Skeuomorph

Skeuomorph (pronounced skyoo-uh-mawrf)

(1) An ornament or design on an object that mimics the form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques, usually one that reflects a previously functional element.

(2) In digital technology. a design or design element, as an icon on a digital device, that mimics the three-dimensional look or the sound of a physical object, even if that object is obsolete.

1889: The construct was the Ancient Greek σκεῦος (skeûos) (implement, tool, vessel) + μορφή (morphḗ) (shape; form), modeled after the earlier zoomorph (resembling an animal) and phyllomorph (resembling a plant).  The suffix -morph was appended to words to denote “of or pertaining to shape or structure”.  Skeuomorph & skeuomorphism are nouns, skeuomorphic is an adjective and skeuomorphically is an adverb; the noun plural is skeuomorphs.

Magic Cap's start-up screen (1994).

The classic desktop metaphor, built with skeuomorphs, which was the start-up screen for the Magic Communicating Applications Platform (1994-2001 and commonly known as Magic Cap), an operating system for personal digital assistants (PDA) constructed wholly in the object oriented programming (OOP) model.  Loaded with good ideas and ahead of its time, Magic Cap failed because the planet's communication infrastructure was neither robust enough or sufficiently fast to realize the OS's possibilities.  Additionally, even as things evolved, there was never enough inter-operability with other systems and services which had achieved critical mass.

A skeuomorph is a design element in an object which mimics the design of a similar object made from another material or serving another function; it can thus be considered a derivative object which retains visual cues from the original object.  Quite when the idea emerged of the skeuomorph as something which consciously and deliberately “carries over” an earlier motif for some purpose beyond the functional is uncertain but in engineering and architecture, the technique pre-dates Antiquity.  Because architectural generations (expressed usually as eras or epochs) tend to extend over at least several human generations, what comes to be defined as “attractive” or “elegant” can become well-established but as technological advances make possible structures which are bigger, taller or able to be created with different materials or in different shapes, it had been common for motifs like familiar visual elements to be (explicitly or in detail) to be included in the new.  It softened the shock of the new.  In domestic architecture, this continues to this day, much to the disgust of architects who are appalled at the mash-up of influences which can appear in a McMansion (in which there will be chandeliers with electric bulbs emulating wax candles; a classic skeuomorph) but since modernity was delivered with the twentieth century, in big buildings and representational architecture, the shock of the new seems to have become the objective and skeuomorphs are regarded as sentimental or worse: bourgeois.

Instagram’s old skeuomorph (left) and the new flat logo (right).

In 2018 Instagram switched its logo from a skeuomorph UI to a flat UI.  It was a move which at the time surprised many because the retro brown and cream camera with a rainbow stripe (a nod to the Polaroid cameras which were such a symbol of the late twentieth century) had become instantly recognisable but the company insisted the new design reflected how the app had changed. When first released (as Burbn), the app was used almost exclusively for its photo filters and effects that lent digital images a “retro edge”, the dominant pattern of use then to use Instagram as handler to edit images which were then uploaded to a platform such as Facebook or X (then known as Twitter).  However, Instagram clicked with generation brought up on short-form content and static images and became suddenly a massive social phenomenon.  So, the logo changed because as the company put it: “We've been inspired by all the ways the community has grown and changed, and we wanted to create something that reflects how vibrant and diverse storytelling on Instagram has become”.  Exactly how all this was reflected in the new logo was neither immediately obvious nor expanded on by Instagram but the point probably was just that it was changed, the medium being the message.  In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for US$1 billion which now sounds a bargain but back then, a billion US$ was still a lot of money.

Skeuomorphs in action: The Lindsay Lohan Quiz for iOS.

In the more ephemeral world of screen icons, graphical user interfaces (GUI) and app design where the life of a design can be closer in duration to that of the premiership of Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister Sep-Oct 2022) than something like Westminster Abbey, skeuomorphs proved popular because instantly they could adopt symbols which were unambiguous and universally understood; the sense of continuity with the past really wasn’t important at all, the retro-look just amusing.  Although using a representation of an old-style rotary-dial telephone on a screen icons does sound paradoxical, it made sense because the symbol was internationally recognized whereas were an image of cell phone (mobile) to be used, it would not have worked as well because it could be easily confused with a calculator or some other rectangular device.  Equally, envelopes and mail-boxes were used where E-mail was involved because nothing else could possibly be so evocative of “mail”.

Among software designers, the dominant theme in the early skeuomorphs was to create panels with a 3D appearance to gain some resemblance to physical buttons.  This was at least partially because designers tend wherever possible to exploit to the maximum whatever is permitted by the medium which is their platform but it was also partly the persuasive utility of the skeuomorph itself.  The alternative approach was the “flat design” which deliberately avoided imitating real-world textures or objects, a paradigm inherited from a school of art and design which rejected the idea of one thing imitation another.  Imitation however thrived, thus smartphones have digital cameras which produce the audible sound of a mechanical shutter when a photograph is taken and note-taking apps may emulate the appearance (in 2D) of textured bond paper.  The trends come and go and no approach has ever seemed to be dominant, both motifs (and hybrid forms) peacefully co-existing, frequently on the one device although in recent years things do seem to have moved to the darker and more minimalist.

