Wedge

Wedge (pronounced wej)

(1) A piece of hard material with two principal faces meeting in a sharply acute angle, for raising, holding, or splitting objects by applying a pounding or driving force, as from a hammer.

(2) A piece of anything of like shape.

(3) A cuneiform character or stroke of this shape.

(4) In historic meteorology, a wedge-shaped extension of the high pressure area of an anticyclone, narrower than a ridge.

(5) Figuratively, something that serves to part, split, divide etc.

(6) In military use, a tactical cavalry formation generally in the form of a V with the point toward the enemy.

(7) In golf, a club with an iron head the face of which is nearly horizontal, for lofting the ball, especially out of sand traps and high grass.  Also, as “Texas wedge” a slang term for using the putter to play a shot while ball is not on the green; origin lies in the historically hard, dry fairways on Texan golf courses.

(8) In optics, a prism of this shape.

(9) In the design of the internal combustion engine, a once popular shape of combustion chamber.

(10) In shoe design, a wedge shaped heel, tapering to the ball of the foot. 

(11) In observational ornithology, describes geese, swans or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation.

(12) In phonetics, the IPA character ⟨ʌ⟩, which denotes an open-mid back unrounded vowel.

(13) In typography, háček quotations ▼.

(14) In mathematics, the symbol ∧, denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction.

(15) In geometry, a five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.

(16) In political science, a strategy or pattern of behaviour by a politician, political party, or advocacy group intended to have a divisive effect on one's political opponents or on the electorate, by emphasizing an issue which polarizes opinion along racial, class, regional, or other demographic lines.

(17) In mountaineering a wedge-shaped device, formerly of wood, now usually of hollow steel, for hammering into a crack to provide an anchor point

Pre 900: From the Middle English wegge, from the Old English wecg (a wedge), from the Proto-Germanic wagjaz (source also of the Old Norse veggr, the Middle Dutch wegge, the Dutch wig, the Old High German weggi (wedge) and the dialectal German Weck (a wedge-shaped bread roll) and related to the Old Saxon weggi.  It was cognate with the dialectal German weck derived from the Old High German wecki and Old Norse veggr (wall).  The Proto-Germanic wagjaz is of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin vomer (plowshare).

From the early fifteenth century, the verb form emerged in the sense of "jam in place with a wedge; tighten with a wedge", the figurative sense "drive or pack (into)" dating from 1720.  The meaning "split (something) apart with a wedge" is attested from 1853.  The general use to describe things shaped like a wedge began in the 1610s and use of the phrase "thin edge of the wedge" meaning a minor change that leads to a major change, especially one thought undesirable, dates from the mid nineteenth century.  Although the style had been produced earlier, the type of women’s shoe called “wedge” was advertised in 1939, a spike in the popularity of the style in the early 1970s cause a brief, world-wide shortage of cork because demand suddenly exceeded the supply which relied substantially on the Portuguese crop.

Wedge Politics

Wedge politics is the art of identifying an issue of importance to one’s own political base but which polarises opinion in that of one’s political opponents.  A wedge issue is of a controversial or divisive nature (guns, abortion, refugees et al) which splits apart a demographic or population group which tends to be clustered in the voting base of an opposing political party.  Wedge issues can be advertised or publicly aired in an attempt to weaken the unity of a population, with the goal of enticing polarized individuals to give support to an opponent or to withdraw their support entirely out of disillusionment.

Some dictionaries cite 1999 as the origin of wedge issue as a phrase but it dates from 1990, in the run-up to that year’s mid-term US congressional elections.  A official under Jimmy Carter (b 1924; US President 1977-1981), Stuart Eizenstst (b 1943; Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and Executive Director, White House Domestic Policy Staff 1977-1981) coined the term to describe the tactics being deployed under George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993) to use affirmative action guidelines and quotas as issues “…to split the coalition of working-class whites and blacks, the two constituencies Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) unified on economic grounds.  The image came to mind of a wedge being driven."  It was a refinement of what emerged during the Reagan presidency, the use of social issues to persuade the working-class to vote against their own economic interests.  In the jargon of political science, they’re also called third rail issues.  It filled a political-linguistic need for fresh labels.  As a phrase, wedge issue had a certain earthy appeal, a wedge being a familiar and vivid metaphor, more memorable than the earlier usage hot-button issue, which was too vague to summon the mental imagery and more widely used and understood than the Latinate polarization so beloved by political scientists.  Generational change means wedge issues can return to haunt the authors.  In the 1990s, gay marriage was used successfully by the Republicans to drive a wedge between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party but within a quarter-century, the universe had shifted and it was the Republicans fractured by the issue.  The hunter had been captured by the game.

The Wedge Combustion Chamber

So-named because the inside top of the cylinder head is shaped like an inclined basin, with the valves sitting at an angle so that the space between the piston and cylinder head looks like a wedge, wedge-shaped combustion chambers have been used by almost every mainstream manufacturer of internal combustion engines.  A relatively simple design, the chamber resembles an inclined basin recessed into the deck of the head, the fuel/air mix supplied (usually) by inline valves, often tilted to accommodate the sloping roof.  The spark plug tends to be located on the thick side of the wedge, positioned most often midway between the valves.

