Artophagous

Artophagous (pronounced are-tof-ah-guss)

Bread-eating.

1790s: The construct was the Ancient Greek ἄρτος (ártos) (a cake or loaf of wheat bread and, (collectively) bread) +‎ -phagous.  The Greek ártos was of unknown origin though probably borrowed from a substrate; it should be compared with the Basque arto (id) and the Old Spanish artal (a type of empanada).  Despite the structural similarity, etymologists concluded the suggestion it might be a borrowing from the Proto-Iranian arta- (flour) (thus connected to the Persian آرد (ârd) (id) is less likely because the Greek form predated both, being already attested in Mycenean thus unable formally to be derived from the same Indo-European root the Iranian stems from.  The suffix –phagous was from the Latin -phagus, from the Ancient Greek -φάγος (-phágos) (-eating), from φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat).  It was used to form adjectives meaning “eating” or “feeding on”.  The synonym was –vorous.  The more common version of the suffix today is –phagia, the frequency of use in Modern English explained by the proliferation of terms used in mental health to refer to the consumption of untypical items (ie mostly not food).  The suffix –phagia was from the Ancient Greek -φαγία (-phagía) (and related to -φαγος (-phagos) (eater)), corresponding to φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat), infinitive of ἔφαγον (éphagon) (I eat), which serves as aorist for the defective verb ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat).

Lindsay Lohan with bread on the syndicated Rachael Ray Show, April 2019.

Apparently, in the writings of the more self-consciously erudite, the word artophagous, which enjoyed some currency in the nineteenth century, was still in occasional use as late as the 1920s but most lexicographers now either ignore it or list it as archaic or obsolete.  It’s an example of a word which has effectively been driven extinct even though the practice it describes (the eating of bread) remains as widespread and popular as ever.  Linguistically, this is not uncommon in English and is analogous with the famous remark by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani (1930–2021; Saudi Arabian minister of petroleum and mineral resources 1962-1986): “The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the Oil Age will end, but not for a lack of oil.” (the first part of that paraphrased usually as the punchier: “The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks.”)

Bread remains one of the world’s most widely consumed foods and for many probably the most essential source of carbohydrates yet the word “artophagous” began to disappear from all but the longest dictionaries, lexicographers noting the trend in the US in the 1950s and elsewhere in the English-speaking world within a few years.  All conclude it was cut as part of the cull of words which had (1) fallen into decades of disuse and (2) alternatives were well-accepted and in common use (in this case, most obviously the unambiguous “bread eating”).  There’s a bias somewhere (either among those on the editorial committees of dictionaries or in the wider population) because there’s still often an entry for the adjective creophagous (flesh-eating or carnivorous).  Creophagous was from the Ancient Greek kreophagos, the construct being κρέας (kreas) (flesh; meat) + -φαγος (-phagos) –from φαγεῖν (phagein) (to eat)."  What’s curious in that in modern use “carnivorous” (meaning much the same thing but from Latin roots) has attained great popularity yet creophagous retains more lexicographical support despite being barely more used than artophagous.  To add insult to injury, worldwide, there are more bread-eaters than flesh-eaters so something is going on.

There are many references to bread in the Christian Bible.  In Matthew 4:4 Jesus, while being tempted by the devil, rebukes him by saying “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  In that, Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, reminding the devil we are to obey God, walk humbly before him, and rely on him; combating the need to satisfy the flesh.  In saying “Man cannot live by bread alone” Jesus wasn’t speaking literally in the vein of a dietician but was making the point a human being as a whole needs sustenance: body, soul, and spirit.  In Genesis 2:7 it was written: “Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground.  He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” which means we are more than just material beings and the essence of us is the life God breathed into us. Since our source of life is from God, bread (a synecdoche for food) alone isn’t enough to sustain us.

The temptation of Christ came during the forty days and forty nights he spent hungry in the wilderness and his point of comparison was the forty years the Israelites endured in the desert mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:1-3: “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”.

Tube

Tube (pronounced toob or tyoob)

(1) A hollow (usually cylindrical or oval) body of metal, glass, rubber or other material, used especially for conveying or containing liquids or gases.

(2) A small, collapsible, cylinder of metal or plastic sealed at one end and having a capped opening at the other from which paint, toothpaste, or some other semi-fluid substance may be squeezed or pumped.

(3) In anatomy & zoology, any hollow, cylindrical vessel or organ:

(4) In botany, the lower part of a gamopetalous corolla or gamosepalous calyx, below the lobes but used generally of any other hollow structure in a plant

(5) As “inner tube” a rubber, synthetic or composite construction in the form of a torus (doughnut-shaped) which sits inside the tyres of bicycles, motorcycles and certain other vehicles for the purpose of sustaining inflation (now rare on passenger vehicles which tend to use “tubeless” tyres.

(6) In semi-formal use (originally UK colloquial but now trademarked), the London RTS (rapid transit system) railway system (should use initial upper case).  The name comes from the tube-like tunnels drilled for most on the original underground sections but “The Tube” is used of the whole network (which does extend beyond London) including the above-ground sectors.  “Tube” is used variously of (1) the service, (2) of the cylindrical tunnels and (3) the rolling stock (the trains and carriages).  The term is also used in other places to describe underground railways.

(7) In electronics as “electron tube” (clipped usually to “tube”); as the “vacuum tube”, the predecessor of the transistor.

