Press

Press (pronounced pres)

(1) To act upon with steadily applied weight or force.

(2) To move by weight or force in a certain direction or into a certain position.

(3) To compress or squeeze, as to alter in shape or size.

(4) To hold closely, as in an embrace; clasp.

(5) To flatten or make smooth, especially by ironing.

(6) To extract juice, sugar, etc from by pressure.

(7) To manufacture (phonograph records, videodiscs, or the like), especially by stamping from a mold or matrix.

(8) To exert weight, force, or pressure.

(9) In weightlifting, to raise or lift, especially a specified amount of weight, in a press.

(10) To iron clothing, curtains, etc.

(11) To bear heavily, as upon the mind.

(12) To compel in another, haste, a change of opinion etc.

(13) Printed publications, especially newspapers and periodicals.  Collectively, all the media and agencies that print, broadcast, or gather and transmit news, including newspapers, newsmagazines, radio and television news bureaus, and wire services.

(14) The editorial employees, taken collectively, of these media and agencies.

(15) To force into military service.

1175-1225: From the Middle English press & presse (throng, trouble, machine for pressing) from the Old French, from presser (to press) from the Latin pressāre, frequentative of premere (past participle pressus).  In Medieval Latin it became pressa (noun use of the feminine of pressus).  The noun press (a crowd, throng, company; crowding and jostling of a throng; a massing together) emerged in the late twelfth century and was from the eleventh century Old French presse (a throng, a crush, a crowd; wine or cheese press), from the Latin pressare.  Although in the Late Old English press existed in the sense of "clothes press", etymologists believe the Middle English word is probably from French.  The general sense of an "instrument or machine by which anything is subjected to pressure" dates from the late fourteenth century and was first used to describe a "device for pressing cloth" before being extended to "devices which squeeze juice from grapes, oil from olives, cider from apples etc".  The sense of "urgency; urgent demands of affairs" emerged in the 1640s.  It subsequently proved adaptable as a technical term in sports, adopted by weightlifting in 1908 while the so-called (full-court press) defense in basketball was first recorded in 1959.  Press is a noun & verb, pressingness is a noun, pressing is a noun, verb & adjective, pressed is a verb & adjective and pressingly is an adverb; the noun plural is presses.  The now archaic verb prest was a simple past and past participle of press.

Fleet Street's last "hot-metal" press, now a permanent exhibit at National Science Museum's Science and Innovation Park, Wroughton, England.

Installed originally in the 1930s to print the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, the apparatus is some 9 metres (29½ feet) high and 9½ metres (31 feet) long, weighing 140 tonnes (154 short tons).  Given the bulk, the museum's management have good reason to make this exhibit permanent.  Although considerably more intricate than the printing presses of 500 years earlier, the operators of those would still have recognized and understood the processes and mechanisms.

The specific sense "machine for printing" was from the 1530s, extended by the 1570s to publishing houses and to publishing generally (in phrases like freedom of the press) from circa 1680 although meaning gradually shifted in early 1800s to "periodical publishing; journalism".  Newspapers collectively came to be spoken of as "the press" simply because they were printed on printing presses and the use to mean "journalists collectively" is attested from 1921 but this has faded from use with the decline in print and the preferred reference has long been “the news media”, Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) helpfully distinguishing between the news media (those agreeing with him) and the fake new media (those not).  The first gathering called a press conference is attested from 1931, though the thing itself had been around for centuries (and in some sense formalized during World War I (1914-1918)) although a politician appears first to have appointed a “press secretary” as late as 1940; prior to that there was some reluctance among politicians to admit they had people on the payroll to "manage the press" but the role long pre-dates 1940.  The term “press release” (an official statement offered to a newspaper and authorized for publication) is from 1918 although the practice was of long-standing.  The sense "force into military (especially naval) service" emerged (most famously in the “press-gang” (a detachment under command of an officer empowered to press men into public service)) in the 1570s, an alteration (by association with the verb press) of the mid-fourteenth century prest (engage by loan, pay in advance (especially in reference to money paid to a soldier or sailor on enlisting), from the Latin praestare (to stand out, stand before; fulfill, perform, provide), the construct being prae- (before) + stare (to stand), from the primitive Indo-European root sta- (to stand, make or be firm).  The verb was related to praesto (ready, available).  The concept of "press ganging" to obtain men for military service is ancient but in the codified way it was done by the Royal Navy it remains the Admiralty's greatest contribution to HRM (human resource management).  

Rupert Murdoch (b 1931), Fleet Street, London, 1969.

Mr Murdoch is pictured with one of the first copies of the new The Sun newspaper, “hot off the press”, the print-run in November 1969 the first since his acquisition of the title.  Ownership of the The Sun proved handy because, after being compelled to close the long-running News of the World in the wake of the "phone hacking scandal", in 2012 Mr Murdoch created a Sunday edition of The Sun, meaning he needed to maintain only one 7-day tabloid rather than two (and the two titles were more similar than they were different); once again, following a crisis, things worked out rather well for Mr Murdoch.  It was Mr Murdoch who added the topless “Page 3 girls” to the Sun, prompting one media analyst to conclude: “Well, Rupert Murdoch has found a gap in the market, the oldest gap in the world”.

In 1969, the phrase “hot off the press” was literal because the old “hot type” presses used the heat in the hand-assembled metal plates to complete the chemical process by which ink end up on paper.  Prepared even to sustain loss-making mastheads if he thinks their continued existence fulfils some useful purpose (such as “influence” or “agenda-setting”), Mr Murdoch clearly retains some residual affection for the print titles on which he built his empire(s) but the old expression “printer's ink in his veins” now is nuanced because although his papers still consume much ink and paper, more than anyone he was responsible for the demise of the old “hot type” printing presses which had evolved over centuries.  Modern newspapers still are printed with a form of ink but, mostly using a process called web offset printing (a variant of offset lithography, optimized for speed and high throughput), that "ink" is so low in viscosity it’s better imagined as a paste.  Usually petroleum or soy-based, the substance is transferred from a metal plate to a rubber "blanket" and, as the newsprint (porous paper in continuous rolls) moves through the press, the ink is applied to the paper as shapes, text and images.  The ink’s chemistry is formulated to ensure absorption into newsprint is close to instantaneous; in this the mix differs from traditional inks which could take seconds or even minutes to dry to the point printed paper could be handled without smudging, drying now achieved almost wholly by absorption and evaporation, not heat-fusing.  To gain speed, there was a trade-off in quality in that being relatively thin, the ink produces less color saturation than is achieved by what’s used for glossy magazines (which is why newspaper images look softer or slightly grayish).  That is of course acceptable because newspapers have a short life, an idea encapsulated by the band the Rolling Stones that in 1967 sang “Who wants yesterday’s papers. Nobody in the world.” although the meaning of that track was better summed up in the line: “Who wants yesterdays girl.”

