Afforce

Afforce (pronounced af-fors)

(1) To strengthen or reinforce by the addition of other or of specially skilled members, deliberative bodies such as juries or tribunals.

(2) To force; compel; violate (obsolete).

(3) Reflexively, to exert one's self; endeavour; attempt (obsolete).

1400s: From the Middle English (in the sense “to force”), from the Old French aforcer, from the Latin exfortiāre, from fortis (strong), from the Proto-Italic forktis, from the primitive Indo-European baergh (to rise, high, hill).  The a- prefix as used here is rare and is in English no longer productive.  It was related to the Latin ad- (to; at) and was used to show or emphasize a state, condition, or manner and was common in Old & Middle English, some of the constructs still used poetically (apace, afire, aboil, a-bling) and some where the specific, technical meaning has endured (asunder, astern).  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noted the descent of many of these form to the archaic, suggesting it was part of the organic evolution of the language, these “…prefixes were at length confusedly lumped together in idea, and the resultant a- looked upon as vaguely intensive, rhetorical, euphonic or even archaic and wholly otiose.”  The double-ff is a written tribute to the spoken, afforce formed with an oral prefix; the noun counterpart of this was æf-.  Afforce, afforcing & afforced are verbs, afforcement is a noun; the noun plural is afforcements.

Afforce thus emerged just as a way of emphasizing the notion of force or indicating the act transpiring.  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1343-1400) in The Man of Law's Tale (1387), the fifth of the Canterbury Tales uses afforce in that sense:  “Than whan thys wycked Thelous by harde manasses and hys grete strengh the had wyll to afforce her, than she restreynyd hys gret foly by thys reason, ffor cause that her Chylde Moryce the whyche was of the age of.”

That strict arbiter of English use, Sir Ernest Gowers (1880-1966), noted approvingly in his second edition (1965) of Henry Fowler's (1858–1933) Modern English Usage (1926) that the OED as early as 1888 ruled afforce was for all purposes obsolete save "to reinforce or strengthen a deliberative body by the addition of new members, as a jury by skilled assessors or persons acquainted with the facts".  Sir Ernest seemed also pleased the OED had sought to drive a stake through afforce's linguistic heart by not including an entry in the concise (COD) edition of the OED, adding that he regarded any revival as but a flashy "pride of knowledge", a most "un-amiable characteristic", the display of which "sedulously should be avoided".  Sir Ernest had spoken, Henry Fowler would have concurred and in any sense afforce remains vanishingly rare.

Manchester Assize Courts 1934.  Damaged by Luftwaffe raids in 1940-1941, it was demolished in 1957.  Perhaps surprisingly, given some of the ghastly stuff built in post-war years, the replacement Crown Court building has some nice touches and not unpleasing lines.

It was the operation of jury trials in English law which saw the meaning beginning to shift although the legal use did encapsulate both senses.  At common law, the practice to “afforce the assize” was a method for a court to secure a verdict where the jury disagreed.  This was achieved by adding other jurors to the panel until twelve could be found who were unanimous in their opinion, thus the senses (1) afforcement being forcing a jury to verdict and (2) afforcement being the addition of members to the jury.  The word has endured (if rarely used) in this technical sense and not become merely a synonym of augment, somewhat unusual in English where words tend to be co-opted for just about use which seems to fit and it may be that when courts ceased to afforce, juries, the word became stranded in its special, historic sense, a process probably assisted by the practice of adding the a- prefix faded.

Vested with both civil and criminal jurisdiction, the Courts of Assize sat between 1293-1972 in the counties of England and Wales.  The afforcement of the assize was an ancient practice in trials by jury and involved adding other jurors to the panel in cases where the jurors differed among themselves and couldn’t agree in one (sententiam) finding.  In those instances, at the discretion of the judges, either the jury could be afforced or the existing body could be compelled to unanimity by directing the sheriff to lock them up without food or drink until they did agree.  The latter does sound an extreme measure; even when medieval conclaves of cardinals proved unable to organise the numbers to elect a new pope, when their eminences were locked-up, they were at least given bread and water.

However it was done, afforcement or starvation, the objective was to get to the point where there were twelve who could agree on a verdict.  However, as legal theorists at the time observed, this really created a second trial and eventually afforcement was abandoned, both justice and its administration thought better served by an insistence on unanimity (probably an inheritance from canon law and a common thing on the continent where the unanimity of a consultative or deliberative body was deemed indispensable).  Also refined was the practice of confining jurors without meat and drink; now they’re fed and watered and, if after long enough some prove still recalcitrant, the jury is discharged and a new trial may be ordered.  Some jurisdictions have found this too inefficient and have introduced majority verdicts so only ten or eleven of the twelve need to be convinced a defendant is guilty as sin which, as any prosecutor will tell you, they all are. 

Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948; Chief Justice of the US 1930-1941) taking FDR's oath of office at the start of his second term, 20 January 1937.

