Ghost

Ghost (pronounced gohst)

(1) The soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons.

(2) A mere shadow or semblance; a trace; a remote possibility; a faint trace or possibility of something.

(3) A spiritual being; the principle of life; soul; spirit (sometimes initial capital letter).

(4) A secondary image, especially one appearing on a television screen as a white shadow, caused by poor or double reception or by a defect in the receiver (also called ghosting).

(5) In photography, a faint secondary or out-of-focus image in a photographic print or negative resulting from reflections within the camera lens (also called ghost image).

(6) In optics, a series of false spectral lines produced by a diffraction grating with unevenly spaced lines.

(7) In metalworking, a streak appearing on a freshly machined piece of steel containing impurities.

(8) In pathology, a red blood cell having no hemoglobin.

(9) In tax-avoidance and other frauds, a fictitious employee, business etc, fabricated especially for the purpose of manipulating funds.

(10) In literature (especially quasi-literature), as ghost-write, to write a book, speech etc for another without attribution (distinct from the trade of the acknowledged ghostwriter).

(11) In engraving, to lighten the background of a photograph before engraving.

(12) In informal use (often associated with social media), suddenly to end all contact with a person without explanation, especially a romantic relationship; abruptly to leave a social event or gathering without saying goodbye.

(13) In digital technology, to remove comments, threads, or other digital content from a website or online forum without informing the poster, keeping them hidden from the public but still visible to the poster.

(14) In bibliography, as ghost edition, an entry recorded in a bibliography of which no actual proof exists.

Pre 900: From the Middle English gost, gast & goost (breath; good or bad spirit, angel, demon; person, man, human being", in Biblical use "soul, spirit, life”), from the Old English gāst (breath, soul, spirit, ghost, being), related to the Old High German gaist & geist (spirit) and the Sanskrit hēda (fury, anger).  The Proto-West Germanic gaist was derived from the Proto-Germanic gaistaz (ghost, spirit, (source also of the Old Saxon gest, the Old Frisian jest, the Middle Dutch gheest, the Dutch geest & the German Geist (spirit, ghost))), from the primitive Indo-European ǵhéysd-os, from ǵhéysd- (anger, agitation) and was cognate with the Scots ghaist (ghost), the Saterland Frisian Gäist (spirit), the West Frisian geast (spirit), the Dutch geest (spirit, mind, ghost), the German Geist (spirit, mind, intellect), the Swedish gast (ghost), the Sanskrit हेड (héḍa), (anger, hatred) and the Persian زشت‎ (zešt) (ugly, hateful, disgusting).  There’s no documentary evidence but the ultimate root is conjectured to be the primitive Indo-European gheis-, used in forming words involving the notions of excitement, amazement, or fear (source also of Sanskrit hedah (wrath), the Avestan zaesha- (horrible, frightful), the Gothic usgaisjan and the Old English gæstan (to frighten).  Ghost is a noun & verb (and used imaginatively as an adjective), ghoster is a noun, ghostly & ghosty are adjectives, ghosting is a noun & verb and ghosted is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is ghosts.

Ghost is the English representative of West Germanic words for "supernatural being" and in Christian writings in Old English it was used to render the Latin spiritus, a sense preserved by the early translators of the Bible in “Holy Ghost”.  The sense of a "disembodied spirit of a dead person", especially imagined as wandering among the living or haunting them, is attested from the late fourteenth century, a meaning-shift which returned the word to what was its probable prehistoric sense.  Most Indo-European words for "soul or spirit" also double with reference to supernatural spirits.  Many have also a base sense of "appearance" (the Greek phantasma; the French spectre; the Polish widmo, from Old Church Slavonic videti (to see), the Old English scin, the Old High German giskin (originally "appearance, apparition”), related to the Old English scinan & the Old High German skinan (to shine)).  Other concepts exist, including the French revenant (literally "returning" (from the other world)), the Old Norse aptr-ganga, (literally "back-comer") & the Breton bugelnoz (literally "night-child”).  The Latin manes (spirits of the dead) was probably a euphemism.

The gh- spelling appeared early in the fifteenth century in Caxton, influenced by Flemish and Middle Dutch gheest, but was rare in English before mid-1500s.  The sense of a "slight suggestion, mere shadow or semblance" (as in ghost image, ghost of a chance etc) is noted from the 1610s; the sense of "one who secretly does work for another" is from 1884 and ghost-write was a 1922 back-formation from the earlier (1919) ghost-writing.  The American Indian ghost dance was first noted in 1890, ghost town is from 1908, ghost story dates from 1811, the now less common ghost-word (apparent word or false form in a manuscript due to a blunder) is from 1886.  The “ghost in the machine” was English philosopher Gilbert Ryle's (1900-1976) 1949 description of René Descartes's (1596-1650) mind-body dualism and the phrase "to give up the ghost" (to die or prepare to die) was well-known in the Old English version; one of the many way folk avoid words like "death" or "die".  Synonyms include phantom, devil, demon, soul, shadow, spectre, vision, vampire, apparition, revenant, appearance, haunt, visitor, shade, spook, poltergeist, phantasm, wraith, daemon & manes.  There are a surprising number of uses of ghost, ghosted, ghosting etc said to be associated modern or internet slang covering fields as diverse as linguistic techniques and the art & science of smoking weed, the latter a rich vein of coinings.  However, the most commonly used describes someone with whom one has been in contact suddenly stops responding, disappearing, as it were, like a ghost.  This can happen in conjunction with unfriending etc but can be an act in isolation.  After becoming one of a number of Australian prime ministers (figuratively) defenestrated by their party before the voters got their chance, Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime minister of Australia 2015-2018) left parliament and decried similarly deposed leaders who chose to stay as "miserable ghosts", a breed with a long tradition in many parliaments.   

