Catharsis

Catharsis (pronounced kuh-thahr-sis)

(1) The purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

(2) In psychiatry, a form of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of repressed, pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.

(3) The discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

(4) In Aristotelian literary criticism, the purging or purification of the emotions through the evocation of pity and fear, as in tragedy.

(5) In medicine, purgation, especially of the bowels.

1770: From the New Latin catharsis, from the Ancient Greek kátharsis (a cleansing) equivalent to kathar, variant stem of kathaírein (to cleanse, purge, purify), from katharós (pure, clear of dirt, clean, spotless, open, free, clear of shame or guilt, purified) + sis.    Root was the Medieval Latin Catharī (the Pure), from the Byzantine Greek καθαροί or katharoí (the Pure), plural of καθαρός (katharós) (pure).  Most of the extended senses found in Modern English are of unknown origin, the original sense from 1770 being "a bodily purging" (especially of the bowels), then an important aspect of medical practice.  After 1872 it came to be applied to emotions when it was referred to as "a purging through vicarious experience"; the psychotherapy sense first recorded in 1909 in Abraham Brill's (1874–1948) translation of Sigmund Freud's (1856–1939) Selected Papers on Hysteria  (Dr Brill’s translation the first of Freud into English).  The alternative spelling cathartick went extinct in the mid-nineteenth century.  The adjective cathartic dates from its use in medical literature in the 1610s in the sense of preparations claimed to be "purgative; purifying"; more general use noted by the 1670s.  Presumably, the cures proved efficacious because the adjective cathartical soon emerged, existing also in the plural as the noun catharticals (laxatives).

Cathar (religious puritan (implied in Catharism)), dates from the 1570s and was from the Medieval Latin Cathari (the Pure), the name taken by the Novatians and other Christian sects, from the New Testament Greek katharizein (to make clean), from the Ancient Greek katharós (pure).  It was applied particularly to the twelfth century sects (Albigenses et al) in Languedoc and the Piedmont which denied and defied the authority of the pope.  The feminine proper name Catherine is from the French Catherine, from the Medieval Latin Katerina, from the Classical Latin Ecaterina, from the Ancient Greek Aikaterine.  The -h- was introduced in the sixteenth century, probably a tribute in folk etymology from the Greek katharos (pure).  Familiar in Modern English also as Katherine, Kate, Cate and other variations, the initial Greek vowel preserved in the Russian form Ekaterina.  For reasons unknown, Catherine began to be used as a type of pear in the 1640s.

The term “Catherine wheel” was originally from the early thirteenth century and described a torture device, the spiked wheel on which (according to some versions of what is thought to be a most dubious tale) the legendary virgin Saint Catherine of Alexandria was in 307 tortured and martyred by the pagan Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (circa 283–312; a Roman emperor, 306-312), thus becoming, in the associative way the Church did these things, patron saint of spinners.  She was a most popular saint in medieval times and popularized the name Catherine (and its variations), the favor enduring to this day.  It was applied from 1760 to a kind of firework which shot flame from a revolving spiral tube, creating the shape of a spinning wheel.

Of the Cathars: Catharism

With origins in Persia and the Byzantine Empire, Catharism was a dualist (or Gnostic revival) fork of Christianity, the movement most active during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in what is now northern Italy and southern France.  It was not a good time to be promoting the notion of two Gods, one good, the other evil; this dualism was however the essential core of Cathar beliefs.  The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament God, creator of the physical world whom many Cathars, and not a few of their persecutors, identified as Satan.  It was an exacting creed which meant all visible matter, including the human body, was created by the evil god and therefore tainted with sin.  Taint might be an understatement; Cathars thought human spirits were the lost spirits of angels trapped within the physical creation of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through what they called the consolamentum, a highly ritualized form of baptism.

The Holy See's foreign policy when the pope did have a few divisions: The papal army, the Cathars & the Albigensian Crusade.

All this was heresy to the monotheistic Roman Catholic Church, founded on the fundamental principle of one God, the creator of all things temporal and spiritual.  The Church’s crackdown got serious during the pontificate of Innocent III (circa 1160-1216; pope 1198-1216), initially by means of political and theological persuasion but with the assassination of his emissary, Innocent abandoned diplomacy, declared his dead ambassador a martyr and launched a military operation, the twenty-year (1209-1229) Albigensian Crusade.  It was the beginning of the end of Catharism.  After 1244 when the great fortress of Montsegur near the Pyrenees was razed, the Cathars became an underground movement, many fleeing to Italy where the persecution was milder.  The hierarchy faded but the heresy lingered until it finally it vanished early in the fifteenth century.

