, 2014, centre) and in trench coat (London, October 2015, right).

To facilitate ease of movement and avoid becoming entangled in the ropes and chains which are a feature of a ship’ deck, the classic naval pea coat was hip-length, unlike the ankle-length great coats used by armies.  When the double-breasted design was extended to the civilian market, the pea coat was almost unchanged (although many were of lighter construction and navy blue remained the most popular color.  When the style of a pea coat is extended to something calf or ankle-length, it becomes a “dreadnought coat” which should not be confused with a “trench coat” which is of lighter construction, traditionally beige and belted and, as all fashionistas know, the belt is always tied, never buckled.

Bunga

Bunga (pronounce bung-gah)

(1) A name given by locals to a location near Moreton Bay in what is now the state of Queensland, Australia.

(2) Phrase associated with a visit by a fake Prince of Abyssinia and his entourage to a British warship in 1910.

(3) A term used by for former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to describe some of the social events he hosted, derived apparently from certain behaviour at the events.

Early 1800s: A word known in English in the early nineteenth century, drawn from various parts of the British Empire.  In Malay-speaking countries bunga means flower and bunga bunga is the plural.  It’s an Aboriginal place name in Queensland and the name of a deity worshiped in Malaysia, Thailand, the southern Philippines and northern Sumatra

The Dreadnought Hoax

The Dreadnought hoaxers.

In 1910, Horace de Vere Cole (1881-1936), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), her brother Adrian Stephen (1883-1948) and a small group of friends, made up in the now socially unacceptable black-face, pretended to be the Prince of Abyssinia and his entourage, obtaining permission to visit the Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought at anchor in Weymouth, Dorset.  The party was welcomed aboard the ship and an honor guard presented arms, accompanied by a rendition of a national anthem (which actually wasn't that of Abyssinia).  It was reported that each time they were shown some marvel of the ship, such as electric light, they murmured the phrase bunga, bunga!  When the pranksters revealed the hoax, there was some embarrassment but remarkably, it transpired no laws had been broken so prosecutions weren't possible (it would be very different today).  The Dreadnought's junior officers decided justice had to be done and met in the wardroom, staging a symbolic thrashing of the buttocks of the male miscreants.  Ms Woolf wasn't punished in absentia, the Royal Navy's long tradition with the lash not extending to the spanking of women.   

Silvio Berlusconi and the bunga bunga parties

Karima El Mahroug (b 1992) better known by her stage name Ruby Rubacuori (Ruby the Heartstealer).

Officially, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023; prime minister of Italy 1994-1995, 2001-2006 & 2008-2011) hosted private parties.  It later emerged they were a sort of semi-structured orgy run by signor Berlusconi to permit his (male) friends to enjoy the conversational skills of young women, anxious to please both host and guests.  Some of the women were younger than others and one turned out to be Ruby the Heartstealer, a pleasingly pneumatic nymph younger even than she at the time admitted.

Silvio and friends, off to bunga bunga.

Evidence Ruby the Heartstealer supplied in 2010 suggested she had received US$10,000 from signor Berlusconi while attending parties at his mansions.  Hoping to clarify the nature of these events, Ruby the Heartstealer described orgy-like behaviour where signor Berlusconi and more than a dozen young women performed an “African-style” ritual, referred to by those in attendance as "bunga bunga", the young ladies performing in varying degrees of undress.  Ruby the Heartstealer though maintained she never enjoyed intimacy with signor Berlusconi and that he "behaved like a father", adding he had given her the cash only because she had told him she was in some trouble.  In June 2013 he was found guilty of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and of abusing his office, was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from holding public office for life.  A year later, judges in Milan overturned the conviction on appeal and the only conviction which was sustained was for tax evasion although, because of his age, he was spared prison and required to perform "community service".  Ruby did lie to him about her age and and few would deny it was at least plausible she was older.  Really, he was a victim. 

Silvio Berlusconi with Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999).

