Draft

Draft (pronounced drahft)

(1) An initial drawing, sketch, or design.

(2) A first or preliminary form of any writing, subject to revision.

(3) The act of drawing; delineation.

(4) A current of air in any enclosed space, especially in a room, chimney, stove or through a door or window frame; a current of air moving in an upward or downward direction.

(5) A device for regulating the current of air in a stove, fireplace etc.

(6) The act of drawing or pulling loads; something that is drawn or pulled; a haul; an animal or team of animals used to pull a load.

(7) The force required to pull a load; in rail transport, the pulling force (tension) on couplers and draft gear during a slack stretched condition.

(8) The taking of supplies, forces, money etc, from a given source.

(9) A selection or drawing of persons, by lot or otherwise, from a subset of the population; levy; conscription or the persons so selected; in professional sport, the selecting or drawing of new players from a choice group of amateur players by professional teams, especially a system of selecting new players so that each team in a professional league receives some of the most promising players.

(10) In military use, a selection of persons already in military service to be sent from one post or organization to another; detachment.

(11) A written order drawn by one person upon another; a writing directing the payment of money on account of the drawer; bill of exchange; A drain or demand made on anything.

(12) As draft beer, a type drawn from a keg or barrel rather than glass or can.

(13) Something that is taken in by drinking or inhaling; a drink; dose.

(14) A quantity of fish caught; the catch or haul (archaic).

(15) In admiralty use, the depth to which a vessel is immersed when bearing a given load.

(16) In Metallurgy, the slight taper given to a pattern so that it may be drawn from the sand without injury to the mold; also called leave.

(17) In steel fabrication, the change in sectional area of a piece of work caused by a rolling or drawing operation.

(18) In stone masonry, a line or border chiseled at the edge of a stone, to serve as a guide in leveling the surfaces.

(19) In the production of textiles, the degree of attenuation produced in fibers during yarn processing, expressed either by the ratio of the weight of raw to the weight of processed fiber, or by the ratio between the varying surface speeds of the rollers on the carding machine.

(20) An allowance granted to a buyer for waste of goods sold by weight.

(21) Ad drafting, in cycling & motorsport, to drive or ride close behind another car so as to benefit from the reduction in air pressure created behind the car or bike ahead; also called slipstreaming.

(22) In hydrology, the divergent duct leading from a water turbine to its tailrace.

(23) To separate a group of livestock from the rest of the herd (Australia & NZ).

(24) In apothecarial use, a measured portion of a liquid or aerosol medication; a dose.

(25)In politics, a system of forcing or convincing (at least nominally unwilling) people to take an elected position.

(26) A checker: a game piece used in the game of draughts.

(27) In medicine, a mild vesicatory (UK, obsolete).

(28) An outhouse: an outbuilding used as a lavatory (obsolete).

(29) In pre-modern military use, a sudden attack upon an enemy (obsolete).

Circa 1500: A spelling variant of the Middle English draught, from Old English dræht, related to dragan (to draw, drag), from Proto-Germanic drahtuz, noun form of draganą.  Root in English is draw, from the Middle English drawen, draȝen, dragen, from Old English dragan (to draw, drag, pull”), from Proto-Germanic draganą, from the primitive dreǵ (to draw, pull).  It was cognate with the West Frisian drage, the Dutch dragen, the German tragen (to carry), the Danish drage, the Albanian dredh (to turn, spin), the Old Armenian դառնամ (daṙnam) (to turn) and the Sanskrit ध्रजस् (dhrájas) (gliding course or motion).  Draught is a variant spelling of draft and is normally pronounced the same way (draft or drahft or with a vowel somewhere between “a” and “ah”). The pronunciation drawt is sometimes heard for draught, perhaps because “aught” is frequently pronounced awt elsewhere, as in caught and taught.

Caught in the draft:  A Lindsay Lohan wardrobe malfunction, MTV Movie Awards, 2008.

