Bacchanal

Bacchanal pronounced (bah-kuh-nahl, bak-uh-nal, bak-uh-nl (noun) or bak-uh-nl (adjective))

(1) A follower of Bacchus.

(2) A drunken reveler.

(3) An occasion of drunken revelry; orgy; riotous celebration.

(4) Of or pertaining to Bacchus; bacchanalian.

1530-1540: From the Latin Bacchānālis (having to do with Bacchus) & Bacchānālia (feast of Bacchus), plural of Bacchānal (a place devoted to Bacchus), from Bacchus (the god of wine), from the Ancient Greek Βάκχος (Bákkhos).  By extension, the meaning "riotous, drunken roistering or orgy" dates from 1711.  Bacchus, known also as Dionysus (Διόνυσος) (Dionysos) was in Greek Mythology the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy.  In Antiquity, most attention focused on wine and given consumption was both high and enthusiastic, the worship of Bacchus became firmly established.  A quirk of Bacchus’ place in the pantheon of gods is that, uniquely, he was born of a mortal mother.  The Romans adopted the name bacchanal (a woman given to such things was a bacchante) and named the behavior of those who had taken too much strong drink: bakkheia.  Bacchanal is a noun & adjective, Bacchanalia is a noun; the noun plural is bacchanals.

Bacchus and Ariadne

Bacchus and Ariadne (1717) by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741).

In Greek mythology, Ariadne was the clever, though perhaps naïve, daughter of King Minos of Crete and she aided the hero Theseus in his mission to slay the Minotaur.  To say naïve might be understating things: poor sweet Ariadne was an emo and a bit of a dill.  On the island of Crete, there was a great labyrinth that housed a fearsome beast, the Minotaur, half human, half bull.  King Minos, in retaliation for his son's death at the hands of an Athenian, required the people of Athens every nine years to send seven young men and seven young virgins to be sacrificed to the beast, the alternative the destruction of their city.  One year, Theseus volunteered to be sent to Crete as part of the awful pact, planning to kill the Minotaur and thereby release his people from their plight.  When he stepped ashore in Crete, Ariadne spotted him and at once fell in love, as emos often do; running to Theseus, she offered to help him defeat the monster if he would marry her.  Theseus naturally agreed so Ariadne gave him a sword and a ball of red thread with which to mark his path so he could find his way out of the labyrinth.  The plan worked to the extent that Theseus slayed the Minotaur but certainly had no intention of marrying Ariadne.  While the couple traveled to Athens, during a brief stop on the island of Naxos, he sailed away, abandoning her while she slumbered on the beach.  Ariadne may have been an emo but Theseus was a cad.  Distraught by being deserted by the one she loved, Ariadne was still sobbing on the shore Bacchus appeared with a procession of his followers.  They spoke a few words and within moments had fallen in love, soon to marry.  In some tellings of the myths, after their wedding, Bacchus placed Ariadne's sparkling diadem in the sky as the constellation Corona, thus making her immortal.

A bacchante illustrating the consequences of what the Ancient Romans called bakkheia: Lindsay Lohan in a Cadillac Escalade, resting after dinner, Los Angeles, May 2007.

Inflammable & Flammable

Inflammable (pronounced in-flam-uh-buhl)

(1) Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable (recommended only for figurative use).

(2) Easily aroused or excited, as to passion or anger; irascible; fiery; volatile, choleric.

1595–1605: From the Medieval Latin inflammābilis, the construct being the Classical Latin inflammā(re) (to set on fire) + -bilis (from the Proto-Italic -ðlis, from the primitive Indo-European i-stem form -dhli- of -dhlom (instrumental suffix).  Akin to –bulum, the suffix -bilis is added to a verb to form an adjectival noun of relationship to that verb (indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).  Construct of the Classical Latin inflammare (to set on fire) is -in (in, on) + flamma (flame).

Flammable (pronounced flam-uh-buhl)

Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable

1805–1815: From the Classical Latin flammā(re) (to set on fire) + -ble (the Latin suffix forming adjectives and means “capable or worthy of”).

Need for standardization

Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.  English, a mongrel vacuum-cleaner of a language, has many anomalies born of the haphazard adoption of words from other tongues but the interchangeability of flammable and inflammable is unfortunate because of the use in signs to warn people of potentially fatal danger.

