Squad

Squad (pronounced skwod)

(1) In modern military use, a small number of soldiers (typically between 4-10), under the authority of a corporal or staff sergeant, usually a sub-set of a platoon and the smallest operational unit recognized by the military.

(2) In law enforcement, a group of police officers or other officials, especially one organized to deal with a particular area of law enforcement or a particular event or situation.

(3) Any small group or party of persons engaged in a common enterprise.

(4) In sport, group of players from which a team is selected.

(5) In slang, any group of people with some identifiable connection (especially one’s friends, taken collectively).

(6) In zoology, an (informal) collective noun for a group of squid.

(7) To form into squads (rare except in technical use).

(8) To assign to a squad (rare except in technical use).

(9) In some dialects (UK, dating from the mid-seventeenth century), sloppy mud, of uncertain origin.

1640–1650: From the French escouade, from the Old French esquade, an alteration of esquadre, from the Italian squadra (battalion, literally “square” (from which French gained escadre), from the Spanish escuadra (square (so called from square shape of the formation)), from the Old Spanish, from escuadrar (to square (from the square formations used)), from the from Vulgar Latin exquadra (to square), from the Latin  squadra (a square), the construct being ex- (out) + quadrare (make square), from quadrus (a square), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer- (four).  Squad is a noun & verb, squaddie & squadron are nouns and squadded & squadding are verbs; the noun plural is squads.

Before advances in ballistics extended the range of firepower, infantry troops tended to fight in a square formation because it was the most effective to repel cavalry or superior forces. And from this came the idea of the squad as a basic military formation, the Latin squadra meaning “square” although that doesn’t imply Roman squads could number as few as four (as is the modern practice, reflected in the slang term for private soldiers (the army’s lowest rank (technically non-ranked)) in some armies being “squaddie”.  In historic (army) use, a squadron was a body of cavalry comprising two companies or troops, averaging from one hundred and twenty to two hundred soldiers.  Probably the best known military squad is the firing squad, a traditional method of military execution and regarded as among the most honorable forms of dispatch.  By the early nineteenth century the word was extended to any small party or group of persons and the use in sports is traced to 1902.  With the evolution of sporting competitions to become professional, larger groups of players were needed to be on stand-by for selection (to cover injury, illness etc) and these groups came to be called squads.

The use by police forces as both standing institutions dedicated to certain duties (drug squad, dog squad, vice squad, bomb squad et al) and ad hoc formations for a one-off purpose (essentially task forces: royal visit squad, test match squad et al) appears to have begun in 1905 and is now institutionalized.  In police use “squad car” can probably has been applied to any vehicle but is most associated with a marked patrol car.  God squad is a casual terms for those spreading the word of God and is usually reserved for especially devoted lay members of a church.  A cheer squad can either be a formal group of attractive young women employed (cheerleaders) to dance and wave pom-poms in support of sporting teams (their numbers diminishing as attitudes to this and that change) or a description of those who (in a usually unorganized fashion) offer unquestioning and often vocal support to someone (Donald Trump, crooked Hillary Clinton et al) or some idea or institution.  In recent US political use, “The Squad” is the collective term for nine (originally four bolshie women of color) Democrat Party members of the US House of Representatives who self-identify as “progressive” and are labeled by Fox News etc as “socialist” or worse.  It was one of the squad members who coined the term “The Squad” although it’s not believed the inspiration was the Irish Republican Army (IRA) of the same name which was tasked with the assassination of political opponents but that’s probably crossed the mind of many of the old, white men who have dominated US politics for centuries.

Some of "the squad", who seem often angry about something, House of Representatives, Washington DC.

Navies in the 1580s picked up the idea of the squadron (from the Italian squadrone, from the Latin squadra (a square) but that does not imply naval squadrons were either originally or even typically of four ships.  The squadron was simply analogous with the army’s platoon / company / regiment / brigade / division arrangements whereby several squadrons made up a flotilla and several flotillas a fleet (confusingly, several fleets could be assembled into a fleet so to make things clearer tags like “home fleet”, grand fleet” et al emerged and squadrons also attracted specific designations such as “China squadron”, “East Africa squadron et al.  Air forces by 1912 began to use the squadron as the basic formation upon which organizational arrangements pivoted.  Over the years the number varied greatly but classically a squadron consisted of twelve aircraft, made up of four “flights” of three.  Squadrons were organized into “wings”, a collection of which was a “group” and beyond that point the arrangements and naming conventions varied.   In the US military’s recently constituted Space Force, multiple squadrons make up an operations delta or a support garrison.

Suicide Squads

HH Asquith (1852-1928) and his young friend Venetia Stanley (1887–1948).