Simone Weil.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher and political activist who, in a manner unusual among left-leaning intellectuals of the era, returned to the religion ignored in her youth and became attracted to the mystical.  Remembered for her political writings and active service in both the Spanish Civil War and occupied France, she died tragically young in the self-sacrificial manner she had lived her life.  Among the more delicate historians, (typified by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)), there’s often an undisguised preference for Greek over Roman but few went as far as Weil who could find no virtue in the latter and was barely less dismissive of the medieval Church.  By contrast, in the Cathars, she found exemplars of goodness although she offered few reasons and fewer still shreds of evidence for this.  Most convincing is the notion that what Weil called affliction (malheur) goes beyond merely describing suffering and makes of it, if not a fetish, then certainly a calling.  Weil felt there were only some able truly to experience affliction: those least deserving of suffering.  Seduced by the lure of the tragic and having trawled history, she found in the Cathars the doomed victims with whom she could identify, drawn to them as Sylvia Plath was to Ted Hughes.

Simone Weil Agitprop.

Although her readership remains substantially limited to those clustered around a number of academic and feminist circles, Weil’s influence on literature has been profound.  She wrote neither fiction nor poetry but in her prolific output, existing mostly in letters and notebooks which in her lifetime were almost entirely unseen and edited for publication only posthumously, lay an extraordinary exploration of the contradictions and confusion of the modern world.  One gains much from reading Weil for despite her tone there’s pleasure in enjoying the lucidity and discovering an uncompromising critique of a world poisoned by the exclusivity of Christianity and its damnation of progress as heresy.  But guilt tinges the pleasure.  This tortured soul lived and died in anguish and dark despair because she knew she deserved no more in a world of where injustice had triumphed and probably forever would.  One fears that in all her brief years, she may never have felt a moment’s joy.

The modern catharsis is a public event, best enjoyed after emerging from rehab.  Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) and Oprah Winfrey (b 1954), 2013.  

Callipygian

Callipygian (pronounced kal-uh-pij-ee-uhn)

Of, pertaining to, or having beautiful buttocks.

Circa 1800: A Latinized form from the Ancient Greek καλλίπυγος (kallípugos) (of, pertaining to, or having beautiful buttocks), the epithet of a statue of Aphrodite at Syracuse, the construct being calli (kalli) (from the Ancient Greek κάλλος (kállos) (beauty)) + πυγή (pugē) (tail; buttocks; rump) + -ian (the adjectival suffix).

Despite the classical association, there were serious critics who deplored the word pygē, dismissing it as mere slang “…completely avoided in epic poetry and higher literature” with “…no convincing etymology" although etymologists trace it back to the primitive Indo-European spugeh with cognates including the Latin pūga, the Old High German fochen, and Old Church Slavonic паоуга (pauga), пѫга (pǫga).  The objection may be because it was used also in the figurative to mean "fat, swelling" but the combinging form  pyg- exists in many technical (often medical) words including pygalgia (pain in the buttocks) and dasypygal (having hairy buttocks).  The lingustic snobbery didn't extend to the taxonomy and systematics of penguins, the Adélie penguin named Pygoscelis adeliae, the construct of the genus Pygoscelis being pygē + skelos (leg").  For those who might think it an anyway handy adjective, the comparative is more callipygian and the superlative most callipygian, applied as appropriate although the TikToK generation has a more accessible lexicon for such purposes.

Vénus callipyge (First century BC) in white marble by an unknown sculptor, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

The Ἀφροδίτη Καλλίπυγος (Aphrodite Kallipygos), known also as the Venus Callipyge or Callipygian Venus (all translating literally as “Venus (or Aphrodite) of the beautiful buttocks”, is a marble statue, carved in Ancient Rome and assumed to be a copy of a Greek original.  It’s one of the most famous examples of a sculptor’s interpretation of the device ἀνάσυρμα (anasyrma, the construct being ἀνά (ana) (up, against, back) + σύρμα (syrma) (skirt) (ἀνασύρματα & ἀνασυρμός (anasyrmata & anasyrmos) the plural), the gesture of lifting the skirt or kilt.  Known also from religious rituals, eroticism and vulgar humor, the technique in art pre-dates antiquity.  The statue depicts a partially draped woman, raising her light peplos (a woman’s ankle-length gown) to uncover the hips and buttocks, her gaze cast back down her shoulder.  Although most often identified as being of Venus (Aphrodite), this has never been certain.

