Repent

Repent (pronounced ri-pent (U) or re-pent (non-U))

(1) To feel sorry, self-reproachful, or contrite for past conduct; regret or be conscience-stricken about past actions or thoughts (historically often followed by of).

(2) In theology, to be sorry for sin as morally evil, and to seek forgiveness; to cease to practice sin and to love; to be penitent.

(3) To remember or regard with self-reproach or contrition.

(4) To feel sorry for; regret (obsolete).

(5) In botany, plants lying or creeping along the ground.

1290–1300: From the Middle English repenten (be grieved over one's past and seek forgiveness; feel such regret for sins, crimes, or omissions as produces amendment of life) from the eleventh century Old French repentir, the construct being re- (used here probably as an intensive prefix) + the Vulgar Latin penitir(e) (to regret) or pentir (to feel sorrow) from the Latin paenitēre (to regret, be sorry) or poenitire (make sorry), from poena (from which English gained penal).  The meaning in the sense of “crawl”, later borrowed by botany, emerged in 1660-1670 and is from the Latin rēpent (stem of rēpēns), present participle of rēpere (to crawl, creep).  The Old French repentir is from the Vulgar Latin repoenitere, the construct being re- + a late derivative of poenitere (be penitent), an alteration of Latin paenitere.  The Latin prefix rĕ- is from Proto-Italic wre (again), which has a parallel in Umbrian re-, but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes its further etymology is uncertain.  While it carries a general sense of "back" or "backwards", its precise sense is not always clear, and its great productivity in classical Latin has the tendency to obscure its original meaning.  Interestingly, in Middle English and after, a common form was as an impersonal reflexive sense, especially as “it repenteth (me, him etc)”.

The distinction between regret and repent exists in many modern languages but there's no evidence any differentiation was maintained during older periods. To repent is to regret so deeply as to change the mind or course of conduct in consequence and develop new mental and spiritual habits but when the King James Bible (1611) was issued in the then current English, repent still could mean regret: Genesis 6:6-7 (KJV (1611)).

(6) And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

(7) And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

In more modern editions, translators ensured that repentance was understood to go beyond mere feelings of regret to express distinct purposes of turning from sin to righteousness, implying a change of mental and spiritual attitude toward sin and wickedness.  The adjective repentant (penitent, contrite, sorry for past sins, words, or deeds) was from the early thirteenth century repentaunt, from the twelfth century Old French repentant (penitent), the present participle of repentir.  The circa 1300 noun repentance (state of being penitent, sorrow and contrition for sin or wrongdoing resulting in vigorous abandonment of it in one's life) was from the twelfth century Old French repentance (penitence), from the present-participle stem of repentir.

The only path to salvation

Repentance through ballistics: Lindsay Lohan with Smith & Wesson S&W500 Magnum as nun in Machete (2010).

Etymologists have noted the convoluted path the modern understanding of repent took from the original Biblical Hebrew.  The Old Testament notion of repentance is represented by two verbs: שוב (shuv) (to return) and נחם (nacham) (to feel sorrow).  In the New Testament, the word translated as “repentance” is the Greek μετάνοια (metanoia) (after or behind one's mind), the construct being meta (after; with) + noeo (to perceive; to think; the result of perceiving or observing).  Metanoia is thus an after-thought; a change of mind.  The Biblical texts however were written not to assist those in lives of quiet contemplation but as a moral code to persuade sinners to turn away from that life to something better.  The reward was eternal life for one’s spirit; the price an unconditional surrender to God as sovereign.  In case readers didn’t get it, the Bible uses the words repent, repentance and repented over one-hundred times.

Repentance through faith: Saint Augustine between Christ and the Virgin (1664), oil on canvas by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (circa 1617-1682).

An early long-form tale of repentance was Saint Augustine’s (354-430) autobiographical Confessiones (Confessions (397-400)) in which (over thirteen volumes) he documented the regenerative effects of true and sincere repentance, which, by God's grace, sets him upon his new journey of life:  "Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new. Too late have I loved Thee.  For behold Thou wert within, and I without, and there did I seek Thee. I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty which Thou madest."  Augustine’s point was that it was only repentance which allowed him fully to understand the implications of the life lived previously outside of God's grace for it was only the sudden embrace of God’s love which could reveal his lowliness and sinfulness.  Augustine saw the gift of repentance as the finest gift of God’s mercy but later he would caution those who, knowing they have sinned, thought their penitence might be put-off: “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.”

Alarum

Alarum (pronounced uh-lar-uhm or uh-lahr-uhm)

(1) An archaic variant of alarm, especially as a call to arms.