Ghostwriters

Art of the Deal by Donald J Trump with Tony Schwartz (1987).  If the Nobel Committee can't bring themselves to confer on President Trump the Peace Prize, they could perhaps make him the Literature Laureate.  He would think that equally deserved.

Ghostwriters (also as ghost-writer) are professional writers hired to create content (books, columns, posts or any other (traditionally) text-focused item), the authorship of which ultimately will be credited to another although ghostwriters can be acknowledged as “co-authors” or (more commonly), receive credit in the form of having their name appear on the cover with a preceding “with”.  That latter approach of course implies some form of collaborative authorship and a famous example is Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) The Art of the Deal (1987), published as “by Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz” [b 1952].  The Art of the Deal is said to be competently written and for those in the business of the ruthless pursuit of deals it’s apparently an invaluable manual, Mr Trump in one interview saying perhaps the most important passages those advising (1) most deals don’t come off and (2) it’s better to walk away from what appears a bad deal than to close it in the hope it can be made to work.  Had than counsel been followed, there’d likely have been rather fewer corporate collapses than have been suffered since it was published; there’s good reasons why The Art of the Deal stayed at number 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list for three months and was a on the list for a year odd.

One day, there may be Lindsay Lohan: The autobiography.  Hopefully, there will be competing "authorized" and "unauthorized" editions.

So what does “By X with Y” usually imply?  The conventional view is it means “Y” is likely to have composed much of the text, based on interviews with “X”, their previous statements or other things they may have written.  It’s the most common approach in the biographies of sports stars that appear in the run-up to Christmas or father’s day; those books often sell well although whether they’re so often read is uncertain.  By contrast, “By X and Y” should mean true co-authorship (though not necessarily on the basis of 50-50 contribution) whereas “X by Y” should be a pure biography (although that can be “authorized” with the cooperation of “X” or “unauthorized” with even “X’s” active opposition to publication).  The “with” category obviously is the most ambiguous and thus often the most useful for a subject, allowing them to bask in the praise of a work well-received yet provide a layer of “plausible deniability” if needed.  Ghostwriters are used for a number of reasons including constraints of time, a lack of interest in the project (though not the profits) or, typically, a lack of the necessary skill with the written word.  Ghostwriting contracts can vary but the focus typically includes terms of payment, non-disclosure of involvement, the notional author’s exercise of veto over all or some of the content and the rights to the finished work.  Mr Trump certainly acknowledged using a ghostwriter, as did Paris Hilton (b 1981) who in her 2023 memoir thanked the ghostwriter who: “helped me find my voice”.

Monsieur Sarközy (left) and his third wife (Italian supermodel Carla Bruni, b 1967, right) arrive at La Santé Prison, November 2025.  Ghostwritten or not, it's unfair to "judge a book by its cover" but Monsieur Sarközy always looked guilty of something.  

One who never needed help to "find his voice" was Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012) who even found symbolic ways to express his inner torments.  When, in October 2025, entering La Santé Prison in Montparnasse to begin a five-year sentence imposed for “criminal association” related to campaign financing (it was a conspiracy charge), as well as comfortable shoes and some nice warm jumpers, the former Le Président took a novel and made sure the assembled press pack knew it was a copy of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844-1946) by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)), one of literature’s great “tales of revenge”.  He's since been released pending an appeal hearing so he's got some time to plot and scheme his vengeance and decide upon whom it will first be visited.

It’s the disclosure of using a ghostwriter that is critical, even if the exact details of relative contributions to the text remain murky.  The French novelist and dramatist Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) is best-known for Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, 1844) and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo but, by his own reckoning, he published some 1,200 volumes, hiring a veritable corps of ghostwriters so the production of “his” works could proceed on an assembly-line basis (many famous painters did much the same, creating by the twentieth century a significant (and lucrative) industry of those in the "authentication" business).  His illegitimate son (Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895 (fils being French for “son”)) was also an author of note (best remembered for The Lady of the Camellias (1848 and Camille in English-language versions), adapted by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) for his opera  La traviata (The Fallen Woman, 1853)) and when one day father and son met for lunch, Dumas the elder asked: ‘‘Have you read my new novel yet?”.  “No,” replied the younger man, “Have you?”

JFK's Ghost, Kennedy, Sorensen and the Making of Profiles in Courage (2021) by David R.Stokes (b 1956 and a member of the Association of Ghostwriters).

