Fragile

Fragile (pronounced fraj-uhl (U) or fraj-ahyl (non-U))

(1) Easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail.

(2) Vulnerably delicate, as in appearance.

(3) Lacking in substance or force; flimsy.

1505–1515: From the Middle English fragile (liable to sin, morally weak), from the Middle French fragile, from the fourteenth century Old French fragele, from the Latin fragilis (easily broken) (doublet of frêle), the construct being frag- (variant stem of the verb frangere (break), from the primitive Indo-European root bhreg- (to break) + -ilis.  The -ilis (neuter -ile) suffix was from the Proto-Italic -elis, from the primitive Indo-European -elis, from -lós; it was used to form an adjective noun of relation, frequently passive, to the verb or root.  It was cognate with fraction & fracture and doublet of frail.  The original meaning from circa 1510 (liable to sin, morally weak) by circa 1600 extended to "liable to break" as a back-formation from fragility which was actually an adoption of the sense in Latin.  The transferred sense "of frail constitution" (of persons) dates from 1858.  The companion adjective frail emerged in the mid fourteenth century in the sense of "morally weak", from the twelfth century Old French fraile & frele (weak, frail, sickly, infirm) (enduring in Modern French as frêle), from the Latin fragilis.  The US slang noun meaning "a woman" is documented from 1908 and although there’s no evidence, etymologists have noted Shakespeare's "Frailty, thy name is woman" (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2).  The comparative fragiler and the superlative fragilest are both correct but the more elegant “more fragile” and “most fragile” tend to be preferred.  Fragile is used usually as an adjective but can be applied as a noun (typically by folk like furniture movers) or in the same way as “exquisite”.  Fragilely is an adverb and fragility is a noun; the noun plural is fragiles.

Words which are either synonyms or close in meaning include delicate, feeble, frail, weak, brittle, crisp, crumbly, decrepit, fine, flimsy, fracturable, frangible, friable, infirm, insubstantial, shivery, slight & unsound.  The antonym most often used to suggest the opposite quality to fragile is “robust” (evincing strength and health; strong).  Robust dates from circa 1545 and was a learned borrowing from circa 1400 Medieval Latin rōbustus (oaken, hard, strong), the construct being rōbus- (stem of rōbur (oak, strength) + -tus (the adjectival suffix).

Lindsay Lohan looking fragile: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985) (left), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, LA (right).

However, fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing.  In the narrow technical sense an expression of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of strength.  The traditions of language obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers.  It's true that on such a continuum a point could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other.

The opposite of fragile is actually antifragile (the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))).  The concept is well known in physiology and part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t happen.  It’s thus an act of antifragility, the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the skin blisters in response to work.  Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used according to emphasize the extent of strength; antifragile is the true opposite.

The idea of antifragile was introduced by Lebanese-born, US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability, the best-known and most influential was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007).  His work was thoughtful, intriguing and practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the texts agreed with that.  Apart from the ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many suppositions is also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our use of language to create.

Lavender

Lavender (pronounced lav-uhn-der)

(1) As a color, a pale bluish purple, similar to or variations of lilac & violet.

(2) Of or pertaining to something of the shade.

(3) In botany, any of the various Old World perennial shrubs or herbaceous plants or shrubs belonging to the genus Lavandula (family Lamiaceae (labiates)), of the mint family, especially Lavandula angustifolia, and cultivated for its spikes of fragrant mauve or blue flowers and as the source of a fragrant oil.

(4) The dried flowers or other parts of this plant placed among linen, clothes etc (usually in small, porous bags (called lavender bags)), for the scent or as a preservative.

(5) As lavender water (historically also called toilet water), a solution of oil of lavender, used sometimes as an aftershave.

(6) In informal use, of or relating to a homosexual orientation in men (archaic); an effeminate male (used as both noun & adjective).

(7) As lavender marriage, a type of marriage of convenience undertaken by gay man and lesbian women, often as a form of professional protection.

