Spinster

Spinster (pronounced spin-sta (U) or spin-ster (non-U))

(1) A woman still unmarried beyond the usual age (according to the usual social conventions) of marrying.  Except when used historically, spinster has long been thought offensive or at least disparaging.

(2) In law (and still used in some jurisdictions), a woman who has never married.

(3) A person (historically always a woman) whose occupation is the spinning of threads (archaic).

(4) A jocular slang variation of the more common a spin doctor, spin merchant or spin master (one who spins (puts a spin on) a political media story so as to lend a favorable or advantageous appearance.

(5) A woman of evil character who has committed evil deeds, so called from being forced to spin in a house of correction (obsolete).

(6) A spider; an insect (such as a silkworm) which spins thread (a rare, dialectal form).

1325–1375: The construct was spin + -ster.  From the Middle English spynnester & spinnestere (a woman who spins fibre).  The early form combined the Middle English spinnen (spin fibers into thread) with -stere, the Middle English feminine suffix from the Old English -istre, from the Proto-Germanic -istrijon, the feminine agent suffix used as the equivalent of the masculine –ere.  It was used in Middle English also to form nouns of action (meaning "a person who ...") without regard for gender, a use now common in casual adaptations.  Spinster came to be used to describe spinners of both sexes which clearly upset some because by 1640 a double-feminine form had emerged: spinstress (a female spinner) which, 1716 also was being used for "a maiden lady".  Spinster, spinsterishness, spinsterism, spinsterism, spinsterdom, spinstership and spinsterhood are nouns and spinsterish, spinsterly, spinsterlike & spinsteresque are adjectives; the noun plural is spinsters.

The unmarried Lindsay Lohan who would probably have been described as a bachelorette, "Heart Truth Red Dress", Fall 2006 fashion show, Olympus Fashion Week, Manhattan, February 2006.

How prevalent the practice actually was is impossible to say because of the paucity of social histories of most classes prior to the modern age but the public attitude was said to be that unmarried women were supposed to occupy themselves with spinning.  This spread to common law through that typically English filter, the class system.  So precisely was the status of the spinster defined that the cut-off point was actually where one’s father sat in the order of precedence, a spinster "the legal designation in England of all unmarried women from a viscount's daughter downward".  Thus a woman’s father had be on the third rung of the peerage to avoid spinsterhood and that meant to avoid the fate the options were either marriage or to secure him an upward notch (from viscount to earl).  The use in English legal documents lasted from the seventeen until well into the twentieth century and, by 1719, had become the standard term for a "woman still unmarried and beyond the usual age at which it was expected".

A metallic wood-boring beetle (left) and a thornback ray (right).

One alternative to spinster which still shows up in the odd literary novel was the Italian zitella (an older unmarried woman).  Zitella was the feminine form of zitello (an older, unmarried man), which was from zito (a young, unmarried man), from the Neapolitan or Sicilian zitu, both probably related to the Vulgar Latin pittitus (small, worthless).  The feminine form of zito was zita (young unmarried woman) and both in southern Italian dialectical use could be used respectively to mean boyfriend & girlfriend and also a type of pasta (correctly a larger, hollow macaroni but as culinary terms they’ve apparently be applied more liberally).  The Italian zitellaggio (zitellaggi the plural) was the state of spinsterhood, the construct being zitella +‎ -aggio.  The suffix -aggio was from the Latin -āticum, probably via the Old Occitan –atge and was used to form nouns indicating an action or result related to the root verb.  Pleasingly, Zitella is a genus of metallic, wood-boring beetles in the family Buprestidae, containing four species and commonly known as jewel beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles.  Quite why the name was chosen isn’t immediately obvious but it’s not uncommon for genera and species to be named after an individual or a place associated with the discovery.  It’s therefore wholly speculative to suggest a link between an entomologist’s girlfriend and a wood-boring beetle.  Still, even that connection might be preferred to the archaic English form "thornback" (a woman over a certain age (quoted variously as 26 or 30 and thus similar in construction to the modern Chinese Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ) (leftover women) who has never married and in the eighteenth century a thornback was thought "older than a spinster").

The slang “old maid”, referring to either to a spinster of a certain age or one who, although younger, behaves in a similar way (the implication being negative qualities such as fussiness or undesirability) is from the 1520s and the card game of that name is attested by 1831 (though it may now be thought a microaggression).  Bachelorette or the gender-neutral forms “unmarried” or “single” tend now to be preferred.  Spinster is a noun, spinsterish an adjective and spinsterishly an adverb but the most commonly used derived forms were probably the noun spinsterhood and the adjective spinsterlike.  The noun plural is spinsters.

End of spinsterhood.

On Sunday 28 November, Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram her notice of engagement to Bader Shammas, then an assistant vice president at financial services company Credit Suisse.  At that point Ms Lohan should have been styled as betrothed which is the state of being engaged; the terms fiancé (or fiancée) also used.  By tradition, engagement rings are worn on the left hand.  Fortunately (for Instagram and other purposes), the ring-finger, partially severed in a nautical accident on the Aegean in 2016 was re-attached with some swift micro-surgery, the digit making a full recovery.  The couple's marriage was announced during 2022. 