A great character in European politics, he remains Italy's longest-serving prime-minister since Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943), a reasonable achievement given the churn-rate in those years.  Although there were scandals aplenty signor Berlusconi proved to be a great survivor and as soon as the pleasing technicalities of Italian law allowed his ban on seeking public office to expire earlier than that imposed in the headline sentence, he sought a seat in the European Parliament and was elected in 2019 and three years later returned to the Italian Senate after winning a seat in the 2022 Italian general election which brought Giorgia Meloni (b 1977; prime minister of Italy since 2022) to power.  There will be critics and it's absurd to suggest (as a few have) that he was to blame for the political emergence of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) and polarizing as he was, many of his achievements were real and Italy has had prime-ministers who promised more and did less.  The government announced a national day of mourning for Wednesday 14 June, the day his state funeral will be conducted at Milan Cathedral.  Despite it all, he'll always be remembered as someone who got a bit of fun out of life and there are worse ways to be remembered.

Silvio's linguistic gift:  After bunga bunga re-entered the language, not even The Observer could resist using it when commenting (with their usual superior air) on Vanity Fair's photo-spread of Lindsay Lohan for the Italian edition.

Hoodoo

Hoodoo (pronounced who-do)

(1) A set of spiritual practices and traditions created and concealed from slave-owners by enslaved Africans in North America, based on traditional African beliefs.  Practiced predominantly in the south-east US, its identifiable features include folk magic, rituals of protection, herbal medicine, charming of objects, and ancestor veneration.

(2) In casual use, bad luck, or a person or thing that brings bad luck, not necessarily associated with the supernatural; to jinx, to bring bad luck or misfortune.

(3) In geology, a pillar of rock, created by various forces of erosion (also known as spires of rock, fairy chimneys, earth pyramids (and in particular formations) tent rocks).

1870: A creation of US English meaning "one who practices voodoo", apparently a variant of Voodoo.  The meaning "something that causes or brings bad luck" seems to have emerged in the 1880s and it was being used as a verb by 1886.  Interestingly, in 2002, it was documented also as a distinctly non-religious American folk magic.  Until the late twentieth century, hoodoo was spelled with & without an initial capital letter in a most inconsistent matter, both forms sometimes appearing in the one document.  The modern practice (which seems compelling) is to capitalize in when the word is used in the context of the spiritual practice or the cultural identification but to use all-lowercase when referring to the geological formations or used as casual slang (perhaps surprisingly, there’s been little apparent interest in proscribing hoodoo in this sense on the grounds of cultural appropriation).  Hoodoo is a noun & verb, hoodooed & hoodooing are verbs and hoodooism is a noun; the noun plural is hoodoos.

The first known instance of Hoodoo in English was in 1870 but the origins are wholly speculative, etymologists concluding it was probably an alteration of voodoo, a word drawn from the Ewe and Fon languages of Ghana and Benin which reference a divinity although the Akan odu (medicine) may be related and there’s also the possibility of a link to the Hausa hu'du'ba (resentment and retribution).  Less likely, but not impossible is that it’s from the variant Hudu (spirit work) in the Ewe language spoken in Ghana and Togo.  The link with Voodoo however is most convincing because Hoodoo was as early as the late nineteenth century identified as an African dialect with practices similar to the mysteries of Obi (Obeah) in the Caribbean.

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  Lindsay Lohan demonstrates. 

Pre-dreadnought battleship, USS Texas ("Old Hoodoo"), 1898.  Note the sailors' washing hanging from the railings, a long naval tradition.   

