Poison & Venom

Poison (pronounced poi-zuhn)

(1) A substance with an inherent property that can impair function, cause structural damage, or otherwise injure or destroy life or impair health.

(2) Something harmful or pernicious, as to happiness or well-being.

(3) A slang term for alcoholic liquor.

(4) To administer poison to (a something living).

(5) To ruin, vitiate, or corrupt.

(6) In chemistry, a substance that retards a chemical reaction or destroys or inhibits the activity of a catalyst or enzyme).

(7) In nuclear physics, a substance that absorbs neutrons in a nuclear reactor and thus slows down the reaction.  It may be added deliberately or formed during fission

1200-1250: From the Middle English poisoun, poyson, poysone, puyson & puisun (a deadly potion or substance (and figuratively, "spiritually corrupting ideas; evil intentions,"), from the twelfth century Old French poison & puison (drink, especially a "medical drink" (later "a (magic) potion; a poisonous drink"), from the Latin potionem (nominative potio) (a drinking, a drink) (and also "a poisonous drink"), from potare (to drink), from the primitive Indo-European root poi- & po- (to drink).  The earliest Lastin forms were pōtiōn (drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion), from pōtō (I drink) & pōtāre (to drink).   The Middle English forms displaced the native Old English ator.  The Latin pōtiōn is the stem of pōtiō, the derive forms being pōtio & pōtiōnis.

The evolution from Latin to French followed the pattern of other words (eg raison from rationem), the Latin word also the source of Old Spanish pozon, the Italian pozione and the Spanish pocion.  The modern and more typical Indo-European word for this is represented in English by virus and the slang sense of "alcoholic drink" is an Americanism dating from 1805.  Figurative use was first noted in the late fifteenth century although it appears not to have been applied to persons until 1910.  It was used as an adjective from the 1520s; with plant names from the eighteenth century.  Poison ivy first recorded 1784; poison oak in 1743, poison in 1915.  Poison-pen, the trolling of the time, was popularized 1913 by a notorious criminal case in Pennsylvania although the phrase dates from 1898.

Three portraits of Lindsay Lohan as Poison Ivy by Alex Ross.  Poison Ivy is a comic book character in works published by US company DC Comics.  Poison Ivy is one of Batman's many enemies.

The sense evolution was from "drink" to "deadly drink".  In some Germanic languages "poison" is aligned with the English gift (eg the Old High German gift, the German Gift, the Danish & Swedish gift and the Dutch gift & vergift).  This shift may have been partly euphemistic and partly the influence of the Greek dosis (a portion prescribed (literally "a giving")), used by Greek physicians to mean "a quantum of medicine".  Of persons detested or regarded as exerting baleful influence, poison and poisonous were in use by 1910 while the slang meaning "alcoholic drink" recorded as an an early nineteenth century invention of American English (as in "what's your poison?"); potus as a past-participle adjective in Latin meant "drunken".  The verb in the sense of "to poison, to give poison to" dates from the circa 1300 poisonen, from the Old French poisonner (to give to drink) and directly from the noun poison.  The figurative use in the sense of "to corrupt" emerged in the late fourteenth century.

Venom (pronounced ven-uhm)

(1) The poisonous fluid that some animals, as certain snakes and spiders, secrete and introduce into the bodies of their victims by biting, stinging etc.

(2) Something resembling or suggesting poison in its effect; spite; malice.

(3) Poison in general (inaccurate, now archaic).

(4) To make venomous; envenom (archaic).

(5) Malice, spite.

1175–1225: A variant of the Middle English venim & venym (poison secreted by some animals and transferred by biting) from the Anglo-Norman & Old French venim, venin (poison; malice), from the Vulgar Latin venīmen (source also of the Italian veleno and the Spanish veneno), from the Latin venēnum (magical herb or potion, poison (and in pre-Classical times "drug, medical potion" also "charm, seduction" probably originally "love potion")).  Root was the Proto-Italic weneznom (lust, desire), from the primitive Indo-European wenh (to strive, wish, love) from wen (to desire; to strive for).  Related are the Sanskrit वनति (vanati) (gain, wish, erotic lust) and the Latin Venus.   The variously deformations in post-Latin languages happened apparently by process of dissimilation.  The modern spelling in English was common by the late fourteenth century and the meaning "bitter, virulent feeling or language" dates from circa 1300.

Not interchangeable

A venomous white-lipped pit viper (Trimeresurus insularis), ready to strike.  The lovely blue ones are rare; most are green.

Poison and venom are often used interchangeably because once in the body, the chemicals can do similar damage, attacking the heart, brain or other vital organs but the meanings are different.  That said, there are many venoms which can be ingested without ill-effect because they are dangerous only if entering the bloodstream although that can happen through a minor cut in the mouth so the practice is not without risk.  Typically, venomous creatures bite, sting or stab their victims whereas for poisonous organisms to affect the living, they have to be bitten, inhaled or touched.  The venomous thus need a way in, like fangs or teeth.  The useful rule is: If one bites something and one dies, what one bit contained poison; if something bites one and one dies, one was bitten by something venomous.  Although a fine distinction for those who have died from either cause, it's an important difference for those signing death certificates. 

