Treasure

Treasure (pronounced trezh-er)

(1) Wealth or riches stored or accumulated, especially in the form of precious metals, money, jewels, or plate; wealth, rich materials, or valuable things.

(2) A thing, beast or person greatly valued or highly prized.

(3) As the verbs treasured & treasuring, carefully to retain or keep in store, as in the mind; to regard or treat as precious; cherish; to put away for security or future use, as money.

(4) A term of endearment in the sense of “cherish” (archaic).

1125–1175: From the Middle English tresor, (displacing the native schat) from the Old French tresor (treasury, hoard, treasure (trésor in Modern French)), from the Gallo-Roman tresaurus, from the Latin thēsaurus (storehouse, hoard; anything hoarded (source also of Spanish & Italian tesoro)), from the Ancient Greek θησαυρός thēsauros (store, treasure, treasure house) (related to tithenai (to put, to place), from a reduplicated form of the primitive Indo-European root dhe- (to set, put).  In Middle English there was also the spelling thresur, the modern spelling is from the sixteenth century.  It replaced the Old English goldhord & maðm and the meaning extended from hoards of precious metals etc to a general sense of "anything valued" from circa 1200.  The verb emerged in late fourteenth century Middle English, a derivative of the noun.  It meant literally "to amass treasure; to store up for the future" but was used also in the figurative sense as "regard as precious, retain carefully in the mind" from treasure.  The first recorded treasure hunt happened in 1913 a relatively modern alternative spelling was the now almost extinct treasuer.  Treasure is a noun & verb, treasurable & treasureless are adjectives, treasury, treasurership, treasuress & treasurer are nouns, treasuring is a verb and treasured is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is treaures.

The noun treasurer was from the late thirteenth century, from the Old North French & Anglo-French tresorer & and the Old French tresorier, from tresor.  The noun treasury (a room or vault in which to store and safeguard treasure) dates from circa 1300, from the eleventh century Old French tresorie (treasury), from tresor.  The meaning "department of state that controls public revenue" was recorded from late the late fourteenth century and the first treasury bill was issued in 1797.  An Old English word for "room for treasure" was maðm-hus and for "treasury", it was feo-hus (connected to the modern fee).  There is a connection with the noun hoard, from the Old English hord (a treasure, valuable stock or store, an accumulation of something for preservation or future use and hence "any mass of things preserved by being deposited together," from the Proto-Germanic huzdam (source also of Old Saxon hord (treasure, hidden or inmost place)).  It was cognate with the Old Norse hodd, the German Hort and the Gothic huzd (treasure; literally "hidden treasure"), from the primitive Indo-European root (s)keu- (to cover, conceal).

T-Paper

US Treasury Building, Washington DC.

T-paper (Treasury-paper) is the collective term for securities issued by United States Treasury.  The US Treasury Department sells bills, notes, and bonds at auction with a fixed interest rate.  When demand is high, bidders pay higher than face value to receive the interest rate.  When demand is low, they pay less, thus the yield declines as the price rises; at times of crisis, yield drops as investors seek security at the expense of income.  T-paper gained the name from being once issued on physical paper or cardboard) but are exist in now digital form and are also referred to as “Treasurys”.

1864 US $100 three-year treasury note (6% annual interest rate, compounded semi-annually, payable at maturity); a bearer-bond, paid over-the-counter, to whomever held the physical paper.  

Although physical paper is no longer much associated with T-paper, a linguistic legacy persists in the “coupon stripping” market.  There’s long been a secondary market for T-paper, one flavor of which is where the interest and principal components have been separated, or "stripped" so they may be re-sold as separate products.  The name is derived from the days of paper and cardboard when traders literally would separate the paper interest coupons from the paper securities.  In the secondary market, the two pieces of paper than became independent retail items, one yielding interest, the principal re-sold as a zero-coupon bond.  The correct name in the digital age is Separate Trading of Registered Interest and Principal Securities (STRIPS).  STRIPS, more than some other products, reflects the dual role of the Treasury as both regulator and participant in the financial gambling market, not itself an issuer of STRIPS (that part of the market reserved for brokers and the non-retail arms of banks), instead the maintaining the transaction and ownership register.

