Soccer

Soccer (pronounced sok-er)

(1) A form of 11-a-side football played between two teams, in which the spherical ball may be advanced by kicking or by bouncing it off any part of the body (excluding the arms and hands unless re-starting the game by throwing in the ball from the sideline), the object being to score points by putting the ball in the opponent’s goal-net. The special position of goalkeeper may, within certain positional limitations, use their arms and hands to catch, carry, throw, or stop the ball.

(2) In the slang of Australian Rules Football (AFL, the old VFL), to kick the football directly off the ground, without use of the hands.

1888 A coining in British English, a colloquial abbreviation for association football, the construct being (As)soc(iation football) + -er.  The other forms were socker (1885) & socca (1889), the first known instance of soccer noted in 1888, the word coming into general use between 1890-1895 and it evolved from slang to a standard form.

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  Usually, the –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun and if added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.  However, there was also the special case of the “slang –er”, which etymologists sometimes call the “Oxford –er” because of the association (though not the origin) of the practice with the university in the nineteenth century.  The slang –er was used as a suffix to make jocular or convenient formations from common or proper names and appears to first have been English schoolboy use in the 1860s before entering the vernacular via its introduction to Oxford University slang from Rugby School, the Oxford English Dictionary even identifying the first documented instance “at University College, in Michaelmas Term, 1875".  The first coining was probably rugger (the game of Rugby) and constructs on the same model include brekker (breakfast), fresher (freshman), leccer (lecture), footer (football), fiver (five-pound note) and tenner (ten-shilling note).  The practice continued in the twentieth century and some coinings endured in the plural such as preggers (pregnant), bonkers (behaving as if bonked on the head) and starkers (stark naked).  Given it was originally the work of schoolboys, some have expressed surprise they didn’t instead render a verbal shorthand of “Association Football” in a form using “ass” (although at Oxford it briefly was assoccer before quickly being truncated).

Football-type games have been documented for centuries and it seems likely something similar was probably played in prehistoric times on occasions when young people congregated but the point of Association Football was that in 1863 it codified a set of rules, allowing structured competitions to be formed.  Prior to that, clubs abd schools played many variations of the game and this caused difficulties when the young men met at university, finding no general agreement on the rules.  The University of Cambridge did create their own rule book but it was but one of many and it was this proliferation which lead to the formation of the association, the discussions eventually producing not only the rules of what would emerge as modern football (soccer) but also the schism which saw some schools and clubs go in another direction and play what became known first as rugby football and later simply rugby.  Later still, when it suffered its own schism and begat rugby league, the name “rugby union” emerged although “rugby” remains most common.

In most parts of the world, the game is known as football but in places where other forms of (closely or vaguely) similar ball sports had become popular and referred to either officially or casually as “football”, soccer was adopted as the preferred term for what was, at the elite level, a minority sport.  Thus in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Ireland the game came to be called soccer although, in New Zealand, beginning in the late twentieth century, “football” increasingly supplanted “soccer”, the assumption being that because the volume of overseas matches televised (with the native commentary) vastly exceeded that of local content, the word became accepted.  Additionally, because the rugby codes (historically rugby union and increasingly after the 1980s rugby league so dominated) and the common slang was “footie” rather than “football”, the latter in that sense never achieved the critical mass needed to entrench use.

It was different in Australia because of Australian Football which, while occasionally called “Aussie Rules” has long been commonly known as football (or footie) so the round-ball game became soccer and the name Socceroo (the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roo)) was adopted as the official name for the national team.  In Japan, where the dominant influence on the language in the twentieth century was the US, the most common form is サッカー(sakkā, from soccer).  In the US, a hybrid (with a few unique innovations) of rugby and association football emerged and was soon more popular than either.  The early name was “gridiron football” but in the pragmatic American way, that quickly became simply “football” although curiously, “gridiron” has survived among many foreign audiences.  Realizing the linguistic batter was lost, the United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, in 1945 changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association before deciding the advantages of product differentiation should be pursued, deleting entirely any use of “football”.  The other great US contribution to the language was the “soccer mom”, an encapsulation of a particular (usually white), middle-class demographic describing (1) a woman who often drives her school-age children to sporting activities and (2) in a quasi-disparaging sense, a white, middle-class woman who obsessively talks of her children’s successes and achievements.  There are derivative terms such as soccer dad & ballet dad but they’ve never achieved the same cultural traction.

The well connected Sepp Blatter (b 1936; President of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 1998-2015).

(1) With Silvio Berlusconi (b 1936; thrice Italian prime minister 1994-2011).

(2) With Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001).

(3) With Elizabeth II; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022).

(4) With the FIFA World Cup trophy (which hasn’t actually been a cup since 1974).

