Port

Port (pronounced pohrt (U) or pawrt (non-U))

(1) A city, town, or other place where ships load or unload.

(2) A place along a coast in which ships may take refuge from storms; harbor.

(3) A place designated in law as a point of entry where persons and merchandise are allowed to pass, by water or land, in and out of a country and where customs officers are stationed to inspect or appraise imported goods.

(4) The left-side of a vessel or aircraft, facing forward (formerly called larboard).

(5) Any of a class of very fortified sweet wines, mostly dark-red, originally from Portugal.

(6) An opening in the side or other exterior part of a ship for admitting air and light or for taking on cargo.

(7) In machinery, an aperture for the passage of steam, air, water etc.

(8) In military use, a small aperture in an armored vehicle, aircraft, or fortification through which a gun can be fired or a camera directed.

(9) In computer hardware, a physical connection (serial, parallel, USB, SCSI etc) to which a peripheral device or a transmission line from a remote terminal can be attached.

(10) In computer software, an address, part of TCP and the IP stack.

(11) The raised centre portion on a bit for horses.

(12) A gate or portal, as in the entrance to a town or fortress (chiefly Scots, now archaic).

(13) In Queensland, Australia, an alternative term for suitcase (increasingly rare).

(14) In computer programming, to modify existing code written for one operating system so it will run on another; a set of files used to build and install a binary executable file from the source code of an application.

(15) The bearing or carriage of one’s self (now archaic, survives as deportment, the once synonymous portance now obsolete).

(16) An abbreviation of Portugal for certain purposes.

(17) In internal combustion engines, an aperture through which (1) the fuel-air mixture passes to reach the inlet valve(s) to the combustion chamber and (2) exhaust gasses from the combustion process pass after exiting through the exhaust valve(s).

(18) In rowing, a “sweep rower” who rows primarily with an oar on the port side.

(19) In the sports of curling & lawn bowls, a space between two stones or bowls wide enough for a delivered stone or bowl to pass through.

(20) In military terminology (also as “at the high port), to hold or carry a weapon with both hands so that it lays diagonally across the front of the body, with the barrel or similar part near the left shoulder and the right hand grasping the small of the stock; to throw the weapon into this position on the command “Port arms!”.

(21) In telephony, to carry or transfer an existing telephone number from one telephone service provider to another.

(22) In law, to transfer a voucher or subsidy from one jurisdiction to another (mostly US use).

(23) In artisan candle-making, a frame for wicks, the word in this context sometimes used generally as a device which hold something in place while being worked on.

(24) In linguistics, an abbreviation of portmanteau.

Pre 900: From the Old English and Middle English port (harbor, haven), reinforced by the Old French port (harbor, port; mountain pass), the Old English and Old French both from the Latin portus (port, harbor (originally "entrance, passage" and figuratively "a place of refuge, asylum")) from the primitive Indo-European pértus (crossing (and thus distantly cognate with ford)) from prtu- (a going, a passage), from the root per- (to lead, pass over) and related to the Sanskrit parayati (carries over), the Ancient Greek poros (journey, passage, way) & peirein (to pierce, to run through), from the Latin porta (gate, door), portāre (passage; to carry) & peritus (experienced), the Avestan peretush (passage, ford, bridge), the Armenian hordan (go forward), the Welsh rhyd (ford), the Old Church Slavonic pariti (to fly), the Old English faran (to go, journey) and the Old Norse fjörðr (inlet, estuary).  The present participle porting, the past participle is ported and the noun plural is ported.

The meaning "gateway; entrance etc" was from the Old English port (portal, door, gate, entrance), from the Old French porte (gate, entrance), from the Latin porta (city gate, gate; door, entrance), from the primitive Indo-European root per-.  The meaning "to carry" was from the Middle French porter, from the Latin portāre (passage; to carry) and is used in this sense still as “ported & porting”;  The use is Queensland, Australia to describe a suitcase as “a port” is fading as the use of regional forms diminishes.  The circa 1300 use to mean of "bearing, mien" (from circa there was the general sense of "external appearance" which extended by the 1520s to the now-archaic sense of "state, style, establishment") is an adaptation of this in the sense of “how one carries (ie deports) oneself” and survives in the word “deportment” (the once synonymous portance is now obsolete); young ladies at finishing school (a kind of training for husband-hunting) would undertake “deportment class” which apparently really did involve learning to walk with a book balanced on the head so the ideal posture could be learned.

Semiotics at sea: The international convention is port (left) is red, starboard (right) is green & stern (aft) is white (ie clear lens).  This rule governs things like navigation lights, chart markings and architectural schematics.

The meaning "left side of a ship" (looking forward from the stern) dates from the 1540s, from the notion of "the side facing the harbor when a ship is docked”.  It replaced backboard, larboard & leeboard to avoid confusion with starboard when in oral use, eventually confirmed by regulatory order of the Admiralty order in 1844 and US Navy Department in 1846.  The origin of the left-right (larboard/starboard) convention in maritime matters is in the ancient vessels which had a (permanently attached) steering oar on the right, thus dictating the need to moor with the left side parallel with the dock or wharf.  The configuration seems to have been standardized in the early vessels of many cultures because the vast majority of the human population seems long to have been right-handed.  Starboard was from the Middle English sterbord, stere-bourd & stere-burd, from Old English stēorbord, from the Proto-West Germanic steurubord (the construct of all forms steer +‎ board.  The use as an adjective is noted from 1857 but oral use likely pre-dated this.  Interestingly, in 1887, a US report noted “port” had replaced “larboard” among all classes of sailors except the whalers harvesting in the Atlantic and South Pacific although the new term was used in the Arctic fleets.

