Suffrage (pronounced suhf-rij)
(1) The
right to vote, especially in a publicly contested, democratic elections; the
franchise.
(2) The
exercise of such a right; casting a vote.
(3) In
ecclesiastical use, a prayer, especially a short intercessory prayer (especially
those offered for the faithful dead) or a short petition (such as those after
the creed in matins and evensong.
(4) Aid,
intercession (now rare).
(5) Testimony;
attestation; witness; approval (now rare).
(6) The
collective opinion of a body of persons (archaic and probably extinct).
1350–1400:
From the Middle English suffrage (intercessory
prayers or pleas on behalf of another), from the thirteenth century Old French sofrage (plea, intercession), from the from
Medieval Latin, from the Latin suffragium
(voting tablet, a vote cast in an assembly (for a law or candidate), an act of
voting or the exercise of the right to vote, the decision reached by a vote, an
expression of approval, influence or promotion on behalf of a candidate), the
construct being suffrag(ari) (genitive suffrāgiī or suffrāgī) (to
express public support, vote or canvass for, support) + -ium (the noun suffix). The –ium suffix (used most often to form
adjectives) was applied as (1) a nominal suffix (2) a substantivisation of its
neuter forms and (3) as an adjectival suffix.
It was associated with the formation of abstract nouns, sometimes
denoting offices and groups, a linguistic practice which has long fallen from
fashion. In the New Latin, as the neuter singular morphological
suffix, it was the standard suffix to append when forming names for chemical
elements. The derived forms included nonsuffrage,
presuffrage, prosuffrage & antisuffrage (the latter a once well-populated
field). Suffrage, suffragist, suffragette,
suffragettism & suffragent are nouns and suffraged is an adjective; the
noun plural is suffrages.
The
sense in English of “vote” or “right to vote” was derived directly from the Classical
Latin and it came by the late nineteenth century to be used with modifiers,
chosen depending on the campaign being advocated (manhood suffrage, universal
suffrage, women's suffrage, negro suffrage etc and the forms were sometimes
combined (universal manhood suffrage).
Because the case for women became the most prominent of the political
movements, “suffrage” became the verbal shorthand (ie technically a clipping of
woman suffrage).The meaning “a vote for or against anything” was in use by the 1530s
and by the turn of the century this had assume the specific sense “a vote or
voice in deciding a question or in a contest for office”. By the 1660s, widely it was held to mean “act
of voting in a representative government” and this is the origin of the modern
idea of the franchise: “the political right to vote as a member of a body”
codified in 1787 in the US US Constitution (in reference to the states).
Exercising
her suffrage: Wearing “I voted” sticker, Lindsay Lohan leaves polling station
after casting her vote in the 2008 US presidential election, West Hollywood, 4
November 2008. In California, the
Democratic ticket (Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) & Joe
Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) took gained all 55 electors in the
Electoral College with 8,274,473 votes (61.01%) against the 5,011,781 (36.95%)
gained by the Republican ticket (John McCain (1936–2018) & Sarah Palin (b
1964).
In zoology
the suffrago (as a learned borrowing from Latin suffrāgō (the pastern, or hock)) describes the joint between the
tibia and tarsus, such as the hock of a horse's hind leg or the heel of a bird. Always rare (and now probably extinct), the
companion term in clinical use was suffraginous, from the Latin suffraginosus (diseased in the hock),
from suffrāgō, used in the sense of
“of or relating to the hock of an animal”.
So, there’s an etymological relationship between English noun “suffrage”
(in zoology, the joint between the tibia and tarsus) and “suffrage” (an
individual's right to vote) and while there are many strange linkages in the
language, that one seems weirder than most.
The anatomical term describes what is essentially the hock in quadrupeds
(although it was used also of birds) and that was from the Classical Latin, suffrāgō (ankle-bone, hock or the part
of the leg just above the heel) and traditionally, etymologists analyzed this
as related to sub- (under) + a base meaning “break, fracture” or “support”
although there were scholars who connected it with frag- (to break) from frangere
(to break). The functionalists weren’t
impressed by that, suggesting it was a transferred anatomical term.