(2) In literary classification, a work written in the form of a warning.

(3) In the form “alarums and excursions”, a stage direction used in Elizabethan theatre (used only in the plural).

1585–1595: From the Middle English alarme & alarom, from the fourteenth century Old French alarme, from the Old Italian all'arme (a call to arms (literally “to the arms”) and understood in translation as “arm yourselves and prepare for battle!”), from the Latin arma & armorum (arms, weapons) (from which English ultimately gained armory).  The Old Italian all'arme was a contraction of the phrase alle arme, alle a contraction of a "to" (from the Latin ad) + le, from the Latin illas, the feminine accusative plural of ille (the) coupled with arme, from the Latin arma (weapons (including armor), literally "the tools or implements (of war)”), from the primitive Indo-European root ar- (to fit together).  Beyond purely military use, the interjection (which had once also been spelt all-arm) came by the late sixteenth century to be a general to be both a “warning of any danger or need to arouse” and the device generating the sound.  From the mid-fifteenth century it had conveyed a “state of fearful surprise" while the weakened sense of “apprehension or unease” dates from 1833.  In England, alarm clocks were first available in the 1690s and they were described as A Larum Clocks.  Alarum is a noun, the present participle is alaruming, the past participle alarumed; the noun plural is alarums.

The phrase alarums and excursions (used only in the plural) was a stage direction used in Elizabethan theatre drama.  It instructed the actors to create a scene suggesting military action, either by having them march across the stage, blowing bugles and beating drums or, as the script directed, performing fragments of a battle or other engagement.  In idiomatic use, it came to be used to allude to (1) the sounds and activities associated with the preparations for war and (2) by extension, any noisy, frantic, or disorganized activity.

Alarum is the old spelling of the modern alarm (as a noun or a verb) which has in literary classification retained a niche as a deliberate archaism, probably because it’s one of those words (like aroint) which endures because it appears in the works of Shakespeare.  There’s also some history of alarum as a poetic device where it’s deployed when the cadence requires “alarm” to be pronounced with a rolling "r" (although it’s not known if this was the practice in Middle English (and Shakespeare’s placement gives no clue).  Other than the technical uses describe, alarum has no use in modern English and if used as a substitute for alarm it will either confuse or be treated as a spelling mistake (which of course it is).

In the classification of non-fiction, an alarum is a work written as a warning.  It can be in the form of a polemic, a history or any other form and the label alarum is thus both a category and a sub-category applied to other classifications.  In this the label works the same way as something like apologia which is typically applied (not always with the agreement of the author) to memoirs and the like.

A classic example of the alarum is Friedrich von Hayek’s (1899–1992) Der Weg zur Knechtschaft (The Road to Serfdom (1944)), a book which warns that the inevitable consequence of governments controlling an economy through central planning is a tyrannical dictatorship and the sacrifice of individual freedom.  His thesis was widely read but gained renewed attention in the 1980s when an interpretation of the neo-liberal economic model he advocated was implemented in both developed and emerging economies with results good and bad.  What was unfortunate however was the impression that many politicians seemed to be acquainted only with the simplified edition issued in 1945 by the US magazine Reader's Digest, a version designed for those without formal training in economics which was easier to read but lacked some of the nuances of argument and the political subtleties which had so captivated certain intellectuals.  Hayek was in his views an elitist who seemed not to have a high opinion of the powers of most people abstractly to reason but he certainly defended their right to pursue what they perceived as their economic advantage.  In many ways the book seems at its best (for non-economists anyway) if read not as advocacy for a particular structure for an economy but as a work of political philosophy and digested this way, Hayek’s discussion of the language of politics is of special interest; his explanation of the way labels like “left” and “right” have become distorted both as descriptors and in the consequences of use remains influential.

Brigade

Brigade (pronounced bri-geyd)

(1) In army organisation, a military unit having its own headquarters and consisting of two or more regiments; the army formation immediately larger than a regiment, smaller than a division.

(2) In casual use, sometimes used to describe a large body of troops.

(3) A group of individuals organized for a particular purpose (used sometimes in a derogatory sense).

(4) A historical term for a convoy of canoes, sleds, wagons, or pack animals, especially as used to supply trappers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Canadian and US fur trade.

1630–1640: A borrowing from the French brigade (body of soldiers) from the Old Italian brigata (troop, crowd, gang) derived from the Old Italian brigare (to fight, brawl) from briga (strife, quarrel), perhaps of Celtic (and related to the Gaelic brigh and Welsh bri (power) or Germanic origin.  The French brigand (foot soldier) which later adopted the meaning “outlaw or bandit” is also related.

