Polka

Polka (pronounced pohl-kuh or poh-kuh)

(1) A lively couple dance of Bohemian origin, with music in duple meter (three steps and a hop, in fast duple time).

(2) A piece of music for such a dance or in its rhythm.

(3) To dance the polka.

(4) As polka dot (sometimes polka-dot), a dot or round spot (printed, woven, or embroidered) repeated to form a pattern on a surface, especially textiles; a term for anything (especially clothing) with this design.

1844: From the French polka, from the German Polka, probably from the Czech polka, (the dance, literally "Polish woman" (Polish Polka), feminine form of Polak (a Pole).  The word might instead be a variant of the Czech půlka (half (půl the truncated version of půlka used in special cases (eg telling the time al la the English “half four”))) a reference to the half-steps of Bohemian peasant dances.  It may even be influenced by or an actual merger of both.  The dance first came into vogue in 1835 in Prague, reaching London in the spring of 1842; Johann Strauss (the younger) wrote many polkas.  Polka was a verb by 1846 as (briefly) was polk; notoriously it’s often mispronounced as poke-a-dot.

Lindsay Lohan in polka dot dress, Los Angeles, 2010.

Polka dot (a pattern consisting of dots (usually) uniform in size and arrangement) is used especially on women’s clothing (men seem permitted accessories such as ties, socks, scarves, handkerchiefs etc) and is attested from 1851 although both polka-spot and polka-dotted are documented in 1849.  

Why the name came to be associated with the then widely popular dance is unknown but most speculate it was likely an associative thing, spotted dresses popular with the Romani (Roma; Traveller; Gypsy) girls who often performed the polka dance.  Fashion journals note that, in the way of such things, the fad faded fast but there was a revival in 1873-1874 and the polka dot since has never gone away, waxing and waning in popularity but always there somewhere.

In fashion, it’s understood that playing with the two primary variables in polka dot fabrics (the color mix and the size of the dots) radically can affect the appeal of an outfit.  The classic black & white combination of course never fails but some colors just don’t work together, either because the contrast in insufficient or because the mix produces something ghastly.  Actually, combinations judged ghastly if rendered in a traditional polka dot can successfully be used if the dots are small enough in order to produce something which will appear at most angles close to a solid color yet be more interesting because of the effect of light and movement.  However, once dots are too small, the design ceases to be a polka dot.  It’s not precisely defined what the minimum size of a dot need to be but, as a general principle, its needs to be recognizably “dotty” to the naked eye at a distance of a few feet.

There’s also the sexual politics of the polka dot, Gloria Moss, Professor of Marketing & Management at Buckinghamshire New University and a visiting professor at the Ecole Superieure de Gestion (ESG) in Paris exploring the matter in her book Why Men Like Straight Lines and Women Like Polka Dots: Gender and Visual Psychology (Psyche Books, 2014, pp 237).  An amusing mix which both reviews the academic literature and flavors the text with anecdotes, Dr Moss constructs a thesis in which the preferences of men and their designs lie in the origins of modern humanity and the need for hunters to optimize their vision on distant horizons while maintaining sufficient peripheral vision to maintain situational awareness, threats on the steppe or savannah coming from any direction.  So men focus of straight line, ignoring color or extraneous detail unless either are essential to the hunt and thus survival, perhaps of the whole tribe.  By contrast, women’s preferences are rooted in the daily routine of the gatherer those millions of years ago, vision focused on that which was close, the nuts and berries to be picked and the infants with their rounded features to be nurtured.  From this came the premium afforded to responsiveness to round shapes, color contrasts and detail.  Being something of an intrusion into the world of the geneticists and anthropologists, reaction to the book wasn't wholly positive but few can have found reading it dull or unchallenging.  Of course, it won't surprise women that in men there is still much of the stone age but, for better or worse, Dr Moss concluded some of them belong there too. 

Dot

Dot (pronounced dot)

(1) A small, roundish mark made with or as if with a pen.

(2) A minute or small spot on a surface; speck.

(3) Anything relatively small or speck-like.

(4) A small specimen, section, amount, or portion; a small portion or specimen (the use meaning “a lump or clod” long obsolete).

(5) In grammar, a punctuation mark used to indicate the end of a sentence or an abbreviated part of a word; a full stop; a period.

(6) In the Latin script, a point used as a diacritical mark above or below various letters, as in Ȧ, Ạ, Ḅ, Ḃ, Ċ.

(7) In computing, a differentiation point internet addresses etc and in file names a separation device (although historically a marker between the filename and file type when only one dot per name was permitted in early files systems, the best known of which was the 8.3 used by the various iterations of CP/M & DOS (command.com, image.tif, config.sys etc).

(8) In music, a point placed after a note or rest, to indicate that the duration of the note or rest is to be increased one half. A double dot further increases the duration by one half the value of the single dot; a point placed under or over a note to indicate that it is to be played staccato.

(9) In telegraphy. a signal of shorter duration than a dash, used in groups along with groups of dashes (-) and spaces to represent letters, as in Morse code.

(10) In printing, an individual element in a halftone reproduction.

(11) In printing, the mark that appears above the main stem of the letters i, j.

(12) In the sport of cricket, as “dot ball” a delivery not scored from.

(13) In the slang of ballistics as “dotty” (1) buckshot, the projectile from a or shotgun or (2) the weapon itself.

(14) A female given name, a clipping of form of Dorothea or Dorothy.

(15) A contraction in many jurisdictions for Department of Transportation (or Transport).

(16) In mathematics and logic, a symbol (·) indicating multiplication or logical conjunction; an indicator of dot product of vectors: X · Y

(17) In mathematics, the decimal point (.),used for separating the fractional part of a decimal number from the whole part.

(18) In computing and printing, as dot matrix, a reference to the method of assembling shapes by the use of dots (of various shapes) in a given space.  In casual (and commercial) use it was use of impact printers which used a hammer with a dot-shape to strike a ribbon which impacted the paper (or other surface) to produce representations of shapes which could include text.  Technically, laser printers use a dot-matrix in shape formation but the use to describe impact printers caught on and became generic.  The term “dots per inch” (DPI) is a measure of image intensity and a literal measure of the number of dots is an area.  Historically, impact printers were sold on the basis of the number of pins (hammers; typically 9, 18 or 24) in the print head which was indicative of the quality of print although some software could enhance the effect.

