Vermiform

Vermiform (pronounced vur-muh-fawrm)

Resembling or having the long, thin, cylindrical shape of a worm; long and slender.

1720-1730: From the Medieval Latin vermiformis, the construct being vermis (worm) + forma (form).  Vermis was from the primitive Indo-European wr̥mis and cognates included the Ancient Greek ῥόμος (rhómos) and the Old English wyrm (worm (which evolved into the Modern English worm)).  Form was from -fōrmis (having the form of), from fōrma (a form, contour, figure, shape, appearance, looks).  The root of the Latin vermis was the primitive Indo-European wer- (to turn, bend), an element most productive, contributing to: adverse; anniversary; avert; awry; controversy; converge; converse (as the adjectival sense of "exact opposite”); convert; diverge; divert; evert; extroversion; extrovert; gaiter; introrse; introvert; invert; inward; malversation; obverse; peevish; pervert; prose; raphe; reverberate; revert; rhabdomancy; rhapsody; rhombus; ribald; sinistrorse; stalwart; subvert; tergiversate; transverse; universe; verbena; verge (as the verb meaning "tend, incline"); vermeil; vermicelli; vermicular; vermiform; vermin; versatile; verse (in the sense of the noun "poetry") version; verst; versus; vertebra; vertex; vertigo; vervain; vortex; -ward; warp; weird; worm; worry; worth (in the adjectival sense of "significant, valuable, of value") worth (as the verb "to come to be"); wrangle; wrap; wrath; wreath; wrench; wrest; wrestle; wriggle; wring; wrinkle; wrist; writhe; wrong; wroth & wry.  Vermiform is an adjective.

Commonly used in medicine to describe the appendix, Modern French also gained the word from Latin as the adjective vermiforme (plural vermiformes), the spelling of the medical use apéndice vermiforme (plural apéndices vermiformes).  The only known derived form in English is the adjective subvermiform, used apparently exclusively in the disciplines of zoology, including entomology.  The meaning was defined in a dictionary from 1898 as “shaped somewhat like a worm” which is surprisingly imprecise for the language of science but that vagueness appears adequate for the purposes to which it’s put.  For whatever reason, vermiform was a word much favored by the US humorist HL Mencken (1880-1956).

The female Eumillipes persephone: 1,306 legs & 330 segments.  

Because the scientific literature has for some time been dominated by COVID-19 and all that flowed the brief, sudden prominence of two vermiform creatures, one ancient, the other more recent, was an amusing distraction.  The younger animal was a new species of millipede which boasted not only more legs than any other creature on the planet but was the first of its kind to live up to its name.    

Since circa 1600, the term millipede has been applied to any of the many elongated arthropods, of the class Diplopoda (a taxonomic subphylum within the phylum Arthropoda (the centipedes, millipedes and similar creepy-crawlies) with cylindrical bodies that have two pairs of legs for each one of their many body segments and, although milliped was long regarded as the correct spelling by scientists who work with myriapods, millipede is by far the most common form in general use (although there’s the odd specialist who insists on millepede).  Millipede was from the Latin millipeda (wood louse), the construct being mille (thousand) + pes (genitive pedis) (foot), from the primitive Indo-European root ped (foot) (probably a loan-translation of Greek khiliopous).  When named, it wasn’t intended as a mathematically precise definition, only to suggest the things had lots of legs though, certainly many fewer than a thousand.  The creature has always possessed a certain comical charm because, despite having usually twice the number of legs as centipedes, the millipede is entirely harmless whereas there are centipedes which can be quite nasty.  For centuries millipede was thought a bit of a misnomer, with no example ever observed with more than 750 legs and that deep-soil dweller was an outlier, most having fewer with a count in two figures quite common.  The new species also lives in the depths: Eumilipes persephone (Persephone, the daughter of Zeus who was taken by Hades to the underworld), a female was found to be sprouting 1,306 legs.  Pale and eyeless, it’s vermiform in the extreme, the body-length almost a hundred times its width and instead of vision, it used a large antennae to navigate through darkness to feed on fungi.

The sheer length of the thing does suggest a long lifespan by the standards of the species, most of which tend not to survive much beyond two years.  The persephone however, based on a count of the body segments which grow predictably in the manner of tree rings, seems likely to live perhaps as long as a decade.  One factor which accounts for the longevity is the absence of predators, the persephone’s natural environment banded iron formations and volcanic rock some 200 feet (60 m) beneath the surface of a remote part of Western Australia.  Entomologists didn’t actually venture that deep to explore, instead using the simple but effective method of lowering buckets of tempting vegetation down shafts drilled by geologists exploring for minerals, returning later to collect whatever creatures had been tempted to explore.

Artist’s impression of an Arthropleura: half a metre wide and perhaps nearly three metres in length, the latter dimension similar to a small car.  

Days after the announcement from the Western Australian desert, livescience.com also announced researchers in the UK found the fossilized exoskeleton of an Arthropleura, the largest arthropod yet known to have lived.  The length of a modern car, the giant millipede-like creatures appear to have done most of their their creeping and crawling during the Carboniferous Period, between 359 million and 299 million years ago.