In- is often used as a prefix with adjectives and nouns to indicate the opposite of the word it precedes (eg inaction, indecisive, inexpensive etc).  Given that, it’s reasonable to assume inflammable is the opposite of flammable and that objects and substances should be so-labeled.  The reason for the potentially deadly duplication is historic.  Inflammable actually pre-dates flammable, the word derived from the Latin verb inflammare (to set on fire), this verb also the origin of the modern meaning “to swell or to provoke angry feelings”, hence the link between setting something on fire and rousing strong feelings in someone.  So, at a time when Latin was more influential, inflammable made sense.  However, as the pull of Latin receded, words with in- (as a negative prefix) became a bigger part of the lexicon and the confusion was created.  By the early nineteenth century, flammable had become common usage, and by the twentieth was widespread.  The modern convention is to use flammable literally (to refer to things which catch fire) and inflammable figuratively (to describe the arousal of passions, the swelling of tissue etc.  Surprisingly, the rules applying to warning signs have yet to adopt this standardization.

Using flammable and inflammable to mean the same thing is confusing.  The preferred wording is flammable and non-flammable.  Borrowing from semiotics, danger should be indicated with red, safety with green.

Portmanteau

Portmanteau (pronounced pawrt-man-toh)

(1) A case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, made usually from stiff leather, hinged at the back so as to open out into two compartments

(2) A word created by blending two or more existing words.

1580s (for the travelling case (flexible traveling case or bag for clothes and other necessaries)): From the Middle French portemanteau (travelling bag, literally "(it) carries (the) cloak").  The original meaning from the 1540s was “court official who carried a prince's mantle" from porte, (imperative of porter (to carry) + manteau (cloak)).  The correct plural is portmanteaux but in modern English use, portmanteaus (following the conventions for constructing plurals in English) is now more common.  In the nineteenth century, the word was sometimes Englished as portmantle, a use long extinct.  The notion of the portmanteau word (word blending the sound of two different words) was coined by Lewis Carroll (pen-name of Charles L. Dodgson; 1832-1898) in 1871 for the constructions he invented for Alice Through the Looking-Glass such as Jabberwocky, his poem about the fabulous beast the Jabberwock.  Portmanteau in this sense has existed as a noun since 1872.

Vintage Louis Vuitton Portmanteau, typically circa US$50-80,000 depending on condition.

A portmanteau word, a linguistic blend, differs from contractions and compounds.  Contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do + not to make don't, whereas a portmanteau word is joins two or more words that relate to the one contractual theme.  A compound word is merely the joining for words in their original form (eg under + statement) without any truncation of the blended words.  Portmanteau words (eg breakfast & lunch to create brunch) always modifies at least one of the original stems.

Lindsay Lohan's handy moniker Lilo (the construct being Li(ndsay) + Lo(han) and it's used sometimes as LiLo) is a portmanteau word.

The word portmanteau was first used in this sense by Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1871) where the concept is helpfully explained by Humpty Dumpty.  Less erudite but just as amusing was the creation of refudiate by Sarah Palin when she got confused and conflated refute and repudiate although it’s unclear whether she knew the meaning of either.  Even those created or used by more literate folk are not always accepted.  Irregardless (portmanteau of regardless and irrespective) seems to stir strong feelings of antipathy in pedants who generally won’t accept it even as a non-standard form and insist it’s simply wrong.  Other languages also create blended forms as needed.  The title of Emile Habibi’s 1974 novel was translated from Arabic utashaʔim (pessimist) + mutafaʔil (optimist) into English as The Pessoptimist.  Arabic linguistic traditions however prefer acronyms and compounds which sometimes overlap.  The group known variously as ISIL or ISIS (although they came to prefer "caliphate" or "Islamic State" (IS)) first adopted the name ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām (Islamic State if Iraq and the Levant) which is usually written as Daesh or Da'ish.  IS think this derogatory as it resembles the Arabic words daes (one who tramples underfoot) and dāhis (those who sows discord).  IS threatened to punish those who use Daesh or Da'ish with a public flogging; repeat offenders promised the cutting out of the tongue.

In the manufacture of big words, English is unlikely ever to match the Germans.  Until changes in EU regulations rendered it obsolete, the longest word in the Fourth Reich was rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz (law delegating beef label monitoring).  Currently, the longest word accepted by German dictionaries is kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (automobile liability insurance), editors rejecting donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe (widow of a Danube steamboat company captain) because of rarity of use.

