Siren

Siren (pronounced sahy-ruhn)

(1) In classical mythology, one of several sea nymphs, sometimes depicted as part-woman, part-bird (and sometimes as sisters) who, with their seductive singing (their “siren song” or “siren call”), lured mariners to destruction on the rocky shore.

(2) A woman who sings sweetly and charms.

(3) In slang, a seductively beautiful or charming woman, especially one who beguiles men; a seductress, temptress or vamp; a dangerous woman who preys on the weaknesses and susceptibilities (there are a few of both).

(4) An acoustical instrument for producing musical tones, consisting essentially of a disk pierced with holes arranged equidistantly in a circle, rotated over a jet or stream of compressed air, steam or the like, so that the stream is alternately interrupted and allowed to pass.

(5) An variation of this implement, making a piercingly loud sound and used as a whistle, fog signal, or warning device; the sound made by such a device.

(6) In zoology, (1) any of several aquatic, eel-like salamanders of the family Sirenidae, having permanent external gills, small forelimbs and no posterior limbs, (2) a member of Sirenia, an order of mammals or (3) any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Hestina.

(7) Anything seductive or tempting (especially if potentially dangerous or harmful (something said to exert “a siren call” on one’s desire).

(8) In music, a musical instrument (one of the few aerophones in the percussion section of the symphony orchestra).

(9) An instrument for demonstrating the laws of beats and combination tones.

(10) In astronomy & astrophysics, an astrophysical event able to be used for calculating cosmic distances.

(11) As “siren suit”, an overall-like one-piece garment introduced in the UK during the “Blitz” as something to be worn by those in air-raid shelters.  

1300-1350: From the Middle English siren & serein, from the Old French sereine, (the Modern French sereine dating from the twelfth century), from the Late Latin sīrēna and the Classical Latin Sīrēn & Sīrēna, from the Ancient Greek Σειρήν (Seirḗn).  The Seirēnes were the alluring sea nymphs of classical mythology and the figurative sense of “one who sings sweetly and charms” was first noted in the 1580s although the classical descriptions of them were mangled in medieval translations, resulting in some odd and fantastical notions of their appearance and it wasn’t unusual for them to be conflated with mermaids.  The Vulgate (the Biblia Vulgata, the fourth century translation of the Bible which, through the choices of words and senses made by the translator(s) had a profound effect on Christianity and Christendom) also gifted to Middle English the use of the word to describe an imaginary species of flying serpents, based on glossary explanations of the Latin sirenes in Isaiah 13:22 (“And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.”  (King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611)).  In the Greek, the word was used also to mean "a deceitful woman" although etymologists note that may have been to suggest she was “a binder, an entangler”, the sense from seira (cord, rope).  In zoology, the mammalian sense appeared first in French in Les entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène (Conversations between Ariste & Eugène) by the French Jesuit priest Dominique Bouhours (1628–1702) while the use to describe the aquatic salamander was introduced in 1766 by Swedish zoologist & physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778 and styled as Carl von Linné after 1761) for a genus of reptiles.  In organic chemistry, scientists noted the attraction exerted by the sirens of mythology and coined “sirenin” to describe a sexual attraction pheromone in some fungi of the genus Allomyces.  Less charmingly, in early twentieth century Australian urban slang, a “stem siren” was a prostitute; in the Australian way, often it was clipped to “stem”.

The use to describe the mechanical device “making a warning sound” was first recorded in 1879 when they were installed on steamboats and this may have been imitative of the similar French word.  In the course of the twentieth century, the things were adapted as audible warning devices for many purposes including air raids, emergency service vehicles and fire alarms (now mandatory in residential accommodation in many jurisdictions).  In schools, workplaces and other geographically large sites, they were used to mark the start and finish of shifts, lessons, meal breaks etc.  The Elizabethan era (1558-1603) adjectives sirenean, sirenian, sirenic, sirenical & sireny) went extinct but as late as the 1940s, the spelling variation sireen still occasionally appeared and not always as a deliberate archaism.  The writer & critic John Ruskin (1819–1900 and known for his fondness for young. beautiful creatures), used the rare sirenic so with that imprimatur, some modern aesthete might be tempted to revive the form.  Siren is a noun & verb, sirenize is a verb, sirenlike, sirenless, sirenical & sirenic are adjectives; the noun plural is sirens or (the rare) sirenes.

Odysseus and the Sirens

In Greek mythology, the Sirens were sea demons, half-woman and half bird (although there were variants in the tales).  They were said to be the daughters of Achelous and either Melpomene, Sterope or Terpsichore, Phorcys often named as their father, while it was also related they were born of the blood of Achelous when he was wounded by Heracles. There were two Sirens in the Odyssey (Homer’s eighth century BC epic poem following the ten year trek of King Odysseus (Ulysses) returning to his home island Ithaca after the decade-long Trojan War) but in the works of later authors there could be four (more often three).  Historians attribute variations in the myths to (1) authorial innovation or (2) in an age of limited literacy, poetry spread in oral performance, meaning details could become blurred.  What was consistent was the musical virtuosity of the Sirens, a popular depiction of them as a three-piece ensemble, one playing the flute and one the lyre while another sang her songs.

Sirens and the Night (1865), oil on canvas by William Edward Frost (1810-1877).

The Sirens used their lyrical and earthly charms to lure sailors to their death; attracted by the enchanting music and voices, the seduced seafarers would sail their ships too close to the rocky coast of the nymphs' island and there be shipwrecked.  Not untypically for the myths of Antiquity, the Sirens are said to have had many homes.  The Romans said they lived on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli while later authors place them variously on the islands of Anthemoessa, on Cape Pelorum, on the islands of the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae.  All were places with rocky coasts and tall cliffs and thus for ships potentially lethal places although the fate of sailors was more gruesome, the Sirens devouring them.  The Argonauts sailed close to the Sirens, but, using the same principle as “radio jamming” in the twentieth century, Orpheus sang as long as the crew was within earshot of them (“drowning out their signal”), so none were lured (except the unfortunate Butes, carried away by Aphrodite after he fell victim).

Temptress in Siren mode: Lindsay Lohan, First Point (2011).

It was Odysseus who most famously escaped the sirens.  Longing to hear their songs but, forewarned by Circe and having no wish to be shipwrecked and devoured, he had his sailors fill their ears with beeswax, rendering them deaf.  Then, he ordered he be tied to the mast, telling his crew that whatever he said, they were not to release him but instead tighten the knots, not cutting the bonds until the ship had sailed far from the coast.  Of course, approaching the rocks, he heard the lovely voices and implored the crew to release him but they followed their skipper’s orders, not setting him free until the danger had passed.  Some writers claimed the Sirens were doomed to die if a man heard their singing and escaped and, as Odysseus sailed off, they flung themselves into the waters and drowned but, among the myths, that was not always their fate.  The idea of the Sirens persists in idiomatic use: the term “siren sound” refers to words or something exerting a particularly compelling attraction but “siren song” or “siren call” can be used of something not directly audible, such as the thoughts evoked by a painting or even a concept; populism, fascism & communism have all been described thus.  That idiomatic use describes an enticing but dangerous appeal, especially a misleading one.

