Troop

Troop (pronounced troop)

(1) An assemblage of persons or things; company; band.

(2) A great number or multitude.

(3) In historic military use, (usually) an armored cavalry, cavalry or artillery battery consisting of two or more platoons and a headquarters group.

(4) As troops, a body of soldiers, police etc.

(5) A unit of Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts usually having a maximum of 32 members under the guidance of an adult leader.

(6) A herd, flock or swarm of some living creatures.

(7) A band or troupe of actors (archaic).

(8) To gather in a company; flock together.

(9) To come, go, or pass in great numbers; throng; to walk, as if in a march; go; to walk, march, or pass in rank or order:

(10) To associate or consort (usually followed by with).

(11) In British military use, to carry (the flag or colors) in a ceremonial way before troops (used also by the military in some countries where military traditions have been influenced by the British).

(12) To assemble or form into a troop or troops.

(13) An alternative spelling of troupe (archaic).

(14) In British military slang, formerly to report a soldier for a breach of discipline (archaic).

(15) An alternative word for consort (archaic).

(16) The collective noun for a group of baboons.

(17) In music, a particular roll of the drum; a quick march.

(18) In mycology, mushrooms that are in a close group but not close enough to be called a cluster.

1545: From the French troupe, from the Old French trope (band of people, company, troop, crowd), of uncertain origin but perhaps from the Frankish throp (assembly, gathering of people), from the Proto-Germanic þurpą (village, land, estate), from the primitive Indo-European treb- (dwelling, settlement) or a back-formation of troupeau, diminutive of the Medieval Latin troppus (flock) and Middle French troupe, from which Modern French gained troupeau (herd)), the construct being trop- (from the Germanic form thorp) + -el, from the Latin –ellus, the diminutive suffix.  There may have been some connection with the Old English ðorp or the Old Norse thorp (village) and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggest the French form was from the Latin troppus (flock) of unknown origin but may also have been picked-up from the (speculative) Germanic source.  Doublet of troupe, and possibly also of thorp and dorp; it was cognate with the German Dorf (village).

It came to be applied to groups of animals in the 1580s, the military adoption for a “subdivision of a cavalry force" dating from the same time, the general use of ‘troop” to describe any “armed forces” attested from the 1590s.  Troops were part of the structure in the Boy Scouts from the organization's beginnings in 1908, the Girl Scouts emulating this upon formation four years later.  In modern use, the spelling troupe has assumed the exclusive use of describing a company of actors, singers, acrobats or other entertainers and performers.

The noun troop is a linguistic curiosity.  It’s used as a collective noun (a troop of girl-scouts) and in the noun plural (the troops) but not as a noun singular (one doesn’t refer to individual troops as “a troop”) but there is the noun singular “trooper”.

Military and Para-military use

The troop as a military sub-unit continues to exist in some armed and police forces but tends now not in general to be part of military structures.  It was originally a tactical group, a small formation of cavalry, part of a squadron deployed on a battlefield for a specific action and it’s in that sense that use persists, a troop sometimes an alternative term for an infantry section or platoon.  There are historic exceptions in the US Cavalry and the British Army where a troop can be an infantry company or artillery battery.

The Australian Army uses the term, a troop a platoon sized element and the general term for army personnel (and literally the private soldier) is trooper.  Technically, it’s only the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR; special forces) of the Royal Australian Infantry Corps which uses troop to refer to its platoon size formations but it remains common slang.  As a general principle, where used in the military, a troop tends to be platoon-sized except in the US Cavalry, where it’s equivalent to a company (ie three to four platoons) and, when combined, these form a regiment, the change in nomenclature dating from 1883.

Para-military use: A troop of girl scouts (or guides) selling biscuits (or cookies).

In civilian use, many US police forces use troop and trooper because they modelled their command structures along military lines, the same reason the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts adopted the form although, in these less robust times, it’s become common, especially with the latter, to replace troop with company, the now less-fashionable military connection being less overt.

One exception was the Salvation Army which never used troop, either as an organizational unit or in the collective to describe its members although, it was common to refer to them as "Christian soldiers".  They did use military ranks and some of the structural terms (such as corps and division) were adopted but never troop.

Egregious

Egregious (pronounced ih-gree-juhs)

(1) Extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant.

(2) Extraordinary in some good way; distinguished or eminent (archaic).

