Dictator

Dictator (pronounced dik-tey-ter)

(1) A person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who (at least ostensibly) has absolute control (ie effectively not restricted by a constitution, laws, recognized opposition, etc) in a government (and officially without hereditary succession); applied particularly to those exercising tyrannical rule.

(2) In republican ancient Rome, a person vested by the senate with supreme authority during a crisis, the regular magistracy being subordinated to him until the crisis was met (typically by conducting a war).

(3) A person who makes pronouncements, as on conduct, fashion etc, which are regarded as authoritative.

(4) A person who dictates text to someone or some sort or mechanical or electronic recording device.

(5) In Ancient Rome (during certain periods), an elected chief magistrate.

1350–1400: From the Middle English dictatour, from the Old French dictator, from the Latin dictātor (genitive dictātōris), (Roman chief magistrate with absolute authority) the construct being dictā(re) (inflection of dictō (I repeat, say often; I dictate (to someone for writing))), frequentative of dicere (to say, speak); I compose, express in writing; I prescribe, recommend, order, dictate)) frequentative of dicere (to say, speak)" (from the primitive Indo-European root deik- (to show (also "solemnly to pronounce") (and related to dīcō (say, speak) + -tor (from the Proto-Italic -tōr, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr from -tor-s; the suffix added to the fourth principal part of a verb to create a third-declension masculine form of an agent noun).  The feminine forms were dictatress or dictatrix, both probably now obsolete except in historic reference or as a jocular form; the old alternative spelling dictatour is obsolete.  Some European languages (including Dutch and Romanian) were like English and borrowed directly the Latin spelling while others used variations including Catalan (dictador), French (dictateur) Italian (dittatore), Piedmontese (ditator), Polish (dyktator), Portuguese (ditador), Russian (дикта́тор (diktátor)), Sicilian (dittaturi), Spanish (dictador) and German (Diktator).  The feminine forms dictatoress & dictatrix are now rare.  Dictator, dictatoress & distatorship are nouns, dictatory is a noun & adjective, dictatorial, dictatorlike & dictatorless are adjectives and dictatorially is an adverb;the noun plural is dictators.

The noun dictatorship (office or term of a (Roman) dictator) came into use in the 1610s to describe the historically specific terms of office the Roman Senate sometimes granted individuals in extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances while the now familiar general sense of "a ruler exercising absolute authority" evolved by the late seventeenth century.  The noun dictator had already proceeded along this path, the historical sense being first used in English circa 1600, the extension to “one who has absolute power or authority" (in any context and not just political power) noted by the 1690s.  The nasty and not infrequently genocidal nature of some of the dictators of the twentieth century and beyond certainly influenced the understanding of the word which, as late as the 1800s could be used neutrally, effectively as a synonym for president.  The adjective dictatorial (pertaining to a dictator; absolute, unlimited), dating from 1901 evolved also to enjoy use outside of descriptors of absolute government and by 1704 had acquired the general sense of "imperious, overbearing", usefully (and often applied as required to husbands, mothers-in-law, parish priests etc); the related form was the adverb dictatorially.  In that vein, to convey the notion of "pertaining to a dictator" there had been dictatorian (1640s) & dictator-like (1580s).  Etymologists insist historic duality of implication in "dictatorial" ((1) a disposition to rule & (2) a sharp insistence upon having one's orders accepted or carried out) has survived in modern use but instances of the former are now less common.

1929 Studebaker Dictator Royal Coupe with rumble seat and "artillery wheels" in the style made famous on Bugatti's roadsters and race-cars.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was of course the dictator who has for almost a century loomed over the word and “Hitler” was used figuratively for "a dictator" from as early as 1934, a use persisting despite there being no shortage of dictatorial tyrants in the years since his assumption of power.  One amusing variation emerged in England in the early years of World War II (1939-1945), a “little Hitler” being someone appointed to a minor post (archetypically an air-raid warden (someone employed to walk the streets during a “black-out” telling folk to extinguish their lights)) and, cloaked in this brief, unaccustomed authority, soon intoxicated by their power.  In the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran (1979-), the regime encouraged a similar put-down aimed at opponents, the US being شيطان بزرگ (Shaytân-e Bozorg (the great Satan)) and Israel شیطان کوچک, (Shaytân-e Kuchak (the little Satan)) and it’s a worse slight even than it sounds because “great” is not the perfect translation, the idea of the great Satan being one of derision rather than awe.  When ayatollahs are in a bad mood (it does happen), sometimes the UK is also described as a “little Satan”.

Lindsay Lohan, glad to see a dictator go.

Lindsay Lohan never forgave dictator Hosni Mubarak (1928–2020; president of Egypt 1981-2011) for shouting at Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001).  When told in 2011 he’d fallen from power as one of the victims of the Arab Spring, she responded: “Cool.”  When told it was brought about by a military coup she replied: “Gross!”  Lindsay Lohan doesn’t approve of coups d'état and believes soldiers should "stay in the barracks", allowing due constitutional process to be followed.   

Because of the evil of Hitler and his many spiritual successors in this century and the last, dictator really doesn’t cry out for synonyms but autocrat, despot, tyrant, absolutist, authoritarian, oppressor & totalitarian all tend in the direction.  Associatively however, the noun generalissimo (supreme military commander), dating from the 1620s and a borrowing of the Italian generalissimo (superlative of generale, from a sense development similar to the French général), can in some cases be applied to dictators because in the twentieth century the title was granted (ie self-conferred) to the dictators comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) and Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975).  Despite that roll-call, it has never come into use as a general term for "in the manner of dictator", possibly because historically it's too specific (to the military context) and has just too many syllables to be catchy slang.