(8) In film production, a kind of film stock for creating positive prints from negatives as part of the process of duplicating the negatives (obsolete).

(9) A washer; one (especially a woman) who washes clothes (archaic).

(10) As a euphemism, a woman employed in prostitution or having loose morals (archaic).

(11) In sexual politics, an only briefly used and now obsolete descriptor: (1) pertaining to LGBT people and rights (as lavender collar which was replaced by rainbow collar (a reference to the gay pride flag)) and (2) a militant strain of lesbian feminism which opposed heterosexism.

1225–1275: From the Middle English lavendre, from the Anglo-French lavendre, from the Old French lavandiere (the lavender plant), from the tenth century Medieval Latin lavandārius & lavendula, a variant of livendula, a nasalized variant (unrecorded) of lividula (a plant livid in color).  The French forms may be from the Latin lividus (bluish; livid), but was certainly influenced by the French lavande and the Italian lavanda (a washing), from the Latin lavare (to wash), from the primitive Indo-European root leue- (to wash), the link being the flower being used to scent washed fabrics and as a bath perfume.  The Latin lavō (I wash, bathe; I wet, moisten) was from the Proto-Italic lawāō, from the primitive Indo-European lewhs (to wash).  It was cognates with the Ancient Greek λούω (loúō) & λοέω (loéō), the Albanian laj, the Old Armenian լոգանամ (loganam) and the Old English lēaþor (from which English gained lather).  Lavender is a noun & adjective, lavendering is a verb and lavendered is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is lavenders).

The adjective in the sense of “a pale purple color, of the color of lavender flowers” dates from 1840", the noun as a color noted since 1882.  The identical Middle English word meant both "laundress; washerwoman" and "prostitute, whore; camp follower", the origin of that probably being the roles being performed by the same personnel, one presumably before sunset, the other after.  In politics, lavender enjoyed a brief currency as (1) pertaining to LGBT people and rights (as lavender collar which was replaced by rainbow collar (a reference to the gay pride flag) and (2) a descriptor of a militant strain of lesbian feminism which opposed heterosexism.

Lindsay Lohan with lavender colored hair, smoking.

The surname does exist as Lavandar but the more common spelling is Lavender, regarded by genealogists as English but of early French origin.  Introduced by the Normans after the conquest of 1066 it is occupational and derived from lavandier, applied especially to workers in the wool industry employed to wash raw wool or rinse the cloth after fulling. Job-descriptive surnames originally denoted the actual occupation of the name-bearer and only later became hereditary when a son or perhaps a daughter followed the father into the same line of business.  The surname first recorded in 1273 on the “Hundred Rolls” of Cambridgeshire and the earliest known instance in the US record is from New York in 1846 although its likely (possibly with variations of spelling) there were earlier cases of immigration.  The first recorded spelling of the family name was la Lauendere which, dated 1253, was entered in the “Pipe Rolls” of Oxfordshire during the reign of Henry III (1207–1272; King of England 1216-1272) and over the centuries, in the British Isles, Europe, the US and the British Empire, the spelling evolved in several forks until the modern Lavender emerged as the most common.

Wedding day of film star Rock Hudson (1925–1985) & Phyllis Gates (1925–2006), Santa Barbara, California, 9 November 1955.They separated in 1957, the divorce granted the next year.

A lavender marriage is one between a man and woman undertaken as a marriage of convenience to conceal the socially stigmatized sexual orientation of one partner or both.  The color lavender had an association with gay men going back centuries and it’s thought the origin was based on the idea of a shade somewhere between pink (girl) & blue (boy).  Although there’s much evidence to suggest there’s a long tradition of the practice in many cultures, the term “lavender marriage” seems to date only from 1895 and came into wide use only in the mid twentieth century where it was used almost exclusively, knowingly to describe marriages in the Hollywood film industry between couples known not to be straight.  In some cases the marriages were a professional necessity because of contracts of employment which essentially proscribed all aspects of homosexuality.  Although in the west the structural reasons for lavender marriages have substantially been dismantled, they are known still to occur, especially in communities where social mores reflect the less progressive views of their countries of ethnic origin.

