Youth

Youth (pronounced yooth)

(1) The state (imprecisely defined) of being young.

(2) The appearance, freshness, vigor, spirit etc, characteristic of one who is young (usually as youthful or youthfulness).

(3) The time of being young; early life (figuratively applied also to institutions, ideas, movements etc to describe the first or early period.)

(4) The period of life from puberty to the attainment of full growth (nominal adulthood), sometimes used as a (vague) synonym for adolescence.

(5) Young persons, collectively.

(6) A young person, by convention usually male (which some etymologists suggest is the only correct use).

(7) As a locality name, the Isle of Youth (Isla de la Juventud in the Spanish and formerly the Isle of Pines), an island in the Caribbean, a municipality in southern Cuba.

Pre 900: From the Middle English youthe, youghte & ȝouþe, from the Old English geoguth or ġeoguþ (the state of being young; young people, junior warriors; young of cattle (and related to geong (young)), from the Proto-West Germanic juwunþa, from the Proto-Germanic jugunþō & jugunþiz (youth) and related to the Old Saxon juguth, the Old Frisian jogethe, the Middle Dutch joghet, the Old High German iugund, the Gothic junda and the Latin juventus.  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Juugd, the Gothic junda, the German Low German Jöögd, the West Frisian jeugd, the Dutch jeugd and the German Jugend.  The ultimate source of the Germanic forms was a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root yeu- (vital force, youthful vigor) + the Proto-Germanic abstract noun suffix –itho.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Proto-Germanic form apparently was altered from juwunthiz by the influence of its contrast dugunthiz (ability (source of the Old English duguð)).  In Middle English, the medial “g” became a yogh (a Middle English letter (ȝ) used mainly where modern English has gh and y), which then disappeared.  The alternative forms yought & youthe are obsolete.  The Middle English youthhede (youthhood, the synonyms being yonghede, yongthe & youthe) was an example of an early nuancing as it described the part of life which followed childhood and is thus the equivalent of the modern adolescence although it’s clear it was also used of youth generally.  Youth, youthism & youthfulness are nouns, youthy is a noun & adjective (both obsolete), youthwards is an adverb and youthful & youthless are adjectives; the noun plural is youths (collectively as youth).

Synonyms are easy to list but harder to use like youth, the meanings tend to be loaded, some working in some contexts but not others and the list includes: juvenility, youngness & youngth (both archaic), youthfulness, immaturity, minority, adolescence, child, childish, kid, lad, teen, teen-ager, youngster, young  minority, immaturity & stripling.  The classic antonym is adulthood but in some contexts old-age, senility and dotage (the one favoured by Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) to disparage Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) before they fell in love) may be applied.

Lindsay Lohan as an 11 year old youth and at a youthful 36.

The adjective youthful dates from the 1560s and much earlier, Old English had geoguðlic and other words formerly used in the same sense were youthlike, youthly, youthsome & youthy.  Yippie was first reported in 1968 and was the “marketing” name of the (not wholly fictitious) "Youth International Party" (modelled on the then commonly used “hippie”), “founded” by counter culturalists Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989), Jerry Rubin (1938–1994), Nancy Kurshan (b 1944) & Paul Krassner (1932–2019).  Youth can be a modifier (youth culture, youth crime, youth worker, youth hostel, youth market, youth justice et al) and be modified (middle youth, troubled youth) while “youthism” (discrimination against the young) is the companion term to ageism (discrimination against the old) although the former is, at law, not an inherently “suspect category” in most systems where the appropriate framework exists; that’s why five year olds can’t sue for the right to hold drivers licences although if someone that youthful in somewhere like Florida or Texas petitioned the US Supreme Court for the right to carry an AR-15, given the composition of the bench, it’s far from certain there wouldn’t be at least a few dissenting opinions supporting his or her right and as a piece of black letter law, under current interpretations, it could be argued a five year old with an AR-15 wouldn’t be any less representative of a “well-regulated militia” than anyone else who now enjoys the right.

Ever inventive, English has coined new derivations as required, the spread encouraged by the emergence of social media.  A “youthemism” is a particular form of euphemism, describing the phrases and photographs used in advertising to make older individuals feel a little young younger; youthemisms appear in the slogans and marketing campaigns for everything from pairs of jeans to “mid life crisis” motor cycles.  Also from advertising (sometime seeking votes as well as sales) is “youthenize” which describes making someone or something more appealing to a younger market; as a transitive verb it can be used to mean “to make youthful or younger; to rejuvenate”.  By obvious analogy with earthquake, “youthquake” seems first to have appeared in Vogue magazine in 1965 and was a reference to the cultural changes being wrought by the youthful baby boomers who were (uniquely in history) both in a critical mass and an economic force by virtue of their unprecedented (for youth) levels of disposable income.  The phrase “fountain of youth” is an allusion to some of the tales from antiquity and is used to refer to any product, exercise regime or other activity which promises to restore or prolong youthfulness.  The non-standard spelling “yoof” is a colloquialism from England which first gained currency during the 1980s, often as “yoof kulture” and in Thatcher-era England was a way of disparaging the behaviour and sloppy language standards among the young.  Like other words intended to offend, there were sub-cultures which adopted yoof as a form of group identity and solidarity, use prevalent among the then emerging “ravers” and the “acid house” scene.

