Macaronic

Macaronic (pronounced mak-uh-ron-ik)

(1) A text composed of or characterized by Latin words mixed with vernacular words or non-Latin words given Latin endings (known in literary theory as the “macaronic verse”).

(2) In latter-day use, a text constructed with words from more than one language (written in a hodgepodge; a work of macaronic character).

(3) In structural linguistics, as macaronics, the study of or instances of macaronic language.

(4) Used loosely, anything mixed of stuff from different sources; a gallimaufry; a jumble (now rare).

(5) Of men, a dandy, foppish, trifling, affected (based on like “a macaroni” when used in that sense) (archaic).

1605–1615: From the sixteenth century New Latin macarōnicus, from the dialectal Italian maccarone (coarse dumpling), from the French macaronique (from the association of macaroni (the pasta) as peasant food with the vernacular language of peasants, thus the implication that mixing languages was indicative of “a lack of sophistication; being uneducated”, the construct being macaron(i) + -icus.  The Latin suffix -icus (feminine -ica, neuter -icum) was from i-stem + -cus and occurred in some original cases, becoming influential in adjectival formation and later used freely.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic -igaz (source of the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic - -eigs, the Sanskrit -इक (-ika) and Proto-Slavic -ьcь (the latter becoming fossilized as a nominal agent suffix, but it likely originally also served adjectival functions).  The suffix was appended to nouns to form adjectives denoting (1) belong to, (2) derived from or (3) pertaining to and thus may be compared to the suffixes -ic & -ish.  The spelling macaronick has been obsolete since the eighteenth century.  Macaronic is a noun & adjective and macaronically is an adverb; the noun plural is macaronics.  The comparative is “more macaronic” and the superlative “most macaronic” and those presumably can be used either of (1) the number of “foreign” words in a text or (2) the extent of the perceived inelegance thus created.

Teofilo Folengo (1491–1544 (who wrote under the pseudonyms Merlino Coccajoa & Merlinus Cocaius)) is regarded as one of the earliest and certainly most celebrated of the Italian macaronic poets.  He had become a Benedictine monk after being disowned (and more to the point, disinherited) by his father, disappointed at his son being sent down from university for “bad behavior”, a character trait which the Benedictines seemed not wholly to have suppressed because while in the village close to the monastery, he was ensorcelled by the comely waif Girolama Dieda who led him astray.  They eloped but after years of wandering, he returned to the church, performing the necessary rites of repentance, remaining in “the arms of God” until he died.  It was in 1519 he published Maccaronea, a volume of burlesques in a style which proved influential, encouraging a host of imitators to pen a literature of rough and ribald satire in mingled Latin and Italian verse.  Helpfully, Brother Folengo in 1517 coined the Modern Latin macaronicus, based on the dialectal Italian maccarone (the pasta macaroni) and provided a verse referencing the ingredents: “Quoddam pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum” which may be translated as “A certain dish made of flour, cheese, and butter, thick, crude, and rustic”, the elements deconstructed as farina (flour), caseo (cheese), botiro (butter), compaginatum (put together), grossum (thick), rude (crude; rough) & rusticanum (rustic).

So the macaronic verse was what might now be called a “mash-up” of vernacular words in a Latin context with Latin endings; applied loosely to verse in which two or more languages are jumbled together with little regard to syntax but so constructed as to be intelligible; that was what lent them the humor, they were obviously “wrong” but enough remained of conventional structures that the meaning was clear.  Because the dish maccarone was so associated with the rural poor (thus “peasant food”), the idea of the tangled, tortured language(s) of the verse was a caricature of the “talk of the uneducated, unsophisticated yokel”; in other words, a literary analogue of macaroni.  Although it was Folengo who popularized the technique its name, he wasn’t the first to publish verse in the style, Tifi (dagli) Odasi (the pen-name of Italian poet Michele di Bartolomeo degli Odasi (circa 1450–1492) in 1490 issuing Carmen macaronicum de Patavinis (Macaronic Song from Padua).  After the enthusiastic response to Folengo, the idea spread throughout Europe and much macaronic verse soon existed in French and German literature (the Germans calling them Nudeloerse although the works seem now to be listed as Knittelvers among the “amusing doggerel).

Portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1756), oil on canvas by François Boucher (1703-1770), Bavarian State Collection.

Soldiers liked pseudo Latin and Illegitimi non carborundum (Don't let the bastards grind you down) a classic of “Barracks Latin” while schoolboys & undergraduates were drawn to the macaronic limerick, the more bawdy the better:

King Louis, when passing through Bruges
Met a lady whose cunt was so huge
That he said, as he came
In that fabulous dame,
“Atta girl! Apris moi le deluge.” 

Apris moi le deluge (After me, the flood) was a phrase attributed to Louis XV (1710–1774; le Bien-Aimé (Louis the Beloved), King of France 1715-1774) who is reputed to have uttered the words to the Marquise de Pompadour (styled usually as Madame de Pompadour (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (1721-1764), the king's official chief mistress 1745-1751)).  It conveys a feeling both narcissistic and nihilistic, the notion that once one is dead it matters little what happens in the world, an intoxicating sentiment expressed by characters in many novels.  Whether the king really spoke these exact words isn’t certain and there are different versions but it’s likely based on something he said and historians don’t doubt the fragment of thought is a glimpse into the royal mind.  In a more romantic telling of the tale, he whispers to his concubine: Après nous, le deluge (After us, the flood).

There was a young lady of Nantes
Très jolie, et très élégante, [Very pretty, and very elegant]
But her cunt was so small
It was no good at all,
Except for la plume de ma tante.

La plume de ma tante (The quill (pen) of my Aunt) is notorious for its use in French language teaching and derided as being as useless in general discourse as “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”, neither “often coming up in conversation”.

Macaroni is of course an obviously Italian word, a quality once exploited for jocular effect by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), someone not noted for his sense of humor.  In his (partly reliable) memoir, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled Benito Mussolini’s (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) 1937 state visit to Berlin being discussed during one of the Führer’s usually dreary social gatherings, recounting the way the sycophantic Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) responded to Hitler having praised the Italian’s virtues and “Caesarean look.”:

“Goebbels interposed.  He was surely speaking in the name of all present, he said, if he called attention to the enormous difference between the Duce and the Führer.  After all, the Führer was quite another kind of personality. In Italy Mussolini might be something special, a Roman among plain ordinary Italians, as the Führer had sometimes remarked; but here in Berlin he was, after all, just an Italian among Germans. At any rate he, Goebbels, at times had felt that the Duce had come walking out of an operetta.  Hider’s initial response to this seemed to be one of contradictory emotions. His new friend was being denigrated, but at the same time he felt flattered and stimulated. When Goebbels followed this up with two or three skillful remarks, Hitler began imitating a few of Mussolini’s poses that had struck him as outré: the outstretched chin, the right hand braced against the hip, the straddle-legged stance. While the onlookers laughed obediently, he flung out a number of Italian or Italian-sounding words like patria, Victoria, macaroni, bellezza, belcanto, telegrafico, and basta. His performance was very funny.”  Speer was not much noted for a sense of humor either.

The curious adoption in England, late in the eighteenth century, of “a macaroni” to describe “a dandy, a foppish and extravagantly well-dressed young man” was an allusion to London’s fashionable Macaroni Club, popular with elegant young men from the what were then called “the better classes” who after their obligatory “Grand Tour of the Continent” arrived home affecting French and Italian fashions and accents, something which brought them some derision.  Interestingly, among twenty-first century entertainment figures, affected foreign accents are still heard.  Macaroni also provided the English ruling class with (yet) another way of putting down foreigners: there were “macaroni philosophers” (anything from other than Greek, German or English empiricist traditions), “macaroni marquises” (European titles of nobility of dubious provenance) and “macaroni makers” (a Foreign Office term for Italian diplomats (a later alternative being “ice-cream salesmen”).  Fortunately though, macaroni cheese (Mac ’n’ Cheese) which upon its eighteenth century introduction to London was an “exotic dish” survived to become truly classless comfort food, albeit one which dieticians are inclined to preach against, at least if enjoyed too much or too often.  In the English-speaking world, the spelling “macaroni” is almost universal although the original Italian form, maccaroni, was for centuries common and remains listed still by some dictionaries as an alternative.  The Italians now use maccheroni and in other countries this can be seen in menus of those Italian restaurants sprinkling a little linguistic flavor.   

