Nightmare

Nightmare (pronounced nahyt-mair)

(1) A terrifying dream in which the dreamer experiences feelings of helplessness, extreme anxiety, sorrow etc.

(2) A condition, thought, or experience suggestive of a nightmare.

(3) A monster or evil spirit once believed to oppress persons during sleep.

1250–1300: From the Middle English nightmare, from the Old English nihtmare, the construct being night +‎ mare (evil spirit believed to afflict a sleeping person).  It was cognate with the Scots nichtmare and nichtmeer, the Dutch nachtmerrie, the Middle Low German nachtmār and the German Nachtmahr.  Another Old English word for it was niht-genga.

Night was from the Middle English nighte, night, nyght, niȝt & naht (night), from the Old English niht, neht, nyht, neaht & næht (night), from the Proto-Germanic nahts (night), from the primitive Indo-European nókwts (night).  It was cognate with the Scots nicht & neicht (night), the West Frisian nacht (night), the Dutch nacht (night), the Low German & German Nacht (night), the Danish nat (night), the Swedish & Norwegian natt (night), the Faroese nátt (night), the Icelandic nótt (night), the Latin nox (night), the Greek νύχτα (nýchta) (night), the Russian ночь (nočʹ) (night) and the Sanskrit नक्ति (nákti) (night).  Mare had a second etymological track from the sense of the female horse (mare from the Old English mīere).  The sense of “nightmare, monster” is from the Old English mare from the Proto-Germanic marǭ (nightmare, incubus) and can be compared with the Dutch dialectical mare, the German dialectical Mahr from the Old Norse mara which produced also the Danish mare and the Swedish mara (incubus, nightmare).  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European mor (feminine evil spirit).  The English and European forms were akin to the Old Irish Morrígan (phantom queen), the Albanian merë (horror), the Polish zmora (nightmare), the Czech mura (nightmare, moth) and the Greek Μόρα (Móra); doublet of mara.

The original meaning (incubus, an evil female spirit (later often called a goblin) afflicting men (or horses) in their sleep with a feeling of suffocation) dates from the thirteenth century, with the meaning shift from the incubus to the suffocating sensation it causes emerging in the mid sixteenth century.  The sense of "any bad dream" is recorded by 1829; that of "very distressing experience" is from 1831.  Nightmare and nightmarishness are nouns, nightmarish is an adjective and nightmarishly an adverb; the noun plural is nightmares.  The adjective nightmaresque is non-standard but use is not infrequent.

Bad dreams

Waking from a bad dream, Lindsay Lohan in Scary Movie 5 (2013).

Nightmares are regarded by mental health clinicians essentially as part of the human condition.  In this they differ from night terror (sometimes called sleep terror), a disorder inducing panic or feelings of morbid dread, typically during the early stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and usually brief in duration, lasting no more than 1-10 minutes.  Sleep terrors appear most often to begin in childhood, decreasing (usually) with age but their frequency and severity can be affected, inter alia, by sleep deprivation, medications, stress, fever and intrinsic sleep disorders.  Evidence does seem to suggest a predisposition to night terrors may be congenital and there may be an increase in prevalence among those with first-degree relatives with a similar history but the link to inheritance is dismissed by some academics as "speculative".

The Nightmare (1781), oil on canvas by the Swiss-English painter John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Detroit Institute of Arts.  It's a popular image to use to illustrate something "nightmare related".

When the political activist Max Eastman (1883–1969) visited Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in Vienna in 1926, he observed a print of Fuseli's The Nightmare, hung next to Rembrandt's  (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) The Anatomy Lesson.  Although well known for his work on dream analysis (although it’s the self-help industry more than the neo-Freudians who have filled the book-shelves), Freud never mentions Fuseli's famous painting in his writings but it has been used by others in books and papers on the subject.  The speculation is Freud liked the work (clearly, sometimes, a painting is just a painting) but nightmares weren’t part of the intellectual framework he developed for psychoanalysis which suggested dreams (apparently of all types) were expressions of wish fulfilments while nightmares represented the superego’s desire to be punished; later he would refine this with the theory a traumatic nightmare was a manifestation of “repetition compulsion”.  The juxtaposition of sleeping beauty and goblin provoked many reactions when first displayed and encouraged Fuseli to paint several more versions.  The Nightmare has been the subject of much speculation and interpretation, including the inevitable debate between the Freudians and Jungians and was taken as a base also by political cartoonists, a bunch more nasty in earlier centuries than our more sanitized age.

The current diagnostic criteria for sleep terrors

The fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5, 2013) revised the diagnostic criteria for sleep terror disorder, requiring:

(1) Recurrent periods where the individual abruptly but not completely wakes from sleep, usually occurring during the first third major period of sleep.

(2) The individual experiences intense fear with a panicky scream at the beginning and symptoms of autonomic arousal, such as increased heart rate, heavy breathing, and increased perspiration. The individual cannot be soothed or comforted during the episode.

(3) The individual is unable or almost unable to remember images of the dream (only a single visual scene for example).

(4) The episode is completely forgotten.

