Psychosis

Psychosis (pronounced sahy-koh-sis)

In psychiatry, a severe mental disorder (sometimes with physical damage to the brain), more serious than neurosis, characterized by disorganized thought processes, disorientation in time and space, hallucinations, delusions and a disconnection from reality.  Paranoia, manic depression, megalomania, and schizophrenia are all psychoses.

1847: From the New Latin & Late Greek psȳ́chōsis, the construct being psycho- + -osis, the source being the Ancient Greek ψύχωσις (psúkhōsis) (animation, principle of life), psych from the Ancient Greek ψυχή (psukhḗ or psykhē) (mind, life, soul).  The suffix –osis is from the Ancient Greek -ωσις (-ōsis) (state, abnormal condition or action), from -όω (-óō) (stem verbs) + -σις (-sis); -oses was the plural form and corresponding adjectives are formed using –otic, thus respectively producing psychoses and psychotic.  The Ancient Greek psykhosis meant "a giving of life; animation; principle of life".  In English, the original 1847 construction meant "mental affection or derangement" while the adjective psychotic (of or pertaining to psychosis) dates from 1889, coined from psychosis, on the model of neurotic/neurosis and ultimately from the Ancient Greek psykhē (understanding, the mind (as the seat of thought), faculty of reason).  The adverb was psychotically, the comparative of which is more psychotically and the superlative most psychotically, both occasionally useful.

Psychosis and the DSM

The word psychosis was a mid-nineteenth century creation necessitated by early psychiatry’s separation of psychiatric conditions from neurological disorders.  Originally a generalized concept to refer to psychiatric disorders, gradually it became one of the major classes of mental illness, assumed to be the result of a disease process, and, more recently, to a symptom present in many psychiatric disorders.  During this evolution, the diagnostic criteria shifted from the severity of the clinical manifestations and the degree of impairment in social functioning to the presence of one or more symptoms in a set of psychopathological symptoms.  By the early twentieth century, the concept of neurosis (which once embraced both the psychiatric and the neurological disorders), became restricted to one major class of psychiatric disease whereas psychosis (which once embraced all psychiatric disorders) became restricted to the other.

The first consensus-based classification with a description of diagnostic terms was in the first edition of the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I (1952)) in which mental disorders were divided into two classes of illness: (1) organic disorders, caused by or associated with impairment of brain tissue function; and (2) disorders of psychogenic origin without clearly defined physical cause or structural changes in the brain.  When DSM-II was released in 1968, the classifications were revised with mental disorders now classed as (1) psychoses and (2) neuroses, personality disorders, and other non-psychotic mental disorders.  Psychosis was defined as a mental disorder in which mental functioning is impaired to the degree that it interferes with the patient's ability to meet the ordinary demands of life and recognize reality.

Advances in both neurology and psychiatry led to an extensive revision in DSM-III (1980).  Radically, all traditional dichotomies (organic versus functional, psychotic versus neurotic et al) were discarded with psychiatric syndromes assigned to one of fifteen categories of disease.  At the labelling level, the term psychotic was used to describe a patient at a given time, or a mental disorder in which at some time during its course, all patients evaluate incorrectly the accuracy of their perceptions and thoughts but the editors emphasized it should not be applied to patients suffering only minor distortions of reality, regardless of how exactly they might fulfil the clinical criteria.  The revisions in DSM-III-R (1987) extended only to slight changes in terminology.

Mirroring the changes in diagnostic criteria published by the WHO, DSM-IV (1994) noted the diagnosis of psychosis should no longer be based on the severity of the functional impairment but rather on the presence of certain symptoms which included delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior.  This emphasis on psychoses being spectrum conditions was continued in DSM-5 (2013) with schizoid (personality) disorder and schizophrenia defining its mild and severe ends.  Additionally, a more precise diagnostic framework was defined in which patients were assessed in terms both of symptoms and duration of suffering.

Two examples of schizophrenia in art.

My Eyes in the Time of Apparition (1913) by August Natterer.

