Amid

Amid (pronounced uh-mid)

(1) In the middle of; surrounded by; among.

(2) During; in or throughout the course of.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English amidde, from the Old English amiddan, from on middan (in (the) middle), the construct being a- + mid.  The a- prefix was used to create many words (apace, astern, abeam, afire, aboil, asunder etc) but is considered now rare or no longer productive; It implied a sense of “in”, “on” or “at such a time” and was used to show those states, conditions, or manners.  It came from the Middle English a- (up, out, away), from the Old English ā- (originally ar- & or-, from the Proto-Germanic uz- (out-), from the primitive Indo-European uds- (up, out) and was cognate with the Old Saxon ā- and the German er-.  Mid and its variations in every known European language (except Icelandic) never meant anything but middle.  The root of the Modern English form is the Middle English mid & midde, from the Old English midd (mid, middle, midway), from the Proto-Germanic midjaz, from the primitive Indo-European médhyos.  It was cognate with the Dutch midden, the German Mitte, the Icelandic miður (worse, less) and the Latin medius.

Amid, amidst and among

Amid is a preposition, a type of word that shows certain kinds of relationships between other words; it has peacefully coexisted with amidst for some seven-hundred years.  Amid has two meanings, the first expresses a kind of physical relationship such as “in the middle of; surrounded by; among.”  This second sense can show a relationship between things in time or convey the idea that something is taking place against the backdrop or background of something else as in “during, in or throughout the course of.”

Amidst, dating from 1250-1300 and derived from the Middle English amiddes, means the same thing as amid and one can substitute for the other without a sentence changing meaning.  Both amid and amidst are thus correct, the former more common in both American and British English although the Americans are slightly more fond of the latter.

It’s an example of the profligacy of English, preserving two words when one would do.  Amid is the older, recorded before 1000, developing from the Old English on middan which begat first the Middle English amidde and then amid.  Amidst appeared between 1250–1300, drawn from the Middle English amides, the –s in amiddes representing a suffix English once used to form adverbs, this strange –s also producing some less common adverbs, such as unawares.  The “t” in the –st suffix is called a parasitic or excrescent –t, technical terms in phonetics to describe a sound inserted to reflect how people find it most easy to pronounce another sound, not because the added sound has any historic or grammatical reason (against, amongst, and whilst are other examples) to exist.

However, “among” is also a preposition but one with more senses than amid.  One of its meanings is “in, into, or through the midst of; in association or connection with; surrounded by” which overlaps with amid & amidst so English offers three similar words which can mean the same thing.  Among however is not wholly interchangeable with the other two.  Although “…a house amid the trees”; “…a house amidst the trees” & “a house among the trees” are all correct, it’s wrong to say either “FDR assumed the presidency among the Great Depression” or “…exercise is amid the things part of a healthy diet”.

Lindsay Lohan's strangely neglected film Among the Shadows (Momentum Pictures, 2019) was also released in some markets as The Shadow Within.  It's not known what prompted the change (although there was a film in 2007 called The Shadow Within) but the original name was certainly preferable to either Amid the Shadows or Amidst the Shadows, not because the latter two impart a different meaning but because "among" better suits the rhythm of the phrase.  "Among" probably was best; "amid" might have worked but "amidst" would have troubled some because that excrescent –t makes difficult a phonetic run-on to "the".  Given the two titles under which the film was distributed have quite different meanings, presumably either the title is incidental to the content or equally applicable.  A dark and gloomy piece about murderous werewolves and EU politicians (two quite frightening species), perhaps both work well and no reviewer appears to have commented on the matter and given the tone of the reviews, it seems unlikely there'll be a sequel to resolve things.

International

International (pronounced in-ter-nash-uh-nl)

(1) Between or among nations; involving two or more nations.

(2) Of or relating to two or more nations or their citizens.

(3) Pertaining to the relations between nations.

(4) Any of the four international socialist or communist organizations formed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with initial capital letter).

(5) A labor union having locals in two or more countries.

(6) An organization, enterprise, or group, especially a major business concern, having branches, dealings, or members in several countries (often styled as multi-national or multinational).

