Litotes, meiosis & paradiastole

Litotes (pronounced lahy-tuh-teez, lit-uh-teez or lahy-toh-teez)

In formal rhetoric, a figure of speech whereby something is stated by denying its opposite, especially (though not of necessity) one in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary (a certain class of understatement).

1650–1660: A learned borrowing from the Late Latin lītotēs, from the Ancient Greek λιτότης (litótēs) (literally “plainness” and used in the sense also of “simplicity, understatement”), from λιτός (litós) (smooth, plain, simple).  In the rules and conventions of classical rhetoric, litotes was known also as moderatour or antenantiosis; it was a device to achieve a ironic effect, emphasizing a point by stating a negative further to affirm a positive, often by the use of a double negatives.  Litotes is a noun, litotical is an adjective and litotically is an adverb; the noun plural is litotes.

Meiosis (pronounced mahy-oh-sis)

(1) In cell biology, part of the process of gamete formation, consisting of chromosome conjugation and two cell divisions, in the course of which the diploid chromosome number becomes reduced to the haploid

(2) In formal rhetoric, belittlement or notably expressive understatement.

1580–1590: From the Ancient Greek meíōsis (a lessening), the construct being meiō-, (a variant stem of meioûn (to lessen) from meíōn (less)) + -sis.  The –sis suffix was from the Ancient Greek -σις (-sis) and was used to forms noun of action), often via Latin but increasingly also from French; it had exactly the same effect as the Latin –entia and the English -ing.  Historically, the use in terms borrowed from Ancient Greek was comparatively rare but there are many modern coinages based on Ancient Greek roots, reflecting to ongoing reverence for the ancient languages.  Meiosis is a noun, meiotic is an adjective and meiotically is an adverb.

Paradiastole (pronounced par-uh-die-ast-oh-lee

In formal rhetoric, a form of euphemism in which a positive synonym is substituted for a negative word.

Circa 1640: From the Ancient Greek παραδιαστολή (paradiastolḗ), the construct being παρα- (para-) (next to, alongside) + διαστολή (diastolḗ) (separation, distinction).  Paradiastole is a noun, paradiastolic is an adjective and paradiastolically is an adverb; the noun plural is paradiastoles.

Hirohito saluting on white horse at an army parade, Yoyogi Parade Ground, Tokyo, 1933.

The use of understatement is cross-cultural and is identifiable in many languages and the English upper classes made it something of a tradition; it was never unexpected to hear some grandee refer to his forty-room country house as “the cottage” but for sheer scale, few can match Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989; Emperor (昭和天皇 (Shōwa-tennō) of Japan 1926-1989).   Having endured hearing a long succession of bad news about the state of Japanese military affairs, he learned of the defeat of his axis partner, Nazi Germany and then, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Unlike some of the generals, admirals and politicians advising him, the emperor accepted the inevitable and on 14 August 1945, delivered a speech effectively accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (26 July 1945), the Allies' demand of unconditional surrender.  It had taken two A-Bombs to summon the most memorable understatement of World War II (1939-1945):  “…the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage...”  So, if the word “understatement” is well understood and widely practiced, why the need for “litotes”, “meiosis” & “paradiastole”, all figures of speech which are a form of understatement.  For what most people do, most of the time, there’s really no need at all and “understatement” is better because its meaning isn’t obscure, unlike the classical trio.  However, in the arcane world of literary theory and textual deconstruction, the words do have some utility to convey subtle or nuanced meanings.

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

A litotes is a form of understatement in which a double negative or a negation is used to affirm something positive, usually with some implication of restraint in the expression, a familiar example being “he’s not the most intelligent person I know” which people understand as “he’s a bit dim” without brutal edge and in that it’s also an applied euphemism.  It can also be used to create ambiguities in meaning, illustrated in the BBC TV comedy series Yes Minister (1980-1984) when the minister discovers his performance in office is in many places being described as “not bad” and he’s troubled because the mere phrase does not convey the meaning.  Without the context in which the words were uttered and the various non-verbal clues attached to the delivery, he has no idea whether he’s being regarded “quite good” or “not quite good enough”.  It does seem “litotes” is sometimes applied to what are, strictly speaking, an example of “meiosis”, usually in instances where what’s being described is apparently “weak or understated” but having the effect of intensification.

Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) with champagne flute (image digitally altered by In Defence of Marxism).

The nuance attached to a meiosis was it was a type of understatement downplaying the significance of something, often with the hope of creating the impression things are not as bad as they seem.  Done well, it can work:  When Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) casually alluded to a few “local difficulties” (the crisis engendered by the resignation of his entire team of Treasury ministers) before flying off for a tour of the Commonwealth, his words did the trick and the ructions almost immediately subsided.  Unlike litotes, the meiosis is not so associated with double negatives but is characterized by “minimizing language”.  In politics, the paradiastole is perhaps the highest form of the understatement because it’s of such utility in the deployment of that standard tool of the politician: the lie.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) on the hustings, Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster, New Jersey, August, 2024.

The paradiastole is a rhetorical device used to reframe something negative or morally questionable as something positive or at least neutral and there’s some connection with the mechanics of “Newspeak” described by George Orwell (1903-1950) in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) while in structural linguistics it’s defined as the “rhetorical technique of evaluative redescription”.  While most of us relate to that as “euphemism”, the paradiastole differs in that instead of being a “polite” way of referring to something, it’s used in an attempt to shift the perception of meaning.  Some paradiastoles are themselves ironic such as the use in IT to describe bugs in software as “undocumented features” but often it’s an attempt to deceive or manipulate by seeking to recast something unpleasant as favorable.

MRDA

MRDA (pronounced emm-ahr-dee-ey)

The abbreviation of “Mandy Rice-Davies Applies”, an aphorism used in law and politics to refer to any denial which is transparently self-interested.

1963: An allusion to the statement “Well he would, wouldn't he?”, said by Welsh model Mandy Rice-Davies (1944-2004) during cross-examination in a trial at the Old Bailey (the central criminal court for England & Wales) associated with the Profumo affair.

Lord Astor, Mandy Rice-Davies and the Profumo Affair

The context of Ms Rice-Davies’s answer was the question: “Are you aware that Lord Astor denies any impropriety in his relationship with you?” and the answer “Well he would, wouldn't he?” elicited from those in the court “some amusement”.  MDRA (Mandy Rice-Davies Applies) thus became in law and politics an aphorism used as “verbal shorthand” to refer to any denial which is transparently self-interested although it doesn’t of necessity imply a denial is untrue.  In general use, the fragment from the trial is often misquoted as “Well he would say that, wouldn't he?” because that better encapsulates the meaning without being misleading.

Mandy Rice-Davies (left) and Christine Keeler (right), London, 1963.  Note the leopard-print seat covers.

The Profumo affair was one of those fits of morality which from time-to-time would afflict English society in the twentieth century and was a marvellous mix of class, sex, spying & money, all things which make a good scandal especially juicy.  John Profumo (1915-2006) was the UK’s Minister for War (the UK cabinet retained the position until 1964 although it was disestablished in the US in 1947) who, then 46, was found to be conducting an adulterous affair with 19 year old topless model Christine Keeler (1942-2017) at the same time she was also enjoying trysts with a Russian spy, attached to the Soviet embassy with the cover of naval attaché.  Although there are to this day differing interpretations of the scandal, there have never been any doubts this potential Cold-War conduit between a KGB spy and Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for War represented at least a potential conflict of interest.

Dr Evatt (left), comrade Molotov (centre) and Soviet translator Alexei Pavlov, exchanging MRDAs in Russian & English, London, 1942.

