Flatware

Flatware (pronounced flat-wair)

In catering, an omnibus term covering (1) cutlery such as the knives, forks, and spoons used at the table for serving and eating food & (2) crockery such as those plates, saucers, dishes or containers which tend to flatness in shape (as opposed to the more capacious hollowware).

1851: The construct was flat + ware.  Flat dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English flat from the Old Norse flatr, related to Old High German flaz (flat) and the Old Saxon flat (flat; shallow) and akin to Old English flet.  It was cognate with the Norwegian and Swedish flat and the Danish flad, both from the Proto-Germanic flataz, from the primitive Indo-European pleth (flat); akin to the Saterland Frisian flot (smooth), the German flöz (a geological layer), the Latvian plats and Sanskrit प्रथस् (prathas) (extension).  Source is thought to be the Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús & platys) (flat, broad).  The sense of "prosaic or dull" emerged in the 1570s and was first applied to drink from circa 1600, a meaning extended to musical notes in the 1590s (ie the tone is "lowered").   Flat-out, an adjectival form, was first noted in 1932, apparently a reference to pushing a car’s throttle (accelerator) flat to the floor and thus came to be slang for a vehicle’s top speed.  The noun was from the Middle English flat (level piece of ground, flat edge of a weapon) and developed from the adjective; the US colloquial use as a noun from 1870 meaning "total failure" endures in the sense of “falling flat”.  The notion of a small, residential space, a divided part of a larger structure, dates from 1795–1805; variant of the obsolete Old English flet (floor, house, hall), most suggesting the meaning followed the early practice of sub-dividing buildings within levels.  In this sense, the Old High German flezzi (floor) has been noted and it is perhaps derived from the primitive Indo-European plat (to spread) but the link to flat as part of a building is tenuous.

Ware was from the Middle English ware & war, from the Old English waru & wær (article of merchandise (originally “protection, guard”, the sense probably derived from “an object of care, that which is kept in custody”), from the Proto-Germanic warō & Proto-West Germanic war, from the Proto-Germanic waraz, the Germanic root also the source of the Swedish vara, the Danish vare, the Old Frisian were, the Middle Dutch were, the Dutch waar, the Middle High German & German Ware (goods). All ultimately were from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (perceive, watch out for)  In Middle English, the meaning shifted from "guard, protection" to "an object that is in possession, hence meriting attention, guarded, cared for, and protected".  Thus as a suffix, -ware is used to form nouns denoting, collectively, items made from a particular substance or of a particular kind or for a particular use.  In the special case of items worn as clothing, the suffix -wear is appended, thus there is footwear rather than footware.  In the suffixed form, ware is almost always in the singular but as a stand-alone word (meaning goods or products etc), it’s used as wares.  Ladyware was a seventeenth century euphemism for "a woman's private parts" (the companion manware etc much less common) and in Middle English there was also the mid-thirteenth century ape-ware (deceptive or false ware; trickery).

Hardware and software were adopted by the computer industry, the former used from the very dawn of the business in the late 1940s, borrowing from the mid-fifteenth century use which initially described “small metal goods” before evolving to be applied to just about everything in building & construction from tools to fastenings.  Apparently, software didn’t come into use until the 1960s and then as something based on “hardware” rather than anything to do with the mid-nineteenth century use when it described both "woolen or cotton fabrics" and "relatively perishable consumer goods"; until then there was hardware & programs (the term “code” came later).  The ecosystem spawned by the industry picked up the idea in the 1980s, coining shareware (originally software distributed for free for which some payment was hoped) and that started a trend, begetting:

Abandonware: Software no longer updated or maintained, or on which copyright is no longer defended or which is no longer sold or supported; such software can, with approval pass to others for development (takeoverware) or simply be purloined (hijackware).  Abandonware is notoriously associated with video game development where there’s a high failure rate and many unsuccessful projects later emerge as shareware or freeware.

Adware: Nominally free software which includes advertising while running.  Adware sometimes permits the advertising to disappear upon payment and is popularly associated with spyware although the extent of this has never reliably been quantified.

Baitware: Software with the most desirable or tempting features disabled but able to be activated upon payment; a type of crippleware or demoware.

Freeware: Free software, a variation of which is “open source” which makes available also the source code which anyone may modify and re-distribute on a non-commercial basis.  Google’s Chrome browser is a famous example, developed from the open source Chromium project.

Censorware: An umbrella term for content-filtering software.

Demoware: A variation of crippleware or baitware in that it’s a fully-functional version of the software but limited in some critical way (eg ceases to work after 30 days); also called trialware.  The full feature set is unlocked by making a payment which ensures the user is provided with a code (or "key") to activate full-functionality.  The fashionable term for this approach is "freemium" (a portmanteau of free & premium, the idea being the premium features cost something.

Donationware: Pure shareware in that it’s fully-functional and may be used without payment but donations are requested to support further development.  A type of shareware.

