Samizdat

Samizdat (pronounced sah-miz-daht or suh-myiz-daht)

(1) A clandestine publishing system (really, an ecosystem of sometimes connected but often independent systems) within the Soviet Union, by which forbidden works of literature were reproduced and circulated (also called “underground publishing”).

(2) A work or periodical circulated by this system (a samizdat publication).

1966: A direct borrowing from the Russian самизда́т (samizdat) (self-publishing), the construct being сам (sam) (self) + изда́т (izdát), an abbreviation of изда́тельство (izdátelʹstvo) (publishing house, publishing), the word samizdat coined as a jocular allusion to the compound name of official Soviet publishing organs (Gosizdát for Gosudárstvennoe izdátel'stvo (State Publishing House)).  Even among historians of the Cold War opinion must still be divided on whether samizdat remains a foreign term (and thus italicized) or has been assimilated into English (and thus not italicized); whichever is used, use within a document should be consistent.  A samizdatchik was a person involved in the production or distribution of samizdat.  In English language publications, the first known use of samizdat was in 1966 but the word clearly was in use in the Soviet Union (and presumably elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain) at least as early as the late 1950s and the clandestine production, copying and distribution of works banned by church or state authorities had been practiced for millennia.  Samizdat & samizdatchik are nouns; the noun plural is samizdats or samizdaty.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak’s (1890–1960), first edition, 1957.

The companion word was tamizdat, a direct borrowing from the Russian тамизда́т (tamizdát) literally “published there”, the construct being там (tam) (there) + изда́ть (izdátʹ).  That was a form of clandestine distribution in which writings published abroad were smuggled into the Soviet Union or other places behind the Iron Curtain.  Such works could be by foreign authors, by those in the Soviet Union or those in exile (self-imposed or otherwise); the definitional point was the publications were always banned.  A tamizdatchik was a person involved in the production or distribution of tamizdat although, as was the case with samizdatchiks, mere possession of a copy of something illicit could be enough for the security forces to apply the label; guilt by association often a popular legal device in authoritarian states.  The tamizdat tradition is less celebrated but there have been some notable titles.  Boris Pasternak’s (1890–1960) novel Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and there published in 1957 with Russian language copies soon appearing as tamizdats, swapped, bartered and sold in the vibrant underground trade in Moscow and Leningrad (the old imperial name Saint Petersburg restored in 1991).  The author was in 1958 awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature which didn’t best please the Politburo, compelling him to decline the award.  Times have changed and the novel is now part of the Russian high school curriculum.

Tamizdat Inc

Founded in 1998 and now based in Brooklyn, New York, Tamizdat Inc. is a NPO (non-profit organization) dedicated to promoting and facilitating international cultural exchange.  It appears to be focused on pop culture and originally was established to assist musicians from Central and Eastern Europe reach broader audiences, its activities including organizing tours by bands and staging music festivals.  Prior to streaming services going mainstream, Tamizdat for some years in the early 2000s ran a bricks & mortar music shop and CD distribution centre based in Prague (capital of the Czech Republic) but more recently it seems most involved with assisting those involved in some form of “art” to gain visas to visit the US.  Presumably, serious operations like the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) view Tamizdat Inc with the same sceptical eye they cast upon subversive outfits like the Vatican or the Falun Gong.

The Culture of Samizdat, Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union (2020) by Josephine von Zitzewitz.

Although used mostly by historians and political scientists, samizdat is an accepted term in the jargon of literary theory and its use is not restricted to the Soviet Union or the states behind the old Iron Curtain.  Within the discipline, the term denotes certain “underground writing” (self-publication), circulated in typescript or copies produced on photocopiers or other duplicating machines; what (in this context) makes it samizdat is content expressing views proscribed by the state.  The word entered Western consciousness in 1966 when details emerged of the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial, conducted in Moscow the previous year.  Andrei Sinyavsky (1925–1997) was a literary critic but it was the material he wrote under the pseudonym Abram Tertz which saw Moscow brand him a “dissident”.  That what he wrote was critical of the communist regime was bad enough but his texts were smuggled out of the country and published in the West before returning as contraband, thereby circumventing the state’s strict (and bafflingly inconsistent) censorship regime.

Obviously guilty as sin, Mr Sinyavsky and fellow malcontent Yuli Markovich (1925–1988) were convicted of anti-Soviet agitation in a “show trial” and remarkably, history records them as the first Soviet writers to be convicted solely on the basis of their written words.  Plenty over the decades had been sentenced (sometimes to death) on charges in some way involving what they’d written, but Sinyavsky & Daniel served six years in a penal colony just for the words.  For the Kremlinologists, the most intriguing aspect of the trial was the prosecutor revealing the existence of a large body of underground literature circulating within the Soviet Union so the point of this “show trail” was not to secure a couple of convictions (rarely difficult in a Moscow court) but to act as a warning to other dissidents.  Being a dissident was not easy and one of the under-appreciated difficulties was that the state quasi-tolerated what came to be called “official dissidents”; those who were permitted to be critical… up to a point.  This approach functioned both within the country as a “safety valve” and, for Western viewers, an indication things were not as repressive as anti-Soviet propaganda claimed.  Unfortunately, as the political climate shifted, “official dissidents” could find what was tolerated one month could be judged unacceptable the next with consequences ranging from tiresome to serious.

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), first edition, 1968.

Thus the attraction of adopting a pseudonym and publishing abroad, an additional benefit being duplicating machines were freely available in the West and hundreds or even thousands of copies cheaply could be produced in a way impossible in the Soviet Union where such machines were rare and their use diligently monitored.  As a form of deterrence, the 1966 Sinyavsky–Daniel show trial was not wholly effective because in 1968 the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) completed his essay Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence in which he described the anti-ballistic missile defense projects being explored by both Moscow and Washington as likely to increase the threat of nuclear war.  Initially distributed within the Soviet Union in samizdat, it was smuggled to the West and published in translation.  As a punishment, Sakharov was removed from his role in military research and restricted to studying theoretical physics.  Even more famous was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s (1918–2008) The Gulag Archipelago which, written between 1958-1968, was first published in Paris in 1968.  An exploration of the vast system of Soviet labor camps and penal colonies, the sprawling, three volume work included interviews, reports, statistics and an account of the author’s own experience as a Gulag prisoner.  In the West it remains the best known samizdat and prior to publication, the text in Russian did circulate in the Soviet Union although not until 1989 (in the days of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) was it openly on sale in some bookshops.