Although the Arthropleura have long been known from the fossil record, there’d not before been any suggestion they ever grew quite so large and the find was quite serendipitous, discovered on a beach in a block of sandstone which had recently fallen and cracked apart.  The exoskeleton fragment is 30 inches (750 mm) long and 22 inches (550 mm) wide which means the giant millipede would have been around 102 inches (2600 mm) long and weighed around 110 lbs (50 kg)m making it the biggest land animals of the Carboniferous era.  Despite its bulk however, the physics of movement and the need to support its own weight mean the leg count is nowhere near as impressive as its young relation what is now on the other side of the world (what are now the Australian and European land masses were closer together during the Carboniferous) and it’s still not clear if Arthropleura had two legs per segment or every two segments but either way it adds up to much fewer than a hundred.

Ultimately, Arthropleura was a victim of changing conditions.  In its time, it would have been living in a benign equatorial environment but, over millions of years, the equator can shift because of the phenomenon of TPW (true polar wander) in which the outer layer of Earth shifts around the core, tilting the crust relative to the planet’s axis.  This last happened some eighty-four million years ago.  So, the conditions which for so long had been ideal changed and changed suddenly and Arthropleura was unable to adapt, going extinct after having flourished for nearly fifty-million years.  The reasons for their demise are those seen repeatedly in the fossil record: In an abruptly changed environment, there was suddenly more competition for fewer resources and the Arthropleura lost out to animals which were stronger, more efficient and better able to adapt.

The human appendix.

Thousands of years after first being described, the human appendix, a the small blind-ended vermiform structure at the junction of the large and the small bowel remains something of a mystery.  For centuries the medical orthodoxy was it vestigial, a evolutionary dead-end and a mere quirk of human development but the current thinking is it exists as a kind of “safe-house” for the good bacteria resident in the bowel, enabling them to repopulate as required.  However, being blind-ended, although intestinal contents easily can enter, in certain circumstances it can operate as a kind of one-way, non-return valve, making exit impossible which results in inflammation.  This is the medical condition appendicitis and in acute cases, the appendix must surgically be removed.  That's usually fine if undertaken in good time because it's a simple, commonly performed procedure but unfortunately, in a small number of cases, a residual "stump" of the structure may escape the knife and in this inflammation may re-occur, something surgeons resentfully label “stumpitis”.  Apparently the most useless part of the human anatomy, there is noting in the medical literature to suggest anyone has noticed any aspect of their life being changed by not having an appendix.

Jumbo

Jumbo (pronounced juhm-boh)

(1) An informal descriptor for a very large person, animal, or thing, applied especially to an unusually large version of something usually smaller.

(2) In commerce, a term (sometimes interpolated into a brand) used to suggest a large version of something.

(3) A general term for wide-bodied passenger airplanes although historically most associated with the Boeing 747 (1969).

(4) In (mostly in the US) nautical use, a forestaysail having a boom (jumbo boom) along its foot, used especially on schooners; a sail used in place of a course on a square-rigged ship, having the form of an isosceles triangle set apex downward.

(5) In engineering & mining, as drilling jumbo, a platform-mounted machine used to drill rock.

(6) As mumbo-jumbo, a historic term used of paganism, originally referring to deities or other supernatural beings worshipped some West African peoples (usually in the form of an idol representing such a being). It was later adopted to describe any speech which was either technical jargon understood only by specialists or anything genuinely meaningless or incomprehensible.

1800–1810: Of uncertain origin but there is evidence the first use of the word by English-speakers was as an imperfect echoic of what was heard by European explorers or colonists in Africa.  It entered popular use after Jumbo, an East African elephant (1860-1885) was in 1882 exhibited by PT Barnum (1810-1891) of the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus.  The name may be derived from either the Swahili jambo (matter, thing) or jumbe (chief, headman) although some sources cite the Sanskrit जम्बु (jambū or jambul) (rose apple).  Most convincing comes from the anthropological record of west-Africa where jumbo was used to describe a "clumsy, unwieldy fellow" (1823), itself possibly from a word for elephant in a West African language, perhaps the Kongo nzamba.  As a modifier (formally & informally) to impart the sense of largeness, jumbo is appended as required: jumbo jet (and jumbojet), jumbo mortgage, jumbomania, jumbo slice, superjumbo, jumbo sandwich, jumbo cigar, jumbo burger, jumbo cola et al.  Walt Disney’s musical cartoon Dumbo (1941) influenced the adoption of dumbo to mean “someone not intelligent”, the use documented by 1951 but the oral use probably pre-dates that.  Jumbo is a noun & adjective, jumboization (and jumboisation) are nouns, jumboize (and jumboise) are verbs; the noun plural is jumbos.

PT Barnum's publicity materials were created prior to "truth in advertising" laws.

The original Jumbo (the elephant) was an exhibit in London Zoo, the institution having purchased the beast from French explorers who were said to have captured it as a calf in Abyssinia in 1861.  Barnum purchased Jumbo in 1862 (much to the displeasure of the English) and immediately began in the US one of his typically extravagant advertising campaigns which emphasised both what a coup he’d achieved by wresting it from the British Empire and what an extraordinary size the creature was.  His circus toured the country with Jumbo a star attraction until in September 1885 it was killed near Saint Thomas, Ontario when struck by a freight train.

