Undertaker

Undertaker (pronounced uhn-der-tey-ker)

(1) A person whose profession is the preparation of the dead for burial or cremation and the management of funerals (like embalmer, now mostly a historic reference, the preferred modern terms being funeral director or mortician)

(2) A person receiving land in Ireland during the Elizabethan era, so named because they gave an undertaking to abide by several conditions regarding marriage, to be loyal to the crown, and to use English as their spoken language (obsolete, now used only for historic references).

(3) A contractor for the royal revenue in England, one of those who undertook to manage the House of Commons for the king in the Addled Parliament of 1614 (obsolete, now used only for historic references).

(4) A person who undertakes something (became rare because of the likelihood of confusion with funeral directors but "undertake", "undertaking" and "undertaken" now common).  Historically, the word was associated in Middle and early Modern English with those running businesses but as the association with embalming and burials became pervasive, it came to be replaced with the French entrepreneur.

1350–1400: A compound word under- + -take- + -er, a back-formation from the earlier undertake (after undernim (from the Middle English undernimen, from the Old English underniman (to take in, receive, comprehend, understand, blame, be indignant at, take upon oneself, steal), the construct being under- +‎ nim.  It was cognate with the Dutch ondernemen (to undertake, attempt) and the German unternehmen (to undertake, attempt).  Under is from the Middle English under-, from the Old English under-, from the Proto-Germanic under, from the primitive Indo-European n̥dhér (lower) and n̥tér (inside).

Take is from the Middle English taken (to take, lay hold of, grasp, strike), from the Old English tacan (to grasp, touch), of North Germanic origin, from the Old Norse taka (to touch, take), from the Proto-Germanic tēkaną (to touch), from the primitive Indo-European dehig- (to touch).  Gradually, it displaced the Middle English nimen (to take), from the Old English niman (to take).  It was cognate with the Icelandic and Norwegian Nynorsk taka (to take), the Norwegian Bokmål ta (to take), the Swedish ta (to take), the Danish tage (to take, seize), the Middle Dutch taken (to grasp), the Dutch taken (to take; grasp) and the Middle Low German tacken (to grasp); tackle is related.

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 suffix is from the Middle English -er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought to have been borrowed from Latin -ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French -or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant of which was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.

Mercedes-Benz 600 Hearse

In English, undertaker was an agent noun from the verb undertake, the early meaning, strictly speaking, "a contractor of any sort hired to perform some task" but it was applied mostly to those engaged is some sort of commercial enterprise.  There had long been instances of the use of “funeral-undertaker” but by the 1690s, “undertaker” had come to mean almost exclusively those whose profession was to “embalm and bury”.  Most etymologists conclude this organic shift to linguistic exclusivity came via the word being used as a euphemism for the mechanics of the profession, matters of mortality something of a taboo topic.

Undertaker faded from use as “mortician” and “funeral director” came to be preferred, firstly in the US with the latter soon becoming the standard form in the rest of the English-speaking world.  It was at the July 1895 meeting of the Funeral Directors' Association of Kentucky that it was proclaimed “…an undertaker will no longer be known as an "undertaker and embalmer." In the future he will be known as the "mortician."  This soon spread and the term undertaker is now almost unknown except in historic references or in figurative use in fields such as politics and sport.  In general use, the words "undertake", "undertaken" or "undertaking" are now used to describe just about any activity and with no sense of a taint of association with corpses. 

In the narrow technical sense, even in modern use, the terms funeral director, mortician, and undertaker mean the same thing (a person who supervises or conducts the preparation of the dead for burial and directs or arranges funerals"  Nuances have however emerged, especially in the US where a funeral director tends to be someone who owns or operates a funeral home whereas the term mortician implies a technical role, a person who handles the body (the embalmer) in preparation for a funeral.  Often of course, these roles are combined, especially in smaller operations so for practical purposes, funeral director and mortician are generally interchangeable.  Although it would probably once have seemed a bizarre construction, there are also now funeral celebrants who officiate at ceremonies not (or only vaguely) connected with religious practice and are thus analogous to the civil celebrants who perform secular marriage ceremonies.  They're not directly connected with the school of thought which prefers to "celebrate a life" rather than "mourn a death" at a funeral, an approach which can be taken even in an overtly religious service.  

So it's largely a matter of how those within the profession prefer to style themselves and Funeral Director seems now the most popular choice although mortician remains widely used in the US.  Mirriam-Webster provides:

Funeral Director: A person whose job is to arrange and manage funerals.

Mortician: A person whose job is to prepare dead people to be buried and to arrange and manage funerals.

Undertaker: One whose business is to prepare the dead for burial and to arrange and manage funerals.

1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) hearse by German coach builders, Pollmann of Bremen.

Built on a (lengthened) 1967 short wheelbase (SWB) platform, it’s a genuine one-off, the only 600 hearse ever built.  The story (which may be true), repeated whenever it’s offered for sale, is it was originally a sedan purchased by a German farmer (always referred to as Herr K) whose particular experience of the Wirtschaftswunder (the German post-war economic miracle) was the massive capital gain he enjoyed when he sold his farmland for urban development.  Happy, he bought Mercedes-Benz 600 (in champagne metallic gold) for his wife and commissioned an architect to design a house for them to enjoy.  Unfortunately, he arrived home one day to find the ungrateful hausfrau had run off with the architect and, unable to bear to keep the 600 because it was a reminder of the strumpet’s infidelity, he returned the car to the dealer to off-load.  It was sold to the coach-builders Pollmann which converted it to a hearse which seems appropriate although it's not known if the former farmer was impressed by the symbolism of the transformation.  It was used for some years for the purpose for which it was designed and has since been restored by US-based expert in all things 600esque, Karl Middelhauve.