The dates from the first century BC, the lost Greek original thought to have been rendered in bronze and executed around 300 BC, very early in the classical Hellenistic era although nothing is known of its history until it was rediscovered, missing its head, during The Renaissance.  The head was recreated, first in the sixteenth century and later the eighteenth when the sculptor closely followed the earlier restoration, the head made to look over the shoulder which had the effect further to draw attention to the bare buttocks, something thought greatly to enhance its popularity and certainly influence those who would later reprise the work.  This would not be the only time the artists of the high Renaissance would modify reality a bit to so construct an idealized vision of the classical world of Antiquity.  It was in the seventeenth century the statue was identified as Venus and associated with a temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos at Syracuse.

Lindsay Lohan displaying callipygian qualities with feet nicely juxtaposed, Playboy Magazine shoot, 2011.

That association is however tenuous because it was discussed by the (third century AD) writer Athenaeus of Naucratis in his fifteen-volume Deipnosophists (dinner-table philosophers).  According to Athenaeus, two beautiful sisters from a farm near Syracuse argued over which of them had the shapelier buttocks, and accosted a passer-by, asking him to judge.  The young man, the son of a rich local merchant voted for the older sister and found himself quite smitten with her, quickly falling in love.  In one of the fortunate coincidences which pepper myths ancient and modern, the man’s younger brother heard of this and went to see the girls for himself and, as much of an emo as his sibling, fell in love with the younger sister.  The brothers refused to consider other brides, so their father arranged the marriages.  The citizens dubbed the sisters Kallipugoi (the women with beautiful asses) and dedicated a temple to Aphrodite, calling her Kallipygos.  The cult of Aphrodite attracted other writers, the Christian author Clement of Alexandria (circa 150-215) included it in his table of the erotic manifestations of paganism and variations of Athenaeus’s tale circulated in copies of Vincenzo Cartari’s (1531-1590) retelling in Le Imagini con la sposizione dei dei de gli antichi (The Images of the Gods of the Ancients and their Explanations (1556)) some of the stories from classical mythology.

Vénus callipyge (1683-1686) in white marble by François Barois (1656–1726), Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The Venus Callipyge in the Louvre Museum in Paris is one of several copies of the Roman version of the Venus from the Farnese Collection.  Then as now, the taste of the public ebbed and flowed and what was declared to be obscene moved in the arc of a pendulum, this rendition modified with additional marble layers which, as historians of art note, were draped across the eponymous feature “so as not to offend an increasingly prudish public taste”.  After the French Revolution, it was displayed in the Jardin des Tuileries (the public garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde), reflecting the politics of 1789.  That a statue in in a French museum has the buttocks depicted in swirling fabric while those on show in Italy are bare is mere coincidence and no inferences about national character should be drawn.

The adjective callipygian need not be restricted to the human form and can be applied anthropomorphically.  In different ways, stylists can apply to machinery the motifs of the baroque, the sensuous the athletic or the muscular.

1 1974 Dino 246 GTS (C&F) by Ferrari.

2 1958 De Soto Firesweep convertible by Chrysler.

3 1965 Jaguar E-Type (modified as Eagle Speedster 4.7).

4 1971 Chevrolet Corvette Coupé LS6 by General Motors.

5 1967 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 (Duetto).

6 1971 Mercedes-Benz W111 (280SE 3.5 Coupé).

7 1973 BMW E9 (3.0 CSi).

8 1971 Lamborghini Miura P400SV.

9 1966 AC Shelby Cobra 427 S/C.

Demon

Demon (pronounced dee-muhn (U) or dee-mon (non-U))

(1) An evil supernatural spirit; devil or fiend; an evil spirit resident in or working for Hell; a devil; a false god or idol; a Satanic divinity.

(2) An evil passion or influence.

(3) A most wicked, cruel or malevolent person; also (in weakened sense) a mischievous person, especially a child.

(4) A person who is extremely skillful in, energetic at, or devoted to a given activity, especially a sport.

(5) Of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or noting a demon.

(6) In computing, a part of a computer program, such as a help facility, that can run in the background behind the current task or application, and which will only begin to work when certain conditions are met or when it is specifically invoked; often styled daemon.

(7) A person's fears or anxieties (always in the plural and usually in the form “haunted by their demons” or “facing their demons”).

(8) In Greek mythology, a tutelary deity or spirit intermediate between the major Olympian gods and mankind, especially a deified hero or the entity which supposedly guided Socrates, telling him what not to do.

