Habitué

Habitué (pronounced huh-bich-oo-ey or huh-a-bee-twey (French))

(1) A frequent or habitual visitor to a place.

(2) Casual term for someone so bone-idle they stay in bed long after the hour most decent folk arise.

(3) A person thought (or self-described as) especially competent to pass critical judgments in an art, particularly one of the fine arts, or in matters of taste.

1818: An English borrowing from the French habitué (to frequent), noun use of masculine past participle of habituer (accustom), from the Late Latin habituāre (to bring into a condition or habit of the body; to habituate), from habitus (condition, appearance, dress), originally the past participle of habers (to have, hold, possess; wear; find oneself, be situated; consider, think, reason, have in mind; manage, keep), from the primitive Indo-European ghabh- (to give or receive) and later the perfect passive participle of habeō (have)); the plural form is habitués.

Never assimilated into English

Another re-boot.  Shoe shop habitué Lindsay Lohan assesses the heel &  sole.

Borrowed from the Modern French, habitué is ultimately a fork of the Late Latin habeo (have) which was productive in many European languages.  It entered the Proto-Italic as habēō or haβēō although the latter may come from a primitive Indo-European word meaning “to grab, to take”; it’s related also to the Old Irish gaibid (to take, hold) and the Polish gabać (to grab, snatch).  Despite the similarity in both form and meaning, the English “have” is not a cognate, related instead to the Latin capiō (to take).  Some of the oldest attestations are the works of Plautus (circa 254-184 BC) and the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus (186 BC). The Umbrian cognate hab- exists in the Iguvine Tablets (oldest of the third century BC tablets) and the Oscan cognate haf- is in the Tabula Bantina (89 BC).  Habitué illustrates the conventions of English which operates to define whether foreign words in common use are absorbed or remain alien.  Habitually the adverb and habitual the verb are both commonly used English words spelled in conventional English phonetics.  Habitué is spelled with an accented é (accent acute) and a correct pronunciation depends on following the French rule; it’s thus still a foreign word used in English enough to avoid obsolescence yet not sufficiently for either spelling or pronunciation further to have been anglicized.  At one end of the market, habitué is used by some to describe patrons of high-priced shops, art galleries, the opera etc when they feel a word like “customer” might be thought a bit common.  At the other end, it’s a favorite of police prosecutors, who, enjoying the juxtaposition of language, describe someone who not infrequently enjoys the services of prostitutes as “a habitué of brothels”.

Floppy

Floppy (pronounced flop-ee)

(1) A tendency to flop.

(2) Limp, flexible, not hard, firm, or rigid; flexible; hanging loosely.

(3) In IT, a clipping of “floppy diskette”.

(4) In historic military slang (Apartheid-era South Africa & Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), an insurgent in the Rhodesian Bush War (the “Second Chimurenga” (from the Shona chimurenga (revolution)) 1964-1979), the use a reference to the way they were (in sardonic military humor) said to “flop” when shot.

(5) In informal use, a publication with covers made with a paper stock little heavier and more rigid that that used for the pages; Used mostly for comic books.

(6) In slang, a habitué of a flop-house (a cheap hotel, often used as permanent or semi-permanent accommodation by the poor or itinerant who would go there to “flop down” for a night) (archaic).

(7) In slang, as “floppy cats”, the breeders’ informal term for the ragdoll breed of cat, so named for their propensity to “go limp” when picked up (apparently because of a genetic mutation).

1855-1860: The construct was flop + -y.  Flop dates from 1595–1605 and was a variant of the verb “flap” (with the implication of a duller, heavier sound).  Flop has over the centuries gained many uses in slang and idiomatic form but in this context it meant “loosely to swing; to flap about”.  The sense of “fall or drop heavily” was in use by the mid-1830s and it was used to mean “totally to fail” in 1919 in the wake of the end of World War I (1914-1918), the conflict which wrote finis to the dynastic rule of centuries also of the Romanovs in Russia, the Habsburgs in Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans in Constantinople although in the 1890s it was recorded as meaning “some degree of failure”.  The comparative is floppier, the superlative floppiest.  Floppy a noun & adjective, floppiness is a noun, flopped is a noun & verb, flopping is a verb, floppier& floppiest are adjectives and floppily is an adverb; the noun plural is floppies.  The adjective floppish is non-standard and used in the entertainment & publishing industries to refer to something which hasn’t exactly “flopped” (failed) but which had not fulfilled the commercial expectations.

Lindsay Lohan in "floppy-brim" hat, on-set during filming of Liz & Dick (2012).  In fashion, many "floppy-brim" hats actually have a stiff brim, formed in a permanently "floppy" shape.  The true "floppy hats" are those worn while playing sport or as beachwear etc.

The word is used as a modifier in pediatric medicine (floppy baby syndrome; floppy infant syndrome) and as “floppy-wristed” (synonymous with “limp-wristed”) was used as a gay slur.  “Flippy-floppy” was IT slang for “floppy diskette” and unrelated to the previous use of “flip-flop” or “flippy-floppy” which, dating from the 1880s was used to mean “a complete reversal of direction or change of position” and used in politics to suggest inconsistency.  In the febrile world of modern US politics, to be labelled a “flip-flopper” can be damaging because it carries with it the implication what one says can’t be relied upon and campaign “promises” might thus not be honored.  Whether that differs much from the politicians’ usual behaviour can be debated but still, few enjoy being accused of flip-floppery (definitely a non-standard noun).  The classic rejoinder to being called a flip-flopper is the quote: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”  That’s often attributed to the English economist and philosopher Lord Keynes (John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946) but it was said originally by US economist Paul Samuelson (1915–2009) the 1970 Nobel laureate in Economics.  In the popular imagination Keynes is often the “go to” economist for quote attribution in the way William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is a “go to author” and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) a “go to politician”, both credited with thing they never said but might have said.  I phraseology, the quality of “Shakespearian” or “Churchillian” not exactly definable but certainly recognizable.  In the jargon of early twentieth century electronics, a “flip-flop” was a reference to switching circuits that alternate between two states.