Postcardware: Developer requests a postcard from the user’s home town.  This really is a thing and the phenomenon is probably best explained by those from the behavioral science community; also called cardware.

Ransomware: Software which “locks” or in some way renders inaccessible a user’s data or system, requiring a payment (usually in crypto-currency) before access can be regained; malware’s growth industry.

Spyware: Software which furtively monitors a user’s actions, usually to steal and transmit data; antispyware is its intended nemesis.

Malware: Software with some malicious purpose including spyware and ransomware.

Bloatware: Either (1) the programs bundled by manufacturers or retailers with devices when sold, (often trialware and in some notorious cases spyware) or (2) software laden with pointless “features” nobody will ever use; also called fatware, fattware and phatware.

Vaporware: Non-existent software which is either well behind schedule or has only ever been speculative; also called noware.

Ford flathead V8 with heads removed (right), a pair of (flat) heads (centre) and V8 with (aftermarket Offenhauser) heads installed.

Flat as a noun, prefix or adjective has also been productive:  Flat white can be either a coffee or a non-gloss paint.  Flatway and flatwise (with a flat side down or otherwise in contact with a flat surface) are synonymous terms describing the relationship of one or more flat objects in relation to others and flat-water is a nautical term meaning much the same as "still-water".  The flat universe is a cluster of variations of one theory among a number of speculative descriptions of the topological or geometric attributes of the universe.  Probably baffling to all but a few cosmologists, the models appear suggest a structure which include curves while as a totality being of zero curvature and, depending on the detail, imply a universe which either finite or infinite.  In internal combustion engines, a flathead engine (also called the sidevalve or L-Head) is one where the poppet valves are built into the engine block rather than being in a separate cylinder head which has since the 1950s been the almost universal practice (overhead valve (OHV) and overhead camshaft (OHC)).  Until the 1950s, flatheads were widely available in both cheap and expensive vehicles because they used relatively few moving parts, were simple (and thus economic) to manufacture and existed in an era of low-octane fuels which tended to preclude high engine speeds.  During the Second World War (1939-1945), decades of advances in design and metallurgy were effectively accomplished in five years and flathead designs were phased out of production except for non-automotive niches where simple, cheap, low-revving units were ideal.  The classic flathead was the Ford V8 (1932-1953 in the US market although, remarkably, production overseas didn’t end until 1993) which encompasses all the advantages and disadvantages of the design and was so identified with the concept that it’s still known as “the Flathead”, the name gained because the “head”, containing no valve-gear or other machinery, is little more than a piece of flat steel, providing a sealing for the combustion process.

Flat Earth Society factional options.

Members of the Flat Earth Society believe the Earth is flat but there's genuine debate within the organization, some holding the shape is disk-like, others that it's conical but both agree we live on something like the face of a coin.  There are also those in a radical faction suggesting it's actually shaped like a doughnut but this theory is regarded by the flat-earth mainstream as speculative or even heretical.  Evidence, such as photographs from orbit showing Earth to be a sphere, is dismissed as part of the "round Earth conspiracy" run by NASA and others.  The flat-earther theory is that the Arctic Circle is in the center and the Antarctic is a 150-foot (45m) tall wall of ice around the rim; NASA contractors guard the ice wall so nobody can fall over the edge.  Earth's daily cycle is a product of the sun and moon being 32 mile (51 km) wide spheres travelling in a plane 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above Earth.  The more distant stars are some 3100 miles (5000 km) away and there's also an invisible "anti-moon" which obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.

Lindsay Lohan in Lanvin Classic Garnet ballet flats (ballet pumps in the US) (Lanvin p/n: FW-BAPBS1-NAPA-A18391), Los Angeles, 2012.

Ballet flats are shoes which either literally are or closely resemble a ballerina’s dancing slippers.  In the US, ballet flats are almost always called ballet pumps and this use has spread, many in the industry also now calling them pumps, presumably just for administrative simplicity although the standardization does create problems because the term “pump” is used to describe a wide range of styles and there’s much inconsistency between markets.  A flat-file database is a database management system (DBMS) where records are stored in a uniform format with no structure for indexing or recognizing relationships between entries.  A flat-file database is best visualized as the page of a spreadsheet which no capacity for three-dimensionality but, in principle, there’s no reason why a flat-file database can’t be huge although they tend for many reasons not to be suitable to use at scale.

The Flatiron building (circa 1904) oil on canvas by Ernest Lawson (1873-1939).

The Flatiron Building is a 22 storey, 285 foot (86.9 m), tall building with a triangular footprint, located at 175 Fifth Avenue in what is now called the Flatiron District of Manhattan, New York City.  Opened in 1902 and originally called the “Fuller Building”, the Flatiron was one of the city’s first skyscrapers and gained the nickname which stuck because people compare the shape to the cast-iron clothes irons then on sale although, viewed from ground level, the shape is deceptive; whereas an iron is symmetrical, the Flatiron is an irregular triangle: a wedge.  A striking example of modernist design, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989.