Sailors are said to be notoriously superstitious and probably didn’t need much persuasion to call the USS Texas “Old Hoodoo”.  The US Navy’s first (pre-dreadnought) battleship, she was commissioned in response to the naval arms race which developed in the Americas in the late nineteenth century although, despite the tensions, construction was undertaken as what would seem a leisurely pace; ordered in 1886, it wasn't until 1889 the keel was laid down and when finally commissioned in 1895, although not yet obsolescent, she was hardly in the forefront of naval architecture.  The ship's accident-prone reputation was well deserved and had started early with incidents of grounding, flooding (drowning three of the crew) and a collision with a dock.  However, she rose to the occasion and provided sterling service during the Spanish–American War (1898) but, ironically, her reputation was such that the Navy decided to use the now storied name for a new dreadnought, the USS Texas (BB-35), commissioned in 1914 and later declared a national historic landmark (and now the last surviving World War I (1914-1918) era dreadnought).  As sailors know, it’s bad luck to change the name of a ship and now named the USS San Marcos, the old Texas proved it so.  Towed as a hulk to shallow waters in Chesapeake Bay, resting on the bottom, she became an increasingly battered target ship, the US Navy using her for gunnery practice until the late 1940s.  Increasing water traffic however meant the hulk had become a navigational hazard and most of the remains were removed as scrap in 1959.

Hoodoos short (left), tall (centre) and clustered (right), Arizona, south-west US.

In geology, a hoodoo (also known as spires of rock, fairy chimneys, earth pyramids (and in particular formations) tent rocks) is a tall, typically thin, spire of rock formed by the processes of erosion (wind, rain, floods) and are forms usually of a relatively soft rock (such as sandstone) topped by harder stone which better resists the forces of nature.  Mostly, they exist within sedimentary rock and volcanic rock formations.  Hoodoos can be only a few feet high or exceed the level of multi-storey buildings and the shape they assume is wholly dictated by the composition of the rocks from which they’re formed, the erosional patterns differing according to the hardness of the material.  The introduction of the word hoodoo to geology seems to have happened in the late nineteenth century at the time when it had entered the vernacular to describe both the rituals of certain folk magic and the sense of doom or bad luck.  As the more remote regions of the western US were explored, the rocky structures were noted to be of not dissimilar spiritual significance to First Nations peoples and in some cases literally to be the petrified remains of those punished by the gods for their transgressions.

In the natural environment, temperature can also create structures with a hoodoo-like appearances.  Trees in Finland (left), a frozen fountain in Shevchenko Garden, Kharkiv, Ukraine (centre) and frozen Geyser in Letchworth State Park, New York with volcano-like flow maintained at the top (right).

Cutthroat

Cutthroat (pronounced kuht-throht)

(1) Slang for a murderer (regardless of chosen method) or one thought capable of murder (based on the notion of "cutting the throat" being a classic, ancient method of murder (done properly, being quick, rapid and almost silent)).

(2) Ruthless in competition.

(3) In games of cards where the rules permit each of three or more persons to act and score as an individual.

(4) In billiards, a three person game where the object is to be the last player with at least one ball still on the table.

(5) As cutthroat eel, a family, Synaphobranchidae, of eels found worldwide in temperate and tropical seas.

(6) As cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii), a species of freshwater fish in the salmon family of order Salmoniformes.

(7) As cutthroat finch, a common species of estrildid finch found in Africa.

(8) As cutthroat razor, a reusable knife blade used for shaving hair.

(9) In linguistics, as an ellipsis of cutthroat compound (an agentive-instrumental verb-noun compound word).