(8) In materials, as “nanotube”, small carbon constructions some 50,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

(9) In fashion variously as (1) “tube top” (a tight-fitting, sleeveless garment extening from the armpits to the waist or hips, (2) “boob tube” a shorter type of tube top which covers only the breasts (often labeled as “bandeau tube top”) and (3) “tube skirt” (a close fitting skirt which differs from the similar “pencil skirt” which is tapered).

(10) In slang, a television set (also used as “boob tube” with “boob” used in the sense of “someone stupid or foolish”, an allusion either to the inanity of much of what was broadcast or slur upon the audience).  Historically, television screens (like pre-modern computer monitors) used a “cathode-ray tube” and this was the original source of the idea of televisions as “on the tube”.

(11) In the slang of surfers, the curled hollow space formed when a cresting wave pitches forward when breaking.

(12) In the slang of clinical medicine, to intubate.

(13) In Australian Slang, a can of beer.

(14) In slang, a telescope (now rare and used usually as a deliberate archaism).

(15) To furnish with a tube or tubes.

(16) To convey or enclose in a tube.

(17) To form or render into the shape of a tube; to make tubular.

1590-1600: From the Middle French tube, from the Latin tubus (tube, pipe), related to tuba (long trumpet; war-trumpet), of obscure origin, but possibly connected to tībia (shinbone, reed-pipe).  The idiomatic for “down the tube(s)” (into a ruined, wasted, or abandoned state or condition; lost, finished) dates from the early 1960s and carries the same meaning as “down the drain”.  Despite the similarity of the words and the shapes of the structures, etymologists believe tub (open vessel used for liquids or other substances) was unrelated to tube.  Tub was from the late fourteenth century Middle English tubbe & tobbe, from a continental Germanic source such as the Middle Dutch tubbe, the Middle Low German tubbe & tobbe or the Middle Flemish tubbe, all of uncertain origin.  Tube, tubage & tubing are nouns & verbs, tubulure is a noun, tubed is a verb, tubular, tubey, tubiform, tubesque, tubeless, tubelike, tubish, tuboid & tuboidal are adjectives; the noun plural is tubes.

Squeezed from a tube: The toothpaste one squeezes onto a toothbrush is called a "nurdle".

The original use in the 1590s was of the observed structures in anatomy and zoology (a hollow organ or passage in the body) and this was extended by the 1650s to mean “pipe or hollow cylinder” (especially a small one used as a conduit for liquids).  The use to describe a “sealed container in tubular form” began in 1859 with the vacuum tube, later extended in electronics to a sealed tube containing electrodes (in wide use until the 1950s when transistors achieved mass-production).  The use to describe televisions dates from 1959 and seems to have been as clipping of “cathode ray tube” (CRT, the technology use of pre-modern screens) or “picture tube”.  “The Tube” was also late nineteenth century for wired telephones, the use derived from ships where voice traffic between places was sometimes carried by “speaking tube”, the same technology also used in horse-drawn carriages and early motor vehicles where the passenger compartment was sealed and separated from the drive or chauffeur.  In limousines (with a glass partition or divider), speaking-tubes were still sometimes fitted as late as the 1960s because it was simple, reliable technology and over such short distances an electronic apparatus offer little advantage.  London’s underground railway (an early London RTS (rapid transit system)) came to be known as “the Tube” in 1847, based on the tubular tunnels drilled to created the network; in 1900, in the press, it was dubbed the “Twopenny Tube” (a reference to the basic fare).  “Tube” has come to be a slang for RTS systems in various places, even those with no tubular tunnels (a similar linguistic process to “wire” or “cable” for electronic transmission).

Tube maps (sort of):  The London Underground maps, 1908 (left), 1933 (centre) and 2014 (right).

Although referred to almost universally as the “London Underground Map”, pedants like to point out (1) it’s a schematic (or diagram) rather than a map and (2) over half the “Underground” is above ground.  The now familiar concept of the “map” was in 1931 devised by Henry Beck (1902–1974), then a 29 year old electrical draftsman, who envisaged the rail lines as wires, the stations as connectors and the whole network as an integrated and interconnected diagrammatic system, much like the electrical circuit boards he was accustomed to drawing.  What was revolutionary about Mr Beck’s concept was he understood the purpose was different from a conventional map where scale mattered, rail lines had to be drawn in exactly the shape the assumed and topographic features were included.  What people wanted in a map of “The Tube” was a navigation aid, something which made as simple as possible the task of working out the matter of getting from station-to-station. 

The verb “to tube” (receive, enclose, or dispatch in a (pneumatic) tube) was in use by at least 1870 and was a clipping of pneumatic-dispatch tube (PDT), tubes first installed in 1859 in buildings for the rapid delivery of documents between floors or offices and propelled by air pressure; for dispatch, the documents were rolled and inserted in a small cylinder, the external diameter of which was slightly less than the internal diameter of the tube infrastructure.  The noun tubage (insertion of a tube into a cavity or canal) dates from 1880 and by 1896 it was being used as a collective nouns for tubes.  The adjective tubular (having the form of a tube or pipe) was from the Latin tubulus (a small pipe) and was in the early 1960s adopted in California’s surfing culture to describe the hollow, curling waves, most ideal for riding.

Lindsay Lohan in green-hooped tube top (left) and Coco Avenue's range of boob tubes in designer colors (right).

