Comptroller

Comptroller (pronounced kuhn-troh-ler)

A variant spelling of controller, used especially as a title of some financial executives.

Circa 1500: From the late Middle English compteroller, a spelling mistake which became a variant of countreroller (from which Modern English ultimately gained controller) due to medieval folk etymology, the notion being there was a link to the Middle French compte (account); the Middle French compteroleur is attested circa 1375.  Originally the two spellings were equivalent and pronounced identically; the sometimes-used modern pronunciation (komp-troll-ah) is based on the spelling.  Controller is thus sometimes a homophone, sometimes not and there seem to be pedants on both sides of fence upon which most sit.  Comptroller and comptrollership are nouns; the noun plural is comptrollers.

Controller came from the From Middle English countreroller, from the Anglo-Norman contreroulour and the Middle French contreroleur (the Modern French contrôleur), from the Medieval Latin contrārotulātor, from contrārotulāre (from which is descended the modern control).  The original meaning in English was “an official in charge of accounts in a king's household" from the late thirteenth century Anglo-French contrerolleour, from the Old French contrerelleor, from the Medieval Latin contrarotulator.  The broader sense of one who manages the finances of a corporation or institution" emerged from circa 1450-1500; the first syllable was confused with count from the Latin comptus (an account) from computare, hence the creation of comptroller.

Comptroller & Controller

Comptroller is an example of the haphazard way mistakes sometimes made their way into English, became entrenched and then, often with some enthusiasm, were adopted throughout the British Empire and beyond.  Although adherence is not universal, the convention of use is that if employed in government service, the job is styled as comptroller (eg Comptroller-General, Household Comptroller etc) and if in the private sector, controller (eg Financial Controller) is used.  Because of its origin, the very existence of “comptroller” attracted disapproval until well into the twentieth century but the distinction between the two words must have proved useful because it has endured; that’s how English works.  The evolution of the convention was organic but unfortunately less helpful than it might have been.  More useful would have been for comptroller to apply to people and controller to electric or mechanical devices for controlling circuits or systems but the convention was a product of its time.

A legacy of empire is that the civil services of many members of the Commonwealth and the United States contain many comptrollers.  In India, for example, the civil service appointments are essentially the same as under the Raj.  The Comptroller and Auditor General of India audits all receipts and expenditure of the Government of India and the state governments, including QUANGOs and other authorities where funding substantially is provided by government.  The Comptroller of the President's Household is a position analogous with a similar appointment at Buckingham Palace and, by statute, is always a Navy Captain.  Similar positions of comptrollers exist in the governor's household in each state and union territory.

Set in stone: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Although it has existed since emerging in 1863 from the slew of legislation passed during the US Civil War (1861-1865), the regulator of the nation’s largest financial institutions remains one of the more obscure federal bodies, something perhaps related to its name being misleading in that it plays little direct role in currency matters, both the US Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) and the Treasury (of which the independent OCC is technically a part) being far more influential.  The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is an interesting case study illustration a number of the phenomena noted in organizational behavior exclusive to governmental institutions which, unlike institutions which have to justify their ongoing existence on some easily understood metric (like running at a profit).

The OCC’s notional supervisory bailiwick is the “national” banks, so-called because they are chartered under the National Bank Act which also dates from 1863.  The wartime function of all this actually had little to do with the banks; the legislation and the OCC were designed to be a way the Union armies could be financed and with the outcome of the conflict still in the balance, the advantages to be gained by creating a financing mechanism which could strengthen the Northern economy, military and industry by then obvious.  At the time, the banks operated under charters issued by the states and their core business was not attracting deposits and lending but the issuing of banknotes and because the economy ran on banknotes (gold and silver coins had a function but couldn’t support modern commerce as once they had).

Neither the administration nor the Congress really had any alternative as a mechanism to finance the war which had drained the federal coffers induced borrowing to the point where the capital markets were depleted to the extent of being a threat to both the economy and military operations.  While a fiat currency would seem a textbook solution, an acceptance of the concept was still years away so the compromise was for (1) the federal government to charter the banks, (2) to taxed the state banknotes into existence and (3), require the new “national” banks to invest their reserves in US government bonds.  Instantly it created a source of finance the South couldn’t match.  In wartime, the system worked well, perhaps even more effectively than the government had envisaged but what it meant was that when the war ended, the new, powerful, National banks remained but without the demand that they act as a conduit of money to support the needs of the state.

So the big banks proceeded to do what big banks do, the result being over the decades one bank scandal panic and crisis after another until in 1913, the Federal Reserve was created which obviated any the need private banknotes, the national currency (in the form of Federal Reserve notes), then still backed by physical gold the medium of exchange for all purposes.  The big banks adapted well to the new environment and so did the OCC which evolved into what can be understood only as the big bank’s lobbyist, an administrative layer between them and regulation, a tendency furthered by the emergence of what’s known as “regulatory arbitrage”.  Because the US system for chartering banks is a patchwork (states authorize some banks, along with the OCC, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has an authority physically to examine the records of all banks) the banks can actually choose their regulator and some have left the state-based systems and “joined” the OCC orbit where the regulatory environment is much more benign.  This regulatory arbitrage is self-reinforcing because as institutions shift their status, they also move their fees, thereby further strengthening the OCC, the implication being the banks are valued clients rather than institutions to regulate.

