cloture

US Senate in session during the 1999 impeachment trial of President Clinton

1 August 2025

Cloture is the act of ending debate on a subject in a legislative assembly, and most often today it’s used in reference to the United States Senate. The word is a modern borrowing from the French clôture, which was used by the French Assembly in the nineteenth century.

We see the word being used in English to refer to the French practice as early as 1835. From London’s Morning Chronicle of 19 March of that year:

But the evident cause of stopping the debate so abruptly was the appearance of General Bugeaud at the tribune. This mad partisan, this Colonel Srathorp of the Chamber of Deputies, would infallibly have terminated a rigmarole of absurd provocation by some absurd motion in favour of Ministers, which, in consequence, most probably would have been negatived. Ministers, therefore, unable to silence General Bugeaud, were obliged to stop his mouth with the cry of “cloture;” and the Opposition, which felt that it had the best of the debate, did not show itself inclined to oppose the demand. Thus ended the interpellations.

And in the late 1840s, discussions about instituting a cloture rule, modeled on the French rule, in the House of Commons in Westminster began. As a result, when exactly the word crossed over from being used in a French context to an English one is difficult to pin down with precision. But here is an instance that is about debate in the House of Commons with no reference to the French practice in London’s The Standard of 16 May 1850, although the word is placed in italics, indicating it has not been entirely anglicized:

Everybody laments the prodigious waste of public time in the House of Commons, which results from ambitious oratory. Mr. Chisholm Anstey, Mr. Roebuck, and Mr. Urquhart are bye [sic] words among us for consuming more public time to little purpose than any three men in England. We have even had a parliamentary committee appointed to inquire into the propriety of curtailing the length of senatorial tongues, and putting the extinguisher of the cloture upon the fervid rhetoric of gentlemen like Sir Joshua Walmesley.

The inquiry into a cloture rule in Westminster continued for decades. The rule was not formally adopted until 1882. But in the mean time an informal cloture process was sometimes seen, where a member would voluntarily cease speaking when asked. Here is an example of such an informal cloture rule from the Illustrated London News of 26 February 1870:

And at last Mr. Ayrton rose to put his imprimatur on that view of the subject. While arguing generally, though the hour was a critical one, he adequately listened to; but when he seemed to be entering on an exposition of his ideas of the duty of a Chief Commissioner of Works, and was apparently about to repeat at length his disclaiming speech on his re-election for the Tower Hamlets, it is not too much to say that the small House which was existent at the moment rose with curious unanimity, ad so demanded the “cloture” that the right hon. Gentleman abruptly ceased.

And here is commentary on the cloture rule from the 1887 edition of Lester S. Cushing’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice:

In the House of Commons, England, ever since the Irish Parliamentary Party proved strong enough to combat with the Opposition by obstructing all bills in the endeavor to procure “Home Rule” for Ireland there has been nothing but turmoil over every bill proposed; to stop this the “Government Party” passed a rule which was applied wherever obstruction or debate was carried too far; this was called “Cloture.” It is used as a “gag” law, as when “Cloture” is moved every thing or motion is subordinated to the motion in favor of which “Cloture” was applied.

In the United States, the House of Representatives had always had an equivalent to the cloture rule, that is the motion to call the previous question. But in the Senate, there was no formal mechanism for ending debate. As long as a member or members held the floor, they could filibuster and forestall a vote. It wasn’t until 1917 that the Senate adopted a cloture rule requiring a two-thirds majority approval for ending debate. The number of votes was subsequently reduced to a three-fifths majority for most matters and a simple majority for certain questions, like consent for judicial nominations.

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Sources:

“About Filibusters and Cloture: Historical Overview,” United States Senate, accessed 6 July 2025.

Cushing, Lester S. Manual of Parliamentary Practice: Rules of Proceeding and Debate in Deliberative Assemblies. Frances P. Sullivan, ed. New York: M. J. Ivers, 1887, §222n, 118n. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“London: Thursday, March 19, 1835.” Morning Chronicle (London), 19 March 1835, 3/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online (1891), 1989, s.v. cloture, n.

