Bleak

Bleak (pronounced bleek)

(1) Bare, desolate, and often windswept.

(2) Cold and piercing; raw.

(3) Without hope or encouragement; depressing; dreary.

(4) A number of species of fish, the best known of which is probably the European freshwater fish, Alburnus, having scales with a silvery pigment used in the production of artificial pearls.

(5) Pale (obsolete).

1300-1350: From the Middle English bleke (also bleche, source of the Modern English bleach, and bleike (due to Old Norse), and the earlier Middle English blak & blac (pale, wan), from the Old English blǣc, blǣċ & blāc (bleak, pale, pallid, wan, livid; bright, shining, glittering, flashing) and the Old Norse bleikr (pale, whitish), from the Proto-Germanic blaikaz (pale, shining). It was cognate with the Old Norse bleikja & bleikr (white), the Old High German bleih, the Dutch bleek (pale, wan, pallid), the Low German blek (pale), the German bleich (pale, wan, sallow), the Danish bleg (pale), the Swedish blek (pale, pallid), the Norwegian bleik (pale), the Faroese bleikur (pale) and the Icelandic bleikur (pale, pink).  Akin to bleach, the primitive Indo-European root was bhel- (to shine, flash, burn (also "shining white").  Bleak is a noun & adjective, bleakness a noun, bleakish, bleaker & bleakest are adjectives and bleakly is an adverb; the noun plural (of fish) is bleaks or bleak (especially of a large number).

The original English sense (pale, wan etc) is long obsolete; the meaning modern meaning "bare, windswept" emerging in the 1530s, the figurative sense of "cheerless" first noted circa 1719.  The same Germanic root produced the Middle English blake (pale (bacc in the Old English)), but this fell from use, probably from confusion with blæc (black); the surviving surname “Blake” a demonstration of this, its roots traced variously to both "one of pale complexion" and "one of dark complexion".  Bleak has survived, not in the "pale" sense, but meaning only "bare, barren."  Common related words and synonyms include desolate, austere, dreary, chilly, cold, grim, lonely, harsh, somber, sad, dark, gloomy, dismal, bare, blank, burned, cleared, desert, deserted & exposed.

Jarndyce v Jarndyce,  Court of Chancery

Although now thought a conventional novel, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published Bleak House in twenty serialized episodes between March 1852 and September 1853, a technique popular at the time.  It’s the recounting of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, a long-running (fictional) case in the Court of Chancery and is a critical satire of the English legal system.

In the novel, the matter of Jarndyce v Jarndyce ran in the Court of Chancery for generations, ending not in resolution but closing only when it was found that legal costs charged over the years had absorbed all the money in the estate.  The legal profession was critical of Bleak House, claiming it was much-exaggerated and hardly typical of the cases heard in Chancery but Dickens’ depiction was not wholly fictional, there being a number of cases which had dragged on for decades, ending, like Jarndyce v Jarndyce, only because legal costs had consumed all the funds which were the source of the original action, two decades-old Chancery cases mentioned in the author's preface as his inspiration.  Nor was Dickens alone in his criticism of this judicial lethargy, many, including some within the profession, had long advocated reform and the author's interest was also personal.  One, he'd worked as a legal clerk and had successfully brought before Chancery an action for breach of copyright but, despite winning the case, had been forced to pay costs because the other party declared bankruptcy.

A bleak visage.

The Court of Chancery (or court of equity) was one half of the English civil justice system, running in parallel with the common-law courts.  Chancery had evolved into a recognizable form in the fourteenth century as a court concerned more with justice and fairness than the rigid and precise rules under which the common-law courts operated, its most famous innovation being the laws of trusts which exist to this day.  However, Chancery’s increasing remit begat its own bureaucratic inertia and as early as the sixteen century the court was criticized for its leisurely pace, long backlogs and high costs; despite sporadic attempts at reform, especially during the early nineteenth century, the problems persisted.  The core of the problem was that every delay in the process meant another fee was charged and those fees were paid to the court's officials, thus providing an economic incentive for them to find reasons for delays.

