Scientist

Scientist (pronounced sahy-uhn-tist)

A person who studies or practises any of the sciences or who uses scientific methods, especially in the physical or natural sciences.

1833: Modeled after artist, the construct was the Latin stem scientia (knowledge) +‎ -ist.  Science was from the Middle English science & scyence, from the Old French science & escience, from the Latin scientia (knowledge), from sciens, the present participle stem of scire (to know).  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).

Natural Philosopher versus Scientist

Founded in 1831 and modelled on the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte (Society of German Researchers and Physicians), the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) was formed as an organisation open to anyone interested in science, unlike the exclusive Royal Society (originally Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge), founded on 28 November 1660 and granted a royal charter by Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of Scotland, England and Ireland 1660-1685).  The Royal Society is the world's oldest continuously existing scientific academy and it's list of fellows range from Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in 1672 to Elon Musk (b 1971) in 2018.  In an indication of the breadth of its attraction, at the meeting of the BAAS on 24 June 1834, unexpectedly in attendance was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834); he’d not left his home in Highgate Hill for years and would die within weeks.  That a poet should attend a meeting about science was not at the time a surprise, the division between science and the arts coming later and Taylor had previously written about the scientific method.

Scientists study all sorts of things.  Research like this can attract an Ig Nobel prize.

For most of history, those we would now think of as scientists had been called natural philosophers.  Coleridge declared true philosophers were those who sat in their armchairs and contemplated the cosmos; they did not scratch around in digs or fiddle with electrical piles.  Cambridge don, the Reverend William Whewell, an English polymath, responded by suggesting, by analogy with artist, they should be called scientists and added those studying physics could be styled physicists, the French having already applied physicien (physician) to the surgeons and etymologists once dated the word “scientist” from that meeting but it was later discovered Whewell had coined the term in 1833 and it first appeared in print a year later in his anonymous review of Mary Somerville's (1780-1872) On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences published in the Quarterly Review.  It took a while to catch on but was in wide use in the US by the late nineteenth century and the rest of the English-speaking world a few years later although as late as 1900 there were publishers which had scientist on their “not-acceptable” list.

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

Basic

Basic (pronounced bey-sik)

(1) Of, relating to, or forming a base; fundamental.

(2) In chemistry, pertaining to, of the nature of, or containing a base; alkaline.

(3) In metallurgy, noting, pertaining to, or made by a steelmaking process (basic process) in which the furnace or converter is lined with a basic or non-siliceous material, mainly burned magnesite and a small amount of ground basic slag, to remove impurities from the steel.

(4) In geology, descriptor of a rock having relatively little silica.

(5) In military use, the lowest or initial form of anything (chiefly US).

(6) In popular culture, the adjectival part of a slang term for a sub-set of females characterized by predictable or unoriginal style, interests, or behavior.

(7) Of things elementary in character, essential, key, primary, basal, underlying.

(8) As a computer industry acronym, (BASIC and its forks, QBASIC, BASICA etc), a long-lived programming language: B(eginner's) A(ll-purpose) S(ymbolic) I(nstruction) C(ode).

1832:  Originally from chemistry (base + ic) and adopted by about every other field.  The programming language was created in 1964 by Hungarian-born US-based computer scientist John Kemeny (1926-1992) and US computer scientist Thomas Kurtz (b 1928).  Use to describe a female sub-set dates from 2005.

The Basic Bitch

Basic bitch, often truncated to the (sometimes affectionate) "basic", is a US pop-culture term.  Although use outgrew its origins, it was intended as a pejorative descriptor of white, middle class females with boringly predictable, mainstream tastes in consumer goods and culture.  Variously interpreted as a variation on the earlier airhead, a general expression of misogyny and another unsuccessful attempt to invent a term white people would find offensive, basic bitch briefly generated a sizable critique.  Although expressions of disapproval of hollow consumer culture had became common even before publication of JK Galbraith's (1908–2006) The Affluent Society (1958) made it a bit of a thing, basic bitch seemingly offended just about all the usual suspects in the grievance industry.

Feminists found it misogynistic and weren’t at mollified by the emergence of a term of male equivalence, their general position probably demanding the dismissal of all cultural feminine signifiers.  To them, the specifics were tiresomely irrelevant; basic bitch was just another way to demean women.  The left generally agreed, arguing it was unhelpful to target a stereotype of late capitalist femininity rather than adhere to their critique of consumer culture.  Western capitalism, neutral on the squabble, soon commodified:

Less predictable was the race-based criticism.  Basic bitch was considered yet another attempt to create a term of disparagement to describe the white folk which they would find actually offensive and in that, like all previous attempts, it didn’t work.  However, it clearly made sense only if applied to white, middle-class females so had the effect of creating yet another exclusive enclave of white privilege and one which, by definition, excluded other ethnicities, even if becoming a basic bitch was their aspiration.  First noted in 2005 in a sub-set of popular music, "basic bitch" entered mainstream use circa 2009 and use appears to have peaked in 2014 although term may persist because it references a mode of behavior rather than anything specific to a time or place; it’s thus adaptable and generationally transferrable.  It’s also an amusing example of one aspect of how Sisyphean battles in the pop-culture wars are waged.  All those who coined the alliterative basic bitch were saying was “our taste in pop music is better than their taste in pop music”.

In the matter of Judge Eugene Fahey

Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018) was a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court; Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed.  In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.

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

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

Bathtub

Bathtub (pronounced bath-tuhb or bahth-tuhb)

(1) A tub in which to bathe, variations including permanent installations (either built-in fixtures or free-standing units) in a bathroom and (now less commonly in the developed world) portable constructions (historically of metal or timber although for military and outdoor use, foldable bathtubs (of leather or canvas) have a long history).

(2) An automotive style (most common in the 1950s) in which the bodywork resembled an upturned bathtub.

