Moniker

Moniker (pronounced mon-i-ker)

(1) A personal name or nickname as an informal label, often drawing attention to a particular attribute; sometimes also used in commerce.

(2) In computing, an object (an instance of structured data) used to associate the name of an object with its location; many coders prefer “tag”.

1849: Moniker is perhaps from the Irish Shelta munik, munika &  mŭnnik (name), said to be a permutation and extension of Irish ainm (name).  Earlier scholars said it was originally a hobo term, dating it from 1851 and of uncertain origin, perhaps from monk (monks and nuns take new names with their vows) and noted British tramps of the period referred to themselves as “in the monkery”.  Monekeer is attested among the London underclass from 1851 and there were those who claimed to detect “a certain Coptic or Egyptian twang” but, given the uncertainty, all conclude the origin can be only uncertain and the ideas of it being (1) a back-slang of the Middle English ekename (the construct being eke (also, additionally) +‎ name), (2) a corruption of monogram (in the sense of “a signature”), (3) from monarch in the egotistical sense of “I, myself” or (4) from “monk” (monks and nuns take new names with their vows) are all speculative and there’s certainly no link with the primitive Indo-European root no-men (name).  The (rare) alternative forms were monacer, monicker & moniker. Moniker is a noun; the noun plural is monikers.

Lindsay Lohan doing the LiLo, Mykonos, Greece, 2018.

Lindsay Lohan’s moniker LiLo is a blend, the construct being Li(ndsay) + Lo(han).  Being based on proper nouns, in linguistics this would by most be regarded a pure blend, although some would list it as a portmanteau which is a special type of blend in which parts of multiple words are combined into a new word (and some insist that in true portmanteaus there must be some relationship between the source words and the result).  As a proper noun in its own right, “Lilo” means “generous One” and its origin is Hawaiian although in some traditions in the islands it can be translated as “lost”.  The LiLo name was also adopted as the name of an impromptu dance Ms Lohan performed in 2018 at the Lohan Beach House on the Greek Island of Mykonos.

English has a tradition of accumulation many words to mean much the same thing and this can be handy because it allows nuances of use to emerge.  Moniker has as one of those words which, despite there being many better-known and probably better understood synonyms, offers variety, a linguistic flourish that doesn’t suffer the boring familiarity of “nickname” or the dubious connotations of “alias”.  The other related forms include epithet, byname, pseudonym, sobriquet pen-name & to-name.  By some typically strange process, in English the French nom de plume (pen-name) is common whereas among the French nom de guerre (literally, “name of war”, referring to the pseudonyms used during wars) is used for all purposes.  The more recent creation "nom de Web" was a humorous coining for those operating on the internet under a cloak of anonymity although for those who object to mixing linguistic sources for such things there was also nom de clavier, the construct being the French nom (name) + de (of) + clavier (keyboard).  Of course, even someone using a nom de clavier will be able to pay their monthly US$8 and attach to it a Twitter blue tick.

The moniker in modern US politics

Monikers in politics are nothing new but Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination and subsequently the presidency then and in 2020 was an example of democratic politics adopting the techniques of reality television and his application of derisive monikers to his opponents proved quite effective in 2016.  The campaign team took the idea seriously from the start, workshopping the possibilities in focus groups to find which gained the best response.  It turned out, based on data from the focus groups there was nothing to choose between crooked Hillary and lying Hillary (as one might imagine) but this was just another big TV show so Trump picked the one he preferred.  Crooked Hillary’s loss was Ted Cruz’s gain: He became Lyin’ Ted which was remembered when, rather than sharing the cold with his those who he represents when Texas froze under a polar vortex, the flew off to sunny Mexico for a vacation.  He was immediately dubbed flyin’ Ted.  The monikers are also recycled “crazy” briefly tried for crooked Hillary, used for Bernie Sanders and later for Liz Chaney, the last use probably because of the attractiveness of the cadence.  The opposing campaign teams noted both phenomenon and effect but all decided they either didn’t wish to adopt the technique or it was too late and to come up with a dirty Donald or cheating Donald or whatever, would have seemed an unoriginal reaction.  They were probably right to resist temptation.

The class of 2016: (1) Tez Cruz: Lyin’ Ted, (2) Marco Rubio: Little Marco, (3) Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren: Pocahontas, (4) Pete Buttigieg: Alfred E Neuman, (5) Michael Bloomfield: Mini Mike, (6) Jeb Bush: Low Energy Jeb, (7), Hillary Clinton: Crooked Hillary, (8) Bernie Sanders: Crazy Bernie.

Some of the memorable monikers Mr Trump has deployed over the years include: Wacky Bill Cassidy, Sleepin' Bob Casey, Low-Polling Liz Cheney, Wacky Susan Collins, Leakin' James Comey, Shadey James Comey, Slimeball James Comey, Slippery James Comey, Ron DeSanctimonious (Ron DeSantis), Leaking Dianne Feinstein, Jeff Flakey, (Jeff Flake), Rejected Senator Jeff Flake, Al Frankenstein (Al Franken), Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Nasty Kamala (Kamala Harris) Phony Kamala Harris, Corrupt Kaine (Tim Kaine), Cryin' Adam Kinzinger, Senator Joe Munchkin (Joe Manchin), Broken Old Crow (Mitch McConnell), Evan McMuffin (Evan McMullin), Disaster from Alaska (Lisa Murkowski), Fat Jerry (Jerry Nadler), Eva Perón (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Foul Mouthed Omar (Ilhan Omar), Dummy Beto (Beto O'Rourke), Truly weird Senator Rand Paul, Nancy Antoinette (Nancy Pelosi), Nervous Nancy Pelosi, The Nutty Professor (Bernie Sanders), Adam Schitt (Adam Schiff), Pencil Neck (Adam Schiff), Weirdo Tom Steyer, Goofy Elizabeth Warren, Low-IQ Maxine Waters, That woman from Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) and Gretchen Half-Whitmer (Gretchen Whitmer).

