Knickers

Knickers (pronounced nik-erz)

(1) Loose-fitting short trousers gathered in at the knees.

(2) A bloomers-like undergarment worn by women.

(3) A general term for the panties worn by women.

(4) In product ranges, a descriptor of certain styles of panties, usually the short-legged underpants worn by women or girls.

(5) As the slang “to get one's knickers in a twist”, to become flustered or agitated (mostly UK, Australia & New Zealand).

(6) In slang, a mild expression of annoyance (archaic).

1866: A clipping of knickerbockers (the plural and a special use of knickerbocker).  The use is derived from the short breeches worn by Diedrich Knickerbocker in George Cruikshank's illustrations of Washington Irving's (1783-1859) A History of New York (1809), published under the pen-name Dietrich Knickbocker.  The surname Knickerbocker (also spelled Knikkerbakker, Knikkerbacker, and Knickerbacker) is a American creation, based on the names of early Dutch early settlers of New Netherland, thought probably derived from the Dutch immigrant Harmen Jansen van Bommel(l), who went variously by the names van Wy(y)e, van Wyekycback(e), Kinnekerbacker, Knickelbacker, Knickerbacker, Kinckerbacker, Nyckbacker, and Kynckbacker.  The precise etymology is a mystery, speculations including a corruption of the Dutch Wyekycback, the Dutch knacker (cracker) + the German Bäcker (or the Dutch bakker (baker)), or the Dutch knicker (marble (toy)) + the German Bäcker (or the Dutch bakker).  Aside from the obvious application (of or relating to knickerbockers), it was in the US used attributively as a modifier, referencing the social class with which the garment was traditionally associated; this use is now listed as archaic.

Men in knickerbockers.

Washington Irving was an American short-story writer and diplomat, most remembered today as the author of Rip Van Winkle (1819).  Although the bulk of his work was that of a conventional historian, his early writing was satirical, many of his barbs aimed at New York’s high society and it was Irving who in 1807 first gave NYC the nickname "Gotham" (from the Anglo-Saxon, literally “homestead where goats are kept”, the construct being the Old English gāt (goat) +‎ hām (home)).  The name Diedrich Knickerbocker he introduced in 1809 in A History of New York (the original title A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty).  A satire of local politics and personalities, it was also an elaborate literary hoax, Irving through rumor and missing person advertisements creating the impression Mr Knickerbocker had vanished from his hotel, leaving behind nothing but a completed manuscript.  The story captured the public imagination and, under the Knickerbocker pseudonym, Irving published A History of New York to critical and commercial success.  The name Diedrich Knickerbocker became a nickname for the Manhattan upper-class (later extended to New Yorkers in general) and was adopted by the New York Knickerbockers basketball team (1845-1873), the name revived in 1946 for the team now part of the US National Basketball League although their name usually appears as the New York Knicks.  The figurative use to describe New Yorkers of whatever status faded from use early in the twentieth century.  Knickerbocker was of course a real name, one of note the US foreign correspondent HR Knickerbocker (1898–1949) who in 1936 was a journalist for the Hearst Press, accredited to cover the Spanish Civil War.  Like many foreign reporters, his work made difficult by the military censors who, after many disputes, early in 1937 deported him after he’d tried to report the retreat of one of the brigades supplied by the Duce with the words “The Italians fled, lock, stock and barrel-organ”.

For designers, conventional knickers can be an impediment so are sometimes discarded: Anja Rubik, Met Gala 2012.  Note JBF hair-style and fine hip-bone definition.

Knickers dates from 1866, in reference to loose-fitting pants for men worn buckled or buttoned at the waist and knees, a clipping of knickerbockers, used since 1859 and so called for their because of their resemblance to the trousers of old-time Dutchmen in George Cruikshank's (1792-1878) illustrations in the History of New York.  A now extinct derivation was the Scottish nicky-tam (garter worn over trousers), dating from 1911, a shortened, colloquial form, the construct being knickers + the Scottish & northern English dialect taum, from Old Norse taumr (cord, rein, line), cognate with the Old English team, the root sense of which appears to be "that which draws".  It was originally a string tied by Scottish farmers around rolled-up trousers to keep the legs of them out of the dirt (in the style of the plus-fours once associated with golf, so-named because they were breeches with four inches of excess material which could hang in a fold below the fastening beneath the knee, the plus-four a very similar style to the classic knickerbocker).  The word “draws” survives in Scots-English to refer to trousers in general.  It also had a technical use in haberdashery, describing a linsey-woolsey fabric with a rough knotted surface on the right side which was once a popular fabric for women's dresses.

Cami-knickers, 1926, Marshalls & Snelgrove, Oxford Street, London.