Shrink

Shrink (pronounced shringk)

(1) To draw back, as in retreat or avoidance; to shrink from danger; to shrink from contact.

(2) To contract or lessen in size, as from exposure to conditions of temperature or moisture; to become reduced in extent or scope.

(3) A slang term for a psychotherapist, psychiatrist, or psychoanalyst (also (rarely) as shrinker and (historically) as head shrinker.

(4) In economics, as "shrinkflation" (the construct being shrink + (in)flation), a term describing the tactic of reducing the volume of a product (usually in the same packaging) while maintaining the price, thus an attempt to conceal the increase in the unit cost.   

Pre 900:  From the Middle English schrinken, from the Old English scrincan (to draw in the limbs, contract, shrivel up; wither, pine away (the past tense scranc, the past participle scruncen)), from the Proto-Germanic skrink and related to the Old Norse skrokkr (torso) & hrukka (a crease); cognate with Middle Dutch schrinken, the Old Swedish skrunkin (wrinkled), the Swedish skrynka (to shrink) & the Norwegian & Icelandic skrukka (old shrunken woman).  Root was probably the Proto-Germanic skrinkwaną from skrink-, probably from the primitive Indo-European sker- (to turn, bend).  Shrink is a noun & verb, shrinker & shrinkage are nouns, shrinking is a verb & adjective, shrinkable is an adjective and shrinkingly is an adverb; the noun plural is shrinks.  The used derived forms are shrank (noun & verb) and shrunk (verb & adjective).

Some shrinkage though never a shrinking violet: A shrunken Lindsay Lohan during "thin phase", 2005.

Shrink operated originally with the causal shrench (in the manner of drink/drench). The sense of "become reduced in size" emerged in the late thirteenth century, the meaning "draw back, recoil" attested since the early fourteenth, the speculation being it was suggested by the behavior of snails.  The transitive sense, "cause to shrink" is also from the late 1300s.  The noun shrinkage (act or fact of shrinking) dates from 1713 and was derived from the verb whereas the meaning "amount by which something has shrunk" wasn’t used until 1862.  The US slang for psychiatrists dates (in some form) from 1950 and shrink-wrap is from 1961, having replaced an earlier (1959) trade-name (shrinking-wrap) which never caught on.  In idiomatic use, "shrinking" often appears to suggest a quality of shyness or timidity.  The best known term is "shrinking violet" (a shy or timid person, who avoids contact with others) which emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, adopting the recently coined use in botany describing the violet (genus Viola) flower and plant.  In the popular imagination, a shrinking violet is a delicate, waif-like creature.

Madness and the Profession

The original use of “head-shrinker” was to describe members of the Jivaro tribe of Amazonia who preserved the heads of their enemies by stripping the skin from the skull, resulting in a shrunken mummified remnant the size of a fist.  Apparently an ancient practice, the term in this anthropological sense was first recorded in 1926 and it wasn’t until 1950 when it was documented that “head-shrinker” had become Hollywood slang for a psychiatrist.  Popular culture adopted the sense.  It was used in the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), by SF writer Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) in Time For The Stars (1956) and was heard on Broadway in West Side Story (1957).  The first recorded use of “shrink” in this context was by Thomas Pynchon (b 1937) in his novel The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) although it’s not known if this was an invention by the author or an adoption of existing slang, many sources suggesting there exists anecdotal evidence to suggest the latter.

Sigmund Freud, enjoying just a cigar.