Sleepy Joe and wife on the campaign trail, 2020.

Even Trump however probably had to reign in his worst instincts, of which there are many.  He must have been tempted to persist calling Joe Biden sleepy-creepy Joe because of the long history of hair-sniffing photographs but, given his own record of locker-room talk, perhaps thought an allusion to senility might be safer.  Sleepy Joe it became although he’d previously flirted with Corrupt Joe, Basement Biden, Beijing Biden, China Joe, Quid Pro Joe and Slow Joe.  Had it been twenty years earlier, he’d probably have dismissed Pete Buttigieg with the gay slur Mayor Buttplug but times have changed.  He actually struggled to find some way successfully to disparage Buttigieg, finally picking up a reference to the Mad Magazine character Alfred E Neuman.  Buttigieg successfully deflected that echo from the analogue age, claiming never to have heard of Alfred E Neuman and suggesting it might be a “generational thing”, the cultural moment having passed.  It may also have been a good tactic; Ronald Reagan’s campaign staff never cared if anyone said he was too ignorant to be president but worried greatly if anyone suggested he was too old.  All the same, between Buttigieg and Neuman, there is some resemblance.

The pot calling the kettle black: Donald Trump in action.

One of the more recent to emerge was Ron DeSanctimonious to describe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who a well-regarded betting site currently lists as the $2.10 favorite for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 with Mr Trump at $3.10 and all others as outsiders.  Perhaps surprisingly, the Democrat field is more closely contested although Sleepy Joe remains the favorite though it’s a long way out and even Crooked Hillary Clinton is at only $26.00 which doesn’t seem long odds considering the history.  Ron DeSanctimonious has lots of syllables so isn’t as punchy as some of the earlier monikers but Mr Trump has a habit of trying them out to see how they catch on and replacing anything which doesn’t work and in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election he confirmed he voted for DeSantis so there's that.  However, long words can work well if they roll easily off the tongue which is why Pocahontas gained resonance.  Donald Trump dubbed Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas because of her claim to Native American ancestry which proved dubious but others were more clever still, referring to her as Fauxcahontas.  That was actually an incorrect use necessitated by the need of rhyme and word formation; technically she was a Fakecahontas but as a word it doesn’t work as well.  People anyway seemed to get the point: as a Native American, she was fake, bogus, phoney.

Mr Trump in November 2022 announced he'd be seeking the Republican Party's nomination again in 2024 so monikers old and new might again be deployed although, gloating somewhat over the disappointing performance of Trump-aligned candidates in the mid-term elections, Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The New York Post ran the headline "Trumpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall".  The Trumpty Dumpty line wasn't original, memes and books having circulated for years, but, News Corp having given the lead, it'll be interesting to see if that starts a trend among what Mr Trump calls "the fake news media".       

Nibble

Nibble (pronounced nib-uhl)

(1) To bite off small bits of something; to eat food by biting off small pieces.

(2) To bite, eat, or chew gently and in small amounts (often in the form “nibbled at”); to take dainty or tentative (especially when unsure of the taste) bites; an act or instance of nibbling.

(3) A small morsel of food.

(4) Snack food (allways (sweet or savory) in the plural as “nibbles” and usually served with drinks).

(5) In fishing, a response by a fish to the bait on a line (technically, the feeling of the fish tasting the bait but not yet “hooked”).

(6) In many contexts, a preliminary positive response or reaction such as an “expression of interest” to a proposal.

(7)  Of an idea or suggestion, tentatively or cautiously to consider.

(8) In moments of intimacy, sexually to stimulate a partner by the (gentle) use of the teeth on body parts (usually extremities) such as toes, finger tips, nipples or ear lobes, a subset of fetishists using this caressing as a prelude to acts such as biting, scratching or spanking.

(9) In computing, a unit of memory equal to half a byte, or four bits.

1425–1475: From the late Middle English nebillen (to peck away at, to sample, to take small bites) and thought related to the Middle Low German nibbelen (to gnaw; to pick with the beak), thus the presumption by most etymologists the word is probably of Dutch or Low German origin and akin to the modern Low German nibbeln (to gnaw), the Middle Dutch knibbelen (to gnaw) (and the source of the Dutch knibbelen (to cavail, squabble)) the Dutch nibbelen (to nibble) and the Saterland Frisian nibje (to nibble).  The noun (an act of nibbling) developed from the verb and appeared in the 1650s, extended in the mid nineteenth century to describe plates of "small bites or morsels.  The verb nosh came into use in New York in 1957 in the sense of “to snack between meals and was from the Yiddish nashn (nibble), from the Middle High German naschen, from the Old High German hnascon & nascon (to nibble), from the Proto-Germanic naskon & gnaskon.  The forms noshed & noshing soon emerged in casual use although “the nosh” had been used in the US military as a noun since 1917, meaning “a mess or canteen”; it was a clipping of “nosh-house” which in civilian slang described restaurants & cafés.  Nibble is a noun & verb, nibbled is a verb & adjective, nibbler is a noun, nibbling is a noun & verb and nibbleable & nibbly & nibblish are adjectives (although not all dictionaries list them as standard forms); the noun plural is nibbles.

Nibbles could also be described as tidbits (often wrongly used as titbits), bites, tastes, or crumbs.  In idiomatic use, “to get a nibble” is (analogous with a fish tentatively tasting the bait before swallowing the hook) to receive a response to an offer, suggestion, idea, advertisement etc.  “To nibble away at” describes processes similar to those illustrated by phrases such as “straw which broke the camel’s back” or “death of a thousand cuts”.  Rust for example “nibbles away” at metal and inflation “nibbles away” at savings and the value of money (unlike hyperinflation which, depending on the its extent, is better described as a process of erosion, decimation, destruction etc).  As a verb to nibble is also to find petty faults or make needlessly pedantic points.

Lindsay Lohan nibbling on a slice of watermelon.