Although few were quite as vituperative as Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who once describes the members of the Australian Senate as "unrepresentative swill", governments in the twentieth century often found upper houses to be such a nuisance they schemed and plotted ways to curb their powers or, preferably, do away with them entirely.  As the electoral franchise was extended, governments were sometimes elected with what they considered a mandate to pursue liberal or progressive policies while upper houses, by virtue of their composition and tenure (some with life-time appointments) often acted as an obstruction, rejecting legislation or imposing interminable delays by sending proposed laws to be “discussed to death” in committees from which “nothing ever emerged”.  This was the situation which confronted the glittering Liberal Party cabinet of HH Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916) which in 1909 found the Lords, in defiance of long established convention, blocking passage of the budget.  The Lords was wholly unelected, its membership mostly inherited, sometimes by virtue of some service (virtuous or otherwise) by an ancestor hundreds of years before.  Successive elections didn’t resolve the crisis and Asquith resolved to pursue the only lawful mechanism available: the creation of as many peers as would be necessary (in the hundreds) to secure the passage of his legislation.

That of course required royal ascent and the newly enthroned George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), while making his reservations clear, proved a good constitutional monarch and made it known he would follow the advice of his prime-minister.  As it turned out, the “suicide squad” wasn’t required, their Lordships, while not at all approving of the government, were more appalled still at the thought of their exclusive club being swamped with “jumped-up grocers” in “bad hats” and allowed the legislation to pass.  Actually, “castration squad” might have been a more accurate description because while the Lords survived, Asquith ensured it would be less of an obstacle, substituting the road block of its power of veto with a speed-bump, a right to impose a two-year delay (in 1949 reduced to six months).  The New Labour administration (1997-2010) introduced further reforms which were designed eventually to remove from the Lords all those who held seats by virtue of descent and even the Tories later moved in that direction although the efforts have stalled and a few of the hereditary peers remain.  As things now stand, the last remaining absolute veto the Lords retain is to stop an attempt by a government to extend a parliament's life beyond five years. 

The preserved Legislative Council Chamber in the Queensland Parliament.

Some upper house assassins however truly were a suicide squad.  In Australia, the state of Queensland followed the usual convention whereby the sub-national parliaments were bicameral, the Legislative Council the upper house and like the others, it was a bastion of what might now be called "those representing the interests of the 1%" and a classic example of white privilege.  Actually, at the time, the lower houses were also places of white privilege but the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had long regarded the non-elected Legislative Council (and upper houses in general) as undemocratic and reactionary so in 1915, after securing a majority in the Legislative Assembly (the lower house) which permitted the party to form government, they sought abolition.  The Legislative Council predictably rejected the bills passed by the government in 1915 & 1916 and a referendum conducted in 1917 decisively was lost; undeterred, in 1920, the government requested the governor appoint sufficient additional ALP members to the chamber to provide an abolitionist majority.  In this, the ALP followed the example of the Liberal Party in the UK which in 1911 prevailed upon the king to appoint as many new peers as might be needed for their legislation to pass unimpeded through an otherwise unsympathetic House of Lords.  That wasn’t needed as things transpired but in Queensland, the new members of the Legislative Council duly took their places and on 26 October 1921, the upper house voted in favor of abolition, the new appointees known forever as "the suicide squad".  Despite the success, the trend didn't spread and the Commonwealth parliament and those of the other five states remain bicameral although the two recent creations, established when limited self-government was granted to the Northern Territory (NT) and Australian Capital Territory (ACT), both had unicameral assemblies.

Lindsay Lohan in costume as Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn (a comic book character created by DC Comics), "Halloween bash", Albert's Club, South Kensington, London, October 2016.

Across the Tasman Sea, the New Zealand upper house lasted another three decades but it’s eventual demise came about not because of conflict but because the institution was increasing viewed as comatose, rejecting nothing, contributing little and rarely inclined even to criticize.  Unlike in England and Queensland, in New Zealand the abolition movement enjoyed cross-party support, left and right (although the latter in those days were pretty leftist), united in their bored disdain.  One practical impediment was the New Zealand parliament couldn’t amend the country’s constitution because no government had ever bothered to adopt the Statute of Westminster (1931) by which the Imperial Parliament had granted effective independence to the Dominions but in 1947 this was done.  Despite that, the Labour Party didn’t act and after prevailing in the 1950 general election, it was a National Party administration which passed the Legislative Council Abolition Act, its passage assured after a twenty-member “suicide squad” was appointed and the upper house’s meeting of 1 December 1950 proved its last.  Opposition from within the chamber had actually been muted, presumably because to sweeten the deal, the government used some of the money saved to pay some generous “retirement benefits” for the displaced politicians.  New Zealand since has continued as a unitary state with a unicameral legislature.

Primitive

Primitive (pronounced prim-i-tiv)

(1) Being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence, especially in an early age of the world.