The Roman Poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) wrote that the Sirens were once ordinary girls, companions of Persephone; in his telling they were something “nice girls from good families who got led astray by mixing with the wrong crowd”.  When Persephone was abducted by Pluto, they asked the gods for wings so they could soar in the skies to help them search for their lost companion; that’s the most romantic explanation for the “half-woman and half bird” motif.  More unforgiving writers attributed the transformation to (1) the anger felt by Demeter when the Sirens failed to prevent the abduction of her daughter or (2) the wrath of Aphrodite who sought to deprived them of their feminine beauty because they scorned the pleasures of love.  A twist on that was that after their transformation, they made the mistake of trying to rival the muses who avenged the slight by plucking the Sirens’ feathers.  In a literary sense, the nymphs certainly exerted on authors a siren call.  The tomb of the Siren Parthenope was said to be in Naples, where her body had been cast upon the shore and that geographical connection is in the narrative strand in which Parthenope was a hauntingly beautiful Phrygian girl who fell in love with Metiochus but could not bring herself to break her vow of chastity.  She cut off her hair and ran off into exile in Campania (close to Naples) where she dedicated herself to Dionysus, something possibly the origin of Aphrodite’s disapprobation; it was Aphrodite who turned Parthenope into a Siren as punishment for abandoning her love.  The Sirens were also said to sing for the blessed in the Islands of the Blessed; because they could play the celestial harmonies, they were often depicted on sarcophagi.

First Point (2011) by Richard Phillips (b 1962), hosted by Vimeo by courtesy of Richard Phillips and Gagosian Gallery.  Lindsay Lohan as a siren; it would seem almost a calling.  Screened in conjunction with the 54^th international exhibition of the Venice Biennale (June 2011), First Point was a short film said by the diredctor to represent a “new kind of portraiture.”  Filmed in Malibu, California, the piece was included in the Commercial Break series, presented by Moscow's Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (now Garage Museum of Contemporary Art); although the promotional notes indicated it would include footage of the ankle monitor she helped make famous, the device doesn't appear in the final cut.

Directed by: Richard Phillips & Taylor Steele

Director of Photography: Todd Heater

Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick

Creative Director: Dominic Sidhu

Art Director: Kyra Griffin

Editor: Haines Hall

Color mastering: Pascal Dangin for Boxmotion

Music: Tamaryn & Rex John Shelverton

The Chrysler Air Raid Siren and the Firepower V8  

According to Guinness World Records, the loudest sirens ever were the 350-odd built in the early 1950s by Chrysler for the US government and installed around the country to warn of an impending nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.  The maximum volume the devices generated was recorded (at a distance of 100 feet (30.5 m)) as 138 dB (decibels), a level at which a human would suffer at least temporary deafness if within around 200 feet (60 m) during operation.  Guinness noted the compressor discharge throughput at peak volume was 74 m³ (2,610 cubic feet at 7 lb per square inch) of air per second and the physics of fluid dynamics (air a fluid in this context) was such this would have caused a sheet of paper in the path spontaneously to ignite.  By comparison the now retired SST (supersonic transport) airline Concorde at take-off produced noise levels between 112-114 dB at a distance of 100 feet and even afterburner equipped military jets (F-16, F-35 etc) haven’t been recorded as generating levels as high as 138 dB.

Although there were ebbs in the tensions, the “High Cold War” is defined usually as the time between the early 1950s and late 1960s, the public's fear of thermo-nuclear war at sometimes acute. In popular culture, the subject was a popular with authors and film-makers, the best known including the book On the Beach (1957) by Neville Shute (1899-1960) and the memorable film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), based on the novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George (1924–1966).  The US government made many preparations for such an event, notably building vast underground facilities where essential personnel (members of the administration, the Congress, their families and servants) could live until it was safe for them to emerge into the post-apocalypse world and stake claim to whatever habitable real-estate remained.  The taxpayers who paid for these facilities were of course rather less protected but the government in 1952 did install warning sirens in cities; people might still be vaporized by comrade Stalin's (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) H-Bombs but they would know what was coming so there was that.

US war-room film set for Stanley Kubrick's (1928-1999) film version of Dr Strangelove.  Upon becoming president in 1981, Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, POTUS 1981-1989) was reported as being disappointed nothing quite so dramatic actually existed, the White House's “Situation Room” something like what would be used by an insurance company to conduct sales training seminars.  The story is thought likely apocryphal but there is documentary evidence Mr Reagan did sometimes confuse historic fact with what he's seen in movies.

The early version of the warning siren was co-developed by Chrysler and Bell Labs and named CBVS (Chrysler Bell Victory Siren) which, given the consequences of nuclear war, seems at least optimistic.  Technically, although the acoustic properties met the specification, the drawback was the devices manually were activated and controlled, requiring someone physically to be on-location to start the thing and, being directional, rotate it so the sound would be broadcast 360^o.  The obvious flaw in that was, were  there to be a nuclear attack in the area, the job-description, at least potentially, was self-sacrificial, something comrade Stalin doubtless would have thought just the part of the cost of war with the unfortunate patriotic soul posthumously to be awarded the coveted Герой Советского Союза (Hero of the Soviet Union) decoration.  However, neither the White House or the Pentagon liked the optics and revised specifications for the sirens were issued.

Photograph by Rob Storms of Chrysler Air Raid Siren atop Rochester Fire Department Maintenance Building, Rochester, Monroe County, New York.

Chrysler's engineers responded with a more elaborate device, automated and remotely administrated; because it was developed wholly in-house, the corporate-themed acronym CARS (Chrysler Air Raid Siren) was coined.  Introduced in 1952, the new design was powered by Chrysler’s new, 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) Hemi-head V8, rated at what was then a stellar 180 HP (134 kW), a three-stage compressor added to increase output.  Instead of demanding a doomed operator, there was a control panel connected (with nothing more than the two-pair copper cables that became familiar as Cat3 “phone-wire”) to dedicated phone lines so it could be activated either by local civil defense authorities or the military.  The big V8 provided sufficient power to both increase the dB and the geographical coverage, the siren able to be heard over an area of some 15.8 square miles (41 km²), an impressive number given the electric sirens used today for tornado and tsunami warnings have an effective footprint of only some 3.9 square miles (10 km²).

Chrysler Air Raid Siren being delivered on the back of a Dodge flatbed truck, 1953.

