Trope

Trope (pronounced trohp)

(1) In art and literature, any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense and which tends to become a motif.

(2) In rhetoric, a figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a non-literal or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(3) In geometry, a tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic or the reciprocal of a node on a surface (archaic).

(4) In music, a short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music; a pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

(5) In the rituals of Judaism, a chanting (cantillation) pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(6) In medieval Christianity (and preserved in the rituals of certain factions in Roman Catholicism), either a phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir or a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.

(7) In Athenian philosophy, any of the ten arguments used in scepticism to refute dogmatism.

(8) In Santayanian philosophy, the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence.

(9) In metaphysics, a particular instance of a property, as contrasted with a universal.

1525–1535: From the Latin tropus (a figure of speech (in rhetoric)) from the Ancient Greek τρόπος (trópos) (a turn, direction, course, way; manner, fashion; a mode in music; a mode or mood in logic (in rhetoric, "a turn or figure of speech)) and related to τροπή (tropḗ) (solstice; trope; turn) and τρέπειν (trépein) (to turn).  Root was the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn), related also to the Sanskrit trapate (is ashamed, confused, literally "turns away in shame") which Latin picked up trepit (he turns), the Latin adoption in the figurative.  The meaning is now understood as something more diffuse but technically, in rhetoric, a trope was "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a sense other than the usual definition".  In English, the word is found often in combined form (such as heliotrope) and occurs also in concrete nouns that correspond to abstract nouns ending in -tropy or -tropism.  Trope is a noun & verb, troper, tropist, tropology & tropism are nouns and tropey is an adjective; the noun plural is tropes.

When younger, Lindsay Lohan's signature trope was playing dual roles (The Parent Trap (1998), Freaky Friday (2003) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  During her “troubled starlet” phase, she became emblematic of the “downward spiral” trope.  In 2022, she appeared in Falling for Christmas, Netflix's latest take on the "Christmas movie trope".  Although the scripts for tropes have long followed an algorithm, the studios are said now to be using a predictive form of artificial intelligence (AI) to hone the generation of whatever should have the most audience appeal.  The screen-writers (most of whom drive cars and use other products manufactured using processes in which machines substantially have displaced the human labor content) are are unlikely ultimately to succeed in keeping AI out of their profession and, in the medium term, their future may lie in the creation of the quirky and bizarre but in the economy, that's a niche.  For the formulaic stuff (most commercial cinema), the studios are likely to find the AI path "better, cheaper, faster" and the history of US industrial relations suggests these imperatives will prove irresistible.               

The Stage Five Clinger Trope

Most sources cite origin of the Stage 5 Clinger trope as the movie Wedding Crashers (2005) although there are claims it merely popularized the use; without earlier citations however, the trope’s origin appears to be the movie.  As a technical point, a stage one clinger isn’t initially labelled as such, the term applied retrospectively after syndrome is diagnosed.  If men are smart or lucky, they’ll recognize this by stage two but some men are so stupid they don’t realize until stage four.  While in movie there was no discussion of stages other than “5”, by implication five was most extreme and memes soon fleshed out 1-4:

Stage 1 Clinger: She seems fine

First date goes well, she’s attentive, interested, even gets the drinks sometimes and she makes breakfast.  Afterwards, text messages are fun and flirtatious.

Stage 2 Clinger: Hunter and game

The text messages become frequent, the first hint of the lure / engage / trap strategy of the lone hunter.  SMSs start out OK which lulls you into a false sense of security.  Before long, a few messages have been exchanged, most of which have required you to agree with her about innocuous stuff like the weather or today’s traffic.  Then, she’ll suggest a second date and extract a commitment to a specific time/date/place.  That will be soon.       

Stage 3 Clinger: Manoeuvres

Second date not something you’ll wish to repeat.  Bit creepy, how much she knew about you, clearly adept at mining the web.  To escape, you agree to third date while finding pretext to avoid confirming time.  Within hours, text messages become frequent to the point of nuisance.  Check Facebook and you’ll see she’s friended everyone you know.  Ignore SMS and eventually it goes quiet… for about an hour.  Then she phones.  Third date will not be possible to avoid, the illusion you’ll use it to end things still something you convince yourself to believe.  The S3C stage can frequently be the point of no return.  Acquaint yourself with the tale of Julius Caesar (100-44 BC; Roman general and dictator of Rome 49-44 BC) crossing the Rubicon and ponder.      

