Establishment

Establishment (pronounced ih-stab-lish-muhnt)

(1) The act or an instance of establishing.

(2) The state or fact of being established.

(3) Something established; a constituted order or system.

(4) The existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority (ie “the Establishment” in the popular imagination which in this context should be used with an initial capital).  “The Establishment” is a nuanced synecdoche for “ruling class” with the emphasis on a dedication to the preservation of the status quo.

(5) As a modifier, belonging to or characteristic of “the Establishment” (the dominant or hegemonic “power elite” in a field of endeavor, organization etc (“the political establishment”, “the literary establishment” etc) or their “world view” (the “establishment interpretation of history”).

(6) A household; place of residence including its furnishings, grounds etc; a body of employees or servants

(7) A place of business together with its employees, merchandise, plant, equipment etc.

(8) A permanent civil, military, or other force or organization (often used to describe the defined number of personnel, in aggregate or sectionally, the “establishment” being the approved size, composition, and equipment of a unit.  In the military, the word is often modified (peacetime-establisnment, war-establishment, overseas-establishment etc).

(9) Any institution (university, hospital, library etc).

(10) The recognition by a state of a church as the state church.  In Christianity, the church so recognized, the term most associated with the Church of England (and historically the Church of Wales and Church of Ireland).

(11) A fixed or settled income (archaic).

1475–1485: A compound word, the construct being establish + -ment, from the Middle English establishment, stablishment & stablisshement, from the Old French establissement (which endures in Modern French as établissement), from the verb establir.  The noun establishment was from the late fourteenth century verb establish, from the Old French establiss-, the present participle stem of the twelfth century establir (cause to stand still, establish, stipulate, set up, erect, build), (which endures in Modern French as établir), from the Latin stabilire (make stable), from stabilis (stable).  The -ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment, from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.  It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of "the action or result of what is denoted by the verb".  The suffix is most often attached to the stem without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms without -e preferred in American English.  The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably judgment vs judgement.  In modern use, judgement is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is considered acceptable as long as use is consistent.  Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment.  To those not aware of the convention, it could look just like a typo.  Establishment is a noun; the noun plural is establishments.

The noun establishmentarian describes “an adherent of the principle of an established church” dates from 1839 which of course begat the noun establishmentarianism (the doctrine of the establishmentarians).  What came first however was antidisestablishmentarianism, every schoolboy’s favorite long word although in scientific English there are constructions longer still and even the most alphabetically prolifically forms in English are short compared to those in languages such as Welsh, German and Maori.  It’s not clear who coined antidisestablishmentarianism but William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) used the word in his two volume work The state in its relations with the church (1841), a critique of “the ecclesiastical system established by law” and specifically the status of Church of England; it was a discussion of the implications of disestablishment (the act of withdrawing the church from its privileged relation to the state).  As words, neither establishmentarianism nor antidisestablishmentarianism now much disturb the thoughts of many in England and the only role for the latter has long been as a entry in the internet’s many lists of long, obscure or weird words.  In the narrow technical sense, the curious beast that is the Church of England became “an established church” only after the Act of Settlement (1701) and the subsequent Acts of Union (1707) which formalized the status of the institution, first in England and later Great Britain.  Functionally however, the English church can be considered “established” since the Act of Supremacy (1534) which abolished papal authority in England and declared Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) Supreme Head of the Church of England, the culmination of a process the king had triggered in 1527 when Clement VII (1478–1534; pope 1523-1534) proved tiresome in the matter of divorce law.  Although other sixteenth century statutes (notably the Act of Supremacy (1558) & Act of Uniformity (1558) which usually are referred to collectively as the “Elizabethan Religious Settlement”) added to the framework, the changes were mechanistic and procedural rather than substantive and simply built upon what had since 1534 been the established “state church” while the eighteenth century acts were essentially codifications which formalized the position in constitutional law.  Legally, little since has changed and 26 Church of England bishops (all appointed by the prime-minister (on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury)) continue (as the “Lords Spiritual”, their lay colleagues being the “Lords Temporal”) to sit in the House of Lords.

In English, establishment's original fifteenth century meaning was “a finalized and settled arrangement” (ie of income or property) while the sense of “the established church” entered the language in 1731, reflecting what had been the legal position since 1534.  The sense of “a place of business” emerged in the early 1830s while the idea of “a social matrix of ruling people and institutions” was in use as early as the mid 1920s although the phrase “the Establishment” (in the socio-political sense) didn’t enter popular use until the late 1950s, influenced by the publication in 1956 of The Power Elite by US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962 and usually styled C Wright Mills).  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions work to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.

When the establishment fractured: Republican (for Goldwater, left) & Democratic (against Goldwater, right), 1964 presidential campaign buttons, 1964.  This was before the color coding (Republican red, Democratic blue) was standardized in 2000 by the arbitrary choice of the TV networks.

