Lunch

Lunch (pronounced luhnch)

(1) A light midday meal between breakfast and dinner; luncheon.

(2) Any light meal or snack.

(3) To eat lunch.

(4) In slang, as “out to lunch:, dim, vague, useless ineffectual.

(5) In slang as “lunchy”, old-fashioned; passé; out of style (obsolete).

(6) In slang as “eating their lunch”, outwitting an opponent.

(7) In Caribbean slang (among older folk), mid afternoon tea.

(8) In first-class and test-match cricket, the break in play between the first and second sessions.

(9) In Minnesota, USA, any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering.

1580:  It’s never been clear which came first: lunch or luncheon.  Origin of both is thought to lie in a dissimilated variant of nuncheon, the Middle English nonechenche (noon ling meal and drink), equivalent to none (noon) + schench (from the Old English scenc or scencan (to pour out, give drink)), cognate with the Dutch and German schenken.  Apparent unrelated, Old English had nonmete (afternoon meal, literally "noon-meat").  Nonechenche was possibly altered by the northern English dialect lunch (hunk of bread or cheese) from 1590 which may be from lump or the Spanish lonja (slice, literally “loin”).  Because dinner in the sense of the biggest or main meal of the day) could be eaten either at around noon, in the evening or at night, there was a need for a meal to fill the gap between breakfast and dinner.

A montage of a languid Lindsay Lohan lingering over lunch.

The idea of lunch as it’s now understood took a long time to evolve, to “take a lunch” in 1786 is recorded as eating a chunk of something (perhaps evolved from lump), carved sufficiently large to constitute a filling meal and as late as 1817, the US Webster’s Dictionary offered as the only definition of lunch "a large piece of food", a meaning long obsolete and in the 1820s, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) thought it either “a vulgarism or a fashionable affectation".   Nevertheless, lunch’s intrusion into the language in the nineteenth century does suggest some sort of social change was afoot, either in the type, style or timing of meals or at least the words used to describe them.  Lunch-money was attested from 1868; lunch-time from 1821; lunch hour from 1840 and the lunch-break from 1960.  The slang phrase out to lunch in the sense of “a bit vague, dim, clueless (but some way short of actually insane) was first recorded in recorded 1955, the notion of being "not there" and instead at lunch.

Receptacles in which to store one’s lunch for transport have a history.  The lunch-box is documented from 1864, the lunch-pail from 1891.  Those were descriptive nouns whereas lunch-bucket emerged in the 1990s as an adjective indicating working-class men or values, bucket presumably the best word because it was universally understood in the English-speaking world to an extent pail was not.  Lunch-bag seems never to have become a common form despite being widely used but in the 1970s, the verb brown-bag (and the related brown-bagging) referring to bringing lunch or liquor in a brown paper bag.  A long-time staple of a lunch-pail’s contents, lunch-meat (a processed form of meat-based protein produced in a size which, when sliced, was aligned with the slices of standard loaves of bread and thus convenient for making sandwiches) was first documented in 1931.  The lunch-counter (a long, elevated table or bench where customers eat standing or sitting on high stools) is an 1854 invention of US English.

The possible future of lunch: Grilled jellyfish.

The portmanteau word brunch dates from circa 1890, a British student slang merging of breakfast and lunch, according to the magazine Punch (1 August 1896).  It appeared in 1895 in the defunct Hunter's Weekly, but two years earlier, at the University of Oxford, the students had drawn what must at the time have seemed an important distinction: The combination-meal, when nearer the usual breakfast hour, is "brunch" and, when nearer luncheon, is "blunch".  That’s a linguistic curiosity in that the brunch survived while blunch did not yet the modern understanding of a brunch appears to be something taken closer to the time of lunch than breakfast.  It may be that brunch was just the more pleasingly attractive word, blunch not so well rolling off the tongue.