Lindsay Lohan approaching port while sitting slightly to starboard, Vanity Fair photo shoot, Marina del Rey, California, October 2010.  The location was the Sovereign, a motor yacht built in 1961 for the film star Judy Garland (1922-1969).

The figurative sense "place of refuge" is noted from the early fifteenth century, the phrase “any port in a storm” (any refuge is welcomed in adversity) first documented since 1749 but it’s likely it was in the oral use of sailors and others much earlier.  The “port of call” dates from 1810 and is a location scheduled for a visit by a ship; it’s used by both the military and civil shipping.  The phrase “first port of call” can be either a literal description of the first place a ship (or by extension other forms of transport) is to visit or figuratively “the default or usually choice of option”.  The porthole (opening in the side of a ship) dates from circa 1300 and is documented in the terminology of naval architects since 1506; the original use in warships was to describe the embrasures in the side of the ship through which cannons were fired.  What are now thought of as portholes in ships were (from 1788) originally called “air-ports” on the basis they were a "small opening in the side of a ship to admit air and light.

A mid-century modern car port.  The car is a Mercedes-Benz (R107) SL.

A portreeve (from the Middle English port-reve, from the Old English portgerēfa, the construct being port (a walled market town) +‎ gerēfa (reeve (a local official)) was variously a mayor, bailiff magistrate or warder in a port or maritime town; the equivalent office in inland settlements was the borough-reeve (mayor).  The difference was the specific duties attached to officials in places with ports.  The carport (also as also car-port), an adaptation of the French porte-cochère, was formalized in the jargon of architecture in 1939, referring to the practice of lean-to roofs being added to houses to afford weather-protection to cars.  It had become common practice as car ownership grew and many properties couldn’t accommodate a separate garage, or in the case of multiple-vehicle ownership, it couldn’t be enlarged.  The carport became a favourite of modernist architects who tended often to object to space which could be allocated to people being “wasted” on a car but in the affluent post-war years, became a class-identifier, the carport thought a symbol of poverty compared with the integrated or stand-alone double garage.  Portsider (left-handed person) dates from 1913 and was US baseball slang although, technically, it referred to those who batted left-handed rather than left-handers per se (as in cricket, there are right-handers who bat left-handed).  The distinction also existed in boxing, a southpaw originally a fighter who “leads with the left” rather than a left-hander although that does seem to be the modern use.

This is the portable loo of Kim Jong-un, (b 1984, Supreme Leader of the DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) which travels with the Supreme Leader when he visits places in the DPRK (to view missile tests etc).  In commercial parlance, these are known as portaloos.  Note the soldier stationed outside the loo, there to guard against anyone attempting to share the Supreme Leader’s facilities (it’s said the soldier has orders to “shoot to kill”).  Proof of existence of Kim III's portable loo solved one mystery which had divided genetcists and the medical community.  In a biography of the Supreme Leader's father (Kim II: Kim Jong-il (1941–2011; The Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011), it had been revealed The Dear Leader was not subject to bowel movements, never needing to defecate or urinate but it was not known if this is was genetic characteristic of the dynasty and therefore enjoyed also by The Supreme Leader.  Now we know.  The noun and adjective portable was from the Middle French portable, from the Latin portabilis.

Seaport describes a port which is costal rather than one on the banks of a river or the shore of a lake.  The airport (facility for commercial air transport) dates from 1902 and became (at lease in civilian use) the preferred description of the place where aircraft arrive and depart (although airfield, field, aerodrome, airstrip, airdrome & landing strip seem still sometimes to find a niche).  Airport came into regular use in 1919 (the use in reference to airships in 1902 was a one-off) and was used first to describe Bader Field, outside Atlantic City, New Jersey which opened in 1910.  The older word for such a place was aerodrome which had an interesting history, coined originally to mean “flying machine” from the Ancient Greek ἀεροδρόμος (aerodrómos) (traversing the air), the newer sense analogous with the French hippodrome, from the Latin hippodromos, from the Ancient Greek ἱππόδρομος (hippódromos), the construct being ἵππος (hippos) (horse) + δρόμος (dromos) (course).  Airport shouldn’t be hyphenated to avoid confusion with the earlier (1788) air-port which is now a ship’s porthole.

Penfords Great Grandfather Rare Tawny gift box, US$244 per 750 ml.

The use to describe the sweet, dark-red wine was from circa 1695, a shortening of Oporto, the city in northwest Portugal from which the wine originally was shipped to England (from O Porto (literally “the port”).  French wines had been preferred in England but various squabbles had for some time almost excluded them, not least because, with anti-French feeling high during the reign of Queen Anne (1665–1714; Queen variously of England, Scotland, Ireland & Great Britain 1702-1714), English politicians ran nasty “don’t buy French” campaigns.  Paul Methuen (circa 1672–1757), the English minister-resident in Lisbon, negotiated a reciprocal agreement (part of the Methuen Treaty of 1703) whereby low tariffs would be imposed on Portuguese wines in exchange for a similar accommodation on English textiles.  Portuguese wine merchants decided to stimulate trade further by spiking port wine with brandy, thereby increasing the alcohol content which gradually induced a change in the national taste and accounts for why to this day English port is stronger.  The other alcohol-related use is porter, a dark style of beer developed in London well-hopped beers made from brown malt, or well-roasted barely.  It’s un-related to port wine or Portugal and gained its eighteenth century name from the popularity the brew enjoyed among street and river porters, porters in that context being the people employed to carry or move luggage, freight etc, a use which survives in hotels, railway stations etc.