Purple

Purple (pronounced pur-puhl)

(1) Any color having components of both red and blue (often highly saturated), the darker the hue, the more likely to be described thus.

(2) In color theory, any non-spectral color on the line of purples on a color chromaticity diagram or a color wheel between violet and red.

(3) A dye or pigment producing such a colour

(4) Cloth or clothing of this hue, especially as formerly worn distinctively by persons of imperial, royal, or other high rank.

(5) In the Roman Catholic Church, a term at various times used to describe a monsignor, bishop or cardinal (or their office), now most associated with the rank, office or authority of a cardinal.

(6) Imperial, regal, or princely in rank or position.

(7) Any of several nymphalid butterflies including the red-spotted purple and the banded purple)

(8) Of or pertaining to the color purple (or certain things regarded as purple).

(9) In writing, showy or overwrought; exaggerated use of literary devices and effects; marked by excessively ornate rhetoric (purpureal).

(10) In language, profane or shocking; swearing.

(11) In modern politics, relating to or noting political or ideological diversity (in the US based on the blending of Democrat (blue) and Republican (red); in other places red & blue indicate different places on the political spectrum).

(12) In drug slang; the purple haze cultivar of cannabis in the kush family, either pure or mixed with others, or by extension any variety of smoked marijuana (“purple haze” a popular name for commercially available weed in those places where such thing are lawful.  Purple haze was originally slang for LSD.

(13) In agriculture, earcockle, a disease of wheat.

(14) To make or become purple (or, in ecclesiastical use, to put on one’s purple vestments) .

Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun and adjective purple, purpel & purpur, from Old English purpuren & purpul, a dissimilation (first recorded in Northumbrian, in the Lindisfarne gospel) of purpure (purple dye, a purple garment), from the adjective purpuren (purple; dyed or colored purple), from purpura (a kind of shellfish, Any of various species of molluscs from which Tyrian purple dye was obtained, especially the common dog whelk; the dye; cloth so dyed; splendid attire generally), from the Ancient Greek πορφύρα (porphýra or porphura) (the purple fish (Murex)), perhaps of Semitic origin.  Purpur continued as a parallel form until the fifteenth century and was maintained in the rules of heraldry until well into the nineteenth.  The verb purple (to tinge or stain with purple) was from the noun and emerged circa 1400.  The earlier form was purpured, a past-participle adjective.  The adjective purplish (somewhat purple, tending to purple) was from the noun and dates from the 1560s.  Purple is a noun, verb & adjective, purpled & purpling are verbs, purplish, purpler, purply & purplest are adjectives and purpleness is a noun; the noun plural is purples.

The rhetorical use in reference to “the splendid; the gaudy” began as a description of garments (classically imperial regalia) and since the mid-eighteenth century, as “purple prose” of writing.  In US political discourse and commentary, purple has since been used (often in graphical or cartographic form) to indicating the sectional or geographical spaces in which the increasing division of the country into red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) was less apparent.  That this came into widespread use only by around 2004 is because the use of red & blue by the US news media became (more or less) standardized only by the 1990s, use have begun circa 1980, something without any relationship to the linking of the colors (red=left; blue=right) traditional in other parts of the English-speaking world.  One curiosity is the shade of purple known as magenta: It was so called because the dye of theat shade was created at the time of the Battle of Magenta (1559) in which the French and Sardinians defeated the Austrians.  Purple is widely used in zoology and botany to create common names of species to some extent colored purple.

Purple patch: 1970 Dodge Challenger (440 Six-Pack) in Plum Crazy (left) and 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda in In Violet) (clone; right).  Chrysler had some history in the coining of fanciful names for colors dating from the psychedelic era of the late 1960s when the choices included Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told was that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape.  The lurid colors soon disappeared, not only because fashions change but because at the time they depended on the use of lead which was banned from paint in the early 1970s.  Not until the early twenty-first century did manufacturers perfect ways economically to replicate the earlier colors without using lead. 

In idiomatic use, purple is popular.  One “born into the purple” was literally one of royal or exalted birth although it’s now often used even of those from families somewhere in the upper middle class.  The “purple death” was hospital slang for Spanish influenza and it was an allusion to the cyanosis which, because of the difficulty breathing, which would turn the skin purple.  In the early post-war years “purple death” was also used to describe a cheap Italian wine.   The phrase “once in a purple moon” was a variation of “once in a blue moon” and some dictionaries include an entry, apparently only for the purpose of assuring us that not only is it extinct but it may never have been in common use.  “Purple bacteria” (the form only ever used in the plural) are a proteobacteria which produce their own food using photosynthesis; they are all classed as purple, even though some are orange, red or brown.  In the analogue-era world of the phone phreaks (hackers who used the telephone networks for other than the intended purpose), a “purple box” was a device which added a hold facility to a telephone line.  It was an allusion to the general term “black box” used in engineering and electronics to describe small devices with specific purposes; not all “purple boxes” were actually purple.  “Purple gas” was a Canadian term which described the gas (motor spirit; petrol) colored with a purple dye to indicate it was sold subject to a lower rate of taxation and for use only in agriculture and not on public roads.  Anyone found using “purple gas” beyond a farm could be charged and many countries use similar methods though the dye is not always purple.  “Purple gold” was a synonym of amethyst gold (a brittle alloy of gold and aluminium, purple in colour).

