Electra

Electra (pronounced ih-lek-truh)

(1) In Greek mythology, (also as Elektra or Laodice), any of several mythical women, most famously as the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; she incited her brother Orestes to avenge the death of their father by killing his murderess Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.

(2) In Astronomy, one of the six visible stars in the Pleiades.

(3) A female given name from Ancient Greek (now rare).

(4) In psychoanalytic theory, as “Electra complex”, a young girl's sub-conscious competition with her mother for her father's affection.  Still much associated Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the term was in 1913 coined by Carl Jung (1875–1961) but Freud, proprietorial in such matters, added layers to his “Oedipus complex” (originally detailing a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father) publishing the refinement as the “feminine Oedipus attitude”.  It can (generously) be interpreted as Freud’s contribution to gender-equality.

First century BC (of the name, although the literary tradition stretched back several millenia): From the Ancient Greek Ἠλέκτρα (Ēléktra (literally “shining bright)), from ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron) (amber) and related to ἠλέκτωρ (ēléktōr) (shining sun; beaming sun).  Although etymologists regard the possibility as dubious, there may be a connection with the Sanskrit उल्का (ulkā́) (meteor) and/or the Latin Vulcānus (god of fire and metalworking) and the Ancient Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios) (sun).  The ultimate source may even be pre-Greek so it’s not surprising the exacting lexicographers list the origin as “uncertain”.  The Latin noun ēlectra was the nominative/accusative/vocative plural of ēlectrum (from Ancient Greek ḗlektron) and the best known adaptation was electrum (amber; an alloy of gold and silver, used in Antiquity and now specifically a natural alloy with between 20 and 50 per cent silver (once commonly called “German silver plate).  Electra is a proper noun; the noun plural is Electras (about the only use of the plural form is of sopranos or Buicks).

The legend of Electra (Ηλέκτρα)

While some of the myths of Antiquity have a unique storyline and there are characters who appear in a single role with a known lineage, in many cases the tales are tangled and figures from one myth may appear in others with different parents and children.  As an example, consider the literary career of Electra who variously was (1) One of the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, who married Thaumas and then gave birth to Iris and to the Harpies; (2) One of Persephone's companions and was present when she was carried off by Hades; (3) One of the Pléiades.  Zeus fathered her child Dardanus who left Samothrace and went to the Troad, where he founded the royal dynasty of Troy.  Electra had another son, Iasion.  Electra is also said to have had a third son, named Emathion, who ruled over Samothrace, but more frequently this third child of hers by Zeus is named as Harmonia; (4) In the Italian version of Electra's legend, she was the wife of the Etruscan King Corythus and Dardanus and Iasion were born in Italy; (4) Electra is also linked to the legend of the Palladium.  She was later transformed with her sisters into the constellation of the Pleiades.

Elektra (Frankfurt, 1953).

The 1967 recording of Richard Strauss's (1864–1949) Elektra with Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005) and the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) under Hungarian-British conductor, Sir Georg Solti (1912–1997) is regarded still by many critics as the finest studio recording.  Given the virtuosity on show, it's hard to argue but among the opera cognoscenti there’s a faction that insists Electra's hatreds and lust for vengeance were never better captured than in the 1953 recording with German soprano Inge Borkh (1921–2018) and the Sinfonieorchester dem Hessischen Rundfunk (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra of the state of Hesse), under German composer and conductor Kurt Schröder (1888–1962), a release noted also for German mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig's (1928–2021) appearance as first maid.  In all the repertoire of opera, Electra is one of the roles demanding much range from a soprano and listeners can choose the Electra they prefer: technical ecstasy or thrilling intensity.

Most famously however she was (6) the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.  After Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, Electra was treated as a slave, spared only on the intervention of her mother.  In some accounts Electra saved her brother (the young Orestes) by entrusting him to their old tutor who took him away from Mycenae.  To prevent her giving birth to a son who might avenge her father, Electra was either married to a peasant who lived far from the city, or, having been betrothed to Castor and then Polymestor, was imprisoned at Mycenae.  On Orestes' return, she recognized him at Agamemnon's tomb and played an active part in the assassination of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. When the Erinyes pursued Orestes for this crime, she devoted herself to his welfare.  In Euripides' Orestes she fought at her brother's side against the local populace who wanted the murderers condemned to death.  Electra was the main character in Sophocles' (now lost) Aletes: when Orestes and Pylades went to Tauris, rumours started at Mycenae that they had died, and that Electra's sister Iphigenia had killed Orestes.  Aegisthus's son Aletes assumed the throne and Electra went to Delphi, where she met Iphigenia who had gone there with Orestes.  Electra was about to blind her when she saw her brother.  Electra and Orestes returned to Mycenae and killed Aletes.  Electra married Pylades and went with him to Phocis; their children were Medon (3) and Strophius.

Electracy

Actor Carmen Electra (stage name of Tara Leigh Patrick, b 1972) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), The Art of Elysium Launches Betty and Veronica Apparel Line in Association with Miramax Films and Archie Comics, Beverly Hills, California, May 2004.

Electracy is the “skill and facility necessary to exploit the potential of modern electronic media”, a idea that has come to attract more attention after the disclosures of AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems “going rogue”, something of interest not only because of the reported events but the suspicion there have likely been many more “undisclosed incidents”.  First appearing in Teletheory (1989), the concept of electracy was constructed by US literary theorist Professor Gregory Ulmer (b 1944, then holding the chair in the Department of English at the University of Florida and a professorship of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland) and it appeared at a time when the internet had expanded beyond the US.  What had come to be known as the internet (until circa 2016 often with an initial capital) had been restricted mostly to universities, the military and some government agencies but by the late 1980s it had extended to research institutions in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan but looked nothing like whate the www (world wide web) would transform it to in the following decade.  According to Professor Ulmer, electracy was “to digital media what literacy is to print”, the concept encompassing the broader cultural, institutional, pedagogical, and ideological implications inherent in “…the major societal transition from print to electronic media”.  A portmanteau word, the construct was electr(icity) + trac(e) + -y with “trace” used in the sense made famous by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).  Trace was a core concept in Derridian deconstruction; it denoted the principle that every sign, word, or present experience carries within it the mark of what it is absent, not present, and different from itself.  Instead of meaning coming from a pure, self-contained origin or a direct connection to reality, the trace means that every “present meaning” is already inhabited by the “ghost” of other “past and future signs”.  Unlike some of the concepts from deconstruction and other forks of postmodernism, la trace could, at the definitional level, be understood by most.

Jung, Freud and the Electra complex

The pioneers of psychoanalysis gathered at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, September 1909. Front Row (left to Right): Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924) & Carl Jung.  Back Row (left to right): Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), Ernest Jones (1879–1958) & Abraham Arden Brill (1874–1948).

The group photograph was shot during a conference on psychology hosted by Dr Hall, then president of Clark University and the first in the US to earn a doctorate in the discipline.  Although even then psychoanalysis was established in the US, the conference would prove a landmark and trigger not only a wealth of publications but also the legitimization of the field to the extent departments of psychology began to proliferate in US institutions.  This was Freud's only trip to the US, a place where his influence would for generations be profound but, within half a decade, his estrangement from Jung had begun, producing the profession’s most famous schism that to some extent endures to this day.