The New York garment industry in 1882 adopted knickers to describe a "short, loose-fitting undergarment for women" apparently because of the appeal of the name.  By 1884, the word had crossed the Atlantic and in both France and the UK was used to advertise the flimsier of women’s “unmentionables” and there have long many variations (although there’s not always a consistency of style between manufacturers) including camiknickers, French knickers, the intriguingly-named witches' knickers & (the somewhat misleading) no knickers.  From the very start, women’s knickers were, as individual items, sold as “a pair” and there’s no “knicker” whereas the singular form knickerbocker, unlike the plural, may only refer to a single garment.  In the matter of English constructed plurals, the history matters rather than any rule.  Shoes and socks are obviously both a pair because that’s how they come but a pair of trousers seems strange because it’s a single item.  That’s because modern "trousers" evolved from the Old Scots Trews, Truis & Triubhas and the Middle English trouzes & trouse which were separate items (per leg) and thus supplied in pairs, the two coverings joined by a breechcloth or a codpiece.  A pair of spectacles (glasses) is similar in that lens were originally separate (al la the monocle), things which could be purchased individually or as a pair.  The idea of a pair of knickers was natural because it was an adaptation of earlier use for the men’s garments, sold as “pairs of knickerbockers” or “pairs of knickers”.

Lindsay Lohan in cage bra and knickers, Complex Magazine photoshoot, 2011.

The bra, like a pair of knckers, is designed obviously to accommodate a pair yet is described in the singular for reasons different again.  Its predecessor, the bodice, was often supplied in two pieces (and was thus historically referred to as “a pair of bodies” (and later “a pair of bodicies”)) and laced together but that’s unrelated to the way a bra is described: It’s a clipping of the French brassière and that is singular.  Brasserie entered English in the late nineteenth century although the French original often more closely resembled a chemise or camisole, the adoption in English perhaps influenced by the French term for something like the modern bra being soutien-gorge (literally, "throat-supporter") which perhaps had less appeal although it may be no worse than the more robust rehausseur de poitrine (chest uplifter) which offers more functionally still.  Being English, brassiere was soon shortened to bra and a vast supporting industry evolved.

Kiki de Montparnasse lace knickers, US$190 at FarFetch.

Pump

Pump (pronounced puhmp)

(1) An apparatus or machine for raising, driving, exhausting, or compressing fluids or gases by means of a piston, plunger, or set of rotating vanes.

(2) An instance of the action of a pump; one stroke of a pump; any action similar to pumping.

(3) In engineering or building trades, a shore having a jackscrew in its foot for adjusting the length or for bearing more firmly against the structure to be sustained.

(4) In the slang of the biological sciences, an animal organ that propels fluid through the body; the heart.

(5) In cell biology, a system that supplies energy for transport against a chemical gradient, as the sodium pump for the transfer of sodium and potassium ions across a cell membrane.

(6) To raise, drive or free from fluids by means of a pump.

(7) To inflate something with a gas or viscous substance and used analogously in other contexts.

(8) To operate or move by an up-and-down or back-and-forth action.

(9) Several types of shoe, with much variation in the way the description is applied.

(10) In bodybuilding and climbing, a swelling of the muscles caused by increased blood flow following high intensity weightlifting; a specific type of exercise routine offered by gyms; as “pump iron” a generalised phrase to refer to weight-lifting.

(11) In colloquial use, a ride on a bicycle given to a passenger, usually on the handlebars or carrier (rare).

(12) In US slang, the heart, (obsolete).

(13) In (vulgar) UK slang, the vagina (obsolete).

(14) In the slang of (pre-pandemic) social interaction, vigorously to shake a hand (often as "pumping the flesh").

(15) In slang, as “pump for information”, relentlessly to question.

(16) In the slang of computer programming, to pass messages to a program so it may respond.

(17) In cosmetic surgery or non-surgical beauty treatment, as "pumped up", a general term to describe body parts (lips, breasts etc) made plumper with some artificial substance or the redistribution of the body’s natural fat deposits.

(18) In ballistics, as “pump-action”, a design which permits the rapid loading a shell or cartridge from a magazine.

1400-1450:  From the Late Middle English pumpe, cognate with Middle Low German pumpe and Middle Dutch pompe (water conduit, pipe).  Later variations were the Dutch pompen, the German pumpen, and the Danish pompe.  All are thought derived from the Spanish bomba of imitative origin, the source thought to be North Sea sailors, either an imperfect echoic or something imitative of the sound of the plunger in the water.  The earliest use in English was in reference to a device to raise and expel bilge water from ships and the Late Old French pompe probably is from something Germanic.  The mystery is that pumps are ancient machines so the late appearance in the Germanic word is odd in that no evidence has been found of a previous descriptive word.  The use as an "an act of pumping" is attested from the 1670s.  Pump & pumping are nouns & verbs, pumper is a noun, pumpy is a noun & adjective and pumped is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is pumps.

