Nurdle

Nurdle (pronounced nhur-dl)

(1) In cricket, to work the ball away gently, especially to the leg side, gently nudging the delivery into vacant spaces on the field; such a shot played.

(2) In conversation, gently to waffle or muse on a subject about which once obviously knows little.

(3) In manufacturing, a pre-production micro-plastic pellet about the size of a pea, the raw material used in the manufacture of plastic products.

(4) In marine ecology as plastic resin pellet pollution (PRPP); marine debris.

(5) The depiction of a wave-shaped blob of toothpaste sitting on a toothbrush.

(6) That which is squeezed from tube to toothbrush.

(7) In the game of tiddlywinks (as nurdling), sending an opponent's wink too close to the pot to score easily. 

Circa 1968: In the context of cricket, it’s of unknown origin but presumably some sort of blend, influenced possibly by “nerd” & “nudge”, the meaning conveyed being a style of play that is cautious, unambitious and unexciting; the slow accumulation of a score; there’s been the suggestion of a link with “noodle” but it’s hard to see the connection and there's no documentary evidence.  The earliest known citation is a 1985 match report in The Times (London).  The small, cylindrical pellets, the raw material of the manufacturing processes of many plastic products, have been called nurdles since at least the 1970s, a reference from that time noted in the manuals supplied with an injection-molding machine.  The word is likely to have been coined either because of the physical similarity of the pellets to some types of noodle or as a variation of nodule (a small node or knot) and plastic nurdles have for decades been recdorded as a significant proportion of marine pollution.  As used to describe the toothbrush-length squirt of toothpaste as it sits atop the bristles, the origin is murky but may be linked to nodule.  There have been suggestions the use by the American Dental Association in the 1990s in a public-service advertising campaign about the correct technique for brushing may have been the coining but the word was used in toothpaste advertising as early as 1968 although the original spelling seems for some time to have been “nerdle”.  Nurdle is a noun & verb and nurdled & nurdling are verbs; the noun plural is nurdles.  The adjective nurdlesque is non-standard but has been used by at least one cricket commentator not impressed by a batsman's slot selection.

The Great Nurdle Affair

Previously little discussed in law, the nurdle received some brief attention when a trademark-infringement lawsuit (Colgate-Palmolive Co v. GlaxoSmithKline LLC, US District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 10-05728) was filed in July 2010 by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), makers of Aquafresh “Triple Protection” toothpaste, against Procter & Gamble (P&G), owners of the Colgate “Triple Action” brand.  Almost immediately, P&G counter-sued in the same court with the retaliatory GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Colgate-Palmolive, No. 10-05739.  One was seeking, inter alia, the exclusive right to depict a nurdle, the other claiming the image was so generic anyone enjoyed the right.

GSK's Aquafresh Triple Protection & Colgate’s Triple Action.

The disputes hinged on “triple” as a descriptor and “nurdle”, not as a word but as the image of a wave-shaped blob of toothpaste sitting atop the bristles on the head of a toothbrush.  GSK's core argument was that it held trademark registrations on both “triple protection” and a red, white & blue-striped nurdle.  P&G argued “triple protection” was weak and that a nurdle is inherently merely descriptive because it is but a literal image of the product.  What the court had to decide was whether a reasonable consumer, on seeing the nurdle and “triple action” text description on packages of Colgate toothpaste, could be sufficiently misled to believe what they were looking at was sourced, sponsored or endorsed by GSK which used both on their Aguafresh brand.

GSK’s nurdle.

In a filing of some eighty pages, P&G noted its recent release in the US of a toothpaste with packaging which superimposes the words “Triple Action” (the implication being (1) cavity protection, (2) fresh breath & (3), whiter teeth) atop a blue, white and green nurdle.  In response, GSK, which uses the “Triple Protection” phrase on its Aquafresh products, filed a trademark application for the "nurdle design" regardless of color; this induced P&G to sue to enforce its rights to use the nurdle.  P&G further noted GSK did not file their application until after they had already complained about P&G’s nurdle design and suggested GSK was using the process to stifle competition by asserting an excessively broad scope for trademark rights.

P&G’s nurdles, registered by Colgate as trademarks. 