Stage 4 Clinger: The circling vulture

By stage four, clinging has slurred effortlessly into stalking and S4C is likely to send your mother flowers on her birthday and attempt at avoidance will prompt texting and calling from other phones.  Those who drive are even more of a threat because, where you go, she can follow so you’ll run into her in the most improbable places, and usually she’ll suggest taking advantage of the coincidence by going to lunch, dinner or whatever else might be close.  No matter how studiously you watch the rear-vision mirror, she’ll hunt you down and find you. 

Stage 5 Clinger: Thrill of the kill

At this point, her life is scheduled around your own, even to the point where she may now work in the same building, expects to have lunch together every day and a drink after work whenever possible.  When you try to avoid these, emotional meltdowns ensue, the only way to avoid a scene being to agree.  Many of your friends start asking you out as a couple and tell you you’re lucky because she’s wonderful.  She’s been to their dinner parties where she talks about your plans together.  Stage five clinger can also be APC ("actual psycho-chick", the two not synonymous but there’s frequent overlap).  Pursuing another relationship in an attempt to dissuade her brings its own problems, the S5C-APC will spray-paint CHEATER on either their car or yours (in red; unless car is red, then she’ll use black).  At this point, faking your own death begins to look like good tactic.

Crooked Hillary (b 1947) and Bill Clinton (b 1946) in the rain at the formal dedication of the William J Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, November 2004.  Cling on and no matter what, never let go.

The significance of dividing the path of the clinger into stages is it’s vital to extricate yourself from their clutches during the earliest stage possible; it needs to be remembered progression can be rapid, some clingers so adept at the art they're able to skip one or even two stages.  The longer delayed the excision, the harder it becomes and if allowed to reach the later stages, you may be stuck with her forever and for that, you can’t blame her: you're trapped and it's all your fault; you have only yourself to blame.

Shturmovik

Shturmovik (pronounced sturm-oh-vic)

The Russia word used to mean “Ground Attack Aircraft”.

1939-1941: From the Cyrillic штурмовик (shturmovík) which in English is written sometimes as the simplified (phonetic) Stormovik or Sturmovik.  The word is a shortened form of Bronirovanni Shturmovik (Bsh) (armed stormtrooper) and was the generic term in Russia for aircraft designed for this role; in English it was a synecdoche for the Ilyushin Il-2.

A flight of Ilyushin Il-2s.

The definitive Shturmovik was the Илью́шин Ил-2 (Ilyushin Il-2), a remarkable platform which provided a template for future airframes of its type.  Over 36,000 were produced, an all-time record for combat aircraft and one more impressive still if the 7000-odd of its closely related successor (Ilyushin Il-10) are included, the family total thus close to 43,000.  Although not as ascetically unhappy as the infamously ungainly French bombers of the era, the Il-2 was not a delicate, elegant thing in the style of something like the Supermarine Spitfire or a muscular form like the North American P-51 Mustang and one popular nickname adopted by the Soviet infantry viewing from below was “hunchback” although those better acquainted with its construction and purpose preferred “Flying Tank”.

The idea of “flying tank” is a useful one to explore.  Many theorists in the early 1930s had advocated the use of low-altitude aircraft, flying at relatively slow speeds as the most effective weapon which could deliver ordinance with sufficient accuracy to neutralize tanks and other armored vehicles in battlefield conditions.  That implied the need for an airframe to both carry heavy weaponry and sufficient armor to resist attack from the ground and air, a combination judged impossible to produce because the engines at the time lack the power needed for such heavy machine.  The engines did during the 1930s became more powerful but the conceptual breakthrough was in the design of the airframe.  Previously, designers had done essentially what the nineteenth century naval architects did to make the early “ironclads”: attach additional metal plates over an existing lightweight structure.  Even at sea that limited performance but did (for a while) make the craft close to impregnable; it couldn’t however produce a military aircraft with its need for specific performance over different ranges.  The solution was to make the armor an integral part of the shell, protecting the crew, engine and fuel tank, the weight of this central unit some 700 kg (1540 lb), a number offset by not having also to support the weight of a conventional fuselage, the steel part of that having little supporting structure inside, the armor used as a structural member.  It was an approach which in the post-war years would be implemented in cars as the “safety-cell”, the central passenger compartment onto which the other components would be added.

Ilyushin Il-2 with 37 mm ShFK-37 cannons.

