Insipid & Sapid

Insipid (pronounced in-sip-id)

(1) Without distinctive, interesting, or stimulating qualities; vapid.

(2) Something or someone dull or uninteresting; lacking character or definition.

(3) Food or drink lacking sufficient taste to be pleasing; bland, unappetizingly flavorless.

1610–1620: From the sixteenth century French insipid (without taste or perceptible flavor), from the Late Latin insipidus (tasteless), the construct being in- (in the sense of negation) + -sipidus (savory; tasty), a form of sapidus (sapid) from sapere (have a taste (and used also to mean “be wise”)).  The figurative (ie not of food or drink) meaning (uninteresting, dull) emerged in English in the 1640s and it’s believed this was under the influence of Medieval Latin or the Romance languages, where it was a secondary sense.  The noun insipidity was in use by the early seventeenth century.  The choice of synonym can depend on whether what is being described is food & drink or something (or someone) else and the options include banal, bland, ho-hum, innocuous, trite, vapid, tasteless, bland, wearish, boring, vacuous, dull, bland, characterless & colourless.  In English, in some senses the use has been influenced by insipient (unwise, foolish, stupid; lacking wisdom).  Insipient was from the Middle English insipient & incipient, from the Old French insipient, ultimately from the Latin īnsipiēns.  For the fastidious, the comparative is “more insipient”, the superlative “most insipient”).  Insipid is an adjective, insipidity & insipidness are nouns and insipidly is an adverb.

Sapid (pronounced sap-id)

(1) Having taste or flavor (and used specifically to mean “savory”).

(2) Agreeable to the taste; palatable.

(3) Agreeable, as to the mind; to one's liking.

1625-1635: From the Latin sapidus (tasty), from sapere or sapiō (to taste).  The original meaning in English was “having the power of affecting the organs of taste (when used of food & drink or other substances)” while the figurative sense suggested something “gratifying to the mind or its tastes”.  The adjective sipid has the same meaning as sapid and was a mid-nineteenth century back-formation from insipid (on the model of “gruntled” from “disgruntled”) whereas sapid was a direct borrowing from Latin.  Both sapid & sipid can be used to mean “having a taste or flavor; savoury” but unlike insipid which remains in wide use (both in the original context of food & drink and figuratively), neither have ever attained much currency and it’s not unreasonable for both to be listed as obsolete.  Sapid is an adjective, sapidity & sapidness are nouns.

The infamously insipid Koryo Burger, the in-flight delicacy offered by Air Koryo, national carrier of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea).

In a sense, what words flourish (or at least endure) in English is because of the operation of something of a popularity contest.  While there are style guides, text books and grammar Nazis to tell us which words to use and in what manner, English has no body such as the French government’s Académie Française (council for matters pertaining to the French language) which publishes the a variety of documents which may be said collectively to define what is “official French”.  The Académie had an interesting political history, beginning as a private venture it received the imprimatur of both church & state when in 1635 it was granted a royal charter by Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642; chief minister (chancellor or prime-minister) to the King of France 1624-1642) during the reign of Louis XIII (1601–1643; King of France 1610-1643) but was dissolved 1793 during the French Revolution (1789), partly because of the mob’s anti-royalist feelings but also because there was some resentment among the peasantry (an in the provinces generally) to the notion of a Parisian elite deciding whose dialect was “right” and whose was “wrong”.  That’s exactly the same dispute which now bubbles in US universities between (1) those who insist there is “correct” standard English while other forms are dialectal variations (ethnic, regional, class etc) and (2) those who argue for a cultural equivalency between all forms, most notably AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and its many forks.  In 1795 the new regime in France created the Institut de France (Institute of France) as a kind of clearing house for all matters relating to what was “acceptable” French culture, absorbing some pre-existing scientific, literary and artistic bodies and it was to the institute that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) in 1803 restored the Académie Française as a division.

Portrait of Goethe, oil on paper by Italian artist Elia Bonetti (b 1983).

Spain’s Real Academia Española (Royal Academy of Spain) is a similar body but perhaps surprisingly (given all the stereotypes of the Prussians) there is in Germany no central authority defining the German language, several organizations and institutions working (cooperatively and not) together standardize and update things.  The most authoritative body for German orthography is the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (Council for German Orthography), the membership of which includes representatives from other German-speaking countries (Austria, Switzerland et al) and its mandate extends to overseeing spelling and orthographic rules, something not without controversy, especially since the great spelling “reform” of 1996.  In the spirit of the post-1945 spirit of avoiding where possible the creation of all-powerful single institutions, it’s the Duden dictionary and Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language) which exert great influence in in maintaining and documenting German vocabulary, grammar and usage, but both tend to be observational, recording changes in the language rather than seeking to enforce rules (ie they are descriptive rather than prescriptive).  German thus evolves through the combined influence of these institutions, public usage, and scholarly input, rather than through a single authoritative academy and internationally it’s probably the Goethe-Institut (Goethe Institute, named after the German author & philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)) which most promotes the study of German language & culture through its worldwide network of some 160 centres.

English is more democratic still, the survival of words and grammatical forms dependent on the users and even before the British Empire saw the tongue spread around the world the foreign influences were profound, the Latin, Greek, French & Germanic threads the most obvious and even to speak of the “Old English” is misleading to all but those in the field because to most, the “Old English” really isn’t recognizable as “English”.  Not only does modern English thus evolve but so do the other blends such as “Spanglish” (a hybrid of Spanish & English), Hinglish (Hindi & English) and its absurd to speak of “pure English”, even the way BBC announcers used to speak (in the so-called “RP” (received pronunciation) often including fragments picked up from the Raj and around the world.  While the Académie Française may try to keep French as pure as possible, English shamelessly is linguistically slutty.