(5) With Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999).

(6) With Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1946; thrice Israeli prime-minister 1996-2022).

(7) With David Cameron (b 1966; UK prime-minister 2010-2016).

(8) With Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani (b 1988; chief of Qatar's 2022 World Cup Bid).

(9) With Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955, French president 2007-2012).

(10) With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; Turkish president or prime-minister since 2003).

(11) With Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).

(12) With Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & Jun-Sep 2013).

Unlike some sports where the influence of technology or improvements in this and that are so significant that it’s verges on impossible usefully to compare players from different eras, probably few would agree that among sports administrators, Sepp Blatter has achieved extraordinary things.

In office as president of FIFA between 1998-2015, Blatter devoted much of his time (and FIFA’s money) to building his power base among Football’s influential in Asia and Africa.  This attracted some comment from the football community in places like Europe and South America but in was in May 2015 he really made the headlines when a joint operation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Swiss investigators staged a raid on the Zürich hotel where FIFA were about to conduct their annual congress.  Seven FIFA executives were arrested and charged with racketeering and money laundering while a further seven officials and sports-marketing figures were indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for offenses reaching back more than two decades.  Shortly afterwards, the DoJ revealed four other executives and two companies had already pleaded guilty in the international probe, which involved the payment of some US$150 million in what were alleged to be bribes and kickbacks.  Despite it all, two days after the arrests, Blatter was re-elected president by nearly a two-thirds majority of the 209-member FIFA voting body.  Contrary to the president’s expectations, a public outcry ensued which in just a few days escalated so rapidly that Blatter called for a special session of the FIFA congress to be convened, vowing to resign once a successor had been elected.  In October 2015, following the announcements of further investigations of Blatter’s conduct, FIFA’s ethics committee suspended him from the organization for 90 days, appointing an acting president.

Two months later Blatter was found guilty of ethics violations and barred from football-related activities for eight years.  Some of the charges were pursuant to a US$2 million payment Blatter made in 2011 to Michel Platini (b 1955; president of Union des associations européennes de football (UEFA) 2007-2015), the supporting documentation associated with the payment said to be about as extensive as that attached to the receipt in the petty-cash tin for a packet of biscuits.  Platini had long been assumed to be Blatter’s successor.  Blatter appealed the decision and in February 2016 FIFA’s appeals committee reduced the ban to six years, a ruling upheld by the Tribunal arbitral du sport (Court of Arbitration for Sport in December (CAS).  Under new FIFA President Gianni Infantino (b 1970; FIFA president since 2016), further investigations were undertaken and in December 2020, FIFA filed a criminal complaint against Blatter relating to his role in the FIFA Museum project before in March 2021, citing financial wrongdoing in the payment of huge “bonuses”, imposing a fine of just over US$1 million and extending his ban from football for a further six years, beginning as soon as his original ban expired in October 2022.  That was bad enough but his life appeared to be getting worse when, in November 2021, Swiss authorities brought to trial fraud charges associated with the falsification of documents relating to the mysterious payments to Platini.  Some eight months later, Blatter and Platini were cleared of all charges.  Sepp Blatter has achieved extraordinary things.

Snood

Snood (pronounced snood)

(1) A headband once worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

(2) A headband for the hair.

(3) A pouch or net-like hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman's hair.

(4) In zoology, a long fleshy appendage of pendulous red skin that hangs over the upper beak of male turkeys.

(5) A short line of horsehair, gut, monofilament etc, by which a fishhook is attached to a longer (and usually heavier) line; a snell.

(6) A piece of clothing to keep the neck warm; a neck-warmer.

(7) To bind or confine (the hair) with a snood or (in other contexts) to put on a snood.

Pre 900: From the Middle English snod (fillet, ribbon (the plural was snoden)), from the Old English snōd (headdress, fillet, ribbon for the hair), from the Proto-Germanic snōdō (rope, string), from the primitive Indo-European snohtéh (yarn, thread), from sneh & snehi- (to twist, wind, weave, plait).  It was cognate with the Scots snuid (snood) and the Swedish snod & snodd (twist, twine) and related in various ways to the Old Saxon snōva (necklace), the Old Norse snúa (to turn, twist) & snúðr (a twist, twirl), the Old Irish snathe (thread) and the English needle.  The alternative spellings were snod & sneed, both now obsolete.  In Dutch, snood means “villanous and criminal.  The Dutch form was from the Middle Dutch snôde, from the Old Dutch snōthi, from the Proto-Germanic snauþuz (bald, naked, poor), from the primitive Indo-European ksnéw-tu-s, from the root ksnew- (to scrape, sharpen) and cognates included the German schnöde and the Old Norse snauðr.  Snood is a noun & verb and snooding & snooded are verbs; the noun plural is snoods.