Pontoon

Pontoon (pronounced pon-toon)

(1) In military use, a boat, boat-like device or some other floating structure used as one of the supports for a temporary bridge (often styled as “pontoon bridge) placed over a river, canal or similar waterway.

(2) A float for a derrick, landing stage etc.

(3) In nautical use, a float (often inflatable) for raising a sunken or deeply laden vessel in the water; a camel or caisson.

(4) In aviation, a seaplane’s floats.

(5) In some places (1) an alternative name for the card game blackjack (also as 21 or twenty-one, an alteration of the French ving-un (an obsolete variant of vingt-et-un (twenty-one)) and (2) in the game, the combination of an ace with a ten or court card when dealt to a player as his first two cards.

(6) In nautical freight & passenger handling, a lighter or barge used for loading or unloading ships.

(7) In automotive design, a style in which the coachwork features smooth, flowing curves extending from the front to the rear without interruption.

1585–1595: From the Middle French ponton, from the fourteenth century Old French ponton (bridge, drawbridge, boat-bridge; flat-bottomed boat), from the Latin pontōn-, from pontō (flat-bottomed boat, punt), from pōns (bridge); a pontōnem was a “ferryboat”.  The use in some places to describe the card game (an alteration of the French ving-un (an obsolete variant of vingt-et-un (twenty-one) dates from 1916 and entered English when French & British troops played the game on the Western Front during World War I (1914-1918).  In engineering, the pontoon bridge (a roadway supported on pontoons) was described as early as 1778.  Pontoon, pontooning & pontooneer are nouns and pontooned is an adjective & verb; the noun plural is pontoons.

Bugatti T32s at the French Grand Prix, Tours, 1923.

Attracted by gains to be realized in aerodynamic efficiency, in 1923 Bugatti fabricated four T32 race cars to compete in that year’s French Grand Prix using the pontoon principle.  Bodied in aluminum, the stubby little machines were nicknamed “the Tanks” and there’s certainly a resemblance to the lines of the World War I tanks but, designed without the use of a wind-tunnel, the aviation influenced airfoil shape chosen to increase top speed also possessed that other quality need by aircraft: lift.  The combination of speed and lift was of course a recipe for instability and the T32s showed a marked inclination to leave the track.  Despite this discouraging start, the pontoon approach would ultimately prevail but for decades, instances of aerodynamically-induced instability would plague the tracks, the death toll not small.

Small & large: 1926 Hanomag 2/10 PS Coupé (Kommissbrot) (left) & 1933 Volvo Venus Bilo (right).  The larger the pontoon, the more slab-sided the tendency.

In automotive design, term "pontoon" was used to a style in which the coachwork features smooth, flowing curves extending from the front to the rear without interruption.  The use of the word alluded to the nautical term used to describe a floatation device attached to the sides of a boat or ship to provide stability.  The objectives of the early adopters of the motif included (1) aerodynamic efficiency, (2) a reduction in the number of components needed to form a body, (3) enhanced efficiency through the allocation of more usable internal space and (4) a sleek and streamlined appearance.  It took decades of experimentation and there were a number of notable failures in just about every aspect of the pursuit of those objectives but, beginning in the 1920s, literally dozens of recognizably pontoon-like forms entered production, some sold by the thousand but it’s notable the most successful ventures were those which involved smaller (sometimes on the scale which would later be called micro-cars) vehicles.  On those, the styling tended to be less jarring to the aesthetic sensibilities of those who would actually pay for the things; on the larger machines, the most commonly applied epithet was “slab-sided”.

The pontoon would prevail but in one little corner of England, the 1930s lasted until 1968.  Remarkably, when the NSU Ro80 (left) was released in 1967, the Vanden Plas Limousine (right, complete with a divided windscreen made of two flat panes) was on-sale in a showroom in the same street.

Still, as the 1930s unfolded, the trend was certainly gaining strength and had it not been for the blast of war, things might have evolved much as they did although like many of the aspects of science and engineering which benefited from the extraordinary progress realized during those years, the evolution at the very least would probably have taken much longer.  As it happened, in the late 1940s as the first generation of post-war vehicles was released in the US, the pontoon motif was almost universal, only some vestigial traces of the old, separated ways remaining to reassure.  In Europe, some clung longer to the old ways and in the UK, even by the late 1960s there were still traditionalists finding a tiny market still existed for the old ways bit but mostly, during the previous decade the pontoon had taken its place as one of the symbols of mid century modernism.

Bridge on the road to the pontoon: 1948 Mercedes-Benz 170 (left) & 1951 Mercedes-Benz 220 (right).

One range was so definitively pontoonish that it even picked up the nickname “pontoon”.  Daimler-Benz emerged from World War II not so much diminished as almost destroyed and in 1945 the board of directors felt compelled to issue a statement declaring “Daimler-Benz had ceased to exist in 1945” although that proved pessimistic, a modest programme of repair and maintenance soon established and the next year, small scale production resumed of the pre-war 170V although circumstances were challenging and in two years barely 600 left the improvised assembly line.  However, the currency reform and economic stabilization of 1948 transformed things and marked the birth of the post-war Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) and the 170 range, so appropriate to the austere times was soon augmented and then replaced by more advanced models but the pre-war styling was carried over substantially unchanged.