(9) In the thought experiments of both physics and philosophy, a hypothetical entity with special abilities postulated for the purposes required.

(10) A person's inner spirit or genius; a guiding or creative impulse (archaic).

(11) In card games, a type of patience or solitaire played in the UK & US.

(12) Any of various hesperiid butterflies of the genera Notocrypta and Udaspes.

Circa 1200-1250: From the Middle English demon (an evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, an incubus, a devil), from the Medieval Latin dēmōn, daemōn & daemoniumm (lar, familiar spirit, guardian spirit), from the Ancient Greek daimónion (thing of divine nature (though when used by Jewish and Christian writers: “evil spirit”)), neuter of daimónios, from δαίμων (daímōn) (deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity) and in both the Greek and Latin, the meanings sometime extended to souls of the dead and “one's genius, lot, or fortune”.  Ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European dai-mon (divider, provider (of fortunes or destinies)) from the root da (to divide).  The alternative spellings daemon & daimon was used in specialized senses and remain a favourite of the modern gaming industry; daimon was a transliteration of the Greek daimōn which was deployed to avoid the post-classical associations of demon (often in the adjectival form daimonic).  The demoness (female demon) dates from the 1630s.  Demon is a noun; the noun plural is demons.

Crooked Hillary Clinton depicted as a demon (believed to be digitally-altered image).

The malignant sense existed in English from the start because the Greek word was used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and the Vulgate (the principal Latin version of the Bible, prepared mainly by the theologian Saint Jerome (circa 344-Circa 420) in the late fourth century, and (as revised in 1592) adopted as the official text for the Roman Catholic Church) for "god of the heathen, heathen idol" and also for "unclean spirit".  This was also part of the Jewish tradition where authors had used the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim (lords, idols) in the Septuagint and in Matthew 8:31 there appears daimones, translated as deofol in the Old English & feend or deuil in the Middle English.  A more evocative word in the Old English word was hellcniht (literally "hell-knight").  The inherited sense from the Ancient Greek (supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god; a ministering spirit) appeared in English from the 1560s, written variously as daemon or daimon.  The meaning "destructive or hideous person" is from the 1610s and as "an evil agency personified" (ie the demon drink), from 1712.  In another sense in late fourteenth century English, the “Demon of Socrates” was a daimonion (a divine principle or inward oracle) although his accusers (and later the Church Fathers) represented this otherwise.  The Demon Star (1895) is Algol (variable star (Beta Persei)) in the constellation Perseus, documented in the late fourteenth century, which translates literally as "the Demon" from the Arabic al-ghul (the demon), from which is derived the modern ghoul.  It corresponds, in modern representations of the constellation, to the gorgon's head Perseus holds, but probably it was so called because it visibly varies in brightness every three days, which sets it apart from other bright stars.  In one of the most famous fragments of English verse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) Kubla Khan (1798), there are the lines:

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

The noun demonarchy (rule or dominion of demons) first appeared in the 1640s while the noun demonology (the study of demons or beliefs about demons) had appeared in both secular and church documents as early as the 1590s, the related terms of the discipline being demonologer & demonological.  The adjective demonic (also daemonic) (devilish, of the nature of or pertaining to a demon), from the Latin daemonicus dates from the 1660s while demonical (from the Old English glossed daemonicus with deofelseoc (devil-sick) was from later in the century.  The adjective demoniac (possessed by a demon, insane) was from circa 1400 but several decades earlier there had been the noun demoniak, (one who is possessed, a lunatic), from the Late Latin daemoniacus, from the Greek daimoniakos (possessed by a demon), from diamond.  From the 1640s the adjective was used in the sense of "of or pertaining to demons or spirits" while by 1820 this had extended to a rather softened "devilish"; the related forms were demoniacal & demoniacally.

Lindsay Lohan in demonic pose to celebrate her twenty-third birthday, 2009.

The verb demonize (also demonise) (to make into a demon (literally or figuratively)) dates from 1778, either as a construct built from the noun or from the Medieval Latin daemonizare, all influenced by the Greek daimonizesthai (to be under the power of a tutelary deity) and the sense in the New Testament of "to be possessed by a demon”, the related forms demonized, demonizing & demonization all in use by the late eighteenth century.  The noun Pandæmonium (pandemonium the modern form) was in 1667 coined by John Milton (1608-1674) in Paradise Lost as the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell (the high capital of Satan and all his peers and the abode of all the demons), the construct being the Greek pan- (all) + the Late Latin daemonium (evil spirit) from the Greek daimonion (inferior divine power) from daimōn (in the sense of lesser god).