Although in the public consciousness Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) does seem to loom over psychiatry and his theories continue to flavour the writing of at least some clinicians and academics, the editors of the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) have moved on and in mainstream contemporary psychiatry, the Freudian “feminine Oedipus attitude” seems to be regarded primarily as a historical psychoanalytic concept rather than an acknowledged human developmental process or a psychiatric diagnosis.  It was Carl Jung (1875–1961) who coined the term “Electra complex” and explicitly Freud rejected it, not because he dismissed the notion but because his original conception was of his “Oedipus complex” as something applicable to both sexes and it was only later he constructed a more intricate model of female psychosexual development, thus the need for his term: “feminine Oedipus attitude”.

Electra Receiving the Ashes of her Brother, Orestes (circa 1927). oil on canvas by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar (1762–1834), Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

In Freud’s construct of female development: (1) the mother was the primary love object until (2) the child discovers the anatomical difference between the sexes, thus developing (3) what Freud styled “penis envy”, leading her to (4) blame her mother for rendering her with what she perceives as a “deficiency”, something that compelled her to (5) shift her affections towards her father meaning she (6) became her mother’s competitor for the father’s affection before (7) eventually identifying with her mother and accepting the defined “feminine role”.  Freud seems not to have commented on whether he was annoyed by Jung’s “Electra complex” becoming one of the most popular pieces of jargon to leak from the profession to popular discourse but he’d made clear his thoughts, writing in From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (the Wolfman case history) (1918) that he saw “no progress or advantage” in introducing the term and did not advocate its use.  That presumably was a clinician’s considered view though there’s no reason to suspect Austrian neurologists are any less prone than the rest of us to professional jealousy and in little more than a decade his position significantly had shifted; by 1931 Freud was arguing the pre-Oedipal attachment of girls to their mothers was much more important in than his earlier formulations had suggested.  So, although among Freudians, neo-Freudians and the wider community, his particular take on the Electra complex retains a following, the theory wasn’t a single, fixed proposition.

The Return of Orestes (from Electra by Sophocles) (1782), oil on canvas by John Downman (1749–1824), National Trust Collections, Hinton Ampner, Alresford.

The figure at the far left is Charles James Fox (1749–1806), a British Whig statesman whose career in politics endured for some four decades; he’s best remembered for his part in the Fox-North coalition government (April-December 1883 with Lord North (1732-1792)), dismissed by a then not quite mad George III (1738–1820; King of the UK 1760-1820) after the loss of the American colonies.  The episode was of note in the development of Westminster parliamentary conventions because the coalition had taken office despite the king’s opposition and when George III a few months later took the opportunity to “clear out that rotten crew”, it would be the last time the sovereign’s reserve powers would be invoked to sack a prime minister until in 1975 Sir John Kerr (1914–1991; Governor-General of Australia 1974-1977) sundered the commission of Gough Whitlam (1916–2014; Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975), proving the royal prerogative still existed (although paradoxically perhaps now only in the hands of a monarch’s representative rather than their own).  There had been William IV’s (1765–1837; King of the UK 1830-1837) in 1834 dismissing Lord Melbourne (1779–1848; prime minister of the UK 1834 & 1835-1841) but historians seem to treat that more as a “gentlemen’s agreement” and most of those few Australians who by 1975 much thought about such things probably believed the days of meddling viceroys were done.

Fox’s other (and far-reaching) contribution to political evolution was that in refusing to serve in the administration of Lord Shelburne (1737-1805; Prime Minister of the UK 1782–1783), he accelerated the morphing of the Tory faction into a formalized party and no prime minister since Shelburne has attempted to govern without the support of a party.  In the literature, the relationship between George III and Fox often was described as “mutual antipathy” but “mutual hatred” better describes things and there have been few loathings so well documented as public knowledge, the king in a letter to North as early as 1775 saying of Fox he had: “…cast off every principle of common honour and honesty ... [a man who is] as contemptible as he is odious ... [and has an] aversion to all restraints.”  It was deeply personal view because the king attributed this dissolute lifestyle of his son and heir (George IV (1762–1830) King of the UK 1820-1830) to Fox’s corrosive influence.  Despite that, Fox’s appearance in the painting was likely playful rather than political, the artist often including public figures in his works with no overt purpose; Downman was not a “political artist”.

APA Dictionary of Psychology; the APA also publishes a concise edition.

Despite’s Freud’s place in the history of the profession and his continue presence within factions in mainstream psychiatric science, in the “standard” diagnostic literature (the DSM & the WHO's (World Health Organization’s) ICD (International Classification of Diseases)), there are only traces of his legacy.  The DSM-5-TR (2022) is the APA’s most comprehensive diagnostic classification system yet and it includes no mention of the Electra complex, feminine Oedipus complex, penis-envy syndrome, or Oedipal developmental stage, either as diagnoses or as elements in diagnostic criteria and that reflects the path of the modern (ie post 1980) DSM’s evolution as concepts not technically diagnoses came gradually to be removed or renamed, the framework shifting from the classic psychoanalytic explanations of psychopathology Freud, Jung and others had pioneered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  That doesn’t imply parent–child attachment, identification, rivalry and such has been downgraded in importance, indeed the volume of literature would suggest the opposite; it means just that modern developmental psychology studies these things extensively but generally without Freud's specific (and still famous) assumptions.  Less well-known than the DSM, the APA also publishes a psychology dictionary in which the Oedipus complex is discussed as a concept of classical psychoanalytic theory, noting that contemporary psychoanalytic thinking substantially has reduced its centrality and instead focuses more on empirical findings about earlier mother–child relationships.

Electra and the Chorus bearing vessels for libation on the tomb of Agamemnon (undated), illustration from The Choephori by Aeschylus (circa 525-circa 456 BC), pencil, pen and ink on paper by John Flaxman (1755–1826), an English sculptor and draughtsman in the neoclassical tradition, Royal Academy of Arts, London.

In modern parlance all that might suggest “Freud was cancelled by the DSM”.  That would be overstating things but it’s true than prior to the DSM-III (1980), the earlier editions (DSM-I (1952) & DSM-II (1968)) conceptualized mental disorders predominantly in psychodynamic terms with psychoanalytic concepts consequently afforded some prominence although despite the emphasis, neither the Oedipus or Electra complexes were ever listed in the DSM as a diagnosis; they were theoretical explanations of personality development and psychopathology rather than a disorder with diagnostic criteria.  It was in DSM-III the change really began, the editors deliberately moving psychiatric classification toward operationalized diagnostic criteria and away from competing psychodynamic theories, one consequence being explicit mention of the Oedipal theories disappeared from the DSM's diagnostic architecture; the threads could still be detected but that required prior knowledge, a not unreasonable assumption given the publication at the time tended circulate mostly within the profession; its high public profile would come later.  Psychoanalysis however has not disappeared and there are psychoanalytic theorists who continue to use Oedipal language meaning the concepts not infrequently appear in the literature although that does not imply modern psychiatry universally has empirically validated Freud's theory.