(7) An employee, especially an executive, assigned to work in a foreign country or countries by a business or organization that has branches or dealings in several countries.

(8) A casual term for sporting matches played between national teams in many sports (rugby, cricket, football eta al) and applied also to individuals selected for those contests.

1780: A compound word, inter + national, coined apparently by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham  (1748-1832) in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1870) and appears also in A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace (1786–1789) which forms part IV of the Principles of International Law.  Inter was from the Latin inter (between, amid), a form of prepositional inter (between).  Nation existed in Middle English as nacioun and nacion, borrowed from Old French nation, nacion and nasion (nation), from the Latin nātiōnem, accusative of nātiō and gnātiō (nation, race, birth) from natus & gnatus, past participle stem of nasci & gnasci (to be born).  In displaced the native Middle English when it emerged as theode, thede (nation), from the Old English þēod, the Middle English burthe (birth, nation, race, nature) and the Middle English leod, leode, lede (people, race), all ultimately from the Old English root lēod.  Variations of nation exist in most European languages including the Saterland Frisian nation, the West Frisian naasje, the Dutch natie, the Middle Low German nacie and the German, Danish and Swedish nation.

The socialist hymn The Internationale was written in 1871 by French anarchist (and confessed freemason) Eugène Pottier (1816-1887) and the International Date Line (IDL) was first standardized in 1884 (although it's since been tinkered with for reasons reasons both administrative and opportunistic).  Multinational, in the sense of trans-national corporations was first noted in 1921 and is often used in a derogatory manner; when CEO of Ford Motor Company in the mid-1970s, Lee Iacocca (1924-2019) was sensitive to this and said he preferred the term internationalism.  That never caught on, probably because it had traditionally been a word associated with the left and fellow travelers with faith first in the League of Nations (LN; 1920-1946) and subsequently the United Nations (UN; 1945). 

The Internationals

The International Workingmen's Association (later known as the First International) was an international structure intended to unite a myriad of anarchist, socialist and communist political groups with the still embryonic trade union movements.  Essentially, it was meant to be a broad, left-wing, working-class organization devoted to bringing the class struggle to fruition.  Founded in 1864, it quickly gained a membership of millions but, by 1872, communist and anarchist factions had split the movement; it was dissolved in 1876.

The Second International was formed in 1889 as a grouping of the newly-created socialist and labour political parties.  Although emblematic of the utopian spirit in the workers’ parties of the pre-1914 world, the Second International did attempt to construct coherent platforms and was in some way a precursor of the march through the institutions approach three generations later.  They attempted to exclude from their councils the anarcho-syndicalists and unionists who had splintered the First International but in this had limited success.  The Second International was dissolved in 1916 amid much rancor, both about (1) the way leaders of labour parties seemed anxious to collaborate with the capitalists becoming, in effect, a stratum above the working class and (2) the way, on nationalist grounds, they supported their own bourgeois in the bloody slaughter of the First World War.

The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International was formed in 1919 as an outgrowth of the creation of the Soviet Union and, in its original formation, advocated world communism.  This was to be achieved by “…all available means, including armed force” and aimed to overthrow the international bourgeoisie to be replaced by an international soviet republic as a transitional phase before the “…complete abolition of the state".  The vicissitudes of history gradually wore this down to the point where Soviet practice, if not orthodoxy, had become “socialism in one state”.  Ostensibly to improve relations with London and Washington (although his motives were influenced more by a desire to weaken parts of the communist movement), Comrade Stalin unexpectedly dissolved the Third International in 1943.

Comrade Stalin & Comrade Trotsky.

The Fourth International was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), directly to oppose what Soviet communism had become under Comrade Stalin (1878-1953) which Comrade Trotsky considered counter-revolutionary and essentially a fascist state under the control of a bureaucratic elite directed by Stalin.  The Fourth International suffered its own splits and, despite attempts at re-unification, no longer exists as a single trans-national grouping.  However, with its inherently anti-authoritarian core, the doctrines of the Fourth International retain a popular, almost romantic following and around the planet there exist Trotskyite groups for those attracted by the defense of workers' internationalism.  Comrade Stalin had Comrade Trotsky assassinated in 1940; the murder weapon an ice-axe.  In the way of these things, calls for a fifth international were heard only months after the formation of the Fourth.  Indeed, in response to the increasingly plaintive cries, over the decades, several were announced but all soon withered away.  Still longed for by a handful, the movements seem never to have progressed beyond the stage of running lamington drives.