The life of German artist August Natterer (1868-1938) began innocuously enough, studying engineering, travelling extensively, marrying and building a successful career as an electrician.  However, in his thirties, he began to experience anxiety attacks and delusions and in 1907 suffered a hallucination in which thousands of images flashed before his eyes in little more than thirty minutes.  So affected by the experience that he attempted suicide, he was admitted to an asylum and would spend the remaining quarter-century of his life in and out of institutes for the insane.  In the literature, Natterer is referred to as Neter, a pseudonym used by his psychiatrist to protect patient and family from the social stigma then associated with mental illness.  He described the 1907 hallucination as a vision of the Last Judgment which he described as:

"...10,000 images flashed by in half an hour.  I saw a white spot in the clouds absolutely close – all the clouds paused – then the white spot departed and stood all the time like a board in the sky. On the same board or the screen or stage now images as quick as a flash followed each other, about 10,000 in half an hour… God himself occurred, the witch, who created the world – in between worldly visions: images of war, continents, memorials, castles, beautiful castles, just the glory of the world – but all of this to see in supernal images. They were at least twenty meters big, clear to observe, almost without color like photographs… The images were epiphanies of the Last Judgment. Christ couldn't fulfil the salvation because he was crucified early... God revealed them to me to accomplish the salvation."

After his suicide attempt and committal to the first of what would be several mental asylums, Natterer thereafter maintained that he was the illegitimate child of Emperor Napoleon I and "Redeemer of the World".  The vision inspired Natterer to a prolific production of drawings, all documenting images and ideas seen in the vision, one especially interesting to those studying psychosis and schizophrenia being My Eyes in the Time of Apparition (1913), two eyes bloodshot and wide-open eyes staring from the page.  The irises of the eyes do not match.

The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch.

Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was one of a number of artists modern psychiatrists have written of as having both genetic and environmental predispositions to mental illness, schizophrenia in particular; one of Munch’s sisters had schizophrenia, his father suffered from depression, his mother and another sister dying from tuberculosis when he was young.  Munch though was a realist, once telling an interviewer, “I cannot get rid of my illnesses, for there is a lot in my art that exists only because of them.”

His was a troubled life and in 1908, following a psychotic break exacerbated by alcoholism, Munch was admitted to a mental health clinic, later diagnosed with neurasthenia, a clinical condition now known to be closely associated with hypochondria and hysteria.  Adding to his problems, the Nazis labelled Munch’s work as “degenerate art” and in 1937 confiscated many of his works but their disapprobation had less of an influence on his painting than his schizophrenia, his output continuing to feature figures obviously tortured by anguish and despair.  The apparently frantic strokes of the brush and his seemingly chaotic pallet of colors have long intrigued both critics and clinicians seeing insight into his state of mind, the idea being his paintings provide something of a visual representation of how schizophrenia might lead individuals to see the world.

Lindsay Lohan in a theme of blue, following Edvard Munch.

Endlessly reproduced, the subject of numerous memes and the inspiration for many re-interpretations, The Scream is easily Munch’s most famous work and probably the most emblematic of what now is called “schizophrenic art”.  For decades it has been the chosen artistic representation for what is regarded as the angst-ridden modern human condition and when discussing it, Munch once described walking with two friends when the sky suddenly turned blood red, causing him to “tremble with pain and angst”, and he felt he heard his “…scream passing endlessly through the world.”

Immiserate

Immiserate (pronounced ih-mis-uh-reyt)

(1) To cause to become impoverished.

(2) To make miserable (a contested meaning).

