Absinthe or Absinth

Absinthe or Absinth (pronounced ab-sinth)

(1) A green, aromatic liqueur (alcohol content 45-74%), made with wormwood and other herbs, it has a bitter, liquorice flavour; has from time-to-time been banned in many Western countries.  Technically, because of the high wormwood content, it’s a gin.  The colloquial name was green fairy.

(2) An alternative name for the herb Artemisia absinthium (grande wormwood); essence of wormwood which correctly should be spelled only absinth).

(3) Bitterness; sorrow (archaic except for poetic use).

(4) A shade (a spectrum from yellow-green to a quite bright hue),labeled on color charts as “absinthe green”.

(5) A rare alternative name for the sagebrush (US).

1350-1470: From the French absinthe (essence of wormwood (short for extrait d'absinthe)), from the Latin absinthium (wormwood and a doublet of absinthium), from the Ancient Greek ἀψίνθιον (apsínthion) (wormwood) of uncertain origin although its speculated the source may be a Persian root (spand or aspand, or the variant esfand) which meant Peganum harmala, also called Syrian Rue which, while not actually a variety of rue, is another famously bitter herb.  The alternative etymology is that the genus was named after Queen Artemisia, the wife and sister of Mausolus, ruler of Caria 377–353.  When Mausolus died, he was buried in the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and traces of the ruins can still be seen at Bodrum in modern-day Turkey.  In the Hellenic myths, Ἄρτεμις (Artemis) was  goddess of the hunt, and protector of the forest and children; her equivalent in Roman mythology was Diana.  Absinthe & absinthism are nouns and absinthic is an adjective; the noun plural is absinthes.

The highly alcoholic, anise-flavored liquor originally made from grande wormwood, anise, and other herbs was first distilled in 1842, lending its name to the yellow-green color which became commercially available in the late 1800s.  The early spelling was absinth (which survived longer than absynthe and absenta) and although extinct in English use, absinth is the spelling variant most commonly applied to varieties of the spirit produced in Central and Eastern Europe and is specifically associated with Bohemian-style absinthes.  The wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) plant itself has long been figurative of "bitter" sorrow and was known in English as absinth in English from circa 1500; the earlier tradition, drawn from the Old English, used the word in the Latin form.  The drink first gained popularity in Europe after being consumed in some abundance by French soldiers in Algiers.  In North Africa, there was a long fascination with absinthe, historians noting it had been associated with “magical properties” as far back as ancient Egypt.

Before being outlawed in many Western countries in the early twentieth century, it was known colloquially as the green fairy, a “green muse” who would visit to liberate the visions of poets and artists.  The health authorities fretted over the alleged hallucinogenic qualities and, after a bit of a moral panic, imposed a ban.  Historians of such things suspect the spirit probably generally didn't induce hallucinations to anywhere near the extent of the legends of the era suggest and that its reputation was probably gained from excessive consumption of mixes with unusually high concentrations of wormwood being sold, the regulation of the content of strong drink paying little attention to anything except the taxable component (alcohol).  However, absinthe is again available in Australia; a 750 ml (25 oz) bottle of Vedrenne Elie Arnaud Denoix Mythe including a drip-spoon (sugar cubes not included) is available at Aus$100.00.

Death in the afternoon

Death in the Afternoon, also called The Hemingway or Hemingway Champagne, is a mix of absinthe and Champagne, invented by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) himself.  The concoction shares its name with a novel from his “bullfighting, bull-slinging, & bullshit” period (Death in the Afternoon (1932)), the recipe published in a 1935 anthology of cocktails with contributions from noted authors. 

(1) Pour one jigger of absinthe into a Champagne glass.

(2) Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness.

(3) Drink three to five of these, slowly.

Traditional French Method

(1) Pour a shot (1oz/30ml) of absinthe into a tall, wide rimmed glass.

(2) Rest specially slotted absinthe spoon across top of the glass.

(3) Place a sugar cube atop absinthe spoon.

(4) Slowly drizzle ice-cold water over sugar cube so water is evenly displaced into absinthe until drink is diluted to a ratio between 3:1 and 5:1.

(5) Stir gently and enjoy.

Bohemian Method

(1) Pour a shot (1oz/30ml) of absinthe into a tall, wide rimmed glass.

(2) Put lump of sugar on a spoon and dip it in the absinthe until cube is saturated.

(3) Hold spoon over glass and set the cube alight; it will bubble and caramelize.

(4) When flame has died down, stir sugar into absinthe.

(5) Add iced-water until drink is diluted to a ratio between 3:1 and 5:1.

(6) Stir gently and enjoy.

French purists disapprove of these Bohemian ways, claiming the caramelizing of the sugar impairs the true flavor of absinthe.

Ernest Hemingway wasn’t the only one fond of the green fairy.  Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) is claimed to have said “After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”  He applied his empirical research into the spirit’s psychoactive and degenerative properties in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890-1891) in which the eponymous protagonist takes those staples of decadent Victorian hedonism, opium and absinthe, in seedy places among London's Docklands.