1825–1835: The construct was bath + tub and the previous related word was “wash-tub”, dating from the turn of the seventeenth century.  Bath was from the Middle English bath & baþ, from the Old English bæþ (bath), from the Proto-West Germanic baþ, from the Proto-Germanic baþą (bath), from the primitive Indo-European root bhē- (to warm).  The corresponding inherited verbs were bathe & beath.  The Old English bæð (“an immersing of the body in water, mud, etc” or “a quantity of water etc., for bathing”) was from the Proto-Germanic badan (the source also of the Old Frisian beth, the Old Saxon bath, the Old Norse bað, the Middle Dutch bat and the German Bad), also from the primitive Indo-European root bhē- with the appended –thuz (the Germanic suffix indicating “act, process, condition” (as in “birth”; “death”)). The etymological sense is of heating, not immersing.  Tub was from the late fourteenth century Middle English tubbe & tobbe (open wooden vessel made of staves), from the Middle Dutch & Middle Flemish tubbe or the Middle Low German tubbe & tobbe, of uncertain origin.  Etymologists have concluded there’s no link with the Latin tubus or the English tube but it was related to the Old High German zubar (vessel with two handles, wine vessel) and the German Zuber.  In the seventeenth century tub was slang for “pulpit”, thus since the 1660s a “tub-thumper” was a particularly forceful preacher who literally “thumped his fists on the pulpit” to emphasize some point; the use was later extended beyond the church to politicians and others who spoke in a loud or dramatic way.  The English city in the county of Somerset (in Old English it was Baðun) was so called from its hot springs.  The convention now probably is to refer to any permanently installed unit as a “bath”, a bathtub something portable.  The word can appear both as bath tub and bath-tub.  Bathtub is a noun and bathtubby is an adjective (bathtubesque & bathtubbish (resembling or characteristic of a bathtub) were jocular constructions); the noun plural is bathtubs.

Lindsay Lohan with claw-footed bathtub, music video release of Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father) (2005).

A “bathtub cockpit” is a cockpit with recessed seating, so that a pilot or driver is sitting in a bathtub-shaped space.  It was often seen in aircraft but the classic example was that used in the delicate, cigar-shape voiturettes built to contest the Formula One World Championship during the 1.5 litre era (1961-1965).  The bathtub curve is a concept from reliability engineering, describing a particular form of the hazard function taking into account three categories of failure rate.  As a theoretical model it assumes the shape of a bathtub (sectioned in the middle and viewed from the side), the three regions being (1) a decreasing failure rate due to early failures, (2) a constant failure rate due to random failures and (3) an increasing failure rate due to wear-out failures.  The slang term “bathtub gin” is a US prohibition era (1919–1933) term to refer to a gin (or other spirit) of such dubious quality it suggests it may have been distilled by an unskilled amateur in their bathtub.  It’s a similar form to “gutrot”, “moonshine” etc and was applied sometimes to any form of illicit alcohol and not just distilled spirit.  “Bathtub racing” literally describes bathtubs being raced.  One of sports more obscure niches, the variations have included (modified) bathtubs being rowed or sailed on waterways or raced on land (either powered, pushed or run on downhill courses.  In economics, the “bathtub theorem” is the charming illustration of the idea that capital accumulation = production - consumption.  The metaphor is that of the water running from the taps (production) and that exiting from the plughole (consumption).  That seems obvious but where the inflow is too great for the capacity of the plughole, the water in the tub (capital) overflows, flooding the place, an elegant explanation of the effects of over-production which can induce recessions or depressions.

Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax KCB.  Lest it be thought multi-element names are a thing exclusive to the British Isles, they exist elsewhere, an example of which was the German Count Graf Philipp-Constantin Eduard Siegmund Clemens Tassilo Tobias von Berckheim (1924-1984).

In the intricate hierarchy of the UK’s honours system, The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is an order of chivalry dating from 1725 and the name really is derived from the use of a bathtub, the reference being to the medieval ceremony under which knighthoods were conferred, bathing being a symbol of purification.  More than most British honours, the Order of the Bath has a tangled history, at times limited to the military and with various restrictions on the numbers of members.  One thing which was once constant however was that recipients were entitled to the post-nominal letters “KB” after their name.  This changed in 1815 when the order was re-organized into three classes: Knight Grand Cross (GCB), Knight Commander (KCB) & Companion (CB) and the transition was handled effortlessly by the experts but one thing which these days annoys those who worry about such things (and there are a few) is that inexpert journalists and others not do sometimes attach a KB to a Knight Bachelor.  The Knight Bachelor actually attracts no post-nominal letters; it’s a kind of “entry-level” knighthood and recipients are not inducted as a member of one of the orders of chivalry (although there have been plenty of awards of the latter to those whose lives have been far removed from the chivalrous, not all of them from the colonies or Dominions).  The Order of the Bath also provided one of the amusing anecdotes in the unpromising field of diplomatic protocol.  In 1939, when Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax KCB (1880-1967) was introduced at a ceremony in Moscow, protocol required his honors be read out in full, the Russian translator rendering his KCB as рыцарь умывальник (rytsar' umyval'nik) (Knight of the Wash Tub).  The Russians honor guard couldn’t help but laugh and fortunately, the admiral shared their amusement.

In December 1917, the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956) published a fictitious history of the bathtub.  Intended as an amusing hoax, the story was so convincing that quickly it wildly was promulgated, appearing even in reference works and medical journals.  Around a century later, a similar hoax was perpetrated when a university student edited the electric toaster’s Wikipedia page, claiming it had been invented by a wholly factitious Scottish scientist.  The technique was exactly the same as Mencken’s: use the dry factual approach (ie the classic Wikipedia template) and it remained on-line for some years, presumably because the origin of the toaster is not a matter of great interest or controversy.

1949 Nash Ambassador (left), Evelyn Ay (1933–2008), Miss America 1954, in her “bathtub” Nash Rambler (the official car of the beauty pageant) (centre) and 1957 Nash Ambassador which still showed the legacy of the earlier, more extravagant bathtub styling cues.

The best remembered of the “bathtub” cars were first built in the late 1940s by manufacturers introducing their first genuinely new post-war lines (most of the cars produced in 1945-1946 were slightly updated versions of those which had last been made early in 1942).  Within the industry, engineers first called the motif “envelope styling” but the more evocative (and certainly more accurate because an up-turned bathtub came to mind more than an envelope) “bathtub” quickly became the preferred slang.  Echoes of the lines which became familiar in the next decade can be seen in some of the low-volume and experimental bodies seen in the 1920s & 1930s, many an evolution of the realization the “teardrop” shape was close to aerodynamically optimal (at least on paper, the implications of lift and down-force then not widely understood).  Among the large US manufacturers, Nash and Hudson pursued the bathtub style to its most extreme and persisted the longest.  In the early 1950s, the aerodynamic advantages were apparent and combined with the inherently good weight-distribution afforded by their low-slung “step-down” construction, the Hudson Hornet dominated NASCAR racing between 1951-1954, despite its straight-six engine having both less power and displacement than some of the competition.  Except for the odd quirky niche, the bathtub styling didn’t make it into the 1960s and nor did the Nash & Hudson nameplates, the former in 1954 absorbing the latter to created AMC (American Motor Corporation) and in 1957, both brand-names were retired.

Evolution of the Porsche “bathtub” style 1948-1965, the lines of the original a direct descendant of a pre-war racing car.  1948 Porsche 356-001 (the Gmünd Roadster) (top), 1955 Porsche 356 pre-A 1500 Speedster (centre) and 1965 Porsche 356SC Coupé (bottom).  Although the “bathtub” motif was abandoned with the end of 356 production, the 356’s contribution to the lines of the 911 (introduced in 1964 as the 901) is obvious and in the sixty-odd years since, stylistically, not much has changed.