In pneumatic tyres, although still common on bicycles and motor-bikes, inner tubes are now rare in passenger vehicle use but they are still produced for a variety of commercial application and they have been re-purposed for the recreational pastime of “tubing” (riding on the inflated inner tube of a large (truck, tractor etc) tyre), undertaken both as a water-sport and on ski-slopes.  The jocular slang noun “tube-steak” emerged in 1962 to described “a frankfurter” (ie hotdog sausage), the term obviously a reference to the shape and given that, it’s remarkable it seems not to have been used as a slang for “penis” until the mid-1980s.  The test-tube (cylinder of thin glass closed in rounded form at one end) was so named in 1909 because it was used to test the properties of liquids.  Surprisingly, “test-tube baby” predates by decades modern IVF (In vitro fertilization) and was first used in 1935 in reference to artificial insemination.  In the 1980s, “test tube baby” became the popular descriptor of IVF, “test tube” used as a synecdoche of the process rather than any suggestion of the use of the glass receptacles.  The name “tube-top” (a women's close-fitting elastic top) made its debut in 1972 (although the style had been seen before); the “tube skirt” appeared the next season (again, a re-labeling) while the first “boob tubes” (a truncated version of the “tube top” which wraps only around the breasts) were advertized in 1977.  Being elasticized, some wear boob tubes without a bra but they're available also with a "built-in" bra (like all forms of structural engineering, physics does limit what's possible) and some are made with a thicker material so a strapless bra unobtrusively can be worn underneath.  

YouTube content.  

YouTube is a US social media and online video sharing platform now owned by Google.  It first appeared in 2005 and is now the planet's second most visited internet site, only Google search generating more traffic (as expressed in volumes of unique visits per day).  YouTube was emblematic of the way the internet evolved in a manner somewhat different to that futurists had in preceding decades predicted.  Although it was clear it would be an inter-connected world of databases with content from “content providers” available for download, few predicted the extent to which the terms “viewer”, “user” and “content provider” would overlap; the upload phenomenon generally was not predicted.  Substantially, this was technologically deterministic: with a high percentage of the world’s population carrying cameras able to produce HD (high definition) photographs and films which easily can be uploaded to a global distribution platform at only marginal cost, a new industry emerged and others were disrupted or destroyed.

OSCA S187 (750S).  The Italians dubbed these tubo di dentifricio (toothpaste tube), illustrating yet again how everything sounds better in Italian.

In 1937, facing bankruptcy, the three surviving Maserati brothers (Bindo (1883-1980), Ettore (1894-1990) & Ernesto (1898-1975)) sold their eponymous company to the Orsi Group in Modena, the arrangement including a decade-long consultancy for the trio.  It’s not known if there was “no compete” clause in place but the brothers waited until 1947 when the contract expired before returning to San Lazzaro di Savena (near Bologna) where they founded Officine Specializzate per la Costruzione Automobili Fratelli Maserati S.p.A. (O.S.C.A.), the intention being to build small runs of racing cars for customers and for more than a decade production continued.  Most of the machines built used small displacement engines to contest the various series for such things (then popular in Italy) although in 1951 there was a one-off, 4.5 litre (273 cubic inch) V12, soon rendered an orphan when the Formula One rules were changed. 

Accordingly, subsequent OSCAs were smaller and one of the most exquisite was the S187 which made its debut in 1956.  Built to contest the well-supported 750 cm³ (46 cubic inch) racing class, the name was derived from the displacement of each of the engine’s four cylinders, a convention used for years also by Ferrari.  The smallest engine O.S.C.A. ever made, it was of “square” configuration (the bore & stroke both 62 mm (2.44 inch)) with double overhead camshafts (DOHC) and a pair of twin-choke, side-draft Weber carburetors.  Modest the displacement may have been but the package generated an impressive 70 horsepower which, combined with low weight (a svelte 450 kg (990 lb)) and effective aerodynamics, delivered class-leading performance.  That was despite the S187 being a little heavier than had been envisaged because constraints in time & cash meant the planned multi-tubular space frame had to be abandoned, replaced with a more conventional ladder frame chassis.

OSCA 750S NART (North American Racing Team), one of four with a clamshell body.

The delicate aerodynamic body was by the coachbuilder Morelli and the S-187 (referred to usually as the 750S) was immediately successful, gaining a class victory at the 1956 Mille Miglia, followed the next year with a class win at the 12 Hours of Sebring.  Although in 1959 still competitive in the 750 cm³ class, the brothers produced a new cylinder head which raised the output by 5 horsepower which may sound slight but it was a 7% lift (it would be like adding some 30 hp to a 400 hp engine) and despite in competition being regularly run for sustained periods at the 7700 rpm redline, reliability continued to be outstanding and the 750S remained competitive until well into the 1960s.  Nineteen were built.

End of the line: 1963 OSCA 1600 GT2

Unfortunately, age caught up with the Maserati brothers and in 1963 they sold O.S.C.A. to Count Domenico Agusta (1907–1971) who, in 1945, founded the MV Agusta motorcycle company, a move necessitated by the post-war peace treaty which included a ban on Italian aircraft production which obviously rendered unviable the aviation business Costruzioni Aeronautiche Giovanni Agusta S.A. (formed in 1923 by Count Giovanni Agusta (1879–1927)).  The O.S.C.A. operation was closed in 1967.

Gray

Gray (pronounced grey)

(1) Of a spread of colors between white and black; having a neutral hue; any achromatic color; any color with zero chroma, intermediate between white and black.

(2) Something in or of this color, applied particularly to horses (and sometimes of a horse that appears white but is not an albino).

(3) Conveying a sense of the dark, dismal, or gloomy.