Early in July 1941, some two weeks into Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union), the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) first became aware of the Shturmovik which initially they compared to the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) Junkers Ju 87 (Stuka) dive-bomber which had been such an effective ground-forces support weapon in the conquest of Poland and then Western Europe, its limitations not exposed until it was deployed in the early days of the Battle of Britain (July-October 1940).  The Ju 87 could support a heavier bomb-load than the Il-2 but, equipped with automatic cannons, rockets, machine guns, and bombs, the Russian aircraft was much more lethal.  The Germans however quickly identified the weak points and that most had been rushed into service with pilots provided with neither adequate training or the tactics needed to protect each other in flight, especially during attacking runs.  Moreover, they lacked the optical sights needed accurately to aim their weapons and while the thick armor surrounded the pilot and engine, the structure behind the cockpit was plywood, highly susceptible to damage (tail-gunners suffered a death rate seven times that of the pilots because the gunner’s portion of the airframe was mostly of plywood).

Literally hundreds of Il-2s were lost to anti-aircraft fire or attacks by fighters, usually from the rear during bombing runs but, defying the expectations had infected the highest levels of the German political and military command, the Soviets were able to make good their losses of Shturmoviks and pilots, just as they were able to re-equip armored divisions with tanks, exceeding the capacity of the Germans ability to destroy formations.  As the war proceeded, the Shturmoviks increasingly came in waves and although the attrition remained high (the losses at a rate other allied forces would never have countenanced), the sheer weight of numbers meant the Soviets could overwhelm what were increasingly numerically inferior formations.  Noting the robustness of the Il-2, the Germans nicknamed them Betonflugzeug (concrete plane), acknowledging the ability to absorb punishment; others preferred Der Schwarze Tod (the Black Death).  The ability of the Soviet industrial machine to first maintain and later vastly increase production of things like aircraft and tanks was because of decisions taken by the Germans during the 1930s which afforded priority to create an air-force best suited to supporting brief, high-intensity conflicts (which came to be known as blitzkrieg (lightning war), thus the mass-production of small dive-bombers, medium-range light bombers and fighters rather than long-range strategic, heavy bombers.  As the Soviets moved their plant & equipment eastward (itself a remarkable achievement), the factories became immune from air attack as they were beyond the range of the Luftwaffe.  However, as the German advance stalled, production in Moscow resumed, increasing the available numbers and innovations appeared, one prototype even tested with a flame-thrower mounted in the nose.

Red Army Air Force Yakovlev Yak 9B dropping PTABs.

Another innovation first delivered by the Shturmovik was the Protivo-Tankovaya Avia Bomba (Anti-Tank Air-Bomb; the PTAB), one of the predecessors of modern cluster munitions and similar in concept to the contemporary German two-kilogram Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD-2) (butterfly-bomb).  In Mid-1943, knowing the Wehrmacht’s Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) against Soviet forces in the Kursk salient was imminent, the Russians stockpiled the PTABs, producing almost a million of the 2 Kg devices, designed specifically so a Shturmovik could carry almost 200, each with a “shaped charge” warhead able to penetrate the armor of even the best protected tanks.  The battle of Kursk (July 1943) was the biggest tank engagement ever fought and for days some 8000 tanks (3000 German, 5000 Soviet) ranged around a vast battlefield of swirling heat, dust and death and although visibility at times restricted the use of air-power, the PTAB equipped Shturmoviks damaged or immobilized a verified 419 enemy vehicles.

RAF Hawker Hurricane IID with a 40mm Vickers anti-tank cannon fitted under each wing.  The pilots noted the "tank buster" moniker but preferred "Flying Can Openers".

The Shturmovik concept was quickly adopted by other air forces and one was rapidly improvised by the UK’s Royal Air Force to counter the threat posed by tanks in the North African campaign.  By 1941 it was apparent the Hawker Hurricane was no longer suitable in its original role as an interceptor and fighter but it was a robust, reliable and easily serviced platform and it proved adaptable to the ground attack role.  By early 1942 deliveries had begun of the Mark IID Hurricane and equipped with a pair of under-wing mounted 40mm (1.6 inch) canon, it proved an effective counter to the Africa Corps’ tanks in the Western Desert as well as fulfilling a similar role in the Burma theatre against the even more vulnerable Japanese armor; in both places they were dubbed, with some accuracy: “tank busters”.  The effect of the 40 mm canons was such that when fired, they perceptibly slowed the plane in flight but pilots learned techniques to compensate.  So convincing were the results that a generation of heavy fighters either designed for or able to be adapted for the purpose, Hawker’s Typhoon & Tempest and Republic’s huge P-47 Thunderbolt all as famed as “tank busters” as for any other part they played in the war, especially noted for their role in the development of air-to-ground rockets.

Lindsay Lohan in body armor.