Hitler Youth & Band of German Maidens members on camp together, circa 1937. Sometimes, the boys & girls got to know one another.

The German form jugend became notorious because during the Third Reich (1933-1945) the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth, 1926-1945 and abbreviated as HJ) was the Nazi Party organization for boys (10-18), intended to instil a sense of nationalism, prevent any from drifting towards delinquency and, more controversially, prepare them for military training proper.  The Bund Deutscher Mädel (Band of German Maidens) was the girls' wing of the Hitlerjugend and, abbreviated as BDM, its purpose was to prepare girls for their traditional role of motherhood.  Perhaps unfortunately, some mixed activities such as the HJ and the BDM going on camps together resulted in much practical preparation for motherhood, revelations of this promiscuity leading Germans to conclude BDM might be better understood as Bund Deutscher Matratzen (Band of German Mattresses).

The word youth has long been applied to the young of both sexes (and now of all genders) but there was (especially among classists) an argument that while anyone could be youthful or possess the quality of youthfulness, only a young male could be described as a youth.  That was skating on etymologically thin ice although it does seem likely the view did reflect the conventions of use in earlier centuries and that was another example of the reverence for antiquity which so flourished in the post medieval-period.  Those who translated the myths from Rome and Greece of course wrote often of the beautiful boys and young men who litter the tales but the girls and women were never youths; they were nymphs, waifs, pixies, sprites, fairies or naiads and this tradition infected academia, more than one professor insisting a youth could be only male.

But now it’s used of anyone young though context still matters.  In clinical medicine for example there are two distinct fields: paediatric medicine and adolescent medicine, puberty the point of delineation.  As a technical distinction in hospitals that’s uncontroversial but other words within the rubric of youthfulness can carry baggage, juvenile for example being innocuous when used in zoology to describe the young of a species but potentially incendiary when applied to people, such remains the influence of the phrase “juvenile delinquency”, popular since the 1960s whenever there’s a need to create a moral panic about the behaviour of youth (complaints about which by older generations have been documented since Antiquity).  Adolescent too has suffered because of phrases like “adolescent humor”, “adolescent behavior” etc which rarely suggest anything positive.

Teenage fencing.

Then of course there is teen-age which true pedants will always distinguish from teenage (pronounced teen-ige) which is a technical herm of fence-builders to describe a technique of weaving which interleaves brushwood to produce a type of fencing called wattle, the weave effected usually horizontally around vertical uprights planted in the ground.  The use to refer to those aged 13-19 dates from 1911 and was used originally of Sunday school classes with the adjective teen-aged first noted 1922 although it wasn’t until the 1950s that an identifiable “teen-age culture” could be said to exist, something of which many (then and now) disapproved but modern capitalism, generally neutral on low-intensity cultural squabbles, identified a new market and in music, clothing, film and just about every aspect of pop-culture, teens have since been a valuable segment, spending either other people’s money (OPM) or their own.  Being teen-aged of course stops with one’s 20^th birthday but youth for some time persists although there’s no general agreement for how long.  A helpful guide though may be the criterion enforced by New Zealand-based tour operator Contiki Tours, long renowned for their innovative model of alcohol-fueled packaged tourism for amorous youth although it seems they now also cater for those who drink rather less enthusiastically than the average Antipodean.  Contiki restrict their tours to those aged 18-35, presumably because at 18 sex is lawful in all countries visited and 35 is the upper limit at which it's (in some cases) plausible for men to hook-up with 18 year old women.  The days when a 21^st birthday was of legal significance have gone but there’s a wide range of ages which (somewhat arbitrarily) are used to at least imply a suggestion of adulthood including matters of sexuality activity (generally 14-18 depending on jurisdiction), obtaining a drivers licence (14-23), voting (15-20), consuming alcohol (5 (with parental supervision) –20), being responsible for criminal acts (8-14) or becoming President of the United States (35).  Lindsay Lohan, having thus attained the statutory age of political adulthood on 2 July 2021, may now seek to become POTUS; that would MAGA.

A montage of images of a teen-aged Lindsay Lohan.  

Legal rights and responsibilities however really don’t define the end of youth because it’s a cultural construct and probably most would accept 25 or even 29 as the end although of course many even beyond this can remain “youthful” and the distinction between someone thought a “youth” or a “young adult” is likely more a judgment of the individual than anything much to do with their age and in casual use, youth, inherently a relative term, can also be applied to the middle aged.  When it was noticed during the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) that certain defendants were being influenced during the communal lunches by the most recalcitrant of the Nazis, it was decided to serve the meals to a number of separate tables and the one allocated to Walther Funk (1890–1960; Nazi economics minister & central bank president) (then aged 56), Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist) (46), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) (41) & Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 and Gauleiter (district party leader) & Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945) (38) was referred to by jailers and prisoners alike as der Tischjugend (the youth table), the average age of the diners at the other tables much older.  The troublemaker who was the reason the seating plans were changed was Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) (52) who was put in a room to eat alone which he did, most unhappy at being denied his audience.