There have too been attempts to afforce the bench.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945; US President 1933-1945), not best pleased at repeatedly having parts of his New Deal legislation declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, in 1937 created the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill which sought to add sympathetic judges to the bench, his argument being the constitution not mandating than there must be nine judges on the bench, it was a matter for congress to determine the number.  He was apparently serious but may also have had in mind the threat in 1911 by the UK’s Liberal Party government to appoint to the House of Lords as many peers as would be necessary to ensure the upper house could no longer block their legislation.  That worked, the peers backing down and allowing the government’s reforms to pass into law, the feeling always that they were less appalled by creeping socialism than the thought of the House of Lords being flooded with “jumped-up grocers”.  It may also have worked in the US, the "court-packing plan" ultimately not required.  Some months after FDR’s landslide victory in the 1936 presidential election, Justice Owen Roberts (1875–1955; US Supreme Court judge 1930-1945) switched his vote, creating a pro-New Deal majority, an act remembered in judicial history as the "the switch in time that saved nine".

The US Supreme Court in session, 1932.  The photo is by Erich Salomon (1886-1944) and is one of two known images of the court in session.  Dr Salomon died in Auschwitz.

The idea of “packing the court” has been revived before but in 2021, congressional Democrats introduced a bill for an act which would expand the Supreme Court bench from nine to thirteen, essentially for the same reasons which attracted FDR in 1937.  Unlike then however, the Democrat control of both houses was marginal and there was no chance of success and even had there been an unexpectedly good result in the 2022 mid-term elections, nothing would have overcome the resistance of conservative Democrats in the senate.  With the Republican-appointed judges (reactionary medievalists or black-letter law judges depending on one’s view) likely to be in place for decades, the 2021 bill is more a shot across the judicial bow and the interplay between electoral outcomes and public opinion, of which the judges are well aware, will bubble and perhaps boil in the years ahead.

Lindsay Lohan on the panel of The Masked Singer (2019).

The Masked Singer Australia is a TV singing competition, the local franchise of a format which began in South Korea as the King of Mask Singer.  The premise is that elaborately costumed masked celebrities sing a song and a panel has to guess their identity.  In 2019, the producers afforced the judging panel with the appointment of Lindsay Lohan and the experiment seems to have been a success despite Ms Lohan having little or no idea who the local celebrities were, masked or otherwise.  That may have been part of the charm of her performance and it seemed to gel with viewers, the second series in 2020, in which Ms Lohan wasn’t able to participate because of COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, seeing a sharp decline in viewer numbers, the opening episode down 37% from 1.2 million to 733k.  Overall, the season average in the five mainland capital cities dropped to 816k from 928k, a year-on-year drop of 12%.  In October 2021, Warner Brothers TV announced a third series had been commissioned for broadcast in 2022 but Lindsay Lohan didn't again afforce the panel, depriving audiences of the chance to watch her try to guess the names of people she's never heard of.  #BringBackLindsay is expected to trend.

Ordinary

Ordinary (pronounced awr-din-rhe (U) or awr-dn-er-ee (non-U))

(1) Of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional.

(2) Plain or undistinguished.

(3) Somewhat inferior or below average; mediocre (often when describing sporting competitions or in other contexts where expectations of exceptional performance are high).

(4) Customary; usual; normal; the usual course of things; normal condition or health; a standard way of behavior or action (use now most prevalent in Ireland & Scotland).

(5) In slang (mostly US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line), common, vulgar, or disreputable.

(6) In the definition of jurisdictional limits, immediate, as contrasted with something that is delegated.

(7) In some places, of officials of the agencies of the state, belonging to the regular staff or the fully recognized class.

(8) In ecclesiastical use, an order or form for divine service, especially that used for Mass (the prescribed form of divine service, ie those parts of the Mass that do not vary from day to day and (by extension) in secular use, a book of rules or other document setting out ordinary or regular conduct.

(9) In the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, the service of the Mass exclusive of the canon.

(10) A member of the clergy appointed to prepare condemned prisoners for death, the use derived from the role of the chaplain of Newgate prison who prepared prisoners for the gallows (obsolete).

(11) In English ecclesiastical law, a bishop, archbishop, or other ecclesiastic (or their deputy or other nominee), in their capacity as an ex officio ecclesiastical authority (typically, a bishop holding an office to which certain jurisdictional powers are attached).

(12) In some US states, a judge of a court of probate.

(13) In a restaurant or inn, a complete meal in which all courses are included at one fixed price per head (as opposed to à la carte service) (both UK use, now rare).

(14) An arrangement whereby an individual hosts others to a meal in a restaurant, latter billing the guests a pre-agreed amount.

(15) A late-nineteenth century term for the penny-farthing bicycle (distinguishing them from the newer “safety bicycles”), still used (along with "hi-wheel" and variants) by hobbyists.