In 1952, there was no engine better suited to the task than Chrysler’s new “FirePower” Hemi V8.  Applying their wartime experience building a number of high-output, multi-cylinder engines (the most remarkable a V16 aero-engine rendered obsolete by jet technology before it could be used), the FirePower featured hemispherical combustion chambers and was the corporation’s first use of OHV (overhead valves) in passenger vehicle engines.  Both OHV and hemispherical combustion chambers had been around for decades but, before long, Chrysler would make a (trade-marked) fetish of “Hemi”, continuing cheerfully to use the name for a range of V8s introduced in 2003 even though they no longer used a true hemi-head, the design unable to be adapted to meet modern exhaust emission laws.  The so-called “third generation” Hemi remains available still although how long it will last will be a matter of the interplay of politics and demand.  Doubtless, it’s on Greta Thunberg’s (b 2003) long (and expanding) hit-list and that she and the engine arrived on planet Earth in the same year won't much impress her.

Chrysler FirePower 392 cubic inch (6.4 litre) V8 in 1957 Chrysler 300C Convertible.  In the jargon, the pair of four barrel carburetors were dubbed  “dual quads”.

First sold in 1950, the FirePower appeared first as a 331, growing over the decade to 354 (5.8) and then 392 (6.4) before being retired in 1959, the wedge-headed alternative with increased displacement a cheaper path to power (the hemi heads needing special machining and the valve-train was heavy and labor-intensive to assemble).  Chrysler and Imperial shared the engines but remarkably, in an approach that would today shock accountants and efficiency experts, the companion divisions (De Soto & Dodge) produced nine different hemi-head V8s with capacities between 241 (4.0) and 345 (5.6) with relatively little commonality of components between them all.  The last of the FirePowers were noted also for being one of the first engines offered with electronic fuel injection (built with analogue components) but while that offered real advantages over the mechanical systems then available in a handful of models in Europe and the US, the technology was then too fragile to be reliable and most of the 16 sold (reputedly all but one) were recalled and retro-fitted with a pair of faithful four barrel carburetors.  In 1964, the hemi-head was revived for a racing engine and, to satisfy the regulatory body that had been unimpressed with the use of such a thing in a series for “stock” cars, it was made available to the public between 1966-1971, this time called “Street Hemi”.  In 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) form, it gained a reputation Chrysler would exploit for decades after production ended.

Some 350 CARS were built, all by the Chrysler's M&I (Marine & Industrial Engine Division, based in Trenton, Michigan) with some maintained in service as late as the 1970s.  During the era of détente, the last were retired, some sold to museums or collectors while other were just abandoned because, mounted atop tall buildings to maximize their acoustic coverage, the cost of removal far exceeded their value as units to be re-purposed or scraped.  At least three fully functional CARS still exist, one in a remote part of Texas where it’s safe to stage the occasional demonstration of the sound.  During these displays, the clear zone (minimum safe distance) extends outwards 320 feet (97.5 metres) but even at this range, anyone standing directly in front of the projection horns would find the experience uncomfortable, prolonged exposure risking some damage to the eardrums.  Although directional, there’s much “sound soak” in the device's proximity so just operating the siren from the side control panel requires hearing protection (acoustic earmuffs rated at a minimum 30 dB).

CARS at the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing, re-awakened after decades, 1997.

One collector attracted to them was Don Garlits (b 1932) who, in the post-war years, was among the most innovative and successful drivers and builders in the then wildly popular sport of drag-racing and it was with highly-modified Chrysler Hemis (the HP (horsepower) of which would come to be generated in thousands) he built his reputation.  In 1997, a documentary crew from the UK visited Garlits and saw one of the old CARS sitting neglected in the storeroom where it’d sat for decades after having spent some 20 years in salt-laden air atop a Florida high-rise.  Remarkably, after doing little more than connecting a battery and checking the oil and coolant, once a carburetor had been bolted on with a can of gas (petrol) rigged up, it started almost immediately, a reasonable achievement given it had never before run on gasoline because the CARS always used propane.  As Garlits over the decades had discovered a ¼ mile (402 metres) at a time, the FirePower Hemi was a tough old thing.

The Siren Suit

Weldon pattern for siren suit, 1940.  Home-made clothes used to be common and wartime conditions made the practice spike.  The production and distribution of patterns was a significant industry, enduring, at a smaller scale, to this day.

Unrelated to the seductive Sirens of mythology, the “siren suit” was a World War II (1939-1945) era coining describing a garment “ideal to wear when there was a risk of an air-raid siren sounding”.  The design wasn’t new; they would have been familiar to previous generations as the “overalls” mechanics and such wore to protect their clothing from oil and dirt, the novelty being the application.  Because “the Blitz” (the bombing campaign against London and other English cities waged by the Luftwaffe (the German Air Force) in 1940-1941) was conducted at night, that meant air-raid sirens were most likely to sound when people were in bed and the attraction of the “overall-like” siren suit was it could be worn over nightwear (pyjamas, nighties and such), meaning that upon being wakened by the siren, time would not be wasted getting dressed before rushing off to seek shelter; all one need to put on was one’s shoes.  With wool, silk & cotton supplies being diverted to military production, recycled blends using the more available rayon came increasingly to be used and the versatility of the synthetic made it popular; available in a variety of weights, unlike fabrics made from natural fibres, it was not subject to creasing or shrinkage.  In 1940, the most commonly requested feature was a “hood” and these came to be included on many, often with a lining for additional warmth.  Stylistically and conceptually, the siren suit can thus be imagined as a “proto-onesie”, one of the twenty-first century’s more controversial garments, not so much for what is it (warm, comfortable, convenient) but for where some choose to frequent while wearing one (Walmart, fast food outlets and such).

Wartime individualism, circa 1941: Despite wartime privations, fashion sense didn’t die and ways were found to individualize even the most starkly functional items.

As this publicity shot indicates, gas-masks were in the UK of 1940 a piece of compulsory kit for civilians, the use of poison gas expected by many in politics and the military.  Ironically, of all the leaders in the era, it was only Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who was enthusiastic about the use of gas as a weapon, thinking it ideal to deploy on beaches in the event of an amphibious assault by the Wehrmacht (the German military (1935-1945)).  Even Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) explicitly ruled out the use of poison gas, despite the Germans also holding large stocks.  Although in 1918 Hitler had learned of Germany’s capitulation when in hospital recovering from the temporary blindness suffered after being gassed, his unwillingness to use gas was not a humanitarian gesture but because the unpredictability of the wind (in Europe the “westerly” (ie from west to east) the prevailing type) made use too risky.