(5) The occurrence of the sleep terror episode causes clinically significant distress or impairment in the individual's functioning.

(6) The disturbance is not due to the effects of a substance, general medical condition or medication.

(7) Coexisting mental or medical disorders do not explain the episodes of sleep terrors.

Hypnopompic

Hypnopompic (pronounced hip-nuh-pom-pik)

Of or relating to the state of consciousness between sleep and becoming fully awake.

1897: The construct was hypno-, from the Ancient Greek ὕπνος (húpnos) (sleep) + the Ancient Greek πομπή (pomp(ḗ)), (a sending away) +‎ -ic.  The -ic suffix was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); a doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The word was coined in the sense of “pertaining to the state of consciousness when awaking from sleep” by Frederic WH Myers (1843-1901), the construct being from hypno- (sleep) + the second element from the Greek pompe (sending away) from pempein (to send).  The word was introduced in Glossary of Terms used in Psychical Research, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xii (1896-1897 supplement), an organization founded by Myers.  Hypnopompic & hypnopompia were thought to be necessary as companion (in the sense of “bookend”) terms to hypnagogic & hypnagogia (Illusions hypnagogiques) which are the “vivid illusions of sight or sound (sometimes referred to as “faces in the dark”) which sometimes accompany the prelude to the onset of sleep.  Hypnopompic is an adjective and hypnopompia is a noun; the noun plural is hypnopompias.

Frederic Myers was a philologist with a great interest in psychical matters, both the orthodox science and aspects like the work of mediums who would “contact the spirits of the dead”, the latter, while not enjoying much support in the scientific establishment, was both taken seriously and practiced by a remarkable vista of “respectable society”.  Mediums enjoyed a burst in popularity in the years immediately after World War I (1914-1918) when there was much desire by grieving wives & mothers to contact dead husbands and sons and some surprising figures clung to beliefs in such things well into the twentieth century.  In the early 1960s, a reunion of surviving pilots from the Battle of Britain (1940) was startled when their wartime leader and former head of Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding (1882–1970), told them: “regularly he communicated with the spirits of their fallen comrades”.  Myers also had what might now be called a “varied” love life although it’s said in his later life his interest was restricted to women, including a number of mediums, all reputed to be “most fetching”.

In the profession, while acknowledging the potential usefulness in things like note-taking in a clinical environment, few psychologists & psychiatrists appear to regard hypnopompia & hypnagogia as separate phenomena, both understood as the imagery, sounds and strange bodily feelings sometimes felt when in that state between sleep and being fully awake.  In recent years, as the very definition of “sleep” has increasingly been segmented, the state in some literature has also been referred to both as “stage 1 sleep” & “quiet wakefulness” although the former would seem to be most applicable to falling asleep (hypnagogia) rather than waking up (hypnopompia).  Still, the distinction between what’s usually a late night versus an early morning thing does seem of some significance, especially that most in the discipline of the science of sleep (now quite an industry) seem to concede wake-sleep & sleep-wake transitions are not fully understood; nor are the associated visual experiences and debate continues about the extent to which they should (or can) be differentiated from other dream-states associated with deeper sleep.

Waking in a hypnopompic state: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022).

One striking finding is that so few remember hypnopompic & hypnagogic imagery and that applies even among those who otherwise have some ability to recall their dreams.  What’s often reported by subjects or patients is the memory is fleeting and difficult to estimate in duration and that while the memory is often sustained for a short period after “waking”, quickly it vanishes.  An inability to recall one’s dreams in not unusual but this behavior is noted also for those with a sound recollection of the dreams enjoyed during deeper sleep states.  What seems to endure is a conceptual sense of what has been “seen”: faces known & unknown, fragmentary snatches of light and multi-dimensional geometric shapes.  While subjects report they “know” they have “seen” (and also “heard”) more fully-developed scenes, their form, nature or even the predominate colors prove usually elusive.  Despite all this, it’s not uncommon for people to remark the hypnopompic experience is “pleasant”, especially the frequently cited instances of floating, flying or even a separation from the physical body, something which seems more often called “trippy” than “scary”.

For some however, the hypnopompic & hypnagogic experience can be recalled, haunting the memory and the speculation is that if “nightmarish” rather than “dream-like”, recollection is more likely, especially if associated with “paralyzed hypnogogia or hypnopompia” in which a subject perceives themselves “frozen”, unable to move or speak while the experience persists (for centuries a reported theme in “nightmares).  Observational studies are difficult to perform to determine the length of these events but some work in neurological monitoring seems to suggest what a patient perceives as lasting some minutes may be active for only seconds, the implication being a long “real-time” experience can be manufactured in the brain in a much shorter time and the distress can clinically be significant.  For this reason, the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) regards hypnagogia & hypnopompia as something similar to synaesthesia (where a particular sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation; things like letters being associated with colors) or certain sexual fetishes (which were once classified as mental disorders) in that they’re something which requires a diagnosis and treatment only if the condition is troubling for the patient.  In the fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5 (2013)), hypnagogia anxiety was characterized by intense anxiety symptoms during this state, disturbing sleep and causing distress; it’s categorized with sleep-related anxiety disorders.