Childless cat lady Taylor Swift with her “floppy cat”, Benjamin Button (as stole).  Time magazine cover, 25 December 2023, announcing Ms Swift as their 2023 Person of the Year.  "Floppy cat" is the the breeders' informal term for the ragdoll breed an allusion to their tendency to “go limp” when picked up, a behavior believed caused by a genetic mutation.

The other use of flop in IT is the initialism FLOP (floating point operations per second).  Floating-point (FB) arithmetic (FP) a way of handling big real numbers using an integer with a fixed precision, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base; FP doesn’t really make possible what would not in theory be achievable using real numbers but does make this faster and practical and the concept became familiar in the 1980s when Intel made available FPUs (floating point units, also known as math co-processors) which could supplement the CPUs (central processing units) of their x86 family.  The 8087 FPU worked with the 8086 CPU and others followed (80286/80287, 80386/80387, i486/i487 etc) until eventually the FPU for the Pentium range was integrated into the CPU, the early implementation something of a debacle still used as a case study in a number of fields departments including management and public relations.

FLOPs are an expression of specific performance and are used to measure those computations requiring floating-point calculations (typically in math-intensive work) and for purposes of “benchmarking” or determining “real-world” performance under those conditions, it’s a more informative number than the traditional rating of instructions per second (iSec).  The FLOPs became something of a cult in the 1990s when the supercomputers of the era first breached the trillion FLOP mark and as speeds rose, the appropriate terms were created:

kiloFLOPS: (kFLOPS, 10³)
megaflops: (MFLOPS, 10⁶)
gigaflops: GFLOPS, 10⁹)
teraflops: TFLOPS, 10¹²)
petaFLOPS: PFLOPS, 10¹⁵)
exaFLOPS: (EFLOPS, 10¹⁸)
zettaFLOPS: ZFLOPS, 10²¹)
yottaFLOPS: YFLOPS, 10²⁴)
ronnaFLOPS: RFLOPS, 10²⁷)
quettaFLOPS: QFLOPS, 10³⁰)

In the mysterious world of quantum computing, FLOPs are not directly applicable because the architecture and methods of operation differ fundamentally from those of classical computers.  Rather than FLOPs, the performance of quantum computers tends to be measured in qubits (quantum bits) and quantum gates (the operations that manipulate qubits).  The architectural difference is profound and explained with the concepts of superposition and entanglement:  Because a qubit simultaneously can represent both “0” & “1” (superposition) and these can be can be entangled (a relationship in which distance is, at least in theory, irrelevant), under such multi-string parallelism, performance cannot easily be reduced to simple arithmetic or floating-point operations which remain the domain of classical computers which operate using the binary distinction between “0” (off) and “1” (on).

Evolution of the floppy diskette: 8 inch (left), 5¼ inch (centre) & 3½ inch (right).  The track of the floppy for the past half-century has been emblematic of the IT industry in toto: smaller, higher capacity and cheaper.  Genuinely it was one of the design parameters for the 3½ inch design that it fit into a man's shirt pocket.

In IT, the term “floppy diskette” used the WORM (write once, read many, ie "read only" after being written) principle first appeared in 1971 (soon doubtless clipped to “floppy” although the first known use of this dates from 1974).  The first floppy diskettes were in an 8 inch (2023 mm) format which may sound profligate for something with a capacity of 80 kB (kilobyte) but the 10-20 MB (megabit) hard drives of the time were typically the same diameter as the aperture of domestic front-loading washing machine so genuinely they deserved the diminutive suffix (-ette, from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something).  They were an advance also in convenience because until they became available, the usual way to transfer files between devices was to hard-wire them together.  Introduced by IBM in 1971, the capacity was two years later raised to 256 kB and by 1977 to a heady 1.2 MB (megabyte) with the advent of a double-sided, double-density format.  However, even then it was obvious the future was physically smaller media and in 1978 the 5¼ inch (133 mm) floppy debuted, initially with a formatted capacity of 360 kB but by 1982 this too had be raised to 1.2 MB using the technological advance if a HD (high density) file system and it was the 5¼ floppy which would become the first widely adopted industry “standard” for both home and business use, creating the neologism “sneakernet”, the construct being sneaker + net(work), the image being of IT nerds in their jeans and sneakers walking between various (unconnected) computers and exchanging files via diskette.  Until well into the twenty-first century the practice was far from functionally extinct and it persists even today with the use of USB sticks.

Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) with 3½ inch floppy diskette (believed to be a HD (1.44 MB)).

The meme-makers use the floppy because it has become a symbol of technological bankruptcy. In OS (operating system) GUIs (graphical user interface) however, it does endure as the "save" icon and all the evidence to date does suggest that symbolic objects like icons do tend to outlive their source, thus the ongoing use in IT of analogue, rotary dial phones in iconography and the sound of a camera's physical shutter in smart phones.  Decades from now, we may still see representations of floppy diskettes.

The last of the mainstream floppy diskettes was the 3½ inch (89 mm) unit, introduced in 1983 in double density form with a capacity of 720 KB (although in one of their quixotic moves IBM used a unique 360 kB version for their JX range aimed at the educational market) but the classic 3½ was the HD 1.44 MB unit, released in 1986.  That really was the end of the line for the format because although in 1987 a 2.88 MB version was made available, few computer manufacturers offered the gesture of adding support at the BIOS (basic input output system) so adoption was infinitesimal.  The 3½ inch diskette continued in wide use and there was even the DMF (Distribution Media Format) with a 1.7 MB capacity which attracted companies like Microsoft, not because it wanted more space but to attempt to counter software piracy; within hours of Microsoft Office appearing in shrink-wrap with, copying cracks appeared on the bulletin boards (where nerds did stuff before the www (worldwideweb).  It was clear the floppy diskette was heading for extinction although slighter larger versions with capacities as high as 750 MB did appear but, expensive and needing different drive hardware, they were only ever a niche product seen mostly inside corporations.  By the time the CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read-only Memory) reached critical mass in the mid-late 1990s the once ubiquitous diskette began rapid to fade from use, the release in the next decade of the USB sticks (pen drives) a final nail in the coffin for most.