Several spellings of luncheon were noted in the decades after the 1640s, the now standardised form not widespread until 1706.  Of uncertain origin, in the 1580s was used to describe something like the northern English dialectal lunch (hunk of bread or cheese), though influenced by the Spanish lonja (a slice, literally "loin"), blended with or influenced by nuncheon, from the mid-fourteenth century Middle English nonechenche, (light mid-day meal), from none (noon) + schench (drink), from the Old English scenc, from scencan (pour out).

The possible future of lunch: Fishcakes.

The etymology of all these words is tangled and there are reasons to suspect the similar forms arose independently in different place rather than as forks of anything vaguely lineal, the OED discounting the notion of lunching, which dates from the 1650s, being derived from the verb lunch because that wasn’t to be attested for another century, the OED suggesting there may be some connection (by analogy) with words like truncheon etc to simulate a French origin which is speculative but such things are not unknown in ever class-conscious England.  Whatever the origin, it does seem to have been used to describe an early afternoon meal eaten by those who take dinner at noon.

Vile

Vile (pronounced vahyl)

(1) Wretchedly bad.

(2) Highly offensive, unpleasant, or objectionable.

(3) Repulsive or disgusting, as to the senses or feelings; repellent.

(4) Morally debased, depraved, or despicable; vulgar, obscene.

(5) Foul; filthy.

(6) Poor; wretched.

(7) Of mean or low condition; Menial; lowly.

(8) Degraded; ignominious.

(9) Of little value or account; paltry

(10) Vicious, evil iniquitous.

(11) Unpleasant or bad weather.

1250–1300: From the Middle English vil, from the Anglo-French ville, from the Old French vil (shameful, dishonorable; low-born; cheap; ugly, hideous), from the Latin vīlis (cheap, worthless, base, common), possibly from the primitive Indo-European wes-li, a deverbal adjective with passive meaning (which can be bought), from the root of venus (sale).  It was cognate with the Latin vīlis, the Ancient Greek ὦνος (ônos) & ὠνέομαι (ōnéomai) (to buy), the Sanskrit वस्नयति (vasnayati) (to haggle) and वस्न (vasna) (price).  Related forms are the adjectives viler and vilest, the adverb vilely and the noun vileness (the thirteenth century vilety appears to be extinct).  Handy synonyms include repugnant, horrid, contemptible, depraved, noxious, vulgar, humiliating, vicious, disgusting, sleazy, ugly, despicable, repulsive, revolting, miserable, nasty, appalling, immoral, shocking and disgraceful.

The verb revile was from the late fourteenth century revilen (debase, degrade (a sense now obsolete)) and by the mid-fourteenth century meant "insult, taunt, vilify, assail with abusive language".  It was from the Old French reviler (consider vile, despise, scorn).  The mid-fifteenth century vilify (to lower in worth or value) was from the Late Latin vilificare (to make cheap or base; to esteem of little value) is from the Latin vilis (cheap, worthless, base, common).  The meaning "to slander, speak evil of" dates from the 1590s.

Crooked Hillary Clinton, deleting something.

Prandial

Prandial (pronounced pran-dee-uhl)

Of or relating to a meal, especially dinner (sometimes affected, jocose or facetious).

1810-1820: From the Late Latin prandialis or the Classical Latin prandium (late breakfast; lunch), perhaps from the primitive Indo-European pr̥hemós (first), from prehe- + -edere (to eat) + the Latin -ium (the suffix forming nouns), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -yós (suffix forming adjectives from noun stems) +‎ -al (the suffix forming adjectives).  The primitive Indo-European ed- root (to eat) meant originally "to bite".  It’s never been clear why the meaning shift from the Classical Latin meaning (late breakfast; lunch) to the later (dinner) happened.  Now, prandial is used almost exclusively as (a usually jocular or affected) pre-prandial or post-prandial (often plural), a reference to before or after-dinner drinks.  The adverb is prandially.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying a pre-pradial.