1994 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6  (964) in Amethyst Metallic over Classic Gray.

A “purple passage” (also as “purple prose”) was any form of writing thought showy or overwrought, using an exaggerated array of literary devices and effects or marked by excessively ornate rhetoric.  It was a criticism but the later “purple patch” which describes any particular good period or performance (in any context) was wholly positive.  The “purple pill” was an advertising slogan used by a pharmaceutical company but unlike “little blue pill” (Viagra), it never entered the vernacular.  “Purple plague” has specific meanings in chemistry and electronics (relating to a chemical reaction which produces an undesirable purple compound) but a more amusing use is by Roman Catholic bishops noting a unwanted number of monsignors (who wear a purple sash) in their dioceses, sent there by the Vatican.  In US politics a “purple state” is a “swing state”, one which, depending on this and that, may vote either Republican (red) or Democrat (blue).  The “purple star” was the symbol worn by Jehovah's Witnesses in concentration camps in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), one of a number of color-coded patches, the best-known of which was the yellow Jewish star.  The Jehovah's Witnesses were an interesting case in that uniquely among the camp inmates, they could at any time leave if they were prepared to sign a declaration denying their religious beliefs.  In international air-traffic management, a “purple zone” (also “purple airway”) describes a route reserved for an aircraft on which a member of a royal family is flying.  In US military use, the “Purple Heart” dating from 1932, is still awarded to service personnel wounded in combat.  It’s origin was a decoration in purple cloth first awarded in 1782 which came to be known as the “wound stripe”.  In the mid 1960s, “purple haze” was slang for LSD; it was later repurposed for various strains of weed.

Lindsay Lohan, admirer of all things purple.

The dye tyrian purple (all the evidence suggests it would now be thought a crimson), was produced around Tyre and was prized as dye for royal garments, hence the figurative use in the sixteenth century of purple for “imperial or regal power” (it was also the color of mourning or penitence among royalty or the upper reaches of the clergy).  Tyrian purple (also known as shellfish purple) was for long periods the most expensive substance in Antiquity (often (by weight) three times the value of gold, the exchange rate set by a Roman edict issued in 301 AD.  By the fifteenth century when the intricate process to extract and process the dye was lost, Tyrian purple had for millennia been variously a symbol of strength, sovereignty and money and its use had spread from the Classical world to Southern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia and was so associated with the civilization of the Phoenicians (the color named after their city-state Tyre) that they were known as the “purple people”.  What many didn’t know was that the dye associated with the illustrious came not from a gemstone or some vivid coral but from the slimy mucous of sea snails in the Murex family.  Debate continues about what must have been the process used in extraction and production although, given many factories and artisans were involved over the years, there may have been many variations of the method.

It was in 1453 when the Byzantine capital Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) fell to the Ottomans that the knowledge of Tyrian purple was lost, something of a footnote to the end of the Eastern Roman Empire but still a loss.  Then, the infamously smelly dyeworks of the old city were the hub of purple production although, after a series of punitive taxes, the Catholic Church had lost control of the pigment which is the origin of the pope’s decision that red would become the new symbol of Christian power and this was adopted for the garb of cardinals; the story that the vivid red symbolized the blood cardinals mush be prepared to spill in the defense of their pope was just a cover story although one obviously approved of by the pontiff.

Beginning in 1968 with Shades of Deep Purple (left), the rock band Deep Purple sometimes used purple-themed album cover art and may have wished they'd stuck with that their eponymous third album (1969).  The original cover (centre), featuring a fragment of one panel of the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450-1516), was declared "demonic" by the US distributors so an alternative needed hastily be arranged and whether because of the tight schedule or just wanting to play it safe, they stuck to purple (right).  They'd earlier had a similar difficulty with their US label when releasing their second album (The Book of Taliesyn (1968)), the objection that time that one song title (Wring That Neck) was "too violent" (it was an instrumental piece and the reference was to a technique used with the neck of a guitar but it was anyway changed to Hard Road).  Times have changed.

Mnemonic

Mnemonic (pronounced ni-mon-ik)

(1) Something assisting or intended to assist the memory.

(2) Pertaining to mnemonics or to memory.

(3)In computing, truncated code thought easy to remember (eg STO for store).

