Velvet

Velvet (pronounced vel-vit)

(1) A fabric fashioned from silk with a thick, soft pile formed of loops of the warp thread either cut at the outer end or left uncut.

(2) In modern use, a fabric emulating in texture and appearance the silk original and made from nylon, acetate, rayon etc, sometimes having a cotton backing.

(3) Something likened to the fabric velvet, an allusion to appearance, softness or texture,

(4) The soft, deciduous covering of a growing antler.

(5) In informal use (often as “in velvet” or “in the velvet”), a very pleasant, luxurious, desirable situation.

(6) In slang, money gained through gambling; winnings (mostly US, now less common).

(7) In financial trading, clear gain or profit, especially when more than anticipated; a windfall profit.

(8) In mixology, as “Black Velvet”, a cocktail of champagne & stout (also made with dark, heavy beers).

(9) A female chinchilla; a sow.

(10) An item of clothing made from velvet (in modern use also of similar synthetics).

(11) In drug slang, the drug dextromethorphan.

(12) To cover something with velvet; to cover something with something of a covering of a similar texture.

(13) In cooking, to coat raw meat in starch, then in oil, preparatory to frying.

(14) To remove the velvet from a deer's antlers.

1275–1325: From the Middle English velvet, velwet, veluet, welwet, velvette, felwet veluet & veluwet, from the Old Occitan veluet, from the Old French veluotte, from the Medieval Latin villutittus or villūtus (literally shaggy cloth), from the classical Latin villus (nap of cloth, shaggy hair, tuft of hair), from velu (hairy) and cognate with French velours.  The Latin villus is though probably a dialectal variant of vellus (fleece), from the primitive Indo-European wel-no-, a suffixed form of uelh- (to strike).  Velvet is a noun, verb & adjective, velvetlike & velvety are adjectives, velveting & velveted are verbs & adjective; the noun plural is velvets.

The noun velveteen was coined in 1776 to describe one of first the imitation (made with cotton rather than silk) velvets commercially to be marketed at scale; the suffix –een was a special use of the diminutive suffix (borrowed from the Irish –in (used also –ine) which was used to form the diminutives of nouns in Hiberno-English).  In commercial use, it referred to products which were imitations of something rather than smaller.  The adjective velvety emerged in the early eighteenth century, later augmented by velvetiness.  In idiomatic use, the “velvet glove” implies someone or something is being treated with gentleness or caution.  When used as “iron fist in a velvet glove”, it suggests strength or determination (and the implication of threat) behind a gentle appearance or demeanor.  “Velvet” in general is often applied wherever the need exists to covey the idea of “to soften; to mitigate” and is the word used when a cat retracts its claws.  The adjective “velvety” can be used of anything smooth and the choice between it and forms like “buttery”, “silky”, “creamy” et al is just a matter of the image one wishes to summon.  The particular instance “Velvet Revolution” (Sametová revoluce in Czech) refers to the peaceful transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from in late 1989 in the wake of the fall of Berlin Wall.  Despite being partially in the Balkans, the transition from communism to democracy was achieved almost wholly without outbreaks of violence (in the Balkans it rare for much of note to happen without violence).

Ten years after: Lindsay Lohan in black velvet, London, January 2013 (left) and in pink velour tracksuit, Dubai, January 2023 (right).

The fabrics velvet and velour can look similar but they differ in composition.  Velvet historically was made with silk thread and was characterized by a dense pile, created by the rendering of evenly distributed loops on the surface.  There are now velvets made from cotton, polyester or other blends and its construction lends it a smooth, plush texture appearance, something often finished with a sheen or luster.  A popular modern variation is “crushed velvet”, achieved by twisting the fabric while wet which produces a crumpled and crushed look although the effect can be realized also by pressing the pile of fabric in a different direction.  It’s unusual in that object with most fabric is to avoid a “crumpled” look but crushed velvet is admired because of the way it shimmers as the light plays upon the variations in the texture.  The crushing process doesn’t alter the silky feel because of the dense pile and the fineness of the fibers.  Velour typically is made from knit fabrics such as cotton or polyester and is best known for its stretchiness which makes its suitable for many purposes including sportswear and upholstery.  Except in some specialized types, the pile is less dense than velvet (a consequence of the knitted construction) and while it can be made with a slight shine, usually the appearance tends to be matte.  Velour is used for casula clothing, tracksuits & sweatshirts and it’s hard-wearing properties mean it’s often used for upholstery and before the techniques emerged to permit vinyl to be close to indistinguishable from leather, it was often used by car manufacturers as a more luxurious to vinyl.  The noun velour (historically also as velure & velours) dates from 1706 and was from the French velours (velvet), from the Old French velor, an alteration of velos (velvet) from the same Latin sources as “velvet”.

