Epoch

Epoch (pronounced ep-uhk or ee-pok)

(1) A particular period of time marked by distinctive features, events etc.

(2) The beginning of a distinctive period in the history of anything.

(3) A point in time distinguished by a particular event or state of affairs; a memorable date.

(4) In geology, any of several divisions of a geologic period during which a geologic series is formed (much associated with rock formation).  An epoch (the shortest division of geologic time) is a sub-division of a period.  As a geochronologic unit, an epoch can range between hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

(5) In astronomy, an arbitrarily fixed instant of time or date, usually the beginning of a century or half century, used as a reference in giving the elements (such as coordinates of a planetary orbit) relating to a celestial body.

(6) In astronomy, the mean longitude of a planet as seen from the sun at such an instant or date.

(7) In chronology, astronomy & computing, a specific instant in time, chosen as the point of reference or zero value of a system that involves identifying instants of time.

(8) In physics, the displacement from zero at zero time of a body undergoing simple harmonic motion (the displacement of an oscillating or vibrating body at zero time).

(9) In AI (artificial intelligence), one complete presentation of the training data set to an iterative machine learning algorithm.

1605-1615: From the Medieval Latin epocha, from the Ancient Greek ἐποχή (epokhḗ) (epochē) (a check, cessation, stop, pause, fixed time, epoch of a star (ie the point at which it seems to halt after reaching the highest, and more generally the place of a star (thus the extension of use to “a historical epoch”))), from ἐπέχω (epékhō, (to hold in, check), the construct being ἐπι- (epi-) (upon) + ἔχω (ékhō) (to have, hold), from the primitive Indo-European root segh- (to hold).  The early seventeenth century adoption in English of epocha was in the sense of “point marking the start of a new period in time” and it was used by scholars and theologians of momentous events in history (the crucifixion of Christ; the Visigoths gathering at the gates of Rome etc).  Less than a decade after epocha had entered the language, the transferred meaning “a period of time” was in use and it entered the jargon of geology in 1802 although the technology then did not permit precise measurements and exploration was then embryonic (what are now understood as dinosaur fossils not so classified until 1824) so most of the early estimates of geological epochs were inaccurate.

Confusingly, “epoch” can be used either to refer to a distinct and defined historic period (ie with an agreed beginning & end) or the event associated with the beginning of that period.  The latter concept is best understood in the adjectival forms “epoch-making” and “epochful”.  Subepoch is a technical term from geology, used as a geochronologic unit comprising one or more ages, being a period of generally agreed significance within an epoch.  The companion superepoch (two or more sequential epochs references as one for illustrative or didactic purposes is non-standard.  In statistical analysis, sub_epoch, base-epoch, super_epoch & primary_epoch exist as commands in aspects of database handling and manipulation, the link being the use of “datum” as epoch’s coordinate term in cartography and engineering.  The alternative form epocha was in use between the seventeenth & nineteenth centuries.  Epoch is a noun & verb, epochful, epocjless & epochal are adjectives and epochally is an adverb; the noun plural is epochs.

Bal du moulin de la Galette (Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876), oil on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Belle Époque (appearing in texts often as La Belle Époque with capitalization not always used) was a period in European history characterized by peace, progress, cultural refinement and artistic innovation; the term was an adoption of the French La Belle Époque (literally “the beautiful era” and best understood as “the golden age”).  Historians date the start of the Belle Époque from the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1970-1871) although, “on the ground” it likely wasn’t so clear-cut because the impositions of war reparations made the first few post-war years “difficult” in France so “mid-1870s” may be a better point of origin.  The Belle Époque lasted until the blast of World War I (1914-1918) destroyed the continent’s sense of optimism and ended an era characterized by what might now be call an “end of history” feeling that held things like wars, famines and plagues were in the past and the future would be one of progress and improvement.

Art Nouveau.

An advertisement (1899) for Moët & Chandon's champagnes, designed by Czech painter & graphic artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939):  “White Star” champagne (left) & “Grand Crémant Imperial” (right).  The product is very much a period piece, Art Nouveau characterized by swirling shapes, stylized representations of women and intricate floral motifs.  For those with enough disposable income, La Belle Époque must have been an amusing time to live.  The “modern industrial” sense later summoned by the straight, sharp and geometric lines of Art Deco was a deliberate rejection of Art Nouveau's intricate, hand-crafted aesthetic yet in Art Deco the influence of the earlier style often is apparent.  Although by the 1920s unfashionable and in the inter-war years casually dismissed by many critics and historians, Art Nouveau's popular appeal never went away.  While there was never really a “revival”, the style's motifs remained a staple of commercial graphic art and the various “nostalgia movements” before being “cherry picked” by pop art, psychedelia and postmodernists.   

Those 40-odd years of what came to be called La Belle Époque were not without conflict or economic disruptions and it must be remembered Europe’s “golden age” was one of untroubled pleasure only for a select few, most of the population living lives of hard labor and drudgery, many on a variation of the Hobbesian (the very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)) path: “nasty, crowded, brutish and short”.  La Belle Époque is a selective construct of the era’s intellectual and aesthetic landmarks in art, literature and architecture, characterized by opulence, eclecticism and an undeniable dynamism from which emerged movements such as Futurism, Cubism and Art Nouveau.  Viewed from our troubled times, the Belle Époque exists in a warm nostalgic glow and it’s telling the term first gained popularity in France during the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression.  Even then, La Belle Époque was still in living memory but because it became mythologised as a “golden age”, it was as myth it passed into history.

