Oxfordian

Oxfordian (pronounced ox-for-dee-en or ox-for-dee-an

(1) In geology, relating to or describing the Oxfordian age or stage, a geological time interval in the Jurassic period between 163.5±1.0 Ma - 157.3±1.0 Ma or the stage of rocks (chiefly coral-derived limestones) deposited during it.

(2) A theory of Shakespeare authorship; the view that Edward de Vere (1550–1604), seventeenth Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare.

(3) A person or thing associated with the town of Oxford or (less commonly), Oxford University.

1920s: The construct was Oxford + -ian.  Oxford was first settled by the Anglo-Saxons and was initially known as Oxenaforda (ford of the oxen), noted in Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis (a kind of world history, written in Latin ehich begin's with God's creation and end in 1140); the river crossing for oxen began circa 900.  The suffix -ian was a euphonic variant of –an & -n, from the Middle English -an, (regularly -ain, -ein & -en), from the Old French –ain & -ein (or before i, -en), the Modern French forms being –ain & -en (feminine -aine, -enne), from the Latin -iānus (the alternative forms were -ānus, -ēnus, -īnus & -ūnus), which formed adjectives of belonging or origin from a noun, being -nus (cognate with the Ancient Greek -νος (-nos)), preceded by a vowel, from the primitive Indo-European -nós.  It was cognate with the English -en.

To be or not to be tattooed

Theories the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) were written by someone other than the bard began to be published in the mid-nineteenth century and although Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was the most cited alternative, there were others and some suggested committees of co-authors.  Edward de Vere (1550–1604), seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was mentioned in the earlier papers but it wasn’t until the helpfully named John Thomas Looney (1870–1944) published Shakespeare Identified (1920) that Lord Oxford was claimed to be the sole author.  Few have been persuaded but Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and two US Supreme Court judges were convinced Oxfordians.

One of Lindsay Lohan’s tattoos is "What Dreams May Come" which is from Hamlet’s "To be, or not to be..." speech:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 1.

Cad, Bounder & Rotter

Cad (pronounced kad)

(1) A man who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way, especially toward women (mostly UK, now rare but not archaic).

(2) A local town boy or youth, as contrasted with a university or public school student.

(3) A servant at a university or public school.

(4) In architecture and engineering, as CAD, the acronym for Computer Aided (or Assisted) Design.

(5) In medicine, as CAD, the acronym for Coronary Artery Disease

(6) In computing, an abbreviation for the Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard combination.

(7) In currency trading, as CAD$, the code of the Canadian dollar

(8) In EU financial regulation as CAD1 & CAD2, the acronyms for Capital Adequacy Directives.

(9) A person who stood at the door of an omnibus to open and shut it, and to receive fares; bus conductor (UK archaic).

1730: A shortening of cadet, used originally of servants, later (1831) of town boys by students at Oxford and English public schools (though curiously, at Cambridge alone it meant "snob"), then "townsman" generally.  Between 1780-1790, it came to be adopted as a shortening of “caddie” (used to describe “a person who runs errands and does odd jobs”, a use thought of Scottish origin from the boys who carried clubs for golfers).  The Scots picked up caddie from the French cadet, from the dialectal capdet (chief, captain), from the Latin capitellum, diminutive of caput (head).  Cad seems, in the mid nineteen century (documented 1838-1868) also to have meant a "person lacking in finer feelings" but this use faded, replaced by other words as cad came to be applied mostly to upper class men behaving badly.  The related forms are caddish, caddishly & caddishness.

Bounder (pronounced boun-der)

(1) A person who is thought to have attempted, to have bounded to a higher social strata, often based on newly acquired wealth; social climber.

(2) A person, beast or thing that bounds.

(3) A dishonourable, morally reprehensible man (archaic, replaced by cad).

(4) That which limits; a boundary (technical use only).

1535–1545: Originally an English slang term applied to a “person of objectionable social behaviour”, it came by the late nineteenth century (attested 1882) to describe a “would-be stylish person”, a sense later extended to bounding (uninvited as it were) from a lower to higher social class to another), the implication being such social mobility is possible but depended on the bounder being accepted by the higher class.

The construct is bound + -er.  Bound is from the Middle English bound & bund (preterite) and bounden, bunden, ibunden & ȝebunden (past participle) from the Old English bund-& bunden (ġebunden) respectively.  The –er suffix is from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought likely a borrowing from the Latin ārius.  Use was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our) from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.

Rotter (pronounced rot-ah)

A person thoroughly bad, worthless, objectionable, unpleasant, or despicable.

1889: The construct is rot(t) + er.  Rot is from the Middle English rotten & roten from the Old English rotian (to rot, become corrupted, ulcerate, putrefy), from the Proto-Germanic rutāną (to rot).  The –er suffix is from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought likely a borrowing from the Latin ārius.  Use was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our) from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  Since use was first documented in the late nineteenth century, meaning has never shifted from "person deemed objectionable on moral grounds".

