Catwalk

Catwalk (pronounced kat-wawk)

(1) A narrow walkway, especially one high above the surrounding area, used to provide access or allow workers to stand or move, as over the stage in a theater, outside the roadway of a bridge, along the top of a railroad car etc; any similar elevated walkway.

(2) By extension, a narrow ramp extending from the stage into the audience in a theatre, nightclub etc, associated especially with those used by models during fashion shows (although the gender-neutral “runway” is now sometimes used in preference to “catwalk”).

(3) In nautical architecture, an elevated enclosed passage providing access fore and aft from the bridge of a merchant vessel.

(4) By extension, as "the catwalk", industry slang for the business of making clothes for fashion shows.

1874: The construct was cat + walk.  The use of catwalk to describe a long, narrow footway was a reference initially to those especially of such narrowness of passage that one had to cross as a cat walks.  It applied originally to ships and then theatrical back-stages, the first known use with a fashion show runway dating from 1942.  In architecture on land and at sea, the catwalk soon lost its exclusive association only with the narrow and came instead to be defined by function, used to describe any walkway between two points.  The noun plural is catwalks.  For both nautical and architectural purposes, the English catwalk was borrowed by many languages including Norwegian (Bokmål & Nynorsk) and Dutch and it’s used almost universally in fashion shows.  Some languages such as the Ottoman Turkish قات‎ use the spelling kat and some formed the plural as catz.

Cat (any member of the suborder (sometimes superfamily) Feliformia or Feloidea): feliform (cat-like) carnivoran & feloid or any member of the subfamily Felinae, genera Puma, Acinonyx, Lynx, Leopardus, and Felis or any member of the subfamily Pantherinae, genera Panthera, Uncia and Neofelise and (in historic use, any member of the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae, genera Smilodon, Homotherium, Miomachairodus etc, most famously the Smilodontini, Machairodontini (Homotherini), Metailurini, "sabre-toothed cat" (often incorrectly referred to as the sabre-toothed tiger) but now most associated with the domesticated species (Felis catus) of felines, commonly and apparently since the eight century kept as a house pet)) was from the Middle English cat & catte, from the Old English catt (male cat) & catte (female cat), from the Proto-West Germanic kattu, from the Proto-Germanic kattuz, from the Latin cattus.

Cat has most productively been applied in English to describe a wide variety of objects and states of the human condition including (1) a spiteful or angry woman (from the early thirteenth century but now almost wholly supplanted by “bitch” (often with some clichéd or imaginative modifier)), (2) An aficionado or player of jazz, (3) certain male persons (a use associated mostly with hippies or sub-set of African-American culture), (4) historic (early fifteenth century) slang for a prostitute, (5) in admiralty use, strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship, (6) in admiralty use, a truncated form of cat-o'-nine-tails (a multi-lash (not all were actually nine-tailed)) whip used by the Royal Navy et al to enforce on-board discipline), (7) in admiralty use, a sturdy merchant sailing vessel (long archaic although the use endures to describe the rather smaller "catboat", (8) as “cat & dog (cat being the trap), a archaic alternative name for the game "trap and ball", (9) the pointed piece of wood that is struck in the game of tipcat, (1) In the African-American vernacular, vulgar slang or the vagina, a vulva; the female external genitalia, (11) a double tripod (for holding a plate etc) with six feet, of which three rest on the ground, in whatever position it is placed, (12) a wheeled shelter, used in the Middle Ages as a siege weapon to allow assailants to approach enemy defenses, (13) in admiralty slang, to vomit, (14) in admiralty slang to o hoist (the anchor) by its ring so that it hangs at the cathead, (15) in computing, a program and command in the Unix operating system that reads one or more files and directs their content to the standard output (16) in the slang of computing, to dump large amounts of data on an unprepared target usually with no intention of browsing it carefully (which may have been a sardonic allusion of “to catalogue or a shortened form of catastrophic although both origins are unverified, a street name of the drug methcathinone, (17) in ballistics and for related accelerative uses, a shortened form of catapult, (18) for purposes of digital and other exercises in classification, a shortening of category, (19) an abbreviation of many words starting with “cat”) (catalytic converter, caterpillar (including as “CAT” by the manufacturer Caterpillar, maker of a variety of earth-moving and related machines)) catfish, etc, (20) any (non military-combat) caterpillar drive vehicle (a ground vehicle which uses caterpillar tracks), especially tractors, trucks, minibuses, and snow groomers.

Walk was from the Middle English walken (to move, roll, turn, revolve, toss), from the Old English wealcan (to move round, revolve, roll, turn, toss) & ġewealcan (to go, traverse) and the Middle English walkien (to roll, stamp, walk, wallow), from the Old English wealcian (to curl, roll up), all from the Proto-Germanic walkaną & walkōną (to twist, turn, roll about, full), from the primitive Indo-European walg- (to twist, turn, move).  It was cognate with the Scots walk (to walk), the Saterland Frisian walkje (to full; drum; flex; mill), the West Frisian swalkje (to wander, roam), the Dutch walken (to full, work hair or felt), the Dutch zwalken (to wander about), the German walken (to lex, full, mill, drum), the Danish valke & waulk), the Latin valgus (bandy-legged, bow-legged) and the Sanskrit वल्गति (valgati) (amble, bound, leap, dance).  It was related to vagrant and whelk and a doublet of waulk.

