Variation

Variation (pronounced vair-ee-ey-shuhn)

(1) The act, process, or accident of varying in condition, character, or degree; The act of varying; a partial change in the form, position, state, or qualities of a thing.

(2) Amount, rate, extent, or degree of change.

(3) A different form of something; a variant; a related but distinct thing.

(4) In music, the transformation of a melody or theme with changes or elaborations in harmony, rhythm, and melody (the technique often using repetition of material with alterations to melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, texture, counterpoint or orchestration (though often with some invariant characteristic).

(5) In ballet, a solo dance, especially one a section of a pas de deux.

(6) In astronomy, any deviation from the mean orbit of a heavenly body, especially of a planetary or satellite orbit.

(7) In admiralty use as applied to nautical navigation, the angular difference at the vessel between the direction of true north and magnetic north; also called magnetic declination.

(8) In biology, a difference or deviation in structure or character from others of the same species or group (specifically in genetics the modification of a hereditary trait.

(9) In linguistics, any form of morphophonemic change, such as one involved in inflection, conjugation, or vowel mutation.

(10) In linguistics, when two or more linguistic forms appear in the same environment without a change in meaning, the choice of form being determined by factors of dialect, sociolect, register or simply the speaker's preference.

(11) In board and other games, a a line of play that differs from the original.

(12) In mathematics (variational calculus), an infinitesimal perturbation applied to a function, typically denoted , used to probe how a functional changes.

1350-1400: From the Middle English variation (difference, divergence), from the Middle French variation, from the Old French variacion (variety, diversity) and directly from the Latin variationem & variātiōn (stem of variātiō) (a difference, variation, change), from the past participle stem of variare (to change) (the source of the modern English vary).  The use in the context of musical composition wasn't common until the early nineteenth century.  The available synonyms themselves show an impressive variation: deviation, abnormality, diversity, variety, fluctuation, innovation, divergence, alteration, discrepancy, disparity, mutation, shift, modification, change, swerve, digression, contradistinction, aberration, novelty, diversification, mutation, alteration, difference.  Apart from the English variation, European descendants include the French variation, the Italian variazione, the Portuguese variação, the Russian вариация (variacija), the Spanish variación and Swedish variation.  Variation & variationism are nouns, variationist is a noun & adjective and variational is an adjective; the noun plural is variations.

In jurisdictions of the common law tradition, the word “variation” must be used with caution because while in documents it can be innocuous, it possesses also a number of well-established legal meanings, these varying according to the field of law where applied.  In the broadest (and simplest) sense, a “variation” is a change to an existing legal instrument, obligation, agreement etc that in some way changes something while leaving the arrangement’s whole substantially in existence.  The most familiar use is in contract law, a variation to a contract an agreement between parties to the contract to alter one or more of the terms.  In practice, despite the evolved rules, with the agreement of all parties, a variation to a contract can be so fundamental that it really become a “new contact”.  Provided there is certainty in the wording of the “variation” and all parties are content, this can be uncontroversial but in disputes, a variation can be found to be so fundamental a court will declare it a “new contract”.  Contract variations are so common (and often oral transactions if minor) that most pass unnoticed though disputed variations are among some of the famous entries in contract law text books.  In the jargon, a variation is conceptually distinct from a rescission (terminating an existing contract) or a novation (substituting a new contract or party for an existing one).

The interesting technical aspect of course is the point at which a “variation” becomes a contract, the terminology of significance because just because those writing something call it a “variation”, that doesn’t mean a court will accept it is one; depending on this and that, it may be held what the parties call a “variation” has, in effect, rescinded and replaced the original contract.  Borrowing from the traditions of equity the maxim “equity looks at substance rather than form” and what contract law judges do is look at consequence rather than the label.  One who would have understood that what matters is substance rather than form was comrade Stalin.  He eventually would find the Yugoslavian communists just to troublesome but while they could still be controlled, he was inclined to despair, complaining they were “more Marxist than Marx” and became annoyed with one delegation to which he'd just explained the importance of assuming control of the organs of state without it appearing a communist takeover.  All they wanted to talk about was the design of the red stars for the caps of the police and military personnel, prompting him angrily to exclaim: “What do you want with red stars on your caps?  The form is not important but what is gained, and you—red stars!  By God, there’s no need for stars!”     

Ginger, copper, auburn & chestnut are variations on the theme of red-headedness: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the possibilities. 

Courts can also impose variations on their own orders (in which a term or terms might be altered but the order remains operative).  A judge of their own volition may issue a variation or it can be a response to a request from one of the parties (or both) to the proceedings.  Variations in orders are very common in family matters (quantum of maintenance payments, shared parenting arrangements etc) and criminal law (a sentence, bail or parole arrangements etc).  As a piece of judicial administration, variations are a vital aspect because, analogous with the use in contract law, they are a “modification”, meaning the force of the original remains afoot with no need for a re-hearing or the making of a new order.  Of course, a court may choose to set aside an order and make a new one; it’s on an order-by-order basis.  In specialized matters such will or trusts, variations can highly be regulated the laws of trusts especially specific and, as Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) found out, sometimes legally bulletproof.  Beneficiaries and trustees are of course subject to restrictions on variations but courts are also governed by the rules.  

Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations: 1955 & 1981

Published in 1741, J.S. Bach’s (1685-1750) Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and thirty variations.  Written for the harpsichord, it was named after German harpsichordist & organist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756), thought to have undertaken the first performance.  The work is now part of the canon of Baroque music but, before 1955, was an obscure piece of the Bach repertoire, a technically difficult composition for the hardly fashionable harpsichord and known mostly as a device for teachers to develop students’ keyboard skills.  Even for aficionados of the Baroque, it was rarely performed.

Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was a Canadian classical pianist, his debut album on the then novel twelve-inch vinyl LP an interpretation of The Goldberg Variations, played not on a harpsichord but a piano.  It was at once acknowledged to be an extraordinary performance and although critics don't always embrace radical approaches to older pieces, the praise was almost universal although there was one reviewer wo expressed "shock" ate Gould's fingers moving at a tempo the composer would never have envisioned, resulting in a piece of electrifying intensity; it really was something beyond mere interpretation. As well as introducing him to a wider audience, The Goldberg Variations proved also Gould's swansong, uniquely for him, re-recorded in 1981 and issued days before his death.  Eschewing the stunningly fast pace that had made the earlier recording famous and clearly the work of a mellower, more reflective artist, for those familiar with the original, it’s a masterpiece of controlled tension.  In 2002, Sony re-released both, the earlier essentially untouched, the later benefiting from a re-mastering correcting some of the technical deficiencies that tended to plague many early digital releases.  Although critics and professional musicians doubtlessly understood why Gould believed there were aspects of the 1955 performance that detracted from the whole and why he felt his second attempt the better piece of art, for those who listen to music for pleasure, it’s still the original that thrills.

Rarely can a single recording have so successfully revived a long-neglected work but that’s what Gould’s 1955 release did for Bach’s Goldberg Variations, his audacious interpretation unlocking fascinations that have since drawn audiences although not until the next century were many other pianists tempted into the studio.  The (alleged) early history also is intriguing: When first published, the piece was titled: “Aria with diverse variations for a harpsichord with two manuals.  Composed for Music Lovers to Refresh their Spirits.”  While we can be grateful for the adoption of the punchier “Goldberg Variations”, the origins of the wordy original may lie in the household of an insomniac Russian count then serving as ambassador to the electoral court of Saxony (part of the Holy Roman Empire).  To sooth him to sleep, the ambassador would have the court musician (Johann Gottlieb Goldberg) spend evenings in an antechamber, playing the harpsichord.  It was the count who requested Bach to compose works of a “gentle yet lively character” so that, even if not lulled to sleep, he might be cheered up.  That tale appeared in a very early biography of Bach and few historians think it likely (his pupil Goldberg was the aged 14) but it’s attractive enough not to be forgotten and while the inclusion of “lively” might seem a strange request from an insomniac, as a chronic condition it has been linked to depression.

Simone Dinnerstein, Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach (Telarc CD-80692).

Additionally, the count may have had scripture in mind:  “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” (1 Samuel 16:23; King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611).  Not for nothing is Bach known as perhaps the greatest composer of “Church Music”, his works often including what was in his lifetime called gemüths-ergetzende (soul-enhancing).  Certainly, the work retains its capacity to stun, US pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s acclaimed recording in 2007 one of that year’s big hits on the classical charts: Released by Telarc, it was her self-financed project to mark a return to performance after pausing to give birth to her first child and definitely it was not a Gould 1.1 or 2.1.  Preformed on a 1903 Hamburg Steinway model D concert grand, the sound was sumptuous without the contrived lushness many studios once were compelled to concoct in the day before digital techniques were refined to the point where individual notes could be captured almost in the space’s “specific cubic millimetres”.  What’s often forgotten about the Goldberg Variations is that although reviewers have often focused on the “difficult passages”, some of it is simple indeed and it’s this “light & dark” that can be exploited; Gould in 1955 had his approach, Dinnerstein in 2007 had her own and the contrast in obvious from the opening aria, played at a tempo that will seem startling to those who have only heard Gould’s first take on the meditation.  What she seems to have decided is it could be a romantic piece (not the most fashionable view in 2007), not from beginning to end, but with the character of those passages gaining emphasis from the more rapid sections.  It was an accomplished work and while the virtuosity might have been expected, it’s the inventiveness that will intrigue although there will be some who expected more, some of the repeats not included, presumably a technical limitation of the single-CD release.  Hopefully, like Gould, she’ll re-record, now technology no longer imposes such constraints.

Dysphemism

Dysphemism (pronounced dis-fuh-miz-uhm)

(1) The substitution of a harsh, disparaging, unpleasant or offensive word or phrase expression for something dignified, innocuous or neutral (ie the opposite of “euphemism”).

(2) A word or phrase so substituted (eg “shrink” for psychiatrist; “cancer stick” for cigarette; “ambulance chaser” for lawyer etc).

1873: The construct was dys- + (eu)phemism.  The Greek dysphemia meant “ill language, words of ill omen”, deconstructed simply as dys- (bad, abnormal, difficult) + phēmē (speech, voice, utterance, a speaking).  The dys- prefix was from New Latin dys- (used to convey the idea of being difficult, impaired, abnormal, or bad), from the Ancient Greek δυσ- (dus-) (hard, difficult, bad), from the Proto-Hellenic dus-.   It was cognate to the Proto-Germanic tuz- (hard, difficult, wrong, bad (ie the English "tore") and the Proto-Iranian duš- (bad).  Understandably, confusion with the separately derived prefix dis- is not uncommon.  The dis- prefix was from the Middle English dis-, from the Old French des from the Latin dis, from the proto-Italic dwis, from the primitive Indo-European dwís and cognate with the Ancient Greek δίς (dís) and the Sanskrit द्विस् (dvis).  It was applied variously as an intensifier of words with negative valence and to render the senses “incorrect”, “to fail (to)”, “not” & “against”.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Dysphemism & dysphemist are nouns, dysphemistic & dysphemistical are adjectives and dysphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is dysphemisms.

Virgil pointing out the Erinyes (1890), engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883).