The Nightmare (1781), oil on canvas by the Swiss-English painter John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Detroit Institute of Arts.  It's a popular image to use to illustrate something "nightmare related".

When the political activist Max Eastman (1883–1969) visited Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in Vienna in 1926, he observed a print of Fuseli's The Nightmare, hung next to Rembrandt's  (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) The Anatomy Lesson.  Although well known for his work on dream analysis (although it’s the self-help industry more than the neo-Freudians who have filled the book-shelves), Freud never mentions Fuseli's famous painting in his writings but it has been used by others in books and papers on the subject.  The speculation is Freud liked the work (clearly, sometimes, a painting is just a painting) but nightmares weren’t part of the intellectual framework he developed for psychoanalysis which suggested dreams (apparently of all types) were expressions of wish fulfilments while nightmares represented the superego’s desire to be punished; later he would refine this with the theory a traumatic nightmare was a manifestation of “repetition compulsion”.  The juxtaposition of sleeping beauty and goblin provoked many reactions when first displayed and encouraged Fuseli to paint several more versions.  The Nightmare has been the subject of much speculation and interpretation, including the inevitable debate between the Freudians and Jungians and was taken as a base also by political cartoonists, a bunch more nasty in earlier centuries than our more sanitized age.

Irrefragable

Irrefragable (pronounced ih-ref-ruh-guh-buhl)

(1) Not to be disputed or contested (as assertion).

(2) Not able to be denied or refuted; indisputable (as fact).

(3) That which cannot or should not be broken; indestructible (archaic and probably extinct).

(4) Of a person, someone obstinate; stubborn (obsolete except as a literary device).

1525–1535: A learned borrowing from Late Latin irrefrāgābilis (irrefragable) with the English suffix –able appended.  The suffix -able was from the Middle English -able, from the Old French -able, from the Latin -ābilis (capable or worthy of being acted upon), from the primitive Indo-European i-stem forms -dahli- or -dahlom (instrumental suffix); it was used to create adjectives with the sense of “able or fit to be done”.  The construct of irrefrāgābilis was the Latin ir- (a variant of in- (used a prefix meaning “not”)) + refragā(rī) (the present active infinitive of refrāgor (to oppose, resist; to gainsay, thwart)) + -bilis (the suffix used to form adjectives indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).  Because of the paucity of documentary evidence, the ultimate source of the Latin refrāgor remains uncertain, but the construct may have been re- (the prefix used in the sense of “again”) + fragor (a breaking, shattering; a crash; din, uproar (from frangō (to break, shatter), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European bhreg- (to break)), formed as an antonym of suffrāgōr, the first-person singular present passive indicative of suffrāgō (to support; to vote for).  The sixteenth century French form was irréfragable, also from the Late Latin.  The meanings related to “indestructible objects” fell from use as early as the mid-seventeenth century while the figurative sense of “someone stubborn or obstinate” endured into the twentieth and, as a literary device, probably still tempts some and for those so tempted, the better style guides help by telling us to stress the second syllable.  The spelling irrefragible is obsolete.  Irrefragable is an adjective, irrefragability & irrefragableness are nouns and irrefragably is an adverb; the noun plural is irrefragabilies.

In English, irrefragable didn’t survive in common use for no better reason than people for whatever reason preferred the alternatives (literal & figurative) including (depending on the context): undeniable, indubitable, unassailable, indisputable, unambiguous, unquestionable, irrefutable, incontestable, immutable and unanswerable.  All those synonyms convey much the same thing for most so usually, the only thing the use of “irrefragable” is likely to engender is bafflement; few people will know what it means.  That can be fun between consenting word-nerds but it otherwise tends just to annoy.  There are structuralists who claim “irrefragable” is (or at least can be) different form a word like “unquestionable” because the former should specifically be associated with logical or argumentative strength while the later can be used in any context without necessarily emphasizing the same rigorous logical support.  So, because the underpinning of the scientific method is the disproving stuff, to say a scientific theory is irrefragable does not mean it cannot be argued against or disproven or that it’s beyond doubt or uncertainty; it means only that it cannot be refuted based on the current evidence.  By contrast, in some schools of theology, many things are unquestionable, not because they can be proved or disproven but because they must be accepted as matters of faith.  In the Roman Catholic Church, this is formalized: If a pope (invoking his infallibility in matters of dogma), declares something to be thus, it is, as a matter of canon law, both irrefragable & unquestionable.  The ancient idea of papal infallibility has been invoked only once since it was codified in the proceedings of the First Vatican Council (Vatican I 1869-1870) but since the early post-war years, pontiffs have found ways to achieve the same effect, John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) & Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) both adept at using what was in effect a personal decree a power available to one who sits at the apex of what is in constitutional terms an absolute theocracy.  Critics have called this phenononom "creeping infallibility" and its intellectual underpinnings own much to the tireless efforts of Benedict XVI while he was head of the Inquisition (by then called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) during the late twentieth century.

