Virus

Virus (pronounced vahy-ruhs)

(1) An sub- or ultra-microscopic (20 to 300 nm diameter), metabolically inert, non-cellular infectious agent that replicates only within the cells of living hosts, mainly bacteria, plants, and animals: composed of an RNA or DNA core, a protein coat, and, in more complex types, a surrounding envelope.  Because viruses are unable to replicate without a host cell, they are not considered living organisms in conventional taxonomic systems (though often referred to as live (in the sense of active) when replicating and causing disease.

(2) A quantity of such infectious agents.

(3) In informal use, metonymically, A disease caused by such an infectious agent; a viral illness.

(4) Venom, as produced by a poisonous animal etc (extinct in this context). 

(5) Figuratively, any malicious or dangerous entity that spreads from one place or person to another; a corrupting influence on morals or the intellect. 

(6) In computing, a segment of often self-replicating code furtively planted in a computer program, either to damage a system or for financial gain by a variety of fraudulent techniques.

(7) In computing (loosely used), any form of malware.

Late 1300s: From the Middle English virus (poisonous substance (this meaning now extinct in this context)), from the Latin vīrus (slime; venom; poisonous liquid; sap of plants; slimy liquid; a potent juice), from rhotacism from the Proto-Italic weisos & wisós (fluidity, slime, poison) probably from the primitive Indo-European root ueis & wisós (fluidity, slime, poison (though it may originally have meant “to melt away, to flow”), used of foul or malodorous fluids, but in some languages limited to the specific sense of "poisonous fluid") which was the source also of the Sanskrit visam (venom, poison) & visah (poisonous), the Avestan vish- (poison), the Latin viscum (sticky substance, birdlime), the Greek ios (poison) & ixos (mistletoe, birdlime), the Old Church Slavonic višnja (cherry), the Old Irish fi (poison) and the Welsh gwy (poison).  It was related also to the Old English wāse (marsh).  Virus is a noun & a (rare) verb and viral is an adjective; the noun plural is viruses.

The original meaning, "poisonous substance”, emerged in the late fourteenth century and was an inheritance from the Latin virus (poison, sap of plants, slimy liquid, a potent juice) from the Proto-Italic weis-o-(s-) (poison), probably from the primitive Indo-European root ueis-, thought originally to mean "to melt away, to flow" and used of foul or malodorous fluids, but with specialization in some languages to mean "poisonous fluid".  It’s the source of the Sanskrit visam (venom, poison) & visah (poisonous), the Avestan vish- (poison), the Latin viscum (sticky substance; birdlime) the Greek ios (poison) & ixos (mistletoe, birdlime), the Old Church Slavonic višnja (cherry). The Old Irish fi (poison) and the Welsh gwy (poison).  The meaning "agent that causes infectious disease" emerged in the 1790s, the medical literature of the time describing their manifestation in  especially disgusting terms (the word pus most frequent) and one dictionary entry of 1770 contains the memorable: "a kind of watery stinking matter, which issues out of ulcers, being endued with eating and malignant qualities".  As early as 1728 (borrowing from the earlier sense of "poison"), it had been used in reference to venereal disease, the first recognizably modern scientific use dating from the 1880s.  The first known citation in the context of computing was by Gregory Benford (b 1941) who published The Scarred Man (1970) although it’s often credited to David Gerrold (b 1944), who used the word in this context in When HARLIE Was One (1972).

Before the internet: ARPANET network schematic 1973.

In computing, theoretical work on the self-replicating code (which is the core of a digital virus) was published as early as 1971 and what’s regarded as the first object to behave like a virus (though technically, it would now be called a worm) was released as a harmless amusement on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) (ARPANET), the internet’s precursor network.  It was called “creeper, catch me if you can!" and, perhaps predictably, other nerds rose to the challenge and release the “reaper” their own worm which killed whatever creepers it found.  Creeper & reaper conducted their cat & mouse game on Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) PDP-10, predecessor to the famous PDP-11 mini-computer and at this point, viruses were genuinely harmless (if time wasting) activities conducted between consenting nerds in the privacy of their parochial networks.  However, it was the development of the personal computer (PC) from 1975 and especially the subsequent adoption by business of the IBM-PC-1 (1981) and its clones which created the population in which viruses could spread and while relatively harmless creations like Stoned (1987) tended to amuse because they did little more that display on the screen of an infected device the message "Your PC is now Stoned", there were many others which were quite destructive.  The first which came to wide public attention was probably Melissa (1999) which caused much economic loss and the discussion of which (by mostly male writers in the specialist press) excited some criticism from feminists who objected to headlines like "Melissa was really loose, and boy did she get around".    

The late John McAfee (1945–2021) who led an interesting life.

In medicine, the first antivirus was available in 1903, an equivalent (shrink-wrap) product for computers apparently first offered for sale in 1987 although there seems no agreement of which of three authors (Paul Mace, Andreas Lüning & the late John McAfee) reached the market first.  The adjective viral (of the nature of, or caused by, a virus) dates from 1944 as applied in medicine whereas the now equally familiar, post world-wide-web sense of stuff "become suddenly popular through internet sharing" is attested by 1999 although most seem convinced it must have been in use prior to this.

The rhinovirus (one of a group of viruses that includes those which cause many common colds) was first described in 1961, the construct being rhino- (from the Ancient Greek rhino (a combining form of rhis (nose) of uncertain origin) + virus.  The noun virology appeared in 1935 to describe the then novel branch of science and parvovirus (a very small virus), the construct being parvi- (small, little) + the connecting element -o- + virus was coined in 1965 to describe the decreasingly small objects becoming visible as optical technology improved.  The rotavirus (a wheel-shaped virus causing inflammation of the lining of the intestines), the construct being rota (wheel) + virus dates from 1974.

Diagram of a retrovirus.