(16) In heraldry, any of the simplest and commonest charges (the “conventional”), such as the bend, fesse & cross, usually in geometric form with straight or broadly curved edges and commonly charged upon shields

(17) In mathematics, (of a differential equation) containing two variables only and derivatives of one of the variables with respect to the other

(18) As All Ordinaries (“all ords” in the market vernacular) index, a share index calculated using the last traded price of 500 of the largest publically listed companies on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

(19) A courier; someone delivering mail or post (used between the sixteenth & nineteenth centuries by those in the service of the Royal Mail).

1250–1300: From the Middle English noun & adjective ordinarie (regular, customary, belonging to the usual order or course, conformed to a regulated sequence or arrangement), from the Anglo-Norman ordenarie, ordenaire et al, from the Medieval Latin, noun use of the Classical Latin ordinārius (orderly, regular, of the usual order), the construct being ordin- (stem of ordō (row, rank, series, regular arrangement) (genitive ordinis) + -ārius (the adjectival suffix).  The alternative spelling ordinarie is long obsolete.  Ordinary is a noun & adjective, ordinariness is a noun, ordinarily, extraordinarily & superextraordinarily are adverb and extraordinary (also as extra-ordinary) is an adjective; the noun plural is ordinaries.

In English, the adjective was derived from the noun in the sixteenth century in the sense of “common in occurrence, not distinguished in any way” and this endured in English, the O-Level (once the lowest of the three levels of the General Certificate of Education in the UK secondary school system (dating from 1947 as a contraction of “ordinary level”) remaining available in some overseas systems).  Generally though, the various noun uses adopted between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries faded for use except in the phrase “out of the ordinary” (someone of something beyond that regularly encountered, expected or customary) although in fields as diverse as steel fabrication and financial market trading, there were such uses from the mid-twentieth century.  The adjective ornery was a dialectal contraction of ordinary (which most sources list as class-based rather than a regionalism) in US English and first documented in 1816 (the history in oral use unknown).  It was used to convey the sense of “poor quality, coarse, ugly” and by the 1860s the meaning ad evolved to the more specific “mean, cantankerous and bad-tempered (orneriness the noun).  That coining hints at the strange history of the word which, following the practice in Latin, began as something neutral meaning “normal, in the expected place, of the expected appearance etc” yet came to be used (as a comparative) also in the negative (somewhat inferior, below average, plain & unexceptional (even rather mediocre).  By contrast, the extra- in extraordinary is used not as an intensifier but to create an antonym; something extraordinary is that which is exceptionally good.  Politicians are most inclined to speak of us as “ordinary people” which presumably implies that even if only sub-consciously, they think of themselves (and others in the political class) as extraordinary and the rest of us as ordinary indeed.

Lord Dawson of Penn (1864–1945; Physician-in-ordinary to the King, 1910-1937).

So calling something ordinary can mean either it’s commonplace (nothing special or unusual) and thus entirely average or its’ below average or of poor quality.  An “ordinary day” might be one pleasingly free of problems or one which has disappointed because nothing especially good happened.  To say someone is ordinary can be a compliment if one is distinguishing them from the surrounding madmen, nutcases and psychos and is essentially the same as calling them “normal” yet it can also mean “dull” or “not that attractive” and just as the politicians know we’re ordinary and they’re not, in the social media age “celebrities” and “ordinary people” really are two separate populations; ‘twas ever thus of course but now it’s an industry.  In ecclesiastical and secular law the old technical meaning persisted.  The title of physician in ordinary to the King (or Queen) is no longer in use but it meant simply the sovereign’s personal doctor and additional doctors who might be summoned were styled either physicians extraordinary or extra physicians.  They needed to be multi-skilled, at least one documented as having euthanized a dying king to ensure the death could be announced in the respectable morning broadsheets rather than the disreputable afternoon tabloids.  Interestingly, years later, Lord Dawson would speak in the House of Lords against the idea of euthanasia being provided for in legislation, maintaining that it was something best left to the judgment of the doctor in the room which will for some confirm the wisdom of Evelyn Waugh’s (1903-1966) observation that the greatest risk to one is hospital is “being murdered by the doctors”.  Although physicians-in-ordinary are no longer described as such, in the Medical Household (attached to the Royal Household in England), the positions of Apothecaries to the King & Occultist to the King have never been disestablished.