The Machete funeral hearse

Lindsay Lohan in habit, emerging from hearse in Machete (2010).  The Machete hearse was based on a 1987 Cadillac Brougham (1987-1992).

Between 1931-1979, General Motors' Cadillac division offered a line called the Cadillac Commercial Chassis, a long-wheelbase, heavy-duty platform which was mechanically complete but with a partially built body (without bodywork rear of the windscreen, doors and other panels included on request).  Produced on the D platform (exclusive to Cadillac), the "Commercial Chassis" was used by coach-builders to create high-roofed ambulances, hearses (often called funeral coaches in the US) and cleverly designed hybrids which at short notice could be converted from ambulances to hearses or used by a coroner's staff to transport a corpse; these multi-purpose devices were popular in towns with small populations.  The early Commercial Chassis were based on the Series 355 (1931-1935) and the Series 75 (1936-1992) from 1936 and although there were specific modification to the frame, the mechanical components were always shared with the 75 which, used for the big limousines, meant costs were amortized across the ranges.  After 1980, production continued on the downsized platform but there was no longer a separate D platform, the partially bodied cars structurally identical to the mainstream line.

1960 Mercedes-Benz 300d Cabriolet D (left) and 1960 Cadillac hearse (Funeral Carriage) on the Commercial Chassis (right).

Dating from the age of horse drawn carriages, the landau irons (which some coachbuilders insist should be called "carriage bars") on the rear side-panels of hearses emulate in style (though not function) those used on carriages and early automobiles (the last probably the Mercedes-Benz 300 (the “Adenauer”; W186 (1951-1957) & W189 (1957-1962)) Cabriolet D).  On those vehicles, the irons actually supported the folding mechanism for the fabric roof but on hearses they are merely decorative, there to relieve the slab-sidedness of the expanse of flat metal.  The alternative approach with hearses is to use a more conventional glass panel, usually with curtains fitted which can be drawn as desired.  In many cases, there is a desire to make the coffin (casket) as visible as possible because some, to permit the dead a final act of conspicuous consumption, are crafted with some extravagance.

1971 Ford Thunderbird with standard vinyl roof (left) and 1967 Ford Thunderbird with the vinyl removed (right).

There was however one curious use of a stylized iron for a purpose which was both functional and aesthetic.  When, in a sign of the times, the 1967-1971 Ford Thunderbird included a four-door sedan rather than a convertible as a companion to the coupés in the range, the sedans were fitted with the combination of the irons and a vinyl roof.  In this one, unique, case the irons and the vinyl actually improved rather than detracted from the appearance because, built on a surprisingly short wheelbase, the Thunderbird had to be fitted with rather short rear doors (also compelling the use of the front-opening "suicide door" configuration) and to accommodate the shape of C-pillar, each had to intrude on the other.  What the (always dark) vinyl and the sweep of the irons did was conceal the compromise and for that reason, this generation of Thunderbirds is probably the only car where vinyl roofs are rarely removed because exposing the metal results in a very strange look.  Because (1) they're ugly and (2) they trap moisture, thereby encouraging rust, removing a vinyl roof usually improves the appearance of a car but this is the one exception.       

War

War (pronounced wawr)

(1) A conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air; in the singular, a specific conflict (eg Second Punic War).

(2) A state or period of armed hostility or active military operations.

(3) A contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns.

(4) By extension, a descriptor for various forms of non-armed conflict (war on poverty, trade war, war on drugs, war on cancer, war of words etc).

(5) A type of card game played with a 52 card pack.

(6) A battle (archaic).

(7) To conduct a conflict.

(8) In law, the standard abbreviation for warrant (and in England, the county Warwickshire.

Pre 1150: The noun was from the Middle English werre, from the late Old English were, were & wyrre (large-scale military conflict) (which displaced the native Old English ġewinn), from the Old Northern French were & werre (variant of Old French guerre (difficulty, dispute; hostility; fight, combat, war)), from the Medieval Latin werra, from the Frankish werru (confusion; quarrel), from the Old Norse verriworse and was cognate with the Old High German werra (confusion, strife, quarrel), the German verwirren (to confuse), the Old Saxon werran (to confuse, perplex), the Dutch war (confusion, disarray) and the West Frisian war (defense, self-defense, struggle (also confusion).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wers- (to mix up, confuse, beat, perplex) and the Cognates are thought to suggest the original sense was "to bring into a state of confusion”.  The verb was from the Middle English, from the late Old English verb transitive werrien (to make war upon) and was derivative of the noun.  The alternative English form warre was still in use as late as the seventeenth century.

Developments in other European languages including the Old French guerrer and the Old North French werreier.  The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian guerra also are from the Germanic; why those speaking Romanic tongues turned to the Germanic for a word meaning "war" word is speculative but it may have been to avoid the Latin bellum (from which is derived bellicose) because its form tended to merge with bello- (beautiful).  Interestingly and belying the reputation later gained, there was no common Germanic word for "war" at the dawn of historical times.  Old English had many poetic words for "war" (wig, guð, heaðo, hild, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate Latin bellum was gewin (struggle, strife (and related to “win”).

War-time appeared first in the late fourteenth century; the territorial conflicts against Native Americans added several forms including warpath (1775), war-whoop (1761), war-dance (1757), war-song (1757) & war-paint (1826) the last of which came often to be applied to war-mongering (qv) politicians (as in "putting on their war-paint"), a profession which does seem to attract blood-thirsty non-combatants.  War crimes, although widely discussed for generations, were first discussed in the sense of being a particular set of acts which might give rise to specific offences which could be codified in International Law: A Treatise (1906) by LFL Oppenheim (1858–1919).  The war chest dates from 1901 although even then it’s use was certainly almost always figurative; in the distant past there presumably had in treasuries been chests of treasure to pay for armies.  War games, long an essential part of military planning, came to English from the German Kriegspiel, the Prussians most advanced in such matters because the innovative structure of their general staff system.

