Shampoo

Shampoo (pronounced sham-poo)

(1) To wash the head or hair, especially with a cleaning preparation that does not leave a soap film.

(2) To clean rugs, upholstery, or the like with a special preparation.

(3) To massage (archaic); originally a traditional Indian and Persian body massage given after pouring warm water over the body and rubbing it with extracts from herbs.

(4) A (usually liquid or cream) preparation used for shampooing, especially one that does not leave a soap film.

1762: From the Hindi चाँपो (cā̃po), imperative form of चाँपना (cā̃pnā) (to press, knead), from the Sanskrit root चपयति (capayati) (to pound, knead or smooth).  Under the Raj, the original anglicized form was champo (later champoo) from the Hindi chāmpo (to massage), an inflected form of chāmpnā (to knead; literally “to press”) itself derived from the Sanskrit root चपति (chapati or capayati), which meant “to press, knead, or soothe”.  Under the Raj, the word the word initially referred to any type of pressing, kneading, or soothing with the definition extended to mean “wash the hair” by 1860.  Although people had for centuries been using a variety of soapy preparations, it was in 1954 that the first packaged products (initially for domestic rather than commercial use) called “carpet shampoo” appeared.  Shampoo is a verb or a noun, shampooer is a noun and the other verbs (used with object) are shampooed & shampooing; the accepted adjective is shampooed but the inventive shampooish has been noted.

Cultures since antiquity have made shampoo using mixtures of herbs and extracts from vegetation, the mix dictated by what was available for harvest in the local area or through trade and in India, a favorite formula was that concocted by boiling an extract of the fruit of the Sapindus, mixed with fragrant herbs.  Sapindus is a tree which grows across the Indian sub-continent and under the Raj came to be known as the soapberry or soapnut, the extract of which when mixed with water created a soap-like lather know as phenaka.  Widely used to wash the hair and mixed with a variety of herbs which lent both fragrance and color, it was this which traders and colonial officials brought back to Europe where the idea evolved into packaged  "champoo" although prior to that, "shampooing" centres were opened although these focused on shampoo in the sense of "massage", conducted in conjunction with "vapor baths", based on the idea popular at the time that breathing in certain preparations was most efficacious in the treatment of many ailments.  The word "champoo" didn't long endure and by the early twentieth century, "shampoo" was the accepted spelling, the early shampoos little more than mild, liquid detergents but by the 1930s, synthetic surfactants had begun to replace the soap component.  Many claims are made for modern shampoos and conditioners but there are hairdressers who claim nothing is as good for achieving shiny, bouncy hair than pure aloe vera gel, squeezed straight from a freshly-cut leaf; some use it as a substitute for conditioner while others mix it with a mild liquid soap.

Wikihow have published a guide for those seeking to achieve the classic Lindsay Lohan look, including the hair.  Those who want the look might be tempted to try GHD’s Oracle which uses as U-shaped clamp, with one cooling plate on top and ceramic heater plates on each arm to maintain the temperature at 365˚f (185˚c), the design innovation meaning the heated hair is cooled before leaving the styler; GHD say it helps set curls in place.  Stylists note the advantage but say that because of the way it interacts with the moisture left in the hair after washing, the extent to which the hair is dried should vary according to hair type and users may need to experiment to determine what works best.

Step 1: Wash with shampoo and conditioner.  As a general principle it's best to shampoo in two sessions, the first removing the layer of oil & dirt which inevitably attaches to the strands, the second to allow the cleansing of the whole scalp and take advantage of any properties the shampoo may offer.  Some manufacturers describe the properties as "nourishing" and this needs to be read-down (hair being dead tissue), but the health of the scalp and hair roots can be improved.  The need for the double-shampoo technique does vary with the environment, it being less beneficial for those who wash their hair every day but valuable for those who spend their days in areas with high levels of atmospheric pollution.  Either way, when shampooing, focus on the roots, massaging with the finger-tips; this will result in the cleanest hair.  When finished, take time to ensure all shampoo is rinsed from the hair and when conditioning, use a generous amount to ensure there's enough to swamp all the hair, gently massaging as it's applied.  For the length of time the conditioner is left on the hair, manufacturers do vary in their recommendations and it best to follow their instructions but there's probably little benefit in conditioning for more than a couple of minutes.

Step 2: Gently towel-dry the hair; a fluffy cotton towel is best and it's necessary to dry it only to the point where the water stops dripping.  Then blow-dry, using the coolest setting on the dryer and dry only partially, the hair left moist to the touch.

Step 3: Apply some root-pump, working the hair through the fingers and using the finger-tips to push at the roots.  Despite what some say about this "increasing volume", it has no such effect and is simply a form of scalp massage, said to increase blood flow to the roots which may well be beneficial.

