Westphalia

Westphalia (pronounced west-fey-lee-uh or weat-feyl-yua)

(1) Of or relating to the historic north-west German region of Westphalia or its inhabitants (now a subdivision (landschaftsverband) of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony).

(2) A term in the Holy Roman Empire to describe the power of second sight for which the peasants of Westphalia were said to be noted.

(3) One of the major dialect groups of West Low German spoken in Westphalia.

(4) In geology, a European phase of the upper-Carboniferous period.

(5) A warm-blood horse bred in the Westphalia region.

(6) A term to describe the treaty (Peace of Westphalia) ending the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

(7) As “Westphalian”, a description of the international system of co-existing sovereign states said to have originated with the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and formalised first in the new political order created in Europe.

(8) As Westphalian ham (Westfälischer Schinken), a ham originally produced from acorn-fed pigs raised in the forests of Westphalia, Germany which subsequently was dry cured and later smoked over a mixture of beechwood and juniper branches.  In this form, they were sliced thinly and served without further cooking.  Westphalian ham is regarded still as a delicacy.

Circa 1200:  A regional & geographical name, from Middle Dutch falen, from Old French faillir (From Old French falir, from Vulgar Latin fallire, from Latin fallere, present active infinitive of fallo.)  The term "Westphalia" contrasts with the much less used term "Eastphalia", which roughly covers the south-eastern part of the present-day state of Lower Saxony, western Saxony-Anhalt and northern Thuringia

The nation-state and Westphalian sovereignty

Although never a part of the negotiations which culminated in the Peace of Westphalia which, in 1648, ended the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the concept of Westphalian (or state) sovereignty emerged and was refined over the subsequent three-hundred odd years.  The principle, one of the foundation concepts in international law, is that each state enjoys exclusive sovereignty within its territory, a principle upheld in its purest form in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Opinion of its desirably has always been contested, especially by those poor, misguided souls who attempt to inject ethics into international relations but as power-realist Henry Kissinger (B 1923, US national security advisor (1969-1975) & secretary of state 1973-1977)  noted, it was “a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight…[which depended on] states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and …[maintaining stability and a balance of power].”

Treaty of Westphalia in Münster, 24 October 1648, woodcut after a painting, circa 1900, by Fritz Grotemeyer (1864–1947).

The doctrine of absolute state sovereignty began most obviously to fray in the 1920s when the League of Nations (1920-1946) was formed, lawyers and political scientists there developing theories which, in certain circumstances, justified intervention in the affairs of sovereign states.  The League proved ineffectual in translating these theories and policies into effective action but the legal principles subsequently developed for the Nuremberg trials (1945-1946) provided the basis of the framework of what came to be called the “doctrine of the international community”, a school of thought which has produced both quasi-legal gestures such as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) and actual standing institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Ariana Grande (b 1993, left), Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, centre) and Lily Collins (b 1989) in ham-centric watercolor images from the Instagram page celebsonsandwiches.  Of the three, Ms Grande's “thinly sliced” creation is the closest in appearance to Westphalian ham which has something of an “uncooked” look.  In the usual sense of the word, Westphalian ham is, of course, “uncooked”.

Droste

Droste (pronounced dross-tee)

(1) A surname of Germanic origin.

(2) An object displaying the Droste effect.

1904: The Droset effect is named after an image of a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate and the box, the image thus replicating.  The Droste brand was from the Netherlands and was founded in 1863 by Gerardus Johannes Droste (1836-1923), the image was designed by Jan Musset (1861–1931.  The packaging of the cocoa powder was first used in 1904.  The surname’s origin was in the German province of Westphalia, the name derived from the Old German drotsete, derived from the elements truth (body of servants) and sizzen (to preside).  The surname Droste thus denotes a head servant or steward, in charge of a nobleman's household servants.  The first known instance of the name appearing in records was found in Schweinheim, Westphalia in 1335.  The variations in the spelling of the name included Droste, Drost, Droz, Drossate, Drossaerd, Drossärd, Drossart and others.  Droste is a proper noun, a noun and an an adjective; the noun plural is Drostes.

A box of Droste cocoa powder, which demonstrates the effect to which it lent the name.