Flatware

Flatware in its historic sense is now rarely used outside of the categorization systems of catering suppliers except in the US where it vies with “silverware” & “flatwaresilverware” to describe what is in most of the English-speaking world called cutlery.  In modern use, a term which covers some utensils and some dishware seems to make no sense and that’s correct.  The origin of flatware belongs to a time when those to whom an invitation to dinner was extended would bring their own “flatware” (knife, fork, spoon, plate, goblet) because in most houses, those items existed in numbers sufficient only for the inhabitants.

Jacob Rees-Mogg taking a dish of tea.  Mr Rees-Mogg (b 1969), a noted member of Boris Johnson's government since 2019, is sometime referred to as "the right honourable member for the eighteenth century".

As applied to crockery, flatware items were in the fourteenth century those plates, dishes, saucers which were "shallow & smooth-surfaced", distinguishing them from hollowware which were the larger items (steel, china, earthenware) of crockery used to cook or serve food (onto or into flatware to be eaten with flatware).  The seemingly aberrant case of the cup (something inherently hollow) being flatware is that what we would now call a mug or goblet, like a knife, fork or plate, was an item most people would carry with them when going to eat in another place.  The issue of cup and saucer existing in different categories thus didn’t exist and in any case saucers were, as the name suggests, originally associated with the serving of sauce, being a drip-tray.  The cup and saucer in its modern form didn’t appear until the mid eighteenth century when a handle was added to the little bowls which had been in use in the West for more than a hundred years (centuries earlier in the East) and reflecting handle-less age, the phrase “a dish of tea” is still an occasionally heard affectation.

Elizabeth II farewelling Bill & crooked Hillary Clinton, Buckingham Palace, 2000.

Almost universally, flatware is referred to as "the silver".  Eating and drinking has long been fetishized and adopted increasingly elaborate forms of service so (except for the specific sense in the US) the term flatware is now of little use outside the databases of catering suppliers, crockery and cutlery now more useful general categories which can accommodate what is now a huge number of classes of wares.  Flatware is a noun and the noun plural is flatwares.

Omnibus

Omnibus (pronounced om-nuh-buhs)

(1) A now less commonly used term for a bus (a public mass-transit vehicle).

(2) A volume of reprinted works of a single author or of works related in interest or theme, by extension later applied to a television or radio programme consisting of two or more programmes earlier broadcast.

(3) Something pertaining to, including, or dealing with numerous objects or items at once, the best known example being the omnibus bills submitted to a legislature (a number of bills combined as one).

(4) As a pre-nominal, of, dealing with, or providing for many different things or cases. 

(5) In philately, a stamp issue, usually commemorative, that appears simultaneously in several countries as a common issue.

(6) In public transportation, a service which stops at every station, as opposed to a point-to-point express.

(7) In literary use as a humorous device, a jack of all trades (a person with knowledge in multiple fields, usually with some hint of lacking competence in at least some).

(8) In restaurants, both (1) a waiter’s assistant (obsolete, replaced by busboy or (now more commonly) busser or commis waiter) & (2) later the small, wheeled cart used by a waiter's assistant.

1829: A adoption in English to describe a "long-bodied, horse-drawn, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers", from the French voiture omnibus (carriage for all, common (conveyance)), from the Latin omnibus (for all), dative plural of omnis (all), ablative of omnia, from the primitive Indo-European hep-ni- (working), from hep- (to work; to possess) or hop- (to work; to take).  Bus was thus a convenient shortening to describe the (then horse drawn) forms of public transport and subsequent uses by analogy with transporting (even weightless) stuff is derived from this.  The present participle is omnibusing or omnibussing and the past participle omnibused or omnibussed; the noun plural is either omnibuses or (for the public transportation) omnibusses; the attractive omnibi unfortunately wholly non-standard.

Omnibus entered English to describe a “horse-drawn, long-bodied, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers” in 1829 as a borrowing from the French where it had been in use for a decade, introduced in Paris in the winter of 1819-1820 by a Monsieur Jacques Lafitte (1761-1833) who used the term voiture omnibus”, combining the French word for "carriage" with the Latin phrase meaning "for all".  An Englishman named George Shillibeer (1797-1866) was the coach-builder to whom Lafitte awarded the contract to build his omnibuses and after returning to London, he built similar models, introducing them in 1929 to immediate success.  In the manner of the Brougham and Hansom cabs, they were known first as Shillibeers (and use of his name to describe the vehicles did persist until late in the nineteenth century) but omnibus was soon preferred and that for more than a century remained the official designation (and indeed still appears in some legislation and ordinances) but predictably, the public preferred the more phonetically economical "bus" and that endures to this day.  Encouraged by his success, Mr Shillibeer remained entrepreneurial, introducing in 1858 the “funeral omnibus” which combined in the one vehicle (in separate compartments), accommodation for both coffin (casket) and mourners.  Thus a combination of bus and hearse, the advertising suggested that for smaller funeral parties it would be cheaper than hiring multiple vehicles (with their attendant staff and horses).  Perhaps for cultural reasons it seems not to have been a success, but hearses with similar configuration are used in some countries and, in the West, some are built with seating for up to four passengers, apparently intended for the undertaker’s staff.

