Spook

Spook (pronounced spook)

(1) In informal use, a ghost; a specter; an apparition; hobgoblin.

(2) A person whose appearance or conduct is thought “ghost-like”.

(3) In philosophy, a metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct.

(4) In slang, a ghostwriter (one who writes text (typically columns, autobiography, memoir) published under the name of another,

(5) In slang, an eccentric person (now rare).

(6) In disparaging and offensive slang, term of contempt used of people of color (historically African-Americans).

(7) In slang, a spy; one engaged in espionage.

(8) In slang, a psychiatrist (originally US but now more widespread under the influence of pop culture.

(9) In the slang of blackjack, a player who engages in “hole carding” by attempting to glimpse the dealer's hole card when the dealer checks under an ace or a 10 to see if a blackjack is present.

(10) In southern African slang any pale or colorless alcoholic spirit (often as “spook & diesel”).

(11) To haunt; inhabit or appear in or to as a ghost or spectre.

(12) To frighten; to scare (often as “spooked”).

(13) To become frightened or scared (often as “spooked”); applied sometimes to animals, especially thoroughbred horses.

1801: A coining of US English, from the Dutch spook (ghost), from the Middle Dutch spooc & spoocke (spook, ghost), from an uncertain Germanic source (the earliest known link being the Middle Low German spōk (ghost), others including the Middle Low German spôk & spûk (apparition, ghost), the Middle High German gespük (a haunting), the German Spuk (ghost, apparition, hobgoblin), the Danish spøg (joke) & spøge (to haunt), the Norwegian spjok (ghost, specter) and the Swedish spok (scarecrow) & spöke (ghost).  The noun spook in the sense of “spectre, apparition, ghost” seems first to have appeared in a comical dialect poem, credited to “an old Dutch man in Albany” and printed in Vermont and Boston newspapers which credited it to Springer's Weekly Oracle in New London, Connecticut.  The regional diversity in language was then greater and evolutions sometimes simultaneous and the word also appeared in US English around 1830 as spuke & shpook, at first in the German-settled regions of Pennsylvania, via Pennsylvania Dutch Gschpuck & Schpuck, from the German Spuk.  Spook & spooking are nouns & verbs, spooker & spookery are nouns, spooktacular is a noun & adjective, spooktacularly is an adverb, spooked is a verb & adjective, spookery is a noun, spooky, spookiest & spookish are adjectives; the noun plural is spooks.

Spooked: Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

A “spook show” (frightening display) was a term in use by 1880 and in the sense of a “popular exhibition of legerdemain, mentalism or staged necromancy” it was documented by 1910.  The spook house (abandoned house) was in use in the 1850s, the expression meaning “haunted house” emerging in the 1860s.  The meaning “superstition” had emerged by 1918, presumably an extension from the earlier sense of “a superstitious person”, documented around the turn of the century although it probably existed longer in oral use.  In the 1890s, “spookist” (described variously as “jocular” and “a less refined word” was used to refer to spiritualists and medium (and in those years there were a lot of them, their numbers spiking after World War I (1914-1918) when many wished to contact the dead.  Spooktacular (a pun on “spectacular” developed some time during World War II (1939- 1945).  The meaning “undercover agent” or “spy” dates from 1942 (inducing “spookhouse” (haunted house) to pick up the additional meaning “headquarters of an intelligence operation”, a place presided over by a “spookmaster” (“spymaster” the preferred modern term).  In the same era, in student slang a spook could be an unattractive girl or a quiet, diligent, introverted student (something like the modern “nerd” but without any sense of a focus of technology).

Senator Rebecca Ann Felton (1835–1930, left) and Senator Mitch McConnell (b 1942; US senator (Republican-Kentucky) since 1985; Senate Minority Leader since 2021).  The spooky resemblance between Senator Fulton (who in 1922 served for one day as a senator (Democratic-Georgia), appointed as a political manoeuvre) and Senator Mitch McConnell has led some to suggest he might be her reincarnated.  Some not so acquainted with history assumed the photograph of Senator Felton was Mitch McConnell in drag.

The sense of spook as “a black person” is listed by dictionaries of US slang as being documented by 1938 (the date of origin uncertain) and it seems to have begun in African-American (hep-cat) slang and it was not typically used with any sense of disparagement, nor was it thought in any way offensive word.   However, by 1945 it had picked up the derogatory racial sense of “black person”, defined specifically as “frightened negro” and it became a common slur in the post-war world, probably because that even by then the “N-word” was becoming less acceptable in polite society.  That was the “linguistic treadmill” in practice but spook had also deviated earlier: In 1939 it is attested as meaning “a white jazz musician” and is listed by some sources as a disparaging term for a white person by 1947.  Spook also developed a curious fork in military aviation although one probably unrelated to the informal pilot’s jargon of the 1930s, a “spook” a “novice pilot” of the type who “haunt the hangers”, hiring air-time and learning to fly for no obvious practical purpose other than the joy of flying.  During the early 1940s, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) began the recruitment of black athletes for training as pilots, conducted at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; the group (1940-1948) was known as the Tuskegee Airmen and during World War II (1939-1945) they gained a fine reputation when deployed as combat units.  However, they also suffered prejudice and when first posted to Europe were often called the “Spookwaffe” (a play on Luftwaffe, the name of the German air force) although as happened decades later with the by then infamous N-word, some black pilots “re-claimed” the name and used it as a self-referential term of pride.

