Dump

Dump (pronounced duhmp)

(1) To drop something or let fall in a mass; fling down or drop heavily or suddenly.

(2) To empty the contents of something (by tilting, overturning etc).

(3) To dismiss, fire, or release from a contract.

(4) In informal (and very common) use, to end a relationship with someone (especially a romantic partner), used mostly when the action is one-sided although there are many mutual dumpings, even if some are technically retrospective.

(5) Suddenly to transfer or rid oneself of some responsibility, task or duty.

(6) In the slang of boxing (1) to knock down an opponent & (2) intentionally to lose a match.

(7) In commerce (1) to put (goods or securities) on the market in large quantities and at a low price without regard to the effect on market conditions or (2) deliberately to offer goods in large quantities or at prices below the cost of production & distribution in an attempt to drive out competition.

(8) In international trade, to sell (goods) into foreign markets below cost in order to promote exports or damage foreign competition.

(9) In computers, (1) to print, display or record on an output medium the contents of a computer's internal storage or the contents of a file, often at the time a program fails, later to be used to debug or determine the cause or point of failure or (2) as screen dump, to print or create an image file of the screen’s display.

(10) Of precipitation (rain, hail & (especially) snow), heavy downfalls.

(11) In historic use, a small coin made by punching a hole in a larger coin (called a holey dollar and issued in both Canada and Australia).

(12) A deep hole in a river bed; a pool (a northern England regionalism).

(13) In slang, to kill; to arrange or commit murder.

(14) To fall or drop down suddenly.

(15) To throw away, discard etc something.

(16) In informal use, to complain, criticize, gossip, or tell another person one's problems (often as “to dump on”); to treat with disrespect, especially to criticize harshly or attack with verbal abuse.

(17) In vulgar slang, an evacuation of the bowels; to defecate (often as “take a dump”; men especially fond of the phrase “huge dump”).

(18) An accumulation of discarded garbage, refuse etc; a tip or landfill site, also called a dumpsite or dumping-ground.

(19) In military use, a collection of ammunition, stores, etc, deposited at some point, as near a battlefront, for distribution (ammo dump, fuel dump etc).

(20) In mining, a runway or embankment equipped with tripping devices, from which low-grade ore, rock etc., are dumped; the pile of stuff, so dumped.

(21) In informal use, a place, house or town (even a state or entire country according to some) that is dilapidated, dirty, or disreputable.

(22) In merchandising, a bin or specially made carton in which items are displayed for sale.

(23) In surfing (of a wave) to hurl a swimmer or surfer down.

(24) To compact bales of wool by hydraulic pressure (Australian and New Zealand).

(25) A mournful song; a lament; a melancholy strain or tune in music; any tune (obsolete).

(26) A sad, gloomy state of the mind; sadness; melancholy; despondency (usually in the form “down in the dumps”).

(27) Absence of mind; reverie (now rare).

(28) Heavily to knock; to stump (Scottish, obsolete).

(29) A thick, ill-shapen piece (UK, archaic).

(30) A lead counter used in the game of chuck-farthing (UK, archaic).

(31) A type of dance (obsolete).

1300–1350: From the Middle English dompen & dumpen (to fall suddenly, plunge), from the Old Norse dumpa (to thump, strike, bump).  The modern senses of the transitive verb and noun are unknown prior to the nineteenth century and may either be from another source or are an independent expressive formation.  There may have been some Scandinavian influence such as the Norwegian dumpa (suddenly to fall) which may also be linked with other Germanic forms such as the Middle Low German dumpeln (to duck) and the Danish dumpe (suddenly to fall).  The use in the sense of “hole used for the disposal of unwanted items by burying” was a development of the Scots dump (hole in the ground), the Norwegian dump (a depression or hole in the ground), the German Low German dumpen (to submerge) and the Dutch dompen (to dip, sink, submerge), something obviously not unrelated to the early fourteenth century meaning “throw down or fall with force, drop (something or someone) suddenly” which didn’t exist in Old English.  The modern use is actually most modern, the sense “unload en masse, cause to fall out by tilting up a cart etc” not recorded until it emerged in American English by 1784 while that of “discard, abandon” dates from 1919.  The use in economics to describe “export or throw on the market in large quantities at low prices” was first noted in 1868 in the context of anti-competitive practices.  A dumping ground was first documented in 1842 although the term may earlier have been in oral use.  Dump & dumping are nouns & verbs, dumped is a verb, dumper & dumpage are nouns and dumpy is an adjective; the noun plural is dumps.

By 1865, the noun dump was understood as place “where refuse is dumped, piled or heaped; a repository of refuse matter” and applied originally to extractive mining as a development of the verb, the use extending to sites for discarding domestic rubbish by 1872, the earlier “dumping-ground” common by 1857.  The meaning “any shabby or dilapidated place” dates from 1899 while the use by the military to describe places for the “collection of ammunition, equipment etc, deposited at a convenient point for later distribution” was a product of World War I (1914-1918), noted first in 1915 and possibly a development from soldiers’ slang although the later war-time slang to mean “act of defecating” appears to be of civilian origin, noted first in the US in 1942.  The dump-truck was first so described in 1930s and although truck had for decades been used to dump stuff, the name was derived from the use of hydraulic rams to enable to load more quickly to be emptied by raising the load bed or freight compartment at an acute angle.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