Lindsay Lohan display advertising on Italian omnibus, Milan.

The use of omnibus to describe a junior staff member in a restaurant who was assigned essentially “all the tasks the waiters preferred not to do” dates from 1880 and came soon to be applied to the wheeled carts such helpers used to more around crockery, cutlery, flatware and such.  This simultaneous use may have proved confusing or else three syllables was just too much because by 1913 the carts were being called busses and their operators busboys (although that seems not to have survived our more gender-sensitive age and “commis waiter” seems now preferred (usually as “commis”).  Omnibus was the name of a long-running live TV series (1952-1961) hosted on US television by expatriate English journalist Alistair Cooke (1908-2004).  The use of omnibus to describe a legislative bill which addresses a number of vaguely related (or even wholly dissimilar) matters in the one document technically dates from 1842 although, as an adjective referring to legislation "designed to cover many different cases, embracing numerous distinct objects", it was in use in the US as early as 1835 and is most famously associated with the act (made of five separate bills) passed in 1850 to secure the Compromise of 1850 which (temporarily) defused a political confrontation between slave and free states over the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War.

The Man on the Clapham Omnibus

1932 Lancia Autoalveare, a triple-decker omnibus which served the Rome-Tvoli route.  The upper deck was apparently, at least on some occasions, designated as "non-smoking" but history doesn't record whether the bus company enjoyed any more success than the government of Italy in enforcing such edicts.

The phrase “man on the Clapham omnibus” was one adopted (apparently from early in the twentieth century) by judges of English courts to illustrate the “reasonable person”.  The word “reasonable” had been in English since circa 1300 as a borrowing from the Old French raisonable and the Latin rationabilis (from ratio) and in this context was an attempt by example encapsulate “the average man” or “the man in the street”, judges varying in their descriptions of this construct but meaning usually something like “a reasonably intelligent and impartial person unversed in legal esoteric” (Jones v US, DC Court of Appeals).  When the phrase was in 1903 used by Lord Justice Sir Richard Collins MR, the Clapham omnibus would have been horse drawn and he credited the expression to one he’d heard mentioned by a previous Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Bowen (1835-1894).

The judicial choice of a bus passenger was based on the idea that such a person could be thought to be representative of an upstanding, respectable and thoroughly ordinary member of society, one for whom views of things were not infected by legal technicalities.  The choice of Clapham was significant only that it was an unexceptional London suburb something like many of dozens that might be said to have been “typical” of the city.  The man on the Clapham omnibus was thus in the tradition of legal fictions, a hypothetical person used for illustrative purposes, the first known instance of which in Western legal tradition was the creation by Roman jurists of the figure of bonus pater familias (good family father) a chap said to be not only respectable but unrelentingly and reliably average in every aspect of life.  In the Canadian province of Quebec, the very similar standard of the bon père de famille is derived from the Roman bonus pater familias.  The reasonable man (now of course a reasonable person) is a necessity in many aspects of law because so many standards upon which cases are decided depend on the word reasonable.  Were the consequences of an action reasonably foreseeable?  Would a reasonable person believe a certain thing told to them?  Was a claim by advertisement reasonable?  Was the violence used reasonable given the manner in which the defendant was assaulted.

Crooked Hillary dumping on deplorables, Georgia, 2016.

Omnibuses have long been used by politicians for their campaign tours.  They offer lots of advantages, being offices and communications centres with at least some of their running costs offset by a reduction in staff travel expenses.  Additionally, with five large, flat surfaces, they are a rolling billboard although that can be good or bad.  In 2016, one of crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses was photographed in Lawrenceville, Georgia dumping a tank full of human waste onto the street and into a storm drain.  The local news service reported that when police attended the street was “…was covered in toilet paper and the odor was noxious”.  Hazmat crews were called to clean up the scene and the matter was referred to the environmental protection division of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) later issued an apology, claiming the incident was “an honest mistake.”  Using the word “honest” in any statement related to crooked Hillary Clinton is always a bit of a gamble and there was no word on whether the dumping of human excrement had been delayed until the bus was somewhere it was thought many deplorables may be living.  If so, that may have been another “honest mistake” because Gwinett County (in which lies Lawrenceville) voted 51.02% Clinton/Kaine & 45.14% Trump/Pence although the symbolism may not have been lost on much of the rest of Georgia; state wide the Republican ticket prevailed 50.38% to 45.29%.

