Pachyderm

Pachyderm (pronounced pak-i-durm)

(1) Historically, any of the thick-skinned, non-ruminant ungulates, such as the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros.

(2) General (non-scientific) term for an elephant and some other, impressively large creatures.

(3) In the idiomatic, a person not sensitive to criticism, ridicule, etc; a thick-skinned person.

1838: From the seventeenth century French pachyderme, from the New Latin Pachyderma, the assumed singular of Pachydermata, from the Ancient Greek pakhudermos (thick-skinned), the construct being of pakhus (thick, large, massive) + derma (skin (from the primitive Indo-European root der (to split, flay, peel) with derivatives referring to skin and leather)).  The more familiar form of derma was dérmata, neuter plural of dermatos (skinned).  Pachyderme was in 1797 adopted as a biological term in 1797 by French naturalist Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric (Baron (Georges) Cuvier, 1769–1832) and while the order Pachydermata has fallen into disuse in formal zoology, pachyderm remains in common use to describe elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses etc.  The related forma are pachydermal, pachydermous, pachydermic, pachydermoid & pachydermatous.

Elephants

In zoology, the original taxonomic order, Pachydermata (“thick skin” the construct from the Ancient Greek being παχύς (pachys) (thick) + δέρμα, (derma) (skin) is a now obsolete order of mammals, a grouping which once included thick-skinned, hoofed animals such as the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, elephant, pig and horse.  Being polyphyletic, the order is no longer used but is an illustrative cul-de-sac in the history of systematics.  The word “pachyderm” remains in use to describe elephants, rhinoceroses, tapirs, and hippopotamuses.

The original classification Pachydermata included three herbivorous families: Proboscidiana, Pachydermata Ordinaria, and Solipedes.  They were later reclassified as Proboscidea (among living species represented now only by three species of elephants), the Perissodactyla (odd-toed ungulates, including horses, tapirs and rhinoceroses), the Suina (pigs and peccaries), the Hippopotamidae, and the Hyracoidea (hyraxes).  It was advances in genetic analysis which allowed the others to be classified as wholly separate clades.

Interestingly, despite the name being a reference to the thickness of skin, the thin-skinned horse genus was an original inclusion, based apparently on the other shared characteristic: "mammals with hoofs with more than two toes".  Belying appearances, horses do exhibit a slight departure from a true monodactylous structure, every member of the family having vestiges of two additional toes under the skin.

A pachyderm playing polo.

Chrysler’s 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8 (1966-1971), was nicknamed “Elephant Motor”, an allusion to the bulky cylinder heads required to house the complex valve-train and their vague resemblance to ears of the beast.  The moniker was a piece of zoological one-upmanship on Chevrolet's mouse (small-block V8) and rat (big block V8).

Failures in verisimilitude in Mean Girls (2004):  One of the props was a framed photograph representing Cady Heron during her childhood in Africa, sitting atop an elephant.  The elephant of a different taxonomy, being an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) instead of the appropriate African savanna bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) known in Kenya.  The left hand's inadvertent srpski pozdrav (a three-fingered Serbian salute originally expressing the Holy Trinity and used in rituals of the Orthodox Church which has (like much in the Balkans) been re-purposed as a nationalist symbol) is a Photoshop fail.

Guillotine

Guillotine (pronounced gil-uh-teen)

(1) An apparatus designed efficiently to carry out executions by decapitation.

(2) In medicine, an instrument used surgically to remove the tonsils.

(3) Any of various machines in which a vertical blade between two parallel uprights descends to cut or trim metal, stacks of paper etc.

(4) To truncate or cut.

(5) A technical procedure permitted in some parliaments which provides for an early termination of the time usually allocated to debate a bill, forcing an immediate vote.

(6) In philosophy, as “Hume's guillotine”, a synonym of “Hume's law”, the idea that what ought to be the case cannot be deduced from what is already the case; named after the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–1776).