In the hierarchy of linguistic moral disapprobation, rotter is handy because it condemns someone as unambiguously bad.  There are synonyms such as scamp, rascal or rogue which can be applied humorously or affectionately (though usually with a sympatric adjective) but a rotter is just bad.  This probably applies too to disparagements like blackguard, creep, villain & scoundrel but they do rely on some specific conduct to justify the appellation whereas a rotter can be thought a rotter for no particular reason; they’re just a rotter.

Cad, bounder or rotter?

Lindsay Lohan with Harvey Weinstein (b 1952).

Former US film producer, co-founder in 1979 of film & television production & distribution company Miramax and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein is probably regarded by most as having ticked all the cad, bounder & rotter boxes.  Opinions may vary on whether one label should be lent more emphasis than another but it doubtful many would think none are applicable.  

The word cad evolved in the British class system and once was a general cultural put-down, based on it being an earlier descriptor of the servant-class and thus carrying the implication of a lack of finer tastes or manners but other words proved more attractive for this and, by early in the twentieth century, cad had come to refer to a man who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way, especially toward women.  The British class system’s put-downs however are in themselves nuanced, class-based things and the point about cad was it applied only to the well-bred, chaps aware of the gentlemanly codes, but who failed to live up to them.

Barnaby Joyce with his (now estranged) wife and four daughters.

There were thus no cads in the working class or the middle classes because, knowing no better, they couldn’t be blamed; they knew not what they did.  Those from the lower classes (and especially the aspirational middle-class) certainly could be bounders and anyone could be a rotter but to be a cad, one had to come from the upper strata.  The shift in meaning from earlier times was noted by Anthony West in his biography (Aspects of Life (1984)) of his father, HG Wells (1866–1946), a man of modest origins.  In the nineteenth century of Wells’ youth, a cad was “…a jumped-up member of the lower classes who was guilty of behaving as if he didn't know that his lowly origin made him unfit for having sexual relationships with well-bred women.”  Now, Wells would be called a bounder but not a cad.

The Honorable Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; variously thrice Deputy Prime-Minister of Australia (between local difficulties), 2016-2022), House of Representatives, Canberra ACT, Australia, 2018.  Definitely a cad but not a bounder and opinions will be divided on whether or not he's a rotter.  Some will be forever convinced while the more thoughtful might concede he was one of those chaps who "could be a bit of a rotter".

Agastopia

Agastopia (pronounced agg-uh-stow-pee-ah)

Deriving visual enjoyment from the appearance of a specific body part or parts (some suggesting the attraction must be fetishistic to cross the threshold from admiration to syndrome).

2011: A creation of etymologist Peter Novobatsky who included it in his 2011 book Depraved English.  A construct from the Ancient Greek ἀγα- (aga(s)-) (very) + -topia (a back-formation extracted from utopia (and other words) ultimately deriving from the Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos) (place).  Utopia was from the New Latin Ūtopia, the name of a fictional island possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system in the 1516 book Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535).  The construct was the Ancient Greek οὐ (ou) (not) + τόπος (tópos) (place, region) + -ία (-ía) (the New Latin suffix, from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) which formed abstract nouns of feminine gender.  More’s irony in calling a world in which everything and everyone works in perfect harmony being best translated as “not a real place” is often lost by modern writers.  Agastopia is a noun, agastopic is an adjective and agastopically is an adverb; the noun plural is agastopias.

Agastopic: Lindsay Lohan's feet.

Although there had not previously been a generic descriptor of part-focused voyeuristic fetishism, there’s no suggestion Novobataky thought agastopia a serious contribution to the taxonomy of mental health but some have adopted it, fleshing out the definitional range.  It’s been suggested the condition manifests as (1) a love or admiration of one’s own body part, compelling either a fondness of performing a particular task with it or a preference to cover and shield it with a protective layer or (2) the more familiar admiration of another’s body part(s).  Some sources, without citation, note it’s “…believed to be a rare condition” and one for which there’s “… no cure.”  Despite these nudges, when published in 2013, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), made no specific mention of agastopia.

Tomos

Tomos (pronounced tomm-oss)

In Orthodox Christianity, an ecclesiastical document, usually promulgated by a synod, and used to communicate or announce important information.

1510-1520: From the French, from the Latin tomus, from the Ancient Greek τόμος (tomos) (section, slice, roll of paper or papyrus, volume), from τέμνω (témnō or témnein) (I cut, separate); a doublet of tome which persists in English and is used to refer to heavy, large, or learned books.

The Ukraine and the Moscow–Constantinople Schism of 2019

Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople executes the Tomos, attended by Metropolitan Epiphanius I of Kiev, 5 January 2019.

In Istanbul (Constantinople), on Saturday 5 January 2019, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (b 1940; 270th archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch since 1991) signed a Tomos, an act formalizing his decision in October  2020 to create an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, thus splitting it from the Russian church to which it has been tied since 1686.  Until the decree, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine that was a branch of the Russian Church was considered legitimate and two others were regarded as schismatic. The new church unites the two formerly schismatic bodies with what is now the official Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Tomos of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on 5 January 2019.

