Zoozve

Zoozve (pronounced zooz-vee or zooz-vay)

The orthodox clipping of 524522 Zoozve (provisional designation 2002 VE68), a temporary quasi-satellite (or quasi-moon and technically an asteroid) of the planet Venus.

2024 (sort of): From an accidental coining by a graphic artist preparing a rendering of a stylized poster of the solar system, the asteroid's provisional designation (2002VE) misread and written as ZOOZVE (the text of the descriptors all in upper case).  Another suggested pronunciation is jeuj-vey (as in zhuzh) but zooz-vee & zooz-vay seem more mnemonic.  Zoozve is a proper noun; the noun plural is zoozves.  Although Zoozve is a unique object, in the solar system, doubtlessly there are many more quasi-moons and zoozve (with an initial lower case) may emerge as the generic term, thus the need for the noun plural.

The Poster.

Zoozve first came to wider public attention early in 2024 when the tale was revealed in a podcast produced by Latif Nasser (b 1986) of New York public radio station WNYC’s RadioLab.  The story was triggered when he first noticed a detail on a poster of the solar system: a moon of Venus called Zoozve.  There are many moons in the solar system but Dr Nasser holds a PhD from Harvard's History of Science department and knew the astronomical orthodoxy was that Venus “has no moons”, something some rapid research confirmed so he contacted Elizabeth Landau (b 1975), a member of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) communications, his not unreasonable assumption being if anyone should know about what’s in space, it was the folk at NASA.  After consulting the charts, Ms Landau concluded there was such an object but that it wasn’t a moon; it was a quasi-moon which, discovered in 2002, after 2004 when its dual orbits were first tracked, enjoyed the distinction of being the first quasi-moon ever found.  What appeared on the poster as “Zoozve” was the graphic artist’s misreading of “2002VE”, a designation typical of the naming conventions used in astronomy.

Poster close-up.

The distinction between a moon and a quasi moon is the former have “a primary anchor”: Although the Earth’s Moon of course revolves around the Sun as well as this planet, the solar relationship is a by-product of Earth’s gravitational pull.  A quasi-moon is one with two distinct paths of rotation, one around its (temporary) planet and one around the Sun.  There are implications in that beyond the cosmic phenomenon being a scientific curiosity: quasi-moons eventually will become detached (astronomers seem to like “flung-off” which is more illustrative) which means they could become objects which could crash into Earth.  Zoozve is some 240m (785 feet) in diameter and the conventional calculation is an impact with Earth would release energy equivalent to some 69,000 A-bombs with the yield (15 kilotons of TNT) of the device dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.  Zoozve is in the last few hundred years of its eight millennia-odd attachment to Venus and modelling suggests it is unlikely to hit earth when it does become adrift but such calculations are acknowledged to be “ultimately imprecise” and, as mentioned, there are doubtless many more; the universe is a violent and destructive place.  Quasi-moons had been speculated to exist for almost a century before 2002VE was named and since then it’s been discovered Earth has a few of its own.

2002VE was discovered in 2002 by Brian Skiff (b 1953), a research scientist at Arizona’s Lowell Observatory in Arizona and because he made no attempt to give it a “proper” name, it was allocated the procedural 2002VE86 (“proper” names granted usually only after an object has attracted sufficient interest to generate academic papers).  Dr Nasser however was so charmed by the tale of 2002VE that he submitted an application to the Working Group Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) the committee responsible for assigning names to minor planets and comets.  What he wanted was for 2002VE to become Zoozve but it transpired there were naming "rules" including:

(1) 16 characters or less in length

(2) Preferably one word

(3) Pronounceable (in some language)

(4) Non-offensive

(5) Not too similar to an existing name of a Minor Planet or natural Planetary satellite.

(6) The names of individuals or events principally known for political or military activities are unsuitable until 100 years after the death of the individual or the occurrence of the event.

(7) Names of pet animals are discouraged

(8) Names of a purely or principally commercial nature are not allowed.

(9) Objects that approach or cross Earth's orbit (so called Near Earth Asteroids) are generally given mythological names.

Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida.

Because of 2002VE’s proximity to earth, the need to have the name rooted in mythology was obviously the most onerous hurdle to overcome and it is a common-sense stipulation, imposed to avoid controversy on Earth: Imagine the fuss if quasi-moon 524522 Lindsay Lohan ended up crashing into Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago?  There would be litigation.

Added to which, the IAU have the reputation of being a bunch of humorless cosmic clerks, something like the Vogons ("...not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.") in Douglas Adams’ (1952–2001) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979-1992): they were the crew who decided Pluto should no longer be thought a planet because of some tiresome technical distinction.  Although lacking the lovely rings of Saturn (a feature shared on a smaller scale by Jupiter, Uranus & Neptune), Pluto is the most charming of all because it’s so far away; desolate, lonely and cold, it's the solar system’s emo.  If for no other reason, it should be a planet in tribute to the scientists who, for decades during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, calculated possible positions and hunted for the elusive orb.  In an example of Donald Rumsfeld's (1932–2021; US secretary of defense 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) “unknown knowns”, the proof was actually obtained as early as 1915 but it wasn’t until 1930 that was realized.  In an indication of just how far away Pluto lies, since the 1840s when equations based on Newtonian mechanics were first used to predict the position of the then “undiscovered” planet, it has yet to complete even one orbit of the Sun, one Plutonian year being 247.68 years long.  Unromantic, the IAU remains unmoved.  Still, there have been exceptions to the rule and it emerged some of the “rules” are actually “guidelines” and the WGSBN was so impressed by the serendipitous tale that a majority of the committee’s eleven voting members cast their ballots for Zoozve so, on 5 February 2024, Radiolab was able to announce the IAU officially had re-designated 2002VE as 524522 Zoozve.

