Encyclopedist

Encyclopedist (pronounced en-sahy-kluh-pee-dist)

(1) A compiler of or contributor to an encyclopedia.

(2) One of the collaborators fn the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (now almost always used with initial capital letter).

(3) A dismissive term applied by KGB specialists to generalists.

1645–1655: The construct was encycloped(ia) + -ist.  Encyclopedia was attested from the 1530s, from the New Latin encyclopaedia (general education), from the Renaissance Ancient Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία (enkuklopaideía) (education in the circle of arts and sciences (literally “training in a circle”)), a mistaken univerbated form of the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδείᾱ (enkúklios paideíā) (education in the circle of arts and sciences, the construct being ἐγκύκλιος (enkúklios) (circular (also “general”)) + παιδείᾱ (paideíā) (child-rearing, education), from pais (genitive paidos (child).  The modern sense of a "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, the origin most associated with the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts (1751-1772)).  Encyclopedism (or encyclopaedism) is the related noun and encyclopaedist the alternative spelling, the Latin form surviving as a variant because many of the most famous printed volumes had Latin names; as the printed editions fade from use, except in historic references, encyclopedia is now by far the prevalent spelling.  The adjective encyclopedic dates from 1816 while the truncation cyclopaedia is attested from 1728.  

The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  The original Encyclopedists (encyclopaedists in historic British use) were the French Encyclopédistes, members of the Société des gens de lettres (a literary association) who between 1751-1765 contributed entries for the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers, published between 1751-1772, edited by noted art critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and (until 1759 when one of his entries triggered an amusing ecclesiastical turf-war), mathematician & musicologist Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783).  Encyclopedist is a noun; the noun plural is encyclopedists.

Opening pages of Lindsay Lohan's entry at encyclopedia.com.

Confusingly, “cyclopedia” and “encyclopedia” mean the exact same thing, cyclopedia a long less common spelling although one that in a niche in publishing did persist into the twenty-first century.  First known to have appeared in 1728, according to the usually practice in English where shorter forms are preferred with the unnecessary discarded, “cyclopedia” should have prevailed but as Henry Fowler (1858–1933) pointed out in his authoritative A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): “The longer forms [encyclopaedia & encyclopaedic] are in themselves better” simply on the basis of an established pattern of use although he did note “cyclopaedic is becoming the more usual form for the adjective”.  That adjectival preference didn’t last into the modern age and etymologists attribute the decline in use of cyclopaedic and its related forms to the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for “British Encyclopædia”) becoming for more than a century a cultural reference in much of the English-speaking world.  First published in 1768, the 15^th and final printed edition appeared in 2010, spanning some 33,000 pages over 32 volumes and complete sets often are offered for sale.

For those who can remember the ways thing used to be done: Britannica 1990 edition.

This 1990 edition comprised 29 volumes plus 2-volume index, three (1990, 1991 & 1992) annuals (updates issued between full-editions) and a Propaedia Outline of Knowledge.  Volumes 1-12 were written in the Micropaedia Ready Reference section and volumes 13-29 in the Micropaedia Knowledge in Depth section.  All this weighed in at 68 kg (150 lb).  With search engines, for the end user, information became “weightless” although, to deliver facts (and cat videos) to hand-held devices, around the planet, every second, much mass must be displaced.

For anyone with a bookshelf to fill they’re a visually impressive sight and doubtlessly some have bought sets for “interior decoration” but it would appear supply now exceeds demand, not everyone in the modern age seeing the aesthetic value in several feet of leather spines though there was a time when many found them useful.  Old Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), writing in 1965 to the famously undomesticated author Ronald William “R.W.” Clark (1916–1987) recounted that from conversations with Aldous Huxley (1894–1963): “You could always tell by his conversation which volume of the Encyclopedia Britanica he’d been reading.  One day it would be Alps, Andes and Apennines, and the next it would be Himalayas and the Hippocratic Oath.”  Huxley certainly enjoyed “showing off” but for those who didn’t grow up in a time when the answer to just about any question of fact was but seconds away after a few taps on a screen, it must be difficult to imagine what it was like in the “pre-interconnected” age.  Before the internet, it could take days and much effort to find the answer to a question and sometimes, the answer proved elusive and one just gave up because it was too hard.  Those with access to a set of “the Britannica” of course had an advantage although the information within obviously was current only up to a certain date, thus the attraction of annual almanacs that were a collection of facts, figures and such covering much of what had changed in the most recent twelvemonth.  In a sense, among many, a collective amnesia seems to have overtaken the land because many of those who lived before search engines (let alone AI (artificial intelligence)) seem not to appreciate how profound, within barely a generation, has been the change.  Still, since 2016, the encyclopaedia has appeared online at Britannica.com so the content remains in a now more easily accessible (and current) form although it's now just one tiny corner-store in a market it once dominated.  If any one factor encouraged the survival of  the word “cyclopaedia”, it was the popularity of Pears' Cyclopaedia, a single-volume encyclopaedia published in the UK by the Pears' Soap Company (1807); it first appeared in 1879, the year of Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) Diamond Jubilee.  Obviously less comprehensive than the Britannica, Pears’ found a niche in being convenient and oriented towards what most people wanted to know most of the time including an atlas, gazetteer & medical dictionary with sections devoted to topics as diverse as commerce, history, science, religion and literature.  After 1953 Pears' editions became annual but, from the early 1990s (the www (world wide web) emerged in 1992 and became mainstream in 1995-1996), sales tended down and succumbing to the inevitable, the last appeared in 2017.