In the mid 1990s, installing OS/2 Warp 4.0 (Merlin) with the optional packs and a service pack could require a user to insert and swap up to 47 diskettes.  It could take hours, assuming one didn't suffer the dreaded "floppy failure".

That was something which pleased everyone except the floppy diskette manufacturers who had in the early 1990s experienced a remarkable boom in demand for their product when Microsoft Windows 3.1 (7 diskettes) and IBM’s OS/2 2.0 (21 diskettes) were released. Not only was the CD-ROM a cheaper solution than multiple diskettes (a remarkably labor-intensive business for software distributors) but it was also much more reliable, tales of an installation process failing on the “final diskette” legion and while some doubtlessly were apocryphal, "floppy failure" was far from unknown.  By the time OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released in 1994, it required a minimum of 23 floppy diskettes and version 4.0 shipped with a hefty 30 for a base installation.  Few mourned the floppy diskette and quickly learned to love the CD-ROM.

What lay inside a 3½ inch floppy diskette.

Unlike optical discs (CD-ROM, DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) & Blu-Ray) which were written and read with the light of a laser, floppy diskettes were read with magnetic heads.  Inside the vinyl sleeve was a woven liner impregnated with a lubricant, this to reduce friction on the spinning media and help keep the surfaces clean.

Curiously though, niches remained where the floppy lived on and it was only in 2019 the USAF (US Air Force) finally retired the use of floppy diskettes which since the 1970s had been the standard method for maintaining and distributing the data related to the nation’s nuclear weapons deployment.  The attractions of the system for the military were (1) it worked, (2) it was cheap and (3) it was impervious to outside tampering.  Global thermo-nuclear war being a serious business, the USAF wanted something secure and knew that once data was on a device in some way connected to the outside world there was no way it could be guaranteed to be secure from those with malign intent (ayatollahs, the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d'Or, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the Freemasons, those in the Kremlin or Pyongyang etc) whereas a diskette locked in briefcase or a safe was, paradoxically, the state of twenty-first century security, the same philosophy which has seen some diplomatic posts in certain countries revert to typewriters & carbon paper for the preparation of certain documents.  In 2019 however, the USAF announced that after much development, the floppies had been retired and replaced with what the Pentagon described as a “highly-secure solid-state digital storage solution which work with the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS).”

It can still be done: Although no longer included in PCs & laptops, USB floppy diskette drives remain available (although support for Windows 11 systems is said to be "inconsistent").  Even 5¼ inch units have been built.

It thus came as a surprise in 2024 to learn Japan, the nation which had invented motorcycles which didn’t leak oil (the British though they’d proved that couldn’t be done) and the QR (quick response) code, finally was abandoning the floppy diskette.  Remarkably, even in 2024, the government of Japan still routinely asked corporations and citizens to submit documents on floppies, over 1000 statutes and regulations mandating the format.  The official in charge of updating things (in 2021 he’d “declared war” on floppy diskettes) in July 2024 announced “We have won the war on floppy disks!” which must have be satisfying because he’d earlier been forced to admit defeat in his attempt to defenestrate the country’s facsimile (fax) machines, the “pushback” just too great to overcome.  The news created some interest on Japanese social media, one tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter) damning the modest but enduring floppy as a “symbol of an anachronistic administration”, presumably as much a jab at the “tired old men” of the ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) as the devices.  There may however been an element of technological determinism in the reform because Sony, the last manufacturer of the floppy, ended production of them in 2011 so while many remain extant, the world’s supply is dwindling.  In some ways so modern and innovative, in other ways Japanese technology sometimes remains frozen, many businesses still demanding official documents to be endorsed using carved personal stamps called the印鑑 (ikan) or 判子 (hanko); despite the government's efforts to phase them out, their retirement is said to be proceeding at a “glacial pace”.  The other controversial aspect of the hanko is that the most prized are carved from ivory and it’s believed a significant part of the demand for black-market ivory comes from the hanko makers, most apparently passing through Hong Kong, for generations a home to “sanctions busters”.

Vanity

Vanity (pronounced van-i-tee)

(1) An excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc; character or quality of being vain; conceit.

(2) An instance or display of this quality or feeling.

(3) Something about which one is vain or excessively proud.

(4) Lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness.

(5) Something worthless, trivial, or pointless.

(6) A small case, usually used for make-up items.

(7) A usually small dressing table used to apply makeup, preen, and coif hair. Normally quite low and similar to a desk, with drawers and one or more mirrors on top.  Often paired with a bench or stool to sit upon.

(8) A type of bathroom fitting, usually a permanently-fixed storage unit including one or more washbasins.

(9) An alternative name for a portfolio maintained as a showcase for one's own talents, especially as a writer, actor, singer, composer or model.

(10) Any idea, theory or statement entirely without foundation (UK only, now obsolete).

1200-1250: From Middle English vanite, borrowed from Old French vanité (self-conceit; futility; lack of resolve) derived from the Classical Latin vānitās (emptiness, aimlessness; falsity (and when used figuratively "vainglory, foolish pride”), root of which was vānus (empty, void (and when used figuratively "idle, fruitless”).  A more precise equivalent in Latin was probably vanitatem (emptiness, foolish pride).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wano-, the suffixed form of the root eue- (to leave, abandon, give out).  English also absorbed many synonyms and related words: egotism, complacency, vainglory, ostentation, pride, emptiness, sham, unreality, folly, triviality, futility.  Except in religious texts, the old meaning (that which is vain, futile, or worthless) faded from general use, the modern meaning (self-conceited), which endures to this day, is attested from the mid-fourteenth century.  The first reference to furniture was the vanity table, dating from 1936, a use adopted by manufacturers of bathroom fittings in the later post-war period.  The first vanity table seem to have been advertised in 1936.