The first use of the adjective postprandial (now usually as post-prandial) seems to have been by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) in 1820 to convey the meaning "happening, said, done etc; after dinner".  The first known instance of preprandial (also pre-prandial) (before dinner) is in a letter of 1822 by the poet Charles Lamb (1775–1834) to Coleridge: “Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood’s or any other magazine passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, you know best.  I have no quarrel with you about præprandial avocations—so don’t imagine one.”

Rebarbative

Rebarbative (pronounced ree-bahr-buh-tiv)

(1) Causing annoyance, irritation, or aversion; repellent.

(2) Fearsome; forbidding (obsolete).

1885: From the French rébarbative, the feminine form of the fourteenth century rébarbatif (disagreeable; repellent; unattractive), from the Middle French rébarber (to oppose; to stand up to;to be unattractive) from the Old French rebarber (to repel (an enemy), to withstand (him) face to face).  The construct was ré- + barbe (beard) + -atif (-ative).  The re- prefix is from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be” and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.  Barbe was from the Latin barba (beard), literally “to stand beard to beard against”   The –atif suffix was used in Latin to indicate “of, related to, or associated with the thing specified”.

The generally accepted theory for the origin of the word is the itchy, irritating quality of a beard.  The word is applied now to anyone really annoying.

Crooked Hillary Clinton.

Mullet

Mullet (pronounced muhl-it)

(1) Any of various teleost food marine or freshwater, usually gray fishes of the family Mugilidae (grey mullet (order Mugiliformes)) or Nullidae (red mullet (order Syngnathiformes)), having a nearly cylindrical body; a goatfish; a sucker, especially of the genus Moxostoma (the redhorses).

(2) A hairstyle in which the hair is short in the front and at the sides of the head, and longer in the back; called also the “hockey player haircut" and the "soccer rocker"; the most extreme form is called the skullet, replacing the earlier hockey hair.

(3) In heraldry, a star-like charge having five or six points unless a greater number is specified, used especially as the cadency mark of a third son; known also as American star & Scottish star.  The alternative spelling is molet.

(4) In slang (apparently always in the plural), a reference to one’s children (two or more).

(5) In slang, a person who mindlessly follows a fad, trend or leader; a generally dim-witted person.

(6) In dress design, a design based on the hairstyle, built around the concept of things being longer at the back, tapering progressively shorter towards the sides and the front.  The name is modern, variations of the style go back centuries.

1350-1400: The use in heraldry is from the Middle English molet(te), from the Old French molete (rowel of a spur), the construct being mole (millstone (the French meule) + -ette (the diminutive suffix).  The reference to the fish species dates from 1400–50, from the late Middle English molet, mulet & melet, from the Old French mulet (red mullet), from the Medieval Latin muletus, from the Latin muletus & moletus from mullus (red mullet) from the Ancient Greek μύλλος (múllos & mýllos) (a Pontic of fish), which may be related to melos (black) but the link is speculative.

The use to describe the hair-style dates from 1994, thought to be a shortening of the slang mullethead (blockhead, fool, idiot (mull meaning “to stupefy”)), popularized and possibly coined by US pop-music group the Beastie Boys in their song “Mullet Head”.  Mullet-head also was a name of a large, flat-headed North American freshwater fish (1866) which gained a reputation for stupidity (ie, was easily caught).  As a surname, Mullet is attested in both France and England from the late thirteenth century, the French form thought related to the Old French mul (mule), the English from the Middle English molet, melet & mulet (mullet) a metonymic occupational name for a fisherman or seller of these fish although some sources do suggest a link to a nickname derived from mule.

The noun plural is mullet if applied collectively to two or more species of the fish and mullets for other purposes (such as two or more fish of the same species or the curious use as a (class-associated) slang term parents use to refer to their children if there are two or more although use in the singular isn’t recorded; apparently they can have two (or more) mullets but not one mullet.