Lindsay Lohan (with body-double) during filming of Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024) which the Daily Beast concluded wasn't exactly “insipid”.  The car is a Triumph TR4 (1961-1967), one of the early versions with a live rear axle, a detail probably of no significance in the plot-line.

In this democratic way, insipid has endured because it fills a niche that sapid & sipid never found, in both usage & meaning.  Vividly, insipid conveys the notion of something lacking flavor, excitement, or interest, whether literally (vapid food or drink) or figuratively (dull conversation or ideas).  This negative association has a broad and (regrettably) frequent application in everyday language, there so often being a need to decry things or people as uninteresting or failing to make an impact.  By contrast, although sapid & sipid both mean “food having flavour”, there’s less need because that’s expected and what’s usually sought is a way to say the quality is lacking and terms of emphasis came to be preferred: “flavoursome” “tasty” and such taking over although none were as precise as the practical & versatile “insipid” which proved the perfect one-word descriptor whether literally or figuratively.  Insipid is useful too because it’s nuanced in that it although used usually as negative, it’s also a “neutral word” in the sense of “bland”.  When the Daily Beast was searching for similes & metaphors in their review of Irish Wish (released in 2024 as the second edition of Lindsay Lohan’s three film Netflix deal), they opted also to “damn with faint praise” observing because the Netflix’s target audience “merely want to watch something that isn’t insipid and horribly made”, maybe the film (sort of) succeeded.  So insipid has survived because it fulfils needs while sapid & sipid are now little more than linguistic curiosities.

Insipid, sipid & sapid: The votes are in.

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.

Apostrophe

Apostrophe (pronounced uh-pos-truh-fee)

(1) The punctuation mark (') used variously: (1) to indicate the omission of one or more letters in a word, whether pronounced or unpronounced, (2) to indicate the possessive case or (3) to indicate plurals of abbreviations and symbols.

(2) In formal rhetoric (as the literary apostrophe), a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea.

(3) In sociolinguistics & orthography, the text character (’) which serves as a punctuation mark in various languages and as a diacritical mark in certain rare contexts.

1525–1535: The use as a rhetorical device was from the Late Latin, from the Classical Latin apostrophe, from the Ancient Greek ἀποστροφή (apostrophḗ) (a turning away; a digression), the construct being apostroph-, verbid of apostréphein (to turn away) + -ē (the noun suffix).  The punctuation mark dates from 1580–1590 and was from the Middle French, replacing the earlier apostrophus, from the Late Latin, from the Ancient Greek ἀπόστροφος (apóstrophos) (accent of elision) (prosōidía) (eliding (mark) (literally “(mark) of turning away”), noun use of an adjective from ἀποστρέφω (apostréphō) (I turn away), verbid of apostréphein, the construct being ἀπό (apó) (away (which sometimes appeared as aph)) + στρέφω (stréphō or stréphein (to turn).  The now rare alternative forms were apostrophë & apostrophy and in non-US use apostrophise etc is more common than apostrophize etc.  Apostrophe & apostrophization are nouns, apostropher, apostrophizing & apostrophize are verbs, apostrophic & apostrophed are adjectives and apostrophically is an adverb; the noun plural is apostrophes.

Lindsay Lohan with pram, JFK airport, New York, January 2024.  In English, names with apostrophes are uncommon (almost all from other languages) but the punctuation mark is sometimes used as a guide to pronunciation.  Ms Lohan named her son (b 2023) Luai which in the Arabic is pronounced Lou’aye with the apostrophe operating as “a kind of break or a cut”.

There are a number of derived terms.  Some are purely descriptive (such as the “curly apostrophe”, the “perpendicular apostrophe”, “vertical apostrophe” and the “straight apostrophe” which in publishing are distinguished as the “typographic apostrophe” (an apostrophe that has a curved, asymmetrical form) (known also as the printer's apostrophe) and the “typewriter apostrophe” (an apostrophe with a straight, vertically symmetrical form).  In sociolinguistics & orthography, the apologetic apostrophe is imposed upon a Scots word in to lend it the appearance of being a contraction of an English word such as wi' (equivalent to the English “with”) and a' (equivalent to the English “all”).  The humorous apostrophectomy is a clinical procedure used by the grammar nazis ruthlessly to excise incorrect apostrophes, usually those used wrongly to form plurals.  The construct was apostrophe +‎ -ectomy (from the Ancient Greek -εκτομία (-ektomía) (a cutting out of), from ἐκτέμνω (ektémnō) (to cut out), the construct being ἐκ (ek) (out) + τέμνω (témnō) (to cut). The reverse procedure (inserting an apostrophe where one is required) was apostrophplant. the construct being apostroph(e) + (in)plant.  The grammar nazis operate usually on the “greengrocer's apostrophe” one where the symbol is used in error when forming a noun plural.  It’s probably a slight on greengrocers in that others are just as guilty but the most commonly cited examples are usually something like “Banana’s, 99c lb” rather than “Vegetarian Burger’s available”.  Among those in England who speak RP (Received Pronunciation, the “correct” form insisted on by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) until the 1960s (with the odd quirky exception)), the greengrocer's apostrophe is still sometimes known as the “Yorkshire apostrophe”; it’s a form of (southern) linguistic snobbery because the phenomenon certainly isn’t unique to those from the county.

The literary apostrophe is a figure of speech in which a thing, a place, an abstract quality, an idea, a dead or absent person, is addressed as if present and capable of understanding. Classic instances include Oliver Goldsmith’s (1728–1774) opening in The Deserted Village (1770): “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain…”; Antony's cry in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Julius Caesar (1599): “'O Judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts…”; William Wordsworth’s (1770–1850) passionate appeal in London 1812: “Milton! Thou should'st be living at this hour…” and the biblical: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55; King James Version (KJV, 1611)).