Currencies need to be regulated which was a relatively simple (if technically complex) business when the objects were physical paper (or plastic) and metal but the emergence of cryptocurrencies without a national identity has required a different approach. 

The OCC last had a full-time, permanent comptroller in mid-2020.  President Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) has made several attempts to have the Senate confirm an appointment but without success.  The Republicans appear to believe only white mane are qualified for such a role and even some Democrat senators have found the political positions of some of the White House’s offering just too radical an given that white men seem now to be anathema to the factions which control the Democratic Party, there seem little prospect the OCC will soon gain a new comptroller.  One suggestion has been to solve many problems by abolishing the OCC and transferring its functions to the FDIC and while that might result in a better regulated environment, as the troubles with the First Republic bank illustrate, its supervisory regime is hardly perfect and despite all that’s been revealed since 2008, the big banks still enjoy an implicit guarantee from the federal government that they’ll be bailed out in the event of another financial crisis. They are still too big to fail, regardless of which authority acts as their nominal supervisor.

Preposition

Preposition (pronounced prep-uh-zish-uhn)

(1) In English grammar, any member of a class of words found in many languages that are used before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives, and that typically express a spatial, temporal, or other relationship, as in, on, by, to, since.

(2) To position in something in advance or beforehand (often as pre-position).

(3)  An exposition; a discourse (obsolete).

1350-1400: From the Middle English preposicioun (in grammar: "indeclinable part of speech regularly placed before and governing a noun in an oblique case and showing its relation to a verb, adjective, or other noun"), from the Old French preposicion, from the Latin praepositiōn & praepositionem (nominative praepositio) (a putting before, a prefixing), noun of action from the past-participle stem of praeponere (put before), the construct being prae- (before (source of the English pre-)) + pōnere (put, set, place (past participle positus and related to  praepono (to place before)).  In grammatical use, it was a loan-translation of the Greek prothesis (literally "a setting before").  In the Old English, foresetnys was a loan-translation of the Latin praepositio and it exists in modern French as préposition.  In grammar, it's so called because it's placed before the word with which it's phrased (eg block of iron) and the more recent form meaning “to position in something in advance or beforehand” appears not to have been used before the early 1960s.

Sentences and prepositions

Another example of the medieval reverence for Latin, the “rule” in English that a sentence should not end with a preposition is an import from the classical language and an accurate description of the old practice.  English grammar however differs from the Latin, and the rule does not fit English where, certainly in speech, a final preposition is normal and idiomatic.  In short, the “rule”, which in Modern English Usage (1926), the stern Henry Fowler (1858-1933) dismissed as a "cherished superstition", never existed, although many attempted enforcement.  

Portrait of John Dryden (1730) by George Vertue (1684-1756), line engraving on paper, Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Print Room).

Some have even been converts to the cause.  The younger John Dryden (1631–1700), a fine stylist of English and the nation's first Poet Laureate, would lace his sentences with terminal propositions yet in later life would edit his first editions "correcting" the indiscretions of youth, explaining that "...in considering whether what I write be the idiom of the tongue, …and have no other way to clear my doubts but by translating my English into Latin".  This Fowler would paraphrase as "...you cannot put a preposition (roughly speaking) later than its word in Latin and therefore you must not do so in English".  Even in the seventeenth century few were as punctilious although Fowler did note Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) refinement of the "rule": Discerning "...that prepositions and adverbs are not always easily distinguished, kept on the safe side by not ending sentences with "on", "over", "under" or the like, even when they would have been adverbs".  Like those who care nothing for that other non-rule, the dreaded split infinitive, yet never commit it to writing lest they be thought unsophisticated by the fastidious, Gibbon wanted to keep up appearances.  Like Gibbon, Dryden's quill secured his reputation as a writer, his downfall nothing to do with his English, dismissed in 1689 from the laureateship because, as a devout papist, he refused to swear an oath of allegiance when the crown passed into protestant hands.  Up with such he had to put.  

There is a case to avoid the practice in writing but only if the “rule” is applied to the whole text.  Technically, the problem of placing the preposition arises most when a sentence ends with a relative clause in which the relative pronoun (that; whom; which; whomever) is the object of a preposition.  Where writing is edited to be formal, when a pronoun other than that introduces a final relative clause, the preposition usually precedes its object: “He finished the painting to which he had devoted twelve years.”  If the pronoun is that, which cannot be preceded by a preposition, or if the pronoun is omitted, then the preposition must occur at the end: “The librarian found the books that the child had scribbled in.”  Adherence to the rule does tend to render text which appears more correct grammatically even if frequently it differs from English as it is spoken: people tend to say “what did you step on?” not “on what did you step?”  Among stylists of language, other “rules” have been suggested such as avoiding unnecessary prepositions; “I stepped off the ship” is better than “I stepped off of the ship”.  Some authorities also maintain there should be a comma after prepositional phrases at the beginning of a sentence, one publication insisting one is obligatory if the phrase is longer than four words.  While that may seem arbitrary, if applied consistently, it will enhance the rhythm of the text.