The “Dempster-Dumpster trash-hauling mechanism” remains familiar as the modern “dumpster”, a large, mobile container designed to be removed by a truck and taken away so the contented could be dumped in a dump, the container quickly reused.  It was patented by the Dempster brothers of Knoxville, Tennessee who ran an operation manufacturing waste collection vehicles (which would eventually include the Dempster Dumpmaster and Dempster Dinosaur).  The Dempster-Dumpster system achieved success by creating a system of mechanically emptying standardized metal containers which had been perfected between 1935-1937.  The concept of the dumpster (a standardized design able to be stored, re-used and transported efficiently) later influenced the development of container shipping.  The name dumpster became generic and was itself linguistically productive: “dumpster diving” (1979) described the practice of scavenging from dumpsters while “dumpster fire” was a figurative reference to a situation at once calamitous, foul and either insoluble or, if fixable, not worth the effort.  In use, a “dumpster fire” is similar to a “train wreck” or “shit show” but different from a “hot mess”, hot messes worth fixing because they remain in essence, desirable.  The use of “dumpster fire” spiked in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, used not only by both camps but also disillusioned neutrals.

The noun landfill dates from 1916 was a euphemism for dump although unlike some of the breed, it was at least literally true.  The adjective dumpy (short and stout) was from circa 1750 and the origin is undocumented but many etymologists assume it was linked to dumpling (mass of boiled paste (also “a wrapping in which something is boiled”)) which dates from circa 1600 and was from the Norfolk dialect, again of uncertain origin but the source may be Germanic or simply from “lump” (and there are those who argue dumplings were probably originally “lumplings”).  Lump was from the Middle English lumpe, from a Germanic base akin to the Proto-Germanic limpaną (to glide, go, loosely to hang).  “Humpty Dumpty” was a French nursery rhyme hero (it seems first to have been translated into English in 1810) and in the late eighteenth century it had been used to mean “a short, clumsy person of either sex”, presumably a reduplication of Humpty (a pet form of Humphrey (which was used of mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby in the BBC Television comedy Yes Minister) although a humpty-dumpty in the 1690s was originally was a drink, a cocktail of “ale boiled with brandy” which probably tasted better than it sounds.  The construction was based presumably on hump and dump but the basis has eluded researchers.  In the late twentieth century, “hump & dump” was repurposed to describe the practice (habit, calling, tactic, whatever) of enticing a woman in order to enjoy sex and immediately afterwards leaving, never to ring or call.  It’s subsequently be claimed by bolshie women for much the same purpose; the variations included “fuck & chuck”, “pump & dump:, “jump and dump” and “smash and dash”.

Crooked Hillary dumping on deplorables, Georgia, 2016.

Big buses have long been used by politicians for their campaign tours.  They offer lots of advantages, being offices and communications centres with at least some of their running costs offset by a reduction in staff travel expenses.  Additionally, with five large, flat surfaces, they are a rolling billboard although that can be good or bad.  In 2016, one of crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses was photographed in Lawrenceville, Georgia dumping a tank full of human waste onto the street and into a storm drain.  The local news service reported that when police attended the street was “…was covered in toilet paper and the odor was noxious”.  Hazmat crews were called to clean up the scene and the matter was referred to the environmental protection division of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) later issued an apology, claiming the incident was “an honest mistake.”  Using the word “honest” in any statement related to crooked Hillary Clinton is always a bit of a gamble and there was no word on whether the dumping of human excrement had been delayed until the bus was somewhere it was thought many deplorables may be living.  If so, that may have been another “honest mistake” because Gwinett County (in which lies Lawrenceville) voted 51.02% Clinton/Kaine & 45.14% Trump/Pence although the symbolism may not have been lost on much of the rest of Georgia; state wide the Republican ticket prevailed 50.38% to 45.29%.

Dump has been quite productive.  A “dump-pipe” is part of the exhaust system in an internal combustion engine; a “brain dump” or “info dump” is the transfer of a large quantity of information or knowledge from one person (or institution) to another, although it’s also used in the slang of those working in the theoretical realm of the digitizing of human consciousness; a block dump was an image contains the sectors read from an original floppy diskette or optical disc; “dump months” are those periods during which film distributers & television programmers scheduled content either of poor-quality or of limited appeal; a “dump job” was either (1) the act of moving a corpse or some incriminating material from the scene of the crime to some un-related place, preferably remote & deserted or (2) the abandonment of an unfinished task for which the abandoner might be expected to take responsibility, especially in a fashion that makes it likely that one or more colleagues will take on its completion; the “mag dump” was military slang for the act of firing an entire magazine-full of ammunition from a fully-automatic weapon in a single burst; “dumpsville” could be either (1) the figurative location of a person who has been dumped by a lover or (2) a description of an undesirable town or other locality; to be “down in the dumps” is to be depressed, miserable and unhappy.

An electrically controlled exhaust system "cut-out", the modern version of the old, mechanical, "by-passes".  All dump-pipes work by offering exhaust gasses a "shortcut" to the atmosphere.

