Leap

Leap (pronounced leep)

(1) To spring through the air from one point or position to another; to jump.

(2) Quickly or suddenly to move or act.

(3) To cause to leap.

(4) A spring, jump, or bound; a light, springing movement.

(5) The distance covered in a leap; distance jumped.

(6) A place leaped or to be leaped over or from.

(7) A sudden or abrupt transition.

(8) A sudden and decisive increase.

(8) In folk mythology, to copulate with or coverture of (a female beast) (archaic).

(9) In slang, to copulate with (a human) (archaic).

(10) A group of leopards.

(11) In figurative use, a significant move forward.

(12) In figurative use, a large step in reasoning (often one that is not justified by the facts, hence the sceptical phrase “a bit of a leap” & “quite a leap”).

(13) In mining (also used in geology), a fault.

(14) In aquatic management, a salmon ladder; a trap or snare for fish, historically constructed with fallen from twigs; a “weely”.

(15) In music, a passing from one note to another by an interval, especially by a long one, or by one including several other intermediate intervals.

(16) An intercalary measure, best-known as “leap year”, “leap second” et al.

(17) In pre-modern measures of weight, half a bushel.

Pre 900: From the Middle English lepen, from the Old English hlēapan, from the Proto-West Germanic hlaupan, from the Proto-Germanic hlaupaną (a doublet of lope, lowp, elope, gallop, galop, interlope and loop).  It was cognate with the German laufen (to run; to walk), the Old Norse hlaupa the Gothic hlaupan, the West Frisian ljeppe (to jump), the Dutch lopen (to run; to walk), the Danish løbe and the Norwegian Bokmål løpe, from the primitive Indo-European klewb- (to spring; stumble) (and may be compared with the Lithuanian šlùbti (to become lame) & klùbti (to stumble).  The verb forms are tangled things.  The third-person singular simple present tense is leaps, the present participle leaping, the simple past leaped or leapt (lept & lope the archaic forms) and the past participle is leaped or leapt or (lept & lopen the archaic forms).  That leapt and leaped remain in concurrent use is another of those annoy things in English which are hangovers from their ancient entrenchments in regional use and, as a general principle leapt tends to be is preferred educated British English while leaped is seen more frequently in North America (although leapt is in those places not uncommon, especially in areas with historical ties to England).  The transitive sense as in “pass over by leaping” was in use by the early fifteenth century and there are references to the children’s game “leap-frog” documented in the 1590s, and so obvious was the use of that figuratively it probably quickly was adopted but the first attested entry dates from 1704.  The familiar “to leap tall buildings in a single bound” comes from the Superman comics of the 1940s although in idiomatic use, “leaps” has been paired with “bounds” since at least since 1720.  Leap is a noun, verb & adjective, leaper & leapling are nouns and leaping and leapt & leaped are verbs; the noun plural is leaps.

The leap year is “a year containing 366 days” and use dates from late fourteenth century Middle English lepe gere, a genuine innovation because no equivalent term existed in the Old English. The origin is thought to come from the effect of fixed festival days, which normally advance one weekday per year, to “leap” ahead one day in the week.  The Medieval Latin was saltus lunae (omission of one day in the lunar calendar every 19 years), the Old English form being monan hlyp.  The adjustments happened in the calendars of many cultures, always with the purpose of ensuring the man-made devices for tracking dates (and therefore time) remained consistent with the sun; summer needed always to feel like summer and winter like winter.  Different methods of handling the intercalary were adopted and in England the bissextile was the device.  The noun & adjective bissextile (plural bissextiles) dates from the early 1580s and was from the Latin bisextilis annus (bissextile year), the construct being bisextus + -ilis, deconstructed as bis- (two; twice; doubled) + sextus (sixth) + dies (day) and was a reference to the Julian calendar's original reckoning of its quadrennial intercalary day as a 48-hour 24 February (subsequently distinguished as the two separate days of the sixth day before the March calends (sexto Kalendas Martii) and the “doubled sixth day”.  In modern use, 24 February is now understood as “five days before 1 March” but in Roman use it was called “the sixth” because the counting of dates was then inclusive.

Trace element of Leap Year: Lindsay Lohan in Irish Wish.

For those who understand the reference, Lindsay Lohan's new Netflix movie Irish Wish (2024) is said by Irish reviewers to be "a mix of Leap Year meets Just My Luck meets Freaky Friday in which Lohan stars as quiet book editor Maddie Kelly, who embarks on a journey to find love by learning to love herself first."  Like Irish Wish, Leap Year (2010) was filmed in Ireland.

The replacement of the bissextile by the then novel 29 February every four years-odd appears such an obviously good idea it seems strange it took centuries universally to be adopted in England although the documents reveal the shift was certainly well in progress by the mid-fifteenth century and in an echo of later practices, the more curmudgeonly the institution, the slower the intrusion of the new ways, the Admiralty and houses of parliament ignoring 29 February until well into the 1500s.  It wasn’t until the Calendar (New Style) Act (1750) passed into law that 29 February received formal recognition in UK law.  The reform worked well from the start but in some jurisdictions, government lawyers took no chances and for the handful of souls born on a 29 February, their birth dates were deemed to be 28 February or 1 March for all legal purposes (eligibility for drivers licenses or pensions, age of consent etc).  One born on 29 February is a “leapling” and there are said to be a few as five million of these lonely souls on the whole planet.  In many countries hospitals and midwives note the frequency with which expectant mothers approaching March request staff do whatever is required to avoid them giving birth to a leapling, fearing the child will feel deprived by having fewer birthdays than their siblings of friends.  The math of the leap year is it is one (1) evenly divisible by 4, (2) except for years are evenly divisible by 100 except that (3) years evenly divisible by 400 are leap years.  So, 2000 was while 1900 was not; 2100 will not be a leap year, but 2400 will be.  However, because the rotation of the Earth is changing (and thus the length of days), as is its distance from the Sun, even a 29 February now and then is not enough to keep everything in sync.  So, there are also leap seconds, spliced in as needed and unlike 29 February, only those dealing with atomic clocks and such notice addition.

