Chaste

Chaste (pronounced cheyst)

(1) Refraining from sexual intercourse, either by choice or to conform to some imposed system of morality or religion; to be virtuous.

(2) Not engaging in sexual relations; the state of voluntary celibacy.

(3) A virgin.

(4) In conduct, literature etc, free from obscenity; decent.

(5) By extension, anything define as pure (white snow, certain grades of stainless steel, architecture simple in style and not needlessly embellished or excessively ornamented etc).

(6) An unmarried female (obsolete).

1175–1225: From the Middle English chaste (virtuous, pure from unlawful sexual intercourse (as defined by the Church)), from the Old French chaste (morally pure), from the Latin castus (clean, pure, morally pure), the verbal adjective from the same root as careō (I lack), possibly from the primitive Indo-European ḱes- (to cut).  The most common modern use (one who refrains from sexual intercourse) is the transferred sense of "sexually pure" which had emerged by the fifteenth century (although chaste as a noun meaning (a virgin person) had been in use from the early fourteenth century).  The meaning was by the 1620s extended to conduct or language “free from obscenity”, and in general to artistic or literary styles which were “simple and unadorned” by the 1750s.  “Chaste architecture” (that with pure lines and without needless embellishments) became an (admiring) term describing the built environment in the early nineteenth century but should not be confused with the later schools of functionalism and brutalism.  The adjective unchaste first appeared in the late fourteenth century.  Depending on context, the synonyms can include continent, clean, decorous, proper, unsullied, celibate, virginal and virtuous or unaffected, unadorned & neat.  The antonyms can include immoral, promiscuous, coarse, rococo or ornate.  The verbs chasten, chastening & chastened do have an archaic sense related sexual purity but are most often used as forms of chastise (to punish, scold, censure or castigate).  Chaste, chaster & chastest are adjectives, chasten, chastening & chastened are verbs chastely is an adverb and chastity, chasteness & chastenedness are nouns; the most common (though rare) noun plural is chastities.  Chasity is also a (rare) proper noun when used as a female given name.  When Chastity Bono (b 1969; the only child of 1960s pop-music husband & wife duo Sonny (b 1935) & Cher (b 1946) Bono) transitioned to become a trans-man, he chose the name Chaz.

The Chastity Belt

Lindsay Lohan announcing (the resumption of) her chasteness, 2018.

There must be few medieval accessories which have been as well documented and displayed as the chastity belt which, according to legend, was a device men would have their wives wear during those weeks, months or even years while they were off somewhere performing military service.  The term “belt” is a little misleading because the “belt” component was there merely to ensure the vital components remained in place and couldn’t be removed or otherwise penetrated, a key-lock system included; they key of course held by the travelling husband.  The vital components were fashioned usually in metal (there are some accounts of those made using a thick leather) and were designed to make sexual intercourse anatomically impossible.

However, like much that in the centuries after the Renaissance came to be regarded as historical “fact”, the tale that the origins of the chastity belt was as an anti-temptation device during the Crusades has been discredited and there is no credible evidence the things even existed prior to the fifteenth century and that although they were certainly documented in the 1500s, they appears to have been much discussed but little used although there are references in medical texts to women fashioning such things (though perhaps not of metal) for their own protection against rape.  Intriguingly too, there are records of one being found on the skeleton of a young woman in her grave, fitted presumably to protect her virtue on her path to heaven or wherever else she was headed.  The great flourishing in chastity belt production actually happened in the nineteenth century when there was demand from museums and travelling exhibitions for such things and, because real relics were rare to the point of non-existence, fakes were needed.  Just as many of the gruesome and supposedly “Medieval” torture devices were products of the Victorian imagination, the chastity belts were equally bogus, although as curators of such things have noted, many were a tribute to the skills of the craftspeople (and women really were involved in artisan work) who not only managed to make convincing “artefacts” but rendered the patina of centuries.

The nineteenth century also saw the beginnings of psychiatry as it would now be understood and one of the orthodoxies of the age was that masturbation was harmful.  Psychiatrists (mostly) didn’t claim masturbation made people go blind but they assembled plenty of other reasons the practice was so undesirable it should be avoided and as in many things, suggestions of abstinence were doubtlessly understood to be ineffective so physical devices were often recommended.  Interestingly, many were aimed at the parents of female adolescents and latter-day feminist criticism has suggested this emphasis was because it was feared if girls learned about the pleasures of sex it might lead them to promiscuity, the implication that self-administration was likely to be a more pleasant experience than sex with most men.  In the medical literature, it wasn’t until the late 1920s that the general disapprobation of masturbation was relaxed and only in the post-war years did the idea fade from mainstream psychiatry (although the churches often continued to believe the old ways were best).  Chastity belts haven’t entirely gone away and every now and then, in the parts of the internet where bizarre and salacious stories are the best click-bait, there will be reports of them being worn (often unwillingly); many of these tales seem to come from east of Suez.  In the world of consensual depravity that is the BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism), chastity belts are a niche device; the purposes of use presumably vary.

Congress of Berlin (1881), oil on canvas by Anton von Werner (1843–1915).  Lord Salisbury is the tall, bearded figure, third from the right.