Defragable: Defragmentation in action under MS-DOS 6.22.  On a nearly full big drive (say 320 MB) on which defragmentation had been neglected for a while, the process could take literally hours.  True obsessives would add the relevant command to their autoexec.bat to start every day with a defrag, the sequence being: (1) switch on, (2) go and get coffee and (3) hope it was done upon return.

Before installable file systems (IFS) began to gain critical mass in the 1990s, disk defragmenters were something of a fetish among nerds because, at the software level, there were few quicker (a relative term) and cheaper ways to make things run faster.  Fragment was from the late Middle English fragment, from the Latin fragmentum (a fragment, a remnant), the construct being frangō (I break) +‎ -mentum, from the suffix -menta (familiar in collective nouns like armenta (herd, flock)), from the primitive Indo-European -mn̥the.  The tendency of the early file systems to increasing sluggishness was because the File Allocation Table (FAT) was an up-scaled variant of that used on floppy diskettes where the cluster sizes (the segments into which the media was divided) were small and thus less prone to fragmentation.  However, because of the arcane math which dictated how many clusters there could be under the various implementations of FAT, the only way to accommodate the increasing size of hard disk drives (HDD) was to make the clusters larger, the consequence of which was a file of 1 KB or less absorbed all of a 32 KB cluster, something both an inefficient use of space and inherently prone to fragmentation.  What defragmenters did was re-allocate files to make data both as contiguous and un-fragmented as possible.  Modern file systems (HPFS, NTFS et al) still have limits but the numbers are very big and contemporary operating systems now handle defragmentation dynamically.  Although it remains a useful system on USB pen drives and such because of the wide system compatibility and ease of use, it’s doubtful even the more nostalgic nerds have fond memories of FAT on HDDs; a corrupted FAT could be a nightmare.

Sneaker

Sneaker (pronounced snee-ker)

(1) A high or low shoe, notionally intended to be worn when playing sport or other recreational activities, usually with a rubber or synthetic sole and uppers of canvas, leather or a synthetic material (sold as “a pair of sneakers”).

(2) One who sneaks; a “sneak”.

(3) A vessel of drink (a now archaic UK dialect form).

(4) A large cup (or small basin) with a saucer and cover (Indian English, now largely archaic).

(5) In biology, as “sneaker male”, a male animal which pretends to be a female to get close to a female, thereby increasing their chance of mating.

(6) In marine hydrology, disproportionately large coastal waves which can without warning appear in a wave train.

1550s: The construct was sneak + -er.  The origin of sneak is uncertain.  It may be from the thirteenth century Middle English sniken (to creep, to crawl), from the Old English snīcan (to creep, to crawl), from the Proto-West Germanic snīkan, from the Proto-Germanic sneikanan or snīkaną (“to creep, to crawl”) which is related to the root of both snail & snake.  Similar forms include the Danish snige (to sneak), the Swedish snika (to sneak, hanker after) and the Icelandic sníkja (to sneak, hanker after).   Alternatively, there may be a link with snitch, also of uncertain origin.  Snitch may be an alteration of the Middle English snacche (a trap, snare) or snacchen (to seize (prey)), the source of the modern English snatch.  A parallel evolution in Middle English was snik & snak (a sudden blow, snap).

The alternative etymology is as a dialectal variant of sneak.  The noun emerged in the 1590s as a development of the verb (as implied in “sneakish” in the sense of “creep or steal about privately; move or go in a stealthy, slinking way” and most etymologists have concluded it was probably a dialectal survivor from the Middle English sniken from the Old English snican, from the Proto-Germanic sneikanan.  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  Sneaker is a noun; the noun plural is sneakers.

Reader's Digest published a number of maps illustrating regional variations in the way things are described in the US.  While they didn't seem to indicate there was a costal v flyover linguistic divide, the Mason-Dixon line did seem to have some influence and there was something of an east-west divide.  One outlier however was "sneakers" which was found predominately to be prevalent only around the north & south Atlantic coasts, the rest of the country preferring "tennis shoes" while there were pockets in the Mid-West where "gym shoes" had traction.  The publication noted their map represented only the dominant form and that all forms (and other) could be found throughout the land.

According to Google Trends, in on-line shopping, while the numbers bounce around, they do so within a range and "sneakers" remains statistically dominant.

The noun sense of sneak as “a sneaking person; person of selfish and cowardly temper and conduct” dates from the 1640s a development from the verb; by 1700 it was used to describe “the act or practice of sneaking”.  The transitive sense of “stealthily to insert” was known by the mid-seventeenth century while that of “partake of or get surreptitiously” dates from 1883.  The phrase “to sneak up (on someone or something)” was in use by 1869.  As an adjective (in reference to feelings, suspicions etc) it was used in the sense of “not openly vowed, undemonstrative” from 1748 while the “sneak-thief” (one who enters through unsecured doors and windows to steal) was first so describe in 1859.  “Sneak previews” were originals viewings of movies held before their public release for friendly critics and others likely to provide helpful publicity, the phrase first used in 1938.