Lindsay Lohan entering her fifth decade.  Her five eras thus far may loosely be labelled: (1) child star, (2) troubled Hollywood starlet, (3) nemesis, (4) reinvention and (5) redemption.

Signed to the Ford agency, Lindsay Lohan secured her first modelling gig aged three but what’s understood as the “Lindsay Lohan era” ran for the decade after the release of Mean Girls (2004).  It was characterized by her low-speed car crashes, court appearances and becoming a staple of the tabloid press and lower reaches of the glossy magazine industry, a reasonable contribution to GDP (gross domestic product), providing predictable cash flow for paparazzi on both sides of the Atlantic.  Improbable as it once seemed, she proved a survivor in the churn of the industry's destructive “child star” machine and on 2 July, 2026 celebrated her 40^th birthday.  That happened during the 23^rd FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football which, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN (United Nations)) World Cup and, on the day, playing at the Bay Area Stadium in Santa Clara, San Francisco, USA beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 so that was a good birthday present.  

Geologyin's illustration of the concept of geological epochs.

In scientific usage there is precision, the ICS (International Commission on Stratigraphy) codifying a strict hierarchy on the discipline of geology, the structure being Eon → Era → Period → Epoch → Age.  However, in ordinary English discourse (and even in the work of professional scholars and historians) there is no fixed hierarchy in that an age may be longer than an era and an era may be longer than an epoch; unless following established conventions, writers can opt for whichever word best conveys the intended nuance, a choice that can be influenced by the search for rhetorical effect or the rhythm of the narrative.  So, in the way of English, there are no “rules” but, as a general principle, (1) Age = “known for...”, (2) Era = “lasting period of...” and (3) Epoch = “a period with a turning point that defined its nature.”  The overlaps in use don’t usually cause confusion but among the fastidious there are acknowledged nuances and accepted conventions of use:

(1) An epoch is a distinct period marked by particular characteristics or events, thus the use in geology where defining changes or sets of conditions can be established by scientific techniques such as chemical analysis or radiocarbon dating.  In non-scientific use, because of the etymological lineage, an epoch typically begins with some sort of event thought a turning point or watershed and this can be an organic development with no exact fixed date (the Industrial Revolution) or something decidedly exact (the epoch of the computer operating system Unix is defined as 00:00:00 UTC, 1 January 1970 although this was not first set precisely then).

(2) An age is a period with a specific, dominant association.  That might be a technology (bronze age; oil age; jet age etc), a characteristic (age of empires; age of European colonialism etc) or an individual (Napoleonic age; Elizabethan Age etc).  Unlike the epochs of geologists and astronomers, “ages” can run in parallel or overlap.  While some are sequential such as the “Three Age System” (Stone Age; Bronze Age; Iron Age) tracking the evolution of humanity's tools and metalworking capabilities between prehistory and Antiquity, others can co-exist such as the Age of Sail & Age of Enlightenment.  Because of the nature of the word and historic pattern of use, of the three, “age” is the most flexible and adaptable because it’s merely associative, not exclusive and often with no precise chronology.

(3) An era is a period (by human standards usually but not necessarily long) with origins at a certain point (usually an event) and characterized by an enduring pattern; eras tend to be major historical phases or systems (the Nazi era; the analogue era etc).  Generally “era” is used to denote something coherent (though it need not be long); a stretch of history with a recognizable character, a beginning and an end.  That can reference the life of an individual (Queen Victoria lent her name to the “Victorian era” 1837-1901), several individuals (there were four Kings of England named George whose collective reign defined the “Georgian era” 1714-1830) or a specific closed-time set (the “inter war era”: 1918-1939).

Eras tour merchandise.  Canvas tapestry featuring photographs from Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, cotton canvas, 800 mm (31½ inches) x 1220 mm (48 inches).

Taylor Swift’s “Eras” project tends to be thought of as a concert tour but it’s better imagined as pop culture’s greatest ever exercise in vertical integration, a merging of music (audio streaming, packaged (in multiples in the case of the vinyl releases) & live performance), video content, merchandise ranging from framed posters, a “limited edition” book, a film with concert footage, outfits emulating those worn on stage, jewellery, hoodies, pillows, stainless steel tumblers and more.  Although there has in recent years been a bit of mission creep, the idea of a canvas tapestry as a piece of tour merchandise in the pop music business would, until recently, likely have occurred to few.  Commerce has moved on from a half-century earlier when, at a Led Zeppelin concert, one might be able to buy a Tee-shirt (in S, M, L & XL), maybe with a choice of black or white (black quickly selling out).

Ms Swift is good with words and for the “Eras” project may have pondered using “Ages” or “Epochs”.  Given the accepted conventions (Age = “known for...”, Era = “lasting period of...” and Epoch = “a period with a turning point that defined its nature.”) and the concept of the “Eras” project, a convincing case could have been made for “Ages” because each subset was thematically distinct while the use of “Epochs” would have worked because the word is understood as a “period of time with a beginning and end” but linking each with a single “triggering event” might have descended to abstractions so “Eras” seems the best choice.  Certainly it’s unlikely she long considered using “Periods”; although etymologically defensible, it would have been decarded on much the same basis as that of the publishers of the magazine Australian Women’s Weekly who, upon in 1983 switching to issuing monthly editions, opted not to change the title to “Women’s Monthly”.