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

A number of enquiries concluded the difficulties (obvious to all except those benefiting from the system) were structural, the solution: dissolution.  In 1873 and 1875 the Supreme Court of Judicature Acts dissolved the Chancery and created a unified High Court of Justice, with Chancery becoming one of three divisions of the High Court, thus preserving equity as a parallel stream of law but resolving many of the administrative impediments to judicial efficiency.  The reform didn't infect the whole judicial system; even in the twentieth century, the House of Lords once took nearly eighteen years to hand down a decision.  The judicial indolence surprised few, Sir Patrick Dean (1909–1994; UK Ambassador to the US 1965-1969) of the foreign office once noting business in the Lords was often "conducted at a leisurely pace".

Charles Dickens' former "holiday cottage", overlooking Viking Bay in the Kent town of Broadstairs, came to be called Bleak House after the novel was published.  Built in 1801, it's said to be where the author wrote his his eighth novel, David Copperfield  (1849-1850), the manuscript for which reached the publisher with the informative title The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account).

Slag

Slag (pronounced slag)

(1) The substantially fused and vitrified matter separated during the reduction of a metal from its ore; also called cinder.

(2) The scoria (the mass of rough fragments of pyroclastic rock and cinders produced during a volcanic eruption) from a volcano.

(3) In the post-production classification of coal for purposes of sale, the left-over waste for the sorting process; used also of the waste material (as opposed to by-product) from any extractive mining.

(4) In industrial processing, to convert into slag; to reduce to slag.

(5) In the production of steel and other metals, the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal.

(6) In commercial metallurgy, to remove slag from a steel bath.

(7) To form slag; become a slaglike mass.

(8) In slang, an abusive woman (historic UK slang, now a rare use).

(9) In slang, a term of contempt used usually by men of women with a varied history but now to some degree synonymous with “unattractive slut” (of UK origin but now in use throughout the English-speaking world and used sometimes also of prostitutes as a direct synonym, the latter now less common).

(10) In the slang of UK & Ireland, a coward (now regionally limited) or a contemptible person (synonymous with the modern “scumbag” (that use still listed by many as “mostly Cockney” but now apparently rare).

(11) In Australian slang, to spit.

(12) Verbally to attack or disparage somebody or something (usually as “slag off”, “slagged them”, “slagged it off” etc); not gender-specific and used usually in some unfriendly or harshly critical manner; to malign or denigrate.  Slang dictionaries note that exclusively in Ireland, “slagging off” someone (or something) can be used in the sense of “to make fun of; to take the piss; the tease, ridicule or mock” and can thius be an affectionate form, rather in the way “bastard” was re-purposed in Australian & New Zealand slang.

1545–1555: From the Middle Low German slagge & slaggen (slag, dross; refuse matter from smelting (which endures in Modern German as Schlacke)), from the Old Saxon slaggo, from the Proto-West Germanic slaggō, from the Proto-Germanic slaggô, the construct being slag(ōną)- (to strike) + -gô (the diminutive suffix).  Although unattested, there may have been some link with the Old High German slahan (to strike, slay) and the Middle Low German slāgen (to strike; to slay), the connection being that the first slag from the working of metal were the splinters struck off from the metal by being hammered.  Slāgen was from Proto-West Germanic slagōn and the Old Saxon slegi was from the Proto-West Germanic slagi.  Slag is a noun & verb, slagability, deslag, unslag & slaglessness are nouns, slagish, slagless, slagable, deslagged unslagged, slaggy & slaglike are adjectives and slagged, deslagged, unslagged, slagging, deslagging & unslagging are verbs; the noun plural is slags.  As an indication of how industry use influences the creation of forms, although something which could be described as “reslagging” is a common, it’s regarded as a mere repetition and a consequence rather than a process.

In the UK & Ireland, the term “slag tag” is an alternative to “tramp stamp”, the tattoo which appears on the lower back.  Both rhyming forms seem similarly evocative.

The derogatory slang use dates from the late eighteenth century and was originally an argot word for “a worthless person or a thug”, something thought derived from the notion of slag being “a worthless, unsightly pile” and from this developed the late twentieth century use to refer to women and this is thought to have begun life as a something close to a euphemism for “slut” although it was more an emphasis on “unattractiveness”.  The most recent adaptation is that of “slagging off” (verbal (ie oral, in print, on film etc) denigration of someone or something, use documented since 1971 although at least one oral history traces it from the previous decade.  In vulgar slang, slag is one of the many words used (mostly) by men to disparage women.  It’s now treated as something akin to “slut” (in the sense of a “women who appears or is known to be of loose virtue) but usually with the added layer of “unattractiveness”.  The lexicon of the disparaging terms men have for women probably doesn’t need to precisely to be deconstructed and as an example, in the commonly heard “old slag”, the “old” likely operates often as an intensifier rather than an indication of age; many of those labeled “old slags” are doubtless quite young on the human scale.  Still, that there are “slags” and “old slags” does suggest men put some effort into product differentiation.

