Collage

Collage (pronounced kuh-lahzh or koh-lahzh)

(1) The technique, most associated with visual abstract art, of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface various materials not normally associated with one another, as newspaper clippings, parts of photographs, theater tickets, and fragments of an envelope.

(2) A work of art produced by this technique.

(3) An assemblage or occurrence of diverse elements or fragments in (1) and unlikely or unexpected juxtaposition or (2) a coherent result.

(4) In film, a series of seemingly unrelated scenes or images or shifts from one scene or image to another suddenly and without transition.

(5) Any work created by combining unrelated (or at least definably different) styles; in literature, a combination of styles within the one work; in music a combinations of genres.

1915–1920: From the French collage, the construct being coll(er) (paste, glue) + -age.  Coller was from the Ancient Greek κόλλα (kólla) (glue) of uncertain origin but may ultimately be from the primitive Indo-European kol- and cognates included the Russian кле́й (kléj) and the Middle Dutch helen. The –age suffix was from the Middle French -age, from Old French -age, from the Latin –āticum (influential in words like rivage and voyage) which was used to form nouns or collective nouns in the sense of "action or state of being (a) X, result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X".  Although the historical suffix has had many applications (eg family relationships or locations), it’s now almost wholly restricted to the sense of "action of Xing", and many terms now have little to no connection with the most common uses something especially notable in forms descended from actual Latin words such as fromage and voyage.  Collage & Collagist are nouns, collaged & collaging are verbs (used with object); the noun plural is collages.

Of the accidental & intentional

It not certain exactly when collage was first used in the sense its modern meaning.  It's sometimes credited to English painter and critic, Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) who used the term in a 1919 publication but that’s contested given the word had appeared earlier though there’s some doubt whether that was in reference to the mechanical technique or the final product.  What became known as collage certainly long pre-dates 1919; papier collé was used by both Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963) early in the century and artists, authors & painters had for centuries been producing work from disparate components.  In the digital age, the somewhat misleadingly named software eCollage (and many others) allowed collages to be created on screen although, technically, these programs were as often used to render photomontage as collage.  The opportunistically named iCollage is an image-assembly app for iOS.

A montage of Che Guevara collages.  The difference between collage and montage is that while a collage weaves together things of difference to create a unified whole, a montage uses complete things of some similarity to create something visually coherent although, with some modern artists, coherence can prove elusive.

Colleges by Giuseppe Arcimboldi; Left to right: Four Seasons in One Head, oil on canvas, (circa 1590), Fire, oil on wood, (1566), Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor painted as Vertumnus, Roman god of the seasons, oil on canvas, (circa 1591), The Librarian, oil on canvas, (1566) & Summer, oil on canvas, (1563).

In Western portraiture, the collage is not a recent form.  Although also a conventional court painter of portraits and sacred art, Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldi (1527–1593) was noted for his portraits rendered as collages, the heads fashioned from objects such as vegetables, fruits, flowers & fish.  Very much the modern art of his day, his fanciful work seems to have been well received and critics have linked his work to the tradition of Mannerism.  Examples of collage have been found which pre-date Antiquity and the idea of assembling some representation of something from whatever items fall to hand is thought likely to have been one of the earliest forms of human artistic expression. 

Colleges by Jason Mecier; Left to right: Sigmund Freud, Frida Kahlo, Barack Obama, Lindsay Lohan & Donald Trump.

Los Angeles based pop artist Jason Mecier (b 1968) operates in a particular niche of the collage world, his mosaic portraits fabricated from unconventional materials, sometimes thematic (Sigmund Freud rendered in pills) and most famously, trash.  Perhaps surprisingly, Mr Mecier seems never to have fashioned a likeness of crooked Hillary Clinton; even when working with trash, presumably one has to draw the line somewhere.

Mosaic

Mosaic (pronounced moh-zey-ik)

(1) A picture or decoration made of small, usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass etc.

(2) The process of producing such a picture or decoration.

(3) Something resembling such a picture or decoration in composition, especially in being made up of diverse elements (in general use, often confused with a collage or montage).

(4) In surveying, a number of aerial photographs assembled as a continuous photographic representation of an area (commonly called a mosaic map, aerial mosaic or photo-mosaic).