There is of course a vagueness associated with the definitions because not all “eras” and “ages” have as convenient bookends the end of one war and the start of another; that’s why context can matter.  In speaking of the time after World War II (1939-1945), “post-war era” is a common term but the meaning can vary depending on what’s being discussed.  It’d be absurd to speak of 2026 as being in the “post-war” era (although in a sense that’s true) so meaning must be gleaned from context.  The two decade period 1918-1939 came to be called both the “inter-war” and “pre-war” era (although many tend to restrict the latter to a start-point in the mid-1930s) and in much historiography there's sometimes the suggestion the “post-war” era can usefully be said to have ended some 20 years hence; that’s about 1965 so conveniently (1) in the new era of the High Cold War, (2) about the length of a then typical “generation” and (3) in the 1960s, a very different era.  So it can be inexact and some with a focus on political economy fix the end date on exactly 17 October 1973, the day OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) proclaimed an oil embargo targeting the US and other states providing military aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  At that point, the West’s long post-war boom, although already stuttering, ended.  In a similar vein, although also very much a Western-centric view, some historians have argued the nineteenth century is best imagined as a construct running from the close of the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) to the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918).  There’s much support for that although there are different views about the conceptual view of the twentieth century. While 1914 seems a logical starting-point, candidates for the end date include 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989)), 1991 (dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1911)) and the 9/11 terrorist strikes in 2001.

Taylor Swift Style: Fashion through the eras.

Between March 2023 and December 2024, Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour took in 149 shows in 51 cities over five continents; each performance ran for a remarkable 3½ hours and there was a mid-tour revision of the song set to interpolate material The Tortured Poets Department (2024), her eleventh studio album.  The “Eras” title was an allusion to the show’s format, a retrospective in which each of her albums was designated as a “musical era”, the many outfits worn tied to those themes and just as each song and each performance was a product, so could be each outfit, some available on-line for purchase by devoted Swifties.  So, as set piece events go, Ms Swift set a high bar and, on revenues in excess of US$2 billion, profits were high and continue to grow.

Even when there are precise start and end dates, things can at the margin become blurred.  Pedants enjoy pointing out the 1960s began on 1 January 1961 so an expression like “the 1960s” ends on 31 December 1969 but the decade in which most of those years existed actually includes 1970, a quirk which extends also to centuries and millennia, something ultimately a product of there being no year zero in the calendar now defining BCE (before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) (the pair the secular version of BC (Before Christ) and AD (from the Latin Anno Domini (in the year of the Lord)), all based on the (nominal) birth date of Jesus Christ.  “Ages” and “eras” can at once be “exact” and “indicative”.  Many of the civilizations of antiquity all had their so-called “golden ages” and these tended to be associated with particular dynasties or reigns.  The examples are many and are cross-cultural, including the Gupta Empire in India (mid-third to mid-sixth century AD) founded by Mahārāja Śrī-Gupta, the Tang dynasty (626-684) & the reign of Tae-tsong (618-626) in China and, in Egypt, the reigns of Sethos I and Ram'eses II (1336-1224 BC).  In the West, the use of “golden ages” is legion including in Russia during the rule of Czar Peter the Great (1672-1725) (memorable because the Russian people have not enjoyed many “golden ages”) and, of course, in England, the “Elizabethan age”, referencing the reign of Elizabeth I (1533–1603; Queen of England & Ireland 1558-1603).  However, at the granular level, the idea of the term “Elizabethan age” denoting a “golden age” in literature was contested by the English writer, literary scholar and Anglican lay theologian C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) who, in his Introduction to English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1654), distinguished the “estimable” literature of the later Elizabethan period from what he called that of the earlier “drab age”.  Lewis found drabness in the poetry and prose of the later medieval period up to the early Renaissance, distinguishing it from the “golden era style” between circa 1580-1603.  Lewis was an uncompromising critic but while most in the profession may well agree much that was written in the fifteenth century and early Tudor period was “drab”, among those published in the period were Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and John Skelton (circa 1460-1529); their writing was not beyond criticism but the works were hardly drab.

Sarah Chapelle's (b 1992) Swiftie site documenting looks from The Eras tour: Fearless v6 (worn 18 October, 2024, far left), Midnights v5 (worn 16 August, 2024, centre left), 1989 v2 (worn 19 March, 2023, centre right) and Reputation v1 (worn 18 March, 2023, far right).  Some outfits can be purchased on-line but buyers should note they should not expect their appearance exactly to emulate what's “on the tin”.  

Simulacrum describes an image that while not purely realistic, maintains enough of a likeness for the subject to be recognizable.  In some jurisdictions it can be deemed “deceptive and misleading” if a product is represented in manner judged to be a “deliberate misrepresentation” intended to induce a purchase.  Legal recourse is available but is practical only if enough money is involved (such as real estate); although in theory someone purchasing a McDonalds Big Mac after being tempted by the image in the advertising might have grounds for an action, a claim of under $US10 would not impress a judge and even a class action would, on several grounds, be thrown out.  Presumably a disgruntled consumer could lodge a claim for the “pain & suffering” caused by one's Big Mac not looking as attractive as the one in the advertising but that'd likely anger the judge still more.  The classic simulacrums were the stylish images rendered in the 1960s by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) for GM’s (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor Division) and those of Ms Swift in the Eras Tour outfits are in the same “mannerist but not quite surrealist” tradition.  Although obviously “unrealistic”, these depictions are not “deceptive and misleading” because they’re so obviously simulacral and exist only as devices, the extent of the licence taken illustrated by them appearing next to a flesh & blood Ms Swift in the same outfit.  They are “impossible” rather than “idealized”.

