Liberal

Liberal (pronounced lib-ruhl (U) or lib-er-uhl (non U))

(1) Favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs (and in this context a synonym of progressive and antonyms of reactionary.

(2) Noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform (used often with an initial capital letter, something in some cases perhaps influenced by the existence of political parties with the name (where the initial capital is correct)).

(3) Of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism, especially the freedom of the individual and governmental guarantees of individual rights and liberties.

(4) Favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties (now better described as libertarian now the definitions of “liberal” are so fluid).

(5) As “liberal education”, of or relating to an education that aims to develop general cultural interests and intellectual ability (as distinct from specific vocational training).

(6) Favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression.

(7) Of or relating to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.

(8) Free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant, unprejudiced, broad-minded

(9) Open-minded, free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values etc.

(10) Characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts; unstinting, munificent, openhanded, charitable, beneficent; lavish.

(11) Given or supplied freely or abundantly; generous.

(12) Abundant in quantity; lavish.

(13) Not strict or rigorous; not literal (often of translations, interpretations etc).

(14) Of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts.

(15) Of, relating to, or befitting a freeman (now rare).

(16) A person of liberal principles or views, especially in politics or religion.

(17) A member of a “liberal” party in politics (if applied to a part actually named “Liberal”, in some contexts an initial capital should be used).

(18) Unrestrained, licentious (obsolete although the sense seems still to be understood by the Fox News audience).

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the twelfth century Old French liberal (befitting free people; noble, generous; willing, zealous), from the Latin līberālis (literally “of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free person” and used also in the sense of “honorable”), the construct being līber (variously “frank, free, open unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious”) + -ālis.  The –alis suffix was from the primitive Indo-European -li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of –āris and there may be some relationship with hel- (to grow); -ālis (neuter -āle) was the third-declension two-termination suffix and was suffixed to (1) nouns or numerals creating adjectives of relationship and (2) adjectives creating adjectives with an intensified meaning.  The suffix -ālis was added (usually, but not exclusively) to a noun or numeral to form an adjective of relationship to that noun. When suffixed to an existing adjective, the effect was to intensify the adjectival meaning, and often to narrow the semantic field.  If the root word ends in -l or -lis, -āris is generally used instead although because of parallel or subsequent evolutions, both have sometimes been applied (eg līneālis & līneāris).  The noun came into use early in the nineteenth century.  The antonym in the sense of “permitting liberty” is “authoritarian” while in the sense of “open to new ideas and change”, it’s “conservative”.  Liberal is a noun & adjective, liberalism, liberalizer, liberalization, liberalist & liberality are nouns, liberalize is a verb and liberally is an adverb; the noun plural is liberals.

The mid-fourteenth century adjective meant “generous” (in the sense of “quantity”) and within decades this has extended to “nobly born, noble, free” and from the late 1300s: “selfless, magnanimous, admirable” although, as a precursor of what would come, by early in the fifteenth century it was used with bad connotations, demoting someone “extravagant, undisciplined or unrestrained”; Someone something of a libertine (in the modern sense) therefore and it was in this sense Don Pedro in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Much Ado About Nothing (1599) spoke of the lustful villain in Act 4, Scene 1:

Why, then are you no maiden, Leonato,
I am sorry you must hear. Upon mine honor,
Myself, my brother, and this grievèd count
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber window
Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confessed the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret.

The evolution in use continued and while in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries “liberal” was used as a term of reproach suggesting “lack of restraint in speech or action”, with the coming of the Enlightenment there was a revival of the positive sense, the word now used also to mean “free from prejudice, tolerant, not bigoted or narrow” and that seems to have emerged in the late 1770s although by the nineteenth century, use often was theological rather than political, a “liberal” church (Unitarians, Universalists et al) one not so bound the rigidities in doctrine & ritual as those said to be “orthodox” (not to be confused with the actual Orthodox Church).  It was also in the nineteenth century that in England the phrase “liberal education” became widely used although what to claimed to described had a tradition in pedagogy dating from Antiquity although the it path to modernity was hardly uninterrupted, various forms of barbarism intervening and in this context it probably is accurate to speak of some periods of the Medieval era as “the Dark Ages”.  There was never anything close to a standard or universal curriculum but theme understood in the nineteenth century was it was the only fitting education for what used to be called “a gentlemen” (a term related in sense development to the Classical Latin liber (a free man)) and contrasted with technical, specialist or vocational training.  Historically, the “liberal arts” inherited from the late Middle Ages were divided into the trivium (grammar, logic & rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music & astronomy).

Much associated with the worst of America’s “corrupting coasts” (New York City & Hollywood), Lindsay Lohan is a classic liberal.

The now familiar use in politics began in the first decade of the nineteenth century, one of the many ripples from the French Revolution (1789) when it was used to suggest a tendency to “favor freedom and democracy” over the long dominant hierarchical systems which characterized feudal European society.  In English, the label was initially applied by opponents to whichever party or politicians championed individual political freedoms and it seems the word often was spoken with a French accent, the implications being that such notions were associated with chaos and ruin; the revolution of 1789 had shocked and frightened the ruling establishment(s) just about everywhere.  However, there seems to have been a fork in the sense development in the US which came from a tradition which of course viewed more approvingly revolutions which swept away tyranny and there, certainly by the 1820s, “liberal” was already being used to mean “favorable to government action to effect social change” and some historians have linked this to the religious sense of “free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions” (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform); this theme has continued to this day.  From the very foundations of the first colonial settlements, in what became the US there has always been a tension between the lure of freedom & democracy and that of religious purity, the notion what was being created was a society ordained by God.

In politics the usual brute-force distinction is of course between “liberals” and “conservatives” and while the nuances and exceptions are legion, it does remain the core template by which politics is reported and it applies to institutions as varied as the Roman curia, the Israeli cabinet, the Church of England and presidential elections in the Islamic republic or Iran; while not entirely accurate, it remains useful.  What is less useful is the noun “liberalism” which in the nineteenth century did have a (more or less) accepted definition but which since has become so contested as to now be one of those words which means what people want it to me in any given time and place.  That the title of the “true inheritor” of liberalism has been claimed groups as diverse as certain neo-Marxists and the now defunct faction of the US Republican Party which used to be called the “Rockefeller Republicans” illustrates the problem.  Also suffering from meaning shifts so severe as to render it a phrase best left to professional historians is “neo-liberal”, first used in 1958 as a reference to French politics and theology but re-purposed late in the twentieth century to describe a doctrine which was a synthesis of laissez-faire economics, deregulation and the withdrawal of the state from anything not essential to national security, law & order and economic efficiency.  Some critics of latter day neo-liberalism call it "an attempt to repeal the twentieth century" which captures the spirit of the debate.

