Fag

Fag (pronounced fag)

(1) Something hanging loose, a flap (mostly archaic except in US technical use in industrial production of textiles where, in the process of quality inspections, a fag is a rough or coarse defect in the woven fabric).

(2) Slang for a boring or wearisome task (archaic).

(3) The worst part or end of a thing (mostly UK, now archaic).

(4) Offensive slang for a contemptible or dislikable person (archaic).

(5) Offensive slang for a homosexual male, applied most often to an obvious, especially effeminate or “unusual” one (now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous although within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing).

(6) To tire or weary by labor; to be exhausted (usually in the phrase “fagged out”).

(7) One allocated to do menial chores for an older school pupil (mostly in the English public school system but said to be extinct since the late 1990s although apparently still practiced in some Commonwealth countries with public (private) schools based on the old English model).

(8) Slang for a cigarette (now rare, especially in North America); the Cockney rhyming slang was “oily rag”.

(9) As "fag-end" (as in the last un-smoked end of a cigarette), a remnant of something once larger, longer etc such as the frayed end of a length of cloth or rope.

(10) As "fag-end administration", the last months or weeks of a government prior to an election.

1425–1475: From the late Middle English fagge (flap; broken thread in cloth, loose end (of obscure origin)), the later sense-development to the intransitive verb meaning “to droop, to tire, to make weary; drudgery” apparently based on the idea of “a drooping end” or “something limply hanging” dating from the 1520s.  The transitive sense of "to make (someone or something) fatigued, tire by labor" was first noted in 1826.  Those fagged-out fatiguing labor were in the 1850s said to have been engaged in “faggery” and from the same era “brain-fag described "mental fatigue."  Fag is a noun and verb, fagging or fagged are verbs and faggish & fagged are adjectives.  Apparently un-fagged is a correct construction which may be used to describe the process of cutting the ties binding a bundle of sticks.  Functional forms (fag butt, fag lighter, fag grave (an ashtray) are created as required. Fag is a noun & verb; the noun plural is fags.   

A GIF of Lindsay Lohan enjoying a fag.

The meaning “cigarette” dates only from 1888 and was derived from fag-end (applied to many things and attested since the 1610s) and thus a cigarette butt was one of many fag-ends but “fag” (and the plural “fags”) came much to be associated with cigarettes.  Fag may be variant of the verb “flag” in the sense of “droop, tire” and related (perhaps remotely) to the Dutch vaak (sleepiness).  The use of the term to refer to cigarettes is still heard in parts of the English-speaking world but is almost unknown in the US where use is not advised because there, almost exclusively, it's exclusively a gay slur.

Inhaling a known carcinogen is of course a bad idea and not recommended but Lindsay Lohan did make smoking look sexy.

Faggery (or faggotry) was the system in English public schools in which the younger students acted as servants (there were sometimes other purposes) for the older.  It was part of public school environment which Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) said was designed primarily to teach pupils life was “inherently unfair”.  Still, he valued the process and described any chap who hadn't benefited from the experience as having "no background".  The use in English public schools to describe a junior student who performs "certain duties" for a senior seems first to have been used in 1785 although the practice is documented from the seventeenth century.  The schoolboy slang describing the offices of the institution as “fagdom” & “fagmaster” dates from 1902.  In modern use, faggery (less so faggotry but like faggotness, faggotize & faggotism) is used as a gay slur.  The term "faggot voter" was a historic term in the UK & Ireland used when there was a property qualification attached to the electoral franchise.  A legal loophole, it described someone entitled to vote by virtue of holding some form of property title short of freehold, typically to a subdivision.  The origin of the term was based on the idea of “faggot” in the sense of the sticks gathered together and bound to make a whole (ie one property with one title fragmented for electoral purposes while not diminishing the quality of the ultimate ownership).  The “loophole” was one of those things which began as an “unintended consequence” of changes to the rules of real property but it wasn’t reformed until the late 1800s because so many land-owners and members of parliament made use of it to “stack their constituencies” with voters.

As a shortening of faggot, “fag” is documented as being applied as a term of disparagement to homosexual males from 1914, an invention of American English slang, though related to the earlier (1590s) contemptuous term for a woman, especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot in the sense of "bundle of sticks", ie something awkward that has to be carried in the sense of "worthless baggage” (and therefore “worthless woman").  More speculatively, there may be a link with the Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a faggot homosexual man).  There may also have been some connection with the English public school slang noun fag which even then carried the suggestion of catamite (From the Latin catamītus (boy kept as a sexual partner), from Catamītus, from the Etruscan catmite, from the Ancient Greek Γανυμήδης (Ganumḗdēs) (Ganymede), in Greek mythology an attractive Trojan boy abducted by Zeus and taken to Mount Olympus to become his cupbearer and lover (and Ganymede endures as a doublet in that sense)).  The term “faggot marriage” was not a synonym of “lavender marriage” (an arrangement in which a gay man would marry a lesbian for purposes of social or professional respectability) but a disparaging reference to gay marriage.