Dating from 1656, euphemism was from the Ancient Greek εὐφημισμός (euphēmismós) (use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one, superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies), from εὐφημίζω (euphēmízō), from εὔφημος (eúphēmos & euphemizein (speak with fair words, use words of good omen)).  Despite the impression conveyed by disapproving historians like Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) the Romans, like all the cultures of antiquity, used euphemisms but it does seem true the Athenians were the most delicate of all, so careful to avoid ill-omened words they called their prison “the chamber” and the executioner “the public man” while the hardly convivial Furies (Erinyes) they called Eumenides (the “kindly ones” or “Venerable Goddesses”).  The construct was εὖ (eû) (good; well) + φήμη (phḗmē) (a voice, a prophetic voice, rumor, talk) + -ismos (-ism).  The Greek phēmē was from φάναι (phánai) (to speak, say), from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say).  The concept was well-known in Hellenic culture, the Ancient Greek aristeros (the better one) a euphemism for “the left (hand)”.  In English, it was originally a rhetorical term, the broader sense of “choosing a less distasteful word or phrase than the one meant” in use since at least 1793 and common by the 1830s.  The most common of the derived forms was the adverb euphemistically, documented since 1833 although the first use is uncertain.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Euphemism & euphemist are nouns, euphemistic & euphemistical are adjectives and euphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is euphemisms.

Patterns of use: dysphemism vs euphemism.

Google Ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their Ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, Ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts (typically a scanner might misread an “f” for a long “s” or a “u” for an “n”) of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI (artificial intelligence) should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Whether in general use dysphemisms are more or less common than euphemisms can be debated although, impressionistically, it does seem likely the latter enjoyed a long history of prevailing in print, the reasons for that including politeness and fear, both of the stroke of the censor’s pen and the lawyer’s writ for defamation.  In the age when social media affords users (still) a degree of anonymity, the use of dysphemisms probably has increased but the word itself remains rare while “euphemism” and its derive forms continues to flourish.  The history also was interesting; although first in print between 1873-1884 (as the French formation dysphémisme (modelled after euphémisme)), not until 1927 was there a revival when, after French-Belgium philologist Dr Albert Carnoy’s (1878-1961) “rediscovery”, he granted it an entry in La Science du Mot, Traité de Sémantique (The Science of the Word: A Treatise on Semantics, 1927) although he was no fan, including in his definition: “Dysphemism is unpitying, brutal, mocking. It is also a reaction against pedantry, rigidity and pretentiousness, but also against nobility and dignity in language.”  Dr Carnoy was one of those now little-acknowledged toilers in the dusty archives of linguistics and his work on the etymology of Indo-European languages (especially Indo-Iranian) provided some of the framework still used today.

Daddy-daughter day: Lear and Goneril in the RSC's (Royal Shakespeare Company) 1953 production of King Lear.

One plausibly could say the euphemism is “essential” to civilized life while (perhaps generously), dysphemism is “desirable” for those wishing to “make a point”.  A dysphemism is the deliberate substitution of a harsh, offensive, contemptuous or otherwise negatively charged expression for a more neutral one and although common in everyday discourse, there are also specialized forms (political speech or literary devices) where, rather than being spur-of-the-moment “swap”, the forms often rehearsed and polished although often not original; like euphemisms, dysphemisms tend to be clichéd, indeed, both often tend on that quality for their effect.  In their own ways, the use of dysphemisms in politics and literature is both “idealized” and “exaggerated” while those heard in general conversation can tend to be less elegant or rhythmic.  William Shakespeare (1564–1616) of course knew how to gain effect by blending elegance with brutishness, that “light & dark” in the words (Act 2, scene 4) of the king in King Lear (circa 1605) to his daughter Goneril:

But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,

Or, rather, a disease that’s in my flesh,

Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,

A plague-sore or embossèd carbuncle

General Franco lies in state, Royal Palace Madrid, 21 November, 1975.  In his life, Franco attracted many dysphemisms and fifty years on from his death, that continues, the Franco-era remaining Spain's great fault-line.

As dysphemisms within a family go, that’s pretty extreme, labelling her a “boil”, “plague-sore” or “embossèd carbuncle” (ie a repulsive, diseased growth on his body) rather than the usual “I’m very disappointed in you” or even “you’re an ungrateful, wicked, bad daughter”.  Obviously a family with “issues” and one “unhappy in its own way”.  Nor did Shakespeare spare the feelings of the Jews.  In The Merchant of Venice (1598), old Shylock repeatedly is subjected to dysphemistic descriptions, most famously: “the devil” and “a misbeliever, cut-throat dog”.  The canine reference is very much cross-cultural; although “man’s best friend” and among the most popular domestic pets, “dog” is in many traditions a classic dysphemism.  As a literary sub-type and in political propaganda, there’s a long history of animals being an element in which the dysphemism is metaphorical dehumanisation.  Pig, dog, rat, worm, parasite, vermin, mouse, dinosaur, leech etc deployed for various effects, notable practitioners being the old Soviet Union (including its client states behind the Iron Curtain, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) when the “communist” bit was still taken seriously and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)), the latter really liking “dog”, sometimes with adjectival enhancement, often as a prelude to a sentence of execution.  There are many ways of using animals as points of comparison with the character of individuals that can at least verge on the complimentary (lion, tiger, shark etc) but “dog” is applied usually with contempt.  While it was Jeff Kennett (b 1948; premier of the Australian state of Victoria 1992-1999) who came “claim ownership” of the phrase: “He has all the attributes of a dog… except loyalty”, it’s believed to have earlier been by Andrew Peacock (1939–2021; leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1983–1985 and 1989–1990) of Peter Costello (b 1957; treasurer of Australia 1996-2007) in one of those internecine squabbles that usually are more nasty (and thus amusing) than any invective directed at notional political opponents.  The use extends even to the dog's bark.  After the nationalist forces under Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) prevailed in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939 and a very bloody business), his troops were told, were they to hear anyone speaking in the Basque or Catalan dialects, they were to be told: “Speak the language of the empire, don't bark like dogs.” 