The audio equivalent of all this is magnitzdat, denoting material recorded on magnetic tapes that went on unlawfully to be circulated.  Originally, the audio tape recordings were of spoken text and took advantage of several quirks in the Soviet criminal code: (1) While citizens could not own printing presses or duplicating machines, they were permitted to own tape-recorders and by the mid-1950s, Japanese machines, although rare and expensive, had begun to appear and listening was often a communal experience, (2) although the production of more than six copies of a typewritten text was unlawful, there were no restrictions on duplicating recordings and (3) the only legal liability for the content of a recording accrued to those recorded, not those involved in production or distribution. The construct of magnitizdat was магнитофон (magnit(ofon)) (literally “magnetic tape recorder”) + изда́ть (izdát).  Because of the relatively small numbers of real-to-reel tape recorders available, behind the Iron Curtain, the printed samizdats & tamizdats had a much more profound and far-reaching effect but, in an indication of what might have been possible had the technology been available, by the late 1970s cheap, portable cassette tape players enjoyed wide ownership in Iran and the people around Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979-1989), then in exile in Paris, maintained an energetic programme of distribution to Iran of tapes containing his incendiary speeches against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980; last Shah of Iran 1941-1979).  Easily duplicated and shared within communities, the Ayatollah’s message spread probably at least as rapidly as would have occurred had he been allowed to broadcast on radio or television and the rest is history.

Lindsay Lohan, Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father) (2005), 2Crow Bootleg.

Technically of course, a magnitzdat was conceptually similar to a “bootleg” recording, a form which in the West enjoyed in heyday in the 1970s & 1980s.  The term “bootlegging” dates from the late eighteenth century when it was used by British customs and excise officers to describe the trick smugglers used to hide contraband in their large sea-boots.  Since then, it’s been applied variously including (1) the distilling, transporting and selling of unlawful liquor (2) unlicensed copies of software and (3) unauthorized recordings of music and film.  In music, bootleg recordings began to appear in some volume in the 1960s and originally were often from live performances.  Frequently created from tapes of dubious quality with little or no editing, these bootlegs generally were tolerated by the industry because they tended to circulate among fans who anyway purchased the official product and were thought of just a form of free promotional material.  Later, when things became more organized and bootleggers began distributing replicas of official releases, the attitude changed and for decades the music and software industries fought ongoing battles against bootleg copies (which in some non-Western markets represented in excess of 90% of software installations).

Broken English (1979) by Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025).

Marianne Faithfull undeniably was beautiful but before Broken English her discography had been a predictable pastiche of any number of “girl singers” of the 1960s, the music rarely original, usually melodic and inoffensive but never with an arrangement hinting her output could be thought “interpretative”.  Broken English startlingly was different and rarely has a repertoire better suited a “gin soaked” voice.  However there was one track with lyrics deemed in some places “obscene” (the words now would raise barely an eyebrow) so in those markets the album appeared with the offending track deleted.  That led to a lively trade in “bootleg” copies (ie those produced for sale in less censorious jurisdictions) and before long most regulators bowed to reality, allowing their citizens to hear Ms Faithful sing the words many likely would hear while walking along city streets.

While obviously there can in form be similarities in samizdats, tamizdats, magnitzdats and bootlegs, the motives for their production and distribution differ.  “Bootleg copies” of this and that are money-making devices that generate profit by evading copyright, thereby denying the payment of royalties to those who hold the IP (intellectual property) or distribution rights whereas the Russian trio existed to publish material proscribed by state censorship.  Behind the Iron Curtain, for those involved in the means of production or distribution, there could be a profit motive (especially resellers in the “secondary market” and beyond) but the primary rationale was to avoid the censor’s pen.  Although philosophers have for millennia discussed and explained the nature of the institutions such as organized religion and what would come to be called “the nation state” (and latterly, political scientists have with increasing levels of complexity added to the literature), operating in parallel with theoretical niceties such as “consent”, “distributive justice” and “social contracts” is “power”.  Politics, as it is practiced, was detailed by the Florentine diplomat Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, 1469–1527) in Il Principe (The Prince, 1532), a kind of “owner’s handbook” of power and its retention and its core dynamic is what’s now known as regime survival, an imperative which long predates Renaissance Italy and although tactics may vary, the strategy remains the same, whether in a besieged Constantinople in 1453, in the Führerbunker in 1945, in the Oval Office in 2021 or among Ayatollahs in Tehran in 2026.  Censorship is an important component in regime survival because if alternative thoughts are allowed freely to circulate, people might get ideas and princes, popes and presidents all well know where that may lead.

Court of the Star Chamber (1951), gouache on paper by Cecil Doughty (1913–1985).

Although created in the mid-twentieth century, the work is in the style of a "period correct" woodcut.  The Star Chamber was formed because of the courts of Common Law and Chancellery had become inefficient, rule-bound and susceptible to external influences and initially it functioned well but later (especially under the seventeenth century Stuarts) it became a tool of repression.

