Insipid & Sapid

Insipid (pronounced in-sip-id)

(1) Without distinctive, interesting, or stimulating qualities; vapid.

(2) Something or someone dull or uninteresting; lacking character or definition.

(3) Food or drink lacking sufficient taste to be pleasing; bland, unappetizingly flavorless.

1610–1620: From the sixteenth century French insipid (without taste or perceptible flavor), from the Late Latin insipidus (tasteless), the construct being in- (in the sense of negation) + -sipidus (savory; tasty), a form of sapidus (sapid) from sapere (have a taste (and used also to mean “be wise”)).  The figurative (ie not of food or drink) meaning (uninteresting, dull) emerged in English in the 1640s and it’s believed this was under the influence of Medieval Latin or the Romance languages, where it was a secondary sense.  The noun insipidity was in use by the early seventeenth century.  The choice of synonym can depend on whether what is being described is food & drink or something (or someone) else and the options include banal, bland, ho-hum, innocuous, trite, vapid, tasteless, bland, wearish, boring, vacuous, dull, bland, characterless & colourless.  In English, in some senses the use has been influenced by insipient (unwise, foolish, stupid; lacking wisdom).  Insipient was from the Middle English insipient & incipient, from the Old French insipient, ultimately from the Latin īnsipiēns.  For the fastidious, the comparative is “more insipient”, the superlative “most insipient”).  Insipid is an adjective, insipidity & insipidness are nouns and insipidly is an adverb.

Sapid (pronounced sap-id)

(1) Having taste or flavor (and used specifically to mean “savory”).

(2) Agreeable to the taste; palatable.

(3) Agreeable, as to the mind; to one's liking.

1625-1635: From the Latin sapidus (tasty), from sapere or sapiō (to taste).  The original meaning in English was “having the power of affecting the organs of taste (when used of food & drink or other substances)” while the figurative sense suggested something “gratifying to the mind or its tastes”.  The adjective sipid has the same meaning as sapid and was a mid-nineteenth century back-formation from insipid (on the model of “gruntled” from “disgruntled”) whereas sapid was a direct borrowing from Latin.  Both sapid & sipid can be used to mean “having a taste or flavor; savoury” but unlike insipid which remains in wide use (both in the original context of food & drink and figuratively), neither have ever attained much currency and it’s not unreasonable for both to be listed as obsolete.  Sapid is an adjective, sapidity & sapidness are nouns.

The infamously insipid Koryo Burger, the in-flight delicacy offered by Air Koryo, national carrier of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea).

In a sense, what words flourish (or at least endure) in English is because of the operation of something of a popularity contest.  While there are style guides, text books and grammar Nazis to tell us which words to use and in what manner, English has no body such as the French government’s Académie Française (council for matters pertaining to the French language) which publishes the a variety of documents which may be said collectively to define what is “official French”.  The Académie had an interesting political history, beginning as a private venture it received the imprimatur of both church & state when in 1635 it was granted a royal charter by Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642; chief minister (chancellor or prime-minister) to the King of France 1624-1642) during the reign of Louis XIII (1601–1643; King of France 1610-1643) but was dissolved 1793 during the French Revolution (1789), partly because of the mob’s anti-royalist feelings but also because there was some resentment among the peasantry (an in the provinces generally) to the notion of a Parisian elite deciding whose dialect was “right” and whose was “wrong”.  That’s exactly the same dispute which now bubbles in US universities between (1) those who insist there is “correct” standard English while other forms are dialectal variations (ethnic, regional, class etc) and (2) those who argue for a cultural equivalency between all forms, most notably AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and its many forks.  In 1795 the new regime in France created the Institut de France (Institute of France) as a kind of clearing house for all matters relating to what was “acceptable” French culture, absorbing some pre-existing scientific, literary and artistic bodies and it was to the institute that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) in 1803 restored the Académie Française as a division.

Portrait of Goethe, oil on paper by Italian artist Elia Bonetti (b 1983).

Spain’s Real Academia Española (Royal Academy of Spain) is a similar body but perhaps surprisingly (given all the stereotypes of the Prussians) there is in Germany no central authority defining the German language, several organizations and institutions working (cooperatively and not) together standardize and update things.  The most authoritative body for German orthography is the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (Council for German Orthography), the membership of which includes representatives from other German-speaking countries (Austria, Switzerland et al) and its mandate extends to overseeing spelling and orthographic rules, something not without controversy, especially since the great spelling “reform” of 1996.  In the spirit of the post-1945 spirit of avoiding where possible the creation of all-powerful single institutions, it’s the Duden dictionary and Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language) which exert great influence in in maintaining and documenting German vocabulary, grammar and usage, but both tend to be observational, recording changes in the language rather than seeking to enforce rules (ie they are descriptive rather than prescriptive).  German thus evolves through the combined influence of these institutions, public usage, and scholarly input, rather than through a single authoritative academy and internationally it’s probably the Goethe-Institut (Goethe Institute, named after the German author & philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)) which most promotes the study of German language & culture through its worldwide network of some 160 centres.

