Fissiparous

Fissiparous (pronounced fi-sip-er-uhs)

(1) In biology, reproducing or propagating by fission; propagated by spontaneous fission or self-division (that form of asexual generation in which the parent divides; each part becoming a new individual).

(2) Having a tendency to divide into groups or factions; factious, tending to break into pieces

1825-1835: An adaptation of the New Latin fissiparus, the construct being fissi, from fissus (split, cleft) + parous, from pariō (I bring forth) by mistaken analogy with vīviparus.  Vīviparus was a 1640s adoption from the Late Latin viviparus (bringing forth alive), the construct being vivus (alive, living), from the primitive Indo-European root gwei- (to live) + parire (bring forth, bear) from the primitive Indo-European root pere- (to produce, bring forth).  Outside of physics and biology, fissiparous is rare, the preferred synonyms in general use being  divisive, fractious, fragmenting & unstable; when used it’s often as the collocation "fissiparous tendencies".  Fissiparous & fissipalmate are adjectives, fissiparousness, fissiparity & fissiparism are nouns and fissiparously is an adverb; the most common noun plural is fissiparism.

Outside of the technical use (mostly in physics and biology), fissiparous is used in political science or the study or organizational behavior when discussing the institutions which either inherently posses or are prone to developing factions.  While it’s true that not very helpful in that any institution with more than one member could presumably be vulnerable, the view is that the institutions most at risk are those where ideological differences exist either in objective or the means by which it may be achieved.  However, even if no disputes of this kind may exist, of achieving fissiparousness may manifest simply because of a pursuit for organizational power or authority.  The risk to therefore thought to be greatest in the institutions which (1) exist to pursue some ideological purpose, the parameters of which are variable and (2) the rewards of power are greatest.  That’s why fissiparousness is often displayed in political parties and religions.

Fissiparousness is much associated with the modern Church of England, factions of which some time ago mostly abandoned any interest in God or the message of Christ for the more important matters of championing or decrying gay clergy, getting women into or keeping them out of the priesthood, and talking to or ignoring Rome.  Among those resistant to anything beyond the medieval, there's even an institutional forum, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) which holds meetings at which there is much intrigue and plotting; it's sort of an anti-Lambeth Conference though the cucumber sandwiches are said to be much the same.  Under the stresses inherent in the late twentieth-century, fissiparousness saw the Anglicans coalesce into three factions, the low & lazy, the broad & hazy and the high & crazy.

The Low & Lazy

Like the high churchers, the low lot still believe in God but, their time not absorbed plotting and scheming or running campaigns to stamp out gay clergy and opposing the ordination of women, they actually have time to pray, which they do, often.  The evangelical types come from among the low and don’t approve of fancy rituals, Romish ways or anything smelling of popery.  Instead, they like services where there’s clapping, dancing and what sounds like country & western music with sermons telling them it’s Godly to buy things like big TVs and surf-skis.

The Broad & Hazy

The broad church is more a club than a church, something like the Tory Party at prayer.  The parishioners will choose the church they (occasionally) attend on the same basis as their golf club, driving miles if need be to find a congregation acceptably free of racial and cultural DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).  They’re interested not at all in theology or anything too abstract so sermons need to be brief and sufficiently vague to please the bourgeoisie.  The broad church stands for most things in general and nothing in particular; finding most disputes in Anglicanism baffling, they just can't see what all the fuss is about.

The High & Crazy

The high church has clergy who love dressing up like the Spice Girls, burning incense and chanting the medieval liturgy in Latin.  They disapprove of about everything that’s happened since the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and believe there’d be less sin were there still burnings at the stake.  Most high church clergy wish Pius IX (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) still sat on the throne of Saint Peter and some act as though he does.

Of human nature

Cady's Map by Janis Ian.

