Doodlebug

Doodlebug (pronounced dood-l-buhg)

(1) In entomology, the larva of an antlion (a group of some 2,000 species of insect in the neuropteran family Myrmeleontidae, the appellation “doodlebug” an allusion to the “doodle-like” marks they leave in the sand as tracks of their movement.

(2) In entomology (UK), a cockchafer (genus Melolontha).

(3) In entomology (US regional), a woodlouse.

(4) As “doodlebugger”, a dowser (divining rod) or similar device supposedly useful in locating underground water, hydrocarbons, minerals etc.  By extension, the word was applied to geophysicists or geologists undertaking field work (especially oil prospecting or mineral exploration); they were said to be doodlebugging.

(5) In World War II (1939-1945) UK slang, the German cruise missile the V1, (Fs-103), also known informally as the “flying bomb” or “buzz bomb”, the latter an allusion to the distinctive sound made by the craft’s pulse-jet power-plant.  The slang began among RAF (Royal Air Force) personnel and later spread to the general population.

(6) In US rural slang, as “doodlebug tractor”, a car or light truck converted into tractor used (usually for small-scale agriculture), first noted as a type during the Great Depression years of the 1930s.  During World War II, the improvisation continued because new tractors were in short supply because most production was allocated to the military. 

(7) Individual self-propelled train cars (obsolete).

(8) Any of various small, squat vehicles (as both nickname and official designation).

(9) In informal use, a term of endearment (now rare).

(10) In informal use, a slackard (an archaic form of slacker) or time-waster (now rare).

(11) In informal use, an idiot (as used casually rather than in its once codified sense in mental health).

(12) In informal use, someone who habitually draws (or doodles) objects.

1865-1870: A coining in US English, the construct being doodle + bug, the first known use as a US dialectal form (south of the Mason-Dixon Line) to describe certain beetles or larva.  Doodle dates from the early seventeenth century and was used to mean “a fool or simpleton”.  It was originally a dialectal form, from dudeldopp (simpleton) and influenced by dawdle (to spend time idly and unfruitfully; to waste time, pointlessly to linger, to move or walk lackadaisically; to “dilly-dally”), thus the later use of doodle to mean “a slackard (slacker) or time-waster”.  The German variants of the etymon included Dudeltopf, Dudentopf, Dudenkopf, Dude and Dödel (and there’s presumably some link with the German dudeln (to play the bagpipe)).  There is speculation the Americanism “dude” may have some connection and the now internationalized (and sometimes gender-neutral) “dude” has in recent decades become one of slang’s more productive and variable forms.  The song Yankee Doodle long pre-dates the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) but it was popularized in the era by being used as a marching song by British colonial troops, the intention being to poke fun at their rebellious opponents; that didn't work out well.  From this use was derived the verb of the early eighteenth century (to doodle), meaning “to swindle or to make a fool of”.  The predominant modern meaning (the drawings regarded usually as “small mindless sketches”) emerged in the 1930s either from this meaning or (as seems to have greater support), from the verb “to dawdle” which since the seventeenth century had been used to mean “wasting time; being lazy”.  In slang and idiomatic use, doodles uses are legion including “the penis” and any number of rhyming forms with meanings ranging from the very good to the very bad.  The hyphenated doodle-bug has appeared and Urban Dictionary has the usual array of alternative, user-generated meanings.  Doodlebug, doodlebugging & doodlebugger are nouns; the noun plural is doodlebugs.

A doodled Volkswagen “bug” on Drawn Inside.

Bug dates from 1615–1625, the original use being to describe insects, apparently as a variant of the earlier bugge (beetle), thought to be an alteration of the Middle English budde, from the Old English -budda (beetle) but etymologists are divided on whether the phrase “bug off” (please leave) is related to the undesired presence of insects or was of a distinct origin.  Bug, bugging & debug are nouns & verbs, bugged is a verb & adjective and buggy is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bugs.  Although “unbug” makes apparent sense (ie remove a bug, and thus synonymous with the modern “debug”), it doesn’t exist whereas forms such as the adjectives unbugged (not bugged) and unbuggable (not able to be bugged) are listed as standard.  The array of compound forms meaning “someone obsessed with an idea, hobby etc) produced things like “shutterbug” (amateur photographer) & firebug (arsonist) seems first to have emerged in the mid nineteenth century.  The development of this into “a craze or obsession” is thought rapidly to have accelerated in the years just before World War I (1914-1918), again based on the notion of “bitten by the bug” or “caught the bug”, thus the idea of being infected with an unusual enthusiasm for something.