English is more democratic still, the survival of words and grammatical forms dependent on the users and even before the British Empire saw the tongue spread around the world the foreign influences were profound, the Latin, Greek, French & Germanic threads the most obvious and even to speak of the “Old English” is misleading to all but those in the field because to most, the “Old English” really isn’t recognizable as “English”.  Not only does modern English thus evolve but so do the other blends such as “Spanglish” (a hybrid of Spanish & English), Hinglish (Hindi & English) and its absurd to speak of “pure English”, even the way BBC announcers used to speak (in the so-called “RP” (received pronunciation) often including fragments picked up from the Raj and around the world.  While the Académie Française may try to keep French as pure as possible, English shamelessly is linguistically slutty.

Lindsay Lohan (with body-double) during filming of Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024) which the Daily Beast concluded wasn't exactly “insipid”.  The car is a Triumph TR4 (1961-1967), one of the early versions with a live rear axle, a detail probably of no significance in the plot-line.

In this democratic way, insipid has endured because it fills a niche that sapid & sipid never found, in both usage & meaning.  Vividly, insipid conveys the notion of something lacking flavor, excitement, or interest, whether literally (vapid food or drink) or figuratively (dull conversation or ideas).  This negative association has a broad and (regrettably) frequent application in everyday language, there so often being a need to decry things or people as uninteresting or failing to make an impact.  By contrast, although sapid & sipid both mean “food having flavour”, there’s less need because that’s expected and what’s usually sought is a way to say the quality is lacking and terms of emphasis came to be preferred: “flavoursome” “tasty” and such taking over although none were as precise as the practical & versatile “insipid” which proved the perfect one-word descriptor whether literally or figuratively.  Insipid is useful too because it’s nuanced in that it although used usually as negative, it’s also a “neutral word” in the sense of “bland”.  When the Daily Beast was searching for similes & metaphors in their review of Irish Wish (released in 2024 as the second edition of Lindsay Lohan’s three film Netflix deal), they opted also to “damn with faint praise” observing because the Netflix’s target audience “merely want to watch something that isn’t insipid and horribly made”, maybe the film (sort of) succeeded.  So insipid has survived because it fulfils needs while sapid & sipid are now little more than linguistic curiosities.

Insipid, sipid & sapid: The votes are in.

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 of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI 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.

Garbage

Garbage (pronounced gahr-bij)

(1) Discarded material (often animal and vegetable matter from food production).

(2) Any matter that is no longer wanted or needed.

(3) Anything contemptibly worthless, inferior, or vile (physical material or, used figuratively, any idea or content (literature, music, film, ideas, theories et al).

(4) Worthless talk; lies; foolishness.

(5) In informal use in architecture & design, unnecessary items added merely for embellishment; garnish.

(6) In the space industry, no non-functional artificial satellites or parts of rockets floating in space (space junk, a genuine and growing problem in near-earth orbit).

(7) In computing, meaningless, invalid or unwanted data.

(8) The bowels of an animal; refuse parts of flesh; offal (obsolete).

(9) In North American slang (of ball sports), an easy shot.

(10) In North American slang (of team sports), as “garbage time”, the period at the end of a timed sporting event that has become a blowout when the outcome of the game has already been decided, and the coaches of one or both teams will often decide to replace their best players with substitutes.

(11) In North American slang, to eviscerate (obsolete).

1400–1450: From the Middle English garbage, garbidge & gabage (discarded parts of butchered fowls; entrails of fowls used for human food).  In the Middle English, garbelage meant “removal of refuse from spices” & garbelure meant “refuse found in spices” while the Old French garbage (also as jarbage) meant “tax on sheaves of grain”.  Quite what were the mechanics of the sense-shifts has never been clear and further to muddy the waters there was also the Old Italian garbuglio (confusion).  All dictionaries thus regard the original form as being of “unknown origin”.  The familiar modern meaning (refuse, filth) has been in use since at least the 1580s, an evolution from the earlier sense of “giblets, refuse of a fowl, waste parts of an animal (head, feet, etc) used for human food).  Etymologists noted it was one of many words to enter English through the vector of the French cooking book and its sense of “waste material, refuse” was influenced by and partly confused with “garble” in its older sense of “remove refuse material from spices” (while Middle English had the derived noun garbelage it seems only ever to have been used to mean “the action of removing refuse (ie not the material itself)).  In modern North American use, “garbage” generally means only “kitchen and vegetable wastes” while “trash” the more common term generally used of “waste; discarded rubbish”.  The alternative spelling garbidge is obsolete (although it does sometimes still appear as a marker of the use of an eye dialect).  Garbage is a noun, verb & adjective, garbaging & garbaged is a verb and garbagelike is an adjective; the noun plural is garbage.

Portrait by Lindsay Lohan constructed entirely from recycled garbage by Jason Mecier (b 1968).  His work is crafted using discarded items and he attempts where possible to use objects in some way associated with his subjects.  Although described by some as mosaics, his technique belongs to the tradition of college.

