Jumbo

Jumbo (pronounced juhm-boh)

(1) An informal descriptor for a very large person, animal, or thing, applied especially to an unusually large version of something usually smaller.

(2) In commerce, a term (sometimes interpolated into a brand) used to suggest a large version of something.

(3) A general term for wide-bodied passenger airplanes although historically most associated with the Boeing 747 (1969).

(4) In (mostly in the US) nautical use, a forestaysail having a boom (jumbo boom) along its foot, used especially on schooners; a sail used in place of a course on a square-rigged ship, having the form of an isosceles triangle set apex downward.

(5) In engineering & mining, as drilling jumbo, a platform-mounted machine used to drill rock.

(6) As mumbo-jumbo, a historic term used of paganism, originally referring to deities or other supernatural beings worshipped some West African peoples (usually in the form of an idol representing such a being). It was later adopted to describe any speech which was either technical jargon understood only by specialists or anything genuinely meaningless or incomprehensible.

1800–1810: Of uncertain origin but there is evidence the first use of the word by English-speakers was as an imperfect echoic of what was heard by European explorers or colonists in Africa.  It entered popular use after Jumbo, an East African elephant (1860-1885) was in 1882 exhibited by PT Barnum (1810-1891) of the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus.  The name may be derived from either the Swahili jambo (matter, thing) or jumbe (chief, headman) although some sources cite the Sanskrit जम्बु (jambū or jambul) (rose apple).  Most convincing comes from the anthropological record of west-Africa where jumbo was used to describe a "clumsy, unwieldy fellow" (1823), itself possibly from a word for elephant in a West African language, perhaps the Kongo nzamba.  As a modifier (formally & informally) to impart the sense of largeness, jumbo is appended as required: jumbo jet (and jumbojet), jumbo mortgage, jumbomania, jumbo slice, superjumbo, jumbo sandwich, jumbo cigar, jumbo burger, jumbo cola et al.  Walt Disney’s musical cartoon Dumbo (1941) influenced the adoption of dumbo to mean “someone not intelligent”, the use documented by 1951 but the oral use probably pre-dates that.  Jumbo is a noun & adjective, jumboization (and jumboisation) are nouns, jumboize (and jumboise) are verbs; the noun plural is jumbos.

PT Barnum's publicity materials were created prior to "truth in advertising" laws.

The original Jumbo (the elephant) was an exhibit in London Zoo, the institution having purchased the beast from French explorers who were said to have captured it as a calf in Abyssinia in 1861.  Barnum purchased Jumbo in 1862 (much to the displeasure of the English) and immediately began in the US one of his typically extravagant advertising campaigns which emphasised both what a coup he’d achieved by wresting it from the British Empire and what an extraordinary size the creature was.  His circus toured the country with Jumbo a star attraction until in September 1885 it was killed near Saint Thomas, Ontario when struck by a freight train.

Perhaps curiously, the noun mumbo-jumbo seems not to have fallen from the linguistic treadmill, despite its origin and early colonial associations.  It entered English in 1738, based on an account of an incident in 1732 which occurred near Sami (in modern-day Gambia).  In the publications of the time, the Mumbo Jumbo was described as a costume “idol” used by men to frighten others and as coercive tool to regulate behaviour; it was used especially against women to induce their submission.  In hours of daylight, the costume was mounted on a stick placed at the outskirts of the village while by night a man would dress in it, visiting the homes of women or others deemed a problem, disputes “settled” and punishments bestowed.  Other spellings noted in the eighteenth century include Munbo Jumbo, Numbo Jumbo and Mumbo Chumbo and the original account ascribed the practice to Mandingo but linguistic anthropologists have never been able to trace an obvious Mandingo term which might be the source, the suggestions including mama dyambo (pompom-wearing ancestor) and mamagyombo (magician who exorcises troubled ancestor spirits).  It may have been borrowed from another Niger-Congo language and the European colonial transcriptions were the French moumbo-dioumbo & moumbo-ioumbo and the Portuguese mumban-jumban.  On the basis of the colonial-era accounts, the tradition (of uncertain age) must have been widespread with all settlements in the region was said to have a Mumbo Jumbo and by the mid-nineteenth century it had in English become a byword for a “superstitious object of senseless worship”, evolving by the 1890s to describe any speech which was either technical jargon understood only by specialists or anything genuinely meaningless or incomprehensible, use presumably reinforced and encouraged by some perception of association with “mumble”.  In that sense, it somewhat differed from the pseudo-Latin “hocus-pocus” which described words or incantations wholly fake and intended to deceive.  Despite the history, mumbo jumbo seems still acceptable in English and why it hasn’t yet been condemned as racist or cultural appropriation isn’t clear.

Jambo!  Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls.