In the West, the notion of “freedom of speech” is a recent arrival; edicts banning “seditious and heretical works” were proclaimed in 1529 during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) who shortly would change his mind about what constituted “heresy”.  Within a decade of the first proclamations, laws were passed requiring books must be licensed for printing by Privy Council or other royal nominees, an indication the printing press in its time was as disruptive an influence as the internet and social media would later prove; in moves that would be applauded by later Soviet governments, in England and elsewhere in Europe, severe restrictions were imposed on the importation of foreign books.  Had these measures worked as intended, political and intellectual life would have been very different but in England (as in Europe), underground and unlicensed printing presses were soon active and often highly productive.  By 1557, the Stationers' Company (an outgrowth of the London craft guild of printers) was granted a “charter of incorporation” which stipulated only members of the company (or others holding a special patent) were allowed to print any work for sale in the kingdom.  In 1586, the Court of Star Chamber introduced an ordinance mandating that no printing press might be set up in any place other than London or the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge, the point being that in those places the state possessed the infrastructure to supervise what was being produced.  As the Star Chamber was inclined to do, under the act of 1637 it imposed harsh punishments upon transgressors and even after the court was in 1641 abolished by the Long Parliament the repression not only continued but the consequences for illicit printing became more severe.  Remarkable as it sounds, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658), publishers and printers may have looked back on the administration of the Star Chamber as an enlightened period.  The puritanical Cromwell in 1655 actually banned all unofficial publications but this was found to create more problems than it solved and four years later the Rump Parliament permitted the printing of a limited number of licensed newsbooks but distribution was restricted.

So censorship was not invented by the Tsars or comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953).  The significance of the Stationers' Company’s charter was that structurally it created a regime strikingly similar to that which prevailed in the Soviet Union in which the entire publishing industry could be thought “the government printer”.  What members of the company were compelled to do was record prospectively in the Stationers' Register any publications they proposed to print, something which has made research difficult for historians because not everything recorded ended up being printed.  Nevertheless, the Register remains an important source document of literary activity in the era and although the original purpose had been to prevent the spread of seditious publications, lawyers began to use the entries as evidence when attempting to assert copyright.  That was at the time too novel a notion to impress the judges but the register form part of the template for the first English Copyright Act (1709), which provided the framework on which the rights of writers and publishers would be codified.  Lawyers who experienced the often futile task of arguing their cases before the Star Chamber would have found the Tsarist and Soviet models regulating publishing refreshingly familiar and concepts such as samizdat & tamizdat would have needed little explanation.

Bone Music by Stephen Coates.  The x-ray discs are now minor collectables and while all those decades what Russians paid most influenced by what was claimed to be "on the cut", buyers now especially value the best images, skulls among the more desirable.

The ever inventive Russian youth were early adopters of bootleg recordings and combined recycling with a unique form of magnitzdat.  Because the Communist Party was as scared of rock music as it was of tracts about Western democracy and human rights, such sounds were banned and damned as subversive, decadent, capitalist, imperialist etc; in an authoritarian state, the exact form of the damnation is less important than the fact some label has been applied.  So, rock albums were hard to get but in Soviet homes gramophones (record players) were common so all that was needed was the media.  That was found in the rubbish discarded by hospitals, x-ray images turning out to be an ideal material for cutting the grooves which could be played on a gramophone.   Known by a variety of terms including ribs, music on ribs, jazz on bones or bone music, although the first were produced as early as 1946, most date from the 1950s & 1960s, cut into 7-inch discs (the size of the old 45 rpm “single”).  The machines used to “cut the grooves” were reputedly old 78 rpm phonographs, modified by skilled technicians, trained by the state to do stuff in the service of socialism.  Because of the nature of the material, they had a short life (managing a dozen plays was exceptional) and the quality was (by the standards of commercially produced vinyl pressings) appalling but alternatives were scarce and the improvised recording were cheap, often selling for a few kopeks with only the most desirable bands attracting more than a ruble.

Bone music: A early form of a digital disc.

That so many discarded X-rays were available in a nation in which usually there were shortages of just about everything except Vodka, was a product of circumstances.  With the breakdown of public health systems in the immediate aftermath of World War II (1939-1945) at a time when close to 20 million soldiers and displaced civilians were moving between countries, an increase in the spread of tuberculosis concerned the authorities and the Soviet government, like many, embarked on a vast programme of chest X-rays.  As a public health initiative it was a success but it resulted in large libraries of X-rays being stored in hospitals.  Because these contained a silver nitrate substance, they were a fire hazard and, after a couple of conflagrations, a twelve month limit was imposed on storage so hospital administrators were happy to give their old stocks to anyone who asked.  So, the input cost of the raw material was zero and the production costs were marginal which meant that even if the retail unit price of a bone music cut was less than a ruble, with high volumes, it was by Soviet standards a lucrative business model.  Customer satisfaction however was variable because, bought on street corners, the audio quality was unpredictable as was the content; until played, a buyer couldn’t be certain what they’d bought.  Noting the trend, the government passed a law banning the home-production of recordings of “a criminally hooligan trend” but rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay.

Poison & Venom

Poison (pronounced poi-zuhn)

(1) A substance with an inherent property that can impair function, cause structural damage, or otherwise injure or destroy life or impair health.

(2) Something harmful or pernicious, as to happiness or well-being.

(3) A slang term for alcoholic liquor.

(4) To administer poison to (a something living).

(5) To ruin, vitiate, or corrupt.

(6) In chemistry, a substance that retards a chemical reaction or destroys or inhibits the activity of a catalyst or enzyme).

(7) In nuclear physics, a substance that absorbs neutrons in a nuclear reactor and thus slows down the reaction.  It may be added deliberately or formed during fission.

(8) Variously in computing (often as "poison message"), a routine or instructing which can stop processes; the "poison queue" is a place to which these are diverted to prevent the running (a similar concept to a "quarantine zone").

1200-1250: From the Middle English poisoun, poyson, poysone, puyson & puisun (a deadly potion or substance (and figuratively, "spiritually corrupting ideas; evil intentions,"), from the twelfth century Old French poison & puison (drink, especially a "medical drink" (later "a (magic) potion; a poisonous drink"), from the Latin potionem (nominative potio) (a drinking, a drink) (and also "a poisonous drink"), from potare (to drink), from the primitive Indo-European root poi- & po- (to drink).  The earliest Lastin forms were pōtiōn (drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion), from pōtō (I drink) & pōtāre (to drink).   The Middle English forms displaced the native Old English ator.  The Latin pōtiōn is the stem of pōtiō, the derive forms being pōtio & pōtiōnis.  The adjective poisonsome is obsolete and poisonous is used for all purposes.  Poison is a noun & verb, poisonousness & poisoner are nouns, empoison is a verb, poisoning is a noun & verb, poisoned is a verb & adjective, poisonous, poisonlike & poisonless are adjectives and poisonously is an adverb; the noun plural is poisons. 

