Refusenik

Refusenik (pronounced ri-fyooz-nik)

(1) In (originally) informal use, a citizen of the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922-1991), a Soviet citizen (usually Jewish) who was denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union (usually to Israel).

(2) By extension, a person who refuses to cooperate with a system or comply with a law as a matter of political principle or because of a moral conviction.

Circa 1975: The construct was refuse + -nik.  The Russian отказник (otkáznik), the construct of which was отка́з (otkáz) (refusal, denial, repudiation, rejection, nonsuit; renunciation, disavowal; breakdown, failure) +‎ -ник (-nik) was a synonym of refusenik.  The -ник suffix was from the Proto-Slavic -ьnikъ, created originally by a nominalization of the adjectives in -ьnъ with the suffix -ikъ (from -ик (-ik)).  The suffix and was used to form masculine nouns, usually denoting adherents etc, the use illustrated by forms such as the dialectal Lithuanian lauk-inykas (peasant, farmer), from laũkas (field) and the Old Prussian lauk-inikis (vassal).  Refuse (in the sense of “to decline a request or demand” was from the Middle English refusen, from the Old French refuser, from the Vulgar Latin refūsāre, a blend of Classical Latin refūtāre (the source also of “refute”) and recūsāre (the source also of recuse).  The use in the sense of “items or material that have been discarded; rubbish, garbage, trash) was a late Middle English borrowing of the Middle French refusé, past participle of refuser (to refuse) which displaced the native Middle English wernen (to refuse).  In English, “refusenik” began as a calque of the Russian отка́зник (otkáznik) and from the mid-1970s, “refusenik” came to be used of someone who refused to do something (usually some law with which most complied), often either as a protest against government policy (conscription) or as a matter of personal autonomy (mandated vaccination).  While the construct of the word was an amusing novelty, the idea conveyed had a long tradition, the English agent noun refuser documented since the late fifteenth century.  The alternative spelling refusnik was not uncommon.  Refusenik is a noun; the noun plural is refuseniks.  Forms like refuseniking & refuseniked are non-standard but used for humorous effect as required.

Technically the –nik suffix corresponds approximately to the English –er in that nearly always it denotes an agent noun (ie it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the suffix is attached).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The connotation however is different in that –er is linguistically neutral (ie the value in the word “murderer” is carried by the “murder” element) whereas a –nik word is usually loaded and that can be negative, positive and often jocular. 

In structural linguistics, the process of creating words by adding a foreign suffix (such as refusenik) is known as “suffix borrowing” (or “affix borrowing”, “prefix borrowing” the obvious companion term).  Refusenik was thus a fork of the phenomenon known as “neoclassical blending” or “neoclassical compounding”, where a foreign morpheme is combined with a native or other language base.  The forms are described as “neologisms created through affixation” and many are coined for jocular effect, the “-nik” subset used to imply a person associated with something, often in a somewhat negative sense, other noted examples including “beatnik” (a member of the “beat” generation of the 1950s, an early example of what would in the 1960s come to be called the “counter culture” and a kind of proto-hippie), “peacenik” (one opposed to war and coined originally to describe those associated with the anti-war movement in the US and opposed to US participation in the conflict in Indochina), “warnick” (the response of the peaceniks to those who supported US policy (which wasn’t picked up by the establishment, unlike “dry”, used originally as a slur by the those who had been labeled “wet” (higher taxes, more social spending etc); the “drys” (smaller government, deregulation etc) liked the term and adopted it although their attempt to give it a little more appeal as “warm & dry” never caught on), “appeasenik” (used in a derogatory sense to describe those who prefer a policy of appeasement to a more robust foreign policy response), “contranik”, (used in a derogatory sense to describe those in the US supporting the right-wing Contras (from the Spanish la contrarrevolución (literally “the counter-revolution”) who between 1979-1990 staged an insurgency against Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinista Junta), “nogoodnik” (someone disreputable), “neatnick” (someone thought obsessively tidy in their habits), “kibbutznik” (In Israel, a member of a kibbutz (and not necessarily a Russian émigré)), “sweetnik” (one’s sweetheart (male or female), “noisenik” (a musician who produces harsh, discordant music (with deliberate intent rather than through lack of skill) and “nudenik” (a advocate of nude sunbathing).

A 1961 guide to the beatnik world view.

The difference between a “beatnik and a “beat” was that the “Beats” were members of the “Beat Generation” a literary and cultural movement which emerged in the late 1940s and popularized by the writers Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), William S Burroughs (1914–1997) a Neal Cassady (1926-1968).  Kerouac would describe the Beat state as being “beaten down, exhausted, but also in touch with the raw, spiritual, and authentic experiences of life” and they were a harbinger of the counter-culture of the 1960s.  There were at the time claims there was a distinct “Beat philosophy” but there were so many claims about this that it really can’t be said there was ever a coherent “philosophy” beyond a sense of rebellion against mainstream culture, materialism, and the alleged conformity on post-war America life, the latter something which in later decades would exert a strong nostalgic pull, exploited by a number of politicians.  The term “beatnik” was more about the stereotyped. Superficial elements associated with those who followed what they thought was the “beat lifestyle”.  It’s not fair to say the beatniks were “the Beat’s groupies” but that probably was the public perception, one which imagined them sitting in coffee shops, wearing berets and listening to poetry readings.

The “nik” words belong to a broader class of borrowed affixed words or loanword derivatives, the best known of which are the neoclassical compounds, formed by combining elements (usually prefixes or suffixes) from classical languages, particularly Greek and Latin, with existing words or roots from other languages (or simply combining Greek & Latin elements, something of which some purists don’t approve).  These compound words are common both in general use and specialized or technical fields such as science, medicine, and philosophy.  Well known examples include: “television” (the construct being tele- (from the Greek tēle (far)) + vision (from the Latin videre (to see)), “automobile”, the construct being auto- (from the Greek autos (self)) + mobile (from the Latin mobilis (movable)), “astronaut” (the construct being astro- (from the Greek astron (star)) + -naut (from the Greek nautēs (sailor)), “bicycle”, the construct being bi- (from the Latin bis (twice)) + cycle (from the Greek kyklos (circle; wheel)).