The term “Establishment Republican” (a “moderate” or “liberal” member of the US Republican Party (as opposed to the right-wing fanatics who staged a hostile take-over) emerged in the 1980s to replace “Rockefeller Republican”.  Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977) was the archetype of the “liberal republican” in the decade between crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) losing the 1964 presidential election and crooked old Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) in 1974 resigning from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  It was in those years the right-wing began their “march through the party establishment”, a process accelerated during the Reagan (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) years and the moderates came to prefer the term “Establishment Republican” because Rockefeller was tainted by his association with the north-east, something with less appeal as the party’s centre of gravity shifted to the Mid-West and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The few surviving Establishment Republicans are now derided by the right wing fanatics as RINOs (Republicans in name only) and in 2024 the more useful descriptors are probably “pre-Trump Republican” & “post-Trump Republican”.  That linguistic moment may pass but the party at this time shows little inclination of seeking to find the centre ground, a wisdom advocated even by Richard Nixon.  In the pre-Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990)) UK, where the existence of “the Establishment” was quite obvious, it was the journalist Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) who popularized the term, explaining the concept as a kind of individual & institutional symbiosis by which “the right chaps” came to control the country’s “levers of power, influence and social authority”, exercised through social connections established between families or at the elite schools such men attended: “By the 'Establishment' I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.”

The Rover P5B, the car of the Establishment

In the UK, the Establishment had survived two world wars, the Great Depression, an abdication and even a couple of Labour governments but, by the 1960s, the acceptance of its once effortless hegemony was being challenged, not because people were becoming convinced by the writings of political theorists but as a consequence of the antics of those from the very heart of the Establishment (the Profumo scandal, the “Cambridge Five” spies et al).  In retrospect, it was the ten-odd years prior to 1973 that were the last halcyon days of the “old Establishment” for after that the UK’s anyway troubled “old” economy stagnated, triggering a series of events, notably the assault on the system from within by the improbable anti-Establishment figure of Margaret Thatcher.  The changes wrought in the last five decades shouldn’t be overstated because what happened was one Establishment was replaced by another and there was a substantial overlap in institutional and individual membership but it’s a very different apparatus from that of the 1960s.

Rover 3.5 Coupé.  Establishment figures preferred the saloon, the (four door) coupé more what used to be called a “co-respondent's” car (ie the sort of rakish design which would appeal to the sort of chap who slept with other men’s wives, later to be named as “co-respondent” in divorce proceedings).

One charming Establishment symbol from those years which are for most not in living memory was the ultimate “Establishment car”, one which while not the biggest, fastest, or most expensive available, possessed the qualities to appeal to the “right chaps”.  The Rover P5 was in production between 1958-1973, running from around the time that old patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) told the working class “…most of you have never had it so good” to the last days before the first oil shock ended the West’s long, post-war economic prosperity (although the British experience of that was patchy).  The P5’s presence throughout was somehow reassuring because from its debut it embodied the virtues for which Rovers had during the 1950s come to be valued: solidity, quality, comfort and an indifference to fashions and fads.  The P5 was a presence also in parts of the old British Empire and it enjoyed a following in both Australia & New Zealand, valued because it had an “Establishment air” yet was not flashy like a Pontiac or Jaguar (the mostly badge-engineered Daimlers a remarkably effective piece of product differentiation) or a statement of wealth like a Mercedes-Benz would by the mid-1960s become.

Rover 3 Litre engine schematic.

The P5 was sold originally as the 3 Litre in three releases (Mark 1, 1958-1962; Mark II, 1962-1965 & Mark III 1965-1967), using a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) straight-six with an implementation of the “F-head” design in which the inlet valve sat at the top of the combustion chamber with a side-mounted exhaust valve, an arrangement which offered some advantages when designing combustion chambers suited to the lower octane fuel then used in many markets and allowed the use of larger valves than would have been possible with a conventional OHV (overhead valve) arrangement).  The latter was a matter of some significance because the Rover six came from a time when the taxation regime was based on bore diameter, something which resulted in generations of British small bore, long-stroke engines and the 3 litre six was a famously smooth device, the advertising sometimes showing a circular coin sitting (on its edge) on the air-cleaner with the engine running, the coin not even vibrating.  Technologically though, for passenger vehicles, it was a cul-de-sac and more modern power-plants from the US, Europe (and even the UK) were out-performing the old F-Head.

What transformed the P5 was the adoption of the 3.5 litre (215 cid) V8 which Rover had purchased from General Motors (GM) which, in versions made by Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac (BOP), had been used for the new compact lines between 1961-1963.  The UK’s industry made many mistakes in the post-war years but what became the Rover V8 was an inspired purchase, remaining in production in displacements between 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) and 5.0 (305) from 1967 until 2006, powering everything from the original Range Rovers to executive sedans and sports cars  It was related also to the Oldsmobile version (Rover used Buick’s variant) on which Repco in Australia based the 3.0 litre (193 cubic inch) SOHC (single overhead camshaft) V8 the Brabham team would use to secure the Formula One drivers & constructors championships in 1966 & 1967.

Look of the past; glimpse of the future: 1967 Rover 3.5 Saloon (left) and 1967 NSU Ro80 (right).

