Leftover

Leftover (pronounced left-oh-ver)

(1) Usually as leftovers; food remaining uneaten at the end of a meal, especially when saved for later use.

(2) Anything left or remaining from a larger amount; remainder.

(3) A casual (and disparaging) term used in the People's Republic of China to describe women still un-married after the age of twenty-six. 

1878: A compound word left + over; the construct being a noun use of verb phrase left over.  The meaning is always in the sense of left (“remaining, abandoned”) + over (“excess”).  Left is from the Middle English left, luft, leoft, lift & lyft, from the Old English left & lyft (air, atmosphere) from the Proto-Germanic luft with which may be compared the compared the Scots left (left), the North Frisian lefts, left & leefts (left), the West Frisian lofts (left), the dialectal Dutch loof (weak, worthless), and the Low German lucht (left).  Over is from the Middle English over from the Old English ofer from the Proto-Germanic uber (over), from the primitive Indo-European upér, a comparative form of upo; akin to the Dutch over, the German ober & über, the Danish over, the Norwegian over, the Swedish över, the Icelandic yfir, the Faroese yvir, the Gothic ufar, the Latin super, the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér), the Albanian upri (group of peasants) and the Sanskrit उपरि (upári).  The hyphenated left-over (remaining, not used up) is from 1890 as a noun meaning "something left over" is from 1891.  The sense of (the almost always plural) leftovers “excess food after a meal" (especially if re-served later) dates from 1878.  In this sense, Old English had metelaf.

Leftover women

Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ), most often translated as "leftover women" is a phrase (usually considered derogatory), which describes Chinese women who remain unmarried by their late twenties.  First promulgated by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) as a promotion of government programmes, it’s been used in other countries but remains most associated with People's Republic of China (PRC).  As a demographic phenomenon, it was once unexpected because the conjunction of the PRC's one-child policy and the disproportionate abortion of female foetuses had led to a distortion in the historic gender balance.  Births in China since the one-child policy was introduced in 1979 have averaged 120 males for every 100 females compared to a global ratio of 103:107.

A bride with four suspected leftovers.

The term appears to have entered common-use in 2005-2006 and seems first to have appeared in the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan.  Unlike most of Cosmopolitan’s editorial content, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took it seriously and instructed the ACWF (a kind of cross between the CWA (Country Women’s Association) and the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to publish articles stigmatizing women still unwed by their late twenties.  Borrowing from Maoist tradition (if not theory), the ACWF provided a useful analysis of the problem, concluding that while “pretty girls” didn’t need much education to find a rich partner, “average or ugly” ones who seek higher degrees thinking it will “increase their competitiveness” in the marriage market are delusional; all that happens is they become old “…like yellowed pearls."  The rhetorical flourishes aside, they had a point.  As the numbers of highly educated women rose, the numbers of potential husbands they found acceptable did not.  What the distorted gender balance created by the one-child policy and the selective-sex abortion preferences had produced was an increasingly educated and middle-class female minority not impressed by a less schooled and more rural male majority. 

Geographic distribution of leftover women, People’s Republic of China.

“Leftover women” seemed the choice in print but on the internet, the punchier 3S or 3SW (Single, Seventies (referring to the then prominent 1970s birth cohort) and Stuck) was also used instead of sheng nu.  There is an equivalent term for men, guang gun (bare branches (ie men who do not marry and thus do not add branches to the family tree)); shengnan (leftover men) does exist but is rare.

CCP demographers had expressed concerns about the social and economic implications of the one-child policy as early as the 1990s.  In the new century, the policy was first selectively relaxed, then revised to permit additional children for those selected by the CCP as desirable breeders and, on 31 May 2021, at a meeting of the of the CCP Politburo, the three-child policy (三孩政策) was announced.  The session, chaired by Xi Jinping (b 1953; CCP general secretary 2012- & PRC president 2013-), followed the release of the findings of the seventh national population census which showed the number of births in mainland China in 2020, at twelve million, would be the lowest since 1960, an indication of the demographic trend causing the ageing of the population.  The Xinhua state news agency then announced the three child policy would be accompanied by supportive measures to “maintain China's advantage in human resources” but surveys suggested the section of the population the CCP would like to see produce three children per household were generally unwilling to have even two, the reason overwhelmingly the high cost of living in Chinese cities.  The announcement on 26 July 2021 permitting Chinese couples to have any number of children was thus greeted by most with restrained enthusiasm.

Leftover no longer: Lindsay Lohan's engagement ring.  Ms Lohan announced her engagement in 2021, marring the following year.  In 2023, a post confirmed reports of her pregnancy. 