Truly unique words (in the sense of one-off spellings) happen for many reasons.  Those intended for global use as trademarked company or product names really do have to be unique and sufficient different to just about every other word to ensure there are no legal maneuverings contesting their registration which is how we ended up with “Optus” (used since 1991 by the Australian telecommunications company (TelCo) which is now a subsidiary of Singapore-based TelCo Singtel) and Stellantis (a conglomerate created by the merger of the Italian Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA Group (comprising the Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel and Vauxhall brands)).  While on first hearing, to many, Optus and Stellantis probably sounded like mistakes, some words really were just the result of error.  Apron (an article of clothing worn over the front of the torso and at least part of the legs and donned by (1) cooks, butchers and others as protection from spills and (2) Freemasons as part of their regalia worn during their cultish rituals was from the Middle English naperoun & napron, from the Old French napperon, a diminutive of nappe (tablecloth), from the Latin mappa (napkin).  “Napron” became “apron” by the process of linguistic assimilation (ie “a napron” becoming “apron” because of the evolution of pronunciation.

Some become legion as accidental coinings only for it to turn out there’s a pedigree.  Warren Harding (1865-1921; US President 1921-1923), during the 1920 presidential campaign, used “normalcy” instead of “normality” after a George W Bush-like (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) mangling of the written text, something understandable because the section 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.”

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.

Quark

Quark (pronounced kwawrk or kwahrk)

(1) In physics, any of a set of six hypothetical elementary particles (together with their antiparticles), said to be the fundamental units which combine to make up the subatomic particles known as hadrons (baryons, such as neutrons and protons, and mesons) but unable to exist in isolation.

(2) A soft creamy cheese, eaten throughout northern, central, eastern, and south-eastern Europe as well as the Low Countries, very similar to cottage cheese though not usually made with rennet

(3) In computer operating systems, an integer that uniquely identifies a text string.

(4) In informal use in the British Falkland Islands, the name given to the black-crowned night heron, Nycticorax nycticorax, the origin onomatopoeic, from the sound of the bird’s squawk.

(5) In Old & Middle English onomatopoeic slang, to croak (obsolete).

1963: A coining by US physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019), describing the discovery for which he would be awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics.  The English word quark appears un-adapted in the scientific lexicon of just about every language on Earth but the Italians invented the pleasing quarkonio, the construct being quark + -onium (termination of positronium), a meson consisting of a charm quark or a bottom quark and its own antiquark and consequently devoid of flavor (the name given to different versions of the same type of particle).  The German noun Quark (curds, (and in slang “trivial nonsense”)) has been suggested as Dr Gell-Mann’s inspiration (Gell-Mann's parents were from the Austro-Hungarian Empire).  The German form was from the late Middle High German twarc, from the Old Church Slavonic tvarogu (curds, cottage cheese), from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root teue- (to swell), the source also of the Greek tyros (cheese).  Russian-American physicist George Zweig (b 1937) who (independently of Gell-Mann) co-proposed the theory of quarks, called them aces because his calculations suggested there were four of them.

Gell-Mann’s linguistic choice prevailed but the etymological speculation about quark ran as a minor footnote in the history of high-energy physics, interest stimulated after he was awarded 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles.  From the beginning the physicist’s quark rhymed with "cork" but Gell-Mann subsequently came across quark in James Joyce’s (1882-1941) difficult (some prefer "rewarding" and Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) was a fan, claiming to find at least one gem on every page)) novel Finnegans Wake (Three quarks for Muster Mark!) and without the literary antecedent, it may thus have entered the scientific discourse as “kwork”.  Because of the context in which Joyce placed quark in the novel, Gell-Mann deduced the author intended it to rhyme with “Mark” & “Bark” and among Joyceians, there’s long been discussion about whether the source was the Old & Middle English slang meaning “croak” or the German Quark which had a technical meaning in cheese production but also was a popular colloquial term for "trivial nonsense” in the sense of “talking nonsense”.  Joyce had certainly visited parts of Germany where the term was in use but no notes have ever been uncovered which would confirm the origin.

Hawkwind, Quark, Strangeness and Charm (Charisma CDS 4008 (1977)).

It’s still scientific orthodoxy there are six quarks but there may be more.  They are known as flavors and are named (1) up, (2) down, (3) strange, (4) charmed, (5) bottom & (6) top, each manifesting in three colors, (1) red, (2) green & (3) blue.  The use of colors as a convention seems a curious choice because, not falling within the wavelength of visible light, quarks cannot possess the quality of a color in the conventional sense of the word.  However, red, green and blue are probably more mnemonic that the traditional constructions from the Ancient Greek.  Neutrons & protons are each made from three quarks, one of each color, a neutron being (2 x down + 1 x up) and a proton (2 x up + 1 x down).  Particles can be assembled using the other quarks but the resulting mass is massively larger and rapidly they decay into protons and neutrons.  Until the experiments of the early 1960s which at high-speed collided protons with electrons or other protons, it was thought neutrons & protons were fundamental particles.  It was during the observations of these collisions that it became understood quarks were the building blocks.

White cheeses.