1972 Chrysler Valiant Charger R/T E49 (left) and 1974 Ford Falcon XB GT Hardtop (right), 1974 RE-PO 500K endurance race, Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia, November 1974.

The fifth round of the 1974 Australian Manufacturers' Championship, the 1974 RE-PO 500K event was run under Group C (Touring Cars) regulations over 106 laps (501 km (311 miles)) and one quirky thing about the race was it being a footnote in Australian political history, both the E49 Charger of Lawrie Nelson (b 1943) and the Falcon GT of Murray Carter (b 1931) carrying “Liberal” signage as part of a paid sponsorship deal arranged by the Liberal Party of Australia.  Carter finished second (like the Liberal Party in that year's federal election (ie, they lost), although then party leader, Sir  Billy Snedden (1926–1987), provided one of the more memorable post election statements when he claimed "We didn't lose, we just didn't win enough votes to win." and he'd today be most remembered for that had it not be for the circumstances of his death which passed into legend.  Carter would later reveal that despite his solid result, the Liberal Party never paid up, the sponsorship deal apparently what later Liberal Party leader John Howard (b 1939; prime minister of Australia 1996-2007) might have called a "non-core promise".  

Death of former Australian Liberal Party leader Sir Billy Snedden.

The Liberal Party was in 1944 founded by Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) as essentially an “anti-Labor Party” aggregation of various groups and he emphasized at the time and often subsequently that he wanted his creation truly to be a “liberal” and not a “conservative” party; it was to be a “broad church” in which some diversity of opinion was not merely tolerated but encouraged.  Mostly he stuck to that although some would note as the years passed, perhaps he became a little less tolerant.  By 2024, the Liberal Party of Australia has fallen under the control of right-wing fanatics, religious fundamentalists & soft drink salesmen and it doubtful someone like Sir Robert would now want to join the party, even if they’d have him.  The current party leader is Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) and interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.

The arrival of political parties called “Liberal Party” & “Conservative Party” (often with modifiers (Liberal Democrats, Liberal Movement etc) created the need for labels which distinguish between the “liberal” and “conservative” factions within each: while all members of a Liberal Party are “big L Liberals” some will be “small c conservatives” and some “small l liberals” which sounds a clumsy was of putting things but it’s well-understood.  Some though noted there were sometimes more similarities than differences, the US writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-circa 1914) in an entry in his Devil's Dictionary (1911) recording: "Conservative (noun), a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."  These days it he might be called a cynical structuralist.  Bierce, a US Civil War (1861-1865) veteran, never lost his sense of adventure and, aged 71, vanished without a trace in one of the great mysteries in American literary history.  The consensus was he probably was shot dead in Mexico and in one of his last letters there’s a hint he regarded such as fat as just an occupational hazard: “Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life.  It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!”

So, “liberal” being somewhat contested, while the comparative was “more liberal” and the superlative “most liberal”, modified forms appeared including anti-liberal, half-liberal, non-liberal, over-liberal, pre-liberal, pseudo-liberal, quasi-liberal, semi-liberal, uber-liberal, ultra-liberal, arch-liberal, classical-liberal, neoclassical-liberal and, of course, liberal-liberal & conservative-liberal.  In modern use there have been linguistic innovations including latte-liberal (the sort of “middle class” liberal who, stereotypically, orders complicated forms of coffee at the cafés & coffee shops in up-market suburbs, the term very much in the vein of “Bollinger Bolshevik” or “champagne socialist”.  A latte liberal is a variation of the earlier wishy-washy liberal (someone who will express fashionable, liberal views but will not deign to lift a finger to further their cause) with the additional implication they are of the middle class and committed only to the point of "virtue signaling".  The portmanteau word milliberal (the construct being mill(ennial) +‎ (li)beral is a liberal of the millennial generation (those born between 1981-1986).  The term boba-liberal comes from internet-based (notably X, formerly known as Twitter) political discourse (mostly in the US it seems) and is a slur describing a liberal-leaning Asian American with politics or attitudes considered too tepid or whitewashed by other Asian Americans, stereotyped as focusing on superficial gestures over more meaningful actions especially in regards to Asian American activism.  Those who comment on stories on Fox News have also contributed to the lexicon, the portmanteau libtard (the construct being lib(eral) + (re)tard) and the meaning self explanatory, as it is for NazLib, the construct being Naz(i) + Lib(eral).  So, especially in the US, “liberal” is a word which must be handled with care, to some a mere descriptor, to some a compliment and to others an insult.  While there are markers which may indicate which approach to adopt (is one's interlocutor carrying a gun, driving a large pick-up truck, listening to country & western music etc), none are wholly reliable and probably the best way is to work into the conversation a “litmus paper” phrase like “liberal gun laws”.  From the reaction, one's path will be clear.

But although there are some for who it seems a calling, being a liberal is not in the DNA and there have been some who became conservative, just as there are conservatives who converted to liberalism.  Indeed, were the views of many to be assessed, it’d like be found they are various to some degree liberal on some issues and conservative on others, a phenomenon political scientists call “cross-cutting cleavages”.  Political journeys are common and may be endemic to one’s aging (and certainly financial) path, there being many youthful anarchists, socialists and nihilists who have ended up around the boardroom table, very interested in preserving the existing system.  The path from liberalism can also be a thing of blatant opportunism.  It is no criticism of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) that he re-invented himself as an anti-liberal because that was the way to become POTUS (president of the United States), despite for decades his stated positions on many social issues revealing his liberal instincts.  It’s just the way politics is done.  It’s also the way business is done and it was unfortunate Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) elected to settle in the matter of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News to ensure no more of Fox’s internal documents entered the public domain.  Those which did appear were interesting in that far from Fox’s anti-liberal stance being Mr Murdoch’s ideological crusade, it was more the path to profit and were Fox’s audience to transform into something liberal, there would go Fox News.