The human race does seem inherently fissiparousness and wherever cultures have formed, history suggests divisions will form and folk will tend to coalesce (or be allocated or otherwise forced) into factions.  Usually, this is attributed to some defined or discernible difference (ethnicity, skin color, language, tribal affiliation, religion et al) but even among homogeneous groups, it's rare to identify one without sub-groups.  It does seem human nature and has long since become institutionalized and labelling theory practitioners can probably now build minor academic careers just by tracking the segregation as it evolves (boomers, gen-X, millennials etc).  The faction names of the cliques at North Shore High School (Mean Girls, Paramount Pictures 2004)) were Actual Human Beings, Anti-Plastics, The Art Freaks, Asexual Band Geeks, Asian Nerds, Burnouts, Cheerleaders, Cool Asians, Desperate Wannabes, Freshmen, Girls Who Eat Their Feelings, J.V. Cheerleaders, J.V. Jocks, Junior Plastics, Preps, ROTC Guys, Sexually Active Band Geeks, The Plastics, Unfriendly Black Hotties, Unnamed Girls Who Don't Eat Anything, and Varsity Jocks.  Given the way sensitivities have evolved, it’s predictable some of those names wouldn’t today be used; the factions' membership rosters would be much the same but some terms are now proscribed in this context, the threshold test for racism now its mere mention, racialism banished to places like epidemiological research papers tracking the distribution of morbidity. 

Rusticate

Rusticate (pronounced ruhs-ti-keyt)

(1) To go to the country; to stay or sojourn in the country; to banish or retire to the country.

(2) To make rustic, as persons or manners; to make or become rustic in style, behaviour etc.

(3) In architecture, to finish an exterior wall with large blocks of masonry that are separated by deep joints and decorated with a bold, usually textured, design.

(4) Temporarily (as a punishment for a transgression not sufficiently serious to warrand permanent exclusion) to send down a student from a university (historic UK use).

(5) By extension, to sack a politician from office because of misbehavior or scandal (not used in cases of simple ineptitude or incompetence).

1650–1660: From the Latin rūsticātus, past participle of rūsticārī (to live in the country), the construct being rūstic(us) (rustic + -ātus).  The ultimate root was rūs (the country) which, like rūsticus was from the Proto-Italic rowestikos. The Classical Latin suffix –ātus (feminine -āta, neuter -ātum) was from the Proto-Italic -ātos, from the primitive Indo-European -ehtos and is listed by scholars as a "pseudo-participle" possibly related to -tus, though similar formations in other Indo-European languages indicate it was distinct from it by Indo-European times.  The suffix –ate was used to form adjectives from nouns indicating the possession of a thing or a quality and was one of Latin’s perfect passive participle suffixes of first conjugation verbs (-ātus, -āta & -ātum) which, in Middle English was written -at.  Rusticate is a verb, rusticator & rustication are nouns and rusticated & rusticating are adjectives & verbs; the usual noun plural is rusticators.

Frequently rusticated by inclination (and sometimes by circumstances of his own making): Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between rustications) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022, left) and Lindsay Lohan, temporarily rusticating in Georgia Rule (2007) (right).

Tampion

Tampion (pronounced tam-pee-uhn)

(1) In ordnance, a wooden plug, or a metal or canvas cover for the muzzle of a gun, a cannon or other piece of ordnance when not in use; a stopper; a bung.

(2) In music, a plug for the upper end of an organ pipe.

(3) An obsolete form of tampon (a plug of absorbent material inserted into a body cavity or wound to absorb fluid).

1425-1475: From the Late Middle English tampyon, a variant of the fourteenth century Middle French tampon & tampion (piece of folded cloth used to stop a hole), a nasalized variant of Old French tapon (tape plug), a diminutive or augmented form of the Old French tape (plug, bung, tap), from the Frankish tappo (stopper, plug), from the Proto-Germanic tappô (plug, tap).  It was cognate with the Old High German zapfo (stopper) and the Old English tæppa (stopper).  The alternative forms were tampeon and tompion.  The use to describe a "canvas or wooden plug futted to the muzzle of a gun to prevent the intrusion of rain or seawater" entered military use in the 1620s.  Tampion is a noun and tampioned an adjective; the noun plural is tampions.

