Badminton

Badminton (pronounced bad-min-tn)

(1) A racquet sport played on a rectangular (at competitive level, always indoor) two players or two pairs of players equipped with light rackets used to volley a shuttlecock over the high net dividing the court in half.

(2) A drink made with a mix of claret, soda water and sugar (also as badminton cup).

(3) A small village and civil parish in the south-west English county of Gloucestershire (initial upper case).

(4) A community in the Glyncoed area, Blaenau Gwent county borough, Wales, UK.

(4) Among the young of Hong Kong, a euphemism for sexual congress.

1873-1874: The game was named after Badminton House, the country seat of the dukes of Beaufort in Gloucestershire (now associated with the annual Badminton horse trials).  The derived terms include badminton court, badminton racquet and badminton ball.  The locality name was from the Old English Badimyncgtun (estate of (a man called) Baduhelm), which deconstructs as the personal name Bad (possibly also found in the Frankish Badon) + helm (from the Old English helma (helm, tiller)+ -ing (from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing)).+ -tun (used here to refer to “a place”).  Among players in England, the sport is sometimes referred to with the slang “badders”.  Badminton & badmintonist are nouns; the noun plural is plural badmintons.

Badminton racquets (racket in US use) use the same design as tennis racquets but are of lighter construction and not as tightly strung.

Games using shuttlecocks (the designs having variations but all using deliberately “anti-aerodynamic” properties to dissipate the energy carried in flight) are known to have been played for at least centuries across Eurasia, the attractions including the game not putting a premium on physicality (women at comparatively little disadvantage because the effect of fluid dynamics on the shuttlecock negated much of the power of inherently stronger men) and there being no need for a truly flat, prepared surface.  The recognizably modern game of badminton evolved in the early-mid nineteenth century and was something of a cult under the Raj, played by expatriate British officers of the Indian Army, both the polo crown and those unable to afford the upkeep of ponies.  It was a variant of the earlier games “shuttlecock” and “battledore” (battledore an older term for “racquet”).  The history of the sport’s early days is murky and it’s not clear if the first games in England really were played at Badminton House, the Duke of Beaufort’s country estate in 1873-1874 but it seems it was from then the game spread.  The apparently inexplicable “badminton ball” (the game played with a shuttlecock) is accounted for by the fame once being played using a soft, woolen ball and called “ball badminton”.

Among the first players at Badminton House were soldiers returning from their service under the Raj and just as they took English habits and practices to India (for good and bad), upon returning they brought much from the Orient, including their sport.  Under the Raj, it had been played outdoors and when it was wet or windy, the woollen ball was often used but the principle was essentially the same as the modern game except nets weren’t always used and there was sometimes no concept of a defined “court”, the parameters established by the players’ reach and capacity to return the shot from wherever the ball or shuttlecock was placed; what was constant was that if the shot hit the opponent’s ground, the point was won.

Standard dimensions of shuttlecocks used in officially sanctioned competitions.

Under the Raj, the game was known also as Poona or Poonah, named after the garrison town of Poona (named thus in 1857 and changed to Pune in 1978 as part of the process which restored the historic names of Chenni (Madras until 1996), Mumbai (Bombay until 1996) etc).  It was in Poona where some of the most devoted players were stationed and there were several layers of competition taken as seriously as polo tournaments; when these offers returned to England, badminton clubs were soon established (mostly in the south).  The so called “Pune Rules” (of which there were variations reflecting the regimental origins of the clubs) were maintained until 1887 when the recently confederated Badminton Association of England (BAE) codified a standard set which differ little from those of the modern game.  The All England Open Badminton Championships for gentlemen's doubles, ladies' doubles, and mixed doubles were first played in 1899 while singles competitions debuted in 1900 and an England–Ireland championship match was held in 1904.  It first appeared in the Olympic Games as an “exhibition sport” at Munich (1972) and has been in the regular programme since Seoul (1988), the medal table dominated overwhelmingly by the PRC (People’s Republic of China); only players from the PRC and Indonesia have every won Olympic gold.