The star cross'd lovers: Romeo and Juliet (1884), oil on canvas by Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853–1928), Southampton City Art Gallery.

As a mark indicating “an omitted letter”, the apostrophe was in common (though far from universal) use by the early sixteenth century and the origin of use as a possessive marker lay in one representing the loss of -e- in words ending in –es; by the mid eighteenth century, it was being applied to all possessives, whether or not they were ever once spelled with an additional “e”.  Another of the grammar nazis bugbears (they have many) is the incorrect use of “it’s” as a neuter possessive pronoun, the late sixteenth century construct being it + the genitive/possessive ending “'s”.  The correct use of “it’s” is as a contraction of “it is” etc but as a possessive form it endured until the early nineteenth century and etymologists suggest the decline in use was due to either because the contraction of “it is” had become established or to align use with the general practice of omitting apostrophes in personal pronouns (yours, hers, theirs et al.).  One of the best known instances of a word with a “apostrophe substitution” appears in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) where “star cross’d lovers” is used to describe the doomed pair.

1967 Ford Mustang (left), 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda (the 1971 grill an aesthetic choice and the apostrophe indicating a clipping of “Barracuda”, the model designation used on the non high-performance models) (centre) and 1968 Chevrolet Camaro (right) at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC) (the “Race to the Clouds”).  The three compete in the "Vintage Car" class.  The PPIHC is a marvelously anarchic event, run continuously since 1916 (except in 1917-1919 & 1942-1945 because of wartime restrictions) and an example of how good things can be if the FIA (the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation), world sport’s dopiest regulatory body) isn’t involved.

Pikes Peak in the US state of Colorado was in 1820 named (as Pike’s Peak) after Brigadier General Zebulon Pike (1779–1813) who led an earlier expedition (which failed to reach the summit).  It a shame the landmark wasn't named "Zebulon's Peak"; so much more evocative.  The name Zebulon was from the Latin Zabulon, from the Ancient Greek Ζαβουλών (Zaboulṓn), from the Biblical Hebrew זְבוּלוּן (z'vulún).  In the Hebrew, Zebulon was a male name meaning “exalted house,” “dwelling,” “lord,” or “prince” (the alternative spelling was Zebulun.  In biblical times, Zebulun was one of the twelve tribes of Israel and it was the given name for the sixth son of Jacob and his wife, Leah.  Prior to European settlement, the native peoples of the region called the peak variously Tava (Sun) or Heey-otoyoo' (Long mountain).  In 1890, the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) introduced a policy avoiding the use of apostrophes in the possessive form in place names, the intent being: (1) a standardization convention to remove confusion, (2) to simplify the printing of maps by ensuring there were fewer clashes with special characters and (3) to remove another source of imaginative interpretation by lawyers.  An additional benefit was realized when computer databases began to be created and, especially in the early post-war years, many problems in indexing and formatting were avoided by restricting entries to letters & numbers.  In 1890, Pike’s Peak thus became Pikes Peak and just to make sure no grammar Nazis ever attempted a revival, in 1978 the Colorado state legislature outlawed the use of an apostrophe in Pikes Peak, apparently one of the world’s few laws about punctuation.  The BGN does make the odd exception in the case of places of historical significance and Martha's Vineyard was one of the few places to emerge with apostrophe intact.  

It’s a pity the BGN doesn’t set the other rules for the use of the apostrophe, a matter which so concerned Henry Fowler (1858–1933) that he devoted several paragraphs to the topic in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926).  One helpful reform would be to standardize the placement when making a possessive of names ending in “s” and that rule should be: (1) when a name ends in a letter other than “s” the apostrophe sits before the appended (plural) “s” (Lindsay Lohan’s car) and (2) when a name ends in “s” the apostrophe follows (the so-called “trailing apostrophe”) (Britney Spears’ car).  That has the benefit of simplicity and would mean one wouldn’t have to choose between the various options published in style guides, some of which are based on the number of syllables and some on the sound of the word when pronounced.  It’s a layer of complication as unnecessary as adding pronunciation guides to printed numbers (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th etc) in that it’s a needless tribute by the written to the spoken; the human brain can manage without them.

Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021) and Tim Walz (b 1964; governor of Minnesota since 2019), on stage, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 6 August 2024.

The issue flared when Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 US presidential election for not only does “Harris” end in “s” but “Walz” when spoken sounds like it too ends thus, something which style guides variously suggest should exist in the possessive either as Walz’s or Walz’.  Clearly, he’s a trouble-maker.  Most of the grammar nazis (X (formerly known as Twitter) their natural home where debate ensued) seemed to conclude “Walz’s” was correct but Harris’ or Harris’s divided opinion, the factions forming to defend either (1) if the “s” is sounded, spell the “s” and (2) if it ends in an “s” regardless of pronunciation, it’s a trailing apostrophe.  Most dictionaries say either practice is acceptable provided use is consistent which is fence-sitting but reflects reality although there is the sense many editors would be happy if a universal appended “’s” was the “rule” so the tiresome debate would go away.  Presumably that would also please the Harris-Walz campaign team which has issued press releases which included “Harris’s positive vision” and “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”

Henry Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage has been influential for almost a century and it’s the original and the second edition (1965) edited by Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) which remain the standard (the third (1996) and fourth (2015) editions less helpful although some readers might appreciate being “spoken with” rather than “dictated to” as was Henry Fowler’s way).  However, in the TikTok age, it may prove the singer Taylor Swift (b 1989) is now the final arbitrator of the language’s squabbles.  In mid 2024, MS Swift released the album The Tortured Poets Department and while most (Swifties and others) focused on the music, some couldn’t help but notice what appeared to be the “missing apostrophe”.  However, whether or not it’s missing depends on how the title is read:  If it's a possessive form then one should appear but if “poets” is operating as descriptive modifier of “department” then none is required.  Understanding the distinction is easiest if the phrase is deconstructed and imagined as a department in a university which contains tortured poets; there morosely they sit for a time but they don’t “possess” the department; instead, tortured poets come and go and over generations the membership changes but the department endures.  In that sense, Ms Swift’s "Tortured Poets Department" is like a "Farmers Market" rather than a "driver’s license".  So, it’s really a matter of what Ms Swift intended and she seems a bit of a word nerd so it may be assumed she says what she means and means what she says.

