Sarcophagus

Sarcophagus (pronounced sahr-kof-uh-guhs)

(1) A stone coffin, especially one bearing sculpture, inscriptions, etc, often displayed as a monument.

(2) In Ancient Greece, a kind of limestone thought to consume the flesh of corpses, used for coffins.

(3) In contemporary use, any (usually large) structure used to encase something.

(4) A form of wine cooler used in the eighteenth century.

1595-1605: From the French sarcophage, from the Latin sarcophagus, from the Ancient Greek σαρκοφάγος (sarkophágos) (coffin of limestone), noun use of the adjective sarcophagous.  The original in Ancient Greek was so named because of the limestone’s supposed property of consuming the flesh of corpses laid in it: σαρκοφάγος (sarkophágos) (flesh-eating, carnivorous), from the genitive σαρκός (sarkós) of σάρξ (sárx) (flesh; meat) + -φάγος (-phágos) (from ἔφαγον (éphagon), past of φάγω (phágō) (eat), the root of phagein (to eat) being the primitive Indo-European bhag- (to share out, apportion; to get a share).  The preferred plural remains sarcophagi although all dictionaries list the unpalatable sarcophaguses as an alternative.

In English, the sense "stone" was the earliest, the meaning "stone coffin, often with inscriptions or decorative carvings" didn’t emerge until 1705. The Classical Latin was shortened in Vulgar Latin to sarcus, source of the French cercueil (coffin, casket), the German Sarg (coffin) and the Dutch zerk (tombstone).  The reputation of lime as a means of causing the rapid putrefaction of corpses persisted well into the twentieth century and was the downfall of some murderers subsequently surprised to learn it acted instead as a preservative on the bodies they had buried.

The Chernobyl incident

Before incident

The incident at the Chernobyl power-plant on 26 April 1986 was trigged by an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction which happened because of a series of events over two days, ironically during was supposed to be a test of safety systems.   After several explosions, during which quantities of radioactive material were released and spread widely over Europe, the core of reactor number four melted down.  Despite this, other reactors continued to operate and the Chernobyl power plant wasn’t finally decommissioned until December 2000.  The surrounding area is now an exclusion zone and will not be habitable for at least twenty-thousand years with the highly contaminated reactor number four encased in what was intended to be only a temporary concrete sarcophagus (the original Russian name was Объект Укрытие (Obyekt Ukrytiye) which translates as sheltering or covering); it’s since been covered with a metal enclosure.

After incident

The contaminated ruins of reactor number four were so dangerous that work on a sarcophagus began within a month of the meltdown, construction of the reinforced concrete structure substantially complete by November 1986.  However, the building had become so radioactive it became impossible for workers to approach close enough to finish the work and the robots used instead were not able completely to seal the sarcophagus.

Sarcophagus

Envisaged by engineers to have a life of thirty years, the sarcophagus deteriorated more quickly than had been expected and in 1997 an international project was formed to design and build something more durable.  Known as New Safe Confinement, it is a metal arch some 344 feet (105 metres) high and spanning 843 feet (257 metres), prefabricated and moved on rail lines, sliding over the existing sarcophagus.  The project team noted the adoption of the word confinement, rather than containment, commonly used in nuclear facility architecture.  The distinction is the difference between a reactor containment building which designed to contain radioactive gases and a structure built for the confinement of solid radioactive waste.

New Safe Confinement

Construction was completed in late 2018, after which trials and tests of the internal systems were run.  Unlike the sarcophagus, New Safe Confinement is designed to permit, using robotic devices, the remains of reactor number four safely to be dismantled and removed.  This is of course a man-made structure and like them all, nothing lasts forever and there is still no agreement between engineers about when a replacement layer will have to be added although all agree the new sarcophagus should adequately serve for decades; the discussion is about how many.

Nefarious

Nefarious (pronounced ni-fair-ee-uhs)

Extremely evil, wicked or villainous; iniquitous; sinful.