Leap is common in idiomatic use:  To do something in “leaps and bounds” suggests commendably quick progress.  A “leap in the dark” is to take some action while being uncertain of consequences and the related “leap of faith” is trusting in something that cannot be seen or proven so in a sense they’re two ways of saying much the same thing although “leap of faith” does also imply some trust in something or someone.  To have one’s heart “leap into one’s throat” is an allusion to the sensation felt sometimes in the throat when something scary happens.  To “leap for joy” is much the same as “jump for joy” and describes joyous happiness.  To “leap at” something is enthusiastically to take up an offer, avail one’s self of an opportunity etc.  When doing so, one might be said to “leap into action”.  To be cautioned to “look before you leap” is to suggest one should be sure of things before doing something; if one ignores the advice then it’s a “leap of faith” or a “leap into the dark”.  To “leapfrog” is to skip a step in some process, the connotation almost always positive.  To suggest someone “take a flying leap” is much the same as telling them to “go jump in the lake” or, as is now more common: “fuck off”.  The concept of the "quantum leap" was in 1913 introduced (as the "quantum jump") by Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885–1962) in his "Bohr model" of the atom.  In the strange world of quantum mechanics it describes the discontinuous change of the state of an electron in an atom or molecule from one energy level to another and was adopted figuratively to refer to an "abrupt, extreme change".  In modern use, it has come to mean a large or transformative change, a use to which pedants sometimes object but this is how the English language works.  The “leap year bug” is jargon rather than a idiom and describes the growing number of instances of problems caused by computers (and related machines) for whatever reason not correctly handling the existence of leap years.  Most are caused by human error and some are not being rectified because the original error has been built upon to such an extent that it’s easier to handle the bugs as they occur.  If something is said to be “a bit of a leap” or “quite a leap” it means there's some scepticism about the relationship one thing and another (often cause & effect). 

Jaguar's Leaper

Leaper on 1960 Jaguar Mark 2.

The “Leaper” was the factory’s name for the leaping feline figure which for decades adorned the space atop or behind the grill on many Jaguars.  These embellishments were originally mere functional devices because they were literally the external radiator caps so the most important part of the design was that easily they could be unscrewed to allow coolant to be added.  Inevitably, the possibilities occurred to stylists (as such designers used to be called) and the once modest radiator cap became miniature (though many were anything but small) works of art to covey the image the manufacturer wished.  Jaguar’s founder, Sir William Lyons (1901–1985), had a eye for style and was appalled at some of the after-market ornaments being sold to some of the buyers of his SS (Standard Swallow) Jaguars in the pre-war years so commissioned his own, the company legend being there was an amateur sculptor on the staff who got the job.  Beginning in 1938, this became the Jaguar standard and it adorned the cars until 1951 although it didn’t appear on the XK120 which caused such a sensation at the 1948 London Motor Show, apparently because that car was such a flourish of modernity the inclination was to abandon such antiquated relics.  So, when the Jaguar Mark V was retired in 1951, so was the leaper.

The Jaguar leaper had teeth which sounds ominous for pedestrians but some of the hood emblems looked more lethal still.  Left to right (top row): Buick, Packard & Pierce-Arrow; (centre row): Rolls-Royce, Bentley & Mercury; (bottom row): Duesenberg, Mercedes-Benz & Nash.

Whether nostalgia overtook the factory or there was popular demand seems not to have been recorded but in 1955 the leaper leapt back onto the Jaguar saloons (though not the sports cars) and it was sleeker still, the back legs now outstretched and because radiators were now hidden behind grills, the leaper was fixed to the bonnet (hood) and this shape would be used until 1969, offered even as an option on the XK150.  A smaller version was fashioned for the long, low & wide Mark X in 1961 and it was in use until 1970 when the 420G was retired.  That seemed to be the end of the line for the leaper because one wasn’t included when the new XJ range was released in 1968.

Leaper on a US market 1999 Jaguar Vanden Plas (X308).  The US market Vanden Plas were the only Jaguars on which the leaper was used in conjunction with the fluted grill fitted to the home market (and some RoW (rest of the world)) Daimlers.  Because it was Mercedes-Benz and not Jaguar which held the US rights to the Daimler brand, Daimlers sold in the US were badged as Jaguar Vanden Plas although they were otherwise identical to Daimlers including the fluted fittings.  The supercharged Daimler Vanden Plas was the most exclusive of the X308s and was noted for details such as the rear picnic tables being crafted from solid burl walnut timber rather than the veneer over plastic used on cheaper models.