So if “Freud was cancelled” is the wrong phrase, it’s necessary to nominate one better and either “somewhat restricted” or “much diminished” better capture what happened (certainly if what’s being discussed is the DSM rather than psychiatry or psychotherapy as a whole).  Prior to the DSM-III, disorders commonly were described in terms of underlying psychological mechanisms and conflicts, emphasizing the primacy of psychoanalytic theory as an important influence in both DSM-I & DSM-II.  It was DSM-III that was the watershed in that it built the framework upon which all subsequent editions have been constructed, up to the current DSM-5-TR.  A major break from what had been established (reflecting a generational change in the profession), DSM-III introduced explicit operational diagnostic criteria and deliberately adopted an approach intended to be neutral concerning etiology (the establishment of a cause, origin, or reason for something).  Henceforth, the DSM would describe what a disorder looked like rather than discuss theories explaining why it manifested.

Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, Third Edition (PDM-3, 2026).  The PDM is less popular with a general readership because it focuses on “why we’re mad” while the DSM defines exactly “how we’re mad” and offers hints on what to do about it.  The PDM is however useful for those who (in themselves or others) detect madness but wish to determine just when & why the instability began.

However, just because Freud's metapsychology ceased explicitly to appear in the DSM’s organizing framework doesn’t mean Freud has no influence on contemporary psychiatry; a number of the concepts he developed or modified have, to varying degrees, survived including unconscious processes; defense mechanisms; transference and countertransference; the importance of early relationships; attachment and interpersonal development and (vitally) the idea that psychological processes can operate outside conscious awareness.  As that implies, much modern work has been built Freudian concepts that became mainstream orthodoxy.  What happened was those concepts have been reformulated or interpolated into broader psychological theories, rather than being accepted simply because Freud proposed them and, in a nod to Freud’s seminal role, there is now the PDM (Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, first published in 2006 and now in its third edition (2026)) which, able to be read as a complement to the DSM or a stand-alone title, deliberately incorporates psychodynamic concepts.  That the DSM & PDM peacefully can co-exist does indicate why it’s at least misleading to speak of Freud being “cancelled”; it was more that the DSM was becoming a different sort of publication and Freud needed a new home.

Buick Electra

1973 Buick Electra 225 Custom Four-door Hardtop.

Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 and POTUS 1969-1974) last full-year in office, 1973 was the last “good year” of the old US economy but events in the Middle East that October would trigger the first oil shock and legislation would impose on cars battering-ram like bumpers and crude emission control devices that impaired driveability reduced power and increased fuel consumption.  It’s remarkable behemoths like the Electra lasted another three seasons.

Over six generations, GM’s (General Motors) Buick division produced the Electra between 1959 and 1990.  For its whole existence the Electra was the flagship of division’s full-size line and, at various points, was available with just about every style of coachwork Detroit offered in the era including two & four-door hardtops, four door sedans, two door convertibles and five door station wagons.  While there were no four-door convertibles, or station wagons with two-doors or in hardtop configuration, some coach-builders used also the platform as the basis of ambulances, limousines or hearses.  The best-known of the breed was the Electra 225 that gained its name from being an impressive 225 inches (5.715 m) in length and while dimensions continue commonly to be used as product descriptions in many industries, explicit mention of length does seem rare in cars although allusions were once common (SWB, LWB, EWB, an appended “L” etc). The Maybach revival used “57” (5.7 m long) & “62” (6.2 m) and some of the Land Rovers were designated according to the wheelbase in inches (88, 110 etc); there was the Ford GT40 but that was about height.  The classic Electra 225s (they wouldn’t always measure 225 inches stem to stern but the name stuck) were built on the GM corporate C platform and although part of the “great down-sizing” in 1977, it retained the RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration until 1985 when, along with the equivalent ranges built by Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Pontiac & Chevrolet, the “full-size” lines shifted to FWD (front-wheel-drive).  The most famous Electra 225 was a 1966 four-door hardtop in which the actor Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) was killed after the car slammed into the back of a stationary truck;  the protective “Mansfield bars” on trucks are named after her.  Because of the name, it was used for the Buick Electra E5, a battery electric mid-size crossover SUV manufactured since 2023 in China by SAIC-GM under the Buick brand.

Powered clamshell tailgate on 1971 Buick Estate Wagon.  The 1971 Estate used the Electra platform and was Buick's first full-sized station wagon since 1953.  It was a very cool feature.  

A footnote in the Electra’s history is the powered clamshell tailgate used on the Estate Wagon between 1971 and 1976.  Built on a 127 inch (3.23 m) wheelbase, the Estate Wagons truly were large machines and the clamshell tailgate appeared on all GM’s big wagons in the era, the novelties being the powered rear glass sliding up into the roof as the tailgate slid into a recess under the cargo floor; very cool.  The power tailgate (the first ever seen on station wagons) was operated by switches on the instrument panel or a key switch on the rear quarter panel but while wagons had the powered glass, the powered tailgate was optional and, if the manual version, there was a small handle on the tailgate and an additional chrome “ring” with “flippers” around the keyhole.  The apparatus operated by turning the key to raise the glass into the roof cavity with the tailgate lowered by turning the chrome ring.  A clever design of the type engineers really would have enjoyed perfecting, the tailgate used counter-weights of sizes & springs of tension (a la garage doors) calculated exactly to allow the structure to drop under the force of gravity while demanding only a light action manually to raise it; it was a case-study in the difference between mass & weight (mass x gravity).  Although heavy and intricate, the system proved admirably reliable but the design wasn’t carried over to the new generation of smaller station wagons because, in the unforgiving new world, there was a quest to reduce weight in the hunt for improved fuel economy and lower exhaust emissions.

Lockheed Electra

TEAL Lockheed L-188 Electra ZK-TEB 1963 (left) & 1965 (right).  The TEAL livery was retained when the corporate name was changed in 1965, the aircraft not immediately re-painted, “Air New Zealand” replacing “TEAL JET PROP” on the fuselage as required by the rules of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (better known as the “Chicago Convention” (1944).

The airline TEAL (Tasman Empire Airways Limited) emerged from the Tasman Sea Agreement, an intergovernmental treaty between the Australia, New Zealand and the UK, concluded in London early in 1940.  The purpose of the operation was to provide for the trans-Tasman traffic of passengers, cargo and mail, something disrupted by the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945).  In the manner of a number of wartime agreements, the treaty contained a sunset clause stipulating a termination within three months of the end of the war with Germany but such was the state of post-war civil aviation that arrangements were carried over, the pre-war practices not returning to the trans-Tasman route until 1954.  As part of that re-organization, the shareholdings, previously spread between the New Zealand Government (20%), Union Airways (19%), BOAC (38%) and Qantas (23%), were dissolved and the two governments assumed co-ownership until 1961 when both decided to maintain separate national carriers, TEAL and Qantas, the relationship having been strained since the Australians had insisted TEAL order the turboprop Lockheed Electra to maintain fleet standardization with Qantas while the New Zealanders wanted to upgrade to jets.  In 1965, TEAL was re-named Air New Zealand.