(5) In architectural plans, a system of patterns for differentiating the areas of a building or the like, sometimes consisting of purely arbitrary patterns used to separate areas according to function but often consisting of plans of flooring, reflected ceiling plans, overhead views of furnishings and equipment, or other items really included in the building or building plan.

(6) In the plant pathology field in biology, any of several diseases of plants, characterized by mottled green or green and yellow areas on the leaves, caused by certain viruses (also called mosaic disease); an organism exhibiting mosaicism.

(7) In television production, a light-sensitive surface in a camera tube, consisting of an insulating medium (a thin mica sheet) coated on one side with a large number of granules of photo-emissive material (small globules of silver and cesium insulated from each other).  The image to be televised is focused on this surface and the resulting charges on the globules are scanned by an electron beam.

(8) Of, pertaining to, resembling, or used for making a mosaic or mosaic work.

(9) As a general descriptor, something (physical, abstract or conceptual) composed of a combination of diverse elements (in this sense mosaic, collage & montage are often applied in undifferentiated fashion).

(10) To make a mosaic; to decorate with mosaic.

(11) In theology, of or pertaining to Moses or the writings, laws, and principles attributed to him (always initial capital).

(12) In genetics an alternative name for chimera (an individual composed of two or more cell lines of different genetic or chromosomal constitution, but from the same zygote).

(13) In graphical production (or as a tool of censorship), a pixelization of all or part of an image.

(14) An early web browser developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the name an allusion to the integration of multiple components including HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and Gopher's search & communications protocols.  It was the first widely adopted browser which used an implementation of the user interface still in use today.

(15) In palaeontology, as Mosaic evolution (or modular evolution), a theory that evolutionary change can occur in some body parts or systems without simultaneous changes in other parts.

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French mosaicq (mosaic work), from the Middle French moysaique & mosaïque, from the Italian mosaico, from the fifth century Medieval Latin mōsaicus & musaicum, a re-formation of the Late Latin musīvum (opus), from the Latin musēum & musaeum (mosaic work) of unknown origin.  The variants are assumed by etymologists to be linked to the Late Greek Μουσεῖον (Mouseîon) (mosaic work; shrine of the Muses; museum) by analogy with archivum & archīum (archive) although the classical Greek is nowhere attested in the sense “mosaic”.  The Ancient Greek mouseios (of the Muses) was from Μοῦσα (Moûsa) (Muse).  Because of the influence of both Moses and the Muses, the history is tangled.  The word was formed in Medieval Latin as though from the Greek, but the Late Greek word meaning "mosaic work" was mouseion (and further to twist the tale etymologists note this sense in Greek was borrowed from Latin).  The meaning "a piece of mosaic work" dates from the 1690s while the figurative form (anything resembling a mosaic work in composition) had been in use since the 1640s.  The familiar adjectival use in English in the sense of "made of small pieces inlaid to form a pattern" dates from the 1580s.  The spellings mosaick & musaic are listed by dictionaries respectively as obsolete & archaic.  Mosaic is a noun, verb & adjective, mosaicked is a verb, mosaicing, mosaicism & mosaicist are nouns, mosaiced & mosaicking are adjectives and mosaically is an adverb; the noun plural is mosaics.  All forms use an initial capital if used in association with Mosaic law.

Mosaic of Bruce McLaren (1937–1970) by Nikki Douthwaite (1973-2022); car is a 1968 Mclaren M7A, still fitted with the adjustable spoilers which (of course) the FIA banned.  The late Ms Douthwaite used a technique called pointillist hole punch art, the mosaics crafted by individually placing (using tweezers) colored paper dots which are the waste material from office hole punches.  Her mosaics, containing sometimes hundreds of thousands of dots, were constructed over weeks and finished with a preservative varnish.

Although the specific technical meanings are respected in science, in art & design, the terms mosaic, collage and montage are often used interchangeably and that’s sometimes understandable because the three can be visually similar and close examination can be required to determine the correct form.  In the visual arts, a mosaic is created by locating & fixing small (classically square tiles), usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass etc to create a pattern.  A collage is a picture created by using items of different shape, composition etc to create a (hopefully) thematically integrated result.  A montage is a work created by in some way assembling a number of separate components which are conceptually or thematically similar (even to the point of being identical.

Portrait by Lindsay Lohan by Jason Mecier (b 1968).  His work is crafted using discarded items and he attempts where possible to use objects in some way associated with his subjects.  Although described by some as mosaics, his technique belongs to the tradition of college.