The mullet hairstyle goes back a long way.  The Great Sphinx of Giza is thought to be some four and a half thousand years old but evidence men and women hair with hair cut short at the front and sides, long at the back, exists from thousands of year earlier.  It’s assumed by historians that the cut would variously have been adopted for functional reasons (warmth for the neck and freedom for obstruction of the eyes & face) and as a preferred style.  There are many findings in the archaeological record and, over many centuries, references to the hair style being a feature of many cultures.  In the West, the acceptability of longer cuts for men was one of the social changes of the 1960s and the mullet was one style to again arise; from there it’s never gone away although, as the mullet came to be treated as a class-identifier, use did become more nuanced, some claiming to wear one ironically.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).

Opinion remains mixed but there are mullet competitions with prizes although, it must take an expert to work out the difference between the “best” mullet and the “worst”.  The competitions seem popular and are widely publicized, although the imagery can be disturbing for those with delicate sensibilities not often exposed to certain sub-cultures.  Such folk are perhaps more familiar with the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge but there was a time when he wore a mullet although the portraits which survive suggest his might not have been sufficiently ambitious to win any modern contests.

An emo with variegated tellum in black, purple & copper.

Associated initially with that most reliable of trend-setters, the emo, the tellum (mullet spelled backwards), more helpfully described as the “reverse mullet” is, exactly as suspected, long in front and short at the back.  Definitely a thing exclusively of style because it discards the functionally which presumably was the original rationale for the mullet, emos often combine the look with one or more lurid colors, the more patient sometimes adopting a spiky look which can be enlivened with a different color for each spike.  That’s said to be quite high-maintenance.

Martina Navratilova (b 1956).

On a tennis court, a mullet is functional.  No more monolithic than any others, it’s probably absurd to think of any of the component part of the LGBTQQIAAOP as being an identifiable culture but there appears to have been a small lesbian sub-set in the 1980s which adopted the mullet although motives were apparently mixed, varying from (1) chauvinistic assertiveness of the lesbionic, (2) blatant advertising for a mate to (3) just another haircut.

It also featured in a recent, celebrated case of gender-fluidity, Bruce Jenner (b 1949) sporting a mullet shortly before beginning his transition to Caitlyn Jenner.  However, the mullet may be unrelated to the change, the record indicating his long-time devotion to the cut and, since becoming Caitlyn, it seems to have been retired for styles more overtly feminine.

Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of Scotland, England and Ireland 1660-1685) in his coronation robes (circa 1661), oil on canvas by John Michael Wright (1617–1694).

Charles II an early adopter of the mullet dress, chose the style for his seventeenth century coronation robes.

Lindsay Lohan, also with much admired legs, followed the Stuart example.

The mullet dress.  Miranda Kerr in pink demonstrates.

Red Mullet.

Grey Mullet.

Pareidolia

Pareidolia (pronounced par-ei-do-lia)

In psychiatry and psychology, the perception of a recognizable image or meaningful pattern where none exists or is intended.

1994: From Ancient Greek παρα ((para (alongside, concurrent)) + εἴδωλον ((eídōlon (image, phantom)).  Word was invented by UFO debunker Steven Goldstein in 22 June 1994 edition of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, a publication devoted to rational, evidence-based explanations of the para-normal, magic, UFOs, conspiracies and the many crackpot notions spread by new-agers, spiritualists and other nutjobs.

Pareidolia is a form of apophenia where the mind will attempt to find connections in random events, thoughts or patterns where none actually exist. Pareidolia concentrates the visual and audio aspects of the brain in constructing a perception from a vague stimulus.  Pre-dating the actual word, in some circles in both psychology and psychiatry, it was for some decades popular to attempt to induce a form of pareidolia in a patient to be able to assess them better, most famously with the Rorschach Ink Blots.

Technically, there are two forms of pareidolia, the first, the mechanistic, where man-made objects, by mere coincidence have a resemblance to something else.  The second, the matrixed, is where natural phenomenon such as rock formations, clouds or the surfaces of planets include shapes which can be interpreted as something human, animal or supernatural and instead of being regarded as coincidental and amusing, are treated as having some inherent meaning or being evidence of some theory otherwise unsupported by any evidence.

