Alternate & Alternative

Alternate (pronounced awl-ter-neyt, or al-ter-neyt (adjective) or awl-ter-nit (noun).

(1) Repeatedly and regularly to interchange with one another in time or place; rotate (usually followed by with).

(2) To change back and forth between conditions, states, actions etc.

(3) To perform or do in succession or one after another.

(4) Being in a constant state of succession or rotation; interchanged repeatedly one for another.

(5) Reciprocal; mutual.

(6) Constituting an alternative (a historic sense in English, revived in US use (and not without controversy).

(7) In botany, placed singly at different heights on the axis, on each side in succession, or at definite angular distances from one another, as leaves; opposite to the intervals between other organs (petals alternate with sepals).

(8) In electric current, voltage etc, to reverse direction or sign at regular intervals, usually sinusoidally ((having the shape or characteristics of a sine wave)), the instantaneous value varying continuously.

(9) In mathematics, designating the members in a series, which regularly intervene between the members of another series, as the odd or even numbers of the numerals; every other; every second (eg 2, 4, 6, 8).

1505-1515: From the Latin alternō (take turns), from alternus (one after another, by turns), the construct being alter (other) + -rnus (a suffix forming adjective from the earlier -r̥inos from -(o)sinos, from -nus or from some -r- or -s- stem + -nus; metanalysis of this suffix led to its free use).  In classical Latin, alternātus was the past participle of alternāre.  Derived forms are the adverbs alternately & alternatingly, the noun alternateness and the adjective nonalternating.

Alternative (pronounced awl-tur-nuh-tiv, al-tur-nuh-tiv)

(1) A choice limited to one of two or more possibilities, as of things, propositions, or courses of action, the selection of which precludes any other possibility.

(2) One of the things, propositions, or courses of action that can be chosen.

(3) A possible or remaining course or choice.

(4) Affording a choice of two or more things, propositions, or courses of action (of two things, propositions, or courses) mutually exclusive so that if one is chosen the other must be rejected.

(5) Employing or following non-traditional or unconventional ideas, methods etc.; existing outside the establishment.

(6) In logic (of a proposition) asserting two or more choices, at least one of which is true.

1580–1590: The construct was alternat(e) + -ive (an adjective suffix signifying relating or belonging to).  The –ive suffix is from the Anglo-Norman -if (feminine -ive), from Latin -ivus. Until the fourteenth century all Middle English loanwords from Anglo-Norman ended in -if (compare actif, natif, sensitif, pensif etc) and, under the influence of literary Neolatin, both languages introduced the form -ive.  Those forms not yet replaced were subsequently changed to end in -y (compare hasty, from hastif, jolly, from jolif etc.).  Like the Latin suffix -io (genitive -ionis), Latin suffix -ivus is appended to the perfect passive participle to form an adjective of action.  Alternative was from the Middle French alternatif, from the Medieval Latin alternātīvus (alternating), from the participle stem of Latin alternō (interchange, alternate). Derived forms are the adverb alternatively, the nouns alternativeness & alternativity, the adjective quasi-alternative and the adverb quasi-alternatively.

Alternative Facts

The phrase “alternative facts” aroused interest when used in 2017 by Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) campaign strategist and counselor, Kellyanne Conway (b 1967; senior counselor to the president, 2017-2020).  Ms Conway used the words during a Meet the Press interview to describe the use of statistics quoted by Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director, 2017), numbers which, prima facie, seemed dubious.  The matter about which Spicer spoke was not a great affair of church or state; it was squabble about which president attracted the greater live audience to his inauguration, Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2009 or Donald Trump in 2017.  All available evidence appeared to suggest Obama’s numbers were up to twice those of Trump and if Spicer hadn’t brought it up probably nobody else would have mentioned it but for Trump, who borrowed for his campaign so many of the techniques he’d learned from his career in reality television, viewer numbers were professional life and death.

Kellyanne Conway in hoodie: Miss January, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's annual Conservative Women Calendar (2009).

Ms Conway sought later to clarify “alternative facts” by defining the phrase as "additional facts and alternative information" which, when deconstructed, probably did add a layer of nuance but really didn’t help.  Journalists, not a crew always entirely truthful, decided to help and called the phrase "Orwellian", provoking a spike on the search engines as folk sought out "doublethink" and "newspeak"; sales of George Orwell’s (1903–1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) said overnight to have risen several-dozen fold.  The relationship between the press and the Trump White House was never likely to be friendly but “alternative facts” meant things started badly almost from day one.  Noting journalists rarely seemed to show great energy in pursuing crooked Hillary Clinton’s evasiveness and casual relationship with truthfulness, the administration felt unfairly picked-upon.  Journalists thought “alternatives facts” was just too blatant, beyond spin and actually an expression of contempt; they knew politicians were going to lie but the lack of subtlety was just insulting.  Both sides made good cases.