GSK’s filing was only half the length and accused P&G of adopting various nurdle designs and the “Triple Action” mark in an effort to “trade off the commercial magnetism” of GSK own packaging which had since 1987 included a distinctive red, white and blue nurdle, an argument which implied elements of both usurpation and ambush marketing.  P&G asked the court to declare its “Triple Action” phrase and interpretation of the nurdle not confusingly similar to GSK’s own “Triple Protection” phrase and nurdle which used distinctively different colors.  It sought also have the court (1) cancel GSK’s “Triple Protection” and nurdle trademark registrations and (2), deny such injunctive relief that would have prevented P&G from using any nurdle design and a phrase containing “triple”.  Damages were sought on several grounds including punitive damages.  It was a case of some commercial significance given GSK had deployed the nurdle as a cartoon character in a marketing campaign aimed at children, the idea being that if children pestered their parents enough to buy Aquafresh for them, it was likely they’d gain the whole family as a conquest.  The nurdle campaign ran on Nurdle World in the US and The Nurdle Shmurdle in the UK.

Post settlement: Colgate Triple Action with a visually different nurdle.

Late in 2011, the parties announced a notice of settlement had been filed in the court; a confidential settlement had been negotiated.  The details have never been made public but a review of supermarket shelves suggests (1) the red, white & blue GSK nurdle is acknowledged to be propriety, (2) a nurdle nevertheless remains generic and can be depicted as long as it is sufficiently distinguished from GSK’s 1987 original and (3) things claiming to be of or pertaining to happening in threes may be described as “triple” whatever but, in the context of toothpaste, “triple protection” is a GSK trademark.  P&G could thus display a nurdle, just not GSK’s nurdle.  So, as a private settlement, there’s no change to established law but those inhabiting that grey space between ambush marketing and actual deceptive and misleading conduct no doubt took note.  A judge might anyway find the outcome in accordance with the operation of trademark law: a trademarked image as specific as the GSK nurdle is entitled to protection but, as a general principle, a word as notoriously common as “triple” is the property of the commons available to all.

In Germany, between the 1920s and the end of World War II (1939-1945), nurdles could be radio-active, toothpaste sold with trace amounts for thorium obtained from monazite sands, the promotional material of which read: “Increases the defenses of teeth and gums” & “Gently polishes the dental enamel, so it turns white and shiny”.  Although known since at least the mid-1920s, it was only in the aftermath of the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) that the adverse effects of ionizing radiation in high or sustained does became widely recognized, rendering radio-active toothpaste an undesirable product in the minds of mothers everywhere.  Although radio-active toothpaste sounds evil, the Nazis can't be blamed for it being on the shelves, its debut dating from the Weimar Republic (1918-1933).  

Save Paste structural concept for toothpaste packaging.

From the days when folk made their own toothpaste by mixing water, salt and the soot from chimneys, toothpaste has become one of the sometimes unacknowledged markers of civilized life.  The packaging though has been little changed since 1889 when Johnson & Johnson introduced their range in collapsible metal tubes.  The switch from metal to plastic happened over decades, necessitated initially by wartime shortages but by the 1990s, tubes were almost universally plastic.  Despite that, the fundamental design remained unchanged and was often inherently inefficient, supplied in a cardboard box, much of the internal capacity of which was unused because of the shape of the tube.  The design added cost and induced adverse environmental outcomes because (1) the box was unnecessary and immediately discarded and (2), the surplus volume added to the costs of storage and transportation.  One interesting suggestion has been the trapezoidal package.

By using a single cardboard container as both collapsible container and display packaging, it eliminates the need for a separate box.  Also, if designed with the correct geometry, multiple trapezoidal containers can more efficiently be packed for transportation and storage, thereby reducing the energy expended.  This simple trick of packaging. if extended to all products sold in tubes should result in a significant reduction in energy consumption (road, rail and air transport) and therefore in greenhouse emissions.  Additionally, the carboard is more easily recycled than plastic. 