A Fishmonger's Shop (1873), watercolor on paper by Frederick Walker (1840–1875).  The artist was a keen fisher (the known as a fisherman) and such was his attention to detail, a dozen-odd species have been identified.

Applying his techniques to the another Abrahamic faith, in Act 1, Scene 1 of Othello (1603), Shakespeare has the villainous Iago shout at the nobleman Brabantio, waking him to tell him his daughter Desdemona, has eloped with Othello, the Moor: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping [a term from animal husbandry describing “livestock mating”] your white ewe.”  Now that might be listed as “Islamophobic”, joining much of the treatment of Shylock as “anti-Semitic” but Othello’s dysphemistic range extended to “sexism”, calling his own wife a “strumpet” (used by Shakespeare in the sense of “prostitute”) rather than addressing her by name.  Being English and “middle class”. Shakespeare was of course class-conscious and in Hamlet (circa 1600), he has the prince describe Polonius as: “a fishmonger”.  Fishmonger is of course an honorable profession but what Shakespeare wanted was a word Hamlet would choose as a means contemptuously to reduce Polonius to a supposedly vulgar, grasping tradesman and snobby Hamlet was in the habit of applying “degrading” labels to those he disliked.  The tradition endures: While in Berlin’s Spandau Prison serving the sentences they were lucky to receive from the IMT (International Military Tribunal) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and Walther Funk (1890–1960; Nazi economics minister & central bank president) had a argument about a light bulb, Speer in an entry of 14 October, 1952 in his clandestine prison diary (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau: The Secret Diaries, 1975)) recording the exchange:

Big quarrel among all of us because of the lighting problem.  Everyone wants something different.  Violent discussion.  Funk backs off ten paces and berates all of us.  When he starts using vulgar epithets, I shout back: ‘You sound like a truck driver!’  He clears out.  The first scene of this sort in seven years and, worse yet, in the presence of a guard.”  Of course, in Speer’s internal logic there would be nothing incongruous in one convicted war criminal thinking it an insult to compare the language of another to that of “a truck driver”, that occupation definitely not one associated with polite middle-class society, the “worse yet” explained by “prison guards” being of the “truck driver class”.  Speer wouldn’t have needed an explanation of the choice of words by Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ (1812–1870) novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (now clipped usually to “A Christmas Carol” (1843)), the old curmudgeon’s contemptuous references to the poor: “Are there no prisons?; “Are there no workhouses?” the same sort of linguistic devaluation of human worth as his “truck driver” or “prison guard” being used not as neutral occupational descriptors but “categories of lesser intrinsic value”.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (first edition, 1949).  Modern re-prints have tended to use the numeric 1984 for the title.

Scrooge at least became a reformed character although, despite his decades of assiduous self-promotion, it seems doubtful Speer ever much changed his fundamental view of humanity and it may be he’d have seen the logic in the famous dysphemistic strategy for “preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick” suggested by the Anglo-Irish satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in A Modest proposal (1729).  Swift’s essay wholly was satirical and gained its effect from being written in ostensibly polite language, echoed later by the style in which Nazi-era documents (some from ministries headed by Speer) detailed appalling crimes in euphemism-laden texts that on surface analysis seemed innocuous bureaucratese.  Well acquainted with bureaucratese and the way language could be weaponized, in both Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell (1903-1950) demonstrated the “sword & shield” potential of dysphemism & euphemism, one of his warnings the way “political language” could be used to reduce individuals to degraded categories, something later explored by those developing labelling theory.  That of course wasn’t new, the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (pen name of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) in his novella Heart of Darkness (1899) used the brutish dysphemisms European colonial administrators applied casually to native Africans, reducing them to the status of animals, objects, or undifferentiated masses, again a technique that would have been familiar to Speer because an essential underpinning the whole Nazi racialist project was the need to have some people classified as “sub-human” and thus able without moral scruples to be “processed” as “livestock” or “beasts of burden”.  Conrad employed dysphemisms to expose the dehumanising psychology of colonialism as Orwell would later warn of the similar phenomenon in authoritarian states.

The Mean Girls Burn Book, a repository of the dysphemistic.

As might be expected, the film Mean Girls (2004) is a rich source of dysphemism, much of humor depending on deliberately derogatory or dehumanising language but, as a linguistic case-study, it’s of use also because, in the strict technical sense, not every “insult” is necessarily a dysphemism.  “Plastic” (and especially the collective “the Plastics”) certainly is dysphemistic and a classic example in that it takes a “neutral” word (using one of its two, well-known, “technical meanings”) and applies it to the clique of those individuals judged “artificial, fake, superficial etc”.  For deconstructionists, there’s also the contrast of the mix & match of dysphemism & euphemism in the text, indirect language of both flavours used when discussing sex, weight, menstruation etc although the labels applied to people tend to the former.  The script does illustrate the way dysphemism, pejoration, slur, insult, profanity, taboo language, and metaphorical dehumanisation can in some cases be distinguished while in others there’s obvious cross-categorization; in Mean Girls, much of the work done by language happens “at the margins” and the “Burn Book” in a way “institutionalises dysphemistic”, “burn” itself slang for an intentionally cutting insult.

At its most simple and most obvious, the dysphemism is merely the substitution of a harsh, disparaging, unpleasant or offensive word or phrase expression for something dignified, innocuous or neutral (ie the opposite of “euphemism”) and for centuries that’s been embedded in slang and used by authors, comedians and such as a source of bawdy humor, Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) in Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) clearly enjoying having his readers wallow in deliberately coarse or degrading terminology, notably for sexual behavior and bodily functions.  In that sense, it was “vulgarisation” a sub-set of dysphemism and perhaps (certainly in oral use) the most frequently practiced.  Dysphemism however is not of necessity something vulgar or insulting and can be a kind of “defense mechanism”; a way of “making light” of something disturbing or tragic.  In that vein, while “she died” is neutral, “she passed on” is euphemistic and “she kicked the bucket” is dysphemistic.  For those who wish to descend further into irrelevance there’s “she croaked”, “she karked it”, “she bit the dust” or “she fell of the perch”.