Exquisite

Exquisite (pronounced ek-skwi-zit or ik-skwiz-it)

(1) Of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence and often associated with objects or great delicacy; of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship; beautiful, delicate, discriminating, perfect.

(2) Extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate.

(3) Intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain; keenly or delicately sensitive or responsive; exceeding; extreme; in a bad or a good sense (eg as exquisite pleasure or exquisite pain).

(4) Recherché; far-fetched; abstruse (a now rare early meaning which to some extent survives in surrealist’s exercise “exquisite corpse”).

(5) Of particular refinement or elegance, as taste, manners, etc or persons.

(6) A man excessively concerned about clothes, grooming etc; a dandy or coxcomb.

(7) Ingeniously devised or thought out (obsolete).

(8) Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact (now less common except as an adverb.

(9) Of delicate perception or close and accurate discrimination; not easy to satisfy; exact; fastidious (related to the sense of “exquisite judgment, taste, or discernment”.

1400–1450: From the Late Middle English exquisite (carefully selected), from the Latin exquīsītus (excellent; meticulous, chosen with care (and literally “carefully sought out”)), perfect passive participle of exquīrō (to seek out), originally the past participle of exquīrere (to ask about, examine) the construct being ex- + -quīrere, a combining form of quaerere (to seek). The construct of exquīrō was ex- +‎ quaerō (seek).  The ex- prefix was applied to words in Middle English borrowed from the Middle French and was derived from the Latin ex- (out of, from) and was from the primitive Indo-European eǵ- & eǵs-.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐξ (ex-, out of, from) from the Transalpine Gaulish ex- (out), the Old Irish ess- (out), the Old Church Slavonic изъ (izŭ) (out), the Russian из (iz) (from, out of).  Exquisite is a noun & adjective, exquisiteness is a noun and exquisitely an adverb; the noun plural is exquisites.

The etymology of the Latin quaerō (seek) is mysterious.  It may be from the Proto-Italic kwaizeō, from the primitive Indo-European kweh (to acquire) so cognates may include the Ancient Greek πέπαμαι (pépamai) (to get, acquire), the Old Prussian quoi (I/you want) & quāits (desire), the Lithuanian kviẽsti (to invite) and possibly the Albanian kam (I have).  Some have suggested the source being the primitive Indo-European kwoys & kweys (to see) but there has been little support for this.  The authoritative Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs (LIV)), the standard etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European languages, suggests it’s a derivation of hzeys (to seek, ask), via the form koaiseo.  "Exquisite corpse" is a calque of the French cadavre exquis (literally “exquisite cadaver”).  Dating from 1925, it was coined by French surrealists to describe a method of loosely structured constructivism on the model of the parlour game consequences; fragments of text (or images) are created by different people according to pre-set rules, then joined together to create a complete text.  The name comes from the first instance in 1925: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (The exquisite corpse will drink new wine).  Exquisite corpse is noted as a precursor to both post-modernism and deconstructionist techniques.

Although not infrequently it appears in the same sentence as the word “unique”, exquisite can be more nuanced, the comparative “more exquisite, the superlative most exquisite” and there has certainly been a change in the pattern of use.  In English, it originally was applied to any thing (good or bad, art or torture, diseases or good health), brought to a highly wrought condition, tending among the more puritanical to disapprobation.  The common modern meaning (of consummate and delightful excellence) dates from the late 1570s while the noun (a dandy, a foppish man) seems first to have been used in 1819.  One interesting variant which didn’t survive was exquisitous (not natural, but procured by art), appearing in dictionaries in the early eighteenth centuries but not since.  The pronunciation of exquisite has undergone a rapid change from ek-skwi-zit to ik-skwiz-it, the stress shifting to the second syllable.  The newer pronunciation attracted the inevitable criticism but is now the most common form on both sides of the Atlantic and use seems not differentiated by class. 

An exquisite and a wimp: Baldur Benedikt von Schirach

Exquisite is used almost exclusively as an adjective, applied typically to objects or performances but it’s also a noun, albeit one always rare.  As a noun it was used to describe men who inhabited that grey area of being well dressed, well coiffured, well mannered and somewhat effeminate; it was a way of hinting at something without descending to the explicit.  PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) applied it thus in Sam the Sudden (1925) and historians Ann (1938-2021) & John Tusa (b 1936) in The Nuremberg Trial (1983) found no better word to apply to former Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, noting his all-white bedroom and propensity to pen poor poetry.  The companion word to describe a similar chap without of necessity the same hint of effeminacy is “aesthete”.  In The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992), Brigadier General Telford Taylor (1908–1998; lead US counsel at the Nuremberg Trial) wrote of von Schirath that: “at thirty-nine, was the youngest and, except perhaps for Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) and Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist), the weakest of the defendants.  If wimps had then been spoken of, Schirach would have been so styled.”  

