Peptonize

Peptonize (pronounced pep-tuh-nahyz)

(1) In physiology and biochemistry, to hydrolyse (a protein) to peptones by a proteolytic enzyme, especially by pepsin or pancreatic extract (done usually to aid digestion).

(2) In biochemistry, any water-soluble mixture of polypeptides and amino acids formed by the partial hydrolysis of protein.

(3) To render a text or some other form into something more easily understood (ie a figurative use of the notion of “making more digestible”).

1877: The construct was peptone + ize.  The noun peptone was from the German Pepton, from the Ancient Greek πεπτόν (peptón) (cooked, digested), (neuter of peptos), the verbal adjective of peptein (to cook), from πέπτω (péptō) (soften, ripen, boil, cook, bake, digest); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European root pekw (to cook; to ripen).  The –ize suffix was from the Middle English -isen, from the Middle French -iser, from the Medieval Latin -izō, from the Ancient Greek -ίζω (-ízō), from the primitive Indo-European verbal suffix -idyé-.  It was cognate with other verbal suffixes including the Gothic -itjan, the Old High German –izzen and the Old English -ettan (verbal suffix).  It was used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives which (1) make what is denoted by the noun or adjective & (2) do what is denoted by the noun or adjective; the alternative form is –ise.  In British English, alternative spelling is peptonise.  Peptonize, peptonized & peptonizing are verbs, peptonic is an adjective and peptonization & peptonizer are nouns; the most common noun plural is peptonizations.

Peptone was adopted as the general name for a substance into which the nitrogenous elements of food are converted by digestion.  The word entered scientific English in 1860, the German Pepton having first appeared in academic papers in 1849.  Being used in chemistry, a number of derived forms were created as required including antipeptone (a product of gastric and pancreatic digestion, differing from hemipeptone in not being decomposed by the continued action of pancreatic juice), hemipeptone (a product of gastric and pancreatic digestion of albuminous matter, which (unlike antipeptone) is convertible into leucin and tyrosin by the continued action of pancreatic juice; it's formed also from hemialbumose and albumin by boiling dilute sulphuric acid), bactopeptone (a peptone used as a bacterial culture medium) and neopeptone (a commercial mixture of peptones & vitamins), amphopeptone (a product of gastric digestion, a mixture of hemipeptone and antipeptone

Peptides attracted interest some years ago when their use in the performance enhancing drugs (PED) supplied to athletes was publicized.  Peptones and peptides are both derived from proteins but have distinct differences in their structures and properties.  Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds and are naturally occurring molecules found in the body and in some foods (hence the interest in their use in PEDs), their biological functions including acting as signaling molecules, hormones, and enzymes.  Under laboratory conditions or during industrial process they can also be derived from the hydrolysis of proteins to be used as therapeutic agents, diagnostic tools, and in many research environments.  Examples of peptides include oxytocin, vasopressin, and insulin.  Peptones are mixtures of amino acids and peptides produced by the partial hydrolysis of proteins and are significantly larger and more complex than peptides.  In the body, they’re produced by the digestion of natural proteins using enzymes or acids and in microbiological culture media are widely used as a source of amino acids and peptides which readily can be utilized by microorganisms for growth and metabolism.  In the industrial production of food, peptones are a common flavor enhancer and examples include tryptone, casitone, and yeast extract.

Mother's other little helper: Peptonized port was once recommended for nursing mothers.

The reason the verb peptonize (and peptonise) is at all known beyond biochemistry & industrial laboratories is the form can by analogy be used to describe the process by which some long or unintelligible document is rendered into something more easily digestible.  In this it differs from “abridge” which describes reducing the size of a document and, strictly speaking, the process should be restricted to removing passages of text which are not essential to the meaning or which intrude on the narrative flow.  Abridgment of novels (of which those published by the Reader’s Digest periodical remain the best-known) have become a popular form and often appear in editions including several of an author’s works.  The Reader's Digest began publication of these anthologies (fiction & nonfiction) in 1950 and originally they marketed by advertisements in the periodical and in mail-order catalogues (which were for 150-odd years a form of distribution which can be considered the B2C (business to consumer) websites of the pre-internet age as “Reader's Digest Condensed Books” before in 1997 being re-branded as “Reader's Digest Select Editions”.  There were some who were rather snobby about the Reader's Digest because it avoided abstractions and wrote for a literate but not necessarily highly educated audience and the news in the 1980s that it was Ronald Reagan’s (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) preferred periodical reinforced the prejudice although it appears also to have boosted circulation.  More sympathetic critics however have praised the editing of the company’s abridged editions which they in more than one case observed made for a better novel.