The problem of re-production is not restricted to the PRC, the birth rate in South Korea now down to around .8 per woman while a rate around 2.1 is necessary if the population is to be sustained.  What exacerbates the problem in the PRC is the simple lack of women of child-bearing age, caused by the distorted male/female live-birth rates in the decades following the imposition of the one-child policy and any vague hope the long stretches of lock-downs may have encouraged procreation were not realized.  Despite that disappointment, the CCP wasn't discouraged and embarked on a new propaganda campaign making it clear to young women that having babies was part of their patriotic duty to the motherland: pregnancy was now compulsory.  In the West, the decline in the birth rate has for some time been thought a problem, largely because of the impending acceleration in the distortion between those of working age (paying into the system) and those not generating income (extracting from the system).  Of late however, influenced by the un-anticipated rapidity in the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, theorists are re-visiting the models and pondering the implications.

Moist

Moist (pronounced moyst)

(1) Moderately or slightly wet; damp.

(2) Tearful.

(3) Accompanied by or connected with liquid or moisture.

(4) Prevailing high humidity.

(5) In informal (though not infrequent) use (1), of the vagina: sexually lubricated due to sexual arousal & (2) of a woman: sexually aroused, turned on.

(6) In medicine, characterized by the presence of some fluid such as mucus, pus etc; of sounds of internal organs (especially as heard through a stethoscope): characterized by the sound of air bubbling through a fluid.

(7) Historically, in science (including alchemy), pertaining to one of the four essential qualities formerly believed to be present in all things, characterized by wetness; also, having a significant amount of this quality.

1325-1375:  From the Middle English moist & moiste which has the senses of (1) damp, humid, moist, wet, (2) well-irrigated, well-watered, (3) made up of water or other fluids, fluid, (4) figuratively) (of ale), fresh, (5) carnal, lascivious; undisciplined, weak & (6) in alchemy, medicine, physics: dominated by water as an element.  It was from the Anglo-Norman moist, moiste & moste, from the Middle French moiste and the Old French moiste (damp, wet, soaked) & muste (damp, moist, wet (which endures in the thirteenth century modern French moite, perhaps from the Vulgar Latin muscidus (moldy) & mūcidus (slimy, moldy, musty), from mucus (slime).  Doubts have always surrounded the alternative etymology which suggested a link with the Latin musteus (fresh, green, new (literally “like new wine" from mustum (unfermented or partially fermented grape juice or wine, must).  The noun was derived from the adjective.  The noun moisture (diffused and perceptible wetness) dates from the mid-fourteenth century, from the Old French moistour (moisture, dampness, wetness (which endures in the thirteenth century modern French moiteur), from moiste.  The verb moisten (make moist or damp) emerged in the 1570s, from moist, which until the mid-fourteenth century was used as a verb.  Moist is a noun, adjective & (mostly obsolete) verb, moisten is a verb, moistened & moisty are adjectives, moistener is a noun and moistly an adverb; the verb moistify is classified as a jocular creation of Scottish origin.

Making moist look good: Lindsay Lohan, hot and damp in white bikini at the swimming pool, Los Angeles, 2009.

In general use it was from the fourteenth century applied to the tearful or eyes wet with tears, due either to crying, illness or old age; since the mid-twentieth century use in this context has increasing been restricted to literature or poetry, probably because of the influence of the increased lining of the word with the bodily fluids associated with sexual arousal.  As a poetic device, between the fourteen and eighteenth centuries, moist (sometimes as “the coming moist”), was used to suggest impending rain and a gathering storm was “the moist”.  Some older usage guides suggested moist was mostly used for agreeable or neutral conditions (moist chocolate cake; moist garden) while damp was applied to something undesirable (damp clothes; damp carpet) but this seems dated, given the current feelings of linguistic disapprobation.  The synonyms depend for meaning on context and can include (of the eyes) dewy-eyed, misty, teary, weepy, wet, (of the weather) damp, muggy, humid, rainy, & (of the built environment) wet & dank.

The language’s most hated word.

