Stew & Casserole

Stew (pronounced stoo or styoo)

(1) A preparation usually of meat, fish, or other food cooked by stewing, especially a mixture of meat and vegetables (recipes exist for vegetarian & vegan stews).

(2) In informal use, a state of agitation, uneasiness, or worry.

(3) A term for a brothel; a whorehouse (archaic), in the collective “the stews” was a neighborhood in which there were many brothels (the red light district).

(4) A cooking vessel for boiling or stewing (obsolete since the early eighteenth century); a cauldron; still seen as a modifier (stew pot).

(5) To cook food by simmering or slow boiling; to undergo cooking by simmering or slow boiling.

(6) In informal use, to fret, worry, or fuss, often in the phrases “in a stew” or “to stew over” (synonyms include agitation, confusion, dither, flap).

(7) In informal use, to feel uncomfortable due to a hot, humid, stuffy atmosphere, as in a closed room; to swelter.

(8) A fishpond or fish-tank (often as stew-pond); (mostly archaic UK use with origins in Sussex).

(9) An artificial oyster bed (in US regional use).

In the preparation of tea, to cause the tea to become bitter by infusing or drawing for too long

(10) As a general descriptor, a mix (usually of heterogeneous objects, substances, people etc).

(11) In slang (commercial flight crew, cruise ship crews, military mess staff), a clipping of steward or stewardess.

(12) A public room for hot steam baths (obsolete).

Circa 1300:  From the Middle English stew, stue, stewen & stuwen (to take a sweat bath) and stuen (to take a very hot bath), from the Anglo-Norman estouve, from the Old & Middle French estuver (étuve in modern French), a verbal derivative of estuve (sweat room of a bath) (thought related to the Medieval Latin stupha, of uncertain origin), from the unattested Vulgar Latin extūfāre (evaporate), the construct being ex- (out of; from) + the unattested tūfus (vapour), from the Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos) (smoke, steam), from τύφω (túphō) (to smoke).  It was cognate with the Italian stufare, the Spanish estufar and the Portuguese estufar.  In the Old English there was stuf-bæþ (a hot-air bath, vapor bath).  Stew in the sense of fish tanks was from the Old French estui, from estoier (to shut up, confine), ultimately from the Latin studium (study).  Stew is a noun & verb, stewable is an adjective, stewed is a verb & adjective and stewing is a noun.  The noun plural is stews.

The intransitive use dates from the 1590s while the meaning "to boil slowly, to cook meat by simmering it in liquid" came into use in the early fifteenth century.  The meaning "to be left to the consequences of one's actions" is from 1650s, especially in figurative expression “to stew in one's own juices”.   The use of stewed to suggest a state of drunkenness dates from 1737.  As a noun dating from circa 1300, a stew was first a "vessel for cooking" from the verb while the meal (stewed meat with vegetables) wasn’t so described until 1756 and the coordinate terms (which emerged or were over the centuries borrowed) included brew, simmer, hash, jumble, medley, mishmash, potpourri, pottage, pot pie, stroganoff, salmagundi, casserole, hotpot (also hot-pot), hot-dish, cassoulet, goulash & ragout.  Modifiers are common (beef stew, chicken stew, Irish stew, cowboy stew, son-of-a-bitch stew, son-of-a-gun stew, hillbilly stew etc, army stew, prison stew etc).  Stews are probably among the oldest prepared & combined dishes cooked by man, the original cooking vessels including animal skulls and turtle shells.

The apparently curious use to refer to brothels dates from the mid-fourteenth century (often in the plural as stews and whole districts could be describes as “the stews” if thought to contain many brothels or be the haunt of prostitutes.  It was a carry-over of the earlier use of stew (from the Old French estuve "bath, bath house; bawdy house) to refer to a bath house (a heated room designed for public bathing) and the parallel reflected the apparently not undeserved reputation of medieval bath houses.  In late fourteenth century Middle English, Ionete-of-the-steues (Janet of the Stews) was common slang for a prostitute.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Nazi head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was Austrian and must have liked stew-favored idioms.  When he heard the British government had provided a security guarantee to Poland, he became enraged and shouted "I'll cook them a stew (einen Eintopf kochen) they'll choke on!"

Casserole (pronounced kas-uh-rohl)

(1) A baking dish of glass, earthenware etc, often with a cover and sometimes used also as a serving dish.

(2) Any food, usually a mixture, cooked in such a dish.

(3) To bake or cook (food) in a casserole.

(4) A small (metal, glass, carbon fibre or ceramic) dish with a handle, used in chemical laboratories.

1706: From the sixteenth century French casserole (ladle-like pan), the construct being casse (small saucepan; pan for dripping) (from the Old Provençal cassa (large spoon), akin to the Medieval Latin cattia (pan, dipper; crucible) (influenced by the Provençal caça but the ultimate source may be the ancient Greek kyathion or kuathion, a diminutive of kuathos (cup for the wine bowl) + -role (the diminutive suffix)).  Similar (and related formations include cassole (without the -er-) and casseron (using the diminutive suffix -eron, from -on).    The Middle French was casserolle.  Casserole is a noun and verb, casseroled is an adjective and casseroling a verb; the noun plural is casseroles.