Perhaps curiously, the noun mumbo-jumbo seems not to have fallen from the linguistic treadmill, despite its origin and early colonial associations.  It entered English in 1738, based on an account of an incident in 1732 which occurred near Sami (in modern-day Gambia).  In the publications of the time, the Mumbo Jumbo was described as a costume “idol” used by men to frighten others and as coercive tool to regulate behaviour; it was used especially against women to induce their submission.  In hours of daylight, the costume was mounted on a stick placed at the outskirts of the village while by night a man would dress in it, visiting the homes of women or others deemed a problem, disputes “settled” and punishments bestowed.  Other spellings noted in the eighteenth century include Munbo Jumbo, Numbo Jumbo and Mumbo Chumbo and the original account ascribed the practice to Mandingo but linguistic anthropologists have never been able to trace an obvious Mandingo term which might be the source, the suggestions including mama dyambo (pompom-wearing ancestor) and mamagyombo (magician who exorcises troubled ancestor spirits).  It may have been borrowed from another Niger-Congo language and the European colonial transcriptions were the French moumbo-dioumbo & moumbo-ioumbo and the Portuguese mumban-jumban.  On the basis of the colonial-era accounts, the tradition (of uncertain age) must have been widespread with all settlements in the region was said to have a Mumbo Jumbo and by the mid-nineteenth century it had in English become a byword for a “superstitious object of senseless worship”, evolving by the 1890s to describe any speech which was either technical jargon understood only by specialists or anything genuinely meaningless or incomprehensible, use presumably reinforced and encouraged by some perception of association with “mumble”.  In that sense, it somewhat differed from the pseudo-Latin “hocus-pocus” which described words or incantations wholly fake and intended to deceive.  Despite the history, mumbo jumbo seems still acceptable in English and why it hasn’t yet been condemned as racist or cultural appropriation isn’t clear.

Jambo!  Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls.

Much has changed in the twenty-first century and it’s doubtful all of “You got your freshmen, ROTC Guys, preps, JV jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly Black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet, and the worst.  Beware of The Plastics.” would appear were the Mean Girls (2004) script to be written today, mere mention of ethnicity now often deconstructed as some level of racism.  Cady (the white protagonist raised (somewhere) in Africa) uses the Swahili greeting "jambo" (from -amba (to say) which linguistic anthropologists say was probably derived from the Proto-Bantu (there’s a similar term in Zulu)) to introduce herself to a table of “Unfriendly Black Hotties”.  The script never makes explicit just where in Africa Cady may have spent her youth but this, along with another couple of cultural and linguistic clues do hint it may have been among sub-Saharan ethnic groups although whether that was intentional isn’t documented.  However, “jambo” is one of several similar words used on the continent linked both to the later evolution in English of jumbo and mumbo jumbo and it may be jumbo was either a direct phonetic spelling recorded by Europeans or just a mis-heard rendition.

The prototype of first jumbojet (Boeing 747) on show on the forecourt at the Boeing’s factory in Seattle, Washington, 1968 (left), at the Paris Air Show in 1969 with a Concorde in the background (centre) and the last 747 (a freighter), also on the Boeing forecourt, November 2022.

Jumbo was a big elephant and the word was soon used to describe large examples of other things.  In commercial use, the first use seems to have been Jumbo Cigars, sold in 1886.  The best known use in the modern age is probably jumbo-jet (also appears jumbojet), probably first used by Boeing engineers circa 1960 although the first documented reference is from 1964.  It replaced the earlier Boeing engineering-slang jumbo-707, probably because a three syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven.  In the narrow technical sense, jumbo-jet came to refer to all wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes built since the late 1960s, but, being first, it tends most to be associated with Boeing’s 747.  Thus, when in the early 2000s, the even larger Airbus 380 took to the skies, the term superjumbo (and super-jumbo) was used by some, the airframe’s point of visual differentiation from the 747 being the Boeing’s famous hump being extended along the fuselage to the tail section, creating a double-decker.  The term (which had earlier been used of the stretched 747s) however never quite caught on in the same way because the 380 was unique and a class of superjumbos thus never emerged to demand a descriptive generic term.  As it was, economics conspired against the A380 and the circumstances in which it flew were very different to those envisaged in the late 1980s when first the project was conceived for not only had advances in engineering and materials allowed a new generation of twin-jet jumbos to operate at a much lower passenger cost per mile but airports, their systems and physical infrastructure optimized around the 747’s capacity, proved unwilling to make the changes needed to accommodate higher peak demand.  After little more than a dozen years of assembly, Airbus in 2021 ceased production of A380 after some 250 had been built.

One of NASA’s Boeing 747s, adapted as a heavy-lift platform to “piggy-back” the US Space Shuttles (left).  The Soviet Union (and briefly the Russians) used the one-off Antonov An-225 Мрія (Mriya (dream or inspiration)) to piggy-back its  Буран (Buran (Snowstorm or Blizzard)), the USSR's space shuttle (right).  The An-225, with the largest wingspan and heaviest take-off weight of any aircraft ever to enter operational service, was destroyed in the early days of the Russian invasion (the 2022 "Special Military Operation”) of Ukraine.

The 747 proved more enduring a successful and was a machine which was truly revolutionary in its social consequences.  Just as Boeing’s earlier 707 (1958) had been instrumental in making trans-Continental air travel a viable and reliable means of transport for a small number of people, the economics of scale made possible by the 747 meant such trips became accessible for many more.  Between 1968 and 2022, almost 1600 were built in a variety of lengths and configurations and it was for decades the faithful workhorse of many airlines, but it ultimately fell victim to the same financial squeeze that doomed the A380, twin-engined aircraft able to carry almost as many passengers at a significantly lower cost.  By 2016 it was clear demand had dwindled and most of the production thereafter was for freight operators still attracted by the 747’s unique combination of capacity, reliability and range.  As passenger 747s progressively are retired, many will be converted to freighters, an relatively simple operation envisaged even during the design process in the 1960s.  Many flyers however noted the 747’s demise with some regret.  None denied the advantages of airframes built from composite materials nor the enhanced economy of the twin-engine configuration but for those who flew for hours above 30,000 feet (9000+ m), knowing one was in a metal cylinder with the redundancy of four engines imparted great confidence.