Nor has it ever been clear why “head shrinker” or the derived “shrink” became connected with psychiatry, the most common speculation being that the discipline, and especially psychoanalysis, was perceived to be most concerned with the shrinking of swollen egos, a perhaps not unjustified assumption in the show-business circles which provided a goodly percentage of the patients.  It may hint also at the not wholly universal acceptance of psychiatry as a legitimate speciality within medicine until well into the twentieth century (by which time psychiatrist had replaced alienist).  It was only with advances in diagnostic neurology and the increasing effectiveness of psychoactive drugs that psychiatry began to enjoy its current respectability within the profession.

Classic shrinkflation.  The Toblerone before & after.

The famous Toblerone chocolate bar is manufactured in Bern, Switzerland by Mondelez International and noted for its shape: a series of triangular prisms sitting atop an elongated base.  In 2016, the company reduced the volume of chocolate in some bars by increasing the gap between the distinctive triangles, thus cutting the net weight by about 10% while using the existing packaging.  It was a cost cutting exercise which lowered not only the cost of production but also some transportation fees (in those situations where freight charges were weight-based).  The RRP (recommended retail price) was unchanged.  The trick was not well-received in the market and within two years the prisims were moved back to their original positions, forcing the company to adopt other techniques such as moving some production to countries with lower labor costs.  

Athwart

Athwart (pronounced uh-thwawrt)

(1) From side to side; crosswise, transversely.

(2) In admiralty use, at right angles to the fore-and-aft line; across.

(3) Perversely; awry; wrongly.

1425-1475: From the Late Middle English athwert & athirt and a proclitic form of preposition; the construct was a- (in the sense of "in the direction of, toward")  + thwart.  The a prefix was from the Old English an (on) which in Middle English meant “up, out, away”, both derived from the Proto-Germanic uz (out), from the primitive Indo-European uds (up, out); cognate with the Old Saxon ā which endures in Modern German as the prefix er.  Thwart was from the Middle English adverb & adjective thwert, (crosswise; (cooking) across the grain, transverse; counter, opposing; contrary, obstinate, stubborn), a borrowing from Old Norse þvert (across, transverse), originally the neuter form of þverr (transverse, across), from the Proto-Germanic þwerhaz, altered or influenced by þweraną (to turn) and þerh, from the primitive Indo-European twork & twerk (to twist).  Cognates include the Old English þweorh (transverse, perverse, angry, cross), the Danish tvær, the Gothic þwaírs (angry), the West Frisian dwers (beyond, across, to the other side of), the Dutch dwars (cross-grained, contrary), the Low German dwars (cross-grained, contrary) and the German quer (crosswise; cross).  The modern English queer is related.  Although still used by poets good and bad, the word is probably otherwise obsolete for all purposes except historic admiralty documents.  Athwart is a noun & adverb, athwartship is an adjective & adverb and athwartships & athwartwise are adverb; the noun plural is athwarts.  Forms like athwartly are definitely non standard.

In nautical design, the term “athwart” is used to describe a direction or orientation that is perpendicular to the centreline of a ship or boat (ie that which runs across the vessel from side to side (port-to-starboard) at right angles to the fore-and-aft line.  In shipbuilding this can apply to various components and actions on a ship, such as beams, futtocks, bulkheads, or even the positioning of objects; as a general principle something can be said to be “athwart” if it sits perpendicular to the centreline but the term is most often applied to objects which span or crosses the vessel’s entire width.  In naval architecture specifically, athwart was used as a noun to refer to the cross-members which sat beneath the deck-mounted gun-turrets on warships.  Although they had long been a part of the supporting structures, the term “athwart” seems first to have been used on the blueprints of HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906 and a design thought so revolutionary it lent its name to the class of the biggest battleships, previous such vessels immediately re-classified as “pre-dreadnoughts” and, when even bigger ships were launched, they were dubbed “super-dreadnoughts”.

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Roinson, athwart, TV Guide's sixth annual Emmy after party, The Kress, September 2008, Hollywood, California.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Kubla Khan (1798)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Sack

Sack (pronounced sak)

(1) A large bag of strong, coarsely woven material, as for grain, potatoes, or coal.