1976 US $5000 ten-year treasury note with 8% rate.

The difference in types of T-Paper are defined by the length of the term: the time until the bond the matures at which point it is repaid.  All T-paper are really bonds, the nomenclature just part of the jargon of the industry.  Treasury Bills are issued for less than a year, Treasury Notes for 2, 3, 5, and 10 years and Treasury Bonds for 30 years.  Still unconfirmed is whether recent discussions by Treasury about longer-term bonds will be pursued although demand seemingly exists, fifty and even hundred-year bonds mentioned.  There has been speculation about the demand which, given the amount of money said now to be “sloshing around” the system, wasn’t unexpected and the large holdings of various sovereign wealth funds may also find the longer terms attractive, for reasons political as well as fiscal.  It anyway represents one school of thought on what to do about the money supply. 

A more recent creation is the Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS), bond, the principal of which is indexed against inflation using the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  As the CPI rises, the principal is adjusted upward; if the index falls, the principal is adjusted downwards, the coupon rate remaining constant, but generating a different amount of interest when multiplied by the inflation-adjusted principal.  This has the effect of protecting the holder against the inflation rate as measured by the CPI.  The current version of TIPS was created in 1997 and is offered with five, ten and thirty year maturities.

Spikes and waves:  US T-Note yield against inflation projections and outcomes with events noted, 2000-2020.

Inflation-indexed bonds became common in government bond markets in the late twentieth century, many emerging in the inflationary environment which followed (1) the distortions in US government spending the 1960s, (2) the structural changes to the Bretton-Woods system in the 1970s  and (3) the consequences of the oil shocks in the same decade; they’re essentially a form of hedging.  In the orthodox bond market, even those issued for long terms promise the holder a fixed dollar (or whatever currency) income flow for the term of issue.  That contrasts with the outgoings of an individual or corporation because prices tend quickly to adjust to external changes and unexpected changes can increase the general level of prices, altering the real purchasing power of money which is a risk to both holders and issuers of orthodox bonds.  The indexed bond substantially reduces this risk in that the lender’s receipts and the borrower’s payments become linked to movements in the general price level.

Lindsay Lohan attending the LA premiere of Treasure Planet, Cenerama Dome, Hollywood, California, November 2002.

Again, while used as a hedge, it is still a gambling market, the incentive for governments, beyond the political attractions of being able to offer the product, being the ability substantially to reduce borrowing costs  The UK government first issued indexed bonds in 1981 as a part of an attempt to reduce (it was actually an attempt to kill) inflation.  The markets however had noted the post-war performance of successive governments and were sceptical, holders of orthodox bonds, in effect, charging the government on the basis of an inflation rate substantially higher than the government intended the outcome to be.  This is how gambling works.  In issuing indexed bonds, simultaneously the government flagged a new seriousness in monetary policy and an intent to reduce funding costs by promising to compensate investors for high inflation only if inflation did not fall.  Unexpectedly, the government’s strategy proved successful and substantial savings in borrowing costs were realised.  The effect of the increase in the money supply induced by the COVID-19 responses will ultimately produce higher inflation because, unlike the restorative measures in the wake of the global financial crisis (2008-2011) which essentially gave money only to the rich, greater disposable income was gained more widely.  If the inflation is sustained or (in response to new, unexpected events) spikes, New Zealand's approach (which included products actually marketed as "inflation-proof bonds") might be re-visited.   

The New Zealand experience was different but the small size of the market, while making it an interesting and manageable thing for modelers and analysts, does mean caution must be taken if attempting to apply that experience at scale.  The NZ government issued inflation-adjusted government securities between 1977-1985 and, in a period of historically high inflation, they were popular, eventually accounting for some 15% of domestic debt on issue.  Post-war NZ had evolved into what is possibly the West’s most extreme example of an open political system being combined with a highly regulated economy and that did tend to work until the convulsions of the 1970s to which the NZ hybrid proved unable to adjust.  The adjustments were made after a change of government in 1984 and the inflation adjusted bonds offered by tender in 1983-1984 entered a market where the official inflation target was considerably lower than the buyer’s expectation.

New Zealand Consumer Price Index (CPI) 1970-2015.

Almost immediately, the new government ceased issuing indexed debt.  Perhaps paradoxically, the same credibility gap confronted the government in its own use of more orthodox methods to cut inflation.  Because it was expected the costs of selling long-term nominal bonds would be high, in 1986, issues longer than five years were suspended, the government making clear that would prevail until their inflation target had been met or exceeded.  The approach, while textbook correct, wasn’t without risk because, although shortening the term of a government’s nominal debt can be an appropriate response where inflation outcomes are uncertain, it does heighten the risk of higher costs when rolling-over maturing debt.  As it turned out, for one reason and another, some fairly brutal, inflation was tamed and in 1995, the government returned to the index-linked market.  Many countries created markets, Finland and some of the Nordic zone as early as 1945 and Israel ten year later.  A cluster of Latin American countries issued between 1964-1972 and a number of OECD nations followed the New Zealand and UK in the 1980s although the US Treasury wasn’t active until 1997.