(19) In civil law, a woman's dowry.

(20) In video gaming, the abbreviation for “damage over time”, an attack that results in light or moderate damage when it is dealt, but that wounds or weakens the receiving character, who continues to lose health in small increments for a specified period of time, or until healed by a spell or some potion picked up.

(21) To mark with or as if with a dot or dots; to make a dot-like shape.

(22) To stud or diversify with or as if with dots (often in the form “…dotting the landscape…” etc).

(23) To form or cover with dots (such as “the dotted line”).

(24) In colloquial use, to punch someone.

(25) In cooking, to sprinkle with dabs of butter, chocolate etc.

Pre 1000: It may have been related to the Old English dott (head of a boil) although there’s no evidence of such use in Middle English.  Dottle & dit were both derivative of Old English dyttan (to stop up (and again, probably from dott)) and were cognate with Old High German tutta (nipple), the Norwegian dott and the Dutch dott (lump).  Unfortunately there seems no link between dit and the modern slang zit (pimple), a creation of US English unknown until the 1960s.  The Middle English dot & dotte were from the Old English dott in the de-elaborated sense of “a dot, a point on a surface), from the Proto-West Germanic dott, from the Proto-Germanic duttaz (wisp) and were cognate with the Saterland Frisian Dot & Dotte (a clump), the Dutch dot (lump, knot, clod), the Low German Dutte (a plug) and the Swedish dott (a little heap, bunch, clump).  The use in civil jurisdiction of common law where dot was a reference to “a woman's dowry” dates from the early 1820s and was from the French, from the Latin dōtem, accusative of dōs (dowry) and related to dōtāre (to endow) and dāre to (give).  For technical or descript reasons dot is a modifier or modified as required including centered dot, centred dot, middle dot, polka dot, chroma dot, day dot, dot-com, dot-comer (or dot-commer), dot release and dots per inch (DPI).  The synonyms can (depending on context) include dab, droplet, fleck, speck, pepper, sprinkle, stud, atom, circle, speck, grain, iota, jot, mite, mote, particle, period, pinpoint, point, spot and fragment.  Dot & dotting are nouns & verbs, dotter is a noun, dotlike & dotal are adjectives, dotted is an adjective & verb and dotty is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is dots.

Although in existence for centuries, and revived with the modern meaning (mark) in the early sixteenth century, the word appears not to have been in common use until the eighteenth and in music, the use to mean “point indicating a note is to be lengthened by half” appears by at least 1806.  The use in the Morse code used first on telegraphs dates from 1838 and the phrase “on the dot” (punctual) is documented since 1909 as a in reference to the (sometimes imagined) dots on a clock’s dial face.  In computing, “dot-matrix” (printing and screen display) seems first to have been used in 1975 although the processes referenced had by then been in use for decades.  The terms “dotted line” is documented since the 1690s.  The verb dot (mark with a dot or dots) developed from the noun and emerged in the mid eighteenth century.  The adjective dotty as early as the fourteenth century meant “someone silly” and was from "dotty poll" (dotty head), the first element is from the earlier verb dote.  By 1812 it meant also literally “full of dots” while the use to describe shotguns, their loads and the pattern made on a target was from the early twentieth century.  The word microdot was adopted in 1971 to describe “tiny capsules of Lysergic acid diethylamide" (LSD or “acid”); in the early post-war years (most sources cite 1946) it was used in the espionage community to describe (an extremely reduced photograph able to be disguised as a period dot on a typewritten manuscript.

Lindsay Lohan in polka-dots, enjoying a frozen hot chocolate, Serendipity 3 restaurant, New York, 7 January 2019.

The polka-dot (a pattern consisting of dots of uniform size and arrangement," especially on fabric) dates from 1844 and was from the French polka, from the German Polka, probably from the Czech polka, (the dance, literally "Polish woman" (Polish Polka), feminine form of Polak (a Pole).  The word might instead be a variant of the Czech půlka (half (půl the truncated version of půlka used in special cases (eg telling the time al la the English “half four”))) a reference to the half-steps of Bohemian peasant dances.  It may even be influenced by or an actual merger of both.  The dance first came into vogue in 1835 in Prague, reaching London in the spring of 1842; Johann Strauss (the younger) wrote many polkas.  Polka was a verb by 1846 as (briefly) was polk; notoriously it’s sometimes mispronounced as poke-a-dot.

In idiomatic use, to “dot one's i's and cross one's t's” is to be meticulous in seeking precision; an attention to even the smallest detail.  To be “on the dot” is to be exactly correct or to have arrived at exactly at the time specified.  The ides of “joining the dots” or “connecting the dots” is to make connections between various pieces of data to produce useful information.  In software, the process is literal in that it refers to the program “learning: how accurately to fill in the missing pieces of information between the data points generated or captured.  “The year dot” is an informal expression which means “as long ago as can be remembered”.  To “sign on the dotted line” is to add one’s signature in the execution of a document (although there may be no actual dotted line on which to sign).

Dots, floating points, the decimal point and the Floating Point Unit (FPU) 

When handling numbers, decimal points (the dot) are of great significance.  In cosmology a tiny difference in values beyond the dot can mean the difference between hitting one’s target and missing by thousands of mile and in finance the placement can dictate the difference between ending up rich or poor.  Vital then although not all were much bothered: when Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) was Chancellor of the Exchequer (1886), he found the decimal point “tiresome”, telling the Treasury officials “those damned dot” were not his concern and according to the mandarins he was inclined to “round up to the nearest thousand or million as the case may be”.  His son (Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) when Chancellor (1924-1929)) paid greater attention to the dots but his term at 11 Downing Street, although longer, remains less well-regarded.

In some (big, small or complex) mathematical computations performed on computers, the placement of the dot is vital.  What are called “floating-point operations” are accomplished using a representation of real numbers which can’t be handled in the usual way; both real numbers, decimals & fractions can be defined or approximated using floating-point representation, the a numerical value represented by (1) a sign, (2) a significand and (3) an exponent.  The sign indicates whether the number is positive or negative, the significand is a representation of the fractional part of the number and the exponent determines the number’s scale.  In computing, the attraction of floating-point representation is that a range of values can be represented with a relatively small number of bits and although the capability of computers has massively increased, so has the ambitions of those performing big, small or complex number calculations so the utility remains important.  At the margins however (very big & very small), the finite precision of traditional computers will inevitably result in “rounding errors” so there can be some degree of uncertainty, something compounded by there being even an “uncertainty about the uncertainty”.  Floating point calculations therefore solve many problems and create others, the core problem being there will be instances where the problems are not apparent.  Opinion seems divided on whether quantum computing will mean the uncertainty will vanish (at least with the very big if not the very small).