Nike Dunk SB Low Freddy Kruger (US$30,000), a tribute to the villain (or hero; opinions differ) in the Nightmare on Elm Street films, the Nike swoosh a nice allusion to the blades in the famous gloves.

The noun use of sneaker to describe certain rubber-soled shoes was in use by at least 1895 and thus (even if tangentially) linked to the use in the 1590s sense of “a sneak; one who sneaks around”).  The use for shoes was of course based on rubber-soled shoes being essentially noiseless in contrast to those which leather soles which were usually fitted with protective metal heel & toe plates to reduce wear.  A slang term for any soft-soled (usually rubber) shoe was “brothel creeper”, based on the idea that men who frequented such places preferred to do so silently so as not to be conspicuous.  The original term was actually “sneak”, first documented in accounts of prison life in 1862 as prisoners’ slang for both the wardens who at night wore “India-rubber shoes” and the shoes themselves.  The same issue was noted by the Nazi war criminals held in Spandau Prison between 1947-1987.  The prisoners had complained the heavy boots worn by the guards disturbed them but when the authorities issued rubber-soled footwear they found it harder to undertake un-noticed their many surreptitious activities.

There are a number of alternative names for the shoes.  Some are obvious such as “basketball shoes” or “tennis shoes” and “sports shoe” is a classic generic but plimsole has also endured in some places.  That was based on the “Plimlsoll Line” (originally Plimsoll’s Mark) which was a line painted on the hull of British ships to mark the point the waterline was allowed to reach before the vessel was declared overloaded.  It was named after English Liberal MP Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898), a strident advocate of shipping reforms (many of which were codified in the Merchant Shipping Act (1876) including the “Plimsoll mark”).  Plimsoll came into use in 1907 to refer to rubber-soled, canvas shoe because the band around the shoes holding together the two parts evoked an image of the line on ships.  The spelling quickly shifted to “plimsole” because of the sound association between “soll” and “sole”.  An earlier form was “tacky” (also as “tackie”) which was probably of Dutch or Afrikaans origin, or else from tacky (slightly sticky), a quality associated with rubber, especially before the introduction of vulcanization.  In South Africa, tacky is used not only of rubber-soled shoes but also of car type and often other things made from rubber.

Lindsay Logan, nueva embajadora de Allbirds (the new Allbirds ambassador), possibly on a Wednesday.

In 2022, Allbirds appointed Lindsay Lohan as an ambassador for its "Unexpected Athlete" campaign, focusing on her for the new limited edition of its most successful sneakers (they seem to prefer "running shoe") to date, the Tree Flyer.  The promotional video issued for the announcement was nicely scripted, beginning with Ms Lohan’s perhaps superfluous admission that as an ambassador for running “I am a little unexpected" before working in a few references to her career in film (showing again a rare sense of comedic timing), fondness for peanut butter cookies and the odd social media faux-pas, many of which she's over the years embraced.  The feature shoe is the "Lux Pink" which includes no plastics.  As a well-known car driver and frequent flyer who has for years lived in an air-conditioned cocoon in Dubai, it’s not clear how far up the chart of conspicuous consumption Ms Lohan has stamped her environmental footprint but US-based footwear and apparel company Allbirds claims its design, production & distribution processes are designed to make its products as eco-friendly as possible.  It is a certified “B Corporation”, a system of private certification of for-profit companies of their "social and environmental performance" conferred by B Lab, a non-profit organization which aims to provide consumers with a reliable way to distinguish the genuinely environmentally active from those which cynically “greenwash”.

Lindsay Lohan, Allbirds “Unexpected Athlete Ambassador”.

They’re known also as “gym shoes”, “leisure shoes”, “sandshoes”, “kicks”, “trainers”, “training shoes” and running shoes and in Australia, until the 1990s, one big-selling (and still manufactured) model (the Dunlop Volley) almost universally known as “the Dunlop” and shoe shops do document the difference between “basketball shoes” and “basketball boots”, the latter with an upper built higher to afford greater protection for the ankles.  Interestingly, sneakers (however described) have become something of a cult and many expensive variations are available although analysts see to believe much of the price-tag is can be attributed to profit rather than development or production costs and, like the luxury handbag market, there are claims of “limited availability” and “restricted customer list” but most conclude that usually the only “limit” is demand although some genuine short production runs have been verified, usually for promotional purposes.  They’ve become also an item frequently stolen and among certain demographics, being assaulted so one’s sneakers can be stolen is a not uncommon experience.  Somewhat related to that cultural phenomenon has been the emergence of an after-market for “collectable” or “vintage” sneakers never to be worn and preferably still in their original packaging.  The record price paid at auction is apparently US$2.2 million but some new sneakers associated with celebrities list at as much as US$25,000, intended presumably endlessly to be traded as collectables rather than worn, much in the manner of some of the rarest exotic cars which even the manufacturers admit are produced for just that market.

Claw

Claw (pronounced klaw)

(1) In zoology (1) A sharp, usually curved, nail on the foot of an animal, as on a cat, dog or bird; (2) a corresponding structure in some invertebrates, such as the pincer of a crab (3) a similar curved process at the end of the leg of an insect a (4) a foot so equipped.