Fabulous

Fabulous (pronounced fab-yuh-luhs)

(1) Exceptionally good or unusual, wonderful or superb; fashionable, glamorous (which pedants insist is informal but it’s long been the standard meaning).

(2) Almost impossible to believe; incredible.

(3) In slang or as a euphemism, gay or pertaining to gay people; camp, effeminate ("a fabulousity" suggested as a collective noun for gay men but it never caught on) .

(4) In slang, fashionable, glamorous.

(5) Of or about fables; stories wholly or substantially of the imaginary and known of through myth or legend; something in the record known to be unhistorical.

Circa 1550: From the Late Middle English fabulous & fabulose, from the Latin fābulōsus (celebrated in fable; rich in myth), the construct being fābul(a) (a story, a tale) + -ōsus (the adjectival suffix).  The –ōsus suffix (familiar in English as –ous) was from Classical Latin from -ōnt-to-s from -o-wont-to -s, the latter form a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes: -went & -wont.  Related to these were –entus and the Ancient Greek -εις (-eis) and all were used to form adjectives from nouns.  In Latin, -ōsus was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun.  As a literary genre (and some fables came from oral traditions) fables were stories told usually to make some moral point or illustrate the consequences of one’s actions and while they could sometimes involve fantastical creatures like winged stallions or unicorns, sometimes they involved fictional characters who were mere flesh & blood and even a multi-volume, epic-length novel like Don Quixote (1605-1615) by Miguel de Cervantes circa 1547–1616) can be thought a fable.  Fabulous is an adjective, fabulousness & fabulosity are nouns and fabulously is an adverb; the use is the plural is rare but both fabulousnesses & fabulosities exist.  There is some evidence of use in the gay community of fabulous as a (non-standard) noun, sometime in the form “uber-fabulous” although that construction is also used generally as an adjective of especial emphasis.

Looking fabulous: Lindsay Lohan Fabulous magazine, August 2010.

The original sense was “of or pertaining to fable” and dates from the 1550s.  The now familiar meaning shift began as early as the turn of the seventeenth centuries when the word was recorded to convey the sense of “incredible” which soon extended to “enormous, immense; amazing” and by the mid-twentieth century it was used almost exclusively to mean “marvelous; wonderful, superb”.  The clipping to create the slang “fab” was in used by at least 1957 and use spiked after 1963 when the alliterative “fab four” was used to describe the pop group, The Beatles.  When in 1965 revising Henry Fowler’s (1858–1933), A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) maintained his predecessor’s disapproval of much that was a bit too modern, noting that correctly fabulous meant “…mythical, legendary, but was long ago extended to do duty as an adjective for something that is real but so astonishing that you might not think it was legendary if you did not know better.”, adding that it had “…become fabulously popular as a term of eulogy or allure.”  He seemed though to suspect it might be a “fad word”, noting it and its contracted forms “fab” & “fabs”, like “fantastic”, were perhaps the latest “…in that long list of words which boys and girls use for a time to express high commendation and then get tired of, such as, to go no farther back than the present century, topping, spiffing, ripping, wizard, super, posh, smashing.”  Decades on however, fabulous seems to have endured in its contemporary uses and even the portmanteau adjective fantabulous (the construct being fanta(stic) + (fa)bulous) has survived in its niche.  Fabulous probably gained a new lease of life when it was in the late 1960s picked up by the gay community which has used it even as a noun and it remains an essential element in the camp vocabulary.  Unless it’s between scholars, those wishing to convey the original meaning should probably use terms such as “fabled” or “mythological” rather than fabulous and even “legendary” can be ambiguous because it’s now often used to mean something like “famous” or “very well-known”.

Lindsay Lohan in an unusual cage cutout top, the lines assuming or relaxing from the orthogonal as the body moves (maybe an instance of "a shifting semiorthogonal"), The World's First Fabulous Fund Fair in aid of the Naked Heart Foundation, The Roundhouse, London, February 2015.  An opportunity was missed by not adding a sympathetic clutch purse.

George W Bush, Condoleezza Rice & Colin Powell.

The phrase “the fabulous invalid” refers to live theater & stage productions generally, the use derived from a 1938 stage play of that name by George S Kaufman (1889-1961) and Moss Hart (1904-1961) which traced the that follows the seesawing fortunes of a fictitious Broadway theater between 1900-1930.  In a touching irony, while the play was barely a modest success and not highly regarded by its authors, the title has endured as a synonym for the theatre.  George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) who (admittedly unwittingly) contributed more than most to coining new words & novel grammatical structures, probably wasn’t deliberately alluding the original meaning of fabulous when he used it to describe the performance of his first foreign minister, Colin Powell (1937–2021; US secretary of state 2001-2005) but if considered thus it certainly reflected his view that the general’s favorable public image reflected more myth than reality and he’d prefer a secretary of state who both ticked a few boxes and was more attuned to his brutish world-view.  In Dr Condoleezza Rice (b 1954; US secretary of state 2005-2009) he certainly got that but in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, whatever might have been his better judgment, the general did his job because, as Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel (1882–1946; head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the Nazi armed forces high command) put it at the Nuremberg Trial (1645-1946): “For a soldier, orders are orders.”  His flirtation with politics is a fable and story of Condoleezza Rice’s career in government even more so: a cautionary tale of what can happen when a nice young lady from a good family gets mixed up with an unsavory crowd (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al).