Podophilia

Podophilia (pronounced podd-ah-fil-ee-uh or pod-oh-fil=ee-uh)

A paraphilia describing the sexualized objectification of feet (and sometimes footwear), commonly called foot fetishism although the correct clinical description is now "foot partialism".

The construct was podo- +‎ -philia.  Podo- (pertaining to a foot or a foot-like part) was from the Ancient Greek πούς (poús), from the primitive Indo-European pṓds.  It was cognate with the Mycenaean Greek po, the Latin pēs, the Sanskrit पद् (pad), the Old Armenian ոտն (otn) & հետ (het), the Gothic fōtus and the Old English fōt (from which Modern English gained foot).

The Greek poús was the ancient Greek and Byzantine unit of length originally based upon the length of a shod foot and the idea in Europe endured for centuries although until the seventeenth century there were little attempts at standardization, even within the one jurisdiction and although things were settled well before the twentieth century, in the legal sense it wasn't until 1959 that the US, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the UK signed the "International Yard and Pound Agreement" which codified avoirdupois weight and length then used in all those nations, a set (although largely supplanted by the metric system (except in the US)) which officially still defines both Imperial and US customary units.  This English phrase "length of the chancellor's foot" was an allusion to this history though not actually concerned with lineal measurement.  It was instead coined by the lawyer John Selden (1584–1654) to illustrate how the Court of Chancellery which administered the flexible, adaptable law of equity differed from the rigid, precedent-bound courts of common law.  “Equity is a roguish thing; for law, we have a measure to know what to trust to. Equity is according to the conscience of him who is Chancellor: as it is larger or narrower so is equity. It’s all one as if they should make the standard for the measure, we call afoot to be the Chancellor’s foot.”  In other words, in the Court of Chancellery, equity was administered by the Lord Chancellor at his discretion.  That did mean the estimation of equity could vary from one Chancellor to next and thus the Court of Chancellery soon created its own contradictions and attracted its own critics.

The suffix –philia was from the From Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal love), from φῐλέω (philéō) (to love), from the earlier Ionic Greek (where the meanings diverged somewhat over the years.  It was used to to form nouns meaning a fondness, liking or love of something and in pathology picked up the specific technical sense of abnormal liking or tendency such a paraphilia.  One with specific attraction to feet or footwear is a podophile and their predilections are described as podophilic.

Often focused on toe cleavage, many self-described foot fetishists provide curated content.

Although the psychiatric community has since the mid-twentieth century devoted some time to discussing, re-defining and pondering what is apparently the 1800-odd year history of foot fetishism, a glance at the literature does suggest it’s been thought usually an interesting quirk in the human condition rather than a condition, much less a mental disorder.  Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1987 published the revised third edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), fetishism was usually described as a persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects or an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexualized) body parts (most famously feet) and body secretions.  With the DSM-III-R, the concept of partialism (an exclusive focus on part of the body) was separated from the historic category of fetishism and appended to the “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified” category.  Although one of the dustier corners of psychiatry, the field had always fascinated some and in the years since the DSM-III-R was published, a literature did emerge, most critics maintaining partialism and fetishism are related, can be co-associated, and are non-exclusive domains of sexual behavior.  There was a technical basis for this position because introduced in DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one the implications of which was that it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary.  The recommendation was that the prime diagnostic criterion for fetishism be modified to reflect the reintegration of partialism and that a fetishistic focus on non-sexual body parts be a specifier of Fetishism.

Lindsay Lohan’s right foot, plantar flexing.  Wikifeet's expert critics rate Ms Lohan's feet at 4½ stars (beautiful feet); her page has 3639 images. 

Fetish was from the Latin facere (to make) which begat factitious (made by art), from which the Portuguese feitico was derived (fetiche in the French), from which English gained fetish.  A fetish in this context was defined as "a thing irrationally revered; an object in which power or force was concentrated".  In English, use of fetish to indicate an object of desire in the sense of “someone who is aroused due to a body part, or an object belonging to a person who is the object of desire” dates from 1897 (although the condition is mentioned in thirteenth century medical documents), an era during which the language of modern psychiatry was being assembled.  However, the earliest known literary evidence of podophilia lies in dozens of brooding, obsessive love letters from the second century AD of uncertain authorship and addressed to both male and female youths.  That there are those to whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthral has presumably been part of the human condition from the start.

Lindsay Lohan’s left foot, dorsiflexing.

