Sketch

Sketch (pronounced skech)

(1) A simply or hastily executed drawing or painting, especially a preliminary one, giving the essential features without the details, later to be elaborated.

(2) A rough design, plan, or draft, as of a book.

(3) A brief or hasty outline of facts, occurrences etc.

(4) As thumbnail sketch, a piece of text which summaries someone or something.

(5) A short, usually descriptive, essay, history, or story.

(6) A short play or slight dramatic performance, as one forming part of a variety or vaudeville program; a short comedy routine (a skit).

(7) To make a sketch.

(8) To summarize, to set forth in a brief or general account.

(9) In metallurgy, to mark a piece of metal for cutting.

(10) In music, a short evocative instrumental piece, used especially with compositions for the piano.

(11) In the slang of the Irish criminal class, as “to keep (a) sketch), to maintain a lookout; to be vigilant; watch for something.

(12) In journalism, as parliamentary sketch, a newspaper article summarizing political events which attempts to make serious points in a lest than obviously serious manner (mostly UK).

(13) In category theory, a formal specification of a mathematical structure or a data type described in terms of a graph and diagrams (and cones (and cocones)) on it. It can be implemented by means of “models” (functors) which are graph homomorphisms from the formal specification to categories such that the diagrams become commutative, the cones become limiting (ie products) and the cocones become colimiting (ie sums).

1660–1670: From the Dutch schets (noun), from the Italian schizzo, from the Latin schedium (extemporaneous poem), noun use of neuter of schedius (extempore; hastily made), from the Ancient Greek σχέδιος (skhédios) (made suddenly, off-hand, unprepared), from σχεδόν (skhedón) (near, nearby), from ἔχω (ékhō) (I hold).  The German Skizze, the French esquisse & the Spanish esquicio are also from the Italian schizzo.  The related forms are the nouns sketcher & sketchiness, the adverbs sketchily & sketchingly and the adjectives sketchlike and sketchable.

Sketch became a verb in the 1660s in the sense of “present the essential facts of" and was derived from the earlier noun. This idea of a sketch as a “brief account” by 1789 had enlarged to a "short play or performance, usually comic", still maintaining the connection from art as something less than full-scale, the reference to comedy suggesting something slight rather than a serious work.  The sketch-book was first recorded in 1820.  That sense extended beyond text to art and design from 1725 when it came also to mean "draw, portray in outline and partial shading", firstly to describe simple drawings, referring later to preparatory work for more elaborate creations.  The adjective sketchy is noted from 1805, describing art “having the form or character of a sketch".  The colloquial sense of "unsubstantial, imperfect, flimsy" is from 1878, possibly to convey the sense of something "unfinished".  Adumbrate (faint sketch, imperfect representation), actually pre-dates sketch, noted first in the 1550s.  It was from the Latin adumbrationem (nominative adumbratio) (a sketch in shadow, sketch, outline).  The meaning "to overshadow" is from the 1660s at which time emerged the derived forms adumbrated and adumbrating and related forms are adumbration (noun), adumbrative (adjective) and adumbratively (adverb).

Sketches of Spain

Although not yet regarded as the landmark in jazz it would come to be in the decades which followed its release in 1959, even in 1960 Miles Davis’ (1926-1991) Kind of Blue had already created among some aficionados an expectation; realising it was something special, this was what they hoped would be the definitive Davis style and they were anxious for more.  The next release however, wasn’t indicative of what was to come, Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet (1960 Cat# Prestige P-7166) was the third of four albums assembled from sessions recorded long before the Kind of Blue sessions and released to fulfil contractual obligations to the independent label Prestige.  Although some purists were pleased, after Kind of Blue, the music seemed old-fashioned.

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, (1959, Columbia, Cat# CS 8163).

Davis had enjoyed considerable success in the 1950s but, needing the distribution and promotional network of a major label to reach a wider audience, he’d signed with Colombia (CBS internationally).  The early Colombia releases had been well received but it was the sixth, Kind of Blue, which made him a star beyond the world of jazz, the album selling in volumes unprecedented in the genre; to date, over four million copies are said to have been shipped.  Davis had been innovative before, his performance at the 1954 Newport Jazz Festival defining what had come to be called “hard bop” (a flavor of jazz influenced by other forms, especially rhythm and blues) but the appeal extended little beyond already established audiences.  What made Kind of Blue so significant was that Davis essentially created modal jazz which shifted the technique from one where the players worked within a set chord progression to soloists creating melodies using modes which could be deployed alone or in multiples.  Musicians explain the significance of this as a movement to the horizontal (the scale) rather than the traditional vertical (the chord).  In the somewhat insular world of jazz, that would anyway have been interesting but the sound captivated those beyond and was a landmark in what would come to be known as musical fusion, the cross-fertilisation of sound and technique.  Among composers, fusion was nothing new but Kind of Blue realised its implications in a tight, seductive package.

Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, (1959, Columbia, Cat# CS 8271).

Sketches of Spain too was a fusion but it was different to what had come before and no attempt to be Kind of Blue II.  For one thing, the sound was big, recorded in the famously cavernous converted church in Manhattan which for decades was Colombia’s recording studio.  Lined with old timber and with a ceiling which stretched 100 feet (30 m) high, technicians called it the “temple of sound” because of the extraordinary acoustic properties.  The ensemble too was big, a necessity because this time the fusion was with the orchestral, the long opening track an arrangement by Davis and Gil Evans (1912-1988) of the adagio movement of Joaquín Rodrigo’s (1901-1999) guitar concerto, Concierto de Aranjuez.  Such was the extent of the fusion there were traditionalists who doubted Sketches of Spain could still be called jazz; they saluted the virtuosity but seemed to miss the sometimes arcane complexities in construction inaccessible except to the knowing few.

Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (1970, CBS, Cat# S 66236).

A wider world however was entranced and technical progress needs also to be noted.  Colombia had recorded Davis before in the then still novel stereo but even fans acknowledged the mono pressings remained superior and it wasn’t until 1960, after extensive testing and the refinement of equipment that the technique had been perfected.  Sketches of Spain was lush or austere as the moment demanded, listeners new to stereo especially enchanted at being able to hear the sounds hanging in a three-dimensional space, each instrument a distinct object in time and place.  Nobody asked for mono after that.  Influential as it was, to Davis, Sketches of Spain was just another phase.  Ten years later, noting the increasing sparse audiences in jazz clubs and aware a new generation had different sensibilities, Davis would fuse with other, more recent traditions and Bitches Brew would cast his shadow over a new decade.

Six photographs of Lindsay Lohan, rendered in software as pencil sketches.

Thumbnail

Thumbnail (pronounced thuhm-neyl)

(1) The (finger)nail of the thumb.

(2) As thumbnail sketch, anything quite small or brief, as a small drawing or short essay, a précis or summary.

(3) In printing, a small, rough dummy.

(4) In journalism, a half-column portrait in a newspaper (also called the porkchop).

(5) Something quite small or brief; concise.

(6) Concisely to describe (something or someone).

(7) In computing (on the graphical user interfaces (GUI) of operating systems), a small image used as a preview of the original which loads upon clicking the thumbnail.  Unlike an icon, which is (Usually) a representative symbol, a thumbnail is a smaller copy of the original larger image (although technically, a thumbnail can be constructed which reports a smaller file size than the original).

1595–1605: The construct was thumb + nail.  Thumb was from the Middle English thombe, thoume & thoumbe, from the Old English þūma, from the Proto-West Germanic þūmō, from the Proto-Germanic þūmô from Proto-Indo-European tūm- (to grow).  The spellings thum, thume & thumbe were still in use in the late seventeenth century but are all long obsolete.  Nail was from the Middle English nail & nayl, from the Old English næġl, from the Proto-West Germanic nagl, from the Proto-Germanic naglaz, from the primitive Indo-European hnogh- (nail).  The earliest known instance of the phrase “thumbnail sketch” in the sense of "drawing or sketch of a small size" (though usually not literally the size of a thumbnail) dates from 1852, the verb usage adopted in the 1930s.  Thumbnail is a noun & adjective; thumbnailer is a noun, thumbnailed is a verb & adjective and thumbnailing is a verb; the noun plural is thumbnails.

Fifteen images of Lindsay Lohan’s thumbnails.

The term "thumbnail sketch" began with architects, designers and artists who quickly would create small, conceptual sketches of their ideas so they could be tested without the time or effort required to render at full-scale.  While it’s possible some may literally have been the size of a actual thumbnail, most would have been larger and the term was chosen just as something indicative of “smallness”.  The practice or architects and others creating small sketches was of course ancient and may even have been associated with prehistoric cave painting but it was in the mid-nineteenth century the term “thumbnail sketch” came to be used.  The use of the thumbnail sketch (including the companion “pencil test” in graphic design) is now universal in industries where images need to be created and the techniques learned proved useful in the 1980s when icons became widely used in the on were used on graphical user interfaces (GUI) of operating systems.  In text, in the 1950s, the thumbnail sketch came to be applied to any a précis or summary and has always been prevalent in publishing and criticism (as brief plot summaries, reviews etc) and as short-form biographical data, especially when assembled in a list of those so profiled.