1525–1535: From the Middle English, from the Latin ēgregius (preeminent; outstanding, literally “standing out from the herd”), the construct being ē- (out (and in Latin an alternative to ex-)) + greg-, stem of grēx (flock, herd) + -ius.  Grēx was from the primitive Indo-European hzger- (to assemble, gather together) which influenced also the Spanish grey (flock, crowd), the Lithuanian gurguole (mass, crowd) and gurgulys (chaos, confusion), the Old Church Slavonic гроусти (grusti) (handful), the Sanskrit गण (gaṇá) (flock, troop, group) and ग्राम (grā́ma) (troop, collection, multitude; village, tribe), and the Ancient Greek ἀγείρω (ageírō) (I gather, collect) (from whence came ἀγορά (agorá)).  The link to the Proto-Germanic kruppaz (lump, round mass, body, crop) is contested.  The English –ous was a Middle English borrowing from the Old French -ous and –eux from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and is as doublet of -ose in unstressed position; it was used to form adjectives from nouns and to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, most commonly in abundance.  Egregious is an adjective, egregiously is an adverb and egregiousness is a noun; the noun plural is the delicious egregiousnesses.

Meaning adaptation & shift

There are many words in English where meaning has in some way or to some degree shifted but egregious is one of the rarities which now means the opposite of what it once did.  There are others such as nice which used to mean “silly, foolish, simple”; silly which morphed from referring to things “worthy or blessed” to meaning “weak and vulnerable” before assuming its modern sense; awful which used to describe something “worthy of awe” and decimate, once a Roman military term to describe a death-rate around 10% whereas it implies now a survival rate about that number.  In English, upon its sixteenth century adoption from Latin, egregious was a compliment, a way to suggest someone was distinguished or eminent.  That egregiously clever English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was flattering a colleague when he remarked, "I am not so egregious a mathematician as you are…" which would today be thought an insult.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that in 1534, egregious unambiguously meant "remarkable, in a good sense" but as early as 1573, people were also using it to mean "remarkable, in a bad sense."  The documentary evidence appears sparse but the OED speculates the meaning started to switch because people were using the word sarcastically or at least with some gentle irony.  In the linguistically democratic manner in which English evolves, the latter prevailed, presumably because people felt there were quite enough ways to compliment others but were anxious always to add another insult to the lexicon.  Shakespeare, with his ear for the vernacular, perhaps helped.  Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) employed it in the older sense in his Tamburlaine (1590), writing of “egregious viceroys of these eastern parts…” but within a generation, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) has Posthumus condemn himself in Cymbeline (1611) in the newer condemnatory sense: “egregious murderer”, echoing his earlier use in All's Well That Ends Well (1605).  Both meanings appear to have operated in parallel until the eighteenth century which must have hurt a few feelings or perhaps, in an age of dueling, something more severe.

Imogen Sleeping (from Shakespeare's Cymbeline), circa 1899 by Norman Mills Price (1877–1951).

In southern Europe however, the bard’s words failed to seduce the Romance languages.  The Italian formal salutation egregio is entirely reverential, as are the both the Spanish and Portuguese cognates, egregio and egrégio.

Float

Float (pronounced floht)

(1) To rest, move or remain on the surface of a liquid (to be buoyant; to be supported by a liquid of greater density, such that part (of the object or substance) remains above the surface) or in the air.

(2) By metaphor, to move lightly and gracefully.

(3) By metaphor, information or items circulating.

(4) Figuratively, to vacillate (often followed by between).

(5) As applied to currencies, to be allowed freely to fluctuate in the foreign-exchange market instead of being exchanged at a fixed or managed rate.

(6) In the administration of interest rates, periodically to change according to money-market conditions.

(7) In the equities markets, the offering of previously privately held stock on public boards; an offering of shares in a company (or units in a trust) to members of the public, normally followed by a listing on a stock exchange.

(8) In the bond markets, an offering.

(9) In theatre, to lay down (a flat), usually by bracing the bottom edge of the frame with the foot and allowing the rest to fall slowly to the floor.

(10) An inflated bag to sustain a person in water; life preserver.

(11) In plumbing, in certain types of tanks, cisterns etc, a device, as a hollow ball, that through its buoyancy automatically regulates the level, supply, or outlet of a liquid.

(12) In nautical jargon, a floating platform attached to a wharf, bank, or the like, and used as a landing; any kind of buoyancy device.

(13) In aeronautics, a hollow, boat-like structure under the wing or fuselage of a seaplane or flying boat, keeping it afloat in water (aircraft so equipped sometimes called “float planes”).