(7) In law, as “guillotine clause”, a contractual stipulation that the adoption of the overall contractual package requires adoption of all of the individual treaties or contracts within it; the clause often appears in international treaties or agreements between sub-national entities.

(8) In historic French slang, as “dry guillotine”, the deportation to a penal colony.

Circa 1791: The guillotine was named after Joseph Guillotin (1738-1814), the French physician who advocated its adoption.  The surname Guillotin was of French origin and was from the Old French personal name Guillot, a diminutive of "Guillaume" (the French form of William, meaning “will” or “desire” + “helmet” or “protection” which is amusing given the later association with the guillotine). The “-in” suffix is a common diminutive in French surnames, meaning “little” (in the sense of “younger”) or “son of”.  Still today, the surname Guillotin is found primarily in western France, particularly in regions like Brittany (Bretagne), Normandy, and the Loire Valley.  It probably began as a patronymic name, identifying the bearer as “the son of Guillot”.Guillotine & guillotining are nouns & verbs and guillotined is a verb; the noun plural is guillotines.  Although use of the verb is attested only from 1794, etymologists seem to agree it would have come into oral use simultaneously with the noun.

The classic guillotine consists of a tall, upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended.  The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to fall swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim in a single pass, the head falling into a basket below.  In 1789, having witnessed the sometimes prolonged suffering caused by other methods of execution, Dr Joseph Guillotin (1738-1814), then deputy in the National Assembly had commended the guillotine to the authorities, his notes at the time indicating he was concerned with (1) efficiency of process, (2) a humanitarian concern for the victim and (3), the effect less expeditious methods had on executioners (and of the three, it was only the first and third which would later induce the Nazis to abandon mass-shootings of the Jews and instead create an industrialized process).  The French administration agreed and the first guillotine was built in 1791, the first execution the following year.  Approvingly reporting the efficiency of the machine, the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure in January 1793 noted "The name of the machine in which the axe descends in grooves from a considerable height so that the stroke is certain and the head instantly severed from the body."  The device also affected Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) who, in his seminal French Revolution (1837), was moved to observe "This is the product of Guillotin's endeavors, ... which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! ... Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar's."  For better or worse, historians no longer write like that.

Sterling silver cigar cutter (1994) by Theo Fennell (b 1951).

A finely crafted piece, the upright frame contained a sprung, angled blade with retaining chain, the cigar tip tumbling into a gilded silver basket after the blade descends to the stocks.  The base was of honed, black slate with a sterling silver cartouche ready for engraving, the unit supplied in a bespoke, two-door presentation case.  At auction, it sold for £2,000 (cigar not included).

Born in Saintes, in 1789 Dr Guillotin emerged as a prominent member of the Constituent Assembly in Paris and although philosophically opposed to capital punishment, he was a realist and wished executions done in a more humane manner and, very much in the spirit of the times, for the one method to be used for all social classes.  He recommended a machine known at the time as the “Louison” or “Louisette”, the nickname derived from the French surgeon and physiologist Dr Antoine Louis who designed the prototype although it was built by German engineer and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt, the process typical of the division of labor in Europe at the time.  It was Herr Schmidt who suggested using a diagonal blade rather than the round shape borrowed from the executioner’s axe and, with his knowledge of anatomy, Dr Louis calculated what came to be known as the “angle of Louis”, an alternative term for the sternal angle (the point of junction between the manubrium and the body of the sternum).  The advocacy of Dr Guillotin however received more publicity and, much to his regret, “Guillotine” captured the public imagination, his family so embarrassed by the connection they later changed the family name.  A confessed Freemason, Dr Guillotin died of natural causes in his Paris home, aged 75.  He was buried in the city’s Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

One of the kitten-heel shoes worn by Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) on the day of her execution, 16 October 1793.  

