Coffin

Coffin (pronounced kof-in (U) or kaw-fin (non-U))

(1) The box or case in which the body of a dead person is placed for burial; in US use, usually called a casket.

(2) In veterinary science, the hollow crust or hoof of a horse's foot, below the coronet, in which is the coffin bone.

(3) In printing, the bed of a platen press; the wooden frame around the bed of an early wooden press.

(4) In cooking, a casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie (archaic).

(5) In fingernail art, one of the standard shapes.

(6) In cartomancy, the eighth Lenormand card.

(7) A type of basket (obsolete).

(8) Industry slang for a storage container for nuclear waste.

(9) A conical paper bag, used by grocers (obsolete).

(10) In engineering, an alternative name for a flask or casting mold, especially those used in sand casting.

1300-1350: From the Middle English cofin, from the Old Northern French cofin (sarcophagus (and earlier basket & coffer) from the Latin cophinus (basket, hamper), a loanword from the Ancient Greek κόφινος (kóphinos) (a kind of basket) of uncertain origin, the Latin the source also of the Italian cofano and the Spanish cuebano (basket).  The original meaning in fourteenth century Middle English was "chest or box for valuables", preserved in the modern coffer (see most frequently in the plural form coffers), meaning, inter alia, a specialized type of container for storing money or other valuables.  The funereal sense, "chest or box in which the dead human body is placed for burial" is from 1520s; before that the main secondary sense in English was "pie crust, a mold or casing of pastry for a pie" (late 14c.). The meaning "vehicle regarded as unsafe" is from 1830s; coffin nail (cigarette) is slang from 1880; the phrase "nail in (one's) coffin" (a thing that hastens or contributes to one's death) has been in use since 1792.

Shapes of boxes

Pope Francis (b 19362025; pope 2013-2025) at the funeral of Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023), St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican, January 2023.  The expression "nail down the lid" is a reference to the lid of a coffin (casket), the implication being one wants to make doubly certain anyone within can't possible "return from the dead". 

A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation, although it’s increasingly common for elaborate and expensive coffins to be used only for the funeral ceremony with the dead actually buried or cremated in simple boxes made from cheaper timber or even reinforced cardboard.  Use for burial became two-pronged.  The Old French cofin, (basket), evolved into coffin in English whereas the modern French form, couffin, means cradle.  Within the English-speaking world, coffin is rare in the US where the preferred form is usually casket; elsewhere the words are used interchangeably.  However, some undertakers (now often gentrified as "funeral directors") do note detail differences between the two, a casket denoting a four or eight-sided (almost always a rectangular or long octagonal) shape, while a coffin tends to be six or twelve-sided (almost always an elongated hexagonal or elongated dodecagonal).

1937 Cord 812 Phaeton.

Probably because of the morbid association, the coffin has never been widely used as a design metaphor except where adoption is dictated by functional need.  It was however the most famous feature of the Cord 810/812 (1936-1937), known from its debut as the “coffin nose” and probably still the most memorable car of the art deco period.  Despite the elongated hood (bonnet) and coming from an era during which the configuration was widely used, the Cords were fitted not with straight-eight engines but used a 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) Lycoming V8, the generous length necessitated by something unusual for the time: front wheel drive.  This demanded additional space to achieve the desired lines so the semi-automatic four-speed gearbox was mounted in front of the engine.  In the improving economy of the mid-1930s sales were initially brisk but reliability problems dampened demand and the rectification programme proved so expensive production ceased in 1937, the recession of 1938 dooming hopes of any revival although the body dies were purchased in a fire-sale by two other troubled operations,  Graham-Paige and Hupmobile.  Making the distinctive lines rather more conventional in appearance, the companies created two substantially identical four-door sedans with an emphasis on ease of production and that meant the Cord's radical engineering was abandoned for something as conventional as the new look.  Now using Graham-Page's reliable but uninspiring straight-six engine driving the rear wheels, the cars were competent enough but the market was still difficult and there was insufficient capital to sustain operations during the inevitable delays caused by teething troubles early in the production process.  With fewer than 2000 having been built by late 1940, neither manufacturer's assembly lines lasted long enough to see passenger vehicle stopped after war was declared in 1941 but the plants were in 1942 re-opened for military production.  