(14) In angling, a piece of cork or other material for supporting a baited line in the water and indicating by its movements when a fish bites.

(15) In zoology, an inflated organ that supports an animal in the water; the gas-filled sac, bag or body of a siphonophore; a pneumatophore.

(16) A vehicle bearing a display, usually an elaborate tableau, in a parade or procession.

(17) In banking, uncollected checks and commercial paper in process of transfer from bank to bank; funds committed to be paid but not yet charged against the account.

(18) In metal-working, a single-cut file (a kind of rasp) of moderate smoothness.

(19) In interior decorating, a flat tool for spreading and smoothing plaster or stucco.

(20) In stonemasonry, a tool for polishing marble.

(21) In weaving and knitting, a length of yarn that extends over several rows or stitches without being interworked.

(22) In commerce, a sum of physical cash used to provide change for the till at the start of a day's business.

(23) In geology and mining, loose fragments of rock, ore, etc that have been moved from one place to another by the action of wind, water etc.

(24) To cause something to be suspended in a liquid of greater density.

(25) To move in a particular direction with the liquid in which one is floating (as in “floating downstream” et al).

(26) In aviation, to remain airborne, without touching down, for an excessive length of time during landing, due to excessive airspeed during the landing flare.

(27) To promote an idea for discussion or consideration.

(28) As expression indicating the viability of an idea (as in “it’ll never float”, conveying the same sense as “it’ll never fly”).

(29) In computer (graphics, word processing etc), to cause an element within a document to “float” above or beside others; on web pages, a visual style in which styled elements float above or beside others.

(30) In UK use, a small (often electric) vehicle used for local deliveries, especially in the term “milk float” (and historically, the now obsolete “coal float”).

(31) In trade, to allow a price to be determined by the markets as opposed to by rule.

(32) In insurance, premiums taken in but not yet paid out.

(33) In computer programming, as floating-point number, a way of representing real numbers (ie numbers with fractions or decimal points) in a binary format

(34) A soft beverage with a scoop of ice-cream floating in it.

(35) In poker, a manoeuvre in which a player calls on the flop or turn with a weak hand, with the intention of bluffing after a subsequent community card.

(36) In knitting, one of the loose ends of yarn on an unfinished work.

(37) In transport, a car carrier or car transporter truck or truck-and-trailer combination; a lowboy trailer.

(38) In bartending, the technique of layering of liquid or ingredients on the top of a drink.

(39) In electrical engineering, as “float voltage”, an external electric potential required to keep a battery fully charged

(40) In zoology, the collective noun for crocodiles (the alternative being “bask”).

(41) In automotive engineering, as “floating axle”, a type of rear axle used mostly in heavy-duty vehicles where the axle shafts are not directly attached to the differential housing or the vehicle chassis but instead supported by bearings housed in the wheel hubs.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English floten, from the Old English flotian (to float), from the Proto-Germanic flutōną (to float), from the primitive Indo-European plewd- & plew- (to float, swim, fly).  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian flotje (to float), the West Frisian flotsje (to float), the Dutch vlotten (to float), the German flötzen & flößen (to float), the Swedish flotta (to float), the Lithuanian plaukti, the Middle Low German vloten & vlotten (to float, swim), the Middle Dutch vloten, the Old Norse flota, the Icelandic fljóta, the Old English flēotan (to float, swim), the Ancient Greek πλέω (pléō), the Lithuanian plaukti, the Russian пла́вать (plávatʹ) and the Latin plaustrum (wagon, cart).  It was akin to the Old English flēotan & Old Saxon flotōn (root of fleet).  The meaning “to drift about, passively to hover" emerged circa 1300 while the transitive sense of “to lift up, to cause to float (of water etc)” didn’t come into use for another 300-odd years and the notion of “set (something) afloat” was actually originally figurative (originally of financial matters) and noted since 1778.  Float was long apparently restricted to stuff in the water and didn’t come into use to refer to things in the air until the 1630s, this extending to “hover dimly before the eyes” by at least 1775.   In medicine, the term “floating rib” was first used in 1802, so called because the anterior ends are not connected to the rest.  The Proto-Germanic form was flutojanan, from the primitive Indo-European pleu (to flow) which endures in modern use as pluvial.