Tunnel port heads

Long rendered obsolete by modern fuel delivery systems and advances in the understanding of fluid dynamics, tunnel port heads were an attempt to remove one fundamental drawback of pushrod-activated valves in overhead valve (OHV) engines with crossflow cylinder heads: the restriction the pushrod path imposes on intake port size and shape.  Historically, the shape and size of intake ports was compromised by the need to make room for the pushrod passing from the centre of the engine to the valve lifters above the combustion chambers.  This meant it was rarely possible for intake ports to assume what was thought to be the ideal size and shape for high performance applications.

Ford’s solution in 1965 was a brass tube to house the pushrod, passing directly through the intake port, permitting the port to be as large as possible.  Dubbed the “tunnel port”, surprisingly, flow-tests proved the tube was no impediment to gas movement and the design proved successful, both in the Le Mans winning GT40s and the Galaxies on the NASCAR circuits.  Those however were big-block 427 cubic inch (7 litre) engines and the sheer size of the things disguised the inherent limitation of huge ports: the reduced velocity of gas-flow at low engine speeds which consequently produced power and torque curves unimpressive except high in the rev-range, where they were impressive indeed.  In 1969, needing more power from the small-block (Windsor) 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) engines used in the Trans-Am series, Ford bolted on tunnel port heads, the results disastrous.  Gas flowed effortlessly and top-end power was prodigious but the cars were used on circuits and, unlike the NASCAR ovals, a broad power-band was needed and the tunnel port 302s were forced to operate at engine speeds apparently beyond the block’s capacity to survive.  The project was soon abandoned.

1968 Ford Mustang 302 tunnel port, Car & Driver comparison test with Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, March 1968.

However, the tunnel port 302s have a charisma and retain a cult-following to this day, the defenders maintaining the failures were only indirectly related to the innovative heads, citing the oiling system which was inadequate to supply the bottom end of the engine under the high lateral loads experienced.  The early versions sucked in a lot of air which caused the bearings to starve for lubrication although this was quickly resolved with the installation of dual-pickup systems.  That bottom end was anyway insufficiently strong to withstand the high engine speeds the tunnel-ports mad possible.  Before long, the race drivers were being told to limit the rpm (revolutions-per-minute (engine speed)) but that defeated the very purpose of the tunnel port.  Many also note that the 302 TPs were built on Ford’s standard engine assembly line whereas the 427 TPs were lovingly hand-assembled by a dedicated crew in a separate facility.  Race teams were used to being able to blueprint and rebuilt engines to with precise clearances using exactly weighted components but were told to use the 302 TPs just as they were delivered.  There seems no doubt there were quality and assembly problems with the engines and those who have subsequently (and for decades) used them in competition (after blueprinting and careful assembly) have reported a high level of reliability.

1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302.

In 1968 however, Ford’s engineers returned to the drawing board, adapting the canted-valve heads from their new small block V8 (Cleveland or 335 series) to sit atop the 302 Windsor.  Their efforts succeeded, the less exotic Boss 302 couldn’t match the tunnel port for top-end power but the torque curve meant it was more suitable for use in the road cars which had to be built in the volume necessary to fulfil the Trans Am homologation rules.  It proved a paragon of reliability.

427 FE tunnel-port cylinder head (upper) showing the hollow brass tunnel passing directly through the intake port compared with a standard 427 FE (lower).

Dongle

Dongle (pronounced dong-guhl)

(1) Historically, a hardware device attached to a computer without which a particular software program will not run; used to prevent unauthorized use.

(2) Latterly, a device (almost always plugged into a USB port) to enable connectivity with other devices, peripherals or networks.

(3) In (very) casual use, any small USB device. 

1980: First recorded in 1980, shortly after the debut of the original IBM PC-1 and although often cited as arbitrary coinage, is possibly derived from dangle, given the first dongles dangled from a short cable.  Unfortunately, the advertisement in a computer magazine in the early 1990s which claimed the dongle was invented by an engineer named Don Gall was just an attempt to make nerds laugh and maybe create an urban legend.  Donglegate was a 2013 incident at an IT conference when a double entendre on the word "dongle" led to a complaint.  Dongle is a noun; the noun plural is dongles.  Because of the nature of the devices and the use to which they're put, it's surprising it seems not to be used as a verb; nor have dongling & dongled emerged. 

Parallel-port dongle.

Historically, a dongle was a small (about the size of a box of matches) pass-through device, a piece of hardware which connected to a PC’s 25-pin parallel (then used most often for a printer) port.  It provided usually a form of copy protection and license enforcement in that the software with which it was supplied wouldn’t run unless dongle was plugged-in.  Most PCs had only one printer port (although from the original IBM PC-1 (1981), there was always support for three physical parallel ports and in the early days of the industry it wasn't unknown to see three Epson 9-pin impact (dot-matrix) clattering away, hanging off the one PC) but it was in some cases possible to daisy-chain multiple dongles on the one port and still connect the actual printer (as the last device in the chain).  The parallel dongles were famously robust and reliable but less successful were the early implementations of dongles as USB devices; the problems were not solved until the early 2000s.

Raspberry Pi Nano WiFi dongle.