In the same way the infamous N-word has been re-claimed by certain sub-sets of people of color and is, in context, an acceptable use by or between them, “faggot” similarly, although now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous, within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing.  Two inventive variations were “fag hag” (a heterosexual woman who socializes with homosexual men (1969)) and “fag stag” (a heterosexual man who socializes with homosexual men (circa 1995)).  The less common companion slang for men who have many lesbian friends was “dutch boy”, “lesbro” or “dyke tyke”.  Covering all bases, it transpires that those of both sexes who associate with lesbian, gay and bisexual people are “fruit flies”.  The story that male homosexuals were called faggots because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an urban legend with no etymological or historical basis. Burning sometimes was a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (which relied on the scriptural suggestion invoked as the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, although parliament had declared homosexuality a capital crime in 1533, the prescribed method of execution was to be hanged.  While the inquisitorial and judicial organs of the Roman Catholic Church may over the centuries have burned at the stake a good many homosexuals, that really was incidental to the process (sort of the "collateral damage" of the day), the actual sentence imposed usually for other offences.

Faggot was from the Middle English fagot, from the Middle French fagot (bundle of sticks), from the Medieval Latin and Italian fagotto and related to the Old Occitan fagot, the Italian fagotto & fangotto and the Spanish fajo (bundle, wad).  In Italian a fagotto was (1) a bundle or sack, (2), (figuratively) a clumsy or awkward person; a klutz or (3), in music, a bassoon and was probably from the Italian fagotto (diminutive of Vulgar Latin facus, from the Classical Latin fascis (bundle of wood), or perhaps the Ancient Greek φάκελος (phákelos) (bundle).  The senses relating to persons, though possibly originating as an extension of the sense "bundle of sticks", could have been reinforced by Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a homosexual man).  In English, “fagot” was long the alternative spelling.

A sincere form of flattery: North American F-86 Sabre (first flown October 1947, left) and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (first flown December 1947, right).

A well-crafted amalgam of technology stolen from the West (the airframe construction techniques from the US, the jet-engine a blatant copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene and the aerodynamics the result of wartime German research), the USSR’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 was a short-range interceptor, the appearance of which in the skies of the Korean War (1950-1953) theatre was such a shock to the UN forces that the US Air Force (USAF) had to scramble to assemble squadrons of North American F-86 Sabres for deployment.  Made in both the USSR and by licensed overseas constructors, the MiG-15 was produced in extraordinary numbers (some sources suggest as many as 17,700) and equipped not only Warsaw Pact (1955-1991) militaries, some three dozen air forces eventually using the type; it remained in front-line service well into the 1960s.  Simple, robust and economical to operate, many still fly in private hands and some continue to be used as jet-trainers, ideal for the role because of their predictable characteristics and good handling.  Soviet consumer goods of the post-war years may have been of dubious quality and often in short supply by the MiGs were well-built and numerous.

The MiG-15’s NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the trans-Atlantic alliance formed in 1949 as a defensive system for Western Europe designed (in the phrase of its first secretary general General Lord (Hastings "Pug") Ismay (1887–1965): to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down) reporting name was Fagot.  NATO reporting names have no linguistic or etymological significance, being chosen (1) with an initial letter indicating type (B=bomber; F=fighter; C=commercial & cargo; H=helicopter; M= miscellaneous) and (2) a one-syllable name for propeller aircraft and a two-syllable name for jets.  Fagot was just another reporting name picked from NATO’s list of the possible for allocation to fighters:

Fairytale of New York (1987) is a song by the Irish pop-band The Pogues, augmented for the occasion by the late Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000).  One stanza includes the lines:

You're a bum

You're a punk

You're an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot

You cheap lousy faggot

Happy Christmas your arse

I pray God it's our last

The "offensive" line obviously was : "You cheap lousy faggot" and for many years, every Christmas, there was in England an almost ritualistic argument about whether it was appropriate to play the piece on radio, a matter of some interest because Fairytale of New York frequently was voted the nation’s most popular Christmas song. something which displease many reverend and right reverend gentlemen although Lambeth Palace seems never to have commented on the matter.

In the late 1980s the BBC seemed unconcerned at the possibility of a gay slur being thought at least implied but found the anatomical slang offensive, asking that "arse" be replaced with “ass” which was a liberal approach compared with the old BBC tradition of outright bans but sensitivities shifted to gender in the 1990s and in subsequent live performances MacColl sometimes adjusted the lyrics further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard".  Since then broadcasts have varied in the version carried, the BBC even permitting all or some of “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” on some of their stations but not others.  There’s was also use of the old practice “bleeping out” (actually scrambling) “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” as required and it’s now fairly unpredictable just which version will be played.  It did seem one of the more improbable battlefields of the culture wars but was emblematic of the new censorship.  Although, in the context of the song, it was obvious “faggot” was being used in the old sense of meaning “someone worthless” rather than “someone a bit of a homosexual”, the objection was to the very word which many activists demand should be proscribed, the same fate suffered by "niggardly" a form with an etymology as unrelated to the infamous "N-word" as the meaning.

Climate

Climate (pronounced klahy-mit)

(1) The composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years (decades, centuries or other epochs).

(2) A region or area characterized by a given climate (often as climatic zone or with modifiers such as cold-climate, sub-climate, micro-climate, dry-climate etc).

(3) The prevailing attitudes, standards, or environmental conditions of a group, period, or place (used in politics, sociology, economics etc in the sense of mood, atmosphere, spirit, tone, temper etc).