Cover girl Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) amply filling the cover of Cosmopolitan's “Love Edition”, January 2026; content providers like Ms Sweeny will help ensure the survival of at least some print titles.  A tablet computer and a printed glossy are just two different technologies and whether a magazine like Cosmopolitan or a newspaper like The Economist, reading the physical copy tends to be more pleasing, tactile experience.

However, just as Mr Murdoch was in the 1980s instrumental in consigning the old printing presses to the scrapheap (along with a substantial number of the unionized workforce previously employed to maintain and run them), he’s also seen technological advances impose not always welcome changes on his business model, some of the implications of which he discussed in 2006: “To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.”  He may have been too pessimistic because, in the 2020s, watching Mr Murdoch’s Fox News, it’s not immediately obvious the people have “taken control” and a more glum analysis suggests the elites merely have done what elites always have sought to do as conditions shift: keep the strategy, adjust the tactics.  Still, although printed newspapers no longer need to exist, nostalgic types who enjoy the ritualism of reading one spread on a table while taking a coffee (and maybe even a cigarette) will miss them when they’re gone so they at least will wish Mr Murdoch many more years of rude good health because whether the print titles will survive his (God forbid) death isn’t certain.  Despite that uncertainty, most analysts seem to believe print in its (possibly diminishing) niches will likely endure.  Some of the glossies continue to flourish and encouragingly, the pleasingly quirky automotive site Petrolicious (revived after being acquired by the duPont Registry Group in 2024) has brought back its printed, tabloid size monthly Petrolicious Post (US$9.00 cover price, US$108.00 annual subscription), the internet lowering the costs associated with such projects by permitting direct-to-customer distribution without the need to supply newsstands.

Most meanings related to pushing and exerting pressure had formed by the mid-fourteenth century and this had been extended to mean "to urge or argue for" by the 1590s.  The early fourteenth century pressen (to clasp, hold in embrace) extended in meaning by the mid century also to mean "to squeeze out" & "to cluster, gather in a crowd" and by the late 1300s, "to exert weight or force against, exert pressure" (and also "assault, assail" & "forge ahead, push one's way, move forward", again from the thirteenth century Old French presser (squeeze, press upon; torture)", from the Latin pressare (to press (the frequentative formation from pressus, past participle of premere (to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress), from the primitive Indo-European root per- (to strike)).  The sense of "to reduce to a particular shape or form by pressure" dates from the early fifteenth century while the figurative (“to attack”) use was recorded some decades earlier.  The meaning "to urge; beseech, argue for" dates from the 1590s.

The letter-press referred to matter printed from relief surfaces and was a term first used in the 1840s (the earlier (1771) description had been "text," as opposed to copper-plate illustration).  The noun pressman has occasionally been used to refer to newspaper journalists but in the 1590s it described "one who operates or has charge of a printing press" and was adopted after the 1610s to refer to "one employed in a wine-press".  A similar sharing of meaning attached to the pressroom which in the 1680s meant "a room where printing presses are worked" and by 1902 it was also a "room (in a courthouse, etc.) reserved for the use of reporters".  To press the flesh (shake hands) came into use in 1926 and a neglected use of “pressing” is as a form of torture.  Under a wide variety of names, pressing was a popular method of torture or execution for over four-thousand years; mostly using rocks and stones but elephants tended to be preferred in South and South-East Asia.  It’s a medieval myth that Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) invented pressing but he certainly adopted it as a method of torture with his usual enthusiasm for such things.  Across the channel, under the French civil code, Peine forte et dure (forceful and hard punishment) defined pressing.  Used when a defendant refused to plead, the victim would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the subject to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

Pressed for time: Giles Corey's Punishment and Awful Death (1692), a drawing held by the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC.  Watched by a presumably approving crowd, the technique was to place stones upon the board covering the unfortunate soul: The “straw which broke the camel’s back” principle.

Remembered as a method use for torture and to extract confessions, the technique of pressing was known often as “crushing” if used in executions or the unfortunate victim of a pressing were to die.  Giles Corey was a farmer of 81 who lived in south-west Salem village, Massachusetts who had been accused of witchcraft, then a fashionable charge in Salem (despite the perception, it wasn't only women who were arraigned as witches).  He chose not to enter a plea and simply remained mute in court, prompting the judges to order the coercive measure peine forte et dure, an ancient legal device dating from thirteenth century Anglo-Norman law and which translated literally as “a long and hard punishment”; it was used to persuade those who refused to engage in process to change their mind (ie forcing an accused to enter a plea).  In the First Statute of Westminster (3 Edward I. c. 12; 1275) it stated (in Sir Edward Coke’s (1552–1634) later translation):  “That notorious Felons, which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in Enquests of Felonies that Men shall charge them with before the Justices at the King’s suit, shall have strong and hard Imprisonment (prisone forte et dure), as they which refuse to stand to the common Law of the Land.”

Prisone forte et dure came into use because of the principle in English law that a court required the accused voluntarily to seek its jurisdiction over a matter before it could hear the case, the accused held to have expressed this request by entering a plea.  Should an accused refuse to enter a plea, the court could not hear the case which, constructively, was an obvious abuse of process in the administration of justice so the work-around was to impose a “coercive means”.  The First Statute of Westminster however refers to prisone forte et dure (a strong and hard imprisonment) and it does seem the original intent was to subject the recalcitrant to imprisonment under especially harsh conditions (bread & water and worse) but at some point in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries there seems to have been a bit of mission creep and the authorities were interpreting things to permit pressing.  The earliest known document confirming a death is dated 1406 but it’s clear that by then pressing was not novel with the court acknowledging that if the coercive effect was not achieved, the accused certainly would die.  One who might have been pleased the law had moved on from torturing defendants who declined to enter a plea was Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941).  Appearing before the IMT (International Military Tribunal) in the first Nuremberg Trial which heard the cases against two dozen of the surviving leading Nazis, those in the dock all pleaded "not guilty" except Hess who stood at the microphone, said "nein" (no) and walked back to his place.  Dryly, the IMT's president responded:  "That will be recorded as a plea of 'not guilty'".  There was laughter in the court.  

Pressed Duck

Caneton à la presse, Aus$190 (US$122) at Philippe Restaurant (Melbourne).