From the beginnings of modern psychiatry, such a focus was not in itself considered a disorder, unless accompanied by distress or impairment although it was noted by many that if even a nominally “harmless” fetish became an obsession, it certainly could impair healthy sexuality.  In DSM-5 (2013), the diagnosis was assigned to individuals who experience sexual arousal from objects or a specific part of the body which is not typically regarded as erotic and presumably any body part or object can be a fetish, the most frequently mentioned including underwear, shoes, stockings, gloves, hair and latex.   Fetishists may use the desired article for sexual gratification in the absence of a partner although it’s recorded this may involve nothing more than touching smelling the item and the condition appears to manifest almost exclusively in men, the literature suggesting a quarter of fetishistic men are homosexual but caution needs always to be attached to these numbers.  Because fetishism is something which many happily enjoy their whole adult lives, it never comes to the attention of doctors and a high proportion of the statistical material about fetishism is from patients self-reporting.  The statistics in a sense reflect thus not the whole cohort of the population with the condition but rather those who either want to talk about it or are responding to surveys.  That is of course true of other mental illnesses but is exaggerated with fetishism because so much lies with the spectrum of normal human behavior and the definitional limitations in the DSM-5 reflect this, including three criteria for Fetishistic Disorder and three specifiers:

Criterion 1: Over a six month period, the individual has experienced sexual urges focused on a non-genital body part, or inanimate object, or other stimulus, and has acted out urges, fantasies, or behaviors.

Criterion 2: The fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause distress, or impairment in functioning.

Criterion 3: The fetishized object is not an article of clothing employed in cross dressing, or a sexual stimulation device, such as a vibrator.

Specifiers for the diagnosis include the type of stimulus which is the focus of attention (1) the non-genital or erogenous areas of the body (famously feet) and this condition is known also as Partialism (a preoccupation with a part of the body rather than the whole person), (2) Non-living object(s) (such as shoes), (3) specific activities (such as smoking during sex).

Not AOC’s feet.

The foot particularists also do PSAs (public service announcements).  When an image of feet was posted to Instagram with a caption claiming they belonged to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, b 1989, US Representative (Democrat-New York) since 2019 and one of "the squad"), the alleged foot-selfie was lent a whiff of scandal by their owner being in the bath, holding a vape with a bottle of pumpkin-scented shampoo nearby.  The story quickly was debunked by the online foot fetishists at WikiFeet, the internet’s most comprehensive collection of pictures of women's feet.  In this case, Ms Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Wikifeet page was used to compare and contrast and it wasn’t a difficult task for the Wikifeet experts because the toes in the image were mildly brachydactyly (an inherited trait whereby the bones of the digits are relatively short) whereas AOC’s are not so afflicted.  Wikifeet’s users rate AOC’s feet at “4 stars” (nice feet), based on the 78 images in her page (many in sandals but some daringly bare).  Further research by the Wikifeet particularists revealed the feet really belonged to Sydney Leathers (b 1991) who became even better known by parlaying the publicity she attracted for being the sexting partner of disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner (b 1964) into an apparently brief career as an aspiring porn star.  Why that didn’t flourish isn’t clear because rarely has there been a better porn star name than "Sydney Leathers" and Australian fellmongers and fetishists alike missed a marketing opportunity there.

Gianvito Rossi 85 suede pumps, US$1,210 at net-a-porter.

Noting the definitional model in the DSM-IV-TR (2000), despite the history in psychiatry’s world of paraphilias and a notable presence in popular culture, there were those who claimed the very notion of a foot fetish was false because of that critical phrase “non-living” which would seem to disqualify a foot (unless of course it was no longer alive but such an interest would be seriously weird and a different condition; although in this context there are deconstructionists who would make a distinction between a depiction of a live foot and the foot itself, clinicians probably regard them as interchangeable tools of the fetishist although the techniques of consumption would vary).  The critic noted many fetishes are extensions of the human body, such as articles of clothing or footwear but that did not extend to feet and that diagnostically, a sexual fascination with feet did correctly belong in the category of “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified,” and thus be regarded as partialism: Foot partialism.

Design by Davina-India.  Although the extreme examples won’t be possible to render as practical products without (unanticipated) advances in materials, 3D printing offers possibilities for the shoe-oriented faction of the foot partialists.

It was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who admitted that, lawfulness aside, as animals, the only truly aberrant sexual behavior in humans could be said to be its absence (something which the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves).  It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat podophila and many other “harmless” behaviors as “normal” and thus within the purview of the manual only to the extent of being described, clinical intervention no longer required.  Whether all psychiatrists agree with the new permissiveness isn’t known but early reports suggest there’s nothing in the DSM-5-TR (2022) to suggest podophiles will soon again be labeled as deviants.