The adjective virulent dates from circa 1400 in reference to wounds, ulcers etc (full of corrupt or poisonous matter), from the Latin virulentus (poisonous), from virus; the figurative sense of "violent, spiteful" attested from circa 1600; virulently the related form.  The mysterious reovirus was a noun coined in 1959 by Polish-American medical researcher Dr Albert Sabin (1906-1993), the “reo-“ and acronym for “respiratory enteric orphan”, to describe viruses considered orphans in the sense of not being connected to any of the diseases with which they were associated.  More technical still was the (1977) retrovirus, an evolution of the (1974) retravirus (from re(verse) tra(nscriptase) + connective -o- + virus), explained by it containing reverse transcriptase, an enzyme which uses RNA instead of DNA to encode genetic information, thus reversing the usual pattern.  While these things are usually the work of committees, there seems to be nothing in the public record to suggest why “retro-“ was preferred to “retra-“, the assumption being “retro-“ more explicitly indicated "backwards."

In 2014, while in the South Pacific, Lindsay Lohan contracted Chikungunya, an infection caused by the Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), spread by two types of mosquito.  On Twitter and Instagram, she recommended the use of bug spray.  The condition was first isolated in Tanzania in 1952, the word Chikungunya from the Kimakonde language which translates literally as "to become contorted" although the World Health Organization (WHO) lists the common symptoms as a persistent headache, swollen joints, muscle pain and a rash which typically appears first on the extremities.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) assembly and egress.

Not alive in the technical sense defined in biology, a virus is a biological agent which reproduces inside the cells of living hosts.  When infected by a virus, a host cell is forced quickly to produce thousands of identical copies of the original; unlike actual living things, viruses do not have cells that divide, new viruses being assembled in the infected host cell.  Unlike simpler infectious agents, viruses contain genes so they mutate and evolve and thousands are known to exist.  Viruses are tiny, much smaller than bacteria and it can require more than a million of them, side by side, to reach one inch (25 mm) and although a theory of viruses was constructed after French and Russian experiments in the 1880s, it wasn’t until the electron microscope became available in 1931 that the first images were captured.  Where there is life, there are viruses and it’s thought likely they have existed either since, or very shortly after, the first living cells evolved; it’s not impossible the first cellular forms would now, technically, be classified as viruses.  Viruses can be benign and bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria, used in eastern Europe since the nineteenth century to treat infection but almost ignored since the development of antibiotics.  With the growth in antibiotic resistance, there’s now renewed interest.  Viruses also perform a useful role in ecology, killing around a fifth of oceanic biomass, the increased respiration in the seas ultimately reducing the atmospheric carbon dioxide by some three gigatons per year.

During the initial 2019 outbreak in Wuhan of what is now called COVID-19, both virus and disease were mostly referred to as "coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus" or "Wuhan pneumonia".  There had been a long tradition of naming diseases after the geographical location where they were first reported (Hong Kong flu, Spanish flu etc) but this could be misleading.  The Spanish flu, associated with the pandemic of 1918-1920, was actually first detected elsewhere, either on the World War I battlefields of France or (more probably) a military camp in the United States but, because Spain was a neutral in the conflict, there was no military censorship to limit reporting so warnings about this especially virulent influenza were printed in the Spanish press.  From here, it was eventually picked up and publicized as “Spanish flu” although, doctors there, in an early example of contract tracing, were aware of vectors of transmission and insisted it was the “French flu” because this was where their back-tracing led.  This had no effect beyond Spain and it’s ever since been known as “Spanish flu” although the practice of using geographical references has now been abandoned, a linguistic sanitization which has extended to anything likely to cause offence, the recently topical Monkeypox now called Mpox which seems hardly imaginative.     

Representation of a coronavirus.

In January 2020, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) recommended the name 2019-nCoV & 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease as interim names for virus and disease respectively (although “human coronavirus 2019”, “HCoV-19” & “hCoV-19” also exist in the record).  The committee’s recommendation conformed to the conventions adopted after it was decided in 2015, to avoid social stigma, to cease the use of geographical locations or identities associated with specific people(s) in disease-related names.  Although well understood by scientists, the WHO must have thought them a bit much for general use and in February 2020, issued SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 as the official nomenclature: CO=corona, VI=virus, D=disease & 19=2019 although for a while, confusingly, documents issued by the WHO sometimes referenced “COVID-19 virus” rather than the correct SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; the name adopted because of the close genetic relationship to the first SARS outbreak in 2003 (now retrospectively listed as SARS-Cov-1).

One of civilizations modern quests in the hunt for the “viral video” (video content posted to the internet which rapidly and at scale is passed from user to user in a pattern analogous to the spread of a virus).  A viral video can bring one (at least a transitory fifteen minutes) fame, cash and perhaps a spike in the traffic to one’s OnlyFans page but, depending on the content and context, what can also ensue is infamy, cancellation or incarceration so, as the “Justine Sacco (b 1985) incident” illustrates, caution should be a prelude to posting.  A minor industry has sprung up to advise all who aspire to be content providers and one popular theme is what makes a clip go viral.  On the basis of posted advice, it seems clear there’s no one set of parameters which need be used but there’s certainly a collections of characteristics which encourage sharing and while virality remains unpredictable, most clips which spike do share common traits although with some obvious exceptions, the phenomenon tends to be siloed, a clip which wildly goes vial among one market segment can be almost un-shared within another.  The markers likely to trigger a viral reaction have been categorized thus:

(1) Original content: This need not of necessity be something novel or in any way unique but both those qualities can be valuable, something genuinely new most likely to grab attention.

(2) Creativity: This can mean something unconventional in approach or the use of existing techniques with high production values.

(3) Emotional Resonance:  Known also as “emotional manipulation”, content which can evoke feelings of joy, awe surprise, sadness, rage, disgust etc are more likely to be shared.

(4) Brevity: Most viral tend to be videos are short (less than two minutes is typical) and to some extent this is technologically deterministic, so much viral media coming from sites which curate such material and this has encouraged a ecosystem of what are now called “viral sites” (BuzzFeed, Upworthy, Distractify, LittleThings, Thought Catalog, UPROXX, Vox, Daily Dot, Ranker, Words et al).  Students of cause & effect can ponder the interplay between the emergence of these platforms and the alleged shortening of the planet’s collective attention span.