Watching with amused detachment were those with as little trust in what was being reported as in those being reported.  Some observed that “alternative facts” in political discourse was little different from the arguments offered in court by prosecution and defense; law was a matter for the judge but questions of fact were for the jury and for centuries juries had been choosing between alternative facts.  This was not novel and in an era where the conduct of politics was as adversarial as what’s done in any courtroom, nor did it seem difficult.  It’s never been certain just who first said “the truth is so precious it deserves an escort of lies” but it sits well with many.

The difference

Sometimes expressed is the view that in the days before linguistic promiscuity overtook the land, "alternate" and "alternative" enjoyed quite distinct meanings.  If two things were described as alternate, it meant one came after another in a repetitive pattern; if red switches to black, then red, then black etc, red & black are said to be alternating.  If one has the choice between red & black, the two colors are alternatives.  If one declines coffee, one might be offered tea as an alternative. Thus alternate is where one comes after another and alternative is where one is the option opposed to the other.  That is for many the preferred position but in the sixteenth century the alternative did enjoy the sense pendants insist belongs properly only to alternate so there's history but in English, citing precedents from the sixteenth century to support the revival of some archaic use rarely impresses and the blurring of any distinction is just how the language evolves.  In the US alternate & alternative seem now widely accepted as synonyms and while that's perhaps unfortunate, confusion will presumably be rare because the meaning will usually be clear from the context in which the words appear.

The battle may be lost: The international reach of US English means alternate & alternative may in decades to come be universally regarded as synonyms.  

Beyond US shores, the process has already begun.  Both belong to a class of words which sound similar and have a not-unrelated meaning (like enormous and enormity) and the trend towards interchangeability in use appears usually to favor that which is phonetically preferred so alternate is more often heard.  It’s common now in much of the English-speaking world to hear an opposition leader described as the alternate rather than alternative prime minister, something which should be said only when describing alternating premierships such as those of Gladstone and Disraeli.  Where alternate & alternative went in the US the world may be destined to follow: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definitely blames the Americans but they would say that wouldn't they?

Alternating prime-ministers, each an alternative.  William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) (left) and Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, later First Earl of Beaconsfield; prime-minister Feb-Dec 1868 & 1874-1880) (right).

Peradventure

Peradventure (pronounced pur-uhd-ven-cher (U) or per-add-ven-chur (non-U)

(1) Chance, doubt or uncertainty (rare & archaic).

(2) Surmise (obsolete).

(3) It may be; perchance or maybe; possibly; perhaps (a definitely obsolete adverb).

1250–1300: From the Middle English peraventure, & per aventure, from Old French par aventure, the spelling in English modified in the seventeenth century to emulate Latin, providing a gloss of classical respectability.  The earliest form (circa 1300) was per aventure, paradventure adopted in the fourteenth and peradventure (sometimes in the old form as peraduenture) the final change.  Adventure evolved from the Middle English aventure, aunter & anter, from the Old French aventure, from the Late Latin adventurus, from the Latin advenire & adventum (to arrive), which in the Romance languages took the sense of "to happen, befall".  Aventure was from the Vulgar Latin adventura, from the Late Latin adventurus, from the Classical Latin adventus, the construct being adveniō (arrive) +‎ -tus (the action noun–forming suffix).  Peraventure is a noun & adverb, the noun plural is peradventures.

Peradventure in the sense of “chance, doubt or uncertainty” is both rare and archaic, a combination characterizing those words Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) listed as archaisms, words he suggested were “…dangerous except in the hands of an experienced writer who can trust his sense of congruity”, adding that the use of archaisms was “…more likely to irritate the reader than to please…” and the word does seem to appear when people seek either (1) variety, (2) a flourish or (3) a display of their “pride of knowledge”, one of the many linguistic habits of Henry Fowler damned.  Peradventure means “chance, doubt or uncertainty” (the other meanings wholly obsolete) and is used in the forms “beyond peradventure” & “beyond a peradventure”, the more usual ways of expressing the sentiment including “beyond question” & “without doubt”. 

The reason it should be avoided in normal discourse is that unlike some deliberate archaisms, (such as “afforce” which is sufficiently close in construction and meaning to “reinforce”), there is nothing in the word which would allow a interlocutor to pick up the meaning.  That’s because the element “adventure” id derived from a linguistic fork which evolved into extinction, the aventure in the Old French per aventure coming from the adventura, a future form of the verb advenire (to happen (ie something which may occur).  However by the time it entered the Old French, variously it could mean destiny or fate, a chance event, an accident, fortune or luck and it was the sense of “a chance or uncertain event” that attached to the word when it was adopted in the Middle English.  That eventually produced peradventure but “adventure” also came to be used in English as an event with some risk of danger or loss, that sense persisting in law (In admiralty law, marine insurers use adventure in the technical sense of ”the period during which insured goods are at risk” and there’s the technical term “medical misadventure”, used when doctors murder their patients).  The sense thus shifted from “a chance event” to “a hazardous undertaking or audacious exploit to the modern form” (which still exists in law) before assuming the modern meaning: “a novel or exciting experience”.  Thus, it’s unlikely to occur to most that “peradventure” means what it does.