“Sketches in Parliament.” Illustrated London News. 26 February 1870, 222/1. Gale Primary Sources: The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003.

“Thursday Evening, May 16.” The Standard (London), 16 May 1850, 2/3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Image credit: C-SPAN, 1999. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

armadillo

A nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus)

30 July 2025

The armadillo is a largely nocturnal American mammal of the order Cingulata. There are a number of species of armadillo, of which the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) is perhaps the most familiar to English speakers. That species is found in South and Central America and in the southeastern United States, as far west as Texas and as far north as Nebraska and is the only species of armadillo common to the United States.

Armadillo has a straightforward etymology. Its name comes from its keratinous skin that forms a leathery, armored carapace about its head, upper body, and tail.  The word is a borrowing from Spanish, armado (“armored,” past participle of armar) + -illo (diminutive suffix). So an armadillo is literally a “little armored one.”

The word appears in Spanish in Nicolas Monardes 1571 De las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al vso de medicina (Of the Things that Are Brought from Our West Indies, which Serve as Medicine). That work was translated into English in 1577 later by John Frampton, which is the first known use of the word in English:

Thei dooe bryng also from the firme lande a bone, the whiche is of the taile of a straunge beaste, whiche is all couered ouer with small shelles, euen unto the feete, like as Horse is couered with armour: where by he is called the Armadillo, that is to saie a beaste armed. He is of the greatnesse of a yonge Pigge, and in the snoute he is like unto hym, he hath a greate and long taile like to a Lizarde. He abideth or dwelleth in the yearth, as a Mole doeth, and thei saie that he is maintained thereof, for abroade out of the yearth, thei see hym not eate any thyng.

Another early English use, with a slightly different spelling and clearly cribbed from Frampton’s translation, can be found in Thomas Blundeville’s 1594 His Exercises Containing Sixe Treatises:

The beast Armadillio is found in the Realme of Mexico, and he is no bigger than a cat, hee is headed like a Swine, and hath the féet of a Herison, and a long tayle, he is armed with scales, whereof he taketh his name, he keepeth for the most part within the ground, and as some suppose, doth liue by the earth, by reason that he is neuer seene to eat abroad out of his den, the bones of his tayle are medicinable, and do remedie the paine and deaffnes of the eares.

When I lived in Texas, I would occasionally encounter armadillos in the summer when walking my dog in the pre-dawn hours (to avoid the heat). It is indeed an odd-looking creature, stranger in real life than it appears in photos.

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Sources:

Blundeville, Thomas. His Exercises Containing Sixe Treatises. London: John Windet, 1594, 261v. ProQuest Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Monardes, Nicolás. Segunda parte del libro de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al vso de medicina. Seville: Alonso Escribano, 1571, 96. HathiTrust Digital Library.

———. The Three Bookes Written in the Spanish Tonge by the Famous Phisition D. Monardes. John Frampton, trans. London: William Norton, 1577, sig. fol. 73v. ProQuest Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, March 2016, s. v. armadillo, n.

Photo Credit: Gail Hampshire, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

throuple

Hand-tinted postcard, c. 1910

28 July 2025

Throuple is a good example of a word that has been coined multiple times, by multiple people, over the years. A blend of three + couple, it can refer to any grouping of three, but more commonly it is used to describe a polyamorous relationship involving three people, a ménage à trois, although that latter term can also refer to a single sexual encounter involving three people. Throuple always refers to a longer-term relationship that extends beyond just sex.

The earliest use of throuple that I have found is from 11 July 1994 on a Unitarian Universalist email list. That might seem an odd source for a sexually charged term, but in context it is less surprising. The topic was the difficulty of raising children in a nuclear family model:

As a result, I am find myself becoming increasingly interested in the notion of polyamorous relationships for the sake of our own sanity as parents attempting to raise children, as well as for the sanity of two children being raised by stressed-out parents of the so-called “normal nuclear family” structure.