The most immediate implication of the signing of the Tomos is that Ukrainian clerics are forced immediately to pick sides, needing to choose between the Moscow-backed and the newly independent Ukrainian churches, a choice that will have to be taken with fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed rebels as a backdrop.  Although there’s no formal link of establishment between church and state in Ukraine, the Ukrainian president immediately declared “…the Tomos is one more act declaring the independence of Ukraine”.  In the immediate aftermath of the ceremony in Istanbul, it appeared some two-thirds of the Ukrainian churches have sundered their relationship with Moscow.

Neither the Kremlin nor the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow are best pleased with Bartholomew granting the Ukrainian church autocephaly (independence) and the Russian church immediately severed ties with Constantinople, the centre of the Orthodox world.  A spokesman for the Russia-affiliated faction of the Church in Ukraine issued a statement saying the Tomos was “…anti-canonical” and will visit upon the Ukraine nothing but “…trouble, separation and sin".  In this, Moscow concurred, one archbishop adding that “…instead of healing the schism, instead of uniting Orthodoxy, we got an even greater schism that exists solely for political reasons.”

Although Orthodoxy was itself born of a schism and this latest split, already described as the Moscow–Constantinople Schism of 2019 is but the latest, the political and military situation in which it exists doesn’t auger well for a peaceful resolution.  In the Kremlin, Mr Putin notes such things and no good will come of this.

Dick-pic & Slot-shot

Dick-pic (pronounced dik-pik)

A picture of a human’s penis, if taken and disseminated in a certain context.

Dick became the pet-form name circa 1550 (though some etymologists suspect it had earlier been in use) for Richard via being the rhyming nickname for Rick, Richard's original affectionate diminutive.  Richard being (1) among the commonest English names and (2) exclusively male, it quickly become a synonym for "fellow; lad" and thereby a generally used word to refer to men, individually and collectively; from this connection came the use of dick as slang for that exclusively male body part.  Anything claimed to be an authoritative list of the slang senses must be viewed with scepticism because many forms are very old and the surviving written records are not a comprehensive catalogue of what was often an exclusively oral dialect so the date of origin is uncertain.  The meaning "penis" is attested from 1891 in a dictionary of farmer's slang and was said (predictably) to have been well-known British army slang but, perhaps regionally, the use could date back a century or more.  Most sources note "dick" in this context is thought now less offensive than once it was but for those still disturbed, there's a goodly number of alternatives. 

Pic of a Dick: The honorable Richard Face, former News South Wales Minister of Gaming & Racing (1995-2003).

The vulgar slang nouns dickhead & dickface (a stupid or contemptible person) are attested only from circa 1969 so Richard Face’s parents can't be accused of making what might now be thought an unwise choice.  Interestingly, although presumably not unaware of the linguistic possibilities his name offered, Richard Face was either indifferent or saw some political advantage in brand-name awareness because he chose to remain a Richard despite actually being christened Jack Richard Face.  Whether he ran the usual focus groups to find which worded best (Dick Face or Jack Face) isn't known.  In time, he did live up to his name, in 2004 fined Aus$2500 for lying to the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), the magistrate's rationale for not imposing a custodial sentence being (1) he was no longer a police officer and therefore "not directly involved in the administration of justice", (2) had an "exemplary record of public service", (3) had been under stress, was depressed and a heavy drinker at the time of his lie, (4) had shown remorse and pleaded guilty, (5) had "not committed perjury" or "sworn false evidence" and (6) "did not engage in persistently false swearing over sustained periods of time."

Pic was first recorded circa 1885 as a shortening of picture (image, likeness, photo, etc).  Picture was from the Middle English pycture, from the Old French picture, from the Latin pictūra (the art of painting, a painting), from pingō (I paint); a doublet of pictura.  The plural is pics but pix is common in casual & commercial use so the accepted alternative plural of dick-pics would be dick-pix. 

Slot-shot (pronounced slot+shot)

A picture of a human female’s genitalia, if taken and disseminated in a certain context.

Slot in the sense of a "bar or bolt used to fasten a door, window etc" entered Middle English circa 1300 from the Middle Dutch or Middle Low German slot, from the Old High German sloz & German Schloss (bolt, bar, lock, castle), from the Proto-Germanic stem slut- (to close).  The anatomical use to describe the "hollow at the base of the throat above the breastbone" was a late fourteenth century adoption from the Old French esclot (hoof-print of a deer or horse) of uncertain origin, but this sense is probably obsolete except in historic references.  Slot meaning a "a narrow, elongated depression, groove, notch, slit, or aperture, especially a narrow opening for receiving or admitting something" dates from the 1520s, the idea later developed to suggest putting something "where it belongs" but this seems to have been adopted only in the mid-1960s.

Shot (in the sense of the firing of a bow (later applied to firearms etc)) was from pre-900 Middle English, from the Old English sc(e)ot & (ge)sceot and was cognate with the German Schoss & Geschoss.  It was related to the Old Norse skot and the Old High German scoz (missile).  The sense of shot as the "view from a camera" isn't attested until 1958 although it had been used in the cinematic sense since 1922 to describe the process of recording movies (mov(ing picture) + -ies) since 1922 and may thus have enjoyed earlier use.  As used to refer to individual pictures, printed usually on cardboard or special photographic paper, it dates from the late 1930s, the specialized use in law enforcement (as mugshot) began in the US in 1950.