One ghostwriter not (explicitly) acknowledged was Theodore Chaikin "Ted" Sorensen (1928–2010; US lawyer, author & presidential adviser), now widely believed to have written the great bulk (and possibly all) of Profiles in Courage (1956), credited to John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963).  The slim volume displayed Sorensen’s fine touch with language but it was a slight work, a collection of eight, short biographical sketches describing acts of “bravery and integrity” by  DWM (dead white men who were now mostly forgotten US senators) and that it received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography was an indication more of the political sympathies of the selection committee than the work’s literary merit or historical significance.  Still, it was a minor contribution to history and Barack Obama (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded apparently to express the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s gratitude he wasn’t George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009).  Even at the time the authorship of Profiles in Courage was controversial with some journalists openly accusing the then Senator Kennedy (Democrat-Massachusetts 1953-1960) of having done little more than put his name on the cover and accept a Pulitzer.  A fortnight after the award was announced, stories began to appear in the press casting doubt on the authorship and, within days, a check (cheque) was drawn against a Kennedy family trust in favour of Ted Sorensen for US$100,000-odd, a extraordinary sum wholly disproportionate to either the fee even well-paid ghostwriters would expect or the profits realised by Profiles in Courage.  Shamelessly (a Kennedy family trait), whether as a senator or POTUS, JFK would autograph copies of “his” book and personally hand them as gifts to visiting dignitaries.

Politicians of course have speechwriters and their contributions are usually well-publicized, some of the more-skilful (or more publicity-conscious) becoming minor celebrities, a thing sometimes resented by those for whom they write although, as a general principle, politicians are well-advised if they leave speech-writing to the pros.  During the 1969 election campaign, when discussing speechmaking, bizarrely, the idiosyncratic Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; prime minister of Australia 1968-1971), despite having at his finger-tips the entire resources of the Commonwealth government, complained that the leader of the Opposition’s (Gough Whitlam (1916–2014; Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975) “…large staff—which I haven’t got—helps him.  You see, I have never delivered a speech that I haven’t written myself. I doubt very much if Mr Whitlam has ever delivered a speech he wrote himself.  I need some research assistance, some background speech notes and this is what [Mr Whitlam’s staff are] doing and that is all [they are] doing.”  When asked his reaction to Mr Gorton’s claim he wrote all his speeches himself, Mr Whitlam (who had spent the campaign lampooning Gorton’s frequent lapses into near incoherency) quipped: “That is one of the few prime ministerial statements of this election that I find credible.”

An artist's ghostly take on an unforgiving woman: Portrait of Lady Violet Bonham Carter (circa 1917), oil on canvas by Sir William Orpen (1878–1931).

It’s not only speeches that are written for politicians to deliver, much of that to which their signatures are appended the work of others including most correspondence and some ghostwriters manage to hone their style to emulate the distinctiveness of those for whom they labor.  Although he once claimed “Oh, I have not read a great deal”, Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) literary output was prodigious, including even one novel (that proved great fun for Freudians interested in mother-son relationships) and yielded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature.  His style came to be called “Churchillian” and is recognizable (indeed, even in the 1930s it was thought old-fashioned) but it could also be replicated and, years after his death, it became more widely known his teams of “research assistants” genuinely were responsible for many first drafts and even the authorship of what were at the time described in terms like “rolling Churchillian phrases” but in fairness, in that he was not unique and he did review every word prior to publication, editing and polishing as required.  Sometimes the criticism of such practices can go too far.  When Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964), died, Churchill’s private secretary drafted a short message of condolence to be published in the next edition of The Times: “I am deeply grieved at the loss of my oldest and closest friend who severed his country and his causes valiantly and was the most loyal and devoted of comrades.”  As a message from an old man with not long to live to the memory of his friend of almost 60 years, it seemed not objectionable but an objection came from Lady Violet Bonham Carter, (1887–1969, daughter of Henry Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916)) who called the message “clearly political” and thus breaking his silence on such matters, a silence tacitly for some time erected due to his decline.  The secretary smoothed things over with her but she returned to the theme after seeing two messages sent in Churchill's name in support of the Conservative Party on the eve of the 1964 general election.  These she branded “forgeries”.  To this accusation the secretary responded with rather more ferocity, telling her: “I really do not think you should have used the word ‘forgery’ to me.  Sir Winston has had things drafted for him for many years, even when he was prime minister.  If they represent his views, and he signs them, they are not ‘forgeries’.”

C'était ça ou mourir (2026) by Thélyson Orélien.  How the Prix Goncourt's committee rules on this work may prove influential in the future of publishing.