The Mercedes-Benz Pontoons: 1953 180 (left), 1956 219 (centre) and 1959 220 SE cabriolet (right).

Lindsay Lohan on pontoon, Sardinia, 2016.

It was however obvious that the approach was antiquated and in 1951 work was begun on a new range of mass-produced four-door sedans which abandoned the old separate chassis for a unibody.  This was the car which came to be called the pontoon and the first version was released in 1953 as the 180, fitted with 1.8 litre (110 cubic inch) four-cylinder engine in both petrol & diesel forms.  Stylistically, it was among the simplest, least adorned interpretations of the pontoon idea and has been compared both to “three boxes” and “on loaf of bread atop another” and among mainstream vehicles, probably only the contemporary British Fords (the Mark Consul, Zephyr & Zodiac (the so called “three graces”)) enjoyed the same austerity of line.  The pontoon though looked undeniably modern compared with its predecessors and it was a success, soon augmented by the longer 220 fitted with the 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) straight-six with which more than any other the company rebuilt its reputation.  As the Wirtschaftswunder gathered pace, demand emerged for something more exclusive and a 220 coupé and cabriolet were added although, very expensive, production didn’t reach far into four figures.  More popular was the blend of the six cylinder engine with the short body of the 180, the engineering of which was simple enough but finding the appropriate nomenclature must have required some discussion and, given the way thing were then done by Germans, presumably reached board level for approval.  The solution was to call it the 219 which was a unique departure from the factory’s naming conventions and the only time in recent history the base three-digit model designation has ended in other than a 0 (zero).  Model proliferation would follow and the problem would reoccur and in later years another convention was adopted which lead to a confusing alpha-numeric soup (190 E 2.6, 300 E 2.8 et al so under that regime the 219 would have become the 180 2.2) until in the early 1990s the whole system was re-organized.  The pontoon line lasted until 1963 although by then it looked a relic and had been cut to a few lower-cost utilitarian models.  The pontoons were really the last memory of the austere years before the exuberance of the 1960s affected even Daimler-Benz.

OSI Silver Fox.  Race car designers had before tried the twin-pontoon idea without great success but in 1967, attracted by the uniquely achievable aerodynamic advantages offered by what was essentially a “wing with wheels”, OSI built the Silver Fox for the Le Mans 24 Hour endurance race.  Financial difficulties doomed that project and the potential of concept was undermined when the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation (and international sports dopiest regulatory body)) banned “movable aerodynamic aids”).

Telex

Telex (pronounced tel-eks)

(1) A two-way teletypewriter service channeled through a public telecommunications system for instantaneous, direct communication between subscribers at remote locations (sometimes with initial capital letter).

(2) A physical teletypewriter machine used to send or receive on such a service.

(3) A message transmitted by telex.

(4) To transmit such a message.

1932:  A compound coined word to describe "a communication system of teletypewriters", the construct being tel(eprinter) + ex(change).

The Telex

Although most associated with the clunky looking teleprinters used to type and send/receive messages, telex actually refers to the network over which the message traffic passed.  Point-to-point messaging like the telegraph long pre-dated the telex network and, being based on physical wires and cables, introduced into English the verbal shorthand for such messages: the wire and the cable.  Teleprinters evolved from the telegraph, both using binary signals, best understood by reference to Morse-code in that symbols were represented by the on/off of an electrical current.  Because this is so different from the variable voltage model of analog telephone systems, the telex network was wholly separate.

Slovenian news site, telex.si. 

The first telex network was built in Germany as a university research project in the later years of the Weimar Republic, the first commercial services being offered by the Reichspost (German post office) in 1932.  Adoption was slow until the post-war years but telex become widely popular after 1945 and by the 1960s was the de-facto standard for long-distance corporate communications.  It was a robust and high-security network with both error-checking for the message and a machine-2-machine answerback protocol under which the sending machine sent a WRU (WhoaReyoU) code to which the recipient machine would respond with the transmission of an unambiguous identifying code.  It meant it was difficult to send a message to an incorrect address; something a few eMail and Twitter users might wish existed on their systems.

Still a niche market.  

Telex is used now only by those prepared to pay the cost for very high security.  Although still available from swisstelex in some western European countries, telex is now almost entirely a relic except for niches like underground military installations or TvHF (telex via HF radio) which remains a required element of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System.  Telex generally went into decline as services like fax, eMail and SMS because ubiquitous.  These innovations, although technically much different for telex, were, to the users, lineal descendants, inheriting particularly the stylistic techniques of abbreviated English such as CUL8R or FYEO which the Nokia generation of the 1990s claimed as their invention.  Except for the swisstelex service, vendors offering telex emulation across various platforms do so without dedicated lines. 

Rehab

Rehab (pronounced ree-hab)

(1) A clipping of rehabilitation.

(2) In slang (though also sometimes used formally), a programme or facility for treating substance abuse (those addicted to narcotics or alcohol.

(3) In slang (though also sometimes used formally), a programme or facility for treating those recovering from certain medical conditions:

(4) In slang, a building which has been renovated, usually in the context of urban renewal and re-development being.

(5) Of or relating to rehabilitation.

(6) In the vernacular of post-war New Zealand English, the informal short form for the Department of Rehabilitation, a government institution established to cater for the needs of injured military personnel.