Oculus

Oculus (pronounced ok-yuh-luhs)

(1) In anatomy, an eye.

(2) In architecture, a window or other circular (or oval) opening, especially one at the apex of a dome.

(3) In archaeology, a design representing an eye, as on funerary pottery found in megalithic tombs of Europe.

(4) In the mechanical engineering (associated with fluid dynamics), the central boss of a volute.

(5) In poetic and literary use, luminary of the sun and stars; eye of the soul, mind's eye; a spot resembling an eye, such as on a peacock feather; a principle ornament or the main feature of something.

(6) In botany, a bud, bulb or knob on many roots, on the reed etc.

(7) As oculist (plural oculists), one who practices the discipline of oculism (an archaic name for an ophthalmologist or optometrist).

1857: From the Latin oculus (an eye), from the Proto-Italic okwelos, from the primitive Indo-European hsokw (eye; to see).  It was cognate with the Sanskrit अक्षि (ákṣi), the Ancient Greek ὄσσε (ósse), the Gothic augō, the Old English ēaġe (from which Modern English would gain eye) & the Proto-Slavic oko.  Originating in antiquity, it was a widely used feature of Byzantine and Neoclassical architecture, known in French as the œil de boeuf (bull's-eye).  The noun plural is oculi.  An impressively long word with the same root is ocularpneumoplethysmography, a non-invasive technique for detecting carotid stenosis by measurement of ophthalmic artery pressure.  Oculus & oculist are nouns; the noun plural is oculi (under the standard rules of English plural formations, the result would be oculuses by that seems to have been too awful to contemplate). 

The Pantheon

The Pantheon in Rome (from the Latin Pantheum, from the Ancient Greek Πάνθειον (Pantheion) ([temple] of all the gods) was built as a Roman temple and since the 609 has been a Roman Catholic church (Basilica di Santa Maria ad Martyres or Basilica of Saint Mary and the Martyrs).  It was built on the site of an earlier temple constructed during the time of Christ and rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian circa 126 AD, the actual date uncertain because Hadrian retained the old inscriptions.

Cylindrical with a portico of sixteen staggered Corinthian columns, the dome has a diameter of 43.2m (142 feet) and was for over 1300 years the largest in the world and remains, after some two-thousand years, the largest unreinforced concrete dome, a feat achieved by a gradual reduction in the thickness and weight of the materials used for the upper layers.  Each of the granite columns weigh sixty tons.  Quarried in Egypt, they were dragged 100 km (60 miles), placed on barges and shipped up the Nile to Alexandria where they were transferred to boats to cross the Mediterranean to the port of Ostia.  From there, they were sent by barges, up the Tiber to Rome where they were dragged to the construction site for erection.

The dome was originally covered in bronze and there are reports from travelers of it sparkling in the sunlight, the glint playing on the surrounding skyline.  However during the middle ages most was pilfered, sometimes with official sanction, sometimes not, the shortage of building materials often acute.  The last of it, Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, 1568–1644, pope 1623-1644) in 1631, needing ordinance for his military campaigns to expand the borders of the Papal States, stripped what bronze remained as well as that from the portico to melt down for cannons.  Romans, as cynical about their rulers then as now, were soon sharing the saying “quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini” (what was not done by the barbarians, was done by the Barberini).

The ass's ears, circa 1860.

Roman architect and Engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (circa 75-10 BC) wrote the influential De architectura which defined the building and aesthesis standards of Classical architecture and the design of the Pantheon follows his rules, height and width exactly match, meaning a perfect sphere would precisely fit inside the dome.  Vitruvius would not have been best pleased at the additions made in the 1600s by Urban VIII.  Sometimes wrongly blamed on Bernini, pontiff turned amateur architect added two bell towers to the sides of the façade which, although disliked by Romans who nicknamed them le orecchie del culo (the ass’s ears), it wasn’t until late in the nineteen century they were finally demolished.

The Pantheon, Rome.

