Gaiter

Gaiter (pronounced gey-ter)

(1) In fashion, a covering of cloth or leather for the ankle and instep and sometimes also the lower leg, worn over the shoe or boot.

(2) A waterproof covering for the ankle worn by climbers and walkers to prevent snow, mud, or gravel entering over the top of the boot.

(3) A cloth or leather shoe with elastic insertions at the sides.

(4) An overshoe with a fabric top.

1765-1775: From the French guêtre (belonging to peasant attire) from the Middle French guiestres (guestes the plural), from the Old French gueste, possibly from the Frankish wasta &  wastija (wrist) from the Proto-Germanic wastijō (garment; dress) and thus related to the German rist (wrist, ankle (and the source of the English wrist and the German Rist (instep)), from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (to turn, bend).  It was cognate with the Middle High German wester (a child's chrisom-cloth), the Middle High German westebarn (godchild), the Old English wæstling (a coverlet) and the Gothic wasti (garment; dress).  The original sense in English was "leather cover for the ankle".  Gaiter is a noun, the present participle is gaitering and the past participle gaitered; the noun plural is gaiters.

The related noun spat (short gaiter covering the ankle) which (except in technical and commercial use) is used only in the plural dates from 1779 and was a shortening of spatterdash (long gaiter to keep trousers or stockings from being spattered with mud), the construct being spatter + dash, the same idea as the noun dashboard which was a timber construction attached to the front of horse-drawn carriages to protect the passengers from mud or stones thrown up when the beasts were at a dash.  The figurative use of spats to refer the coverings used to conceal the (usually rear) wheels of a car by encapsulating the aperture described by the wheel-arch persisted in the UK and most of the old British Empire but in North America, "fender skirts" came to be preferred.

Historically, gaiters were either medium (mid-calf) or long (reaching to the knee) while the shorter variations, extending from ankle to instep, were known as spats.  In the fashion industry, the terms gaiters and spats are often used interchangeably and except among the equestrian and other horse-oriented crowds, they now exist only as a fashion item, improvements in the built-environment meaning the need for them as functional devices has diminished.

Lindsay Lohan in boots with emulated gaiters, on her way to frozen yoghurt shop, Los Angeles, 2009.

Historically, gaiters were detachable and secured with a variety of fastenings (buttons, ties, buckles and even zips and Velcro), the advantage being they could be cleaned separately from the clothing they were used to protect.  Particularly in the longer versions, the leg-warmer fad of the 1980s was a borrowing of the look.  Boots with what is essentially a contrasting panel (often of a suede-like material) extending from the ankles sometimes as high as just below the knee capture the look of the gaiter.

Spat

Spat (pronounced spat)

(1) A petty quarrel; a dispute.

(2) A light blow; a slap or smack (now rare).

(3) A classic footwear accessory for outdoor wear (technically an ankle-length gaiter), covering the instep and ankle, designed to protect these areas from mud & stones etc which might be splattered (almost always in the plural).

(4) In automotive design, a piece of bodywork on a car's fender encapsulating the aperture of the wheel-arch, covering the upper portion of the wheel & tyre (almost always on the rear) and used variously to reduce drag or as a aesthetic choice.

(5) In aviation, on aircraft with fixed under-carriages, a partial enclosure covering the upper portion of the wheel & tyre, designed to reduce drag.

(6) In zoology, a larval oyster or similar bivalve mollusc, applied particularly when one settles to the sea bottom and starts to develop a shell; young oysters collectively, especially seed oysters.

1350-1400: From the Middle English spat (argument, minor scuffle), from the Anglo-Norman spat, of unknown origin but presumed related either to (1) being the simple past tense & past participle of spit or (2) something vaguely imitative of the sound of a dispute in progress.  In use, a spat implies a dispute which is minor and brief.  That doesn’t preclude violence being involved but the word does tend to be applied to matters with few serious consequences but a spat can of course escalate to something severe at which point it ceases to be a spat and becomes a brawl, a fight, a murder, a massacre or whatever the circumstances suggest is appropriate.  Otherwise, a spat is synonymous with words like bickering, brouhaha, disagreement, discord, falling-out, feud, squabble, tiff or argument.