1660–1670: From the New Latin mnemonicus from the Ancient Greek μνημονικός (mnēmonikós) (of memory) derived from μνήμων (mnḗmōn) (remembering, mindful) & μνᾶσθαι (mnâsthai) (to remember); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European men (to think).  The meaning "aiding the memory", a back-formation from mnemonics dates from 1753, the noun meaning "mnemonic device" is from 1858.  The use in computer programming emerged in the early days of code and was a space-saving (eg del rather than delete) tool as well.  Mnemonical was the original form from the 1660s.

Sans Forgetica

Sans Forgetica sample text.

Recently released, Sans Forgetica (which translates as "without forgetting") is a sans-serif font developed by RMIT University in Melbourne.  Back-slanted and with gaps in the character constructions, it’s designed explicitly to assist readers better to understand and retain in their memory what they’ve read.  Perhaps counter-intuitively for those outside the field, the shape is intended to reduce legibility, thereby (1) lengthening the tame taken to read the text and (2) adding complexity to learning and absorbing what’s been read.  Together, they create what in cognitive psychology and neuroscience is called "desirable difficulty", in this case forcing (RMIT might prefer "nudging") people to concentrate.

The first three paragraphs of Lindsay Lohan's Wikipedia page, rendered in Sans Forgetica.  Sans was from the Middle English saunz & sans, from the Old French sans, senz & sens, from the Latin sine (without) conflated with absēns (absent, remote).   Forgetica was an opportunistic coining, the construct being forget + -ica.  Forget was from the Middle English forgeten, forgiten, foryeten & forȝiten, from the Old English forġietan (to forget) (which was influenced by the Old Norse geta (to get; to guess), from the Proto-West Germanic fragetan (to give up, forget).  The -ica suffix was from the Latin -ica, the neuter plural of -icus (belonging to derived from; of or pertaining to; connected with).

From usually a young age, readers become skilled at scanning text, a process helped by most publishers seeking to render their works as legible as possible.  The theory of desirable difficulty is that omitting parts of the font requires the reader to pause and process information more slowly, thus provoking an additional cognitive processing which may enhance both understanding and retention.  While the application of the science to a font is novel, there’s nothing original about Sans Forgetica as a piece of typography, it being described as a hybrid of several existing schools and within the theory, on the basis of a small-group sample of students, it’s claimed to be a balance between legibility and difficulty.  According to the documents supplied by the developer, it’s not been tested as a device for advertisers to draw people to their text, the theory of that being people scan and dismiss (without retention) the great bulk of the large, static signage which is a feature of just about every urban environment.  With Sans Forgetica, because it can’t as quickly be scanned, people will tend longer to linger and so more carefully read the whole; a memorable event itself.

Flachkühler

Flachkühler (pronounced flak-koo-ler)

In German, (literally wide cooling device (radiator)), a name adopted by Daimler-Benz to describe the W111 Mercedes-Benz coupés and cabriolets built (1969-1971) with a lower, wider radiator grill than the earlier W111 (and W112) coupés and cabriolets (1961-1969).

Circa 1860s: The construct was Flach + kühler.  The adjective flach (the singular flacher, the comparative flacher and the superlative flachsten) (shallow (wide and not deep)) was from the Middle High German vlach, from the Old High German flah, from the Proto-Germanic flakaz of uncertain origin.  The construct of the noun Kühler ((1) cooler (anything device which cools) or (2) radiator (of an internal combustion engine) was kühlen +‎ -er.  Kühlen was from the Middle High German küelen, from the Old High German kuolōn & chuolen, from the Proto-Germanic kōlōną & kōlēną and related to kalaną (to be cold).  It was cognate with the Hunsrik kiele, the Luxembourgish killen, the Dutch koelen, the Saterland Frisian köile, the English cool (verb) and the Swedish kyla.  The German suffix -er (used to forms agent nouns etc from verbs (suffixed to the verb stem)) was from the Middle High German -ære & -er, from the Old High German -āri, from the Proto-West Germanic -ārī, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, from the Latin -ārius.  When used as an adjective, kühler was a comparative degree of kühl ((1) cool (of temperature), (2) calm, restrained, passionless and (3) cool, frigid (particularly of the emotions)), from the Middle High German küele, from the Old High German kuoli, from the Proto-West Germanic kōl & kōlī, from the Proto-Germanic kōluz & kōlaz, from the primitive Indo-European gel-.  It was cognate with the Dutch koel and the English cool.  Flachkühler is a noun; the noun plural is Flachkühlers.