Step 4: Once the hair is completely dry, use a styling iron (sometimes called a curling or straightening iron).  Section the hair into 3-6 parts depending on volume and when parting, gather the hair and put each in an elastic band.

Step 5: Start curling the hair just below the elastic.  The placement of the elastic band determines the outcome of the curls so it should be tied higher or lower depending on desired effect.  For the Lindsay Lohan look, the curls need to be very loose.

Step 6: Product: The classic Lindsay Lohan look is achieved with a surprisingly small dose of hairspray, the hair gently teased with a wide-toothed comb. the operative word gently; less is more.  It's a specific look, quite long-lasting and easy to maintain, the volume maintained with little more than a running of the fingers through to the top of the hair, re-separating the curls.

Blondes have more shampoo.  John Frieda blonde shampoo range.

Intelligence

Intelligence (pronounced in-tel-i-juh-ns)

(1) Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

(2) Describing the manifestation of a high mental capacity.

(3) The faculty of understanding.

(4) Knowledge of an event, circumstance, etc., received or imparted; news; information.

(5) The gathering or distribution of information, especially secret information; the evaluated conclusions drawn from such information; an organization or agency engaged in gathering such information.

(6) The interchange of information.

(7) In the sect of Christian Science, a fundamental attribute of God, or infinite Mind; an intelligent being or spirit, especially an incorporeal one, as an angel.

(8) News or information (now obsolete except as applied to the military, government or others who practice espionage).

(9) As used in intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, refers to an individual's relative standing on two quantitative indices, namely measured intelligence, as expressed by an intelligence quotient, and effectiveness of adaptive behavior.

1350-1400: From the Middle English intelligence (the highest faculty of the mind, capacity for comprehending general truths (and later "faculty of understanding, comprehension")), from the Old French intelligence, from Latin intelligentia & intellegentia (understanding, knowledge, power of discerning; art, skill, taste), from intelligentem (nominative intelligens) (discerning, appreciative), present participle of intelligere (to understand, comprehend, come to know),from intellegere (to discern, comprehend (literally “ choose between”)), the construct being inter-, (between, amid), a form of prepositional inter (between)+ legere (to choose), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather (with derivatives meaning "to speak; to pick out words)) or the Proto-Italic legō (to care).

The meaning “superior understanding, sagacity, quality of being intelligent” is from the early 1400s and the particular application to spies dates from later that century although at much the same time it was applied in general to "information received or imparted; news". The word assumed its modern meaning (being endowed with understanding or knowledge) in late 1300s, influenced by the use in Old French where it had existed since the twelfth century.  The first formerly structured intelligence quotient (IQ) tests were conducted in 1921.  Intelligential is the adjective and intel the usual abbreviation.

Military Intelligence

The record of military intelligence during World War I (WWI, 1914-1918) was mixed and the troops would joke there were three types of intelligence: human, animal & military.  It was during WWI that some British military intelligence units began to pick up their familiar identification codes (M(ilitary) I(ntelligence)1, MI4, MI5 etc).  MI5 and MI6 remain well-known, thanks to Ian Fleming (1908–1964; the former naval intelligence officer who wrote the James Bond novels) and other writers but there were many other MIs, researchers uncovering amidst the alpha-numeric soup references to entities up to MI25 but not all existed at the same time and most have long since been either disestablished or folded into MI5, MI6 or GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters; the UK government's clearing house for signals intelligence (SIGINT)) in the post-war years.

Artificial Intelligence: A random eight AI generated images of Lindsay Lohan.  

The records are occasionally contradictory but researchers have synthesized what are thought to be the most reliable sources and the list has been little amended since first it was published in the late 1990s.  The list should not however be misinterpreted; some of the MIx entries identified better thought of as project codes for operations which were, either at once or shortly after their creation, appended to other departments rather than becoming or remaining distinct entities with a personnel establishment and physical accoutrements of infrastructure.  Other were ad-hoc creations of wartime exigency that were dissolved as circumstances rendered their purpose redundant.  There’s also another reason why the list may be incomplete: given all this operates at least notionally under the auspices of the notoriously secretive military and it could be there are any number of still secret departments.

MI1: During WWI, the army’s MI1 (there were a number of sub-sections labelled MI1a, MI1b etc) and the Admiralty’s NID25 had operated separately as collectors and interpreters of SIGINT, including code-breaking.  After the war, they were combined into the inter-service Directorate of Military Intelligence and Cryptography which ultimately evolved into GCHQ.  However, the Army, Royal Navy and newly created Royal Air Force (RAF) all maintained, sometimes in great secrecy, their own intelligence operations, the Admiralty especially jealous of its independence in as many fields as possible.