Just after Christmas 2017, while on holiday in Thailand, Lindsay Lohan was bitten by a snake and while said to have made a full recovery, there was never any word on fate of serpent which, presumably, wasn't venomous.  The syndicated story on the internet attracted comment from the grammar Nazis who demanded proof the snake really was taking a Thai holiday.

Flatware

Flatware (pronounced flat-wair)

In catering, an omnibus term covering (1) cutlery such as the knives, forks, and spoons used at the table for serving and eating food & (2) crockery such as those plates, saucers, dishes or containers which tend to flatness in shape (as opposed to the more capacious hollowware).

1851: The construct was flat + ware.  Flat dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English flat from the Old Norse flatr, related to Old High German flaz (flat) and the Old Saxon flat (flat; shallow) and akin to Old English flet.  It was cognate with the Norwegian and Swedish flat and the Danish flad, both from the Proto-Germanic flataz, from the primitive Indo-European pleth (flat); akin to the Saterland Frisian flot (smooth), the German flöz (a geological layer), the Latvian plats and Sanskrit प्रथस् (prathas) (extension).  Source is thought to be the Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús & platys) (flat, broad).  The sense of "prosaic or dull" emerged in the 1570s and was first applied to drink from circa 1600, a meaning extended to musical notes in the 1590s (ie the tone is "lowered").   Flat-out, an adjectival form, was first noted in 1932, apparently a reference to pushing a car’s throttle (accelerator) flat to the floor and thus came to be slang for a vehicle’s top speed.  The noun was from the Middle English flat (level piece of ground, flat edge of a weapon) and developed from the adjective; the US colloquial use as a noun from 1870 meaning "total failure" endures in the sense of “falling flat”.  The notion of a small, residential space, a divided part of a larger structure, dates from 1795–1805; variant of the obsolete Old English flet (floor, house, hall), most suggesting the meaning followed the early practice of sub-dividing buildings within levels.  In this sense, the Old High German flezzi (floor) has been noted and it is perhaps derived from the primitive Indo-European plat (to spread) but the link to flat as part of a building is tenuous.

Ware was from the Middle English ware & war, from the Old English waru & wær (article of merchandise (originally “protection, guard”, the sense probably derived from “an object of care, that which is kept in custody”), from the Proto-Germanic warō & Proto-West Germanic war, from the Proto-Germanic waraz, the Germanic root also the source of the Swedish vara, the Danish vare, the Old Frisian were, the Middle Dutch were, the Dutch waar, the Middle High German & German Ware (goods). All ultimately were from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (perceive, watch out for)  In Middle English, the meaning shifted from "guard, protection" to "an object that is in possession, hence meriting attention, guarded, cared for, and protected".  Thus as a suffix, -ware is used to form nouns denoting, collectively, items made from a particular substance or of a particular kind or for a particular use.  In the special case of items worn as clothing, the suffix -wear is appended, thus there is footwear rather than footware.  In the suffixed form, ware is almost always in the singular but as a stand-alone word (meaning goods or products etc), it’s used as wares.  Ladyware was a seventeenth century euphemism for "a woman's private parts" (the companion manware etc much less common) and in Middle English there was also the mid-thirteenth century ape-ware (deceptive or false ware; trickery).  Flatware is a noun; the noun plural is flatwares.

Hardware and software were adopted by the computer industry, the former used from the very dawn of the business in the late 1940s, borrowing from the mid-fifteenth century use which initially described “small metal goods” before evolving to be applied to just about everything in building & construction from tools to fastenings.  Apparently, software didn’t come into use until the 1960s and then as something based on “hardware” rather than anything to do with the mid-nineteenth century use when it described both "woolen or cotton fabrics" and "relatively perishable consumer goods"; until then there was hardware & programs (the term “code” came later).  The ecosystem spawned by the industry picked up the idea in the 1980s, coining shareware (originally software distributed for free for which some payment was hoped) and that started a trend, begetting:

Abandonware: Software no longer updated or maintained, or on which copyright is no longer defended or which is no longer sold or supported; such software can, with approval, pass to others for development (takeoverware) or simply be purloined (hijackware).  Abandonware is notoriously associated with video game development where there’s a high failure rate and many unsuccessful projects later emerge as shareware or freeware.

Adware: Nominally free software which includes advertising while running.  Adware sometimes permits the advertising to disappear upon payment and is popularly associated with spyware although the extent of this has never reliably been quantified.

Baitware: Software with the most desirable or tempting features disabled but able to be activated upon payment; a type of crippleware or demoware.

Freeware: Free software, a variation of which is “open source” which makes available also the source code which anyone may modify and re-distribute on a non-commercial basis.  Google’s Chrome browser is a famous example, developed from the open source Chromium project.

Censorware: An umbrella term for content-filtering software.