The French poet Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) was famously fond of absinthe, his lust for the spirit shared with his lover and fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the pair having a drunken tiff during which Rimbaud was shot, sustaining a minor wound.  After that, Verlaine’s alcoholism worsened and he died in poverty, on his deathbed damning as “the green witch” which governments should ban.  Rimbaud may have been more open-minded, one of his works containing the line: “Wise pilgrims, let us reach / The Absinthe with its green pillars.”  Shortly after being shot, he renounced poetry, briefly serving in the military before deserting to take up a life in commerce.

Le Buveur d'absinthe (The Absinthe Drinker (1859)) by Édouard Manet (1832-1883).

The first major painting by the French painter Édouard Manet was Le Buveur d'absinthe, a study of an alcoholic rag-picker who frequented the area around the Louvre.  The work caused a stir in polite society because of its seedy realism and the concern at the time about the corrosive effects of absinthe among Parisian bohemians and although there’s nothing to prove Manet was even an occasional drinker of the stuff, he did among some gain the reputation on the basis of "guilt by association".  Very few in the art establishment liked the painting and even Manet would later admit the earliest version of the work contained technical flaws but it was the content which so offended and there was something of the "shock of the new" in that it was one of the first depictions of Absinth drinking in representational art.  Manet submitted Le Buveur d'absinthe for inclusion in the Paris Salon in 1859 and almost unanimously the selection committee voted "non".  The establishment may not have wanted moral  degeneracy hanging in their galleries but the avant garde wanted little but and Manet's painting was among the first admitted to the Salon des Refusés (literally "exhibition of rejects") in 1863.  

A Le Buveur d'absinthe (The Absinthe Drinker) (1901) by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

A Le Buveur d'absinthe would be also be painted by Pablo Picasso, competed in the autumn of 1901, just as his “blue period” was beginning.  Although nowhere near as monochromatic as later blue period works such as Femme aux Bras Croisés (Woman with Folded Arms (1901-1902)) or La Vie (Life (1903)), the work is an early example of the themes associated with this phase, melancholy, alienation & desolation.  The blue period began after Picasso became depressed over the suicide of a close friend and for some years he would explore aspects of human misery.  For someone who looks this unhappy absinthe might be a good choice but it disn't suit everyone.  The French symbolist writer Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) was renowned for his particularly erratic and eccentric behavior, often indulged in while drinking in Paris’s absinthe cafes and it’s said, with his face painted green, he once rode his bicycle through a village to celebrate the joy of the spirit.  He died of consumption, the severity of his condition aggravated by drug and alcohol use.

Absente Absinthe Refined.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) was known to drink absinthe, not anything unusual at the time and while he suffered from what would now be called “mental health issues” (then it was simply “went mad”), what part the drink played in his breakdown isn’t known although in letters to friends, he did note the effect it had on his work.  The mere connection however was enough for Crillon Importers to collaborate with Absente to produce the Van Gogh themed packaging for Absente Absinthe Refined when in 1999 it was the first brand to offer the green fairy in the US since it was banned in 1912.  Absente made much of its spirit being “authentic” by which they meant it was distilled from wormwood and therefore contained thujone, the fabled and allegedly psychoactive substance naturally present in the herb and the reason for the original ban although cautiously, when permitting sales in 1999, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives limited the thujone content to 10 milligrams per liter.

Lindsay Lohan in absinthe green, 2019.

Once one of France’s most famous poets and essayists, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was probably no more fond of absinthe than any other strong drink but he certainly didn’t avoid the green fairy, even writing the poem Enivrez-vous (Get drunk) in which its mentioned.  For years he drank heavily and used a variety of opioids before suffering a massive stroke in 1866, lingering in a semi-paralysis for almost a year before dropping dead.

Harvest

Harvest (pronounced hahr-vist)

(1) The season when ripened crops are gathered.

(2) The crop or yield of one growing season.

(3) A supply of anything gathered at maturity and stored.

(4) The result or consequence of any act, process, or event.

(5) To gather (a crop or the like); to reap.

(6) To gain, win, or use (a prize, product, or result of any past act, process etc)

(7) To catch, take, or remove (animals), especially for food.

(8) To collect (any resource) for future use.

(9) In epidemiological statistical analysis, as harvesting effect, a method used to calculate the excess deaths suffered during certain events (and the subsequent decrease in the expected normal mortality rate as the specific conditions subside.

(10) To extract an organ or tissue from a living or dead body, for the purposes of fertilization, transplantation or research.

(11) In modern paganism, a ceremony held on or around the autumn equinox, traditionally the harvesting season.

Pre 950: From the Middle English harvest & hervest (autumn, one of the four seasons; period between August and November), from the Old English hærfest (autumn, harvest-time; August), from the Proto-West Germanic harbist, from the Proto-Germanic harbistaz (harvest-time, autumn, fall) (source also of the Old Saxon hervist, the Old Frisian & Dutch herfst & the Old Norse haust (harvest)), from the primitive Indo-European kerp- (to gather, pluck, harvest).  It was cognate with the German Herbst (autumn) and related to the Old Norse harfr (harrow), the Old High German herbist (autumn), the Latin carpere (to pluck), the Ancient Greek karpos (fruit) and the Sanskrit krpāna (shears).  Curiously, the use in cell biology to refer to the extraction of cell began in 1946, the same year it appears first to have been applied to the hunting and gathering of wild animals.  The earlier (and mostly dialectical) forms harvist, hervest, harst & hairst are all obsolete.