The verb tamp (to fill a hole containing an explosive with dirt or clay before blasting) dates from 1819 and appears to have begun as workmen's slang, possibly as a back-formation from tampion, that word being mistaken as a present participle (tamping).  The noun tamper emerged circa 1865 in the sense of "one who or that which tamps" and was the agent noun from the verb.  In the world of explosive blasting, tamp is still used in the sense of "to plug up a hole with clay, earth, dry sand, sod, or other material, as a prelude to detonation" and in civil engineering generally means (1) to drive in or pack down by frequent gentle strokes & (2) as "tamp the soil" so to render a smooth surface.

Royal Marines fitting tampions to the fourteen inch guns of the battleship HMS Howe.  When fitted, a gun was said to be "tampioned", the word also once common in military medicine when a plug of absorbent material had been inserted into a body cavity or wound to absorb fluid.

Tachyon

Tachyon (pronounced tak-ee-on)

In theoretical physics, a hypothetical elementary particle capable of travelling faster than the speed of light

1967: The construct was tachy + on, a hypothetical Ancient Greek etymon derived from ταχυόν (takhuón) (a quick thing), from ταχύς (takhús) (swift, rapid).  The on suffix is used in physics to form nouns denoting subatomic particles (eg proton), quanta (eg photon), molecular units (eg codon), or substances (eg interferon). Tachyon is a noun and tachyonic is an adjective (the more attractive adjectival form in French is tachyonique); the noun plural is tachyons.

The universe’s universal speed limit

In the literature, the earliest reference to speculative discussions about faster-than-light particles appears to be work published in 1904 by German theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951), others suggesting the possibility in 1962 used the term meta-particle.  In 1967, US physicist Gerald Feinberg (1933–1992) coined the word tachyon in a paper titled Possibility of Faster-Than-Light Particles, based on his study of how such particles would behave according to special relativity.

Tachyons probably can’t exist because they would conflict with many known laws of physics and speculative experiments have been designed to demonstrate the logical paradoxes their existence would create.  Despite this theoretical proof of their impossibility, experiments have been performed to look for them, but no evidence has been found.  They can be imagined because it’s a variation of the visual effect of watching an airplane travelling faster than the speed of sound.  There, the airplane is seen before being heard.  Because a tachyon must always be faster than light, it wouldn’t be possible to see it coming and after it passed, the observer would see two images of it, appearing and departing.  The meta-implication, were faster-than-light travel possible for some things or layers, is the universe being a space in which, at least in part, everything is happening at the same time.

The speed limit ultimately is always C.

However, just because tachyons can't exist hasn't stopped physicists pondering the possibilities offered by tachyonic devices.  The concept of the tachyonic antitelephone was in 1969 proposed by US physicist Gregory Benford (b 1941), his idea being that if a tachyon could be sent back in time, it could be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light, the hypothetical device thus able to send information back in time.  That of course would have the potential for both good and evil but would anyway violate the law of causality, as effect would occur before cause.

Elegiac

Elegiac (pronounced el-i-jahy-uhk or el-i-jahy-ak or ih-lee-jee-ak)

(1) Used in, suitable for, or resembling an elegy.

(2) Expressing sorrow or lamentation.

(3) In classical prosody, a technical classification noting a distich or couplet the first line of which is a dactylic hexameter and the second a pentameter, or a verse differing from the hexameter by suppression of the arsis or metrically unaccented part of the third and the sixth foot.

(4) An elegiac or distich verse.

(5) A poem constructed in such distichs or verses.

1575-1585: From the Middle French élégiaque, from the Latin elegīacus (poem or song of lament) and the Ancient Greek ἐλεγειακός (elegeiakós) (from the earlier eleigeia).  In ancient Greece the verse form was associated with laments and other mournful tunes.  The meaning “pertaining to an elegy or elegies” emerged in English in the 1640s while the loosened sense of “expressing sorrow, lamenting” dates from the turn of the nineteenth century.  The adjective elegiacal was first used in the 1540 as a technical term in the sense of “of meter”.  Elegiac & elegiacal are adjectives and elegiacally is an adverb.