As a unisexual style, by 1940, the siren suit wouldn’t have been too shocking a challenge to the fashion police.  Although the tradition is longer still, in the West, women routinely (if not universally) had been wearing “trousers” since the mid-nineteenth century (for sport, work & leisure, the light and convenient “pyjama-suit” welcomed by many) and, during World War I (1914-1918), as in increasing numbers they entered the industrial workforce to replace men conscripted for military service, the sheer functionality of trousers was compelling (and often, for safety reasons, compulsory); women in overalls became commonplace.  Given the purpose, the early siren suits (the less pleasing “blitz suit” never catching on) were designed with little in mind except comfort, warmth and speed in donning so most were fastened with a zip though the photographic record confirms buttons or snap-fittings were also used, mass-production made immediately possible because they could be sewed on the same lines used to make overalls.  Winston Churchill often was photographed in his siren suit and while that promoted use, it also confirmed the style was not “slimming”.  Even more than overalls, siren suits seem to have featured generously-sized pockets, a thoughtful addition permitting those disturbed from their slumber quickly to stash valuables and the essentials needed for a few hours in an air-raid shelter while retaining the recommended “hands-free” status.  Coincidentally, the siren suit fitted in with the wartime “fashion zeitgeist” the rationing of fabrics and other materials imposing on clothing simplicity and a reduction in bulk.  Even after that economic imperative had faded, that simplicity would remain influential in the post-war years, most obviously in the minimalist movement, effects achieved with severe cuts rather than fussy embellishments.

Winston Churchill (left) in siren suit with comrade Stalin (right), the Kremlin, Moscow, August 1942.

The prime minister had earlier worn the same Siren suit on a visit to the White House to meet Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, POTUS 1933-1945) and it was much admired, the FLOTUS (Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962; FLOTUS 1933-1945) even saying she’d like to have one made for her husband, if “…the wool shortage” would allow it.  Decades later, during his visit to Washington DC, Volodymyr Zelenskyy (b 1978, President of Ukraine since 2019) found his similar sartorial choice not as well-received.  According to Churchill, even before the war he’d been inspired by the “coveralls” worn by coal miners to commission the London tailors Turnbull & Asser to create a bespoke one for him, finding it just the thing to wear when enjoying his hobby of painting.  Upon the country being threatened by bombing, he ordered several, his specifications recorded in the company’s archives: “Generously cut, with two breast pockets, a zip fastening, roomy side pockets, a belt and pleats to the front of the trousers.”  To suit their client’s whims, Turnbull & Asser made them in various fabrics including the same pinstripe as some of his suits, a durable serge twill and one in a velvet of striking emerald green, still on display in their London store.  There’s nothing to suggest he ever worn one made from utilitarian rayon.

Epoch

Epoch (pronounced ep-uhk or ee-pok)

(1) A particular period of time marked by distinctive features, events etc.

(2) The beginning of a distinctive period in the history of anything.

(3) A point in time distinguished by a particular event or state of affairs; a memorable date.

(4) In geology, any of several divisions of a geologic period during which a geologic series is formed (much associated with rock formation).  An epoch (the shortest division of geologic time) is a sub-division of a period.  As a geochronologic unit, an epoch can range between hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

(5) In astronomy, an arbitrarily fixed instant of time or date, usually the beginning of a century or half century, used as a reference in giving the elements (such as coordinates of a planetary orbit) relating to a celestial body.

(6) In astronomy, the mean longitude of a planet as seen from the sun at such an instant or date.

(7) In chronology, astronomy & computing, a specific instant in time, chosen as the point of reference or zero value of a system that involves identifying instants of time.

(8) In physics, the displacement from zero at zero time of a body undergoing simple harmonic motion (the displacement of an oscillating or vibrating body at zero time).

(9) In AI (artificial intelligence), one complete presentation of the training data set to an iterative machine learning algorithm.

1605-1615: From the Medieval Latin epocha, from the Ancient Greek ἐποχή (epokhḗ) (epochē) (a check, cessation, stop, pause, fixed time, epoch of a star (ie the point at which it seems to halt after reaching the highest, and more generally the place of a star (thus the extension of use to “a historical epoch”))), from ἐπέχω (epékhō, (to hold in, check), the construct being ἐπι- (epi-) (upon) + ἔχω (ékhō) (to have, hold), from the primitive Indo-European root segh- (to hold).  The early seventeenth century adoption in English of epocha was in the sense of “point marking the start of a new period in time” and it was used by scholars and theologians of momentous events in history (the crucifixion of Christ; the Visigoths gathering at the gates of Rome etc).  Less than a decade after epocha had entered the language, the transferred meaning “a period of time” was in use and it entered the jargon of geology in 1802 although the technology then did not permit precise measurements and exploration was then embryonic (what are now understood as dinosaur fossils not so classified until 1824) so most of the early estimates of geological epochs were inaccurate.

Confusingly, “epoch” can be used either to refer to a distinct and defined historic period (ie with an agreed beginning & end) or the event associated with the beginning of that period.  The latter concept is best understood in the adjectival forms “epoch-making” and “epochful”.  Subepoch is a technical term from geology, used as a geochronologic unit comprising one or more ages, being a period of generally agreed significance within an epoch.  The companion superepoch (two or more sequential epochs references as one for illustrative or didactic purposes is non-standard.  In statistical analysis, sub_epoch, base-epoch, super_epoch & primary_epoch exist as commands in aspects of database handling and manipulation, the link being the use of “datum” as epoch’s coordinate term in cartography and engineering.  The alternative form epocha was in use between the seventeenth & nineteenth centuries.  Epoch is a noun & verb, epochful, epocjless & epochal are adjectives and epochally is an adverb; the noun plural is epochs.

Bal du moulin de la Galette (Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876), oil on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Belle Époque (appearing in texts often as La Belle Époque with capitalization not always used) was a period in European history characterized by peace, progress, cultural refinement and artistic innovation; the term was an adoption of the French La Belle Époque (literally “the beautiful era” and best understood as “the golden age”).  Historians date the start of the Belle Époque from the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1970-1871) although, “on the ground” it likely wasn’t so clear-cut because the impositions of war reparations made the first few post-war years “difficult” in France so “mid-1870s” may be a better point of origin.  The Belle Époque lasted until the blast of World War I (1914-1918) destroyed the continent’s sense of optimism and ended an era characterized by what might now be call an “end of history” feeling that held things like wars, famines and plagues were in the past and the future would be one of progress and improvement.

Art Nouveau.

An advertisement (1899) for Moët & Chandon's champagnes, designed by Czech painter & graphic artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939):  “White Star” champagne (left) & “Grand Crémant Imperial” (right).  The product is very much a period piece, Art Nouveau characterized by swirling shapes, stylized representations of women and intricate floral motifs.  For those with enough disposable income, La Belle Époque must have been an amusing time to live.  The “modern industrial” sense later summoned by the straight, sharp and geometric lines of Art Deco was a deliberate rejection of Art Nouveau's intricate, hand-crafted aesthetic yet in Art Deco the influence of the earlier style often is apparent.  Although by the 1920s unfashionable and in the inter-war years casually dismissed by many critics and historians, Art Nouveau's popular appeal never went away.  While there was never really a “revival”, the style's motifs remained a staple of commercial graphic art and the various “nostalgia movements” before being “cherry picked” by pop art, psychedelia and postmodernists.   