Lindsay Lohan with a pair of ratchet loppers, pruning cuttings for the potting shed, May 2015.

In the Old & Middle English, it was primarily a season name, the sense of the implied reference to the gathering of crops just something of tradition and the specific, separate meaning (the time of gathering crops) dates only from the mid-thirteenth century, the sense extended to the action itself and the product of the action only after circa 1300.  Early in the sixteenth century, harvest assumed the now familiar meaning exclusively and the borrowed autumn and repurposed fall supplied the season name.  Being more evocative, fall is better than autumn.  The figurative uses began to emerge in the 1530s, use as an adjective documented early in the sixteenth century.  “Harvest home” which included the “festival feast”, was a festive event celebrating the bring home of the last of that season’s harvest and is first recorded in 1577.  The harvest moon, dating from 1704, was that which was full within a fortnight of the autumnal equinox.  Harvestable & harvestless are adjectives; harvestability and harvesting are nouns. 

The New Holland CR 10.90 Raupe-HSCR Harvester: harvesting.

The harvester, agent noun from harvest and noted since the 1590s, was “a reaper", a device used to assist in and speed-up the gathering of certain crops and the variations were many.  The first (vaguely) recognizable ancestor of the modern combine harvester was the generation of harvesters (the earliest of which were horse-drawn and seem to have been in use since the 1820s although no patent was issued until 1835) first sold in 1847 and advertised as machines for the “reaping and binding field crops".  The combine harvester (often referred to as “combines” or “headers”, the latter a reference to the bolt-on attachments optimized for particular crops) is so named because it combines in one machine the four separate harvesting operations, (1) reaping, (2) threshing, (3) gathering and (4), winnowing, the (5) multi-function headers a more recent innovation.  The tractor and the combine harvester are two of the most revolutionary machines, partially responsible for huge increases in agricultural production, equally dramatic reductions in the farm labour force and the consequent acceleration of urbanization as a demographic trend.

2025 John Deere 9900 Self-Propelled Forage Harvester: 956 horsepower.

Modern harvesters are machines of extraordinary efficiency, one able in an hour to reap more than what would once have taken a large team of workers more than a day.  Mechanized harvesters were an early example of the way technology displaces labor at scale and because historically women were always a significant part of the harvesting workforce, they were at least as affected as men.  The development meant one machine operator and his (and they were almost exclusively men) machine could replace even dozens of workers, something which profoundly changed rural economies, the participation of the workforce engaged in agriculture and triggered the re-distribution of the population to urban settlements.  Artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest innovation in technology applied to agriculture as just a one operator + machine combo replaced dozens of workers, multiple machines now go about harvesting which an AI bot handling the control and a dozen or more of these machines can be under the supervision of a single individual sitting somewhere on the planet, not so much controlling the things and monitoring for errors and problems.  Removing the on-site human involvement means it becomes possible to harvest (or otherwise work the fields) 24/7/365 without concerns about intrusions like light, the weather or toilet breaks.  Of course people remain involved to do tasks such as refueling and such but AI taking over many of these roles may be only a matter of time.

1981 Chevrolet Corvette: 190 horsepower. 

John Deere's yellow & green has around the planet for decades been a familiar sight in fields but it's not a mix often seen on the road; strange color-combos are not unknown but in recent decades factories have restricted not only the range of hues offered but also the ways they can be combined.  The 1981 Chevrolet Corvette (above) definitely didn’t leave the assembly line in yellow & green; that season, yellow (code 52) was available but there was no green on the color chart and while two-tone paint was a US$399.00 option, the only choices were Silver/Dark Blue (code 33/38); Silver/Charcoal (code 33/39); Beige/Dark Bronze (code 50/74) & Autumn Red/Dark Claret (code 80/98).  After taking in the effect of the yellow/green combo, the camel leather trim (code 64C/642) seems anti-climatic.

Maybe the Corvette's repaint was ordered by a fan of John Deere’s highly regarded farm equipment because JD’s agricultural products are always finished in a two-tone yellow/green (their construction equipment being yellow & black).  For the 1981 Corvette, a single engine was offered in all 50 states, a 350 cubic inch (5.7 litre) V8 designated L81 which was rated at the same 190 HP (142 kW) as the previous season’s base L48; no high-output version was now available but the L81 could be had with either a manual or automatic transmission (it would prove to be the last C3 Corvette offered with a manual).  Glumly though that drive-train might have been viewed by some who remembered the tyre-smoking machines of a decade-odd earlier, it would have pleased buyers in California because in 1980 their Corvettes received only the 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) V8 found often in taxi-cabs, pickup trucks and station wagons; to them the L81 was an improvement.  The L81’s 180 horsepower certainly wouldn’t impress those in the market for John Deere’s 9900 Self-Propelled Forage Harvester, powered by a 1465 cubic inch (24 litre) Liebherr V12, rated at 956 HP (713 kW) (956 hp), the machine available only in the corporate two-tone yellow & green.  Like Corvettes which have tended to be quite good at their intended purpose and pretty bad at just about everything else, harvesters are specific purpose machines; one which is a model of efficiency at gathering one crop will be hopelessly inept with another and in that they differ from the human workforce which is more adaptable.  However, where there is some similarity in the plants, it can be possible for the one basic machine to be multi-purpose, the role changed by swapping the attachable device which does the actual picking or gathering.   

