Flookerang & Fratzog

Flookerang (pronounced flook–ah-rang)

A corporate logo adopted in 1957 by Chrysler Corporation for use in promoting the dramatically restyled versions of the company’s “Forward Look” designs (1955-1956).

1957: The construct was flook + (boom)erang.  Now mostly obsolete, flook was an alternative spelling of fluke (in the sense of “blade at the end of an anchor”).  In wide nautical use, flook (fluke) was used of any of the triangular blades at an anchor’s end, the appendages there to “catch” on the seabed or riverbed, keeping the vessel moored in position (ie not drifting away with the tide).  In armaments design, the flook was a metal hook that appeared close to the tip of many staff weapons (such as a bill) with the effect in combat depending on use; if thrust, could be penetrative (armor or flesh as need be) while if swung it could work as a “grappling hook”.  Fluke & flook are old words, documented since at least the tenth century although, anchors, staff weapons, arrowheads and such having by then been in use for millennia, the forms may well be more ancient.  The origin was the Middle English flok, fluke & flewke, from the Old English flōcand and cognate with the Old Norse flōki; it may be compared with the Old High German flah (flat (source of the modern German flach)), from the Proto-Germanic flakaz although for technical reasons related to the phonetics, etymologists seem to prefer a link with the Middle Low German vlögel (wing) and the Germanic vlōch & vlucht (used in the sense of both “wing” & “flight”) or even vlunke (the modern Low German Flunk (wing, pinion)).  The modern use in German of fluke to describe the tail of whales and such is thought borrowed from English.  The use of sea creatures came from the Old English flōc (flatfish), of Germanic origin, related to the German flach (flat), the Old Saxon flaka (sole), the Old High German flah (smooth) and the Old Norse floke (flatfish, flounder, flak, floe; disk), all ultimately from Proto-Germanic flakaz, from the primitive Indo European root plak- (to be flat).  The parasitic worm was so named in the 1660s by virtue of the distinctive (flat) shape.

A Flookerang: Chrysler corporation brochure, 1958.

In general use, “fluke” has become familiar as the description of the two lobes of the tails of whales (or similar creatures) and whales “fluking” their tails (appearing above the surface just as a deep dive is about to begin) have long been an Instagram staple; once hunted close to extinction for their meat and oil, the charismatic beasts are now among nature’s most prolific content providers although their flukes do occasionally suffer the indignity of being labelled “fishtails”.  Being mammals, they belong to the order Cetacea and are within the zoological class Mammalia, not Pisces.  Interestingly, although “fluke” & “flook” were historically used of the barbed projections added to some arrowheads, the terms seemed to have vanished from modern specialist terminology, replaced by “barbed arrowhead”, the two projections (pointing backwards towards the shaft) designed to resist withdrawal after penetration (and doing victim much damaged during the extraction).  The link with (in this case unfortunate) whales is that the biggest of the barbs were on the biggest of the arrows (the harpoons on whaling ships).  The variant in Scots English was fluik, known to be in use by at least the early seventeenth century.  The way use evolved differently in specialist vocabularies does make sense with nautical jargon retaining fluke or flook for an anchor's broad, seabed-catching blades while in archery, the industry settled on “barb”, presumably because the purpose of the structures mirrored the natural world, barbs in animals and plants doing much the same job.  Boomerang entered English texts only in 1827 and was from būmariny (missile weapon used by Australian Aborigines (a historic term for the native tribes in the continent of Australia, now generally classified as “indigenous” or “first nations” peoples)), the recorded phonetic form of a word in one of the now extinct languages spoken by the Dharuk people native to an area in what is now NSW (New South Wales) and known to geographers as the Sydney Basin.  A word pronounced as wo-mur-rang was noted in NSW in 1798 and it may have been related but there’s no documentary evidence.  Flookerang is a noun, Fratzonic is an adjective and Fratzonically is an adverb; the noun plural is Flookerangs.

1957 Chrysler brochure with Flookerang.  While the 1957 cars were (for better and worse) immensely influential, Virgil's real masterpiece was the 1955-1956 “Forward Look”; frankly, there he should have paused for a few seasons.