Despite progress, notably the use of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, often casually referred to as “drones”) Shturmoviks have remained an important component of military inventories and some years after the end of the First Gulf War (1990-1991), one of the first conspiracy theories to appear on the then novel WorldWideWeb concerned them.  It was claimed a study the Pentagon conducted (using as targets Iraqi tanks abandoned in the Kuwaiti desert) concluded blocks of concrete dropped from aircraft were just as accurate as bombs as well as being cheaper and easier to produce, while equally effective in disabling a tank.  The conspiracy theory claimed that suggestions the concept be pursued was vetoed by the “military-industrial complex” which made much money out of building anti-tank bombs.

Hatter

Hatter (pronounced hat-er)

(1) A maker or seller of hats.

(2) In Australian slang (1) a person who has become eccentric from living alone in a remote area or (2) a person who lives alone in the bush, as a herder or prospector (now archaic and dating from the 1850s, a synecdoche of “mad as a hatter”).

(3) A student or member of the athletic program at Stetson University in Florida.

(4) In dialectical South Scots, to bother; to get someone worked up (and thus related to the modern “to hassle”).

1350–1400: From the Middle English hatter, the construct being hat + -er.  Hat was from the Middle English hat (head covering), from the Old English hæt (head-covering, hat), from the Proto-Germanic hattuz (hat), from the primitive Indo-European kadh (to guard, cover, care for, protect).  It was cognate with the North Frisian hat (hat), the Danish hat (hat), the Swedish hatt (hat), the Icelandic hattur (hat), the Latin cassis (helmet), the Lithuanian kudas (bird's crest or tuft), the Avestan xaoda (hat), the Persian خود‎ (xud) (helmet) and the Welsh cadw (to provide for, ensure).  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.  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.  If added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.  Hatter is a noun and the rare hattering & hattered are verbs; the noun plural is hatters.

Lindsay Lohan wearing hats.

The synonyms are hatmaker (or hat-maker) & milliner.  As makers of hats, the difference between a hatter and a milliner is that a milliner is a hat-maker specializing (historically bespoke headpieces) in women's headwear (and works at a millinery shop), while a hatter makes hats for men (and works at a hattery).  In the business of selling hats the distinction blurred, especially in the case of operations which dealt with hats for both men and women.  As a retailer, a hatter could deal either exclusively in hats for men for those for both sexes whereas what was sold by a millinery was (at least intended) only for women.  Milliner was from the Middle English Milener (native of Milan), the construct an irregular form of Milan + -er, the link explained by the northern Italian city being the source of many of the fine garments for women imported into England in the late Medieval age.

Depiction of the mad hatter’s tea party.  Created by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), The Hatter appears in both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and though nowhere in the text does the author make reference to a "mad hatter", that is the popular form and not an unreasonable one, given the madness of both The Hatter and the March Hare is confirmed by the Cheshire Cat.  Lewis Carroll was said to be familiar with the traits of madness and the condition suffered by hatters was well known but some literary historians have speculated The Hatter may have been based on an eccentric shop-keeper.  There’s no documentary evidence to support the claim.

Role model JR Ewing (Larry Hagman, 1931–2012) in Stetson hat.

The use of Hatter (usually in the collective Hatters) to describe students or members of the athletic program at Florida’s Stetson University comes from John B Stetson (1830-1906), otherwise famous as the hatter known for his eponymous hats.  The school was in 1883 founded as the DeLand Academy but was in 1889 renamed Stetson after the Mr Hatter joined the Board of Trustees, the change acknowledging his financial largess.  Thus were born the Hatters and the name (informally) extends to the school’s mascot (who is correctly named John B) which wears a Stetson hat, green bandana, and alligator skin boots.  The mascot is considered equal in status to all other members of the school family.

Lindsay Lohan wearing more hats.

The phrase “mad as a hatter” was first recorded in 1829 and is usually attributed to the correlation noted between those engaged in the profession of hat-making and instances of Korsakoff's syndrome induced by the frequency of them handling mercury-contaminated felt.  The nineteenth century speculation of a link with the Old English ātor (poison) or its descendant the Middle English atter (poison, venom,) lacks evidence has long been discredited.  Korsakoff's syndrome was named after the Russian neuropsychiatrist Sergei Sergeievich Korsakoff (1854-1900 (his work on alcoholic psychosis still influential)) who identified the syndrome which is induced by both exposure to mercury and chronic alcohol use.  A neurological disorder of the central nervous system caused by a deficiency of thiamine, the symptoms include amnesia, deficits in explicit memory, tremors and general confabulation.  The fourteenth century variant “mad as a March hare” alludes to the crazy behavior of hares during rutting season, mistakenly thought to be only in March.