Dry Cooder, Ronald Reagan, Can of Poisoned Meat.

The evolution from Latin to French followed the pattern of other words (eg raison from rationem), the Latin word also the source of Old Spanish pozon, the Italian pozione and the Spanish pocion.  The modern and more typical Indo-European word for this is represented in English by virus and the slang sense of "alcoholic drink" is an Americanism dating from 1805.  Figurative use was first noted in the late fifteenth century although it appears not to have been applied to persons until 1910.  It was used as an adjective from the 1520s; with plant names from the eighteenth century.  Poison ivy first recorded 1784; poison oak in 1743, poison in 1915.  Poison-pen, the trolling of the time, was popularized 1913 by a notorious criminal case in Pennsylvania although the phrase dates from 1898.  The sense evolution was from "drink" to "deadly drink".  In some Germanic languages "poison" is aligned with the English gift (eg the Old High German gift, the German Gift, the Danish & Swedish gift and the Dutch gift & vergift).  This shift may have been partly euphemistic and partly the influence of the Greek dosis (a portion prescribed (literally "a giving")), used by Greek physicians to mean "a quantum of medicine".  Of persons detested or regarded as exerting baleful influence, poison and poisonous were in use by 1910 while the slang meaning "alcoholic drink" recorded as an an early nineteenth century invention of American English (as in "what's your poison?"); potus as a past-participle adjective in Latin meant "drunken".  The verb in the sense of "to poison, to give poison to" dates from the circa 1300 poisonen, from the Old French poisonner (to give to drink) and directly from the noun poison.  The figurative use in the sense of "to corrupt" emerged in the late fourteenth century.

Three portraits of Lindsay Lohan as Poison Ivy by Alex Ross.  Poison Ivy is a comic book character in works published by US company DC Comics.  Poison Ivy is one of Batman's many enemies.

In idiomatic use, the phrase “poisoned chalice” (a large drinking cup) refers to something which at first glance seems desirable but later is revealed to be disadvantageous or harmful.  It’s now used often in politics to describe the situation in which the leadership of a party is offered to someone even though it seems clear the prospects of success are slight.  This is a modern variant on the original sense in which things initially seemed benign, only later to cause harm or even death.  The earliest known use was by William Shakespeare (1564–1616) in The Tragedy of Macbeth (Macbeth, circa 1606) in the speech in which Macbeth flinches from the prospective murder of King Duncan.  “Poisoned compliment” is synonym of “asterism” or “left-handed compliment”; an insult disguised as a compliment or a compliment which can be interpreted as an insult.  “Damning with faint praise” can be used in the same way.  A “poisonmonger” was “one who peddles poison” and while that could be literal (ie a merchant who trades in poisons), it’s more often used figuratively of those who speak with a “poison tongue” or who wield a “poison pen”.  A “taste of one's own poison” was synonymous with “taste of one's own medicine” and referred to harsh treatment inflicted on one who previously made other suffer the treatment.  To “pick (or “choose”) one’s poison” was to be compelled to choose between two unappealing options.  The variant “a man must be permitted to choose his own poison” was a summation of “liberal” periods of rule within the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) when the consumption of alcohol was tolerated (at least for infidels who were anyway destined for Hell).  To say “one man’s meat is another’s poison” is to admit people have differing tastes; what pleases one person may displease another. 

“Well poisoning” still is practiced and means literally “to make the water supply undrinkable by means of adulteration” (not necessarily with “poison” in the narrow technical sense).  A wartime technique known since at least antiquity, it was used both as an offensive weapon (a terror tactic to disrupt and depopulate a target area) and defensively (as a scorched earth tactic to deny an invading army sources of clean water). Historically, rotting corpses (animal and human) were thrown down wells, making it an early example of biological warfare and that was an especially potent technique because corpses known to have died from transmissible diseases (common during the "age of epidemics" that was the Medieval period) such as bubonic plague or tuberculosis often were available to be "weaponized".  Figuratively, “to poison the well” was pre-emptively to raise ad hominem arguments in order to discredit someone, the concept thus a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is presented to an audience with the intention of devaluing what they’re about to say.  That makes it a certain type of argumentum ad hominem and the phrase was first in this sense used by convert Roman Catholic theologian Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) in Apologia Pro Vita Sua (A defence of one's own life, 1864).  The proverb “The damage that a substance causes is determined more by its quantity than by its essence” is from toxicology and references the phenomenon that while some substances may for life be beneficial or even essential, in certain quantities they can be damaging or even fatal; for humans, ingesting even pure water can prove lethal if enough is consumed in a certain period, toxicity for healthy adults reached with as little as 20 litres (4.4 imperial gallons, 5.3 US gallons) taken over a few hours.

Venom (pronounced ven-uhm)

(1) The poisonous fluid that some animals, as certain snakes and spiders, secrete and introduce into the bodies of their victims by biting, stinging etc.

(2) Something resembling or suggesting poison in its effect; spite; malice.

(3) Poison in general (inaccurate, now archaic).

(4) To make venomous; envenom (archaic).

(5) Malice, spite.