Philadelphus

Philadelphus (pronounced fil-ah-del-fiss)

(1) Any shrub of the temperate genus Philadelphus, cultivated for their strongly scented showy flowers (family Hydrangeaceae).

(2) As Philadelphus coronaries (mock orange), a deciduous, early summer-flowering shrub with arching branches that bear racemes of richly scented, cup-shaped, pure white flowers in profusion with finely toothed, bright green foliage.  The plant is grown for its ornamental value.

(3) A male given name with origins in the Ancient Greek.

1600s (in botanical use): From the Ancient Greek Φιλάδελφος (Philádelphos) (brotherly love) & philadelphon (loving one’s brother).  Philadelphus is a proper noun.

Philadelphus coronaries (mock orange) in flower.

The mock orange plant has long been valued for its decorative and functional properties.  Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826; US president 1801-1809) was a keen gardener and horticulturalist of some note and on 19 April 1807 noted in his “garden book”: “Planted 9 Philadelphus coronarium, Mock orange in the 4 circular beds of shrubs at the 4 corners of the house.”  Although the origin is uncertain, biologists suspect the strong growing, medium-sized shrub is native either to northern Italy, Austria & Central Romania or Central & North America and Asia; in Europe & North America it has been cultivated at least the sixteenth century.  Before modern standards of taxonomy were codified in the eighteenth century, the plant was classified under the genus Syringa (covering the species of flowering woody plants in the olive family or Oleaceae (commonly called lilacs) and a typically comprehensive description was recorded by Lady (Jean) Skipwith (circa 1748–1826), a Virginia plantation owner and manager still celebrated among botanists for her extensive garden, botanical manuscript notes, and library, the latter reputedly the largest at the time assembled by a woman.  Lady Skipwith called the plant a “Syringa or mock orange” while the US naturalist, explorer & explorer William Bartram (1739–1823) preferred the former, reflecting a scientist’s reverence for anything Greek or Latin.  Syringa was from the stem of the Latin syrinx, from the Ancient Greek σῦριγξ (sûrinx) (shepherd's pipe, quill), the name reflecting the use of the plant's hollow stem to make pipes, flutes & tube.  In modern use, “Mock Orange” tends to be preferred by most, the name derived from the fragrance of the flowers being so reminiscent of orange blossoms.  The origin of the scientific name “Philadelphus” (first applied in the early seventeenth century) is attributed usually to being a tribute to Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Ptolemaîos Philádelphos (Πτολεμαῖος Φιλάδελφος in the Ancient Greek) 309-246 BC, pharaoh (king) of Ptolemaic Egypt (284-246 BC), said to be a keen gardener (which can be translated as “he kept many slaves to tend his gardens”).

The literal translation of the Greek philadelphon was “loving one’s brother”, something used in the sense of “brotherhood of man” as well as when referring to family relationships.  For the pharaoh, the use was a little more nuanced because, after some earlier marital problems, he married his older sister Arsinoe II (316-circa 269 BC).  This appalled the Greeks who condemned the arrangement as incestuous and the couple thus picked up the appellation Philadelphoi (Φιλάδελφοι in the Koinē Greek (sibling-lovers)).  Historians however are inclined to be forgiving and suggest the union was purely for administrative convenience, Egyptian political & dynastic struggles as gut-wrenching as anywhere and there’s no evidence the marriage was ever consummated.  Just to make sure there was the appropriately regal gloss, the spin doctors of the royal court circulated documents citing earlier such marriages between the gods (such as Zeus & Hera).  It certainly set a precedent and the intra-family model was followed by a number of later Ptolemaic monarchs and the practice didn’t end.  The scandalous marriage of Heraclius (circa 575–641; Byzantine emperor 610-641) to his youthful niece Martina resulted in her becoming “the most hated woman in Constantinople” and it was a union certainly consummated for “of the nine children she bore her husband, only three were healthy, the rest either deformed or died in infancy.”

The Philadelphi corridor

The Latin proper noun Philadelphi was the genitive/locative singular of Philadelphus.  In 2024 use spiked because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) use “Philadelphi Corridor” as military code for the narrow (14 km (9 miles) long & 100 m (110 yards) wide) stretch of land used to separate the Gaza Strip from Egypt; it runs from the Mediterranean coast to the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel and includes the Rafah crossing into Egypt.  The IDF created the corridor (from Gaza territory) as a “buffer zone” (or “cordon sanitaire”), ostensibly to prevent the Hamas, the PIJ (Palestine Islamic Jihad) and others smuggling weapons and other contraband into Gaza through a remarkable network of underground tunnels.  The corridor assumed great significance after Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 and later after its disengagement from Gaza in 2005; it has long been among the more contested spaces in the Middle East.  According to the IDF, the term “Philadelphi Corridor” was allocated during a routine military planning conference and the choice was wholly arbitrarily with no historical or geographical significance related to the region or any individual.

Just because a military say a code-name has no particular meaning doesn’t mean that’s true; the IDF is no different to any military.  The most obvious possible inspiration for the “Philadelphi corridor” was the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus but one influence may have been cartographic, the geographic shapes of the Gaza Strip (left) and the US city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (right) quite similar and were the monstrosities Northwest, West & Southwest Philadelphia to be annexed by adjacent counties, the shapes of the two would be closer still.  

Lindsay Lohan in Philadelphia, 2012.

The Philadelphi corridor has assumed a new importance because Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1949; Israeli prime minister 1996-1999, 2009-2021 and since 2022) has added Israeli control of it to his list of pre-conditions for any ceasefire in negotiations between his government and the Hamas.  It was designated as a demilitarised border zone after the withdrawal of Israeli settlements and troops from Gaza in 2005, prior to which, under the terms of Israel’s Camp David peace treaty with Egypt (1979), the IDF had been allowed to maintain limited troop formations in corridor but without heavy weapons or heavy armour.  Old Ariel Sharon (1928–2014; prime minister of Israel 2001-2006) arranged the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza subsequently forming the Kadima (Forward) political party because he could persuade the Likud (The Consolidation) party to follow his vision.  Very much a personal vehicle for Mr Sharon, Kadima did not survive his incapacitation from a stroke while the Likud fell into the hands of Mr Netanyahu.  Following the Israeli withdrawal, responsibility for the corridor’s security fell to Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, this maintained until the Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007; it was seized by Israel in May 2024 as the IDF’s Gaza ground offensive extended into Rafah.