Two Lockheed P-3 Orions of the Japanese SDF (Self-Defense Force), on anti-submarine patrol over the Sea of Japan.

The naming of the sea is contested.  Japan asserts “Sea of Japan” has since the early 1800s been the internationally accepted term while the RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) claims “East Sea” predates the period of Japanese colonial rule and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)) Korea advocates use of “East Sea of Korea”.  Unlike the Electra L-188 on which it was based, the Orion proved a great commercial success and between 1960-1990 over 750 were built, the aircraft adopted by over 20 countries; some remain in service.  The distinctive “tail “stinger” is a “MAD boom”, used for the magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) of submarines.

Re-cycling a name the company had in the 1930s used for a smaller airliner, US manufacturer Lockheed between 1957-1961 built 170 Electra L-188s, the first large turboprop airliner built in the US.  With a number of unique design features that made it suitable for use on short runways or airfields located at high altitudes, there should have been great scope for international sales but a combination of two well-publicized crashes (caused by a design fault in the engine-mounts) and the new generation of jet aircraft suppressed demand meaning production ended a decade earlier than planned.  Ironically, whether in passenger service or as the freighters many were later converted into, the Electra proved robust, reliable and provided stellar service to many operators as late as the 1990s, the airframe also serving as the basis for the Lockheed P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft that saw service with many nations.  The Electra’s darkest chapter was that a flight of three was purchased by the military junta that between 1976-1983 ruled Argentina and, during the “Dirty War” (1974-1973) the three flew missions to dump some of the detenidos-desaparecidos (detained-disappeared), political opponents of the regime, of which there may have been as many as 25,000) into the South Atlantic Ocean.  The Argentine Navy’s Electra’s proved ideal for the gruesome task because they were configured with wide cargo doors.

Encyclopedist

Encyclopedist (pronounced en-sahy-kluh-pee-dist)

(1) A compiler of or contributor to an encyclopedia.

(2) One of the collaborators fn the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (now almost always used with initial capital letter).

(3) A dismissive term applied by KGB specialists to generalists.

1645–1655: The construct was encycloped(ia) + -ist.  Encyclopedia was attested from the 1530s, from the New Latin encyclopaedia (general education), from the Renaissance Ancient Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία (enkuklopaideía) (education in the circle of arts and sciences (literally “training in a circle”)), a mistaken univerbated form of the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδείᾱ (enkúklios paideíā) (education in the circle of arts and sciences, the construct being ἐγκύκλιος (enkúklios) (circular (also “general”)) + παιδείᾱ (paideíā) (child-rearing, education), from pais (genitive paidos (child).  The modern sense of a "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, the origin most associated with the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts (1751-1772)).  Encyclopedism (or encyclopaedism) is the related noun and encyclopaedist the alternative spelling, the Latin form surviving as a variant because many of the most famous printed volumes had Latin names; as the printed editions fade from use, except in historic references, encyclopedia is now by far the prevalent spelling.  The adjective encyclopedic dates from 1816 while the truncation cyclopaedia is attested from 1728.  

The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  The original Encyclopedists (encyclopaedists in historic British use) were the French Encyclopédistes, members of the Société des gens de lettres (a literary association) who between 1751-1765 contributed entries for the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers, published between 1751-1772, edited by noted art critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and (until 1759 when one of his entries triggered an amusing ecclesiastical turf-war), mathematician & musicologist Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783).  Encyclopedist is a noun; the noun plural is encyclopedists.

Opening pages of Lindsay Lohan's entry at encyclopedia.com.

Confusingly, “cyclopedia” and “encyclopedia” mean the exact same thing, cyclopedia a long less common spelling although one that in a niche in publishing did persist into the twenty-first century.  First known to have appeared in 1728, according to the usually practice in English where shorter forms are preferred with the unnecessary discarded, “cyclopedia” should have prevailed but as Henry Fowler (1858–1933) pointed out in his authoritative A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): “The longer forms [encyclopaedia & encyclopaedic] are in themselves better” simply on the basis of an established pattern of use although he did note “cyclopaedic is becoming the more usual form for the adjective”.  That adjectival preference didn’t last into the modern age and etymologists attribute the decline in use of cyclopaedic and its related forms to the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for “British Encyclopædia”) becoming for more than a century a cultural reference in much of the English-speaking world.  First published in 1768, the 15^th and final printed edition appeared in 2010, spanning some 33,000 pages over 32 volumes and complete sets often are offered for sale.  For anyone with a bookshelf to fill they’re a visually impressive sight and doubtlessly some have bought sets for “interior decoration” but it would appear supply now exceeds demand.  Since 2016, the encyclopaedia has appeared online at Britannica.com.  If any one factor encouraged the survival of “cyclopaedia”, it was the popularity of Pears' Cyclopaedia, a single-volume encyclopaedia published in the UK by the Pears' Soap Company (1807); it first appeared in 1879, the year of Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) Diamond Jubilee.  Obviously less comprehensive than the Britannica, Pears’ found a niche in being convenient and oriented towards what most people wanted to know most of the time including an atlas, gazetteer & medical dictionary with sections devoted to topics as diverse as commerce, history, science, religion and literature.  After 1953 the editions became annual but, from the 1990, sales tended down and succumbing to the inevitable, the last appeared in 2017.

KGB identity card, issued in 1982 for British SIS (MI6) defector Kim Philby (1912–1988).

The Soviet Union’s (USSR) KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, literally “Committee for State Security” but better understood as “political police”) was the last of an alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH & MGB) which, building on the models of the many secret-police forces maintained by Tsarist Russia (1547-1917), was responsible for the USSR’s internal security and, beyond its borders, espionage, counter espionage and a range of activities conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy (including that not disclosed and that sometimes denied).  In post-Soviet Russia, the KGB evolved into the FSB (Federal Security Service), former comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) honing his skills in the KGB, an institution he is believed to have joined in 1975.

“Lubtanka building”, Lubyanka Square, Meshchansky, Moscow, Russia.

In Soviet times, citizens referred to the building as “the Lubyanka”, a term in synecdochic use referencing the KGB specifically and the state’s sprawling internal security apparatus generally.  After 1918, the yellow-brick building was for decades headquarters of various organs of the Soviet and Russian security services since 1918 (most infamously the KGB, 1954-1991) and it became notoriously especially for the cells in which were conducted interrogations, torture and the executions.  The legend grew the cells were in the basement but that was an illusion, the prison complex actually the windowless top floor, those detained disorientated by the “basement-like” environment.  In a sign of changed times, under the comparatively less repressive regime of comrade Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982), architects were commissioned to re-model the prison into the KGB staff cafeteria.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a museum was opened within the Lubyanka but the political winds have since again blown from the east and access is now highly restricted.  The word became a cultural reference point also in the West and one of the jocular nicknames for the headquarters for the UK's SIS is “London Lubyanka”; sited on the banks of the Thames, descriptions of the building include “fortress-like” & “North Koreaish” but the eclectic mix of styles, shapes & structures has aged well. 