Suspected podophiles, parked outside shoe shop.

Strudel

Strudel (pronounced strood-l or shtrood-l (German))

(1) A pastry, usually consisting of a fruit, cheese, or other mixture, rolled in multiple layers of paper-thin sheets of dough and baked.

(2) In the slang of computing, the “at” symbol (@).

(3) In oceanography, a vertical hole in sea ice through which downward jet-like, buoyancy-driven drainage of flood water is thought to occur.

(4) In engineering and graphic design, a general descriptor of spiral shaped objects.

1893: From the German Strudel (literally “eddy, whirlpool”), from the Middle High German strodel (eddy, whirlpool), from the Old High German stredan (to bubble, boil, whirl, eddy), from the Proto-Germanic streþaną, from the primitive Indo-European verbal stem ser- (to flow) from serw (flowing, stream).  The dish was so-called because of the way the pastry is rolled.  Strudel is a common dish throughout European and languages as diverse as the Norwegian Bokmål, Polish and Portuguese borrowed the German form directly.  In Hebrew colloquial speech, the @ symbol (famous from the use in email addresses) is known as the שטרודל (shtrudel), an allusion to the traditionally spiral form of strudels.  Hebrew is a centrally controlled language and the official word for the @ symbol is כרוכית (keruchith) which is used for the pastry although the loan-word from German is not uncommon in colloquial speech.  To a pâtissier, a strudel is something quite specific but to the less skilled the word is often applied to a variety of cakes, filled croissants, phyllo creations, pies & dainties, patisseries, tarts, turnovers, éclairs and panettone.  The noun plural is strudels. 

Most associated with sweet fillings, most famously apple and cherry, there are also savory strudels which have always been especially popular in Eastern Europe, constructed often with a heavier pastry.  Although the name strudel has been recorded only since 1893, it’s an ancient recipe which has probably been used since thin bread or pastries were used to encase and cook fruit, probably sweetened with honey.  Recipes from the seventeenth century still exist and historians have noted the cross-cultural exchanges with the cuisine from West Asia and the Middle East, such as the influence of the baklava and some Turkish sweets.  Early in the eighteenth century, strudels became signature items in many Vienna pâtisseries and from there became popular throughout the Habsburg Empire and beyond, noted particularly in the north of Italy.  In addition to apples (often with raisins) and cherries (sour, sweet & black), other popular fillings include plums, apricots and rhubarb, the French and English making a specialty of the latter.  Many strudels, especially the apple-based, are also augmented with a variety of creamy cheeses.

Toaster Strudel is a packaged convenience food, prepared by heating the frozen pastries in a domestic toaster, the icing included in a separate sachet.  There were in the 1950s attempts to create pastries which could be frozen and heated by consumers in toasters but it wasn't until the 1980s that advances in the manufacturing equipment and techniques used in the industrial production of food made mass-production and distribution practical.  Toaster Strudel is marketed under the Pillsbury brand operated by private equity investment house Brynwood Partners and has been on sale since 1985.  The core flavors are the original three, strawberry, blueberry and apple but twelve are currently on sale including a popular chocolate variety and from time to time, Pillsbury have offered different blends.  In the movie Mean Girls (2004), it was fictitiously claimed Gretchen Wieners' (Lacey Chabert (b 1982)) family fortune was due to her father's invention of Toaster Strudel; it was one of the script's running gags.

Still pink after all these years: Lacey Chabert.

In 2020, Pilsbury released a promotional version of Toaster Strudel, promoted by Lacey Chabert who is depicted reprising the famous line: “I don't think my father, the inventor of Toaster Strudel, would be too pleased to hear about this” although on the actual product it’s written as “…very pleased to hear about this", a change which seems not significant.  The limited-edition release came in Strawberry & Cream Cheese and Strawberry, the icing (of course) pink and the day of release (of course) a Wednesday.  As part of the promotion, Pillsbury announced The Most Fetch’ Toaster Strudel Icing Sweepstakes, in which contestants created a design on their toasted strudel using the pink icing and there were three grand prize winners, each of whom received a personalized video message from Ms Chabert, a year’s supply of Toaster Strudel and some Mean Girls merchandise.  The list of winners was announced on Twitter (#FetchSweepstakes) and Instagram (@ToasterStrudel) on 3 October 2020 which was (of course) National Mean Girls Day.