In computing, a nibble was a unit of memory equal to half a byte, or four bits, it’s origin apparently in the late 1950s among the IBM engineers developing the mainframe architecture for the System 360 (the S/360, 1964), the fundamentals of which remain in use even now.  Engineers do have a sense of humor and “nibble” was chosen to represent half a byte, based on the homophony of byte and bite although more serious types (and there were a lot of them about at IBM) preferred half-byte or tetrade (“a group of four things”, from the Ancient Greek τετράς (tetrás)) and by the time the concept ended up in the hands of networking and communications engineers, it could also be a semi-octet, quartet or quadbit.  More linguistically adventurous types coined nybble as an alternative spelling (a tribute to the spelling of byte) and this encouraged others who developed a protocol for the exchange executed with four-bit packets which they labeled nabble, a nod to “babble”.  The word babble, despite the common belief, is unrelated to the Latin Babel, from Biblical Hebrew בָּבֶל‎ (bāḇel) (Babylon) and was from the Middle English babelen, from the Old English bæblian (which existed also as wæflian (foolishly to talk), from the Proto-West Germanic bablōn & wablōn, variants of babalōn, from the Proto-Germanic babalōną (to chatter), from a variety of primitive Indo-European sources which were various ways of expressing the idea of vague speech or mumbling, all of which etymologist suspect were onomatopoeic mimicking of the infantile sounds of babies, something forms appear in just about every known European language.

Lindsay Lohan at a table of nibbles.

In the early days of computing when memory of all types was expensive (and sometimes actually rare), nibbles were helpful because four-bit architecture was an economical way to implement processes and many of the early microprocessors, of which the Intel 4004 (1971) is probably the best remembered because it was the core of so many pocket calculators and despite the enormous advances during the last half-century, 4-bit microcontrollers remain in use, simply because something like a basic washing machine demands nothing more.  The programmers of the early mainframes were demanding more but the hardware to handle that didn’t then exist and the nibble was the optimal way to ensure the most characters could be contained in a given number of bytes, making computations faster and debugging easier although, in a classic work-around, some “nibbles” did grow to 8 bits, the trick invoked to add functionality while maintaining backward computability but the increasing muscularity of hardware soon rendered the approach obsolete.

Crooked Hillary Clinton, nibbling.

The noun nibbler means (1) someone who nibbles, (2) a tool for cutting sheet metal and (3) a fish of the sea chub subfamily Girellinae and (4) a technique for duplicating copying protected floppy diskettes.  Copy-protected diskettes were common in the 1980s and were an attempt by software developers to prevent privacy.  When programs were distributed in a multi-diskette pack, it was common practice to have copy protection applied to only one, this being the one required to undertake an installation or make the software operative; it was essentially the same idea as “product activation” in the internet age.  As an additional layer, some manufacturers would include a counter on an installation diskette which would permit the product to be installed only a set number of times.  The idea behind the name was that the hacks “nibbled away” at the security layer(s) and examples included CopyIIPC & CopyIIAT (for low & double (160-180-320-360-720 kB) & high (1.2-1.44 MB) density diskettes respectively and Fast Hack 'Em.  It was something of a power race because within hours of Microsoft introducing a proprietary 1.7 MB format in an attempt to defeat the pirates, hacks & cracks appeared on the bulletin boards.

Joe Biden "nibbling" and a fish nibbling on the dead skin cells of feet. 

In July 2023, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) was observed at a public event “nibbling” on the jumpsuit of an infant girl being held in her moth’s arms.  Fox News, on the spot to record the nibble, claimed the unfortunate child was “scared” and while that may or may not be true, she certainly seemed not best pleased.  Fox News though were right that it was definitely a nibble and nibblin’ Joe used exactly the same action as the small (and presumably grateful) fish which live out their lives feasting on the dead skin cells of the feet of folk who pay a small sum to sit for a while and be nibbled.  For fish and us, it's a win-win situation.

Joe Biden and his wife Dr Jill Biden (b 1951) at a campaign stop, Council Bluffs, Iowa, 30 November, 2019.

Nibblin’ Joe had of course been seen before, photos of him enjoying his wife’s fingers circulating in December 2019 at the start of his No Malarkey bus tour laying out the groundwork for his campaign in the Democratic Party’s Iowa presidential caucuses the following February.  Whether the sight of him nibbling her fingers was responsible for his poor showing in the caucuses isn’t known but despite Pete Buttigieg (b 1982) gaining twice his support in Iowa, the nomination for 2020 was ultimately secured by Mr Biden (with the odd nudge from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which had decided they’d prefer to contest an election with someone who possibly was senile than with anyone who definitely was gay).

He was of course well known for being sniffin’ Joe, photographs of him leaning in, apparently to “sniff” the hair of women and girls (some young enough to be his great-granddaughters) circulating widely in the run-up to the 2020 election.  It was all very strange because it was such unusual behavior.  Had photographs appeared of a man of his age doing such things behind closed doors, it would have been a textbook case of public moral outrage but do so in public, knowing press and television cameras were focused on him and that sometimes the parents of the children were present, suggested a naïve innocence rather than anything distasteful.  Still, it was strange enough for the party hierarchy to discuss the matter with him and in a public statement, he acknowledged “things have changed” over the years and such tactility was no longer acceptable.  “I get it” he said.  Given the obvious discomfort displayed by some of the women sniffed, one might have thought he should have “got it” sooner.

Joe Biden and crooked Hillary Clinton, Scranton Airport, Pennsylvania, July 2016.

He’s also huggin’ Joe.  In July 2016, the greatest interest crooked Hillary Clinton (then in peak pantsuit mode) had in Joe Biden was thinking of some way he could be persuaded to serve as her secretary of state (foreign minister) once she’d enjoyed her landslide victory over Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021).  That may have accounted for the warmth of the welcome she offered when she waited at the bottom of the stairs to meet him at Scranton airport, Pennsylvania.  However, perhaps overcome with emotion (Scranton his childhood home), the hug she offered lingered longer than she would have liked, huggin’ Joe hanging on for some fifty seconds despite her twice “tapping out” (a double tap on the arm, the accepted non-verbal code to indicate a release is requested) and even trying to wriggle free from his grasp didn’t work.