Word endures in describing one of the standard (though numerically various) units of army organisation but was used also by the International Brigades as a general description of the volunteer forces which assembled during the Spanish Civil War to assist the doomed Spanish Republic.  The most familiar brigades in civilian life are fire brigades.

La Brigade de cuisine

The Brigade de cuisine (kitchen brigade) is the hierarchical organizational chart for commercial kitchens, codified from earlier practices by French chef, Georges-Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935).  Escoffier had served in the French army and refined a kitchen structure which had existed since the fourteenth century.  The military-type chain-of-command became formalized but what was novel was what he dubbed the chef de partie system, an organizational model based on sections which were both geographically and functionally defined.  His design was intended to avoid duplication of effort and facilitate communication.

The economic realities of technological innovation, outsourcing to external supply chains and the changing ratio of labour costs to revenue have meant even the larger modern kitchens now use a truncated version of the Escoffien system although the sectional chef de partie structure remains.  Escoffier’s idealized structure was adopted only in the largest of exclusive establishments or the grandest of cruise liners and, like the Edwardian household, is a footnote in sociological history.  The positions were:

Chef de cuisine or Executive Chef: The culinary and administrative head of the kitchen.

Sous-chef de cuisine:  The Executive Chef’s deputy.

Saucier or sauté cook: Prepares sauces and warm hors d'oeuvres, completes meat dishes, and in smaller restaurants, may work on fish dishes and prepare sautéed items.  One of the most technically demanding positions in the brigade.

Chef de partie: The senior chef of a particular section.

Demi Chef: An experienced chef working under a chef de partie.

Chen:  A specialist chef allocated to particular dishes.

Cuisinier:  A generalist chef working in one or more sections.

Commis: A junior chef, working under supervision and often responsible for maintaining the tools and fittings of the section.

Apprentice: Trainee or student chefs gaining theoretical and practical training while performing preparatory and cleaning work.  Duties become more complex as experience builds.

Plongeur: Dishwasher or kitchen porter who cleans dishes and utensils, and may be entrusted with basic preparatory jobs otherwise done by apprentices.

Marmiton: A pot and pan washer, sometimes also known as kitchen porter.

Rôtisseur: The roast cook who manages the team which roasts, broils, and deep fries dishes.

Charcutier: A chef who prepares pork products such as pâté, pâté en croûte, rillettes, hams, sausages and any cured meats.  May coordinate with the garde manger and deliver cured meats.

Grillardin: The grill cook who, in larger kitchens, prepares grilled foods instead of the rôtisseur.

Friturier: The fry cook who, in larger kitchens, prepares fried foods instead of the rôtisseur.

Poissonnier: The fish cook who prepares fish and seafood dishes.

Entremetier: The entrée preparer who prepares soups and other dishes not involving meat or fish, including vegetable and egg dishes.

Potager: The soup cook who, in larger kitchens, reports to the entremetier and prepares the soups, often also assisting the saucier.

Legumier: The vegetable cook who, in larger kitchens, also reports to the entremetier and prepares the vegetable dishes.

Joining the kitchen brigade: Lindsay Lohan as Sous-chef de cuisine on celebrity cooking shows. 

Garde manger: The pantry supervisor responsible for preparation of cold hors d'oeuvres, pâtés, terrines and aspics; prepares salads; organizes large buffet displays; and prepares charcuterie items.

Tournant: The spare hand or rounds man, a utility position which exists to move about the kitchen as required, assisting as needed.  In military terms, the reserve.

Pâtissier: The pastry cook who prepares desserts and other meal-end sweets, and for locations without a boulanger, also prepares breads and other baked items; may also prepare pasta.

Confiseur: In larger kitchens, prepares candies and petit fours instead of the pâtissier.

Glacier: In larger kitchens, prepares frozen and cold desserts instead of the pâtissier.

Décorateur: In larger kitchens, prepares show pieces and specialty cakes instead of the pâtissier.

Boulanger: The baker who, in larger kitchens, prepares bread, cakes, and breakfast pastries instead of the pâtissier.

Boucher: The butcher who butchers meats, poultry, and sometimes fish; often also in charge of breading meat and fish items.

Aboyeur: The announcer or expediter who takes orders from the dining room and distributes them to the various stations; this role may also be performed by a senior chef.

Communard: Prepares the meal served to the restaurant staff.

Garçon de cuisine: The “kitchen boy", a junior position who performs preparatory and auxiliary work, sometimes as a prelude to a formal apprenticeship.