(2) Early in the history of the world or of humankind.

(3) Characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development.(4) In anthropology, of or relating to a preliterate or tribal people having cultural or physical similarities with their early ancestors: no longer in technical use; denoting or relating to a preliterate and nonindustrial social system.

(5) Unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; uncivilized; a savage (some historians once distinguished between barbarians and savages on what was essentially a racist basis).

(6) Being in its earliest period; early; old-fashioned.

(7) In art, an artist of a preliterate culture; a naïve or un-schooled artist; an artist belonging to the early stage in the development of a style; a work of art by a primitive artist; an artist whose work does not conform to traditional, academic, or avant-garde standards of Western painting, such as a painter from an African or Oceanic civilization

(8) In fine art, a painter of the pre-Renaissance era in European painting (usually as "Italian primitive"); the works of these artists or in their recognizable style.

(9) In mathematics, a geometric or algebraic form or expression from which another is derived or a function of which the derivative is a given function; a function the derivative of which is a given function; an anti-derivative.

(10) In linguistics, the form from which a given word or other linguistic form has been derived, by either morphological or historical processes, as take in undertake (the most recent common ancestor (although sometimes hypothetical)).

(11) In biology, of, relating to, or resembling an early stage in the evolutionary development of a particular group of organisms; another word for primordial.

(12) In geology, pertaining to magmas that have experienced only small degrees of fractional crystallization or crystal contamination; of, relating to, or denoting rocks formed in or before the Paleozoic era (obsolete).

(13) In Protestant theology, of, relating to, or associated with a minority group that breaks away from a sect, denomination, or Church in order to return to what is regarded as the original simplicity of the Gospels.

(14) In computer programming, a data type that is built into the programming language, as opposed to more complex structures; any of the simplest elements (instructions, statements) in a programming language.

(15) In digital imagery, artistic training and certain aspects of engineering and architecture, a set of basic geometric shapes which can be used individually or from which more complex shapes can be constructed.

(16) In grammar, original; primary; radical; not derived.

1350-1400: From the Middle English primitif (of an original cause; of a thing from which something is derived; not secondary (used as both noun and adjective and originally in the sense of "original ancestor")), from the Middle French primitif (very first, original) from the Latin prīmitīvus (first or earliest of its kind), from primitus (at first), from prīmus (first).  The alternative spelling primative is long obsolete.  Primitive is a noun & adjective and primitiveness & primitivism are nouns; the noun plural is primitives.

The meaning "of or belonging to the first age" was from the early fifteenth century and was applied especially in the Christian church in the sense of "adhering to the qualities of the early Church."  The secular version of this meaning "having the style of an early or ancient time" was a nostalgic expression, an allusion to the (supposed) simplicity of the "old days" emerged in the 1680s.  The use during the era of European colonial expansion to mean "an aboriginal person in a land visited by Europeans" is from 1779, thus the idea of a primitive being an "uncivilized person".  To the colonial powers it was quite an important point to make because, being "uncivilized" (1) there could of course not be a legal system and thus no conception of the "ownership" of land and (2) such lands the Europeans "discovered" could be declared Terra nullius (from the Latin meaning "nobody's land" (literally "land belonging to nobody").  In Western anthropology, the idea persisted and by the late nineteenth century it was applied to cultures which, through isolation, had continued to operate at a technologically simple level, and even by the mid-late twentieth century it was common for mainstream historians to distinguish between "civilizations" and mere "cultures".  Reflecting both the snobby disdain for the pre Renaissance Italian primitives and perhaps as an allusion to prehistoric cave art, critics in the early 1940s applied the label "primitive" to artists thought "untrained", water-colorists seemingly a particular target.

The Italian Primitives

Technically, the phrase “Italian primitives” refers to works of art created between late eleventh and early fourteenth century with a particular emphasis on the later years.  It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century that historians and collectors first showed notable interest in Italian primitives and it’s indicative of the attitudes of the time that the artists of the era were often classified as “Italian pre-Renaissance” or “proto-Renaissance” painters; as late as the 1970s, “Italian primitives” was something of a pejorative term, such was the reverence for the works of the later Italian Renaissance, especially the High Renaissance (1495–1520), and Mannerism (1520–1600).

Two works by Cimabue (Cenni di Pepo, circa 1240–1302): Castelfiorentino Madonna (circa 1283), tempera & gold on panel (left) and Santa Trinita Maestà (circa 1295), tempera on panel (right).  The early Italian primitive style contrasted with a work representing the later intrusions of technique and dimensional imagination.  It is however misleading to speak of "early" and "late" Italian primitives in the sense of a definable stylistic shift, works with the classic Byzantine lines and form still being painted (for a receptive market) even in the early Renaissance and there would of course be a revival of sorts in some of the schools of early twentieth century modernism.