MRDAs are common in courtrooms and among politicians but some became legends.  In 1954, Dr HV Evatt (1894–1965; Australian attorney-general & foreign minister 1941-1949, and leader of opposition 1951-1960), in the midst of a particularly febrile period during the Cold War, wrote a letter to comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) asking if allegations of Soviet espionage in Australia were true.  Comrade Molotov of course wrote back, politely denying the USSR engaged in spying anywhere.  Assured, Evatt read the letter to the parliament and the members sat for a moment stunned until, on both sides, loudly laughing.  It was a MRDA before there were MRDAs.

The Profumo affair is noted also for being at least an influence in the end of the “age of deference” in England and while that’s often probably overstated, the immediate reaction and the aftermath proved it wasn’t only across colonial Africa that a “wind of change” was blowing.  The second Lord Astor (1907–1966) was emblematic of the upper classes of England who once would have expected deference from someone like Ms Rice-Davies, someone “not of the better classes” as his lordship might have put it.  Although what came to be known as the “swinging sixties” didn’t really begin until a couple of years after the Profumo affair when the baby-boomers began to come of age, the generational shift had by then become apparent and it was something surprisingly sudden as the interest of the young switched from pop music to politics.  As recently as the 1959 election campaign, the patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) had told the working classes “most of you have never had it so good” and for the last time they would express their gratitude to their betters, delivering the Tories an increased majority, an impressive achievement for "the last of the old Edwardians" who, upon assuming the premiership in 1957 in the wake of the Suez debacle, had told the Queen he doubted his administration would last six weeks.

In the matter of Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited [2024] FCA 369

Mr Justice Lee.

Justice Michael Lee (b 1965) in April 2024 handed down one of the more anticipated judgments of recent years, finding Bruce Lehrmann (b 1995), on the civil law test of the balance of probabilities, had raped Brittany Higgins (b 1993) on the sofa in a ministerial suite in Parliament House while the victim was affected by strong drink.  Apart from the heightened public interest in the verdict, lawyers were watching closely to see if there would be encouragement for those defending themselves in defamation cases, something which had been lent unexpected strength by an earlier judgment; although the matter of rape was central to the facts, Lehrmann v Network Ten was a defamation case.  However, for those who appreciate judicial findings for their use of language, Justice Lee didn’t disappoint and although neither Ms Rice-Davies nor MRDA were mentioned in his text, as he assessed the conduct and evidence of Mr Lehrmann, they may have come to mind.

Janet Albrechtsen in her study.

In his opening remarks, the judge acknowledged the case had become a cause celebre for many and that it was best described as “an omnishambles”, the construct being the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field).  In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”.  As one read the judgement one could see why the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, “clusterfuck” may have been in his thoughts as he pondered the best euphemism.  Helpfully, one of the Murdoch press’s legal commentators, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand) who had been one of the journalists most interested in the case, informed the word nerds omnishambles (1) dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) had endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 Word of the Year.  The judge's linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.

Noting Mr Lehrmann’s original criminal trial on the rape charge had been aborted (after having already been delayed for reasons related to the defamation matter) because of jury misconduct with a subsequent retrial not pursued because of the prosecution’s concern about the fragile mental state of the complainant, the judge observed “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat.”  In other words, Mr Lehrmann who could have walked away with no findings against him, lured by the millions of dollars to be gained, rolled the legal dice and was found to have committed rape.  He is of course not the first to fall victim to suffer self-inflicted legal injury in not dissimilar circumstances; the writers (from different literary traditions) Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and Jeffrey Archer (b 1940) both were convicted and imprisoned as a consequence of them having initiated libel actions.  Whether Mr Lehrmann will now face a retrial in the matter of rape is in the hands of the Australian Capital Territory’s (ACT) Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).  In such a case, it would be necessary to prove the event happened under the usual test in criminal law: beyond reasonable doubt.  Even if that isn’t pursued by the DPP, his time in courtrooms may not be over because it’s possible he may face action because of his conduct in this trial with the handling of certain documents and another unrelated matter is pending in Queensland.

