lineup

Made from the phrasal verb line up, the noun has a specific procedural meaning in American policing. A suspect stands among fillers chosen to look like them, and the procedure is only as fair as that resemblance: a six-foot suspect between two men of five foot six is hardly a test. Witnesses view a lineup, someone is placed in one, and an officer is in charge of it.

The sports sense is about who is actually selected, not everyone on the books. A manager fields a lineup, a player returns to the lineup after injury, and rival teams study each other's lineup before a game. It stretches beyond ball sports: a Formula One team decides its driver lineup for the season, which is a different thing from the starting order of cars on race day.

Promoters and festival talent buyers put together a lineup, and the word belongs to that side of the business as much as to fans. It is not limited to music: a theater festival has a lineup of plays. Organizers may shape it deliberately, as with one festival that keeps a rough 50/50 split between northern and southern performers.

Bands measure their history in lineups: a group loses half its lineup, re-forms with a new one, and goes through lineup changes as members come and go. The word is countable, so a single band can have several lineups, each identified by its members. Keep it distinct from the acts on a festival bill, where each item in the lineup is a whole band.

Marketing talk for a range meant to be seen whole. It usually follows a brand or model name, as in the Chevelle lineup or Honda's product lineup, and it reaches well past cars and gadgets: a fund company offers a lineup of funds, a drinks maker a lineup of brands. A strong lineup praises the breadth and quality of the range together.

Canada's everyday word for a queue: people wait in a lineup, join the lineup, or find a lineup of customers at the counter. Where other North Americans would usually say line and British speakers queue, Canadians reach for lineup. Context keeps it apart from the police identification sense; a lineup at the bank is simply people waiting their turn.

Scientists and analysts use the general sense for things set out in a meaningful order rather than in a printed list. Physicists speak of the lineup of band structures across a semiconductor interface, or of orbitals in a molecule, meaning how energy levels sit relative to one another; a chart reader studies the lineup of price patterns. In these uses the word comes close to alignment.

Baseball's version is strictly numbered: the leadoff hitter bats first, the #2 batter next, and a hitter can be moved up or down the lineup. The word also slides into the team-members sense: a weak-hitting or great-hitting lineup describes the batters themselves, not the order they come in. Players are said to be in the lineup, at its top or near its bottom.

Broadcasting ties it to a time slot: a Saturday-morning lineup, a Sunday-night lineup, a three-hour lineup of shows. Networks build, revamp and move whole lineups, as when the Mystery Movie lineup of Columbo, McCloud and McMillan and Wife shifted to Sunday night. In a 1966 House committee hearing it even names a block of airtime sold to a sponsor: a half-hour minimum lineup of $60,000.

Motor racing keeps the verb alongside the noun: cars line up behind the pole sitter, and the resulting lineup is set fastest to slowest from qualifying. NASCAR distinguishes formats, such as a double-car lineup, in which the third-fastest car starts behind the pole sitter and the fourth-fastest behind the car on the outside of the front row, pairing the field throughout.

Railroad working vocabulary, found in American rail rules and hearings. A track crew secures or obtains a lineup before taking track cars onto the main line, so the list works as a kind of clearance; without one, crews must proceed with special care. In railroad writing it may even appear without an article, as in lineup will not contain, almost like a mass noun.