1175–1225: A variant of the Middle English venim & venym (poison secreted by some animals and transferred by biting) from the Anglo-Norman & Old French venim, venin (poison; malice), from the Vulgar Latin venīmen (source also of the Italian veleno and the Spanish veneno), from the Latin venēnum (magical herb or potion, poison (and in pre-Classical times "drug, medical potion" also "charm, seduction" probably originally "love potion")).  Root was the Proto-Italic weneznom (lust, desire), from the primitive Indo-European wenh (to strive, wish, love) from wen (to desire; to strive for).  Related forms included the Sanskrit वनति (vanati) (gain, wish, erotic lust) and the Latin Venus.   The various deformations in post-Latin languages happened apparently by process of dissimilation with the modern spelling in English more or less standardized by the late fourteenth century.  In figurative use, to have "venom in one's voice" was to express thoughts or feelings marked by spite or malice (vitriolic talk); that of course has been common in human discourse since even before structured language developed but the use of "venom" or "venomous" as a descriptor has been in use since at least the late twelfth century.  The adjective venomosalivary (relating to venom and saliva) is now rare and appears only in historic references while the adjective venonsome is obsolete and venomous is used for all purposes.  Venom is a noun, verb & adjective, venomousness, venomization & venomosity are nouns, venomless, venomlike, venomosalivary, venomsome, venomous & venomic are adjectives, venomize, venoming & envenomate are verbs, venomed is a verb & adjective and venomously is an adverb; the noun plural is venoms.

Sometimes similar consequences but linguistically not interchangeable

A venomous white-lipped pit viper (Trimeresurus insularis), ready to strike; the lovely blue ones are rare; most are green.  That may be an example of survival of the fittest given the environments in which they dwell tend more to be green than blue.  As a footnote, the phrase “survival of the fittest” often is attributed to Charles Darwin (1809-1882) but nowhere does in appear in his epoch-making On the Origin of Species (1859); it was coined by English polymath Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), first used in his Principles of Biology (1864).  Sometimes misunderstood, “fittest” means “best fitted to the environment”, not “strongest, fastest, or most physically fit”.  In other words, organisms most likely to survive as a species are those best adapted to their niche or able to adapt to environmental change.

Poison and venom often are used interchangeably because once in the body, the chemicals can do similar damage, attacking the heart, brain or other vital organs but the meanings are different.  That said, there are many venoms which can be ingested without ill-effect because they are dangerous only if entering the bloodstream although that can happen through a minor cut in the mouth so the practice is not without risk.  Typically, venomous creatures bite, sting or stab their victims whereas for poisonous organisms to affect the living, they have to be bitten, inhaled or touched.  The venomous thus need a way in, like fangs or teeth.  The useful rule is: If one bites something and one dies, what one bit contained poison; if something bites one and one dies, one was bitten by something venomous.  Of course one is just as dead whether the cause was ingesting poison, the bite of a venomous snake or being murdered by the Freemasons but the difference is important for those signing death certificates.

Lindsay Lohan in pink orchid veavage swimsuit next to potted pink orchid, Phuket, Thailand, December, 2017.  It was during this holiday the wire services reported “Lindsay Lohan bitten by snake on holiday in Thailand” and almost instantly the grammar Nazis tweeted on X (then known as Twitter) demanding proof the snake really was taking a vacation; standards have fallen since sub-editors went extinct but errors like this may vanish as AI (artificial intelligence) bots replace flesh & blood journalists.  Ms Lohan made a full-recovery; there was no word on the fate of the (presumably non-venomous) serpent.

Mountweazel

Mountweazel (pronounced mount-wee-zuhl)

Factitious material deliberately included in a publication as a “copyright trap”, allowing identification of plagiarism and potential violations of copyright.

1975: A definition by Henry Alford (b 1962) which appeared in a 1975 edition of The New Yorker, referencing an entry in the fourth edition (1975) of the New Columbia Encyclopedia, involving the fictitious Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, said to have died in an explosion while on assignment for the just as fanciful “Combustibles” magazine.  Mountweazel was not a legitimate family name, the neologism coined by Karen Tweedy-Holmes (b 1942), then an editor for the encyclopedia, the purpose being a fictional biographical entry for the imaginary Lillian Virginia Mountweazel.  For all purposes (other than the doomed heroine), mountweasel is used without an initial capital.  Mountweazel is a noun; the noun plural is mountweazels.

Ms Tweedy-Holmes (there can have been few finer names for a lexicographer) described her tragic heroine as an American fountain designer turned photographer, born in 1942 in Bangs, Ohio and most noted for her commissioned series of images of the mailboxes of rural America, her death said to have come in 1973.  Ms Tweedy-Holmes authoritative (and wholly bogus) biographical entry for the late Ms Mountweazel read: “Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942–1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio.  Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964.  She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes.  The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972).  Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”  The coining was for the purpose of a “copyright trap”, in this context an apparently legitimate dictionary entry structurally and stylistically indistinguishable from thousands of others, the idea being that were another publication to include a “Lillian Virginia Mountweazel” entry with the same “facts”, that obviously would be a plagiarism and potentially a breach of copyright.

Combustibles magazine (special issue, 4 June, 1973).

Ms Mountweazel may never have lived but in death is memorialized in the Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection which includes an “extensive collection of Combustibles Magazine” covers, some editions including her assignments, notably “The Whimsical History of Fireworks” and “Disturbing Revelations” about Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) who in 1945 had been employed by the US government, suddenly rather more interested in the missiles the German could help them build rather than his wartime use of slave labor.  There’s also the revelation the Flags Up! project, although promoted as the USPS (US Postal Service) using “captivating imagery” to demonstrate how the new ZIP codes enhanced “the efficiency and modernization of the postal system”, actually was funded by the CCF (Congress for Cultural Freedom), a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) “front organization” used during the Cold War to produce anti-Soviet propaganda.  The “messaging” in Flags Up! was to show the way freedom of thought and the expression of ideas was allowed freely to flow between Americans, however remote they might be.  Of course, also included is the “special issue” of Combustibles (4 June, 1973) in which was announced the death the previous day of Ms Mountweazel, killed in the crash of a Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 SST (supersonic transport) passenger airliner during the 1973 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport.  In the accident, all six crew members died along with eight in the nearby village of Goussainville, Val-d'Oise where Ms Mountweasel had been researching “the negative health effects of sound pollution in communities near major international airports.”  After her death, photojournalism scholar Pierre Menard, acknowledged Ms Mountweazel as “one of the most important in the world of pyromaniac publishing.”  Pierre Menard was also factitious, the name borrowed from Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)), a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

Official Journal of the Institute of Explosives Engineers, March 2026 edition.  It would seem women involved in “blowing-up stuff” prefer to wear sensible shoes which seems wise.