In considering the evidence offered by Mr Lehrmann, the judge appears to have found some great moments in the history of MRDAs:

Commenting on his claim to having returned (after midnight following Friday evening’s hours of convivial drinking) to his Parliament House office to write papers about the French submarines and related government matters, he observed Mr Lehrmann “…hitherto had demonstrated no outward signs of being a workaholic.”  “To remark that Mr Lehrmann was a poor witness is an exercise in understatement.”

Regarding the claim Mr Lehrmann had made to someone to whom he’d just been introduced that he was “…waiting on a clearance to come through so that he could go and work at Asis.” (the Australian Security Intelligence Service; the external intelligence service al la the UK SIS (MI6) or the US CIA (although without the assassinations… as far as is known)), the judge observed she “…kept her well-founded incredulity to herself.”, such “Walter Mitty-like imaginings” demonstrating he “…had no compunction about departing from the truth if he thought it expedient.”

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

The reading of the judgement was live-streamed and the passage which got the loudest chuckle was in the discussion of Mr Lehrmann’s deciding whether he found Ms Higgins attractive.  In an interview on commercial television broadcast in 2023, he’d denied finding the young lady attractive, despite the existence of comments dating from 2019 indicating the opposite.  Pausing only briefly, Justice Lee delivered this news with an arched eyebrow:  “When confronted by this inconsistency, his attempt to explain it away by suggesting the attraction he felt for Ms Higgins was ‘just like [the attraction] I can find [in] anybody else in this [court]room, irrespective of gender’ was as disconcerting as it was unconvincing.”  The judge ordered to audience to suppress their laughter.

Even regarding submarines as a likely topic over drinks, his honour was sceptical: “With the exception of Mr Lehrmann, no one who gave evidence as to their time at The Dock could recall discussing Australia’s submarine contracts with France at either table. The lack of recollection of any discussion of this topic is intuitively unsurprising.  Declaiming on the topics of who was building submarines and where they were being built was not quite the repartee one would usually expect to hear over a convivial drink on a Friday night between 20 [something]-year-olds out for a good time – even if (with respect) one would not expect the badinage of the Algonquin Round Table.” (an early twentieth century, shifting aggregation of men & women of letters who met over lunch in New York’s Algonquin Hotel, their barbs and thoughts often appearing in their newspaper & magazine columns; they dubbed themselves “The Vicious Circle” and were a sort of Cliveden set without the politics.  Cliveden was a stately home in Buckinghamshire, the country seat of Lord Astor and the scene of many of the events central to the Profumo affair).

The judge was forensic in his deconstruction of Mt Lehrmann’s MRDA he returned to Parliament House after being out drinking with Ms Higgins and others in order to retrieve his keys: “If the reason Mr Lehrmann needed to return to Parliament House was to collect his keys, he could have texted his girlfriend to have her meet him at the door or called her.  Mr Lehrmann asks me to accept the proposition that it was ‘a process to get in’ to his shared flat and that to avoid this complication, he preferred to: (a) go out of his way to go back to work in the early hours; (b) lie to Parliament House security; (c) sign the necessary register; (d) be issued with a pass; (e) go through a metal detector; (f) be escorted by a security guard to his office; (g) obtain his keys from his office; (h) book another Uber; (i) go back through a Parliamentary exit; (j) meet the ride-share car; and then (k) ride home.”

Bruce Lehrmann leaving the court after the verdict was delivered.

In psychiatry, distinction is made between the “habitual” and “compulsive” liar and while this wasn’t something Justice Lee explored, he did in one passage sum up his assessment of the likely relationship to truth in anything Mr Lehrmann might say: “I do not think Mr Lehrmann is a compulsive liar, and some of the untruths he told during his evidence may sometimes have been due to carelessness and confusion, but I am satisfied that in important respects he told deliberate lies. I would not accept anything he said except where it amounted to an admission, accorded with the inherent probabilities, or was corroborated by a contemporaneous document or a witness whose evidence I accept.”