As a descriptor of the short gaiter covering the ankle (which except in technical and commercial use is used only in the plural), use dates from 1779 as an invention of American English and a shortening of the trade-terms spatterdash (or splatterguard) (long gaiter to keep trousers or stockings from being spattered with mud), the construct being spatter + dash (or guard), the former the same idea as the noun dashboard which was a timber construction attached to the front of horse-drawn carriages to protect the passengers from mud or stones thrown up when the beasts were at a dash.  In cars, the use of the term dashboard persisted although the device both shifted rearward (aligned with the cowl (scuttle) & windscreen) and changed in function.  In aircraft where the link to horse-drawn transport didn’t exist, the preferred equivalent term became “instrument panel”.

Stanley Melbourne Bruce (front row, second from left) in spats, official photograph of his first cabinet, Melbourne, 1923.

Spats date from a time when walking in cities could be a messy business, paved surfaces far from universal.  As asphalt and concrete became commonplace in the twentieth century, spats fell from frequent use though there were those who clung to them as a fashion accessory.  Stanley Melbourne Bruce (1883–1967; prime minister of Australia 1923-1929) liked spats and wore them as late as the 1940s but historians of fashion note it's said nothing was more influential in their demise than George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom 1910-1936) eschewing them after 1926.  They days, they're seen only in places like the Royal Enclosure at Ascot or smart weddings although variations are still part of some ceremonial full-dress military uniforms.  Technically, a spat probably can be called a “short” or “ankle-length” gaiter but it’s wise to use “spat” because gaiters are understood as extending higher towards the knee.

On the Jaguar 2.4 & 3.4 (1955-1959, top row; later retrospectively named Mark 1), full-sized spats were standard equipment when the standard wheels were fitted but some owners used the cut-down versions (available in at least two designs) fitted when the optional wire wheels were chosen.  For use in competition, almost all drivers removed the spats.  The Mark 2 (bottom row;1959-1969) was never fitted with the full-size units but many used slimmer version available from both the factory and third-party suppliers; again, in competition, spats in any shape were usually discarded.  On the big Jaguars, spats (which had already been scalloped) disappeared after production of the Mark IX ended in 1961.    

On cars, it wasn’t until the 1930s that spats (which some English manufacturers called "aprons" and in the US they came to be called “fender-skirts” though the original slang was “pants”) began to appear as the interest in streamlining and aerodynamic efficiency grew and it was in this era they became also a styling fad which, for better and worse, would last half a century.  They’d first been seen in the 1920s as aerodynamic enhancements on speed record vehicles and some avant-garde designers experimented with enveloping bodywork but it was only late in the decade that the original style of separate mudguards (later called cycle-fenders) gave way to more integrated coachwork where the wheel-arch was an identifiable feature in the modern sense.  Another issue was that the early tyres were prone to wear and damage and needed frequently to be changed, hence the advantage of making access to the wheels un-restricted.  In the 1930s, as streamlining evolved as both a means to reduce drag (thus increasing performance and reducing fuel consumption) and as a styling device, the latter doubtlessly influenced by the former.  On road cars, spats tended to be used only at the rear because of the need to provide sufficient clearance for the front wheels to turn although there were manufacturers (Delahaye, Nash and others) which extended use to the front and while this necessitated compromise (notably the turning circle and cooling of the brakes), there were some memorable art-deco creations.

The aerodynamic advantages were certainly real, attested by the tests conducted during the 1930s by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union, both factories using spats front and rear on their land-speed record vehicles, extending the use to road cars although later Mercedes-Benz would admit the 10% improvement claimed for the 1937 540K Autobahn-kurier (highway cruiser) was just “a calculation” and it’s suspected even this was more guesswork than math.  Later, Jaguar’s evaluation of the ideal configuration to use when testing the 1949 XK120 on Belgium roads revealed the rear spats added about 3-4 mph to top speed though they precluded the use of the lighter wire wheels and did increase the tendency of the brakes to overheat in severe use so, like many things in engineering, it was a trade-off.

1958, 1959 & 1960 Chevrolet Impalas.  Not actually wildly popular when new, accessory spats now often appear on restored cars as a “period accessory”.

In the post-war years, concerns with style rather than specific aerodynamic outcomes probably prevailed.  In the US especially, the design motifs borrowed from aircraft and missiles (where aerodynamic efficiency was important and verified in wind tunnels) were liberally applied to automobiles but in some cases, although they actually increased drag, they anyway appeared on production cars because they lent the desired look.  Because they added to the cost of production, spats tended often to be used on the more expensive ranges, this association encouraging after-market accessory makers to produce them, often for models where they’d never been available as a factory fitting or option.  Although now usually regarded as naff (at least), there’s still some demand because they are fitted sometimes (often in conjunction with that other acquired taste period-accessory, the "Continental" spare-tyre kit) by those restoring cars from the era although the photographic record does suggest that when the vehicles were new, such things were vanishingly rare.