KGB identity card, issued in 1982 for British SIS (MI6) defector Kim Philby (1912–1988).

The Soviet Union’s (USSR) KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, literally “Committee for State Security” but better understood as “political police”) was the last of an alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH & MGB) which, building on the models of the many secret-police forces maintained by Tsarist Russia (1547-1917), was responsible for the USSR’s internal security and, beyond its borders, espionage, counter espionage and a range of activities conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy (including that not disclosed and that sometimes denied).  In post-Soviet Russia, the KGB evolved into the FSB (Federal Security Service), former comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) honing his skills in the KGB, an institution he is believed to have joined in 1975.

“Lubtanka building”, Lubyanka Square, Meshchansky, Moscow, Russia.

In Soviet times, citizens referred to the building as “the Lubyanka”, a term in synecdochic use referencing the KGB specifically and the state’s sprawling internal security apparatus generally.  After 1918, the yellow-brick building was for decades headquarters of various organs of the Soviet and Russian security services since 1918 (most infamously the KGB, 1954-1991) and it became notoriously especially for the cells in which were conducted interrogations, torture and the executions.  The legend grew the cells were in the basement but that was an illusion, the prison complex actually the windowless top floor, those detained disorientated by the “basement-like” environment.  In a sign of changed times, under the comparatively less repressive regime of comrade Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982), architects were commissioned to re-model the prison into the KGB staff cafeteria.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a museum was opened within the Lubyanka but the political winds have since again blown from the east and access is now highly restricted.  The word became a cultural reference point also in the West and one of the jocular nicknames for the headquarters for the UK's SIS is “London Lubyanka”; sited on the banks of the Thames, descriptions of the building include “fortress-like” & “North Koreaish” but the eclectic mix of styles, shapes & structures has aged well. 

As an internal security agency, the KGB (like its predecessors) was always formidable and usually effective in the suppression of dissent but in espionage and counter-espionage, the record was patchy and increasingly so as the Cold War (1947-1991) drew to its (anti-) climax.  Most of the celebrated successes happened either before the Cold War began or in its early years, the number and usefulness of ideologically motivated defectors and traitors from the West sharply declining after comrade Khrushchev’s (Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “Secret Speech” at the 1956 Communist Party Congress in which he denounced comrade Stalin's (Joseph Stalin 1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) repressions and purges, laying bare the nature of the his regime.  The speech didn’t long stay secret, the transcripts leaked to the West convincing all but the few most devoted of the “useful idiots” their faith had been misplaced and the god had failed.  After the interventions in Hungary that same year and Czechoslovakia in 1968, idea of a Soviet-like future became still less appealing, not only in the West but also among the disillusioned in the USSR and its satellite states.

Decline: Soviet real per capita GDP growth 1960-1985.  Nostalgic as he may be for the empire of the old USSR, even Mr Putin admits the economic system simply didn't work.

However, whatever the decline in the metrics, the KGB continued to grow, reflecting the need to increase surveillance and internal control in order for the party to maintain its authority over a system in which occasional periods of stagnation were the only good news in what was, in retrospect, a system in the throes of terminal decline.  By the mid-1970s, in the Moscow region alone, the KGB establishment stood at some 50,000 (greater than the combined workforce of their Cold War opponent’s CIA & FBI (the US Central Intelligence Agency & Federal Bureau of Investigation) although other Western nations also maintained large security operations of spies and analysts) and of the total force of half a million-odd, some 220,000 guarded the USSR’s borders, not from fear of invasion by a foreign power but to discourage escape attempts.  Once an organization with a relatively simple structure which, as late as the early 1960s, was administered through three directorates, the KGB grew to encompass a dozen, reflecting in part the geographical division of the country by 1980 in 21 departments when once there had been eight.  If there was one dominated theme in the government of the late Soviet Union it was a burgeoning bureaucracy, the upper echelons staffed increasingly by party apparatchiks with little knowledge of intelligence or espionage (the USSR’s equivalent of the MBA-CEO class in the West).  These the experienced operators disparagingly called “encyclopedists”, the idea being they knew just a little bit about many things and, being empire-builders as industrious as their imperialist lackey counterparts, fiefdoms proliferated.  Apart from the documented decrease in efficiency, the growth of the KGB, like that of the armed forces, the party and the military-industrial complex, absorbed (unproductively), a rising share of the USSR’s diminishing financial resources at a time of failing health care, food shortages and a general decline in living standards, one former KGB general (Oleg Kalugin (b 1934)) later telling the joke which circulated within the organization: The USSR was “the Congo with rockets”.  In living standards, the flagship of the second-world was tending towards the third and the structural imbalances fed off themselves, an economic viscous circle that led to the economic and moral bankruptcy which doomed the USSR.  Late in 1991, the KGB was dissolved, having out-lasted the party by just weeks although, in the years since, the successor organizations in both Russia and the states within its sphere of influence have sometimes devolved towards the past.