In English, war is most productive as a modifier, adjective etc and examples include: Types of war: Cold War, holy war, just war, civil war, war of succession, war of attrition, war on terror etc; Actual wars: World War I, Punic Wars, First Gulf War, Korean War, Hundred Years' War, Thirty Years' War, Six-day War etc; Campaigns against various social problems: War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on cancer; The culture wars: War on Christmas, war on free speech; In commerce: Price wars, Cola Wars, turf war; In crime: turf war (also used in conventional commerce), gang war, Castellammarese War; In technology: Bus wars, operating system wars, browser wars; Various: pre-war, post-war, inter-war, man-o'-war, war cabinet, warhead, warhorse, warlord, war between the sexes, war bond, war reparations, war room.

Film set for the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).

Pre-war and post-war need obviously to be used in context; “pre-war” which in the inter-war years almost always meant pre-1914, came after the end of WWII to mean pre-1939 (even in US historiography).  “Post-war” tracked a similar path and now probably means the years immediately after WWII, the era generally thought to have ended (at the latest) in 1973 when the first oil shock ended the long boom.  Given the propensity over the centuries for wars between (tribes, cities, kings, states etc) to flare up from time to time, there have been many inter-war periods but the adjective inter-war didn’t come into wide use until the 1940s when it was used exclusively to describe the period (1918-1939) between the world wars.  The phrase “world war”, although tied to the big, multi-theatre conflicts of the twentieth century, had been used speculatively as early as 1898, then in the context of the US returning the Philippines (then a colonial possession) to Spain, trigging European war into which she might be drawn.  “Word War” (referring to the 1914-1918 conflict which is regarded as being “world-wide” since 1917 when the US entered as a belligerent) was used almost as soon as the war started but “Great War” continued to be the preferred form until 1939 when used of “world war” spiked; World War II came into use even before Russian, US & Japanese involvement in 1941.  For as long as there have been the war-like there’s presumably been the anti-war faction but the adjectival anti-war (also antiwar) came into general use only in 1812, an invention of American English, in reference to opposition to the War of 1812, the use extending by 1821 to describe a position of political pacifism which opposed all war.  War-monger (and warmonger) seems first to have appeared in Edmund Spenser’s (circa 1552-1599) Faerie Queene (1590) although it’s possible it may have prior currency.  The warhead was from 1989, used by engineers to describe the "explosive part of a torpedo", the use later transferred during the 1940s to missiles.  The warhorse, attested from the 1650s, was a "powerful horse ridden into war", one selected for strength and spirit and the figurative sense of "seasoned veteran" of anything dates from 1837.  The (quasi-offensive though vaguely admiring) reference to women perceived as tough was noted in 1921.

Man-of-war (a soldier and) is an old form while the meaning "armed ship, vessel equipped for warfare" is from the late fifteenth century and was one of the primary warships of early-modern navies, the sea creature known as the Portuguese man-of-war (1707) so called for its sail-like crest.  The more common form was “man o' War”.  The Cold War may have started as early as 1946 but certainly existed from some time in 1947-1948; it was a form of "non-hostile belligerency” (although the death–toll in proxy-wars fought for decades on its margins was considerable);  it seems first to have appeared in print in October 1945 in a piece by George Orwell (1903—1950).  The companion phrase “hot war” is actually just a synonym for “war” and makes sense only if used in conjunction with “cold war”.  The cold war was memorably defined by Lord Cherwell (Professor Frederick Lindemann, 1886–1957) as “two sides for years counting their missiles”.

The civil war (battles among fellow citizens or within a community (as opposed to between tribes, cities, nations etc)) for civil in a sense of "occurring among fellow citizens" is noted from the fourteenth century in batayle ciuile (civil battle), the exact phrase “civil war” attested from late fifteenth century (bella civicus in the Latin).  A word for the type of conflict in the Old English was ingewinn and in Ancient Greek it had been polemos epidemios.  The instances of what would now be called civil war pre-date antiquity but the early references typically were in reference to ancient Rome where the conflicts were, if not more frequent, certainly better documented.  The struggle in England between the parliament and Charles I (1600-1649) has always and correctly been known as the English Civil War (1642-1651) whereas there are scholars who insist the US Civil War (1861-1865) should rightly be called the “War of Secession”, the “war between the States" or the “Federal-Confederate War”.  None of the alternatives ever managed great traction and “US Civil War” has long been the accepted form although, when memories were still raw, if there was ever a disagreement about this, the parties seem inevitability to have settled on “the War”.  The phrases pre-war and post-war are never applied the US Civil War, the equivalents being the Latin forms ante-bellum (literally “before the war”) and post-bellum (literally “after the war”).

Colonel Nasser, president of Egypt, Republic Square, Cairo, 22 February 1958.

During the centuries when rules were rare, wars were not but there was little discussion about whether or not a war was happening.  There would be debates about the wisdom of going to war or the strategy adopted but whether or not it was a war was obvious to all.  That changed after the Second World War when the charter of the United Nations was agreed to attempt to ensure force would never again be used as a means of resolving disputes between nations.  That's obviously not been a success but the implications of the charter have certainly affected the language of conflict, much now hanging on whether an event is war or something else which merely looks like war.  An early example of the linguistic lengths to which those waging war (a thing of which they would have boasted) would go, in the post-charter world, to deny they were at war happened after British, French and Israeli forces in 1956 invaded Egypt in response to Colonel Gamal Nasser's (1918–1970; president of Egypt 1954-1970) nationalization of foreign-owned Suez Canal Company.  The invasion was a military success but it soon became apparent that Israel, France and Britain were, by any standards, waging an aggressive war and had conspired, ineptly, to make it appear something else.  The United States threatened sanctions against Britain & France and the invading forces withdrew.  There's always been the suspicion that in the wake of this split in the Western Alliance, the USSR seized the opportunity to intervene in Hungary which was threatening to become a renegade province.