Much has changed in the twenty-first century and it’s doubtful all of “You got your freshmen, ROTC Guys, preps, JV jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly Black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet, and the worst.  Beware of The Plastics.” would appear were the Mean Girls (2004) script to be written today, mere mention of ethnicity now often deconstructed as some level of racism.  Cady (the white protagonist raised (somewhere) in Africa) uses the Swahili greeting "jambo" (from -amba (to say) which linguistic anthropologists say was probably derived from the Proto-Bantu (there’s a similar term in Zulu)) to introduce herself to a table of “Unfriendly Black Hotties”.  The script never makes explicit just where in Africa Cady may have spent her youth but this, along with another couple of cultural and linguistic clues do hint it may have been among sub-Saharan ethnic groups although whether that was intentional isn’t documented.  However, “jambo” is one of several similar words used on the continent linked both to the later evolution in English of jumbo and mumbo jumbo and it may be jumbo was either a direct phonetic spelling recorded by Europeans or just a mis-heard rendition.

The prototype of first jumbojet (Boeing 747) on show on the forecourt at the Boeing’s factory in Seattle, Washington, 1968 (left), at the Paris Air Show in 1969 with a Concorde in the background (centre) and the last 747 (a freighter), also on the Boeing forecourt, November 2022.

Jumbo was a big elephant and the word was soon used to describe large examples of other things.  In commercial use, the first use seems to have been Jumbo Cigars, sold in 1886.  The best known use in the modern age is probably jumbo-jet (also appears jumbojet), probably first used by Boeing engineers circa 1960 although the first documented reference is from 1964.  It replaced the earlier Boeing engineering-slang jumbo-707, probably because a three syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven.  In the narrow technical sense, jumbo-jet came to refer to all wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes built since the late 1960s, but, being first, it tends most to be associated with Boeing’s 747.  Thus, when in the early 2000s, the even larger Airbus 380 took to the skies, the term superjumbo (and super-jumbo) was used by some, the airframe’s point of visual differentiation from the 747 being the Boeing’s famous hump being extended along the fuselage to the tail section, creating a double-decker.  The term (which had earlier been used of the stretched 747s) however never quite caught on in the same way because the 380 was unique and a class of superjumbos thus never emerged to demand a descriptive generic term.  As it was, economics conspired against the A380 and the circumstances in which it flew were very different to those envisaged in the late 1980s when first the project was conceived for not only had advances in engineering and materials allowed a new generation of twin-jet jumbos to operate at a much lower passenger cost per mile but airports, their systems and physical infrastructure optimized around the 747’s capacity, proved unwilling to make the changes needed to accommodate higher peak demand.  After little more than a dozen years of assembly, Airbus in 2021 ceased production of A380 after some 250 had been built.

One of NASA’s Boeing 747s, adapted as a heavy-lift platform to “piggy-back” the US Space Shuttles (left).  The Soviet Union (and briefly the Russians) used the one-off Antonov An-225 Мрія (Mriya (dream or inspiration)) to piggy-back its  Буран (Buran (Snowstorm or Blizzard)), the USSR's space shuttle (right).  The An-225, with the largest wingspan and heaviest take-off weight of any aircraft ever to enter operational service, was destroyed in the early days of the Russian invasion (the 2022 "Special Military Operation”) of Ukraine.

The 747 proved more enduring a successful and was a machine which was truly revolutionary in its social consequences.  Just as Boeing’s earlier 707 (1958) had been instrumental in making trans-Continental air travel a viable and reliable means of transport for a small number of people, the economics of scale made possible by the 747 meant such trips became accessible for many more.  Between 1968 and 2022, almost 1600 were built in a variety of lengths and configurations and it was for decades the faithful workhorse of many airlines, but it ultimately fell victim to the same financial squeeze that doomed the A380, twin-engined aircraft able to carry almost as many passengers at a significantly lower cost.  By 2016 it was clear demand had dwindled and most of the production thereafter was for freight operators still attracted by the 747’s unique combination of capacity, reliability and range.  As passenger 747s progressively are retired, many will be converted to freighters, an relatively simple operation envisaged even during the design process in the 1960s.  Many flyers however noted the 747’s demise with some regret.  None denied the advantages of airframes built from composite materials nor the enhanced economy of the twin-engine configuration but for those who flew for hours above 30,000 feet (9000+ m), knowing one was in a metal cylinder with the redundancy of four engines imparted great confidence.

Lindsay’s Olives in sizes to suit.  Black olive martinis are a cult.

In commercial use, obvious comparative terms like “small”. “medium” & “large” are commonly used and “extra” is often appended to “small” & “large”.  In the sizing of clothing, “extra” is used in multiples, labelled usually as XL XXL XXXL etc to indicate ascending graduations of large (L).  With the “Extra Large”, this is on the model of the DD, DDD, FF etc bra cup descriptors used by some manufacturers although the use varies, a DD sometimes the same as an E and sometimes something between a D & E.  However, at the other end of the size range, the multiple letters work the other way, an AAA cup smaller than an AA which is smaller than an A.  Linguistically, that does make sense because with bras the multiple letters are synonymous with “extra”, the AA being extra small and the DD extra large.  The alpha-numeric nomenclature used (30A, 32D etc) is maintained presumably because something like a "Jumbo" bra might lack sales appeal.  Where manufactures want to use descriptors which indicate a larger size beyond something like extra large, they’ll trawl the alphabet, thus product packaging described as “jumbo”, “super” “mega”, colossal” “super”, “maxi” etc.  Unlike S-M-L, there’s no defined ascendant order so it might be that where one manufacturer’s jumbo is larger than their mega while with some it may be the other way round.