Pump-action, in reference to a type of repeating firearm equipped with a rapid loading mechanism is attested in advertisements from 1912 but it’s unknown whether this was an invention by a manufacturer or retailer or an adoption of existing slang.  The metaphoric extension in pump (someone) for information is from 1630s.  To pump iron as a term for the lifting of weights for fitness was first noted in 1972; pump-classes in gyms became popular in the 1990s although label wasn’t (virtually) universal until circa 2002.  The meaning “low shoe without fasteners" dates from the 1550s and is of unknown origin but was perhaps (very speculatively) echoic of the sound made when walking in them or, more plausibly, from Dutch pampoesje (type of sandal worn in the Dutch East Indies), derived from the Javanese pampoes and ultimately of Arabic origin.  Some sources propose a connection with pomp but it’s undocumented.  The name pump was applied to many shoes with a very low heel, convenient in situations where freedom of movement was required and thus preferred by dancers, couriers, acrobats, duellists and such.  In the shoe business, the definition soon wandered with differences noted between British and North American applications.

The now obsolete nineteenth century phrase “keep your toes in your pump” was dialectal for "stay calm, keep quiet, don't get excited", in the same sense as advice not to “get your knickers in a knot”, the latter which has survived.  In slang, to "be pumped" is (1) to be excited in anticipation of something, (2) having muscles in an engorged state following exercise, (3) in body-building, having muscles which have responded as expected to steroids or other drugs, (4) in rock-climbing, being severely fatigued, (5) in cosmetic surgery & certain non surgical treatments, having a fuller appearance (lips, breasts etc) by virtue of the insertion of implants or an injection of some chemical and (6) among models and other women, the sense of relief upon replacing fetching but uncomfortable shoes with a pair of welcoming and accommodating pumps.

Of pumping ship

Pumps are of great importance on ships because of the need quickly to be able to remove unwanted water from inside a hull.  At sea, when a ship is "taking on water", if pumps fail or the entry of water exceeds pumping capacity, a ship will become unstable and it may sink.  In the smallest vessels, hard-pumps are used while mechanical devices are installed on anything larger than a modest dinghy.  In admiralty jargon, the command “Pump Ship!” is an instruction to begin pumping with all pumps and, in the way sailors adapt such things, it entered naval vernacular as the phrase meaning “I intend to urinate”.

It was picked up by nautical types in civilian life but was probably unknown to most until the publication (in three volumes, 2021-2022) of the unexpurgated diaries of Sir Henry "Chips" Channon (1897–1958), a US born English MP and socialite.  Edited by Dr Simon Heffer (b 1960), the entry of interest was from 19 November 1936 when Channon hosted one of his many glittering dinners in the dining room designed by Parisian interior decorator Stéphane Boudin (1888–1967, his House of Jansen later decorating the White House for Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994; US First Lady 1961-1963)) and modelled on the interior of the Amalienburg, an eighteenth century hunting lodge in on the grounds of the Nymphenburg Palace Park outside Munich, a place notorious for the intricacy of its fittings, even by the standards of Rococo.  The Amalienburg was built for someone who would later be Holy Roman Emperor, just the sort of crew with whom Channon identified and he had the elaborate style replicated in the dining room of his London house in Belgrave Square, including even the Bavarian national colors of blue & silver.  Unfortunately, no color photographs appear to have survived and the room was later disassembled, the extendable mirrored table, which could expand to a length of 25 feet (7.7 m), occasionally offered at auction.  By all accounts, the room truly was “breathtaking” and it was one of the few things in life of which Channon could find no grounds for criticism, it living up to his expectation it would “shimmer in blue and silver” and “shock and stagger London”.  For that alone he seemed to think the Stg£6,000 (mostly money he had married) cost (some Stg£525,000 adjusted for 2023) well worth it.  To illustrate the relativities, the next year he would purchase a V12 Rolls-Royce Phantom III for a sum (Stg£1900 for the chassis & another Stg£1100 to have a coach-builder fabricate a body) which would then have bought six houses in a middle-class London suburb although it’s not known if that’s something he’d have known, “middle class” being about the worst thing he could think to say of anyone.

Dining Room, 5 Belgrave Square, London, circa 1937.

On that November evening the guest of honor was King Edward VIII (1894–1972; King of the UK & Emperor of India January-December 1936, subsequently Duke of Windsor) and Channon noted in his diary his surprise at the monarch’s “modern” turn of phrase when he rose and announced “I want to pump shit.”  A dutiful host, Channon recorded he “…led His Majesty to our loulou! He proceeded to pass water without shutting the door, talking to me the while”.  That fragment of royal history was printed in the first volume (2021) of the published diaries (it was a measure of the deference which still applied in the England of 1965 that when first they appeared in heavily redacted form the passage was omitted) but comments soon appeared suggesting neither Channon nor Dr Heffer were well-acquainted with the sailors' slang the king would have learned during his brief naval career.  Dr Heffer responded by examining closely the original entry in the diarist’s hand and concluded the relevant character really was a “t” and not a “p” so the words on the night were either “misheard or misunderstood” and there’s little doubt what was said was “pump ship” and not “pump shit”.  He added that like Channon, he had “no naval connections” and was as thus just as “unfamiliar with the sea-dog slang” but that when the paperback edition was proofed, the text would be changed and an explanatory footnote (the diaries worth reading just for Heffer’s detailed footnotes) added.  Rising to the occasion, he observed this meant the “the hardback edition is destined to become a collector's item.”  The dinner proved the apogee of Channon’s social life because he’d backed the wrong royal horse, Edward VIII abdicating within weeks of having pumped ship in Belgrave Square.