Demoware: A variation of crippleware or baitware in that it’s a fully-functional version of the software but limited in some critical way (eg ceases to work after 30 days); also called trialware.  The full feature set is unlocked by making a payment which ensures the user is provided with a code (or "key") to activate full-functionality.  The fashionable term for this approach is "freemium" (a portmanteau of free & premium, the idea being the premium features cost something.

Donationware: Pure shareware in that it’s fully-functional and may be used without payment but donations are requested to support further development.  A type of shareware.

Postcardware: Developer requests a postcard from the user’s home town.  This really is a thing and the phenomenon is probably best explained by those from the behavioral science community; also called cardware.

Ransomware: Software which “locks” or in some way renders inaccessible a user’s data or system, requiring a payment (usually in crypto-currency) before access can be regained; malware’s growth industry.

Spyware: Software which furtively monitors a user’s actions, usually to steal and transmit data; antispyware is its intended nemesis.

Malware: Software with some malicious purpose including spyware and ransomware.

Bloatware: Either (1) the programs bundled by manufacturers or retailers with devices when sold, (often trialware and in some notorious cases spyware) or (2) software laden with pointless “features” nobody will ever use; also called fatware, fattware and phatware.

Vaporware: Non-existent software which is either well behind schedule or has only ever been speculative; also called noware.

Flat as a noun, prefix or adjective has also been productive:  Flat white can be either a coffee or a non-gloss paint.  Flatway and flatwise (with a flat side down or otherwise in contact with a flat surface) are synonymous terms describing the relationship of one or more flat objects in relation to others and flat-water is a nautical term meaning much the same as "still-water".  The flat universe is a cluster of variations of one theory among a number of speculative descriptions of the topological or geometric attributes of the universe.  Probably baffling to all but a few cosmologists, the models appear suggest a structure which include curves while as a totality being of zero curvature and, depending on the detail, imply a universe which either finite or infinite.

The “going flat” movement describes an activist community of women who have undergone a mastectomy (the surgical removal of one breast (unilateral) or both (bilateral) who elect not to have a reconstruction.  Since reconstructive surgery became mainstream in the 1980s, a large percentage of women who had a mastectomy opted (for whatever reason) not to reconstruct but the more recent “going flat” movement was a political act: a reaction against what is described in the US as the “medical-industrial complex”, the point being that women who have undergone a mastectomy should not be subject to pressure either to use a prosthetic or agree to surgical reconstruction (a lucrative procedure for the industry).  It’s a form of advocacy which has a focus not only on available fashions but also the need for a protocol under which, if women request an AFC (aesthetic flat closure, a surgical closure (sewing up) in which the “surplus” skin, often preserved to accommodate a future reconstructive procedure, is removed and the chest rendered essentially “flat”), that is what must be provided.  The medical industry has argued the AFC can preclude a satisfactory cosmetic outcome in reconstruction if a woman “changes her mind” but the movement insists it's an example of how the “informed consent” of women is not being respected.  Essentially, what the “going flat” movement seems to be arguing is the request for an AFC should be understood as an example of the legal principle of VAR (voluntary assumption of risk).  The attitude of surgeons who decline to perform an AFC is described by the movement as the “flat refusal”.

Ford flathead V8 with heads removed (right), a pair of (flat) heads (centre) and flathead V8 with (aftermarket Offenhauser) heads installed.

In internal combustion engines, a flathead engine (also called the sidevalve or L-Head) is one where the poppet valves are built into the engine block rather than being in a separate cylinder head which has since the 1950s been the almost universal practice (overhead valve (OHV) and overhead camshaft (OHC)).  Until the 1950s, flatheads were widely available in both cheap and expensive vehicles because they used relatively few moving parts, were simple (and thus economic) to manufacture and existed in an era of low-octane fuels which tended to preclude high engine speeds.  During the Second World War (1939-1945), decades of advances in design and metallurgy were effectively accomplished in five years and flathead designs were phased out of production except for non-automotive niches where simple, cheap, low-revving units were ideal.  The classic flathead was the Ford V8 (1932-1953 in the US market although, remarkably, production overseas didn’t end until 1993) which encompasses all the advantages and disadvantages of the design and was so identified with the concept that it’s still known as “the Flathead”, the name gained because the “head”, containing no valve-gear or other machinery, is little more than a piece of flat steel, providing a sealing for the combustion process.

Flat Earth Society factional options.

Members of the Flat Earth Society believe the Earth is flat but there's genuine debate within the organization, some holding the shape is disk-like, others that it's conical but both agree we live on something like the face of a coin.  There are also those in a radical faction suggesting it's actually shaped like a doughnut but this theory is regarded by the flat-earth mainstream as speculative or even heretical.  Evidence, such as photographs from orbit showing Earth to be a sphere, is dismissed as part of the "round Earth conspiracy" run by NASA and others.  The flat-earther theory is that the Arctic Circle is in the center and the Antarctic is a 150-foot (45m) tall wall of ice around the rim; NASA contractors guard the ice wall so nobody can fall over the edge.  Earth's daily cycle is a product of the sun and moon being 32 mile (51 km) wide spheres travelling in a plane 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above Earth.  The more distant stars are some 3100 miles (5000 km) away and there's also an invisible "anti-moon" which obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.