Walk has contributed to many idiomatic forms including (1) in colloquial legal jargon, “to walk” (to win (or avoid) a criminal court case, particularly when actually guilty, (2) as a colloquial, euphemistic, “for an object to go missing or be stolen, (3) in cricket (of the batsman), to walk off the field, as if given out, after the fielding side appeals and before the umpire has ruled; done as a matter of sportsmanship when the batsman believes he is out or when the dismissal is so blatantly obvious that the umpire’s decision is inevitable, (4) in baseball, to allow a batter to reach first base by pitching four balls (ie non-strikes), (5) to move something by shifting between two positions, as if it were walking, (6) (also as “to full”, to beat cloth to give it the consistency of felt, (6) in the slang of computer programming, to debug a routine by “walking the heap”, (7) in aviation, to operate the left and right throttles of an aircraft in alternation, (8) in employment, to leave, to resign, (9) in the now outlawed “sports” of dog & cock-fighting, to put, keep, or train (a puppy or bird) in a walk, or training area, (10) in the hospitality trade, to move a guest to another hotel if their confirmed reservation is not available at the time they arrive to check-in (also as to bump), (11) in the hospitality trade, as “walk-in”, a customer who “walks-in from the street” to book a room or table without a prior reservation, (12) in graph theory, a sequence of alternating vertices and edges, where each edge's endpoints are the preceding and following vertices in the sequence, (13) In coffee, coconut, and other plantations, the space between the rows of plants (from the Caribbean and most associated with  Belize, Guyana & Jamaica, (14) in orchids, an area planted with fruit-bearing trees, (15) in colloquial use, as “a walk in the park” or “a cakewalk”, something very easily accomplished (same as “a milk-run”) and (16) in the (now rare) slang of the UK finance industry, a cheque drawn on a bank that was not a member of the LCCS (London Cheque (check in the US) Clearance System), the sort-code of which was allocated on a one-off basis; they had to be "walked" (ie hand-delivered by messengers).

A crop top appended to Duran Lantink's (b 1998) fall 2025 Duranimal collection, Paris Fashion Week, March.  Although technical details weren't provided, based on the realistic "jiggle" achieved, the "garment" may have included "ballistics gel" in the critical elements.

Especially since the ratio of fabric to flesh on red carpets shrunk during the last two decades, critics and the public alike have become jaded, shock and surprise harder to achieve on the catwalk.  However, at Paris Fashion Week 2025, what had become elusive with fabric and flesh and was achieved with latex, a male model appearing in a gender-bending top during the presentation of Dutch designer Duran Lantink's (b 1998) fall 2025 Duranimal collection.  What turned out to be the most publicized item in the Palais de Tokyo Room wasn’t the collection of pieces featuring bold animal prints with striking silhouettes, but one never to be in any high street catalogue, a flesh-colored torso with a pair of realistic, jiggling, prosthetic breasts worn by male model Chandler Frye.

Tit for tat: Mica Argañaraz strutting in T-shirt.

What the male mode wore was, in design terms, a crop top, albeit one with untypical choices in material and construction, and the companion piece was worn by model Mica Argañaraz: a T-shirt also in skin-tone latex, molded in the form of an idealized male torso, something like those the sculptors of Antiquity once carved in marble.  Both were on display on a catwalk which snaked around a maze of cubicles filled with headset-wearing workers shuffling and stapling papers, something which may have had some thematic connection which what was on show although no explanation was provided.  While the T-shirt seems to have provoked few comments, there were criticisms of the latex boobs, usually in some way an objection to the objectification of the female body (something generally thought a battle long lost) while others denied this could possibly thought “fashion” which was about as pointless an observation as any of those by the many who over the years have dismissed porcelain urinals, drip paintings and such as “not art”.  When asked about the use of a woman’s body as a “costume” (nobody asked about the make torso), Mr Lantink replied it was “…about cosplay, it’s playing with bad taste, it’s about form. Every season, we’re trying to sort of surprise ourselves with how can we change an original piece into something that we find interesting”, adding: “And we’re gonna do whatever the fuck we want because we’re free.”

On the catwalk: Lindsay Lohan in a Heart Truth Red Dress during Olympus Fashion Week, Fall, 2006, The Tent, New York City.