The emergence of draft circa 1500 reflected a change in pronunciation although both it and draught are now pronounced the same.  The meanings "rough copy of a writing" and “something drawn" is attested from the fourteenth century; that of "preliminary sketch from which a final copy is made" is from the 1520s; that of "flow of a current of air" was first noted circa 1770.  The descriptor of a type of beer is from the 1830s, in reference to the method of "drawing" it from the cask.  As applied to a bank draft, later extended to bills of exchange, meaning emerged in 1745. The meaning "a drawing off a group for special duty" is from 1703 and applies especially to military service; the verb in this sense first recorded 1714.  Related forms are the adjectives draftable, undraftable, undrafted & antidraft, the nouns drafter & redraft (also a verb) and the verb redraft.

Except in the US and places which have adopted US English, draft and draught seem now to be alternative spellings and while the old distinctions of use remain technically correct, modern practice appears to be to use them interchangeably.  Draft almost universal in American English and draught persists elsewhere for purposes where the historical association is most strong (draught horse, draught beer etc).  Draftee (person conscripted for military purposes) dates from 1864 in US English, the adjectival homophone drafty (exposed to drafts of air) is from the 1580s, draftiness a few years later.  Updraft (US) and updraught (rising air current) is from 1909, one of a rush of words created or adapted from others to serve the new field of aviation.  Draftsman (one who draws or prepares plans, sketches, or designs) is from the 1660s, a variant of the earlier draughtsman.  In finance, overdraft (action of overdrawing an account) dates from 1841 and by 1891 the meaning had extended to "amount by which a draft exceeds the sum against which it is drawn".  Unrelated was the use by 1884 of overdraft to describe “a draft of air passing over, but not through, the ignited fuel”, a use applied to ovens & furnaces.

Draught (act of pulling or drawing; quantity of liquid that one drinks at a time), the source of all this dates from circa 1200, from the Old English dreaht & dræht and related to dragan (to draw, drag).  The oldest recorded sense besides that of "pulling" is of "drinking", one suggestion being the idea of "so much as is drawn down the throat at once", a similar relationship drag has to the act of inhaling from a cigarette.  Draught is attested from circa 1300 as having some connection with "that which is drawn or written" although it seems clear the original meaning referred to writing in general, not “first draft” as is now understood.  In the UK, more than anywhere else, draught retains the functions (horses, beer etc) that did not branch off with draft.

Catching the draft, the Mercedes-Benz of Valtteri Bottas & Lewis Hamilton, Italian Grand Prix qualifying, Monza, September 2020.

In motorsport, drafting (also called slipstreaming) is a driving technique which exploits being in the slipstream of the vehicle to reduce the drag suffered by one’s own vehicle.  As a general principle, the higher the speeds involved, the lower the average energy expenditure required to maintain a certain speed.  Because it can have the effect also of reducing the turbulence between the vehicles, it can also offer a slight advantage to the lead vehicle.  The advantage gained in reducing the energy expenditure manifests as reduced fuel consumption which can be a strategic advantage but the most dramatic effect of “catching the draft” is the so-called “slingshot effect” whereby a vehicle coming out of the slipstream can use the conserved power to pass the vehicle it’s been deliberately following.

Six-Pack: Three drafters and three draftees drafting, Daytona 500, Daytona Beach, Florida, 2011.

The technique began to be well-understood in the 1960s but wasn’t without risk.  A vehicle of one shape could produce a different slipstream than another and at high-speed, slight differences can have a pronounced effect, the results for the trailing car unpredictable.  Additionally, sitting in the draft, enjoying the lower wind-resistance, although it allowed a higher speed to be attained, also meant a reduction in down-force and consequent instability.  The advantages and dangers are best illustrated on the faster oval speedways used by NASCAR.  On the straights, two or more vehicles will race faster when aligned front-to-rear than a single car, the low-pressure wake behind the leading car reducing the aerodynamic resistance on the front of the trailing car allowing the second car to pull closer.  As the second car nears the first it pushes high-pressure air forward so less fast-moving air hits the lead car's spoiler.  The result is less drag for both cars, allowing faster speeds.  On curves however, the load on one side of the car is higher, this accentuated by changes caused by the draft: the leading car has normal front downforce but less rear downforce.  The trailing car has less front downforce but normal rear downforce.  In a group of three or more, the vehicles with drafting partners both ahead and behind will lose downforce front and rear.