Like many aspects of the English language, euphemisms evolve or appear under all sorts of influences.  Some come from popular culture (wardrobe malfunction) and some are an attempt deliberately to deceive (misspoke) while others are a “curated creation” although not all succeed; Gretchen in Mean Girls (2004) never quite managed to make “fetch” happen.  Sometime, they can appear as that bugbear of governments: the “unintended consequence”.  In August 2024, the Hong Kong Education Bureau published a 70-page sex education document which, inter-alia, advised teen-aged Hong Kongers to delay romantic relationships and “set limits on intimacy with the opposite gender” (intra-gender intimacy wasn’t mentioned, presumably not because it’s regarded as desirable but because the bureau though it unmentionable).  Helpfully, the document included worksheets (with tick-boxes) for adolescents and guidance for the teachers helping to educate them on coping with sexual fantasies and the consequences of “acting on impulses”.  Easily the most imaginative tactic the bureau advocated as part of its “abstinence strategy” was that young folk should repress their teen-age sexual urges with “a game of badminton”, a suggestion which drew criticism from experts and lawmakers and derision from the public.  Nobody suggested playing badminton was a bad idea but the consensus was that advocating it as an alternative behaviour for two horny teen-agers was “overly simplistic and unrealistic”, the most common critique being the bureau was “out of touch”, a phrase not infrequently directed towards the Hong Kong government generally.

Some also questioned whether a 70 page booklet was the ideal information delivery platform for the TLDR (too long, didn’t read) generation, brought up on TikTok’s short, digestible chunks.  Still, there was certainly much information and helpful tips including a compulsory form for couples in a “love relationship” which contained a list of the parameters they could use to “set limits to their intimacy” and informed them these matters involved four key subjects: (1) the relationship between love and sex, (2) the importance of boundaries, (3) how to cope with sexual fantasies and impulses and (4) the horrible consequences and were one to act upon these impulses.  The conclusion was strong” “Lovers who are unable to cope with the consequences of premarital sex, such as unwed marital pregnancy, legal consequences and emotional distress, should firmly refuse to have sex before marriage.”  Sex can of course be transactional and even contractual and in that spirit students were urged to “fill in and sign a commitment form to set limits on intimacy” and to help with what young folk could find a difficult clause to draft, the bureau suggested: “It is normal for people to have sexual fantasies and desires, but we must recognise that we are the masters of our desires and should think twice before acting, and control our desires instead of being controlled by them.”  Signing that would presumably “kill the moment” and the bureau assured its readers this would control their sexual impulses in certain ways so they could promise to develop “self-discipline, self-control, and resistance to pornography”.

Nor were external influences neglected, the bureau counselling adolescents that a way to suppress their “natural sexual impulses” was to avoid media and publications which “that might arouse them”, recommending instead they “exercise and indulge in distractions” which will help divert their attention away from “undesirable activities”.  As everyone knows, badminton is both good exercise and a desirable activity.  Not only the sometimes decadent media was seen as a threat; there was also the matter of one’s peers and one scenario the bureau described was coming upon “a young couple in a park” exchanging caresses, the correct reaction to which was to avoid temptation by “leaving the scene immediately” or instead “enjoying the sight of flowers and trees in the park”.  Of greater relevance perhaps was the way to handle the situation were a young man to find himself alone with his girlfriend while “studying at home”: “Leave the scene immediately; go out to play badminton together in a sports hall.”  There was also sartorial advice for your scholars, the students to dress appropriately and avoid wearing “sexy clothing” that could lead to “visual stimulation.”  Any ayatollah would agree with that, wondering only why it took the Hong Kong government so long to point it out.  Whether the new guidelines will be result in behavioral changes remains to be seen but the document certainly stimulated responses from the meme-makers, one claiming the advocacy for badminton as a contraceptive proved just how out of touch was the Hong Kong government because it “obviously hasn’t caught up with the popularity of pickleball.”  However, the most obvious cultural contribution was linguistic, phrases like: “want to try out my badminton racquet?” and “let’s play badminton” suggested as the latest euphemism for acts of illicit sex.