Etymologists have concluded the noun was effectively a merger in the Middle English of three related Old English nouns: flota (boat, fleet), flote (troop, flock) & flot (body of water, sea), all from the same source as the verb.  The early senses were the now-mostly-obsolete ones of the Old English words: the early twelfth century “state of floating"”, the mid thirteenth century “swimming”, the slightly later “a fleet of ships; a company or troop” & the early fourteenth century “stream or river”.  From circa 1300 it has entered the language of fishermen to describe the attachments used to add buoyancy to fishing lines or nets and some decades later it meant also “raft”.  The meaning “a platform on wheels used for displays in parades etc” dates from 1888 and developed either from the manner they percolated down a street on from the vague resemblance to flat-bottomed boat which had been so described since the 1550s.  The type of fountain drink, topped with a scoop of ice cream was first sold in 1915.

The noun floater (one who or that which floats) dates from 1717 as was the agent noun from the verb.  From 1847 it was used in political slang to describe an independent voter (and in those days with the implication their vote might be “for sale”), something similar to the modern “swinging voter”.  By 1859 it referred to “one who frequently changes place of residence or employment” and after 1890 was part of US law enforcement slang meaning “dead body found in the water”.  The noun flotation dates from 1765, the spelling influenced by the French flotaison.  The adverb afloat was a direct descendent from the Old English aflote.  In idiomatic use, it was the boxer Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) who made famous the phrase “float like a butterfly; sting like a bee” and “whatever floats your boat” conveys the idea that individuals should be free to pursue that which they enjoy without being judged by others.  To “float someone’s boat” is to appeal to them in some way.  Float is a noun & verb, floater is a noun, floated is a verb, floating is a noun, verb & adjective and floaty is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is floats.

Lindsay Lohan floating in the Aegean, June 2022.

In the modern age, currencies began to be floated in the early 1970s after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system (1944) under which most major currencies were fixed in relation to the US dollar (which was fixed to gold at a rate of US$35 per ounce).  That didn’t mean the exchange rates were static but the values were set by governments (in processes called devaluation & revaluation) rather than the spot market and those movements could be dramatic: In September 1949, the UK (Labour) government devalued Sterling 30.5% against the US dollar (US$4.03 to 2.80).  The Bretton Woods system worked well (certainly for developed nations like the US, the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of western Europe) in the particular (and historically unusual) circumstances of the post-war years but by the late 1960s, with the US government's having effectively printed a vast supply of dollars to finance expensive programs like the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms build-up, the “Great Society” and the space programme, and social programs, surplus dollars rapidly built up in foreign central banks and increasingly these were being shipped back to the US to be exchanged for physical gold bars.  In 1971, the Nixon administration (1969-1974) responded to the problem of their dwindling gold reserves by suspending the convertibility, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system and making floating exchange probably inevitable, the trend beginning when Japan floated the Yen in 1973.

A Bloomberg chart tracking the effect of shifting the US dollar from its link with gold to a fiat currency.  Due to this and other factors (notably the oil price), in the 1970s, the bills of the 1960s were paid.

Others however moved more slowly, many adopting the tactic of the Australian government which as late as 1983 was still running what was known as a “managed float”, an arrangement whereby the prime-minister, the treasurer and the head of the treasury periodically would meet and, using a “a basket of currencies”, set the value of the Australian dollar against the greenback and the other currencies (the so-called “cross-rates”).  Now, most major Western nations have floating currencies although there is sometimes some “management” of the “float” by the mechanism of central banks intervening by buying or selling.  The capacity for this approach to be significant is however not as influential as once it was because the numbers in the forex (foreign exchange) markets are huge, dwarfing the trade in commodities bonds or equities; given the volumes, movements of even fractions of a cent can mean overnight profits or losses in the millions.  Because some "floats" are not exactly "free floats" in which the market operates independently, there remains some suspicion that mechanisms such as "currency pegs" (there are a remarkable variety of pegs) and other methods of fine tuning can mean there are those in dark little corners of the forex world who can benefit from these manipulations.  Nobody seem prepared to suggest there's "insider trading" in the conventional sense of the term but there are some traders who appear to be better informed that others. 

Cluster

Cluster (pronoubced kluhs-ter)

(1) A number of things of the same kind, growing or held together; a bunch.

(2) A group of things or persons close together.

(3) In US military use, a small metal design placed on a ribbon representing an awarded medal to indicate that the same medal has been awarded again (equivalent to UK & Commonwealth “bar”).

(4) In phonetics, a succession of two or more contiguous consonants in an utterance (eg the str- cluster of strap).

(5) In astronomy, a group of neighboring stars, held together by mutual gravitation, that have essentially the same age and composition and thus supposedly a common origin.