Jumbo spark plugs.  This was actually advertising the strength of the spark rather than the plug, some of the Jumbo line of plugs physically smaller than than some offered by the competition.  The need for higher-performance spark plugs arose as higher octane gas (petrol) permitted compression ratios to rise.

Short

Short (pronounced shawrt)

(1) Having little length; not long.

(2) Of a person, of comparatively small stature; having little height; not tall (applied by extension to just about everything (furniture, buildings, animals et al)).

(3) Extending or reaching only a little way; having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically.

(4) Brief in duration; not extensive in time.

(5) Brief or concise, of limited duration.

(6) Rudely brief; abrupt; brusque.

(7) Low in amount; scanty.

(8) Not reaching a point, mark, target, or the like; not long enough or far enough.

(9) Below the standard in extent, quantity, duration, etc.

(10) Being of an insufficient amount; below the desired level.

(11) Of pastry, crisp and flaky; breaking or crumbling readily from being made with a large proportion of butter or other shortening.

(12) Of dough, containing a relatively large amount of shortening.

(13) Of metals, deficient in tenacity; friable; brittle.

(14) In physiology, of the head or skull, of less than ordinary length from front to back.

(15) In markets, not possessing at the time of sale commodities or stocks that one sells and therefore compelled to make a purchase before the delivery date.

(16) In markets, noting or pertaining to a sale of commodities or stocks that the seller does not possess, depending for profit on a decline in prices.

(17) In markets, as short selling, a mechanism for gambling that the future price of a stock or other security will fall.

(18) In phonetics, a sound lasting a relatively short time; denoting a vowel of relatively brief temporal duration (in popular usage denoting the qualities of the five English vowels represented orthographically in the words pat, pet, pit, pot, put, and putt)

(19) In prosody, of a syllable in quantitative verse, lasting a relatively shorter time than a long syllable.

(20) Of an alcoholic drink, a small measure (sometimes known as a shot); also used in certain UK circles to describe whisky served undiluted (straight).

(21) In ceramics, of clay, not sufficiently plastic enough to be modeled.

(22) In rope-making, hard fibre.

(23) In baseball, holding the bat with hands higher on the handle of the bat than the usual grip; a fielder standing in a fielding position closer to the home plate than in an orthodox setting (often called the short-stop).

(24) In tailoring, a description for cuts for those who are shorter; a garment, as a suit or overcoat, in such a size.

(25) In clothing, trousers, knee-length or shorter; short pants worn by men as an undergarment, usually as an alternative to closely-fitted underpants; knee breeches, formerly worn by men but now rare except in certain equestrian pursuits.

(26) In finance, bonds with a short duration until maturity.

(27) In mining, crushed ore failing to pass through a given screen, thus being of a larger given size than a specific grade; remnants, discards, or refuse of various cutting and manufacturing processes.

(28) In army jargon, of artillery, a shot that strikes or bursts short of the target (also admiralty jargon for the same concept).

(29) In electricity, as short circuit, the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it.

(30) In gambling, in the jargon of betting odds, almost even.

(31) In film-making, a production of deliberately brief duration.

(32) A truncated form of a word or phrase.

(33) In cricket, as a modifier, describing a fielding position closer to the pitch than the (nominally) standard placement (eg short third man as opposed to third man); a ball bowled so that it bounces relatively far from the batsman; a “run” disallowed by the umpire because a batter failed to touch the designated line on the pitch.

(34) In (physical) money handling, providing a total amount in cash using the fewest possible notes, ie using those of the largest denominations (mostly archaic).

(35) In computer programming, an integer variable having a smaller range than normal integers; usually two bytes in length.

Pre-900: From the Middle English adjective schort (short), from the Old English sċeort & sċort (short, not long, not tall; brief), from the Old High German scurz (short), from the Proto-West Germanic skurt, from the Proto-Germanic skurta & skurtaz (short), from the primitive Indo-European sker & ker (to cut (on the notion of “something cut off) in the same sense as the Sanskrit krdhuh (shortened, maimed, small)).  It was cognate with shirt, skirt & curt, the Scots short & schort (short), the French court, the German kurz, the Old High German scurz (short (source of the Middle High German schurz)), the Old Norse skorta (shortness, scarcity a lack (source of the Danish skorte)) & skera (to cut), the Albanian shkurt (short, brief), the Latin curtus (shortened, incomplete) & cordus (late-born (originally "stunted in growth)), the Proto-Slavic kortъkъ, the Old Church Slavonic kratuku, the Russian korotkij (short), the Lithuanian skursti (to be stunted) & skardus (steep), the Old Irish cert (small) and the Middle Irish corr (stunted, dwarfish).