Comrade Andropov.

General Kalugin did however give credit where it was due.  The KGB in 1979 had spies well-placed inside the intelligence apparatuses of a number of countries and one of these agents provided the information the wife of a Soviet diplomat had with some frequency been observed having sex with the family’s large pet (male) dog.  The KGB agents were a worldly lot and might have had a chuckle before turning a blind eye but the source advised there were plans to obtain video evidence with which the diplomat could be blackmailed.  So sensitive was the matter that discussions involved the head of KGB himself, Yuri Andropov (1914–1984; head of KGB 1967-1982, Soviet leader 1982-1984).  Unable simply to recall the couple lest it compromise the source and, in a nice touch, not wishing to burden the husband with the knowledge of his wife’s unusual predilection for canine-intimacy, no solution seemed immediately obvious until, after for some time sitting in silence, comrade Andropov suggested: “Kill the dog”.  All agreed this was a good idea so it was arranged for a KGB technician to visit the house on some pretext to slip the hound some poisoned meat.  The dose turned out to be wrong so instead of killing the beast, just its hind quarters became paralyzed although that obviously solved the problem; a tactical failure but a strategic success.  It was a minor event in a long career and it's believed it played no part in comrade Andropov being the last leader of the USSR but one.

Malia Nummerdor mugshot.  Lots of stuff happens in Florida.

Less inclined to understanding and forgiveness than the KGB’s apparatchiks were one husband in Florida and the officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.  In September 2026, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) tabloid New York Post reported a husband’s bedroom security camera (said to be visible and displaying a blinking red light when recording) had captured scenes of his wife performing “a disgusting act” with the family dog.  The man had installed the camera in an attempt to find who was pilfering from a coin jar so the sight of his wife enjoying bestiality with his dog would have been at least a surprise.  Mother of two Malia Nummerdor (b 1989) was arrested and charged with “engaging in sexual contact with an animal”, the sheriff’s office confirming the footage revealed Ms Nummerdor was “nude from the waist down, positioned with the dog in a manner consistent with sexual activity”.

Police interviewed the suspect who “acknowledged the video showed her with the dog, but denied there was any sexual contact – claiming that she was just petting it.”  In the report of interview filed, the investigating detective described her answers as “contradictory”.  Predictably, a case that sounded like something from the front page of NRS (normally reliable source) National Enquirer attracted much public interest and friends of Ms Nummerdor launched a fundraiser to assist her with legal expenses, claiming she was “set up by her spouse”.  Helpfully, one acquaintance revealed: “I went to school with her, and she never rubbed me as a weirdo.  She is very pretty.  I don’t think she would have trouble finding a human being to be intimate with.  Of course, that alone doesn’t prove anything, but I think it’s important to remember that the person being portrayed online is someone who has people who knew her before these allegations.” while another concluded “I feel there is much more to the story.”

Trope

Trope (pronounced trohp)

(1) In art and literature, any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense and which tends to become a motif.

(2) In rhetoric, a figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a non-literal or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(3) In geometry, a tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic or the reciprocal of a node on a surface (archaic).

(4) In music, a short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music; a pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

(5) In the rituals of Judaism, a chanting (cantillation) pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(6) In medieval Christianity (and preserved in the rituals of certain factions in Roman Catholicism), either a phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir or a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.

(7) In Athenian philosophy, any of the ten arguments used in scepticism to refute dogmatism.

(8) In Santayanian philosophy, the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence.

(9) In metaphysics, a particular instance of a property, as contrasted with a universal.

1525–1535: From the Latin tropus (a figure of speech (in rhetoric)) from the Ancient Greek τρόπος (trópos) (a turn, direction, course, way; manner, fashion; a mode in music; a mode or mood in logic (in rhetoric, "a turn or figure of speech)) and related to τροπή (tropḗ) (solstice; trope; turn) and τρέπειν (trépein) (to turn).  Root was the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn), related also to the Sanskrit trapate (is ashamed, confused, literally "turns away in shame") which Latin picked up trepit (he turns), the Latin adoption in the figurative.  The meaning is now understood as something more diffuse but technically, in rhetoric, a trope was "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a sense other than the usual definition".  In English, the word is found often in combined form (such as heliotrope) and occurs also in concrete nouns that correspond to abstract nouns ending in -tropy or -tropism.  Trope is a noun & verb, troper, tropist, tropology & tropism are nouns and tropey is an adjective; the noun plural is tropes.