(4) Conveying a sense of the dull, dreary, or monotonous.

(5) In informal use, of older people; pertaining to old age (related to having gray hair; being gray-headed), sometimes expressed as graybeard.

(6) In demography (originally slang but now often used formally), of the aging of a whole population or those in a certain sector or geographic region (such as “the graying of the Freemasons”).

(7) In economics, as “gray dollar” (the purchasing power of older consumers), “gray collar” (the workforce participation of older workers) & “gray market” (a (usually) lawful but unofficial state where goods are produced or imported outside of the usual channels (ie between the (white) market and the “black market”).

(8) As “gray matter” an informal reference to (1) the physical brain, (2) levels of intelligence or (3) thought processes.

(9) Something indeterminate and intermediate in character, often as “gray area” (ie neither black or white; neither one thing or another; a state of uncertainty).

(10) In certain industrial production, an unbleached and un-dyed condition.

(11) In metallurgy and industrial production, the color of freshly broken cast iron.

(12) Documented since 1863 (the oral use presumably earlier), a member of the Confederate (southern) army in the American Civil War or the army itself (based on the standard uniform color, compared with the Union (northern) forces which wore blue, the idea used also in the description of the World War II (1939-1945) German army (Heer) as the Feldgrau (field gray), a later variation in the GDR (the German Democratic Republic, the Old East Germany) being Steingrau (stone-grey) for the National People's Army,

(13) In physics, the standard unit of absorbed dose of radiation (such as x-rays) in the International System of Units (SI), equal to the amount of ionizing radiation absorbed when the energy imparted to matter is 1 J/kg (one joule per kilogram) and a gray is equivalent to 100 rads.  The unit was first used in 1975 and was created in honor of English radiobiologist Louis Harold Gray (1905–1965).  The standard abbreviation is Gy.

(14) In film-stock photography, to give a soft effect to (a photograph) by covering the negative while printing with a ground-glass plate (now emulated in software in digital photography).

(15) In the (mostly US) discipline of ufology (an umbrella term which encompasses all which evolved from the flying saucer sightings of the 1950s), an extraterrestrial humanoid with grayish skin, bulbous black eyes and an enlarged head with an unchanging, serious expression (who sometimes carries an anal probe).

(16) In gambling, a penny with a tail on both sides, used for cheating in the game of two-up (US).

(17) In wastewater management, as “gray water”, household waste water not suitable for human consumption but able to be re-used for some purposes without purification (such as garden irrigation), and thus contrasted with black water (wastewater from toilets, garbage disposal, and industrial processes which demands treatment prior to reintroduction to the environment).

(18) In computing, as "grayed-out", the practice in graphical user interfaces (GUI) to display a non-available menu option in a shade of gray, the choice reverting to a different color when available for selection. 

(19) To make or become gray.

Pre 900: From the Middle English gray, grei & grai (of a color between white and black; having little or no color or luminosity), from the Old English grǣg & grēg, and the Mercian grei, from the Proto-West Germanic grāu, from the Proto-Germanic grewa & grēwaz, from the primitive Indo-European ǵreh- (to green, to grow) and cognate with the German grau, the Old Norse grār & grár, the Dutch grauw, the Latin rāvus (grey), the Old Church Slavonic зьрѭ (zĭrjǫ) (to see, to glance), the (archaic) Russian зреть (zret) (to watch, to look at) and the Lithuanian žeriù (to shine).  There appear to be no certain connections outside Germanic and the French gris, the Spanish gris, the Italian grigio and the Medieval Latin griseus are all loan-words from Germanic. The adjective form was the first, the noun emerging as a derivative circa 1200 while the verb with the sense of “become gray, wither away” came into use in the 1610s although etymologists note there is a single instance of gray as a verb in a late fourteenth century text, an example of the way in which innovations in English don’t always immediately flourish.  As a color, there’s no direct synonym (although silvery, silver & ash inhabit a kind of gray area) but related words in the figurative sense include drab, dusty, clouded, dappled, heather, iron, lead, neutral, oyster, pearly, powder, shaded, silvered, slate, stone, ashen & dingy.  Gray is a noun, verb & adjective, greyness is a noun, greyed is a verb, grayer, grayish & grayest are adjectives, grayly is an adverb; the noun plural is grays.

Lindsey Lohan in Lavish Alice gray suit.

Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word and the meanings are the same for both (except where based on a proper noun such as a surname so a product like Earl Grey Tea is always spelled thus) although there are conventions of use and historic practices should usually be followed.  Except with brand-names or in the SI unit measuring radiation, the spellings can interchangeably be used without causing confusion although use should always be consistent.  In commercial use, there was in the early twentieth century an attempt to create a functional distinction between gray and grey, the former a mixture of “blue & white”, the latter of “black & white” and there are manufacturers who still use the convention but it hasn’t been widely adopted.  The spelling gray is more common in American English, while grey is sometimes preferred in British English despite Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and just about every English lexicographer since insisting it should for all purposes be gray.

Lindsay Lohan color image rendered in 8-bit gray scale.