In internal combustion engines (ICE), there are both down-pipes and dump-pipes.  Their functions differ and the term down-pipe is a little misleading because some down-pipes (especially on static engines) actually are installed in a sideways or upwards direction but in automotive use, most do tend downwards.  A down-pipe connects the exhaust manifold to exhaust system components beyond, leading typically to first a catalytic converter and then a muffler (silencer), most factory installations designed deliberately to be restrictive in order to comply with modern regulations limiting emissions and noise.  After-market down-pipes tend to be larger in diameter and are made with fewer bends to improve exhaust gas flow, reduce back-pressure and (hopefully) increase horsepower and torque.   Such modifications are popular but not necessarily lawful.  Technically, a dump-pipe is a subset of the down-pipes and is most associated with engines using forced aspiration (turbo- & some forms of supercharging).  With forced-induction, exhaust gases exiting the manifold spin a turbine (turbocharger) or drive a compressor (supercharger) to force more of the fuel-air mixture into the combustion chambers, thereby increasing power.  What a dump-pipe does is provide a rapid, short-path exit for exhaust gases to be expelled directly into the atmosphere before reaching a down-pipe.  That makes for more power and noise, desirable attributes for the target market.  A dump pipe is thus an exit or gate from the exhaust system which can be opened manually, electronically, or with a “blow-off” valve which opens when pressure reaches a certain level.  In the happy (though more polluted) days when regulations were few, the same thing was achieved with an exhaust “by-pass” or “cut-out” which was a mechanical gate in the down-pipe and even then such things were almost always unlawful but it was a more tolerant time.  Such devices, lawful and otherwise, are still installed.

Grab from a Microsoft Windows system dump.  Although dumps contain much, of the thousands of lines one might contain, only a small string of text in one line might be relevant and users may need some assistance to interpret the result. 

In computing, a system dump is typically a commitment to a file of what exists in memory (random access memory (RAM) or on a paged volume) and they’re created usually at points of failure, creating essentially a snapshot of what was happening either at or immediately prior to the unfortunate event.  The contents of a system dump can be used to identify errors and debug programs.  A “stand-alone dump” program (a SAD or SADMP) produces a dump occupied by either (1) a system that failed or (2) a stand-alone dump program that failed.  Either the stand-alone dump program dumped itself (a self-dump) or the operator loaded another stand-alone dump program to dump the failed stand-alone dump program.  It’s less ominous than it sounds and together, the stand-alone dump program and the stand-alone dump together form what is known as the stand-alone dump service aid.  The significance of the element “stand-alone” is that the dump is performed separately from normal system operations and does not require a system to be in a condition for normal operation.  It means that except in cases of catastrophic failure (especially if involving the total loss of mains & UPS (uninterruptable power supply) power, it should be possible always to create a high-speed, unformatted dump of central storage and parts of paged-out virtual storage on a tape device or a direct access storage device (DASD).  The stand-alone dump supplies information which can be used to determine why the system or the stand-alone dump program failed.

Sad

Sad (pronounced sad)

(1) Affected by unhappiness or grief; sorrowful or mournful; depressed, glum, melancholy; feeling mentally uncomfortable, discomforted, distressed, uncomfortable.

(2) Expressive of or characterized by sorrow.

(3) Unfortunate; unsatisfactory; shabby; in poor condition.

(4) Of color, somber, dark, or dull; drab; lacking brightness.

(5) Of music, an identifiable set of characteristics in composition which humans (with some cultural variations) perceive as evoking melancholy; poignant, touching.

(6) In slang, unfashionable; socially inadequate or undesirable deplorably bad; lamentable (probably interchangeable with “lame”).

(7) In slang (New Zealand), strongly to express displeasure.

(8) In baking (pastry, cakes etc) not having risen fully; heavy, soggy (no rare except regionally).

(9) As SAD, seasonal affective disorder.

(10) Heavy; weighty; ponderous; close; hard (obsolete).

(11) Valiant, firm or steadfast (obsolete).

(12) Dignified, serious, grave (obsolete).

(13) Sated, having had one's fill; satisfied, weary (obsolete).

(14) Naughty; troublesome; wicked (obsolete).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English sad, from the Old English sæd (grave, heavy, weary (originally “sated, full; having had one’s fill of food, drink, fighting etc)), from the Proto-Germanic sadaz (sated, satisfied), the source also of the Old Norse saðr, the Middle Dutch sat, the Dutch zad, the Old High German sat, the German satt and the Gothic saþs (satiated, sated, full)), akin to the Old Norse sathr, the Latin satis (enough) & satur (sated), and the Greek hádēn (enough), from the primitive Indo-European seto or seh- (to satiate, satisfy) from the root sa- (to satisfy).  Synonyms include unhappy, despondent, disconsolate, discouraged, gloomy, downcast, downhearted, depressed, dejected & melancholy; the antonyms including happy, cheerful, gleeful, upbeat & joyous.  Sad & saddening are nouns, verbs & adjectives, sadness is a noun, saddenest, sadded & sadding are verbs, sadly is an adverb, sadder & sadest are adjectives and sadden is verb & adjective; the noun plural is sads.  The special noun use of sad (plural sads) is as an alternative form of saad (the letter ص in the Arabic script which is the 14^th letter of the Arabic alphabet).

In Middle English & early Modern English the prevailing senses were "firmly established, set; hard, rigid, firm; sober, serious; orderly and regular but such notions (except in dialect) survive only among some bakers where the word is used to describe anything which has failed to rise and remains soggy, heavy and lacking fluffiness.  Etymologists assume the sense development was based on a transference of the idea of “heavy, ponderous” to Being “full” mentally or physically (ie “weary; tired of).  By the early fourteenth century, the familiar modern use to suggest “unhappy, sorrowful, melancholy, mournful” was established although a less supported alternative path of the change traces a course through the common Middle English sense of “steadfast, firmly established, fixed” (sad-ware described some notably tough pewter vessels) and “serious” to “grave.”  In the way sad is most used in Modern English, ultimately it replaced the Old English unrot which was the negative of rot (which confusingly to modern ears, meant “cheerful, glad”.  By the mid fourteenth century, the dominant meaning was to express “sorrow or melancholy” while the meaning “very bad, wicked” dates from the 1690s; that use faded but re-emerged in the late twentieth century, use the same way “lame” is deployed to describe the unfashionable or socially lamentable, a variation on the slang sense of “inferior, pathetic”, documented since 1899.  The “sad sack” (a usually miserable person)” dates from the 1920s and was popularized by World War II (1939-1945) era cartoon character published in US military magazine Yank, assumed by all to be a euphemistic shortening of the alliterative armed forces slang phrase sad sack of shit.