Kitchen Brigade in the New Kitchen, Café Riche, Paris, 1865 (unknown artist).

Interrobang

Interrobang (pronounced in-ter-uh-bang)

A punctuation mark (‽) which merges the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!) to indicate a query made as an interjection.

1962: A blended word and an invention of US English, the construct being the Latin Latin interro(gātiō) (examination, inquiry, interrogation, questioning) + bang (in this context typesetters’ slang for the exclamation mark (exclamation point in US use), the glyph a ligature of these two marks (the unicode is U+203d).  The even more rare alternative spelling is interabang.  The companion term is gnaborretni (interrotbang reversed, the plural being gnaborretnis) which uses the a symbol (⸘) (an inverted interrobang) to replace the ¡¿ used in Spanish, Galician, and Leonese, just as in English the interrobang can replace !? or ?! (the unicode is U+2E18).  Interrobang is a noun, the noun plural interrobangs.  All other forms are non-standard but interrobanged, interrobanger & interrobanging will presumably be deployed as circumstances seem to dictate and UrbanDictionary users noted the possibilities with predictable suggestions.

Variations on the theme.

Now sixty years old, interrobang was coined in 1962 by US American advertising executive Martin K Speckter (1915–1988) who suggested it in an article written for the printing trade journal TYPEtalks.  As a commodity, the interrobang was an example of a slightly better mousetrap which required more effort to use and achieved exactly the same thing, thus the lack of market penetration.  A few publications did adopt it but adoption was never widespread and it was clear it was less understood than the common “!?”, “????” etc although it did find a niche in chess where an interrobang is a legal move of questionable merit.

The interrobang is used to convey in pure text those layers of meanings provided by non-verbal clues such as facial expressions or tonal variations. 

Most punctuation marks are ancient but the interrobang is novel in being relatively new.  Mr Speckter’s idea was that what was needed in pure text advertisements was a symbol which could convey the feeling implicit in a surprised rhetorical question (the classic example of which is probably (really‽).  In TV or print advertising using images this was transmitted using facial expressions or vocal intonations but in pure text, this wasn’t always immediately clear.  For centuries, people had been using work-arounds like “?!”, “!?” or “????” but what he wanted was something more elegant.  His interrobang was certainly that and some academics acknowledged its utility but adoption was patchy because it was never integrated into the standard character-set of the typewriter keyboards of the era.  There were a few supporting gestures, most notably in 1967 when ATF (American Type Founders) included it in Richard Isbell’s (1924-2009) Americana typeface (the company’s last type cut in metal) and the next year it was available on some Remington typewriters, followed some years later by Smith-Corona typewriters but generally the industry ignored the innovation.  Crucially, IBM declined to add the interrobang to the golfballs used on their then dominant Selectric range of typewriters or their then embryonic word-processing programs.

Interestingly, nor was it included when a digital version of the Americana typeface was released and nor did it make it to the standard keyboards which IBM, Apple and others began to offer from the late 1970s although for nerds who did their own keyboard mappings, such things were sometimes possible.  Adoption has been limited and will remain so until included on standard physical keyboards (which seems unlikely) and there’s no evident demand for the symbol to be added to virtual implementations.  That said, it is in a number of fonts including Amplitude Wide Bold, Fritz Robusto, Constantia and Fontesque Sans so it’s there to be used although, as any form of communication relies on both parties sharing the same understanding of what a symbol denotes, it’s useful only of the recipient knows what it means.

There are interrobang emojis which makes perfect sense but using the glyph is possible on most platforms if not effortless.  In Microsoft Office for example, using the TrueType font Wingdings 2 it’s invoked by pressing the key marked with a tilde.  That’s not too bad but under iOS you have to edit the keyboard so you really (really‽) have to want to make the point:

(1) Copy an interrobang symbol of choice

(2) Launch the Settings app and choose General

(3) Tap Keyboard

(4) Select Keyboard

(5) Tap Text Replacement

(6) Tap the + symbol in the upper right corner

(7) Paste the interrobang symbol in the phrase field

(8) Type ?! in shortcut field

(9) Tap Save

Mungbean

Mung bean (pronounced mung–been)

(1) A plant, Vigna radiata, of the legume family, cultivated for its edible seeds, pods, and young sprouts.

(2) The seed or pod of this plant.

1905-1910: The English form is from the earlier moong (from the Hindi mū̃g, variant of mūg and the Prakrit mugga and Sanskrit mudga).  The traditional form is mung bean, mungbean is an accepted alternative and it’s never been hyphenated.