(4) An area of the earth's surface between two parallels of latitude (obsolete).

(5) A region of the Earth (obsolete).

(6) In contemporary slang, a clipping of “climate change” and frequent verbal (especially oral) shorthand.

1350–1400: From the Middle English climat, from the Old French climat (region, part of the earth), from the Late Latin clīmat- (stem of clīma, from the Ancient Greek κλῐ́νω (klínō) (I slope, incline)), from klīmat- (stem of klī́ma (latitude, slope, region (literally “inclination”), the notion being “slope of the earth from equator to pole”), the construct being klī- (akin to klī́nein (to slope, lean)) + -ma (the noun suffix), ultimately from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root klei- (to lean).  The adjective climatic is sometimes confused with climactic.  Climatic is used of the climate; climactic describe something which forms a climax.  Climate is a noun & verb and climatic, climatical & climatal are adjectives and climatically is an adverb; the noun plural is climates.

The original meaning in the mid-fourteenth century was purely geographic, the sense being horizontal zone of the earth's surface measured by lines parallel to the equator (ie latitude).  From antiquity, geographers and cartographers divided earth into zones determined by the angle of the sun on the slope of the surface and the length of daylight.  Not knowing what lay beyond reported (and not always reliable) observations, these zones varied greatly.  Some calculated variously 24 or 30 climates between Meroe on the upper Nile (in modern-day Sudan) and the mythical Riphaean Mountains which thought to be the Arctic’s boundary, systems in which as one traced the map north, the climate changed at the point where daylight was a half hour longer or shorter (according to season) than the starting point.  Others thought cosmically and listed seven (one for each known planet) or twelve (tied to the signs of the zodiac).

Being a measure of latitude, there was obviously a tendency for the climates to correlate with temperature, something noticed as early as the late-fourteenth century and, being practical rather than abstract, the word came rapidly to be used in the sense of “distinct zones of the earth's surface associated with changes in weather”.  This meaning shift evolved by the early seventeenth century to make climate understood as “combined results of weather associated with a region, the characteristics of a country or region with reference to variation of heat, cold, humidity, rainfall, wind etc.  The figurative use (the collective mental or moral atmosphere of a group or whole society) dates from the 1660s.  The difference between climate and “the weather” is that climate is a summary of the long-term manifestations of weather and other atmospheric conditions (which can be applied to defined zones or globally).  The modern practice is that climate is a statistical summary of a representative period and that’s usually generational (ie 25-30 years) but climate modelers using the geological record and other sources (trees, ice cores etc) can construct longer epochs in centuries (eg the ice ages) or even millions of years, the global climate during the age of the dinosaurs often summed up as “warm & wet”.

Lindsay Lohan pondering climate change.

To acclimatise (or acclimatize) is to acclimate (become accustomed to) one’s self to the weather conditions prevalent where one find’s one’s self, a term used also figuratively in the sense of adjusting tastes or expectations to different cultures.  The use of modifiers is common and can be meteorological (warm-climate, dry-climate, chilly climate, temperate-climate etc) or figurative (hostile climate, sceptical climate etc).  In the age of climate-concern, there’s been a growth of such use including climate canary, climate control, climate denial, climate denier, climate despair, climate emergency, climate finance, climate doom, climate system, climate-speak and, of course, climate change.  Indeed, the very phrase “climate change” is a construct which has come widely to be used because it references easily understood consequences rather than some abstract process.  The possible climatic implications of man-made atmospheric CO₂ emissions was discussed as early as 1896 by Swedish chemist & Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) in a paper called On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground, his conclusion being that the burning of fossil fuels could lead to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading a global increase in average temperatures.  In the scientific community, his ideas for decades remained controversial and in the wider community, barely noted and it wasn’t until the 1950s when researchers, taking advantage of new techniques made possible by the vastly increased quantity of data which became available because of wartime advances and a vast expansion of meteorological and atmospheric measuring, began serious study of the study the potential impact of human activities on the Earth's climate.

Between the 1970s and the early twenty-first century, a consensus built in mainstream science that human activities (especially the burning of fossil fuels), were contributing to global warming and other climatic changes.  The early phrase popular in the discussion, at that stage conducted mostly among scientists and environmentalists (although the fossil fuel industry quickly mounted counter campaigns, both in public relations activities and the traditional buying-off of politicians) was the “greenhouse effect” but greenhouses, associated with positive things like grapes & tomatoes didn’t have the desired worrying effect so the terminology in the 1990s shifted to the consequences.  “Global warming” replaced “greenhouse effect” in consciousness-raising but it proved vulnerable to attacks from industry which claimed every unseasonal cold-spell disproved the thesis, thus the use of “climate change”.  That has proved resistant to challenge and even in the West the matter is now being taken seriously, as the consequences of climate change begin to affect to rich nations of the global north, destructive heat, fires, hurricanes, floods and tropical diseases no longer ignored as largely they were when those who suffered were mostly Africans, Arabs, Asians and animals.