The verb shorten (1510) (make shorter) had by the 1560s encompassed "grow shorter"; the earlier form of the verb was simply short, from Old English sceortian (to grow short, become short; run short, fail), the fork gescyrtan meaning "to make short".  The meaning "having an insufficient quantity" is from 1690s, the idea of someone "rude" is attested from the late fourteenth century.  The sense of someone "easily provoked; short of temper" is from the 1590s but etymologists prefer the origin being "not long (ie short) in tolerating" rather than a link to a “short fuse” which would cause gunpowder quickly to explode, although that is the modern form.  There are conventions of use: short is often used in the positive vertical dimension and used as is shallow in the negative vertical dimension; in the horizontal dimension narrow is more commonly used.  Short & brief (as opposed to long) indicate slight extent or duration and short may imply duration but is also applied to physical distance and certain purely spatial relations (a short journey) while brief refers especially to duration of time (a brief interval).  Synonyms (according to context) includes abbreviated, brief, crisp, precise, shortened, terse, low, small, thick, tiny, limited, poor, shy, slender, slim, tight, sharp, fragile, bare & compressed.  Short is a noun, verb, adverb & adjective, shortness is a noun, shorter shorted & shortest are adjectives, shorted & shorting are verbs and shortly is an adverb.

Derived forms include shortage (limited supply) (1862 from US English), shorty (short person) (1888), shortfall (something falling short of expectations) (1895), shorthand (a method of rapid writing used to record dictation or other speech) (1636), shorts (short pants) (1826 and uniquely applied to trousers, short-sleeved shirts etc never using the form) and the intriguing short shorts (1946 describing men's briefs, now often called boxer shorts (1949)), shortcoming (1670s) (an expression of inadequacy and usually used in the plural), shortly, from the Old English scortlice (briefly also in late Old English) (in short time; soon; not long), shortness (1570s), from the Old English scortnes and now used mostly in the sense of “shortness of breath”, shortstop (1837) (a fielding position in various sports (although has faded in cricket)), shortcut (1610s) (often as short-cut, (path not as long as the ordinary way)) although the term may have been longer in oral use because the figurative sense is documented from the 1580s; it’s familiar now as “a desktop pointer to files more deeply nested” since file-loading graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were bolted atop computer operating systems in the 1980s.  Shortening (1540s) (action of making short) was a verbal noun from shorten and the meaning "butter or other fat used in baking" (1796) was from shorten in the sense "make crumbly" (1733), from the adjective short in the early fifteenth century secondary sense of "easily crumbled" which may have been linked to the idea of "having short fibers" and from this, came shortbread (1755) and shortcake (1590).

The noun & verb shortlist (to cull someone from a long list and place them on a shorter list of those to be considered for advancement or preferment) dates from 1955, although the noun form short list (and short-list) had existed in this sense since 1927; the shortlist is now most celebrated in literary awards, the appearance on one something of an award in itself.  The short-timer (1906) was "one whose term or enlistment is about to expire" and was used variously in employment, sports teams and the military (the similar short-term was noted in 1901).  Short-wave (1907) was a reference to the broadcast radio wavelength less than circa 100 meters, used for long distance transmission.  Short handed in the sense of "having too few hands (employees)" dates from 1794, the use in ice hockey noted first in 1939.  Short-lived was from the 1580s and later assumed a specific technical definition in nuclear & high-energy particle physics.  The short-sleeve (of a shirt or blouse etc), although presumably a garment design of longstanding was first documented in the 1630s in a regulation issued in the Massachusetts Bay colony, forbidding "short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arme may be discovered”, a notion still part of the dress-code in some societies.  The first use of short-sighted was in the 1620s, surprisingly a reference to someone “lacking foresight”, the literal use in optometry to describe myopia not adopted until the 1640s.  The short-order was restaurant jargon from 1897, from the adverbial expression “in short order” (rapidly, with no fuss) and survives functionally as the “short order cook” in the fast food industry. The electrical short-circuit (the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it) was first described in 1854.  The use as a verb (introduce a shunt of low resistance) began in 1867; the intransitive sense from 1902 and the figurative sense (to interfere with some process and stop it) is recorded by 1899.  The short haul was US use from the 1950s to describe a commercial airline flight of short duration.  The blended noun shortgevity apparently exists as a (rarely used) back-formation from longevity.