In canon law, the term is used still to describe someone having immediate jurisdiction in a given case of ecclesiastical law (typically a bishop within a diocese).  That use dates from the fourteenth century and was picked up in the 1800s in secular judicial administration to refer to a judge vested with the right to handle cases on the basis of ex-officio authority, rather than by delegation.  In other words, that authority was the ordinary, normal authority held by a judge within their jurisdictional competence.  In the UK, the best-known use was in the title Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (the Law Lords in casual use).  These were the judges appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act (1876) to exercise the judicial functions of the House of Lords which was the highest appellate for most cases decided by the UK’s lower courts (apart from a handful of institutions from which cases on appeal proceeded to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council).  Because the lords of appeal in ordinary technically were appointed as barons in the peerage of England, they thus had the right to sit in the Lords and vote on legislation and this meant ultimately they might be called to decide upon cases dealing with the very laws they’d been part of creating.  In practice this was rarely controversial but it came to bother academic political scientists and other theorists who noted the importance of the doctrine of the separation of powers in a democratic system.  What made it worse (at least on paper) was the lord chancellor (1) sat in and presided over the House of Lords, (2) was ex officio, a judge in the Court of Appeal and the president of the Chancery Division (an inheritance from the days prior to the Judicature Acts (1876) when the lord chancellor headed the old Court of Chancery) and (3) was a member of cabinet.  The office therefore straddled the executive, legislative and judicial functions of government so the fingers were uniquely were in three pies.  It was something which had been discussed for decades before the New Labour government, anxious to do things which would please the various European Union (EU) critics, reformed the arrangements, taking advantage of the prevailing mood to axe from the Lords as many of the hereditary peers as could be managed.  In 2009, New Labour created the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the House of Lords ceased to be vested with judicial functions, the lords of appeal in ordinary then in office concurrently appointed as Supreme Court judges and excluded from the Lords until their retirement from the bench.

Lindsay Lohan at the Dorchester Hotel restaurant China Tang, London, June 2017.

Sibyl, Lady Colefax (1874–1950) was an English socialite and interior decorator who in the 1930s & 1940s followed the tradition of hosting “Ordinaries” at London’s Dorchester Hotel, small lunch parties with a set menu, after which she would invoice the guests for their meal.  In the restaurant trade, an “ordinary” was a lunch or dinner in which all courses were included at the one fixed price per head (as opposed to à la carte service).  Because Lady Colefax essentially “bought in bulk” and the menu was what would now be understood as a “chef’s choice”, the prices were good and her address book was the envy of London society so the company was always amusing and occasionally illustrious.  In his infamously indiscrete diaries, Henry "Chips" Channon (1897–1958) would sometimes refer to her as “Old Coalbox” but most of the entries about her were affectionate and sympathetic.

Crepuscule

Crepuscule (pronounced kri-puhs-kyool or krep-uh-skyool)

(1) Twilight; dusk.

(2) By extension, a brief period of transition between two states.

1350-1400: From the Middle French crepuscule, from the thirteenth century Old French crépuscule, from the Latin crepusculum (morning or evening twilight), the construct being crepus- (akin to creper (dark, dusky; obscure)) + -culum, the accusative singular of cūlus (a vulgar term for the buttocks) from the Proto-Italic kūlos, from the primitive Indo-European kul-, from kew- (to cover), the cognates for which included the Old Irish cúl (bottom) and the Lithuanian kẽvalas (skin, cover); it was related to cutis (hide).  Crepuscule, crepuscle & crepusculum are nouns, crepuscular is an adjective; the noun plural is crepuscules.

Before the provision of electricity which by the twentieth century meant much of the world was no longer constrained in their activities by the hours of sunlight, even other forms of artificial light could be variously expensive, unavailable or unreliable so sunlight was important, socially and economically so it’s not surprising a number of words evolved to describe the transition from light to dark including blackness, dark, dusk, gloom, obscurity, twilight, sundown, sunset, black, blackout, brownout, cloudiness, dimness, duskiness, eclipse, lightlessness, murk, murkiness, nightfall, blue hour, gloaming, evenfall, fogfall & smokefall.

Lindsay Lohan in daylight (left), as the crepusculum descends (centre) and in the dark of night (right).

The most attractive of these is twilight, an evocative word and one to which poets have always been drawn, whether to suggest some sense of uncertainty or the last days of life before the darkness of death.  Twilight was from the Middle English twilight & twyelyghte, the construct being twi- (double, half-) +‎ light, thus literally “second light, half-light”.  It was cognate with the Scots twa-licht, twylicht & twielicht (twilight), the Low German twilecht & twelecht (twilight), the Dutch tweelicht (twilight, dusk) and the German Zwielicht (twilight, dusk).  In the Old English, the form was twēone lēoht (twilight).  The curious word twilit (the simple past tense and past participle of twilight) has long intrigued etymologists.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the earliest known use dates only from 1869 and the speculation is it was coined by someone who found the conventional forms (twilitten & twilighted) inelegant.  Smokefall (the close of the day before nightfall, when fog comes) was apparently used as early as the eleventh century and reflects the use of “smoke” in some regional dialects to refer variously to darkness, smoke and fog.  After thing became more precise, it was re-purposed to describe “the soot which falls from a cloud of smoke” and much later was adopted by those creating special effects to mean “an artificial waterfall of smoke for shows”, the smoke (sometimes combined with a mist of fine water vapor) used to reflect images created by light projection.