Suez Canal, 1956.

In the House of Commons (Hansard: 1 November 1956 (vol 558 cc1631-7441631)), the prime minister (Anthony Eden, 1897–1977, UK prime-minister 1955-1957) was asked to justify how what appeared to be both an invasion and an act of aggressive war could be in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.  Just to jog the prime-minister's memory of the charter, the words he delivered at the UN's foundation conference in San Francisco in 1945 were read out: “At intervals in history mankind has sought by the creation of international machinery to solve disputes between nations by agreement and not by force.”  In reply, Mr Eden assured the house there had been "...no declaration of war by us.", a situation he noted prevailed for the whole of the Korean War and while there was in Egypt clearly "...a state of armed conflict...", just as in Korea, "...there was no declaration of war.  It was never admitted that there was a state of war, and Korea was never a war in any technical or legal sense, nor are we at war with Egypt now."

Quite how the comparison with Korea, a police action under the auspices of the UN and authorized by the Security Council (the USSR was boycotting the place at the time) was relevant escaped many of the prime-minister's critics.  The UK had issued an ultimatum to Egypt regarding the canal which contained conditions as to time and other things; the time expired and the conditions were not accepted.  It was then clear in international law that in those circumstances the country which delivers the ultimatum is not entitled to carry on hostilities without a declaration of war so the question was what legal justification was there for an invasion?  The distinction between a “state of war" and a "state of armed conflict", whatever its relevance to certain technical matters, seemed not to matter in the fundamental question of the lawfulness of the invasion under international law.  Mr Eden continued to provide many answers but none to that question.

The aversion to declaring war continues to this day, the United States, hardly militarily inactive during the last eight-odd decades, last declared war in 1942 and that was against Italy.  There is it seems, even an aversion to the word, the UK not having had a secretary of state (minister) for war since 1964 and the US becoming (nominally) pacifist even earlier, the last secretary of war serving in 1947; the more UN-friendly “defense” the preferred word on both sides of the Atlantic.  In the Kremlin, Mr Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999) seems also have come not to like the word.  While apparently sanguine at organizing “states of armed conflict”, he’s as reluctant as Mr Eden to hear his “special military operations” described as “invasions” or “wars” and in a recent legal flourish, arranged the passage of a law which made “mentioning the war” unlawful.

Not mentioning the peacekeeping operation: Mr Putin.

The bill which the Duma (lower house of parliament) & Federation Council (upper house) passed, and the president rapidly signed into law, provided for fines or imprisonment for up to fifteen years in the Gulag for intentionally spreading “fake news” or “discrediting the armed forces”, something which includes labelling the “special military operation” in Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion”.  Presumably, given the circumstances, the action could be described as a “state of armed conflict” and even Mr Putin seems to have stopped calling it a “peacekeeping operation”; he may have thought the irony too subtle for the audience.  Those who post or publish anything on the matter will be choosing their words with great care so as not to mention the war.

However, although Mr Putin may not like using the word “war”, there’s much to suggest he’s a devotee of the to the most famous (he coined a few) aphorism of Prussian general & military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831): “War is the continuation of policy with other means.”  The view has many adherents and while some acknowledge its cynical potency with a weary regret, for others it has been a word view to purse with relish.  In the prison diary assembled from the huge volume of fragments he had smuggled out of Spandau prison while serving the twenty year sentence he was lucky to receive for war crimes & crimes against humanity (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau, the Secret Diaries), pp 451 William Collins Inc, 1976), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recounted one of Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) not infrequent monologues and the enthusiastic concurrence by the sycophantic Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945):

"In the summer of 1939, On the terrace of the Berghof [Hitler’s alpine retreat], Hitler was pacing back and forth with one of his military adjutants. The other guests respectfully withdrew to the glassed-in veranda.  But in the midst of an animated lecture he was giving to the adjutant, Hitler called to us to join him on the terrace. “They should have listened to Moltke and struck at once” he said, resuming the thread of his thought, “as soon as France recovered her strength after the defeat in 1871.  Or else in 1898 and 1899.  America was at war with Spain, the French were fighting the English at Fashoda and were at odds with them over the Sudan, and England was having her problems with the Boers in South Africa, so that she would soon have to send her army in there.  And what a constellation there was in 1905 also, when Russia was beaten by Japan.   The rear in the East no threat, France and England on good terms, it is true, but without Russia no match for the Reich militarily. It’s an old principle: He who seizes the initiative in war has won more than a battle.  And after all, there was a war on!”  Seeing our stunned expressions, Hitler threw in almost irritably: “There is always a war on. The Kaiser [Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918)] hesitated too long."

Such epigrams usually transported Ribbentrop into a state of high excitement.  At these moments it was easy to see that he alone among us thought he was tracking down, along with Hitler, the innermost secrets of political action.  This time, too, he expressed his agreement with Hitler with that characteristic compound of subservience and the hauteur of an experienced traveller whose knowledge of foreign ways still made an impression on Hitler.  Ribbentrop’s guilt, that is, did not consist in his having made a policy of war on his own. Rather, he was to blame for using his authority as a supposed cosmopolite to corroborate Hider’s provincial ideas. The war itself was first and last Hitler’s idea and work.  “That is exactly what neither the Kaiser nor the Kaiser’s politicians ever really understood,” Ribbentrop was loudly explaining to everyone.  “There’s always a war on. The difference is only whether the guns are firing or not.  There’s war in peacetime too. Anyone who has not realized that cannot make foreign policy.”