Left to right: Spook, the Bacterian ambassador, Benzino Napaloni, Diggaditchie of Bacteria (a parody of Benito Mussolini), Adenoid Hynkel (Adolf Hitler) and Field Marshall Herring (Hermann Göring).  The satirical film The Great Dictator (1940) was very much a personal project, Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) writing, producing & directing as well as staring as Adenoid Hynkel, Phooey of Tomainia.  The rather cadaverous looking Spook was the Bacterian ambassador.

Seventy years of spooks.

On 9 September 2019, the Royal Australian Mint released a 50 cent coin to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency (similiar in function to the UK's MI5 (Security Service)).  The issue was limited to 20,000 coins and each featured an encrypted code, similar in structure to those used by spooks during the Cold War.  At the time of the release, the Mint ran a competition inviting attempts to "solve the code", the prize the only proof commemorative coin in existence.  The competition was won by a fourteen year old who is apparently still at liberty, despite having proved him or herself a threat to national security.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) gave the word a few memorable phrases but one of the most evocative is a calque of the German spukhafte Fernwirkung (rendered by Einstein as spukhafte Fernwirkungen (spooky actions at a distance) in a letter of 3 March 1947 to the physicist Max Born (1882–1970)).  Einstein used “spooky actions at a distance” to refer to one of the most challenging ideas from quantum mechanics: that two particles instantaneously may interact over a distance and that distance could be that between different sides of the universe (or if one can’t relate to the universe having “sides”, separated by trillions of miles.  Known as “quantum entanglement”, it differs radically from some of the other (more abstract) senses in which everything in the universe is happening “at the same time”.

This aspect of quantum mechanics has for a century-odd been one of the most contested but the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who designed experiments which tested the theories, their results contradicting Einstein and discovering the seriously weird phenomenon of quantum teleportation.  Quantum entanglement is a process in which two or more quantum particles are in some way connected so any change in one causes a simultaneous change in the other, even if they are separated by vast distances.  Indeed those distances could stretch even to infinity.  Einstein was one of many physicists not convinced and he didn’t like the implications, calling the idea “spooky action at a distance” and preferred to think the particles contained certain hidden variables which had already predetermined their states.  This was neat and avoided the need for any teleportation.  However, what the 2022 Nobel Laureates found that the fabric of the universe should be visualized as a sea of wave-like particles that affect each other instantaneously, distance as conventionally measured being irrelevant.  What that seems to mean is that nothing has to travel between the two particles (the speed of light therefore not a limitation) because the two are in the same place and that place is the universe.  The English physicist Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) was surely correct when he remarked “…not only is the universe queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.”

Penthouse

Penthouse (pronounced pent-hous)

(1) An apartment or dwelling on the roof of a building, usually set back from the outer walls.

(2) Any specially designed apartment on an upper floor, especially the top floor, of a building.

(3) A structure on a roof for housing elevator machinery, a water tank etc.

(4) Any roof-like shelter or overhanging part.

(5) In Real Tennis, a corridor having a slanted roof and projecting from three walls of the court.

(6) As mechanical penthouse, a floor, usually directly under a flat-roof, used to house mechanical plant & equipment.

(7) A special-interest magazine, aimed at a mostly male audience and published in several editions by a variety of owners since 1965.

1520–1530: Despite the appearance penthouse is not a portmanteau (pent + house) word.  Penthouse is an alteration (by folk etymology) of the Middle English pentis, pentiz & pendize (and other spellings), from the Old French apentiz & apentis (appendage, attached building), the construct being apent (past participle of apendre (to hang against)) + -iz (the French -is ) from the unattested Vulgar Latin –ātīcium (noun use of neuter of the unattested –ātīcius, the construct being the Latin -āt(us) (past participle suffix) + -īcius (the adjectival suffix)).  Old French picked up apentis from the Medieval Latin appendicium (from the Classical Latin appendo (to hang) & appendere (to hang from).  A less common alternative variant to describe a shed with a sloping roof projecting from a wall or the side of a building was pentice.  Penthouse is a noun; the noun plural is penthouses.