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), 2008.

Wither

Wither (pronounced with-er)

(1) To shrivel; fade; decay.

(2) To lose the freshness of youth, as from age (often followed by away).

(3) To make flaccid, shrunken, or dry, as from loss of moisture; cause to lose freshness, bloom, vigour, etc.

(4) Harmfully to affect.

(5) To abash, as by a scathing glance (the withering look).

(6) The singular of withers (part of the back of a four-legged animal that is between the shoulder blades).

1530s: From the Middle English as an alteration of the late fourteenth century wydderen (dry up, shrivel), intransitive, apparently a differentiated and special use of wederen (to expose to weather), from the Old English hwider, an alteration of hwæder, from the Proto-Germanic hwadrê.  In German, there was verwittern (to become weather-beaten), from Witter (weather).  The transitive sense emerged in the 1550s.  Wither is a verb & adverb, withered is an adjective &  adverb, withering is a noun, verb & adjective and witheringly is an adverb.

Readers ancient & modern

There's also whither (To what place?) which is functionally equivalent to the relative adverb "whereto".  Except in poetry or other literary forms, "whither" is now rare to such an extent that it can be said to have vanished from popular use.  For many students, Shakespeare in the original is close to something in a foreign language and it’s not uncommon for high-school texts to be rendered more accessible.  This has be criticised as dumbing down (and at tertiary level probably is) but is probably a good idea.  One editor actually thought young readers would manage with wither but thought "riggish" too difficult.  In Antony and Cleopatra (Act 2 Scene 2), Shakespeare had Enobarbus say:

Never. He will not.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies, for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

The editor “translated” thus:

He’ll never leave her.
Age won’t wither her,
And her charms are so varied that she never grows boring.
With other women, the longer you know them the less appealing they become. 
Cleopatra, on the other hand, makes you desire her the more you see her.
Even her worst faults are charming
Holy priests bless her even when she acts the slut.

The Withered Garland (1800) by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829)

It was yet May when these you broke,

and in those flowers spoke,

yet a blossom yourself,

that which, now blooming, in your own heart

was awakening and,

in sacred wise, did already stir,

that childlike something your friend, ah! so cherished

when she her heart did lay

upon his own,

where now I do eternally weep.

 

These violets, which as a sign the child did send,

now do so soften my heart

that my eyes

may never bring to an end

the pain they now suck in,

and oft do still to her turn,

now finding but this garland, withered, in my hands.

Like this wreath did she,

chosen early to end,

lose herself self-unbeknownst.

 

Take hither this lofty, precious gift,

the only thing yet left to me

of the precious one,

that it might her image yet renew

when amid tears

my yearning so willingly flees

into death arms, escaping life’s vain notions.

Though let me first in tears

immerse my sweet remembrance!

 

We who found life in the pleasure of death,

who boldly nature understood

amid the flames,

where love and pain together

us unite:

let our foreheads be encircled

by the sign whose sense we have long since found.

For did not from these wounds

oft spring forth roses

in painful caress?

 

Hence may this girl’s own shadow surround us, hovering,

to melancholy devoted,

till in death as one we may again more intimately live,

and this deep striving wholly unite

those who, smiling, for one another weep.

Athwart

Athwart (pronounced uh-thwawrt)

(1) From side to side; crosswise, transversely.

(2) In admiralty use, at right angles to the fore-and-aft line; across.

(3) Perversely; awry; wrongly.