How slag heaps are created.

All uses of “slag”, figurative & literal, can be traced back to the vitreous mass left as a residue by the smelting of metallic ore, the fused material formed by combining the flux with gangue, impurities in the metal, etc.  Although there’s much variation at the margins, typically, it consists of a mixture of silicates with calcium, phosphorus, sulfur etc; in the industry it’s known also as cinder and casually as dross or recrement (the once also-used "scoria" seems now exclusively the property of volcanologists).  When deposited in place, the piles of slag are known as “slag heaps” and for more than a century, slag heaps were a common site in industrial regions and while they still exist, usually they’re now better managed (disguised).  A waste-product of steel production, slag can be re-purposed or recycled and, containing a mixture of metal oxides & silicon dioxide among other compounds, there is an inherent value which can be realized if the appropriate application can be found.  There are few technical problems confronting the re-use of slag but economics often prevent this; being bulky and heavy, slag can be expensive to transport so if a site suitable for re-use is distant, it can simply be too expensive to proceed.  Additionally, although slag can in close to its raw form be used for purposes such as road-base, if any reprocessing is required, the costs can be prohibitive.  The most common uses for slag include (1) Landfill reclamation, especially when reclaiming landfills or abandoned industrial sites, the dense material ideal for affording support & stability for new constructions, (2) the building of levees or other protective embankments where a large cubic mass is required, (3) in cement production in which ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) can be used as a supplementary component material of cement, enhancing the workability, durability and strength of concrete, (4) manufacturing including certain ceramics & glass, especially where high degrees of purity are not demanded, (5) as a soil conditioner in agriculture to add essential nutrients to the soil and improve its structure, (6) as a base for road-building and (7) as an aggregate in construction materials such as concrete and asphalt.  The attraction of recycling slag has the obvious value in that it reduces the environmental impact of steel production but it also conserves natural resources and reduces the impact of the mining which would otherwise be required.  However, the feasibility of recycling slag depends on its chemical composition and the availability of an appropriate site.

Harold Macmillan, Epsom Derby, Epsom Downs Racecourse, Surrey, 5 June 1957.

The word “slag” has been heard in the UK’s House of Commons in two of the three senses in which it’s usually deployed.  It may have been used also in the third but the Hansard reporters are unlikely to have committed that to history.  In 1872, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, UK prime-minister Feb-Dec 1868 & 1874-1880) cast his disapproving opposition leader’s gaze on the cabinet of William Gladstone (1809–1898; prime-minister 1868–1874, 1880–1885, Feb-July 1886 & 1892–1894) sitting on the opposite front bench and remarked: “Behold, a range of extinct volcanoes; not a flame flickers upon a single pallid crest.”.  Sixty-odd years later, a truculent young Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) picked up the theme in his critique of a ministry although he was slagging off fellow Tories, describing the entire government bench as “a row of disused slag heaps”, adding that the party of Disraeli was now “dominated by second-class brewers and company promoters.”  Presumably Macmillan thought to be described as a “slag heap” was something worse than “extinct volcano” and one can see his point.  The rebelliousness clearly was a family trait because in 1961, when Macmillan was prime-minister, his own son, by then also a Tory MP, delivered a waspish attack on his father’s ministry.  When asked in the house the next day if there was “a rift in the family or something”, Macmillan said: “No.”, pausing before adding with his Edwardian timing: “As the House observed yesterday, the Honorable Member for Halifax has both intelligence and independence.  How he got them is not for me to say."

Lindsay Lohan and the great "slagging off Kettering scandal".

Although lacking the poise of Macmillan, Philip Hollobone (b 1964; Tory MP for Kettering since 2005), knew honor demanded he respond to Lindsay Lohan “slagging off” his constituency.  What caught the eye of the outraged MP happened during Lindsay Lohan’s helpful commentary on Twitter (now known as X) on the night of the Brexit referendum in 2016, the offending tweet appearing after it was announced Kettering (in the Midlands county of Northamptonshire) had voted 61-39% to leave the EU: “Sorry, but Kettering where are you?”