Use of the noun “tropism” is now generalized but in literary history it’s used in the sense of the “technique” (really more a concept) attributed to the Russian-born French-Jewish novelist and lawyer Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999).  An exercise in abstract thought, madame Sarraute’s approach was to refer to mental and imaginative life as perceived by her and, thus perceived, it comprised (literally) millions of tiny little responses to innumerable stimuli, the classic example being her experimental narrative Tropismes (begun in 1932 but not published until 1939).  In that, with a most unconventional use of language, she “translated” her “vision of reality” into a construct of a “different reality”, the book consisting of 24 short vignettes, capturing brief scenes, described in intricate detail; it was compared by one modern critic to “a MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine able to scan what the brain is doing to construct perceptions and render it all sequentially in text.”  The work came to be regarded as proto nouveau roman (“new novel”, an originally French literary movement that emerged in the mid-1950s); it was described by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) as un chef-d'œuvre (a masterpiece) and the Paris-based newapaper Le Monde included it in their “100 Books of the Century”.  The title of Tropismes was a botanical reference, tropisms being stimuli to plant growth and this idea madame Sarraute applied to human thought processes, tropisms imagined as “interior movements that precede and prepare our words and actions, at the limits of our consciousness.”

Tropisms (first edition of the English language edition (1963)).

In reading Tropisms, some mental gymnastics are demanded because among the mysteries of the abstract and imaginary are interspersed the real and living; with often no clear break between where one ends and the other starts, it can be helpful to re-read the odd passage.  Even in 1939 when the French language edition first was published, that “modernist” approach hardly was new but it wasn't yet part of mainstream literature.  That “slurring between” what's “real” and what's not adds to the experience and, within the internal logic of the author's premise, probably is essential but the traditionalists of the pre-Nouveau Roman world likely have dismissed the “blurring” as a technical flaw.  After the “very modern” novelist Sir Martin Amis (1949–2023) told one interviewer people “should read my books twice” fully to understand them, his father (Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)), possibly with a glance at the Booker on his shelf, observed: “Well that means the little shit has failed doesn't it?”

One can see why it seduced Sartre but the idea of the Nouveau Roman becoming fashionable didn’t at the time appeal to most of the “reading for pleasure” segment of the market (ie those who paid for and read novels rather than “deconstructing” them in seminar rooms).  For a mainstream readership, the conventions of the nineteenth century novel (beginning, middle, end; plots; characters, right & wrong etc) that seemed dreary to literary theorists were the essence of fiction and to replace these with “cold, meticulous descriptions of external objects” seemed hardly “literature”; for “that sort of thing”, there were repair manuals and political science tracts.  Read however on its own terms and not as an “exemplar of a genre”, Tropismes can be compelling in the way a half-century before, those prepared to spend time looking from different angles at the work of the early cubists must have found fascinating new insights.

Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 (Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2), oil on canvas by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), Philadelphia Museum of Art,  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The Spanish illustrate the meaning of “enigmatic” with the example “of meeting a man on the stairs and being unable to tell if he's going-up or coming down”.  One could describe Tropisms as: “an enigmatic work”.   

Just as the cubists could depict the human form simultaneously in the way the brain might separately process the sight viewed in different aspects, what Nathalie Sarraute did was explore spaces variously unremarkably mundane or threateningly claustrophobic, populated with dream-like figures, her idea being of the mind working in the almost animalistic, pre-verbal, “instinctual movements” she thought arose from human unconscious.  These she said, “constitute the secret source of our existence” and the old existentialist Sartre concurred, saying: “it is existence itself”.  Even Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), fond of the novels of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) and unlikely to have found much of worth in nouveau roman, in a way, thought like Sarraute and Sartre.  In 1949, after a minor stroke, his personal physician (Lord Moran (Charles Wilson), 1882-1977; President of the RCP (Royal College of Physicians) 1941-1949), seeking to reassure his patient the consequences were minor, explained: “…there was no paralysis; it had only cut off the nutrition of certain central cells concerned with sensation”, adding, in the clinician’s reductionist way: “Sensation doesn’t matter.”  Churchill at once interrupted: “Life is sensation; sensation is life.”

Visitatio Sepulchri Double Bass Sheet Music by Sir James MacMillan (b 1959).