Pressed duck (In the French the dish described variously as canard à la presse, caneton à la presse, canard à la rouennaise, caneton à la rouennaise or canard au sang) is one of the set-pieces of traditional French cuisine and the rarity with which it's now served is accounted for not by its complexity but the time-consuming and labor-intensive steps in its preparation.  Regarded as a specialty of Rouen, the creation was attributed to an innkeeper from the city of Duclair.  Expensive and now really more of a set-piece event than a meal, pressed duck in the twenty-first century rarely appears on menus and is often subject to conditions such as being ordered up to 48 hours in advance or accompanied with the pre-payment of at least a deposit.  Inevitably too there will be limits on the number available because a restaurant will have only so many physical duck presses and if that’s just one, then it’s one pressed duck per sitting and, given what’s involved, that means one per evening.  Some high-end a la carte restaurants do still have it on the menu including La Tour d'Argent in Paris, Philippe Restaurant in Melbourne, Ottos in London, À L'aise in Oslo, The Charles in Sydney (a version with dry-aged Maremma duck) and Pasjoli in Los Angeles lists caneton à la presse as its signature dish.

Pressed duck sequence of events: The duck press (left), pressing the duck (centre) & pressed duck (right).

Instructions

(1) Select a young, plump duck.

(2) Wringing the neck, quickly asphyxiate duck, ensuring all blood is retained.

(3) Partially roast duck.

(4) Remove liver; grind and season liver.

(5) Remove breast and legs.

(6) Take remaining carcass (including other meat, bones, and skin) and place in duck-press.

(7) Apply pressure in press to extract and collect blood and other juices from carcass.

(8) Take extracted blood, thicken and flavor with the duck's liver, butter, and Cognac.  Combine with the breast to finish cooking.  Other ingredients that may be added to the sauce include foie gras, port wine, Madeira wine, and lemon.

(9) Slice the breast and serve with sauce as a first serving; the legs are broiled and served as the next course.

Silverplate Duck Press (Item# 31-9128) offered at M.S. Rau Antiques (Since 1912) in New Orleans at US$16,850.

According to culinary legend, the mechanism of the screw-type appliance was perfected in the late nineteenth century by chefs at the Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris, the dish then called canard au sang (literally “duck in its blood”), a description which was accurate but presumably “pressed duck” was thought to have a wider appeal.  The example pictured is untypically ornate with exquisite foliate scrollwork and delicate honeycomb embossing on the base.  Although associated with the famous dish, outside of the serving period, chefs used duck presses for other purposes where pressing was required including the preparation of stocks or confits (various foods that have been immersed in a substance for both flavor and preservation).

Pressed duck got a mention in a gushing puff-piece extolling the virtues of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) which, in the pre-war years, was a remarkably fertile field of journalistic endeavour on both sides of the Atlantic.  William George Fitz-Gerald (circa 1970-1942) was a prolific Irish journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Ignatius Phayre and the English periodical Country Life published his account of a visit to the Berchtesgaden retreat on the invitation of his “personal friend” Adolf Hitler.  That claim was plausible because although when younger Fitz-Gerald’s writings had shown some liberal instincts, by the “difficult decade” of the 1930s, experience seems to have persuaded him the world's problems were caused by democracy and the solution was an authoritarian system, headed by what he called “the long looked for leader.”  Clearly taken by his contributor’s stance, in introducing the story, Country Life’s editor called Hitler “one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the century” and noted “the Führer is fond of painting in water-colours and is a devotee of Mozart.”

Country Life, March 1936 (both Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945)   (1893–1946) and Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946; Reichsminister of War 1935-1938) (1878–1946) were then generals and not field marshals, von Blomberg raised to the rank in April 1936, Göring in February 1938).  Göring wearing the traditional southern German Lederhosen (leather pants) must have been a sight worth seeing.

Substantially, the piece in Country Life also appeared in the journal Current History with the title: Holiday with Hitler: A Personal Friend Tells of a Personal Visit with Der Führer — with a Minimum of Personal Bias”.  In hindsight it may seem a challenge for a journalist, two years on from the regime’s well-publicized murders of a least dozens of political opponents (and some unfortunate bystanders who would now be classed as “collateral damage”) in the pre-emptive strike against the so-called “Röhm putsch”, to keep bias about the Nazis to a minimum although many in his profession did exactly that, some notoriously.  It’s doubtful Fitz-Gerald visited the Obersalzberg when claimed or that he ever met Hitler because his story is littered with minor technical errors and absurdities such as Der Führer personally welcoming him upon touching down at Berchtesgaden’s (non-existent) aerodrome or the loveliness of the cherry orchid (not a species to survive in alpine regions).  Historians have concluded the piece was assembled with a mix of plagiarism and imagination, a combination increasingly familiar since the internet encouraged its proliferation.  Still, with the author assuring his readers Hitler was really more like the English country gentlemen with which they were familiar than the frightening and ranting “messianic” figure he was so often portrayed, it’s doubtful the Germans ever considered complaining about the odd deviation from the facts and just welcomed the favourable publicity.

So, those who complain about the early implementations of consumer generative AI (artificial intelligence) products "making stuff up" to "fill in the gaps" can be assured it's something with a long (if not noble) tradition among flesh & blood content providers whether they be the Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda or a working journalist hustling for a dollar.  Generative AI is likely for some time to remain in its "early implementation" phase so should be used with much the same approach as that taken by the inspection teams of the US & USSR when auditing the outcomes of various SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) agreements: "trust but verify".  As a working journalist, Fitz-Gerald became used to editing details so he could sell essentially the same piece to several different publications, cutting & pasting as required, Current History’s subscribers spared the lengthy descriptions of the Berghof’s carpets, curtains and furniture enjoyed by Country Life’s readers who were also able to learn of the food served at der Tabellenführer, the Truite saumonée à la Monseigneur Selle (salmon trout Monseigneur style) and caneton à la presse (pressed duck) both praised although in all the many accounts of life of the court circle’s life on the Obersalzberg, there no mention of the vegetarian Hitler ever having such things on the menu.

Indeed, in Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled that belying the impression of excess created by the regime’s gaudy spectacles and monumentalist architecture, there was little extravagance at Hitler’s table, fresh vegetables his single gastronomic indulgence.  Describing things, Speer wrote: “The food was emphatically simple.  A soup, no appetizer, meat with vegetables and potatoes, a sweet.  For beverage we had a choice between mineral water, ordinary Berlin bottled beer, or a cheap wine.  Hitler was served his vegetarian food, drank Fachinger mineral water, and those of his guests who wished could imitate him.  But few did.  It was Hitler himself who insisted on this simplicity.  He could count on its being talked about in Germany.  Once, when the Helgoland fishermen presented him with a gigantic lobster, this delicacy was served at table, much to the satisfaction of the guests, but Hitler made disapproving remarks about the human error of consuming such ugly monstrosities. Moreover, he wanted to have such luxuries forbidden, he declared.  Göring seldom came to these meals.  Once, when I left him to go to dinner at the Chancellery, he remarked: ‘To tell the truth, the food there is too rotten for my taste.  And then, these party dullards from Munich!  Unbearable.’"

