Mutual (pronounced myoo-choo-uhl)
(1) Possessed,
experienced, performed, etc by each of two or more with respect to the other;
reciprocal.
(2) Having
the same relation each toward the other.
(3) Of
or relating to each of two or more; held in common; shared.
(4) In
corporate law, having or pertaining to a form of corporate organization in
which there are no stockholders, and in which profits, losses, expenses etc,
are shared by members in proportion to the business each transacts with the
company:
(5) In
informal use, an entity thus structured.
1470–1480:
From the Middle English mutual (reciprocally
given and received (originally of feelings)), from the Old & Middle French mutuel, from the Latin mūtu(us)
(mutual, reciprocal (originally “borrowed”)), the construct being mūt(āre)
(to change (source of the modern mutate (ie delta, omicron and all that))) + -uus (the adjectival suffix) + the Middle
French -el (from the Latin –ālis (the third-declension
two-termination suffix (neuter -āle)
used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) and rendered in
English as –al. Root was the primitive Indo-European mei- (to change, go, move). The alternative spelling mutuall is obsolete. Derived forms used to describe ownership structures such as quasi-mutual and trans-mutual are created as required. Mutual & mutualist are nouns & adjectives, mutuality, mutualization, mutualism & mutualness are nouns, mutualize, mutualizing & mutualized are verbs and mutually & mutualistically are adverbs; the noun plural is mutuals.
The term "mutually exclusive" is widely used (sometimes loosely) but has a precise meaning in probability theory & formal logic where it describes multiple events or propositions such that the occurrence of any one dictates the non-occurrence of the other nominated events or propositions. The noun mutualism is used in fields as
diverse as corporate law, economic theory, materials engineering, political
science and several disciplines within biology (where variously it interacts
with and is distinguished from symbiosis). The
phrase "mutual admiration society" is from 1851 and appears to have been coined
by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) to describe those who habitually were in agreement with each-other and inclined to swap praise. The "mutual fund", although the structure pre-existed the adjectival use, is from
1950 and these soon came to be known simply as “mutuals”, the word appearing
sometimes even in the registered names and the best known of the type were the building societies & benevolent (or friendly) societies, the core structural element of what was the ownership being held in common by the members rather than shareholders.
The concept of the mutual structure is of interest in some jurisdictions
because of the suggestion the large assets held by chapters of the Freemasons may be so owned and, with the possibility the aging membership may ultimately
result in these assets being dissolved and the proceeds distributed. If, under local legislation, the structure
was found to be mutual, membership might prove unexpectedly remunerative.
The
Cold War's "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) is attested from 1963 (although it
wasn’t until 1966 it entered general use) and was actually a modification of
the Pentagon’s 1962 term “assured destruction” which was a technical expression
from US military policy circles to refer to the number of deliverable nuclear warheads
in the arsenal necessary to act as a deterrent to attack. In the public consciousness it was understood
but vaguely defined until 1965 when Robert McNamara (1916–2009; US Secretary of
Defense 1961-1968) appeared before the House Armed Services Committee and
explained the idea was "the minimum threat necessary to assure deterrence:
the capability in a retaliatory nuclear attack to exterminate not less than one
third the population of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)”. The “mutual” was added as the number of
deployable Soviet warheads reached a critical strategic mass. The mastery of statistical analysis served McNamara well until the US escalation of the war in Vietnam when the Hanoi regime declined to conform to follow his carefully constructed models of behavior.
In
social media, a mutual is a pair of individuals who follow each other's social
media accounts, whether by agreement or organically and there’s something a
niche activity is working out the extent to which the behavior happens between
bots. Mutuality (reciprocity,
interchange) was from the 1580s. Mutually
(reciprocally, in a manner of giving and receiving), was noted from the 1530s
and the phrase mutually exclusive was first recorded in the 1650s. The specialized mutualism (from the Modern French
mutuellisme) dates from 1845, referring
to the doctrine of French anarchist-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809-1865) that individual and collective well-being is attainable only by
mutual dependence. In the biological
sciences, it was first used in 1876 to describe "a symbiosis in which two
organisms living together mutually and permanently help and support one
another" although there are those who differentiate mutualism (a type of
co-existence where neither organism is directly affected by the other but the
influence they exert on other organisms or the environment is of benefit to the
other) from symbiosis (where there’s a co-dependency).