There has never been an authenticated Lindsaygate or Lohangate so, deductively, Lindsay Lohan has lived a scandal-free life although she does have some history of refusenikism.

Refusenik though belongs to the subset of the type coined usually for humorous effect or a commercial purpose and they include the “-zillas” (stormzilla, bridezilla, bosszilla et al), the suffix from the fictional Godzilla and appended to imply something or someone is excessively large, powerful, or monstrous, usually in an exaggerated or absurd way, the “-aholics” (shopaholic, chocoholic, workaholic et al) the suffix appended to The suffix -aholic (from alcoholic) is often humorously attached to nouns to describe someone addicted to or obsessed with something, the “fests” (geekfest, nerdfest, laughfest, foodfest et al, the –fest suffix from the German Fest (festival), appended to describe and event involves much of a certain thing or theme or will attract those of a certain type, the “-o-ramas” (snack-o-rama, fright-o-rama, book-o-rama et al, the -orama suffix from panorama (a wide view) and appended to suggest an abundance or spectacle of something and of course the “-gates” (pizzagate, whitewatergate, snipergate, servergate, benghazigate et al (all in some way related to crooked Hillary Clinton which is interesting), -gate suffix from the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.  The use of the –gate scandal is an example of what’s called “transferred, implied or imputed meaning” and because it creates form which are “mock-serious”, the words can straddle a range of senses, unlike something like “chocoholic” which, whatever might be the implications for an individual’s health, is always jocular.

In English, the use of the –nik suffix spiked after the USSR in October 1957 launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth although the earlier Yiddish forms (in Yinglish, the words contributed by Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe) may also have exerted some regional influence, notably in New York where as early as the 1930s nudnik (an annoying person; a pest, a nag, a jerk) had spread beyond the Jewish community.  The association of with Sputnik created a minor industry among headline writers looking for words to describe the failures, explosions and crashes which were a feature of the launches in the early days of the US space program after the Russian’s satellite had so shocked the Americans.  The terms like kaputnik, dudnik and flopnik became briefly famous and contributed to the impression the Soviets were much more advanced in rocketry and related technology but that was misleading because the Russians had suffered just as many failures but theirs were a state secret and therefore unknown outside official circles while for the US launches were televised nationally on network television.  The perceptions generated by kaputnik, dudnik and flopnik also created a political ripple which would play out in the 1960 US presidential election and beyond.  Although Sputnik gave things quite a shove, the suffix had a long history in English and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes raskolnik (a bit of a rascal) was in use by at least 1723.  After following the British Empire to the other side of the world, raskol washed up in PNG (Papua New Guinea) as a noun meaning “a criminal, operating sometimes as part of a gang”.  IN PNG, raskol was from the English rascal (a rogue, a scoundrel, a trickster) and entered Tok Pisin (“talk + pidgin”, one of PNG’s official languages and a creole of Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian and Trans-New Guinean languages (principally English and Kuanua).  In later editions of The American Language (first published in 1919), the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956 and a fair scholar of the tongue) credited the popularity of the practice of appending -nik to the ends of adjectives to create nouns to US Cartoonist Al Capp (1909–1979) who put a few of them in his syndicated Li'l Abner cartoon (1934-1977), Sputnik (1957) & beatnik (1958) respectively an accelerant or product of the process.

While it often was applied humorously, it also was used of those in Israel who refused to participate in military operations conducted by the Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisra'el (the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)) in the occupied Palestinian territories (which the government of Israel calls “disputed territories” which the refuseniks regards as unlawful under international law.  Language matters much in the Middle East and some still use “Tel Aviv” as the synecdoche for “government of Israel” because recognition Jerusalem (another “disputed” space” as the capital is so limited.  Tel Aviv briefly was the capital between May 1948-December 1949 and a time when ongoing military conflict rendered Jerusalem too unstable for government operations.  Jerusalem was declared the capital in December 1949 and by mid-1950, most of the state’s administrative apparatus was based there but its status as a national capital is recognized by only a handful of nations.

Books (left & centre), academic journals and magazines used the title “Refusenik” in its original sense of “a Soviet citizen (usually Jewish) who was denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union (usually to Israel), something which was a feature of the Brezhnev-era (Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982)) USSR but it was later adopted (by extension) in the English-speaking world to refer to those refusing to cooperate with a system or comply with a law as a matter of political principle or because of a moral conviction.  Edited by self-described refusenik (in the later sense) Peretz Kidron (1933–2011) and published in 2013 by Bloomsbury, Refusenik (right) applied the word in the later sense of “those who refuse” rather than the original “those who were refused”.  With a blurb including a quote from linguistics theorist & public intellectual Professor Noam Chomsky (b 1928) and a foreword by author and essayist Susan Sontag (1933—2004), it’s likely a few reviews were written before a page was turned.

Fluff

Fluff (pronounced fluhf)

(1) Light, downy particles, as of cotton.

(2) A soft, light, downy mass.

(3) In slang, a cloth diaper (nappy).

(4) In slang (New England region in the US), marshmallow crème, thus the local delicacy the “fluffernutter” (a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff), once a favorite of children’s school lunches but now likely to attract “mother shaming” on Instagram.

(5) In LGBTQQIAAOP slang, the passive partner in a lesbian relationship, known also as a “ruffle”.

(6) In slang, (Australia, New Zealand, Canada), a fart.

(7) In the slang of pop-culture fandom, fan fiction which (in whole or in part) is “sweet and feel-good” in tone, usually involving romance.

(8) In the slang (UK) of the role-playing game community, a form of role-playing which is inconsequential and not related to the plot and used sometimes in the context of (but not limited to) filling time.

(9) In UK slang short change deliberately given by a railway clerk (keeping the money for themselves), an example of a “deliberate fluff” (obsolete).

(10) Figuratively, something of no consequence; insubstantial.

(11) Figuratively (of literature, political argument, philosophy et al), a slight work or one of dubious artistic or intellectual value; unscholarly (used also as a polite euphemism for “bullshit (BS)” which is less explicit than “cattle feces” (“cattle faeces in non-US English).

(12) An error (flub, lapse, blooper, blunder, boo-boo, defect, error, fault, faux pas, gaffe, lapse, mistake, slip, stumble, brain-fart, brain-explosion), especially an actor's memory lapse in the delivery of lines (often in the form “fluffed their lines”.