Psychiatrists & psychologists find the distinction between climate and weather a helpful metaphor when explaining personality.  The term personality denotes the enduring pattern of a patient’s life and can thus be thought their individual climate.  The weather which produces that climate can be good (happy events, a successful marriage, a fulfilling career), bad (a dull job, habitually sore feet) or severe (cancer, divorce) and in some cases a patient’s reaction to these event can result is what is diagnosed as a personality disorder (PD).  In the West, psychiatry is thought one of medicine’s more recent disciplines and in some structural senses that’s probably true but the understanding of the human personality is ancient.  Writing in 45 BC, the Roman statesman & scholar Cicero (106-43 BC) observed that in men existed “…all kinds of depravity and perversity” and that “There are more disorders of the mind than of the body and they are of a more dangerous nature for the mind, when disordered… can neither bear nor endure anything and is under the perpetual influence of desires”.  Cicero went further, noting the depravities of men were deep seated and either caused or exacerbated by environment in which men lived and what afflicted one could also poison the whole for when an entire society “declare unanimously for what is wrong, then we are altogether overwhelmed”.  PD writ large: Each individual an element of the weather and the body politic the climate.

La Mort de Cicéron (The Death of Cicero (circa 1635), oil on canvas by François Perrier (1590–1650), Bad Homburg, Staatliche.

Within two years of writing those words Cicero would be dead and the circumstances of his execution would provide probably several case studies in PD but he had few reasons to complain; he may have lived by the pen but he ruled by the sword, for centuries remembered fondly by scholars of Antiquity and, perhaps less helpfully for his reputation, of late by Ted Cruz (b 1970; US senator (Republican, Texas) since 2013).  Knowledge of PD then was not novel when in 1980 when first it appeared in the third edition (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, organized on a categorical basis with patients classified into one of several distinct personality disorder types.  This system was revised in the DSM-IV (1994) and again in the DSM-5 (2013), the latter adopting a hybrid categorical-dimensional approach to PD, a condition it notes affects at least two of a patient’s (1) way of thinking about oneself and others, (2) way of responding emotionally, (3) way of relating to other people and (4) way of controlling one’s behavior.  In the DSM-5-TR (2022), the types of PD are listed as:

Antisocial personality disorder: A pattern of disregarding or violating the rights of others.  A person with antisocial personality disorder may not conform to social norms, may repeatedly lie or deceive others, or may act impulsively.

Avoidant personality disorder: A pattern of extreme shyness, feelings of inadequacy, and extreme sensitivity to criticism.  Patients with avoidant personality disorder may be unwilling to get involved with others unless they are certain of being liked, be preoccupied with being criticized or rejected, or may view themselves as not being good enough or socially inept.

Borderline personality disorder: A pattern of instability in personal relationships, intense emotions, poor self-image and impulsivity.  A patient with borderline personality disorder may go to great lengths to avoid being abandoned, have repeated suicide attempts, display inappropriate intense anger, or have ongoing feelings of emptiness.

Dependent personality disorder: A pattern of needing to be taken care of and submissive (clingy the modern term) behavior.  Patients with dependent personality disorder may have difficulty making daily decisions without reassurance from others or may feel uncomfortable or helpless when alone because of fear of inability to take care of themselves.

Histrionic personality disorder: A pattern of excessive emotion and attention-seeking. Patients with HPD may be uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention and may use physical appearance to draw attention to themselves or have rapidly shifting or exaggerated emotions.

Narcissistic personality disorder: A pattern of need for admiration and lack of empathy for others.  A patient with NPD may have a grandiose sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, take advantage of others or lack empathy.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: A pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfection and control.  A patient with OCPD (distinct from Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)) may be overly focused on details or schedules, may work excessively, not allowing time for leisure or friends, or may be inflexible in their morality and values.

Paranoid personality disorder: A pattern of being suspicious of others and seeing them as mean or spiteful.  Patients with paranoid personality disorder often assume people will harm or deceive them and refuse to confide in others or become close to them.

Schizoid personality disorder: Being detached from social relationships and expressing little emotion.  A patient with schizoid personality disorder typically does not seek close relationships, chooses to be alone and appears to care little about praise or criticism from others.

Schizotypal personality disorder: A pattern of being very uncomfortable in close relationships, having distorted thinking and eccentric behavior. A patient with schizotypal personality disorder may have odd beliefs or odd or peculiar behavior or speech or may have excessive social anxiety.

Anxiety

Anxiety (pronounced ang-zahy-i-tee)

(1) Fear, foreboding, worry, disquiet, distress, uneasiness or tension caused by apprehension of possible future misfortune, danger etc, often to a degree that normal physical and psychological functioning is disrupted (can occur without an identifiable cause in which case the patient may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder).

(2) Earnest but tense desire; eagerness; an uneasy or distressing desire for someone or something.

(3) In psychiatry, a state of intense apprehension or worry often accompanied by physical symptoms such as shaking, intense feelings in the gut etc, common in mental illness or after a distressing experience; a generalised state of apprehension and psychic tension occurring in some forms of mental disorder.