The Congress of Berlin (13 June-13 July 1878) was held to re-organize the arrangement of states in the Balkans after the Russo-Turkish War of (1877–1878).  It was convened in Berlin because (1) the Russians would have been unwilling to attend elsewhere (especially London) and (2) because Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) did not want anything to be agreed which might lead to war or anything else which might disrupt his intricate system of interlocking treaties and alliances which maintained a general peace in Europe.  The language of diplomacy was then still French so Bismarck insisted on all discussions being conducted in French (even though) the French representatives were there as little more than observers.  The UK's prime-minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, UK prime-minister Feb-Dec 1868 & 1874-1880) didn’t speak French so the transaction of the substantive matters fell to the foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury (1830–1903; UK Prime Minister for thirteen years variously 1885-1902 ("prime-minister since God knows when" in Churchill's words)).  Under Bismarck’s strict chairmanship, the congress proceeded with a rare efficiency, concluding in a month, securing peace for a generation and gaining the crumbling Ottoman Empire a final four decades of existence.  Salisbury regarded the outcome of the conference as most satisfactory but what gave him the greatest amusement was when, at the final ceremony, the Sultan of Turkey presented Lady Salisbury with “The Order of Chastity, Third Class” which the marchioness accepted gracefully.  Lord Salisbury was later told by the protocol staff that only the wives of crowned monarchs received The Order of Chastity, First Class while other royal ladies received the Second Class and the wives of diplomats the Third Class.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Antidisestablishmentarianism (pronounced an-tee-dis-uh-stab-lish-muhn-tair-ee-uh-niz-uhm)

Opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established (state) church.

1838: A compound word: anti + dis + establishment + arian + ism.  Anti- is from the Middle English from the Latin from the Ancient Greek.  It’s a prefixal use of antí; akin to the Sanskrit ánti (opposite), the Latin ante and the Middle Dutch ende.  Dis- is a Latin prefix used to impart the meanings “apart,” “asunder,” “away,” “utterly,” or having a privative, negative, or reversing force.  In English, it’s long been used freely, especially with these latter senses, as an English formative.  Establishment is drawn from the Old French establissement (and persists in Modern French as établissement), derived from the verb establir from the Old Occitan establir, from Latin stabilīre (present active infinitive of stabiliō); cognates include Occitan establir, French établir and Italian stabilire.  The –arian suffix dates from circa 1530, from the Late Latin ariānus.  It was a suffix forming personal nouns corresponding to Latin adjectives ending in -ārius or English adjectives or nouns ending in –ary and subsequently proved productive in English with other Latinate stems, forming nouns denoting a person who supports, advocates, or practices a doctrine, theory, or set of principles associated with the base word (authoritarian, vegetarian etc).  The –ism suffix is from the Ancient Greek –ismos & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, often through the Latin –ismus & -isma, though sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Greek.  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form action nouns from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

Portrait of King Henry VIII, circa 1509, unknown artist.  This is the earliest portrait of Henry as king of England known to have survived.  It’s hung in the Denver Art Museum.

It was Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) who created what endures in England to this day as the established church, the phrase “Church of England” becoming frequently used immediately after the act of separation in 1534.  The king separated the English church from the authority of Rome to become one of a number created in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, not because of any theological or doctrinal differences, but in order to secure the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536).  Having found the pope unwilling to annul, he had himself instead declared supreme head of the Church in England, the schism with Rome (with the exception of a brief interruption), unhealed to this day.  Problem solved.  There is a distinction between the Church in England and the Church of England, the roots of Christianity in the British Isles established during England’s time as a province of the Roman Empire early in the first millennium.  From these beginnings there were forks and regional divergences until 597 when a Gregorian mission by Augustine of Canterbury visited, Christianity in England from that point subject to the authority of the Pope.  So it continued until 1534, England even once providing a pope (Adrian IV, circa 1100- 1159, pope 1154-1159), noted now for his contribution to the Irish problem unsolved even now.

Generally pointless and the Germans do it better

With twenty-eight letters and twelve syllables, antidisestablishmentarianism is often cited as the longest word in English.  However, floccinaucinihilipilification (a waggish schoolboy creation in Latin meaning “the act or habit of describing or regarding something as worthless”, the construct being floccus (a wisp) +‎ naucum (a trifle) +‎ nihilum (nothing) +‎ pilus (a hair) + -fication (process of becoming)) is one letter longer and the longest non-technical word in English.  It was once used in a debate in the UK House of Commons, although, even that wasn’t the longest ever spoken in Westminster, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a factitious creation said to mean “a lung disease caused by inhalation of very fine silica dust usually found in volcanos”) having been earlier used during a select committee enquiry.  An opportunist extension of the medical term pneumonoconiosis, it was coined during the proceedings of the National Puzzlers' League convention in 1935 in an attempt to create English’s longest word but was dismissed by dictionaries as fake, clinicians and textbooks still referring to the disease as pneumonoconiosis, pneumoconiosis, or silicosis.  British dictionaries may feel compelled to include antidisestablishmentarianism but many overseas publications do not, on the basis there’s hardly any record of its use except in lists of long words which some editors treat as lexicographical freak shows.  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary lists the longest as electroencephalographically, a physician’s diagnostic too.