The derived terms are many and include “garbage can” or “garbage bin” (a receptacle for discarded matter, especially kitchen waste), “garbage bag” (a bag into which certain waste is placed for subsequent (often periodic) collection and disposal), such a bag functioning often as a “bin liner” (a usually plastic disposal bag used to make the disposal process less messy), “garbage day” (or “garbage time”), the day on which a local government or other authority collects the contents of a householder’s garbage bin, left usually kerbside, “garbage collector”, “garbage man”, “garbage lady” & “garbage woman” the employees (“garbos” in Australian slang) who staff the collection process (known (usually humorously) since 1965 also as “garbologists” whose trade is “garbology”, “garbage truck” (A vehicle for the collection and removal of waste, usually a truck with a custom-built apparatus to compact the collected waste), “garbage dump” (the place to which garbage trucks deliver their load), “garbage disposal (unit)” (an electric device installed in a kitchen drain that shred waste before washing it down the drain (known commercially (sometimes capitalized) also as a “garburator” or “garberator”), “garbage bandit” (the wildlife known to raid garbage bins for food).  For the two holding centres used in 1945 to imprison the suspected Nazi war criminals prior to trial, the British used the codename "Camp Dustbin" and the Americans "Camp Ashcan"; both resisted the temptation to use "garbage" or "trash".  In coining derived terms or in idiomatic use, depending on the country, not only are "garbage" & "trash" used interchangeably, elements such as "ash", "rubbish", "dust" etc can also sometimes be substituted.  

In appearing to characterize the supporters of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) as “garbage”, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) gave something of a “free kick” to the Trump campaign which wasted no time in focusing on this latest gaffe to divert attention from the joke which triggered the whole “garbagegate” thing.  In mid-October, 2024 US comedian Tony Hinchcliffe (b 1984), whole performing a set as part of the entertainment for a Trump rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, included material in keeping with having “a bit of previous” in the use of jokes regarded variously as anti-Semitic, misogynistic and racist, the most controversial being: “I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico.”  The punch-line was well-received, greeted with much laughter and applause.

Tony Hinchcliffe on stage, Madison Square Garden, New York, October 2024.

It was interesting the comedian used “island of garbage” rather than “island of trash” because, in the US, “trash” is the more commonly used term and one which has a long history of being applied to social & ethnic minorities (white trash, trailer trash etc) which presumably was the intended implication.  The choice may have been influenced by the well-known “Great Pacific garbage patch”, an accumulation of (mostly) plastic and other marine debris in the central Pacific which is believed to cover at least 600,000 square miles (1.5 million km²).  While “…literally a floating island of trash” could have worked, not only would it have been more blatant but the impact of the punch-line depended on the audience summoning the mental image of the Pacific Ocean phenomenon (caused by and essentially circular sea current which is oceanography is called a “gyre”) before learning the reference was actually to Puerto Rico (and by implication, Puerto Ricans).  The racial slur wouldn’t have pleased the Trump campaign professionals who will have explained to their candidate that while it’s important to “feed the base” with messages they like, it doesn’t have to be done that often and certainly not in a way with the potential to alienate an entire sub-set of demographic in which a percentage are known to be the prized “undecided voters”.  There is a significant Puerto Rican population in three of the so-called “battleground states” where the election will be decided.

Still what’s done is done and there was a problem to be managed, but the problem soon vanished after President Biden decided to issue a condemnation of the rally saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”  That statement was reflected in the text of the transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, but the political operatives in the White House press office decided to apply some spin, appending a “psychological apostrophe”, rendering “supporters” as “supporter’s”, explaining for those of us too dim to get it that what Mr Biden meant was that his critique was limited exclusively to the deplorable comedian.  Clearly the White House press office operates in the tradition of “Don’t report what he says, report what he means”, urged on reported by the staff of crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) during his disastrous 1964 presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969).

President Joe Biden nibbles on a baby dressed as chicken during White House Halloween event, Washington DC, 31 October 2024.

Predictably, the “battle of the transcripts” made things worse rather than better so Mr Mr Biden tweeted his “clarification” on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation.”  The problem with the tweet was it was coherent and used close to standard English grammar, leading readers immediately to suspect it had been written by someone else, it anyway being widely assumed the president is no longer allowed unsupervised use of any internet-connected device.  Worse still, the apparent disdain of Trump’s supporters did appear to be in the tradition of Democratic Party “elite” opinion of the people they like to call “ordinary Americans”, Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2008 caught belittling small-town Pennsylvanians for being bitter and turning to God, guns and anti-immigrant sentiment to make themselves feel better (he was probably also thinking of pick-up trucks and country & western music too) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) during the 2016 campaign infamously described the Trump crowd as “a basket of deplorables”.  Again, it’s really counter-productive to feed an already satiated base if the menu also further alienate some of the undecided.

Crooked Spiro & Tricky Dick: Spiro Agnew (1918–1996; US vice president 1969-1973, left) and Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974, right).