Lindsay’s Olives in sizes to suit.  Black olive martinis are a cult.

In commercial use, obvious comparative terms like “small”. “medium” & “large” are commonly used and “extra” is often appended to “small” & “large”.  In the sizing of clothing, “extra” is used in multiples, labelled usually as XL XXL XXXL etc to indicate ascending graduations of large (L).  With the “Extra Large”, this is on the model of the DD, DDD, FF etc bra cup descriptors used by some manufacturers although the use varies, a DD sometimes the same as an E and sometimes something between a D & E.  However, at the other end of the size range, the multiple letters work the other way, an AAA cup smaller than an AA which is smaller than an A.  Linguistically, that does make sense because with bras the multiple letters are synonymous with “extra”, the AA being extra small and the DD extra large.  The alpha-numeric nomenclature used (30A, 32D etc) is maintained presumably because something like a "Jumbo" bra might lack sales appeal.  Where manufactures want to use descriptors which indicate a larger size beyond something like extra large, they’ll trawl the alphabet, thus product packaging described as “jumbo”, “super” “mega”, colossal” “super”, “maxi” etc.  Unlike S-M-L, there’s no defined ascendant order so it might be that where one manufacturer’s jumbo is larger than their mega while with some it may be the other way round.

Jumbo spark plugs.  This was actually advertising the strength of the spark rather than the plug, some of the Jumbo line of plugs physically smaller than than some offered by the competition.  The need for higher-performance spark plugs arose as higher octane gas (petrol) permitted compression ratios to rise.

Slurp

Slurp (pronounced slurp)

(1) To ingest (food or drink) with loud sucking noises (verb).

(2) An intake of food or drink with a noisy sucking sound (noun).

1640-1650: From the Middle Dutch slurpen & slorpen (to sip, slurp), from the Old Dutch slurpen, from the Proto-Germanic slarpaną (to sip, slurp), from the primitive Indo-European srebh- & srobh- (to sip, slurp, gulp).  It was cognate with the West Frisian slurvje (to slurp), the German schlürfen (to sip, slurp), the Swedish slurpa (to slurp), the Middle High German sürfeln & sürpfeln (to sip, slurp) and the Latin sorbeō (to suck up, imbibe, absorb).  All are thought onomatopoeic and the related forms are slurped & slurping.  The Dutch slurpen is thought to be of imitative origin, probably from the German schlürfen or (more improbably) some other Germanic form.  The intransitive sense was in use by at least 1917 but the noun, derived from the verb, seems not to have existed before 1949.  The slurpee (as Slurpee) was originally a registered trademark but it has long since descended to the generic.  A slurpee is a a partially-frozen drink made of small ice crystals and flavored with sugar-rich, artificially colored and flavored syrup, the alternative names around the planet including slushie, ICEE (pronounced icy), slush, slosh & the trade-marked Slush Puppie.  Slurp is a noun & verb, slurper is a noun, slurpy is an adjective, slurping & slurped are verbs; the noun plural is slurps.

Ending badly

Although probably misleadingly-named, the Big Bang is the preferred explanation for the origin of the universe in its present form.  There are a number of competing theories for how it will all end; all are big but the only one immediately threatening is the Big Slurp.

The Big Freeze suggests the universe will continue to expand until it runs out of energy and everything approaches a temperature of absolute zero.  Opinion is divided about what follows ranging from eternal, frozen darkness to a contraction (on some basis) back to a singularity, perhaps to await the next Big Bang.  The big freeze is quite compatible with speculative multiverse & multiple-universe models. 

In the Big Rip, the density of dark energy increases with time, causing the rate of acceleration to increase so that all matter disintegrates, ripped apart by dark energy.  The universe becomes a singularity as the dark energy density and expansion rate becomes infinite.

The Big Crunch hypothesis is a symmetric construct.  The notion is that at some point the Big Bang ceases to expand (although light, energy etc may still be be present) and begins contracting until it collapses again into a dimensionless singularity.  From this, another Big Bang could happen and the process may be cyclical, happening repeatedly; time a kind of return to forever.  The theory received much support but current evidence also indicates (according to some) the universe is not closed so variations on the model are being built.

The Big Bounce imagines an oscillatory universe which is a cyclic repetition interpretation of the Big Bang where the first cosmological event was the result of the collapse of a previous universe.  This depends on the early universe being infinitely dense and, developed to its logical conclusion, contradicts basic physics although, given the conditions immediately prior to the Big Bang aren’t known, this needn’t invalidate the theory.

Big Slurp theory posits the universe exists in a false vacuum and could at any moment become a real vacuum.  Also known as false vacuum collapse or vacuum decay theory, the big slurp is highly technical and understanding it requires knowledge of some arcane concepts in physics.  Not easily explained, slurp theory is a speculative exercise in imagining the nature of the vacuum in which the universe exists and its relationship to background energy.  If a vacuum is not in its lowest energy state, it’s a false vacuum which could transform into a lower energy state, hence the label "vacuum decay".  There would be consequences for the universe but they’re unpredictable.  Matter, energy, and spacetime would be affected and it’s possible the entire structure of the universe could instantaneously, at any time, be destroyed at which point time would presumably stop and given that as far as is known, the Big Bang is the only known mechanism by which time can start, whether anything could happen next is uncertain because there would be no "next".