1965 Iso Grifo Bizzarini A3/C, Le Mans, 1965.

One of the most admired of the trans-Atlantic hybrids of the post-war years (1945-1973) which combined elegant coachwork, (hopefully) high standards of craftsmanship and the effortless, low-cost power of large-capacity American V8 engines, the Iso Grifo was produced between 1965-1974 by the Italian manufacturer Iso Autoveicoli.  Styled by Bertone’s Giorgetto Giugiaro (b 1938) with engineering handled by the gifted Giotto Bizzarrini (b 1926), the Grifo initially used a 327 cubic inch (5.3 litre) version of the small-block Chevrolet V8, coupled with the equally ubiquitous Borg-Warner four & five speed manual gearbox or robust General Motors (GM) automatics.  Later, after some had been built with the big-block Chevrolet V8, GM began to insist on being paid up-front for hardware so Iso negotiated with the more accommodating Ford Motor Company and switched to 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) versions of their 335 (Cleveland) engine.

1955 Iso Isetta.

Iso was already familiar with the mechanical configuration, production of their Rivolta coupe, equipped also with the Chevrolet 327, having begun in 1962.  The Rivolta, let alone the Grifo was quite a change of direction for Iso which until then had produced a variety of appliances, scooters & moto-cycles, it’s most famous product the Isetta, one of the generation of “bubble cars” which played such a part in putting Europeans back on (three or four) wheels during the re-construction of the post-war years.  Surprisingly, despite the prominence of the Isetta name and the Italian association, barely a thousand were actually manufactured by Iso, the overwhelming majority produced in many countries by BMW and others to which the a license was granted.  Powered by tiny two and four-stroke engines, their popularity waned as “real” cars such as the Fiat 500 (1955) and later the Mini (1959) emerged; although costing little more than the bubble cars, they offered more space, performance and practicality.  By the early 1960s, the bubble cars were driven almost extinct but, as a tiny specialized niche, they never completely vanished and the Isetta is enjoying a twenty-first century revival as model urban transportation, including the option of electric propulsion.

1968 Iso Rivolta.

The Rivolta was thus quite a jump up-market and, while the engine wasn't the bespoke thoroughbred found in a Ferrari or Aston-Martin, the rest of the specification justified the high price.  Unlike some of the British interpretations using American V8s, Iso insisted on modernity, the platform probably the best of the era, the body welded to a pressed-steel chassis, a combination which proved both light and stiff.  Just as importantly, given the high rate of corporate failure among those attracted to this potentially lucrative market, it was cost-effective to manufacture, reliable and easy to service.  Probably the feature which let it rank with the most accomplished of the era was the sophisticated de Dion rear suspension which, combined with four wheel disc brakes, lent it a rare competence.  The de Dion design was not an independent arrangement but certainly behaved as if it was and, despite what Mercedes-Benz claimed of their beloved swing-axles, was superior to many of the independent setups on offer.  A noted benefit of the de Dion system is it ensures the rear wheels remain always parallel, quite an important feature in an axle which has to transmit to the road the high torque output of a big V8, a lesson Swiss constructor Peter Monteverdi (1934–1998) applied later in the decade when he went into production using even bigger engines.  Iso, with a solid base in accounting and production-line economics, ran an efficient and profitable operation not beset by the recurrent financial crises which afflicted so many and the elegant Rivolta was a success, remaining available until 1970.  Some eight hundred were sold.

1967 Iso Grifo Series One.

The Rivolta’s platform proved adaptable.  In 1965, Iso released the Grifo coupé, more overtly oriented to outright performance and strictly a two-seater.  With lovely lines and a modified version of the Rivolta’s fine chassis, the Grifo was another product of the fertile imaginations of Giugiaro & Bizzarrini but, in something not untypical in Italian industry of the time, the relationship between the latter and Iso’s founder Renzo Rivolta (1908–1966) soon became strained and was sundered.  Bizzarrini would go on to do remarkable things and Iso’s engineers assumed complete control of the Grifo after the first few dozen had been completed.  Bizzarrini had pursued a twin-stream development, a competition version called the A3/C with a lower, lightweight aluminum body as well as the road-going A3/L and when he decamped, he took with him the A3/C, to be released also under his name while Iso devoted its attentions to the A3/L, again using engine-transmission combinations borrowed from the Corvette.

1964 Iso Grifo Spider.

The Grifo weighed a relatively svelte 1430 kg (3153 lbs) in what must have been a reasonably slippery shape because the reports at the time confirmed some 240 km/h (150 mph) was easily attained, an increase on that managed by the Corvette and, when configured with the taller gearing the factory offered, the factory claimed 260 km/h (162 mph), was possible.  A test in the UK in 1966 almost matched that with a verified 161 mph (259 km/h) recorded and two year later, the US publication Car & Driver 1968 tested a 327 Grifo but didn't to a top-speed run, instead estimating 157 mph (253 km/h) should be possible given enough road.  There were surprisingly few variations, fewer than two-dozen made with a targa-style removable roof panel and a single, achingly lovely roadster was displayed on Bertone's stand at the 1964 Geneva Motor Show; it remained a one-off although a couple of coupés privately have been converted.