In the Medieval period, snoods were most associated with young unmarried girls, the implication being “in a state of maidenhood or virginity” so were something like advertising one’s status on Facebook as “single”.  Merely adorning one’s hair with a snood was of course no guarantee of chastity so the system was open to abuse but social media profiles can be misleading so in a thousand or more years little seems to have changed.  Modern adaptations of the word have been opportunistic.  Since 1938 snood has been used to describe the pouch or net-like “bags” use to contain hear at the back of the scalp and these were well-documented as widely worn in the Middle Ages but nobody seems to have thought them snoods which were culturally specific.  The accessories dating from the late 1930s were sold in parallel with conventional hairnets and were worn almost exclusively by women, long hair for men not then a thing in the West.  Typically, they were a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head but differed from a hairnet proper in that the fit was looser, and they were constructed with a noticeably thicker yarn, weaved in a coarser mesh.  The way they were worn varied greatly according to the preference of the user and the nature of the hair to be contained.  Sometimes, a tighter-mesh band around the forehead or crown, running over or behind the ears and under the nape of the neck held things in place, the woven “bag” containing the hair dangling at the back.  There were also snoods fashioned from a solid fabric, but the advertising of the era suggests these were for fashion rather than function and tended to be colored to match an outfit.  Snood-like constructions are also worn by some women in a variety of religions which demand some form of hair-covering although the interpretation varies.  In the post-war years as health regulations began more rigorously to be imposed in food production and other sensitive facilities, snood seems briefly seems to have been used to describe the hairnets which were being mandated for employees and others in the space.  There were “hair snoods” and “beard snoods” but it was a brief linguistic phenomenon and soon it was hairnets all the way down.

Samir Nasri (b 1987) in football snood.

In Association football (soccer), the word was for some years used to describe the specialized garments players used as “neck-warmers”.  Popular with some players and understandably so in a sport played in the depths of the northern winter, the team managers were divided on their desirability and there were reports that as recently as 2009, (male) media commentators (presumably from a nice warm commentary position) were recorded as saying snoods as neck-warmers were “unmanly”.  Use of such as word would now probably see a commentator cancelled (or worse) and if may be that if a player chose again to wear one on grounds of the ubiquitous H&S (health & safety), they might find officialdom too timid to react. 

Nike Football Snood.

Demand clearly exists because manufacturers continue to maintain the product lines despite bans on their use at the professional level, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and the Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA, the International Association Football Federation) acting in 2011.  The concern apparently was on grounds of player safety, the suspicion that injuries might result from a snood being pulled from behind and in those circumstances the awarding a penalty for the infringement would not be sufficient because the need was to avoid injuries, not simply punish transgressors.  However, there was no empirical data and the risks were all theoretical so both authorities outlawed the things on the technical basis of them being “not an approved part of the football kit”.  The football snoods aren’t actually exclusively “neck-warmers” because, fully unfolded, they actually can cover the nose and ears, both vulnerable areas in cold conditions and in competitions where they’re not banned, they’re popular with goalkeepers, usually the most static position on the pitch.  So, instead of being thought of as neck-warmers, they’re really half-balaclavas and in the US, where “football” is something different, they’re often called “soccer scarfs”.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates the difference in a muffler (designed for warmth, left) and a scarf (designed to be decorative, centre).  A football player is a fully extended football snoot, worn in extended, half-balaclava style (right); in the US these are sometimes called “soccer scarfs”.

There is a logic to that although “soccer muffler” might be more precise although, lacking the alliterative punch, it’s unlikely to catch on.  Until well into the twentieth century, muffler and scarf were used interchangeably but with the introduction of the baffled mechanical device used to reduce the noise from car engines, the automotive use swamped the linguistic space and muffler became less associated with the neck accessory.  Historically, muffler was mostly British in use, Americans always preferring scarf but scarf is now almost universal although in the upper reaches of the fashion business however, the distinction is sometimes still drawn between the two, a scarf defined as an accessory to enhance the look and made from fabrics like silk, cotton or linen whereas a muffler is more utilitarian, bulkier and intended to protect from the cold and thus made from wool, mohair or something good at retaining body-heat.  Confusingly, muffler occasionally is used in commerce as a label of something which looks like a small blanket, worn over the shoulders and resembling an open poncho.

Football

Football (pronounced foot-bawl)

(1) As Association Football (soccer), a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goal-nets at opposite ends of a field, points being scored by placing the ball in an opponent’s net.

(2) As American football, a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goals at opposite ends of a field having goal posts at each end, with points being scored either by carrying the ball across the opponent's goal line or kicking it over the crossbar between the opponent's goal posts.