While there was no “Combustibles” magazine (which for the entrepreneurial seems a gap in the market), for students of such things or enthusiasts of the art & science of “blowing-up stuff”, the IEE (Institute of Explosives Engineers (Voice of the Explosive Industries)) publishes the quarterly Official Journal of the Institute of Explosives Engineers, currently distributed to a membership of some 2,000 “highly qualified engineers and specialists” involved in blowing-up stuff.  Additionally, copies are made available to selected academics, professional institutions and those in the business (of blowing-up stuff).  As well as academic papers, features and articles, the journal functions as a trade publication with information and reviews of new products and services.  The editors welcome submissions relevant to blowing-up stuff and, if appropriate, prior to publication, will submit texts for professional peer review.  The next International Explosives Conference will be held between 16-18 June, 2026 at the Parkgate Hotel in Cardiff, Wales and the institute recommends the early booking of hotel rooms because on the evening of the 16^th, Take That (an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990) will be performing their Circus Live show at the city’s Principality Stadium.

A synonym of mountweazel is the German Nihilartikel, said to have appeared in 2003 as a hoax in the German-language Wikipedia in 2003 and later picked up by the English version from which it spread through blogs, print publications and such, these serving as “references” appearing to legitimate subsequent use.  The construct of Nihilartikel (being a noun, if used in the original German, with an initial upper case) was the Latin nihil (nothing), from nihilum (from ne- (not) +‎ hīlum (the least bit)) + the German Artikel (article) (from the Middle High German artikel, from the Latin articulus.  This is defined (in the jargon of Wikipedia) as a type of citogenesis (a circular form of citation where various sources report each other, creating a false impression of reliability).  The construct being cit(e) +‎ -o- +‎ -genesis, citogenesis was in 2011 coined by US engineer Randall Munroe (b 1984), presumably on the model of the homophone cytogenesis (the formation, development and variation of cells), the construct being cyto- + genesis.  Cyto- (“cell” as used in biology) was a learned borrowing from the Ancient Greek κύτος (kútos) (container, receptacle) and genesis (origin, start; point (in time) at which something comes into being). came via Latin from the Ancient Greek γένεσις (génesis).  Cite (in this context “to quote; to repeat, to make mention of; to list”) was from the Old French citer, from the Latin citare (to cause to move, excite, summon) and frequentative of ciēre (to rouse, excite, call).  So, just as cytogenesis describes cells being formed and variations emerging from components, in citogenesis what is happening to the assembly of “apparent (but erroneous) facts” with “authenticity verified” on the basis of other “apparent (but erroneous) facts that gained their “apparent veracity” merely from the frequency of citation.

The Pentagon Papers.  In 1971, the USSC (US Supreme Court) ruled 6-3 against granting the Nixon (Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US VPOTUS 1953-1961 & POTUS 1969-1974)) administration an injunction preventing further publication of excerpts by the New York Times & The Washington Post, holding the government’s attempt to invoke “prior restraint” violated the First Amendment (freedom of the press) of the constitution and the claim of a threat to national security was not in this case sufficiently justified to allow suppression of the press.  It’s interesting to speculate how today’s USSC would rule on the same facts.

For other purposes, there are variants of the “copyright trap”.  Organizations wishing to detect the source of “leaks” (documents being photocopied and given to unauthorized recipients) would sometimes make visually almost imperceptible changes (an additional space, a character in a slightly different font etc) in certain copies, meaning an analysis of a “leaked copy” could isolate the source.  That obviously depended on the existence of relatively few original copies but that is the nature of leaked material.  The digitization of documents of course made copying and leaking not only quicker and easier but also made possible grabbing data on a huge scale.  While in 1969 Dr Daniel Ellsberg (1931–2023) had to spend several evenings alone with one of Rand Corporation’s photocopiers to duplicate the 7000-odd pages that became “the Pentagon Papers”, by the time Edward Snowden (b 1983) and Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning (b 1987) were stealing US government data by the gigabyte, all they needed was a USB stick onto which stuff silently was copied as they went about their paid work.  All digital copies of a document are of course functionally identical and even metadata which can reveal something about the copying (such as a date stamp) can be edited so what sometimes was done was the insertion of something hidden which could be detected only at the software level and not visually.  The best known was the “Alt + 255 trick”, a keyboard combination which created the NBSP (non-breaking space) Unicode character U+00A0.  Visually indistinguishable from the standard gap (U+0020) created by a tap of the space bar, the location could be detected using certain text editors so, correctly implemented, it would be a useful device for tracing sources of leaks.  However, “software tricks” can be detected by other software which is why crooked Hillary Clinton’s (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) legal team (a well-resourced and busy crew) insisted on printing out thousands of E-mails because of fears the investigators exploring the (still not adequately explained) “servergate” scandal might detect in the raw files something crooked Hillary had deleted.

The companion (in form though not intent) of the mountweazel is the “ghost word”.  A ghost word is a word that enters a dictionary, reference book or some other reputable source, despite being “wrong”.  The causative events have been varied, including misunderstood abbreviations, typographical errors, printer's mistakes, errors in transcription or translation, scribal copying errors, damaged manuscripts, corruptions in transmission and mishearings of audio recordings.  While advances in technology have made it possible more efficiently to identify ghost words, the increasing use of OCR (optical character recognition) on texts of sometimes dubious legibility may yet create a few and given the propensity of AI (artificial intelligence) bots to “make-up stuff”, there’s likely to be a new generation yet to be discovered.  In linguistics, the professionals distinguish between “ghost words” and “phantom words” and the distinction matters in their rarefied world but to most of us the latter probably would be thought mere “spelling errors”.

Few have made a great as contribution to the study of the English language as Walter William Skeet, the ghost word but one of his minor legacies.