It was in late 1967 the Rover 3.5 was released and the press reception was generally favourable, the improvements in performance and fuel consumption (not something often achieved when adding cylinders and displacement) attributed to a combination of greater mechanical efficiency and reduced weight, the all-aluminum V8 some 200 lb (90 kg) lighter than the hefty old six although some did note the new engine couldn’t quite match the smoothness of the old.  By 1967 however the testers seemed to be aware that whatever its charms, it was a design from the mid-1950s and the world had moved on although to be fair Rover had too, it’s P6 (2000), released in 1963 was very much a modernist take (and one which would in 1968 also be transformed by the V8, becoming the 3500 (1968-1976)).  Between 1967 and the end of production in 1967, the flavor of the press commentary about the 3.5 was very much: “outmoded but satisfying”.

Released in September 1967: Rover 3.5 saloon (left) and NSU Ro80 (right), partially exposed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October.

Like the 3.5, the NSU Ro80 had been released in September that year and the contrast was obviously between the past and the future, the German car influencing design for more than a generation (with the obvious exception of the ill-fated Wankel engine) while what the Rover represented was already almost extinct, few of the others in its market segment (the Vanden Plas Farinas, the Humber Super Snipe, the Vauxhall Viscount, the Daimler Majestic Major and the Austin 3 Litre) to see the 1970s.  Nor did other manufacturers make much effort to compete for buyers who clearly wanted something lighter and more modern although, after taking over Rootes Group, to replace the defunct Super Snipe and Imperial, Chrysler did embark on a quixotic venture to prove demand still existed by taking advantage of the old Commonwealth tariff preference scheme by importing the Australian-built Valiant (built on the US A-Body) in both straight-six & V8 form.  It registered barely a blip on the sales charts although, remarkably, both remained available until 1976 by which time the writing was on the wall for Chrysler’s entire European operation.

A UK government 3.5 waiting outside No 10 Downing Street (left) and Harold Wilson about to enter his (right).

For many however, the Rover’s reassuring presence was more appealing than modernity (although the rakish Rostyle wheels may have been a shock for some).  It certainly appealed to those at the heart of the establishment and the first prime minister to have been driven in one was the pipe-smoking Harold Wilson (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) who, although he’d once promised to revitalize the economy with the “white heat of technological change”, was a cautious and conservative character; the car suited him and he appreciated the custom-built ashtray which held his pipe.  Edward "Ted" Heath (1916-2005; UK prime-minister 1970-1974), James "Jim" Callaghan (1912–2005; prime minister of the UK 1979-1979) and Mrs Thatcher followed him into the backseat, something made possible because the Ministry of Supply (advised production was ending in 1973), purchased a batch from the final run, stockpiling them for future VIP use, the same tactic some police forces would later adopt to secure warehouses full of Rover SD1s (another recipient of the ex-Buick V8), the front wheel drive (FWD) replacements they knew were in the pipeline not a compelling choice for the highway patrol.  Not until 1981 was Mrs Thatcher's Rover retired and replaced with a Daimler.

A tale of two rooflines: the “Establishment” 3.5 Saloon (left) and the rakish 3.5 Coupé (right).

In automobiles, by the 1960s, the English-speaking world had (more or less) agreed a coupé was a two door car with a fixed roof and (if based on a sedan), often a shorter wheelbase, designed put a premium on style over utility.  There were hold-outs among a few UK manufacturers who insisted there were fixed head coupés (FHC) and drop head coupés (DHC), the latter described by most others as convertibles or cabriolets but mostly the term had come to be well-understood.  It was thus a surprise when Rover in 1962 displayed a “four-door coupé”, essentially their 3 Litre sedan with a lower roof-line and a few “sporty” touches such as a tachometer and a full set of gauges.  One intriguing part of the tale was why, defying the conventions of the time, the low-roof variation of the four-door was called a coupé (and Rover did use the l'accent aigu (the acute accent: “é”) to ensure the “traditional pronunciation” was imposed although the Americans and others sensibly abandoned the practice).  The rakish lines, including more steeply sloped front and rear glass were much admired although the original vision had been more ambitious still, the intention being a four-door hardtop with no central pillar.  Strangely, although the Americans and Germans had managed this satisfactorily, a solution eluded Rover which had to be content with a more slender B-pillar.

Lindsay Lohan with Porsche Panamera 4S four-door coupe (the factory doesn't use the designation but most others seem to), Los Angeles, 2012.

The etymology of coupé is that it’s from couper (to cut off) but the original use in the context of horse-drawn coaches referred to the platform being shortened, not lowered.  Others too have been inventive, Cadillac for decades offering the Coupe De Ville (they used also Coupe DeVille) and usually it was built to exactly the same dimensions as the Sedan De Ville, differing on in the door count.  So Rover probably felt entitled to cut where they preferred; in their case it was the roof and in the early twentieth century, the four-door coupe became a thing, the debut in 2004 of the Mercedes-Benz CLS influencing other including BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi.  The moment for the style clearly hasn’t passed because when CLS production ended in August 2023, the lines were carried over to the new E-Class (W214, 2023-) but there are no longer references to a “four-door coupé”.

One of Elizabeth II’s P5B Saloons outside the gates of Windsor castle (left) and Her Majesty at the wheel (right), leaving the castle, reputedly on the way to church so while one of her 3.5s won’t quite be “only driven to church on Sunday by little old lady”, being in the Royal mews, it would have been well-maintained.