Moist appears to be the most disliked word in the English language.  In 2012 The New Yorker asked its readers to nominate a word to scrub from the English language and an overwhelming consensus emerged to ditch "moist".  Even in surveys where it doesn’t top the disgust list, moist seems always to score high (or low depending on one’s view) and most of the words with which it competes have about them some quality of moistness including pus (a white to yellowish liquid formed on the site of a wound or infection), phlegm (a liquid secreted by mucous membranes), seepage (the slow escape of a liquid or gas through small holes or porous material), splooge (an abrupt discharge of fluid, fester (of a wound or sore that becomes septic; suppurate), mucus (a slippery secretion produced by and covered by mucous membranes), ooze (fluid slowly trickle or seep out of something), putrid (organic matter decaying or rotting and emitting a fetid smell) & curd (a dairy product obtained by curdling milk (or soy).  Others have conducted similar surveys and found other words which attracted little fondness (not all of which literally involved any sort of wetness but had a spelling or pronunciation which seemed to hint at moistness) included festering, lugubrious, smear, squirt, gurgle, fecund, pulp and viscous.  Surprisingly perhaps, "rural" often rates a high disapprobation count, perhaps reflecting the urban bias of surveys (something presumably true of The New Yorker's erudite readership).  

Practitioners of structural linguistics provided another layer of interest, noting some correlation between the offending words and their use of the "phonetically abrasive" letters (“b”, “g”, “m”, “u” & “o”).  That would seem tom make “gumbo” at least a linguistic micro-aggression but it deserves to be defended.  Gumbo is a soup or stew (depending on how it’s prepared) especially popular in Louisiana and made with an intense stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener (historically always okra), and the so-called “holy trinity” of celery, bell peppers and onions; it’s said to be delicious.  The origin of the use of the word gumbo to describe the dish is uncertain but it was first recorded in 1805 as a part of Louisiana French and etymologists conclude it was probably from the Central Bantu dialect.  In the associative way such things work, Gumbo was used also of the creole patois of Louisiana; that use dating from 1838.  A patois is one of the layers of language and while a creole is recognized as a stand-alone language, a patois is considered a variation of a “real” language.  It’s a highly technical aspect of structural linguistics and the mechanics of differentiation used by linguists to distinguish between creoles, patois, and pidgins (many of which remain permanently in flux) are intricate and understood by few, the rules (about which not all agree) including arcane discussions about the situations in which patois is properly capitalized and those in which it’s not.  Less controversial is the use of gumbo in hydrology where it’s used of “fine, silty soils which when wet becomes very thick and heavy” (a use obviously redolent with moistness and thus likely to elicit disgust from delicate types).  For those who wish further to be disgusted, a usually reliable source (Urban Dictionary) has several pages of real-world definitions of gumbo, many of which rate high on the moistness index.   

Researchers from Oberlin College in Ohio and Trinity University in San Antonio ran three different experiments to figure out how many people hate the word "moist" and work out why.  They found more than one person in five loathed moist and it seems people associate it with bodily functions, whether they realize it or not.  The researchers said their subjects’ responses were typified by an answer such as “It just has an ugly sound that makes whatever you’re talking about sound gross”.  The younger (or more neurotic) the study participants were, the more likely they were to dislike the word and the more disgust bodily functions provoked, the less they liked moist.  Still, although the researchers didn’t try to prove it, it’s doubtful many would have declined a slice of a nice, moist chocolate cake.

Moist dark chocolate cake

Using dark chocolate makes for the ultimate moist chocolate cake and it’s ideal to serve with brandy infused cream.  The preparation time is between 30-40 minutes, cooking takes 60-90 minutes and it’s ready to serve as soon as cooled.  This recipe will yield a cake of 12-14 slices.

Ingredients (chocolate cake)

200 g dark chocolate (about 60-75% cocoa solids), chopped
200 g butter, cubed
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules
85 g self-raising flour
85 g plain flour
¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200 g light muscovado sugar
200 g golden caster sugar
25 g cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
75 ml buttermilk
50 g grated chocolate or 100 g curls, to decorate

Ingredients (ganache)

200 g dark chocolate (about 60% cocoa solids), chopped
300 ml double cream
2 tablespoons golden caster sugar

Instructions

(1) Heat oven to 160C (fan-forced) / 140C (gas level 3).  Butter and line a 300 mm round (75 mm deep) cake tin.

(2) Put 200g chopped dark chocolate in medium pan with 200g butter.

(3) Mix 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules into 125 ml cold water and pour into pan.

(4) Warm over a low heat just until everything is melted (DO NOT overheat). Alternatively, melt in microwave (should take 3-5 minutes), stirring after 2 minutes.

(5) Mix 85 g self-rising flour, 85 g plain flour, ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 200 g light muscovado sugar, 200 g golden caster sugar and 25 g cocoa powder; squash mix until lump-free.

(6) Beat 3 medium eggs with 75 ml buttermilk.

(7) Pour melted chocolate mixture and egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir everything to a smooth (quite runny) consistency.