Over the years, the tunnel complex has proved a remarkably effective means by which to facilitate cross-border smuggling of weapons, other materiel, fuel and a variety of stuff including food, medicine and consumer goods, despite many attempts by the IDF and Egyptian authorities to end the traffic, the latter perhaps a little less fastidious in their endeavours.  The tunnels are impressive pieces of civil engineering, including electricity, ventilation systems, air-conditioning and communications facilities; some are sufficient large to allow heavy trucks to pass and there has long been speculation about the extent to which financial and logistical support for tunnel construction, maintenance & repair is channelled from the Gulf Arab states.  In Cairo, the government viewed the IDF’s seizure of the corridor with some alarm and remain a “status quo” power, insistent that an ongoing Israeli presence will “endanger” the Camp David peace treaty, no small matter because the “ripple effect” of the 1979 agreement had profound consequences in the region.

Pointing the way: Mr Netanyahu (left) explains the Philadelphi corridor (right).      

Still, Mr Netanyahu has made clear he intends to maintain a military presence in the corridor (including the Rafah crossing) and that remains an unnegotiable condition for a ceasefire with the Hamas; opposition to this stance has come from Cario, the Hamas and some of the third parties involved in the negotiation.  In Tel Aviv, that would not have been unexpected but there is now an increasingly persistent protest movement among Israeli citizens, the allegation being the prime-minister is cynically adding conditions he knows the Hamas will be compelled to reject because as long as the war continues, he can remain in office and avoid having to face the courts to answer some troubling accusations pre-dating the conflict.  Mr Netanyahu responded to this criticism by saying as long as the Hamas remained a threat (later refined to “as long as Hamas remained in control of Gaza”), the offensive needed to continue.  One of the great survivors of Middle East politics, Mr Netanyahu recently assured the more extreme of his coalition partners (described as “right-wing” which, historically, is misleading but descriptive in the internal logic of Israeli politics) by engineering a vote in cabinet binding Israel to retaining control of the corridor.  Despite this, opposition within the cabinet to the ongoing “moving of the goalposts” to prevent any possibility of a ceasefire is said to be growing.  The opposition accused the prime-minister of being more concerned with placating the extremists in his government than securing the release of the remaining hostages seized by the Hamas in the 7 October 2023 attack and left unstated but understood by implication was the message Mr Netanyahu regards them as the “collateral damage” in his manoeuvres to avoid the courts.

Bandwagon

Bandwagon (pronounced band-wag-uhn)

(1) A wagon, historically large and often ornately decorated, used to transport the members of a band or musical troop while performing for events such as circus parades or political rallies.

(2) Figuratively, a party, cause, movement, fashion, trend etc, that by its mass appeal or strength readily attracts many followers.

1849 (although some sources cite 1855): An Americanism, the construct being band + wagon.  Band (in the context of a musical troop) was from the Middle English band, from the Old French bande, from the Old Occitan banda (regiment of troops), which may have been from the Frankish bend, from the Proto-Germanic bandiz, from the primitive Indo-European bhend (to tie; bond, band).  The Modern German spelling is Bande (band).  Wagon was from the Middle Dutch wagen, from the Old Dutch wagan, from the proto West Germanic wagn, from the Proto-Germanic wagnaz (wagon), from the primitive Indo-European woghnos (wagon, primitive carriage), from wegh (to transport).  The form is also related to the Modern English way & weigh.  Bandwagon in its literal or figurative sense is not directly related to wagon’s sense of “a woman of loose virtue” (the idea being she is being “ridden” in the sense of being “mounted for sexual purposes”, the same idea as the disparaging “town bike”) although, once a reputation as “a bit of a wagon” is known, some presumably would be inspired to “jump on the bandwagon.  The alternative spelling is band-wagon and it would be a useful distinction if the hyphenated form is used of the actual wagon while the unhyphenated is for figurative purposes.  Bandwagon, bandwagonist, bandwagonism, bandwagoning & bandwagoner are nouns; the noun plural is bandwagons.  Bandwagon has been used as a non-standard verb and the adjective bandwagonish is non-standard.

In sociology, the “bandwagon effect” describes the phenomenon of people often doing or believing what they think many other people do or believe.  There can be a sound evolutionary basis for this and it is often observed in the animal behavior described as “safety in numbers” which describes beasts clustering when a predator is hunting; while the predator may be guaranteed a kill, each individual has a higher chance of survival if in a group than if isolated and thus a more attractive target.  The idea is also known as “herd behavior”, “herd instinct” & “herd mentality” and used especially in economics, explaining some trends (buying & selling) in equity markets and notably, crypto-currencies.  Terms like “herd behaviour” are often used disparagingly but there is a certain internal logic, illustrated by Joseph Heller (1923-1999) in Catch-22 (1961):

“We won’t lose. We’ve got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.”
“But suppose everybody on our side felt that way.”
“Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way.  Wouldn’t I?”

The usual expression is “climb (or jump, hop, get) on the bandwagon”, describing the tendency for people to follow others in joining, supporting or buying something as its popularity rises.  The companion phrase is “hype train” although some bandwagons become more personalized. The “Trump Train” used to describe the way the early successes enjoyed in 2016 by Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) in the process to seek the Republican Party’s nomination for that year’s presidential election assumed its own momentum, gathering speed and numbers of passengers (train-like) as it went.

Armada Cornet Band of Michigan in Band Wagon with instruments (1878).

The original band wagons (initially never hyphenized) were large, open, horse drawn carriages used essentially as mobile stages, carrying musicians who would play as they moved, typically in a circus procession or as part of the spectacle of entertainment which was a part of nineteenth century elections in the US.  The band wagons themselves became campaign posters, painted in the colors associated with a candidate and thus emblematic of the party, which would explain why Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) in 1899 explained “being on the bandwagon” as meaning “…attaching oneself to anything that looks likely to succeed.”

Wagon porn: Band Wagon, wheels (43 & 55-inch); body dark green with gold scrolling on body & seats; gearing Naples yellow, ornamented with ultramarine blue & gold stripes; trimming dark green goatskin.  The Carriage Monthly, December 1881.

The terms “bandwagoner” & “bandwagon fan” are used to describe those who support or participate in something only because it is popular or successful.  The most frequent use is as a derogatory term to refer to those who discover an allegiance to a sporting team or franchise as they begin to enjoy success, distinguishing them from the “die hard” fan who maintains their supports in bad times as well as good.  The phenomenon is cross-code (football, hockey, basketball etc) and is a specific instance illustrating the adage: “nothing succeeds like success”.