Gray (and grey for those who prefer the spelling) is often used figuratively, either as an allusion to the color or to illustrate some degree of uncertainty (ie that zone between the absolutes of black & white).  In economics, the “gray dollar” expresses the purchasing power of older consumers, the “gray collar” the workforce participation of older workers & “gray market” the (usually) lawful but unofficial state where goods are produced or imported outside of the usual channels (ie between the (white) market and the “black market”).  Then classic gray market is that for cars not officially available in a certain market but imported by third-parties (sometimes with the need to modify them to meet local regulations) and re-sold.  The practice was especially prevalent in the US during its more restrictive times in the 1980s and the gray market for desirable (ie usually more powerful) models from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and others sold elsewhere in the world saw an industry emerge to meet the need, the processes involved in making gray market vehicles compliant with US regulation known as “federalization”.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) was the first erotic novel in a trilogy by EL James (b 1963).  Being English, she spelled the word grey and either for publication in the US or the film adaptation it wasn't changed to gray, the assumption presumably that all would cope.

As an adjective it’s widely used.  In wastewater management, “gray water” is household waste water not suitable for human consumption but able to be re-used for some purposes without purification (such as garden irrigation), and thus contrasted with black water (wastewater from toilets, garbage disposal, and industrial processes which demands treatment prior to reintroduction to the environment).  “White water” is not used in this context because of specific meanings elsewhere, either as “frothy water as in river rapids” or “white water” (and “whitewater”) navy, part of an admiralty hierarchy describing the capabilities of naval forces: (1) a brown water force restricted to rivers and estuaries, (2) a white water force able to operate close to coastlines and (2) a blue water force which can ply the open seas.  In wastewater management, instead of white water, the preferred term is “potable”.

Grayness at the margins: In fashion the distinction between gray, silver & ash varies between manufacturers.

The use with animals is usually literal (gray fox, gray elephant, gray squirrel, gray hare, gray wolf, gray whale etc) but a special use derived from zoology is the “gray mare”, an expression adapted in the 1540s (from “the gray mare is the better horse”) to refer to households in which the husband was dominated by the wife.  The use in this context has long been extinct and was unrelated to the nineteenth century US folk song “The Old Gray Mare”.  In equine classification, a gray horse is a horse with a coat color which appears gray, but is actually a combination of white hairs mixed with hairs of other colors.  Gray horses can be born with a dark coat color that gradually lightens as they age or they can be born with a light-colored coat that darkens over time.  The range of “gray” colorations is not uncommon in horses and such is the variations some are sometimes described as “blue”.

Iowa-class battleship USS Missouri (BB-63, 1944-1992) in battleship gray.

In demography, the use of “gray” as an synecdoche of “aging” (an allusion to gray hair) began as slang but has become so accepted by economists and others it probably should now be thought formal.  It can be used to describe aging of a whole population (the “graying of China”) or those in a certain sector or geographic region (“the graying of the priesthood”).  Still a slang form is “graybeard”, a reference to an older man, one who presumably needs to be bearded if an individual but when applied collectively (“the graybeards”) it’s based on the age of the group rather than any particular hirsuteness.  The phrase “giving me gray hair” is used as a complaint that someone is so troublesome the stress they induce is causing one prematurely to age.  In some cases, stress can literally cause premature aging.  Battleship gray is a (narrow) range of dull, matt shades of gray often used for warships, it being the compromise which worked best as a form of camouflage against the variations in sea color.  Modern paints used of warships still use battleship gray but with special (stealth) treatments to reduce susceptibility to detection by radar or other electronic systems.

Gray hair as a thing: Some now dye their hair gray but as a look it succeeds only in the young and is one of those rare things which succeeds when it's obvious it's fake so the correct term should be "faux gray". In older women, for whom grayness is a thing of the passing of time, the choice is to conceal or celebrate, the latter group growing but still a feminist, anti-ageist niche.  "Blue rinses" seem a thing of the past (there was once the term "blue rinse set" which carried a number of connotations, none positive) but, among the young, blue hair is now not uncommon, usually in variegated form.

In politics an éminence grise (gray eminence) is an influential “backroom operator” who functions as a “power behind the throne”.  The classic éminence grise is someone known to few who influences (in some cases rumored to dictate) the decisions made by someone in a powerful position.  An éminence grise differs from a “king maker” in that the latter is usually much better known and tends to ensure who is appointed to positions of authority rather than being involved in the discharge of their duties.  The first so described as an eminence grise was François Leclerc du Tremblay (1577–1638), an aide to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642; chief minister (chancellor or prime-minister) to the King of France 1624-1642).  The cardinal wore the customary and conspicuous scarlet while the monk Leclerc was attired in a habit described at the time as gray although evidence suggests it would now be thought beige.  His influence on matters of church & state was understood to be great though he was hardly ever seen.  In Nazi Germany, the idea of the eminence grise was picked up in the 1940s by party members who resentfully noted the undue influence of Martin Bormann (1900–1945) on Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), despite him being nominally only the Führer’s secretary.  He was known as the der braune Schatten (literally “the brown Shadow” but translated in English as “brown eminence”), an allusion to the golden-brown party uniform habitually he wore.  The party uniform also provided cynical citizens with the basis of their description of high-ranking party functionaries as Goldfasan (golden pheasants), a sly reference to them always looking well-fed, regardless of the state of rationing imposed during times of food shortages.

Establishment

Establishment (pronounced ih-stab-lish-muhnt)

(1) The act or an instance of establishing.

(2) The state or fact of being established.

(3) Something established; a constituted order or system.

(4) The existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority (ie “the Establishment” in the popular imagination which in this context should be used with an initial capital).  “The Establishment” is a nuanced synecdoche for “ruling class” with the emphasis on a dedication to the preservation of the status quo.

(5) As a modifier, belonging to or characteristic of “the Establishment” (the dominant or hegemonic “power elite” in a field of endeavor, organization etc (“the political establishment”, “the literary establishment” etc) or their “world view” (the “establishment interpretation of history”).