1935 Studebaker Dictator phaeton (left) & 1936 Studebaker Dictator sedan (right).

The Studebaker Dictator was produced between 1927-1937, the naming scheme using titles from government service to indicate a model’s place in the hierarchy, the Dictator replacing the Standard Six as the entry-level model, the progressively more expensive models being the Commander and President.  Other manufacturers have adopted the concept idea, Opal in Germany once merging admiralty and political ranks, offering the Kapitän, Commodore, Admiral & Diplomat.

Some of the opposition to crooked Hillary Clinton's (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) presidential campaign in 2016 accused her of wanting to turn the US into a dictatorship.  Given that she couldn't manage even to keep her husband "on the porch", fears crooked Hillary might in the Oval Office morph into dictatorial Hillary may have been hyperbolic but the meme makers any responded with agitprop.

To many it will seem strange a US manufacturer would, as late as 1937, call one of its cars the Dictator but in 1927 the Nazis were years from power and Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943), was far from the tainted character he would later become, public perception of his rule still in the moment of admiring him for “making the trains run on time”.  Whether any improvement in punctuality was noted by many Italians is dubious but the Duce would anyway have been pleased at least one train arrived in good time.  Because the image of a mass-movement black-shirted supporters taking to the streets to overthrow an old, corrupt government was just the sort of propaganda dictators adore, the 1922 "March on Rome" became part of fascist mythology but although a good "photo opportunity", Mussolini joined the march only for it's final stage; he caught the Naples-Rome train.  Studebaker anyway had always explained the name as suggesting “a fine car at a moderate price” that would “dictate the standards” in the vital mid-priced field.  That was fair enough but with the benefit of post-Nazi hindsight, when the option of a straight-eight engine was offered as an upgrade from the straight-six, Studebaker probably would not to have used the marketing slogan “a brilliant example of excess power”.  By 1937, the use of excess power by the Third Reich’s dictator was becoming obvious and Studebaker quietly dropped the Dictator name for 1938, re-positioning the Commander as the base model, the cars exported to the Europe, the UK and the British Empire having early been renamed Director.  Of those changes, probably just about everyone except Henry Ford (1863-1947) approved.  Briefly, Studebaker had also offered the Chancellor but, presumably because it wasn’t a title that much resonated in the American imagination, it was short-lived (only in the catalogue for the 1927 season); that was a stroke of luck for Studebaker because Hitler took over the Reich Chancellery in January 1933 and had the Chancellor remained in production, it too would have faced the linguistic cull for 1938.  

So Studebaker’s tale is an example of how the shifting meaning of words can influence many things.  Still, if in 1937 any association with Hitler had become distasteful for a US corporation, even by 1940, some two years after the Nazi’s most publicized pogrom against the Jews (Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)), Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) released his satirical comedy The Great Dictator which parodied both dictators (Hitler and Mussolini), his argument being that however controversial it might be, “…Hitler must be laughed at."  He later admitted that had he known in 1940 what would later be understood, he’d never have produced the film.  When in 1940 Lord Halifax (Edward Wood, 1881–1959) arrived in Washington DC to take up his appointment as UK’s ambassador, he was taken to lunch by a group of Republican senators and told they regarded Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, POTUS 1933-1945) as “a worse dictator than Hitler or Mussolini” so Studebaker clearly made the right decision.

Studebaker US6 truck in Red Army use, configured as mobile Katyusha rocket launcher, circa 1943.  Under Lend-Lease arrangements, some 152,000 US6's were supplied during Great Patriotic War (1941-1945).

Comrade Stalin’s favorite cars by the 1930s were the big Packards but he acknowledged the importance of Studebaker trucks supplied by the US under Lend-Lease and the company also greatly benefited; like many US corporations, some of its golden years came during World War II (1939-1945) when industrial capacity was given over to government contracts fulfilling military demand.  A variety of materiel was produced but Studebaker’s most notable contribution to the war effort was the versatile US6 (G630 in the government purchasing system) 2½ (short) ton 6x6 trucks, over 150,000 of which were supplied to the Soviet Union.  Built in many configurations, the most memorable adaptation by the Red Army was as a mobile platform for the BM-31-12 (nickname: Andryusha) Katyusha rocket launcher, known to the enemy as “Stalin’s organs” because of the distinctive sound; before drones emerged as the preferred front-line weapon, the Russian army widely deployed such rockets in the “special military operation” (invasion) against Ukraine.  The US6 proved popular with Red Army troops who judged it superior to the locally-made ZIS-5 & GAZ-AA and better even than the captured German trucks with Maybach engines which (belying the German reputation for “good beer, good engines, good sausages”), were prone to overheating under extreme loads, unlike the Studebakers that never boiled.

Tough, durable and easy to repair, it was the WS6 that made possible the movement of the Red Army at the scale and speed achieved by 1943-1944 and it proved equally adept at handing the both the muddy and freezing conditions that became notorious on the Eastern Front; affectionately the troops nicknamed the things “Studer”.  The tale circulated that comrade Stalin even wrote a letter of appreciation to Studebaker, mentioning how important the US6 had been to the Red Army; that turned out to be apocryphal but in the Studebaker archives there are documents from Soviet officials expressing their satisfaction with the machines.  The flow of information between across the Iron Curtain was once highly restricted and one Soviet diplomat, arriving in the US in the late 1960s, expressed surprise Studebaker was no longer in business.  Brought up on the legends of the part the WS6 had played in Great Patriotic War, he'd assumed the company would still be a fixture in US manufacturing.  Of course, if corporate comings & goings in Detroit (actually South Bend, Indiana, where Studebakers were built, a place that wouldn’t again make the international headlines until 2020 when Pete Buttigieg (b 1982; US secretary of transportation 2021-2025), who served as mayor from 2012 to 2020 sought the Democratic presidential nomination), were a mystery to Russians, the Kremlin was just as opaque, even to experienced diplomats.  Probably no figure in the twentieth century was as dominating a dictator as comrade Stalin but even at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) there were senior figures in the US State Department and the UK’s Foreign Office who believed the one Russians knew as their vozhd (from the Russian вождь (vožd) (chieftain, leader) was a figure whose freedom of action was constrained by “hard liners in Moscow”.