The verb sadden picked up the meaning “to make sorrowful” in the 1620s; until around circa 1600 it had meant “to make solid or firm” and the early verb was the simple sad, from the Middle English saden (become weary or indifferent (also “make (something) hard or stiff”, from the Old English sadian which may be the source of the modern verb but the history is tangled.  The intransitive meaning “to become sorrowful” dates from 1718.  The noun sadness developed from the early fourteenth century Middle English sadnesse (seriousness) and the reason it’s not entirely clear when the meaning shift to “sorrowfulness, dejection of mind” evolved is probably because there was such regional variation but it appears to have unfolded over the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries; throughout Middle English the word usually referred to “solidness, firmness, thickness, toughness; permanence, continuance; maturity; sanity”.  The adjective sadder (more sad) was from the Middle English sadder and saddest persist as the comparative & superlative forms.  The adverb sadly originally meant “heavily” & “solidly”, the use to convey “sorrowfully” emerging by the mid-fourteenth century.

Acronym Finder lists an impressive 104 acronyms or initialisms, some of the more memorable being Sex, Alcohol, Drugs; Social Anxiety Disorder; Search and Destroy; Seasonal Affective Disorder; Schizoaffective Disorder; Separation Anxiety Disorder; Stand Alone Dump; Single, Available & Desperate; Single Awareness Day (ie Valentine's Day); System Administrator (they prefer sysadmin or syscon); Scotland Against Drugs and Sullen, Angry, Depressed.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Avoiding SADness: Lindsay Lohan soaking up some sun in Prussian blue bikini with high-waist brief and halter-style top.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a particular instance of depression which is sometimes referred to as seasonal depression or winter depression.  SAD was first described in 1984 and included in the revision to the third edition (DSM-III-R (1987)) of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a “seasonal pattern”, a modifier applied to recurrent forms of mood disorders, rather than as an independent entity.  In the DSM-IV (1994), its status as a standalone condition was changed, no longer classified as a unique mood disorder but instead a specifier (called “with seasonal pattern”) for the “recurrent major depressive disorder that occurs at a specific time of the year and fully remits otherwise”.  In the DSM-5 (2013), although there were detail changes in terminology, the disorder was again identified as a type of depression (Major Depressive Disorder with Seasonal Pattern).  The symptoms of SAD often overlap with the behaviors & mood changes noted in clinical depression, the novelty being the condition manifesting usually during the fall (autumn) & winter when temperatures and lower and the hours of sunlight fewer, the symptoms tending to diminish with the onset of spring.  While notably less common, there are those who experience SAD during the summer and in either case it’s seen more frequently in women. SAD appears to be possible at any age but is most typically suffered in the age range 18-30.  In the US, the dynamic of the condition is illustrated by the diagnosis of SAD ranging from 1.4% of the population in sunny Florida to 9.9% in often gloomy Alaska and, after some initial sceptism, the condition was accepted as legitimate by most of the profession although there has been some contradictory research.  Although in a sense SAD has for centuries been documented in the works of poets and artists, it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that structured research began and it has been linked to a biochemical imbalance in the brain prompted by exposure to reduced hours of daylight and a reduction in sunlight.  It’s thought that as the seasons go by, some experience a shift in their internal “biological clock” (circadian rhythm) which induces the mechanism to become asynchronous with their daily schedule.  SAD appears more prevalent among those living far from the equator where the conditions in winter are exaggerated.

Common symptoms of SAD include fatigue (even among those who increase their daily hours of sleep) and the weight gain associated with overeating and carbohydrate cravings.  The symptoms can vary from mild to severe and in many cases are little different to those associated with major depression including:

(1) Feeling sad or having a depressed mood.

(2) Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed.

(3) Changes in appetite; usually eating more, craving carbohydrates.

(4) Change in sleep patterns (usually sleeping too much).

(5) Loss of energy or increased fatigue despite increased hours of sleep.

(6) Increase in purposeless physical activity (eg inability to sit still, pacing, handwringing) or slowed movements or speech (to be clinically significant these actions must be severe enough to be observable to others).

(7) Feelings of worthlessness or guilt.

(8) Difficulty thinking, concentrating, or making decisions.

(9) Thoughts of death or suicide.

Risking SADness: Lindsay Lohan's strangely neglected film Among the Shadows (Momentum Pictures, 2019) was also released in some markets as The Shadow Within.  It's a gloomy piece, shot almost wholly in darkness and revolves around murderous werewolves and EU politicians (two quite frightening species).

There are several treatments for SAD including light therapy, antidepressant medications & talk therapy, sometimes used in combination.  Light therapy involves sitting in front of a light therapy box which emits a very bright light (while filtering-out harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays), usually for at least 20 minutes per day, typically first thing in the morning, during the winter months.  Most report some improvement after undergoing light therapy within 1-2 weeks of beginning treatment but the best results are obtained and relapse is most often prevented if the treatment is continued through the winter.  This is definitely a treatment rather than a cure and many re-start the therapy in the early fall to prevent any onset.  Talk therapy, particularly cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), has been used to treat SAD and the results appear to be similar to those suffering other forms of depression.  Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the anti-depressants most commonly used to treat SAD.