Of Pumps, Courts and Flats

Lindsay Lohan in curved-heel stiletto pumps.

The homogenization of English was well-advanced long before the ubiquity of the internet but well into the twentieth century, different meanings for words could evolve in parallel in different regions of the same country, let alone between different states or provinces.  In British English, a court shoe was a woman’s shoe with a low cut vamp, sometimes with no instep fastening and otherwise adorned with a shoe buckle or a bow as an ostensible fastening.  In US English, such a shoe is a pump; pumps and court shoes may or may not have an ankle strap.  Pumps today, on either side of the Atlantic, are almost exclusively worn by women but historically were also formal shoes for men, the male variation called an opera slipper or patent pump.  For men, the pump gained ascendency over the dress boot as modern road-making techniques rendered cities less muddy places and dress pumps remained the standard for evening full-dress until the Second World War.  They remain the usual choice for black tie events and are obligatory with white-tie; the original design with steel-cut buckles, otherwise long extinct, still part of British court uniform and dress.

The construction of pumps is simple, using a whole-cut leather top with a low vamp, lined with either quilted silk or plain leather, trimmed with braid at the opening. The full leather sole is either glued onto the bottom, common on cheaper styles, or sewn, as on more costly bespoke styles still made traditionally, using a shallow slit to lift a flap of leather around the edge to recess and hide the stitching. The sole is, as on ordinary shoes, several layers of leather put together. The bow is made of grosgrain silk or rayon, in a pinched or flat form.  Pumps, which may have an ankle strap, if also constructed with a strap across the instep, are called Mary Janes.

Lindsay Lohan in ballet flats / pumps / slippers.  Ballet pumps in the UK, ballet flats in US English.

Most of the UK fashion business adopted the US use of pump because it simplified the mechanics of trade.  Otherwise, in the UK (and most of the Empire and Commonwealth) a pump implied a flat or low-heel ballet slipper or even rubber-soled canvas plimsolls.  Ballet slippers (now more often called flats) date from the medieval period, their popularity declining in only in the seventeenth century when higher heels became fashionable.  After a brief nineteenth century revival, heals again prevailed until the 1960s when they became suddenly and wildly popular after Brigitte Bardot appeared in a pair of Rose Repetto’s hand-stitched ballet flats.  These days, between heals and flats, it seems a draw although the trend increasingly to prefer the comfort of the flat as the years pass is noted.

Lindsay Lohan in kitten-heeled pumps.

Except for court dress, historic references or the exact (if not always enforced) rules for white-tie, there’s now less precision attached to the use of pump and the word should be thought of as referencing a range of closed and open-toed shoes, with and without straps, bows or buckles, the other useful modifier being some reference to the height or type of the heel.  This means anything from a modest kitten to an elongated stiletto and, depending on the airport at which one lands, a flat may be a ballet flat or a ballet pump.

In US use, pumps are exclusively women's shoes with a kitten or higher heel; flats are never pumps and Canada, always more influenced by US linguistic imperialism, followed; that influence is now almost universal and the notion of the flat pump, while not extinct, has declined.  Heels for pumps vary, from the kitten 1-2 inch (25-50 mm) to the stripper (200-250 mm), the bulk of stiletto sales in the 3-5 inch (75-125 mm) range.  They can be made from any material though the classic is patent leather and, under rules formalised by Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) Miss Universe contests, white, stiletto pumps were once obligatory in the swimsuit section of beauty pageants.  Perhaps surprisingly to some, the swimsuits have survived much criticism as have the stilettos although they're no longer exclusively white and, open-toed and strappy, in most places they wouldn't even be thought of as pumps.

Of the Holley Double Pumper

Even in an age when electronic fuel-injection (EFI) has long been the standard form of induction in internal combustion engines, there remain silos in which the now arcane languages of carburetors are spoken and while there is some commonality of terms among the shortcuts, abbreviations & euphemisms of these vernaculars, a trained ear can pick the differences between the flavours to tell which dialect (SU, Weber, Holley, Rochester, Carter et al) is in play.  One part of the Holley tongue is “double pumper”.  A Holley double pumper is a four barrel carburettor with two accelerator pumps (the source of the moniker) and a mechanical linkage connecting the primary and secondary sides of the device.  Widely used during the classic era (1964-1971) of the US muscle cars, the main advantage of the design was the twin accelerator pumps prevented the transitory leanness in the fuel-air mixture which can happen during quick throttle blade movements if only a single pump is fitted.  All multi-barrel carburetors use an accelerator pump circuit but many have only one feeding the primary barrel(s).  These pumps spray a quick shot of the mix to compensate for the split-second lag which will happen before the main circuit fully responds to a throttle pushed suddenly wide open.  All double pumper carburetors use an accelerator pump circuit on both the primary and the secondary sides.

