Nitsuh Abebe’s latest “On Language” column (archived; see this post) is on the word frictionless, which is not particularly interesting in and of itself; I was skimming along:
“Frictionless” used to be an intensely physical word: It first thrived in the late 1880s, when the engineers of the Second Industrial Revolution were scrambling for new lubricants, bearing designs and low-friction alloys to keep factory machines from grinding themselves to bits.
Today’s use, though, comes from computing, in which “friction” is anything that stands between a user and the completion of a task — whether it’s learning complicated system architecture or having to click a single additional “OK” button to order shoes. Removing those obstacles was, for a while, the tech world’s grand selling point.
…when I got to this:
These complaints [about “the dream of a frictionless existence”], funnily enough, echo the oldest use of “frictionless” cited in the Oxford English Dictionary — from an 1848 satirical poem, which mentions “a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, / Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot, — / A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on / The heart that strives vainly to burst off a button.”
I thought the date must be wrong — that sounded more like 1948 than 1848 (especially “internal police” and “permanent strait-jacket”). But when I investigated, I learned that sure enough, it’s a quote from James Russell Lowell’s “A Fable for Critics,” which is indeed from 1848 (and is indeed the earliest OED cite, along with “1848 in J. Craig, New Universal Dictionary”; the entry is from 1898). Here’s some more context (it’s a very long poem):
Sons fit for a parallel—Thompson and Cowper;
I don’t mean exactly,—there’s something of each,
There’s T.’s love of nature, C.’s penchant to preach;
Just mix up their minds so that C.’s spice of craziness
Shall balance and neutralize T.’s turn for laziness,
And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet,
Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,—
A brain like a permanent straight-jacket put on
The heart that strives vainly to burst off a button,—
A brain which, without being slow or mechanic,
Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic;
He’s a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten,
And the advantage that Wordsworth before him had written.
I confess I had no idea Lowell could be so lively; I may have to investigate him further. At any rate, does anyone else feel that the bit originally quoted seems more modern than its date?
Yeah, it does. On a less interesting note, the word “frictionless” appears to have been used by engineers even before the conventionally-understood start of the Industrial Revolution: See https://archive.org/stream/chronologicalin01offigoog/chronologicalin01offigoog_djvu.txt, in the listings for 1736
I also agree although whether the text is actually that atypical for 1848 or whether instead our stereotypes about how folks wrote in 1848 are imprecise might require further inquiry. Cutting the other way, I wonder whether the “police” in “internal police” are actually metaphorically a buncha uniformed guys w/ guns and badges or whether that’s instead a different sense of “police” like wiktionary’s sense 5 of the noun: “(archaic, now rare) Synonym of administration, the regulation of a community or society. [from 17th c.] .”
I note that put is pronounced pʌt, an exception to the FOOT-STRUT split. Lowell was from Massachusetts. I’ve only heard one person pronounce it that way, and he spoke Texan.
I hope Lowell is not recommending a less-crazy Cowper. That would be like wanting Coleridge to be a bit more into the stark social realism, or Whitman to improve his rhyme schemes.
The Zipless Fuck was frictionless.
Rawdogging, in contrast, is partial to a bit of rub-a-dub-dub.
The Zipless Fuck was frictionless
True, true. My, how that takes one back …
Ubi sunt?
Actually, still around, I see, in this case, though sadly afflicted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Jong
Yeah. I never got over those “skid marks” her hookups left on the sheets.
@jwb
[2 August 1834]
Georgi beschlagnahmte in dem Zimmer Briefe von Büchners Straßburger Briefpartnern. Aus Eugen Boeckels Briefen an Büchner schloss er, „daß Büchner nach Frankfurt gegangen sey“. Er schickte an das dortige Polizeiamt ein „Signalement“ Büchners, HL Dok 3.4.10. Signalement also einen behördeninternen Steckbrief, sowie einen Bericht „mit dem Ersuchen , nach zu spüren, zu durchsuchen und Alles zu verhaften, was verdächtig sey.“
http://buechnerportal.de/aufsaetze/buechners-gerichtliche-verfolgung
My translation:
Georgi [Conrad Georgi, the Universitätsrichter, or judge with jurisdiction over Uni Giessen] confiscated letters [found] in the room from Büchner’s correspondents in Strassburg. From Eugen Böckel’s letters he drew the conclusion “that Büchner had gone to Frankfurt”. He sent the Frankfurt Police HQ a “Signalement”, i.e., an arrest warrant in Büchners name to be disseminated internally to relevant authorities, together with a report “with the request to investigate, to carry out searches and arrest everyone [lit., everything, we are talking about Gesindel and rohe Kerle here!] who [lit. what, rohe Kerle etc.] is a potential suspect [verdächtig]”.
