Short

Short (pronounced shawrt)

(1) Having little length; not long.

(2) Of a person, of comparatively small stature; having little height; not tall (applied by extension to just about everything (furniture, buildings, animals et al)).

(3) Extending or reaching only a little way; having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically.

(4) Brief in duration; not extensive in time.

(5) Brief or concise, of limited duration.

(6) Rudely brief; abrupt; brusque.

(7) Low in amount; scanty.

(8) Not reaching a point, mark, target, or the like; not long enough or far enough.

(9) Below the standard in extent, quantity, duration, etc.

(10) Being of an insufficient amount; below the desired level.

(11) Of pastry, crisp and flaky; breaking or crumbling readily from being made with a large proportion of butter or other shortening.

(12) Of dough, containing a relatively large amount of shortening.

(13) Of metals, deficient in tenacity; friable; brittle.

(14) In physiology, of the head or skull, of less than ordinary length from front to back.

(15) In markets, not possessing at the time of sale commodities or stocks that one sells and therefore compelled to make a purchase before the delivery date.

(16) In markets, noting or pertaining to a sale of commodities or stocks that the seller does not possess, depending for profit on a decline in prices.

(17) In markets, as short selling, a mechanism for gambling that the future price of a stock or other security will fall.

(18) In phonetics, a sound lasting a relatively short time; denoting a vowel of relatively brief temporal duration (in popular usage denoting the qualities of the five English vowels represented orthographically in the words pat, pet, pit, pot, put, and putt)

(19) In prosody, of a syllable in quantitative verse, lasting a relatively shorter time than a long syllable.

(20) Of an alcoholic drink, a small measure (sometimes known as a shot); also used in certain UK circles to describe whisky served undiluted (straight).

(21) In ceramics, of clay, not sufficiently plastic enough to be modeled.

(22) In rope-making, hard fibre.

(23) In baseball, holding the bat with hands higher on the handle of the bat than the usual grip; a fielder standing in a fielding position closer to the home plate than in an orthodox setting (often called the short-stop).

(24) In tailoring, a description for cuts for those who are shorter; a garment, as a suit or overcoat, in such a size.

(25) In clothing, trousers, knee-length or shorter; short pants worn by men as an undergarment, usually as an alternative to closely-fitted underpants; knee breeches, formerly worn by men but now rare except in certain equestrian pursuits.

(26) In finance, bonds with a short duration until maturity.

(27) In mining, crushed ore failing to pass through a given screen, thus being of a larger given size than a specific grade; remnants, discards, or refuse of various cutting and manufacturing processes.

(28) In army jargon, of artillery, a shot that strikes or bursts short of the target (also admiralty jargon for the same concept).

(29) In electricity, as short circuit, the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it.

(30) In gambling, in the jargon of betting odds, almost even.

(31) In film-making, a production of deliberately brief duration.

(32) A truncated form of a word or phrase.

(33) In cricket, as a modifier, describing a fielding position closer to the pitch than the (nominally) standard placement (eg short third man as opposed to third man); a ball bowled so that it bounces relatively far from the batsman; a “run” disallowed by the umpire because a batter failed to touch the designated line on the pitch.

(34) In (physical) money handling, providing a total amount in cash using the fewest possible notes, ie using those of the largest denominations (mostly archaic).

(35) In computer programming, an integer variable having a smaller range than normal integers; usually two bytes in length.

Pre-900: From the Middle English adjective schort (short), from the Old English sċeort & sċort (short, not long, not tall; brief), from the Old High German scurz (short), from the Proto-West Germanic skurt, from the Proto-Germanic skurta & skurtaz (short), from the primitive Indo-European sker & ker (to cut (on the notion of “something cut off) in the same sense as the Sanskrit krdhuh (shortened, maimed, small)).  It was cognate with shirt, skirt & curt, the Scots short & schort (short), the French court, the German kurz, the Old High German scurz (short (source of the Middle High German schurz)), the Old Norse skorta (shortness, scarcity a lack (source of the Danish skorte)) & skera (to cut), the Albanian shkurt (short, brief), the Latin curtus (shortened, incomplete) & cordus (late-born (originally "stunted in growth)), the Proto-Slavic kortъkъ, the Old Church Slavonic kratuku, the Russian korotkij (short), the Lithuanian skursti (to be stunted) & skardus (steep), the Old Irish cert (small) and the Middle Irish corr (stunted, dwarfish).