The use in theology dates from 1655–1665, from the New Latin Mosaicus, the construct being the Late Latin Mōs(ēs) (Moses) + (the text-string) -aicus, on the model of Hebraicus (Hebraic).  In writing relating to Mosaic law or ethics, the adjectival forms Mosaical (which pre-dated Mosaic) and post-Mosaic are common.  The Ebionites were a Jewish Christian sect during the first two centuries after the crucifixion of Christ.  Ebonite was from the Latin ebonita, from the Greek Ἐβιωναῖοι (Ebionaioi), from the Hebrew אביונים‎ (ebyon; ebyonim; ebionim) (the poor, the poor ones) and the sect’s name was chosen to reflect their belief that poverty was a blessing and plenty a curse.  Their Christology was adoptionist, maintaining Jesus of Nazareth was mere human flesh & blood and therefore Christians continued bound by the Mosaic Law, the adherence to which was why God choose Jesus to be a messianic prophet in the vein of Moses himself.  While within the sect there were theological differences but the central tenet was that the essential Christian orthodoxy of the divinity of Jesus was a heresy and that he was the natural born son of Joseph and Mary.

Montage created with fragments from Lindsay Lohan's Playboy Magazine photoshoot, 2011.

The Ebionite world-view obviously shares much with Judaism but to mainstream (indeed almost all) thought within Christianity they are wholly heretical, the rejection of Christ’s divinity the objection rather than and technical points of difference with the Mosaic code of law.  Islam of course objected to Christian theology because it distorted the purity of monotheism, the doctrine of the Trinity a dilution of the Abrahamic God and really a type of iconography.  However, the Ebionites were faithful to the original teachings of the historical Jesus and thus shared Islamic views about Jesus as a prophet yet still mere human flesh and blood, leading to the intriguing situation of the Jewish Christianity which vanished from the early Christian church being preserved in Islam.  The particular Ebionite teaching of Jesus as a follower of Mosaic law was later reflected in the Koran which were the words of the prophet Muhammad.

Detail of the pointillist hole punch technique.  There are a number of pointillist methods using devices as varied as lasers and Sharpie brand pens.

Montage

Montage (pronounced mon-tahzh (mawn-tazh in French))

(1) The technique of combining in a single composition, pictorial elements from various sources, as parts of different photographs or fragments of printing, either to give the illusion that the elements belonged together originally or to allow each element to retain its separate identity as a means of adding interest or meaning to the composition; the composition itself.

(2) By analogy, the creation of a thing or concept by combining a number of related elements; any combination of disparate elements that forms or is felt to form a unified whole.

(3) In photography, as photomontage, a juxtaposition or partial superimposition of several shots to form a single image.

(4) In film & television etc, a technique of editing used to present an idea or set of interconnected ideas.

1929: A borrowing from the French montage (assembly, set-up), the construct being mont(er) (to mount; to put up) + -age.  Monter was from the Vulgar Latin montāre, the present active infinitive of monto (to climb, mount, go up), from mōns & montem (mountain), from the primitive Indo-European men- (mountain).  The suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.  The French suffix -age was from the Middle & Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum, (greatly) extended from words like rivage and voyage.  It was used usually to form nouns with the sense of (1) "action or result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X" or (2) "state of being (a or an) X".  A less common use was the formation of collective nouns.  Historically, there were many applications (family relationships, locations et al) but use has long tended to be restricted to the sense of "action of Xing".  Many older terms now have little to no connection with their most common modern uses, something particularly notable of those descended from actual Latin words (fromage, voyage et al).

A montage of Lindsay Lohan as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) might have rendered.

Montage, although now most associated with photography, painting and other static installations, was originally a term in cinematography, first attested in 1929.  The use was extended in 1931 (as photomontage) to the use of photographs or photographic negatives to make art or illustrations.  The technique can, in many fields, be used to add a veneer of intellectual gloss to what is really an elaborated form of plagiarism.  More helpfully, photomontages have been a vital aspect of the techniques of producing large scale imagery and the first were literally assembled on large tables by technicians armed with scissors, magnifying glasses and adhesive tape, the most prolific of the early adopters being the military who used the small images taken during photo-reconnaissance (PR) missions.  As camera technology improved, definition increased and more detail was captured but this was counted somewhat by increased anti-surveillance measures which forced the PR missions to operate at higher altitude.  Interestingly, the Allied military in World War II (1939-1945) found women much more efficient in both analysing PR and assembling montages.