(8) Pour this into tin and bake for 85-90 minutes.  To test, push a skewer into the centre and (1) it should come out clean and (2) the top should feel firm (surface cracking is normal and indicates perfectly cooked).

(9) Leave to cool in tin (during this, it will likely dip a little), then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cut cold cake horizontally into three.

(10) To make the ganache, put 200 g chopped dark chocolate in a bowl. Pour 300 ml double cream into a pan, add 2 tablespoons golden caster sugar and heat until mix is at the point of boiling.

(11) Immediately remove mix from heat and pour it over the chocolate.  Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.  Cool until it becomes a little cooler but remains pourable.

(12) Sandwich the layers together with just a little of the ganache. Pour the rest over the cake letting it fall down the sides; smooth over any gaps with a palette knife.

(13) Decorate with 50 g grated chocolate or 100 g chocolate curls. The cake will keep “moist and gooey” for 3-4 days.

Fartsdumper

Fartsdumper (pronounced farst-hoump-ah)

In Norwegian Nynorsk & Norwegian Bokmål, the indefinite plural of fartsdump (masculine or feminine), a road hump, speed bump or speed hump.

Mid twentieth century: The construct was fart + -s- + dump.  Fart was from the Middle Low German vart (speed, velocity; movement, motion; transport, transportation, traffic), from the From Old Saxon fard (traffic; journey) from the Proto-West Germanic fardi, from the Proto-Germanic fardiz (journey, voyage).  In the higher Germanic, the definite singular was farten, the indefinite plural fartar & the definite plural fartane.  The -s- was the genitival interfix indicating that the former part is a characteristic of the latter.  Dumper was from the German dumpf ((of a sound) dull (pain also), hollow, muffled; a thud (dull sound)), a gradation from the Middle High German dimpfen (to smoke, fume) and it’s speculated it may ultimately be derived from the same source as the English dank.  In fartsdump (masculine), the definite singular is fartsdumpen, the indefinite plural fartsdumpar & the definite plural fartsdumpane.  In fartsdump (feminine), the definite singular is fartsdumpa, the indefinite plural fartsdumper & the definite plural fartsdumpene.  The alternative form is the synonym fartshump (and derivatives).

The English Dank is a curious one, the conventional etymology suggesting it dates from the late fourteenth century, from the Middle English danke (wet, damp; dampness, moisture), probably from the North Germanic and related to the Swedish dänka & dank (marshy spot), the Norwegian dynke (to moisten), the Icelandic dökk (pool), the Old Norse dǫkk (pit, depression; water hole), from the Proto-Germanic dankwaz (dark).  The alternative etymology traces it to the a West Germanic source such as Dutch damp (vapor) or the Middle High German damph, both ultimately from the Proto-Germanic dampaz (smoke, steam, vapor).  Dank is an adjective & noun, dankly is an adverb, dankness is a noun and danker & dankest are adjectives.  The noun plural is danks.  Dank’s niche in the language is unique but words associated with the idea include chilly, damp, humid, muggy, steamy, sticky, wet, clammy, dewy, dripping, moist, slimy & soggy.

In other languages the evolution differed.  In Modern Dutch, dank (gratitude, a showing or token of recognition; reward, recompense) is from the Middle Dutch danc, from Old Dutch thank, from the Proto-Germanic þankaz.  In German, dank (thanks to, because of) was cognate with danken and the Dutch dank (and related to the Latin grātia) while in Lower Sorbian it came to mean "tax, fine, levy, duty".  In one Germanic quirk, in Luxembourgish, dank evolved as the second-person singular imperative of danken (to thank), from the Old High German thankōn, from the Proto-Germanic þankōną and cognate with the German danken, the Dutch danken, and the English thank.

Humps & bumps

In Norway, this advises a speed hump is ahead and drivers must not exceed 30 km/h (19 mph).

The terms speed hump and speed bump are, by most, used interchangeably because few of us realize there’s a difference, both appearing as tiresome, planned obstacles placed in a road. However, to traffic engineers, there is a difference.  A speed hump is intended to slow traffic to a speed in a 10-20 mph (16-32 km/h) range and is used in high volume areas such as residential streets, school zones, bus stops, the approaches to pedestrian crossings and around hospitals.  The construction and installation techniques vary depending upon the dimensions of the hump and the material used but the objective is gradually to reduce the speed of traffic, thus minimizing both the occurrence of incidents and reduce severity of injury in those which happen.  In design, a speed hump is a compromise between its purpose the need (1) to avoid damage to vehicles and (2) ensure emergency service vehicles are not unduly impeded.  Speed Bumps are more aggressive intent, designed to reduce the speed of vehicles to as slow as 2 mph (3 km/h) and generally no more than 5 mph (8 km/h).  Rising at a more acute angle and usually higher than a speed hump, speed bumps are used in areas where vehicle and pedestrians (or animals) share the environment such as parking areas, concourses or inner city streets.  The core purpose is a shock which induces a driver abruptly and rapidly to reduce speed.