(5) The hook: Two minutes is a long time in the context of scrolling and while it’s not impossible for a clip where the “best big” comes at the end to go viral, it is less likely because not enough viewers will have persisted for it to gain critical mass.  Ideally, interest to the point of being committed to watch to the end should be captured in the first few seconds.  If the material is in the form of music, it should appeal (in a TikTok sort of way) with the sort of formula the pop music generators perfected in decades past.

(6) Entertaining: Clips go viral for all sorts of reasons but nothing seems to work better that something which makes people laugh; it’s more popular even than outrage, the internet’s other way of life.

(7) Relatability: Relatability (that with which people can identify) is a concept which can be vertical (something with great appeal to certain section of the population) or horizontal (something with general appeal to many sections of the population).  Content with a universal appeal (cross-cultural relevance) should in theory produce the greatest numbers but something aimed specifically at one market can produce greater tangible results (revenue).

(8) A twist: The ultimate viral video content is probably something with a hook at the start which grabs the attention, maintains a commitment to watching and then concludes with a dramatic, unexpected or funny ending.

(9) Ease of sharing: When file formats were not (more or less) standardized and cross-platform compatibility couldn’t be assumed, this was something to consider but now most content is optimized for the majors (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube et al), the process close to effortless.

(10) A Call-to-Action: This means something which encourages sharing and that can be explicit (“please share”) or a subliminal message which induces in viewers either a desire to share or a feeling they are somehow obliged to share.  Those which are controversial (the more polarizing the better) and which enable users to engage in “virtue signalling” (sharing a clip as a display of moral superiority) should produce more reaction.

(11) Relevance: If it’s funny enough nothing else really matters but something tied to the zeitgeist tends most quickly to gain traction.  These can be tied to trending hashtags or challenges on social media and are the most obvious form of encouraging interaction without demanding any real commitment.

(12) Celebrity association.  This need not be an endorsement (there evidence there’s now much cynicism about this) but if a celebrity shares something, it should be an accelerant in the process.

A classic viral clip: Man in Finance mixed by DJs Billen Ted & David Guetta, written and sung by Megan Boni (Girl on Couch).

I'm looking for a man in finance
Trust fund
Six-five (ie 6 foot, five inches tall)
Blue eyes
That's all I want

The lyrics to the track Man in Finance (sometimes as Looking for a Man in Finance) were written by Megan Boni (b 1997 and now better known as @girl_on_couch).  In April 2024 Ms Boni uploaded the clip (as a cappella piece) to TikTok and she says it was a parody of the unrealistic expectations of men held by young single women such as herself.  Attached to the original (a viral-friendly 19 seconds in duration) upload, Ms Boni requested DJs in her audience to “…make this into an actual song plz just for funzies.”  The DJs responded, the edited clip went viral and Ms Boni quit her “9 to 5” to enter the music industry.

The admirable Megan Boni, on a couch.

Catchy though it was, Ms Boni did take a risk because on the internet are those waiting to be offended (or disrespected, marginalized etc) and in an interview with The BBC she did note one comment on her post was that wanting a man with “blue eyes” meant she must be “racist” but there was little support for that and she escaped cancellation.  Still, the risks were clearly there because each line was laden with offence for anyone anxious to be outraged:

I'm looking for a man in finance (critique: supports a system which is exploitative and exists alienate people from the fruits of their labor).

Trust fund (critique: materialist).

Six-five (critique: heightist and thus exclusionary).

Blue eyes (critique: racist and thus exclusionary)

That's all I want

Really, people should just enjoy the beat.  As a parody it works well, a young spinster lamenting her status as a singleton by restricting the acceptable catchment of who might seek courtship to (1) “a man” (thereby excluding half the population), (2) employed in the “finance” industry (a tiny fraction of the male population), (3) the beneficiary of a “trust fund” (a tiny fraction of men working in the finance industry) (4) “six-five” tall (a tiny fraction of men working in the finance industry who are the beneficiaries of a trust fund) and (5) has “blue eyes” (an unknown but small percentage of 6’ 5" (1.95 m) tall men who are the beneficiaries of a trust fund and employed in the finance industry).  That math is of course what makes the last line (That’s all I want) so funny.  Ms Boni should maintain her high standards because she deserves to find the man of her dreams.

Epicaricacy

Epicaricacy (pronounced epp-e-kar-a-kh-see)

Rejoicing at or deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others (rare & probably extinct).

1700s: From the Ancient Greek ἐπιχαιρεκακία (epikhairekakía) (joy upon evil).  Epichairekakia appears first in the work of Aristotle, the construct being ἐπί (epi-) (upon) + χαρά (chara) (joy) + κακόν (kakon) (evil).  Epicaricacy has appeared in dictionaries of English since the early eighteenth century but there’s is no indication there was anything actual use of the word until the early twenty-first when there appeared a number of websites devoted to "interesting”, “obscure” or “rare” words.  Even then, use seems to have been limited to documenting that very rarity and obscurity.

In English, the German compound Schadenfreude (joy in the misfortune of others) has come to be preferred, used commonly since the late twentieth century although it was mentioned in English documents in 1852 and 1867 and first used in running text in 1895.  The construct of Schadenfreude, first attested in German in the 1740s, is Schaden (damage, misfortune) + Freude (joy).  The definition of Schadenfreude is usually extended to include “malicious enjoyment” but, as used in English, this isn’t always accurate and while “gloat” is close to Schadenfreude, it differs in that gloating need not be malicious and can be practiced and understood as something friendly or affectionate.  While common nouns normally are not capitalized in English, Schadenfreude sometimes is, following the German convention and this may be better because, unlike an assimilated word like etcetera, Schadenfreude remains still foreign.