(6) A household; place of residence including its furnishings, grounds etc; a body of employees or servants

(7) A place of business together with its employees, merchandise, plant, equipment etc.

(8) A permanent civil, military, or other force or organization (often used to describe the defined number of personnel, in aggregate or sectionally, the “establishment” being the approved size, composition, and equipment of a unit.  In the military, the word is often modified (peacetime-establisnment, war-establishment, overseas-establishment etc).

(9) Any institution (university, hospital, library etc).

(10) The recognition by a state of a church as the state church.  In Christianity, the church so recognized, the term most associated with the Church of England (and historically the Church of Wales and Church of Ireland).

(11) A fixed or settled income (archaic).

1475–1485: A compound word, the construct being establish + -ment, from the Middle English establishment, stablishment & stablisshement, from the Old French establissement (which endures in Modern French as établissement), from the verb establir.  The noun establishment was from the late fourteenth century verb establish, from the Old French establiss-, the present participle stem of the twelfth century establir (cause to stand still, establish, stipulate, set up, erect, build), (which endures in Modern French as établir), from the Latin stabilire (make stable), from stabilis (stable).  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  In modern use, judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.  Establishment is a noun; the noun plural is establishments.

The noun establishmentarian describes “an adherent of the principle of an established church” dates from 1839 which of course begat the noun establishmentarianism (the doctrine of the establishmentarians).  What came first however was antidisestablishmentarianism, every schoolboy’s favorite long word although in scientific English there are constructions longer still and even the most alphabetically prolifically forms in English are short compared to those in languages such as Welsh, German and Maori.  It’s not clear who coined antidisestablishmentarianism but William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) used the word in his two volume work The state in its relations with the church (1841), a critique of “the ecclesiastical system established by law” and specifically the status of Church of England; it was a discussion of the implications of disestablishment (the act of withdrawing the church from its privileged relation to the state).  As words, neither establishmentarianism nor antidisestablishmentarianism now much disturb the thoughts of many in England and the only role for the latter has long been as a entry in the internet’s many lists of long, obscure or weird words.  In the narrow technical sense, the curious beast that is the Church of England became “an established church” only after the Act of Settlement (1701) and the subsequent Acts of Union (1707) which formalized the status of the institution, first in England and later Great Britain.  Functionally however, the English church can be considered “established” since the Act of Supremacy (1534) which abolished papal authority in England and declared Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) Supreme Head of the Church of England, the culmination of a process the king had triggered in 1527 when Clement VII (1478–1534; pope 1523-1534) proved tiresome in the matter of divorce law.  Although other sixteenth century statutes (notably the Act of Supremacy (1558) & Act of Uniformity (1558) which usually are referred to collectively as the “Elizabethan Religious Settlement”) added to the framework, the changes were mechanistic and procedural rather than substantive and simply built upon what had since 1534 been the established “state church” while the eighteenth century acts were essentially codifications which formalized the position in constitutional law.  Legally, little since has changed and 26 Church of England bishops (all appointed by the prime-minister (on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury)) continue (as the “Lords Spiritual”, their lay colleagues being the “Lords Temporal”) to sit in the House of Lords.

In English, establishment's original fifteenth century meaning was “a finalized and settled arrangement” (ie of income or property) while the sense of “the established church” entered the language in 1731, reflecting what had been the legal position since 1534.  The sense of “a place of business” emerged in the early 1830s while the idea of “a social matrix of ruling people and institutions” was in use as early as the mid 1920s although the phrase “the Establishment” (in the socio-political sense) didn’t enter popular use until the late 1950s, influenced by the publication in 1956 of The Power Elite by US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962 and usually styled C Wright Mills).  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions work to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.

When the establishment fractured: Republican (for Goldwater, left) & Democratic (against Goldwater, right), 1964 presidential campaign buttons, 1964.  This was before the color coding (Republican red, Democratic blue) was standardized in 2000 by the arbitrary choice of the TV networks.

The term “Establishment Republican” (a “moderate” or “liberal” member of the US Republican Party (as opposed to the right-wing fanatics who staged a hostile take-over) emerged in the 1980s to replace “Rockefeller Republican”.  Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977) was the archetype of the “liberal republican” in the decade between crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) losing the 1964 presidential election and crooked old Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) in 1974 resigning from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  It was in those years the right-wing began their “march through the party establishment”, a process accelerated during the Reagan (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) years and the moderates came to prefer the term “Establishment Republican” because Rockefeller was tainted by his association with the north-east, something with less appeal as the party’s centre of gravity shifted to the Mid-West and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The few surviving Establishment Republicans are now derided by the right wing fanatics as RINOs (Republicans in name only) and in 2024 the more useful descriptors are probably “pre-Trump Republican” & “post-Trump Republican”.  That linguistic moment may pass but the party at this time shows little inclination of seeking to find the centre ground, a wisdom advocated even by Richard Nixon.  In the pre-Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990)) UK, where the existence of “the Establishment” was quite obvious, it was the journalist Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) who popularized the term, explaining the concept as a kind of individual & institutional symbiosis by which “the right chaps” came to control the country’s “levers of power, influence and social authority”, exercised through social connections established between families or at the elite schools such men attended: “By the 'Establishment' I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.”