The Harvesting Effect

The harvesting effect (properly called mortality displacement) is a term from a process in epidemiological statistical analysis which maps and quantifies (1) a period where the human death rate significantly exceeds the predicted level and (2) a subsequent period when aggregate mortality is lower.  A harvesting effect is almost always associated with external factors such as war, extreme climatic conditions, famines or epidemics & pandemics.  Implicit in the model is the notion of a relationship of vulnerability between those who suffer an early death and the sudden change in external circumstances.  For example, when wars occur, there’s inherently the possibility of an accelerated death toll among those most likely to be serving in the most dangerous aspects of military service (fit, healthy young men) whereas when societies are subjected to extremes of heat or cold, it’s the frail and elderly who are most vulnerable.  The harvesting effect is a useful analytical tool because it can quantify the extent to which causation can be attributed: a subsequent drop in the mortality of a target population would suggest a high causal correlation because the heatwave, polar vortex or whatever, has in advance already harvested the expected victims.  That is rationalized as accelerated mortality, those who died as a result of the event were old and frail and thus likely soon anyway to die.  War-time and post-war data is interesting too for those studying not only the long-tail effects of physical injuries sustained in conflict but also those of mental illness caused by the trauma of the experience.  Historians can also use the data, where it exists with a high degree of reliability, to track the extent to which the causalities of war were civilians, something which in the West rose and fell between antiquity and the modern era before spiking dramatically in the wars of the twentieth century.

The harvesting effect is of great interest during and in the aftermath of pandemics and epidemics.  In the sombre world of public health policy, the harvesting effect is noted as one of the factors which can lead to pandemics and epidemics receding or even disappearing, the idea being the disease having already harvested the susceptible; those who remain are the strong who won’t succumb and the resistant who remain unaffected.  As a statistical source, the raw data of excess deaths is helpful too in determining the true death toll from a disease like COVID-19.  Difficult anyway in developing countries where in non-pandemic conditions there’s often a high proportion of deaths where a cause, even if known, isn’t recorded but in countries with highly developed health systems, many factors can mean the data is inaccurate.  That includes social stigma which in some countries apparently appears to some extent to have attached to COVID-19; it was certainly a factor in the early, misleading count of deaths from AIDS, the sudden spike in fatal pneumonia a sociological rather than a medical phenomenon.

Estimation of excess deaths against official COVID-19 deaths, published by The Economist, mid 2021.

A number of institutions accumulated the data-sets necessary to assess the true COVID-19 death toll and several, including the Financial Times and The Economist, collaborated to create the World Mortality Dataset (WMD) which contains both their statistical analysis and some discussion of the results.  At a time when the official global death toll was around 4.8 million, the findings published on the WMD (a perhaps unfortunate acronym) suggests a true number somewhere between 8 and 18.5 million.  Using the same statistical modelling, the death tolls for the previous four influenza pandemics (if happening now), they put at 75 million (1918), 3.1 million (1957), 2.2 million (1968) and 0.4 million (2009).  It certainly appears the official toll is significantly understated but the WMD does caution the usual caveats inhabit the margins: this is a composite of many data sets, capturing not only COVID-19 deaths (strictly speaking) but also those with some indirect association such as those suffering other conditions yet not able to secure timely treatment because the pandemic displaced healthcare resources.  It would be difficult to create a statistically robust formula to calculate relative contributions to death by various factors.  The method the WMD use they represent as:

Excess mortality = (A) Deaths directly caused by COVID infection

+ (B) Deaths caused by medical system collapse due to COVID pandemic

+ (C) Excess deaths from other natural causes

+ (D) Excess deaths from unnatural causes

+ (E) Excess deaths from extreme events: wars, natural disasters etc.

Running the COVID-19 numbers also produced some interesting finding of general interest in the field of public health.  There were some countries, those with natural geographic advantages and which applied stringent control measures, in which actual mortality was lower than that expected, the spreading virus (indirectly) turning the curve negative because the policies enforced had the side-effect of effectively eliminating seasonal influenza and its associated deaths.

The official COVID-19 death toll: 5,476,854 on Wednesday 5 January 2022, 13:42 GMT.            

Discombobulate

Discombobulate (pronounced dis-kuhm-bob-yuh-leyt)

To confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate.

The most frequently used derived forms appear to be the verbs (used with object), discombobulated & discombobulating.  Discombobulation is the noun and discombobulated the adjective.