The word exists in many European languages including Danish (kasserolle), German (Kasserolle), Norwegian Bokmål (kasserolle), Norwegian Nynorsk (kasserolle) & Russian (кастрю́ля (kastrjúlja)).  The word for centuries described only the cooking vessel but by the late nineteenth century (some sources say explicitly 1889 but it’s likely the oral use pre-dates this) it was applied also of the dishes cooked in one, under the influence of chefs’ jargon such as en casserole & à la casserole.  As need be, modifiers are added (tuna casserole, chicken casserole, vegetarian casserole etc).  In situations where confusion might arise, it’s recommended the meals be called “casseroles” and the cooking vessels “casserole pans”.

Lindsay Lohan cooking marshmallowed yams in casserole dish, Thanksgiving, 2013.

Stews and casseroles are frequently indistinguishable (although by tradition stews have a thicker gravy), especially when served although there are techniques in cooling which allow as chef to produce a casserole with a crusty surface whereas a stew tends to be wholly amorphous.  Both are slow-cooked, one-pot dishes, the difference being that stews are cooked on a stovetop while casseroles are oven-baked.  Chefs insist a casserole should be baked uncovered in the oven but many leave the lid on and the differences can make a difference in that in an oven, heat circulates all around whereas on a stovetop it’s applied only from the bottom.  For this reason stews are usually cooked in pots made from earthenware, cast-iron or some other material with high heat-retention properties; this will tend to equalize the temperature and when cooking a stew, it should be covered from the point when the liquid is added onto the solid ingredients and left to simmer for a few hours until the gravy thickens.  For a stew, chefs recommend frying the meat to the point of crustiness before adding other ingredients and, although the view is not universal, many suggest that if adding onions (an essential ingredient for many), they too should be pre-cooked.  With casseroles, meat may need to be pre-cooked depending on the cut.

Chickpea & Aubergine Stew

Preparation time: 15 minutes (plus overnight soaking).

Cooking time: 8-10 hours.

Serves: 4-6.

Dig out the slow cooker to make this healthy stew. Topped with toasted pine nuts and served with flatbreads, it makes a wonderfully nutritious vegan meal

Ingredients

200g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (plus extra to serve (to taste)

2 onions, finely sliced

6 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon baharat

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, stalks finely chopped, leaves roughly chopped (to serve)

3 medium aubergines (eggplant), sliced into 20 mm (¾ inch) rounds

2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes

1 lemon, juiced

50g pine nuts, toasted (to serve)

Selection of pitta breads or flatbreads, to serve (optional)

Method

(1) Drain the chickpeas and bring to the boil in a pan of salted water. Cook for 10 minutes, then drain.

(2) Heat oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the onions for 10 mins, or until beginning to soften.  Stir in the garlic, baharat and cinnamon and cook for 1 minute. Tip the onion mixture into a slow cooker and add the chickpeas, parsley stalks, aubergines (eggplant), tomatoes and 2 cups of water. Season to taste.

(3) Cover and cook on high for 2 hours, then turn the heat to low and cook for 6-8 hrs more until the mixture has reduced slightly and the chickpeas and aubergines are really ten

(4) Stir in lemon juice, then scatter the pine nuts and parsley leaves.  Drizzle with olive oil and serve with pitta breads or flatbreads.

Orifice

Orifice (pronounced awr-uh-fis or or-uh-fis)

A mouth, opening or aperture, as of a tube or pipe; a mouth-like opening or hole; mouth; vent (mostly technical or medical use).

1535–1545: From the Middle English orifice (an opening, a mouth or aperture), from the Old French & Middle French orifice (the opening of a wound), from the Late Latin ōrificium (an opening (literally "the making of a mouth")), the construct being Latin ōr- (stem of ōs (genitive oris)) (mouth (and related to "oral")) + fic- (combining form of facere; facio) (to make, to do) + -ium (the noun suffix).  The root of facere was the primitive Indo-European dhe- (to set, put).  The rare adjectival form is orificial; neither orificish or orificesque apparently exist.

Miss Schilling’s Orifice

Rolls-Royce Merlin V12.

Fuel to early versions of the twenty-seven litre (1648 cubic inch) Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine was supplied with a carburetor, putting the pilots in the Merlin-powered Spitfires and Hurricanes at a disadvantage against the German Messerschmitt BF109 fighters which used a fuel-injected Daimler-Benz DB601 inverted V12.  In the British planes, during a negative G-force maneuver (pitching the nose hard down), fuel was forced upwards to the top of the carburetor's float chamber rather than into the combustion chamber, leading to a loss of power. If the negative G continued, the fuel would collect in the top of the float chamber, forcing the float to the bottom. This in turn would open the needle valve to maximum, flooding the carburetor with fuel, drowning the supercharger with an over-rich mixture which would shut down the engine, a serious matter in aerial combat.