The oculus in the Pantheon is the most famous of the many built by the Romans.  Open to the weather, it allows rain to enter and fall to the floor, where it is carried away through drains. A masterpiece of Roman architectural scale, though it looks small, the oculus’ diameter is 27 feet (8.2m) allowing it to light the building as the sun lights the earth and rain also keeps the building cool during the hot summer months.  A clever trick of lighting (and mathematics) was played out on every 21 April, the founding date of Rome.  At midday, the sunlight hits the metal grille above the door, filling the entrance way with light, timed to coincide with a ceremony at which the emperor appears in the space, reflecting his status as either an earthly god on one on whom the blessings of the gods shone.  Which of these applied depended on the Emperor.  In style, if not scale, the Pantheon was the inspiration for the Große Halle (Great Hall (and referred to in contemporary documents also as the Volkshalle (People's Hall or Ruhmeshalle (Hall of Glory)) which was to be the centrepiece of Germania as Berlin was to be re-named upon becoming the capital of the Third Reich.

Albert Speer's (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) post-war memoirs (1969) are not wholly truthful but on matters of architecture they are thought reliable and provide an insight not only into the grandiose plans but also the political and psychological aspects of representational buildings to which Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) attached such importance.  The monumental size alone was significant and despite Hitler being scornful of the mystical notions of some of his paladins, Speer was convinced that inherent in the awe-inspiring scale of the designs was the idea of them becoming places of worship, something which would be reinforced as they aged, unchanged, over the centuries.  Able to accommodate 150-180,000 people, the dome would have had a diameter of 250 metres (825 feet). rising in a slightly parabolic curve to a height of 221 metres (726 feet) while the oculus would be 46 metres (152 feet) in diameter, larger than the entire dome of either the Pantheon (43 metres (142 feet)) or that of St Peter's Basilica (44 metres (145 feet)).  The interior would be 16 times the volume of St Peter's.

Model of the Great Hall intended for Germania.

Speer also noted that even in the late 1930s when first he showed the architectural drawings to Hitler, the Führer suspended belief in facts when it suited him.  Because it was technically possible, Speer originally envisaged building the dome without the use of any structural steel but Hitler objected that were it to be struck by a bomb, the vaulting might be so damaged that without a supporting framework, repairs would be impossible.  Speer conceded the point but when he had questioned whether it was wise to have so tall a structure build in the very heart of the Reich's capital where it would act as a navigational aid for attacking bombers, Hitler breezily replied that Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) had assured him his Luftwaffe would ensure "no enemy plane will ever enter Germany's skies".  Infamously, the Reichsmarschall would boast to the German people: "If as much as a single enemy aircraft flies over German soil, my name is Meier!"; the Royal Air Force's (RAF) bombing raids on Berlin soon began.

Lindsay Lohan with peacock feathers. during blonde phase.

The eye-like feature on a peacock's tail-feathers are called an oculus and because the collective noun for a group of peacocks (peafowl) is "an ostentation" so these several could be styled "an ostentation of oculi".  This photograph is available as a 2024 calendar.                   

Bubble

Bubble (pronounced buhb-uhl)

(1) A spherical globule of gas (or vacuum) contained in a liquid or solid.

(2) Anything that lacks firmness, substance, or permanence; an illusion or delusion.

(3) An inflated speculation, especially if fraudulent.

(4) The act or sound of bubbling.

(5) A spherical or nearly spherical canopy or shelter; dome.

(6) To form, produce, or release bubbles; effervesce.

(7) To flow or spout with a gurgling noise; gurgle.

(8) To speak, move, issue forth, or exist in a lively, sparkling manner; exude cheer.

(9) To seethe or stir, as with excitement; to boil.

(10) To cheat; deceive; swindle (archaic).

(11) To cry (archaic Scots).

(12) A type of skirt.

(13) In infection control management, a system of physical isolation in which un-infected sub-sets population are protected by restricting their exposure to others.

1350-1400: From the Middle English bobel (noun), possibly from the Middle Dutch bobbel and/or Middle Low German bubbele (verb), all probably of echoic origin.  Related forms appear as the Swedish bubbla, the Danish boble and the Dutch bobble.  The use to describe markets, inflated in value by speculation widely beyond any relationship to their intrinsic value, dates from the South Sea Bubble which began circa 1711 and collapsed in 1720.  In response to the collapse, parliament passed The Bubble Act (1720), which required anyone seeking to float a joint-stock company to first secure a royal charter.  Interestingly, the act was supported by the South Sea Company before its failure.  Ever since cryptocurrencies emerged, many have been describing them as a bubble which will burst and while that has happened with particular coins (the exchange collapses are something different), the industry thus far has continued with only the occasional period of deflation.  Bubble & bubbling are nouns & verbs, bubbler is a noun, bubbled is a verb, bubbly is a noun & adjective, bubbleless & bubblelike are adjectives and bubblingly is an adverb; the noun plural is bubbles.