The Hijab Police

Of the many “morality police” forces that have existed in countries with a majority Islamic population, the best known was Afghanistan's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice which actually pre-dated the Taliban takeover in 1996 but they certainly deployed it with an enthusiasm which went much beyond it functioning as “burka police” and in one form or another, it actually operated for most of the (first) post-Taliban era.  When the Taliban regained power in 2021, immediately they created the "Ministry of Invitation, Guidance and Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" and, in a nice touch, allocated as its headquarters the building formerly used by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

The institution is infamous also in Iran.  In the West, it’s usually referred to as the “morality police” and among women the sardonic slang is “hijab police” but technically, the instrument of the Islamic Republic of Iran which enforces, inter alia, the laws governing the wearing of the hijab is گشت ارشاد (Gašt-e Eršād (Guidance Patrol)).  On 16 September 2022, the hijab police arrested Mahsa Amini (2001-2022) because she was wearing her hijab in “an un-Islamic way”.  While in custody, Ms Amini suffered a medical event, dying two days later without recovering consciousness, the hijab police claiming the cause of death was heart failure, induced by pre-existing conditions.  Her family dispute this, saying the evidence suggests she was severely beaten and many witnesses have confirmed she was tortured in the back of a van before arriving at a hijab police office.

Handy guide for the hijab police.  Not only must hijab must be worn correctly but clothing must also be (1) not brightly colored, (2) not patterned with extravagant designs or shapes and (3) be loose enough that the shape of the body is not discernible.

Her death triggered waves of protests in Iran, which, on the basis of footage seen in the West, seem dominated by school girls and young women; that's not unique in the context of political protest but is historically unusual.  With protest signs and banners rendered in TikTok-friendly English, the headline issue is of course the matter of the hijab and whether women should be beaten to death for letting a lock of hair slip from beneath but the protesters are making clear they're there to highlight corruption (noting the poverty of most while the clerical elite have become very rich), the structure of the state, the economy and the very question of whether the republic should be an Islamic theocracy.  The ayatollahs are no doubt well aware that the standard calculation in political science is that if 3½% of the population can be mobilized to revolt, regimes can be toppled and most recently, the Afghan Taliban did it with a fraction of that.  For many reasons, Afghanistan may be a special case and the Iranian state, on paper, is much better equipped to suppress internal dissent but then the security apparatuses around Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi (circa 1942–2011; Libyan dictator 1969-2011) both looked impregnable until the volume of the protesters reached critical mass.  These things are however hard to judge from afar, Bashar al-Assad (b 1965; ophthalmologist and Syria dictator 2000-2024) looked vulnerable long before Gaddafi and Mubarak fell yet he sat as dictator in Damascus for another 14 years.  The ayatollahs of course watched things with concern but so did individuals in the Kremlin, aware their security apparatus proved inadequate to execute the battle plan of the "special military action" in Ukraine and observed, in a nice echo of the 1979 revolution, the protesters in Tehran again chanting the cry once spat against the Shah: “Death to the Dictator!”.

Calumny

Calumny (pronounced kal-uhm-nee)

(1) A false statement, maliciously made, designed to injure the reputation of someone or something; a malicious utterance of false charges or misrepresentation; slander; defamation.

(2) The act of uttering calumnies; defamatory words.

(3) Such a false charge or misrepresentation.

(4) As “oath of calumny”, in historic Scots law, a method for the prevention of calumnious and unnecessary suits, by which both parties at the beginning of a cause swear, either personally or through counsel, that the facts set forth by them are true.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English calumnīe (false accusation, slander; objection raised in bad faith), from the fifteenth century Old French calomnie (slander (that in modern French endures as calomnie), from the Latin calumnia (trickery, subterfuge, misrepresentation, malicious charge), the construct being calumn- (thought originally a participle of calvī (to deceive; to trick) + -ia +-y).  The source of the Latin is murky but there are etymologists who maintain the primitive Indo-European cognates include the Ancient Greek kēlein (to bewitch, cast a spell) the Gothic holon (to slander), the Old Norse hol (praise, flattery), the Old English hol (slander) & holian (to betray) and the Old High German huolen (to deceive).  It’s suspected the whole group is from the same root as call.  The English word is a doublet of challenge.  Calumny is a noun & verb, calumniousness, calumniator & calumniation are nouns, calumniate, calumniated & calumniating are verbs, calumniatory & calumnious are adjectives and calumniously is an adverb; the noun plural is calumnies.

The Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) were used to form abstract nouns of feminine gender (countries, diseases, species etc and, occasionally, collections of stuff).  The –y suffix was from the Middle English –y & -i, from the Old English -iġ (-y, -ic), from the Proto-Germanic -īgaz (-y, -ic), from the primitive Indo-European -kos, -ikos, & -iḱos (-y, -ic).  It was cognate with the Scots -ie (-y), the West Frisian -ich (-y), the Dutch -ig (-y), the Low German -ig (-y), the German -ig (-y), the Swedish -ig (-y), the Latin -icus (-y, -ic), the Sanskrit -इक (-ika) and the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós); a doublet of -ic.  The –y suffix was added to (1) nouns and adjectives to form adjectives meaning “having the quality of” and (2) verbs to form adjectives meaning "inclined to".  Words such as derogation, vilification, disapprobation obloquy, traducement etc can in meaning tend towards calumny don’t of necessity carry the “legal baggage” associated with fraudulent misrepresentation, defamation and such.  The modern slang “diss” (from Jamaican English or AAVE (African American Vernacular English and probably a short form of “disrespect” rather than “disparage”) can describe statements sounding calumnious typically they’re a traducement rather than something defamatory.  The adjective calumnious (slanderous, using calumny) emerged in the late fifteenth century and was the equivalent of the Latin calumniosus.  The verb calumniate (knowingly utter false charges) was from Latin calumniatus, past participle of calumniari (falsely to accuse) in use since the 1550s.  The noun calumniation (act of calumniating) was first documented in the 1540s and was the noun of action from calumniate.  The rarely-used noun calumniator (one who falsely and knowingly accuses another of anything disgraceful or maliciously propagates false reports) was in use by the 1560s, from Latin calumniator, an agent noun from calumniari.

Calumny is of course a feature of political exchanges but lest anyone suspects the twenty-first century represents a low point in public politeness, press reports of eighteenth & nineteenth century election campaigns are available and after reviewing these, readers can decide on which side of the Atlantic discourse was most calumnious.  The word calumny is now not commonly applied to political insults (thought often well-deserved) but is a part of the legal jargon in jurisdictions in the common law tradition.  In law, the use of “calumny” rests on the notions of “false, fraudulent & malicious” and is heard most often in matters of probate (the process of verifying the legality of a will).  In the administration of probate “fraudulent calumny” describes the act of a beneficiary making false representations to the person making their will (the testator or testatrix) about another person, the outcome of which is: (1) the beneficiary making the false representations inherits to a greater extent or (2) the person the subject of those representations inherits less.  While these outcomes may be similar to instances in which “undue influence” has been exercised upon a testator or testatrix, what makes fraudulent calumny different is that some sort of falsehood must be involved.  In matters of undue influence, the motives of the influencer may not be pure or honorable but the method of persuasion is more subtle and need not involve untruths, something that makes proving undue influence notoriously challenging because the testator or testatrix has made and executed the will of their own volition.  The text-books sometimes use the legal slang of the “drip, drip, drip of a slow poison” to distinguish undue influence from the sudden, lethal dose of fraudulent calumny.

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

Borrowing from criminal law, the familiar maxim mens rea (from the Latin mēns + reus (literally “guilty mind” and the basis of the precept in English common law: Actus non facit reum nisi mens rea sit (the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty), what a liability for fraudulent calumny hinges on is not that a representation was false but that it was by the calumniator known to be false or they were so reckless as to not to verity the authenticity of what they said.  Probate can however be a tangled web and in the case law there have been instances where conduct clearly was calumnious yet fraudulent calumny was not found because it was proved the disinheritance of the subject of the untrue representations (for wholly unrelated reasons) anyway have happened in accordance with the wishes of the testator or testatrix.  So there can be “other contextual reasons” leading to a will being changed and courts can find their existence wholly excludes the possibility of fraudulent calumny or reduce the strength of the “fraudulent calumny argument”, the latter vaguely along the lines of the “contributory negligence” concept in tort law.  As a category of claim to challenge the validity of a will, fraudulent calumny is in most jurisdictions rare for the practical reason it is so seldom successful; that’s not to say the act is necessarily uncommon, just that it’s hard to prove.  In some cases this can be because there’s a complete lack of evidence.  A malicious falsehood might well be told to someone making out their will that has the direct and immediate effect of them disinheriting the slandered party and making the person telling the untruth the sole beneficiary but, if only two people were ever part of a conversation behind closed doors and one is dead, there likely will be no evidence the untruth was ever uttered and while there may be other grounds upon which the will might be challenged, it usually would not be possible to find fraudulent calumny.

Nor is mere “untruth” or “recklessness” enough to sustain a finding of fraudulent calumny.  Were someone to have made any number of false representations to a testator or testatrix, even if it was found their will was in some way disadvantageous to the slandered party, if there’s compelling evidence the representations had no effect of the decisions of the testator or testatrix, there can be no finding of fraudulent calumny because there exists no casual connection between one act and another.  So it’s limited and intent alone does not create grounds.  Even if it can be proven the falsehoods were intended to cause a will to be changed that “guilty mind” become irrelevant if those statements can be shown to have had no effect.  In that it differs from the application of criminal law where, if one attempts to murder someone but is so inept the target (1) suffers no harm, (2) was unaware an attempt on their life had been made, (3) and in some way benefited from the attempt and (4) the perpetrator suffered some injury in making the attempt, the offence of attempted murder has still been committed and the incompetent assassin may be subject to prosecution.  So, on the path to the fraudulent calumny finishing line there are many hurdles and what a claimant must demonstrate is:

(1) One or more false representations were made.

(2) The representation(s) were made to the testator or testatrix.

(3) The representation(s) went to character or conduct of an existing or potential beneficiary of the will.

(4) The representation(s) were made for the purpose of inducing the testator or testatrix to alter their testamentary dispositions either (4.1) to leave more to the person making the false representation(s) or (4.2) exclude or leave less to the subject of the false representation(s).

(5) The false representation(s) must have been made in the knowledge they were untrue or with recklessness as to their truth

(6) On the balance of probabilities (ie, the common law test in civil matters), it was the false representation(s) that induced the induced the testator or testatrix to change their will.