The verb shorten (1510) (make shorter) had by the 1560s encompassed "grow shorter"; the earlier form of the verb was simply short, from Old English sceortian (to grow short, become short; run short, fail), the fork gescyrtan meaning "to make short".  The meaning "having an insufficient quantity" is from 1690s, the idea of someone "rude" is attested from the late fourteenth century.  The sense of someone "easily provoked; short of temper" is from the 1590s but etymologists prefer the origin being "not long (ie short) in tolerating" rather than a link to a “short fuse” which would cause gunpowder quickly to explode, although that is the modern form.  There are conventions of use: short is often used in the positive vertical dimension and used as is shallow in the negative vertical dimension; in the horizontal dimension narrow is more commonly used.  Short & brief (as opposed to long) indicate slight extent or duration and short may imply duration but is also applied to physical distance and certain purely spatial relations (a short journey) while brief refers especially to duration of time (a brief interval).  Synonyms (according to context) includes abbreviated, brief, crisp, precise, shortened, terse, low, small, thick, tiny, limited, poor, shy, slender, slim, tight, sharp, fragile, bare & compressed.  Short is a noun, verb, adverb & adjective, shortness is a noun, shorter shorted & shortest are adjectives, shorted & shorting are verbs and shortly is an adverb.

Derived forms include shortage (limited supply) (1862 from US English), shorty (short person) (1888), shortfall (something falling short of expectations) (1895), shorthand (a method of rapid writing used to record dictation or other speech) (1636), shorts (short pants) (1826 and uniquely applied to trousers, short-sleeved shirts etc never using the form) and the intriguing short shorts (1946 describing men's briefs, now often called boxer shorts (1949)), shortcoming (1670s) (an expression of inadequacy and usually used in the plural), shortly, from the Old English scortlice (briefly also in late Old English) (in short time; soon; not long), shortness (1570s), from the Old English scortnes and now used mostly in the sense of “shortness of breath”, shortstop (1837) (a fielding position in various sports (although has faded in cricket)), shortcut (1610s) (often as short-cut, (path not as long as the ordinary way)) although the term may have been longer in oral use because the figurative sense is documented from the 1580s; it’s familiar now as “a desktop pointer to files more deeply nested” since file-loading graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were bolted atop computer operating systems in the 1980s.  Shortening (1540s) (action of making short) was a verbal noun from shorten and the meaning "butter or other fat used in baking" (1796) was from shorten in the sense "make crumbly" (1733), from the adjective short in the early fifteenth century secondary sense of "easily crumbled" which may have been linked to the idea of "having short fibers" and from this, came shortbread (1755) and shortcake (1590).

The noun & verb shortlist (to cull someone from a long list and place them on a shorter list of those to be considered for advancement or preferment) dates from 1955, although the noun form short list (and short-list) had existed in this sense since 1927; the shortlist is now most celebrated in literary awards, the appearance on one something of an award in itself.  The short-timer (1906) was "one whose term or enlistment is about to expire" and was used variously in employment, sports teams and the military (the similar short-term was noted in 1901).  Short-wave (1907) was a reference to the broadcast radio wavelength less than circa 100 meters, used for long distance transmission.  Short handed in the sense of "having too few hands (employees)" dates from 1794, the use in ice hockey noted first in 1939.  Short-lived was from the 1580s and later assumed a specific technical definition in nuclear & high-energy particle physics.  The short-sleeve (of a shirt or blouse etc), although presumably a garment design of longstanding was first documented in the 1630s in a regulation issued in the Massachusetts Bay colony, forbidding "short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arme may be discovered”, a notion still part of the dress-code in some societies.  The first use of short-sighted was in the 1620s, surprisingly a reference to someone “lacking foresight”, the literal use in optometry to describe myopia not adopted until the 1640s.  The short-order was restaurant jargon from 1897, from the adverbial expression “in short order” (rapidly, with no fuss) and survives functionally as the “short order cook” in the fast food industry. The electrical short-circuit (the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it) was first described in 1854.  The use as a verb (introduce a shunt of low resistance) began in 1867; the intransitive sense from 1902 and the figurative sense (to interfere with some process and stop it) is recorded by 1899.  The short haul was US use from the 1950s to describe a commercial airline flight of short duration.  The blended noun shortgevity apparently exists as a (rarely used) back-formation from longevity.