In modern use, “trope” continues to be used to denote any rhetorical or figurative device but the history was varied, one special use occurring during the Middle Ages when it came to be applied to a verbal amplification of the liturgical text used Church rituals.  Regionally, there were likely a few (now lost) but the best–documented of such interpolations was the Quem quaeritis trope preceding Easter Sunday's Introit.  The Latin phrase Quem quaeritis (Whom do you seek?) was used as the opening line (of four) in the Easter liturgical dialogue introduced during the tenth century and which came to be the basic structural element in what became a vast body of medieval liturgical drama (known also as isitatio sepulchri (Visit to the tomb)).  From this perhaps unpromising ecclesiastical origin came the rebirth of European theatre as it developed into a dramatized form (detached from the sacred Liturgy); what was genuinely a new genre became a trope of great significance in the evolution of European drama.  The Easter Introit (a short musical piece or chant sung at the start of an Easter service) was in a sense “ready-made” for adaptation and proved in the hands of many authors ideal for elaboration into the dialogues that were the basis of an entire school of liturgical drama.  Although never long pieces, so influential was their form the English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar Sir Edmund Kerchever “E.K.” Chambers (1866–1954) devoted many pages to tracing their lineage in his two volume The Mediaeval Stage (1903), a work long overshadowed by his four-volume The Elizabethan Stage (1923) but which benefited from the latter-day revival of interest in and re-assessment of the period dubbed the “Late Middle Ages”.

DVD covers: (The Parent Trap (1998), Freaky Friday (2003) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  

When younger, Lindsay Lohan's signature trope was playing dual roles (The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday and I Know Who Killed Me while during her “troubled Hollywood starlet” phase” (2007-2012) she became emblematic of the “downward spiral” trope.  In 2022, she appeared in Falling for Christmas, a Netflix take on the "Christmas movie trope".  Although the scripts for tropes have long followed an algorithm, the studios are said now to be using a predictive form of AI (artificial intelligence) to hone the generation of whatever should have the most audience appeal (an approach with a history in popular music pre-dating AI).  The flesh & blood screen-writers (most of whom have for decades driven cars and made their toast using products manufactured in plants where machines (industrial robots) substantially have displaced the human labor content) are are unlikely ultimately to succeed in keeping AI out of their profession; in the medium term, their future may lie in the creation of the quirky and bizarre (in the pop-culture ecosystem, that's a niche to inhabit until AI also perfects those tropes and at marginal cost).  Indeed, what's predictable is the emergence of the "obviously not AI generated" trope although, presumably, it's a matter of time until machines master also that genre.  For the formulaic stuff (most commercial screen product), the studios are likely to find the AI path "better, cheaper, faster" and the history of US industrial relations suggests these imperatives will prove irresistible.  It's doubtful whether, over the last 40-odd years, many screen-writers gave much thought to the blue-collar workers displaced by robots from assembly lines; it's likely they were just delighted by cheap toasters and better-built cars.  Whether the quality of what ends up on screen will much be improved by AI remains to be seen but the studios will benefit from lower production costs while hoping those rendered redundant will find ways to generate sufficient disposable income to be able to pay to watch what the machines are making.       

Of the Stage 5 Clinger trope, most sources cite the origin as the movie Wedding Crashers (2005) although there are claims it merely popularized the use; without earlier citations however, the source must be assumed to be the film.  As a technical point, a stage one clinger isn’t initially labelled as such, the term applied retrospectively after syndrome is diagnosed.  If men are smart or lucky, they’ll by stage two realize what is happening but some men are so stupid things don't "click" until stage four.  While in movie there was no discussion of stages other than “5”, by implication that was most extreme and memes soon fleshed out 1-4.  Although unverified, the following cautionary tale reputedly was written by Bill Clinton:

SC1, the Stage 1 Clinger: She seems fine

First date went well, she was attentive, interested, and even sometimes got the drinks.  Best of all, she made breakfast!.  Afterwards, the text messages were fun and flirtatious.

SC2, the Stage 2 Clinger: Hunter and game

The text messages become frequent and your first impression was of course positive but, in retrospect, that was the first first hint of the lure / engage / trap strategy of the lone hunter, the point of a lure being to tempt prey and "lure them into a false sense of security".  Lures are of course used because they work and, before long, you'll be exchanging texts with her, most of which will demand little more than agreeing with her about innocuous topics like the weather or the day's traffic.  She has engaged her prey.  When the conversational dynamic has achieved the required level of "naturalness", she’ll suggest a second date and will extract a commitment to a specific time / date / place.  That will be soon.  At this point, an escape still is simple but appears not necessary because a second date seems hardly a threat.

"I've got a stage five clinger", Wedding Crashers (2005).         