(6) In military ordnance, a group of bombs or warheads, deployed as one stick or in one missile, applied especially to fragmentation and incendiary bombs.

(7) In statistics, a naturally occurring subgroup of a population used in stratified sampling.

(8) In chemistry, a chemical compound or molecule containing groups of metal atoms joined by metal-to-metal bonds; the group of linked metal atoms present.

(9) In computer software, a file system shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers.

(10) In computer hardware, two or more computers working at the same time, each node with its own properties yet displayed in the network under one host name and a single address.

(11) A collective noun for mushrooms (troop is the alternative).

Pre 900: From the Middle English cluster (bunch), from the Old English cluster & clyster (cluster, bunch, branch; a number of things growing naturally together), from the Proto-Germanic klus- & klas- (to clump, lump together) + the Proto-Germanic -þrą (the instrumental suffix), related to the Low German Kluuster (cluster), the dialectal Dutch klister (cluster), the Swedish kluster (cluster) and the Icelandic klasi (cluster; bunch of grapes).  All the European forms are probably from the same root as the noun clot.  The meaning "a number of persons, animals, or things gathered in a close body" is from circa 1400, the intransitive sense, "to form or constitute a cluster," is attested from the 1540s; the use in astronomy dating from 1727.  Cluster is a noun & verb; clustery is an adjective, clustered is an adjective & verb, clustering is a noun, adjective & verb and clusteringly is an adverb; the noun plural is clusters.  The specialized technical words include the adjective intercluster (and inter-cluster) & the noun subcluster (and sub-cluster).

Clusters various

Cluster is a (slang) euphemism for clusterfuck; drawn from US military slang, it means a “bungled or confused undertaking”.  The cluster which the slang references is the cluster bomb, a canister dropped usually from an aircraft which opens to release a number of explosives over a wide area, thus the sense of something that becomes a really big mess.  Cluster bombs began widely to be used during the Second World War, the first deployed being the two-kilogram German Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD-2) (butterfly-bomb).  The US, UK, USSR and Japan all developed such weapons, described in typical military tradition by an unmemorable alpha-numeric array of part-numbers, the battlefield slang then being "firecracker" or "popcorn" and it wasn’t until 1950 that “cluster bomb” was first used by the manufacturers and another ten years before the term came into general use.

However, the informal compound clusterfuck was at first rather more literal, emerging in 1966 meaning “orgy” or some similar event in which intimacy was enjoyed between multiple participants.  The sense of it referencing a “bungled or confused undertaking” started only in 1969, first noted among US troops in Vietnam who, with some enthusiasm, used it both as a graphic criticism of military tactics and the entire US strategy in the Far East.  The standard military euphemism is "Charlie Foxtrot”.

There are alternative etymologies for clusterfuck but neither has attracted much support, one being it was coined in the 1960s by hippie poet Ed Sanders as “Mongolian Cluster Fuck” and this may have been an invention independent of the military use.  The other is said to date from the Vietnam War and have been the creation of soldiers critical of the middle-management of the army, the majors and lieutenant colonels, those responsible for supply and logistics, aspects of war for millennia the source of many military problems.  The insignia for each of these ranks (respectively in gold or silver), is a small, round oak-leaf cluster, hence the notion when there's a screw up in the supply chain, it's a clusterfuck.  It's a good story but etymologists have doubts about the veracity.

Students learning English are taught about euphemisms and the vital part they play in social interaction.  They are of course a feature of many languages but in English some of these sanitizations must seem mysterious and lacking any obvious connection with what is being referenced.  There are also exams and students may be asked both to provide a definition of “euphemism” and an example of use and a good instance of the latter is what to do when a situation really can be described only as “a clusterfuck” or even “a fucking clusterfuck” but circumstances demand a more “polite” word.  So, students might follow the lead of Australian Federal Court Judge Michael Lee (b 1965) in Lehrmann v Network TenPty Limited [2024] FCA 369 who in his 420 page judgment declared the matter declared “an omnishambles”. The construct of that was the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field).  In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a. scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”.  As one read the judgement one could see what the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, he may have been thinking “clusterfuck”.  Helpfully, one of the Murdoch press’s legal commentators, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand) who had been one of the journalists most attentive to the case, told the word nerds (1) omnishambles dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 Word of the Year.  The linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.  If a student cites “omnishambles” as a euphemism for “clusterfuck”, a high mark is just about guaranteed.

Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak leaves & Swords (1957 version).  These “de-nazified” awards were first issued by the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG or West Germany) in 1957 and were awarded only to members of the Wehrmacht entitled to such awards.  Production of these awards ceased in 1986.

German law since the end of World War II generally have prohibited individuals from wearing the swastika but in 1957, under pressure from the newly (1955) reconstituted armed forces (the Bundeswehr (literally "Federal Defense")), the Gesetz über Titel, Orden und Ehrenzeichen (legislation concerning titles, orders and honorary signs) was amended, authorizing the replacement of Nazi-era Knight's Crosses with items with an oak leaf cluster in place of the swastika, essentially identical to the Imperial Iron Cross of 1914.

Lindsay Lohan at the Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022) premiere, New York City, November 2022.

The dress was a Valentino sequined embroidered floral lace column gown with jewel neck, long sleeves and concealed back zip.  It was worn with a gold Valentino Rockstud Spike shoulder bag in crackle-effect metallic nappa leather, complemented with Stephanie Gottlieb jewelry including diamond cluster earrings in 18k white gold and a heart shaped yellow sapphire ring with pavé diamonds.

Banner

 Banner (pronounced ban-er)

(1) The flag of a country, army, troop etc.

(2) An ensign or the like bearing some device, motto, or slogan, as carried in religious processions, political demonstrations etc.

(3) A flag used as the standard of a nation, sovereign, lord, knight, military formation or other institution (and by extension (1) the military unit under such a flag or standard & (2) a military or administrative subdivision).

(4) A sign painted on fabric or some other material and hung over a street, entrance etc.

(5) Anything regarded or displayed as a symbol of principles.

(6) In heraldry, a square flag bearing heraldic devices.

(7) In journalism, a headline extending across the width of a newspaper or web page (in print usually across the top of the front page); also known as banner line, banner headline, screamer or streamer.

(8) As a verb, in journalism, (of a headline), prominently to display (used in other contexts by analogy).

(9) In advertising, an advertisement appearing across the top or bottom or along one side of a newspaper or web page; also known as a banner ad .

(10) An open streamer with lettering, towed behind an airplane in flight, for advertising purposes.

(11) A placard or sign carried in a procession or demonstration.

(12) As an adjective, leading or foremost.

(13) Historically, a type of administrative division in Inner Mongolia and Tuva, made during the Qing dynasty; at that time, Outer Mongolia and part of Xinjiang were also divided into banners.

1200–1220: From the Middle English banere (piece of cloth attached to the upper end of a pole or staff), from the Old French baniere (flag, banner, standard) (from which modern French in the twelfth century gained bannière), from the Late Latin bann & bannum (variants of bandum (standard)), from a Frankish or West Germanic source, from the Proto-Germanic bandwa (identifying sign, banner, standard (and also “military formation under a banner”), source also of the Gothic bandwa (a sign), from suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root bha- (to shine).

A non-official Royal Standard of Croatia, one of several designs used by those affiliated with the movement seeking to restore the Royal House of Croatia.

A banner was the standard (a type of flag) of a king, lord, or knight, behind which his followers marched to war and to which they rallied in battle.  From the early fourteenth century, there was also the related noun banneret, an order of knighthood, originally in reference to one who could lead his men into battle under his own banner, for centuries a common European practice when armies were organized ad-hoc for invasions and formations were deployed under their banners rather than being mixed.  It later came to mean “one who received rank for valiant deeds done in the king's presence in battle”.  As is still the practice, such honors had grades and there was also the bannerette (a small banner), awarded to those who provided service meritorious rather than valorous.  The reason a banner was attached to a tall pole and carried by “a standard bearer” was that in the swirl of battle, such was the clatter that communication by voice could soon become impossible over even short distances and the only way a commander could effectively re-assemble his troops into formation was to have them return to the banner.  This was the origin of the phrase “rally around the flag”, in the twentieth century re-purposed metaphorically although the figurative sense of "anything displayed as a profession of principles" was used as early as the fourteenth century.  The first use of banner to describe newspaper headlines which in large, bold type stream across the top of the page dates from 1913.  The term “banner blindness” was created in 1998 to describe the tendency of users to ignore banner advertising on websites.  Synonyms (depending on context) can include emblem, headline, bunting, pennant, streamer, advertisement, leading, colors, ensign, heading, pennon, standard, exceptional, foremost, outstanding, banderole, burgee & gonfalon.  Banner is a noun, verb and adjective, bannered is an verb & adjective and bannering is an adjective; the noun plural is banners.