Should the 2024 US presidential contest descend again to Biden vs Trump (something a majority of Americans seem resigned to rather than enthusiastic about), Mr Trump will again have to decide which moniker best suits his opponent.  In 2020 he used “sleepy Joe”, the unsubtle message denoting someone in advanced cognitive decline who was apt to need frequently to nap.  At the time, there were memes around the hair sniffing photographs using “creepy Joe” and it may have been tempting but Mr Trump’s own documented history of ungentlemanly conduct with women may have led his advisors to suggest he avoid casting that stone.  On that basis, “sniffin’ Joe”, “huggin’ Joe” and “nibblin Joe” are probably out too so it’s either stick with “sleepy Joe” or think of something new.  Whatever his flaws, Mr Trump has a good record of avoiding issues with narcotics and alcohol so the well publicized problems of Hunter Biden (b 1970) might offer some possibilities given the recent discovery of cocaine in the White House although there’s said to be no evidence linking the substance with any member of the Biden family.  In the run-up to the 2020 election he’d used “Basement Biden”, “Beijing Biden” & “Slow Joe” but none really captured the imagination in the way of “crooked Hillary”, “low energy Jeb”, “little Marco”, “mini Mike”, “Lying Ted” or “Fauxcahontas” (although the last one was coined by someone else and Mr Trump usually preferred “Pocahontas”).  He does of course have other matters to think about but the task will have been allocated to staff and it’ll be interesting to see if they conjure up anything fun.

Swirl

Swirl (pronounced swurl)

(1) A twist, as of hair around the head or of trimming on a hat; a whorl or curl.

(2) Any curving, twisting line, shape, or form.

(3) A descriptor of a state or confusion or disorder.

(4) A swirling movement; whirl; eddy; to turn or cause to turn in a twisting spinning fashion (used especially of running water).

(5) In fishing, the upward rushing of a fish through the water to take the bait.

(6) To move around or along with a whirling motion; a whirl; an eddy.

(7) To feel dizzy or giddy (the idea of a “spinning head”).

(8) To cause to whirl; twist.

(9) To be arranged in a twist, spiral or whorl.

(10) Figuratively, to circulate, especially in a social situation.

(11) In AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), to in some way mingle interracially (dating, sex, marriage etc) (dated; now rare).

(12) In internal combustion engines (ICE), as “swirl chamber”, a now generic term for a type of combustion chamber design.

1375-1425: From the late (northern) Middle English swirlen (to eddy, swirl) which was probably from the Old Norse svirla (to swirl), a frequentative form of Old Norse sverra (to swing, twirl).  It was cognate with the Scots swirl & sworl (to eddy, swirl), the Norwegian Nynorsk svirla (to whirl around; swirl), the Swedish sorla (to murmur, buzz) and the Dutch zwirrelen (to swirl).  Related forms included the dialectal German schwirrlen (to totter), the West Frisian swiere (to reel, whirl), the Dutch zwieren (to reel, swing around), the German Low German swirren (to whizz, whirl or buzz around), the German schwirren (to whirr, whizz, buzz), the Swedish svirra (to whirr about, buzz, hum), the Danish svirre (to whizz, whirr) and the English swarm.  The construct may be understood as the Germanic root swir- + -l- (the frequentative suffix).  Swirl is a noun & verb, swirled is a verb & adjective, swirling is a noun, verb & adjective, swirly is a noun & adjective, swirler is a noun and swirlingly is an adverb; the noun plural is swirls.

In English, the late (northern) Middle English noun swirlen (to eddy, swirl) seems originally to have come from a Scottish word, the origin of which is undocumented but etymologists seem convinced of the Scandinavian links.  The sense of a “whirling movement” emerged in the early nineteenth century although the meaning “a twist or convolution (in hair, the grain of wood etc)” was in use by 1786.  The verb as a transitive in the sense of “give a swirling or eddying motion to” was in use in the early sixteenth century but it may by then long have been in oral use, one text from the fourteenth containing an example and the source of that may have been either Germanic (such as the Dutch zwirrelen (to swirl) or the Norwegian Nynorsk svirla (to whirl around; swirl) or it may have evolved from the English noun.  The intransitive sense (have a whirling motion, form or whirl in eddies) dates from 1755.  The adjective swirly existed by 1785 in the sense of “twisted or knotty” but by the middle of the next century it had come also to describe anything “whirling or eddying”, applied especially to anything aquatic.  By 1912, it was used also to mean “full of contortions or twists” although “swirling” in this sense had by then been in (gradually increasing) use for a century.

Of curls & swirls: Lindsay Lohan with curls (left) and swirls (right).

In hairdressing, although customers sometimes use the words “curl” and “swirl” interchangeably, to professionals the use should be distinct.  A swirl is a movement or pattern in which hair is styled or arranged, typically with a rounded or circular pattern and swirls can be natural (the pattern at the crown of the head where the hair grows in a circular direction) or stylized (the look deliberately created and most obvious in “up-dos) or the formal styles associated with weddings and such).  The end result is a wide vista and the swirl is more a concept than something which exists within defined parameters.  A curl is (1) a type of hair texture or (2) the act of creating a curl with techniques using tools and/or product.  Some people (and there’s a strong ethnic (ie genetic) association) naturally have curly hair due to the shape of their follicles and within the rubric of what used to be called the ulotrichous, hairdressers classify curls as tyree types: (1) tight (small, corkscrew-like structures), (2) medium (tighter curls but with a softer appearance) and (3) long spirals with a large diameter).  Some commercial product also lists “ringlets” as a type but as tight, well-defined spirals, they’re really a descriptive variation of the tight or medium.  So, the essential difference is that a swirl is a pattern or movement of the hair, while a curl describes texture or shape and while a swirl is a matter or arrangement, a curl demands changing the hair’s natural texture or shape.  Swirls are very much set-piece styles associated with formal events while curls are a popular way to add volume, texture, and movement to the hair.