1595–1605: From the Latin nefārius (wicked, vile; execrable; abominable), the construct being nefās (something contrary to divine law, an impious deed, sin, crime) + -ius or –ious (the suffix from the Old Latin -ios, from the primitive Indo-European –yós and used to form adjectives from nouns.  The Middle English suffix –ous was borrowed from the Old French -ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of); a doublet of -ose in the unstressed position).  The construct of nefās was ne- (the negative prefix) + fās (law, right).  Nefarious is an adjective, nefariously is an adverb and nefariousness is a noun.

Crooked Hillary Clinton & Harvey Weinstein, Lincoln Centre, New York, April 2012.

Neophyte

Neophyte (pronounced nee-uh-fahyt)

(1) A beginner or novice at something;  person who is new to a subject, skill, or belief.

(2) In the Roman Catholic Church, a novice in a religious order; a new convert or proselyte; a new monk.

(3) A person newly converted to a belief, as a heathen, heretic, or nonbeliever; proselyte.

(4) In Christianity, a name given by the early Christians (and still by the Roman Catholics), to those who have recently embraced the Christian faith, and been admitted to baptism, especially those converts from heathenism or Judaism (in most of the primitive Church, a person newly baptized).

(5) In botany, a plant species recently introduced to an area (in contrast to archaeophyte, a long-established introduced species).

1550-1460:  From the Ecclesiastical Latin neophytus (newly planted), from the Ancient Greek νεόφυτος (neóphutos) (newly planted), the construct of which was νέος (néos) (new) + φυτόν (phutón) (plant, child), the origin of which was a verbal adjective of phyein (cause to grow, beget, plant).  In the Greek used in the New Testament, the spelling was neophutos.  Neophyte is a noun & adjective, neophytic & neophytish are adjectives and neophytism is a noun; the noun plural is neophytes.

Churches and cults

In both the biblical sense of "a young scholar" and the general sense of "someone new to something", Cady Heron in Mean Girls (2004) was a neophyte.

Despite the lineage, use in English was rare prior to the nineteenth century.  The technical sense of ecclesiastical use is from I Timothy iii:6 and the general sense of "one who is new to any subject" was first recorded in the 1590s.  In early translations of the Bible, the neophyte was “a young scholar”, the implication being an “old scholar” could not be a neophyte by deferring his baptism or by long delaying his conversion to God which he had long before learned to be necessary.  As Christianity became increasingly corporatized in the search for bums on pews, view became less rigorous.  The word is also a favorite among cults.  In the symbolism of Freemasonry, the north refers to the outer or profane world and the east the inner world of Masonry; hence the cornerstones of Masonic Lodges are laid always in the south-east corner and the initiations of neophytes is always undertaken with them facing the north-east, symbolic of the position of neophytes, partly in the darkness of the former, partly in the light of the latter.

Cornerstone of a Masonic Lodge.

One of history's better known Masonic plots involves the White House's missing its cornerstone.  In October 1792, a group of freemasons ("conspiracy" a tempting collective noun) furtively assembled at a Georgetown tavern and paraded to the proposed site of the president’s mansion where they conducted certain rituals.  In one ceremony, they placed an inscribed cornerstone and then repaired to the inn to toast the event.  According to Masonic legend, some sixteen toasts were made, one consequence of which was they neglected to document the cornerstone's location.  Subsequent searches never located the stone and even when the White House underwent extensive renovations between 1948-1952 (engineers in 1948 threatened to condemn the building such was the state of structural decay) it wasn't discovered.  The most popular theory is it sits embedded between two stone walls near the Rose Garden.

Photon

Photon (pronounced foh-ton)

The subatomic particle that carries the electromagnetic force and is the quantum of electromagnetic radiation; has a rest mass of zero, but has measurable momentum, exhibits deflection by a gravitational field, and can exert a force.  It has no electric charge, has an indefinitely long lifetime, and is its own antiparticle.  It is the quantum (a bundle of energy) in which light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation are emitted.