Lindsay Lohan enjoying a Slurpee, New York City, 2014.

Succinite

Succinite (pronounced suhk-sinn-ite)

(1) In mineralogy, Baltic (or “true”) amber, so called because of the succinic acid in the fossil resin: often incorrectly applied to fossilized resin (amber) generally.

(2) In non-technical use, a garnet of amber, especially fossilized resin.

(3) In non technical use, an substance resembling amber.

(4) The color amber.

1816: A creation for scientific purposes in modern English with the sense of “amber-colored mineral”, from the Latin succinum (amber) a variant of sūcinum, the construct being succin +‎ -ite.  The root of succus was the primitive Indo-European sewg & sewk; cognate with sugō (juice; sap of a plant).  The Classical Latin is said to be from a Northern European language and was assimilated in form to the Latin succus & sucus (juice, sap) and related to succinic (in organic chemistry, of or pertaining to succinic acid), from the French succinique.  It was a synonym of ambra (amber).  The -ite suffix was from the French -ite, from the Old French, from the Latin -ītēs, from the Ancient Greek -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs).  It had a wide application including (1) the formation of nouns denoting the followers or adherents of a individual, doctrine or movement etc, (2) the formation of nouns denoting descendants of a certain historic (real or mythical) figure (widely used of biblical identities), (3) the formations of demonyms, (4) in geology the formation of nouns denoting rocks or minerals, (5) in archeology, the formation of nouns denoting fossil organisms, (6) in biology & pathology to form nouns denoting segments or components of the body or an organ of the body, (7) in industry & commerce to form nouns denoting the product of a specified process or manufactured product & (8) in chemistry to form names of certain chemical compounds (historically especially salts or esters of acids with names with the suffix -ous.

There’s also the rare adjective succiniferous used with the senses (1) yielding amber, (2) of or pertaining to amber or the plant yielding it & (3) in organic chemistry, of or pertaining to succinic acid.  Ferous (or gerous) are from the Latin ferre & gerere, both meaning “to bear” and surviving in English are over two-hundred words ending in ferous; most of them now obscure and used only in a technical context.  In an illustration of linguistic overlap, the Latin verb succinite was the second-person plural present active imperative of succinō, the construct being sub- (under; below) +‎ canō (sing).  It had the meanings (1) to sing to, to accompany in song & (2) to accord, in agreement with.  Succinite is a noun; the noun plural is succinites.

Succiniferous: Lindsay Lohan wearing Baltic Amber pendant.

The word succinite is sometimes used casually of amber, things which resemble amber or even shades of the color.  Geologists use the more with more precision and within the community there was a long dispute about succinite (Baltic amber), its botanical origin, and methods of distinguishing it from other fossil resins.  The questions were resolved by advances such as infrared spectrometry and speculation about a link with other acids are now held to be unsustainable, the consensus now that amber is coniferous in origin, not as had been suggested in the nineteenth century, from the tree Pinites succinifer.  It seems now clear that the extant Baltic amber came from several species of conifers of the family Sciadopityaceae.  Baltic amber is not a polymer but has a complex, cross-linked  macromolecular structure with the pores filled by components of the structure, an arrangement chemists call a supramolecule, something which both hardens the substance and increases density, accounting for its extraordinary longevity, ancient samples notable for their encapsulated, perfectly preserved plant and animal samples.

Amber alerts.

The term “Amber Alert” is a defined part of public information messaging and analogous with the red/amber/green lights used in traffic signals, amber meaning essentially “proceed with heightened caution and awareness”.  Noting the evidence provided in the well publicized defamation case (John C Depp II v Amber Laura Heard (CL-2019-2911; Fairfax County Circuit Court)), the meme-makers responded.

Most succiniferous: The Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 1917.  This is the only known color image of the room.

Last seen (in crates) in 1945, it was either destroyed in the last days of World War II (1939-1945) or dissembled and hidden somewhere or otherwise disposed of.  Between 1979-2003, with early funding from the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, the old West Germany), a replica was built and installed in the Catherine Palace.  The golden, jewel-encrusted creation, rendered by artisans and craftsmen from tons of amber, was a gift to Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) in 1716, celebrating the conclusion of an alliance between Russia and Prussia.  Much admired during the centuries in which it endured wars, pandemics and revolutions, it was looted by the Nazis in the final months of the war, packed into crates which subsequently vanished.  Either they were lost or destroyed in the chaos or hidden away.

Originally installed in the Charlottenberg Palace of Friedrich I (1657–1713; King of Prussia 1701–1713), the Amber Room was a genuine multi-national venture, the design by Andreas Schlüter (1659–1714), a German sculptor in the baroque tradition, the bulk of the construction by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolfram (1646-1716), already famous for his skill in rendering amber.  It took over a decade to build and upon completion, Peter the Great expressed his wonderment and in 1716, Frederick William I (1688–1740; King of Prussia 1713-1740) presented it to the Tsar, part of his diplomatic effort to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.  Accordingly, along with a selection of paintings, the room was crated and shipped to Saint Petersburg where it remained until in 1755 it was moved to the Catherine Palace (Tsarskoye Selo (Tasar's Palace)) in Pushkin.  Now installed in a larger space, the Italian designer Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was engage to remodel the assembly to suit, addition amber panels shipped from Berlin.  Renovations and refinements continued to be undertaken during the eighteenth century and when complete, the room covered some 180 square feet (16.7 m³) and contained some six tons (6100 kg) of amber, semi-precious stones and gold leaf.  At the time, it was thought one of the wonders of the modern world.