All that matters for purposes of definition is that the word has no actual history of use in the language.  One celebrated example was “dord” which appeared in the 1934 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, defined as “density”.  What had happened was the chemistry section’s editor had written a note saying: “D or d, cont/ density” (meaning “uppercase D or lowercase d is the abbreviation for density”) but a typesetter misread the spaces, blending the characters to create a “new word”.  Until 1939 “dord” sat on its page in Webster’s, apparently without causing trouble but it was noticed during an internal review and a “plate change/imperative/urgent” instruction was sent to the printer; at that point the linguistic exorcism was effected but, because lead-times and product supply-lines were then longer, not until 1947 were Webster’s confident they successfully had “de-dorded” things.  It could of course have been different.  Had chemists ((The origin, start; point (in time) at which something comes into being). or anyone else) decided dord was a “perfectly cromulent word” and use had achieved critical mass, it would have become a “real word”.  Quite when the term “ghost word” first was used in this sense is uncertain but lexicographers agree it was popularized by English mathematician, philologist & Anglican deacon Walter William Skeat (1835–1912), notable for his seminal work in editing Medieval texts.

The neologism “cromulent” appeared in Lisa the Iconoclast (episode 16, season 7 of the US animated TV series The Simpsons (1989-) which aired on Fox on 18 February, 1996.  Cromulent (acceptable; valid; correct) was deliberately not “a real word”, the gag being it was included in the script to be used by one character to assure another that “embiggen” (to make larger) was “a real word”.  So it was a funny line but the irony was embiggen had a (limited) history of use dating from 1884.  In the years since, it has been included in mainstream dictionaries and has found a niche in the mysterious world of string theory, a collection of explanations of the structure of the universe; being under the rubric of quantum gravity, string theory is understood only by a handful of specialists, not all of whom agree with each other.  Probably few would deny embiggen deserves to be in the jargon of string theory but whether the discipline is cromulent science continues to divide opinion.

Warren Harding (1865–1923; POTUS 1921-1923), New Year's Day, 1920.  A confessed Freemason, Harding presided over a scandal-plagued administration and his early death might have been one of those “good career moves”.  Theodore Roosevelt’s (TR, 1858–1919; POTUS 1901-1909) daughter Alice Longworth (1884–1980) “knew everybody” in twentieth century US politics and in summing up Harding concluded: “Harding wasn’t a bad man, he was just a slob.”

There have over the years been many “ghost words” (the authoritative Wiktionary listing 33 instances in English of examples meeting their strict criterion).  It’s not enough that a word is “wrong”; whether fictitious, malicious, erroneous or whatever, to become a “ghost word” it must appear in some work of reference and be presented as “genuine”, enduring in that form long enough to take on some sort of life.  Humorists and experimentalists have of course coined or repurposed words which have entered mainstream use but these are not ghost words because their lineage was documented.  There are also “pseudo ghost words” (those treated as such but with a verified history authenticating the alleged error), a celebrated example being Warren Harding’s use during his successful 1920 presidential campaign of “normalcy” instead of “normality”, the section of his speech containing the offending word almost aggressively alliterative:

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Unrelated: The mountain weasel (Mustela altaica), an inhabitant of high-altitude regions in parts of Asia including Kazakhstan, Tibet, India, Mongolia, north-eastern China and southern Siberia.

In saying "normalcy", he may have misspoken or perhaps Harding liked the word; questioned afterwards he said he found it in a dictionary which probably was true although whether his discovery came before or after the speech wasn't explored.  Although Harding’s choice was at the time much-mocked, normalcy certainly had existed since at least 1857, originally as a technical term from geometry meaning the “mathematical condition of being at right angles, state or fact of being normal in geometry” but subsequently had on several occasions appeared in print as a synonym of normality.  Still, it was hardly in general use though Harding gave it a boost and it’s not since gone extinct, now with little complaint except from the most linguistically fastidious who insist the use in geometry remains the only meaning and all subsequent applications are mistakes.  In these circumstances, a misspeak “does not a ghost word always make” and in 1920 many assumed Mr Harding had “misspoken”.  For someone to “misspeak” was then understood to mean “saying something incorrectly, unclearly or inaccurately (by mistake).  The word “Misspeak” thus distinguished unintentional errors, mispronunciations or “slips of the tongue” from deliberate lies but it came to suffer a darkly amusing late career change.  Historically, it meant (1) to fail to pronounce, utter, or speak correctly or (2) to speak insultingly, disrespectfully or inappropriately (a use long obsolete) but in recent decades it has evolved as a “weasel word” (a word used to hedge a statement, making it vague; equivocal; ambiguous; misleading) used by politicians and others tacitly to admit having lied without having to say: “I lied”.  So it’s beyond a euphemism (which has a hint of polite respectability) and something most associated with crooked Hillary Clinton, notorious for her “strained” relationship with truthfulness although to be fair to crooked Hillary (difficult, but it can be done), her husband (Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001)) did not in such matters set a stellar example.

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

A malapropism is a literary device and not a ghost word.  Mrs Malaprop was a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s (1751-1816) play The Rivals (1775); she had the habit of substituting inappropriate but like-sounding words that would take on a ludicrous meaning in the sentence in which they appeared (her intended compliment “nice arrangement of epithets” came from her lips as “nice derangement of epitaphs”).  That was very different from a “mere typo”, a breed which tends either to be annoying or amusing but which in certain documents could be consequential (consider “prescribe” vs “proscribe”) but typos can also coin words.  “Hodling” was intended to be in the text string “I am holding”, typed by a cryptocurrency investor who wished to assure others in the chatgroup he was “holding” his Bitcoin position and not selling despite the sudden drop in the price.  Unfortunately, he’d reputedly enjoyed half a bottle of whisky (or whiskey) so finger control on the keyboard was diminished, thus the word-making “I am hodling.”  That proved a linguistic gift because “hodl” (hold) entered the jargon of the cryptocoin jockeys and hodlers (those who do not react to every price downturn by selling) are thought a fearless elite. 

Applied spoonerism: First assembled in 1977, the Cunning Stunts was a London-based, feminist performance collective.  Suffering the internal conflicts perhaps endemic to collectives, the Cunning Stunts dissolved in 1982, having seemingly worked their concept dry.  In the UK, much alternative theatre didn’t survive the 1980s, the administration of Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) dismantling many of the often left-wing local authorities which had provided a substantial proportion of the funding.