I also tend to view the issue of sex in a polyamorous relationship as being somewhat irrelevant when it comes to the children in the situation. Most of the time I would imagine that sex would not even be much of an issue at all (except for the gossip mongers and busy-bodies for whom such a situation would provide fuel enough to have people thinking that such a relationship would consist of non-stop sexual encounters). These are among the same sorts of jealousy-based streotyping [sic] and perverted imaginings which undoubtedly hinder most any non-traditional couple (or in this case throuple or more).

This appearance of the word seems to be an outlier, as I can find no other uses of this sense until 2012, although I think it’s safe to assume that the word was relatively widespread in oral use. After all, it’s a natural blend, and throuples have existed since time immemorial. (The Oxford English Dictionary dates English use of ménage à trois to 1862.)

I also found a use of throuple in the general sense of a group of three on the Usenet group alt.tv.red-dwarf from 11 December 1997:

There’s so much great stuff on Daytime telly, thesedays. The really usefull show’s great, so’s supermarket sweep, and of course teletubbies, and schools programs are great too! Then there’s something on BBC2 at about one. I recently had a throuple of days of school, and I quite enjoyed myself (except i had a disgusting cold, which ruins things.)

Like the polyamorous sense, this general use has also undoubtedly been in oral use for ages.

The next instance of the polyamorous sense that I have found is in Allison Nichols’s 2008 novel Contents Under Pressure, describing a relationship between three queer people, Kenneth, Barbie, and Mango. Kenneth and Mango are men, and Barbie is either a drag queen or a transwoman; the novel does not clarify. It is hardly a positive depiction of such a relationship in any case:

She killed Mango for the only motive older than money—love. Seems she, Mango, and Kenneth were a throuple. A couple plus one. Kenneith and Mango had started dating right after the show had moved to Lucky. But once Barbie arrived in Provincetown, Kenneth became drawn to her as if they were made for each other. Mango was none too pleased at sharing Kenneth’s affection, but over time, the three came to tolerate, if not embrace, one another.

The polyamorous sense of throuple starts appearing commonly in print publications in 2012. There is this use in reference to the television series The Big C (2010–13) in the New York Daily News of 12 May 2012:

IN THE BROADWAY musical “Shrek,” Brian d’Arcy James played an ogre who was green. On “The Big C” Sunday night (Showtime, 9:30 p.m.), his racy guest-star role has him getting blue. He plays Tim, a married psychotherapist who, along with his wife, Giselle (Tammy Blanchard), initiates a sexy three-way tryst with Sean (series regular John Benjamin Hickey). Says James, 43, who lives on the upper West Side with his wife and daughter, “I never thought I'd be making out—on the set or off—with John Benjamin Hickey.” No matter. That's exactly what he does in the series, which looks at life and death in a darkly comic way. “Tim is wide open to defining who he is sexually,” says James. “The setup is that Tammy's and my character consider a relationship with Sean. We're calling it a throuple.” (“Threelationship” also works.)

A few months later, on 30 July 2012, the New York Post had this about New York magazine’s upcoming “sex” issue:

New York’s double issue is devoted to “Sex: the multiplicity of Desire.” Predictably there’s an element of Ivy League-flavored reportage, with a sex party hostess who “finds the terminology ‘sex party’ reductive and degrading.” There’s a piece on a three-man “throuple” that produces gay porn, but whose “home life seems positively wholesome,” with remarkably little interpersonal tension. Not much insight is gleaned, however, into how the participants manage to pull this off, no pun intended.

The New York magazine piece about the gay throuple is in the 6 August 2012 issue, which had sex as the issue’s theme:

And here lies a second explanation for Benny’s—and, by extension, CockyBoys’—microfame. Adrian explains that he is driving upstate to the house that he shares with Benny, who is now puppyishly tugging on Adrian’s hand, and Jason, who is the CEO of CockyBoys. The three men have been together for just over four years—a “throuple,” Benny calls it, putting air quotes around the dumb word. Their throuplehood is more or less a permanent domestic arrangement. The three men work together, raise dogs together, sleep together, miss one another, collect art together, travel together, bring each other glasses of water, and, in general, exemplify a modern, adult relationship.

Except that there are three of them.