The development of languages in cultures of course reflects their environment and priorities although the oft-repeated claim that the Inuit and other nations in arctic and sub-arctic regions had 400 (the number does vary from source to source) words for “snow” are misleading although linguistic anthropologists have explored this on a number of occasions and all have concluded there are at least a few dozen and if the net is cast wider to encompass all aspects of snow (types of tracks in snow, suitability for wildlife etc), then the number is in three figures.  Linguistics is a discipline which illustrates structural functionalism in its pure form: words are created according to need and remain in use if they fulfill a useful purpose.  To most living in urban environments in industrial societies “snow” is adequate for most situations but those running ski-fields need more nuances while for the peoples in arctic regions, the correct description of the type of snow they will soon have to traverse can be the difference between life and death.

Posh

Posh (pronounced posch)

(1) Sumptuously furnished or appointed; luxurious.

(2) Elegant or fashionable; exclusive.

(3) A more expensive version of something mass-produced.

(4) Non-U term for the upper-class or genteel.

(5) Non-U term for speaking English with received pronunciation.

1890s: The source is obscure but it’s thought probably derived from the Gypsy (Romani; Roma) posh & pash (“half”), from the Old Armenian փոշի (pʿoši), the preferred theories accounting for it being associated with wealth and its implications being either because (1) a posh-kooroona (half a crown), once a fair sum, was used metaphorically for anything pricey or (2) because posh-houri (a half-penny) became a general term for money.  A period dictionary of slang defined "posh" as a term for “money” used by the criminal class and notes this was used sometimes specifically to refer to a halfpenny or other small coin and the connection seems soon to have been extended to wealth in general: a slang use documented from the early 1890s meant "dandy" (someone well dressed and apt to "splash cash").  There was also the early-twentieth-century Cambridge University slang poosh (stylish) which may have been a (deliberate) mispronunciation of polish but it’s thought un-related.  A popular folk etymology, dating from 1915, holds it’s an acronym for "port (left) out, starboard (right) home", describing the cooler, north-facing cabins taken by rich passengers travelling from Britain to India under the Raj and back.  However, despite much repetition of the story, there’s no direct evidence for this claim.

Posh and Smart: U and Non-U

A selection of U & non-U words by Professor Alan Ross.

A fun linguistic irony is that posh folk aren’t supposed to use the word, their preference supposedly being “smart”.  In 1954, Alan Ross (1907-1980), Professor of Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, coined "U" (upper-class) and "non-U" (non-Upper-Class) to describe the differences social class makes in their use of English.  While his article included differences in pronunciation and writing styles, it was his list of variations in vocabulary which attracted most interest.  Professor Ross published his illustrative glossary of "U" and "non-U", differentiating the speech patterns in English social classes in a Finnish academic journal and used extracts from Nancy Mitford’s (1904–1973 and the oldest of the Mitford sisters) novel The Pursuit of Love (1945) to provide examples of the patterns of speech of the upper class.  This pleased Nancy Mitford who interpolated the professor’s work into an article about the English gentry she was writing for Stephen Spender's (1909-1995) literary magazine Encounter (1953-1990).  Although not best-pleased her discussion of the Ross thesis was the only part of her piece to attract attention, more amusing was the subsequent re-publication in her slim volume Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (1956) which, augmented with contributions from John Betjeman (1906–1984) and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), meant that for decades she was the acknowledged authority on upper-class speech, manners and ways.  Her class-conscious readers had taken it all more seriously than she had intended.

Interest has never gone away and, as differences in the English speaking world gradually diminish from country-to-country, works on the theme often appear in popular journalism.  Helpfully for the status-obsessed English middle-class, magazines like Country Life now and then print guides to help those concerned with such things and, sometimes controversially, there’s the occasional attempt to update the canon.  Right-wing English weekly The Spectator some years ago suggested the (non-U) "toilet" was now entirely classless and could be used, as it was by the rich Americans, instead of the (U) "loo".  Country Life ignored them and later retaliated by claiming the aristocracy's preferred term for their most frequent brush with the plumbing was "lavatory" and that "loo" was "now lower-middle class", apparently a slight worse than "peasant".

Posh vs smart: 2021 Lexus LS 500h (left) vs 1975 Bristol 411 Series V.  The essence of posh is a conjunction of shiny stuff (now expressed as "bling" or "bling-bing" and "pricetaggery", the latter a word coined apparently by the writers of The Simpsons cartoon though it was used by Mr Burns (evil nuclear power-plant owner) to convey a rather different meaning.  Something smart tends to express things like its price tag by being generally understated yet with one or two characteristics effortlessly recognized by smart folk while remaining invisible to most.

Poshmark is an example of the social marketplace, a site which exists to bring together buyer and seller, its revenue generated by "clipping the ticket" on each transaction.  It's thus structurally the same as a general trading site like eBay in that it facilitates B2C (business-to-consumer) and C2C (consumer-to-consumer) sales but as a niche player with a certain speciality, remains viable on less than 1% the turnover of the bigger aggregators because of the internet's global scale.

Epicurean

Epicurean (pronounced ep-i-kyoo-ree-uhm)

(1) The philosophical system or doctrine of Epicurus (circa 340–270 BC), holding that the external world is a series of fortuitous combinations of atoms and that the highest good is pleasure, interpreted as freedom from disturbance or pain (classical meaning from Antiquity).