In French, the equivalent term is mise-en-abyme (plural mise en abymes or mises en abyme), (literally “placement into abyss”).  Long familiar in art and advertising, it was first used as device of literary criticism by the French author André Gide (1869–1951), whose output was varied but in the field of literary criticism was usually comprehendible, unlike some of what would later emerge from Paris.  His private (in his case a relative term) life was less admired.  In literature, the expression of the idea varies from introspection to the interpolation of a version of the work into the work itself; a story within a story.  In its more arcane interpretations, it’s used in deconstructive literary criticism to explore the inter-textual consequences of language (language abstracted from the constructed “reality” of the text).

A visual representation of the original Droste in an infinite loop (choose loop option to run).  Depending on how one defines infinity, an actual Droste probably can’t exist because at some point the light reflecting to define the image would become a single photon and because light cannot be smaller than a photon, the loop must stop.  It can however be described to the point where the loop tends toward infinity because whatever the visual dimension might be, descriptively it can (as a mathematical expression) be halved.  Infinity itself, although it probably doesn’t exist, can also be described although perhaps not as an equation.

London based art design group Hipgnosis played with the idea for the album cover for Pink Floyd's Ummagumma (1969).

Gide was unusually helpful (compared by later French theorists) in provide explanations which could be understood and were genuinely deconstructive in a useful way.  He made clear for example that his allusion to the Droste effect in the visual arts (infinite regression of form) did not imply a direct application of the concept to literature; he was discussing the use of the representation of a work within a work and makes the point that pure regression within something like a novel would be an absurd loop.  Instead, his conception was of structural elements of a novel appearing within the text as a way a author can construct meaning by creating or resolving conflict.

In computing, the mechanics of the idea is expressed as a quine (a computer with no dependence of user (or third-party) input, the only output of which is a replicated copy of its own source code).  Usually called, "a self-replicating program", quine was coined by US physicist Douglas Hofstadter (b 1945) and appeared first in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979) in honor of US philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) who wrote widely about indirect self-reference.  Hofstadter’s core concept in Gödel, Escher, Bach is elusive but is probably best understood as revolving around the interplay of loops in the mathematical structures in art, music and language.  It is not an easy read.

Tyrannicide

Tyrannicide (pronounced ti-ran-uh-sahyd or tahy- ran-uh-sahyd)

(1) The act of killing a tyrant.

(2) A person who kills a tyrant.

1640-1650: From the French tyrannicide, from the Latin tyrrannicīdium & tyrannicīda, the construct being tryant +‎ -cide.  Tryant was from the Middle English ttyraun, tiraunt, tyrant & tyrante, from the Old French tyrant, constructed with the addition of a terminal -t to tiran (from the Middle French tyran (a tryant or bully), from the Latin tyrannus (despot (source also of the Spanish tirano and the Italian tiranno)), from the Ancient Greek τύραννος (túrannos) (usurper, monarch, despot) of uncertain origin but which some have speculated may be a loan -word from a language of Asia Minor (perhaps Lydian); some etymologists compare it to the Etruscan Turan (mistress, lady (and the surname of Venus)).  The evolutionary process was via a back-formation related to the development of French present participles out of the Latin -ans form, thus the unetymological spelling with -t arose in Old French by analogy with present-participle endings in -ant.  The feminine form tyranness seems first to have been documented in 1590, perhaps derived from the Medieval Latin tyrannissa, although whether this emerged from courtiers in palaces or husbands in more humble abodes isn’t recorded.  The plural was tryants.

In Archaic Greece, tryant was a technical rather than a casually descriptive term, applied to a usurper (one who gains power and rules extra-legally, distinguished from kings elevated by election or natural succession), something discussed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) in his landmark The Social Contract (1762) in which he noted “they applied it indifferently to good and bad princes whose authority was not legitimate”.  It’s now used to describe a despot; a ruler who governs unjustly, cruelly, or harshly and, by extension, any person in a position of authority who abuses the power of their position or office to treat others unjustly, cruelly, or harshly.  In Greece, a ruler (tyrannical or otherwise) was variously the archon, basileus or aisymnetes; an unjust ruler or superior is typically now called autocrat, dictator, despot or martinet.  What Rousseau didn’t dwell on was that while in the Greek tradition, the word was not applied to old hereditary sovereignties (basileiai) and despotic kings, it was used of usurpers, even when popular, moderate, and just (the most celebrated in the surviving histories being Cypselus of Corinth in the seventh century BC) but, presumably by unfortunate association, it soon became a word of reproach in the modern sense.  A hint of this may be found in the way in Greek theatre of the fourth century BC, cherished pathos in regard to tyrannicide.  The noun plural was tyrannicides.