Holley 850 CFM (cubic feet per minute) double pumper carburetor (part number 0-4781C) (left).  The double accelerator pump outlets for both the primary and secondary throttle bores are are arrowed (right), in this case on a HP (high-performance) version in which the choke housing has been removed to optimize the air inlet path, making it less suitable for street use but ideal for competition.

It’s important not to refer to vacuum secondary carburettors (VSC) as any sort of pumper.  A VSC uses a secondary opening controlled by a vacuum diaphragm which opens the secondary barrels only when there is sufficient airflow demand to require it so no accelerator pump is required on the secondary side.  So, a VSC is technically a “single pumper carburettor” but that term is never used and anyone referring to one as such will lose face.  There's also a point of etiquette of which to be aware.  While “VSC” is an accepted term, a double pumper is never referred to as a “DP” because use in the pornography industry has made “DP” exclusively their own and it seems mere politeness not to intrude on their noble linguistic traditions.

There is an (unverified) industry legend that the "double buffer" terminology adopted in 1991 when Microsoft released version 4 of the Smart Drive (smartdrv.exe) disk cache was the coining of a coder who used a Holley double pumper in his muscle car.  That may or may not be true but "double buffer" lives on in the memory management of graphics processing units (GPU) as a description of the temporary storage areas in main memory where data is held during the transfer process.  The trick is that rather than processes being sequential, while program x is being read, program y can be written and vice versa.  It's not exactly quantum mechanics but means things simultaneously are happening in two places; for the gamers for whom GPUs are a fetish, every millisecond matters.

Weiland tunnel ram inlet manifold for big block Chevrolet V8 (396-427-454) with dual Holley 750 CFM double pumpers.

Plastic

Plastic (pronounced plas-tik)

(1) Any of a group of synthetic (and usually hydrocarbon-based) polymer materials which may be shaped when soft and subsequently hardened.

(2) In slang, a credit card, or credit cards collectively (an allusion to the material typically used in their manufacture); money, payment, or credit represented by the use of a credit card or cards.

(3) Something (or a number of things), made from or resembling plastic (sometimes merely descriptive, sometimes as a slur suggesting inferiority in quality).

(4) Capable of being molded or of receiving form; having the power of molding or shaping formless or yielding material.

(5) In psychology, the quality of being easily influenced; impressionable.

(6) In biology of or relating to any formative process; able to change, develop, or grow; capable of adapting to varying conditions; characterized by environmental adaptability.

(7) Figuratively and in slang, something superficially attractive yet unoriginal or artificial; insincerity or fakeness in an individual or group.

(8) A widely used combining form (plastic surgery, plastic bullet, plastic explosive, chloroplastic, protoplastic etc).

(9) A sculptor or molder; any solid but malleable substance (both obsolete).

In physiology, producing tissue (obsolete).

1625–1635: From the Latin plasticus (that which may be molded or relating to that which has been molded), from the Ancient Greek πλαστικός (plastikós) (fit for molding, capable of being molded into various forms; pertaining to molding), from πλάσσω (plássō) (to mold, to form).  In Hellenic use, in relation to the arts, there was plastos (molded, formed) the verbal adjective from plassein (to mold) and from the Greek plastikós was derived both plaster and plasma.  Words vaguely or exactly synonymous (depending on context) include elastic, molded, synthetic, bending, giving, yielding, cast, chemical, ersatz, phony, pseudo, substitute, ductile, fictile, formable, moldable, pliable, pliant, resilient, shapeable, flexible & amenable.  Plastic is a noun, verb & adjective, plastically & plasticly are adverbs and plasticity is a noun; the noun plural is plastics and the seventeenth century spelling plastick is long obsolete.

1968 Chevrolet Corvette L88 (left) & 1962 Trabant 601 Universal (station wagon) (right).

Materials with plastic properties were attractive for car producers for different reasons.  It made low-volume production runs viable because the tooling costs were a fraction of the cost of those using steel or aluminum and in some cases the light weight and ease of modification was an attraction.  In the GDR (German Democratic Republic, the old East Germany), the long-running Trabant's bodywork was made with Duroplast, a composite thermosetting plastic (and a descendant of Bakelite).  A resin plastic reinforced with fibers (the GDR used waste from both cotton & wool processing), it was structurally similar to fibreglass and it's a persistent urban myth that Trabants were made from reinforced cardboard.