How to walk like catwalk model

Traci Halvorson of Halvorson Model Management (HMM) in San Jose, California, has written a useful guide for those wishing to learn the technique of walking like a catwalk (increasingly now called the gender-neutral “runway”) model.  Although walking on a wide, stable flat surface, in a straight line with few other instructions except “don’t fall over”, doesn’t sound difficult, the art is actually a tightly defined set of parameters which not all can master.  Some models who excel at static shots and are well-known from their photographic work can’t be used on a catwalk because their gait, while within the normal human range, simply isn’t a “catwalk walk”.  It’s thus a construct, of clothes, shoes, style and even expression and catwalk models need to be adaptable, able to achieve essentially the same thing whether in 6-inch (150 mm) high stilettos or slippery-soled ballet flats; it’s harder than it sounds and as all models admit, nothing improves one’s technique like practice.

(1) The facial expression.  It sounds a strange place to start but it’s not because if the facial expression is unchanging it means it’s easier to focus on everything else, the rational being that humans use their range of facial expression to convey emotion and attitude but this all has to be neutralized to permit the photographers (paradoxically the audience is less relevant) to capture what are defined “catwalk” shots.  Set the chin to point slightly down though don’t hang the head; the angle should be almost imperceptible and it recommended to imagine an invisible string attached to the top of the head holding the chin in its set position.

(2) Do not smile.  Catwalk models do not smile because it draws attention away from the product although this does not mean looking miserable or unhappy; instead look “serious” and this usually is done by perfecting what is described as a “neutral” expression, one which would defy an observer being able to tell whether the wearer is happy or sad.  To achieve this, the single most important aspect is to keep the mouth closed in a natural position, something like what is recommended for a passport photograph and ask others to judge the look but as a note of caution, there will be failures because some girls just look sort of happy no matter what.  In most of life, this will be of advantage so a career other than the catwalk will beckon.

(3) On the catwalk, keep the eyes focused straight ahead.  This not only makes walking easier but also self-imposes a discipline which will help maintain the static facial expression.  Because the eyes are focused straight-ahead, it will stop the head moving and the look will be the desired one of alertness and purposefulness.  Some models recommend imagining a object moving in front of them and focus on that and in the situations where there’s a procession on the catwalk, it’s possible usually to fixate on some unmoving point on the model ahead.

(5) Don’t fall over.  It’s an obvious point but it does happen and usually, shoes are responsible, either because the nature of the construction has so altered the model’s centre of gravity or there's  contact between footwear and some flowing piece of fabric, either one’s own or one in the wake of the model ahead.  There is no better training to avoid “catwalk stacks” than to practice in a wide variety of shoe types.

(5) If possible, arrange a replica catwalk on which to practice, it need only to be a few paces long and arranged so the walk is towards a full-length mirror.  For side views, film using a carefully positioned camera and compare the result with footage of actual catwalk models at work.  If possible, work in pairs or a group because you’ll hone each other’s techniques but remember this is serious business and criticism will need to be frank; feelings may need to be hurt on the walk to the catwalk.

(6) Stand up straight, imagining the invisible string holding the head in place being also attached to the spine.  Keep the shoulders back but not unnaturally so, posture needs to be good but not stiff or exaggerated and a good posture can to some extent compensate for a lack of height.  Again, this needs to be practiced in front of a mirror and practice will improve the technique, the object being to stand straight while looking relaxed and comfortable.

(7) Perfecting the actual catwalk walk will take some time because, although it looks entirely natural when done by models, it’s not actually the “natural” way most people walk.  To train, begin purely mechanistically, placing one foot in front of the other and walking with (comfortably) long strides, the best trick being to mark a line on the floor with chalk and imagine walking on a rope, keeping one foot in front of the other, allowing the hips slightly to move from side to side; the classic model look.  With sufficient practice, what designers call the model’s “strut” will evolve and in conjunction with the other techniques, there’ll be a projection of assuredness and confidence.

(8) However, the hips need symmetrically and slightly to move, not swing.  Catwalk models are hired as platforms for clothes within a narrow dimensional range and this includes not only the cut of the fabric but also the extent it is required to move as the body moves and motion must not be exaggerated.  When practicing this, again it’s preferable to work in pairs or groups.

How it's done.  Catwalk models need to look good coming or going.

(9) Limit the movement of the arms when walking.  Let the arms hang at the sides with the hands relaxed, the swing of the limbs sufficient only to ensure the look is not unnaturally stylized and certainly nothing like that of most people on the street.  Many report when first practicing that there’s a tendency for the hands to clench into fists and that’s because of the discipline being imposed on other body parts but from the start, ensure the hands are relaxed, loosely cupped and with a small (natural) gap (something like ¼ inch (5-6 mm) between the fingers.  Allow the arms slightly to bend and they’ll sway (just a little) with the body.

(10) Practice specifically for the occasion.  Just as even the best tennis players have to practice on grass if they’ve just come off playing on clay or hard-courts, at least an hour before an actual catwalk session should be spent practicing in the same style of shoes as will be worn for the session(s).  This applies even if wearing something less challenging like flats because the change in weight distribution and the resultant centre of gravity is profound if the last few days have been spent in 6 inch (150 mm) heels.     