As an internal security agency, the KGB (like its predecessors) was always formidable and usually effective in the suppression of dissent but in espionage and counter-espionage, the record was patchy and increasingly so as the Cold War (1947-1991) drew to its (anti-) climax.  Most of the celebrated successes happened either before the Cold War began or in its early years, the number and usefulness of ideologically motivated defectors and traitors from the West sharply declining after comrade Khrushchev’s (Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “Secret Speech” at the 1956 Communist Party Congress in which he denounced comrade Stalin's (Joseph Stalin 1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) repressions and purges, laying bare the nature of the his regime.  The speech didn’t long stay secret, the transcripts leaked to the West convincing all but the few most devoted of the “useful idiots” their faith had been misplaced and the god had failed.  After the interventions in Hungary that same year and Czechoslovakia in 1968, idea of a Soviet-like future became still less appealing, not only in the West but also among the disillusioned in the USSR and its satellite states.

Decline: Soviet real per capita GDP growth 1960-1985.  Nostalgic as he may be for the empire of the old USSR, even Mr Putin admits the economic system simply didn't work.

However, whatever the decline in the metrics, the KGB continued to grow, reflecting the need to increase surveillance and internal control in order for the party to maintain its authority over a system in which occasional periods of stagnation were the only good news in what was, in retrospect, a system in the throes of terminal decline.  By the mid-1970s, in the Moscow region alone, the KGB establishment stood at some 50,000 (greater than the combined workforce of their Cold War opponent’s CIA & FBI (the US Central Intelligence Agency & Federal Bureau of Investigation) although other Western nations also maintained large security operations of spies and analysts) and of the total force of half a million-odd, some 220,000 guarded the USSR’s borders, not from fear of invasion by a foreign power but to discourage escape attempts.  Once an organization with a relatively simple structure which, as late as the early 1960s, was administered through three directorates, the KGB grew to encompass a dozen, reflecting in part the geographical division of the country by 1980 in 21 departments when once there had been eight.  If there was one dominated theme in the government of the late Soviet Union it was a burgeoning bureaucracy, the upper echelons staffed increasingly by party apparatchiks with little knowledge of intelligence or espionage (the USSR’s equivalent of the MBA-CEO class in the West).  These the experienced operators disparagingly called “encyclopedists”, the idea being they knew just a little bit about many things and, being empire-builders as industrious as their imperialist lackey counterparts, fiefdoms proliferated.  Apart from the documented decrease in efficiency, the growth of the KGB, like that of the armed forces, the party and the military-industrial complex, absorbed (unproductively), a rising share of the USSR’s diminishing financial resources at a time of failing health care, food shortages and a general decline in living standards, one former KGB general (Oleg Kalugin (b 1934)) later telling the joke which circulated within the organization: The USSR was “the Congo with rockets”.  In living standards, the flagship of the second-world was tending towards the third and the structural imbalances fed off themselves, an economic viscous circle that led to the economic and moral bankruptcy which doomed the USSR.  Late in 1991, the KGB was dissolved, having out-lasted the party by just weeks although, in the years since, the successor organizations in both Russia and the states within its sphere of influence have sometimes devolved towards the past.

Comrade Andropov.

General Kalugin did however give credit where it was due.  The KGB in 1979 had spies well-placed inside the intelligence apparatuses of a number of countries and one of these agents provided the information the wife of a Soviet diplomat had with some frequency been observed having sex with the family’s large pet (male) dog.  The KGB agents were a worldly lot and might have had a chuckle before turning a blind eye but the source advised there were plans to obtain video evidence with which the diplomat could be blackmailed.  So sensitive was the matter that discussions involved the head of KGB himself, Yuri Andropov (1914–1984; head of KGB 1967-1982, Soviet leader 1982-1984).  Unable simply to recall the couple lest it compromise the source and, in a nice touch, not wishing to burden the husband with the knowledge of his wife’s unusual predilection for canine-intimacy, no solution seemed immediately obvious until, after for some time sitting in silence, comrade Andropov suggested: “Kill the dog”.  All agreed this was a good idea so it was arranged for a KGB technician to visit the house on some pretext to slip the hound some poisoned meat.  The dose turned out to be wrong so instead of killing the beast, just its hind quarters became paralyzed although that obviously solved the problem; a tactical failure but a strategic success.  It was a minor event in a long career and it's believed it played no part in comrade Andropov being the last leader of the USSR but one.

Malia Nummerdor mugshot.  Lots of stuff happens in Florida.

Less inclined to understanding and forgiveness than the KGB’s apparatchiks were one husband in Florida and the officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.  In September 2026, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) tabloid New York Post reported a husband’s bedroom security camera (said to be visible and displaying a blinking red light when recording) had captured scenes of his wife performing “a disgusting act” with the family dog.  The man had installed the camera in an attempt to find who was pilfering from a coin jar so the sight of his wife enjoying bestiality with his dog would have been at least a surprise.  Mother of two Malia Nummerdor (b 1989) was arrested and charged with “engaging in sexual contact with an animal”, the sheriff’s office confirming the footage revealed Ms Nummerdor was “nude from the waist down, positioned with the dog in a manner consistent with sexual activity”.

Police interviewed the suspect who “acknowledged the video showed her with the dog, but denied there was any sexual contact – claiming that she was just petting it.”  In the report of interview filed, the investigating detective described her answers as “contradictory”.  Predictably, a case that sounded like something from the front page of NRS (normally reliable source) National Enquirer attracted much public interest and friends of Ms Nummerdor launched a fundraiser to assist her with legal expenses, claiming she was “set up by her spouse”.  Helpfully, one acquaintance revealed: “I went to school with her, and she never rubbed me as a weirdo.  She is very pretty.  I don’t think she would have trouble finding a human being to be intimate with.  Of course, that alone doesn’t prove anything, but I think it’s important to remember that the person being portrayed online is someone who has people who knew her before these allegations.” while another concluded “I feel there is much more to the story.”

Grand

Grand (pronounced grand)

(1) Impressive in size, appearance, or general effect.

(2) Stately, majestic, or dignified.

(3) Highly ambitious or idealistic.

(4) Magnificent or splendid.

(5) Noble or revered.

(6) Highest, or very high, in rank or official dignity.

(7) Main or principal; chief; the most superior.

(8) Of great importance, distinction, or pretension.

(9) Complete or comprehensive (usually as the “grand total”).

(10) Pretending to grandeur, as a result of minor success, good fortune, etc; conceited & haughty (often with a modifier such as “rather grand”, awfully grand” or “insufferably grand”).

(11) First-rate; very good; splendid.

(12) In musical composition, written on a large scale or for a large ensemble (grand fugue, grand opera etc) and technically meaning originally “containing all the parts proper to a given form of composition”.

(13) In music, the slang for the concert grand piano (sometimes as “concert grand”).

(14) In informal use, an amount equal to a thousand pounds or dollars.

(15) In genealogy, a combining (prefix) form used to denote “one generation more remote” (grandfather, grand uncle etc).