One thing toothpaste manufacturers seem never anxious to discuss is the opinion of many experts that GSK’s classic nurdle, extending the length of the brush-head, is way too much and adults should instead use a nurdle no bigger than a pea.  Restraint when squeezing out a nurdle for children should be even more severe because of the risk when young of swallowing too much toothpaste containing fluoride: it increases the risk dental fluorosis, a cosmetic condition that affects the appearance of the teeth, ranging from brown and light discoloration to darker strains and even pitting.  On a very young child’s brush, rather than a plump nurdle, the toothpaste should just be a smear although they can use an adult's pea-sized nurdle after the age of three.  The British Dental Association summarize best practice by recommending (1) the correct amount of toothpaste for most people to use is a pea size, (2) brush at least twice daily, with a fluoridated toothpaste, brush last thing at night and at least on one other occasion; if possible brush after every meal, (3) use a fluoridated toothpaste (1,350–1,500 ppm fluoride) and (4), spit out after brushing and do not rinse (this maintains the fluoride concentration level).

Nurdling: Lindsay Lohan on the set of HBO's Eastbound & Down (2013), brushing teeth while smoking.  It's an unusual combination but might work OK if one smokes a menthol cigarette and uses a nurdle of mint toothpaste.  Other combinations might clash.

Void

Void (pronounced void)

(1) In law, having no legal force or effect; not legally binding or enforceable.

(2) Useless; ineffectual; vain; devoid; destitute (usually followed by of).

(3) Without contents; empty.

(4) Without an incumbent, as an office.

(5) In mathematics, of a set: empty.

(6) In card games, having no cards in a suit.

(7) An empty space or one with a sense of emptiness.

(8) Something experienced as a loss or privation:

(9) A gap or opening, as in a wall.

(10) A vacancy; vacuum.

(11) In typography, inside area of a character of type, such as the inside of an O.

(12) To make ineffectual; invalidate; nullify.

(13) To empty; discharge; evacuate.

(14) To depart from; to vacate (archaic).

(15) In computer programming, a function or method that does not return a value.

(16) In architecture, a differentiated treatment of space.

1250–1300: The adjectival form was from the Middle English voide & voyde, from the Anglo-French & Old French voide, voit, vuide, & vuit (source also of the Modern French vide), from the unattested Vulgar Latin vocīta & vocita, feminine of vocītus & vocitus, an unattested and dissimilated variant of the Latin vacīvus, vacuus & vocīvus, (empty) from vacāre (to be empty).  The verb was from the Middle English voiden, from the Anglo-French voider, from the Old French, from the unattested Vulgar Latin vocitāre, derivative of the unattested vocītus & vocitus, noun derivative of the adjective.  Root was the primitive Indo-European wak-, an extended form of the root eue- (to leave, abandon, give out).

Void circa 1300 was first a verb (to clear some place of something) with the meaning "to deprive (something) of legal validity" attested from the early fourteenth century.  The adjectival sense evolved in parallel with the verb, again circa 1300, the meaning "unoccupied, vacant" soon extending to "empty, vast, wide, hollow, waste, uncultivated, fallow" and as a noun, "opening, hole; loss".  The meaning "lacking or wanting (something)” is recorded from the early 1400s while "legally invalid, without legal efficacy" is attested from the mid fifteenth century.  The adjective voidable is from the late fifteenth century 15c; the sense of an "unfilled space, gap" dates from the 1610s and the meaning "absolute empty space, vacuum" is from 1727.  Voider and voidness are both derived nouns.

In diplomacy

In fourteenth century Europe, French was the most widely-spoken language and in 1539, the court of Francis I (1494–1547; King of France 1515-1547) declared French to be the official language of government.  It was in this era that diplomacy began to assume a recognizably modern form with an increasingly consistent use of titles, conventions and institutions.  From this position of cultural hegemony, French emerged as the language of diplomacy, a position enhanced as the European colonial empires expanded.  It wouldn’t be until well into the twentieth century, under mostly US influence, that English began first to run in parallel as a language of diplomacy and later to assume primacy, English and French being the first two official languages of the United Nations (UN).  However, the linguistic legacy endures in the handbooks of diplomacy which include the standardized titles and phrases of the profession.  One phrase still used is that when one diplomat refuses to accept a message from another, returning the envelope to the sender marked nul et non avenue (literally “null and void”), creating the diplomatic fiction the envelope was unopened and the message thus unread, thereby relieving both parties of the need to pursue the unpleasantness.