Spats vanished from cars made in the UK and Europe except among manufacturers (such as Citroën) which made a fetish of conspicuous aerodynamics and in the US, where they endured, increasingly they appeared in cut-down form, exposing most of the wheel with only the upper part of the tyre concealed.  By the mid 1990s spats appeared only on some of the larger US cars (those by then also down-sized from their mid-seventies peak) and none survived into the new century, the swansong the 1996 Cadillac DeVille.  However, the new age of efficiency did see a resurgence of interest with spats (some actually integrated into the bodywork rather than being detachable) used on some electric and hybrid vehicles where every possible way of optimizing the use of energy is deployed.

1 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen

2 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Autobahn-kurier

3 1937 Auto-Union Type C Stromlinie

4 1939 Mercedes-Benz W154 Rekordwagen

5 1939 Mercedes-Benz T-80

6 1940 Mercedes-Benz 770K Cabriolet B

9 1970 Porsche 917 LH

8 1988 Jaguar Jaguar XJR9

Pioneered by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union during the 1930s when the factory racing programmes were being subsidized by the Nazi regime as a national prestige project, spats were used on the specially tuned cars used for land-speed record attempts though not on the circuits where the air-flow was needed for brake cooling.  The use on the road cars was sometimes an overt allusion to the quest for aerodynamic efficiency such as those added to the streamlined 540K Autobahn-kurier (highway cruiser) but their use on big machines like the 770K was simply as a styling tool.  The highest evolution of the 1930’s theme was the aero-engined T-80, intended to lay siege to the world Land-Speed Record (LSR).  Powered by a 3,500 hp (2,600 kW), 44.5 litre (2,716 cubic inch) Daimler-Benz DB 603 inverted V12 (most of which were supplied to the Luftwaffe), calculations (all then by slide-rule) suggested it should reach 750 km/h (466 mph) on a 10 kilometre (6 mile) stretch of the Autobahn, closed to other traffic for the occasion.  Scheduled for January 1940, the outbreak of war meant the T-80 never ran.  In the years since, partial or complete spats have often been used on high-speed vehicles in competition.

1970 Chaparral 2J. 

The most extraordinary vindication of the concept was probably the 1970 Chaparral 2J, built for the Canadian-American Challenge Cup (the Can-Am, a series for unlimited displacement sports cars under the FIA’s minimalist Group 7 rules).  Although using a similar frame and power-plant (the all aluminum, 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Chevrolet V8 (ZL1)) as most of its competition, it differed in that the bodywork was rather more rectilinear, the transmission was semi-automatic and, most intriguingly, the use of two small auxiliary engines (Rockwell JLO 247 cm³ two-stroke, two-cylinder units which usually powered snowmobiles).  Unlike the auxiliary engines used in modern hybrids which provide additional or alternative power, what the Rockwells did was drive two fans (borrowed from the M-109 Howitzer, the US Army’s self-propelled 155 mm (6 inch) cannon) which pumped air from underneath at 9650 cfm (cubic feet per minute) (273 m3 per minute), literally sucking the 2J to the road, the technique enhanced by a Lexan (a thermoplastic polymer) skirt which partially sealed the gap between the shell and the road.  The rear spats (integrated into the body-shell) were part of the system, offering not only their usual contribution to reduced drag but increasing the extent of the suction generated by the extractor fans.  The 2J was immediately faster than the competition but the suction system proved fragile although, as a proof of concept it worked and it was clear that only development was needed to debug things.  Unfortunately, innovation and high speeds have always appalled the FIA (the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile which has for decades been international sport’s dopiest regulatory body) and they banned the 2J.  Really, the FIA should give up on motorsport and offer their services to competitive crochet where they can focus on things like pins and needles not being too sharp.

1949 Delahaye 175-S Saoutchik roadster (left), 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special  (centre) & 2016 Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 (electric) (right).

Fashions change and spats in the post-war years became unfashionable except in the odd market segment which appealed to an older demographic and even there, as the years were by, they were cut-away, revealing more of the wheel & tyre but they never entirely went away and designers with big computers now don’t even need even bigger wind tunnels to optimize airflow and spats have been displayed which are mounted vertically, some even responding to dynamic need by shifting location or direction.