A montage of Lindsay Lohan as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) might have rendered.

The techniques honed in wartime proved valuable in peacetime for creating large-scale maps and renderings from sometimes even thousands of small fragments.  This was the way big areas on the surface of the earth were able to be visualized as if a single photograph and in the 1950s work began on the task of mapping the ocean floor, something of interest not only oceanographers & nautical geographers but also to navies, commercial shipping companies and miners, the oil & gas industry long aware that vast untapped resources lay under the waves.  The concept of mapping the seabed is simple in that all that is required is to have the images in the form of a grid which could then be assembled in a single montage (the world’s biggest).  However, while the scale in terms of the surface area proved manageable, obtaining the data at depths in which pressures are immense and darkness total proved as challenging as predicted and although the maps are in a sense complete, the deepest parts of the oceans remain to some extent mysterious.  The available montages (which scientists call bathymetric data sets) include the GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans which is an international project), Seabed 2030 (a collaborative project between GEBCO and the Japanese Nippon Foundation which plans to have a comprehensive map of the entire ocean floor by 2030), the EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network which publishes highly detailed bathymetric maps for European waters) and the US NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which offers maps of US waters and contributes to global programmes, their material available through the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

A montage of Lindsay Lohan as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) might have rendered.

The difference between collage and montage is that while a collage weaves together things of difference to create a unified whole, a montage uses complete things of some similarity to create something visually coherent although, with some modern artists, coherence can prove elusive, however cohesive a whole the glue might produce.  At the definitional margins however, the distinctions can be significant in the production but be undetectable in the result.  To create what appeared to be the montage of the seabed, what was done was technically a collage, the assembled components including photographs, renderings from ship-based sonar measurements and satellite altimetry as well as some enhancement in software.  However big might have been the ambition to create a unified montage of the ocean floor, cosmologists & astronomers thought bigger still and as space-based cameras and wandering craft became available, montages were assemble of objects such as the moon and the lovely rings of Saturn.  Aiming to produce the grandest montage of all is the European Space Agency which (ESA), using observations from their Euclid space mission (launched in July 2023) will explore dark matter and dark energy; over time billions of galaxies will be viewed.  What makes Euclid different from the Hubble Telescope and JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is it can survey large parts of the sky at once, the agency describing the difference as between looking through a window compared with a keyhole.  In time, all the known objects in the universe might be photographed which will permit quite a montage but what really interests the cosmologists is the dark matter (which may actually be dark energy or a combination of the two) so it’s a quest for the known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

Réclame

Réclame (pronounced rey-klahm)

(1) In historic French use, publicity; self-advertisement; notoriety (in a positive sense).

(2) In historic French use, a talent for generating interest & getting attention; a gift for dramatization; a hunger for publicity.

(3) In modern English use (as a critique of social media content, celebrity culture etc), of public attention or acclaim achieved to an extent disproportionate to value or achievement.

1865–1870: From the French réclame, from the early fourteenth century reclaimen (call back a hawk to the glove) from the Old French reclamer (to call upon, invoke; claim; seduce; to call back a hawk) (which in the twelfth century entered Modern French as “réclamer”) and directly from the Latin reclāmāre.  Because the hawks used in falconry were, by definition, tame, “reclaim” by the mid fifteenth century was used to mean “make tame” (ie “reclaimed from the wild state of nature”), the use taken from the late fourteenth century sense of “subdue, reduce to obedience, make amenable to control”.  In Middle English, many “re-” words had conveyed no sense of “return or reciprocation”, the meaning “revoke” (an award, grant, gift etc) dating from the late fifteenth century while the sense of “recall (someone) from an erring course and direct them to a proper state” had emerged decades earlier.  The sense of “get back by effort” is thought by etymologists to have evolved under the influence of claim and the specific meaning “bring waste land into useful condition fit for cultivation” seems first to have been used in the context of agriculture in 1764, the idea again being again on the probably on notion of “reclaimed from the wild state of nature” rather than a suggestion of a return to a previous state of cultivation (although there were instances of both).  Land reclamation (the extending of the area available for urban settlement has been practiced for thousands of years but it has been practiced at scale only since the mid-nineteenth century when large-capacity mechanical devices became available.  Réclame is a noun; the noun plural is réclames.