Coffin-shaped fingernails painted in Dior 999 (left) and gloss-black (right).  With a distinctive curve which tapers to an obtuse end, the elegant and much-admired coffin is one of the standard shapes in fingernail art.  The name is also sometimes misapplied: If the tapering is more severe, the nail should properly be called an almond and if rounded, it’s an oval or squoval (although some manicurists list those variations as a pipe).  The alternative name for the coffin is "ballerina", a reference to the shape of the shoes in which the dancers perform.

Outtakes of Lindsay Lohan with and in casket during vampire-themed photo-shoot by Tyler Shields (b 1982).  The Life Is Not A Fairytale session, Los Angeles, May 2011.

Absquatulate

Absquatulate (pronounced ab-skwoch-uh-leyt)

To flee; abscond; decamp; run away.

1840: Absquatulate replaced the earlier absquotilate (attested from 1837), both being facetious coinages of pseudo-Latin: blendings of abscond +‎ squat +‎ perambulate with the middle portion probably influenced by -le (frequentative) and the dialectal term squattle (depart).  The source is contested.  It’s said to have been used on the London stage in the lines of the comical American character Nimrod Wildfire in the play The Kentuckian as edited by British author William Bayle Bernard (1807–1875) although there are references to it being in some editions of James Kirke Paulding’s (1778- 1860; US Secretary of the Navy 1838-1841) original script.  In an example of the language displacement caused by war (which would become more prevalent in the twentieth century), the US Civil War slang skedaddle replaced it; other synonyms in the sense of “quickly to leave” include abscond, decamp and the unfortunately rare vamoose.

Lunch aftermath: Lindsay Lohan in chunky platforms, absquatulating from the Café de Paris, Monte Carlo, June 2015.

Although absquatulate is wholly facetious, all agree the meaning has always been "to flee; abscond; decamp; run away" but the use to which it was put does hint that there was often some suggestion those absquatulating were doing so after stealing something or committing some other crime.  The word become sufficiently Latinized for a family of relations to emerge including absquatulation, absquatulated, absquatulater and absquatulative.  The latter-day creation abscotchalter was criminal-class slang describing someone hiding from the police; it seems now extinct except as a humorous literary device.

Election aftermath: Crooked Hillary Clinton in blue pantsuit absquatulates early, Washington DC, November 2016.

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 etc) 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.   

Diatessaron

Diatessaron (pronounced dahy-uh-tes-er-uhn)

(1) In theology, a conflation of the four Gospels of the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) into a single narrative.

(2) In the musical notation of Ancient Greek music, the interval of a fourth (obsolete).

(3) An electuary compounded of four medicines (obsolete).

1375-1400: From the Late Latin, from the Ancient Greek dia tessarōn khordōn sumphōnia (concord through four notes), the construct being διά (diá) (composed of (literally through)) + τεσσάρων (tessárōn) (every fourth).  Tessárōn was the genitive plural of τέσσαρες (téssares) (four).  Diatessaron is a noun; the noun plural is diatessara or diatessarons.

In Europe, the word was for centuries used as a technical term in music meaning "interval of a fourth" and in 1803 it was adopted in theological publishing to describe the harmonizing of the four biblical gospels, something done informally for centuries.  The use in the early medicinal preparations began with apothecaries defining certain electuaries as diatessarons if they were made from four base ingredients but the use soon faded.  An electuary is any medicine mixed with honey or other sweetener in order to make it more palatable to swallow and is from the Late Latin electuarium (of unknown origin but likely a corruption of the Ancient Greek ἐκλεικτόν (ekleiktón) (medicine that melts in the mouth; medicine which can be licked-up; lozenge, jujube) from ἐκλείχω (ekleíkhō) (to lick up; I lick up), the construct being ἐκ (ek) (out, from) + λείχω (leíkhō) (I lick)).

Folio 4v of the Rabula Gospels (Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana) Canon Tables.