Epicaricacy is usually delicious but can be enjoyed even more if the associated scuttlebutt, rumors, gossip (it's such an intoxicating thing tautology is inevitable), stories and low skulduggery are recorded so endlessly the pleasure can be enjoyed with no detail forgotten.  A Burn Book is recommended.

Although Schadenfreude is now not uncommon in English, the emotion it describes is undoubtedly more frequently felt than expressed.  Predictably perhaps, the antonym "confelicity", the construct being the Latin con- (from cum (with)) + the Latin felicitas (happiness), although in English since the nineteenth century, is noted by most dictionaries as rare; it seems we relish the misery of others more than their happiness.  Still, English at least has confleicity, German apparently offering no antonym for Schadenfreude, confirming everyone's worst prejudices about the Prussians.  Epicaricacy certainly had its chance, appearing in two of Nathan Bailey’s Lexicons, the Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1737) and the Dictionarium Britannicum, (1751) which stimulated apparently no interest in the word and nor did Joseph Shipley’s Dictionary of Early English or Peter Novobatzky & Ammon Shea’s marvelous Depraved and Insulting English, both from 1955, encourage a spike.  Those entries were however sufficient for epicaricacy to deserve a place in Mrs Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words (1974) yet it remained neglected while Schadenfreude gained critical mass which means the German import is better than the English construct.  That’s how English works and is part of its charm; it’s a slut of a language which takes in whatever best suits the needs of the moment.

Candor

Candor (pronounced kan-der)

(1) The state or quality of being frank, open, and sincere in speech or expression; candidness.

(2) Freedom from bias; fairness; impartiality; the quality of the disinterested comment.

(3) Kindliness (obsolete except in the most abstract (“cruel to be kind”) sense).

(4) Purity (obsolete).

(5) Whiteness, brilliance; purity of shade (obsolete)

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the French candour, from the Late Latin candor (purity, openness), from the Classical Latin candidus & candidum (whiteness) from candēre (to shine, to be white), from the primitive Indo-European root kand- (to shine).  A legacy of the Classical Latin candidus & candidum survives in English as “candidate”.  In the Rome of Antiquity, a tradition arose among politicians to wear the most immaculately white toga that could be found, so that they might leave the best impression.  Originally, the Latin candidatus meant literally “a person dressed all in white” but in time it came to mean “one seeking office by election”.  There’s a link also with incandescent (white and glowing) and modern meaning of candid come from a figurative use of “pure white” in the sense of “frank, honest and unadorned”.  The other derivation in English from candēre is candle, and that’s not related to candles being white (which originally they rarely were) but the brightness of the light they offered when lit.  Candle dates probably from the eighth or ninth centuries and was from the Middle English candel, from the Old English candel (candle), from the Latin candēla (candle), from the verb candeō (be white, bright, shining; I shine).

Depending on context, the synonyms for candor can include frankness, honesty, sincerity, equity, fairness & parrhesia while the antonyms typically used include deception, fraud, lie, untruth (or, in the case of crooked Hillary Clinton “I may have misspoken”).  In English, the alternative (mostly UK although also used in parts of the Commonwealth, notably Canada (which is presumed to be the influence from the French-speaking population which uses the same spelling)) spelling is candour white the spelling in Italian & French is candour and in Portuguese, candor.  Candor is a noun and candid is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is candors.

The original meaning in English (whiteness) dating from circa 1500, didn’t long survive the shift in meaning (circa 1600) to "openness of mind, impartiality, frankness”, something which occurred under the influence of French, the borrowing essentially from the French candied.  The familiar (and probably more frequently used) related forms are the adjectives candid and the adverb candidly; the noun candidness is rare.  Less common are the derived forms rarely used beyond the literarure of political science and literary criticism, the adjectives pseudocandid & quasi-candid and the adverb pseudocandidly.  The first use in photography was noted in 1929 and in television in the 1960s, both suggesting something spontaneous or un-staged material and while the meaning is still understood, in the age of TikTok and “reality” television, most now treat the use with some scepticism.  In politics, the quality of candidness is much prized by voters and there is evidence to suggest politicians can benefit from telling the truth although most seem still to take a more cautionary approach and assume that if they’re truthful, people will be so appalled as to not vote for them.  Other, more sophisticated, types understand candor can be to their advantage and have learned to deploy it (occasionally) or (more typically) have perfected faking it.  Both can work.     

Although clinicians have constructed fine diagnostics distinctions between them, among lay-people the terms “compulsive lying”, “pathological lying”, “mythomania” and “habitual lying” are all used to refer to those who tell falsehoods out of desire, habit or venality and sometimes for no apparent reason.  The condition is of course about as old as the first human interactions but was first described in the medical literature in 1891 by German psychiatrist Anton Delbrück (1862-1944) who wrote the case studies of five of his most extravagantly untruthful patients, labelling the behavior pseudologia phantastica (literally something like “a fantastic study of lying” and pseudologia fantastica in US English).  For clinicians, the distinction essentially is that a pathological liar is one who lies simply to get what they want and with little or no self-awareness while a compulsive liar tells untruths simply out of habit, even when the lie serves no purpose and confers no advantage.

There’s no consensus among clinicians about whether compulsive lying should be listed as a stand-alone diagnosis and even in the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR (2022)) it’s not recognized it as a separate mental health condition although compulsive lying does appear as a component and symptom of several conditions including bipolar disorder (the old manic-depression), attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), impulse control disorder, substance dependency disorder, borderline personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.  The DSM notes also that it’s rare for compulsive lying to indicate psychosis and that patients who lie compulsively often have a high degree of self-awareness and are thus not distanced from reality.