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses also attracted memes referencing a crash and a breakdown.  Both were fake news but surprisingly prescient, the Clinton/Kaine ticket securing an absolute majority of votes cast but failing to gain the requisite numbers in the Electoral College because the campaign neglected adequately to target areas in states the DNC regarded either (1) solidly in the possession of their machine or (2) populated by folk from the "basket of deplorables" and thus worthy only of a dumping of shit, figurative and literal.  Like the candidate, the 2016 campaign was something like what was planned for 2008, taken from the cold-room, rechauffed and served.  It wasn't quite that the staff had "learned nothing and forgotten everything" but it does seem the operation was top-heavy with political operatives and lacking in those with a mastery of the techniques of data analysis.  All the evidence suggests there was no lack of data, just an inability to extract from it useful information. 

Before Photoshop imbued all with cynical disbelief, the triple decked omnibus was a popular vehicle for April fool's day pranks, the photograph on the left published in Lisbon on the day in 1951.  The one on the right is from 1926 and was in the German magazine Echo Continental (trade publication of the auto and truck parts manufacturer Continental AG) which "reported" the development of Berlin's new triple-decker city omnibus.  So lovely are the art deco lines, it's a shame it wasn't real.

Synecdoche

Synecdoche (pronounced si-nek-duh-kee)

In the study of rhetoric, a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special; a member of the figurative language set, a group which includes metaphors, similes and personification; it describes using part of a whole to represent the whole.

Late 1400s: As a "figure of speech in which a part is taken for the whole or vice versa," synecdoche is a late fifteenth century correction of the late fourteenth century synodoches, from the Medieval Latin synodoche, an alteration of the Late Latin synecdochē, from the Ancient Greek συνεκδοχή (sunekdokhḗ) (the putting of a whole for a part; an understanding one with another (and literally "a receiving together or jointly" (ekdokhē the root of interpretation)) from synekdekhesthai (supply a thought or word; take with something else, join in receiving).  The construct was syn- (with) + ek (out) + dekhesthai (to receive), related to dokein (seem good) from the primitive Indo-European root dek- (to take, accept).  The construct of the Greek form was σύν (sún) (with) + ἐκ (ek) (out of) + δέχεσθαι (dékhesthai) (to accept), this final element related to δοκέω (dokéō) (to think, suppose, seem).  The alternative spellings syndoche & synechdoche are rare.  Synecdoche, synecdochization & synecdochy are nouns, synecdochic & synecdochical are adjectives, synecdochize is a verb and synecdochically is an adverb; the noun plural is synecdoches.  

Synecdoche vs. Metonymy

It’s one of those places in English where rules or descriptions overlap and it's easy to confuse synecdoche and metonymy because they both use a word or phrase to represent something else (and there are authorities which classify synecdoche as merely a type of metonymy although this appals the more fastidious).  Technically, while a synecdoche takes an element of a word or phrase and uses it to refer to the whole, a metonymy replaces the word or phrase entirely with a related concept.  Synecdoche and metonymy have much in common and there are grey areas: synecdoche refers to parts and wholes of a thing, metonymy to a related term. The intent of synecdoche is usually either (1) to deviate from a literal term in order to spice up everyday language or (2) a form of verbal shorthand.  In the discipline of structural linguistics, it's noted the distinction is between using a part to represent the whole (pars pro toto, from the Latin, the construct being pars (part) + prō (for) + tōtō, the ablative singular of tōtus (whole, entire)) or using the whole to represent a part (totum pro parte , from the Latin, the construct being tōtum (whole) + prō (for) + parte, the ablative singular of pars (part)).

The Pentagon, Arlington County, Virginia, USA.  Advances in technology have made the site vulnerable to long-range attacks as early as the 1950s and many critical parts of the military's administration are now located elsewhere.  After construction ended in 1943, for some 80 years the Pentagon was (in terms of floor area) the world's largest office building.  It's place on this architectural pecking order has since been supplanted by the Surat Diamond Bourse in Gujarat, India, opened in 2023.

Forms of Synecdoche

(1) A part to represent a whole: The word "head" can refer to counting cattle or people; hands for people on a specific job or members of a crew etc.

(2) A whole to represent a part: The word "Pentagon", while literally a very big building, often refers to the few decision-making generals who comprise the Joint Chiefs of Staff or more generally, the senior ranks of the US military.  However, the use of "the White House" (a smaller building) operates synecdochically to refer to "the administration" rather than "the president" and while it should be reasonable to assume some interchangeably, under both Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021), it's been not uncommon to hear "the White House" being quoted "clarifying" (ie correcting" something said by the president .    

(3) A synecdoche may use a word or phrase as a class to express more or less than the word or phrase actually means: The USA is often referred to as “America” although this is a term from geography while "USA" is from political geography.  The word "crown" is often used to refer to a monarch or the monarchy as a whole but in some systems (notably the UK and Commonwealth nations which retain the UK's monarch as their head of state) the term "The Crown" is a synecdoche for "executive government".  

(4) Material representing an object: Cutlery and flatware is often (and often erroneously) referred to as "silver" or "silverware" even though there may not be a silver content in the metal although, "silver" being also a term referencing a color, the use is thought acceptable.