Firecracker 400, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1974.

In NASCAR’s 1974 Firecracker 400, the lead changed forty-five times, a record which would stand until 2010 and it’s remembered also for one of the sport’s most audacious uses of drafting.  As he was about to start the final lap, David Pearson (1973 Mercury #21) feigned engine troubles by slowing and dropping low on the track, forcing the slipstreaming Richard Petty (1974 Dodge #43) to swerve into the lead.  Person then was able to sit in Petty’s slipstream, drafting past on the final corner to win the race.  Petty’s reaction, recorded in the press box after the race, was so memorable it was transcribed and published in next morning’s Orlando Sentinel.

Doomsday

Doomsday (pronounced doomz-dey)

(1) In Christian eschatology, the day of the Last Judgment, at the end of the world (sometimes capital letter); the end of days; the end of times.

(2) Any day of judgment or sentence (sometimes initial capital).

(3) In casual use, the destruction of the world, since the 1950s, by means of nuclear weapons.

(4) As doomsday weapon(s), the device(s) causing the destruction of the world; anything capable of causing widespread or total destruction.

(5) Given to or marked by forebodings or predictions of impending calamity; especially concerned with or predicting future universal destruction.

(6) As Doomsday Clock, a symbolic warning device indicating how close humanity is to destroying the world, run since 1947 as a private venture by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Pre 1000: A compound from the Middle English domes + dai from the Old English construct dom (judgment) + dæg (day), dōmesdæg (sometimes dōmes dæg) (Judgment Day) and related to the Old Norse domsdagr.  Dome was borrowed from the Middle French dome & domme (which survives in Modern French as dôme), from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae) (literally “house (of the church)”), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías); doublet of domus.  Dom was from the Proto-West Germanic dōm and was cognate with the Old Frisian dōm, the Old Saxon dōm, the Old High German tuom, the Old Norse dómr and the Gothic dōms.  The Germanic source was from a stem verb originally meaning “to place, to set”, a sense-development also found in the Latin statutum and the Ancient Greek θέμις (thémis).  Dai had the alternative forms deg, deag & dœg all from the Proto-West Germanic dag; it was cognate with the Old Frisian dei, the Old Saxon dag, the Old Dutch dag, the Old High German tag, the Old Norse dagr and the Gothic dags.

In medieval England, doomsday was expected when the world's age had reached 6,000 years from the creation, thought to have been in 5200 BC and English Benedictine monk, the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735) complained of being pestered by rustici (the "uneducated and coarse-mannered, rough of speech"), asking him "how many years till the sixth millennium be endeth?"  However, despite the assertions (circa 1999) of the Y2K doomsday preppers, there is no evidence to support the story of a general panic in Christian Europe in the days approaching the years 800 or 1000 AD.  The use to describe a hypothetical nuclear bomb powerful enough to wipe out human life (or all life) on earth is from 1960 but the speculation was the work of others than physicists and the general trend since the 1960s has been towards smaller devices although paradoxically, this has been to maximize the destructive potential through an avoidance of the "surplus ballistic effect" (ie the realization by military planners that blasting rubble into to smaller-sized rocks was "wasted effort and bad economics").

The Domesday Book

Domesday is a proper noun that is used to describe the documents known collectively as the Domesday Book, at the time an enormous survey (a kind of early census) ordered by William I (circa 1028-1087; styled usually as William the Conqueror, King of England 1066-1087) in 1085.  The survey enumerated all the wealth in England and determined ownership in order to assess taxes.  Domesday was the Middle English spelling of doomsday, and is pronounced as doomsday.

Original Domesday book, UK National Archives, London.