The Rover P5B, the car of the Establishment

In the UK, the Establishment had survived two world wars, the Great Depression, an abdication and even a couple of Labour governments but, by the 1960s, the acceptance of its once effortless hegemony was being challenged, not because people were becoming convinced by the writings of political theorists but as a consequence of the antics of those from the very heart of the Establishment (the Profumo scandal, the “Cambridge Five” spies et al).  In retrospect, it was the ten-odd years prior to 1973 that were the last halcyon days of the “old Establishment” for after that the UK’s anyway troubled “old” economy stagnated, triggering a series of events, notably the assault on the system from within by the improbable anti-Establishment figure of Margaret Thatcher.  The changes wrought in the last five decades shouldn’t be overstated because what happened was one Establishment was replaced by another and there was a substantial overlap in institutional and individual membership but it’s a very different apparatus from that of the 1960s.

Rover 3.5 Coupé.  Establishment figures preferred the saloon, the (four door) coupé more what used to be called a “co-respondent's” car (ie the sort of rakish design which would appeal to the sort of chap who slept with other men’s wives, later to be named as “co-respondent” in divorce proceedings).

One charming Establishment symbol from those years which are for most not in living memory was the ultimate “Establishment car”, one which while not the biggest, fastest, or most expensive available, possessed the qualities to appeal to the “right chaps”.  The Rover P5 was in production between 1958-1973, running from around the time that old patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) told the working class “…most of you have never had it so good” to the last days before the first oil shock ended the West’s long, post-war economic prosperity (although the British experience of that was patchy).  The P5’s presence throughout was somehow reassuring because from its debut it embodied the virtues for which Rovers had during the 1950s come to be valued: solidity, quality, comfort and an indifference to fashions and fads.  The P5 was a presence also in parts of the old British Empire and it enjoyed a following in both Australia & New Zealand, valued because it had an “Establishment air” yet was not flashy like a Pontiac or Jaguar (the mostly badge-engineered Daimlers a remarkably effective piece of product differentiation) or a statement of wealth like a Mercedes-Benz would by the mid-1960s become.

Rover 3 Litre engine schematic.

The P5 was sold originally as the 3 Litre in three releases (Mark 1, 1958-1962; Mark II, 1962-1965 & Mark III 1965-1967), using a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) straight-six with an implementation of the “F-head” design in which the inlet valve sat at the top of the combustion chamber with a side-mounted exhaust valve, an arrangement which offered some advantages when designing combustion chambers suited to the lower octane fuel then used in many markets and allowed the use of larger valves than would have been possible with a conventional OHV (overhead valve) arrangement).  The latter was a matter of some significance because the Rover six came from a time when the taxation regime was based on bore diameter, something which resulted in generations of British small bore, long-stroke engines and the 3 litre six was a famously smooth device, the advertising sometimes showing a circular coin sitting (on its edge) on the air-cleaner with the engine running, the coin not even vibrating.  Technologically though, for passenger vehicles, it was a cul-de-sac and more modern power-plants from the US, Europe (and even the UK) were out-performing the old F-Head.

What transformed the P5 was the adoption of the 3.5 litre (215 cid) V8 which Rover had purchased from General Motors (GM) which, in versions made by Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac (BOP), had been used for the new compact lines between 1961-1963.  The UK’s industry made many mistakes in the post-war years but what became the Rover V8 was an inspired purchase, remaining in production in displacements between 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) and 5.0 (305) from 1967 until 2006, powering everything from the original Range Rovers to executive sedans and sports cars  It was related also to the Oldsmobile version (Rover used Buick’s variant) on which Repco in Australia based the 3.0 litre (193 cubic inch) SOHC (single overhead camshaft) V8 the Brabham team would use to secure the Formula One drivers & constructors championships in 1966 & 1967.

Look of the past; glimpse of the future: 1967 Rover 3.5 Saloon (left) and 1967 NSU Ro80 (right).

It was in late 1967 the Rover 3.5 was released and the press reception was generally favourable, the improvements in performance and fuel consumption (not something often achieved when adding cylinders and displacement) attributed to a combination of greater mechanical efficiency and reduced weight, the all-aluminum V8 some 200 lb (90 kg) lighter than the hefty old six although some did note the new engine couldn’t quite match the smoothness of the old.  By 1967 however the testers seemed to be aware that whatever its charms, it was a design from the mid-1950s and the world had moved on although to be fair Rover had too, it’s P6 (2000), released in 1963 was very much a modernist take (and one which would in 1968 also be transformed by the V8, becoming the 3500 (1968-1976)).  Between 1967 and the end of production in 1967, the flavor of the press commentary about the 3.5 was very much: “outmoded but satisfying”.

Released in September 1967: Rover 3.5 saloon (left) and NSU Ro80 (right), partially exposed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October.

Like the 3.5, the NSU Ro80 had been released in September that year and the contrast was obviously between the past and the future, the German car influencing design for more than a generation (with the obvious exception of the ill-fated Wankel engine) while what the Rover represented was already almost extinct, few of the others in its market segment (the Vanden Plas Farinas, the Humber Super Snipe, the Vauxhall Viscount, the Daimler Majestic Major and the Austin 3 Litre) to see the 1970s.  Nor did other manufacturers make much effort to compete for buyers who clearly wanted something lighter and more modern although, after taking over Rootes Group, to replace the defunct Super Snipe and Imperial, Chrysler did embark on a quixotic venture to prove demand still existed by taking advantage of the old Commonwealth tariff preference scheme by importing the Australian-built Valiant (built on the US A-Body) in both straight-six & V8 form.  It registered barely a blip on the sales charts although, remarkably, both remained available until 1976 by which time the writing was on the wall for Chrysler’s entire European operation.