Once was liberal: Candace Owens Farmer (née Owens and usually styled “Candace Owens”; b 1989) with "Candace Coffee Mug", one item in a range of Candace merchandise.

Because race remains the central fault-line in US politics, political cartoonists and commentators have never been prepared to have as much fun with the black conservatives as they enjoyed with “gay Republicans”, the latter a breed thought close to non-existent as last as the 1990s.  Black conservatism is to some extent aligned with black Christian religiosity but it’s a creature also of that under-reported demographic, the successful, black middle class, a diverse group but one which appears to have much in common with the priorities of their white counterparts.  In that sense Candace Owens is not wholly typical but she is much more entertaining and here early political consciousness was as a self-declared (though apparently retrospectively) liberal before moving to a nominally conservative stance although whether this was an ideological shift or a pursuit of clicks on the internet (on the model Mr Murdoch values to maximize revenue from Fox News) isn’t clear.  What is clear is Ms Owens knows about the Freemasons, her research into the cult beginning apparently when she “freaked out” after learning Buzz Aldrin (b 1930; who in 1969 was the second man to set foot on the Moon) is a confessed Freemason.  On 30 September, 2024, she discussed the Freemasons on her YouTube channel:

What is Freemasonry?  OK, so during the late Middle Ages, the world was united under the holy Roman Catholic church.  OK?  So if you had any opposition to the church throughout Europe, you were forced to go underground.  Right?  We were a Christian society.  And among the only organized groups that were able to move freely throughout Europe were these guilds of stonemasons, and they would then be, therefore, because they could move freely, hence, Freemasons.  They were able to maintain the meeting halls or lodges in virtually every major city, and the Masons were, essentially, very talented at architecture, and they had a bunch of secret knowledge — sometimes secret knowledge of architecture and of other topics.  And that knowledge was dated back to the times of Egypt. Right?  And it was essential maintaining this knowledge in the construction of European churches and cathedrals.

So one of the things that is well known is that Freemasons were in opposition to the church.  Right? They wanted to crush the church, which is why it is not ironic that the person who founded the Mormon church, as just one example — many of the churches, the very many Protestant faiths that we have — was Joseph Smith and he was a Freemason.  That's a fact, just as one example. Now, you may know some people that are Freemasons and you're going, well, I know this person and he goes to a lodge and he's completely harmless.  Yes. It is a known thing that 97 — like, something like 97% of Freemasons are not in the top tier degree of Freemasonry.  And it is understood that at the top tier degree of Freemasonry, you essentially become one of the makers of the world.

So I'm — just for those of you guys who've never even heard of that, and like I said, I would have been among you. I'm very new to relearning American history through the lens of Freemasonry. Some known Freemasons — George Washington was a Freemason, Thomas Jefferson was a Freemason, Benjamin Franklin was a Freemason, Buzz Aldrin was a Freemason — don't get me started. For those of you that have been listening to this podcast for a long time, you already know where I'm at — or where I'm at when it comes to NASA and the weird satanic chants that they were doing to establish the Apollo program and all the weird stuff that happened leading up to the moon landing. So I freaked out when I learned Buzz Aldrin was a Freemason.  It's not helping my case in believing those moon landings, I'll tell you that for free.  Franklin Roosevelt was another Freemason.

Autographed publicity photo of Buzz Aldrin issued by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) prior to the Apollo 11 Moon mission (16-24 July 1969).

Whether Ms Owens changed her views on matters Masonic after hearing Mr Aldrin had endorsed Mr Trump isn’t known but he issued an unambiguous statement of support, sentiments with which presumably she’d concur.  The former astronaut was especially impressed the Republican candidate had indicated that in a second term he would elevate space exploration as a “policy of high importance again” and that his first administration had “reignited national efforts to get back to the Moon and push on to Mars.”  Beyond that, Mr Aldrin noted: “The Presidency requires clarity in judgement, decisiveness, and calm under pressure that few have a natural ability to manage, or the life experience to successfully undertake. It is a job where decisions are made that routinely involve American lives – some urgently but not without thought.  For me, for the future of our country, to meet enormous challenges, and for the proven policy accomplishments above, I believe we are best served by voting for former President Trump. I wholeheartedly endorse him for President of the United States. Godspeed President Trump, and God Bless the United States of America.”  Masonic votes having the same value as any other, Mr Trump welcomed the support.

Ms Owens had been scheduled to speak at a number of engagements in Australia  & New Zealand but interestingly, in October 2024, the Australian government issued a press statement confirming her visa had been "canceled", based on her "capacity to incite discord", leading immediately to suspicions her silencing had been engineered by the Freemasons.  It’s good we have Ms Owens to warn us about liberals and the Freemasons, an axis of evil neglected by political scientists who tend often to take a structralist approach to the landmarks in the evolution of the use of the term “liberal” which they classify thus:

(1) Classical Liberalism which emerged in the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries, was rooted in the ideas of the Enlightenment with an emphasis on limited government, a free market (ideas as well as goods & services), individual liberty, freedom of speech, the rule of law and the enforcement of private property rights.  The movement was a reaction to absolute monarchies and state-dominated mercantilist economies.

(2) Social Liberalism (understood as “liberal” in modern US use) was a layer of rather than a fork off classical liberalism but it did accept a greater role for the state in regulating the economy and providing social welfare to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth and opportunity.  It was a nineteenth century development to address the excesses of “unbridled” capitalism” and its critique of economic inequality was remarkably similar to that familiar in the twenty-first century.

(3) Neoliberalism as a term first appeared in the late 1950s but in the familiar modern sense it was defined in the era of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) & Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) who embarked on project built around a philosophy which afforded primacy to free markets, deregulation, privatization and a reduction in government spending, often combined with globalization.  Their program simultaneously to restrict the money supply while driving up asset prices had implications which wouldn’t be understood for some decades.  The Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal project was a reaction to the post oil-crisis stagflation (a portmanteau word, the construct being stag(nation) + (in)flation)) and the alleged failure of the welfare state & the orthodoxy of Keynesian economics, named after English economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes (later Lord Keynes) 1883-1946).