“Fetch” never quite happened: Regina George (Rachel McAdams (b 1978)) shuts down Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert (b 1982)), Mean Girls (2004).  Thanks to the government of Hong Kong, “Badminton” may yet happen.

In fairness to the Hong Kong government, it’s not unique in its ineptitude in talking to the young about sex.  Their messaging was however at least clear and unambiguous unlike that in the Australian government’s infamous “milkshake” advertising campaign in 2021.  That was about the matter of “consent to have sex”, a matter of some significance given the frequency of it being the central contested issue in many rape cases so it was an important thing to discuss but unfortunately, all that was agreed was it was embarrassingly dumbed-down and a puerile attempt at humor.  Within days the milkshake video was withdrawn from the Aus$3.7 million campaign.  About the same time the mystifying milkshake video was making children laugh, Mick Fuller (b 1968; commissioner of the New South Wales (NSW) Police Force 2017-2022) proved one didn’t have to be a boomer to be out of touch with the early twenty-first century.  Mr Fuller, noting no doubt the fondness the young folk showed towards their smartphones, suggested an app would be answer, as it seems to be to just about every other problem (“there’s an app for that”).  Deconstructed, that would seem to require both parties logging into the app (hopefully having it already installed) and in some way authorizing sexual activity with the other.  For security reasons, 2FA (two-factor authentication) would obviously be a necessity so it would be doable, only delaying rather than killing the moment.  Still, it didn’t sound like something which would soar to the top of App Store charts and while Mr Fuller argued such a tool could be used “to keep matters out of the justice system”, he did concede it might be a “ “terrible” suggestion and “the worst idea I have all year.”.

The Badminton Cup cocktail

Ingredients

Strips of peel from a ½ cucumber
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons of superfine sugar
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
One 750-ml bottle dry red wine (ideally a Bordeaux (Claret))
16 ounces chilled soda water
Ice, preferably 1 large block

Instructions

(1) In a small punch bowl, combine the cucumber peel, sugar and nutmeg.
(2) Add wine, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
(3) Refrigerate until chilled (will typically take some two hours).
(4) Stir in the soda water, add ice and serve.

The Badminton Beltie Cocktail

The Badminton cup is a classic summer cocktail designed to refresh on a hot day.  However, English summers, though now noticeably hotter than in decades past, can be unpredictable and there will be cold days.  In such weather, the Badminton beltie is a better choice than a badminton cup, the sour fruitiness of the raspberry whisky said to combine with the sweet smoothness of the spiced rum to create a “belter of a drink”.  It was created during the unseasonably cold and wet week of the 2023 Badminton Horse Trials.

Ingredients

2 measures spiced rum liqueur (20%)
2 measures raspberry whisky liqueur (18%)
Crushed Ice

Instructions

(1) Half fill a rocks or tumbler glass with crushed ice
(2) Add measures of spiced rum liqueur & raspberry whisky liqueur.
(3) Gently muddle the mix.
(4) Garnish with two slices of fresh lime.

Palter

Paltering (pronounced pawl-ter)

(1) Insincerely or deceitfully to talk or act; to lie or use trickery; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.

(2) To bargain with; to haggle (now rare).

(3) Carelessly to act; to trifle (now rare).

(4) To babble; to chatter (archaic).

1530–1540: The original meaning was “indistinctly to speak; to mumble”.  The origin is obscure and etymologists suggest it may have been an alteration of “falter” in (the sense of a “faltering delivery of speech” same sense, with an appended “p-“ from palsy (in pathology, a complete or partial muscle paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by a loss of feeling and uncontrolled body movements such as shaking).  The predominant meaning by the mid-seventeenth century was the use to describe the particular form of deceptive or misleading conduct that is the telling of a partial truth in such as way as to avoid a “technical lie” yet convey an untruth.  The alternative suggestion is a connection with the Middle English palter (rag, trifle, worthless thing), from Middle Low German palter (rag, cloth).  The verb has long been a mystery because it had the frequentative, but there is nothing to suggest the existence of a verb “palt”; it’s not impossible it may have been an alteration of paltry (trashy, trivial, of little value; of little monetary worth; someone despicable; contemptibly unimportant).  The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing).