The use to mean a demon, evil spirit, spectre or hobgoblin was first recorded in the mid-fourteenth century and was a clipping of the Middle English bugge (scarecrow, demon, hobgoblin) or uncertain origin although it may have come from the Middle Welsh bwg (ghost; goblin (and linked to the Welsh bwgwl (threat (and earlier “fear”) and the Middle Irish bocanách (supernatural being).  There’s also speculation it may have come from the scary tales told to children which included the idea of a bugge (beetle) at a gigantic scale.  That would have been a nightmarish thought and the idea remains fruitful to this day for artists and film-makers needing something frightening in the horror or SF (science fiction) genre.  The use in this sense is long obsolete although the related forms bugbear and bugaboo survive.  Dating from the 1570s, a bugbear was in folklore a kind of “large goblin”, used to inspire fear in children (both as a literary device & for purposes of parental control) and for adults it soon came to mean “a source of dread, resentment or irritation; in modern use it's an “ongoing problem”, a recurring obstacle or adversity or one’s pet peeve.  The obsolete form bugg dates from circa 1620 and was a reference to the troublesome bedbug, the construct a conflation of the middle English bugge (scarecrow, hobgoblin) and the Middle English budde (beetle).  The colloquial sense of “a microbe or germ” dates from 1919, the emergence linked to the misleadingly-named “Spanish influenza” pandemic.

A doodlebug (left) and his (or her) doodles in the sand (right).

That the word doodlebug has appeal is obvious because since the 1860s it has been re-purposed many time, often with the hint something “small but not cute”, that something understandable given the original creature so named (larva of an antlion) is not one of nature’s more charismatic creations.  Doodlebugs are squat little things which live mostly in loose sand where they create pit traps and genuinely are industrious creatures, their name earned not because they are idle time-wasters but because the tracks they leave in the sand are strikingly similar to the doodles people often wile away their time drawing.  The frankly unattractive ant leave their doodles behind because, as they percolate over the ground, their big butts drag behind them, leaving the erratic trails.  So compelling is the name, it has been applied to a number of other, similar insects.  Another use is attributive from the link with the seventeenth century notion of a doodle being “a simpleton or time-waster”, extended later to “an idiot” (the word used casually rather than as it once was codified in mental health); in the 1930s it came be used of those who incessantly sketch or draw stuff, the idea being they are squandering their time.  What they draw are called “doodles”, the source of the name for the artist.

Doodles on a rendering of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.

The mid-twentieth century art (some of its practitioners claiming it was a science) of doodlebugging was practiced by doodlebuggers who used a method said to be not greatly different from the equally dubious technique of the water diviner.  All the evidence suggests there was a general scepticism of the claims that a bent rod waived about above the earth could be used to locate hydro-carbons and the use of “doodlebuging” to refer to the process was originally a slur but it became an affectionate name for those intrepid enough to trek into deserts seeking the “black gold” usuing more orthodox prospecting techniques.  In the 1940s when the “profession” was first described, any reliable means of detecting sub-surface oil deposits simply didn’t exist (other than drilling a hole in the ground to see if it was there) and the early doodlebuggers were scam merchants.  The science did however advance (greatly spurred on by the demands of wartime) and when geologists came to be able to apply the modern machinery of seismic mapping and actually had success, they too were called doodlebuggers and happily adopted the name.

Texaco Doodlebug fuel tanker, one of eight built in 1934-1935 during the industry's "streamliner" era.  It was a time when art deco's lovely lines appeared in many fields of design. 

In the early twentieth century, a doodlebug was a self-propelled rail car, used on rail lines which were short in length and subject only to light traffic.  These were autonomous vehicles, powered both by gasoline (petrol) (in the US, it was the the pre-diesel era) and electricity; they were an attractive alternative for operators, being much cheaper to run than the combination of large locomotives & carriage cars, eminently suited to routes with lower passenger numbers.  The concept may be compared with the smaller (often propeller or turbo-prop) aircraft used for shuttle services or on regional & feeder routes where demand be sufficient to make viable the use of larger airliners.  Although the doodlebugs carried relatively few passengers, their operating costs were correspondingly lower so the PCpM (passenger cost per mile) was at least comparable with the full-sized locomotives.  While it may be a myth, the story is that one rail employee described the small, stumpy rail car as looking like a “potato bug” and (as English informal terms tend to do) this morphed into the more appealing doodlebug.