The Suffragist, 7 July, 2017.
Printed
originally in 1913 as a single-sheet pamphlet, in November that year The Suffragist was first issued as
weekly, eight-page tabloid newspaper, noted for its cover art which was a kind
of proto-agitprop. A classic
single-issue political movement, the pamphlets had been produced by the CU
(Congressional Union), an affiliate of the NAWSA (National American Woman
Suffrage Association) but The Suffragist
was an imprint of the CUWS (Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage), created
(with a unique legal personage to avoid corporate liability) as a publicity and
activist organ; in 1917 it became the NWP (National Woman's Party). After its aims were in 1918 realised, The Suffragist
ceased publication and the activists shifted their attention to the promotion
of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), some which, more than a century on, has
still not been ratified and has thus never been interpolated into the
constitution.
Suffrage
came ultimately from the suffrāgium (which
had a number of senses relating to “voting”) writers from Antiquity documented
their takes on the etymology. In De lingua latina libri XXV (On the Latin
Language in 25 Books), the Roman scholar Varro (Marcus Terentius Varro, 116–27
BC) held it arose metaphorically from suffrāgō
(ankle-bone), the rationale being that votes originally were cast pebbles,
sherds (now more commonly called “shards”) or other small tokens, possibly with
astragali (knuckle or ankle-bones typically
from sheep or goats) used like dice or counters. Animal bones widely were used for many
purposes, Pliny the Elder (24-79) in his encyclopaedic Naturalis historia (Natural History (37 thematic books in ten
conceptual volumes)) noted people re-purposing astragali for tasks as diverse as teaching arithmetic,
gambling, divination, or decision-making.
The Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 BC) seems not directly to have
commented on the etymology, in his De
Legibus (On the Laws) using suffrāgium
in the common sense of “voting” & “vote” applied it also as a rhetorical
device to suggest “support” so while not supporting the link with bones, nor
does he contradict the popular notion that as an ankle-bone supports the human
structure, votes support a candidate.
The Suffragist, 15 September, 1917.
The
medieval grammarians also took an interest, Isidore of Seville (circa 560-636)
covering all bases by noting (1) suffrāgium’s link
with fragor (breaking) implied the
idea of “breaking one’s voice” in approval (voting then often done in town
squares “by the voice” and (2) the role of the ankle-bone in supporting the as
a vote cast supports a proposition or candidate in an election. Because only fragments of texts from
thousands of years ago remain extant, it’s impossible to be emphatic about how
such things happened but the consensus among modern etymologists appears to
favour the purely metaphorical “support” rather than any use of bones as
electoral tokens or calculation devices.
Better documented is the migration of suffrāgium to ecclesiastical use, entering Church Latin to use used
to mean “prayers of intercession”; it was from here the English suffrage first
entered the language. As the Roman world
Christianized, many words were re-purposed in a religious context and suffrāgium was picked up in the sense of
“spiritual support”, manifested in prayers of intercession which originally
were those offered for the “faithful dead”: in Confessiones (Confessions, 397-400), Saint Augustine of Hippo
(354–430) wrote of suffragia sanctorum
(the suffrages of the saints) by which he meant their intercessory prayers but,
as was not uncommon, although the “masses for the dead” remained the standard,
there was some theological mission creep and the prayers could assume a wider
vista, extending also to the living.
Heartfelt
advice in 1918 from a “suffragette wife” to young ladies contemplating
marriage.