A plant species in the legume family, the mungbean (Vigna radiata) is known also as the green gram, in Persian as maash (ماش‎), in Sanskrit as moong (मुद्ग (Romanized as mudga)) and in the Philippines as monggo, or munggo.  Technically, it’s the mung bean but mugbean emerged as an alternative form as early as the 1970s.  Used as an ingredient in both savory and sweet dishes, it’s grown in many countries but the largest areas in cultivation are in India, China, and Southeast Asia.

Vegan Mung Bean Stew

Ingredients

½ cup raw mung beans

5 potatoes, peeled and quartered

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 onion, peeled and chopped

2 carrots, sliced

2 stalks celery, sliced

5 button mushrooms, sliced

4 small tomatoes, quartered

2 cups vegetable stock

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) Preheat oven to 400^o F (200^o C).

(2) Place mung beans in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook for 10 minutes. Lower heat to medium, and simmer until soft, about 10 minutes. Drain beans into a strainer and rinse under cold water. Set aside.

(3) Meanwhile, place the potatoes in saucepan, cover with water, and stir in ¼ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook just until potatoes begin to soften when pierced with a fork, about 10 minutes. Drain, and set aside.

(4) Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion; cook and stir until transparent, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, carrots, celery, and mushrooms. Cook and stir until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Pour in the stock, and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook vegetable mixture 5 minutes more. Combine with the mung beans and potatoes in an oven-proof casserole. Cover with a lid.

(5) Bake in pre-heated oven until mixture bubbles which will typically take about 30 minutes.

Reverend

Reverend (pronounced rev-ruhnd (U) or rev-er-uhnd (non-U))

(1) A title of respect applied or prefixed to the name of a member of the clergy or a religious order (initial capital letter).

(2) Worthy to be revered; entitled to reverence.

(3) Pertaining to or characteristic of the clergy.

(4) In informal use, a member of the Christian clergy; a minister.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English reverend (also as reverent) (worthy of deep respect, worthy to be revered (due to age, character etc)), from the Middle French révérend, from the Old French, from the Latin future passive participle reverendus (he who is worthy of being revered; that is to be respected), gerundive of reverērī (to stand in awe of, respect, honor, fear, be afraid of), from the deponent verb revereor (I honor, revere).  The construct of reverērī was re- (in this case used probably as an intensive prefix) + vereri (stand in awe of, fear, respect) from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (perceive, watch out for).

As a courteous or respectful form of address for clergymen, it has been in use since the late fifteenth century, a variation of the earlier reverent which had been used in this sense since the later fourteenth century; it was prefixed to names by the 1640s and the abbreviation Rev. was introduced in the 1690s, becoming accepted and common by the 1720s.  One historical quirk is that the vice-chancellor of the University of University is formally styled The Reverend the Vice-Chancellor even if not a member of the clergy, a relic of the days when the appointee always held some ecclesiastical office.

The Roman Catholic Church

Cardinal George Pell (b 1941).  When appointed bishop and subsequently archbishop, he was styled The Most Reverend but upon becoming a cardinal, although remaining an archbishop, a cardinal's form of address prevailed and he was instead styled His Eminence.

Religious sisters can be styled Reverend Sister although this is now rare outside Italy unless the order to which the sister is attached is under the authority of the Vatican and not the local bishop.  Abbesses of convents are styled The Reverend Mother Superior.  Deacons are styled The Reverend Deacon if ordained permanently to the diaconate.  Seminiarians are styled The Reverend Mister if ordained to the diaconate and prior to being ordained presbyters.  Priests are styled variously The Reverend or The Reverend Father according to tradition whether diocesan, in an order of canon regulars, in a monastic or a mendicant order or clerics regular.  Priests appointed to grades of jurisdiction above pastor are styled The Very Reverend (there are appointments such as  vicars general, judicial vicars, ecclesiastical judges, episcopal vicars, provincials of religious orders of priests, rectors or presidents of colleges and universities, priors of monasteries, deans, vicars forane, archpriests et al).  Certain appointments such as Protonotaries Apostolic, Prelates of Honour and Chaplains of His Holiness are styled The Reverend Monsignor.  Abbots of monasteries are styled The Right Reverend.  Bishops and archbishops are styled The Most Reverend (In some countries of the British Commonwealth, only archbishops are styled The Most Reverend while bishops are styled The Right Reverend).  The word is not used in relation to cardinals or the pope.

In the Roman Catholic Church, Reverend (and its variations) appears only in writing; in oral use other titles and styles of address are used except in the rare cases of ceremonies where the entire style of an individual is recited.

The Orthodox Church

Lindsay Lohan as a Reverend Sister in Machete (2010).

