Brat

Brat (pronounced brat)

(1) A child, especially one is ill-mannered, unruly, annoying, spoiled or impolite etc (usually used either playfully or in contempt or irritation, often in the phrase “spoiled brat”.

(2) As “military brat”, “army brat” etc, a child with one or more parent serving in the military; most associated with those moving between military bases on a short-duration basis; the derived form is “diplomatic brat” (child living with parents serving in overseas missions).

(3) In the BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism) community, a submissive partner who is disobedient and unruly (ie a role reversal: to act in a bratty manner as the submissive, the comparative being “more bratty”, the superlative “most bratty”).

(4) In mining, a thin bed of coal mixed with pyrites or carbonate of lime.

(5) A rough makeshift cloak or ragged garment (a now rare dialectal form).

(6) An apron fashioned from a coarse cloth, used to protect the clothing (a bib) (a now obsolete Scots dialect word).

(7) A turbot or flatfish.

(8) The young of an animal (obsolete).

(9) A clipping of bratwurst, from the German Bratwurst (a type of sausage) noted since 1904, from the Middle High German brātwurst, from the Old High German, the construct being Brāt (lean meat, finely shredded calf or swine meat) + wurst (sausage).

(10) As a 2024 neologism (technically a re-purposing), the qualities associated with a confident and assertive woman (along the lines of the earlier “bolshie woman” or “tough broad” but with a more overtly feminist flavor).

1500–1520: Thought to be a transferred use (as slang for “a beggar's child”) of the early Middle English brat (cloak of coarse cloth, rag), from the Old English bratt (cloak) of Celtic origin and related to the Old Irish brat (mantle, cloak; cloth used to cover the body).  The origin of the early Modern English slag use meaning “beggar's child” is uncertain.  It may have been an allusion, either to the contemporary use meaning “young of an animal” or to the shabby clothing such a child would have worn", the alternative theory being some link with the Scots bratchet (bitch, hound).  The early sense development (of children) may have included the fork of the notion of “an unplanned or unwanted baby” (as opposed to a “bastard” (in the technical rather than behavioral sense)) had by a married couple.  The “Hollywood Brat Pack” was a term from the mid-1980s referring to a grouping of certain actors and modeled on the 1950s “Rat Pack”.  The slang form “brattery” (a nursery for children) sounds TicTokish but actually dates from 1788 while the generalized idea of “spoiled and juvenile” became common in the 1930s.  The unrelated use of bratty (plural bratties) is from Raj-era Indian English where it describes a cake of dried cow dung, used for fuel.  Brat is a noun, verb & adjective, brattishness & brattiness are nouns, bratting & bratted are verbs, brattish & bratty are adjectives and brattily is an adverb; the noun plural is brats.

LBJ, the "Chicken Tax" and the Subaru BRAT

Subaru Brat, advertising in motion (US).

The Subaru BRAT was (depending on linguistic practice) (1) a coupé utility, (2) a compact pick-up or (3) a small four wheel drive (4WD) ute (utility).  The name was an acronym (Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter), the novel idea of “bi-drive” (4WD) being the notion of both axles being driven, something dictated by the need to form the acronym.  “Bi-Drive Recreational All-Terrain Transporter” certainly was more imaginative (if opportunistic) than other uses of BRAT as an acronym which have included: ”Behaviour Research And Therapy” (an academic journal), “Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast” (historically a diet recommended for those with certain stomach disorders), “Brush Rapid Attack Truck” (a fire-fighting vehicle), “Basenji Rescue and Transport” (a dog rescue organization), “Behavioral Risk Assessment Tool” (used in HIV/AIDS monitoring), Beautiful, Rich and Talented (self-explanatory), the “Bureau de Recherche en Aménagement du Territoire” (the Belgium Office of Research in Land Management (in the French)), “Beyond Line-Of-Sight Reporting and Tracking” (a US Army protocol for managing targets not in visual range) and “Battle-Management Requirements Analysis Tool” (a widely used military check-list, later interpolated into a BMS (Battle Management System).

Ronald Reagan on his Santa Barbara ranch with Subaru BRAT.  Like many owners who used their BRATs as pick-up trucks, President Reagan had the jump seats removed.

Built on the platform of the Leone (1971-1994) and known in some markets also as the MV Pickup, Brumby & Shifter, the BRAT was variously available between 1978-1994 and was never sold in the JDM (Japanese domestic market) although many have been “reverse imported” from Australia and the US and the things now have a cult following in Tokyo.  The most famous BRAT owner was probably Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) who kept a 1978 model on his Californian ranch until 1988, presenting something of a challenge for his Secret Service detail, many of whom didn’t know how to drive a stick-shift (manual transmission).  That though would have been less frightening than the experience of many taken for a drive by Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) in the Amphicar 770 (1961-1965) he kept at his Texas ranch.  LBJ suddenly would turn off the path, driving straight into the waters of the dam, having neglected to tell his passengers of the 770’s amphibious capabilities.

Of physics.  Those familiar Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) First Law of Motion (known also as the Law of Inertia: "An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will continue in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force") can ponder the possibilities.