Although the The Flookerang can best be described as a pair of stylized boomerangs, one with an especially acute angle overlaid atop another in a more conventional shape and it can be assumed Chrysler used flook in the sense of the appendages on weapons rather than the homophonic fluke’s sense of (1) a lucky or improbable occurrence unlikely to be repeated or (2) to by pure chance obtain a successful outcome (although, in retrospect, there was an element of both in the corporation’s 1957 ranges).  The shape obviously was abstract and did not represent one of Chrysler’s manufacturing divisions (in 1957: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler & Imperial) or a specific model or range.  It was instead a mid-century modernist allusion to the latest version of the company’s “Forward Look” design, introduced for the 1955 season and styled by Virgil Exner (1909–1973; vice president of styling, Chrysler Corporation 1957-1962).  The 1955-1956 Chryslers were for the corporation a watershed because although the mechanical engineering had always been sound (in some ways, often industry-leading), by the late 1940s the styling of the cars had become “frumpy”, a product of the design ethos of Kaufman Thuma “K.T.” Keller (1885–1966; president of Chrysler Corporation 1935-1950 and chairman of the board 1950-1956) who believed a car should be able to be “driven by a gentleman with his fedora or Stetson on”.  This resulted in cars that were tall & boxy; while comfortable to sit inside and drive, they looked old-fashioned and out of step with styling trends from Europe or elsewhere in Detroit.  Basic engineering was the message (“function over fashion” in the modern parlance) and although there were critics of the approach (including many within Chrysler), Keller was unmoved, quoted as saying that while none of the corporation’s cars would: “…knock your eyes out, neither will they knock your hat off as you enter or exit”.  He also had earthier ways of explaining his philosophy.

Flookerang variations: 1958 Plymouth Fury (left), 1961 Dodge Dart Phoenix (centre) and 1961 Plymouth Fury (right).

Trouble was, in the unexpectedly prosperous US of the early 1950s, folk were becoming more interested in style and less in their hats and when Exner’s “Ford Look” appeared late in 1954, buyers responded to “longer, lower, wider” as predictably they would for most of the next two decades.  The lines were elegant, the dimensions well proportioned and, at least in the more expensive versions, there was nicely detailing and it was a direction the industry could have taken but the US of the mid 1950s had become something of a candy-store and there were lots of kids with pocket money; prosperity begat excess.  Exner’s 1957 range more than any was the one that ushered in mass-market fins and a half-decade of bloat in the American automobile; in retrospect, it was “the curse of plenty”.  Still, the macropterous era was among the most memorable era in an industry that’s had a few and, if excess there must be, it should be “laid on with a trowel”; that Exner’s re-styling for 1957 did but within a couple of seasons, compared with the ways GM (General Motors) outposts like Buick and Cadillac would explore the theme, the 1957 Chryslers appeared (almost) restrained.  By contrast with the extravagance seen on the cars the emblem was created to promote, the Flookerang was subtle, the overlaid shapes denoting (1) rapid forward progress and (2) the sweep of those big fins rearward.  As a conceptual link it was one of the more successful of its kind but, unfortunately, the species it referenced soon went extinct.  Chrysler in 1957 had announced the look in banner headlines reading “Suddenly, it’s 1960” and, in a period when the “futuristic” was everywhere in films, newspapers and fiction, the cars did seem to offer a glimpse of a bright, shiny new world.  The problem was however that once on the path of excess there is nowhere to go but “more excessive” and that’s what happened; by the time it really was “1960”, the moment had passed and the fins soon would be pruned, Exner fired (actually relegated to a face-saving consultancy) with the Flookerang in 1961 (mostly) abandoned, replaced by the mysterious Fratzog.

Flookercharger.

Chrysler’s use of the Flookerang was inconsistent, both in variations in shape and placement on vehicles, on some models appearing one season, vanishing the next, only to re-appear for an encore, perhaps explaining why it never really became culturally embedded as a symbol, its relatively short life contributing also.  It must though have appealed to at least one custom-builder who blended the tail-fins of a 1960 Plymouth Fury with a 1966 Dodge Charger, the Flookerangs left in place despite the tendency of those crafting such things to remove “extraneous detailing”.  The styling of the 1966-1967 Chargers was received with restrained enthusiasm (although, once a small spoiler had been added to the trunk (boot) lid to tame the “lift” encountered at high speed, the fastback lines proved aerodynamically efficient on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals) but few would have suggested grafting on a 1960 Fury’s fins would have improved the aesthetics.  That was however done by one visionary soul who didn’t stop at what clearly was thought a callipygous optimization, a 1967 interior used with the dashboard modified to house a remarkable 19 gauges, the four electroluminescent pods on the driver’s side matched by a symmetrical quartet to the right.  The engine was a 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 that may have been original although it included a Sonoramic cross ram induction system (most photogenic but never offered by the factory with the 440); the transmission a TorqueFlite 727 Automatic.  Given the configuration, adding five hood scoops seemed appropriate and the steering wheel boss retained its original Fratzog.  Unfortunately, the unique machine was damaged in a garage fire (one unkind comment on a Mopar site suggesting it may have attracted “the wrath of God”) and its fate is unknown.