Dongle has also come to mean just about anything small which connects to a USB port and does something.  Although the definitions were never codified, the convention of use with USB devices seems to be that a dongle is something which in some way is an enabling device for something else (such as connecting to a WAN, LAN, Wi-Fi or a streaming feed) whereas “stick”, “pen-drive” or “key” is used for something self-contained such as a flash drive.

Personalized dongles.

The most familiar “dongles are still the USB flash drives, used for data storage and file transfer, the later a large-scale version of the original “sneaker-net” which described a kind of low-tech “networking” of devices, accomplished by a programmer (wearing sneakers of course), floppy diskettes in hand, waling between machines to copy and write files.  Memories fade but it’s not forgotten just how transformative was the arrival of the USB flash drive.  Although there had been advances in removable storage which meant at least some users were no longer subject to the tyranny of the 1.44 MB floppy diskette, the proprietary devices were expensive and thus relatively rare.  Additionally, the removable media depended on compatible devices existing at each end, something not always possible conveniently to arrange.  On the PCS, the ubiquitous 3½ floppy diskette had shrunk from it 5¼-inch origins but grown from a capacity 180 KB to 1.44 MB and some versions in the 1990s supported 1.8 MB & 2.88 MB but take-up was slow, the BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) support needed by the latter attracting little support from manufacturers.  Thus the enthusiasm which greeted the early 16 MB USB flash drives early in the century too grew to the point that in 2024 2 TB sticks are available and 4 TB prototypes have been demonstrated.  That process also attracted the interest of economists who noted that even by the standards of IT hardware, the unit cost reductions have been dramatic: the early 1 GB sticks were advertised at US$300 yet by 2024 1 TB (1024 or 1000 GB depending on manufacturer) were advertised at under US$150.  Curiously (and unusually for the industry), just who “invented” the USB flash drive remains contested.

Rainbow Technologies' "Don Gale" dongle advertisement (1992).  While there was no actual Mr Gale, the story related is exactly the reason the software protection hardware was created.

Quarantine

Quarantine (pronounced kwawr-uhn-teen or kwor-uhn-teen)

(1) In historic English common law, the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her deceased husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.

(2) A strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease and (by extension), any rigorous measure of isolation, regardless of the reason.

(3) A period, originally 40 days (the historic understanding of the maximum known incubation period of disease) of detention or isolation imposed upon ships, persons, animals, or plants on arrival at a port or place, when suspected of carrying some infectious or contagious disease; a record system kept by port health authorities in order to monitor and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.  The origin was in measures taken in 1448 in Venice's lazaret to avoid renewed outbreaks of the bubonic plague.

(4) In historic French law, a 40-day period imposed by the king upon warring nobles during which they were forbidden from exacting revenge or to continue warfare.

(5) A place where such isolation is enforced (a lazaret).

(6) In international relations, a blockade of trade, suspension of diplomatic relations, or other action whereby one country seeks to isolate another.

(7) In computing, a place where files suspected of harboring a computer virus or other harmful code are stored in a way preventing infection of other files or machines; the process of such an isolation.

(8) To withhold a portion of a welfare payment from a person or group of people (Australia).

(9) To quarantine someone or something.

1600–1610: From the Middle English quarentine (period a ship suspected of carrying contagious disease is kept in isolation), from the Norman quarenteine, from the French quarenteine, from the Italian quarantina, a variant of quarantena, originally from the upper Italian (Venetian) dialect as quaranta giorni (space of forty days, group of forty), from quaranta (forty) from the Medieval Latin quarentīna (period of forty days; Lent), from the Classical Latin quadrāgintā (four tens, forty) and related to quattuor (four), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer (four).  The difference between quarantine and isolation is one of context; while people might for many reasons be isolated, quarantine is a public health measure to deal with those exposed to or at risk of having been infected by a communicable disease, the duration of the quarantine being sufficient to ensure any risk of spreading the infection has passed.  The name is from the Venetian policy (first enforced as the 30 day edict trentino in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for forty days to ensure no latent cases remained aboard.  The extended sense of "any period of forced isolation" dates from the 1670s.  A doublet of carene and quadragene.

In the context the L'Ancien Régime (pre-revolutionary France), it was a calque of the French quarantaine, following the edicts of Louis IX (and formalized by the quarantaine du Roi (1704) of Louis XIV which was a mechanism of quieting squabbling nobles).  Quarantine was introduced to international relations as a euphemism for "blockade" in 1937 because the Roosevelt administration was (1) conscious of public reaction to the effects on civilians of the Royal Navy’s blockade of Imperial Germany during World War I (1914-1918) and (2) legal advice that a “blockade” of a non-belligerent was, under international law, probably an act of war.  The use was revived by the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962).  The verb meaning "put under quarantine" came quickly to be used in any sense including figuratively (to isolate, as by authority) dates from 1804.  Predating the use in public health, in early sixteenth century English common law, the quarentine was the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her dead husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.  The alternative spellings quarentine, quarantin, quaranteen, quarantain, quarantaine, quarrentine, quarantene, quarentene, quarentyne, querentyne are all obsolete except in historic references).  While not of necessity entirely synonymous, detention, sequester, separation, seclusion, segregation, sequestration, lazaretto, segregate, confine, separate, seclude, insulate, restrict, detach & cordon, are at least vaguely similar.  Quarantine is a noun & verb, quarantiner is a noun, quarantinable is an adjective and quarantined & quarantining are verbs & adjectives.