In computer hardware, few pieces have so consistently been the source of problems as Floating point units (FPUs), the so-called “math co-processors”.  Co-processors were an inherent part of the world of the mainframes but came to be thought of as something exotic in personal computers (PC) because there was such a focus on the central processing unit (CPU) (8086, 68020, i486 et al) and some co-processors (notably graphical processing units (GPU)) have assumed a cult-like following.  The evolution of the FPU is interesting in that as manufacturing techniques improved they were often integrated into the CPU architecture before again when the PC era began, Intel’s early 808x & 8018x complimented by the optional 8087 FPU, the model replicated by the 80286 & 80287 pairing, the latter continuing for some time as the only available FPU for almost two years after the introduction of the 80386 (later renamed i386DX in an attempt to differential genuine “Intel Inside” silicon from the competition which had taken advantage of the difficulties in trade-marking numbers).  The delay was due to the increasing complexity of FPU designs and flaws were found in the early 387s.

Intel i487SX & i486SX.

The management of those problems was well-managed by Intel but with the release of the i487 in 1991 they kicked an own goal.  First displayed in 1989, the i486DX had been not only a considerable advance but included an integrated FPU (also with some soon-corrected flaws).  That was good but to grab some of the market share from those making fast 80386DX clones, Intel introduced the i486SX, marketed as a lower-cost chip which was said to be an i486 with a reduced clock speed and without the FPU.  For many users that made sense because anyone doing mostly word processing or other non-number intensive tasks really had little use for the FPU but then Intel introduced the i487SX, a FPU unit which, in the traditional way, plugged into a socket on the system-board (as even them motherboards were coming to be called) al la a 287 or 387.  However, it transpired i487SX was functionally almost identical to an i486DX, the only difference being that when plugged-in, it checked to ensure the original i486SX was still on-board, the reason being Intel wanted to ensure no market for used i486SXs (then selling new for hundreds of dollars) emerged.  To achieve this trick, the socket for the I487 had an additional pin and it was the presence of this which told the system board to disable the i486SX.  The i487SX was not a success and Intel suffered what was coming to be called “reputational damage”.

Dual socket system-board with installed i486SX, the vacant socket able to handle either the i486DX or the i487SX.

The i487SX affair was however a soon forgotten minor blip in Intel’s upward path.  In 1994, Intel released the first of the Pentium CPUs all of which were sold with an integrated FPU, establishing what would become Intel’s standard architectural model.  Like the early implementations of the 387 & 487, there were flaws and upon becoming aware of the problem, Intel initiated a rectification programme.  They did not however issue a recall or offer replacements to anyone who had already purchased a flawed Pentium and, after pressure was exerted, undertook to offer replacements only to those users who could establish their pattern of use indicated they would actually be in some way affected.  Because of the nature of the bug, that meant “relatively few”.  The angst however didn’t subside and a comparison was made with a defect in a car which would manifest only if speeds in excess of 125 mph (200 km/h) were sustained for prolonged periods.  Although in that case only “relatively few” might suffer the fault, nobody doubted the manufacturer would be compelled to rectify all examples sold and such was the extent of the reputational damage that Intel was compelled to offer what amounted to a “no questions asked” replacement offer.  The corporation’s handing of the matter has since often been used as a case study in academic institutions by those studying law, marketing, public relations and such.

Pencil

Pencil (pronounced pen-suhl)

(1) A slender tube, usually of wood, metal or plastic containing a core or strip of graphite (still referred to as lead) or a solid coloring material, sharpened to some extent, used for writing or drawing.

(2) A stick of cosmetic coloring material for use on the eyebrows, eyelids etc.

(3) Anything shaped or used like a pencil, as a stick of medicated material.

(4) In optics (from the seventeenth century), an aggregate or collection of rays of light, especially when diverging from or converging to a point.

(5) In geometry (from the nineteenth century), a set of geometric objects with a common property, such as the set of lines that pass through a given point in a projective plane.

(6) As a verb, "to pencil in", to schedule or list tentatively, as or as if by writing down in pencil rather than in more permanent ink.

(7) In animation, as "pencil-test", a first take of pictures, historically on black and white film stock, now emulated in software; also used to describe a test which assesses (1) the viability of bralessness (Western tradition) or (2) one's attainment of "real womanhood" (Chinese use).

(8) In medicine, a small medicated bougie (from the nineteenth century and now archaic).

(9) A paintbrush (from the fourteenth century and now archaic).

1350–1400: From the Middle English pencel (an artist’s fine brush of camel hair, used for painting, manuscript illustration etc), from the Anglo-Norman and Old French pincil (artist's paintbrush) from the Old & Middle French pincel from the Medieval Latin pincellus, from the Latin pēnicillum & pēnicillus (painter's brush, hair-pencil (literally "little tail"), a diminutive of pēniculus (brush), a diminutive of penis (tail).  It’s from the old French variant pincel that Modern French gained pinceau (paintbrush).  The verb pencil emerged early in the sixteenth century as pencellen (apply (gold or silver) in manuscript illustration) and by the 1530s was being used in the sense of “to mark or sketch with a pencil-brush”, extended to work undertaken with lead pencils from the 1760s.  Despite the obvious similarity, there is no relationship with the word pen.  The spelling pensill is long obsolete.  Pencil is a noun & verb, penciler is a noun, penciled is a verb, penciled is a verb & adjective and pencillike is an adjective; the noun plural is pencils.  The additional "l" (penciller, pencilled etc) is used in traditional British spelling.

The alluring catwalk combination of a "pencil-thin" model (note the shoulder-blade definition) & polka-dots.  The industry has “solved” the problem of the perception of models being “dangerously thin” by adding a token number of “plus-size” units to their DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) roster.  However, the agencies report the fashion houses still first select the slenderest.