The Republican Party has for over fifty years paid much lip service to defending and acknowledging the dignity of those they claim liberals in general and Democrats in particular disparage as “garbage”, or “deplorable”.  That they did this while driving down their wages didn’t escape attention but one can’t help but admire the way the Republican Party has managed to convince the deplorables repeatedly to vote against their own economic self-interest by dangling before their eyes distractions like the right to own guns, abortion and transgenderism.  Occasionally, there’s even been the odd amusing moment, such as on 11 September 1970 when Spiro Agnew gave a speech designed to appeal to what he called the "forgotten Americans", that group of white, working middle & lower class votes Nixon believe could be converted to the Republican cause because the once blue-collar Democratic Party had abandoned their interests to focus on fashionable, liberal causes such as minority rights.  The tone of the speech (though perhaps not the labored syntax which would be rejected as TLDR (too long, didn’t read) in the social media age) would be familiar to modern audiences used to political figures attacking the news media and was a critique of what later Republicans would label “fake news”.  In attacking the liberals, it also had some fairly tortured alterative flourishes:  

“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.  They have formed their own 4-H Club - the “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history”  “…As long as they have their own association, crooks will flourish.  As long as they have their own television networks, paid for by their own advertisers, they will continue to have their own commentators.  It is time for America to quit catering to the pabulum peddlers and the permissive.  It is time to speak up forcefully for the conservative cause."

Mr Trump lost no time in exploiting the latest in a long line of Mr Biden’s gaffes, turning up to a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin (another battleground state) in a Trump branded Freightliner garbage truck flying an American flag, conducting an impromptu interview in the passenger’s seat decked out in the hi-viz (high-visibility) gear worn by garbagemen.  “How do you like my garbage truck?” he asked reporters.  “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

Probably the Biden camp was lucky the comedian didn’t use “trash” in his racist joke because had the president mangled his words enough to end up calling the Trumpers “trash” their reaction would likely have been visceral because it would of course have been deconstructed as a clipping of “white trash”.  The slur “white trash” has a long history in the US, first used in the ante-bellum South of the mid-nineteenth century (possibly and certainly concurrently as “poor white trash”), said to be the way black slaves referred to whites of low social status or working in low-level jobs.  It was apparently one of the first of the attempts to find an offensive term for white people, something which in the late twentieth century became something of a linguistic cottage industry and although literally dozens were coined and some have had some brief popularity in popular culture, none seem ever to have achieved critical mass acceptance and, importantly, none seem ever much to have offended the white folks.  Indeed, “white trash”, “white trashery” etc have even been adopted by sub-groups of white society as a kind of class identifier, rather as the infamous N-word has become a term of endearment among African Americans.

Edgar Winter's White Trash Live at the Fillmore (1971) and Edgar Winter's White Trash Recycled (1977).

Edgar Winter (b 1946) formed Edgar Winter’s White Trash in 1971, the name an allusion to the stereotype of “white trash” being most commonly found south of the Mason-Dixon Line because the band was an aggregation of musicians from Louisiana & Texas.  It was an example of a slur being “reclaimed” and “embraced” by a group originally it target.

Even when it’s directed at a whole society, the white people seem to cope.  In 1980, Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015; prime minister of Singapore 1959-1990) felt compelled to issue a statement telling the people of Australia their economy needed significant reforms were the fate of becoming “the poor white trash of Asia” to be avoided.  Mr Lee’s advice was certainly prescient, 1980 being the last “good” year of the “old” Australian economy (things would get worse before they got better) and the reforms would be imposed over the next two decades (especially during the 1980s) but at the time, the mention of “poor white trash” attracted less comment than the implication Australia was “an Asian nation”, the political class dividing into an “Asianist” faction and a group which agreed with the UN (United Nations) that like New Zealand, the place belonged with “Western Europe and others”.

Biscione

Biscione (pronounced bisch-sho-nee)

Pre 1100: An Italian word, the construct being bisci(a) (snake) +‎ -one (the augmentative suffix).  Biscione is a masculine augmentative of the Italian feminine noun biscia (grass snake, a corrupted form of the Late Latin & Vulgar Latin bīstia), from bēstia (beast) of unknown origin.  Biscione is a noun; the noun plural biscioni (used in English also as bisciones).

(1) In heraldry, a heraldic device consisting of a large snake “giving birth” to a child through its mouth (not devouring the infant as it may appear).

(2) A surname of Italian origin.

The Biscione is known also as the vipera (viper) and in the Milanese dialect as the bissa.  In heraldry, the symbol is used as a charge (any emblem or device occupying the field of an escutcheon (shield)), over Argent (a tincture of silver which appears usually as a shade of white) and often in Azure (a range of blue).  The snake is depicted in the act of “giving birth” to a human through its mouth and while anatomically improbable, it was doubtless always understood and something symbolic.  Historically, what emerged was depicted as a child but in the more sensitive twentieth century this tended to be blurred into something recognizable merely as “human of no distinct age or gender”.  It has been the emblem of the Italian Visconti family for almost a millennium.