Although for almost 20 years a fixture outside No 10 Downing Street, the most famous P5B owner was Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) who upgraded from a 3 Litre in 1968 and, although not noted for being sentimental about machinery, until 1987 ran one of the several maintained in the Royal Mews during her reign.

Rover P5B headrests (left & right) and the mounting assembly for the reading lamps in the front units (centre).

Most of the focus on the Rover 3.5 has always been about the engine and the illustrious passengers but one detail of note is the extraordinary bulky headrests, optional fittings in most markets.  Quite why they were so big isn’t clear although the shape of the rear units presumably made for an easier mounting on the parcel shelf, meaning the seat's frames & covers needed no modification, but it’s apparently not an urban myth some used by the British government had a bullet-proof panel inserted; there was certainly the space to accommodate even a thick metal plate.  The front headrests were used also to house the optional reading lamps, the wiring harness well concealed within.

Edition

Edition (pronounced ih-dish-uhn)

(1) One of a series of printings of the same publication, each issued at a different time and differing from another by alterations, additions etc (historically sometimes referred to as impressions).

(2) The format in which a work is published (single volume edition, abridged edition, leather-bound edition, French language edition etc).

(3) In newspaper production, a form of differentiation between different versions of the “same” issue (late edition, city edition etc) and used in a similar manner in radio & television broadcasting.

(4) In book collecting, as “first edition”, a copy of a book from its first release or print run.

(5) The whole number of impressions or copies of a book, newspaper etc, printed from one set of type at one time.

(6) A version of anything (physical and not), often (sometimes misleadingly) in forms such as “limited edition”, “special edition” etc).

1545–1555: From the French édition, from the Middle French, from the Latin ēditiōn- (publication), the stem of ēditiō (a bringing forth, publishing), the construct being ēdit, the past participle of ēdere (to give out; bring forth, produce) + -iōn (the suffix appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process).  When the word entered English in the sense of “version, translation, a form of a literary work” (and later “act of publishing”) the dominant linguistic influence was probably the Latin editionem (a bringing forth, producing (although in specialized use it also carried the meaning “a statement, an account rendered”, from the past-participle stem of ēdere, the construct being e(x) (in the sense of “out”) + -dere, a combining form of dare (to give), from the primitive Indo-European root do- (to give).  Edition is a noun; the noun plural is editions.

More Issues Than Vogue sweatshirt from Impressions.

In publishing and (sometimes vaguely) related fields, the terms “issue”, “edition” and “version” have come to be used so loosely that they sometimes function interchangeably but within the publishing industry, there are conventions of use: Issue traditionally was used to refer to a specific release of a recurring publication (magazine, journal, newspaper etc) and tended to be tied to the release sequence (“October 2024 Issue”, “Fall 2024 Issue”, “Issue No. 215” etc).  Issue can however be used also as “re-issue” which refers usually to a “re-print” of a previous edition although it’s not uncommon for blurbs like “re-issued with new foreword” or “re-issued in large print” to appear, the implication being the substantive content remains the same.  Edition was used of a particular form or version of a publication that might differ from previous ones in significant ways which might include text corrections, foreign language translations, or updates, thus descriptions like “German Language Edition”, “Second Edition” or “Abridged Edition.  Some editions (especially those which appear in an irregular sequence) actually give in their title some hint of the nature of what distinguishes them from what came before such as the convention adopted by the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic for their Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  What the APA does is change the number if a DSM is regarded as a “new edition” but retain the number with an appended “R” (revised) or “TR” (text revision) if it’s an “updated edition”.  Thus has appeared the DSM-III-R (1987), the DSM-IV-TR (2000) and the DSM-5-TR (2022).  There’s some overlap in use for version and this perhaps reflects the influence of technology because it tends to be used of a specific form or variant of a publication such as language (eg Spanish version), format (eg audio version) or materials used in the construction (eg e-book version) rather than an implication of a chronological or iterative update (which in publishing tends to be called an “edition”.  In that the industry differs from IT where version numbers are almost always sequential although the convention widely used in the 1980s in which something like “version 2.4.3” could be interpreted as 2=major release, 4=update and 3= bug fix has long fallen into disuse.

Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version (RSV), 1952 limited edition, first printing by Thomas Nelson & Sons, brown full leather binding with inlaid gold lettering, silk end paper and green cardboard slip case, custom bound by the Chicago Bible Society.  US$750 from Abe Books.

There are also special uses which assume a life of their own, notably the Revised Standard Version (RSV), an English translation of the Bible published in 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the US.  The RSV was a revision of the American Standard Version (ASV, 1901) and was published to render the text into the modern English which readily would be understood by a contemporary reader of modest education.  The object was not to change the meaning of the text but to preserve it and paradoxically this required editing the classic verses written by William Tyndale (circa 1494–1536) or in the King James Version (KJV, 1611) because the over hundreds of years the language had evolved and the much of what was in the original needed to be interpreted for a general audience and the controversy of clerical gatekeepers between God and his people had for centuries been a thing.  The RSV however has not been the last words and those who track novel initializms will have been delighted by the appearance of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, released in 1989 by the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue), published in 2021.  Students of such things aren’t expecting the next update for at least a decade but finding a name might prove more of a challenge than editing the Old Testament’s Book of Leviticus for a modern audience although those who have worked in biblical forks have found alpha-numeric solutions such as RSV-2CE (Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (2006))

First Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, "Copy No 1", held in the National Library of Ireland.  It contains in Joyce's hand an inscription to the English political activist Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876–1961) who was for decades his patron.