The suffix –cide was from the From Middle French -cide, from the Latin -cīda (cutter, killer), from -cīdium (killing), from caedō (to cut, hew, kill) and was a noun-forming suffix denoting “an act of killing or a slaughter”, “one who kills” or “one who cuts” from the appropriate nouns stems.  In English, the alternative form was –icide.

Tyrannicide is a noun.  The adjective tyrannous (of tyrannical character) was from the late fifteenth century whereas the now more common adjective tyrannical dates from the 1530s from the Classical Latin tyrannicus (arbitrary, despotic), from the Ancient Greek tyrannikos (befitting a despot) from tyrannos.  The adjectival variation tyrannic was used in this sense from the late fifteenth century and the companion adverb was tyrannically.  The adjective tyrannicidal was a creation of the mid-1800s which gained a new popularity in the next century when examples abounded.  The late fourteenth century noun tyranny (cruel or unjust use of power; the government of a tyrant) was from the thirteenth century Old French tyranie, from the Late Latin tyrannia (tyranny), from the Ancient Greek tyrannia (rule of a tyrant, absolute power) from tyrannos (master).

The tyrannosaurus (carnivorous Cretaceous bipedal dinosaur) was named in 1905 and came to public attention the following year when US paleontologist, geologist (and enthusiastic eugenicist) Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) who coined the term, published his research in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, the construct being the Ancient Greek tyrannos + -saurus (from the Ancient Greek σαῦρος (saûros) (lizard, reptile)).  The now familiar abbreviation T-Rex appears not to have been used before 1970 when it was adopted as the name of a pop-group.  In the avian branch of zoology, tyrant birds are members of the family Tyrannidae, which often fight or drive off other birds which approach their nests which seems a bit of a slur.

In the early days of Antiquity, tyrannicide was a part of the political process and rather than being thought of as what would now be called a “criminal” act, it was just another method of transferring power.  As societies evolved and recognizable civilizations emerged from competing cultures, attitudes did change and tyrannicide began to be regarded as a form of murder which might be self-justifying depending on the context and the degree of tyranny eradicated although Aristotle did distinguish between those who committed tyrannicide for personal gain and those (rare) disinterested souls who did it for the good of the community.

However intricately philosophers and legal theorists added the layer of nuance, tyrannicide (many of which were of course also acts of regicide ("the killing of a king" (used also for assassinated queens, ruling princes etc) or "one who does the killing", from the Latin rēgis (king (genitive singular of rēx)) +‎ -cide (killer), patterned after suicide, tyrannicide etc) remained a popular and expedient way to hasten dynastic or political change.  It could be said the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) and established the principle that the religion a ruler choose to adopt for himself and his nation was a purely internal matter and not one to be changed by foreign intervention, represented the beginning of an international law which would come to outlaw the assassinations of rulers, tyrants or not.  That however is a retrospective view and not one at the time discussed.

Nor would legal niceties have been likely much to influence those who would wish to kill a tryant, some of whom have even claimed some justification under natural law.  Whether Brutus (85-42 BC) ever uttered the phrase Sic semper tyrannis (thus always to tyrants) after stabbing Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) or not (as the historian Plutarch (46-circa 122) maintained), it resonated through history, John Wilkes Booth, noting in his diary that he shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" after killing Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865) in 1865.  History doesn’t record if the words were on the lips of those who either attempted or succeeded in dispatching Adolf Hitler (1944), Benito Mussolini (1945), Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García (1956), the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo (1961), South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee (1979), President Anwar Sadat of Egypt (1981), Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah (1996) & Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (2011), but it can be imagined they weren’t far from the assassins’ thoughts.

International law did however evolve to the point where the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons was presented in 1973, coming into force in 1977 and eventually ratified by 180 countries.  Although the convention was inspired by a spike in the assassination of diplomats in the early 1970s, the protection was extended to tyrants, the wording of the relevant clause being in Article 1a which declared that the ranks of “internationally protected persons” included:

A Head of State, including any member of a collegial body performing the functions of a Head of State under the constitution of the State concerned, a Head of Government or a Minister for Foreign Affairs, whenever any such person is in a foreign State, as well as members of his family who accompany him.