Lindsay Lohan’s official Mac ‘n’ cheese recipe.

Harlot

Harlot (pronounced hahr-luht)

(1) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; one given to the wanton; lewd; low; base.

(2) By extension, in political discourse, an unprincipled person (now rare).

(3) A person given to low conduct; a rogue; a villain; a cheat; a rascal (obsolete).

(4) To play the harlot; to practice lewdness.

Circa 1200: From the Middle English harlot (young idler, rogue), from the Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (rascal; vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin but thought probably of Germanic origin, either a derivation of harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow); most speculate the first element is from hari (army).  It was cognates with the Old Provençal arlot, the Old Spanish arlote and the Italian arlotto.  The long obsolete Middle English carlot (a churl; a common man; a person (male or female) of low birth; a boor; a rural dweller, peasant or countryman) is thought probably related.  Harlot was a noun and (less often) a verb, harlotry a noun and harlotize a verb; the present participle was harloting (or harlotting), the simple past and past participle harloted (or harlotted) and there’s no evidence exotic forms like harlotistic or harlotic ever existed, however useful they might have been.  Harlot is a noun & verb, harlotry is a noun, harlotish is an adjective, harlotize and harloted & harloting are verbs; the noun plural is harlots.  The adjective harlotesque is non-standard.

Harlot as a surname dates from at least the mid-late 1100s but by circa 1200 was being used to describe a “vagabond, someone of no fixed occupation, an idle rogue" and was applied almost exclusively to men in the Middle English and Old French.  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1345-1400) used harlot in a positive as well as pejorative sense and in medieval English texts it was applied to jesters, buffoons, jugglers and later to actors.  What is the now prevalent meaning (prostitute, unchaste woman) was originally the secondary sense but it had probably developed as early as the late fourteenth century, being well-documented by the early fifteenth.  Doubtless, it was the appearance in sixteenth century English translations of the Bible (as a euphemism for "strumpet, whore") which cemented the association.

In harlotesque mode: Lindsay Lohan in fancy dress as Suicide Squad's (2016) Harley Quinn, Halloween party, London, November 2016.  It may be a cliché but for purposes of fancy dress, fishnet stockings (or tights) are the motif of choice for those wanting the "harlot look". 

The biblical imprimatur didn’t so much extend the meaning as make it gender-specific.  The noun harlotry (loose, crude, or obscene behavior; sexual immorality; ribald talk or jesting) had been in use since the late fourteenth century and the choice of harlot in biblical translation is thought an example of linguistic delicacy, a word like “strumpet” though too vulgar for a holy text and “jezebel” too historically specific.  In this, harlot is part of a long though hardly noble tradition of crafting or adapting words as derogatory terms to be applied to women.  It has to be admitted there are nuances between many but one is impressed there was thought to be such a need to be offensive to women that English contains so many: promiscuous, skeezer, slut, whore, concubine, courtesan, floozy, hooker, hussy, nymphomaniac, streetwalker, tom, strumpet, tramp, call girl, lady of the evening, painted woman et al.  So the bible is influential although there’s a perhaps surprising difference in the translations of that prescriptive duo, Leviticus & Ezekiel: In the King James Version (KJV 1611), harlot appears in thirty-eight versus, but once in Leviticus, nine times in Ezekiel, some of the memorable being:.

Genesis 38:24: And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she [is] with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Leviticus 21:14: A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, [or] an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

Joshua 6:25: And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Isaiah 1:21: How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

Ezekiel 16:15: But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

Ezekiel 16:41: And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

Ezekiel 23:19: Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

Ezekiel 23:44: Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.

Amos 7:17: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

Nahum 3:4: Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

Stanley Baldwin election campaign poster, 1929.