1425-1475: From the Late Middle English athwert & athirt and a proclitic form of preposition; the construct was a- (in the sense of "in the direction of, toward")  + thwart.  The a prefix was from the Old English an (on) which in Middle English meant “up, out, away”, both derived from the Proto-Germanic uz (out), from the primitive Indo-European uds (up, out); cognate with the Old Saxon ā which endures in Modern German as the prefix er.  Thwart was from the Middle English adverb & adjective thwert, (crosswise; (cooking) across the grain, transverse; counter, opposing; contrary, obstinate, stubborn), a borrowing from Old Norse þvert (across, transverse), originally the neuter form of þverr (transverse, across), from the Proto-Germanic þwerhaz, altered or influenced by þweraną (to turn) and þerh, from the primitive Indo-European twork & twerk (to twist).  Cognates include the Old English þweorh (transverse, perverse, angry, cross), the Danish tvær, the Gothic þwaírs (angry), the West Frisian dwers (beyond, across, to the other side of), the Dutch dwars (cross-grained, contrary), the Low German dwars (cross-grained, contrary) and the German quer (crosswise; cross).  The modern English queer is related.  Although still used by poets good and bad, the word is probably otherwise obsolete for all purposes except historic admiralty documents.  Athwart is a noun & adverb, athwartship is an adjective & adverb and athwartships & athwartwise are adverb; the noun plural is athwarts.  Forms like athwartly are definitely non standard.

In nautical design, the term “athwart” is used to describe a direction or orientation that is perpendicular to the centreline of a ship or boat (ie that which runs across the vessel from side to side (port-to-starboard) at right angles to the fore-and-aft line.  In shipbuilding this can apply to various components and actions on a ship, such as beams, futtocks, bulkheads, or even the positioning of objects; as a general principle something can be said to be “athwart” if it sits perpendicular to the centreline but the term is most often applied to objects which span or crosses the vessel’s entire width.  In naval architecture specifically, athwart was used as a noun to refer to the cross-members which sat beneath the deck-mounted gun-turrets on warships.  Although they had long been a part of the supporting structures, the term “athwart” seems first to have been used on the blueprints of HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906 and a design thought so revolutionary it lent its name to the class of the biggest battleships, previous such vessels immediately re-classified as “pre-dreadnoughts” and, when even bigger ships were launched, they were dubbed “super-dreadnoughts”.

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Roinson, athwart, TV Guide's sixth annual Emmy after party, The Kress, September 2008, Hollywood, California.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Kubla Khan (1798)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Cacophony

Cacophony (pronounced kuh-kof-uh-nee)

(1) A harsh discordance of sound; dissonance.

(2) The use of inharmonious or dissonant speech sounds in language.

(3) In music, the frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand.

1650-1660: From the sixteenth century French cacophonie (harsh or unpleasant sound) from the New Latin cacophonia, from the Ancient Greek κακοφωνία (kakophōnía) (ill or harsh sounding), from kakophonos (harsh sounding), the construct being being κακός (kakós) (bad, evil) + φωνή (phōnḗ) (voice, sound) from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say).  The source of kakós was the primitive Indo-European root kakka (to defecate), something which may have been in mind in that notable year 1789, when first cacophony was used to mean "discordant sounds in music".  Cacophony is a noun, cacophonic & cacophonous are adjectives, cacophonously an adverb and the noun plural is cacophonies.  The most natural antonym is harmony although musicologists tend to prefer the more precise euphony.

Noise as music

There were twentieth century composers, all of whom thought themselves both experimental and somewhere in the classical tradition, who wrote stuff which to most audiences sounded more cacophonous than melodic.  Some, like Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) had a varied output but for untrained listeners seeking music for pleasure rather than originality or the shock of something new, the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007), Charles Ives (1874–1954) and Philip Glass (b 1937) were not fun.  Some critics however, trained or otherwise, claim to enjoy many of these cul-de-sacs of the avant-garde and find genius among the noise.  Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) would have called them formalists.

Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music (1975).