1970 Iso Grifo Series Two.

The bodywork was revised in 1970, subsequent cars listed as series two models.  The revisions included detail changes to the interior, improvements to the increasingly popular air-conditioning system and some alterations to the body structure, the hydraulics and the electrical system, most necessitated by new regulatory requirements by some European countries but required mostly in an attempt to remain compliant with the more onerous US legislation.  The most obvious change was to the nose, the headlamps now partially concealed by flaps which raised automatically when the lights were activated.  Presumably the smoother nose delivered improved aerodynamics but the factory made no specific claims, either about performance or the drag co-efficient (CD) number.

1972 Iso Lele & 1972 Iso Fidia.

In 1972, an unexpected change in the power-train was announced.  After almost a decade exclusively using Chevrolet engines, Iso issued a press release confirming that henceforth, the series two Grifo would be powered by Ford’s 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) 335 series (Cleveland) V8.  In the state of tune chosen by the factory (essentially the same as fellow Italian specialist De Tomaso were using in their mid-engined Pantera), the Ford engine was similar in size, weight to the small-block Chevrolet and delivered similar power and torque characteristics so the driving experience differed little although there were 22 high-performance Leles using a tuned 351, all with a ZF five-speed manual gearbox.  The other improvement in performance was presumably Iso’s balance sheet.  The switch had been made because internal policy changes at GM meant they were now insisting on being paid up-front for their product whereas Ford was still prepared to offer an invoice with a payment term.  The change extended to the other models in the range, the Lele coupé and Fidia saloon and while the Chevrolet/Ford split in the Lele was 125/157, the circumstances of the time meant that of the 192 Fidias made, only 35 were fitted with the 351.

1969 Iso Grifo 7 Litre (427).

One of the trends which made machines of the 1960s so memorable was a tendency never to do in moderation what could be done in excess.  In 1968, Iso announced the Grifo 7 Litre, built following the example of the US manufacturers who had with little more than a pencil and the back of an envelope worked out the economics of simple seven litre engines were more compelling than adding expensive components like overhead camshafts and fuel-injection to five litre engines.  Petrol was, of course, cheap and limitless.  Petrol actually wasn’t as cheap in Italy or the rest of Europe but Iso’s target market for the Grifo was those who either could afford the running costs or (increasingly) paid their bills with other people’s money (OPM) so fuel consumption wasn’t something often considered.  The new version used a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) version of the big-block Chevrolet V8, bigger and heavier than the 327 so the driving characteristics of the nose-heavy machine were changed but contemporary reports praised the competence of the chassis, the de Dion rear-end notably superior in behavior compared with the Corvette’s independent rear suspension although some did note it took skill and often a sense of restraint, effectively to use the prodigious power.  Tellingly, the most receptive market for the Grifos, small and big-block, was the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, the old West Germany) with its network of highways without the tiresome speed limits elsewhere imposed and (even in Italy), often enforced.  The autobahn really was the Grifo's native environment.   

1970 Iso Grifo Can Am (454).

Faster it certainly was although the factory’s claim of a top speed of 186 mph (a convenient 300 km/h) did seem optimistic to anyone with a slide-rule and there appears not to be any record of anyone verifying the number although one published test did claim to have seen well over 255 km/h (150 mph) with the Grifo still "strongly accelerating" before “running out of road”.  It had by then become a genuine problem.  Gone were the happy times when testers still did their work on public roads; increased traffic volumes by the late 1960s meant the often deserted stretches of highway (in 1956 an English journalist had taken a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR Coupé to 183 mph (294 km/h) on the autobahn) were now rare but whatever the terminal velocity, nobody seemed to suggest the 7 litre Grifo lacked power.  In 1970, after Iso’s stock of the by-then out-of-production 427 were exhausted, the big-block car was re-named Can-Am and equipped instead with a 454 cubic inch (7.5 litre) version, the name an allusion to the unlimited displacement Group 7 sports car racing series run in North America in which the big-block Chevrolets were long the dominant engine.  Despite the increased displacement, power actually dropped a little because the 454 was detuned a little to meet the then still modest anti-emission regulations.