(2) A fondness for, and enjoyment of the luxuries of life, especially fine food and drink; a person who cultivates a refined taste, especially in food and wine; a connoisseur (modern meaning).

1350–1400: From the Middle English Epicures & Epicureis (Epicureans the plural) from the Latin Epicūrēus (Epicūrus in the Medieval Latin) from the Ancient Greek Ἐπίκουρος (Epíkouros).  The original meaning from the late fourteenth century was a “follower of the philosophical system of Epicurus".  From the 1570s, the sense evolved of "one devoted to pleasure, the adjectival form attested from 1580s in the philosophical sense and from the 1640s with the meaning "pleasure-loving".  The –an suffix is from the Middle English -an, -ain, -ein & -en, from the Old French –ain & -ein, from the Latin -ānus (feminine -āna), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -nós.  It was appended to (mostly) nouns to create the adjectival form or to nouns to make an agent noun. Epicurean is a noun & adjective, Epicureanism is a noun, epicureanize, epicureanizing & epicureanizedare are verbs; the noun plural is epicureans. 

Mainland Epicure Gold cheese: highly recommended; sharp, crumbly and perfect for toasties.

Epicurus was a Latinized form of Greek Epicouros (circa 340-270 BC), an Athenian philosopher whose teachings were that (1) pleasure is the highest good and (2) virtue the greatest pleasure.  Western culture hungrily absorbed the first lesson but tended to neglect the second.  As late as the 1560s, the name was used pejoratively in the now (mostly) archaic sense of "one who gives himself up to sensual pleasure", especially as applied to gluttonous sybarites, a use well established by 1774. Epicurus's school was opposed by the stoics and it was they who first gave his name a reproachful sense, the non-pejorative meaning "one who cultivates refined taste in food and drink" noted since the 1580s.  The historic synonyms would include voluptuary or decadent, in the modern sense they would be gastronome, gourmet, gourmand, connoisseur or bon vivant.

Aspect views of a bust of Epicurus.

Epicurus, a philosopher in Hellenic Greece, founded a school circa 307 BC in which he developed a system hostile to superstition and divine intervention and believed pleasure leads to the greatest individual and collective good.  The path to this, Epicurus held, was to study the world, live modestly and contain one’s desires so as to not succumb to self-indulgence.  A life such lived, he taught, would allow one to attain a state of ataraxia (tranquility) and aponia (a freedom from fear and pain) and to attain these two states produces human happiness in its purest and highest form.  Happiness therefore comes from the virtues of diligence and restraint; the avoidance of excess.  To be fair to Epicurus, he was not averse to the odd luxury and his school was known for the feasts it held on the twentieth of each month.  Noted Epicurean and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) maintained the tradition.

A modern Epicurean: Lindsay Lohan at a table of delicacies.

Although austerity may sound unfashionable to those immersed in globalised consumerism, Epicureanism is, in other ways, astonishingly modern.  Epicurus dismissed the influence of gods in the natural world in favor of materialistic explanations and was thus wholly opposed to conventional theism.  Indeed, Epicureanism was the only non-theistic Western philosophy known before the modern age and in older usage, was synonymous with atheism, the reason it was a term used to condemn by many in the medieval Church.  He thought to have taken this to its logical conclusion and held that the Earth and the rest of the universe was but matter and energy arranged by chance in the form we know; a product of physics and chemistry rather than a deity but there must always be caution in that so little has survived for there to be definitive views of the philosophy of Epicurus.  Some of his writings survive but of the hundreds of books he’s said to have written, all that remains are fragments of text and some letters.  Much of what is known comes from Diogenes the Cynic (412 or 404-323 BC) and poem De rerum natura (Of the Nature of Things) by Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus (circa 99–circa 55 BC), a long didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism.

Rome During the Decadence (1547) by Thomas Couture (1815–1879).

The meaning has shifted.  Modern Western audiences have noted the monthly feast Epicurus hosted while turning a deaf ear to his caution that life otherwise should be lived with modesty and restraint.  Epicureanism thus became a synonym for hedonism and in the minds of most is now associated almost exclusively with fine food and drink.  By the late twentieth-century, the word in the sense of its original meaning was barely used outside academic circles but of late there’s been a revival of interest; there are several large Epicurean associations in Greece and a Society of Friends of Epicurus with a sizable following in the English-speaking world.  It’s also attracted the usual suspects: there are French chefs like to style themselves Epicurean as did, perhaps less plausibly, the late Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011).

Indent

Indent (pronounced in-dent)

(1) To form deep recesses in something.

(2) In typography, to begin a line or lines at a greater or less distance from the margin; to set in or back from the margin, as the first line of a paragraph (the “hanging indent” pulls the line out into the margin).

(3) To cut or tear a document (especially a contract or deed in duplicate) so the irregular lines may be matched to confirm its authenticity

(4) To cut or tear the edge of (copies of a document) in an irregular way.