Leading Tory (Conservative Party) “Dry” Lord Norman Tebbit (1931–2025) on the cover of Private Eye magazine, 16 May, 1986.  The duel of the Tories' “Wets vs Dry” was something like “Dysphemisms at several dozen paces”.

Dysphemisms can also be adopted by those they were originally intended to disparage, notably in the 1980s by the “drys” (those on the nominal right of politics who would later be tagged “economic rationalists).  The “drys” liked the label and ran with it although their retribution (dubbing their opponents the “wets”) wasn’t embraced by them but at least they never got to be called “economic irrationalists” so there was that.   “Police officer” is a neutral descriptor (“law-enforcement professional” less a euphemism than a broader category of those employed on one side (although then can be fraying at the edges) of the crime business) while “cop” often was intended to disparage but in many places the “cops” came to like it, making it part of their slang, even using it in advertising and official documents.  In semiotics (the study of connotation & denotation of meaning in signs (words, marks, images etc)), the crucial aspect in whether a dysphemism remains a disparagement or emerges as something neutral or even embraced as at least quasi-affectionate is whether the pattern of popular use maintains or dissipates the originally deliberate “negative semantic loading”.  The verb "to cop" was from the Old French caper, from the Latin capere (to take or seize (the same root as capture)) and was known in English by the early 1700s.  By the middle of the nineteenth century, the noun “copper” was in common use to describe police constables and it survived and spread better than “peeler” or “bobby”, both a reference to Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850; Prime Minister of the UK 1834–1835 & 1841–1846) who, as Home Secretary (minister of the interior), introduced the Metropolitan Police Act (1829) establishing a police force for much of London and the surrounding areas).  The tales that “cop” was derived from “Constable on Patrol” (C.O.P.) or the copper buttons & badges part of the uniform were fanciful folk etymology; they were fake news. 

Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism (2017) by Tiago Saraiva (b 1972).

The stronger dysphemism “pig” has however always been disparaging and began not as a late twentieth century clipping of “fascist pig” but more than 150 years earlier, an entry appearing in Francis Grose’s (circa 1730-1791) Lexicon Balatronicum, (a dictionary of London slang).  According to Grouse, “pig” in this context was a clipping of “China Street pig”, underworld slang for a “Bow Street Officer” (the “Bow Street Runners” London's first professional, organized police force).  The porcine comparison was based on the criminal class’s view of policemen being as “greedy, dirty and unpleasant” as pigs although the reference was less to personal hygiene than the officers’ (probably not wholly undeserved) reputation for corruption and fondness for seizing for themselves a thief’s illicit loot or wallets.  Historians note also the “snout allusion”: the early undercover detectives and patrol officers characterized as “sniffing out crime”, much as a pig uses its snout to “root around” in search of something tasty.  In the UK, “copper”, “bobby” and “peeler” all supplanted “pig” but there was a revival of the latter in the US during the 1960s as the counter-culture, Vietnam War protesters, the Weather Underground and others became the police’s “usual suspects”.  This time there really was a connection with “fascist pig” and the Black Panther Party lent the use much cultural traction by prominent placement in newsletters, speeches and, most graphically, political cartoons depicting “police brutality”.  Media management wasn’t then the art it would become and attempts by some police forces to reclaim the word with “P.I.G.” campaigns (the initialism for “Pride, Integrity, Guts”) were greeted with derision so they stuck to being “cops”.  Not all looked as unfavourably upon pigs as the London underworld of old.  The quote: “I am fond of pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.” supposedly was said by Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) but like many memorable quips attributed to him, it’s unverified.  Always sentimental about animals (though one of England’s more voracious carnivores), it’s certainly something he might have said.

Agastopia

Agastopia (pronounced agg-uh-stow-pee-ah)

Deriving visual enjoyment from the appearance of a specific body part or parts (some suggesting the attraction must be fetishistic to cross the threshold from admiration to syndrome).

2011: A coining of etymologists Peter Novobatzky & Ammon Shea who included it in their 1999 book Depraved English (sub-titled: "The most disgusting and hilarious word book ever", a title debatably hyperbolic but that adequately captured the intention).  While not exhaustive, there was an entry for maschalephidrosis (runaway armpit perspiration), the construct being the Ancient Greek μασχάλη (maskhálē) (armpit) + hidrosis, from the New Latin hidrōsis, from the Ancient Greek ἱδρώς (hidrṓs) (sweat) + -sis (the suffix in medicine used to form nouns of condition) so there were certainly highlights.  The construct of agastopia was the Ancient Greek ἀγα- (aga(s)-) (very) + -topia (a back-formation extracted from utopia (and other words) ultimately deriving from the Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos) (place).  Utopia was from the New Latin Ūtopia, the name of a fictional island possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system in the 1516 book Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535).  The construct was the Ancient Greek οὐ (ou) (not) + τόπος (tópos) (place, region) + -ία (-ía) (the New Latin suffix, from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) which formed abstract nouns of feminine gender.  More’s irony in calling a world in which everything and everyone works in perfect harmony being best translated as “not a real place” is often lost in modern use and the word probably has genuinely undergone a meaning-shift.  Agastopic is a noun & adjective, agastopia is a noun and agastopically is an adverb; the noun plural is agastopias.

Agastopic: Studies of the soles of Lindsay Lohan's feet in three aspects.