(2) A mechanical device either resembling a claw or with similar functionality, used for gripping or lifting.

(3) In colloquial use, a human fingernail, particularly if long (natural or extended).

(4) In botany, slender appendage or process, formed like a claw, such as the formation found at the base of petals.

(5) In juggling, the act of catching a ball overhand.

(6) To tear, scratch, seize, pull, etc, with or as if with claws.

(7) To make by or as if by scratching, digging etc, with hands or claws.

(8) To make fumbling motions.

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun clawen (sharp, hooked, horny end of the limb of a mammal, bird, reptile etc), from the Old English clawan, clāwan & clēn (claw, talon, iron hook), from the Proto-Germanic klawjaną & klawō and cognate with the Old High German kluwi, chlōa & chlō and akin to the Middle Dutch klouwe, the Dutch klauen & klauw, the Old Frisian klawe (claw, hoe), the West Frisian klau, the Sanskrit glau- (ball, sphere), the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish klo and the German Klaue (claw).  The Old English verb clawian (to scratch, claw) shared its etymology with the nouns and the developments in other Germanic languages included the Dutch klaauwen, the Old High German klawan and the German klauen.  Claw is a noun & verb, clawer is a noun. clawless is an adjective, clawed is a verb & adjective, clawing is a verb, noun & adjective and clawingly is an adverb; the noun plural is claws.

The phrase “to claw back” in the sense of "regain by great effort" sounds ancient but is documented only since 1953 as a noun; the verb (an act of this) coming into use in 1969.  The sense of antiquity comes from “clawback” which since at least the 1540s meant “one who fawns on another; a sycophant” and that was derived from the late fourteenth century “claw the back” (to flatter, to curry favor) which was different from the modern “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours) which is about co-operation with a whiff of something corrupt.  The use of “claw back” expanded in the 1970s to describe a trick in politics whereby the voters were given something in the run-up to an election and after getting their votes, a government would “claw back” what was given by using some mechanism apparently unrelated to the original bribe.  The noun dew claw (also as dew-claw) describes the “"rudimentary inner toe of the foot, especially the hind foot, of some dogs” and has been documented since the 1570s but may have enjoyed long regional use and etymologists note that while the claw part is obvious, the origin of the other element is mysterious.  The verb “declaw” was from veterinary science and was used usually of a procedure applied to creatures in zoos or domestic pets to make them less dangerous to others or their environment.  It’s become controversial.  In figurative use, it’s used to describe processes which limit the effectiveness of sporting teams, political parties etc.  Phrases like “showing her claws” & “scratching her eyes out” were once applied usually to (and about) bolshie women but it’s since been embraced by various parts of the LGBTQQIAAOP community; it’s used as required.  Claw is one of those words in English with a structural duality; in zoology a claw may either be a single nail or a collection of several.

Alexander McQueen’s “Armadillo boots” with “claw heels” (left) and Lindsay Lohan out walking in New York in claw heels, 2011 (left).

Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) displayed his “Armadillo boots” as part of the spring/summer 2010 Plato’s Atlantis collection which turned out to be his final show.  Inspired by the ideas made famous in Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) On the Origin of Species (1859), the collection was an imagining of humankind evolving into a species living underwater (and thus technically a devolution) as hybrid aquatic creatures.  The boots were a blend of the shape of an Armadillo with the claw-like heel borrowed from the lobster, all finished in turquoise, sea-green and other shades evocative of oceans and coral reefs.  The combination of the 9-inch (230 mm) claw stiletto heel and the unnatural shape the foot made to assume meant the thought exercise was intended more to please fashion editors than end up on cobblers’ lasts but as Lindsay Lohan demonstrates, when combined with a more conventional fitting, the claw heel is manageable, the change in the centre of gravity induced by the forward movement of the heels point of contact presumably minimal.  While not conventionally attractive, the boots were admired by those who appreciate such things for their own sake and criticized by those who take such things too seriously.

Among his assemblages, Salvador Dalí’s (1904-1989) Lobster Telephone (1936) is the best known and probably as famous as La persistènciade la memòria (The Persistence of Memory (although often referred to as the more evocative “melting clocks”)) is among his paintings.  It tends now to be forgotten that by the 1930s the Surrealist movement had come to be seen as moribund, an idea which had worked its concepts dry but in a creative burst, Dali and his collaborators built installations both minute and at scale which, playing with conjunction of objects and spaces never before associated, managed what’s so rarely achieved in art: the genuinely new.  The lobster was also for Dali a sex object which may sound improbable until it’s remembered how influential had become the works of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and the crustacean, with its succulent white flesh promising pleasure and those menacing claws nothing but pain, was quite a motif.  To make the point he painted a large lobster for Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) who in 1937 placed it with care on an evening gown, achieving an erotic playfulness.  Dali had just a much fun with the telephone, the claws enveloping a user’s ear while the tail, home of the sexual organs, was placed directly over the mouthpiece.