Flag of the Commander of the Croatian Navy.

Technically, the term banner can be used to describe any flag, ensign, pennant or standard although it’s now less used for the more precise terms have come to be well-understood and are thus more popular.  Pennant was from the Middle English penon, penoun & pynoun, from the Old French penon, from the Latin penna (feather).  Although it wasn’t always the case, a pennant is distinguished by its elongated shape which tapers to a point.  It’s now especially associated with naval use, the advantage of the shape being that it tends to remain legible even in conditions where material of square or rectangular shape can become distorted.  Pennants are also used by sports teams and university societies.  In sporting competition, a championship is sometimes referred to as “the pennant” or “the flag” even though such thing are not always awarded as physical trophies.

Flag of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (1947–1990) under comrade Marshall Tito.

Ensign was from the Middle English ensigne, from the Old French enseigne, from the Latin īnsignia, the nominative plural of īnsigne.  By convention of use, ensign is now used almost exclusively by the military, especially by naval forces (the use to describe the lowest grade of commissioned officer in the US Navy (equivalent to a sub-lieutenant, and once used also in the infantry (the coronet fulfilling the role in the cavalry) dates from the role evolving from the assigned role of being responsible for the care, raising and lowering of flags and pennants, including the unit’s ensign).  In navies, the principal flag or banner flown by a ship (usually at the stern) to indicate nationality is called the ensign (often modified as red ensign, royal ensign etc).

Standard was from the Middle English standard, from the Old French estandart (gathering place, battle flag), from the Frankish standahard (literally “stand firm, stand hard”), the construct being stand +‎ -ard.  There is an alternative etymology which suggest the second element was from the Frankish oʀd (point, spot, place (and linked with the Old French ordé (pointed), the Old English ord (point, source, vanguard), the German Standort (location, place, site, position, base, literally “standing-point”))).  The notion is this merged with the Middle English standar, stander or standere (flag, banner (literally “stander)).  Standard is now the usual form when describing symbol of an individual, family, clan or military formation when presented in the shape used by national flags.

1957 Standard Ensign.  It typified the dreary products offered by much of the British industry in the post-war years.  The flag is the Red Ensign (Red Duster in nautical slang), the civil ensign of the UK, flown by British merchant or passenger craft since 1707.

The Standard Motor Company operated in the UK between 1903-1970 although in 1963 it ceased to use the Standard name on products sold in most markets, switching them to Triumph which would be used until 1984, the company having been integrated into the doomed British Leyland (BL) conglomerate in 1968.  In India, where the operations had become independent of BL, the Standard name lingered until 1988.  In 1957, Standard, having obtained from the Royal Navy the right to use the name Vanguard (the name of many ships and submarines including the last dreadnought (big battleship) ever launched) for their family car (the Standard Vanguard, 1948-1963), decided to continue the nautical theme by naming their new model the Ensign (1957-1963).  In the manner of the Citroën ID (1957-1969) and Mercedes-Benz 219 (W105, 1956-1959), the Ensign offered a large-bodied vehicle at a lower price, achieved by fitting a less powerful engine and substantially reduced equipment levels.  Until 1962 the Ensign was available only with a 1670 cm³ (102 cubic inch) for-cylinder engine which even in the pre-motorway era was thought marginal in a relative heavy car but, although slow, it offered a lot of metal for the money and sold well to fleets and the government, the military especially fond of them.  If the 1.6 litre gas (petrol) version was slow, also available was a version with a 1622 cm³ (99 cubic inch) Perkins P4C diesel engine, the low survival rate of which is sometimes attributed to so many being sold to the Coal Board or Wales and, having descended into Welsh valleys, they lacked to power to climb out.  The last of the Ensigns (1962-1963) were fitted with a 2163 cm³ (132 cubic inch) four-cylinder gas engine which proved more satisfactory but by then the Vanguard-Ensign line was outdated and the names were retired when the replacement range was marketed under the Triumph rather than the Standard marque.

Once the "Standard of the World": 1938 Cadillac Series 90 V16 Convertible Coupé (left), 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham (centre) & 1967 Cadillac Coupe DeVille convertible.