A technical rule in poetry

In the study and practice of poetry, the elegiac is that said to be written in the form of elegiac couplets.  It’s a highly technical definition, understood and applied (critically rather than deconstructively) by a handful of specialists in the field: An elegiac couplet consists of one line of poetry in dactylic hexameter (a stressed (or long) syllable followed by two unstressed (or short) syllables, repeated five times to create a pentameter line) followed by a line in dactylic pentameter (a hexameter with six feet).  In Text thus constructed, purists insist, each foot needs to be a dactyl (a long and two short syllables), but, since antiquity, the classical meter has always tolerated the substitution of a spondee (two long syllables) in place of a dactyl in most places; technically the first four feet can either be dactyls or spondees.  Got it?

Among critics, the dactylic hexameter is regarded as the higher form because, since antiquity, it has been the structural framework of the epic whereas the elegiac form was thought both less demanding and more popular.

Yates & Auden.

In Memory of WB Yeats by WH Auden (1939)

 

He disappeared in the dead of winter:

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,

And snow disfigured the public statues;

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

 

Far from his illness

The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,

The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;

By mourning tongues

The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

 

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumours;

The provinces of his body revolted,

The squares of his mind were empty,

Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

 

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,

To find his happiness in another kind of wood

And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.

The words of a dead man

Are modified in the guts of the living.

 

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,

And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed

And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom

A few thousand will think of this day

As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

 

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

 

II

 

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

The parish of rich women, physical decay,

Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

 

III

 

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

 

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

 

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

 

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

 

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

 

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

 

Although written by WH Auden (1907-1973) as a tribute to WB Yeats (1865–1939), the work is also something of a reflection on the nature of poetry.

Bruit

Bruit (pronounced broot)

(1) To voice abroad; rumor (used chiefly in the passive and often followed by about); a rumor; a report (archaic).

(2) In medicine, any generally abnormal sound or murmur heard on auscultation.

(3) Noise; din; a loud outcry; a clamor (archaic).

1400-1450: The noun is derived from the late Middle English bruit (commotion, tumult; fame, renown (and also the collective noun for a group of barons)) and other forms, from the Anglo-Norman brut (commotion, tumult; noise, sounds; fame, renown; hearsay, rumour; (collective noun for a group of barons)) and the Old French bruit (commotion, tumult; noise, sounds; fame, renown; hearsay, rumour) (which survives in Modern French as bruit (noise; report, rumour)), a noun use of the past participle of bruire (to make a noise; to rattle; to roar; to rustle), from the Late Latin brugere, an alteration of the Latin rugīre (to roar), the present active infinitive of rugiō (to bray; to bellow, roar; to rumble), most likely from the primitive Indo-European hirewg- (to belch; to roar), possibly influenced by the Late Latin bragere (to bray).  The verb was derived from the noun.  The meaning "to report" emerged in the 1520s, extending to the sense of "rumor, tiding, fame, renown" by the mid sixteenth century.  The less common use meaning "noise, uproar, rumor" was derived from bruire (to make noise, roar).  The English word was cognate with the Italian bruito, the Medieval Latin brūgītus, the Catalan brogir (to roar) and the Old Occitan bruir & brugir (to roar).  The Late Latin brūgītus was another of those Medieval Latin inventions of uncertain origin though some suggest it was likely from the Vulgar Latin bragere (to yell) or the Latin rugīre (to roar).  Bruit is a noun & verb, bruitage is a noun (the agent noun brutier listed as archaic) and bruiting & bruited are verbs; no plural form of the noun can be said to be common but bruitages was probably historically the most frequently seen.  

For physicians only

The connection between surviving senses of bruit, (1) the softly-spoken rumour and (2) a sound from some internal organ is that the latter is so inaudible a physician usually needs a stethoscope for it to be heard.  In medicine, a bruit is an audible vascular sound associated with turbulent blood flow and although usually heard with the stethoscope, such sounds may occasionally also be palpated as a thrill.