1834: An Americanism, one of a number of fanciful creations which were coined during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mostly mock-Latin, discombobulate presumably a whimsical alteration of a blend of discompose or discomfit, the implied meaning “to confuse; to frustrate”.  It was an alteration of the equally fake discombobricate & discombobracated, first attested in the early 1800s and driven extinct by its usurper; the other spellings from the era (discombulate & discomboberate) never gained traction and etymologists assume discombobulate prevailed because it offered the easier pronunciation.  The US school of mock-Latin and other creations, believed associated with students at the better universities of the era, included confusticate (confound & confuse), absquatulate (run away; make off), spifflicate (confound; beat), scrumplicate (eat), bloviate (to speak or discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner) & blustrification (the act of celebrating boisterously).

Lindsay Lohan looking discombobulated, New York City, 2014.  The bag is Givenchy’s Disney-inspired Antigona Bambi tote from Riccardo Tisci’s (b 1974) Autumn-Winter 2013 collection.

Because the English vocabulary offers so many easy ways to say much the same thing as the five-syllable discombobulate (befuddle, bewilder, confound, disconcert, fluster, addle, baffle, disturb, frustrate, fuddle, muddle, perplex, puzzle, ruffle, throw, upset, mix up et al), all became more popular.  Discombobulate was rare and indeed sometimes listed as extinct until revived in the early twenty-first century when it became a frequent addition to the lists of interesting, neglected or bizarre words which flourished as the world wide web gained the internet a critical mass, the American Dialect Society in 2009 naming it the most creative word of the year which might not have been the most appropriate category given the creation dated from 1834 but one could see what they meant.  Since, it’s found a niche, perhaps helped by the age of pandemic to which it seems well-suited.

Recombobulation Area, Mitchell Airport terminal, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

It hasn’t (yet) spawned derivatives; there’s no indication the happily contented are describing themselves as “combobulated” any more than they self-label as "gruntled" but for some years Mitchell airport in Milwaukee has provided in the terminal, a “Recombobulation Area” where passengers can gather their thoughts and recover from whatever ghastly experience they’ve just suffered.  Given the nature of modern air travel, it seems a good idea.

Baryon

Baryon (pronounced bar-ee-on)

(1) In physics, a proton, neutron, or any elementary particle that decays into a set of particles that includes a proton; any of a class of elementary particles that have a mass greater than or equal to that of the proton, participate in strong interactions, and have a spin of 1/2 . Baryons are either nucleons or hyperons. The baryon number (baryogensis) is the number of baryons in a system minus the number of antibaryons.

(2) In astronomy, a specific description for objects in the universe composed of conventional atomic matter.

1950–1955: From the Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús & barý(s)) (heavy) +‎ -on (the Ancient Greek -ον (-on) suffix ending neuter nouns and adjectives).  The word was coined by Dutch-American physicist Abraham Pais (1918–2000) and chosen because at the time, most known elementary particles had lower masses than baryons. Baryons are significant in cosmology because the standard model assumes the Big Bang produced a state with equal amounts of baryons and antibaryons.  Baryon is a noun & baryonic is an adjective; the noun plural is baryons.

Of matter

For experts only: The baryon number.

By definition, baryonic matter should only include matter composed of baryons. It should include protons, neutrons and all the objects composed of them (ie atomic nuclei), but exclude things such as electrons and neutrinos which are actually leptons.  Astronomers however apply the term ‘baryonic matter’ rather more liberally, arguing that on astronomical scales, protons and neutrons are always accompanied by electrons (in appropriate numbers for astronomical objects to possess all but zero net charge).  Astronomers therefore use ‘baryonic’ to refer to all objects made of normal atomic matter, essentially ignoring the presence of electrons (which represent less than 0.0005% of the mass).  Neutrinos, on the other hand, are considered non-baryonic by astronomers and physicists alike.  Another of astronomy’s quirks is that black holes are often included as baryonic matter although physicists insist that while most of the matter from which black holes form is baryonic matter, once swallowed by the black hole, this distinction is lost and, although still subject to speculation, the current orthodoxy is that black holes cannot possess properties such as baryonic or non-baryonic.  Objects of baryonic matter include clouds of cold gas, planets, comets, asteroids, stars, neutron stars and (possibly) black holes.  Non-baryonic matter includes neutrinos, free electrons, dark matter, supersymmetric particles, axions, and (possibly) black holes.

Bottle

Bottle (pronounced bot-l)

(1) A portable vessel, usually of plastic or glass (the original containers of this type were of leather) and typically (though by no means exclusively) cylindrical with a narrow neck that can be closed with a cap or cork, for containing liquids

(2) The contents of such a container; as much as such a container contains.

(3) As “the bottle”, a verbal shorthand for alcohol, strong drink, intoxicating beverages; liquor.

(4) To put into or seal in a bottle.

(5) To preserve (usually fruits or vegetables) by heating to a sufficient temperature and then sealing in a jar (not a common use in the US).

1325–1375: From the Middle English botel (bottle, flask, wineskin), from the Anglo-French, from the Old French boteille (the Modern French is bouteille), from botel, from botte (bundle) probably from the Vulgar Latin butticula (literally “a little cask”), the construct being the Late Latin butti(s) (cask) + -cula (ultimately an alternative form of -ulus; added to a noun to form a diminutive of that noun) although etymologists note the origin remains disputed and there may be a Germanic link (although some maintain it was actually from Archaic Greek), possibly with the Low German Buddel and the Old High German būtil, the latter the source for the German Beutel).  The Latin was the source also of the Spanish botella and the Italian bottiglia.  The third-person singular simple present is bottles, the present participle bottling and the simple past & past participle bottled.  The noun plural is bottles.