(13) A young woman (often as “a bit of fluff”), the implication being of her providing a brief, amusing diversion rather than one sought for a permanent relationship)

(14) To make into fluff; shake or puff out (feathers, hair etc) into a fluffy mass (often followed by up).

(15) To make a mistake.

(16) To become fluffy; move, float, or settle down like fluff.

1780s: From the earlier (or perhaps contemporary) floow (woolly substance, down, nap, lint (which appeared also as flough, flue & flew)), possibly from the West Flemish vluwe (an imitative modification of floow), of uncertain origin but which may be from the French velu (hairy, furry), from the Latin villūtus (having shaggy hair), from villus (shaggy hair, tuft of hair) and may be compared with the Old English flōh (that which is flown off, fragment, piece), linked to the later “flaw”.  Although undocumented, etymologists generally conclude the word may have been a blend of flue +‎ puff.  “Fluffy stuff” is a common phenomenon in the natural world and descriptors existed in many European languages including the possibly onomatopoeic Middle Dutch vloe, the dialectal English floose, flooze & fleeze (particles of wool or cotton; fluff; loose threads or fibres), the Danish fnug (down, fluff) and the Swedish fnugg (speck, flake).  Traces of the sound of the word “fluff” are found in other languages including the Japanese フワフワ (fuwafuwa) (lightly, softly), the Hungarian puha (soft, fluffy), the Polish puchaty (soft, fluffy) and the Romanian puf (down; peachfuzz; soft hair of some animals; powderpuff).  Fluff & fluffing are nouns & verbs, fluffed is a verb, fluffiness & fluffer are nouns, fluffless & flufflike are adjectives, fluffy is an adjective (and non-standard) noun and fluffily is an adverb; the noun plural is fluffs.

Fluffied: Lindsay Lohan in bikini embellished with faux fur, photo-shoot for the fifth anniversary of ODDA magazine, April 2017.

In idiomatic use there’s “fluff around” of “fluff about” (ineffectually to act or waste time”, “fluff off” (an affectionate form of “fuck off”), “fluff-ball” or “ball of fluff” (a fluffy kitten or puppy with the quality of “cuteness”), “bum fluff” or “belly-button fluff” (small particles the fabric of clothing which accumulates in body crevices), “fluffhead” (someone vague or confused (synonymous with “airhead”), “fluff up” (a polite version of “fuck up”).  The term “fluffy bunny” isn’t from lagomorphology (the scientific study of rabbits (small mammals in the family Leporidae)) although it may be assumed it’s often heard in pet shops.  Fluffy bunny (also as “fluff bunny” & “fluffbunny”) was an adaptable noun used to mean: (1) a synonym of chubby bunny (a competitive eating game in which contestants had to pronounce words or phrases (such as “Irish wristwatch”) while holding increasing numbers of marshmallows is their mouth), (2) in the strange world of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement which in theory can occur in theory never arises because of other physics and (3) a derogatory descriptor of a casual, naive practitioner of Wicca (or other neo-pagan religion), especially one deemed to have only a superficial understanding.  The slang “bit of fluff” (young woman with who one is enjoying or planning a brief affair) was first recorded in 1903 while the use to describe marshmallow confection seems to date from at least 1920, noted in Massachusetts.  The verb in the sense of “to shake into a soft mass” was in use by 1875 (directly from the noun) while the meaning “make a mistake” dates from 1884 as theater slang to refer to acts who had forgotten their lines.  The adjective fluffy (containing or resembling fluff) came into use in the 1820s.

Watergate Fluff

Watergate fluff is one of the alternative terms for the dish “Watergate Salad”, the others including Green Fluff, Green Goddess, Fluff Salad and Funeral Salad, the last picked up reputedly because it was so often served at wakes.  It’s not clear how the culinary delight came to be called “Watergate Salad” although there’s no doubt the use was triggered by some association the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s which revolved around attempts by the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) to “cover up” the involvement of operatives connected to the White House with the break-in in June 1972 of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate Building.  Interestingly, although the scandal (in the public perception although the legal proceedings would last longer) ended in August 1974 when Nixon resigned, the first known use of the term “Watergate Salad” dates from 1975 although in September 1974, Maryland's Hagerstown Daily Mail had published the recipe for “Watergate Cake”, also a similarly green-tinted dessert made with pistachio pudding in the mix and sometimes the icing.

The dish however predates the term.  Some claim the Kraft Foods Corporation deserves credit (apparently as a proud boast rather than an admission of guilt) as the creator because in 1975 they published a recipe called “Pistachio Pineapple Delight” as part of a promotional campaign to support the release that year of their “Pistachio Pudding Mix” (something with a long tradition, a whipped cream and pineapple concoction detailed in a Kansas newspaper in 1913, the year Richard Nixon was born).  At that point, history and myth become hard to separate, one story saying the food editor of the Chicago Tribune named it to stimulate interest, suggesting it was the ideal snack to enjoy while watching the televised hearings of proceedings pursuant to the scandal while another claimed it was associative because the Watergate Hotel (in the infamous building) served the salad on their popular weekend buffets; no menus appear to have survived to prove or disprove that one.  Best of was the link was because the salad was “full of nuts” (like the crew involved in the scandal, including the memorable lawyer and Watergate conspirator & burglary coordinator G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) who wasn’t really “a nut” but is often portrayed as one).  True or not, that’s the one which deserves to be accepted.

Aleita Dupree's Watergate Salad recipe

Ingredients

1 (3 ½ oz) box of instant pistachio pudding mix.
1 (20 oz) can of crushed pineapple with juice (most use sweetened).
1 (8 oz) container of cool whip, thawed.
1 heaped cup of miniature marshmallows.
½ cup of chopped pecan nuts.
Stemmed maraschino cherries for garnish (optional).

Instructions

(1) In glass serving bowl, mix crushed pineapple and juice with pistachio pudding mix.  Stir pudding until mix completely is dissolved and mixture is smooth.

(2) Fold in the thawed cool whip.  Gently fold until pudding and cool whip is completely blended.

(3) Add miniature marshmallows and pecans.  Cover and chill until salad is set (should take up to 30 minutes).