Among the more infamous suggested abridgments was that recommended by some critics for Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) dark satire Catch-22 (1961).  Apparently not enjoying the mental gymnastics demanded by the structure, not only did they suggest one or more chapters should be deleted, the consensus appeared it be it would matter little which chapters were sacrificed in the desired abridgment.  Time has been kinder to the book and few would now suggest deleting anything although the author, like many novelists, discarded much from his early drafts and in 2003 release Catch as Catch Can which included two chapters which never made it to the final draft (the previously published Love, Dad & Yossarian Survives), both of which worked well as short stories which were more viciously condemnatory of the US military than even what appeared in 1961.  Six decades on, it’s difficult to make the case removing a chapter from Catch-22 would in anyway peptonize to work although in at least one literary studies course students were set the task of working out which chapter could be deleted with the fewest consequential changes needing to be imposed on the rest. 

In 1970 however, it became possible to assess what would happen if chunks of the book were deleted because that year a film “version” was released and to produce that, radically the novel was abridged.  Whether it was much peptonized by the process was at least questionable, the phrase in the review by Richard Schickel (1933–2017): “One of our novels is missing” capturing the view of many.  In fairness, given the sprawling scale, there was of course no other way it could be condensed into two hours of screen time and something spread over many viewings, a la Richard Wagner’s (1813–1883) Ring Cycle (1876), would have brought its own problems.  Still, by 2019 technology had made the habits of audiences change and a six-part mini-series was released.  With a total running time over four hours it was still not enough to encompass the whole novel but hardly of a length to intimidate the binge generation and as a piece of entertainment it was well received although the advice of the serious-minded remained the same: read the book.

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

Both the film and the book actually went well beyond mere abridgment, verging solidly into what students of the visual forms call “interpretation” or “adaptation” so people can decide whether there was peptonization, simplification or both.  By contrast, a document subjected to a peptonization may be rendered shorter, longer or even transformed into a different format.  The genre known as “popular” (“popular science” and “popular history” the best known) often contain elements from technical or academic works which are re-written into a form more easily comprehended by readers without background in the specialization and is a classic form of peptonization.  Once can also exist as an adjunct document which accompanies the substantive text: an explanatory memorandum and an executive summary are both examples and even the abstract which sits as a header can fulfil the function and all three probably are valued by many because they obviate any need to read something which may be tiresomely and often needlessly long.  That may have been what Lord Salisbury (1893-1972) had in mind when in 1952 he remarked of the idea “…budget proposals could be simplified and summarized a little before being shown to the prime-minister.”: “Of course, I don’t know how far they are peptonized already.”  Even then, such use was rare (certainly outside the House of Lords) and now the meaning functionally be extinct.

Approved by His Majesty's Home Secretary.

In England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, peptonised milk was part of the treatment regimes used in the force-feeding of patients in lunatic asylums, suffragettes on hunger strike those afflicted by Anorexia Nervosa (then still often called Anorexia Hysterica).  The method didn’t long endure in dealing with the bolshie proto-feminists because the public reaction was such the Home Office usually relented.  It remained often used for the anorexics and it presumably enjoyed some success but in 1895 The Lancet (a weekly medical journal first published in 1823) reported a fatal case: “The patient refused food so ‘was fed an enemata of peptonised milk, beef tea and brandy.  This was carried out for two to three days and in ten days she could take a moderate diet by the mouth, but suffered from diarrhoea.  On the thirteenth day after admission she rapidly became worse, the temperature rose to 102°F, and on the fifteenth day she died.”