The notion of being "capable of change or of receiving a new direction" emerged in 1791 and this idea was picked up in 1839 when the term plastic surgery was first used to describe a procedure undertaken to "remedy a deficiency of structure" is recorded by 1839 (in plastic surgery).  The most familiar use referring to the hydrocarbon-based polymers dates from 1909 when the expression "made of plastic" gained currency which remained literal until 1963 when the US counterculture adopted it as slang meaning "false, superficial", applying it both the political and consumer culture.  The noun plastic (solid substance that can be molded) however appears first to have been used in 1905 and was applied originally to dental molds.  Our plastic age can be said to have begun in 1909 when a US patent was issued for Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride (marketed as Bakelite), a resin created by the reaction between phenol & formaldehyde.  Chemists had for years been experimenting with various compounds, much of the research funded by the petroleum industry which was seeking some profitable use for its by-products but Bakelite was the first plastic material which had characteristics which made it suitable for manufacture at scale and adaptability to a wide range of uses.  Thus the first commercially available plastic made from synthetic components which retained its formed shape if heated, it was developed by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland (1863-1944) while working in the US.

The “plastics” at lunch with plastic packaging on plastic trays, Mean Girls (2004).

Plastic explosive (explosive material with a putty-like consistency) became familiar to the military only in the Second World War and more generally in the 1950s but the first use of the term dates from 1894.  Earlier uses include describing the creative or formative processes in art generally as plastic, an echo of the use which sometime prevailed in Hellenic culture but this faded after a few decades during the seventeenth century although the noun plasticity (capability of being molded or formed; property of giving form or shape to matter) endured after first being noted in 1768.  A nineteenth century adoption was in the biological sciences in the sense of “organisms capable of adapting to varying conditions; characterized by environmental adaptability and in the same era, in engineering it came to mean “of or pertaining to the inelastic, non-brittle, deformation of a material”.

The success of Bakelite triggered a rush of development which produced the early versions of the numerous substances that can be shaped and molded when subjected to heat or pressure.  Plastics gain their plasticity because they consist of long-chain molecules known as polymers which flex but don’t break their bonds when subjected to all but extreme stresses.  They’re almost always artificial resins (but can be made from some natural substances such as shellac) and the best known are Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene.  Useful as it is, plastic (with a life measured in some cases in centuries) has emerged as a significant environmental threat, both as visible waste (and thus a threat in many way to wildlife) and as micro-plastic, microscopic-sized fragments which exist in the environment including the human food chain.

Bella Hadid, Coperni show, Paris Fashion Week, October 2022.

Although many in the industry prefer to talk about natural fibres like silk or linen, it’s plastics like nylon or polyester which make possible both the shape and behavior of many modern garments and their mass-production.  One possibility offered by plastics was illustrated at the 2022 Paris Fashion Week in October when as the concluding set-piece of the Coperni show, Bella Hadid (b 1996) appeared on the catwalk wearing only G-string knickers.  There she paused while for about a quarter hour, two men sprayed her body with what appeared to be white paint.  Once done, a woman emerged to cut a thigh-high asymmetric slit and adjusted things slightly to render an off-the-shoulder look.  Essentially a free-form exercise in 3D printing, the spray-on dress was left deliberately unfinished so as not to detract from the performance; had such a creation been built behind closed doors, either on a human or mannequin, re-usable and adjustable formwork would likely have been used to catch overspray and allow things like hems, straps and splits more precisely to be rendered.  On the night though, the fraying at the edges was just part of the look and Ms Hadid looked wonderful, a thinspiration to the whole pro-ana community.  The term “sprayed on” had long been used to describe skin-tight clothing but the Coperni show lent it a literalism new to most.

On the catwalk, spray-painting a model had been done before, two robots used in Alexander McQueen’s spring 1999 show to adorn Shalom Harlow (b 1973) after the fashion of those used in car assembly plants but that was literally just paint onto a conventional fabric whereas Ms Hadid’s dress appeared over bare (though presumably some sort of lotion was used to suit the properties of the plastic) skin.  The spray-on material is called Fabrican, created by Dr Manel Torres who first demonstrated its properties in 2006.  It’s a liquid fibre, bound by polymers, bio polymers and greener solvents which evaporate on contact with a surface (like Ms Hadid’s skin and including water).  As a fabric, it’s said to have a similar texture to suede and can be manipulated like any other but the feel can be altered depending on the fibers (natural or synthetic) used in the mix and the shape of the nozzle used on the spray device.

Although an eye-catching example of the technology, Fabrican’s place in fashion business is likely to be as an adjunct device rather than one used to create whole garments.  It would be invaluable for Q&D (quick and dirty) solutions such as effecting repairs or adding something but it’s been demonstrated as long ago as 2010 at London Fashion Week without demand emerging though it may yet find a niche.  What more likely beckons is a role in medicine (perhaps especially for military medics in the field) as a sterilized (perhaps even an anti-bacterial) bandage-in-a-can.  Indeed, the style of dress created in Paris is known as the “bandage” dress.

Bella Hadid, Coperni’s 2023 show, Paris, 2022

Shalom Harlow, Alexander McQueen’s spring show, London, 1999.

Cage

Cage (pronounced keyj)

(1) A boxlike enclosure having wires, bars, or the like, for confining and displaying birds or animals or as a protective barrier for objects or people in vulnerable positions (used in specific instances as battery cage, bird-cage, birdcage, Faraday cage, tiger cage, fish cage etc).