Phrases like “shameless harlot” and “political prostitution” used to be part of the lively language of politics but social change and an increasing intolerance of gendered terms of derision have rendered them almost extinct (the language of metaphorical violence is next for the chopping-block: guillotined, knifed, axed etc all on death row).  Harlot’s most notable political excursion came in 1931 when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; thrice UK prime-minister 1923-1937) was facing an orchestrated campaign against his leadership by the newspaper proprietors, Lords Rothermere (1868–1940) & Beaverbrook (1879-1964), the "press barons" then a potent force (Beaverbrook called them collectively the "press gang").  Before commercial television & radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable.  The press barons though, whatever their desires, couldn't be dictatorial, as Beaverbrook found when his long campaign for empire free-trade achieved little but they sometimes behaved as if they could at a whim move public opinion and often politicians were inclined to believe them.  Within the UK at the time, Rothermere & Beaverbrook weren’t exactly “by Murdoch out of Zuckerberg” but it’s hard to think of a better way of putting it.

Baldwin in 1931 found a good way of putting it.  His leadership of the Tory party challenged because he refused to support them in what was even then the chimera of empire free trade, he responded with a strident speech which appealed to the public’s mistrust of the press barons, using a phrase from his cousin Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), ironically a friend of Beaverbrook.  Rothermere & Beaverbrook he denounced as wanting power without responsibility, “…the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  It was the most effective political speech in the UK until 1940, Baldwin flourishing and empire free trade doomed, although Beaverbrook would keep flogging the corpse for the rest of the 1930s.  Often underestimated, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) would later acknowledge Baldwin as the most formidable political operator of the era.

The oratory of Lloyd-George and Churchill may be more regarded by history but Baldwin did have a way with words and less remembered lines from another of his famous speeches may have influenced climate change activist Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  Delivered in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 in a debate on disarmament, he argued for an international agreement to restrict the development of the aircraft as a military weapon:

“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him.  The bomber will always get through…”.  “The only defense is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.”

Prescient about the way the unrestricted bombing of civilians would be the Second World War’s novel theatre, the phrase "the bomber will always get through" reverberated around the world, chancelleries and military high commands taking from it not the need for restrictions but the imperative to build bomber fleets, Baldwin not planting the seed of the idea but certainly reinforcing the prejudices and worst instincts of many.  That was the power of the phrase; it subsumed the purpose of the speech, the rest of which was essentially forgotten including the concluding sentences:

"I do not know how the youth of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been on it."

“This is a question for young men far more than it is for us…”  “Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war…”  “At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone.  But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.”

“If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done.”  “As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth.”

Hansard recorded Baldwin’s speech being greeted with “loud and prolonged cheers”, his enthusiasm for disarmament making him as popular as Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) would briefly be in 1938 when he returned from Germany with a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature an a guarantee of “peace in our time”.  Soon, the views on both men would shift but historians today treat them more sympathetically.

The old and the young.

Greta Thunberg (b 2003) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), United Nations, New York, September 2019.  Ms Thunberg was attending a UN climate summit Mr Trump snubbed, going instead to a meeting on religious freedom.  Proving that God moves in mysterious ways, Mr Trump took a whole new interest in evangelical Christianity when he entered the contest for the 2016 presidential election.  Ms Thunberg seems to have noted the final paragraphs of Baldwin's speech and while convinced it’s quite right to “lay the blame on the old men” and their blah, blah, blah, which she thinks insufficient to lower carbon emissions, seems confident youth will prove more receptive to doing something about us defiling the earth.

Greta Thunberg, How Dare You? (Acid house mix).

Leman

Leman (pronounced lem-uhn or lee-muhn)

(1) A sweetheart; lover; beloved.

(2) A mistress.

(3) As Lac Léman, the French name for Lake Geneva.

1175-1225: From the Middle English lemman (loved one of the opposite sex; paramour, lover; wife (and also (1) "a spiritually beloved one; redeemed soul, believer in Christ; female saint devoted to chastity; God, Christ, the Virgin Mary" & (2) "a term of intimate address to a friend or lover")), variant of leofman, from the Old English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart; attested as a personal name), the construct being lief +‎ man (beloved person).  Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof (dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz.  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo & ljoo, the West Frisian leaf, the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs, the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the Polish luby.  Man is from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European man or mon (man).  The origins of the use of "Dear" as a salutation in letters (a convention some preserve in email though apparently not in other digital comms) is thought derived ultimately from the the Old English leofman (the construct being leof (dear) + man) as a term of intimate address to a friend or lover.