Something described as “short and sweet”, dates from the 1530s and is something unexpectedly brief and can be applied positively, neutrally or negatively.  To be “caught short” is feeling a sudden need to urinate or defecate in circumstances where a loo is not conveniently accessible.  To “fall short” is to prove inadequate for some task or to fail to reach or measure up to a standard or expectations.  In cinema the “short film” carries a connotation of something artistic where as “shorts” are often just fillers in a commercial space.  A “short-seller” is one “shorting stocks”, a method of trading in which positions are placed to attempt to profit from a expected decline in the future price of the stock.  To be “cut short” is to be interrupted in some way by someone or something.  To have someone “by the short and curlies” is to have someone completely in one's power, an allusion to pubic hair, hence the related (and more evocative) phrase “they have us by the scrotum”.  Having the “short end of the stick” is to receive the most disadvantageous part of something (analogous with “drawing the short straw”, a literal practice used to allocate an undesirable task, usually in the absence of volunteers.  To give “short shrift” (often incorrectly expressed as “short shift”) to someone is to be dismissive.  The “long and short of it” is a brief, succinct explanation of something; gist of the matter.  Something “short for” (contraction of a name or phrase) is a more convenient form of a longer word or phrase (such as bus for omnibus and ETA for expected time or arrival).  That use dates from 1873 but the forms have altered over time: Psycho by 1921 was campus slang for psychology, use extended to cover psychologists by 1925 but this has since shifted to be a reference to psychopaths, the change thought provoked by the frequency with which the word came to be used in popular culture.  To “short change” someone originally (1903) meant not to give someone all the change they were due in a financial transaction; now mostly used figuratively.  The “short story” was obviously an ancient form of writing but as a defined genre in literature, was first labelled in 1877.  To “make short work” of something is quickly to complete the task, the phrase first noted in the 1570s. To be “short by the knees” was to be kneeling, attested since 1733; to be "short by the head" dates from the 1540s and was to be beheaded.  In 1897 a short was also a term for a street car (trolley bus), so called both because the street cars and the rides taken in them were shorter (respectively in length and duration) than railroad cars.

Of machinery short & long

The stretching of military and commercial airframes has for decades been common practice, the objective usually to increase carrying capacity (passengers, freight, weapons etc).  Unusually, with the Boeing 747 (the original jumbo jet), there were variations both short and long.  The origin of the term jumbo-jet seem to lie in the slang adopted by Boeing’s engineers circa 1960 (the first reference in print apparently in 1964), during the early planning for the project which would first fly in 1969.  Then called the jumbo-707, it was soon shortened to jumbo-jet, probably because a three syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven.  The term jumbo-jet came to refer to all wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes but has always tended most to be associated with Boeing’s 747.  Highly successful and as influential on the economics of the industry in the 1970s as the 707 had been in the 1950s, the basic platform was offered in an stretched version (747-8) in 2005, the fuselage lengthened from 232 feet (71 m) to 251 feet (77 m).

The original 747-100 series (1969, left), the elongated 747-8 (2005, centre) and the shortened 747SP (1975).

Unusually however, in 1975 Boeing announced a short version, named 747SP (Special Performance), the lower weight improving fuel consumption, permitting operators to fly long-haul routes non-stop.  Some 47 feet (14 m) shorter than the original 747-100 series, the SP entered service in 1976 but was never as commercially successful as Boeing hoped, only 45 of the projected 200-odd ever built.  Had fuel remained cheap demand may have been higher but every analysis confirmed the role envisaged for the SP would be more economically served with a new generation of two-engined jumbos and this was the path pursued both by Boeing and Airbus.

1965 Mercedes-Benz 600s: Four-door Pullman (background) & the standard saloon (foreground).

Short is a relative term.  The standard Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) at some 5.54m (218.1 inches) in length was long by most standards but informally,  it’s always been referred to as the SWB (short wheelbase) because the companion Pullman model was even more imposing at 6.24 m (245.7 inches), the elongation effected by extending the wheelbase from 3.2 m (126 inches) to 3.9 m (153.5 inches).  Some sources refer to the bigger car as a LWB but the factory designation was always Pullman.  US manufacturers habitually used a variety of wheelbases on the platforms which began to proliferate during the 1960s but didn’t much reference the dimension in advertising and never in model designations.  The British and Europeans, with smaller ranges, often did both, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz & BMW all designating their long wheelbase saloons with an appended “L” (short for Long or Lang), the Germans for decades maintaining the distinction although Jaguar found demand for their (shorter) standard wheelbase XJ declined to the extent that production was halted and the long wheelbase (LWB) became standard.  Introduced initially as an extra-cost option in 1972 on the XJ12 and Daimler Double Six, the LWB began as a niche model for those wanting more rear-seat leg room (1105 sold compared with 3008 of the SWB) but by 1974, such had the demand profile changed that the SWB platform was restricted to the lovely but doomed two-door XJC (coupé, 1975-1978).  When the XJC was cancelled, all XJs were built on the LWB platform, now marketed without the obviously superfluous “L” badge.

1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK (left) & 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K.

Mercedes-Benz didn’t always make it easy to work out what was long and what was short.  The “K” in SSK (W06, 1928-1932) is short for kurz (short) which was fine given it was a SWB version of the SS but the 770K (W07, 1930-1938 & W150, 1939-1943) was anything but short, the “K” short for kompressor (supercharger).  Further to complicate things the SSK was supercharged but presumably SSKK might have been thought a bit much although there was a lightweight version of the SSK called SSKL (W06, 1929), the “L” short for licht (light) which was, again, fine except “L” would later appear simultaneously as short forms of both licht & lang.  This duplication of meaning has seemed always to lack the expected Teutonic exactitude.