US and European visions of luxury: 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman in velour (top left), 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham in leather (top right), 1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 in velour (bottom left) & 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 in leather (bottom right).  Whether in velour or leather, the European approach in the era was more restrained. 

In car interiors, the golden age of velour began in the US in the early 1970s and lasted almost two decades, the increasingly plush interiors characterized by tufting and lurid colors.  Chrysler in the era made a selling point of their “rich, Corinthian leather” but the extravagant velour interiors were both more distinctive and emblematic of the era, the material stretching sometimes from floor to roof (the cars were often labeled “Broughams”).  The dismissive phrase used of the 1970s was “the decade style forgot” and that applied to clothes and interior decorating but the interior designs Detroit used on their cars shouldn’t be forgotten and while the polyester-rich cabins (at the time too, on the more expensive models one’s feet literally could sink into the deep pile carpet) were never the fire-risk comedians claimed, many other criticisms were justified.  Cotton-based velour had for decades been used by the manufacturers but the advent of mass-produced, polyester velour came at a time when “authenticity” didn’t enjoy the lure of today and the space age lent the attractiveness of modernity to plastics and faux wood, faux leather and faux velvet were suddenly an acceptable way to “tart up” the otherwise ordinary.  At the top end of the market, although the real things were still sometimes used, even in that segment soft, pillowy, tufted velour was a popular choice.

1989 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D'Elegance in velour (left) and a "low-rider" in velour (right).  The Cadillac is trimmed in a color which in slang came to be known as "bordello red".  Because of changing tastes, manufacturers no longer build cars with interiors which resemble a caricature of a mid-priced brothel but the tradition has been maintained (and developed) by the "low-rider" community, a sub-culture with specific tastes. 

At the time, the interiors were thought by buyers to convey “money” and the designers took to velour because the nature of the material allowed so many techniques cheaply to be deployed.  Compared with achieving a similar look in leather, the cost was low, the material cost (both velour and the passing underneath or behind) close to marginal and the designers slapped on pleats, distinctive (and deliberately obvious) stitching, extra stuffing, the stuff covering seats, door panels, and headliners, augmented with details like recessed buttons, leather grab-handles and the off chrome accent (often anodized plastic).  By the 1980s, velour had descended to the lower-priced product lines and this was at a time when the upper end of the market increasingly was turning to cars from European manufacturers, notably Mercedes-Benz and BMW, both of which equipped almost all their flagships destined for the US market with leather and real wood.

The Velvet Underground with Nico (Christa Päffgen; 1938–1988) while part of Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) multimedia road-show The Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966-1967 and known briefly as “The Erupting Plastic Inevitable” or The Exploding Plastic Invisible).  Unusually, the acronym EPI never caught on.

The (posthumously) influential US rock band The Velvet Underground gained their name from a book with that title, published in 1963, the year before their original formation although it wouldn’t be until 1965 the band settled on the name.  The book was by journalist Michael Leigh (1901-1963) and it detailed the variety of “aberrant sexual practices” in the country and is notable as one of the first non-academic texts to explore what was classified as paraphilia (the sexual attraction to inanimate objects, now usually called Objectum Sexuality (OS) or objectum romanticism (OR) (both often clipped to "objectum")).  Leigh took a journalistic approach to the topic which focused on what was done, by whom and the ways and means by which those with “aberrant sexual interests” achieved and maintained contact.  The author little disguised his distaste for much about what he wrote.  The rock band’s most notable output came in four albums (The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968), The Velvet Underground (1969) & Loaded (1970)) which enjoyed neither critical approval nor commercial success but by the late 1970s, in the wake of punk and the new wave, their work was acknowledged as seminal and their influence has been more enduring than many which were for most of the late twentieth century more highly regarded.