The phenomenon of pareidolia manifests with such frequency as the identification of the human face in various structures that, given the wealth of behavioral evidence of diminished orientation towards faces as well as the presence of face perception impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), interest was taken in the possibility of a relationship between the two.  Not something in which observational studies offered obvious potential, even the of design of experiments was challenging and the legacy of ASD research seemed not a guide, the underlying mechanisms of the deficits in ASD, although habitually described as “unclear” were better called “unknown”.  In ASD research, face-like object stimuli which had been shown to evoke pareidolia in TD (typically developing according defined criteria in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; 2013) individuals were used to test the effect of a global face-like configuration on orientation and perceptual processes in young children with ASD and age-matched TD controls.  That had demonstrated TD children were more likely to look first towards upright face-like objects than children with ASD, suggesting a global face-like configuration elicit a stronger orientation bias in TD children as compared to children with ASD.

However, once focused on the stimuli, both groups spent more time exploring the upright face-like object, suggesting both perceived it as a face.  The conclusion was the result was in agreement with earlier work in the field of abnormal social orienting in ASD.  Whether variations on the approaches in ASD research would be useful in the study of pareidoila was of interest because face detection is an automatic, rapid and subconscious process, considered as a core component of the social perceptual system subtending social behaviors.  That faces can (as the illusory detection called pareidolia) be perceived in non-face stimuli, such as toast, clouds or landscapes by some while many on the ASD suffer difficulties in the perception of the real thing, did at least hint at the possibility of a link or even perhaps the need to revise the parameters of ASD.

Detecting faces in non-face stimuli may have a strong adaptive value given that from an evolutionary point of view, the cost of erroneously detecting a face in non-face stimuli might be less than failing to detect another’s face in the environment.  Pareidolia may thus be just another spectrum condition in that the perception of pareidolic faces or other shapes in a variety of surfaces or spaces may vary little between people, the difference being more the individual’s reaction and the reporting of the event(s).

Procreate

Procreate (pronounced proh-kree-yet)

(1) To beget, engender or generate (offspring).

(2) To produce; bring into being.

1530–1540: From the Latin prōcreātus, past participle of prōcreāre (to breed), the construct being pro- + creāre (to create), prōcreāte being the second-person plural present active imperative of prōcreō (present infinitive prōcreāre, perfect active prōcreāvī, supine prōcreātum; first conjugation).  Root form was pro- +‎ creo, the pro- prefix being the combining form of prō (preposition); creo was from the Proto-Italic krēāō (to make grow) from the primitive Indo-European ḱer- (to grow; become bigger”), the same root of crēscō (I increase, rise, grow, thrive; multiply, augment).

Related forms are the nouns procreation, procreativeness & procreator, the adjectives procreant & procreative, the verbs procreated & procreating and the adjective procreative; synonyms and related terms include spawn, proliferate, originate, impregnate, parent, engender, sire, create, breed, father, generate, mother, produce, propagate, conceive, hatch, multiply, get, beget & make.

Consequences of procreation: Lindsay Lohan’s family tree.

Procreation was a theme in the Bible.  In Genesis 1:28, God tells Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and increase in number”, a point reinforced in Psalm 127:3–5 and Matthew 28:18-20.  In an early example of a social contract, in the Covenant of the Rainbow (Genesis 6:13-22 (KJV)), having told man to go forth and multiply, God granted humanity dominion over all earth and “…every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”

Most anxious to do the Lord’s work is Deputy Prime-Minister of Australia Barnaby Joyce (b 1967).  Having gone forth and multiplied with his wife, after pausing to condemn same-sex marriage because it threatened the sanctity of traditional marriage, he deserted his wife to go forth and multiply with his mistress.  Twice.

Tank

Tank (pronounced tangk)

(1) A large receptacle, container, or structure for holding a liquid or gas.