The role the Italian primitives played in the transition from the Byzantine artistic tradition to the more naturalistic and humanistic style that would later characterize the Italian Renaissance was of course acknowledged but the works themselves were usually treated as something imitative or at least derivative of the earlier techniques despite there being an obvious move away from the strict stylization and abstract qualities of Byzantine art, elements of naturalism, spatial depth, and even an exaggerated emotional expression appearing.  The Renaissance was not one of those moments in art when there was an abrupt shift from one stylistic tradition to another and the Italian primitives were part of series of developments in art, architecture and culture that typify the forces which become epoch-making.  The emphasis on perspective, anatomical accuracy and depictions of the range of human emotion so associated with the Renaissance owes much to the Italian primitives, not only in technique but also what came to be regarded as acceptable subject matter for art and one might suspect the Renaissance masters, revolutionary though they were, perhaps regarded the earlier tradition with more reverence than the critics who were so seduced by the sumptuousness of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella (circa 1280), tempera on wood by Giotto (Giotto di Bondone, circa 1267-1337).  Among the Italian primitives, the works of Giotto provide some of the finest illustrations of the emergence of elements which the Renaissance masters would refine and perfect.  His Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella is very much in the vein of earlier works by Giunta Pisano (circa 1180-circa 1260) and Cimabue and details how the Italian primitives didn't wholly abandon the hieratic solemnity of Byzantine iconography but weren't constrained by their formulaic traditions, returning to a realism which would have been familiar in antiquity.  The use of embryonic techniques of perspective and chiaroscuro created a depth and volume which would later become the dominant motif in European art.

Graphics Primitives in Digital Images

Lindsay Lohan constructed in graphic primitives by MeygaHardy on DeviantArt.

In digital imagery (vector graphics, CAD systems et al), graphic (sometimes called geometric) primitives are the simplest form of shape which can be rendered and scaled for display on a screen (although in advanced engineering, as mathematical expressions, there are pure geometric primitives which can’t be displayed although they can be manipulated) and are sometime thus described as “irreducible” or “atomic”.  The origin of all graphics primitives are the point (technically the representation of a point as a point exists in space as a dimensionless address) and the straight line (that which extends from one point and another).  These lives were the original vectors and the earliest computers could handle only lines and points, thing like triangles and squares being constructed from these.  Graphic primitives are now more extensive and from assembling these, more complex shapes can be built.  Among mathematicians, there are debates about just what can be said to constitute a pure primitive, some suggesting that if a shape can be reduced to two or more shapes, it doesn’t qualify but for most they’re just handy objects and the technical squabble passes unnoticed.  The principle of graphic primitives underpinned the techniques of the early cubist artists.

Primitif by Max Factor (1956).  The use of the French adjective Primitif lent the product a continental connection but it's the masculine form, the feminine being primitive.

Claw

Claw (pronounced klaw)

(1) In zoology (1) A sharp, usually curved, nail on the foot of an animal, as on a cat, dog or bird; (2) a corresponding structure in some invertebrates, such as the pincer of a crab (3) a similar curved process at the end of the leg of an insect a (4) a foot so equipped.

(2) A mechanical device either resembling a claw or with similar functionality, used for gripping or lifting.

(3) In colloquial use, a human fingernail, particularly if long (natural or extended).

(4) In botany, slender appendage or process, formed like a claw, such as the formation found at the base of petals.

(5) In juggling, the act of catching a ball overhand.

(6) To tear, scratch, seize, pull, etc, with or as if with claws.

(7) To make by or as if by scratching, digging etc, with hands or claws.

(8) To make fumbling motions.

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun clawen (sharp, hooked, horny end of the limb of a mammal, bird, reptile etc), from the Old English clawan, clāwan & clēn (claw, talon, iron hook), from the Proto-Germanic klawjaną & klawō and cognate with the Old High German kluwi, chlōa & chlō and akin to the Middle Dutch klouwe, the Dutch klauen & klauw, the Old Frisian klawe (claw, hoe), the West Frisian klau, the Sanskrit glau- (ball, sphere), the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish klo and the German Klaue (claw).  The Old English verb clawian (to scratch, claw) shared its etymology with the nouns and the developments in other Germanic languages included the Dutch klaauwen, the Old High German klawan and the German klauen.  Claw is a noun & verb, clawer is a noun. clawless is an adjective, clawed is a verb & adjective, clawing is a verb, noun & adjective and clawingly is an adverb; the noun plural is claws.