However, while Jaguar’s designers were convinced, the buyers were not and the leaper remained a popular after-market fitting on both the XJs (where it looked OK because of the car’s resemblance to the earlier generations) and the XJ-S (where frankly, it looked absurd).  Notably, demand for the return of the leaper was strong in the US and in response, the factory relented and a “safe” version was developed to please the safety-conscious American regulators, using a spring-loaded mechanism similar to the one Mercedes-Benz used for its three-pointed star, a variation later perfected to conform with European legislation governing “the external projections of motor vehicles”.  The end for the leaper finally came in 2005 although the profile lives on in a boot (trunk) badge used on modern Jaguars (including the ones which look like big Hyundais).

Twelvemonth & Year

Twelvemonth (pronounced twelve-month)

Twelve months (one year).

Pre 1050: From the Middle English twelmonth, twelfmonthe, twelfmonþe or twelv′munth, from the Old English twelfmōnþ or twelfmōnaþ.  The construct was twelve +‎ month. Twelve was from the Middle English twelve, from the Old English twelf (twelve), from the Proto-Germanic twalif, an old compound of twa- (two) + -lif (left over (in the sense of the two left over after having already counted to ten)) from the primitive Indo-European leyp- (leave, remain). It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian tweelf, tweelif & tweelich (twelve), the West Frisian tolve (twelve), the Dutch twaalf (twelve), the German & Low German twalf & twalv (twelve), the German zwölf (twelve), the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian tolv (twelve) and the Icelandic tólf (twelve).  Month was from the Middle English month & moneth, from the Old English mōnaþ (month), from the Proto-Germanic mēnōþs (month), from the primitive Indo-European mḗhins (moon, month), probably from meh- (to measure), a reference to the moon's phases as the measure of time, the construct understood as moon +‎ -th.  It was cognate with the Scots moneth (month), the North Frisian muunt (month), the Saterland Frisian mound (month), the Dutch maand (month), the Low German Maand & Monat (month), the German Monat (month), the Danish and Norwegian Bokmål måned (month), the Norwegian Nynorsk & Swedish månad (month), the Icelandic mánuði (month), the Latin mēnsis (month), the Ancient Greek μήν (mḗn), the Armenian ամիս (amis), the Old Irish mí and the Old Church Slavonic мѣсѧць (měsęcĭ).  Twelvemonth is a noun; the noun plural is twelvemonths.

The adverb was twelvemonthly which is not the same as twelve-monthly, another ill-defined construction which originally meant one thing annually done but was used by some in the sense of something done every month of the year.  It’s now regarded as an archaic or dialect word for year and seen only in historic texts or as a literary device. In the mid-twentieth century there was movement among some to offer it as a way offering more precision in language, the notion being that year would describe a calendar year (eg 1999) whereas September 1998-August 1999 would be a twelvemonth.  The idea never caught on.

Year (pronounced yeer)

(1) A period of 365 or 366 days, in the Gregorian calendar, divided into twelve calendar months, now reckoned as beginning 1 January and ending 32 December (the calendar or civil year).  The 366 day leap year happens (with a few exceptions) every four years; 29 February being the quadrennial addition.  The leap year (mostly) fixes the calendar and maintains it at the same length, mechanics of adjustments described in Medieval Latin as saltus lunae (omission of one day in the lunar calendar every 19 years) which in the Old English was monan hlyp. 

(2) A period of approximately the same length in other calendars; The traditional Chinese calendar, which determines the date of the Lunar New Year, is lunisolar (based on the cycle of the moon as well as on Earth's course around the sun).  A month on this Chinese calendar is 28 days long, and a normal year lasts between 353-355 days.  Other methods of calculation include from Tishiri 1 to Elul 29 in the Jewish calendar, and from Muharram 1 to Dhu al-Hijjah 29 or 30 in the Islamic.

(3) A period of 12 calendar months calculated from any point.

(4) In astronomy, also called the lunar year, a division of time equal to twelve lunar months and equal to 354.3671 days

(5) In astronomy, as tropical year (also known as a solar or astronomical year), the time the Sun takes to return to the same position in the cycle of seasons, as seen from Earth and equal to 365.242 (eg the time from vernal equinox to vernal equinox, or from summer solstice to summer solstice).

(6) In astronomy, as sidereal year, the time taken by the Earth to orbit the Sun once with respect to the fixed stars (equal to 365.256).  Hence, it is also the time taken for the Sun to return to the same position with respect to the fixed stars after apparently travelling once around the ecliptic; the time in which any planet completes a revolution round the Sun (eg the Martian year).

(7) With various modifiers (fiscal year, liturgical year, academic year et al), a period out of every twelve months, devoted to a certain pursuit, activity, or the like.

(8) A group of students entering school or college, graduating, or expecting to graduate in the same year (as in class of 2020).

(9) In English common law as legal year, a measure equal to a year and a day, the period fixed to ensure the completion of a full year. It was used in admiralty law to determine the time within which wrecks had to be claimed and in the criminal law to determine liability in murder cases; if the victim of an assault lived a year and a day from the assault, the perpetrator could not be charged with murder, even were the victim subsequently to die from his injuries.  The rule was translated to statute law in some jurisdiction and was repealed only because of advances in medical care and technology.

Pre 900: From the Middle English yeer, from the Old English gēar, gearlic & gear (yearly, of the year, annual).  It was related to the Gothic jēr, the Old Saxon & Old High German jār, the Old Norse ār (year), the Polish jar (springtime), the Latin hōrnus (of this year), the Dutch jaar, the German Jahr, the Gothic jēr and the Greek hôros (hṓrā) (year, season, part of a day, hour).  The alternative spellings were yeare, yeer, yeere & yere, all long obsolete.  Year & yearling are nouns and yearly is a noun, adjective & adverb; the common noun plural is years.