The borrowings by other languages make an impressive list including the Assamese বটল (botol (which may be via the Portuguese botelha)), the Bengali বোতল (botôl), the Bislama botel, the Cornish botel, the Brunei Malay butul, the Dutch bottel, the Ese butorua, the Fiji Hindi botal, the Gamilaraay baadhal, the Georgian ბოთლი (botli), the Gujarati: બાટલી (bāṭlī), the Hindi: बोतल (botal (which may be via the Portuguese botelha)), the Dari بوتل‎ (bôtal), the Jamaican Creole bokl & bakl, the Kannada: ಬಾಟಲಿ (bāṭali), the Malay & Indonesian botol, the Min Nan 帽突 (bō-tu̍t), the Papiamentu bòter, the Maori pātara, the Marathi: बाटली (bāṭlī), the Nepali बोतल (botal), the Pashto بوتل‎ (botál), the Pennsylvania German Boddel, the Persian بطری‎ (botri), the Punjabi: ਬੋਤਲ (botal), the Samo botolo, the Sranan Tongo batra, the Scottish Gaelic botal, the Shona bhotoro, the Sinhalese: බෝතලය (bōtalaya), the Swahili libhodlela, the Tok Pisin botol, the Welsh potel, the Xhosa ibhotile & imbodlela, the Yiddish: באָטל‎ (botl) and the Zulu bhodlela.

Bottle features much in UK slang.  The phrase “to bottle” refers to (1) a bottle as a weapon (usually involving it either as a blunt instrument or (when broken) as an improvised bladed weapon to slash or stab (“glassing” the equivalent if a glass drinking receptacle is used), (2) to pelt (a musical act on stage, a sporting team on the field of play etc) with bottles as a sign of disapproval, (3) to refrain from doing something at the last moment because of a sudden loss of courage (that use based on the cockney rhyming slang "bottle and glass" (meaning "ass" as an expression of courage or nerve)) or (4) money collected by street entertainers or buskers.  In printing, it can refer to (1) pages printed several on a sheet (to rotate slightly when the sheet is folded two or more times) or (2) as “bottle-arsed”, the old printers' slang for a typeface wider at one end than the other.  Bottle (with variations such as bottle-fed & bottle-baby) is also a general term to reference infants fed from a bottle with baby formula or some milk other than the mother’s natural supply; that from which the infant is fed is the baby-bottle (wholly replacing the suckling-bottle from 1844).  A bottle-neck is any point in a system which is a cause of inefficiency or congestion, based on the idea of the neck of a bottle being the narrowest part and thus establishing the maximum flow-rate; use in this context dates from 1896 in the specific sense of “narrow entrance, spot where traffic becomes congested”, extended to “anything which obstructs a flow” by 1922, the verb in this sense used since 1928.  To “bottle (something) up” is not to deal with problems or emotions; letting something “out of the bottle” is the less common companion term.  Interestingly, the figurative use “bottling-up” in this context is from the 1620s, pre-dating the literal use (putting stuff in bottles for storage) by two decades.  In a variety of forms (“on the bottle”, “hitting the bottle”, “to drown one’s troubles in the bottle” et al), bottle has since the seventeenth century been a generalized reference to alcohol and its (usually excessive) consumption.

Natural red-head Lindsay Lohan during bottle-blonde phase with bottle of Fiji Water.  As a modifier for various hair-colors (though almost always blonde if applied to women and something more youthfully dark with men), “bottle” was a suggestion of the use of dye, bottle-blonde the most frequently used.

First sold in 1996, Fiji Water quickly became a celebrity favorite, many attracted presumably by the claim that, coming from an “ancient artesian aquifer”, it was "Earth's finest water" but it attracted controversy because at the time when the company began shipping to high-income countries what was a high-priced, premium product, almost half the Fijian population lacked access to clean drinking-water (the Fijian government claims fewer than 10% are now so deprived).  Analysis also revealed an extraordinary environmental impact by the time it reached the consumer, more water consumed in the extraction, production and distribution processes to produce one bottle of Fiji Water than was in the delivered product.  A combination of the use of diesel-fueled machinery, plastic packaging and the vast distances over which what is a very heavy product was shipped meant a effective carbon footprint per litre well over a thousand time higher than the safe tap water available just about anywhere it was sold.