Via the notion of “talk in a trifling manner, babble” came (by the 1580s) the sense of both “insincere words” or “misleading statements; “playing fast and loose" with the truth.  The sense of “trifle away, squander” was in use by the 1620s.  The now obsolete noun palterly (paulterly the alternative spelling) is unrelated.  It was a late Middle English form from palter (a rag, worthless thing), from the Middle Low German palter (rag, cloth) and was used to convey the sense of something (or someone) "mean or parsimonious".  Palter and paltered are verbs and palterer & paltering are nouns & verbs; the more common noun plural is palterings but all forms of the word are rare outside of academic use in the analysis of politics and commerce.  Palter has been used as an irregular noun and palteresque is tempting in the post-truth age.

Paltering is an old and, outside of academia, rarely used word but the practice it describes, while hardly a modern invention, seems now more prevalent in public discourse so a revival may happen.  Paltering is a term used to describe the act of deceiving someone by telling the truth, but in a misleading or incomplete way, something more devious even than the many lies of crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) (which she usually “explains” by saying she “misspoke”).  The essence of paltering was captured in the elegant phrase of former UK cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong (1927-2020; later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster) who, under cross-examination in the “Spycatcher” trial (1986), when referring to a letter, answered: “It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.”  Whether the old Etonian was aware of much post-Classical writing isn’t known (at Christ Church, Oxford he read the “Greats” (the history and philosophy of Ancient Greece & Rome)) but he may have been acquainted with Mark Twain’s (1835-1910) Following the Equator (1897) in which appeared: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.  Let us economize it.” or the earlier thoughts of the Anglo-Irish Whig politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who in his Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory (1796) noted: “Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.”  Just as likely however is that Sir Robert had been corrupted by his long service in HMG (Her Majesty’s Government) and was thinking of: “The truth is so precious, it deserves an escort of lies”, a phrase often attributed (as are many) to Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), but there’s some evidence to suggest he may have picked it up from comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and even if it wasn’t something the old seminarian coined, it was the mantra by which he lived so he deserves some credit.  Sir Robert’s phrase entered the annals of legal folklore and was good enough to have been lifted from a script from the BBC satire Yes Minister.

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

Unlike crooked Hillaryesque blatant lying (which involves providing false information), paltering involves using truthful statements (or at least those with the quality of plausible deniability) to create a false impression or intentionally to mislead someone.  Paltering is achieved by (1) omitting crucial details, (2) emphasizing certain truths while downplaying or not disclosing others or (3) presenting information in a way that technically is correct but which leads one’s interlocutor(s) to draw erroneous conclusions.  In practice, the mechanics of paltering usually are (1) Selective Truth: (highlighting facts that support one’s position while ignoring those that do not, (2) Omission: Leaving out vital information that would correct a listener's misunderstanding(s) and (4) Context Manipulation: Presenting information out of context to alter its meaning.  The classic wording of the oath or affirmation given by witnesses in legal proceedings (“the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”) is essentially an “anti-paltering” device.

So paltering is insidious because it is the artful use of the truth to create which might be thought a “constructive lie” and the word seems first to have enjoyed its latter day revival when political scientists in the US adopted it when analyzing texts and there is qualitative research which suggests those who palter can tend to rationalize the act by expressing sentiments along the lines of “lying is worse”.  Helpfully, the Trump White House was (and may yet again be) a place where many case-studies in the “compare & contrast” of lies and paltering were created and for that we should be grateful.

An example of the “simple lie” came when Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director 2017) early in 2021 informed the White House press corps that Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) had enjoyed a greater larger live audience at his inauguration than that which had attended Barack Obama’s (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2009.  All available evidence appeared to suggest Obama’s numbers were up to twice those of Trump and if Spicer hadn’t brought it up (it was hardly a great affair of church or state) probably nobody else would have mentioned it but for Trump, who borrowed for his campaign so many of the techniques he’d learned from his career in reality television, viewer numbers were professional life and death and thus the lie. 

Kellyanne Conway in hoodie: Miss January, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's annual Conservative Women Calendar (2009).