That represents the current view of what's "drafting" rather than "forging" although it may take some time before texts created by generative AI (artificial intelligence) are granted the same approbation, a ghostwriter’s hand still human and, at least for a while, that still matters as one French committee recently concluded, removing from consideration for the 2026 Prix Goncourt (The Goncourt Prize) the novel C'était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die, 2026) by Haitian-born Canadian novelist Thélyson Orélien (b 1988), the concerns being “plagiarism” and “the use of generative AI.”  Although Le prix Goncourt carries a merely symbolic purse of €10, it’s vested with genuine prestige and is associated with a spike in sales so is worth winning.  Monsieur Orélien denies the accusations and the matter is attracting attention because it’s a sign of things to come, literary prize committees among the many institutions that will need to formulate protocols to determine where legitimate use of AI (research, grammar checks, formatting etc) ends and concepts like plagiarism, appropriation and “non-authorship” begins.  It was the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) who, in The Concept of Mind (1949), when discussing the notion of dualism explored by the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), introduced the phrase “ghost in the machine” and that was better to illustrate for modern readers his critique of the Cartesian position of the mind being distinct from the body with physical and mental activities occurring “simultaneously but separately”.  Mind-body dualism had a long run in Western philosophy and can again be re-considered because we’ve come a long way and with generative AI, the "ghostwriter is now the machine" and these agents clearly have “opinions” so not only are they writing, increasingly, they are “deciding” what to write.  The problems confronting such committees seem insoluble so the fudge may be the creation of new literary prizes for AI generated works and there’s no reason why the committees and juries shouldn’t at least in part be made up of AI agents.

Holy Ghost vs Holy Spirit in Biblical Translation

Pentecostés (Pentecost, circa 1545), oil on canvas by Tiziano Vecelli (or Vecellio), (circa 1489-1576; known in English as Titian), basalica of Santa Maria della Salute, Venice.  The Christian holy day of Pentecost (celebrated 50 days after Easter Sunday) commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks.

The Trinity is one of Christianity’s central doctrines, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in the one Godhead.  One of the most important Christian affirmations about God, it’s rooted in the idea God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the incarnated figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the helper or intercessor in the power of the new life.  In the Roman Catholic Church, the Sign of the Cross is made in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  It’s a myth that prior to Vatican II (the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965), the Third Person of the Trinity was always referred to in English as the Holy Ghost and one of the council’s decisions was to replace this with Holy Spirit.  Although it’s true Pius XII (1876–1958, pope 1939-1958) authorized several bilingual rites that included Holy Spirit, this was merely procedural and a formalization of processes for the publishing of new editions of existing works. Well before the twentieth century, the shift to Holy Spirit had become almost universal in translation although use of the older form persisted because of the reverence for tradition among some congregations (if not always the clergy) and a fondness, particularly in the Anglican community, for earlier translations, especially the Book of Common Prayer (1549-1622) and the King James version of the Bible (KJV: 1611).

Pentecôte (Pentecost, 1732), oil on canvas by Jean Restout (1692–1768), Louvre Museum, Paris.

The change reflects the evolution of words but, as a matter of Christian theology, "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" mean exactly the same thing.  The early translators were influenced by ghost being of Germanic origin and, as the Old English gast inherited the original meaning “soul, life, breath, good or bad spirit, angel or demon”, they used gast to translate the Latin Spiritus: thus Holy Ghost.  Although the more modern sense of a disembodied dead person dates from the late fourteenth century, it long remained rare and when translating the Bible into English the scholars behind the KJV opted mostly to use Holy Ghost which enjoys 90 entries compared with seven for Holy Spirit (between translators it's thought there were only linguistic and not doctrinal differences).  Either as literature or theology, there’s nothing in the texts to suggest any difference of meaning between the two, the conclusion of biblical scholars being the choices were wholly arbitrary and probably an unintentional consequence of the KJV being translated from the Greek into English by different committees.  One committee translated hagion pneuma as Holy Spirit while the other preferred Holy Ghost and when the work of the two bodies was combined, the differences remained.  In English, the meaning shift of ghost was induced essentially by its adoption in literature and popular culture, the sense long universally understood to be that of the spectre of a deceased person or a demonic apparition, hardly an association the church found helpful.  It hasn’t wholly been replaced however, some editions of the Book of Common Prayer still are printed with the phrase “He may receive the benefits of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience.”

Unrelated to etymological matters however, there is one fine theological point about the Trinity.  It took some time for the Patristic Fathers (the early Christian writers of the period generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times or end of the Apostolic Age (circa 100 AD) to either the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) or the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD)) to work out the Trinity was three persons, but one God.  The Old Testament foretold the visit to earthly life of the Messiah, but did not name him explicitly as Jesus, seeing the Holy Spirit as a manifestation of God, but did not see Him as a separate person of the one Godhead.  Despite the implications of that, at least since the still influential Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), it’s never been an orthodox view the Old Testament should be thought incomplete.  Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022), always one to find a fine theological point, noted “Christians do not read the Old Testament for its own sake but always with Christ and through Christ, as a voyage to Truth through continuing Revelation.”

Rolls-Royce and Ghosts, ancient & modern

A century-odd apart: 1902 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (left) and Paris Hilton's 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost (right).