Lindsay Lohan in Lanvin Classic Garnet ballet flats (ballet pumps in the US) (Lanvin p/n: FW-BAPBS1-NAPA-A18391), Los Angeles, 2012.

Ballet flats are shoes which either literally are or closely resemble a ballerina’s dancing slippers.  In the US, ballet flats are almost always called ballet pumps and this use has spread, many in the industry also now calling them pumps, presumably just for administrative simplicity although the standardization does create problems because the term “pump” is used to describe a wide range of styles and there’s much inconsistency between markets.  A flat-file database is a database management system (DBMS) where records are stored in a uniform format with no structure for indexing or recognizing relationships between entries.  A flat-file database is best visualized as the page of a spreadsheet which no capacity for three-dimensionality but, in principle, there’s no reason why a flat-file database can’t be huge although they tend for many reasons not to be suitable to use at scale.

The Flatiron building (circa 1904) oil on canvas by Ernest Lawson (1873-1939).

The Flatiron Building is a 22 storey, 285 foot (86.9 m), tall building with a triangular footprint, located at 175 Fifth Avenue in what is now called the Flatiron District of Manhattan, New York City.  Opened in 1902 and originally called the “Fuller Building”, the Flatiron was one of the city’s first skyscrapers and gained the nickname which stuck because people compare the shape to the cast-iron clothes irons then on sale although, viewed from ground level, the shape is deceptive; whereas an iron is symmetrical, the Flatiron is an irregular triangle: a wedge.  A striking example of what would come to be called "modern architecture", it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989.

Flatware

Flatware in its historic sense is now rarely used outside of the categorization systems of catering suppliers except in the US where it vies with “silverware” and the clumsy “flatwaresilverware” to describe what is in most of the English-speaking world called cutlery.  In modern use, a term which covers some utensils and some dishware seems to make no sense and that’s correct.  The origin of flatware belongs to a time when those to whom an invitation to dinner was extended would bring their own “flatware” (knife, fork, spoon, plate, goblet) because in most houses, those items existed in numbers sufficient only for the inhabitants.

Jacob Rees-Mogg taking a dish of tea.  Mr Rees-Mogg (b 1969), a noted member of Boris Johnson's government since 2019, is sometime referred to as "the right honourable member for the eighteenth century".

As applied to crockery, flatware items were in the fourteenth century those plates, dishes, saucers which were "shallow & smooth-surfaced", distinguishing them from hollowware which were the larger items (steel, china, earthenware) of crockery used to cook or serve food (onto or into flatware to be eaten with flatware).  The seemingly aberrant case of the cup (something inherently hollow) being flatware is that what we would now call a mug or goblet, like a knife, fork or plate, was an item most people would carry with them when going to eat in another place.  The issue of cup and saucer existing in different categories thus didn’t exist and in any case saucers were, as the name suggests, originally associated with the serving of sauce, being a drip-tray.  The cup and saucer in its modern form didn’t appear until the mid eighteenth century when a handle was added to the little bowls which had been in use in the West for more than a hundred years (centuries earlier in the East) and reflecting handle-less age, the phrase “a dish of tea” is still an occasionally heard affectation.

Elizabeth II farewelling Bill & crooked Hillary Clinton, Buckingham Palace, 2000.

Almost universally, flatware is referred to as "the silver".  Eating and drinking has long been fetishized and adopted increasingly elaborate forms of service so (except for the specific sense in the US) the term flatware is now of little use outside the databases of catering suppliers, crockery and cutlery now more useful general categories which can accommodate what is now a huge number of classes of wares.

Whilom

Whilom (pronounced hwahy-luhm or wahy-luhm)

(1) Former; erstwhile (adjective); at one time; at time past (adverb) (both archaic).

(2) While (obsolete in general use but sometimes deployed as a literary device).

Circa 1200: Middle English from the pre-900 Old English hwīlum (at times), dative case of hwīl (while) and related to Old High German hwīlōm and German weiland (of old; formerly).  The meaning by circa 1200 was “at time past” and whilom was a commonly used conjunction from the 1610s and the spelling was for whatever reason the survivor of a few variations, something not unusual in the evolution of language.  In the Old English hwīlum was an adverb meaning "at times; in times passed" and that sense was picked up in the Middle English, the meaning “formerly” acquired in the twelfth century.  For centuries a staple a staple of educated English, use of the adverb dwindled toward the end of the nineteenth century but there was a last gasp, a brief popularity between the end of the Victorian era (1901) and the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918).  Whilom was drawn from Old English at a time when the language was heavily inflected, adjectives, nouns, and verbs adopting different endings depending on the job they were doing.  Whilom (then spelt hwilom), was the dative plural of hwil (which evolved into the Modern English while) but as English gradually abandoned its inflections, the word became a fossil, its ending stuck there permanently. 