Deacons are styled The Reverend Deacon (traditionally only in writing and not universally applied).  A married priest is The Reverend Father; a monastic priest is The Reverend Hieromonk; a protopresbyter is The Very Reverend Father; and an archimandrite is either The Very Reverend Father (Greek practice) or The Right Reverend Father (Russian practice).  For most purposes all may be addressed as Father and the most comprehensive (and multi-lingual) style guide is that published by the office of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.  Abbots and abbesses are styled The Very Reverend Abbot or Abbess and are addressed as Father and Mother respectively.  A bishop is referred to as The Right Reverend Bishop and addressed as Your Grace (or Your Excellency).  An archbishop or metropolitan, whether or not he is the head of an autocephalous or autonomous church, is styled The Most Reverend Archbishop or Metropolitan and addressed as Your Eminence.  Heads of autocephalous and autonomous churches with the title Patriarch are styled differently and the word reverend shouldn’t be used; the actual use varies according to the customs of their respective churches and is always Beatitude but sometimes also Holiness and, exceptionally, All-Holiness (if reverend appears by error, it’s not considered offensive).

The Anglican Communion (including the Episcopalian churches)

Deacons are styled as The Reverend, The Reverend Deacon, or The Reverend Mr, Mrs or Miss (and Ms has been added to the style guides of the more liberal branches).  Priests (vicars padres, rectors and curates et al) are usually styled as The Reverend, The Reverend Father or Mother (even if not a religious) or The Reverend Mr, Mrs, Miss or Ms.  Heads of some women's religious orders are styled as The Reverend Mother (even if not ordained).  Canons are often styled as The Reverend Canon.  Deans are usually styled as The Very Reverend (although this can vary for those attached to larger cathedrals).  Archdeacons are usually styled as The Venerable.  Priors of monasteries may be styled as The Very Reverend.  Abbots of monasteries may be styled as The Right Reverend.  Bishops are styled as The Right Reverend.  Archbishops and primates and (for historical reasons) the Bishop of Meath and Kildare are styled as The Most Revered and there is no difference in the style afforded to the twenty-six bishops of the old bishoprics with seats in the House of Lords.

The first and second women in the Anglican Church to be appointed as Most Reverend Archbishops Kay Goldsworthy (b 1956; Archbishop of Perth in the Province of Western Australia since 2018) (left) & Melissa Skelton (b 1951; Metropolitan and Archbishop in the Anglican Church of Canada since 2018) (right).

Vatic

Vatic (pronounced vat-ik)

Of, relating to, or characteristic of a prophet; oracular.

1595–1605: From the Latin vātēs (seer, prophet, poet, bard), the construct being vat + -ic.  Vātēs (the alternative form was vātis) was from the Proto-Italic wātis, from the primitive Indo-European wéhtis (seer), from weht- (to be excited).  The –ic suffix (-ick an obsolete form) is from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos, formed with the i-stem suffix and the adjectival suffix –kos.  It was used on noun stems and carried the meaning “characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to” and on adjectival stems acted emphatically.  In the Ancient Greek the form was -ικός (-ikós), in the Sanskrit it was -इक (-ika) and in the Old Church Slavonic, -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ).  Vatic is an adjective occasionally used as vatical.

Dolores Ibárruri Gómez (1895–1989), known as La Pasionaria (the passionflower) for her anguished oratory, was a communist politician in the Spanish republic which, proclaimed in 1931, prompted the king (Alfonso XIII 1886–1941; King of Spain 1886-1931) to flee with a sizable chunk of the state exchequer.  It was a curious choice of moniker because the passionflower (Passiflora, a genus of over five-hundred species of the family Passifloraceae) had long been used as a calmative, a folk remedy for anxiety, insomnia and stress, all conditions hardly likely to be ameliorated by listening to Señora Ibárruri’s polemics.

By 1936, tensions between the leftist republic and the conservative factions of the old monarchial state were hinting at war and a fascist politician, José Calvo Sotelo (1893-1936; First Duke of Calvo Sotelo), threatened the new government with a military takeover.  At this arose the black-garbed figure of La Pasionaria who, pointing her finger at Sotelo, intoned: “Ese fue tu ultimo discurso” (That was your last speech).  It proved a vatic utterance; within days Republican assault guards dragged Sotelo from his house and shot him dead, dumping the corpse at Madrid’s East Cemetery.  This was the point at which General Franco (Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892–1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975)) concluded the government could no longer govern; the Spanish Civil War became inevitable.