(2) A natural or artificial pool, pond, or lake (a now rare British and US dialectical form).

(3) A light-proof container inside which a film can be processed in daylight; any large dish or container used for processing a number of strips or sheets of film.

(4) In the military, an armored, self-propelled combat vehicle, armed with cannon and machine guns and moving on a caterpillar tread.

(5) Slang term for a prison cell or enclosure for more than one occupant, as for prisoners awaiting a hearing.

(6) In fashion, as tank top, a type of sleeveless shirt.

(7) To do poorly or rapidly to decline rapidly; to fail.  In competitive sport (as tanking), intentionally to fail.

(8) As belly tank racer, a specialised class of motorsport using vehicles constructed using WWII surplus auxiliary under-belly aircraft fuel tanks.

1610-1620: A Portuguese import from India, from the Gujarati Hindi ટાંકી (tānkh & ṭāṅkī) (artificial lake; cistern, underground reservoir for water) or the Marathi टाकी (ṭākī, tanken & tanka), the Indian forms possibly from the Sanskrit tadaga-m (pond, lake pool) and reinforced in the later (1680s) sense of "large artificial container for liquid" by the Portuguese tanque (reservoir), contraction of estanque (pond, literally “something dammed up”), derivative of estancar (hold back a current of water; to dam up; block; stanch, weaken (related to the modern English stanch)), possibly (unattested) from the Vulgar Latin stanticāre (to dam up; block; stanch, weaken).  That’s not conclusive, some sources even suggesting the Portuguese word is the source of those in the Indian dialects.  While, at this distance, cause and effect can be difficult to determine, there were links also to languages in west Asia, and the Gujarati, Marathi and other Indian forms may be compared with the Arabic verb اِسْتَنْقَعَ‎ (istanqaʿa) (to become stagnant, to stagnate).  Synonyms include vessel, container, pond, pool, reservoir, keg, cask, cistern, basin, receptacle, vat, cauldron, tub & aquarium.

#Free Britney tank top.

Tank proved an adaptable verb.  The most obvious sense (to pour or put into a tank) was noted first in 1900 but may earlier have been in oral use.  Perhaps surprisingly, the meaning in sporting competition "deliberately to lose” is documented only from 1976 when it was used in a magazine interview by a female professional tennis player noting the practice among the men on the tour.  It’s been suggested use in boxing may have pre-existed this but no evidence has been offered.  As an adjective, “tanked” has been used to describe the inebriated since 1893.

The meaning "fuel container" is recorded from 1902 and came to be applied to just about every transportation vehicle or platform using liquid or gaseous fuels (cars, trains, aircraft, rockets, missiles etc) and even missiles using solid fuels.  Exceptions seemed to be made for novel technologies such as nuclear-powered devices and hydrogen where “cell” seems preferred if the storage tank is exchangeable although tank is still used for fixed hydrogen storage.  It’s tempting to suspect “fuel tank, gas tank or petrol tank” may have been in use prior to 1902 because oil tank is documented from 1862 but all sources quote 1902 as the first recorded instance although the first use of tanker to describe a ship designed to carry oil or other liquid cargo was in 1900.  The railroad tank-car is attested from 1874 and the slang term for a jail-cell is from 1912.

Lindsay Lohan in Gucci tank top.

Two certainly unrelated aquatic terms emerged about the same time.  The first fish-tanks, for hobbyists or as ornamental objects, were advertised in 1921, a year after the tank suit (one-piece bathing suit), so named because it was worn in a swimming tank, a slang term for swimming pools since circa 1890.  The tank top, an item of women’s casual-wear which blended the styling of the tank suit with a tee-shirt was released in 1968.  The first think-tank (in the sense of a formal research institute) established was the Centre for Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California in 1959.  Think-tank is widely used in colloquial language and the formally established think-tanks have become so associated with political agendas they’ve long habitually needed a modifier (left-wing, liberal, conservative etc).