An artificial tulip in elisa mauve.

However although the South Sea affair was the first use of “bubble” to describe such a market condition, it wasn’t the first instance of a bubble which is usually regarded as the Dutch tulpenmanie (tulip mania) which bounced during the 1630s, contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and wildly fashionable tulip reaching extraordinarily high levels, the values accelerating from 1634 until a sudden collapse in 1637.  Apparently just a thing explained by a classic supply and demand curve, the tulip bubble burst with the first big harvest which demonstrated the bulbs and flowers were really quite common.  In history, there would have been many pervious bubbles but it wasn’t until the economies and financial systems of early-modern Europe were operating that the technical conditions existed for them to manifest in the form and to the extent we now understand.  Interestingly, for something often regarded as the proto-speculative asset bubble and a landmark in economic history, twentieth-century revisionist historians have suggested it was more a behavioral phenomenon than anything with any great influence on the operation of financial markets or the real economy, the “economic golden age” of the Dutch Republic apparently continuing unaffected for almost a century after the bottom fell out of the tulip market.  The figurative uses have been created or emerged as required, the first reference to anything wanting firmness, substance, or permanence is from 1590s.  The soap-bubble dates from 1800, bubble-shell is from 1847, bubble-gum was introduced in 1935 and bubble-bath appears first to have be sold in 1937.  The slang noun variation “bubbly” was first noted in 1920, an invention of US English.  

The word "bubble" spiked shortly after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Over time, use has expanded to encompass large-scale operations like touring sporting teams and even the geographical spaces used for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics but the original meaning was more modest: small groups based on close friends, an extended family or co-workers.  These small bubbles weren't supposed to be too elastic and operated in conjunction with other limits imposed in various jurisdictions; a bubble might consist of a dozen people but a local authority might limit gatherings to ten in the one physical space so two could miss out, depending on the details in the local rules.  Bubble thus began as an an unofficial term used to describe the cluster of people outside the household with whom one felt comfortable in an age of pandemic.

Tulips

Bubbles were however a means of risk-reduction, not a form of quarantine.  The risks in a bubble still exist, most obviously because some may belong to more than one bubble, contact thus having a multiplier effect, the greater the number of interactions, the greater the odds of infection.  Staying home and limiting physical contact with others remained preferable, the next best thing to an actual quarantine.  The more rigorously administered bubbles used for events like the Olympics are essentially exercises in perimeter control, a defined "clean" area, entry into which is restricted to those tested and found uninfected.  At the scale of something like an Olympic games, it's a massive undertaking to secure the edges but, given sufficient resource allocation can be done although it's probably misleading to speak of such an operation as as a "bubble".  Done with the static-spaces of Olympic venues, they're really quarantine-zones.  Bubble more correctly describes touring sporting teams which move as isolated bubbles often through unregulated space.

The Bubble Skirt

A type of short skirt with a balloon style silhouette, the bubble dress (more accurately described as a bubble skirt because that’s the bit to which the description applies) is characterized by a voluminous skirt with the hem folded back on itself to create a “bubble” effect at the hemline.  Within the industry, it was initially called a tulip skirt, apparently because of a vague resemblance to the flower but the public preferred bubble.  It shouldn’t be confused with the modern tulip skirt and the tulip-bubble thing is just a linguistic coincidence, there’s no link with the Dutch tulipmania of the 1630s.  Stylistically, the bubble design is a borrowing from the nineteenth century bouffant gown which featured a silhouette made of a wide, full skirt resembling a hoop skirt, sometimes with a hoop or petticoat support underneath the skirt.   While bouffant gowns could be tea (mid-calf) or floor length, bubble skirts truncate the look hemlines tend to be well above the knee.  Perhaps with a little more geometric accurately, the design is known also as the “puffball” and, in an allusion to oriental imagery, the “harem” skirt.  Fashion designer Christian La Croix became fond of the look and a variation included in his debut collection was dubbed “le pouf” but, in English, the idea of the “poof skirt” never caught on.

Lindsay Lohan in Catherine Malandrino silk pintuck dress with bubble skirt, LG Scarlet HDTV Launch Party, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, April 2008.