Although in non-clinical use there had not previously been a generic descriptor of part-focused voyeuristic fetishism, there’s no suggestion Novobatzky & Shea thought their coining a "serious" contribution to the taxonomy of mental health but some commentators have adopted it, fleshing out the definitional range.  It’s been suggested the condition manifests as (1) a love or admiration of one’s own body part, compelling either a fondness of performing a particular task with it or a preference to cover and shield it with a protective layer or (2) the more familiar admiration of another’s body part(s).  Some sources, without citation, note it’s “…believed to be a rare condition” and (presumably tongue in cheek), one for which there’s “… no cure.”  Despite these helpful nudges, when the fifth edition of the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published in 2013 (DSM-5), there was no specific mention of agastopia and this was maintained when the revised version (DSM-5-TR) was released in 2022.  Still, for clinicians who find it convenient quasi-medical jargon, presumably a patient found to be "fond of certain body part" without "fetishising" it (or them) would be found to be "agastopish"; fetishes also intrinsically spectrum conditions, the comparative would be "more agastopic" and the superlative "most agastopic".

In an agastopic moment: The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments (circa 1778), drawing in red chalk with brown wash by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825)).

The notion agastopia is “believed to be a rare condition” might be based on some obscure statistics but certainly is a reflection on (1) the profession no longer regarding (most) such things as diagnosable conditions unless certain criteria are fulfilled and (2) the general consensus most instances of agastopia (being untroubling) are never reported to a clinician.  In other words, "believed to be a rare condition" probably is better expressed a "known to be a rarely reported condition".  Impressionistically, the likely real-world experience is that the prevalence of agastopia in a subset of the population doesn't justify funding the research and agastopia should not wholly be conflated with the various fetishistic interests now listed in the DSM as "particularisms" although overlap obviously must exist.  Nor is agastopia something exclusively either a male preserve or sexually focused, some women known to enjoy (in both senses) an agostopic relationship with their hair or fingernails.  In the days when two of the most significant vectors for the distribution of pornography were magazines (that although with glossy covers should not be confused with "the glossies") and various digital media (tapes and optical discs), both forms provided content devoted to or thematically inclinded towards one body part or another, something carried over to the internet when websites became the default mode.  Among the pornography aggregation sites, it’s not unusual for body parts or attributes (and not just the old "usual suspects") to be listed as categories for consumers with a particular agastopic or fetishistic focus.

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996, seen here plantar flexing), whose feet seem never to command the attention they deserve.

So, thus compartmentalized, agastopia is a thing existing at a commercially critical mass.  ‘Twas perhaps ever thus but what has in recent decades changed is the attitude of the mental health community.  Before the release of DSM-III-R (1987), fetishism tended to be described as a persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects or an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexualized) body parts (most famously, feet) and body secretions.  With the DSM-III-R, the concept of partialism (an exclusive focus on part of the body) was separated from the historic category of fetishism and appended to the “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified” category.  Although one of the dustier corners of psychiatry, the field had always fascinated some and in the years since the DSM-III-R was published, a literature did emerge, most critics maintaining partialism and fetishism are related, can be co-associated, and are non-exclusive domains of sexual behavior.  There was a technical basis for this position because introduced in the DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one of the implications of which was it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary.  The recommendation was the prime diagnostic criterion for fetishism be modified to reflect the reintegration of partialism and that a fetishistic focus on non-sexual body parts be a specifier of fetishism.

Fetish was from the the French fétiche, from the Portuguese feitico, from facere (to make) which begat factitious (created; artificial).  A fetish in this context was defined as "a thing irrationally revered; an object in which power or force was concentrated".  In English, use of "fetish" to indicate an object of desire in the sense of “someone who is aroused due to a body part, or an object belonging to a person who is the object of desire” dates from 1897 (although the condition is mentioned in thirteenth century medical documents) and it was in the late nineteenth century the lexicon of modern psychiatry began to be assembled.  However, in the literary record, surviving from the seventh century AD are dozens of brooding, obsessive love letters from the second century AD of uncertain authorship and addressed to both male and female youths.  That there are those in whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthral presumably has from the start been part of the human condition.

Poster for Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, (1930).  Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) understood (and exploited) herself as a “fetishized object” but her construct was as knowingly artificial as was Blue Angel of most of Weimar Berlin.

One obvious linguistic virtue of “agastopia” is it can be used as an alternative to “fetishism”, the latter a word with the power to mislead or distort meaning because of the associations vested by popular use although some estimable writers have found “fetish” indispensable while maintaining clarity.  In The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (2000), a study of the politics on that troubled decade in Europe and the US, English historian Piers Brendon (b 1940) used “fetish” in the way most familiar when writing of a certain aspect of Berlin during the last days of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933): “Sleazy clubs offered anything from cocaine to fetishism and perversions abounded: one coven of coprophagists gorged a prostitute on chocolate, gave her a laxative and settled down to a feast.  There were so many homosexual bars, transvestite dance halls and nude cabarets that an enterprising publisher issued a ‘Guide to Vicious Berlin’.  Outside the palace at the bottom of Unter den Linden [literally “under the linden trees", a boulevard in the central Mitte district running between the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Palace, the name gained from the linden (non citrus lime) trees lining the thoroughfare] were two stone lions, one of which was said to roar whenever a virgin walked by.”  If some of what was in the Christopher Isherwood’s (1904–1986) Goodbye to Berlin (1939) was an indication, the lion would not often have had to stir but literature can be highly selective, lives of most of the burghers in Weimar-era Berlin likely as stolid and respectable as stereotypes of Germans suggest.  While Isherwood and Marlene Dietrich painted captivating pictures of a decadent city, generally life was more prosaic.