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

Still the most famous critique of the “rule” is a quote attributed to Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), one of many of dubious provenance.  The story goes that when an editor returned the proofs of the text he’d submitted for publication, included was a chastisement for ending a sentence with a preposition to which he responded: “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”  Like other cultural reference points (Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Albert Einstein (1879-1955) et al) much is attributed to Churchill on the basis it seems plausible he might have said it and it does have a “Churchillian ring” but the point was avoiding ending a sentence with a preposition can result in something unnatural and even absurd, rather as restructuring a split infinitive can sound when spoken, however elegant it may appear in print.  It seems most likely the first use of the phrase was by an anonymous official who in 1942 wrote an article for The Strand Magazine, a monthly periodical published in the UK between 1891-1950, focused on short-form fiction and what came to be called “general interest pieces”.  The title was revived in the US 1998 and is now a quarterly, based in Michigan.

Athenaeum

Athenaeum (pronounced ath-uh-nee-uhm or ath-uh-ney-uhn)

(1) An institution for the promotion of literary or scientific learning.

(2) A library or reading room.

(3) A sanctuary of Athena at Athens, built by the Roman emperor Hadrian, and frequented by poets and scholars (always with initial capital letter).

1727:  Adopted in English from the Latinized form of Greek Athḗnaion (the temple of Athene) in ancient Athens, in which professors taught and actors or poets rehearsed. The meaning "literary club-room or reading room" is from 1799 while the generalized "literary or scientific club" emerged in the mid 1860s.  The academy of learning in Rome was established near the Forum in circa 135 AD by the Emperor Hadrian.  The alternative (mostly US) spelling is athenaeum.

Ruins of the Athenaeum, Rome, now a working archaeological dig.

The Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus, 76–138; Roman emperor 117-138) built the Athenaeum as a place for the promotion of literary and scientific studies (ingenuarum artium), the name borrowed from the Hellenic original in acknowledgement of the still admired intellectual traditions of classical Athens.  The Athenaeum was situated near the Capitoline Hill and the ruins were discovered in 2009 during excavations for the construction of a underground rail line, in the middle of what is now Piazza Venezia.

Founded in 1824 with an exclusively male membership roll, the Athenaeum is a private club in London, on Pall Mall at the corner of Waterloo Place, the origin of which was to provide a place men of a literary and scientific bent would find convivial, an atmosphere then apparently thought hard to find in the city's more fashionable clubs.  As was the trend in the twentieth century, women sort of "crept in" as guests and later in a segregated space but since 2002 they have been admitted as full members.  In another sign of the time, it’s now a non-smoking building although charmingly, the elegant “smoking room” signs remain.  There are a number of Athenaeum Clubs in cities of the Commonwealth.

South Library, The Athenaeum Club, London.

The Athenaeum Club is noted for its three libraries, housing a collection of manuscripts, documents and books accumulated over two centuries.  The most photogenic of the three is the South Library designed by English architect Decimus Burton (1800–1881).  Although a space in the tradition of the great continental libraries, in one aspect the visual effect has been heightened in the twenty-first century, LED (light emitting diode) illumination now integrated, almost imperceptibly, into the architectural fabric.  In a nod to the layout of a library's shelving, London’s DesignPlusLights created a three-level, horizontal framework, softly to illuminate the spines, cowls added over each light source to ensure there was no leakage of luminosity, only the vertical shelving being lit.  Adding to the ethereal effect, taking advantage of the new possibilities offered by the tiny LED units, miniature spotlights were built-into the central chandelier to upwardly project light to the ceiling rose.  There’s also a trick using light as an architectural device, recessed up-lights within the window frames and fireplace drawing the eye lower, rendering the internal void something more attuned to human scale.

Position

Position (pronounced puh-zish-uhn)

(1) Condition with reference to place; location; situation.

(2) A place occupied or to be occupied; site.

(3) In military jargon, a fortified position.

(4) The proper, appropriate or usual place.

(5) A situation or condition, especially with relation to favorable or unfavorable circumstances.

(6) To be in an awkward position or to bargain from a position of strength.

(7) High standing, as in society; important status.

(8) A post of employment.

(9) A manner of being placed, disposed, or arranged:

(10) A mental attitude, a stated opinion.

(11) In ballet, any of the five basic positions of the feet with which every step or movement begins and ends.

(12) In music, the arrangement of tones in a chord, especially with regard to the location of the root tone in a triad or to the distance of the tones from each other.

(13) In music, in the construction of stringed instruments, any of the places on the fingerboard of a stringed instrument where the fingers stop the strings to produce the various pitches.

(14) In music, any of the places to which the slide of a trombone is shifted to produce changes in pitch.

(15) In finance, a commitment to buy or sell securities.

(16) In classical prosody, the situation of a short vowel before two or more consonants or their equivalent, making the syllable metrically long.

(17) To determine the position of; to locate.

(18) In language, make position (of a consonant, either on its own or in combination with other consonants, such as x in Latin) to cause a short vowel to become metrically long when placed after it.