(3) By association (sometimes officially and sometimes as an alternative or informal name), any of various games played with spherical or ellipsoid balls, based usually on two teams competing (variously) to kick, head, carry, or otherwise propel the ball in the direction of each other's territory, the mechanisms of scoring varying according to the rules of the code (Rugby Union, Rugby League, Canadian Football, Australian Rules Football, Gaelic Football et al).

(4) The inflated ball (of various sizes and either spherical or ellipsoid in shape and historically made of leather but now often synthetic) used in football, the Rugby codes etc.

(5) Any person, thing or abstraction treated roughly, tossed about or a problem or (in the phrase “political football”) an issue repeatedly passed from one group or person to another and treated as a pretext for argument (often to gain political advantage) instead of being resolved.

(6) In slang (originally in the US military but now widely used), a briefcase containing the codes and options the US president would use to launch a nuclear attack, carried by a military aide and kept available to the president at all times (also as nuclear football, atomic football, black box or black bag) (by convention with an initial capital).

(7) As a modifier, football club, football ground, football fanatic, football pitch, football hooligan, football fan, football match etc.

(8) In commercial use, something sold at a reduced or special price.

1350-1400: From the Middle English fut ball, fotbal & footbal, the construct being foot + ball, the name derived from the games which involved kicking the ball.  Foot was from the Middle English fut, fot, fote & foot, from the Old English fōt, from the Proto-West Germanic fōt, from the Proto-Germanic fōts, from the primitive Indo-European pṓds.  Ball was from the Middle English bal, ball & balle, from the (unattested) Old English beall & bealla (round object, ball) or the Old Norse bǫllr (a ball), both from the Proto-Germanic balluz & ballô (ball), from the primitive Indo-European boln- (bubble), from the primitive Indo-European bel- (to blow, inflate, swell).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon ball, the Dutch bal, the Old High German bal & ballo (from which Modern German gained Ball (ball) & Ballen (bale)).  The related forms in Romance languages are borrowings from the Germanic.

Lindsay Lohan in “gridiron” gear, Life Size (2000).

Apparently in international use now less common than once (“NFL” now preferred), the term "gridiron" remains frequently used in the US describe American football including the NFL (National Football League).  The word refers to the marking originally painted on the field: two intersecting series of parallel lines running the length & breadth of the field which produced a cross-hatched effect recalling the gridirons used on stoves.  After the 1919-1920 season, the grid was replaced with yard lines still in use today but the name has stuck.  In the thirteenth century it was an instrument of torture on which victims chained before being burned by fire and in the same vein (though less gruesomely), in the 1500s it described a similar wrought grate on which meat and fish were broiled over hot coals.  In modern use, it's used of lattice-like structures (though not necessarily of iron) including in ship repair where grid irons are used as an open frame which supports vessels for examination, cleaning and repairs when out of the water and in the slang of live theatre, it's a raised framework from which lighting is suspended.  An interesting (though no longer permitted) use emerged in twentieth century land law in New Zealand where "to grid iron" was to purchase land with the boundaries drawn so remaining adjacent parcels were smaller than the minimum which could be registered in fee simple (freehold), thus preserving the buyers view and excluding the threat of undesirable neighbors.

In Australia & New Zealand, “footy” is the common slang used in all of the four major codes.  Slang terms for footballs include moleskin, pill, peanut, pigskin, pillow & pineapple.  The names are an allusion to the shape and that so many start with the letter “p” is thought mere coincidence.  The figurative sense of “something idly kicked around, something subject to hard use and many vicissitudes” which is the ancestor of the “political football” was in use as early as the 1530s while the US military slang referencing the portable device with which a US president emerged in the 1960s.  Football (in the sense of soccer) is called “the world game”: and like the game, forms of the word have spread to many languages including the Arabic كرة القدم‎ (calque), the Czech fotbal, the Dutch: voetbal (calque), the German Fußball (Fussball) (calque), the Hebrew כדורגל‎ (calque), the Japanese フットボール (futtobōru), the Korean 풋볼 (putbol), the Maltese futbol, the Portuguese futebol, the Romanian fotbal, the Russian футбо́л (futból), the Spanish fútbol, the Thai ฟุตบอล (fút-bɔn) and the Turkish futbol.  Football is a noun & verb, footballer & footballization are nouns, footballing is a verb & adjective and footballed is a verb; the noun plural is footballs.

The Nuclear Football

US Navy Commander walking across the White House lawn, carrying the “Football” onto Marine One (the presidential helicopter).