Battle of Britain era Hawker Hurricane Mk IIA and Supermarine Spitfire Mk II.

Ms Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling (1909-1990) was a pre-modern rarity, a female engineer and amateur racing driver.  While employed as an engineer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough she worked on the fuel delivery problem, concluding quickly the only complete solution for fuel starvation was a pressurized fuel system such as the direct injection on the Daimler-Benz V12s but that such a development would take months to design, test, manufacture and install.  However, as a stop-gap measure, she designed a flow restrictor: a small metal disc with a central orifice, looking much like a plain metal washer.  The restrictor orifice was sized to accommodate just the fuel flow needed for maximum engine power, the setting usually used during dogfights and it solved the immediate, critical, problem of the engine shutdowns following flooding.  Officially named the RAE Restrictor or RAE Anti “G” Carburetor, the device proved popular with pilots, who much preferred to call it Miss Shilling's orifice or the Tilly orifice.  The simple and elegant solution proved effective until pressurized carburetors (essentially throttle-body injection, a simplified version of the Daimler-Benz direct fuel injection) were developed which permitted even inverted flight.  With a backpack of RAE Restrictors, she toured RAF airfields on her motor-bike instructing and assisting the maintenance crews with the installation of the devices.

RAE Anti "G" carburetor restrictor plate instruction sheet.

Ms Shilling was a serious engineer making an important contribution to the war effort and was not amused by the nick-names for her invention but reportedly regarded it as something typical of minds of men and carried on with her work.  The orifice was but a footnote in the history of the Merlin and the Allied war effort but did typify the improvisation and speed with which British industry developed "quick & dirty" solutions, especially in the early days of the war.

Arrow

Arrow (pronounced ar-oh)

(1) A slender, straight and usually pointed missile or weapon made to be shot from a bow and equipped with stabilizing fins (historically feathers) at the end of the shaft near the nock.

(2) Anything resembling an arrow in form, function, or character.

(3) A linear, wedge-shaped symbol used on maps, architectural drawings, engineering blueprints or any document to indicate direction or placement.

(4) In astronomy, the constellation Sagitta.

(5) In text handling and for other purposes, to indicate the proper position of an insertion by means of an arrow-like symbol (often in the form “to arrow in”).

(6) In graph theory, a directed edge (arc).

(7) In computing, the -> symbol, which has specific meanings in a number of programming languages (in Unicode, the hexadecimal range for the 112 supported arrows is 0x2190–0x21ff).

(8) In botany, the inflorescence or tassel of a mature sugar cane plant.

Pre 900: From the Middle English arewe & arwe, from the Old English arwan, from the earlier earh (oblique form ēarw-), from the Proto-Germanic arhwō, from the primitive Indo-European arku & hérkwo- (bow, arrow).  It was cognate with the Persian پيکان (paykan) (arrow), the Faroese ørv (arrow), the Old Norse & Icelandic ör (arrow) (plural örvar), the Gothic arhvazna & arhwazna; the (unattested) Germanic arhwō (feminine) and related to the Latin arcus (genitive arcūs) (bow, arc),  thus the unattested Latin arku- (bow; arch) and the unattested pre-Germanic arku-ā (belonging to the bow).  The word was rare in the Old English. The more common forms to describe an arrow were stræl (which is cognate with the word still common in Slavic and once prevalent in Germanic, related to words meaning "flash, streak") and fla & flan (the -n perhaps mistaken for a plural inflection), from the Old Norse, a North Germanic word which may originally conveyed the sense of "splinter" or “sharp pioint”.  Stræl was extinct by circa 1200; fla became flo in early Middle English and survived only in Scots dialects until the fourteenth century.  Arrow is a noun & verb, arrowing is a verb and arrowed is a verb and adjective although arrowless and arrowlike are the more common adjectival forms; the noun plural is arrows.

Lindsay Lohan in ugg boots with bow & arrow; photoshoot by Ellen Von Unwerth (b 1954) for GQ magazine's German edition, Malibu Beach, California, June 2010.

Convair B36 Peacemaker.  An incident on Valentine's Day 1950 which involved a USAF SAC Convair B-36B (44-92075) was the first (retrospectively) to be classified a "broken arrow".

The meaning in cartography and related fields (a mark like an arrow) dates from 1834.  The noun arrow-head (also arrowhead) is from the late fifteenth century but the ancient ones found buried in the soil were in the seventeenth century called elf-arrows.  The noun arrow-root (also arrowroot) dates from the 1690s, and was so named because the plant's fresh roots or tubers were used to absorb toxins from the wounds caused by poison-darts.  In US military terminology (command and control; nuclear weapons safeguards), broken arrow refers to an accidental event involving nuclear weapons, warheads or components not thought to create a risk of nuclear war.  The term had been used by the military to mean other things, some localized to specific combat theatres, but to avoid any confusion, the Pentagon in the mid-1960s standardized the nomenclature for reporting incidents involving nuclear weapons or related components.  At the time, many of the codes were based on Native American-themed phrases (Broken Arrow, Empty Quiver, Bent Spear etc), something which would not now be done.