Hider threw his foreign minister a look of something close to gratitude.  “Yes, Ribbentrop,” he said, “yes!"  He was visibly moved by having someone in this group who really understood him. “When the time comes that I am no longer here, people must keep that in mind.  Absolutely.”  And then, as though carried away by his insight into the nature of the historical process, he went on: “Whoever succeeds me must be sure to have an opening for a new war.  We never want a static situation where that sort of thing hangs in doubt In future peace treaties we must therefore always leave open a few questions that will provide a pretext.  Think of Rome and Carthage, for instance. A new war was always built right into every peace treaty. That's Rome for you! That's statesmanship.”

Pleased with himself, Hitler twisted from side to side, looking challengingly around the attentive, respectful circle.  He was obviously enjoying the vision of himself beside the statesmen of ancient Rome.  When he occasionally compared Ribbentrop with Bismarck—a comparison I myself sometimes heard him make—he was implying that he himself soared high above the level of bourgeois nationalistic policy.  He saw himself in the dimensions of world history. And so did we.  We went to the veranda. Abruptly, as was his way, he began talking about something altogether banal."

Enfeoff

Enfeoff (pronounced en-fef or en-feef)

(1) In property law, to invest a person with possession of a freehold estate in land

(2) In feudal societies, to take someone into vassalage by giving a fee or fief in return for certain services.  It was employed extensively to raise troops for armies.

1350-1400: From Middle English enfe(o)ffen, borrowed from the Anglo-French enfe(o)ffer.  The Old French fiefer and fiever were derivative of fief (fee).  Enfeoffment is the noun, enfeoff the third-person singular, enfeoffs the simple present enfeoffing the present participle and enfeoffed the simple past and past participle.  This survives in English (and Australian) real-property law as the true expression of freehold title of law (in-fee-simple) although, in both England and the old dominions, freehold is technically a revocable grant of title by the Crown.

Rocroi, the last Tercio by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau (b 1964).  It depicts the Spanish defeat at Rocroi against the French in 1643.  During the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), much enfeoffment was required.

Urning & Urningin

Urning & Urningin (pronounced ern-ing & ern-ings)

A male homosexual person (obsolete, and when used should be in the historic context of the original meaning, a technically differentiated sense of homosexuals as a “third sex” rather than a variation of the spectrum within the (then) existing two).  The equivalent feminine form was urningin.

1864: From the German Urning (a male homosexual constructed as a third sex (Uranian), the related form being Urnigtum (homosexuality), referring Aphrodite (Ūrania), coined by the German writer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) in 1864.  By the early twentieth century, except among some writers in German, the word in this sense had largely been supplanted by homosexual.  The link to Aphrodite lies in Plato’s Symposium (circa 385–370 BC), where the goddess Aphrodite, in her heavenly aspect (Ūrania), is described as inspiring a noble form of affection between older and younger men.  In Greek and Roman mythology, what’s described as “the heavenly aspect of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty and love, Ūrania (and her Roman counterpart Venus) is contrasted with the earthly aspect known as Aphrodite.  Ūrania is also the muse of astronomy.

Originally used by astrologers and astronomers, uranian is now rare, used only poetically.  It was from the Latin Ūrania (the muse of astronomy in Greek mythology) +‎ -an (the suffix forming agent nouns).  Ūrania was from the Ancient Greek Οὐρᾰνῐ́ᾱ (Ouraníā) (muse of astronomy), from οὐράνιος (ouránios) (of or relating to the sky, celestial, heavenly) (from οὐρανός (ouranós) (the sky; heaven, home of the gods; the universe) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European hwers- (rain) + -ιος (-ios), the suffix forming adjectives meaning (pertaining to).  Uranical is equally rare.

When writing now of homosexuality, uranism should be described as a particular historical construct.  The suggestion in 1864 was that the Urning (male) and the Urningin (female) homosexuals should be regarded as a third sex, not on any spectrum within the then-accepted binary division of gender.  Despite that, it was an interesting anticipation of the later notion(s) of gender fluidity in that it it encompassed the idea of something feminine inherently within the male body and vice versa.

Psychopathia Sexualis

In English, urning seems to have become widely discussed in the medical profession after it appeared to be in Charles Chaddock's 1892 translation of the impressively titled Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study, also known as Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to the Antipathetic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-forensic Study), published in 1886, a book by an Austro-German psychiatrist with a name of similarly imposing length, Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing (1840–1902), work and author respectively cited usually as the more manageable Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing.

In his translation, US neurologist Charles Chaddock (1861–1936) set a couple of landmarks in English, one being apparently the first instance in print of the word “bisexual” being used in the sense of humans being sexually attracted to both women and men.  Prior to that "bisexual" was used either to refer to hermaphroditic plants (ie those with both male and female reproductive structures), or to mixed-sex schools (ie co-ed(ucational)) or other institutions, an instance of how meaning-shifts in language can make difficult the reading of historic texts.

Psychopathia Sexualis wasn’t the first publication to explore the topic but the scale and breadth of approach to sexual pathology makes it one of the seminal works in the field.  Although covering a wide range of paraphilias, it was notable for a then quite novel focus on male homosexuality (hence the "antipathetic instinct" in the subtitle).and introduced the newly coined terms "sadism and masochism".  Very much a book of its time, von Krafft-Ebing writings reflected the views of the medical mainstream, distilling Karl Ulrichs' Urning (1825–1895) theory with Bénédict Morel's (1809–1873) theory of degeneration (a handy model for frustrated psychiatrists, degeneration theory held there were psychological which were genetic and could not be cured by a psychiatrist; it could be used to explain any psychological condition).