The Christian New Testament begins with the story of Jesus rendered as  four versions of the story of Jesus, each more or less complete. These accounts of Jesus’ life, the gospels (meaning “good story”), are each named after its purported author, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and each relates a narrative of the life of  Jesus and his ministry, all in in theological terms. Three of these gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are very similar, and are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels; John is quite different.  In academic theology, The Diatessaron is described as “a harmonized gospel”, a text created by taking the four “standard gospels” and weaving them into one story.  Medieval scholars believed there was one original Diatessaron written during the second century by an individual named Tatian but it’s long been thought most probable that several gospel harmonies (or Diatessarons were) created between the second and fourth centuries and in one form or another, the Diatessaron was one of the pre-eminent Gospel texts in the Syriac-speaking churches of the east until the fifth century when, under the influence of the western church which maintained the tradition of four separate gospels, the harmonized versions began to be supplanted by the four.

Despite that change (which spread with typical efficiency in the institutional Church), the Diatessaron remained for centuries a document of importance to individual Christians and even some clerics, despite the loss of canonical status.  Speculation has long surrounded to origin of the Diatessarons for there exists no documentary evidence.  Most scholars seem to believe the motives of the early authors were pragmatic, a single text more suitable to use a teaching device to a population which was substantially unschooled and often illiterate.  There was also some sensitivity to the criticism from Christianity’s early enemies which focused often on the inconsistencies between the gospels, each difference in detail seized upon as might a barrister in cross-examination highlight contradictions in the evidence offered by a witness.  As a literary device, the concept of harmonization was anyway accepted and known since Antiquity and scholars had even then known the four individual gospels had themselves been harmonized from earlier texts.  Moreover, the Gospels are interpretive texts, drawing and editing passages from the Hebrew Bible to support the veracity of their narrative, citing those texts as required so structurally, harmonization is a form of interpretation.  To understand the extent to which the Diatessarons might be thought of as cross-cutting interpolations (and certainly not deconstructions) of the four gospels, they're best viewed in tabular form, the columns arranged spreadsheet-like.  Dr Naomi Koltun-Fromm (b 1964) of Haverford College, Pennsylvania has written a fine piece using this format. 

Flagstaff

Flagstaff (pronounced flag-staf or flag-stahf)

The forms flag-staff & flag staff both exist, the original mistake often replicated and often seen in commercial use.  Flagstaff is a noun; the noun plural is flagstaves or flagstaffs, the latter now more common.

(1) A pole on which a flag is flown (by convention, a flagstaff is shorter, often portable and used with miniature flags while a “flagpole” is used taller, used for full-sized flags and usually a permanent structure.

(2) A locality name in a number of countries.

Circa 1610: The construct was flag + staff.  Dating from the late fifteenth century, Flag was from the Middle English flag & flagge (flag), the origins of which are uncertain.  Possible sources include (1) the early Middle English flage (name for a baby's garment), (2) the Old English flagg & flacg (cataplasm, poultice, plaster), (3) a blend of the nouns flap & fag (in obsolete sense “flap”) or (4) an imitative form of something unknown.  Although it’s speculative, there is support for a link with the Proto-Germanic flaką (something flat), from the primitive Indo-European pleh- (flat, broad, plain), the reference obviously to the shape of a flag.  The Germanic cognates included the Saterland Frisian Flaage (flag), the West Frisian flagge (flag), the Dutch vlag (flag), the German Flagge (flag), the Swedish flagga (flag) and the Danish flag (flag, ship's flag).  The words may be compared with the Middle English flacken (to flutter, palpitate), the Swedish dialectal flage (to flutter in the wind) and the Old Norse flögra (to flap about), all akin to the Old High German flogarōn (to flutter), the Old High German flogezen (to flutter, flicker), the Middle English flakeren (to move quickly to and fro) and the Old English flacor (“fluttering, flying).  Staff (in the sense of a “stick or pole”) was from the Middle English staf (stick or pole, especially one up to 6 feet (1.8 metres) in length and carried in the hand (typically “a military standard”)), from the Old English stæf (plural stafas) (walking stick, strong pole used for carrying, rod used as a weapon, pastoral staff), probably originally stæb, from the Proto-Germanic stab- (the source also of the Old Saxon staf, the Old Norse stafr, the Danish stav, the Old Frisian stef, the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch staf, the Old High German stab, the German Stab, the Gothic stafs and the Middle Dutch stapel (pillar, foundation).