A first edition of Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce (1882–1941) in 2009 sold on the opening day of an antiquarian book fair London for Stg£275,000, at the time a record for a twentieth century first edition.  Ulysses is regarded in the industry as the most collectable modern novel and the first editions, printed on hand-made Dutch fine-paper, are well-catalogued and this was number 45 of the first edition print run (all signed by the author) of 100, one of four not previously accounted for.  It had been sold originally by the Manhattan’s obviously subversive Sunwise Turn bookshop (Ulysses at the times banned in the US) and remained in the possession of the same family, stored in its original box and thus not exposed to light, accounting for the preservation of the construction.  Proving that dealers in literary circles can gush with the finest used car salesmen, the dealer who arranged the sale explained: “The color is amazing – this lovely Aegean Sea, Greek flag blue which would normally have darkened into a more dirty blue but because it has been in a box it is a complete thing of beauty.”  The almost pristine condition was a product also of its history of use, an inspection suggesting it was seemingly unread except for the well-thumbed final chapter where the most salacious passages can be found.  The existence of unread copies of well-known books is not unusual and those notorious for sitting neglected on the bookshelf include “challenging” texts such as A Theory of Justice (1971) by John Rawls (1921–2002), A Brief History of Time (1988) by Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) and Joyce’s own, bafflingly difficult Finnegans Wake (1939).  Intriguingly, the antiquarian book business also includes the category “pre-first edition” (any limited run copy of a book printed before the “first edition” is published).  The apparent oxymoron is explained by “first edition” being an industry definition rather than a literal description; pre-first editions thus analogous with “pre-production” or “final prototype” cars which (if they’ve survive the crusher which claims most) can be prized by collectors.

Among special editions there are, inter alia, “Collector's Editions”, “Anniversary Editions” and even, in one instance, the “So Fetch Edition”.

In commerce, “special editions” have become notable income generators for content providers and the movie business has embraced the concept with editions such as “the making of”, “bloopers & out-takes”, “director’s cut” and others and the idea isn’t new.  Led Zeppelin's eighth studio album (In Through the Out Door (1979)) originally was sold with an outer sleeve of plain brown paper, stamped with nothing more than the while the cardboard sleeve proper within was released with six different versions of the artwork.  Buyers would thus not know which sleeve they were selecting.  There’s nothing to suggest it was anything but a gimmick and neither the band nor the record company were expecting many to keep buying copies in the plain brown wrapped until they’d scored all six covers but there were press reports at the time of "Led Heads" doing exactly that.  The industry took note.

Taylor Swift's The Anthology, one of 34 available editions of The Tortured Poets Department.

The attraction of releasing multiple versions of essentially the same product with variations restricted to some added content or detail differences in the packaging is that the additional costs in production and distribution are marginal yet there’s sometimes it’s possible to charge a premium for the “non-standard editions”.  The practice had for decades been quite a thing with car manufacturers but the music business came also to like the idea because, unlike with the cars where customers tended to buy one at a time, obsessive fans of musicians might be persuaded they needed several copies of what was essentially the same thing.  Leftist UK student site The Tab noted few music fans were as obsessive as Taylor Swift’s (b 1989) Swifties and, more significantly, they were also impressively numerous and thus an irresistible catchment of disposable income.  What The TAB noted was the almost simultaneous release of a remarkable (and apparently unprecedented) of 34 versions of Ms Swift’s eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024), something which as well as generating revenue has the statistical benefit of afforcing her presence on the charts, every sale counting as a 1.0.  Some were technologically deterministic in than four were released as audio cassettes and nine were exclusively digital bit most were essentially the same product except for the inclusion of a bonus track and there were some available only through the retailer Target.  The most obsessive Swifties obviously could buy all 34 editions but for those which want just an exhaustive collection of the music, it appeared all was included on the accurately named The Anthology so there was that.  One day, all 34, still (where appropriate) unopened in their original packaging will appear begin to appear on auction sites.  The approach attracted some adverse comment (which the Swifties doubtless ignored) and probably confirmed in the mind of JD Vance (b 1984; US senator (Republican-Ohio) since 2023) that childless cat ladies are evil.