The adjective whilom is one of four (the others being erstwhile, quondam and umquhile) with the same meaning (formerly; in the past) and it’s now flagged by most dictionaries as “obsolete”, more traditional editors preferring “archaic”.  The adjective appeared in the fifteenth century, intriguingly with the meaning "deceased" and it’s presumably this which influenced the meaning-shift towards "former" which by the nineteenth century universal although for those who wish to avoid “dead” but find “passed on” a bit naff, whilom might offer promise.

Whilom special friends, Samantha Ronson & Lindsay Lohan, Charlotte Ronson Spring 2009 Fashion Show, September 2008, New York City.

JM Barrie (1860-1937) used it in The Little White Bird (1903), writing “Whom did I see but the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these gardens” but even then “former” and “erstwhile” were beginning to be preferred although, perhaps predictably, that made it appeal to PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) who put in Heavy Weather (1933).  It’s seen now only in that graveyard of the linguistically anachronistic: the literary novel.

Martinet

Martinet (pronounced mahr-tn-et)

(1) A strict disciplinarian, especially in the military.

(2) Someone who stubbornly adheres to methods or rules.

1670s: Named after Lieutenant-Colonel (in the Régiment du Roi) Jean Martinet (circa 1635-1672), a French Army drillmaster in 1668 appointed inspector-general of the infantry in the armies of Louis XIV (1638–1715; King of France 1643-1715) with the task of introducing and enforcing "...the drill and strict discipline of the French regiment of Guards across the whole infantry".  The surname is a diminutive of the Latin Martinus which endures in modern use as Martin.  The meaning "an officer who is a stickler for strict discipline" is first attested in 1779 in English, based on his invention of an especially arduous  system of drill, one one academic study guide citing Martinet as the inspiration for the parade-obsessed General Scheisskopf in Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) Catch-22 (1961), though without attribution.  The meaning "an officer who is a stickler for discipline and regularity in small details" dates from 1779 but it seems, despite the origin, the word is not used in this sense in French.  Related forms are the adjective martinetish and the noun martinetism.

Shot in the back by his own troops

Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Martinet was Inspector General of the infantry in the armies of Louis XIV and a famously strict drillmaster.  Unpopular though his methods may have been among the troops, his techniques influenced training and battlefield tactics in many European armies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

Rifle-mounted bayonets.

Also innovative in technical matters, he introduced the bayonet as an addition to the rifle barrel, borrowing the idea from hunters in the Bayonne region from which the weapon gained its name.  Although simple in design and easy to mass-produce, it revolutionized the deployment of infantry formations because it permitted the French armies to dispense entirely with the pikemen who had hitherto always protected musketeers (rifles) and arquebusiers (light canon) from enemy cavalry, close-range combat and while reloading. The bayonet allowed firearm-using soldiers to protect themselves, the design perfected when adapted to fit over the barrel, allowing the gun to be fired with the bayonet still fixed.

Martinet's second innovation was in logistics or what in US military use is the Q-Side; Martinet called it the depot system.  Until then, soldiers foraged off the land, often forcibly taking food and supplies from civilians, a practice which became notorious during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) of the seventeenth century when large tracts of Germany were depopulated and many towns and cities razed.  Martinet built a system of fortified storehouses, placed along communication routes so armies on campaign could be supplied and be thus free to pursue strategic objectives.  While this made the waging of war a more humane business, there’s nothing to suggest this was of any concern to Martinet; he wished only to improve the efficiency of the military machine.

Well regarded though he was by the military hierarchy and the Sun King’s Court, his strictness made him unpopular with the soldiers and he was killed by “friendly fire” while leading an infantry assault at the siege of Duisburg during the Franco-Dutch War (1672–78).  His methods were later perfected by the Prussian Army of Frederick the Great (Frederick II, 1712–1786; King of Prussia 1740-1772) although improvements in weaponry and communications mean they’re no longer of the same use under battlefield conditions although the drills are still practiced by most militaries in their training programmes.

Celsius

Celsius (pronounced sel-see-uhs or sel-shee-us)

(1) As a measure of temperature, pertaining to or noting the Celsius scale of temperature scale in which 0° represents the point (at sea level (ie under normal atmospheric pressure)) where pure water freezes and 100° the point at which it turns to steam.  The Symbol is “C” and the term Centigrade is for most general purposes interchangeable.

(2) In thermodynamics, of or relating to a temperature scale having the same units as the Celsius scale but in which the zero point has been shifted so that the triple point of water has the exact value 0.01°; Celsius temperatures are computed from Kelvin values by subtracting 273.15 from the latter.  The symbol is “CC”.

1742: Named after Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744) who in 1742 proposed the centigrade scale and invented the centigrade thermometer.  The surname Celsius is Latinized from the estate's name, celsus (mound).  The synonyms are centigrade and the rare centesimal.  The term Celsius came into use in 1797 to describe the thermometer and in 1812 in reference to the scale of temperatures.  The companion adjective centigrade (consisting of 100 degrees, divided into 100 equal parts) was a construct of the Latin centi- (from centum (one hundred)) + grade (degree), the second element from Latin gradus (step) & gradi (to walk, go, step), from the primitive Indo-European root ghredh- (to walk, go).  The centigrade thermometer divides the interval between the freezing and boiling points of water into 100 degrees.