Flown first in 1938 and named after the Spartan admiral Lysander (circa 467-395 BC), the Westland Lysander was a British army co-operation and communications aircraft used extensively during the Second World War (1939-1945).  Although it couldn’t match the extraordinary STOL (short Take-Off & Landing) performance of the its German contemporary the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, it was capable, robust and had a good enough short-field capability to perform valuable service throughout the conflict.  Like many aircraft with a fixed undercarriage, partially enveloping spats were fitted to reduce drag but those on the Lysander had the unusual feature of being fitted with their own removable spats (similar to those used on automobiles).  Once these were dismounted, assemblies could be fitted to mount either Browning machine guns or stub wings which could carry light bombs or supply canisters.  The arrangement was popular with ground crew because the accessibility made servicing easy and pilots appreciated the low placement because the change in weight distribution had little adverse effect on handling characteristics.

Vermiform

Vermiform (pronounced vur-muh-fawrm)

Resembling or having the long, thin, cylindrical shape of a worm; long and slender.

1720-1730: From the Medieval Latin vermiformis, the construct being vermis (worm) + forma (form).  Vermis was from the primitive Indo-European wr̥mis and cognates included the Ancient Greek ῥόμος (rhómos) and the Old English wyrm (worm (which evolved into the Modern English worm)).  Form was from -fōrmis (having the form of), from fōrma (a form, contour, figure, shape, appearance, looks).  The root of the Latin vermis was the primitive Indo-European wer- (to turn, bend), an element most productive, contributing to: adverse; anniversary; avert; awry; controversy; converge; converse (as the adjectival sense of "exact opposite”); convert; diverge; divert; evert; extroversion; extrovert; gaiter; introrse; introvert; invert; inward; malversation; obverse; peevish; pervert; prose; raphe; reverberate; revert; rhabdomancy; rhapsody; rhombus; ribald; sinistrorse; stalwart; subvert; tergiversate; transverse; universe; verbena; verge (as the verb meaning "tend, incline"); vermeil; vermicelli; vermicular; vermiform; vermin; versatile; verse (in the sense of the noun "poetry") version; verst; versus; vertebra; vertex; vertigo; vervain; vortex; -ward; warp; weird; worm; worry; worth (in the adjectival sense of "significant, valuable, of value") worth (as the verb "to come to be"); wrangle; wrap; wrath; wreath; wrench; wrest; wrestle; wriggle; wring; wrinkle; wrist; writhe; wrong; wroth & wry.  Vermiform is an adjective.

Commonly used in medicine to describe the appendix, Modern French also gained the word from Latin as the adjective vermiforme (plural vermiformes), the spelling of the medical use apéndice vermiforme (plural apéndices vermiformes).  The only known derived form in English is the adjective subvermiform, used apparently exclusively in the disciplines of zoology, including entomology.  The meaning was defined in a dictionary from 1898 as “shaped somewhat like a worm” which is surprisingly imprecise for the language of science but that vagueness appears adequate for the purposes to which it’s put.  For whatever reason, vermiform was a word much favored by the US humorist HL Mencken (1880-1956).

The female Eumillipes persephone: 1,306 legs & 330 segments.  

Because the scientific literature has for some time been dominated by COVID-19 and all that flowed the brief, sudden prominence of two vermiform creatures, one ancient, the other more recent, was an amusing distraction.  The younger animal was a new species of millipede which boasted not only more legs than any other creature on the planet but was the first of its kind to live up to its name.    

Since circa 1600, the term millipede has been applied to any of the many elongated arthropods, of the class Diplopoda (a taxonomic subphylum within the phylum Arthropoda (the centipedes, millipedes and similar creepy-crawlies) with cylindrical bodies that have two pairs of legs for each one of their many body segments and, although milliped was long regarded as the correct spelling by scientists who work with myriapods, millipede is by far the most common form in general use (although there’s the odd specialist who insists on millepede).  Millipede was from the Latin millipeda (wood louse), the construct being mille (thousand) + pes (genitive pedis) (foot), from the primitive Indo-European root ped (foot) (probably a loan-translation of Greek khiliopous).  When named, it wasn’t intended as a mathematically precise definition, only to suggest the things had lots of legs though, certainly many fewer than a thousand.  The creature has always possessed a certain comical charm because, despite having usually twice the number of legs as centipedes, the millipede is entirely harmless whereas there are centipedes which can be quite nasty.  For centuries millipede was thought a bit of a misnomer, with no example ever observed with more than 750 legs and that deep-soil dweller was an outlier, most having fewer with a count in two figures quite common.  The new species also lives in the depths: Eumilipes persephone (Persephone, the daughter of Zeus who was taken by Hades to the underworld), a female was found to be sprouting 1,306 legs.  Pale and eyeless, it’s vermiform in the extreme, the body-length almost a hundred times its width and instead of vision, it used a large antennae to navigate through darkness to feed on fungi.