A magnetic bottle is a machine created by placing two magnetic mirrors in close proximity; they’re used in experimental physics temporarily to trap charged particles, preferably electrons because they’re lighter than ions, the best known use of the device to isolate high energy particles of plasma in fusion experiments.  A message in a bottle is literally that, a written note placed in a sealed bottle and cast to the ocean currents, hopefully to be found somewhere some day; these may be distress messages requesting rescue or for no particular purpose.  Although long obsolete, a bottle was once also something tied in a bundle, especially (hay), the link being to the Old French botte (bundle).  The zoological term bottle-nose dates from the 1630s, applied to the porpoise from the 1660s although as a general descriptor in engineering and architecture, it’s noted from the 1560s.  The bottle-washer is from 1837, the bottle-shop a surprisingly recent 1929 and the first mechanical bottle-opener was advertised in 1875.  A jar, jug, urn, vial, canteen, carafe, cruet, decanter, ewer, flagon, flask, phial, soldier, dead soldier or vacuum bottle can also be used to store liquids and certain designs of some of these are in some cases classified as bottles but the use is technical and a bottle is usually defined and understood in its most simple and traditional form.  

The UK dialectal use to describe a dwelling, building or house is obsolete.  It was from the Middle English bottle, botel & buttle, from the Old English botl (building, house), from the Proto-West Germanic bōþl, from the Proto-Germanic budlą, buþlą & bōþlą (house, dwelling, farm), from the primitive Indo-European bhow & bow (literally “to swell, grow, thrive, be, live, dwell”).  It was cognate with the North Frisian budel, bodel, bol & boel (dwelling, inheritable property), the Dutch boedel, boel (inheritance, estate), the Danish bol (farm), the Icelandic ból (dwelling, abode, farm, lair) and related to the Old English bytlan (to build).

The anatomy of the bottle

The finish (also called the closure) is the very top where the bottle is sealed with a cork (natural, composite or some alternative) or screw-top cap, the latter increasingly popular but now that the problem of cork taint (caused usually by trichloroanisole (TCA)), appears to have been solved, cork is making something of a comeback, aided perhaps by the tactile experience of opening a bottle with a corkscrew.  Collectively, the finish is made of a lip and collar, the collar the lower part of the finish, below the lip.  Structurally, the finish is all that is above the distinctive upper terminus of the neck, the term “finish” a glassmakers reference to the final process of making a mouth-blown bottle (ie the final step or the "finishing") and it’s sometimes also referred to sometimes as a "top," "lip" or "mouth".  The wrapping (metal or some form of composite) which is applied around the finish is called the capsule.

The bore (also called the aperture, corkage, opening, mouth, orifice or throat) is the opening at the top of the finish from which the bottle's contents are poured.  The relationship between bore & stopper in a bottle is exactly the same as that of cylinder & piston in an internal combustion engine.  The neck is the (almost always) constricted part of a bottle that lies above the shoulder and below the finish.  The sealing surface sits atop the bore and is where the closure and finish mesh to seal the contents inside.  The extreme top portion of the finish (rim) is sometimes referred to as the sealing surface though that is dependent on the type of finish.  It varies with the technology, the sealing surface on a cork finish is primarily the inside of the bore whereas if an external threaded finish combination is used, the rim becomes the sealing surface against which the screw cap twists down and seals.

An embossed bottle.

The shoulder is the portion of the bottle which lies between the point of change in vertical tangency of the body and the base of the neck.  In the design of bottles, the shoulder is the upper of the two transition zones between portions, the other being the heel, the body the part where most of a bottle’s contents are stored.  The body lies between the shoulder and heel (insweep) and it’s on the body that most labels appear.  Some bottles feature an embossing, raised lettering, designs, or graphics on the surface of the bottle that are formed by incising or engraving on the inside mold surface(s).  The embossing was often effected by the use of interchangeable (usually cast-iron) engraved plates which could be swapped in the same bottle mold so runs of different embossing patterns could be applied to the same type bottle.  The use of these transformed the economics of bottle production; simply with a swap of the plate, the same mold could be used to produce scores of unique and individually embossed bottles of the same shape and design.  The plates are collectables and are called "slug plates" by collectors although the industry insists they were for centuries never known as anything but “plates”.  Bottles thus produced are said to have emerged from a "plate mold".  Mold seams are raised lines on the body, shoulder, neck, finish, and/or base of the bottle that are formed where the edges of different mold sections parts came together, some manufacturers preferring "mold line(s)" although in the long history of glass-making, they’ve also been known as "joint-marks" & "parting lines".

Pol Roger Vintage Brut (1947).

The heel (also called the insweep) is the lowest portion of the bottle where the body begins to curve into the base, terminating usually at the resting point of the bottle (ie the extreme outer edge of the base so the heel may be thought of as the transition zone between the horizontal plane of the base and the vertical plane of the body).  Wine aficionados like to call this the "basal edge", a kind of masonic code-word with which they identify each-other.  The base, as the name implies, is the very bottom of the bottle; the surface upon which it stands.  Traditionally, manufacturers’ quoted measurements of a base are of the greatest diameter (round) or greatest width and depth (non-round) and the "resting point" of a bottle is usually the extreme outside edge of the base.  The kick-up (also called the punt or push-up) is the steep rise or pushed-up portion of the base which slightly reduces the internal volume of the bottle.  Originally, kick-ups were included certainly to enhance strength & stability but historians remain divided on whether the shape was crafted to collect any sediment in the liquid.  In the early twentieth century, some US glassmakers called this feature a "shove-up" but the term never caught on.