While it’s true Libya’s ratification of the convention didn’t save Colonel Gaddafi from becoming a victim of tyrannicide, he would at least have died knowing he was being assassinated in contravention of a UN convention.  Whether Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) was either explicitly calling for or hinting that an act of tyrannicide should be visited upon Vladimir Putin excited much interest recently when the US president labeled his Russian counterpart as a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power”.  It certainly could be construed as a call for Mr Putin’s “removal”, despite the White House in recent weeks having repeatedly emphasized that regime change in Russia is not US policy.  “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” Mr Biden said at the end of his speech in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, an unscripted sentiment he apparently added in the heat of the moment.

Methods of tyrannicide vary: this is the kiss of death.

It took only minutes for the White House damage-control team to scramble, playing down the remarks with a Kafkaesque assertion that the president “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change” but was instead making the point that Putin “…cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”  Within the Washington DC’s Capital Beltway the internal logic of the distinction makes complete sense, the White House insisting, a la the Barry Goldwater (1909–1998; Republican presidential candidate 1964) school of clarity of expression that what matters is not what Mr Biden says but what he means and they’re here to explain that.  Perhaps the staff should give Mr Biden a list of helpful ways of advocating tyrannicide.  Arthur Calwell (1896–1973; Leader of the Australian Labor Party 1960-1967) didn’t escape controversy when he called for “the visitation of the angel of death” upon the tyrannical Archbishop Daniel Mannix (1864–1963; Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne 1917-1963) but it was more poetic than Mr Biden’s efforts and Calwell, if accused of advocating tyrannicide, could point out he was calling merely for episcopicide (the killing of a bishop, the construct being the Latin episcopus (bishop in a Christian church who governs a diocese), from the Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος (epískopos) (overseer), the construct being ἐπί (epí) (over) + σκοπός (skopós) (watcher, lookout, guardian) +‎ -cide), something with a long if not always noble tradition.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (b 1962; US secretary of state since 2021), noted for his precision of oral expression, followed up by saying it wasn’t the intention of Mr Biden to topple Mr Putin.  “The president made the point last night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else” Mr Blinken said while speaking in Jerusalem on Sunday, adding that “the US did not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else”.  It’s “… up to the people of the country in question… the Russian people”.

Given the context of Mr Biden’s speech, it wasn’t difficult to understand why it aroused such interest.  Earlier, he’d called the invasion of Ukraine an act of aggression “… nothing less than a direct challenge to the rule-based international order established since the end of World War II” and that the valiant resistance of the Ukrainian people was a “battle for freedom” and the world must prepare for a “long fight ahead”.  “We stand with you,” he told Ukrainians in the speech which had begun with the famous words of the Polish Pope Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005): “Be not afraid”, a phrase associated with a earlier call for regime change within the countries of what was then the Warsaw Pact.  In remarks addressed directly to citizens of Russia, he added: This war is not worthy of you, the Russian people”.

The Kremlin’s displeasure at the remarks was soon expressed, prompting the White House cleaners to explain that what Mr Biden said was not what he meant and by Sunday the president appeared to be back on-message.  When asked by a reporter if he was calling for regime change in the Kremlin, he answered: “No”.

Forms in English constructed with the suffix –cide.

Deliquesce

Deliquesce (pronounced del-i-kwes)

(1) In physical chemistry, to become liquid by absorbing moisture from the atmosphere and dissolving in it (best illustrated by the behavior of certain salts).

(2) To melt away; to disappear (used literally & figuratively).

(3) In botany, branching so the stem is lost in branches (as is typical in deciduous trees).

(4) In mycology (of the fruiting body of a fungus), becoming liquid as a phase of its life cycle.