All editions: The Tab’s The Tortured Poets Department discography:

1. Collector’s Edition Deluxe with The Manuscript
2. Collector’s Edition Deluxe with The Albatross
3. Collector’s Edition Deluxe with The Bolter
4. Collector’s Edition Deluxe with The Black Dog
5. Standard album and The Manuscript
6. Standard and The Manuscript (signed)
7. Standard and But Daddy I Love Him (Acoustic)
8. Standard and Guilty As Sin? (Acoustic)
9. Standard and Down Bad (Acoustic)
10. Standard and Fortnight (Acoustic)
11. Standard and Fresh Out The Slammer (Acoustic)
12. Target exclusive with The Albatross
13. Target exclusive with The Bolter
14. Target exclusive with The Black Dog
15. Target exclusive vinyl
16. The Manuscript vinyl (pressing one)
17. The Manuscript vinyl (pressing two)
18. The Albatross vinyl
19. The Bolter vinyl
20. The Black Dog vinyl
21. The Manuscript vinyl
22. The Anthology
23. Standard and The Black Dog ‘voice memo’
24. Standard album and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me voice memo
25. Standard album and Cassandra voice memo
26. Standard album (digital)
27. Standard album and Daddy I Love Him (Acoustic)
28. Standard album and loml (live from Paris)
29. Standard album and My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys (live from Paris)
30. Standard album and The Alchemy / Treacherous mashup (live from Paris)
31. The Manuscript cassette
32. The Bolter cassette
33. The Albatross cassette
34. The Black Dog cassette

1976 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, Lipstick edition.  The shade of red appears to be close to Dior's lipstick #744 (Party Red).

The car manufacturers have produced at least hundreds of “special editions”, a concept to which they kept returning because it was lucrative, the things usually profitable to an extent exceeding greatly the nominal sum of their parts.  Quite how many have existed over the years is difficult to estimate because, in addition to the well-documented examples from manufacturers which were sold nationally or even globally, some were offered only briefly or regionally and barely advertised.  Additionally, dealers or sometimes an agglomeration of them would also conjure up their own "special editions" so the total of such things is probably in the thousands.  Sometimes, fashion houses were paid to lend their name, AMC teaming with Pierre Cardin, Levi Strauss (Volkswagen also had a denim-trimmed Beetle though without a specific brand attribution) & Oleg Cassini while the Lincoln Continental at times was offered with themes by Emilio Pucci, Cartier, Bill Blass and de Givenchy although the most memorable were the reputed 500 “Lipstick editions”, a study in red & white, quite a sight given the expanse of sheet metal and leather.

1969 Dodge Charger R/T SE (left), 1972 Chrysler VH Valiant Charger 770SE E55 (centre left), 1976 Holden HX LE (centre right) and 2002 Mazda Miata Special Edition (MX-5 in some markets) (right).

In most of the “special” editions, offered over the decades, it was only in the advertising or press kits that terms like “special edition” or “limited edition” appeared.  Sometimes though, such physical badges did appear on the vehicles. In the US, on the 1969 Dodge Chargers with the SE option, the badge included both “SE” & “Special Edition” while in Australia, only “SE” appeared on the 1972 Chrysler VH Valiant Charger 770SE E55 (one of the industry’s longer model names) although the marketing material called it a “Special Edition”, a usage borrowed from the parent corporation in the US and even the badge used was the same part as that which had been stuck on the 1970 Dodge Challenger SE.  Holden’s frankly cynical (but most profitable) 1976 LE spelled out “Limited Edition” under a “LE” (in a larger font) while Mazda used only the full term for the Miata (MX-5) Special Edition models.

Limited Edition, less limited profit: The Holden LE

1976 HX Holden LE

By the mid 1970s, the market had come to prefer the cheaper, smaller and easier to use cassette tapes which meant warehouses were soon full of the once desirable 8-track players and buyers were scarce.  In Australia, GMH (General Motor Holden) by 1975 had nearly a thousand in the inventory which also bulged with 600-odd Monaro body-shells, neither of which were attracting customers; fashions change and both had become unfashionable.  Fortunately, GMH was well-acquainted with the concept of the "parts-bin special edition" whereby old, unsaleable items are bundled together and sold at what appears a discount, based for advertising purposes on a book-value retail price there’s no longer any chance of realizing.  Thus created was the high-priced, limited edition LE (which stood for "Limited Edition", the Monaro name appearing nowhere although all seem still to use the name), in metallic crimson with gold pin striping, golf "honeycomb" aluminium wheels, fake (plastic) burl walnut trim and crushed velour (polyester) upholstery; in the 1970s, this was tasteful.  Not designed for the purpose, the eight-track cartridge player crudely was bolted to the console but five-hundred and eighty LEs were made, GMH pleasantly surprised at how quickly they sold with no need to resort to discounting.  When new, they listed at Aus$11,500, a pleasingly profitable premium of some 35% above the unwanted vehicle on which it was based; these days, examples are advertised for sale for (Aus$) six-figure sums and anyone who now buys a LE does so for reasons other than specific-performance.  Although of compact size (in US terms) and fitted with a 308 cubic inch (5.0 litre) V8, it could achieve barely 110 mph (175 km/h), acceleration was lethargic by earlier and (much) later standards yet fuel consumption was high; slow and thirsty the price to be paid for the early implementations of the emission control plumbing bolted to engines designed during more toxic times.      