Nazis at the Berghof: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), Martin Bormann (1900–1945), Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945), and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945)), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany, 1936.  Of much, all were guilty as sin but von Schirach would survive to die in his bed at 67.  

Convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT, 1945-1946) for crimes against humanity, von Schirach received a twenty year sentence, escaping conviction for his role as Nazi Party youth leader and head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), (though he was a good deal more guilty than Socrates in corrupting the minds (and perhaps more) of youth), the sentence imposed for his part in deporting Viennese Jews to the death camps while Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna.  Had subsequently discovered evidence against him been available at the trial, doubtlessly he’d have been hanged.

Exquisite: A style guide

Lindsay Lohan in a Gucci Porcelain Garden Print Silk Gown with an all-over Dutch toile in blue and white, high ruffled collar and bib, flared sleeves, pussy bow and a blue and red patent leather belt around a high waist, Savoy Hotel, London, June 2017.  The gown was said to have a recommended retail price (RRP) of Stg£4,040 (US$7300).  The occasion was the launch of the charitable organization One Family, dedicated to combating child trafficking.

Within the one critique, the word exquisite can appear, used as a neutral descriptor (an expression of extent), a paean to beauty and even an ironic dismissal.  A gown for example can be “exquisitely detailed” but that doesn’t of necessity imply elegance although that would be the case of something said to be an “exquisite design”.  That said, most were drawn to the gown in some way, the references to Jane Austin many (although historians of fashion might note Gucci’s creation as something evocative more of recent films made of Jane Austin novels that anything representative of what was worn in her era) and the fabric’s patterning & restraint in the use of color produced a dreamily romantic look.

Zephyr

Zephyr (pronounced zef-uhr (U) or zef-er (non-U))

(1) A gentle, mild breeze, considered the most pleasant of winds.

(2) As a literary device, the west wind personified which should be used with an initial capital letter and not capitalized if referring to some gentle waft.

(3) Any of various things of fine, light quality (fabric, yarn etc), most often applied to wool.

(4) The usual (Westernised) spelling of Ζεφυρος (Zéphuros or Zéphyros), the Greek and Roman god of the west wind.  The Roman name was Zephyrus, Favonius.

(5) A model name used on various cars produced by the Ford Motor Company, including some under the Lincoln and (the now defunct) Mercury brands.

Circa 1350: From the Middle English zeferus & zephirus, from the Old English zefferus, from the Latin zephyrus, from the Ancient Greek Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros or Zéphyros) (the west wind), probably from the Greek root zophos (the west, the dark region, darkness, gloom).  The Latin Zephyrus was the source also of zéphire (French), zefiro (Spanish) and zeffiro (Italian).  The plural is zephyrs and the derived term is zephyrette (capitalised and not); the alternative spellings were zephir & zefir.  The casual use in meteorology dates from circa 1600.  While, as Zephyr, classically something warm, mild and occidental, zephyr can be used to refer to any gentle breeze or waft where the wish is to suggest a wind not strong as in a gust, gale, cyclone, blast, typhoon or tempest, the adjectival form being zephyrean.

Cupid and Psyche (1907) by Edvard Munch (1863–1944).

In Greek mythology, Ζεφυρος (transliterated as Zéphuros or Zéphyros) was the god of the west wind, one of the four seasonal Anemoi (wind-gods), the others being his brothers Notus (god of the south wind), Eurus (god of the east wind) and Boreas (god of the east wind).  The Greek myths offer many variations of the life of Zephyrus, the offspring of Astraeus & Eos in some versions and of Gaia in other stories while there were many wives, depending on the story in which he was featured.  Despite that, he’s also sometimes referred to as the “god of the gay”, based on the famous tale of Zephyrus & Hyakinthos (Hyacinthus or Hyacinth).  Hyacinth was a Spartan youth, an alluring prince renowned for his beauty and athleticism and he caught the eye of both of both Zephyrus and Apollo (the god of sun and light) and the two competed fiercely for the boy’s affections.  It was Apollo whose charms proved more attractive which left Zephyrus devastated and in despair.  One day, Zephyrus chanced upon the sight of Apollo and Hyacinth in a meadow, throwing a discus and, blind with anger, sent a great gust of wind at the happy couple, causing the discus to strike Hyacinth forcefully in the head, inflicting a mortal injury.  Stricken with grief, as Hyacinth lay dying in his arms, Apollo transformed the blood trickling to the soil into the hyacinth (larkspur), flower which would forever bloom in memory of his lost, beautiful boy. Enraged, Apollo sought vengeance but Zephyrus was protected by Eros, the god of love, on what seems the rather technical legal point of the intervention of Zephyrus being an act of love.  There was however a price to be paid for this protection, Zephyrus now pledged to serve Eros for eternity and the indebted god of the west wind soon received his first task.  There are other tales of how Cupid and Psyche came to marry but in this one, with uncharacteristic clumsiness, Cupid accidently shot himself with one of his own arrows of love while gazing upon the nymph Psyche and it was Zephyrus who kidnapped her, delivering his abducted prize to Cupid to be his bride.