1916: A compound word phot(o)- +‎ -on.  Photo is from the Ancient Greek combining form φωτω- (phōtō-) from φῶς (phôs) (light).  The –on suffix is used often in science, in physics (eg electron) and in chemistry (eg carbon) and is from the Ancient Greek -ον (-on), used when ending neuter nouns and adjectives.  In physics, mathematics and biology, it forms nouns denoting subatomic particles (proton), quanta (photon), molecular units (codon), or substances (interferon).  In biology and genetics, it’s applied to form names of stuff considered basic or fundamental units such as codon.  In chemistry, it’s used to form names of noble gases and certain nonmetal elements such as boron or silicon.  Photon was coined in 1916 by US physicist Leonard Troland (1889-1932) as a unit of light hitting the retina but the word was little used until the 1920s when a number of scientific papers were published.  Although the findings of some of the early experiments were later disproved, the word was soon adopted by most physicists.  Photon is a noun and photonic an adjective; the noun plural is photons.  

The light quantum

The photon is also called the light quantum.  The Latin word quanta (how much; the singular form is quantum) was used in the nineteenth century to mean particles or as a measure of quantity, the latter meaning persisting in general use.  What light was actually made from was, until the early twentieth century, one of the fundamental arguments in physics; the dispute essentially whether light was a wave or a particle.  Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published his theory in a 1905 paper which described electromagnetic waves as “…spatially localized, discrete wave-packets” which he labeled das lichtquant (the light quantum).  Light has special characteristics: apart from being creation’s universal speed limit, photons have a unique property in that they are both a particle and a wave, almost certainly have no mass and carry no charge.

JPL (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) used the properties of the photon to illustrate the weird world of quantum theory.

Photons underlie Einstein’s theory of relativity.  Travelling at the speed of light (and light can be slowed-down or stopped), if a photon could visualize, the entire universe would appear as a two-dimensional timeless plane which is completely still.  However, a photon can’t visualize or even experience anything because, for a proton, time doesn't pass, physicists labeling such things null geodesics.  A photon moves from its start to its end: An interaction creates (or emits) it until another interaction destroys (or absorbs) it.  These two things, creation and destruction, are all that can happen to a photon and neither can be experienced because there’s no time; what photons do can be measured but the frame of reference is wholly external.  In an inertial reference frame, there are physical laws which don't depend on the motion of anything external to the system yet for a photon, the physical rules it obeys depend exclusively on everything which happens external to it.

Weirder still, because protons lack mass, a photon cannot visualize the rest of the universe because seeing requires interacting with other particles, antiparticles, or photons, and, once such an interaction occurs, that photon's journey is over, its destruction as instantaneous as its creation.  Thus the fundamental importance of time to the existence of three-dimensional space; were there no time, everything would happen at once.

Neutrino

Neutrino (pronounced noo-tree-noh, nyoo-tree-noh)

In physics, a stable elementary particle, classified as a lepton which has an extremely small (but nonzero) mass and no electric charge. Travelling at the speed of light, it interacts with the surroundings only via the weak force or gravitation, making it very difficult to detect.  Three types exist, associated with the electron, the muon, and the tau particle.  The neutrino symbol is a V.

1932: Coined by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), the construct being neutr(on) + -ino.  Neutron was a formation of neutral +‎ -on (the suffix forming nouns denoting subatomic particles (proton), quanta (photon), molecular units (codon), or substances (interferon).  It was coined by Scottish-Australian physicist William Sutherland in 1899 in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine. Subsequent usage was sporadic and theoretical, sometimes referring to neutrinos rather than neutrons, and the modern sense was reintroduced by New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) in 1920.  The Italian diminutive suffix –ino (plural -ini, feminine -ina) is from the Latin -īnus, from the primitive Indo-European –iHnos (and is most comparable with the English suffix –ine).  It’s (1) an alterative suffix used to form diminutives, (2) a derivational suffix used to form adjectives or nouns, (3) used to indicate an ethnic or geographical origin, (4) used to indicate tools or instruments and (5) used to derive adjectives denoting composition, colour or other qualities.  In Italian, neutrino means “little neutron”.  Neutrino is a noun; the noun plural is neutrinos 