Something described as “short and sweet”, dates from the 1530s and is something unexpectedly brief and can be applied positively, neutrally or negatively.  To be “caught short” is feeling a sudden need to urinate or defecate in circumstances where a loo is not conveniently accessible.  To “fall short” is to prove inadequate for some task or to fail to reach or measure up to a standard or expectations.  In cinema the “short film” carries a connotation of something artistic where as “shorts” are often just fillers in a commercial space.  A “short-seller” is one “shorting stocks”, a method of trading in which positions are placed to attempt to profit from a expected decline in the future price of the stock.  To be “cut short” is to be interrupted in some way by someone or something.  To have someone “by the short and curlies” is to have someone completely in one's power, an allusion to pubic hair, hence the related (and more evocative) phrase “they have us by the scrotum”.  Having the “short end of the stick” is to receive the most disadvantageous part of something (analogous with “drawing the short straw”, a literal practice used to allocate an undesirable task, usually in the absence of volunteers.  To give “short shrift” (often incorrectly expressed as “short shift”) to someone is to be dismissive.  The “long and short of it” is a brief, succinct explanation of something; gist of the matter.  Something “short for” (contraction of a name or phrase) is a more convenient form of a longer word or phrase (such as bus for omnibus and ETA for expected time or arrival).  That use dates from 1873 but the forms have altered over time: Psycho by 1921 was campus slang for psychology, use extended to cover psychologists by 1925 but this has since shifted to be a reference to psychopaths, the change thought provoked by the frequency with which the word came to be used in popular culture.  To “short change” someone originally (1903) meant not to give someone all the change they were due in a financial transaction; now mostly used figuratively.  The “short story” was obviously an ancient form of writing but as a defined genre in literature, was first labelled in 1877.  To “make short work” of something is quickly to complete the task, the phrase first noted in the 1570s. To be “short by the knees” was to be kneeling, attested since 1733; to be "short by the head" dates from the 1540s and was to be beheaded.  In 1897 a short was also a term for a street car (trolley bus), so called both because the street cars and the rides taken in them were shorter (respectively in length and duration) than railroad cars.

Of machinery short & long

The stretching of military and commercial airframes has for decades been common practice, the objective usually to increase carrying capacity (passengers, freight, weapons etc).  Unusually, with the Boeing 747 (the original jumbo jet), there were variations both short and long.  The origin of the term jumbo-jet seem to lie in the slang adopted by Boeing’s engineers circa 1960 (the first reference in print apparently in 1964), during the early planning for the project which would first fly in 1969.  Then called the jumbo-707, it was soon shortened to jumbo-jet, probably because a three syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven.  The term jumbo-jet came to refer to all wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes but has always tended most to be associated with Boeing’s 747.  Highly successful and as influential on the economics of the industry in the 1970s as the 707 had been in the 1950s, the basic platform was offered in an stretched version (747-8) in 2005, the fuselage lengthened from 232 feet (71 m) to 251 feet (77 m).

The original 747-100 series (1969, left), the elongated 747-8 (2005, centre) and the shortened 747SP (1975).

Unusually however, in 1975 Boeing announced a short version, named 747SP (Special Performance), the lower weight improving fuel consumption, permitting operators to fly long-haul routes non-stop.  Some 47 feet (14 m) shorter than the original 747-100 series, the SP entered service in 1976 but was never as commercially successful as Boeing hoped, only 45 of the projected 200-odd ever built.  Had fuel remained cheap demand may have been higher but every analysis confirmed the role envisaged for the SP would be more economically served with a new generation of two-engined jumbos and this was the path pursued both by Boeing and Airbus.