(2) The amount a sack holds; also called sackful the amount contained in a sack, sometimes used as a unit of measurement.

(3) A bag, usually large.

(4) In slang, dismissal or discharge from employment.

(5) In slang, the bed, often as “in the sack”.

(6) In fashion, a loose-fitting dress, as a gown with a Watteau back, especially one fashionable from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century (also spelled sacque); formerly, a loose-fitting hip-length jacket, cloak or cape.

(7) A loose-fitting coat, jacket, or cape.

(8) In the slang of baseball, a base.

(9) In the slang of agriculture in South Midland, US, the udder of a cow.

(10) In the slang of American Football, to tackle the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage before the player is able to throw a pass.

(11) In fashion, as sack-line, a loose-fitting, vaguely tubular, enveloping style of dresses and coats which emerged first in 1957.

(12) To pillage or loot after capture; to plunder.

(13) A strong, light-colored wine, traditionally imported from Spain and the Canary Islands.

(14) In cricket, a run scored off a ball not struck by the batsman: allotted to the team as an extra (on sundry) and not to the individual batsman; now usually called a bye (archaic).

(15) In vulgar slang, usually as ball-sack (although there are imaginative variations): the scrotum.

(16) In fashion, as sack coat; a kind of coat worn by men, and extending from top to bottom without a cross seam.

A dated form of sac (pouch in a plant or animal).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun sak, sake & sakke (bag, sackcloth), from the Old English sacc (sack, bag) & sæcc (sackcloth, sacking), both from the Proto-West Germanic sakku, from the late Proto-Germanic sakkuz (sack), from the Latin saccus (bag, sack, sackcloth), from the Ancient Greek σάκκος (sákkos) bag made from goat hair, sieve, burlap, large cloak (as for a wedding dress), from the Semitic;  In the Hebrew and Phoenician, a śaq was a “cloth made of hair, bag, mourning dress”.  The use to describe the pillage of a city or other settlement after conquest dates from 1540–1550; from Middle French phrase mettre à sac (to put to pillage, literally “to put (loot) in a sack”), sac in this sense from the Italian sacco (looting, loot), a shortened form of saccomano, from the Middle High German sakman (pillager).  As applies to alcohol, Sack was first recorded in 1525–1535, from the French (vin) sec (dry (wine)), from the Latin siccus (dry).  It was cognate with the Dutch zak, the German Sack, the Swedish säck, the Danish sæk, the Hebrew שַׂק‎ (śaq) (sack, sackcloth), the Aramaic סַקָּא‎, the Classical Syriac ܣܩܐ‎, (Ge'ez) ሠቅ (śäḳ), the Akkadian saqqu and the Egyptian sꜣgꜣ. A doublet of sac.  It was a long time ago and, records being scant, some etymologists suggest the word was originally Egyptian, a nominal derivative of sꜣq (to gather or put together) that also yielded the sok (sackcloth) and the Greek borrowing came via a Semitic intermediary.  Others reject this, noting that such an originally Egyptian word would be expected to yield the Hebrew סַק rather than שַׂק‎ and instead argue the Coptic and Greek words are both borrowed from the Semitic, with the Coptic word perhaps developing via Egyptian sꜣgꜣ.  The Japanese is the descendent is theサック (sakku) and historically, sack was an alternative spelling of sac (sacrifice).  Sack, sacking & sackage are nouns and verbs, sacker is a noun, sacked is a verb & adjective, sackful is a noun & adjective and sackable & sack-like are adjectives; the noun plural is sacks.  The adjectives sackesque & sackish have been used by critics of fashion but both are non-standard while the noun sackability is used purely for comic effect.  

Lindsay Lohan adopted the sack-line early and from time-to-time returns to the look.