In French, réclame was a noun & verb and by the mid nineteenth century it was used usually to mean “a small advertisement” of the type which typically appeared in newspapers or other publications (as opposed to billboards or banners or buildings).  Depending in context, the forms avertissement & publicité (often clipped to pub) could be used as synonyms.  The word spread in Europe and other colonial empires including the Mauritian Creole reklam, the Danish reklame, the Dutch reclame, the Indonesian reklame, the German Reklame, the Hungarian reklám, the Polish reklama, the Romanian reclamă, the Italian reclame, the Norwegian Bokmål reklame, the Norwegian Nynorsk reklame, the Spanish reclame, the Swedish reklam, the Finnish reklaami, the Turkish reklam, the Estonian reklaam and the Russian рекла́ма rekláma.  The noun in French has a special use in the sport of falconry (in the sense of “reclaim”) where it was a call and sign for the bird of prey to return to the gauntlet of the falconer.  The use in falconry was inherited from the Old French verb reclamer (to implore; to shout to), from the Latin reclāmāre, from reclāmō, the construct being re- (used as an intensifier in the sense of “opposite, against” + clāmō (cry out, shout), from the primitive Indo-European root kele (to shout).  In the Old French, as a transitive verb, reclamer could mean (1) to protest, (2) to object or (3) to claim, reclaim.

In English, for centuries, words have come and gone, some going extinct and some later revived, sometimes enduringly.  The twenty-first century rediscovery of réclame though is unusual in that when reclame previously was used in English it was as an alternation spelling or reclaim whereas the newly re-purposed réclaim is a borrowing from late nineteenth century Modern French.  That which is embarked upon in the quest for fame or notoriety can be described neutrally (commercial, promotion, advertizing, content provision etc) or negatively (hoopla, hype, noise, propaganda etc) and réclame recently was added the latter class.  It is used to describe those who by virtue of their activities on social media, in “reality” content generally or as part of celebrity culture have achieved a level of acclaim or public attention wildly disproportionate to any substantive achievement or contribution.

L'Homme réclame (Publicity man, 1926), collage on cardboard by Aleksandra Ekster (1882-1949), collection of the National Gallery of Australia (Accession Number: 77.11.1 (1977)).

Aleksandra Ekster (who in the West is often exhibited as Alexandra Exter)) was a Russian artist whose work covered a remarkable range of twentieth century movements.  Beginning as a noted figure in the pre-revolutionary Russian avant-garde before moving to the West, her output included Cubism, Futurism and even some in the vein of Vorticism although it was Art Deco which owes her the greatest debt and her influence there was neglected by historians until recently.  Had she been a man, she might earlier have been better appreciated.

Réclame as now used is thus a word of cultural snobbery and one which encapsulates a certain hierarchical model of what’s a respectable profile and what’s not: being “Instagram famous” definitely is not.  Curiously, it seems the word is deployed as a weapon by those with definite opinions on the difference between “high quality” pop culture and that in the field less deserving rather than by those of the type who distinguish only between the “high or experimental” and “everything else”.  As a critique, réclame is a new way of describing those “famous for being famous”, a characteristic identifiable in the West for well over a century but now a genuine mass-phenomenon because the distribution channels have become so extensive and wide.  What is derided as the community of réclame is just a business model in action, content providers providing supply to fulfill demand.  Of course, the model has operated to increase both the audience and the volume of aggregate demand, something which seems further to depress the critics but culturally, probably little has changed in the internet age; it’s just that things are on a bigger scale and more obvious.

Paris Hilton (b 1981, left) & Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right), Los Angeles, 2003.

Also helpful in many ways is Ms Hilton’s recently published book Paris: The Memoir (Harper Collins London, (2023), pp 336, ISBN 0-0632-2462-3) which, while genuinely a memoir is interesting too for the deconstruction of the subject the author provided in a number of promotional interviews.  There have over the years been many humorless critics who have derided Ms Hilton for being “famous for being famous” but the book makes clear being the construct that is Paris Hilton is a full-time job, one which demands study and an understanding of the supply & demand curves of shifting markets; a personality cult needs to be managed.  She displays also a sophisticated understanding of the point made by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who once explained the abstraction of a personality cult by pointing to his huge portrait and saying “…you see, even I am not Stalin, THAT is Stalin!”  Ms Hilton may never have done anything as useful as find a cure for cancer or invent a new nuclear weapon but she’s a cog in the machine which keeps the economy ticking over and collectively, the activities of the réclame set continue to generate a not insignificant chunk of the revenue which funds some of the advances in technology which have been so transformative.  Their contribution need not be seen as culturally inferior to that of the literary festival circuit, it's just different.