1756: From the Latin dēliquēscere (to become liquid), the construct being dē- + liquēscere (to liquefy; liquescent).  In scientific literature, the adjective deliquescent (liquefying in air) is the most commonly used form.  It was from the Latin deliquescentem (nominative deliquescens), present participle of deliquescere (to melt away), the construct being de- + liquesco (I melt) and familiar in French also as déliquescent.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  In French the dé- prefix was used to make antonyms (as un- & dis- function in English) and was partially inherited from the Old and Middle French des-, from the Latin dis- (part), the ultimate source being the primitive Indo-European dwís and partially borrowed from Latin dē-.  The figurative sense of “apt to dissolve or melt away” was in use by 1837 while the verb deliquesce appears not to have been used thus until the late 1850s.  In scientific literature, the adjective deliquescent (liquefying in air) is the most commonly used form.  It was from the Latin deliquescentem (nominative deliquescens), present participle of deliquescere (to melt away), the construct being de- + liquesco (I melt) and familiar in French also as déliquescent.  The figurative sense of “apt to dissolve or melt away” was in use by 1837 while the verb deliquesce appears not to have been used thus until the late 1850s.    Deliquesce, deliquesced & deliquescing are verbs, deliquescent is an adjective, deliquescence is a noun and deliquescently is an adverb; the noun plural is deliquescences.

Deliquesce 1, oil on canvas by Tammy Flynn Seybold (b 1966).

This was the first in the Deliquesce Series, a group of works exploring the themes of transformation and conservation of energy in human forms, the artist noting being intrigued by the deceptively ephemeral nature of materials: “We think of objects - human forms included - as decaying, degrading or ‘disappearing’ but, as we know from the laws of thermodynamics, all energy is conserved - like matter, it is merely transformed from one form to another.  This work, painted with pastel-hued oils was made directly from a live model, the drips allowed organically to happen from her languid form and by using light, bright hues, I hoped to bring a spirit of optimism to this transformative process.”

A footnote to the addition of deliquesce to scientific English is a tale of the chance intersection of politics and chemistry.  Dr Charles Lucas (1713–1771) was an Anglo-Irish physician who held the seat of Dublin City in the Irish Parliament and was what now would be called “a radical”, dubbed at the time “Irish Wilkes” (a nod to the English radical politician John Wilkes (1725–1797).  His early career was as an apothecary and he was shocked discover the fraud and corruption which permeated the industry and in an attempt to reform the abuses published A Short Scheme for Preventing Frauds and Abuses in Pharmacy (1735) which much upset his fellow apothecaries who were the beneficiaries of the crooked ways but the parliament did respond and created legislation regulating standards in medicines and providing for the inspection of the products; it was the first of its kind in the English-speaking world and the ancestor of the elaborate framework of rules today administered by entities such as the US FDA (Food & Drug Administration.  Encouraged, he later published Pharmacomastix, or the Office, Use, and Abuse of Apothecaries Explained (1741), the contents of which were used by the parliament to make certain legislative amendments.

However, as well as a radical, Lucas was a idealist and while the establishment was content to support him in matter of pills and potions, when he intruded into areas which disturbed the political equilibrium, they were less tolerant and, facing imprisonment, Lucas fled to the continent where he’d decided to study medicine, graduating as a doctor in 1752.  One of his first projects as a physician was a study of the composition of certain mineral waters, substances then held to possess some remarkable curative properties (something actually not without some basis).  To undertake his research he visited a number of sites including Spa, Aachen in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia and Bath in the English county of Somerset.  The material he assembled and published as An Essay on Waters. In three Parts: (i) of Simple Waters, (ii) of Cold Medicated Waters, (iii) of Natural Baths (1756) and it was in this work that the verb “deliquesce” first appeared.  Ever the “disturber” Dr Lucas’s tract upset the medical establishment in much the same way two decades earlier he’d stirred the enmity of the apothecaries, the cluster of physicians clustered around the Bath spa angered the interloper hadn’t consulted with them on a topic over which they asserted proprietorship.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

In chemistry, the companion word of deliquescence is hygroscopy, both describing phenomena related to the ability of substances to absorb moisture from the surrounding environment, but they differ in extent and behavior.  Hygroscopy refers to the ability of a substance to absorb moisture from the air when exposed; hygroscopic substances can attract and hold water molecules onto their surface but tend not to dissolve.  Many salts behave thus and a well-known example of practical application is the silica gel, which, in small porous packages, is often used as a desiccant to absorb moisture in packaging. Deliquescence can be thought of an extreme form of hygroscopy (hydroscopy taken to its natural conclusion) in that a substance which deliquesces not only absorbs moisture from the air but also absorbs it to the point where it dissolves completely in the absorbed water, forming a solution.  In the natural environment, this happens most frequently when the relative humidity of the surrounding air is high and the classic deliquescent substances are salts like calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, zinc chloride, ferric chloride, carnallite, potassium carbonate, potassium phosphate, ferric ammonium citrate, ammonium nitrate, potassium hydroxide, & sodium hydroxide.  Presumably because deliquescence is the extreme form of hydroscopy it was the former which came to be used figuratively (dissolving into “nothing”) while the latter did not.