The Trump administration actually gave the world a linguistic gift, another term for paltering: “alternative facts”, first mentioned by Trump campaign strategist and counselor, Kellyanne Conway (b 1967; senior counselor to the president, 2017-2020).  Ms Conway used the words during a Meet the Press interview to describe the use of statistics quoted by Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director, 2017), numbers which, prima facie, seemed dubious.  She sought later to clarify “alternative facts” by defining the phrase as "additional facts and alternative information" which, when deconstructed, probably did add a layer of nuance but really didn’t help.  Journalists, not a crew always entirely truthful, decided to help and called the phrase "Orwellian", provoking a spike on the search engines as folk sought out "doublethink" and "newspeak"; sales of George Orwell’s (1903–1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) said overnight to have risen several-dozen fold.  The relationship between the press and the Trump White House was never likely to be friendly but “alternative facts” meant things started badly almost from day one.  That had no discernible effect on Mr Trump who committed a classic act of paltering when, in arguing he had won the 2020 presidential election and it had been “stolen” from him by the corrupt, Democratic Party controlled “deep state”, emphasized that on election day he had “won more votes that any sitting president in history”.  That was of course literally true and something to be noted by psephologists for their trivia nights (psephologists know how to have a good time) but about as relevant to the results of the election as was crooked Hillary Clinton getting three million-odd more votes than Mr Trump in 2016.

The increase in the use of "paltering" is attributed to (1) the internet which encouraged the posting of lists of rare, obscure or archaic words and (2) the use in academia, the publications of which are indexed and harvested by statistical grabbers like Google's Ngrams.  Tempting though it may be, Mr Trump being an arch palterer probably did little to boost the use of the word although he may have inspired others to adopt the technique.

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Misspeak

Misspeak (pronounced mis-speek)

(1) To speak, utter, or pronounce incorrectly.

(2) To speak inaccurately, inappropriately, or too hastily.

(3) A euphemism for a lie, usually deployed after one is caught.

1150–1200: The construct was mis- + speak.  Mis was from the Middle English mis-, from the Old English mis-, from the Proto-Germanic missa- (wrongly, badly), from the primitive Indo-European mitto (mutual, reciprocal), from the primitive Indo-European meyth- (to replace, switch, exchange, swap).  It was cognate with the Scots, Dutch, Swedish & Icelandic mis and the German mis & miss.  Related too was the French més- & mé- (mis-), from the Old French mes- (mis-), from the Frankish mis- & missa- (mis-), all from the same Proto-Germanic source.  Speak was from the Middle English speken (to speak), from the Old English specan (to speak), an alteration of the earlier sprecan (to speak), from the Proto-West Germanic sprekan, from the Proto-Germanic sprekaną (to speak, make a sound), from the primitive Indo-European spreg- (to make a sound, utter, speak).  The spelling misspeken was used in the fourteenth century to convey the meaning “say amiss", “to say sinful things” & "speak insultingly (of)”.  From the 1590s, it acquired also the meaning “to pronounce wrongly” and by 1890, to "speak otherwise than according to one's intentions”.  Related also was the Old English missprecan (to grumble; murmur).  The derived forms are misspoke, misspoken & misspeaking.

Speak, misspeak and damned misspeak

Misspeak exists in two senses.  The first is to use mispronounce something or use an incorrect word or phrase.  An example was when Warren Harding (1865-1921; US President 1921-1923), during the 1920 presidential campaign, used “normalcy” instead of “normality”.  The section of the speech with the offending word was almost aggressively alliterative…

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

… so in saying "normalcy" he may have misspoken or perhaps Harding liked the word; questioned afterwards he said he found it in a dictionary which probably was true although whether his discovery came before or after the speech wasn't explored.  Although Harding’s choice was much-derided at the time, normalcy had certainly existed since at least 1857, originally as a technical term from geometry meaning the "mathematical condition of being at right angles, state or fact of being normal in geometry" but subsequently it had appeared in print as a synonym of normality on several occasions.  Still, it was hardly in general use though Harding gave it a boost and it’s not since gone extinct, now with little complaint except from the most linguistically fastidious who insist the use in geometry remains the only meaning and all subsequent uses are mistakes.