Some assembly required: a doodlebug tractor with hydraulic pump-driven crane, the agglomeration dating from circa 1934.

Although the mechanical specification of each tended to vary as things broke and were replaced with whatever fell conveniently to hand or could be purchased cheaply, when discovered, it included a 1925 Chevrolet gasoline engine, Ford Model T firewall and steering, Ford Model A three-speed manual transmission, Ford Model TT (truck) rear end and AM General HMMWV rear wheels and tires.  The "mix & match" approach was typical of the genre and it's doubtful many were for long exactly alike.

A doodlebug could also be a DIY (do it yourself) tractor.  During the Great Depression of the 1930s, smaller-scale farmers (then more prevalent than today) in the US no longer had the capital (or access to loan-capital) to purchase plant and equipment on the same scale as in more prosperous times but needed still to make their land productive, a essential tool being the tractor, one of modernity's many devices which greatly had increased the efficiency of agriculture.  New tractors being thus for many being unattainable, necessity compelled farmers to turn to what was available and that was the stock of old cars and pickup trucks, now suddenly cheaper because the Depression had lowered demand for them as well.  With saws and welding kits, imaginative and inventive farmers would crop & chop and slice & dice until they had a vehicle which would do much of what a tractor could and according to the legends of the time, some actually out-performed the real thing because their custom design was optimized for a specific, intended purpose.  What made the modifications possible in the engineering sense was that it was a time when cars and pick-ups in the US always used a separate chassis; the bodies could be removed and it was possible still to drive the things and it was on these basic platforms the “doodlebug” tractors were fashioned.  They were known also as “scrambolas”, “Friday night specials” and “hacksaw tractors” but it was “doodlebug” which really caught on and so popular was the practice that kits were soon advertised in mail-order catalogues (the Amazon of the day and a long tradition in the rural US).  Not until the post-war years when economic conditions improved and production of machinery for civilian use resumed at full-scale did the informal industry of the doodlebug end.

1946 Brogan Doodlebug (right) with 1942 Pontiac Torpedo (left).  In the US, some passenger car production continued in the first quarter of 1942. 

Although now what’s most remembered about the US cars of the post-war era are the huge and extravagantly macropterous creations, there were more than two dozen manufacturers in the 1940s & 1950s offering “micro-cars”, aimed at (1) female drivers, (2) inner-city delivery services and (3) urban drivers who wanted something convenient to manoeuvre and park.  The market however proved unresponsive and as the population shift to the suburbs accelerated, women wanted station wagons (in many ways the emblematic socio-economic symbol of suburban American of the 1950s) and the delivery companies needed larger capacity.  As the Volkswagen Beetle (Type 1, 1938-2003) and a few other niche players would prove during that decade’s “import boom”, Americans would buy smaller cars, just not micro-cars which even in Europe, where they were for a time successful, the segment didn’t survive to see the end of the 1960s (although various factors would see later revivals).  But there was the Brogan Doodlebug, made by the B&B Specialty Company of Rossmoyne, Ohio and produced between 1946-1950 although that fewer than three dozen were sold hints at the level of demand at a time when Detroit’s mass-production lines were every day churning out thousands of “standard sized” cars.