Lindsay Lohan fastening Louis Vuitton patent leather cork wedges.

Designed to exploit the nature of fluid dynamics, the chamber’s steep walls deflect the air/fuel flow path, forcing it to move in a downward spiral around the cylinder axis.  During the compression stroke, the compressed air/fuel area reduces to such an extent that the trapped mixture is violently thrust from the thin to the thick end of the chamber, building up significant kinetic energy, which, when ignited, improves the burn rate and thus the extraction of energy: the power.  Another advantage, refined particularly from the mid 1970s, is that the wedge-shaped combustion chamber tends to have a smaller surface area than other designs and so there is less space on which droplets can condense, assisting in reducing the volume of fuel remaining unburnt after the combustion cycle, thus reducing hydrocarbon emissions.  Ultimately, the wedge-shaped combustion chamber is not as efficient or able to produce as much power as other designs but is well-suited to engines which need to deliver a compromise between torque, power and economy over a wide operating range.  It has the additional benefit of being inherently cheaper to build than others because of the simplicity of the casting and machining processes required and the structure of its valve train tends to require fewer moving parts.

Sandwedge

Sandwedge (pronounced sand-wej)

(1) As Operation Sandwedge, a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the political enemies of US President Richard Nixon.

(2) As sand wedge, a specialized golf club, an iron with a heavy lower flange, the design of which is optimized for playing the ball out of a bunker (sand trap).

1971: The name was chosen for a “dirty tricks” covert operation as a borrowing from golf, the sand wedge a club used to play the ball from a difficult position.  The construct was sand + wedge.  Dating from pre-1000, sand was from the Middle English sand, from the Old English sand, from the Proto-West Germanic samd, from the Proto-Germanic samdaz, from the primitive Indo-European sámhdhos, from sem- (to pour).  Wedge was a pre 900 from the Middle English wegge (wedge), from the Old English wecg (a wedge), from the Proto-Germanic wagjaz (source also of the Old Norse veggr, the Middle Dutch wegge, the Dutch wig, the Old High German weggi (wedge) and the dialectal German Weck (a wedge-shaped bread roll) and related to the Old Saxon weggi.  It was cognate with the dialectal German weck derived from the Old High German wecki and Old Norse veggr (wall).  The Proto-Germanic wagjaz is of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin vomer (plowshare).  Sandwedge is a noun; should the plural ever be needed, it would be sandwedges (ie phonetically a la the use in golf (sand wedges)).

In golf, when using a sand wedge, the player’s stance and the way in which the club addresses the ball differs from what’s done when using a conventional iron.  Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) demonstrates the difference although there may be some variations depending on an individual's weight distribution. 

Richard Nixon.

Operation Sandwedge was a covert intelligence-gathering operation intended to be conducted against the political enemies of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974).  Beginning in 1971, the early planning was done by Nixon's Chief of Staff HR Haldeman (1926-1993), his assistant for domestic affairs, John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) and Jack Caulfield (1929–2012), then attached to Ehrlichman’s White House staff “handling special assignments” and also involved (though paid not by the White House but from external campaign funds) was Tony Ulasewicz (1918-1997), later a bit-player in the subsequent Watergate affair.  The core of Caulfield’s plan was to target the anti-Vietnam War movement and those figures in the Democratic Party Nixon had identified as the greatest threat to his re-election in 1972, including Ted Kennedy (1932–2009; US senator 1962-2009), Ed Muskie (1914–1996; US senator 1959-1980), William Proxmire (1915–2005; US Senator 1957-1989) and Birch Bayh (1928–2019; US senator 1963-1981).  Of interest too was a settling of scores with those who had prevented G Harrold Carswell (1919–1992) being confirmed by the Senate as Nixon's nominee for the Supreme Court and the president's net was internecine too, others of the targeted figures in his own Republican Party.

G Gordon Liddy.

Operation Sandwedge was intended to be clandestine but it wasn’t subtle and included physical and electronic surveillance, the intelligence of particular interest that which could be used either to feed damaging leaks to the press or for purposes of blackmail including dubious financial transactions, mental health records and sexual proclivities.  However, the operation never proceeded beyond the planning stages because Haldeman and Ehrlichman thought the methods of Caulfield (a former New York Police Officer) unsophisticated so transferred the project to G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021), a lawyer, one-time FBI agent and later one of the great characters of the Watergate affair.  Caulfield had chosen the name sandwedge because, as a dedicated golfer, he knew the sand wedge was the club of choice when one was in a difficult spot and if well-played, it was what could transform a bad situation into something good.  At the time, the code-names were probably among the more imaginative things to emerge from Pennsylvania Avenue, the name chosen for the squad to investigate leaks of information to the press was dubbed “the plumbers”.

The Watergate complex, Washington DC.