English doesn't encourage the conjuring of the long compound words familiar in German.  The classic long German word is Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (42 letters) meaning "Danube steamship company captain" but there are others, not all of which dictionaries accept.  Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung (41 letters) means "regulation requiring a prescription for an anaesthetic”; Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister (30 letters) means “head district chimney sweep"; Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (39 letters) means "legal protection insurance companies".  Enterprising Germans created Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (80 letters) meaning "association of subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services" but this was held to be bogus and rejected by all authorities which maintained the 63 letter Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz ("beef labelling regulation and delegation of supervision law") remained the longest.  It was a real word in actual (if rare) use though usually through the more manageable abbreviation ReÜAÜG but it was rendered obsolete by changes to EU regulations.  Currently, the longest word accepted by most German dictionaries is the 36 letter Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (automobile liability insurance).

Regarding the substantive matter of disestablishment, it’s a political position developed in nineteenth century Britain in opposition to the Liberal Party’s proposal for the removal of the Anglicans’ status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.  The establishment was maintained in England, but the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 and the four Church of England dioceses in Wales were disestablished in 1920, becoming the Church in Wales.  Given the nature of the modern Church of England, it’s a matter seldom mentioned as a constitutional reform of pressing importance.

Sedevacantism

Sedevacantism (pronounced sed-ah- vey-kuhnt-niz-uhm)

In Christianity, the belief (maintained by a faction of conservative Roman Catholics) that the present occupant of the Holy See is not the true pope and the see has been vacant since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II (1962-1965)).

Circa 1965: the construct was the Latin phrase sede vacante +‎ -ism.  The Latin phrase sede vacante (vacant chair) is from canon law term sedes vacans which describes the period during which there is no appointee to an episcopal see.  It thus applies to any vacant bishopric but is most associated with that of the Bishop of Rome (the Roman Catholic Pope) where it’s part of formal processes associated with any interregnum.  The construct of sedes (seat, chair (and used sometimes also to mean “place, residence, settlement, habitation, abode”)) was sedeō (I sit) +‎ -ēs (the suffix used to form a third-declension feminine abstract noun designating the result of an action from a verb root or conceived root form).  Etymologists note that like caedēs (slaughter) from caedō (I kill or cut), sedes is an outlier and like the proto-Italian, Latin tended not productively to form nouns from verbs by changing the vowel grade.  They consider the word's lengthened grade as similar to the Proto-Germanic sētiją (seat) and likely ultimately from a common source although the origin remains murky.  Vacante was the ablative (masculine, feminine & neuter) singular of vacāns (emptying, vacating; idling) (genitive vacantis), the present active participle of vacō.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Sedevacantism and sedevacantist are nouns; the common noun plural is Sedevacantists.

Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) is a very busy man and it not know if he has much time to open the Bible but it may be that recently he felt constrained to turn to Galatians 6:7 and ponder the passage in which Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Galatians wrote: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”  King James Version (KJV, 1611).  Francis certainly has been sowing.  Recently, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (the DDF, the latest name for the Inquisition) issued a statement confirming an adult who identifies as transgender can receive the sacrament of Baptism under the same conditions as any adult, as long as “there is no risk of causing scandal or confusion to other Catholics”.  To clarify the matter, the DDF added that children or adolescents experiencing transgender identity issues may also receive Baptism “if well prepared and willing”.  Within days of that announcement, Francis played host to a group of transgender women (many of them sex workers or migrants from Latin America) who were among the 1200 impoverished or homeless who attended a luncheon held in the papal audience hall (the Vatican Press Office noting the catering extended to “a full meal and dessert”) to mark the Church’s “World Day of the Poor”.  Apparently, the pontiff has been in contact with the transgender women since he organized assistance for the during the COVID-19 lockdowns when they were unable to practice their trade.  Meetings are said now to be monthly with His Holiness providing funds, medicine and shampoo.

A pope giving shampoo (and hopefully conditioner) to the needy need not be controversial but news of that largess came at a time when dissent was swirling about the DDF’s announcement (signed by Francis) which confirmed trans-men & women can also witness marriages and be named as godparents under certain circumstances.  In the tradition of the Inquisition, the DDF’s document was legalistic although many noticed a vague “clarification” which seemed rather to verge on the ambiguous: That for individuals with gender-identity afflictions to be baptized, it must not cause “scandal” or “disorientation”.  However, the very idea seemed to scandalize some bishops and theologians who noted there had apparently been no change to the Church’s traditional teaching that gender ideology and transgender lifestyles are a "grave disorder" in need of correction through spiritual and secular therapy.

The DDF issued its statement in response to a dubia (a respectful request for clarification regarding about certain established teachings), one of quite a few which have ended up in the Vatican’s post-box (dubias are always on paper) in this pontificate.  The most celebrated of these letters of dissent (the more searchingly serious of which are in exquisitely polite Latin) were signed by four cardinals and received in September 2016, asking (1) Whether those living in sin were now to be granted Holy Communion, (2) Whether the Church had overturned Saint John Paul II’s (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) 1993 encyclical Veritatis splendor (The Splendor of the Truth) which laid down certain fundamentals of the Church's role in moral teaching, (3) Whether there were changes in what constituted certain sins, (4) Whether circumstances or intentions can now transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act subjectively good or defensible as a choice and (5), Whether the church no longer excludes any creative interpretation of the role of conscience and now accepts that conscience can be authorized to permit legitimate exceptions to absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts by virtue of their object?