1525–1535: A compound word, the construct bing cut + throat.  the early twelfth century cut was from the Middle English cutten, kitten, kytten & ketten (to cut), from the Old English cyttan (related to the Scots kut & kit (to cut)), probably of North Germanic origin, from the Old Norse kytja & kutta, from the Proto-Germanic kutjaną & kuttaną (to cut), of uncertain origin but possibly related to the Proto-Germanic kwetwą (meat, flesh).  It was akin to the Middle Swedish kotta (to cut or carve with a knife), the Swedish kuta & kytti (a knife)), the Norwegian kutte (to cut), the Icelandic kuta (to cut with a knife), the Old Norse kuti (small knife) and the Norwegian kyttel, kytel & kjutul (pointed slip of wood used to strip bark).  Descent from the Old French coutel (knife) is thought improbable and it displaced the native Middle English snithen (from Old English snīþan (related to the German schneiden)), which survives still in some dialects as snithe.  The pre-900 t was from the Middle English throte, from the Old English throtu, þrote, þrota & þrotu (throat), from the Proto-Germanic þrutō (throat), from the primitive Indo-European trud- (to swell, become stiff).  It was cognate with the Dutch strot (throat), the German drossel (throttle, gorge of game (wild animals)), the Icelandic þroti (swelling) and the Swedish trut.  The Old English throtu was related to the Old High German drozza (throat) and the Old Norse throti (swelling).  Words with a similar meaning in the figurative sense include ferocious, vicious, savage, barbarous, bloodthirsty, cruel, dog-eat-dog, merciless, pitiless & relentless and unprincipled.  The alternative form is cut-throat although dictionaries note the rare use of cut throat.  Cutthroat is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is cutthroats.

You're wrong.—He was the mildest manner'd man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat:
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought;
No courtier could, and scarcely woman can
Gird more deceit within a petticoat;
Pity he loved adventurous life's variety,
He was so great a loss to good society.

Don Juan (1819–24) canto III, stanza XLI, by Lord Byron (1788–1824)

A hover of cutthroat trout.

The cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) is of the family Salmonidae and is native to a number of North American cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean and Rocky Mountains.  The common name "cutthroat" is derived from the coloration on the underside of the lower jaw.  Despite the use of the name, not all cutthroat trout instantly are recognizable.  Coastal cutthroat trout occur as sea-run or freshwater-resident forms in streams and lakes in a coastal range from lower south-east Alaska to Prince William Sound and are the most common trout species in the region.  What was noted as early as the 1950s was a lack of a distinct red slash mark in some sea-run and lake-resident forms which meant easily they could be confused with rainbow trout and although a positive identification was possible because (unlike the rainbow) the cutthroat is marked by the by the presence of minute teeth between the gills behind the base of the tongue, that obviously demanded close inspection.  That cutthroat trout and rainbow trout often share the same habitats does lead to occasional hybridization (the mating producing fertile offspring) which can make identification challenging as the hybrid fish are intermediate in appearance.

HMS Dreadnought at anchor, 1908.

The “cutthroat compound” is one of the more recent additions to the jargon of structural linguistics, the term in 2015 coined by historical linguist Brianne Hughes to describe a compound word formed from a transitive verb followed by a noun that is the object of that verb and the form is self-referential because “cutthroat” is such a form.  According to Ms Hughes’ analysis, although her research revealed some 1350 have from time-to-time been created, in Modern English, fewer than three dozen remain in common use, the most frequently heard being “breakfast” (the meal that “breaks the fast” since dinner, supper, midnight snack or whatever was one’s last meal).  She listed some which have survived to appear occasionally (swashbuckler, sawbones, and skinflint) but, being a historical linguist it was the “fun” ones which caught her eye and these included “catch-fart” (a footboy or servant who follows too closely behind his master, “hugmoppet” (an overly-affectionate old woman), “lackbeard” (a young man) and the hopefully metaphorical “lickspittle” (a toady or yes-man, base on the imagery of “one who licks up the spittle of another”.  More familiar are “daredevil” (one who “dares” the devil (ie takes great risks, tempting the devil to “take them to Hell”), “scarecrow” (used to “scare away crows”, “spoilsport” (one who ruins the fun), “turncoat” (one who changes their allegiance), “breakwater” (something that diverts or breaks the force of water) and “pickpocket” (one who “picks pockets”).  At the margins, deconstruction can be challenging: Is a dreadnought (1) an individual with a dread of nothing or (2) an individual who does but dread?  As the Royal Navy knew, it was the former and Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher (First Baron Fisher, 1841–1920; First Sea Lord 1904–1910 & 1914–1915), the figure most associated with the epoch-making HMS Dreadnought (1906), when raised to the peerage, choose as the motto on his coat of arms: “Fear God and dread nought”.  Much the old salt would much have preferred the punchy “cutthroat compound” to the academic textbook term in the linguistics literature: “agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun compounds”.