Parimutuel
betting is from the French invention pari
mutuel (mutual betting), the construct being pari (wager, from parier
(to bet) from the Latin pariare (to
settle a debt (literally “to make equal”)) from par, from paris (equal) +
mutuel (mutual). It describes a gambling system where all bets
of a particular type are pooled and from this (gross-pool), taxes and the
vigorish (from the Yiddish וויגריש
(vigrish), from the Russian вы́игрыш (výigryš) (winnings),
the commission or “hose-take" are deducted. The dividends are then calculated by dividing
the remainder (net pool) by all winning bets. In many jurisdictions it’s called the Tote
after the totalisator, which calculates and displays bets already made; in
Australia and New Zealand it’s the basis of the original agency structure of
the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB).
The
adoption of mutual as a synonym for "common" is from 1630s and was
long condemned as being used “loosely, improperly and not infrequently, often
by those who should know better”; “mutual friend" seemed the most common
offence. The view was that “mutual”
could apply to only two objects and “common” should be used if three or more
were involved. Opinion has thankfully
since softened. Mutual and common (in
the sense of the relation of two or more persons or things to each other) have
been used synonymously since the sixteenth century and the use is considered entirely
standard. Objections are one of those
attempts to enforce create rules in English which never existed, the only
outcome being the choice of use treated as a class-identifier by those who care
about such things and either ignored or un-noticed by most. Tautologous use of mutual however should be
avoided: One should say co-operation (not mutual co-operation) between two states.
Common (pronounced kom-uhn)
(1)
Belonging equally to, or shared alike by, two or more or all in question (as in
common property; common interests et al).
(2)
Pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community, nation, or culture;
public (as in common language; common history et al).
(3) Joint;
united.
(4)
Prevailing; Widespread; general; universal (eg common knowledge).
(5)
Customary, habitual, everyday.
(6) In
some jurisdictions a tract of land owned or used jointly by the residents of a
community, usually a central square or park in a city or town (often as “the
commons” or “the common”).
(7) In
domestic & international law, the right or liberty, in common with other
persons, to take profit from the land or waters of another, as by pasturing
animals on another's land (common of pasturage ) or fishing in another's waters
(common of piscary). Of interest to
economist and ecologists because of the disconnection between the economic gain
from the commons and the responsibility for its care and management.
(8)
Vulgar, ordinary, cheap, inferior etc (as a derogatory expression of class,
often in phrases such as “common as muck” or “common as potatoes”, the
back-handed compliment “the common-touch” applied to politicians best at
disguising their contempt for the voters (or, as they refer to us: “the
ordinary people”).
(9) In
some (particularly Germanic) languages, of the gender originating from the
coalescence of the masculine and feminine categories of nouns.
(10) In
grammar, of or pertaining to common nouns as opposed to proper nouns.
(11) In
the vernacular, referring to the name of a kind of plant or animal but its
common (ie conversational) rather than scientific name (the idea reflected in
the phrase “common or garden”).
(12)
Profane; polluted (obsolete).
(13)
Given to lewd habits; prostitute (obsolete).
(14) To
communicate something; to converse, talk; to have sex; to participate; to board
together; to eat at a table in common (all obsolete vernacular forms).
1250–1300:
From the Middle English comun
(belonging to all, owned or used jointly, general, of a public nature or
character), from the Anglo-French commun,
from the Old French, commun (Comun was rare in the Gallo-Romance
languages, but reinforced as a Carolingian calque
of the Proto-West Germanic gamainī (common)
in the Old French and commun was the
spelling adopted in the Modern French) (common, general, free, open, public),
from the Latin commūnis (universal,
in common, public, shared by all or many; general, not specific; familiar, not
pretentious), thought originally to mean “sharing common duties,” akin to mūnia (duties of an office), mūnus (task, duty, gift), from the
unattested base moin-, cognate with
mean. The Latin was from a reconstructed
primitive Indo-European compound ḱom-moy-ni-s (held in
common), a compound adjective, the construct being ko- (together) + moi-n-
(a suffixed form of the root mei- or mey (to change, go, move (hence
literally "shared by all").
The second element of the compound was the source also of the Latin munia (duties, public duties, functions;
specific office). It was possibly
reinforced in the Old French by the Germanic form of ḱom-moy-ni-s (ko-moin-i)
and influenced also the German gemein,
and the Old English gemne (common,
public). Comun and its variations cam to displace the native Middle English imene & ȝemǣne (common, general, universal (from the Old
English ġemǣne (common, universal)), and the later Middle English mene & mǣne (mean, common (also from the Old English ġemǣne)) and the Middle English samen & somen (in
common, together (from the Old English samen
(together)). A doublet of gmina. Common is a noun, verb & adjective, commoner is a noun & adjective, commonality is a noun and commonly is an adverb; the noun plural is commons.