SC3, the Stage 3 Clinger: Tactical Manoeuvres

The second day was maybe something you'd not wish to repeat because there was a creepiness in the way she knew so much about your life.  Of course, in the age of social media, such "biodata mining" is hardly a challenge but her knowledge seemed so comprehensive as to suggest the skills of a stalker.  The most dopey men at this point are flattered because they enjoy a date in which about the only topic of conversation was themselves but the more socially sophisticated should at this point sense danger.  The mistake is to continue the engagement by agreeing to a third date, even if thought a clever ploy by not confirming a time; at this point, delusions remain comforting.  Within hours, text messages become frequent to the point of nuisance; you check Facebook and find she's friended everybody one knows while on Instagram she's posted positive comments on your posts.  Needing time to think, you ignore the texting and eventually it goes quiet… for about an hour.  Then she phones.  By being terse to the point of brutish, it can now be ended but many men allow themselves to be trapped into a third date, usually with the illusion they'll use the event to end things.  The S3C stage frequently is the point of no return and exactly when you should have acquainted yourself with the tale of Julius Caesar (100-44 BC; Roman general and dictator of Rome 49-44 BC) crossing the Rubicon and pondered whether to cast the di or cut your losses and run.      

SC4, the Stage 4 Clinger: The circling vulture

By stage four, clinging has slurred effortlessly into stalking and S4C is likely to send your mother flowers on her birthday and attempts at avoidance will prompt texting and calling from other phones.  SC4s who drive are even more of a threat because, wherever you go, she can follow; you'll "run into her" at the most improbable places and usually she’ll suggest taking advantage of the coincidence by going to lunch, dinner or whatever else might be close.  No matter how studiously you might watch the rear-view mirror, she’ll hunt you down and find you.

S5C, the Stage 5 Clinger: Thrill of the kill

A "cheater's" Volvo C30 (2006-2013).  Over dark blue, a stark white "CHEATER" probably is a better contrast the the traditionally preferred red or lurid fuchsia.

The "Cheater Car" phenomenon is due often to wanton philandering but also in some instances because S5C-APCs seek to "dissuade the competition"; Hell hath no fury like a S5C-APC.  In the days of solid machines like the 140/160 (1966-1975) and 240/260 series (1974-1993) series cars, it was once accepted, as a sociological reality, no Volvo ever would suffer the fate but clearly, both Volvos and their ownership profile have changed.  While obviously not desirable, some vehicles have suffered more.

At this point, her life is scheduled around you, even to the point where she may now work in the same building; she expects to have lunch with you every day and a drink after work whenever possible.  Should you try to avoid these meetings, emotional meltdowns (sometimes in public) ensue, the only way to avoid a scene being to agree.  Your friends will start asking you out as a couple and tell one how lucky you are to have her because "she’s wonderful"; the most helpful will hint "she's too good for you" and "you won't do any better".  They know that because they've invited her to their dinner parties where she talks about your plans together.  The S5C can also be APC ("actual psycho-chick", the two not synonymous but there’s frequent overlap).  Pursuing another relationship (even in desperation a fake one) as in an attempt to dissuade her brings its own problems; the S5C-APC will spray-paint CHEATER on their car (usually in some reddish hue but black or white also are used, the required contrast depending on the car's color; these are APC conventions of use).  At this point, faking your own death begins to seem a good tactic.

Cling on and no matter what, never let go: Victorious S5C crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) and Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) under gloomy skies for the formal dedication of the William J Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, November 2004.  

The significance of dividing the path of the clinger into stages is it’s vital to extricate yourself from their clutches at the earliest stage possible; it needs to be remembered progression can be rapid, some clingers so adept at the art they're able to skip one or even two stages.  The longer delayed the excision, the harder it becomes and if allowed to reach the later stages, one may be stuck with her forever, the hunter has been captured by the game and for that, you can’t blame her: You're trapped and it's all your fault; you have only yourself to blame.

Now

Now (pronounced nou)

(1) At the present time or moment (literally a point in time).

(2) Without further delay; immediately; at once; at this time or juncture in some period under consideration or in some course of proceedings described.

(3) As “just now”, a time or moment in the immediate past (historically it existed as the now obsolete “but now” (very recently; not long ago; up to the present).

(4) Under the present or existing circumstances; as matters stand.

(5) Up-to-the-minute; fashionable, encompassing the latest ideas, fads or fashions (the “now look”, the “now generation” etc).

(6) In law, as “now wife”, the wife at the time a will is written (used to prevent any inheritance from being transferred to a person of a future marriage) (archaic).

(7) In phenomenology, a particular instant in time, as perceived at that instant.