1350–1400: From the Middle English graund, grond, grand, graunt & grant, from the Anglo-Norman graunt, from the Old French grant & grand (large, tall; grown-up; great, powerful, important; strict, severe; extensive; numerous), from the Latin grandis (big, great; full, abundant; full-grown (and figuratively “strong, powerful, weighty, severe”, of unknown origin.  Words conveying a similar sense (depending on context includes ambitious, awe-inspiring, dignified, glorious, grandiose, imposing, large, lofty, luxurious, magnificent, marvelous, monumental, noble, princely, regal, royal, exalted, palatial; brilliant, superb opulent, palatial, splendid, stately, sumptuous, main, large, big & august.  Grand is a noun & adjective, grander & grandest are adjectives, grandness is a noun and grandly is an adverb; the noun plural is grands.

In Vulgar Latin it supplanted magnus (although the phrase magnum opus (one’s great work) endured) and continued in the Romanic languages.  The connotations of "noble, sublime, lofty, dignified etc” existed in Latin and later were picked up in English where it gained also the special sense of “imposing” (which tended often to imply “big”.  The meaning “principal, chief, most important” (especially in the hierarchy of titles) dates from the 1560s while the idea of “something of very high or noble quality” is from the early eighteenth century.  As a general term of admiration (in the sense of “magnificent or splendid” it’s documented since 1816 but as a modifier to imply perhaps that but definitely size, it had been in use for centuries: The Grand Jury was an invention of the late fifteenth century, the grand tour was understood as “an expedition around the important places in continental Europe undertaken as part of the education of aristocratic young Englishmen) as early as the 1660s and the grand piano was named in 1797.  In technical use it was adapted for use in medicine as the grand mal (convulsive epilepsy with loss of consciousness), borrowed from the French grand mal (literally “great sickness”) as a point of clinical distinction from the petit mal (literally “small sickness”) (an epileptic event where consciousness was not lost).  The meaning "a thousand dollars" dates from 1915 and was originally US underworld slang, that sum then a lot of money (the cheapest Ford Model T then listed for US$350).

The “Twenty Grand”: 1933 Duesenberg SJ Arlington Torpedo Sedan by Rollston.

Celebrating "A century of Progress" and held between 27 May, 1933-31 October, 1934 in Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago World's Fair was memorable for the stunning array of art deco architecture and being the first US-staged international fair to book a profit.  Indeed, with close to 40 million paying visitors, the event had proved so popular the scheduled closing date of 12 November, 1933 was extended by almost a year.  When the fair opened its gates, the nation still was in the depths of the Great Depression and it was less than three months since Franklin Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, POTUS 1933-1945) in his first Inaugural Address on 4 March 1933 had delivered the words “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” so, in the circumstances, after three troubled years, the success was a remarkable achievement.  Still, it was far from an ideal time to display luxury goods but despite it all, four of the nation’s most exalted automobile manufacturers showed the finest they could achieve.

The “Twenty Grand”: 1933 Duesenberg SJ Arlington Torpedo Sedan by Rollston. 

Reflecting the interest in what the industry then called “streamlining”, Cadillac showcased their Aerodynamic Coupe, a fine housing for the company’s already famous 452 cubic inch (7.4 litre) V16.  Visually, Packard’s Sport Sedan didn’t have the Cadillac’s radical lines but the coachwork by Dietrich was elegant with some styling elements which others would emulate over the remainder of the decade.  Powered by Packard’s second-generation V12, the press dubbed it “The Car of the Dome” an allusion to the exposition’s Travel and Transportation Building where it sat.  Most startling among the four was Pierce-Arrow’s Silver Arrow, the look of which often is described as “avant-garde” but in many aspects it anticipated the early days of mid-century modernism and was probably an influence on the remarkable Tatras from Czechoslovakia although, with a front-mounted V12, under the striking bodywork, it was in many ways a conventional design.  By far the most familiar in appearance was the Duesenberg Arlington Torpedo Sedan with one-off coachwork by Rollston.  While it lacked the rakish appeal of some of the Duesenberg roadsters or phaetons, of its type it was a fine expression and under the long hood of course sat the supercharged 420 cubic inch (6.9 litre) straight-8; with a 32 valve, DOHC (double overhead camshafts) cylinder head, it was rated at 320 HP and was the industry’s most powerful engine.  Although not officially revealed, rumors circulated the price tag was US$20,000 (equivalent to some US$500,000 in 2026), leading the press to nickname it the “Twenty Grand.”

The use of the prefix grand- in genealogical compounds is a special case.  The original meaning was “a generation older than” and the earliest known reference is from the early thirteenth century in the Anglo-French graund dame (grandmother) & (later) grandsire (grandfather), etymologists considering the latter possibly modeled on the avunculus magnus (great uncle).  The English grandmother & grandfather formally entered the language in the fifteenth century and the extension of the concept from “a generation older than” to “a generation younger than” was adopted in the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) thus grandson, granddaughter etc.  Grand as a modifier clearly had appeal because in the US, the “Big Canyon” was in 1869 re-named the Grand Canyon.  In the modern era grand has been appended whenever there’s a need economically to convey the idea of a “bigger or more significant” version of something thus such constructions as grand prix, grand slam, grand larceny, grand theft auto, grand unification theory, grand master (a favorite both of chess players and the Freemasons) etc.  While “grand” can be a “loaded word” in that it can be deployed to convey something positive or negative some related forms can be even more variable and often are prone to misuse.  These include “grandeur” ((1) the state of being grand or splendid; magnificence; (2) the state of being noble; (3) largeness; tallness; loftiness (archaic), “grandiose” ((1) Large and impressive, in size, scope or extent; (2) pompous or pretentious; (3) magnificent or spectacular and “grandiloquent” (of an individual, their writing or speech): given to using language in a showy way by using may obscure or long words.

The Grand Jury

Donald Trump in Manhattan Criminal Court, April 2022.

The Manhattan grand jury that indicted Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) on 34 felony counts of "falsification of business records in the first degree" was an example of an institution with origins in twelfth century England although it didn’t generally become known as the “grand jury” until the mid-1400s.  At least some of the charges against Mr Trump related to the accounting associated with “hush-money” payment made in some way to Stormy Daniels (b 1979; the stage name of Stephanie Gregory although Mr Trump prefers “horseface” which seems both ungracious and unfair) and reports at the time offered the prospect of more legal-political drama, the suggestion he'd likely have to face more grand juries hearing more serious matters.  All such possibilities were however put on hold when he again became POTUS. 

A grand jury is a group of citizens (usually between 16-23) who review evidence presented by a prosecutor to determine whether the case made seems sufficiently compelling to bring criminal charges.  A grand jury operates in secret and its proceedings are not open to the public, unlike a trial before a jury (a smaller assembly and classically a dozen although the numbers now vary and once it was sometimes called a petit jury (petit (small), from the Middle English petit, from the Old French petit, from the Late Latin pitittus, a diminutive of pit-).  It is this smaller jury which ultimately will pronounce whether a defendant is guilty or not; all a grand jury does is determine whether a matter proceeds to trial in which case it will issue an indictment, which at law is a formal accusation.  The origins of the grand jury in medieval England, where it was used as a means of investigating and accusing individuals of crimes was to prevent abuses of power by the king and his appointed officers of state although it was very much designed to protect the gentry and aristocracy from the king rather than any attempt to extend legal rights to most of the population.

