- published: 31 May 2008
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A wing is an appendage with a surface that produces lift for flight or propulsion through the atmosphere, or through another gaseous or liquid fluid. A wing is an airfoil, which has a streamlined cross-sectional shape producing a useful lift to drag ratio.
The word "wing" from the Old Norse vængr for many centuries referred mainly to the foremost limbs of birds (in addition to the architectural aisle.) But in recent centuries the word's meaning has extended to include lift producing appendages of insects, bats, pterosaurs, boomerangs, some sail boats and aircraft.
"Wing" can also mean an inverted airfoil on a race car that generates a downward force to increase traction.
Various species of penguins and other flighted or flightless water birds such as auks, cormorants, guillemots, shearwaters, eider and scoter ducks and diving petrels are avid swimmers, and use their wings to propel through water.
A wing's aerodynamic quality is expressed as its lift-to-drag ratio. The lift a wing generates at a given speed and angle of attack can be one to two orders of magnitude greater than the total drag on the wing. A high lift-to-drag ratio requires a significantly smaller thrust to propel the wings through the air at sufficient lift.
Anna Eva Lydia Catherine Wing, MBE (born 30 October 1914) is an English actress. She has had a long career in television and theatre, but is most known for playing Lou Beale, the family matriarch of the Beale and Fowler family on EastEnders.
Wing was born in Hackney, London, and started out as an artist's model and later, during the Second World War, worked in East End hospitals. At age 30, she married the actor Peter Davey, by whom she had a son, actor-director Mark Wing-Davey, but the marriage ended in divorce after three years. Her five years as the partner of Philip O'Connor, a surrealist writer and contemporary of Stephen Spender and Laurie Lee, saw her spend some time as a nursery teacher in West London. She had a second son by Philip, Jon O'Connor, who also taught and currently works in education management and consultancy.
She attended the funeral of her EastEnders onscreen daughter Wendy Richard on 9 March 2009. She is a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
Wing is best known for portraying the Beale and Fowler family matriarch Lou Beale on EastEnders from the show's inception in February 1985, until the character was killed off in July 1988. She quit her role in the hit show as she was unhappy with the direction it was going, but has since reflected that it may not have been the right decision.[citation needed]
I spent my life twenty years in the basin
My only friend was a man of much more
He lied with power in his weary eyes 'till day came
And all at once I knew his name
Giles of the river...comin' in to make my precious day
Giles of the river...comin' in to tell one tale and take
My breath away...and he's on his way
He took me down through good times late departed
And through the world as it was and will be
By bad self I watched you as you hung your head out my door
But you won't grieve me no more