A UK government 3.5 waiting outside No 10 Downing Street (left) and Harold Wilson about to enter his (right).

For many however, the Rover’s reassuring presence was more appealing than modernity (although the rakish Rostyle wheels may have been a shock for some).  It certainly appealed to those at the heart of the establishment and the first prime minister to have been driven in one was the pipe-smoking Harold Wilson (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) who, although he’d once promised to revitalize the economy with the “white heat of technological change”, was a cautious and conservative character; the car suited him and he appreciated the custom-built ashtray which held his pipe.  Edward "Ted" Heath (1916-2005; UK prime-minister 1970-1974), James "Jim" Callaghan (1912–2005; prime minister of the UK 1979-1979) and Mrs Thatcher followed him into the backseat, something made possible because the Ministry of Supply (advised production was ending in 1973), purchased a batch from the final run, stockpiling them for future VIP use, the same tactic some police forces would later adopt to secure warehouses full of Rover SD1s (another recipient of the ex-Buick V8), the front wheel drive (FWD) replacements they knew were in the pipeline not a compelling choice for the highway patrol.  Not until 1981 was Mrs Thatcher's Rover retired and replaced with a Daimler.

1955 Chrysler C-300 (top left), 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Coupé (top right), Rover 3.5 Coupé (bottom left) and Rover 3.5 Saloon (bottom right).

On sale only in 1955-1956, the restrained lines of Chrysler’s elegant “Forward Look” range didn’t last long in the US as extravagance overtook Detroit but the influence endured longer in Europe, both the Mercedes-Benz W111 (1961-1971) & W112 Coupes (1962-1967) and the Rover P5 (1958-1967) & P5B (1967-1973) interpreting the shape.  The Rover was a tale of two rooflines: the “Establishment” Saloon and the rakish Coupé.

US-delivered 1965 Rover 3 Litre Coupe.

Prior to 1967 when legislation rendered the low-volume model unviable, Rover did ship a small number of P5s to the US, made possible because the line was anyway produced in LHD (left-hand-drive) for European sale.  There were a number of changes such as the amber taillights being replaced with red lens but although, sensibly, the Americans spelled “coupe” without the l'accent aigu (acute accent), the “Coupé” badge was retained.

In automobiles, by the 1960s, the English-speaking world had (more or less) agreed a coupé was a two door car with a fixed roof and (if based on a sedan), often a shorter wheelbase, designed put a premium on style over utility.  There were hold-outs among a few UK manufacturers who insisted there were fixed head coupés (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC), the latter described by most others as convertibles or cabriolets but mostly the term had come to be well-understood.  It was thus a surprise when Rover in 1962 displayed a “four-door coupé”, essentially their 3 Litre sedan with a lower roof-line and a few “sporty” touches such as a tachometer and a full set of gauges.  One intriguing part of the tale was why, defying the conventions of the time, the low-roof variation of the four-door was called a coupé (and Rover did use the l'accent aigu (the acute accent: “é”) to ensure the “traditional pronunciation” was imposed although the Americans and others sensibly abandoned the practice).  The rakish lines, including more steeply sloped front and rear glass were much admired although the original vision had been more ambitious still, the intention being a four-door hardtop with no central pillar.  Strangely, although the Americans and Germans had managed this satisfactorily, a solution eluded Rover which had to be content with a more slender B-pillar.

Lindsay Lohan with Porsche Panamera 4S four-door coupe (the factory doesn't use the designation but most others seem to), Los Angeles, 2012.

The etymology of coupé is that it’s from couper (to cut off) but the original use in the context of horse-drawn coaches referred to the platform being shortened, not lowered.  Others too have been inventive, Cadillac for decades offering the Coupe De Ville (they used also Coupe DeVille) and usually it was built to exactly the same dimensions as the Sedan De Ville, differing on in the door count.  So Rover probably felt entitled to cut where they preferred; in their case it was the roof and in the early twentieth century, the four-door coupe became a thing, the debut in 2004 of the Mercedes-Benz CLS influencing other including BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi.  The moment for the style clearly hasn’t passed because when CLS production ended in August 2023, the lines were carried over to the new E-Class (W214, 2023-) but there are no longer references to a “four-door coupé”.

One of Elizabeth II’s P5B Saloons outside the gates of Windsor castle (left) and Her Majesty at the wheel (right), leaving the castle, reputedly on the way to church so while one of her 3.5s won’t quite be “only driven to church on Sunday by little old lady”, being in the Royal mews, it would have been well-maintained.

Although for almost 20 years a fixture outside No 10 Downing Street, the most famous P5B owner was Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) who upgraded from a 3 Litre in 1968 and, although not noted for being sentimental about machinery, until 1987 ran one of the several maintained in the Royal Mews during her reign.

Rover P5B headrests (left & right) and the mounting assembly for the reading lamps in the front units (centre).

Most of the focus on the Rover 3.5 has always been about the engine and the illustrious passengers but one detail of note is the bulk of the headrests, optional fittings in most markets.  Quite why they were so big isn’t clear although the shape of the rear units presumably made for an easier mounting on the parcel shelf, meaning the seat's frames & covers needed no modification, but it’s apparently not an urban myth some used by the British government had a bullet-proof panel inserted; there was certainly the space to accommodate even a thick metal plate.  The front headrests were used also to house the optional reading lamps, the wiring harness well concealed within.