1325-1375: From the Middle English posicioun (a positing; a statement of belief, the laying down of a proposition or thesis), borrowed (as a term in formal logic and philosophy) from the Old French posicion (position, supposition (from which Modern French gained position)), from the Latin positiōn & positionem (stem of positiō) (act or fact of placing, situation, position, affirmation), the noun of state from the past-participle stem of pōnere (put; to place, lay down)).  The ultimate source is contested.  Some suggest the primitive Indo-European po-s(i)nere (the construct being apo (off, away) + sinere (to leave, let) while other etymologists prefer the Proto-Italic posine-, from the primitive Indo-European tkine- (to build, to live), from the root tkei- (to settle, dwell, be home).

The meaning "proper place occupied by a person or thing" (especially as applied to a place occupied by a person or thing (hence the link to "status, standing &  social rank" noted since 1832 and "official station, employment" (1890))) is from the 1540s.  The sense of a "manner in which some physical thing is arranged or posed, aggregate of the spatial relations of a body or figure to other such bodies or figures" dates from 1703 and was applied specifically to dance steps by 1778 and as a technical description of certain aspects of human sexual intercourse in 1883. The technical use "to assume a position” (intransitive) dates from the 1670 whereas the transitive sense of "to put in a particular position" is recorded from 1817.  The military use in the sense of "place occupied or to be occupied" ws first used in 1781.

Positionality

Second wave feminism and post-modernism grew together in the again expanding universities of the 1980s, a symbiosis of shifting cause and effect that was extraordinarily productive, at least if measured quantitatively by volume of publication.  One fork, drawing in some ways from the new-left, was positionality, a theory of construct that creates (or, according to some critical theorists, imposes) identity; it also builds a framework with which to deconstruct how an identity, however constructed, biases one’s worldview.  Positionality was first applied to gender and sexuality in 1988 by philosopher Linda Alcoff (b 1955), essentially as a critique of the patriarchal overlays and suppositions that distorted feminist thought to the point where even the more abstract or radical positions were to be understood only with some reference to prevailing male views.  Professor Alcoff argued for a positional definition of woman, one where aspects of women's identity are markers of relational positions rather than essential qualities, these identities existing in a constantly shifting network.

Linda Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, City University of New York Graduate Centre.

The creation of modern identity politics has seen a revival of interest in positionality, both now seen as emergent from historical experience yet still retaining an inherently political ability to take gender as a point of departure.  Gender thus is not natural, biological, universal, ahistorical or even essential yet remains still relevant because it’s the position from which politically to act.  Alcoff’s concept was that the existing construct of "woman" is defined not by a particular set of attributes but by a position so the internal characteristics of the individual thus identified are not denoted so much as the external context within which the individual is situated; the position is always relative to the patriarchy.  By contrast, the positional definition renders identity relative to a constantly shifting context, the swirl of the objective economic, cultural, political and ideological objects and narratives.  In this analysis, the concept of positionality allows for a determinate though a fluidity of identity and feminist politics can emerge rather than being mediated through a set of defined attributes.  The implication of this for second wave feminism was that positionality existed to create a location for the construction of meaning, rather than echoing the earlier tools of feminism, used where meaning needed to be discovered.

Strumpet

Strumpet (pronounced struhm-pit)

A woman of loose virtue (archaic).

1300–1350: From the Middle English strumpet and its variations, strompet & strumpet (harlot; bold, lascivious woman) of uncertain origin.  Some etymologists suggest a connection with the Latin stuprata, the feminine past participle of stuprare (have illicit sexual relations with) from stupere, present active infinitive of stupeo, (violation) or stuprare (to violate) or the Late Latin stuprum, (genitive stuprī) (dishonor, disgrace, shame, violation, defilement, debauchery, lewdness).  The meanings in Latin and the word structure certainly appears compelling but there is no documentary evidence and others ponder a relationship with the Middle Dutch strompe (a stocking (as the verbal shorthand for a prostitute)) or strompen (to stride, to stalk (in the sense suggestive of the manner in which a prostitute might approach a customer).  Again, it’s entirely speculative and the spelling streppett (in same sense) was noted in the 1450s.  In the late eighteen century, strumpet came to be abbreviated as strum and also used as a verb, which meant lexicographers could amuse themselves with wording the juxtaposition of strum’s definitions, Francis Grose (circa 1730-1791) in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) settling on (1) to have carnal knowledge of a woman & (2) to play badly on the harpsichord or any other stringed instrument.  As a term in musical performance, strum is now merely descriptive.

Even before the twentieth century, among those seeking to disparage women (and there are usually a few), strumpet had fallen from favour and by the 1920s was thought archaic to the point where it was little used except as a device by authors of historical fiction.  Depending on the emphasis it was wished to impart, the preferred substitutes which ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years included tramp, harlot, hussy, jezebel (sometimes capitalized), jade, tart, slut, minx, wench, trollop, hooker, whore, bimbo, floozie (or floozy) and (less commonly) slattern skeezer & malkin.