The Old Testament

Vanity of vanities, said the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

The word translated as vanity appears 37 times in Ecclesiastes, more than in the entirety of the rest of the Old Testament so is clearly a theme of the text.  The meaning of vanity is used here in its original form of something that is transitory and quickly passes away.  In that it’s a literal translation of the Hebrew hebel, best understood in this context as meaning breath of wind, something which, whatever its immediate effects, is soon gone.  Unfortunately for nihilists, emos and other depressives trawling texts for anything confirming the pointlessness of life, biblical scholars agree the phrase is not an assertion that life is meaningless or that our labors in this fallen world are ultimately useless.  Instead, it’s a saying to help people put their lives in the proper perspective.  Ecclesiastes is not saying all our efforts are worthless, just observing that all we do in our three score and ten years upon this earth is but a brief prelude to our eternal existence and much of life escapes our understanding, for we cannot comprehend how everything fits into the grand story of creation.

All very poetic but, perhaps sadly, improbable.  It’s more likely the universe is a violent, doomed, swirl of matter and energy, life is pointless, right or wrong are just variable constructs, everything is meaningless and all any can hope for is a fleetingly brief false consciousness which might make us feel happy.

Vanity Fair

Published in 1678, John Bunyan’s (1628–1688) The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of the Christian’s spiritual journey through the sins and temptations of earthly existence to the salvation of the Kingdom of Heaven; a symbolic vision of an English worthy’s pilgrimage through life.  In the village of Vanity is a perpetual fair, selling all things to satisfy all desires and Vanity Fair represents the sin of man’s attachment to and lust for transient worldly goods, a critique echoed later in secular criticisms of materialism.  Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), although making no mention of Bunyan or his work when he published Vanity Fair in 1848, could rely on his readers being well acquainted with the symbolism of the earlier allegory.  By the mid-nineteenth century when Thackeray’s portrait of British society was published, the term had become laden too with secular and class-conscious meanings, suggesting the imagery both of self-indulgent playground and the sense of that stratum of society where the only habitué are the idle and undeserving rich.  Thackeray explored both.

Lindsay Lohan. Vanity Fair Italia, August 2011.

Over the years, on both sides of the Atlantic, a number of periodicals have used the masthead Vanity Fair.  The current one has its roots in Condé Nast’s purchase in 1913 of a men's fashion journal called Dress, and Vanity Fair, a magazine devoted to performing arts with an emphasis on theatre.  After a brief, unsatisfactory foray as the combined title Dress and Vanity Fair, in 1914 he re-launched as Vanity Fair and success was immediate, continuing even until well into the depression years of the 1930s.  Curiously different to the vicissitudes of the digital age, although revenue from advertising had collapsed, by the time Condé Nast in 1936 folded Vanity Fair into his companion title Vogue, circulation had reached an all-time high.  The problem was the cover price of an issue wasn’t sufficient profitably to cover production and distribution costs; advertising was essential.  In a situation familiar to newspaper publishers in their halcyon days, it wasn’t advantageous to achieve higher sales.

Condé Nast Publications revived the title, February 1983 the first issue.  Like most print publications, its advertising revenue has declined but, critically in this market, so have newsstand sales.  Its subscriber base is said to be stable but Condé Nast doesn’t release data indicating the breakdown mix and it’s thus unknown how much of this is made up from less lucrative bundled packages.  Newsstand sales of single-issue copies are a vital metric in this market, editors judged by monthly sales, a school of analysis now devoted to deconstructing the relationship between the photograph on an issue’s cover and copies sold; editorial content, while not ignored, seems less relevant.

The magazine’s future is thus uncertain as are the options were it not to continue as a distinct, stand-alone entity with a print version.  It’s a different environment from 1936 when it was absorbed into Vogue and different even to the turn of the century when Mirabella, a similar publication facing similar problems, closed.  The now well-practiced path of ceasing print production and going wholly digital may become attractive if circulation continues to suffer.  While it true Condé Nast already has digital titles which would seem to overlap with Vanity Fair, that’s less of a concern than cannibalization in print where the relationship of production and distribution costs to individual sales is different; both are marginal in gaining additional digital subscriptions.

Vanity Cases

The vanity case is an ancient accessory, one, three-thousand years old, made from inlaid cedar containing ointment, face-paint, perfume and a mirror of polished metal, was discovered during one of Howard Carter’s (1874–1939) archaeological digs.  Well known in something recognizably modern from the fourteenth century in France and Italy, they became fashionable in England only during the 1700s and then for men, as a small box called a “dressing case”, designed to fit into larger “dressing case”.

Enamel vanity case by Gérard Sandoz, Paris, circa 1927 (left) and cigarette case by Cartier, Paris, circa 1925 (right).  During the 1920s, the modern styles evolved.  Most exquisite were the art-deco creations designed as companion pieces to the cigarette cases newly fashionable with women as the social acceptability of young ladies smoking became prevalent.

Valkyrie

Valkyrie (pronounced val-keer-ee, val-kahy-ree, vahl-kerr-ee or val-kuh-ree)

(1) Any of the twelve beautiful war-maidens attendant upon Odin who rode over battlefields, gathering the souls of slain warriors chosen by Odin or Tyr and taking them to Valhalla, there to wait upon them.

(2) Code name for the civil-military conspiracy against the Nazi German government, culminating in the attempt coup d'état of 20 July 1944 during which an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).

(3) A frequently used name for high performance machinery (eg Aston Martin Valkyrie, North American XB70 Valkyrie).