The “Football” (also as nuclear football, atomic football, black box or black bag) is a briefcase (reputedly made of a reinforced material with a black leather skin) which a military aide to the US president carries so at all times when the commander-in-chief is remote from designated command centres (such as the White House Situation Room), orders to the military can be issued including the command to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons.  The Football contains lists of the codes needed to transmit the launch order and the essential technical documentation required to determine the form a nuclear attack should assume.  Apparently, there’s also a check-list of the domestic measures immediately to be executed in the event of an attack including the imposition of martial law and the closing of US airspace to civilian aviation.  This was an outgrowth of the “SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) Execution Handbook which codified in one publication all essential information needed in the circumstances, something developed during the administration of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) but in the way of things familiar to those acquainted with bureaucratic inertia, the physical size (and thus the weight) of the contents grew and there are reports the package now weights in excess of 20 kg (45 lb).  Of course, everything could be contained on a single USB pen-drive (and the Football presumably includes a number of these) but because it’s something of a doomsday device, everything needs to be accessible in a WCS (worst case scenario) in which electronic devices are for whatever reason unable to be used.

Set of the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).  It’s presumably apocryphal but it’s said Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) remarked his only disappointment upon becoming president was that the White House Situation Room was more like something in which an insurance company might conduct seminars than the film’s dramatic War Room set.

The first known use of something recognizable as a “Football” was during the second administration (1957-1961) of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) although in those days it contained purely the vital information and none of the independent communications connectivity which apparently was added as early as 1977.  Quite when first it was called the Football isn’t known but the term was in use during the Kennedy years and all agree it was based on the idea of the football “being passed” as happens in the game, the link being that it’s carried 24/7/365 by an on-duty military officer.  There’s also the story that “Football” was a refinement (possibly a euphemistic one) of the earlier (and also unattributed) nickname “dropkick”.  In the game of football the dropkick can be used to transfer the ball to another player and it was used as a codename in the film Dr Strangelove, a dark comedy of nuclear destruction.  However whether art imitated life or it was the other way around isn’t known and Football anyway prevailed.

The arrival of the Football in Hiroshima in May 2023 with Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) who was in town for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting was noted on Japanese Social Media although it wasn’t the first time the Football had been in the city which was the target of the first nuclear attack, Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) visiting in 2016.  By the time President Obama stepped off the Air Force One, the Football enabled him to unleash within 30 minutes the equivalent of over 22,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs which, while rather less than in 1969 when the when the size of the US nuclear arsenal peaked, was still quite an increase on the two deliverable weapons available in August 1945.  The thermo-nuclear (fusion) devices in use since the 1950s were also a thousand-fold (and beyond) more powerful than the fission bombs deployed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki although interestingly, while for decades the Hiroshima bomb was a genuine one-off (using uranium rather than plutonium), analysts believe in recent years uranium has again become fashionable with recent adopters such as Pakistan and the DPRK (North Korea) building them because of the relative simplicity of construction.

Gaffer & Duct

Gaffer (pronounced gaf-er)

(1) The chief electrician on the set of a movie or television show.

(2) In informal use, a boss, supervisor, or manager.

(3) In informal use, an old man, especially one living in the country (often used affectionately or patronizingly).

(4) A foreman or overseer in charge of a group of physical laborers; the coach or manager of a sports team.

(5) In glassmaking, a master glassblower responsible for shaping glassware.

(6) Slang for boy or youth (unique to Ireland); used in maritime regions to refer to the baby of the house.

(7) A type of tape used usually as a safety device to tape-down cables to reduce the risk of tripping hazards (technically gaffer’s tape).

(8) In slang, as “to gaff”, “gaffered” or ”to gaffer”, a description of some temporary or roughly improvised repair using gaffer tape or some other quick and dirty method; “to make a gaff” as a description of a mistake is a variation of this.

1565–1575: Thought likely to be a contraction of godfather, but with the vowels influenced by grandfather.  The use to describe “an elderly rustic" was apparently based on continental analogies (compare gammer and the related French compère and German Gevatter).  It seems originally to have been a term of respect, also applied familiarly; from "old man" and was by 1841 extended to foremen and supervisors generally.  In UK police forces, it’s common slang to describe the officer in charge of a particular section or squad and in Association Football (soccer), the head coach or manager.

In the early twentieth century, it was carried over to the electrician or technician in charge of lighting on a film set because the natural lighting on early film sets was adjusted by opening and closing flaps in the tent, these cloths called gaff cloths or gaff flaps.  Because the technician used a long pole with a hook known as a “gaff hook”, he came to be known as a “the gaff hooker” and, as English does when users find there are too many syllables, this was truncated to “the gaffer”.  The tape later used for electrical cables was almost exclusively in the gaffers' toolboxes and thus became “gaffer’s tape”.  Now it’s known almost always as “gaffer tape”.

Duct (pronounced duhkt)

(1) Any tube, canal, pipe, or conduit by which a fluid, air, or other substance is conducted or conveyed.