In internal combustion engines (ICE), the “swirl chamber is a now generic term used to describe a widely-used type of combustion chamber when upon introduction, the fuel-air mixture “swirls around” prior to detonation.  The design is not new, Buick’s straight-8 “Fireball” cylinder head using a simple implementation as long ago as the 1920s and it would serve the corporation into the 1950s.  The critical aspect of the engineering was the interaction between a receded exhaust valve and a rising in the top of the piston which “pushed” most of the fuel-air mixture into what was a comparatively small chamber, producing what was then called a “high-swirl” effect, the “Fireball” moniker gained by virtue of the actual combustion “ball of fire” being smaller in volume than was typical at the time.  The benefit of the approach was two-fold: a reduction in fuel consumption because less was required per power-stroke and (2) a more consistent detonation of the poor quality fuel then in use.  As fuel improved in quality and compression ratios rose (two of the dominant trends of the post-war years), the attraction of swirl chambers diminished but the other great trend was the the effective reduction in the cost of gasoline (petrol) and as cars became larger & heavier and roads more suited to higher speeds, the quest was for power.

Swirling around: The swirl process in a diesel combustion chamber.

Power in those years usually was gained by increased displacement & combustion chamber designs optimized for flow; significantly too, many popular designs of combustion chamber (most notably those in the so-called “wedge” heads) were cheaper to produce and in those years, few gave much thought to air-pollution.  The cars of the 1950s & 1960s had really toxic exhaust emissions.  By the mid 1960s however, the problem of air pollution in US cities was so obvious and the health effects were beginning to be publicized, as was the contribution to all of this by motor vehicles.  Regulations began to appear, California in 1961 (because of the high vehicle population and certain geographical & climatic phenomena, Los Angeles & San Francisco were badly affected by air pollution) passing the first statute and the manufacturers quickly agreed to adopt this standard nationally, fearing other states might begin to impose more onerous laws.  Those however arrived by mid-decade and although there was specific no road-map, few had any doubts the rules would become stricter as the years passed.  The industry’s only consolation was that these laws would be federal legislation so they would need to offer only one specification for the whole country (although the time would come when California would decide things should be tougher and by the 1970s there were “Californian cars” and “49 state cars”).  K Street wasn’t the force then it later became and the manufacturers conformed with (relatively) little protest.

Fuel was still cheap and plentiful but interest in swirl chambers was revived by the promise of cleaner burning engines.  Because it wasn’t new technology, the research attracted little attention outside of the engineering community but in 1970, German-born Swiss engineer Michael May (b 1934) demonstrated a Ford (Cologne) Capri with his take on the swirl chamber in a special cylinder head.  In a nod to the Buick original, May nick-named his head design the “Fireball” (professional courtesy a thing among engineers).  What Herr May had done was add a small groove (essentially a channel surrounding the intake valve) to the chamber, meaning during the last faction of a second of piston movement, the already swirling fuel-air mixture got a final nudge in the right direction: instead of there being a randomness to the turbulence of the mix, the shape was controlled and was thus able to be lower in volume (a smaller fireball) and precisely controlled at the point at which the spark triggered detonation; May called this a “higher swirl”.  Not only did this reduce exhaust emissions but it also cut fuel consumption for a given state of tune so designers could choose their desired path: more power for the same fuel consumption or the same power for less and within a short time, just about the whole world was taking great interest in fuel consumption.

Detail of the original "flathead" cylinder head of the Jaguar V12 (left) and the later "Fireball" head with swirl chambers (right).

A noted use of May’s design was its adoption in 1981 on Jaguar’s infamously thirsty V12 (1971-1997), an innovation celebrated by the addition of the HE (High Efficiency) label for the revised power-plant.  The notion of “high efficiency” was comparative rather than absolute and the V12 remained by most standards a thirsty beast but the improvement could be in the order of 40% (depending on conditions) and it was little worse than the similar displacement Mercedes-Benz V8s of the era which could match the Jaguar for power but not the turbine-like smoothness.  Threatened with axing due to its profligate ways, the swirl chambers saved the V12 and it survived another sixteen years which included two severe recessions.  Debuting even before the Watergate scandal, it lasted until the Monica Lewinsky affair.  In the decades since, computer simulations and high-speed photography have further enhanced the behavior of swirl & turbulence, the small fireballs now contained in the center of the chamber, prevent heat from radiating to the surrounding surfaces, ensuring the energy (heat) is expended on pushing the piston down to being the next cycle, not wasting it by heating metal.  The system is popular also in diesel engines.

Basketweave

Basketweave (pronounced bah-skit-weev (U) or bas-kit-weev (non-U))

(1) A plain woven pattern with two or more groups of warp and weft threads are interlaced to render a checkerboard appearance resembling that of a woven basket; historically applied especially (in garment & fabric production) to wool & linen items and (in furniture, flooring etc), fibres such as cane, bamboo etc.

(2) Any constructed item assembled in this pattern.

(4) In the natural environment, any structure (animal, vegetable or mineral) in this pattern.

(5) In automotive use, a stylized wheel, constructed usually in an alloy predominately of aluminum and designed loosely in emulation of the older spooked (wire) wheels.   