(4) Political Liberalism was most famously articulated by US philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) in his book A Theory of Justice (1971), a work nobody much under forty should attempt because few younger than that would have read enough fully to understand the intricacies.  In summary, it does sound remarkably simple because it calls for a pluralist society built on principles of justice and fairness, administered by a system of governance which permits a diversity of viewpoints while maintaining a fair structure of cooperation.  Rawls’ political liberalism draws one in to what soon becomes and intellectual labyrinth; once in, it’s hard to get out but it’s a nice place to spend some time and most rewarding if one can maintain the same train of thought for several weeks.

(5) Cultural Liberalism is not new but from the mid-twentieth century, its range of application expanded as previously oppressed groups began to enjoy a recognition of their rights, initially usually as a result of a change in societal attitudes and later, by a codification of their status in law, the matters addressed including ethnicity, feminism, civil liberties, reproductive rights, religion and the concerns of the LGBTQQIAAOP community.

(6) Liberal Internationalism is an approach to foreign policy (really a formal doctrine in some countries) advocating global cooperation, international institutions, human rights, and the promotion of democracy.  Its core tenants included support for multilateralism, international organizations like the United Nations (UN), global trade and the promotion of liberal democratic governance worldwide.  What is called the “liberal world order” has underpinned the western world since 1945 but its dominance is now being challenged by other systems which have their own methods of operation.

Refusenik

Refusenik (pronounced ri-fyooz-nik)

(1) In (originally) informal use, a citizen of the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922-1991), a Soviet citizen (usually Jewish) who was denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union (usually to Israel).

(2) By extension, a person who refuses to cooperate with a system or comply with a law as a matter of political principle or because of a moral conviction.

Circa 1975: The construct was refuse + -nik.  The Russian отказник (otkáznik), the construct of which was отка́з (otkáz) (refusal, denial, repudiation, rejection, nonsuit; renunciation, disavowal; breakdown, failure) +‎ -ник (-nik) was a synonym of refusenik.  The -ник suffix was from the Proto-Slavic -ьnikъ, created originally by a nominalization of the adjectives in -ьnъ with the suffix -ikъ (from -ик (-ik)).  The suffix and was used to form masculine nouns, usually denoting adherents etc, the use illustrated by forms such as the dialectal Lithuanian lauk-inykas (peasant, farmer), from laũkas (field) and the Old Prussian lauk-inikis (vassal).  Refuse (in the sense of “to decline a request or demand” was from the Middle English refusen, from the Old French refuser, from the Vulgar Latin refūsāre, a blend of Classical Latin refūtāre (the source also of “refute”) and recūsāre (the source also of recuse).  The use in the sense of “items or material that have been discarded; rubbish, garbage, trash) was a late Middle English borrowing of the Middle French refusé, past participle of refuser (to refuse) which displaced the native Middle English wernen (to refuse).  In English, “refusenik” began as a calque of the Russian отка́зник (otkáznik) and from the mid-1970s, “refusenik” came to be used of someone who refused to do something (usually some law with which most complied), often either as a protest against government policy (conscription) or as a matter of personal autonomy (mandated vaccination).  While the construct of the word was an amusing novelty, the idea conveyed had a long tradition, the English agent noun refuser documented since the late fifteenth century.  The alternative spelling refusnik was not uncommon.  Refusenik is a noun; the noun plural is refuseniks.  Forms like refuseniking & refuseniked are non-standard but used for humorous effect as required.

Technically the –nik suffix corresponds approximately to the English –er in that nearly always it denotes an agent noun (ie it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the suffix is attached).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The connotation however is different in that –er is linguistically neutral (ie the value in the word “murderer” is carried by the “murder” element) whereas a –nik word is usually loaded and that can be negative, positive and often jocular. 

In structural linguistics, the process of creating words by adding a foreign suffix (such as refusenik) is known as “suffix borrowing” (or “affix borrowing”, “prefix borrowing” the obvious companion term).  Refusenik was thus a fork of the phenomenon known as “neoclassical blending” or “neoclassical compounding”, where a foreign morpheme is combined with a native or other language base.  The forms are described as “neologisms created through affixation” and many are coined for jocular effect, the “-nik” subset used to imply a person associated with something, often in a somewhat negative sense, other noted examples including “beatnik” (a member of the “beat” generation of the 1950s, an early example of what would in the 1960s come to be called the “counter culture” and a kind of proto-hippie), “peacenik” (one opposed to war and coined originally to describe those associated with the anti-war movement in the US and opposed to US participation in the conflict in Indochina), “warnick” (the response of the peaceniks to those who supported US policy (which wasn’t picked up by the establishment, unlike “dry”, used originally as a slur by the those who had been labeled “wet” (higher taxes, more social spending etc); the “drys” (smaller government, deregulation etc) liked the term and adopted it although their attempt to give it a little more appeal as “warm & dry” never caught on), “appeasenik” (used in a derogatory sense to describe those who prefer a policy of appeasement to a more robust foreign policy response), “contranik”, (used in a derogatory sense to describe those in the US supporting the right-wing Contras (from the Spanish la contrarrevolución (literally “the counter-revolution”) who between 1979-1990 staged an insurgency against Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinista Junta), “nogoodnik” (someone disreputable), “neatnick” (someone thought obsessively tidy in their habits), “kibbutznik” (In Israel, a member of a kibbutz (and not necessarily a Russian émigré)), “sweetnik” (one’s sweetheart (male or female), “noisenik” (a musician who produces harsh, discordant music (with deliberate intent rather than through lack of skill) and “nudenik” (a advocate of nude sunbathing).

A 1961 guide to the beatnik world view.

The difference between a “beatnik and a “beat” was that the “Beats” were members of the “Beat Generation” a literary and cultural movement which emerged in the late 1940s and popularized by the writers Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), William S Burroughs (1914–1997) a Neal Cassady (1926-1968).  Kerouac would describe the Beat state as being “beaten down, exhausted, but also in touch with the raw, spiritual, and authentic experiences of life” and they were a harbinger of the counter-culture of the 1960s.  There were at the time claims there was a distinct “Beat philosophy” but there were so many claims about this that it really can’t be said there was ever a coherent “philosophy” beyond a sense of rebellion against mainstream culture, materialism, and the alleged conformity on post-war America life, the latter something which in later decades would exert a strong nostalgic pull, exploited by a number of politicians.  The term “beatnik” was more about the stereotyped. Superficial elements associated with those who followed what they thought was the “beat lifestyle”.  It’s not fair to say the beatniks were “the Beat’s groupies” but that probably was the public perception, one which imagined them sitting in coffee shops, wearing berets and listening to poetry readings.