One can often date the widespread use of a sex-related term to its use by sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, and he uses throuple in the 9 January 2013 column, Savage Love. In it he references the New York magazine piece, makes the point that heterosexuals form throuples too, and opines more favorably on such arrangements:

Some gay people think throuples are odd, some think they’re unremarkable, and some think they’re sensible. And some gay people—some dumb ones—think gay throuples are bad PR at a time when gay couples are fighting for the right to marry. But our fight is for equal rights, not double standards, and no one argues that straight marriage should be banned because of all the straight throuples, quadles, quintles, sextetles, etc. out there.

[…]

Throupledom presents unique challenges: Major life decisions require buy-in from three people; two can gang up against one during arguments; the partners who were coupled before the third came along may treat the third as a junior partner, not an equal partner, etc. But throupledom presents unique benefits, too: another set of hands to help around the house, another income to pay down the mortgage, another smiling face to sit on, etc. And it’s not like coupledom is a surefire recipe for success. Half of all marriages—those traditional “one man, one woman, for life” marriages—end in divorce. Yet discussions of throupledom all seem to begin with the assumption that coupledom is a self-evidently more stable arrangement. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’d like to see some research comparing throuples to couples before I accept that premise.

Use of throuple in print becomes much more common after this.

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Sources:

Dziemianowicz, Joe. “D’Arcy James Scores a ‘Big C’ Triple Play.” Daily News (New York), 12 May 2012, 4B. ProQuest Newspapers.

McLure, David. “Children and Family Structure.” UUS-L (listserv), 11 July 1994. Google Groups.

Nichol, Allison. Contents Under Pressure. Walker, Louisiana: Intaglio, 2008, 176. Archive.org.

Ouroborous**. Usenet: alt.tv.red-dwarf, 11 December 1997. Google Groups.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2001, s.v. ménage à trois, n.

Savage, Dan. “Gay Panic Attack.” Savage Love, 9 January 2013.

“Skin Magazines.” New York Post, 30 July 2012, 26/3-4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Young, Molly. “He & He & He: Benny Morecock Is in a ‘Throuple’ with Two Partners. Their Family Business Is a Gay-Porn Company in Long Island City. The Cleavers They’re not—and Yet Their Home Life Seems Positively Wholesome.” New York (magazine), 6 August 2012. ProQuest Magazines. [Morecock is Benny’s nom de porn, not his actual surname.]

Photo credit: unknown photograph, c. 1910. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

akimbo

Superman with arms akimbo

25 July 2025

To stand akimbo is to have one’s hands on one’s hips with the elbows turned outward. The word dates to the fifteenth century, but its origin is unknown. There are, however, a number of competing hypotheses.

Let's start with what we know for sure. The word began as a prepositional phrase, on or in kenebowe. The preposition was subsequently reduced to a. These prepositions can lose their final -n when unstressed, becoming a. That much of the word’s origin is certain. The earliest known use of the term is from the fifteenth century poem The Tale of Beryn:

The hoost made an hidouse cry, in gesolreut be haut,
And set his hond in kenebowe ; he lakkid nevir a faute

(The host made a hideous cry, a shrill howl,
And set his hand akimbo; he never was critical of a fault)

(The phrase in gesolreut be haut is a musical reference, literally meaning a G note above middle C; here it is being used figuratively to mean a shout or howl.)

That explains the a- prefix, but the -kimbo root is more difficult. There are three explanations that have some degree of plausibility, although all three should be treated with skepticism.

The first is that it is a compound of the Anglo-Norman cane (flagon, pitcher) + bow, meaning a hoop or ring. In other words, when standing akimbo one’s arms resemble a jug handle.

The second is that it is from an Old Norse phrase í keng boginn (bent like a bow). Unfortunately, this phrase is unattested and doesn’t actually appear in any extant writing from the period.

The third is that it is a compound of the Middle English keen + bow, alluding to the sharply bent elbows.

While the term started out as on/in kenebowe in the fifteenth century, by the middle of the seventeenth century the on/in had been reduced to a, and the n had shifted to m. The a began to be hyphenated by the early eighteenth century, a-kimbo, and by the early nineteenth, it was simply akimbo.