Flink Fartsdumper (Smart Speed bumps): In high-tech & law-abiding Scandinavia, the smart-speed bump seems admired, only transgressors suffering while the obedient in their Volvos cruise on, their serenity undisturbed.

Fart Kontrol in Denmark.  The Fart Kontrol signs advise motorists of enhanced speed monitoring by the police including speed cameras.

The Nordic nations seem well-advanced in the art and science of speed humps & bumps, something not surprising, Sweden especially notorious for its onerous (and enforced) road-rules.  The new generation of Scandinavian smart speed humps & bumps are part of an integrated system of traffic management which permits speed limits in a given place to be varied according to defined conditions (time of day, visibility, weather conditions, day of the week etc), the signage changing automatically or by intervention in response to a specific event (road damage, accidents etc).  All this is accomplished by a combination of robotic devices which use sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) and centralized or distributed monitoring centres where humans react to information passed dynamically by the AI.  Part of the system is the smart speed hump or bump, one of the features of which is that the devices can be designed to be both depending on need and indeed even cease to exist, becoming a flat structure not protruding from the road’s surface.  Manually or automatically thus, at any time, a road may change from one with a speed hump, a speed bump or no obstruction at all.  The use of sensors monitoring the speed of traffic allows a speed hump or speed bum to be raised in response to a vehicle travelling above the limit while remaining flat for those not offending, sinners thus punished while the virtuous proceed serenely and slowly onwards. 

This is an aspect of the surveillance society which is becoming pervasive, the integration of which with AI has implications both reassuring and ominous.  The developments are most obvious (and most discussed) in China’s (People’s Republic of China; the PRC) Social Credit System (unrelated to CH Douglas's (1879–1952) mysterious theory of political economy).  The Chinese system began essentially as an exercise in database matching with the intention of ensuring those with a history of bad debts weren’t able to obtain credit from other institutions.  From there it grew to the point where the combination of big-machine databases and facial recognition software can mean someone crossing a road without waiting for the “Cross” sign to appear, might find their “social credit” score debited.  Presumably, if one jaywalks once too often, there can be consequences although whether that will be a text message suggesting a closer attention to road rules or a knock on the door at 2am informing one that one is to spend the next week in a “re-education centre” remains to be seen.  To the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) the social credit system must seem admirable because, after all, anyone who waits for the “Cross” sign has nothing to fear and pedestrian injuries & fatalities should greatly be reduced.  A win-win system then.

In the West, the pressure to adopt systems which pivot off the possibilities offered by facial recognition and database matching will be irresistible.  Corporations like the idea that someone wandering around a shop should see and hear content as tailored to their buying habits as that which is delivered to their screens at home or in their pocket.  They’ll be interested too in whether someone walking into the shop was once convicted (or even accused) of a property offence such as theft (especially shop-lifting it’s presumed) so matching a corporate surveillance system to law-enforcement databases offers obvious efficiencies in loss-prevention.  In commerce, the attraction of AI is that such systems, whether revenue generating or loss-preventing, run at essentially marginal cost.  Thus a “success” rate, in terms of additional sales may need to be as little as 3% because 3% of a store’s total customer movement should be still a big number.  Politically, it may be more of a concern because the possible implications of agencies of the state knowing (and recording) what a citizen eats, drinks, reads & watches and where they go with whom and what they buy or do when they’re there, remains substantially still speculative.  The possibilities will however emerge as the systems, gradually (and not necessarily obviously) are rolled-out, history suggesting we’ll be told about (1) the benefits and (2) if we’re doing nothing wrong we have nothing to fear.

Fart kontrol in the age of climate change.

Melissa Carone & Rudy Giuliani before the Michigan House Oversight Committee, Lansing, Michigan, 2 December 2020.