1965 Mercedes-Benz 600s: Four-door Pullman (background) & the standard saloon (foreground).

Short is a relative term.  The standard Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) at some 5.54m (218.1 inches) in length was long by most standards but informally,  it’s always been referred to as the SWB (short wheelbase) because the companion Pullman model was even more imposing at 6.24 m (245.7 inches), the elongation effected by extending the wheelbase from 3.2 m (126 inches) to 3.9 m (153.5 inches).  Some sources refer to the bigger car as a LWB but the factory designation was always Pullman.  US manufacturers habitually used a variety of wheelbases on the platforms which began to proliferate during the 1960s but didn’t much reference the dimension in advertising and never in model designations.  The British and Europeans, with smaller ranges, often did both, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz & BMW all designating their long wheelbase saloons with an appended “L” (short for Long or Lang), the Germans for decades maintaining the distinction although Jaguar found demand for their (shorter) standard wheelbase XJ declined to the extent that production was halted and the long wheelbase (LWB) became standard.  Introduced initially as an extra-cost option in 1972 on the XJ12 and Daimler Double Six, the LWB began as a niche model for those wanting more rear-seat leg room (1105 sold compared with 3008 of the SWB) but by 1974, such had the demand profile changed that the SWB platform was restricted to the lovely but doomed two-door XJC (coupé, 1975-1978).  When the XJC was cancelled, all XJs were built on the LWB platform, now marketed without the obviously superfluous “L” badge.

1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK (left) & 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K.

Mercedes-Benz didn’t always make it easy to work out what was long and what was short.  The “K” in SSK (W06, 1928-1932) is short for kurz (short) which was fine given it was a SWB version of the SS but the 770K (W07, 1930-1938 & W150, 1939-1943) was anything but short, the “K” short for kompressor (supercharger).  Further to complicate things the SSK was supercharged but presumably SSKK might have been thought a bit much although there was a lightweight version of the SSK called SSKL (W06, 1929), the “L” short for licht (light) which was, again, fine except “L” would later appear simultaneously as short forms of both licht & lang.  This duplication of meaning has seemed always to lack the expected Teutonic exactitude.

Wearing it well: Lindsay Lohan in shorts.

1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder (LWB) (left) & 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder SWB (right).

Lengthening already large saloons to provide more rear-seat space made sense for many, especially those driven by a chauffeur.  However, with sports cars or other machines intended for competition, the tendency is to shorten, this reducing weight and improving agility although the combination of high power and a short wheelbase can induce some handling characteristics best explored by expert hands.

Ferrari's 250 (1952-1964) series of sports cars, cabriolets and coupés was significant not only for the many successes achieved on the track but also because it was the first model to be built in commercially viable numbers for sale to the public.  In this, the 250 set the template for the generations of road-cars which the factory would offer in succeeding decades, models which would provide not only the basis for the lightweight, high-performance variants used in racing but much of the funding as well.  All but a handful of the 250s were built either on the original 2.6 m (102.4 inch) wheelbase or the later (SWB) of 2.4 m (94.5 inch).  After the release of the SWB (which became the factory designation), the term LWB was retrospectively (and unofficially) applied to the longer frames.

The 250s had attracted much attention in the US market but the overwhelming response was that there was demand for a luxury cabriolet.  Accordingly, Ferrari's coachbuilder Scaglietti's created a roadster called the 250 GT California Spyder on the standard (LWB) platform and between 1957-1959 produced a run of fifty.  In the days before the quantitative easing (creating money and giving it to the rich) programmes run during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis 2008-2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) when a million dollars was still a lot of money, a California Spider set a then world-record for a car sold at open auction, the hammer dropping at US$12 million.  The 250 GT Berlinetta (coupé) had been released in SWB form in 1959 and it was on this platform the revised 250 GT California Spyder SWB was shown at the 1960 Geneva Motor Show.  Using the same proportions which would become famous on the 250 GTO, as well as the revised lines, the SWB Spyder benefited from being fitted with disc brakes and an updated version of the 3.0 litre (180 cubic inch) Colombo V12.

Wearing it not so well: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; head of state (1934-1945) and government (1933-1945) in Nazi Germany) in shorts.

So much in Nazism (and fascism generally) was fake spectacle that much emphasis was always given to the few things of note which were real (Hitler’s Iron Crosses (though he rarely wore the "First Class" one), Göring's war record, Goebbels' PhD etc), the importance to the regime of spectacle at the time suspected but not fully understood until the post-war years.  All politicians carefully cultivate their image but Hitler was singularly careful and diligent in preparation, these photographs in shorts (Bavarian Lederhosen (leather trousers)) taken for him to assess their suitability for use as publicity shots.  Unsurprisingly, he rejected them as “beneath my dignity” and ordered the negatives destroyed but they ended up in the photographer's archive.

Bob

Bob (pronounced bobb)

(1) A short, jerky motion.

(2) Quickly to move up and down.

(3) In Sterling and related currencies, a slang term for one shilling (10c); survived decimalisation in phrases like two bob watch, still used by older generations).

(4) A type of short to medium length hairstyle.