Bleriot traversant la Manche le 25 Juillet 1909 (Blériot crossing the English Channel on 25 July 1909), coloré à la main pochoir print (hand-coloured stencil print) by Ernest Montaut (1879–1909).  In 1909, this image was issued as a commemorative postcard.

It’s a modern conceit that technology now moves too fast for bureaucracy and laws to keep pace but twas often thus.  Although as early as 1785, men had crossed the English Channel by hot-air balloon, for thousands of years since the retreat of the glaciers, most arriving in British Isles had travelled across the seas so by 1909 the British had never troubled to update the forms used by their customs officials. So, when French engineer and pioneer aviator Louis Blériot (1872–1936) on 25 July 1909 flew across the English Channel in his Type XI monoplane (a flight duration of some 37 minutes), the Collector of Customs at Dover noted in his daily log: “I issued to him a Quarantine Certificate, thereby treating it [the aircraft] as a yacht and the aviator as Master and owner.”

In scripture, the number 40 often occurs although Biblical scholars, always anxious to dismiss musings from numerologists, new age practitioners and crystal-wearing basket weavers, reject the notion it has any special meaning beyond the idea of a “period of trial or struggle”, memorably expressed in the phrase “forty days and forty nights”.  In the Old Testament, when God destroyed the earth in the Great Flood, he delivered rain for 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12).  After killing the Egyptian, Moses fled to Midian where he spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30) and subsequently he stood on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (Exodus 24:18) and then interceded on Israel’s behalf for 40 days and 40 nights (Deuteronomy 9:18, 25).  In Deuteronomy 25:3, the maximum number of lashes a man could receive as punishment for a crime was set at 40.  The Israelite spies took 40 days to spy out Canaan (Numbers 13:25), the Israelites wandered for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2-5) and before Samson’s deliverance, Israel served the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1).  Goliath taunted Saul’s army for 40 days before David arrived to slay him (1 Samuel 17:16) and when Elijah fled from Jezebel, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).  The number 40 also appears in the prophecies of Ezekiel (4:6; 29:11-13) and Jonah (3:4).  In the New Testament, the quarentyne was the desert in which Christ fasted and was tempted for for 40 days and 40 nights (Matthew 4:2) and there were 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3).  Presumably, this influenced Western medicine because it was long (and still by some) recommended that women should for 40 days rest after childbirth.

Plague, the Venetians and Quarantino

The Plague of Justinian arrived in Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 541, brought from recently conquered Egypt across the Mediterranean by plague-ridden fleas in the fur of rats on ships bringing loot from the war.  From the imperial capital it spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia, killing an estimated thirty to fifty million, perhaps a quarter the inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.  Plague never really went away, localized outbreaks happening periodically unit it returned as a pandemic some eight-hundred years later; the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed some two-hundred million in just four years and demographically, Europe would not for centuries recover from the Black Death.

There was at the time little scientific understanding of contagion but it became clear it was related to proximity so officials in Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik in Croatia) resolved to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until it was apparent they were healthy.  Initially, the sailors were confined to their ships for thirty days, formalized in a 1377 Venetian law as a trentino (thirty days), which radically reduced the transmission rate and by 1448, the Venetians had increased the forced isolation to forty days (quarantine), which, given bubonic plague’s thirty-seven day cycle from infection to death, was an example of a practical scientific experiment.  The word soon entered Middle English as quarantine (already in use in common law as a measure of certain rights accruing to a widow), the origin of the modern word and practice of quarantine.  The English had many opportunities to practice quarentine.  In the three-hundred odd years between 1348 and 1665, London suffered some forty outbreaks, about once a generation (or every twenty years), the significance of this pattern something which modern epidemiologists would later understand.  Quarentine laws were introduced in the early sixteenth century and proved effective, reducing the historic medieval death-rates to about twenty percent.

Eggs à la Lohan

During the Covid-19 pandemic, some turned back to neglected hobbies.  One of Lindsay Lohan's recommendations for a time of quarantine was to take the time to cook, posting a photograph of Eggs à la Lohan, a tasty looking omelet, inspired apparently by a widely shared motivational poem by Kitty O’Meara (on the internet dubbed the "poet laureate of the pandemic") which included the lines:

And the people stayed home.  And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.  And listened more deeply.  Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.  Some met their shadows.  And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed.  And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.  And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

Unfortunately, viewed from early 2023, it would seem Ms O'Meara's hopes quarantine might have left us kinder, gentler and more thoughtful may not have been realized.  It may be Mr Putin didn’t read the poem and just ate his omelet.

Cope

Cope (pronounced kohp)

(1) To struggle or deal, especially on fairly even terms or with some degree of success.

(2) To face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties, especially successfully or in a calm or adequate manner.

(3) To come into contact; to meet (archaic).

(4) A long mantle, especially of silk, worn by ecclesiastics over the alb or surplice in processions and on other occasions.

(5) Any cloak-like or canopy-like covering (now rare).

(6) The night sky or the sky (archaic except as a literary or poetic device, sometimes in conjunction with “heaven”).

(7) In metallurgy, the upper half of a flask.

(8) In woodworking, to join (two molded wooden members) by undercutting the end of one of them to the profile of the other so that the joint produced resembles a miter joint.

(9) To form a joint between such members in this way or to undercut the end of (a molded wooden member) in order to form a coped joint.

(10) In steel fabrication, to cut away a flange of a metal member so that it may be joined to another member at an angle.

(11) In falconry, to clip or dull the beak or talons of a hawk.

(12) In medieval military use, for infantry forces to meet in battle.