MI2: A divisional title, the “desk” or section devoted to intelligence relating to Russia & Scandinavia.

MI3: A divisional title, the “desk” or section devoted to intelligence relating to Eastern Europe.  This originally included Germany but so important did the German threat become that MI14 and MI15 were created exclusively to handle Britain’s fears of things Teutonic.

MI4: Matters related to aerial reconnaissance.  MI4’s original remit included not only the analysis of photographs but also the technical aspects of the process (cameras, lens, film stock, mounting techniques etc) and as civil aviation expanded, spying on foreign territory was accomplished sometimes with the use of civil airliners.  MI4 was transferred to Military Combined Operations in April 1940 when the MI15 was hived-off as an operation concerned purely with engineering aspects of photography and attached to the Air Ministry.

MI5: The well-known domestic intelligence service, the focus of which varies according to changes in the threat environment (Germans, feminists, communists, fascists, homosexuals, Freemasons, terrorists et al).  It’s known also as the Security Service but the authorities never make much of this, presumably because they don’t like the idea of people calling it "the SS".  MI5 is responsible to the home secretary (the UK's minister for internal affairs).

MI6: The foreign intelligence service, almost always called MI6 because of its historic origins but actually correctly styled the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and as the Secret Service Bureau, it actually pre-dated WWI, the MI6 tag not used until World War II (WWII, 1939-1945).  The SIS is responsible to the Foreign Secretary and is well-known because of the connection with spies real and fictional: James Bond, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Ian Fleming, Somerset Maugham, Kim Philby etc. 

MI7: Military Communication Interception, later known as the Propaganda Section and transferred to the Ministry of Information during the Battle of France (the Western Campaign (Westfeldzug to the Germans) May-June 1940)).

MI8: Better known as the WWII Special Operations Executive (SOE), the covert ops department set up “to set Europe ablaze”, concentrating on sabotage and political subversion in Nazi-occupied Europe.  Said at the time to be of great psychological value, post-war analysis of its operations suggested success was patchy.  In the inter-war years, MI8 was concerned with the interception and interpretation of communications.

MI9: A WWII creation concerned with undercover operations, especially assisting escape and evasion by both civilians and prisoners of war.

MI10: Weapons analysis, a WWII military-civil partnership which conducted tests and provided analytical services.

MI11: Military security.  Although concerned with internal matters such as leaks and the theft of intelligence, most of its staff were in field security and the Military Police dealt overwhelmingly with normal police matters or military discipline.

MI12: Military censorship, always a growth industry in the armed forces.  One WWII US general held the view the civilian population needed to be told about the war only when it was over and then only that “we won”.

MI13: There is no evidence MI13 ever existed.  Whether this was because of the superstition the British attach to the number 13 isn’t known.  Conspiracy theorists wonder if it’s something so secret that it’s never been spoken of.

MI14 & MI15: Divisional title, the “desk” or section devoted to intelligence relating to Germany.

MI15: In April 1940, the MI15 title was recycled, German matters having long been exclusively the domain of MI14.  MI15 became the aerial photography branch which was purely technical (how best to photograph stuff) and attached to the Air Ministry while MI4 (aerial reconnaissance) decided what should be photographed.

MI16: Scientific analysis.  As WWII progresses, the importance of advances in science and technology became increasingly obvious.  MI16 wasn’t a collection of scientists but an administrative centre to coordinate research and ensure efforts weren’t being duplicated.  It interacted with existing instruments such as the Ministry of Supply in matters of resource allocation.

MI17: Secretariat for Director of Military Intelligence.  This was an attempt to coordinate the back-office and administrative overhead of all the MIx departments but it also added to the bureaucracy.

MI18: There is no evidence MI18 ever existed but because of the existence of MI19 such an institution may at least have been contemplated with the designation reserved for that purpose (or it could, like the mysterious MI13, be in secret functioning even today).

MI19: A WWII prisoner of war debriefing unit, best known for the transcripts they provided by secretly bugging German generals in captivity in England.  The transcripts are especially interesting when read in conjunction with some of the generals’ memoirs published after their release.

Conspiracy theorists find it intriguing that there’s no documentary evidence for the existence of MI13, MI18 & MI20 and MI21-MI25 remain classified as secret.  Over the years, the most popular conspiracy theory has been there’s a MI unit somewhere concerned with a covering up what the government really knows about UFOs.

The SIS Building, 85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall, Lambeth, London.  Opened in 1994, nicknames include Legoland, The London Lubyanka, Ceaușescu Towers & The Ziggurat.