White House transcript of press conference assembled when the president met with Colin Powell and Richard Armitage (b 1945; US deputy secretary of state 2001-2005) at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Wednesday, 6 August 2003:

THE PRESIDENT: First, it's been my real privilege and honor to welcome the Secretary of State back to Crawford. He and Dick Armitage came, and we spent yesterday evening and this morning talking about our country's desire to promote peace and freedom, our obligations as a prosperous and strong nation to help the less fortunate. And we had a good strategy session, and now we're about to go out and brand some cows -- well, not exactly. (Laughter)

QUESTION: Sir, you've seen the report that Secretary Powell and Secretary Armitage are going to leave at the end of this administration. Do you expect them to stay on if there is a second Bush administration? Would you like them to?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first things first, we hope there is a second Bush administration. And I will work hard to convince the American people that their confidence in me is justified. And we'll deal with it at the right time.  Listen, this guy has done a fabulous job. Washington, particularly in August, is a dangerous period -- a dangerous time, because there's a lot of speculation. And all I can tell you is, the man flies to Crawford and we spend a good 24 hours talking about how we're going to work together to make the world a better place.

QUESTION: But, Mr. President, you said, we'll deal with it…

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Elizabeth.

QUESTION: We'll deal with it at the right time. That isn't "yes".

THE PRESIDENT: Deal with what at the right time?

QUESTION: With whether Secretary Powell will serve in a second term. Is that, "yes" or "no"? I mean, are you going to offer him a spot in the second term?

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't have a term. I serve the President. (Laughter)

QUESTION: No, but the President…

THE PRESIDENT: Elizabeth, look, first things first, and that is, we've got a year-and-a-while during my first term to make the world a more peaceful place and we'll deal with it. Washington loves speculation. Clearly, you love speculation. You love it. You love to speculate about…

QUESTION: It wasn't my story. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Let me finish, please; let me finish. You love to speculate about whether so-and-so is going to be a part of the administration or not. And I understand the game. But I have got to do my job, and I'm going to do it. And I'm going to do it with the Secretary of State. And the fact that he is here in Crawford, Texas, talking about issues of importance, should say loud and clear to the American people that he's completely engaged in doing what he needs to do, and that is, serve as a great Secretary of State.

QUESTION: Do you want to serve more than four years, Mr. Secretary?

SECRETARY POWELL: I serve at the pleasure of the President, and this is all August speculation with no basis in fact. There was no basis for this story to begin with, and we're doing our jobs together.

THE PRESIDENT: All right. We're going to get a burger. Thank you.

Combo

Combo (pronounced kom-boh)

(1) In informal use, a small jazz or dance band (as distinct from a big band).

(2) In informal use, many forms of combined items (bundled “meal deals”; products sold with a collection of options offered at a nominal discount against the price calculated on the basis of the extended value etc).

(3) In informal use, to combine.

(4) A sequence of actions combined as one for certain purposes.

(5) In informal use, the combination (the numerical sequence) of a combination lock.

(6) In video gaming, an action composed of a sequence of simpler actions, especially a composite attacking move in a fighting game; two or more game-play elements (characters, items, options etc) which are powerful when used together.

(7) In collectible card games, a strategy under which the objective is to win by playing a specific combination of cards (or similar), usually in a single play.

(8) In historic Australian (derogatory) slang, a white man (1) who lives among Aboriginal people and adopts Aboriginal culture or (2) has entered into an ongoing sexual relationship with an Aboriginal woman or (3) has taken an Aboriginal wife, usually in a common-law marriage (all now archaic).

(9) In computing (in the design of graphical user interfaces (GUI)), in the informal use “combo box” (A GUI widget that is a combination of a dropdown list or list box and a single-line textbox, allowing the user either to type a value directly into the control or choose from the list of existing options).

1924: A clipping of comb(ination) + -o.  Combination (the act of combining, the state of being combined or the result of combining) was from the Middle English combinacioun & combynacyoun, from the Old French combination, from the Late Latin combīnātiō.  The colloquial -o suffix (wino, ammo, combo, kiddo et al) appears widely in English but is most common in Australia where in certain sub-cultures it appears to be obligatory (they have names like Shaneo, Toddo, Wayneo etc).  The first use was of small jazz groups and dance bands and was used to differentiate the smaller ensembles from the then popular “big bands”, the implication also that while combos were often ad-hoc things with the membership varying from evening to evening whereas big bands had a more stable (usually salaried) membership and usually took the name of the band leader.  Combo is a noun, comboing & comboed are verbs and comboable is an adjective; the noun plural is combos or comboes.

The VW Kombi and the Samba

1951 VW Kombi.

Although there was for years in English-speaking markets something of a tendency to call all the Volkswagen Type 2s Kombis, the Kombi was just one configuration in a range which eventually extended beyond a dozen distinct types.  Kombi was a clipping of the German Kombinationskraftwagen (combination motor vehicle), another of those compound nouns at which they excel.  The Kombi coachwork featured side windows and removable seats in the rear compartment, permitting the thing thus to be used either for passengers, freight or a combination of the two.  Other types in the range included pure delivery vans (no rear seats) with a variety of door options, a high-roof version best suited to transporting cargo which was bulky but not especially heavy, pick-ups (Transporters) with either a single or double passenger cabin and the other classic, the Microbus, intended purely for people and thus configured with fixed seats in the rear.  It was the Microbus which made its mark with the US surfing community in the 1960s and it became identified with the counter culture, something perhaps assisted by its large, flat surfaces which lent themselves to the psychedelic paint schemes associated with the era.