1971 Iso Grifo Can Am (454).

Unlike the 427 which breathed through three two barrel carburetors, the 454 was equipped with less intricate induction, a single four barrel and, officially, output dropped from 435 horsepower to 390 but, these were gross (SAE) numbers and Detroit’s high-performance engines in this era were rated at something around what a manufacturer thought would be acceptable (all things considered), rather than an absolutely accurate number but the 454 certainly was just a little less potent than the 427 although it's probable few owners often went fast enough to tell the difference.  What didn’t change between the 7 Litre and the Can Am was its most distinctive feature, the modification to the hood (bonnet) made to ensure the additional height of the 427's induction system could be accommodated.  The raised central section, the factory dubbed "the penthouse".

Penthouse on 1969 Iso Grifo 7 Litre (427).

Not everyone admired the stark simplicity, supposing, not unreasonably, that Giugiaro might have done something more in sympathy with its surroundings.  Critics more stern would have preferred a curvaceous scoop or bulge and thought the penthouse amateurish, an angular discordance bolted unhappily atop Giugiaro’s flowing lines  but for those brought up in the tradition of brutalist functionalism, it seemed an admirable tribute to what lay beneath.  The days of the big-block Grifo were however numbered.  In 1972, with Chevrolet no longer willing to extent credit, and Ford’s big-block (429 & 460) engines re-tuned as low-emission (for the time) units suitable for pickup trucks and luxury cars, the Can-Am was retired.  So the small-block 351 Grifo became the sole model in the range but it too fell victim to changing times, production lasting not long beyond the first oil shock in October 1973 which made petrol suddenly not only much more expensive but sometimes also scarce and the whole ecosystem of the trans-Atlantic machines became threatened and in little more than a year, Iso was one of the many dinosaurs driven extinct.  Decades later, the survivors of the 412 sold are highly desirable; fine examples of the small-block Grifos attract over US$500,000, the few dozen penthouse cars can sell for up to a million and the rare early A3/Cs for well over.

Not fans of brutalist functionalism were the Lancia-loving types at Road & Track (R&T) magazine in the US.  Late in 1974, R&T published their 1975 buyer’s guide for imported and domestically-built smaller cars (R&T neither approving of nor understanding why anyone would wish to buy a big American car) and surprisingly, there were reviews of the Grifo, Lele and Fidia although the last of these sold in the US some two years earlier had been titled as 1973 models, the company having never sought to certification to continue sales although, given nothing had been done to modify them to meet the new safety regulations, that would likely have been pointless unless the strategy was to seek a "low volume" exemption, something improbable by 1975.  The distributors had however indicated to the press all three would return to the US market in 1975, supplying publicity photographs which included a Series II "penthouse" Grifo although the big-block cars hadn't been built in Italy since 1972.  A further complication was that during 1974, Ford had discontinued production of the high-performance 351 (the "Cleveland" 335 series) V8 so it wasn't clear what power-train would have been used.  Others had the same problem, De Tomaso (which withdrew from the US market in 1974) switching to use tuned versions of the Australian-built Cleveland 351s but for Iso, the whole issue became irrelevant as the factory was closed late in 1974.  R&T's last thoughts on the penthouse appeared in the buyer's guide:

"However, the clean lines of the original Grifo have been spoiled by that terrible looking outgrowth on the hood used for air cleaner clearance.  For US$28,500 (around US$150,000 in 2024 $ although direct translation of such a value is difficult to calculate because of the influence of exchange rates), a better solution to this problem should have been found."

View from the penthouse in which Lindsay Lohan lived in 2014, W Residences, Manhattan, New York City.

Ancestor

Ancestor (pronounced an-ses-ter or an-suh-ster)

(1) A person from whom one is descended (maternal or paternal); forebear; progenitor (often used in the plural and by convention, applied usually to (1) great grand-parents or earlier or (2) those already deceased).

(2) In biology, the actual or hypothetical form or stock from which a (usually dissimilar) organism has developed or descended.

(3) An object, idea, style, or occurrence serving as a prototype, forerunner, or inspiration to a later one; in linguistics, a word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.

(4) A person who serves as an influence or model for another; one from whom mental, artistic, spiritual, etc., descent is claimed.

(5) In the law of probate, person from whom an heir derives an inheritance; one from whom an estate has descended (the correlative of heir).

(6) In figurative use, one who had the same role or function in former times (now rare except as a literary device).

1250–1300: From the Middle English ancestre, auncestre & ancessour (one from whom a person is descended).  Ancestre & auncestre were from the (early) Old French ancesre & (the later) ancestre (which endures in modern French as ancêtre), from the Latin nominative antecēssor (one who goes before (literally “fore-goer”), from the Classical Latin antecēdere (to procede), the construct being ante (before), from the primitive Indo-European root ant- (front, forehead (and influenced by the derivatives meaning "in front of, before")) + cedere (to go), from the primitive Indo-European root ked- (to go, yield).  Ancessour was from the Old French ancessor, from the Latin accusative antecessorem, from antecedo (to go before), the construct being ante (before) + cedo (to go).  Both rare outside of technical literature, the present participle is ancestoring and the past participle ancestored.  Synonyms include forebear, forefather, founder, antecedent, ascendant, foremother, forerunner, precursor, primogenitor, progenitor, antecessor & foregoer.