The British government did not until 1994 officially acknowledge the existence of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6), and the identities of its staff and location of their offices were classified secret and subject to a D-Notice (now called a DSMA-Notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice)) which was an official request by government to publishers and broadcasters not to publish or broadcast items about certain matters, a system which worked rather effectively in the pre-internet age.  However, the location of the SIS’s headquarters in the London suburb of Lambeth was apparently the UK’s “worst kept secret” appearing in training materials for taxi drivers although the story it was once in Lonely Planet’s London guide seems to have been apocryphal.  When the new SIS building was commissioned, it was decided to solve the problem of the secret leaking by publishing the details and ensuring the new structure was about the most obvious thing on the Thames.  An eclectic mix of styles, shapes & structures, when opened in 1994 it attracted criticism from those architects who decry anything other than 1950s New York modernism but it has aged rather well, the colors, lines and proportions not without charm.

Butyraceous

Butyraceous (pronounced byoo-tuh-rey-shuhs)

Of the nature of, resembling, or containing butter.

1660–1670: A compound word, the construct being the Latin būtȳr(um) + -aceous.  Butyro-, a combining form of Latin būtȳrum (butter) was borrowed from the Ancient Greek βούτῡρον (boútūron) and -aceous was from the New Latin, derived from the Classical Latin -aceus (of a certain kind) and related to –ac & -ax, the Latin adjectival suffixes.  The construct of the Ancient Greek βούτῡρον was βοῦς (boûs) (cow) +‎ τυρός (turós) (cheese).  Synonyms include buttery, waxy, slippery, creamy, oiled, lubricant, lustrous, polished, rich, sleek, smooth, soapy, soothing, swimming, unctuous, adipose, oleaginous, lardy, lubricative & lubricous.

Making fake Sizzler cheese toast

Ingredients

(1) Thick sliced bread.

(2) Butter (room temperature).

(3) Pecorino cheese (shredded or grated).

Instructions

(1) Combine equal amounts of butter with parmesan and mix to create a paste.

(2) Using suitable knife, spread the butter/cheese paste on one side of bread.

(3) Pan-fry the bread paste-side down in frying pan over a medium heat and place a lid or flat plate over bread so it can steam while cooking.  Cook until golden brown and serve.

Notes

Sizzler use Pecorino cheese but toast can be made with Parmesan, the original using shredded cheese but grated or shaved can also be used, the latter able to produce a slightly chunky effect some prefer.

Sizzler has always used only white bread but it works with wholemeal or wholegrain varieties.  The recipe is best in its simple form but garlic powder, dried herbs or small quantities of sliced or grated onion can be added to the mix.  Some recommend beating the butter before adding the cheese.  This doesn’t affect the taste but is said both to reduce the cooking time and produce a toast with a slightly different texture.  Margarine should not be used.

Lindsay Lohan, Butter Nightclub, New York City, 2006.

Honorific

Honorific (pronounced on-uh-rif-ik)

(1) Conveying honor, as a title or a grammatical form used in speaking to or about a superior, elder etc.

(2) In certain languages (including Chinese and Japanese) a class of forms used to show respect, especially in direct address.

(3) A title or term of respect.

(4) Of a pronoun, verb inflection etc, indicating the speaker's respect for the addressee or his acknowledgment of inferior status

1640–1650: The construct was honor + -ific, from the Latin honōrificus (honor-making).  Honor as a noun dates from circa 1150–1200, from the Middle English honour, honor & honur (glory, renown, fame earned), from the Anglo-French honour & Old French onor, honor & honur (honor, dignity, distinction, position; victory, triumph) (which persists in Modern French as honneur), from the Latin honōr- (stem of honor & the earlier honōs), from honorem (nominative honos).  The verb was from the Middle English honouren & honuren, from the Anglo-French honourer & honurer, from the Latin honōrāre, derivative of honor.  It displaced the Middle English menske (honor, dignity among men), from the Old Norse menskr (honor).  In Middle English, it also could mean "splendor, beauty; excellence" and until the seventeenth century, honour and honor appears to have been equally popular forms, the former still used in places most influenced by British use, the latter long the preferred form in North America.  Meaning "feminine purity, a woman's chastity" dates from the late fourteenth century.  The idea of the “honor roll” is attested in an academic context from 1872 and from here it spread to sporting and other organizations.  The initial h is merely etymological, the sound having disappeared even prior to it entering Middle English.