Obviate

Obviate (pronounced ob-vee-eyt)

(1) To anticipate and prevent or eliminate difficulties, disadvantages etc by effective measures; to render unnecessary.

(2) To avoid a future problem or difficult situation.

(3) In linguistics, as obviative, a grammatical marker that distinguishes a relatively non-salient referent in a given context from a relatively salient (proximate) one.

1590–1600: From the Late Latin obviātus (prevented), past participle of obviāre (to act contrary to; go against; to block; to hinder), second-person plural present active imperative of obviō, derivative of obvius, from the adjective obviam (in the way), the construct being ob (in front of, against) + viam, accusative of via (way).  The noun obviation was from the early fifteenth century obviacioun (encounter, contact, exposure), from the Medieval Latin obviationem (nominative obviatio), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of obviare (act contrary to, go against).  Obviate is a noun & verb, obviator & obviation are nouns, obviated & obviating are verbs and obviative is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is obviates.

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

Obviate is sometimes misused.  Only things that have not yet occurred can be obviated; one can obviate a possible future difficulty, but not one which already exists.  For over a century, obviate has attracted the attention of the grammar Nazis and the objection has always been that “obviate the necessity” or “obviate the need” are redundant.  Technically however, these phrases are not redundancies in the sense that “obviate the necessity” is to prevent the necessity from arising, hence to make unnecessary.  Wilson Follett (1887-1963) in Modern American Usage (published posthumously in 1966) took the position that obviate can mean only “make unnecessary” and not “anticipate and prevent” but usage guides since have been less prescriptive, noting the older but still current meaning “to avoid an anticipated difficulty."  Thus, in a sentence like “.. avoiding discussion of these matters can obviate any need for separate communiqués”, the need can be perceived as a difficulty in which case any “need for” is indeed redundant.  There seems no reason to prefer one interpretation to the other because it’s hardly ever the case that meaning can be obscured and the choice should be based on which produces the most elegant sentence.

Annex

Annex, Anex or Annexe (pronounced uh-neks, an-eks or an-iks)

(1) To attach, append, or add, especially to something larger or more important.

(2) To incorporate (territory) into the domain of a city, country, or state.

(3) To take or appropriate, especially without permission.

(4) To attach as an attribute, condition, or consequence.

(5) Something annexed.

(6) In architecture, a subsidiary building or an addition to a building.

(7) Something added to a document; appendix; supplement.

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the Anglo-French and Old French annexer (to join), from the Medieval Latin annexāre, from the Classical Latin annexus (tied to), past participle of annectere (to attach to; to connect with) from nectere (to join; to tie; bind).  It now almost always means "to join in a subordinate capacity", usually as it applies to nations or territories and the meaning “supplementary building" is from 1861.  In legal use, as it applies to documents, it’s an alternative to "append".  The alternative spellings are anex (US) and annexe (used variously in the rest of the English-speaking world).  Annex is a noun & verb; annexion, annexation, annexationism, annexationist, annexer & annexure are nouns, the noun plural is annexes.

A type of theft

Annexation is the formal act by which a state proclaims sovereignty over territory once outside its domain and varies from an act of cession in which territory is given away or sold.  Annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition and historically, annexation has been preceded by conquest and military occupation although in a few cases, such as the Anschluss, the 1938 German annexation of Austria, conquest may be accomplished by the threat of force without active hostilities and military occupation does not constitute or necessarily lead to annexation.  When military occupation results in annexation, an official announcement is the usual protocol, announcing the sovereign authority of the annexing state has been established and will be maintained in future.  This was the usual way of doing things, such as when Burma was annexed to the British Empire in 1886 and followed by Israel in 1981 when it annexed the Golan Heights.  George Orwell (1903-1950), who had spent time employed by the colonial police in Burma, when asked to explain the methods and purposes of the British Empire answered: "theft".  Privately, most in  the Foreign Office probably agreed but preferred "annexation" in official documents.  The subsequent recognition of annexation by other states may be explicit or implied; annexation based on the illegal use of force is condemned in the Charter of the United Nations and there are effectively annexed lands which for decades have been regarded as “disputed territory”.