The Watergate affair was of course the most celebrated of the “dirty tricks” operations run out of (or at least connected with) the Nixon White House but it was far from unique.  Back channel operations had actually begun even before the 1968 election but by 1971 the vista had expanded to include what would now be called fake news plants, the infiltration of the staff of political opponents and break-ins and burglary, among the most infamous of which was “the plumbers” (including Liddy) breaking into the office of the psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg (b 1931), the former Defence Department military analyst who had leaked the “Pentagon Papers”.  Ellsberg’s file revealed nothing of interest but the burglary gained a place in history, being recorded by Ehrlichman (who approved the operation) as "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No 1".  There would be more.

Paige Spiranac with sand wedge.

Sandwedge had been envisaged as an intelligence gathering operation, the most novel aspect of which was that while the project documents presented an overview of something using conventional methods of surveillance and the compilation of publicly available material, privately Caulfield advised illegal electronic surveillance would also be used, something any expect presumably could have deduced from the size of the requested budget.  Of the greatest interest were financial records (relating particularly to tax matters), mental health conditions, undisclosed legal problems and sexual conduct, especially if illicit and preferably unlawful.  The idea greatly interested Haldeman and Ehrlichman but they had never been convinced by Caulfield’s “lack of background” by which they meant education and political experience.  Accordingly, Sandwedge and all intelligence matters were transferred to Liddy, the article of faith in the White House being that anything run by a trained lawyer would be legally secure, not something they believed of ex-NYC policemen.

New York Times, Saturday 2 March 1974.

Liddy revelled in the role as the White House’s clandestine clearing house for “covert ops” and created his own list of spy-like code names (Gemstone, Diamond, Ruby et al) to an range of activities expanded beyond Sandwedge including physical espionage, infiltration of protest groups, secret wire-taps, sabotage of opposition campaigns and, of course, “honey-pot traps”.  Even for Haldeman and Ehrlichman the implications of becoming essentially gangsters was too much but the shell of Liddy's structure was in 1972 approved and even then it included a range of unlawful activities, including the one which would trigger the chain of events which would culminate in Nixon’s resignation of the presidency and see dozens of the conspirators (including Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Liddy) jailed: the break in and bugging of the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex.  As the affair unfolded, suspicion fell upon Caulfield until it was realised his role in Operation Sandwedge had ended before any dubious operations began and he’d never been part of Liddy’s more ambitious plans.  He was compelled to resign from government but was never prosecuted, maintaining to his dying day that if he’d been left to run Operation Sandwedge, there would have been no burglaries in the Watergate complex or anywhere else and thus none of the cascading scandals which at first paralysed and later ended the second term of the Nixon administration.

Paige Spiranac's definitive guide to the use of one's sand wedge.  This is one of a series of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies.

Slope

Slope (pronounced slohp)

(1) To have or take an inclined or oblique direction or angle considered with reference to a vertical or horizontal plane; slant.

(2) To move at an inclination; obliquely to move.

(3) To direct at a slant or inclination; incline from the horizontal or vertical.

(4) To form or describe something with a slope or slant.

(5) A descriptor of ground or some aspect of the natural or built environment which has an incline, such as a hill.

(6) An inclination or slant, especially downward or upward; to lie or cause to lie at a slanting or oblique angle.

(7) Any deviation from the horizontal or vertical; an inclined surface.

(8) In mathematics, (1) the tangent of the angle between a given straight line and the x-axis of a system of Cartesian coordinates; (2) the derivative of the function whose graph is a given curve evaluated at a designated point.

(9) In slang, a disparaging and offensive term used to refer to a person of East Asian appearance.

(10) As slope off, a slang term (mostly UK, Australia & New Zealand) describing someone moving slowly, or furtively away, usually to avoid work or responsibility; a rare variation is “sloped-in”, used to describe to who arrive somewhere surreptitiously (those late for work etc).

(11) To follow an inclined course down a hillside (applied especially to natural features).

(12) In military use, as slope position, a drill command referring to the position in which a long-arm should be held.

1495–1505: From Middle English slope (go in an oblique direction), from the earlier adjectival meaning “slanting”, an aphetic variant of the Middle English aslope, from the Old English aslopen, past participle of āslūpan (to slip away), the construct being a- (away) + slupan (to slip).  From 1709 slope was used to mean "to be in a slanting position", the transitive sense "place in a slanting position" having been part of the language since circa 1600.  The derogatory slang meaning "oriental person" is attested from 1948.  Slopingly is an adverb, slopingness, sloper & slope are nouns, sloped & sloping are adjectives and sloped & sloping are verbs.