Twelvemonth does still get the odd use, usually as a novelty or deliberate anachronism.

Year-long (also yearlong) dates from 1813, year-round from 1917 and as an adverb from 1948.  The light-year (also lightyear), the distance light travels in one year (circa 5.87 trillion miles (944 trillion km)) was first defined in 1888.  Yearling (an animal a year old or in its second year) is attested from the mid-fifteenth century, the noun year-old in this sense being from the 1530s.  Yearbook (also year-book) dates from the 1580s as (book of reports of cases in law-courts for that year), the sense extended to other books of “accumulated events and statistics of the previous year" by 1710.  The first used in the sense of a “graduating class album" is attested from 1926, an invention of American English.  The Dutch schrikkeljaar (leap year) is from the Middle Dutch schricken (leap forward) which translates literally as "be startled, be in fear" and the 29 February is schrikkeldag.  The Danish skudaar & Swedish skottår translate literally as "shoot-year”; The German schaltjahr is from schalten (insert, intercalate) and the Late Latin phrase was annus bissextilis, source of the Romanic words.  One quirk in modern commerce is that payrolls tend to be administered in weekly or multiples of weekly cycles and for most purposes there are 52 weeks in a year.  However, the year (to four decimal places) is actually about 52.1775 weeks long so, every thirteen years-odd, accountants often have to ensure provision has been made for an additional payroll period; modern software has solved the problem for most.

Many rules have been suggested to avoid any ambiguity when writing the year in text but the best method is simply to write if out in full (1999-2002).  There have been publications with rules which differ under different circumstances but any technical need to limit the number of characters used has long gone and the simple form avoids any ambiguity.  Should the need arise of to write using the tags BD and AD, it also important to choose a style that avoids ambiguity.  AD (anno domini (Latin: in the year of the lord), refers to the birth of Jesus Christ, the year 1 AD (somewhat inaccurately but notionally) being his year of birth, and anything tagged BC (before Christ) being the years prior, counted backwards and starting at 1 BC, there being no year zero (which is a nuisance because it means not all the twentieth century consists of years numbered 19xx, the last year of the century being 2000; 1 January 2001 being the first day of the new century and millennium).  Classically, the convention in English was to place the letters BC after the year and AD before.  That was so the written word would pay tribute to the spoken, the common expression in formal and ecclesiastical use being "in the year of our Lord 2021".  That’s now rare and it may be preferable to use the suffixed (55 BC, 2021 AD) for both.  The alternatives to BC &AD are BCE (before common era) & CE (common era), the years exactly aligned and, although there seems no accepted convention about where the letters are placed, use should be consistent.

Quantum

Quantum (pronounced kwon-tuhm)

(1) A quantity or amount.

(2) A particular quantity or amount.

(3) A share or portion.

(4) A large quantity; something ordered, delivered or stored in bulk.

(5) In physics, the smallest quantity of some physical property, such as energy, that a system can possess according to the quantum theory; involving quanta, quantum mechanics or other aspects of quantum physics.

(6) A particle with such a unit of energy; the fundamental unit of a quantized physical magnitude, as angular momentum.

(7) Of change: (1) classically, sudden or discrete, without intermediate stages & (2) in modern adjectival use, something sudden and significant.

(8) In mathematics, a definite portion of a manifoldness, limited by a mark or by a boundary.

(9) In law, a brief document provided by the judge, elaborating on a sentencing decision (now most often used in the subcontinent); the total amount of something; the quantity.

(10) In computer operating systems, the amount of time allocated for a thread to perform its work in a multithreaded environment.

(11) In computer design, short for quantum computing.

(12) In medicine, the minimum dose of a pathogen required to cause an infection.

1610-1620: From the Late Latin quantum, noun use of the neuter form of the Classical Latin quantus (how much).

Quantum imported from Latin to physics directly by German theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) to describe the concept of the "minimum amount of a quantity which can exist".  Quantum theory is from 1912 and quantum mechanics from 1922, the latter much associated with German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) who in 1927 deduced his "uncertainty principle" which declares an electron may have a determinate position, or a determinate velocity, but not both.  In physics, the term quantum jump (the abrupt transition from one stationary state to another) came into use in 1954 while quantum leap (sudden large advance) dates from 1963 and in figurative use (by non-physicists) describes some drastic change or radical advance in some aspect of something (and is thus often synonymous with that other favorite of post-modernists, the paradigm shift.  There are pedants (and one suspects few of them actually comprehend quantum theory) who insist “quantum leap” in the sense of “sudden & big is wrong but it’s just part of the evolution of English in its usual democratic way.  Quantum is a noun and adjective; the noun plural is quantums or quanta.

IBM quantum computer.

In an announcement little noted outside the nerd community, in late 2021 IBM introduced the Circuit Layer Operations per Second (CLOPS) performance standard for quantum computing.  As a measuring metric, CLOPS corresponds to the number of quantum circuits a quantum processing unit (QPU) can execute per unit of time, the innovation compared with previous standards such as FLOPS (Floating Point Operations per Second) and its variations (ranging from kiloFLOPS (KFlops:10³) to yottaFLOPS (YFlops: 10²⁴)), in that it expresses not only the actual speed at which the workload is processed and successfully completed but also adjusts to account for the latency of the interaction between the quantum and classical computing realms.