Francis neither acknowledged nor replied to the cardinals' respectful dubia, perhaps wondering if the long tradition in the Church of England of hoping problems might go away if one pretends they don’t exist might be the best course to follow.  However, some months later a less deferential letter arrived in which several dozen Catholic theologians, priests and academics went further than the cardinals and formally accused Pope Francis of spreading heresy, a document the like of which hadn't been sent to a pope since the 1300s.  Stunningly, it was one step short of actually accusing the pontiff of being a heretic.

Apparently unfazed, His Holiness has continued along a path of greater inclusiveness of which “shampoo diplomacy” is a part, dealing with dissenters as he goes.  In In November 2023, it was announced he had sacked (“removed from the pastoral care of the diocese” as the Holy See puts such things) US Bishop Joseph Strickland (b 1958; Bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas 2012-2023) and appointed an interim apostolic administrator.  Bishop Strickland (appointed to his position in 2012 by Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022)) is said to be one of the WWJD (what would Jesus do?) school and on 12 May 2023 had tweeted (ie to the whole world) “I believe Pope Francis is the pope, but it is time for me to say that I reject his program of undermining the Deposit of Faith.  Follow Jesus."  The tweet was enough for the Vatican to launch an investigation, in response to which on more than one occasion Bishop Strickland asserted he would not voluntarily resign.  The investigation was remarkably quick by the standards of the Holy See and early in November a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston revealed the tribunal had advised His Holiness “the continuation in office of Bishop Strickland was not feasible.”  The pope requested the bishop resign but he declined, thus the rare sacking.  Strickland stating “I believe Pope Francis is the pope” was of some significance, a clear statement he was not a sedevacantist.  Sedevacantism is a belief maintained by a faction of conservative Roman Catholics that the present occupant of the Holy See is not the true pope and the see has been vacant since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II (1962-1965)).  The sedevacantists disapprove of the changes in Church rituals, procedures brought about by Vatican II but the essence of their movement is that popes since the death of Pope Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958) have espoused one or more heresies.

Pope Francis at the traditional Wednesday General Audience, St. Peter's Square, Vatican City, 8 March 2023.

Dissenters and sedevacantists are two problems facing the pope but he needs also to deal with rumblings from those who may well believe they are “working towards Francis” (or at least where they would like Francis to go).  What shampoo diplomacy seems to have done is unleash forces which would like to impose on the Church a “modernizing” beyond anything which would have been recognizable as an implication of Vatican II.  In late October 2023, the Vatican acted with rare decisiveness to block attempts by German prelates to change doctrine regarding homosexual relationships and female clergy.  Sedevacantism wasn’t mentioned by Rome by the other “S word” appeared, the German hierarchy warned they were “approaching schism” in their moves to diverge from the Catholic Church's teachings and that “radical propositions” such as the approval of homosexual relationships and the ordination of women priests must be abandoned.

What presumably also miffed Rome was that the objectionable German document was entitled “German Synodal Way”, something chosen deliberately as a reference to Pope Francis's global “Synod on Synodality”.  That was either cheeky or provocative but having sown the wind, Francis is reaping the whirlwind; having given the Germans ideas, he now has to draw the line and draw it he did, telling the bishops in Bonn that regarding the matters they are contesting: “there is no possibility of arriving at a different assessment”, adding it “…must be made clear from the outset that these issues are of varying relevance and cannot all be placed on the same level.”  Whether or not it much mollified the Germans, it was further noted that while some matters cannot even be discussed, other “…aspects can be subjected to joint in-depth discussion.”

Usurp

Usurp (pronounced yoo-surp or you-zurp (US))

(1) Forcibly or illegally to seize and hold a throne, an office, institution or position. 

(2) To use without authority or right; wrongfully to employ.

(3) To encroach or infringe upon another’s rights.

(4) To make use of quotations (obsolete except for historic reference).

1275–1325: Middle English, borrowed from the Old French usurper from the Latin ūsūrpāre (to take possession through use), the Latin origin of which is undocumented but thought to be a construct of ūsus (use) + rapere (to seize).  There forms such as nonusurping, unusurped, unusurping, usurpingly and nonusurpingly exist but are so rare as to be practically extinct.  The seemingly strange but inventive strange verb selfusurp (or self-usurp) seems to have picked up the modern meaning that it applies to things happening between one and one’s digital avatar.  Usurp is a verb, usurper & usurpation are nouns, usurpative & usurpatory are adjectives,  usurpatively is an adverb, usurped is a verb and usurping is a noun & verb; the noun plural forms usurpers & usurpations are both in use in historic documents and are sometimes used of those involved in a modern coup d'état.

Manchester Corporation v Manchester Palace of Varieties Ltd [1955] 1 All ER 387

Lindsay Lohan usurping the escutcheon of the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or (digitally altered image).

In London, in December 1954, the High Court of Chivalry was summoned for the first time in two centuries to hear the case of a city council claiming their coat of arms had been usurped by a private company displaying it on their theatre.  Before substantive matters were introduced, the judge had to rule whether the ancient court still existed and if so, if it was the appropriate body to hear the case.  The judge found the court extant and with valid jurisdiction, his reasons a succinct sketch of the UK’s unwritten constitution in operation and a tale of how law and language interacted over several centuries.  The important principle established was to confirm, even in the modern era, there existed an enforceable law of arms and the law takes as much notice of bad heraldic manners as it does of more violent discourtesies, the judge disapproving of the “prevalent” notion that something cannot be unethical if it’s lawful.  That theme has of late been noted by royal commissioners though perhaps not politicians; in the judgement, the temptation to comment on whether chivalry was dead was resisted.