Cisgender

Cisgender (pronounced sis-jen-der)

(1) Noting or relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with that person’s biological sex assigned at birth (also as cisgendered in this context) and the prefix cis- is used variously as a modifier (ciswoman, cismale, ‎cisnormativity et al) where the practices of chemistry are followed when forming names of chemical compounds in which two atoms or groups are situated on the same side of some plane of symmetry passing through the compound.

(2) A person who is cisgender.

1994:  A compound word, modeled on the earlier transgender, the construct being cis- + gender.  Cis is from the English preposition cis (on this side of) and the earliest known gender-related use of the prefix in any language was in a 1914 German language book on sexology.  In English, the first use of the prefix in the context of gender dates from 1994.  In English, cis was an abbreviation, presumably from either cosine and sine and the number i or translingual cos, i, and sin.  Latin gained the word from the primitive Indo-European ḱe (here) and it was cognate with ce-dō, hi-c, ec-ce, the Ancient Greek ἐκεῖνος (ekeînos) the Old Irish cē (here) and the Gothic himma (to this).  Gender is from the Middle English (where it at times co-existed with gendre), from the Middle French gendre from the Latin genus (kind, sort) and is a doublet of genre, genus, and kin.  The verb developed after the noun.

The Cisgender List

The word cisgender became a technical necessity when, in the late twentieth century, gender ceased to be a binary with a meaning essentially synonymous with sex; as expressions of gender fluidity became increasingly common, cisgender emerged as the preferred term to describe what gender used to be.  With gender being re-defined from a binary to a spectrum, linguistic politics became important and the imperative was to create a category for those for whom the sex identity assigned at birth continued later in life to align with their perceived gender-identity.  If it wasn’t just another point on the spectrum, there was concern cisgender would become normative, the implication being those elsewhere on the spectrum being defined as abnormal or sub-normal.  Cisgender is distinct from but interacts both with the LGBTQQIAAOP spectrum and the pronoun wars.

Possible Cisgender Pride Flags: The practice of identity politics is the staking of a claim (or the digging of a trench depending on one's view) in the battlefield of the culture wars and one aspect of this is the flying of the "pride flag" of one's group.  There have been a few proposed but none seems yet to have emerged as the accepted version.  Displaying one might be considered a hate crime so it should be unfurled with caution.   

The spectrum evolved as quite a democratic construct, something which may have been at least partially technologically deterministic in that the proliferation of points on the spectrum was driven not by medicine or the social sciences but by interaction on social media platforms.  While the users might have felt validated or empowered (and on the social, empowerment is good) by being able to adopt or invent their own self-identities, the platforms liked it because it added another filter for their ad-targeting, very handy for delivering the product (the users) to the consumers (the advertisers).  Some social media sites now offer dozens of options but there is much overlap and many are micro-variations; there appear to be about a dozen definable categories:

Agender/Neutrois: These terms are used by people who don't identify with any gender at all — they tend to either feel they have no gender or a neutral gender. Some use surgery and/or hormones to make their bodies conform to this gender neutrality.

Androgyne/Androgynous: Androgynes have both male and female gender characteristics and identify as a separate, third gender.

Bigender: Someone who is bigender identifies as male and female at different times. Whereas an androgyne has a single gender blending male and female, a bigender switches between the two.

Cis/Cisgender: Cisgender is essentially the opposite of transgender (cis from the Latin meaning "on this side of" versus the Latin trans meaning "on the other side"). People who identify as cisgender are males or females whose gender aligns with their birth sex.

Female to Male/FTM or Male to Female/MTF: Someone who is transitioning FTM or MTF, either physically (transsexual) or in terms of gender identity; probably most closely related to the earlier transvestism, a word now unfashionable, objections to its use being associative rather than linguistic.