The Dodge Demons

The 1969 Dodge Swinger 340 (left), a platform familiar in Australia where it was produced (1969-1971) in a variety of configurations including a two-door hardtop (a 1971 VG Regal 770 (centre)) and four-door sedans (a 1971 long-wheelbase VIP (right)).

The Dodge Dart of the mid 1960s was a compact (in US terms) economy car which fulfilled its role well, lasting indeed until the late 1970s when it turned out to be in many ways superior to its ill-fated replacements.  However, an unusual conjunction of economic, legislative and demographic factors in the late 1960s made the Dart an ideal platform for a cheap muscle car which could easily and quickly be built from the corporate parts bin.  Its humble origins were never entirely disguised and it always lurked behind the sturm und drang of the bigger, more illustrious models like the Charger, Challenger and Daytona but as a bargain-priced muscle car, it deserved success.  Dodge had tentatively dipped the Dart’s toe into the muscle car waters in 1967 when it introduced the Dart GTS which, fitted with a 273 cubic inch (4.4 litre) V8 performed admirably given its modest specification but it the next year it became available with a new 340 cubic inch (5.5 litre) V8 which, thought under-rated at 275 (gross) horsepower, was one of the best units of the era.  Able in most cases to match the performance offered by much of the bigger-engined competition, reviews were positive and in 1969 a separate line called the Swinger 340 was released, a package which convinced Dodge to abandon its brief flirtation with overkill, not renewing the availability of the 383 & 440 cubic inch (6.3 & 7.2 litre) V8 engines in the platform.  The big-block engines were really suitable only for a drag strip, the lighter 340 a better idea.

1971 Dodge Demon 340.

Demon decal with demonic pitchfork.

In 1971, the Dart received an additional body style, borrowed from their corporate companion Plymouth which had added the Duster coupé as a stylish addition to the Valiant line, their equivalent of the compact Dart.  However, Dodge’s marketing people in the early 1970s either smoked too much weed or didn’t get out enough because shortly after flirting with the idea of adding statutory grape to their paint colour charts, they decided to call their new high-performance compact the Demon.  That upset the Christian lobby, influential even then but remarkably, the marketing department was going to use the name Beaver until more worldly types told them about its use in slang.  The churches weren’t best pleased about Demon but, given the scriptural basis, they relented despite the cartoon devil on a decal stuck to the fenders.  The churches, not impressed with a marketing strategy which seemed to support the Antichrist weren’t convinced by the explanation that it was all about a play on words (Come in for a Demon-stration) and continued to protest.  Dodge persisted and although denied statutory grape, buyers could choose lurid colors like Go-Green and Citron Yella while for those intent on building the quickest version possible, there was the Demon Sizzler package which bundled a number of dress-up and high performance options.  It was a good combination at a low price but it was out-sold by the mechanically identical Plymouth Duster 340s possibly because the Christian lobby had actually organized the preaching of sermons condemning Dodge as doing the Devil’s work so in 1973 the Demon nomenclature (and the offending cartoon) was dropped, the thing re-branded to the bland Dart Sport, a line which ran for three years (although the once virile 340 would be detuned and then replaced with a much milder 360 cubic inch (5.9 litre) unit.  The Christian lobby thus claimed the demon’s scalp although they never managed to veto Dodge’s use of Swinger and today, the 1971 & 1972 Demon 340s are sought-after.  Production numbers were never high (10,098 & 8,700 respectively) and give its cheap, disposable nature, and the buyers attracted to such things over the decades, attrition rates were high and survivors are few although, as just about everywhere in the muscle car ecosystem, there’s a minor industry in creating clones.

Demon redux: 2018 Dodge Challenger Demon.  The yellow plastic guard on the leading edge of the front splitter was attached at the factory to deter damage during transport to dealerships.  The instruction was to remove them prior to sale but they picked up a cult following and many buyers insisted they be retained.

Chrysler reprised the Dodge Demon name in 2018 (and Swinger in 2022) apparently with little theological opposition.  The engine used in the new Demon was an evolution of the 376 cubic inch (6.2 litre) Hemi V8 which, in 2017’s Challenger Hellcat, was rated at 707 horsepower.  With production limited to 3300 units, the 2018 Demon used a supercharged Hemi which produced 808 hp but an optional package boosted that to 840.  So equipped, the Demon would cover a standing quarter-mile (400m) in 9.65 seconds at 140 mph (225 km/h) and cost was a remarkably modest US$86,091 including the optional package which, while not entirely suitable for driving on public roads, was completely street-legal.  It included a number of features which hinted at its real purpose, including the passenger and rear seats being no-cost options and, most intriguingly, a high-output mode which both increased power and disabled the cabin air-conditioning, routing its cooling flow instead to the induction system, a device that lowered the intake temperature by 18-odd degrees, thereby gaining a few more horsepower.  Although tuned for quarter-mile sprints and thus limiting top-speed to about 170 mph (270 km/h), it could be geared for top end performance and would easily exceed 200 mph (320 km/h).