(2) Anything that confines or imprisons; prison and figuratively, something which hinders physical or creative freedom (often as “caged-in”).

(3) The car or enclosed platform of an elevator.

(4) In underground mining, (1) an enclosed platform for raising and lowering people and cars in a mine shaft & (2) the drum on which cable is wound in a hoisting whim.

(5) A general descriptor for any skeleton-like framework.

(6) In baseball (1) a movable backstop for use mainly in batting practice & (2) the catcher's wire mask.

(7) In ice hockey and field hockey, a frame with a net attached to it, forming the goal.

(8) In basketball, the basket (mostly archaic).

(9) In various sports which involve putting a ball or other object into or through a receptacle (net, hole), to score a goal or something equivalent.

(10) In fashion, a loose, sheer or lacy overdress worn with a slip or a close-fitting dress.

(11) In ordnance, a steel framework for supporting guns.

(12) In engineering (1) various forms of retainers, (2) a skeleton ring device which ensures the correct space is maintained between the individual rollers or balls in a rolling bearing & (3) the wirework strainers used to remove solid obstacles in the fluids passing through pumps and pipes

(13) To put (something or someone) into some form of confinement (which need not literally be in a cage).

(14) In underwear design, as cage bra, a design which uses exposed straps as a feature.

(15) In computer hardware, as card cage, the area of a system board where slots are provided for plug-in cards (expansion boards).

(16) In anatomy (including in zoology) as rib-cage, the arrangement of the ribs as a protective enclosure for vital organs.

(17) In athletics, the area from which competitors throw a discus or hammer.

(18) In graph theory, a regular graph that has as few vertices as possible for its girth.

(19) In killer Sudoku puzzles, an irregularly-shaped group of cells that must contain a set of unique digits adding up to a certain total, in addition to the usual constraints of Sudoku.

(20) In aviation, to immobilize an artificial horizon.

1175–1225: From the Middle English cage (and the earlier forms kage & gage), from the Old French cage (prison; retreat, hideout), from the Latin cavea (hollow place, enclosure for animals, coop, hive, stall, dungeon, spectators' seats in a theatre), the construct being cav(us) (hollow) + -ea, the feminine of -eus (the adjectival suffix); a doublet of cadge and related to jail.  The Latin cavea was the source also of the Italian gabbia (basket for fowls, coop).  Cage is a noun, verb and (occasional) adjective, caged & caging are verbs (used with object) and constructions include cage-less, cage-like, re-cage; the noun plural is cages.

The noun (box-like receptacle or enclosure, with open spaces, made of wires, reeds etc) typically described the barred-boxes used for confining domesticated birds or wild beasts was the first form and form circa 1300 was used in English to describe "a cage for prisoners, jail, prison, a cell".  The noun bird-cage (also birdcage) was in the late fifteenth century formed to describe a "portable enclosure for birds", as distinct from the static cages which came to be called aviaries.  The idiomatic use as “gilded cage” refers to a place (and, by extension, a situation) which is superficially attractive but nevertheless restrictive (a luxurious trap) and appears to have been coined by the writers of the popular song A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900).  To “rattle someone's cage” is to upset or anger them, based on the reaction from imprisoned creatures (human & animal) to the noise made by shaking their cages.  The verb (to confine in a cage, to shut up or confine) dates from the 1570s and was derived from the noun.  The synonyms for the verb include crate, enclosure, jail, pen, coop up, corral, fold, mew, pinfold, pound, confine, enclose, envelop, hem, immure, impound, imprison, incarcerate, restrain & close-in.

Wholly unrelated to cage was the adjective cagey (the frequently used derived terms being cagily & caginess), a US colloquial form meaning “evasive, reticent”, said to date from 1896 (although there had in late sixteenth century English been an earlier cagey which was a synonym of sportive (from sport and meaning “frolicsome”)).  The origin of the US creation (the sense of which has expanded to “wary, careful, shrewd; uncommunicative, unwilling or hesitant to give information”) is unknown and despite the late nineteenth century use having been attested, adoption must have been sufficiently hesitant not to tempt lexicographers on either side of the Atlantic because cagey appears in neither the 1928 Webster’s Dictionary nor the 1933 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

John Cage (1912–1992) was a US avant-garde composer who, inter alia, was one of the pioneers in the use of electronic equipment to create music.  He’s also noted for the 1952 work 4′33″ which is often thought a period of literal silence for a duration of that length but is actually designed to be enjoyed as the experience of whatever sounds emerge from the environment (the space, the non-performing musicians and the audience).  It was an interesting idea which explored both the definitional nature of silence and paralleled twentieth century exercises in pop-art in prompting discussions about just what could be called music.