Gender Fluid: Like the bigender, the gender-fluid feel free to express both masculine and feminine characteristics at different times.  The category can be misleading because of the use of the term gender fluidity generally to describe these matters.

Gender Nonconforming/Variant: This is a broad category for people who don't act or behave according to the societal expectation for their sex. It includes cross-dressers and tomboys as well as the transgender; again overlaps with other categories probably exist.

Gender Questioning: This category is for people who are still trying to figure out where they fit on the axes of sex and gender.

Genderqueer: This is an umbrella term for all nonconforming gender identities. Most of the other identities in this list fall into the genderqueer category.

Intersex: This term refers to a person who was born with sexual anatomy, organs, or chromosomes that aren't entirely male or female.  Outside of medicine, intersex has largely replaced the term "hermaphrodite" for humans although it continues to be used in zoology.

Neither:  Used by those who probably could be accommodated in other categories but prefer the ambiguity, indifference or imprecision of “nothing”.

Non-binary: People who identify as non-binary disregard the idea of a male and female dichotomy, or even a male-to-female continuum with androgyny in the middle. For them, gender is not a lineal spectrum but a concept better illustrated in three or more dimensions.

Other: Probably the same as "neither" but an important thing about gender fluidity is the primacy of self-identity.

Objectum: Those attracted to inanimate (non-living) objects.

Pangender: Pangender is similar to androgyny, in that the person identifies as a third gender with some combination of both male and female aspects, but it's a little more fluid.  It can also be used as an inclusive term to signify "all genders".

Trans/Transgender: Transgender is a broad category that encompasses people who feel their gender is different than the sex they were born (gender dysphoria).  Technically, it’s probably most useful as a blanket term but the historical association of the trans-prefix make it a popular choice.  The term "assigned at birth" is now popular but misleading in that it applies some arbitrariness in the habits of the nurses ticking the boxes.  The transvestites (those (mostly men) who wear women's outerwear) are at least in some cases a subset of the transgender spectrum although the term is no longer in wide use. 

Transsexual: Transsexual refers to transgender people who outwardly identify as their experienced gender rather than their birth sex. Many, but not all, transsexuals are transitioning (or have transitioned) from male to female or female to male through hormone therapy and/or gender reassignment surgery.

Two-spirit: This began life as a US-specific term which refers to gender-variant Native Americans.  In more than 150 Native American tribes, people with "two spirits" (a 1990s term coined to replace "berdache") were part of a widely accepted, often respected, category of gender-ambiguous men and women.  Whether the term comes to be adopted by other defined ethnicities (especially indigenous tribes) or such use is proscribed as cultural appropriation, remains unclear.

Elon Musk FRS.  Mr Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018.

Not all are pleased with the linguistic progress.  Twitter owner Elon Musk (b 1971) in June 2023 declared the use of “cis” or “cisgender” on Twitter were “slurs” which constituted “harassment” and transgressors were subject to suspension from the platform, adding that what constituted harassment would have to be “repeated & targeted”.  Presumably that implies the terms can still be used on twitter but not as weapons.  At this time, Twitter’s guidelines define slurs and tropes as language which “intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category”.  The notion of a “protected category” is from US law and refers to a specific group of individuals who are afforded legal protections against discrimination based on certain characteristics or attributes.  These categories typically include characteristics such as race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, and other similar attributes that are protected by anti-discrimination laws in various jurisdictions.  The categories are indicative rate than absolute.  The blind and infants for example can’t claim they are being discriminated against because the state refuses to permit them to hold drivers licenses and the race protections have tended to offer the most protection to minority groups.  As Mr Musk would have anticipated, his comments were quickly responded to by those recalling his asserting after assuming control of the platform the Twitter “believes in free speech” and that earlier in 2023 he’d quietly dropped from the hateful content policy the rule protecting trans people from dead-naming (the act of referring to a transgender person by their birth name, or the name they used prior to their gender transition) and mis-gendering.

Gay

Gay (pronounced gey)

(1) Of a happy and sunny disposition (probably obsolete except for historic references).