1920–1925: The construct was basket + weave (and used variously as basketweave, basket-weave & basket weave depending on industry, product, material etc).  Basket was from the thirteenth century Middle English basket (vessel made of thin strips of wood, or other flexible materials, interwoven in a great variety of forms, and used for many purposes), from the Anglo-Norman bascat, of obscure origin.  Bascat has attracted much interest from etymologists but despite generations of research, its source has remained elusive.  One theory is it’s from the Late Latin bascauda (kettle, table-vessel), from the Proto-Brythonic (in Breton baskodenn), from the Proto-Celtic baskis (bundle, load), from the primitive Indo-European bhask- (bundle) and presumably related to the Latin fascis (bundle, faggot, package, load) and a doublet of fasces.  In ancient Rome, the bundle was a material symbol of a Roman magistrate's full civil and military power, known as imperium and it was adopted as the symbol of National Fascist Party in Italy; it’s thus the source of the term “fascism”.  Not all are convinced, the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noting there is no evidence of such a word in Celtic unless later words in Irish and Welsh (sometimes counted as borrowings from English) are original.  However, if the theory is accepted, the implication is the original meaning was something like “wicker basket”, wicker one of the oldest known methods of construction.  The word was first used to mean “a goal in the game of basketball” in 1892, the use extended to “a score in basketball” by 1898.  In the 1980s, as operating systems evolved, programmers would have had the choice of “basket” or “bucket” to describe the concept of a “place where files are stored or reference prior to processing” and they choose the latter, thus creating the “download bucket”, “handler bucket” etc.  On what basis the choice was made isn’t known but it may be that baskets, being often woven, are prone to leak while non-porous buckets are not.  Programmers hate leaks.

A classic basketweave pattern.

Weave was from the Middle English weven (to weave), from the Old English wefan (to weave), from the Proto-West Germanic weban, from the Proto-Germanic webaną, from the primitive Indo-European webh (to weave, braid).  The sense of weave as “to wander around; not travel in a straight line” was also in the early fourteenth century absorbed by the Middle English weven and was probably from the Old Norse veifa (move around, wave), related to the Latin vibrare, from vibrō (to vibrate, to rattle, to twang; to deliver or deal (a blow)), from the  Proto-Italic wibrāō, denominative of wibros, from the primitive Indo-European weyp- (to oscillate, swing) or weyb-.  The root-final consonant has never been clear and reflexes of both are found across Indo-European languages.  The verb sense of “something woven” dates from the 1580s while the meaning “method or pattern of weaving” was from 1888.  The notion of “to move from one place to another” has been traced to the twelfth century and was presumably derived from the movements involved in the act of weaving and while it’s uncertain quite how the meaning evolved, it’s documented from early fourteenth century as conveying “move to and fro” and in the 1590s as “move side to side”,  In pugilism it would have been a natural technique from the moment the first punch was thrown but formally it entered the language of boxing (as “duck & weave”) in 1918, often as weaved or weaving.  By analogy, the phrase “duck & weave” came to be used of politicians attempting to avoid answering questions.  In the military, weave was also used to describe evasive maneuvers undertaken on land or in the air but not at sea, the Admiralty preferring zig-zag, as the pattern would appear on charts.  The fencing method known as teenage is a kind of basketweave.  Basketweave is a noun & adjective and (in irregular use) a verb and basketweaver is a noun; the noun plural is basketweaves.

Attentive basketweavers: Students in a lecture  (B.A. (Peace Studies)) at Whitworth University, Spokane, Washington, USA.

A basketweaver is of course “one who weaves baskets” but in idiomatic use, basketweaver is used also to mean “one whose skills have been rendered redundant by automation or other changes in technology”.  The term “underwater basketweaving” is used of university course thought useless (in the sense of not being directly applicable to anything vocational) and is applied especially to the “studies” genre (gender studies, peace studies, women’s studies et al).  Beyond education, it can be used of anything thought “lame, pointless, useless, worthless, a waste of time etc”.  Basketweaving is also a descriptor of a long and interlinked narrative of lies, distinguished from an ad-hoc lie in that in a basketweave of lies, there are dependencies between the untruths and, done with sufficient care, each can act to reinforce another, enabling an entire persona to be constructed.  It’s the most elaborate version of a “basket of lies” and can work but, like a woven basket, if one strand becomes lose and separates from the structure, under stress, the entire basket can unravel, spilling asunder the contents.

Official portrait of Representative the honorable George Santos.

A classic basketweaver is George Anthony Devolder Santos (b 1988) who, in the 2022 mid-term elections for the US Congress, was elected as a representative (Republican) for New York's 3rd congressional district.  Although he seems to have passed untroubled through the Republican Party’s candidate vetting process, after his election a number of media outlets investigated and found his public persona was almost wholly untrue and contained many dubious or blatantly false claims about, inter-alia, his mother, personal biography, education, criminal record, work history, financial status, ancestry, ethnicity, sexual orientation & religion.  When confronted, Mr Santos did admit to lying about certain matters, was vague about some and ducked and weaved to avoid discussing others, especially the fraud charges in Brazil he avoided by fleeing the country.  Although a life-long Roman Catholic, Mr Santos on a number of occasions claimed to be Jewish, even fabricating stories about his family suffering losses during the Holocaust.  Later, after the lies were exposed, he told a newspaper “I never claimed to be Jewish.  I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.”  In the right circumstances, delivered on-stage by a Jewish comedian, it might have been a good punch-line.

Few are laughing however and Mr Santos is under investigation by both Brazilian and US authorities.  However, despite many calls (from Republicans and Democrats alike) that he resign from Congress, Mr Santos has refused and the Republican house leadership, working with an unexpectedly paper-thin majority, has shown no enthusiasm to pursue the matter.  What Mr Santos has done is expose the limitations of the basketweaving technique.  While a carefully built construct can work, it relies on no loose threads being exposed and while this can be manageable for those not public figures, for anyone exposed to investigation, in the twenty-first century such deceptions are probably close to impossible to achieve and Mr Santos was probably lured into excessive self-confidence because, in relative anonymity, he had for years managed to deceive, fooling many including the Republican Party and perhaps even himself.  In retrospect, he might one day ponder how he ever thought he’s get away with it.  One thing that remains unclear is how he should be addressed.  Members of the House of Representatives typically are addressed as "the honorable" in formal use but this is merely a courtesy title and is not a requirement.  The use is left to individual members and as far as is known, Mr Santos has not yet indicated whether he wishes people to address him as “the honorable George Santos”.