Quark cheese (sold also as quarg) is a feature of cuisines in the Baltic and nations traditionally Germanic or Slavic-speaking as well as some Jewish sects and Turkic peoples.  It is soft and white, has a relatively short shelf-life and the appearance is similar to cottage cheese or mascarpone; in some languages the terms for that and quark are interchangeable.  The Roman historian Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus, circa 56–circa 120) in his De origine et situ Germanorum (On the Origin and Situation of the Germans (circa 98)) discussed Germanic culture (clearly they were viewed as a trouble even then) makes mention of a “fluffy white cheese” which may have been something like quark or any one of the fermented milk variations of the age.  The word quark was from the Late Middle High German quarc, twarc, & zwarg the Lower Saxon dwarg, all in use by at least the late thirteenth century and thought derived from a West Slavic equivalent, possibly the Lower Sorbian twarog, the Upper Sorbian twaroh, the Polish twaróg or the Czech & Slovak tvaroh; it was cognate with the Belarusian тварог (tvaroh) and the Russian творог (tvorog).  It’s thought the Old Slavonic tvarogъ was connected in some way with the Old Church Slavonic творъ, (tvor) (form), thus the notion of a “solidified milk which took a form”, an idea familiar in the French fromage (cheese) and the Italian formaggio (cheese).

Founded in 2004, 3 Quarks Daily is a kind of on-line selective content aggregator, augmented with some editorial material; thematically, nothing tends to dominate although the curators do insist whatever is run must be “inherently fascinating”.  That’s something obviously a matter a reader's judgment but such is cast of the net that on any given day, it’s likely many will find stuff of interest, some of which sometimes will fascinate.  Befitting a site which began when the web was barely a decade old, 3 Quarks Daily recalls the time when what the “inventor of the internet” (Al Gore; b 1948, US vice president (VPOTUS) 1993-2001 & in 2000 the next president of the United States (NPOTUS)) called the “information super-highway” could genuinely surprise and delight.  That still happens of course but more prominence is enjoyed by places with content delivered by algorithms rewarding shark-feeding populism.  The site’s name comes from the elementary nuclear particle and acknowledges the debt to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, the choice being an allusion to three Quarks spanning the often separate worlds of art, literature & science and the site used to award annual prizes known as Top Quark, Strange Quark & Charm Quark.  A visit to 3 Quarks Daily is highly recommended.

Mnemonic

Mnemonic (pronounced ni-mon-ik)

(1) Something assisting or intended to assist the memory.

(2) Pertaining to mnemonics or to memory.

(3)In computing, truncated code thought easy to remember (eg STO for store).

1660–1670: From the New Latin mnemonicus from the Ancient Greek μνημονικός (mnēmonikós) (of memory) derived from μνήμων (mnḗmōn) (remembering, mindful) & μνᾶσθαι (mnâsthai) (to remember); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European men (to think).  The meaning "aiding the memory", a back-formation from mnemonics dates from 1753, the noun meaning "mnemonic device" is from 1858.  The use in computer programming emerged in the early days of code and was a space-saving (eg del rather than delete) tool as well.  Mnemonical was the original form from the 1660s.

Sans Forgetica

Sans Forgetica sample text.

Recently released, Sans Forgetica (which translates as "without forgetting") is a sans-serif font developed by RMIT University in Melbourne.  Back-slanted and with gaps in the character constructions, it’s designed explicitly to assist readers better to understand and retain in their memory what they’ve read.  Perhaps counter-intuitively for those outside the field, the shape is intended to reduce legibility, thereby (1) lengthening the tame taken to read the text and (2) adding complexity to learning and absorbing what’s been read.  Together, they create what in cognitive psychology and neuroscience is called "desirable difficulty", in this case forcing (RMIT might prefer "nudging") people to concentrate.

The first three paragraphs of Lindsay Lohan's Wikipedia page, rendered in Sans Forgetica.  Sans was from the Middle English saunz & sans, from the Old French sans, senz & sens, from the Latin sine (without) conflated with absēns (absent, remote).   Forgetica was an opportunistic coining, the construct being forget + -ica.  Forget was from the Middle English forgeten, forgiten, foryeten & forȝiten, from the Old English forġietan (to forget) (which was influenced by the Old Norse geta (to get; to guess), from the Proto-West Germanic fragetan (to give up, forget).  The -ica suffix was from the Latin -ica, the neuter plural of -icus (belonging to derived from; of or pertaining to; connected with).

From usually a young age, readers become skilled at scanning text, a process helped by most publishers seeking to render their works as legible as possible.  The theory of desirable difficulty is that omitting parts of the font requires the reader to pause and process information more slowly, thus provoking an additional cognitive processing which may enhance both understanding and retention.  While the application of the science to a font is novel, there’s nothing original about Sans Forgetica as a piece of typography, it being described as a hybrid of several existing schools and within the theory, on the basis of a small-group sample of students, it’s claimed to be a balance between legibility and difficulty.  According to the documents supplied by the developer, it’s not been tested as a device for advertisers to draw people to their text, the theory of that being people scan and dismiss (without retention) the great bulk of the large, static signage which is a feature of just about every urban environment.  With Sans Forgetica, because it can’t as quickly be scanned, people will tend longer to linger and so more carefully read the whole; a memorable event itself.

Radar

Radar (pronounced rey-dahr)

(1) In electronics, a device for determining the presence and location of an object by measuring the time for the echo of a radio wave to return from it and the direction from which it returns (originally the acronym RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging)).

(2) Collectively, the hardware & software used in such systems.

(3) Figuratively, a means or sense of awareness or perception:

1940–1945: An acronym (RADAR: RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging)), coined in the US and entering English as a word within years.  Specialized forms are created as needed (radar gun, radar zone, radar tower, radar trap et al) Radar is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is radars.