The Old
French sofrage came directly from
Church Latin, entering Middle English in the fourteenth century with suffrages being
prayers of intercessions, often described as “petitions” to God or (in the case
of specific topics) to the relevant saint or saints and “suffrage” seems to
have entered the vernacular, Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) using the word
merely as a synonym for “prayers” of whatever type. Having thus arrived in the Church, the use
was extended to the ecclesiastical structure, the first suffragan bishops
appointed in the late 1500s, their role being a “bishop who assists another
bishop” and the role seems to have been envisaged as something of a clerical
plateau, intended as an appointment for one either “unsuitable” for an ordinary
jurisdiction or with no desire to ascend the hierarchy. The use came directly from the thirteenth
century Old French suffragan, from the Medieval Latin suffraganeus (an assistant) which was a noun use of the adjective, (assisting,
supporting) from the Latin suffragium
(support). The title endures to this day
although between denominations there can be variations in the role (ie job
description) including some being appointed as assistants to bishops while
others directly administer geographical regions within a supervising bishop’s diocese. That means the title alone does not describe
the nature of the office and although a priest may be styled Diocesan bishop,
Titular bishop, Coadjutor bishop, Auxiliary bishop or Suffragan Bishop, not all
of the same type necessarily fulfil the same duties and there may be overlap. While
engaged in wartime cryptographic work for the UK government, the troubled mathematician
Dr Alan Turing (1912-1954) became well-acquainted with the organizational
structure of the British Army and was struck by the similarities between that
institution and the Church of England as described in Anthony Trollope’s
(1815-1882) The Chronicles of Barsetshire
(published in a series of six novels between 1855-1867). Ever the mathematician, Dr Turing devised a
table, having concluded a lieutenant-colonel was a dean while a major-general
was a bishop. A brigadier was a
suffragan bishop, the rational for that being they were the “cheapest kind of
bishop”.
The Suffragist, 3 October,
1917.
It was
the “re-discovery” of the Classical world (ironically often through the
archives or writings of Islamic scholars) during the Renaissance and
Reformation that Western scholars and translators re-visited the Latin sources,
reviving the political sense of suffrāgium
into English, restoring “vote” and “right to vote” alongside what had become
the standard (religious) sense. Even
then, although there was in most places rarely a wide franchise, voting did
happen (among a chosen few) and by the seventeenth century “suffrage” (a vote
in an election) was part of common English use and in the 1700s & 1800s, as
various forces began to coalesce into democratic movements, it assumed the
meaning “a right to vote” which evolved gradually (via manhood suffrage, woman
suffrage, negro suffrage etc) into the now familiar “universal adult suffrage”.
In English, suffrage has thus enjoyed a palimpsestic past, its ancestral
roots anatomical, adapted in antiquity for matters electoral, taken up in
Christendom as a form of prayer before returning again with a use in democratic
politics.
The
most famous derived from was of course the noun suffragette which seems first
to have been appeared in print in the UK in 1906, used as a term of derision
(by a man). It was an opportunist
coining which can be deconstructed as a (etymologically incorrect) feminine
form of the noun suffragist (an advocate of the grant or extension of political
suffrage) but it owed its existence to the women who in the UK began to take
militant action. Whereas a suffragist
might have been someone (male or female) who wrote learned letters on the
subject to the editor of The Times, the suffragette chained herself to the
railings outside Parliament House and engaged in other forms of civil
disobedience with at least one fatality recorded.
The end
of civilization as men knew it: Postcard marking the granting of voting rights
to women by the colonial government in New Zealand (1893), printed &
published in England by the Artist's Suffrage League, Chelsea, London.
Only four countries: New Zealand, Australia,
Finland & Norway (and 11 US states) extended the franchise to women prior
to World War I. France (birthplace of “Liberté, égalité,
fraternité”) denied women the vote until after World War II
(1939-1945), Charles de Gaulle's (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969)
provisional government in Algiers granting “full suffrage” on 21 April 1944
with the first exercise of the right in the municipal elections of 29 April,
1945. Swiss women gained the right to
vote (at the federal level) in 1971, following a national referendum in which a
majority approved the idea. At the
cantonal (regional) level, some cantons had earlier granted women voting
rights, Vaud the first in 1959. The last
was Appenzell Innerrhoden which did so only to comply with a ruling by the
Swiss Federal Supreme Court.