That means it hangs on intent, event, cause and effect, thus the frequency with which lawyers use the phrase “notoriously difficult to prove” when the possibility of fraudulent calumny comes up in conversation; one can prove intent and event and even that the desired effect happened but if the cause was found to be unrelated, there can, as a matter of law, be no fraudulent calumny.  Despite the obstacles, the concept is simple: “The alleged “poisoner” is receiving a greater share of the estate than the claimant believes is (1) fair and (2) in accordance with the deceased’s true wishes and his has been achieved by the poisoner “poisoning” the mind of the testator or testatrix with untruths.”  Although “challenging”, on the basis of the evidence presented, courts can find fraudulent calumny established (although in some cases the judgment has made it difficult to work out “undue influence ended” and “fraudulent calumny began”.  Typically, except for theorists,  that matters little because the outcome is the critical point.  In Edwards v Edwards [2007] EWHC 1119 (Ch), a woman of 86 died some three months after cutting from her will one son & grandson, leaving the remaining son the estate’s sole beneficiary.  The evidence suggested the testatrix had at the time she executed her final will enjoyed full “testamentary capacity” (ie the “being of sound mind” thing) and both understood and approved the document’s contents; the burden to produce “compelling evidence” of undue influence or of fraudulent calumny thus fell upon the claimant seeking to have the new will set-aside in favour of the original executed a decade earlier.

Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918) by Henry Louis “H.L.” Mencken (1880–1956).  Although it was not his fault, Mencken lived too long and even by the 1930s was thought (though not by other curmudgeons) “dated”.  The Mencken of 1918 was however the author at his best, Damn! A Book of Calumny a collection of short, cynical, punchy pieces representative of a certain strain of US thought in the era.

After reviewing the evidence, the judge found the new will had been induced by undue influence and set it aside, restoring the original.  In the summary, the judge listed the principles: (1) There is no presumption of undue influence for testamentary dispositions; the burden lies on the challenger; (2) the facts must be inconsistent with any hypothesis other than undue influence; (3) undue influence may arise through coercion (pressure overbearing the testator’s volition without convincing judgment) or fraud.  He added that “fraudulent calumny” exists where a person “poisons the testator’s mind” against a “natural beneficiary” by dishonest aspersions known to be false or made recklessly as to their truth.  In other words, “fraudulent calumny” may be thought a type of (or element in”) undue influence meaning the latter can be found to exist in the absence of the former but the former is a “flavour of the latter”.  In Edwards v Edwards, the just found both were operative.  Because fraudulent calumny cases are rare, the modern reiteration of principles was helpful.  The judge emphasized that while the relevant standard of proof is the civil balance of probabilities, the evidence must be compelling and the facts inconsistent with any innocent hypothesis.  Although understood as an old legal orthodoxy, the judgment in Edwards v Edwards confirmed fraudulent calumny is a “stand-alone” basis on which a will may be set aside, quite distinct from coercion.

Even in Kremlin the word proved useful.  On 5 March, 1940, comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) had signed an “open-ended death warrant” authorizing Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953; head of the Soviet secret police 1938-1946) to “apply the supreme penalty, shooting” to Polish POWs (prisoners of war) who refused to accept Soviet authority; consequently almost 22,000 were executed with their the bodies buried in a mass grave in the forest of Katyn.  The corpses were unearthed by the German army in 1943 and Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945), instantly alive to the possibility of driving a wedge between the Soviets and its western Allies, arranged a forensic examination through the office of the neutral Swiss Red Cross, their unambiguous findings quickly published by the Germans.  In London, the Polish government-in-exile had long suspected the Soviets were responsible for the missing troops but found their repeated attempts to pursue the matter stonewalled and their protests suppressed.

As a cynical opportunist, comrade Stalin had few peers and not only did he deny his government’s involvement in the mass murder, he accused the “London Poles” (an annoyance to him because he was backing an alternative, “puppet communist government” under his control) of siding with the Nazis, the headline “HITLER’S POLISH COLLABORATORS!” appearing in Pravda on 19 April, 1943; within a week, Moscow had broken off diplomatic relations with the London Poles for failing “to offer a rebuff to the vile Fascist calumny.”  The British and Americans were well-aware of the truth but relations with the Kremlin were in 1943 “tense” because the so-called “second front” (the invasion of Europe from the west) had again been postponed so, not wishing further to antagonize comrade Stalin, on both sides of the Atlantic, blind eye were turned to the telescopes and diplomats inclined to “make a fuss” side-lined or posted somewhere remote.  Not until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 did the new government of Russia admit the truth about the Katyn massacre.

The Calumny of Apelles

Apelles of Kos was one of the most renowned painters in Ancient Greece during the fourth century BC.  The work (remembered as the Calumny of Apelles) that was reputedly his greatest masterpiece was lost but a vivid description by the Syrian-born Greek writer Lucian of Samosata (circa 125–circa 187) survived and a number of artists subsequently have interpreted the text and rendered versions in their own style.  Quite how reliable was Lucian’s ekphrasis (from the Ancient Greek ἔκφρασις (ékphrasis) (literally “I describe” and in modern use understood to mean “a detailed description”) can’t be known but that he was what would now be called a “social commentator” noted for his satires rather than an art critic has made some scholars of Antiquity caution the “description” might contain the odd embellishment or “slant”.  Despite that, it’s the only extant critique of the painting so that’s what artists have had to work with.  Appelles painted his Calumny as a “revenge work” after a rival wrongfully accused him of committing an act of treason against the Egyptian king.

La Calumnia de Apeles, (Calumny of Apelles, circa 1503), engraving in black on ivory laid paper by Girolamo Mocetto (circa 1470-circa 1534) after Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506).