The tabloid press: On 29 November 2006, News Corp's New York Post ran its front page with a paparazzi photo of Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), Britney Spears (b 1981) and Paris Hilton (b 1981), the snap taken outside a Los Angeles nightclub, shortly before dawn.  Remembered for the classic tabloid headline Bimbo Summit, the car was Ms Hilton's Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).

The term "tabloid press" refers to down-market style of journalism designed to enjoy wide appeal through an emphasis on scandals, sensation and sport, featuring as many celebrities as possible.  The word tabloid was originally a trademark for a medicine which had been compressed into a small tablet, the construct being tab(let) + -oid (the suffix from the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the ο being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached), from εἶδος (eîdos) (form, likeness)).  From the idea of the pill being the small version of something bigger, tabloid came to be used to refer to miniaturized iterations of a variety of stuff, newspapers being the best known use.  A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet but despite the name, there is no standardized size for the format but it's generally about half the size of a broadsheet.  In recent decades, economic reality has intruded on the newspaper business and there are now a number of tabloid-sized newspapers (called "compacts" to distinguish them from the less reputable) which don't descend to the level of tabloid journalism (although there has been a general lowering of standards).

The Mean Girls (2004) Burn Book (left) and Lindsay Lohan burning an “inflammatory” tabloid magazine, Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, GQ Magazine, October 2006.

In Mean Girls, the Burn Book gained its notoriety from being packed with inflammatory comments.  In a visual critique of the tabloid press's "obsession" with her (admittedly incident-packed young) life, Lindsay Lohan in 2006 posed for a photo-shoot by Terry Richardson (b 1965) for GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) magazine.  Titled Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, the theme was her as a case-study of the way the “tabloid press” handled celebrity culture, the joke being a magazine with “inflammatory content about her” being literally set aflame, the glossy paper of course being flammable.  It’s appears a consensus in the “media studies” crew this aspect of “tabloid culture” peaked in the first dozen-odd years of the twenty-first century, the reasons for that including (1) the period having an exceptionally large cast of suitable subjects, (2) smart phones with HD (high-definition) cameras becoming consumer items meaning potential content proliferated (ie what once would not have been photographed now became available to editors as low cost images) and (3) social media sites not having attained critical mass, all factors which at the time enabled the lower-end glossies to flourish.

Scum

Scum (pronounced skuhm)

(1) A film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as a result of natural processes such as the greenish film of algae and similar vegetation on the surface of a stagnant pond.

(2) A layer of impure matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as the result of boiling or fermentation.

(3) As disparaging slang, a person though low, worthless, or evil (often as “scumbag” or “scumbucket”.

(4) Such persons collectively (often as “scum of the earth”).

(5) An alternative name for scoria, the slag or dross that remains after the smelting of metal from an ore.

1200–1250: From the Middle English scume, derived from the Middle Dutch schūme (foam, froth) cognate with German schaum, ultimately of Germanic origin, drawn from the Old High German scūm and Old French escume.  In Old Norse word was skum, thought derived from the primitive root (s)keu (to cover, conceal).  By the early fourteen century, the word scummer (shallow ladle for removing scum) had emerged in Middle Dutch, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic skuma, the sense deteriorated from "thin layer atop liquid" to "film of dirt," then just "dirt" and from this use is derived the modern skim.  The meaning "lowest class of humanity" is from the 1580s; the familiar phrase “scum of the earth” from 1712.  In modern use, the English is scum, the French écume, the Spanish escuma, the Italian schiuma and the Dutch schuim.  Scum is a noun & verb, scumbag, scumbaggery, scumbagginess & scumbucket are nouns, and scumlike, scummy & scumbaggy are adjectives; the noun plural is scums.

Rendezvous: New Zealand-born cartoonist David Low's (1891-1963) famous take on the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

The document usually is called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because it was signed by comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945).  To illustrate the pact's cynical nature, Low depicted Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, left) exchanging artificial pleasantries with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953, right) both knowing it was only a matter of time before their nations would be at war.  Although Low at the time couldn't have known it, comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) was not unaware of public opinion and when presented with the pact's draft text, decided the rather flowery preamble extoling German-Soviet friendship was just too absurd, telling the visiting delegation that "...after years of pouring buckets of shit over each-other...", it'd be more convincing were the document to be as formal as possible.  Sensational as news of the pact was in 1939, what became more notorious still was the appended "secret protocol" which defined the line of delineation by which Poland would be "carved-up" between Germany and the USSR after the German invasion.  Because of geography and demographic reality, the line on the map was remarkably close to the Curzon Line, first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; Viceroy of India 1899-1905 & UK Foreign Secretary 1919-1924) as the border between Soviet Russia and a reconstituted Poland.

Cautiously, comrade Stalin waited a couple of weeks to ensure the German victory was secure before sending the Red Army over the border, an act the Poles would remember as "a stab in the back".  The defense counsel at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) obtained a copy of the secret protocol and attempted to have it introduced as evidence but the judges denied the motion, the compromise being it could be referred to but the contents could not be discussed.  The irony of two Soviet judges dealing with the charges of a conspiracy to wage aggressive war (Count 1) and waging aggressive war (Count 2) when knowledge of the secret protocol (a conspiracy to invade Poland) was afoot attracted much comment.  One unmoved by the perception of cynicism was comrade Stalin for whom all politics was realpolitik.  At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually would refer to “the Curzon Line” and the UK foreign secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed the more common practice was to call it “the Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  “Call it whatever you like” replied Stalin, “we still think it's fair and just”.  Rarely did comrade Stalin much care to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.      

 

The Society for Cutting Up Men: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

S.C.U.M. Manifesto (post shooting, 1968 paperback Edition).

Although celebrated in popular culture as the summer of love, not everyone shared the hippie vibe in 1967.  The S.C.U.M. Manifesto was a radical feminist position paper by Valerie Solanas (1936-1988), self-published in 1967 with a commercial print-run a year later.  Although lacking robust theoretical underpinnings and criticized widely within the movement, it remains both feminism’s purest and most uncompromising work and an enduring landmark in the history of anarchist publishing.  In the abstract, S.C.U.M. suggested little more than the parlous state of the word being the fault of men, it was the task of women to repair the damage and this could be undertaken only if men were exterminated from planet Earth.  The internal logic was perfect.

As well as the Society for Cutting Up Men, Acronym Finder’s list of the use of SCUM as an acronym includes (1) Subculture Urban Marketing, (2) Santa Clara United Methodist, (3) Sensitive Caring Urban Male (though being one of those wouldn’t save them and they’re as likely (after ordering their Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato with almond milk and an extra shot of espresso) as a (4) Self-Centered Urban Male to get Solanas’ “six-inch blade” between the ribs), (5) Southern California Unified Malacologists (malacology is the study of molluscs), (6) South Coast United Motorcyclist and (7) Socialist Cover-Up Media (how Fox News and those in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) cult think of the “fake news media).