Bader Shammas (b 1987) and his leman.

A linguistic relic, leman applied originally either to men or women and had something of a romantic range.  It could mean someone of whom one was very fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly tended to the latter; a sweetheart or paramour.  In the narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, it would be confusing.  It tends now to be used as a term of disparagement against women in the same way a suggestion of the mendacious is thought a genteel way to call someone a liar.  In early-modern English, alternative spellings did emerge, lemman between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries and remarkably, lemon in the fifteenth and sixteenth.  No explanation for lemon in this context has emerged and it may have been an imperfect echoic.  The word certainly had a curious path on its way to obscurity, beginning as meaning "one's beloved", it came to be applied to God, Christ, the Blessed Virgin and other notables of Christianity before being specifically re-purposed around the turn of the fourteenth century to mean "one's betrothed" yet by the late 1500s it had acquired the  at the turn of the sense of a "concubine or mistress".   

The Faerie Queene (1590) by Edmund Spenser (circa 1552-1599)

Woodcut illustration for Book II (Cantos VII-XII) of the Faerie Queene.

As long ago as the late sixteenth century, leman was rare word, supplanted by other forms, some gender-specific.  However, that very quality of the obsolescent made it attractive as a literary device for those seeking some historic flavor, the use exemplified in The Faerie Queene, an epic-length poem recounting tales of knightly exploits.  Written in a deliberately archaic style, Spenser merged history and myth, drawing especially on the Arthurian legends with each of the books an allegorical following of a knight who represents a particular virtue (holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy) which will be tested by the plot.  It’s long been of interest to Shakespearean scholars because book two appears to be a source for much of King Lear.  It’s also attracted the attention of feminist critics.

Such is the crueltie of womenkynd,
When they have shaken off the shamefast band,
With which wise Nature did them strongly bynd,
T’obay the heasts of mans well ruling hand,
That then all rule and reason they withstand,
To purchase a licentious libertie.
But virtuous women wisely understand,
That they were borne to base humilitie,
Unlesse the heavens them lift to lawfull soveraintie. (Book five) 

The poem is unfinished: Spenser planned twelve books but only six were completed, a seventh left incomplete.

Faire Venus seemde vnto his bed to bring

Her, whom he waking euermore did weene

To be the chastest flowre, that ay did spring

On earthly braunch, the daughter of a king,

Now a loose Leman to vile seruice bound. (Book one)

Odalisque

Odalisque (pronounced ohd-l-isk)

(1) A female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one attached to the Ottoman seraglio.

(2) Any of a number of representations of such a woman or of a similar subject, as by Ingres, Matisse et al (initial capital letter).

(3) In informal use, (1) a desirable or sexually attractive woman and (2) in painting, a reclining female figure in some state of undress (contested).

1680s: From the 1660s French odalique (the intrusive -s- perhaps from -esque), from the Ottoman Turkish اوطه‌لق‎ (ōdalik) (maid-servant (sometimes translated as concubine)), the construct being اوده‎ (oda or ōdah) (room in a harem (literally “chamber, hall”) + lιk (the noun suffix of appurtenance).  In French, the suffix was sometimes confused with Greek -isk(os) (of the nature of, belonging to), hence the alternative spelling odalisk where was still circulating well into the twentieth century.  The spread of the Ottoman Empire from Asia to Europe meant useful or intriguing words from Ottoman Turkish entered other languages.  Some use the French or English forms but other variations included the Catalan odalisca, the Dutch odalisk, the German Odaliske, the Hungarian odaliszk, the Icelandic ódalíska, the Italian odalisca, the Portuguese odalisca, the Russian одали́ска (odalíska), the Serbo-Croatian одалиска (odaliska) and the Spanish odalisca.  Odalisque is a noun; the noun plural is odalisques)

An odalisque and the quality of odalisque: Odalisque à la culotte rouge (Odalisque in red trousers) (1921), oil on canvas by Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (left) and Lindsay Lohan (2008) in the same vein (right).