One fun footnote from the case was a non-substantive matter, Ms Lisa Wilkinson (b 1959), the Network 10 journalist at the centre of the defamation claim, objecting to being characterized as a “tabloid journalist”.  It transpired her employment history included stints with Dolly, the Australian Women’s Weekly and commercial television including the Beauty & the Beast show.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t asked to define what she thought “tabloid journalism” meant; perhaps Justice Lee decided he’d heard enough MRDAs that day.

On the basis that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann did rape Ms Higgins, his claim for damages against Network Ten for defamatory material earlier broadcast was dismissed.  The judge found the material indeed had the capacity to defame but because the imputations substantially were true, their defense was sustained.  So, the only millions of dollars now to be discussed concern the legal costs: who is to pay whom, the judge asking the party’s submission be handed to the court by 22 April.  Mr Lehrmann’s legal team has not indicated if they’re contemplating an appeal.

Despite many opportunities, Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) has never denied being a Freemason.

Carpet

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Ash

Ash (pronounced ash)

(1) The powdery, nonvolatile products and residue formed when matter is burnt; that which remains after burning; any of certain compounds formed by burning.

(2) In geology, finely pulverized lava thrown out by a volcano in eruption (technically volcanic ash).

(3) In chemistry, the non-aqueous remains of a material subjected to any complete oxidation process.

(4) Human (or animal) remains after cremation and either buried, scattered or stored in a crypt or container (usually styled as an “urn” regardless of style (always in the plural).

(5) Figuratively, mortal remains in general (always in the plural).

(6) Figuratively, the residue of anything (structures, institutions, movements, ideas, hopes etc), especially following disasters or catastrophes.

(7) In arboreal classification, any of the various oleaceous trees of the genus Fraxinus, of the olive family (especially F. excelsior of Europe and Asia or F. americana (white ash) of North America), having opposite, pinnate leaves, winged seeds and purplish flowers in small clusters.

(8) In arboreal classification, any of several trees resembling the ash, such as the mountain ash (and in Australia, any of several trees resembling the ash, especially of the eucalyptus genus).

(9) The tough, straight, close-grained wood of any of these trees, highly valued as timber because of its durability, widely used for the handles of tools (shovels, pick-axes etc) and once the choice material for the frames of many early automobiles.

(10) The largely archaic æsc (the symbols Æ & æ) (ash) from the Old English (the plural æscas).  The digraph æ represents a front vowel approximately like that of the “a” in the Modern English “hat” and the character is used also used to represent this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

(11) A light silvery grey colour, often with a brownish tinge.

(12) As the ash-blonde hair color, a spectrum expressed in solid and variegated forms which blends or interpolates various classic blondes, silver-greys, and the lighter shades of brown.

(13) The acronym for Action on Smoking & Health, non-governmental organizations (NGO) in eth UK, Ireland & New Zealand, chartered as a charities (though through interaction with government they function sometimes in a way similar to QANGOs).

(14) To removed the burned tobacco from the end of a burning cigar or cigarette (usually by “flicking”, “tapping” or tapping the unburned section on the rim of an ashtray  The used to describe emptying the ask from the bowl of an extinguished pipe is less common.

(15) In agriculture, to cover newly-sown fields of crops with ashes.