It wasn’t until 1948 (at the ninth meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures and the Comité International des Poids et Mesures (CIPM)) that the word Celsius (in honor of Anders Celsius) was adopted (by international agreement) as the standard measure of 100^o increment temperatures; prior to that, the unit was known as centigrade and the two terms were for decades in common, interchangeable use.  Most of the world’s population has long used Celsius, the US the only large country still expressing temperature in the old Fahrenheit scale although, even then, Celsius is in wide use in the scientific community and among others dealing with international institutions.  The other widely used scale is kelvin (symbol is “K”), which had a particular applicability in cosmology, physics and other disciplines, 0 K (-273.15 °C) being absolute zero (the lowest possible temperature (thus far something only theoretically described and measured only as “tending to”) at which the motion of particles at a point in time and space cease to move so stopping the generation of heat, the product of energy.  Between 1948 and 2019, through a series of international agreements, the temperature scales were refined and made more precise and the degree Celsius is now precisely equal to the kelvin.

Curiously, the original Celsius was the reverse of the modern practice: Then, the boiling point was 0° C and the freezing point 100° C.  For scientists that was manageable but for most people would have seemed counter-intuitive so in 1743, the scale inversion proposed by French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin (1683–1755) was accepted.  Monsieur Christian was also influential in the development of the mercury thermometer.  For most people, temperature is a well-understood and unconventional measure although, now that climate change is “baked in” and a rise in average global temperature well over 2° C inevitable, a matter in which there is heightened interest.  Temperatures in parts of England exceeding 40° C, something once thought impossible, have focused the minds of many.

Some have however long been aware of the implications.  Mountaineers have long understood how hard it is to get a good cup of tea while climbing because, the higher one climbs, the lower the air pressure and thus the boiling point of water.  Atop Mount Everest (29031.7 feet, 8,848.86 m) water boils at 68° C which is not hot enough to extract the best flavor from the leaves.  The culinary implications go beyond that.  At sea level where water boils at 100° C, the hard-boiled egg is a mundane item but it’s unknown up Mount Everest because the white cooks at 85°C and the yoke at 65°C; up there, the whole of an egg will never cook.  A climber especially fond of hard-boiled eggs could take to the peak a pressure cooker and that would work, the boiling point rising to around 107.5 °C.

Lindsay Lohan and Brittany Byrd (b 1994) emerging from one of Zimmer's cryotherapy cold chambers which run at a temperature as low as -110°C, June 2015.

Although cryotherapy was intended originally as a treatment to hasten an athlete's recovery from injury, cryo-chambers are available for anyone although most presumably don't undertake the treatment wearing a strappy bandage monokini by Moeva London.  That said, the choice was a reminder lime & grey is an underused combination.

Vomitory

Vomitory (pronounced vom-i-tawr-ee or vom-itohr-ee)

(1) Inducing vomiting; to make vomitive.

(2) An emetic (a vomitory agent).

(3) Of or relating to vomiting.

(4) An aperture through which matter is ejected or discharged.

(5) In architecture, an opening, as in a stadium or theater, designed to permit large numbers of people to enter or leave (also called vomitorium).

(6) A container for receiving vomitus (whatever is discharged) (obsolete except in historic context).

1595–1605: From the Latin vomitōrius, the construct being vomi- (variant stem of vomere (to vomit) + -tōrius (the suffix added to a participle to create a first- and second-declension adjective).  Vomit as a verb was an early fifteenth century adoption from the Latin vomitus (past participle of vomitare) and was developed from the fourteenth century noun vomit (act of expelling contents of the stomach through the mouth), from the Anglo-French vomit, from the Old French vomite, from the Latin vomitus, from vomō & vomitare (to vomit often), frequentative of vomere (to puke, spew forth, discharge), from the primitive Indo-European root weme- (to spit, vomit), source also of the Ancient Greek emein (to vomit) & emetikos (provoking sickness), the Sanskrit vamati (he vomits), the Avestan vam- (to spit), the Lithuanian vemti (to vomit) and the Old Norse væma (seasickness).  The used of the noun to describe the matter disgorged during vomiting dates from the late fourteenth century and is in common use in the English-speaking world although Nancy Mitford (1904–1973 and the oldest of the Mitford sisters) in the slim volume Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (1956) noted “vomit” was “non-U” and the “U” word was “sick”, something perhaps to bear in mind after, if not during, vomiting.  Vomitory is a noun & adjective (vomitorium is a noun); the noun plural is vomitories.