Not a Kombi: 1959 VW Microbus Deluxe (Samba).

The Microbus was also offered (between 1951-1966) in a “Deluxe” version which featured both a folding fabric sunroof and some unusual “skylight” windows which followed the curve of sides of the roof.  Available in 21 & 23 window versions, these are now highly collectable and such is the attraction there’s something of a cottage industry in converting Microbuses to the be-windowed specification but it’s difficult exactly to emulate the originals, the best of which can command several times the price of a fake (a perfectly restored one in 2017 selling at auction in the US for US$302,000).  Such was the susceptibility to rust, the survival rate wasn’t high and many led a hard life when new, popular with the tour guides who would conduct bus-loads of visitors on (slow) tours of the Alps, the sunroof & skylights ideal for gazing at the peaks.  To add to the mood, a dashboard-mounted valve radio was available as an option.  The Microbus Deluxe is actually rarely referred to as such, being almost universally called the “Samba” and the origin of that in uncertain.  One theory is that it’s a borrowing from the Brazilian dance and musical genre that is associated with things lively, colorful, and celebratory, the link being that as well as the sunroof and windows, the Deluxe had more luxurious interior appointments, came usually in bright two-tone paint (other Type 2s were usually more drably finished) and featured lashings of external chrome.  It’s an attractive story but some prefer something more Germanic: Samba as the acronym for the business-like phrase Sonnendach-Ausführung mit besonderem Armaturenbrett (sunroof version with special dashboard).  However it happened, Samba was in colloquial use by at least 1952 and became semi official in 1954 when the distributers in the Netherlands added the word to their brochures.  Production ended in July 1967 after almost 100,000 had been built.

Combo in nature but not Kombi in name: 1959 VW Double passenger cabin Transporter (which the factory called the Doka, from Doppelkabine (double cabin).

The very existence of the VW Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) was an act of serendipity, one entrepreneurial dealer from the Netherlands in 1947 noting during a visit to the factory the use of a rather cobbled-together “pick-up” based on a Beetle chassis.  With Europe in the throes of post-war rebuilding and so much industrial production still disrupted, there was a shortage of such vehicles and he sketched what would now be called a “forward control van” which the factory agreed to develop.  However, such was the demand for the Beetle that it wasn’t until 1950 than production of the Type 2 began and, despite the legend that the two share underpinnings, that’s only partially true because to gain the necessary strength, a different floor plan was required.  Still, with many mechanical components there was much interchangeably between Types 1 & 2, something which added greatly to its appeal and it was instantly successful the first generation staying in production until 1966 and although in most of the world the classic air-cooled / rear-engine configuration was in subsequent decades replaced, Type 2 in that specification were made in Brazil until 2013 and although demand was still strong and the line was profitable, the country was the last developed market in the world to introduce the safety regulation which had seen the old Kombis go elsewhere extinct.  The South American line had been the last link with the Nazi’s Kdf-Wagen (which became the Beetle, the first prototype of which dated from 1935, renamed to the snappier Volkswagen (literally “people’s car”).  Kdf (Kraft durch Freude, literally “Strength Through Joy” was the Nazi state’s leisure organization which was involved in everything from holiday resorts and cruise liners to the regulation of workplaces (the classic Nazi “carrot & stick” approach) but it was also used as a slogan an in that sense joy was compulsory and the state had ways to punish those not thought sufficiently joyful.

Combo cards: 3Com Ethernet XL PCI 3c900 NIC (RJ45-AUI-BNC) (left), NVidia GPU (HDMI-VGA-DVI) (centre) & Startech AT (Advanced Technology (or ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)) 2S1P (2 x DB9 Serial-1 x DB25 Parallel) (right).

In personal computer hardware, combo devices have existed almost as long as the industry.  When, with rather modest expectations, IBM released the PC-1 in 1981, it was a US$5000 thing which even by the standards of the time was slow and not particularly capable but (1) it was an IBM and that really gave it a legitimacy no other name could and (2) it was delivered with lots of “open architecture” slots which meant third-party manufacturers could (license and royalty-free) produce all sorts of plug-in cards which extended the functionally.  Soon, there were cards offering sound, support for color monitors (IBM liked people to watch acid-green text displays because they thought the PC-1 would be used mostly as a way to hook into their big mainframes), higher definition graphics, additional ports and before long, connections to the various adapters which could be used to connect to networks.  Things advanced rapidly however and before long there were various ways of connecting to stuff and such were the realities of production-line economics that for manufacturers it often made sense to combine different things on the one card.  While for example a manufacturer could offer three different NICs (network interface cards) to support three different connections, what proved most popular was the combo card which included the three most common types.  The approach also suited customers who might want an additional serial & parallel port but found a combo card with both a better deal than buying two cards.  The approach is still followed today by the GPU (graphical processing unit) manufacturers which have at various times offered combo card with ports for VGA (technically “Video Graphics Array” but really long a reference to the pin-layout), HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), DVI (Digital Video Interface, of which there were many) & DP (DisplayPort).

Just about any combination of stuff can be a combo including mix & match makeup.  Lindsay Lohan also was part of Pepsi’s promotional campaign for a “dirty soda”, a concoction of Pepsi Cola & milk (Pilk), served with cookies; on the internet, opinion was divided.  One of the most prolific users of combo seems to be the fast food industry, a combo meal (there are often variations) two or more components (typically a burger, a soda and fries) bundled at a price lower than purchasing the items separately.  For the industry, the combos are a high profit item because they stimulate demand, increasing volume with only a marginal increase in labour costs.