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

The other meaning of misspeak is as a euphemism for a lie, usually deployed after one is caught and, for politicians, it’s a handy way technically to admit mendacity without actually having to use the distasteful word "lie".  Crooked Hillary Clinton, after years of fudging, was forced to admit she “misspoke” when claiming that to avoid sniper-fire, she and her entourage “…just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base” when landing at a Bosnian airport in 1996.  She admitted she “misspoke” only after a video was released of her walking down the airplane’s stairs to be greeted by a little girl who presented her with a bouquet of flowers.  Even her admission was constructed with weasel words: “…if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement”.  That seemed to clear things up and the matter is now recorded in the long history of crooked Hillary Clinton's untruthfulness as "snipergate".

Crooked Hillary in the Balkans, 1996.

Candor

Candor (pronounced kan-der)

(1) The state or quality of being frank, open, and sincere in speech or expression; candidness.

(2) Freedom from bias; fairness; impartiality; the quality of the disinterested comment.

(3) Kindliness (obsolete except in the most abstract (“cruel to be kind”) sense).

(4) Purity (obsolete).

(5) Whiteness, brilliance; purity of shade (obsolete)

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the French candour, from the Late Latin candor (purity, openness), from the Classical Latin candidus & candidum (whiteness) from candēre (to shine, to be white), from the primitive Indo-European root kand- (to shine).  A legacy of the Classical Latin candidus & candidum survives in English as “candidate”.  In the Rome of Antiquity, a tradition arose among politicians to wear the most immaculately white toga that could be found, so that they might leave the best impression.  Originally, the Latin candidatus meant literally “a person dressed all in white” but in time it came to mean “one seeking office by election”.  There’s a link also with incandescent (white and glowing) and modern meaning of candid come from a figurative use of “pure white” in the sense of “frank, honest and unadorned”.  The other derivation in English from candēre is candle, and that’s not related to candles being white (which originally they rarely were) but the brightness of the light they offered when lit.  Candle dates probably from the eighth or ninth centuries and was from the Middle English candel, from the Old English candel (candle), from the Latin candēla (candle), from the verb candeō (be white, bright, shining; I shine).

Depending on context, the synonyms for candor can include frankness, honesty, sincerity, equity, fairness & parrhesia while the antonyms typically used include deception, fraud, lie, untruth (or, in the case of crooked Hillary Clinton “I may have misspoken”).  In English, the alternative (mostly UK although also used in parts of the Commonwealth, notably Canada (which is presumed to be the influence from the French-speaking population which uses the same spelling)) spelling is candour white the spelling in Italian & French is candour and in Portuguese, candor.  Candor is a noun and candid is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is candors.

The original meaning in English (whiteness) dating from circa 1500, didn’t long survive the shift in meaning (circa 1600) to "openness of mind, impartiality, frankness”, something which occurred under the influence of French, the borrowing essentially from the French candied.  The familiar (and probably more frequently used) related forms are the adjectives candid and the adverb candidly; the noun candidness is rare.  Less common are the derived forms rarely used beyond the literarure of political science and literary criticism, the adjectives pseudocandid & quasi-candid and the adverb pseudocandidly.  The first use in photography was noted in 1929 and in television in the 1960s, both suggesting something spontaneous or un-staged material and while the meaning is still understood, in the age of TikTok and “reality” television, most now treat the use with some scepticism.  In politics, the quality of candidness is much prized by voters and there is evidence to suggest politicians can benefit from telling the truth although most seem still to take a more cautionary approach and assume that if they’re truthful, people will be so appalled as to not vote for them.  Other, more sophisticated, types understand candor can be to their advantage and have learned to deploy it (occasionally) or (more typically) have perfected faking it.  Both can work.     