Lies, lies and damn lies.  Crooked Hillary Clinton

Whether from fear of retribution, being cancelled or actual Arkancide, it seems no clinician has ever published their assessment of whether crooked Hillary Clinton should be thought a pathological or compulsive liar.  Of course, given the wealth of the material one would need to review, it may be just too big a job, there being only so many hours in a day.  There may anyway be some overlap and however her casual relationship with truth might be diagnosed, the lying is certainly habitual though whether candid or not, crooked Hillary occasionally is caught telling the truth: 

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle”:  Candid.  It didn’t work but, lacking a strategic plan, this was her campaign team’s best attempt to develop an effective media-management tactic.  The pantsuits actually attracted more interest but even though intended as a feminist statement (and they certainly weren’t successful as a fashion statement), their most noted impact was as a gift to the cartoonists and meme-makers who quickly latched onto the orange pantsuit as an analogue for prison jumpsuits.  

“Probably my worst quality is that I get very passionate about what I think is right”.  Not candid.  Hillary Clinton has no sense of right and wrong, just rat-cunning in working out what’s in her personal interest.  Rare modesty though, some of her qualities are much worse.

Getting to the truth: Crooked Hillary Clinton lands in Bosnia, 1996. 

“I remember landing under sniper fire”:  Not candid.  This was just a lie. When landing at a Bosnian airport in 1996 (during one of the civil wars the Balkan states have from time-to-time), crooked Hillary was presented with a bunch of flowers by a little girl.  Later, when the lie was exposed, she couldn’t be candid even in her confession.  Refusing to admit she lied, she said she “misspoke”, adding “On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that I knew not to be the case."  That actually meant “I lied”.

“Aww don't feel noways tired. I've come too faarrr from where I started frum”:  Not candid, this was crooked Hillary’s fake Southern drawl, adopted while speaking at a church, south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Apparently thinking she could still get away with the way things were done in 1949, she fooled nobody, presumably, not even herself.

“We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good”:  Candid.  This is a glimpse of crooked Hillary’s elitist, dictatorial, fascist character and whatever she planned to take away from others, she would never have to sacrifice a thing.

“God bless the America we are trying to create”:  Probably not candid; there is scant evidence crooked Hillary’s alleged Christianity is sincere and is about as convincing as Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2017-2021; president elect 2024) new-found piety.  She also said “I have to confess that it's crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian” and that was both candid and a reasonable critique of much of the modern Republican Party, the beliefs of some members distant from what the New Testament reveals about the thoughts of Christ.

Lips moving: Some possibility of untruthfulness.

“I have said that I'm not running and I'm having a great time being pres, …being a first-term senator”:  Not candid.  This came at a time when crooked Hillary was still telling her New York constituents she was committed only to representing them.  As deluded as she feels entitled, she still thinks the Democratic nomination in 2024 might be possible if the DNC (Democratic National Committee) works out (or, more to the point, admits) Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) is senile and even she might be a better candidate.

“Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody's going to believe them”: Candid, this is what she really thinks.  Crooked Hillary has utter contempt for anyone except the rich people her husband’s career has allowed her to mix with.  In fairness, this attitude is one of the characteristics of second-wave feminism and beyond, the focus always on tiny elites from various fashionable group identities, the women who serve their coffee and empty their trash bins barely acknowledged.  

“If I didn't kick his ass every day, he wouldn't be worth anything”:  A candid comment from crooked Hillary about her husband and probably true; he’d never have made it without her and vice-versa.

“My mother named me after Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008)”.  The claim was based on her finding his climbing of Mount Everest so inspiring, thus explaining the double-l spelling of her name.   However, the first successful ascent of Everest did not take place until half a decade after her birth.  The story was later “clarified” when a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the famous mountaineer but the account “...was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”  Despite this, it remains unclear if crooked Hillary lied about her own name or was accusing her mother of lying.  Still, given everything else, “…at this point, what difference does it make?”

“We have a lot of kids who don't know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word.”  Candid and to be fair, this one is linguistically defensible, the phrase “four-letter-word” having a meaning beyond the literal.

Candid admissions: Lindsay Lohan as spokesperson for lawyer.com, 2018.

Janus

Janus (pronounced jey-nuhs)

(1) In Roman mythology, a god of doorways (and thus also of beginnings), and of the rising and setting of the sun, usually represented as having one head with two bearded faces back to back, looking in opposite directions, historically understood as the past and the future.

(2) When used attributively, to indicate things with two faces or aspects; or made of two different materials; or having a two-way action.

(3) In zoology, a diprosopus (two-headed) animal.

(4) In chemistry, used attributively to indicate an azo dye with a quaternary ammonium group, frequently with the diazo component being safranine.

(5) In astronomy, a moon of the planet Saturn, located just outside the rings.

(6) In figurative use, a “two-faced” person; a hypocrite.

(7) In numismatics, a coin minted with a head on each face.

(8) In architecture, as the jānus doorway, a style of doorway, archway or arcade, the name derived from the Roman deity Iānus being the god of doorways.

Mid-late 1500s: From the Latin Iānus (the ancient Italic deity Janus), to the Romans of Antiquity, the guardian god of portals, doors, and gates; patron of beginnings and endings.  The Latin Iānus (literally “gate, arched passageway”) may be from the primitive Indo-European root ei- (to go), the cognates including the Sanskrit yanah (path) and the Old Church Slavonic jado (to travel).  In depictions, Janus is shown as having two faces, one in front the other in back (an image thought to represent sunrise and sunset reflect his original role as a solar deity although it represents also coming and going in general, young and old or (in recent years) just about anything dichotomous).  The doors of the temple of Janus were traditionally open only during the time of war and closed to mark the end of the conflict, the origins of allusions to the “temple of Janus” being used metaphorically to mean conflict or wartime and the month of January is named after Janus, the link being to “the beginning of the year.  Janus is a noun or proper noun and Janian is an adjective.

Prosthetic in studio (left), Ralph Fiennes (b 1962) on-set in character (centre) and Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) imagined in the same vein (right).

The prosthetic used in the digitally-altered image (right) was a discarded proposal for the depiction of Lord Voldemort in the first film version of JK Rowling's (b 1965) series of Harry Potter children's fantasy novels; it used a Janus-like two-faced head.  It's an urban myth Peter Dutton auditioned for the part when the first film was being cast but was rejected as being "too scary".  If ever there's another film, the producers might reconsider and should his career in politics end (God forbid), he could bring to Voldemort the sense of menacing evil the character has never quite achieved, fine though Mr Fiennes' performance surely was.  Interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.