In the cutthroat position: Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, left) and Vanessa Lachey (née Minnillo, b 1980, right), staged shot, June, 2007.

There are also surnames which are cutthroat compounds (William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863); Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) & William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and the constructs appear also in other languages, the French amuse-bouche a small appetizer meant to “amuse one’s bouche (mouth)” (ie taste good).  As a device, the technique was in Romance languages a common way to form agent nouns but use was rare in Germanic languages (which use the suffix “-er” or its homologues).  The increase in the appearance of the pattern in English after the Norman Conquest (1066 and all that) was a consequence of French influence and linguistic anthropologists believe this reflected sociological factors: forming agent nouns in this way for despicable or derisible agents (such as cutthroat and turncoat) was apparently one way the English could mock both the French and those English folk who had become “affected”, speaking French and acting “more French than the French”.

Palace

Palace (pronounced pal-is)

(1) The official residence of an emperor, king, queen, bishop or other exalted personage.

(2) A large and stately mansion or building.

(3) A large and often ornate structure used for entertainment, exhibitions etc.

(4) To decorate or ornate (obsolete).

1200–1250: From the Middle English palais (official residence of an emperor, king, queen, archbishop etc), from the earlier paleys, from the Old French palais (palace, court), from the Medieval Latin palācium (“a palace” and a spelling variant of the Classical palātium (generic use of Palātium, in reference to the Palatine (from Mons Palatinus (the Palatine Hill)), one of the seven hills of Ancient Rome, where the aristocracy of the Roman Republic (and later the emperors) built large, splendid residences)).  The hill’s name may be from the Latin palus (stake) on the notion of "an enclosure" while some speculate it’s from the Etruscan and connected with Pales (said to be although this too is contested “an Italic goddess of shepherds, flocks and livestock).  One noted etymologist linked it with palatum "roof of the mouth; dome, vault", the rationale being that because “palate” can be referred to as a “flattened or vaulted” part and the terms “flat” and “vaulted” are often applied to hills in accordance with their shape; on that basis, the idea of a derivation of palatium from palatum seems compelling.  Palācium was the source also of the Spanish palacio and the Italian palazzo.  The modern French palace is a direct borrowing from the English which was from the Old French palais.  In English, the general sense of "magnificent, stately, or splendid dwelling place" emerged by circa 1300 and the ironic sense is documented from the early 1600s although it may have been in oral use earlier.  The French palais was the source of the German Palast, the Swedish palats and other Germanic forms whereas others, such as Old English palant and the Middle High German phalanze (Pflaz in modern German) are from the Medieval Latin word.  Palace is a noun, palaced & palace-like are adjective, palacing is a verb and palaceward an adverb.  The noun plural is palaces.

The noun palazzo (large and imposing building) was from the 1660s, from Italian palazzo.  The adjective palatial (of the nature of a palace, magnificent) dates from 1754 and was from the French palatial (magnificent) from the Latin palātium (see palace); the adverb palatially is noted from 1761.  In Middle English there was palasin (literally "belonging to a palace or court"), dating from circa 1400, from the Old French and palatian (1845) was a revival in that sense and most associated with the palaces of India under the Raj.  Palacious, noted first in the 1620s, meant “magnificent, of the nature of a palace” but is long obsolete.  The noun paladin is from the 1590s and was used by those (many) authors of the medieval romance cycle (one of the twelve knightly champions in attendance on Charlemagne and accompanying him to war) and was from the sixteenth century French paladin (a warrior), from the from Italian paladino, from the Latin palatinus (palace official), noun use of palatinus (of the palace).  In the Old French the spelling was palaisin (from which Middle English gained the circa 1400 palasin) but the Italian form prevailed, even though the subject matter was French, simply because most of the poets attracted to most of the poets attracted to the tales were Italian.  The extended sense of "a heroic champion" dates from 1788 and the modern use is often negative in the sense of describing operatives and functionaries associated with political leaders.