(5) A single (acceptable) word to suggest to the listener or reader another (unacceptable) word; commonly used as a linguistic work-around of NSFW (not suitable for work) rules on corporate eMail or other systems: “crock” or “cluster” are examples, pointing respectively to “crock of shit” and “cluster-fuck”.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Etiquette

Etiquette (pronounced et-i-kit or et-i-ket)

(1) A construct both culturally specific and culturally variable which is a codification of the requirements as to social behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion (and thus often exists as sub-sets which can in detail be contradictory).

(2) A prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of procedure, ceremonies et al in any formal environment (courts, investitures et al).

(3) An accepted (and sometimes in whole or in part codified) set of rules of ethical behavior relating to professional practice or the conduct between members of the profession.

(4) The expected behavior in certain situations (surfing; golf etc) and enforced according to prevailing standards.

(5) A label used to indicate a letter is to be sent by airmail (the French par avion (by airplane).

1730–1740: From the French étiquette (property, a little piece of paper, or a mark or title, affixed to a bag or bundle, expressing its contents, a label, ticket; a memorandum), from the Middle French estiquette (ticket, label, memorandum), from the Old French verbs estechier, estichier, estequier estiquier & estiquer (to attach, stick), from the Frankish stekan, stikkan & stikjan (to stick, pierce, sting), from the Proto-Germanic stikaną, stikōną & staikijaną (to be sharp, pierce, prick), from the primitive Indo-European steyg or teyg- (to be sharp, to stab).  It was akin to the Old High German stehhan (to stick, attach, nail) (which endures in Modern German as stechen (to stick)) and the Old English stician (to pierce, stab, be fastened).  Etiquette is a noun and etiquettal is an adjective; the noun plural is etiquettes.

The most attractive story of the origin of etiquette in its modern form is that the groundskeepers tending the gardens & parks at the Palace of Versailles became annoyed at the casual way the courtiers attached to the household of Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715) would walk across their lovingly manicured lawns.  In response the gardeners would erect stakes onto which they would pin étiquettes (literally “little cards”) warning transgressors to “Keep off the Grass”.  Unfortunately, although there’s no doubt the signs did exist at Versailles and the legend is even Louis XIV dutifully complied, they were not the origin of “etiquette” in its modern sense.

The reverence for lawns however outlasted the Ancien Régime, Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna, the revolutions of the nineteenth century, wars, occupations and five republics and Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012).  On visits to Paris, tourists who have since high school neglected their French sometimes see the signs Pelouse au repos in parks which they translate as “place to rest”, only to be harangued by an angry attendant, pointing and ordering them back to the pavement.  The actual translation is “the lawn is resting” and any other country would include “Keep off the Grass” in English (the world’s lingua franca) but that’s not the French way.  In the hierarchy of Gaelic officialdom, the part inspectors are said to be worse than the parking police but not as bad as the stewards patrolling the spectator areas at the annual Le Mans 24 hour endurance race, their officiousness something to behold as gleefully they enjoy being cloaked in their brief authority.

The exact history remains murky but etymologists seem most convinced the word in its modern sense can be traced to the seventeenth century Spanish royal court which, impressed by the ritualized forms of the Hapsburg monarchy in Vienna, had officials record a list of the rules and procedures covering dress, orders of procedure in ceremonies, forms of dress and so on.  There were printed on cards distributed to functionaries and others so they would know what to do and when.  From this, the Spanish court became one of Europe’s better behaved royal operations and from the French etiquette (label, ticket etc), the Spanish form was etiqueta.  Simultaneously, many army barracks had such labels nailed to the walls (France étiquettes, In Spain etiquetas, in Italy etichette) containing the relevant instructions for the soldiers.  However, it’s thought the use in the royal court was the most influential and from this evolved the concept of etiquette which has developed into a list of the rules or formalities signifying the socially accepted rules of behavior and decorum.  Not all agree with the Spaniards getting the credit and some trace it back to well before Louis XIV but all seem to agree it was one royal court or another.

There has for centuries been an industry in publishing “etiquette guides” (the first seem to have appeared in sixteenth century Italy) and that many have been issued with titles such as “Modern Etiquette” or “American Etiquette” which does suggest what is regarded as acceptable is subject to change although the very notion of etiquette is highly nuanced; what is acceptable in one context can be social death in another.  Nor is necessary even to purchase a book because the internet is awash with guides on the matter but as an indication that both formats may just be scratching the surface, there are finishing schools in Switzerland which offer six-week courses for US$34,000.  Presumably essential for daughters being prepared for husband hunting, the six-week duration does hint there’s more to it than mastering the use of the flatware arrayed at dinner and knowing whether it’s a properly a napkin or serviette.  Even more essential that learning those details, what such courses can impart is the essential skill to be able to identify those who are and are not “one of us”; group identity as important to the rich as it is to supporters of football clubs.

Surely only a matter of time.