In 1888, a hydrochloride-based process which obviated the need to use mercury when processing felt was patented and in France and the UK, just before the turn of the century, laws were passed banning the use of substance in the making of hats but, as an illustration of the way things have changed, in the US, the risk was ignored by hatters and their employers alike, even trade unions making no attempt to end its use.  Only with the onset of World War II when all available mercury was needed for military production did US hat makers voluntarily agree to adopt the long available alternative process which used hydrogen peroxide.

Coup

Coup (pronounced koo)

(1) A highly successful, unexpected stroke, act, or move; a clever action or accomplishment; a brilliant and successful stroke or action

(2) As count coup, a brave or reckless deed performed in battle by a single warrior, as touching or striking an enemy warrior without sustaining injury oneself (believed specific to the Plains Indians of North America); a blow against an enemy delivered in a way that shows bravery.

(3) A short form for coup d'état, used (1) literally, in the context of a political takeover or overthrow (a putsch) and, (2) by extension, in business, sport, academia etc.

(4) A rubbish tip.

(5) In Scots, to barter; traffic; deal

(6) As (the unrelated) chicken coop (pronounced koop), a construction made up of an outdoor area, a roosting box, a roosting box support, a nesting box, and a garden above the outdoor area.

(7) In roulette, a single roll of the wheel.

(8) In the French card game rouge et noir, a deal.

(9) In the card-game bridge, one of various named strategies employed by the declarer to win more tricks (such as the Bath coup & Vienna coup).

(10) In billiards, the direct pocketing of the cue-ball, which is a foul stroke.

(11) To perform a coup; to recount or relate the coups one has performed.

1350–1400: From the Middle English coupe (to pay for), from the Old Norse kaupa (to buy, barter) and cognate with the Old English cēapian and the German kaufen.  The use in the modern sense of “blow; strike against” emerged in the 1640s and was from the French coup (literally “blow, stroke”) from the twelfth century Old French colp (a blow, strike), from the Medieval Latin colpus, from the Latin colaphus (blow with the fist; a cuff, box on the ear), from the Greek kólaphos (a blow, buffet, punch, slap) of uncertain origin.  In Modern French the word is regarded as a “workhorse”, used variously to describe physical blows from “a pat on the back” to “a serious assault”, gunshots, sudden, dramatic weather events such as claps of thunder or gusts of wind and moves in games including cards & chess.  Depending on the context, the synonyms include action, plot, revolt, revolution, overthrow, stratagem, accomplishment, upset, stroke, exploit, stunt & deed.  Coup, coupist & coupism are nouns; the plural is coups (pronounced kooz (or koo in French)).

A coup de grâce is a “mercy killing”, a final blow or shot delivered to kill a wounded person or animal, the rationale being it "puts them out of their misery".  Some have been notable: When it became clear to the coup plotters that Unternehmen Walküre (Operation Valkyrie, the 20 July 1944 attempt to overthrow Nazi rule, the success of which was predicated on the assassination of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had failed, a number of the plotters decided to anticipate the inevitable by committed suicide.  Most succeeded but Colonel General Ludwig Beck (1880–1944), pencilled in as head of state in the provisional government, given permission by his captor to take his own life, shot himself in the head (twice according some accounts) but managed only to wound himself.  That might sound like an indictment of the marksmanship in the senior ranks of the Wehrmacht but it transpires not to be unknown in suicide attempts, especially when the weapon is a small calibre pistol loaded with the steel-jacketed bullets used by the military.  An army sergeant delivered Beck the coup de grâce with a single shot.

The meaning “a sudden decisive act” was first used in 1852 as clipping of coup d'etat.  The linguistic gift was the consequence of the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, staged by Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–1873; first president of France (1848-1852) and (as the Emperor Napoleon III) the last monarch (1852-1870)).  In the narrow technical sense, political scientists often list the event as a “self coup” because he was at the time serving as President of France (the Second Republic) and the appropriately-named Operation Rubicon was a way to ensure his continuation in office, the president, under the constitution, compelled to relinquish office in 1852.  Charles-Louis was a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) who would become known as Napoleon I.  Just to emphasize the imperial connection, the coup was timed to coincide with the anniversary of Napoleon I's victory at the Battle Austerlitz (2 December 1805, the so-called “Battle of the Three Emperors”), one of the great set-piece engagements of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).

Emperor Donald I in his coronation robes, post coup d'etat (digitally altered image).