(11) Practice with different types of music because the catwalk walk really is an exercise in rhythm and if one can find a piece which really suits and makes the walk easier to perfect, if it’s possible to imagine that while on the catwalk, that’s good although sometimes there’s music at the shows and not all can focus on what’s in the head while excluding what’s coming through the speakers.

Traci Halvorson's instructions were of course aimed at neophytes wishing to learn the basic technique but among established models there are variations and the odd stake of the individualistic, the most eye-catching of which is the "fierce strut", a usually fast-paced and aggressive march down the catwalk while still using the classic one-foot-in-front-of-the-other motif which so defines the industry.  It's thus not quite Nazi-style goose-stepping or even the hybrid step used most enthusiastically by the female soldiers in the DPRK (North Korean) military but it's clearly strutting with intent.

Recent fierce struts on the catwalk (runway).

Magazine

Magazine (pronounced mag-uh-zeen)

(1) A publication that is issued periodically, usually bound in a paper cover, and typically contains essays, stories, poems, etc., by many writers, and often photographs and drawings, frequently specializing in a particular subject or area, as hobbies, news, or sports.

(2) A room or place for keeping gunpowder and other explosives, as in a fort or on a warship.

(3) A building or place for keeping military stores, as arms, ammunition, or provisions.

(4) A metal receptacle for a number of bullets or cartridges, inserted into certain types of automatic and semi-automatic weapons which, when empty, is removed and replaced by a full receptacle in order to continue firing.

(5) In broad or narrowcast media (radio, TV, social etc), a production consisting of several, usually short, segments in which various subjects are examined, usually in greater detail than on a regular newscast.  In the jargon of the industry: the magazine format.

(6) A device for continuously recharging a handling system, stove or boiler with solid fuel.

(7) A storehouse or warehouse (now rare).

(8) A collection of war munitions.

(9) A rack for automatically feeding a number of slides through a projector.

(10) In film-stock photography, an alternative name for cartridge.

(11) A city regarded as a marketing centre (archaic).

1581: From the Middle French magasin (warehouse, store), from the Italian magazzino (storehouse), from the Arabic مَخَازِن‎ (makhāzin) (plural of مَخْزَن‎ (makhzan) (storehouse)) noun of place from خَزَنَ‎ (khazana) (to store, to stock, to lay up); from the same Arabic source came the Spanish almacén (warehouse) and it's an example of European languages borrowing from an Arabic in plural form to create a singular form.  The original Arabic plural مخازن (maxāzin) was from the singular noun مخزن (maxzan) (storehouse; depot; shop).  A magazinette was  a small or short magazine (in the sense of a periodic publication), based on the notion of a novella or operetta.  Such things do still exist but the term has fallen from use.  In the early days of the commercial availability of semi-automatic firearms, at least one manufacturer did label those used with handguns "magazinette", the idea being they were a small version of the "magazines" supplied with larger weapons but the four syllable suggestion seems almost instantly to have been replaced by "clip".  The informal noun describing the industry publishing magazines was magazineland.  Magazine, magaziner & magazinette are nouns and magazinelike (and magazine-like) is an adjective (magazinesque seems to be non-standard); the noun plural is magazines.

Lindsay Lohan, Vogue magazine (Spanish edition), August 2009.

The original general sense of “storehouse” is almost obsolete except for military purposes and in naval history, magazines feature frequently because their detonation (usually as a result of attack but sometimes accidents too) was often the cause of ships being sunk, often with a high death-toll.  As used to describe books figuratively as “storehouses of information”, the form emerged circa 1640, the first application to a "periodical journal" was the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731.  Over the years magazines have appeared in a variety of formats with paper stock of different sizes and quality and have been as small as a single sheet or have run to hundreds of pages.  Although high-end publications were often lavish, it was only after the 1970s that the use of glossy paper became the industry standard after for years often appearing only on covers.  In the West, the the 1970s, 1980s & 1990s were the golden decades for magazines (and newspapers), the general trend of rising prosperity and the attractiveness of the medium to advertisers meaning growth of the sector was assured and the ease with which new entrants could appear was enhanced by the rise of desktop publishing, meaning entire editions could be composed with equipment which cost a tiny faction of what was required even a generation earlier.  There was churn because many came and went and the periodic recessions claimed some but during those decades the trend was more and not less.

Jarre 10-Shot Pinfire "Harmonica" pistol with 10 chamber magazine.

The early pistols were essentially small-scale muskets with the same, single-shot capability but there was for decades a quest to find a reliable and economical to manufacture design which increased this capacity and the “harmonica” design was an early invention, breech loaded with a steel slide magazine which contained chambers for the projectiles.  The capacity was determined by the size of the magazine although, obviously, the design inherently precluded carrying one in a conventional holster were the magazine in place.  The earliest known examples date for the 1740s.

Ruger Single-Nine .22 Magnum revolver (9-round cylinder) in stainless-steel with fibre-optic front sight (left) and Desert Eagle .50 Magnum Semi-Automatic (7 round magazine) in stainless steel (right).