Although it wouldn’t be known as radar for a few years, the system first became well known (within a small community on both sides of the English Channel) in 1940 because the string of radar installations along the English coast played such a significant role in the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) defense during the Battle of Britain, the air-war fought that summer.  What the radar did was to provide sufficient notice of an attack to enable RAF Fighter Command to react to threats in the right place at the right time (altitude was always a problem to assess) by “scrambling” squadrons of aircraft on stand-by rather than having to maintain constant patrols in the sky, something which rapidly would have diminished resources.

RAF radar towers on the channel coast, 1940.

There was some criticism that after some early attacks on the radar installations, the Luftwaffe didn’t persist, much to their disadvantage as it transpired.  In fact, the early attacks were successful and for periods, the ground controllers substantially were “blind” but the Germans could only attack what they could see and this was the masts and wires along the coast, easily and quickly able to be repaired.  The Germans knew what the radar was doing and suspected the advantage it offered the defenders but because their early attacks on the towers and wires, although clearly destructive, appeared to do little to diminish the RAF’s ability to respond, they switched to other targets.  The towers and wires were actually just a part of a system, much of which was underground, and it was the connectivity between the controllers receiving & interpreting the radar data, the sector stations and the fighter squadrons which made the RAF so effective.  Technically, the way the British implemented radar was an inefficient "brute-force" approach but it worked well and was able to be built and repaired quickly.  RAF was also an interesting example of how acronyms are adapted for use.  The British traditionally sounded RAF as the letters R-A-F rather than “raff” but when the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was formed, they adopted the form “raff”, presumably as a point of differentiation and, the Australians being never fond of wasted effort, something like “R-double-A-F” would have been a bit much.

Although some have tried to be prescriptive about forms of use and for centuries others have published style guides and books of “rules”, English tends still to evolve organically and words, “rules” and conventions come and go; only the strong survive in this laboratory of linguistic Darwinism.  The transition of an acronym to a recognized "word" is an example of some of the processes involved and although the proliferation of acronyms is certainly a recent phenomenon, they’ve actually be around at least since Antiquity, their initial attractions being they saved space on the expensive material on which stuff was written, they meant a scribe or scholar saved time (some paid by the hour or even the characters used) and generally, they made texts easier to read.  However, in the West, it was during World War I (1914-1918) that the growth in the number of acronyms really began, the military taking to them with a glee which soon infected the rest of government.

Etymologists note the trend of construction beginning early in the twentieth century before the great spike during the Great War but the word acronym seems not to have entered English until 1943.  It was borrowed from the circa 1902 German Akronym, from the Ancient Greek ἄκρον (ákron) (end, peak) & ὄνυμα (ónuma) (name), the construct being acro- (high; beginning) +‎ -(o)nym (name) and modeled after two other German nouns from semantics “homonym” (word with the same sound and spelling as another but different meaning) & Synonym (a word with the same meaning as another word).  For most of us, whatever looks like an acronym is an acronym among the specialists for who structural linguistics is a profession, a calling or an obsession (there’s often overlap), there are distinctions.  They will insist that an acronym is a construction which is always sounded as a word (eg UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization which is pronounced yoo-nes-koh) whereas one (certainly since the mid 1950s) where the letters are sounded as letters (eg BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation which is pronounced bee-bee-see) is an initialism.  Initialism actually had its own history: in mid-nineteenth century academic publishing it was used in the sense of “group of initial letters of an author's name (rather than the full name) atop a published paper” and an earlier term for what is now known as an initialism “alphabetic abbreviation”, dating from 1907.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover or Radar magazine, June-July 2007.  The last print-edition of Radar was in 2008; since 2009 it's been released on-line. 

For most folk their handling of such things has little to do with the structural distinctions but is more pragmatic and based on linguistic convenience and administrative convenience.  When typing, www makes more sense than “world wide web” yet in speech the full version is an economic three syllables, unlike the acronym which takes a time-consuming nine and is thus rare.  In the 1990s, “dub-dub-dub” was suggested as an alternative but it never caught on.  There are also situations where an acronym may be a homophone of another word so while ETA (the acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty), the armed left-wing separatist organization in Spain’s Basque Country) was pronounced etta, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (an armed secessionist movement of Bougainvilleans seeking independence from Papua New Guinea (PNG)) enjoyed the acronym BRA but it was never spoken as brah but always B-R-A.  So, the constructions which most regard as acronyms (or variations of the breed) consists of eleven types:

(1) Pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters (eg TIFF: True Image File Format; pronounced tif), (2) Pronounced as a word, the construct a mix of initial and non-initial letters (eg Radar: RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging); pronounced ray-dar), (3) Pronounced as a mix of letters and a word (eg JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group; pronounced jay-peg (although the variation jay-pee-gee is widespread because the file-name format used by CP/M in the 1970s and PC/MS-DOS in the 1980s in which file names used a string of up to eight characters, followed by a period, followed by an type-identifying file-name extension of up to three characters meant JPEGs were named filename.jpg), (4) Pronounced as a string of letters (eg BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation; pronounced bee-bee-see), (5) Pronounced as a string of letters, but with an interpolated verbal shortcut (eg National Health & Medical Research Council: NH&MRC; pronounced enn-aitch-and-emm-are-see), (6) A Shortcut incorporated into a name (eg SCO: the Santa Cruz Operation; pronounced sko) (7) The mnemonic (eg KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid; pronounced kiss), (8) The self-referential (eg TLA: Three Letter Acronym; pronounced tee-elle-eh), (9) The interpolated acronym (eg GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program; pronounced gimp), (10) Pseudo-acronyms (eg K9: pronounced key-nahyn (ie canine) which when sounded invoke a word or phrase (thus technically gramograms) and (11) The dreaded internally redundant acronym where a word (usually the last) is duplicated (eg ATM: Automated Teller Machine which is often used as ATM Machine.