There’s something about trollop which is hard to resist but it has fallen victim to modern standards and it now can’t be flung even at white, hetrosexual Christian males (a usually unprotected species) because of the historic association.  Again the origin is obscure with most etymologists concluding it was connected with the Middle English trollen (to go about, stroll, roll from side to side).  It was used as a synonym for strumpet but often with the particular connotation of some debasement of class or social standing (the the speculated link with trollen in the sense of “moving to the other (bad) side”) so a trollop was a “fallen woman”.  Otherwise it described (1) a woman of a vulgar and discourteous disposition or (2) to act in a sluggish or slovenly manner.  North of the border it tended to the neutral, in Scotland meaning to dangle soggily; become bedraggled while in an equestrian content it described a horse moving with a gait between a trot and a gallop (a canter).  For those still brave enough to dare, the present participle is trolloping and the past participle trolloped while the noun plural (the breed often operating in pars or a pack) is trollops.

Floozie (the alternative spellings floozy, floosy & floosie still seen although floogy is obsolete) was originally a corruption of flossy, fancy or frilly in the sense of “showy” and dates only from the turn of the twentieth century.  Although it was sometimes used to describe a prostitute or at least someone promiscuous, it was more often applied in the sense of an often gaudily or provocatively dressed temptress although the net seems to have been cast wide, disapproving mothers often describing as floozies friendly girls who just like to get to know young men.

Strum and trollop weren’t the only words in this vein to have more than one meaning.  Harlot was from the Middle English harlot, from Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (vagabond; tramp), of uncertain origin but probably from a Germanic source, either a derivation of harjaz (army; camp; warrior; military leader) or from a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow).  It was an exclusively derogatory and offensive form which meant (1) a female prostitute, (2) a woman thought promiscuous woman and (3) a churl; a common person (male or female), of low birth, especially who leading an unsavoury life or given to low conduct.

Lord Beaverbrook (1950), oil on canvas by Graham Sutherland (1903–1980).  It’s been interesting to note that as the years pass, Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) more and more resembles Beaverbrook.

Increasing sensitivity to the way language can reinforce the misogyny which has probably always characterized politics (in the West it’s now more of an undercurrent) means words like harlot which once added a colorful robustness to political rhetoric are now rarely heard.  One of the celebrated instances of use came in 1937 when Stanley Baldwin’s (1867–1947; leader of the UK’s Tory Party and thrice prime-minister 1923 to 1937) hold on the party leadership was threatened by Lord Rothermere (1868-1940) and Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964), two very rich newspaper proprietors (the sort of folk Mr Trump would now call the “fake news media”).  Whether he would prevail depended on his preferred candidate winning a by-election and three days prior to the poll, on 17 March 1931, Baldwin attacked the press barons in a public address:

“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense; they are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men.  What are their methods?  Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context and what the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

The harlot line overnight became a famous quotation and in one of the ironies of history, Baldwin borrowed it from his cousin, the writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) who had used it during a discussion with the same Lord Beaverbrook.  Like a good many (including his biographer AJP Taylor (1906-1990) who should have known better), Kipling had been attracted by Beaverbrook’s energy and charm but found the inconsistency of his newspapers puzzling, finally asking him to explain his strategy.  He replied “What I want is power. Kiss ‘em one day and kick ‘em the next’ and so on”.  “I see” replied Kipling, “Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  Baldwin received his cousin’s permission to recycle the phrase in public.

While not exactly respectable but having not descended to prostitution, there was also the hussy (the alternative spellings hussif, hussiv & even hussy all obsolete).  Hussy was a Middle English word from the earlier hussive & hussif, an unexceptional evolution of the Middle English houswyf (housewife) and the Modern English housewife is a restoration of the compound (which for centuries had been extinct) after its component parts had become unrecognisable through phonetic change.  The idea of hussy as a housewife or housekeeper is long obsolete (taking with it the related (and parallel) sense of “a case or bag for needles, thread etc” which as late as the eighteenth century was mentioned in judgements in English common law courts when discussing as woman’s paraphernalia).  It’s enduring use is to describe women of loose virtue but it can be used either in a derogatory or affectionate sense (something like a minx), the former seemingly often modified with the adjective “shameless”, probably to the point of becoming clichéd.

“An IMG Comrade, Subverts, Perverts & Extroverts: A Brief Pull-Out Guide”, The Oxford Strumpet, 10 October 1975.   

Reflecting the left’s shift in emphasis as the process of decolonization unfolded and various civil rights movements gained critical mass in sections of white society, anti-racist activism became a core issue for collectives such as the International Marxist Group.  Self-described as “the British section of the Fourth International”, by the 1970s their political position was explicitly anti-colonial, anti-racist, and trans-national, expressed as: “We believe that the fight for socialism necessitates the abolition of all forms of oppression, class, racial, sexual and imperialist, and the construction of socialism on a world wide scale”.  Not everything published in The Oxford Strumpet was in the (evolved) tradition of the Fourth International and it promoted a wide range of leftist and progressive student movements.

Lindsay Lohan in rather fetching, strumpet-red underwear.