The grand jury has been retained in the legal systems of only two countries: the US and Liberia.  Many jurisdictions now use a single judge or magistrate in a lower court to conduct a preliminary hearing but the principle is the same: what has to be decided is whether, on the basis of the evidence presented, there’s a reasonable prospect a properly instructed (petit) jury would convict.  In the US, the grand jury has survived because the institution was enshrined in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger.”  In England, the grand jury was thought a vital protection against arbitrary prosecutions by the government, and it was included in the Bill of Rights (1689) to ensure individuals would not be subject to unjustified criminal charges.  There is an argument that, by virtue of England’s wondrously flexible unwritten constitution, the grand jury hasn't been abolished but they're merely no longer summoned.  It's an interesting theory but few support the notion, the Criminal Justice Act (2003) explicitly transferring the functions to the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and the model of the office of  DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) has been emulated elsewhere in the English-speaking world.  Presumably, a resuscitation would require the DPP to convene a grand jury and (if challenged on grounds of validity) the courts have to concur but as late as 1955 an English court was prepared to hold a court which had for centuries neither sat nor held a hearing remained extant so the arguments would be interesting.

The “Grand Mercedes”: The Grosser tradition

Der Grossers: 1935 Mercedes-Benz 770 K (W07) of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohita, 1901–1989, emperor of Japan 1926-1989 (left)), Duce & Führer in 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770 K (W150) leading a phalanx of Grossers, Munich, 1940 (centre) and comrade Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) in 1966 Mercedes-Benz 600 six-door Landaulet (W100), Belgrade, 1967 (right).

Produced in three series (770 K (W07, 1930–1938 & W150, 1939-1945) & 600 (W100, 1963-1981)) the usual translation in English of “Grosser Mercedes” is “Grand Mercedes” and that is close to the German understanding which is something between “great”, “big” and “top-of-the-line”.  In German & Austrian navies (off & on) between 1901-1945, a Großadmiral (Grand Admiral) was the equivalent to the (five star) Admiral of the Fleet (UK) or Fleet Admiral (US); the rank was abolished in 1945 and has never been re-established.  When the 600 was released in 1963, it may have been the last time a single model could be described as "the best car in the world" but, driven to extinction in 1981 by an oil crisis and an array of regulations never envisaged when it was designed, it wasn’t replaced and the factory didn’t return to the idea until a prototype was displayed at the 1997 Tokyo Motor Show.  The specification and engineering was impressive but the appearance was underwhelming, a feeling reinforced when the production version (2002-2013) emerged not as an imposing Grosser Mercedes but a Maybach, a curious choice which seemed to suggest a marque which for a century had been the choice of popes, presidents & potentates was no longer good enough.  Although dynamically a fine car (at the time the best of its type), the Maybach looked something like a big Hyundai and lingered for a slow-selling decade before an unlamented death, suggesting the MBAs (Master of Business Administration) who decided on a re-branding using a name with little resonance except among except automotive & military historians should stick to creating campaigns for washing powder.

Grand, Grand Luxe & Gran

Jaguar 420G publicity material, 1966.

Car manufacturers were attracted to the word because of the connotations (bigger, better, more expensive etc).  When in 1966 Jaguar updated the slow-selling Mark X (1961-1966), it was integrated into what proved a short-lived naming convention, based on the engine displacement.  Under the system, with a capacity of 4.2 litres (258 cubic inch) the thing had to be called 420 but there was a smaller saloon in the range so-named so the bigger Mark X was renamed 420G.  Interestingly, when the 420G was released, any journalist who asked was told “G” stood for “Grand” which is why that appeared in the early reports although the factory seems never officially to have used the word, the text in the brochures reading variously: 420G, 420 G or 420 “G”.  The re-naming did little to encourage sales although the 420G remained in production until 1970 by which time production had dwindled to a trickle, the car rendered instantly a relic when the epoch-making XJ6 (in three generations, 1968-1992) made its debut in 1968.  The use of a "G" is unusual in product names although it has appeared as a part of alphabetical sequences (bras and certain Chryslers for example) but when in 1989 the now defunct software manufacturer Lotus released a version of their 1-2-3 spreadsheet for IBM's new OS/2 operating system, it was called 1-2-3/G, the "G" a nod to the product using OS/2's Presentation Manager (a GUI (Graphical User Interface)).  Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the PC (personal computer) industry's original "killer apps" and along with WordPerfect & dBASE III was the backbone of corporate software in the 1980s but the universe shifted and all are now historic footnotes.  As IBM had for OS/2, Lotus had grand plans for 1-2-3/G but both fell victim to Microsoft's better implemented strategy for global domination.   

The tale of the Mark X & 420G is emblematic of the missed opportunities and mismanagement which would afflict the British industry during the 1970s & 1980s.  In 1961, the advanced specification of the Mark X (unitary construction, independent rear suspension, four-wheel disc brakes) made it an outstanding platform and had Jaguar fitted an enlarged version of the larger of the two superb V8s they had gained with their purchase in 1960 of Daimler, it would have been an ideal niche competitor in mid-upper reaches of the lucrative US market.  Except for the engine, it needed little change except better ventilation and the installation of a good air-conditioning system, then already perfected by Detroit.  Although the Daimler V8 and Borg-Warner gearbox couldn't have matched the ultimate refinement of what Detroit was building (by then the finest engine-transmission combinations in the world), the English pair certainly had their charms and would have seduced many.

1969 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ 428.  The use of "SJ" was a borrowing from the celebrated Duesenberg SJs (1932-1937) a breed that exerted an influence well beyond the three dozen built.

Pontiac’s memorable 1969 Grand Prix also might have gained some allure from the word.  The term “Grand Prix” still is most associated with top-level motorsport (although it originally was borrowed from Grand Prix de Paris (Big Prize of Paris), a race for thoroughbred horses staged at the Longchamps track) so although Pontiac’s rather large 1962 Grand Prix was far removed from a racing car, it was marketed on the basis of “high performance” so the tag would have made sense given the way labels were applied in the era.  However, big as it was, it got bigger and the second generation (1965-1968) morphed into something truly grand in size if not dynamic qualities.  Style returned when the third generation (1969-1972) was released, the look dominated by the elongated nose that truly was a triumph of fashion over function; although fitted with V8 engines with displacements as large as 455 cubic inches (7.5 litre), the power-plants, while relatively wide, were quite short and under that long hood (bonnet) was a compartment that easily could have housed a V16.  As a piece of packaging efficiency it was an absurdity but undeniably it was a dramatic look and sales spiked.  The 1969-1970 cars remain the most highly regarded of the third generation, the few hundred with the 428 cubic inch (7.0 litre) HO (High Output) V8 coupled with a four-speed manual transmission the most collectable.  From there, although over a further five generations the Grand Prix remained successful enough to remain in the catalogue until 2008, the best years were over and at some point in the 1970s or 1980s (opinions differ), there was little about the by then dreary Grand Prix which seemed at all grand.