The reason bruit has almost wholly disappeared from English except for its technical use in medicine (although the odd lawyer anxious to impress a probably linguistically jaded judge might include the odd "bruitated" in their pleas) is that, outside of that profession, few know what it means and there are a number of well-known and therefore better synonyms.  The following paragraph illustrates why bruit is best left to the physicians, this being unintelligible to almost any but them.

In the acute early phase there is vasodilation with the classical, full, bounding pulsation and arterial bruit.  Cranial and orbital bruits are vibrations resulting from turbulence in intracranial or extracranial vessels. Although usually systolic in timing, these bruits may extend into diastole or even be continuous. These sounds may originate within the cranium or be transmitted from arteries in the neck or, occasionally, from cardiac valvular lesions. The orbits provide relative "windows" for transmission of intracranial sounds, with minimal bony dissipation. Indication for cranial and orbital auscultation usually follows from historical physical examination or laboratory evidence of cranial—cervical disorders such as seizures, headaches, stroke syndromes, intracranial mass lesions, or carotid bruits.  Neck auscultation is commonly indicated for initial evaluation of stenotic or embolic cerebrovascular symptoms, or as part of a comprehensive physical examination in asymptomatic patients at risk for atherosclerosis. Cervical bruits and hums may arise from neck arteries or veins, and may be innocuous findings or indicate underlying pathology. Bruits arising in the carotid arteries are produced by intrinsic stenosis or, occasionally, with vascular occlusion from extrinsic compression. Depending on a variety of factors, these bruits may be systolic, primarily systolic with extension into diastole, or continuous. The cervical venous hum is auscultated over the internal jugular veins in many normal children. Commonly a continuous high-pitched sound, it is occasionally more prominent in diastole. It occurs more frequently on the right than on the left, and may be present bilaterally.  Supraclavicular bruits during systole are a frequent finding in normal children and in adults with subclavian or vertebral artery stenosis. Supraclavicular auscultation is usually initiated to evaluate vertebral artery occlusive symptoms, arm claudication, or "subclavian steal" in the adult with atherosclerosis.

Stop the noise, please consider the neighborhood.

Though in English bruit was banished to the physician's surgery, in French it endures (1) in the sense of "noise" as a synonym for boucan (informal) & bordel (vulgar) and (2) in the sense of rumor as a synonym for ouï-dire & rumeur.  Prefects of French regions will sometimes issue Arrêter le Bruit (Stop the Noise) ordinances restricting DIY (do it yourself) or gardening work carried out by individuals using tools or devices likely to cause inconvenience to the neighborhood due to of volume of noise (lawnmowers, motorized cultivators, chainsaws, drills, planers, saws etc).  Typically, orders restrict such activities to Monday-Friday: 08:30-12:00 & 13:30-19:30 and Saturdays:  09:00-12:00 & 15:00-19:00 with a total ban on Sundays and public holidays

Apse

Apse (pronounced aps)

(1) In architecture, a semicircular or polygonal termination or recess in a building, usually vaulted and used especially at the end of a choir in a church.

(2) The bishop's seat or throne in ancient churches.

(3) A reliquary (or case) in which the relics of saints were kept.

(4) In astronomy, an alternative name for an apsis (either of two points in an eccentric orbit, one (higher apsis) farthest from the centre of attraction, the other (lower apsis) nearest to the center of attraction); largely obsolete.

1815–1825; A variant of apsis & hapsis, from the Ancient Greek ἁψίς (hapsís) (arch, vault), from ἅπτω (háptō) (I bind, join) from haptein (to fasten).  The Ancient Greek ἁψίς (hapsís) (from the Ionic apsis) originally meant "a fastening, felloe of a wheel," from haptein (fasten together) which is of unknown origin. The original sense in Greek seems to have been the joining of the arcs to form a circle, especially in making a wheel.  As an architectural term, it’s attested in English (in the Latin form) as early as 1706. Apse is a noun, apsidal is an adjective and apsidally is an adverb; the noun plural is apses.  