The sense of history was real but the motive was more Machiavellian.  Le President liked being head of state, was frustrated his agenda had yet to be implemented and the coup took the course familiar in dozens since, dissolving the parliament & vesting the office of president with the power to rule by decree.  Giving a lesson which would be well-learned by later dictators, within days of the coup the president had conducted a constitutional referendum which (carefully counted) approved his actions and by 14 January 1852 a new constitution had been promulgated (replacing the document of 4 November 1848 which had been the founding text of the Second Republic).  However, even enhanced powers (strengthened still further over the next few months) proved insufficient and, with the concurrence of the Sénat (the unelected upper chamber of the national assembly) and another referendum (one in which who counted the votes was of more importance than who voted), on 2 December 1852, Bonaparte proclaimed himself “Emperor of the French” as Napoleon III.  In the French monarchical tradition, he now thought he had a job for life.  Things didn’t quite work out that way but he was for a while a real emperor which is something few presidents get to be.  When he turns off the light at night, it may be that Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) early-morning thoughts turn not to memories of Stormy Daniels (the stage name of Stephanie Gregory, b 1979 with whom nothing ever happened) but to Napoleon III.  Were he to follow the business model of 1852, he could be crowned Donald I.

The coup d'état (pronounced koo dey-tahz or ku-deta (French)) is the sudden, unlawful (although this is often retrospectively “fixed”) often violent, decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.  In French, unlike English, the word État (sovereign political entity) is capitalized.  As a political tactic, coup d'état has existed probably since the first forms of government emerged but the phrase is recent, apparently unknown in English prior to 1802 when, finding no better phrase in English to convey the idea, the French form was adopted.  Neither coup d'état nor putsch have ever been defined in international law and tend to be used interchangeably, any variation in use tending to occur according to the linguistic traditions of the country in which the event happens rather than any differences in practice.  Technically, both are any sudden, decisive political act but are usually used to describe an attempt, successful or not, to overthrow a government or leader.  In contrast to a revolution, a coup d'état (sometimes truncated to coup) or putsch, does not involve a mass uprising, being instead usually an action where a small group arrests, executes or in some way disposes of incumbent leaders, seizing the institutions of the state and proclaims themselves in power.  That’s the essence of the coup d'état, it’s the takeover of the state, usually by one or more of the constituent institutions of the state.  Debate continues about whether Nacht der langen Messer ((Night of the Long Knives, also called Unternehmen Kolbri (Operation Hummingbird), the bloody purge between 30 June-2 July 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a number of extrajudicial executions, ostensibly to crush what was referred to as “the Röhm Putsch”) should be called a “pre-emptive” or “preventative” strike.  All the evidence suggests there was no likelihood of a coup in the immediate future but that it wasn’t something which could in the future be thought impossible.  Most settle on “preventative”.

Nice day for a coup d'état.  Air Marshal Perence Shiri (1955-2020, left) and the late Robert Mugabe (1924–2019; prime minister of Zimbabwe 1980-1987, president 1987-2017, right).

Occasionally, there’s the curious case of the military coup where both the soldiers and the deposed deny it was any such thing.  In 2017 the Zimbabwe Army’s high command engineered the “retirement” of Robert Mugabe and most unusually, it was greeted with almost universal local and international approval, despite a consensus that military overthrows are pretty bad form and not to be encouraged.  This was a special case, everyone preferring to welcome the outcome and not dwell too long on the process.  As military coups go, it wasn’t too bad and to smooth the process, Mr Mugabe’s was granted a “severance package” along the lines of that Mr Putin offered to some annoying types: “We know what you’ve stolen over the years but you stole it fair and square so you can keep it but you have to go away and keep quiet.”  Despite the generosity of that, within a few months he was complaining he’d been the “victim of a coup d'état.”

Coups d'état (coup d'états the alternative plural in English) also attract modifiers.  A “colonels' coup” is a military coup in which the dominant players are not from the most senior ranks (ie not the Generals or Admirals).  The classic example was the Greek coup of 21 April 1967 which was staged by literally a number of colonels, the resulting right-wing military dictatorship often dubbed the “Regime of the Colonels”.  In 1973, the generals got their revenge, overthrowing the colonels and in the jargon of political science, a “generals’ coup” is one considered to have been instigated by the military establishment rather than a faction meaning a coup led by only a couple of generals is not a “generals’ coup” but a “military coup” which happens to have been staged by generals.  Political scientists enjoy distinctions like this and they really like “soft-coup” which describes an overthrow which is essentially administrative.  The political demise of both Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) and Jim Bolger (b 1935; prime-minister of New Zealand 1990-1997) were achieved by way of soft-coup, a pack of colleagues assembled to tell the leader they “no longer have the numbers”.  The number of failed soft-coups is legion but, when the first fails, the second often succeeds.  The soft-coup is also a favorite of conspiracy theorists who see in all that is wrong in the world the hand of the “deep state” (or else the Freemasons, the Jews, the Jesuits or the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or).  They're probably right about the Freemasons.