In architecture

Once reduced, in architecture there’s only form and space but it’s helpful to imagine some space as part of the form so there’s thus form, space and void, void being a space defined by the form and theorists layer this further by distinguishing between voids cognitive and functional.  Cognitive voids are those created for emotional and perceptional impact, a kind of (usually static) visual effect whereas functional voids fulfil a technical requirement, typically ventilation or the movement of people.  Theorists tend to classify cognitive voids in the language of art: conceptual, perceptual, or sculptural while the functional are grouped by traditional terms from architecture: as entrance, courtyard, circulation et al.  In the analysis of the theorists, cognitive voids exist either as transparent or permeable spaces, the former most used to create perceptual effects, the latter for the visual.

Functional void: Grand Central Terminal (the official abbreviation is GCT although the popular form is "Grand Central Station" (often clipped to "Grand Central")), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, 1929.

Unfortunately, the clerestories which once shone no longer shine.  Because of more recent development in the surrounding space, the sunlight no longer enters the CCT's void through the clerestoried windows is such an eye-catching way (left).  In modern skyscrapers, light-shafts or atriums can extend hundreds of feet to ensure what sunlight is available can be captured; there's now often little at ground level.  When the a scene from the Lindsay Lohan film Just my Luck (2006) (right) was shot in the GCT, it was in a dimmer ambiance.  

Artophagous

Artophagous (pronounced are-tof-ah-guss)

Bread-eating.

1790s: The construct was the Ancient Greek ἄρτος (ártos) (a cake or loaf of wheat bread and, (collectively) bread) +‎ -phagous.  The Greek ártos was of unknown origin though probably borrowed from a substrate; it should be compared with the Basque arto (id) and the Old Spanish artal (a type of empanada).  Despite the structural similarity, etymologists concluded the suggestion it might be a borrowing from the Proto-Iranian arta- (flour) (thus connected to the Persian آرد (ârd) (id) is less likely because the Greek form predated both, being already attested in Mycenean thus unable formally to be derived from the same Indo-European root the Iranian stems from.  The suffix –phagous was from the Latin -phagus, from the Ancient Greek -φάγος (-phágos) (-eating), from φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat).  It was used to form adjectives meaning “eating” or “feeding on”.  The synonym was –vorous.  The more common version of the suffix today is –phagia, the frequency of use in Modern English explained by the proliferation of terms used in mental health to refer to the consumption of untypical items (ie mostly not food).  The suffix –phagia was from the Ancient Greek -φαγία (-phagía) (and related to -φαγος (-phagos) (eater)), corresponding to φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat), infinitive of ἔφαγον (éphagon) (I eat), which serves as aorist for the defective verb ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat).

Lindsay Lohan with bread on the syndicated Rachael Ray Show, April 2019.

Apparently, in the writings of the more self-consciously erudite, the word artophagous, which enjoyed some currency in the nineteenth century, was still in occasional use as late as the 1920s but most lexicographers now either ignore it or list it as archaic or obsolete.  It’s an example of a word which has effectively been driven extinct even though the practice it describes (the eating of bread) remains as widespread and popular as ever.  Linguistically, this is not uncommon in English and is analogous with the famous remark by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani (1930–2021; Saudi Arabian minister of petroleum and mineral resources 1962-1986): “The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the Oil Age will end, but not for a lack of oil.” (the first part of that paraphrased usually as the punchier: “The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks.”)

Bread remains one of the world’s most widely consumed foods and for many probably the most essential source of carbohydrates yet the word “artophagous” began to disappear from all but the longest dictionaries, lexicographers noting the trend in the US in the 1950s and elsewhere in the English-speaking world within a few years.  All conclude it was cut as part of the cull of words which had (1) fallen into decades of disuse and (2) alternatives were well-accepted and in common use (in this case, most obviously the unambiguous “bread eating”).  There’s a bias somewhere (either among those on the editorial committees of dictionaries or in the wider population) because there’s still often an entry for the adjective creophagous (flesh-eating or carnivorous).  Creophagous was from the Ancient Greek kreophagos, the construct being κρέας (kreas) (flesh; meat) + -φαγος (-phagos) –from φαγεῖν (phagein) (to eat)."  What’s curious in that in modern use “carnivorous” (meaning much the same thing but from Latin roots) has attained great popularity yet creophagous retains more lexicographical support despite being barely more used than artophagous.  To add insult to injury, worldwide, there are more bread-eaters than flesh-eaters so something is going on.