While ascending the stairs to the guillotine, she tripped, stepped on the executioner's foot and lost her shoe, something of a harbinger to what she’d lose a few moments later.  The shoe was later recovered and is now on display at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen.

Although Dr Guillotin regretted his name being associated with the contraption, the true origin wasn't even French.  While the date such a thing was first used is unknown it seems almost certainly a medieval creation, an early English record indicating a mechanical beheading device was in use in Halifax in West Yorkshire; then called the Halifax Gibbet, the decapitation of an unfortunate Mr John Dalton recorded in 1286.  A sixteenth century engraving named The Execution of Murcod Ballagh Near to Merton in Ireland 1307 shows a similar machine suggesting use also in medieval Ireland and Scotland, from the mid-sixteenth century until the abolition of use circa 1710; it was called the Maiden which seems to have been functionally identical to the Halifax Gibbet.  In Italy, most un-euphemistically, it was called the Mannaia (cleaver).  Over the years, it attracted many nicknames, some sardonically deployed as the equivalent of gallows humour including La Monte-à-regret (The Regretful Climb), Le Rasoir National (The National Razor), La Veuve (The Widow), Le Moulin à Silence (The Silence Mill), La Bécane (The Machine), Le Massicot (The Cutter), La Cravate à Capet (Capet's Necktie (Capet being Louis XVI)) & La Raccourcisseuse Patriotique (The Patriotic Shortener).

Marie Antoinette's execution on October 16, 1793 (Unknown artist).

The carts famously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (the period in the mid-1790s after the declaration of the First Republic, marked by massacres, public executions, anti-clericalism and internecine political struggle) were called tumbrels although many illustrations depict the use of four-wheeled carts rather than tumbrels.  Presumably both types were used but historians generally believe it was usually the tumbrel because the revolutionaries preferred the symbolism of something usually used for moving dung or rubbish and suggest artists simply preferred the four-wheelers for compositional reasons.  The noun tumbrel (two-wheeled cart for hauling dung, stones etc) was from mid-fifteenth century French, a name, curiously perhaps, used in the early thirteenth century to describe what some eighteenth century dictionaries described as a mysterious “instrument of punishment of uncertain type” but which turned out to be (1) a name for the cucking stool used, inter alia, to conduct the dunking in water of women suspected of this and that and (2) was a type of medieval balancing scale used to weigh coins.  It was from the Old French tomberel (dump cart) (which exists in Modern French as tombereau), from tomber ((let) fall or tumble), possibly from a Germanic source, perhaps the Old Norse tumba (to tumble), the Old High German tumon (to turn, reel).

Public guillotining of Eugen Weidmann, Versailles, 1939.

The records from the early days of the revolution are understandably sketchy but the first guillotine was likely that crafted by a German harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt which was first used on 25 April 1792, the term “guillotine” appearing first in print in a report by the journalist Louis René Quentin de Richebourg de Champcenetz (1759-1794) who, in another journalistic scoop, was later guillotined.  Although synonymous with the French Revolution, during which some seventeen thousand were beheaded, the guillotine remained the official method of capital punishment until the death penalty was abolished in 1981.  The highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier (circa 1756–1792) was the first victim while the last public guillotining was of Eugen Weidmann (1908-1939) who, convicted of six murders, was beheaded in Versailles on 17 June 1939.  The final drop of the blade came when murderer Hamida Djandoubi’s (1949-1977) sentence was carried out in Marseille on 10 September 1977.

Boucles d'oreilles pendantes guillotine en laiton (guillotine drop earrings in brass), cut and engraved, Paris, circa 1880.

In France, until the onset of modernity with the coming of the twentieth century, artistic and decorative representations of the guillotine proliferated because the bloody events of the 1790s had made the instrument a symbol of republican patriotism.  Methods of execution now appear less as fashion items although there was a revival associated when the punk movement went mainstream in the mid-1970s (anarchists, revolutionaries and such less inclined to trivialize what they intended soon to be a serious business). In recent years, models in nooses have however strutted the catwalks generating outrage which, measured in column inches, photographs and clicks, was the point of them donning the macabre accessory.  For those nostalgic for the days of la révolution, made with a variety of materials guillotine drop earrings are available on-line.