In popular (sic) culture, Lou Reed (1942–2013) in 1975 released Metal Machine Music, either (1) to fulfil a contractual obligation to a record label with which he no longer wished to be associated, (2) to annoy critics and others he didn’t like, (3) as a piece of electronic music, (4) to win a bet with Andy Warhol (1928-1987) or (5) because he was suffering an amphetamine induced psychosis.  Known as MMM or 3M by fans and categorized by most as noise, drone, industrial or minimal, it’s about two hours of modulated feedback running at different speeds.  Despite the derision attracted at the time, it’s since built a cult following and has been performed live, one approving reviewer suggesting MMM is best understood as “…electricity falling in love with itself”.  The original release was a double album on twelve-inch vinyl and featured a “locked grove” on the final track meaning the noise endlessly would loop, theoretically forever.  This trick couldn’t be done on the new medium of the CD but there were no complaints the omission detracted from the experience.

Phonaesthetics is a discipline most associated with the phonetics branch of linguistics although it’s of interest also in psychology or any aspect of literary studies concerned with the utility of sounds or words as poetic devices.  Despite progress in the use of machines to systematize the relationship between certain sounds and human feeling, phonaesthetics remains still too subjective to be regarded as something which can be called “scientific” although few would doubt that even if precise models have never been created, one knows the qualities when one hears them.  The basis of phonaesthetics is the perception of beauty induced by the sounds of certain words or their elements and while there may be various explanations why a word like “succulent” is so pleasing, the effect is real.  Sounds alone however do not account for all reactions because words can have many associations (some historic and often varying between cultures).  At the phonetic level there seems no obvious reason why the word “moist” should evoke such distaste yet consistently it’s high on the lists of the “most hated” words in English, the planet’s definitely cross-cultural fondness for moist chocolate cakes notwithstanding.  Most conclude the aversion has some link with human bodily fluids.

Cassandra.

Remarkably, Lindsay Lohan (a dedicated “remainer”) proved one of the more thoughtful commentators amid the “cacophony of Brexit analysis” on the fateful night of the referendum when 72.21% of the UK electorate voted (51.89-48.11%) to leave the EU (European Union (1993)), the multi-national aggregation which evolved from the EEC (European Economic Community), the Zollverein formed in 1957) that the country had joined in 1973.  In the years to come, throughout the land, increasingly, people will say: “We should have listened to Lindsay.”

The use of “phonaesthetics” in this context appears to have been by the fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), a man well-versed in words, sounds and their effects on readers; the construct was the Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) (voice, sound) + αἰσθητική (aisthētikḗ) (aesthetics) and the aesthetic qualities of “speech sounds” enjoys a dichotomous binary: those subjectively euphonious (pleasing) or cacophonous (displeasing).  Importantly, this is the study of sound and not written text; although the two main flavours of Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese) are essentially the same language, the former when spoken tends to be judged mellifluous, the latter jarring.  So, “euphony” describes the perception of sounds as pleasant (which implies lyrical, rhythmical or harmonious) whereas “cacophony” is associated with harshness (often a chaotic or discordant mix).  That does not mean something cacophonous is meaningless, indeed the very jumble may be an ideal device to convey meaning whether in speech or music, poets and composers skilled in using sounds to generate feelings serenity or disorder as required, the juxtaposition of the two able to be used to exaggerate the effects of both.

Intelligence

Intelligence (pronounced in-tel-i-juh-ns)

(1) Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

(2) Describing the manifestation of a high mental capacity.

(3) The faculty of understanding.

(4) Knowledge of an event, circumstance, etc., received or imparted; news; information.

(5) The gathering or distribution of information, especially secret information; the evaluated conclusions drawn from such information; an organization or agency engaged in gathering such information.

(6) The interchange of information.

(7) In the sect of Christian Science, a fundamental attribute of God, or infinite Mind; an intelligent being or spirit, especially an incorporeal one, as an angel.

(8) News or information (now obsolete except as applied to the military, government or others who practice espionage).

(9) As used in intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, refers to an individual's relative standing on two quantitative indices, namely measured intelligence, as expressed by an intelligence quotient, and effectiveness of adaptive behavior.