Lindsay Lohan, after party at the Annex following Freaky Friday (2003) premiere, Hollywood, August 2003.

The formalities of annexation are not defined by international law; whether it be done by one authority or another within a state is a matter of constitutional law and conditions may exist which obviate the necessity for conquest prior to annexation.  In 1910 for example, Japan converted its protectorate of Korea into an annexed colony by means of proclamation; in a legal sense it was no more than a simple administrative act.  Preceding its annexation of the Svalbard Islands in 1925, Norway eliminated its competitors by means of a treaty in which the islanders agreed to Norwegian possession.  Annexation of Hawaii by the United States in the late nineteenth century was a peaceful process, based upon the willing acceptance by the Hawaiian government of US authority.  The Italian annexation of Ethiopia in 1936 was accomplished by a decree issued by the Italian King and joint resolutions of Congress were the means by which the United States annexed Texas (1845) and Hawaii (1898).

Prevent & preempt or pre-empt

Prevent (pronounced pri-vent)

(1) To keep from occurring; avert; hinder, especially by the taking of some precautionary action.

(2) To hinder or stop from doing something.

(3) To act ahead of; to forestall (archaic).

(4) To precede or anticipate (archaic).

(5) To interpose a hindrance.

(6) To outdo or surpass (obsolete).

1375–1425: From the late Middle English preventen (anticipate), from the Latin praeventus, past participle of (1) praevenīre (to anticipate; come or go before, anticipate), the construct being prae- (pre; before) + ven- (stem of venīre (come)) + -tus (the past participle suffix) and (2) praeveniō (I anticipate), the construct being prae- (pre; before) + veniō (I come).  In Classical Latin the meaning was literal but in Late Latin, by the 1540s the sense of “to prevent” had emerged, the evolution explained by the idea of “anticipate to hinder; hinder from action by opposition of obstacles”.  That meaning seems not to have entered English until the 1630s.

The adjective preventable (that can be prevented or hindered) dates from the 1630s, the related preventability a decade-odd later.  The adjective preventative (serving to prevent or hinder) is noted from the 1650s and for centuries, dictionaries have listed it as an irregular formation though use seems still prevalent; preventive is better credentialed but now appears relegated to be merely an alternative form.  The adjective preventive (serving to prevent or hinder; guarding against or warding off) has the longer pedigree (used since the 1630s) and was from the Latin praevent-, past-participle stem of praevenīre (to anticipate; come or go before, anticipate).  It was used as a noun in the sense of "something taken or done beforehand” since the 1630s and had entered the jargon of medicine by the 1670s, and under the influence of the physicians came the noun preventiveness (the quality of being preventive).  The noun prevention came from the mid-fifteenth century prevencioun (action of stopping an event or practice), from the Medieval Latin preventionem (nominative preventio) (action of anticipating; a going before), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of the Classical Latin praevenīre.  The original sense in English has been obsolete since at least the late seventeenth century although it was used in a poetically thus well into the 1700s.  Prevent is a verb, preventable (or preventible), preventive & preventative are adjectives, preventability (or preventibility) is a noun and preventably (preventibly) is an adverb.  The archaic spelling is prævent.

Many words are associated with prevent including obstruct, obviate, prohibit, rule out, thwart, forbid, restrict, hamper, halt, forestall, avoid, restrain, hinder, avert, stop, impede, inhibit, bar, preclude, counter, limit & block.  Prevent, hamper, hinder & impede refer to so degree of stoppage of action or progress.  “To prevent” is to stop something by forestalling action and rendering it impossible.  “To hamper” or “to hinder” is to clog or entangle or put an embarrassing restraint upon; not necessarily preventing but certainly making more difficult and both refer to a process or act intended to prevent as opposed to the prevention.  “To impede” is to make difficult the movement or progress of anything by interfering with its proper functioning; it implies some physical or figurative impediment designed to prevent something.

Preempt or pre-empt (pronounced pree-empt)

(1) To occupy (usually public) land in order to establish a prior right to buy.

(2) To acquire or appropriate before someone else; take for oneself; arrogate.

(3) To take the place of because of priorities, reconsideration, rescheduling, etc; supplant.