The use of Scum as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men existed in printed form from 1967 (though not in the manifesto’s text) although Solanas later denied the connection, adding that S.C.U.M. never existed as an organization and was just “…a literary device”.  The latter does appear true, S.C.U.M. never having a structure or membership, operating more as Solanas’ catchy marketing label for her views; dubbing it a literary device might seem pretentious but, given her world-view, descending to the mercantile would have felt grubby.  That said, when selling the original manifesto, women were charged US$1, men US$2.  While perhaps not as elegant an opening passage as a Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) might have penned, Solanas’ words were certainly succinct.  "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.”  Ominously, “If S.C.U.M. ever strikes” she added, “it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”  No ambiguity there, men would know what to expect.

On set, 1967, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) & Nico (1938-1988).

Author and work were still little-known outside anarchist circles when, on 3 June 1968, Solanas attempted to murder pop-artist Andy Warhol, firing three shots, one finding the target.  The year 1968 was in the US a time of violence and tumult but amid it all, the celebrity connection and the bizarre circumstances ensured this one crime would attract widespread coverage.  Valerie Solanas with her two guns had entered Mr Warhol’s sixth-floor office at 33 Union Square West convinced he was intent on stealing the manuscript of the play Up Your Ass she’d repeatedly tried to persuade him to produce.  Warhol and his staff had reviewed the work and decided it simply wasn’t very good (Warhol giving the the back-handed compliment of it being "well-typed") but because he’d “misplaced” the manuscript (it was later discovered in a trunk) Solanas concluded that was just a trick and he was going to steal what she thought of as her brilliant play, claiming it as her own.  Although she’d for some time hovered around the fringes of the Warhol “Factory”, she seems not to have had much success as an advocate.  Her S.C.U.M. Manifesto envisioned a world without men which was at the time heady stuff with a certain mid-1960s appeal but Warhol also declined her offer to become a member of the Scum’s “Men’s Auxiliary” (a group for men sufficiently sympathetic to Scum’s aims to begin “working diligently to eliminate themselves.”)  As offers go, it really wasn't compelling.

New York Daily News, 4 June 1968.

Not best pleased by the headline, “Actress Shoots Andy Warhol”, Solanas demanded a retraction claiming that she was "a writer, not an actress."  The paper had based the headline on her appearance in Warhol's films I, a Man (1967) and Bike Boy (1967).  Warhol later admitted he'd cast her in I, a Man (for which she received a US$25 fee) in the hope she'd stop nagging him about the play she'd written.  She never complained about anything else the press wrote about her but apparently the label "actress" was beyond the pale.

Solanas’ state of mind about the fate of her intellectual property can be explained by it being no secret Warhol was inclined to “use” (the words “borrow”, “appropriate” “steal” also often used but “sample” was not yet a thing) and rebrand it all as “his art”.  For weeks leading up to the attempt on his life, repeatedly she’d called his office with first requests and then demands about her manuscript, culminating with threats at which point Warhol stopped taking her calls; the next call she made was in person and she shot him and an art gallery owner with who he was discussing an exhibition (he (as collateral damage) received minor injuries); Warhol was declared dead but paramedics arrived to stabilize him.  Calmly, Solanas left the building and several hours later, approached a policeman in Times Square, handed over her two guns and told him: “He had too much control over my life.”  Unsurprisingly, a judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation and she received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but despite this, she was found competent to stand trial and pleaded guilty to “reckless assault with intent to harm”; sentenced to three years incarceration (including time served) in the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane (1892-1977); she was released late in 1971.  Solanas never renounced the S.C.U.M. manifesto nor lost faith in its capacity to change the world but her her mental health continued to decline and reports indicate she became increasingly paranoid and unstable. She spent her last years in a single-occupancy welfare hotel in San Francisco, where, alone, she died in 1988, the official cause of death listed as "pneumonia".  

  

A (fake) montage of Lindsay Lohan as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) might have rendered.  Ms Lohan was not yet 12 months old when Warhol died (the start of her modeling career still two years off) but had he lived another two decades he'd almost certainly have painted her.

Ms Solanas' infamy lasted beyond fifteen minutes and one unintended consequence of her act was the S.C.U.M. Manifesto finally finding a commercial publisher, thus becoming what is publishing is known as succès de scandale (a work which owes its success or very existence to some notoriety or scandalous element).  In certain feminist and anarchist circles she remains a cult figure although, it takes some intellectual gymnastics to trace a lineal path from her manifesto to the work of even the more radical of the later-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), Susan Brownmiller (b 1935) or Catharine MacKinnon (b 1946).  Solanas to this day still is usually described as a “feminist” or “radical feminist” but, given the implication of the manifesto, it would seem more accurate to label her a misandrist (one who exhibits a hatred of or a prejudice against men), a world view which attracts many because, to be fair, there are any number of reasons to hate men.  Although one suspects among women the "all men are bastards" school of thought is ancient, the noun "misandry" was a late nineteenth century formation, the construct being mis- (in the sense of “hatred”) +‎ -andry (men), by analogy with the more commonly used misogyny (hatred of or a prejudice against women); the inspiration was the Ancient Greek μισανδρία (misandría), the construct being μισέω (miséō) (hate) + ἀνήρ (anḗr) (man).

Cause and effect: The (attempted) murder weapon (Beretta M1935 automatic in .32ACP, left) and Warhol's post-operative torso (right).

Warhol required surgery to his spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus and lungs; the damage he suffered to a range of internal organs not uncommon among those shot at close range; the bullet ricocheted off a rib, accounting for the lateral trajectory.  Although the Beretta M1935 automatic (in .32ACP) she used is not regarded as a “big calibre” (the .32 listed by most as a “small bore”), a single shot from one, especially at close-range, can be lethal and an wound from even a smaller load (like the .22 she was also carrying) can be fatal.  In the context of handguns, a “big calibre” load usually is defined as one with a diameter of .40 inches (10mm) or larger and of those there are many including .44, .45 & .50 although “magnum” versions of smaller bore ammunition (.22, .357 etc) can match many larger loads in “stopping power”.  Interviewed later, Warhol reflected: “Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television - you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”

Gun (1982), synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas by Andy Warhol.

Artistically, the shooting had consequences.  Warhol became more guarded, abandoning projects like filmmaking which required so much contact with people and stopping the production of controversial art which might attract more murderous types and focusing on business, in 1969 founding what in 1969 became Interview magazine.  Although there had in his previous output been evidence of an interest in death and violence, after the shooting, often he would visited the theme of death, painting a series of skulls and one of guns, a weapon with which he now had an intensely personal connection.  He was certainly not unaware what happened that day in June 1968 was a turning point in his life, some twenty years later noting in his diary: “I said that I wasn’t creative since I was shot, because after that I stopped seeing creepy people.”