Pencils are produced in quite a variety and specialized types include the carpenter's pencil, the wax (or china) pencil, and the color pencil although what’s more precisely defined are the technical descriptions based on the specification of the graphite (HB, 2B etc), used to rate darkness and hardness.  A propelling pencil is one with a replaceable and mechanically extendable lead that wears away with use, designed to provide lines of constant thickness without requiring sharpening and typically featuring a small eraser at the end opposite the tip.  Pencil pouches and pencil cases are containers in which one stores ones pencils and related items (pencil sharpener, eraser et al); by convention a pouch was made of a soft material while cases tended to be fashioned from some hard substance (steel, wood, plastic etc) but the terms are used loosely.  A kohl pencil (also called an eyeliner pencil) is one with a kohl core (which can be sharpened in the usual manner) used for enhancing the eyes.  The golf pencil was originally designed for golfers and was about three inches (75 mm) in length though they’re now commonly used in situations where pencil turnover is high (election booths, gambling houses etc).

School pencils are a useful way to convey important messages to children.

The "pencil skirt" is a close-fitting garment which classically was knee to calf length.  In explosives, a "pencil detonator" (also as "time pencil") is a timed fuse designed to be connected to a detonator or short length of safety fuse.  "Pencil-thin" is a term (historically one of admiration but of late also used negatively) for an especially slender woman but it can be applied to any thin object (synonymous with "stick-thin", thought a clipping of the earlier zoological reference "stick insect thin").  The phrase "power of the pencil" is from professional gambling and refers to an authority to charge a punter's gambling or other bills to the casino (the house).  The "lead in one's pencil" is slang which referencing the state of erection of one's penis; to "put the lead into one’s pencil" referred to some form of stimulation which induced such an erection (including presumably the sight of an attractive, pencil-thin woman).  To "pencil something in" is to make a tentative booking or arrangement (on the notion of being erasable as opposed to using ink which suggests permanence or something confirmed); the phrase has been in use only since 1942.  The derogatory slang "pencil-pusher" (office worker) dates from 1881; prior to that such folk had since 1820 been called "pen-drivers", the new form reflecting the arrival at scale of mass-produced pencils.  The derogatory "pencil neck" (weak person) was first noted in 1973 while "pencil dick" (a penis of a girth judged inadequate or a man with such an organ) is documented in US slang since 1962.

Lindsay Lohan in pencil skirts: The pencil skirt can be thought the companion product to the bandage dress; while a bandage dress ends usually above the knee (the more pleasing sometimes far above) a pencil skirt typically falls to the knee or is calf-length.

Technical terms for the grips with which a pencil is held.

The test pencil is a device with a small bulb or other form of illumination which lights up when an active current is detected.  Available in many voltages (the most common being 12, 24, 48 (for automotive and other low-voltage applications) and 110/120 & 220/240v), they work either by direct contact with the wire through which the current passes or (through the insulation) as a proximity device.  The "test pencil" should not be confused with the "pencil test" which is either (1) in animation, an early version of an animated scene, consisting of rough sketches that are photographed or scanned (now overtaken by technology which emulates the process in software and almost obsolete but the term is still used by graphic artists to describe conceptual sketches or rough takes), (2) in apartheid-era South Africa, a method of determining racial identity, based on how easily a pencil pushed through a person's hair could be removed and (3) a test to determine the necessity (some concede on the advisability) of wearing a bra, based on whether a pencil placed in the infra-mammary fold stays in place with no assistance (which sounds standardized but sources vary about whether the pencil test should be performed with the arms by the side or raised which can significantly affect the result.

The Pencil Test

The pencil test: In the West this photograph would be graded "fail"; in China it’s a "pass", an example of "cultural specificity".

Although it sounds a quintessentially TikTok thing and did trend in 2016, the year the Chinese version of TikTok was released, re-purposing of the pencil test by Chinese women as the “true womanhood” test actually pre-dated the platform.  Like the best trends it was quick and simple and required only the most basic piece of equipment: a pencil (although a pen would do).  The procedure was the classic pencil test used to determine the viability of bralessness but, unlike the occidental original where the pencil falling to the ground was graded a “pass”, in the oriental version, that’s a “fail”, the implement having to sit securely in place to prove one is “a real woman”.  Millions of images were uploaded to Chinese social media channels as proof the challenge had been passed; this presumably will assist in ensuring one doesn’t become a leftover woman.

The Flying Pencil

Prototype Dornier 17 V1, 1934.

One of terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), imposed on Germany after the World War I (1914-1918) was it was denied the right to military aviation.  Those familiar with the operations of sanctions in the twenty-first century will not be surprised that within a few years, there were significant developments in German civil aviation including gliding clubs which would provide the early training of many pilots who would subsequently join the Luftwaffe, even before the open secret of the organization’s existence formerly was acknowledged in 1935.  Additionally, under well-concealed arrangements with Moscow, German pilots underwent training in the Soviet Union, one of the many programmes in a remarkably flourishing industry of military exchanges undertaken even during periods of notable political tension.  In those years, the German aircraft industry also had its work-arounds, sometimes undertaking research, development and production in co-operation with manufacturers in other countries and sometime producing aircraft notionally for civil purposes but which could easily re-purposed for military roles.  An example was the Dornier Do 17, nicknamed the “flying pencil” in an allusion to the slender fuselage.

Battle of Britain era Dornier Do17 E, 1940.

In 1934, Dornier’s initial description of the Do 17 as a passenger plane raised a few eyebrows in air ministries around the continent but in an attempt to lend the ruse a (thin) veneer of truth, the company submitted the design to Deutsche Luft Hansa (which became the modern carrier Lufthansa), the airline admiring the speed and flying characteristics but rejecting the proposal on the reasonable grounds the flying pencil had hardly any room for passengers.  To all observers, the thing was obviously a prototype bomber and one of the fastest and most advanced in the world but to maintain the subterfuge, Dornier instead claimed it was now a “fast mail transport”.  That fooled few but so soon after the Great War, there was little appetite in Europe for confrontation so Dornier was able to continue to develop the Do 17 as a bomber, adding a glazed nose, provision for internal armament and an internal bomb bay.

Dornier Do 217 E, 1943.