Before the release of the Barbie movie in July 2023, it had probably never occurred to the industry there would one day be demand for a burger with hot-pink sauce but it’s now at Burger King, available as part of a combo meal.  First to make the Barbie-themed meal available was Burger King Brazil, the combo including a cheeseburger topped with bacon bits and dressed with a hot pink sauce, said to have a “smoky” flavor.  Also included is a pink vanilla milkshake with strawberry Nesquik powder mixed in and when the straw is put in, it’s topped with a pink frosted donut.  Barbie being the star, the side order of “Ken’s potatoes” is just a plain order of fries, a sly nod to the “he’s just Ken” message.

Jumbo

Jumbo (pronounced juhm-boh)

(1) An informal descriptor for a very large person, animal, or thing, applied especially to an unusually large version of something usually smaller.

(2) In commerce, a term (sometimes interpolated into a brand) used to suggest a large version of something.

(3) A general term for wide-bodied passenger airplanes although historically most associated with the Boeing 747 (1969).

(4) In (mostly in the US) nautical use, a forestaysail having a boom (jumbo boom) along its foot, used especially on schooners; a sail used in place of a course on a square-rigged ship, having the form of an isosceles triangle set apex downward.

(5) In engineering & mining, as drilling jumbo, a platform-mounted machine used to drill rock.

(6) As mumbo-jumbo, a historic term used of paganism, originally referring to deities or other supernatural beings worshipped some West African peoples (usually in the form of an idol representing such a being). It was later adopted to describe any speech which was either technical jargon understood only by specialists or anything genuinely meaningless or incomprehensible.

1800–1810: Of uncertain origin but there is evidence the first use of the word by English-speakers was as an imperfect echoic of what was heard by European explorers or colonists in Africa.  It entered popular use after Jumbo, an East African elephant (1860-1885) was in 1882 exhibited by PT Barnum (1810-1891) of the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus.  The name may be derived from either the Swahili jambo (matter, thing) or jumbe (chief, headman) although some sources cite the Sanskrit जम्बु (jambū or jambul) (rose apple).  Most convincing comes from the anthropological record of west-Africa where jumbo was used to describe a "clumsy, unwieldy fellow" (1823), itself possibly from a word for elephant in a West African language, perhaps the Kongo nzamba.  As a modifier (formally & informally) to impart the sense of largeness, jumbo is appended as required: jumbo jet (and jumbojet), jumbo mortgage, jumbomania, jumbo slice, superjumbo, jumbo sandwich, jumbo cigar, jumbo burger, jumbo cola et al.  Walt Disney’s musical cartoon Dumbo (1941) influenced the adoption of dumbo to mean “someone not intelligent”, the use documented by 1951 but the oral use probably pre-dates that.  Jumbo is a noun & adjective, jumboization (and jumboisation) are nouns, jumboize (and jumboise) are verbs; the noun plural is jumbos.

PT Barnum's publicity materials were created prior to "truth in advertising" laws.

The original Jumbo (the elephant) was an exhibit in London Zoo, the institution having purchased the beast from French explorers who were said to have captured it as a calf in Abyssinia in 1861.  Barnum purchased Jumbo in 1862 (much to the displeasure of the English) and immediately began in the US one of his typically extravagant advertising campaigns which emphasised both what a coup he’d achieved by wresting it from the British Empire and what an extraordinary size the creature was.  His circus toured the country with Jumbo a star attraction until in September 1885 it was killed near Saint Thomas, Ontario when struck by a freight train.

Perhaps curiously, the noun mumbo-jumbo seems not to have fallen from the linguistic treadmill, despite its origin and early colonial associations.  It entered English in 1738, based on an account of an incident in 1732 which occurred near Sami (in modern-day Gambia).  In the publications of the time, the Mumbo Jumbo was described as a costume “idol” used by men to frighten others and as coercive tool to regulate behaviour; it was used especially against women to induce their submission.  In hours of daylight, the costume was mounted on a stick placed at the outskirts of the village while by night a man would dress in it, visiting the homes of women or others deemed a problem, disputes “settled” and punishments bestowed.  Other spellings noted in the eighteenth century include Munbo Jumbo, Numbo Jumbo and Mumbo Chumbo and the original account ascribed the practice to Mandingo but linguistic anthropologists have never been able to trace an obvious Mandingo term which might be the source, the suggestions including mama dyambo (pompom-wearing ancestor) and mamagyombo (magician who exorcises troubled ancestor spirits).  It may have been borrowed from another Niger-Congo language and the European colonial transcriptions were the French moumbo-dioumbo & moumbo-ioumbo and the Portuguese mumban-jumban.  On the basis of the colonial-era accounts, the tradition (of uncertain age) must have been widespread with all settlements in the region was said to have a Mumbo Jumbo and by the mid-nineteenth century it had in English become a byword for a “superstitious object of senseless worship”, evolving by the 1890s to describe any speech which was either technical jargon understood only by specialists or anything genuinely meaningless or incomprehensible, use presumably reinforced and encouraged by some perception of association with “mumble”.  In that sense, it somewhat differed from the pseudo-Latin “hocus-pocus” which described words or incantations wholly fake and intended to deceive.  Despite the history, mumbo jumbo seems still acceptable in English and why it hasn’t yet been condemned as racist or cultural appropriation isn’t clear.

Jambo!  Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls.