(2) In anatomy and zoology, a tube, canal, or vessel conveying a body fluid, especially a glandular secretion or excretion.

(3) In botany, a cavity or vessel formed by elongated cells or by many cells.

(4) In the infrastructure of electricity, a single enclosed runway for conductors or cables.

(5) In a printing press, the reservoir for ink.

(6) Guidance; direction; quotation (obsolete).

1640-1650: From the Latin ductus (conveyance of water; a leading, a conduit pipe), noun use of the past participle of ducere (to lead) from dūcō (I lead, draw), from the primitive Indo-European root deuk (to lead).  Use has endured in the Medieval Latin aqueduct and the high rank of aristocracy, duke, drawn from the past participle of ducere (to lead); the construct was duc (variant stem of dūcere (to lead)) + tus (suffix of verbal action).  The meaning in an anatomical sense (vessel of an animal body by which blood, lymph etc, are conveyed) was first noted in the 1660s while that of a "conduit or channel" dates from 1713.  Use in a variety of architectural and engineering contexts to describe "tubes in a structure" developed after the use to describe an "air tube" in 1884.

Duct tape was in 1894 originally sold under the name duck tape, long, non-adhesive strips of plain cotton duck cloth used in various mechanical processes.  The name was transferred to a plastic-coated adhesive tape used by U.S. soldiers in World War II, probably because of its waterproof qualities (ie the sense of "water off a duck's back").  It continued in civilian use after the war, and the name shifted to duct tape by 1958, perhaps because the most common use was in air ducts, which also accounts for its still standard silver-gray color.

Duct and Gaffer Tape

Duct tape scene: Lindsay Lohan as Tess Conway in Freaky Friday (2003).

Often casually regarded as interchangeable, duct and gaffer tapes are constructed differently because they’re intended for different purposes.  Indeed, using one for the intended application of the other can cause messy or worse results.  They’re similar in that both are hand-tearable, conform well to uneven surfaces and tend to be sold in the same packaging and sizes.  Duct tape is constructed with a polyethylene (PE) cloth backing, a material that makes it waterproof and contains an aggressive, rubber-based glue, allowing it easily to adhere to many of surfaces.   Duct tape has (1) a shiny, reflective backing, (2) is for semi-permanent or permanent applications and (3) tends to leave an adhesive residue when removed.  A specialized variation is a heat-resistant foil (not cloth) duct tape, useful for sealing heating and cooling ducts.  For decades silvery gray, it’s now available in colors and even printed designs.

Lindsay Lohan in duct tape cocktail dress.  Tape is 3M Utility Duct Tape 2929 (Silver).  Shoes are Jimmy Choo Patent Leather Sandals.

Gaffer tape is made with a coated cloth backing and a synthetic, rubber-based glue.  Because it doesn’t have the PE backing, gaffer tape is not waterproof but, the barrier properties in the backing make it moisture resistant in most cases.  This means it shouldn’t be used for waterproofing but is suitable for temporary use in high-humidity and moist environments. The adhesive on gaffer tape is less aggressive than duct tape, rendering it more easily removed when temporary need is over.  Because of its origins in the theatre, gaffer tape traditionally had a matte white or black backing to reduce the reflection of light but is now available in colored gloss finishes.

Satellite

Satellite (pronounced sat-l-ahyt)

(1) In astronomy, celestial body orbiting around a planet or star; a moon.

(2) In geopolitics, as “satellite state”, a country under the domination or influence of another.

(3) Something (a county, sub-national state, office, building campus etc), under the jurisdiction, influence, or domination of another entity; Subordinate to another authority, outside power, or the like (also known as a “satellite operation”, “satellite campus”, “satellite workshop” etc).

(4) An attendant or follower of another person, often subservient or obsequious in manner; a follower, supporter, companion, associate; lackey, parasite, sycophant, toady, flunky; now used usually in the derogatory sense of “a henchman” although, applied neutrally, it can be used of someone’s retinue or entourage (and even the machinery of a motorcade).

(5) A man-made device orbiting a celestial body (the earth, a moon, or another planet etc) and transmitting scientific information or used for communication; among astronomers and others form whom the distinction matters, man-made devices are sometimes referred to as “artificial satellites” to distinguish them for natural satellites such as the Earth’s Moon.  The standard abbreviation is “sat” and the situation in which a satellite is hit by some object while in orbit (which at the velocities involved can be unfortunate) is called a “sat-hit”.

(6) As “derelict satellite”, a man-made device (including the spent upper-stages of rockets) in orbit around a celestial body which has ceased to function.

(7) In medicine, a short segment of a chromosome separated from the rest by a constriction, typically associated with the formation of a nucleolus.