The related forms jail and goal are of interest.  Jail as a noun dates from circa 1300 (although it had by then been used as a surname for at least a hundred years) and meant "a prison; a birdcage".  It was from the Middle English jaile, from the Old French jaiole (a cage; a prison), from the Medieval Latin gabiola (a cage (and the source also of the Spanish gayola and the Italian gabbiula)), from the Late Latin caveola, a diminutive of the Latin cavea.  The spellings gaile & gaiole were actually more frequent forms in Middle English, these from the Old French gaiole (a cage; a prison), a variant spelling thought prevalent in the Old North French, which would have been the language most familiar to Norman scribes, hence the eventual emergence of goal which emerged under that influence.  It’s long been pronounced jail and the persistence of gaol as the preferred form in the UK is attributed to the continued use in statutes and other official documents although there may also have been some reluctance to adopt “jail” because this had come to be regarded as an Americanism.

The cage bra

The single strap cage bra.

A cage bra is built with a harness-like structure which (vaguely) resembles a cage, encapsulating the breasts using one or more straps.  Few actually use the straps predominately to enhance support and the effect tends to be purely aesthetic, some cage bras with minimal (or even absent) cup coverage and a thin band or multi-strap back.  Designed to be seen, cage bras can be worn under sheer fabrics, with clothes cut to reveal the construction or indeed worn alone, the effect one borrowed from engineering or architecture where components once concealed (air conditioning ducting, plumbing, electrical conduits etc) are deliberately exposed.  It’s thus a complete reversal of the old rule in which the sight of a bra strap was a fashion-fail.  The idea has even been extended to sports bras which actually have long often used additional, thick straps to enhance support and minimize movement, especially those induced by lateral forces not usually encountered.  The cage bra's salient features include:

Lindsay Lohan in harness cage bra with sheer cups and matching knickers.

(1) The straps are a cage’s most distinctive feature.  The most simple include only a single additional strap across the centre while others have a pair, usually defining the upper pole of each cup.  Beyond that, multiple straps can be used, both at the front and back, some of which may have some functional purpose or be merely decorative.  Single strap cage bras are often worn to add distinctiveness to camisoles while those with multiple straps are referred to as the harness style and have the additional benefit (or drawback depending on one’s view) of offering more frontal coverage, the straps sometimes a framework for lace or other detailing; this is a popular approach taken with cage bralettes.

Front and back views of modestly-styled criss-cross cage bras.

(2) Many cage bras are constructed around a traditional back band, especially those which need to provide lift & support while those (usually with smaller cups) have a thin band (merely for location) or none at all.  In this acknowledgement of the laws of physics, they’re like any other bra.  Those with a conventional back band (both bras and bralettes) are often constructed as the V-shaped cage, the symmetrical straps well suited to v-necks or even square necks and paired with cardigans or more structured jackets or blazers, they’re currently the segment's best-sellers.  A more dramatic look is the criss-cross cage but fashionistas caution this works well only in minimal surroundings so accessories should be limited to earrings or stuff worn on the wrist or beyond.

Example of the cage motif applied to a conventional bra, suitable for larger sizes.

(3) As a general principle, the cage bras manufactured tend to be those with cup sizes in the smaller range, reflecting the anticipated demand curve.  However, even the nominal size (A, B C etc) of the cups of cage bras can be misleading because they almost always have less coverage than all but the most minimal of those used by conventional bras and should be compared with a demi cup or the three-quarter style of plunge bras.  That said, there are strappy designs which include molded cups with underwires suitable for larger sizes but it’s a niche market and the range is limited, the scope for flourishes being limited by the need to preserve functionality, a demand which, all else being equal, tends to increase with as mass grows.

Examples of designs used to fabricate harness cage bras which can be worn under or over clothing or, in some cases, to augment a more conventional bra or bralette.

(4) Despite the specialized nature of cage bras, some are multi-purpose and include padding with all the usual advantages in concealment and additional volume, permitting use as an everyday garment rather than one used exclusively for display.  Some include removable padding so the bra can be transformed into a see-through design.

Choker cage bra.

(5) The methods of closure type vary.  The most uncompromising designs actually have no closure mechanism; the idea being one would detract from the purity of the lines so this requires the wearer to pull it over the head.  Other types use both front and back closures, usually with conventional hook & clasp fittings (so standard-sized extenders can sometimes be used) but there are some which borrow overtly from the traditions of BDSM underwear (the origin of the cage bra motif) and use extravagantly obvious buckles and even the occasional key-lock.  The BDSM look is most obviously executed in the choker cage bra which includes a neck choker as a focal point to accentuate the neck and torso, something best suited to a long, slender neck.  Buyers are are advised to move around when trying these on because the origins of the BDSM motif lay in devices used in Medieval torture routines so a comfortable fit is important.

Cage bralette.

(6) Almost all cage bras continue to use the same materials as conventional garments, the fabrics of choice being nylon or spandex, their elasticity permitting some adjustments to accommodate variations in shape or location.  Sometimes augmented with lace, fabric, mesh or metal rings, straps can also be made from leather.

(7) Ricki-Lee Coulter in illusion dress, March 2022.

Although usually worn under or over clothing, the cage bra concept can be integrated and the gaps inherent in the use of straps mean the style is ideal for illusion clothing.