Avoiding the claws: Lindsay Lohan saving a lobster from certain death in Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club (2019).  Her intentions were pure but the ultimate fate of the crustacean remains uncertain. 

The Claw of Death, Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Although the whole, vast wasteland of the restricted zone which was declared after the nuclear accident in 1986 has any number of abandoned structures and relics, there’s something about the “claw of death” which people find especially eerie.  The radioactive artifact of Soviet-era nuclear power-plant design is a hydraulically activated clawed bucket which was once attached to one of the pieces of heavy machinery used to move contaminated objects during the decontamination process and although there are contradictory reports, it seems it was used to clear concrete, uranium & graphite debris from the collapsed roof of the building which housed the destroyed reactor.

Today, and for the indefinite future, the claw is located in the yard of the Service of Special Engineering Works in Pripyat and has become a tourist attraction and is always on the itinerary of guided tours of Chernobyl, the moniker “Claw of Death” a little misleading: it’s safe to within a few metres of the thing for a short period although close, prolonged exposure would cause radiation poisoning.  As soon as the clean-up operation was complete, the claw was dumped where it now sits and things were done in such a rush it was left in the middle of a road.  Because of Moscow’s “special military operation”, Chernobyl tourism is in abeyance but there’s no suggesting the claw will be moved so when business resumes, the claw will be waiting.  It can’t be melted-down or buried because of the risk of contaminating the soil or groundwater.

Lindsay Lohan as "Carrie" meets Freddy Krueger (boxer Floyd Mayweather (b 1977)), A Night Full of Fright, Halloween party at Foxwoods Resort Casino, Connecticut, 30 October 2013 (left).  Freddy Krueger was "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs", the antagonist in the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series (of which ANoES III was the best) and portrayed most memorably by Robert Englund (b 1947) (right).  His signature device was the clawed glove.

Reinsure

Reinsure (pronounced ree-in-shoor or ree-in-shur)

(1) In insurance, to again insure.

(2) In insurance, to insure under a contract by which a first insurer is relieved of part or all of the risk (on which a policy has already been issued), which devolves upon another insurer.  It’s preferable in this context to use the hyphenated re-insure to distinguish from reinsure (the again of again insuring something.

1745–55: The construct was re- + insure.  The re- prefix was from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exceptions are all forms of be and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.  Insure was from the mid-fifteenth century insuren, a variant spelling of the late fourteenth century ensuren (to assure, give formal assurance (also the earlier (circa 1400) sense of "make secure, make safe")) from the Anglo-French enseurer & Old French ensurer, probably influenced by Old French asseurer (assure), the construct being en- (make) + seur or sur (safe, secure, undoubted).  The technical meaning in commerce (make safe against loss by payment of premiums; undertake to ensure against loss etc) dates from 1635 and replaced assure in that sense.  Reinsure, reinsured & reinsuring are verbs and reinsurer & reinsurance are nouns; the common noun plural is reinsurances.

Reinsurance

In commerce, reinsurance is a contract of insurance an insurance company buys from a third-party insurance company to (in whole or in part) limit its liability in the event of against the original policy.  In the industry jargon, the company purchasing the reinsurance is called the "ceding company" (or "cedent" or "cedant") while the issuer of the reinsurance policy is the "reinsurer".  Reinsurance can be used for collateral purposes such as a device to conform to regulatory capital requirements or as a form of transfer payment to maximize the possibilities offered by international taxation arrangements purposes but the primary purpose is as risk-management, a form of hedging in what is essentially a high-stakes gambling market.  There are specialised reinsurance companies which, in their insurance operations, do little but reinsurance but many general insurers also operate in the market, their contracts sometimes layered as they reinsure risk they’re previously assumed as reinsurance.

In the industry, there are seven basic flavors of reinsurance:

(1) Facultative coverage: This protects an insurance provider only for an individual, or a specified risk, or contract.  If there are several risks or contracts that needed to be reinsured, each one must be negotiated separately and the reinsurer has all the right to accept or deny a facultative reinsurance proposal.  Facultative reinsurance comprises a significant percentage of reinsurance business and must, by definition, be negotiated individually for each policy reinsured.  Facultative reinsurance is normally purchased by a cedent for risks either not or insufficiently covered by reinsurance treaties, for amounts above contractual thresholds or for unusual risks.    

(2) Reinsurance treaty: A treaty contract is one in effect for a specified period of time, rather than on a per risk, or contract basis.  For the term of the contract, the reinsurer agrees to cover all or a portion of the risks that may be have been incurred by the cedent.  Treaty reinsurance is however just another contract and there’s no defined template; the agreement may obligate the reinsurer to accept reinsurance of all contracts within the scope ("obligatory reinsurance”) or it may allow the insurer to choose which risks it wants to cede, with the reinsurer obligated to accept such risks ("facultative-obligatory reinsurance ((fac oblig)).