Railton Mobil Special, powered by a pair of supercharged Napier Lion VIID (WD) broad arrow (W-12) aero-engines.  On 16 September 1947 it set the world Land Speed Record (LSR) on the Bonneville Salt Flats at 394.2 mph (634.4 km/h) in a two-way run over the measured mile (385.6 & 403.1 mph (620.6 & 648.7 km/h)).

Broad arrow internal combustion engines (ICE) are also referred to as “W engines” and have three groups of cylinders, one vertical and the two others symmetrically angled at less than 90° on either side.  The configuration has always been rare but is not new, the English Napier company building a W12 aero-engine between 1917-1935 which was such a sound design that development allowed it to enjoy an unusually long life as the most powerful engine of its era.  As well as aircraft, it was used in boats and racing cars and two powered the car which in 1947 set the world land speed record, a mark which stood until 1964.

1992 Mercedes-Benz 600SEL (W140) and the conceptual sketch for the proposed broad arrow W18 intended for the hypothetical 800SEL.

In the late 1980s, Mercedes-Benz, already concerned that Jaguar & BMW had made the V12 seem a bit common, became alarmed when learning a prototype BMW V16 (code name Goldfisch) had been installed in a 7 series (E32) and was being tested.  The Mercedes engineers didn’t need a tape measure to know a V16 would be too long to fit under the hood (bonnet) of their upcoming W140 and weren’t at all attracted to the idea of lengthening the nose, knowing such a change would (1) further delay a programme already behind schedule, (2) cost a lot of money in a project already over-budget and (3) make no economic sense given the V16 would be a low-volume model.  If a V16 was too long and an H16 too complex and hard to package, the obvious solution was a broad-arrow engine which can be thought of as a flattened V12 with an additional bank of cylinders in the centre and thus a W18.  Although wider than a V12 and even a V8, the W140’s engine bay was wide and, being barely longer than a straight-6, the idea seemed compelling.

BMW 750iL (E32) fitted with prototype 6.7 litre (406 cubic inch) V16 (codename Goldfisch).  Such was the length of the V16 that the front-mounted radiator was deleted and replaced by twin units in the rear, large scoops installed above the rear wheels to direct airflow; a rear grill was fabricated for heat extraction.    

It was a time of excess and the buoyant economies on both sides of the Atlantic (and notably also in Japan) gave little hint of the troubles to follow.  The engineers decided their flagship of the 1990s would be an 800SEL, the only discussion note being whether the internal components would be taken from the 2.6 litre (159 cubic inch) six or the 2.8 litre (171 cubic inch) unit and thus create either a 7.8 litre (476 cubic inch) W18 or one of 8.4 litres (513 cubic inch).  In a rare example of restraint, they settled for the smaller one.  There have been suggestions the engineers thought BMW would never proceed with a V16 because of the problems in packaging and doubted their own multi-bank proposal would ever see the light of day but as a design it was hard to resist so dutifully (and one suspects lovingly) they drew the blueprints to be presented to the board for approval.

Auto Motor magazine's somewhat unfortunately proportioned sketch (2000) of what a V24 Maybach coupé might look like (left), the circulated sketch of a Mercedes-Benz V24 (2 x M120 V12s) which probably always was fake news (centre) and the Maybach Exelero test-bed (2005) which made do with a V12 and followed Auto Motor's lead though with a finer sense of scale.

By the time the blueprints landed on the boardroom table it had become clear that things were changing and perhaps the 1990s might be a bit different to what had been envisaged in early 1987 when the parameters for the big W140 were laid down.  As well as the disturbing indications that the US Federal Reserve was prepared to raise interest rates to the point where the economy would go into recession in a bid finally to tame inflation, also looming were ever-stricter emission regulations.  Accordingly, the board vetoed the 800 SEL project and expressed themselves content the 6.0 litre (366 cubic inch) V12 (M120) already in development would be more than adequate for all purposes.  The board’s decision turned out to be prescient, the M120 one of the company’s best power-plants and one which was enlarged several times for specialist applications, the largest displacing 7.3 litres (445 cubic inch).

Mercedes-Benz Vision Maybach 6 Cabriolet (2017).

Since then, the trend has been towards smaller capacity engines and, as the ICE approaches, if not extinction then certainly a diminished role in land transport, there’s no longer much talk of W18s or V16s.  However, in the late 1990s, the Mercedes-Benz engineers did have one final fling at multi-cylinder glory, filing conceptual drawings of a V24 (2 x M120s) which could be used under the (very long) hood of an imagined Maybach coupé.  This one circulated but they appear never to have troubled the board by seeking approval to build even a prototype although, had the circumstances been different, it might have been a nice fit for either the one-off Maybach Exelero test-bed (2005) or the Vision Maybach 6 Cabriolet (2017) which nicely captured the spirit of the prewar 500K & 540K special roadsters.