Is it odd that “internal police” takes singular agreement?
@PlPad: German usage aside, “police” definitely already had in English, including AmEng, the “bunch of uniformed guys with guns and badges” sense by 1848, although it was a fairly new one. But other older senses were still extant.
I’m not sure that the German precedent tells us too much (the Germans were way ahead of the U.S. in terms of institutionalized police), but it appears that folks in Lowell’s Massachusetts were indeed using “police” to mean law enforcement officers by 1848. An 1838 Massachusetts law authorized the mayor and aldermen of Boston to “appoint such police officers . . . as they may judge necessary, with all or any of the powers of the constables of said city.” https://archive.org/details/actsresolvespass3738mass/page/410/mode/2up?q=police, at 410. That would have been the very beginning of the transition to what we might recognize as a modern police force.
I don’t remember ever hearing that myself, but DARE has about 20 notes on pronunciations of put in various states, including
and with a headnote: “[All of these forms have antecedents in Scots and Engl dial; pit is the common form in Scots and nEngl dial, and putt is attested in various parts of England and in Scotland as a differentiated form along with pit.]”
There was no such thing as Germany at the time; in fact, by using that word you would have made yourself suspect of being a dangerous revolutionary. The feudal lords of the Metternich era were deadly afraid of a repeat of the French Revolution (and losing their heads on the guillotine), and the motto of the Hessische Landbote (“Friede den Hütten! Krieg den Palästen!”) was exactly what ignited those fears. That Büchner could emigrate to France without much difficulty (just like other left-wing intellectuals) shows that the police was not yet very effective, especially when they had to deal with intelligent people.
Context quoted from Lowell:
Don’t you want to include the preceding line, with its split rhyme?
Topped with another one in a footnote:
Also, Lowell wrote “strait-jacket”, not “straight-jacket” (although the latter appears in a handful of reprints).
Don’t you want to include the preceding line, with its split rhyme?
You are, as usual, correct; how could I miss that?
“Frictionless” is also familiar from introductory physics, with all its frictionless planes and bearings. You are on a completely frictionless, undentable frozen pond, dressed appropriately but with no tools, rope, etc. How do you get to shore?
I haven’t read much J. R. Lowell, but “The Latest Decalogue” and “In the Present Crisis” (maybe more familiar as adapted to hymnody) seem rather modern, and I agree about the passage quoted above. I’m not saying you should take “In the Present Crisis” literally.
@Y: Maybe “put on” and “button” are just an approximate rhyme, like “brought over” and “thought of her”, or “mistress” and “kiss trees” near the beginning of the poem.
Though I’ve seen “tuck” for “took” in representations of rural New England dialect (not that of the Lowells who speak only to Cabots). Hence
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket,
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
You are on a completely frictionless, undentable frozen pond, dressed appropriately but with no tools, rope, etc. How do you get to shore?
Anyone stupid enough to get themself into that situation is likely not smart enough to reach shore.
Too pessimistic. You get to shore on the same skates (“dressed appropriately”) that got you to the middle.
Would the skates work if the ice is “completely frictionless”? Maybe you have to melt some ice (e.g., by breathing on it) and hope that the ice + surface layer of water is not completely frictionless.
How do you get to shore?
Air presumably was not removed completely, just wave your hands and sail forth. One can also throw some of the articles of “appropriate dressing” to gain momentum, but it might not be enough considering air drag.
Would the skates work if the ice is “completely frictionless”?
The problem for skates would be the ‘undentable’: you skate by turning one skate orthogonal to the direction of travel and pushing to cut into the ice with the ‘edge’, to get grip. (That’s why they’re sharp. There’s an inner and outer edge, slightly convex underside of the blade. I apologise if I’m telling the Canadians here how to suck eggs.) ‘undentable’ is not a thing with terrestrial ice any more than is ‘frictionless’.
IOW, what @Y said.
Interestingly, ice skating only works because water has a weird phase diagram. Ice is less dense than liquid water, so ice can be melted by pressure. (This is also why ice cubes stick together. The ice melts at points of contact, then flows away and refreezes.) Skate blades melt a thin layer of water, which is what the ice skater slides on.
How do you get to shore?
I assume the answer involves a spherical cow?