1515–1525: From the Middle English anxumnesse (apprehension caused by danger, misfortune, or error, uneasiness of mind respecting some uncertainty, a restless dread of some evil), from the Old English angsumnes, from the Latin anxietatem (nominative anxietas) (anguish, anxiety, solicitude) a noun of quality from anxius (uneasy, anxious, solicitous, distressed, troubled in mind) from angō (to distress, trouble), akin to the Ancient Greek ἄγχω (ánkhō) (to choke).  The construct of the Latin anxietās was anxi(us) (anxious) + -etās, a variant of -itās used if appearing before a vowel.  The -itas suffix was from the Proto-Italic -itāts & -otāts (-tās added to i-stems or o-stems, later used freely) and ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -tehats.    Synonyms include foreboding, uneasiness, perplexity, disquietude, disquiet, trouble, apprehension, restlessness & distress and it’s become a popular modifier (range anxiety, climate anxiety, separation anxiety, performance anxiety etc).  Anxiety is a noun; the noun plural is anxieties.

Xanax tablets.

Xanax is the brand name for the drug alprazolam which is a benzodiazepine.  It is a prescription medication primarily used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders and (more controversially) depression.  A fast & short-acting benzodiazepine, Xanax works by enhancing the activity of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which helps to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.  Xanax is regarded as effective for treating anxiety and related disorders when used as prescribed but can be habit-forming, leading to dependence and addiction.  Lindsay Lohan released (or "dropped" in the fashionable parlance) the track Xanax in 2019.  With a contribution from Finnish pop star Alma (Alma-Sofia Miettinen; b 1996), the accompanying music video was said to be “a compilation of vignettes of life”, Xanax reported as being inspired by Ms Lohan’s “personal life, including an ex-boyfriend and toxic friends”.  Structurally, Xanax was quoted as being based around "an interpolation of" Better Off Alone, by Dutch Eurodance-pop collective Alice Deejay, slowed to a Xanax-appropriate tempo.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder (PD) were formalized when the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) was released in 1980 although among clinicians, GAD had for some years been a noted thread in the literature but what was done in DSM-III was to map GAD onto the usual pattern of diagnostic criteria.  In practice, because of the high degree of co-morbidity with other disorders, the utility of GAD as defined was soon a regular topic of discussion at conferences and the DSM’s editors responded, the parameters of GAD refined in subsequent releases between 1987-1994 when GAD’s diagnostic criteria emerged in its recognizably modern form:

By the time the terminology for mental disorders began in the nineteenth century to be codified, the word anxiety had for hundreds of years been used in English to describe feelings of disquiet or apprehension and in the seventeenth century there was even a school of thought it was a pathological condition.  It was thus unsurprising that “anxiety” was so often an element in the psychiatry’s early diagnostic descriptors such as “pantophobia” and “anxiety neurosis”, terms which designated paroxysmal manifestations (panic attacks) as well as “interparoxysmal phenomenology” (the apprehensive mental state).  The notion of “generalized anxiety”, although not then in itself a diagnosis, was also one of the symptoms of many conditions including the vaguely defined neurasthenia which was probably understood by many clinicians as something similar to what would later be formalized as GAD.  As a distinct diagnostic category however, it wasn’t until the DSM-III was released in 1980 that GAD appeared, anxiety neurosis split into (1) panic disorder and (2) GAD.  When the change was made, the editors noted it was a response to comments from clinicians, something emphasised when DSM-III was in 1987 revised (DSM-III-R), in effect to acknowledge there was a class of patient naturally anxious (who might once have been called neurotic or pantophobic) quite distinct from those for whom a source of anxiety could be deduced.  Thus, the cognitive aspect of anxiety became the critical criterion but within the profession, some scepticism about the validity of GAD as a distinct diagnostic category emerged, the most common concern being the difficulty in determining clear boundaries between GAD, other anxiety-spectrum disorders and certain manifestations of depression.

The modern label aside, GAD has a really long lineage and elements of the diagnosis found in case histories written by doctors over the centuries would have seemed familiar to those working in the early nineteenth century, tales of concern or apprehension about the vicissitudes of life a common thing.  As psychiatry in those years began to coalesce as a speciality and papers increasingly published, it was clear the behaviour of those suffering chronic anxiety could culminate in paroxysmal attacks, thus it was that GAD and panic attacks came to be so associated.  In English, the term panophobia (sometimes as pantaphobia, pantophobia or panphobia) dates from 1871, the word from the Late Latin pantŏphŏbŏs, from the Ancient Greek παντοφόβος (all-fearing (literally “anxiety about everything”)).  It appears in the surviving works of medieval physicians and it seems clear there were plenty of “pantophobic patients” who allegedly were afraid of everything and it was not a product of the Dark Ages, Aristotle (384-322 BC) in the seventh book of his Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC) writing there were men “…by nature apt to fear everything, even the squeak of a mouse”.

The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I (1952) comprised what seems now a modest 130 pages.  The latest edition (DSM-5-TR (2022)) has 991 pages.  The growth is said to be the result of advances in science and a measure of the increasing comprehensiveness of the manual, not an indication that madness in the Western world is increasing.  The editors of the DSM would never use the word "madness" but for non-clinicians it's a handy term which can be applied to those beyond some point on the spectrum of instability.