Termagant

Termagant (pronounced tur-muh-guhnt)

(1) A mythical deity popularly believed in Medieval Christendom to be worshiped by Muslims and introduced into the morality play as a violent, overbearing personage in long robes (a proper noun and thus used with initial capital).

(2) A brawling, boisterous, and turbulent person or thing (archaic).

(3) A censorious, nagging, scolding and quarrelsome woman (not exactly synonymous with “harridan”, “virago” or “shrew” but with a similar flavor of disapprobation); for those who find some women worse than others, the comparative is “more termagant”, the superlative “most termagant”.

(4) The act of behaving violently; turbulent conduct.

Circa 1500: From the Middle English Termagaunt (one of the three fictitious deities (others being Apollin & Mahound) represented as being worshipped by Muslims; any pagan god), from the from the Anglo-Norman Tervagant, Tervagaunt & Tervagan and the Old French Tervagant & Tervagan, a name bestowed on a wholly fictitious Muslim deity, created by Christian polemicists to use in medieval morality plays as a symbol of the Islamic faith.  In the Old French, Tervagant was a proper name in the eleventh century chanson de geste (song of heroic deeds (from the Classical Latin gesta (deeds, actions accomplished)) Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland).  The epic poem is the oldest known work of substantial length in French still extant and was drawn from the exploits of the Frankish military commander Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778) during the reign of Charlemagne (748–814; “Charles the Great” and (retrospectively) the first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814).  That the text (more correctly “texts” as a number of variants have been identified) survived to this day is accounted for by the work’s popularity; it was between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries among the most widely distributed pieces of literature in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.  The alternative spelling was termagant.  Termagant is a noun & adjective, termagancy & termagantism are nouns, termagantish is an adjective, and termagantly is an adverb; the noun plural is Termagants.

The ultimate origin of the word is a mystery but the most supported theory suggests the construct being based on the Latin ter (three times, thrice) (from the primitive Indo- European tréyes (three)) + vagāns (rambling, wandering) (present active participle of vagor (to ramble, roam, wander), from vagus (rambling, roaming, wandering) (the source of which may be the primitive Indo-European hwogos) + -or (an inflected form of -ō (the suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).  Given that possible etymology, it’s argued the appearance of Termagant in Chanson de Roland as one of the three deities allegedly worshipped by Muslims was an allusion to the wandering of the moon (the crescent moon a well-known symbol of Islam) in the form of the mythological goddesses Selene in heaven, Diana on Earth, and Proserpina in the underworld.  The adjective was derived from the original proper noun, the sense of a “violent, overbearing person” (later applied especially to “difficult” women) evolving because Christian scribes always applied these characteristics to the figure; the meaning shift was thus a “partial transfer” in that the unpleasant personality was carried over to earthly flesh and blood with no suggestion of anything supernatural. 

Al Malik Al Ahmar (The Red Jinn-King) from an eighteenth century edition of the the Arabic manuscript of Kitab al Bulhan (Book of Wonders).

The Termagant was a wholly mythical deity invented by Christian writers in Middle Ages who claimed it was a figure worshiped by Muslims.  Depicted as a violent, overbearing personage in long robes, unlike a number of cross-cultural creations there was no figure which existed specifically in Islamic belief, theology, or folklore that could be said to be a model for the fanciful imaginings of Christian polemicists so it was “fake news” rather than a distorted version of a figure in what was in the West long called Mohammedanism (also a misleading tern because of the implication Muhammad is worshiped by Muslims; In Islam only Allah (God) is worshiped while Muhammad is venerated as His greatest prophet).  This was all part of Christianity’s misrepresentation of Islamic theology as not monotheist and thus in violation of first two of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus: (1) Thou shall worship no other Gods and (2) Thou shall not create false idols.  It was a blatant untruth because strictly Islam was tawḥīd (monotheistic) and explicitly proscribed even the suggestion of a pantheon of gods.  Unlike Christianity’s claims about Jesus Christ, the prophet Muhammad was never said to be divine and was never worshipped.  Thus, the so-called “Saracen trinity” in medieval texts has no basis in Islamic doctrine although that didn’t prevent the notion spreading and being believed and variants of the techniques of dissemination have since been practiced by propagandists such as priests and politicians.

An Islamic miniature (1595) depicting Iblīs (top right) plotting against Muhammad watching over a meeting by the leaders of the Quraysh discussing the second pledge at al-Aqabah, being spied on by the anti-Islamic zealot “the Monk” Abu ʿĀmir al-Rāhib, who is part of Iblīs' plan, New York Public Library collection.

It’s true that there were then (as there are now) in Islam many figures of authority cloaked in long, dark robes but that was true also of Christianity and other faiths.  By the late Middle Ages, even if the fake theology was proving unconvincing, the secular appeal of such a menacing figure was real and especially in English theatre (where there was often more leeway granted by the censors of church & state than elsewhere in Europe), the termagant evolved into a stock character: ranting, tyrannical, bombastic and often dressed in a costume of a type which late in the twentieth century the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said (1935–2003) in Orientalism (1978) identified as a clichéd “exoticized Eastern costume” (another Western construct).  Of Termagant Apollin & Mahound, although there are in the Islamic tradition no true analogues, there are figures (perhaps better thought of as “concepts”) in which there are vague or superficial resemblances to the stereotype although there was never a hint they should be worshiped.  The جنّ (Jinn) were supernatural beings made of “smokeless fire” and although some were rebellious or violent, depending on this and that, they might be benevolent, neutral, or malevolent but were certainly not deities to be worshipped and seem never to have been depicted as despotic tyrants in the theatrical sense of the Termagant of the Christian imagination.  Best known in the West was إبليس (Iblīs/Shayṭān (Satan)) who existed as the primary adversarial figure in Islam and one representing arrogance, rebellion, and temptation.  Iblīs however seems closer to the Christian Satan than a “false god”, not being nor portrayed as a blustering theatrical tyrant in robes.  Most interesting in the tradition were the طاغية (ẓālim; the tyrannical rulers), a crew made especially interesting in the last few months, following the ayatollahs’ recent bloody crackdown on the streets of Iran to ensure regime survival, the death-toll in January 2026 believed to have exceeded 30,000 and the author and public policy analyst Robert Templer (b 1966) has estimated that on at least two days that month, there were more were killed in state-sanctioned violence than on any day since the end of World War II (1939-1945), his calculations including the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans.  The Qurʾān condemns unjust rulers (such as the Pharaohs) and to make the point, the ẓālim tended to be overbearing, violent and arrogant.  Those Iranians killed by the thousand while chanting “Death to the dictator!” would have recognized what the Qurʾān condemns but the pattern is known from history.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right) with former special friend Samantha Ronson (b 1977, left).  The couple were a tabloid staple in 2008-2009 but at the time the question often asked was whether a relationship between one “quite termagant” and another “more termagant” could long be sustained.  As was predicted, things ended badly.  There seems no evidence there ever was a collective noun for Termagants.  If one is needed, it’s be something like a “tempest”, “scold”, “railing” or “fury” of termagants.