A more familiar derivation of haptein was the noun synapse (junction between two nerve cells), an 1899 creation of medical Latin, from the Greek synapsis (conjunction), from or related to synaptein (to clasp, join together, tie or bind together, be connected with), the construct being syn- (together) + haptein (to fasten).  It was introduced by English physiologist Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), summarizing recent work by other neurologists, in an 1897 revision of Sir Michael Foster's (1836–1907) Textbook of Physiology; the form of the coinage suggested by the English classical scholar Arthur Woollgar Verral (1851-1912).

The cathedra (bishop's chair) of Rome, in the apse in the Basilica of St John Lateran, Rome.

Knocker

Knocker (pronounced nok-er)

(1) A person or thing that knocks.

(2) A sometimes ornamental hinged knob, bar, etc on (usually) a door, for use in knocking.

(3) In informal use, a persistent and carping critic; a faultfinder; nit-picker.

(4) In vulgar slang, a female breast (usually in the plural, for obvious reasons).

(5) In slang as “on the knocker”, canvassing or selling door-to-door (UK); promptly; on time; a correct (Australia & New Zealand).

(6) In slang, one who defaults on payment of a wager (an archaic North of England dialectical form).

(7) In slang, a person who is strikingly handsome or otherwise admirable; a stunner (an archaic variation of “a knock-out”).

(8) A dwarf, goblin, or sprite imagined to dwell in mines and to indicate the presence of ore by knocking (South Wales, archaic dialectical eighteenth & nineteenth century form).

(9) In the arcade game pinball, a mechanical device in a pinball table that produces a loud percussive noise.

(10) In entomology, a large cockroach, especially Blaberus giganteus, of semitropical America, which is able to produce a loud knocking sound.

(11) In geology, a large, boulder-shaped outcrop of bedrock in an otherwise low-lying landscape, chiefly associated with a mélange.

1375-1400: An agent noun from the Middle English knock, the construct being knock + -er.  Knock was from the Middle English knokken, from the Old English cnocian, ġecnocian & cnucian (to knock, pound on, beat), from the Proto-West Germanic knokōn, from the Proto-Germanic knukōną (to knock), a suffixed form of knu- & kneu- (to pound on, beat), from the primitive Indo-European gen- (to squeeze, pinch, kink, ball up, concentrate). The English word was cognate with the Middle High German knochen (to hit), the Old English cnuian & cnuwian (to pound, knock) and the Old Norse knoka.  It was related to the Danish knuge and the Swedish knocka (to hug).  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.  It added to a noun it denoted an occupation.  The sense of "door banger" is from the 1590s although the precise use in architecture of a "metal device fixed to the outside of a door for banging to give notice when someone desires admission" seems not to have been formalised until 1794.  The use to refer to breasts wasn’t noted until 1941.

Knocker-upper using bamboo knocker, circa 1900.

Mentioned in Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) Great Expectations (1860-1861), the knocker-upper (or knock-up) was an occupation created by the demands of the industrial revolution in late eighteenth century which demanded an often newly-urbanized workforce to appear in factories on time for shifts, the punctuality important because of the need to synchronize the attendance of labour to machines.  At the time, alarm clocks were neither cheap nor generally available but the role persisted in some parts of northern England, well into the twentieth century, long after electricity and alarm clocks became ubiquitous, the knocker-uppers sometime on the payroll of mill or factory owners.  The role was sometimes combined with employment by local authorities, the knocker-upper paid while on his “waking-up” rounds manually to extinguish the street-lamps.

Bronze door knockers from earlier centuries.

Knocker-upper Mary Smith using peas-shooter, London, circa 1930.