1946 Brogan Doodlebug.

Somewhat optimistically (though etymologically defensible) described as a “roadster”, the advertising for the Doodlebug exclusively featured women drivers and it certainly was in some ways ideal for urban use (except perhaps when raining, snowing, in cold weather or the sun was harsh).  It used a three wheeled chassis with the single wheel at the front, articulated so the vehicle could turn within its own length making parking easy, the thing barely 96 inches (2,440 mm) in length & 40 inches (1,020 mm) wide; weighing only some 442 lbs (200 kg), it was light enough for two strong men to pick it up and move it (a characteristic with both advantages and drawbacks).  Powered by either a single or twin-cylinder rear-mounted engine (both rated at a heady 10 HP (horsepower ), no gearbox was deemed necessary, thus no tiresome gear levers or clutch pedals intruded to confuse women drivers.   B&B claimed a fuel consumption up to 70 mpg (84 mpg in Imperial gallons) with a cruising speed of 45-50 mph (70-80 km/h).  All this for US$400 and remarkably, it seems it wasn’t until 1950 (after some 30 doodlebugs had been built over four years) the cost-accountants looked at the project and concluded B&B was losing about US$100 on each one sold.  A price-rise was ruled out so production ended and although B&B released the Broganette (an improved three-wheeler with the single wheel at the rear (a configuration offering much better stability); it was no more successful and the company turned to golf carts and scooters; that proved more lucrative.  B&B later earned a footnote in the history of motorsport as one of the pioneer go-kart manufacturers.

Annotated schematic of the V-1 (left) and a British Military Intelligence drawing (dated 16 June 1944, 3 days after the first V-1 attacks on London (right). 

First deployed in 1944 the German Vergeltungswaffen eins (“retaliatory weapon 1” or “reprisal weapon 1” and eventually known as the V-1) was the world’s first cruise missile.  One of the rare machines to use a pulse-jet, it emitted such a distinctive sound that those at whom it was aimed nicknamed it the “buzz-bomb” although it attracted other names including “flying bomb” and “doodlebug”.  In Germany, before Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945) decided it was the V-1 (understood as “vengeance weapon 1”), the official military code name was Fi 103 (The Fi stood for Fieseler, the original builder of the airframe and most famous for their classic Storch (Stork), short take-off & landing (STOL) aircraft) but there were also the code-names Maikäfer (maybug) & Kirschkern (cherry stone).  While the Allied defenses against the V-1 did improve over time, it was only the destruction of the launch sites and the occupation of territory within launch range that ceased the attacks.  Until then, the V-1 remained a highly effective terror weapon but, like the V-2 and so much of the German armaments effort, bureaucratic empire-building and political intrigue compromised the efficiency of the project.

V-1 falling on London, 13 June, 1944, the location identifiable by the roofline of the city’s courts of law.  Not until 29 March, 1945 did the UK suffer its last V-1 strike, that final doodlebug falling to ground in Datchworth, Hertfordshire.

Shot from a Fleet-Street roof-top air-raid warning observation post, the image captures a V-1 in profile during the final seconds of its descent.  Accurate enough only for the target to be “London”, this one fell on a side road off Drury Lane, the warhead’s explosion damaging several buildings including the offices of The Daily Herald newspaper.  Long associated with the British Labour Party (and the labor movement more generally) The Daily Herald was published between 1912-1964 (always as a daily except during World War I (1914-1918) when there was only a weekly edition) and for a time in the 1930s it was the newspaper with the world’s highest audited circulation, peaking at over two million with a readership several times that number.  Despite a number of changes in ownership and editorial focus, it was for all its existence very much an organ of the labour movement and broadly supportive (though not uncritical) of the Labour Party, something that didn’t change in 1964 when it was re-launched as The Sun.  The real change came in 1969 when the by then ailing title was bought by Rupert Murdoch (b 1931), after which it (and the tabloid market) was never quite the same.  The pre-internet state of the UK’s once vibrant newspaper business was summarised by an anonymous advertising copywriter whose thoughts appeared in the book Newspaper Money by economists Fred Hirsch (1931–1978) and David Gordon (b 1942):

The Times is read by the people who run the country.

The Guardian is read by the people who would like to run the country.

The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.

The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who remember the country as it used to be.

The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country is still like that.

The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the men who run the country.

The Daily Mirror (which itself once tried to run the country) is read by the people who think they run the country.

The Morning Star is read by the people who would like another country to run the country.

The Sun-well, Murdoch has found a gap in the market - the oldest gap in the world.

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.

Dysphemism

Dysphemism (pronounced dis-fuh-miz-uhm)

(1) The substitution of a harsh, disparaging, unpleasant or offensive word or phrase expression for something dignified, innocuous or neutral (ie the opposite of “euphemism”).

(2) A word or phrase so substituted (eg “shrink” for psychiatrist; “cancer stick” for cigarette; “ambulance chaser” for lawyer etc).