(13) In South Africa, an acronym for Congress of the People, a political party founded in 2008 by dissident members of the African National Congress (ANC).

(14) To buy, barter; make a bargain, exchange for value (obsolete since the seventeenth century.

1175-1225: From the Middle English capa (large outer garment, cloak, mantle) which by the late thirteenth century acquired the specific ecclesiastical sense of “large mantle of silk or other material worn by priests or bishops over the alb on special occasions” from the Medieval Latin capa (cloak), from the Late Latin cappa (hooded cloak) (and source of the Old English cāp and the modern cap).  In figuratively use it was used of the night (the idea of the “cloak” of night's darkness) which was later extended to the "vault of the sky", the notion of the sky enveloping the earth as a cape covers the body, hence the late fourteenth century poetic phrase “cope of heaven”.  Cope is a noun & verb and coping is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is copes.

In Medieval Europe, meanings evolved in parallel.  The verb emerged in the late fourteenth century as coupen (to quarrel) which in the early 1400s had meant “come to blows, deliver blows, engage in combat”, from the Anglo-French & Old French couper, from colper (to strike; to cut; a blow hit, punch), from colp (a blow).  The meaning evolved and by the eighteenth century meant “handle (successfully), deal with” and etymologists suspect this may have been under the influence of the obsolete use of cope to mean “to traffic, bargain for, buy”, in common use between the fifteenth & seventeenth centuries in North Sea trade, from the Flemish version of the Germanic source of English “cheap”.  The construct of København (literally “merchant's port”) (Copenhagen), the capital of Denmark, was køber (merchant (literally “buyer”)) + havn (port) (thus the idea in English of a port as a “haven in a storm”).  English picked up cope in the fifteenth century from its sense in Low German of "to buy, barter, make a bargain”, use lasting until late in the seventeenth.  The noun coping dates from the early seventeenth century as a term in architectural meaning “the top or cover of a wall, usually sloped to shed water”, an allusion to the function of a priest’s cloak-like cope in protecting the wearing from rain.  By the 1660s, this technical sense in building extended to a general description of the form and shape of a typical cope and the verb cope in this context was used to describe “forming a cope, bend as an arch or vault”.  The notion was picked up in carpentry in the 1880s as “coping saw”, a saw with a long, narrow blade used for cutting curved patterns.

Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) in red papal cope & mitre, worn when presiding over the ceremonies marking the opening of the Pauline Year, 29 June 2008.

The cope is a liturgical vestment, a long cloak, open in front and fastened at the breast with a band or clasp, known as a morse.  Always made in a great variety of colors and patterns, the cope has never been restricted to the clergy and although now, in its more elaborate forms, it's most associated with bishops and cardinals, there's no doubt it was originally a functional garment designed for no higher purpose than to protect the wearer and his clothes from the elements.  In Ancient Rome, it was known in Classical Latin as pluviale (rain coat) or cappa (cape) and in design and construction has changed little in two-thousand years.

Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) in Cappa Magna with caudatario.

Among copes, the highlight of any ecclesiastical fashion parade in the Roman Catholic Church is the silk cappa magna (great cape).  Technically a jurisdictional garment, it’s now rarely seen and worn only in processions or when "in choir" (attending but not celebrating services).  Cardinals wear red and bishops violet and both cardinals and papal nuncios are entitled to a cappa magna of watered silk.  Well into the twentieth century, a cappa magna could stretch for nearly 15 metres, (50 feet) but Pius XII’s (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958) motu proprio (literally “on his own impulse”, essentially constitutionally the same as a royal decree which unilaterally creates law) Valde solliciti (1952) laid down that they should not be longer than 7m (23 feet) and later instructions from the Vatican banned them from Rome and curtailed their use elsewhere.  Valde solliciti translates literally as “very worried” and Pius in 1952 was clearly exactly that, concerned at complaints that the extravagance of the Church’s rituals was inappropriate at a time of such troubled austerity.  There was in 1952 still little sign of the remarkable post-war economic recovery which within a decade would be critiqued in Federico Fellini's (1920–1993) film La Dolce Vita (the sweet life, 1960).  Accordingly, Pius wrote:

Being greatly troubled by the peculiar conditions of our times, which laborious experiments and changes make daily more difficult and more difficult, and which make those wishes worthy of the greatest consideration and care, for the attainment of which many strive today with a noble anxiety, We have always thought it opportune and consistent with the duty of Our conscience to respond to them with warnings which arise from it: namely, that all, and in a special way from the sacred order of men, are directed to a more sober, moderate and austere way of life.

For this reason, which also concerns Us, it was decided to set an example in these matters: it was decided to moderate somewhat the external rites which belong to the fulfilment of Our Apostolic office, that is, to reduce the sacred ceremonies to a simpler and shorter form; and for this reason above all we are moved with joy, because we see all men of heart, when in the habit of acting of individuals, as well as in the actions of public life, even in regard to the clergy, more than pride, we are amazed at the painstaking concern for the needs of human society.

It is our intention, therefore, to issue some regulations concerning the vestments of the Cardinal Fathers, who indeed are very dear to Us, and are present to Us so much in the whole Church that we govern. Indeed, we know that they do not look to the admiration of their admirers, but to place their own excellent dignity and authority in their own light; and in the same way it was seen by Us not only to abhor them from empty luxury, but rather those who have attributed to them the piety of the ecclesiastical patrimony of the Christian faithful, and sometimes also family wealth, to spend liberally in projects of beneficence when they are deeply convinced of themselves, to respond to the precepts of evangelical wisdom, as those who the results that remain, even those that arise from a more moderate way of living and dressing, will be invested in divine worship, in charity, in the education of the youth, and in apostolic works.