It must have been a memorable silhouette in the still austere post-war world, a sheath dress made voluminous with layers of organza or tulle, the result a cocoon-like dress with which Pierre Cardin and Hubert de Givenchy experimented in 1954 and 1958, respectively. A year later, Yves Saint Laurent for Dior added the combination of a dropped waist dress and bubble skirt; post-modernism had arrived.  For dressmakers, bubble fashion presented a structural challenge and mass-production became economically feasible only because of advances in material engineering, newly available plastics able to be molded in a way that made possible the unique inner construction and iconic drape of the fabric.  For that effect to work, bubble skirts must be made with a soft, pliable fabric and the catwalk originals were constructed from silk, as are many of the high end articles available today but mass-market copies are usually rendered from cotton, polyester knits, satin or taffeta.

The bubble in the 1950s by Pierre Cardin (left), Givenchy (centre) & Dior (right).

The bubble skirt was never a staple of the industry in the sense that it would be missing from annual or seasonal ranges, sometimes for a decade or more and sales were never high, hardly surprising given it was not often a flattering look for women above a certain age, probably about seven or eight.  Deconstructing the style hints at why: a hemline which loops around and comes back up, created sometimes by including a tighter bottom half with the bulk of additional material above, it formed a shape not dissimilar to a pillow midway through losing its stuffing.  For that reason, models caution the look is best when combined with a sleek, fitted top to emphasize the slimness of the waistline, cinched if necessary with a belt some sort of delineating tie.  The bubble needs to be the feature piece too, avoiding details or accessories which might otherwise distract; if one is wearing a partially un-stuffed pillow, the point needs to be made it’s being done on purpose.

The bubble is adaptable although just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.  The bubble skirt has however received the Paris Hilton imprimatur so there’s that.

On the catwalks however, again seemingly every decade or so, the bubble returns, the industry relying on the short attention span of consumers of pop culture inducing a collective amnesia which allows many resuscitations in tailoring to seem vaguely original.  Still, if ever a good case could be made for a take on a whimsical 1950s creation to re-appear, it was the staging of the first shows of the 2020-2021 post-pandemic world and the houses responded, Louis Vuitton, Erdem, Simone Rocha and JW Anderson all with billowy offerings, even seen was an improbably exuberant flourish of volume from Burberry.  What appeared on the post-Covid catwalk seemed less disciplined than the post-war originals, the precise constraints of intricately stitched tulle forsaken to permit a little more swish and flow, a romantic rather than decadent look.  The reception was generally polite but for those who hoped for a different interpretation, history suggests the bubble will be back in a dozen-odd years.

Doomsday

Doomsday (pronounced doomz-dey)

(1) In Christian eschatology, the day of the Last Judgment, at the end of the world (sometimes capital letter); the end of days; the end of times.

(2) Any day of judgment or sentence (sometimes initial capital).

(3) In casual use, the destruction of the world, since the 1950s, by means of nuclear weapons.

(4) As doomsday weapon(s), the device(s) causing the destruction of the world; anything capable of causing widespread or total destruction.

(5) Given to or marked by forebodings or predictions of impending calamity; especially concerned with or predicting future universal destruction.

(6) As Doomsday Clock, a symbolic warning device indicating how close humanity is to destroying the world, run since 1947 as a private venture by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Pre 1000: A compound from the Middle English domes + dai from the Old English construct dom (judgment) + dæg (day), dōmesdæg (sometimes dōmes dæg) (Judgment Day) and related to the Old Norse domsdagr.  Dome was borrowed from the Middle French dome & domme (which survives in Modern French as dôme), from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae) (literally “house (of the church)”), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías); doublet of domus.  Dom was from the Proto-West Germanic dōm and was cognate with the Old Frisian dōm, the Old Saxon dōm, the Old High German tuom, the Old Norse dómr and the Gothic dōms.  The Germanic source was from a stem verb originally meaning “to place, to set”, a sense-development also found in the Latin statutum and the Ancient Greek θέμις (thémis).  Dai had the alternative forms deg, deag & dœg all from the Proto-West Germanic dag; it was cognate with the Old Frisian dei, the Old Saxon dag, the Old Dutch dag, the Old High German tag, the Old Norse dagr and the Gothic dags.

In medieval England, doomsday was expected when the world's age had reached 6,000 years from the creation, thought to have been in 5200 BC and English Benedictine monk, the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735) complained of being pestered by rustici (the "uneducated and coarse-mannered, rough of speech"), asking him "how many years till the sixth millennium be endeth?"  However, despite the assertions (circa 1999) of the Y2K doomsday preppers, there is no evidence to support the story of a general panic in Christian Europe in the days approaching the years 800 or 1000 AD.  The use to describe a hypothetical nuclear bomb powerful enough to wipe out human life (or all life) on earth is from 1960 but the speculation was the work of others than physicists and the general trend since the 1960s has been towards smaller devices although paradoxically, this has been to maximize the destructive potential through an avoidance of the "surplus ballistic effect" (ie the realization by military planners that blasting rubble into to smaller-sized rocks was "wasted effort and bad economics").