Rjukan's three-mirror array, reflecting the Sun's rays on the town square below.  Each mirror is 17²m (183 square feet).

The Norwegian town of Rjukan sits some 3 hours north-west of the capital, Oslo and is famously one of the darkest inhabited settlements on Earth, wholly without sun for five months of the year.  Some 3400 souls live in Rjukan, the town created by Norsk Hydro, the electricity company which built a hydro-electric plant on the nearby falls to generate large quantities of electricity.  The reason it spends so long in darkness is because it sits in a valley, surrounded by mountains which block the light.  In 1928, Norsk Hydro built a cable car to permit the town's residents to travel to the mountain top to enjoy some sunshine but recently, the town spent 5 million Norwegian Kroner (US$4.95 million) to install an array of moving mirrors to direct sunlight to the town square.  Solar-powered, the mirrors sit 450-metres up the slope and track the movement of the sun.  Not only has the innovation brought light into the lives of the locals but the motorized mirrors have become a tourist attraction.  The idea of such a mirror was actually not new and had been discussed since 1913 but one was installed only in 2013.

Citizens in the reflected Sunshine.

Zarf

Zarf (pronounced zahrf)

In the Levant, a holder with a handle, rendered traditionally in ornamental metal and used to hold a coffee cup without a handle.

1836: Adopted in English from the Ottoman Turkish ظرف‎ (zarf), from the Arabic ظَرْف‎ (ẓarf) (container, sheath).  An alternative spelling is zurf and in the Balkans: zȁlf & zȁf (Serbo-Croatian); zȁrf (за̏рф in Cyrillic).  Zarf is a noun; the noun plural is zarfs.

Ottoman era solid silver zarf (with a depiction of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey (now the Republic of Türkiye), circa 1890.

Zarf was a specialized adoption in Ottoman Turkish of the Arabic zarf which means “container”.  In Arabic, a zarf is also an envelope and the word is sometimes appended to various Arabic, English and international forms as required.  A Zarf-DL is the familiar DL envelope, a zarf değiştirmeyi is a change envelope and, specific to printers, a zarf yazıcı is an envelope feeder & zarf dönüş an envelope return.

Lindsay Lohan out getting the morning coffee fix.

The modern plastic zarf.  Modern zarfs are designed to accommodate most disposable coffee cups, made usually in a small-medium-large range which is not quite internationally standardized but with variations small enough not to matter.

Better to minimize the risk of an almost inevitable spillage and seldom seen without a most capacious handbag in which one might be carried, noted coffee fiend Lindsay Lohan really should invest in a modern, portable zarf although, how long single-use, disposable coffee cups will be permitted isn’t known.  Weather forecaster Greta Thunberg (b 2003) would probably suggest we should all carry our own cup but history suggests governments are unlikely to rely on environmental consciousness to induce behavioral change and consumers may soon be charged to use disposable coffee cups and wooden utensils.  The experiment with forcing supermarkets to charge for plastic bags proved yet again what increasing the cost of cigarettes had repeatedly demonstrated: that nothing changes behavior quite as well or as quickly as making the target more expensive.  Remarkably, since the UK government introduced their levy on plastic bags, consumption has dropped by over ninety percent, a good outcome which pleased the supermarkets too.  It meant a small but not insignificant cost of operating was shifted from retailer to consumer and the introduction of a relatively low-volume but highly profitable a new profit centre: plastic bags.  In Australia, the dominant duopoly, Coles and Woolworths, which once had to give away a combined 5.7 billion bags annually year at .3 cents per bag, costing them Aus$171 million, now sell 1.2 billion of the heavier bags, yielding an annual profit estimated to be about Aus$70 million; a turn round of Aus$240 million so a nice little earner and some handy green-washing to boot.

Slum

Slum (pronounced sluhm)

(1) A densely populated, run-down, squalid part of a city, now usually on the outskirts, inhabited by poor people (often used in the plural).

(2) Any squalid, run-down place, especially if used for human habitation.

(3) As slumming it, (1) to visit slums, especially from curiosity or (2), to visit or frequent a place, group, or amusement spot considered to be low in social status or (3), to use goods or services of lesser quality or cheaper than those to which one is accustomed.

(4) Slang for a shabbily dressed person, essentially the noun form of those slumming it (in sense of (3) above) and can be used (“the slums” or “those slums”) as a collective noun for groups of the poorly dressed (now rare).

1825 (noun) & 1884 (verb): A truncation of back slum (dirty back alley of a city, street of poor or low people (1825)), it was initially a slang or cant word meaning "room" and most especially "back room” (1812).  Slumscape, a use drawn from landscape to describe depressed urban housing was first noted in 1947 but never became a popular form although slum-lord (1899), from slum-landlord (1885) was in common use until well into the twentieth century, the use in England diminishing after housing and hygiene regulations began to impose standards improving the condition of rented housing.  Slum is of unknown origin, though there is support from some etymologists for the theory of the imperfect echoic, possibly from a foreign accent.  The most common related form now is used most often in the phrase “slumming it”, an expression indicating (sometimes voluntary) use of some service or product lower in standard than that to which one is accustomed.  The other related forms, slummy, slummily and slumminess are rare probably to the point of being archaic.