The slippery slope and the thin end of the wedge

Borrowed from political science, the terms “slippery slope” and “thin end (sometimes edge) of the wedge” are sometimes used interchangeably but, while both refer to similar processes, there are nuances which distinguish the two.  The idea is that a small, minor and perhaps innocuous change or innovation affecting something can trigger a chain of events which might result in unintended consequences; in that there are similarities with chaos theory but a slippery slope is much more specific and probably lineal.  There’s often overlap between the two and the distinctions are not always absolute but circumstances usually tends more to one than the other.  Both tend to be used in political discourse by extremists and fanatics and are often example of what is called the “slippery slope fallacy” such as the argument that if gay marriage is allowed, eventually the gay people will be allowed to marry their goats.  That argument really was raised by some who claimed it wasn't an extreme position to take, pointing out that two generations earlier, those who had been opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality because it would put society on a slippery slope towards gay marriage had been accused of raising a “slippery slope fallacy”.  All things considered, goats seem safe.  The slippery slope is also a piece of imagery adopted sometimes by black-letter-law judges who oppose judicial activism.

The difference is essentially in the dynamics driving the process.  On a slippery slope, things happen because of the inherent inertia; the notion that of sitting on a slippery slope, the slide downhill an inevitable consequence of the physics of fluid dynamics and the force of gravity.  The downward path will happen naturally.  By contrast, the model of the thin end of the wedge is that of the wedge driven into the tree.  If left there nothing will happen but if the woodsman continues to hammer the edge into the trunk, at some point, the tree will fall.  An example of the thin end of the wedge was the deployment in the early 1960s by the Kennedy administration (1961-1963) of a small number of military advisors to support the government of South Vietnam.  It had never been intended that large-scale combat operations would be undertaken in Vietnam but, step-by-step, Washington increased the commitment.  An more familiar example of the slippery slope is to adopt a rigorous diet and then allow a weekly “cheat day”.  On the first cheat day, one might have just the one chocolate biscuit but the next week it’s a biscuit and a donut and within weeks it’s packets of both.

Anthony Trollope’s (1815-1882) 1857 novel Barchester Towers is set in a tranquil and leafy town but there are few novels which, without even a threat of bloodshed, so successfully and with such subtlety impart such feelings of incipient evil and a relentless undercurrent of dread.  In Victorian novels there were many characters of dubious virtue but few not actually homicidal managed to induce in readers such feelings of unease and distaste as the slimy Reverend Obadiah Slope.

Although said to be “tall and not ill made”, Slope was “saucer-eyed”, his hair “lank, and of a dull pale reddish hue… formed into three straight lumpy masses, each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented with much grease.”  His face, “perhaps a little redder” than his hair, not unlike beef “of a bad quality”, a “redeeming feature” his nose which was “pronounced, straight, and well-formed” although marred still by “a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of red colored cork".  The description of the nose is not without significance for it had by some been asserted that he was of lineal descent from Dr Slop, “that eminent physician who assisted at the birth of Mr Tristram Shandy, and that in early years he added an ‘e’ to his name, for the sake of euphony.”  Shandy, the eponymous character from Laurence Sterne's (1713-1768) nine volume work (1759-1757), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, was birthed by the “man-midwife” Dr Slop, who squashes Tristram's nose with forceps as he yanks the baby out.

Slope was the domestic chaplain to Bishop Proudie at Barchester and began as a protégé of the Bishop’s wife (a truly ghastly woman) but later became her enemy as he attempted when he endeavored to wrest the control of the diocese from her hands by becoming an eminence (pâle) rouge, a kind of vicarage Richelieu controlling the Bishop.  The plots and schemes of the calculating chaplain, conducted with much obsequiousness, play out in the novel as a part of a struggle between those of the high church and the evangelicals, a struggle not resolved to this day.  The Trollope aficionados don’t regard Barchester Towers as his best work but few deny it’s one of the most enjoyable and anyone who wishes to sample Trollope should start here.

On the slopes: Lindsay Lohan in Gstaad, Switzerland, 2016.  The experience on skis may have come in handy in 2022 during filming for Netflix's Falling for Christmas.

Polysphere

Polysphere (pronounced pol-ee-sfeer)

(1) In mathematics, a product of spheres.

(2) In mechanical engineering, a design of combustion chamber formed by the two shallow concave domes under the intake and exhaust valve seats.

1955: A compound word, the construct being poly + sphere.  Poly is from the Ancient Greek πολύς (polús or polys) (many, much), from the primitive Indo-European polhiús (much, many) from the root pele (to fill), akin to the Old English fela (many).  Sphere is from the Middle English spere, from the Old French spere, from the Late Latin sphēra, from the Classical Latin sphaera (ball, globe, celestial sphere), from the Ancient Greek σφαῖρα (sphaîra) (ball, globe), of unknown origin.  Despite spread of the myth by some medieval writes, sphere is not related to superficially similar Persian سپهر‎ (sepehr) (sky).  Poly, in modern English (especially in industrial and scientific application) use became a word-forming element meaning "many, much, multi-, one or more" with derivatives referring to multitudinousness or abundance.  It was equivalent to the Latin multi- and should properly be used in compounds only with words of Greek origin but this, etymologically slutty English ignores.  Polysphere is a noun and polyspheric is an adjective; the noun plural is polyspheres.