The locality names are probably usually in some way related to the presence of a flagstaff (or flagpole) and there are some romantic tales about how the city of Flagstaff, Arizona (county seat of Coconino County) gained the name, most in some way related to the US centennial celebrations of 4 July 1876 when a large flag was flown from a tall tree (in some tellings it was raised on an actual flagpole made from an impressively straight and tall pine tree felled for the occasion).  The actual details remain murky but all seem convinced the flag flown on the day was the central feature.  Flagstaff is the location of the Museum of Northern Arizona which holds a collection of ten sandpainting reproductions (by an unknown Navajo artist) of photographic images taken by Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), the Republican Party nominee at the 1964 US presidential election.  An avid photographer, Goldwater captured many images of Western landscapes and Native Americans subjects, publishing three books of his photographs between the 1940s & 1970s.  The terms flagstaff and a flagpole often are used interchangeably but among specialists there is a convention distinguishing use:

Flagstaff: (1) A shorter pole or staff, often portable or decorative and seen on tables at international conferences, inform of each representative or delegation. (2) With the exception of those used on vessels or vehicles, the flagstaff is most associated with ceremonial, indoor use. (3) Flagstaffs are often fitted with an ornamental finial (a decorative topper) which is often styled to match the base (which, if fitted, is typically wide and relatively heavy to provide stability.

Flagpole: (1) A typically taller and more robust structure, used outdoors (although there are “full-sized” flagpoles in enclosed buildings. (2) Flagpoles usually are fixed installations and designed to withstand severe weather, holding a flag (or flags) in a permanent or semi-permanent position. Flagpoles can be installed in the ground or attached to a building (or some custom structure), usually with a mechanism for raising or lowering the flag, the most common of which is the halyard system.

Lindsay Lohan with flagstaff equipped Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) Pullman during filing for Liz & Dick (2012).  The Even more then forty years after the last was built, the 600 remains a popular choice for film directors wishing to summon the verisimilitude of wealth, power and evil, the latter because of the roll-call of kleptomaniac, megalomaniac and occasionally genocidal heads of state who formed a great fondness for the things.

Breakdown of Mercedes-Benz flagstaff part numbers for W116 (1972-1980, left) and W123 (1976-1986, right).  Despite the appearance, as the numbers indicate, the shafts were different although some of the fittings were interchangeable.  Although the W123 (equating with the modern E-Class) was in the “mid-range” market, it was popular in governmental and diplomatic use, being much cheaper than the bigger S-Class (and certainly the gargantuan Großer (Grosser (the W100)) and there was a long-wheelbase (LWB) version with seating for seven to eight.

The term flagstaff is now associated mostly with the devices attached to limousines (and increasingly, armored, truck-like SUVs) used by the military, the corps diplomatique or other government dignitaries.  These are used to fly national flags, personal standards or whatever is appropriate to the occupant’s station.  Because they are used on vehicles which, being used for ceremonial purposes, often travel at low speed in parades, the flags used are sometimes rigid to emulate the appearance of one in a stiff breeze, a similar trick to that NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) used for the flag “flown” on the moon to mark the Apollo 11 landing in 1969.

Flagstaff-equipped Mercedes-Benz 600s (W100, 1963-1981): comrade Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; prime-minister or president of Yugoslavia 1944-1980) (left), comrade Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989; general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party 1965-1989) and Pope Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978).

Although not a technically difficult device to create, some manufacturers who serviced the market (Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Lincoln & Imperial) offered the flagstaffs as a factory part-number (technically, some coming from third-party coach-builders).  On the Mercedes-Benz 600 they were available either as a pair or single fitting (installed either left or right although they were interchangeable and a single part-number) but there doesn’t seem to have been any asymmetrical installs.  There are photographs of 600s with bumper-bar mounted flagstaff but these were an after-market, third-party fitting and not a factory variation.  Because many Lincolns, Cadillacs, Imperials etc were built by independent coach-builders on either a “commercial chassis” or as a “stretch”, there’s much variation in both the design and placement of flagstaffs.