In the Nazi mind, not only was the Amber Room of German origin but such treasures anyway belonged only in the Reich and it was added to the (long) list of artworks to be looted as part of Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union).  As the Wehrmacht advanced on Pushkin, the Russian curators began to attempt to disassemble the panels but their fragility was such it was quickly realized any work done in haste would cause only destruction.  Accordingly, they had carpenters construct a frame over which was glued wallpaper, there not being time even to construct a false wall.  Not fooled, the Nazi looters removed the entire structure, shipping it to be installed in the Königsberg Castle Museum (now in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) on the Baltic coast.  However, the tide of the war turned and in 1943 the museum's director received from Berlin instructions to return the room to crates and this had be accomplished by August 1944 when allied bombing raids severely damaged the castle.  Quite what happened to the crates remains unknown.  It may be they were destroyed during the war or were in the hold of a ship sunk in the Baltic but the tales of them being hidden somewhere has never gone away and continues to tantalize, a solitary panel actually found in Bremen in 1997.  The replica room, dedicated in a ceremony in 2004 by Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) and Gerhard Schröder (b 1944, Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005) remains on public display at the Tasrskoye State Museum Reserve outside Saint Petersburg.

Monochrome

Monochrome (pronounced mon-uh-krohm)

(1) A painting or drawing in different shades of a single color (now rare).

(2) The art or technique of producing such a painting or drawing.

(3) The state or condition of being painted, decorated, etc, in shades of a single color.

(4) A “black-and-white” photograph or transparency (an image reproduced in tones of gray.

(5) By analogy, something devoid of any distinctive or stimulating characteristics; bland or colourless.

(6) In ceramics, a ceramic glaze of a single colour; an object so glazed.

1655-1665: From the Medieval Latin monochrōma (painting or drawing done in different tints of a single color) from the Ancient Greek μονόχρωμος (monókhrōmos or monokhrōmatos) (of the one colour), the construct being μόνος (mónos) (one; single; alone), from the primitive Indo-European root men- (small, isolated) + χρῶμα (khrôma) (genitive khrōmatos) (colour; complexion, skin).  In Classical Latin, the most-used form was monochromos (literally “having one color”).  The sense it’s understood in photography dates from 1940 when (presumably almost instantly), the verbal shorthand became “mono”, exactly the same pattern of use when the need arose to distinguish between color printers and those using only black consumables.  The word was used as an adjective after 1849 although monochromatic (of one color, consisting of light of one wavelength and probably based either on the French monochromatique or the Ancient Greek monokhrōmatos) had been used thus since at least 1807 (presumably it pre-dated this because the adverb monochromatically is documented since 1784.  The alternative forms are both self-explanatory: unicolour used usually single solids and monotint, rare and used mostly as a technical term in art-production where, properly, it describes a reproduction of a multi-color image using just shades of a single color.  Monochrome is a noun & adjective, monochromaticity, monochromy & monochromist are nouns, monochromic is an adjective and monochromatically is an adverb.

Monochromic images of Lindsay Lohan smoking.

The classic mono laser printer of the late twentieth century: Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III (1990) in the HP Museum.

In the narrow technical sense, a monochromic image is composed of one colour or values of one colour (technically also called a monotint).  In modern use, a linguistic paradox exists because an image consisting of just one colour (eg red, yellow, blue etc) is not usually described as monochrome yet most images rendered in multiple gradations of gray-scale (just about any image described as black & white) almost always are.  For most purposes, in casual use, monochrome versus colour is a binary describing both the devices used in the production process and the output.  There’s also a scientific quirk.  Monochromatic light is electromagnetic radiation of a single frequency but, no source of this exists because that would demand a wave of infinite duration which the laws of physics don’t permit.

In fashion, the monochromatic is a place on the continuum of tonality, the effect at its most dramatic when tied to a model’s skin-tone, hair and eye-color.  In truth, what matters most is sometimes less how she appears in the flesh than how well the effect translates to photographs, something complicated by certain combinations suffering under natural light and suited only to artificial environments.  For that reason, when the most uncompromising monochrome ensembles are seen, there’s always the suspicion filters and post-production have played a part.

Lindsay Lohan at the Christian Siriano Fall 2023 show, New York Fashion Week, February 2023.

Slurring effortlessly into the auburn hair, the satin two-piece used shades of copper, burnt orange and peach, the spectrum not disturbed by anything intrusive, a shimmering peach-infused copper eye shadow with flared lashes blended by chocolate eye pencil, a luminescent focus achieved with satin glossed lips while apricot blush and bronzer was applied with an austerity which many should emulate; all part of the monochromatic moment.

Gourmet

Gourmet (pronounced goor-mey)

(1) A connoisseur of fine food and drink with a discriminating palate; a gastronome or bon vivant.

(2) Of or characteristic of a gourmet, especially in involving or purporting to involve high-quality or exotic ingredients and skilled preparation.

(3) A kitchen elaborately equipped for the preparation of fancy, specialized, or exotic meals.