The verb was from the Middle English honouren & honuren (to do honor to, show respect to) from the Old French onorer, honorer (respect, esteem, revere; welcome; present (someone with something)), from the Latin honorare (to honor) from honor (honor, dignity, office, reputation).  It was a Latinate correction that began to be made in early Old French and from circa 1300 was used to mean “confer honors on; action of honoring or paying respect to; act or gesture displaying reverence or esteem; state or condition inspiring respect; nobleness of character or manners; high station or rank; a mark of respect or esteem; a source of glory, a cause of good reputation" and shortly after "to respect, follow teachings & instructions etc”.  In commercial transaction, the meaning "accept a bill due etc, is attested from 1706, via the notion of "perform a duty of respect toward".  The meaning "one's personal title to high respect or esteem" is from the 1540s.  The suffix -ific (creating or causing something) was from the Latin -ficus, from the Proto-Italic -fakos and related to faciō, from the Proto-Italic fakjō, from the primitive Indo-European dheh- (to put, place, set), perhaps via a later intermediate root dh-k-yé/ó- and cognate with the Ancient Greek τίθημι (títhēmi), the Sanskrit दधाति (dádhāti), the Old English dōn (which begat the English do) and the Lithuanian dėti (to put).  Facere (to make) was the present active infinitive of faciō.  Honorific is an adjective & noun; honorifically is an adverb.  The rare adjective honorifical is used when describing the doing or conferring of an honor.

performance.

Lindsay Lohan on the panel of The Masked Singer (2019).  The term "diva" can be used as a honorific.

Divas (real and imagined) are popular figures to parody and the word has produced a number of derived forms including (1) the nouns divaism (diva-like behavior) & divadom (the condition of being a diva; the sphere of divas) and (2) the adjectives divaesque (behavior reminiscent of a diva (the comparative more divaesque, the superlative most divaesque)), divalike & divaish (pertaining to the manner expected of a diva (some noting of the latter the anagram was HIV/AIDS)).  The adjective divaistic and the verbs divaed & divaing (doing something in a divaish way) are non-standard and used for jocular effect.  In music, the noun “diva house” described a late 1980s subgenre of house music, much associated with booming vocals (handbag house listed usually as the synonym although, being pop culture, there are likely some who find a distinction)).  The noun divo is used of “a male diva” (a man with the traits characteristic of a typical diva (used also with the implication the word should summon in the mind "deviant" (ie he's a bit gay)).  Diva (in the sense used in English) was also borrowed from the Italian in un-adapted form in Catalan, Dutch, French, Norwegian Nynorsk, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

A honorific is a title that conveys esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person.  In the modern age, until the late twentieth century, the most common honorific forms were Mr, Mrs & Miss which became so procedural they could hardly any longer be though honorific except in the most narrow technical sense.  Feminist thought came to preferred Ms which caught on and the LGBTQQIAAOP movement introduced Mx which didn’t although it did intriguingly turn the honorific from a matter of etiquette into something political.  Although less common a practice now, English also had a tradition of the anti-honorific (despective or humilific) first person forms such as an expressions like “your most humble servant”, the effect of which is to enhance the relative honor accorded to the person addressed.

There are some who define the term quite widely, even to the point where it’s essentially synonymous with “title” although, at the margins, the distinction can be difficult to determine.  In the US, senators and ambassadors are so styled while holding the office and that’s because it’s a title proper yet, upon retirement, they continue to be addressed so and at that point, it becomes a honorific.  In the English-speaking world this extends also to military ranks.  A retired general is properly styled General (rtd) but is addressed as “general” which is a honorific whereas those of five-star rank (field marshal and equivalent) are deemed technically never to retire and thus retain the title proper.  Pedants insist, in the narrow technical sense, the title doctor is honorific if used by those who actually don’t hold doctorates (most dentists, vets and physicians and these days even osteopaths & chiropractors are often so-styled) yet some of those holding honorary doctorates use the titles.  In the Commonwealth, the title “honourable” is given to members of the executive and legislative bodies during their term of service.  It can also be retained by royal licence (ie the approval of the Governor-in-Council) after a certain number of years’ service although there appear to be no formal rules requiring the subject actually to be in any way honorable, the effluxion of time apparently deemed sufficient.  In some fields, titles are wholly informal and may be though honorific even if technically outside the usual understanding.  In music, a distinguished conductor or virtuoso instrumentalist may be known as maestro (from the Italian maestro, from the Latin magister (master)) and a great (or possibly troublesome) soprano may be a diva (from the Italian diva, from Latin dīva (goddess), feminine of dīvus (divine, divine one; notably a deified mortal)).

In the intricate world of the British peerage, and the related order of precedence, honorifics abound; the younger son of a duke is styled Lord though he’s not actually a lord; it’s just a courtesy title.  Winston Churchill, fond of decorations but with little interest in titles, upon accepting the Garter, suggested he might continue to be called Mr Churchill as a "discourtesy title".  In society, the order of precedence is a thing of some importance and one that even experts need sometimes to check to ensure the youngest daughter of a duke is in the right place in relation to the oldest son of a viscount.  Get it wrong and there could be a comment in Tatler.