The sheer length of the thing does suggest a long lifespan by the standards of the species, most of which tend not to survive much beyond two years.  The persephone however, based on a count of the body segments which grow predictably in the manner of tree rings, seems likely to live perhaps as long as a decade.  One factor which accounts for the longevity is the absence of predators, the persephone’s natural environment banded iron formations and volcanic rock some 200 feet (60 m) beneath the surface of a remote part of Western Australia.  Entomologists didn’t actually venture that deep to explore, instead using the simple but effective method of lowering buckets of tempting vegetation down shafts drilled by geologists exploring for minerals, returning later to collect whatever creatures had been tempted to explore.

Artist’s impression of an Arthropleura: half a metre wide and perhaps nearly three metres in length, the latter dimension similar to a small car.  

Days after the announcement from the Western Australian desert, livescience.com also announced researchers in the UK found the fossilized exoskeleton of an Arthropleura, the largest arthropod yet known to have lived.  The length of a modern car, the giant millipede-like creatures appear to have done most of their their creeping and crawling during the Carboniferous Period, between 359 million and 299 million years ago.

Although the Arthropleura have long been known from the fossil record, there’d not before been any suggestion they ever grew quite so large and the find was quite serendipitous, discovered on a beach in a block of sandstone which had recently fallen and cracked apart.  The exoskeleton fragment is 30 inches (750 mm) long and 22 inches (550 mm) wide which means the giant millipede would have been around 102 inches (2600 mm) long and weighed around 110 lbs (50 kg)m making it the biggest land animals of the Carboniferous era.  Despite its bulk however, the physics of movement and the need to support its own weight mean the leg count is nowhere near as impressive as its young relation what is now on the other side of the world (what are now the Australian and European land masses were closer together during the Carboniferous) and it’s still not clear if Arthropleura had two legs per segment or every two segments but either way it adds up to much fewer than a hundred.

Ultimately, Arthropleura was a victim of changing conditions.  In its time, it would have been living in a benign equatorial environment but, over millions of years, the equator can shift because of the phenomenon of TPW (true polar wander) in which the outer layer of Earth shifts around the core, tilting the crust relative to the planet’s axis.  This last happened some eighty-four million years ago.  So, the conditions which for so long had been ideal changed and changed suddenly and Arthropleura was unable to adapt, going extinct after having flourished for nearly fifty-million years.  The reasons for their demise are those seen repeatedly in the fossil record: In an abruptly changed environment, there was suddenly more competition for fewer resources and the Arthropleura lost out to animals which were stronger, more efficient and better able to adapt.

The human appendix.

Thousands of years after first being described, the human appendix, a the small blind-ended vermiform structure at the junction of the large and the small bowel remains something of a mystery.  For centuries the medical orthodoxy was it vestigial, a evolutionary dead-end and a mere quirk of human development but the current thinking is it exists as a kind of “safe-house” for the good bacteria resident in the bowel, enabling them to repopulate as required.  However, being blind-ended, although intestinal contents easily can enter, in certain circumstances it can operate as a kind of one-way, non-return valve, making exit impossible which results in inflammation.  This is the medical condition appendicitis and in acute cases, the appendix must surgically be removed.  That's usually fine if undertaken in good time because it's a simple, commonly performed procedure but unfortunately, in a small number of cases, a residual "stump" of the structure may escape the knife and in this inflammation may re-occur, something surgeons resentfully label “stumpitis”.  Apparently the most useless part of the human anatomy, there is noting in the medical literature to suggest anyone has noticed any aspect of their life being changed by not having an appendix.

Upper

Upper (pronounced uhp-er)

(1) Higher, as in place, position, pitch, or in a scale.

(2) Superior, as in rank, dignity, or station.

(3) In geography (as place or regional names), at a higher level, more northerly, or farther from the sea.

(4) In stratigraphy, denoting a later division of a period, system, or the like, (often initial capital letter).

(5) The part of a shoe or boot above the sole, comprising the quarter, vamp, counter, and lining.

(6) A gaiter; made usually of cloth.

(7) In dentistry, as upper plate, the top of a set of false teeth (dentures), the descriptive prefix for teeth in the upper jaw.