The “nik” words belong to a broader class of borrowed affixed words or loanword derivatives, the best known of which are the neoclassical compounds, formed by combining elements (usually prefixes or suffixes) from classical languages, particularly Greek and Latin, with existing words or roots from other languages (or simply combining Greek & Latin elements, something of which some purists don’t approve).  These compound words are common both in general use and specialized or technical fields such as science, medicine, and philosophy.  Well known examples include: “television” (the construct being tele- (from the Greek tēle (far)) + vision (from the Latin videre (to see)), “automobile”, the construct being auto- (from the Greek autos (self)) + mobile (from the Latin mobilis (movable)), “astronaut” (the construct being astro- (from the Greek astron (star)) + -naut (from the Greek nautēs (sailor)), “bicycle”, the construct being bi- (from the Latin bis (twice)) + cycle (from the Greek kyklos (circle; wheel)).

There has never been an authenticated Lindsaygate or Lohangate so, deductively, Lindsay Lohan has lived a scandal-free life although she does have some history of refusenikism.

Refusenik though belongs to the subset of the type coined usually for humorous effect or a commercial purpose and they include the “-zillas” (stormzilla, bridezilla, bosszilla et al), the suffix from the fictional Godzilla and appended to imply something or someone is excessively large, powerful, or monstrous, usually in an exaggerated or absurd way, the “-aholics” (shopaholic, chocoholic, workaholic et al) the suffix appended to The suffix -aholic (from alcoholic) is often humorously attached to nouns to describe someone addicted to or obsessed with something, the “fests” (geekfest, nerdfest, laughfest, foodfest et al, the –fest suffix from the German Fest (festival), appended to describe and event involves much of a certain thing or theme or will attract those of a certain type, the “-o-ramas” (snack-o-rama, fright-o-rama, book-o-rama et al, the -orama suffix from panorama (a wide view) and appended to suggest an abundance or spectacle of something and of course the “-gates” (pizzagate, whitewatergate, snipergate, servergate, benghazigate et al (all in some way related to crooked Hillary Clinton which is interesting), -gate suffix from the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.  The use of the –gate scandal is an example of what’s called “transferred, implied or imputed meaning” and because it creates form which are “mock-serious”, the words can straddle a range of senses, unlike something like “chocoholic” which, whatever might be the implications for an individual’s health, is always jocular.

In English, the use of the –nik suffix spiked after the USSR in October 1957 launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth although the earlier Yiddish forms (in Yinglish, the words contributed by Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe) may also have exerted some regional influence, notably in New York where as early as the 1930s nudnik (an annoying person; a pest, a nag, a jerk) had spread beyond the Jewish community.  The association of with Sputnik created a minor industry among headline writers looking for words to describe the failures, explosions and crashes which were a feature of the launches in the early days of the US space program after the Russian’s satellite had so shocked the Americans.  The terms like kaputnik, dudnik and flopnik became briefly famous and contributed to the impression the Soviets were much more advanced in rocketry and related technology but that was misleading because the Russians had suffered just as many failures but theirs were a state secret and therefore unknown outside official circles while for the US launches were televised nationally on network television.  The perceptions generated by kaputnik, dudnik and flopnik also created a political ripple which would play out in the 1960 US presidential election and beyond.  Although Sputnik gave things quite a shove, the suffix had a long history in English and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes raskolnik (a bit of a rascal) was in use by at least 1723.  After following the British Empire to the other side of the world, raskol washed up in PNG (Papua New Guinea) as a noun meaning “a criminal, operating sometimes as part of a gang”.  IN PNG, raskol was from the English rascal (a rogue, a scoundrel, a trickster) and entered Tok Pisin (“talk + pidgin”, one of PNG’s official languages and a creole of Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian and Trans-New Guinean languages (principally English and Kuanua).  In later editions of The American Language (first published in 1919), the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956 and a fair scholar of the tongue) credited the popularity of the practice of appending -nik to the ends of adjectives to create nouns to US Cartoonist Al Capp (1909–1979) who put a few of them in his syndicated Li'l Abner cartoon (1934-1977), Sputnik (1957) & beatnik (1958) respectively an accelerant or product of the process.

While it often was applied humorously, it also was used of those in Israel who refused to participate in military operations conducted by the Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisra'el (the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)) in the occupied Palestinian territories (which the government of Israel calls “disputed territories” which the refuseniks regards as unlawful under international law.  Language matters much in the Middle East and some still use “Tel Aviv” as the synecdoche for “government of Israel” because recognition Jerusalem (another “disputed” space” as the capital is so limited.  Tel Aviv briefly was the capital between May 1948-December 1949 and a time when ongoing military conflict rendered Jerusalem too unstable for government operations.  Jerusalem was declared the capital in December 1949 and by mid-1950, most of the state’s administrative apparatus was based there but its status as a national capital is recognized by only a handful of nations.

Books (left & centre), academic journals and magazines used the title “Refusenik” in its original sense of “a Soviet citizen (usually Jewish) who was denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union (usually to Israel), something which was a feature of the Brezhnev-era (Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982)) USSR but it was later adopted (by extension) in the English-speaking world to refer to those refusing to cooperate with a system or comply with a law as a matter of political principle or because of a moral conviction.  Edited by self-described refusenik (in the later sense) Peretz Kidron (1933–2011) and published in 2013 by Bloomsbury, Refusenik (right) applied the word in the later sense of “those who refuse” rather than the original “those who were refused”.  With a blurb including a quote from linguistics theorist & public intellectual Professor Noam Chomsky (b 1928) and a foreword by author and essayist Susan Sontag (1933—2004), it’s likely a few reviews were written before a page was turned.

Cartnaping

Cartnaping (pronounced kahrt-nap-ing)

(1) In retail industry slang, the act of customers taking a shopping cart (in some markets a “shopping trolley, buggy, trundler etc”) beyond the designated confines (usually a car-park).