1873: The construct was dys- + (eu)phemism.  The Greek dysphemia meant “ill language, words of ill omen”, deconstructed simply as dys- (bad, abnormal, difficult) + phēmē (speech, voice, utterance, a speaking).  The dys- prefix was from New Latin dys- (used to convey the idea of being difficult, impaired, abnormal, or bad), from the Ancient Greek δυσ- (dus-) (hard, difficult, bad), from the Proto-Hellenic dus-.   It was cognate to the Proto-Germanic tuz- (hard, difficult, wrong, bad (ie the English "tore") and the Proto-Iranian duš- (bad).  Understandably, confusion with the separately derived prefix dis- is not uncommon.  The dis- prefix was from the Middle English dis-, from the Old French des from the Latin dis, from the proto-Italic dwis, from the primitive Indo-European dwís and cognate with the Ancient Greek δίς (dís) and the Sanskrit द्विस् (dvis).  It was applied variously as an intensifier of words with negative valence and to render the senses “incorrect”, “to fail (to)”, “not” & “against”.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Dysphemism & dysphemist are nouns, dysphemistic & dysphemistical are adjectives and dysphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is dysphemisms.

Virgil pointing out the Erinyes (1890), engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883).

Dating from 1656, euphemism was from the Ancient Greek εὐφημισμός (euphēmismós) (use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one, superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies), from εὐφημίζω (euphēmízō), from εὔφημος (eúphēmos & euphemizein (speak with fair words, use words of good omen)).  Despite the impression conveyed by disapproving historians like Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) the Romans, like all the cultures of antiquity, used euphemisms but it does seem true the Athenians were the most delicate of all, so careful to avoid ill-omened words they called their prison “the chamber” and the executioner “the public man” while the hardly convivial Furies (Erinyes) they called Eumenides (the “kindly ones” or “Venerable Goddesses”).  The construct was εὖ (eû) (good; well) + φήμη (phḗmē) (a voice, a prophetic voice, rumor, talk) + -ismos (-ism).  The Greek phēmē was from φάναι (phánai) (to speak, say), from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say).  The concept was well-known in Hellenic culture, the Ancient Greek aristeros (the better one) a euphemism for “the left (hand)”.  In English, it was originally a rhetorical term, the broader sense of “choosing a less distasteful word or phrase than the one meant” in use since at least 1793 and common by the 1830s.  The most common of the derived forms was the adverb euphemistically, documented since 1833 although the first use is uncertain.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Euphemism & euphemist are nouns, euphemistic & euphemistical are adjectives and euphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is euphemisms.

Patterns of use: dysphemism vs euphemism.

Google Ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their Ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, Ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts (typically a scanner might misread an “f” for a long “s” or a “u” for an “n”) of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI (artificial intelligence) should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Whether in general use dysphemisms are more or less common than euphemisms can be debated although, impressionistically, it does seem likely the latter enjoyed a long history of prevailing in print, the reasons for that including politeness and fear, both of the stroke of the censor’s pen and the lawyer’s writ for defamation.  In the age when social media affords users (still) a degree of anonymity, the use of dysphemisms probably has increased but the word itself remains rare while “euphemism” and its derive forms continues to flourish.  The history also was interesting; although first in print between 1873-1884 (as the French formation dysphémisme (modelled after euphémisme)), not until 1927 was there a revival when, after French-Belgium philologist Dr Albert Carnoy’s (1878-1961) “rediscovery”, he granted it an entry in La Science du Mot, Traité de Sémantique (The Science of the Word: A Treatise on Semantics, 1927) although he was no fan, including in his definition: “Dysphemism is unpitying, brutal, mocking. It is also a reaction against pedantry, rigidity and pretentiousness, but also against nobility and dignity in language.”  Dr Carnoy was one of those now little-acknowledged toilers in the dusty archives of linguistics and his work on the etymology of Indo-European languages (especially Indo-Iranian) provided some of the framework still used today.

Daddy-daughter day: Lear and Goneril in the RSC's (Royal Shakespeare Company) 1953 production of King Lear.