In Scandinavia, Fartkontrol is a familiar and well-understood road-sign but in the English-speaking world, at first glance it might summon thoughts other than of traffic management.  When Rudy Giuliani (b 1944; Mayor of New York City 1994-2001 & Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) personal attorney since 2018) appeared at a hearing conducted by Michigan House Oversight Committee in Lansing on 2 December 2020, there were so many memorable moments, it’s perhaps unfair to focus one but Mr Giuliani’s inability to maintain fartkontrol was so emblematic of the event that it’s as well remembered as his appearance in the mockumentary Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020).  Helpfully the precise moments of interest may be determined by the expressions of distaste shown by Jenna Ellis (b 1984), an attorney then attached to the Trump team and sitting to Mr Giuliani’s left.  The hearing was held to investigate allegation of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and focused both on aspects of the behavior of voters and the operations of electronic voting machines provided by Dominion Voting Systems.  Footage of the hearing provided some fun for viewers but the drama of the events of 6 January and more recently the coverage of the congressional committee investigating the involvement of others in the attempted insurrection diverted attention from what was in itself a serious matter.  That may soon change as the previously little-reported suit by Dominion (US Dominion Inc & Dominion Voting Systems Inc versus Fox Corporation & Fox Broadcasting (CA No N21C-11-082 EMD CCLD)) was recently cleared to proceed by the Superior Court in Delaware.  Dominion is, inter alia, suing Fox News for repeatedly broadcasting claims Dominion rigged and otherwise manipulated the 2020 election, even though it knew the claims to be demonstratively untrue.  Even if a final judgment doesn’t in quantum approach the US$1.6 billion headline damages Dominion have cited, the case may become interesting (1) as a marker on where the US mainstream media stands in relation to the First Amendment and (2) especially interesting if Fox is subject to discovery, the tantalizing prospect being the revelation of communications from Rupert Murdoch (b 1931; effective controller of News Corp & Fox News) himself.  Just what Mr Murdoch actually tells his editors to do and say has for decades been a matter of fascination among political junkies.

If Mr Giuliani’s inconsistent fartkontrol was a footnote, the appearance of his star witness was one of the better fifteen minutes of fame seen in recent years.  Ms Melissa Carone’s (b 1998) performance before the oversight committee was a smorgasbord of conspiracy theory, accusation and political polemic; of its genre, it was a tour de force.  Indeed, it seemed a star had been discovered and a career in politics or the theatre (it can be a fine distinction) seemed certain but unfortunately the Michigan Department of State recently disqualified the mercurial Ms Carone from contesting the Republican primary for a state Senate seat, the office saying she (and ten others who had nominated) had made false statements on an affidavit candidates were required to submit.  In the matter of Ms Carone, she had attested she had against her no unpaid fines for election law violations and all of her public campaign filings were up-to-date.  The department of state ruled this was not true and it was her second recent disqualification, the Macomb County Clerk & Register of Deeds having earlier barred her from participating in a primary for state representative.

Ms Carone knows a conspiracy when she sees and accused Republican election officials and the GOP leadership of plotting to keep her off the ballot.  “This is how our elected officials keep good candidates from getting elected” Ms. Carone said, adding that she was “…going to fight it. Even if I don’t end up on the ballot, my voice will be heard. I’m not going anywhere. I will still be exposing these establishment sellout RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) in the Michigan GOP.”  The office of the Macomb County clerk denied any political motivation, saying the disqualification was because “…she basically perjured herself” and that it was in Michigan “a felony to make a false statement on affidavits like those signed by candidates.”

Rudy Giuliani.

Melissa Carone

Dank

Dank (pronounced dangk)

(1) Unpleasantly moist or humid; damp and, often, chilly.

(2) In slang, as dank weed, excellent; high quality marijuana.

(3) In slang (as a critique of an internet meme), passé or clichéd, out of touch; having missed the cultural moment.

(4) In slang, an adjective of generalized approval or disapproval depending on the practice of the user, the former using dank ironically, the latter literally.

(5) A small silver coin formerly used in Persia

(6) As the acronym DANK, the Deutsch Amerikanischer National Kongress (German American National Congress).

(7) As an intransitive verb, to moisten, dampen; used of mist, dew etc (obsolete).

1350-1400: From the Middle English danke (wet, damp; dampness, moisture), probably from the North Germanic and related to the Swedish dänka & dank (marshy spot), the Norwegian dynke (to moisten), the Icelandic dökk (“pool”), the Old Norse dǫkk (pit, depression; water hole), from the Proto-Germanic dankwaz (dark).  The alternative etymology traces it to the a West Germanic source such as Dutch damp (vapor) or the Middle High German damph, both ultimately from the Proto-Germanic dampaz (smoke, steam, vapor).  Dank is an adjective & noun, dankly is an adverb, dankness is a noun and danker & dankest are adjectives.  The noun plural is danks.  Dank’s niche in the language is unique but words associated with the idea include chilly, damp, humid, muggy, steamy, sticky, wet, clammy, dewy, dripping, moist, slimy & soggy

In other languages the evolution differed.  In Modern Dutch, dank (gratitude, a showing or token of recognition; reward, recompense) is from the Middle Dutch danc, from Old Dutch thank, from the Proto-Germanic þankaz.  In German, dank (thanks to, because of) was cognate with danken and the Dutch dank (and related to the Latin grātia) while in Lower Sorbian it came to mean "tax, fine, levy, duty".  In one Germanic quirk, in Luxembourgish, dank evolved as the second-person singular imperative of danken (to thank), from the Old High German thankōn, from the Proto-Germanic þankōną and cognate with the German danken, the Dutch danken, and the English thank.