Historically, the capacity of a sack has been defined in law.  Although long archaic and subject to (sometimes regional) variations depending on commodity, the old English measure of weight, usually of wool, was equal to 13 stone (182 lb), or 26 stone (364 lb).  The term survives in the Woolsack, on which sits the presiding officer of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK’s parliament (formerly the Lord Chancellor, now the Lord Speaker).  Because there’s never been a universally accept definition for sack (size, shape, construction or capacity), what some call a sack others will call a bag, pack, pouch carryall, portmanteau, satchel, tote etc or the constructs haversack, knapsack, rucksack.  The only (loosely applied) conventions of use appear to be that bags etc tend to be smaller and sacks larger and made from more coarse material.  Folklore said to be medieval held that it was a bag if, when filled with potatoes, it could be carried by a woman but, it if demanded the strength of a man, it was a sack; story is likely apocryphal.  The synonyms for the plundering of cities include pillage, loot & ransack.  The idiomatic uses of sack number at least in the dozens.

Sack dresses by Hubert de Givenchy, Spring Summer 1958 collection, Paris 1957.

Givenchy’s sack-line debuted in their spring-summer line on 1957's catwalks, Balenciaga showing a not dissimilar style just a few weeks later.  Both were essentially an evolution of the “Shirt Dress” which had attracted some attention the previous season and signaled a shift from the fitted, structured silhouettes which had been the signature motif of the decade.  The sack-line dresses were described by some critics as “shapeless” or “formless”, presumably because they lacked any suggestion of the waistline which had existed for so long as fashion’s pivot-point.  However, the forms the sack-line took would have been recognizable to anyone familiar with fluid dynamics or the behavior of air in wind tunnels, a waistless dress which narrowed severely towards the hem one of the optimal aerodynamic shapes.  That was presumably a coincidence but Givenchy’s press-kits at the 1957 shows did claim that “More than a fashion, it’s actually a way of dressing” and one which must have found favor with at least some women, not unhappy at being able to ditch the forbidding and restrictive, high-waisted girdles needed to achieve the wasp-wasted “New Look” which Dior had introduced to a post-war world anxious to escape wartime austerity.

Sack dress # 164 by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Spring Summer 1958 collection, Paris 1957.

Balenciaga’s sack dress was in 1957 probably more exaggerated than Givenchy’s; loose and enveloping, it brought to fashion an unprecedented gap between body and garment, emphasizing how radical a shift it was the long tradition of using idealized version of the female form as the basis for the tailored shape, designers making great efforts in their cuts to emulate aspects of human movement in the behavior of fabrics.  The sack-line disconnected the two, women now feeling an moving within, rather than with the dress; it was really quite subversive to suggest clothes might be designed for the comfort of women rather than the gaze of men.  Gone were the darts, belts and bands which had so carefully be crafted to be suggestive of that idealized shape, the woman’s body now and abstract entity which, within its enveloping cocoon could be a very different that that seen usually on the catwalks.  Within the fashion industry, the enthusiasm with which the sack-line was received was restrained but cultural critics, then less numerous but perhaps more erudite than today, were intrigued, modernity welcomed in a field which had never embraced the avant-garde in the way of art, literature and architecture, the link to functionalism especially noted.  It has aged well and been influential although it would begat a less stylish variation on the theme, the dreaded "tent dress".

Marilyn Monroe in burlap sack dress, 1951.

The sack-line which appeared on the haute couture runways in 1957 wasn’t an entirely new style, a loose-fitting dress, often as a gown with a Watteau back had been fashionable from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century (when it was also spelled as both sack & sacque) and even before that the terms had been applied to a a loose-fitting hip-length jacket, cloak or cape and later there was the sack coat; a kind of coat worn by men, the cut extending from top to bottom without a cross seam.  There was however a more recent take, Twentieth Century Fox’s PR operation in 1951 taking advantage of a bitchy comment from a Hollywood columnist (plus ça change) to issue a series of promotional photographs of Marilyn Monroe wearing a literal “sack dress”.  There are a number of versions of the tale but the one most often told is that Ms Monroe, then twenty-four and wearing a revealing red dress, prompting one gossip columnist to snipe that she looked “cheap and vulgar” and would have been better advised to wear “a potato sack.”  Twentieth Century Fox put her in one.

