Cynophagia (pronounced)
The
practice of eating dog meat.
Late 1700-early
1800s: The construct was cyno- + phagia.
Cyno was a combining form of the Ancient Greek κύων (kúōn or kýon) (dog) and the suffix –phagia was from the Ancient Greek -φαγία
(-phagía) (and related to -φαγος (-phagos) (eater)), corresponding to φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat), infinitive of ἔφαγον (éphagon) (I eat),
which serves as infinitive
aorist for the defective verb ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat). In English, use is now most frequent in
mental health to reference the consumption of untypical items. Being a cynophagist (a person who engages in
cynophagia) is not synonymous with being a cynophile (a person who loves canines) although it’s
not impossible there may be some overlap in the predilections. The construct was cyno- + -phile. The
–phile suffix was from the Latin -phila,
from the Ancient Greek φίλος (phílos).
(dear, beloved) and was used to forms noun & adjectives to convey the meanings
“loving”, “friendly”, “admirer” or “friend”.
In the context of metal health, the condition would be described as cynophilia.
The -philia suffix was from the Ancient
Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal)
love). It was used to form nouns
conveying a liking or love for something and in clinical use was applied often
to an abnormal or obsessive interest, especially if it came to interfere with
other aspects of life (the general term is paraphilia). The companion suffix is the antonym -phobia.
The related forms are the prefixes phil- & philo- and the suffixes
-philiac, -philic, -phile & -phily. Cynophagia, cynophagy, cynophagism
& cynophagist are nouns and cynophagic is an adjective; the noun plural is cynophagists.
The word
cynophagia was coined as part of the movement in European scholarship in the
late eighteenth & early nineteenth centuries which used words from classical
languages (Ancient Greek & Latin) as elements to create the lexicon of “modern”
science & medicine, reflecting the academic & professional reverence
for the supposed purity of the Ancient world.
The reason there was a cynophagia but not a “ailourphagia” (which would
have meant “the practice of eating cat meat”) is probably because while the
reports from European explorers & colonial administrators would have sent
from the orient many reports of the eating of dogs, there were likely few
accounts of felines as food. The
construct of “ailourphagia” would have been ailour-,
from the Ancient Greek αἴλουρος (aílouros) (cat) + phagia. The Greek elements of ailouros were aiolos (quick-moving
or nimble) & oura (tail), the
allusion respectively to the agility of cats and their characteristic tail
movements. There are of course ailurophiles (one especially fond of cats), notably the "childless cat ladies" and disturbingly, there's also paedophage (child eater).
Historically,
east of Suez, consuming dog meat was not uncommon and in some cultures it was a
significant contribution to regional protein intake while in other places it
was either unlawful of taboo. Carnivorism
(the practice of eating meat) is an almost universal human practice but what is
acceptable varies between cultures. Some
foods are proscribed (such as shellfish or pig-meat) and while it’s clear the
origin of this was as a kind of “public heath” measure (the rules created in
hot climates in the pre-refrigeration age) but the observance became a pillar
of religious observance. Sometimes, a similar
rule seems originally to have had an economic imperative such as the Hindu
restriction on the killing of cattle for consumption, thus the phrase “sacred
cow”, the original rationale being the calculation the live beasts made an
economic contribution which much outweighed their utility as a protein source. So, what is thought acceptable and not is a
cultural construct and that varies from place-to-place, the Western aversion to
eating cats & dogs attributable to the sentimental view of them which has
evolved because of the role for millennia as domestic pets. Over history, it’s likely every animal in the
world has at some point been used as a food source, some an acquired taste such
as the “deep fried tarantula” which, long a tasty snack in parts of Cambodia,
became a novelty item in Cambodian restaurants in the West. There are though probably some creatures which
taste so awful they’re never eaten, such as parrots which ate the seeds of
tobacco plants, lending their flesh a “distinctive flavor”. The recipe for their preparation was:
(1) Place
plucked parrot and an old boot in vat of salted water and slow-cook for 24
hours.