Predictably, the sight of the words vomitory & vomitorium (and its plural vomitoria) captured the always vivid imaginations of a few medieval “historians” who decided these were specially-built spaces designated for the purpose of allowing an Ancient Roman indulging in epic feats of eating and drinking at an orgy (another medieval favorite when describing the lives of Roman decadents) to stagger off and tickle their throat with a feather, inducing them to vomit up what had just been consumed, emptying the stomach so they might return to gorge more.  The idea of frequent orgies which included binge and purge cycles as an institutionalized feature of Roman life is wholly erroneous.

The correct (sixteenth century) translation of the Latin vomitorium (from the use in Roman architecture) noted the helpfully illustrative derivation from vomere (to vomit) and defined the word as “disgorging the spectators”.  Architects refined the use in the mid-eighteenth century when vomitory first appeared in the literature, then defined as “an entrance piercing the banks of seats of a theatre, amphitheater, or stadium and designed to permit the most efficient ingress & egress of people in volume”.  At the definitional level nothing has since changed although improvements in machinery, engineering and materials have permitted the construction of larger structures with greater human capacity and this has meant the planning and design process in determining the points and process of ingress & egress has assumed increasing importance, to optimize economy of operation, logistical efficiency and, critically, safety, modern building codes especially emphasizing the latter.  In architecture, the word vomitory is often used casually to refer to the whole sub-structure but one is made of components which can includes aisles, cross-aisles (sloped & level walking surfaces), ramps, stairs, tunnels and the particular constructions which are the bulk entry/exit apertures and areas at each end of the system.

Circle in the Square Theatre, Broadway, New York City, built wit classic vomitory.

The term “theatre-in-the-round” can be misleading because the arrangement of the performance areas, while central, is rarely executed as an actual circle, the reference instead being to the audience being seated “all around”.  The classic design is a square or polygonal formation and, except in some one-act performances, actors enter through vomitories between the seating, directors moving them as necessitated by the need to relate to an audience viewing from anywhere in the 360^o sweep, the scenery minimal and positioned avoid obstructions.  Because theatre-in-the-round inherently deconstructs the inherently two-dimensional nature of the classical stage, it was long a favorite of the avant-garde (there was a time when such a thing could be said to exist).  The arena theatre is theatre-in-the-round writ large, big auditoria with a central stage and like the sports stadia they resemble, typically rectangular and often a multi-purpose venue.  There’s a fine distinction between arena theatres and hippodromes which more recall circuses with a central circular (or oval) performance space surrounded by concentric tiered seating with deep pits or low screens often separating audience and performers.

Lindsay Lohan descending a vomitory after selecting an audience member to participate in a skit, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, November 2012. 

New York’s Circle in the Square Theatre, originally located in another place, sits now in mid-town Manhattan and is one of only two Broadway theaters which feature a thrust stage extending on three sides into the audience.  The architect’s combination of a tri- thrust stage and a U-shaped seating arrangement was chosen to enable the intimacy associated with the company’s older, smaller performance space to be maintained in what was a much larger room.  The design made possible a configurable seating arrangement for up to 650 in which no member of the audience member would be more than eight rows from the stage and the theatre is also one of the few in Broadway with a vomitory, used in some productions as an entry or exit point for members of the cast.

The rare use as an artistic device aside, the purpose of a modern vomitory remains what it was for Roman architects; a thing of pure functionality, the form of which is dictated by efficiency of operation.  Thus, as the volume of stadiums grew, vomitories needed to become either larger or more numerous and there were a number of factors which compelled architects sometimes to follow both courses.  However, just as skyscrapers can’t practically be built as tall as techniques of structural engineering now permit because beyond a certain point the internal volume which needs to be allocated to lift-shafts and stairwells renders them uneconomic, neither can vomitories be allowed disproportionately to absorb space.

Classic vomitory (left) and latitudinal vomatory (right).

Another approach is the so-called latitudinal vomatory which is not new, the best-known extant example of the tradition seen in Warsaw's Royal Lazienki Park, the Theatre on the water (often referred to as the Theatre on the Isle) designed by Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer (1753–1795) and thought one of the more interesting pieces of eighteenth century theatre architecture.  A striking feature of the latitudinal approach is the complete functional and structural separation of stands & vomitories and visually it appeals to architects because it reduces the number of interruptions to the sweep of the horizontal lines which define the terraced surfaces.  The sympathy with the shape of the terraces mean it’s thought by many a truer representation of vomitories as a stadium’s circulatory system, a favorite expression of architects from Antiquity.

Warsaw's Theatre on the water (1790-1793) in the Royal Lazienki Park.  The amphitheatre showing the stairs of the latitudinal vomitory (left), the vista from above (centre) & the lobby level entrance to the vomitory (right).  The design of the amphitheatre borrowed from structures built in ancient Herculaneum.

Nolle

Nolle (pronounced nol-ee)

In law, an oral and verbal shorthand for nolle prosequi (pronounced nol-ee pros-i-kwahy or nol-ee pros-i-kwee): an entry (historically a certificate) made upon the records of a court when the plaintiff or prosecutor will proceed no further in a suit or action. The official abbreviation is nol. pros.