An eighteenth century carving of Janus in the style of a herm.

A part of the etymological legacy of the Roman Empire, the name Janus appears in several European languages.  In Danish (from the Latin Iānus), it’s a Latinization of the Danish given name Jens.  In Faroese, it’s a male given name which begat (1) Janussson or Janusarson (son of Janus) and (2) Janusdóttir or Janusardóttir (daughter of Janus).  In Estonian it’s a male given name.  In Polish, it’s both a masculine & feminine surname (the feminine surname being indeclinable (a word that is not grammatically inflected).  There is no anglicized form of the Latin name Janus.  Although it was never common and is now regarded by most genealogy authorities as "rare", when used in the English-speaking world the spelling remain "Janus".  Often, when Latin names were adopted in English, even when the spelling was unaltered, there were modifications to suit local phonetics but Janus is pronounced still just as it would have been by a Roman.

Tristar pictures used the janus motif in the promotional material for I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

Dating from the 1580s, was from the Latin ianitor (doorkeeper, porter), from ianua (door, entrance, gate), the construct being ianus (arched passageway, arcade" + tor (the agent suffix).  The meaning “usher in a school” and later “doorkeeper” emerged in the 1620s white the more specific (and in Scotland and North America enduring) sense of “a caretaker of a building, man employed to attend to cleaning and tidiness” seems first to have been documented in 1708 (the now unused feminine forms were janitress (1806) & janitrix (1818).  Why janitor survived in general use in Scotland and North America and not elsewhere in the English-speaking world is a mystery although the influence of US popular culture (film and television) did see something of a late twentieth century revival and in  sub-cultures like 4chan and other places which grew out of the more anarchic bulletin boards of the 1980s & 1990s, a janitor is the (often disparaging) term for a content moderator for a discussion forum.

Augustus Orders the Closing of the Doors of the Temple of Janus (circa 1681), oil on canvas by Louis de Boullogne (1654–1733), Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

Among the more annoying things encountered by those learning English are surely Janus words, those with opposite meanings within themselves.  Examples include:

Hew can mean cutting something down or adhering closely to it.  Sanction may mean “formal approval or permission” or “an official ban, penalty, or deterrent”.  Scan can mean “to look slowly and carefully” or “quickly to glance; a cursory examination”.  Inflammable, which many take to mean “easy to burn” but the treachery of the word lies in the in- prefix which is often used as a negative, with the result that inflammable can be deconstructed as “not flammable”.  Trip can (and usually does) suggest clumsiness but can also imply some nimbleness or lightness of foot, as in the saying “trip the light fantastic”.  Oversight is a particularly egregious example.  To exercise oversight over someone or something is provide careful, watchful supervision yet an oversight is an omission or mistake.  In the ever-shifting newspeak of popular culture, the creation of the janus-word is often deliberate.  Filth can mean “of the finest quality”, wicked can mean “very good” and in the way which might have pleased George Orwell "bad" has become classic newspeak.   “Bad weed” can  mean the drug was either good or bad depending on the sentence structure: “that was bad weed” might well suggest it was of poor quality while “man, that was some bad weed” probably means it was good indeed.  Saying nice now seems rarely to mean what dictionaries say nice has come to mean but can variously describe something appalling or disgusting.

Fluoroscope

Fluoroscope (pronounced floor-uh-skohp, flawr-uh-skohp or flohr-uh-skoph)

(1) In laboratory physics, a device used to measure the fluorescence of a solution (now rare).

(2) In medicine (and later commerce), a radiologic instrument (originally built as a tube or box) equipped with a fluorescent screen on which opaque internal structures can be viewed as moving shadow images formed by the differential transmission of x-rays through the body.

1896: A word coined in US English to describe a newly introduced device, the construct being fluoro- + -scope and adapted from the German Fluorescop.  Fluro- was from the Italian fluoro, from the Latin fluor (flow).  Scope was from the Italian scopo (purpose), from the Latin scopus (target), from the Ancient Greek σκοπός (skopós) & σκοπέω (skopéō) (examine, inspect, look to or into, consider), from σκέπτομαι (sképtomai), from the primitive Indo-European speḱ-.  Etymologically, the word is related to both skeptic and spectrum.  Fluoroscope & fluoroscopy are nouns, fluoroscopically is an adverb and fluoroscopic is an adjective; the noun plural is fluoroscopes.

The shoe-fitting fluoroscope

From the podological safety of the twenty-first century, the idea that part of the shoe-buying process once involved having one’s feet blasted with radiation probably seems strange but for decades they were a fixture in shoe-shops.  The idea has a certain compelling logic because under x-rays, the bones and flesh of the feet were clearly visible as was the outline of the shoe, all guesswork about the fit thus removed, customers able to choose a perfect pair.

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope, circa 1940.

The design of the fluoroscope also had great appeal as a sales device because unlike many of the uses of the technology in clinical medicine, the ones in shoe shops were designed so the images could be seen by the customer.  Indeed, they featured three viewing ports so simultaneously the x-rayed foot could be seen by the owner, the sales staff and one other which the manufacturers said was to allow a parent and a child to share the experience.  Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were made with an upward-facing x-ray tube which sat inside the bottom of a metal housing, the images fed to a fluorescent screen at the top, viewable through the three ports.  At foot level was an aperture which opened into a space between x-ray tube fluoroscopic screen and it was in this space the foot rested.  When triggered, the x-rays penetrated both shoe and foot, the fluorescent screen lighting up with the image.