Another adjectival example has (predictably) ancient roots: the septic tank.  Septic (septic circa 1600) was from the Latin septicus (of or pertaining to putrefaction) from the Greek septikos (characterized by putrefaction) from sepein (make rotten or putrid, cause to rot).  The septic tank is attested from 1902 and was used even in UK rhyming slang as “the septics” to refer to Americans (ie the tank in septic tank rhyming with “yank”).

The sardonic humor of war: March 2022, a young lady from Ukraine in a tank turret.

Johnson and Shipley Belly Tank Racer (1955), Bonneville Salt Flats, circa 1963.

Belly tank racers were built in the post-war years using WWII surplus auxiliary under-belly aircraft fuel tanks as bodies, mated to whatever engines were available.  Because the tanks were designed to have optimal aerodynamic properties to minimise drag during flight, they were ideal for straight line speed and most belly tank racers were used for top-speed record attempts at venues like the Bonneville Salt Flats where runs of several miles were possible.

One outlier is the tankard.  Despite being something used to hold liquids, it’s said to be a phonetic coincidence, tankard apparently unrelated to tank which it long pre-dated.  The origin of tankard (large tub-like vessel) is uncertain, like corresponding Middle Dutch tanckaert.  One suggestion is it’s a transposition of kantard, from the Latin cantharus (a large drinking cup with two handles or a fountain or basin in the courtyard of a church used by worshippers to purify prior to entry) and another ponders a link with the French tant quart (as much as a quarter).  The meaning "drinking vessel" was first noted in the late fifteenth century.

In military use (to describe the armored vehicle moving on continuous self-laying articulated tracks and with mounted canon), the word is from 1915.  The development of the tank proceeded initially under the auspices of the Royal Navy which probably seems strange but happened that way because the organization with the most expertise in the steel fabrication and with the heavy engines needed was the navy which formed the Admiralty Landships Committee to coordinate the operation.  On Christmas eve 1915, the Committee of Imperial Defense, reviewed the proposal for what was then called the "caterpillar machine-gun destroyer" and approved it “for secrecy” being a project of the “Tank Supply Committee”.  Charmingly, it seems both "cistern" and "reservoir" also were proposed a cover names, all based on the physical similarity, early in production, between the armored vehicles and the navy's water-storage tanks; the admirals preferred the punchier, monosyllabic "tank".

First used in action on the Western Front, at Pozieres ridge, on 15 September 1916, the name was quickly picked up by soldiers and has been part of military jargon since, including derived forms: the tank-trap (ditch, sometime with steel structures) attested from 1920, the tank-destroyer (a kind of propelled grenade, later versions including the bazooka and the famous late WWII German Panzerfaust) from 1928 and the tank-buster (ground-attack fighter aircraft with 40mm canon) in 1942.  In 1940, a French general described the English Channel as “a good tank ditch” and suggested he was more optimistic than most of his colleagues that the British could resist invasion.  So it proved, the scale required for the armada assembled in 1944 an indication of just how good a tank ditch it was.

British Mark I, 1916.  The first tank (150 built) used in combat, the Mark I was deployed in an attempt to break the stalemate of trench warfare.  Protected from small arms fire and able to crush barbed wire emplacements, the early tactical use was as a device to clear a pathway for infantry assaults but, although the first effects were dramatic, counter-measures were soon developed and it wasn't until later in the war it became clear the tank had to be used en masse, as a strategic weapon.  The  rhomboidal shape, unusual by later standards, meant the twin 57mm (2.25 inch) canons had to be side mounted; a turret arrangement would have resulted in a centre of gravity which would have rendered the structure unstable.  By war's end, the British had built more than two-thousand tanks but the design which would most influence future development was probably the French FT.

German Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III; 1940-1945) self-propelled gun.

Tanks and self-propelled guns (SPG) are visually similar and sometimes confused.  The difference is that a SPG doesn’t have the rotating gun-turret which gives the tank such a flexible range of fire, SPGs having a range of barrel adjustment usually only in the vertical plane.  They are also almost always less armored, often slower and either with lighter or no subsidiary defenses.