The Oxford Strumpet was an alternative left newspaper published within the University of Oxford and sold locally.  It had a focus on university politics and events but also included comment and analysis of national and international politics.  With a typically undergraduate sense of humor, the name was chosen to (1) convey something of the anti-establishment editorial attitude and (2) allude to the color red, long identified with the left (the red-blue thing in recent US politics is a historical accident which dates from a choice by the directors of the coverage of election results on color television broadcasts).  However, by 1975, feminist criticism of the use of "Strumpet" persuaded the editors to change the name to "Red Herring" and edition 130 was the final Strumpet.  Red Herring did not survive the decline of the left after the demise of the Soviet Union and was unrelated to the Red Herring media company which during the turn-of-the-century dot-com era published both print and digital editions of a tech-oriented magazine.  Red Herring still operates as a player in the technology news business and also hosts events, its business model the creation of “top 100” lists which can be awarded to individuals or representatives of companies who have paid the fee to attend.  Before it changed ownership and switched its focus exclusively to the tech ecosystem, Red Herring magazine had circulated within the venture capital community and the name had been a playful in-joke, a “red herring” being bankers slang for a prospectus issued with IPO (initial public offering) stock offers.

Soccer

Soccer (pronounced sok-er)

(1) A form of 11-a-side football played between two teams, in which the spherical ball may be advanced by kicking or by bouncing it off any part of the body (excluding the arms and hands unless re-starting the game by throwing in the ball from the sideline), the object being to score points by putting the ball in the opponent’s goal-net. The special position of goalkeeper may, within certain positional limitations, use their arms and hands to catch, carry, throw, or stop the ball.

(2) In the slang of Australian Rules Football (AFL, the old VFL), to kick the football directly off the ground, without use of the hands.

1888 A coining in British English, a colloquial abbreviation for association football, the construct being (As)soc(iation football) + -er.  The other forms were socker (1885) & socca (1889), the first known instance of "soccer" noted in 1888, the word coming into general use between 1890-1895 and it evolved from slang to a standard noun.  Soccer is a noun & verb and soccered & soccering are verbs.  The special use as a verb happens in Australian Rules Football and describes a player kicking the football directly off the ground, without the use of the hands.

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  Usually, the –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun and if added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.  However, there was also the special case of the “slang –er”, which etymologists sometimes call the “Oxford –er” because of the association (though not the origin) of the practice with the university in the nineteenth century.  The slang –er was used as a suffix to make jocular or convenient formations from common or proper names and appears to first have been English schoolboy use in the 1860s before entering the vernacular via its introduction to Oxford University slang from Rugby School, the Oxford English Dictionary even identifying the first documented instance “at University College, in Michaelmas Term, 1875".  The first coining was probably rugger (the game of Rugby) and constructs on the same model include brekker (breakfast), fresher (freshman), leccer (lecture), footer (football), fiver (five-pound note) and tenner (ten-shilling note).  The practice continued in the twentieth century and some coinings endured in the plural such as preggers (pregnant), bonkers (behaving as if bonked on the head) and starkers (stark naked).  Given it was originally the work of schoolboys, some have expressed surprise they didn’t instead render a verbal shorthand of “Association Football” in a form using “ass” (although at Oxford it briefly was assoccer before quickly being truncated).

Football-type games have been documented for centuries and it seems likely something similar was probably played in prehistoric times on occasions when young people congregated but the point of Association Football was that in 1863 it codified a set of rules, allowing structured competitions to be formed.  Prior to that, clubs abd schools played many variations of the game and this caused difficulties when the young men met at university, finding no general agreement on the rules.  The University of Cambridge did create their own rule book but it was but one of many and it was this proliferation which lead to the formation of the association, the discussions eventually producing not only the rules of what would emerge as modern football (soccer) but also the schism which saw some schools and clubs go in another direction and play what became known first as rugby football and later simply rugby.  Later still, when it suffered its own schism and begat rugby league, the name “rugby union” emerged although “rugby” remains most common.

To most in the US, the word "football" means something different than in much of the world so it's not clear what Lindsay Lohan thought she was being invited to when Carolyn Radford (b 1982; Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mansfield Town Stags) extended the offer of a seat at a match.  It’s not known if Ms Lohan did manage to catch a game but the promise of her presence clearly inspired the players because the Stags, then languishing in the non-League (fifth level) division of the English football league system, in 2024 gained promotion to League One (the old third division).  

In most parts of the world, the game is known as football but in places where other forms of (closely or vaguely) similar ball sports had become popular and referred to either officially or casually as “football”, soccer was adopted as the preferred term for what was, at the elite level, a minority sport.  Thus in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Ireland the game came to be called soccer although, in New Zealand, beginning in the late twentieth century, “football” increasingly supplanted “soccer”, the assumption being that because the volume of overseas matches televised (with the native commentary) vastly exceeded that of local content, the word became accepted.  Additionally, because the rugby codes (historically rugby union and increasingly after the 1980s rugby league so dominated) and the common slang was “footie” rather than “football”, the latter in that sense never achieved the critical mass needed to entrench use.