Although for model names Rolls-Royce has borrowed from the atlas (Corniche, Camargue), their most frequent source has been the spirit world (Ghost, Phantom, Wraith,  Spectre) and the Silver Ghost (1906-1926) was the car that cemented the company's reputation for quality.  Sometime during its life, it may well have deserved to be regarded "the best car in the world" and while that term a long ago ceased to be useful, Rolls-Royce have at times justified the tag "best-made cars in the world".  Some might have matched the quality of the fit and finish but it's doubtful many have ever done it better and such was the reputation the Silver Ghost quickly gained that the name (coined by the Autocar magazine and not the factory) overtook the line.  Originally, the Silver Ghost had been but one model in a range available on their standard (40/50 hp) chassis but the name so captured the public imagination that, eventually, the factory relented and when the first of the Phantom line was released in 1926, Silver Ghost for all the 40/50 cars it became.  Perhaps surprisingly, although in the subsequent century there were many uses of the "silver" element (Silver Wraith, Silver Dawn, Silver Cloud, Silver Shadow, Silver Spirit, Silver Spur & Silver Seraph), it wasn't until 2009 the "Ghost" name was revived and (since 2021 in its second generation), it remains in production, the line augmented in 2011 by the Ghost EWB (extended wheelbase).  Plenty of manufacturers have over the years listed LWB (long wheelbase) models but EWB was a genuinely novel abbreviation, the factory not commenting on whether LWB had become "a bit common" or it was just a piece of "product differentiation".      

RAF (Royal Air Force) Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost armored car, Iraq, circa 1936.

The Silver Ghost also had what may seem an improbable career as a military vehicle, the factory eventually building 120 armored cars on the chassis, a role to which it was well-suited because famously it was robust enough to survive the often rough roads throughout the British Empire.  Although the period of intended service on the Western Front during World War I (1914-1918) was shortened when the "war of movement" anticipated upon the outbreak of hostilities quickly gave way to effectively static trench warfare, the machines proved ideally suited to the conditions in the Middle East, the most famous the squadron used by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia; 1888–1935) in battles against Ottoman forces during World War I.  What the British discovered was the tactics the Royal Navy honed at sea for 300-odd years could be applied to motorized operations across vast sandy stretches, detachments of armored cars able to be handled like squadrons of destroyers.  Lawrence remarked the Rolls-Royces were “more valuable than rubies” in desert combat and that he’d be content with one for the rest of his life were it to be supplied with tyres and petrol, the big, heavy Ghosts prone voraciously to chew through both.  In many parts of the empire, numbers of the armoured cars remained in service well into the 1930s (valued especially by the Raj in India) and the last was retired from service with the Irish Free State only in 1944, new tyres having become unobtainable.

Chopine

Chopine (pronounced choh-peen or chop-in)

(1) A shoe having a thick sole, usually of cork, suggesting a short stilt, worn especially by women in Europe in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries and said to have been introduced from the Ottoman Empire.

(2) A bottle of wine (usually Bordeaux) containing 250 ml, 1/3 of the volume of a standard bottle.

1570–1580: From the Middle French chapin, from the Old Spanish chapín (type of high shoe or clog, raised by means of a cork sole), from chapa (plate of metal), the construct being chap(a) (from the Middle French chape) + -in (the adjectival suffix).  The original, the Old Spanish chapín, was probably imitative of the sound made by the shoe when walking.  Dictionaries note a number of cognates of chopine including choppins & chapiney but, as might be imagined, it must have been a word in limited use (by cobblers, fashionistas etc) because there are no entries for the word (or similar forms such as cioppino or choppino) in English / Italian dictionaries of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries; perhaps it was at the time: "The shoe that dare not speak its name".  It's possible the equivalent in Renaissance Italian was zoccolo (familiar as the English plural "clogs") which may come from the Italian zocco (stump or block of wood) but adding to the murkiness, in one English / Italian dictionary, the word chopinos appears in the definition of the plural zoccoli.  Chopine is a noun; the noun plural is chopines.

Portrait de Chopin en Dante (drawing of Chopin as Dante, 1849), graphite pencil on paper by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Eugène Delacroix National Museum, the Louvre, Paris.  Inscribed Cher Chopin (Dear Chopin), the drawing is believed to have been sketched on 31 October, 1849, upon the artist learning of the composer's death some two weeks earlier.  It remained in Delacroix's bedroom until his death.

Unfortunately, chopiner is not an English noun meaning “one who makes or wears chopines” but a French verb meaning “to drink to excess” while the English adjective Chopinian carries the sense “of or pertaining to the Polish composer & virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)”.  A macabre footnote in Chopin's story is that Hans Frank (1900–1946; Nazi lawyer and governor of the General Government (1939-1945) in German-occupied Poland during World War II), whose rule in Nazi-occupied Poland was an appalling and bloody tale of corruption and depravity, when on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in all seriousness (as an experienced trial lawyer) offered in mitigation for his conduct the fact he'd established in Kraków a Chopin Museum, something he noted: “the Poles had never managed to do”.  The belated attempt at redemption came apparently at the instigation of Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945) who, although as evil as any of the Nazis, was at least clear-headed enough to understand carrots were in occupied territories at least as useful as sticks.

Defendants in the dock at the First Nuremberg Trial (Frank circled).