Of context

The dick-pic, the practice of someone (usually male) sending another (usually female) an unsolicited picture of (what is usually their own) penis isn’t a recent invention but the extraordinary latter day spike in the numbers sent is a genuine cultural phenomenon.  It’s socially and technologically deterministic, something made possible by (1) the permissive social attitude of the participating demographic, (2) the ubiquity of their possession of high-definition cameras, (3) the removal from the process of third-parties (especially those who once developed and printed the physical images), (4) the extent of digital connectivity between members of the demographic and (5), the marginal financial cost of the transactions.  It’s an interesting development in that in the West, the history of the depiction of nudity is overwhelmingly female so “pictures of genitalia sent by phone” is a genre in the annals of the nude (technically probably the naked) untypically dominated by the male body.

Generally uncontroversial if either requested or welcomed by a recipient with whom an appropriate level of emotional capital has already been built, dick-pics are notorious for the negative emotions induced in those receiving them as something unsolicited and unwelcome.  So, unless the intention is actually to shock, offend or upset (and among the demographic, that is sometimes a thing) they’re best avoided; good rarely seems to come of them and in some jurisdictions, there are circumstances in which sending a dick-pic can be an offence which can result in the sender being placed for life on a sex-offender’s register; it depends on the context.

Dick-pic detail from Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475–1564) David (1501-1504), Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.

Michelangelo’s David, a six-ton, 17-foot (5.2 m) tall symbol of divine victory over evil is art as a sculpture or in depiction and, despite the visible penis, in the West is usually thought not obscene.  In another context it can be, the erection of some inventive interior decorating required to conceal the offensive bits when a 3D-printed replica was displayed at the 2021 Dubai Expo.  It happens in the West too.  In the nineteenth century the Grand Duke of Tuscany presented Queen Victoria with a full-sized replica of the original which she found so confronting that hurriedly a proportionally accurate fig leaf was crafted, kept in readiness for any royal visits to be hung from two strategically placed hooks.  Even in the twenty-first century, replicas have attracted complaints, the argument being the context of a museum which people choose to visit being different for places where encounters may happen by chance.  Obscenity and offensiveness thus are situational constructs and a dick-pic exchanged between consenting adults is different from discovered in other circumstances; it depends on the context.

The Svakom Siime Sex Selfie Stick.

It’s assumed because there are few reports of women sending pics of their genitalia that the practice is notably less common than the dick-pic and while that’s not an accepted way to draw a definitive conclusion from two data sets, few doubt it’s true.  There are surely many reasons that’s the case and the paucity of examples is probably the reason a standardized female equivalent of “dick-pic” seems not to have evolved.  Suggestions have included “gash-flash”, “trap-snap” and “clamagram” but the most phonetically pleasing are probably “pussy-portrait” and “slot-shot”, the latter a metaphor which references the slot on a machine which is a perfect fit for coins of a certain denomination.  For women who find artistically limiting the idea of a static slot-shot, for US$149, there’s the Svakom Siime Sex Selfie Stick (SSSSS), a USB-rechargeable video-recorder-vibrator which offers, especially for those with basic video-editing skills, the chance to create a clip of an organism from the inside.  Thus the "clit-clip", a bit of digital one-upmanship (that may not be quite the right noun) on any "dick-pic".  

Available in violet, khaki & black, she can be connected to the USB port of a PC or Mac and there's a downloadable app for MacOS, Windows (XP SP2 onwards), iOS and Android.  The camera is a seemingly modest .3 megapixel unit but given the environment in which she'll be operating, that's more than adequate; videos are saved in the mp4 format, the product & software manuals are both downloadable and there's an instructional video on the Svakom website.  Whisper-quiet to ensure privacy, battery-life is said to be around two hours of "continuous use" so one can understand why women might prefer such a device to most men.  The manufacturer refers to the SSSSS as "she" rather than "it" (or even "he"), an interesting assignment of notional gender given the anatomical emulation.

L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World (1866)), oil on canvas by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The recumbent female has, off and on, been a staple of Western art since Antiquity but there was something about French artist’s Gustave Courbet’s L'Origine du monde which was so provocative that publicly, it wasn’t exhibited for 120 years.  A slot-shot writ large, it’s still a work which many institutions avoid, even those sanguine about female nudity (and nakedness) in artistic and other contexts, one columnist noting recently the painting “… if indeed it can be called erotic…” was “…still unsuitable for publication in a paper with a general readership.”  Perhaps it’s because it so differs from the long traditions of the nude, a study more gynecological than artistic or maybe it’s the lush and untended growth of pubic hair, something which seems often to disturb though it may be anatomically accurate: One Russian gynecologist was asked whether the model was a virgin and, after casting his professional eye, answered with an emphatic “Nyet”.  There’s also the objectification, the decapitation of the subject reducing the work somehow to a slot-shottish case-study for the male gaze, a reductionism which has for decades attracted criticism from feminists.  When depictions of L'Origine du monde have appeared in bookshops and galleries, there’s often been controversy, sometimes requiring the summoning of the gendarmerie although the Musée d'Orsay reports the work appears on one of their gift-shop’s best-selling post-cards so there's that.