The model of eitquette has been used to coin a few amusing forms including netiquette (the construct being (inter)net + et(iquette)) which was documented as early as 1993 (the dawn of the world wide web) and referred to the “appropriate style and manners to be used when communicating on the internet).  Some of this early (often doomed) attempt to imposed civility on digital communication survives including the warning that the use of capital letters conveys SHOUTING.  Chatiquette is a similar set of rules, specific to chatrooms.  Jetiquette lists the standards of acceptable behavior expected of passengers travelling on a commercial airline) (arm-rest ownership, the politics of the reclining seat, the matter of socks and bare feet and all that).  Hatiquette defines the etiquette attached to the wearing of hats and it’s a complex business because what’s obligatory in one place is a sin against fashion in another.  It goes back a long way: After the passing of the UK’s Reform Act (1832) which extended the franchise, permitting the entry to parliament by lower reaches of the middle class, the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) cast his eye on the benches of the House of Commons and pronounced he’d “never seen such bad hats”.  Reddiquette describes the proper conduct to be followed on the website Reddit and it takes not long to work out not all redditors comply, any more than they take seriously the moderators’ rules on their sub-reddits.  In the narrow technical sense Wikiquette is the etiquette dictating how one should behave when working on a wiki (a type of database; there are many Wikis) but it’s used almost exclusively of Wikipedia, the open access online encyclopaedia.  Debtiquette sets out the rules of debt and deals both with owing something and being owed; it seems more to be about non-financial debts, the rules for which are fairly well defined in law. 

Fork

Fork (pronounced fawrk)

(1) An instrument having two or more tines (popularly called prongs), for holding, lifting, etc., as an implement for handling food or any of various agricultural tools.

(2) Something resembling or suggesting this in form or conceptually.

(3) As tuning fork, instruments used (1) in the tuning of musical instruments and (2) by audiologists and others involved in the study or treatment of hearing.

(4) In machinery, a type of yoke; a pronged part of any device.

(5) A generalized description of the division into branches.

(6) In physical geography and cartography, by abstraction, the point or part at which a thing, as a river or a road, divides into branches; any of the branches into which a thing divides (and used by some as a convention to describe a principal tributary of a river.

(7) In horology, (in a lever escapement) the forked end of the lever engaging with the ruby pin.

(8) In bicycle & motorcycle design, the support of the front wheel axles, having the shape of a two-tined fork.

(9) In archery, the barbed head of an arrow.

(10) To pierce, raise, pitch, dig etc, with a fork.

(11) Metonymically (and analogous with the prongs of a pronged tool), to render something to resemble a fork or describe something using the shape as a metaphor.

(12) In chess, to maneuver so as to place two opponent's pieces under simultaneous attack by the same piece (most associated with moves involving the knight).

(13) In computer programming, to modify a software’s source code to create a version sufficiently different to be considered a separate path of development.

(14) To turn as indicated at a fork in a road, path etc.

(15) Figuratively, a point in time when a decision is taken.

(16) In fulminology, as "forked lightning" the type of atmospheric discharge of electricity which hits the ground in a bolt.

(17) In software development, content management & data management, figuratively (by abstraction, from a physical fork), a departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT) (unintentionally as originally defined but later also applied where the variation was intentional; metonymically, any of the instances of software, data sets etc, thus created.

(18) In World War II era British military jargon, the male crotch, used to indicate the genital area as a point of vulnerability in physical assault.

(19) in occupational slang, a clipping of forklift; any of the blades of a forklift (or, in plural, the set of blades), on which the goods to be raised are loaded.

(20) In saddlery, the upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.

(21) In slang, a gallows (obsolete).

(22) As a transitive verb, a euphemistic for “fuck” one of the variations on f***, ***k etc and used typically to circumvent text-based filters.

(23) In underground, extractive mining, the bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains; to bale a shaft dry.

Pre-1000: From the Middle English forke (digging fork), from the Old English force & forca (pitchfork, forked instrument, forked weapon; forked instrument used to torture), from the Proto-West Germanic furkō (fork), from the Latin furca (pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke) of uncertain origin. The Middle English was later reinforced by the Anglo-Norman & Old Northern French forque (it was from the Old French forche which French gained fourche), also from the Latin.  It was cognate with the Old Frisian forke, the North Frisian forck (fork), the Dutch vork (fork), the Danish vork (fork) and the German Forke (pitchfork).  The evolved Middle English form displaced the native Old English gafol, ġeafel & ġeafle (fork) (and the apparently regionally specific forcel (pitchfork) though the use from circa 1200 to mean “forked stake or post used as a prop when erecting a gallows” did for a while endure, probably because of the long-life of the architectural plans for a structure which demanded no change or functional improvement.

Representation of the forks the Linux operating system.  Software forks can extend, die off or merge with other forks.