Lindsay Lohan never forgave Hosni Mubarak (1928–2020; president of Egypt 1981-2011) for shouting at Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001).  When told in 2011 he’d fallen from power as one of the victims of the Arab Spring, she responded: “Cool.”  When told it was brought about by a military coup she replied: “Gross!”  Lindsay Lohan doesn’t approve of Coups d'état and believes in due constitutional process.   

A “palace coup” is one staged by those who were already part of the group in power (the word “palace” is thus used here as a synecdoche and there’s not necessarily a physical palace involved).  It’s really the ultimate factional power-play and often used of the (figurative) back-stabbing which tended to be the culmination of the low skulduggery which is a feature of modern democratic politics.  The “self-coup” (also called the auto-coup) is better thought of as a power-grab and involves someone lawfully in power seizing (by non-constitutional or by some means of dubious lawfulness) power from other branches or institutions of government.  Typically, this will involve dissolving legislatures or removing judges.  There are also “failed coups” which often are notable for the bloody (sometimes literal, sometimes figurative depending on where it happens) aftermath, revenge visited upon the plotters (and sometimes their friends, family and other “usual suspects”).  Done properly, the vengeance should be short and sharp (though not necessarily with a low-body count).  In that it differs from a successful coup because in those the settling of scores and elimination of enemies (real and imagined) can drag on from weeks, or in extreme cases, such as the 1973 military coup in Chile, years.

A coup d'essai (literally “stroke of trial”) is a first attempt at something.  A coup de force (literally “stroke of force”) is a sudden violent action.  A coup de foudre (literally “stroke of lightning” is a sudden unforeseen event, the most attractive use of which is the peoetic “love at first sight”).  A coup de glotte (a glottal stop) is a term from phonetics which describes a plosive sound articulated with the glottis (the opening between the true vocal cords which is located in the larynx and affects voice modulation through expansion or contraction).  A coup de main ( literally “stroke of hand”  is a military term meaning “surprise attack” but is sometimes used in other contexts; if successfully executed, it could be said to be a coup de maître (a master stroke).  A coup de poing (literally “stroke of fist”) is persuasion by means of violence (sometimes used loosely of coercion or implied violence); in archaeology it describes a hatchet or hand-axe.  A coup de soleil is an attack of sun-stroke.  A coup de theatre is (1) a sudden or unexpected event in a play (the work either of the author, director or performer) or (2) a theatrical trick, twist or gesture staged for dramatic effect.  A Coup de vent (literally “stroke of wind”) is a whirlwind or other gust of unusual strength.  A coup d'œil (literally “stroke of eye”) is “a comprehensive glance; a general view” which in military use refers to a “rapidly sizing up of a position and estimating its strategic advantages and drawbacks”.

Sabot & Clog

Sabot (pronounced sab-oh or sa-boh (French)

(1) A shoe made of a single block of wood hollowed out, worn especially by farmers and workers in the Netherlands, France, Belgium etc.

(2) A shoe with a thick wooden sole and sides and a top of coarse leather.

(3) In military ordinance, a wooden or metal disk formerly attached to a projectile in a muzzle-loading cannon.

(4) In firearm design, a lightweight sleeve in which a sub-caliber round is enclosed in order to make it fit the rifling of a firearm; after firing the sabot drops away.

(5) In nautical use, a small sailing boat with a shortened bow (Australia).

1600–1610: From the French sabot, from the Old French çabot, a blend of savate (old shoe), of uncertain origin and influenced by bot (boot).  The mysterious French savate (old shoe), despite much research by etymologists, remains of unknown origin.  It may be from the Tatar чабата (çabata) (overshoes), ultimately either from the Ottoman Turkish چاپوت‎ (çaput or çapıt) (patchwork, tatters), or from the Ottoman Turkish چاپمق‎ (çapmak) (to slap on), or of Iranian origin, cognate with the modern Persian چپت‎ (čapat) (a kind of traditional leather shoe).  It was akin to the Old Provençal sabata, the Italian ciabatta (old shoe), the Spanish zapato, the Norman chavette and the Portuguese sapato.  The plural is sabots.