It can of course be used among word nerds and others where a pride of knowledge is something admired.  John Parker (1885–1958), the US alternate judge sitting on the International Military Tribunal trying the Nazi leadership (the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946)), used the phrase “…conspiracy has been proved beyond peradventure” when resisting the objection from the French judges that the charge of “criminal conspiracy” (Count One: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War) was not sustainable because it was unknown in international or continental law, too vague and a conspiracy is anyway absorbed by the crime one committed.  It was an interesting discussion which didn’t convince the French although, in the circumstances, they were inclined to compromise… a little.  The primary US judge, Francis Biddle (1886–1968), noted on hearing “peradventure” that Judge Parker “liked such old-fashioned phrases, which, when he used them, sounded like the crack of a long whip, tearing other arguments to shreds”.  He might have added Parker came from the North Carolina bar, where old-fashioned phrases are perhaps more often heard.

It does also enjoy that ultimate imprimatur of authenticity, as an adverb appearing seventeen times in the plays of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), two examples being:

Henry V, Act IV, Scene I.

Some, peradventure, have on them the guilt of peradventure premeditated and contriued Murther; some, of beguiling Virgins with the broken Seales of Periurie; some, making the Warres their Bulwarke, that haue before gored the gentle Bosome of Peace with Pillage and Robberie.

Coriolanus Act II, Scene I.

…peraduenture some of the best of 'em were hereditarie hangmen.  Godden to your Worships, more of your conuersation would infect my Braine, being the Heardsmen of the Beastly Plebeans.  I will be bold to take my leaue of you.

Trend of use of peradventure, tracked by the Collins English Dictionary.

The trend however, the odd eighteenth century spike notwithstanding, is down, one of the few supporting gestures in recent years (2015) by UK Labor MP Harriet Harman (b 1950) and such was the reaction from friend and foe that, beyond peradventure, she’s unlikely to use it again.

Hood

Hood (pronounced hood)

(1) A soft or flexible covering for the head and neck, either separate or attached to a cloak, coat and similar garments.

(2) Something resembling or suggestive of such a covering (especially in shape) and used in botany to describe certain petals or sepals.

(3) In North America and other places subject to that linguistic influence, the (usually) hinged, movable part of an automobile body covering the engine (the bonnet in the UK and most of the old British Empire).  Despite geographical spread, the phrase “under the hood” is now close to universal, referring to (1) the engine of an automobile & (2) by extension, the inner workings or technical aspects of anything (a computer’s specifications etc).

(4) In the UK and most of the old British Empire, the roof of a carriage or automobile, able to be lowered or removed (ie on a convertible, cabriolet, roadster, drophead coupé (DHC) et al).  In North America and other places subject to that linguistic influence such things tend variously to be called soft-tops or convertible tops.

(5) A metal cover or canopy for a stove, fitted usually with a ventilation system (a flue or extractor fan).

(6) In falconry, a cover for the entire head of a hawk or other bird, used when not in pursuit of game.

(7) On academic gowns, judicial robes etc, an ornamental ruffle or fold on the back of the shoulders (in ecclesiastical garments, and in cults such as the Freemasons, also used as a mark of one’s place in the hierarchy).

(8) In nautical use, as hooding ends, one of the endmost planks (or, one of the ends of the planks) in a ship’s bottom at bow or stern which fits into the stem and sternpost rabbets.  When fitted into a rabbet, these resemble a hood (covering).

(9) In zoology, a crest or band of color on the head of certain birds and other animals (such as the fold of skin on the head of a cobra, that covers or appears to cover the head or some similar part).

(10) In anatomy (the human hand), over the extensor digitorum, an expansion of the extensor tendon over the metacarpophalangeal joint (the extensor hood (dorsal hood or lateral hood).

(11) In colloquial use in palaeontology, the osseous or cartilaginous marginal extension behind the back of many dinosaurs (also known as the “frill”).

(12) As the suffix –hood, a native English suffix denoting state, condition, character, nature, etc, or a body of persons of a particular character or class, formerly used in the formation of nouns: childhood; likelihood; knighthood; priesthood and of lad appended as required (Twitterhood, Instahood etc, subsets of Twitterverse & Instaverse respectively).

(13) In slang, a clipping of hoodlum.

(14) In slang, a clipping of neighborhood, especially an urban neighborhood inhabited predominantly by African Americans of low socioeconomic status (a part of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and adopted also by LatinX) although use in these communities does now transcend economic status.

(15) To furnish with or fit a hood; to cover with or as if with a hood.