Those 40-odd years of what came to be called La Belle Époque were not without conflict or economic disruptions and it must be remembered Europe’s “golden age” was one of untroubled pleasure only for a select few, most of the population living lives of hard labor and drudgery, many on a variation of the Hobbesian (the very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)) path: “nasty, crowded, brutish and short”.  La Belle Époque is a selective construct of the era’s intellectual and aesthetic landmarks in art, literature and architecture, characterized by opulence, eclecticism and an undeniable dynamism from which emerged movements such as Futurism, Cubism and Art Nouveau.  Viewed from our troubled times, the Belle Époque exists in a warm nostalgic glow and it’s telling the term first gained popularity in France during the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression.  Even then, La Belle Époque was still in living memory but because it became mythologised as a “golden age”, it was as myth it passed into history.

Lindsay Lohan entering her fifth decade.  Her five eras thus far may loosely be labelled: (1) child star, (2) troubled Hollywood starlet, (3) nemesis, (4) reinvention and (5) redemption.

Signed to the Ford agency, Lindsay Lohan secured her first modelling gig aged three but what’s understood as the “Lindsay Lohan era” ran for the decade after the release of Mean Girls (2004).  It was characterized by her low-speed car crashes, court appearances and becoming a staple of the tabloid press and lower reaches of the glossy magazine industry, a reasonable contribution to GDP (gross domestic product), providing predictable cash flow for paparazzi on both sides of the Atlantic.  Improbable as it once seemed, she proved a survivor in the churn of the industry's destructive “child star” machine and on 2 July, 2026 celebrated her 40^th birthday.  That happened during the 23^rd FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football which, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN (United Nations)) World Cup and, on the day, playing at the Bay Area Stadium in Santa Clara, San Francisco, USA beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 so that was a good birthday present.  

Geologyin's illustration of the concept of geological epochs.

In scientific usage there is precision, the ICS (International Commission on Stratigraphy) codifying a strict hierarchy on the discipline of geology, the structure being Eon → Era → Period → Epoch → Age.  However, in ordinary English discourse (and even in the work of professional scholars and historians) there is no fixed hierarchy in that an age may be longer than an era and an era may be longer than an epoch; unless following established conventions, writers can opt for whichever word best conveys the intended nuance, a choice that can be influenced by the search for rhetorical effect or the rhythm of the narrative.  So, in the way of English, there are no “rules” but, as a general principle, (1) Age = “known for...”, (2) Era = “lasting period of...” and (3) Epoch = “a period with a turning point that defined its nature.”  The overlaps in use don’t usually cause confusion but among the fastidious there are acknowledged nuances and accepted conventions of use:

(1) An epoch is a distinct period marked by particular characteristics or events, thus the use in geology where defining changes or sets of conditions can be established by scientific techniques such as chemical analysis or radiocarbon dating.  In non-scientific use, because of the etymological lineage, an epoch typically begins with some sort of event thought a turning point or watershed and this can be an organic development with no exact fixed date (the Industrial Revolution) or something decidedly exact (the epoch of the computer operating system Unix is defined as 00:00:00 UTC, 1 January 1970 although this was not first set precisely then).

(2) An age is a period with a specific, dominant association.  That might be a technology (bronze age; oil age; jet age etc), a characteristic (age of empires; age of European colonialism etc) or an individual (Napoleonic age; Elizabethan Age etc).  Unlike the epochs of geologists and astronomers, “ages” can run in parallel or overlap.  While some are sequential such as the “Three Age System” (Stone Age; Bronze Age; Iron Age) tracking the evolution of humanity's tools and metalworking capabilities between prehistory and Antiquity, others can co-exist such as the Age of Sail & Age of Enlightenment.  Because of the nature of the word and historic pattern of use, of the three, “age” is the most flexible and adaptable because it’s merely associative, not exclusive and often with no precise chronology.

(3) An era is a period (by human standards usually but not necessarily long) with origins at a certain point (usually an event) and characterized by an enduring pattern; eras tend to be major historical phases or systems (the Nazi era; the analogue era etc).  Generally “era” is used to denote something coherent (though it need not be long); a stretch of history with a recognizable character, a beginning and an end.  That can reference the life of an individual (Queen Victoria lent her name to the “Victorian era” 1837-1901), several individuals (there were four Kings of England named George whose collective reign defined the “Georgian era” 1714-1830) or a specific closed-time set (the “inter war era”: 1918-1939).

Eras tour merchandise.  Canvas tapestry featuring photographs from Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, cotton canvas, 800 mm (31½ inches) x 1220 mm (48 inches).

Taylor Swift’s “Eras” project tends to be thought of as a concert tour but it’s better imagined as pop culture’s greatest ever exercise in vertical integration, a merging of music (audio streaming, packaged (in multiples in the case of the vinyl releases) & live performance), video content, merchandise ranging from framed posters, a “limited edition” book, a film with concert footage, outfits emulating those worn on stage, jewellery, hoodies, pillows, stainless steel tumblers and more.  Although there has in recent years been a bit of mission creep, the idea of a canvas tapestry as a piece of tour merchandise in the pop music business would, until recently, likely have occurred to few.  Commerce has moved on from a half-century earlier when, at a Led Zeppelin concert, one might be able to buy a Tee-shirt (in S, M, L & XL), maybe with a choice of black or white (black quickly selling out).

Ms Swift is good with words and for the “Eras” project may have pondered using “Ages” or “Epochs”.  Given the accepted conventions (Age = “known for...”, Era = “lasting period of...” and Epoch = “a period with a turning point that defined its nature.”) and the concept of the “Eras” project, a convincing case could have been made for “Ages” because each subset was thematically distinct while the use of “Epochs” would have worked because the word is understood as a “period of time with a beginning and end” but linking each with a single “triggering event” might have descended to abstractions so “Eras” seems the best choice.  Certainly it’s unlikely she long considered using “Periods”; although etymologically defensible, it would have been decarded on much the same basis as that of the publishers of the magazine Australian Women’s Weekly who, upon in 1983 switching to issuing monthly editions, opted not to change the title to “Women’s Monthly”.