Therefore, while we honor them with due honor, we think that We will make their laudable Christian plans and purposes easier by these, which we have established by Motu Proprio, norms pertaining to the attitude of the Cardinal Fathers:

(1) Of the robe of the Cardinal Fathers, the cord or tail is to be removed, either of a red or purple color.

(2) The string or tail of their cap, which will not be worn in the Supreme Pontifical Chapels, nor in the Sacred Consistory, should be reduced to half, considering its size, which is in use today.

(3) Their clothes of a purple color (talar clothes, mantles, mozeta) are woolen; that the Cardinal Fathers, who had previously had silk vestments of a purple color, may continue to wear them for the same period.

(4) The norms of the ceremonies in the Roman Court will be reintegrated, according to the habit of those Cardinal Fathers who are recruited into the Sacred College either from among the Canons Regular, or from the Clergy Regular, or from the Religious Congregations.

Amanda Seyfried (b 1985) in cloak, Red Riding Hood (2011).

The caudatari need a practical understanding of physics when dealing with the challenge of stairs; note the parabolic curve a Cappa Magna assumes in ascent.

Over the centuries, there was certainly a bit of mission creep in the cope.  Originally garments like other cloaks of at most of ankle-length, by the mid-twentieth century, those used by cardinal could trail for 7 metres (23 feet).  Formerly introduced as an ecclesiastical vestment by Pope Nicholas III (circa 1225–1280; pope 1277-1280), even when of more modest length, in those dustier, muddier times, the need for an aide (familiar in English as “Page of the Robes”), saw the appointment of those who would follow behind, carrying the tail of the robe and preventing it dragging on the ground.  The first aides were laymen but the role was later assigned to junior clerics, often trainee priests and, in the way of bureaucracy, as bishops and other more junior clerics began to lengthen their trains, their numbers grew, not least because sometimes two were required when a cardinal might be negotiating tricky obstacles like stairs.  In the Church these aides were styled as caudatario (plural caudatari), (from Italian and literally “train-bearer”) and their sole role was to carry the train of the cassock or cappa magna during solemn ceremonies but, again in the way bureaucracies tend to grow, they began to assume the role of a personal assistant (PA) taking charge of the vestments’ cleaning, repair and storage (the role in England of the “Master of the Robes”) and during services, holding the cardinal’s cap or books and prompting him to recall (as required) what came next in the order of service.  However, Pope John XXIII (1881-1963; pope 1958-1963), either moved by the spirit of La Dolce Vita or responding to cardinals complaining about their sartorial emasculation, restored things, setting the Cardinals' copes to 12 meters (40 feet) and the bishops’ to 7m (23 feet).  One quirk in the Orthodox Church is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is required to don an ermine-lined winter cappa, because he is bound by the unalterable rules of the Status quo, an 1852 Ottoman firman (a word from the Persian (فرمان) meaning "decree") which regulates relations between the various religious groups caring for sites in the Holy Land.

Lindsay Lohan in Lavish Alice cape.  Lindsay Lohan is believed to have good coping skills.

In modern use, people seem often to use the words cloak & cape interchangeably, presumably because (1) both are now less common and (2) both are made from a single piece of fabric (though often lined), is sleeveless and hangs loose.  Properly though, capes are shorter, often of hip-length while cloaks are calf-length or descend to the floor.  Perhaps what misleads is the tendency in popular culture (especially film) to depict super-heroes (Superman and his many imitators) in flappy capes which extend sometimes almost to the ankles.  Cloaks also often have hoods which are less common on capes.  Cloak is from the French word cloche (bell), implying a wrap narrow at the top, flaring at the bottom and the envelopment they provide saw the word adopted to mean conceal, used in fields as diverse as coatings which resist detection by radar and masking agents used to suppress the presence of drugs.

Poop

Poop (pronounced poop)

(1) In naval architecture, as “poop deck”, a structure at the stern of a vessel.

(2) In nautical jargon, (1) as of a wave, to break over the stern of a ship or (2) to take to take seas over the stern (especially repeatedly).

(3) As “pooped”, a slang term expressing exhaustion or fatigue; has been used as a noun in this context as “an old poop”.

(4) As “pooped out”, a slang term applied usually to machinery which has failed.

(5) As “poop sheet”, military slang for information updates circulated on paper; later adopted as “get the real poop” (get the true facts on something).

(6) As a noun, excrement; as a verb, the act of defecation, both described by most dictionaries as informal and often childish; also recorded as a child’s expression of disappointment; was also used as a euphemism for flatulence, apparently as a more polite replacement for the earlier fart. 

(7) As “party pooper”, a stupid, fussy, or boring person.

(8) As onomatopoeia, to make a short blast on a horn.