(16) In medieval armor, a range of protective cloakings or coverings

Pre 900: From the Middle English hode, hod, hude, hudde & hoode (hoodes apparently the most common plural), from the Old English hōd, from the Proto-Germanic hōdaz, (related to the Old High German huot (hat), the Middle Dutch hoet and the Latin cassis helmet) and cognate with the Saterland Frisian Houd, the Old Frisian hōde, the West Frisian & Dutch hoed, the Proto-Iranian xawdaH (hat), the German Low German Hood and the German Hut (hat).  The Old English hād was cognate with German –heit and was a special use used to convey qualities such as order, quality, rank (the sense surviving academic, judicial & ecclesiastical garments).  The ultimate source is uncertain but most etymologists seem to support the primitive Indo-European kad & kadh (to cover).  Hood is modified as required (chemical hood, clitoral hood, un-hood, de-hood, fume hood, hood-shy, hood unit, hoodwink, range hood, riding hood etc) and something thought hood-shaped is sometimes described as cuculliform.  Hood is a noun & verb, hooded & hooding are verbs, hoodless hoodesque & hoodlike are adjectives; the noun plural is hoods.

Hooded: Lindsay Lohan in hoodie, JFK Airport, New York City, NYC April 2013. The bag is a Goyard Saint Louis Tote (coated canvas in black).

Hood as clipping of hoodlum (gangster, thug, criminal etc) dates from the late 1920s and would influence the later use of “hoodie” as a slur to refer to those wearing the garment of the same name, the inference being it was worn with nefarious intent (concealing identity, hiding from CCTV etc.  Hood as a clipping of neighborhood (originally especially an urban (inner-city) neighborhood inhabited predominantly by African Americans of low socio-economic status) dates from circa 1965 and became part of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and was adopted also by LatinX) although use in all communities does now transcend economic status.  It was an alternative to ghetto (a word with a very different tradition) and encapsulated both the negative (crime, violence, poverty) & positive (group identity, sense of community) aspects of the low-income inner city experience.  Although a part of AAVE, it never formed part of Ebonics because its meaning was obvious and, to an extent, integrated into general US vernacular English.  The phrase “all good in the hood” is an example of the use of the clipping.

Blu-Ray & DVD package art for Red Riding Hood (2006).  In US use, "alternate" seems to have been accepted as a synonym for "alternative".  Few seem to mind.

The verb hood in the sense of “to put a hood” & “to furnish with a hood” on dates from circa 1400 while although hooded & hooding aren’t attested until decades later, it’s possible the use emerged at much the same time.  The Old English hod was typically "a soft covering for the head" which extended usually over the back of the neck but only in some cases did it (permanently or ad-hoc) attach to some other garment.  The modern spelling emerged early in the fifteenth century and indicated a “long vowel” although that pronunciation is long extinct.  The word was picked up in medicine, botany & zoology in the seventeenth century while the use to describe the “foldable or removable covers on a carriage which protects the occupants from the elements” was documented since 1826 and that was used in a similar context by the manufacturers of prams and baby-carriages by at least 1866.  The meaning “hinged cover for an automobile engine” was in use in the US by 1905 while across the Atlantic, the British stuck to “bonnet”.  The fairy tale (some read it as a cautionary tale) Little Red Riding Hood (1729) was a translation of Charles Perrault's (1628-1703) Petit Chaperon Rouge which appeared in his book Contes du Temps Passé (Stories or Tales from Past Times (1697)).

The suffix -hood (a word-forming element meaning “state or condition of being”) was an evolution of the Old English -had (condition, quality, position) which was used to construct forms such as cildhad (childhood), preosthad (priesthood) & werhad (manhood); it was cognate with German –heit & -keit, the Dutch -heid, the Old Frisian & Old Saxon -hed, all from the Proto-Germanic haidus (manner, quality (literally “bright appearance”, from the primitive Indo-European skai & kai- (bright, shining) which was cognate with the Sanskrit ketu (brightness, appearance).  It was originally a free-standing word but in Modern English survives only in this suffix.

HMS Hood in March 1924.  The last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy, it was 860 feet (262 metres) in length, displaced 47,000 tons and had a main armament of eight 15 inch (380 mm) guns.

HMS Hood (1918-1941) was a Royal Navy battlecruiser named after Admiral Samuel Hood, first Viscount (1724–1816), one of five admirals the family would provide.  Although the Battle of Jutland (1916) had exposed the inherent limitations of the battlecruiser concept and the particular flaws in the British designs, the building of the Hood anyway continued and the revisions made in the light of the Jutland experience in some way exacerbated the ship’s problems; weight was added without fully affording the additional protection required.  The Admiralty was aware of this and of the four battlecruisers of her class planned, Hood was the only one completed as the Navy embarked on a re-design but the naval disarmament agreed between the major powers in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) meant none were built (indeed no navy would launch a new battlecruiser until the 1980s and even then the notion was thought strange) and for almost two decades Hood remained the largest warship in the world.