1350-1400: From the Middle English intelligence (the highest faculty of the mind, capacity for comprehending general truths (and later "faculty of understanding, comprehension")), from the Old French intelligence, from Latin intelligentia & intellegentia (understanding, knowledge, power of discerning; art, skill, taste), from intelligentem (nominative intelligens) (discerning, appreciative), present participle of intelligere (to understand, comprehend, come to know),from intellegere (to discern, comprehend (literally “ choose between”)), the construct being inter-, (between, amid), a form of prepositional inter (between)+ legere (to choose), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather (with derivatives meaning "to speak; to pick out words)) or the Proto-Italic legō (to care).

The meaning “superior understanding, sagacity, quality of being intelligent” is from the early 1400s and the particular application to spies dates from later that century although at much the same time it was applied in general to "information received or imparted; news". The word assumed its modern meaning (being endowed with understanding or knowledge) in late 1300s, influenced by the use in Old French where it had existed since the twelfth century.  The first formerly structured intelligence quotient (IQ) tests were conducted in 1921.  Intelligential is the adjective and intel the usual abbreviation.

Military Intelligence

The record of military intelligence during World War I (WWI, 1914-1918) was mixed and the troops would joke there were three types of intelligence: human, animal & military.  It was during WWI that some British military intelligence units began to pick up their familiar identification codes (M(ilitary) I(ntelligence)1, MI4, MI5 etc).  MI5 and MI6 remain well-known, thanks to Ian Fleming (1908–1964; the former naval intelligence officer who wrote the James Bond novels) and other writers but there were many other MIs, researchers uncovering amidst the alpha-numeric soup references to entities up to MI25 but not all existed at the same time and most have long since been either disestablished or folded into MI5, MI6 or GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters; the UK government's clearing house for signals intelligence (SIGINT)) in the post-war years.

Artificial Intelligence: A random eight AI generated images of Lindsay Lohan.  

The records are occasionally contradictory but researchers have synthesized what are thought to be the most reliable sources and the list has been little amended since first it was published in the late 1990s.  The list should not however be misinterpreted; some of the MIx entries identified better thought of as project codes for operations which were, either at once or shortly after their creation, appended to other departments rather than becoming or remaining distinct entities with a personnel establishment and physical accoutrements of infrastructure.  Other were ad-hoc creations of wartime exigency that were dissolved as circumstances rendered their purpose redundant.  There’s also another reason why the list may be incomplete: given all this operates at least notionally under the auspices of the notoriously secretive military and it could be there are any number of still secret departments.

MI1: During WWI, the army’s MI1 (there were a number of sub-sections labelled MI1a, MI1b etc) and the Admiralty’s NID25 had operated separately as collectors and interpreters of SIGINT, including code-breaking.  After the war, they were combined into the inter-service Directorate of Military Intelligence and Cryptography which ultimately evolved into GCHQ.  However, the Army, Royal Navy and newly created Royal Air Force (RAF) all maintained, sometimes in great secrecy, their own intelligence operations, the Admiralty especially jealous of its independence in as many fields as possible.

MI2: A divisional title, the “desk” or section devoted to intelligence relating to Russia & Scandinavia.

MI3: A divisional title, the “desk” or section devoted to intelligence relating to Eastern Europe.  This originally included Germany but so important did the German threat become that MI14 and MI15 were created exclusively to handle Britain’s fears of things Teutonic.

MI4: Matters related to aerial reconnaissance.  MI4’s original remit included not only the analysis of photographs but also the technical aspects of the process (cameras, lens, film stock, mounting techniques etc) and as civil aviation expanded, spying on foreign territory was accomplished sometimes with the use of civil airliners.  MI4 was transferred to Military Combined Operations in April 1940 when the MI15 was hived-off as an operation concerned purely with engineering aspects of photography and attached to the Air Ministry.

MI5: The well-known domestic intelligence service, the focus of which varies according to changes in the threat environment (Germans, feminists, communists, fascists, homosexuals, Freemasons, terrorists etc).  It’s known also as the Security Service but the authorities never make much of this, presumably because they don’t like the idea of people calling it "the SS".  MI5 is responsible to the home secretary (the UK's minister for internal affairs).