At various points in the nineteenth century, for volume production, the industry settled on (1) revolvers with a "revolving" cylinder containing the cartridges and (2) semi-automatics with the shells held in a magazine (or “clip”) housed usually in the grip.  The two designs each have advantages and disadvantages: In their favour, revolvers are reliable and, with fewer moving parts, are less prone to jamming, (2) are easy to use (basically “point & fire”), (3) are easy to clean and maintain, (4) are available in a variety of calibres (although the larger the bore, the lower the cylinder’s capacity, the range from 5 x .50 to 9-12 x .22) and (5) can be fired even if pressed against an object.  The drawbacks include (1) slower reloading, (2) bulk (revolvers tend to be wider and heavier due to the cylinder) and (3) many revolvers have an inherently heavier trigger pull.  Semi-automatic often offer (1) a higher capacity for a given calibre than most revolvers, (2) faster reloading (assuming one has a replacement clip), (3) a thinner profile, (3) lighter trigger pulls (especially single-action units) and (4) a remarkable range of accessories including rails for lights, lasers and optics.  The drawbacks include (1) complexity and a greater number of moving parts, thus increasing the risk of jams or misfeeds, (2) steeper learning curve for users because of the more complex construction and operation, exacerbated by there being greater structural variation between manufacturers than with revolvers, (3) greater sensitivity to exactitude in load specification and (5) if pressed against an object, the slide can slightly move, preventing fire.

The early days of the internet, when most interactions happened on desktops or laptops, appears to have had little effect on the magazine publishing industry and may even have stimulated demand but it was in the early 2010s the near simultaneous arrival at scale of bandwidth, social media and smartphones which created a vicious cycle of (1) increasing volumes of content moving from established publishers to social media & (2) the advertising revenue following the viewers who followed the content.  The decade was littered with publications which either moved on-line or folded entirely but nothing compared with the sudden hit in 2020-2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic when titles which had for a generation or more been staples of the industry ceased to be.  However, some subsequently were revived and what seems to have happened is that many non-specialist titles (such as fashion magazines) have been re-invented as niche players designed to appeal to a small market with the interests and disposable income (the famous A1 & A2 demographic) which will attract advertisers.  A kind of pre-packaging of the audiences micro-marketers crave, this segment of the magazine business can be compared with narrowcasting and for some, the glossy magazine is something desirable and just another form of technology albeit one which can be a more pleasant and more convenient way to consume content and prices has risen so such things can also be flaunted as a status symbol, the sense of exclusivity sometimes not wholly illusory because some titles do restrict certain content to their print editions.  In the West, it's unlikely the glossies will ever again be the mass-market force they once were but as the revival of vinyl records demonstrated, where ongoing demand exists for something technically obsolete, provided a business model can be found profitably to provide supply, niches can survive and thrive.

The Economist's editors' choice of the ten covers which seemed best to define 2016.  At the time, 2016 seemed a ghastly year but worse was to come. 

However, being something that looks like a glossy magazine and sits in the shop on the shelf with other magazines does not guarantee that it is a magazine.  The English weekly The Economist (published since 1843) certainly ticks all the boxes for the criteria of what most people would think constitutes a magazine yet it has always described itself as a "newspaper".  That probably seems strange to many given the structure and nature of the content is more closely aligned with other specialist publications labelled "magazines" than with almost all "newspapers".  The explanation is relates to the the way the word "newspaper" was understood in 1843 and until 1971 it was printed in a broadsheet format (the change to the modern form in no way affecting editorial content).  Just to add some typically Economistesque precision, the editor in 2016 clarified the position further by explaining "perfect-bound" publications (the binding process used) were in 1843 called "newspapers".  If that sounds a highly technical point, so it should because economics remains, by definition and habit, the publication's meat & drink and economics is a technical business.  Whether it is or can ever be a science is one of those amusing arguments in which minds are never changed.

The Economist is renowned also for its cartoons and the dry, occasionally sardonic captions which accompany the photographs and illustrations used lend color or context to articles.  A rough guide to Hell appeared on the cover of the 2012 Christmas double issue (December 2012).  Theologically dubious, as a piece predictive of the decade ahead, it proved remarkably prescient.

Politically, The Economist is best classified as belonging to "the fiscally conservative, socially liberal faction of the rational centre-right" and one perhaps surprising quirk revealed in a survey conducted by a US university was the high number of readers who turn first to the weekly obituary, the subjects of which are an eclectic lot: In addition to the expected popes, politicians & potentates, criminals, Cassanovas & courtesans and musicians, mandarins & megalomaniacs (there's some overlap with other categories), there are lives recorded which might otherwise be forgotten such as the man who spent decades gathering and storing all the typefaces used by the world's typewriters.  Nor are non-humans neglected, Alex the African Grey (science's best known parrot) & Benson (England's best-loved fish), both granted the valedictories they doubtlessly deserved.

Erwartangsborizont

Erwartangsborizont (pronounced eah-wah-tum-swar-eh-sont)

(1) In English use, as “horizon of expectations”, a term from literary theory to denote the criteria readers use to judge texts in any given period.