The deployment as part of the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) provided valuable information in both battle tactics and the need for enhanced defensive armaments and it was these lessons which were integrated into the upgraded versions which formed a part of the Luftwaffe’s bomber and reconnaissance forces at the start of World II.  They provided useful service in the early campaigns against Poland, Norway & the Low Countries but the limitations were exposed when squadrons were confronted by the advanced eight-gun fighters of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain (July-September 1940).  However, in the absence of a better alternative, they played an important part in the early successes Germany enjoyed in the invasion of the Soviet Union but such was the rapidity of art-time technological advances that by 1942 the Do 17 was obsolescent and withdrawn from front-line service, relegated to training and other ancillary roles.  The slim frame which had in 1934 helped provide the flying pencil with its outstanding performance now became a limitation, preventing further development even as a night-fighter, the role assigned in those years to many airframes no longer suitable for daytime operations.  Its successor, the Do 217 was notably fatter in the fuselage but even it was soon rendered obsolete and by 1944 had been withdrawn from front-line service.

The extraordinary Mohammed Rafieh

A COVID-19 era Mohammed Rafieh at work in his Persian pencil place.

Mohammed Rafieh opened Medad Rafi in Tehran in 1990, specializing in color pencils, a description which is no exaggeration.  Although his stock numbers in the thousands, Mr Rafieh has no need for databases, barcodes or lists of part-numbers, having committed to memory the place of every pencil in his shop, an inventory said to include every color known to be available anywhere in the world.  Mr Rafieh's shop is located in the vast bazaar which sits between the two mosques in Tehran's district 15.  Medad (مداد) is Persian for pencil and Rafi the affectionate diminutive of Rafieh so in translation the shop is thus "Rafi's Pencils"; never has Mr Rafieh been accused of misleading advertising.

Mr Rafieh at work.

The pencil in its familiar, mass-produced form is surprisingly modern.  Quills made from bird feathers and small brushes with bristles from a variety of creatures were used long before chalk or lead pencils.  Sticks of pure graphite (commonly (if chemically inaccurately) known as "black lead") were used in England for marking writing instruments from the mid sixteenth century while the wooden enclosure was a contemporary innovation from the Continent and it seems to have been in this era the word pencil was transferred from a type of brush to the newly encapsulated "graphite writing implement".  The modern clay-graphite mix, essentially little different to that still in use, was developed in the early nineteenth century, mass-production beginning in mid century, something made possible by the availability of cheap, precision machine tools.  The inventor of the handy innovation of an eraser being attached to the end opposite the sharpened lead was granted a patent in 1858.  Some like these on pencils and some don't.

Pencil sharpeners of increasing complexity.  Unless one has specific needs, the old ways are usually the best.

The modern pencil also encouraged the development of the pencil sharpener, one of the world's most simple machines and something which really hasn't been improved upon although over the last century an extraordinary array of mechanical and electro-mechanical devices have been offered (some so wondrously complex it's suspected they existed just to flaunt the engineering although they do make fine gifts for nerds; it's likely nerds do prefer pencils to pens).  Apparently first sold commercially in 1854 (prior to than a hand-held blade of some sort would have been the usual method), some have been intriguing and imaginative designs which sometimes found their specialized niche but none sharpen a pencil better than the cheapest and most simple.  Even now, if one has paper, the creation of just about anything in theoretical physics, poetry or literature demands little equipment beyond pencil, sharpener & eraser.  

The Faber-Castell production process.

The pencil as collectable

Lot 278: Four volumes of Roget's International Thesaurus.

Pencils can be collectables if their provenance adequately is documented.  Doyle’s in New York on 18 June 2024 conducted an auction of some items from the estate of US composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021), attracting dealers, collectors & Sondheim devotees and Lot 278 was indicative of the strength of bidding: four (well worn) volumes of Roget's International Thesaurus.  Although one was from the first printing (June 1946), it lacked a dust jacket and came with library markings and a “Withdrawn” stamp.  None of those offered were rarities (reflected in the pre-sale estimate of US$200-300) but the hammer fell at an impressive US$25,600.  The stationery freaks (it really is quite a thing) were also in the crowd, a signed spiral notebook selling for what one commentator called “a startling US$15,360.”

Lot 275: Three boxes of Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencils.  They were not cylindrical so, like a "carpenter's pencil", were less prone to rolling onto the floor.  Decades after the pencils were first produced, there would be a Cadillac Blackwing V8, a notable piece of engineering doomed by its high cost. 

What was most surprising though was the fate of Lot 275: “Three boxes of vintage Blackwing 602 pencils (Circa 1940s-1950s).  Three blue boxes printed with "Eberhard Faber/Blackwing/Feathery-Smooth Pencils, two of the boxes complete with 12 pencils, one with 8 only (together 32 pencils).  Some wear to the boxes and drying of the erasers.”  Sondheim was a devoted Blackwing user, telling one interviewer: “I use Blackwing pencils. Blackwings.  They don’t make ’em any more, and luckily, I bought a lot of boxes of ’em.  They’re very soft lead.  They’re not round, so they don’t fall off the table, and they have removable erasers, which unfortunately dry out."  The pencils sold for US$6,400 against a pre-sale estimate of US$600-800.

The pencils were an example of how critical is provenance in the collectables market.  In June 2023, Bloomfield Auctions in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, held a “specialist” sale focused “militaria, police and important Irish historical items”, one entry with a pre-sale estimate of US$65,000-100,000 being Lot 148: “An engraved, silver-plated pencil, believed to have been a 52nd birthday present (20 April 1941) from Eva Braun (1912–1945) to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  On the day, the pencil sold for US$6,900.