Pre 900: From the Middle English now, nou & nu from the Old English nū (at the present time, at this moment, immediately), from the Proto-West Germanic nū, from the Proto-Germanic nu, from the primitive Indo-European nū (now) and cognate with the Old Norse nu, the Dutch nu, the German nun, the Old Frisian nu and the Gothic nū.  It was the source also of the Sanskrit and Avestan nu, the Old Persian nuram, the Hittite nuwa, the Greek nu & nun, the Latin nunc, the Old Church Slavonic nyne, the Lithuanian nū and the Old Irish nu-.  The original senses may have been akin to “newly, recently” and it was related to the root of new.  Since Old English it has been often merely emphatic, without any temporal sense (as in the emphatic use of “now then”, though that phrase originally meant “at the present time”, and also (by the early thirteenth century) “at once” (in the early Middle English it often was written as one word).  The familiar use as a noun (the present time) emerged in the late fourteenth century while the adjective meaning “up to date” is listed by etymologists as a “mid 1960s revival” on the basis the word was used as an adjective with the sense of “current” between the late fourteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  The phrase “now and then” (occasionally; at one time and another) was in use by the mid 1400s, “now or never” having been in use since the early thirteenth century.  “Now” is widely used in idiomatic forms and as a conjunction & interjection.  Acronym Finder lists 26 NOW acronyms including National Organization for Women, Night of Worship, No Other Way, Nightmares on Wax, Never Open Wide, National Orchestra of Wales, Negotiable Order of Withdrawal, New Opportunities for Women, No Opportunity Wasted, Non-hazardous Oilfield Waste, Northamptonshire Orchestral Winds, and Network-grade Optical Wireless.  Now is a noun, adjective & adverb, nowism, nowness & nowist are nouns; the noun plural is nows.

Right here, right now: Acid House remix of Greta Thunberg’s (b 2003) How dare you? speech by Theo Rio.

“Now” is one of the more widely used words in English and is understood to mean “at the present time or moment (literally a point in time)”.  However, it’s often used in a way which means something else: Were one to say “I’ll do it now”, in the narrow technical sense that really means “I’ll do it in the near future”.  Even common occurrences treated as happening “now” (such as seeing or hearing something) are really experiences of past events.  Because light travels at a finite speed, it takes time for it to bounce from something to one’s eye so visual perception is an exercise in looking back to the past; even when reading something on a screen or page one’s brain is processing something from a nanosecond (about one billionth of a second) earlier.  For most purposes an essential convenience, “now” is but a convincing illusion and even though, in a special sense, everything in the universe is happening at the same time (now), while that can be imagined, it's not something easily experienced because of the implications of relativity.  None of this causes many problems in life but among certain physicists and philosophers, there is a dispute about “now” and there are essentially three factions: (1) that “now” happened only once in the history of the known universe and cannot again exist until the universe ends, (2) that only “now” can exist and (3) that “now” cannot ever exist.  These positions do appear irreconcilable.

Does now exist? (2013), oil & acrylic on canvas by Fiona Rae (b 1963) on MutualArt.

The notion that “now” can have happened only once in the history of our universe is nuanced because even the concept of "universe" is contested.   According to some cosmological theorists, variously there may be many universes, some which used to exist, some exact duplicates of our own (for students of the implications of "infinity", at least one of then even containing an identical Lindsay Lohan), some extant and some yet to be created (or "emerge"; the speculations differ).  An alternative view is "our universe" may now be in one of its many phases, each which will start and end with a unique “now” and that's tied up with the nature of time, the mechanism upon which “now” depends not merely for definition but also for existence.  That faction deals with what is essentially an intellectual exercise whereas the others operate where physics and linguistics intersect.  Within the community holding "now can never exist" there's a sub-faction arguing that to say “now” cannot exist is a bit of a fudge in that it’s not that “now” never happens but only that it can only every be described as a particular form of “imaginary time”; an address in space-time in the past or future.  The purists however are absolutists and their proposition is part of the nature of infinity, something which renders it impossible ever exactly to define “now” because endlessly the decimal point can shift so “now” can only ever be tended towards and never attained.  If pushed, all they will concede is that “now” can be approximated for purposes of description but that’s not good enough: there is no now because there can't be.

nower than now!: Lindsay Lohan on the cover of i-D magazine No.269, September, 2006.  If initial capitals are eschewed, it's a hint the publication is positioned as "edgy".

The “only now can exist” faction find tiresome the proposition that “the moment we identify something as happening now, already it has passed”, making the point that “now” is the constant state of existence and that a mechanism like time exists only a thing of administrative convenience.  The “only now can exist” faction are most associated with the schools of presentism or phenomenology and argue only the present moment (now) is “real” and that any other fragment of time can only be described, the past existing only in memory and the future only as anticipation or imagination; “now” is the sole verifiable reality.  They are interested especially in what they call “change & becoming”, making the point the very notion of change demands a “now”: events happen and things become in the present; without a “now”, change and causality are unintelligible.  The debate between the factions hinges often on differing interpretations of time: whether fundamentally it is subjective or objective, continuous or discrete, dynamic or static.  Linguistically and practically, “now” remains central to the human experience but whether it corresponds to an independent metaphysical reality remains a dispute that, pleasingly for those involved, can go on endlessly because there's unlikely ever to be a "right" answer.  Pleasingly, most people "now" alive (and most now dead) have dealt with the concept "now" and its companions (past & future) without being much troubled by the squabbles among philosophers or cosmologists.  