At the chemical level, hygroscopy (a class in which scientists include deliquescence as a sub-set) describes the phenomenon of attracting and holding water molecules via either absorption or adsorption (the adhesion of a liquid or gas on the surface of a solid material, forming a thin film on the surface.) from the surrounding environment.  Hygroscopy is integral to the biology of many plant and animal species' attainment of hydration, nutrition, reproduction and/or seed dispersal.  Linguistically, hygroscopy is quirky in that the construct is hygro- (moisture; humidity), from the Ancient Greek ὑγρός (hugrós) (wet, moist) + -scopy (observation, viewing), from the Ancient Greek σκοπέω (skopéō) (to see (and the source of the Modern English “scope”) yet unlike other forms suffixed by “-scopy”, it no longer conveys the sense of “viewing or imaging”.  Originally that was the case, a hygroscope in the late eighteenth century understood as a device used to measure humidity but in a wholly organic way this use faded (“dissolving deliquescently to nothing” as it were) while hygroscopic (tending to retain moisture) & hygroscopy (the ability to do so) endured.  The modern instrument used to measure humidity is hygrometer, the construct being hygro- + -meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices.

Palindrome

Palindrome (pronounced pal-in-drohm)

(1) A word, line, verse, number, sentence, etc, reading the same backward as forward.

(2) In biochemistry, a region of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides is identical with an inverted sequence in the complementary strand.

1638: From the Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palindromos) (running back again; recurring, literally “literally "a running back”) the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + δρόμος (dromos) (direction, running, race, racecourse).  Pálin was from the primitive Indo-European kwle-i-, a suffixed form of the root kwel- (revolve, move round) (kw- becomes the Greek p- before some vowels.  The word palindrome was first published by Henry Peacham (1578-circa 1645) in The Truth of Our Times (1638).  Although derived from the Greek root palin + dromos, the Greek language uses καρκινικός (carcinic, literally “crab-like”) to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.  The related palinal (directed or moved backward, characterized by or involving backward motion) dates from 1888.  Palindrome & palindromist are nouns, palindromically is an adverb and palindromic an adjective.

The noun palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire) dates from the 1590s and was from either the sixteenth century French palinod or the Late Latin palinodia, from the Greek palinōidia (poetic retraction), again from pálin; the related form were palinodical & palinodial.  The word palinode was sometimes applied to the apologia artists and others in the Soviet Union were compelled to publish, were they accused of formalism or something just as heinous.

Pierre Laval (1883–1945), the palindromic Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944.  He was executed by a French firing squad in 1945.

Perhaps surprisingly, the longest known palindromic word is not German despite their fondness for lengthy compounds.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records the record is held by the 19 character saippuakivikauppias which is Finnish for “a travelling salesman who sells lye (caustic soda)”.  It’s said not often to come up in conversation and seems to exist only a curiosity used to list the world’s longest known palindrome.  In English, palindromes of a few characters are common but examples with more than seven letters are rare.  Tattarrattat, as it’s usually spelled, has 12 characters but it’s a bit of a fudge because it’s also an onomatopoeia so some lexicographers insist it doesn’t count.  Tattarrattat is the sound made by knocking on a door.  Also cheating but clever is the 11 letter aibohphobia meaning a fear of palindromes, the construct being the suffix -phobia + its reverse.  Adding to the charm is that it’s doubtless a non-existent condition, but it’s suspected there are a few of those in the literature of psychiatry.  From India, there's kinnikinnik, a smoking mixture of bark & leaves (but no tobacco.  English’s longest “real” palindrome appears to be detartrated, the past participle of detartrate (to remove tartrates (salts of tartaric acid), especially from fruit juices and wines, in order to reduce tartness or sourness).  Not only is it a real word but it describes a common process in the industrial production of foods and beverages.

Announced on an auspicious date.