There are many references to bread in the Christian Bible.  In Matthew 4:4 Jesus, while being tempted by the devil, rebukes him by saying “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  In that, Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, reminding the devil we are to obey God, walk humbly before him, and rely on him; combating the need to satisfy the flesh.  In saying “Man cannot live by bread alone” Jesus wasn’t speaking literally in the vein of a dietician but was making the point a human being as a whole needs sustenance: body, soul, and spirit.  In Genesis 2:7 it was written: “Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground.  He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” which means we are more than just material beings and the essence of us is the life God breathed into us. Since our source of life is from God, bread (a synecdoche for food) alone isn’t enough to sustain us.

The temptation of Christ came during the forty days and forty nights he spent hungry in the wilderness and his point of comparison was the forty years the Israelites endured in the desert mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:1-3: “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”.

Surreal

Surreal (pronounced suh-ree-uhl (U) or sur-reel (non-U))

(1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of surrealism, an artistic and literary style; surrealistic.

(2) Having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic & and incongruous.

(3) As surrealism, an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that, inter alia, explored the “liberation of the mind” by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious.

(4) In mathematics as surreal numbers, a collection of numbers which includes both the real numbers and the infinite ordinal numbers, each real number surrounded by surreals, which are closer to it than any real number.

1936: A back formation from surrealism, the construct being ; sur- +‎ realism, from the French surréalisme, the construct being sur- (beyond) +‎ réalisme (realism).  Sur- ((over in the sense of “on top of” & over- in the sense of “excessive; excessively; too much”)) was from the Old French sur-, sour-, sor- & soure-, from a syncopation of the Latin super- (above, on top, over; upwards; moreover, in addition, besides) from the Proto-Italic super, from the primitive Indo-European upér (over, above (and cognate with the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér) (above) and the Proto-Germanic uber (which in English became “over”)).  The English sur- was from the Middle English sur-, from the Old French sur-, sour-, sor- & soure-, a syncopic form of the Latin super.  Sur is a doublet of super-, over- and hyper-.  Real was from the Middle English real, from the Old French reel, from the Late Latin reālis (actual), from the Latin rēs (matter, thing), from the primitive Indo-European rehís (wealth, goods).  Surreal is a noun & adjective, surreally is an adverb, surrealism & surreality are nouns and surrealistic is an adjective; the noun plural is surreals.

Lobster Telephone (1936) by Salvador Dali, one of a dozen-odd originals (in colors and shades of cream created by the artist).

In French, the noun surréalisme appeared first in the preface to Guillaume Apollinaire's (1880-1918) play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1916-1917 and first performed in 1917).  The word was taken up in the 1920s by French intellectuals who created a number of (competing) Manifeste de Surréalisme (Surrealist manifesto) which were documents exploring the nature of human psychology and the way the radical imagination could produce transformative art.  Such was the nature of their texts, inspiration was offered to groups as diverse as landscape painters and anarchists and anyone else attracted to the idea (if not the business) of revolution.  The English form of the word appeared first in 1931, the French spelling having been in use since 1927.  Surrealist as an adjective and noun (from the 1917 French surréaliste) has been in use since 1925 while the adjective surrealistic dates from 1930.

La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images) (1929), oil on canvas, by Rene Magritte (1898-1967), Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The French text Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe) is an act of deconstruction, a statement that a painting is a representation of something, not the object itself.  It’s a statement of the obvious but is both in the artistic tradition of opposition to oppressive rationalism and an influential strand in the history of Surrealism and Pop Art.

Mama, papa is wounded! (1927) by Yves Tanguy (1900-1955), oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

One of the motifs of surrealist painters was a deliberate disconnection between the title of a work and any immediately obvious meaning. Tanguy’s Mama, papa is wounded! was a painting in one of the recognized surrealist styles: a landscape of wide vista littered with abstract shapes, the title taken from a case-study in a psychiatry textbook.  Beyond mentioning he’d imagined the whole canvas before lifting a brush, Tangay gave no clue about the meaning, but coming so soon after Great War, many focused on a link with the many French causalities of the conflict, the depiction of their horrific injuries also part of an artistic movement in the post-war years.

Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937), oil on canvas by Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

Salvador Dali remains the best-known surrealist painter and Swans Reflecting Elephants is an example of his paranoiac-critical method, which attempted to use art to represent how subconscious thought might summon the irrational imagery when in a state of psychosis or paranoia.  The work is interesting too in that it’s the most perfect example of a double image, the trees and swans reflected in the mirror-like surface of the water as lake as elephants.  Dali himself would sometimes discuss the usefulness of the mirror as a device to explore the divergence between conscious reality and the world of the subconscious.

Jean-Martin Charcot, documentary photographs of hysteria patients at La Salpêtrière Asylum 1878, printed in Le Cinquantenaire de L’hystérie (La Révolution Surréaliste (1928)) by André Breton (1896–1966) & Louis Aragon (1897–1982).  Breton & Aragon lamented that hysteria (which they called "the greatest poetic discovery of the late nineteenth century") was being redefined by the new discipline of psychiatry as merely a symptom of mental illness which could be eliminated by suggestion alone.

The link between surrealist art and madness long intrigued the medical community and the interest later extended to the relationship with modernism in general.  Remarkably, it wasn’t until 1980 with the publication of the third edition (DSM-III) that the diagnosis “hysteria” was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Hysteria had for centuries been a kind of omnibus diagnosis, applied to those (almost always women) displaying an extraordinary array of mental and physical symptoms, the gendered hysteria derived from the Ancient Greek word for uterus.  To many Surrealists, hysteria was the state in which a poetic expression of the mind’s wilder impulses could be unleashed, meaning that instead of being silenced, this fundamental condition of being female could usefully be objectified.  History and art met in the decade of the surrealists because the 1930s was a time to be hysterical, less about what was happening than the fear of what was to come but the reaction to the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, an exhibition by surrealist artists held in Paris in January-February 1938 was not despair or shock but indifference, the novelty of the form having passed, the claim the exhibition needed to be understood as a single installation convincing few.  In the history of the movement, the peak had actually passed and although surrealist works would continue to be produced (and actually mass-produced as wildly popular prints) in the post-war world, the output was repetitive.  The avant-garde having plundered from surrealism what could be carried off, explored other directions.

Woman’s Dinner Dress (February 1937) by Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973), printed silk organza and synthetic horsehair, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The fragments however endure.  Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian fashion designer who took the objects made famous by the Futurists, Dadaists, & Surrealists and integrated them into clothing, her most memorable piece a white evening gown adorned with a large Daliesque lobster.  A design which would now attract little attention, at the time it was a sensation, its audacity a contrast with the solid pastels and other subdued hues with which Coco Chanel (1883-1971) had defined Parisian sophistication.  The playful designs she adopted (a telephone-shaped handbag, buttons in the shape of lollipops, fingernail gloves and hats in shapes borrowed from industry and agriculture) were not always original but she lent them a respectability in the world of high-fashion. 

In the surreal style: Salvador Dali (2021) by Javier Peña and Lindsay Lohan by Mohamad Helmi on Displate.

Lollipop

Lollipop (pronounced lol-ee-pop)

(1) A (usually disc-shaped) piece of hard candy attached to the end of a small stick, held in the hand while the candy is sucked or licked.

(2) In computer networking, a routing protocol using sequence numbering starting at a negative value, increasing until zero, at which point it switches indefinitely to cycle through a finite set of positive numbers.

(3) In the labeling of the Android operating system, v5.0 to 5.1.1.

(4) In the slang of fashion and related photography, a term for very thin models whose heads appear disproportionately large.

(5) In the slang of musical criticism, a short, entertaining, but undemanding piece of classical music.

1784: A creation of Modern English of uncertain origin.  It simply be the construct of lolly + pop, lolly from the Northern English dialect loll (dangle the tongue) and pop an alternative name for “slap”.  It was essentially a toffee-apple without the apple or the stick; a stick dipped in toffee. 

Lindsay Lohan enjoying giant lollipop.

The alternative theory is it’s borrowed from Angloromani (literally "English Romani"), the language combining aspects of English and Romani, which was the language spoken by the Romani (gypsy, traveler, Roma et al) people in England and Wales.  Displaced by English in the early twentieth century, its traces remain in the English used by modern Romani.  Theory is that root is the Angloromani loli phabai or lollipobbul (red or candy apple), from the Middle Indic lohita (from Sanskrit) and loha (red), drawn from reudh with Indo-European roots.  Among etymologists, the Angloromani connection has most support.Originally, lollipop seems to have referred just to the boiled sweet with the meaning "hard candy on a stick" not noted until the 1920s.  In commerce, the spelling varies including lollipop, lollypop, loli-pop, lollypopp and lolly-pop.