Gladstone.

The word first enjoyed popular use as a verb because it was popular in Victorian novels set in London’s East End, the negative association gained from the meaning "to visit slums for disreputable purposes or in search of vice" (1860).  The first modification of the verb form seems to date from 1884 in the sense of "visit slums of a city", especially as a diversion or amusement for the middle-class, often under guise of philanthropy.  Tempting though it is because of the timing, there’s nothing to suggest an etymological connection with the habit of William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; variously the UK's chancellor of the exchequer or prime minister 1852-1894) of visiting slums, sometimes after midnight, for his "rescue work": meeting prostitutes on the street, recording their names in his little black book so that he might secure their salvation by arranging worthy and gainful employment.  Sometimes he would take them home for tea and readings from scripture.  Late in life, sensing perhaps the end was nigh, he clarified his role in a "Declaration" executed in his own hand on 7 December 1896.  Embossed with an embargo it was be unsealed only after his death, Gladstone wrote, "I desire to record my solemn declaration and assurance, as in the sight of God and before His Judgement Seat, that at no period of my life have I been guilty of the act which is known as that of infidelity to the marriage bed."  There’s some commendably Clintoneque precision there.

Slumming it: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend, Samantha Ronson, NYC subway, 2008.

Trench

Trench (pronounced trensh)

(1) In military (usually army (infantry)) use, an elongated pit for protection of soldiers and or equipment, usually perpendicular to the line of sight toward the enemy.

(2) A system of such excavations, with their embankments etc (usually in the plural).

(3) To dig or construct such a structure; to form a furrow, ditch, etc by cutting into or through something.

(4) In archaeology, a pit, usually rectangular with smooth walls and floor, excavated during an archaeological investigation; any deep furrow, ditch, or cut.

(5) In oceanography, a long, steep-sided, narrow depression in the ocean floor.

(6) To invade, especially with regard to the rights or the exclusive authority of another; to tend towards or encroach upon.

(7) A type of over coat.

(8) To have direction; to aim or tend.

(9) To cut; to form or shape by cutting; to make by incision, hewing, etc.

(10) In (mostly historic military) medicine, as trench foot, a type of foot damage caused by prolonged exposure to moisture.  Those most associated with the trench warfare of the First World War (from which it gained the name), the condition was first described by physicians attached to Napoleon Bonaparte's army during the retreat from Russia in the winter of 1812.

1350-1400: From the Middle English trenche (track cut through a wood or path made by cutting (later long, narrow ditch)) from the Old French trenche (a slice, cut, gash, slash; defensive ditch), from the verb trecncier (to cut, carve, slice), possibly from the Vulgar Latin trincāre (cut into three parts), from the Classical Latin was truncāre (to maim, mutilate, cut off), from truncus (maimed, mutilated).  Truncus also had the meaning "trunk of a tree, trunk of the body" and is of uncertain origin, perhaps from the primitive Indo-European root tere (cross over, pass through, overcome).  The first use by the military for trench in the modern sense was noted circa 1500 with trench foot mentioned in reports in 1915 although the condition had been documented since 1812 and doubtlessly had been long existed.  The trench coat dates from 1916 and, perhaps surprisingly, "trench warfare" didn’t appear in print until 1918.  Trench is a noun & verb, trenching is a noun, verb & adjective and trenched is a verb; the noun plural is trenches.  Forms such as detrench, retrench, entrench etc are coined as needed.  The adjective trenchant once had the meaning "fitted to trench or cut; gutting; sharp" but this is long obsolete; in figurative use it now conveys "keen; biting; vigorously articulate and effective; severe".

The trench coat

Winston Churchill (1875-1965, right), commanding the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, with his deputy, Sir Archie Sinclair (1890–1970, right), Armentieres 11 February 1916.  Both are wearing trench coats, Churchill in a French M15 Adrian helmet.

One often-repeated story of the origin of the trench coat is it was created as a khaki-colored overcoat to offer protection to soldiers suffering in the muddy, sometimes water-logged trenches on the western front during the First World War.  That was certainly where it picked up the name but, (like the medical condition trench food which had been known to army physicians for over a hundred years) the garment long pre-existed the conflict.  It was descended from waterproof coats created by Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1766–1843) and self-taught English engineer Thomas Hancock (1786–1865) in the early 1820s.

Macintosh and Hancock’s rain-repellent garment was called the “mac” or “macintosh" names which became generic for the type of product, a usage which, in parts of the UK endures to this day.  Created from a rubberized cotton, the mac was outerwear offering protection from rain or the elements in general, the target market wide in the age of horse-drawn transport and included anyone for whom outdoor activities were a part of the day.  The mac proved popular among those in horse racing, farming and the whole hunting, fishing and shooting set as well as the military officers with which it would later be so associated.  Macintosh continued to refine the material, the fabric by mid-century breathable, and more water-resistant and in 1853, Regent Street tailor John Emary (b circa 1810, his date of death unknown), designed an improved raincoat, which he produced under the name of his company, Aquascutum (from the Latin aqua (water) + scutum (shield).  Aquascutum’s success attracted the attention of Hampshire draper Thomas Burberry (1835–1926) who would, in 1856, found his eponymous company.  Burberry’s innovation in 1879 was the weatherproofing of individual strands of cotton and wool fibres using a coating of lanolin, rather than something applied to a finished textile, Burberry’s gabardine (a borrowing of a word from the 1590s which described a number of garments, all variations of protective, enveloping cloaks) fabric so superior to anything else available that it was instantly successful.