Nude & Naked

Nude (pronounced nood or nyood)

(1) Naked or unclothed, as a person or the body.

(2) Without the usual coverings, furnishings etc; bare.

(3) In art, being or prominently displaying a representation of the nude human figure.

(4) In law, a contract made without a consideration or other legal essential and therefore invalid (nudum pactum).

(5) In historic commercial use (usually for underwear), a light grayish-yellow brown to brownish-pink color (no longer in common use; now considered offensive because of the cultural implications of its association with white skin).

1531: As an artistic euphemism for naked, use was first applied to sculpture first emerged in the 1610s but the term not common in painting until the mid-nineteenth century when the idea of "the nude" was recognized as a genre.  The origin of the use in painting in the sense of "the representation of the undraped human figure in visual art" is said to date from 1708 and be derived from the French nud, an obsolete variant of nu (naked, nude, bare) also from the Latin nūdus.  The phrase idea of being in the nude (in a condition of being unclothed) emerged in the 1850s in parallel with the use in art criticism.

The adjective nude in legal use dates from the 1530s and meant "unsupported, not formally attested", the use from the Latin nūdus (naked, bare, unclothed, stripped) from the primitive Indo-European root nogw- (naked).  In legal matters it was typically applied in contract law (hence the "nude contract") and, by extension, the general sense of "mere, plain, simple" emerged twenty years later.  is attested from 1550s. In reference to the human body, "unclothed, undraped," it is an artistic euphemism for naked, dating from 1610s (implied in nudity) but not in common use in this sense until mid-nineteenth century.  The noun nudie (a nude show) dates from 1935 while the much earlier noun nudification (making naked) was from 1838, presumably a direct borrowing of the French nudification which had been in use since 1833.  The practice of nudism actually has roots in Antiquity but nudist (as applied to both practitioners and practice) came into use only in 1929 as an adjective and noun, both influenced by the French nudiste.  The noun nudism (the cult and practice of going unclothed) also dates from 1929 and in the UK, however inaccurately, it was described as a cult of German origin which had been picked up also by the more bohemian of the French, the more respectable London press linking the practice with vegetarianism, physical exercise, pagan worship and the eating of seeds.

Naked (pronounced ney-kid (U) or neck-ed (non-U))

(1) Being without clothing or covering; nude.

(2) Without adequate clothing.

(3) A natural environment bare of any covering, overlying matter, vegetation, foliage, or the like.

(4) Bare, stripped, or destitute.

(5) A descriptor of the most basic version of something sometimes more elaborate or embellished.

(6) In optics, as applied to the eye, sight etc, unassisted by a microscope, telescope, or other instrument.

(7) Defenseless; unprotected; exposed.

(8) Not accompanied or supplemented by anything else.

(9) In botany, (of seeds) not enclosed in an ovary; (of flowers) without a calyx or perianth; (of branches etc) without leaves; (of stalks, leaves etc) without hairs or pubescence.

(10) In zoology, having no covering of hair, feathers, shell etc.

(11) In motorcycle design, a machine in which the frame and engine are substantially exposed by virtue of screens and fairings not being fitted.

Pre 900: From the Middle English nakede & naked (without the usual or customary covering" (of a sword etc)) from the Old English nacod (nude, bare, empty or not fully clothed); related to the Old High German nackot, the Old Norse noktr and Latin nudus; cognate with the Dutch naakt, the German nackt, the Gothic naqths; akin to the Old Norse nakinn, the Latin nūdus, the Greek gymnós and Sanskrit nagnás.  Source was the Proto-Germanic nakwathaz, also the root of the Old Frisian nakad, the Middle Dutch naket, the Old Norse nökkviðr, the Old Swedish nakuþer and the Gothic naqaþs and ultimate source the primitive European nogw (naked), related to the Sanskrit nagna, the Hittite nekumant, the Old Persian nagna, the Lithuanian nuogas, the Old Church Slavonic nagu, the Russian nagoi, the Old Irish nocht and the Welsh noeth.  As applied to qualities, actions, etc, use emerged in the early thirteenth century, the phrase “naked truth” first noted in 1585 in Alexander Montgomerie's (circa 1550-1598) The Cherry and the Slae.  The phrase “naked as a jaybird (1943) was earlier referenced as “naked as a robin” (1879); the earliest known comparative based on it was the fourteenth century “naked as a needle”.  “Naked eye” is from 1660s, the form unnecessary in the world before improvements in lens grinding technology led to the invention of telescopes and microscopes.  The adjective nakedly (without concealment, plainly, openly) was from circa 1200.  The noun nakedness was from the Old English nacedness (nudity, bareness).