Nor is a spoonerism likely to become a ghost phrase.  A spoonerism is a play on words in a phrase in which the initial (typically a consonant) sounds of two or more of the words are transposed.  It was named after Oxford don the Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), who was alleged to have made many such slip-ups (“Our dear old queen” becoming “Our queer old dean”) although among scholars it’s suspected that while doubtless he made a few, there was likely a healthy industry among his students (and perhaps even his fellow dons) is concocting more to be attributed.  Another variant was the mondegreen.  Mondegreen was coined by US editor & journalist Sylvia Wright (1917-1981) who, in a piece published in 1954 in Harper's Magazine, recalled a childhood memory of mishearing her mother read a line in the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o' Moray (which appeared in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) by the English clergyman bishop and antiquarian Thomas Percy (1729-1811)): “They have slain the Earl o' Moray, / And laid him on the green”, the second line misheard as, “And Lady Mondegreen”.  Now an acknowledged descriptor, “mondegreen” didn’t appear in mainstream dictionaries until the twenty-first century and that was a product of lists of “obscure or unusual” words beginning to proliferate on the internet as bandwidth increased and cost fell.  Not all novelties pleased the editors but mondegreen was nerdy enough to make the lexicographical cut.  Structurally, there’s no reason why a misspeak, malaproprism, spoonerism or mondegreen can’t become a ghost word; it’s all in the history.

Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo in his battered 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet.

Both embiggen and cromulent are not ghost words because they were positioned as “joke words” rather than being errors and nor are they mountweazels because they were inserted into the script as something other than copyright traps.  Essentially, a mountweazel deliberately is fake while a ghost word is in some sense “wrong”, the distinction summed up as: (1) a ghost word is an error mistaken for truth while (2) a mountweazel is a fabrication presented as truth for strategic reasons.  There are however limitations to the mountweazel’s utility as a copyright trap, the classic example the legal squabble which came to be dubbed “the Columbo Trap”.  Columbo was a TV detective drama which at various times between 1968-2003 was shown on the NBC & ABC networks; it started Peter Falk (1927–2011) as Lieutenant Columbo, remembered for (1) always solving the murder(s), (2) his catch phrase “just one more thing” and (3) driving a dilapidated 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet (one of 504 built that year out of the 2,030 produced during a six-year run (1956-1961)).

The Trivia Encyclopedia (1974): Mostly accurate.

The first edition of the best-selling book The Trivia Encyclopedia appeared in 1974; written by Fred L. Worth, it was for years a fixture on bookshop “Christmas gift” lists.  In 1984, claiming damages of US$300 million, Mr Worth filed suit against the distributors of the board game Trivial Pursuit, claiming they had stolen their game’s Q&A (questions & answers) from his books.  There were many instances of copying he cited but his key piece of evidence was a mountweazel he'd included: the “trivial fact” the first name of the TV detective Lieutenant Columbo was: “Philip”.  This was a product of Mr Worth’s imagination but in the board game, it appeared as an answer to that question.  His legal point was that while the board game’s creators could have obtained his other examples from many other sources (as indeed he had), the notion of “Philip Columbo” appeared first in his book and that it was “not a fact” was irrelevant because the basis of his suit was the unauthorized and unattributed copying.

Not to be confused: Mr Spock (left) & Dr Spock (right).

The Trivia Encyclopedia mostly was accurate although there appeared on the cover an “accidental” mountweasel.  The “Dr Spock” mentioned in the cover art was the character in the TV Series Star Trek (1966-1969) who was always referred to as “Mr Spock” (reflecting the practice in the USN (US Navy), the rank-structure and conventions of which were adopted for the series).  Within The Trivia Encyclopedia, things are OK, the character always referred to as “Mr Spock” and the “trivial facts” correct:  (1) Mr Spock was Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise; (2) he was played by Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015); (3) his human mother was Amanda (played by Jane Wyatt (1910-2006); (4) his Vulcan father was Sarek (played by Mark Lenard (1924-1996).  In publishing, by convention, authors tend not to have the final say on a book’s title or cover art so it was likely an editor at Brooke House who may inadvertently have put the mountweazel on the cover.  Presumably the confusion arose because (1) Mr Spock was rather nerdy in the stereotypical way of a physics Ph.D, and (2) while the series was being televised, the book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by US paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) had become a best-seller, making its author a household name.  Spock being an unusual name, “Dr” became so associated with “Spock”, many not familiar with the intricate details of the TV series may have conflated the two.

On just about any topic, there's probably a trivia list somewhere on-line.

Defending the suit, the distributers of Trivial Pursuit made no attempt to deny sourcing much material from Mr Worth's book, arguing “facts” are not able to receive the protection of copyright.  To emphasize the point, the company provided a long list of published texts from which information had been copied and argued it would be absurd to suggest they could be sued for providing the answer “Queen Victoria reigned between 1837-1901” because that fact appears in thousands of books.  They acknowledged an action might be possible (depending on many things) had they merely published a “book of trivial facts” (a la Mr Worth’s) but a multi-player board game in which questions had to be answered was “a substantially different product” within the meaning of copyright law.  The judge agreed, a finding upheld on appeal and the USSC declined to re-hear the case, thus reinforcing general principle “a fact cannot be copyrighted”.  Mr Worth’s response was that by definition “Philip Columbo” was thus a piece of fiction deserving copyright; the judges acknowledged the logic but found it too much of a stretch to be accommodated within copyright law and did not concur.  Amusingly however, others also copied Mr Worth’s mountweazel with references to “Lieutenant Philip Columbo” over the years appearing in print and on-line, Peugeot in the 1980s even running advertising campaign in which “Lt. Philip Columbo” was mentioned as the “most famous driver” of a Peugeot convertible.  That was a bit of a shift from the company’s original views on the 403 Cabriolet’s appearance in the TV series, the executives not best pleased at its dilapidated state.  Internet sleuths later published close-up screen shots of his police badge which revealed his name was “Frank Columbo”.