(2) In slang, a customer (now presumed to be a “Karen”) who purloins another’s (empty) shopping cart for their own use, usually when no others conveniently are to hand.

1990s: First recorded in California on the model of “kidnapping”, the construct being cart + nap + -ing.  In most non-US use, the spelling would usually be “cartnapping”.  Historically, a cart was a small, open, wheeled vehicle, drawn or pushed by a person or animal and used usually for transporting goods (although many passenger transports (often towed) have been described thus.  Go-carts (also as go-kart), the small motor vehicles, powered by lawn-mower or motorcycle engines remain one of the most popular platforms in entry-level motorsports although the sport no prefers they be called “karts”.  Cart was from the Middle English cart & kart, from the Old Norse kartr (wagon; cart), akin to the Old English cræt (chariot; cart), from the Proto-Germanic krattaz, krattijô & kradō, from the primitive Indo-European gret- (tracery; wattle; cradle; cage; basket), from ger- (to turn, wind).  It was cognate with the West Frisian kret (wheelbarrow for hauling dung), the Dutch krat & kret (crate; wheelbarrow for hauling dung), the German Krätze (basket; pannier); the most obvious wider cognate was the Sanskrit ग्रन्थ (grantha) (a binding).

In English the familiar meaning of “nap” is “to sleep for a brief time, especially during the day”.  In that sense, nap was from the Middle English nappen, from the Old English hnappian (to doze, slumber, sleep), from the Proto-West Germanic hnappōn (to nap) and was cognate with the Old High German hnaffezan & hnaffezzan (from which Middle High German gained nafzen (to slumber), source of the German dialectal napfezen & nafzen (to nod, slumber, nap).  In this sense, “nap” is used figuratively, often in the phrase “caught napping” which suggests being “caught off guard (in military conflicts, sporting competitions etc.  However, one of the other meanings of “nap” was “to grad; to nab”) and while the use is long extinct as a stand-alone word, as an element it endures in “kidnap” (and the derived “cartnap”, “catnap” etc).  In that sense the source of “nap” is murky but it was probably of North Germanic origin, from the Old Swedish nappa (to pluck, pinch).  The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing).  Cartnaping & cartnap are nouns & verbs, cartnaper is a noun and cartnaped is a verb; the noun plural is cartnapings and although also rare, cartnapers is more widely used, usually on internet “shaming” sites which document the devices abandoned or dumped in streets, waterways, parks etc.

How it all began: US Patent 2,196,914.

Although it’s clear such things had been used in many cultures for millennia, as a mass-produced commodity, the modern shopping cart was “invented” by Sylvan Goldman (1898-1984) an Oklahoma-based supermarket mogul.  It was in 1936, during the Great Depression, that Mr Goldman built his first prototypes and the following year, he began a trial of the devices in his chain of Humpty Dumpty grocery stores.  Although the early take-up rate was “sluggish”, by 1938, when he filed a patent application for his original design (“a combination basket and carriage”) the things had becoming popular with customers and in April 1940 the US Patent and Trademark Office granted US Patent 2,196,914 (Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores).

The utility was so obvious that shopping carts rapidly became features of large shopping centres throughout the nation and he soon added features, most famously as “baby seat” although the implementation of that would probably shock & appal today’s H&S (health & safety) regulators.  In the post-war years the shopping carts multiplied by the million because of a then unique combination of circumstances in the US economy: (1) widespread prosperity, (2) a ship of population from town centres to (often newly developed) remote suburbs, (4) clusters of those suburbs being serviced by large shopping centres & supermarkets and (4) multi-vehicle households which meant women had begun to drive to shop.  What the shopping centres tended to do was provide a space in which all a week’s shopping could be done in one place, purchases collected by customers who parked their car in a vast car park and it was the shopping cart which made this structural model possible.

1964 GM Runabout show car with obligatory white, happily married, middle-class woman with one of her 2.8 children (who were always well-behaved).  Note the child's white gloves, a wise parental precaution (even pre-COVID-19) given the volume of pathogens found on the typical supermarket shopping cart.

One refinement to the concept was the GM Runabout, displayed at the General Motors Futurama Exhibit the 1964 New York World's Fair.  The three-wheeled car was able to seat two adults and three children (approximately the size projected for the “average” white, middle-class US family of the late 1960s) and was optimized for ease of handling, the single front wheel able (at low speeds) to turn through 180^o.  The target market was made obvious by its most innovative feature: two fitted shopping carts which slotted into the rear bodywork, the wheels and lower assembly folding away when locked into position.  That might seem superfluous given supermarkets provided such things but the advantage was the carts could also be used at home, obviating the need to make several trips between car and kitchen.  The retail industry presumably would have liked to have seen the idea catch on because, having already off-loaded onto the customer the task of carrying the groceries to the car, it would have meant they could do away with most of their own stock of carts, needing only a few for those who needed to take their goods as far as a taxi.  The poor, able to afford neither cab nor car would just have to work it out.

Mitt Romney (b 1947; Republican nominee in the 2012 US presidential election, US senator (Republican-Utah) since 2019) (left), buying 12-packs of Caffeine Free Diet Coke and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi, Hunter's Shop and Save, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, August 2012.  Mormons are not allowed to do anything “evil” (though it's rumored some do) and the Doctrine and Covenants (the D&C (1835); referred to usually as the Word of Wisdom) is the scriptural canon of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), section 89 of which provides dietary guidelines which prohibit, inter-alia, the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and hot drinks (ie tea & coffee).  This index of forbidden food accounts not only for why noted Mormon Mitt Romney usually looks so miserable but also why manufacturers of chocolate, candy & soda have long found Utah a receptive and lucrative market; other than joyful singing, the sugary treats are among their few orally enjoyed pleasures.  In buying caffeine-free soda, Mitt shows he still knows how to have a good time.  Lindsay Lohan, shopping in Beverley Hills in December 2007 (right), uses a shopping cart because a half-dozen 500 ml (16.9 fl oz) bottles of evian water are heavier than they look.  Neither have ever been accused of cartnapping.

Dumped in the wild: victims of cartnaping. 