Section

Section (pronounced sek-shuhn)

(1) A part cut off or separated.

(2) A distinct part or subdivision of anything (object, data set, country, social class, military establishment et al).

(3) In text, a distinct part or subdivision within a document or set of documents (periodicals, newspapers, legal codes et al), the idea emulated in many forms of broadcasting.

(4) One of a number of parts that can be fitted together to make a whole or a larger component.

(5) An act or instance of cutting; separation by cutting.

(6) In surgery, the making of an incision or the physical incision (in medical slang, “section” & “Caesar” contest the right to be the colloquial short form for “Caesarean section” with the latter apparently the winner.

(7) In pathology, a thin slice of a tissue taken for microscopic examination (sometimes called a specimen although section has a specific technical meaning related to its suitability for use in microscopy.

(8) In all physical sciences, a slice or part (of a mineral, metal, plant etc) removed for examination or other purposes.

(9) A graphical or mathematical representation of an object as it would appear if cut by a plane, showing its internal structure (in architecture, engineering etc).

(10) In geometry, a plane surface formed by cutting through a solid; the shape or area of such a plane surface.

(11) In geology, a sequence of rock layers.

(12) In North American land law (some jurisdictions in US & Canada), an area one mile square (640 acres; 2.6 km²; 259 hectares).

(13) In New Zealand land law a plot of land (of varying size) for building on, especially in a suburban area

(14) In military establishments, classically a small unit (as few as 6-8) consisting of two or more squads (as few as 2+3), several squads when assembled comprising a platoon (terminology and numbers vary greatly between militaries and branches within).

(15) In military terminology any small tactical grouping, either standing or created ad-hoc for specific missions; as “staff section”, the administrative and organizational apparatus attached to an operational unit or units.

(16) In the design of carriages for railroads, a division of a sleeping car containing both an upper and a lower berth.

(17) In railroad administration, a length of track, roadbed, signal equipment etc, maintained by one crew.

(18) In mass-transit, any of two or more trains, buses, trams etc, running on the same route and schedule at the same time, one right behind the other, and considered as one unit, as when a second is necessary to accommodate more passengers than the first can carry.

(19) In mass transit (Australia & New Zealand), a fare stage on a bus, train or tram etc (similar to the sectors used by airlines).

(20) In botany, a segment of a naturally segmented fruit, as of an orange or grapefruit.

(21) In botany, a taxonomic rank below the genus (and subgenus if present), but above the species.

(22) In zoology, an informal taxonomic rank below the order ranks and above the family ranks.

(23) In art, as “sectional art”, a single work designed to be displayed as separate pieces (as opposed to the single piece collage or montage (made from many components) or the diptych, triptych, polyptych etc (where all the pieces are in some way attached to create a (usually) symmetrical whole.

(24) In music, a division based on the instruments used or their purpose (rhythm section; brass section; string section et al).

(25) In music, an extended division of a composition or movement that forms a coherent part of the structure.

(26) In publishing, as the section mark (sometimes called the signature), a mark used to indicate a subdivision of a book, chapter etc or as a mark of reference to a footnote (the symbol § denotes a section in a document)

(27) In bookbinding (sometimes called the signature, gathering, gather or quire) a folded printing sheet or sheets ready for gathering and binding.

(28) In live theatre, one of a series of circuits for controlling certain lights (footlight, down-lights et al).

(29) In category theory, a right inverse.

(30) In some jurisdictions, a mechanism by which a mentally disturbed person may be confined in an institution (under appropriate statute) for examination to determine whether a longer or permanent order of confinement is justified.

(31) In military slang (as “to section” or “section 8”), to dismiss an individual from the service on mental health grounds.