The B-san: Boeing B-29 Superfortress, 1945.  The cost to develop the B-29 far exceeded what was spent on the Manhattan Project which built the first atom-bombs.  Coincidently, the cost was similar to that spent by Nazi Germany on another influential delivery system, the V2 (Aggregat 4 (A4)) rocket project.  

Probably every country on the planet has an array of honorifics though some apply them more formally.  In Japan, san is the most commonplace honorific and is a title of respect typically used between equals of any age, the closest analogues in English being Mr, Miss etc.  San is sometimes used with company names; the offices or shop of Nippon Denso might be referred to as Nippon Denso san by those in another corporation.  On the small maps in phone books and on business cards in Japan, names of companies are written using san and it can be attached to the names of animals or even inanimate objects; a pet rabbit might be called usagi-san, and fish used for cooking can be referred to as sakana-san though being akin in English to Mr Fish, some might avoid the term in mixed company.  Married people often refer to their spouse attaching san and during the Second World War, even enemy aircraft attracted the honorific; Japanese civilians the target of the United States Army Air Force’s (USAAF) Boeing B29 bombers called them the B-san.  Due to san being gender neutral and commonly used, it can be used to refer to people who are not close or to whom one does not know but it may not be appropriate when using it on someone who is close or when it is clear other honorifics should be used.  Rules for this are doubtlessly best understood by the Japanese.  San is a simple form but a myriad of other Japanese honorifics such as Sama, Kun, Chan, Tan, Bō, Senpai, Sensei, hakase, Sensi, and Shi are applied under a more complex matrix of rules.

Aggression

Aggression (pronounced uh-gresh-uhn)

(1) The action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like.

(2) Any offensive action, attack, or procedure; an inroad or encroachment.

(3) The practice of making assaults or attacks; offensive action in general.

(4) In clinical psychiatry, overt or suppressed hostility, either innate or resulting from continued frustration and directed outward or against oneself.

(5) In the study of animal behavior and zoology, behavior intended to intimidate or injure an animal of the same species or of a competing species but is not predatory.  Aggression may be displayed during mating rituals or to defend territory, as by the erection of fins by fish and feathers by birds.

1605–1615: English borrowed the word directly from the French aggression, derived from the Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio (a going to, an attack)), a noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi (to approach; attack) a construct of ad (to) + gradi (past participle gressus (to step)) from gradus (a step).  The Classical Latin aggressiōn (stem of aggressiō), was equivalent to aggress(us) + iōn derived from aggrēdi (to attack).  Psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" had its origin in early psychiatry, first noted in English in 1912 in a translation of Freud.  Related forms are antiaggression (adjective), counteraggression and preaggression (nouns); most frequently used derived form is aggressor (noun).

Aggression and International Jurisprudence, Locarno, Kellogg–Briand and the Nuremberg Trial

For centuries, philosophers, moral theologians and other peripheral players had written of the ways and means of outlawing wars of aggression but in the twentieth century, in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I (1914-1918), serious attempts were made to achieve exactly that, the first of which was the Locarno Pact.

Gustav Stresemann, Austen Chamberlain & Aristide Briand, Locarno, 1926.

Although usually referred to as the Locarno Pact, technically the pact consisted of seven treaties, the name derived from the Swiss city of Locarno at which the agreements negotiated between 5-16 October, 1925 although the documents were formally signed in London on 1 December.  Cynically, it can be said the Locarno Pact was a device by the western European powers to ensure they’d not again be the victims of German aggression which, if and when if were to happen, would be directed against those countries on its eastern border.  Of the seven treaties, it was the first which mattered most, a guarantee of the existing frontiers of Belgium, France, and Germany, underwritten by the UK and Italy.  Of the other agreements, two were intended to reassure the recently created Czechoslovakia and the recreated Poland, both of which, presciently as it turned out, felt some threat from Germany.

Whatever the implications, the intent was clear and about as pure as anything in politics can be: an attempt to ensure European states would never again need to resort to war.  Although the structural imbalances appear, in retrospect, obvious, at the time there were expectations of continued peaceful settlements and there arose, for a while, what was called the "spirit of Locarno": Germany was admitted to the League of Nations in September 1926, with a permanent seat on its council and Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded to the lead negotiators of the treaty, Sir Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937; UK foreign secretary 1924-1929), Aristide Briand (1862-1932; French foreign minister 1926-1932) and Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929; German foreign minister 1923-1929).