Between Aristotle and the publication of the first edition of the DSM in 1952, physicians (and others) pondered, treated and discussed the nature of anxiety and theories of its origin and recommendations for treatment came and went.  The DSM (retrospectively labelled DSM-I) was by later standards a remarkably slim document but unsurprisingly, anxiety was included and discussed in the chapter called “Psychoneurotic Disorders”, the orthodoxy of the time that anxiety was a kind of trigger perceived by the conscious part of the personality and produced by a threat from within; how the patient reacted to this resulted in their reaction(s).  There was in the profession a structural determinism to this approach, the concept of defined “reaction patterns” at the time one of the benchmarks in US psychiatry.  When DSM-II was released in 1968, the category “anxiety reaction” was diagnosed when the anxiety was diffuse and neither restricted to specific situations or objects (ie the phobic reactions) nor controlled by any specific psychological defense mechanism as was the case in dissociative, conversion or obsessive-compulsive reactions. Anxiety reaction was characterized by anxious expectation and differentiated from normal apprehensiveness or fear.  Significantly, in DSM-II the reactions were re-named as “neuroses” and it was held anxiety was the chief characteristic of “neuroses”, something which could be felt or controlled unconsciously by various symptoms.  This had the effect that the diagnostic category “anxiety neurosis” encompassed what would later be expressed as panic attacks and GAD.

A: Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities (such as work or matters relating to educational institutions).

B: The patient finds it difficult to control the worry.

C: The anxiety and worry are associated with three (or more) of the following six symptoms:

(1) Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge.

(2) Being easily fatigued.

(3) Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank.

(4) Irritability.

(5) Muscle tension.

(6) Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless, unsatisfying sleep).

The key change really was for the criteria for GAD requiring fewer symptoms. Whereas with the DSM-IV-TR (2000) individuals needed to exhibit at least three physical and three cognitive symptoms for a diagnosis of GAD, under DSM-5 (2013), only one of each was required so not only was the accuracy and consistency of diagnosis (by definition) improved, the obvious practical effect was better to differentiate GAD from other anxiety disorders and (importantly) the usual worries and concerns endemic to the human condition.  The final significant aspect of the evolution was that by the time of DSM-5, GAD had become effectively a exclusionary diagnosis in that it cannot be diagnosed if the anxiety is better explained by other anxiety disorders and nor can GAD be caused directly by stressors or trauma.

Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No 2 (The Age of Anxiety) was inspired by WH Auden's long poem of the same name.

WH Auden's (1907-1973) The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1944) divided critics, said by some to be "his best work to date" and by others to be "dull and an obvious failure", some of whom rubbed in the critical salt by adding Leonard Bernstein's (1918-1990) Symphony No 2 (1948-1949), inspired by the poem, was the finer piece of art.  It was better received in the US where it was written, winning the Pulitzer prize but whether or not influenced by the reaction, Auden would never again complete an epic-length work.  Like HG Wells' (1866-1946) Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), it was very much a work of the unhappy time in which Auden found himself and in some ways picked up from his lament September 1st, 1939 (a poem he later renounced).  As a poem, The Age of Anxiety is a delight for structuralists, its six sections (prologue, life-story, dream-quest, dirge, masque & epilogue (and emulated by the six movements in Bernstein's symphony (each movement sub-divided))) able to be deconstructed even mathematically but, the most common complaint is that although his four protagonists (three men and a woman) are very different people and all from a world of vernacular American English, their thoughts on the human condition and their own are expressed as if each had once gone up to Oxford to take a degree in English, as Auden in his youth had done.  Such voices in poems are not unusual but the critics go further in claiming that anyone new to the work, were the characters' names to be concealed, could not possibly guess which of the four is talking.  While it becomes clear the abstractions he maps upon his four represent thought, intuition, sensation & feeling, while helpful as a device through which his word-view can be discussed, as flesh & blood characters they are vague indeed.  Still, literature should perhaps be enjoyed for what it is rather than what it's not; one doesn't need to find plausible what Philip Roth (1933-1918) thinks might be the thoughts of a woman to find pleasure in the text and it's the same with Auden's The Age of Anxiety.  Those interested in poetry as art will read such cleverness with relish, ticking the boxes on the path to technical ecstasy.  Those who want to feel something should stick to Sylvia Plath (1932-1963).      

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

WH Auden in The Age of Anxiety (1944).

Valkyrie

Valkyrie (pronounced val-keer-ee, val-kahy-ree, vahl-kerr-ee or val-kuh-ree)

(1) Any of the twelve beautiful war-maidens attendant upon Odin who rode over battlefields, gathering the souls of slain warriors chosen by Odin or Tyr and taking them to Valhalla, there to wait upon them.

(2) Code name for the civil-military conspiracy against the Nazi German government, culminating in the attempt coup d'état of 20 July 1944 during which an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).

(3) A frequently used name for high performance machinery (eg Aston Martin Valkyrie, North American XB70 Valkyrie).

1768: From the Old Norse valkyrja (literally "chooser of the slain") and cognate with the Old English wælcyrie (witch).  The construct was valr (those who fell battle, slaughter (and cognate with Old English wæl)) + kyrja (chooser (and cognate with Old English cyrie)).  Kyrja was from the ablaut root of kjosa (to choose), from the Proto-Germanic keusan, from the primitive Indo-European root geus- (to taste; to choose).  The Old English form wælcyrie, strangely was less prevalent in Anglo-Saxon tales than in Scandinavian myths although linguistic anthropologists have suggested this may be a consequence of the better preservation of old texts.  Köri was an alternative Norse form of kyrjam, from the ablaut root of kjosa, from the Proto-Germanic keusan, the earlier form of which was geus (to taste; to choose) from which English ultimately gained gusto.  Richard Wagner's (1813–1883) modern German Walküre was directly from the Norse while the word was first noted in English as a proper noun (valkyries) in the 1770s and as a common noun (valkyries) since the 1880s. Valkyrie is a noun & valkyrian is an adjective; the noun plural is valkyries.