1965 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE Cabriolet (Hōchkühler)

The dimensions of the grill used on the Mercedes-Benz W111 coupé & cabriolet was dictated by the height of the three litre straight six (M189) engine used in the more exclusive W112 (300 SE) versions.  The M189 was one of several de-tuned variants of the M198 used in the 300SL Gullwing & Roadster (W198) which had started life as the M186 in the big 300 (W186, “Adenauer”) saloon before revealing it’s competition potential by gaining victories at the Nürburgring, the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico and, most famously, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.  In the sports cars, the long-stroke six had been installed at an angle of 50^o and fitted with a dry sump which permitted a low hood (bonnet) line but in the W111 & W112 the engine was in a conventional perpendicular arrangement and used a wet sump, further adding to the height, thus the relatively tall grill.  The smaller sixes used in the car (2.2 litre (M127); 2.5 (M129) & 2.8 (M130)) were of a more modern, short-stroke design and didn’t demand such a capacious engine bay but production line rationalization didn’t make viable two different sets of coachwork for what were low volume models.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Coupé (Flachkühler)

By the mid 1960s however, Mercedes-Benz realized their gusty, high-revving sixes were technologically bankrupt and for success in the vital US market, they needed a mass-market V8.  Their big-block 6.3 litre V8 (M100), introduced in 1963 with the 600 Grosser (W100) wasn’t suitable for down-sizing so a physically smaller range was developed, the first of which was designated M116; released in 1969 and in displacements of 3.5, 3.8 & 4.2 litres, it would serve the line until 1991.  The 3.5 came first and in 1969 it was fitted to the W111 coupé & cabriolet.  By then, the old 3.0 litre six had been discontinued so the tall grill, which by then had come to look rather baroque, as no longer required and the factory took the opportunity to modernize things and the new, lower wider grill came to be known as the Flachkühler (literally “flat cooler” and best translated as “flat radiator”, the engineers deciding the earlier design should be referred to as the Hōchkühler (high radiator).  Hōch (high, tall; great; immense; grand; of great importance) was from the Middle High German hōch, from the Old High German hōh, from the Proto-West Germanic hauh, from the Proto-Germanic hauhaz, from the primitive Indo-European kewk-, a suffixed form of kew-; it may be compared to the Dutch hoog, the English high and the Swedish hög.

1968 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE Cabriolet (Hōchkühler, left) and 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet (Flachkühler, right).

Because of the first oil shock in 1973, the plans for mass-market (a relative term) Mercedes-Benz V8s were interrupted for a while but the 3.5 litre W111s had already reached the end of the line before the embargo began.  Produced only until 1971, they were always expensive and only 3,270 coupés and 1,232 cabriolets were built and, it being another age, they were available with a four-speed manual gearbox, an option a few actually choose.  The Mercedes-Benz manual gear-change was a rather clunky thing but such is rarity value, they have a cult following.  The whole ecosystem of 280 SE 3.5 coupés and cabriolets is actually a cult in itself, perfectly restored cabriolets commanding prices in excess of US$500,000 and some German tuning houses will charge even more for examples modernized with attributes like ABS, later V8 engines, transmissions and suspension.  Even now, although in essence the structure dates from the late 1950s and the mechanicals a decade later, the appeal remains because the things are remarkably usable in modern conditions and ascetically, nothing Mercedes-Benz has made since has anything like the elegance.

1953 Morgan Plus 4 ("flat radiator", top left), 1955 Morgan Plus 4 (top right), 1969 Morgan Plus 8 (bottom left) and 2024 Morgan Plus 6 (bottom right).  Thematically, not all that much has changed since 1954.  

Strangely, the idea of the “flat radiator” had been around for a while in the vernacular of collector car circles but it referred to another aspect of geometry.  In 1952, Morgan of Malvern Link, Worcestershire, was (as it is now) a cottage industry manufacturing pre-war sports cars with more modern engines and they received advice from the manufacturer of their separate headlight assemblies that because MG’s new TF (due for release in 1953) would have its headlamps integrated into the bodywork, production of the housing was ending.  There being no alternative supplier, Morgan were compelled to follow MG’s lead restyle things so the headlamps were faired in.  Concurrent with this, the Morgan factory took the opportunity to do one of their rare styling changes, abandoning their long-establish upright radiator grill one mounted in a cowl that blended into the hood (bonnet).  It wasn’t exactly the onset of modernity but there presumably was some aerodynamic gain.  Just to assure buyers change wasn’t being made for the sake of change, disc brakes would have to wait another few years.  The change to the grill was made in 1953 although, because of the way Morgan operated, some of the older style cars were actually assembled later than the new.  The cars with the traditional Morgan look which features the upright grill are known among aficionados as the “flat radiator Morgans”.

Impromptu Flachkühler: In October 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG.  There was a low-speed unpleasantness with a van which caused the roadster to suffer a Flachkühler.

Appoggiatura

Appoggiatura (pronounced uh-poj-uh-too-r-uh or uh-poj-uh-tyoo- r-uh or ahp-pawd-jah-too-rah (Italian))

In musical composition, an ornament consisting of a non-harmonic note (short or long) preceding a harmonic one either before or on the stress (a note of embellishment preceding another note and taking a portion of its time).

1745-1755: From the Italian appoggiatura, from appoggiare (to lean; to prop; to support) from the Vulgar Latin appodiāre (present active infinitive of appodiō, from the Classical Latin podium) and related to the French appuyer, the Spanish apoyar and the Portuguese apoiar.  The meaning in music is for the sense of one note “propping up” another.