Nude or naked?

In many places the words may correctly be used interchangeably.  In law, a nude and a naked contract are the same, a pact which is unenforceable because if doesn’t possess all the elements required to be valid.  The legal maxim nuda pactio obligationem non parit signifies a naked promise which is a promise without anything being provided in return.  Nuda pactio obligationem non parit thus does not create a legal obligation.

Kenneth Clark. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. Bollingen Series, New York, Pantheon Books, 1956.

Kenneth Clark, a cultural elitist of a kind now perhaps either extinct or rendered silent by a less deferential culture, opened The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1956) by noting naked implied something embarrassing yet nude “… carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone”.  Clark’s view was there were works of art in which there were nudes but other depictions were just variations of nakedness for whatever purpose.  The nude, he concluded, "…is not the subject of art, but a form of art."  In other word, the models in men's magazines were photographed in a state of nakedness while the women rendered in fine art were part of the tradition of the nude.  Photographers who thought their work artistic didn't agree and the onset of cultural relativism means such debates no longer happen.  However, the adoption by some that nude was something to used exclusively about works of art dates only from the eighteenth century, a movement led by critics and the commercial art industry which wanted the English market again to start buying the many nudes available for sale but which, even before the Victorian era, had fallen from fashion.

New York Magazine, February 2008 (Spring Fashion Issue).

Bert Stern’s (1929-2013) nude photo shoot of Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) was commissioned by Vogue magazine and shot over three days, some six weeks before her death.  In book form, the images captured were compiled and published as The Last Sitting (first edition, William Morrow and Company (1982) ISBN 0-688-01173-X).  Stern reprised his work in 2008 with Lindsay Lohan, the photographs published in February 2008’s spring fashion issue of New York magazine.  Stern chose the medium of forty-six years earlier, committing the images to celluloid rather than using anything digital.  The reprised sessions visually echoed the original with a languorous air though the diaphanous fabrics were draped sometimes less artfully than all those years ago.  He later expressed ambivalence about the shoot, hinting regret at having imitated his own work but the photographs remain an exemplar of Lohanary.

2008 naked Ducati 1098 Streetfighter.

The theory of the naked motorcycle is a machine reduced to its essence of a frame, wheels and an engine, thereby making it lighter than more exotically configured models which may include flashings, windshields, saddlebags or fairings.  Simple physics mean a machine with less mass accelerates, turns and stops with less demand of energy and at low speed they tend to be easier to manoeuvre, are lighter to hold up when static and certainly easier to mount on a centre-stand.  There's also the attraction there are fewer things to break, fibreglass fairings being notorious for getting cracked, scratched or broken and Perspex screens are, with age, prone to cloudiness.  The look however is why some buy naked bikes, the intricacies of the exposed mechanicals appealing especially to engineers anxious to display the quality of the frame's welding or the indefinable but real attraction of Allen-headed bolts.  They're also quick.  Although sacrificing the aerodynamic advantages gained by fairings means in some cases the naked machines can have lower top speeds, they tend to accelerate with more alacrity, offer instant responsiveness and, in street use, top speeds are now anyway rarely approached.

Lindsay Lohan, Playboy magazine, January/February 2012.

Nudity & nakedness are defined by both context & circumstances.  The cover photograph for Lindsay Lohan's 2012 Playboy shoot was, in the narrow technical sense, ambiguous because the chair could have been concealing a pair of delicate lace knickers.  However, because of the nature of the publication, this is a nude shot (shoes don't count; everybody knows that).

Pantsuit

Pantsuit (pronounced pant-soot)

A woman's suit consisting of slacks and a matching jacket.