Nor was there any unanimity of opinion within the profession but the book was influential in psychiatry for decades and it wasn’t until 1973, in preparation for the publication in 1974 of a seventh printing of the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II (1968)) that homosexuality ceased to be listed as a category of disorder although the revision was less than activists had hoped, the diagnosis instead becoming a "sexual orientation disturbance".  In the DSM-III (1980), it was again re-classified but it wasn’t until that volume was revised (DSM III-R) in 1987 that homosexuality ceased to be a treatable condition, a position which, in the West, would not everywhere for some years be reflected in legislation.

Aphrodite (1887), oil on canvas by Robert Fowler (1853–1926).

In Europe, one stream of the dissent against prevailing orthodoxy is traced to the mid-nineteenth century writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a proto gay rights activist trained in law, theology, and history.  Using the nom-de-plume Numa Numantius, during the 1860s, he issued a number of political pamphlets asserting something with strands of the modern view: that some men were born with the spirit of a woman trapped in their bodies, these men constituting a third sex which, in 1864, he named urnings and that those we would now call a lesbians were urningin, a man’s spirit trapped in the body of a woman.  His theories gained little public support but he wasn’t entirely isolated.  In 1869, Hungarian journalist Károli Mária Kertbeny coined the terms “homosexual” and “homosexuality” in a political treatise against the Prussian penal code which criminalized the behavior among men, arguing the condition was inborn and unchangeable, one of many normal variations in the human condition.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, reviewed the literature and synthesised.  Describing homosexuality as a “degenerative” disorder, he adopted Kertbeny’s terminology, but not his notion of the normal; in Psychopathia Sexualis he viewed unconventional sexual behaviors through the lens of nineteenth century Darwinian theory: non-procreative sexual behaviors, masturbation included, were forms of psychopathology and his most intriguing mix of ancient and modern was that in being born with a homosexual predisposition ("born like this" in the 21C vernacular), the victim was a victim of congenital disease.  His views of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder were influential but even those who disagreed cemented the linguistic legacy, term “homosexual” quickly adopted as the standard term in the medical lexicon.  After the publication of Psychopathia Sexualis, views on the mater coalesced but prevailing opinion shifted little.  In opposition von Krafft-Ebing, German psychiatrist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935) emerged as a neo-Urlichian, publishing and lecturing in support of a normative view of homosexuality and underground movements existed in many cities, some tolerated. 

It was the founder of psychoanalysis, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who offered the theory which would capture the popular imagination.  Disagreeing with both Hirschfeld’s theories of normal variation and Krafft-Ebing’s of pathology, Freud believed all were born with bisexual tendencies and therefore manifestations of homosexuality could be a normal phase of heterosexual development and an innate bisexuality allowed no possibility of a separate “third sex” constructed by Hirschfeld.  Nor could the “degenerative condition” described by von Krafft-Ebing be maintained because, inter alia, it was “found in people whose efficiency is unimpaired, and who are indeed distinguished by specially high intellectual development and ethical culture”.  That may amuse some now but, within Freudian theory, the internal logic is perfect, manifestations of adult homosexual behavior being caused by “arrested” psychosexual development, a theory of immaturity.

Yet, despite the interest aroused, after Freud’s death in 1939, most psychoanalysts came to view homosexuality as pathological and, in the massively expanded universities of the post-war years, research in the field exploded and sexology evolved from a professional niche to a well-funded discipline, the academic work increasingly augmented by popular publications aimed at the general reader as well as the profession.  By the mid-twentieth century, the intellectual centre of psychiatry had shifted from Europe to the United States and it was there that published what would quickly become the most influential publication in the field, the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  When the first edition (DSM-I) was released in 1952, homosexuality was classified as a “sociopathic personality disturbance” and this was the orthodoxy until revised in the DSM-II in 1968 when the term changed to “sexual deviation”, a nuance probably better understood by the profession than the patients although "sexual deviant" became a popular phrase and one applied to many activities.

One implication of sexologists becoming more numerous and active was to change the very nature of research.  Whereas psychiatrists and other clinicians drew conclusions from a skewed sample of patients seeking treatment for homosexuality or other difficulties, sexologists undertook field studies for which were recruited large numbers of subjects in the general population, most of whom had never presented themselves for psychiatric treatment.  The most famous of the reports published both generated headlines and became best-sellers.  The Kinsey reports, with sample sizes in the thousands, found homosexuality to be more common in the general population than the psychiatrists had claimed although the often-quoted 10% “statistic” is now discredited and thought a significant over-estimate.  Ford and Beach, looking at both diverse cultures and animal behavior, confirmed Kinsey’s view that homosexuality was more common than psychiatry maintained and that it was found regularly in nature.  In a number of smaller surveys of which psychologist Evelyn Hooker’s was typical, no evidence was found to suggest gay men were any more prone to severe psychological disturbances than anyone else although some did concede the perception they were "highly strung" and "dramatic" was supported by observational studies but that may be influenced by depictions in popular culture and thus perhaps even "learned or imitative".

The wealth of research, coupled with an increasingly strident gay activism and generational changed within the APA induced change, the awareness now that the real psychological damage being done might be the stigma caused by the “homosexuality” diagnosis.  Nevertheless, in 1973 when the APA met to discuss the matter, planning both for a revised DSM II and the new DSM-III, it was pondered whether “homosexuality” should be included in the APA nomenclature.  Implicit in this was the very question of what could be said to constitute a mental disorder so it was a matter of importance beyond the immediate issue.  Not wishing fundamentally to change the parameters of diagnosis, the APA came up with a masterful fudge, issuing a statement saying they had “reviewed the characteristics of the various mental disorders and concluded that, with the exception of homosexuality and perhaps some of the other 'sexual deviations', they all regularly caused subjective distress or were associated with generalized impairment in social effectiveness of functioning”.  Happy with the loophole, the APA’s Board of Trustees (BoT) voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM.