Borrani wire wheels on 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 (Daytona) coupé (far left), “Hotwire” wheels on 1974 Holden Torana SL/R 5000 (centre left), “Basketweave” wheels on 1990 Jaguar XJS coupé (centre right) & 1986 Holden Piazza (far right).

Basketweave wheels remain popular (although some feelings may be strained when it comes time to clean the things) but the use of “basketweave” to describe the construction was a bit of a stretch and some prefer “lattice” which seems architecturally closer.  Were the motif of the classic basketweave to be applied to a wheel it would look something those used on the Holden Piazza, briefly (1986-1989) available on the Australian market.  Because it’s not easy successfully to integrate something inherently square or rectangular into a small, circular object, such designs never caught on although variations were tried.  The “basketweave” wheels which did endure owed little to the classic basketweave patters although there are identifiable hints in the construction so people understand the connection and rather than thought of as a continuation of the design elements drawn from the traditions of weaving, the wheels really established a fork of the meaning.  As a design, they were an evolution of the “hotwire” style popular in the 1970s when was a deliberate attempt to echo the style of the classic spoked (wire) wheels which, being lighter and offering better brake cooling properties than steel disk wheels, were for decades the wheel of choice for high performance vehicles.  That changed in the 1960s as speeds & vehicle weight rose and tyres became wider and stickier, a combination of factors which meant wire wheels were no longer strong enough to endure the rising stresses.  Additionally, the wire wheel was labor intensive to make in an era when that beginning to matter, wheels cast from an alloy predominately of aluminum were cheaper to produce as well as stronger.

Lindsay Lohan in Miami, clothes by Amiparism, Interview Magazine, December 2022.  The car is a Jaguar XJS convertible with the factory-fitted basketweave (or lattice) wheels.

1988 Porsche 911 (930) Turbo Cabriolet (left) and Hans Stuck (1900–1978) in Auto Union Type C (6.0 litre V16), Shelsley Walsh hill climb, Worcestershire, England, June 1936 (right).

The Porsche is fitted with three-piece, 15 inch BBS RS basketweave wheels with satin lips: The rear units are 11 inches in width (running 345/35 tyres) while at the front the wheels are 9 inches wide (mounted with 225/50 tyres).  Although advances in electronics since 1988 have made the behaviour of the most powerful rear-engined Porsches easier to tame, in 1988, the best way to ameliorate the inherent idiosyncrasies of the configuration was to fit wider wheels, increasing the rubber’s contact area with the road.  The idea was not new, both the straight-eight Mercedes-Benz W125 and the V16 Type C Auto-Union Grand Prix cars of 1937 using twin rear tyres when run in hill climbs.  The Porsche 930 (1975-1989) quickly gained the nickname “widow maker” but the Auto Union, which combined 520 horsepower and a notable rearward weight bias with tyres narrower than are these days used on delivery vans, deserved the moniker more.  Fitting the second set of rear wheels did help but the handling characteristics could never be made wholly benign and it wasn’t until the late 1950s that mid-engined Grand Prix cars became manageable and notably, they had about half the power of the German machines of the 1930s.

Pell

Pell (pronounced pel)

(1) An animal skin, fur or hide.

(2) A lined cloak or its lining.

(3) A roll of parchment; a record kept on parchment.

(4) As a Sussex dialectical form, a body of water somewhere between a pond and a lake in size.

(5) An upright post, often padded and covered in hide, used to practice strikes with bladed weapons such as swords or glaives.

(6) As Pell Office, a department of the English Exchequer (abolished in 1834).

Mid 1300s: From the Middle English pel (skin, hide), a roll of parchment, from the Anglo-French pell and the Old French pel (skin, hide (which by the thirteenth century it had evolved into peau which endures in Modern French)), from the Latin pellem & pellis (skin, leather, parchment, hide), from the Proto-Italic pelnis, from the primitive Indo-European pel- (skin, hide (also to cover, wrap; skin, hide; cloth)), the source of the modern pelt and distantly related to fell and film.  It was cognate with the Welsh pell (far), from the primitive Indo-European kwel and in Welsh, the plural was pell, the equative pelled, the comparative pellach and the superlative pellaf.  In the modern age, a frequently used derivation is rheolydd pell (remote control).  Pell is a noun or proper noun, a verb and an adjective; the noun plural is pells.  The present participle is pelling, the past participle pelled.

Pell-mell (confusedly; in an impetuous rush; with indiscriminate violence, energy, or eagerness) dates from the 1570s and was from the French pêle-mêle, from the twelfth century Old French pesle mesle, thought to be a jingling rhyme on the second element, which is from the stem of the verb mesler (to mix, to mingle".  The earliest known form in English was the phonetic borrowing from the French as “pelly melly”.  The primitive Indo-European root pel- (skin, hide) was a significant and productive pre-modern word, reflecting the importance of hides and skins in the economies of all societies, being related to fell (skin or hide of an animal), the Old English filmen (membrane, thin skin, foreskin),  pellagra (a disease characterised by skin lesions and mental confusion), pellicle (a thin skin or surface film), film (a thin layer of some substance; a pellicle; a membranous covering, causing opacity), pelt (skin of a fur-bearing animal), pillion (a pad behind the saddle of a horse for a second rider) & surplice (a thin, liturgical vestment of the Christian Church).

Cardinal George Pell in ecclesiastical regalia.  This was an exhibit introduced by the cardinal counsel to support the defence that the allegations against him were (as described) technically impossible (in the place and within the time alleged) because of the cut of the garments. 