Pre 950: From the Middle English asshe & aisshe (powdery remains of fire), from the Old English asce & æsce, from the Proto-West Germanic askā, from the Proto-Germanic askǭ, from the primitive Indo-European hes-.  It was cognate with the Frisian esk, the Dutch asch, the Swedish aska, the Danish & Norwegian aske, the Old Norse & Old High German aska (from which German gained German Asche) and the Gothic azgo (from the unattested Germanic askōn- (though the evolution of the Gothic is murky).  It was akin to the Latin ārēre (to be dry) (from which English ultimately gained arid) and āra (altar), the Oscan aasaí (on the altar), the Tocharian ās- (dry out; to get dry), the Sanskrit ā́sa- (ashes) and the Hittite hassi (on the hearth), from the primitive Indo-European root as- (to burn, glow).  The Spanish and Portuguese ascua (red-hot coal) are Germanic loan-words.  Ash is a noun & verb, ashiness is a noun, ashed is a verb, ashing is a noun & verb, ashen is an adjective & verb and ashless is an adjective; the noun plural is ashes.  The UK dialectal plural axen was from the Middle English axen & axnen, from the Old English axan & asċan (ashes) and was the plural of the Old English axe or æsċe (ash).  Some dictionaries do list it as rare but for (non-historic) purposes it’s archaic.

The various trees gained the common name ash from the Old English æsc, which was related to the primitive Indo-European word for the tree, while the generic name originated in Latin from a primitive Indo-European word for birch.  Both words were also used to mean “spear” & “shaft” in their respective languages because the straight, tough and durable timber was ideal for such purposes.  From the Old High German asc was derived the German Esche, with an altered vowel from the adjectival derivative eschen (which in Middle High German was eschîn.  It was akin to the Latin ornus (wild mountain ash), the Welsh onnen, the Ancient Greek ὀξύα (oxúa) (beech), the Old Armenian հացի (hacʿi), the Russian yáseń, the Polish jesion, the Czech jasan, the Lithuanian úosis, the Armenian hatsi and the Albanian ah (beech), all ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ōs (ash (tree)).  Although the close-grained timber of the ash is tough, it also has outstanding elasticity which allows it to be formed into shapes so was the preferred wood for spear-shafts and later came to be favored by coach-builders, many of the early automobiles also constructed with ash frames.

Forms have been coined as needed (as a portmanteau or with or without the hyphen) including ash-gourd, ash-pan, ashtray, ashcan, ash-pit fly-ash, ash-borer, pearl-ash, pot-ash & soda ash.  Potash (a class of potassium minerals of similar applicability to potassium carbonate and widely used in the production of fertilizers) is one of the most extensively mined minerals in the world.  One inventive use was noted in 1945 when the US military designated their internment camp for suspected Nazi war criminals as “Ashcan”; impressed, the British dubbed their holding facility “Dustbin”.  The ash-bin (receptacle for ashes from a fire and other refuse) seems not to have been recorded until 1847 although such devices would have been in use for centuries.  Similarly, the word ash-tray (reusable receptacle for the the ashes of the tobacco of smokers) first appears only in 1851 although they were doubtlessly among the first companion products after tobacco was introduced to the Western world after the early European exploration of the Americas in the late fifteenth century.  The ash-heap (stack or pile of ashes or other refuse) dates from the 1640s and seems to have been invented by foundry workers, who presumably produced more ash than most, at a time when their processes were mostly wood-fired.  The ash-pit (repository for ashes, especially in the lower part of a furnace) was first recorded in 1797 and reflected the increasing size of furnaces technological progress made possible; it was the “big brother” to the earlier ash-hole, in use since the 1640s, which continued to be used to describe the architecture of smaller installations.  It’s not known if regional variations in pronunciation meant “ash-hole” sometimes cause problems.

Lindsay Lohan imagined as an ash-blonde.

The phrase “ashes to ashes” is from the Church of England’s (Anglican) burial ritual, mentioned first in the Book of Common Prayer (1549) as part of the service's committal: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother [or sister] here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  It’s an echo of biblical passage from Genesis 3:19: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  Over time, “ashes to ashes” transcended its religious origin and has come to be used to allude to the cyclical nature of life and the inevitability of death.  Long pre-dating Christianity, ashes, as a reminder of finality, had been an ancient symbol of grief or repentance, their presence a part of pagan rituals and the early Church picked this up, the tradition beginning when Pope Gregory I (circa 540–604; usually styled Saint Gregory the Great, pope 590-604) sprinkled ashes on the heads of penitents on the first day of Lent although it wasn’t formalized in the ecclesiastical calendar until the fourteenth century, “ashes” having come to mean “the mortal remains of a person” by at least the late thirteenth century and alluded to the ancient custom of cremation.  The use to refer to the finely pulverized lava ejected from volcanoes dates from the 1660s.