Chrysler, the poly, the hemi and the hemi which is really a poly

Chrysler didn’t invent hemispherical combustion chambers but they certainly made a cult of them.  In internal combustion engines of the mid-late twentieth century, the hemispherical combustion chamber was one of the best designs with with to provide an efficient burn-space while minimizing thermal loss and permitting the use of large diameter canted-valves to optimize intake and exhaust flow.  The early Chrysler Hemi V8s (1951-1958) were the most powerful of their generation but there were drawbacks.  To take advantage of the large valves at diverging angles, the valve train assembly was both bulky and heavy, needing two rocker shafts rather than the single units used with in-line arrangements.  Adding to the cost and complication were the inherently more expensive casting and machining processes required to produce the hemispherical shape of the combustion chambers in the cylinder heads.  To enable the mass-production of a less expensive V8 to use in their lower-priced lines, Chrysler created new cylinder heads with polyspheric (two shallow concave domes under the valves and named the “Poly”) combustion chambers and a less elaborate system of valve activation which needed only a single rocker shaft.  Although less powerful than the Hemis, the Polys were cheaper and lighter although it wouldn’t be until the 1960s that Chrysler standardized engines across their divisions; an early adoption of such economies of scale might have saved the corporation more money than retaining an exclusively Hemi-headed line would have cost.

The Hemi, 1951-1958 & 1964-1971 (left), the polyspheric, 1955-1967 (centre) and the new "Hemi" which is really a swirl Chamber, 2003- (right).

However, the Poly proved a cul-de-sac.  In an era of cheap petrol, larger capacity engines proved a more attractive route to horsepower than sophisticated combustion chamber design and the Hemis were retired in 1958, replaced by larger engines with wedge-shaped chambers, used by other manufacturers and much more suited to mass-production.  Consigned to the grave with the Hemis were almost all the Polys, only the 318 V8 (5.2 litre) retained as a rare oddity until 1967.  The Hemi would return, available between 1964-1971 as a 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) race engine (there were also some reduced displacement versions to satisfy local rules) which, for homologation purposes would in 1966 be released in slightly detuned form detuned for street use.  The name however held such an allure that it was revived in 2003 for Chrysler's new (and perhaps final) generation of V8s although in the narrow technical sense, Hemi is now more a marketing than an engineering term because the twenty-first century combustion chambers are something of a hybrid of hemispheric and polyspheric, the general term describing them for the last fifty-odd years being swirl chambers, a design which makes possible a high out-output of power, low emissions and an economy in operation which would have been thought impossible to achieve as recently as the 1980s.

Lindsay Lohan with polyspheric hair.  Polyspheric hair styles are possible, the classic example of which is the symmetrical “twin dome” look which is difficult exactly to achieve and harder still to maintain for more than a brief time.  They’re thus seen usually only at photo-shoots or for one-off events but the design element is popular with asymmetric styles.

When Chrysler in 1964 introduced the 273 cubic inch (4.5 litre) V8 as the first of its LA-Series (that would begat the later 318, 340 & 360 (the V10 Magnum used in the Dodge Viper is also as descendent)), the most obvious visual difference from the earlier A-Series V8s was the noticeably smaller cylinder heads.  The A engines used as skew-type valve arrangement in which the exhaust valve was parallel to the bore with the intake valve tipped toward the intake manifold (the classic polyspherical chamber).  For the LA, Chrysler rendered all the valves tipped to the intake manifold and in-line (as viewed from the front), the industry’s standard approach to a wedge combustion chamber.  The reason for the change was that the decision had been taken to offer the compact Valiant with a V8 but it was a car which had been designed to accommodate only a straight-six and the wide-shouldered polyspheric head A-Series V8s simply wouldn’t fit.  So, essentially, wedge-heads were bolted atop the old A-Series block but the “L” in LA stood for light and the engineers wanted something genuinely lighter for the compact (in contemporary US terms) Valiant.  Accordingly, in addition to the reduced size of the heads and intake manifold, a new casting process was developed for the block (the biggest, heaviest part of an engine) which made possible thinner walls.  With the exception of the Hemis, the new big-block engines used wedge-heads and the small block polyspheres (the A-Series) were replaced by the LA except for an export version of the 313 (5.1 litre) which in small numbers was manufactured until 1965 and the 318, the last of which was fitted in 1967.  Confusingly, the replacement LA engine was also a 318, a product of carrying over certain components, both the 318-A & 318-LA sharing the same bore & stroke.  In an example of production-line rationalization, when Chrysler Australia bored out their 245 cubic inch (4.0 litre) Hemi-6 to create the 265 (4.3), the bore chosen was the same as the 318s so pistons could have been shared with the V8 although for technical reasons this wasn't actually done.  The Australian "Hemi" straight sixes used another variation of the combustion chamber in that chambers sat in upper third of the globe, hence the "low hemispherical" slang which wasn't wholly accurate but Ford's Boss 429 V8 had already been dubbed the "semi-hemi" and linguistic novelty was becoming hard to find.