Thumbnail sketches of recent Australian administrations

Kevin Rudd (right) & Cardinal Pell (left), 2010.

Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013): There have been few Australian prime-ministers who entered office with such goodwill as that enjoyed by Kevin Rudd and none who have so quickly squandered it all.  Mr Rudd’s win in 2007 was a testament to his personal popularity and a reasonable achievement given that, by any standards, on paper, the previous government shouldn’t have lost office, there being no crisis, an outstandingly good fiscal position, low unemployment and no serious scandals.  Essentially, the electorate seemed bored by a decade-odd of dull competence and Mr Rudd was new, presentable and in his nerdy, weird way, appealing and thus the country voted.  His honeymoon wasn’t noticeably short but he had the misfortune to be prime-minister when the global financial crisis (GFC) hit and while for many reasons, Australia was relatively unaffected, the stresses it induced revealed tensions in his government and his background as a public servant wasn’t useful whenever decisiveness was required; long used to providing advice to others who made decisions, his government stuttered under the weight of committees and boards of enquiry.  A contrast with this intellectual timidity was his reputation for arrogance and abrasiveness when dealing with his colleagues and this didn’t help him maintain their support; he lost an internal party vote in 2010 and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) choose another leader.  In 2023, it was announced Dr Rudd would be Australia’s next ambassador to the United States and there are rumors he’s negotiated a secret, back-channel deal whereby he reports directly to the prime-minister and not, as is usual, to the foreign minister.

Julia Gillard (left) & Kevin Rudd (right), 2013.

Julia Gillard (b 1961; Australian prime minister 2010-2013):  Julia Gillard is thus far the only woman to become Australia’s prime-minister and some of the treatment she endured in office might make a few women wonder if reaching the top of the greasy pole is worth the price to be paid.  That said, it’s still a good gig and many will try.  Metaphorically knifing her predecessor in the back meant her premiership didn’t start in the happiest of circumstances and it didn’t help and he made little attempt to conceal his thoughts on recent events.  The poison spread through the party and the healthy majority gained in 2007 was lost in the 2010 election, the Gillard government surviving only with the support of three independents, all of whom extracted their own price.  Bizarrely as it might seem to some, Rudd returned for a while as foreign minister, an unhappy experience for many.  It couldn’t last and it didn’t, Mr Rudd resigning and unsuccessfully contesting the leadership.  Still despite it all, on paper, the Gillard government managed things successfully in a tight parliament and although the actual achievements were slight, they probably exceed expectations.  Ms Gillard is probably best remembered for her “misogyny” speech which deservedly went viral because it was highly entertaining although it did reveal someone sensitive to criticism and one wonders if she’d ever reviewed some of things said about male politicians over the centuries.  It’s clearly a more sensitive age but nor did she appear to see any inconsistencies between the words spat at her and her use of “poodle” and “mincing” (with all that they imply) when decrying one of her male opponents.  As it was, Mr Rudd got his revenge, toppling her in 2013 although his victory may have seemed pyrrhic (his second coming lasting three months-odd), he was probably content.

Tony Abbott (left) & Vladimir Putin (right) with koalas, 2014.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015): One probably disappointed that Ms Gillard was in 2013 replaced was Mr Abbott because all the indications were the Liberal-National coalition’s victory in the 2013 election would have produced a landslide-scale majority rather than the merely comfortable one achieved against Mr Rudd.  Still, the majority was sufficient for Mr Abbott easily to purse his objectives and he immediately set to reducing expenditure, cutting taxes, stopping irregular immigration (his famous “stop the boats” campaign lent three word slogans (3WS) a new popularity which endures to this day) and attacking trade unions.  He was a very different character from Mr Rudd but similarly inept in managing public perception of his government.  In his thoughts, there was a certainly of purpose Mr Rudd lacked but the core problem was that his world view seemed to have been set in stone by the Jesuits who taught him while he was training for the priesthood and while much had changed since the fourteenth century, he’d not moved on.  Thus created were the tensions which marked his government which was split between technocratic realists, right-wing fanatics, a genuinely liberal wing and his coalition partners, the National Party which was devoted to the horse trading necessary to extract the money required to pork-barrel their electorates.  Presiding over this lot as a leader with thoughts were more akin to the old Democratic Labor Party (DLP) than anything from the third millennium, it’s probably remarkable Mr Abbott lasted as long as he did.  The 2014 budget which made big cuts was blamed by many for his demise and while it’s true it was badly designed and poorly explained, it does appear Mr Abbott, while one of the most formidably focused and effective oppositions leaders, simply lacked the skills needed to be prime-minister.  In 2013, he lost an internal party ballot to the man he’d replaced in a similar vote in 2009.