(4) In bridge, to make a preemptive bid (a high opening bid, made often a bluff by a player holding a weak hand, in an attempt to shut out opposition bidding).

(5) To forestall or prevent (something anticipated) by acting first; preclude; head off.

(6) In computer operating systems, the class of actions used by the OS to determine how long a task should be executed before allowing another task to interact with OS services (as opposed to cooperative multitasking where the OS never initiates a context switch one running process to another.

(7) In the jargon of broadcasting, a euphemism for "cancel” (technical use only).

1830: An invention of US English, a back formation from preemption which was from the Medieval Latin praeēmptiō (previous purchase), from praeemō (buy before), the construct being prae- (pre; before) + emō (buy).  The creation related to the law or real property (land law), to preempt (or pre-empt) being “to occupy public land so as to establish a pre-emptive title to it".  In broadcasting, by 1965 it gained the technical meaning of "set aside a programme and replace it with another" which was actually a euphemism for "cancel”.  Preempt is a verb (and can be a noun in the jargon of broadcasting and computer coding), preemptor is a noun and preempted, preemptory, preemptive & preemptible are adjectives.  The alternative spelling is pre-empt and the (rare) noun plural preempts.

In law, broadcasting and computer operating system architecture, preempt has precise technical meanings but when used casually, it can either overlap or be synonymonous with words like claim, usurp, confiscate, acquire, expropriate, seize, assume, arrogate, anticipate, commandeer, appropriate, obtain, bump, sequester, take, usurp, annex & accroach.  The spelling in the forms præemption, præ-emption etc is archaic).

Preemptive and Preventive War

A preemptive war is a military action by one state against another which is begun with the intent of defeating what is perceived to be an imminent attack or at least gaining a strategic advantage in the impending (and allegedly unavoidable) war before that attack begins. The “preemptive war” is sometimes confused with the “preventive war”, the difference being that the latter is intended to destroy a potential rather than imminent threat; a preventative war may be staged in the absence of enemy aggression or even the suspicion of military planning.  In international law, preventive wars are now generally regarded as aggressive and therefore unlawful whereas a preemptive war can be lawful if authorized by the UN Security Council as an enforcement action.  Such authorizations are not easily gained because the initiation of armed conflict except in self-defense against “armed attack” is not permitted by the United Nations (UN) Charter and only the Security Council can endorse an action as a lawful “action of enforcement”.  Legal theorists suggest that if it can be established that preparations for a future attack have been confirmed, even if the attack has not be commenced, under international law the attack has actually “begun” but the UN has never upheld this opinion.  Militarily, the position does make sense, especially if the first two indictments of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) assembled at Nuremberg (1945-19465) to try the surviving Nazi leadership ((1) planning aggressive war & (2) waging aggressive war) are considered as a practical reality rather than in the abstract.

Legal (as opposed to moral or ethical) objections to preemptive or preventive wars were not unknown but until the nineteenth century, lawyers and statesmen gave wide latitude to the “right of self-defense” which really was a notion from natural law writ large and a matter determined ultimately on the battlefield, victory proof of the ends justifying the means.  Certainly, there was a general recognition of the right forcibly to forestall an attack and the first legal precedent of note wasn’t codified until 1842 in the matter of the Caroline affair (1837).  Then, some Canadian citizens sailed from Canada to the US in the Caroline as part of a planned offensive against the British in Canada.  The British crossed the border and attached, killing both Canadians and a US citizen which led to a diplomatic crisis and several years of low-level clashes.  Ultimately however, the incident led to the formulation of the legal principle of the "Caroline test" which demands that for self-defense to be invoked, an incident must be "…instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".  Really, that’s an expression little different in meaning to the criteria used in many jurisdictions which must exist for the claim of defense to succeed in criminal assault cases (including murder).  The "Caroline test" remains an accepted part of international law today, although obviously one which must be read in conjunction with an understanding of the events for the last 250-odd years.