The Subaru BRAT is remembered also as a “Chicken Tax car”.  Tax regimes have a long history of influencing or dictating automotive design, the Japanese system of displacement-based taxation responsible for the entire market segment of “Kei cars” (a clipping of kei-jidōsha (軽自動車) (light automobile), the best known of which have been produced with 360, 600 & 660 cm3 (22, 37 & 40 cubic inch) engines in an astonishing range of configurations ranging from micro city cars to roadsters and 4WD dump trucks.  In Europe too, the post-war fiscal threshold resulted in a wealth of manufacturers (Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, BMW, Ford, Maserati, Opel et al) offering several generations of 2.8 litre (171 cubic inch) sixes while the that imposed by the Italian government saw special runs of certain 2.0 litre (122 cubic inch) fours, sixes & even V8s.  The US government’s “Chicken Tax” (a part of the “Chicken War”) was different in that it was a 25% tariff imposed in 1963 by the Johnson administration on potato starch, dextrin, brandy and light trucks; it was a response to the impost of a similar tariffs by France and the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) on chicken meat imported from the US.

Subaru BRAT in use.

The post-war development in the US of large scale, intensive chicken farming had both vastly expanded production of the meat and radically reduced the unit cost of production which was good but because supply quickly exceeded the demand capacity of the domestic market, the surplus was exported, having the effect in Europe of transforming chicken from a high-priced delicacy to a staple consumer protein; by 1961, imported US chicken had taken some 50% of the European market.  This was at a time when international trade operated under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT (1947)) and there was nothing like the codified dispute resolution mechanism which exists in the rules of the successor World Trade Organization (the WTO (1995)) and the farming lobbies in Germany, France and the Netherlands accused the US producers of “dumping” (ie selling at below the cost of production) with the French government objecting that the female hormones US farmers used to stimulate growth were a risk to public health, not only to those who ate the flesh but to all because nature of the substances was such that a residue enter the water supply.  The use of the female hormones in agriculture does remains a matter of concern, some researchers linking it to phenomena noted in the last six decades including the startling reduction in the human male's sperm count, the shrinking in size of the penises of alligators living in close proximity to urban human habitation and early-onset puberty in girls.

Subaru BRAT Advertising (US).

Eventually, the tariffs on potato starch, dextrin and brandy were lifted but the protection for the US truck producers remained, triggering a range of inventive “work-arounds” concocted between various engineering and legal offices, most of which involved turning two-seater trucks & vans into vehicles which technically could quality as four-seaters, a configuration which lasted sometimes only until the things reached a warehouse where the fittings could be removed, something which would cost the Ford Motor Company (one of the corporations the tax had been imposed to protect) over US$1 billion in penalties, their tactics in importing the Transit Connect light truck from Turkey (now the Republic of Türkiye) just too blatant.  In New Zealand, in the mid 1970s, the government found the “work-arounds” working the other way.  There, changes had been implemented to make the purchase of two seater light vans more attractive for businesses so almost instantly, up sprang a cottage industry of assembling four-door station wagons with no rear seat which, upon sale, returned to the workshop to have a seat fitted.  Modern capitalism has always been imaginative.

Subaru "Passing Lamp" on Leone 1600 GL station wagon (optional on BRATs, 1980-1982).

In Fuji Heavy Industries’ (then Subaru’s parent corporation) Ebisu boardroom, the challenge of what probably was described as the “Chicken Tax Incident” was met by adding to the BRAT two (the frame welded to the cargo bed) plastic, rear-facing jump seats, thereby qualifying the vehicle as a “passenger car” subject in the US only to a 2.5 and not a 25% import tax.  Such a “feature” probably seems strange in the regulatory environment of the 2020s but there was a time when there was more freedom in the air.  Subaru’s US operation decided the BRAT’s “outdoor bucket seats” made it an “open tourer” and slanted the advertising thus, the model enjoying much success although the additional seating wasn’t available for its final season in the US, the BRAT withdrawn after 1987.  Another nifty feature available on the BRAT between 1980-1982 was the “Passing Lamp” (renamed “Center Lamp” in 1982 although owners liked “Third Eye” or “Cyclops”), designed to suit those who had adopted the recommended European practice of flashing the headlights (on high beam) for a second prior to overtaking.  The BRAT was not all that powerful so passing opportunities were perhaps not frequent but the “passing lamp” was there to be used if ever an even slower car was encountered.  The retractable lamp was of course a complicated solution to a simple problem given most folk so inclined just flash the headlights but it was the sort of fitting with great appeal to men who admire intricacy for its own sake.

Brat: Charli XCX's Summer 2024 album

Charli XCX, BRIT Awards, O2 Arena,  London, February 2016; the "BRITs" are the British Phonographic Industry's annual popular music awards.

“Brat” has been chosen by the Collins English Dictionary as its 2024 Word of the Year (WotY), an acknowledgement of the popular acclaim which greeted the word’s re-purposing by English singer-songwriter Charli XCX (the stage-name of Charlotte Emma Aitchison (b 1992)) who used it as the title for her summer 2024 album.  The star herself revealed her stage name is pronounced chahr-lee ex-cee-ex; it has no connection with Roman numerals and XCX is anyway not a standard Roman number.  XC is “90” (C minus X (100-10)) and CX is “110” (C plus X (100 +10)) but XCX presumably could be used as a code for “100” should the need arise, on the model of something like the “May 35^th” reference Chinese Internet users used to use in an attempt to circumvent the CCP's (Chinese Communist Party) "Great Firewall of China" when speaking of the “Tiananmen Square Incident” of 4 June 1989.  In 2015, Ms XCX revealed “XCX” was an element of her MSN screen name (CharliXCX92) when young (it stood for “kiss Charli kiss”) and she used it on some of the early promotion material for her music.