Circa 1656: A translation of the German Verelendung (to sink into misery), the origin being the New Latin immiserāre & immiserāt- (both derived from miser (wreched), the construct in German being ver- (the causative prefix) + Elend (poverty).  Although it appeared in words concerned with the state of the working class during the industrial revolution, the word surged in use (as both immiseration & immiserate) during the 1950s although it had appeared in papers published in journals of economics as early as 1940, use noted especially in critiques of the European colonial empires, then in their early stages of dissolution although this was at the time by many either not realized or ignored.  The paradox of use increasing during the 1950s (a time when, in the West, real-wage outcomes for workers were (unusually) tending to improve) is thought a function of the vast increase in the publication rate of books and periodicals concerned with economics.  Im- was from the Middle English in- from the Old English in- (in, into (prefix)), from the Proto-Germanic in, from the primitive Indo-European en.  Misery was borrowed from the Old French miserie (from which Modern French gained misère), from the Latin miseria (from miser).  The suffix –ation was from the Middle English –acioun & -acion, from the Old French acion & -ation, from the Latin -ātiō, an alternative form of -tiō (from whence –tion).  Immiserate, immiserating, immiserates & immiserated are verbs and immiseration is a noun; the noun plural is immiserations.  Perhaps surprisingly, neither economists nor political scientists seem to have been tempted to coin immiserative. 

Wage growth and the money supply

David Ricardo (circa 1821), oil on canvas by Thomas Phillips (1770–1845), National Portrait Gallery, London.

In Marxist theory, the immiseration thesis (emiseration thesis in some translations) suggests the nature of capitalist production tends to stabilizes real wages, flattening wage growth relative to the money supply (however measured) in the economy, thus sustaining the ever-increasing power of capital over labour.  The theory has been refined in recent years to reflect also the way technological innovation has lowered demand for labor relative to plant and other capital equipment.  Karl Marx's (1818-1883) early (1840s) work reflected the influence of English economist David Ricardo's (1772–1823) wage theory which held wages will tend towards a subsistence minimum.  Marx however was an empiricist and his observations of industrial societies noted the working class didn’t necessarily suffer an absolute decline in living standards and by the 1850s was suggesting instead the most important metric was the relative immiseration of workers vis-à-vis capital.

Until the twenty-first century, the most innovative work on the thesis concerned the implications of technological change (the displacement of labor by machines) but in recent years, there’s been much attention to the ownership of assets and capital in an era which has seen an extraordinary rise in the money supply, induced firstly by the so-called Greenspan put (1987 on) and later, in the wake of the (2008-2011) global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing quantitative easing by many central banks.

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

Dictionaries are divided on whether immiserate really has the alternative meaning "to make miserable".  Some list the meaning without comment while others suggest the use (which must be rare) began as a mistake which was repeated.  There are dictionaries which are prescriptive (stating what the language should be) and those which are descriptive (recording how the language actually is used) but there seems no correlation between this and views of immiserate's allegedly alternative meaning.  The idea that there is some connection between poverty and misery does seem uncontroversial and while the dreary phrase "money doesn't buy happiness" is often repeated, a probably more helpful observation was that attributed to George Bernard Shaw (GBS, 1856-1950): "Money might not buy happiness but given the choice, one would rather be rich and miserable than poor and miserable".    

Obelus

Obelus (pronounced ob-uh-luhs)

(1) A mark (− or ÷) used in ancient manuscripts to point out spurious, corrupt, doubtful, or superfluous words or passages.

(2) Another name for dagger (obsolete).

(3) As a dagger mark (†),used as a reference mark in printed matter, or (historically) to indicate that a person is deceased; now most often used to indicate a footnote.

(4) A mark (÷) used to represent division in mathematics.

1350–1400: A Middle English borrowing from the Late Latin from the Ancient Greek ὀβελός (obelós) (spit; pointed pillar).  The origin is something of a mystery, thought possibly an alteration of βέλος (bélos) but the initial vocal cannot be accounted for.  Etymologists agree the word is pre-Greek but there’s never been any evidence to suggest the source.  Obelus is a noun; the noun plural is obeli.

Said to be a creation of the Homeric scholar Zenodotus, the obelus was one of a system of editorial symbols used to enhance the meaning of documents.  The original use was twofold, a horizontal line indicating a critical mark to point out that a passage was spurious, but with one point below and one above (÷) (ὀβελὸς περιστιγμένος (obelòs peristigménos)) it denoted superfluous passages; these device were used especially in philosophical texts.  The original Zenodotuian set was expanded, firstly by Aristophanes of Byzantium (who invented the asterisk) and, in their most systematized form, by Aristarchus, thus the usually applied term Aristarchian symbols.  The dagger symbol, a later variant of the obelus, depicted an iron roasting spit, a dart, or the sharp end of a javelin, the symbolism suggesting a cutting-out of dubious material and remains common in modern typography.