(2) After
24 hours remove parrot & boot.
(3) Throw
away parrot and eat old boot.
Analysts had expected “more of the same” from Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) in his debate with Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021): the southern border, illegal immigrants, inflation et al. What none predicted was that so much of the post-debate traffic would be about Mr Trump’s assertion Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (one of literally dozens of localities in the country so named, one factor which influenced it becoming the name of the town in the Fox cartoon series The Simpsons) were eating the pets of the residents (ie their cats & dogs). As racist tropes go, it followed the script in terms of the “otherness, barbarism, incompatibility” etc of “outsiders in our midst” although there seemed to be nothing to suggest there was any tradition of such consumption in Haiti. Still, at least it was something novel and it wasn’t the first time pet cats had been mentioned in the 2024 presidential campaign, Mr Trump’s choice of running mate as JD Vance (b 1984; US senator (Republican-Ohio) since 2023) bring renewed attention to the latter’s 2021 interview then Fox News host Tucker Carlson (b 1969) in which he observed the US had fallen into the hands of corporate oligarchs. Radical Democratic Party politicians and “…a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Eventually, that would be answered by the childless cat ladies, notably the most famous: the singer Taylor Swift who posted an endorsement of Kamala Harris, posing with Benjamin Button, the Ragdoll she adopted in 2019. Benjamin Button was no stranger to fame, the seemingly nonplussed puss appearing of the cover announcing Ms Swift as Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year.
Childless cat lady Taylor Swift with ragdoll Benjamin Button (as stole). Ragdoll cats make good stoles because (apparently because of a genetic mutation), they tend to "go limp" when picked up.
Ms Swift is
of course a song-writer so well accustomed to crafting text to achieve the
desired effect and one word nerd lawyer quickly deconstructed, much taken by the first
three paragraphs which interlaced the first person (“I” & “me/my”) and
the “you” while avoiding starting any sentence with “I” (a technique taught as
a way of conveying “objectivity”) until the she announces her conclusion:
“Like many of you, I watched the debate
tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the
issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter
to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can
about their proposed policies and plans for this country.”
“Recently I
was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential
run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the
dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I
need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.
The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
“I will be
casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential
Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and
causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a
steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in
this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and
impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up
for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.”
So, a
classic example of a technique which might be used by someone disinterested: two
premises which lead to a conclusion, the rhythm of the lyric being “I, I, you, you, you.” Then, after the “you, you, you” of the “discussion” has made it clear where her
focus is, every sentence in the third paragraph begins with “I”, emulation a cadence
which might appear in a musical track: “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your
research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.” One can see why her songs are said to be so catchy.
The intervention of Ms Swift and Benjamin Button produced reactions.
Newspapers haven’t always been effective in
changing voting intentions or nudging governments in particular public policy directions. During the inter-war years the Beaverbrook (the
Daily & Sunday Express and the less disreputable Evening Standard) press in the UK ran a long and ineffective
campaign promoting “empire free trade” and the evidence suggests the editorial
position a publication adopted to advocate its readers vote one way or the
other was more likely to reflect than shift public opinion. One reason is that in the West, while politics
is very interested in the people, the people tend not to be interested in
politics and most thoughtful editorials are barely read. People are however rabid consumers of popular
culture and one opposition leader would later claim an interview a woman’s
magazine conducted with his (abandoned) ex-wife did him more political damage
than anything written by political or economics reporters, however critical. With 283 million followers on Instagram (Ms Harris
has 18 million), Ms Swift’s intervention may prove decisive if she shifts just
a few votes in the famous “battleground states”.
Whether Ms Swift’s
endorsement of Kamala Harris will shift many opinions isn’t known (many analysts
concluding the electorate long ago coalesced into “Trump” & “anti-Trump”
factions) but the indications are she may have been remarkably effective in persuading
to vote those who may not otherwise have bothered, the assumption being most of
these converts to participation will follow her lead and it’s long been
understood that to win elections in the US, the theory is simple: get those who
don’t vote to vote for you. In practice,
that has been difficult to achieve at scale (the best executions in recent
years by the campaign teams of George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US
president 2001-2009) in 2004 and Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017)
in 2008.