The tool used depended on the need.  Knocker-uppers tended to use a short, hardwood stick to bang on doors and a lighter one, often made of bamboo to tap on windows, the latter in some towns long enough to reach the upper stories although there are photographs of pea-shooters being used in London, apparently a dried pea projective the only practical way to reach the third floor.  The nature of service was customised according to need.  In places where shifts were invariable, the knocker-upper tended to work from a list which only occasionally changed whereas in areas where industries ran multiple shifts and an employee’s start and finish times could change from day to day, slate boards were often attached to the wall next to the door with the desired hour nominated, these known as "knocky-up boards" or "wake-up slates".

When door knockers go rogue.

It's not clear if the rogue door-knocker was a  schizophrenic Freemason but in 2011 Ms Lohan had been granted a two-year restraining order against alleged stalker David Cocordan, the order issued some days after she filed complaint with police who, after investigation by their Threat Management Department, advised the court Mr Cocordan (who at the time had been using at least five aliases) “suffered from schizophrenia”, was “off his medication” and had a "significant psychiatric history of acting on his delusional beliefs.”  That was worrying enough but Ms Lohan may have revealed her real concerns in an earlier post on twitter in which she included a picture of David Cocordan, claiming he was "the freemason stalker that has been threatening to kill me- while he is TRESPASSING!"  Being stalked by a schizophrenic is bad enough but the thought of being hunted by a schizophrenic Freemason is truly frightening.  Apparently an unexplored matter in the annals of psychiatry, it seems the question of just how schizophrenia might particularly manifest in Freemasons awaits research so there may be a Ph.D there for someone.

Equipoise

Equipoise (pronounced ee-kwuh-poiz or ek-wuh-poiz)

(1) An equal distribution of weight; even balance; equilibrium; The relation of two weights or forces which balance each other; equilibrium; equiponderance.

(2) An alternative name for a counterpoise in certain contexts, now rarely seen outside of literary and poetic use.

(3) In medical research, as clinical equipoise, or the principle of equipoise, a term to describe certain aspects of the ethical basis for clinical trials.

(4) In commercial pharmacy, the trademark for Hydroxyzine, an antihistamine and Boldenone Undecylenate, an anabolic steroid, once prescribed for human use, now restricted to veterinary applications, mostly equine.

(5) Of or pertaining to equilibrioception, the state of being balanced or in equilibrium.

1625–1635: An English coining which borrowed from both Latin and French, following the mid sixteenth century phrase "equal poise", the construct being equi + poise.  The prefix equi (which existed also as equ if preceding a vowel), was a word-forming element meaning "equal” from the Latin aequi, a combining form of aequus (equal, even).  Poise was from the Anglo-Norman poise (measure of weight), from the Anglo-Norman pois, from the Middle French pois (weight).

Clinical Equipoise

The term clinical equipoise, (also known within the medical research community as the principle of equipoise), was used first in 1987 by Benjamin Freedman (1951-1997), professor of medicine in the Biomedical Ethics Unit at McGill University, Montreal.  It provides a construct for the ethical framework of medical research involving the assignment of patients to different treatment streams in clinical trials.  An ethical dilemma exists in clinical trials if a researcher has cause to believe the treatment in one stream of a trial is significantly out-performing others.  Although it’s something of a deliberate scientific fiction, trials should be designed on the basis of a null hypothesis; that there should exist no evidence beyond the indicative that the intervention being trialed will result in better results than existing treatments or no treatment at all.  As a trial proceeds, findings may provide sufficient evidence to convince the investigator of the intervention’s efficacy and once a certain threshold of evidence is reached, uncertainty no longer exists, thereby creating an ethical imperative for the investigator to provide the superior intervention to all participants.  Being a thing applied to clinical work, it’s therefore not an abstract theory but, given the size, duration and complexity of many trials, it can be difficult to define exactly, or even vaguely, when the threshold has been reached.

Equipoise is one of the brand-names used for boldenone undecylenate (also as boldenone undecenoate.  It is an androgen and anabolic steroid (AAS) medication intended for use in in veterinary medicine (predominately equine) but in the 1970s it began to be used by humans, usually to enhance physical characteristics.  It remains available for veterinary use where it highly regarded but in most markets it's a controlled drug and use by humans is via the illicit market.  

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.