Dagger obeli

In mathematics, the obelus is still used throughout the English-speaking world as the division sign, a use dating from an appearance in Teutsche Algebra (1659) by Swiss mathematician Johann Rahn.  That was accepted for centuries and endured even after the onset of modernity because the early mechanical adding-machines and electronic calculators included ÷ as the division key but, from the early-1980s, when IBM (more or less) standardized computer keyboards, a ÷ wasn’t included and software instead used the slash (/) for division.  Interestingly, although the asterisk (*) was used to perform the multiplication function, the necessary survival of the x on keyboards has meant the * has tended to be restricted to multiplication in software formulae and x is used in general text and equations.  The ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation recommends only the slash (solidus or fraction bar) for division.  There is however a faction of mathematicians who have use neither for the ÷ or the -.  These purists insist there’s no such thing as division or subtraction, the operations respectively actually multiplication by fractions and the addition of negatives.   

Cash

Cash (pronounced kash)

(1) Money in the form of coins or banknotes, historically that issued by a government or a bank or other financial institution operating with the approval of a government.

(2) Money or an equivalent paid at the time of making a purchase.

(3) Immediate payment, in full or part, for goods or services, even if not paid in physical cash (ie as distinct from the various forms of time (delayed) payment).

(4) To give or obtain cash for a check, money order, bill of exchange etc.

(5) In some games of cards, (1) to win (a trick) by leading an assured winner or (2) to lead (an assured winner) in order to win a trick.

(6) Any of several low-denomination coins of China, Vietnam, India, and the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), especially the Chinese copper coin.

1590–1600: From the Portuguese caixa, from the Tamil காசு (kācu) (a copper coin), from the Sanskrit karṣa (a weight (of precious metal such as silver or gold)).  There was also the sixteenth century Old Italian cassa (money box) from the Latin capsa (case).  Variation of cash appear in many languages including the Japanese: キャッシュ (kyasshu), the Serbo-Croatian (kȅš & ке̏ш) the Romanian cash and the Swedish cash.

Cashable is an adjective, cashability & cashableness are nouns.  The noun plural is cash (except for the proper noun; the surname’s plural being Cashes).  The homophone of cash is cache, often mispronounced as kaache although cache’s adoption as a technical term in computing has led some to suggest kaache should be the use in the industry with kash for all other purposes and there’s much support for the view which does make sense, even if, given the specificity of the context, confusion is unlikely.  The verb cashier (and the related cashiering & cashiered) is (1) the simple past tense and past participle of cashier and (2) the apparently curious term for the dismissal of a military officer, cashiered in this context from the Dutch casseren & kasseren, from the Old French casser (to break (up)).  During a ceremonial cashiering, the break of his link with the military was sometimes symbolized dramatically by literally breaking the officer’s sword (which had in advance been partly sawn through).   

The surname appears to be an American variant of Case, the records indicating it was first adopted by in the US by German immigrants named Kirch and Kirsch, an example of the Anglicization of names once a common of those migrating to the English-speaking world.  In rare cases it has been used a male given name, often as a second name reflecting the mother’s maiden name.  A cashier (person in charge of money), dates from the 1590s, from the French caissier (treasurer), from caisse (money box), the immediate source of the English word perhaps the Middle Dutch kassier.

Lindsay Lohan themed cash.  Unfortunately, these Lohanic notes are not issued by the US Federal Reserve and thus neither legal tender nor readily convertible (at least at face-value) to other currencies.  However, Lindsay Lohan is dabbling in the embroynic world of the NFT (non fungible token) which may evolve to have some influence on the development of how cash is stored and exchanged (if not valued).   