Soviet era T-34 medium tank (1940-1967 (USSR) still in use by some armed forces)).

The T-34 was one of the outstanding tanks of WWII, its superiority over the German Panzers a shock to the invading Wehrmacht in 1941.  It used a powerful 76.2 mm (3 inch) canon which for years out-gunned almost everything ranged against it but perhaps its most clever feature was a simple design trick, armor sloped at a tumblehome 60^o which afforded a high degree of protection against anti-tank weapons, shells tending to glance off rather than penetrate or explode.  Such was its influence, aspects of the concept and details of design were copied by both by allies and the enemy and, early in the war, there was no better battlefield weapon.  The T-34 had a lasting impact on tank design and there's more of a lineal path from the T-34 to the later Panzers, the Panther and the Tigers, than from earlier German designs.

German Panther: PanzerKampfwagen V (1943-1945 (Germany); 1944-1949 (France)).

Neither as heavily gunned or armored as the better known Tiger family, the Panther was rushed into production to counter the Soviet T-34.  It was immediately effective but the lack of time fully to develop the design meant problems of reliability and field maintenance were never wholly solved.  Like any tank, a compromise between cost, performance, range, firepower, mobility and protection, the Panther was fine machine in the circumstances and its performance in open country and for long-range deployments was outstanding.  Had the Panthers been fully developed and available in strategic numbers earlier in the war, many battles might have taken a different path.

Lindsay Lohan in tank top.

Compliment & Complement

Compliment (pronounced kom-pluh-muhnt (noun) or kom-pluh-ment (verb))

(1) An expression of praise, commendation, or admiration (noun).

(2) A formal act or expression of civility, respect, or regard (noun).

(3) A courteous greeting; good wishes; regards (noun).

(4) To pay a compliment to (verb).

(5) To show kindness or regard for by a gift or other favour (verb).

1570–1580: From the French compliment from the Italian complimento, a borrowing from the Spanish cumplimiento from cumplir (to complete, do what is proper or fitting, be polite).  The construct was compli- (from complir) + -miento (from the Old Spanish, from the Late Latin -mentum, from the Classical Latin -menta. A doublet of –mento (and used as the suffix –ment in Modern English), it formed nouns from verbs with the sense of the action or process.  Compliment is a doublet of complement and related forms are complimentable (adjective), complimenter (noun), complimentingly (adverb) and outcompliment (verb (used with object)).  Synonyms include admiration, applause, commendation, homage, ovation, blessing, courtesy, adulation, endorsement, tribute, congratulate, applaud, laud, commend, cajole, endorse, extol, acclaim, bouquet and confirmation.

Complement (pronounced kom-pluh-muhnt (noun) or kom-pluh-ment (verb))

(1) Something that completes or makes perfect (noun).

(2) The quantity or amount that completes anything (noun).

(3) Either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole; counterpart (noun).

(4) To complete; form a complement to (verb)

1350–1400: A Middle English borrowing from the Old French from the Latin complēmentum (something that completes; that which fills up) from compleō (I fill up, I complete).  The construct was complē(re) (to fill up) + -mentum (derived from the Latin suffix -menta in collective nouns like armenta (herd, flock); the Latin -menta is from the primitive Indo-European -mn̥the.  The related Latin complēre (to fill up) is formed from com- (intensive) + plēre (to fill).  Complement is a doublet of compliment.

Lindsay Lohan in Alice Temperley gown complemented with silver and diamond cluster jewelry (2011).

Complement and compliment, which (noun & verb) are pronounced alike and originally shared some meanings, evolved to become separate words with entirely different meanings.  As a noun, complement means “something that augments, completes or makes perfect”.  As a verb, complement means “to add to or complete”.  The noun compliment means “an expression of praise, commendation, or admiration”.  The verb compliment means “to pay a compliment to”.