Black Cherry Strudel

To ensure the finest product, pâtissiers often insist on using only fresh fruit but canned or frozen black cherries work equally well in strudels and can be much easier to work with because there’s no need to macerate the fruit which may instead immediately be cooked.  This recipe can also be used with sour cherries in which case the lemon juice is omitted in favor of 150 g (¾ cup) of sugar.  It can be served warm or cold according to preference and the variations are many; the cranberries and almonds can be replaced with other dried fruits and nuts and there are the purists who insist on nothing but black cherries (although a few do add apricot brandy).  Traditionally, it’s served with a dollop of thickened cream.

Ingredients

800 g (3½ cups) fresh black cherries, cleaned and pitted
100 g (½ cup) granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
A dash of cinnamon
Juice and zest of 1 organic, un-waxed, scrubbed lemon
60 g (½ cup) dried cranberries
50 g (½ cup) slivered almonds
6 large sheets strudel or filo pastry
1 egg whisked with 1 tablespoon milk or water for brushing
Icing sugar for dusting

Instructions

Preparation: Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F).  Line a baking tray (or sheet) with baking (parchment) paper.

Cook cherry filling: In a small bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons of sugar and cornstarch until no lumps of cornstarch remain.  Add the cherries and the remaining sugar into another bowl and allow them to let macerate for an hour (it will take this long for the sugar to draw some liquid from the fruit).  Add the cherries, cranberries, almonds, cornstarch mixture, vanilla extract, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice into a saucepan and simmer over medium-high heat until the mixture starts to thicken, which should take 7 to 10 minutes.  Set the mix aside to cool to room temperature.

Roll strudel (pastry): Place the sheets of strudel or filo pastry on a clean, dry tea-towel (one with some embossing does make rolling easier).  Arrange the cherry filling lengthwise on the pastry leaving a 25 mm (1 inch) border along bottom and sides and then fold in the edges.  Use the tea-towel to lift and roll the pastry tightly, enclosing all the filling.  Tuck the ends in and transfer the strudel seam-side down onto the prepared baking tray.  If using filo pastry, brush each sheet with melted butter to prevent it drying out during the cooking.

Bake strudel:  Brush the top of the strudel with egg wash and bake for 25-35 minutes, until the pastry has become golden brown and obviously flaky.  Slice the strudel while still warm and dust with icing sugar; it’s traditionally served with custard, ice cream or a dollop of thickened cream.

Bandage

Bandage (pronounced ban-dij)

(1) A strip of soft cloth or other material used to bind up a wound, sore, sprain etc, or as a protective compression device to prevent or limit injury.

(2) Anything used as a band or ligature.

(3) To bind or cover with a bandage; to put a bandage on a wound, sprain etc, or as a protective compression device to prevent or limit injury.

(4) In fashion, a type of dress, distinguished from similar styles by the use of knitted fabrics.

(5) Figuratively, by extension, a provisional or makeshift solution that provides insufficient coverage or relief (also as band-aid solution).

1590-1600: From the Middle English bandage (strip of soft cloth or other material used in binding wounds, stopping bleeding etc), from the sixteenth century French bandage, from the Old French bander (to bind), from bande (a strip).  The verb bandage (to dress a wound etc, with a bandage) dates from 1734 (and was implied in bandaging).  Bandage is the spelling in Danish, Dutch, German, English & Swedish but other languages localized the French including Norwegian Bokmål (bandasje) Polish (bandaż) & Turkish (bandaj).  The spelling in the constructed Esperanto is bandaĝo.  Bandage is a noun, verb & adjective, bandaged & bandaging are verbs (used with & without an object) and the noun bandager does exist although use seems restricted to first-aid manuals.  Other words used in similar vein include dressing, gauze, plaster, swathe, truss, compress, bind & wrap.  The noun plural is bandages.