(4) Used to describe products positioned as being of higher quality or more exotic or delicate in taste or nature.

1820: From the French gourmet (connoisseur in eating and drinking), from the Middle French gourmet, from the Old French groumet (wine broker, valet in charge of wines, servant) from groume & grommes (wine-taster, manservant) a word which may be from the thirteenth century Middle English grom & grome (boy, valet, servant), from the Old English grōma (male child, boy, youth) and akin to the Old English grōwan (to grow).  The adjectival sense emerged circa 1900.  Gourmet is a noun and adjective; the noun plural is gourmets.

Noted gourmet and suspected gourmand, Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) in a slaughterhouse, the accompanying generals carrying notebooks and pencils to record his thoughts and instructions.  The Supreme Leader’s father (Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1994-2011) & grandfather (Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1948-1994) were also gourmets.

Like the phrase like bon appétit (from the French and literally “good appetite” but used in the sense of “enjoy your meal”), “gourmet” has come to be debased by the use in popular culture as a marketing term to be applied to anything with fancier packaging, an assertion of better quality and a higher price.  It thus now thought by many a pretentious, middlebrow term and these snobs prefer terms such as artisanal (emphasizing the craft) for fine food while the rest either don’t mind gourmet or use the handy “foodie” which seems classless and surprisingly recent, documented only since 1982.

Noted gourmet Lindsay Lohan at a table of delicacies.

Gourmet however definitely shouldn’t be confused with gourmand, although it’s admitted there may be some overlap.  A gourmand is one given to excess in the consumption of food and drink; a greedy or ravenous eater and the word was from the Middle English gourmaunt, gormond & gromonde (glutton), from the Old French noun gormant (a glutton), from the adjective gormant (gluttonous), of uncertain origin.  The noun plural is gourmands and that may be often needed, the suspicion being that gourmands often gather, congregating in fast-food outlets or the food courts in suburban malls.  Despite the apparent similarity, etymologists think gourmet unconnected with gourmand although the latter’s ambiguous sense of “one fond of good eating” dates from 1758.  Later dictionaries would clarify things by saying that for the former, food & wine was a thing of quality, for the latter, of quantity.

Baroque

Baroque (pronounced buh-rohk or ba-rawk (French)).

(1) Of or relating to a style of architecture and art originating in Italy in the early seventeenth century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, by forms in elevation and plan suggesting movement, and by dramatic effect in which architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts often worked to combined effect (often used with an initial capital letter).

(2) In music, of or relating to the period following the Renaissance, extending (circa 1600-1750) which tended to be characterized by extensive use of the thorough bass and of ornamentation to create dramatic effects. Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederick Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi were great composers of the baroque era.

(3) In literature, a style of prose thought extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted in character or style.

(4) An irregularly shaped pearl (rare except in technical use).

(5) In pre-modern twentieth century design or engineering, objects intricately or ornately detailed in a way no longer financially viable.

(6) Descriptively (of any object where the technical definitions don’t apply), variously (1) ornate, intricate, decorated, laden with detail & (2) complex and beautiful, despite an outward irregularity.

(7) In stonemasonry & woodworking, chiselled from stone, or shaped from wood, in a garish, crooked, twisted, or slanted sort of way, grotesque or embellished with figures and forms such that every level of relief gives way to more details and contrasts.

(8) Figuratively, something overly or needlessly complicated, applied especially to bureaucracy or instances like accounting systems which either are or appear to be designed to conceal or confuse.

1765: From the French baroque (originally “pearl of irregular shape”), from the Portuguese barroco or barroca (irregularly shaped pearl) which was in some way influenced by either or both the Spanish berrueco or barrueco (granitic crag, irregular pearl, spherical nodule) and the Italian barocco, of uncertain ultimate origin but which may be from the Latin verrūca (wart).  The etymology is however murky and some suggest the Portuguese words may directly have come from the Spanish berruca (a wart) also from the Latin verrūca (a steep place, a height (and thus “a wart” or “an excrescence on a precious stone”).  Most scholars think at some point it probably conflated with Medieval Latin baroco, an invented word for a kind of obfuscating syllogism although one speculative alternative is the word was derived from the work of the Italian painter Federigo Barocci (1528-1612), a founder of the style, but most think this mere coincidence.  The comparative is baroque and the superlative baroquest, both thankfully rare.  Baroque is a noun & adjective, baroqueness is a noun and baroquely is an adverb, the noun plural is baroques.

Marble Court, Palace of Versailles.  Commissioned in the 1660s by Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715), the Palace of Versailles is thought one of the the finest example of secular Baroque architecture.

Baroque is one of those strange words in English which has evolved to have several layers of meaning including (1) a term which defines epochs in music & architecture, (2) a term referencing the characteristics in the music & architecture most associated with those periods, (3) a term which is a negative criticism of those characteristics, (4) a term which is (by extension) a negative criticism of the excessively ornate in any field (especially in literature) and (5) a term applied admiringly to things intricately or elaborately detailed.  In English, baroque began as an expression of contempt for the style of architecture which most historians believe began in early seventeenth century Rome and which shocked many with its audacious departure from the traditions of the Renaissance which paid such homage to (what was at least imagined to be) the Classical lines from Antiquity.  In architecture, baroque has never been exactly defined, something some explain by analogy with Clement Attlee’s (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) observation that it was as pointless to define socialism as it was an elephant for “...if an elephant ever walked into the room, all would know what it was”.