Mocetto based his engraving of a drawing by Mantegna and versions by other artists also exist.  The theme of calumny (false accusation) obviously is a thread running through many societies (certainly in Italy during the dying days of the late Middle Ages) so the attraction to artists is not surprising.  Ever since one stone-age man (or woman) copied another’s cave-painting and claimed the work as original, artists have been accusing each-other of this and that, some claims calumniatory, some more measured.  For historians of art, the print is interesting because it’s a “work in progress”, the shading not yet added to the basilica’s dome.  Mocetto remained true to Lucian’s words but relocated the allegory’s scene to Venice’s Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Andrea del Verrocchio’s (circa 1435–1488) equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400–1475) standing in the background.  Attended by Ignorance and Suspicion, Midas with his donkey’s ears extends his hand to Calumny while she stands at some distance.  Calumny is the most beautiful woman of her age but is riddled with malignant passions, her fury and wrath symbolized by the blazing torch she holds in one hand, the other dragging by the hair the blameless young man she has slandered; he reaches his hand to the heavens, calling on the gods to bear witness to his innocence.  Calumny is attended to by Envy, pale and wasted away by lingering illness, while following her are Fraud & Conspiracy.  Dressed in tattered black is the mournful Repentance, tears in her eyes as in shame she glances at Truth slowly approaching.

La Calumnia de Apeles (Calumny of Apelles, circa 1497), tempera on panel by Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (Sandro Botticelli) (circa 1445-1510).

Botticelli’s Calumny is the most famous of the genre and also was true to the spirit of Lucian’s ekphrasis, the figures personifications of vice & virtue, or the powerful & powerless (the king and victim).  From left to right, they represent (1) Truth, nude and pointing upwards to Heaven, (2) Repentance, in black (3) Perfidy (Conspiracy), in red and yellow, over the innocent half-naked (4) victim on the floor being pulled forward by the hair by (5) Calumny (Slander), in white and blue and holding a flaming torch, (6) Fraud (behind), tending to Calumny's hair, (7) Rancour (Envy), a bearded and hooded man in black, holding his hand towards (8) the king's eyes to obscure his view.  On the throne, the king has the donkey's ears of King Midas, while (9) Ignorance on his right and (10) Suspicion to his left grasp the ears as they whisper into them.  The king extends his hand towards Calumny, but his gaze is averted.  Historians say it’s at least possible Botticelli had in mind some unfortunate slandered chap (perhaps himself) but some years after he finished the work, the Florentine authorities received an anonymous letter, accusing the artist of “keeping a boy” and practicing homosexuality.  There’s no record of any prosecution being initiated and the consensus is the accusation was likely motivated by envy, vengeance or other of the vices Apelles of Kos depicted, all those years ago.  So it was a calumnious letter but not necessarily an untruth, Botticelli’s proclivities a matter of historic record.  The pattern remains current; when politicians sometimes complain a prosecution of them is “politically motivated”, that may well be true but doesn’t mean they’re not as guilty as sin of that with which they’ve been charged.

Trope

Trope (pronounced trohp)

(1) In art and literature, any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense and which tends to become a motif.

(2) In rhetoric, a figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a non-literal or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(3) In geometry, a tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic or the reciprocal of a node on a surface (archaic).

(4) In music, a short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music; a pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

(5) In the rituals of Judaism, a chanting (cantillation) pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(6) In medieval Christianity (and preserved in the rituals of certain factions in Roman Catholicism), either a phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir or a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.

(7) In Athenian philosophy, any of the ten arguments used in scepticism to refute dogmatism.

(8) In Santayanian philosophy, the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence.

(9) In metaphysics, a particular instance of a property, as contrasted with a universal.

1525–1535: From the Latin tropus (a figure of speech (in rhetoric)) from the Ancient Greek τρόπος (trópos) (a turn, direction, course, way; manner, fashion; a mode in music; a mode or mood in logic (in rhetoric, "a turn or figure of speech)) and related to τροπή (tropḗ) (solstice; trope; turn) and τρέπειν (trépein) (to turn).  Root was the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn), related also to the Sanskrit trapate (is ashamed, confused, literally "turns away in shame") which Latin picked up trepit (he turns), the Latin adoption in the figurative.  The meaning is now understood as something more diffuse but technically, in rhetoric, a trope was "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a sense other than the usual definition".  In English, the word is found often in combined form (such as heliotrope) and occurs also in concrete nouns that correspond to abstract nouns ending in -tropy or -tropism.  Trope is a noun & verb, troper, tropist, tropology & tropism are nouns and tropey is an adjective; the noun plural is tropes.

Use of the noun “tropism” is now generalized but in literary history it’s used in the sense of the “technique” (really more a concept) attributed to the Russian-born French-Jewish novelist and lawyer Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999).  An exercise in abstract thought, madame Sarraute’s approach was to refer to mental and imaginative life as perceived by her and, thus perceived, it comprised (literally) millions of tiny little responses to innumerable stimuli, the classic example being her experimental narrative Tropismes (begun in 1932 but not published until 1939).  In that, with a most unconventional use of language, she “translated” her “vision of reality” into a construct of a “different reality”, the book consisting of 24 short vignettes, capturing brief scenes, described in intricate detail; it was compared by one modern critic to “a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine able to scan what the brain is doing to construct perceptions and render it all sequentially in text.”  The work came to be regarded as proto nouveau roman (“new novel”, an originally French literary movement that emerged in the mid-1950s); it was described by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) as un chef-d'œuvre (a masterpiece) and the Paris-based newapaper Le Monde included it in their “100 Books of the Century”.  The title of Tropismes was a botanical reference, tropisms being stimuli to plant growth and this idea madame Sarraute applied to human thought processes, tropisms imagined as “interior movements that precede and prepare our words and actions, at the limits of our consciousness.”

Tropisms (first edition of the English language edition (1963)).