Matisse was one of many painters drawn to the exoticism of the orient and painted a series of “Odalisque works”.  There was a time when what white male artists did defined what was art but in recent decades, the depictions by Western artists of aspects of culture east and south of Suez have become controversial, the popular word “problematic” often heard.  Even as historical artefacts, it’s difficult now not to be aware of the complicated legacy such imagery evokes, the Western construct of “Orientalism”, although born of a time when such places were far removed from the industrial society of the post-Enlightenment West, jarring when considered using the twenty-first century standards of representing race and gender.  The objectification by white male artists of women (oriental or not), of course had a long history but it adds another layer when those depicted are the prisoners of a harem, a commodity maintained at the pleasure of a man and discarded at whim.  Did Matisee and the others reveal their colonial attitudes by focusing only on the female body as something which existed aesthetically to please men while ignoring the inherent violence beneath the surface?  There have always been those who argue the artist has the right not to be troubled by (or even know about) such things and the l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) school will always have a following but the recent deconstructions of patriarchal and colonial structures of power do mean that while such works can still be enjoyed, to admit such an indulgence is becoming harder to sustain.

Odalisque au pantalon rouge (Odalisque in Red Pants) (circa 1925), oil on canvas by Henri Matisse, Fundación Museos Nacionales, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela.  The real one is on the left, the forgery on the right.

As commodity however, Matisses remain desirable.  Sometime between 1999-2002, his Odalisque au pantalon rouge (Odalisque in Red Pants) was stolen from the Venezuelan national gallery in Carracus and replaced with a forgery.  The crime remained un-noticed until 2003 and the work was recovered some fourteen years later, the circumstances of the disappearance remaining as murky as Venezuela’s politics but the scandal did attract much attention especially given it was the only Matisse hung in any of the nation’s museums and the only of his Odalisques on display anywhere in Latin America.  After being recovered in 2012 in Miami by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the real and the fake were (side-by-side) exhibited as a kind of installation, accompanied by collateral displays which documented the technical differences between the two, the security protocols by which cultural institutions determined patrimony and the systems maintained to monitor any theft of patrimony, according to the regulations of each country and those of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

US and Mexican nationals were convicted on charges of attempting to sell the stolen Odalisque but most Venezuelans appeared to draw the weary conclusion that official corruption was involved.  It was only when in 2002 the museum received a message telling them the painting was being offered for sale that a check was made and it was found the one on the gallery’s walls not just a fake but a poorly executed one.  Nevertheless, it had hung there for at least two years, an embarrassing photograph from 2000 emerging which showed then President Hugo Chávez (1954–2013; Venezuelan president 1999-2013 (except during a few local difficulties in 2002)) standing in the museum with the fake Matisse behind him.  An investigation began but, as often happens in Venezuela, it proved inconclusive although it did reveal word of the painting being on the market had been received as early as 2000 but the matter, for whatever reason, wasn’t pursued.  When the FBI made their arrests, the suspects told them the painting had been stolen and replaced by museum employees, something which elicited little surprise in Carracus and nor was anyone much shocked when an audit revealed several other pieces were missing, none of which have been recovered.  Under Chavez, Western art was not regarded as anything of importance and, given the country’s problems in the years since, it’s likely that if ever another audit is performed, a few more things might be found to be missing.

An odalisque and the quality of odalisque: Odalisque (circa 1880), oil on canvas by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845–1902)  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (left) and Lindsay Lohan in the same vein, Vanity Fair photo-shoot, 2010 (right).

Inamorata

Inamorata (pronounced in-am-uh-rah-tuh or in-am-uh-rah-tuh)

A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover

1645-1655: From the Italian innamorata (mistress, sweetheart), noun use of the feminine form of innamorato (the noun plural innamoratos or innamorati) (lover, boyfriend), past principle of innamorare (to inflame with love), the construct being in- (in) + amore (love), from the Latin amor.  A familiar modern variation is enamor.  Inamorata is a noun; the noun plural is inamoratas.