(7) To rehabilitate (something, someone, a concept or idea).

(8) In political science, to restore an individual to their previous status (drawn from late medieval civil & canon law and associated particularly with Soviet-era Russia and undertaken to rectify those unpersoned).

(9) In environmental science, a defined area (land or aquatic) in which a programme of rehabilitation is being undertaken or has been completed.

1948 (as documented although there may have been previous ad-hoc use in various oral traditions):  The original form emerged in the vernacular of post-war New Zealand English NZ the informal short form for the Department of Rehabilitation, a government institution established to cater for the needs of injured military personnel.  It worked in conjunction with the civil organization the Rehabilitation League, formed in 1931 with similar aims.  By the early 1970s, the word as a slang term was used in relation to housing and urban renewal programmes.  The extension of the meaning to “an action of restoring anything to a previous condition” emerged in the mid-nineteenth century and was soon used of land, buildings, machinery etc and in the 1940s it began to be applied to programmes designed to re-educate & re-train criminals, addicts and such for a successful re-entry to society.  Rehab is a noun & verb, rehaber is a noun & rehabbed & rehabbing; the noun plural is rehabs.

The Collins Dictionary tracks patterns of word use and while the pre-modern statistics are neither comprehensive or exact to the extent revealed by analysis of the wealth of modern data, it's thought still usefully illustrative.  Clearly there was a trend of use in the eighteenth century but this is thought not indicative of "rehab" being treated as a stand-alone word but as a contraction to save space when printing legal and ecclesiastical documents, a required technique in an era when ink and paper were both expensive.  Rehab, as currently used, is very much a word of the twenty-first century.

The noun rehabilitation (act of reinstating in a former rank or standing) dates from the 1530s and was from the French réhabilitation or the Medieval Latin rehabilitationem (nominative rehabilitatio) (restoration), a noun of action from the past-participle stem of rehabilitare, the construct being re- (again) + habitare (make fit), from the Latin habilis (easily managed, fit).  At least some etymologists suspect the derived verb rehabilitate may have emerged concurrently but the earliest known citation is from 1583.  The process originally applied exclusively to those who, having earlier been punished for some transgression by being stripped for rank or status, were for whatever reason restored to their former position.  The verb was from the Medieval Latin rehabilitatus, the past participle of rehabilitare and the processes were at various times codified in both civil and canon law.  The process is now best remembered from the practices in the Soviet Union where comrades guilty of especially unworthy acts (or thoughts) could be “unpersoned” (ie erased from all records).  In some cases, circumstances could change and the unpersoned were rehabilitated.

Lindsay Lohan with broken wrist (fractured in two places in an unfortunate fall at Milk Studios during New York Fashion Week) and 355 ml (12 fluid oz) can of Rehab energy drink, Los Angeles, September 2006.  The car is a 2006 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 (R230; 2004-2011) which would later feature in the tabloids after a low-speed crash.  The R230 range (2001-2011) was unusual because of the quirk of the SL 550 (2006-2011), a designation used exclusively in the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273).

Doubtlessly, substance abuse has existed ever since substances became available to be abused and just a certainly, over the millennia, individuals, families and societies have devised their own methods to rehabilitate those afflicted.  There was great variation in the approaches but in the West, most tended to be influenced by the dominant ethos that addiction was a moral failing and personal weakness, the literature suggesting punishment and abstinence were there preferred course of treatment; “drying out” has a long history.  It was in the late twentieth century that the notion of “rehab” being not only a process but one which could be treated in a permanent structure, an institutionalization of earlier ad-hoc approaches of which Alcoholics Anonymous, beginning in 1935 is probably the best known although it was by no means the first and much of its success in attracting followers has been attributed to it distancing itself from the religious affiliations which characterized many of its predecessors.

Lindsay Lohan in rehab center, Sundance, Utah, 2007.  It is possible to purchase alcohol in Utah although the regulatory environment is more restrictive so presumably the state is more suited than many to host rehab centers.

Even by the 1970s, there was still much stigma attached to rehabilitation programmes and it was probably the admission by Betty Ford (1918–2011; US First Lady 1974-1977) that she was an alcoholic which was most instrumental in lending some legitimacy to the concept.  After leaving the White House she would found her own rehab clinic which continues to operate.  In the years since, there’s been an attempt to re-classify addiction as a treatable medical condition rather than a moral failing or something worse which need to be treated punitively.  To an extent that has worked and there’s probably a general public perception that addiction is exactly that, a chemical relationship between the substances and the physical brain but in some jurisdictions, such is the volume of addiction that it’s simply not possible to provide rehab services on the scale required.  There’s a critique also of rehab as something which has come to be seen by the TikTok generation as something almost fashionable, presumably because of the frequency with which pop-culture celebrities are clients and even addiction can now thus be rationalized as one of the corollaries of the creative mind.  There’s also of course the link between rehab clinics and wealth, the association created because (1) they’re places where even short-stay programmes can cost tens of thousands of dollars and (2) the only time they’re attract publicity is when a celebrity or some other famous figure attends.  Criticism has been extended too because there’s often little sympathy for those who use an admission of addiction in mitigation (“excuse” in the popular imagination) when on trial for this or that and there’s a perception rehab is an attractive alternative to actual punishment.