One plausibly could say the euphemism is “essential” to civilized life while (perhaps generously), dysphemism is “desirable” for those wishing to “make a point”.  A dysphemism is the deliberate substitution of a harsh, offensive, contemptuous or otherwise negatively charged expression for a more neutral one and although common in everyday discourse, there are also specialized forms (political speech or literary devices) where, rather than being spur-of-the-moment “swap”, the forms often rehearsed and polished although often not original; like euphemisms, dysphemisms tend to be clichéd, indeed, both often tend on that quality for their effect.  In their own ways, the use of dysphemisms in politics and literature is both “idealized” and “exaggerated” while those heard in general conversation can tend to be less elegant or rhythmic.  William Shakespeare (1564–1616) of course knew how to gain effect by blending elegance with brutishness, that “light & dark” in the words (Act 2, scene 4) of the king in King Lear (circa 1605) to his daughter Goneril:

But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,

Or, rather, a disease that’s in my flesh,

Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,

A plague-sore or embossèd carbuncle

General Franco lies in state, Royal Palace Madrid, 21 November, 1975.  In his life, Franco attracted many dysphemisms and fifty years on from his death, that continues, the Franco-era remaining Spain's great fault-line.

As dysphemisms within a family go, that’s pretty extreme, labelling her a “boil”, “plague-sore” or “embossèd carbuncle” (ie a repulsive, diseased growth on his body) rather than the usual “I’m very disappointed in you” or even “you’re an ungrateful, wicked, bad daughter”.  Obviously a family with “issues” and one “unhappy in its own way”.  Nor did Shakespeare spare the feelings of the Jews.  In The Merchant of Venice (1598), old Shylock repeatedly is subjected to dysphemistic descriptions, most famously: “the devil” and “a misbeliever, cut-throat dog”.  The canine reference is very much cross-cultural; although “man’s best friend” and among the most popular domestic pets, “dog” is in many traditions a classic dysphemism.  As a literary sub-type and in political propaganda, there’s a long history of animals being an element in which the dysphemism is metaphorical dehumanisation.  Pig, dog, rat, worm, parasite, vermin, mouse, dinosaur, leech etc deployed for various effects, notable practitioners being the old Soviet Union (including its client states behind the Iron Curtain, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) when the “communist” bit was still taken seriously and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)), the latter really liking “dog”, sometimes with adjectival enhancement, often as a prelude to a sentence of execution.  There are many ways of using animals as points of comparison with the character of individuals that can at least verge on the complimentary (lion, tiger, shark etc) but “dog” is applied usually with contempt.  While it was Jeff Kennett (b 1948; premier of the Australian state of Victoria 1992-1999) who came “claim ownership” of the phrase: “He has all the attributes of a dog… except loyalty”, it’s believed to have earlier been by Andrew Peacock (1939–2021; leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1983–1985 and 1989–1990) of Peter Costello (b 1957; treasurer of Australia 1996-2007) in one of those internecine squabbles that usually are more nasty (and thus amusing) than any invective directed at notional political opponents.  The use extends even to the dog's bark.  After the nationalist forces under Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) prevailed in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939 and a very bloody business), his troops were told, were they to hear anyone speaking in the Basque or Catalan dialects, they were to be told: “Speak the language of the empire, don't bark like dogs.” 

A Fishmonger's Shop (1873), watercolor on paper by Frederick Walker (1840–1875).  The artist was a keen fisher (the known as a fisherman) and such was his attention to detail, a dozen-odd species have been identified.

Applying his techniques to the another Abrahamic faith, in Act 1, Scene 1 of Othello (1603), Shakespeare has the villainous Iago shout at the nobleman Brabantio, waking him to tell him his daughter Desdemona, has eloped with Othello, the Moor: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping [a term from animal husbandry describing “livestock mating”] your white ewe.”  Now that might be listed as “Islamophobic”, joining much of the treatment of Shylock as “anti-Semitic” but Othello’s dysphemistic range extended to “sexism”, calling his own wife a “strumpet” (used by Shakespeare in the sense of “prostitute”) rather than addressing her by name.  Being English and “middle class”. Shakespeare was of course class-conscious and in Hamlet (circa 1600), he has the prince describe Polonius as: “a fishmonger”.  Fishmonger is of course an honorable profession but what Shakespeare wanted was a word Hamlet would choose as a means contemptuously to reduce Polonius to a supposedly vulgar, grasping tradesman and snobby Hamlet was in the habit of applying “degrading” labels to those he disliked.  The tradition endures: While in Berlin’s Spandau Prison serving the sentences they were lucky to receive from the IMT (International Military Tribunal) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and Walther Funk (1890–1960; Nazi economics minister & central bank president) had a argument about a light bulb, Speer in an entry of 14 October, 1952 in his clandestine prison diary (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau: The Secret Diaries, 1975)) recording the exchange:

Big quarrel among all of us because of the lighting problem.  Everyone wants something different.  Violent discussion.  Funk backs off ten paces and berates all of us.  When he starts using vulgar epithets, I shout back: ‘You sound like a truck driver!’  He clears out.  The first scene of this sort in seven years and, worse yet, in the presence of a guard.”  Of course, in Speer’s internal logic there would be nothing incongruous in one convicted war criminal thinking it an insult to compare the language of another to that of “a truck driver”, that occupation definitely not one associated with polite middle-class society, the “worse yet” explained by “prison guards” being of the “truck driver class”.  Speer wouldn’t have needed an explanation of the choice of words by Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ (1812–1870) novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (now clipped usually to “A Christmas Carol” (1843)), the old curmudgeon’s contemptuous references to the poor: “Are there no prisons?; “Are there no workhouses?” the same sort of linguistic devaluation of human worth as his “truck driver” or “prison guard” being used not as neutral occupational descriptors but “categories of lesser intrinsic value”.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (first edition, 1949).  Modern re-prints have tended to use the numeric 1984 for the title.

Scrooge at least became a reformed character although, despite his decades of assiduous self-promotion, it seems doubtful Speer ever much changed his fundamental view of humanity and it may be he’d have seen the logic in the famous dysphemistic strategy for “preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick” suggested by the Anglo-Irish satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in A Modest proposal (1729).  Swift’s essay wholly was satirical and gained its effect from being written in ostensibly polite language, echoed later by the style in which Nazi-era documents (some from ministries headed by Speer) detailed appalling crimes in euphemism-laden texts that on surface analysis seemed innocuous bureaucratese.  Well acquainted with bureaucratese and the way language could be weaponized, in both Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell (1903-1950) demonstrated the “sword & shield” potential of dysphemism & euphemism, one of his warnings the way “political language” could be used to reduce individuals to degraded categories, something later explored by those developing labelling theory.  That of course wasn’t new, the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (pen name of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) in his novella Heart of Darkness (1899) used the brutish dysphemisms European colonial administrators applied casually to native Africans, reducing them to the status of animals, objects, or undifferentiated masses, again a technique that would have been familiar to Speer because an essential underpinning the whole Nazi racialist project was the need to have some people classified as “sub-human” and thus able without moral scruples to be “processed” as “livestock” or “beasts of burden”.  Conrad employed dysphemisms to expose the dehumanising psychology of colonialism as Orwell would later warn of the similar phenomenon in authoritarian states.

The Mean Girls Burn Book, a repository of the dysphemistic.

As might be expected, the film Mean Girls (2004) is a rich source of dysphemism, much of humor depending on deliberately derogatory or dehumanising language but, as a linguistic case-study, it’s of use also because, in the strict technical sense, not every “insult” is necessarily a dysphemism.  “Plastic” (and especially the collective “the Plastics”) certainly is dysphemistic and a classic example in that it takes a “neutral” word (using one of its two, well-known, “technical meanings”) and applies it to the clique of those individuals judged “artificial, fake, superficial etc”.  For deconstructionists, there’s also the contrast of the mix & match of dysphemism & euphemism in the text, indirect language of both flavours used when discussing sex, weight, menstruation etc although the labels applied to people tend to the former.  The script does illustrate the way dysphemism, pejoration, slur, insult, profanity, taboo language, and metaphorical dehumanisation can in some cases be distinguished while in others there’s obvious cross-categorization; in Mean Girls, much of the work done by language happens “at the margins” and the “Burn Book” in a way “institutionalises dysphemistic”, “burn” itself slang for an intentionally cutting insult.