Chloris and Zephyr (1875) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), Musee des Beau-Arts of the Musées Mulhouse Sud Alsace.

Zephyros was in classical art most often depicted as a handsome, winged youth and a large number of surviving Greek vases are painted with unlabeled figures of a winged god embracing a youth and these are usually identified as Zephyros and Hyakinthos although, some historians detecting detail differences list a number of them as being of Eros (the god of Love) with a symbolic youth.  Although sometimes rendered as a winged god clothed in a green robe and crowned with a wreath of flowers, in Greco-Roman mosaics, Zephyros appears usually in the guise of spring personified, carrying a basket of unripened fruit.  In some stories, he is reported to be the husband of Iris, the goddess of the rainbow and Hera’s messenger and in others, Podarge the harpy (also known as Celano) is mentioned as the wife of Zephyrus but in most of the myths he was married to Chloris.  Chloris by most accounts was an Oceanid nymph and in the tradition of Boreas & Orithyia and Cupid and Psyche, Zephyrus made Chloris his wife by abduction, making her the goddess of flowers, for she was the Greek equivalent of Flora, and living with her husband, enjoyed a life of perpetual spring.

Lincoln Zephyr V12, 292 cubic inches (4.4 litre).  It was the last of the American V12s.

In the inter-war era, the finest of the big American cars, the Cadillacs, Lincolns, Packards and Duesenbergs, offered craftsmanship the equal of anything made in Europe and engineering which was often more innovative.  The 1930s however were difficult times and by mid-decade, sales of the big K-Series Lincolns, the KA (385 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8) and KB (448 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V12) were falling.  Ford responded by designing a smaller, lighter Lincoln range to bridge the gap between the most expensive Ford and the lower-priced K-Series Lincolns, the intention originally to power it with an enlarged version of the familiar Ford V8 but family scion Edsel Ford (1893–1943; president of the Ford Motor Company 1919-1943), decided instead to develop a V12, wanting both a point of differentiation and a link to K-Series which had gained for Lincoln a formidable reputation for power and durability.  Develop may however be the wrong word, the new engine really a reconfiguration of the familiar Ford V8, the advantage in that approach being it was cheaper than an entirely new engine, the drawback the compromises and flaws of the existing unit were carries over and in some aspects, due to the larger size and greater internal friction, exaggerated.

Lincoln Zephyr V12, 267 cubic inches (4.4 litre).

The V12 however was not just V8 with four additional pistons, the block cast with a vee-angle of 75^o rather than the eight’s 90^o, a compromise between compactness and the space required for a central intake manifold and the unusual porting arrangement for the exhaust gases.  The ideal configuration for a V12 is 60^o and without staggered throws on the crankshaft, the 75^o angle yielded uneven firing impulses, although, being a relatively slow and low-revving unit, the engine was felt acceptably smooth.  The cylinder banks used the traditional staggered arrangement, permitting the con-rods to ride side-by-side on the crank and retained the Ford V-8’s 3.75 inch (90.7 mm) stroke but used a small bore of just 2.75 inches (69.75 mm), then the smallest of any American car then in production, yielding a displacement of 267 cubic inches (4.4 litres), a lower capacity than many of the straight-eights and V8s then on the market.

1941 Lincoln Zephyr coupe in Darian Blue.

The V12 was introduced in 1936 in the new Lincoln Zephyr, the name chosen to emphasize the wind-cheating qualities of the modernist styling which, with a raked windscreen and integrated fenders, was among the more successful of the streamlined, aerodynamic designs which followed the Chrysler Airflows which had encountered such market resistance.  A relatively low-weight and the presumed aerodynamic efficiency permitted more than respectable performance by the standards of the time but the engine did suffer teething troubles.  Because the exhaust system was routed through the block to four ports on each side of the engine, cooling was from the beginning the problem it had been on the Ford V8, only on a larger scale.  Although the cooling system had an apparently impressive six-gallon (22.7 litre) capacity, it quickly became clear this was under certain conditions marginal and the radiator grill was soon extended to increase airflow.  Nor was lubrication initially satisfactory, the original oil pump found to be unable to maintain pressure when wear developed on the many bearing surfaces; it was replaced with one that could move an additional gallon (3.79 litre) a minute.  Most problems were resolved during the first year of production and the market responded to the cylinder count, competitive price and styling; after struggling to sell not even 4000 of the big KAs in 1935, Lincoln produced nearly 18,000 Zephyrs in 1936, sales growing to over 25,000 the following year.  Production between 1942-1946 would be interrupted by the war but by the time the last was built in 1948, by which time it had been enlarged to 292 cubic inches (4.8 litre (there was in 1946, briefly, a 306 cubic inch (5.0 litre) version) over 200,000 had been made, making it the most successful of the American V12s.  It was an impressive number, more than matching the 161,583 Jaguar built over a quarter of a century (1971-1997) and only Daimler-Benz has made more, their count including both those used in Mercedes-Benz cars and the the DB-60X inverted V12 aero-engines famous for their wartime service with the Luftwaffe.  