The name Domesday Book (which was Doomsday in earlier spellings) was first recorded almost a century after 1086.  An addition to the manuscript was made probably circa 1114-1119 when it was known as the Book of Winchester and between then and 1179, it acquired the name by which it has since been known.  Just to clarify its status, the Treasurer of England himself announced “This book is called by the native English Domesday, that is Day of Judgement” (Dialogus de scaccario), adding that, like the Biblical Last Judgment, the decisions of Domesday Book were unalterable because “… as from the Last Judgment, there is no further appeal.”  This point was reinforced by a clause in the Dialogue of the Exchequer (1179) which noted “just as the sentence of that strict and terrible Last Judgement cannot be evaded by any art or subterfuge, so, when a dispute arises in this realm concerning facts which are written down, and an appeal is made to the book itself, the evidence it gives cannot be set at nought or evaded with impunity.”  It was from this point that began in England the idea of the centralised written record taking precedence over local oral traditions, the same concept which would evolve as the common law.

The Doomsday Book described in remarkable detail the landholdings and resources of late eleventh century England and is illustrative of both the power of the government machine by the late medieval period and its deep thirst for information.  Nothing on the scale of the survey had been undertaken in contemporary Europe, and was not matched in comprehensiveness until the population censuses of the nineteenth century although, Doomsday is not a full population census, the names appearing almost wholly restricted to landowners who could thus be taxed.  It was for centuries used for administrative and legal purposes and remains often the starting point for many purposes for historians but of late has been subject to an increasingly detailed textual analysis and it’s certainly not error-free.

The Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe.  Maintained since 1947 by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BOTAS), the clock was created as a metaphor for threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons.  On the clock, a hypothetical global catastrophe is represented as the stroke of midnight and BOTAS’s view of the closeness to that hour being reached by the number of minutes or seconds to midnight.  Every January, BOTAS’s Science and Security Board committee meets to decide where the second-hand of the clock should point and in recent years, other risk factors have been considered, including disease and climate change, the committee monitoring developments in science and technology that could inflict catastrophic damage.

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

These concerns do have a long history in philosophy and theology but the use in 1945 of nuclear fission to create atomic weapons focused the minds of many more on the possibilities, the concerns growing in the second half of the twentieth century as the bombs got bigger and proliferated extraordinarily to the point where, if all were detonated in the right place at the right time, almost everyone on Earth would have been killed several times over.  At least on paper, the threat was real and even before Hiroshima made the world suddenly aware of the matter, there had been some in apocalyptic mood: Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) “finest hour” speech in 1940 warning of the risk civilization might “…sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”.  It had been a growing theme in liberal interwar politics since the implications of technology and the industrialisation of warfare had been writ large by the World War I (1914-1918).

HG Wells’ (1866–1946) last book was Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), a slim volume, best remembered for the fragment “…everything was driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity”, seemingly describing a world which had become more complicated, chaotic and terrifying than anything he had prophesized in his fiction. In this it’s often contrasted with the spirit of cheerful optimism and forward-looking stoicism of the book he published a few months earlier, The Happy Turning (1945), but that may be a misreading.  Mind at the End of its Tether is a curious text, easy to read yet difficult to reduce to a theme; in his review, George Orwell (1903-1950) called it “disjointed” and it does have a quality of vagueness, some chapters hinting at despair for all humanity, others suggesting hope for the future.  It’s perhaps the publication date that tints the opinions of some.  Although released some three months after the first use of atomic bombs in August 1945, publishing has lead-times and Wells hadn’t heard of the A-bomb at the time of writing although, he had in 1914 predicted such a device in The World Set Free.  In writing Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells, the great seer of science, wasn’t in dark despair at news of science’s greatest achievement, nuclear fission, but instead a dying man disappointed about the terrible twentieth century which, at the end of the nineteenth, had offered such promise.

In 1947, though the USSR had still not even tested an atomic bomb and the US enjoyed exclusive possession of the weapon, BOTAS was well aware it was only a matter of time and the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.  Adjustments have been made a couple of dozen times since, the most optimistic days being in 1991 with the end of the Cold War when it was seventeen minutes to midnight and the most ominous right now, BOTAS in 2023 choosing 90 seconds, ten seconds worse than the 100 settled on in 2020.