Malcolm Turnbull (right) & Peter Dutton (left) roadside billboard (2016).

Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime minister 2015-2018):  There was an unusually great public optimism which immediately surrounded Mr Turnbull’s accession to office.  So encouraging were the polls that he probably should have gone to an early election as Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957) did in 1955, thus avoiding the grinding down of energy inevitable in “fag-end” administrations.  Instead he delayed, making the same mistake as Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) and John Gorton (1911-2002; Australian prime-minister 1968-1971) and the early support evaporated, the government surviving the 2016 election with only a slender majority.  Being from the liberal wing, Mr Turnbull really wasn’t a good fit as leader of the modern Liberal Party he’d been accepted only because he was rich, a virtue which in the party tends to mean other vices are overlooked (if not forgiven).  This allowed him sometimes to prevail but ultimately it was the corrosive and related issues of energy and an emissions reduction policy which proved his nemesis.  Even if the public didn’t fully understand the intricacies of the issue (and the especially complex mechanisms in the associated legislation), increasingly they were being persuaded by the science underlying climate change and just wanted the matter resolved.  The factions in the Liberal-National coalition had for more than a decade been torn asunder by climate policy and the divisions poisoned public perception of the government; Mr Abbott may have been wrong in how he handled the matter in 2013 but he was at least certain and decisive and was accordingly rewarded.  Support for Mr Turnbull eroded and in an amusingly chaotic leadership coup in 2018, he lost the leadership.  In retirement, he found common cause with Mr Rudd as they joined to complain about the undue influence Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) News Corporation exerts in Australian politics, especially the national daily The Australian which, despite a notionally small distribution, is highly effective in setting agendas, forcing other outlets to pursue News Corp's pet issues.

Scott Morrison (left) & Grace Tame (right), 2022.

Scott Morrison (b 1968; prime-minister 2018-2022): There are a few candidates who deserve to be regarded as Australia’s worst prime-minister (some of them quite recent) but the uniquely distinguishing feature of assessments of Mr Morrison’s term is that so many view it with such distaste.  His narrow victory in the 2018 election was a remarkable personal achievement but that proved the high-water mark of his administration.  Many critiques noted his lack of background, his experience limited to sales, marketing and slogans which has its place but did seem to result in him viewing a democracy rather as a sales manager views his employer’s customer loyalty programmes: Just as only good customers are entitled to the benefits of membership, in the Morrison government it seemed only electorates which returned coalition members were deserving of funding.  That did change in the run-up to an election; then marginal electorates which might elect coalition members attracted largess and while all parties do this, few have been so so blatant or extreme as Mr Morrison.  He also blundered in foreign affairs, publicly and pugnaciously calling for an international enquiry into the origins of the SARS-COV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.  That was a good idea but it should have been handled through the usual channels, not as foghorn diplomacy and the assumption of most was he was looking forward to going to his church (one where they clap, sing, strum guitars and the preacher assures the congregation God approves of surf-skis and big TVs) and telling everyone he’d stood up to the Godless atheists in the Chinese Communist Party.  Then there was the matters like the way a submarine contract was cancelled (costing the taxpayer a few hundred million) and the “robodebt” scandal (which turned out to be unlawful) which cost an as yet uncertain millions more.  Robodebt also exposed the contrast between his attitude to poor people who might be entitled to small welfare payments and that towards corporations which benefited from COVID-19 payments intended for those suffering certain defined losses in revenue.  When it was pointed out many companies which had received millions actually increased their revenue during the pandemic, Mr Morrison made it clear they could keep the money.  Maybe poor people should become Liberal Party donors.

Thumbnails of Lindsay Lohan image files in a sub-directory.

Embellish

Embellish (pronounced m-bell-lysh)

(1) To decorate, garnish, bedeck or embroider an object.

(2) To beautify by ornamentation; to adorn.

(3) To enhance a statement or narrative with fictitious additions.