It must be noted that to date, the pure quantum computer has existed only in theory and that functions now executed in the quantum space involve an interaction, being mediated via a classical binary computer which translates workloads into a QPU-compatible format, retrieves the workload's results and presents them in an understandable form.  CLOPS thus accounts for not only the interval of time that the workload is actually being processed at the qubit (quantum bit) level, but also the time it takes for the system to translate and transfer information across both components.

Dating back decades, IBM has published many standards which the industry has adopted ranging from specifications for memory addressing to video displays (the famous CGA, EGA, VGA, XGA et al) and had for some time discussed the need for a harmonized standard for quantum computing.  Until CLOPS was announced, the measures had usually been expressed in terms of two of quantum’s three planes: (1) scale which pertains to the number of qubits present in any given system and (2) quality which refers to the proportion of qubits that can perform usable work expressed via quantum volume.  What CLOPS does is provide a formula to express a measure of (3) speed.

IBM has published CLOPS results for some of its quantum computing systems using machines constructed with between five and 64 qubits and it was interesting to note all had a similar quantum volume score, their actual speed (expressed in CLOPS) varied between 753 and 1419 layers per second; as IBM predicted, it was latency which accounted for the difference.  Noting that, IBM also published results from their Qiskit (Quantum Information Software Kit for Quantum Computation) project which focuses on reducing the latency in the quantum-classic computing translation layer seriously via closer physical proximity between the objects, some experiments reducing run-time cycles from 45 days to nine hours.  The company expects CLOPS to be the defined measure of quantum computing in its present form as FLOPs and its variations were to super-computing.

Phreak

Phreak (pronounced freek)

(1) Illicitly to tamper with or connect to various systems using telephones (in the sense of phone phreaking.

(2) To act as a phone phreak.

1972: An altered spelling of freak, applied by and to the phone phreaks, constructed by blending the ph of phone with freak.  Phone is from the Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) (sound).  Freak was first used circa 1560 in the sense of a "sudden change of mind or something done on a whim" and is of uncertain origin but thought probably from a dialectal word related to the Middle English frekynge (capricious behaviour; whims) and friken & frikien (briskly or nimbly to move) from the Old English frician (to leap, dance) or Middle English frek (insolent, daring) from the Old English frec (desirous, greedy, eager, bold, daring).  The ultimate root may be the Proto-Germanic frekaz & frakaz (hard, efficient, greedy, bold, audacious) in which case, it would be related to the phreak as a noun.  Related were the Old High German freh (eager) and the Old English frēcne (dangerous, daring, courageous, bold).  In linguistics, words like phreak are known as a sensational spelling and the trend continued in the post-web world from the 1990s onwards with creations such as phat and phishing.  Phreak is a noun & verb, phreaker is a noun and phreaked & phreaking are verbs; the noun plural is phreaks.

The phone phreakers

Digilog Systems Telecomputer II (315), circa 1976, a briefcase-housed acoustic coupler.

Phone phreaking was a term coined to describe the activities of the sub-culture of people who explored and exploited public telephone networks.  The term first referred to groups which, since the late 1950s, had reverse engineered the analogue system of audio tones used to route long-distance calls.  By re-creating these tones, phreaks could switch calls from the handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world; this at a time when even local calls could cost money and long distance or international calls could cost hundreds of dollars per hour.  Electronic tone generators known as blue boxes soon became available, making phreaking possible even for those without much technical knowledge.  This early aspect of phreaking effectively ended by the 1980s as most phone networks switched from acoustic tones to digital computer systems.  The phone phreaks are best remembered for their early hacks into the big mainframes of operations like NASA, the Pentagon and the CIA.  The phreaks were pleased to find a military mainframe might be in a secure facility with industrial strength air-conditioning and power supply systems with armed guards on the doors yet be connected directly to the public telephone network.

The idea of phone phreaking has survived phonetically as the phone freak-out; there are are public freak-outs and private freak-outs.

Tumblehome

Tumblehome (pronounced tuhm-buhl-hohm)

(1) In naval architecture, an inward and upward slope of the middle body of a vessel; of the sides of a ship: To incline or slope inwards, to contract above the point of extreme breadth.

(2) A conceptually similar shape applied, in reverse, to the upper body of an automobile.

1828: A compound word, tumble + home.  Tumble was from the Middle English tumblen (to fall over and over again, tumble), frequentative of the Middle English tumben (to fall, leap, dance), from the Old English tumbian, from the Proto-Germanic tūmōną (to turn, rotate).  It was cognate with the Middle Dutch tumelen and the Middle Low German tumelen & tummelen.  Home was from the Middle English home, hom, hoom & ham, from the Old English hām (village, hamlet, manor, estate, home, dwelling, house, region, country), from the Proto-West Germanic haim, from the Proto-Germanic haimaz (home, village), from the Proto-Indo-European tḱóymos (village, home), from the root tḱey-.  The (rare and probably extinct) alternative spelling is tumble home.  Tumblehome is a noun; the noun plural is tumblehomes.