Rides of some Valkries

Valkyries Riding into Battle (1838) by Johan Gustaf Sandberg (1782–1854).

The Valkyries now get quite good press but in heathen times they were thought rather more sinister.  The literal translation of their name (choosers of the slain), referred to them choosing who gains admittance to Valhalla, the Norse resting place of fallen warriors, but in some tellings of the myth they decided also who died in battle and used their malicious magic to ensure their preferences were brought to fruition.  The tales of them writing their ledger of death are recounted in Edda, (an Old Norse term that refers to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: the Prose Edda and an older collection of poems now known as the Poetic Edda.  Assembled in Ireland during the thirteenth century and written in Icelandic, they comprise material reaching back to the Vikings and are the main sources of medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland and Norse mythology), their most gruesome side illustrated vividly in the Darraðarljóð, a poem contained within Njal’s Saga.  In the saga are depicted a dozen Valkyries prior to the Battle of Clontarf, sitting at a loom and weaving the tragic fate of the warriors using intestines for their thread, severed heads for weights, and swords and arrows for beaters, all the while chanting their intentions with ominous delight.  That might delight some radical feminists but part of the myths is also that having carried the fallen to Valhalla, there the twelve beauties waited upon them hand and foot, attending to their every whim.  Readers have always been able to take from mythology what they will.  The artists of the nineteenth century however were always evocatively romantic when depicting the Valkyries, perhaps recalling the  Nietzschean visions in the thirteenth century Norse Saga of the Volsungs in which beholding a Valkyrie is compared with staring into a flame.

Valkyrie and a Dying Hero (circa 1877) by Hans Makart (1840-1884).

The imagery exists also in the folklore of other Germanic peoples.  In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the valkyries (wælcyrie in the Old English) were female spirits of carnage and the Celts, with whom the Norse and other Germanic peoples associated for centuries, had in their mythology similar beings such as the war goddesses Badb and the Morrígan.  Whether in their loving or bloodthirsty modalities, the valkyries are part of the complex of shamanism that permeates pre-Christian Germanic religion. Much like the ravens Hugin and Munin, they’re projections of parts of Odin, semi-distinct entities part of his larger being.

Hitler’s other Valkyrie

Unity Valkyrie Mitford (1914–1948) was one six daughters of a right-wing father from the English aristocracy, five of whom, had they lived in the modern era would have been among the most prolific on social media and staples of celebrity gossip sites; they were “content providers” and “click bait” before their time.  Diana (1910–2003) became the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980), founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists and the mother of Max Mosley (1940–2021; president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) 1993-2009); on the day she died she was the last person alive to have known both Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955).  Jessica (1917-1996) became a communist, Nancy (1904-1973 an author of note and Deborah (1920–2014) ended her life as Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.  Only Pamela (1907-1994) enjoyed what might be thought a “normal” rural life.  The only brother (Tom, 1909-1945) was killed while on active service with the British Army in Burma, one of several theatres in which he fought, declining to take up arms against Nazi Germany, his choice of deployment the sort of indulgence the establishment were extended.

Adolf Hitler & Unity Mitford taking tea during the annual Wagner Festival, Bayreuth, Germany, July 1936.

Unity became besotted with admiration for Hitler and although various theories have been offered to account for the attraction which seems to date from her attendance at the 1933 Nuremburg Rally, there’s no doubt about her methods.  While the legend was that after taking up residence in Munich in 1934, she stalked him, making her presence known at the restaurants & cafés where he was a habitué until she gained an invitation to his table, she was a socialite who knew how the system worked and actually gained a meeting by more traditional “networking”.  Hitler was intrigued, not only by her obvious personal (the depth of her political knowledge is contested) devotion but also her family’s historic connections with notable figures of importance in German culture including the composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and the proto-Nazi author Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927).  Telling one confidant that being next to Hitler was “like sitting next to the sun”, she became part of the court circle which surrounded Hitler where the Wagnerian touch of her middle name gained her the nickname “the Valkyrie” and some historians have speculated the second (and rather-half-hearted) of Eva Braun’s (1912–1945) two suicide attempts during the 1930s was at least partially motivated by her jealousy of Unity.

Perhaps already mentally unstable, Unity was distraught at the thought of Britain and Germany being at war and on 3 September 1939 (the day the British declaration of war was delivered), shot herself in the head.  She joined the surprisingly long list of those who survived such an act although, badly injured, she was never again the same; repatriated to the UK via Switzerland, she died in 1948 from complications related to the bullet which remained lodged in her brain.  Even in the 1940s conspiracy theories were a thing and there were several about the already strange tale of Unity Mitford, something encouraged by veil of secrecy her family draped around her.  The most bizarre was that shortly after returning to England she was admitted to a private maternity hospital in Oxford where she gave birth to Hitler’s child.  The origin of the claim was said to have been the sister of the hospital’s former manager who passed it on to her daughter, the niece revealing it some years later.  Unfortunately, it appears the hospital “neglected to register” babies born during the war, something quite unusual and another element onto which the conspiracy theorists latched.  Historians have dismissed the possibility Hitler had a child.