The meaning of the word expanded too. By the nineteenth century akimbo was being used for the legs as well. And beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, the word was being used more generally to mean askew or disorderly. The word’s use as an adjective is in the last sense, so in 2002 Esquire magazine could write this description of Charlie the Tuna, the mascot of StarKist-brand tuna:

He is still on the can. He is still blue, with mitteny hands and startled, akimbo eyebrows. He is still wearing a pair of Woody Allen-ish eyeglasses and a smart red beret. You remember Charlie: the protohipster with his bebop, his bongos, his Burroughs, and his Baudelaire. Commercial after commercial, Charlie tried to make himself attractive by attaining cultural mastery, only to be told, “Sorry, Charlie: StarKist doesn't want tunas with good taste. StarKist wants tunas that taste good.”

Charlie the Tuna with fins akimbo and “akimbo eyebrows”

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, AND2 Phase 1, 2000–06, s.v. cane1, n.

Furnivall, F. J. and W. G. Stone, eds. The Tale of Beryn. Early English Text Society, extra series 105. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909, lines 1837–38, 57. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Junod, Tom. “Man at His Best: Bizarre Essay of the Month: The Significance of Charlie the Tuna.” Esquire, September 2002, 80. ProQuest

Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, s.v. kene-boue, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2012, s.v. akimbo, adv. and adj.; June 2008, s.v. a, prep.1.

Image credits:

Superman: by Michael Allred, DC Comics, 2018. Wikimedia Commons. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.

Charlie the Tuna: StarKist, Co.. 2020. Wikipedia. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.

zeppelin

Crash of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, 6 May 1937

23 July 2025

Zeppelin, meaning a dirigible airship, comes, of course, from the name of Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin (1838–1917), who designed such airships. Ironically, the word appears in English before it does in German. English use as an adjective referring to such airships dates to 1896, while the German Luftschiff Zeppelin isn’t recorded until 1904.

Ferdinand Zeppelin published the designs for his airship in 1893 and patented them two years later. His first airship took flight in 1900. But there was considerable pre-launch hype. The earliest use of the adjective zeppelin that I’m aware of appears in the Boston Daily Advertiser on 12 February 1896, a reference to the count’s proposed flying machine:

Dr. Helmholtz had already pronounced favorably upon the Zeppelin flying machine some time before the specialist’s death; and even the Kaiser, it is reported, has now begun to take an interest in the device submitted by the Wurtemburg [sic] inventor.

As yet the accounts of the new flying machine are not very explicit. It is stated, however, that the Zeppelin air-ship is a cigar-shaped vessel, which can be steered upward and downward, right and left, forward and backward, under practically every condition presented by the atmosphere within a distance of three and a half miles from the surface of the earth.

The noun zeppelin is in place in the opening years of the next century when it appears in the pages of the Baltimore American on 6 August 1908:

Walter Wellman, who planned recently about going to the North Pole in a dirigible balloon, said last night that he was planning to make the attempt next year. He said his airship, the America, built for polar atmospheric conditions, could easily travel from New York to Buffalo, Detroit, or even Chicago. It is, Mr. Wellman said, the second largest airship ever built. Its 200,000 cubic feet being exceeded only by the Zeppelin.

“But in fuel-carrying capacity and radius of action the America exceeds the Zeppelin,” continued Mr. Wellman.

The Oxford English Dictionary also has a 1908 quotation for the noun zeppelin from H. G. Wells’s novel The War in the Air, but Wells is using it as a proper name for a particular airship, the Graf Zeppelin. (Wells’s airship is fictional; the first real airship named Graf Zeppelin took to the air in 1927.)

Cf. airship, blimp, dirigible.

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Sources:

“An Air Ship.” Boston Daily Advertiser (Massachusetts), 12 February 1896, 4/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“By Balloon to the Pole” (5 August 1908). Baltimore American (Maryland), 6 August 1908, 9/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, June 2014, s.v. Zeppelin, n.

Wells, H. G. The War in the Air. London: George Bell and Sons, 1908, 235, 258. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Murray Becker / Associated Press, 1937. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.