A biscione used by the Visconti family for crests and costs of arms.

The origins of the symbol are obscure but there are the inevitable (and of the fanciful) medieval tales including that it was (1) taken as a prize of war from a standard or shield of a Saracen killed by Ottone Visconti (1207–1295; Archbishop of Milan 1262-1295 and the founder of the Visconti dynasty) during the Barons' Crusade (1239-1241) or (2) to honor Ottone Visconti for having killed the drake Tarantasio, an enormous snake which dwelled in Milan’s now vanished Lake Gerundo and ate the local children; the serpent feared also because its venomous breath polluted the water and made men ill.  Less bloodthirsty (and thus less popular) is the story it all began with a bronze souvenir in the shape of a serpent, brought to the city from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul in the Republic of Türkiye) by Arnolf II of Arsago (circa 950-1018; Archbishop of Milan 998-1018).  It’s said the archbishop used the symbol wisely during the episcopate and it became so associated with Milan the city and its citizens embraced its use.  Most prefer the tale from the thirteenth century Crusade and it would explain why the child was often said to be “a moor”.

Although it’s not thought related, serpents have much occupied the minds of those in Christendom, notably the one coiled around the lush foliage in the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve with forbidden fruit, her weakness leading to the downfall of mankind and our eternal sin, thus establishing one of the central tenants of the Church: Women are to blame for everything bad.  There’s also a reference to beasts and a new-born child about to be devoured in the vivid imagery of chapter 12:1-4 in the New Testament’s Book of Revelation (King James Version (KJV, 1611)):

1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Not wholly improbable as an Eve for the third millennium, while on holiday in Thailand, just after Christmas 2017, Lindsay Lohan was bitten by a snake and while said to have made a full recovery, there was never any word on fate of serpent.  The syndicated story on the internet attracted comment from the grammar Nazis who demanded it be verified the snake really was on holiday in Thailand.

Alfa Romeo and the biscione

Alfa Romeo Automobiles SpA is based in the northern Italian city of Turin and for much of the twentieth it wrote an illustrious history on road and track before losing its way in the 1980s; it’s now one of the fourteen brands under the corporate umbrella of the multinational Stellantis (headquartered (for various reasons) in the Netherlands).  Alfa Romeo was founded in 1910 as A.L.F.A. (Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (which translates literally as “the Anonymous car company of Lombardy”).  It was in 1915 A.L.F.A. was acquired by Italian Engineer Nicola Romeo (1876–1938) who in 1920 added his name and turned the company into an industrial conglomerate encompassing not only passenger & racing cars but also a product range as diverse as heavy machinery, aero engines and a bus & truck division.

Biscione bas relief, Piazza Duomo Oggiaro, Milan.

The Anonima (anonymous) was a reference to the legal structure of a “Società anonima” (S.A) which designated a class of limited liability company, a common device still in countries which have maintained the traditions of the Code Napoléon (the codified Napoleonic civil law (1804)).  Originally, it provided for shareholders remaining anonymous and able to collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates in an “over-the-counter” transaction, paid to whoever held the paper.  The attraction was the certificates could be transferred in secret and thus nobody (not the company management nor the regulatory authorities) necessarily knew who owned the shares.  That system was obviously open to abuse and abuse there was, tax evasion, money laundering, related party transactions and bribery soon rife, prompting governments to legislate and while SAs and the later SpAs (Società per azioni, most accurately translated as “joint-stock company”) no longer offer shareholders the same degree of anonymity, devices such as intricate structures made up of trusts, and holding companies can be used to at least obscure the identities of ultimate beneficiaries.  The tradition of concealment continues in many places, including common law jurisdictions in which the Code Napoléon was never part of the legal system.  Some are more helpful than others and although, despite the urban myth, it’s apparently never been possible to turn up at the counter of the famously “flexible” Delaware Division of Corporations and register an entity as being owned by "M. Mouse, D. Duck & E. Bunny", the US state is said still to be “most accommodating”.

Whether true or not, the industry legend is the Alfa Romeo logo was adopted because high on the wall of the Filarete Tower in Milan’s Piazza Castello were mounted several heraldic interpretations of the Biscione Visconteo, the coat of arms of the city of Milan and of the Visconti family which first ruled it in 1277 when Ottone Visconti assumed the Dominium Mediolanense (Lordship of Milan).  Late in 1910, waiting for the No. 14 tram to arrive for his journey home, was a draftsman from the A.L.F.A. design office and he was so taken with the symbol he sketched the first take of the corporate logo which remains in use to this day.  The biscione and a representation of Milan's official flag (a red cross on a white background) are the two elements which have remained constant in all nine version of the logos used in the last 115 years-odd.

The Alfa Romeo logo since 1910.