Sabot is the ultimate source of sabotage & saboteur.  English picked up sabotage from the French saboter (deliberately to damage, wreck or botch), used originally to refer to the tactic used in industrial disputes by workers wearing the wooden shoes called sabots who disrupted production in various ways.  The persistent myth is that the origin of the term lies in the practice of workers throwing the wooden sabots into factory machinery to interrupt production but the tale appears apocryphal, one account even suggesting sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating the term sabotage with inefficiency.

Vintage Dutch sabots.

The words saboter and saboteur appear first to have appeared in French dictionaries in 1808 (Dictionnaire du Bas-Langage ou manières de parler usitées parmi le peuple of d'Hautel) suggesting there must have been some use of the words in printed materials some time prior to then.  The literal definition provided was “to make noise with sabots” and “bungle, jostle, hustle, haste” but with no suggestion of the shoes being used in the “spanner in the works” sense suggested by the myth.  Sabotage would not appear in dictionaries for some decades, noted first in the Dictionnaire de la langue française of Émile Littré (1801-1881) published between 1873-1874 and curiously, it’s defined as referencing that specialty of cobbling “the making of sabots; sabot maker”.  It wouldn’t be until 1897 that the use to describe malicious damage in pursuit of industrial or political aims was recorded, anarcho-syndicalist Émile Pouget (1860-1931) publishing Action de saboter un travail (Sabotaging or bungling at work) in Le Père Peinard, which he helpfully expanded in 1911 in the user manual Le Sabotage.  In neither work however was there mention of using sabots as a means of damaging or halting machinery, the sense was always of things done by those wearing sabots, the word a synecdoche for the industrial proletariat.  Contemporary English-language sources confirm this.  In its January 1907 edition, The Liberty Review noted sabotage was a means of “scamping work… a device… adopted by certain French workpeople as a substitute for striking.  The workman, in other words, purposes to remain on and to do his work badly, so as to annoy his employer's customers and cause loss to his employer”.

Clog (pronounced klog or klawg)

(1) To hinder or obstruct with thick or sticky matter; choke up.

(2) To crowd excessively, especially so that movement is impeded; overfill.

(3) To encumber; hamper; hinder.

(4) To become clogged, encumbered, or choked up.

(5) A shoe or sandal with a thick sole of wood, cork, rubber, or the like; a similar but lighter shoe worn in the clog dance.

(6) A heavy block, as of wood, fastened to a person or beast to impede movement.

(7) As clog dance, a type of dance which specifically demands the wearing of clogs.

(8) In British dialectal use, a thick piece of wood (now rare).

(9) In the slang of association football (soccer), to foul an opponent (now rare).

(10) A heavy block, especially of wood, fastened to the leg of a person or animal to impede motion.

(11) To use a mobile phone to take a photograph of (someone) and upload it without their knowledge or consent, the construct being c(amera) + log, a briefly used term from the early days of camera-equipped phones on the which never caught on.

1300s: Of unknown origin, most likely from the Middle English clogge (weight attached to the leg of an animal to impede movement) or from a North Germanic form such as klugu & klogo (knotty tree log) from the Old Norse, the Dutch klomp or the Norwegian klugu (knotty log of wood).  The word was also used in Middle English to describe big pieces of jewelry and large testicles.  The meaning "anything that impedes action" is from the 1520s, via the notion of "block or mass constituting an encumbrance” although it became nuanced, by 1755 builders were distinguishing between things clogged with whatever naturally belonged then and becoming “choked up with extraneous matter”, a distinction doubtlessly of great significance to plumbers.  The sense of the "wooden-soled shoe" is attested from the late fourteenth century, used as overshoes until the introduction of rubber soles circa 1840.  Related forms include the adjective cloggy, the noun clogginess, the verbs clogged & clog·ging and the adverb cloggily.  A frequently used adjectival derivative is anticlogging, often as a modifier of agent and, unsurprisingly, the verb unclog, first noted circa 1600, is also common.

Clog promotion, H&M catalog 2011.

Young women in clogs, smoking cigarettes.

Lindsay Lohan in Gucci Black Patent Leather Hysteria Platform Clogs with wooden soles, Los Angeles, 2009.  The car is a 2009 (fifth generation) Maserati Quattroporte leased by her father.

Clogs were originally made entirely of wood (hence the name), the more familiar modern form with leather uppers covering the front being noted first in the late sixteenth century but may have been worn earlier.  Long popular with men working in kitchens (always with a rubber covering on the sole), the first revival as a fashion item occurred circa 1970, primarily for women and clog-dancing, a form "which required the wearing of clogs" is attested from 1863.  There are now a variety of variations on the clog sole including the Tengu geta, having a single tooth in the centre and the Albarcas which features extensions something like a three-legged stool.  None look very comfortable but their users appear content.