1932 Bucciali TAV 8-32 Saoutchik Fleche d’Or (Golden Arrow).

About as incongruous in the early 1930s as the 800SEL would have been sixty years later was the Bucciali TAV8-32.  Produced by a French concern with a history in military aviation, Bucciali manufactured automobiles between 1922-1932 and was a noted pioneer in the groundbreaking concept of front-wheel drive, then known as Traction Avant (TAV), a phrase Citroën would later make famous.  Their machinery was intriguing but the crowning achievement was the eighth iteration, the TAV 8-32 and Bucciali enjoyed a successful run in 1930, France for various reasons not then greatly suffering from the depression which had already affected many countries.  The next year however the economy went rapidly into decline and like many manufacturers, Bucciali’s business became first marginal and bankruptcy soon beckoned, the company doing well to limp to an inevitable demise in 1932.

Few TAV 8-32s survive but one memorable four-door version has been on the show circuit for some time.  The 1932 TAV 8-32 Saoutchik Fleche d’Or (Golden Arrow), the name an allusion to the imagery used on the coachwork, was fitted with a stunningly sculpted, low-slung body by the French coach-builder Carrozzeria Saoutchik.  Apart from the TAV configuration which made possible the distinctive low chassis, the Fleche d’Or included other interesting features including a Voisin twelve cylinder sleeve-valve engine with four carburetors, a transverse transmission and 24 inch wheels, fabricated from steel with integral brake drums.  The distinctive stork on each side of the hood side was fabricated from German silver, phosphor bronze and gold-plated brass, the design borrowed from the insignia of the WWI fighter squadron of the builder.

Thunk

Thunk (pronounced thunk)

(1) Onomatopoeic slang for sounds such as the impressive thud when the doors close on pre-modern Mercedes-Benz; representing the dull sound of the impact of a heavy object striking another and coming to an immediate standstill, with neither object being broken by the impact.

(2) In computer programming, a delayed computation (known also as a closure routine.

(3) In computing, in the Scheme programming language, a function or procedure taking no arguments.

(4) In computing, a specialized subroutine in operating systems where one software module is used to execute code in another or inject an additional calculation into another subroutine; a mapping of machine data from one system-specific form to another, usually for compatibility reasons, to allow a 16-bit program to run on a 32-bit operating system.

(5) In computing, to execute code by means of a thunk.

(6) As “get thunked” or “go thunk yourself”, an affectionate insult among the nerdiest of programmers.

(7) In colloquial use, a past tense form of think (the standard form being "thought").  Usually it's used humorously but, if erroneous, it's polite not to correct the mistake.

1876: The first documented instance as incorrect English is from 1876 but doubtlessly it had been used before and there’s speculation it may have be a dialectical form in one or more places before dying out.  There being no oral records and with nothing in writing prior to 1876, the history is unknown.  As an echoic of the sound of impact, it’s attested from 1952.  Although occasionally heard in jocular form, except in computing, thunk is non-standard English, used as a past tense or past participle of think.  The mistake is understandable given the existence of drink/drunk, sink/sunk etc so perhaps it’s a shame (like brung from bring) that it’s not a standard form except in computing.  The plural is thunks, the present participle thunking and the simple past and past participle thunked.  The numerical value of thunk in Chaldean Numerology is 4; the value in Pythagorean Numerology is 2.

Getting thunked

The origin of the word to describe a number of variations of tricks in programming is contested, the earliest dating from 1961 as onomatopoeic abstractions of computer programming.  One holds a thunk is the (virtual) sound of data hitting the stack (some say hitting the accumulator).  Another suggestion is that it’s the sound of the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. The most inventive in that it was said to have been coined during an after-midnight programming session when it was realized a type of an argument in Algol 60 could be figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery.  In other words, it had "already been thought of"; thus it was christened a "thunk", which is “the past tense of ‘think’ at two in the morning when most good programming is done on a diet of Coca-Cola and pizza”.

Door closing on 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230 S.  Until the 1990s, the quality of even the low-end Mercedes-Benz models was outstanding.

Thunking as a programming concept does seem to have been invented in 1961 as “a chunk of code which provides an address”, a way of binding parameters to their formal definitions in procedure calls.  If a procedure is called with an expression in the place of a formal parameter, the compiler generates a thunk which computes the expression and leaves the address of the result in some standard location.  It usefulness was such it was soon generalised into: an expression, frozen with its environment for later evaluation if and when needed (that point being the closure), the process of unfreezing thunks called forcing.  As operating systems evolved into overlay-rich environments, the thunk became a vital stub-routine to load and jump to the correct overlay, Microsoft and IBM both defining the mapping of the 16-bit Intel environment with segment registers and 64K address limits whereas 32 & 64-bit systems had flat addressing and semi-real memory management.  Thunking permits multiple environments to run on the same computer and operating system and to achieve this, there’s the universal thunk, the generic thunk and the flat thunk, the fine distinctions of which only programmers get.  In another example of nerd humor, a person can be said to have their activities scheduled in a thunk-like manner, the idea being they need “frequently to be forced to completion”, especially if the task is boring.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

So it’s a bit nerdy but modern operating systems need thunking because 8, 16, 32 and 64-bit routines can need to run both concurrently and interactively on the same machine (real or virtual).  If a 32-bit application sends something with precision data types to a 64-bit handler, without thunking, the call will fail because the precise address can’t be resolved.  Although not literally true, it’s easiest to visualise thunking as a translation layer.