Less happy were many clinicians who insisted on a vote of the whole membership.  The APA agreed and the decision to remove was upheld by a 58% majority of 10,000 voting members although technically, the question on which they voted was not whether homosexuality should remain a diagnosis but whether to support or oppose the BoT’s decision and, by extension, the scientific process created to make the determination.  It seemed a fine distinction and the BoT’s decision did anyway not immediately end psychiatry’s pathologizing of some presentations of homosexuality.  Instead, a revision to the DSM-II text contained a new diagnosis: "Sexual Orientation Disturbance" (SOD).  SOD (one does have to wonder if the condition was so-named as some sort of in-joke among the DSM's editors) defined homosexuality as an illness if an individual with same-sex attractions found them distressing and wanted to change, an important difference which changed the emphasis from condition to consequence.  That of course implied a future for what came to be known as sexual conversion therapy which has consequences of its own and, presumably, meant anyone unhappy with being heterosexual could seek treatment in an attempt to turn them gay.

SOD was replaced in DSM-III (1980) by a new category called “Ego Dystonic Homosexuality” (EDH) but it was increasingly obvious both SOD and EDH were political fudges to fix an immediate problem and it was not sustainable to maintain a diagnostic criteria under which any identity disturbance could be considered a psychiatric disorder.  The generational shift had happened and EDH was deleted from the revised DSM-III-R, in 1987.  Officially, the DSM now regarded homosexuality as a normal variant of the human condition, essentially what was thought in 1973 but couldn’t then be said.  It didn’t mean the end of debate but did mean those individuals and institutions determined still to discriminate could no longer cite a medical or scientific rationale.

Kyiv (formerly Kiev)

Kyiv (formerly Kiev) (pronounced kee-yiv (Ukrainian) or kee-yev (Russian))

(1) Capital of Ukraine, in the north-central region of the country on the Dnieper River.

(2) An oblast (a region or province in Slavic or Slavic-influenced countries (plural oblasts or oblasti)) of Ukraine, the medieval principality centered on Kiev (the Kievan state (Kievan Rus)).

(3) In culinary slang, a shortened for the dish Chicken Kiev (a breast of chicken stuffed with butter, garlic and parsley, rolled, breaded and fried). 

Pre 1000: From the Ukrainian Kýjiv or Kyyiv (Ки́їв), from the Russian Kíjev (Ки́ев), perhaps from the name Кий (Kij or Kyi), one of the city’s four legendary founders, from the Proto-Slavic kyjь (stick, club) although some historians regard this as a folk etymology and instead link it to an evolution of something from the local language.  The alternative forms are Kyïv, Kyjiv & Kyyiv, the earlier forms Kiou, Kiow, Kiovia, Kiowia, Kiew, Kief, Kieff & Kief all obsolete.  Historically, in Western use, an inhabitant of Kiev was a Kievan.

The Ukrainian government's official roman-alphabet name for the city is Kyiv, according to the national standard for romanization of Ukrainian Київ (Kyjiv), and has been adopted by geographic naming databases, international organizations, and by many other reference sources.  In the West, many style guides have been updated to reflect the government’s recommendation the preferred spelling should be Kyiv (although a few historians insist it should be Ki'iv), pronounced kee-yiv and a transliteration of the Ukrainian Київ.

The Russian form was a transliteration from the Russian Cyrillic Киев and, along with the associated pronunciation, was the internationally accepted name during the Soviet era, something that lasted well into the twenty-first century and many who couldn’t have found the place on a map would have been familiar with both because of the eponymous chicken dish introduced to popular Western cuisine in the 1960s.  The post-Soviet reaction to the Russification of Ukraine encouraged the Ukrainian authorities to adopt the local spelling, the cultural sensitivities heightened by Russia’s military incursions into Ukrainian territory since 2014.  The changing of locality names is nothing new in Europe, various parts of the continent having changed hands over thousands of years and names of localities have often been altered better to suit the needs of conquerors, sometimes as a form of triumphalism and sometimes just to ease the linguistic difficulties.  The area in which sits Kyiv has at times over the last millennium fallen under Mongol, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Soviet and now Ukrainian rule and while Russian and Ukrainian are both east Slavonic languages (as opposed to west Slavonic languages such as Polish, and south Slavonic ones like Bulgarian) and from the one original root they have, like just about all languages, diverged in forks which sometimes evolved and sometimes went extinct.

In the early modern period, Ukrainian absorbed some Polish influences and a number of vowels came to be pronounced differently from their Russian counterparts, the kind of regional difference quite familiar to those in England, Germany or the United States.  That would be variation enough to account for many differences but in its evolution, several letters of the alphabet became unique to Ukrainian (such as the ї in Київ) and the variations can make it difficult for native Russian speakers to understand some words or expressions when spoken by Ukrainians.  Still, there must be acknowledgement that name changes imposed from Moscow (whether Russian, Tsarist or Soviet) have so often reflected an astute understanding of propaganda and the implications of language.  When in the 1660s the Ukraine was taken from the Kingdom of Poland, the Russians promptly renamed the territory "Little Russia" although despite the assertions of some that here began the Kremlin's manufactured fiction that Russians & Ukranians are the one people with the one language, the root of that lie earlier.  The legend shared by three Slavic peoples is of three brothers, Czech, Lech & Rus who set off in three directions from the family and later settled in different places, the three fathering the Czechs, the Poles and the Rus (which begat both the Russians and Ukranians).     