1969 Ford (UK) Zephyr Zodiac Mark IV.

Lincoln ceased to use the Zephyr name after 1942, the V12 cars after then advertised simply as Lincolns, distinguished in name only by the coachwork.  The Zephyr badge was in 1950 revived by Ford of England for their line of mainstream family cars, augmented after 1953 by an up-market version called the Zodiac, noted for its bling.  The first three generations (1950-1966) were well-regarded (the Mark III (1962-1966) in most ways a superior car to the contemporary US Ford Falcon) and enjoyed success in both the home and export markets but the Mark IV (1966-1972), despite a tantalizingly advanced specification and offering a lot of metal for the money, proved so ghastly the name was retired when the range was replaced.  Not having suffered the tainted Mark IV Zephyrs, Ford felt it safe to recycle the Zephyr name in the US, firstly on the bland Mercury clone (1978-1983) of the (US) Ford Fairmont and finally, for a single year in 2006, on an undistinguished Lincoln which was almost immediately re-branded the MKZ.  There have been no Zephyrs since.

Lindsay Lohan resisting a zephyr's efforts to induce a wardrobe malfunction, MTV Movie Awards, Los Angeles, 2008.

Wimp

Wimp (pronounced whimp)

(1) A weak, ineffectual, timid person.

(2) In particle physics, a speculative particle: Weakly Interacting Massive Particle.

(3) In computer science, a summary of the elements of the graphical user interface (GUI): (Windows, Icons, Menus (or Mice), Pointing device (or Pull-down menus).  

1915-1920: In the sense of "someone weak or timid", it's an Americanism of uncertain origin although etymologists have concluded it almost certainly is a back-formation from whimper.  The earliest known use in print dates from 1920 but it seems not to have re-appeared until 1960 although wimpish persisted.  In the US, the meaning must by the 1930s have had some currency because two pop-culture characters used a form of nominative determinism (a relationship between an individual's name and their qualities, habits or vocation) in their names: J. Wellington Wimpy who was devious but cowardly and the quiet, ineffectual Wallace Wimple.  The idiomatic form "wimp-out" is a synonym of "chicken out" and often used as "wimped out".  The use by the US Marine Corps (USMC) as the abbreviation for "weak in mountain phase" was a way of expressing an opinion of those cadets who lacked the endurance or other qualities demanded by the "mountain phase" of training conducted in Dahlonega, Georgia.  The use in computer user interfaces is said to date from 1980 and have been coined by computer scientist Merzouga Wilberts, about whom little appears to be known.  The name "Merzouga Wilberts" may have started as some sort of in-joke which has come to be spread by the internet (a la the "inventor of the toaster") and the credit for the pioneering work on computer GUIs is usually afforded to the work done by Xerox Corporation's PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) during the 1970s.  Less well-known use as an acronym in computing includes Windows Interface Manipulation Program, Windows impersonator and (as WiMP), Windows Media Player.  The spelling whimp was probably an imperfect echoic for the time when use was predominately oral.  Wimp is a noun, verb & adjective, wimping & wimped are verbs, wimpish & wimpy are adjectives; the noun plural is wimps.

The biggest data

Based on the biggest data sets ever gathered, cosmologists use mathematics to calculate the actual parameters of the universe and the numbers which have emerged from the equations suggest some ninety percent of matter (or energy) has yet to be discovered, observed or defined.  One possibility is mechanical; the math is wrong.  The other explanation is the data is incomplete because or means of measuring or observing the cosmos is not able to see anything.  Scientists, as impressed as economists by the beauty of their mathematical models, prefer the later.  To account for all that’s “missing”, they speak of dark matter and dark energy and divide their energies between looking for the dark stuff and developing theories which might explain its nature.

Weakly interacting massive particles (wimps) emerged as one theory; a speculative particle thought wholly or partially to constitute what is commonly referred to as "dark matter" but which may be "dark energy".  The theory suggests a wimp interacts via gravity and any other forces and is inherently non-vanishing in its strength.  For the theory to work, wimps must date from the earliest moments of the Universe and be "cold" dark something because modelling of a universe full of cold dark matter produces a distribution of galaxies close to what we today observe.  However, a simulation with hot dark matter reduces a universe to a sort of cosmic sludge.