1550-1560: From the Middle English seccioun (in astronomy, “the intersection of two straight lines; a division of a scale”), from the Old French section, from the Latin sectionem (stem of sectiō) (a cutting; cutting off, excision, amputation of diseased parts of the body etc), from sectus, past participle of secāre (to cut), from the primitive Indo-European root sek (to cut).   The construct was sec(t) (āre) + -iōn.  The meaning “a part cut off or separated from the rest” dates from the early fifteenth century while that of a “drawing representing something as if cut through” was from the 1660s.  In English, from the 1550s, there was the sense of “an act of cutting or dividing”; that is now archaic or preserved only in some aspects of engineering and in medical phrases, most famously the Caesarian section.  The meaning “a subdivision of a written work, statute etc” was first noted in the 1570s when the structure in publishing was (more or less) standardized: books divided into chapters, chapters into sections and sections into paragraphs or breaks, a system still reflected by modern word-processing software.  Section can have defined meanings (such as in publishing or land law) but the in general use the synonyms include cut, division, snippet, part, segment, slice, piece & specimen.  Section is a noun & verb, sectionalism & sectionality are nouns, sectioning is a noun & verb, sectional & sectionary are nouns & adjectives, sectioned is a verb (and a non-standard adjective), sectionable is an adjective and sectionally is an adverb; the noun plural is sections.

Three-piece sectional art, distinguished a triptych in that the three sections are hung separately.  Some commercial galleries do describe such products as "triptychs" because the word has such an association with "high art". 

In music, although functionally the distinctions had long been understood, the idea of sections in a band or orchestra didn’t come into use until the 1880s (the sections either by type (strings) or function (rhythm).  The use of section to describe the one square mile (640 acres) blocks used for purposes of sub-dividing public lands dates from 1785.  The famous “section 8” began as World War II (1939-1945) US military slang referring to the passage in army regulations under which as soldier could be discharged from the service for reasons of mental illness (not necessarily defined as insanity).  The verb section came into use in publishing in the early nineteenth century in the sense of “divide a text into sections”, extended by the 1890s to “cut through so as to present a section”.  The adjective sectional in the sense of “pertaining to a division of a larger part” was first noted in 1806 but it is mere coincidence this was the year in which the thousand year old Holy Roman Empire was dissolved.  It originally did mean “of or pertaining to some particular section or region of a country as distinct from others”, something would soon often be heard in the US political vocabulary in the decades leading up to the Civil War (1861-1965).  The noun sectionalism emerged in parallel an originally meant “sectional prejudice or spirit; the clashing of sectional interests” but it soon added the sense “a confinement of interests to a local sphere”.  It was in use in US English by 1836 but, again under the influence of those forces which would lead to the Civil War, it was in frequent use by the mid-1850s.

The meaning “composed or made up of several independent sections that fit together” was in use in engineering and other mechanical fields by the mid-eighteenth century.  The specific noun meaning “piece of furniture composed of sections which can be used separately” appeared in the early 1960s (a clipping of sectional seat, sectional sofa etc in use since 1949) but the preferred modern descriptor is “modular”.  The noun cross-section (section of something made by a plane passing through it at a right angle to one of its axes) dates from 1748 and was first applied to the sketches and plans of engineers and architects.  In the early twentieth century, it picked up the figurative sense of “a representative sample”, emerging apparently in the social sciences before entering general use.  The noun subsection (also as sub-section) (part or division of a section) dates from the 1620s.  The noun midsection (also as mid-section) (middle of the human body, the midriff or belly) was coined in the 1930s for commercial purposes.  Other forms (quarter-section, half-section, multi-section, un-sectioned, bisection etc were coined as the need arose.

Lindsay Lohan in sections, hung above a "sectional sofa".  "Sectional furniture" was first advertised in the late 1940s and offered more flexibility in that the pieces could be assembled in a variety of configurations, better to suit the available space.  The modern trend is to describe such pieces as "modular furniture" but the art is still sectional; modular art is something different. 

The military slang (as “to section” or “section 8”) referred to World War II (1939-1945) US Army regulations (detailed in Section VIII) under which an individual could be dismissed from the service on mental health grounds.  These grounds provided for the discharge of men who were deemed mentally unfit for military service so didn’t exactly follow the conventions followed in civilian medicine; proven (or confessed) homosexuality could for example be the grounds for a Section VIII discharge.  The term entered popular culture in the post-war years when it was used in fictional depictions of military life, often as a humorous device following the attempts of soldiers to be “sectioned” as a way out of the military.  Most militaries have since adopted practices which align more closely with the mainstream handling of mental health conditions.