The phrase “to claw back” in the sense of "regain by great effort" sounds ancient but is documented only since 1953 as a noun; the verb (an act of this) coming into use in 1969.  The sense of antiquity comes from “clawback” which since at least the 1540s meant “one who fawns on another; a sycophant” and that was derived from the late fourteenth century “claw the back” (to flatter, to curry favor) which was different from the modern “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours) which is about co-operation with a whiff of something corrupt.  The use of “claw back” expanded in the 1970s to describe a trick in politics whereby the voters were given something in the run-up to an election and after getting their votes, a government would “claw back” what was given by using some mechanism apparently unrelated to the original bribe.  The noun dew claw (also as dew-claw) describes the “"rudimentary inner toe of the foot, especially the hind foot, of some dogs” and has been documented since the 1570s but may have enjoyed long regional use and etymologists note that while the claw part is obvious, the origin of the other element is mysterious.  The verb “declaw” was from veterinary science and was used usually of a procedure applied to creatures in zoos or domestic pets to make them less dangerous to others or their environment.  It’s become controversial.  In figurative use, it’s used to describe processes which limit the effectiveness of sporting teams, political parties etc.  Phrases like “showing her claws” & “scratching her eyes out” were once applied usually to (and about) bolshie women but it’s since been embraced by various parts of the LGBTQQIAAOP community; it’s used as required.  Claw is one of those words in English with a structural duality; in zoology a claw may either be a single nail or a collection of several.

Alexander McQueen’s “Armadillo boots” with “claw heels” (left) and Lindsay Lohan out walking in New York in claw heels, 2011 (left).

Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) displayed his “Armadillo boots” as part of the spring/summer 2010 Plato’s Atlantis collection which turned out to be his final show.  Inspired by the ideas made famous in Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) On the Origin of Species (1859), the collection was an imagining of humankind evolving into a species living underwater (and thus technically a devolution) as hybrid aquatic creatures.  The boots were a blend of the shape of an Armadillo with the claw-like heel borrowed from the lobster, all finished in turquoise, sea-green and other shades evocative of oceans and coral reefs.  The combination of the 9-inch (230 mm) claw stiletto heel and the unnatural shape the foot made to assume meant the thought exercise was intended more to please fashion editors than end up on cobblers’ lasts but as Lindsay Lohan demonstrates, when combined with a more conventional fitting, the claw heel is manageable, the change in the centre of gravity induced by the forward movement of the heels point of contact presumably minimal.  While not conventionally attractive, the boots were admired by those who appreciate such things for their own sake and criticized by those who take such things too seriously.

Among his assemblages, Salvador Dalí’s (1904-1989) Lobster Telephone (1936) is the best known and probably as famous as La persistènciade la memòria (The Persistence of Memory (although often referred to as the more evocative “melting clocks”)) is among his paintings.  It tends now to be forgotten that by the 1930s the Surrealist movement had come to be seen as moribund, an idea which had worked its concepts dry but in a creative burst, Dali and his collaborators built installations both minute and at scale which, playing with conjunction of objects and spaces never before associated, managed what’s so rarely achieved in art: the genuinely new.  The lobster was also for Dali a sex object which may sound improbable until it’s remembered how influential had become the works of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and the crustacean, with its succulent white flesh promising pleasure and those menacing claws nothing but pain, was quite a motif.  To make the point he painted a large lobster for Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) who in 1937 placed it with care on an evening gown, achieving an erotic playfulness.  Dali had just a much fun with the telephone, the claws enveloping a user’s ear while the tail, home of the sexual organs, was placed directly over the mouthpiece.

Avoiding the claws: Lindsay Lohan saving a lobster from certain death in Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club (2019).  Her intentions were pure but the ultimate fate of the crustacean remains uncertain. 

The Claw of Death, Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Although the whole, vast wasteland of the restricted zone which was declared after the nuclear accident in 1986 has any number of abandoned structures and relics, there’s something about the “claw of death” which people find especially eerie.  The radioactive artifact of Soviet-era nuclear power-plant design is a hydraulically activated clawed bucket which was once attached to one of the pieces of heavy machinery used to move contaminated objects during the decontamination process and although there are contradictory reports, it seems it was used to clear concrete, uranium & graphite debris from the collapsed roof of the building which housed the destroyed reactor.

Today, and for the indefinite future, the claw is located in the yard of the Service of Special Engineering Works in Pripyat and has become a tourist attraction and is always on the itinerary of guided tours of Chernobyl, the moniker “Claw of Death” a little misleading: it’s safe to within a few metres of the thing for a short period although close, prolonged exposure would cause radiation poisoning.  As soon as the clean-up operation was complete, the claw was dumped where it now sits and things were done in such a rush it was left in the middle of a road.  Because of Moscow’s “special military operation”, Chernobyl tourism is in abeyance but there’s no suggesting the claw will be moved so when business resumes, the claw will be waiting.  It can’t be melted-down or buried because of the risk of contaminating the soil or groundwater.