Conversation

Conversation (pronounced kon-ver-sey-shuhn)

(1) A (usually) informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc, by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy.

(2) Association or social intercourse; intimate acquaintance.

(3) In tort law, as criminal conversation, an action variously available (according to circumstances), pursuant to adultery.

(4) Behavior or manner of living (obsolete).

(5) Close familiarity; intimate acquaintance, as from constant use or study (now rare).

1300–1350: From the Middle English conversacion & conversacioun, from the Old French conversacion (behavior, life, way of life, monastic life), from the Latin conversātiōnem (accusative singular of conversātiō) (conversation) (frequent use, frequent abode in a place, intercourse, conversation), noun of action from the past-participle stem of conversari (to live, dwell, live with, keep company with), the passive voice of conversare (to turn about, turn about with (conversor (abide, keep company with) a frequently used derivative)), from an assimilated form, the construct being com (with, together) + versare, frequentative of vertere (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European root wer (to turn, bend).  Both the mid-fourteenth century meanings (1) "place where one lives or dwells" and (2) "general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world" are long obsolete.  Those senses were picked up from the Old French conversacion and directly from the Latin conversationem.

The modern sense of "informal interchange of thoughts and sentiments by spoken words" dates from the 1570s but this for a long time ran in parallel with being a synonym for "sexual intercourse", in use since at least the late fourteenth century.  Depending on the circles in which one moved, that might have been the source of misunderstandings.  In common law, the tort of criminal conversation emerged in the late eighteenth century.  The "conversation-piece" was noted from 1712 in the sense of "painting representing a group of figures arranged as if in conversation" al la "still life"; by 1784 it had come to mean "subject for conversation, something about which to talk".

The tort of criminal conversation

Like “knowing” (of biblical origin), "conversation" was a euphemism for illicit sex and in this sense has long been obsolete except as “criminal conversation”. which, at common law, is a tort which can be used in proceedings pursuant to certain types of adultery.  Dating from the eighteenth century, although abolished in England in 1857, the tort survived in Australia until 1975 when the Family Law Act replaced the old Matrimonial Causes Act, a piece of law reform which much disappointed Liberal Party lawyers, not a few moralists (professional & amateur) and readers of the Melbourne Truth, a most disreputable tabloid noted for its outstanding racing form guide and publication of salacious photographs (often taken through the windows of St Kilda motels) used as evidence in divorce cases.  The action remains available in a handful of jurisdictions in the United States where the rules can be more liberal than permitted in English courts in that women are entitled to sue.  The name has always been misleading; although called "criminal" conversation, the action was only ever strictly a claim for damages in money.

Example one (Cheryl & Gareth): A man has an affair with a married woman.  

The husband of the unfaithful wife would have been able to sue the unfaithful husband in the tort of criminal conversation.

It was a precisely defined tort which existed to allow wronged parties to seek monetary compensation for acts of unfaithfulness.  Under criminal conversation, within certain limitations of timings and sequence of events, a husband could sue any man who slept with his wife, even if consensual.  If the couple was already separated, the husband could sue only if the separation was caused by the person he was suing.

Example two (Vikki & Barnaby): A man has an affair with an unmarried woman.  

No action would have been possible in the tort of criminal conversation because the woman has no husband to raise the action.  Only a husband could be the plaintiff, and only the "other man" could be the defendant.

Reflecting the moral basis of the tort, each separate adulterous act could give rise to a separate claim for criminal conversation and curiously, the plaintiff, defendant and wife were not permitted to take the stand, evidence being given by other observers, often servants in the employment of one of the parties to the suit.  The tort was a matter wholly a creature of civil law and the definitions of adultery codified in canon law had no relevance to the offence or any subsequent penalty.  Under canon law, someone was deemed to have committed adultery if they enjoyed intimacy with someone while married to another whereas if the other party was also married, the offence was double adultery but neither aggravated the offence or could be offered in mitigation.

Conversation piece: Lindsay Lohan in conversation with her sister Aliana, La Conversation bakery & café, West Hollywood, California, April 2012.  Sadly, La Conversation is now closed.

Conversation piece: The Schutz Family and their Friends on a Terrace (1725) by Philip Mercier, Tate Gallery.  As a genre in painting, the "conversation piece" was a notionally informal (though obviously often staged) group portrait, usually small in scale and depicting families (and sometimes groups of friends) in domestic interior or garden settings.  They were popular for much of the eighteenth century, the most noted artists in the style including Philip Mercier (1689-1760), William Hogarth (1697-1764), Arthur Devis (1712-1787) and Johan Zoffany (1733-1810).

The form is interesting because it reflects the emergence of a new component of the leisured class, the newly rich merchants, or mine and factory owners whose wealth was derived from the profits of industrial revolution and the country’s expanding international trade.  The painters tended to show their subjects in genteel interaction, taking tea, playing games or sitting with their pets.  Conversation pieces were thus different from the formal court or grand style portraits favored by the aristocracy and were an attempt to represent the new middle class behaving as they imagined the old gentry did in everyday life.  Their influence worked also in reverse, aristocratic and royal patrons soon commissioning artist to paint their families in a similar vein.