(5) To make tooth-like notches in something; to notch.

(6) To indenture, as an apprentice (mostly archaic).

(7) In inventory control or stock management, to draw an order upon stock.

(8) In military use (originally under the Raj), a requisition or order for supplies, sent to the commissariat of an army (later adopted in commerce generally to mean “to place an order for a good or commodity, usually for foreign goods, historically through an agent).

(9) To enter into an agreement by indenture; make a compact.

(10) In US financial history, a certificate (or intended certificate), issued by the government of the United States at the close of the Revolution, for the principal or interest of the public debt; at the close of the Revolutionary War for the principal or interest due on the public debt.

(13) In steel fabrication, to form a pattern on metal.

(14) An alternative word for indentation.

(15) A class of stamp; an impression made in the paper (as distinct from a wax seal which sat atop and was indented with a seal).

(16) Formally commit to doing something; to engage someone (both obsolete and based on the notion of the arrangement being formalized with an “indented document” even after the practice has ceased).

(17) To crook or turn; to wind in and out; to zigzag (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French endenter, a back formation from indented (having tooth-like notches).  The verb indent in the sense of “to dent or press in” emerged in the early fifteenth century and was etymologically distinct from the contemporary verbs indenten & endenten (to make notches; to give (something) a toothed or jagged appearance (which was used also to convey “to make a legal indenture, make a written formal agreement or contract”)) and was from the twelfth century Old French endenter (to notch or dent, give a serrated edge to) and from the Medieval Latin indentare & indentātus, the construct in Latin being in- (in-) + dent (tooth) from dēns, from the Proto-Italic dents, from the primitive Indo-European dónts and cognate with the Ancient Greek ὀδούς (odoús), the Sanskrit दत् (dát), the Lithuanian dantìs, the Old English tōþ (source of the English tooth) and the Armenian ատամ (atam), from the primitive Indo-European root dent- (tooth).  The prefix -in is quirky because it can act either to negate or intensify.  The general rule is that when pre-pended to a noun or adjective, it reinforces the quality signified and when pre-pended to an adjective, it negates the meaning, the latter mostly in words borrowed from French.  The Latin prefix in- was from the Proto-Italic en-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥- (not), the zero-grade form of the negative particle ne (not) and was akin to ne-, nē & nī.  In Modern English it is from the Middle English in-, from Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in, from the primitive Indo-European en.  Dent was dialectal variant of the Middle English dunt, dent, dente & dint (a blow; strike; dent), from the Old English dynt (blow, strike, the mark or noise of a blow), from the Proto-Germanic duntiz (a blow) and akin to the Old Norse dyntr (dint).  Indent, indenture & indenting are nouns & verbs, indenter, indention, indentation & indentor are nouns, indented is a verb & adjective and indentable is an adjective; the noun plural is indents.

Scriptum super libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Liber I (Commentary on the Book I of the Sentences of Peter Lombard) by Italian Dominican friar, philosopher & theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), transcribed in Latin as a decorated manuscript on paper by an unknown scribe in central Italy in the mid-late fifteenth century.  Still sometimes used in newspaper and magazine publishing, the "Drop Cap" is a disproportionately large letter which appears as the first in a sentence and the practice created the most obvious need for an indent.  Otherwise the indent appeared as a blank space to indicate the start of a new paragraph, a technique some still use.

The original significance of “indented documents” was they were an analogue version of modern digital cryptography such as the need for both public and private “keys” to make a file accessible.  The noun indenture was a late fourteenth century form meaning (written formal contract for services (between master and apprentice, etc), a deed with mutual covenants), from the Anglo-French endenture, from the Old French endenteure (indentation), from endenter (to notch or dent).  The classic indented document was a contact or agreement of some kind created in two (or more) parts on a single sheet of parchment which was then cut in an irregular zigzag (ie an “indented” line) with each party retaining their piece.  Each part of the parchment could be authenticated by matching its jagged edge with that of another part.  The forms indented & indenting were known by the late fourteenth century while the additional of indent to the jargon of mechanical printing to describe “the insertion of a blank space to force text inward” dates from the 1670 although the idea of an indent being “a cut or notch in a margin” was in use in the 1590s, derived from the verb.  There is also evidence indent was used in the late 1400s the sense of “a written agreement” (ie the documents cut from the single sheet of parchment) as a scribe’s short form of the formal term endenture."  That practice arose because ink and parchment were both expensive and over many pages, money would be saved if the number of letters used was reduced and the same tactic lasted well into the twentieth century because those sending telegrams were charged by the letter.  Unfortunately, different scribes sometimes used different abbreviations which can make the reading of medieval texts a challenge.

Prelude, dent & aftermath: Lindsay Lohan out driving (left), the big dent (centre) and after being fixed (right).

In October 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 400 (175 for the US market, 225 for the RoW (rest of the world)) of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a permanent fixed-roof (a production number of 350 is sometimes quoted but those maintaining registers insist it was 400).  However, by 2007, all dents had been repaired and the car (California registration 5LZF057), detailed & simonized, was being offered for sale in Texas, the mileage stated as 6207.  Bidding was said to be “healthy” so all's well that ends well.