Acting under instruction from Berlin, Frank’s regime actively had attempted to eradicate Polish culture and while his methods were never subtle, the worst excesses included mass-murder of “the intelligentsia” (writers, artists, journalists, academics, priests etc) but the governor-general, bizarrely, had a personal obsession with Chopin, based on a genuine fondness for the music and many had been drawn to what been described as its “quasi-improvised” quality; the French composer Georges Bizet (1838–1875) spoke of Chopin’s work as “…charming, strange, unique, inimitable”.  Frank too clearly was charmed but understood the long dead composer would need to be “Germanized” to be acceptable in the Third Reich (1933-1945), taking measures such as spelling his name in a Germanic-sounding “Schopping” and banning performances of his compositions for Polish audiences.  The centrepiece of this improbable Nazi attempt at cult-creation was what Frank called the “temporary” Chopin Museum in his official headquarters at Wawel Castle in Kraków, a permanent structure to be erected once Germany had won the war.  In typical Nazi style, Frank dispatched his (by then well-experienced) agents to loot occupied Europe for Chopin artifacts, manuscripts, letters, death masks and memorabilia, managing to acquire (ie steal) even an original Pleyel grand piano that had belonged to the composer.  Despite that interest, in May 1940 he had made only a token attempt to prevent the destruction of the famous bronze Chopin Monument in Warsaw's Łazienki Park, the 16-ton statue cut into pieces and melted down for the benefit of the German war machine.

The Nuremberg Trial, 1946 (1946), oil on canvas by Dame Laura Knight RA (1877-1970), IWM (Imperial War Museum), London.

Dame Laura Knight’s large canvas The Nuremberg Trial, 1946, now hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London and is one of the most re-produced images from the trial.  An unusual blend of two aspects of realism achieved by a juxtaposition of defendants in the dock and a devastated Nuremberg cityscape (including corpses), the artist did change a few details to suit her didactic purposes, Hans Frank seated not in his usual place but at the painting’s bottom-right, presumably better to show the wrists damaged by a failed suicide attempt.  In court, Frank wore gloves to conceal the effect but these Dame Laura choose to remove.  Curiously for such an accomplished artist, some of the likenesses achieved of those in the dock are not impressive but it remains one of the trial’s most memorable images, despite at the time being received by the critical establishment without enthusiasm.

Sketch of Frank in the dock by New Zealand-born political cartoonist David Low (1891-1963).

For the museum’s opening ceremony, Frank personally selected Ludmilla Berkwic (1910–2005), a fine Polish concert pianist and piano teacher who, on Chopin’s Pleyel, preformed several pieces for an audience of high-ranking Nazis, the recital very well-received.  Unfortunately, Frank’s staff hadn’t dug too deep and what they failed to detect was that Ms Berkwic had since the start of the war being living under false papers because her father's family was Jewish.  That might have gone undetected were it not for Dr Goebbels having arranged for the performance to be filmed and, in an attempt to show how benign was Nazi rule in Poland, distributed throughout Europe on propaganda newsreels.  By 1943 he probably realized that might be a futile project but his energy for the Sisyphean task never waned.  However, an unexpected consequence of the publicity was it prompted one of Ms Berkwic’s jealous rivals to denounce her for having Jewish heritage.  That forced her and her mother to obtain from the Polish Underground new sets of forged papers and, strange as it sounds, they fled to Germany where they could be absorbed into the millions of captive Polish workers.  Hiding, as it were, “in plain sight”, she survived the war working in a munitions factory and in 1947 emigrated to the US, setting in New York.  Frank’s gesture did not make much impression on the judges of the IMT (International Military Tribunal) sitting for the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946): They convicted him on counts three (war crimes) and four (crimes against humanity) and handed down a sentence of death by hanging.  As a trained lawyer, Frank was at least a realist, the prison psychologist recording that when asked his reaction to the verdict, Frank had smiled when answering: “I deserved it and I expected it.”  Unlike the most recalcitrant of the defendants, he seemed aware too of the magnitude of the crimes being tried, admitting: “A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”  Some of what Frank stole for “his” Chopin Museum was recovered and today, the most comprehensive collection of the composer's memorabilia is housed in the official Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, established in 1954 and operated by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

The ultimate platform shoe

How they worked.  Chopines were a kind of wonder bra for the feet.

Chopines began as a purely functional device; a means of raising women’s shoes and the hems of their dresses above the dirt and filth in which they were often compelled to walk; in the age of horse-drawn transport, streets sometimes were "rivers of blood, mud and horseshit".  It's said the chopines were brought to Europe by traders from the Ottoman Empire where they'd been worn in bath houses by concubines, courtesans and others, the speculation being they were originally a modestly proportioned device designed as a health measure, a means of protecting the feet from infection, bath houses being warm, dark and moist, the perfect incubation environment for bacteria.  As sometimes happens, they became a status symbol with prestige determined by their elevation, the tallest extant examples reaching 20 inches (508 mm) although some historians claim they were built as much as ten inches (254 mm) higher.  Students of the art suspect that if true, such things may have been constructed for shop-window displays rather than being worn because at that height they're really "stilts".  Beyond a certain height, practicality (ie stability) would certainly have become marginal but there's evidence highly stylized examples were worn outside the bath house on ceremonial occasions, the wearer presumably "mostly static".  Chopines were most popular in Spain and Italy in the late sixteenth century and when they spread to England, they were sometimes referred to as "the Venice" because of the perception that was their city of origin, a notion that seems to have arisen because of their mention in widely-read travel journals of the age; Venice was a popular destination for such travellers.  Their impracticality must have made them a niche item because they never became part of any defined English costume or style of dress but whether alpha-males objected to women suddenly appearing taller is lost to history.