1966: The construct was pant + suit.  The original form “pants suit” was noted first in 1964, wholly supplanted by pantsuit which emerged within two years.  Pant is a shortened form of pants (trousers, drawers) itself a shortening of pantaloons, a usage from 1840 which was initially limited to vulgar and commercial use with the colloquial singular pant attested from 1893.  Suit is from the Middle English sute, from the Anglo-Norman suite and the Old French sieute & siute (in Modern French as suite), originally a participle adjective from the Vulgar Latin sequita (for secūta), from the Classical Latin sequi (to follow), in the sense the component garments "follow each other" (ie are worn together).  Although known also as the trouser suit or slack suit, it was only ever pantsuit which evolved into a single word although modern feminist thought seems to prefer the simple “suit” as applied to the men’s business staple.

Women in trousers: The subversive history

Lindsay Lohan in pink pantsuit with Valentino’s Rockstud pumps, New York, October 2019.

The style actually predates the word, the combination of trousers and a jacket having for centuries been worn for practical reasons by working-class and peasant women and it became a not uncommon sight after women entered the manufacturing workforce at scale during World War One.  However, among some, it seemed to induce conniptions when middle-class women began to adopt the combination as distinctive daywear in the inter-war years.  It wasn’t for lack of modesty but rather that trousers were seen as emblematic of female assertiveness that had already seen gains in political, legal and economic rights.  Apparently not at all threatening when worn in the field or on factory floors, they were clearly part of an ever-thickening wedge when they appeared in the office.

Marlene Dietrich, Paris, 1933.

First an identifiable item when the appeared in the United States during the 1920s, the pantsuit has at various times be spelled also as pant suit & pants suits; the preferred term in feminist circles seems now to be “suit”.  Outside the US, elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the term "trouser suit", dating from the First World War, operated in parallel during most of the twentieth century but has now faded from use as has the linguistically unhappy "slack suit" or the (probably worse) "slacks suit".  More deliberately androgynous than what would follow, Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) famously adopted men’s suits with dramatic effect and not without social effect.  After being photographed in 1933 aboard the SS Europa en route to France wearing a white suit, the Paris police sent a warning that she would be arrested if she wore menswear in the City of Lights. Dietrich ignored them and disembarked in a tweed suit complete with a tie, overcoat, beret and sunglasses.  The gendarmes did not arrest her.

YSL's Le Smoking tuxedo suit, 1966 (left), reprised by Abbey Lee Kershaw (b 1987) in 2014 (right).

It was probably Yves Saint Laurent's (1936-2008) Le Smoking design in 1966 which legitimized the presence of the pantsuit in catalogues and, increasingly, on the catwalk.  The 1966 piece was a revived tuxedo, tailored to the female form, in velvet or wool.  Other fabrics soon followed but unfortunately, not all modern interpretations are as pleasing because they’re the choice of many whose figures tend not to suit more flattering cuts and, being now positioned as a feminist symbol, the implication is any criticism of the style is, at least, a micro-aggression and even as long ago as the 1960s, women were pushing back; New York socialite Nan Kempner (1930–2005) was once denied entry to La Cote Basque restaurant because she was wearing pants so instantly she took them of and walked in, wearing just her tunic top.

Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011), fashion icon.

Forty-odd years on, in August 2008, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) referred to her campaign staff as The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pantsuits.  That didn't work out well but she persisted with the pantsuits to the point the garment was her one identifiable style and in an interview with CNBC she explained the choice:

(1) It was initially that she liked pantsuits, saying “They make me feel professional and ready to go.”

(2) A pantsuit is a kind of uniform which matches the default male suit & tie and men traditionally haven't attracted criticism for that.  She noted it was "an easy way to fit in" with what was a male-dominated business and that “as a woman running for President,” she liked the “visual cue” that she was “different from the men but also familiar.”

(3) The uniform was an "anti-distraction technique."  Removing much of the scope for those who traditionally focused on what women wore, it forced some attention on what she was saying.  Obviously, that could be sometimes be to her disadvantage.

(4) The cut of the pantsuit provides protection "from creeps."  "They helped me avoid the peril of being photographed up my skirt while sitting on a stage or climbing stairs, both of which happened to me as First Lady.”  She explained that after that happened, she took a cue from one of her childhood heroes, Nancy Drew, because she “would often do her detective work in sensible trousers.”

The pantsuit turned out to be a good platform for subliminal messaging, crooked Hillary successively wearing red, white and blue iterations for the three presidential debates in 2016, an option no male candidate could emulate without attracting derision.  Men can of course wear ties of different colors but it's hardly as obvious.  Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) would later suggest an orange pantsuit was best suited to crooked Hillary's skin tone and character.

Donald Trump shaking hands with crooked Hillary Clinton (in red pantsuit) and Kim Jong-un (in blue pantsuit).