Charli XCX with Brat album (vinyl pressing edition) packaging in "brat green".

According to Collins, the word “resonated with people globally”.  The dictionary had of course long had an entry for the word something in the vein of: “someone, especially a child, who behaves badly or annoys you”, but now it has added “characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude”.  In popular culture, the use spiked in the wake of the album's released but it may be “brat” in this sense endures if the appeal is maintained, otherwise it will become unfashionable and fade from use, becoming a “stranded word”, trapped in the time of its historic origin.  So, either it enters the vernacular or by 2025 it will be regarded as “so 2024”.  The lexicographers at Collins seem optimistic about its future, saying in the WotY press release that “brat summer has established itself as an aesthetic and a way of life”.

Lindsay Lohan in Jil Sander (b 1943) "brat green" gown, Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, Los Angeles, October 2024.  For anyone wanting to describe a yellowish-green color with a word which has the virtues of (1) being hard to pronounce, (2) harder to spell and (3) likely to baffle most of one’s interlocutors, there’s “smaragdine” (pronounced smuh-rag-din), from the Latin smaragdinus, from smaragdus (emerald), from the Ancient Greek σμάραγδινος (smáragdinos), from σμάραγδος (smáragdos).

The “kryptonite green” used for Brat’s album’s packaging seems also to have encouraged the use in fashion of various hues of “lurid green” (the particular shade used by Ms XCX already dubbed “brat green” although some which have appeared on the catwalks seem more of a chartreuse) and an online “brat generator” allowed users replicate the cover with their own choice of words.  The singer was quite helpful in fleshing out the parameters of the aesthetic, emphasizing it didn’t revolve around a goth-like “uniform” and nor was it gender-specific or socially restricted.  In an interview with the BBC, Ms XCX explained the brat thing was a spectrum condition extending from “luxury” to “trashy” and was a thing of attitude rather than accessories: “A pack of cigs, a Bic lighter, and a strappy white top with no bra.  That’s kind of all you need.”  Although gender-neutral, popular use does seem to put the re-purposed “brat” in the tradition of the earlier “bolshie woman” or “tough broad” but with a more overtly feminist flavor, best understood as “the qualities associated with a confident and assertive woman”.  In its semantic change, “brat” has joined some other historically negative words & phrases (“bitch”, “bogan”, the infamous “N-word” et al) which have been “reclaimed” by those at whom the slur was once aimed, a tactic which not only creates or reinforces group identity but also weaponizes what used to be an insult so it can be used to return fire.

Blister

Blister (pronounced blis-tah or blis-ter)

(1) A thin vesicle on the skin, containing watery matter or serum and induced typically by caused by friction, pressure, burning, freezing, chemical irritation, disease or infection.

(2) In botany, a swelling on a plant.

(3) A swelling containing air or liquid, as on a painted surface.

(4) In medicine, something applied to the skin to raise a blister; a vesicatory (blister agent) or other applied medicine (mostly archaic).

(5) In glass-blowing, a relatively large bubble occurring during the process.

(5) In roofing, an enclosed pocket of air, which may be mixed with water or solvent vapor, trapped between impermeable layers of felt or between the membrane and substrate.

(7) In military jargon, a transparent bulge or dome on the fuselage of an airplane, usually for purposes of observation or mounting a gun but used sometimes as a housing for rearward air extraction.

(8) In photography, a bubble of air formed where the emulsion has separated from the base of a film, usually as a result of defective processing.

(9) In metallurgy, a form of smelted copper with a blistered surface.

(10) A dome or skylight on a building.

(11) The moving bubble in a spirit level.

(12) The small blister-like covering of plastic, usually affixed to a piece of cardboard or other flat sheet, and containing a small item (pens, hardware items etc).

(13) As “blister pack” or “blister card”, the packaging used for therapeutic or medicinal tablets in which the pills sit under small blister-like coverings, often labeled sequentially (1,2,3 or Mon, Tue, Wed etc) to aid patients.

(14) As “blister packaging” a type of pre-formed packaging made from plastic that contains cavities; a variant of bubble-wrap.

(15) In slang, an annoying person; an irritant.

(16) The rhyming slang for “sister”, thus the derived forms “little blister”, “big blister”, “evil blister” et al).

(17) In slang, a “B-lister” (ie a celebrity used for some purpose or invited to an event when it’s not possible to secure the services of an “A-Lister”.  In industry slang, the less successful celebrity managers are “blister agencies”.

(18) To raise a blister; to form or rise as a blister or blisters; to become blistered.

(19) To criticize or severely to rebuke (often as “blistering attack”).

(20) To beat or thrash; severely to punish.