Although La Pasionaria would always deny having said the words, they passed into the myths and legends of the conflict and, given it was about the bloodiest thing imaginable, of those there were plenty.  What she never disowned was another phrase, “No pasarán” (They shall not pass), one she used, with some variations, on several occasions, most famously in 1936 during the Battle for Madrid in a speech which concluded “Long live the Popular Front! Long live the union of all anti-fascists! Long live the Republic of the people! The Fascists shall not pass! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!”  This time her words proved not vatical, General Franco, upon the fall of Madrid in 1939 proclaiming "Hemos pasado" (We have passed).

It was a phrase with history, best remembered from the World War One Battle of Verdun when it was used by French General Robert Nivelle (1856-1924) and was soon adopted by other units of the French army, appearing in propaganda material after the Second Battle of the Marne (July-August 1918).  As late as 1940, it was an inscription on some uniforms worn by soldiers manning the Maginot Line but on that occasion, vatic though it was, the sense was soon ironic; the Germans didn’t pass the Maginot Line, by-passing it instead.

La Pasionaria had a feeling for a phrase.  Although on the other side, there were plenty of twentieth-century fascists who gleefully would have embraced (if not adopted) some of her epithets.  Such similarities between communists and fascists were noted by  Winston Churchill (1874-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945), for different reasons, both fair judges of such things.

Tea-towel available from the Radical Tea-Towel Company (a juxtaposition of words which can't often have been contemplated) at US$22.00, 19 x 27 inches (480 x 700mm), heavyweight, unbleached organic cotton with a hanging loop. Designed in Wales and ethically printed, cut and sewn in England.  The famous battle cry "No pasarán!" was taken up by British anti-fascists during the October 1936 Battle of Cable Street.   The Radical Tea Towel Company also offers Battle of Cable St and Spanish Civil War tea towels.

Statue of La Pasionaria, River Clyde, Glasgow. Scotland.

Emoji

Emoji (pronounced ih-moh-jee)

In digital technology, a small digital picture or pictorial symbol that represents a thing, feeling, concept etc, used in text messages and other electronic communications, now usually as part of a standardized set.  Technically an emoji is a digital graphic icon with a unique code point.

1999: From a creation in Japanese translating literally as “pictograph”, the construct being e- (picture, drawing) + moji (written character or letter).  In the original Japanese it’s 絵文字 (えもじ, emoji), the construct being 絵 (え (e, (picture)) + 文字 (もじ (moji) (character).

Proto emojis: Puck Magazine 1881.

Because of a cross-lingual phonetic coincidence, emoji is often thought related to the word emotion, a natural connection because it’s emotions that emojis are now used to convey.  That was the connection with the emoji’s predecessor, the emoticon, the concept of text-based symbols being used to replace certain instances of formal language.  The first codified form of the emoticon set was released in 1982 and used the standard ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character set assembled to represent ideas as images ((*_*) being a face, : ( sadness, : (( extreme sadness etc).  The idea wasn’t new, various punctuation marks used for hundreds of years in a similar manner, including in newspapers and books, but there had never been any standardization except that which existed by agreement between regular correspondents although, in 1881, American magazine Puck published four symbols which could be used to convey joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment.  Assembled using standard shapes from mechanical type-setting, Puck probably either created or at least legitimized what came to be called typographical art.

The idea of localised conventions would later appeal to a community using a common means of communication with a closed character set: Morse Code operators who devised their own convenient shorthand, a set of numbers transmitted by a short series of dots and dashes, which all understood represented longer strings of text, commonly used messages including:

1- Wait a moment

4- Where shall I go ahead?

6- I am ready

7- Are you ready?

8- Close your key; circuit is busy

12- Do you understand?

13- I understand

24- Repeat this back

27- Priority, very important

29- Private, deliver in sealed envelope.

73- Best regards

88- Love and kisses

92- Deliver promptly

The concept is exactly the same as the part of the algorithm used by data compression programs (ZIP and others) whereby small values are used to represent (and replace) larger ones, hence the ability to compress file-size.  The pragmatic Morse operator's list was mostly business-like, focused on transmitting the most information with the fewest taps but there were a couple more romantic: 73 meant “best regards” and 88 “love and kisses”, both of which would become stalwarts in the world of emoticons and emojis.

Lindsay Lohan Emojis.

The idea of the emoticon, still a disparate thing without standards, began to coalesce in the 1990s, Microsoft bundling the wingdings truetype font with Windows and by the middle of the decade, the first SMS (short message services) products, the protocols for which had evolved as part of the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standards, were released.  Strange as it may sound in an age when SMS messages number annually in the trillions, the take-up rate was initially slow but growth was soon exponential.  Screen-focused, emoticons were always integral to SMS.