1300–1350: From the Middle English embelisshen from the Anglo-French, from the Middle French embeliss- (stem of embelir), the construct being em- (The form taken by en- before the labial consonants “b” & “p”, as it assimilates place of articulation).  The en- prefix was from the Middle English en- & in-.  In the Old French it existed as en- & an-, from the Latin in- (in, into); it was also from an alteration of in-, from the Middle English in-, from the Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in (in).  Both the Latin and Germanic forms were from the primitive Indo-European en (in, into) and the frequency of use in the Old French is because of the confluence with the Frankish an- intensive prefix, related to the Old English on-.) + bel-, from the Latin bellus (pretty) + -ish.  The –ish suffix was from the Middle English –ish & -isch, from the Old English –isċ, from the Proto-West Germanic -isk, from the Proto-Germanic –iskaz, from the primitive Indo-European -iskos.  It was cognate with the Dutch -s; the German -isch (from which Dutch gained -isch), the Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish -isk & -sk, the Lithuanian –iškas, the Russian -ский (-skij) and the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ίσκος (-ískos); a doublet of -esque and -ski.  There exists a welter of synonyms and companion phrases such as decorate, grace, prettify, bedeck, dress up, exaggerate, gild, overstate, festoon, embroider, adorn, spiff up, trim, magnify, deck, color, enrich, elaborate, ornament, beautify, enhance, array & garnish.  Embellish is a verb, embellishing is a noun & verb, embellished is a verb & adjective and embellisher & embellishment are nouns; the noun plural is embellishments.

The meaning "dress up (a narration) with fictitious matter" was first noted in the mid-fifteenth century and was an acknowledgement of a long (if sometimes hardly noble) literary tradition.  It was exemplified by the publication in 1785 by German author Rudolf Erich Raspe (1736-1794) of Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, a collection of extraordinary stories, based (loosely) on the tales told by the real-life Baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720-1797).  The real baron was prone to quite some exaggeration in the tales of his travels but never went as far as Herr Raspe had his fictional baron flying to the moon.  The technique of enhancing a statement or narrative with fictitious additions (ie lies) was later perfected by the author and one-time Tory politician Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare (b 1940) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947).

Lindsay Lohan in bikini embellished with faux (synthetic) fur, photo-shoot for the fifth anniversary of ODDA magazine, April 2017.

In the matter of Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump

Various matters relating to a payment allegedly made by (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) to adult film star (and director in the same genre) Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory Clifford; b 1979) are currently before a New York criminal court.  When a member of Mr Trump’s legal team suggested she may have a  “propensity to embellish” when giving evidence, counsel was using the word “embellish” in the crooked Hillary sense of “lie”.  Lawyers have many ways to suggest those being cross-examined are lying and embellish is one of the more euphemistic though not as inventive as “economical with the truth”.  That one will forever be associated with former UK cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong (1927-2020; later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster) who, under cross-examination in the “Spycatcher” trial (1986), when referring to a letter, answered: “It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.”  Whether the old Etonian was aware much post-Classical writing isn’t known (at Christ Church, Oxford he read the “Greats” (the history and philosophy of Ancient Greece & Rome)) but he may have been acquainted with Mark Twain’s (1835-1910) Following the Equator (1897) in which appeared: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.  Let us economize it.” or the earlier thoughts of the Anglo-Irish Whig politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who in his Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory (1796) noted: “Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.”  Just as likely however is that Sir Robert had been corrupted by his long service in government and was thinking of: “The truth is so precious, it deserves an escort of lies.”, a phrase often attributed (as are many) to Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), but there’s some evidence to suggest he may have picked it up from comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and even if it wasn’t something the old seminarian coined, it was the mantra by which he lived so he deserves some credit.

Courtroom sketch of defendant, judge, prosecutor & witness by Jane Rosenberg (b 1949), Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, 7 May 2024.

The work of courtroom sketch artists became a feature of the trial process in many Western courts during the years when photography was banned and Ms Rosenberg has since 1980 become of of the most highly regarded practitioners.  Of her art, she was quoted, in a statement she stressed was non-political and not a comment on the legal merit of his case, that Mr Trump was “fun to draw”.  Something of the character of law will be lost if the courtroom sketch artist is replaced by an artificial intelligence (AI) bot.

The exchange on 7 May wasn’t the first time “propensity” and “embellish” had been entered into the trial transcript.   On 23 April, the court heard about former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s (b 1951) “secret arrangement” negotiated in 2015 with Mr Trump and his then attorney (and “fixer”) Michael Cohen (b 1966), the terms of which included the publication (1) promoting Mr Trump’s presidential ambition and (2) publicizing Mr Cohen’s “research” relating to Mr Trump’s opponents: “He would send me information [about the others seeking the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential election] and that was the basis for our story, and we would embellish (in the National Enquirer tradition "embellish" is a spectrum word ranging in meaning from "exaggerate" to "untrue").” Mr Pecker testified, adding the arrangement was kept secret from all but a handful of his senior executives: “I told them [the National Enquirer’s East and West Coast bureau chiefs] we were going to try and help the campaign, and to do that we would keep it as quiet as possible.”  National Enquirer has bureaux; who knew?