Brendon however also applied “fetish” to attitudes expressed toward objects, institutions and concepts decidedly non-sexualized including “the Maginot Line” (a French border fortification that proved illusory), “rural conservation”, “the League of Nations” (1920-1945) and “liberalism”.  Of the last, perhaps gleefully, he documented L’Osservatore Romano’s (the daily newspaper of Vatican City) lauding of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) as a man of the same mind as Pius XI (1857–1939; pope 1922-1939) and a “man whom Providence has sent Us (sic)... [who did not believe in the] “villainous fetishes of liberalism.”  The Holy See’s mouthpiece concluded by saying it was “…thanks to the Duce” that “Italy has been given back to God and God to Italy.”  The extent of God’s gratitude can of course only be guessed but as the fate of Italian fascism (with the fall of Mussolini in 1943 it “burst like a bubble” in the unguarded phrase of German Generaloberst (Colonel General) Alfred Jodl (1890–1946, chief of the OKW operations staff 1939-1945)) suggested, the movement never became in Italy quite the fetish the Duce had hoped.

Of Foot Particularism: The DSM-5 Criteria

Criterion 1: Over a six month period, the individual has experienced sexual urges focused on a non-genital body part, or inanimate object, or other stimulus, and has acted out urges, fantasies, or behaviors.

Criterion 2: The fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause distress, or impairment in functioning.

Criterion 3: The fetishistic object is not an article of clothing employed in cross dressing, or a sexual stimulation device, such as a vibrator.

Specifiers for the diagnosis include the type of stimulus which is the focus of attention (1) the non-genital or erogenous areas of the body (such as feet) and this condition is known also as Partialism (a preoccupation with a part of the body rather than the whole person), (2) Non-living object(s) (such as shoes), (3) specific activities (such as smoking during sex).

WikiFeet is a wiki which curates users’ submissions of women's feet with a predictable emphasis on celebrities. The Lindsay Lohan page contains 3639 images with the WikiFeet community rating her feet at 4.7 stars (out of 5) and that means she's in the category: "beautiful feet".  The site includes sections for “feet of the day” and “feet of the week” although the criteria for "making the cut" for these honors are not disclosed.  An illustrative sample from WikiFeet's rating table includes:

Billie Eilish, 97 images, rated 4.1 (nice feet)

Anna Kournikova, 362 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Selena Gomez, 1963 images, rated 4.7, (beautiful feet)

Nicki Minaj, 1135 images, rated 3.4 (OK feet)

Mila Kunis, 1131 images, rated 4.6, (beautiful feet)

Janelle Monáe, 486 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Nancy Pelosi, 14 images, rated 2.9 (OK feet)

Rihanna, 5663 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Emily Ratajkowski, 2571 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Paris Hilton, 997 images, rated 3.2 (OK feet)

Emma Watson, 1047 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Megan Fox, 1866 images, rated 4.1 (nice feet)

Emma Raducanu 80 images, rated 4.6 (beautiful feet)

Charli XCX, 960 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013, left) and Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025, right).

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s feet must convey something of her crooked crookedness because Wikifeet's connoisseurs rate them only at 2.5 stars (OK feet) but politics in the US being so polarized, there may be an element of strategic voting involved and the sample size is anyway small, crooked Hillary's page having only 24 images.  Following in the footsteps of the original, there exists a companion WikiFeet page for men’s feet although, predictably, it’s a mere shadow of the feminine version and that must be emblematic of many things in sociology, sexual politics and fetishism.  On the male site there is a solitary entry on Donald Trump’s page and while it’s not the only known photograph of his bare feet, it is the one with the best angle; with only a single image on which to base an assessment, the rating of 1.3 stars (bad feet) may reflect political bias rather than objective judgment.  That may also have influenced voting on the 32 images on Kamala Harris’s (b 1964; VPOTUS 2021-2025) page though the fact she rated a solid 4.0 (nice feet) clearly wasn’t enough to help her win the 2024 presidential election, feet clearly just not an issue.

Shine envy: Field Marshal el-Sisi (left) and President Trump (right), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 2017.  Military men usually have shiny shoes, the more senior ranks allocated a batman to do the polishing and some branding of consumer shoe polishes reflect (get it?) the tradition, "Parade Gloss", "Military Tan" and "Rollcall Black" all having been sold "in the tin".

There was nothing in the recent testimony of Stormy Daniels (stage name of Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) to suggest Donald Trump has a particular thing for feet but he certainly notices shoes.  When meeting Field Marshal Fattah el-Sisi (b 1954; president of Egypt since 2014) in Riyadh, Mr Trump couldn’t help but be impressed how much shinier were the field marshal’s shoes, his seemingly close to identical pumps dull by comparison.  As they left the room, Mr Trump remarked to him: “Love your shoes.  Boy, those shoes. Man …” but knew he’d lost face and doubtless the White House shoe-shine operative loudly was told: "You're fired!"  The Democratic Party seems never to have drawn attention to Joe Biden's (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 and POTUS 2021-2025) shoes, presumably because they feared Fox News might have demanded proof he could still tie his own laces.

Noting the definitional model in the DSM-IV-TR (2000), despite the history in psychiatry’s world of paraphilias and a notable presence in popular culture, there were those who claimed the very notion of a foot fetish was false because of that critical phrase “non-living” that would seem to disqualify a foot (unless of course it was no longer attached to a living being) but such an interest would be seriously weird (the "lucky" rabbit foot from another tradition) and a more disturbing condition; although in this context there are deconstructionists who would make a distinction between a depiction of a live foot and the foot itself, clinicians probably regard them as interchangeable tools of the fetishist although the techniques of consumption would vary.  It's a nuanced aspect of "body parts as this and that" because some are, in many religious traditions, venerated as holy relics or icons.  The critics noted many fetishes are extensions of the human body, such as articles of clothing or footwear, but that did not extend to feet and that diagnostically, a sexual fascination with feet did correctly belong in the category of “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified,” and thus should be regarded as a partialism: Foot partialism.  While there are those who greatly admire elegant creations such as a stiletto heeled slingback, the interest in these as pieces of design is separate from those who focus on their "associative connections": Thigh-length, laced leather boots with a five inch (125 mm) heel are likely to be "enjoyed" not as stand-alone objects but because of the thighs, calves, ankles and feet of those stereotypically assumed most often to pull them on (and, of course, take them off). 