1971 Holden HQ Monaro LS 350

The overwrought and bling-laden Holden HX typified the tendency during the 1970s and of US manufacturers and their colonial off-shoots to take a fundamentally elegant design and, with a heavy-handed re-style, distort it into something ugly.  A preview of the later “malaise era” (so named in the US for many reasons), it was rare for a facelift to improve the original.  The 1971 HQ Holden was admired for an austerity of line and fine detailing; what followed over three subsequent generations lacked that restraint.  The HX LE was one of a number of "special" and "limited" editions offered during the era and it remains one of the few remembered.

Malevolent, malicious & malignant

Malevolent (pronounced muh-lev-uh-luhnt)

(1) Wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious.

(2) Evil; harmful; injurious.

(3) In astrology, a force evil or malign in influence.

1500–1510:  From the Middle English malevolent (suggested by Middle English malevolence (analyzed of late as “male violence”)), from the Old French malivolent and the Latin malevolentem, the construct being male (badly, ill, wrongly) + volens (wanting, willing, wishing”), the present participle of velle (to want, wish for, desire).  The most commonly used form in Latin appears to have been malevolēns (ill-disposed, spiteful).  Upon entering English in the sixteenth century, the word retained this sense of ill will or harmful intent.  The adjective malevolent (having an evil disposition toward another or others, wishing evil to others) dates from the early sixteenth century while the noun malevolence (the character of being ill-disposed toward another or others; ill-will, malice, personal hatred) was in use by the mid-fifteenth, from the Old French malevolence and directly from Latin malevolentia (ill-will, dislike, hatred), from malevolentem (nominative malevolens) (ill-disposed, wishing ill, spiteful, envious).  The antonym is benevolent and the usual negative forms are unmalevolent & non-malevolent.  Malevolent is an adjective, malevolence is a noun and malevolently is an adverb; the noun plural malevolences.

The writings of Russian-American author & mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (often styled Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891; co-founder of the Theosophical Society (1875)) were in the nineteenth century influential in non-mainstream theology and philosophy circles.  Her work included exploring "…the horrifying principles and malignant influence of the Society of Jesus [the Jesuit Order, a Roman Catholic cult] are brought out in the open for all to see, hitherto secret ciphers of the so-called higher Masonic degrees revealed, examples of Jesuit cryptography exposed, and a High Mason’s critical strictures upon Masonry itself articulated.”   In July 1773, Clement XIV (1705–1774; pope 1769-1774), acting on a request from many governments disturbed by the Jesuits’ plotting and scheming, issued the brief Dominus ac Redemptor (Lord and Redeemer) which dissolved the cult.  However, the Jesuits went underground and conducted a masonic-like infiltration of the Church which culminated in the pressure exerted on Pius VII (1742–1823; pope 1800-1823) who in 1814 issued the papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum (The care of all Churches) allowing the order to be re-established and resume its Masonic ways.

Malicious (pronounced muh-lish-uhs)

(1) Full of, characterized by, or showing malice; intentionally harmful; spiteful.

(2) In common law jurisdictions, vicious, wanton, or mischievous in motivation or purpose (often in statute as an “aggravating circumstance”).

(3) In common law jurisdictions as malicious prosecution, an intentional tort which arises from a party (1) intentionally and maliciously instituting or pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal) that is (2) brought without probable cause and (3) dismissed in favor of the other party.  It belongs sometimes to the class of actions called “abuse of process”.

(4) In common law jurisdictions as “malicious prosecution”, a common law intentional tort which arises from a party (1) intentionally and maliciously instituting or pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal) that is (2) brought without probable cause and (3) dismissed in favor of the other party.

(5) In common law jurisdictions as “malicious mischief”, the willful, wanton, or reckless destruction of the personal property of another occasioned by actual ill will or resentment toward the owner or possessor of such property.

1175–1225: From the Middle English malicious (which may have existed in the Old English as malicius but this is contested), from the Old French malicios (showing ill will, spiteful, wicked (which persists in Modern French as malicieux)) from the Latin malitiōsus (wicked, malicious), the construct being maliti(a) (badness; ill will; spite), from malus (bad; evil) + -osus.  In Latin, the -ōsus suffix was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun.  The Middle English form displaced the earlier native Middle English ivelwilled & ivelwilly (malicious), both related to the Old English yfelwillende (literally “evil-willing”).  In early fourteenth century Anglo-French legal language, it meant “characterized by malice prepense”, essentially little different from the sense “malicious” today enjoys in statute in common law jurisdictions.  The adverb maliciously (in a spiteful manner, with enmity or ill-will) emerged in the late fourteenth century while the noun maliciousness (extreme enmity or disposition to injure; actions prompted by hatred) was in use a few decades later.  The spelling malitious is obsolete.  The usual negative forms are non-malicious & unmalicious but lexicographers note also the use of semi-malicious & quasi-malicious, forms adopted presumably when some nuance of the evil done seems helpful.  At the other end of the scale of maliciousness, the comparative is more malicious and the superlative most malicious.  Malicious is an adjective, maliciousness is a noun and maliciously is an adverb.

Malignant (pronounced muh-lig-nuhnt)

(1) Disposed to cause harm, suffering, or distress deliberately; feeling or showing ill will or hatred.

(2) Very dangerous or harmful in influence or effect.