(2) Given to or abounding in social or other pleasures (probably obsolete except for historic references).

(3) Of relating to, or exhibiting sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons of one's own sex; homosexual.  Technically gender and sex-neutral but use tends now to be restricted to males.

(4) Of, indicating or supporting homosexual interests or issues.

(5) Slang term among certain classes of youth for something thought bad or lame, use now frowned upon in polite society.

1275-1325: From the Middle English gay, from the Old French gai (joyful, laughing, merry), usually thought to be a borrowing of Old Occitan gai (impetuous, lively), from the Gothic gaheis (impetuous), merging with earlier Old French jai (merry) and Frankish gāhi, both from the Proto-Germanic ganhuz and ganhwaz (sudden).  Origin was the primitive geng or ǵhengnh (to stride, step”), from ǵēy or ghey (to go), cognate.  Word was cognate with Dutch gauw (fast, quickly) and the Westphalian Low German gau and gai (fast, quick) which became the German jäh (abrupt, sudden), familiar in the Old High German gāhi.  There is alternative view, promoted by Anatoly Liberman, that the Old French gai was actually a native development from the Latin vagus (wandering, inconstant, flighty) as in French gaine (sheath).  The meaning "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree" existed from the beginning but "wanton, lewd, lascivious (though without any suggestion of homosexuality) had emerged at least by 1630 and some claim it can be traced back to the work of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400).  The word gay has had various senses dealing with sexual conduct since the seventeenth century. Then, a gay woman was a prostitute, a gay house a brothel and, a gay man was a womanizer.  Gay is a noun, verb, adjective & adverb, gayness & gaiety are nouns, gayify is a verb and gayest is an adjective; the noun plural is gays.  Irregular forms like gaydar or gaynessness are coined as required but in many cases, use outside the gay (or in certain cases the the broader LGBTQQIAAOP community) is socially proscribed.

A brief history of gay

There’s a widespread perception that gay shifted meaning from describing happy folk or events to a chauvinistic assertion of group identity as an overtly political act dating from the late 1960s.  The specific use actually dates from the 1920s, the years immediately after the First World War when first it appeared as an adjective.  It was used thus by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) in Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922), becoming widespread in certain circles in US cities by the late 1930s.  Academic literature picked this up and reports of gay as slang began to be cited in psychological journals in the late 1940s.  Later, archivists found the term gay cat existed as early as 1893 among itinerants in north-east American cities and the use clearly persisted, attested to in Erskine's 1933 dictionary of Underworld & Prison Slang.  Nothing is known about the author of this work and the name N. Erskine may be a pseudonym, one assumption being he had served time in prison.

Admiring glance: Lindsay Lohan during her "L" phase with former special friend Samantha Ronson. 

It wasn’t gay’s first fluidity in meaning; for centuries it’d been used in reference to various flavors of sexual conduct, ranging from female prostitutes to womanizing(!) men, all while the traditional use continued in parallel.  The most recent shift, essentially an appropriation for political purposes, ended the duality and has become so entrenched this may be final.  This final shift began in the late 1960s and quickly won the linguistic battle, use of gay in the new sense being common, though not universal, throughout the English-speaking world within a decade.  Other things changed too, some quickly, some not.  When in 1974 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued the seventh printing of second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II (1968)), they (sort of) de-listed homosexuality as a mental disorder although it wasn't wholly removed the publication of until the DSM-III in 1980; legislative changes unfolded over many decades.  One practical effect of removing homosexuality from the DSM's list of mental disorders was that overnight, tens of millions of people instantly were "cured", a achievement which usually would glean someone the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.    

LGBTQQIAAOP: The Glossary

L: Lesbian: Women attracted only attracted to women.

G: Gay: Men attracted only to men (historically gay can used to describe homosexual men and women but modern convention is still to use lesbian for women although many lesbians self-describe as gay).

B: Bisexual: A person attracted to both sexes.

T:Transgendered: A person who has or is transitioning to the opposite sex, as they were born as the wrong sex, in the wrong body.  The most obvious category to illustrate sex and gender are not synonymous.