Monster Rehab energy drinks.

According to the helpful site Caffeine Informer, Monster's Rehab energy drinks (Peach Tea, Raspberry Tea, Orangeade, Watermelon, Strawberry Lemonade & Tea + Lemonade) contain 160 mg of caffeine (except the watermelon flavor which weighs in at 150).  A cup of black coffee will typically contain between 55-70 mg.  According to the manufacturer, the Rehab drinks are "packed with electrolytes, vitamins, and botanicals that deliver on advanced hydration helping you reduce fatigue and increase concentration."  Their target market is those who wish to "refresh, recover & revive" and their staccato advertising copy captures the moment they'd like customers to visualize:

It’s 2 P.M. Still sleeping, but who’s banging on the door?  “Housekeeping!”  Your eyes open to see a mermaid scoot her ass across the floor.  The housekeeper screams and mutters a prayer.  This can’t be right.  Your eyes close.  It’s after 4 now.  Your head’s pounding.  So many questions.  You’ve got to meet everyone downstairs in an hour to do it all again.  Not a problem.  You’re a professional.  You crack open a Rehab Monster Tea + Lemonade and let the lemon-infused electrolytes, vitamins, and botanicals work their life-giving, hydration magic.  Congrats, You’re back from the dead.

Mass

Mass (pronounced mas)

(1) A body of coherent matter, usually of indefinite shape and often of considerable size.

(2) A collection of incoherent particles, parts, or objects regarded as forming one body.

(3) Aggregate; whole (usually preceded by in the).

(4) A considerable assemblage, number, or quantity.

(5) Bulk, size, expanse, or massiveness.

(6) In painting, an expanse of color or tone defining form or shape in general outline rather than in detail.

(7) A shape or three-dimensional volume that has or gives the illusion of having weight, density, and bulk.

(8) The main body, bulk, or greater part of anything.

(9) In physics, a physical quantity expressing the amount of matter in a body. It is a measure of a body's resistance to changes in velocity (inertial mass) and also of the force experienced in a gravitational field (gravitational mass); according to the theory of relativity, inertial and gravitational masses are equal.

(10) In pharmacology, a preparation of thick, pasty consistency, from which pills are made.

(11) In the Roman Catholic Church and certain Protestant Churches, the celebration of the Eucharist.

(12) In some religious rituals, the musical setting of certain parts of this service, as the Kyrie eleison, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei (sometimes with initial lowercase).

(13) In extractive mining, an irregular deposit of ore not occurring in veins.

Pre-900: From the Middle English masse, from the Old English mæsse from the Vulgar Latin messa & massa (mass; that which forms a lump) from the Church Latin missa, past participle of mittere (to send, dismiss), perhaps derived from the concluding dismissal in the Roman Mass, Ite, missa est, (Go, it is the dismissal).  Ultimate root was the Ancient Greek mâza (barley cake, lump, mass, ball), akin to mássein (to knead).  Mass is a noun, verb & adjective, massing is a noun & verb and massed is a verb; the noun plural is masses. 

The meaning "lump, quantity, size" is from the late fourteenth century, the sense a direct borrowing from the Old French masse (lump, heap, pile; crowd, large amount; ingot, bar") which had enjoyed the meaning since the eleventh century, under the influence of the Latine massa (kneaded dough, lump, that which adheres together like dough), probably from Greek mâza related to mássein from the primitive Indo-European root mag- (to knead); related was the Lithuanian minkyti (to knead), root of macerate.  The sense extended in English in the 1580s to "a large quantity, amount, or number" and the strict sense in physics is from 1704.  It was first used as an adjective in 1733 and was used thus in biology in the nineteenth century.  Mass-culture was first used (in sociology) in 1916; mass hysteria from 1914; mass media from 1923; mass movement from 1897; mass production from 1920; mass grave from 1918 and mass murder from 1880.

Increasing mass: Lindsay Lohan posts pregnancy progress pictures on Instagram.

Increasing Mass and the Higgs Field

In physics, mass is locked up energy; as an object accelerates, its mass will increase, mass here called “inertial mass”.  Inertial mass is the amount of resistance a physical object has to any change in its motion, this including the resistance a body has to acceleration or to directional changes.  According to the theory of relativity, gravitational mass is always the same as inertial mass; however, when describing an object’s mass increasing due to acceleration, it’s the inertial mass which increases.  So, as an object increases in speed, so does the amount of energy it has, this energy is what is referred to as “the increase in mass”.  It’s this relationship between mass and energy which explains why nothing can exceed the speed of light.  The energy of a particle diverges to infinity as it approaches the speed of light and because there cannot be infinite energy in a particle, the speed of light cannot be reached although particle physicists are divided about whether this was always true.  In the first fraction of a second after the big bang, almost all particles were massless, travelling at or beyond the speed of light until, sometime in that first second, the Higgs field came into existence, permeating the whole universe, giving mass to particles.