(5) A docked horse’s tail.

(6) A dangling or terminal object, as the weight on a pendulum or a plumb line.

(7) A short, simple line in a verse or song, especially a short refrain or coda.

(8) In angling, a float for a fishing line.

(9) Slang term for a bobsled.

(10) A bunch, or wad, especially a small bouquet of flowers (Scottish).

(11) A polishing wheel of leather, felt, or the like.

(12) An affectionate diminutive of the name Robert.

(13) To curtsy.

(14) Any of various hesperiid butterflies.

(15) In computer graphics (especially among demosceners), a graphical element, resembling a hardware sprite, that can be blitted around the screen in large numbers.

(16) In Scotland, a bunch, cluster, or wad, especially a small bouquet of flowers.

(17) A walking beam (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English bobben (to strike in cruel jest, beat; fool, make a fool of, cheat, deceive), the meaning "move up and down with a short, jerking motion," perhaps imitative of the sound, the sense of mocking or deceiving perhaps connected to the Old French bober (mock, deride), which, again, may have an echoic origin. The sense "snatch with the mouth something hanging or floating," as in bobbing for apples (or cherries), is recorded by 1799 and the phrase “bob and weave” in boxing commentary is attested from 1928.  Bob seems first to have been used to describe the short hair-style in the 1680s, a borrowing probably of the use since the 1570s to refer to "a horse's tail cut short", that derived from the earlier bobbe (cluster (as of leaves)) dating from the mid fourteenth century and perhaps of Celtic origin and perhaps connected in some way with the baban (tassel, cluster) and the Gaelic babag.  Bob endures still in Scots English as a dialectical term for a small bunch of flowers.

The group of bob words in English is beyond obscure and mostly mysterious.  Most are surely colloquial in origin and probably at least vaguely imitative, but have long become entangled and merged in form and sense (bobby pin, bobby sox, bobsled, bobcat et al).  As a noun, it has been used over the centuries in various senses connected by the notion of "round, hanging mass," and of weights at the end of a fishing line (1610s), pendulum (1752) or plumb-line (1832).  As a description of the hair style, although dating from the 1680s, it entered popular use only in the 1920s when use spiked.  As a slang word for “shilling” (the modern 10c coin), it’s recorded from 1789 but no connection has ever been found.  In certain countries, among older generations, the term in this sense endures in phrases like “two bob watch” to suggest something of low quality and dubious reliability.

UK Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 1830–1903; UK Prime Minister for thirteen years variously 1885-1902 (prime-minister since "God knows when" in Churchill's words)).

The phrase "Bob's your uncle" is said often to have its origin in the nepotism allegedly extended by Lord Salisbury to his favorite nephew Arthur Balfour (1848–1930; UK Prime Minister 1902-1905), unexpectedly promoted to a number of big jobs during the 1880s.  The story has never convinced etymologists but it certainly impressed the Greeks who made up a big part of Australia's post-war immigration programme, "Spiro is your uncle" in those years often heard in Sydney and Melbourne to denote nepotism among their communities there.

The other potential source is the Scottish music hall, the first known instance in in a Dundee newspaper in 1924 reviewing a musical revue called Bob's Your Uncle.  The phrase however wasn't noted as part of the vernacular until 1937, six years after the release of the song written by JP Long, "Follow your uncle Bob" which alluded to the nepotistic in the lyrics:

Bob's your uncle

Follow your Uncle Bob

He knows what to do

He'll look after you

Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937) notes the phrase but dates it to the 1890s though without attribution and it attained no currency in print until the post-war years.  Although it's impossible to be definitive, the musical connection does seem more convincing, the connection with Lord Salisbury probably retrospective.  It could however have even earlier origins, an old use noted in the Canting Dictionary (1725) in an entry reporting "Bob ... signifies Safety, ... as, It's all Bob, ie All is safe, the Bet is secured."