(4) To serve, garnish with stemmed cherries and extra chopped pecans (if desired).

Fluff in fashion

Fluffiness in fashion: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022, left) and in New York to promote Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024, right).  The fluffy cream coat is by David Koma (Davit Komakhidze (Georgian: დავით კომახიძე); b 1985)) a London-based, Georgian-born fashion designer (the label of his fashion house is stylized as DΛVID KOMΛ).  The crystal payette-embroidered layered cup bra hints at the profile of the customer base; it’s on sale at US$1250 (down from US$1750).  The fashion business is regarded by some as a bit “fluffy” (frocks and such) compared with “hard” industries such as heavy engineering or nuclear weapons construction but the annual turnover of the global fashion industry is substantial.  The numbers bounce around a bit because it difficult to determine where “fashion” ends and “commodities” begin but estimates between US$1.5-2.5 trillion are widely quoted (In financial use, one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 (one million million or 1,000 billion)).

Cynophagia

Cynophagia (pronounced)

The practice of eating dog meat.

Late 1700-early 1800s: The construct was cyno- + phagia.  Cyno was a combining form of the Ancient Greek κύων (kúōn or kýon) (dog) and the suffix –phagia was from the Ancient Greek -φαγία (-phagía) (and related to -φαγος (-phagos) (eater)), corresponding to φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat), infinitive of ἔφαγον (éphagon) (I eat), which serves as infinitive aorist for the defective verb ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat).  In English, use is now most frequent in mental health to reference the consumption of untypical items.  Being a cynophagist (a person who engages in cynophagia) is not synonymous with being a cynophile (a person who loves canines) although it’s not impossible there may be some overlap in the predilections.  The construct was cyno- +‎ -phile.  The –phile suffix was from the Latin -phila, from the Ancient Greek φίλος (phílos). (dear, beloved) and was used to forms noun & adjectives to convey the meanings “loving”, “friendly”, “admirer” or “friend”.  In the context of metal health, the condition would be described as cynophilia.  The -philia suffix was from the Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal) love).  It was used to form nouns conveying a liking or love for something and in clinical use was applied often to an abnormal or obsessive interest, especially if it came to interfere with other aspects of life (the general term is paraphilia).  The companion suffix is the antonym -phobia. The related forms are the prefixes phil- & philo- and the suffixes -philiac, -philic, -phile & -phily.  Cynophagia, cynophagy, cynophagism & cynophagist are nouns and cynophagic is an adjective; the noun plural is cynophagists.

The word cynophagia was coined as part of the movement in European scholarship in the late eighteenth & early nineteenth centuries which used words from classical languages (Ancient Greek & Latin) as elements to create the lexicon of “modern” science & medicine, reflecting the academic & professional reverence for the supposed purity of the Ancient world.  The reason there was a cynophagia but not a “ailourphagia” (which would have meant “the practice of eating cat meat”) is probably because while the reports from European explorers & colonial administrators would have sent from the orient many reports of the eating of dogs, there were likely few accounts of felines as food.  The construct of “ailourphagia” would have been ailour-, from the Ancient Greek αἴλουρος (aílouros) (cat) + phagia.  The Greek elements of ailouros were aiolos (quick-moving or nimble) & oura (tail), the allusion respectively to the agility of cats and their characteristic tail movements.  There are of course ailurophiles (one especially fond of cats), notably the "childless cat ladies" and disturbingly, there's also paedophage (child eater). 

Historically, east of Suez, consuming dog meat was not uncommon and in some cultures it was a significant contribution to regional protein intake while in other places it was either unlawful of taboo.  Carnivorism (the practice of eating meat) is an almost universal human practice but what is acceptable varies between cultures.  Some foods are proscribed (such as shellfish or pig-meat) and while it’s clear the origin of this was as a kind of “public heath” measure (the rules created in hot climates in the pre-refrigeration age) but the observance became a pillar of religious observance.  Sometimes, a similar rule seems originally to have had an economic imperative such as the Hindu restriction on the killing of cattle for consumption, thus the phrase “sacred cow”, the original rationale being the calculation the live beasts made an economic contribution which much outweighed their utility as a protein source.  So, what is thought acceptable and not is a cultural construct and that varies from place-to-place, the Western aversion to eating cats & dogs attributable to the sentimental view of them which has evolved because of the role for millennia as domestic pets.  Over history, it’s likely every animal in the world has at some point been used as a food source, some an acquired taste such as the “deep fried tarantula” which, long a tasty snack in parts of Cambodia, became a novelty item in Cambodian restaurants in the West.  There are though probably some creatures which taste so awful they’re never eaten, such as parrots which ate the seeds of tobacco plants, lending their flesh a “distinctive flavor”.  The recipe for their preparation was:

(1) Place plucked parrot and an old boot in vat of salted water and slow-cook for 24 hours.
(2) After 24 hours remove parrot & boot.
(3) Throw away parrot and eat old boot.

Analysts had expected “more of the same” from Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) in his debate with Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021): the southern border, illegal immigrants, inflation et al.  What none predicted was that so much of the post-debate traffic would be about Mr Trump’s assertion Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (one of literally dozens of localities in the country so named, one factor which influenced it becoming the name of the town in the Fox cartoon series The Simpsons) were eating the pets of the residents (ie their cats & dogs).  As racist tropes go, it followed the script in terms of the “otherness, barbarism, incompatibility” etc of “outsiders in our midst” although there seemed to be nothing to suggest there was any tradition of such consumption in Haiti.  Still, at least it was something novel and it wasn’t the first time pet cats had been mentioned in the 2024 presidential campaign, Mr Trump’s choice of running mate as JD Vance (b 1984; US senator (Republican-Ohio) since 2023) bring renewed attention to the latter’s 2021 interview then Fox News host Tucker Carlson (b 1969) in which he observed the US had fallen into the hands of corporate oligarchs. Radical Democratic Party politicians and “…a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Eventually, that would be answered by the childless cat ladies, notably the most famous: the singer Taylor Swift who posted an endorsement of Kamala Harris, posing with Benjamin Button, the Ragdoll she adopted in 2019.  Benjamin Button was no stranger to fame, the seemingly nonplussed puss appearing of the cover announcing Ms Swift as Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year.