1960 Rolls-Royce Phantom V Canberra state limousine by Park Ward, Buckingham Palace, 1990.  On limousines, although the most common location of flagstaffs is the front fender (almost always paired), the cars of the Royal Mews (what the British royal family call their garage) fly a standard from a single, central mount at the front of the roof.

Gulag

Gulag (pronounced goo-lahg)

(1) The system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union (with initial capital).

(2) Individually, a Soviet forced-labor camp (usually with initial capital).

(3) By association, any prison or detention camp, especially one used for political prisoners (usually not with initial capital).

(4) Figuratively, any place regarded as undesirable or one perceived as being a “punishment-post” (not with initial capital).

(5) Figuratively, any system used to silence dissent (not with initial capital).

1930-1931: From the Russian ГУЛА́Г (GULÁG, GULag or Gulág), the acronym (Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj) translated usually as “Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps” but also, inter alia, “Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps”, “Main Directorate for Places of Detention”, “Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps” etc.).  The noun plural was Gulags.

An example of the way in which a bland acronym (like the 1933 Gestapo (an abbreviated form of the German Geheime Staatspolizei (the construct being Ge(heime) Sta(ats)po(lizei), literally “secret state police”) can become a byword for something awful, although technically, the acronym GULag (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj (Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps)) didn’t come into use until 1930, the origin of what quickly would evolve into a vast, nation-wide network of concentration camps lies in the legal device created almost immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917.  This was the concept of the “class enemy”, a logical crime to gazette under Marxist-Leninist theory and one that could be applied literally to anybody, regardless of their conduct; it was essentially the same idea as the crime of “unspecified offences” which appears in the judicial sentences of some authoritarian states.  Russia, as many of the Bolsheviks knew from personal experience, had a long tradition of “internal exile” and the new regime extended this concept, creating concentration camps for class enemies where convicts were required to perform useful manual labor (forestry, mining, quarrying etc).

The early camps, authorized by decree in April 1919, were the prisoner of war (POW) facilities which had become redundant after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) which concluded hostilities between Russia and the Central Powers although the first model camp was in the White Sea region, in what were once the Orthodox Church's monastery buildings on the Solovetsky Islands and the first prisoners were anti-Bolsheviks, mostly left-wing intellectuals and members of the White Army.  The Cheka, the Russian secret police (the first in the alphabet soup of the names adopted (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH, MGB, (most famously) KGB & FSB), was allocated the role of administration.  Reflecting the love secret police everywhere have for mysterious acronyms, the Cheka created SLON (Northern Camps of Special Significance) as an administrative template for the Solovetsky Islands which, briefly, was the only camp complex in the Soviet state.  The number of concentration (usually described as “correctional labor”) camps grew sufficiently during the 1920s to outgrow the bureaucratic structures initially formed by the Cheka and in 1930 the GULag was created as a separate division of the secret police which worked in conjunction with the Soviet Ministry of the Interior overseeing the use of the physical labor of prisoners.  Although the camps were sometimes used for those guilty of “normal” criminal offences, the great majority of inmates were political prisoners who were sometimes genuine political dissidents but could be there for entirely arbitrary reasons or even as victims of personal vendettas.  In these aspects there are parallels with the Nazi's concentration camps which also worked as systems of coercion, punishment & repression although the GULag never had a programme industrially to exterminate an entire race.  There was another striking similarity in the camp architecture of the two dictatorships which were nominally ideological opponents.  The German equivalent of the GULag, the Konzentrationlager is remembered for the words Arbeit macht frei (work makes you free) rendered in wrought iron above the gates of Auschwitz I; the inscription через труд (through labor (ie get back home through working)) was the message at the prisoners' entrance to the Magaden camp in Siberia.      