In formal logic, the term “bandwagon fallacy” (argumentum ad populum) is probably better understood by the expressions used in common discourse including “appeal to the masses” or “mob appeal”, all made to sound more palatable in the Latin consensus gentium (agreement of the people).  Essentially, the fallacy is that if a particular view or attitude is held by a majority of the population, it must be “right”, the corollary of course that if something is unpopular, it must be “wrong”; these are the two extremes of the bandwagon fallacy spectrum.  Although used in psychology and political science, the concept is more familiar in commerce and the evidence is on display in all of the advertising material which portrays products as desirable simply on the basis of their alleged popularity.  The blending of all this with the “bandwagon effect” is encapsulated in the more recent portmanteau noun “brandwagon”.

The special use of “bandwagoning” in international relations (IR) was coined by University of Chicago political scientist Quincy Wright (1890–1970) in A Study of War (1942).  Characterized by some also as “accepting the inevitable” or “lying back and trying to enjoy it”, it describes the process in which a state shifts from being an adversary of a stronger state to being in some way aligned, either in a formal alliance or a state of peaceful co-existence.  Implicit in the arrangement is that any benefits which accrue from the relationship, vis-à-vis third parties, will overwhelmingly be gained by the stronger state.  Historically, such relationships often have come into being because domination by the regional or global hegemon is anyway inevitable and it may as well be accepted without the consequences of armed conflict.  In IR, bandwagoning is cumulative in that the more states which decide to align with the strong state, the more which will either follow the lead or seek an alliance with another powerful player.

The idea of juxtaposing someone getting “back on the party bandwagon” with falling “off the wagon” (ie drinking alcohol again) was hard to resist for at least one headline writer who knew click-bait when they saw it.  The phrase “fall off the wagon” originated in the US in the late nineteenth century as “fall off the water wagon (or cart)”, the device referenced the horse-drawn water tanks which were a frequent sight in summer, keeping down the dust on the unpaved roads of the era.  The idea thus was that to be “on the wagon” was to be drinking water rather than strong drink; “fall off the wagon” and you're back on the booze.

Molyneux

Molyneux (pronounced mol-un-ewe)

(1) A habitational surname of Norman origin, almost certainly from the town of Moulineaux-sur-Seine, in Normandy.

(2) A variant of the Old French Molineaux (an occupational surname for a miller).

(3) An Anglicized form of the Irish Ó Maol an Mhuaidh (descendant of the follower of the noble).

(4) In law in the state of New York, as the “Molineux Rule”, an evidentiary rule which defines the extent to which a prosecutor may introduce evidence of a defendant’s prior bad acts or crimes, not to show criminal propensity, but to “establish motive, opportunity, intent, common scheme or plan, knowledge, identity or absence of mistake or accident.”

(5) In philosophy, as the “Molyneux Problem”, a thought experiment which asks:”If someone born blind, who has learned to distinguish between a sphere and a cube by touch alone, upon suddenly gaining the power of sight, would they be able to distinguish those objects by sight alone, based on memory of tactile experience?”

Pre 900: The French surname Molyneux was from the Old French and is thought to have been a variant of De Molines or De Moulins, both linked to "Mill" (Molineaux the occupational surname for a miller) although the name is believed to have been habitation and form an unidentified place in France although some genealogists have concluded the de Moulins came from Moulineaux-sur-Seine, near Rouen, Normandy.  Despite the continental origin, the name is also much associated with various branches of the family in England and Ireland, the earliest known references pre-dating the Norman Conquest (1066).  The alternative spelling is Molineux.

The "Molyneux Problem" is named after Irish scientist and politician William Molyneux (1656–1698) who in 1688 sent a letter to the English physician & philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), asking: Could someone who was born blind, and able to distinguish a globe and a cube by touch, be able to immediately distinguish and name these shapes by sight if given the ability to see?  Obviously difficult to test experimentally, the problem prompted one memorable dialogue between Locke and Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753 (who lent his name, pronounced phonetically to the US university) but it has long intrigued those from many disciplines, notably neurology and psychology, because sight is such a special attribute, the eyes being an outgrowth of the brain; the experience of an adult brain suddenly being required to interpret visual input would be profound and certainly impossible to imagine.  Philosophers since Locke have also pondered the problem because it raises issues such as the relationship between vision and touch and the extent to which some of the most basic components of knowledge (such as shape) can exist at birth or need entirely to be learned or experienced.

The Molineux Rule in the the adversarial system 

The Molineux Rule comes from a decision handed down by the Court of Appeals of New York in the case of People v Molineux (168 NY 264 (1901)).  Molineux had at first instance been convicted of murder in a trial which included evidence relating to his past conduct.  On appeal. the verdict was overturned on the basis that as a general principle: “…in both civil and criminal proceedings, that when evidence of other crimes, wrongs or acts committed by a person is offered for the purpose of raising an inference that the person is likely to have committed the crime charged or the act in issue, the evidence is inadmissible.”  The rationale for that is it creates a constitutional safeguard which acts to protect a defendant from members of a jury forming an assumption the accused had committed the offence with which they were charged because of past conduct which might have included being accused of similar crimes.  Modified sometimes by other precedent or statutes, similar rules of evidentiary exclusion operate in many common law jurisdictions.  It was the Molineux Rule lawyers for former film producer Harvey Weinstein (b 1952) used to have overturned his 2020 conviction for third degree rape.  In a 4:3 ruling, the court held the trial judge made fundamental errors in having “…erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose.” and therefore the only “...remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”

Harvey Weinstein and others.

Reaction to the decision of the appellate judges was of course swift and the opinion of the “black letter” lawyers was the court was correct because “…we don't want a court system convicting people based on testimony about allegations with which they’ve not been charged.”, added to which such evidence might induce a defendant not to submit to the cross-examination they’d have been prepared to undergo if only matters directly relevant to the charge(s) had been mentioned in court.  Although the Molineux Rule has been operative for well over a century, some did thing it surprising the trial judge was prepare to afford the prosecution such a generous latitude in its interpretation but it should be noted the Court of Appeal divided 4:3 so there was substantial support from the bench that what was admitted as evidence did fall within what are known as the “Molineux exceptions” which permit certain classes of testimony in what is known as “character evidence”.  That relies on the discretion of the judge who must weigh the value of the testimony versus the prejudicial effect it will have on the defendant.  In the majority judgment, the Court of Appeal made clear that in the common law system (so much of which is based on legal precedent), if the trial judge’s decision on admissibility was allowed to stand, there could (and likely would) be far-reaching consequences and their ruling was based on upholding the foundations of our criminal justice system in the opening paragraphs: "Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged and, thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality. It is our solemn duty to diligently guard these rights regardless of the crime charged, the reputation of the accused, or the pressure to convict."