Elsewhere in the automotive world “standard” was used in different ways.  Cadillac long used the slogan “The Standard of the World” and that was certainly true in the 1930s when the Cadillac V16s were at least the equal in engineering and craftsmanship to anything made in Europe an even in the late 1960s, although the “hand-made” years were over, the company still offered the finest engine-transmission combinations in the world and managed to master sub-systems like air-conditioning in a way it took the Europeans a few decades to match.  After about 1970, it was usually downhill for the old “standard of the world” although there have been some hopeful signs in the twenty-first century.  General Motors’ now defunct southern outpost, Holden, in first two decades (1948-1966), used standard to mean “basic”, the better-equipped versions being the “Business” and the “Special”.  In England, Jaguar’s pre-war use of SS as a brand was apparently derived from the company’s origin as the Swallow Sidecar Company but, after the association with the Standard Motor Company as an engine supplier, the factory began to prefer Standard Swallow, the cars sold under the badge Jaguar SS.  After the war, the SS label was dropped, the association with the Nazi Party’s SS (Schutzstaffel (security section or squad)) too unsavory in those times although the moment would soon pass, Jaguar in 1957 reviving the name for the XK-SS, the road-going version of the D-Type race car.

Pennant of the commander of a flotilla of naval vessels in the Croatian Navy.

Flag is from the Middle English flag & flagge (flag), of uncertain origin.  It may have been related to the early Middle English flage (name for a baby's garment) and the Old English flagg & flacg (cataplasm, poultice, plaster) or could have been merely imitative or otherwise drawn from the Proto-Germanic flaką (something flat), from the primitive Indo-European pleh- (flat, broad, plain), referencing the shape.  The modern flag is a piece of cloth, decorated with a combination of colors, shapes or emblems which can be used as a visual signal or symbol.  In Admiralty use, a “flag” can refer to (1) a specific flag flown by a ship to show the presence on board of the admiral; the admiral himself, or their flagship or (2) a signal flag or the act of signaling with a flag.  The now familiar use as national symbol is surprisingly modern.  Although flags and standards were of course common even before the current conception of the nation-state coalesced, it wasn’t until the eighteen century that the association of a flag with a country became close to universal.  One interesting quirk of national flags is that since Libya’s was redesigned, the flag of Jamaica is the only one on Earth not to include either red, white or blue.

A banner used in Croatia between 925-1102 (left), the current Croatian flag adopted after independence in 1990 (centre) and the Croatian naval ensign (1990).

One of the most ancient symbols to endure in modern nation flags is the red & white checkered pattern used to this day on the flag of Croatia.  The oldest known example dates from 925 and the pattern was used (with the odd interruption) for centuries, even when the country was a non-sovereign component of supranational states such as the Habsburg Empire.  A red star was used instead when Croatia was a part of comrade Marshall Tito’s (1892-1980) Jugoslavija (Yugoslavia) between 1945-1990 but the red & white checks were restored when independence was regained in 1990.

Ivana Knoll at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Noted Instagram influencer Ivana Knoll (b 1992) was a finalist in the Miss Croatia beauty contest in 2016 and for her appearances at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, chose a number of outfits using the national symbol of the red and white checkerboard, matching the home strip worn by the team.  By the standards of Instragram, the design of the hoodie she donned for Croatia's game against Morocco at the Al-Bayat stadium wasn't particularly revealing but it certainly caught the eye.  As if Gianni Infantino (b 1970) doesn't have enough to ponder, the former Miss Croatia tagged FIFA in her posts, fearing perhaps the FIFA president may not be among her 600,000 Instagram followers and her strategy seems to have had the desired effect although whether the design which, does cover her hair, shoulders and legs, will prove sufficiently demur to satisfy the local rules, isn't clear.   The guidance provided by FIFA indicated non-Qatari women don’t need to wear the abaya (the long, black robe), tops must cover their midriff and shoulders, and skirts, dresses or trousers must cover the knees and clothing should not be tight or reveal any cleavage.  In accordance with the rules or not, Ms Knoll proved a popular accessory for Qatari men seeking selfies.

Croatian FIFA World Cup 2022 strips, home (left) & away (right). 

On the basis of her Instagram posts, the German-born beauty wouldn't seem to be in compliance with the rules but thus far there's been no report of reaction from the authorities but if she has any problems, Sepp Blatter's (b 1936; FIFA president 1998-2015) lawyers may be available.  They seem pretty good.  Paradoxically, although the impressively pneumatic Ms Knoll generated much interest in her hoodie, had she worn an all-enveloping burka in the red & white checkerboard, it might have gained even more clicks.

Lindsay Lohan with ensigns, flags and pennants.