The Manchester Corporation won and the court has not since sat but in 2012,  the council of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth issued a statement that they were prepared to lodge a writ against a Facebook page they alleged was usurping its coat of arms.  Before the council made clear whether they were intending to sue facebook.com or the author(s) of the page, the offending image had been removed.  As one of the findings in 1955 had been the High Court of Chivalry could be abolished only by an act of parliament, because New Labour’s judicial reforms didn’t do this, it appears the court would have to be convened in some form to hear similar matters although it's thought the marvellously flexible British constitution would allow a judge at an appropriate level to declare that their court was "sitting as the Court of Chivalry for the purposes of this case".

Scum

Scum (pronounced skuhm)

(1) A film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as a result of natural processes such as the greenish film of algae and similar vegetation on the surface of a stagnant pond

(2) A layer of impure matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as the result of boiling or fermentation

(3) A low, worthless, or evil person.

(4) Such persons collectively.

(5) An alternative name for scoria, the slag or dross that remains after the smelting of metal from an ore.

1200–1250: From the Middle English scume, derived from the Middle Dutch schūme (foam, froth) cognate with German schaum, ultimately of Germanic origin, drawn from the Old High German scūm and Old French escume.  In Old Norse word was skum, thought derived from the primitive root (s)keu (to cover, conceal).  By the early fourteen century, the word scummer (shallow ladle for removing scum) had emerged in Middle Dutch, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic skuma, the sense deteriorated from "thin layer atop liquid" to "film of dirt," then just "dirt" and from this use is derived the modern skim.  The meaning "lowest class of humanity" is from the 1580s; the familiar phrase “scum of the earth” from 1712.  In modern use, the English is scum, French écume, Spanish escuma, Italian schiuma and Dutch schuim.  Scum is a noun & verb and scumlike & scummy are adjectives; the noun plural is scums.

The Society for Cutting Up Men: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

S.C.U.M.  Manifesto (1968 Edition).

Although celebrated in popular culture as the summer of love, not everyone shared the hippie vibe in 1967.  The S.C.U.M. Manifesto was a radical feminist position paper by Valerie Solanas (1936-1988), self-published in 1967 with a commercial print-run a year later.  Although lacking robust theoretical underpinnings and criticized widely within the movement, it remains feminism’s purest and most uncompromising work, an enduring landmark in the history of anarchist publishing.  In the abstract, S.C.U.M. suggested little more than the parlous state of the word being the fault of men, it was the task of women to repair the damage and this could be undertaken only if men were exterminated from the planet.  The internal logic was perfect. 

The use of S.C.U.M. as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men existed in printed form from 1967 (though not in the manifesto’s text) although Solanas later denied the connection, adding that S.C.U.M. never existed as an organization and was just “…a literary device”.  The latter does appear true, S.C.U.M. never having a structure or membership, operating more as Solanas’ catchy marketing label for her views.  Calling it a literary device might seem pretentious but, given her world-view, descending to the mercantile would have felt grubby.  That said, when selling the original manifesto, women were charged US$1, men US$2.

While perhaps not as elegant an opening passage as a Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) might have penned, Solanas’ words were certainly succinct.  "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.”  Ominously, “If S.C.U.M. ever strikes” she added, “it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”  No ambiguity there, men would know what to expect.

On set, 1967, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) & Nico (1938-1988).

Author and work were still little-known outside anarchist circles when in 1968 Solanas attempted to murder Andy Warhol, firing three shots, one finding the target.  Despite her comments in the aftermath linking the manifesto to the shooting, her motive was a dispute between the two over copyright and money rather than anything political or artistic.  In hospital for months, Warhol never fully recovered; Solanas, although found to be a paranoid schizophrenic, was judged fit to stand trial and served three years for "reckless assault with intent to harm".  Warhol died in 1987, Solanas a few months later.  Her fame lasted beyond fifteen minutes and in certain feminist and anarchist circles she remains a cult figure although, it takes some intellectual gymnastics to trace a lineal path from her manifesto to the work of even the more radical of the later-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), Susan Brownmiller (b 1935) and Catharine MacKinnon (b 1946).

Rendezvous: David Low's (1891-1963) famous take on the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov (Nazi-Soviet) Pact.  Although Low at the time couldn't have known it, comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) was sensitive to public opinion and when presented with the draft text of the pact, decided the rather flowery preamble extoling German-Soviet friendship was just too absurd, telling the visiting delegation that "...after years of pouring buckets of shit over each-other...", it'd be more convincing were the document to be as formal as possible. 

Saint

Saint (pronounced seynt)

(1) Any of certain persons, said to be of exceptional holiness of life, formally recognized as such by churches by act of canonization (with doctrinal and procedural differences between denominations).

(2) In secular use, figuratively, a person of extraordinary virtue or who performed acts of extraordinary virtue (often as secular saint).

(3) As patron-saint, the founder, sponsor, inspiration or patron, as of a movement or organization (used formally by churches and informally otherwise).

(4) A religious icon or relic (archaic).