Common
has been used disparagingly of women and criminals since at least the
fourteenth century and snobs have added categories since as required. The meanings "pertaining equally to or
proceeding equally from two or more" & "not distinguished,
belonging to the general mass" was from circa 1400 whereas the sense of
"usual, not exceptional, of frequent occurrence" &
"ordinary, not excellent" dates from the late fourteenth century. Common
prayer was that done in public in unity with other worshipers as contrasted
with private prayer, both probably more common then than now. The Church of England's Book of Common Prayer was first published in 1549 and went through several revisions for reasons both theological and political. The 1662 edition remains the standard collection of the prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and while many churches now use versions written in more modern English, there remain traditionalists who insist on one of the early editions.
The common room was noted first in the 1660s,
a place in the university college to which all members were granted common
access. The late fourteenth century
common speech was used to describe both English and (less often) vernacular
(which came to be called vulgar) Latin.
From the same time, the common good was an English adoption of the Latin
bonum publicum (the common
weal). Common sense is from 1839 and is
U whereas, because of the tortured grammar, 1848’s common-sensible is thought
non-U. The idea of common sense had been
around since the fourteenth century but with a different meaning to the modern:
The idea was of an internal mental power supposed to unite (reduce to a common
perception) the impressions conveyed by the five physical senses (sensus communisin the Latin, koine aisthesis in the Ancient Greek).
Thus it evolved into "ordinary understanding, without which one is foolish
or insane" by the 1530s, formalised as "good sense" by 1726 with
common-sense in the modern sense the nineteenth century expression.
The
mid-fourteenth century common law was "the customary and unwritten laws of
England as embodied in commentaries and old cases", as opposed to statute
law. Over the years, this did sometimes
confuse people because in different contexts (common law vs statute law; common
law versus equity; common law vs civil law) the connotations were
different. The phrase common-law
marriage is attested from a perhaps surprisingly early 1909. In the English legal system, common pleas was
from the thirteenth century, from the Anglo-French communs plets (hearing civil actions by one subject against another
as opposed to pleas of the crown). In
corporate law, common stock is attested from 1888. The late fourteenth century commoner is from
the earlier Anglo-French where in addition to conveying the expected sense of
"one of the common people” also had the technical meaning “a member of the
third estate of the estates-general".
In English it acquired the dual meaning as (1) of non-royal blood and
(2), since the mid-fifteenth century “a member of the House of Commons”. Commonly
the adverb is from circa 1300 and commonness the noun from the 1520s though it
originally meant only "state or quality of being shared by more than
one", the idea of something of "quality of being of ordinary
occurrence" not noted until the 1590s.
The adjective uncommon assumed a similar development, in the 1540s
meaning "not possessed in common" and by the 1610s meaning "not
commonly occurring, unusual; rare".
Last
thoughts on a non-rule
The
distinction between mutual (reciprocal; between two) and common (among three or
more) probably once was, at least to some extent, observed by educated writers,
Dr Johnson (1709-1984) in his A
Dictionary of the English Language (1755) allowing but one definition: MUTUAL
a. Reciprocal; each acting in return or correspondence to the other.
G K Chesterton.
That
old curmudgeon G K Chesterton (1874-1936) was certainly convinced. Writing about Charles Dickens (1812–1870) novel
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865), he
claimed the title was the source of the phrase in general speech, snobbily
noting of it was the “…old democratic and even uneducated Dickens who is writing
here. The very title is illiterate. Any priggish pupil teacher could tell
Dickens that there is no such phrase in English as 'our mutual friend'. Anyone could tell Dickens that 'our
mutual friend' means 'our reciprocal friend' and that 'our
reciprocal friend' means nothing. If he had only had all the solemn
advantages of academic learning (the absence of which in him was lamented by
the Quarterly Review), he would have known better. He would have known that the
correct phrase for a man known to two people is 'our common friend'."
The
phrase in the English novel however pre-dated Dickens, Jane Austen (1775-1817) using
it in both Emma (1816) and Persuasion (1818) and long before 1864, Mary
Shelley (1797–1851), Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), Herman Melville (1819–1891), James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) and Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) all had “mutual friend” in their text. Dickens, with the prominence afforded by the
title and serialized in the press, doubtless popularized it and, as Chesterton
well knew, literature anyway isn’t necessarily written in "common speech". Whoever opened the floodgates, after 1864,
mutual friends continued to flow, the writers George Orwell (1903-1950), Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Jerome K Jerome (1859–1927), Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), Henry James (1843–1916), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894),
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) and Church of England (broad faction) priest & historian Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) all content with "mutual friend" so those
condemned by Chesterton are in good company. The old
snob probably did ponder if calling someone a “common friend” might
create a misunderstanding but then, good with words, he’d probably avoid that
by suggesting they were “rather common” or “a bit common" if that was what he
wanted to convey, which not infrequently he often did.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.