Lindsay Lohan as "Carrie" meets Freddy Krueger (boxer Floyd Mayweather (b 1977)), A Night Full of Fright, Halloween party at Foxwoods Resort Casino, Connecticut, 30 October 2013 (left).  Freddy Krueger was "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs", the antagonist in the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series (of which ANoES III was the best) and portrayed most memorably by Robert Englund (b 1947) (right).  His signature device was the clawed glove.

Genius

Genius (pronounced jeen-yuhs)

(1) An exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as applied to creative and original work in science and art.

(2) A person having such capacity.

(3) As applied collectively, usually to a nation or period, a descriptor of characteristics said to have produced something exceptional.

(4) The guardian spirit of a place, institution etc (now rare), derived from Roman mythology, the guiding spirit who attends a person from birth to death.

(5) In Islamic (Arabic) mythology (as jinn or genie), a demon (often plural).

1350–1400 (for its adoption in English; 1640s for its modern sense): From the Middle English, from the Latin genius (inborn nature; a tutelary deity of a person or place; wit, brilliance) from gignere (to beget) or gignō (to beget, produce) from the Old Latin genō from the primitive Indo-European root ǵenh & gen(e)-yo- from gene- (give birth, beget) with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.  The sense of "characteristic disposition" of a person is from 1580s, the modern meaning "person of exalted natural mental ability" was first recorded in the 1640s.  In English, as in the French genie and the German Genius & Genie, the “talent” senses of genius were likely influenced by the Latin ingenium (innate quality, nature, character, temperament, talent, intellect).  Ingenium supplied both ingenious and engine, its stem sharing a parent in genius’s gignere.  That French derivative, genie, was used to translate the jinn in the English translation (1706-1721) of the One Thousand and One Nights (أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ‎ (Alf Laylah wa-Laylah), the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age; this was because of its resemblance in sound and, to some extent, sense.  Genius is a noun & adjective and geniusness is a noun; the noun plural is geniuses when applied to people and genii when otherwise used.

Evolution of genius

Over two millennia the meaning of “genius” shifted from a guiding spirit which lived in everyone to a description of the intellectual brilliance known only to a few.  The idea began in Ancient Rome; a person’s “genius” dictated their unique personality and disposition but it was more than a thousand years before the word came to be used to describe not a spirit inspiring a talent but also the talent itself.  In Antiquity, every person had a genius, a kind of guardian spirit who guided them from birth to death. The male genius was a kind of incarnation of Jupiter, the chief male deity; the female, Juno.  Places (genius loci), objects, events, and institutions also had their own genii, and Romans would propitiate their genii at important moments in their lives.

A scoop from Just Jared.

When first used in English, people still spoke of “having a genius” but as more rational understandings of mental ability evolved, it became increasingly common to describe them as “being a genius”.  The two meanings ran in parallel for centuries and echoed the Christian concept of guardian angels.  The “good” spirit was called the bonus genius (1606), the bad the malus genius (1538), giving rise to the seventeenth century “evil genius”, conceived originally as a malevolent spirit which tries to make someone do evil and the evil genius persists and remains prevalent among both historians (it does seem often applied to certain figures in the Third Reich (1933-1945)) and popular culture.  In English, the early use of genius as a label tended to favor poets, the most popular writing of the age.  Poet and scholar Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote that poetry “…must not be drawn by the ears: it must be gently led, or rather, it must lead, which was partly the cause that made the ancient learned affirm it was a divine, and no human skill, since all other knowledges lie ready for any that have strength of wit; a poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried into it.”  It later became used about great composers and authors although some thought it might be too liberally applied, essayist and playwright Joseph Addison (1672–1719) noting in 1711 there “...is no character more frequently given to a writer, than that of being a genius. I have heard many a little sonneteer called a fine genius.”  Now, the best footballer, tennis player etc might often be called "a genius" although there is the occasional echo of the ancient tradition: an exceptional goal or point might be described as an "act of genius".  

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) on Twitter 6 January 2018.

In the modern age, it’s applied to scientists, artists and, perhaps sometimes hyperbolically, to some of the better backs (though of course never the forwards) in rugby.  In 2018, Donald Trump tweeted he was not merely a genius but “…a very stable genius”.  Reaction was mixed but as a title it tempted Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker (b 1984) & Carol Leonnig (b 1966) who in 2020 published A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America.  It focused on the first three years of his presidency, a period during which things seemed at the time to be a bit erratic but was tranquil compared with what was to follow.  Three years to the day after the famous tweet, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol Building in Washington DC in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.  As a coda, Rucker & Leonnig in 2021 published I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year.

Witch

Witch (pronounced wich)

(1) A person, historically either male or female but now especially a woman, who professes or is supposed to practice magic or sorcery; a sorceress (especially popular in mythology and fiction but also associated with certain societies and historical periods and still current in parts of some countries).