Pre 1000; A borrowing from the Old French, it existed in English as seint, sainct, seinct, sanct & senct, derived from the Latin sānctus (sacred; holy), adjectival use of past participle of sancīre (to hallow; to consecrate), the construct being sanc (akin to sacer (sacred)) + tus (past participle suffix).  The French borrowing replaced the Old English sanct which had been drawn from the Latin.  Variations were adopted by most Germanic languages; it was sankt in the Old Frisian, sint in Dutch and sanct in German; the Italian is santa.  As a verb in the sense of "to enroll (someone) among the saints", use was common by the late fourteenth century and the adjectival forms saintly & saintliness emerged in the 1620s.  Universal abbreviation is St and now often without full-stop, a welcome reduction in clutter.  One quirk in English is the name St John (Christian or surname) is properly pronounced sin-jin.

Originally an adjective prefixed to the name of a canonized person, by circa 1300 it had become a noun.    Saint Bernard, to describe the breed of mastiff dogs, was used first in 1839, the name adopted because the monks of the hospice of the pass of St Bernard (between Italy and Switzerland) sent them to rescue snowbound travelers.  The term secular-saint remains in wide use, the first known example being St Elmo's Fire (named for the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors, a corruption of the name of St Erasmus (fuoco di Sant'Elmo in the Italian), an Italian bishop martyred in 303) in the 1560s.  The phenomenon of weather is known also as corposants or corpusants, from the Portuguese corpo santo (holy body), and was described as long ago as Antiquity, mentioned in Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads (1572), a Portuguese epic poem written by Luís Vaz de Camões (circa 1524-1580) and earlier alluded to by the Greek poet Xenophanes of Colophon (circa 570–circa 478 BC).

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Unlike many of the buildings usually included in the standard tourist itinerary of Rome, the Cornaro Chapel (1626), at Santa Maria della Vittoria, close to the Repubblica metro station, is tiny.  In this intimate space is an elevated aedicule on which sits the little church’s famous installation, L'Estasi di Santa Teresa (The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa; sometimes called The Transverberation of Saint Teresa), a sculptural group in white marble, carved by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) in 1652.

The interior of the church, also the work of Bernini, is sumptuously decorated, gilded stucco and multi-colored marble arranged so that barely a surface or crevice is left naked, this lushness the best setting imaginable for this masterpiece of high Roman baroque.  Bernini dismissed the suggestion he use an enclosed chapel and instead presented his composition as a theatre, cleverly lit by a window hidden by the pediment with, on the flanking walls, two opera-boxes containing sculptured representations of the family of his patron, the Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653). 

Bernini had reason to be grateful to the cardinal.  The work was completed during the pontificate of Innocent X (1574–1655; Giovanni Battista Pamphilj, pope 1644-1655) and Bernini had been the court architect of the previous pope, Urban VIII (circa 1568–1644; Maffeo Barberini, pope 1623-1644), regarded by Innocent as profligate.  With papal patronage withdrawn, Bernini was again an artist for hire and the cardinal granted the commission.  Teresa of Ávila, the Spanish founder of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, is depicted seated on clouds as if on a bed.  She is captured during the ecstasy she described in her mystical autobiography, experiencing an angel piercing her heart with a dart of divine love, causing both immense joy and pain.  Considering the long tradition of statuary in the Roman Catholic Church, that of Saint Teresa is quite a departure, her contorted posture and the ambiguous smile of the angel lending the scene a rare mix of passion and voluptuousness.  It’s reputed also to be the only Roman Catholic church with a painting depicting a battle scene above the alter and soldiers instead of angels holding up the organ, a legacy of the celebrations at the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).

Saint Teresa in white marble, 1652 (left) and Lindsay Lohan resting in a Cadillac Escalade, Los Angeles, May 2007 (right).  The striking similarity between the two saintly souls inspired one of 2007's most widely-shared memes.

Hoodie

Hoodie (pronounced hood-ee or hoo-dee (Scots))

(1) An originally informal term for a hooded sweatshirt, sweater, or jacket.

(2) A young person who wears a hooded sweatshirt, regarded by those who read London's Daily Telegraph as someone either (1) committing a crime, (2) on their way to a crime, (3) coming from a crime or (4) planning a crime.

1789: Hoodie was originally a familiar term for the hooded crow (Corvus cornix), a Eurasian bird species in the Corvus genus, known also (regionally) as the Scotch crow and Danish crow, the slang shortening of hooded sweatshirt first noted in 1991 (sometimes written as hoody).  The word is still a slang term but has also become the accepted proper description of the garment which can even be a fashion item.   