(21) In cooking, to sear after blanching

1250–1300: From the Middle English blister & blester (thin vesicle on the skin containing watery matter), possibly from the Old French blestre (blister, lump, bump), probably from the Middle Dutch blyster & bluyster (swelling; blister), from the Old Norse blǣstri (a blowing), dative of blāstr (swelling).  All the European forms are from the primitive Indo-European bhlei- (to blow, swell), an extension of the root bhel- (to blow, swell).  The verb emerged late in the fifteenth century in the sense of “to become covered in blisters” and the medical use (of vesicatories) meaning “to raise blisters on” is in the literature from the 1540s.  The noun & adjective vesicatory dates from the early eighteenth century was from the Modern Latin vesicularis, from vesicula (little blister), diminutive of vesica (bladder).  In historic medicine, a vesicant (plural vesicants) or vesicatory (plural vesicatories) is used as an agent which induces blistering.  Typically a chemical compound, the primary purpose was intentionally to create a blister to draw blood or other bodily fluids to the surface, often in an attempt to relieve inflammation, improve circulation in a specific area, or treat various conditions indirectly by this counter-irritation technique.  Historically, vesicatories were commonly used with substances like cantharidin (from blister beetles) being applied to the skin to achieve this effect but in modern medicine the practice is (mostly) obsolete because more effective and less invasive treatments now exist.  Blister & blistering are nouns, verbs & adjectives, blistered is a verb & adjective, and blisterlike, blisterless & blistery are adjectives; the noun plural is blisters.

1968 MGC Roadster with bulge, blister and the bulge's curious stainless steel trim.

The MGC (1967-1969) was created by replacing the MGB’s (1962-1980) 1.8 litre four cylinder engine with a 2.9 litre (178 cubic inch) straight-six, something which necessitated a number of changes, one of which was the bonnet (hood) which gained a bulge to accommodate the revised placement of the radiator and, on the left-hand side, a small blister because the forward of the two carburettors sat just a little too high to fit even with the bulge.  Because to raise the whole bulge would have the bonnet look absurd, the decision was taken just to add a blister.  A blister (in this context) is of course a type of bulge and where a blister ends a bulge begins is just a convention of use, blisters informally defined as being smaller and of a “blister-like shape”, something recalling one appearing on one’s foot after a day in tight, new shoes.  A blister (which some seem to insist on calling a “teardrop” in they happen to assume that shape) also differs from a scoop in that it’s a enclosed structure whereas a scoop has an aperture to permit airflow.  There are however some creations in the shape of a typical blister which are used for air-extraction (the aperture to the rear) but these tend to be called “air ducts” rather than blisters.  MGC’s bulged and blistered bonnet has always been admired (especially by students of asymmetry) and both the originals (in aluminium which is an attraction in itself) and reproduction items are often used by MGB owners, either just for the visual appeal or to provide greater space for those who have installed a V8.  The apparently superfluous stainless steel trim piece in the bulge (there's no seam to conceal) is believed to be a motif recalling the small grill which was in a similar place on BMC’s (British Motor Corporation) old Austin-Healey 3000 (1959-1967), the MGC created because the 3000 couldn’t easily be modified to comply with the increasingly onerous US regulations.  Because there were doubts the cost of developing a replacement would ever be recovered, the decision was taken to build what was, in effect, a six-cylinder MGB.  The considerable additional weight of the bigger engine spoiled the MGB’s almost perfect balance and although a genuine 120 mph (195 km/h) machine, the MGC was never a critical or commercial success with only 8,999 (4,542 roadsters & 4,457 coupés) produced during its brief, two season life.

Republic P-47C Thunderbolt with the original colonnaded canopy (top) and the later P-47D with blister canopy (bottom).

When the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt (1941-1945) entered service with the USAAF (United States Army Air Force) in 1942, it was the largest, heaviest, single seat, piston-engined fighter ever produced, a distinction it enjoys to this day.  However, one thing it did share with some of its contemporaries was the replacement in later versions of the colonnaded canopy over the cockpit by an all-enveloping single panoramic structure which afforded the pilot unparalleled visibility, something made possible by advances in injection molding to fabricate shapes in Perspex, then still a quite novel material.  These canopies were adopted also for later versions of the The Supermarine Spitfire (1938-1948) and the North American P-51 Mustang (1941-1946) but the historians of aviation seem never to have settled on a description, opinion divided between “bubble-top” and “blister top”.

In military aviation, “blister” is more familiar as a use to describe the transparent bulge (or dome) on the fuselage of an airplane, usually for purposes of observation or mounting a gun but used sometimes to house a rearward air extraction device.  However, because of other linguistic traditions in military design, the “blisters” used as gun mounting position were also described with other words, the use sometimes a little “loose”.  One term was barbette (plural barbettes), a borrowing from the French and used historically to mean (1) a mound of earth or a platform in a fortification, on which guns are mounted to fire over the parapet and (2) (in naval use), the inside fixed trunk of a warship's gun-mounting, on which the turret revolves and used to contain the hoists for shells and cordite from the shell-room and magazine.

Also used was turret, from the Middle English touret, from the Old French torete (which endures in Modern French as tourette), a diminutive of tour (tower), from the Latin turris.  In architecture (and later adoptions like electronic circuitry and railcar design), turrets tended to be variations of or analogous with “towers” but in military use there was a specific evolution.  The early military turrets were “siege towers”, effectively a “proto-tank” or APC (armoured personnel carrier) in the form of what was essentially a “building on wheels”, used to carry ladders, casting bridges, weapons and soldiers equipped with the tools and devices need to storm so fortified structure such as a fort or castle.  From this evolved the still current idea notion of an armoured, rotating gun installation on a fort or warship and as powered land vehicles and later flying machines (aircraft) were developed, the term was adopted for their various forms of specialized gun mountings.  In aircraft, the term blister came later, and allusion to the blister-like shape increasingly used to optimize aerodynamic efficiency, something of little concern to admiralties.