The Appoggiatura

As in many fields, fashions in music change.  There was a period, during the sixteenth century, when the rules of counterpoint were strict and discords permissible only if they were prepared and resolved in ways used in the previous sections; the only discord normally allowed on the strong beat was the suspension.  There the discord is prepared by the note being tied across from a weak to a strong beat and resolved onto the next weak beat; a type of syncopation.  In the mid-century however, there was a relaxation of the rules of voice leading which included experimentation with unprepared discords, the most important of which was the appoggiatura.  The appoggiatura started as a decorative note which displaced the first part of a note of a melody.  It occurred on the strong beat of the bar and could be either dissonant or consonant but in either case, the appoggiatura resolved (upwards or downwards) onto a consonance but, unlike the suspension, did not require to be prepared or tied from a previous note.  In order to overcome the earlier rule that all discords had to be prepared, the appoggiatura was originally shown as an ornament but later was written out in full.

An ornament: Bach, Orchestral Suite in B minor for flute and strings: Menuet.

That was just a fudge, a composer paying respect to a rule while breaking it because, as played, an appoggiatura is not a short ornament, it takes usually up a full half of the length of the note that it resolves onto and if resolved onto a note three beats long, it takes up a third or two thirds the length.  The appoggiatura is usually connected with the main harmony note by a slur and is normally played with a small degree of emphasis.

Haydn: Sonata in G major XVI:27 Allegro con Brio.

Haydn shows appoggiaturas at *1, *2 and *3, now written out in-full as was normal practice in the classical period. Their identity as elaborating notes is given away by the presence of the slurs.

The two superstars of the 1950s.  Maria Callas and Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), back-stage after the "Happy Birthday Mr President" performance, Madison Square Garden, New York, 19 May 1962.

December 2 2023 marked the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the singer Maria Callas (1923-1977), the soprano who remains still more famous than any other and the subject of a cult, something attributable certainly to her art but the tempestuous life she led off the stage attracted many; in the very modern sense of the word, Callas was a celebrity.  What Callas is in 2023 is thus a construct, a mix of myth, discography, and public persona although it’s more correct to say she’s a number of constructs; the criteria of trained musicians and critics likely to differ from those who just listen.  She was neither the most technically accomplished nor the most refined singer and yet, as Sir Rudolf Bing (1902–1997; General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York (the Met)) famously noted, “having once heard Callas, it was difficult to listen to anyone else sing the same music”.  That was because whatever the technical flaws or deliberate departures from what had become the accepted techniques of the mid-twentieth century, Callas brought to every performance a thrilling intensity which made the characters come alive in a way even the most virtuosic of her contemporaries couldn’t quite match.

The critics impressed only by technical ecstasy liked to label Callas a “singing actress” and there’s something in that but not in the way they mean; the “acting” wasn’t there to compensate for the voice, it was a part of the voice.  There are several recordings of the “madness” scene in Gaetano Donizetti's (1797–1848) Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) in which, as an exercise in singing, the performances are more accomplished yet it’s the Callas version which is the definitive because only she can send a shiver down the spine.  It was in the interpretation, just as it was when, in Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813–1901) Otello (1886), she played with layers of vocal tones variously to convey feelings of warm nostalgia, paranoia, depression and impending death.  Whatever was in the score to be expressed, it’s there but it wasn’t done with vocal pyrotechnics, indeed Callas, in both studio recordings and live performances often eschewed the cadential trills and appoggiature which, although unwritten, had entered Opera in the seventeenth century and become a signature of sopranos since at least the early nineteenth.  What she did with her voice has been called a kind of “operatic word-painting”, a lending of emotional depth which enabled her, more than any other to transcend the theatrical artificiality of opera and it’s this quality which means even roles for which she seemed an improbable choice (such as Giacomo Puccini’s (1858–1924) Madam Butterfly (1904)) demand attention.

Bathtub

Bathtub (pronounced bath-tuhb or bahth-tuhb)

(1) A tub in which to bathe, variations including permanent installations (either built-in fixtures or free-standing units) in a bathroom and (now less commonly in the developed world) portable constructions (historically of metal or timber although for military and outdoor use, foldable bathtubs (of leather or canvas) have a long history).

(2) An automotive style (most common in the 1950s) in which the bodywork resembled an upturned bathtub.