(8) In biology, a colony of microorganisms whose growth in culture medium is enhanced by certain substances produced by another colony in its proximity.

(9) In formal grammar, a construct that takes various forms and may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or the grammatical aspect (highly technical descriptor no longer used in most texts).

(10) In television, as satellite TV, the transmission and reception of television broadcasts (and used also in narrowcasting) using satellites in low-earth orbit.

(11) In the military terminology of Antiquity, a guard or watchman.

(12) In entomology, as satellite moth, the Eupsilia transversa, a moth of the family Noctuidae.

1540-1550: From the fourteenth century Middle French satellite, from the Medieval Latin satellitem (accusative singular of satelles) (attendant upon a distinguished person or office-holder, companion, body-guard. courtier, accomplice, assistant), from the Latin satelles, from the Old Latin satro (enough, full) + leyt (to let go) and listed usually as akin to the English “follow” although the association is undocumented.  Although the Latin origin is generally accepted, etymologists have pondered a relationship with the Etruscan, either satnal (klein) (again linked to the English “follow”) or a compound of roots: satro- (full; enough) + leit- (to go) (the English “follow” constructed of similar roots).  Satellite is a noun, verb & adjective and satellitic & satellitious are adjectives; the noun plural is satellites.  Satellitious (pertaining to, or consisting of, satellites) is listed by most dictionaries as archaic but is probably the best form to use in a derogatory sense, best expressed in the comparative (more satellitious) or the superlative (most satellitious).

Lindsay Lohan promoting the Sick Note series, TV & Satellite Week magazine, 21-27 July 2018.

The adjectival use is applied as required and this has produced many related terms including satellite assembly (use of committees or deliberative bodies created by a superior authority), satellite broadcasting (in this context distinguished from transmissions using physical (point-to-point) cables or ground-based relays), satellite campus, satellite DNA (in genetics, an array in  tandem of repeating, non-coding DNA), satellite-framing (in linguistics, the use of a grammatical satellite to indicate a path of motion, a change of state or grammatical aspect (as opposed to a verb framing)), satellite navigation (the use of electronic positioning systems which use data from satellites (often now as “SatNav”)) and satellite station (either (1) as ground-base facility used for monitoring or administrating satellites or (2) a manned facility in orbit such as the ISS (International Space Station)), satellite telephone (telephony using satellites as a transmission vector)

Sputnik 1 blueprint, 1957.

The original sense in the 1540s was "a follower or attendant of a superior person" but this use was rare before the late eighteenth century and it seemed to have taken until the 1910s before it was applied in a derogatory manner to suggest "an accomplice or accessory in crime or other nefarious activity” although the Roman statesman Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC) often used the Latin form in this way.  In the seventeenth century, as telescopes became available, the idea was extended to what was then thought to be "a planet revolving about a larger one" on the notion of "an attendant", initially a reference to the moons of Jupiter.  In political theory, the “satellite state” was first described in 1800, coined by John Adams (1735-1826; US president 1797-1801) in a discussion about the United States and its relationships with the other nations of the Americas although in geopolitics the term is most identified with the “buffer states”, the members of the Warsaw Pact which were within Moscow’s sphere of influence.  The familiar modern meaning of a "man-made machine orbiting the Earth" actually dates (as scientific conjecture) from 1936, something realized (to the surprise of most) in 1957 when the USSR launched Sputnik 1.  Sputnik was from the Russian спу́тник (sputnik) (satellite (literally "travelling companion” and in this context a shortened form of sputnik zemlyi (travelling companion of the Earth), from the Old Church Slavonic supotiniku, the construct being the Russian so- (as “s-“ (with, together)) + пу́тник (pútnik) (traveller), from путь (put) (way, path, journey) (from the Old Church Slavonic poti, from the primitive Indo-European pent- (to tread, go)) + ник (-nik) (the agent suffix).

Sputnik, 1957

Russian Sputnik postcard, 1957.

The launch of Sputnik shocked the American public which, in a milieu of jet aircraft, televisions and macropterous Cadillacs, had assumed their country was in all ways technologically superior to their Cold War enemy.  Launched into an elliptical low-Earth orbit, Sputnik was about twice the size of a football (soccer ball) and it orbited for some three more months before falling towards earth, the on-board batteries lasting long enough for it to broadcast radio pulses for the first three weeks, transmissions detectable almost anywhere on earth.  It sounds now a modest achievement but it needs to be regarded as something as significant as the Wright Flyer in 1903 travelling 200 feet (61 m), at an altitude of some 10 feet (3 m) and in the West the social and political impact was electrifying.  There were also linguistic ripples because, just as a generation later the Watergate scandal would trigger the –gate formations (which continue to this day), it wasn’t long before the –nik prefix (which had actually been a part of Yiddish word creation for at least a decade) gained popularity.  Laika, the doomed stray dog launched aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957 was dubbed muttnik (although the claims it was the first living thing in space have since been disproved because "living" entities were both on board the Nazi V2 rockets (1944-1945) which often briefly entered the stratosphere and have long been present in the upper atmosphere where they’re ejected into space by natural atmospheric processes) while the early US satellites (quickly launched to display the nation’s scientific prowess) failed which gave the press the chance to coin kaputnik, blowupnik, dudnik, flopnik, pffftnik & stayputnik.