Naval architecture, fire control ballistics and aviation had however moved on in those years and although the biggest warship afloat (the “Mighty Hood” in the public imagination), Hood was outmoded but as late as the early 1930s this mattered little because the prospect of war between the big powers seemed not only remote but absurd.  Hood is still thought one of the most elegant warships ever and it spent those years touring the empire and other foreign ports, her fine lines and apparent might impressing many although the Admiralty was well aware the days of Pax Britannica were over.  Much comment has been made about the design flaw which resulted in the Hood sinking in minutes after a shell from the German battleship Bismarck, fired from a range of some ten miles (16,000 m), penetrated the deck (some modern analysts contest this because of technical details relating to the angle of fire available to the German gunners), causing the magazine to explode, essentially splitting the hull in two.  In fairness to the Kriegsmarine (the German navy), it was a good shot but at that range, it was also lucky, that essential element in many a battle.

In structural linguistics, the term “Americanisms” is used to describe several sub-sets of innovations in English attributed to those (and their descendents) who settled in North America.  They include (1) spellings (color vs colour), most of which make more sense than the originals, (2) simplification of use (check used for cheque as well as its other meanings), (3) coinings (sockdolager (decisive blow or remark), a nineteenth century American original of contested origin) and (4) alternatives (suspenders vs braces).  Hood was one word where used differed in the US.  In the UK, the hood was the (traditionally leather but latterly a variety of fabrics) folding top which began life on horse-drawn carriages and later migrated to cars which eventually were, inter alia, called cabriolets, drophead coupés or roadsters.  In the US the same coachwork was used but there the folding tops came to be called “soft tops”, one reason being the hood was the (usually) hinged panel which covered the engine.  In the UK, that was called a bonnet (from the Middle English bonet, from the Middle French bonet (which endures as the Modern French bonnet), from the Old French bonet (material from which hats are made), from the Frankish bunni (that which is bound), from the Proto-Germanic bundiją (bundle), from the primitive Indo-European bend- (to tie).  The origins of the use of bonnet and hood as engine coverings were essentially the same: the words were in the nineteenth century both used on both sides of the Atlantic to describe cowls or coverings which protected machinery from the elements, impacts etc (the idea based on the familiar garments) and it was only chance that one use prevailed in one place and one in the other.  There were other differences too: what the British called the boot the Americans said was the trunk which on the early automobiles, like many of the stage coaches they replaced, indeed it was.

Unhinged: Not all hoods were hinged.  In 1969, some Plymouth Road Runners (left) and Dodge Super Bees (right) could be ordered with a lightweight, fibreglass hood held in place by four locking pins.  Known as the "lift-off hood", it need two conveniently to remove the thing so it wasn't the most practical option Detroit ever offered but to the target market, it was very cool.

Parsec

Parsec (pronounced pahr-sek)

A unit of astronomical length, based on the distance from Earth at which a star would have a parallax of one second of arc which is equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun or 3.26 light-years.  Its lineal equivalent is about 19.1 trillion miles (30.8 trillion km).

1913: The construct was par + sec, derived from parallax + second.  Parallax is from the Middle French parallaxe, from the Ancient Greek παράλλαξις (parállaxis) (alteration) from παραλλάσσω (parallássō) (to cause to alternate) from ἀλλάσσω (allássō) (to alter) from ἄλλος (állos) (other).  Second, in the sense of time, is from the Middle English secunde & seconde, borrowed from the Old French seconde, from the Medieval Latin secunda, short for secunda pars minuta (second diminished part (of the hour)). Parsec is a noun; the noun plural is parsecs.

Distance in space

The parsec (pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System.  A parsec is defined as the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arc second, which corresponds to 648000 astronomical units.  The nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) from the Sun.

The parsec unit appears first to have been suggested in 1913 by the English astronomer Professor Herbert Hall Turner (1861-1930).  It was invented to permit calculations of astronomical distances using only raw observational data and is thus the default unit of measure in astronomy and astrophysics although the more-easily understood light-year is preferred by lay-persons.  While useful to describe the comparatively short distances within the Milky Way, multiples of parsecs are needed to map the wider universe including kiloparsecs (kpc) for objects immediately beyond the Milky Way and megaparsecs (Mpc) for more distant galaxies.  Gigaparsecs (Gpc) are used to measure the quasars and galaxies which exist at the extreme edge of the known universe; the particle horizon (the boundary of the observable universe) has a radius of about 14.0 Gpc (46 billion light-years).

Although in use for more than a century, the parsec wasn’t formally defined until August 2015 when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which, as part of the definition of a standardized absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scale, noted the existing explicit definition of the parsec as exactly 648000 astronomical units, or approximately 3.08567758149137×10¹⁶ metres.

Hubble telescope image of star-forming region in the Carina Nebula.  As photographed, the gas and dust cluster is about .889 of a parsec (2.9 light-years) tall.