1768: From the Old Norse valkyrja (literally "chooser of the slain") and cognate with the Old English wælcyrie (witch).  The construct was valr (those who fell battle, slaughter (and cognate with Old English wæl)) + kyrja (chooser (and cognate with Old English cyrie)).  Kyrja was from the ablaut root of kjosa (to choose), from the Proto-Germanic keusan, from the primitive Indo-European root geus- (to taste; to choose).  The Old English form wælcyrie, strangely was less prevalent in Anglo-Saxon tales than in Scandinavian myths although linguistic anthropologists have suggested this may be a consequence of the better preservation of old texts.  Köri was an alternative Norse form of kyrjam, from the ablaut root of kjosa, from the Proto-Germanic keusan, the earlier form of which was geus (to taste; to choose) from which English ultimately gained gusto.  Richard Wagner's (1813–1883) modern German Walküre was directly from the Norse while the word was first noted in English as a proper noun (valkyries) in the 1770s and as a common noun (valkyries) since the 1880s. Valkyrie is a noun & valkyrian is an adjective; the noun plural is valkyries.

Rides of some Valkries

Valkyries Riding into Battle (1838) by Johan Gustaf Sandberg (1782–1854).

The Valkyries now get quite good press but in heathen times they were thought rather more sinister.  The literal translation of their name (choosers of the slain), referred to them choosing who gains admittance to Valhalla, the Norse resting place of fallen warriors, but in some tellings of the myth they decided also who died in battle and used their malicious magic to ensure their preferences were brought to fruition.  The tales of them writing their ledger of death are recounted in Edda, (an Old Norse term that refers to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: the Prose Edda and an older collection of poems now known as the Poetic Edda.  Assembled in Ireland during the thirteenth century and written in Icelandic, they comprise material reaching back to the Vikings and are the main sources of medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland and Norse mythology), their most gruesome side illustrated vividly in the Darraðarljóð, a poem contained within Njal’s Saga.  In the saga are depicted a dozen Valkyries prior to the Battle of Clontarf, sitting at a loom and weaving the tragic fate of the warriors using intestines for their thread, severed heads for weights, and swords and arrows for beaters, all the while chanting their intentions with ominous delight.  That might delight some radical feminists but part of the myths is also that having carried the fallen to Valhalla, there the twelve beauties waited upon them hand and foot, attending to their every whim.  Readers have always been able to take from mythology what they will.  The artists of the nineteenth century however were always evocatively romantic when depicting the Valkyries, perhaps recalling the  Nietzschean visions in the thirteenth century Norse Saga of the Volsungs in which beholding a Valkyrie is compared with staring into a flame.

Valkyrie and a Dying Hero (circa 1877) by Hans Makart (1840-1884).

The imagery exists also in the folklore of other Germanic peoples.  In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the valkyries (wælcyrie in the Old English) were female spirits of carnage and the Celts, with whom the Norse and other Germanic peoples associated for centuries, had in their mythology similar beings such as the war goddesses Badb and the Morrígan.  Whether in their loving or bloodthirsty modalities, the valkyries are part of the complex of shamanism that permeates pre-Christian Germanic religion. Much like the ravens Hugin and Munin, they’re projections of parts of Odin, semi-distinct entities part of his larger being.

Hitler’s other Valkyrie

Unity Valkyrie Mitford (1914–1948) was one six daughters of a right-wing father from the English aristocracy, five of whom, had they lived in the modern era would have been among the most prolific on social media and staples of celebrity gossip sites; they were “content providers” and “click bait” before their time.  Diana (1910–2003) became the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980), founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists and the mother of Max Mosley (1940–2021; president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) 1993-2009); on the day she died she was the last person alive to have known both Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955).  Jessica (1917-1996) became a communist, Nancy (1904-1973 an author of note and Deborah (1920–2014) ended her life as Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.  Only Pamela (1907-1994) enjoyed what might be thought a “normal” rural life.  The only brother (Tom, 1909-1945) was killed while on active service with the British Army in Burma, one of several theatres in which he fought, declining to take up arms against Nazi Germany, his choice of deployment the sort of indulgence the establishment were extended.

Adolf Hitler & Unity Mitford taking tea during the annual Wagner Festival, Bayreuth, Germany, July 1936.

Unity became besotted with admiration for Hitler and although various theories have been offered to account for the attraction which seems to date from her attendance at the 1933 Nuremburg Rally, there’s no doubt about her methods.  While the legend was that after taking up residence in Munich in 1934, she stalked him, making her presence known at the restaurants & cafés where he was a habitué until she gained an invitation to his table, she was a socialite who knew how the system worked and actually gained a meeting by more traditional “networking”.  Hitler was intrigued, not only by her obvious personal (the depth of her political knowledge is contested) devotion but also her family’s historic connections with notable figures of importance in German culture including the composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and the proto-Nazi author Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927).  Telling one confidant that being next to Hitler was “like sitting next to the sun”, she became part of the court circle which surrounded Hitler where the Wagnerian touch of her middle name gained her the nickname “the Valkyrie” and some historians have speculated the second (and rather-half-hearted) of Eva Braun’s (1912–1945) two suicide attempts during the 1930s was at least partially motivated by her jealousy of Unity.

Perhaps already mentally unstable, Unity was distraught at the thought of Britain and Germany being at war and on 3 September 1939 (the day the British declaration of war was delivered), shot herself in the head.  She joined the surprisingly long list of those who survived such an act although, badly injured, she was never again the same; repatriated to the UK via Switzerland, she died in 1948 from complications related to the bullet which remained lodged in her brain.  Even in the 1940s conspiracy theories were a thing and there were several about the already strange tale of Unity Mitford, something encouraged by veil of secrecy her family draped around her.  The most bizarre was that shortly after returning to England she was admitted to a private maternity hospital in Oxford where she gave birth to Hitler’s child.  The origin of the claim was said to have been the sister of the hospital’s former manager who passed it on to her daughter, the niece revealing it some years later.  Unfortunately, it appears the hospital “neglected to register” babies born during the war, something quite unusual and another element onto which the conspiracy theorists latched.  Historians have dismissed the possibility Hitler had a child.