Childless cat lady Taylor Swift with ragdoll Benjamin Button (as stole).  Ragdoll cats make good stoles because (apparently because of a genetic mutation), they tend to "go limp" when picked up.  

Ms Swift is of course a song-writer so well accustomed to crafting text to achieve the desired effect and one word nerd lawyer quickly deconstructed, much taken by the first three paragraphs which interlaced the first person (“I” & “me/my”) and the “you” while avoiding starting any sentence with “I” (a technique taught as a way of conveying “objectivity”) until the she announces her conclusion:

 “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.”

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.”

So, a classic example of a technique which might be used by someone disinterested: two premises which lead to a conclusion, the rhythm of the lyric being “I, I, you, you, you.”  Then, after the “you, you, you” of the “discussion” has made it clear where her focus is, every sentence in the third paragraph begins with “I”, emulation a cadence which might appear in a musical track: “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”  One can see why her songs are said to be so catchy.

The intervention of Ms Swift and Benjamin Button produced reactions. 

Newspapers haven’t always been effective in changing voting intentions or nudging governments in particular public policy directions.  During the inter-war years the Beaverbrook (the Daily & Sunday Express and the less disreputable Evening Standard) press in the UK ran a long and ineffective campaign promoting “empire free trade” and the evidence suggests the editorial position a publication adopted to advocate its readers vote one way or the other was more likely to reflect than shift public opinion.  One reason is that in the West, while politics is very interested in the people, the people tend not to be interested in politics and most thoughtful editorials are barely read.  People are however rabid consumers of popular culture and one opposition leader would later claim an interview a woman’s magazine conducted with his (abandoned) ex-wife did him more political damage than anything written by political or economics reporters, however critical.  With 283 million followers on Instagram (Ms Harris has 18 million), Ms Swift’s intervention may prove decisive if she shifts just a few votes in the famous “battleground states”.

Celebrity endorsements are not unusual; some successful, some not.  In 2016, Lindsay Lohan endorsed crooked Hillary Clinton (who did win the popular vote so there was that).

Whether Ms Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris will shift many opinions isn’t known (many analysts concluding the electorate long ago coalesced into “Trump” & “anti-Trump” factions) but the indications are she may have been remarkably effective in persuading to vote those who may not otherwise have bothered, the assumption being most of these converts to participation will follow her lead and it’s long been understood that to win elections in the US, the theory is simple: get those who don’t vote to vote for you.  In practice, that has been difficult to achieve at scale (the best executions in recent years by the campaign teams of George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) in 2004 and Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2008.

However, in including a custom URL which directed people to vote.gov where they could register to vote produced a spike in voter registration, the US General Services Administration (GSA) revealing an “unprecedented” 338,000-odd unique visits to their portal in the hours after Ms Swift’s post.  Although the “shape” of the hits isn’t known, most seem to be assuming that (as well as some childless cat ladies), those who may be voting for the first time will tend to be (1) young and (2) female, reflecting the collective profile of Ms Swift’s “Swifties”.  They are the demographic the Democratic Party wants.  The GSA called it the “Swift effect” and added that while in the past there had been events which produced smaller spikes, they were brief in duration unlike the Swifties woh for days kept up the traffic, the aggregate numbers dwarfing even the “intensity and enthusiasm” in the wake of the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) overturning Roe v Wade (1973) prior to the 2022 mid-term congressional elections.

In an interview with JD Vance, Fox News asked what he thought might be the significance of Ms Swift mobilizing the childless cat lady vote and he responded: “We admire Taylor Swift’s music. But I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music, or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most people.  When grocery prices go up by 20 per cent, it hurts most Americans. It doesn’t hurt Taylor Swift. When housing prices become unaffordable, it doesn’t affect Taylor Swift, or any other billionaire.”  Fox News choose not to pursue the matter of whether self-described “billionaire celebrity” Donald Trump could be said to be “…fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most people.”

In “damage-limitation” mode, the Trump campaign mobilized generative AI in an attempt to re-capture the childless cat lady vote.  After the debate, Mr Trump had added geese to the alleged diet of Springfield’s Haitian residents.

Mr Trump may have himself to blame for Ms Swift’s annoying endorsement because he’d earlier posted fake, AI-generated images on his social media platform, Truth Social, suggesting she’d urged her the Swifties to vote for him.  Such things were of course not foreseen by the visionary AI (artificial intelligence) researchers of the 1950s, the genie is out of the bottle and given that upholding the “freedom of speech” guaranteed by the First Amendment to the constitution is one of the few things on which the SCOTUS factions agree, the genie is not going back.

The meme-makers have really taken to generative AI.

So while generative AI doesn’t allow mean the meme makers can suddenly create images once impossible, it does mean they can be produced by those without artistic skills or specialized resources and the whole matter of the culinary preferences of Haitians in Ohio is another blow for the state.  It was only in May 2024 that a number of schools in issued a ban on Gen Alpha slang terms including:

Ohio: It means “bad” with all that implies (dull, boring, ugly, poor etc).  Because of the way language evolves, it may also come to mean “people who eat pet cats & dogs”.  The implication is it’s embarrassing to be from Ohio.

Skibidi: A reference to a viral meme of a person’s head coming out of a toilet; it implies the subject so described is “weird”.

Sigma: Unrelated to the 18^th letter of the Greek alphabet, it’s been re-purposed as a rung on the male social hierarchy somewhat below the “alpha-male”.

Rizz: This one has a respectable pedigree, being the the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2023 word of the year.  It’s said technically to be a “Gen Z word”, short for “charisma”.  It has been banned because Gen Alpha like to use it in the negative (ie “lacking rizz”; “no rizz” etc).

Mewing: A retort or exclamation used to interrupt someone who is complaining about something trivial.  Gen Alpha are using it whenever their teachers say something they prefer not discuss.

Gyatt: A woman with a big butt, said originally based on the expression “goddam your ass thick.”

Bussin’: “Good, delicious, high quality” etc.

Baddie: A tough, bolshie girl who “doesn’t take shit form no one”.  It’s a similar adaptation of meaning to a term like “filth” which means “very attractive”.

Lunch

Lunch (pronounced luhnch)

(1) A light midday meal between breakfast and dinner; luncheon.

(2) Any light meal or snack.

(3) To eat lunch.