Words like inamorata litter English and endure in their niches, not just because poets find them helpful but because they can be used to convey subtle nuances in a way a word which appears synonymous might obscure.  One might think the matter of one’s female lover might be linguistically (and sequentially) covered by (1) girlfriend, (2) fiancé, (3) wife and (4) mistress but to limit things to those is to miss splitting a few hairs.

A man’s girlfriend is a romantic partner though not of necessity a sexual one because some religions expressly prohibit such things without benefit of marriage and there are the faithful who follow these teachings.  One can have as many girlfriends as one can manage but the expectation they should be enjoyed one at a time.  Women can have girlfriends too but (usually) they are “friends who are female” rather than anything more except of course among lesbians where the relationship is the same as with men.  Gay men too have girlfriends who are “female friends”, some of whom may be “fag hags” a term which now is generally a homophobic slur unless used within the LGB factions of the LGBTQQIAAOP community where it can be jocular or affectionate.

A fiancé is a women to whom one is engaged to be married, in many jurisdictions once a matter of legal significance because an offer of marriage could be enforced under the rules of contract law.  While common law courts didn’t go as far as ordering “specific performance of the contract”, they would award damages on the basis of a “breach of promise”, provided it could be adduced that three of the four essential elements of a contract existed: (1) offer, (2) certainty of terms and (3) acceptance.  The fourth component: (4) consideration (ie payment), wasn’t mentioned because it was assumed to be implicit in the nature of the exchange; a kind of deferred payment as it were.  It was one of those rarities in common law where things operated almost wholly in favor of women in that they could sue a man who changed his mind while they were free to break-off an engagement without fear of legal consequences though there could be social and familial disapprobation.  Throughout the English-speaking world, the breach of promise tort in marriage matters has almost wholly been abolished, remaining on the books in the a couple of US states (not all of which lie south of the Mason-Dixon Line) but even where it exists it’s now a rare action and one likely to succeed only in exceptional circumstances or where a particularly fragrant plaintiff manages to charm a particularly sympathetic judge.

The spelling fiancé (often as fiance) is now common for all purposes.  English borrowed both the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) from the French verb fiancer (to get engaged) in the mid nineteenth century and that both spellings were used is an indication it was one of those forms which was, as an affectation, kept deliberately foreign because English typically doesn’t use gendered endings. Both the French forms were ultimately from the Classical Latin fidare (to trust), a form familiar in law and finance in the word fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūciārius (held in trust), from fīdūcia (trust) which, as a noun & adjective, describes relationships between individuals and entities which rely on good faith and accountability.  Pronunciation of both fiancé and fiancée is identical so the use of the differentiated forms faded by the late twentieth century and even publications like Country Life and Tattler which like writing with class-identifiers seem to have updated.  Anyway, because English doesn’t have word endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female betrothed would seem unfashionable in the age of gender fluidity but identities exist as they’re asserted and one form or the other might be deployed as a political statement by all sides in the gender wars.

Model Emily Ratajkowski's (b 1991) clothing label is called Inamorata, a clever allusion to her blended nickname EmRata.  This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in three aspects.

Wife was from the Middle English wyf & wif, from the Old English wīf (woman, wife), from the Proto-West Germanic wīb, from the Proto-Germanic wībą (woman, wife) and similar forms existed as cognates in many European languages.  The wife was the woman one had married and by the early twentieth century, in almost all common law jurisdictions (except those where systems of tribal law co-existed) it was (more or less) demanded one may have but one at a time.  Modern variations include “common-law wife” and the “de-facto wife”.  The common-law marriage (also known as the "sui iuris (from the Latin and literally “of one's own right”) marriage", the “informal marriage” and the “non-ceremonial marriage”) is a kind of legal quasi-fiction whereby certain circumstances can be treated as a marriage for many purposes even though no formal documents have been registered, all cases assessed on their merits.  Although most Christian churches don’t long dwell on the matter, this is essentially what marriage in many cases was before the institutional church carved out its role.  In popular culture the term is used loosely to refer sometimes just about any un-married co-habitants regardless of whether or not the status has been acknowledged by a court.  De facto was from the Latin de facto, the construct being dē (from, by) + the ablative of factum (fact, deed, act).  It translates as “in practice, what actually is regardless of official or legal status” and is thus differentiated from de jure, the construct being dē (from) + iūre (law) which describes something’s legal status.  In general use, a common-law wife and de facto wife are often thought the same thing but the latter differs that in some jurisdictions the parameters which define the status are codified in statute whereas a common law wife can be one declared by a court on the basis of evidence adduced.