North American XB-70 Valkyrie.

Even while the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962) was in still in production, the Pentagon was planning its successor.  The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was nuclear-armed, long-range, deep-penetration strategic bomber, capable of cruising at Mach 3+ (circa 2000 mph (3,200 km/h)) at an altitude of 70,000 feet (circa 24 km), performance which would have rendered it close to invulnerable to both ground-based anti-aircraft fire and short-range fighter interceptors.  However, by the late 1950s, while the XB-70 was still in the prototype stage, the introduction of surface-to-air missiles put this near-invulnerability in doubt and this, coupled with the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) meant the brief era of dominance by the big strategic bomber was over although the platforms, re-purposed, remain in use to this day.  In 1961, after two Valkyries had been built (one of which was lost in an accident), the project was cancelled, viewed as a flying dreadnought overtaken by technology.  President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961), a practical military man who had over the decades seen many weapons rendered obsolete by advances in technology, thought the Valkyrie was like "bows and arrows in the gunpowder age".  The end of the dominance of the big strategic bomber had earlier been predicted by the man who more than any remains associated with the once often-expressed advocacy of the platform which alone could win wars: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris (1892–1984; head of RAF Bomber Command 1942-1945) noted during World War II (1939-1945) the "...day of the heavy bomber will pass as it did for the cavalry charge and soon will for the battleship".  The admirals weren't best pleased to hear that but he was right although, seventy-odd years on, the B-52, much updated, remains in service but it has been re-purposed, no longer envisaged as something to fly over Russian or Chinese targets, dropping gravity bombs.     

North American XB-70 Valkyrie Specifications

Length: 189 ft 0 in (57.6 m)

Wingspan: 105 ft 0 in (32 m)

Height: 30 ft 0 in (9.1 m)

Wing area: 6,297 ft2 (585 m2)

Airfoil: Hexagonal; 0.30 Hex modified root, 0.70 Hex modified tip

Empty weight: 253,600 lb (115,030 kg; operating empty weight)

Loaded weight: 534,700 lb (242,500 kg)

Take-off weight: 542,000 lb (246,000 kg)

Fuel capacity: 300,000 pounds (140,000 kg) or 46,745 US gallons (177,000 L)

Powerplant: 6 × General Electric YJ93-GE-3 afterburning turbojets

Dry thrust: 19,900 lbf (84 kN) each

With afterburner: 28,800 lbf (128 kN) each

North American XB-70 Valkyrie Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 3.1 (2,056 mph (3,309 km/h))

Cruise speed: Mach 3.0 (2,000 mph (3,200 km/h))

Range: 3,725 nautical miles (4,288 mi (6,901 km)) on combat mission

Service ceiling: 77,350 ft (23,600 m)

Wing loading: 84.93 lb/ft2 (414.7 kg/m2)

Lift-to-drag: About 6 at Mach 2[116]

Thrust/weight: 0.314

End of an era: The Aston Martin Valkyrie

The days of such things may be numbered but the manufacturers of petrol-fueled hypercars are hastening, while they still can, to offer the rich a way amusingly (and given the aftermarket, often profitably) to spend the quantitatively-eased cash governments have given them this past decade.  In August 2021, Aston Martin unveiled the Valkyrie Spider, an open-roof version of the Formula One-inspired hybrid hypercar, the coupés produced in 2022, the Spiders the following year.  Revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California, the Valkyrie Spider differs from the coupé in having a removable carbon-fibre roof panel, two hinged polycarbonate side windows and front-hinged dihedral doors rather than the closed version’s gull-wings.

The powertrain of both is essentially the same, combining a 6.5 litre (397 cubic inch), Cosworth-designed, naturally-aspirated V12 and a single electric motor for a total output of 1160 bhp (865 kW) in the coupé and 20 bhp (15 kW) less in the spider, Aston Martin not commenting on the difference.  Drive is to the rear wheels through what’s described as a seven-speed “automated manual” transmission and though the coupé is slightly lighter, performance for both is said to be similar with a 0-60 mph (100 km) time around 2.5 seconds and a top speed around 217 mph (350 km/h) although it’s noted removing the roof sacrifices about 12 mph (20 km/h).  Eighty-five Valkyrie Spiders will be built, these in addition to one-hundred and fifty coupés and twenty-five race-track only specials and while pricing hasn’t been announced, leaks from the factory suggest something over US$3 million.  Interest is said to be strong although the loss of the lucrative Russian market presumably saw some adjustments in national allocations.  On the car's webpage, the factory summed up its estimate of the performance by concluding "Any faster and it would fly."

Less is more: Underside of the Aston Martin Valkyrie. 

Actually, even were it able to go faster it still might not leave the ground.  While the aerodynamic techniques visible in the bodywork are orthodox by contemporary standards, the Valkyrie also generates much "virtual downforce" by the sculpturing of the underside, significant parts of which are effectively "hollow", the channels using the fluid dynamics of the air-flow to "suck the car to the ground".  The technique has been used for decades but the Valkyrie is the most extreme implementation yet seen on a road car.

Hedgehog

Hedgehog (pronounced hej-hog or heg-hawg)

(1) An Old World, insect-eating mammal of the genus Erinaceus, especially E. europaeus, and related genera, having a protective covering of spines on the back (family Erinaceidae, order Insectivora (insectivores)).  They’re noted for their tactic of rolling into a spiny ball when a threat is perceived.

(2) Any other insectivore of the family Erinaceidae, such as the moon rat.