Shigetaka Kurita’s 1999 DoCoMo emoji set.

While not the first emoji set, that being a plain black collection included with the Japanese J-Phone in 1997, it’s Shigetaka Kurita’s (b 1972) release in 1999 which is the first notable landmark.  Interestingly, reflecting the intention to make communication more efficient on NTT DoCoMo's business-oriented cellular platform, apart from some hearts (intact and broken), the 176 in the set didn’t include many to convey emotion, although in the abstract, the one representing a beer glass was often used to suggest “I need a drink”.  The beginnings were modest, reflecting both the hardware and the mobile networks of the time; although bright, each was rendered in a single color and the bitmapped shape was blocky but the range and definition constantly improved to the point where, unlike emoticons, emojis really are pictures rather than typographic approximations and this has influenced the use of the word, "emoji" now sometimes applied to just about any small picture in any digital context.

A splash of vomit emojis.

In the English-speaking world, critical mass in terms of adoption was reached in 2012, the year after Apple added an official set to the iOS keyboard, Android following in 2014 when KitKat was released.  Apple had included emojis in the Japanese releases of iOS since 2008 and may have been tempted to extend availability when it became apparent how many hacks existed to gain the feature on devises using other languages.  What made that viable was emoji, in 2010, being standardized by Unicode (the non-profit consortium which maintains text standards on digital devices globally) which meant emojis could be sent and received by any device, regardless of operating system or platform.  By then, the standard set had grown to almost a thousand.  The Unicode Consortium has been busy ever since, creating an emoji subcommittee which has so much business to transact it meets at least weekly and their output has been prodigious: by September 2021, over 3,600 emojis had been approved, 112 in the last release alone.

Crooked Hillary Clinton emoji.

A character set in the thousands and growing has however changed the nature of the emoji as a language supplement, it once being possible to know them all and rely on many others also knowing most.  With so many, it’s become just another language, a system where every user has their own sub-set and analysis of traffic suggests for most this can be just a handful and even among devotees it’s rare for them regularly to display a vocabulary of more than a few dozen.  While, as a medium of meaning, the emoji does depend on an intuitive understanding of appearance, if some are too weird or mysterious, there is Emojipedia, an on-line emoji reference which documents changes and definitions and EmojiTranslate is a website where the translation of text to emoji (and vice versa) is handled.  Even that isn’t enough to satisfy the evidentiary standards of courts in some jurisdictions, accredited translators now sometimes used to translate the meaning of emojis where material using them is tendered in evidence.  Emoji is just another language and something in one cultural context can mean something else in another, the meaning the sender implied perhaps the opposite of what the receiver inferred.  On the basis of established principles such as “reasonable doubt” or “balance of probabilities”, courts must decide.

The New Yorker, 30 March 2015.

Out in the world of the emoji freaks, books have been written using nothing but emojis, a concept not new.  In the 1990s, one pop-music journalist, displeased at the quality of an interview with a singer he was about to publish, rendered the whole thing in the zaph dingbat font (which in professional typesetting had existed since the 1970s), rendering it an illegible cryptogram to all except those who had memorized the mapping of the font.  Such people do exist but they’re rare and it’s not clear if the writer succeeded in his aim to make more interesting a boring interview.  One magazine to find a novel use was the fine New Yorker which, in 2015, ran a cover featuring Crooked Hillary Clinton emojis when discussing the mail server affair, one of the many scandals attached to her although, they unfortunately resisted the temptation to integrate a delete key into one.  Perhaps inspired, in her presidential campaign, crooked Hillary tried to weaponize the emoji in a tweet aimed at a younger demographic but received quite a backlash for doing something so obviously cynical; inauthentic being the modern term.

The work of the consortium has also been cognizant of forces operating more widely.  In 2014, they began to address the lack of racial and gender DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in the little images, the population disproportionately male and white, a distortion of reality hardly appropriate in what was to some degree one of the world’s global languages.  In this they were later than some; in 2012, the ever-woke Apple included in iOS 6 several emojis of same-sex couples.  Although all were shown holding hands, they didn’t look any happier than their more traditional predecessors but there are limitations with what can be achieved on such a tiny digital canvas.  In another sign of the times, over the years, guns morphed into less threatening water-pistols.  Perhaps strangely, the pandemic didn’t produce a flood of corona-themed images, Apple’s set still the only of the majors to include something recognizably SARS-Cov-2ish.  Still, there's plenty of time, world emoji day is 17 July and COVID-19, unlike some of us, is expected to be alive and well for many Julys to come.