The now famous Higgs boson (known also as the Higgs particle) is a subatomic particle which was first described theoretically (as part of a mechanism which was initially referred to as the Higgs Mechanism and is now called the Higgs Field) in the 1960s by English theoretical physicist Peter Higgs (b 1929) and (independently) by a number of others.  The Higgs Field was “invented” because without its operation there was no way to account for the mass of bosons (one of two types of particles) and while bolting it onto the models physicists use for their calculations, it’s existence wasn’t proved until experiments conducted using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, a very big particle accelerator) at the Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire (CERN; the European Organization for Nuclear Research).  The formal announcement of the verification of the existence of the Higgs boson (and by implication the field) was made in July 2012, the Nobel Prize in Physic awarded the following year to Higgs and Belgian theoretical physicist François, Baron Englert (born 1932) (technically the field is properly known as the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, noting the contribution of US theoretical physicist Robert Brout (1928-2011).

Inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a high-energy particle collider mounted in a 17 mile (27 km) long tunnel in a loop deep under the Swiss-French border near Geneva.

The boson is associated with the Higgs field, a form of energy which permeates the entire universe and can be conceptualized as part of the universe’s “fabric” although it’s not helpful to visually that literally but particles acquire their mass by interacting with this field, the Higgs boson the quantum excitation of the field.  Electrically neutral, the Higgs boson is very short-lived, decaying almost at the point of creation and its very existence can be detected only indirectly by an observation of the particles into which it decays.  It took decades to detect because until the LHC was fully operational, a machine capable of sustaining the experiment didn’t exist.  However, while the work at CERN is thought proof of the existence of the field but nothing beyond; how or why the field exists and why some particles interact more than others remains unknown.

Fix

Fix (pronounced fiks)

(1) To repair or mend; to rectify a fault.

(2) To put in order or in good condition; to adjust or arrange.

(3) To make fast, firm, or stable; to place definitely and permanently.

(4) To settle definitely; to determine (place, value etc); to make rigid; to mount or secure in place.

(5) To direct (the eyes, one’s attention, one’s gaze etc) steadily; To attract and hold (the eye, one’s attention, one’s gaze etc).

(6) To put into permanent form.

(7) To put or place the responsibility or blame for something upon a person or institution.

(8) To assign or refer to a definite place, time, event etc.

(9) To provide or supply with something needed or wanted, especially popular in narcotics transactions; the quantity supplied in that transaction; to inject oneself with a narcotic.

(10) In informal us, to arrange or influence the outcome or action of, especially privately or dishonestly (juries, sporting events, stock prices etc).

(11) To prepare a meal, snack, drink etc.

(12) In informal use, to put in a condition or position to make no further trouble.

(13) In informal use, to get even with; to visit vengeance upon (often as “fix right up).

(14) In informal use, to castrate an animal (used usually of domestic pets).

(15) In slang, to prepare or plan (followed usually by an infinitive as in “fixing to go”, (mostly US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line).

(16) In informal use, a position from which it is difficult to escape; a dilemma; a predicament (typically “in a fix”).

(17) In informal use, a repair, adjustment, or solution, usually of an immediate nature (sometimes in the form “quick & dirty fix”, expressed also in IT as “a Q&D”).

(18) In navigation, a charted position of a vessel or aircraft, determined by two or more bearings taken on landmarks, GPS location, stars etc.

(19) In navigation, the determining of the position of a ship, plane etc, by mathematical, electronic, or other means.

(20) A clear determination (often as “get a fix on”).

(21) A compulsively sought dose or infusion of something (such as “one’s morning caffeine fix”).

(22) In slang, a euphemism for the state of pregnancy (such as “she’s fixed-up”).

(23) In chemistry, to make stable in consistency or condition; reduce from fluidity or volatility to a more stable state.

(24) In photography, to render (an image) permanent by removing light-sensitive silver halides; in digital imaging, any form or correction.

(25) In microscopy, to kill, make rigid, and preserve for microscopic study.

(26) In cytology to kill, preserve, and harden tissue, cells etc for subsequent microscopic study.

(27) In industrial production, to convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen compounds, as in the manufacture of fertilizers or the action of bacteria in the soil.

(28) In biology, to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially carbohydrates, as occurs in photosynthesis in plants and some microorganisms.

(29) In foreign exchange (forex) trading, a benchmark exchange rate used to settle or fix the value of certain financial instruments or transactions.

1350–1400: From the Middle English fixen, from the Middle French fixer or the Medieval Latin fixāre, from the Latin fixus (fixed), past participle of fīgere (to fasten).  The sense of “to repair” may first have been used in the US in the eighteenth century but the first recorded used in England was in the early 1800s although, in the way of such things, it’s likely already to have been in oral use for some time.  The use to mean “to prepare” to plan ” is a uniquely American use, now heard mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line (“feel like I’m fixing to die” etc) although linguistic anthropologists note that until the mid twentieth century was a common form throughout the US eastern seaboard states.  Forms (sometimes hyphenated) like overfix, defix & refix are created as required and fixt (an archaic form of fixed) is still sometimes used in SMS messaging, advertising etc.  Fix & fixer are nouns & verbs, fixed, fixated & fixing are verbs, fixable is an adjective, fixative is a noun & adjective and fixability, fixer, fixator & fixation are nouns; the noun plural is fixes.