Philip Hollobone MP, official portrait (2020).

Mr Hollobone, a long-time "leaver" (a supporter of Brexit), wasn’t about to let a mean girl "remainer's" (one who opposed Brexit) slag of Kettering escape consequences and he took his opportunity in the House of Commons, saying: “On referendum night a week ago, the pro-Remain American actress, Lindsay Lohan, in a series of bizarre tweets, slagged off areas of this country that voted to leave the European Union.  At one point she directed a fierce and offensive tweet at Kettering, claiming that she had never heard of it and implying that no one knew where it was.  Apart from the fact that it might be the most average town in the country, everyone knows where Kettering is.”  Whether a phrase like “London, Paris, New York, Kettering” was at the time quite as familiar to most as it must have been to Mr Hollobone isn’t clear but he did try to help by offering advice, inviting Miss Lohan to switch on Kettering's Christmas lights that year, saying it would “redeem her political reputation”.  Unfortunately, that proved not possible because of a clash of appointments but thanks to the Tory Party, at least all know the bar has been lowered: Asking where a town sits on the map is now “slagging it off”.  Learning that is an example of why we should all "read our daily Hansards", an observation Mr Whitlam apparently once made, suggesting his estimation of the reading habits of the general population might have differed from reality.

Screen grab from the "apology video" Lindsay Lohan sent the residents of Kettering advising she'd not be able to switch on their Christmas lights because of her "busy schedule".

Pale

Pale (pronounced peyl)

(1) Light-colored or lacking in color.

(2) Someone lacking their usual intensity of color due to fear, illness, stress etc.

(3) Not bright or brilliant; dim.

(4) Faint or feeble; lacking vigor (mostly archaic).

(5) To seem less important, significant, remarkable etc, especially when compared with something or someone else.

(6) A stake or picket, as of a fence.

(7) An enclosing or confining barrier; enclosure; a district or region within designated bounds; to encircle or encompass.

(8) Limits; bounds (now rare except if used figuratively in the phrase “beyond the pale”).

(9) In heraldry, an ordinary (band) in the form of a broad vertical stripe at the centre of an escutcheon.

(10) In shipbuilding, a shore used inside to support the deck beams of a hull under construction.

(11) In some of the dialectical English spoken in southern Africa, a euphemism for white.

1375-1400: From the Middle French Palle, from the twelfth century Old French paile & paleir (pale, light-colored (pâle in the Modern French)), from the Latin pallidus (pale, pallid, wan, colorless), from pallēre (be pale, grow pale) from the primitive Indo-European root pel- (pale) of which pallid is a doublet.  Pel was a significant root in many languages and productive, forming all or part of appall; falcon; fallow (in its adjectival sense), pallid, pallor, palomino, Peloponnesus, polio & poliomyelitis.  The linkages were many including the Sanskrit palitah (gray) & panduh (whitish, pale), the Greek pelios (livid, dark) & polios (gray (of hair, wolves, waves)), the Latin pallere (to be pale) & pallidus, the Old Church Slavonic plavu, the Lithuanian palvas (sallow), the Welsh llwyd (gray) and the Old English fealo & fealu (dull-colored, yellow, brown).  Pel also forms the root of words for "pigeon" in Greek (peleia), Latin (palumbes) and Old Prussian (poalis).

As an adjectival descriptor of color, it seems first, from the early fourteenth century to have been applied to human skin-tone and complexion to convey the sense of “whitish appearance, bloodless, pallid".  From the mid-fourteenth century it began to be used as a modifier to nuance the tones of colors in the sense of “lacking chromatic intensity, approaching white".  Late in the century, use was extended to non-human objects or substances (such as ales and other liquors) at which time it became also a frequent figurative form.  Paleface, is said to be a translation of a Native American word form noted in several dialects meaning "European"; attested from 1822 in American English, there are suggestions the tale may be apocryphal and a creation of the palefaces themselves.

The noun paling (stake, pole, stake for vines) was an early thirteenth century adoption of the circa 1200 Anglo Latin from the Old French pal and directly from the Latin palus (stake, prop, wooden post), source also of the Spanish and Italian palo, from the primitive Indo-European pakslo-, a suffixed form of the root pag- (to fasten) and a doublet of pole.  By the 1550s, the adjective form existed to refer to a fence made from palings, formed by connecting the pointed vertical stakes by horizontal rails above and below.