The committee each year issues an explanatory note and in 2021 noted the influences on their decision.  The COVID-19 pandemic was a factor, not because it threatened to obliterate civilization but because it “…revealed just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly. In this time of genuine crisis, governments too often abdicated responsibility, ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively, and consequently failed to protect the health and welfare of their citizens.  As a result, many hundreds of thousands of human beings died needlessly”.  COVID-19 they noted, will eventually recede but the pandemic, as it unfolded, was “a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage nuclear weapons and climate change, which currently pose existential threats to humanity, or the other dangers—including more virulent pandemics and next-generation warfare—that could threaten civilization in the near future”.  In 2023, the adjustment was attributed mostly to (1) the increased risk of the use of nuclear weapons after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, (2) climate change, (3) biological threats such as COVID-19 and (4) the spread of disinformation through disruptive technology such as generative AI (artificial intelligence).

The acceleration of nuclear weapons programs by many countries was thought to have increased instability, especially in conjunction with the simultaneous development of delivery systems increasingly adaptable to the use of conventional or nuclear warheads.  The concern was expressed this “may raise the probability of miscalculation in times of tension”.  Governments were considered to have “…failed sufficiently to address climate change” and that while “fossil fuel use needs to decline precipitously if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided”, instead “…fossil fuel development and production are projected to increase”.  Political factors were also mentioned including the corrosive effects of “false and misleading information disseminated over the internet…, a wanton disregard for science and the large-scale embrace” of conspiracy theories often “driven by political figures”.  They did offer a glimmer of hope, notably the change of administration in the US to one with a more aggressive approach to climate change policy and a renewed commitment to nuclear arms control agreements but it wasn’t enough to convince them to move the hands of the clock.  It remains a hundred seconds to midnight.

The clock is not without critics, even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) expressing disapproval since falling under the control of Rupert Murdoch (b 1931).  There is the argument that after seventy years, its usefulness has diminished because over those decades it has become "the boy who cried wolf": a depiction of humanity on the precipice of the abyss yet life went on.  Questions have also been raised about the narrowness of the committee and whether a body which historically has had a narrow focus on atomic weapons and security is adequately qualified to assess the range of issues which should be considered.  Mission creep too is seen as a problem.  The clock began as a means of expressing the imminence of nuclear war.  Is it appropriate to use the same mechanism to warn of impending climate change which has anyway already begun and is likely accelerating?  Global thermo-nuclear war can cause a catastrophic loss of life and societal disruption within hours, whereas the climate catastrophe is projected to unfolds over decades and centuries.  Would a companion calendar be a more helpful metaphor?  The criticism may miss the point, the clock not being a track of climate change but of political will to do something to limit and ameliorate the effects (everyone having realised it can’t be stopped).

Understate

Understate (pronounced uhn-der-steyt)

(1) In speech or writing, a statement ostensibly less in strength than the author actually intends to convey.

(2) In design (architecture, fashion etc), a kind of shorthand for stark minimalism, the pared down look with which elegance is most easily attained.

1799: The construct was under + state.  The related “understated” used to discuss matter of style, appears not to have been used before 1957.  Under is pre-900 Middle English, from the Old English.  It was cognate with the Dutch onder, the German unter, the Sanskrit अधर (ádhara), the Old Norse undir & the Latin inferus.  The sense of under in the Latin inferus is fun.  It’s from the Proto-Italic enðeros, from the primitive Indo-European hindher and meant (1) in the masculine plural “the souls of the dead” and (2) in the neuter plural “the netherworld; the underworld; Hell”.  Its other linkage is to the modern “inferior”, another sense of “under”.  Under was productive as a prefix in Old English, as were the similar forms in German and Scandinavian, sued often to form words modeled on Latin.  The notion of "inferior in rank, position etc" existed as well as the spatial in Old English, reference to standards (less than this, that and the other) dates from the late fourteenth century.  State as the verb referring to speech dates from the 1590s in the sense of "to set in a position" and is derived from the earlier noun use.  The idea of "declaring in words" was first attested in the 1640s, from the notion of "placing" something on the record.

Emperor Hirohito of Japan, 1933.