Wimps may be out there and if they're they're there, they're everywhere.  Enhanced images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The term "weakly interacting massive particles" was coined by US theoretical physicist Pierre Sikivie (b 1949) in 1983 but the underpinnings of the concept lie in the work of two US theoretical physicists Howard Georgi III (b 1947) & US theoretical physicist Sheldon Glashow (b 1932) who in 1974 published what is considered the first “grand unified theory”, a framework which could accommodate “everything” in the universe and thus explain its structure and formation (though not the origin).  Immensely influential, physicists, cosmologists & mathematicians have since been “plugging-in” data and theories to this now much-modified framework.  Georgi & Glashow had proposed entities which behaved like stable, weakly interacting massive particles as a possible explanation for dark matter but it was Sikivie who came up with the memorable term.  In the way these things happen in science, there are also now SWIMPs (super weakly interacting massive particle) and GIMPs (a class of SWIMP which interacts only gravitationally).

String theory: Lindsay Lohan in string bikini, Mykonos, Greece, August 2014.

In the mysterious world of particle physics, this stuff is understood by a relative few and even among them there are disagreements but the hypothetical WIMPS can be described as particles which interact through the weak nuclear force and gravity, but not through electromagnetic or strong nuclear forces, which is why they are considered “weakly interacting”.  Speculative theories in physics have become not uncommon because, although in the last hundred-odd years the understanding of the universe has been transformed, the “standard” model of the place contains anomalies and into these gaps, theories are plugged.  WIMPs however are like the various flavours of string theory in that while there’s a perfect internal logic, not only have the notions never been tested but it not possible to design a test.  Despite that, such is the mathematical elegance that some hypothetical entities and structures are so compelling that adherents cling to them with the driven intensity of seventeenth century Jesuit priests.  Still, the WIMP is an attractive candidate as at least part of the explanation for dark matter because, as described, they fulfil a number of what all in the field agree are critical criteria:

Stability & longevity: To exist as imagined, WIMPs must be very long-lived and inherently stable, enabling them persist throughout cosmic history.  That doesn’t contradict the notion of “nothing lasts forever” because need last only between time beginning and ending and it’s assumed both states either have happened (perhaps many times) or will happen.

Abundance: There is nothing to suggest any reason why WIMPS couldn’t have been produced in the earliest moments of the universe and thus been an inherent part of cosmic inflation, meaning they might exist in sufficient quantities to account for the observed amount of dark matter.

Strength in interaction with other stuff: The WIMP’s weak interactions would explain why they’ve yet to be detected, such is the rarity with which they interact with ordinary matter.

So, although wimps remain wholly hypothetical, assuming the math is correct, wimps do successfully fill the astrophysical gaps and there is a near consensus today among cosmologists that most of the mass in the Universe is dark.  That said, the answer remains, “don’t know”. 

An exquisite and a wimp: Baldur Benedikt von Schirach

Exquisite is used almost exclusively as an adjective, applied typically to objects or performances but it’s also a noun, albeit one always rare.  As a noun it was used to describe men who inhabited that grey area of being well dressed, well coiffured, well mannered and somewhat effeminate; it was a way of hinting at something without descending to the explicit.  PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) applied it thus in Sam the Sudden (1925) and historians Ann (1938-2021) & John Tusa (b 1936) in The Nuremberg Trial (1983) found no better word to apply to former Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, noting his all-white bedroom and propensity to pen poor poetry.  The companion word to describe a similar chap without of necessity the same hint of effeminacy is “aesthete”.  In The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992), Brigadier General Telford Taylor (1908–1998; lead US counsel at the Nuremberg Trial) wrote of von Schirath that: “at thirty-nine, was the youngest and, except perhaps for Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) and Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist), the weakest of the defendants.  If wimps had then been spoken of, Schirach would have been so styled.”  

Nazis at the Berghof: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), Martin Bormann (1900–1945), Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945), and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany, 1936.  Of much, all were guilty as sin but von Schirach would survive to die in his bed at 67.  

Convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT, 1945-1946) for crimes against humanity, von Schirach received a twenty year sentence, escaping conviction for his role as Nazi Party youth leader and head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), (though he was a good deal more guilty than Socrates in corrupting the minds (and perhaps more) of youth), the sentence imposed for his part in deporting Viennese Jews to the death camps while Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna.  Had subsequently discovered evidence against him been available at the trial, doubtlessly he’d have been hanged.

Interahamwe

Interahamwe (pronounced in-ter-ah-ham-way or in-tra-ham-way)

A Hutu paramilitary organization.

1992: A constructed proper noun, described variously as (1) borrowed from a Rwanda-Rundi (a dialect of Kinyarwanda) term or (2) a creation to describe the paramilitary formation.  Literal translation is "those who work together" and is thus a euphemism, one based on the link to the Interahamwe’s preferred choice of weapons: farm tools and the machete.  The construct is intera (from the verb gutera), (to work) + hamwe (together) which is related to rimwe (one).

After the genocide

Flag of the Interahamwe.

Although most associated with the Rwandan genocide on 1994, the Interahamwe began as the innocuous youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), then the Hutu ruling party of Rwanda.  However, like other some political youth movements (the Taliban in Pakistan; the Mandela United Football Club in South Africa et al), the circumstances of the times led to mission creep.