Depending on the context the synonyms can include dilemma, plight, quandary, mess, install, secure, set, settle, stabilize, define, establish, limit, resolve, solve, specify, work out, adjust, correct, overhaul, patch, rebuild, regulate, amend, fasten, stabilize.  In idiomatic use the word often appears.  To “fix someone right up” means to visit vengeance upon them (including killing them, sometime on behalf of others).  A “fix up” can mean (1) wrongly to implicate someone in a crime or other wrong-doing, (2) corruptly to interfere with a jury, the outcome of a sporting event, the operation of a market, the level of an interest-rate etc.  “Been fixed up” can refer to a young lady with child (in or out of wedlock), often with the implication the state may be unplanned or undesired.  To say “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” is cautionary advice hinting that if something functionally fulfils its purpose, attempting to improve it may make things worse.  To be in a fix (often as “a bit of a fix”) is to find one’s self in a position from which it is difficult to escape; a dilemma; a predicament.  For someone to be “a fixture” is to be seemingly a permanent part of something (a squad, a sporting team etc); it’s used also of institutions.  The “fixer-upper” is something (typically a house or car) in dilapidated condition but usually still in a fit state to inhabit, drive etc so thus suitable for those able to make their own repairs.

Finger fix: In October 2016, during an Aegean cruise, Lindsay Lohan suffered a finger injury.  In this nautical incident, the tip of one digit was severed by the boat's anchor chain but details of the circumstances are sketchy.  It may be that upon hearing the captain give the command “weigh anchor”, she decided to help but, lacking any background in admiralty terms and phrases, misunderstood the instruction.  The detached piece was salvaged from the deck and soon re-attached by a micro-surgeon ashore.  Digit and the rest of the patient apparently made a full recovery and despite the gruesome injury Ms Lohan later managed to find husband and recently announced she’s “fixed up” in the sense of being with child so all’s well that ends well.

The human race has a long tradition of fixing broken stuff but in the twentieth century manufacturers devoted much attention to try to dissuade consumers from fixing things, preferring instead they purchase a new one.  The origins of this were identified by historians in the inter-war years (1918-1939) but the economic conditions of the 1930s limited the effects and it was in the long economic boom of the post-war years that the trend developed in conjunction with the concept of “planned obsolescence”, the beginnings of an era in which it became typically less expensive to replace a broken something than have it fixed, a phenomenon influenced by factors such as increasing unit labor costs, the substitution of parts made from metal, wood, leather etc with plastics and designs deliberately intended to make fixes difficult to effect.  In recent years, particularly in the field of consumer electronics, the tricks have included “sealing for life” (said to be a water-proofing measure) and the use of screws or other fasteners which can be opened only with a special tool (either unavailable to the public or sold as a prohibitively expensive part-number).  One interesting reaction to this has been the “right to repair” movement, an on-line cooperative community which publishes manuals, repair guides and tricks & tips for those who wish to fix.

Fluctuations: Eurodollar LIBOR rates 1 July 1989-28 April 2023 (chart by FedPrimeRate.com). The LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) is the average interest rate at which (a basket of major) banks borrow funds from other banks in the London market (as defined).  Globally, the daily LIBOR fix is a widely used benchmark (or reference) rate for short term interest rates.

In foreign exchange (forex) trading, the term “a fix” most often used to refer to a benchmark exchange rate used to settle (or fix) the value of certain financial instruments or transactions and it’s commonly heard in the context of determining the daily or hourly exchange rates for major currency pairs.  The rate is used as a standard for settling various transactions, such as corporate hedging, portfolio valuation, or derivatives contracts and there are also interest-rate fixes such as the LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) which gained infamy following revelations of the insider-trading some used to manipulate to point at which it was fixed.  Reflecting the city’s history as a financial centre, the “London 4 pm fix” (known also as the “WM/Reuters” or “London” fix) is probably still the best-known daily fix; used as a benchmark against which many forex-related instruments are valued, it’s calculated from the aggregate of physical trades executed during a specific time-window and, as the name implies, that’s usually some defined period either side of 16:00 London time.  As a general principle fixes are set by aggregating and averaging the transactional traffic generated by major banks and financial institutions which, in theory, should ensure a fair and transparent process but there have been instances of malpractice (of which the one associated with the LIBOR was merely the most publicized) which have seen fines imposed and regulatory scrutiny increased.  The principle of the fix as used in forex markets is typical but in other areas of finance, the mechanisms can differ.

The colonial fix

The term “colonial fix” is used to describe the various trick and techniques the European colonial powers used to maintain and extend control in their empires, all of which, sometimes for centuries, used a relative handful of personnel to rule over millions and the best remembered are those practiced under the Raj.  Raj refers to British rule in India prior to 1947 (historians debate just when it can be said to have begun because the project predated the legal construct which formalized things in 1858-1859 although some, for convenience, have applied it to the whole empire.  Raj was a proprialisation of the Hindi noun raj (reign, rule), from the Hindustani राज & راج‎ (rāj), (reign, rule; empire, kingdom; country, state; royalty), from the Pali & Prakrit rajja, from the Sanskrit राज्य (rājyá) (empire, kingdom, realm; kingship, royalty, sovereignty; country), from rājati (he rules), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European h₃reǵ- (to right or straighten oneself; to govern, rule; just; right (with derivatives meaning “to direct in a straight line” and thus “to lead, to rule”)), source also of the German Reich.