They're everywhere

Although not observed until 1955, Austrian-Swiss physicist Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900-1958) created a theoretical model in 1930 of what he called the neutron, the word modelled on electron.  He speculated his new particle was emitted from the nucleus together with the electron or beta particle in the process of decay.  The word neutrino entered the scientific lexicon after Italian–American physicist Enrico Fermi used it at a Paris conference in 1932.  Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, billions of which produced by nuclear reactions in the sun pass through every human body on earth every second without disturbing any atoms.  An incalculable number were created fractions of a second after the Big Bang and new ones are constantly being generated, in the nuclear hearts of stars, in particle accelerators and atomic reactors on Earth, during the explosive collapse of supernovas and when radioactive elements decay. Physicists estimate, at any given point in time or space, there are a billion times more neutrinos than protons in the universe.

A perfect gift for nerds, neutrino T-shirts are available in designer colors. 

Despite their ubiquity, neutrinos remain mysterious, streaming through most matter as if they were light rays going through a transparent window, scarcely interacting with everything else in existence.  They made the headlines in 2011 when researchers in Italy suggested they had detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, hitherto thought impossible.  Technical faults in the measurement were later detected and neutrinos resumed their place as cosmically law-abiding particles.  Later reports from the US indicate the possibility a fourth type (the so-called sterile neutrino) might exist; if detected, known laws of physics would have to be amended because sterile neutrinos don't fit into what's known as the Standard Model, a framework that explains almost all known particles and forces except gravity.  A new analytical framework would be required.

Parsec

Parsec (pronounced pahr-sek)

A unit of astronomical length, based on the distance from Earth at which a star would have a parallax of one second of arc which is equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun or 3.26 light-years.  Its lineal equivalent is about 19.1 trillion miles (30.8 trillion km).

1913: The construct was par + sec, derived from parallax + second.  Parallax is from the Middle French parallaxe, from the Ancient Greek παράλλαξις (parállaxis) (alteration) from παραλλάσσω (parallássō) (to cause to alternate) from ἀλλάσσω (allássō) (to alter) from ἄλλος (állos) (other).  Second, in the sense of time, is from the Middle English secunde & seconde, borrowed from the Old French seconde, from the Medieval Latin secunda, short for secunda pars minuta (second diminished part (of the hour)). Parsec is a noun; the noun plural is parsecs.

Distance in space

The parsec (pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System.  A parsec is defined as the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arc second, which corresponds to 648000 astronomical units.  The nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs (4.2 light-years) from the Sun.

The parsec unit appears first to have been suggested in 1913 by the English astronomer Professor Herbert Hall Turner (1861-1930).  It was invented to permit calculations of astronomical distances using only raw observational data and is thus the default unit of measure in astronomy and astrophysics although the more-easily understood light-year is preferred by lay-persons.  While useful to describe the comparatively short distances within the Milky Way, multiples of parsecs are needed to map the wider universe including kiloparsecs (kpc) for objects immediately beyond the Milky Way and megaparsecs (Mpc) for more distant galaxies.  Gigaparsecs (Gpc) are used to measure the quasars and galaxies which exist at the extreme edge of the known universe; the particle horizon (the boundary of the observable universe) has a radius of about 14.0 Gpc (46 billion light-years).

Although in use for more than a century, the parsec wasn’t formally defined until August 2015 when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which, as part of the definition of a standardized absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scale, noted the existing explicit definition of the parsec as exactly 648000 astronomical units, or approximately 3.08567758149137×10¹⁶ metres.

Hubble telescope image of star-forming region in the Carina Nebula.  As photographed, the gas and dust cluster is about .889 of a parsec (2.9 light-years) tall.

Stratosphere

Stratosphere (pronounced strat-uh-sfeer)

(1) The region of the upper atmosphere extending between the tropopause and mesosphere to about 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the earth, characterized by little vertical change in temperature.

(2) In historic documents, all of the earth's atmosphere lying outside the troposphere (obsolete).

(3) Any great height or degree of anything, as the highest point of a graded scale.