The ATM machine might be OK if ATM had become a word (a la radar) but it never did.  Why some acronyms enter English as genuine stand-alone words while others never do is influence by a number of things but there are certainly no defined rules:

(1) Frequency of Use: If an acronym is used widely and frequently it can come to be accepted as a word: Thus, while NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics never reached critical mass, it’s successor organization NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) certainly did.

(2) Ease of use: The effortlessness with something rolls off the tongue will influence acceptance.  Radar and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) both benefited from this but sometimes an acronym’s creators may have wished they’d thought of something less amenable: In 1972, Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) campaign staff created the "Committee to Re-elect the President" which they abbreviated to CRP but the (usually hostile) press of course prefered CREEP and that's how it's remembered.  As it turned out, the journalists were right; in addition to fund-raising, printing flyers and producing bumper stickers, CREEP also engaged in back-channel deals and dirty-tricks operations.

(3) Portability: If an acronym is used in ways other than for the original purpose, it’s more likely to become a word.  Radar came to be used in many figurative ways and even spawned the imaginative “gaydar” (a portmanteau word, a blend of gay + (ra)dar, a colloquialism describing an individual’s (deductive or intuitive) ability to identify another as gay when it’s not immediately obvious through visual or other clues.

(4) Lexical Adaptation: The more an acronym can be adapted to fit standard grammatical rules, the more quickly it might be accepted as a word; laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) & radar both quickly came into use as nouns.

(5) Duration of use: The longer an acronym is in use, the more likely it will become ingrained in the lexicon.  Of course notoriety can transcend time: The Nazi Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)) existed for barely a dozen years but remains so notorious it’s part of language, used especially in political discourse when critiquing the powers of the state.

(6) The lexicographical imprimatur: If the editors of dictionaries accept a word and grant it an entry, there’s probably no more significant step for an acronym on the way to word-hood.  Of course, an entry in an established publication (preferably one with at least a history of print editions) suggests legitimacy in a way that on-line versions curated by users may not but English in such matters also works by acclamation and it may be some acronyms which became words really did first appear in the very often helpful Urban Dictionary.

Baroque

Baroque (pronounced buh-rohk or ba-rawk (French)).

(1) Of or relating to a style of architecture and art originating in Italy in the early seventeenth century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, by forms in elevation and plan suggesting movement, and by dramatic effect in which architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts often worked to combined effect (often used with an initial capital letter).

(2) In music, of or relating to the period following the Renaissance, extending (circa 1600-1750) which tended to be characterized by extensive use of the thorough bass and of ornamentation to create dramatic effects. Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederick Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi were great composers of the baroque era.

(3) In literature, a style of prose thought extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted in character or style.

(4) An irregularly shaped pearl (rare except in technical use).

(5) In pre-modern twentieth century design or engineering, objects intricately or ornately detailed in a way no longer financially viable.

(6) Descriptively (of any object where the technical definitions don’t apply), variously (1) ornate, intricate, decorated, laden with detail & (2) complex and beautiful, despite an outward irregularity.

(7) In stonemasonry & woodworking, chiselled from stone, or shaped from wood, in a garish, crooked, twisted, or slanted sort of way, grotesque or embellished with figures and forms such that every level of relief gives way to more details and contrasts.

(8) Figuratively, something overly or needlessly complicated, applied especially to bureaucracy or instances like accounting systems which either are or appear to be designed to conceal or confuse.

1765: From the French baroque (originally “pearl of irregular shape”), from the Portuguese barroco or barroca (irregularly shaped pearl) which was in some way influenced by either or both the Spanish berrueco or barrueco (granitic crag, irregular pearl, spherical nodule) and the Italian barocco, of uncertain ultimate origin but which may be from the Latin verrūca (wart).  The etymology is however murky and some suggest the Portuguese words may directly have come from the Spanish berruca (a wart) also from the Latin verrūca (a steep place, a height (and thus “a wart” or “an excrescence on a precious stone”).  Most scholars think at some point it probably conflated with Medieval Latin baroco, an invented word for a kind of obfuscating syllogism although one speculative alternative is the word was derived from the work of the Italian painter Federigo Barocci (1528-1612), a founder of the style, but most think this mere coincidence.  The comparative is baroque and the superlative baroquest, both thankfully rare.  Baroque is a noun & adjective, baroqueness is a noun and baroquely is an adverb, the noun plural is baroques.

Marble Court, Palace of Versailles.  Commissioned in the 1660s by Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715), the Palace of Versailles is thought one of the the finest example of secular Baroque architecture.

Baroque is one of those strange words in English which has evolved to have several layers of meaning including (1) a term which defines epochs in music & architecture, (2) a term referencing the characteristics in the music & architecture most associated with those periods, (3) a term which is a negative criticism of those characteristics, (4) a term which is (by extension) a negative criticism of the excessively ornate in any field (especially in literature) and (5) a term applied admiringly to things intricately or elaborately detailed.  In English, baroque began as an expression of contempt for the style of architecture which most historians believe began in early seventeenth century Rome and which shocked many with its audacious departure from the traditions of the Renaissance which paid such homage to (what was at least imagined to be) the Classical lines from Antiquity.  In architecture, baroque has never been exactly defined, something some explain by analogy with Clement Attlee’s (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) observation that it was as pointless to define socialism as it was an elephant for “...if an elephant ever walked into the room, all would know what it was”.