The meaning of the word tumblehome has been well understood from its first appearance in the early nineteenth century but the origin has never been obvious.  Shipbuilders had for centuries been using variations of the design for a number of reasons but the first known instance of the word dates only from 1828 and then without explanation, suggesting the term may already have been in common use, at least within the industry.  An 1848 reference from a shipwright does however hint at some sense of novelty, noting “… the upper works usually incline towards the middle line, or as it is termed “tumble home”.  The word “tumble” to refer to the sides of ships appears to have been used at least as early as 1687 but the compound tumblehome seems not to have emerged for another hundred and fifty-odd years.  The idea always summoned was of the imagery of the sides of a ship “tumbling down” the slope created but why “home” was added remains a mystery, the assumption being it was based either on (1) an association with certain domestic architectural styles of the time (2) the romantic notion of the sea, to which the tumblehome falls, being "home" for sailors or  (3) the idea of a dilapidated house in the throes of "tumbling down", fallen bits an pieces accumulating at the bottom.

Big ships and fast cars

In automotive design (upper), the term is applied when the width of the cabin (cockpit or glasshouse) reduces as the height rises.  Although curved glass in the side windows of cars began widely to be adopted in the mid-1960s, thus creating a mild tumblehome effect, the term is applied only when it is sufficiently severe to be apparent to casual viewers.

In naval architecture (lower), the geometry is reversed, a tumblehome define as a hull which flares out as the sides approach the waterline.  Although in some vessels, the effect is barely detectable by the naked eye, it’s a technical term and applies to all hulls which dimensionally qualify.  The opposite, the classic shape for ships’ hull, is called the flare.

USS Brooklyn, 1896.

Tumblehome, unless taken to extremes, was functional in that it improved stability in warships under sail; sailing ships heel (they tend to lean over when moving) and tumblehome reduced this.  At the time, the biggest contributor to a warship’s mass on the upper decks was the guns and a tumblehome design, moving the centre of gravity lower, allowed armament to be maintained or even increased without further loss of stability.  Additionally, there was the benefit of making it harder for boarding parties to climb aboard.  In commercial shipping, vessels were long taxed on the basis of the square footage of a ship’s deck and fat ships with a pronounced tumble carrying the same freight but taxed less, were attractive.  Government fiscal policy thus influenced and distorted design and engineering principles in the same way tax arrangements of windows affected architecture and those on cylinder bores (adversely) affected engine design.

Lamborghini LP500 Countach prototype, 1971.

The Countach had one of the most extreme implementations, the angle meaning it was possible for only part of the side-window to be lowered but at least the Italians were more thoughtful than the Germans; in 1954, facing a similar challenge with the side-glass on the 300 SL (W198 1954-1957) gullwing, Mercedes-Benz simply fixed the panes, ventilation provided only by small quarterlights.  Neither flow-through ventilation or air-conditioning was available so driving in a gullwing could be hot and sticky experience and there's a reason they're sometimes seen being driven (at low speeds and not on public roads) with at least one door open. .  The tumblehome is used by high-performance cars because of the aerodynamic advantages it confers, reducing frontal area an allowing the curve of the greenhouse to be optimized for air-flow, lowering resistance.  Because of great advances made during the late twentieth century, refinements to tumblehomes no longer deliver the 3-5% improvements in a drag coefficient (CD) which once was possible, engineers now pursuing factional gains.  The origins in cars however lay in the quest for more interior space and for mass-market vehicles, bulging out the sides gained the odd vital inch and the technique, combined with curved side glass, has become almost universal although there has been the odd deviation.  Stylists are predicting tumblehomes are likely to become more exaggerated as sides need to be bulkier to meet more rigorous side-impact regulations and roof-lines are lowered slightly in the quest to reduce drag.

Lindsay Lohan in tumblehome blonde wig.

What professional hair stylists call “the tumblehome” is a triangulated shaping which is most cases can’t be achieved without an expert application of product and when sported by models on photo-shoots, it’s common for the angles and an illusion of volume to be achieved with engineering no more complex than a sheet of cardboard (cut to suit) being attached with hairclips to the back of the head.  The look can however be achieved with synthetics which can be persuaded sustainably to behave in a way human hair naturally resists and Lady Gaga (b 1986) made a tumblehome wig a signature feature of her “Fame Monster” period (2009-2010).  With natural hair, a tumblehome with hair a little shorter than that of Lady Gaga’s wig is sometimes technically achievable given the right hair and a generous use of product the sideways projection would be noticeably less.

Lady gaga in Fame Monster mode.

The tumblehome style with the exaggerated elongations al la Gaga is rarely seen and usually represents a lot of work.  However, many take about as much effort to avoid the similar geometry of the “pyramid head”: a triangular shape with a flat crown area which flares to a wide bushy shape at the ends.  A function of length and weight for those with curly hair, pyramids happen usually when the strands are of almost uniform length and the curls tend to “stack”, the weight meaning the roots sit flattest on the scalp while towards the ends where the effective volume (hair + space) is greatest, the curled strands move sideways, unlike the behavior of straight hair which is purely downwards.

Lindsay Lohan with pyramid head, Saturday Night Live, 2004.

Stylists recommend layers as the best tactic to minimize the triangulation, the strategy essentially to create longer, diagonal layers to frame the face, meaning the remaining curls “sit into each other”.  What this does is simply physics, the layering on the surface reducing the weight, increasing the percentage of the volume on the crown area and although some are resistant, the best results will probably be achieved if the hair is cut dry because it will be presented at its natural weight.  When wet, the moisture content will disguise the extent of the left-right movement and exaggerate the up-down.  The shorter the layers of course the more effective the amelioration but this can be too radical for some so clients need to be turned into realists.