Super simulacrum: The Colossus of Rhodes (circa 1560), hand-colored by Dutch portrait and religious painter Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) on an engraving by Dutch publisher & designer Philip Galle (1537–1612).

The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and although it stood for barely half a century before being felled by an earthquake, it's ruins lying for almost a millennium as a kind of tourist attraction before the metal was carted of as scrap to be melted-down an re-cycled.  The notion the statue's legs straddled the entrance to Rhodes Harbor with tall-masted ships passing between them was wholly fanciful; even with modern materials and techniques, such a construction would be impossible.  The engineers and architects of the sixteenth century would of course have known it couldn't be done but such was the allure of the era of Classical Antiquity that brilliant myths seduced the public imagination better than tiresome facts.

Other “era-related” terminology also often used interchangeably relates to that long span of history between the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD) and the dawn of the Renaissance in the late fourteenth century: (1) Middle Ages, (2) Dark Ages and (3) Medieval.  “Middle Ages” is the most obviously descriptive because it refers to the period between the dying gasps of Classical Antiquity and the cultural & artistic revival of the Renaissance while Medieval simply means “relating to the Middle Ages” (although by virtue of association and use, it came to be used also as a slur).  As general principle, historians tend to divide the Middle Ages into (1) Early (476-circa 1000), (2) High (circa 1000-circa 1300) and (3) Late (circa 1300-circa 1500).  “Dark Ages” reflected the prejudices of fifteenth century writers who regarded the earlier Middle Ages (476-circa 1000) as a period of stagnation, lack of progress and “intellectual darkness”, a stark contrast to the idealized vision of Classical Antiquity they constructed from what evidence there was, “filling in the gaps” with imaginations as famously vivid as any of the Medieval scribes and artists responsible for some fabulous beasts.  The Seven Wonders of of the Ancient World” they found especially compelling, some of their speculative depictions of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon such examples of architectural gigantism even Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) might have been embarrassed.  Maybe they looked in awe at the scale of Great Pyramid of Giza and assumed all the ancients operated in “think big” mode.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime Minister of Australia 2013-2015) agitprop.

Mr Abbott's combination of relentless negativity and repetition of 3WSs (three word slogans) contributed to his resounding victory in the 2013 general election although, in office, the results were mixed and it ended badly.  Recently revived as the Liberal Party's federal president (the institution's third “Lazerus with a triple bypass” after Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; Prime Minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) and John Howard (b 1939; Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007)), Mr Abbott unquestionably was one of history's most effective leaders of the opposition but as Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) remarked of Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895):  “He was essentially a opposition politician and behaved as such even when in government”.  Of such matters, Jenkins was a fair judge.  Although medieval may literally mean “relating to the Middle Ages” and can be used as a neutral adjective (medieval architecture, medieval manuscripts etc), it is also used as a term of derision: “Mr Abbott’s views on certain topics seem distinctly medieval although, to be fair, the thirteenth century probably never produced a finer mind”.  Used in that way, it implies “outdated, harsh or unenlightened”, a throwback to the stereotypes of the Dark Ages but more recent scholarship has cast doubt on whether the “Dark Ages” was a time as culturally sterile and technologically stagnant and was for centuries an orthodoxy among historians.  A view now more popular is the earlier conceptions of the period were formed because of the relative scarcity of written records and although it’s now clear there was progress in agriculture, law, architecture, theology, literature, engineering and state formation, it is true that compared with what came before and what followed, progress often was fitful.  Of note also is there were in the Renaissance and beyond not a few who didn’t count “advances in theology” as progress worth mentioning.

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist (pronounced tsahyt-gahyst)

A German noun, the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time, historically especially as reflected in literature and philosophy although now also used to reference popular culture.

1835: From the German, Zeit + Geist, literally "time spirit (or ghost)", a calque of Latin genius sēculī, and best translated as “spirit of the age”.  It’s not commonly pluralized but the plural of Geist (ghost; spirit) is Geister, thus in English the irregular noun zeitgeister (also often in the plural), sometimes used of those who write of the fads in contemporary culture. Zeitgeist is a noun and zeitgeisty, zeitgeistier & zeitgeistiest are adjectives; the (rare) plural is zeitgeists.  Hopefully, zeitgeistesque never becomes a thing.  

Spirit of the age

A concept from eighteenth & nineteenth century German philosophy, best translated as "spirit of the age", it refers to the invisible forces dominating or defining the characteristics of a given epoch in history.  Although now most associated with German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), especially in contrast with the Hegelian concepts of volksgeist (national spirit) and weltgeist (world-spirit), the coinage predates Hegel and appears in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ("Goethe"; 1749–1832), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet; 1694–1778).  Hegel, in Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), did write of the idea but preferred the phrase Geist der Zeiten (spirit of the times) over the compound Zeitgeist.  Most sources acknowledge the first documented use being in the writings of Herder.

Portrait of GWF Hegel (circa 1839), steel engraving by Lazarus Gottlieb Sichling (1812–1863) after an aquarel (watercolor) lithograph (1828) by Julius Ludwig Sebbers (circa 1785-1893).