It was different in Australia because of Australian Football which, while occasionally called “Aussie Rules” has long been commonly known as football (or footie) so the round-ball game became soccer and the name Socceroo (the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roo)) was adopted as the official name for the national team.  In Japan, where the dominant influence on the language in the twentieth century was the US, the most common form is サッカー(sakkā, from soccer).  In the US, a hybrid (with a few unique innovations) of rugby and association football emerged and was soon more popular than either.  The early name was “gridiron football” but in the pragmatic American way, that quickly became simply “football” although curiously, “gridiron” has survived among many foreign audiences.  Realizing the linguistic batter was lost, the United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, in 1945 changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association before deciding the advantages of product differentiation should be pursued, deleting entirely any use of “football”.  The other great US contribution to the language was the “soccer mom”, an encapsulation of a particular (usually white), middle-class demographic describing (1) a woman who often drives her school-age children to sporting activities and (2) in a quasi-disparaging sense, a white, middle-class woman who obsessively talks of her children’s successes and achievements.  There are derivative terms such as soccer dad & ballet dad but they’ve never achieved the same cultural traction.

The well connected Sepp Blatter (b 1936; President of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 1998-2015).

(1) With Silvio Berlusconi (b 1936; thrice Italian prime minister 1994-2011).

(2) With Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001).

(3) With Elizabeth II; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022).

(4) With the FIFA World Cup trophy (which hasn’t actually been a cup since 1974).

(5) With Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999).

(6) With Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1946; thrice Israeli prime-minister 1996-2022).

(7) With David Cameron (b 1966; UK prime-minister 2010-2016).

(8) With Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani (b 1988; chief of Qatar's 2022 World Cup Bid).

(9) With Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955, French president 2007-2012).

(10) With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; Turkish president or prime-minister since 2003).

(11) With Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).

(12) With Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & Jun-Sep 2013).

Unlike some sports where the influence of technology or improvements in this and that are so significant it verges on impossible usefully to compare players from different eras, probably few would disagree that among sports administrators, Sepp Blatter has achieved some of the most extraordinary things.

In office as president of FIFA between 1998-2015, Blatter devoted much of his time (and FIFA’s money) to building his power base among football’s influential in Asia and Africa.  This attracted some comment from the football community in places like Europe and South America but it was in May 2015 he really made the headlines when a joint operation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Swiss investigators staged a raid on the Zürich hotel where FIFA were about to conduct their annual congress.  Seven FIFA executives were arrested and charged with racketeering & money laundering while a further seven officials and sports-marketing figures were indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for offenses reaching back more than two decades.  Shortly afterwards, the DoJ revealed four other executives and two companies had already pleaded guilty in the international probe, which involved the payment of some US$150 million in what were alleged to be bribes and kickbacks.  Despite it all, two days after the arrests, Blatter was re-elected president by nearly a two-thirds majority of the 209-member FIFA voting body.  Contrary to the president’s expectations, a public outcry ensued which in just a few days escalated so rapidly that Blatter called for a special session of the FIFA congress to be convened, vowing to resign once a successor had been elected.  In October 2015, following the announcements of further investigations of Blatter’s conduct, FIFA’s ethics committee suspended him from the organization for 90 days, appointing an acting president.

Two months later Blatter was found guilty of ethics violations and barred from football-related activities for eight years.  Some of the charges were pursuant to a US$2 million payment Blatter made in 2011 to Michel Platini (b 1955; president of Union des associations européennes de football (UEFA, the peak body controlling football in Europe) 2007-2015), the supporting documentation associated with the payment said to be about as extensive as that attached to the receipt in the petty-cash tin for a packet of biscuits.  Platini had long been assumed to be Blatter’s successor.  Blatter appealed the decision and in February 2016 FIFA’s appeals committee reduced the ban to six years, a ruling upheld by the Tribunal arbitral du sport (Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)) in December.  Under new FIFA President Gianni Infantino (b 1970; FIFA president since 2016), further investigations were undertaken and in December 2020, FIFA filed a criminal complaint against Blatter relating to his role in the FIFA Museum project before, in March 2021, citing financial wrongdoing in the payment of huge “bonuses”, imposing a fine of just over US$1 million and extending his ban from football for a further six years, beginning as soon as the original ban expired in October 2022.  That was bad enough but his life appeared to be getting worse when, in November 2021, Swiss authorities brought to trial fraud charges associated with the falsification of documents relating to the mysterious payments to Platini.  Some eight months later, Blatter and Platini were cleared of all charges.  Sepp Blatter has achieved extraordinary things.

Afterburner

Afterburner (pronounced af-ter-bur-ner)

(1) In aviation, a device placed within, or attached to the exit of, a jet-engine exhaust pipe to produce afterburning.

(2) In engineering, a device in the exhaust system of an internal-combustion engine for removing or rendering harmless potentially dangerous components in the exhaust gases.

1948: A compound word, the construct being after + burn +-er.  The verb after developed from its use as an adverb and preposition, from the Middle English after-, efter- & æfter-, from the Old English æfter- (after, behind, against; later in time; in pursuit, following with intent to overtake), the idea being off + -ter (a comparative suffix), the original formation meant "more away, farther off”.  It was cognate with the Scots efter-, the Old Frisian & West Frisian efter-, the Dutch achter-, the German after-, the Swedish efter, the Old Norse eptir, the Old High German aftar, the Gothic aftra (behind), the Greek apotero (farther off) and the Old Persian apataram (further).  From circa 1300 it assumed the meaning "in imitation of; in the style of" while, as a conjunction in the sense of "subsequent to the time that" the use was inherited from the late Old English.  The phrase “after hours” (hours after regular working hours) dates from 1814 although the exact purpose has always proved elusive but it’s assumed by most to relate to retail commerce rather than terms of employment.  Afterwit was from circa 1500 and deconstructs literally as "wisdom that comes too late" but is familiar feeling of one for whom a perfect piece of repartee comes to mind only after the moment has passed; it’s perhaps surprising afterwit didn’t endure in the language.  The phrase “after you” an element in etiquette meaning “yielding precedence to another” dates from 1650.