Karlskirche, Vienna.The Vatican's Saint Peter’s Square is often used to illustrate Baroque architecture and all those colonnades do make quite a statement but Vienna's Karlskirche better represents the way church architects took to the form.  It was commissioned in 1713 by Charles VI (1685–1740; Holy Roman Emperor 1711-1740) after the end of the last great epidemic of Plague as an act of memorial to Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584; Archbishop of Milan 1564-1584), revered as a healer of those suffering from Plague.

Actually, although etymologists would say that's true, that’s not how the word is actually often applied because the terms baroque and rococo are often used interchangeably by non-specialists when speaking of just about any building adorned with the elaborate details not seen since modernism, functionalism & brutalism prevailed.  What distinguishes things is less the actual shapes than the feeling imparted, baroque and rococo both noted for asymmetry, luxuriant detailing, extravagant, unexpected curves & lines and a polychromatic richness but where baroque’s language is of grandeur, weight & monumentalism, rococo’s implementations summon thoughts of lightness, playfulness and frivolity.  Tellingly, rococo, when used as a critique is applied almost always in the negative, suggesting something fussy, pointlessly elaborate and overstated whereas baroque is often used admiringly, literature about the only field in which use is universally negative.  The other common use of baroque in the negative applies to bureaucracy or tangled administrative systems when it’s used as a synonym of byzantine.  For those seeking a rule of thumb, except in literature, baroque tends not to be used negatively and when describing objects which contain ornate or intricate detailing, it’s adopted usually to suggest something complex and beautiful, despite an outward irregularity.  Baroque suggests restraint and good taste (there are many other words with which to describe the garish, crooked, twisted or grotesque) and to damn something as silly, over detailed and laden with decorations with no functional or aesthetic purpose, there’s rococo.

Winter Palace, Saint Petersberg.  Some do find the Winter Palace a bit rococo and there are elements of that in the interior but architecturally, it's an example of early baroque, albeit much modified by later renovations.  It was built as a residence of Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) and remain an official palace of the Romanov Tsars between 1732 and the 1917 revolutions.  The present appearance reflects both the restorative work of the late 1830s when it was rebuilt after a severe fire and the restoration after the damage suffered during the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944).

The use in the language of literary criticism is, like any application of “baroque” in the non-visual arts, inherently imprecise.  Even in music, it’s understood as a period and many of the compositions which emerged from the era do have a style which is recognisably “baroque” but there was also much which was anything but.  The same can of course be said of the European buildings of the same period, the overwhelming majority of which were neither “baroque”, nor memorable, the adjective in what is now called the “built environment” making sense only when used of representational architecture.  That’s a well-understood distinction in architecture and even painting but more contentious in music, something made murkier still by musicologists having divided the baroque into the “early”, “middle” and late”, mapped onto a range of styles which were sometimes particular to one country and sometimes popular in many.  Interestingly, although as a generalized descriptor it needs still to be thought of as something which began as a term of derision in architecture (and it is from there it gained its parameters), there is an earlier, anonymous piece of (not especially serious) opera criticism which labelled a work as du barocque (in the sense of the original meaning “pearl or irregular shape”), damning the music as un-melodic, discordant and a roll-call of just about every known compositional device; something more like a student’s assignment than a opera.  It’s a critique not greatly different from that made some three centuries later by comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953) who’d been displeased by one of comrade Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906-1975) operas, calling it формализм (formalism), "chaos instead of music", a self-indulgence of technique by a composer interested only in the admiration of other composers.

L'Estasi di Santa Teresa (The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa) by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) is a sculptural group rendered in white marble, set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.  It’s thought one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque and depicts Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun and saint, in a state of religious ecstasy, a spear-holding angel watching over her.  The installation in 2007 (briefly one supposes) gained baroque sculpture a new audience when it was used in a popular meme which noted some similarity with an early morning photograph of Lindsay Lohan resting in a Cadillac.

The last days of baroque: 1967 Mercedes–Benz 600 Pullman Laudaulet (left & rght) and 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet (centre).  There was intricate detailing on the W111 and W100s, the last truly coach-built Mercedes-Benz.  Most were produced between 1963-1971 although the W100s continued in a trickle, substantially hand-built, until 1981.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), remembered as the philosopher who loomed over the French revolution, was also a composer and in his Dictionnaire de la musique (Dictionary of Music, 1767) declared baroque music to be that “...in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited...”, noting the term was a re-purposing of baroco (an alternative spelling of baroko (from a mediaeval mnemonic chant and a mode of syllogism used whenever some point seemed to be exist only pointlessly to obfuscate), used since the thirteenth century by philosophers discussing the tendency by some of their peers (usually those in the Church or university) needlessly to complicate simple concepts and arguments, just for the sake of grandiose academic gloss; formalism as it were.  Etymologists however remain unconvinced by Rousseau’s speculation and cite earlier evidence which suggests it was from architecture that the use in painting and music was derived, pondering that had Rousseau’s musicology been influenced by him being an architect rather than a philosopher, he too may have identified the source in brick and stone.  Anyway, baroque music as it’s now understood is a surprisingly recent construct, discussed as a thing only in the twentieth century, the term widely used only after the 1950s when the advent of long-playing (LP) records made the packaging and distribution of long-form composition practical and the industry became interested in categorizations, the Baroque something different from the Renaissance and the Classical despite the popular association of them all as one.