The noun compress, (in the surgical sense of "soft mass of linen or other cloth to press against some part of the body (with the aid of a bandage)”), as an adaptation from the earlier verb, evolved in the 1590s in parallel with bandage.  In earlier use, the noun ligament (band of tough tissue binding bones) was a late fourteenth century creation from the Latin ligamentum (a band, bandage, tie, ligature), from ligare (to bind, tie), from the primitive Indo-European root leig- (to tie, bind) and in the medical literature, ligamental, ligamentous & ligamentary still occasionally appear.  One technical term from medicine which seems extinct is the verb deligate (to bind up, bandage), noted since 1840 (and implied in deligated), from the Latin deligatus (bound fast), from deligare (to bind fast), the construct being de- (from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from); the Old English æf- was a similar prefix) + ligare (to bind).  Under the Raj, the noun puttee (long strip of cloth wound round the lower leg as protection by soldiers) enjoyed a evolution in spelling typical of many words in British India, patawa in 1875, puttie by 1886 and the modern puttee finally (more or less) standardized by 1900).  The source was the Hindi patti (band, bandage) from the Sanskrit pattah (strip of cloth).  The noun fascia did have a brief career in medicine, being from the Latin fascia (a band, bandage, swathe, ribbon), derivative of fascis (bundle (which as fasces became a familiar form in the twentieth century)).  In English, the original use was in architecture, the anatomical application not noted until 1788 and it’s now also a familiar form in botany, music, astronomy and interior design, most obviously in cars.  The noun bandeau (headband), now much associated with revolutionaries (and in fashion the emulation) dates from 1706, from the French bandeau, from the twelfth century Old French bandel & bendel (bandage, binding), a diminutive of bande (a band, a strip).  As a style of women's top or bra, it was first described in 1968 and is distinguished from similar styles in being of a rectangular cut, the hems forming two horizontal lines above and below the breasts.

The bandage dress

Although the motif of what is called the bandage dress is clearly identifiable in depictions of women which pre-date antiquity, the creation of the modern commercial product is credited to the 1980s work of Tunisian couturier Azzedine Alaïa (1935-2017) but it is with French designer Hervé Peugnet’s (1957–2017) fashion house Hervé Léger that the style is now most associated.

Charlotte McKinney (b 1993), 2018.

The bandage dress is a specific interpretation of the earlier, figure-hugging bodycon dress, the name originally a contraction of "body conscious" which the industry would later morph into "body confidence" in reaction to criticism and in Japan, they were marketed as ボディコン (bodikon), a spelling better suited to traditional pronunciation in Japanese.  What distinguished bandage from bodycon was the fabric, the former made not with anything woven, engineered instead to compress with machine-knitted material, the completed panels left uncut and assembled to created the finished item.  Bandage dresses thus, although truly suitable for only one body type, because of the compression effect of the knitted fabric, do (slightly) extend the parameters of the silhouette which can be accommodated while still being aesthetically successful whereas bodycon dresses made from fabrics which merely cling rather than smooth out imperfections rely on an ideally formed frame.  For that reason, the jocular slang “body compression” was sometimes used to describe this sub-set of the bodycon, the bandage dress working like externally worn shapewear, corset-like in effect if not quite an actual exoskeleton.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), 2008.

Hervé Léger in 1992 first displayed the bandage dresses which would come to be the style’s definitive look; instantly popular, they were a red-carpet staple well into the twenty-first century.  Still a big seller, the bandage dress in 2015 migrated, via the twittersphere, from the fashion section to the front page when the comments of Patrick Couderc (b 1961, then managing director of Hervé Léger's British distributor, MJH Fashion), were published.  In an interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday, Mr Couderc made it clear he’d prefer it if some women would avoid buying Hervé Léger’s most famous creation, those on the proscribed list including lesbians, those beyond a certain age and anyone with a less than ideal silhouette.

There was an element of classism too in his critique as he lamented the bandage dress as a victim of its own success, too many now seen on the wrong-shaped customers and worse still, they were often cheap knock-offs of the £1,300 (US$1603) originals and thus increasingly associated with reality TV stars and those working in hair salons.  Admitting dryly “you can be a victim of your success”, his comments seemed to echo those reported earlier in the century by the distributers of a high-end cognac and the Maybach, Daimler-Benz’s ill-fated mistake in thinking what was needed was a brand above Mercedes-Benz which for almost a century had been good enough for presidents, popes and potentates.  Then the complaint had been that drink and car were finding favor with hip-hop & rap stars and this most interpreted as an expression of concern the association with people of color might “cheapen the brand”.  Mr Couderc didn’t comment on skin color but told The Mail he refuses to give free dresses to celebrities if they are “judged to lack sufficient class”.