Of hair

A bob cut or bob is a short to shoulder-length haircut for women.  Historically, in the west, it’s regarded as a twentieth-century style although evidence of it exists in the art of antiquity and even some prehistoric cave-paintings hint it may go way back, hardly surprising given the functionality.  In 1922, the Times of London, never much in favor of anything new, ran a piece by its fashion editor predicting the demise of the fad, suggesting it was already passé (fashion editors adore the word passé).  Certainly, bobs were less popular by the 1930s but in the 1960s, a variety of social and economic forces saw a resurgence which has never faded and the twenty-first century association with the Karen hasn't lessened demand (although the A-line variant, now known in the industry as the "speak to the manager" seems now avoided) and the connection with the Karen is the second time the bob has assumed some socio-political meaning; when flaunted by the proto-feminists of the 1920s, it was regarded as a sign of radicalism.  The popularity in the 1920s affected the millinery trades too as it was the small cloche which fitted tightly on the bobbed head which became the hat of choice.  Manufacturer of milliner's materials, hair-nets and hair-pins all suffered depressed demand, the fate too of the corset makers, victims of an earlier social change and one which would in the post-war years devastate the industries supporting the production of hats for men.

Variations on a theme of bob, Marama Corlett (b 1984) and Lindsay Lohan, Sick Note, June 2017.

Hairdressers have number of terms for the variations.  The motifs can in some cases be mixed and even within styles, lengths can vary, a classic short bob stopping somewhere between the tips of the ears and well above the shoulders, a long bob extending from there to just above the shoulders; although the term is often used, the concept of the medium bob really makes no sense and there are just fractional variations of short and long, everything happening at the margins.  So, a bob starts with the fringe and ends being cut in a straight line; length can vary but the industry considers shoulder-length a separate style and the point at which bobs stop and something else begins.  Descriptions like curly and ringlet bobs refer more to the hair than the style but do hint at one caveat, not all styles suit all hair types, a caution which extends also to face shapes.

Asymmetrical Bob: Another general term which describes a bob cut with different lengths left and right; can look good but cannot (or should not) be applied to all styles.   

A-line bob: A classic bob which uses slightly longer strands in front, framing the face and, usually, curling under the chin; stylists caution this doesn’t suit all face shapes.

Buzz-cut bob: Known also as the undercut (pixie) bob, and often seen as an asymmetric, this is kind of an extreme inverted mullet; the the usual length(s) in the front and close-cropped at the back.  It can be a dramatic look but really doesn’t suit those above a certain BMI or age.

Chin-length bob: Cut straight to the chin, with or without bangs but, if the latter is chosen, it’s higher maintenance, needing more frequent trims to retain the sharpness on which it depends.  Depending on the face shape, it works best with or without fringe.

Inverted bob: A variation on the A-line which uses graduated layers at the back, the perimeter curved rather than cut straight. Known also as the graduated bob, to look best, the number of layers chosen should be dictated by the thickness of growth.

Shaggy bob: A deliberately messy bob of any style, neatness depreciated with strategic cutting either with scissors or razor, a styling trick best done by experts otherwise it can look merely un-kept.  The un-kept thing can be a thing if that’s what one wants but, like dying with gray or silver, it's really suitable only for the very young.  Some call this the choppy and it’s known in the vernacular of hairdressing as the JBF (just been fucked).

Spiky bob: This differs from a JBF in that it’s more obviously stylised.  It can differ in extent but with some types of hair is very high maintenance, demanding daily application of product to retain the directions in which the strands have to travel.    

Shingle bob: A cut tapered very short in the back, exposing the hairline at the neck with the sides shaped into a single curl, the tip of which sits at a chosen point on each cheek.  This needs to be perfectly symmetrical or it looks like a mistake.

Shoulder-length bob: A blunt bob that reaches the shoulders and has very few layers; with some hair it can even be done with all strands the same length.  Inherently, this is symmetrical.

Speak to the manager bob: Not wishing to lose those customers actually named Karen, the industry shorthand for the edgy (and stereotypically in some strain of blonde) bob didn’t become “Karen”.  The classic SttM is an asymmetric blonde variation of the A-line with a long, side-swept fringe contrasted with a short, spiky cut at the back and emblematic of the style are the “tiger stripes”, created by the chunky unblended highlights.  It's now unfashionable though still seen.

Ephemeral

Ephemeral (pronounced ih-fem-er-uhl)

(1) Lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory.

(2) In biology, a short-lived organism (usually defined as a life-span less then twenty-four hours) as with some flowers, insects, and microscopic life.

(3) In geology, pertaining to a usually dry body of water which fills for brief periods during and after rain.