Fratzog (pronounced frat-zog)

A corporate logo since 1961 used from time to time by Chrysler Corporation (and of late revived by Stellantis, the multi-national automotive manufacturing concern into which Fiat-Chrysler was in 2021 absorbed).

1960: According to industry legend, a wholly meaningless word made up on the spur of the moment by the shape’s designer.  If the designer (whose name remains unknown) had some inspiration for their choice, it seems never to have been documented but frequently it’s been assumed the construct was frat(ernity)+ zog.  Fraternity was from the Middle English fraternite, from the Old French fraternité, from the Latin frāternitās, ultimately from frāter (brother).  Although almost certainly unrelated to Fratzog, in the Albanian language, zog translates literally as “bird” (zogu (“the bird”, using the definite article)).  The Zogolli family’s (the construct being the root Zog + the Ottoman-Turkish patronymic suffix –oglu (son of)) most famous member was Zog I (Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli; 1895–1961); King of Albania 1928–1939) and in 1922 (after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved), he Albanized and shortened his surname to Zogu, six year later clipping the final “-u” and adopting the mononym King Zog as his royal title.  Fratzog also predates by some 16 years the acronym ZOG (used also as Zog) (Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government, or Zionist-Occupied Government), a term (dating from 1976) for the US government used by certain antisemitic conspiracy theorists claiming Jews secretly control the US government (a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda under the Third Reich (1933-1945) extended also to the UK government).  JOG (Jewish Occupational Government) has also been used but, historically, SOG was preferred it was thought to distinguish “Jewish subversive conduct” from “being Jewish” although that subtlety escaped most.  Fratzog is a noun; the noun plural is Fratzogs.

1966 Dodge Charger.  In case people didn't “get the message”, Dodge added a fratzog to the hubcaps (top left), gas cap (top left) and grill (centre) while a Flookerang appeared on the C-Pillar (bottom left) with a pentastar behind the front wheel-arch (bottom right).

Using standard etymological deconstruction, a surface analysis of Flookerang reveals the portmanteau construction but all that’s known of the origin of Fratzog is the logo emerged in mid 1960 from Chrysler’s Highland Park styling studio, then under the direction of Elwood Engel (1917–1986; Chief Designer, Chrysler Corporation 1961-1973).  Whether it was the work of an individual or something of a team effort is unclear but, given the simplicity of the task, that it came from the hand of a single designer is quite plausible.  While never named, some sources have referred to the designer as “he” so it’s reasonable to assume it was a man (throughout Detroit the styling studios then an almost exclusively male domain although women had for decades being involved in color choices and interior detailing) but no documentary evidence has ever been sighted.  The meaning of Fratzog has long been a mystery with the industry legend being it was “made up on the spot” after someone in the marketing department sent a request asking how they should refer to the thing.  Having the punchy qualities of being short, memorable, phonetic, unique and needing only two syllables, it would have had some appeal to marketing types but whether they ever sent a “follow-up” asking what it meant, isn’t known.

Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity house, 107 Edgemoor Lane, Ithaca, New York.

Probably it was good they didn’t pursue the matter because the orthodoxy is “Fratzog” has no meaning, speculation focused usually on the “frat” element with the most popular theory being it may be a borrowing of the clipping of “fraternity” (a social organization of male students at a college or university) and familiar in forms such as “frat party” (much associated with drunkenness, frat houses to this day one of the most convenient paths to alcohol for those under 21 (in the US the minimum age at which alcohol may be purchased and consumed)).  Many of the designers at Highland Park would have been “frats” (members of a fraternity and habitués of frat houses) so it’s not impossible “fratzog” may have been slang among certain drunken students although that’s wholly speculative but there is a rich history of such constructs including “frat boy” & “frat rat” (members of a fraternity, the most obnoxious of the breed dubbed “fratholes”), “frat house” (a fraternity's building) and “frat flick” & “frat lit” (movies & books about fraternities or appealing to the frat boy stereotype (“fratire” the ultimate form of the literature, now understood as a stream of “toxic masculinity”)).  As might be predicted given the elements of frat house life (males aged 17-25, ample stocks of alcohol, disposable income and proximity to sorority houses (a source of female students aged 17-25)), behavior can be less than ideal and recent scandals at Cornell University have illustrated aspects of the culture.  Sorority was from the Renaissance Latin sorōritās, from the Classical Latin soror (sister), from the primitive Indo-European swésōr; the word may be compared with the Portuguese sororidade, the Spanish sororidad and the French sororité.