As the
campaign stepped up, techniques were borrowed from anarchists and
revolutionaries including fire-bombings of institutions of “the establishment”;
if imprisoned, the suffragettes would stage hunger strikes compelling the home
secretary to order either their release or force-feeding (a practice previously
most associated with lunatic asylums).
Although the suffragettes generated international publicity and
encouraged similar movements in other places, despite New Zealand having in
1893 having granted the vote to women on the same basis as men without the
country having descended into some kind of feminized Hell, little progress was
made and it was only the social and economic disruptions brought about by World
War I which induced change, women over 30 able to vote in elections
and be elected to parliament in 1918. In
1928, this was extended to all women over 21, thus aligning their franchise
with that which men had since 1918 enjoyed.
The 1928 settlement remains the classic definition of “universal
suffrage” in the sense of “all adults” and all that has changed is the threshold
age has been lowered to 18 although the UK government has suggested it will
seek further to lower this to 16. If
that’s enacted, it’ll still be less permissive that what the ayatollahs (not
usually thought paragons of liberalism) in Iran permitted during the 1980s when
15 year olds got the vote.
"Love, honor and obey" was a bride's traditional wedding vow but in the nuclear weapons treaty business between the US & USSR the principle was: "trust but verify".
As the meme-makers
knew, even after women voting became a thing, some husbands knew they still had
to check to make sure their wives got it right:
Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) verifying the vote of Melania
Trump (b 1970, US First Lady 2017-2021 and since 2025) while exercising her “secret
ballot” in the 2016 US presidential election, Polling Station 59 (a school),
Manhattan, New York, 8 November 2016.
The –ette suffix was from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.
It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something and the
use in English to create informal feminine forms has long upset some, including
Henry Fowler (1858–1933) who in his A
Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) condemned the formation of “suffragette”:
“A more
regrettable formation than others such as leaderette & flannelette, in that
it does not even mean a sort of suffrage as they mean a sort of leader & of
flannel, & therefore tends to vitiate the popular conception of the
termination's meaning. The word itself may now be expected to die, having lost
its importance; may its influence on word-making die with it!” Whether one might read into that that
damnation that Henry Fowler regretted women getting the vote can be pondered but
to be fair, the old linguistic curmudgeon may have been a proto-feminist who
approved. There were anyway some
reactionaries who became converted to the cause. After a satisfactory election result, Winston
Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) was reminded
by his wife Clementine Churchill (1885–1977) that he’d received more votes from
women than from men, having apparently been forgiven for having once been in
the vanguard of the opposition to woman suffrage. “Quite right”, cheerfully he agreed; a practical
democrat, he by then welcomed votes regardless of their origin.
Woman
Suffrage Headquarters, Euclid Avenue, Cleveland Ohio, 1912.
The
word “suffrage” came by the late 1860s to be attached to activists advocating
extending the franchise to women, “woman suffragist” & “female suffragist”
both used in US publications and the divergence in the movement was reflected in
the UK by the adoption of terms “manhood suffragist” (by at least 1866) and “woman
suffragist” (by 1871) although the first reference of the latter was to actions
in the US, the existence of the breed in England not acknowledged for a further
three years. Historically, both “woman suffrage”
& “women's suffrage” were used but the former overwhelmingly was the standard
phrasing late in the 1800s and into the next century when the matter became a
great political issue. To modern eyes
“woman suffrage” looks awkwardly wrong but is grammatically correct, “woman”
used as a noun adjunct (ie a noun modifying a following noun). Singular noun adjuncts are common such as “student
union” even though the in institution has a membership of many students. In English, a singular noun can function
attributively (like an adjective) to describe a category or class (manpower,
horse racing etc). The possessive
(women’s suffrage) emphasizes ownership: the notion of suffrage (in the
linguistic sense) “belonging” to women and in modern use that that appears to
be the common form and “woman suffrage” was a formal, abstract construction
from more exacting times, reflected in uses like “manhood suffrage”, “child
labor”, “slave trade” etc. In structural
linguistics, the shift to a preference for possessive forms (workers’ unions, children’s
rights, women’s movement etc) is thought a marker of the increasingly
fashionable concepts of agency and belonging.