Paper trimming guillotine.

The device was used in many European countries until well after the Second World War but, perhaps predictability, none were as enthusiastic as the Nazis.  Having been used in various German states since the seventeenth century and being the preferred method of execution in Napoleonic times, guillotine and firing squad were the legal methods of execution during both the Second Reich (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933).  For the Nazis however, it was just another way to industrialize mass-murder and under the Third Reich (1933-1945), 16,500 were guillotined including 10,000 in 1944–1945 alone although, after the attempt on his life in July 1944, Hitler wasn’t at all attracted to an efficient or humanitarian dispatch of the surviving plotters and for them specified a more gruesome method.  The guillotine was used for the last time in the FRG (West Germany) in 1949 though its use in the GDR (East Germany) persisted until 1966, mostly by the Stasi (secret police) for secret executions.

Brandenburg prison fallbeil now on display at the Deutsche Historisches Museum.  Unlike most of the Tegel machines, it's un-painted and not fitted with a blade shield although the rather crude construction using unfinished wood planks and four hefty, unadorned wooden legs is characteristic of the Tegel design.  Some other Tegel fallbeils have had some of the timber members replaced with square metal tubing.

The German for guillotine is fallbeil (axe-method).  The Nazis increased the number of capital offences in the criminal code and consequently, there was a drastic increase in the number of executions in the Reich.  To meet the demand, many prisons were designated as execution sites, sixteen gazetted by 1942, all equipped with metal (Mannhardt) fallbeils, the standardized procedure for execution as typically exact and bureaucratic as anything in the German civil service.  The first fallbeils were made from wood and built by the inmates of the Tegel prison in Berlin, hence their name.  The later Mannhardt design, fabricated from steel was more sophisticated, including an external pulley frame and, thoughtfully, a hinged sheet-metal to protect the executioner from blood spray.

Mall

Mall (pronounced mal or mawl)

(1) A clipping of shopping mall, a (usually) large retail complex containing a variety of stores and often restaurants and other business establishments housed in a series of connected or adjacent buildings or in a single large building.  Shopping centre is the usual alternative descriptor but market, plaza, marketplace & mart are also used.

(2) A large area, sometimes lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade (in some places called boulevard, boardwalk, esplanade, alameda, parade or walk).

(3) In urban business districts, a street from which motor-traffic has been excluded and given over entirely to pedestrians.

(4) A strip of land, usually planted or paved, separating lanes of opposite traffic on highways, boulevards etc (use restricted to certain US states).

(5) In the game of pall-mall, either (1) the game itself, (2) the mallet used in the game or (3) the place or alley where pall-mall was played.

(6) The game of polo (obsolete since the late seventeenth century).

(7) To beat with a mall, or mallet; to beat with something heavy; to bruise.

(8) In the jargon of US property development, to build up an area with the development of shopping malls

(9) In slang, (often as malling), to shop at the mall (the “mall rat” being one who frequents such places (usually in a pack) without necessarily intending to shop.

1737: From The Mall, a fashionable tree-lined promenade (then thought of as a “pall-mall alley”) in St James's Park, London where originally the game pall-mall was played.  The name of the game was also spelled palle-malle, paille-maille, pel-mell & palle-maille, pell-mell.  The noun plural is malls.

Eighteenth century woodcut of men playing pall mall.