(3) In US use (outside of strict zoological use), any of various other spiny animals, especially the porcupine

(4) In military use, a portable obstacle made of crossed logs in the shape of an hourglass, usually laced with barbed wire or an obstructive device consisting of steel bars, angle irons, etc, usually embedded in concrete, designed to damage and impede the boats and tanks of a landing force on a beach (an Ellipsis of the original Czech hedgehog (an antitank obstacle constructed from three steel rails)).

(5) In military (army or other ground forces) use, a defensive pattern using a system of strong points (usually roughly equally distant from the defended area) where there exists neither the personnel nor materiel to build a defensive perimeter.

(6) In (informal) military use, a World War II (1939-1945) era, anti-submarine, spigot mortar-type of depth charge, which simultaneously fired a number of explosive charges into the water to create a pattern of underwater explosions, the multiple pressure waves creating a force multiplier effect.

(7) In Australia & New Zealand, a type of chocolate cake (or slice), somewhat similar to an American brownie.

(8) In water way engineering & mining, a form of dredging machine.

(9) In botany, certain flowering plants with parts resembling a member of family Erinaceidae, notably the Medicago intertexta (Calvary clover, Calvary medick, hedgehog medick), the pods of which are armed with short spines, the South African Retzia capensis and the edible fungus Hydnum repandum.

(10) To array something with spiky projections like the quills of a hedgehog.

(11) In hair-dressing, a range of spike hair-styles.

(12) An electrical transformer with open magnetic circuit, the ends of the iron wire core being turned outward and presenting a bristling appearance.

(13) To curl up into a defensive ball (often as hedgehogging).  

(14) In catering, a style used for cocktail party food, consisting of a half melon or potato etc with individual cocktail sticks of cheese and pineapple stuck into it.

(15) In differential geometry, a type of plane curve.

(16) In biochemistry & genetics, as hedgehog signalling pathway, a key regulator of animal development present in many organisms from flies to humans.

(17) In biochemistry, as sonic hedgehog, a morphogenic protein that controls cell division of adult stem cells and has been implicated in the development of some cancers (sometimes capitalized).

1400–1450: From the late Middle English heyghoge, replacing the Old English igl.  The construct was hedge + hog, the first element from the creature’s habit of frequenting hedges, the second a reference to its pig-like snout.  Hedge was from the Middle English hegge, from the Old English heċġ, from the Proto-West Germanic haggju, from the Proto-Germanic hagjō, from the primitive Indo-European kagyóm (enclosure) and was cognate with the Dutch heg and the German Hecke.   Hog was from the Middle English hog, from the Old English hogg, & hocg (hog), which may be from the Old Norse hǫggva (to strike, chop, cut), from the Proto-Germanic hawwaną (to hew, forge), from the primitive Indo-European kewh- (to beat, hew, forge).  It was cognate with the Old High German houwan, the Old Saxon hauwan, the Old English hēawan (from which English gained “hew”).  Hog originally meant “a castrated male pig” (thus the sense of “the cut one” which may be compared to hogget (castrated male sheep)).  The alternative etymology traces a link from a Brythonic language, from the Proto-Celtic sukkos, from the primitive Indo-European suH- and thus cognate with the Welsh hwch (sow) and the Cornish hogh (“pig”).  In the UK, there are a number of synonyms for mammals with spines, all of which evolved as historic regionalisms and those which have endured include urchin (listed as archaic but still used in fiction), furze-pig (West Country), fuzz-pig (West Country), hedgepig (South England), hedgy-boar (Devon) and prickly-pig (Yorkshire).  Hedge-hog is the alternative form.  Hedgehog is a noun & adjective, hedgehogged & hedgehogging are verbs and hedgehogless, hedgehoglike & hedgehoggy are adjectives; the noun plural is hedgehogs.

Hedgehog slice.

A conjecture by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), the hedgehog's dilemma, is a metaphor about the people’s simultaneous long for and the dangers posed by the quest for human intimacy and social interaction.  Schopenhauer illustrated the problem by describing a group of hedgehogs who in cold weather try to move close together to share body-heat.  However, because of the danger they pose to each other by virtue of their sharp spines, they are compelled to maintain a safe distance.  As much as they wish to be close, they must stay distant for reasons beyond their control.  Thus it is with humans who either known instinctively or learn from bitter experience that it’s not possible to enjoy human intimacy without the risk of mutual damage and it is this realization which induces caution with others and stunted relationships.  The most extreme manifestation is self-imposed isolation.

"Chunky spikes" a variant of the "hedgehog cut".

Of course most in modern societies interact with many others and Schopenhauer wasn’t suggesting total social avoidance was in any way prevalent but that most relationships tended to be perfunctory, proper and distant, mediated by “politeness and good manners” part of which is literally “keeping one’s distance”; what is now called one’s “personal space”.  Even among German philosophers with their (not always deserved) reputation for going mad it was a particularly Germanic view which recalls the musing of Frederick II (Frederick the Great, 1712–1786, Prussian king 1740-1786) that “The more I know of the nature of man, the more I value the company of dogs”.  It appealed too to other Teutons.  From Vienna, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) quoted Schopenhauer’s metaphor in Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)) and heard in the tale the echoes of what so many of his patients had said while reclined on his office sofa.  He’d certainly have recognized as his own work the concept of “basic repression” explored by Berlin-born philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) in explaining the mechanisms by which people maintained the “politeness and good manners” Schopenhauer suggested were necessary.  Marcuse’s contribution was the idea of “surplus repression”, those restrictions imposed on human behaviour “necessitated by social domination”, a consequence of the social organization of scarcity and resources in a way not “in accordance with individual needs”.  Some Germans however found some additional repression suited their character.  Albrecht Haushofer (1903–1945), an enigmatic fellow-traveller of the Nazis and for a long time close to the definitely repressed Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi deputy Führer 1933-1941) wrote during the early days of the regime that “…I am fundamentally not suited for this new German world… He, whose faith in human society approximately agrees with Schopenhauer’s fine parable of the hedgehogs – is unsuitable for the rulers of today.”  That notwithstanding, his faith in the Nazis appeared to overcome his doubts because he remained, off and on, in their service until 1945 when, during the last days of the war, he was murdered by the regime.  