The Domesday Book

Domesday is a proper noun that is used to describe the documents known collectively as the Domesday Book, at the time an enormous survey (a kind of early census) ordered by William I (circa 1028-1087; styled usually as William the Conqueror, King of England 1066-1087) in 1085.  The survey enumerated all the wealth in England and determined ownership in order to assess taxes.  Domesday was the Middle English spelling of doomsday, and is pronounced as doomsday.

Original Domesday book, UK National Archives, London.

The name Domesday Book (which was Doomsday in earlier spellings) was first recorded almost a century after 1086.  An addition to the manuscript was made probably circa 1114-1119 when it was known as the Book of Winchester and between then and 1179, it acquired the name by which it has since been known.  Just to clarify its status, the Treasurer of England himself announced “This book is called by the native English Domesday, that is Day of Judgement” (Dialogus de scaccario), adding that, like the Biblical Last Judgment, the decisions of Domesday Book were unalterable because “… as from the Last Judgment, there is no further appeal.”  This point was reinforced by a clause in the Dialogue of the Exchequer (1179) which noted “just as the sentence of that strict and terrible Last Judgement cannot be evaded by any art or subterfuge, so, when a dispute arises in this realm concerning facts which are written down, and an appeal is made to the book itself, the evidence it gives cannot be set at nought or evaded with impunity.”  It was from this point that began in England the idea of the centralised written record taking precedence over local oral traditions, the same concept which would evolve as the common law.

The Doomsday Book described in remarkable detail the landholdings and resources of late eleventh century England and is illustrative of both the power of the government machine by the late medieval period and its deep thirst for information.  Nothing on the scale of the survey had been undertaken in contemporary Europe, and was not matched in comprehensiveness until the population censuses of the nineteenth century although, Doomsday is not a full population census, the names appearing almost wholly restricted to landowners who could thus be taxed.  It was for centuries used for administrative and legal purposes and remains often the starting point for many purposes for historians but of late has been subject to an increasingly detailed textual analysis and it’s certainly not error-free.

The Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe.  Maintained since 1947 by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BOTAS), the clock was created as a metaphor for threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons.  On the clock, a hypothetical global catastrophe is represented as the stroke of midnight and BOTAS’s view of the closeness to that hour being reached by the number of minutes or seconds to midnight.  Every January, BOTAS’s Science and Security Board committee meets to decide where the second-hand of the clock should point and in recent years, other risk factors have been considered, including disease and climate change, the committee monitoring developments in science and technology that could inflict catastrophic damage.

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

These concerns do have a long history in philosophy and theology but the use in 1945 of nuclear fission to create atomic weapons focused the minds of many more on the possibilities, the concerns growing in the second half of the twentieth century as the bombs got bigger and proliferated extraordinarily to the point where, if all were detonated in the right place at the right time, almost everyone on Earth would have been killed several times over.  At least on paper, the threat was real and even before Hiroshima made the world suddenly aware of the matter, there had been some in apocalyptic mood: Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) “finest hour” speech in 1940 warning of the risk civilization might “…sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”.  It had been a growing theme in liberal interwar politics since the implications of technology and the industrialisation of warfare had been writ large by the World War I (1914-1918).

HG Wells’ (1866–1946) last book was Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), a slim volume, best remembered for the fragment “…everything was driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity”, seemingly describing a world which had become more complicated, chaotic and terrifying than anything he had prophesized in his fiction. In this it’s often contrasted with the spirit of cheerful optimism and forward-looking stoicism of the book he published a few months earlier, The Happy Turning (1945), but that may be a misreading.  Mind at the End of its Tether is a curious text, easy to read yet difficult to reduce to a theme; in his review, George Orwell (1903-1950) called it “disjointed” and it does have a quality of vagueness, some chapters hinting at despair for all humanity, others suggesting hope for the future.  It’s perhaps the publication date that tints the opinions of some.  Although released some three months after the first use of atomic bombs in August 1945, publishing has lead-times and Wells hadn’t heard of the A-bomb at the time of writing although, he had in 1914 predicted such a device in The World Set Free.  In writing Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells, the great seer of science, wasn’t in dark despair at news of science’s greatest achievement, nuclear fission, but instead a dying man disappointed about the terrible twentieth century which, at the end of the nineteenth, had offered such promise.