The use to describe a "shaded walk serving as a promenade" was generalized from The Mall, the name of a broad, tree-lined promenade in St. James's Park, London (the name dating from the 1670s and an evolution of the earlier (1640s) maill), so-called because it operated as open alley used to play the game of pall-mall, an ancestor of the modern croquet.  Pall-mall (although described as a “lawn game”) was played on a surface of compacted & leveled soil, boarded in at each side, using a wooden ball which was struck with a mallet to send it through an iron arch placed at the end of the alley, the winner the one who managed to do so with the fewest shots.  The game's name is from the French pallemaille, from the Italian pallamaglio, the construct being palla (ball) + maglio (mallet), from the Latin malleus (hammer, mallet), from the primitive Indo-European root mele- (to crush, grind).  The French and Italian forms (like the English pall-mall) both refer to a game something like croquet, played in Europe after the sixteenth century.

A View of St James Palace, Pall Mall (1763), oil on canvas by Thomas Bowles (1712-1791).

The mall in the sense of a street in an urban business district from which motor-traffic has been excluded and given over entirely to pedestrians dates from 1951.  The sense of an "enclosed shopping gallery" is from 1962 (although such structures in the US pre-date the descriptor and the mall rat (one who frequents a mall) wasn’t labeled as such until 1985.  Mall is the common term in North America but in many countries they’re called shopping centres, markets, plazas, marketplaces, marts or blends of these words.  Mall is still used in the original sense of a shaded walk but is now rare, plaza, esplanade (especially if riparian, costal etc) or boardwalk tending to be preferred whereas mall is most associated with suburban shopping centres or urban streets given over to pedestrians.  The strip mall is a smaller array of shops, assembled usually in a single line parallel with a major arterial road with parking for cars directly in front.  The Pavilion on the Mali in New York’s Central Park was used in the nineteenth century by the “Park Band:, the mali a paved path lined with trees.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying Wetzel's Pretzels, Americana Mall, Los Angeles, June 2009.

The concept of a large structure or area containing the outlets of many traders wasn’t new, recognizable forms identified in the archeological record of many cultures across millennia.  What distinguished the modern mall was that it was inherently (1) suburban and (2) dependent on customers using private motor vehicles rather than walking or public transport.  It was these factors which enabled malls to develop at scale; the land being bar from city centres was cheap and the customer catchment was vast, needing only to be in driving range so thus could service an area of a hundreds square miles or more, something which explains why malls always had vast, often multi-layered car parks.  Urban geographers regard the Northland Center in Southfield, Michigan (which opened in 1954) as the first mall in the modern sense.  Immediately successful, it spawned imitators, immediately in the US and within a decade around the world, the building of malls tracking the development of road systems and the growth in car ownership.  One effect was the decline of commercial activity in city centres as traders followed their customers’ migration to the suburbs, a trend which really didn’t decline until the 1990s when the fashion for inner-city living returned.  This affected both the viability of malls and interest in developing new ones, something exacerbated by the arrival of the “big box” operations which were either single outlets at scale or thematic clusters of traders within the one geographical space.  For many customers, the clusters were attractive because, unlike the malls which tended to limit the number of similar businesses which could lease space, in a cluster one could find many shops servicing the same market centre, typically specialties such as home improvement or decorating.  Consequently, many malls had during the last quarter century been abandoned, demolished or re-purposed, the twenty-first century growth in on-line shopping accelerating the decline.

Pall Mall “Girl Watching” cigarette advertising, circa 1962.

Pall Mall menthol cigarette advertising, 1969.  By then called “the black demographic”, one of the first widespread uses of African-Americans in advertising published in mainstream media was for menthol cigarettes, reflecting the high market penetration of the product in that group.