Variations of the hedgehog look.

There little to suggest that German habitué of the British Library’s reading rooms, Karl Marx (1818-1883), much dwelled upon hedgehogs, zoological or metaphorical but those who wrote of his work did.  In The Hedgehog and the Fox (a fine essay on Tolstoy published in 1953), Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) quoted a fragment from the Greek lyric poet Archilochus (circa 680–circa 645 BC): “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”.  Hedgehogs, wrote Berlin, were those “…who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel—a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance” while foxes “…pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or esthetic principle”.  The hedgehog then is like the scientist convinced the one theory, if worked at for long enough, will yield that elusive unified field theory and is “…the monist who relates everything to a central, coherent, all-embracing system” while the fox is the pluralist intrigued by “the infinite variety of things often unrelated and even contradictory to each other”.  Berlin approved of foxes because they seemed to “look and compare” before finding some “degree of truth” which might offer “a point of view” and thus “a starting-point for genuine investigation”.  He labelled Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Proust as hedgehogs (to one degree or another) while Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moliere, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce were foxes.  To Berlin, Marx was a hedgehog because he pursued a universal explanatory principle in his advocacy of a materialist conception of history.  Berlin’s thesis was attracted much interest including from Marxists and neo-Marxists and their priceless addition to English was the “quasi-hedgehog” to describe their view being there were more shades to Marx than those of a hedgehog but lest than those of the fox.  Presumably the term quasi-hedgehog was coined because a hybrid of a fox and hedgehog was either unthinkable, unimaginable or indescribable.

Ranger Planet’s summary of the difference between porcupines and hedgehogs with illustrations to scale.

Among non-specialists, the terms “porcupine” and “hedgehog” are sometimes used interchangeably (a la “dolphin” and “porpoise”) and one recent linguistic phenomenon has been the emergence of a “new regionalism” in use, the words moving in accords with patterns of migration.  Although both spiny mammals, porcupines and hedgehogs differ in their biology, behavior, and habitat, the former being rodents of the family Erethizontidae (New World) or Hystricidae (Old World) whereas Hedgehogs belong to the family Erinaceidae and are insectivores.  Porcupines have large, round bodies and long quills, typically weighing 1.0-27 kg (2.2-60 lb) while Hedgehogs are much smaller, weighing usually .45-2.25 kg (1-5 lb) with spines which are shorter and softer.  In both, the distinctive spines are for protection.  A porcupine’s quills detach readily and the advantage of that is they tend to stick to predators; the hedgehogs have shorter, non-barbed spines and when threatened, the creatures curl into a ball with their spines pointing outward, offering protection.  Porcupines are herbivores, primarily eating leaves, twigs, bark, and other plant material; hedgehogs are omnivores, feeding mostly on insects, small invertebrates, and some fruits or plants.  Porcupines can be either arboreal (tree dwellers) or terrestrial (living on the ground), depending on the species and are more common in North America (New World porcupines) and parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe (Old World porcupines).  Hedgehogs generally are terrestrial and prefer grasslands, hedgerows, and gardens, commonly found in Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa; they are also an introduced species in New Zealand and some Scottish islands where they have proved a threat to native creatures.  Both are solitary and nocturnal (most active at night).  The porcupine did make an appearance in political discourse.  In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) made one of his less remembered interventions in Santo Domingo after it had reneged on its debts to European creditors (something of a recurrent theme south of the border).  Responding to allegation of imperial avarice, Roosevelt responded he had no more appetite for acquisition “…than a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end to.”  Australians, not familiar with porcupines, can equate the presidential metaphor with the familiar phrase “rough end of the pineapple”.

Royal Navy P-class destroyer HMS Pathfinder (1941-1945), 1943, sister ship of HMS Porcupine.

Although during World War II (1939-1945) the Royal Navy used an anti-submarine weapon called “Hedgehog” (also known as the Anti-Submarine Projector) which simultaneously fired a number of explosive charges into the water to create a pattern of underwater explosions, the multiple pressure waves creating a force multiplier effect, the Admiralty has never launched a ship named HMS Hedgehog.  It has however, at various times between 1746-1942 had eight HMS Porcupines on the active list and although another was commissioned in 1967, it was cancelled before being laid down.  The most intriguing HMS Porcupine for word nerds was the last, a P-class destroyer launched in June 1941 (amidst a flurry of destroyer construction early in the war) and commissioned in August 1942.  She was torpedoed by a German U-Boat (submarine) while in the Mediterranean Sea and although damage was severe, the ship remained afloat and was towed back to a North African port, the survival due to her “armored citadel”, a type of naval architecture which can be imagined as a kind of “armored box” enclosing vital components or dangerous material (such as the magazine which hold the ammunition), formed by the armored deck, the waterline belt, and the transverse bulkheads.  It wasn’t unknown for ships to have their bows and sterns shot off yet still not sink and the concept in familiar in the modern automobile’s “safety cell”, the strong passenger compartment to which is attached front and rear the sacrificial “crumple zones” which rather than maintaining their structure in a crash, crumple to absorb and dissipate the impact’s energy before it reaches the occupants.  Declared a total loss, the ship was stripped of components and the hull was cut into two halves (fore & aft) for transportation to England.  Once back in the Portsmouth docks, informally the fore part was dubbed HMS Pork and the rear HMS Pine; both reconfigured as accommodation hulks, the two were in January 1944 commissioned under those names and they remained in service until August 1946, after which all of which was once HMS Porcupine was placed on the disposals list, sold for scrap and broken up.