On 2 February 2020, Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), in a now deleted Instagram post, for the first time publicly acknowledged her relationship with Bader Shammas (b 1987), a group photograph from Dubai, including the couple and her sister Aliana, captioned: "@aliana lovely night with sister and my boyfriend bader💗".  The couple would later marry.  2 February 2020 (02-02-2020) was the twenty-first century’s only eight-digit global palindrome (ie it works with either the MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY convention).  The last eight-digit global palindrome happened 908 years earlier on the even more numerically symmetrical 11 November 1111 (11-11-1111) and the next one will be 908 years hence on 3 March 3030 (03-03-3030).  Six and seven digit palindromes are more common.

Palindromic sentences are often created and these are judged not by length but by their elegance.  Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a word nerd and recreational mathematician who devised the classic "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and this approach was in the 1980s taken to its logical extreme in two novels, Satire: Veritas (1980, 58,795 letters) by David Stephens and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo (1986, 31,954 words) by Lawrence Levine, both said to be palindromically perfect and wholly nonsensical.  Shorter but of admirable clarity are the many baptismal fonts in Greece and Turkey which bear the circular 25-letter inscription NIYON ANOMHMATA MH MONAN OYIN (Wash (my) sins, not only (my) face).  This appears also in several English churches.

Sixteenth century German "oath skull" on which defendants swore their oaths in the Vehmic courts (the Vehmgericht, Holy Vehme or Vehm, the alternative spellings being Feme, Vehmegericht & Fehmgericht), a tribunal system established in Westphalia during the late Middle Ages.

Created essentially because of the inadequacies of the official justice system, they're now often referred to as "proto-vigilante" courts but for centuries they filled a niche before they came increasingly to be associated with injustice and corruption before finally being abolished in 1811, a half-decade after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the source of their original authority.

The pattern on the skull was based on a multi-directional palindromic grid created by some word nerds in Ancient Rome.  Later re-discovered etched onto a wall in the doomed city of Herculaneum, it reads Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas (The sower, Arepo, makes the wheel work) and it works whether read vertically, horizontally, or in the diagonal.  These types of palindromic squares are called pentacles and the SATOR was the most commonly found in the Western Esotericism of late antiquity.  They were used by Kabbalists, Gnostics, alchemists and other pre-medieval mystics in the creation of magic spells, amulets, potions etc and were thus often seen in the shops of apothecaries.

sator: sower/planter
tenet: he/she/they/it holds/has/grasps/possesses
opera: work/exertion/service
rotās: wheels

There has been speculation about the the meaning of this pentacle, some a little fanciful, but the consensus is things were made up just to fit, rather as "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined to use each letter in the alphabet and "DICK HOOD DID EXCEED" serves no purpose other than to appear the same if inverted and viewed in a mirror.  The truly palindromic “never odd or even” spelled backwards remains “never odd or even”.    

Cologne

Cologne (pronounced kuh-lohn)

(1) A Rhine River port and the largest city in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), commercially significant since ancient times.  The German name is Köln (formerly Cöln).

(2) A mildly perfumed toilet water originally the short form of eau de Cologne (Cologne water), made in Cologne since 1709.

(3) A general term for a perfumed liquid or solid made typically with 2-5% fragrant essential oils and 70-95% water & alcohol.

1709 (for the scent).  A short form of eau de Cologne (Cologne water), the name given to the original product in 1709 and such was the success of the original that imitators were soon legion and the product name (usually as bottled liquids) was by the mid-century generic.  The concoction was first brewed by Italian-born perfumier Giovanni Maria Farina (1685-1766) whose contribution to civility was by in 1844 noted in a dictionary as “a distilled spirit blended with certain essential oils so as to give off a fragrant scent”.  Founded in 38 BC as Oppidum Ubiorum, the city was renamed and made a colony in 50 AD at the request of the Emperor Claudius's (10 BC–54 AD; Roman emperor 41-54 AD) wife Agrippina the Younger (15-59 AD), becoming Colōnia Agrippīna (Agrippine Colony) in honor of his mother-in-law.  Colōnia (colony) was from colōnus (farmer; colonist), from colō (till, cultivate, worship), from quelō, from the primitive Indo-European kel (to move; to turn (around)).  From this came the French word for the city (Cologne) which seems to have been in general use in English by the early-mid eighteenth century.  Some historians Agrippina the Younger poisoned Claudius and if so, that suggests, at least, ingratitude.  By 450 AD, the name had been shortened to Colonia before eventually being Germanized, first as Cöln and later Köln.  Cologne & Cologner are proper nouns & nouns and cologned is an adjective; the noun plural is colognes.