OnlyFans, a place for agastopics.

A genuine phenomenon, OF (OnlyFans) is a niche player in the gig economy but the niche is big and if not quite the oldest in the world, it's been around a while.  Something of an early-adopter of techniques embracing the implications of AI (artificial intelligence), while "feet" is just one of many genres serviced, OF is able to engage in "category proliferation" at little more than marginal cost because the site works on a "bolt-on" principle.  The business model works because the platform's content exclusively is user-generated with revenue streams provided by PPV (pay-per-view) customers and monthly subscriptions with creators collecting the bulk of the payments, OF essentially "clipping the ticket" on the way through their gateway.  OF was one of the "plague winners" in the disruptions wrought by the lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic but the earnings profile of the content creators is a highly exaggerated curve, a relative handful finding it most lucrative while for most it's at best a hobby or side-hustle; for OF that's OK, they still clip the ticket.  Although best known for creators posting sexually explicit content, in 2021 (in response to political pressure) it was announced things would be "sanitized" with NSFW (not suitable for work) material purged site-wide.  Such was the outcry from creators & customers the plan survived not even a week, cynical analysts concluding the original announcement had been made to provoke the revolt, OF's management well-aware nothing quietens tiresome politicians as quickly as mass public discontent.  The OF content creators are an imaginative lot and some are said to make "feet" NSFW so those wanting a purely (in the sense of "knee & lower only") anatomical experience are recommended to search with caution.

Foot Finder

When OF attained critical mass it encouraged the growth of an ecosystem of sites acting as "third party intermediaries" servicing those who for whatever reason preferred their transactions to be handled with a guarantee of anonymity (if curated with care, one’s own feet on an OF page should be similarly anonymous).  Content providers are known as “sole traders” while in the jargon the third party operators run “parasitic sites” which may sound harsh but that does mirror the analogous use in biology.  Amusingly, although the internet doomed many other platforms with business models dependent on revenue from advertisers (notably the print media, in the West, many magazines and all but a handful of newspapers driven extinct or taking "an unconscionable time a-dying"), FootFinder (above, left) clearly sees value still in physical, three-dimensional mobile advertising and a large fibreglass foot (above, right) atop a Kei car (diminutive, small displacement Japanese vehicles sold mostly in the JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) certainly must draw the eye.  As long ago as the 1950s, there were those predicting there would one day be a world-wide system (at least one encompassing the Western world) of real-time interconnectivity (ie the concept of the internet) but most seemed to envisage it as people having portals (with acid-green screens) through which to look-up stuff in databases or receive text-based content such as news reports or educational instruction.  In short, a world of "few uploaders and many downloaders".  It's doubtful many imagined "mass-upload" models such as YouTube and definitely not OF; while many would have assumed users would become interactive, Foot Finder would not have occurred to many as a template.  How, 50 years from now we'll all (or at least some of use) be indulging our agastopia(s) may be just as unpredictable.

The feet of Ana de Armas, OnlyFans "Feet of the Year, 2023", plantar flexing.

It need not be an expensive hobby, provided one focuses on one's favorite feet.  English singer Lily Allen (b 1985) has an OF page (Lily Allen FTSE500) for her (US size 6) feet and subscriptions are offered at US$10 per month, her hook on an Instragram post titled “La dolce feeta” including a snap of her toes next to Rome’s Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain) in which Anita Ekberg's (1931-2005) feet splashed, all those years ago.  While to those not part of the fetish it can be hard to tell one foot from another, the cognoscenti have eyes as well-trained as a sommelier's palate; in 2023 OF's "Feet of the Year" title was awarded to Cuban-born Spanish actress Ana de Armas (b 1988).  It was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who admitted, lawfulness aside, as animals, the only truly aberrant sexual behavior in humans could be said to be its absence (something the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves).  It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat agastopia and many other “harmless” behaviors as “normal” and thus within the purview of the manual only to the extent of being described, clinical intervention no longer required.  Whether all psychiatrists agree with the new permissiveness isn’t known but early reports suggest there’s nothing in the DSM-5-TR (2022) to suggest agastopics will soon again be labeled as deviants.

The washing of feet

Not everything foot-centric is agastopic.  In the New Testament there are three texts describing Christ washing feet, the best known of which is John 13:1-17 (Jesus Washing the Disciples' Feet).  The ritual is explained usually as Jesus demonstrating his humility and mission to serve mankind but it's clear he wished also to set a good example to the not infrequently fractious dozen:

"So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."  John 13:12-15 (King James Version; KJV, 1611)

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a female inmate of Rome's Rebibbia prison, 28 March 2024: Symbolic or a "performative photo-opportunity" depending on one's view. 

One of the set-piece motifs of Christianity, the foot-washing ritual takes place on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) and seeks to imitate Christ’s washing of the Disciples’ feet the night before he was crucified at Golgotha.  It was on that evening he said to his Disciples: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” (John 13:21).  The sight of a pope washing feet is familiar but when Francis (1936-2025; pope 2013-2025) performed the ritual at Rome’s Rebibbia prison on Holy Thursday 2024, it was apparently the first time in the institution’s two-thousand year odd existence a pontiff has washed the feet only of women.  Historians concede records from earlier centuries obviously are incomplete but so remarkable was the event deemed, most seemed to conclude a precedent had been set.  In the past Francis had washed the feet of women, Muslims, refugees and other minorities but never women exclusively.  He certainly cast a wider net than his more conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) who sponged the feet only of men and, in the final years of his pontificate, only those of ordained priests.  It’s believed feet proffered to popes, scrupulously are pre-sanitized.