Q: Queer: A non-heterosexual person who prefers to call themselves queer.  Often used by those in the queer art movement, especially by those who maintain there is a distinct queer aesthetic.  Queer used to be a term of disparagement directed at certain non-heterosexuals but (like slut in another context), became a word claimed and re-purposed.

Q: Questioning: Someone questioning their sexual orientation, either unsure of which gender to which they’re attracted or not yet ready to commit.

I: Intersex: Anyone anywhere on the spectrum which used to be defined by the term hermaphrodite.  Intersex is now the accepted term and hermaphrodite should be used only where necessary in the technical language of medicine.

A: Asexual: A person not sexually attracted to anyone or anything (sometimes styled as aromantic).

A: Allies: A straight person who accepts and supports those anywhere in the LGBTQQIAAOP range(s).

O: Objectum: A person attracted to an inanimate object.  Curiously, despite being the only category which, by definition, can't harm another, objectum is now the most controversial entry on the spectrum.

P: Pansexual: A person attracted to a person because of their personality; sex and gender are both irrelevant.

The generally accepted oral shorthand used to be “LGBT” but any truncation can suggest issues around the politics of hierarchy and exclusion.  The modern practice seems to be to use variations of “LGBTQI plus” (often written as LGBTQI+).

Hillman Minx, 1955 (Rootes Corporation).  "Go gay" was an advertising slogan and not an editorial imperative; at this time, advertising was carried on the covers of magazines.  It was not until the 1960s that the relationship between cover photography and the news-stand sales of magazines became better understood.

Bipolar

Bipolar (pronounced bahy-poh-ler)

(1) Having two poles, as the earth.

(2) Of, relating to, or found at both polar regions.

(3) Characterized by opposite extremes in opinions, nature etc.

(4) In electronics, relating to a semiconductor device, such as a transistor, that exploits the electrical characteristics of contact between two substances, one with an inherent positive charge, the other with an inherent negative charge.

(5) In electric power distribution, a power transmission line having two direct-current conductors in opposite polarity.

(6) In physics, a region of magnetic flux having two distinct poles

(7) In psychiatry, of, relating to, or having bipolar disorder (a major mood disorder that is characterized by episodes of mania and depression; once known as manic-depression.

(8) In physiology, having two poles; used especially of nerve cells in which the branches project from two usually opposite points.

(9) In geopolitics, of or relating to an international system in which two states wield most of the cultural, economic, and political influence (ie two states with hegemonies exerted over their respective spheres of influence.  The companion terms are unipolar and multipolar and all are sometimes used by analogy in fields like commerce or sporting competition to reference instances of specific dominance.

1800–1810: The construct was bi- + polar.  Pole (in this context) was from the Middle French pole & pôle, from the Latin polus, from the Ancient Greek πόλος (pólos) (axis of rotation).  The –ar suffix was from Latin -āris (of, pertaining to) and was appended to nouns to create adjectives (it came increasingly to be appended to words of non-Latin origin).  The bi- prefix came directly from the Latin bi-, from Latin bis (twice) & bīnus (double), from the Proto-Italic dwi-, from the primitive Indo-European dwi- and was one of the sequence of Latin number prefixes (uni-, bi, tri etc).  In English, it can be confusing because it can used to mean either (1) two, pair, both, duo or (2) half.  In chemistry, the use meaning half has been discontinued.  In general use, the ambiguity remains, illustrated by the use when applied to measures of duration which can variously be interpreted as “once every two periods” or “twice every period”, the classic examples of which are this like biweekly, bimonthly, and biannual.  Style guides now often suggest choosing unambiguous forms such as “fortnightly” or, where no such elegant alternative exists, spelling it out explicitly (twice a month; every two years etc).  Using semi- as a prefix can work but is imprecise although acceptable if the meaning is in other ways made clear.