Wearing it well: Lindsay Lohan in shorts.

1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder (LWB) (left) & 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder SWB (right).

Lengthening already large saloons to provide more rear-seat space made sense for many, especially those driven by a chauffeur.  However, with sports cars or other machines intended for competition, the tendency is to shorten, this reducing weight and improving agility although the combination of high power and a short wheelbase can induce some handling characteristics best explored by expert hands.

Ferrari's 250 (1952-1964) series of sports cars, cabriolets and coupés was significant not only for the many successes achieved on the track but also because it was the first model to be built in commercially viable numbers for sale to the public.  In this, the 250 set the template for the generations of road-cars which the factory would offer in succeeding decades, models which would provide not only the basis for the lightweight, high-performance variants used in racing but much of the funding as well.  All but a handful of the 250s were built either on the original 2.6 m (102.4 inch) wheelbase or the later (SWB) of 2.4 m (94.5 inch).  After the release of the SWB (which became the factory designation), the term LWB was retrospectively (and unofficially) applied to the longer frames.

The 250s had attracted much attention in the US market but the overwhelming response was that there was demand for a luxury cabriolet.  Accordingly, Ferrari's coachbuilder Scaglietti's created a roadster called the 250 GT California Spyder on the standard (LWB) platform and between 1957-1959 produced a run of fifty.  In the days before the quantitative easing (creating money and giving it to the rich) programmes run during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis 2008-2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) when a million dollars was still a lot of money, a California Spider set a then world-record for a car sold at open auction, the hammer dropping at US$12 million.  The 250 GT Berlinetta (coupé) had been released in SWB form in 1959 and it was on this platform the revised 250 GT California Spyder SWB was shown at the 1960 Geneva Motor Show.  Using the same proportions which would become famous on the 250 GTO, as well as the revised lines, the SWB Spyder benefited from being fitted with disc brakes and an updated version of the 3.0 litre (180 cubic inch) Colombo V12.

Wearing it not so well: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; head of state (1934-1945) and government (1933-1945) in Nazi Germany) in shorts.

So much in Nazism (and fascism generally) was fake spectacle that much emphasis was always given to the few things of note which were real (Hitler’s Iron Crosses (though he rarely wore the "First Class" one), Göring's war record, Goebbels' PhD etc), the importance to the regime of spectacle at the time suspected but not fully understood until the post-war years.  All politicians carefully cultivate their image but Hitler was singularly careful and diligent in preparation, these photographs in shorts (Bavarian Lederhosen (leather trousers)) taken for him to assess their suitability for use as publicity shots.  Unsurprisingly, he rejected them as “beneath my dignity” and ordered the negatives destroyed but they ended up in the photographer's archive.

Goodly

Goodly (pronounced good-lee)

(1) Of a substantial size or quantity.

(2) Of a good or fine appearance (rare).

(3) Of fine quality (obsolete).

(4) Highly virtuous (obsolete unless quantity is thought virtuous which does seem possible).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English, from the Old English gōdlīc, from the Proto-Germanic gōdalīkaz (equivalent to the Old English gōd (good)).  The construct was good + -ly.  Good was from the Middle English good & god, from Old English gōd (that which is good, a good thing; goodness; advantage, benefit; gift; virtue; property), from the Proto-West Germanic gōd, from the Proto-Germanic gōdaz, from the primitive Indo-European ghed (to unite, be associated, suit).  It was cognate with the Dutch goed, the German gut, the Old Norse gōthr, the Gothic goths & the Russian го́дный (gódnyj) (fit, well-suited, good for) & год (god) (year). The –ly prefix was from the Middle English -ly, -li, -lik & -lich, from the Old English -līċ, from the Proto-West Germanic -līk, from the Proto-Germanic -līkaz (having the body or form of), from līką (body) (from whence Modern German gained lich); in form, it was probably influenced by the Old Norse -ligr (-ly) and was cognate with the Dutch -lijk, the German -lich and the Swedish -lig.  It was used (1) to form adjectives from nouns, the adjectives having the sense of "behaving like, having a likeness or having a nature typical of what is denoted by the noun" and (2) to form adjectives from nouns specifying time intervals, the adjectives having the sense of "occurring at such intervals".  Goodly, goodlier & goodliest are adjectives and goodliness is a noun.

Lindsay Lohan with a largifical show of skin and a goodly sprinkle of freckles in Lynn Kiracofe tiara & Frye boots with Calvin Klein Original’s blue cotton jeans over white polyester and spandex XT Trunk briefs, W Magazine photo shoot, April 2005.