There is of course a vagueness associated with the definitions because not all “eras” and “ages” have as convenient bookends the end of one war and the start of another; that’s why context can matter.  In speaking of the time after World War II (1939-1945), “post-war era” is a common term but the meaning can vary depending on what’s being discussed.  It’d be absurd to speak of 2026 as being in the “post-war” era (although in a sense that’s true) so meaning must be gleaned from context.  The two decade period 1918-1939 came to be called both the “inter-war” and “pre-war” era (although many tend to restrict the latter to a start-point in the mid-1930s) and in much historiography there's sometimes the suggestion the “post-war” era can usefully be said to have ended some 20 years hence; that’s about 1965 so conveniently (1) in the new era of the High Cold War, (2) about the length of a then typical “generation” and (3) in the 1960s, a very different era.  So it can be inexact and some with a focus on political economy fix the end date on exactly 17 October 1973, the day OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) proclaimed an oil embargo targeting the US and other states providing military aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  At that point, the West’s long post-war boom, although already stuttering, ended.  In a similar vein, although also very much a Western-centric view, some historians have argued the nineteenth century is best imagined as a construct running from the close of the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) to the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918).  There’s much support for that although there are different views about the conceptual view of the twentieth century. While 1914 seems a logical starting-point, candidates for the end date include 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989)), 1991 (dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1911)) and the 9/11 terrorist strikes in 2001.

Taylor Swift Style: Fashion through the eras.

Between March 2023 and December 2024, Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour took in 149 shows in 51 cities over five continents; each performance ran for a remarkable 3½ hours and there was a mid-tour revision of the song set to interpolate material The Tortured Poets Department (2024), her eleventh studio album.  The “Eras” title was an allusion to the show’s format, a retrospective in which each of her albums was designated as a “musical era”, the many outfits worn tied to those themes and just as each song and each performance was a product, so could be each outfit, some available on-line for purchase by devoted Swifties.  So, as set piece events go, Ms Swift set a high bar and, on revenues in excess of US$2 billion, profits were high and continue to grow.

Even when there are precise start and end dates, things can at the margin become blurred.  Pedants enjoy pointing out the 1960s began on 1 January 1961 so an expression like “the 1960s” ends on 31 December 1969 but the decade in which most of those years existed actually includes 1970, a quirk which extends also to centuries and millennia, something ultimately a product of there being no year zero in the calendar now defining BCE (before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) (the pair the secular version of BC (Before Christ) and AD (from the Latin Anno Domini (in the year of the Lord)), all based on the (nominal) birth date of Jesus Christ.  “Ages” and “eras” can at once be “exact” and “indicative”.  Many of the civilizations of antiquity all had their so-called “golden ages” and these tended to be associated with particular dynasties or reigns.  The examples are many and are cross-cultural, including the Gupta Empire in India (mid-third to mid-sixth century AD) founded by Mahārāja Śrī-Gupta, the Tang dynasty (626-684) & the reign of Tae-tsong (618-626) in China and, in Egypt, the reigns of Sethos I and Ram'eses II (1336-1224 BC).  In the West, the use of “golden ages” is legion including in Russia during the rule of Czar Peter the Great (1672-1725) (memorable because the Russian people have not enjoyed many “golden ages”) and, of course, in England, the “Elizabethan age”, referencing the reign of Elizabeth I (1533–1603; Queen of England & Ireland 1558-1603).  However, at the granular level, the idea of the term “Elizabethan age” denoting a “golden age” in literature was contested by the English writer, literary scholar and Anglican lay theologian C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) who, in his Introduction to English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1654), distinguished the “estimable” literature of the later Elizabethan period from what he called that of the earlier “drab age”.  Lewis found drabness in the poetry and prose of the later medieval period up to the early Renaissance, distinguishing it from the “golden era style” between circa 1580-1603.  Lewis was an uncompromising critic but while most in the profession may well agree much that was written in the fifteenth century and early Tudor period was “drab”, among those published in the period were Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and John Skelton (circa 1460-1529); their writing was not beyond criticism but the works were hardly drab.

Sarah Chapelle's (b 1992) Swiftie site documenting looks from The Eras tour: Fearless v6 (worn 18 October, 2024, far left), Midnights v5 (worn 16 August, 2024, centre left), 1989 v2 (worn 19 March, 2023, centre right) and Reputation v1 (worn 18 March, 2023, far right).  Some outfits can be purchased on-line but buyers should note they should not expect their appearance exactly to emulate what's “on the tin”.  

Simulacrum describes an image that while not purely realistic, maintains enough of a likeness for the subject to be recognizable.  In some jurisdictions it can be deemed “deceptive and misleading” if a product is represented in manner judged to be a “deliberate misrepresentation” intended to induce a purchase.  Legal recourse is available but is practical only if enough money is involved (such as real estate); although in theory someone purchasing a McDonalds Big Mac after being tempted by the image in the advertising might have grounds for an action, a claim of under $US10 would not impress a judge and even a class action would, on several grounds, be thrown out.  Presumably a disgruntled consumer could lodge a claim for the “pain & suffering” caused by one's Big Mac not looking as attractive as the one in the advertising but that'd likely anger the judge still more.  The classic simulacrums were the stylish images rendered in the 1960s by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) for GM’s (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor Division) and those of Ms Swift in the Eras Tour outfits are in the same “mannerist but not quite surrealist” tradition.  Although obviously “unrealistic”, these depictions are not “deceptive and misleading” because they’re so obviously simulacral and exist only as devices, the extent of the licence taken illustrated by them appearing next to a flesh & blood Ms Swift in the same outfit.  They are “impossible” rather than “idealized”.

Super simulacrum: The Colossus of Rhodes (circa 1560), hand-colored by Dutch portrait and religious painter Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) on an engraving by Dutch publisher & designer Philip Galle (1537–1612).

The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and although it stood for barely half a century before being felled by an earthquake, it's ruins lying for almost a millennium as a kind of tourist attraction before the metal was carted of as scrap to be melted-down an re-cycled.  The notion the statue's legs straddled the entrance to Rhodes Harbor with tall-masted ships passing between them was wholly fanciful; even with modern materials and techniques, such a construction would be impossible.  The engineers and architects of the sixteenth century would of course have known it couldn't be done but such was the allure of the era of Classical Antiquity that brilliant myths seduced the public imagination better than tiresome facts.

Other “era-related” terminology also often used interchangeably relates to that long span of history between the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD) and the dawn of the Renaissance in the late fourteenth century: (1) Middle Ages, (2) Dark Ages and (3) Medieval.  “Middle Ages” is the most obviously descriptive because it refers to the period between the dying gasps of Classical Antiquity and the cultural & artistic revival of the Renaissance while Medieval simply means “relating to the Middle Ages” (although by virtue of association and use, it came to be used also as a slur).  As general principle, historians tend to divide the Middle Ages into (1) Early (476-circa 1000), (2) High (circa 1000-circa 1300) and (3) Late (circa 1300-circa 1500).  “Dark Ages” reflected the prejudices of fifteenth century writers who regarded the earlier Middle Ages (476-circa 1000) as a period of stagnation, lack of progress and “intellectual darkness”, a stark contrast to the idealized vision of Classical Antiquity they constructed from what evidence there was, “filling in the gaps” with imaginations as famously vivid as any of the Medieval scribes and artists responsible for some fabulous beasts.  The Seven Wonders of of the Ancient World” they found especially compelling, some of their speculative depictions of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon such examples of architectural gigantism even Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) might have been embarrassed.  Maybe they looked in awe at the scale of Great Pyramid of Giza and assumed all the ancients operated in “think big” mode.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime Minister of Australia 2013-2015) agitprop.