Cosmologists, if so minded, can dwell less on the nature of “now” because they have the “Andromeda paradox”, one of the consequences of Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) theory of special relativity.  What the paradox does is illustrate the way “now” is relative and differs for observers moving at different speeds, the effect increasing as distances increase, such as when the point of reference is the Andromeda galaxy, some 2½ million light years distant from Earth.  Under special relativity, what one observer sees and perceives as “now” on Andromeda will, by another, moving at a different relative speed, be perceived as occurring in the past or future.   This can happen at any distance but, outside of computer simulations or laboratories, the effects of relative simultaneity are noticeable (even at relatively low speeds) only at distance.  The way to conceptualize special relatively is to imagine everything in the universe happening "at the same time" and "work backwards" as distances between objects increase.

Two views of both "now" and "then": Declaration of Independence (1819), oil on canvas by John Trumbull (1756–1843) (left) and US astrophysicist Fred Espenak's (1952–2025) image of the Spica binary system (right).  Forty-odd years on, Trumbull took a little artistic licence in his depiction of that night in Philadelphia on 4 July, 1776.  The painting on the left was of what was once "now" but is now "then" while on the right, the photograph simultaneously captured "now" (here) and "then" (there).  Technically, every photograph of an object has that characteristic but the greater the distance (time), the more obvious the difference.  

One way to illustrate the curious nature of “now” is to conduct a thought experiment.  Imagine, on 4 July, 2026, being in a remote part of Wyoming on a clear night and looking up to a sky full of stars, one of which would be Spica (Alpha Virginis), the brightest star in the Virgo constellation and the 16^th brightest visible on Earth.  Because Spica lies 250 light-years distant, the light seen in Wyoming would have been travelling through space since 4 July 1776 when the delegates to the Second Continental Congress, meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (later renamed Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, adopted unanimously the text of the US Declaration of Independence.  In other words, those on Earth viewing Spica on 4 July, 2026 would see the interacting binary system as it was on 4 July, 1776.  So that’s “now” watching something that is both 250 years old and yet still “now”.  Of course Spica is approximately 250 light years away so the "two fourths of July" might not exactly align but for though experiment purposes they do and that's fine.  Spica (two massive, hot blue stars orbiting each other every four days) presumably still (in its local sense) looks much the same but if anything has changed, not for a quarter-millennium will we notice.    

Seated vis-a-vis (literally "face to face"), Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right) and her sister Aliana (b 1993, left), enjoying a tête-à-tête (literally, "head to head"), La Conversation bakery & café, West Hollywood, California, April 2012.  Sadly, La Conversation is now closed.  

Among the implications of the Andromeda paradox is that although the sisters would experience their discussion as something in the "here and now", to a cosmologist they are looking at each other as they used to be and hearing what each said some time in the past, every slight movement affecting the extent of this.  Because, in a sense, everything in the universe is happening "at the same time", the pair could have been sitting light years apart and spoke what they spoke "at the same time" but because of the speed at which light and sound travel, it's only at a certain distance a "practical" shared "now" becomes possible (even quantum entanglement not able to overcome such an instance of a "distance" problem).  One wholly speculative notion is to connect "now" with at least one of the mysterious pair "dark energy" & "dark matter", two possibly misleading terms used to describe the "missing stuff" the cosmologists' models indicate must (in great quantity) exist in the universe but haven't been yet been identified or even described.  That idea is that "dark energy" may be time itself, the implication being not only can time be used as a measure in the currently accelerating expansion of space but may be the very force responsible for the phenomenon.  Professional cosmologists are unlikely much to be drawn to that speculation, not least because it's not obvious how an experimental test could be be designed but, as the Austrian–British philosopher Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994) explained, the essence of the scientific method is "disproof" and "time may be dark energy" has yet to be disproved.

The notion of time as a form of energy is intoxicating and linked to the idea time either (1) may have been "started" by the unleashing of energy at the moment of the universe's creation or (2) time was that energy and the ongoing (and accelerating) expansion of the universe is just "time being time" (or "time marching on" as it were).  Certainly, time is a useful because without it everything literally "would happen at the same time" and that, in some theories, was what was happening (or "not happening" for those tied to linguistic conventions) prior to what's now usually (if misleadingly) called the "Big Bang".  So, the absence of time may have happened before and may happen again; in that state, the nature of "now" would for many reasons be uncontested.  The idea of time being the "dark energy" is in a sense implied in some of the theories speculating about the "end of the universe" in that some models are based on the universe "going dark" when its last source of energy is exhausted and it may be "running out of energy" and "running out of time" are two ways of expressing the same consequence, the difference being in the mechanics of "cause and effect".