Defilade & Enfilade

Defilade (pronounced def-uh-leyd or def-fuh-lahd)

(1) In military tactical planning and battlefield practice, the protection from hostile ground observation and flat projecting fire provided by an artificial or natural obstacle such as a hill.

(2) The disposition of defensive fortifications to produce this protection.

(3) A fortification having such protection.

1828: From the French défil (to unthread), the construct being dé (remove) + filer (thread), from the Latin fīlum (thread).  The -ade suffix was a borrowing of the Spanish -ado, from the Latin -ata (feminine -atum) used to create adjectives, nouns, and sometimes verbs from words ending in -a.  The suffix was used to form nouns denoting action, or a person performing said action.  The Old French verb was borrowed by Middle English as défiler (to slip away or off), use apparently restricted to the nobility.  The related forms are defiladed & defilading.

Enfilade (pronounced en-fuh-leyd or en-fuh-lahd)

(1) In military tactical planning and battlefield practice, a position of works, troops and matériel which permits sweeping fire from along the length of a line of troops, a trench, a battery etc.

(2) The fire thus directed.

(3) In architecture, an axial arrangement of doorways connecting a suite of rooms with a vista extending the entire length of the suite.

(4) In interior decorating, an axial arrangement of mirrors on opposite sides of a room so as to give an effect of an infinitely long vista.

1697: From the French enfil (to thread), the construct being, en (put on) + filer (thread), from the Latin fīlum (thread).  The -ade suffix was a borrowing of the Spanish -ado, from the Latin -ata (feminine -atum) used to create adjectives, nouns, and sometimes verbs from words ending in -a.  The suffix was used to form nouns denoting action, or a person performing said action.  The Old French verb was borrowed by Middle English as enfile (to put (something) on a thread or string), use apparently restricted to the nobility.

The use in architecture (mostly to describe rows of apartments) and forestry (referencing rows of trees) predated the military sense which now predominates, the original definition in that context printed in military manuals as “rake with shot through the full length”.  The use in architecture persists though it’s long tended to be used loosely to refer to just about anything in a straight line.  Used as a verb since 1706, the related forms are enfiladed & enfilading. 

Known also by the more helpful expression “terrain shielding”, enfilade and defilade are concepts in military tactical theory used to describe a formation's exposure to enemy fire.  A static position is said to be "in enfilade" if an opponent can direct continuous fire along its longest axis.  A static position is "in defilade" if formed with natural or artificial obstacles to shield or conceal the formation from enfilade.  The military picked up the terms from two Old English borrowings from the French: enfiler to put (something) on a thread or string) and défiler (to slip away or off) used (seemingly exclusively) by the English nobility.  In gunnery, enfilade fire (gunfire directed against an enfiladed formation or position) is known also as "flanking fire"; the preferred Admiralty terms for naval fire being raking fire (although the advent of long-range missiles as the warship’s standard armament (big guns now quite rare) means the concept is at sea, now essentially historic.  Strafing, the firing on ground targets from a flying platform, should be done with enfilade fire, the recommendation being (if possible) to maneuver into an enfiladed position prior to attack.  In just about any situation, the enfiladed position is the most advantageous, and thus most sought, for the attacking force.

NATO defines the parameters of the defilade as (1) protection from hostile observation and fire provided by an obstacle such as a hill, ridge, or bank, (2) a vertical distance by which a position is concealed from enemy observation and (3), to shield from enemy fire or observation by using natural or artificial obstacles.  However, the standard definition reflects the origin of the concept in the pre-mechanical age.  In anti-tank (or other armored vehicle) operations, it can be advantageous to generate enfilade fire with anti-armor weapons, from a defilade position, armor tending to be weaker on the sides and rear of armored vehicles so side shots (enfilade) offer greater penetrative potential.

The practical employment of the defilade position need not require construction and may be achieved by taking advantage of a favorable feature of the natural environment such as a ditch, the tactical significance being the enemy is engaged not from the front but from the flank using enfilade fire, the font being protected with hard cover. Used thus, ground to the front will be covered by mutually supporting positions firing from defilade, both sides firing across the front.

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.