The original (1910-1915) version featured a biscione (either devouring or producing a child, Moor or Ottoman Turk (depending on which legend one prefers)) while the crown on the snake's head functioned to distinguish the official Milanese symbol from that used by the Visconti family for various escutcheons while the words ALFA at the top and MILANO at the bottom were separated by two figure-eight "Savoy Knots," a symbol of the royal House of Savoy, a branch of which reigned in Italy between unification in 1861 and the abolition of the monarchy in 1946.  The “Romeo” name was appended in 1920, reflecting the change in the corporate identity and in 1925, a gold laurel leaf surround was added to commemorate the Alfa Romeo P2’s victories in the European Grand Prix at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Alfa Romeo Typo 158s (Alfetta), 1950 British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit, England, May 1950.  The Alfettas finished 1-2-3.

When by referendum, the Italian people voted to establish a republic (the monarchy tainted by its support for the fascist regime (1922-1943) of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943)), the knots from royal regalia were replaced by some nondescript waves but more obvious was the switch from the multi-color design to a simple gold-on-black, a change necessitated by the damage the country’s industrial capacity had suffered during the war, one victim of which was the factory producing the badges.  The simplified version was short-lived but suited the times because it was easier to mass-produce with the available machine tools and the heterochromatic look would return in 1950, the year the pre war Alfa Romeo tipo 158 (Alfetta) would prevail in the in inaugural Formula One World Championship, the tipo 159 retaining the driver’s title the following year.

Umberto II while Prince of Piedmont, a 1928 portrait by Anglo-Hungarian painter Philip Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László).  Note the ruffled collar and bubble pantaloons.

Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia (1904–1983) was the last king of Italy, his reign as Umberto II lasting but thirty-four days during May-June 1946; Italians nicknamed him the Re di Maggio (May king) although some better-informed Romans preferred regina di maggio (May queen).  At the instigation of the US and British political representatives of the allied military authorities, in April 1944 he was appointed regent because it was clear popular support for Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947; king of Italy 1900-1946) had collapsed.  Despite Victor Emmanuel’s reputation suffering by association, his relationship with the fascists had often been uneasy and, seeking means to blackmail the royal house, Mussolini’s spies compiled a dossier (reputably several inches thick), detailing the ways of his son’s private life.  Then styled Prince of Piedmont, the secret police discovered Umberto was a sincere and committed Roman Catholic but one unable to resist his "satanic homosexual urges” and his biographer agreed, noting the prince was "forever rushing between chapel and brothel, confessional and steam bath" often spending hours “praying for divine forgiveness.”  After a referendum abolished the monarchy, Umberto II lived his remaining 37 years in exile, never again setting foot on Italian soil.  His turbulent marriage to Princess Marie-José of Belgium (1906-2001) produced four children but historians consider it quite possible none of them were his.

Benito Mussolini in 1930 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 SS, Rome, April 1931.  The 6C was in almost continuous production between 1927-1954, a few hundred made even during World War II (1939-1945).

In 1960 only detail changes to the logo were introduced but in 1972, not only did the wavy line vanish but so did “Milano”, a recognition the company had opened a new production plant at Pomigliano d'Arco near the southern city of Naples, built to construct the new Alfasud (the construct being Alfa + sud (south)), something encouraged (and subsidized) by the national government, anxious to reduce crime and unemployment in the south.  The Alfasud was an outstanding design but, for a variety of reasons including appalling industrial relation and political instability, the plant Neapolitan was beset by problems which were visited upon the unfortunate Alfasud, many of which rusted away with some haste.  As if to exorcise the memory of the Alfasud, in 1982 the design was again revised, producing what has to date proved the longest-lasting iteration, remaining in use until 2014.  It was essentially a modernization exercise, the graphics simplified and the font switched to the starker Futura font, the revision in 2015 more subtly austere still.

1969 Alfa Romeo Giulia Super Biscione.

The “Biscione” version (1969-1973) of the Alfa Romeo Giulia (type 105, 1962-1978) was mechanically identical to other Giulias built at the same time, the package exclusively a trim level, the same concept Ford used in their “Ghia” ranges, the badge added to various blinged-up models between 1973-2008.  The trim features which appeared on the Biscione Giulias weren’t always exclusive, some appearing at various times on other Giulias but there seems to have been a standard specification for the Bisciones (that plural form preferable in this context) and all included:

A sunken Alfa Romeo badge on the trunk (boot) lid.
A chrome centre strip on the hood (bonnet).
Chrome strips on A pillar & roof.
Chrome spears on the rockers (used also on the Berlina models and different from those on other Gulias).
Green snake badges (ie biscioni) on the C pillars (external).
A partially black headliner.
Chrome surroundings on the B pillar interior light switches.
Velour & moquette used for floor coverings rather than rubber mats.

Silvio Berlusconi, Fininvest and the biscione.

M2 corporate logo (left) and Fininvest corporate logo (right).

Finanziaria di Investimento-Fininvest SpA (Fininvest) is a holding company which holds the equity division of the Berlusconi family.  It was founded in by the estimable Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023; prime minister of Italy 1994-1995, 2001-2006 & 2008-2011) who has thus far proved irreplaceable in the part he played on the European political stage.  Like many things associated with Mr Berlusconi, Fininvest has not been without controversy including intriguing accounts of the way its initial capital was provided in physical cash (unfortunately whether the bundles of lira notes were emptied from suitcases, paper bags or potato sacks has never been disclosed) and the curious phenomena of the way in which laws under which the company or its founder were facing charges mysteriously were repealed prior to the cases going to trial.  Fininvest is now chaired by Mr Berlusconi’s oldest daughter, Maria "Marina" Berlusconi (b 1966).