Mar-a-Lago, Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida.

Another military blister was the cupola (plural cupolas or cupolae), from the Italian cupola, from the Late Latin cūpula (a small cask; a little tub), from the Classical Latin cuppella, from cuppa & cūpa (tub), from the Ancient Greek κύπελλον (kúpellon) (small cup), the construct being cūp(a) + -ula, from the primitive Indo-European -dlom (the instrumental suffix) and used as a noun suffix denoting an instrument.  The origin in Latin was based on the resemblance to an upturned cup, hence the use to describe the rounded top of just about any structure where no specific descriptor existed.  In military use, a cupola is basically a helmet fixed in place and that may be on a building, a ship or an armored vehicle, the function being to protect the head while offering a field of view.  Sometimes, especially in tanks or armored cars, guns or flame-throwers were integrated into cupolas and in naval gunnery, there was the special use to describe the dome-like structures protecting a (usually single) gun mounting, something which distinguished them from the larger, flatter constructions which fulfilled the same purpose for multi-gun batteries.  Turrets and cupolas are among the architectural features of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) winter palace on Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida.

Northrop P-61 Black Widow:  A prototype with the troublesome dorsal blister turret (left), the early production P-61A with the blister removed (upper right) and the later P-61B with the blister restored (lower right).

The attractive aerodynamic properties of the classic blister shape was an obvious choice for use in aircraft but even then, they weren’t a complete solution.  The Northrop P-61 Black Widow was the first aircraft designed from a clean sheet of paper as a night-fighter, cognizant of the experience of the RAF (Royal Air Force) which during the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) Blitz of London (1940-1941) had pressed into service day-fighter interceptors.  Designed to accommodate on-board radar, the Black Widow was heavily gunned and incorporated notable US innovations such as remote control firing mechanisms.  Part of the original was a remotely-controlled blister turret on the dorsal section which proved the shape’s aerodynamic properties worked only when pointed in the appropriate direction; when pointed at right-angles to the aircraft’s centre-line, the tail section between the twin-booms suffered severe buffeting.  Accordingly, the blister turret was deleted from the early production versions but the early experience of the military confirmed the need for additional firepower and after a re-design, it was restored to the slightly lengthened P-61B.  The integration of so many novel aspects of design meant the P-61 didn’t enter service until 1944 and, as the first of its breed, it was never a wholly satisfactory night-fighter but it was robust, had good handling characteristics and offered the advantage of being able to carry a heavy payload which meant it could operate as a nocturnal intruder with a lethal disposable load.  It was however in some ways a demanding airframe to operate, the manufacturer recommending that when fully-loaded in its heaviest configuration, a take-off run-up of 3 miles (4.8 km) was required.  Although its service in World War II (1939-1945) was limited, remarkably, like the de Havilland Mosquito (DH.98), the Black Widow was also a Cold War fighter, both in service until 1951-1952 because of a technology deficit which meant it wasn’t until then jet-powered night-fighters came into service.  The Black Widow was in 1949 (by then designated F-51), the first aircraft in service in the embryonic USADC (US Air Defense Command), formed to defend the country from any Soviet intrusion or attack.

Xanax (Alprazolam), a fast-acting benzodiazepine.  It is marketed as anti-anxiety medication and supplied in blister packs.

Lindsay Lohan released the track Xanax in 2019.  With a contribution from Finnish pop star Alma (Alma-Sofia Miettinen; b 1996), the accompanying music video was said to be “a compilation of vignettes of life”, Xanax reported as being inspired by Ms Lohan’s “personal life, including an ex-boyfriend and toxic friends”.  Structurally, Xanax was quoted as being based around "an interpolation of" Better Off Alone, by Dutch Eurodance-pop collective Alice Deejay, slowed to a Xanax-appropriate tempo.

Xanax by Lindsay Lohan

I don't like the parties in LA, I go home

In a bad mood, pass out, wake up alone

Just to do it all over again, oh

Looking for you

Only one reason I came here

Too many people, I can't hear

Damn, I got here at ten

Now it's 4 AM

I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care about us

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe

No, I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care 'bout us

 

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe, yeah

 

But you're like Xanax to me

When you kiss me, I can't breathe

 

I try to stay away from you, but you get me high

Only person in this town that I like

Guess I can take one more trip for the night

Just for the night

 

Only one reason I came here

Too many people, I can't hear

Damn, I got here at ten

Now it's 4 AM

 

I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care about us

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe

No, I can't be in this club

It's too crowded and I'm fucked

Ain't nobody here for love

Ain't nobody care 'bout us

 

I got social anxiety, but you're like Xanax to me, yeah

Social anxiety, when you kiss me, I can't breathe, yeah

 

But you're like Xanax to me

When you kiss me, I can't breathe

 

But you're like Xanax to me

When you kiss me, I can't breathe

Xanax lyrics Universal © Music Publishing Group

Melodrama

Melodrama (pronounced mel-uh-drah-muh or mel-uh-dram-uh)

(1) A dramatic form (used in theatre, literature, music etc) that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization.

(2) Loosely, (sometimes very loosely), behavior or events thought “melodramatic” (overly dramatic displays of emotion or behavior and applied especially to situations in which “things are blown out of proportion”).