Clearly a student of the interplay of sociology and economics, he allowed his mind to wander wide, recalling that he’d “...never go out to dinner if she’s not wearing tights.  I think hosiery is something which is very magical in my world and I’m veering off into complete poetry now.  But it’s a social statement because in the 1980s, the difference between someone who was wearing tights and someone who was not was very significant.”  Clearly nostalgic for a time when the poor were less inclined to get ideas above their station, he added that then, “...whoever was wearing tights was working in a private office in a bank in St James’s and whoever was not wearing tights was coming to work as a shampooist in a High Street hairdresser, commuting from Croydon.  We were living in a time where the distinction between the two social strata was much more significant than today”.  How he must long for that vanished, pre-1945 world, when folk from Croydon were deferential to their betters.

Salma Hayek (b 1966), 1998.

The attitude was hardly unique in the industry, Abercrombie & Fitch early in the century re-built into a highly profitable company using a model former CEO Mike Jeffries (b circa 1944) described in a 2006 interview as “exclusionary” noting their clothes were a product in which “a lot of people don’t belong and they can’t belong.”  That really wasn’t an unusual business model but it was rare for a CEO so bluntly to state the obvious and, when the comments were published in 2013, Jeffries issued a apology saying "We are completely opposed to any discrimination, bullying, derogatory characterizations or other anti-social behavior based on race, gender, body type or other individual characteristics".  Also controversial was a later comment, attributed in 2013 to (an unnamed) Abercrombie and Fitch district manager.  It’s said the person being interviewed requested anonymity so the statements have never been verified but it was reported that when asked how the company responds to non-profits asking for donations of discontinued clothing to be given to the poor and homeless, the reply was “Abercrombie and Fitch doesn’t want to create the image that just anybody, poor people, can wear their clothing. Only people of a certain stature are able to purchase and wear the company name”, to which he added they would rather “burn the clothes” than risk them being seen on the backs of the poor.  Again, while rarely discussed, the practice of destroying rather than discounting or giving away unsold or discontinued items is widespread in the industry.

Speaking at Hervé Léger’s boutique in Knightsbridge, Central London, the like-minded Mr Couderc wasn’t entirely lacking in empathy, noting “You women have a lot of problems. You will lose the plot.  You will come and you will put a dress on and you’ll be in front of the mirror, like, ‘Argh, I’m so fat’”.  “Yes, you have a 12th of an inch around your stomach, it’s not really a disaster, and what you’re not noticing is that your cleavage is about two inches too low because you are 55 and it’s time that you should not display everything like you’re 23.”  At this point he did concede the particular virtue of the bandage dress was it could in such cases “provide useful support” but that didn’t mean he approved.

How a Hervé Léger bandage dress should hang.

He’d clearly thought about things, his advice to lesbians (presumably young or old) that “if you’re a committed lesbian and you are wearing trousers all your life, you won’t want to buy a Léger dress.  Lesbians would want to be rather butch and leisurely.”  Warming to the topic, he went on to say “voluptuous” women (most drawing the inference he meant "not slender") and those with “very prominent hips and a very flat chest” should wear something else, adding the handy hint that women must not wear underwear that was too small, because “the knicker line cuts through the flesh and goes through the other side of the dress” thereby creating the dreaded “visible panty line” (VPL).

Hervé Léger’s Moscow store.

Quite what he thought the reaction to his comments would be isn’t recorded but while his views may not much have changed since the 1980s, much of the rest of the world now has the means to respond en masse and what should have been the foreseen twitterstorm quickly gathered, #boycottherveleger & #wecanwearwhateverthefuckwewant soon trending.  Doubtlessly fearing the wrath of blood-thirsty lesbians, those not slender, chav shampooists and women of a certain age, Max Azria’s BCBGMAXAZRIA Group (which in 1998 had acquired Hervé Léger), went immediately into crisis management mode, issuing a statement saying they were “...shocked and appalled by Patrick Couderc’s comments made in the Mail on Sunday.  BCBGMAXAZRIA Group is working in concert with MJH Fashion, the London-based licensee of the Herve Leger brand, to investigate and establish appropriate next steps. The statements made by Mr. Couderc are not a reflection of Herve Leger by Max Azria or MJH Fashion ideals or sentiments.”  The Herve Leger by Max Azria brand celebrates sensuality, glamour and femininity without discrimination.”

Less than twenty-four hours later, MJH Fashion confirmed Mr Couderc was no longer employed by the company.  Max Azria (1949–2019) in 2016 ended his connection with BCBGMAXAZRIA and its associated companies and in 2017 the group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the intellectual property rights and assets later acquired by the Marquee Brands division of the Global Brands Group.  Bandage dresses remain popular.