(2) The conceivable content of a literary work or text based on the context of the time of publication (German).

(3) In formal education, the specified performance required in an examination situation (German).

Circa 1944: German determinative compound using the nouns Erwartung (expectation) and Horizont (horizon) with the connecting element “s”.  In German use, in the context of formal education, while not exactly synonymous, (1) solution expectation, (2) solution proposal & (3) sample solution impart a similar meaning.  Erwartangsborizont is a masculine noun; the noun plural is Erwartungshorizonte.  In German, both the spelling of the word and the article preceding the word can change depending on whether it is in the nominative, accusative, genitive, or dative case, thus the declension (in grammar the categorization of nouns, pronouns, or adjectives according to the inflections they receive) is:

Erwartangsborizont: a word which rose with post-modernism.

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.

The German compound noun term Erwartangsborizont was popularized in the 1960s by Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997) and he used it to denote the criteria which readers use to judge literary texts in any given period; he first fully explained the term in Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft (Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory (1967)).  Jauss was a German academic who worked in the field of Rezeptionsästhetik (reception theory) as well as medieval and modern French literature; Erwartangsborizont (his concept of “horizon of expectation”) was his most enduring contribution to literary theory and his pre-scholarly background could in itself be used as something of a case study in his readers’ “horizon of expectation”: During World War II (1939-1945), Jauss served in both the SS and Waffen-SS.

Hans Robert Jauß: Youth, War and Internment (2016) by Jens Westemeier (b 1966), pp 367, Konstanz University Press (ISBN-13: 978-3835390829).

The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc)) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs), later evolving into a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus (more than two million strong), to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with heavy weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 until the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 triggered an expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 900,000 men under arms deployed in a variety of theatres.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS in particular was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

His service in the SS and Waffen-SS included two winters spent on the Russian Front with all that implies but it wouldn’t be until 1995 the documents relating to his conduct in the occupied territories were published and historians used the papers to prove the persona he’d created during the post-war years had been constructed with obfuscation, lies and probably much dissembling.  Despite that, Jauss had been dead for almost two decades before an investigation revealed he’d falsified documents from the era as was probably implicated in war crimes committed by the SS & Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front.

Portrait of Martin Heidegger, oil on canvas by Michael Newton (b 1970).

Although the influence of philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) has attracted much comment because of his flirtation with the Nazis, the most significant intellectual impact on Jauss was the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) who, although he lived to an impressive 102, was precluded by ill heath from serving in the military in either of the world wars.  Gadamer's most notable contribution to philosophy was to build on Heidegger’s concept of “philosophical hermeneutics” (an embryonic collection of theories about the interpretation of certain texts) and these Gardamer expanded and developed in Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method (1960)).  The title was significant because Gadamer argued “truth” and “method” (as both were understood within the social sciences) were oppositional forces because what came to be called truth came to be dictated by whichever method of analysis was applied to a text: “Is there to be no knowledge in art? Does not the experience of art contain a claim to truth which is certainly different from that of science, but just as certainly is not inferior to it? And is not the task of aesthetics precisely to ground the fact that the experience of art is a mode of knowledge of a unique kind, certainly different from that sensory knowledge which provides science with the ultimate data from which it constructs the knowledge of nature, and certainly different from all moral rational knowledge, and indeed from all conceptual knowledge — but still knowledge, i.e., conveying truth?”

Portrait of Hans-Georg Gadamer, oil on canvas by Dora Mittenzwei (b 1955).

The aspect of what Heidegger and Gardamer built which most interested Jauss was what he came to call the “aesthetics of reception” a term which designates the shared set of assumptions which can be attributed to any given generation of readers and these criteria can be used to assist “in a trans-subjective way”, the formation of a judgment of a text.  The point was that over time (which, depending on circumstances, can mean over decades or overnight), for both individuals and societies, horizons of expectation change.  In other words, the judgment which at one time was an accepted orthodoxy may later come to be seem a quaint or inappropriate; the view of one generation does not of necessity become something definitive and unchanging.  Jauss explained this by saying: “A literary work is not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each reader in each period.  It is not a monument which reveals its timeless essence in a monologue.”  He may or may not have been thinking about German society’s changing view of his military career (and his post-war representation of it was itself something of a literary work) but the point was that people reinterpret texts in the light of their own knowledge and experience (their “cultural environment”).

That set of processes he described as constructing a literary value measured according to “aesthetic distance”, the degree to which a work departs from the Erwartangsborizont (horizon of expectations) of earlier readers.  One reviewer summarized things by suggesting the horizon of expectations was “detectable through the textual strategies (genre, literary allusion, the nature of fiction and of poetical language) which confirm, modify, subvert or ironize the expectations of readers” while aesthetic distance becomes a measure of literary value, “creating creating a spectrum on one end of which lies 'culinary' (totally consumable) reading, and, on the other, works which have a radical effect on their readers.”.  In the arcane world of literary theory, more than one commentator described that contribution as: “helpful”.  Opinions may differ.