(4) In slang, as “out to lunch”, dim, vague, uselessly ineffectual.

(5) In slang as “lunchy”, old-fashioned; passé; out of style (obsolete).

(6) In slang as “eating their lunch”, outwitting an opponent.

(7) In Caribbean slang (among older folk), mid afternoon tea.

(8) In first-class cricket, the break in play between the first and second sessions (confusingly for those new to cricket, although the first session is often called the "pre-lunch session", the second is known as the "lunch session" and not the "post lunch session").

(9) In Minnesota, USA, any small meal, especially one eaten at a social gathering.

1580:  It’s never been clear which came first: lunch or luncheon.  Origin of both is thought to lie in a dissimilated variant of nuncheon, the Middle English nonechenche (noon ling meal and drink), equivalent to none (noon) + schench (from the Old English scenc or scencan (to pour out, give drink)), cognate with the Dutch and German schenken.  Apparent unrelated, Old English had nonmete (afternoon meal, literally "noon-meat").  Nonechenche was possibly altered by the northern English dialect lunch (hunk of bread or cheese) from 1590 which may be from lump or the Spanish lonja (slice, literally “loin”).  Because dinner in the sense of the biggest or main meal of the day) could be eaten either at around noon, in the evening or at night, there was a need for a meal to fill the gap between breakfast and dinner.  Lunch is a noun & verb, luncher is a noun, lunching is a noun & verb and lunched is a verb; the noun plural is lunches.

A montage of a languid Lindsay Lohan lingering over lunch.

The idea of lunch as it’s now understood took a long time to evolve, to “take a lunch” in 1786 is recorded as eating a chunk of something (perhaps evolved from lump), carved sufficiently large to constitute a filling meal and as late as 1817, the US Webster’s Dictionary offered as the only definition of lunch "a large piece of food", a meaning long obsolete and in the 1820s, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) thought it either “a vulgarism or a fashionable affectation".   Nevertheless, lunch’s intrusion into the language in the nineteenth century does suggest some sort of social change was afoot, either in the type, style or timing of meals or at least the words used to describe them.  Lunch-money was attested from 1868; lunch-time from 1821; lunch hour from 1840 and the lunch-break from 1960.  The slang phrase out to lunch in the sense of “a bit vague, dim, clueless (but some way short of actually insane) was first recorded in recorded 1955, the notion of being "not there" and instead at lunch.  The luncheon voucher was a public health measure, introduced in 1946 by the UK’s post-war Labour government (1945-1951).  It was literally a paper voucher which represented the mechanism by which the government would subsidize midday meals taken in private restaurants by employees in workplaces where there was no staff canteen.  Luncheon vouchers were an attempt to improve the national diet by encouraging the consumption of healthy, nutritious food at a time when so many basic items were still subject to the rationing imposed during wartime (indeed, some foodstuffs were subject to rationing only after the conflict ceased).  In an example of bureaucratic inertia, the scheme existed to an extent until 2013 by which time the effects of inflation had made the by then trivial subsidy inconsequential.

Receptacles in which to store one’s lunch for transport have a history.  The lunch-box is documented from 1864, the lunch-pail from 1891.  Those were descriptive nouns whereas lunch-bucket emerged in the 1990s as an adjective indicating working-class men or values, bucket presumably the best word because it was universally understood in the English-speaking world to an extent pail was not.  Lunch-bag seems never to have become a common form despite being widely used but in the 1970s, the verb brown-bag (and the related brown-bagging) referring to bringing lunch or liquor in a brown paper bag.  A long-time staple of a lunch-pail’s contents, lunch-meat (a processed form of meat-based protein produced in a size which, when sliced, was aligned with the slices of standard loaves of bread and thus convenient for making sandwiches) was first documented in 1931.  The lunch-counter (a long, elevated table or bench where customers eat standing or sitting on high stools) is an 1854 invention of US English.

The possible future of lunch: Grilled jellyfish.  Although many fish species are in decline, jellyfish numbers are growing.  The part eaten for lunch is called the umbrella. 

The portmanteau word brunch dates from circa 1890, a British student slang merging of breakfast and lunch, according to the magazine Punch (1 August 1896).  It appeared in 1895 in the defunct Hunter's Weekly, but two years earlier, at the University of Oxford, the students had drawn what must at the time have seemed an important distinction: The combination-meal, when nearer the usual breakfast hour, is "brunch" and, when nearer luncheon, is "blunch".  That’s a linguistic curiosity in that the brunch survived while blunch did not yet the modern understanding of a brunch appears to be something taken closer to the time of lunch than breakfast.  It may be that brunch was just the more pleasingly attractive word, blunch not so well rolling off the tongue.  Several spellings of luncheon were noted in the decades after the 1640s, the now standardised form not widespread until 1706.  Of uncertain origin, in the 1580s was used to describe something like the northern English dialectal lunch (hunk of bread or cheese), though influenced by the Spanish lonja (a slice, literally "loin"), blended with or influenced by nuncheon, from the mid-fourteenth century Middle English nonechenche, (light mid-day meal), from none (noon) + schench (drink), from the Old English scenc, from scencan (pour out).

The possible future of lunch: Fishcakes.  Fishcakes are a way by-products of the industrial processing of seafood can be sold as a protein source (ie make use of what would be otherwise used for agricultural feed, the pet-food business or end up a waste product.

The etymology of all these words is tangled and there are reasons to suspect the similar forms arose independently in different place rather than as forks of anything vaguely lineal, the OED discounting the notion of lunching, which dates from the 1650s, being derived from the verb lunch because that wasn’t to be attested for another century, the OED suggesting there may be some connection (by analogy) with words like truncheon etc to simulate a French origin which is speculative but such things are not unknown in ever class-conscious England.  Whatever the origin, it does seem to have been used to describe an early afternoon meal eaten by those who take dinner at noon.

Rabbit

Rabbit (pronounced rab-it)

(1) Any of several soft-furred, large-eared, rodentlike burrowing mammals of the family Leporidae, allied with the hares and pikas in the order Lagomorpha, having a divided upper lip and long hind legs, usually smaller than the hares and mainly distinguished from them by bearing blind and furless young in nests rather than fully developed young in the open.

(2) Any of various small hares.