In reading Tropisms, some mental gymnastics are demanded because among the mysteries of the abstract and imaginary are interspersed the real and living; with often no clear break between where one ends and the other starts, it can be helpful to re-read the odd passage.  Even in 1939 when the French language edition first was published, that “modernist” approach hardly was new but it wasn't yet part of mainstream literature.  That “slurring between” what's “real” and what's not adds to the experience and, within the internal logic of the author's premise, probably is essential but the traditionalists of the pre-Nouveau Roman world likely have dismissed the “blurring” as a technical flaw.  After the “very modern” novelist Sir Martin Amis (1949–2023) told one interviewer people “should read my books twice” fully to understand them, his father (Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)), possibly with a glance at the Booker on his shelf, observed: “Well that means the little shit has failed doesn't it?”

One can see why it seduced Sartre but the idea of the Nouveau Roman becoming fashionable didn’t at the time appeal to most of the “reading for pleasure” segment of the market (ie those who paid for and read novels rather than “deconstructing” them in seminar rooms).  For a mainstream readership, the conventions of the nineteenth century novel (beginning, middle, end; plots; characters, right & wrong etc) that seemed dreary to literary theorists were the essence of fiction and to replace these with “cold, meticulous descriptions of external objects” seemed hardly “literature”; for “that sort of thing”, there were repair manuals and political science tracts.  Read however on its own terms and not as an “exemplar of a genre”, Tropismes can be compelling in the way a half-century before, those prepared to spend time looking from different angles at the work of the early cubists must have found fascinating new insights.

Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 (Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2), oil on canvas by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), Philadelphia Museum of Art,  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The Spanish illustrate the meaning of “enigmatic” with the example “of meeting a man on the stairs and being unable to tell if he's going-up or coming down”.  One could describe Tropisms as: “an enigmatic work”.   

Just as the cubists could depict the human form simultaneously in the way the brain might separately process the sight viewed in different aspects, what Nathalie Sarraute did was explore spaces variously unremarkably mundane or threateningly claustrophobic, populated with dream-like figures, her idea being of the mind working in the almost animalistic, pre-verbal, “instinctual movements” she thought arose from human unconscious.  These she said, “constitute the secret source of our existence” and the old existentialist Sartre concurred, saying: “it is existence itself”.  Even Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), fond of the novels of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) and unlikely to have found much of worth in nouveau roman, in a way, thought like Sarraute and Sartre.  In 1949, after a minor stroke, his personal physician (Lord Moran (Charles Wilson), 1882-1977; President of the RCP (Royal College of Physicians) 1941-1949), seeking to reassure his patient the consequences were minor, explained: “…there was no paralysis; it had only cut off the nutrition of certain central cells concerned with sensation”, adding, in the clinician’s reductionist way: “Sensation doesn’t matter.”  Churchill at once interrupted: “Life is sensation; sensation is life.”

Visitatio Sepulchri Double Bass Sheet Music by Sir James MacMillan (b 1959).

In modern use, “trope” continues to be used to denote any rhetorical or figurative device but the history was varied, one special use occurring during the Middle Ages when it came to be applied to a verbal amplification of the liturgical text used Church rituals.  Regionally, there were likely a few (now lost) but the best–documented of such interpolations was the Quem quaeritis trope preceding Easter Sunday's Introit.  The Latin phrase Quem quaeritis (Whom do you seek?) was used as the opening line (of four) in the Easter liturgical dialogue introduced during the tenth century and which came to be the basic structural element in what became a vast body of medieval liturgical drama (known also as isitatio sepulchri (Visit to the tomb)).  From this perhaps unpromising ecclesiastical origin came the rebirth of European theatre as it developed into a dramatized form (detached from the sacred Liturgy); what was genuinely a new genre became a trope of great significance in the evolution of European drama.  The Easter Introit (a short musical piece or chant sung at the start of an Easter service) was in a sense “ready-made” for adaptation and proved in the hands of many authors ideal for elaboration into the dialogues that were the basis of an entire school of liturgical drama.  Although never long pieces, so influential was their form the English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar Sir Edmund Kerchever “E.K.” Chambers (1866–1954) devoted many pages to tracing their lineage in his two volume The Mediaeval Stage (1903), a work long overshadowed by his four-volume The Elizabethan Stage (1923) but which benefited from the latter-day revival of interest in and re-assessment of the period dubbed the “Late Middle Ages”.

DVD covers: (The Parent Trap (1998), Freaky Friday (2003) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  

When younger, Lindsay Lohan's signature trope was playing dual roles (The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday and I Know Who Killed Me while during her “troubled Hollywood starlet” phase” (2007-2012) she became emblematic of the “downward spiral” trope.  In 2022, she appeared in Falling for Christmas, a Netflix take on the "Christmas movie trope".  Although the scripts for tropes have long followed an algorithm, the studios are said now to be using a predictive form of AI (artificial intelligence) to hone the generation of whatever should have the most audience appeal (an approach with a history in popular music pre-dating AI).  The flesh & blood screen-writers (most of whom have for decades driven cars and made their toast using products manufactured in plants where machines (industrial robots) substantially have displaced the human labor content) are are unlikely ultimately to succeed in keeping AI out of their profession; in the medium term, their future may lie in the creation of the quirky and bizarre (in the pop-culture ecosystem, that's a niche to inhabit until AI also perfects those tropes and at marginal cost).  Indeed, what's predictable is the emergence of the "obviously not AI generated" trope although, presumably, it's a matter of time until machines master also that genre.  For the formulaic stuff (most commercial screen product), the studios are likely to find the AI path "better, cheaper, faster" and the history of US industrial relations suggests these imperatives will prove irresistible.  It's doubtful whether, over the last 40-odd years, many screen-writers gave much thought to the blue-collar workers displaced by robots from assembly lines; it's likely they were just delighted by cheap toasters and better-built cars.  Whether the quality of what ends up on screen will much be improved by AI remains to be seen but the studios will benefit from lower production costs while hoping those rendered redundant will find ways to generate sufficient disposable income to be able to pay to watch what the machines are making.       