1825–1835: The construct was bath + tub and the previous related word was “wash-tub”, dating from the turn of the seventeenth century.  Bath was from the Middle English bath & baþ, from the Old English bæþ (bath), from the Proto-West Germanic baþ, from the Proto-Germanic baþą (bath), from the primitive Indo-European root bhē- (to warm).  The corresponding inherited verbs were bathe & beath.  The Old English bæð (“an immersing of the body in water, mud, etc” or “a quantity of water etc., for bathing”) was from the Proto-Germanic badan (the source also of the Old Frisian beth, the Old Saxon bath, the Old Norse bað, the Middle Dutch bat and the German Bad), also from the primitive Indo-European root bhē- with the appended –thuz (the Germanic suffix indicating “act, process, condition” (as in “birth”; “death”)). The etymological sense is of heating, not immersing.  Tub was from the late fourteenth century Middle English tubbe & tobbe (open wooden vessel made of staves), from the Middle Dutch & Middle Flemish tubbe or the Middle Low German tubbe & tobbe, of uncertain origin.  Etymologists have concluded there’s no link with the Latin tubus or the English tube but it was related to the Old High German zubar (vessel with two handles, wine vessel) and the German Zuber.  In the seventeenth century tub was slang for “pulpit”, thus since the 1660s a “tub-thumper” was a particularly forceful preacher who literally “thumped his fists on the pulpit” to emphasize some point; the use was later extended beyond the church to politicians and others who spoke in a loud or dramatic way.  The English city in the county of Somerset (in Old English it was Baðun) was so called from its hot springs.  The convention now probably is to refer to any permanently installed unit as a “bath”, a bathtub something portable.  The word can appear both as bath tub and bath-tub.  Bathtub is a noun and bathtubby is an adjective (bathtubesque & bathtubbish (resembling or characteristic of a bathtub) were jocular constructions); the noun plural is bathtubs.

Lindsay Lohan with claw-footed bathtub, music video release of Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father) (2005).

A “bathtub cockpit” is a cockpit with recessed seating, so that a pilot or driver is sitting in a bathtub-shaped space.  It was often seen in aircraft but the classic example was that used in the delicate, cigar-shape voiturettes built to contest the Formula One World Championship during the 1.5 litre era (1961-1965).  The bathtub curve is a concept from reliability engineering, describing a particular form of the hazard function taking into account three categories of failure rate.  As a theoretical model it assumes the shape of a bathtub (sectioned in the middle and viewed from the side), the three regions being (1) a decreasing failure rate due to early failures, (2) a constant failure rate due to random failures and (3) an increasing failure rate due to wear-out failures.  The slang term “bathtub gin” is a US prohibition era (1919–1933) term to refer to a gin (or other spirit) of such dubious quality it suggests it may have been distilled by an unskilled amateur in their bathtub.  It’s a similar form to “gutrot”, “moonshine” etc and was applied sometimes to any form of illicit alcohol and not just distilled spirit.  “Bathtub racing” literally describes bathtubs being raced.  One of sports more obscure niches, the variations have included (modified) bathtubs being rowed or sailed on waterways or raced on land (either powered, pushed or run on downhill courses.  In economics, the “bathtub theorem” is the charming illustration of the idea that capital accumulation = production - consumption.  The metaphor is that of the water running from the taps (production) and that exiting from the plughole (consumption).  That seems obvious but where the inflow is too great for the capacity of the plughole, the water in the tub (capital) overflows, flooding the place, an elegant explanation of the effects of over-production which can induce recessions or depressions.

Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax KCB.

In the intricate hierarchy of the UK’s honours system, The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is an order of chivalry dating from 1725 and the name really is derived from the use of a bathtub, the reference being to the medieval ceremony under which knighthoods were conferred, bathing being a symbol of purification.  More than most British honours, the Order of the Bath has a tangled history, at times limited to the military and with various restrictions on the numbers of members.  One thing which was once constant however was that recipients were entitled to the post-nominal letters “KB” after their name.  This changed in 1815 when the order was re-organized into three classes: Knight Grand Cross (GCB), Knight Commander (KCB) & Companion (CB) and the transition was handled effortlessly by the experts but one thing which these days annoys those who worry about such things (and there are a few) is that inexpert journalists and others not do sometimes attach a KB to a Knight Bachelor.  The Knight Bachelor actually attracts no post-nominal letters; it’s a kind of “entry-level” knighthood and recipients are not inducted as a member of one of the orders of chivalry (although there have been plenty of awards of the latter to those whose lives have been far removed from the chivalrous, not all of them from the colonies or Dominions).  The Order of the Bath also provided one of the amusing anecdotes in the unpromising field of diplomatic protocol.  In 1939, when Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax KCB (1880-1967) was introduced at a ceremony in Moscow, protocol required his honors be read out in full, the Russian translator rendering his KCB as рыцарь умывальник (rytsar' umyval'nik) (Knight of the Wash Tub).  The Russians honor guard couldn’t help but laugh and fortunately, the admiral shared their amusement.

In December 1917, the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956) published a fictitious history of the bathtub.  Intended as an amusing hoax, the story was so convincing that quickly it wildly was promulgated, appearing even in reference works and medical journals.  Around a century later, a similar hoax was perpetrated when a university student edited the electric toaster’s Wikipedia page, claiming it had been invented by a wholly factitious Scottish scientist.  The technique was exactly the same as Mencken’s: use the dry factual approach (ie the classic Wikipedia template) and it remained on-line for some years, presumably because the origin of the toaster is not a matter of great interest or controversy.