Stormy Daniels.

The day before, Mr Trump’s team pursued a line of questioning designed to cast doubt on Mr Cohen’s credibility, suggesting that for him Mr Trump has become “an obsession” and that he wishes to see him incarcerated and has “a propensity to lie.”  “He has a goal, an obsession, with getting Trump.  I submit to you he cannot be trusted.  His entire financial livelihood depends on President Trump’s destruction… You cannot make a serious decision about President Trump by relying on the words of Michael Cohen.” Counsel argued.  Mr Cohen had certainly left no doubt the case was on his mind, the previous night posting on-line that he’d experienced some “…mental excitement about this trial...” and the testimony he would deliver.

The highlight thus far however came when the state called to the stand Ms Daniels where in greater detail than expected she described the encounter with Mr Trump which led to the hush-money scheme.  The word the press seemed to settle on for their reports was “salacious” but the two things which most struck legal analysts was (1) the unusually wide interpretative latitude the judge appeared to allow himself when deciding the nature of the many details Ms Daniels should be allowed to introduce and (2) the curious reticence of defence counsel in objecting to the course things were taking.  Both of these aspects may be considered if the case goes on appeal when often a ruling is made on what evidence is relevant and what is so prejudicial that under the evidentiary rule it shouldn’t have been admitted and heard by the jury.

Stormy expression: Donald Trump at the defense table, Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, 7 May 2024.

Over lunch, Mr Trump’s team must have discussed these matters because they moved a motion requesting the judge declare a mistrial on the grounds Ms Daniels’ testimony contained prejudicial and irrelevant comments which: “…aside from pure embarrassment…,” these details did nothing but “…inflame the jury.”  The judge did acknowledge Ms Daniels was a difficult witness to control and agreed: “...it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” but denied the motion, saying defense counsel should have raised more objections during the testimony and that cross-examination would permit them to redress things, adding that at one point he had intervened to limit her statements simply because the defence had not.  The defense did actually raise a number of objections, a slew of which the judge upheld, after which he cautioned the witness: “Just listen to the question, and answer the question.”  Some may have recalled the infamous cross-examination of Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) by Justice Robert Jackson (1892–1954; US Supreme Court Justice 1941-1954; Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg (IMT) trials of Nazi war criminals 1945-1946) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) when the judges of the IMT (International Military Tribunal) declined to “control the witness”, leaving Justice Jackson increasingly exasperated by Göring’s long answers which the prosecutor though mostly irrelevant but which were of great interest to at least some of the judges and permitted under the terms of the court’s charter.  Of course, the IMT wasn’t limited by New York’s rules on admissibility of evidence.

Stormy Daniels (2019) by Robert Crumb.  Robert Crumb (b 1943) is an US cartoonist, associated since the 1960s with the counter-culture and some strains of libertarianism; he was one of the most identifiable figures of the quasi-underground (in the Western rather than the Warsaw Pact sense) comix movement.

However, in one exchange during defense cross examination, there was no question of any propensity to embellish, counsel asking: “Am I correct in that you hate President Trump?” to which Ms Daniels replied: “Yes.”  No ambiguity there and although not discussed in court, her attitude may not wholly be unrelated to Mr Trump’s rather ungracious description of her as “horse face”.  Really, President Trump should be more respectful towards a three-time winner of F.A.M.E.'s (Fans of Adult Media and Entertainment) much coveted annual "Favorite Breasts" award.

Donald Trump leaving Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, 7 May 2024.

Speaking briefly to reporters after leaving the court, Mr Trump said: “This was a very big day, a very revealing day, as you see, their case is totally falling apart, they have nothing on the books and records and even something that should bear very little relationship to the case, it's just a disaster for the DA.”

Arrow

Arrow (pronounced ar-oh)

(1) A slender, straight and usually pointed missile or weapon made to be shot from a bow and equipped with stabilizing fins (historically feathers) at the end of the shaft near the nock.

(2) Anything resembling an arrow in form, function, or character.

(3) A linear, wedge-shaped symbol used on maps, architectural drawings, engineering blueprints or any document to indicate direction or placement.

(4) In astronomy, the constellation Sagitta.

(5) In text handling and for other purposes, to indicate the proper position of an insertion by means of an arrow-like symbol (often in the form “to arrow in”).

(6) In graph theory, a directed edge (arc).

(7) In computing, the -> symbol, which has specific meanings in a number of programming languages (in Unicode, the hexadecimal range for the 112 supported arrows is 0x2190–0x21ff).