Sonoramic

Sonoramic (pronounced sonn-o-ram-ick)

A form of enhanced induction for internal combustion engines; sometimes called cross-ram or long-ram induction.

1959:  A compound word constructed by engineers (apparently with no contribution from the marketing department), the construct being the Latin sonō (make a noise, sound) + the English ram + -ic.  Sonō was from the primitive Indo-European swenhe (to sound, resound) which was cognate with the Sanskrit स्वनति (svanati) (to sound, resound).  The more productive Latin derivative was Latin sonus (sound, a noise) from the primitive Indo-European swon-o, again from the root swenhe.  Ram was from the Old English ramm (in the sense of "battering ram", from the Old High German ram, thought probably related to the Old Norse rammr (strong) and the Old Church Slavonic ramenu (impetuous, violent).  The suffix -ic is from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The engineers were influenced in their coining of sonoramic by the debut three years earlier of the sonogram (thereby creating sonogramic), a form of diagnostic imaging used in medicine.

Fluid dynamics and resonant conditions

1960 Chrysler 300F with long-ram Sonoramic 413 cid (6.8 litre) wedge V8.

All else being equal, increasing the volume of the fuel-air mixture (energy input) flowing through an internal combustion engine (ICE) increases power and torque (energy output).  This can be done with an external device such as a supercharger, or resonance can be created in the induction system by designing a passage which uses the physics of fluid dynamics to increase pressure in specific spaces.  Obviously uninvolved in the engineering, Chrysler’s marketing people claimed in 1960 that the Sonoramic was new technology but for many years the principle had been used in racing engines, the mathematical equations determining acoustics & resonance having been published by German physicist and physician Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821–1894) in a scientific paper published in 1863.  Indeed, the concept had before been used on road cars but always in a discrete manner; what Chrysler did in 1959 with the long-tube ram-runners was make a dramatic fashion statement in designer colors.

Representation of fluid dynamics under specific resonant conditions.

Essentially, the Sonoramic is an implementation of Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) first law of motion, more commonly known as the law of inertia: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion” and it’s the second part which Sonoramic exploited.  During the intake cycle of an engine, the fuel-air mix flows through the intake manifold, past the intake valve, and into the cylinder, then the intake valve shuts.  At that point, the law of inertia comes into play: Because the air was in motion, it wants to stay in motion but can’t because the valve is shut so it piles up against the valve with something of a concertina effect.  With one piece of air piling up on the next, the air becomes compressed and this compressed air has to go somewhere so it turns around and flows back through the intake manifold in the form of a pressure wave.  This pressure wave bounces back and forth in the runner and if it arrives back at the intake valve when the valve opens, it’s drawn into the engine.  This bouncing pressure wave of air and the proper arrival time at the intake valve creates a low-pressure form of supercharging but for this to be achieved all variables have to be aligned so the pressure wave arrives at the intake valve at the right time.  This combination of synchronized events is known as the "resonant conditions".

Long and short-tube Sonoramic intake manifolds.

Most of the Sonoramics produced were long-tubes with a tuned internal-length of thirty inches (760mm), generating prodigious quantities of mid-range torque, ideal for overtaking under highway conditions.  These characteristics were ideal for road cars but also built were a small number of the so-called short-tube Sonoramics, a somewhat misleading term because they shared the external dimensions of the standard devices, the difference being that only a fifteen-inch (380mm) length of the internal passages were resonance-tuned and this, at the expense of mid-range torque, produced much more power high in the rev-range making them more suitable for competition.  Used by Chrysler to set a number of speed records, these were the most charismatic of the breed and a handful were built with manual gearboxes.  At auction, in November 2010, the sole 1960 Chrysler 300F short-tube Sonoramic convertible with the Pont-a-Mousson 4-speed gearbox, sold for US$437,250.

1960 Chrysler 300F long-ram Sonoramic 413 cid (6.8 litre) wedge V8.

The first four generations of the 300 letter series had used increasingly larger versions of the Hemi V8 and the 1958 300D (with a 392 V8) even offered the novelty of a very expensive fuel-injection option but, unlike the mechanical systems offered by Mercedes-Benz, Chevrolet and a handful of others, the Bendix "Electrojector" system used a rudimentary computer which proved unreliable and most were returned to the dealer to be retro-fitted with carburettors.  The Hemi, heavy and expensive to produce, was in 1959’s 300E replaced by the larger capacity, wedge-head 413 which matched it for power but lacked the mystique, something substantially restored in 1960 when the 300F debuted with the sexy Sonoramic.  Ram Induction today is common, although contemporary designs, integrated with fuel-injection systems, are not as photogenic as the original Sonoramics.  As well as raw aluminium, the tubes were available in the designer colors of the time, red, gold and blue; red ones are thought most cool.

Republic P-47 Thunderbolt test-bed with XI-2200 V16 (1945).