Lindsay Lohan in trench coat, out shopping.

Over the years, both the recently much-troubled Aquascutum and Burberry have taken credit for having invented the trench coat but both were popularisers of a pre-existing product, Burberry’s re-writing of history more successful to the point where the Burberry Trench Coat is definitive of the type, most others imitative even in variation.  The style too remains class-associative, worn during the Great War only by the officer class and thus gentlemen (though as the death-toll of them rose, it came to be worn also by “temporary gentlemen” a wartime necessity of the British class-system).  The genuine Burberry and Aquascutum trench coats were expensive, but their image and utility attracted other manufacturers which soon had more affordable imitations on the shelves; that remains the market segmentation today.

Burberry Long Chelsea Heritage Trench Coat (US$2450.00).

The variation Burberry created for military use was released in 1912, the term “trench coat” appearing in print first in 1916 in a tailoring trade journal.  The classic wartime trench coat was double-breasted, tailored to the waist, and flared to a below-the-knee hemline, the belt equipped with D-rings for hooking accessories.  It was a functional design with a caped back so water to drip off while the storm flap at the shoulder provided ventilation, the pockets were deep, cuffs could be tightened, and the buttons at the neck, although there for traditional reasons, provided valuable protect against poison gas when that began to be used in 1915.  Some coats even came with a warm, removable liner, which could be used as bedding and the emblematic shade of khaki so identified with the Burberry Trench was part of the War Office specification, just a standard British Army color.  According to Burberry, although advances in technology and the introduction of new machinery has meant the patterns for their trench coats have been changed, some stitching methods have been updated and metric dimensions are now used, were a garment now to be fashioned from the originals, it would be visually indistinguishable for the current range.      

Lindsay Lohan in sheer trench coat from DKNY's anniversary collection, Esquire DKNY official opening party, One Embankment, London, June 2014.

The coats became especially popular after the Second World War.  Although the price differential for the genuine article is striking (it can be ten times the cost of a knock-off), the difference is certainly discernible, each coat made from gabardine in Castleford and said to take some three weeks to complete.  A Burberry check, a signature combination of camel, ivory, red and black has lined the coats since the 1920s.  A fashion convention emerged in the late 1960s: Whereas the military tradition was always to use the buckle to secure the belt, true fashionistas prefer to tie.

Conjunction

Conjunction (pronounced kuhn-juhngk-shuhn)

(1) In grammar, any member of a small class of words distinguished in many languages by their function as connectors between words, phrases, clauses, or sentences, as and, because, but, however.

(2) Any other word or expression of similar function, as in any case.

(3) The act of conjoining; combination.

(4) The state of being conjoined; union; association.

(5) A combination of events or circumstances.

(6) In formal logic, a compound proposition that is true if and only if all of its component propositions are true.

(7) In formal logic, the relation among the components of such a proposition, usually expressed by the ∧ (∧) operator.

(8) Sexual intercourse (obsolete except for historic or poetic use).

(8) In astronomy, the coincidence of two or more heavenly bodies at the same celestial longitude; also called solar conjunction (the position of a planet or the moon when it is in line with the sun as seen from the earth. The inner planets are in inferior conjunction when the planet is between the earth and the sun and in superior conjunction when the sun lies between the earth and the planet).

(9) The state of two or more such coinciding heavenly bodies.

(10) In astrology, the coincidence of two or more heavenly bodies at the same celestial longitude, characterized by a unification of the planetary energies; an astrological aspect (an exact aspect of 0° between two planets, etc, an orb of 8° being allowed).

1350–1400: From the Middle English conjunccio(u)n, a borrowing from the Anglo-French and Old French conjonction, from the Latin conjunctiōn- (stem of conjunctiō (joining) from coniungere (to join), the second-person singular future passive indicative of coniungō.  Conjunction is a noun, conjunctive is a noun & adjective and conjugate is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is conjunctions.

Beginning a sentence with a conjunction

Unlike French, which has the Académie Française, English has no central authority; assessments of correctness can be made by anyone, judgments of whom others can make of what they will; it's something like the concept of the fatwa in Islam and from this linguistic free-for-all emerged the “rule” a sentence shouldn’t begin with a conjunction.  In English, there’s actually no rule against a sentence beginning with a coordinating conjunction like and, but or yet but the mistaken belief in some sort of prohibition is widespread.  In the literature, thoughts on the origin of this are all conjecture but the theme of most suggestions is the practice is somehow inelegant (although harsher critics describe it as lazy and sloppy) and with a little effort, a more complex and pleasing construction might emerge.  That said, the prohibition has no historical or grammatical foundation and examples exist in the Magna Carta (1215), the United States Constitution (1787), judgments from the US Supreme Court (since at least 1803) and Abraham Lincoln's (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865) Gettysburg Address (1863) and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage traced instances of use even in Old English.  That one is allowed to do something doesn’t mean one should do something and even then, it can be done too often.  A work like however doesn’t have the same feel as but; it’s in a higher register so the choice of which to use to start a sentence may be dictated by style as much as meaning.  So while beginning a sentence with and is permissible English, if overused it makes for dull and repetitive text.

The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, 21 December 2021.