Until recently, zeitgeist tended to be used retrospectively, in the manner of geochronology where an epoch has a known end date before labels are applied.  Of late, with its (perhaps over-enthusiastic) adoption by those who write of pop-culture, it’s come to be attached to just about anything, however fleeting.  Some criticize this but that's probably intellectual snobbery; in a sense Hegel et al were also writing of a type of popular culture.  Appropriately then, zeitgeist should now be considered and English word, having been thoroughly assimilated and not capitalized unless used in a way which references its continental origins (of Hegel, Voltaire etc) in which case it remains German and as a noun picks up an initial capital.  Because it remains both a German and English word, it can be spoken as written or translated, depending on the effect desired and in this it's a variant of the conventions which guide the way written text is handled in oral speech.  Where a word or phrase, however familiar in English, remains foreign it should when spoken, be rendered in translation: the written text “Hillary Clinton is, inter alia, crooked”, is spoken as “Hillary Clinton is, among other things, crooked”.  Where a foreign word or phrase has been assimilated into English it is treated as native so the written text “Hillary Clinton’s statement was the usual mix of lies, half-truths, evasions etc” is spoken as “Hillary Clinton’s statement was the usual mix of lies, half-truths, evasions etcetera.”  Note the usual shortened form (etc) has traditionally always been followed by a full-stop but there is a welcome revisionist movement which argues it too has become an English word (as etcetera is an anglicized form of the Latin et cetera) and thus needs no longer to be treated as a truncation.

Of the zeitgeist, early in the third millennium: Paramount Pictures promotional poster for Mean Girls (2004).

Where a foreign word or phrase, however familiar in English, depends for technical or other reasons on the original form to convey its meaning, it should be spoken as written.  Words of this class are often legal Latin such as obiter dictum (from the Latin and literally "something said in passing and not critically to what's being discussed" and in law describing a judge's expression of opinion not essential to the verdict and thus not binding as a precedent) and habeas corpus (from the Latin habeas corpus ad subjiciendum (literally "You (shall) have the body to be subjected to (examination)" and now a mechanism to challenge the lawfulness of a detention (ie the detainee must be brought before a court).  Status quo (from the Latin status (state) (sometimes used in the ablative statū) + quō (in which), the ablative of quī (which)) is well-known and widely used as kind of verbal shorthand to avoid clumsy English constructions yet the Status Quo is an Ottoman era firman (from the Ottoman Turkish فرمان‎ (ferman), from the Persian فرمان‎ (farmân) (command, order, decree)) which defines certain unchanging understandings among religious communities with respect to nine shared religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to translate this to anything else would rob it of the meaning which relies on its historic context.  So, words evolve to be defined as assimilated into English or not according to "rules" which are a bit vague but in use there's probably a consensus things like "obiter dictum" and "habeas corpus" remain ways of expressing something with a foreign phrase because they're still used in their original (legal) context whereas "status quo" has become an English phrase because use is so diverse and distant from its origins.

Vintage

Vintage (pronounced vin-tij)

(1) The wine from a particular harvest or crop (usually a season).

(2) Of wine, the product of a season of outstanding quality (labeled by calendar year)

(3) The annual produce of the grape harvest, especially with reference to the wine obtained (technically also recorded as the “yield of grapes during one season”).

(4) The time of gathering grapes, or of winemaking.

(5) The act or process of producing wine; winemaking.

(6) The class of a dated object with reference to era of production or use.

(7) A wine of a specified vintage:

(8) Attributively, a subset of something, representing often the most memorable or highest quality items produced (although it can apply to all associated with the designated era) such as vintage cars, vintage dresses etc.  Sometimes, what constitutes a “vintage” item (as opposed to a “veteran” or “antique” etc) is defined by various institutions (vintage watches for example said to be those dated between 1870 and 1980).

(9) Attributively, something old-fashioned or obsolete.

(10) Attributively, something the being the best of its kind.

1400-1450: From the Middle English vendage & vyndage, from the Anglo-Norman vendenge, from vinter, from the Old French vendage & vendenge (vine-harvest, yield from a vineyard (and cognate with the French vendange)), from the Latin vindēmia (a harvest of grapes, vintage), the construct being vīn(um) (grape; wine) + dēmō (take off or away, remove), the construct being de (of; from, away from) + (e)mō (acquire, obtain).  A number of European languages including Spanish, Polish and (surprisingly) France adopted “vintage from English”.  Vintage is a noun, verb & adjective, vintager is a noun, vintagey is (a non-standard) adjective and vintaged & vintaging are verbs; the noun plural is vintages.

Warrnambool Heritage "The Aged Vintage" cheese.  Very good.

The meaning shifted to “age or year of a particular wine” after 1745 with the general adjectival sense of “being of an earlier time” emerging in the early 1880s.  In the business of winemaking, the notion of “vintages” came in the twentieth century to become elastic, the term not of necessity misleading, just one which needed to be understood.  Originally, a vintage was one wine, produced with grapes grown and harvested in the one season and that system is still used but the word has long been used also as a label to denote “something of a superior quality”.  The taste of wine being a subjective thing however and something the industry (often in the small print or with a “NV” added) markets as “non-vintage” may by many buyers be preferred to a “vintage” because the “un-vintaged” drop might be a blend of wine from several years; something routinely done to ensure a particular product tastes much the same from year to year.  Even then, while the regulatory environments in many jurisdictions do specify that to qualify as a “vintage”, the fluid in the bottle must contain a minimum volume from the year on the label but the “foreign” content can be as high as a quarter and according to EU regulators, in some places special exemptions have been granted permitting a 50/50 split.  The use also proved attractive to others and there are many “vintage” cheeses and other foodstuffs, the word in this context meaning little more than being sold at a higher price.