The term “horizon of expectations” obviously is related to the familiar concept of the “cultural context”, both concepts dealing with the ways in which texts are understood within a specific time, place, and cultural framework.  To academics in the field, they are not wholly synonymous but for general readers of texts they certainly appear so.  The elements of the models are the sets of norms, values, conventions, and assumptions that a particular audience brings to a text at a given moment in time and space, expectations shaped by cultural, historical, and literary contexts but in academia the focus specifically is on the audience's interpretive framework.  The processes are dynamic in that although what happens externally can contribute to determining how a work is received and understood by its audience, if a work conforms to or challenges these expectations, it influences its reception and the potential for the work to reshape those horizons; it’s not exactly symbiotic but certainly it’s interactive.

Cady's Map by Janis Ian.

A film is just another piece of text and what is variously acceptable, funny, confronting or shocking to one generation might be viewed entirely differently by those which follow.  The faction names of the cliques at North Shore High School (Mean Girls, Paramount Pictures 2004)) were Actual Human Beings, Anti-Plastics, The Art Freaks, Asexual Band Geeks, Asian Nerds, Burnouts, Cheerleaders, Cool Asians, Desperate Wannabes, Freshmen, Girls Who Eat Their Feelings, J.V. Cheerleaders, J.V. Jocks, Junior Plastics, Preps, ROTC Guys, Sexually Active Band Geeks, The Plastics, Unfriendly Black Hotties, Unnamed Girls Who Don't Eat Anything & Varsity Jocks and given the way sensitivities have evolved, it’s predictable some of those names wouldn’t today be used; the factions' membership rosters might be much the same but some terms are now proscribed in this context, the threshold test for racism now its mere mention, racialism banished to places like epidemiological research papers tracking the distribution of obesity, various morbidities and such. 

Ekpyrosis

Ekpyrosis (pronounced eck-pyh-row-sys)

(1) In modern cosmology, a speculative theory proposing the known universe originated in the collision of two other three-dimensional universes traveling in a hidden fourth dimension. This scenario does not require a singularity at the moment of the Big Bang.

(2) In the philosophy of the Stoic school in Antiquity, the idea that all existence is cyclical in nature and universe is the result of a recurring conflagration in which the all is destroyed and reborn in the same process.

1590s (in English): From the Ancient Greek ἐκπύρωσις (ekpúrōsis) (conflagration, cyclically recurring conflagration in which the universe is destroyed and reborn according to some factions in Stoic philosophy), the construct being the Ancient Greek ἐκ (ek) (out of; from) + πύρωσις (pyrōsis), from πῦρ (pyr) (fire) + -ōsis (the suffix).  While there’s no direct relationship between the modern “big bang theory” and the Stoic’s notion of periodic cosmic conflagration (the idea the universe is periodically destroyed by fire and then recreated), the conceptual similarity is obvious.  The Stoic philosophy reflected the general Greek (and indeed Roman) view of fire representing both destruction and renewal.  In English, ekpyrosis first appeared in the late sixteenth century translations or descriptions of ancient Stoic philosophy, particularly in relation to their cosmological theories and it came to be used either as the Stoics applied it or in some analogous way.  It was one of a number of words which during the Renaissance came to the attention of scholars in the West, a period which saw a revival of interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought, art & architecture and for centuries many of the somewhat idealized descriptions and visions of the epoch were those constructed (sometimes rather imaginatively) during the Renaissance.  The alternative spelling was ecpyrosis.  Ekpyrosis is a noun and ekpyrotic is an adjective; the noun plural is ekpyroses.

In stoic philosophy, ekpyrosis was described sometimes as a recurring, unitary process (the periodic destruction & rebirth of the universe in a single conflagration) and sometimes and the final stage of one existence (destruction) which was the source of a palingenesis (the subsequent rebirth).  Palingenesis was almost certainly a variant of palingenesia (rebirth; regeneration) with the appending of the suffix -genesis (used to suggest “origin; production”).  Palingenesia was a learned borrowing from the Late Latin palingenesia (rebirth; regeneration), from the Koine Greek παλιγγενεσία (palingenesía) (rebirth), the construct being the Ancient Greek πᾰ́λῐν (pálin) (again, anew, once more), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European kwel (to turn (end-over-end); to revolve around; to dwell; a sojourn)) + γένεσις (genesis) (creation; manner of birth; origin, source).  The construct of the suffix was from the primitive Indo-European ǵenh- (to beget; to give birth; to produce”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā) (the suffix used to form feminine abstract nouns).

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

In biology, the word was in the nineteenth century was adopted to describe “an apparent repetition, during the development of a single embryo, of changes that occurred previously in the evolution of its species) came directly from the German Palingenesis (the first papers published in Berlin).  In geology & vulcanology, it was used to mean “regeneration of magma by the melting of metamorphic rocks”) and came from the Swedish palingenes (which, like the German, came from the Greek).  In the study of history, palingenesis could be used to describe (often rather loosely) the recurrence of historical events in the same order, the implication being that was the natural pattern of history which would emerge if assessed over a sufficiently long time.  When such things used to be part of respectable philosophy, it was used to mean “a spiritual rebirth through the transmigration of the soul”, a notion which exists in some theological traditions and it has an inevitable attraction for the new-age set.