Lindsay Lohan “on theme” in the livery of the Cincinnati Bengals (a football team in the NFL (National Football League) as a member of the AFC (American Football Conference) North division (left) and 1968 Dodge Charger Bengal Edition (right).

The Dodge Charger Bengal Edition was created in 1968 by Cincinnati Dodge dealer to celebrate the formation of an NFL franchise for the city, arranging with Chrysler’s fleet supply staff to have the cars painted in orange and fitted with black vinyl roofs to match the team’s colors.  Amusingly, Chrysler had no such orange in the color charts for its passenger cars but a shade mixed for Michigan Department of Transportation's fleet proved a perfect match.  An order of 50 was required for the specialized run so 50 duly were ordered in a variety of mechanical configurations.  Reflecting Dodge’s usual build practice for 1968 Chargers, Fratzog logos were fitted on the grill and rear panel unless the R/T package also was ordered in which case R/T badges were substituted.  In either case, a Fratzog appeared on the steering wheel boss but mysteriously, some 1968 Charger R/Ts exist with a small Fratzog on the instrument panel while others have a miniature R/T.  “Special editions” like the Bengal Charger often appeared to stimulate sales of slow-selling models but the 1968 Charger was a hit from day one and although the product planners had projected sales that season of around 20,000, they were pleasantly surprised when more than 96,000 left the showroom, a second assembly line quickly added to meet demand.  It was a remarkable increase on its slab-sided predecessor (1966-1967) that in 1967 had struggled to achieve a volume of less than 15,000.

A Fratzog.

King Zog I of Albania died in 1961 but there’s nothing to suggest Fratzog’s second element was inspired by or a tribute to the deposed monarch, by then living in France (the culmination of a peripatetic exile made comfortable by having looted the Albanian treasury of its gold reserves) where he would succumb to cancer, his 65 years a reasonable achievement for someone who reputedly smoked some 200 cigarettes a day (if true, assuming he slept 8 hours a day, that’s a fag about every 5 minutes which does seem a heroic devotion to the art).  It’s intriguing to ponder whether being dubbed a “fratzog” was something good or bad but, whatever might be the history of the name (that might to some sound like something associated with the rituals in a Masonic Temple), the shape is no mystery to mathematicians, the Fratzog based on a Deltoid curve (the roulette created by a point on the circumference of a circle as it rolls without slipping along the inside of a circle with three or one-and-a-half times its radius).  Its year of debut came of course at the at the dawn of the space race but while the shape (three delta-forms arranged in an equilateral triangle) might be thought (at least vaguely) evocative of an aerospace theme, that would not much have encouraged more pessimistic types who saw only a “fractured deltoid”.  So, no translation, acronym or verified linguistic origin exists but despite that it certainly caught on, first appearing on the 1962 Dodge Polara 500 and Custom 880, before being applied to various Dodge and other Chrysler models until 1976 and in some places lingering until 1981 when, at the instigation of the new CEO, Lee Iacocca (1924–2019), the pentastar logo was standardized corporation-wide.

Fratzog on 1972 Australian Chrysler Valiant Charger E55 SE 340; not only the Americans had long model names.

Nor is it known if the Fratzog’s “triangular” theme was an allusion to the company’s original logo.  The Dodge brothers' (Horace (1868–1920) and John (1864–1920) engineering business had begun production of passenger cars just before World War I (1914-1918) and their first emblem had been a dual interlocking triangle that resembled a stylized Star of David.  The family was not Jewish and it’s believed the logo used representations of the Greek letter delta (in upper case use a triangle shape) meant to represent the two brothers who had always been close (John dying of pneumonia during the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic and Horace expiring the same year from cirrhosis of the liver).  Other logos would appear after Chrysler purchased Dodge in 1928 (following an abortive earlier attempt) but none were even vaguely Fratzogish so history is not much help in tracing the origin; the industry legend of a designer just “liking the shape” may really be true.  It did though have a longer and more diverse career than the Flookerang, serving variously as body badges & grill emblems and appearing also on gas (petrol) caps & horn buttons.  Despite the proliferation, the Fratzog never became thematic in print advertising the way the Flookerang had been used in the 1950s.  So that's it, both words (one a conventional portmanteau, the other possibly one but genuinely mysterious) emerging from a Detroit styling studio although, had anyone concluded Flookerang & Fratzog was likely a firm of Jewish accountants, that would have been understandable. 