MI6: The foreign intelligence service, almost always called MI6 because of its historic origins but actually correctly styled the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and as the Secret Service Bureau, it actually pre-dated WWI, the MI6 tag not used until World War II (WWII, 1939-1945).  The SIS is responsible to the Foreign Secretary and is well-known because of the connection with spies real and fictional: James Bond, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Ian Fleming, Somerset Maugham, Kim Philby etc. 

MI7: Military Communication Interception, later known as the Propaganda Section and transferred to the Ministry of Information during the Battle of France (the Western Campaign (Westfeldzug to the Germans) May-June 1940)).

MI8: Better known as the WWII Special Operations Executive (SOE), the covert ops department set up “to set Europe ablaze”, concentrating on sabotage and political subversion in Nazi-occupied Europe.  Said at the time to be of great psychological value, post-war analysis of its operations suggested success was patchy.  In the inter-war years, MI8 was concerned with the interception and interpretation of communications.

MI9: A WWII creation concerned with undercover operations, especially assisting escape and evasion by both civilians and prisoners of war.

MI10: Weapons analysis, a WWII military-civil partnership which conducted tests and provided analytical services.

MI11: Military security.  Although concerned with internal matters such as leaks and the theft of intelligence, most of its staff were in field security and the Military Police dealt overwhelmingly with normal police matters or military discipline.

MI12: Military censorship, always a growth industry in the armed forces.  One WWII US general held the view the civilian population needed to be told about the war only when it was over and then only that “we won”.

MI13: There is no evidence MI13 ever existed.  Whether this was because of the superstition the British attach to the number 13 isn’t known.  Conspiracy theorists wonder if it’s something so secret that it’s never been spoken of.

MI14 & MI15: Divisional title, the “desk” or section devoted to intelligence relating to Germany.

MI15: In April 1940, the MI15 title was recycled, German matters having long been exclusively the domain of MI14.  MI15 became the aerial photography branch which was purely technical (how best to photograph stuff) and attached to the Air Ministry while MI4 (aerial reconnaissance) decided what should be photographed.

MI16: Scientific analysis.  As WWII progresses, the importance of advances in science and technology became increasingly obvious.  MI16 wasn’t a collection of scientists but an administrative centre to coordinate research and ensure efforts weren’t being duplicated.  It interacted with existing instruments such as the Ministry of Supply in matters of resource allocation.

MI17: Secretariat for Director of Military Intelligence.  This was an attempt to coordinate the back-office and administrative overhead of all the MIx departments but it also added to the bureaucracy.

MI18: There is no evidence MI18 ever existed but because of the existence of MI19 such an institution may at least have been contemplated with the designation reserved for that purpose (or it could, like the mysterious MI13, be in secret functioning even today).

MI19: A WWII prisoner of war debriefing unit, best known for the transcripts they provided by secretly bugging German generals in captivity in England.  The transcripts are especially interesting when read in conjunction with some of the generals’ memoirs published after their release.

Conspiracy theorists find it intriguing that there’s no documentary evidence for the existence of MI13, MI18 & MI20 and MI21-MI25 remain classified as secret.  Over the years, the most popular conspiracy theory has been there’s a MI unit somewhere concerned with a covering up what the government really knows about UFOs.

The SIS Building, 85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall, Lambeth, London.  Opened in 1994, nicknames include Legoland, The London Lubyanka, Ceaușescu Towers & The Ziggurat.

The British government did not until 1994 officially acknowledge the existence of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6), and the identities of its staff and location of their offices were classified secret and subject to a D-Notice (now called a DSMA-Notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice)) which was an official request by government to publishers and broadcasters not to publish or broadcast items about certain matters, a system which worked rather effectively in the pre-internet age.  However, the location of the SIS’s headquarters in the London suburb of Lambeth was apparently the UK’s “worst kept secret” appearing in training materials for taxi drivers although the story it was once in Lonely Planet’s London guide seems to have been apocryphal.  When the new SIS building was commissioned, it was decided to solve the problem of the secret leaking by publishing the details and ensuring the new structure was about the most obvious thing on the Thames.  An eclectic mix of styles, shapes & structures, when opened in 1994 it attracted criticism from those architects who decry anything other than 1950s New York modernism but it has aged rather well, the colors, lines and proportions not without charm.