Envelope

Envelope (pronounced on-vuh-lohp or en-vee-lope (non-U))

(1) A flat paper container, usually having a gummed flap or other means of closure and used to enclose small, flat items (especially letters) for mailing. 

(2) Something that envelops; a wrapper, integument, or surrounding cover.

(3) In biology, a surrounding or enclosing structure, as a corolla or an outer membrane.

(4) In geometry, a mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.

(5) In the radio transmissions of a modulated carrier wave, a curve connecting the peaks of a graph of the instantaneous value of the electric or magnetic component of the carrier wave as a function of time.

(6) The fabric structure enclosing the gasbag of an aerostat or the gasbag itself.

(7) As an idiom, in pushing the envelope, to stretch established limits, as in technological advance or social innovation.

(8) In music, the shape of a sound which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.

(9) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents, the best known example of which is the blind carbon-copy (bcc) in eMail.

(10) In astronomy, the nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.

(11) In civil engineering, an earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.

(12) In engineering and design, the set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.

(13) In aviation (of dirigibles), a bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.

(14) In electronics, a curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.

(15) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.

(6) In music, the shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler. 

1705: From the Middle French and Old French envoluper, the construct being en- (from the Old French en-, from the Latin in-, a prefixation of in (in, into)) +‎ voluper (to wrap, wrap up).  In Italian, the derivation was viluppare, from the Old Italian alternate goluppare (to wrap) from the Vulgar Latin vlopp (to rap).  The Proto-Germanic wrappaną and wlappaną (to wrap, roll up, turn, wind) came from the primitive werb (to turn, bend), akin to the Middle English wlappen (to wrap, fold) and ultimately the Modern English lap (to wrap, involve, fold).  The modern wrap is derived from the Middle English wrappen (to wrap), the dialectal Danish vravle (to wind, twist), the Middle Low German wrempen (to wrinkle, distort) and the Old English wearp (warp).  The French enveloppe, is a derivative back-formation of envelopper (to envelop).  Envelope is a noun; the noun plural is envelopes.

Pushing the envelope

The phrase pushing the envelope is from the lingo of test pilots, whose job is among the most dangerous of their profession.  It entered general usage following the publication of the late Tom Wolfe’s (1930-2018) book about test pilots and the early US space program, The Right Stuff (1979).  The envelope in the phrase is a mathematical construct, what is called the "flight envelope" of a given aircraft: combinations of speed, altitude, range and stress that are considered the limits of an airframe’s capabilities and so-named because usually it's graphically represented in the shape of the familiar DL envelope.  Within the envelope formed by these parameters, the airframe is structurally sound; beyond those limits, perhaps not and that’s what test pilots do, verify the safety of the aircraft within those limits and pinpoint possible points of failure if the envelope is pushed too far.  Although big, fast computers now make the parameters of the envelope more predictable and the job of the test pilot less dangerous, structural failures during test flights continue to happen.

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Few airframes have operated within such a tight envelope as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, introduced into service in 1956 as a single-engine, supersonic interceptor, built for the United States Air Force (USAF) but used by many nations.  Best thought of as the manned missile by which it was referred to by many, it had a radical wing design, a very small, straight, mid-mounted trapezoidal.   After the German research undertaken during World War II (1939-1945) became available, most jet fighters had used either swept or delta-wings, a compromise between speed, lift, maneuverability and internal space for fuel and equipment.  Lockheed sophisticated wind-tunnels and primitive computers however determined the optimal shape for high-speed supersonic flight was small, straight and trapezoidal.  An extraordinary achievement of manufacture as well as design, the wing was so thin and sharp it was a cut-hazard for ground crews and protective guards were fitted during maintenance.

The F-104 was the first combat aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2 flight, its speed and climb performance impressive even by today’s standards.  However, there was a price to be paid, take-off, stall and landing speeds were high as was the turn radius, combat pilots referring to low-speed turns as “banking with intent to turn".

The flight envelope, note the DL envelope shape.

The safety record was infamously bad.  Of the 916 delivered to the West-German (FRG) Air Force, 262 crashed, gaining it the nickname witwenmacher (widow maker) and some of those grieving widows sued Lockheed, receiving judgment in their favor.  In USAF service, the write-off rate was 30.63 accidents per 100,000 flight hours.  By comparison, the rate for the Convair F-102 Dagger was 14.2 and for the North American F-100 Sabre, 16.25.  The F-104's two nicknames, "manned missile" and "widow maker" may be thought of as cause and effect.

Personalised Lindsay Lohan Celebrity Birthday Card on premium quality satin cardstock @ Stg£3.95 (including envelope).

Martini

Martini (pronounced mahr-tee-nee)

A cocktail made with gin or vodka and dry vermouth, usually served with a green olive (the twist of lemon a more recent alternative).