The lower than expected price may have been the result of doubts being cast on the authenticity of the item’s claimed history.  Technically, Lot 148 was a mid-20th-century mechanical pencil, of white metal (presumably one with a high nickel content) and silver-plated, engraved along one louvered side facet with the inscription: ZUM 20 APRIL 1941 HERZLICHST EVA.  That’s an abbreviated form of phrase typically used on occasions such as birthdays, the brevity necessitated by the surface area with which the engraver had to work, the pencil only some 3¼ inches (82.5 mm) long.  Deconstructed, the sentence fragment begins with the preposition “to” and a contracted, inflected article of speech, “the” expressed in the dative case.  Zum is literally “To the...”, understood as “Upon the...”.  So, the signatory (“Eva”) is marking the occasion the birthday on 20 April 1941, the inherent formality of form what one would expect in a gift to a head of state though perhaps not one from a lover.  However, the very existence of the relationship between the Führer and the woman who later briefly would be Frau Hitler was unknown beyond his court circle and it may have been even the jeweller wasn’t to be given a hint; the exact (physical) nature of their relationship remains a mystery.  However, the word herzlichst is from the root noun Herz (heart) and as an adjective or adverb, herzlich, is often used in the sense of “heartful” or “heartfelt” which at least suggests something intimate and the –st suffix operates to create a superlative, which if literally translated (“most heartful” or “most heartfelt”) sounds in English like something which might be used ironically or cynically but there’s nothing to suggest it should be understood as anything but something like: On the occasion of the 20th April, 1941, most heartfully, Eva.

The "Hitler" Pencil top.

The provenance of the pencil however proved controversial, something not helped by the anonymity of the seller and the lack of any documentary trail which might have helped confirm the veracity of the back-story.  While one could speculate any number of the life the pencil may have led over the decades, no evidence was offered.  The sale also attracted criticism which is increasingly heard when auction houses offer any of the militaria, memorabilia and ephemera connected with Hitler or the Nazis in general.  Although such objects have for decades been collectables there’s now more resistance to the notion of profits being derived from the trade in what is, in some sense, “the commemoration of evil” and the Chairman of the European Jewish Association had called for the pencil to be withdrawn from sale, issuing a statement in which he called the auction part of a “…macabre trade in items belonging to mass murderers, the motives of those buying them are unknown and may glorify the actions of the Nazis, and lastly, their trade is an insult to the millions who perished, the few survivors left, and to Jews everywhere.”  The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews described the sale as “…distressing, disturbing and hugely disrespectful”, arguing that even if of historical significance “…these items have no place in our country other than inside the walls of a museum or other institution where they can be used to teach about the results of anti-Semitism.”

1938 Mercedes-Benz 770K (W150) Cabriolet F, a seven passenger tourer & parade car, pictured here with the folding soft-top in sedanca de ville configuration.

There is still some tolerance for the trade in items which would otherwise anyway be collectables (such as the Mercedes-Benz 770Ks (W07 (1930-1938) & W150 (1938-1943), many of which when offered are claimed (dubiously and not) to have some association with Hitler) and for anything of genuine historical significance (such as diplomatic papers) but the circulation of mere ephemera with some Nazi link is increasingly being condemned as macabre and the higher the prices paid, the most distasteful it seems.  A spokesman for Bloomfield Auctions defended the inclusion of such items in the sale, arguing they “…preserve a piece of our past and should be treated as historical objects, no matter if the history they refer to was one of the darkest and most controversial in recorded history.”, adding “We do not seek to cause hurt or distress to any one or any part of society” and that buyers typically were “legitimate collectors who have a passion for history… all items are a part of history, and we shouldn't be writing history out of books or society.”

Pencil sculpture by Russian artist Salavat Fidai (b 1972).

Pussy

Pussy (pronounced poos-ee or puhs-ee)

(1) In informal use, a cat, especially a kitten (also as puss & pussy-cat).

(2) In colloquial use (now rare), an affectionate term for a woman or girl, seen as having characteristics associated with kittens such as sweetness or playfulness.

(3) Anything soft and furry; a bloom form; a furry catkin, especially that of the pussy willow

(4) An alternative name for the tipcat (rare).

(5) In slang, a disparaging and offensive term referring to a timid, passive person (applied almost exclusively to men).

(6) In vulgar slang, the vulva (used as an alternative to the many other slang terms which includes beaver, box, cunt, muff, snatch, twat poontang, coochie, punani, quim & slit); considered by some to be the least offensive and probably the one most used by women.

(7) In vulgar slang, sexual intercourse with a woman

(8) In vulgar slang of male homosexuals, the anus of a man who is the passive participant in gay sex (ie “the bottom” as used by “the top”).

(9) In slang, a disparaging and offensive term for women collectively, a form of reductionism which treats women as sex objects.

(10) In medical use (pronounced puhs-ee), something puss-like or something from which puss emerges; containing or resembling pus.

(11) As pussybow (or lavallière, pussycat bow or pussy-bow) a style of neckwear worn with women's blouses and bodices. A bow, tied (usually loosely) at the neck, the name is though derrived from the bows owners sometimes attach to their domestic felines (pussy cats).

1580s: The construct was puss +‎ -y (the diminutive suffix).  It may be from the Dutch poesje, a diminutive of poes (cat; vulva), akin to the Low German pūse (vulva) and the Old English pusa (bag).  Puss was probably from the Middle Low German pūs or pūskatte or the Dutch poes (puss, cat (slang for vulva)), ultimately from a common Germanic word for cat, perhaps ultimately imitative of a sound made to get its attention and therefore similar in origin to the Arabic بسة (bissa).  Some sources declare puss in the sense of "cat" dates from the 1520s but this is merely the earliest known documented source and use probably long predates this instance.  The same or similar sound is a conventional name for a cat in Germanic languages and as far off as Afghanistan; it is the root of the principal word for "cat" in the Rumanian (pisica) and secondary words in the Lithuanian (puž (word used for calling a cat)), the Low German (puus) and the Irish puisin (a kitten).  It was akin to the West Frisian poes, Low the German Puus & Puuskatte, the Danish pus, the dialectal Swedish kattepus & katte-pus and the Norwegian pus.  The form is known in several European, North African and West Asian languages and may be compared with the Romanian pisică and Sardinian pisittu; there is also a Celtic thread, the Irish pus (mouth, lip), from the Middle Irish bus.  The noun plural was pussies.

The French village Pussy sits on the eastern slope of Mont Bellachat above the left bank of the Isère, 5½ miles (9 km) north-west of Moûtiers; it is part of commune of La Léchère in the Savoie département of France.  The name is from Pussius, the owner of the region during the Roman occupation of Gaul.