IBM OS/2 2.0 in shrink-wrap, 1992.

Thunking first entered consumer computing at scale with IBM’s OS/2 in 1987, an operating system still in surprisingly wide use and supported by IBM until early in the century.  Interestingly, although both OS/2 (and its successor eCom) have been unavailable for years, in August 2017, a private project released ArcaOS, an x86 operating system derived from OS/2 and, for personal use, it retails at US$129.00.  Like OS/2, it has some features which are truly unique such as, for the handful of souls on the planet who either need or wish simultaneously to run multiple 8, 16 and 32-bit text-mode sessions, (including those internally booting different operating systems in segregated memory) in their hundreds on the one physical machine.  First done in 1992 on OS/2 2.0, it’s still quite a trick and the on-line OS/2 Museum hosts an active community, development continuing.

Lavender

Lavender (pronounced lav-uhn-der)

(1) As a color, a pale bluish purple, similar to or variations of lilac & violet.

(2) Of or pertaining to something of the shade.

(3) In botany, any of the various Old World perennial shrubs or herbaceous plants or shrubs belonging to the genus Lavandula (family Lamiaceae (labiates)), of the mint family, especially Lavandula angustifolia, and cultivated for its spikes of fragrant mauve or blue flowers and as the source of a fragrant oil.

(4) The dried flowers or other parts of this plant placed among linen, clothes etc (usually in small, porous bags (called lavender bags)), for the scent or as a preservative.

(5) As lavender water (historically also called toilet water), a solution of oil of lavender, used sometimes as an aftershave.

(6) In informal use, of or relating to a homosexual orientation in men (archaic); an effeminate male (used as both noun & adjective).

(7) As lavender marriage, a type of marriage of convenience undertaken by gay man and lesbian women, often as a form of professional protection.

(8) In film production, a kind of film stock for creating positive prints from negatives as part of the process of duplicating the negatives (obsolete).

(9) A washer; one (especially a woman) who washes clothes (archaic).

(10) As a euphemism, a woman employed in prostitution or having loose morals (archaic).

(11) In sexual politics, an only briefly used and now obsolete descriptor: (1) pertaining to LGBT people and rights (as lavender collar which was replaced by rainbow collar (a reference to the gay pride flag)) and (2) a militant strain of lesbian feminism which opposed heterosexism.

1225–1275: From the Middle English lavendre, from the Anglo-French lavendre, from the Old French lavandiere (the lavender plant), from the tenth century Medieval Latin lavandārius & lavendula, a variant of livendula, a nasalized variant (unrecorded) of lividula (a plant livid in color).  The French forms may be from the Latin lividus (bluish; livid), but was certainly influenced by the French lavande and the Italian lavanda (a washing), from the Latin lavare (to wash), from the primitive Indo-European root leue- (to wash), the link being the flower being used to scent washed fabrics and as a bath perfume.  The Latin lavō (I wash, bathe; I wet, moisten) was from the Proto-Italic lawāō, from the primitive Indo-European lewhs (to wash).  It was cognates with the Ancient Greek λούω (loúō) & λοέω (loéō), the Albanian laj, the Old Armenian լոգանամ (loganam) and the Old English lēaþor (from which English gained lather).  Lavender is a noun & adjective, lavendering is a verb and lavendered is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is lavenders).

The adjective in the sense of “a pale purple color, of the color of lavender flowers” dates from 1840", the noun as a color noted since 1882.  The identical Middle English word meant both "laundress; washerwoman" and "prostitute, whore; camp follower", the origin of that probably being the roles being performed by the same personnel, one presumably before sunset, the other after.  In politics, lavender enjoyed a brief currency as (1) pertaining to LGBT people and rights (as lavender collar which was replaced by rainbow collar (a reference to the gay pride flag) and (2) a descriptor of a militant strain of lesbian feminism which opposed heterosexism.

Lindsay Lohan with lavender colored hair, smoking.

The surname does exist as Lavandar but the more common spelling is Lavender, regarded by genealogists as English but of early French origin.  Introduced by the Normans after the conquest of 1066 it is occupational and derived from lavandier, applied especially to workers in the wool industry employed to wash raw wool or rinse the cloth after fulling. Job-descriptive surnames originally denoted the actual occupation of the name-bearer and only later became hereditary when a son or perhaps a daughter followed the father into the same line of business.  The surname first recorded in 1273 on the “Hundred Rolls” of Cambridgeshire and the earliest known instance in the US record is from New York in 1846 although its likely (possibly with variations of spelling) there were earlier cases of immigration.  The first recorded spelling of the family name was la Lauendere which, dated 1253, was entered in the “Pipe Rolls” of Oxfordshire during the reign of Henry III (1207–1272; King of England 1216-1272) and over the centuries, in the British Isles, Europe, the US and the British Empire, the spelling evolved in several forks until the modern Lavender emerged as the most common.