The head presumptive (publicized in 2013).

Commissioned by Ottoman-Egyptian diplomat Halil Şerif Pasha (Khalil Bey 1831-1879) as an addition to his famous collection of erotica, ever since first it was seen, historians of art have debated among themselves the identity of the model, their short-list with some glee referred to as Les suspects habituels de Gustave (Gustave’s usual suspects).  No conclusion has ever been agreed although the factions promote their theories, one based on an analysis of the joining edges of the respective canvases, an allegedly matching upper-section displayed in 2013.  The Musée d'Orsay issued a statement saying L'Origine du monde is, as it exists, a complete work and not part of a larger whole.  The mystery continues.

Prerogative

Prerogative (pronounced pri-rog-uh-tiv)

(1) An exclusive right, privilege, etc., exercised by virtue of rank, office, or the like; having a hereditary or official right or privilege.

(2) A right, privilege, etc., limited to a specific person or to persons of a particular category.

(3) A power, immunity, or the like restricted to a sovereign government or its representative.

(4) Characterized by lawless state actions (refers to the prerogative state)

(5) Precedence (obsolete).

(6) A property, attribute or ability which gives one a superiority or advantage over others; an inherent advantage or privilege; a talent.

(7) In constitutional law, a right or power exclusive to a head of state (often derived from the original powers of a monarch) or their nominee exercising delegated authority, especially the powers to appoint or dismiss executive governments.

1350-1400: From the Anglo-Norman noun prerogatif, from the Old French prerogative, from the Latin praerogātīva (previous verdict; claim, privilege), noun use of the feminine singular of praerogātīvus (having first vote; privileged), in Anglo-Latin as prerogativa from late thirteenth century.  The origin lay in a statute in the civil law of Ancient Roman which granted precedence to the tribus, centuria (an assembly of one-hundred voters who, by lot, voted first in the Roman comita).  The law guaranteed them a praerogātīvus (chosen to vote first) derived from praerogere (ask before others).  The construct of praerogere was prae (before) + rogare (to ask, ask a favor), apparently a figurative use of a primitive Indo-European verb meaning literally "to stretch out (the hand)" from the root reg- (move in a straight line).  In Middle English, the meaning "an innate faculty or property which especially distinguishes someone or something" was added.  The alternative spelling prærogative is long obsolete.

The royal prerogative and the reserve powers of the crown

The royal prerogative is the body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity and the means by which (some of) the executive powers of government are exercised in the governance of the state.  These powers are recognized in common law and in a few civil law jurisdictions are held to vest wholly in the sovereign alone, even if exercised through either appointees (of which governors, governors-general & viceroys are the most-known) constitutional government.  In the narrowest sense of technical theory, the recognition of the personal powers of a sovereign exists in most common law systems where the concept is relevant but has long since mostly been reduced to legal fiction and. in most constitutional monarchies, almost all individual prerogatives have been abolished by parliaments.  Some republican heads of state also possess similar powers but they tend to be constitutionally defined and subject to checks and balances.  A notable exception to this is a US president’s un-trammeled right to grant pardons to those convicted of offences under federal law and that’s interesting because it’s the only power in the US Constitution not subject to a check or balance.  A US president thus personally continues to exercise a prerogative in a way a British monarch (or their appointees as governors & governors-general), from whom the power is derived, no longer can.

In Britain, prerogative powers were originally exercised by the monarch (at least in theory and the role of the Church needs also to be noted) acting alone but from after the Magna Carta (1215), there had to be sought the consent of others and this ultimately became parliamentary consent granted to an executive (exercising powers derived from the absolute authority of the monarch) responsible to the parliament.  This took centuries to evolve and eventually meant, in practical terms, the king got the money he needed for his wars and other ventures in exchange for the parliament getting his signature to pass the laws they wanted. 

In Australia, the royal prerogative is limited (but not defined) by the constitution and those powers which vest a monarch’s authority in a governor-general don’t alter the nature of the prerogative, only its detail; the prerogative is exercised by the governor-general but only on the advice of “their” ministers.  The most obvious exception to this is the reserve power of the monarch (and there are those who doubt whether this still exists in the UK) to dismiss a government enjoying the confidence of the lower house of parliament.  In the UK, it’s not been done since William IV (1765–1837; King of the United Kingdom 1830-1837) dismissed Lord Melbourne (1779–1848; Prime Minister of Great Britain 1834 & 1835–1841) in 1834 (some dispute that, saying it was more of a gentleman’s agreement and the last termination was actually that of Lord North (1732–1792; Prime Minister of Great Britain 1770-1782) by George III (1738–1820) King of Great Britain 1760-1820) in 1782) but Australia has seen two twentieth-century sackings; that in 1932 of NSW premier Jack Lang (1876–1975; Premier of New South Wales 1925-1927 & 1930-1932) by Governor Sir Philip Game (1876–1961; Governor of NSW 1930-1935) and, in 1975, when governor-general Sir John Kerr (1914–1991; Governor-General of Australia 1974-1977) sundered Gough Whitlam’s (1916–2014; Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975) commission.