Pussy was first used as a term of endearment for a girl or woman in the 1580s and (by extension), was soon used disparagingly of effeminate men and) and applied childishly to anything soft and furry.  The use to refer to domestic cats & kittens was exclusive by the 1690s but as early as 1715 it was applied also to rabbits.  The use as slang for "female pudenda" is documented from 1879, but most etymologists don’t doubt it had long been in oral use; perhaps from the Old Norse puss (pocket, pouch) (related to the Low German puse (vulva)) or else a re-purposing of the cat word pussy on the notion of "soft, warm, furry thing.  In this it may be compared with the French le chat, which also has a double meaning, feline and genital.  The earlier uses in English are difficult to distinguish from pussy, “pussie” noted in 1583 being applied affectionately to women.  Pussy-whipped in the sense of "hen-pecked" seems to date from 1956, a gentler form perhaps than the fifteenth century Middle English cunt-beaten (an impotent man).  Despite the feeling among many that the history in vulgar slang is long, etymologists note the rarity (sometimes absence) of pussy in its ribald sense from early dictionaries of slang and the vernacular before the late nineteenth century and the frequent use as a term of endearment in mainstream literature.

Lindsay Lohan in a Michael Kors (b 1959) pussy-bow, polka-dot silk blouse with Valentino sneakers, enjoying a frozen hot chocolate, Serendipity 3 restaurant, New York, January 2019.

The pleonastic noun pussy-cat (also pussycat) which describes a domestic cat or kitten dates from 1773 and came soon to be applied to people although there appears to be no written record prior to 1859.  By the early twentieth century it came to be applied to smoothly running engines, the idea being they “purred like a pussycat”.  The noun pussy-willow was by 1835 a popular name of a type of common American shrub or small tree, so-called for the small and very silky catkins produced in early spring; in the 1850s the tree was also referred to as a pussy-cat but use soon faded.  To “play pussy” was World War II Royal Air Force (RAF) slang for "take advantage of cloud cover, jumping from cloud to cloud to shadow a potential victim or avoid recognition."  The medical use, the other (disgusting) adjectival forms of which are pussier & pussiest, dates from circa 1890 although in this sense Middle English had the mid-fifteenth century pushi, a variant of the Latin pus (definite singular pussen or pusset) which in pathology describes the yellowish fluid associated with infected tissue.

Kate Moss in pussy-bow blouse on video link.

As a set-piece event, about the only thing which could have added to the spectacle of the Depp v Heard (John C Depp II v Amber Laura Heard (CL–2019–2911)) suit & counter-suit defamation trial in Fairfax County, Virginia, might have been Ms Heard (b 1986) afforcing her legal team with Rudy Giuliani (b 1944).  Whatever difficulties Mr Giuliani has had with judges, he was good with juries and may have been better at persuading the tribunal assembled in Virginia to ignore the many irrelevant revelations which so tantalized those running commentaries on social media.  As it was, there was something in the trial for just about everyone and one thing claimed by some to have exerted a subliminal influence on judge and jury was what model Kate Moss (b 1974 and appearing as a character witness for Mr Depp (b 1963) which whom she’d enjoyed a predictably well-publicized relationship during the 1990s) wore for her brief testimony.  That she appeared at all was because Ms Heard made the mistake of mentioning her name during testimony, thereby permitting Mr Depp's counsel to call her as a witness.  Looking stunning as expected, her appearance was quickly deconstructed and pronounced as crafted to convey “authority and authenticity”, the key points being (1) a simple hair-style, (2) an “authoritative jacket”, (3) “natural make-up” and (4) a blouse with a pussybow “casually tied” to avoid the appearance of a contrived “court appearance look”.  In other words, she’d been styled to look like a witness appearing in court, not an actor playing a witness appearing in court.  Her three minutes on the stand via a video link should not, according to some lawyers, have been treated by the jury as substantive but what attracted most comment was her choice of a white, spotted pussybow blouse, a feature described in one gushing critique as “…subtly subversive” with an origin as a kind of feminist battledress for those beginning the march through the institutions of male space; a challenge to the “traditional dress codes”.

Lindsay Lohan in black, semi-sheer pussy-bow blouse, Saint Laurent fashion show, Paris Fashion Week, February 2019.

Items recognizably pussybowish had been worn for centuries but the re-purposing to an alleged political statement is traced to the early 1960s when Coco Chanel (1883-1971) added more voluminous bows to silk blouses, the bulk and projection of the fabric off-setting the more severe linens and tweeds with which they were paired.  From there, the pussybow as feminist statement is held to have become overt in 1966 with the debut of Yves Saint Laurent's (1936-2008) Le Smoking design which legitimized the presence of the pantsuit in catalogues and, increasingly, on the catwalk.  The 1966 piece was a revived tuxedo, tailored to the female form, in velvet or wool and notable for being softened with a silk pussybow blouse which was interesting in that had it been combined with the traditional tie worn by men (which wouldn’t then have been anything novel), it would probably have been condemned, not as subversive but as a cliché.  As it was, the pussybow lent sufficient femininity to the redefined pantsuit for it to be just radical enough to be a feminist fashion statement yet not be seen as too threatening.  Despite the claims of some, it wasn’t the first time the pussybow had been paired with trousers but it was certainly the first appearance at a mainstream European show and it proved influential although YSL, so pleased with his models, perhaps didn’t envisage the look on latter-day adopters like crooked Hillary Clinton.

Whether the judge or jury in Virginia were pussybow-whipped into finding substantially for Mr Depp isn’t known but it was certainly interesting Ms Heard lost in the US but won in the UK in 2020 despite both trials being essentially about the same thing: Did Mr Depp subject Ms Heard to violence and other forms of abuse?  Technically, there were differences, Mr Depp in the UK suing not his ex-wife but The Sun, a tabloid newspaper which had published a piece with a headline describing Mr Depp as a "wife beater".  By contrast, the US case revolved around an article in The Washington Post written by Ms Heard, the critical passages being three instances where she alleged she had been a victim of domestic abuse.  Mr Depp sued not the newspaper but Ms Heard, claiming her assertions were untrue and (although he wasn’t explicitly named as the perpetrator), that he’d thus been defamed.  The jury agreed Ms Heard (1) had indeed implied she was the victim of Mr Depp’s violence, (2) that her claims were untrue, (3) that purposefully she was being untruthful and (4) that her conduct satisfied the legal standard of “actual malice”, a critical threshold test in US law (dating from a ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1964 in New York Times v Sullivan) which imposes on public figures the need to prove statements (even if anyway technically defamatory) were made with the knowledge they were false or with reckless disregard of whether they were false or not, before damages may be recovered.