The Rwanda genocide had its origin in the Hutu-Tutsi civil war of 1990-1992.  As violence escalated, use of the word “Interahamwe” changed from a description of the youth group into a broad term applied to almost anyone engaged in the mass-murder of Tutsis, regardless of their age of membership of the MRND.  The translation as “those who work together” became a euphemism for “those who kill together”.  Sardonic forms are not rare in both military and paramilitary jargon; the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) category for suicide-bombers prematurely blown-up by their own malfunctioning devices is “work accident”.

Although their numbers are now much reduced, the Interahamwe retain the ambition to destabilize Rwanda and still operate from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the place to which they fled in late 1994.  From there and neighboring countries, along with other splinter groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), they conduct an insurgency against Rwanda although recent operations suggest they're as much concerned with the various criminal activities undertaken to ensure their survival as any political agenda.

Knave

 Knave (pronounced neyv)

(1) An unprincipled, untrustworthy, or dishonest person.  A rogue (archaic).

(2) A card (1 x hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades) in the standard fifty-two card pack of playing cards.  Also known as the Jack, the choice of word being sometimes used as an indicator either of class or geographical origin.

(3) A male servant of the lower ranks (archaic).

(4) A man of humble position (archaic).

Pre 1000: From the late Old English cnafa (boy, male child; male servant) from the Proto-Germanic knabon- (source also of the Old High German knabo (boy, youth, servant) and the German knabe (boy, lad)) and thought likely related to the Old English cnapa (boy, youth, servant), the Old Norse knapi (servant boy), the Dutch knaap (a youth, servant), the Middle High German knappe (a young squire) and the German Knappe (squire, shield-bearer).  The ultimate origin is a mystery, the most popular speculation being "stick, piece of wood".  Knave, knavess & knavery are nouns, knavish is an adjective and and knavishly is an adverb; the noun plural is knaves.

Cards and class

The sense of a "rogue or rascal" emerged circa 1200, thought probably reflective of a the (ever-present) societal tendency to equate the poor and “those of low birth" with poor character and propensity to crime, English poet & satirist Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in Essay on Man (1732-1734), capturing the feeling: “From the next row to that whence you took the knave, take the seven; from the next row take the five; from the next the queen.  To show mercy towards such a knave is an outrage to society!”  Despite that however, in Middle English didn’t lose the non-pejorative meaning, a knave-child (from the Scottish knave-bairn) being a male child.  The use in playing cards began in the 1560s, a knave being always the lowest scoring of the court cards.

Lindsay Lohan's Royal Routine (Ace down to the 10 in one suit) in The Parent Trap (1998).  The most desirable of the 40 different straight flush possibilities, under standard poker rules, the odds against holding a Royal Routine are 649,739:1 whereas those of any straight flush are a more accessible 72,192:1.  The difference in the math is there are fewer cards available for a Royal Routine to be assembled.

The use of Jack in cards came from the influence of French.  What the French called a valet, the English knew as a knave (in the sense of a young, male servant).  During the seventeenth century the French started to call such staff “Jack” apparently on the basis of it being a common name among the serving class; it was also the name used for the Knave of trumps at the game All Fours.  Although it appears widely to have been played by all classes, All Fours suffered, perhaps because it was a quick, trick-taking game, the reputation of being something enjoyed only by the lower classes and the choice of “knave” or “jack” came to be treated as a class-signifier, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) in Great Expectations (1860-1861) having Estella express scorn for Pip’s use of the latter.  The class-consciousness in English extends to the adoption of the German Bauer (farmer or peasant), as Bower, collectively to describe (usually when a pair of trumps (by color)) the Jacks in some games.  Knave survived in widespread use well into the twentieth century but US cultural influence has rendered it now mostly obsolete except for a few games where it persists and possibly among those who prefer a dish of tea to a cup.

In packs of cards, Knave (marked Kn) was used until Jack (J) became entrenched after 1864 when, US card-maker Samuel Hart published a deck using J instead of Kn to designate the knave to avoid confusion with the visually similar King (marked K).  Historically, in some southern Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks, there were androgynous knaves sometimes referred to as maids.  This tradition survives only in the Sicilian Tarot deck where the knaves are unambiguously female and always known as maids.

Tarot

The Jack of Hearts signifies an honest young man in love. He is attractive, kind and generous, the card often announcing a new and intimate friendship. As a lover, the Jack of Hearts is trustworthy, even when absent he will be faithful.  Committed and sincere, he's a most eligible bachelor.

The Jack of Spades card indicates a young man of dark complexion, cunning and devious.  Intelligent, brilliant even, but cynical and exploitative, he will use you and walk away.  The Jack of spades is a sign you will face adversity from a ruthless person; he cannot be trusted.

The Jack of Diamonds represents the Messenger, symbolising also an unfaithful assistant or dishonest employee. The Jack of diamonds is a young man who comes and goes, taking more than is permitted and although quick-witted and cunning, is not trustworthy.

The Jack of clubs means a good friend.  Although flirtatious, he is a sincere, skilful and brave young man.  For a woman, this card represents her fiancé but for a man, it means a more successful and richer rival. This card also signifies education and intelligence.