The now rare (and probably extinct) antecessor (a doublet of ancestor) dates from circa 1300 in the sense of "an ancestor" and a century later as the more generalized "a predecessor".  The noun ancestry (series or line of ancestors, descent from ancestors) was from the early fourteenth century auncestrie, from the Old French ancesserie (ancestry, ancestors, forefathers) from ancestre, the spelling modified in English under the influence of ancestor.  The adjective ancestral (pertaining to ancestors) dates from the 1520s, from Old French ancestrel (the spelling in Anglo-French auncestrel) (ancestral) from ancestre.  The alternative form ancestorial co-existed for decades after the 1650s but presumably can still be used for linguistic variety although it’s probably obsolete and may thus be thought an affectation.  The adverb ancestrally followed the adjective.

The familiar spelling in Modern English was in circulation by the early fifteenth century and the alternative spellings ancestour, antecessour, auncestor & auncestour (etymologists nothing even more as errors in medieval transcription rather than linguistic forks) are all long obsolete.  The noun plural is ancestors and the always rare feminine form ancestress, dating from the 1570s, is probably extinct except in historic reference.  In the biological sciences and the study of human genealogy, the derived terms include cenancestor (the last ancestor common of two or more lineages, especially the universal last common ancestor (LCA) of all life and grandcestor (not precisely defined but used to refer to more distant ancestors, especially (collectively) those for whom no identifiable records exist.  One interesting modern creation is trancestor (a forebear or forerunner to a trans person, or to modern transgender people in general).

Conventions of use

Depending on context, the word ancestor can be used (1) to refer to those who constitute one’s direct lineage (father, grandmother, great grandfather etc), (2) one’s ethnic heritage (English, German, Persian etc), or (3) the line of ancient evolutionary descent ((hominoidea, hominiade etc).  Such forbears (usually synonymous with ancestor but can be used more generally (eg political forebares), even without an (often implied) modifier) are also in some sense one’s predecessors (from the Middle English predecessour, from the Old French predecesseor (forebear), from the Late Latin praedēcessor, the construct being prae- (pre-) (before; prior to) + dēcessor (retiring officer), Latin dēcēdō (I retire, I die (source of the English decease)) but that word tends to be used where the human relationships are not familial or with objects.  One’s ancestors are thus (1) exactly known (back as many generations as records exist which, depending on the family, may be recent or stretch back centuries), (2) hypothesized (earlier generations the details of which are undocumented or of which there is no awareness), (3) a generalized expression of ethnic extraction (slavic, Polish-Scottish etc) and (4) an expression of human evolution.

Lindsay Lohan's family tree.  Genealogists traditionally use a trunk and branch metaphor because it's the best way graphically to display the procreative ways of one's ancestors.  

Ancestry is thus not something exclusively human and extends to non-human animal species, plant life and even organisms which are not alive in some senses of the word such as viruses.  So usefully understood is the concept of ancestry that that the word is used even in fields like cosmology (discussing the evolution of planets, stars etc), software (the industry’s naming conventions (1.0, 1.1, 2.0 etc) inherently ancestral), geology (noting the transformative process by which liquid magma becomes rock) and generally in fields such as philosophy, musicology, architecture, painting or any discipline where there is some discernible relationship between an idea or object and that which can be defined as a predecessor.

Nor is it unique to human ancestry that ancestors are individually identified and named to the extent possible.  In the pedigree breeding of animals (cats, dogs etc), the papers exist to trace the lineage of these beasts back further than a goodly number of the world’s population can manage, the best known example of which is are thoroughbred race horses for to qualify as one, it must be possible to trace the descent of each individual back to three Arabian stallions brought to England in the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries: Byerley Turk (1680s), Darley Arabian (1704), & Godolphin Arabian (1729).  Ancestry is also important to those other thoroughbreds, royalty and the aristocracy, for upon it depends inheritance of title, land, wealth and occasionally countries.  Vital therefore but as a guarantee of blue-blooded purity it’s long proved a challenge to maintain because of the proclivity of both species to sire bastard progeny and it could be dangerous too, wars over such matters not unknown and the odd inconvenient bastard has met an unfortunate end.

The muscle car and its ancestors

1970 Plymouth Hemi Roadrunner.

The definition of the muscle car is sometimes disputed and the term is more useful if the net is cast a little wider but the classic definition is “an American mid-sized (intermediate) two-door, four seat car produced between 1964-1972 and powered by the large engines hitherto reserved for the full-sized lines”.  That’s precise but also excludes many machines most (definitionally non-obsessive) folk include when considering the muscle car era such as the highest-performance version of the two-seat sports cars (Chevrolet Corvette, AC Shelby Cobra, AMC AMX), the full-sized machines (Ford Galaxie, Chevrolet Impala etc), the pony cars (Ford Mustang, Pontiac Firebird etc) and the compacts (Chevrolet Nova, Dodge Dart etc).