Karlskirche, Vienna.The Vatican's Saint Peter’s Square is often used to illustrate Baroque architecture and all those colonnades do make quite a statement but Vienna's Karlskirche better represents the way church architects took to the form.  It was commissioned in 1713 by Charles VI (1685–1740; Holy Roman Emperor 1711-1740) after the end of the last great epidemic of Plague as an act of memorial to Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584; Archbishop of Milan 1564-1584), revered as a healer of those suffering from Plague.

Actually, although etymologists would say that's true, that’s not how the word is actually often applied because the terms baroque and rococo are often used interchangeably by non-specialists when speaking of just about any building adorned with the elaborate details not seen since modernism, functionalism & brutalism prevailed.  What distinguishes things is less the actual shapes than the feeling imparted, baroque and rococo both noted for asymmetry, luxuriant detailing, extravagant, unexpected curves & lines and a polychromatic richness but where baroque’s language is of grandeur, weight & monumentalism, rococo’s implementations summon thoughts of lightness, playfulness and frivolity.  Tellingly, rococo, when used as a critique is applied almost always in the negative, suggesting something fussy, pointlessly elaborate and overstated whereas baroque is often used admiringly, literature about the only field in which use is universally negative.  The other common use of baroque in the negative applies to bureaucracy or tangled administrative systems when it’s used as a synonym of byzantine.  For those seeking a rule of thumb, except in literature, baroque tends not to be used negatively and when describing objects which contain ornate or intricate detailing, it’s adopted usually to suggest something complex and beautiful, despite an outward irregularity.  Baroque suggests restraint and good taste (there are many other words with which to describe the garish, crooked, twisted or grotesque) and to damn something as silly, over detailed and laden with decorations with no functional or aesthetic purpose, there’s rococo.

Winter Palace, Saint Petersberg.  Some do find the Winter Palace a bit rococo and there are elements of that in the interior but architecturally, it's an example of early baroque, albeit much modified by later renovations.  It was built as a residence of Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) and remain an official palace of the Romanov Tsars between 1732 and the 1917 revolutions.  The present appearance reflects both the restorative work of the late 1830s when it was rebuilt after a severe fire and the restoration after the damage suffered during the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944).

The use in the language of literary criticism is, like any application of “baroque” in the non-visual arts, inherently imprecise.  Even in music, it’s understood as a period and many of the compositions which emerged from the era do have a style which is recognisably “baroque” but there was also much which was anything but.  The same can of course be said of the European buildings of the same period, the overwhelming majority of which were neither “baroque”, nor memorable, the adjective in what is now called the “built environment” making sense only when used of representational architecture.  That’s a well-understood distinction in architecture and even painting but more contentious in music, something made murkier still by musicologists having divided the baroque into the “early”, “middle” and late”, mapped onto a range of styles which were sometimes particular to one country and sometimes popular in many.  Interestingly, although as a generalized descriptor it needs still to be thought of as something which began as a term of derision in architecture (and it is from there it gained its parameters), there is an earlier, anonymous piece of (not especially serious) opera criticism which labelled a work as du barocque (in the sense of the original meaning “pearl or irregular shape”), damning the music as un-melodic, discordant and a roll-call of just about every known compositional device; something more like a student’s assignment than a opera.  It’s a critique not greatly different from that made some three centuries later by comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953) who’d been displeased by one of comrade Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906-1975) operas, calling it формализм (formalism), "chaos instead of music", a self-indulgence of technique by a composer interested only in the admiration of other composers.

L'Estasi di Santa Teresa (The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa) by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) is a sculptural group rendered in white marble, set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.  It’s thought one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque and depicts Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun and saint, in a state of religious ecstasy, a spear-holding angel watching over her.  The installation in 2007 (briefly one supposes) gained baroque sculpture a new audience when it was used in a popular meme which noted some similarity with an early morning photograph of Lindsay Lohan resting in a Cadillac.

The last days of baroque: 1967 Mercedes–Benz 600 Pullman Laudaulet (left & rght) and 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet (centre).  There was intricate detailing on the W111 and W100s, the last truly coach-built Mercedes-Benz.  Most were produced between 1963-1971 although the W100s continued in a trickle, substantially hand-built, until 1981.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), remembered as the philosopher who loomed over the French revolution, was also a composer and in his Dictionnaire de la musique (Dictionary of Music, 1767) declared baroque music to be that “...in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited...”, noting the term was a re-purposing of baroco (an alternative spelling of baroko (from a mediaeval mnemonic chant and a mode of syllogism used whenever some point seemed to be exist only pointlessly to obfuscate), used since the thirteenth century by philosophers discussing the tendency by some of their peers (usually those in the Church or university) needlessly to complicate simple concepts and arguments, just for the sake of grandiose academic gloss; formalism as it were.  Etymologists however remain unconvinced by Rousseau’s speculation and cite earlier evidence which suggests it was from architecture that the use in painting and music was derived, pondering that had Rousseau’s musicology been influenced by him being an architect rather than a philosopher, he too may have identified the source in brick and stone.  Anyway, baroque music as it’s now understood is a surprisingly recent construct, discussed as a thing only in the twentieth century, the term widely used only after the 1950s when the advent of long-playing (LP) records made the packaging and distribution of long-form composition practical and the industry became interested in categorizations, the Baroque something different from the Renaissance and the Classical despite the popular association of them all as one.