(4) In geology, collectively, those layers of the Earth’s crust which primarily comprise stratified deposits (obsolete).

1908: From the French stratosphère, the construct being strato + sphère (literally "sphere of layers").  It was coined by French meteorologist Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (1855-1913).  Strato was an inflected form of strātus (a spreading out), the perfect passive participle of sternō (spread) and past participle stem of sternere (to spread out) from the primitive Indo-European root stere- (to spread).  Sphere was from the Middle English spere, from the Old French sphere, from the Medieval Latin sphēra, from the Classical Latin sphaera (ball, globe, celestial sphere), from the Ancient Greek σφαῖρα (sphaîra) (ball, globe) of unknown origin and despite the apparent similarity, not related to the Persian سپهر‎ (sepehr) (sky).  The earlier use of the word, attested in English 1908 and coined in German 1901, was a geological term for part of the Earth's crust and has long been wholly obsolete.  The second major layer of Earth's atmosphere, the stratosphere sits above the troposphere and below the mesosphere.  Itself stratified, the stratosphere’s cooler layers are closest to the Earth’s surface, the higher layers warmed by the absorption of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation in the ozone layer, a reversal of the process in the troposphere where temperature decreases with altitude.  Stratosphere is a noun, and stratospheric & stratospherical are adjectives; the noun plural is stratospheres.

Layers

It was once thought the first living things to enter the stratosphere were some fruit flies, sent there by the US Air Force aboard one of the V-2 rockets seized from the German's wartime missile programme.  Launched in February 1947 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the purpose of the flight was to explore the effects of radiation exposure at these then novel high altitudes; the V2 attained a height of 68 miles (109 kilometres) and all fruit flies survived the trip.  It was soon appreciated however that some bacteria or viruses must have been present in or on the V2s launched by the Germans between 1944-1945 and many of these would, at least briefly, have entered the stratosphere but even these appear not to have been the first living (and viruses are in some sense “alive”) things there.

Although the tropopause (the uppermost layer of the troposphere) is thought a barrier to the upward movement of particles, volcanoes are an obvious means by which this could occur although such eruptions are rare.  Bacterial life does however survive in the stratosphere, making it technically, part of the biosphere and, in 2001, dust was collected at a height of 25 miles (41 kilometres) which, upon analysis, was found to contain bacteria of surprisingly large size.  The discovery excited speculation that such large bacterial masses may be incoming to Earth, the suggestion being that (1) the bacteria may have arrived in the stratosphere from space and (2) the possibility that the transfer of bacteria from the Earth to the highly mutagenic stratosphere may have played a role in bacterial evolution.  Among the scientific community, enthusiasm for these theories was restrained.

Lambeth

Lambeth (pronounced lam-bith)

(1) A south London suburb, the location of Lambeth Palace, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

(2) A habitational surname based on the locality.

(3) A slang term for the hierarchy of the Church of England (on the model of "Pentagon", "Downing Steeet" etc.

(4) In informal use, an ellipsis of "Lambeth Conference".

1255: The earliest known use was in 1062 as Lambehitha, from the Old English lamb (lamb) + hȳþ (hithe) (landing-place on a riverbank), the name clipped to Lambeth (probably reflecting oral use) by at least 1255.  It was thus a point on the banks of the Thames where the geography and tidal flows were suitable for boats to dock or moor to discharge or take on cargo, lambs presumably common.  Lambeth Palace has for some eight-hundred years been the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  It sits on the south bank of the Thames, a ¼ mile (400m) south-east of the Palace of Westminster (containing the houses of parliament) on the opposite bank.  Lambeth is a proper noun.