In 1947, though the USSR had still not even tested an atomic bomb and the US enjoyed exclusive possession of the weapon, BOTAS was well aware it was only a matter of time and the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.  Adjustments have been made a couple of dozen times since, the most optimistic days being in 1991 with the end of the Cold War when it was seventeen minutes to midnight and the most ominous right now, BOTAS in 2023 choosing 90 seconds, ten seconds worse than the 100 settled on in 2020.

The committee each year issues an explanatory note and in 2021 noted the influences on their decision.  The COVID-19 pandemic was a factor, not because it threatened to obliterate civilization but because it “…revealed just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly. In this time of genuine crisis, governments too often abdicated responsibility, ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively, and consequently failed to protect the health and welfare of their citizens.  As a result, many hundreds of thousands of human beings died needlessly”.  COVID-19 they noted, will eventually recede but the pandemic, as it unfolded, was “a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage nuclear weapons and climate change, which currently pose existential threats to humanity, or the other dangers—including more virulent pandemics and next-generation warfare—that could threaten civilization in the near future”.  In 2023, the adjustment was attributed mostly to (1) the increased risk of the use of nuclear weapons after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, (2) climate change, (3) biological threats such as COVID-19 and (4) the spread of disinformation through disruptive technology such as generative AI (artificial intelligence).

The acceleration of nuclear weapons programs by many countries was thought to have increased instability, especially in conjunction with the simultaneous development of delivery systems increasingly adaptable to the use of conventional or nuclear warheads.  The concern was expressed this “may raise the probability of miscalculation in times of tension”.  Governments were considered to have “…failed sufficiently to address climate change” and that while “fossil fuel use needs to decline precipitously if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided”, instead “…fossil fuel development and production are projected to increase”.  Political factors were also mentioned including the corrosive effects of “false and misleading information disseminated over the internet…, a wanton disregard for science and the large-scale embrace” of conspiracy theories often “driven by political figures”.  They did offer a glimmer of hope, notably the change of administration in the US to one with a more aggressive approach to climate change policy and a renewed commitment to nuclear arms control agreements but it wasn’t enough to convince them to move the hands of the clock.  It remains a hundred seconds to midnight.

The clock is not without critics, even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) expressing disapproval since falling under the control of Rupert Murdoch (b 1931).  There is the argument that after seventy years, its usefulness has diminished because over those decades it has become "the boy who cried wolf": a depiction of humanity on the precipice of the abyss yet life went on.  Questions have also been raised about the narrowness of the committee and whether a body which historically has had a narrow focus on atomic weapons and security is adequately qualified to assess the range of issues which should be considered.  Mission creep too is seen as a problem.  The clock began as a means of expressing the imminence of nuclear war.  Is it appropriate to use the same mechanism to warn of impending climate change which has anyway already begun and is likely accelerating?  Global thermo-nuclear war can cause a catastrophic loss of life and societal disruption within hours, whereas the climate catastrophe is projected to unfolds over decades and centuries.  Would a companion calendar be a more helpful metaphor?  The criticism may miss the point, the clock not being a track of climate change but of political will to do something to limit and ameliorate the effects (everyone having realised it can’t be stopped).

Xanadau

Xanadu (pronounced zan-a-du)

Also known as Shangdu, Xanadu was the capital of Kublai Khan's (1215-1294) Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) in China, before he decided to move his throne to the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) capital of Zhōngdū (middle capital), which he renamed Khanbaliq, later known in the West as Peking and of late, Beijing.  Xanadu then became his summer capital.  Xanadu was visited by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (circa 1254–1324) in about 1275, and was destroyed in 1369 by the Ming army under Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398).

Relic site of Xanadu.  Xanadu was located in what is now called Inner Mongolia, 220 miles (350 km) north of what is no the city of Beijing (Peking).  Today, only ruins remain, surrounded by a grassy mound that was once the city walls. Since 2002, restoration work has been undertaken and in June 2012, Shangdu was made a World Heritage Site.

Kubla Khan (1797) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

By his own account, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was reading about Shangdu while taking laudanum, an opium based medicine.  It led to an opium-induced dream, during which he composed some three-hundred lines of verse.  As soon as he awoke, he wrote down the first fifty but unfortunately, was then interrupted by “a man on business from (the local Somerset village of) Porlock.”   Once the business was concluded, Coleridge found the distraction had driven from his mind the rest of the poem.  All find Coleridge’s story charming but scholars doubt it’s true, the poet having used a similar excuse years before.  Most think it a case of writer’s block.

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