Much has changed in the twenty-first century and it’s doubtful all of “You got your freshmen, ROTC Guys, preps, JV jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly Black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet, and the worst.  Beware of The Plastics.” would appear were the Mean Girls (2004) script to be written today, mere mention of ethnicity now often deconstructed as some level of racism.  Cady (the white protagonist raised (somewhere) in Africa) uses the Swahili greeting "jambo" (from -amba (to say) which linguistic anthropologists say was probably derived from the Proto-Bantu (there’s a similar term in Zulu)) to introduce herself to a table of “Unfriendly Black Hotties”.  The script never makes explicit just where in Africa Cady may have spent her youth but this, along with another couple of cultural and linguistic clues do hint it may have been among sub-Saharan ethnic groups although whether that was intentional isn’t documented.  However, “jambo” is one of several similar words used on the continent linked both to the later evolution in English of jumbo and mumbo jumbo and it may be jumbo was either a direct phonetic spelling recorded by Europeans or just a mis-heard rendition.

The prototype of first jumbojet (Boeing 747) on show on the forecourt at the Boeing’s factory in Seattle, Washington, 1968 (left), at the Paris Air Show in 1969 with a Concorde in the background (centre) and the last 747 (a freighter), also on the Boeing forecourt, November 2022.

Jumbo was a big elephant and the word was soon used to describe large examples of other things.  In commercial use, the first use seems to have been Jumbo Cigars, sold in 1886.  The best known use in the modern age is probably jumbo-jet (also appears jumbojet), probably first used by Boeing engineers circa 1960 although the first documented reference is from 1964.  It replaced the earlier Boeing engineering-slang jumbo-707, probably because a three syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven.  In the narrow technical sense, jumbo-jet came to refer to all wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes built since the late 1960s, but, being first, it tends most to be associated with Boeing’s 747.  Thus, when in the early 2000s, the even larger Airbus 380 took to the skies, the term superjumbo (and super-jumbo) was used by some, the airframe’s point of visual differentiation from the 747 being the Boeing’s famous hump being extended along the fuselage to the tail section, creating a double-decker.  The term (which had earlier been used of the stretched 747s) however never quite caught on in the same way because the 380 was unique and a class of superjumbos thus never emerged to demand a descriptive generic term.  As it was, economics conspired against the A380 and the circumstances in which it flew were very different to those envisaged in the late 1980s when first the project was conceived for not only had advances in engineering and materials allowed a new generation of twin-jet jumbos to operate at a much lower passenger cost per mile but airports, their systems and physical infrastructure optimized around the 747’s capacity, proved unwilling to make the changes needed to accommodate higher peak demand.  After little more than a dozen years of assembly, Airbus in 2021 ceased production of A380 after some 250 had been built.

One of NASA’s Boeing 747s, adapted as a heavy-lift platform to “piggy-back” the US Space Shuttles (left).  The Soviet Union (and briefly the Russians) used the one-off Antonov An-225 Мрія (Mriya (dream or inspiration)) to piggy-back its  Буран (Buran (Snowstorm or Blizzard)), the USSR's space shuttle (right).  The An-225, with the largest wingspan and heaviest take-off weight of any aircraft ever to enter operational service, was destroyed in the early days of the Russian invasion (the 2022 "Special Military Operation”) of Ukraine.

The 747 proved more enduring a successful and was a machine which was truly revolutionary in its social consequences.  Just as Boeing’s earlier 707 (1958) had been instrumental in making trans-Continental air travel a viable and reliable means of transport for a small number of people, the economics of scale made possible by the 747 meant such trips became accessible for many more.  Between 1968 and 2022, almost 1600 were built in a variety of lengths and configurations and it was for decades the faithful workhorse of many airlines, but it ultimately fell victim to the same financial squeeze that doomed the A380, twin-engined aircraft able to carry almost as many passengers at a significantly lower cost.  By 2016 it was clear demand had dwindled and most of the production thereafter was for freight operators still attracted by the 747’s unique combination of capacity, reliability and range.  As passenger 747s progressively are retired, many will be converted to freighters, an relatively simple operation envisaged even during the design process in the 1960s.  Many flyers however noted the 747’s demise with some regret.  None denied the advantages of airframes built from composite materials nor the enhanced economy of the twin-engine configuration but for those who flew for hours above 30,000 feet (9000+ m), knowing one was in a metal cylinder with the redundancy of four engines imparted great confidence.

Lindsay’s Olives in sizes to suit.  Black olive martinis are a cult.

In commercial use, obvious comparative terms like “small”. “medium” & “large” are commonly used and “extra” is often appended to “small” & “large”.  In the sizing of clothing, “extra” is used in multiples, labelled usually as XL XXL XXXL etc to indicate ascending graduations of large (L).  With the “Extra Large”, this is on the model of the DD, DDD, FF etc bra cup descriptors used by some manufacturers although the use varies, a DD sometimes the same as an E and sometimes something between a D & E.  However, at the other end of the size range, the multiple letters work the other way, an AAA cup smaller than an AA which is smaller than an A.  Linguistically, that does make sense because with bras the multiple letters are synonymous with “extra”, the AA being extra small and the DD extra large.  The alpha-numeric nomenclature used (30A, 32D etc) is maintained presumably because something like a "Jumbo" bra might lack sales appeal.  Where manufactures want to use descriptors which indicate a larger size beyond something like extra large, they’ll trawl the alphabet, thus product packaging described as “jumbo”, “super” “mega”, colossal” “super”, “maxi” etc.  Unlike S-M-L, there’s no defined ascendant order so it might be that where one manufacturer’s jumbo is larger than their mega while with some it may be the other way round.

Jumbo spark plugs.  This was actually advertising the strength of the spark rather than the plug, some of the Jumbo line of plugs physically smaller than than some offered by the competition.  The need for higher-performance spark plugs arose as higher octane gas (petrol) permitted compression ratios to rise.