Stubborn

Stubborn (pronounced stuhb-ern)

(1) Unreasonably obstinate; obstinately unmoving.

(2) Fixed or set in purpose or opinion; resolute; obstinately maintaining a course of action regardless of circumstances.

(3) Something difficult to manage or suppress.

(4) An object which is hard, tough, or stiff (stone, timber etc) or wood and thus difficult to shape or work; an object such (as a tightly fastened bolt) which is difficult to move; any problems which prove resistant to attempts to secure a solution.

(5) In the slang of the citrus industry, as stubbornness, a disease of citrus trees characterized by stunted growth and misshapen fruit, caused by Spiroplasma citri.

1350–1400: From the Middle English stiborn, stiborne, styborne, stuborn & stoborne, of obscure origin; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noting the earliest known form as stiborn.  Stubborn is an adjective, stubbornly an adverb and stubbornness a noun.

Stubborn is one of a remarkably large number of words in English with an unknown origin and is thus self referential, itself unreasonably obstinate in an unwillingness to disclose its source.  Deconstruction (stub + born) is no help because the spelling seems to have evolved merely to respect the pronunciation (something which in English can’t always be relied upon) and however tempting might seem a link with “stub” (a short, projecting part or remaining piece) (from the Middle English stubbe (tree stump), from the Old English stybb, stobb & stubb (tree stump), from the Proto-West Germanic stubb, from the Proto-Germanic stunjaz& stubbaz and related to the Middle Dutch stubbe, the Old Norse stubbr and the Faroese stubbi (stub), from the primitive Indo-European steu (to push, stick, knock, beat) & stew- (sharp slope)), a thing often immovable and unyielding, there’s simply no evidence.

More correctly, there’s simply no verified evidence.  As modern English coalesced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, lexicography became more industry than art and there was great interest (and competition) in the production of dictionaries, some of which included etymological detail in their entries.  At this time, it was thought the origin of stubborn was known, the accepted method of the time being to look for similar constructions in Hebrew, Latin and Greek on the basis it was supposedly from these ancient tongues that the words of modern languages were derived.  That supposition wasn’t entirely accurate but was true enough for many of the words in English at the time fully to be understood.  Because the Greek adjective στι-βαρóς (obstinate, stubborn) enjoyed such a similarity of sound with stubborn, that was thought conclusive, hence the entries in early dictionaries.  However, later scholarship proved the two words unrelated and no research has ever offered a plausible alternative.

According to the manufacturers of detergents, the most recalcitrant stains are "stubborn stains".

That stubbornness is a frequently encountered part of the human condition is perhaps indicated by the numbers of words and phrases (most famously “stubborn as a mule”) in English associated with the idea including adamant, determined, dogged, headstrong, inflexible, intractable, ornery, persistent, perverse, relentless, rigid, single-minded, steadfast, tenacious, tough, unshakable, willful, balky, bloody-minded, bullheaded, contrary, refractory, unyielding, obdurate, wayward, obstinate, disobedient, insubordinate, undisciplined & rebellious.

In the interview which accompanied her 2011 Playboy photo-shoot (and Playboy once commissioned research to prove people really did read the text), Lindsay Lohan admitted she “…should have listened to her advisers” and had she done so she would likely have avoided the “problems” so well documented by the tabloid press.  “My stubbornness at 18 and 19-years old got in the way” she added, acknowledging that “…ultimately we are responsible for ourselves and our own actions.”  She returned to the theme in a Vogue interview in 2022 discussing her roles in The Parent Trap (1998) revealing one consequence of her stubbornness complicated things for the production crew.  Her (clearly non-negotiable) demand was that she had to wear a certain nail polish while playing the part of one of the identical twins and that was “Hard Candy” in blue.  Ms Lohan said at the time it was “a big deal” and when it comes to fashion, pre-teen girls are an opinionated and uncompromising lot.  It was of course not a good idea because, with the one actor playing both twins, the distinctive enamel had to be removed with each switch of character.  “It was a nightmare for everyone” she admitted.

In use, stubborn, dogged, obstinate & persistent imply some fixity of purpose or condition and resistance to change, regardless of changing circumstances or compelling evidence.  There are however nuances, stubborn and obstinate both imply resistance to advice or force but stubborn is more suggestive of an innate quality and is used almost exclusively when referring to inanimate things; by convention, to be obstinate seems to demand there be some process of thought or at least character (mules presumably difficult in nature rather than in any way thoughtful).  One who is dogged might be both obstinate and stubborn but dogged can also imply tenacity, a pertinacity and grimness of purpose in doing something, especially in the face of difficulties which seem insurmountable and one who persists in seeking to solve an apparently insoluble problem can be lauded for their, dogged, stubborn determination.  Persistent implies having a resoluteness of purpose, one who perseveres despite setbacks and discouragement.  Some insist stubborn describes an extreme degree of passive obstinacy and while that tends to be true when the word is used of objects, among the sentient, stubbornness can manifest as anything but passive.

In the Bible there are passages which suggest stubbornness in the doing of God's work is a virtue but the trait was sometimes clearly a sin.  In the Book of Deuteronomy (21:18-21 as part of the Deuteronomic Code), the penalty of death by stoning is specified as a punishment for a stubborn and delinquent son.  The text is an interesting example of the usefulness of the Bible as a historic document, the inclusion in the Deuteronomic Code an attempt to reform the breakdown in family life characteristic of an era in which the absolute power parents had once exercised over their children had dissipated, hence the notion that the authority of a village's elders must be both invoked and exercised.  As a solution (though perhaps without the executions), it sounds like many modern suggestions to solve the problem of youth crime and juvenile delinquency.  