Wedding day of film star Rock Hudson (1925–1985) & Phyllis Gates (1925–2006), Santa Barbara, California, 9 November 1955.They separated in 1957, the divorce granted the next year.

A lavender marriage is one between a man and woman undertaken as a marriage of convenience to conceal the socially stigmatized sexual orientation of one partner or both.  The color lavender had an association with gay men going back centuries and it’s thought the origin was based on the idea of a shade somewhere between pink (girl) & blue (boy).  Although there’s much evidence to suggest there’s a long tradition of the practice in many cultures, the term “lavender marriage” seems to date only from 1895 and came into wide use only in the mid twentieth century where it was used almost exclusively, knowingly to describe marriages in the Hollywood film industry between couples known not to be straight.  In some cases the marriages were a professional necessity because of contracts of employment which essentially proscribed all aspects of homosexuality.  Although in the west the structural reasons for lavender marriages have substantially been dismantled, they are known still to occur, especially in communities where social mores reflect the less progressive views of their countries of ethnic origin.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (pronounced hex-ax-oh-gee-oh-e-eye-hex-en-gen-too-hex-a-pho-be-ah)

Fear of the number 666.

The number 666 is best known from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation (13:15–18) and is a symbol both of the Antichrist and the Devil and is applied to the second of two beasts mentioned in the Book of Revelation.  The construct was the Ancient Greek ἑξακόσιοι (hexakósioi) (six hundred) + ἑξήκοντα (hexḗkonta) (sixty) + ἕξ (héx) (six) +‎ -phobia.  The suffix -phobia (fear of a specific thing; hate, dislike, or repression of a specific thing) was from the New Latin, from the Classical Latin, from the Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía) and was used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing (the idea of a hatred came later).  For certain historians and biblical scholars for whom 616 is as suspect as 666 there's the companion phobia: Hexakosioihekkaidekaphobia.   The related forms are hexakosioihexekontahexaphobe & hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic.  For help when practicing pronunciation, go to:

https://www.howtopronounce.com/hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia/

The number of the beast

The origin is murky and there are other biblical references but not always as 666; 666 is the number of talents of gold Solomon collected each year and is the number of Adonikam's descendants who return to Jerusalem and Judah from the Babylonian exile and scholars suggest there are latent references in transliteration.   Nebuchadnezzar, the sixth-century BC king of Babylon, appears both as Nebuchadrezzar and Nebuchadrezzur and the number of each name can be calculated because in the Hebrew, letters double as numbers.  Nebuchadrezzar is 663, and Nebuchadrezzur, 669; midway between the two lies 666 and it was Nebuchadrezzar, who came (bidden by God) to crush God's people so may thus prefigure the end of times beast, the antagonistic creature which appears briefly about two-thirds into Revelation’s apocalyptic vision. Some manuscripts of the original Greek use the symbols χξϛ or χξϝ while other manuscripts spell out the number in words.  Using gematria (the method of calculating numbers from names), Nero Caesar transliterated from Greek into Hebrew produces the number 666 whereas the Latin spelling renders 616.  Thus, 666 may be a coded reference to Nero, although that notion does depend on the accepted Hebrew spelling of Caesar, a thing about which there’s some doubt. 

For two millennia there’s never been ecclesiastical or scholarly consensus about 666.  Although the second century Greek cleric Irenaeus affirmed 666, theologians then and since have expressed doubts because of the appearance of 616 in the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, one of the four great uncial codices, as well as in the Latin version of Tyconius and an ancient Armenian version.  Irenaeus knew about 616 but choose, for whatever reason, to correct the Vetus Latina, the existing Latin version of the New Testament.  The oldest known manuscript of Revelation, from Papyrus 115 in the Oxyrhynchus series, uses 616, as does the later Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, even having 616 written in full: ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ, hexakosioi deka hex (six hundred and sixteen).  These documents are cited by some scholars who suggest 616 was the original, 666 substituted by analogy with 888, the Greek number for Jesus. 

More fun, and just as speculative, is the idea the writers of the time just liked numbers, 666 being more interesting than 616 because:

(1) 666 is a triangular number, the sum of the first 36 natural numbers (ie 1+2+3+4+5+6+...+36=666).  That of course makes 666 the sum total of the numbers on a roulette wheel.  Zero, so often of such significance, here has no effect. 

(2) 666 is the sum of squares of the first seven prime numbers.

(3) In Roman numerals 666 is DCLXVI which has exactly one occurrence of all symbols whose value is less than 1000 in decreasing order (D=500, C=100, L=50, X=10, V=5, I=1).

(4) In base 10, 666 is a repdigit (and therefore a palindromic number) and a Smith number.  A prime reciprocal magic square based on 1/149 in base 10 has a magic total of 666.