Melania Trump in pussybow blouse, Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention (anti-cyber-bullying) summit at the Health Resources and Service Administration, Rockville, Maryland, 20 August 2018.

More significant still was probably that in London, the trial took place before a high court judge who ruled on both matters of law and fact.  By contrast, in the Fairfax County Courthouse, the judge ruled on matters of law but it was the jury which alone weighed the evidence presented and determined matter of fact.  Thus in London one legally trained judge assessed the evidence which hung on the issue of whether Mr Depp subjected Ms Heard to violent abuse during their brief and clearly turbulent union.  The judge found he had whereas seven lay-people, sitting as a jury concluded he had not.  The two processes are difficult to compare because judges provide written judgments (comprising the ratio decidendi (the reasons for the finding) and sometimes some obiter dictum (other matters of interest not actually critical in reaching the decision)) whereas juries operate in secret and what was discussed in the three days they took to deliberate isn’t known although there are hints in the list of questions they presented to the judge before delivering the verdict.  Those hints however hardly compare with Mr Justice Nichol’s (b 1951) ruling of some 67,000 words.

Sue Lyon (1946-2019) in pussybow blouse in the film Lolita (1962) (left) and with pussy (right) in an image from a pre-release publicity set for the film, shot in 1960 by Bert Stern (1929-2013).

What happened in the two trials was not exactly comparable.  In the US, much was made of several statements earlier made by Ms Heard which, although not directly concerned with the matters being litigated, once proved untrue, were used by Mr Depp’s legal team to undermine Ms Heard’s credibility.  The matter of the US$7 million divorce settlement was for example mentioned by Mr Justice Nichol as an example of Ms Heard’s credibility because she didn't profit from divorcing Mr Depp, citing her announcement that she would donate the settlement to charity.  That she failed to do and perhaps remarkably, it wasn’t something at the time challenged by Mr Depp’s lawyers so the judge accepted it as fact.  Whether, had the judge known the truth, his findings would have be different will never be known.  Of interest too is that as a matter of law, Ms Heard's lawyers were not allowed to tell the jury the result of the UK trial and that in London Mr Depp's lawyers had made it clear they felt it unfair they were compelled to sue the newspaper and not Ms Heard.  In Virginia, as a defendant, Ms Heard became the focus and it did seem much of what was presented to the jury discussed her credibility, not of necessity relating to the substantive matters of the case but also of previous statements and conduct.

When the judgment in London was appealed, that was rejected by two judges of the Court of Appeal which may encourage Ms Heard.  Proceeding with an appeal in the US is a high-risk business and there are financial impediments even to lodging the papers but it is something which will not involve a jury, decided instead on points of law and procedure by judges less likely than jury members to be influenced by films they’ve seen, pussybows or other extraneous material.

Pussy Riot band members Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in a glass-walled cage during a court hearing, Moscow, Friday 17 August 2012.

My darling Pussy: The letters of Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson, 1913-1941, (1975), edited by the English historian Alan John Percivale (A.J.P.) Taylor (1906–1990).

Even though it was well into the twenty-first century and the nation had long since succumbed to decadence, Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) still raided a few eyebrows when he and his girlfriend moved into No 10 Downing Street, the Tory Party’s few remaining blue stockings outraged because not only were they the first couple to take up official residence there without benefit of marriage but he was at the time still married to his second wife and the mother of four of his children.  History however recalls things had been more debauched, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) sharing the house during his premiership with not only his wife bit also his mistress, Frances Stevenson (1888–1972), the former usually ensconced upstairs in the prime-ministerial bed while her husband enjoyed his younger companion’s affections a few floors down.

The very modern-sounding arrangement was made possible by Ms Stevenson having been appointed by Lloyd-George as his secretary while he was chancellor of the exchequer, a job offer which was conditional upon her accepting concubinage as part of the job description and it’s never been doubted Lloyd-George was an earlier adopter of KPIs (key performance indicators).  The press were aware of the situation but things were done differently then and not a word of the unusual domestic setup appeared in the papers and surprisingly, even foreign journalists turned a blind eye when Lloyd George attended the Paris Peace Conference (1919) in the company of Ms Stevenson and though the rumor mill among the diplomats would have worked as efficiently then as now, the fiction she was “just his secretary” publicly was maintained by all.  In the lovers’ private conversations, she was his “Pussy” and he her “Tom Cat”, the feline theme taken up in his son’s 1960s biography when he noted of his father: “…with an attractive woman, he was as much to be trusted as a Bengal tiger with a gazelle.”  In 1975, Weidenfeld and Nicolson published My darling Pussy: The letters of Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson, 1913-1941, edited by A.J.P. Taylor.

Ffion Hague, Baroness Hague of Richmond, DBE.

Flawed like us all, Lloyd George was one of the great characters of twentieth century politics and one of the more noted political machinators, his life continuing to attract historians.  In writing The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George's Life (2008) Ffion Hague (b 1968 and the wife of William Hague (b 1961; leader of the British Conservative Party 1997-2001) was, as a Welsh nationalist, perhaps biased and in much the same way A.J.P. Taylor’s hero-worship of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) made his 1972 biography of the press lord so vivid, Lady Hague’s views are not so much between the lines as the lines themselves but this is not a criticism of what is a most readable text.  Whether or not Lady Hague was a feminist was something some once felt compelled to debate although there is little to suggest she much dwelt on the matter but in declining to censure Lloyd George for his exploitive sexual relationships with women, she doubtlessly disappointed some of the sisterhood.  Her take on his many conquests was that things were really symbiotic; the women involved being well-informed individuals who knew what they were doing and ultimately gained from the relationships, brief though often they proved.  Her book was certainly a change from the tradition of treating Lloyd George’s proclivities as cynically and shamelessly transactional but, of course, as has long been known, there may also have been something of the physiologically deterministic in it.  When Albert James (A.J.) Sylvester (1889–1989; principal private secretary (PPS) to David Lloyd George, 1923-1945) in 1947 published The Real Lloyd George, drawn from his diaries, the entry which drew most comment an admiring comment about the Welsh Wizard’s penis: “…the biggest I have ever seen.”  Disappointing some, Mr Sylvester didn't burden his readers with the details or extent of the observational history which made his comparison possible but it's presumed he was on some basis an empiricist.