Chrysler’s interest in ram tuning was an outgrowth of the desire to exploit the findings of research undertaken during the war developing very high-performance piston engines for fighter aircraft.  This had culminated in the XI-2220, a 2,220 cubic inch (36.4 litre) V16 aero-engine which, rated at 2450 horsepower, was tested in a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, an appropriate platform given that the P47 was then the biggest, heaviest single-engined fighter ever to enter service (among piston-engined aircraft it still is).  Although the indications were that close to 4000 horsepower was achievable (at least for short durations), with the advent of the jet engine the days of the big piston-engined fighters were nearly done.  The V16 project was cancelled, a fate suffered also by the other outstanding big aero-engine of that last generation: the Napier-Sabre H24.

XI-2220, V16 aircraft engine (1944-1945).

The lessons learned however would be applied on the ground instead of in the skies because although big capacity piston engines had mostly been rendered obsolete for aircraft, a few generations of some just a bit smaller were about to start roaming American roads.  The cars and their engines would be like nothing before seen, Chrysler adopting for their new 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) V8 in 1951 the V16’s hemispherical combustion chambers, a feature it would use for most of that decade and the next and such was the aura of the name that it’s used still, even if things are now a bit less hemispherical than before.

Chrysler A-311 V8 experimental engine.

The new Hemi V8 had obvious performance potential and the engineers experimented with the tuned-length induction system used on the V16 before the final supercharger/turbocharger combination was adopted.  So successful was the ram-tuned engine (named A-311) that attempts were made to contest the 1952 Indianapolis 500 but the race’s sanctioning body understood the implications the remarkable new powerplant would have on their carefully-curated ecosystem of owners and sponsors and declared it didn’t comply with the rules, even tweaking them a bit to ensure it never would.

Ramcharger Club’s 1949 Plymouth with extreme ram-charging.

The research however continued and, although it’s not clear to what extent their efforts received factory-support, in the late 1950s some young engineers formed the drag racing-focused Ramchargers Club using, somewhat improbably, a 1949 Plymouth business coupe fitted with a particularly extravagant implementation of the technology, a surrealistically tall intake manifold, a device built for dynamometer testing and never intended for a moving vehicle.  They dubbed the Plymouth "High & Mighty".  Bizarre it may have looked but the cartoon-like Plymouth achieved results which vindicated the approach and the system was introduced on 1960 Plymouths, Dodges and Chryslers, the highest evolution of Sonoramic offered on the Chrysler 300 letter series cars until 1964.  Interestingly, while it was only Plymouth which used the Sonoramic name, Dodge labelling the system D-500 Ram Induction and Chrysler simply Ram Induction, all of them are commonly referred to as Sonoramics.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying the effects of fluid dynamics.

Not content with applying the science of fluid dynamics only to the induction system, the Ramchargers used it also for the exhaust headers.  Rather than additional power, the commendably juvenile quest was for noise, the exaggerated, trumpet-like tubes using the megaphone principle which increases volume by raising acoustic impedance.  The desired result was achieved and although there's no record of anyone with a decibel-meter taking a reading, the old Plymouth was said to be spectacularly loud.  Megaphone exhausts were subsequently banned.    

Chrysler Slant Six with Hyper Pak.

Chrysler didn’t restrict the ram induction idea to the big-block V8s, using it also on the short-lived (1960-1962) Hyper Pak performance option for the both 170 cubic inch (2.8 litre, 1959-1969) and 225 cubic inch (3.7 litre, 1987-2000) versions of their Slant Six, the engineers taking advantage of the space afforded by the angled block to permit the curvaceous intake runners nearly to fill the engine bay.  The Hyper Pak wasn't seen in showrooms but was available as an over-the-counter kit (literally a cardboard box containing all necessary parts) from Dodge & Plymouth spare parts departments and its life was limited because it became a victim of its own success.  Although less suitable for street use because it turned the mild-mannered straight-six into something at its best at full throttle, in the race events for which it was eligible it proved unbeatable, dominating the competition for two years, compelling the sanctioning body cancel the series.

Although it was the longer lived 225 version which gained the Slant Six its stellar reputation for durability and the ease with which additional power could be extracted, there's always been a following for the short-stroke 170 because of its European-like willingness to rev, the characteristics of the over-square engine (unique among the slant-six's three displacements (170-198-225)) unusually lively for a US straight-six.  Despite some aspects of the specification being modest (there were only four main bearings although they were the beefy units used in the 426 cubic inch Street Hemi V8), for much of its life it used a tough forged steel crankshaft and high-speed tolerant solid valve lifters and was a famously robust engine.  Despite that, after the Hyper Pak affair, Chrysler showed little interest in any performance potential, knowing the US preference for V8s, something which doomed also Pontiac's short-lived single overhead camshaft (SOHC) straight-six (1966-1969).  A version of the 225 with a two-barrel carburetor (rated at 160 horsepower, an increase of 15 over the standard unit) was offered in some non-North American markets where V8 sales were not dominant and it proved very popular in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Central & South America but only when tighter US emission regulations forced its adoption did a 225 with a two barrel carburetor appear in the home market, installed to restore power losses rather than seek gains.

Pile

Pile (pronounced pahyl)

(1) An assemblage of things laid or lying one upon the other.