Except among collectors or students of such things, by 2024, neither logo probably much registered in the public consciousness in the way of Chevrolet’s bow-tie or Ford’s “Blue Oval” (that font a hand-drawn rendition based on Henry Ford’s (1863-1947) signature although Truetype emulations are now available (FordScript the closest, Fabiola Script & Neville Regular similar)) but despite the collective memory having faded, in 2024 Dodge announced the Fratzog would be revived as symbol of its new range of electric power-trains, assuring the world the constant advances in battery chemistry meant the days of thousand HP (horsepower) EVs with AWD (all-wheel-drive) and a 500 mile (800 km) range were nigh; burning rubber wasn’t going away, it’d just no longer require gas.  To make the historic link, there was CGI (computer generated graphics, generative AI (artificial intelligence) at that point not sufficiently refined) footage with Fratzogs, a rationale and lots of tyre smoke.  As things turned out, batteries continued to improved but Dodge’s announcement 2023 would be the end of the line for their gas-powered V8 muscle cars turned out to be premature though genuinely that was the intent, keen-eyed observers of promotional material for the 2024 (EV) Charger Daytona noting Fratzog logos on the wheel hubs with the one in the centre of the grill being illuminated.

EV: The future of Fratzog.  Dodge's EV shtick is that “people buy performance, not a mechanical specification”, a variant of the hardware store's “people don't want 20 mm drill bits, they want 20 mm holes); it'll be interesting to see if the “US muscle car model” (front-mounted V8, RWD (rear-wheel-drive)) can be re-defined to “performance breakdown”.  The market will decide.

There was also a neologism, “Frazonic” emblazoned on the rear valance; it turned out that adjective referred to the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” (piped “engine noise”, replicating in tone and dB (decibels) the song of a Hellcat V-8; the adverb presumably “Fratzonically”).  Just as government regulations had by the early 1970s contributed to the demise of the first muscle car era (although the insurance companies did their bit), so it seemed clear that five decades on, government edicts might also drive extinct at least the V8-powered monsters of the new generation, production of such things no longer viable given the new fleet fuel efficiency mandate.  However, as things turned out, there may be a stay of execution, internal documents “obtained” by various sites appearing to confirm Dodge’s EV ranges may in 2028 be augmented by a Charger running the supercharged 6.2-liter (376 cubic inch) Hemi Hellcat V8 in a RWD (rear-wheel-drive) configuration.  The internal designation appeared as “HEV” though that stood for not the by now common “Hybrid EV” but the wholly more subversive “Hellcat Equipped Vehicle”; that repurposing may not have been mischievous but someone at Dodge may have been trying to annoy Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  So Dodge is gearing up for what may be one last hard ride for those who can remember the way things used to be done (when noise was organic and not Fratsonic) but within the Stellantis product planning department, the only poem much read is likely to be To a mouse (1785) by Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) with focus on the two famous lines: “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley” (ie however well-planned, things can go awry).  Corporate America has found Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) second administration more accommodating than its immediate predecessor but, like many, keenly they’ll be watching the returns from the 2026 mid-term elections.

Mushroom

Mushroom (pronounced muhsh-room)

(1) Any of various fleshy fungi including the toadstools, puffballs, coral fungi, morels etc; any of several edible species, especially of the family Agaricaceae, as Agaricus campestris meadow mushroom, or field mushroom, cultivated for food in many places.

(2) A fungus producing such fruiting bodies.

(3) Anything of similar shape or correspondingly rapid growth.

(4) As ellipsis of “mushroom cloud”, a large, mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke or rubble, formed in the atmosphere as a result of an explosion (or other sudden release of energy), especially a nuclear explosion.

(5) Of, consisting of, or containing mushrooms.

(6) Resembling a mushroom in shape or form; to have or assume the shape of a mushroom.

(7) Of rapid growth and often brief duration (to spread, grow, or develop quickly).

(8) To gather mushrooms (typically as “mushrooming”, practiced by a mushroomer).

(9) As “magic mushroom” (used typically in the plural), any mushroomlike fungus that after ingestion induces psychedelic effects (“shrooms” to users, “psilocybin mushroom” to clinicians in some jurisdictions where prescription is now lawful).

(10) In ballistics (of a bullet), to form the shape of a mushroom when striking a soft target.

(11) In bar billiards, any of the mushroom-shaped pegs.

(12) In architecture, a concrete column with a thickened portion at the top, used to support a slab.

(13) In slang, an individual who rises rapidly from obscurity or poverty (now rare and displaced by “upstart”); the figurative sense of something that grows very quickly or seems to appear suddenly remains in use.