The game Pall Mall was the subject of a number of contemporary paintings and sketches and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703; noted English diarist & Admiralty administrator) who had mentioned the game as early as 1661, in May 1663 noted in his diary: “I walked in the park… discoursing with the keeper of Pell Mell who was speaking of it; who told me of what the earth is mixed that do floor the Mall and that over all there is cockel-shells powdered.”  In an entry in 1665, Pepys referred to both street and game as Pell Mell.  There were many “Pall Mall” alleys in London and one of them became the street well known variously as a centre of artistic life, the home of many London clubs, the location of the War Office (when war offices were a thing) and a place on the Monopoly board.  Mall tends to be pronounced mawl in most of the world except in England where Pall Mall is pel mal although, even then, the phonetic influence of the US is such that mawl is often heard for uses other than the street.  In Australia, when the Queen Street Mall was in 1982 opened by Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (1911–2005; Country Party premier of Queensland, 1968-1987), he insisted it must be pronounced mawl because he had no wish to be reminded of Malcolm Fraser (1930–2015; Liberal Party prime minister of Australia 1975-1983).

Vellum

Vellum (pronounced vel-uh m)

(1) A fine parchment, prepared from calfskin, lambskin, kidskin etc, treated for use as a writing surface.

(2) A manuscript or the like on vellum.

(3) A texture of paper or cloth resembling vellum.

(4) A creamy colored heavy paper resembling vellum.

(5) Made of or resembling vellum (vellum sometime used by commercial stationery suppliers to refer to paper of the highest quality).

(6) Of a book, a work bound in vellum.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English velum, from velim, from the thirteenth century Old French velin (parchment made from calfskin (which endures in modern French as vélin), from the Middle French veelin & velin (of a calf), from vel (calf) & veel (veal), from the Latin vitulinus (of a calf).  The related word in English was bookfell (a skin prepared for writing upon; a sheet of vellum or parchment; paper), from the Middle English bocfel (parchment), from the Old English bōcfell (parchment, vellum).  It was cognate with the Old High German buohfel & puohfell (parchment), the Middle High German buohvël (parchment) and the Old Norse bókfell (parchment).  The noun plural is vellums.

Vellum sheets being prepared.

It’s now probably only specialists who use the word vellum to refer to the material in its historic sense.  The most frequent use of the word is to describe either (1) a prepared (non-calf) animal skin or membrane (usually in pre-cut form for printing and often referred to also as parchment in its generic sense) or (2) any of the various high-quality editions of paper stock offered by many manufacturers.  In the narrow technical sense “true” vellum is (3) made from calfskin and available usually in single sheets which may be used individually (typically as scrolls) or assembled as bound folios, volumes or codices.  However, such is the quality of the modern, non-calf, parchments that only experts can tell the difference and in academic use, the term "membrane" (which means something very different to engineers and others) is now often preferred because even if it’s not exactly correct, nor can it ever be said to be wrong.  Finally, there is (4) "paper vellum" which is created using either plasticized rag cotton or cellulose fibres harvested from plant or trees.  Vellum paper has become popular for formal or ceremonial documents such as invitations because the lighter versions are translucent with a finish like frosted glass.  Despite its smooth feel, vellum paper does not contain plastic and is quite durable (though with nothing like the longevity of “true” vellum) and versatile in that it can in some cases be printed on with laser and inkjet printers.

Vellum scrolls stored in the UK parliament.

There was a perception that the Acts of the UK parliament had for hundreds of years been printed on vellum scrolls but the practice is of comparatively recent origin, begun only in 1849; prior to that they were handwritten on parchment rolls which were made usually from goatskin.  The innovation of printing record copies of public Acts on vellum was adopted following recommendations made by the Select Committee on Printing in 1848, and a 1849 report by the then Clerk Assistant of the House of Lords.  The resolutions abolished the practice of ingrossing (handwriting) record copies of Acts and inrolling them in parchment rolls containing all public Acts passed in a Parliamentary session.  Record copies of public Acts were henceforth printed in book form, on vellum while private Acts were printed on vellum between 1849-1956, since when they have been printed on archival paper.

Rendering of Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap by lemgras330, colored pencil on Bristol Vellum paper, June 2016.

