An unforgiving noun invoking clear mental images of cars brought to a rusting standstill,
bumper-to-bumper for blocks in every direction. An American term
grid as a shortening of
gridiron appeared in the popular vernacular around 1839. A gridiron is an iron grate used to cook meats over coals.
Grids call for some clarification. In the 1930s, power companies in Britain constructed a countrywide system of high-voltage transmission lines to provide electricity to consumers. It was named the National Grid, a phrase that spread to other parts of the world. Soon this borrowed term was abbreviated to Grid and others borrowed that name. Soon most people understood grid to mean a “network of transmission lines," by 1954 town planners were using” grids” for planning city roads. A combination of the words grid and lock, it’s also called a traffic jam and describes major intersections that are blocked and vehicles are unable to move because of their extreme numbers. Even in Charles Dickens’s time the compound word was used to explain a "a complete lack of movement or progress resulting in a backup or stagnation" From this the term gridlock may have been coined by engineers to describe the “obstruction of urban traffic caused by lines of vehicles forming across junctions and causing further line to form in the intersecting streets.”
Other words that come to mind depicting delays are bottleneck, hitch, obstruction, setback, snag, and stoppage. Eventually a metaphor emerged when a point in a clash when no agreement can be reached, as well as to mean there is a delay or setback. Naturally, traffic engineers don't use the everyday term "gridlock." Instead they explain traffic conditions according to "levels of service," which is a formal system of defining the condition of traffic flow. In the long run drivers will have to arrive at a decision if they are benefiting from life in the fast lane at 30 miles per hour and this muddle of movement gets more perilous every day. In Manila, traffic officers were told to perform the Macarena to avoid traffic congestion. It was a flop.
Oddly enough pedlock has been added to the dictionaries. It’s a combination of pedestrian and gridlock that has surfaced to explain what happens when a place is so crowded that people can’t move easily in any direction. Probably the most unique evolution of the expression to date can be found in the zebrafish. These familiar tenants of home aquariums make it an ideal organism for developmental biologists to use in studying how organs are formed during embryogenesis. Dr Tao P. Zhong at the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Tennessee describes the essential task of a gene— called gridlock— that influences the outcome of precursor cells that will go on to become blood vessels:
The embryos are clear and develop outside of the mother’s body, allowing scientists to watch a zebrafish embryo grow into a newly formed fish under a microscope. This transparency makes observation of anatomical defects caused by genetic mutation easier. Moreover, zebrafish are particularly useful for studies of cardiovascular defects since survival of the embryos is not dependent on circulating blood flow. An obscure, torpedo-shaped fish that hails from India’s Ganges River.
……zebrafish embryos as a model for understanding a type of human blood vessel blockage seen in newborns called coarctation of the aorta. Though coarctation is a common occurrence routinely screened for by pediatricians, little is known of the cause.
..(It’s) a congenital cardiovascular disease,” Zhong said, “where a malformation, or blockage, occurs in the aorta during development. The child can survive with reconstruction of the area blood vessels—an adaptive mechanism takes place.”
Zhong and his colleagues published their work in the November 2002 issue of the journal
Nature. In it they illustrate how a mutation in the gene had in the past been shown to interrupt development of major blood vessels in zebrafish embryos, causing a stoppage of circulatory “traffic.” Dr. Zhong has used this animal model to systematically focus in on how the
protein encoded by
gridlock is involved in the genesis of blood vessels.
Sources:
Blood vessel study uses zebrafish:
www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/?ID=1933
CNN.com - Books - Brave new words - July 3, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/07/03/new.dictionary/
Grid:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/genindex-go.htm
Online Etymology Dictionary:
http://www.etymonline.com/
This week planner is providing study material for two weeks ...:
www.vangrysperre.kawaregem.be/6Aw11.doc
Trivial Trivia: July '98:
www.tulok.net/triv/0798.htm
Senior Thesis:
www.viterbo.edu/personalpages/faculty/ RRuppel/Symposium/Jason.html