In an alignment dubbed the “Christmas Star”, Jupiter and Saturn, the solar system’s two largest planets, appeared on 21 December 2021 to be closer together than they have in nearly 400 years.  From the earth, the giant planets appeared a tenth of a degree apart although they are hundreds of millions of miles apart.  Also, as NASA confirmed, it’s been some 800 years since the planets aligned at night, timing that gave almost everyone on planet Earth the chance to observe the astronomical event known as a “Great Conjunction”, a similar alignment not due until 2080, with the next close conjunction following 337 years later, in 2417.  The event was unusual also because it fell on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, a “rare coincidence,” NASA advised because “the date of the conjunction is determined by the positions of Jupiter, Saturn, and the Earth in their paths around the Sun, while the date of the solstice is determined by the tilt of Earth’s axis.”

Lindsay Lohan (2011).

Screened in conjunction with the 54^th international exhibition of the Venice Biennale (June 2011), Lindsay Lohan was a short film the director said represented a “new kind of portraiture.”  Filmed in Malibu, California, the piece was included in the Commercial Break series, presented by Venice’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and although the promotional notes indicated it would include footage of the ankle monitor she helped make famous, the device doesn't appear in the final cut.

Directed by: Richard Phillips & Taylor Steele
Director of Photography: Todd Heater
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
Creative Director: Dominic Sidhu
Art Director: Kyra Griffin
Editor: Haines Hall
Color mastering: Pascal Dangin for Boxmotion
Music: Tamaryn & Rex John Shelverton

Quash

Quash (pronounced kwosh)

(1) To put down or suppress completely; quell; subdue; used usually in a military or paramilitary context.

(2) To make void, annul, or set aside (a law, indictment, decision etc); to reject (an indictment, writ, etc) as invalid.

(3) To crush or dash to pieces (obsolete and thought possibly an imperfect echoic of squash).

(4) In the civil procedure rules of US courts (as motion to quash), a specific request that asks the court to render the decision of a previous lower court ruling invalid.  It is similar to a motion to dismiss, except it asks the court to nullify a previous ruling rather than the current filing.

Circa 1275: From the Middle English quaschen, quasshen, cwessen, & quassen (to smash, break, overcome, suppress) from the Old French quasser, in part from the Latin quassāre (to shake), present active infinitive of quassō, frequentative of quatere (to shake) and in part from the Late Latin cassāre (to annul), a derivative of the Latin cassus (empty, void) under the influence of the Alatin cassō (I annul), from the Latin quatiō (I shake).  Ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kweht- (to shake), the source also of the words pasta, paste, pastiche, pastry; cognate with Spanish quejar (to complain).  Similar to some degree are suppress, squash, repress, crush, quell, invalidate, annul, revoke, reverse, veto, void, undo, vacate, squelch, repeal, overrule, rescind, scrunch, annihilate and subdue.  Regarding quash and squash, the verb quash is now used to describe the crushing of something in a nonphysical sense whereas squash is applied when an object is physically crushed but both were for hundreds of years used in both senses, quash losing its physical sense only in the twentieth century.  Urban Dictionary also lists a number of non-standard meanings.  Quash & quashed are verbs, quasher is a noun, quashing is a noun & verb and quashable is an adjective; the most common noun plural is quashings.

In the matter of Cardinal Pell

Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023): On appeal, the prosecution not having proved guilt beyond reasonable doubt, the conviction was quashed.

Quash means to nullify, void or declare invalid and is a procedure used in both criminal and civil cases when irregularities or procedural defects are found.  In a unanimous (7-0) judgment (Pell v The Queen [2020] HCA 12)) quashing Cardinal Pell’s conviction (Pell v The Queen [2019] VSCA 186), the High Court set aside the verdict and substituted an acquittal; in a legal sense it is now as if the original verdict never happened.  What the court did was declare existing law and provide what are not exactly parameters but are more than guidelines.  If nothing else, it’s likely the judgment will cause trial judges more precisely to instruct juries about reasonable doubt:

(1) The accused on trial in a serious criminal matter is presumed to be innocent.

(2) The accused may but is not obliged to offer a defense; it is incumbent upon the prosecution (almost always the state) to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, the guilt of the accused.

There’s nothing controversial about those positions, they’ve well known and have for centuries been accepted orthodoxies for the administration of criminal law in common law jurisdictions.  What the Pell judgment did was draw attention to other orthodoxies not as widely known:

(3) A jury is presumed to be comprised of reasonable people who impartially will assess the evidence (contested facts) presented; matters of contested facts are subjective and for the jury.

(4) It is the responsibility of the judge accurately and lucidly to instruct the jury on such matters of law which may be relevant to their consideration of matters of fact; matters of law are objective and for the judge.

Reasonable people on juries are thus required to decide if there is a reasonable doubt the prosecution’s case has proven guilt.  Reasonable doubt went back a long way but the phrase “reasonable person” was defined by English courts in negligence cases, an attempt to provide an example of the “the average man” or “the man in the street”.  Descriptions by judges vary but usually mean something like a “…reasonably intelligent and impartial person unversed in legal esoteric” (Jones v US, DC Court of Appeals), sketched rather more poetically by an English judge as “the man on the Clapham omnibus” (“a bloke on the Hornsby train” in Australian parlance).

(5) In exercising their subjective judgment to determine if the prosecution has proven their case beyond reasonable doubt, the jury is required to decide this on the objective basis of reasonable doubt detailed in the judge’s direction or summing up.

(6) If a court of appeal found a jury, acting reasonably, on the basis of the evidence presented, should have found reasonable doubt of guilt, the judge(s) can order the conviction quashed and verdicts of acquittal entered instead.

Not only verdicts can be quashed.  If within their jurisdiction, a judge can quash a warrant or order.