In idiomatic use, cashing-in one’s chips means literally to take one’s winnings and leave the casino but is also used to mean “to die” whereas cashing-up is a technical term from business referring to the end-of-day audit & balancing procedures.  A moneybags (ie bags full of cash) is someone (usually conspicuously) rich.  A cash-cow is a product or service which dependably provides the owner or operator a lucrative profit.  A cash-crop (agricultural product grown to sell for profit) is attested from 1831 and was distinct from one with some other primary purpose (such as for self-sustenance or stock-feed).  A cash-back is a trick in advertising and a form of discount.  The phrase cold, hard cash is another way of emphasizing the primacy of money.  A cash-book (which historically were physical ledgers but most are now electronic) was a transactional register.  To cash was “to convert (a cheque (the US check) or other bill of exchange) to cash", known since 1811 as a variation of the noun and the now-extinct encash from 1865 was also used as a piece of specialized jargon meaning exactly the same thing; it was replaced as required by cashed & cashing.  The cash-box (also called money-box), dating from the 1590s, was (and remains) a box for the safe-keeping physical cash and was from the sixteenth century French caisse (money box), from the Provençal caissa or the Italian cassa, from the Anglo-Norman & Old French casse (money box), from the Latin capsa (box, case) ultimately from capiō (I take, I seize, I receive), from the primitive Indo-European kehp- (to grasp) (which also led to the Spanish caja (box); the original sense was literally the wooden or metal box by the eighteenth century, the secondary sense of the money began to run is parallel before, for most purposes, becoming the sole meaning.  To cash in is to profit from something, applying it one's advantage.  A cash-register, dating from 1875, was historically a mechanical device used to record transactions and issue receipts, such machines now mostly electronic and increasingly linked to centralized (even international) databases; in Jewish humorous use, a cash-register was “a Jewish piano”.  Cash-flow (which surprisingly seems to date only from 1954) refers to a specific characteristic of business and means the periodic accumulation of disposable revenue to permit the operations always to meet its obligations and continue trading; it’s not directly related to long-term profitability in that something with a good cash-flow can continue indefinitely while only breaking even while a profitable concern with a poorly managed cash-flow can flounder.  In commerce, use is common such as cash-and-carry, cash account, cash-only, discount for cash etc although transaction handling costs have affected the last: where once it was common for businesses to offer a discount to customers paying with physical cash (sometimes because it offered the possibility of a hidden (ie un-taxed) transaction, it’s now not uncommon for a fee to be imposed, reflecting the difference in processing costs for weightless (electronic) payments compared with the physical (notes & coins).  In criminal slang, "cash" is said to be a euphemism for “to do away with, to kill” the word "disband" also carrying this meaning and both “cash” and “disband” are reputed to be used on the dark web as code by those offering contract killing although such things are hard to verify and may be an internet myth. Cash on delivery (COD) dates from 1859 and was an invention of American commerce designed to encourage sales from businesses previously unknown to the individual consumer.  Cashless (often as cashless-society or cashless transaction) refers usually to the elimination of physical money (ie notes and coins), something sought by many bureaucrats for various reasons although of concern to civil libertarians.

According to anthropologists, the word cash (money and all that) is really derived from the word kash, a beer brewed in Ancient Egypt which was used to pay workers (including the builders of the Great Pyramids).  Stone cutters, slaves, architects, and even public officials were often paid (at least in part) with beer, two containers of kash often set as the minimum wage for an Egyptian laborer’s day of work.  At the time, there was quite a brewing industry, the Egyptians known to be distributing at least six varieties of beer by 3,000 BC and there is evidence it played a part in the social conventions of the age: in some circumstances if a man offered a lady a sip of his beer, they could be held to be betrothed so dating could be minefield for those who’d drunk too much.