A classic colonial fix was the Great Council of Chiefs (Bose Levu Vakaturaga) in Fiji which the British administrators created in 1878.  While it's true that prior to European contact, there had been meetings between tribal chiefs (turaga) to settle disputes and for other purposes, all the evidence suggests they were ad-hoc appointments with little of the formality, pomp and circumstance the British introduced.  Still, it was a successful institution which the chiefs embraced, apparently with some enthusiasm because the cloaks and other accoutrements they adopted for the occasion became increasingly elaborate and it was a generally harmonious form of indigenous governance which enabled the British to conduct matters of administration and policy-making almost exclusively through the chiefs.  The council survived even after Fiji gained independence from Britain in 1970 until it was in 2012 abolished by the military government of Commodore Frank Bainimarama (b 1954; prime minister of Fiji 2007-2022), as part of reform programme said to be an attempt to reduce ethnic divisions and promote a unified national identity.  The commodore's political future would be more assured had he learned lessons from the Raj.

Colonial fixes took many forms, all designed to “fix” some tiresome local problem but they really can be reduced to two themes: (1) In any dispute between factions/tribes/families etc in the local population, always back the weakest, politically and militarily and (2) the most effective and efficient method of control is to align with a recognized and accepted local elite and strengthen their authority and status (knighthoods, visits to London to meet the queen, their own Rolls-Royce etc).  The idea of the colonial fix comes to mind when watching the squabble going on in Australia about the creation of a “Voice”, a institution of some kind (the structure uncertain, the details unclear) which would provide representatives (elected somehow, the details unclear) of the indigenous peoples of the continent (First Nations) now the preferred term) with a mechanism whereby they can make submissions to both the national parliament and executive government (where that begins and ends undefined, the details unclear) about matters which in any way involve or affect indigenous peoples (which is presumably everything, the details are unclear).  There will be a national referendum on the Voice late in 2023, required because of the desire to include the institution in the constitution.  That’s the only way to amend the constitution and the success rate of such referenda is low, only 8 of the 44 submitted gaining the necessary “double majority” of an absolute majority of “yes” votes nationally and a majority in each of the six states.  Because of the distribution of population, it’s possible to succeed in one but not the other in which case the proposal is rejected.  If the details of what’s proposed remain unclear, it’s possible still to predict the likely form a Voice will assume.

In the abstract it’ll be something like feminism in that most of the benefits will accrue to a small, urban, educated elite.  In the same way most female CEOs don’t give a lot of thought (or a pay rise) to the working-class women who serve their coffee and empty their trash bins compared with their efforts to secure quotas for women to be appointed to corporate boards, be given winnable seats in legislatures or seats in cabinet, those who serve on the voice will be most interested in cementing their own power and status and the most disadvantaged among the indigenous can expect little.  The phrase “First Nations” at least partly explains the dynamics of this because viewed from the comfort of the Voice, they’ll appear as inconveniently disparate as Karl Marx (1818-1883) found peasants who he compared to a sack of potatoes: “all the same, yet all different”.  Although the word is no longer fashionable (and is probably proscribed), the structure of the First Nations remains that of competing tribes with interests and priorities which sometimes conflict with others and the Voice cannot simultaneously advocate for both.  At that point, the government will back the weakest.  Practically, it will be a bureaucracy which the government will be sure richly to endow with the trappings of office (big cars, fancy titles, much business class travel and a dutiful secretariat which will produce mountains of reports few will read and those who do will ignore).

Quite why there’s such agitation in certain right-wing circles against the Voice is curious because the very existence of the body seems likely only to be one of their assets.  Although some are cautious, the constitutional lawyers have taken the view that there’s nothing in the amendment which would require a parliament or government to act upon the submissions a Voice might make, it saying only that the right to make them exists; they need to be heard and can be acted upon or ignored on a case-by-case basis.  Nor does there seem great potential that the Voice could seek judicial review if their proposals are declined although presumably the possibility does exist if a case can be made that the Voice is not even being listened to.  The concern about appeals to the courts was based on an earlier period in the life of the High Court of Australia (HCA; the nation’s final court of appeal which might in matters involving the relationship between the voice and the parliament & government be a court of first instance) when some judges were inclined to find that although some concepts weren’t written in the constitution, there was a construction under which they could be said to be “implied” and the court could thus proceed as if they were ink on paper.  That moment of judicial activism seems now to have passed although, even if it reappears, it would be quite a leap for a court to find a parliament or government is compelled to adopt a recommendation of an advisory body.  At the most, they would probably require a process which indicates the matter has been duly considered.  For the right-wing fanatics, the run-up to the vote has actually started well.  Already there’s dissention among the self-appointed elite of the First Nations, the view of the dominant faction being there’s only one permissible view and anyone who dares to express another view must be put down.  Politically that makes sense but it’d be better done behind closed doors.  Hopefully, the referendum will pass with a substantial majority so political junkies can enjoy watching the shark-feeding which will follow.  Unfortunately for the most disadvantaged of the indigenous peoples, the latest generations of those who have been marginalized and appallingly treated since white settlement, they can expect that a decade hence, things are likely to be much the same.  Still for those who can hop aboard the Voice gravy train, there’ll be expense accounts, five-star hotels and celebrity status when addressing the United Nations (UN) General Assembly so there’s that.