1350–1400: Following the usual conventions in English, it may be expected the construct was mush- + -room but those words wholly are unrelated and the ultimate source is unknown.  Mushroom was an alteration (by folk etymology) of the Middle English muscheron & musseroun, from the eleventh century Middle French mousseron, from the Anglo-Norman musherum & moscheron, from the Old French moisseron, from the Late Latin mussiriōn- (stem of mussiriō).  The Old French word had a murky history and etymologists suspect it was from the Old French mosse & moise (moss (from which modern French gained mousse (on the basis of the first known use being of a type of fungus which grows in moss))), from the Frankish mosu (moss) or the Old Dutch mosa (moss).  The Old French was akin to the Old High German mosa (moor, swamp), the Old High German mos (moss, bog) & mios (moss, mire), the Old English mēos (moss) & mōs (bog, marsh), the Old Norse mosi (moss) & myrr (bog, mire), all from the Proto-Germanic musą, muso & miuziz (mosses, bog), from the primitive Indo- European mews- (mosses, mold, mildew).  It displaced the native Old English swamm.  The clipping shroom is a synonym (most popular with users of magic mushrooms) and the spelling mushrump is long obsolete (the modern spelling more or less standardized by the 1560s).  Mushroom is a noun, adjective & verb, mushroomed is a verb, mushrooming is a noun & verb, mushroomer is a noun, mushroomic, mushroomless, mushroomlike, mushroomoid & mushroomy are adjectives; the noun plural is mushrooms.

Lindsay Lohan's mushroom gravy.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil or butter
3 cups thinly sliced baby portabella mushrooms or white button mushrooms
½ cup finely chopped onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour or cup for cup gluten-free flour
3 cups beef broth/stock or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Sautee mushrooms and onions until they are nicely browned (should take around 7 minutes).  Add in garlic and stir until fragrant (about 30 seconds).

(2) Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.  Whisk in the broth, remembering to scrape from the bottom of pan all the "browned bits" (the best part).  Reduce to a simmer and simmer until thickened, then remove from heat.  Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

The alternative etymology (noting the Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs) (mushroom) suggests the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin and it remains a matter of debate among etymologists (almost all lexicographers stick to “of uncertain origin”).  What is agreed is the noun “mushroom” was at first applied to almost any of the larger fungi but later to the agaricoid fungi (especially the edible varieties).  The figurative use for something or someone that makes a sudden appearance in full form dates from the 1590s; it was applied especially an upstart person (bounder) or family (those who rose rapidly from a low station in life).  All that was based on the mushroom’s impressively rapid rate of growth and by the 1740s the figurative use substantially has lost the “upstart” sense and came to be used generally of “expanding or increasing rapidly; to rise suddenly in position or rank”.  The famous (or infamous) “mushroom cloud” was first widely described in 1916 (World War I (1914-1918) a time & place of big explosions witnessed by many with cameras) but the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) cites the first use as dating from US in 1902.  It thus long pre-dates the nuclear-age but the phenomenon would for millennia (long before there were explosives) have been observed by those watching volcanic eruptions.  After photographs of the immediate aftermath of the A-bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 1945) widely were publicized, the term became popular and spread to many aspects of popular culture including film, art and T-shirts.

Germania, Berlin’s sandy soil and the “mushroom” used to test for sinkage

Germania model, circa 1940.  The scale of the buildings was monumental and Speer was aware of the comparisons with the Rome and Athens of Antiquity, even writing (a not wholly original) “Theory of Ruin Value” arguing the importance of designs that might, thousands of years hence, leave “magnificent ruins”.

Until in the twenty-first century the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) began doing things at a scale once thought unsustainable, the urban-redevelopment plan imagined on a grandest scale was that for Berlin designed by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945).  What was the be the capital of the Third Reich (and, in the minds of the most delusional of the Nazis: “of the world”) would be renamed Germania and, as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) told Speer’s wife: “Your husband is going to build buildings for me the likes of which haven't been built for 4,000 years.”  Prone to lies and exaggeration, this was one of the occasions the Führer was being truthful and although there was little the plans for Germania that was original, what was impressive was the scale, Speer taking reference points from architectural history (the Pantheon in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris) and making the German versions bigger.  Although at the time much taken with what he called the regime’s “Empire style”, in his (sometimes reliable) post-war memoirs (Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)) he admitted the stylistic failure, above all because the architecture wholly was disconnected from the human scale.

The mushroom, Speer's improbable architectural legacy.