Simulacrum

Simulacrum (pronounced sim-yuh-ley-kruhm)

(1) A slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance; a physical image or representation of a deity, person, or thing.

(2) An effigy, image, or representation; a thing which has the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities; a thing which simulates another thing; an imitation, a semblance; a thing which has a similarity to the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities

(3) Used loosely, any representational image of something (a nod to the Latin source).

1590–1600: A learned borrowing of the Latin simulācrum (likeness, image) and a dissimilation of simulaclom, the construct being simulā(re) (to pretend, to imitate), + -crum (the instrumental suffix which was a variant of -culum, from the primitive Indo-European –tlom (a suffix forming instrument nouns).  The Latin simulāre was the present active infinitive of simulō (to represent, simulate) from similis (similar to; alike), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sem- (one; together).  In English, the idea was always of “something having the mere appearance of another”, hence the conveyed notion of a “a specious imitation”, the predominant sense early in the nineteenth century while later it would be applied to works or art (most notably in portraiture) judged, “blatant flattery”.  In English, simulacrum replaced the late fourteenth century semulacre which had come from the Old French simulacre.  As well as the English simulacrum, the descendents from the Latin simulācrum include the French simulacre, the Spanish simulacro and the Polish symulakrum.  Simulacrum is a noun and simulacral is an adjective; the noun plural is simulacrums or simulacra (a learned borrowing from Latin simulācra).  Although neither is listed, by lexicographers, in the world of art criticism, simulacrally would be a tempting adverb and simulacrumism an obvious noun.  The comparative is more simulacral, the suplerative most simulacral.

Simulacrum had an untroubled etymology didn’t cause a problem until French post-structuralists found a way to add layers of complication.  The sociologist & philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote a typically dense paper (The Precession of Simulacra (1981)) explaining simulacra were “…something that replaces reality with its representation… Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” and his examples ranged from Disneyland to the Watergate scandal.  One can see his point but it seems only to state the obvious and wicked types like Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) said it in fewer words.  To be fair, Baudrillard’s point was more about the consequences of simulacra than the process of their creation and the social, political and economic implication of states or (more to the point) corporations attaining the means to “replace” reality with a constructed representation were profound.  The idea has become more relevant (and certainly more discussed) in the post-fake news world in which clear distinctions between that which is real and its imitations have become blurred and there’s an understanding that through many channels of distribution, increasingly, audiences are coming to assume nothing is real.

Advertising copy for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with graphical art by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum.

The work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman is the best remembered of the 1960s advertising by the US auto industry and their finest creations were those for General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac Motor Division (PMD).  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly took some artistic licence and created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than taken too literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan, it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (125 mm) because the 1958 frames were used for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  It certainly improved the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance also genuinely enhanced handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, their artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Fitzpatrick & Kaufman’s graphic art for the 1967 Pontiac Catalina Convertible advertising campaign.  One irony in the pair being contracted by PMD is that for most of the 1960s, Pontiacs were distinguished by some of the industry’s more imaginative and dramatic styling ventures and needed the artists' simulacral tricks less than some other manufacturers (and the Chryslers of the era come to mind, the solid basic engineering below cloaked sometimes in truly bizarre or just dull  bodywork).

This advertisement from 1961 hints also at something often not understood about what was later acknowledged as the golden era for both the US auto industry and their advertising agencies.  Although the big V8 cars of the post-war years are now remembered mostly for the collectable, high-powered, high value survivors with large displacement and induction systems using sometimes two four-barrel or three two-barrel carburetors, such things were a tiny fraction of total production and most V8 engines were tuned for a compromise between power (actually, more to the point for most: torque) and economy, a modest single two barrel sitting atop most and after the brief but sharp recession of 1958, even the Lincoln Continental, aimed at the upper income demographic, was reconfigured thus in a bid to reduce the prodigious thirst of the 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8.  Happily for country and oil industry, the good times returned and by 1963 the big Lincolns were again guzzling gas four barrels at a time (the MEL in 1966 even enlarged to a 462 (7.6)) although there was the courtesy of the engineering trick of off-centering slightly the carburetor’s location so the primary two throats (the other two activated only under heavy throttle load) sat directly in the centre for optimal smoothness of operation.  Despite today’s historical focus on the displacement, horsepower and burning rubber of the era, there was then much advertising copy about (claimed) fuel economy, though while then as now, YMMV (your mileage may vary), the advertising standards of the day didn’t demand such a disclaimer.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1650), oil on canvas by Samuel Cooper (1609-1672).