Of the Stage 5 Clinger trope, most sources cite the origin as the movie Wedding Crashers (2005) although there are claims it merely popularized the use; without earlier citations however, the source must be assumed to be the film.  As a technical point, a stage one clinger isn’t initially labelled as such, the term applied retrospectively after syndrome is diagnosed.  If men are smart or lucky, they’ll by stage two realize what is happening but some men are so stupid things don't "click" until stage four.  While in movie there was no discussion of stages other than “5”, by implication that was most extreme and memes soon fleshed out 1-4.  Although unverified, the following cautionary tale reputedly was written by Bill Clinton:

SC1, the Stage 1 Clinger: She seems fine

First date went well, she was attentive, interested, and even sometimes got the drinks.  Best of all, she made breakfast!.  Afterwards, the text messages were fun and flirtatious.

SC2, the Stage 2 Clinger: Hunter and game

The text messages become frequent and your first impression was of course positive but, in retrospect, that was the first first hint of the lure / engage / trap strategy of the lone hunter, the point of a lure being to tempt prey and "lure them into a false sense of security".  Lures are of course used because they work and, before long, you'll be exchanging texts with her, most of which will demand little more than agreeing with her about innocuous topics like the weather or the day's traffic.  She has engaged her prey.  When the conversational dynamic has achieved the required level of "naturalness", she’ll suggest a second date and will extract a commitment to a specific time / date / place.  That will be soon.  At this point, an escape still is simple but appears not necessary because a second date seems hardly a threat.

"I've got a stage five clinger", Wedding Crashers (2005).         

SC3, the Stage 3 Clinger: Tactical Manoeuvres

The second day was maybe something you'd not wish to repeat because there was a creepiness in the way she knew so much about your life.  Of course, in the age of social media, such "biodata mining" is hardly a challenge but her knowledge seemed so comprehensive as to suggest the skills of a stalker.  The most dopey men at this point are flattered because they enjoy a date in which about the only topic of conversation was themselves but the more socially sophisticated should at this point sense danger.  The mistake is to continue the engagement by agreeing to a third date, even if thought a clever ploy by not confirming a time; at this point, delusions remain comforting.  Within hours, text messages become frequent to the point of nuisance; you check Facebook and find she's friended everybody one knows while on Instagram she's posted positive comments on your posts.  Needing time to think, you ignore the texting and eventually it goes quiet… for about an hour.  Then she phones.  By being terse to the point of brutish, it can now be ended but many men allow themselves to be trapped into a third date, usually with the illusion they'll use the event to end things.  The S3C stage frequently is the point of no return and exactly when you should have acquainted yourself with the tale of Julius Caesar (100-44 BC; Roman general and dictator of Rome 49-44 BC) crossing the Rubicon and pondered whether to cast the di or cut your losses and run.      

SC4, the Stage 4 Clinger: The circling vulture

By stage four, clinging has slurred effortlessly into stalking and S4C is likely to send your mother flowers on her birthday and attempts at avoidance will prompt texting and calling from other phones.  SC4s who drive are even more of a threat because, wherever you go, she can follow; you'll "run into her" at the most improbable places and usually she’ll suggest taking advantage of the coincidence by going to lunch, dinner or whatever else might be close.  No matter how studiously you might watch the rear-view mirror, she’ll hunt you down and find you.

S5C, the Stage 5 Clinger: Thrill of the kill

A "cheater's" Volvo C30 (2006-2013).  Over dark blue, a stark white "CHEATER" probably is a better contrast the the traditionally preferred red or lurid fuchsia.

The "Cheater Car" phenomenon is due often to wanton philandering but also in some instances because S5C-APCs seek to "dissuade the competition"; Hell hath no fury like a S5C-APC.  In the days of solid machines like the 140/160 (1966-1975) and 240/260 series (1974-1993) series cars, it was once accepted, as a sociological reality, no Volvo ever would suffer the fate but clearly, both Volvos and their ownership profile have changed.  While obviously not desirable, some vehicles have suffered more.

At this point, her life is scheduled around you, even to the point where she may now work in the same building; she expects to have lunch with you every day and a drink after work whenever possible.  Should you try to avoid these meetings, emotional meltdowns (sometimes in public) ensue, the only way to avoid a scene being to agree.  Your friends will start asking you out as a couple and tell one how lucky you are to have her because "she’s wonderful"; the most helpful will hint "she's too good for you" and "you won't do any better".  They know that because they've invited her to their dinner parties where she talks about your plans together.  The S5C can also be APC ("actual psycho-chick", the two not synonymous but there’s frequent overlap).  Pursuing another relationship (even in desperation a fake one) as in an attempt to dissuade her brings its own problems; the S5C-APC will spray-paint CHEATER on their car (usually in some reddish hue but black or white also are used, the required contrast depending on the car's color; these are APC conventions of use).  At this point, faking your own death begins to seem a good tactic.

Cling on and no matter what, never let go: Victorious S5C crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) and Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) under gloomy skies for the formal dedication of the William J Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, November 2004.  

The significance of dividing the path of the clinger into stages is it’s vital to extricate yourself from their clutches at the earliest stage possible; it needs to be remembered progression can be rapid, some clingers so adept at the art they're able to skip one or even two stages.  The longer delayed the excision, the harder it becomes and if allowed to reach the later stages, one may be stuck with her forever, the hunter has been captured by the game and for that, you can’t blame her: You're trapped and it's all your fault; you have only yourself to blame.