In English, goodly was long used to mean (1) someone or some act thought commendable or virtuous, (2) an item of high quality, (3) something or someone attractive and (4) ample or numerous in quality.  It was thus variously a synonym of many words including ample, big, biggish, burly, capacious, comprehensive, decent, extensive, good, great, gross, hefty, husky, jumbo, largish, major, massive, ponderous, respectable, sensible, beautiful & virtuous.  However, by the mid-twentieth century most senses of goodly had gone extinct and the word was only ever used of something quantitative.  Even then it was (and remains) rare but it exists in a niche populated by poets and literary novelists so its audience is thus limited.  As an example of the inconsistency in English’s evolution, the sense of virtue did survive in the noun goodliness.  An alternative to goodly when speaking of quantities was largifical and unlike goodly, it did not survive although large obviously has flourished.  The adjective largifical was from the Latin largificus, from largus (bountiful, liberal), the construct being an adaptation (via facere (in fact)) of larg(us) + faciō (do, make), from the Proto-Italic fakjō, from the primitive Indo-European dheh- (to put, place, set), the cognates of which included the Ancient Greek τίθημι (títhēmi), the Sanskrit दधाति (dádhāti), the Old English dōn (from which English ultimately gained “do”) and the Lithuanian dėti (to put).  So, beyond the confines of the literary novel, the preferred alternatives to goodly and largifical include sufficient, adequate, plenty, abundant, enough, satisfactory, plentiful, copious, profuse, rich, lavish, liberal, generous, bountiful, large, huge, great, bumper, flush, prolific, overflowing, generous & ample, the choice dictated by the nuances of need.

Baffle

Baffle (pronounced baf-uhl)

(1) To confuse, bewilder or perplex.

(2) To frustrate or confound; to thwart (a now archaic and probably obsolete seventeenth century use which didn’t of necessity involve the creation of confusion or bewilderment).

(3) To check or deflect the movement of (sound, light, fluids, etc.).

(4) To equip with a baffle or baffles.

(5) To cheat or trick; to hoodwink or deceive someone (used between the sixteenth & eighteenth centuries and now obsolete).

(6) To struggle ineffectually, as a ship in a gale (a nineteenth form rare except in Admiralty use).

(7) Publicly to disgrace, especially of a recreant knight (used between the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries and now obsolete).

(8) Something that balks, checks, or deflects (also called a baffle-board); an artificial obstruction for checking or deflecting the flow of gases (as in a boiler), sounds (as in the loudspeaker system of a radio or hi-fi set), light (as in a darkroom) or fluids (as in a tank).

(9) In audio engineering, any boxlike enclosure or flat panel for mounting a loudspeaker.

(10) In military camouflage, an architectural feature designed to confuse enemies or make them vulnerable.

(11) In coal mining, a lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine (US dialectal use).

1540-1550: Of uncertain origin but may have entered English from the Scots dialectal bauchle (to disgrace, treat with contempt, especially a perjured knight), from bauch or bachlen (publicly to condemn) and probably related to the early-modern French bafouer (to disgrace, to scorn, abuse or hoodwink) or the obsolete French befer (to mock) which was definitely picked up from the Scots bauchle.  The most likely root is the German natural sound of disgust, like bah which appears in the language as baff machen (to flabbergast) and the familiar modern meaning “to bewilder or confuse” is from 1640s while that of “to defeat someone's efforts” is from 1670s.  The use meaning “shielding device” dates from 1881 and “artificial obstruction” is from 1910.  The alternative spellings bafful & baffol are both obsolete.  Baffle is a noun & verb, bafflement & baffler are nouns and baffled & baffling are verbs & adjectives; the noun plural is baffles (or the rare bafflers).

As a noun, baffle emerged in the early 1880s, initially used mostly of the shielding device attached to stoves and ovens where it was short for “baffle-plate”, derived from the noun.  The earlier noun (from circa 1860) in the same sense was baffler, a word which can still be used to describe (1) something that causes one to be baffled, particularly a difficult puzzle or riddle & (1) in gaming, one of the projections inside a dice tower that serve to deflect the die unpredictably.  The noun bafflement (state of being baffled) dates from 1841 while the adjective baffling (bewildering, confusing, perplexing) was from 1733; it was the present-participle adjective from the verb baffle but also emerged in Admiralty slang (soon picked up in the merchant service) in the eighteenth century as a sailor's adjective for winds that blow variously and make headway difficult; although now rare, it survived into the age of steam.  The noun and verb bafflegab was first noted in 1952 and describes pretentious, incomprehensible, or overly technical language, especially legal or bureaucratic jargon; a synonym of gobbledygook (but not “hocus-pocus” or “mumbo-jumbo” which reference something nonsensical although use of those two is now probably proscribe because of their origin when speaking dismissively of the speech of African “witch doctors”.  The companion word is baffound (to perplex, bewilder by the use of bafflegab).