The traditions associated with kash spread.  In Mesopotamia, tavern owners found guilty of overcharging patrons for beer could be sentenced to death by drowning in the Tigris or Euphrates rivers (depending on where the establishment was located) although most punishments were apparently commuted to fines.  The Ancient Babylonians, serious about beer making, to regulate quality decreed that any commercial beer maker who sold unfit beer was to be drowned in that very impure libation although no records exist which confirm how many were actually suck in their own dodgy brew.  The most attractive Babylonian tale (although not one all historians accept) is that more happily, a bride’s father would supply all the “honey" kash (a form of kash to which honey and sweet herbs were added) the groom could drink for one month after the wedding.  Because the calendar was lunar based, this month was referred to as the “honey moon”.

Indolent

Indolent (pronounced in-dl-uhnt)

(1) Having or showing a disposition to avoid exertion; slothful; disliking work or effort; lazy; idle.

(2) In pathology, causing little or no pain; inactive or relatively benign.

(3) In medicine (applied especially to painless ulcers), slow to heal.

1663: From either the French indolent or directly from the Medieval Latin indolentem, from the Latin indolent- (stem of indolēns), the construct being in- (not) + dolent- (stem of dolēns (pain)), present participle of dolēre (to be painful, be in pain) from dolēre (to grieve, to cause distress).  The sense of "living easily, slothful”, dates from 1710, a sense said (certainly by English etymologists) perhaps developed in French.  The synonyms for both meanings are many, typically words like slow, inactive, sluggish & torpid.  The meanings related to medical matters are now entirely technical and restricted to the profession, both generalized as “a slowly progressive medical condition associated with little or no pain” and specifically in conditions such as lowest of three grades of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), refractory corneal ulcers and a slow-growing carditis, a form of infective endocarditis that may also indicate rheumatic fever.  In general use, the word is now used exclusively to indicate degrees of idleness.  Indolent is an adjective (the occasional use as a noun remains non-standard), indolency & indolence are nouns and indolently is an adverb; the noun plural is indolences.

Living to almost 100, the mathematician & philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) lived a productive life and his output was prodigious.  However, although he admitted taking seriously being told in his youth “the devil makes work for idle hands” and spending his industriously, in 1932 he felt moved to publish an essay he called In Praise of Idleness, written at a time when many anxious to work were suffering from an imposed indolence: “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”  Some five years earlier he’d delivered one of his more famous addresses, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), so it’s unlikely his thought owed much to scripture such as Matthew 6:28 (“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” (King James Version (KJV, 1611)) which was about Christ telling His disciples to abandon anxiety and trust in God to provide.  Instead, he suggested, in what seems a very modern view, that “…a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work..”  He went on to review the evolution of the post-feudal economic models (in a kind of neo-Marxist analysis) and offered an alternative vision and, were he alive today to survey the scene, he would have been disappointed to realize had never been achieved:

“Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”

An indolent Lindsay Lohan, Los Angeles, 2012.

Nor is it likely the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) gave much thought to Matthew 6:28 while writing Ode on Indolence (1819).  There is some scriptural imagery in the poetry of Keats but the debt is more to the Bible as a literary work than anything overtly religious, Keats more influenced by classical mythology, nature, and the Romantic ideals of beauty and truth.

Ode on Indolence by John Keats

They toil not, neither do they spin.’
One morn before me were three figures seen,
    With bowèd necks, and joinèd hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
    In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
        They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
    When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
        Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
    And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.
 
How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
    How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?
Was it a silent deep-disguisèd plot
    To steal away, and leave without a task
        My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
    The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
        Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower:
    O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but—nothingness?
 
A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
    Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
    And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
        The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name;
    The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatiguèd eye;
        The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
    Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek,—
I knew to be my demon Poesy.
 
They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
    O folly! What is Love? and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition! it springs
    From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;
        For Poesy!—no,—she has not a joy,—
    At least for me,—so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep’d in honey’d indolence;
        O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
    That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!
 
And once more came they by:—alas! wherefore?
    My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
    With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
        The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
    Tho’ in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press’d a new-leaved vine,
    Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;
        O Shadows! ’twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
 
So, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
    My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
    A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
        Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
    In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
    And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle spright,
    Into the clouds, and never more return!