But carts built into cars never reached the market so the shopping cart remained ubiquitous, thus the emergence of the crime of “cartnaping”, a poorer demographic (such as university students with carts loaded with beer & frozen pizzas) sneaking from the store, using their cart all the way home.  So the students got their beer and pizza but now had the problem of disposing of an unwanted cart and waiting for dark to fall before dumping the things in local parks, waterways or underpasses was a popular solution.  Because there were so many cartnaping students, it became a real problem (1) for the environment and (2) for the stores which paid several hundred dollars for each cart.  One early response was to pay third-party contractors a “fee per cart recovered” but more recently there have been measures to prevent cartnaping including electronic devices which make it difficult to push the things beyond a certain point and a deposit scheme in which a low-denomination coin is inserted to gain use; the money refunded when the cart is returned.  The latest approach is to require a swipe with a credit card or phone, not to extract a payment but to register the name of the user and local authorities have a variety of schemes t address the problem including a "report-a-cart hotline" and regimes under which stores are fined for each of their carts found "in the wild".

Croissant

Croissant (pronounced krwah-sahn (French) or kruh-sahnt (barbarians))

A rich, buttery, often crescent-shaped, roll of leavened dough or puff paste.

1899:  From the French croissant (crescent), present participle of the verb croître (to increase, to grow), from the Middle French croistre, from the Old French creistre derived from the Classical Latin crēscēns & crēscentem, present active infinitive of crēscō (I augment), drawn from the Proto-Italic krēskō. The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European ḱreh (to grow, become bigger).  Correct pronunciation here.  

The Austrian Pastry

Like some other cultural artefacts thought quintessentially French (French fries invented in Belgium; Nicolas Sarkozy (b 1955; French president 2007-2012) from here and there; the Citroën DS (1955-1975) styled by an Italian) the croissant came from elsewhere, its origins Austrian, the Viennese kipferl a crescent-shaped sweet made plain, with nuts or other fillings.  It varies from the French classic in being denser and less flaky, made with softer dough.  First noted in the thirteenth century at which time, it was thought a “sweet” it was another three-hundred years before it came to be regarded as a morning pastry.  Tastes changed as new techniques of baking evolved and around the turn of the seventeenth century, recipes began to appear in Le Pâtissier François using Pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), these being the first recognisably modern croissants.

Culinary histories include a number of (likely apocryphal) tales of why the croissant adopted a crescent shape.  One suggests it was baked first in Buda to celebrate the defeat of the Ummayyad (the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) was the second of the four major caliphates created after the death of the prophet Muhammad (circa 570-632)) forces by the Franks in the Battle of Tours (732), the shape representing the Islamic crescent moon although more famous is the notion it was designed after the battle of 1683 when the Ottomans were turned back from the gates of Vienna.  A baker, said to have heard the Turks tunneling under the walls of the city as he lit his ovens to bake the morning bread, sounded an alarm, and the defending forces collapsed the tunnel, saving the city.   To celebrate, bread was baked in the shape of the crescent moon of the Turkish flag.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette (1769) oil on canvas by Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802).

The official title of the portrait was Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria and it was created as the era’s equivalent of a Tinder profile picture, the artist summoned in 1769 to Vienna to paint a pleasing rendering of the young lady the Hapsburg royal court planned to marry off to Louis, Dauphin of France (1754-1973) who would reign as Louis XVI (King of France 1774-1792)).  Tinder profile pictures can be misleading (some pounds and even more years sometimes vanishing) so the work must be considered in that context although she was barely fourteen when she sat so it may be true to the subject.  Ducreux’s portrait was the first glimpse the prince had of his intended bride and it must have been pleasing enough for him metaphorically to "swipe right" and the marriage lasted until the pair were executed with the blade of the guillotine.  As a reward, Ducreux was raised to the nobility as a seigneur de la baronnie (lord of the barony, the grade of of baron granted to roturiers (commoners)) and appointed premier peintre de la reine (First Painter to the Queen), outliving the royal couple.

A more romantic tale attributes the pastry to Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen of France 1774-1792), who, as an Austrian, preferred the food of her homeland to that of the French court and, at state dinners, would sneak away to enjoy pastries and coffee.  There is no documentary evidence for her having re-christened the kipferl as the croissant but the story is she so missed what she knew as kipfel (German for crescent) that she commanded the royal baker to clone the treat.  More prosaic, but actually verified by historical evidence, is that August Zang (1807-1888), a retired Austrian artillery officer founded a Viennese Bakery in Paris in 1839 and most food historians agree he is the one most likely to have introduced the kipfel to France, a pastry that later inspired French bakers to create crescents of their own.  The first mention of the croissant in French is in French chemist Anselme Payen’s (1795-1871) Des Substances alimentaires (1853), published long after Marie-Antoinette’s time in court, the first known printed recipe, using the name, appearing in Swiss chef Joseph Favre’s (1849-1903) Dictionnaire universel de cuisine (1905) although even that was a more dense creation than the puffy thing known today.

Breakfast in Paris.

Although the famous shape is much admired, for purists, the choice is always the un-curved croissant au beurre, (butter croissant), the more eye-catching crescents being usually the ordinaires, made with margarine.  The taste in the English-speaking world for things like ham-and-cheese croissants is regarded by the French as proof of Anglo-Saxon barbarism although they will tolerate a sparse drizzle of chocolate if it’s for children and food critics reluctantly concede the almond croissant (with a frangipane filling, topped with slivered almonds and a dusting of powdered sugar) is “…enjoyed by younger women”.  Generally though, the French stick to the classics, eschewing even butter, a croissant being best enjoyed unadorned and taken with a strong black coffee and while some will insist this should be accompanied with a Gitanes, that is optional.

The cube croissant, an Instagram favorite.

Although much focused upon, the shape of a croissant of course becomes less relevant when eaten when the experience becomes one of taste and texture.  For that reason the pastry used has long attracted those chefs for whom food offers architectural possibilities and while for more than a century one-offs have been created for competition and special event, in recent years the phenomenon of social media has been a design stimulant, Instagram, TikTok et al fuelling a culinary arms race and patisseries have built (sometimes short-lived) product lines in response to viral videos.  Fillings have of course been a feature but it’s the shapes which have been most eye-catching (and by extension click-catching which is the point for the content providers). There have been “croissants” in the shape of spheres, discs, pyramids, spirals, wedges and cubes, the last among the more amusing with chefs referencing objects and concepts such as dice, cubist art and, of course, the Rubik’s Cube.  Many have been just a moment while some have for a while trended.