(2) In the new age movement, a practitioner of a nature-based religion founded on ancient beliefs, which honors both a male and female divine principle and includes the practice of magic, especially associated with healing.

(3) An informal and derogatory term for an ugly, mean or wicked old woman; a hag.

(4) A fascinating or enchanting woman (usually in the sense of bewitching).

(5) A person who uses a divining rod; dowser (archaic).

(6) In the sense of witch-hunt, an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, or the like, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.

(7) A flatfish, Pleuronectes (or Glyptocephalus) cynoglossus, of North Atlantic coastal waters, having a narrow greyish-brown body marked with tiny black spots.  The family group is Pleuronectidae (plaice, flounders etc)

(8) In geometry, a certain curve of the third order, also known as versiera.

(9) In entomology, the Indomalayan butterfly Araotes lapithis, of the Lycaenidae family.

Pre 900: From the Middle English wicche from the Old English wicce (sorceress, witch (female)) which were the feminine forms and existed in conjunction with wicca (witch, sorcerer, warlock, wizard), the masculine deverbative from wiccian (to practice sorcery) from the Proto-Germanic wikkōną.  Related were the West Frisian wikje, wikke (to foretell, warn), the Low German wicken (to soothsay) and the Dutch wikken, wichelen (to dowse, divine).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wik-néh, derivation of weyk- (to consecrate; separate); akin to the Latin victima (sacrificial victim), the Swedish vicka (to move to and fro), the Lithuanian viẽkas (life-force) and the Sanskrit विनक्ति (vinákti) (to set apart, separate out).  Witch, witcher & witchery are nouns; witching is a verb & adjective and witchy is an adjective, the noun plural is witches.

An obviously guilty witch before the court, lithograph of a witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts, circa 1692.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) does note the generally accepted etymology is not without phonetic or semantic difficulties and suggests some connection with the Old English wigle (divination) and wig & wih (idol), the nouns representing a Proto-Germanic wikkjaz (necromancer) (one who wakes the dead) from the primitive Indo-European weg-yo from weg (to be strong, be lively).  That wicce once had a more specific sense than the later general one of "female magician, sorceress" is suggested by the presence of other words in Old English describing more specific kinds of magical craft.  In the Laws of Ælfred (circa 890), witchcraft was specifically singled out as a woman's craft, the practitioners of which were not welcome to live among the Western Saxons.

In 2015, Nylon ran the story Lindsay Lohan had taken up witchcraft and wanted to be consecrated by a coven as a white witch.  Nylon did caution the source of the story was the National Enquirer, referred to as "a normally reliable source" only ever ironically. 

The glossary of the Laws of Ælfred translates Latin necromantia (demonum invocatio) as galdre or wiccecræft and in the Anglo-Saxon poem Men's Crafts, wiccræft appears to mean "skill with horses" so the OED is right to note the contested history.  By the early 1600s, the feminine form was so dominant that the forms men-witches or he-witches began to be used.  Warlock was never a universally accepted masculine form of witch despite the notion in modern popular culture and it’s from wicca that English ultimately gained both wizard and wicked.  Even in the sixteenth century, the implications were blurred, Reginald Scot in his The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) asserting it was synonymous in the English tongue to say either “she is a witch” or “she is a wise woman”.  In the popular imagination there's still a widespread perception witches were burned at the stake and while that was the case in many places (along with many other methods of dispatch), in the English-speaking world, because witchcraft was a felony in both England and the American colonies, witches were hanged and not burned.  Witches’ bodies were burned in Scotland, though they were strangled to death first.  The confusion may have arisen because there were cases of witches being burned at the stake but that was because they'd been convicted also of heresy.

Crooked Hillary Clinton has never denied practicing witchcraft (digitally altered image).

The extended sense of "young woman or girl of bewitching aspect or manners" is first recorded 1740.  It’s said to be an echo of the biblical (Exodus 22:18) rendering of mekhashshepheh, the feminine form of the word, meaning "enchantress" and (Deuteronomy 18:10-12) the masculine form (enchanter).  However, scripture is open to interpretation and the helpful translation in the King James Version: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" has been used by some contemporary ordinary Akan Christians in Ghana to justify praying for the death and destruction of witches and wizards.  Witch doctor is from 1718; applied to African magicians from 1836 and soon became interchangeable with “medicine man”.

Sinister

Sinister (pronounced sin-uh-ster)

(1) Threatening or portending evil, harm, or trouble; ominous.

(2) Bad, evil, base, or wicked; fell; treacherous, especially in some mysterious way.

(3) Unfortunate; disastrous; unfavorable.

(4) Of or on the left side; left-handed (mostly archaic except as a literary device).