Craftspersons (and some these days are other than male) in the Morgan factory at Malvern Link, Worcestershire in the UK, fashioning & fabricating ash frames (left) and 1973 Morgan +8 (right).

With only detail changes, the appearance of the roadsters (and the underlying ash frame, the patterns for which haven’t changed since 1937) in 2023 has little changed since the 1950s and the ancestry of the machines from the 1930s is obvious, the similarities out-numbering the differences.  It’s a persistent myth that under the skin, the Morgan’s platform is made entirely of wood but the truth is the chassis has always been rendered in steel & aluminum onto which is mounted the ash frame, to which the aluminum external panels are attached.  Each roadster takes three weeks to complete.

The “Ashes obituary”, 1882.

The Ashes is the (usually biannual) test cricket series conducted between Australia and England (who toured as the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) until 1970).  The term “The Ashes” dates from a satirical obituary published in a UK newspaper in 1882, the day after Australia recorded its first test victory on English soil.  The “obituary” noted the death of English cricket and that “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”.  The idea caught on and as a prelude to the MCC’s next tour of Australia in 1882–1883, the press frequently mentioned the importance of regaining “those ashes”.  This the MCC’s captain vowed to do and after taking an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series the job was done and some ladies presented him with a small urn (of unknown provenance although it may have been used for scent) said to contain the ashes of a wooden bail, humorously referred to as “the ashes of Australian cricket”.  Although it took some years before the contest between the teams was institutionalized as “the Ashes” since the 1920s that’s how they’ve been known.

Former England captain Mike Brearley (b 1942) with the Ashes urn, 1977.

The actual “ashes”, the original urn which has rarely left the MCC Museum at Lord's Cricket Ground in London since being presented to the club in 1927, is tiny, just over four inches (105 mm) high which is remarkable for a trophy which is of such significance to both nations.  It’s something like the sense of English understatement expressed when one compares No 10 Downing Street to something like the Élysée Palace which isn’t a wholly fair juxtaposition but they are, in a sense, comparable national symbols.  Certainly, the modest Ashes urn (originally a mass-produced, terracotta item little different from the thousands sold at the time in seaside souvenir shops) has about it noting of the grandeur of something like the America’s Cup (known as the Auld Mug; 1.1m (43 inches) high and weighing in at a hefty 14 kg odd (30+ lb) or any number of trophies in sports like rugby, football, tennis et al.  As a consolation for the original remaining locked up the MCC, in recent series, larger trophies with designs which acknowledge the little urn are now awarded to the victorious team.

Sir Lewis Hamilton contemplating a "plastic" trophy, Silverstone, 2014.

So trophies don’t have to be imposingly large or obviously expensive to be sought after as long as they’re vested with an appropriate history.  However, there can be some expectation of bling for those won by those contesting one-off events of some significance and Formula One driver Sir Lewis Hamilton (b 1985), prompted apparently by being awarded a “plastic” trophy after winning the 2014 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, later suggested it looked like it might be worth about £10, rather less than the traditional RAC (Royal Automobile Club) Gold Cup (he was subsequently presented with the cup at a press conference).  Warming to the topic though, Sir Lewis said he’d noted an obvious decline in the quality of the trophies awarded to Grand Prix winners and that he’d brought the matter to the attention of the then head of the F1 Bernie Ecclestone (b 1930).  It’s estimated the Ashes urn in 1882 would have been purchased for less than whatever was the equivalent then of £10 in 2014 so history and aura can be worth more than bling.

Lindsay Lohan with some trophies.  Sir Lewis might reflect things could have been worse.