Ether

Ether (pronounced ee-ther)

(1) In chemistry, Pharmacology and (pre-modern) surgery, A colorless, highly volatile, flammable liquid (C₄H₁₀O), having an aromatic odor and sweet, burning taste, derived from ethyl alcohol by the action of sulfuric acid.  It was used as a powerful solvent and as an inhalant anesthetic (also called diethyl ether, diethyl oxide, ethyl ether, ethyl oxide, sulfuric ether.

(2) In pre-modern chemistry, one of a class of compounds in which two organic groups are attached directly to an oxygen atom (the general formula ROR), as in diethyl ether (C₂H₅OC₂H₅).

(3) In Greek mythology, the upper regions of the atmosphere; clear sky or heaven (and from this long a rarely used word for “air”).

(4) In physics, a hypothetical substance supposed to occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space, an idea picked up in the early days of radio broadcasting, the signal said to be “in the ether”.

(5) In chemistry, a starting fluid.

(6) Figuratively, a particular quality created by or surrounding an object, person, or place; an atmosphere; an aura (probably most familiar in the form ethereal). 

1350-1400: From the Middle English ether (the caelum aetherum of ancient cosmology in which the planets orbit; a shining, fluid substance described as a form of air or fire; air), from the Middle French & Anglo-Norman ether, from the Old French aether (highest and purest part of the atmosphere; the medium supposedly filling the upper regions of space), from the Ancient Greek αἰθήρ (aithḗr) (purer upper air of the atmosphere; heaven, sky; theoretical medium supposed to fill unoccupied space and transmit heat and light), (akin to aíthein (to glow, burn)) or directly from its etymon New Latin aethēr (highest and purest part of the atmosphere; air; heavens, sky; light of day; ethereal matter surrounding a deity).  The ultimate source of the Greek was αἴθω (aíthō) (to burn, ignite; to blaze, shine), from the primitive Indo-European heyd- (to burn; fire).  It was related to the Old English ād (funeral pyre) and the Latin aestus (heat).  As late as the nineteenth century, it was not uncommon in English for the Latin-derived spelling aether to be used, probably because so much of what was in the books of apothecaries remained for so long unchanged.  The German-born chemist August Sigmund Frobenius (circa 1690-1741) was the first to use the name for the volatile chemical, his bestowal based on its properties.  The name entered English science in 1757 although it wasn’t until 1842 the anaesthetic properties were fully documented.  The English word was cognate with the obsolete Italian etere (ether & ethera both obsolete), the Middle Dutch ether, the modern Dutch ether (aether obsolete), the German Äther, the Portuguese éter and the Spanish éter.

In ancient cosmology, ether was the element filling all space beyond the sphere of the moon, constituting the substance of the stars and planets; in the imagination of Antiquity it was held by one school of thought to be a purer form of fire or air, by another as a fifth element.  From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, ether was part of scientific orthodoxy and the technical word for an assumed framework within which the forces of the universe interacted, perhaps without material properties.  As the scientific method evolved increasingly to demand proof of theories, doubts were expressed about the validity of the traditional view and in 1887 an experiment by American physicists Albert Michelson (1852-1931) and Edward Morley (1838-1923) cast such doubts on the notion that among others, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was moved to begin calculations and the view of the nature of ether from Antiquity was completely dismissed after conclusive proof of the theory of relativity in 1919.  Despite that, having first been so used in 1899, the word endured well into the twentieth century to describe the path of the then seemingly mysterious radio broadcasts.

Lindsay Lohan during her dabble with Ethereum fueled NFT drops.  

Although the volatility and churn rate make it a hard sector to track, there are apparently over 20,000 currently active (in the sense of being listed somewhere and thus able to be traded) cryptocurrencies.  There are obvious attractions to creating one's own virtual currency because in a sense one is creating one's own money (usually in the millions) and if one can convince others (and guides to market manipulation have been published) to exchange their convertible currency for one's tokens, it can be a good business model.  One thankless task associated with cryptocurrencies however is coming up with a suitable name, something not of great importance once the creation gains critical mass but possibly quite influential when first listed.  It must be something like thinking of names for racehorses but harder still because not only must it be unique but it should also not be too close to other financial products (not just other virtual currencies).  Ethereum (ETH) was coined by Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin (b 1994) who has in interviews revealed he chose the name after browsing Wikipedia for a list of fictional elements on based on ether.  One can certainly see the link and it makes more sense than the earlier Ethernet, originally a trademark of the Xerox Corporation, the construct being ether +‎ net(work).  Ethernet was a collection of cabling and network connectivity protocols standards for bus topology computer networks and to use the word "ether" was a bit of a leap, everything originally connected by cable whereas at least part of the Ethereum traffic travels through the ether (as it was understood in Antiquity).  With Ethernet cabling, there was thick and thin Ethernet and the physical cabling literally was thick and thin, the choice dictated by things like the distance to be covered, the number of nodes to be connected and the available budget.  In the world of cryptocurrency, think & thin means "going through thick & thin", hodling (holding) one's coins no matter what the fluctuations.

Pandemonium

Pandemonium (pronounced pan-duh-moh-nee-uhm)

(1) Wild uproar or unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos.

(2) A place or scene of riotous uproar or utter chaos.

(3) Satan’s palace at the centre of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

(4) Following Milton, the abode of all the demons (often with initial capital letter).