In 1999 proposals to print record copies of public Acts on archival paper were considered.  The House of Lords approved a proposal to change to printing on archival paper, but the House of Commons voted against, noting claims that archival paper was of suitable quality and much cheaper but arguing against the change because of tradition, the superior durability of vellum and the threat to the viability of the UK’s last remaining printer of vellum.  It was one of the less dramatic and acrimonious disputes between the Commons and Lords but it nevertheless dragged on for almost two decades, their lordships never retreating from their view that “…printing on archival paper is a more appropriate use of public funds, and that the case for continuing to print on vellum is not made”.  Not wishing to appear obstructive, it was added that if “…the Commons wished to arrange a contract for printing record copies of Acts on vellum, then the Lords would share experience of managing the legacy contract to assist with this”.  Their last word however was that the House of Lords “…does not wish to contribute financially to any future printing on vellum”.  In a typically English way, the Commons found a compromise, agreeing to provide front and back vellum covers for record copies of Acts which the House of Lords would continue to print on archive paper.  Honor seemed to be satisfied on both sides and another constitutional crisis was averted.

The Brudenell Magna Carta, document on vellum, dated 12 October 1297.

Outside of the parliament however, there were some not convinced the Lords had gone far enough and them storage of the country’s laws on the skins of dead animals should give way to digital storage.  Obvious though it may seem to the Instagram generation for whom archival documents in physical form are rare, it may not be as simple as it seems.  Parchment does last a long time, the UK’s oldest extant law can still be found on a document dating from 1497 and while ordinary paper can deteriorate rapidly, vellum if carefully stored will endure for millennia and original copies for the Magna Carta, signed more than 800 years ago on vellum, still exist.

Victoria Tower, Palace of Westminster, London.

Many actually still exist, the parliamentary archives a collection of some five miles (8 km) of physical parchment, paper and photographs in the Victoria Tower which rises 325 feet (99 m) at the western edge of the Palace of Westminster.  In the tower, scrolls of vellum are piled up in a vast repository, spooled in a range of different sizes, looking much as they would have done hundreds of years ago.  Digital archiving obviously has no such history but the issues of long-term storage are, even after only a few decades of accumulation, well understood.  The advantages of digitization are ease of creation, economy of storage (especially in something as text-orientated as acts of parliament) and simplicity of replication.  However, although often referred to as “weightless”, digital storage inherently needs physical objects: disks (or discs), tapes or other media and an infrastructure of devices is also required for the archives to be read.  This has been a troublesome aspect to many with old archival material on electronic media which may still be usable but, if held on some rare and long obsolete specification of diskette or tape cartridge, may be effectively inaccessible.  The issue is not insurmountable and needs only a protocol under which material is moved from one media to another as technology changes but it’s still a more labour-intensive process (and one with much scope for error) than leaving a vellum scroll sitting of a shelf for centuries.

Disfluency

Disfluency (pronounced dis-floo-uhn-see)

(1) In clinical speech pathology, an impairment of the ability to produce smooth, fluent speech.

(2) In linguistics, an interruption in the smooth flow of speech, as by a pause or the repetition of a word, syllable and non-lexical vocables.

1981: A compound word, the construct being dis- + fluency.  The dis prefix is from the Middle English dis-, from the Old French des from the Latin dis, from the proto-Italic dwis, from the primitive Indo-European dwís and cognate with the Ancient Greek δίς (dís) and the Sanskrit द्विस् (dvis).  It was applied variously as an intensifier of words with negative valence and to render the senses “incorrect”, “to fail (to)”, “not” & “against”.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Fleuency is from the Late Latin fluentia, from the Latin fluens (flowing), present active participle of fluō (I flow) and was cognate with the French fluence.  When first used in English in the 1620s, fluency meant "abundance", the sense "smooth and easy flow" emerging the next decade from fluent + the abstract noun suffix -cy and it replaced the earlier (circa 1600) fluence.  The alternative spelling is dysfluency.

Ums & Ahs

George W Bush (b 1946; US president 2001-2009): Sometimes a few more disfluencies can help.