(8) In botany, the inflorescence or tassel of a mature sugar cane plant.

Pre 900: From the Middle English arewe & arwe, from the Old English arwan, from the earlier earh (oblique form ēarw-), from the Proto-Germanic arhwō, from the primitive Indo-European arku & hérkwo- (bow, arrow).  It was cognate with the Persian پيکان (paykan) (arrow), the Faroese ørv (arrow), the Old Norse & Icelandic ör (arrow) (plural örvar), the Gothic arhvazna & arhwazna; the (unattested) Germanic arhwō (feminine) and related to the Latin arcus (genitive arcūs) (bow, arc),  thus the unattested Latin arku- (bow; arch) and the unattested pre-Germanic arku-ā (belonging to the bow).  The word was rare in the Old English. The more common forms to describe an arrow were stræl (which is cognate with the word still common in Slavic and once prevalent in Germanic, related to words meaning "flash, streak") and fla & flan (the -n perhaps mistaken for a plural inflection), from the Old Norse, a North Germanic word which may originally conveyed the sense of "splinter" or “sharp pioint”.  Stræl was extinct by circa 1200; fla became flo in early Middle English and survived only in Scots dialects until the fourteenth century.  Arrow is a noun & verb, arrowing is a verb and arrowed is a verb and adjective although arrowless and arrowlike are the more common adjectival forms; the noun plural is arrows.

Lindsay Lohan in ugg boots with bow & arrow; photoshoot by Ellen Von Unwerth (b 1954) for GQ magazine's German edition, Malibu Beach, California, June 2010.

Convair B36 Peacemaker.  An incident on Valentine's Day 1950 which involved a USAF SAC Convair B-36B (44-92075) was the first (retrospectively) to be classified a "broken arrow".

The meaning in cartography and related fields (a mark like an arrow) dates from 1834.  The noun arrow-head (also arrowhead) is from the late fifteenth century but the ancient ones found buried in the soil were in the seventeenth century called elf-arrows.  The noun arrow-root (also arrowroot) dates from the 1690s, and was so named because the plant's fresh roots or tubers were used to absorb toxins from the wounds caused by poison-darts.  In US military terminology (command and control; nuclear weapons safeguards), broken arrow refers to an accidental event involving nuclear weapons, warheads or components not thought to create a risk of nuclear war.  The term had been used by the military to mean other things, some localized to specific combat theatres, but to avoid any confusion, the Pentagon in the mid-1960s standardized the nomenclature for reporting incidents involving nuclear weapons or related components.  At the time, many of the codes were based on Native American-themed phrases (Broken Arrow, Empty Quiver, Bent Spear etc), something which would not now be done.

Railton Mobil Special, powered by a pair of supercharged Napier Lion VIID (WD) broad arrow (W-12) aero-engines.  On 16 September 1947 it set the world Land Speed Record (LSR) on the Bonneville Salt Flats at 394.2 mph (634.4 km/h) in a two-way run over the measured mile (385.6 & 403.1 mph (620.6 & 648.7 km/h)).

Broad arrow internal combustion engines (ICE) are also referred to as “W engines” and have three groups of cylinders, one vertical and the two others symmetrically angled at less than 90° on either side.  The configuration has always been rare but is not new, the English Napier company building a W12 aero-engine between 1917-1935 which was such a sound design that development allowed it to enjoy an unusually long life as the most powerful engine of its era.  As well as aircraft, it was used in boats and racing cars and two powered the car which in 1947 set the world land speed record, a mark which stood until 1964.

1992 Mercedes-Benz 600SEL (W140) and the conceptual sketch for the proposed broad arrow W18 intended for the hypothetical 800SEL.

In the late 1980s, Mercedes-Benz, already concerned that Jaguar & BMW had made the V12 seem a bit common, became alarmed when learning a prototype BMW V16 (code name Goldfisch) had been installed in a 7 series (E32) and was being tested.  The Mercedes engineers didn’t need a tape measure to know a V16 would be too long to fit under the hood (bonnet) of their upcoming W140 and weren’t at all attracted to the idea of lengthening the nose, knowing such a change would (1) further delay a programme already behind schedule, (2) cost a lot of money in a project already over-budget and (3) make no economic sense given the V16 would be a low-volume model.  If a V16 was too long and an H16 too complex and hard to package, the obvious solution was a broad-arrow engine which can be thought of as a flattened V12 with an additional bank of cylinders in the centre and thus a W18.  Although wider than a V12 and even a V8, the W140’s engine bay was wide and, being barely longer than a straight-6, the idea seemed compelling.