1885-1890:  Origin disputed; it may be an alteration of Martinez (an earlier alternate name of the drink) but is probably by association with the vermouth manufacturer Martini, Sola & Co. (later Martini & Rossi). Another theory holds it’s a corruption of Martinez, California, town where the drink was said to have originated.  Others claim it was first mixed in New York but then NYC claims lots of things happened there first.

CCTV image capture, New York City, 24 July 2012.  Noted Martini aficionado Lindsay Lohan enjoys a Vodka Martini.

By 1922 the Martini had assumed its modern, recognizable form: London dry gin and dry vermouth in a ratio 2:1, stirred in a mixing glass with ice cubes, sometimes with addition aromatic bitters, then strained into a chilled cocktail glass.  Green olives were the expected garnish by the onset of World War II with a twist of lemon peel often seen by the 1950s.  From the 1930s on, the amount of vermouth steadily dropped as the cult of the dry prevailed.  Today, a typical dry Martini is made with a ration between 6:1 and 12:1.  Some were more extreme, Noël Coward (1899–1973) suggesting filling a glass with gin, then lifting it in the general direction of the vermouth factories in Italy.  Ian Fleming (1908–1964) had James Bond follow Harry Craddock’s shaken, not stirred directive from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) but contemporaries, Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) and Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945; US president 1933-1945), neither a stranger to a Martini, both recommended stirring although chemists observe the concept of “bruising the gin” has no basis in science.  The Vodka Martini came later.  It was first noted in the 1950s when known as the Kangaroo Cocktail, a hint at its disreputable origins but normally reliable sources commend the Blueberry Vodka Martini and purists concede this is the only Martini to benefit from using sweet vermouth.  In 1966, the American Standards Association (ASA) released K100.1-1966, "Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis," a humorous account of how to make a "standard" dry Martini. The latest revision of this document, K100.1-1974, was published by American National Standards Institute (ANSI).  Flippant they may have been but they’re good guides to the classic method.

Compare & contrast: A classic Gin Martini (left) and a Stoli Blueberry Vodka Martini (right)

Stoli Blueberry Vodka Martini Recipe

Ingredients

60 ml (2 oz) Stoli Blueberi Vodka
60 ml (2 oz) sweet vermouth
15 ml (½ oz) lemon Juice
3-5 fresh blueberries
Ice Cubes

Instructions

(1) Pour Stioli Blueberi Vodka, sweet vermouth and lemon juice into cocktail shaker and middle blueberries.
(2) Add ice cubes until shaker is two-thirds full.
(3) Shake thoroughly until mixture is icy.
(4) Strain and pour into chilled martini glasses.
(5) Skew blueberries with cocktail pick, garnish martini and serve.
(6) Add a little blueberry juice to lend a bluish tincture (optinal).

Martini Racing, the Porsche 917 and the Pink Pig

Porsche 917LH, Le Mans, 1970.

Unlike some teams which maintained a standard livery, Martini Racing sometimes fielded other designs.  One noted departure was the “hippie” or “psychedelic” color scheme applied to the Porsche 917LH (Langheck (Longtail)) which placed second at Le Mans in 1970 and proved so popular that the factory received requests from race organizers requesting it be entered.  Weeks later, across the Atlantic, the organizers of the Watkins Glen Six Hours wanted their own ‘hippie’ 917 but with the car in Stuttgart, Martini Racing took over another team’s car and raced in ‘hippie’ colors to ninth place on one day and sixth the next.

Porsche 917K, 1970.

Subsequently the scheme was reprised in another, even more lurid combination of yellow & red in another psychedelic design, this time to match the corporate colors of Shell, the teams sponsor.  This remains the only surviving psychedelic car, the factory’s Langheck 917 being converted to 1971 specifications and painted in Gulf Oil’s livery for Le Mans.  Like many other used 917s, subsequently it was scrapped by an unsentimental Porsche management.

Porsche 917-20, 1971.

Although it raced only once, the “Pink Pig” (917-20) remains one of the best remembered 917s.  In the never-ending quest to find the optimal compromise between the down-force needed to adhere to the road and a low-drag profile to increase speed, a collaboration between Porsche and France's Société d’Etudes et de Réalisations Automobiles (SERA, the Society for the Study of Automotive Achievement) was formed to explore a design combine the slipperiness of the 917-LH with the stability of the 917-K.  Porsche actually had their internal styling staff work on the concept at the same time, the project being something of a Franco-German contest.  The German work produced something streamlined & futuristic with fully enclosed wheels and a split rear wing but despite the promise, the French design was preferred.  The reasons for this have never been clarified but there may have been concerns the in-house effort was too radical a departure from what had been homologated on the basis of an earlier inspection and that getting such a different shape through scrutineering, claiming it still an “evolution” of the original 917, might have been a stretch.  No such problems confronted the French design; SERA's Monsieur Charles Deutsch (1911-1980) was Le Mans race director.  On the day, the SERA 917 passed inspection without comment.