The original specifications of the machines included lead-shielding as well as a section in the manual explaining the importance of these protective fittings but, shoe shops being commercial spaces where displays are often moved (and over the years, renovations effected), it was subsequently found it wasn’t unusual for the heavy shields to be removed so the machines were easier to maneuver into another place.  Additionally, shop staff soon noted that the less shielding fitted, the higher the quality of the image.  That obviously conferred some commercial advantage but also meant that with every scan (and daily there could be dozens), bursts of radiation were scattered in all directions bathing the bodies of customers, staff and innocent bystanders.  In perfect order, maintained according to the manufacturer’s recommendations, the specified 20-second scan delivered around half the dose of radiation of a typical CT (computed tomography) chest scan but not being in a clinical environment where they received regular servicing from qualified technicians, many of the machines in shoe shops were poorly maintained and some subsequently were found to be delivering potentially hazardous doses, registering several hundred times above the permissible limit.  Worse, some shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were positioned next to a wall so those in the shop next door were also irradiated and, to attract those passing the shop, some scans were even conducted with the machine in the store’s front window, radiation blasting all walking past.  For the individual customer who received anyway the highest dose, there was also a multiplier effect because women in particular rarely try just the one pair and could therefore be subject to many dangerous blasts.  Statistically though, most at risk were the staff who, given the machines had been in use since the 1920s, might have been exposed to the risk for decades, papers in the medical literature first documenting the issue in the mid-1950s, the case notes mentioning that not only did one patient report operating the fluoroscope as many as twenty times as day but also the common practice among staff to give their own feet a demonstrative scan just to assure sceptical children the process was painless.

Lindsay Lohan in stiletto heels an an image of how an x-ray of her foot might appear.

It was German mechanical engineer and physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) who in 1895 produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range which could “see through” material including human flesh.  He found the phenomenon so strange and the rays weird beyond immediate comprehension so named them “x-rays”, the implications of his discovery immediately understood and in 1901 it gained him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics.  Still, neither Herr Doktor Röntgen nor any other scientist probably pondered x-rays as something useful in shoe shops and that they ended up there was something serendipitous.  The tale of the migration is contested but the most accepted (and certainly the one supported by patent applications and registrations) is that of a World War I (1914-1918) doctor who adapted an x-ray machine so that the feet of soldiers with foot wounds could be scaned without them having to remove their boots, something which rendered the triage process much more efficient.  After the war, he modified the device to suit the shoe-buying process, demonstrating one at a Boston retailer convention in 1920, eventually being granted a US patent.  The UK authorities about the same time issued a patent for a similar device (where it was called the Pedoscope) and with mass-production lowering the unit cost, by the late 1920s they had proliferated on both sides of the Atlantic.  Although the take-up rate slowed during the depressed decade of the 1920s, sales accelerated in the consumerist culture of the post-war years and by the late 1950s, there were reputedly over ten-thousand in North America, three thousand in the UK and close to a thousand spread between Australia & New Zealand.

Remarkably, although it had been known since the 1920s that x-rays could be harmful, the research was fragmentary and the data insufficient to quantify the risk.  Consumer protection and concerns about public health were nothing like those of today and it was only in 1946, after the aftermath of the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) provided graphic examples of the effects of exposure to radiation in high-doses that the American Standards Association (ASA) issued guidelines for the manufacture of shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, setting an upper limit on the amount of radiation the devices can emit.  Shortly afterwards, shoe shops were required to place warning signs on the machines cautioning customers to have no more than twelve scans a year, an early example of a nation-wide edict at at time when most public-health measures were usually administered by state and local governments.  The concerns remained and in 1948, a survey of the fluoroscopes operating in Detroit revealed most were emitting hazardous doses of radiation, something confirmed by wider tests and the first warnings were issued in 1950 although remarkably, the last wouldn’t be withdrawn from service until the 1970s.

Envelope

Envelope (pronounced on-vuh-lohp or en-vee-lope (non-U))

(1) A flat paper container, usually having a gummed flap or other means of closure and used to enclose small, flat items (especially letters) for mailing. 

(2) Something that envelops; a wrapper, integument, or surrounding cover.

(3) In biology, a surrounding or enclosing structure, as a corolla or an outer membrane.

(4) In geometry, a mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.

(5) In the radio transmissions of a modulated carrier wave, a curve connecting the peaks of a graph of the instantaneous value of the electric or magnetic component of the carrier wave as a function of time.

(6) The fabric structure enclosing the gasbag of an aerostat or the gasbag itself.

(7) As an idiom, in pushing the envelope, to stretch established limits, as in technological advance or social innovation.

(8) In music, the shape of a sound which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.

(9) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents, the best known example of which is the blind carbon-copy (bcc) in eMail.

(10) In astronomy, the nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.

(11) In civil engineering, an earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.

(12) In engineering and design, the set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.

(13) In aviation (of dirigibles), a bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.

(14) In electronics, a curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.

(15) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.

(6) In music, the shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler. 

1705: From the Middle French and Old French envoluper, the construct being en- (from the Old French en-, from the Latin in-, a prefixation of in (in, into)) +‎ voluper (to wrap, wrap up).  In Italian, the derivation was viluppare, from the Old Italian alternate goluppare (to wrap) from the Vulgar Latin vlopp (to rap).  The Proto-Germanic wrappaną and wlappaną (to wrap, roll up, turn, wind) came from the primitive werb (to turn, bend), akin to the Middle English wlappen (to wrap, fold) and ultimately the Modern English lap (to wrap, involve, fold).  The modern wrap is derived from the Middle English wrappen (to wrap), the dialectal Danish vravle (to wind, twist), the Middle Low German wrempen (to wrinkle, distort) and the Old English wearp (warp).  The French enveloppe, is a derivative back-formation of envelopper (to envelop).  Envelope is a noun; the noun plural is envelopes.