A Lambeth degree is an academic degree conferred by the Archbishop of Canterbury under the authority of the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 and those awarded span a number of fields including law, music, literature, medicine and (obviously) divinity.  Some of the degrees (notably the doctorates) are similar in concept to the honorary degrees conferred by universities but all are in law “substantive” and those granted doctorates are entitled to in any circumstances use the honorific “Dr” and the post-nominal of a Lambeth Doctor of Divinity appears as “DD (Cantuar)” whereas an honorary DD from an academic institution would be written DD (Hon).  Many Lambeth degrees have been granted on much the same basis as the honorary awards of other institution; in this case “recognition of service to the church” (although that phrase has generously been interpreted and, in effect, extended to “recognition of service to God”; a typical Anglican fudge that can mean whatever at the time suits Lambeth).  Historically, there were also Lambeth degrees which required some form of examination.  Reflecting the position of the Church of England as an established state church, Lambeth degrees technically are “degrees of the realm” so, in legal theory, a king, queen or regent could veto an award but in practice this power would be exercised by the government.  Lambeth degrees have not for some years been awarded and their immediate future is uncertain but, in the English way, it’s expected they won’t cease to exist but will become a rarity.  

Rowan Williams (b 1950; Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-2012) and Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) chat at Lambeth Palace.

The Lambeth Conference

The Lambeth Conference is a (nominally) decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the AoC (Archbishop of Canterbury), 15 held since the first in 1867.  The Anglican Communion is an international association of autonomous national and regional churches, not a governing body and the office of AoC is in no way analogous with the Roman Catholic pope; while a pope is an absolute monarch atop a theocracy, the AoC is the "spirital head" of the Anglican community but holds no executive authority.  The conferences serve a collaborative and consultative function and are said to express “…the mind of the communion" on issues of the day; resolutions passed at a Lambeth Conference are without legal effect, but can be influential (if others are in the mood to be influenced).

Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's official London residence.

Conferences were never the pure and high-minded discussions of ethics, morality and theology some now appear to believe characterized the pre-modern (in this context those held prior to 1968 when "the troubles began") events.  Agenda and communiqués from all conferences have always included the procedural, administrative and jurisdictional although in recent years, they’ve certainly reflected an increasingly factionalized communion rent with cross-cutting cleavages, first over the ordination of women and of late, homosexual clergy.  During the 1998 conference, Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma (b 1954) of Nigeria attempted to exorcise "homosexual demons" from the soul of Nigerian-born Richard Kirker (b 1951), a British priest and general secretary of the LGCM (Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement).  Recalling perhaps Ephesians 4:32 or (less charitability) the more cautionary Matthew 6:15, Kirker forgave him.  There have since (as far as is known) been no exorcisms at Lambeth conferences but the squabbles over gay male and female clergy have never been resolved.  The spirit of Kirker notwithstanding, at this point, the disagreements seem insoluble.  The poisonous atmosphere at, and in the aftermath of, the  conference in 2008 did not enhance the image of the church and a typically Anglican solution to avoid a repetition in 2018 seemed to have emerged.  In 2014, in answer to the suggestion he had cancelled the 2018 conference, Archbishop Justin Welby (b 1956; 105th Archbishop of Canterbury 2013-2025), in a statement worthy of any of his predecessors, responded by stating: "As it hasn’t been called, it can’t have been cancelled."

A communiqué, issued after the primates' meeting in January 2016, noted the bishops had accepted the archbishop’s proposal the 15^th conference should be held in 2020.  However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was in March 2020 decided to postpone things to the summer of 2021 but the virus proved elusive and by July, the delay had been extended to 2022.  The first epistle of Peter was chosen as the biblical focus for the conference, the theme of which is said to be what it means to be “God’s Church for God’s World”.  The apostle Peter wrote this epistle to give comfort to Christians suffering persecution from non-believers, hoping to encourage them to live pure lives despite their vicissitudes.

#lambeth got tagged in Lindsay Lohan's political commentaries on the dramatic night of the Brexit referendum in 2016.  She was a part of Team #remain.  

Peter didn’t sugar-coat the message (1 Peter 4:12-19), making it clear that for Christians, suffering is actually a participation in the sufferings of Christ and an occasion for rejoicing, helpfully adding that in the midst of the suffering, the Holy Spirit rests upon those who are suffering, this being a great consolation.  He further explained God uses suffering to purify the Christian community, God's household.  God uses the abuse that pagans unjustly heap on Christians to prepare his people for the return of Christ and warns people not to be surprised at the fiery ordeal that will come upon them as followers of Jesus.  Actually, they should be both grateful and happy and thus glorify God, for if they share in Christ’s sufferings it means they will also share in his glory.