That may or may not be true and it could be the publicity people just wanted some imaginative images, the sex-kitten’s soft curves and the utilitarian angularity of a potato sack quite a juxtaposition and if the intention was to prove she was so beautiful she could make even a potato sack look good, the point was well made.  The photographs were used in Stare magazine, several months before Playboy would be launched with her on the cover and Stare included an interview in which she’s alleged to have said she didn’t care for potatoes because they tend to “put on weight” but it must have been a more tolerant age because there’s no record of her being attracting the opprobrium directed by sections of the vegetable industry at President George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993) after he declared he didn’t like broccoli and it was banned from Air Force One.  Stare noted Ms Monroe had a better political antennae than the president, for whatever her dietary strictures, “…she decided to do something for the potatoes!”

It was during the depression years of the 1930s that flour companies in the US became aware women were turning their cotton flour sacks into clothing, cloths and more.  Money was scarce and seeing the possibility of increasing sales at what would be a marginal cost, one manufacturer began to package their product in sacks decorated with attractive patterns.  Now such a move would be thought part of the “circular economy” but during the Great Depression, it was something that became popular because of economic necessity, “repair, reuse, make do, and don't throw anything away” a widely-spread motto of the time.  Other manufacturers soon followed and professional designers were sometimes used to provide more appealing patterns.

Fashion as economic imperative.

The idea of recycling cotton sacks actually pre-dated the years of the Great Depression; although better documented, the events of the 1930s were not unique and in the cyclical nature of economies, down-turns, recessions and depressions appear with some frequency.  Sack clothing, common in the nineteenth century, was still an important component in rural domestic economies in both Canada and the US during the 1920s but it was the effects of the Great Depression which saw the practice spread to the most deprived of the urban population and the most commonly used sacks were those of a convenient size, typically the cotton items in which flour and sugar were sold.  The slang in those years for the recycled clothing was “feedsack,” or “chicken linen”.

The practice declined in the early 1940s as the economy improved but continued during the war years because there were shortages of cotton and much of what was available was devoted to military needs and decorative fabric for dress-making was sometimes unobtainable.  As prosperity overtook the land in the 1950s, the use of sacks to make clothing faded and by 1953, many manufacturers had switched from cotton to much cheaper paper sacks.

Disappear

Disappear (pronounced dis-uh-peer)

(1) To cease to be seen; vanish from sight.

(2) To cease to exist or be known; gradually or suddenly to end.

(3) Of a person, to vanish under suspicious circumstances.

(4) Secretly to kidnap or arrest and then imprison or kill someone without due process of law; used especially to describe the practice in South and Central American republics but the practice is widespread.

1520–1530: The construct was dis- + appear.  The early form was disaperen and earlier still was disparish, from the French disparaiss, stem of disparaître.  The dis prefix is from the Middle English did-, borrowed from Old French des from the Latin dis, ultimately from the primitive Indo-European dwís.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Appear is from the late thirteenth century Middle English apperen & aperen, from the twelfth century Old French aparoir & aperer (appear, come to light, come forth (in Modern French apparoir & apparaître)), from the Latin appāreō (I appear), the construct being ad- (to) + pāreō (I come forth, I become visible), from the Latin apparere (to appear, come in sight, make an appearance), the construct being ad- "to" + parere (to come forth, be visible; submit, obey), probably from the primitive Indo-European pehzs- (watch, see), the simple present tense of pehz- (protect).  The figurative sense of "getting away" appeared only in 1913, the meaning "seem, have a certain appearance" having been in use since the fourteenth century.  The use to describe the secret disposal of political opponents is late twentieth century although technique had long been practiced, presumably even pre-dating modern civilization.  The spelling appeare is obsolete.  There are many synonyms including vanish, depart, wane, retire, escape, go, melt, dissipate, fade, perish, evaporate, expire, sink, flee, retreat, fly, die, recede, leave, withdraw and abandon.  The use of the synonyms is dictated by the process of departure.  Fade suggest something where disappearance has been gradual whereas vanish implies something sudden, often with a hint of something suspicious or mysterious.