The Number of the Beast is 666 (circa 1805), pen and watercolor, by William Blake (1757-1827).

Thanks to popular culture, even beyond Christendom, the number 666 and its relationship with the Devil and the Antichrist is well known and it clearly affects a few.  When in 1989 Ronald Reagan (1911-2004 US president 1981-1989) retired to leafy rich Bel-Air in Los Angeles (a locality which maintained its prestige despite the indignity of the Chevrolet Bel Air between 1950-1972 being reduced from a premium to a basic designation), although happing with the house at 666 St Cloud Road, they soon had the address changed to 668.  Whether this was on advice from Nancy Reagan’s (1921-2016) clairvoyant isn’t recorded but some organs of the US state also chose not to take chances.  US Route 666 (dating from 1926), upon statistical analysis, proved unusually dangerous and after this became public knowledge it picked up the nickname the Devil’s Highway.  In 2003 it was renamed US Highway 491 and the accident rate has lowered although its thought this is due to improvements to the road and a reduction in the number of people stopping to steal road signs, Route 666 a popular destination for stoners to pose for photographs, a thing even in the pre-selfie era.  In more secular Finland, there was apparently little concern, Finair flight AY666 plying the CPH-HEL (Copenhagen-Helsinki) route between 2006-2017, AY666 retired and replaced by AY954 as part of a general restructuring.  AY666’s last flight was on a Friday the 13^th (for the 21^st time) and it landed safely, eight minutes ahead of schedule.

Names for many phobias have been coined and while some (relating to injections, spiders, heights etc) are of clinical significance in mental health, many have been created just for linguistic fun.  A surprising number relate to numbers, many of which reference popular culture (TV, video games etc) and a site exists which provides a précis of many.  The overarching condition is arithmophobia (also known as numerophobia), which is a fear of numbers or mathematics.

Oudenophobia (0), Henophobia (1), Dyophobia (2), Triskaphobia (3), Tetraphobia (4), Pentaphobia (5), Hexaphobia (6), Heptaphobia (7), Octophobia (8), Enneaphobia (9), Decaphobia (10), Hendecaphobia (11). Dodecaphobia (12), Triskaidekaphobia (13), Dekapentophobia (15), Hexadecaphobia (16), Heptadecaphobia (17), Octodecaphobia (18), Enneadecaphobia (19), Eikositriophobia (23), Eikosihexaphobia (26), Triakontenneaphobia (39), Tessarakontadyophobia (42), Tessarakontaheptaphobia (47), Pentekontoctophobia (58), Hexekontadyophobia (62), Hexekontenneaphobia (69), Hebdomekontahenophobia (71), Ogdokontaheptaphobia (87), Enenekontenneaphobia (99), Hekatophobia (100), Hekatohendecaphobia (111), Hekatenenekontahenophobia (191), Diakosioihekkaidekaphobia (216), Diakosioipentekontaphobia (250), Triakosioitriakontatriophobia (333), Tetrakosioeikosiphobia (420). Pentakosioipentekontahenophobia (551), Hexakosioihekkaidekaphobia (616), Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (666), Heftakosioitessarakontaheptaphobia (747), Enniakosioihendecaphobia (911), Enniakosioenenekontenneaphobia (999), Quattuormiliasescentoruphobia (4600), Tessarakontadyochilahexekontenneaphobia (42069), Compustitusnumerophobia (composite numbers), Meganumerophobia (large numbers), Imparnumerophobia (odd numbers), Omalonumerophobia (even numbers), Piphobia (pi), Phiphobia (the golden ratio), Primonumerophobia (prime numbers), Paranumerophobia (irrational numbers), Neganumerophobia (negative numbers) & Decadisophobia (decimals),

The latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR, March 2022) made few changes to the classification anxiety disorders and phobias which had been revised in DSM-5 (2013).  Phobias are categorized as anxiety disorders, with specific phobia (fear of something that poses little or no actual danger) being the most common anxiety disorder.  A specific phobia is said to manifest when a person experiences extreme anxiety when they anticipate exposure or are exposed to a feared stimulus and there are five general categories: (1) animal type (spiders, snakes, dogs etc), (2) the natural environment (tornadoes, heights, water, fire etc), (3) injections and related procedures (needles, medical procedures), (4) situational events (flying, enclosed spaces etc ) & (5) other types (ie phobias that do not fit into the previous four categories).  The fifth category interacts with the introduction of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which is diagnosed when an individual experiences persistent worry about everyday challenges out of proportion to the perceived threat.  GAD extends to those aware their reaction is one of excessive fear about what can be a non-existent threat and no more than worrying about worrying too much.  Superstitions related to particular numbers are common in many cultures but of themselves these do not constitute a phobia which technically is a diagnosis of reaction to the point where the affect on a patient’s life is clinically significant.  Accordingly, while noting just about anything which has been styled a phobia could induce a case of GAD, few actually satisfy the APA’s diagnostic criteria and the DSM mentions just the handful which constitute the overwhelming majority of cases.