(2) Slang for a large number, quantity, or amount of anything.

(3) A heap of wood on which a dead body, a living person, or a sacrifice is burned; pyre the more common form.

(4) Slang term for a lofty or large building or group of buildings.

(5) In metallurgy, a bundle of pieces of iron ready to be welded and drawn out into bars; fagot.

(6) In electricity, slang for a voltaic pile.

(7) To gather, accumulate, or rise in a pile or piles (often followed by up).

(8) In construction, a long column of timber, concrete, or steel that is driven into the ground to provide a foundation for a vertical load (a bearing pile) or a group of such columns to resist a horizontal load from earth or water pressure (a sheet pile)

(9) In heraldry, an ordinary in the form of a wedge or triangle coming from one edge of the escutcheon, from the chief unless otherwise specified.

(10) In archery, the sharp head or striking end of an arrow, usually of metal and of the form of a wedge or conical nub.

(11) A fabric with a surface of upright yarns, cut or looped, as corduroy, Turkish toweling, velvet, and velveteen.

(12) In nuclear physics, a structure of uranium and a moderator used for producing atomic energy; nuclear reactor.

Pre 1000: Middle English pile from Old English pīl (shaft) derived from the Latin pīlum (javelin) and pīla (pillar or mole of stone).  Variations emerged in Late Middle English, pyles from 1375–1425 was a plural of the Latin pilae (literally, balls) and from 1300–50 piles (hair, plumage) from the Latin pilus (hair), the -i- short in Latin but long in Anglicized school pronunciation.  The Middle English pyl (reverse of a coin) was a special use of the Medieval Latin pīla.  Word actually passed to English from the Old French pyle. 

The meaning "mass or heap" was universal by the early fifteenth century, originally "pillar, pier of a bridge," from Middle French pile and directly from Latin pila "stone barrier, pillar, pier"; the development in Latin from "pier, harbor wall of stones," to "something heaped up" and the meaning "large building", common by the fourteenth century is probably the same word.  The "heavy pointed beam" is from the Old English pil (stake), as "arrow" is from the Latin pilum (heavy javelin of the Roman foot soldier, literally pestle), source of the Old Norse pila, the Old High German pfil, and the German pfeil (arrow).  Of all these, origin is uncertain.  The meanings as applied to fabrics and downy plumage are from the Anglo-French pyle or the Middle Dutch pijl, both from Latin pilus (a hair), source of the Italian pelo and Old French pel.  Phonological evidence rules out transmission of the English word via the Old French cognate peil and poil; meaning "nap upon cloth" emerged in the 1560s.  The most familiar modern meeting (to heap up) is from the mid fourteenth century while the figurative verbal expression “pile on” (attack vigorously, attack en masse) is an Americanism from 1894.

Chicago Pile-1

The atomic pile was the original name for a nuclear reactor, a device used to initiate and control a self-sustained nuclear chain reaction.  Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world's first nuclear reactor and on 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated.

Chicago Pile-1, 1942                          

CP-1 was built with 45,000 graphite blocks weighing 360 tons used as neutron moderators, fueled by 5 tons of uranium metal and 45 tons of uranium oxide which, despite the bulk, produced only a tiny amount of power, about one-half watt. The original design intended the shape to be spherical but, during construction, it was calculated the critical mass required for a chain-reaction could be achieved with a smaller pile.  Disassembled in 1943, CP-1 was reconfigured to become Chicago Pile-2 (CP-2) and it operated in that form until 1954 when it was dismantled and buried.

A pile of granite blocks (left) and Lindsay Lohan with several stacks of pregnancy books (right), out-take from Labor Pains (2009).

The term "atomic pile" is a historic artefact from the early years of the science but essentially they were the first nuclear reactors, the term derived from what the physicists at the time visualized as a "pile" of the graphite blocks used to moderate the nuclear reaction.  Why the word "pile" was chosen as a descriptor doesn't seem to have been recorded but it must at the time have seen an obvious choice although, the convention in English would have been to use "stack" because although "pile" and "stack" both refer to agglomerations of objects (although can figuratively also be used of the non-physical), the two have slightly different connotations.  A pile tends to be an unordered heap of items, placed without much care to produce a random or shape ("pile of clothes on the floor", "pile of leaves in the yard" etc).  By contrast, a stack is a more orderly arrangement of items placed atop each other ("stack of books on a table", "stack of plates in a cupboard" etc), suggesting something and structured (although the stuff in the stack could in some ways be quite haphazard (ie not in alphabetical order etc).   So, a pile tends to appear to be disordered or unstructured, while a stack suggest some sense of deliberate organization.  None of that suggest the early, pioneering theorists and researchers were wrong in their choice of word.  The first nuclear reactors were called a pile to reflect the basic, rather unrefined way the components were "piled together"; these really were scientific experiments and not without risk, a number of scientists and engineers who worked in close proximity to Chicago Pile-1 dying prematurely from internal cancers, including Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), the device's designer & builder.