The Death of Seneca (1773), oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Petit Palais, Musée Des Beaux-Arts, De La Ville De Paris, France.  Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger, (circa 4 BC–65 AD)) was one of the best known of the Roman Stoics and the painting is a classic example of the modern understanding of stoicism, Seneca calmly accepting being compelled to commit suicide, condenmed after being implicated in a conspiracy to assassinate the Nero (37-68; Roman emperor  54-68).  The consensus among historians is seems to be Seneca was likely “aware of but not involved in” the plot (a la a number of the Third Reich's generals & field marshals who preferred to await the outcome of the July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) before committing themselves to the cause).  There are many paintings depicting the death of Seneca, most showing him affecting the same air of “resigned acceptance” to his fate.

The Stoics were a group of philosophers whose school of thought was for centuries among the most influential in Antiquity.  Although the word “stoic” is now most often used to refer to someone indifferent to pleasure or pain and who is able gracefully to handle the vicissitudes of life, that’s as misleading as suggesting the Ancient Epicureans were interested only in feasting.  What Stoicism emphasized was living a virtuous life, humans like any part of the universe created and governed by Logos and thus it was essential to at all times remain in harmony with the universe.  Interestingly, although the notion of ekpyrosis was one of the distinctive tenants of the school, there was a Stoic faction which thought devoting much energy to such thoughts was something of a waste of energy and that they should devote themselves to the best way to live, harmony with logos the key to avoiding suffering.  Their ideas live on in notions like “virtue is its own reward” and ultimately more rewarding than indulgence or worldly goods which are mere transitory vanities.

While the speculative theory of an ekpyrotic universe in modern cosmology and the ancient Stoic idea of ekpyrosis both revolve around a cyclical process of destruction and renewal, they differ significantly in detail and the phenomena they describe.  Most significantly, in modern cosmology there’s no conception of this having an underlying motivation, something of great matter in Antiquity.  The modern theory is an alternative to what is now the orthodoxy of the Big Bang theory; it contends the universe did not with a “big bang” (originally a term of derision but later adopted by all) begin from a singular point of infinite density in but rather emerged from the collision of two large, parallel branes (membranes) in higher-dimensional space.  In the mysterious brane cosmology, the universe is imagined as a three- dimensional “brane” within a higher-dimensional space (which tends to be called the “bulk”).  It’s the great, cataclysmic collision of two branes which triggers each defining event in the endless cycle of cosmic evolution.  In common with the Stoics, the process is described as cyclical and after each collusion, the universe undergoes a long period of contraction, followed by another collision that causes a new expansion.  Thus, elements are shared with the “Big Bang” & “Big Crunch” cycles but the critical variations are (1) there’s no conception of a singularity (2) although this isn’t entirely clear according to some, time never actually has to “begin” which critics have called a bit of a “fudge” because it avoids the implications of physical laws breaking down (inherent in the Big Bang’s singularity) and assumes cosmic events occur smoothly (in the sense of physics rather than violence) during brane collisions.

Bust of Marcus Aurelius (121–180; Roman emperor 161-180), Musée Saint-Raymond, Toulouse, France.

Something in the vein of the “philosopher kings” many imagine they’d like to live under (until finding the actual experience less pleasant than they’d hoped), Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic philosopher who has always been admired for his admirable brevity of expression, the stoic world-view encapsulated in his phases such as “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be.  Be one.”, “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” and “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”  Marcus Aurelius was the last emperor of Pax Romana (Roman peace, 27 BC-180 AD), a golden age of Roman imperial power and prosperity.  

To the Stoics of Antiquity, ekpyrosis described the periodic destruction of the universe by a great cosmic fire, followed by its rebirth, fire in the Classical epoch a common symbol both of destruction and creation; the Stoic universe was a deterministic place.  In the metaphysics of the ancients, the notion of fire and the central event was not unreasonable because people for millennia had been watching conflagrations which seemed so destructive yet after which life emerged, endured and flourished and the idea was the same conflagration which wrote finis to all was the same primordial fire from which all that was new would be born.  More to the point however, it would be re-born, the Stoics idea always that the universe would re-emerge exactly as it had been before.  The notion of eternal recurrence doesn’t actually depend on the new being the same as the old but clearly, the Greeks liked things the way they were and didn’t want anything to change.  That too was deterministic because it was Logos which didn’t want anything to change.  The Stoics knew all that had been, all this is and all that would be were all governed by Logos (rational principle or divine reason) and it was this which ensured the balance, order and harmony of the universe, destruction and re-birth just parts of that.  Logos had motivation and that was to maintain the rational, natural order but in modern cosmology there’s no motivation in the laws of physics, stuff just happens by virtue of their operation.