Dank is also a surname.  Diana Dank (b 1989) is a Russian actress and graduate in international management from the Russian Foreign Trade Academy (Moscow).

Dank is not, as is sometimes supposed, a blend of “damp” and “dark” although, most associated with describing damp, dark basements, it’s a practical working definition although dank places are often thought of as humid too.  The seemingly curious evolution of dank as a slang term meaning either “very good” or “very bad” is actually derived from the literal meaning in the sense of “moisture” which can be bad (rising damp etc) or something good (nice moist buds of weed).  Dank weed, the much admired strain of marijuana is said to be really potent, the recommended processing involving a slow drying of the harvested plant material in a paper bag with the top folded and placed in another bag, thereby reducing exposure to light & air.  When retrieving, aficionados check to ensure it remains moist, green and sticky, the resin glands still intact and “sweating” (slightly excreting).  Dank is the sense of things in general which are good developed from here, much as “filth” as a term of approbation emerged from the sense of “dirty bitch”.

Zugzwang

Zugzwang (pronounced tsook-tsvahng)

(1) In chess, a situation in which a player is limited to moves that cost pieces or have a damaging positional effect.

(2) A situation in which, whatever is done, makes things worse.

(3) A situation in which one is forced to act when one would prefer to remain passive.

(4) In game theory, a move which changes the outcome from win to loss.

Circa 1858 (1905 in English): A modern German compound zug+zwang.   Zug (move) is from the Middle High German zuc & zug from the Old High German zug from Proto-Germanic tugiz, an abstract noun belonging to the Proto-Germanic teuhaną, derived from the primitive Indo-European dewk (to pull, lead).  Cognate with the Dutch teug and the Old English tyge.  Zwang (compulsion; force; constraint; obligation) is from the Middle High German twanc from the Old High German geduang.  It belongs to the verb zwingen and cognates include the Dutch dwang and the Swedish tvång.  The word is best understood as "compulsion to move" or, in the jargon of chess players: "Your turn to move and whatever you do it'll make things worse for you", thus the application to game theory, military strategy and politics where there's often a need to determine the "least worse option". 

Chess and Game Theory

The first known use of zugzwang in the German chess literature appears in 1858; the first appearance in English in 1905.  However, the concept of zugzwang had been known and written about for centuries, the classic work being Italian chess player Alessandro Salvio's (circa 1575–circa 1640) study of endgames published in 1604 and he referenced Shatranj writings from the early ninth century, some thousand years before the first known use of the term.  Positions with zugzwang are not rare in chess endgames, best known in the king-rook & king-pawn conjunctions.  Positions of reciprocal zugzwang are important in the analysis of endgames but although the concept is easily demonstrated and understood, that's true only of the "simple zugzwang" and the so-called "sequential zugzwang" will typically be a multi-move thing which demands an understanding of even dozens of permutations of possibilities.

Endgame: Daily Chess Musings quick illustration of the elegance of zugwang.

The concept finds its formal definition in combinatorial game theory. It describes a situation where one player is put at a disadvantage because he has to make a move although the player would prefer to pass and make no move. The fact that the player must make a move means that his position will be significantly weaker than the hypothetical one in which it is his opponent's turn to move. In game theory, it specifically means that it directly changes the outcome of the game from a win to a loss.

Booby

Booby (pronounced boo-bee)

(1) A bird, a gannet of the genus Sula, having a bright bill, bright feet, or both; some are listed as threatened or endangered.

(2) A slang term for someone thought stupid or a dunce, ignorant or foolish (although still used in the mid-twentieth century, it's probably now obsolete, the meaning crowded out by intrusion of newer slang, some of which has also fallen victim to the linguistic treadmill).

(3) The losing player in a game (historic UK usage as "booby prize", now largely obsolete except in informal use).

(4) One of the many slang terms for the human female's breasts and related to the more common boob, boobs and boobie.

(5) In croquet, a ball that has not passed through the first wicket. 