Even if it’s something ephemeral, politicians are often sensitive about representations of their image but concerns are heightened when it’s a portrait which, often somewhere hung on public view, will long outlive them.  Although in the modern age the proliferation and accessibility of the of the photographic record has meant portraits no longer enjoy an exclusivity in the depiction of history, there’s still something about a portrait which conveys, however misleadingly, a certain authority.  That’s not to suggest the classic representational portraits have always been wholly authentic, a good many of those of the good and great acknowledged to have been painted by “sympathetic” artists known for their subtleties in rendering their subjects variously more slender, youthful or hirsute as the raw material required.  Probably few were like Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) who told Samuel Cooper to paint him “warts and all”.  The artist obliged.

Randolph Churchill (1932), oil on canvas by Philip de László (left) and Randolph Churchill’s official campaign photograph (1935, right).

There have been artists for whom a certain fork of the simulacrum has provided a long a lucrative career.  Philip Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László) was a UK-based Hungarian painter who was renowned for his sympathetic portraiture of royalty, the aristocracy and anyone else able to afford his fee (which for a time-consuming large, full-length works could be as much as 3000 guineas).  His reputation as a painter suffered after his death because he was dismissed by some as a “shameless flatterer” but in more recent years he’s been re-evaluated and there’s now much admiration for his eye and technical prowess, indeed, some have noted he deserves to be regarded more highly than many of those who sat for him.  His portrait of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) (1932, left) has, rather waspishly, been described by some authors as something of an idealized simulacrum and the reaction of the journalist Alan Brien (1925-2008) was typical.  He met Churchill only in when his dissolute habits had inflicted their ravages and remarked that the contrast was startling, “…as if Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture for one day of the year.”  Although infamously obnoxious, on this occasion Churchill responded with good humor, replying “Yes, it is hard to believe that was me, isn’t it?  I was a joli garçon (pretty boy) in those days.”  That may have been true for as his official photograph for the 1935 Wavertree by-election (where he stood as an “Independent Conservative” on a platform of rearmament and opposition to Indian Home Rule) suggests, the artist may have been true to his subject.  Neither portrait now photograph seems to have helped politically and his loss at Wavertree was one of several he would suffer in his attempts to be elected to the House of Commons.

Portrait of Gina Rinehart (née Hancock, b 1954) by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira (b 1983), National Gallery of Australia (NGA) (left) and photograph of Gina Rinehart (right).

While some simulacrums can flatter to deceive, others are simply unflattering.  That was what Gina Rinehard (described habitually as “Australia’s richest woman”) felt about two (definitely unauthorized) portraits of which are on exhibition at the NGA.  Accordingly, she asked they be removed from view and “permanently disposed of”, presumably with the same fiery finality with which bonfires consumed portraits of Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), both works despised by their subjects.  Unfortunately for Ms Reinhart, her attempted to save the nation from having to look at what she clearly considered bad art created only what is in law known as the “Streisand effect”, named after an attempt in 2003 by the singer Barbra Streisand (b 1942) to suppress publication of a photograph showing her cliff-top residence in Malibu, taken originally to document erosion of the California coast.  All that did was generate a sudden interest in the previously obscure photograph and ensure it went viral, overnight reaching an audience of millions as it spread around the web.  Ms Reinhart’s attempt had a similar consequence: while relatively few had attended Mr Namatjira’s solo Australia in Colour exhibition at the NGA and publicity had been minimal, the interest generated by the story saw the “offending image” printed in newspapers, appear on television news bulletins (they’re still a thing with a big audience) and of course on many websites.  The “Streisand effect” is regarded as an example “reverse psychology”, the attempt to conceal something making it seem sought by those who would otherwise not have been interested or bothered to look.  People should be careful in what they wish for.

Variations on a theme of simulacra: Four AI (artificial intelligence) generated images of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.  The car depicted (centre right) is a Mercedes-Benz SL (R107, 1971-1989), identifiable as a post-1973 North American model because of the disfiguring bumper bar. 

So a simulacrum is a likeness of something which is recognizably of the subject (maybe with the odd hint) and not of necessity “good” or “bad”; just not exactly realistic.  Of course with techniques of lighting or angles, even an unaltered photograph can similarly mislead but the word is used usually of art or behavior such as “a simulacrum or pleasure” or “a ghastly simulacrum of a smile”.  In film and biography of course, the simulacrum is almost obligatory and the more controversial the subject, the more simulacral things are likely to be: anyone reading AJP Taylor’s study (1972) of the life of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) would be forgiven for wondering how anyone could have said a bad word about the old chap.  All that means there’s no useful antonym of simulacrum because one really isn’t needed (there's replica, duplicate etc but the sense is different) while the synonyms are many, the choice of which should be dictated by the meaning one wishes to denote and they include: dissimilarity, unlikeness, archetype, clone, counterfeit, effigy, ersatz, facsimile, forgery, image, impersonation, impression, imprint, likeness, portrait, representation, similarity, simulation, emulation, fake, faux & study.  Simulacrum remains a little unusual in that while technically it’s a neutral descriptor, it’s almost always used with a sense of the negative or positive.