In the palace: Lindsay Lohan meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Presidential Palace, Ankara, Türkiye, 27 January 2017.

The adjective palatine (possessing quasi-royal privileges (literally "pertaining to a palace)), was by the mid-fifteenth century applied to counties and non-sovereign states, conveying the meaning "ruled by a lord who has privileges resembling those of an independent sovereign"; it was from the fifteenth century Old French palatin and directly from the Medieval Latin palatinus (of the palace (ie "of the Caesars”), from palātium.  In Medieval Latin there was palatinus, a title given to one holding any office in the palace of a prince, hence "possessing royal privileges" and best understood as something like the “courtesy titles” which are a feature of the UK’s system of peerage.  The German state of Rhineland-Palatinate was created in 1946 (as part of the abolition of Prussia) and is made up of parts of the former states of Prussia, Bavaria & Hesse (including Bavaria’s former Palatinate kreis (district)).  The historic Rhineland state was once an electorate in the Holy Roman Empire and by the early eighteenth century, Palatinate was also a noun meaning "resident of or immigrant from the German Palatine".

1200-odd rooms and twenty times the size of the White House: The Quirinal Palace, Rome.  Had things worked out better for Napoleon Boneparte (1769-1821), the Quirinal would have be the seat of his imperial rule. 

There had long been houses larger than others but as legend has it, it’s Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 37–68; Roman emperor 54-68) who is regarded as having ordered the first.  Rome’s Palantine hill had always been a central part of the city but as the metropolis spread, it became the smartest “suburb” and the place many rich and prominent citizens built their houses.  Noting this, the Emperor Nero ordered all on the hill be evicted and their properties purchased so a vast and elaborate dwelling could be erected for him alone and this was named the palātium (literally “on the site of the palatine”).  From this history is ultimately derived the synecdochic and metonymic use of palace, the general “the palace” historically referring to the views or policies of kings and more recently to whatever may be thought or done by the now more typically non-royal inhabitants.

The Élysée Palace, Paris.

Sometimes, the reference may be specific such as “the Quirinal” (referencing Rome’s Quirinal Palace), used variously and metonymically for (1) the Italian civil government as opposed to that of the Holy See in the Vatican, (2) the (2) the court of the king as opposed to the fascist government of the Duce and (3) in Modern Italy the office of the (indirectly elected and mostly ceremonial) presidency as opposed to that of the (popularly elected and executive) prime-minister.  The use is common in countries where the head of state or government is in some way associated (though not of necessity resident) with a palace although the form of use varies for reasons which may be historic or linguistic.  In France, it’s usually “the Élysée” when speaking of the government (or sometimes of the president vis-à-vis the government) although BBC journalists do seem fond of “the Élysée Palace”.  The BBC may also be a good guide to use in the UK, impressionistically preferring “the palace” for home consumption and “Buckingham Palace” when seeking to make clear to foreign audiences that much of what is attributed to the Queen of England is really the thoughts of the royal court, an operation at the scale of a SMB (small & medium business) which runs “the firm”.  Either way, pronouncements from “the palace” or “Buckingham Palace” which once concerned the great affairs of Church, state and empire, seem now more often about family scandals and squabbles.  In the Philippines, both “Malacañang Palace” and “Malacañang” are used to refer to executive government, the choice dictated seemingly by whichever best suits the sentence construction.

A palace guard, Buckingham Palace, London.

In idiomatic use, a “palace coup” (short for Coup d'état (literally "blow of state")) is a general term indicating one faction or family member has overthrown another, something which can be as innocuous as a vote or as dramatic as actual regicide.  A “palace revolution” is actually the same thing but it would be handy if a convention of use could evolve whereby it indicates the more violent events while coups can suggest more civilized changes.  A “palace guard” is literally a police or military squad which provides both physical security and a ceremonial presence at a palace; figuratively it refers to any group protecting someone or something.  A puck palace is an informal North American terms to describe an especially impressive ice hockey stadium.