Variations on a theme of chopine.

As shoes, they had a short life because their sheer size dictated they be made from lightweight materials like cork and wood although some surviving examples do have a metal framework.  The style, in a less extreme form, was briefly revived with the cork-soled platform soles of the 1970s which had the effect of creating a short-lived investment bubble in the Portuguese cork industry although, as economic theory would predict, as the craze faded a Portuguese "cork glut" saw prices collapse.  The absurdity of the style attracted the attention of writers:

"It is ridiculous to see how these ladies crawl in and out of their gondolas, by reason of their choppines [clogs]; and what dwarfs they appear when taken down from their wooden scaffolds; of these I saw nearly thirty together, stalking half as high again as the rest of the world."  (John Evelyn, diary entry, June 1645)

"By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine." (Hamlet, act 2 scene 2, William Shakespeare, 1602)

"He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine... "(Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922).

Continuing the chopine tradition but with rather less elevation: Lindsay Lohan in Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots, New York, March 2019.

Shoes have not since ascended to the heights of the chopines but the attractions of elevation have endured.  The lovely elegance of a five-inch stiletto heel of course remains incomparable but while as a piece of design they’re there to be admired, at a certain point a stiletto becomes unstable.  As a piece of math, heel stability can be reduced to about as complex a problem in mechanics as one cares to make it, the significant variables being the heel height, heel-tip area, shoe geometry, the wearer’s centre of mass, foot position, ground reaction force, and the stiffness of the shoe & ankle as an encapsulated system.  So, the “tipping / stability problem” can be conceptualized (even if individual human variations make it difficult to produce a simple model) and the basic idea is that when standing, ground exerts a “vertical ground-reaction force” through the foot; if the shoe is stable, resultant force falls within the “support polygon” (essentially the area defined by the heel and forefoot contact points).  As a general principle, a shoe’s sole being broad and long (thereby distributing forces over a large contact area), what is critical is the heel, a structure with a much smaller contact area.  Essentially, the remains stable as long as pressure doesn't move beyond the available support area.

Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots from the Pre-Fall 2018 collection.  The large contact area of the kitten heel and height of the sole means stability is achieved but the style does demand some practice because one's "walking technique would need slightly to be adjusted.  

However, the slenderness of the stiletto operates as a multiplier effect, the heel height changes the geometry of the entire foot, not merely the size of the heel.  As the heel’s height increases, the foot shifts into plantar flexion causing a movement of the upper body, meaning the centre of mass relative to the heel changes.  For any given individual, with enough data points quantified, it would be possible to produce an equation that would find a “point of optimal stability” before increasing a heel's height induces “tipping”.  Beyond the “tipping point”, a shoe ceases to be neutrally stable and achieving a static equilibrium isn't possible without muscular compensation or movement.  That can be modelled in software but the practical complication is a human is not a rigid object standing atop an always flat, unmoving surface, ankle, foot and leg continually make corrections, often so minute and instinctive they’re imperceptible to the owner of those body parts.  Thus, a stiletto can statically be geometrically stable yet dynamically unstable.  That’s why heel-tip diameter is so critical in achieving stability and to illustrate that, imagine an example demonstrating not all four-inch (100 mm) stilettos have the same intrinsic stability.  Consider two otherwise identical 100 mm stilettos, one with an 8-mm heel tip, one with 20-mm, the latter allowing a greater movement of the centre of pressure before the ground-reaction force reaches the edge of the heel.  Math nerds can no doubt run the numbers and what they’d find is the intriguing result that doubling the heel height roughly halves the angular tolerance, while doubling heel-tip radius roughly doubles it.  Women used to stilettos of course don’t need an equation to tell them a shoe with an extremely narrow, high heel has a very small stability envelope; the "heelprint" is a vital part of the "footprint".

Lindsay Lohan in Christian Louboutin Madame Butterfly black bow platform booties with six-inch (150 mm) stiletto heel.  What the elevated sole does is change the foot's angle, meaning a similar stability is attained as would be achieved with a 100 heel used in conjunction with a conventional sole.

Hence the frequent use of thicker soles and while opinion can be divided on the look, the elevated platform mechanically is interesting because it allows the heel to be higher while keeping the foot at a less extreme angle; it’s a fudge and not always admired by those for whom the acute angle of the wearer’s foot is one of the most alluring aspects of the stiletto’s aesthetic but if done well, it can be pleasing; it’s not the classic look but needs to be judged on its own terms.  An example of the math is one of differentiation: A 120-mm heel with a 30-mm platform doesn't behave like a 120-mm heel on a flat platform; because of the additional height in the sole, the effective pitch (and thus stability) will be something like a shoe with a 90-mm heel and conventional sole.  Engineers call this the TBA (true biomechanical angle) and in the practical mechanics of the human foot it's of significance because the foot safely can tolerate only a certain maximum angle of incline angle before the ankle undergoes structural plantarflexion failure (where the foot is extended so straight the ankle loses all lateral muscle control).  All this was once a rarely explored exercise in equation-making because shoe designers could tell by looking at design whether it would be practical to wear; they didn’t need the math.  Engineers building humanoid robots did however need to do the sums even though they could, if need be, emulate millions of years of evolution and make feet and ankles more accommodating.  As the recent Humanoid Robot Olympics (August 2026) in Beijing demonstrated, the billions of dollars invested under the watchful eye of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) must have resulted in many correct calculations because what was achieved was impressive (including breaking the world record for the men's 100 metre sprint).  While the CCP surely is interested more in robots for factories and the military than “making a better stiletto”, it’s not impossible a Chinese scientist might gain a Ig Nobel Prize by publishing a by-product of humanoid robot research: the equation for the “perfectly stable stiletto”, designers able to “plug-in” their angles and dimensions meaning the “stability threshold” ceases to be theoretical and becomes just another metric.