The origin of the surname Pell was metonymic occupational name for a dealer in furs, from the Middle English & Old French pel (skin, hide), a similar use to the Germanic forms Pelle & Pfell, the South German spellings from the Middle High German phellee & phelle (purple silk cloth).  In parallel, in England and Flanders, the surname Pell emerged as a pet form of Peter, a biblical name much admired by twelfth century Christian Crusaders and associated with the claim of St Peter, the founder of the Christian church, the name from the Ancient Greek word petrus (rock).  Because there was much commercial and population exchange between Flanders and England, Pell was also adopted as a surname in the former.  Even more so than in England, Flemish surnames were characterized by many variations in spelling and one reason for this was there were no real spelling rules in Medieval English.  Spellings were influenced by official court languages (Latin & French) and there was little consistency, changes happening between the efforts of one scribe and the next.  Names were recorded as they sounded so even the differences in pronunciation between one official or priest and another could induce differences and it wasn’t uncommon for people to have had their names registered in several different forms throughout their lives, something which makes difficult the work of genealogical researchers in the modern era.  Even within English, the variations were legion but there was a linguistic uniqueness among Flemish settlers in England, who spoke a language closely related to Dutch, meaning the pronunciation passed through another unfamiliar filter and anglicization was common, whole syllables sometimes deleted.  Pell has been spelled Pell, Pelle, Pel, Pels, Pells, Pelles & Pelf.

Cardinal Pell with Pope Benedict XVI and former Australian prime-minister Kevin Rudd.

In England, dating from the mid-fourteenth century, the Exchequer’s Pell Office was a department in which the receipts and payments were entered upon two rolls of parchment, the one called the introitta, which was the record of monies received, and the other the exitus, or the record of monies issued (ie credit & debit).  The office gained its name from the ledger entries being made in ink upon rolls called pells, from the Latin pellis (skin, leather, parchment, hide) which, while not exactly the blockchain of their day, represented a considerable advance in accuracy and reliability than the distributed and haphazard methods of the past and functionally similar institutions were established in Scotland and Ireland.  In the sixteenth century the pells (the parchment rolls) were replaced by books but the office retained its name until its abolition in 1834.  The lists of the name of holders of the office of Clerks of the Pells in the Exchequer read like something of a tale of English political corruption and nepotism.

Cardinal Pell makes a point.

The death at 81 of Australian Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) was announced by the Holy See on Tuesday 10 January; he died after complications following “routine hip surgery”.  Created a cardinal in 2003, he was appointed the Vatican’s inaugural Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy (2014-2019 (effectively the treasurer or finance minister)), having earlier served as Archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney.  Although a player of real significance in the culture wars and later among the factions of the Vatican’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, the cardinal came to international attention when in 2018 he was convicted in the Supreme Court of Victoria on five charges of child sexual abuse, perpetrated against two boys of thirteen in a Cathedral a quarter-century earlier.  Sentenced to prison, the cardinal was the most senior Church figure ever jailed for such offences.  The conviction was upheld in a majority judgement (2-1) of the Victorian court of appeal but was in 2020 quashed in a unanimous (7-0) ruling by the High Court of Australia.  The cardinal served 13 months in prison.

Cardinal Pell accompanying to court defrocked Catholic priest and convicted child sex offender Gerald Ridsdale (b 1934), now serving a 36 year sentence.

As a general principle, actions in law against a person die with them but still afoot is a civil lawsuit, launched by the father of a choirboy who prosecutors alleged Cardinal Pell abused.  The action is proceeding because it was lodged against both the late cardinal and the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, something now possible because the old arrangement, under which the Catholic Church could not be sued because at law it had no more status than the local bridge club, has been reformed.  It’s of great interest because while the High Court quashed Pell’s criminal conviction because the Crown had not proven he was guilty (of that with which he was charged on the in the place and at the time alleged) “beyond reasonable doubt”, in civil proceedings, the standard to establish guilt is the less onerous “on the balance of probabilities”.  It’s thus a matter analogous with the civil trial of OJ Simpson (b 1947) which followed his acquittal on murder charges; in the civil trial, the court found against Simpson and awarded the plaintiffs US$33.5 million for his victims' wrongful deaths.  The plaintiff is seeking as yet unspecified damages for mental injury he alleges he suffered after learning of the allegations against Pell, specifically compensation for "nervous shock" he endured as a result of losing his son and learning about the allegations a year later.  The term “nervous shock” is a creature of law with its own history of precedents and tests and describes a recognised mental disorder, injury or illness caused by the actions or omissions of another party and is not entirely aligned with the term which might be used in medicine or psychiatry.  Because it’s now possible to sue the Catholic Church as an entity, in his statement of claim, the plaintiff argues the church is liable as it breached its duty of care.

Cardinal Pell with former Archbishop of Melbourne Sir Frank Little (1925–2008), found by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to have led a culture of secrecy in the Melbourne archdiocese designed to hide complaints against priests and protect the church's reputation from scandal and financial liability.

Given the extraordinary volume of child abuse cases involving Roman Catholic clergy, the case is being watched with interest, not least because of the findings of the earlier Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse which ran for several years, interviewed thousands and found Pell had known of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action.  Pell rejected the commission’s findings, insisting they were "not supported by evidence".  That interplay of findings and other histories mean the case has assumed greater significance because of the argument the church will be liable for the wrongdoings of its priests and bishops under the doctrine of vicarious liability.  There are defences to that but none seem obviously applicable and it’ll be interesting to see if a (presumably confidential) settlement is agreed or the matter proceeds to trial.

Cardinal Pell and Tony Abbott, in church.

Still, in death the late cardinal has his defenders.  Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015), a lay-Catholic who in his youth trained for several years for the priesthood (a background which would later, among his parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the aisle, gain for him the moniker “the mad monk”) eulogized Pell as a “saint for our times” and “an inspiration for the ages”, damning the charges he’d faced as “a modern form of crucifixion”.  Time will tell if some pope might take up Mr Abbott’s hint and begin the process to create another Saint George (all would probably agree just now might be “too soon”) but the flourish “modern form of crucifixion” displayed a flair with words Mr Abbott but seldom displayed during his years in office.