“Kaiser
Wilson” protest sign criticizing Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president
1913-1921) for not keeping his 1916 election “promise” to fight for woman
suffrage: “Have
you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not
self-governed? 20,000,000 American women
are not self-governed. Take the beam out
of your own eye.” The quote:
“Take the beam out of your own eye”
comes from Biblical scripture:
Matthew
7:3-5 (King James Version, (KJV, 1611))
3 And why beholdest
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that
is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou
say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a
beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite,
first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly
to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
What’s
discussed in Matthew 7:3-5 is hypocrisy, the metaphor being a speck of dust in
one’s brother's eye and a plank in one's own and the teaching is one should
first rectify their own significant flaws (the “plank”) before criticizing the
minor flaws of others (the “speck”). What
reading the passage should do is encourage humility and self-reflection,
persuading individuals to acknowledge their own shortcomings before judging
others. The passage was part of the Sermon
on the Mount, regarded by Christians as a central element in Christ’s moral
teachings and Woodrow Wilson, the son of a preacher and himself a noted (if
selective) moralist would have well acquainted with the text.
Watched by an approving comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) casts his vote in the 1937 election for the Supreme Soviet. To the left, Comrade Marshal Kliment Voroshilov (1881–1969) watches Comrade Nikolai Yezhov (1895–1940, head of the NKVD 1936-1938).
Those voting in 1937 may have had high hopes for the future because, read literally, the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union (adopted 5 December 1936) described a democratic utopia. Unfortunately, within months, comrade Stalin embarked on his Great Purge and turned his country into a kind of combination of prison camp and abattoir, many of those involved in drafting the constitution either sent to the Gulag or shot. In 1937 the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) was declared to have won 99% of the vote so it was not an exceptional result but the photograph is unusual in that it’s one of the few in which the usually dour comrade Molotov is smiling. It was comrade Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or Soviet Union 1917-1924) who dubbed Molotov “stone ass” because of his famous capacity (rare among the Bolsheviks) to sit for hours at his desk and process the flow of paperwork the CPSU’s bureaucracy generated. Precise in every way, Molotov would correct those who suggested Lenin’s moniker had been “iron ass” but, disapproving of “shameful bureaucratism”, he may have used several variants in the same vein and in another nod to Molotov’s centrality in the administrative machinery of government, he was known also as “comrade paper-clip”.
On paper, between 1936-1991, the Supreme Soviet was the highest institution of state authority in the Soviet Union (1922-1991) but was in reality a “rubber stamp parliament” which existed only to ratify, adding a veneer of legality to laws sent down by the executive, controlled exclusively by the CPSU although it was valued for photo-opportunities, enthralled delegates always seen attentively listening to comrade Stalin’s speeches. On election night comrade Stalin was quoted in the Soviet press as saying: “Never in the history of the world have there been such really free and really democratic elections -- never! History knows no other example like it...our universal elections will be carried out as the freest elections and the most democratic compared with elections in any other country in the world. Universal elections exist and are also held in some capitalist countries, so-called democratic countries. But in what atmosphere are elections held there?… In an atmosphere of class conflicts, in an atmosphere of class enmity.” The statement often attributed to comrade Stalin: “It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes” probably was apocryphal but indicative of how he did things and his psephological model has been an inspiration to figures such as Saddam Hussein (1937–2006; president of Iraq 1979-2003) and Kim Jong-Un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011).