Romanian Vlad the Impaler postage stamp, 1976.

Paling is a word still used in fencing and impale is related.  In the 1520s, impale meant "to enclose with stakes, fence in", from the French empaler or directly from the Medieval Latin impalare (to push onto a stake).  The now better remembered sense "pierce with a pointed stake" (as torture or capital punishment) dates from circa 1610-1630.  In the popular imagination it’s associated especially with the Romanian Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III, circa 1430-circa 1477, thrice Voivode of Wallachia, 1448-Circa 1477).  One of his favorite methods of torture and execution (there’s often a bit of overlap in these matters) was said to be impalement but some of the more lurid tales of his cruelty may be from the imagination of the medieval mind though his rule is thought to have been severe.  Regardless, he remains a Romanian folk hero.

From the late fourteenth century paling came to refer to the constructed boundary as well as the components, understood generally to describe a "fence of pointed stakes", Paler as a surname meaning "fence-builder" being recorded from late twelfth century.  Another Middle English form of the word in the sense of "fence, paling, wall of an enclosure" sense, based on the plural, was the late fourteenth century pales or palis, the surname Paliser attested from early in the century.  Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) used the variant Palliser in his “parliamentary novels” (1864-1879) as the name for the repressed protagonist; Trollope took care with the selection of his character’s names.

Palisade (a fence of strong stakes), is attested from circa 1600 and was from the fifteenth century French palisade, from the Provençal palissada, from palissa (a stake or paling), from the Gallo-Roman palicea, from the Latin palus (stake) from the primitive Indo-European pakslo-.  The earlier Italian form was palisade, noted since the 1580s.  Palisades entered military jargon circa 1690 and described "close rows of strong pointed wooden stakes fixed in the ground as a defensive fortification", a use which remains a standard part of costal defenses against seaborn invasion.  The trap-rock precipices along the Hudson River opposite New York City were named The Palisades in 1823.  The word remains popular with property developers searching for a word with connotations of elevation and luxury.

Three images of a pale Lindsay Lohan.

In English, pale, pallid and wan imply an absence or faintness of color, especially when used to describe the human countenance.  Pale suggests a faintness or absence of color, which may be natural when applied to objects but when used to descript a human face usually means an unnatural and often temporary absence of color, as arising from sickness or sudden emotion.  Pallid, used almost exclusively to describe the human countenance, implies an excessive paleness induced by intense emotion, disease or death.  Wan implies a sickly paleness, usually as a consequence of illness.

The figurative sense of "limit, boundary, restriction" dates from circa 1400 and referenced the notion of "an enclosed space," hence "district or region within determined bounds" and later it meant "territory held by power of a nation or people".  The more modern idiomatic use, referring to the behavior of a person as “beyond the bounds of morality or social acceptability”, is not without critics but now so common it’s doubtless now the assumed meaning.  Using the phrase in the modern sense, in 2009, during one of their many squabbles, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson (b 1941) said of his Liverpool counterpart, Rafael Benitez (b 1960), "…he's beyond the pale”.  It’s said they’ve not since made up.

The English Pale in Medieval Ireland (1450).

Catherine the Great (Catherine II, 1729–1796; reigning empress of Russia 1762-1796) created the cherta (postaoyannoy yewreskoy) osedlosti (Pale of Settlement) in Russia in 1791. This was the name given to the western border region of the country (modern-day Belarus & Moldova and parts of the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia and western Russia) in which Jews were allowed to live, the motive being to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians.  In a process something like COVID-19 travel exemptions, some Jews were allowed, as a concession, to live “beyond the pale”.  Pales had been enforced in other European countries for similar political reasons.  During the late Medieval period, the Pale (An Pháil in the Irish), often described as the English Pale (An Pháil Shasanach or An Ghalltacht), was that part of Ireland administered directly the English government and the Pale of Calais was formed by the French as early as 1360.

The first printed instance of the phrase is in John Harington's (1560-1612) lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella (1657).  In the verse Ortheris withdraws with his beloved to a country lodge for “quiet, calm and ease” but later they’re tempted to wander:

"Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk".

Clearly it was conveyed no good comes from venturing beyond the pale for soon the lovers are set upon by attacked by armed robbers with “many a dire killing thrust”.