BMW 750iL (E32) fitted with prototype 6.7 litre (406 cubic inch) V16 (codename Goldfisch).  Such was the length of the V16 that the front-mounted radiator was deleted and replaced by twin units in the rear, large scoops installed above the rear wheels to direct airflow; a rear grill was fabricated for heat extraction.    

It was a time of excess and the buoyant economies on both sides of the Atlantic (and notably also in Japan) gave little hint of the troubles to follow.  The engineers decided their flagship of the 1990s would be an 800SEL, the only discussion note being whether the internal components would be taken from the 2.6 litre (159 cubic inch) six or the 2.8 litre (171 cubic inch) unit and thus create either a 7.8 litre (476 cubic inch) W18 or one of 8.4 litres (513 cubic inch).  In a rare example of restraint, they settled for the smaller one.  There have been suggestions the engineers thought BMW would never proceed with a V16 because of the problems in packaging and doubted their own multi-bank proposal would ever see the light of day but as a design it was hard to resist so dutifully (and one suspects lovingly) they drew the blueprints to be presented to the board for approval.

Auto Motor magazine's somewhat unfortunately proportioned sketch (2000) of what a V24 Maybach coupé might look like (left), the circulated sketch of a Mercedes-Benz V24 (2 x M120 V12s) which probably always was fake news (centre) and the Maybach Exelero test-bed (2005) which made do with a V12 and followed Auto Motor's lead though with a finer sense of scale.

By the time the blueprints landed on the boardroom table it had become clear that things were changing and perhaps the 1990s might be a bit different to what had been envisaged in early 1987 when the parameters for the big W140 were laid down.  As well as the disturbing indications that the US Federal Reserve was prepared to raise interest rates to the point where the economy would go into recession in a bid finally to tame inflation, also looming were ever-stricter emission regulations.  Accordingly, the board vetoed the 800 SEL project and expressed themselves content the 6.0 litre (366 cubic inch) V12 (M120) already in development would be more than adequate for all purposes.  The board’s decision turned out to be prescient, the M120 one of the company’s best power-plants and one which was enlarged several times for specialist applications, the largest displacing 7.3 litres (445 cubic inch).

Mercedes-Benz Vision Maybach 6 Cabriolet (2017).

Since then, the trend has been towards smaller capacity engines and, as the ICE approaches, if not extinction then certainly a diminished role in land transport, there’s no longer much talk of W18s or V16s.  However, in the late 1990s, the Mercedes-Benz engineers did have one final fling at multi-cylinder glory, filing conceptual drawings of a V24 (2 x M120s) which could be used under the (very long) hood of an imagined Maybach coupé.  This one circulated but they appear never to have troubled the board by seeking approval to build even a prototype although, had the circumstances been different, it might have been a nice fit for either the one-off Maybach Exelero test-bed (2005) or the Vision Maybach 6 Cabriolet (2017) which nicely captured the spirit of the prewar 500K & 540K special roadsters.

1932 Bucciali TAV 8-32 Saoutchik Fleche d’Or (Golden Arrow).

About as incongruous in the early 1930s as the 800SEL would have been sixty years later was the Bucciali TAV8-32.  Produced by a French concern with a history in military aviation, Bucciali manufactured automobiles between 1922-1932 and was a noted pioneer in the groundbreaking concept of front-wheel drive, then known as Traction Avant (TAV), a phrase Citroën would later make famous.  Their machinery was intriguing but the crowning achievement was the eighth iteration, the TAV 8-32 and Bucciali enjoyed a successful run in 1930, France for various reasons not then greatly suffering from the depression which had already affected many countries.  The next year however the economy went rapidly into decline and like many manufacturers, Bucciali’s business became first marginal and bankruptcy soon beckoned, the company doing well to limp to an inevitable demise in 1932.

Few TAV 8-32s survive but one memorable four-door version has been on the show circuit for some time.  The 1932 TAV 8-32 Saoutchik Fleche d’Or (Golden Arrow), the name an allusion to the imagery used on the coachwork, was fitted with a stunningly sculpted, low-slung body by the French coach-builder Carrozzeria Saoutchik.  Apart from the TAV configuration which made possible the distinctive low chassis, the Fleche d’Or included other interesting features including a Voisin twelve cylinder sleeve-valve engine with four carburetors, a transverse transmission and 24 inch wheels, fabricated from steel with integral brake drums.  The distinctive stork on each side of the hood side was fabricated from German silver, phosphor bronze and gold-plated brass, the design borrowed from the insignia of the WWI fighter squadron of the builder.