(5) In heraldry, noting the side of an escutcheon or achievement of arms that is to the left of the bearer (as opposed to dexter), ie from the bearer's point of view and therefore on the spectator's right.

(6) Wrong, as springing from indirection or obliquity; perverse; dishonest (obsolete).

1375-1425: From the Middle English sinistre (unlucky), from the Old French sinistra (left), from the Latin sinestra (left hand) from the Proto-Italic senisteros, of unknown origin, but possibly from a euphemism from the same primitive Indo-European root as the Sanskrit सनीयान् (sanīyān) (more useful, more advantageous) with the contrastive or comparative suffix -ter, (as in the Latin dexter (on the right-hand)) familiar in the modern “dexterity”.  Sinister is an adjective, sinisterly is an adverb and sinisterness is a noun.  Unlike some other adjectives applied to people, such as exquisite, sinister never evolved into a self-definitional noun.  The alternative spelling sinistre is long obsolete but those for whom historical authenticity matters should note sinister was once accented on the middle syllable by poets including Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden.

Evolution of Sinister

The now universal meanings (evil et al), emerged in the late fifteenth century, a sense inherited from the fourteenth century Old French senestre & sinistre (contrary, false; unfavorable; to the left) picked up directly from the Classical Latin sinestra (left, on the left side (opposite of dexter)).  Sinister had been used in heraldry from the 1560s to indicate "left, to the left" and left in heraldry indicated illegitimacy and in that it preserves the literal sense from Latin of "on or from the left side".  In zoology, the botanists in 1856 created the adjective sinistrorse a word to describe the direction of spiral structures in nature, from Latin sinistrorsus (toward the left side) the construct being sinist- (left) + versus (turned), past participle of vertere (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (to turn, bend).  In the scientific literature it was paired with dextrorse but a broader adoption was doomed by confusion; it was never agreed what was the correct point of view to reckon the leftward or rightward spiraling.  

Peter Dutton (b 1970; Liberal-National Party MP for Dickson (Queensland, Australia) since 2001).  Sometimes, a sinister look is just a matter of chance, there being nothing sinister about Mr Dutton (although he has never denied being a Freemason).

The former Research Institute For Experimental Medicine, Berlin, Germany.  Built for the purpose of housing live animal testing facilities, and until 2003 known as the Central Animal Laboratories of the Free University of Berlin, its common name among Berliners (long known for their sardonic humor) the Mäusebunker (Mouse Bunker). 

Those working in visual media, photographers, cinematographers and painters use tricks of lighting and angle to convey a sense of the sinister, even buildings and landscapes, carefully framed, can invoke the feeling.  Although it can be because of a structure's historical associations, when a building is described as "sinister" it's a thing usually of subjective perception, induced often by a a dark, eerie, or foreboding appearance. There are a number of elements which may be involved:

(1) The architectural style, lighting and choice of materials can contribute to a perception of sinisterness, buildings in the Gothic or Brutalist tradition with their sharp angles, heaviness and use of slabs of dark stone noted for this.

(2) A notorious historical context can impart a meaning which transcends the actual architecture.  Buildings known to be associated with dark historical events or periods in history can gain a reputation as being sinister.  Places once the sites of suffering, torture or death gain this reputation such as the Lubyanka Building in Moscow.  Although an inoffensive Neo-Baroque structure in yellow brick, for most of its life it's been the home of one branch or other of the Russian internal agency, most famously the KGB.

(3) The surrounding environment can make an otherwise charming building seem mysterious and threatening.  Some will find a building standing alone in an isolated area or surrounded by dark and overgrown vegetation can provoke feeling of unease.

Lindsay Lohan as she would appear if left-handed, signing photographs with Sharpie (as recommended by Pippa Middleton), Rachael Ray Show, New York City, January 2019 (digitally mirrored image).  As a general principle, pink is not associated with sinisterness (although crooked Hillary Clinton in pink pantsuit would be most sinister).

A quirk from antiquity is that in matters of religion, to Romans sinister meant auspicious whereas for Greeks it meant inauspicious.  The curious duplicity arose because the Latin word was used in augury in the sense of "unlucky; unfavorable" a natural inheritance because omens, especially the flight of birds seen on the left hand were regarded as portending misfortune thus sinister acquired a sense of "harmful, adverse".  This was from the influence of Greek, reflecting the early Hellenic practice of facing north when observing omens.  In genuine Roman auspices, the augurs faced south so the left was thought good and favorable.  The Romans were a superstitious lot but seem to have managed this strange dichotomy of meaning without difficulty, sinister suggesting something bad except in the temple when it meant something good.

The salute associated with the Nazi regime (1933-1945) has long been regarded as something sinister or worse.  The pantsuit wasn't thought sinister until it became emblematic of crooked Hillary Clinton.