Although clinicians have constructed fine diagnostics distinctions between them, among lay-people the terms “compulsive lying”, “pathological lying”, “mythomania” and “habitual lying” are all used to refer to those who tell falsehoods out of desire, habit or venality and sometimes for no apparent reason.  The condition is of course about as old as the first human interactions but was first described in the medical literature in 1891 by German psychiatrist Anton Delbrück (1862-1944) who wrote the case studies of five of his most extravagantly untruthful patients, labelling the behavior pseudologia phantastica (literally something like “a fantastic study of lying” and pseudologia fantastica in US English).  For clinicians, the distinction essentially is that a pathological liar is one who lies simply to get what they want and with little or no self-awareness while a compulsive liar tells untruths simply out of habit, even when the lie serves no purpose and confers no advantage.

There’s no consensus among clinicians about whether compulsive lying should be listed as a stand-alone diagnosis and even in the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR (2022)) it’s not recognized it as a separate mental health condition although compulsive lying does appear as a component and symptom of several conditions including bipolar disorder (the old manic-depression), attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), impulse control disorder, substance dependency disorder, borderline personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.  The DSM notes also that it’s rare for compulsive lying to indicate psychosis and that patients who lie compulsively often have a high degree of self-awareness and are thus not distanced from reality.

Lies, lies and damn lies.  Crooked Hillary Clinton

Whether from fear of retribution, being cancelled or actual Arkancide, it seems no clinician has ever published their assessment of whether crooked Hillary Clinton should be thought a pathological or compulsive liar.  Of course, given the wealth of the material one would need to review, it may be just too big a job, there being only so many hours in a day.  There may anyway be some overlap and however her casual relationship with truth might be diagnosed, the lying is certainly habitual though whether candid or not, crooked Hillary occasionally is caught telling the truth: 

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle”:  Candid.  It didn’t work but, lacking a strategic plan, this was her campaign team’s best attempt to develop an effective media-management tactic.  The pantsuits actually attracted more interest but even though intended as a feminist statement (and they certainly weren’t successful as a fashion statement), their most noted impact was as a gift to the cartoonists and meme-makers who quickly latched onto the orange pantsuit as an analogue for prison jumpsuits.  

“Probably my worst quality is that I get very passionate about what I think is right”.  Not candid.  Hillary Clinton has no sense of right and wrong, just rat-cunning in working out what’s in her personal interest.  Rare modesty though, some of her qualities are much worse.

Getting to the truth: Crooked Hillary Clinton lands in Bosnia, 1996. 

“I remember landing under sniper fire”:  Not candid.  This was just a lie. When landing at a Bosnian airport in 1996 (during one of the civil wars the Balkan states have from time-to-time), crooked Hillary was presented with a bunch of flowers by a little girl.  Later, when the lie was exposed, she couldn’t be candid even in her confession.  Refusing to admit she lied, she said she “misspoke”, adding “On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that I knew not to be the case."  That actually meant “I lied”.

“Aww don't feel noways tired. I've come too faarrr from where I started frum”:  Not candid, this was crooked Hillary’s fake Southern drawl, adopted while speaking at a church, south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Apparently thinking she could still get away with the way things were done in 1949, she fooled nobody, presumably, not even herself.

“We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good”:  Candid.  This is a glimpse of crooked Hillary’s elitist, dictatorial, fascist character and whatever she planned to take away from others, she would never have to sacrifice a thing.

“God bless the America we are trying to create”:  Probably not candid; there is scant evidence crooked Hillary’s alleged Christianity is sincere and is about as convincing as Donald Trump’s piety.  She also said “I have to confess that it's crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian” and that was both candid and a reasonable critique of much of the modern Republican Party, the beliefs of some members distant from what the New Testament reveals about the thoughts of Christ.

Lips moving: Some possibility of untruthfulness.

“I have said that I'm not running and I'm having a great time being pres, …being a first-term senator”:  Not candid.  This came at a time when crooked Hillary was still telling her New York constituents she was committed only to representing them.  As deluded as she feels entitled, she still thinks the Democratic nomination in 2024 might be possible if the DNC works out Joe Biden is senile and even she might be a better candidate.

“Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody's going to believe them”: Candid, this is what she really thinks.  Crooked Hillary has utter contempt for anyone except the rich people her husband’s career has allowed her to mix with.  In fairness, this attitude is one of the characteristics of second-wave feminism and beyond, the focus always on tiny elites from various fashionable group identities, the women who serve the coffee and empty the trash bins barely acknowledged.  