Pushing the envelope

The phrase pushing the envelope is from the lingo of test pilots, whose job is among the most dangerous of their profession.  It entered general usage following the publication of the late Tom Wolfe’s (1930-2018) book about test pilots and the early US space program, The Right Stuff (1979).  The envelope in the phrase is a mathematical construct, what is called the "flight envelope" of a given aircraft: combinations of speed, altitude, range and stress that are considered the limits of an airframe’s capabilities and so-named because usually it's graphically represented in the shape of the familiar DL envelope.  Within the envelope formed by these parameters, the airframe is structurally sound; beyond those limits, perhaps not and that’s what test pilots do, verify the safety of the aircraft within those limits and pinpoint possible points of failure if the envelope is pushed too far.  Although big, fast computers now make the parameters of the envelope more predictable and the job of the test pilot less dangerous, structural failures during test flights continue to happen.

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Few airframes have operated within such a tight envelope as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, introduced into service in 1956 as a single-engine, supersonic interceptor, built for the United States Air Force (USAF) but used by many nations.  Best thought of as the manned missile by which it was referred to by many, it had a radical wing design, a very small, straight, mid-mounted trapezoidal.   After the German research undertaken during World War II (1939-1945) became available, most jet fighters had used either swept or delta-wings, a compromise between speed, lift, maneuverability and internal space for fuel and equipment.  Lockheed sophisticated wind-tunnels and primitive computers however determined the optimal shape for high-speed supersonic flight was small, straight and trapezoidal.  An extraordinary achievement of manufacture as well as design, the wing was so thin and sharp it was a cut-hazard for ground crews and protective guards were fitted during maintenance.

The F-104 was the first combat aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2 flight, its speed and climb performance impressive even by today’s standards.  However, there was a price to be paid, take-off, stall and landing speeds were high as was the turn radius, combat pilots referring to low-speed turns as “banking with intent to turn".

The flight envelope, note the DL envelope shape.

The safety record was infamously bad.  Of the 916 delivered to the West-German (FRG) Air Force, 262 crashed, gaining it the nickname witwenmacher (widow maker, shared with the Porsche 911 Turbo (930, 1975-1989)) and some of those grieving widows sued Lockheed, receiving judgment in their favor.  In USAF service, the write-off rate was 30.63 accidents per 100,000 flight hours.  By comparison, the rate for the Convair F-102 Dagger was 14.2 and for the North American F-100 Sabre, 16.25.  The F-104's two nicknames, "manned missile" and "widow maker" may be thought of as cause and effect.

Personalised Lindsay Lohan Celebrity Birthday Card on premium quality satin cardstock @ Stg£3.95 (including envelope).

Quadrat

Quadrat (pronounced kwod-ruht)

(1) In ecology, an area of vegetation (sometimes as small as one square metre), marked out for study of flora and fauna in the surrounding area; the frame used to mark out such an area.

(2) In printing, a blank, low-cast type used by typographers to fill in larger spaces in printed lines.

(3) In civil engineering, a type of surveying instrument (obsolete since the sixteenth century).

(4) In Egyptology, a virtual rectangular subdivision of a line or column of hieroglyphs within which a group of hieroglyphs is arranged.

1675-1685: From the late Middle English quadrate, from the French quadrat (literally "a square") from the Latin quadratrus, past participle of quadrare (to make square) and related to quadrus (a square), quattuor (four); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kwetwer- (four).  The earlier use in English (certainly as quadrate but there are indications the spelling quadrat was also used although this may be a later error in transcription) dates from circa 1400 and described a type of surveying instrument.  Quadrat is a noun; quadratic is an adjective and quadrically is an (irregular) adverb; the noun plural is quadrats.   

For pedants only

English is known for its grammar Nazis but there are also style Nazis, one of their concerns being whether there should be one or two spaces after a period (full- stop).  While its quite possible most neither notice nor care, obsessives in both factions feel strongly about this and Microsoft’s April 2020 update for Word users on the 365 platform (the old Microsoft Office 365), which included a new rule flagging double spacing as an error, triggered a minor twitterstorm.

The debate actually goes back centuries, mono and double spacing between sentences, sometimes within the same document, existing from the earliest days of mechanical printing and it’s a myth it has anything to do with proportional fonts.  Proportional (variable width) typefaces were created hundreds of years ago but by the nineteenth century, the double space between sentences was the usual practice in commercial publishing, a standardisation (in English) reinforced during the era of the typewriter (1880s-1980s).  Except for a tiny number of (initially very expensive) IBM machines (from 1942), typewriters universally used monotype typefaces, every character, regardless of shape, taking the space of an upper case M.  The two spaces between sentences became the standard for typists because it made the text easier to read, a practice which endured even after most commercial publishing had, by the mid-twentieth century, adopted single spacing.

Unlike typists, mechanical typesetters weren’t limited to the monotype.  However, the upper case M remained their baseline which came to be known as the “em”.  Units of space were developed as specific fractional segments based on the em, a linear measurement equal to the point size of the typeface. In 10 point type, the em is 10 points wide; in 12 point type, 12 points wide etc.  There were four ubiquitous spaces, thick, middle, thin, and hair, the thickest of which was less than an en (an en being half of an em).  When more horizontal space was needed, typesetters turned to the quadrat (from the Latin quadrates (squared)).  These precisely sized typographic blanks were used for indents, larger spacing, the creation of white lines, and the filling up of short lines and existed in printers’ jargon as en, em, two-em, three-em and four-em although, when setting poetry, special quadrats were sometimes cast to ensure the proper alignment of uniquely set lines.

Below are two examples of the first paragraph of IMDb's biography of Lindsay Lohan, rendered in a monotype font which emulates the output from a classic mechanical typewriter; the upper sample uses single spaces after each period, the lower two spaces.  The comparison illustrates (1) how the double-space between sentences was helpful with monospace typesetting because it so assisted readability and (2) how with proportional fonts the difference is probably so marginal as to be imperceptible to all but a trained (or obsessive) eye.

Microsoft’s 365 update is optional, those committed to the double space can switch off the rule but there’s little doubt the single space is now the more popular practice.  Neither is right or wrong and research about which renders text more readable has been inconclusive, proving only that the factions seem set in their views.  One finding from the research however was that most readers seemed not to care one way or the other; most not noticing even when both methods were applied even within the same paragraph.