1949 Nash Ambassador (left), Evelyn Ay (1933–2008), Miss America 1954, in her “bathtub” Nash Rambler (the official car of the beauty pageant) (centre) and 1957 Nash Ambassador which still showed the legacy of the earlier, more extravagant bathtub styling cues.

The best remembered of the “bathtub” cars were first built in the late 1940s by manufacturers introducing their first genuinely new post-war lines (most of the cars produced in 1945-1946 were slightly updated versions of those which had last been made early in 1942).  Within the industry, engineers first called the motif “envelope styling” but the more evocative (and certainly more accurate because an up-turned bathtub came to mind more than an envelope) “bathtub” quickly became the preferred slang.  Echoes of the lines which became familiar in the next decade can be seen in some of the low-volume and experimental bodies seen in the 1920s & 1930s, many an evolution of the realization the “teardrop” shape was close to aerodynamically optimal (at least on paper, the implications of lift and down-force then not widely understood).  Among the large US manufacturers, Nash and Hudson pursued the bathtub style to its most extreme and persisted the longest.  In the early 1950s, the aerodynamic advantages were apparent and combined with the inherently good weight-distribution afforded by their low-slung “step-down” construction, the Hudson Hornet dominated NASCAR racing between 1951-1954, despite its straight-six engine having both less power and displacement than some of the competition.  Except for the odd quirky niche, the bathtub styling didn’t make it into the 1960s and nor did the Nash & Hudson nameplates, the former in 1954 absorbing the latter to created AMC (American Motor Corporation) and in 1957, both brand-names were retired.

Evolution of the Porsche “bathtub” style 1948-1965, the lines of the original a direct descendant of a pre-war racing car.  1948 Porsche 356-001 (the Gmünd Roadster) (top), 1955 Porsche 356 pre-A 1500 Speedster (centre) and 1965 Porsche 356SC Coupé (bottom).  Although the “bathtub” motif was abandoned with the end of 356 production, the 356’s contribution to the lines of the 911 (introduced in 1964 as the 901) is obvious and in the sixty-odd years since, stylistically, not much has changed.

Audacity

Audacity (pronounced aw-das-a-tee)

(1) Boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restrictions.

(2) Effrontery or insolence; shameless boldness.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English audacite, from the Latin audacis, from audāc, stem of audāx (bold; daring, rash, foolhardy).  The –ity suffix is an import from Latin via French and is used to form a noun from an adjective, especially to form nouns referring to the state, property, or quality of conforming to the adjective's description.  The other Latin forms were audacitas (boldness) and audeō (I am bold, I dare).  In English, the meaning "presumptuous impudence", implying a contempt of moral restraint, is from 1530s.  Audacity & audaciousness are nouns, audacious is an adjective and audaciously is an adverb; the noun plural is audacities (the rarely seen audaciousnesses is a real word). 

HMS Audacity

HMS Audacity was an example of the improvisation required of the Admiralty during the early years of the Second World War when the Navy’s resources were stretched.  The first of her kind, she was originally the German merchant ship SS Hannover, which the Royal Navy captured in 1940, renaming her first Sinbad, then Empire Audacity.  Under the prize laws of war, her cargo, including twenty-nine barrels of pickled sheep pelts, was sold.

HMS Audacity at sea with her Wildcat fighter aircraft secured on the after end of the flight deck, 1940 (left) and the wreck of HMS Audacity (right).  Such was the urgency that there was no time to construct hangers so the aircraft were exposed to the elements at all times.

A minimalist conversion typical of wartime necessity, the early escort carries were true flattops, having no superstructure above the flight deck.  As HMS Empire Audacity, she was commissioned as an "Ocean Boarding Vessel" but in early 1941 was quickly converted to an “escort carrier”, a rudimentary aircraft carrier used to cover shipping vulnerable to submarine attack in the "mid-Atlantic Gap" where there was no air cover from land-based aircraft.  The navy was short of such craft and re-launched her as HMS Audacity.  Traditionally superstitious, sailors have long held that it’s bad luck to rename a ship and so it proved.  Audacity’s pilots had inflicted losses on both German submarines and aircraft and in December 1941, a U-Boat wolf-pack stalking the convoy Audacity was escorting attacked the carrier which sank in little more than an hour, the wreck lying some 500 miles (430 nautical miles; 800 km) west of Cabo Finisterre (Cape Finisterre), a rocky peninsula on Spain's Galician coast.  One notable thing Audacity's brief service did was provide to the Admiralty the needed proof of concept of the inprovised Auxiliary Aircraft Carrier (AAC).  Using very few pilots and aircraft, she proved highly successful in countering the menace of the Luftwaffe's long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 (Condor) aircraft and was effective also against the U-Boats.

Lindsay Lohan’s 2012 photo-shoot by Terry Richardson (b 1965) was labelled by admirers as “audacious” although many others were less approving.  A decade on it’s interesting to speculate whether the gun or the cigarette would now be more controversial.