The "Caroline test" however was a legal principle and such things need to be enforced and that requires both political will and a military mechanism.  In the aftermath of the Great War (1914-1918), that was the primary purpose of the League of Nations (LON), an international organization (the predecessor of the UN) of states, all of which agreed to desist from the initiation of all wars, (preemptive or otherwise).  Despite the reputation the LON now has as an entirely ineffectual talking shop, in the 1920s it did enjoy some success in settling international disputes and was perceived as effective.  It was an optimistic age, the Locarno Treaties (1925) and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) appeared to outlaw war but the LON (or more correctly its member states) proved incapable of halting the aggression in Europe, Asia and Africa which so marked the 1930s.  Japan and Italy had been little punished for their invasions and Nazi Germany, noting Japan’s construction of China as a “technical aggressor” claimed its 1939 invasion of Poland was a “defensive war” and it had no option but to preemptively invade Poland, thereby halting the alleged Polish plans to invade Germany.  Berlin's claims were wholly fabricated.  The design of the UN was undertaken during the war and structurally was different; an attempt to create something which could prevent aggression.

There have been no lack of examples since 1939.  Both the British and Germans staged preemptive invasions of Norway in 1940 though the IMT at Nuremberg was no more anxious to discuss this Allied transgression than they were war crimes or crimes against humanity by anyone except the Nazis.  The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 proceeded without undue difficulty but that couldn’t be said of the Suez Crisis of 1956 when the British, French and Israelis staged an war of aggression which not even London was hypocritical enough to claim was pre-emption or preventive; they called it a peace-keeping operation, a claim again wholly fabricated.  The Six-Day War (1967) which began when Israel attached Egypt is regarded by most in the West as preemptive rather than preventive because of the wealth of evidence suggesting Egypt was preparing to attack although the term “interceptive self-defense” has also be coined although, except as admirable sophistry, it’s not clear if this is either descriptive or helpful.  However, whatever the view, Israel’s actions in 1967 would seem not to satisfy the Caroline test but whether “…leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”, written in the age of sail and musketry, could reasonably be held in 1967 to convey quite the same meaning was obviously questionable.

Interest in the doctrine of preemption was renewed following the US invasion of Iraq (2003).  The US claimed the action was a necessity to intervene to prevent Iraq from deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) prior to launching an armed attack.  Subsequently, it was found no WMDs existed but the more interesting legal point is whether the US invasion would have been lawful had WMDs been found.  Presumably, Iraq’s resistance to the attack was lawful regardless of the status of the US attack.  The relevant sections (Article 2, Section 4) of the UN Charter are considered jus cogens (literally "compelling law" (ie “international law”)).  They prohibit all UN members from exercising "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".  However, this apparently absolute prohibition must be read in conjunction with the phrase "armed attack occurs" (Article 51, Section 37) which differentiates between legitimate and illegitimate military force.  It states that if no armed attack has occurred, no automatic justification for preemptive self-defense has yet been made lawful under the Charter and in order to be justified, two conditions must be fulfilled: (1) that the state must have believed that the threat is real and not a mere perception and (2) that the force used must be proportional to the harm threatened.  As history has illustrated, those words permit much scope for those sufficiently imaginative.

Mr Putin (Vladimir Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999)), although avoiding distasteful words like "aggression" “war” or “invasion”, did use the language associated with preemptive and preventive wars in his formal justification for Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine.  Firstly he claimed, Russia is using force in self-defence, pursuant to Article 51 of the Charter, to protect itself from a threat emanating from Ukraine.  This threat, if real, could justify preemptive self-defence because, even if an attack was not “imminent”, there was still an existential threat so grave that it was necessary immediately to act (essentially the same argument the US used in 2003).  This view met with little support, most holding any such theory of preemption is incompatible with Article 51 which really is restricted to permitting anticipatory self-defence in response to imminent attacks. Secondly he cited the right of collective self-defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” although neither are states and even if one accepts they’ve been subject to a Ukranian attack, the extent of Russia’s military intervention and the goal of regime change in Kyiv appear far to exceed the customary criteria of necessity and proportionality.  Finally, the Kremlin claimed the special military action was undertaken as a humanitarian intervention, the need to stop or prevent a genocide of Russians in Eastern Ukraine.  Few commented on this last point.