1560s: From the New Latin ephemerus from the Ancient Greek ἐφήμερος (ephḗmeros), the more common form of ἐφημέριος (ephēmérios) (of, for, or during the day, living or lasting but for a day, short-lived, temporary), the construct being ἐπί (epí) (on) + ἡμέρα (hēméra) (day).  Originally from the medicine of antiquity as a descriptor of diseases and life-spans (lasting but one day), the extended sense of "transitory" is from the 1630s.  The evocative phrase from the Medieval Latin, memento mori, translates as "remember that you will die".  Synonyms are: short-lived, fleeting, transitory, short, temporary, brief, fugitive, transient, volatile, episodic, evanescent, flitting, impermanent and fugacious.  Ephemeral is a noun & adjective, ephemerality is a noun, ephemerally is an adverb and ephemeric is an adjective; the noun plural is ephemerals.  An ephemeron (ephemera the plural) is "a temporary thing"

Ephemeral art

Ephemeral art, as a defined movement, dates from the work of the Fluxus group in the 1960s.  Originally a platform created to disseminate political messages and critiques of materialist capitalism, the genre developed from the merely ephemeral to the concept of auto-destructive art in which objects existed only for the purpose of their own destruction.  It was perhaps the purest and most original art of the high cold war.

Recreation of Gustav Metzger's auto-destructive installation (1960), exhibition Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow, Tate Gallery 2004.

John Sharkey (1936-2004) and Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) were most influential in the development of Auto-Destructive Art and best remembered for the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966 although the first public demonstration of Metzger’s concepts was at the Temple Gallery, London, in June 1960.  Metzger preferred to describe auto-destructive art as “a public art for industrial societies” and for the installation used in 1960, he hid himself behind a pane of glass covered with a white nylon sheet.  As the exhibition began, he used a brush to apply a hydrochloric acid solution to the fabric and as the material dissolved, creating a swirling, glue-like coating on the glass, he slowly became visible through the holes.  The presentation also included waste in plastic bags and models for auto-destructive sculptures. The work was re-created in 2004 by the Tate Gallery for the exhibition Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow.

Table (circa 1958), one of Gustav Metzger’s non-ephemeral works.

Metzger’s had first discussed his concept of auto-destructive art in a manifesto issued in November 1959.  In this statement, he emphasized how the most robust, and apparently durable, mechanically-manufactured objects (and those in which he though society was vesting a dangerous faith) ultimately would degrade and eventually disappear, a process which humans might delay but not prevent.  A second volume of his manifesto followed the next March in which he elaborated, explaining that auto-destructive art existed to highlight society’s obsession with destruction and the damaging effects of machinery on human life.  Although he didn’t reference it, there were elements in the manifestos which echoed the warnings of the dangers inherent in an uncritical faith in technology made by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) in his final address to the court at the end of the Nuremberg trial.  As well as carrying an anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist message, in the context of the early years of the Cold War the anti-nuclear tone of Metzger’s auto-destructive art was blatant.  His views never changed but, after taking the concept to a natural conclusion of public interest, his work assumed more conventional forms although the political agenda remained, addressing the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, terrorism and climate change.

Photographers can emulate ephemerality even without post-production editing by using light to "overwhelm" the focus: This is a three-frame spread of Lindsay Lohan being photographed at the point of photoflash.

Albert Speer and the permanence of the ephemeral

Nuremberg Rally, 1934.

Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981; Hitler’s court architect 1934-1942), little was built and less remains.  Although he would later admit the monometalism of the Nazi architectural plans was a mistake, his apologia was always tinged with the regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg.  Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable.  Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock (152) of 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness, the other advantage being the lighting disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, Nordic ideal, something which anyway was suspect, one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi ideal was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".

Nuremberg Rally, 1936.

Few though were unimpressed by Lichdom.  Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.”  History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) as a musical accompaniment helps.  Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea of the searchlights to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used.  Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational.  It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited by the time of day and thus the angle of the sun.

Speer had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving the twenty years in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence he was lucky to receive.  His interest in light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG’s (the Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers & carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures.  Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.

It was a shame the book was never written.  He recalled also the effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights.  The result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of architecture and light.”  It was at the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something of a harbinger and deliberately so.  He was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom, thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting, like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial phenomenon.”  Surprisingly, for someone who planned the great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures, the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing.  In all his post-war writings, although there’s much rejection as “a failure” of the plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it.  As he was contemplating a return to the drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world?  Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He will erect buildings for eternity!’  And now gyms!”  As things transpired, not even a gym was built and he instead wrote his history in text.  Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not.