The strict operation of the Molineux Rule (which this ruling will ensure is observed more carefully) does encapsulate much of the core objection to the way courts operate in common law jurisdictions.  The common law first evolved into something recognizable as such in England & Wales after the thirteenth century and it spread around the world as the British Empire grew and that included the American colonies which, after achieving independence in the late eighteenth century as the United States of America, retained the legal inheritance.  The common law courts operate on what is known as the “adversarial system” as opposed to the “inquisitorial system” of the civil system based on the Code Napoléon, introduced in 1804 by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) and widely used in Europe and the countries of the old French Empire.  The criticism of the adversarial system is that the rules are based on the same principle as many adversarial contests such as football matches where the point of the rules is to ensure the game is decided on the pitch and neither team has any advantage beyond their own skill and application.

That’s admirable in sport but many do criticize court cases being conducted thus, the result at least sometimes being decided by the skill of the advocate and their ability to persuade.  Unlike the inquisitorial system where the object is supposed to be the determination of the truth, in the adversarial system, the truth can be something of an abstraction, the point being to win the case.  In that vein, many find the Molineux Rule strange, based on experience in just about every other aspect of life.  Someone choosing a new car, a bar of chocolate or a box of laundry detergent is likely to base their decision from their knowledge of other products from the same manufacturer, either from personal experience or the result of their research.  Most consumer organizations strongly would advise doing exactly that yet when the same person is sitting on a jury and being asked to decide if an accused is guilty of murder, rape or some other heinous offence, the rules don’t allow them to be told the accused has a history of doing exactly that.  All the jury is allowed to hear is evidence relating only to the matter to be adjudicated.  Under the Molineux Rule there are exceptions which allow “evidence of character” to be introduced but as a general principle, the past is hidden and that does suit the legal industry which is about winning cases.  The legal theorists are of course correct that the restrictions do ensure an accused can’t unfairly be judged by past conduct but for many, rules which seem to put a premium on the contest rather than the truth must seem strange.

War

War (pronounced wawr)

(1) A conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air; in the singular, a specific conflict (eg Second Punic War).

(2) A state or period of armed hostility or active military operations.

(3) A contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns.

(4) By extension, a descriptor for various forms of non-armed conflict (war on poverty, trade war, war on drugs, war on cancer, war of words etc).

(5) A type of card game played with a 52 card pack.

(6) A battle (archaic).

(7) To conduct a conflict.

(8) In law, the standard abbreviation for warrant (and in England, the county Warwickshire.

Pre 1150: The noun was from the Middle English werre, from the late Old English were, were & wyrre (large-scale military conflict) (which displaced the native Old English ġewinn), from the Old Northern French were & werre (variant of Old French guerre (difficulty, dispute; hostility; fight, combat, war)), from the Medieval Latin werra, from the Frankish werru (confusion; quarrel), from the Old Norse verriworse and was cognate with the Old High German werra (confusion, strife, quarrel), the German verwirren (to confuse), the Old Saxon werran (to confuse, perplex), the Dutch war (confusion, disarray) and the West Frisian war (defense, self-defense, struggle (also confusion).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wers- (to mix up, confuse, beat, perplex) and the Cognates are thought to suggest the original sense was "to bring into a state of confusion”.  The verb was from the Middle English, from the late Old English verb transitive werrien (to make war upon) and was derivative of the noun.  The alternative English form warre was still in use as late as the seventeenth century.

Developments in other European languages including the Old French guerrer and the Old North French werreier.  The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian guerra also are from the Germanic; why those speaking Romanic tongues turned to the Germanic for a word meaning "war" word is speculative but it may have been to avoid the Latin bellum (from which is derived bellicose) because its form tended to merge with bello- (beautiful).  Interestingly and belying the reputation later gained, there was no common Germanic word for "war" at the dawn of historical times.  Old English had many poetic words for "war" (wig, guð, heaðo, hild, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate Latin bellum was gewin (struggle, strife (and related to “win”).

Lindsay Lohan making the pages of Foreign Policy (FP), July 2007.  Despite the title, FP’s content is sometimes discursive and popular culture figures can appear.

Foreign Policy (FP) was in 1970 founded by Harvard’s Professor Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) and was always intended to be a clearing house for lively, punchy articles in the field of international relations yet not constrained by formal, academic traditions, exemplified by a magazine like Foreign Affairs, published by the US think-tank the Council on Foreign Relations.  Professor Huntington is best remembered for his “Clash of Civilizations” (CoC, 1993) theory which, noting one of threads in world history of the last 1300-odd years, argued the defining conflict of the future would between Western civilization and the multi-national Islamic world, the old order of wars between nation-states rendered obsolete by changes in technology and geopolitics.  The unusual period at the end of the Cold War (1946-1991) was a time of TLAs (three-letter acronym), the era remembered also for US political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s coining of the “End of History” (EoH, 1992) the thesis being that with Western liberal democracy prevailing over the Soviet communist model, the end-point of humanity’s search of the ideal political and economic systems had been reached and it was that Western liberal democracy which would be the universal form, history in that sense, thus ended.  Unfortunately, since the EoH was declared, wars, if no longer declared, have continued to be waged.

War-time appeared first in the late fourteenth century; the territorial conflicts against Native Americans added several forms including warpath (1775), war-whoop (1761), war-dance (1757), war-song (1757) & war-paint (1826) the last of which came often to be applied to war-mongering (qv) politicians (as in "putting on their war-paint"), a profession which does seem to attract blood-thirsty non-combatants.  War crimes, although widely discussed for generations, were first discussed in the sense of being a particular set of acts which might give rise to specific offences which could be codified in International Law: A Treatise (1906) by LFL Oppenheim (1858–1919).  The war chest dates from 1901 although even then it’s use was certainly almost always figurative; in the distant past there presumably had in treasuries been chests of treasure to pay for armies.  War games, long an essential part of military planning, came to English from the German Kriegspiel, the Prussians most advanced in such matters because the innovative structure of their general staff system.

In English, war is most productive as a modifier, adjective etc and examples include: Types of war: Cold War, holy war, just war, civil war, war of succession, war of attrition, war on terror etc; Actual wars: World War I, Punic Wars, First Gulf War, Korean War, Hundred Years' War, Thirty Years' War, Six-day War etc; Campaigns against various social problems: War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on cancer; The culture wars: War on Christmas, war on free speech; In commerce: Price wars, Cola Wars, turf war; In crime: turf war (also used in conventional commerce), gang war, Castellammarese War; In technology: Bus wars, operating system wars, browser wars; Various: pre-war, post-war, inter-war, man-o'-war, war cabinet, warhead, warhorse, warlord, war between the sexes, war bond, war reparations, war room.

Film set for the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).

