This week’s word was once quite scandalous, licentious and even promiscuous. Indeed, it’s not normally a word I’d consider delving into, but in the interest of a summer etymological survey, “bikini” is worthy of our (modest) attention.

The bikini is, of course, a two-piece swimsuit for women, and variations of the basic idea have been around since the days of the Greeks and Romans (yes, they liked to go the beach, too). Fourth-century mosaics at the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily depict Roman women wearing rather bikini-like tops and bottoms. But for much of the first part of the 20th century, women’s swimwear was not nearly as revealing, and “somewhat frumpy” would be a polite way of describing old-timey bathing suits. Privacy and exceptional modesty were the bywords of beach-goers everywhere.

After the first World War, that began to change, as Hollywood led the way by — gasp! — showing a bit of bare midriff on actresses such as Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth. A “bit” was still a bit, however, and the all-important navel was still tastefully covered up.

But in July 1946, a bomb got dropped: an atomic bomb, to be more precise, in the Marshall Islands in the Western Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Navy’s “Operation Crossroads” detonated two 23-kiloton nuclear devices on the Bikini Atoll in an attempt to see how such weapons would affect both men and machines.

On the other side of the world, two French designers were separately planning a style explosion of their own. Inspired by the high drama and excitement of the early atomic age, Jacques Heim (1899-1967) was the first, advertising his “Atome” in early summer 1946 as the “world’s smallest bathing suit.” Louis Réard (1897-1984), an automotive engineer-turned-fashion designer, countered with a far smaller suit. Constructed of just 30 square inches of fabric, Réard could not, in fact, get any self-respecting girl to model it, turning to ah, well, a dancer at the Casino de Paris named Micheline Bernardini for help with putting it on display.

Réard timed his brainchild’s debut on July 5 at the Piscine Molitor, a Parisian public pool, perfectly, naming it “le bikini” after the site of the American Navy’s nuclear test that had occurred just four days earlier that same week. He claimed that it was, in fact, smaller than the world’s smallest swimsuit, but as explosive as an atomic bomb. The resulting (back) splash was indeed the fashion equivalent of an atomic explosion, but Southern Europe embraced the scanty suit within a decade or so. American shores repelled the bikini’s global advance until the 1960s, and the advent of the counterculture, in this case, symbolized by Brian Hyland’s 1960 hit, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” (and by all those silly Frankie Avalon beach-party movies and, of course, The Beach Boys).

All that to say, the first appearance in English of the word comes to us, as noted by the Oxford English Dictionary, in the June 14, 1948 issue of Newsweek, with the line: “This … French beauty… shows the 1948 countertrend against the skimpy ‘bikini’ style … which swept French beaches and beauty contests last year.” The July 2, 1957 London Times offers this definition of a bikini: “‘A small pair of pants and a brassière.’”

In the interest of taste, I won’t delve too much into bikini bottoms for men (think Europe and bodybuilders and stop right there); there’s also the sling “mankini,” but I’ll leave that one to your imagination too.

I wouldn’t wear one myself, but I do hope you found this Spartan garment’s history enlightening. If you have any word ideas, questions or comments, please send me a note at features@dailyuw.com, and until next time, cheers!

Reach Opinion Editor Will Mari at features@dailyuw.com.