1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS454 Convertible (LS6).

Apart from what frankly was the craziness of the muscle cars, one reason the machines of the era remain so memorable is that the 1960s represented the industry's last days of relative freedom.  The regulations imposed by government on designers went from being in the 1950s a manageable nuisance (the few rules which existed sometimes just versions of industry protection) to something annoying intrusive by the late 1960s before in the 1970s becoming truly restrictive and costly.  That most of the regulations were a very good idea and in the interest of just about everybody is not the point.

1956 Chrysler 300B.

There had in the 1950s been something of a power race as manufacturers competed to offer increasingly powerful V8s although in that era, there were no intermediate, compact or pony cars, each manufacturer offering essentially a one-size-fits-all range so the biggest, most powerful engines tended to be installed in the most luxurious and expensive of their lines.  The car with the most obvious claim to ancestry is probably the 1949 Oldsmobile 88 which used the new 303 cubic inch (5.0 litre) Rocket V8 which was modest enough compared with what would follow but was certainly a step in the muscle car direction.  Similarly, the 1955 Chrysler 300 was probably the first post-war US sedan blatantly to emphasize performance and it did offer the corporation's most powerful engine but it was still in the same body as the rest of the range.  More convincing ancestors perhaps were offerings by Chevrolet and (improbably) Rambler which offered high-power options in usually inoffensive sedans but the lift was achieved not by increased capacity but the technological advance of fuel-injection.  The tradition was thus of muscular rather than muscle cars (as subsequently defined), the latter needing the smaller platforms which would appear in the early 1960s.

1964 Pontiac GTO.

The first muscle car is usually said to be the 1964 Pontiac GTO, created by offering the 389 cubic inch (6.5 litre) V8 as an option in the intermediate Tempest, the largest engine otherwise available the (now slightly downsized) 326 (5.3 litre) cubic inch unit.  The original GTO was an option package rather than a designated model, this a contrivance to work-around an edict from General Motors (GM, Pontiac’s corporate parent) which didn’t permit the big engines to be used in the intermediate platform.  Such was success of the (highly profitable) GTO that GM rapidly withdrew the prohibition and a rash of imitators immediately emerged, both from the corporation’s other divisions and those under the umbrella of the competition, Ford and Chrysler.

1962 GAZ-21 Volga (rebuilt to M-23 (KGB (V8) specifications)).

GM in the 1960s was in many ways an innovative corporation but also, as circumstances demanded, imitative: The 1962 Chevy II (later Nova) was conceptually a copy of the 1960 Ford Falcon, the 1966 Chevrolet Camaro a response to the 1964 Ford Mustang and the 1965 Chevrolet Caprice was inspired by the debut of the Ford LTD a few months earlier.  That’s accepted orthodoxy but the accepted wisdom has long been the idea of putting a big-car’s big engine into an intermediate-size platform began in 1964 with the arrival of the Pontiac GTO.  It may be however that Pontiac got the idea from America’s ideological foe, the Soviet Union, which anticipated the concept by two years because between 1962-1970, GAZ produced the intermediate sized M-23 Volga (a special-variant of the M-21) for the exclusive use of the KGB and other Soviet “special services”.  Equipped with the 5.53 litre (337 cubic inch) V8 engine from the big GAZ-13 Chaika (Gull) (1959-1981 and in the Soviet hierarchy, second only to the even bigger ZIL limousines (1936-2012)), the car was said to be a not entirely successful piece of engineering but it was certainly faster than the four-cylinder model on which it was based.  It’s never been clear just what was the top speed because the speedometer was calibrated only to 180 km/h (112 mph) but one intrepid KGB apparatchik claimed to have achieved that and reported his Volga was “still accelerating”.  Like some of the US muscle cars which were produced only in small numbers, in its eight-year run, GAZ made only 603 M-23 Volgas (rare thus compared with a US equivalent, the 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda which in that year alone numbered 670) but it perhaps more than the GTO deserves a place in history as the first muscle car.

1971 Plymouth Hemi Roadrunner.

Between 1964-1970, the muscle car movement would evolve into wilder and increasingly more powerful machinery, an evolution which unfolded in unison with similar developments on the ever lighter pony car platforms.  Things peaked in 1970 but by then the writing was not so much on the wall as on bill papers in the Congress and the revised contract schedules of insurance companies, an onrush of safety and emission-control regulation alone perhaps enough to kill the muscle car ecosystem but the enormous rise in insurance premiums was the final killer.  The combination of affordable high power in cars with dubious handling and braking in packages which appealed to males aged 17-25 had proved a lethal combination and the insurance industry reacted.  In name, the muscle cars would linger on for a couple of seasons but demand had collapsed a combination of circumstances which pre-dated the first oil shock in 1973 which would otherwise likely have been the death knell.