In English, as a clipping (a use of the prefix as a stand-alone word) of bisexual (used as both noun & adjective), the meaning was clear and effortlessly “bi” moved from LGBTQQIAAOP slang to the general vocabulary.  Potentially misleading however is bigender, a coining of LGBTQQIAAOP activists which became linguistically necessary when gender and sex were re-assigned as separate constructs.  It’s recommended it be used as the hyphenated bi-gender (to be consistent “bi-sexual” should probably also adopt the form) lest one might ponder if a bigend is LGBTQQIAAOP slang for something (and at this point one’s mind may wander) unbeknown to one.  Additionally in engineering, a big-end bearing in an internal combustion engine is the one located “big end” of the connecting rod and attached to the crankshaft.  Mechanics may use “bigender” (pronounced big-end-ah) as slang which in oral use won’t be confused with something pronounced as by-jen-dah but if transcribed, were the latter hyphenated, there’ll be no mystified mechanics.  Bipolar is a noun & adjective and bipolarization & bipolarity are nouns; the noun plural is bipolar.

Lindsay Lohan following Edvard Munch's (1863–1944) The Scream (1893).  Much art has been analysed by those seeking insight into the mental health of the artist, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder two conditions frequently identified.

The adjective bipolar dates from 1810 in the figurative sense of "of double aspect" and was by 1859 used in the literature of anatomy (having two processes from opposite poles) to refer to nerve cells while the sometimes hyphenated noun bipolarity (state of having two poles) emerged in 1834.  The earliest known instance of the now familiar use in psychiatry as a technical term to describe what was then known as manic-depressive psychosis appears to date from 1957 in a publication by German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard (1904-1988), noted in the history of the profession for his extensive (though now mostly forgotten) classification of psychotic illnesses (a nosology (the construct being nos- + -ology, from the Ancient Greek νόσος (nosos) (disease) + -λογία (-logia) (study of), the branch of medical science dealing with the classification of diseases)) although still used in structural linguistics is the system of classification of non-verbal communication.  As the term “manic-depression” ascended the linguistic treadmill (a process accelerated by the negative connotations which attached to the word because in popular literature and films manic depressives were often characterised as psychopathic murderers or other flavours or madness) “bipolar disorder” was positioned as a preferable term, the reason being that bipolar was separated from both the connotations of “manic depression” and the two elements (“manic” & “depression”), each loaded with negative associations.  Accordingly, in 1980, bipolar disorder replaced manic-depressive psychosis in the third edition (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  According to tracking by dictionaries, it was in the mid-1990s that bipolar (in the context of mental health) gained traction in general use and, inevitably, appeared on the linguistic treadmill although even forty-odd years on there’s little to suggest it has yet reached the level of opprobrium which might prompt the DSM’s editorial board to discuss the need for a replacement although their processes can take a while, the term “mental retardation” (long regarded in the community as offensive and in some cases misleading) not replaced by term “intellectual development disorder (intellectual disability)” until the release of DSM-5-TR (text revision) in 2022.

The bipolar world in 1980.  The geopolitical architecture of the Cold War (circa 1948-circa 1990) revolved around Moscow (the Warsaw Pact) and Washington DC (NATO).

Bipolar disorder was actually introduced to the DSM when the multi-axial system (Axis I to Axis V) was created:

Axis I: Clinical Disorders (including bipolar disorder)

Axis II: Personality Disorders and Mental Retardation

Axis III: General Medical Conditions

Axis IV: Psychosocial and Environmental Problems (stressors)

Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning

This structure was modified with the release in 2000 of DSM-IV-TR which, within the axis system, divided diagnoses and symptoms into sections or "decision trees," including which symptoms must be included for a diagnosis and which must not be present.  The sectional approach was carried over to the DSM-5 (2013) when the axis system was abandoned, replaced by 20 chapters containing categories of related disorders of which “Bipolar and Related Disorders” is one, others including Anxiety disorders, Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, Depressive disorders, Feeding and eating disorders and Personality disorders.  Within its category, bipolar disorder was subject to some refinements, including those reflected in other areas (such as objectum sexuality) that attempted to reduce the medicalization of behaviour that although statistically aberrant, was part of the normal human condition.  Childhood bipolar disorder for example, although long well-defined and accepted as a diagnosis, was effectively rolled into a new category of depressive disorders called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), reflecting the concern that the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder was being inconsistently and overly applied to behaviour better understood as variations of childhood irritability.  Possibly too, the editors may have been influenced by work in labelling theory which suggested the early appearance in an individual’s medical history of conditions such as depression or bipolar disorder could have life-long consequences.