Members of the Cabinet, Senate, and House are seen gathered in the East Room of the White House, after President Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

The spirit of Locarno proved infectious and inspired the noble notion it might be possible for men to gather around tables and sign papers which for all time would outlaw war and the Kellogg–Briand Pact (known also as the Pact of Paris and technically the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) was a product of this optimism.  Signed in 1928 and named after the two main authors, Briand and Frank Kellogg (1856-1937; US Secretary of State 1925-1929), it was soon ratified by dozens of countries, all the signatory states promising not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them".  It gained Kellogg his Nobel Peace Prize but peace proved elusive and in little more than a decade, the world was at war.  Another point cynics note is that the real consequence of the pact was not the prevention of war but the unfashionability of declaring war; wars continuing with a thin veneer of legal high-gloss.  Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957) during the Suez Crisis (1956), noting no declaration had been made, distinguished between being “at war” and being in “a state of armed conflict” although those on the battlefield doubtless noticed no difference.  Because the pact was concluded outside the League of Nations, it remains afoot and the influence lingers; although hardly militarily inactive since 1945, the last declaration of war by the United States was in 1942.

Defendants at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), popularly known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

Kellogg–Briand thus failed but was a vitally important twentieth century instrument.  It was from Kellogg-Briand the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trial in 1945-1946 were able to find the concept of a crime against peace as pre-existing law that was of such importance in establishing the legal validity of the incitements, both there and at the subsequent Tokyo Tribunal.  Without that legal framework from the 1920s, the construction of the legal basis for the concept of crimes against peace (the first two of the four articles of indictment at Nuremberg), may not have been possible.

At Nuremburg, the indictments served by the International Military Tribunals were:

(1) Conspiracy to plan the waging of wars of aggression.

(2) Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression.

(3) War crimes.

(4) Crimes against humanity.

It’s always been the fourth which has attracted most attention because the crimes committed were of such enormity and on such as scale, the word genocide had to be invented.  However, the greater effect on international law was the creation of the notion that those who plan wars of aggression can be punished for that very act, punishments wholly unrelated to the mechanics or consequences of how the wars may be fought.  Form this point can be traced the end of the centuries-old legal doctrine of sovereign immunity for those waging wars of aggression.

So, after Nuremberg, the long tradition of the preemptive and preventative war as an instrument of political policy was no longer the convenient option it had for thousands of years been.  With section 4 of the United Nations (UN) Charter prohibiting all members from exercising "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state", there was obvious interest in the charter's phrase phrase of exculpation: "armed attack" which effectively limited the parameters of the circumstances in which the use of military force might be legitimate under international law.  Stretching things as far as even the most accommodating of impartial lawyers were prepared to reach, if no armed attack has been suffered, for an act of preemptive self-defense to be lawful, (1) a threat must be demonstratively real and not merely a perception of the possible and (2), the force applied in self-defense must be proportional to the harm threatened.  All this is why General Colin Powell's (1937–2021; US Secretary of State 2001-2005) statement of justification to the Security Council seeking authority to invade Iraq in 2003 took the tortured form it did.

Mr Putin.

The state of international law is why President Vladimir Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999) has resorted to some unusual terminology and some impressive, if not entirely convincing, intellectual gymnastics in his explanations of geography and history.  While hardly the direct and unambiguous speech used by some of his predecessors in the Kremlin, it's certainly kept the Kremlinologists and their readers interested.  As early as December 2020, Mr Putin was already using the phrase "military-technical measures" should NATO (again) approach Russia's borders and the charm of that presumably was that having no precise meaning, it could at any time mean what Mr Putin wanted it to mean at that moment.  Mr Putin also claimed the government in the Ukraine is committing genocide against ethnic Russians within the territory and, in an echo of similar claims from the troubled 1930s "seemed to believe his own atrocity stories", later doubling-down, calling the Ukranian government a "Nazi regime" and said he was seeking a process of "de-Nazification" (an actual structured and large-scale programme run in post-war Germany by the occupying forces aimed at removing the worst elements of the Third Reich from public life).  

Most interestingly, Mr Putin said Ukraine wasn’t a real country, a significant point if true because it's only foreign countries which can be invaded.  If a government moves troops into parts of their own territory, it's not an invasion; it might be a police action, a counter-insurgency or a military exercise or any number of things but it can't be an invasion.  Technically of course, that applies also to renegade provinces.  It seemed an adventurous argument to run given Ukraine has for decades been a member of the UN and recognized by just about every country (including Russia) as a sovereign state.  To clarify, Mr Putin added the odd nuance, claiming Ukraine was "...not a real country..." and had "...never had its own authentic statehood."  "There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine.”  The basis of that was his assertion that Ukraine was created by the Soviet Union's first leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; Leader of Soviet Russia 1917-1924 & the USSR 1922-1924) as either a sort of administrative zone or just as a mistake depending on interpretation.  Ignoring the wealth of historical material documenting the pre-Soviet history of the Ukraine, Mr Putin insisted it was part of Russia, an "...integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space.”