(3) In formal definition (seventeenth, eighteenth & nineteenth centuries), a romantic dramatic composition characterized by sensational incident with music interspersed.

(4) A poem or part of a play or opera spoken to a musical accompaniment (technically, a passage in which the orchestra plays a somewhat descriptive accompaniment, while the actor speaks).

(5) A popular nickname conferred on highly-strung young women with a Mel*.* given name (Melanie, Melissa, Melina, Melinda, Melisandre, Melodie, Melody et al).

1784 (used in 1782 as melodrame): From the French mélodrame (a dramatic composition in which music is used), the construct being mélo- , from the Ancient Greek μέλος (mélos) (limb, member; musical phrase, tune, melody, song) + drame (refashioned by analogy with the Ancient Greek δρᾶμα (drâma) (deed, theatrical act) and cognate to the German Melodram, the Italian melodramma and the Spanish melodrama.  The adjective melodramatic (pertaining to, suitable for, or characteristic of a melodrama) came into use in 1789 (unrelated to political events that year).  Melodrama, melodramaticism, melodramaturgy, melodramatics & melodramatist are nouns, melodramatize, melodramatizing & melodramatized are verbs, melodramatic is an adjective and melodramatically is an adverb; the noun plural is melodramas or melodramata.

As late as the mid-nineteenth century “melodrama” was still used of stage-plays (usually romantic & sentimental) in which songs were interspersed, the action accompanied by orchestral music appropriate to the situations.  By the 1880s, the shift towards a melodrama being understood as “a romantic and sensational dramatic piece with a happy ending” and this proved influential, the musical element ceasing gradually to be an essential feature, the addition of recorded sound to “moving pictures” (movies) the final nail in the coffin.  Since then, a “melodrama” is understood to be “a dramatic piece characterized by sensational incidents and violent appeals to the emotions, but with (usually) a happy ending”.

The origins of melodrama lie in late sixteenth century Italian opera and reflect an attempt to convince audiences (or more correctly, composers and critics) that the form (ie opera or melodrama) was a revival of the Classical Greek tragedy.  It was a time in Europe when there was a great reverence for the cultures of Antiquity, something the result of the scholars and archivists (and frankly the publicists) of the Renaissance building a somewhat idealized construct of the epoch and the content providers noted the labels, the German-British Baroque composer Frederick Handel (1685–1759) using both for his works.  In the late eighteenth century French dramatists began to develop melodrama as a distinct genre by elaborating the dialogue and adding spectacle, action and violence to the plot-lines, a technique still familiar in the 2020s, sensationalism and extravagant emotionalism as effective click-bait now it was for ticket sales in earlier times.

The use of “melodrama” to refer to the life of a troubled popular culture figure represents a bit of a jump in meaning but it’s now well-understood.

The path of the musical form had earlier been laid in text, something becoming a more significant influence as the spread of the printing press made mass-market publications more accessible and they spread even within non-literate populations because as public and private readings became common forms of entertainment.  Although elements of what would later be understood as melodrama exist in the gloomy tragedies of the French novelist Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707–1777), more of an influence on the composers would be those who wrote with a lighter touch including the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) whose Pygmalion (1775) and French theatre director and playwright René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt (1773–1844) whose Le Pèlerin blanc ou les Enfants du hameau (The White Pilgrim (or The Children of the Village)) both came to be regarded as part of the inchoate framework of the genre.  Literary theorists still debate the matter of cause & effect between melodrama and the growing vogue of the Gothic novel, one of fiction’s more emotionally manipulative paths, many concluding the relationship between the two was symbiotic.

There was also the commercial imperative.  Literary historians have documented the simultaneous proliferation of melodramas produced for the English stage during the nineteenth century (notably adaptations of novels by popular authors such as Charles Dickens (1812–1870) and Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)) and the paucity in original work of substance.  There are some who have argued the writers had “lost their ear” for dramatic verse and prose but it more likely they realized they had “lost their audiences” and these were people with bills to pay (the term “potboiler” was coined later to describe “books written only to provide food for the stove” but few authors of popular fiction have ever been far removed from concerns with their sales).  The reason the melodramas which flourished in the 1800s were so popular will be unsurprising to modern film-makers, political campaign strategists and other content providers for they can be deconstructed as a class of naively sensational entertainment in which the protagonists & antagonists were excessively virtuous or exceptionally evil (thus all tiresome complexities reduced for something black & white), the conflict played out with blood, thrills and violence (spectres, ghouls, witches & vampires or the sordid realism of drunkenness, infidelity or personal ruin used as devices as required).

The word “melodrama” appears often in commentaries on politics and that’s a trend which was probably accelerated by the presentation moving for most purposes to screens and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) revolutionizing the business by applying the tricks & techniques of reality TV (itself an oxymoron) meant the whole process can now be thought an unfolding melodrama, indeed, the Trump model cannot work as anything else.  The idea of “politics as theatre” was first discussed in the US in the 1960s but then a phenomenon like Mr Trump would have been thought absurdly improbable.