The noun indentation was first used in 1728 do describe “a cut, notch or incision at the margin or edge of something” and after 1847 the word was used to describe “a dent or impression; a small hollow or depression, a slight pit” which was used in everything from metal-working & carpentry to pastry chefs making pies.  The significance was that usually an indentation was deliberate while a dent was the consequence of an accident.  The now rare indention was a noun dating from 1763 and was an irregular formation from indent and again gained its utility by distinguishing between marginal notches and dents but, in the way of such things, both seem often to have been used interchangeably. The familiar noun dent (a blow; strike; dent) in the sense of “an indentation, a hollow mark made by a blow or pressure" was known by the 1560 and although there’s no documentary evidence, most etymologists assume it was coined under the influence of indent.

Ordinal

Ordinal (pronounced awr-dn-uhl)

(1) In botany and zoology, of, relating to, or characteristic of an order in the biological classification of plants or animals.

(2) Of or relating to order, rank, or position in a series; denoting a certain position in a sequence of numbers.

(3) In church administration, a directory of ecclesiastical services.

(4) In church administration, a book containing the forms for the ordination of priests, consecration of bishops etc.

(5) In numbering conventions (usually as ordinal numeral), any of the numbers that express degree, quality, or position in a series, as first, second, and third (and thus distinguished from cardinal numbers).

(6) In mathematics, a symbol denoting both the cardinal number and the ordering of a given set, being identical for two ordered sets having elements that can be placed into one-to-one correspondence, the correspondence preserving the order of the elements; in logic maths a measure of not only the size of a set but also the order of its elements.

1350–1400: Middle English from the Old French ordinel from the Medieval Latin ōrdināle, noun use of the neuter of ōrdinālis (showing order, denoting an order of succession), the sense being “orderly”, ōrdinālis denoting order or place in a series, from Latin ōrdō (order), (genitive ordinis), the construct being ōrdō (order) + -alia (the Latin adjectival suffix).  The first sense of ordinal was that adopted to describe ecclesiastical documents, the meaning "marking the place or position of an object in an order or series" unknown until the 1590s.  Ordinal is a noun and adjective, the adverb is ordinally.

Conventions

In English there are conventions to guide the way written text is handled in oral speech.  Where a word or phrase, however familiar in English, remains foreign, it should, when spoken, be rendered in translation so, the written text “Hillary Clinton is, inter alia, crooked”, is spoken as “Hillary Clinton is, among other things, crooked.”  Where a foreign word or phrase has been assimilated into English it is treated as native so the written text “Hillary Clinton’s statement was the usual mix of lies, half-truths, evasions etc.” is spoken as “Hillary Clinton’s statement was the usual mix of lies, half-truths, evasions etcetera.”  Note the usual shortened form (etc) has traditionally always been followed by a full-stop but there is a welcome revisionist movement which argues it too has become an English word (as etcetera is an anglicized form of the Latin et cetera) and thus needs no longer to be treated as a truncation.

Where a foreign word or phrase, however familiar in English, depends for technical or other reasons on the original form to convey its meaning, it should be spoken as written.  Words of this class are often legal Latin such as obiter dictum (a judge's expression of opinion not essential to the verdict and thus not binding as a precedent) and habeas corpus (now a mechanism to challenge the lawfulness of a detention).  Status quo is well-known and widely used as kind of verbal shorthand to avoid clumsy English constructions yet the Status Quo is an Ottoman era firman (decree) which defines certain unchanging understandings among religious communities with respect to nine shared religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to translate this to anything else would rob it of the meaning which relies on its historic context.

A DOB written as 07-02-86 is generally understood by Americans but 02 Jul 1986 is preferable because internationally it's unambiguous.  The ordinal numbers (1^st (first), 2^nd (second), 3^rd (third), 4^th (fourth) etc) which sometimes still appear in written text, usually as superscript (set slightly above the normal line of type) reflect actual speech and are often an invaluable aid to the flow and rhythm of text.  However, when used to write dates, they’re wholly unnecessary, a “…needless tribute by the written word to the spoken…” in the words of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) in a note to his father (one of the few of Randolph’s opinions of which he approved).  The preferred format for dates is 2 Jul 1986 (or 2 July 1986 if added formality is needed); as Randolph’s memo explained, this removes the ambiguity which is inevitable if formats like 2/7/1986 or 7/2/1986 are used and placing the word of the month in the middle separates the two numbers.  Randolph Churchill was writing in 1949, long before the storage of data in digital form entered the mainstream.  Because of the way computers usually handle the indexing of such things, if using the date to name files, sub-directories etc, advice has long been to adopt the convention YYYYMMDD (19860702).  That however is but a Y2K approach and may, eight-thousand years odd from now, contribute to the Y10K crisis.  Some have been pondering this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550