Pre-war and post-war need obviously to be used in context; “pre-war” which in the inter-war years almost always meant pre-1914, came after the end of WWII to mean pre-1939 (even in US historiography).  “Post-war” tracked a similar path and now probably means the years immediately after WWII, the era generally thought to have ended (at the latest) in 1973 when the first oil shock ended the long boom.  Given the propensity over the centuries for wars between (tribes, cities, kings, states etc) to flare up from time to time, there have been many inter-war periods but the adjective inter-war didn’t come into wide use until the 1940s when it was used exclusively to describe the period (1918-1939) between the world wars.  The phrase “world war”, although tied to the big, multi-theatre conflicts of the twentieth century, had been used speculatively as early as 1898, then in the context of the US returning the Philippines (then a colonial possession) to Spain, trigging European war into which she might be drawn.  “Word War” (referring to the 1914-1918 conflict which is regarded as being “world-wide” since 1917 when the US entered as a belligerent) was used almost as soon as the war started but “Great War” continued to be the preferred form until 1939 when used of “world war” spiked; World War II came into use even before Russian, US & Japanese involvement in 1941.  For as long as there have been the war-like there’s presumably been the anti-war faction but the adjectival anti-war (also antiwar) came into general use only in 1812, an invention of American English, in reference to opposition to the War of 1812, the use extending by 1821 to describe a position of political pacifism which opposed all war.  War-monger (and warmonger) seems first to have appeared in Edmund Spenser’s (circa 1552-1599) Faerie Queene (1590) although it’s possible it may have prior currency.  The warhead was from 1989, used by engineers to describe the "explosive part of a torpedo", the use later transferred during the 1940s to missiles.  The warhorse, attested from the 1650s, was a "powerful horse ridden into war", one selected for strength and spirit and the figurative sense of "seasoned veteran" of anything dates from 1837.  The (quasi-offensive though vaguely admiring) reference to women perceived as tough was noted in 1921.

Man-o'-war (also as man-of-war) was an old form meaning "fighting man, soldier" while the meaning "armed ship, vessel equipped for warfare" was from the late fifteenth century and was one of the primary warships of early-modern navies, the sea creature known as the Portuguese man-of-war (1707) so called for its sail-like crest.  The more common form was “man o' war”.  The Cold War may have started as early as 1946 but certainly existed from some time in 1947-1948; it was a form of "non-hostile belligerency” (although the death–toll in proxy-wars fought for decades on its margins was considerable);  it seems first to have appeared in print in October 1945 in a piece by George Orwell (1903—1950).  The companion phrase “hot war” is actually just a synonym for “war” and makes sense only if used in conjunction with “cold war”.  The cold war was memorably defined by Lord Cherwell (Professor Frederick Lindemann, 1886–1957) as “two sides for years counting their missiles”.

On June 6, 2025, Friedrich Merz (b 1955, German chancellor since 2025) visited the White House.  He mentioned the war!  Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) would have been pleased by that because his aides would repeatedly have told him: “Don’t mention the war!”

The chancellor’s reference was to “D-Day”, the Allied amphibious invasion of France on 6 June, 1944 and coincidently, the chancellor was born 11 November 1955, 37 years to the day after the signing of the armistice which ended World War I (1914-1918); the eleventh of November is now marked as “Remembrance Day” in the Commonwealth and “Veterans Day” in the US.  The D-Day invasion was the Allies biggest single combined operation of World War II (1939-1945) and remains the largest triphibious invasion in the history of warfare.  The portmanteau adjective triphibious was a blend of tri-(three) +‎ (am)phibious and referred to the combined use of air, naval and ground forces.  The tri- prefix was from the Latin tri- (three) and the Ancient Greek τρι- (tri-) (three) while amphibious was from the Ancient Greek ἀμφίβιος (amphíbios), the construct being ἀμφί (amphí) (in this context “about, concerning”) + βίος (bíos) (life).  Military historians like triphibious but not all etymologists approve.

A civil war (battles among fellow citizens or within a community (as opposed to between tribes, cities, nations etc)) is civil in the sense of "occurring among fellow citizens" and the term dates from the fourteenth century batayle ciuile (civil battle), the exact phrase “civil war” attested from late fifteenth century in the Latin bella civicus.  In Ancient Rome, the rather nasty squabbles between the Optimates and the Senate Elites were known as bellum civile but should in English be understood as “governance war” because what was being described was a factional power-struggle for the control of Rome rather than a “civil war” as it is now understood.  The instances of what would now be called civil war pre-date antiquity but the early references typically were in reference to ancient Rome where the conflicts were, if not more frequent, certainly better documented.  A word for the type of conflict in the Old English was ingewinn and in Ancient Greek it had been polemos epidemios.

The struggle in England between the parliament and Charles I (1600-1649) has always and correctly been known as the English Civil War (1642-1651) whereas there are scholars who insist the US Civil War (1861-1865) should rightly be called the “War of Secession”, the “war between the States" or the “Federal-Confederate War”.  None of the alternatives ever managed great traction and “US Civil War” has long been the accepted form although, when memories were still raw, if there was ever a disagreement, the parties seem inevitability to have settled on “the War”.  The phrases pre-war and post-war are never applied the US Civil War, the equivalents being the Latin forms ante-bellum (literally “before the war”) and post-bellum (literally “after the war”).  The word “civil” of course is used in other ways and there has rarely be much that in another sense is “civil” about civil wars so when fought in what is thought to be in accordance with the “rules of war”, phrases like “chivalrous war” or “clean war” tend to be used although however fought, wars are a ghastly business are there are simply degrees of awfulness.

Colonel Nasser, president of Egypt, Republic Square, Cairo, 22 February 1958.

During the centuries when rules were rare, wars were not but there was little discussion about whether or not a war was happening.  There would be debates about the wisdom of going to war or the strategy adopted but whether or not it was a war was obvious to all.  That changed after the Second World War when the charter of the United Nations was agreed to attempt to ensure force would never again be used as a means of resolving disputes between nations.  That's obviously not been a success but the implications of the charter have certainly affected the language of conflict, much now hanging on whether an event is war or something else which merely looks like war.  An early example of the linguistic lengths to which those waging war (a thing of which they would have boasted) would go, in the post-charter world, to deny they were at war happened after British, French and Israeli forces in 1956 invaded Egypt in response to Colonel Gamal Nasser's (1918–1970; president of Egypt 1954-1970) nationalization of foreign-owned Suez Canal Company.  The invasion was a military success but it soon became apparent that Israel, France and Britain were, by any standards, waging an aggressive war and had conspired, ineptly, to make it appear something else.  The United States threatened sanctions against Britain & France and the invading forces withdrew.  There's always been the suspicion that in the wake of this split in the Western Alliance, the USSR seized the opportunity to intervene in Hungary which was threatening to become a renegade province.