The English upper classes have a long tradition of understatement; it was never unexpected to hear some grandee refer to his forty-room country house as “the cottage” but for sheer scale, few can match Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989; Emperor (昭和天皇 (Shōwa-tennō) of Japan 1926-1989).   Having endured hearing a long succession of bad news about the state of Japanese military affairs, he learned of the defeat of his axis partner, Nazi Germany and then, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Unlike some of the generals, admirals and politicians advising him, the emperor accepted the inevitable and on 14 August 1945, delivered a speech effectively accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, the Allies' demand of unconditional surrender.  It had taken two A-Bombs to summon the most memorable understatement of World War II:  “…the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage...”

Lindsay Lohan at The White Party, Linz, Austria, July 2014, the Grecian inspired gown with spaghetti straps by Calvin Klein, the shoes, Christian Louboutin Aurora Boreale platforms.  This was the best angle for the photographer to choose; viewed from a more oblique angle, the sense of restraint faded.  

In fashion, to achieve a look of understated elegance, the most obvious path to follow is one of stark minimalism.  As in architecture it’s not impossible to achieve the look with decorative flourishes but it’s harder.  Designers suggest neutral colors such as beige, grey, khaki, camel, oatmeal, tan, sand, biscuit, cream, ivory, ecru and mushroom with simple cuts, tailored to avoid anything too close-fitting, paired with either few accessories or, if it’s big, just one; less is more.

Xanadau

Xanadu (pronounced zan-a-du)

Also known as Shangdu, Xanadu was the capital of Kublai Khan's (1215-1294) Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) in China, before he decided to move his throne to the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) capital of Zhōngdū (middle capital), which he renamed Khanbaliq, later known in the West as Peking and of late, Beijing.  Xanadu then became his summer capital.  Xanadu was visited by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (circa 1254–1324) in about 1275, and was destroyed in 1369 by the Ming army under Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398).

Relic site of Xanadu.  Xanadu was located in what is now called Inner Mongolia, 220 miles (350 km) north of what is no the city of Beijing (Peking).  Today, only ruins remain, surrounded by a grassy mound that was once the city walls. Since 2002, restoration work has been undertaken and in June 2012, Shangdu was made a World Heritage Site.

Kubla Khan (1797) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

By his own account, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was reading about Shangdu while taking laudanum, an opium based medicine.  It led to an opium-induced dream, during which he composed some three-hundred lines of verse.  As soon as he awoke, he wrote down the first fifty but unfortunately, was then interrupted by “a man on business from (the local Somerset village of) Porlock.”   Once the business was concluded, Coleridge found the distraction had driven from his mind the rest of the poem.  All find Coleridge’s story charming but scholars doubt it’s true, the poet having used a similar excuse years before.  Most think it a case of writer’s block.

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

Tumult

Tumult (pronounced too-muhlt or tyoo-muhlt)

(1) Violent and noisy commotion or disturbance of a crowd or mob; uproar.

(2) A general outbreak, riot, uprising, or other disorder.

(3) Highly distressing agitation of mind or feeling; turbulent mental or emotional disturbance.

1375–1425: From the late Middle English tumult(e), from the twelfth century Old French tumult from the Latin tumultus (an uproar; commotion; bustle; uproar; disorder; disturbance), akin to tumēre to (to be excited; to swell), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European root teuə - (& teu) (to swell).  Teuə- was a productive root, forming all or part of: butter; contumely; creosote; intumescence; intumescent; protuberance; protuberant; psychosomatic; -some; soteriology; thigh; thimble; thousand; thole; thumb; tumescent; tumid; tumor; truffle; tuber; tuberculosis; tumult & tyrosine.  It’s the hypothetical source of (and certainly evidence for its existence is provided by): the Avestan tuma (fat), the Ancient Greek tylos (callus, lump); the Latin tumere (to swell), tumidus (swollen) & tumor (a swelling); the Lithuanian tukti (to become fat), the Old Church Slavonic & Russian tuku (fat of animals) and the Old Irish ton (rump).  Tumult is a noun & verb, tumultuate, tumultuating & tumultuated are verbs tumultuously is an adverb and tumultuous is an adjective; the noun plural is tumults.  