The forks of The Latin furca (in its primary sense of “fork”) may be from the primitive Indo-European gherk & gherg (fork) although etymologists have never traced any explanation for the addition of the -c-, something which remains mysterious even if the word was influenced by the Proto-Germanic furkaz & firkalaz (stake, stick, pole, post) which was from the primitive Indo-European perg- (pole, post).  If such a link existed, it would relate the word to the Old English forclas pl (bolt), the Old Saxon ferkal (lock, bolt, bar), the Old Norse forkr (pole, staff, stick), the Norwegian fork (stick, bat) and the Swedish fork (pole).  The descendants in other languages include the Sranan Tongo forku, the Dutch vork, the Japanese フォーク (fōku), the Danish korf, the Kannada ಫೋರ್ಕ್ (phōrk), the Korean 포크 (pokeu), the Maori paoka, the Tamil போர்க் (pōrk) and the Telugu ఫోర్క్ (phōrk).  In many languages, the previous form was retained for most purposes while the English fork was adopted in the context of software development.

Forks can be designed for specific applications, this is a sardine fork, the dimensions dictated by the size of the standard sardine tin.

Although visitors from Western Europe discovered the novelty of the table fork in Constantinople as early as the eleventh century, the civilizing influence from Byzantium seems not to have come into use among the English nobility until the 1400s and the evidence suggest it didn’t come into common use before the early seventeenth century.  Historians of food note word seems first to have appeared in this context in an inventory of household goods from 1430 and they suggest, because their influence in culinary matters was strongest, it was probably from the Old North French forque.  It came to be applied to rivers from 1753 and of roads by 1839.  The use in bicycle design began in 1871 and this was adopted directly within twenty years when the first motorcycles appeared.  The chess move was first so-described in the 1650s while the old slang, forks "the two forefingers" was from 1812 and endures to this day as “the fork”.  In the world of cryptocurrencies, fork has been adopted with fetish-like enthusiasm to refer to (1) a split in the blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or (2) a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.

Lindsay Lohan with cheese cake and cake-fork, Terry Richardson photoshoot, 2012.

The verb dates from the early fourteenth century in the sense of (1) “to divide in branches, go separate ways" & (2) "disagree, be inconsistent", both derived from the noun.  The transitive meaning "raise or pitch with a fork" is from 1812, used most frequently in the forms forked & forking while the slang verb phrase “fork (something) over” is from 1839 while “fork out” (give over) is from 1831).  The now obsolete legal slang “forking” in the forensic sense of a "disagreement among witnesses" dates from the turn of the fifteenth century.  The noun forkful was an agricultural term from the 1640s while the specialized fourchette (in reference to anatomical structures, from French fourchette (diminutive of fourche (a fork)) was from 1754.  The noun pitchfork (fork for lifting and pitching hay etc.) described the long-used implement constructed commonly with a long handle and two or three prongs first in the mid fourteenth century, altered (by the influence of pichen (to throw, thrust), from the early thirteenth century Middle English pic-forken, from pik (source of pike).  The verb use meaning "to lift or throw with a pitchfork," is noted from 1837.  The spork, an eating utensil which was fashioned by making several long indents in the bowl to create prongs debuted in 1909.

Der Gableschwanz Teufl: The Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939-1945).

Novelty nail-art by US restaurant chain Denny's.  The manicure uses as a base a clean, white coat of lacquer, to which was added miniature plastic utensils, the index finger a fork, the middle finger a knife, the ring finger a spoon, and the pinky finger presumably a toothpick or it could be something more kinky.

The idiomatic “speak with forked tongue” to indicate duplicitous speech dates from 1885 and was an invention of US English though reputedly influenced by phases settlers learned in their interactions with first nations peoples (then called “Red Indians”).  The earlier “double tongue” (a la “two-faced”) in the same sense was from the fifteenth century.  Fork as a clipping of the already truncated fork-lift (1953) fom the fork-lift truck (1946), appears to have enter the vernacular circa 1994.  The adjective forked (branched or divided in two parts) was the past-participle adjective from the verb and came into use early in the fourteenth century.  It was applied to roads in the 1520s and more generally within thirty years while the use in the sixteenth and seventeenth century with a suggestion of "cuckold" (on the notion of "horned") is long obsolete.  During the World War II, the Luftwaffe’s (German air force) military slang for the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 Lightning was Der Gableschwanz Teufl (the fork-tailed devil).  Applied in many contexts (literally & figuratively), inventions (with and without hyphens) include fork-bomb, fork-buffet, fork-dinner, fork-head, rolling-fork, fork-over, fork-off & fork-up.

Spork from a flatware set made for Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) fiftieth birthday, sold at auction in 2018 for £12,500.  The items had been discovered in England in a house once owned by a senior military officer, the assumption being they were looted in 1945 (“souveniring” in soldier's parlance), the items all bearing the Nazi eagle, swastika and Hitler's initials.  Auction houses can be inconsistent in their descriptions of sporks and in some cases they're listed as splayds, the designs sometimes meaning it's a fine distinction.