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (King James Version (KJV 1611))

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

The 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 (it's an myth spread by Gore Vidal (1925–2012) that the Kennedys drove only Buicks) driven by Senator Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) in which Mary Jo Kopechne (1940-1969) died.  The accident happened at close to midnight, the pair having left a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the east coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Kennedy survived, having left the scene of the crash in circumstances never satisfactorily explained.  The car in which he left the young lady to die belonged to his mother.  By the the time of the accident, Oldsmobile had ceased to use the Delmont name which was offered only in the 1967 & 1968 model years. 

As recent events and judicial decisions illustrate, in the United States there is a tension created by the dynamics which existed from the first days of white settlement, the competing lust to live free from oppression versus the undercurrent of a muscular, puritanical religiosity.  The Old Testament force of the latter in November 1646 prevailed upon the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, inspiring a law providing, inter alia, for the capital punishment of male children found disobedient to their parents.  Although the death penalty was later removed (though punishment for recalcitrant daughters was added in an early example of gender equality), the law was not repealed until 1973 although, as the troubled life of Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) might suggest, enforcement had by then long fallen into disuse.  Similar laws were enacted in Connecticut in 1650, Rhode Island in 1688, and New Hampshire in 1679.

The Massachusetts statute: "If a man have a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient years and understanding sixteen years of age, which will not obey the voice of his Father, or the voice of his Mother, and that when they have chastened him will not harken unto them: then shall his Father and Mother being his natural parents, lay hold on him, and bring him to the Magistrates assembled in Court and testify unto them, that their son is stubborn and rebellious and will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shall be put to death."

King Manuel II (standing, third from left) in May 1910, European royalty gathered in London for the funeral of Edward VII and among the mourners were nine reigning sovereigns, the image colorized from a sepia-toned original.  Dom Manuel II ("The Unfortunate" 1889–1932) reigned as the last King of Portugal and the Algarve 1908-1910, his brief tenure occasioned by the Lisbon regicide of 1908 in which his father and elder brother were murdered.

Counter-intuitively, considering the blood-soaked histories of Europe’s squabbling dynasties, of all the hundreds of cognomina (names appended before or after the person's name which are applied to identify their nature) attached to kings and princes, it seems only to have been Louis X of France (1289–1316; King of France 1314-1316 & King of Navarre (as Louis I) 1305-1316) who was informally styled "The Stubborn" (Louis le Hutin), although, just to stress the point, he was known also as "Louis the Quarrelsome" & "Louis the Headstrong".  Because in royalty names are so often recycled (John, Frederick, Louis, Charles etc), cognomina are genuinely helpful to historians and are for readers, probably more mnemonic that Roman numbering (Louis XI, XII, XIII etc).  While there has been much use of the usual suspects (the Brave, Great, Good, Bad, Cruel, Victorious etc) and some have been merely descriptive (the Fat, Bald, Tall, Hairy etc (although some of these were ironic)), some were evocative:

There was the Abandoned (John I of Aragon), the Accursed (Sviatopolk I of Kiev), the Affable (Charles VIII of France), the Alchemist (John, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach), the Apostate (Julian, Emperor of Rome, the Arab (Phillip I, Emperor of Rome), the Astrologer (Alfonso X of Castile), the Bad (applied to many but famously associated with Emund of Sweden), the Bastard (of which there have been many more than those to whom the sobriquet was attached, the best known being William I (better known as the Conqueror)), the Beer Jug (John George I, Elector of Saxony), the Bewitched (Charles II of Spain), the Bloodaxe (Eric I of Norway), the Bloodthirsty (doubtless a widely used adjective but the most cited seems Ismail of Morocco), Bloody (Mary I of England (and the well known Vodka cocktail)), the Cabbage (Ivaylo of Bulgaria), the Crosseyed (Vasili Kosoi, a Muscovian usurper), the Devil (Robert I, Duke of Normandy), the Indolent (Louis V of France (also the Sluggard which in this context imparts much the same meaning)), the Drunkard, (Michael III, Byzantine Emperor although one suspects he was one of many), the Dung-Named (Constantine V, Byzantine Emperor), the Executioner (Mehmed I of the Ottoman Empire, again one of many), the Fat (most associated with Charles III, Holy Roman Emperor), the Fowler (Henry I of Germany, a notable figure of the First Reich), the Hairy (Wilfred I of Urgel), the Impaler (the infamous Vlad III of Wallachia (Basarab Ţepeluş cel Tânăr of Wallachia was the Little Impaler)), the Impotent (Henry IV of Castile), the Mad (of which there should have been more than there are and associated (fairly or not) with Lorenzo de' Medici of the Florentine Republic), Minus-a-Quarter (Michael VII Dukas, Byzantine Emperor (and apparently the only regal sobriquet derived from monetary policy)), the Priest Hater (Eric II of Norway), the She-Wolf (Isabella of France), the Be-shitten (James II (of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland)), the Stammerer (Louis II of France), the Terrible (a popular one but best remembered for Ivan IV of Russia), the Unfortunate (which could fairly be applied to many but seems linked only with Manuel II of Portugal and the Algarve (who was unfortunate (o Desaventurado) but it could have been worse (he survived to see out his years in Twickenham) and he was known also as the Patriot (o Patriota)).