However, in
including a custom URL which directed people to vote.gov where they could
register to vote produced a spike in voter registration, the US General
Services Administration (GSA) revealing an “unprecedented” 338,000-odd unique
visits to their portal in the hours after Ms Swift’s post. Although the “shape” of the hits isn’t known,
most seem to be assuming that (as well as some childless cat ladies), those who
may be voting for the first time will tend to be (1) young and (2) female,
reflecting the collective profile of Ms Swift’s “Swifties”. They are the demographic the Democratic Party
wants. The GSA called it the “Swift
effect” and added that while in the past there had been events which
produced smaller spikes, they were brief in duration unlike the Swifties woh for days kept up the
traffic, the aggregate numbers dwarfing even the “intensity and
enthusiasm” in the wake of the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) overturning Roe v Wade (1973) prior to the 2022 mid-term
congressional elections.
In an
interview with JD Vance, Fox News asked what he thought might be the
significance of Ms Swift mobilizing the childless cat lady vote and he responded:
“We admire Taylor Swift’s music. But I don’t think most Americans, whether they
like her music, or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a
billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the
interests and problems of most people. When grocery
prices go up by 20 per cent, it hurts most Americans. It doesn’t hurt Taylor
Swift. When housing prices become unaffordable, it doesn’t affect Taylor Swift,
or any other billionaire.”
Fox News choose not to pursue the matter of whether self-described “billionaire celebrity”
Donald Trump could be said to be “…fundamentally disconnected from the interests and
problems of most people.”
In “damage-limitation” mode, the Trump campaign mobilized generative AI in an attempt to re-capture the childless cat lady vote. After the debate, Mr Trump had added geese to the alleged diet of Springfield’s Haitian residents.
Mr Trump may have himself to blame for Ms Swift’s annoying endorsement because he’d earlier posted fake, AI-generated images on his social media platform, Truth Social, suggesting she’d urged her the Swifties to vote for him. Such things were of course not foreseen by the visionary AI (artificial intelligence) researchers of the 1950s, the genie is out of the bottle and given that upholding the “freedom of speech” guaranteed by the First Amendment to the constitution is one of the few things on which the SCOTUS factions agree, the genie is not going back.
The meme-makers have really taken to generative AI.
So while generative AI doesn’t allow mean the
meme makers can suddenly create images once impossible, it does mean they can
be produced by those without artistic skills or specialized resources and the
whole matter of the culinary preferences of Haitians in Ohio is another blow
for the state. It was only in May 2024
that a number of schools in issued a ban on Gen Alpha slang terms including:
Ohio: It means “bad” with all that
implies (dull, boring, ugly, poor etc).
Because of the way language evolves, it may also come to mean “people
who eat pet cats & dogs”. The
implication is it’s embarrassing to be from Ohio.
Skibidi: A reference to a viral meme of a
person’s head coming out of a toilet; it implies the subject so described is “weird”.
Sigma: Unrelated to the 18th letter
of the Greek alphabet, it’s been re-purposed as a rung on the male social hierarchy
somewhat below the “alpha-male”.
Rizz: This one has a respectable
pedigree, being the the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2023 word of the year. It’s said technically to be a “Gen Z word”,
short for “charisma”. It has been banned
because Gen Alpha like to use it in the negative (ie “lacking rizz”; “no rizz”
etc).
Mewing: A retort or exclamation used to
interrupt someone who is complaining about something trivial. Gen Alpha are using it whenever their teachers
say something they prefer not discuss.
Gyatt: A woman with a big butt, said
originally based on the expression “goddam
your ass thick.”
Bussin’: “Good, delicious, high quality”
etc.
Baddie: A tough, bolshie girl who “doesn’t take shit
form no one”. It’s a similar adaptation
of meaning to a term like “filth” which means “very attractive”.
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