In a world beset by fire, flood, pestilence and plague, 1 Peter seemed a good theme to loom over a Lambeth Conference and surprising some (while disappointing others, the 15^th conference in 2022 proved less incendiary than had been (gleefully by some) predicted.  Whether or not Christians beyond the Kent conference rooms much mused on “God’s Church for God’s World” isn't known but the words must have resonated with Archbishop Welby’s predecessor, Rowan Williams.  During his tenure at Lambeth, Dr Williams probably felt more ignored than persecuted by non-believers, finding the internecine squabbles of the believers in the Anglican factions rather more tiresome.  Declaring the problems in the church “insoluble” he seemed not unhappy to be leaving Lambeth to return to his study and write about Dostoevsky (Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)).  A generous spirit, he would have wished his successors well.

Lambeth's latest: Dame Sarah Mullally (b 1962) in the regalia of Bishop of London.

In March 2026, Dane Sarah was installed (modern Anglicans no long fancy the idea of an "enthronement") as AoC; No longer one of the world's more desirable jobs (essentially because it can't be done), along with Dr Williams, all will wish her the best of British luck.  In feminist theory, the phenomenon of women being appointed to suddenly undesirable jobs is known as the "glass cliff".  Were it possible for the job still to be done, the Anglicans would have appointed the 106^th man rather than the first woman, the previous 105 prelates all men since the first, Saint Augustine of Canterbury (circa 630s-circa 604) in 597 (not to be confused with the still influential Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430)).

Whatever the motivations of the Anglicans in handing the keys to Lambeth Palace to a woman, they didn't including attempting to find common ground with the factions that for decades have railed against the notion of homosexual clergy or the ordination of women.  The reaction to Dame Sarah's appointment was most sharp in Africa where many (1) note the twelve apostles (the "only clergy appointed by Jesus Christ") were all men and (2) still adhere to the notion of homosexuality as defined in The Buggery Act 1533 during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547): "The detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast".  Given that uncompromising stance, few were surprised when some African churches announced they were withdrawing from communion with Canterbury, a move matched by some in the US while the puritan faction in Australia's Sydney Diocese has already re-aligned with the traditionalist GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) aggregation.  As schisms go, there have been many more bloody and while some regret the siloization of the Anglican community, the pulling up of drawbridges should make future Lambeth Conferences less gut-wrenching affairs so there's that.  

Cabotage

Cabotage (pronounced kab-uh-tij or kab-uh-tahzh)

(1) In seafaring, navigation or trade along the coast.

(2) In aviation, the legal restriction to domestic carriers of air transport between points within a country's borders (with certain exceptions).

(3) The transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country; the exclusive right of a country to control such transport.

(4) In law, the right to engage in such transport.

1825–1835: A borrowing from the French cabotage (coasting trade) from the French caboter (to sail coastwise; to travel by the coast), a verbal derivative of the Middle French cabo & the Spanish cabo (headland; cape).  Ultimate root is the Latin caput (head).  Word was first used in sixteenth century France to reference the restrictions which permitted only French ships to trade or transport between French ports. Other countries adopted the concept, later extending it to land and air travel.  Cabotage is a noun; the noun plural is cabotages.

Rights

Example of a cabotage arrangement.

Originally a term applied exclusively to shipping along coastal routes, cabotage can now refer also to aviation and land transport.  It is the transport of passengers and/or goods between two places in one country, undertaken by vessels from a different country.  Cabotage rights are those which define the extent to which transport operators from one country can trade in another and many arrangements exist.  In aviation, it is the right to operate within the domestic borders of another country; most states don’t permit aviation cabotage, and strict sanctions exist, historically either for reasons of economic protectionism, national security, or public safety.  One exception is the European Union, the member states of which grant cross-vested rights to all others, cabotage rights remaining otherwise rare in passenger aviation.  The Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation prohibits member states from granting cabotage on an exclusive basis, which has meant it’s not been used in bilateral aviation negotiations and is not granted under most open skies agreements.  The Closer Economic Relations agreement between Australia and New Zealand permits Australian carriers to fly domestically and internationally from New Zealand and vice versa. Additionally, there are limited rights for the airlines to service domestic routes within both countries.