Sputnik 1's launch vehicle (left), the satellite as it orbited the earth (centre) and in expanded form (right. 

Although not a great surprise to either the White House or the Pentagon, the American public was shocked and both the popular and quality press depicted Sputnik’s success as evidence of Soviet technological superiority, stressing the military implications.    This trigged the space race and soon created the idea of the “missile gap” which would be of such significance in the 1960 presidential election and, although by the early 1960s the Pentagon knew the gap was illusory, the arms race continued and the count of missiles and warheads actually peaked in the early 1970s.  It also began a new era of military, technological, and scientific developments, leading most obviously to the moon landing in 1969 but research groups developed weapons such as the big inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and missile defence systems as well as spy satellites.  Satellites were another step in the process of technology being deployed to improve communications.  When President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest ship crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.  By the time of President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, the news travelled around the world by undersea cables within minutes.  In 1963, while news of President Kennedy’s death was close to a global real-time event, those thousands of miles from the event had to wait sometimes twenty-four hours to view footage which was sent in film canisters by air.  By 1981, when an attempt was made on President Reagan’s life, television feeds around the planet were within minutes picking up live footage from satellites.

1967 Plymouth Satellite convertible.

Chrysler's Plymouth division introduced the Satellite on the corporation's intermediate ("B") platform in 1965 as the most expensive trim-option for the Belvedere line.  Offered initially only with two-door hardtop and convertible coach-work, the range of body-styles was later expanded to encompass four-door sedans and station wagons.  In a manner, typical of the way the industry applied their nomenclature as marketing devices to entice buyers, the Belvedere name was in 1970 retired while Satellite remained the standard designation until it too was dropped after 1974.

1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 440 6 Barrel.

Were it not for it being made available in 1966 with the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8, the Belvedere and Satellite would have been just another intermediate but with that option, it was transformed into a (slightly) detuned race-car which one could register for the road, something possible in those happier times.  The Street Hemi was an expensive option and relatively few were built but the demand for high-performance machinery was clear so in 1968, Plymouth released the Road Runner, complete with logos (licensed from the Warner Brothers film studio for US$50,000) and a “beep beep” horn which reputedly cost US$10,000 to develop.  The object was to deliver a high-performance machine at the lowest possible cost so the Road Runner used the basic (two-door, pillared) body shell and eschewed niceties like carpet or bucket seats, the only addition of note a tuned version of the 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 engine; for those who wanted more, the Street Hemi was optional.  Plymouth set what they thought were ambitious sales targets but demand was such that production had to be doubled and the reaction encouraged the usual proliferation, a hardtop coupé and convertible soon rounding out the range.

1970 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner Superbird.

The option list later expanded to include the six-barrel version of the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8, a much cheaper choice than the Street Hemi and one which (usually) displayed better manners on the street while offering similar performance until travelling well over 100 mph (160 km/h) although it could match the Hemi’s sustained delivery of top-end power which, with the right gearing, would deliver a top speed in excess of 150 mph (240 km/h), something of little significance to most.  However, by the early 1970s sales were falling.  The still embryonic safety and emission legislation played a small part in this but overwhelmingly the cause was the extraordinary rise in insurance premiums being charged for the highset-performance vehicles, something which disproportionately affected the very buyers at which the machines were targeted: single males aged 19-29.  However, the platform endured long enough to provide the basis for the Road Runner Superbird, a “homologation special” produced in limited numbers to qualify the frankly extreme aerodynamic modifications for use in competition.  At the time, the additions were too radical for some buyers and dealers unable to find buyers were forced to convert the things back to standard specifications to shift them from their lots but they’re now prized collectables, the relatively few with the Street Hemi especially sought.

1971 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner.

The intermediate line was revised in 1971 using the then current corporate motif of “fuselage styling” and it was probably more aesthetically pleasing there than when applied to the full-sized cars which truly were gargantuan.  The 1971 Satellites used distinctly different bodies for the two and four-door models and while there were no more convertibles, the Street Hemi and six-barrel 440 enjoyed a swansong season although sales were low, the muscle car era almost at an end.