Hood was from the pre-900 Middle English hood & hod, from the Old English hād & hōd (a hood, soft covering for the head" (usually extending over the back of the neck and often attached to a garment worn about the body), from the Proto-Germanic hōdaz (source also of the Old Saxon & Old Frisian hoed & hod (hood), the Saterland Frisian Houd, the Middle Dutch hoet, the Dutch hoed (hat), the Old High German huot (helmet, hat), the German Hut (hat) and the Old Frisian hode (guard, protection), which is of uncertain etymology, possibly from the Latin cassis (hat), the ultimate root likely the primitive Indo-European kadh- (to cover (and related to “hat)).  It was cognate with the Proto-Iranian xawdah (hat), the Avestan (xåda) and the Old Persian xaudā, also from the primitive Indo-European kadh.  The suffix -ie was a variant spelling of -ee, -ey & -y and was used to form diminutive or affectionate forms of nouns or names.  It was used also (sometimes in a derogatory sense to form colloquial nouns signifying the person associated with the suffixed noun or verb (eg bike: bikie, surf: surfie, hood: hoodie etc).  The –y suffix is from the Middle English –y & -i, from the Old English -iġ (-y, -ic), from the Proto-Germanic -īgaz (-y, -ic), from the primitive Indo-European -kos, -ikos, & -iḱos (-y, -ic).  It was cognate with the Scots -ie (-y), the West Frisian -ich (-y), the Dutch -ig (-y), the Low German -ig (-y), the German -ig (-y), the Swedish -ig (-y), the Latin -icus (-y, -ic) and the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós); a doublet of -ic.  The –y suffix was added to (1) nouns and adjectives to form adjectives meaning “having the quality of” and (2) verbs to form adjectives meaning "inclined to".

The modern spelling dates emerged in the early 1400s and reflected the "long" vowel, the spelling enduring although hood is no longer pronounced as such.  Use extended to hood-like-things or animal parts from the mid-seventeenth century and the meaning “foldable or removable cover for a carriage to protect the occupants" is from 1826, extended to "sunshade of a baby-carriage" by 1866.  The meaning "hinged cover for an automobile engine" attested from 1905 and is the standard use in North America but elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the preferred term is “bonnet”; confusingly, hood can also refer the folding roof of a convertible, otherwise called a folding-top or soft-top.

Amanda Seyfried (b 1985) in hoodie in Red Riding Hood (2011).  Little Red Riding Hood is a 1729 translation of Charles Perrault's Petit Chaperon Rouge (Contes du Temps Passé (1697)).

Lindsay Lohan in Vetements hoodie with asymmetric cold shoulder.

As an American English shortening of hoodlum, use is attested from as early as 1866 but it became popular only with the emergence in popular culture of the stereotypical gangster in the 1920s.  As a shortened form of neighbourhood, use in the African-American vernacular is noted from 1987 and it’s recently been identified as a racial slur in certain contexts.  In nautical use, a hood is one of the endmost planks (or, one of the ends of the planks) in a ship’s bottom at the bow or stern.  In ophiology, a hood is an expansion on the sides of the neck typical for many elapids (eg some cobras) and (in colloquial use) the osseous or cartilaginous marginal extension behind the back of many a dinosaur such as a ceratopsid and reptiles such as Chlamydosaurus kingie is often referred to as "the hood".  In the human hand, the hood is the extensor digitorum, an expansion of the extensor tendon over the metacarpophalangeal joint.  Hood has been a most productive accessory in English (extractor hood, hoodie, hoodwink, range hood, under the hood, neighbourhood, girlhood etc).  In clothing, hoods (variously named) have of course existed for thousands of years, adopted and adapted to provide protection from the elements (wind, sun, snow, rain etc).  The hoods used in executions, often worn (though for different reasons) by both executioner and the condemned can't be thought of as hoodies because the purpose in such situations was to conceal the face.

A hoodie offers a (pre-lingual) comment on David Cameron's (b 1966; UK prime-minister 2010-2016) "Hug-a-Hoodie" speech in which (while prime-minister), he advocated a softer approach to social justice.  He is now Lord Cameron, having been ennobled so he can sit in the House of Lords and serve as foreign secretary, there evidently being no Tory in either the Lords or the Commons with the required talent (or whatever else is required) for the job.  He's the first former prime-minister since Lord Home (Alec Douglas-Home; UK prime minister 1963-1964) in 1970 to return to cabinet and all wish him well.

In many cultures, hoods were added to garments for purposes other than mere functionality and depending on factors such as color, style, the volume or design of the materials used, they could indicate things like rank, membership of an order, length of service or academic status.  Hoods were part of imperial regalia, court dress, academic gowns, military dress uniforms, ecclesiastical garb and of course, cults like the Freemasons.  The pragmatic adoption of the hoodie by petty criminals as a means of concealment in late 1980s London appears related to the increasingly widespread use of CCTV (closed-circuit television) surveillance systems and advances in AI (artificial intelligence) mean software now has the ability to "see through" hoodies and this means it is inevitable hoodies will be available with some form of "cloaking" material within; it's just another arms race.  The popularity with (career and aspiring) criminals and certain social groups (distinctions between the two somewhat fluid) appears imitative, the adoption of the symbols of petty crime actually a status-symbol to some and a way of asserting group identity.

It was mere coincidence that the words "hoodie" and "hoodlum" appeared within a few years of each other, the early US use (dating from 1866 but not widely used until the stereotypical Chicago gangster became a staple of popular culture during the 1920s) of hoodlum appearing wholly unrelated to hood.  There are etymologists who list the origin as uncertain and offer other possibilities but the most plausible origin of hoodlum is probably that cited by Herbert Asbury (1889-1963) in The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (1933).  He believed the word an imperfect echoic originating in San Francisco from a particular street gang's call to unemployed Irishmen to "huddle 'em" (to beat up Chinese migrants).  San Francisco newspapers then took to calling street gangs hoodlums, that being the best they could make of the Irish accent.

Cannon

Cannon (pronounced kan-uhn)

(1) In ordnance, heavy artillery: a mounted gun for firing heavy projectiles; a gun, howitzer, or mortar,

(2) In machinery, a heavy tube or drum, especially one that can rotate freely on the shaft by which it is supported (also known as a quill).