Dominique Ansel's Cronut, stacked and sliced.

Some have endured for longer such as the Cronut (the portmanteau’s construct being cro(issant) + (dough)nut) and so serious was New York based French pastry chef Dominique Ansel (b 1978) that in 2013 he trademarked his creation.  In the familiar shape of a doughnut, the composition was described as “a croissant-like pastry with a filling of flavored cream and fried in grapeseed oil.”  Interviewed by Murdoch tabloid the New York Post, the chef revealed it took “two months of R&D (research & development)” before the Cronut was perfected and the effort was clearly worthwhile because after being released in his eponymous bakery in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood, the city’s food bloggers (a numerous and competitive population) responded and within days photographs circulated of dozens waiting for opening time, a reaction which prompted the application to the US Patent and Trademark Office.  In the way of such things, around the planet “clones”, “tributes”, “knock-offs”, “imitations”, “rip-offs” (the descriptions as varied as the slight changes in the recipes introduced presumably to fend off a C&D (cease and desist letter)) soon appeared.  Predictably, some were called “Doughssants” (the Germanic eszett a nice touch) although others were less derivative.

New York Post, August 16 2022.

Monsieur Ansel in 2015 released Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes, a cookbook which included the Cronut recipe and the thing in its authentic form was clearly for the obsessives, the instructions noting making one or a batch was a three-day process.  In its review of the year, Time magazine nominated the Cronut as one of the “best inventions of 2013”, prompting one cultural commentator (another species which proliferates in New York City) to observe the decadence of the West had reached the point the breakdown of society was close.  There may have been something in the idea the new “Visigoths at the Gates of Rome” were actually pastry chefs because in the wake of the Cronut the city was soon flooded with all sorts of novel sugary treats, mostly elaborations of croissants, doughnuts and, it being NYC, bagels.  By 2022 the New York Post was prepared to proclaim: “Move over cronuts! NYC's hot new baked good is the Suprême”, the defenestrator from Noho’s Lafayette Grand Café and revealed to be a “unique circular croissant filled with pastry crème and topped with ganache and crushed up cookies.”  Again of the Instagram & TikTok age, queues were reported even though at a unit cost of US$8.50 it was two dollars more expensive than a Cronut, the price of which had increased fairly modestly since 2013 when it debuted at US$5.00.

All the recent variations on the croissant are built on the theme chefs have for centuries understood is the easy path to popularity: FSS; add fat, salt & sugar, the substances mankind has for millennia sought.  Once it took much effort (and often some risk) to find these things but now they’re conveniently packaged and widely available at prices which, although subject to political and economic forces, remain by historic standards very cheap.  Often, we don’t even need to seek out the packages because so much of the preparation and distribution of food has been outsourced to specialists, mostly industrial concerns but the artisans persist in niches.  That’s certainly true of the croissant, few making their own whether basic or embellished and one of the latest of the croissant crazes is FSS writ large: the crookie.

Miss Sina's crookie (without added topping or powered sugar).

A crookie is a croissant stuffed with chocolate chip cookie dough and its very existence will be thought particularly shameful by some Parisian purists because it was first sold in December 2023 by the Boulangerie Louvard, located on Rue de Châteaudun in Paris’s 9^th arrondissement which, in an Instragram post announced the arrival: “Our pure butter croissant, awarded the seventh best croissant in the Île-de-France region in 2022, is made every morning with a 24-hour fermented milk sourdough and layered with Charente butter.  For our cookie dough, we use one of the best and purest chocolates in the world, from @xoco.gourmet.”  Offered originally in a test batch to test the market, the boulangerie soon announced “The concept was well received, so we're keeping it.  Available every day in-store!”

Unlike a Cronut which (at least in its pure form) demands three days to make, the charm of the crookie is its elegant simplicity and Instagrammers quickly deconstructed and posted the instructions:

(1) With a serrated knife, cut open a croissant lengthwise, leaving a “hinge” at the back.

(2) Add 2-3 tablespoons of your chocolate chip cookie dough (from a packet or home-made).

(3) Close the two sections of croissant wholly encasing the dough.

(4) When the dough is almost cooked (time will vary according to oven and the volume of dough but it takes only a few minutes), remove from oven.

(5) Add more cookie dough to the top of croissant and return to the oven for final bake.

(6) When the outside is crispy and the centre gooey, remove from oven and top with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Some crookie critics don't recommend either adding the second lashing of dough or the powered sugar because they tend to "overwhelm" the croissant and limit the surface area, thereby denying the dish some of the essential crispiness.  

The croissant in fashion

Louis Vuitton Loop (part number M81098).  Created by Nicolas Ghesquière (b 1971) for the Cruise 2022 Collection, the Loop is described as a "half-moon baguette" and was inspired by the earlier Croissant bag, the original a less fussy design.

Lindsay Lohan in T-shirt with croissant theme.

While a handbag lends itself well to the shape of a crescent, it does inherently limit the efficiency of space utilization but this aspect is often not a primary goal in the upper reaches of the market.  With garments however, although actually a common component because the shape makes all sorts of engineering possible such as the underwire of the bra or other constructions where any sort of cantilever effect is demanded, it’s usually just an element rather than a design motif.  As a playful touch, a distinctive crescent moon or croissant might appear on a T-shirt or scarf but it’s rare to see a whole garment pursue the theme although they have appeared on the catwalks where they attract the usual mix of admiration and derision.   

Sarah Jessica Parker in "croissant dress".

Sometimes though, such things escape the catwalk.  In 2022 the actor Sarah Jessica Parker (b 1965) appeared in HBO's And Just Like That, a spin-off (2021-2022) of the Sex and the City TV series (1998-2024), wearing an orange Valentino couture gown from the house’s spring/summer 2019 collection.  It recalled a large croissant, the piece chosen presumably because the scene was set in Paris although it must have been thought the viewers needed the verisimilitude laid on with a trowel because also prominent was a handbag in the shape of the Eifel Tower.  A gift to the meme-makers, admiration for the dress was restrained.