Sometimes the changes effected by governments happen instantly upon occupation such as much as what was done in Nazi-occupied Europe but sometimes, the rectification or correction waits for centuries.  Although the Byzantine capital Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it wasn’t until the Turkification movement, which began in the 1920s after the formation of the modern Turkish state, that the government began to encourage other countries to use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of the transliterations to Latin script which had been used during the Ottoman era.  In 1930, the Government gazetted the official change of name from Constantinople to Istanbul.  Ankara’s interest in linguistic hygiene was recently revived, the Turkish authorities issuing a communiqué advising the country’s name would change from the internationally recognized name from "Turkey" to “Türkiye”.  The concern is said to be the association of Turkey with other meanings in English (not the birds but rather “a person who does something thoughtless or annoying; an event or product which fails badly or is totally ineffectual”).  Around the word, those in chancelleries dutifully adjusted their directory entries while cynics wondered if the Turkish president might be looking for something to distract people from their problems.

The Chicken Kiev speech

What came to be known as the “Chicken Kiev speech” was delivered by President Bush (George HW Bush, George XLI; 1924–2018; US president 1989-1993) to a session of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine in Kyiv on 1 August 1991.  The tone of his words came to be much criticized by the right of the Republican Party, still infused with the spirit of Ronal Reagan and heady from breathing in the dust which rose as the Berlin Wall fell.  Three weeks after the speech, the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence would be presented and a few months after that, over 90% of Ukrainians would vote to secede from the Soviet Union which would collapse before the year was out, an event at least hastened by Ukrainian independence.  Bush’s speech came directly after his meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991), the last Soviet leader, who seems to have impressed the US president with both his sincerity and ability to pursue economic and political reform. 

Bush started well enough, telling his audience “…today you explore the frontiers and contours of liberty…”, adding “For years, people in this nation felt powerless, overshadowed by a vast government apparatus, cramped by forces that attempted to control every aspect of their lives.”  That encouraging anti-Moscow direction must have raised expectations but they were soon dashed, Bush continuing “President Gorbachev has achieved astonishing things, and his policies of glasnost, perestroika, and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.”  Just to make sure there was no hint that Washington might be encouraging in Ukrainian minds any thoughts of independence, Bush provided clarification, telling his by now perhaps disappointed audience that “…freedom is not the same as independence.  Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."

The speech had been written by Condoleezza Rice (b 1954; US secretary of state 2005-2009), then on the eastern Europe desk at the National Security Council and a special assistant to the president for national security affairs although the "suicidal nationalism" flourish was inserted by Bush himself.  Commenting later, Dr Rice and Mr Bush would acknowledge the speech did not capture the moment, the winds of change which had been blowing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but both in their (sort of) apologias made the point that August of 1991 was a very different time and place from December and nobody had predicted the imminent demise of the Soviet Union.

Whatever the reaction of the Ukrainians, it was no more severe than that unleashed at home by the aggregations of anti-communists, American exceptionalists and right-wing fanatics, New York Times columnist William Safire (1929-2009) calling it the "Chicken Kiev speech" and a "colossal mis-judgment".  Later presidents, all of course who served in a post-Soviet environment, seemed to agree and changed direction, pushing for an aggressive expansion of NATO to embrace all the former Soviet bloc.  NATO would, at the now famous Bucharest summit in 2008, go further still, pledging that Ukraine and Georgia would one day be invited to join the alliance. Perhaps wishing to atone for the sins of the father, another President Bush (George W Bush, George XLIII; b 1946; US president 2001-2009) then wanted immediately to offer both nations membership roadmaps but even then, Berlin and Paris were cautious about antagonizing Russia and put both the former Soviet republics on the back-burner.  There they’ve stayed.

Chicken Kiev (côtelette de volaille in Russian & Ukrainian cuisine)

Chicken Kiev variations.

Ingredients

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
Olive oil
4 x 150 g skinless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons of plain flour
2 large free-range eggs
150 g fresh breadcrumbs
Sunflower oil
2 large handfuls of baby spinach or rocket
2 lemons
Butter
4 cloves of garlic
½ a bunch (15g) of fresh flat-leaf parsley
4 knobs of butter (at room temperature)
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
800 g Piper potatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 knob of unsalted butter

Instructions

Fry bacon in a pan at medium heat with no more than a drizzle of olive oil, until golden and crisp, then remove.

For the butter, peel garlic, then finely chop with the parsley leaves and mix into the softened butter with the cayenne.  Refrigerate.

Stuff the chicken breasts.  Pull back the loose fillet on the back of the breast and use a knife to slice a long pocket.

Cut the chilled butter into four and insert into the pocket, then crumble in a rasher of crispy bacon.  Fold and seal back the chicken, completely covering the butter so it becomes a wrapped parcel.

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Place flour in a shallow bowl, whisk the eggs in another and put breadcrumbs and a pinch of seasoning into a third.  Evenly coat each chicken breast in flour, then beaten egg, letting any excess drip off, and finally, turn them in the breadcrumbs, repeating until all four are evenly coated.

Shallow-fry in ¾ inch (20 mm) of sunflower oil on a medium to high heat until lightly golden (should take no more than 2-3 minutes), then transfer to a tray and bake in the oven until cooked through (typically around 10-12 minutes).  The alternative method is to bake them completely in the oven and skip the frying process; this requires drizzling them with olive oil and baking for about 20 minutes; taste will be the same but they won’t have the golden surface texture.

While cooking, peel and roughly chop the potatoes and cook in a large pan of boiling salted water until tender (typically 12-15 minutes).

Chop up broccoli and add it to the potatoes for the last 8-odd minutes of cooking.  Drain and leave to steam dry, then return to the pan and mash with a knob of butter and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Dollop the mash on the serving plates, placing a Kiev atop each. Lightly dress the spinach leaves or rocket in a little oil and lemon juice, then sprinkle over the top as garnish. Serve with a wedge of lemon.