Nothing good ever came from the DLP:  One of tumult’s few linguistic niches is the phrase “the tumult & the shouting”, clearly a favorite of publishers given the number of books enjoying the title.  One was the 1977 political memoir of Frank McManus (1905–1983), an Australian senator who was briefly leader of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in the dying days of its first and longest incarnation.  While of no great literary merit, it’s an amusing mix of apologia and vicious character assassination, capturing vividly the hatreds which for a generation or more poisoned the Victorian Labor Party following the 1955 split.

Tumult is an example of a word in English where the root has become rare but a derived form remains in common use, the adjective tumultuous more frequently seen (tumultuous noted first in English in the 1540s).  It’s was a borrowing from the Middle French tumultuous (tumultueux in Modern French), from the Latin tumultuosus (full of bustle or confusion, disorderly, turbulent), from tumultus which also provided tumult. Like tumult, the adverb tumultuously and the noun tumultuousness are less common.

Headline writers, whether in print or on-line, famously are fond of alliterations and puns, preferably combined.  It's also one of the few aspects of journalism in which clichés seem to be tolerated and even celebrated.  The breed also has favorite words and one is "tumultuous".  While there are many words which (depending on context), can convey much the same meaning including boisterous, hectic, raucous, histrionic, riotous, stormy, turbulent, violent, agitated, clamorous, disorderly, disorder, disturbed, excited, noisy, obstreperous, passionate, rambunctious, restless, rowdy, turmoil, maelstrom, upheaval, riot, agitation, commotion, pandemonium, strife, rumbustious, termagant, unruly, uproarious, vociferous affray, racket, revolt, revolution, mutiny, unrest, disturbance, hassle, fracas, ferment, turbulence, outcry, convulsion, quarrel & perturbation & vicissitudinous, none work quite as well to encapsulate feeling the and some are not words as widely understood.

For some lives, the only adequate adjective is tumultuous (although "stormy" must have been tempting for some of those writing of Mr Trump.

Doom

Doom (pronounced doom)

(1) Fate or destiny, especially adverse fate; unavoidable ill fortune.

(2) Ruin; death.

(3) A judgment, decision, or sentence, especially an unfavorable one.

(4) In Christian eschatology, the Last Judgment, at the end of days.

Pre 900: From the Middle English dome & doome from the Old English dōm (a law, statute, decree; administration of justice, judgment; justice, equity, righteousness; condemnation) from the Proto-Germanic domaz (source also of the Old Saxon and Old Frisian dom, the Old Norse domr, the Old High German tuom (judgment, decree), the Gothic doms (discernment, distinction), possibly from the primitive Indo-European root dhe- (to set, place, put, do), (source also of the Sanskrit dhā́man (custom or law), the Greek themis (law) and the Lithuanian domė (attention)).  It was with the Old Norse dōmr (judgement), the Old High German tuom (condition) and the Gothic dōms (sentence).  A book of laws in Old English was a dombec.

Lidsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011. 

In all its original forms, it seems to have been used in a neutral sense but sometimes also "a decision determining fate or fortune, irrevocable destiny."  The Modern adverse sense of "fate, ruin, destruction" began in the early fourteenth century and evolved into its general sense after circa 1600, influenced by doomsday and the finality of the Christian Judgment. The "crack of doom" is the last trump, the signal for the dissolution of all things and the finality of the Christian Judgment Day, is most memorably evoked in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel 7:7-8.

(7) Doom has come upon you, upon you who dwell in the land. The time has come! The day is near! There is panic, not joy, on the mountains.

(8) I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you. I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices.

Doom Paintings

Doom paintings are the vivid depictions of the Last Judgment, that moment in Christian eschatology when Christ judges souls and send them either to Heaven or Hell.  They became popular in medieval English churches as a form of graphical advertising to an often illiterate congregation, dramatizing the difference between rapture of heaven and the agonies of hell, consequences of a life of virtue or wickedness.  During the English Reformation, many doom paintings were destroyed, thought by the new order rather too lavishly Romish.

Weltgericht (Last Judgement) (circa 1435)); Tempera on oak triptych by German artist Stefan Lochner (c1410–1451).