Brass era: 1915 Stutz Bearcat Model F.  Although untrue, it was for years part of Stutz folklore than anyone who died in one merited an obituary in the New York Times.

“Vintage” has been used of cars since 1928 but in the post-war years when the idea of cars as collectables coalesced, in various places categories were created and while somewhat arbitrary, the cut-off points between one era and another tended to reflect the existence of something significant which (at least for the majority of the vehicles involved) made them in some way identifiably different from what came before.  The terms vary: The most evocative is the “brass era” used in the US and it covers essentially anything produced between the beginning of organized production in the mid 1890s and 1915, the name chosen because of the extensive use of brass for fittings such as headlamp surrounds radiators and levers, the polished metal lending the distinctiveness.  The choice of 1915 as the end of the brass era reflected the decline in the use of the material as mass production made the use of other materials more attractive but the main factor was that was the year Ford ceased use for the Model T, the car which had for years dominated the market.  In the UK (and therefore throughout most of the old British Empire), cars produced prior to 1919 were called “veteran” although there was for a time a fashion to speak of them as “Edwardian, a reference to the reign of Edward VII (1841–1910; King of the UK & Emperor of India 1901-1910), the imprecision in the dates accounted for by “Edwardian” being used as a descriptor of the fashion, architecture etc of the era rather than the reign proper.  “Vintage” cars are those made between 1919-1930 (or 1916-1930 in US use) and as an epoch that follows what was at the time called “post-war” (between the end of the World War (1914-1918) and the onset of the Great Depression.  Conveniently, it conforms (more or less also to the advances in engineering and style which made the machines of the 1920s distinct from those of the next decade.

Post-war classic: 1948 Cisitalia 202 CMM by Vignale.

So, what in political science are the “inter-war years” are divided by the collector car community into “vintage” and “pre-war”, the later epoch being 1930-1942 (US passenger car production ending early in 1942).  Most of what was produced between 1945-1948 was a continuation of what was abandoned with the onset of hostilities but nothing produced after 1945 is grouped with the “pre-war” cohort and the era is generally called “post-war classics” and depending on who is writing the classification, that period ends somewhere around 1960-1962, motoring’s beginning of “the modern” although that’s obviously inexact, some strikingly modern stuff coming from as early as the 1940s and some true relics still on sale as late as 1968.  These definitions don’t apply to stuff made outside the West and in places like the Warsaw Pact nations, the relics would endure until the 1990s; nor do they include retro devices like the Morgan or products of pure-functionalism like Jeeps and Land Rovers.  In the modern age, the labeling has changed and the tendency now is to use self-explanatory terms like “1970”s, “muscle car era” etc.

Lindsay Lohan in a vintage Herve Leger bandage dress, New York, May 2007 (left) and in a vintage-style dress, New York, February 2017.    

In fashion, “vintage” can mean a piece from decades ago or just a few seasons earlier.  Vintage items can sometimes be genuine museum pieces or simply be “old” enough to have gained some sort of respectability.  To be “vintage”, something needs to be the product of an acknowledged designer or manufacturer; items which have gained their notoriety for some other reason (who it’s associated with or the circumstances in which it was worn) can be newsworthy but they’re not “vintage”.  The word is used also of style, a “vintage look” an indicating that an outfit is something which either recalls something associated with an older style or uses known motifs to achieve the effect.  Depending on the implementation, the latter can also be treated as a “retro” whereas a “vintage look” is something where the relationship is more vague.

There is vintage and there is retro: Lindsay Lohan in an art deco mini-dress, said to be a vintage original, paired with a pair of retro Prada stilettos in burgundy.

Modernism

Modernism (pronounced mod-er-niz-uhm)

(1) A modern usage or characteristic; modern character, tendencies, or values; adherence to or sympathy with what is modern.

(2) In theology, a movement in Roman Catholic thought that sought to interpret the teachings of the Church in the light of philosophic and scientific conceptions prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (always with initial capital).  The movement was in 1907 condemned by Pope Pius X (1835–1914; pope 1903-1914).

(3) In theology, the liberal theological tendency in Protestantism which emerged in the twentieth century and became the intellectual core of the moderate wings in many denominations, most obviously displayed in the interplay between the liberal and evangelical factions at recent Lambeth Conferences.

(4) A deliberate philosophical and practical estrangement or divergence from the techniques and practices of the past in the arts and literature, occurring from late in the nineteenth century and (a little arbitrarily), thought to have concluded in the post-war years.  Taking the form in any of various innovative movements and styles, it was an aesthetic descriptor used in mostly in architecture, literature and art to label work thought modern in character, quality of thought, expression or technique (sometimes with initial capital).