Mistress dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English maistresse, from the Old & Middle French maistresse (in Modern French maîtresse), feminine of maistre (master), the construct being maistre (master) + -esse or –ess (the suffix which denotes a female form of otherwise male nouns denoting beings or persons), the now rare derived forms including the adjective mistressed and the noun mistressship.  In an example of the patriarchal domination of language, when a woman was said to have acquired complete knowledge of or skill in something, she’s was said to have “mastered” the topic.  A mistress (in this context) was a woman who had a continuing, extramarital sexual relationship with one man, especially a man who, in return for an exclusive and continuing liaison, provides her with financial support.  The term (like many) has become controversial and critics (not all of them feminists) have labeled it “archaic and sexist”, suggesting the alternatives “companion” or “lover” but neither convey exactly the state of the relationship so mistress continues to endure.  The critics have a point in that mistress is both “loaded” and “gendered” given there’s no similarly opprobrious term for adulterous men but the word is not archaic; archaic words are those now rare to the point of being no longer in general use and “mistress” has hardly suffered that fate, thought-crime hard to stamp out.

This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in another three aspects.

Inamorata was useful because while it had a whiff of the illicit, that wasn’t always true but what it did always denote was a relationship of genuine love whatever the basis so one’s inamorata could also be one’s girlfriend, fiancé or mistress though perhaps not one’s wife, however fond one might be of her.  An inamorata would be a particular flavor of mistress in the way paramour or leman didn't imply.  Paramour was from the Middle English paramour, paramoure, peramour & paramur, from the Old French par amor (literally “for love's sake”), the modern pronunciation apparently an early Modern English re-adaptation of the French and a paramour was a mistress, the choice between the two perhaps influenced by the former tending to the euphemistic.  The archaic leman is now so obscure that it tends to be used only by the learned as a term of disparagement against women in the same way a suggestion mendaciousness is thought a genteel way to call someone a liar.  Dating from 1175-1225, it was from the Middle English lemman, a variant of leofman, from the Old English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart (and attested also as a personal name)), the construct being lief +‎ man (beloved person).  Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof (dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz and was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo & ljoo, the West Frisian leaf, the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs, the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the Polish luby.  Man is from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European mon (man).  A linguistic relic, leman applied originally either to men or women and had something of a romantic range.  It could mean someone of whom one was very fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly drifted to the latter: someone's sweetheart or paramour.  In the narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, that would now just confuse.

About the concubine, while there was a tangled history, there has never been much confusion.  Dating from 1250-1300, concubine was from the Middle English concubine (a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin concubīna, derived from cubare (to lie down), the construct being concub- (variant stem of concumbere & concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix).  The status (a woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the laity.  The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess although this title was wholly honorary and of no religious significance although presumably, as a vicar's wife might fulfil some role in the parish, they might have been delegated to do this and that.

Once were inamoratas: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, barefoot in Los Cabos, Mexico, 2008.

Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“sexually to violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction").  In Medieval Latin it also meant meant also "forcible violation" & "kidnapping" and a misunderstanding of the context in which the word was then used has caused problems in translation ever since .  Concubinage is, in the West, a term largely of historic interest.  It describes a relationship in which a woman engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage.  This may be due to differences in social rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions, or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities.  Historically, concubinage was often entered into voluntarily because of an economic imperative.  In the modern vernacular, wives use many words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).  They rarely use concubine.  They might however be tempted to use courtesan which was from the French courtisane, from the Italian cortigiana, feminine of cortigiano (courtier), from corte (court), from the Latin cohors.  A courtesan was a prostitute but a high-priced one who attended only to rich or influential clients and the origin of the term was when it was used of the mistresses of kings or the nobles in the court, the word mistress too vulgar to be used in such circles.