Pink gin.

The casual term gin palace (literally “A tavern that serves gin”) is anything thought a bit disreputable and a bit gaudy, reflecting London society’s disapproval of the corroding effects of gin on the working class.  A memorable variation was the “floating gin palace, applied to the Royal Navy’s HMS Agincourt, a dreadnought launched in 1913 and fitted out with unusual elaborateness because it’d originally been built to the specification of a foreign navy, the luxury attracting wits who, noting the corruption of her name (A Gin Court) and the alleged fondness by captains and admirals afloat for Pink Gin (Plymouth Gin with a dash of Angostura bitters, the bitters lending the mix a pinkish hue), decided it should be call the “floating gin palace”.

HMS Agincourt, Scapa Flow, Scotland, 1918.

HMS Agincourt was an unusual ship with a curious history and a design unique in the Admiralty list.  Built originally for the Brazilians, then in the throes of the brief but intense South American naval arms race, before completion she was sold to the Ottoman Empire but, with the outbreak of war in 1914, the ship was seized by the British, an act which some historians maintain influenced Turkey to ally with the Central Powers, thereby triggering a chain of events which included the Allied attempt to force the straits of the Dardanelles (remembered in Australia & New Zealand as the Gallipoli campaign) and the eventual break-up of the Ottoman Empire, unleashing forces which to this day still ripple across the region from the Rock of Gibraltar to the Persian Gulf.  The geopolitical speculations aside, Agincourt was of note for being the dreadnought which mounted more heavy guns (fourteen) and more turrets (seven) than any other.  Although that configuration didn’t represent the current thinking in naval architecture, it was certainly in keeping with the Brazil’s requirement for an especially impressive looking ship, rather than one optimized for a high-seas battle.

HMS Agincourt's stern gun turrets.

Reflecting this too was what remains reputedly the largest wardroom (85 x 60 feet (25.9 x 18.3 m) ever installed on a warship and one luxuriously equipped with tableware, crystal & silverware.  That was said to be an impressive sight but so must have been the wall of flame created the first time she fired those fourteen twelve inch (305 mm) naval canons in a broadside, observers noting it was “was awe inspiring and enough to enough to create the impression the ship had blown up”.  Dramatic though it was, the floating gin palace was undamaged, despite the concern of some that a broadside of 12,040 lb (5461 KG) (14 x 12 inch (305 mm) guns firing 860 lb (390 KG) shells) would impose a damaging load on the superstructure.  However, other dreadnoughts, such as the Iron Duke endured 14,000 lb (6350 KG) broadsides (10 x 13½ inch (343 mm) guns firing 1,400 lb (635 KG) shells) without ill-effect and the Agincourt too sailed serenely on.  However, much of the elegant tableware and glassware did shatter and little of what remained surviving subsequent broadsides.  Like much of the fleet, the floating gin palace saw little action during the war although she was part of the inconclusive Battle of Jutland (1916).  Agincourt was struck from the fleet in 1919 and scrapped in 1922 to meet the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty (1922).

1965 Citroën DS21 Pallas (left) & 2020 Citroën DS E Pallas Homage Study.

Citroën introduced the DS in 1955 and, because "DS" is a homophone of déesse (goddess), almost immediately it picked-up the nickname goddess.  In 1965, the factory introduced an up-market version of the DS called the Pallas, not an allusion to the luxury of palaces but a borrowing from Greek mythology, Pallas the goddess of wisdom and useful arts and prudent warfare; Pallas often used as an epithet of Athena.  The idea was that the Pallas would be thought the "goddess of goddesses".  Citroën have since applied the Pallas moniker to many models and in 2020 a designer created the Citroën DS E Pallas Homage Study, imagining a possible electric vehicle.