1730-1740: The construct was modern + ism.  Modern was from the Middle French moderne, from the Late Latin modernus (modern), from the Classical Latin modo (just now; in a (certain) manner)), from the adverb modo (to the measure) originally ablative of modus (manner; measure) and hence, by measure, "just now".  Root was the primitive Indo-European med- (take appropriate measures).  The adjective modern entered English circa 1500 in the sense of "now existing", the meaning "of or pertaining to present or recent times" attested from the 1580s.  The verb modernize (give a modern character or appearance to, cause to conform to modern ideas, adapt to modern persons) has existed since the 1680s, thought probably a borrowing from the French modernizer rather than a native coining.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & -isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

In the narrow, technical sense, modern began in English enjoying a broad meaning, simply a description of that which was not ancient and medieval, but it quickly gained niches, Shakespeare using it to indicate something "every-day, ordinary, commonplace" and the meaning "not antiquated or obsolete, in harmony with present ways" was formalized by the early nineteenth century.  Formerly, the scientific linguistic division of historical languages into old, middle, and modern began only in the nineteenth century, the first university department of modern (ie those still living (unlike Latin and Ancient Greek) and of some literary or historical importance) was created in 1821 although the use of Modern English can be traced from at least circa 1607 when jurist John Cowell (1554–1611) published The Interpreter, a dictionary of law which, inter alia, examined and explained the words of Old and Middle English.  The extended form modern-day was noted from 1872; Modern dance is attested by 1912; modern conveniences (increasingly electrically-powered labour-saving devices) dates from 1926; modern jazz was used in 1954 and the slang abbreviation mod (tidy, sophisticated teen-ager (and one contrasted usually with a disreputable rocker or some other delinquent)) dates from a surprisingly early 1960.

There have been references to modern art since 1807 but it then was simply a chronological acknowledgement in the sense of something being recent rather than a recognizable style or school, that sense, “work representing a departure from or repudiation of traditional or accepted styles”, not attested until 1895, the idea by 1897 extended to the individual, a modern person one thought “thoroughly up to date”.  Although it would take decades to assume its (now) modern meaning, as an adjective, post–modern appears first to have been use in 1919 and by the late 1940s had become common in the language of architects (presumably the first among the modernists to feel no longer modern) and use extended to the arts in the 1960s, infecting politics, literature and just about every form of criticism and critical theory.  The "moment" of post-modernism has passed but but some of its strands have become orthodoxies and so profound were the influences it will for at least decades remain a reference point. 

Tatra T77, Czechoslovakia 1934.

Confusion is sometimes attached to the words “modernity” and “modernism”.  The noun modernity, dating from the 1620s, meant simply the "quality or state of being modern", an elaborated way of saying “recent”, the sense "something that is modern" noted since 1733.  As a word to describe specifically the epoch which began in the early twentieth century, it was in use before World War I (1914-1918).  The sense of that modernity was the particular combination of circumstances and forces which had coalesced to produce in Europe and North America a society which had in technical and other ways progressed with greater rapidity than any in history: (1) A long period of general peace, (2) a level of prosperity, which although uneven and often erratic, was unprecedented, (3) an array of technical innovations (electricity, radio, flight, telegraphs, internal combustion engines etc), (4) increasing literacy and a proliferation of mass-media, (4) an on-rush of new and transformative theories in psychology, philosophy & science (Freud, Darwin, Einstein et al), and (5) a relaxation of historically censorious attitudes which allowed innovations in art and literature to flourish.

Woman with a Hat (1905) by Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

Modernism, a word Dr Johnson (1709-1784) claimed was invented by the novelist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) to suggest any "deviation from the ancient and classical manner" had by 1830 come to refer to generally to "modern ways and styles" but since the mid-1920s, it’s been used exclusively to describe the movements in art, music, architecture and literature which depart in some radical way from classical and other traditional antecedents.  By 1925, the noun modernist was applied to a producer or follower of the work of the movement.  In the 1580s it had meant "one who admires or prefers the modern"; something similar but without the political and other connotations modernity imposed.

Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party (Buzludzha Monument), Buzludzha Peak, Bulgaria (1974-1981).  Now a very modern ruin.

Modernism, even if considered separately within the genres where the label was adopted had no coherence of style, intent or result, the significance being what it was not in that it deliberately aimed to depart from classical and traditional forms.  Although it’s contested still, much of what began as modernist art is attributed to the modernist’s growing alienation from the strictures and conventions which had characterized their formative years during the Victorian age.  It defined an epoch and, somewhere in the post-war period, became part of the history of art or architecture and for those for whom modernism is now just another product, such as art dealers, there’s really no distinction between modernist and postmodernist phases, both grouped under the rubric of Modern Art.

Rendered with Vondy's AI engine: A proto-cubist Lindsay Lohan as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) might have painted her had his experiments with cubism begun during his “blue period” (1901-1904).

Proto-Cubism (which some prefer as Pre-Cubism because they detect a distinct break rather than an evolution) was a term coined by art historians to describe the works produced in the last years of the twentieth century’s first decade.  However expressed, what was being described was the early framework of cubism, characterized by artists reducing images to component parts and rendering them in geometric forms, soon distorting things further by arranging the constructs roughly in place but viewed from different perspectives, the various cones, cubes, cylinders and polygons inherently were simplified forms yet when re-assembled yielding something complex which delighted some and appalled others.  The unhappy critics had to prepare themselves because worse was to come for while the Proto-Cubist works were at least vaguely recognizable representations of someone or something, as the movement unfolded, there was the feeling the technique was being exploited to produce material weird beyond immediate understanding: newness for the sake of newness.

Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (1910) by Pablo Picasso, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City.