(3) The fur of a rabbit or hare, often processed to imitate another fur.

(4) A runner in a distance race whose goal is chiefly to set a fast pace, either to exhaust a particular rival so that a teammate can win or to help another entrant break a record; pacesetter.

(5) In sport, a person poor at a sport; in cricket specifically, an unskilled batter (also as “batting bunny”, usually clipped to bunny).

(5) As Welsh rabbit, an alternative form of Welsh rarebit & Welsh ribbit (A snack made of cheese melted with a little ale and served on toast).  Welsh rabbit was the original form but was erroneously marked as a corruption in a dictionary published in 1785 although it’s not clear if the editor made the assumption or drew the conclusion from oral evidence.

(6) In nuclear engineering, a pneumatically-controlled tool used to insert small samples of material inside the core of a nuclear reactor.

(7) In computing theory, a large element at the beginning of a list of items to be bubble sorted, and thus tending to be quickly swapped into the correct position.

(8) In northern English regional slang, as “rabbit catcher”, a midwife or one who by force of circumstance assists in the delivery of a baby.

(9) As “rabbit ears”, the indoor dipole television antenna which typically sat atop the early analogue sets which received a terrestrial signal.

(10) Incessantly or nonsensically to talk.

(11) To hunt rabbits.

(12) In US slang, to flee.

1375-1425: From the late Middle English rabet & rabette, from the Anglo-Latin rabettus, from the Middle French rabouillet (baby rabbit), from the dialectal Old North French rabotte, probably a diminutive of Middle Dutch or West Flemish robbe (rabbit, seal), of uncertain origin but which may be an imitative verb (perhaps robben or rubben (to rub)) and used to allude to a characteristic of the animal.  The related forms include the French rabot (plane), the Middle Dutch robbe (rabbit; seal (from which Modern Dutch gained rob (seal (also “rabbit”), the Middle Low German robbe & rubbe (rabbit), the later Low German Rubbe (seal), the West Frisian robbe (seal), the Saterland Frisian Rubbe (seal) and the North Frisian rob (“seal”) eventually borrowed as the German Robbe (seal).  Early dictionary editors thus described the word as “a Germanic noun with a French suffix”.  Rabbit is a noun & verb, rabbitiness is a noun, rabbited is a verb, rabbitlike & rabbity are adjectives and rabbiting is a noun & verb; the noun plural is rabbits and (especially in the collective) rab·bit.

Lindsay Lohan with rabbit.

Until the late nineteenth century, the meaning was exclusively what would now be understood as “a young rabbit” but it came to be used of the whole species, replacing the original coney, owing to the latter's resemblance to and use as a euphemism for cunny (“vulva” and linked obviously with “cunt” although despite that the preferred slang with some zoological allusion came to include “beaver”, “camel toe” and (especially) “pussy”, rather than “bunny”).  The noun coney dates from the early thirteenth century and was abstracted from the Anglo-French conis and the Old French coniz, (plurals of conil (long-eared rabbit; (Lepus cunicula)) from the Latin cuniculus, the source also of the Spanish conejo, the Portuguese coelho and the Italian coniglio), the small, Spanish variant of the Italian hare (Latin lepus).  The word may ultimately be from the Iberian Celtic although classical writers said it was Hispanic.  In Middle English the two forms were cony & conny (the derivations including coning, cunin & conyng) while the Old French had conil alongside conin.  The evolution seems to be that the plural form conis (from conil, with the -l- elided) was taken into English and regularly single-ized as cony.  The Old French form was borrowed in the Dutch konijn and the German Kaninchen (a diminutive), and is preserved in the surname Cunningham (from a place-name in Ayrshire).  Rabbits not being native to northern Europe, there was no Germanic word for them.  In the fourteenth century “rabbit” came to describe the young of the species and over the centuries came to supplant coney, a process complete by the early nineteenth.  It was another of those exercises in sanitization because in English & Welsh slang, coney had been adopted as a punning synonym for cunny (cunt).  That was complicated by it appearing in the Book of Proverbs in the King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611) so the work-around was to change the pronunciation of the original short vowel (rhyming with honey, money) to rhyme with bony, stony.  In the Old Testament, the word translates the Hebrew shaphan (rock-badger).

When Volkswagen in 1974 introduced the Golf in the North American market, it was named the Rabbit, apparently because it would thought the name would suggest qualities such as “agility, speed & playfulness” which were positive attributes in what was then (by US standards) a very small car, much smaller than the more recent versions.  Because of the international success of the Golf, when the revised model was released in 1983, the North American cars switched to that name and it’s been marketed that way since except between 2003-2008 when the Rabbit badge was revived.  The revival was in retrospect a curious choice given the obvious advantages offered by using the one name globally but at the time VW America had a rationalization: “We think we have some opportunities to do something creative with the Rabbit nameplate and recognizes the Golf nameplate has never really caught on with North American consumers as it was overshadowed by the Jetta sedan and wagon.  Volkswagen customers want a relationship with their cars and names like The Thing, Beetle, Fox and Rabbit support this."  Whatever the opportunities may have been, the linguistic experiment wasn’t continued and since 2009, it’s been Golfs all the way.

US market VW Golfs: 1974 Rabbit L (Generation 1)  (left) and 2007 Rabbit TSI (Generation 5).

There was some linguistic irony in VW’s choice because as the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956) pointed out in The American Language; An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (1919): “Zoologically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares. But the early colonists, for some unknown reason, dropped the word hare out of their vocabulary, and it is rarely heard in American speech to this day. When it appears it is almost always applied to the so-called Belgian hare, which, curiously enough, is not a hare at all, but a true rabbit.”

The White Rabbit was a character in Lewis Carroll’s (1832–1898) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and one which appears often, always in a waistcoat with pocket watch and in a hurry, fearful always of the impending fury the duchess will visit upon him should he be a moment late.  It’s the white rabbit which Alice follows down the rabbit hole, leading to the bizarre adventures recounted.  One of popular culture’s best-known rabbits gave rise to the phrase “bunny boiler”, a reference to the scene in the film Fatal Attraction (1987) in which a scorned woman revenged herself upon her adulterous ex-lover by tossing his daughter’s pet rabbit into a pot of boiling water; he arrives home to discover a boiled bunny.  The Warner Brother cartoon character Bugs Bunny first appeared on the screen in 1938 and is often described by his shotgun wielding antagonist, the lisping Elmer Fudd, as "that wascally wabbit".