Mr Abbott's combination of relentless negativity and repetition of 3WSs (three word slogans) contributed to his resounding victory in the 2013 general election although, in office, the results were mixed and it ended badly.  Recently revived as the Liberal Party's federal president (the institution's third “Lazerus with a triple bypass” after Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; Prime Minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) and John Howard (b 1939; Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007)), Mr Abbott unquestionably was one of history's most effective leaders of the opposition but as Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) remarked of Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895):  “He was essentially a opposition politician and behaved as such even when in government”.  Of such matters, Jenkins was a fair judge.  Although medieval may literally mean “relating to the Middle Ages” and can be used as a neutral adjective (medieval architecture, medieval manuscripts etc), it is also used as a term of derision: “Mr Abbott’s views on certain topics seem distinctly medieval although, to be fair, the thirteenth century probably never produced a finer mind”.  Used in that way, it implies “outdated, harsh or unenlightened”, a throwback to the stereotypes of the Dark Ages but more recent scholarship has cast doubt on whether the “Dark Ages” was a time as culturally sterile and technologically stagnant and was for centuries an orthodoxy among historians.  A view now more popular is the earlier conceptions of the period were formed because of the relative scarcity of written records and although it’s now clear there was progress in agriculture, law, architecture, theology, literature, engineering and state formation, it is true that compared with what came before and what followed, progress often was fitful.  Of note also is there were in the Renaissance and beyond not a few who didn’t count “advances in theology” as progress worth mentioning.

Palindrome

Palindrome (pronounced pal-in-drohm)

(1) A word, line, verse, number, sentence etc, reading the same backward as forward.

(2) In biochemistry, a region of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides is identical with an inverted sequence in the complementary strand.

1638: From the Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palindromos) (running back again; recurring, literally “literally "a running back”) the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + δρόμος (dromos) (direction, running, race, racecourse).  Pálin was from the primitive Indo-European kwle-i-, a suffixed form of the root kwel- (revolve, move round) (kw- becomes the Greek p- before some vowels.  The word palindrome was first published by Henry Peacham (1578-circa 1645) in The Truth of Our Times (1638).  Although derived from the Greek root palin + dromos, the Greek language uses καρκινικός (carcinic, literally “crab-like”) to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.  The related palinal (directed or moved backward, characterized by or involving backward motion) dates from 1888.  The noun palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire) dates from the 1590s and was from either the sixteenth century French palinod or the Late Latin palinodia, from the Greek palinōidia (poetic retraction), again from pálin; the related form were palinodical & palinodial.  The word palinode was sometimes applied to the apologies artists and others in the Soviet Union were compelled to publish, often after being accused of formalism or something just as heinous.  Palindrome & palindromist are nouns, palindromic is an adjective and palindromically is an adverb; the noun plural is palindromes.

Pierre Laval (1883–1945; Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944).

Even before he spent the final years of his political career as a senior official in the collaborationist regime of Vichy France under Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), the palindromic Laval was already notorious for his dubious financial dealings while in government and being a party to the Hoare–Laval Pact (1935), concocted with the then British Foreign Secretary Samuel “Slippery Sam” Hoare (1880-1959) with which the pair sought to end the tiresome Second Italo-Ethiopian War (the last of the colonial land-grabs in the era of European colonization) because it was “bad for business”.  Something of a precursor to the 1938 Munich Agreement in which the UK and France acquiesced to the Nazi’s dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in exchange for what, delusionally, they believed would be Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) final territorial claim in Europe, what the Hoare–Laval Pact offered was a partition of Abyssinia, something that, in retrospect, would have been merely the first step to Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) absorbing the whole country as a colony of Imperial Italy.  Even for the by then jaded people of France and the UK the cynicism was too blatant and the reaction when the details were made public compelled the dismissal of both ministers.

Sir Samuel Hoare ice-skating, October 1935.

An expert skater, Hoare broke his nose while skating in Switzerland at the time of the furore surrounding the Hoare-Laval Pact; in editorial offices around the world, photographs were captioned: “Hoare skating on thin ice”.  When told of the broken nose, Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) responded: “Pity it wasn't his neck.”  Meeting his unhappy ex-minister after his dismissal, George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) (who had urged the British government to endorse the pact) tried to cheer him up by repeating a joke doing the rounds of the London clubs: “No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.”  He was disappointed when Sir Samuel didn’t laugh.

In the way things are done in politics, after serving their brief time in the penalty box (sin-bin in some sports), both made comebacks although Laval's ended not well.  Slippery Sam found a niche as the UK's ambassador to Spain (1940-1944) where his talents proved invaluable for his dual role (bribing generals and persuading Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) not to get too involved in the war).  Created Viscount Templewood upon his return to the UK, he was an active member of the House of Lords and wrote a number of books but his later life was lived in the shadow of the 1930s, remembered always as one of the 15 “guilty men” portrayed in the 1940 book of the same name, co written by three politically-aligned journalists (Frank Owen (1905-1979, Liberal), Michael Foot (1913-2010, Labour) and Peter Howard (1908-1965, Conservative).  Hoare’s own memoir of the 1930s (Nine Troubled Years (1954)) was an apologia for the appeasement policies of the decade and although if sympathetically read (those were, as he said, “troubled years”) his “guilt” emerges somewhat mitigated, his reputation never recovered.

Otto Abetz (1903-1958; de facto German ambassador to Paris 1940-1944, left) shaking hands with Marshal Pétain (right), Paris, November 1941.

Pétain had little faith in the arrangements his regime negotiated with the Germans honored, telling colleagues after one meeting: "It will take six weeks to work out all the details and six months for the Germans to forget all about them."  Because Berlin didn't formerly created diplomatic relations with France after the defeat in 1940, Otto Abetz was never properly credentialed as ambassador but wholly he discharged the duties.  His great nephew is Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, Treasurer of Tasmania since 2024).

Laval, sniffing the winds of French defeat in 1940, became a convinced fascist, serving in the Vichy regime between July 1940-August 1944 variously as vice-president of the Council of Ministers and head of government.  He fled to Spain after the Liberation of France but was extradited and put on trial for plotting against the security of the state and collaborating with the Nazis; found guilty, he was executed by firing squad in October 1945.  Old Marshal Pétain fared a little better.  Although also sentenced to death for his role during the occupation, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969), then serving as Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, couldn’t bring himself to sign the death warrant for one of the country’s heroes of World War I (1914-1918) and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, officially on the grounds of “age”.