The distinction between cologne and perfume is probably well-understood although there is some imprecision in use, the main differences being the in the concentration of fragrant oils and the intended use.  Cologne, typically contains a lower concentration of oils (usually 2-5%) which results in something lighter and less intense than other scents (most of which are now called perfume (also as Parfum or Extrait de Parfum) in which the concentration ranges most often between 15-40%.  Cologne can thus be fashioned as something subtle and refreshing and ideal for everyday wear although it’s generally not as long-lasting as perfume.  Perfumes are more intense (especially as concentrates) and can be long-lasting, their effect lingering even for hours.  As a general principle, cologne is used in greater volume although a number of perfumes are available as sprays and applied about as liberally whereas the classic concentrates should be daubed onto pulse points such as the wrists, neck and behind the ears.  Historically, cologne was thought of as something worn by men (often as a form of deodorant) rather than women but the products are now less gender-specific.

CColognes have long been marketed to women: Max Factor’s Primitif (1957 left) was explicitly labeled as cologne.  In the twenty-first century, fcuk’s friction (for him) and her (for her) were colognes but described in the marketing material as Eau De Toilette.  The fcuk advertising copy which accompanied the Lindsay Lohan campaign read: "an ultra feminine mix of hypnotic fruity florals and tantalizingly seductive vanilla that penetrate the senses.  its velvety coconut and sensual warmth will keep him coming back for more." (Original syntax in the fcuk style as printed)

Perhaps surprisingly, the European Union (EU) seems never to have sought to impose restrictions on the use of the term “cologne” in the same way they’ve successfully protected geographical indications (GI) like Cognac, Champagne, Parma Ham et al.  Geographical indications (GIs) are protected under EU law to prevent misuse and imitation of traditional products with a specific geographical origin (especially if traditional methods of production are involved).  The rationale is that protection helps maintain the quality and reputation of these products and supports the local communities involved in their production and the EU does not seek to prevent winemakers anywhere making champagne (anyone free to adopt méthode champenoise); they insist only it can’t be marketed as “Champagne”.  Cologne has never been afforded this protection because of the long history of use, both in Europe and around the world.  It long ago became generic.

Cologne Capris leading and following a BMW CSL “Batmobile”, European Touring Car Championship, Salzburgring, 1974.

The Ford “Cologne Capris” used to contest European touring car racing in the 1970s were so named because while Ford of England focused on the international rally championships, the Cologne-based arm of Ford Europe prepared the cars for use on the circuits.  The first version was a fairly modest (by later standards) modification of the RS 2600 which used a 2.6 litre (158 cubic inch) version of the German built V6 which over time was gradually increased in capacity to take advantage of the three litre (183 cubic inch) class limit.  With exotic cylinder heads and a rear suspension which somehow complied with the letter of the law while obviously being a clause passing through a loophole, it was at once successful but Ford’s spies were aware BMW was preparing one of the era’s great homologation specials, the be-winged 3.0 CSL which, powerful and significantly lightened, so gained the nickname “Batmobile”.

Cologne Capris and BMW CSL “Batmobiles”, European Touring Car Championship, Nürburgring, 1974.

The lawyers at in Munich proved as adept as those in Cologne at reading the rulebook and increased the production CSL’s engine displacement to just over three litres, permitting a larger capacity version to be used in competition and the factory produced a 3.5 litre version of the straight-six for the track.  Ford’s answer was a run of 3.1 litre (189 cubic inch) V6 Capris as road cars which meant a 3.4 litre (207 cubic inch) version could be built for competition.  Based this time on the English “Essex” V6, to meet the BMW threat it was fitted with double overhead camshaft (DOHC) heads with four valves per cylinder, a configuration BMW would soon match.  The competition between the Cologne Capris and the Batmobiles was much anticipated as all the ingredients for a stellar season were in place but unfortunately the contests were rare because the Oil Crisis of 1973-1974 meant both Ford and BMW scaled down their competition departments and Ford in late 1974 cancelled the entire programme, the Batmobiles, now with less opposition, continuing to enjoy success on both sides of the Atlantic for several more seasons.