1590s: From Spanish Latin from the earlier pooby, apparently a blend of (the now obsolete in this context) poop (to befool) and baby, perhaps by association with Spanish bobo (stupid person, slow bird), thought to be from an imitative root of the Latin balbus (stuttering).  Balbus was from the primitive Indo-European balb- & balbal- (tongue-tied) and was cognate with the Ancient Greek βαμβαίνω (bambaínō) & βαμβαλύζω (bambalúzō) (I chatter with the teeth), the Russian болтать (boltatʹ) (to chatter, to babble), the Lithuanian balbė́ti (to talk, to babble), the Sanskrit बल्बला (balbalā) (stammering) and the Albanian belbët (stammering).  The booby prize dates from 1883, a prize given to the loser in a game as concept which persists in some sporting competitions as "the wooden spoon", the idea being something as removed as possible from the usual silverware given as trophies.  The booby trap was first noted in 1850, originally a schoolboy prank (ie something only a "boob" would fall for); the more lethal sense developed during World War I and remain common military and para-military use.  Booby and boobyism are nouns, boobyish and (the non-standard but potentially useful)  boobyesque are adjectives; the noun plural is boobies.

Found usually in pairs

A nice pair of boobies.

A booby is a seabird in the genus Sula, part of the Sulidae family. Boobies are closely related to the gannets (Morus), which were formerly included in Sula, the genus created in 1760 by the French naturalist Mathurin Jacques Brisson (1723-1806).  The name is derived from súla, the Old Norse and Icelandic word for the other member of the family Sulidae, the gannet.  The English name booby was based on the Spanish bobo (stupid) as the tame birds often landed on board sailing ships, where they were easily captured and eaten.  As well as a popular addition to the diet of sailors for whom meat other than fish was a rarity, it was fortuitous for many, the Admiralty's archives revealing boobies are often mentioned as having been caught and eaten by shipwrecked sailors.  In taxonomic classification, variations include Abbott's booby (Papasula abbotti), blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii), brown booby (Sula leucogaster), masked booby (Sula dactylatra), Nazca booby (Sula granti), Peruvian booby (Sula variegata), red-footed booby (Sula sula) & Tasman booby (Sula dactylatra tasmani).

Boobies in time, in step.

Based on the use by mainstream internet sites (including nominally reputable news organizations), boob (more commonly in the plural as boobs) seems to have emerged as the preferred slang for breasts, probably because it seems the term women find most acceptable and the one they most often use, not infrequently as their default descriptor.  The origin appears to lie in bubby (plural bubbies), a slang term for the female breast dating from the 1680s which is thought to be imitative of a baby's cry or the sucking sound heard during lactation.  It was most associated with south-east England although that may reflect more extensive documentation rather than proof of regionalism.  Inherently anyway a form in oral use, the alternative pronunciations included buhb-ee, boo-bee & boob-ee so the evolution to boob was perhaps not unexpected although most dictionaries list the earliest known instance as a late 1930s Americanism with the back-formed clippings boob & boobs not appearing until the early post-war years, initially as a vulgarism, women not embracing use for decades although that their approval seems to have coincided with late second-wave feminism is presumably coincidental.

Fully loaded: Lindsay Lohan in boobie-top with crash helmet, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

In fashion, the boobie top (less commonly as booby-top) is a style of clothing (including dresses) which in some way draws attention to or emphasizes the breasts.  The design is most associated with generous displays of cleavage or skin but is used also to refer to garments which wholly cover the breasts in such as way as to highlight the size, shape or movement.

During World War II (1939-1945), the US military kept up with evolution of slang, something reflected in advertising which lent a new definition to "booby trap", a familiar concept in which soldiers were well-drilled.  Until well into the twentieth century (and the beginning of the antibiotic era), it wasn't unusual for the losses of combat-ready troops to illness & disease to exceed those caused by battlefield causalities and although the numbers were dwarfed by conditions such as malaria, preventing and treating sexually transmitted diseases (STDs, then called venereal disease (VD)) was an important component of military medicine.  It wasn’t until the 1970s the initialism VD began to be replaced by STD (VD thought to have to have gained too many specific associations) but fortunately for AT&T, in 1951 they renamed their STD (Subscriber Toll Dialing) service (for long-distance phone calls) to DDD (Direct Distance Dialing), apparently for no better reason than the alliterative appeal although it's possible they just wanted to avoid mentioning “toll” with all that implies.  Many countries in the English-speaking world continued to use STD for the phone calls, even after the public health specialists had re-purposed the initialization.  In clinical use, "Sexually Transmitted Infection" seems now to be the preferred term.