The Latest Decalogue
The only poem I know with that title is by Arthur Hugh Clough
https://allpoetry.com/The-Latest-Decalogue
The lines
Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive
were frequently cited in support of passive euthanasia when I were a lad, by medical folk who had evidently no concept of looking up actual sources. I get the impression that this rather startling misrepresentation of Clough’s intention is no longer rampant, in these days when you can just google the words to find the poem.
Mind you, not that long ago, I encountered this “Darwin” quote
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/04/adapt/
in a flier for a conference about some initiative intended to depower and deprofessionalise doctors yet further. (Apart from been obviously spurious – you’d have thought – on stylistic grounds, the snippet shows, of course, a fundamental misunderstanding of Darwin’s actual theory.)
Oops. Clough and Lowell were both part of the same conspiracy, though, along with Thomas Hughes.
I think I was thinking of Lowell’s poem “Tempora Mutantur”, particularly the end. Clough’s poem is more concise, though.
ETA: In case anyone reads that poem at that site, “Invent a mine, and he” should be “Invent a mine, and be”.
@D.O.: Yes, those are correct answers. If this were a practical problem, flapping your coat might be the best method. You can also inhale facing forward and exhale with your head turned backward, and repeat (or vice-versa). Or expel bodily fluids, which is probably why a textbook I used to use changed the problem from “A man is…” to “A woman is…”
Maybe “put on” and “button” are just an approximate rhyme
Maybe, but the well-documented [pʌt] pronunciation seems the more plausible answer.
@Brett
Why ice is slippery is no longer a settled issue:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-is-ice-slippery-a-new-hypothesis-slides-into-the-chat-20251208/
My favorite frictionless physics story is illustration of the role that friction plays in keeping a moving bicycle upright— imagine trying to ride a bicycle on a frictionless surface. You can’t. This shows that the force keeping a bicycle upright is frictional force between the wheels and the ground transferred through the coupling between the front wheel and the bike’s body. Plus castering of the wheels in the direction of motion. But -not- conservation of angular momentum.
It’s already an approximate rhyme because “putt on” does not in fact rhyme with “button.”
Why ice is slippery is no longer a settled issue
Fascinating, thanks! I like the conclusion:
@ulr: Agreed that “Germany” did not exist in 1834 — although the German Confederation did. But the point remains that Frankfurt in 1834 *had* an organized police force, while Boston simply did not. Nor did, say, New York or Chicago. By contrast, for example, Berlin in that period not only had an organized police force, but starting in 1836 would require all persons entering the city to register with authorities, recording their place and date of birth, parents’ names, current and prior residence, date of arrival, children’s names and date of birth (and death, if applicable), religious affiliation, and criminal record.
Büchner’s own description of this:
This may not be brain surgery, but it is rocket science.
It does if you destress on enough – more than you’d usually do in this position in a sentence. There seem to be numerous other examples of this phenomenon in the same poem.
Well, rocket science is not rocket science.
Rocket engineering, though: that‘s rocket science.
Or expel bodily fluids, which is probably why a textbook I used to use changed the problem from “A man is…” to “A woman is…”
Wot ? Men and women can both expel bodily fluids. It’s a well-known phenomenon.
The steering mechanism is less flexible in one case, though.
[Translated from the original Old Welsh:
A. Mrs Evans, your son Sioni has been writing in the snow with his piss!
B. I don’t see any harm in it. Lots of boys do things like that.
A. Not in our Blodwen’s handwriting, they don’t.
]
a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, / Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot
“Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic …”
Scientists ! I’d never thought of WOTW as an allegory.
The steering mechanism is less flexible in one case, though.
Women can raise their skirts to catch the wind, and so sail to shore. No bodily fluids are needed.
a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, / Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot
For a moment I imagined those as extra lyrics to War Pigs. Doesn’t quite scan though.
as a variation on the coat-flapping approach: depending on the “appropriately dressed”, and on the weather, it might be possible to simply become a badly-designed ice-catamaran by rigging a sail. a simple spinnaker would always be achievable (i’d suggest using an inner layer or scarf* rather than your coat, and rigging it to your neck and wrists); if “appropriate” includes a hockey stick, i think a lateen rig would be the best option.
.
* likely less wind-tight, especially if knitted, but potentially a more useful shape.
extra lyrics to War Pigs
i would love to hear that rewrite!
There’s no wind. If there were any, there would be no problem.
@MattF: That article says some stuff about skis, and it doesn’t really seem to distinguish them from skates. It’s pretty easy to calculate that the narrow form factor of an ice skate blade does make it capable of pressure melting ice.