(3) In pathology, tending to produce death.

(4) In medicine (usually of cells or a tumor), characterized by uncontrolled growth; cancerous, invasive, or metastatic.

1540s: From the Middle French malignant, from the Late Latin malignantem (nominative malignans) (acting from malice), stem of malignāns, present participle of malignāre (to act maliciously; to behave with malign intent) and malignō (to malign, viciously to act).  The English malign (evil or malignant in disposition, nature, intent or influence) was from the Middle English maligne, from the Old French maligne, from the Latin malignus, the construct being malus (bad) + -gnus (born), from gignere (to bear, beget) from the primitive Indo-European root gene- (give birth, beget).  In medicine (of tumors and such), the antonym is “benign” but non-malignant & unmalignant both exist as does semi-malignant which sounds strange to non-clinical ears but which is used apparently with the sense of “not very malignant”, presumably something of a comfort to a patient.  The most commonly distinction in medicine seems to be between “malignant” and “benign” and this provide the author Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) with one of his better jabs.  Learning that the notoriously obnoxious Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) had been operated on after a tumor was found, when told it had been removed and sent for an analysis which proved it “benign”, he observed: “What a miracle that modern medicine could find the only part of Randolph that is not malignant and then remove it.”  Malignant is an adjective, malignancy & malignance are nouns, malignantly is an adverb; the noun plural is malignancies.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

The word entered the medical jargon in the 1560s but the earlier use was as a theological slur, the Church describing as malignant “those damnable followers of the antichrist” in the ecclesiam malignantum (best translated as “Church of the Wicked”), a concept found in many writings in early Christian thought, particularly among certain groups that emphasized the contrast between the true, faithful Church and those who they believed were corrupt or evil within the broader Christian community.  The theme continues to this day and can be identified as the source of many schisms and internecine conflicts within and between many religions.  The term existed in a number of Latin Christian writings, often linked to Augustinian theology.  Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in his work attacking the Donatists (a Christian sect which in the fourth century forced a schism in the Church of Carthage) referenced the ecclesia malignantium to describe those within the Church who were corrupt or sinful, in contrast to the ecclesia sancta (the holy Church).  It was Augustine who constructed the influential doctrine that while within the Church, there could be both saints and sinners, ultimately the Church itself remained holy, an interesting proto-structralism upon which churches of many denominations to this day fall back upon in their handling of clerical scandals.

The ecclesia malignantium were used metaphorically to contrast the “true” Church (those who genuinely followed Christ) with those who may have been Christian in name but acted in ways that were contrary to Christian teachings, thus aligning themselves with evil or wickedness.  In the secular world, the model is not unfamiliar, a modern example being those in the US Republican Party not judged sufficiently “pure” by the right-wing fanatics being labeled “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only), an idea Saint Augustine would have recognized.  So, faith and politics can both be binary exercises, those judged heretical, schismatic, or in some way morally corrupt being a malignant presence in the community and needing to be excised as swiftly as the surgeon’s scalpel slices out a malignant tumor.  During the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation in Europe, the language was re-purposed, by the 1540s used by protestant theologians and activists to condemn as heretics the pope and the Church in Rome.  By the 1590s, malignant was in use to mean (of persons) “disposed to inflict suffering or cause distress” whereas in the early fourteenth century “malign” was used as an adjective and the now extinct malignous meant “poisonous, noxious”.  The noun malignancy dates from circa 1600 and by mid century had come to mean “state of extreme malevolence, bitter enmity”, the particular use in medicine (of diseases, growths, tumors etc with a virulence and tendency to get worse) appears in the medical literature from the 1680s.  In English history, borrowing from the turbulent priests, both the followers of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) and the royalist forces would label each other “malignants”.

In English, “mal-” words are familiar.  The mal- prefix was from the Old French mal- (bad; badly) from the Latin adverb male, from malus (bad, wicked).  In English the prefix was applied to create words variously with some denotation of the negative including (1) bad, badly (malinfluence), (1) unhealthy; harmful (malware), (3) unpleasant (malodorous) (4) incorrect (malformed), (5) incomplete (maldescent) & (6) deficiently (malnourished).  Malevolent, malicious & malignant are from a different linage but all are in some way negative on nature but there are differences between them:  Malevolent means “having or showing a desire to cause harm to others and carries the connotation of “a deep-rooted ill will or hatred”.  Malicious means “intending to do harm, typically without justification” and connotes something of an emphasis on a “spiteful or cruel intent”.  Malignant means “harmful, dangerous, or likely to cause death and while historically it was used to refer to “extreme malevolence”, the use in medicine has in the modern age tended to make that use almost exclusive although it can still be used of anything (or anyone) actively harmful or evil.  So in use, the modern tendency is for malevolent to be used of “ill will or hatred”, malicious “an intent to cause harm” and malignant “something that is dangerously harmful, often in a physical or medical context”.  The related "malign" seems most be used of intent and harmful speech.  Which to use hangs also on intent; if someone is murdered by the Freemasons, it’s not unreasonable to suppose the intent was malicious and the act malevolent but had they been eaten by a shark while swimming, neither word should be invoked because that’s just a thing sharks do.