Because of the popularity of the form, melodrama has rarely found much favor with the critics and that old curmudgeon Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) noted (and, one suspects, not without some satisfaction) that the term generally was “…used with some contempt, because the appeal of such plays as are acknowledged to deserve the title is especially to the unsophisticated & illiterate whose acquaintance with human nature is superficial, but whose admiration for goodness and detestation of wickedness is ready & powerful.”  Henry Fowler moved among only a certain social stratum.  He added that the task of the melodramatist’s was to establish in the audience’s mind the notion of the dichotomous characters as good & wicked and then “…provide striking situations that shall provoke and relieve anxieties on behalf of poetic justice.”  One device once used to produce the desired effect was of course music and a whole academic industry emerged in the mid-twentieth century to explain how different sounds could be used to suggest or summon certain emotions and because music increasingly ceased to be an essential part of the melodramatic form, the situations, dialogue and events in purely textual productions became more exaggerated.

Punkess

Punkess (pronounced puhngk-es)

A feminine form of “punk”.

1976: The construct was punk + -ess.  The word was coined by fashion & pop culture writer Blair Sabol (b 1944) and appeared in the “Observations” column in the October 1976 edition of Vogue magazine.  Punkess is a noun; the noun plural is punkesses.

Vogue cover, October, 1976.

In coining “punkess”, Ms Sabol’s grammar was sound because appending the –ess suffix is the orthodox way to feminize a noun.  The -ess suffix was from the Middle English -esse, from the Old French -esse, from the Late Latin -issa, from the Ancient Greek -ισσα (-issa) and was appended to words to create the female form.   It displaced the Old English -en (feminine suffix of nouns).  The other often used suffix was–ette, from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  Properly applied, it was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something and thus related to –et, from the Middle English -et, from the Old French –et & its feminine variant -ette, from the Late Latin -ittus (and the other gender forms -itta & -ittum).  It was used to form diminutives, loosely construed.  Because of (1) the link with the Latin –itta (the feminine form of –ittus) and (2) the historic tendency to conflate diminutive forms (ie smaller, lesser, inferior) with “female”, the association of the use of the –ette suffix with feminized forms emerged and on some cases entered standard English (majorette (female drum major); usherette (female usher) et al).  The use became less common as gender-neutral language spread.

Vogue Observations (OB) page, October 1976.  In 1976, a pair of raw-hide, knee-high boots, hand-stitched in (just) post-Franco Spain, listed with a RRP (recommended retail price) of US$68 and for “darkening and waterproofing”, the purchase included a tin of ”Graza de Caballo (pig oil, goose grease, and essence of almond).”  Vogue remains an Oxford comma holdout.

So the grammar was (at least historically) sound but whether Ms Sabol’s choice was sociologically well-founded may to some have seemed dubious.  The word “punk” has enjoyed an extraordinary range of use since the seventeenth century and although its origin (in American English)  is murky, all uses thought forks of “punk” in the sense of “rotten wood dust used as tinder” (used thus since at least the late 1670s), evolving by the mid-nineteenth century to mean “something worthless”, personalized by 1910 to mean “an undesirable person (thus the link with petty criminals).  By 1976 however, what Ms Sabol (indirectly) was referencing was the “punk rock” movement which, musically, had actually been around for almost a decade but although the term “punk rock” had in the US appeared in the US pop-music press as early as 1972, it didn’t enter mainstream use until 1976-1977 when the industry (and there have been discussions about cause & effect) realized they had a marketable commodity to package.

An AI (artificial intelligence) generated female punk, who, were she IRL (in real life), might not have a Vogue subscription.

The punk persona of the 1976 punks was such that the female punk musicians stereotypically would have found the notion of “punkess” absurd; they were simply punks making their music.  Of course Ms Sabol was writing in Vogue, discussing not jarring music but the attitude of the women she called the harbingers of “punkess preakness”, those for whom “toughness and aloofness” was not “their trade, but rather feistiness and endurance”  In other words, punkness (for the Vogue readership) describes a kind of “selective attitudinal transference”.  It’s not correct to say critiques of language disparaging or dismissive of women didn’t exist in 1976, the point being that such objections tended then variously to be ignored or devalued, the critics marginalized but Ms Sabol’s crew of punkesses might have approved of the label; a generation earlier, there were those who would have called them “tough broads” so it may have seemed like progress.  Despite that, “punkess” never caught on although “punkette” was used by a number of publications, usually in the context of “young women who adopt the fashion aesthetic of the punk subculture”.

Punkess crooked Hillary Clinton iPhone 16 case by Harold Ninek.

“Punk” proved one of the more adaptable words in English, all traceable to the original sense of “something worthless”.  The re-purposing included (1) “pre World War I (1914-1918) bread of not the highest quality”, (2) “driftwood”, (3) “toxic or poor quality liquor”, (4) “a homosexual”, (5) within the homosexual community “a (usually weak, young) man kept by a man for sexual purposes”, (6) a “ineffectual or worn-out boxer”, (7) “insincerity” (which may have been an imperfect echoic of the slang “bunk”, (8) “Chinese insect repellent”, (9) “certain tobacco products”, (10) “some strains of cannabis”, (11) a “novice” at a trade (much used in the construction industry). (12) “a criminal” (historically much associated with petty crime and “juvenile delinquency”), (13) “decayed or rotted timber”, (14) “a foolish or absurd argument”, (15) a type of incense, (16) “a fungus (polyporus fomentarius etc) sometime dried for use as tinder”) (ie harking back to the seventeenth century original), (17) “a harlot or prostitute” (which gains linguistic respectability for having appeared in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602): “This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers…” & Measure for Measure (1604): “She may be a punk, for many of them are neither maid, widow nor wife”, (18) “used or discarded fruits & vegetables”, (19) a 1970s pop-culture philosophy described as “hip nihilism”, (19) “a photographer’s assistant”, (20) a clipping of “punk rock” or “punk rocker”, (21) “the fashion styles associated with punk rockers and their audiences” (labeled “aggressively dumb” by some who didn’t approve), (22) in pyrotechnics, “a stick coated with a slow-burning paste, used to ignite fireworks, (23) “poverty and the poor”, (24) (as a verb) “to obtain” (often with a hint of the illicit), (25) (as verb) “to puncture a tyre” and (26) “a young elephant”.  Under the Raj, a punkah (or punka) was “a fan, especially made of leaf or cloth and hung from the ceiling”.  Punkah was from the Hindi पंखा (paṅkhā) (fan), from the Sanskrit पक्षक (pakṣaka), from पक्ष (pakṣa) (wing).  Before the advent of electricity a punkah remotely was operated manually by a servant, known as the “punkah-boy” or “punkahwallah” (depending on age).  Wallah was from Hindi -वाला (-vālā) either in the sense of “pertaining to” or (which etymologists think more likely) “man in charge”.

Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys (2002) by Pat Oliphant.

Australian-born US political cartoonist Pat Oliphant (b 1935) used the device of a little penguin as his alter ego and that penguin’s name was “Punk”.  Punk often appeared in Oliphant’s cartoons, making some wry comment or asking a question.  One of the most controversial pieces appeared as “Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys” in which Punk says: “I’ll call the bishop”, receiving the answer: “The bishop has first dibs.”  Widely condemned by the hierarchy of the US church, some newspapers refused to print the cartoon and others didn’t add it to their more widely-distributed on-line editions.  Oliphant’s cartoons are now held in the collection of the National Library of Congress.

Of cyberpunks and cybergoths

Punk has been used as a prefix to create literally dozens of forms and punkitude (the quality or state of being a punk; punkishness; adopting or projecting a punkish persona) captures the flavor of many, the construct being punk + att(itude).  Also existing in many forms, the suffix –punk seems first to have been used in 1986 to create cyberpunk and it spiked in 1992 with the coining of steampunk (although some sources claim this was first seen in 1989).  It’s used to apply the aesthetic or (perceived) attitudes of the 1970s (and beyond) punk subculture (loosely defined) on genres previously unrelated.

A cyberpunk Lindsay Lohan sipping martinis with Johnny Depp and a silver alien by AiJunkie.

The youth subcultures “cyberpunk” and “cybergoth” had common threads in the visual imagery of science fiction (SF) but differ in matters of fashion and political linkages.  Academic studies have suggested elements of cyberpunk can be traced to the dystopian Central & Eastern European fiction of the 1920s which arose in reaction to the industrial and mechanized nature of World War I but in its recognizably modern form it emerged as a literary genre in the 1980s, characterized by darkness, the effect heightened by the use of stark colors in futuristic, dystopian settings, the cultural theme being the mix of low-life with high-tech.  Although often there was much representation of violence and flashy weaponry, the consistent motifs were advanced technology, artificial intelligence and hacking, the message the evil of corporations and corrupt politicians exploiting technology to control society for their own purposes of profit and power.  Aesthetically, cyberpunk emphasized dark, gritty, urban environments where the dominant visual elements tended to be beyond the human scale, neon colors, strobe lighting and skyscrapers all tending to overwhelm people who often existed in an atmosphere of atonal, repetitive sound.

Cybergoth girls: The lasting legacy of the cybergoth's contribution to the goth aesthetic was designer colors, quite a change to the black & purple uniform.  Debate continues about whether they can be blamed for fluffy leg-warmers.

The cybergoth thing, dating apparently from 1988, thing was less political, focusing mostly on the look although a lifestyle (real and imagined) somewhat removed from mainstream society was implied.  It emerged in the late 1990s as a subculture within the goth scene, and was much influenced by the fashions popularized by cyberpunk and the video content associated with industrial music although unlike cyberpunk, there was never the overt connection with cybernetic themes.  Very much in a symbiotic relationship with Japanese youth culture, the cybergoth aesthetic built on the black & purple base of the classic goths with bright neon colors, industrial materials, and a mix of the futuristic and the industrial is the array of accessories which included props such as LED lights, goggles, gas masks, and synthetic hair extensions.  Unlike the cyberpunks who insisted usually on leather, the cybergoths embraced latex and plastics such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), not to imitate the natural product but as an item while the hairstyles and makeup could be extravagantly elaborate.  Platform boots and clothing often adorned with spikes, studs and chains were common but tattoos, piercings and other body modifications were not an integral component although many who adopted those things also opted to include cybergoth elements. 

Although there was much visual overlap between the two, cyberpunk should be thought of as a dystopian literary and cinematic genre with an emphasis on high-tech while cybergoth was a goth subculture tied to certain variations in look and consumption of pop culture, notably the idea of the “industrial dance” which was an out-growth of the “gravers” (gothic ravers), movement, named as goths became a critical mass in the clubs built on industrial music.  While interest in cyberpunk remains strong, strengthened by the adaptability of generative AI to the creation of work in the area, the historic moment of cyberpunk as a force in pop culture has passed, the fate of many subcultures which have suffered the curse of popularity although history does suggest periodic revivals will happen and elements of the look will anyway endure.