Flamingo's Exotic Dancer's boots in baby pink are an example of what can be done if one can cast adrift what's possible from the moorings of what's practical.  Available in calf (left), ankle (centre) and thigh (right) length in a variety of heel and sole heights, there's both a commonality of design elements and interchangeability of components, meaning a high degree of production-line rationalization, making the range economic to produce.  It should be noted "exotic dancer" is a vocational euphemism so the target market is limited but there may be some demand from non-professionals who can see the potential for "home use".

Style by necessity, Paris circa 1942: The chopine's methods of construction and use of materials staged a partial comeback in occupied France (1940-1944).  The sculptured heel both lent style and reduced weight.

Wartime shortages of leather forced French cobblers to turn to more readily available materials such as wood or cork when repairing or replacing heels and soles and the improvisation quickly became characteristic of French footwear during the Nazi Occupation.  Of course, being French, mere functionalism wasn’t enough and identifiable styles emerged, creating a unique “fashion language”; in other words, a fine example of wartime necessity becoming fashion.  Supplies of leather for civilian consumer goods greatly were restricted in many countries during wartime but in places subject to Nazi occupation the deprivations were most severe with the German war machine absorbing the bulk of what was available.  Consequently, French shoemakers increasingly substituted wood, cork, textile, straw and whatever artificial materials could be adapted or re-cycled with wooden clogs becoming a common sight.

French open-toed pumps, circa 1944, Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Constructed on a wooden sole & heel with a raffia upper, the shoe is embellished with a polka-dot ribbon, the only leather component two small cuts for the contact areas of the sole and heel, covered with re-cycled material.  Although a product of necessity, the raffia/word combo does sometimes appear still in modern catalogues and, of course, polka-dots never really go out of style.  So, material supply was a problem but if anything that may have encouraged designers to explore the possibilities offered by materials not previously exploited.  Rather than simply forming blocks of wood or cork into a simple wedge that would have “done the job”, the photographic record makes clear women were wearing raised soles (some quite substantial platforms) and sculptural heels, some as extravagant as was possible within the limitations imposed and augmenting this, ribbons provided considerable scope for decorative variation; in a quirk of the wartime economy, ribbons were for some time among the few materials not subject to rationing.  Cobblers proved imaginative and French commerce rose to the occasion, shoe shops developing a fashion vocabulary: semelles compensées (platform/wedge soles) and semelles articulées (articulated soles) among the coinings.

Semelles articulées, Paris, circa 1942.  The look was soon in vogue.

The articulated creations were ingenious attempts to make wooden soles flexible enough for walking and while it was not possible wholly to emulate the behavior of leather, there were partial solutions, one using thin wooden strips and in 1941 there was the more intricate Smelflex in which the articulation interacted with laminated or hinged sections of wood; with dark irony, the occupying authorities noted the system was derived from a German patent.  In an example of the way in which populations adapt to circumstances, the look became a recognised fashion phenomenon of Occupation-era France and designers made no attempt to disguise their creations as leather, the wooden soles and heels presented explicitly as a blend of “ingenuity and Parisian elegance.”  In an amusing footnote, the shortage of leather and metal did answer the many pre-war complaints about the trend for extremely high, thin talons-échasses (stilt heels) that much pleased the men as they gazed at their drawing boards in Parisian fashion houses but were far from comfortable to wear for much beyond a photo-shoot for a glossy magazine.

Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, left) with Xi Jinping (b 1953; General Secretary of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and paramount leader of the PRC (People's Republic of China) since 2012, right) (far left), Carla Bruni-Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (b 1967, left) and her husband Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012, right) (centre left), Marco Rubio (b 1971; US secretary of state since 2025) (centre right) and how it's done (far right).

In politics, the chopine lives on in the form of "elevator shoes" that can "add" as much a four inches (100 mm) to an individual's height through the mechanism of the "built-up" internal heel.  Politicians are known to wear them including Mr Putin, Mr Sarközy and Mr Rubio, indeed the latter's use of the shoes was exploited by Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) who coined "little Marco" as his opponent's moniker during the 2016 Republican presidential debates although that use is in abeyance while they maintain their at least temporary friendship.  As the elevation increases it's obviously necessary also to add to the upper so (1) the trick is concealed and (2) the ankle retains some lateral support; that's why many elevator shoes are really "elevator boots".  Either way, they work best if trousers are cut accordingly; done well, worn by a well practiced wearer, they should be unobtrusive unless closely inspected.