1667: In John Milton’s (1608-1674) epic poem, Paradise Lost (1667-1674), Pandæmonium was the name of the palace in the centre of hell, "the high capital of Satan and all his peers”.  Milton coined the word as a construct of the Ancient Greek πᾶν (pân) (all; every (and equivalent to the English pan-)) + the Late Latin daemonium (evil spirit, demon), from the Ancient Greek δαιμόνιον (daimónion) (a diminutive form of δαίμων (daímōn) (“little deity”, “little spirit”, “little angel” or (as Christians interpreted it) “little daemon”, later modernized as “demon”).  Depending on one’s didactic or literary purpose, Pandæmonium may thus be translated variously as “All Demons” or, following Milton, as Pandemoneios (Παν-δαιμον-ειον) (the place of all demons).  The transferred sense of “a place of uproar” dates from 1779 while the general use meaning “wild, lawless confusion” has been in use since 1865.  The alternative spellings are pandaemonium & pandæmonium, the latter still in literary use.  Pandemonium is a noun, pandemoniacal, pandemonious, pandemonic & pandemonian are adjectives, pandemoniac is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is either pandemoniums or pandemonia.

There are special, technical uses of “pandemonium”.  In physics, a pandemonium describes a problem that leads to inaccurate results from high-resolution gamma ray detectors in cases of beta decay when the decay product has a large Q value because the decay product has too many possible energy excitation levels with too much variation in the amount of energy emitted by different levels.  Those who understand that doubtlessly visualize the phenomenon while the rest of us probably need something like a cartoon.  In cognitive science, a pandemonium is a conception of visual object recognition in the brain as a hierarchical system of detection and association by a metaphorical set of "demons" sending signals to each other.  No cartoons required.

Some who have inspired fandemonium: The anyway statuesque Taylor Swift, adding to the effect in 6 inch (150 mm) heels (2016, right), the mean girls of Mean Girls (2004, centre) and the more diminutive Lady Gaga (2023, right).

By way of portmanteau nouns, pandemonium has been an element in (1) pandemonium (panda + (pande)–monium) (the furor induced by the reaction of people to the sight of pandas) and (2) fandemonium (fan + -(pan)demonium) (in pop-culture, the furor caused by or involving fans).  In the matter fandemonium, Lady Gaga (b 1986) called her fans “little monsters” while devotees of the Taylor Swift (b 1989) cult are known as “Swifties” (apparently always with an initial capital).

Paradise Lost

Written in the epic tradition of starting in medias res (in the midst of things), John Milton’s Paradise Lost was published originally as a poem of some ten-thousand lines in ten books (1667) before the second edition (1674) was re-organized into twelve volumes, possibly a nod to the Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC)) whose epic work the Aeneid (circa 30-19 BC) was thus assembled.  The poem is an account of the biblical tale of the fall of man: the temptation of Adam & Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden and was structured in two narrative threads, one following Satan, the other about Adam and Eve, a depiction of the tragedy of human existence which can be transformed only by a pure will for redemption.  The second edition is easier to read because it includes chapter summaries.

Milton coined the name for the capital of Hell, “the High Capital, of Satan and his Peers”, built by the fallen angels at the suggestion of Mammon and it appears at the end of Book I of Paradise Lost (1667), noted as having been designed by the architect Mulciber (In Ancient Rome, Mulciber was another name for the Roman god Vulcan), the designer of palaces in Heaven before his fall.  Book II begins with the debate among the Stygian Council (known also as the Infernal Council and the grand gathering of the demons of the Inferno; apparently something like a Tory Party conference but with better catering) in the council-chamber of Pandæmonium.  In an example of free-market efficiency, the demons built the structure in little more than an hour though by far it surpassed in grandeur all human palaces and, being made from solid gold, it never tarnished.  Interestingly, it was Tardis-like, being both small yet with a vast and spacious hall which thronged with swarms of shape-shifting demons, a quality which may account for the spatial ambiguity in the account of the dimensions.

The Shepherd’s Dream (1793), from Paradise Lost, oil on canvas by Henry Fuseli (1741-1825).

One mid-century critique was Milton's God (1965) by Sir William Empson (1906–1984), among the earliest published examples of the techniques of literary deconstructionism being applied to poetic text.   Milton noted his work was a way of “…justifying the ways of God to men” and Empson deconstructed those means, mapping them onto a framework of theological paradox.  While Milton’s God had a mixed reception, it was briefly influential as an early post-modern text although one of the problems inherent in deconstruction is it tempts others to reconstruct and there was a critic who deduced Empson had claimed “the poet felt an active hatred for the God of Christianity.”  That was a challenging notion given the book for so long sat on shelves next to the King James Bible (KJV 1611) and it seemed Epson’s subconscious was being probed.  Although in Milton’s God there was the observation Milton’s social judgment had told him that the Heaven he was imagining before the fall of the angels was already a horrible place, “against his overall intention”, it seems a quite a leap from that to a hatred of the God of the New Testament.

Empson explained what needed better to be understood (because, as he put it, modern Christianity has gone to extreme lengths “to hush it up”) was the moral character of God had become very hard to defend and that this was widely known by the time John Calvin (1509–1564) and Martin Luther (1483–1546) had trod the path of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).  Milton was struggling to defend God, noting that in the De doctrina Christiana (On Christian Teaching (397-426)), Aquinas himself had written there were many who believed God caused evil, practically making God the Devil and Milton would assert the relevant Bible texts must not be interpreted literally.  Milton certainly presents God at his worst but the Almighty is a agreeable figure by Book III although it remains clear his path for man will long and painful with many casualties but the poet's theme remained that there would be awful consequences if “the widespread hatred of God could no longer be contained” and this Empson understood.