The Caesarian section (delivery of a baby by cutting through the abdomen of the mother) was apparently first described as “a section” in 1923 although “a Caesar” seems to be the preferred modern medical slang.  The operation had first been documented in the 1530s and the name was based on that supposedly being the method by which Julius Caesar (100-44 BC; Roman general and dictator of Rome 49-44 BC) was delivered.  Modern thought has rejected that notion and the legend thus also accounts for the historic tracing of his cognomen to the Latin caesus, past participle of caedere (to cut).  If there’s any basis to this, it may have been an ancestor who was so born because Caesar's mother lived to see his adulthood and there’s no record of any woman in antiquity surviving the procedure which was performed usually when the mother had already died.  Modern medical analysts concur with the improbability of the link and the first known attempt to on a live woman was in the early sixteenth century and as late as the 1800s, before antiseptics and blood transfusions were routinely available, there was a 50% mortality rate.

Architectonic

Architectonic (pronounced ahr-ki-tek-ton-ik)

(1) Of or pertaining to the principles of architecture, design and construction.

(2) In figurative use in the social sciences (especially political science and sociology), those things foundational or fundamental; supporting the structure of a morality, society, or culture.

(3) As a descriptor outside the field of architecture, denoting, relating to, or having architectural qualities, especially in its highly organized manner or technique of structure.

(4) In metaphysics, of or relating to the systematic classification of the totality of knowledge.

(5) In artistic composition, having a clearly defined structure, especially one artistically pleasing.

1635-1645 From the Latin architectonicus (of architecture), from the Ancient Greek ἀρχιτεκτονικός (arkhitektonikós) (pertaining to a master builder), from ἀρχιτέκτων (arkhitéktōn) (architect).  Interestingly, in surviving Greek texts, the most commonly-used forms appears to be arkhitekton (chief workman).  As technology improved it became possible to observe physical objects at smaller scales, even down to the sub-atomic level.  What was seen was of course inherently structural so architectonic was co-opted by many fields which created their own words including receptorarchitectonic (in anatomy & biology, relating to the architectonics of receptors, neuroarchitectonic (the architectonics of nerves and the nervous system) and nanoarchitectonic (the design of nanotechnology devices or the architectonic of nanoscale architecture) and politico-architectonic (in structuralism and urban planning, the analysis of purpose of individual elements).  The adjective architectonical dates from the 1590s.  Architectonic is a noun & adjective, architectonically is an adverb and architectonical is an adjective; the noun plural is architectonics.

In English, use in the metaphysical sense (pertaining to systematization of knowledge) dates only from 1801, the allusions to the origins in Antiquity something of a retrospective Enlightenment discovery.  The division of what in Antiquity tended to be called “the sciences” (ie about any field of knowledge to which any form of method could be applied) into ancillary and architectonic is often described as Aristotelian because it was in the surviving texts of Aristotle (384-322 BC) that the concept is both so prevalent and obvious but it was Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who, in Critique of Pure Reason (1781), provided framework in its modern understanding, architectonics being the study both of a system and the processes of its construction.  Kant’s contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), was a philosopher who contributed much to the understanding of the implications of the architectonic, perhaps because as well as his interest in metaphysics, he was a composer and something of a critic of architecture.

Six of the Painterly Architectonic set (1916-1918) in oil by Lyubov Popova (1889-1924).

Painterly Architectonic was a series of works by Russian & Soviet avant-garde artist Lyubov Popova.  Thematically, she explored the effects of color and shape on individual parts of a whole, overlaying the representations of the objects after the manner of collage.  The paintings distort space within the square and rectangular frames, right angles, vertical and horizontal lines almost all shunned in seas of slants and diagonals.  Travelling in Western Europe in the years before World War I (1914-1918), Popova was stunned by the Cubist and Futurist works she saw in France & Italy and these ideas she took back to Moscow, her focus on the interrelationships between individual parts.  In 1916 Popova declared herself a "Suprematist", a term coined a year earlier by Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) another member of the Russian avant-garde who explained it described an art which rejected painting’s historic devotion to representation, focusing instead on the supremacy of pure artistic feeling.  After the October Revolution in 1917, it became a movement, many artists believing a revolutionary society demanded a radically new artistic language. In that they were probably right but in comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) time, they would find the vocabulary was limited.