(8) In bicameral parliaments, as upper house (senate, legislative council, House of Lords etc), the body elected or appointed often on a less representative basis than a lower house.

(9) Slang for a stimulant drug, especially an amphetamine, as opposed to the calmative downer.

(10) In mathematics, (of a limit or bound), greater than or equal to one or more numbers or variables.

(11) In Taoism, a spiritual passageway through which consciousness can reach a higher dimension.

1300-1350: From the Old English upp, from the Proto-Germanic upp and cognate with the Old Frisian up, the Old Saxon up, the Old Dutch up, the Old High German ūf and the Old Norse upp.  Similar formations were the Middle Dutch upper, the Dutch opper, the Low German upper and the Norwegian yppare.  The –er suffix (added to verbs to form an agent noun) is from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ware (suffix denoting residency or meaning "inhabitant of"), from the Proto-Germanic (w)ārijaz (defender, inhabitant), from the primitive Indo-European wer- (to close, cover, protect, save, defend).  It was cognate with the Dutch -er, the German –er and the Swedish -are.  The Proto-Germanic (w)ārijaz is thought most likely a borrowing from the Latin ārius.

The phrase “upper hand” (advantage) was first noted in the late fifteenth century, possibly the jargon of wrestling (“over-hand” existed with the same meaning nearly two-hundred years earlier and “lower hand” (condition of having lost or failed to win superiority) was documented in the 1690s but both are rare compared with “upper hand).  Upperclassman is recorded from 1871 and upper crust is attested from the mid-fifteenth century in reference to the top crust of a loaf of bread tending to be reserved for the rich.  Upper middle class was in use by 1835 and, in an echo of the modern “one percenters”, “upper ten thousand” appears first in 1844 and was common by mid-century to refer to the wealthier strata of society; a companion term of the time was “uppertendom”.  As a descriptor of the part of a shoe above the sole, use emerged in 1789.  The slang use to describe amphetamines and other pep-pills is an Americanism dated usually from 1968 but which may have been in use earlier; the companion term for drugs with a calmative effect was "downer".

In bicameral parliaments, in almost all systems it's common to refer to "upper" & "lower" houses.  In the democratic age, lower houses evolved to be the places which were most directly representative of the electorate and a member able to gain the support of a majority of those elected to a lower house was able to form a government, a process long almost always mediated through party politics.  Upper houses were more varied in composition, sometimes elected, sometimes appointed (in some cases, for life) and they tended to be representative more or established (and entrenched) interests than the wider electorate.  In federal systems, many upper houses were conceived as representatives and defenders of the rights and interests of the constituent states but in the West, this aspect of the history has been subsumed by the influence of the parties and only in rare cases will the interests of the state transcend party loyalty.  The upper chambers have undergone many changes and one of the oldest, the UK's House of Lords, was radically transformed by the New Labour administration (1997-2010) although its powers had already dramatically been pruned earlier in the twentieth century and no prime-minister has sat in the Lords since 1903, something not again contemplated since the 1920s (and under unusual circumstances in the 1950s).  An exception to the use of upper & lower in the context is in the US where the congress and almost all the state assemblies are bicameral.  In the US, historically, there was no conception of "upper & lower" in that sense, the two being regarded as co-equal but with different roles.  That was influenced both by the circumstances of the origin of the nation and the fact the executive branches are not drawn from the memberships  of the assemblies.  However, in recent decades, the use of "upper house" & "lower house" has crept into use, essentially because the standards of journalism are not what they were and this seems to have infected even some US reporters.  Some systems (notably New Zealand) actually abolished their upper house and from time-to-time there are doubtless a number of prime-ministers elsewhere who wish they could.    

For most of the twentieth century, the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso was known as the Upper Volta (the name indicating the land-mass contained the upper part of the Volta River), initially as part of the French colonial empire, later as an independent republic.  A self-governing republic of the French Community between 1958–1960, it was granted full independence in 1960 and re-named Burkina Faso in 1984.  When president, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), used “Upper Volta” sarcastically, as a reference to any unimportant country, especially if he was compelled by the conventions of diplomacy to spend time meeting with their delegations, talking about things in which he just wasn't interested.

Lindsay Lohan wearing Louis Vuitton Star Trail ankle boots, fashioned with a Jacquard textile and glazed calf leather upper, treaded rubber sole, 3.1 inch (80mm) heel and patent monogram-canvas back loop (made in Italy, LV part-number 1A2Y7W, RRP US$1360.00), New York, January 2019.