It was what came to be called Analytical Cubism (circa 1908–1912) which took the deconstruction and re-assembly of Proto-Cubism down its logical path, the fragments viewed from multiple viewpoints and abandoning the tradition of lineal perspective which had developed from Antiquity, through the Primitives and the Renaissance to the modern era.  The palettes tended to be monochromatic or at least muted (shades of brown & gray predominate) and, by the standards of the time, many paintings were jarringly abstract and sometimes described as “wrongly assemble jigsaw puzzles” with pieces dissected into overlapping planes, three dimensional depth and volume flattened to be twisted back to the two dimensions of a flat surface.  Something of an arms race developed between artists as they vied to see who would conjure something which demanded of the viewer even more work to interpret.  As an intellectual exercise in perception and structural analysis, it must have been great fun for those in the studios and for the avant-garde who “got it” but many would have agreed with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who later would condemn such exercises of technical ecstasy as “formalism”.

Still Life with Chair Caning (1912) by Pablo Picasso, oil on oil-cloth over canvas edged with rope, Musée Picasso, Paris.

As a technique, Analytical Cubism could go only so far because ultimately, it remained tied to something which began as representational and had to get back there, albeit in distorted form.  What came next, from 1912-1923, came to be known as Synthetic Cubism which took everyday, real-world objects from kitchens, factories and the streetscape, reducing them to their simplest form to become building blocks to be synthesized into a new whole.  With this came brighter and more varied colors which seemed to imply something more traditional decorative than the often drab geometrical exercises of the analytic works but not all were convinced.  At the time, the general audience seems to have found cubism in any flavour no fun at all: collages with no unifying structure.  That would be the theme of public scepticism about modern art for the next century-odd but there was in places a recognition the cubists were sometimes being playful in their “construction without prior deconstruction”.  As has long happened in the art market, there were those for whom the notion of comparing (1) the analytic dissecting of reality with (2) assembling previously unconnected parts of it to create a synthetic “new” was intriguing but most stuck to the Old Masters.

Analytical Cubism: The Castle of La Roche-Guyon (1909), oil on canvas by Georges Braque (1882-1963), The Met, New York City.

Modernist literature was influenced by the bleak surroundings created by urbanization and industrialization but it was the blast of the Great War which left writers grasping to find a response to what was a much-changed world.  The roots of modernist literature can be found in pre-war works but the war had so undermined faith in the foundations of Western society and culture which early in the century had been viewed with an optimism it’s hard now to convey.  An inescapable element in modernism was a rejection of beauty as if humanity had proved itself somehow unworthy of loveliness and modernist literature reflected disillusionment and betrayal, TS Eliot’s (1888-1965) epic-length poem The Waste Land (1922) is emblematic, reflecting the search for redemption in a spiritually empty landscape and technically, its discordant images and deliberate obscurity typify Modernism and preview the techniques developed in post-modernism which demand the reader be involved in interpreting and deconstructing the text.

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) reading Ulysses, 1955.

Modernist fiction however, in content or technique, wasn’t monolithic and even to label it a genre does require that word to adopt a nuance of meaning, the works could explore the life of one, of a group or all of humanity and ranged from the nihilistic to the utopian.  The great landmark was James Joyce’s (1882-1941) Ulysses (1922), a work of such sometimes impenetrable density which adopted the even then known device of a stream of consciousness to document the events of one day in the lives of three Dubliners, the idea being the abandonment of any structural order, conventional sentence construction sacrificed in an attempt to capture the nature of human fragmentary thought.  Not all readers were seduced by the approach but Ulysses picked up a cult following which endures to this day, some of the adherents compelled even to praise Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), a work which in which a few find rare genius while others conclude it's merely modernism pursued to its inevitable unintelligible conclusion.  Reading Joyce can be hard work although Anthony Burgess (1917–1993), a fair critic of modernism, literary and otherwise, claimed to find a laugh of every page of Finnegans Wake.  For most, it's no fun at all.

Paysage coloré aux oiseaux aquatiques (Colored Landscape with Aquatic Birds, circa 1907) by Jean Metzinger (1883-1956).

In painting, the roots really lie in mannerism although elements can be traced through thousands of years of what is, strictly speaking, non-representational art, exemplified in many aspects by the sometimes (and not deliberately) almost abstract Italian primitives created between the late eleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries.  However, historians regard the first of the modernists as Édouard Manet (1832-1883) who, from his early thirties began to distort perspective and devalue representation, using techniques of brushstroke to emphasize the very nature of the flat canvas on which he worked, something artists had for centuries crafted to disguise.  In his wake came the rush of -isms that would characterize modernism: Impressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism & Expressionism, an array of visions which would see the techniques and physical construction of the works vie for attention (at least among fellow artists and critics) with what was once thought the art itself.

TWA Flight Center (1959-1962) by Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) and Associates, John F Kennedy International Airport, New York City.

In architecture, while not literally technologically deterministic, the advances in the technologies available made possible the abandonment of earlier necessities.  However, while  the existence of steel frames and increasingly complex shapes rendered in reinforced concrete may have allowed what came to be known as the “new international style”, neither precluded the ongoing use of decoration and embellishment, the discarding of which was a hallmark of modernist architecture.  It was the choice of the architects to draw simple geometric shapes with unadorned facades, a starkness associated especially with the mid-to-late twentieth century steel and glass skyscrapers.  Architects are less keen to be associated with some other high-rise buildings of the era, especially the grim housing projects which blighted so much of the urban redevelopment of the post-war years; there was none of the awful grandeur of the best neo-brutalism to many of these.