(3) In armor, a cylindrical or semi-cylindrical piece of plate armor for the upper arm or forearm; a vambrace or rerebrace (the avant-bras in French and sometimes known as lower cannons in the Middle Ages).

(4) In saddlery, as cannon bit or canon bit, the part of a bit in the horse's mouth.

(5) In the design of bells, the metal loop at the top of a bell, from which it is hung.

(6) In zoology, as the cannon bone or the part of the leg in which the cannon bone is located.

(7) In billiards, a British term for a carom (a shot in which the cue ball is caused to contact one object ball after another); the points scored by this; a rebound or bouncing back, as of a ball off a wall.

(8) In underworld slang, a pickpocket (archaic).

1375–1425: From the late Middle English canon, from the earlier Anglo-Latin and Anglo-French canon, from the Italian cannone (large-tube barrel), the construct being cann(a) (tube) + -one (the augmentative suffix).  The Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna) (reed) was from the Akkadian qanû (reed), from the Sumerian gi.na; a doublet of canyon.  The original meaning was an "artillery piece, mounted gun for throwing projectiles by force of gunpowder" the spelling canon in a variety of languages all from the Italian cannone, augmentative of the Latin canna but the use of the double -n- spelling didn’t emerge until circa 1800.  Cannon is a noun and the plural is cannons but, in military use, when speaking of cannons collectively (especially when assembled in a battery), cannon is often used.

The artillery piece revolutionised warfare, the famous walls which for centuries had protected Constantinople were breached soon after cannon were first deployed and the city fell.  The weapon also influenced language.  Cannon fodder, first noted in 1847, describes the infantry or cavalry deployed against cannon-fire and exists in German as kanonenfutter, echoing William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) “food for gun powder” speech in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), Act 4 Scene 2) where Falstaff dismisses concern for his soldiers by saying they’re “good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better”.  Cannon-shot (distance a cannon will throw a ball) is from the 1570s and was an important measure in admiralty and (embryonic) international law, the old three-mile (and the later twelve-mile) maritime limits of national borders reflect the range of shore-based cannons at various times.  It was used also from the 1590s to describe the iron-ball fired from a weapon but this by the 1660s came to be replaced by cannon-ball.  A cannonade (a continued discharge of artillery) is from the 1650s as a noun and as a verb (attack with artillery), a decade later.  The contemporary French was cannonade and the Italian cannonata, the related forms being cannonaded and cannonading.  Cannonade was exclusively a army term which was later replace by barrage; the Admiralty always preferred broadside.

The figurative “loose cannon” seems to have be popularised from its appearance in Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) late Ninety Three (1874) to describe someone “wildly irresponsible, unpredictable or freed from usual restraint", based on the literal sense of dread sailors on old warships felt when a cannon already primed to fire became detached from its mounts and began rolling about the deck.  When a loose cannon discharges, bloody carnage can ensue. 

Naval Cannons

USS Iowa firing nine-gun broadside in an August 1984 test-firing during the sea-trials conducted after being recommissioned as part of the military build-up ordered during Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) first term.

The US Navy’s four Iowa-class battleships, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin & New Jersey (the commissioned Illinois and Kentucky were never launched because of the changing nature of naval warfare) were the last battleships used in US fleets, all other dreadnoughts & super-dreadnoughts decommissioned by 1947 and when finally retired, they had for three decades been the last battleships afloat.  Noted for their longevity, their service variously lasting (including periods in reserve) from 1943 until 1992, they’re among the best-remembered battleships but they were neither the biggest (and certainly not the widest, the beam at around 108 feet (33 m) dictated by the need to pass through the Panama Canal) nor the most heavily gunned.  The Iowas were built with nine 16 inch (406 mm) naval cannons in three 3-gun turrets and could fire both high explosive and armour-piercing shells around 23 nautical miles (27.6 miles; 44.5 km).  A novel later innovation was an adaptation of the W19 nuclear artillery shell was adapted to suit the 16-inch bore.  With a yield of 15 to 20 kilotons of TNT (roughly the same as the A-bomb used against Nagasaki), they remain the world's largest nuclear artillery although, because of the Pentagon’s policy of refusing to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weaponry aboard its ships, it’s unknown if any of the shells were ever carried while the ships were in active service.  Like the US Marine Corps (USMC), the navy was never much enthused at the prospect of nuclear weapons being carried by the surface fleet, regarding the weapons as ideally suited to submarines.  The entire US nuclear artillery inventory was later decommissioned and (officially) dismantled.

Yamato, 1944.

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato-class battleships, Yamato and Musashi, in service between 1942-1945, were bigger and heavier than the Iowas and also used bigger cannons, each having nine 18.1 inch (460 mm) guns in three triple turrets with a shell-range of 26 miles (42 km).  The big guns had been considered for the Iowas during the design process but were sacrificed as part of the speed/range/armour/firepower compromise which naval architects have to apply to every warship.  Interestingly, for a variety of reasons, even the Iowa's never-built successors (the Montana-class), maintained the 16-inch armament, designed around twelve cannons arrayed in four 3-gun turrets.

German conceptual H-45 battleship.

Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the German Navy could have entered World War II (1939-1945) with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.