Of all that Speer planned for Hitler's megalomaniacal vision of Germania, only small fragments remain but the strangest and largest relic is the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body) a concrete structure 30 metres (100 feet) tall and weighing 12,650 tons (11,476 tonnes); locals nicknamed it der Pilz (the mushroom).  Located on the city’s southern edge (near modern day Südkreuz station), the giant concrete cylinder was in 1941 erected to test the suitability of Berlin’s sandy soil, something of great significance because most of Germania’s large, representational buildings would be constructed from granite, concrete & steel; although structural engineers could solve the challenges the architects designs presented, the only way to be certain the soil could handle such weight was to conduct a practical, real-time, full-size experiment.  While the data were required for much of what was planned, of particular interest was intended landmark of the Victory Arch which, at 117 metres (384 feet) tall and 170 metres (558 feet) wide would obviously exert much pressure and, having the foundations sinking into the sandy soil was less than ideal.  With a footprint of exactly 100 m³, Speer’s giant, reinforced concrete “mushroom” was placed in a way that would as closely as possible emulate the forces involved; it sat 18 metres (60 feet) deep with the above-ground extending 14 metres (46 feet) high while inside there were a number of measuring devices recording movement.  As things transpired the instruments recorded sinking between 110-180 mm (4.3-7.1 inches) across the six measuring points and that was well beyond the 60 mm (2.4 inches) deemed by Speer as the upper limit of acceptability.  Whether the findings would have compelled a change to the arch or indeed any of Germania’s other gargantuan designs will never be known because, as the tide of war turned, the resources devoted to the project were re-allocated to more urgent tasks and by 1943 Speer, by then also minister of armaments and war production, quietly shut-down the Germania planning office.  So little was built and less survived but the “mushroom” remained and is now a tourist attraction and a site visited by many organized tours.

The mushroom cloud

Tsar Bomba, the largest ever nuclear test, detonated by the Soviet Union in October 1961.

As the photographs suggest, the mushroom clouds generated by large volcanic eruptions and the detonation of nuclear weapons can look similar because the same atmospheric physics are operating despite the underlying energy-release mechanisms being completely different and, counterintuitively, there is no precise TNT (abbreviation of trinitrotoluene (an explosive substance used in blasting)) equivalent threshold above which every explosion produces a mushroom cloud. A mushroom cloud is principally a consequence of buoyancy and atmospheric fluid dynamics, rather than merely a product of energy released, thus the phenomenon can occur with nuclear explosions, large conventional explosions, volcanic eruptions and even especially intense fires.  What an explosion does is produce a very hot, rapidly expanding mass of gas and entrained material and this rises because the air above has less resistance than the ground below; it rises because it has acquired enormous upward momentum and, as it rises, it entrains surrounding air.  The most important mechanism in the ultimate generation of a mushroom cloud’s distinctive shape is a phenomenon plasma physicists call “thermal buoyancy”.

Physics of a mushroom cloud (left), the fluid dynamics an interplay of energy, matter & air temperature and a mushroom cloud T-shirt (right), the images used sometimes for political messaging and sometimes just for dramatic effect. 

Fernando Famiani's photograph of the eruption of Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy, December 2015, shot from the outskirts of the village of San Teodora.

Familiar from many conditions in climate science, as hot material rises, the heated gas being less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, the rising plume entrains cooler air, increasing its volume while reducing its average temperature, a process that continues until its density approaches that of the surrounding atmosphere at which point, the rising material spreads laterally, producing the mushroom cloud’s characteristic “cap”, the outer regions circulating downwards, maintain the shape of the stem.  There are scaling relationships between explosion energy and the size, height and evolution of the resulting plume and consequently, as a general principle, as explosions become larger, a mushroom cloud becomes increasingly likely under appropriate atmospheric conditions.  So the mushroom cloud is a product of the environment; the same release of energy in different conditions (an explosion deep underground; a large underwater explosion; an explosion in a confined structure; energy released over a sufficiently long period rather than instantaneously) will tend not to create one whereas a relatively modest release of energy can produce one if the geometry and atmospheric conditions are favourable.  So, a mushroom cloud is a thing not of yield but of atmospheric conditions.

Death cap mushrooms.

In 2023, Australian mother of two Erin Patterson (b 1974) murdered three of her relatives and nearly killed a fourth by preparing for them a lunch of Beef Wellingtons laced with highly toxic death cap mushrooms.  Amanita phalloides (the more evocative “death cap” the common name) is a basidiomycete fungus and mushroom (one of many in the genus Amanita) and although originally from Europe, it has spread around the planet as have many species (zoological & botanical) in the age of mass-movement of people and goods.  Dangerously, the death cap closely resembles a number of (variously bland and delicious) edible mushrooms used in many dishes so mushroomers must take care when mushrooming (harvesting wild mushrooms).  They’re the most poisonous of all known mushrooms and a single example contains enough toxin to kill an adult human; unsurprisingly, death caps are estimated to be responsible for as many as 90% of the annual death-toll from eating toxic mushrooms.  Quite what is the extent of the annual loss of life is uncertain because in rural parts of Asia (where foraged mushrooms are common in diets) the statistics are not reliable but it’s believed the numbers bounce-around between 100-300.  The principal toxic constituent (hardly affected by cooking or freezing) is α-Amanitin which causes liver and kidney failure.