Burn was from the Middle English bernen & birnen, from the Old English birnan (to burn), a metathesis from the Proto-West Germanic brinnan, from the Proto-Germanic brinnaną (to burn), from the primitive Indo-European bhrenw- and related to the Middle Irish brennim (drink up) & bruinnim (bubble up), the present stem from bhrewh- & bhru- (linked to the Middle Irish bréo (flame), the Albanian burth, the Cyclamen hederifolium (mouth burning) and the Sanskrit भुरति (bhurati) (moves quickly, twitches, fidgets).  The verb was from the early twelfth century brennen (be on fire, be consumed by fire; be inflamed with passion or desire, be ardent; destroy (something) with fire, expose to the action of fire, roast, broil, toast; burn (something) in cooking) which when applied to objects imparted the sense of “to shine, glitter, sparkle, glow like fire”, the form from both the Old Norse brenna (to burn, light) an two originally distinct Old English verbs: the transitive bærnan (to kindle) and the intransitive beornan (be on fire).  All of these were from the Proto-Germanic brennanan (causative brannjanan), source also of the Middle Dutch bernen, the Dutch branden, the Old High German brinnan, the German brennen, the Gothic brannjan (to set on fire); the ultimate etymology uncertain.  The noun burn dates from circa 1300 in the sense of "act or operation of burning” and was from the Old English bryne, the etymology identical to the verb and prior to the mid-sixteenth century, the usual spelling was brenne.

The Figurative use of burn (of passion, conflict etc.) was in Old English and survives to this day while the literal sense of "be hot, radiate heat" was from the later thirteenth century, the meaning "produce a burning sensation, sting" from a hundred years later.  A further figurative sense, that of "being cheated, swindled or victimized" emerged in the 1650s on the notion that whatever one lost “may as well have been burned”.  The slang use of burned from the late eighteenth century meaning "infected with venereal disease" referred to the sensation which was one of the symptoms.  To “burn one's bridges (behind one)” meant "behave so as to destroy any chance of returning to a status quo" and was used in the late nineteenth century, perhaps because of some of the reckless cavalry operations documented during the US Civil War although it’s a variation on the “burn the boats” (so one’s soldiers have no alternative but to fight, there being no chance of escape) approach known since Antiquity.  To have money “burn a hole in (one's) pocket” was a critique from the 1850s of those with an irresistible propensity to spend whatever money was in one’s possession; the modern expression of economists is of “expenditure rising to meet income”.  The meaning "mark or injury made by burning" is from 1520s while “slow burn” dates from 1938 and refers to a technique in acting.

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  The –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun.  If added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.

The afterburner

Attracted by theoretical work which hinted at improved thrust, Rolls-Royce began ground tests on one of their early jet engines in 1944 although the war ended before the technology was ready for production.  By the early 1950s, most advanced jet fighters had adopted afterburners and they continue generally to be used mostly in military aircraft although a few civilian applications have existed including the now defunct Tupolev Tu-144 and Concorde.

An afterburner’s purpose is to provide an increase in thrust, usually for supersonic flight, takeoff and in combat. Afterburning is achieved by injecting additional fuel downstream of the turbine and produces significantly increased thrust; the trade-off being very high fuel consumption and inefficiency, though this is considered acceptable for the short periods during which it is usually used.  The quantum of a jet-engine’s thrust is determined by the general principle of mass flow rate and thrust depends on two things: the velocity of the exhaust gas and the mass of that gas. A jet engine can produce more thrust by either accelerating the gas to a higher velocity or by having a greater mass of gas exit the engine.  Designing a basic turbojet engine around the second principle produces the turbofan engine, which creates slower gas but more of it. Turbofans are highly fuel efficient and can deliver high thrust for long periods, but the design trade-off is a large size relative to the power output. To generate increased power with a more compact engine for short periods, an engine requires an afterburner. The afterburner increases thrust primarily by accelerating the exhaust gas to a higher velocity.

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird afterburning for additional thrust during take-off (left) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark performing a dump-and-burn (right).

What many people think of as afterburners are actually displays of dump-and-burn at air shows, a procedure where dumped fuel is intentionally ignited using the plane's afterburner. A spectacular flame combined with high speed makes this an interesting sight but it’s just for entertainment.  Fuel dumping is used to reduce the mass of an aircraft about to undertake emergency landings and thus, for other than for safety reasons, dump and burn has no practical use.  In the slang of pilots who flew the early generation of fighters with afterburners the phrase was "lit up the burners" while the dump and burn is also called a "torching" or a "zippo".

Lighting up the burners: Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons (2013).