Although a bit deluxe, not especially grand: 1980 TF (Mark V) Ford Cortina GL.

During the interwar years (1919-1939) “deluxe” (borrowed from the world of fashion) found to be a good label to apply to a car with bling added and sold for a premium well beyond what the adornments cost; the concept proved so profitable it remains practiced to this day.  Deluxe (sometimes as De luxe) was a commercial adaptation of the French de luxe (of luxury), from the Latin luxus (excess), from the primitive Indo-European lewg- (bend, twist).  The “deluxe” label worked so well it begat “Super Deluxe” & “Grand Luxe” both genuinely coinings of the industry.  Deluxe and Grand Luxe eventually fell from favour as model names for blinged-up creations became more inventive but the initializations L, DL & GL were adopted by some, the latter surviving longest by which time it was understood to signify just something better equipped and thus more expensive; it’s doubtful many made a literal connection to “Grand Luxe”.

1970 Plymouth Barracuda Gran Coupe Convertible in Plum Crazy (FC7).

A linguistic curiosity of the US motor industry in the 1970s was “Gran”, technically a truncation of “grand” but with no connection with “gran” as an affectionate diminutive of “grandmother” or the many uses (as Gran) as a proper noun (surnames, locality names etc).  It was Chrysler’s Plymouth Division that for years championed “Gran” (though Buick used it too) and while the Gran Fury (1980-1989) was the longest serving, more linguistically interesting were the “Gran Coupe” (1970-1971) versions of the third generation (1970-1974) Barracuda and the 1971 Fury III Gran Coupe.  The Barracuda Gran Coupe was a bit of mission creep for the word “coupe” because the model was available as both a two-door hardtop and a convertible (in 1970 only).  That was at the time unusual but not wholly without (a partial) precedent because for generations English manufacturers had referred to their larger convertibles as DHCs (drophead coupé).

1971 Plymouth Fury III Gran Coupe (which was a four-door hardtop).

However, the 1971 Fury III Gran Coupe was in the US a genuine first because it had four doors.  The notion of a “four-door coupé” was not new because in the UK, Rover (a company with a history of adventurism in engineering which belied its staid image) in 1962 released a pillared version of the 3 Litre (P5, 1958-1967) four-door saloon with a lowered roof-line and some different interior fittings; this they named “3 Litre Coupé” which puzzled those who had become used to the designation being applied to two-door machines but etymologically, Rover was correct.  Coupé was from the French coupé, an elliptical form of carosse coupé (cut carriage), past participle of couper (to cut)).  Rover did cut-down the roof of the P5 so that was consistent with the etymology but shamelessly, Plymouth, which in 1970 had offered (an uncut) two door Fury II Gran Coupe, for 1971 introduced (the uncut) Fury III Gran Coupe with four door hardtop bodywork.  So, there are (uncut) four door coupes because Plymouth said so.  The mysterious “Gran” seems to have been used for no reason other than sounding vaguely “European” and therefore imparting a more “upmarket” image than the by then common “Grand”.  It was at the time a trend which saw the adoption of “Brougham”, “Monaco”, “Cordoba”, “Monte Carlo”, “rich Corinthian leather” and such although the brutish “Grand” would make a comeback when Plymouth turned to making people movers (vans with more seats).

In the matter of Grand Theft Auto (GTA5): Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018)

In a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court, Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers (Take-Two, aka Rockstar) of the video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed.  In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.

Beware of imitations: The real Lindsay Lohan and the GTA 5 ersatz, a mere "generic young woman".

Concurring with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong".  The “…artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey (b 1951) wrote in his ruling.  Judge Fahey's words recalled those of Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1958-1981) when in Jacobellis v Ohio (378 U.S. 184 (1964) writing of the concept of "obscenity" he wrote: “I shall not today attempt further to define… and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so.  But I know it when I see it…”  Judge Fahey knew a basic white girl when he saw one; he just couldn't name her.  Lindsay Lohan's lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.

The game’s developers may have taken the risk of incurring Lindsay Lohan’s wrath and indignation because they’d been lured into a false sense of security by crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) not filing a writ after a likeness of her appeared on GTA 4’s (2008) Statue Of Happiness which stands on Happiness Island, just off the coast of Liberty City.  The Statue of Happiness was a blatant knock-off of New York’s Statue of Liberty and crooked Hillary became a determined and acerbic critic of Rockstar and the GTA franchise when details of the “Hot Coffee affair” were revealed.  That controversy arose after modders promulgated a code which in GTA: San Andreas’ release (2004) unlocked a hidden “mini-game” which allowed players to control explicit on-screen sex acts.  Men having sex (however defined) with women with whom they don’t enjoy benefit of marriage was a bit of a sore point with crooked Hillary, then a US senator (Democrat-New York), who embarked on a campaign for new regulations be imposed on the industry and the most immediate consequence was the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) launching an investigation, subsequently raising GTA: San Andreas’s rating from “M” (Mature) to “AO” (Adults Only, 18+) until the objectionable content was removed.  For those who wondered if the frankly frightening visage on the GTA 4 statute really was what some suspected, the object’s file name was “stat_hilberty01.wdr”.

Rockstar's Statue Of Happiness in GTA 4 (2008, left) and an official photograph of crooked Hillary Clinton (right). 

Rockstar seeking vengeance was understandable because crooked Hillary’s moral crusade proved tiresome for the company.  Once the ESRB had been nudged into action, crooked Hillary petitioned the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to (1) find the source of the game's “graphic pornographic and violent content”, (2) determine if it should be slapped with an AO rating and (3) “examine the adequacy of the retailers' rating enforcement policies.”  Not content, she then announced she’d be sponsoring in the Senate a bill for an act to make it a federal crime (with a mandatory US$5,000 fine) to sell to anyone under 18, violent or sexually explicit video games; the FEPA (Family Entertainment Protection Act) was filed on 17 December, 2005 and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where quietly it was allowed to expire, the fate of many a bill over the years.

While the bill was undergoing a slow strangulation in committee hearings (killing bills one of the great arts in the US political system), the FTC and Rockstar reached a settlement, the commission ruling the company had violated the FTCA (Federal Trade Commission Act (1914)) by failing to disclose the inclusion of “unused, but potentially viewable” explicit content” (that it was enabled by a third party was held to be “not relevant”).  The settlement required Rockstar “clearly and prominently disclose on product packaging and in any promotion or advertisement for electronic games, content relevant to the rating, unless that content had been disclosed sufficiently in prior submissions to the rating authority” with violations punishable by a fine of up to US$11,000.  In the spirit of the now again fashionable Calvin "silent Cal" Coolidge (1872-1933; POTUS 1923-1929) era capitalism, no fine was imposed for the “hot coffee incident”, honor presumably satisfied by the company already having booked a US$24.5 million loss from the product recall earlier mandated.