(3) Proportional reinsurance: Under this contract, the reinsurer receives a pro-rated share of the premiums of all policies sold by the cedent, the corollary being that when claims are made, the reinsurer bears a pro-rata portion of the losses.  The two pro-rata calculations need not be the same; that a function of agreement by contract but, in proportional reinsurance, the reinsurer will also reimburse the cedent for defined administrative costs such as processing, business acquisition and writing costs.  The industry jargon for this is “ceding commission” and the payment of costs can be front-loaded (ie paid up-front).  Technically, it’s a kind of agency arrangement best thought of as out-sourcing.

(4) Non-proportional reinsurance: Non-proportional reinsurance, also known as “threshold policies”, permit claims against the policy to be invoked only if the cedent’s losses exceed a specified amount (which can be defined in the relevant currency or as a percentage) which is referred to as the priority or retention limit.  Operating something like excess in domestic insurance, it means the does not have a proportional share in the premiums and losses of cedent and the priority or retention limit may be based on a single type of risk or an entire business category; this is a matter of contractual agreement.

(5) Excess-of-Loss (EoL) reinsurance: This is a specialised variation of non-proportional coverage, again the reinsurer covering only losses exceeding the cedent’s retained limit but EoLs are used almost exclusively in large-scale, high-value contracts associated with the coverage of catastrophic events.  The contracts can cover cedent either on a per occurrence basis or for all the cumulative losses within a specified term.

(6) Risk-attaching reinsurance: Here, all claims established during the define term of the reinsurance will be covered, regardless of whether the losses occurred outside the coverage period whereas no coverage will extend to claims which originate outside the coverage period, even if the losses occurred while the reinsurance contract is in effect.  These contracts are executed generally in specific industries where circumstances differ from the commercial mainstream.

(7) Loss-occurring coverage: A kind of brute-force coverage where the cedent can claim against all losses that occur during the term of the reinsurance contract, the essential aspect being when the event causing the loss have occurred, not when the claim has been booked.

Bismarck and the Reinsurance Treaty

Although in force barely three years between 1887-1890, the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret protocol between the German and Russian Empires, was an important landmark in European diplomatic history, partly because of the part it played in the intricate structure of alliances and agreements maintained by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) but mostly because of the significance of the circumstances in which it lapsed and the events which followed.

A typically precise Bismarkian construct, the treaty required both parties to remain neutral were the other to become involved in a war with a third great power, but stipulated that term would not apply (1) if Germany attacked France or (2) if Russia attacked Austria-Hungary.  Under the treaty, Germany acknowledged Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia as part of the Russian sphere of influence and agreed to support Russia in (essentially any) actions it might take against the Ottoman Empire to secure or extend hegemony in the Black Sea, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the straits leading to the Mediterranean.  The treaty had its origins in the sundering in 1887 of the earlier tripartite German-Austro-Hungarian-Russian (Dreikaiserbund (League of the Three Emperors)) which had had to lapse because Vienna and St Petersburg were both anxious to extend their spheres of interests in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire declined and needed to keep options open.

Otto von Bismark.

Bismarck interlocking system of alliances was designed to preserve peace in Europe and the spectre of a competition between Russia and Austria–Hungary to carve up the Ottoman spoils in the Balkans, thus the attraction of the reinsurance treaty to forestall the risk of an alliance between St Petersburg and Paris.  Ever since the Franco-Prussian war, the cornerstone of Bismarck’s foreign policy had been the diplomatic isolation of France, his nightmare being hostile states to the west and east, a dynamic in Germany political thought which would last generations.  It certainly wasn’t true he believed (as he was reputed to have said), that the Balkans weren’t worth the death on one German soldier and that he never bothered reading the mailbag from Constantinople, but he did think it infinitely preferable to manage what should be low-intensity conflicts there than the threat of fighting a war on two fronts against France and Russia.  Thus the Reinsurance Treaty which, strictly speaking, didn’t contradict the alliance between the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the neutrality clauses not applying if Germany attacked France or Russia attacked Austria-Hungary.

Kaiser Wilhelm II in uniform as an Admiral of the Fleet in the British Royal Navy (circa 1896), oil on canvas (believed to be painted from a photograph), by Rudolph Wimmer (1849-1915).

However, Bismarck’s system was much dependent on his skills and sense of the possible.  Once Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia 1888-1918) dismissed Bismarck in 1890, German foreign policy fell into the hands of a sovereign who viewed the European map as a matter to be discussed between kings and Bismarck's successor as Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi (1831–1899; Chancellor of the German Empire 1890-1894) was inexperienced in such matters.  Indeed it was von Caprivi who, showing a punctiliousness towards treaties one of his successors wouldn’t choose to adopt, took seriously the contradictions with some existing arrangements the Reinsurance Treaty at least implied and declined the Russian request in 1890 for a renewal.  From that point were unleashed the forces which would see Russian and France drawn together while Germany strengthened its ties to Austria-Hungry and the Ottomans while simultaneously seeking to compete with Britain as a naval power, a threat which would see Britain and France set aside centuries of enmity to conclude anti-German arrangements.  While the path from the end of the Reinsurance Treaty to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 wasn’t either inevitable or lineal, it’s not that crooked.

Reinsurance recommended: Lindsay Lohan in Esurance Sorta Mom advertisement for Esurance Insurance (an Allstate company).