1681:  From the Latin, the construct being nolle (unwilling) + prosequi (to pursue), literally “unwilling to pursue” which, in the context of legal proceedings, is a formal notice of discontinuance by a prosecutor or plaintiff.  Nolle was the present active infinitive of nōlō (I do not wish; I refuse), a formation based on ne- (not) +‎ volō (I want) or velle (will).  Prosequi was the present active infinitive of prōsequor (I escort, I pursue, I describe), the construct being prō- (forward direction, action) +‎ sequor (follow).  As a verb, nolle-pross is attested from 1880.

No-billing

The legal shorthand is “to nolle” but the more common expression is now “no-bill”.  The nolle prosequi is most familiar in criminal cases when it’s used by the state to discontinue prosecutions but some jurisdictions maintain the device in civil matters where it may used as a declaration by a plaintiff voluntarily withdrawing a claim although a retraxit (a motion for voluntary dismissal) is now a more commonly used procedure,

A nolle prosequi is not the same as a verdict of not guilty; it merely terminates the existing case and, as a general principle, doesn't disbar continuation of the case at a later date, if a prosecutor so empowered wishes.  However, the common law position has been modified in some jurisdictions to provide that if the attorney- general issues a certificate of nolle prosequi, no-one may prosecute the charges.  That exemption aside, anyone whose prosecution has been subject to a nolle prosequi is not “found not guilty” and therefore cannot plead autreufois acquit (a peremptory plea made before the commencement of a trial in which a defendant asserts they were earlier tried for the same crime under same facts of the case) in respect of the relevant offence at any subsequent resumption; as a general principle, double jeopardy cannot apply.

Attorneys-general in Australia have been reluctant to intervene in matters if they regard a request as political rather than technical or procedural.  In 1977, Bob Ellicott QC (b 1927), attorney-general in the second (1975-1980) Fraser administration, resigned rather than accede to the prime-minister’s request he take over a (somewhat bizarre) politically-inspired case and close down the prosecution (although in resigning he also cited the matter of costs).  In 2022 however, the new Australian Labor Party (ALP) attorney-general Mark Dreyfus (b 1956; Attorney-General of Australia 2013 & since June 2022) announced he had directed Commonwealth prosecutors to nolle the prosecution of lawyer Bernard Collaery (b 1944), prosecuted for his part in exposing a bugging operation undertaken by agents of the Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS; the overseas intelligence organization) against Timor-Leste during negotiations over the ownership of oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea.

One must be sympathetic to any attorney-general who is expected to reconcile matters involving international relations (probably always somewhere within the rubric of “national security”) with legal or democratic principles.  The attorney sits atop the legal system in Australia, representing a government which insists all who appear in the nations courts must always speak the truth and imposes sometimes severe punishment on those who do not yet he was in the position of considering whether to continue the prosecution of someone who would be brought before one of those courts and accused of telling the truth.  It’s true that historically one has been able to fall foul of the law for telling the truth (such as in matters of defamation) but as a general principle courts do insist on hearing and protecting the truth.  National security matters are however a special case and there are also laws imposed on those working from agencies such as ASIS which prevent public or other disclosures, truthful or otherwise.

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

Bugging the government of another nation, perhaps especially an ally and close neighbor when the intelligence sought was essentially commercial, does raise ethical issues and also of note was that “Witness K” (who revealed the bugging) actually used proper channels to report what he regarded an inappropriate action he had been ordered to execute although, interestingly, a judge would during the course of the proceedings rule that it was not relevant whether or not the action undertaken by ASIS was lawful.  That may sound strange but in the context of national security matters and the details of the charges actually presented, it’s undoubtedly the correct ruling.  The competing principles displayed in the long tale illustrate why, in matters of national security, it pays not to be too bothered by (sometimes shifting) principles and focus instead on the essentially un-shifting interest of national security and there are precedents from the UK which support this view.  Everybody spies on everybody else and it’s usually the best course that these things remain secret; we have a right not to know.  No-billing the prosecution was surely the best thing to do but really, those who find distasteful the idea of bugging other people’s offices perhaps shouldn’t go into the spying business.

Party comrade Jacob Zuma in court.

Certificate of nolle prosequi issued by the office of the South African Director of Public Prosecutions (KwaZulu-Natal Division) in response to complaint made by Jacob Zuma.

William (Billy) Downer (b 1956) is a retired South African prosecutor.  In an echo of the case (Sankey v Whitlam & Others, (1978) 142 CLR 1, (1978) HCA 43) which in 1977 Bob Ellicott declined to nolle, Mr Downer is privately prosecuting the former President of South Africa, party comrade Jacob Zuma (b 1942; President of South Africa 2009-2018) on charges of fraud and corruption.  Mr Zuma objected to Downer’s involvement in his case and claimed that the retired prosecutor acted unlawfully by leaking information to the media.  Despite a request from Mr Zuma, the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute Mr Downer, issuing a no-bill while noting this did not preclude the former president initiating a private prosecution; this, Mr Zuma has undertaken.  The first hearing of Mr Downer's case against Mr Zuma has been set down for August 2022.