Circa 1350: Origin uncertain but possibly from the Middle English powpen, popen & poupen (to make a gulping sound while drinking, blow on a horn, toot) and perhaps influenced by the Dutch poepen (to defecate) and the Low German pupen (to fart; to break wind”); the English adoption of the latter sense dating from 1735–1745.  The sense of information began as the US Army slang “poop sheet” to refer to anything on paper, distributed by the authorities, one of many ways soldiers had to disparage military intelligence, this one comparing official documents to toilet paper, presumably used.  The sense of “information collated on paper” continued in US journalism circles as “get the poop” in the post-war years but was later displaced by other slang as technology changed.  “Party pooper” was first recorded in 1910–1915 which some suggest is derived from nincompoop but not all etymologists are convinced.  The sense from which the poop desk of ships evolved happened independently, although in parallel with, the various onomatopoeic meanings.  Dating from 1375-1425, it was from the Middle English poupe & pope, from the Old French pope, poupe & pouppe, from the Italian poppa, from the Vulgar Latin puppa, from the Classical Latin puppis, all meaning “stern of a ship”.  All alternative spellings are long obsolete.  Poop & pooping are nouns & verbs and pooped is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is poops. 

A costal carpet python pooping.

In humans and other animals, although the general principle remains (if not exactly accurately) “What goes in, must come out”, there are a number of variables involved in the parameters of poop production, most obviously diet.  This coastal carpet python was seen on the Sunshine Coast in the state of Queensland, Australia and experts in such things commented there was nothing unusual in the behavior.  As they explained: “Carpet pythons will usually eat one big meal, such as a possum”, the meal lasting “...a while as slowly it's digested..." whereas “...smaller snakes, like tiger snakes, eat smaller prey like frogs.  So they will relieve themselves more regularly and with smaller stools.”  Ophiologists (those dedicated to the study of snakes) note also that there's not of necessity any direct correlation between the size of a snake and the volume of their poop, factors such as diet, climate and age all influencing the outcome and observational studies in zoos have concluded that some snakes seem simply to prefer to poop more often than others.  Now we know.

Poop porn: A scorpion taking a poop. 

The Poop Deck

Schematic of a sailing ship hull.

In naval architecture, a poop deck is a deck which forms the roof of a cabin or other enclosure built in the aft (rear) of a ship’s superstructure.  On larger vessels, the cabin was usually called either the “poop cabin” or “navigation cabin”. The significance of the poop desk is that it was from here the ship was sailed; it was for centuries the highest point of a ship’s main structure and so offered the best visibility.  The captain or officer of the watch would from the poop desk instruct the helmsman how to steer with the rudder and relay instructions to those trimming the sails, to change both speed and direction.  The helmsman turned the rudder using a big wheel mounted on the quarter deck, adjacent to and within earshot of the captain on the poop deck.  The placement of poop and quarter decks was dictated by the need for the wheel to be directly above the rudder’s controls because there was no electronic or hydraulic assistance; movements of the wheel purely mechanical, acting on the rudder through a system of ropes and pulleys so distances between the two had to be kept as short as possible.

A stylized representation of a carrack or gallon of the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries.

On modern, motorized ships, the navigational functions once directed from the poop deck have been moved to the bridge, usually located towards the bow (front) although in many cargo vessels (bulk carriers, tankers, container ships etc) the infrastructure is constructed close to the stern (back) to because this optimizes the architecture for load-carrying (loading & unloading as well as capacity).  Poop desks still exist on some naval and commercial vessels and not merely as terms of naval architecture because the space has been re-purposed.  On larger pleasure craft (such as the big yachts billionaires like), poop decks variously are allocated as viewing areas (sometimes with a diving platform), entertainment spaces or a helicopter pad.  On such vessels, many Instagram shots are now taken on poop decks.

The USN's (US Navy) USS Gerald R. Ford.

Laid down in 2009 and commissioned in 2017, she was the lead ship in the Gerald R. Ford class and although a second is scheduled to be launched in 2027, whether the planned series of ten will ever be completed is uncertain because the advances in autonomous underwater and aerial warfare have been such that a school of thought now exists among the navalists that the big ships may become so vulnerable (the factor which doomed the battleship, the last launched in 1946) the programme will need to be re-assessed.  Visually, the most obvious innovation on the Gerald R. Ford was locating the island closer to aft.

One exception to bridge placement is the modern aircraft carrier.  Although in the concept of naval aviation was explored even before World War I (1914-1918), it was in the 1920s dedicated vessels began to be launched and these set the template (a flat, flush flight-deck with the bridge and other superstructure to one side and centralized) which is used still although decks are often no longer always wholly flat.  On carriers, that control superstructure is called the “island” and while some early designs by British and Japanese naval architects featured unconventional arrangements (including port-side or multiple islands), what emerged as a convention was the long-standardized starboard (right-hand side) configuration, something dictated by it best reconciling the competing demands of deck operations, aerodynamics and “human factors”.  Because carrier-based aviators have been trained to almost always fly a left-hand circuit when recovering, they approach the ship from the port (left-hand side) side and land along an angled deck offset to port.

Lindsay Lohan on the poop deck of a yacht cruising of the coast of Sardinia, July 2016.

By placing the island to starboard side, it’s kept from a aviator’s line of sight during the most critical phase (the final approach) and the reduces visual clutter which can lead to a perception of obstacles on the landing side.  The need to optimize visibility should not be underestimated because landings sometimes have to be undertaken on pitching, rolling decks so efficient geometry matters.  Movement at sea and prevailing winds can also create turbulent air behind an island (the so-called “air-wake”) and locating it on the starboard side minimises the intrusion of the worst of the disturbed airflow away from the port-side angled landing area; even more than deck movement, stable air is most critical for safe recoveries.  The most significant aspect of the “human factor” is that a standardized layout permits standardised procedures for deck operations (taxiing, aircraft spotting, crew placement during take-offs & landings etc) so people moving from one carrier to another will know the locations of obstructions, control points, “safe lanes” and such.