North American XB-70 Valkyrie.

Even while the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962) was in still in production, the Pentagon was planning its successor.  The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was nuclear-armed, long-range, deep-penetration strategic bomber, capable of cruising at Mach 3+ (circa 2000 mph (3,200 km/h)) at an altitude of 70,000 feet (circa 24 km), performance which would have rendered it close to invulnerable to both ground-based anti-aircraft fire and short-range fighter interceptors.  However, by the late 1950s, while the XB-70 was still in the prototype stage, the introduction of surface-to-air missiles put this near-invulnerability in doubt and this, coupled with the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) meant the brief era of dominance by the big strategic bomber was over although the platforms, re-purposed, remain in use to this day.  In 1961, after two Valkyries had been built (one of which was lost in an accident), the project was cancelled, viewed as a flying dreadnought overtaken by technology.  President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961), a practical military man who had over the decades seen many weapons rendered obsolete by advances in technology, thought the Valkyrie was like "bows and arrows in the gunpowder age".  The end of the dominance of the big strategic bomber had earlier been predicted by the man who more than any remains associated with the once often-expressed advocacy of the platform which alone could win wars: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris (1892–1984; head of RAF Bomber Command 1942-1945) noted during World War II (1939-1945) the "...day of the heavy bomber will pass as it did for the cavalry charge and soon will for the battleship".  The admirals weren't best pleased to hear that but he was right although, seventy-odd years on, the B-52, much updated, remains in service but it has been re-purposed, no longer envisaged as something to fly over Russian or Chinese targets, dropping gravity bombs.     

North American XB-70 Valkyrie Specifications

Length: 189 ft 0 in (57.6 m)

Wingspan: 105 ft 0 in (32 m)

Height: 30 ft 0 in (9.1 m)

Wing area: 6,297 ft2 (585 m2)

Airfoil: Hexagonal; 0.30 Hex modified root, 0.70 Hex modified tip

Empty weight: 253,600 lb (115,030 kg; operating empty weight)

Loaded weight: 534,700 lb (242,500 kg)

Take-off weight: 542,000 lb (246,000 kg)

Fuel capacity: 300,000 pounds (140,000 kg) or 46,745 US gallons (177,000 L)

Powerplant: 6 × General Electric YJ93-GE-3 afterburning turbojets

Dry thrust: 19,900 lbf (84 kN) each

With afterburner: 28,800 lbf (128 kN) each

North American XB-70 Valkyrie Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 3.1 (2,056 mph (3,309 km/h))

Cruise speed: Mach 3.0 (2,000 mph (3,200 km/h))

Range: 3,725 nautical miles (4,288 mi (6,901 km)) on combat mission

Service ceiling: 77,350 ft (23,600 m)

Wing loading: 84.93 lb/ft2 (414.7 kg/m2)

Lift-to-drag: About 6 at Mach 2[116]

Thrust/weight: 0.314

End of an era: The Aston Martin Valkyrie

The days of such things may be numbered but the manufacturers of petrol-fueled hypercars are hastening, while they still can, to offer the rich a way amusingly (and given the aftermarket, often profitably) to spend the quantitatively-eased cash governments have given them this past decade.  In August 2021, Aston Martin unveiled the Valkyrie Spider, an open-roof version of the Formula One-inspired hybrid hypercar, the coupés produced in 2022, the Spiders the following year.  Revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California, the Valkyrie Spider differs from the coupé in having a removable carbon-fibre roof panel, two hinged polycarbonate side windows and front-hinged dihedral doors rather than the closed version’s gull-wings.

The powertrain of both is essentially the same, combining a 6.5 litre (397 cubic inch), Cosworth-designed, naturally-aspirated V12 and a single electric motor for a total output of 1160 bhp (865 kW) in the coupé and 20 bhp (15 kW) less in the spider, Aston Martin not commenting on the difference.  Drive is to the rear wheels through what’s described as a seven-speed “automated manual” transmission and though the coupé is slightly lighter, performance for both is said to be similar with a 0-60 mph (100 km) time around 2.5 seconds and a top speed around 217 mph (350 km/h) although it’s noted removing the roof sacrifices about 12 mph (20 km/h).  Eighty-five Valkyrie Spiders will be built, these in addition to one-hundred and fifty coupés and twenty-five race-track only specials and while pricing hasn’t been announced, leaks from the factory suggest something over US$3 million.  Interest is said to be strong although the loss of the lucrative Russian market presumably saw some adjustments in national allocations.  On the car's webpage, the factory summed up its estimate of the performance by concluding "Any faster and it would fly."

Less is more: Underside of the Aston Martin Valkyrie. 

Actually, even were it able to go faster it still might not leave the ground.  While the aerodynamic techniques visible in the bodywork are orthodox by contemporary standards, the Valkyrie also generates much "virtual downforce" by the sculpturing of the underside, significant parts of which are effectively "hollow", the channels using the fluid dynamics of the air-flow to "suck the car to the ground".  The technique has been used for decades but the Valkyrie is the most extreme implementation yet seen on a road car.