Hypergolic

Hypergolic (pronounced hahy-per-gaw-lik or hahy-per-gol-ik)

(1) In chemistry, a process in which one substance ignites spontaneously upon contact with a complementary substance (oxidizer).  Word applies especially to bipropellant (made of two components) rocket-fuel.

(2) Of or relating to hypergols.

1945: A backronym derived from the German hypergol, a construct of scientific use: hyp(er) + erg + ol + -ic.  Hyper is from the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér) (over; extreme); erg from the Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon) (work), ol both from from the chemical suffix ol from alcohol & the Latin oleum (oil) and ic, the adjectival suffix, variations of which are widely used in European languages (the Middle English ik, the Old French ique, the Latin icus, all thought derived from the primitive Indo-European ikos; oldest known forms are the Ancient Greek ικός (ikós), the Sanskrit श (śa) & क (ka) and the Old Church Slavonic -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ)).  The hypergole terminology was coined by Dr Wolfgang Nöggerath (1908-1973) of the Technical University of Brunswick, Germany.  Few are as linguistically imaginative as scientists who plunder languages at will to produce the best or most memorable words to describe their creations.  Hypergolic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is hypergolics.

The Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet

During the 1930s, almost all research into rocket propellants was undertaken in Germany, the military being interested in missiles with which to deliver warheads against long-range targets and, even then, some scientists were imagining space flight, usually with a manned visit to the moon in mind.  The experimental fuels were classed as:

Monergols: Single ingredient fuels.
Hypergols: Fuel which ignites upon constituents being combined.
Non-hypergols: Multi-constituent fuel requiring external ignition.
Lithergols: Solid / liquid hybrids.

Operational Me-163.

It was only military necessity that forced the Luftwaffe (the German air force) to commit to combat the only rocket-powered fighter ever deployed.  The Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet was powered by a rocket which burned a methanol hydrazine mix with hydrogen- peroxide as an oxidizer.  It offered a uniquely fast rate of climb and a speed in combat more than 100 mph (160 km/h) faster than allied fighters but was hard to handle and the fuel was both highly volatile and prone to spontaneous combustion in flight or on the ground.  In air engagements, the speed which was so advantageous in reaching a target made it difficult for a pilot to maintain contact, the long bursts of fire need usually to bring down the big bombers rarely sustained.  Most authorities estimate some 370 Me-163s were built but only 60-80 achieved operational status and they shot down only nine allied aircraft.  The Komet effectiveness was limited by its high fuel consumption which limited flight duration (the time available in the combat zone less than eight minutes) but the Luftwaffe's records confirm that on some days, such was the accident rate, not even half the little craft even reached operational height.  Not only was it a difficult machine to handle but, late in the war, resources were so strained that training was limited and few of the Komet's pilots had more than a few hours experience in the craft before deployment.  To make matters worse, although in powered flight its speed make it close to invulnerable to attack, once the fuel was burned, to return to base it had to glide down to the runway and of those lost to allied fighters, most were shot-down during landing or on the ground.

Early drawing of Me-163 prototype.

It was another example of the impressive wartime technology developed by German scientists and engineers which failed to realise the possibilities offered.  Had the resources expended on the Komet instead been devoted to improving the Wasserfall (waterfall) rocket, Allied air losses might have been significantly greater.  The Wasserfall was a surface-to-air missile explicitly designed to counter high altitude bombers and used a two-stage system: (1) a solid-fueled booster rocket for launch after which (2) a liquid-fueled rocket would propel the missile to its target.  A glimpse of the future, it was guided by a radar system that tracked the target & transmitted guidance commands and was designed to be integrated with other ground-based anti-aircraft defenses such as flak batteries.  Ultimately unsuccessful because the time and resources needed for development were never available, like the V1 (an early cruise missile) and V2 (the first operational ballistic missile), the hardware, personnel and data which fell into Allied hands at the end of the war essentially saved decades of peace-time work in projects including surface to air & air to air missiles, the space programme (notably the moon landing) and the the development of the big ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles).  Historically, the Komet remains a one-off, no rocket-powered fighters since manufactured.  In action only between 1944-1945, tactically, it was a failure, losses far exceeding kills, but it influenced the next generation of military airframes being developed for supersonic flight.