At its most simple and most obvious, the dysphemism is merely the substitution of a harsh, disparaging, unpleasant or offensive word or phrase expression for something dignified, innocuous or neutral (ie the opposite of “euphemism”) and for centuries that’s been embedded in slang and used by authors, comedians and such as a source of bawdy humor, Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) in Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) clearly enjoying having his readers wallow in deliberately coarse or degrading terminology, notably for sexual behavior and bodily functions.  In that sense, it was “vulgarisation” a sub-set of dysphemism and perhaps (certainly in oral use) the most frequently practiced.  Dysphemism however is not of necessity something vulgar or insulting and can be a kind of “defense mechanism”; a way of “making light” of something disturbing or tragic.  In that vein, while “she died” is neutral, “she passed on” is euphemistic and “she kicked the bucket” is dysphemistic.  For those who wish to descend further into irrelevance there’s “she croaked”, “she karked it”, “she bit the dust” or “she fell of the perch”.

Leading Tory (Conservative Party) “Dry” Lord Norman Tebbit (1931–2025) on the cover of Private Eye magazine, 16 May, 1986.  The duel of the Tories' “Wets vs Dry” was something like “Dysphemisms at several dozen paces”.

Dysphemisms can also be adopted by those they were originally intended to disparage, notably in the 1980s by the “drys” (those on the nominal right of politics who would later be tagged “economic rationalists).  The “drys” liked the label and ran with it although their retribution (dubbing their opponents the “wets”) wasn’t embraced by them but at least they never got to be called “economic irrationalists” so there was that.   “Police officer” is a neutral descriptor (“law-enforcement professional” less a euphemism than a broader category of those employed on one side (although then can be fraying at the edges) of the crime business) while “cop” often was intended to disparage but in many places the “cops” came to like it, making it part of their slang, even using it in advertising and official documents.  In semiotics (the study of connotation & denotation of meaning in signs (words, marks, images etc)), the crucial aspect in whether a dysphemism remains a disparagement or emerges as something neutral or even embraced as at least quasi-affectionate is whether the pattern of popular use maintains or dissipates the originally deliberate “negative semantic loading”.  The verb "to cop" was from the Old French caper, from the Latin capere (to take or seize (the same root as capture)) and was known in English by the early 1700s.  By the middle of the nineteenth century, the noun “copper” was in common use to describe police constables and it survived and spread better than “peeler” or “bobby”, both a reference to Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850; Prime Minister of the UK 1834–1835 & 1841–1846) who, as Home Secretary (minister of the interior), introduced the Metropolitan Police Act (1829) establishing a police force for much of London and the surrounding areas).  The tales that “cop” was derived from “Constable on Patrol” (C.O.P.) or the copper buttons & badges part of the uniform were fanciful folk etymology; they were fake news. 

Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism (2017) by Tiago Saraiva (b 1972).

The stronger dysphemism “pig” has however always been disparaging and began not as a late twentieth century clipping of “fascist pig” but more than 150 years earlier, an entry appearing in Francis Grose’s (circa 1730-1791) Lexicon Balatronicum, (a dictionary of London slang).  According to Grouse, “pig” in this context was a clipping of “China Street pig”, underworld slang for a “Bow Street Officer” (the “Bow Street Runners” London's first professional, organized police force).  The porcine comparison was based on the criminal class’s view of policemen being as “greedy, dirty and unpleasant” as pigs although the reference was less to personal hygiene than the officers’ (probably not wholly undeserved) reputation for corruption and fondness for seizing for themselves a thief’s illicit loot or wallets.  Historians note also the “snout allusion”: the early undercover detectives and patrol officers characterized as “sniffing out crime”, much as a pig uses its snout to “root around” in search of something tasty.  In the UK, “copper”, “bobby” and “peeler” all supplanted “pig” but there was a revival of the latter in the US during the 1960s as the counter-culture, Vietnam War protesters, the Weather Underground and others became the police’s “usual suspects”.  This time there really was a connection with “fascist pig” and the Black Panther Party lent the use much cultural traction by prominent placement in newsletters, speeches and, most graphically, political cartoons depicting “police brutality”.  Media management wasn’t then the art it would become and attempts by some police forces to reclaim the word with “P.I.G.” campaigns (the initialism for “Pride, Integrity, Guts”) were greeted with derision so they stuck to being “cops”.  Not all looked as unfavourably upon pigs as the London underworld of old.  The quote: “I am fond of pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.” supposedly was said by Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) but like many memorable quips attributed to him, it’s unverified.  Always sentimental about animals (though one of England’s more voracious carnivores), it’s certainly something he might have said.