The 1975 business provoked much academic discussion of the reserve powers but the most lucid read remains Dr HV Evatt’s (1894–1965; ALP leader 1951-1960) book from decades earlier: The King and His Dominion Governors.   Evatt’s (1936) volume was published a hundred odd-years after William IV sacked Melbourne and is useful because in that century there had been more than a few disputes about reserve powers.  Evatt’s central point was that the powers exist but proper rules by which they may be exercised are by no means clear.  The legal power is vested in the governor as the representative of the monarch and when it may properly be used depends on usage and convention.  It seems therefore scarcely possible to say confidently of any case when the Crown has intervened that its intervention was or was not correct for the only standard of correctness in each episode is its consistency with episodes of a similar character, none of which in themselves lay down any principle in law.  Further, Evatt notes, in looking to precedent, support for almost any view can be found in the authorities.  Lofty theoretical purity is also not helpful.  The view the sovereign automatically acts in all matters in accordance with the advice of his ministers rests entirely upon assertion and, Evatt observed, the reserve powers are still, on occasion, properly exercisable and that the Sovereign or his representative may have to exercise a real discretion.  Given that, it really might be impossible that the prerogative could be codified in a document which envisages all possible political or other circumstances.  Evatt nevertheless argued the principles which should guide a sovereign should be defined and made clear by statute.

Nor is practical political reality all that much help, however satisfactory an outcome may prove.  What the exercise of the reserve powers, both in 1932 and 1975, did was enable impasses described, however erroneously as constitutional crises to be resolved by an election, rather than other means.  The result of an election however does not conclude the matter for the correctness of the sovereign's action is not measured by his success as a prophet, any post-facto endorsement by the electorate having not even an indirect bearing on the abstract question of constitutionality.

Dr HV Evatt in his office at the UN.  Although variously a high court judge, attorney-general, foreign minister, opposition leader and Chief Justice of NSW, all he asked for on his gravestone was President of the United Nations, noting his service as president of the general assembly (1948-1949).

Evatt’s core argument therefore is that reserve powers should be subject to the normal and natural process of analysis, definition and reduction to the rules of positive law, which, by 1936, had in some places been done.  Evatt considered section 33(10) of the Western Nigerian constitution which codified things thus: The Governor shall not remove the Premier from office unless it appears to him that the Premier no longer commands the support or a majority of the members of the House of Assembly.  Other sections went on to detail the mechanisms of the exercise of the power, thereby attempting to do exactly what Evatt suggests.  However, the Nigerian example is discussed by Evatt not in the abstract but because the exercise of the power under the constitution became a matter of dispute and the case proceeded though the courts, finally ending up before the Privy Council as Adegbenro v. Akintola (1963 AC 614), an indication even the most explicit codification can remain an imperfect solution.

Finis

Finis (pronounced fin-is, fee-nee or fahy-nis)

End; finish; death; conclusion.

1425–1475: A late Middle English borrowing, either from the French or directly from the Latin fīnis (end; limit, literally “the end" & doublet of fine).  The origin is disputed: It’s possibly from fignis from the primitive Indo-European dheygw- (to stick, set up), from which Latin gained figere & figō (I fasten; to fix) or from fidnis, from bheyd- (to split), which yielded the Latin findō (I divide).  A publishing tradition began in the fifteenth century to place finis at the end of a book, a practice which remained common until the late 1800s.

Existing in Middle English as finishen, finisshen & finischen, the modern English verb finish meant originally (late-fourteenth century) "to bring to an end" and by the mid-fifteenth century, "to come to an end".  The English form came from the thirteenth century Old French finiss- (present participle stem of fenir (stop, finish, come to an end; die)), from the Latin finire (to limit, set bounds; put an end to; come to an end), from finis (that which divides, a boundary, border), often used figuratively to suggest "a limit, an end, close, conclusion; an extremity, highest point; greatest degree.  The meaning "to kill, terminate the existence of" is from 1755.

Modern English offers a myriad of synonyms including over, finish, farewell, windup, completion, expiry, culmination, integration, fulfillment, realization, conclusion, achievement, expiration, finalization, closure, resolution, retirement, result, and outcome.

Prime Minister Attlee, President Truman & Comrade Stalin, Potsdam, 1945.Held. in Brandenburg's Cecilienhof Palace in what would soon become the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany), the Potsdam Conference (17 July-2 August 1945), was the last of the three (following Tehran, 28 November-1 December 1943 & Yalta, 4-11 February 1945) wartime meetings of the heads of government of the UK, US & USSR.