By March 1945, it was obvious to most in Berlin that the end was nigh and one individual brought to the attention of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) a salient passage in his political manifesto Mein Kampf (1925-1926): “The task of diplomacy is to ensure that a nation does not heroically go to its destruction but is practically preserved.  Every way that leads to this end is expedient, and a failure to follow it must be called criminal neglect of duty.  State authority as an end in itself cannot exist, since in that case every tyranny on this earth would be sacred and unassailable.  If a racial entity is being led toward its doom by means of governmental power, then the rebellion of every single member of such a Volk is not only a right, but a duty.”  Unmoved, Hitler responded: “If the war is lost, the people will be lost also.  It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival.  On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things.  For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation.  In any case only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”  Presumably, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (1939-2026; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran 1989-2026) would have concurred with the sentiments for, just as the Germans had “failed Hitler”, those Iranians chanting “Death to the dictator!” had failed him, thus the holy duty to kill them, not for a motive as base as “regime survival” but because the protesters were attacking Islam and thus Allah himself.  In the Supreme Leader’s theological construct, killing thousands in defense of God was not merely justified but an obligation.

Over time, in English, “a termagant” came to mean a scolding or overbearing person, a meaning wholly detached from its supposed origin in religion and under a number of influences, it came to be used mostly of women.  The most significant of these influences was literature and the stage, use shifting from elaborate epics about the crusades to popular entertainment.  As a constructed theological fiction Termagant was anyway perfect for the playwright and had it not existed it surely would have been created, violence, bluster, and irrational fury staples of drama.  For students of such things, the shift from the ranting tyrant to the “stock stage villain” was interesting because in the latter role the Termagant needed sometimes to be a comic character, bombastic and shouting with deliberate “overacting” often in the stage directions.

The elongated John Cleese (b 1939) and Andrew Sachs (1930-2016) in Basil the Rat (25 October, 1979) the final episode in the BBC comedy series Fawlty Towers (12 episodes in two series (1975 & 1979)).  It was in the Fawlty Towers episode The Germans (24 October, 1975) that the phrase “Don't mention the war” was introduced by Basil at his most termagant and in that case Shakespeare would have instructed Cleese to “out-herod Herod”.

So in early Modern English, the shift began from character to adjective and with the use in stage drama expanding during the sixteenth century, the transition accelerated.  When William Shakespeare (1564–1616) had Sir John Falstaff faking his own death (Act 5, Scene 4) in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), he spoke of the fierce Scottish rebel, Archibald, Earl of Douglas as “that hot termagant Scot” and by then there was no hint of any connection to alleged Islamic deities; it was just about the man’s turbulent, violet nature.  Shakespeare’s characters run the gamut of the human condition, something sometimes misunderstood by those who associate him only with what’s understood as “high culture” but he knew that while “overacting” sometimes was essential for comic effect  otherwise it needed sedulously to be avoided. In his stage instructions for Hamlet (circa 1600) he cautioned the cast: “Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.”  That instruction also assumed a new life, appearing in modified form in All's Well That Ends Well (circa 1602) as “out-villain'd villainy” before in the 1800s “out-herods Herod” came widely to be used as a critique of any behaviour thought “excessive” and by then, in stage productions, “termagant” explicitly was invoked as verbal shorthand for the sort of strident ranting sometimes required.

The suggestion that Basil Fawlty may be thought a “Shakespearian” character is not flippant and is in the vein of the observation by the English actor Sir Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) that were the Italian painter of the Early Renaissance Sandro Botticelli (circa 1445-1510) alive today: “he'd be working for Vogue”.  One suspects Shakespeare would have been proud to have created a figure like the evil J.R. Ewing (from the US TV series Dallas (1978-1991)) or penned a line like “Round up the usual suspects!” (from the movie Casablanca (1942)).  The works of Sir Pelham “P.G.” Wodehouse (1881–1975) have a certain charm which exerts a powerful pull on some critics and often he’s cited as a twentieth century popular author reaching a similar audience to that for which Shakespeare wrote centuries earlier.  The politician and diarist Woodrow Wyatt (1918–1997) reckoned: “There are almost as many quotations in Wodehouse as Shakespeare” and the usually acerbic Auberon Waugh (1939–2001) mused: “The failure of academic literary criticism to take any account of Woodhouse’s supreme mastery of the English language or the profound influence he has had on every worthwhile English novelist of the last 50 years demonstrates in better and concise form than anything else how the English literature industry is divorced from the subject it claims to study.”  His point was well-made although it may have been a little back-handed, old Auberon Waugh probably not thinking the last fifty years had produced many “worthwhile” novelists.

Color plate of Sir John Falstaff by Giovan Battista Galizzi (1882-1963) from The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff (1923, with an introduction by lawyer George Radford (1851-1917)).

Even before the scientific and technical advances of the last two centuries-odd led to a proliferation of creations, the English language's vocabulary was famously large and while some categories have been more more productive than others, few proved quite as imaginatively fecund as (1) coinings and re-purposings to describe female body parts and (2) terms with which to demonize or disparage women (termagant one of the latter).  After the dubious link with Islam had been discarded, termagant was understood as someone blustering, noisy and tyrannical; it was in the late sixteenth century there was a distinct gender shift and the word became specifically female, associated less with domineering violence and more with shrillness, emotional excess, and scolding, performed in a theatrical style that audiences coded as unseemly or grotesque, applying the word to “difficult” women in the world beyond.  It was a time of profound social and political change and as social norms in England hardened around ideals of female deference, obedience and modesty, the label migrated: While for men “termagant” had meant (depending on context) threatening or ridiculous, when applied to women it suggested social transgression.  It wasn’t quite Taliban-level repression but women with minds of their own were apt to be judged quarrelsome, overbearing and scolding, terms like “shrew” & “virago” becoming termagant’s companion terms.  At this point, lexical fossilization set in and by the mid-1700, the original sense (the fictional deity) had faded into obscurity with the meaning stabilized as “a domineering, bad-tempered woman”, thus the adjectival form “termagant behaviour”.  To etymologists, the long process was an interesting case study in that the mechanism of changed happened in phases, the theatrical and religious origins surviving only as residual footnotes while the metonymic shifts were driven by changing cultural norms, not grammatical rules.

The Royal Navy's Talisman-class destroyer, HMS Termagant, 1916.