Disappear is an intransitive verb.  The phrase “they disappeared him” appeared in Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) 1961 novel Catch 22, as a darkly humorous reference to the way the military would dispose of those whose continuing existence they found inconvenient; an example of extrajudicial execution, unofficially state-sanctioned murder without any formal process.  In English, “to disappear someone", although an unnatural construction, has by usage become correct because it’s accepted as a mock euphemism.  To be “disappeared” didn’t of necessity mean murdered.  The missing could have been imprisoned or internally exiled but, because they disappeared without a trace, there was no way of knowing and the worst tended often to be assumed.  Some regimes seemed also to understand the uncertainty could be an advantage such as the way in the Soviet Union it wasn’t unknown for those sent to the Gulag remaining there sometimes for months before it was confirmed either they were imprisoned or even dead.  Historically the practice is most associated with the military dictatorships in Central & South America between the during the 1970s and 1990s, most infamously the so-called Guerra sucia (Dirty War) conducted by the military junta which ran Argentina between 1976-1983, a period marked by a kind of state terrorism although, in an interesting example of a private-public partnership, it acted also as the state-sponsor of the activates of a number of far-right papa-military groups.  During the junta’s rule, as many as 25,000 were killed or disappeared.

Despite the practice of political opponents being “disappeared” being for decades widespread, it wasn’t until the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty which created the International Criminal Court that technically it entered international law as a crime and, at least in some circumstances, one with a wide vista.  Under the terms of the statute, if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a "forced disappearance" is classified as a crime against humanity and is thus not subject to a statute of limitations.  In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Before & after, Love Is in the Bin (ex Girl with Balloon (2006)) (2018) by Banksy.

Disappearance can be integrated into art.  A playful (or exploitative, depending on one’s view) take on the idea was the transmogrification of Girl with Balloon by the artist Banksy into Love Is in the Bin.

In what was described by the auction house Sotheby's as an “art intervention by the artist”, what was claimed to be a remote-controlled and “unexpected” self-destruction took place during the auction at which the work was offered.  Immediately upon the drop of the gavel (at a then record of just over Stg£1m (circa US$1.4m)), a shredder built into the frame was triggered, intended (it was said by the artist) entirely to shred the work.  However, the device malfunctioned and stopped with its work (conveniently) exactly half-done; what was planned to disappear, instead became half-transformed, half remaining.  It was either part of the plan or something serendipitous but anyway Sotheby’s claimed this was the first piece of art created mid-auction and the stunt had the desired effect, Love Is in the Bin in October 2021 realizing at auction Stg£18.5m (US$25.1m).  But that wasn’t a work disappearing.  Even if fully-shredded, it would have been but a transformation, the residue in the bin becoming part of the art and, within the construct of pop-art, that’s exactly right.  Whether the fully-shredded installation would have brought more at auction will never be known.

In March 2016, Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram (an apparently photoshopped photograph) with her head covered by a brown paper-bag on which was written "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE", reprising the effort a couple of years earlier by another Hollywood celebrity with a troubled past who said it was to convey the message he was disappearing from public life.  Despite initial speculation, it was apparently never Lindsay Lohan's intension to disappear from anything except the tabloids, her message being she was no longer an  enfant terrible.  The barcode (upper right) was not of significance. 

The act of disappearance has however been used, the not entirely original but most pure interpretation of which was the ephemeral art movement of the Cold War years which went beyond the idea of gradual degradation many artists had explored and used instead a technique of almost instant destruction.  The proponents of auto-destructive art claimed their work was political, a reaction to the devastation of two world wars and the threat of nuclear conflagration.