In idiomatic use there’s “pull a rabbit out of the hat” (to find or obtain a sudden solution to a problem), “rabbit-hearted” (someone timid or inclined to be flighty), “rabbit food” (a disapproving view of vegetables held by some meat-eaters), “the rabbit test” (an early pregnancy test involving the injection of the tested woman's urine into a female rabbit, then examining the rabbit's ovaries a few days later for changes in response to a hormone (“the rabbit died” the phrase indicating a positive test or an admission of one’s pregnancy)), “breed like rabbits” (slang for an individual, family, or sub-group of a population with a high birth-rate), “down the rabbit hole” (a time-consuming tangent or detour, often one from which it’s psychologically difficult to extricate oneself), “lucky rabbit’s foot”, (the carrying of a luckless bunny’s preserved rabbit’s foot as a lucky charm), “like a rabbit warren” (a confusingly labyrinthine environment (used literally & figuratively)), “rabbit in the headlights” (an allusion to the way rabbits (like some other wildlife) sometimes “freeze” when caught in the light of an oncoming vehicle’s headlamps) and the inevitable “rabbit fucker” (a general term of disparagement (although it could be applied literally in the right circumstances)).

The “earless” rabbit with “eared” companions.

In May 2011, some weeks after the meltdown at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant which suffered severe damage in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, a video of an “earless rabbit” began to circulate, purportedly captured in an area just beyond the crippled plant’s exclusion area.  The immediate speculation was of course the creature’s unusual state was a result of a radiation-induced genetic mutation.  Geneticists however had a less troubling explanation.  Although there’s no doubt the radiation emitting from Fukushima Dai-ichi (some 225 kilometres (140 miles) north-east of Tokyo) represents a major risk to health and the long-term environmental effects remain unclear, the scientists say not only is it unlikely to be linked with the earless rabbit, such creatures are far from unusual.  According to a  statement issued from Colorado State University's Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences: “…radiation can cause mutations that can be occasionally expressed as obvious birth defects, such as shown in the video.  However, to say this is the result of contamination from the Fukushima accident is a stretch, because natural radiation, as well as many other chemical substances in the environment and other factors, can also be mutagenic.  In most cases, the cause of congenital birth defects in humans and other animals cannot be determined and as far as science has shown, there have never been mutations produced by ionizing radiations that do not occur spontaneously as well.”

Rabbits used in nuclear reactors: Polyethylene 1-inch (25 mm) rabbit (left), Polyethylene 2-inch (50 mm) rabbit (centre) and Titanium 2-inch (50 mm) rabbit.

The rabbit does though have a place in nuclear engineering.  In the industry, the term “rabbit” is used to describe a range of pneumatically controlled tools which are used remotely to insert or retrieve items from a nuclear reactor or other radioactive environments.  The name is thought to come from the devices being tubular (on the model of the rabbit borrow) which allows samples rapidly to be injected into the periphery of a reactor core, the injectables moving “with the speed of startled rabbits” although there may also be the implication of rabbits as expendable creatures, the tool essential for maintenance, inspection, and repair tasks in nuclear facilities, where direct human intervention is either dangerous or impossible because of high radiation levels.

Winston Churchill inspecting the progress of project White Rabbit No, 6, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, England, November 1941.

The World War II (1939-1945) era White Rabbit No. 6 was an engineering project by the British Admiralty although as a security measure the official code-name was changed to Cultivator No. 6 to make it sound less mysterious and more like a piece of agricultural equipment.  It was a military trench-digging machine and an example of the adage that “generals are always preparing to fight the last war” and although designed exclusively for army use on (and at least partially under) land, it came under the auspices of the Royal Navy because it was a brainchild (one of many) of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who, between the outbreak of war in 1939 and his assumption of the premiership some months later, served as First Lord of the Admiralty (the service’s civilian head).  Trenches and artillery had been the two dominant features of World War I (1914-1918) and Churchill had spent some months (1915-1916) in one of the former while under fire from the latter while commanding a battalion; before the implications of mechanization and the German’s Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics were apparent, he assumed the new war in France would unfold something like the old, thus the interest in something which would “revolutionize trench warfare”.  Trench warfare however wasn’t repeated so White Rabbit No.6 was soon realized to be already obsolete and the project was abandoned and although the most fully developed of the prototypes did perform according to the design parameters, whether it would have been effective remains doubtful; remarkably, work on these things wasn’t wholly abandoned until 1942.  The “White Rabbit” project codes came from Churchill’s sense of humor, his ideas coming, as he said: “like rabbits I pull from my hat” and he supported many, some of which were of great military value while others, like the “floating runways” (artificial icebergs made with a mixture of shards of timber & frozen water), were quixotic.

White Rabbit © Copperpenny Music, Mole Music Co

Surrealistic Pillow album cover, 1967.

White Rabbit was a song by Grace Slick (b 1939) and released on the album Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane.  The lyrics were inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871).  It was the psychedelic era and drug references were common in popular music and in the case of White Rabbit it may have been appropriate if the speculation the books been written while the author was under the influence of Laudanum (a then widely-available opiate-infused drug) is true (there's no evidence beyond the circumstantial).  Given the imagery in the text, it’s not difficult to believe he may have been on something and among authors and poets it was a popular way to stimulate the imagination, inspiring at least some of one of the most beloved fragments of English verse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) Kubla Khan (1797) which ends abruptly at 54 lines.  According to Coleridge, he was unable to recall the rest of the 300-odd which had come to him in an opium-laced dream (the original publication was sub-titled “A Vision in a Dream”) because he was interrupted by “a person on business from Porlock” (a nearby Somerset village).  Grace Slick would have sympathized with an artist being intruded on by commerce.

White Rabbit lyrics:

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice

When she's ten feet tall

 

And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call

Call Alice

When she was just small

 

When the men on the chessboard

Get up and tell you where to go

And you've just had some kind of mushroom

And your mind is moving low

Go ask Alice

I think she'll know

 

When logic and proportion

Have fallen sloppy dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen's off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head