Hangry

Hangry (pronounced hang-gree)

Feeling irritable or irrationally angry because of hunger.

1915-1920: A portmanteau word, the construct being from h(ungry) + angry.  Hungry is from the Middle English hungry, from the Old English hungriġ & hungreġ (hungry; famishing; meager), from the Proto-Germanic hungragaz (hungry).  It was cognate with the Dutch hongerig, the German hungrig and the Swedish hungrig, all of which meant “hungry”.  Anger is from the Old Norse angr (affliction, sorrow).

Hungry (pre 950) was from the Middle English hungry & hungri, from the Old English hungriġ & hungreġ (hungry; famishing; meager) which existed also in the Common West Germanic and was from the Proto-Germanic hungragaz (hungry).  It was cognate with the German hungrig, the Old Frisian hungerig, the Dutch hongerig, the German hungrig and the Swedish hungrig, all of which meant “hungry”.  The use as a figurative form is noted from circa 1200.

Angry (1350-1400) in the sense of "hot-tempered, irascible; incensed, openly wrathful" is a construct of the earlier noun anger + -y,  The Old Norse adjective was ongrfullr (sorrowful) (the Old Norse angr meant “affliction, sorrow”), from the mid thirteenth century a Middle English form was angerful (anxious, eager).  The “angry young man” dates from 1941 but became a popular form only after John Osborne's (1929-1994) play Look Back in Anger was performed in 1956 although the exact phrase does appears nowhere in the text.  The rare related form is angriness.

The –y suffix is from the Middle English –y & -i, from the Old English -iġ (-y, -ic), from the Proto-Germanic -īgaz (-y, -ic), from the primitive Indo-European -kos, -ikos, & -iḱos (-y, -ic).  It was cognate with the Scots -ie (-y), the West Frisian -ich (-y), the Dutch -ig (-y), the Low German -ig (-y), the German -ig (-y), the Swedish -ig (-y), the Latin -icus (-y, -ic) and the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós); a doublet of -ic.  The –y suffix was added to (1) nouns and adjectives to form adjectives meaning “having the quality of” and (2) verbs to form adjectives meaning "inclined to".

The cats Hillary & Bill: a question understandably frequent in some marriages.

Etymologists list hangry as a humorous invention in US English dating from circa 1915-1920 but use soon died out, not to be revived until 1956 when it was mentioned in the US psychoanalytic journal American Imago in a discussion about various kinds of deliberate and accidental wordplay.  Hangry, unlike some of contractions or elisions documented, survived (or was again revived) in the internet age, becoming popular from the mid-1990s and achieved sufficient linguistic critical-mass for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to accept it as a word in their 2018 update.  Even among those who dismiss hangry as slang, the usual rules of English should apply so the comparative is more hangry, the superlative most hangry, and the adjectives hangrier and hangriest.

Hangriness can lead to "diva-like behavior".  The Australian New Idea is a "women's magazine" offered still in a print edition as well as on-line.  Locally, the slang for the publication is "The No Idea".

Some dictionaries still resist, apparently not convinced it’s yet a proper word despite the usually authoritative imprimatur of the OED.  For those who side with the OED, of note is that hangry thus becomes only the third word in English to end in –gry, the other two being, predictably, angry and hungry.  There is the odd instance in the historic record of puggry (a light scarf wound around a hat or helmet to protect the head from the sun) but etymologists overwhelmingly say this is a mistake, a Raj-era corruption of the correct puggaree, from the Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi pagṛī (turban), related to the Punjabi pagg (turban) and Kashmiri pag (turban), all of unknown origin.  Angry, hungry & hangry are the only words in English ending in "gry".