“If I didn't kick his ass every day, he wouldn't be worth anything”:  A Candid comment from crooked Hillary about her husband and probably true; he’d never have made it without her and vice-versa.

“My mother named me after Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008)”.  The claim was based on her finding his climbing of Mount Everest so inspiring, thus explaining the double-l spelling of her name.   However, the first successful ascent of Everest did not take place until half a decade after her birth.  The story was later “clarified” when a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the famous mountaineer but the account “...was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”  Despite this, it remains unclear if crooked Hillary lied about her own name or was accusing her mother of lying.  Still, given everything else, “…at this point, what difference does it make?”

“We have a lot of kids who don't know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word.”  Candid and to be fair, this one is linguistically defensible, the phrase “four-letter-word” having a meaning beyond the literal.

Candid admissions: Lindsay Lohan as spokesperson for lawyer.com, 2018.

Notorious

Notorious (pronounced noh-tawr-ee-uhs, noh-tohr-ee-uhs or nuh-tohr-ee-uhs)

(1) Something publicly or widely known.

(2) Something publicly or widely known and regarded with disfavor.

1548: From the Medieval Latin nōtōrius (well known, public), from the Classical Latin nōtus (known), past participle of nōscere (come to know), perfect passive participle of nōscō (get to know), from the primitive Indo-European root gno- (to know).  In Late Latin, there was nōtōria (a notice, news, intelligence) and nōtōrium (indictment, a (criminal) charge), the construct being nō(scere) (to get to know) + -tōrius (the adjectival suffix).  Middle English gained notoire from mid-fourteenth century Anglo-French, from the Old French in the sense of "well-known".  The now predominant negative connotation (noted for some bad practice or quality, notable in a bad sense, widely but discreditably known) arose in the seventeenth century, the suggesting being the meaning shift was influenced by the long pattern of use of the adjective’s frequent association with derogatory nouns.  Notorious is an adjective, notoriety & notoriousness are nouns and notoriously an adverb.  The handy derivation is notoriety.

During the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, the adjective notorious, except for academia and the practice of law, became almost wholly associated with derogatory nouns (bad, dishonest, untruthful etc) and the general perception thus arouse it was something of a synonym for infamous, a word which retained the dichotomy with famous.  Among lawyers and others in technical fields where the notorious preserved its original meaning, common use persisted well into the twentieth century and endures, if more rarely, still, the suspicion being it’s sometimes deployed in a courtroom as a flashy display of erudition, what Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) in his 1965 revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926), called “a pride of knowledge”.

Mandy Rice-Davis and Christine Keeler, 1963.

The murkiness in which notorious has swum means it’s better entirely to avoid what is now probably an archaic meaning, however pleasing it can be as literary device.  In the modern sense of the word, Christine Keeler (1942-2017) and Mandy Rice-Davis (1944-2014) became notorious because of their involvement in the Profumo affair of the early 1960s.  The infamy the notoriety brought them didn’t last because, for many reasons, the affair’s subsequent trial soon became itself notorious for injustice and official misconduct, Ms Keeler and Ms Rice-Davis becoming instead celebrities (in the very modern sense of that word).  They died famous rather than infamous and remembered more fondly than many of those who emerged less scared from the now notorious trial.  So context and the character of individuals can confuse things.  To say it’s notorious (in the old sense) crooked Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 is technically a neutral statement of fact but that date became well-known only because she “misspoke” in claiming her parents named her after Sir Edmund Hillary (1919–2008), the first man to ascend Mount Everest.  Sir Edmund conquered the mountain in 1953, years after her birth and her claim universally was derided as an untruth; when challenged, she blamed her mother.  Linguistically unambiguous is to use the word in both senses: crooked Hillary Clinton is notoriously untruthful.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.  Language and the meaning(s) words convey can vary according to the context in which they're used; "notorious" now has a common meaning but in courtrooms it retains also its technical, neutral sense.  All would agree Lindsay Lohan in her youth achieved a degree of notoriety but its only harsher critics who label her notorious.