Perhaps surprisingly, the longest known palindromic word is not German despite their fondness for lengthy compounds.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records the record is held by the 19 character saippuakivikauppias which is Finnish for “a travelling salesman who sells lye (caustic soda)”.  It’s said not often to come up in conversation and seems to exist only a curiosity used in lists of long palindromes where it's the undisputed number one.  In English, palindromes of a few characters are common but examples with more than seven letters are rare.  Tattarrattat (the sound made by knocking on a door), as it’s usually spelled, has 12 characters but is a bit of a fudge because it’s also an onomatopoeia so some lexicographers insist it doesn’t count.  Also cheating but clever is the 11 letter aibohphobia meaning a fear of palindromes, the construct being the suffix -phobia written in reverse + phobia.  Adding to the charm is that while doubtlessly a non-existent condition, it's suspected there are anyway a few of those in the literature of psychiatry; certainly there's a goodly number in the many "phobia lists".  From India, there's kinnikinnik, a smoking mixture of bark & leaves (but no tobacco).  English’s longest “real” palindrome appears to be detartrated, the past participle of detartrate (to remove tartrates (salts of tartaric acid)), especially from fruit juices and wines, in order to reduce tartness or sourness).  Not only is it a real word but it describes a common process in the industrial production of foods and beverages.

Announced on an auspicious date.

On 2 February 2020, Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), in a now deleted Instagram post, for the first time publicly acknowledged her relationship with Bader Shammas (b 1987), a group photograph from Dubai, including the couple and her sister Aliana (b 1993), captioned: "@aliana lovely night with sister and my boyfriend bader💗".  The couple would later marry.  2 February 2020 (02-02-2020) was the twenty-first century’s only eight-digit global palindrome (ie it works with either the MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY convention).  The last eight-digit global palindrome happened 908 years earlier on the even more numerically symmetrical 11 November 1111 (11-11-1111) and the next one will be 908 years hence on 3 March 3030 (03-03-3030).  Six and seven digit palindromes are more common.

Palindromic sentences are often created and these are judged not by length but by their elegance which is why “never odd or even” often is cited as an example.  Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a word nerd and recreational mathematician who devised the classic "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and this approach was in the 1980s taken to its logical extreme in two novels, Satire: Veritas (1980, 58,795 letters) by David Stephens and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo (1986, 31,954 words) by Lawrence Levine, both said to be palindromically perfect and wholly nonsensical.  Shorter, but of admirable clarity, are the many baptismal fonts in Greece and Turkey which bear the circular 25-letter inscription NIYON ANOMHMATA MH MONAN OYIN (Wash (my) sins, not only (my) face).  This appears also in several English churches.  Originally specific to poetry, a palindromic verse (one reading the same forwards or backwards) was in literary criticism described as cancrine, from the Latin cancer (crab) + -īnus (the suffix added to a noun base (especially a proper noun) to form an adjective in the sense of “of or pertaining to”), the notion being “cancrīnus”, the image based on most species of crab being able to walk sideways (both left & right).  In general use, by extension, the world came to be used to mean “reading something backwards”.

Sixteenth century German "oath skull" on which defendants swore their oaths in the Vehmic courts (the Vehmgericht, Holy Vehme or Vehm, the alternative spellings being Feme, Vehmegericht & Fehmgericht), a tribunal system established in Westphalia during the late Middle Ages.

Created essentially because of the inadequacies of the official justice system, they're now often referred to as "proto-vigilante" courts but for centuries they filled a niche before they came increasingly to be associated with injustice and corruption before finally being abolished in 1811, a half-decade after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the source of their original authority.

In linguistics, these “grid of letters” are called “acrostics”.  Acrostic was from the Middle French acrostiche & acrostique (persisting in modern French as acrostiche) and its etymon the Late Latin acrostichis, from the Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), the construct being ἄκρο- (ákro-) (the prefix indicating, inter alia, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos) (row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse) (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European steyg- (to climb, go)).  They remain still a popular form for the “word puzzles” appearing in the surviving newspapers and magazines.  In verse, an acrostic is a poem in which the initial letters of each line make a word or words when read downwards (the mesostich (middle) or telestich (final) letter of each line might also be used) whereas in prose the first letter of each paragraph or sentence might make up a word.  It’s speculated the earliest acrostic may have been created as a mnemonic device and used as a tool to aid oral transmission and most of the acrostics in the Old Testament are of the alphabetical or abecedarian (in this context “a work which uses words or lines in alphabetical order”) kind.  For poets however it may have been just an intellectual exercise (or perhaps “a gimmick” if not well-received by certain critics).  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) used a simple acrostic device in ABC, a twenty-four stanza poem in which the first letter of the first word in each stanza is the appropriate letter of the alphabet, from A to Z.  The dramatist Benjamin Jonson (circa 1572–circa 1637) in his Argument (prefacing The Alchemist (1610)) used an acrostic verse (“argument” a technical term meaning “the abstract” or “plot summary”).

The palindromic (or “all-round”) acrostic seen on the oath skull is known as the “Sator square” or the “Cirencester word square” because a copy was in 1868 discovered on a painted wall plaster in what is now Victoria Road in the English town of Cirencester in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire.  At the time of the inscription, during the Roman occupation of Britain, the settlement was called Corinium.  The best documented of the early examples was one etched onto a wall in the doomed city of Herculaneum, the conclusion of most being Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas should be understood as “The sower, Arepo, makes the wheel work”), the trick being it can be read vertically, horizontally, or in the diagonal.  Known also as pentacles, the “SATOR” was the most commonly found in the Western Esotericism of late antiquity, used by Kabbalists, Gnostics, alchemists and other pre-medieval mystics in the creation of magic spells, amulets, potions etc and were thus often seen in the shops of apothecaries.  For deconstructionists, the translations are:

sator: sower/planter
tenet: he/she/they/it holds/has/grasps/possesses
opera: work/exertion/service
rotās: wheels

There has been speculation about the meaning of this pentacle, some a little fanciful and it’s not impossible things were made up just to fit, rather as "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined to use each letter in the alphabet and "DICK HOOD DID EXCEED" serves no purpose other than to appear the same if inverted and viewed in a looking glass.

ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR

The one on the skull was a second form, copied from an Egyptian papyrus of the late fourth or early fifth century AD:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

Among professionals and amateurs alike, there has been much debate about the possible meaning(s) and although there are a number of permutations, most hint at something like “the sower Arepo holds the wheels carefully”, indicating the care required when sowing the seeds for next season’s crop.  The form may however in some places have been vested with magical or religious significance.  In sixth century Ethiopia, the five words (corrupted to Sador, Alador, Danet, Adera and Rodas), were used as the names of the five nails of Christ's Cross.  In France, the word square was known to have been used as a form of lucky charm and reputedly, one fortunate inhabitant of Lyon was cured of madness by eating three crusts of bread (each inscribed with the square) while making five recitations of the Pater Noster in remembrance of the five wounds of Christ and the five nails.  Presumably encouraged by such an event, Spanish and Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries took these charms to South America where they were said variously to protect folk from snake bites and aid childbirth.