Although it had probably before been on the tips of not a few tongues, the words “baffle”, “baffling” & “baffled” in connection with Lindsay Lohan really spiked in 2016 when footage circulated of her speaking in distinctively different accent which used a conventional US English vocabulary but was delivered, with an occasionally halting delivery, the accent vaguely Russian or eastern European.  She later clarified thing by saying it was “…a mixture of most of the languages I can understand or am trying to learn”, adding that she’d been “…learning different languages since I was a child.  I'm fluent in English and French can understand Russian and am learning Turkish, Italian and Arabic”.  Taking advantage of the interest, she named the latest addition to the planet’s linguistic diversity “LiLohan” and a limited edition LiLohan clothing line was quickly made available as a philanthropic endeavour, part of the proceeds from each item sold going to Caudwell Children and the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD).  Turkey is now properly called Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (Republic of Türkiye); the accepted short form Türkiye.

Baffled sump (left) and fuel tank (right).In cars, baffles are used in sumps and fuel tanks to prevent fluids sloshing around when subjected to the high lateral forces encountered in high-speed cornering.  With fuel tanks this ensures weight transfers are minimized while the purpose in a sump is to (1) avoid the oil surge or starvation which can happen if movement means the oil becomes removed from the oil-pump’s pickup & (2) assist in reducing the oil’s tendency to foam.  In Australia Ford included a baffled sump on the Falcon GTHO Phase III (1970-1971) and this was to be carried over to the abortive Phase IV (1972), the novelty with the latter being the race cars gaining tear-drop shaped “ears” welded to each side of the sump, adjacent to the oil pump.  The ears not only increased oil capacity but also, sitting as they did in the air-flow passing under the body, enhanced cooling.

Speak no evil: Alan Tudge.

Given the number of times the Australian Liberal Party has in recent years sought to celebrate the virtue of “personality responsibility” the evidence given by Alan Tudge (b 1971) to the royal commission investigating the “robodebt” scheme (a system which sought to “recover” what were alleged to be debts incurred by citizens who had failed to inform the government about their earnings) must to some have seemed baffling; not necessarily surprising, just baffling.  The scheme had been found to be unlawful but Mr Tudge, who served as (Liberal) minister for human services in 2017-2018 and was (under the Westminster system) “responsible” for the administration of “robodebt”, refused during questioning to accept ministerial responsibility for the unlawfulness of the scheme.  Despite being the minister in charge, Mr Tudge said it was not his responsibility check whether or not the robodebt scheme was lawful although he did seem to concede he was responsible for the scheme’s “lawful implementation”, adding that he assumed it was lawful, and had never been shown legal advice regarding its legality.  His position appeared to be based on what sounds a reasonable assumption: that the departmental secretary (the public servant in charge of the department) would not be implementing a program which he or she would know to be unlawful, something he described as “unfathomable”, adding that the scheme had gone through a rigorous cabinet process “which always has a legal overlay”.

Justice Jackson prosecuting, Albert Speer in the dock, Nuremberg, 1946. 

There are many books by academics, historians and former politicians which discuss the doctrine of ministerial responsibility but it's not known if the transcript of 20 June 1946 of the International Military Tribunal (the Nuremberg Trial) was in Mr Tudge's mind: Mr Justice Robert Jackson (1892–1954; US Supreme Court Justice 1941-1954; Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg (IMT) trials of Nazi war criminals 1945-1946) cross-examining Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945):

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Your statement some time ago that you had a certain responsibility as a Minister of the Government.  I should like to have you explain what responsibility you referred to when you say you assume a responsibility as a member of the Government; your common responsibility, what do you mean by your common responsibility along with others?

DEFENDANT SPEER: In my opinion, a state functionary has two types of responsibility.  One is the responsibility for his own sector and for that, of course, he is fully responsible.  But above that I think that in decisive matters there is, and must be, among the leaders a common responsibility, for who is to bear responsibility for developments, if not the close associates of the head of State?

This common responsibility, however, can only be applied to fundamental matters, it cannot be applied to details connected with other ministries or other responsible departments, for otherwise the entire discipline in the life of the state would be quite confused, and no one would ever know who is individually responsible in a particular sphere. This individual responsibility in one's own sphere must, at all events, be kept clear and distinct.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, your point is, I take it, that you as a member of the Government and a leader in this period of time acknowledge a responsibility for its large policies, but not for all the details that occurred in their execution. Is that a fair statement of your position?

DEFENDANT SPEER: Yes, indeed.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I think that concludes the cross-examination.

Alan Tudge at the 2017 Midwinter Ball with Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller.

Ms Millar also provided some interesting evidence to the “robodebt” royal commission and (pursuant to an unrelated matter) received from the Commonwealth a taxpayer-funded Aus$650,000 settlement for damages while working in two ministerial offices.  Ms Millar had accused Mr Tudge of being physically abusive towards her while in a consensual relationship and part of the settlement related to these matters, including compensation for loss of earning, hurt, distress, humiliation & medical and legal costs.  The Commonwealth did not admit liability but in paying Aus$650,000 seems to have assumed responsibility.  In a Clintonesque touch, Mr Tudge admitted he was at times sexually intimate with Ms Miller but insists he did not have “sexual intercourse” with that woman.