Fouetté

 

Fouetté

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

I woke up with this word on my mind. I have no idea why as I haven’t been watching ballet recently and have never studied it in great depth.

The word comes from the French fouetter, meaning to flog or whip.

A fouetté or ‘fouetté rond de jamb en tournant’, to give it its full name, is a movement in ballet in which the dancer stands on one foot and moves the free leg in a whipping motion in front or behind the body while spinning. It is an extremely difficult move to perfect and takes determination and hours of practice.

Most professional ballet dancers train for about six hours a day for six days of the week and are judged to be among the fittest of all athletes. The nature of their work means that their bones are strengthened as well as their muscles, because dancing is a weight-bearing occupation.  After eight to ten years of training, a professional ballet dancer’s life as a performer does not usually last beyond the age of thirty-five. There are exceptions, of course.

The ballets in which thirty-two fouettés can be seen are Swan Lake, in the pas de deux of the Black Swan, and the wedding pas de deux in Don Quixote.

ABC Wednesday Q

Q is the 17^th letter of the English alphabet. It holds 19^th place in the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets. It is normally followed by 'u' and indeed was sometimes represented thus in classroom alphabet charts. It may still be – I just haven't seen it so for many years.
When it is not followed by 'u' it is commonly in transliteration from Arabic words like Qatar. Usually the pronunciation is 'kw' though there are exceptions, like quay, queue, quiche, picturesque, grotesque.
As a mediaeval Latin numeral Q represents 500.
During the First World War (1914 – 1918) Q ship was the name given to warships that had been disguised as tramp steamers. These ships were used to lure U-boats to destruction. Submarines had a limited supply of torpedoes and would only deploy them against warships. If a submarine detected a merchant vessel it would surface in order to fire shells at it. The objective was to destroy vessels carrying vital supplies. Once the submarine had surfaced the Q ship would uncover its hidden guns and fire.

HMS Tamarisk was a British First World War Q-ship, built on the Clyde.

This painting is of an event that occurred on 8 August 1917 in the Bay of Biscay. HMS Dunraven did not manage to sink the submarine she had lured but was significantly damaged herself and sank early on 10 August as the British destroyer HMS Christopher had begun to tow her towards Plymouth. Two of the crew members - Lieutenant Charles Bonner and Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher - were awarded Victoria Crosses in recognition of the efforts of the Dunraven's crew.

Both images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Q was the nom-de-plume of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who was an author, a professor of English Literature at Cambridge and the editor of the first 'Oxford Book of English Verse' in 1900. Q was also the codename given to the character in the James Bond films who provides 007 with a seemingly unending supply of Quirky accoutrements.

There are a number of words beginning with Q that I find strangely attractive. For example, the Quagga (Equus quagga) is now extinct. It was native to South Africa and was a Quaint zebra-like animal with yellow-brown stripes on its head, neck and forebody. I like Quintessential and Quizzical, Quietus, Query, Quadrille and Querulous and of course, we should not overlook Don Quixote tilting at windmills from whose name comes the adjective Quixotic!

Thank you to Denise Nesbitt and the members of her cheerful team who organise and host this weekly meme. To see more Qs please click here.