Having established his case the Ukraine was no foreign country but just another piece of Russia, Mr Putin turned his thoughts to the nature of the threat the obviously renegade province posed.  Although after the collapse of the USSR, the Ukraine voluntarily (and gratefully) gave up the nuclear weapons in its territory in exchange for a security guarantees issued by the US, UK, and Russia, Mr Putin expressed concern the neo-Nazi regime there had both the knowledge and the desire to obtain nuclear weapons and delivery systems, adding: “If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia... we cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since, let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.”

The internal logic of this was perfect to satisfy international law: (1) The territory which on maps is called Ukraine is not a country and just a part of Russia and (2), the illegal administration running the renegade province of Ukraine is plotting to acquire weapons of mass-destruction.  Under those conditions, military action by Moscow would be valid under international law but just to make sure, Mr Putin recognized Donetsk and Luhansk (two separatist regions in the Donbas), and deployed Russian troops as "peacekeepers".  Around the world, just about everybody except the usual suspects called it an invasion.

Many also discussed the legal position, perhaps not a great consolation to the citizens of Ukraine and the limitations of international law had anyway long been understood by those who were most hopeful of their civilizing power.  In his report to President Truman (1884–1972; US president 1945-1953) at the conclusion of the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), Justice Robert Jackson (1892–1954; sometime justice of the US Supreme Court, US solicitor general & attorney general and chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials), noted the judgment had "...for the first time made explicit and unambiguous what was theretofore, as the Tribunal has declared, implicit in International Law, namely, that to prepare, incite, or wage a war of aggression, or to conspire with others to do so, is a crime against international society, and that to persecute, oppress, or do violence to individuals or minorities on political, racial, or religious grounds in connection with such a war, or to exterminate, enslave, or deport civilian populations, is an international crime, and that for the commission of such crimes individuals are responsible. This agreement also won the adherence of nineteen additional nations and represents the combined judgments of the overwhelming majority of civilized people. It is a basic charter in the International Law of the future."  However, his idealism tempered by what he knew to be the nature of men, he conceded it would be "... extravagant to claim that agreements or trials of this character can make aggressive war or persecution of minorities impossible." although he did add that there was no doubt "they strengthen the bulwarks of peace and tolerance."  One of the US judges at Nuremburg had, whatever the theoretical legal position, reached an even more gloomy conclusion, Francis Biddle (1886–1968; US solicitor general 1940-1941 & attorney general 1941-1945 and primary US judge at the Nuremberg Trials) writing to the president that the judgements he'd helped deliver couldn't prevent war but might help men to "... learn a little better to detest it."  "Aggressive war was once romantic, now it is criminal."

Biddle was a realist who understood the forces which operated within legal systems and nation states.  Even the long-serving liberal judge William O Douglas (1898–1980; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1939-1975) couldn’t bring himself to accept that the aggression which led to World War II (1939-1945) in which as many a sixty millions died was not reason enough to overcome his aversion to ex post facto law (the construct being the Latin ex (from) + post (after) + facto, ablative of factum (deed), (that which retrospectively changes the legal consequences of actions from what would have applied prior to the application of the law).  Douglas deplored the way the IMT had not only convicted but imposed capital sentences of those indicted for conduct which has at time been legal under metropolitan and international law:

“No matter how many books are written or briefs filed, no matter how finely the lawyers analyzed it, the crime for which the Nazis were tried had never been formalized as a crime with the definiteness required by our legal standards, nor outlawed with a death penalty by the international community. By our standards that crime arose under ex post facto law. Goering et al. deserved severe punishment. But their guilt did not justify us in substituting power for principle.”

Developments since in international law have seen progress.  The United Nations Charter, adopted in 1945, prohibits the use of force by one state against another, except in cases of self-defense or when authorized by the UN Security Council for the purpose of maintaining or restoring international peace and security, Article 2(4) of the UN Charter stating “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."  That works in conjunction with the Nuremberg Principles which declared the planning, preparation, initiation, or execution of a war of aggression is a crime against peace and a violation of international law, a more concrete underpinning of customary international law than the Kellogg-Briand Pact which was in the same vein but always was of limited practical application because there existed no mechanism of enforcement or codification of penalties.  Despite that, the core concept of just what does constitute the crime of “aggressive war” has never been generally agreed and although the UN’s 1974 statement: “Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.” seems compelling, the debate continues.