US President Truman and the USSR’s comrade Stalin attended for the duration while Prime Minister Churchill represented the UK until 24 July, leaving the following day for London to be present for the declaration of results of the general election.  He left without saying farewell to Truman and Stalin because he expected to be re-elected and return within days.  Instead, the Conservatives were defeated in a landslide and, on 28 July, the new prime minister, the Labour Party’s Clement Attlee flew to Potsdam for the conference’s resumption.  The defeat provoked a variety of reactions within the Soviet delegation.  Comrade Stalin, who had no particular objection to elections, believing "it mattered not who voted but rather who counted the votes", was surprised, having assumed the Conservative Party would have “fixed” the result.  Churchill’s doctor noted in his diary the comment of one female Soviet soldier who, on hearing the news, said she expected Mr Attlee would “… now have Mr Churchill shot”.  On 29 July, leaving the prime minister’s country house, Chequers, for what he assumed would be the last time, Churchill signed finis in the visitors’ book.  He was too pessimistic, returning to office in 1951 and staying, despite a stroke in 1953, until 1955.

Barracuda

Barracuda (pronounced bar-uh-koo-duh)

(1) Any of several elongated, predaceous, tropical and subtropical marine fishes of the genus Sphyraena, certain species of which are used for food.

(2) Slang term for a treacherous, greedy person (obsolete); slang term for one who uses harsh or predatory means to compete.

(3) A car produced by the Plymouth division of Chrysler Corporation in three generations between 1964-1974.

1670-1680: From American Spanish, thought derived from customary use in the Caribbean, borrowed from the Latin American Spanish barracuda, perhaps from a Cariban word, most likely the Valencian-Catalan barracó (snaggletooth), first recorded as barracoutha.

The 1971 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda at auction

While the 1964 Ford Mustang is credited with creating the pony-car market, it was actually the Plymouth Barracuda which came first, released seventeen days earlier.  Ford’s idea was to drape a sexy new body over an existing, low-cost, platform and drive-train and Chrysler chose the same route, using the sub-compact Valiant as Ford were using their Falcon.

1965 Ford Mustang

Unfortunately, despite the project having been in the works for years, a sudden awareness Ford were well advanced meant Chrysler’s lower-budget development was rushed.  Despite the Valiant’s platform and drive-train being in some aspects better than the Falcon, Plymouth’s Barracuda was a bit of a flop, outsold by its competitor initially by around ten to one, numbers which got worse.  While the Mustang got what was called “the body from central casting”, from the windscreen forward, the Barracuda retained the sheet-metal from the mundane Valiant, onto which was grafted a rear end which was adventurous but stylistically disconnected from the front.

1964 Plymouth Barracuda

It was an awkward discombobulation although, with the back-seat able to be folded down to transform the rear passenger compartment into a large luggage space, it was clever design.

1971 Jensen FF

The novelty of that rear-end was a giant rear window which, at 14.4 square feet (1.34m³), was at the time the largest ever installed in a production car.  In 1966, even grander glazing was seen on the Jensen Interceptor, styled by Italy’s Carrozzeria Touring, but there it was ascetically successful, the lines of the big trans-Atlantic hybrid more suited to such an expanse of glass.

1967 Plymouth Barracuda

The extraordinary success of the Mustang nevertheless encouraged Chrysler to persist and the Barracuda, though still on the Valiant platform, was re-styled for 1967, this time with the vaguely Italianesque influences seen also in 1966 in the revision to Chevrolet’s doomed, rear-engined Corvair.  As a design, it worked well and offered both notchback and convertible coachwork as well as a fastback but, because of the economic necessity of retaining some aspects of the Valiant’s structure, wasn’t able to realise the short-deck, long-hood look with which the Mustang had established the pony car design motif used still today.

1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

General Motors’ (GM) answer to the Mustang wasn’t as constrained by the fiscal frugality which had imposed so many compromises on the Barracuda, the Chevrolet Camaro and the substantially similar Pontiac Firebird both introduced in 1966 with a curvaceous interpretation of the short-deck, long-hood idea which maintained a relationship with the GM’s then voguish “coke-bottle” designs.  In a twist on the pony car process, the Camaro and Firebird were built on an entirely new platform which would later be used for Chevrolet’s new competitor for the Valiant and Falcon, the Nova.  Just as the pedestrian platforms had restricted the freedom to design the Barracuda, so the Camaro’s underpinnings imposed compromises in space utilization on the Nova, a few inches of the passenger compartment sacrificed to fashion.  For 1967, Ford released an updated Mustang, visually similar to the original but notably wider, matching the Camaro and Firebird in easily accommodating big-block engines, not something Chrysler easily could do with the Barracuda.