In the DSM-5, the diagnostic sub-categories of bipolar disorder were extended to seven:

(1) Bipolar I disorder

(2) Bipolar II disorder

(3) Cyclothymic disorder

(4) Substance/medication-induced bipolar and related disorder

(5) Bipolar and related disorder due to another medical condition

(6) Other specified bipolar and related disorder

(7) Unspecified bipolar and related disorder

Other changes included (1) the elimination of “mixed episode”.  Instead, a manic, hypomanic, or depressive episode can be specified as “with mixed features” a specifier with its own DSM definition. (2) The bipolar II diagnosis in the DSM-IV excluded a history of mixed episodes and this exclusion has been removed, something many long advocated. (3) There was a standardization of the text.  The word “abnormally” was not included in the DSM-IV criterion A for a hypomanic episode, while it was in criterion A for a manic episode; in DSM-5 the same language is used for both, the full criteria for the two distinct types of episodes thus closer together. (4) Each type of bipolar disorder gained specifiers (such as “with mixed features”, “with anxious distress” & “with rapid cycling”) which serve further to clarify the illness.

The DSM-5-TR was released in 2022 and among the changes were amendments to the section covering disorder.  Criterion B in bipolar I disorder was refined to make explicit that a manic episode can't be “superimposed on” (ie bolted-onto to run simultaneously with) an existing diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, delusional disorder, or other specified or unspecified psychotic disorder.  A similar procedural clarification was made to criterion C for bipolar II.  The specifiers indicating the severity of a manic episode were also updated.  Under DSM-5, the bipolar severity specifiers were mild, moderate, and severe which certainly made sense when labeling depressive episodes but when of clinical significance, that was less helpful when categorizing manic episodes because, in the nomenclature of the DSM, “mild” indicated “no impairment in functioning” whereas manic episodes inherently impaired function.  The specifiers for manic episodes accordingly were updated in the DSM-5-TR to (1) Mild (the manic episode meets the minimum symptom criteria), (2) Moderate (the manic episode causes a very significant increase in impairment and (3) Severe (the patient needs nearly continual supervision to prevent harm from being done to themselves and/or others).

2:365 by Kim Rask & Missy Douglas (2014), Ucki Ood, pp 400 (ISBN-100615950620).  A collection of 365 works painted in 2013 as a document of bipolar disorder.

First diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 19 while a student of art at Cambridge, Dr Missy Douglas (b 1977) in 2013 undertook for that year, each day to paint a canvas which would express her feelings at that moment.  To ensure the works reflected her condition rather than the effects of medication, during this year she went un-medicated, hoping the paintings would more accurately reflect the highs and lows of bipolarity.  When going to sleep each evening, Dr Douglas had no idea how she would feel the next morning, some days ecstatic, some days depressed.  Although the change in name to bipolar was probably helpful, Dr Douglas' experiment does illustrate why “manic depression” was so evocative of the condition.  Interestingly, on not one day was a painting not completed, not does the set include a blank canvas or one simply black or rendered otherwise monochromatically.  What this indicates would be something to ponder but is perhaps indicative of how a spectrum condition can manifest, Dr Douglas presumably a high-functioning bipolar.  For a BBC piece, Dr Douglas provided brief notes for six of the works:

Day 5: “I was really anxious, angry and feeling trapped.”

Day 177: “I was really in a dark place here. I was completely in a depressive phase.”

Day 236: “I was burying feelings and my emotions were all over the place.  Very turbulent.”

Day 242: “I was at the height of mania here, but there was a massive wave of white depression heading towards me.”

Day 314: “Mania.  I was buzzing and everything was technicolor and beautiful.  I was flying and felt invincible."

Day 359: “Christmas Day 2013.  I was feeling very depressed yet I completely compartmentalised and concealed it.  The twinkly forced jollity hid the sadness.”