Zucchetto

Zucchetto (pronounced zoo-ket-oh or tsook-ket-taw (Italian)

A small, round skullcap worn by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, a priest's being black, a bishop's violet, a cardinal's red, and the pope's white; a calotte; the style is worn also by Syriac (or Malankara Orthodox) and some Anglican clergy.

1850–1855: From the Italian zucchetto, a variant of zucchetta, diminutive of zucca (gourd, squash, pumpkin) from the Late Latin cucutia (gourd), probably from the Classical Latin cucurbita.  Depending on the country or order, a zucchetto may also be referred to as a pilus, pilos, pileus, pileolo, subbiretum, submitrale, soli deo, berrettino, calotte or calotta.  Although unattested, it may be related to the primitive Indo-European tjukka (gourd) and the alternative spelling was zuchetto which most dictionaries seem now to list as non-standard.  The Italian noun zucchetta was (1) a tromboncini (a kind of squash), (2) an ecclesiastic skullcap or (2) a military helmet worn in the 16th century.  The relationship between the small vegetable and the head-covering is the shape, the construct being zucca (gourd, squash, pumpkin) + -etto.  The etto- suffix was used to forms nouns from nouns, denoting a diminutive.  It was from the Late Latin -ittum, accusative singular of –ittus, and was the alterative suffix used to form melioratives, diminutives, and hypocoristics and existed variously in English & French as -et, in Italian as Italian -etto and in Portuguese & Spanish as -ito.  With an animate noun, -etto references as male, the coordinate female suffix being -etta, which is also used with inanimate nouns ending in -a.  It should not be confused with the homophonous suffix -eto.  Zucchetto is a noun; the noun plural is zucchettos.

The first head covering recognizably zucchettoesque was the Greek pilos which evolved also into the modern beret which was in its early forms a larger, irregularly-shaped zucchetto.  A classic medieval adaptation to the climate, it covered a monk’s tonsure (that part of the head from which the hair was shaved, a practice not formally abandoned in the Roman Catholic Church until 1972) thus providing, depending on the season, either insulation or protection from the sun.  It is similar in appearance to the Jewish kippah and this presumably was intentional although the theological basis of two differs.

Ecclesiastical fashion statement: Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) wearing zucchetto with matching choir cape.

In the Roman church, the color of the zucchetto can be used to determine the office held but the distinctions are not absolute.  A pope for example obviously wears a white but bit that right extends also to those in orders where white vestments are worn.  Cardinals wear scarlet, archbishops, bishops and other notables amaranth and the more junior ranks black.  Apparently informally, some monks wear the brown of their traditional habits.  By convention, a prelate (a bishop or cardinal) removes his zucchetti when in the presence of a more senior appointee and all doff the things when the pope is in the room.  Observers of such things have noted that except during the most formal occasions, this etiquette seems wither to be waived or ignored.

The zucchetto is worn throughout most of the Mass, is removed at the commencement of the Preface, and replaced at the conclusion of Communion, when the Blessed Sacrament is put away, the zucchetto never worn at any occasion where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed and it’s always removed at the end of the last secret prayer, replaced after the ablutions.  Thoughtfully, there’s usually provided also a funghellino (literally “little mushroom”), a kind of hat-stand fashioned usually from brass or wood on which a zucchetto sits when not worn.

Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) & Cardinal Pell in the Vatican.

The zucchetto has also entered the long list of the Catholic Church’s list of cargo cult items.  In a tradition which is said to have be started by Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958), cardinals & bishops, if presented with a new zucchetto, may kiss theirs and give it to the generous faithful soul.  Some prefer to take the gift, place it briefly on their heads and hand it back with a blessing.  Recent popes have also adopted the practice, presumably thinking it a good photo opportunity.  Obviously the system could be open to abuse.  Should a zucchetto which has adorned the head of a pope or cardinal fall into the hands of a voodoo priest, they could use it to make a voodoo doll.