Ancestors of the muscle car

1936 Buick Century 66S Coupé (Fisher body style # 36457).

Although the improvement in the economy remained patchy, Buick rang in the changes for 1936, re-naming its entire line.  Notably, one newly designated offering was the Century, a revised version of the model 60, created by replacing the 233 cubic inch (3.8 litre) straight eight with the 320 cubic inch (5.2 litre) unit from the longer, heavier Roadmaster.  Putting big engines into small cars was nothing new and during the interwar years some had taken the idea to extremes, using huge aero-engines, but those tended to be one-offs for racing or speed-record attempts.  In Europe, (slightly) larger engines were sometimes substituted and British manufacturers often put six cylinder power-plants where once there had been a four but their quest was usually for smoothness and refinement rather than outright speed and the Century was really the first time a major manufacturer had used the concept in series production.  It’s regarded by many as the last common ancestor (LCA) of the muscle car.

Much muscle: 1933 Napier-Railton, fitted with a 23.9 litre (1461 cubic inch) W12, naturally aspirated aero-engine.  Between 1933-1937, it would set 47 world speed records in England, France and the United States.  Fuel consumption at speed was an impressive 4.2 mpg (imperial gallons) (67.29 litres/100 kilometers).

The Century gained its name from British slang, “doing the century” meaning to attain 100 mph (161 km/h) on a public road, then a reasonable achievement given the machinery and the roads of the day.  In production between 1936-1942, the Buick’s positioning of the Century in the market was hinted at by initially offering a range of four two door coupés & convertibles and a solitary four door sedan although subsequent demand saw further variations of the latter added in 1938.  Always the most expensive of the short wheelbase (SWB) line, the high-performance Century was as much a niche model as the later muscle cars would be and the Century never constituted more than 10% of production but demand was steady and it remained available until civilian production of cars was prematurely curtailed early in 1942.

1958 Jaguar 3.4.  VDU 881 was a Jaguar factory car on loan to Mike Hawthorn (1929–1959; FI world champion 1958) who tuned it further and used it both as a road car and for racing.  In VDU 881 he was killed in a motorway accident in treacherous conditions and although high speed was certainly a factor, the exact reason for the crash will never be known, the most common theory being the behavior of the early radial-ply tyres which, although raising the limits of adhesion beyond that of the earlier cross-plys, did tend suddenly to lose grip at the limit rather than gradually and predictably sliding towards that point.

One obvious spiritual ancestor from across the Atlantic was the Jaguar 3.4 (1957-1959), created by the same formula which would become Detroit’s muscle car template: take a big engine from a big car and put it in a small car.  The Jaguar 2.4 had been on sale since 1955, a successful incursion into the market segment BMW would later define with the 3 Series (1975-).  Jaguar had not deliberately neglected the small saloon segment since 1949 but in the early post-war years lacked the capacity to add another line, their resources fully absorbed by production of the XK120 (1948-1654) sports car and the big saloon, the Mark V (1948-1951).  It wasn’t until after the new big car, the Mark VII (1951-1956) had been released that attention (as Project Utah) could be turned to development of a smaller line and that emerged in 1955 as the 2.4, running a short-stroke, 2.5 litre (152 cubic inch) version of the XK-six, the package carefully honed to ensure a genuine 100 mph (161 km/h) was attainable.  Instantly successful, it quickly became the company’s biggest seller and within two years, responding to demand, a 3.4 litre (210 cubic inch) version was released.

Bob Jane in 1959 Jaguar Mk 2 3.8 (with 4.1 litre engine) winner of the Australian Touring Car Championship, Mallala, South Australia, 1963.

Because of the importance of the US market, much emphasis was put on the availability of an automatic transmission but the manual versions were also much fancied, rapid on the road and in racing but even at the time, there were comments that perhaps the power available exceeded the capability of the platform.  Jaguar did (at least partially) acknowledge things weren’t ideal by offering disc brakes, an option which proved popular.  Substantial revisions to the underpinnings weren’t however undertaken until the release in 1959 of the Mark 2 (the earlier 2.4 & 3.4 retrospectively dubbed Mark 1) which much improved the car’s manners.  However, although now fitted with a 3.8 litre (231 cubic inch) XK-six, the new car was heavier so there wasn’t that much of a lift in performance and, at the limit, both could be a handful, even in the hands of experts.  So, even if some don't call it a muscle car, it could behave like one.