1969 Plymouth 'Cuda 440

However, this was the 1960s and though Chrysler couldn’t easily install a big-block, they could with difficulty and so they did, most with a 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 and, in 1969, in a package now called ‘Cuda, a few with the 440 (7.2 litre).  At first glance it looked a bargain, the big engine not all that expensive but having ticked the box, the buyer then found added a number of "mandatory options" so the total package did add a hefty premium to the basic cost.  The bulk of the 440 was such that the plumbing needed for disc brakes wouldn’t fit so the monster had to be stopped with the antiquated drum-type and nor was there space for power steering, quite a sacrifice in a car with so much weight sitting atop the front wheels.  The prototype built with a manual gearbox frequently snapped so many rear suspension components the engineers were forced to insist on an automatic transmission, the fluid cushion softening the impact between torque and tarmac.  Still, in a straight line, the things were quick enough to entice almost 350 buyers.  To this day the 440 remains the second-largest engine used in a pony car, only the Pontiac 455 (7.5 litre) offering more displacement.

1968 Plymouth Barracuda Convertible

The better choice, introduced late in 1967, was an enlarged version of Chrysler’s LA, small-block V8, now bored-out to 340 cubic inches (5.6 litre); it wouldn’t be the biggest of the LA series but it was the best.  A high-revving, free-breathing thing from the days when only the most rudimentary emission controls were required, the toxic little (a relative term) 340 gave the ‘Cuda performance in a straight line barely inferior to the 440, coupled with markedly improved braking and cornering prowess.  One of the outstanding engines of the era and debatably the best small-block, it lasted, gradually detuned, until 1973 by which time interest in performance cars had declined in parallel with the engineers ability to produce them while also complying with the increasingly onerous anti-pollution rules.

1968 Hemi 'Cuda, ex factory

Of course, for some even a 440 ‘Cuda wouldn't be enough and anticipating this, in 1968, Plymouth took the metaphorical shoehorn and installed the 426 cubic inch (6.9 litre) Street Hemi V8, a (slightly) civilised version of their racing engine.  Fifty were built (though one normally reliable source claims it was seventy) and with fibreglass panels and all manner of acid-dipping tricks to reduce weight, Plymouth didn’t even try to pretend the things were intended for anywhere except the drag strip.  The power-to-weight ratio of the 1968 Hemi ‘Cudas remains the highest of the era.

1971 Plymouth 'Cuda

The third and final iteration of the Barracuda was introduced as a 1970 model and lasted until 1974.  Abandoning both the delicate lines of the second generation and the fastback body, the lines were influenced more by the Camaro than the Mustang and it was wide enough for any engine in the inventory.  This time the range comprised (1) the Barracuda which could be configured with either straight-six or one of the milder V8s, (2) the Gran 'Cuda which offered slightly more powerful V8s and some additional luxury appointments including the novelty of an overhead console (though obviously not available in the convertible) and (3) the 'Cuda which was oriented towards high-performance and available with the 340, 383, 440 and 426 units, the wide (E-body) platform able to handle any engine/transmission combination.  Perhaps the best looking of all the pony cars, sales encouragingly spiked for 1970, even the Hemi ‘Cuda attracting over 650 buyers, despite the big engine increasing the price by about a third and it would have been more popular still, had not the insurance premiums for such machines risen do high.  With this level of success, the future of the car seemed assured although the reaction of the press was not uncritical, one review of the Dodge Hemi Challenger (the ‘Cuda’s substantially similar stable-mate), finding it an example of “…lavish execution with little thought to practical application”.

1971 Plymouth 'Cuda Convertible

Circumstances however conspired to doom the ‘Cuda, the Hemi, the Challenger and almost the whole muscle car ecosystem.  Some of the pony cars would survive but for quite some time only as caricatures of their wild predecessors.  Rapidly piling up were safety and emission control regulations which were consuming an increasing proportion of manufacturers’ budgets but just as lethal was the crackdown by the insurance industry on what were admittedly dangerously overpowered cars which, by international standards, were extraordinarily cheap and often within the price range of the 17-25 year old males most prone to high-speed accidents on highways.  During 1970, the insurance industry looked at the data and adjusted the premiums.  By late 1970, were it possible to buy insurance for a Hemi ‘Cuda and its ilk, it was prohibitively expensive and sales flopped from around 650 in 1970 to barely more than a hundred the next year, of which but a dozen-odd were convertibles.

It was nearly over.  Although the Barracuda survived, the convertible and the big-block engines didn’t re-appear after 1971 and the once vibrant 340 was soon replaced by a more placid 360.  Sales continued to fall, soon below the point where the expensive to produce E-body was no longer viable, production of both Barracuda and Challenger ending in 1974.  Even without the factors which led to the extinction however, the first oil-crisis, which began in October 1973, would likely have finished them off, the Mustang having (temporarily) vacated that market segment and the Camaro and Firebird survived only because they were cheaper to build so GM could profitably maintain production at lower levels.  Later in the decade, GM would be glad about that for the Camaro and Firebird enjoyed long, profitable Indian summers.  That career wasn't shared by the Javelin, American Motors’ belated pony car which, although actually more successful than the Barracuda, outlived it only by months.

1971 Hemi 'Cuda Convertible at 2021 auction

It was as an extinct species the third generations ‘Cudas achieved their greatest success... as used cars.  In 2014, one of the twelve 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles sold at auction for US$3.5 million and in 2021, another attracted a bit of US$4.8 million without reaching the reserve.