Suez Canal, 1956.

In the House of Commons (Hansard: 1 November 1956 (vol 558 cc1631-7441631)), the prime minister (Anthony Eden, 1897–1977, UK prime-minister 1955-1957) was asked to justify how what appeared to be both an invasion and an act of aggressive war could be in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.  Just to jog the prime-minister's memory of the charter, the words he delivered at the UN's foundation conference in San Francisco in 1945 were read out: “At intervals in history mankind has sought by the creation of international machinery to solve disputes between nations by agreement and not by force.”  In reply, Mr Eden assured the house there had been "...no declaration of war by us.", a situation he noted prevailed for the whole of the Korean War and while there was in Egypt clearly "...a state of armed conflict...", just as in Korea, "...there was no declaration of war.  It was never admitted that there was a state of war, and Korea was never a war in any technical or legal sense, nor are we at war with Egypt now."

Quite how the comparison with Korea, a police action under the auspices of the UN and authorized by the Security Council (the USSR was boycotting the place at the time) was relevant escaped many of the prime-minister's critics.  The UK had issued an ultimatum to Egypt regarding the canal which contained conditions as to time and other things; the time expired and the conditions were not accepted.  It was then clear in international law that in those circumstances the country which delivers the ultimatum is not entitled to carry on hostilities without a declaration of war so the question was what legal justification was there for an invasion?  The distinction between a “state of war" and a "state of armed conflict", whatever its relevance to certain technical matters, seemed not to matter in the fundamental question of the lawfulness of the invasion under international law.  Mr Eden continued to provide many answers but none to that question.

The aversion to declaring war continues to this day, the United States, hardly militarily inactive during the last eight-odd decades, last declared war in 1942 (against Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria & Romania, the latter three apparently at the insistence of the state department which identified certain legal technicalities).  There seems no an aversion even to the word, the UK not having had a secretary of state (minister) for war since 1964 and the US becoming (nominally) pacifist even earlier, the last secretary of war serving in 1947; the more UN-friendly “defense” the preferred word on both sides of the Atlantic.  In the Kremlin, Mr Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999) seems also have come not to like the word.  While apparently sanguine at organizing “states of armed conflict”, he’s as reluctant as Mr Eden to hear his “special military operations” described as “invasions” or “wars” and in a recent legal flourish, arranged the passage of a law which made “mentioning the war” unlawful.

Not mentioning the war (special military operation): Mr Putin.

The bill which the Duma (lower house of parliament) & Federation Council (upper house) passed, and the president rapidly signed into law, provided for fines or imprisonment for up to fifteen years in the Gulag for intentionally spreading “fake news” or “discrediting the armed forces”, something which includes labelling the “special military operation” in Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion”.  Presumably, given the circumstances, the action could be described as a “state of armed conflict” and even Mr Putin seems to have stopped calling it a “peacekeeping operation”; he may have thought the irony too subtle for the audience.  Those who post or publish anything on the matter will be choosing their words with great care so as not to mention the war.

However, although Mr Putin may not like using the word “war”, there’s much to suggest he’s a devotee of the to the most famous (he coined a few) aphorism of Prussian general & military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831): “War is the continuation of policy with other means.”  The view has many adherents and while some acknowledge its cynical potency with a weary regret, for others it has been a world view to pursue with relish.  In the prison diary assembled from the huge volume of fragments he had smuggled out of Spandau prison while serving the twenty year sentence he was lucky to receive for war crimes & crimes against humanity (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau, the Secret Diaries), pp 451 William Collins Inc, 1976), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recounted one of Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) not infrequent monologues and the enthusiastic concurrence by the sycophantic Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945):

"In the summer of 1939, On the terrace of the Berghof [Hitler’s alpine retreat], Hitler was pacing back and forth with one of his military adjutants. The other guests respectfully withdrew to the glassed-in veranda.  But in the midst of an animated lecture he was giving to the adjutant, Hitler called to us to join him on the terrace. “They should have listened to Moltke and struck at once” he said, resuming the thread of his thought, “as soon as France recovered her strength after the defeat in 1871.  Or else in 1898 and 1899.  America was at war with Spain, the French were fighting the English at Fashoda and were at odds with them over the Sudan, and England was having her problems with the Boers in South Africa, so that she would soon have to send her army in there.  And what a constellation there was in 1905 also, when Russia was beaten by Japan.   The rear in the East no threat, France and England on good terms, it is true, but without Russia no match for the Reich militarily. It’s an old principle: He who seizes the initiative in war has won more than a battle.  And after all, there was a war on!”  Seeing our stunned expressions, Hitler threw in almost irritably: “There is always a war on. The Kaiser [Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918)] hesitated too long."

Such epigrams usually transported Ribbentrop into a state of high excitement.  At these moments it was easy to see that he alone among us thought he was tracking down, along with Hitler, the innermost secrets of political action.  This time, too, he expressed his agreement with Hitler with that characteristic compound of subservience and the hauteur of an experienced traveller whose knowledge of foreign ways still made an impression on Hitler.  Ribbentrop’s guilt, that is, did not consist in his having made a policy of war on his own. Rather, he was to blame for using his authority as a supposed cosmopolite to corroborate Hider’s provincial ideas. The war itself was first and last Hitler’s idea and work.  “That is exactly what neither the Kaiser nor the Kaiser’s politicians ever really understood,” Ribbentrop was loudly explaining to everyone.  “There’s always a war on. The difference is only whether the guns are firing or not.  There’s war in peacetime too. Anyone who has not realized that cannot make foreign policy.”

Hider threw his foreign minister a look of something close to gratitude.  “Yes, Ribbentrop,” he said, “yes!"  He was visibly moved by having someone in this group who really understood him. “When the time comes that I am no longer here, people must keep that in mind.  Absolutely.”  And then, as though carried away by his insight into the nature of the historical process, he went on: “Whoever succeeds me must be sure to have an opening for a new war.  We never want a static situation where that sort of thing hangs in doubt In future peace treaties we must therefore always leave open a few questions that will provide a pretext.  Think of Rome and Carthage, for instance. A new war was always built right into every peace treaty. That's Rome for you! That's statesmanship.”

Pleased with himself, Hitler twisted from side to side, looking challengingly around the attentive, respectful circle.  He was obviously enjoying the vision of himself beside the statesmen of ancient Rome.  When he occasionally compared Ribbentrop with Bismarck—a comparison I myself sometimes heard him make—he was implying that he himself soared high above the level of bourgeois nationalistic policy.  He saw himself in the dimensions of world history. And so did we.  We went to the veranda.  Abruptly, as was his way, he began talking about something altogether banal."