Erin Patterson, prior to charges being laid.

It was severe liver failure that was the cause of the death of Erin Patterson’s three victims, all of whom died within a week of falling ill (despite one receiving a liver transplant); the sole survivor recovered after several weeks of treatment.  The trial was conducted before a jury that delivered a guilty verdict on all three charges and the judge handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years; there was immense international interest in the case and it was the first sentencing hearing in the state of Victoria to be live-streamed.  In what was anyway a macabre tale, one interesting aspect was the way Erin Patterson chose to learn about the nature of the death cap; some will have drawn the conclusion: “When researching murder-methods, don’t use one’s own digital devices.”  The case currently is on appeal, the defense seeking a retrial on several procedural and technical grounds while the state is arguing the sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and there should be no possibility of parole.  On X (formerly known as Twitter), some were even more unforgiving, suggesting: “She should get the chair.”

Cryptic crochet: Erin Patterson crocheted a rat as a gift for her defense counsel.  According to press reports, it was an expression of “thanks” but a crocheted mushroom would have been a nice touch.

In her cell, “mushroom lady” (the public's choice of dub upon the case being publicized) is said to pass the hours crocheting, an intricate, time-consuming business but for those serving long prison sentences, time is relative in a way different to that made famous by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and for the seven Nazis incarcerated in Spandau prison after the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), “time” often came up in their sometimes awkward conversations.  Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1876–1960; head of the German Navy 1928-1943) served as prison librarian and, responding to a complaint from one of his fellow inmates that his handing out the four permitted (and by 1954 uncensored) newspapers (one selected by each of the powers administering the prison (France (Kurier), the UK (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), US (Die Welt) & USSR (Berliner Zeitung)) bound in one folder meant “It will take too long for one person to read all four newspapers”, answered “That doesn't matter. You've got plenty of time, after all.”  Despite that uncompromising start, within two days the admiral relented, averting the threat of mutiny by distributing the papers singularly.

According to Australian neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay, knitting and crochet can be “deceptively good” for the brain, being an “ideal mix of repetition plus cognitive challenge”, helping individuals regulate their mood and attention span.  She explained the mechanism by pointing out in crocheting: “You have to remember where you're up to, you have to problem solve, you have to make decisions, you're constantly challenging yourself if you're doing more and more complicated patterns but, at the same time, it's challenging but it's low stakes… which I think might be one of the best kinds [of cognitive challenge] we can have.  We're mastering a skill, we're getting better at that and we're kind of just doing the task for the sake of doing the task … it's quite a simple form of mastery and there's something really soothing and good for our mood about that.”  Intriguingly, Dr McKay now has one potential subject available for what would be a unique, longitudinal study: mushroom lady sitting for 33 years in solitary confinement, crocheting stuff.  Such parameters would of course never be approved by any university ethics committee so for researchers interested how such things affect a brain operating in a most unusual environment, there are possibilities. 

Ozempic: The famous “fat jab”.  Now on GLP-1 fat jabs, hopefully the prison authorities will permit mushroom lady (once slender) to create content and open an OnlyFans page with proceeds going to the families of her victims.  There would be a viewership for such content, some of whom would seek contact.

One unexpected coda to the trial was the announcement mushroom lady has been granted access to taxpayer-funded Ozempic (a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) appetite suppressant), the official explanation being her inability to pursue an exercise regime while in solitary confinement; because of the nature of her offences, it's expected she'll remain in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future (33 years presumably within the vista of “foreseeable”).  Unfortunately, her previous exercise techniques were not disclosed, something that would have been of interest to many pursuing weight-loss.  Doubtlessly anticipating some public outrage at the thought taxpayers would be footing the bill for mushroom lady to get free “fat jabs”, a spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Justice issued a statement confirming weight loss drugs were just another medicine and would be provided to prisoners based on a clinician's advice: “Prescriptions are only given by clinicians when there’s a clear medical need - like preventing serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes.  Access to prescribed weight loss medication was introduced in response to recommendations from the Coroner following a death in custody linked to obesity.”  The convicted mass-murderer had told the court she “had a problem” with body image and binge-eating, a perhaps unnecessary confirmation given some of the photographs circulated by the media.

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.