What is sometime neglected in the history of the GULag (and other systems of concentration camps) is that while it is well-understood as part of a system of repression, there were genuine attempts to locate the camps in places where the labor extracted from the inmates could be applied to the maximum benefit for the state, something of great significance because in 1929 comrade Stalin (1878–1953; Soviet leader 1922–1953) announced a programme of rapid industrialization and the first of a succession of five-year plans. In support of this, the Politburo abolished any distinction between political and other crimes and intruded a unified network of camps to replace the hitherto dual prison system.  From this point, accelerating from the mid-1930s, archipelagos of camps were built (substantially by the prisoners) close to sites of huge economic projects such as a canal from the White Sea to the Baltic Sea, gold mining in Kolyma and lines of communications such as the Baikal-Amur Mainline.

The GULag’s second great growth spurt happened during Stalin’s “Great Terror” in 1936-1938 when the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the armed forces, the civil service and even the GULag management were subject to purges and while there were many executions, most were sent to the camps which, never designed for such numbers, were unable to handle the mass influx and the already high death rate increased sometimes threefold.  During comrade Stalin's great purges, the (whispered) joke was that the Russian population consisted of (1) those in the gulag, (2) those just released and (3) those about to go back.  On a somewhat smaller scale, rapid inflows also happened in the early years of World War II because of the need to imprison those deported from territory just occupied by the Soviet Union (Eastern Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia) but this pressure on capacity was more than off-set by the sudden release of many prisoners to meet the needs of the Red Army which had suffered massive losses in the Nazi invasion.  Needing troops, all was suddenly forgiven and it wouldn’t be until 1945 that the numbers in the camps began again to trend upwards, reflecting the waves of arrests among the ranks of the Red Army, former German POWs and ethnic minorities, including Soviet Jews.  The Cold War also fed the GULag.  In 1948-1949, Stalin launched the construction of new megalomaniacal projects, including the Volga-Don Canal, new power stations, dams, and communications, among them the Dead Road and a tunnel and railway to Sakhalin Island, both of which, despite a horrific death-toll, proved impossible to build and were cancelled when Stalin died in 1953.

After Stalin’s death, an amnesty was announced for many of those serving sentences for criminal offences and almost all of those deemed to have committed “minor offences” were released although political prisoners remained imprisoned and it wasn’t until “the thaw” under Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) that widespread releases were ordered after almost four million political crime cases were reviewed and in 1957, as one of a number of reforms, the GULag was abolished and most of the camps shut down.  Khrushchev himself announced that the Soviet economy would no longer based on the slave labor of prisoners which, as a piece of economic analysis was true but while the numbers of political prisoners fell, they did not disappear although they tended now to be only imprisoned for genuine opposition to the regime, dispatched most frequently to labor camps in Mordovia or in camps clustered around the Urals. The conditions remained grim but the death rates were tiny compared to those suffered in Stalin’s time but what also disguised the extent of post-Stalinist repression was than many dissidents were technically not imprisoned but instead declared insane and incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals, many of which closely resembled prisons.  There, the “insane” were often subject to cruel & unusual “medical” procedures.

The number of people who passed through the GULag can never exactly be known but, using archival material which became accessible after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, historians have estimated between 15-18 million were imprisoned and the death-toll may have been almost 10%, the overwhelming majority of whom were from Russia or the constituent republics of the USSR but others were foreigners, mostly Czechoslovaks, Poles, Hungarians & Frenchmen.  The network of camps dotted around the USSR consisted of almost 500 administrative centres, each running as few as dozens or as many as hundreds of individual camps, historians having documented just under 30,000.  In the West the term GULag became widely known only after the publication in 1973 Russian of novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's (1918–2008) three-volume The Gulag Archipelago, described by the author as "An Experiment in Literary Investigation" which he wrote between 1958-1968, using documentary sources including legal papers, interviews, diaries, statements and his personal experience as a GULag prisoner.

Map of the GULag camp distribution, Plain Talk magazine, 1950.

However, both the system of slavery and the word “GULag” had, during comrade Stalin’s time, been publicized in the West, remarkably accurate maps published in 1950 in the US in Plain Talk (A US anti-communist monthly magazine, 1946–1950) magazine but, despite it being the high Cold War, the revelations didn’t resonate in public consciousness as they would a generation later when Solzhenitsyn released The Gulag Archipelago.