It was of course a good name for a warship and between 1780 and 1965, the British Admiralty from time to time had seven HMS Termagants attached to the Royal Navy’s fleets, the last launched in 1943.  One with a vague connection to the original meaning was a Talisman-class destroyer, ordered originally by the Ottoman Empire but in 1915 requisitioned by the Admiralty (as HMS Narborough) before being renamed built HMS Termagant.  Despite the expectations of decades, World War I (1914-1918) was not a conflict of great naval clashes and although she took part in the Battle of Jutland (1916, which seemed at the time anti-climatic but was strategically decisive), her record was not illustrious and, sold for scrap in 1921, she was broken up two years later.

Anthony Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister of Australia since 2022, left) and his wife Jodie Haydon (b 1979, centre) with Grace Tame (b 1994; activist and advocate for survivors of sexual assault, right) in photo opportunity before a morning tea at the Lodge (the prime minister’s residence), Canberra, Australia, January, 2025.

The “Fuck Murdoch” T-Shirt she made famous was worn with a purpose.  Happy to discuss the provocative fashion piece, Ms Tame said the message wasn’t aimed just at media mogul Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) but rather the “obscene greed, inhumanity and disconnection that he symbolises, which are destroying our planet.  For far too long this world and its resources have been undemocratically controlled by a small number of morbidly wealthy oligarchs.  If we want to dismantle this corrupt system, if we want legitimate climate action, equity, truth, justice, democracy, peace, land back, etc, then resisting forces like Murdoch is a good starting point.  Speaking truth to power starts at the grassroots level with simple, effective messages. It’s one of my favourite shirts.”

A difficult woman's sceptical glance: Grace Tame (right) looking at Scott Morrison, Canberra, Australia, January 2022.

Ms Tame had previously provided photographers with some good snaps, most memorably her stony “side-eye” expression to Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime minister 2018-2022), another politician she deemed not to have treated allegations of sexual assault and toxic workplace culture in federal parliament with sufficient seriousness, noting his casual dismissal of her as having “had a terrible life”.  Less than amused at some of the commentary about her sideways glance, she tweeted on X (the called Twitter) that some in the media appeared to have reduced the matter of survival from abuse to a culture “…dependent on submissive smiles, self-defeating surrenders and hypocrisy”, adding “What I did wasn’t an act of martyrdom in the gender culture war.”   Expanding things to a construct, she explained: “It’s true that many women are sick of being told to smile, often by men, for the benefit of men. But it’s not just women who are conditioned to smile and conform to the visibly rotting status-quo. It’s all of us.”

If Anthony Albanese didn't previously think Grace Tame was “a difficult woman”, he probably now does.

In Australian political discourse, “termagant” has not often been heard but ALP (Australian Labor Party) luminary Kim Beazley (b 1948) did in 2008 so label the Liberal Party’s Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015); while a by then untypical use, it did prove the word was still used of men.  Unfortunately, that seems not to have stuck in the mind of mind of the ALP’s Anthony Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister of Australia since 2022) who, during a “rapid-fire word association game” at a function organized by Mr Murdoch’s News Corp, was prompted with “Grace Tame” to which he responded “difficult”.  The remarks were noted by Ms Tame who had in the past been critical of politicians who she claimed treated her as a “problem to be managed” rather than doing anything substantive to prevent sexual abuse or assist survivors.  Whether it would have been any better had he be called her “termagant” rather than “difficult” is debatable but at least the history of Mr Abbott being so labelled would have meant it could be argued it wasn’t a “gendered” word (the history of the last few centuries notwithstanding).  Probably the best choice for Mr Albanese would have been “formidable” in the sense of the French très formidable meaning something like “wonderful” or “terrific”, such a woman being une femme formidable.  Formidable was from the Middle English formidable, from the Old French formidable & formible, from the Latin formīdābilis (formidable, terrible), from formīdō (fear, dread); it was another example of a meaning shift.  In fairness to Mr Albanese, it was a spur-of-the-moment response to an unexpected prompt and, in an attempt to make things better, he explained: “I was asked to describe people in one word and Grace Tame you certainly can’t describe in one word.  She has had a difficult life, and that was what I was referring to.  If there was any misinterpretation, then I certainly apologise. I think that Grace Tame has taken what is personal trauma and that awful experience that she had and channelled that into helping, in particular, other young women, being a strong and powerful advocate, being quite courageous in the way that she has gone out there.”  That probably made things worse.  Unimpressed, Ms Tame (a most adept media player) issued a statement: “Spare me the condescension, old man”, suggesting Mr Albanese was paraphrasing Scott Morrison who’d once explained her attitude as the consequence of a “terrible life”.  Continuing her critique, she added: “We all know what you meant. A badge of honour anyway.  A confession that I’ve ruffled him.”  On social media, she found much support, one posting: “‘Difficult’ is the misogynist’s code for a woman who won’t comply.  History tends to call her ‘courageous’.”

Australian Femicide Watch's Difficult Woman T-shirt in red (also available in seven other colors.  The fingernail shape is a stiletto.

Ms Tame must have resisted the temptation to order a batch of “Fuck Albo” T-shirts which shows some generosity of spirit but the Australian Femicide Watch's Red Heart Movement is offering “Difficult Woman” T-shirts with Aus$5 from each sale donated to the Grace Tame Foundation.  The garments are made with 100% combed organic cotton grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides and certified as compliant to the GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard).  Depressingly, Australian Femicide Watch tracks the death toll of women in Australia killed in “intimate partner violence”; in 2025 the rate was 1.44 per week and by the first week in April 2026, 1.23.

Crooked Hillary Clinton, the termagant of the last four decades.

Although it’s Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) “crooked” moniker which will forever be attached to crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), more than most women who have dared trespass on the historic male preserve of politics, she has attracted gender-based terms of disparagement.  Not content only with words from English, Mr Trump also borrowed from Yiddish, referring to her failure to secure the Democrat nomination for the 2008 presidential election as having been “schlonged by Barack Obama” (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) in the primaries.  A schlong (from the Yiddish שלאַנג (shlang) (snake)) is “a penis” and usually carries the implication of “a big one” so his idea was one of “man beats woman”; as “woman beats man”, the closest companion term is “pussy whipped” which for men obviously is quite a put-down.  Crooked Hillary has also been called “a tough little termagant in a pantsuit”, “the virago of Pennsylvania Avenue”, “calculating”, “disingenuous”, “a radical feminist”, “a harridan” (a bossy or belligerent old woman), a “femocrat”, a “feminazi”, “a succubus” (a female demon who had sex with sleeping men”, “Lady Macbeth in a headband”, “Ms bad-hair day” and “a shrew”.  All very sexist of course and there also been a debate about whether she should be called a “habitual” or “pathological” liar but she really can’t complain about that; she has “a bit of previous”.