Porsche 917-20, Le Mans, 1971.

At 87 versus 78 inches (2.2 vs 2.0 m), the SERA car much wider than a standard 917K, the additional width shaped to minimize air flow disruption across the wheel openings.  The nose was shorter, as was the tail which used a deeper concave than the “fin” tail the factory had added in 1971.  Whatever the aerodynamic gains, compared to the lean, purposeful 917-K, it looked fat, stubby and vaguely porcine; back in Stuttgart, the Germans, never happy about losing to the French, dubbed it "the pig".  Initially unconvincing in testing, the design responded to a few tweaks, the factory content to enter it in a three hour event where it dominated until sidelined by electrical gremlins.  Returned to the wind tunnel, the results were inconclusive although suggesting it wasn't significantly different from a 917K and suffered from a higher drag than the 917-LH.  It was an indication of what the engineers had long suspected: the 917K's shape was about ideal.

Porsche 917-20, Le Mans, 1971.

For the 1971 Le Mans race, the artist responsible for the psychedelia of 1970 applied the butcher’s chart lines to the body which had been painted pink.  In the practice and qualifying sessions, the Pig ran in pink with the dotted lines but not yet the decals naming the cuts; those, in a font called Pretoria, being applied just before the race and atop each front fender was a white pig-shaped decal announcing: Trüfel Jäger von Zuffenhausen (the truffel hunter from Zuffenhausen); the Pink Pig had arrived.  Corpulent or not, in practice, it qualified a creditable seventh, two seconds slower than the 917-K that ultimately won and, in the race, ran well, running as high as third but a crash ended things.  Still in the butcher's shop livery, it's now on display in the Porsche museum.

Porsche 917-20, 1971.

Scuttlebutt has always surrounded the Pink Pig.  It's said the decals with the names of the cuts of pork and bacon were applied furtively, in the early morning of the race, just to avoid anyone asking they be removed.  Unlike the two other factory Porsches entered under the Martini banner, the Pink Pig carried no Martini decals, the rumor being that the Martini board refused to associate the brand with the thing.  Finally, although never confirmed by anyone, it's long been assumed the livery was created, not with any sense of levity but as a spiteful swipe at SERA although it may have been something light-hearted, nobody ever having proved Germans have no sense of humor.

Porsche 917KH, 1971.

Using the 917KH (Kurz (Short)), the factory team in 1970 gained Porsche its first outright victory in the Le Mans twenty-four classic.  In the following year's race, Martini Racing won using a 917KH with a similar specification, running this time in the standard corporate livery.  The refinements to the 917K's aerodynamic properties had tamed whatever idiosyncrasies remained from the fast but unstable original and with still could have been extracted from the enlarged flat-12 but with the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation)), international sport’s dopiest regulatory body, again changing the rules, the run in 1971 would prove to be the 917’s last official appearance at Le Mans.

Porsche 917-10, 1972.

Although the bloodless bureaucrats at the FIA probably thought they'd killed off the 917, there was still much potential to be exploited and Porsche now devoted the programme to the Can-AM (Canadian-American Challenge Cup), conducted on North American circuits for unlimited displacement sports cars.  Run under Group 7 regulations, what few rules there were mostly easy simultaneously to conform with while ignoring which it why the Can-Am between 1966-1973 is remembered as one of the golden eras of the sport.  Now turbocharged (as 917-10 & 917-30), in their ultimate form the cars were tuned in qualifying trim for some 1500 horsepower and raced usually with over 1000.  So dominant were the 917s that the previously successful McLaren team withdrew to focus on Formula One and there were doubts about the future of the series but as it turned out, the interplay of geopolitics and economics that was the first oil crisis meant excesses such as unlimited displacement racing was soon sacrificed.

Porsche 917K-81 (Kremer).

However, the 917 was allowed one final fling as an unintended consequence of rule changes for the 1981 sports car season which although never intended as a loophole through which the now ancient Porsche could pass, for one team the chance to again run the 917 at Le Mans proved irresistible.  The factory had retired the 917 after its win in the 1973 Can-Am, moving to the 936 platform for 1975 and while aware of the implications of the rule changes, weren't tempted by what they regarded a nostalgic cul-de-sac but Kremer Racing were intrigued and, with factory support, built a new 917 to Group 6 specifications (enclosed bodywork and a 5.0 litre flat-12), labeling it the 917K-81.  Using Kremer own aluminium spaceframe, at the 1981 Le Mans 24 hour it was fast enough to qualify in the top ten and run with the leaders until a suspension failure forced retirement (the car eventually classified: 38th, DNF (did not finish).  The pace displayed was sufficiently encouraging for the car to be entered in that year's 1000 km event at Brand Hatch where it proved fast but, lacking the factory support, also fragile and it again recorded a DNF.  That was the end of the line for the 917.