Disfluencies are the filled pauses, the ums and ahs in speech which in structural linguistics are fillers called non-lexical vocables.  Technically, fillers are neither recognized as purposeful or contain formal meanings and can be associated with articulation problems such as stuttering.  Considered a sin in broadcast media such as news reports or films, they’re an important part of everyday conversation, said by researchers to constitute some twenty percent of "words" in typical conversations.  Fillers can be used as a pause for thought or as an emphasis.  Research indicates that while disfluencies vary between languages, "huh" is the most recognized syllable throughout the world, used always as an interrogative.

Speech disfluencies caused many problems in the early days of speech-to-text software.  Of late, they’ve become important in the development of software convincingly to emulate a human for tasks like answering phones.  Unlike speech-to-text where perfection was the goal, here, it’s important the machine’s speech not be perfect and ums and ahs are required.  To date, most successful experiments have been where there are a limited number of variables and a closed vocabulary set such as booking a hairdresser.  There the variables are date, time, hairdresser and what’s to be done.  Industry term for this niche is the conversational bot.  Interestingly, even advocates of the technology, whatever their private thoughts, aren’t suggesting this can soon be pursued to its logical conclusion but then technological changes tend not to follow a lineal path.  Conversational bots, just like humans when it all gets too much, will transfer the call to their supervisor and for the foreseeable future, they’re likely to remain flesh and blood but there's no reason why systems which don't yet exist (and possibly using bio-synthetic hardware and quantum technology) cannot entirely replace humans for all but a select number of tasks, both physical and non-physical.

The speech disorder stuttering (sometimes known as stammering) is most associated with involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases in the flow of speech but disfluencies such as silent pauses or blocks during which the stutterer is unable to produce any sounds are also characteristic of the syndrome.  Stuttering seems to be a normal part of the human condition and the cause remains mysterious; males are much more susceptible than females and there appears to be some genetic link but even modern techniques in neurology have revealed little.  Because stuttering can be induced by physical brain injury, there was much interest in comparing the brains of victims of injury with those of natural stutterers but the findings from the research have proved inconclusive.  There have been many attempts to develop treatments and therapies to reduce the extent of an individual’s stuttering but while cases with degrees of success have been reported, the results have been so erratic that all that appears to have been indicated is that some patients can be helped and it matters little what method is chosen while others show no improvement, regardless of the therapy.  Interestingly, there seemed little relationship between the severity of the condition and the extent of the improvement reported, the only consistent finding being that those under the age of eight benefit most from intervention.  Among some adult stutterers, there is a political objection to treatment on the same basis that some in the Deaf community object to hearing implants because they perceive them as a threat to their culture and way of life, suspecting an attempt to erase a minority group, assimilating its members into the mainstream.

Benzodiazepine

Benzodiazepine (pronounced ben-zoh-dahy-az-uh-peen)

A family of chemical compounds used as minor tranquilizers that act against anxiety and convulsions and produce sedation and muscle relaxation; marketed, with variations, under a number of brand-names and trademarks such as Diazepam (Valium) and chlordiazepoxide (Librium).

1934: Word is a chemical construct, from benzo (word-forming element used in chemistry to indicate presence of a benzene ring fused with another ring) + di (from the Ancient Greek δίς (dís) (twice) + az (nitrogen-substituted) + epine (from the French hepta (seven-membered).

Benzodiazepines are a class of therapeutic agents capable of producing a calming, sedative effect and used in the treatment of fear, anxiety, tension, agitation, and related states of mental disturbance.  Among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, the first benzodiazepine was chlordiazepoxide (Librium), followed by a large variety of agents, including diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax), each with slightly different properties.  Benzodiazepines work by enhancing the action of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which inhibits anxiety by reducing certain nerve-impulse transmissions within the brain.

Before the development of the benzodiazepines, the only available anti-anxiety drugs were the barbiturates and meprobamate and, relative to these, the benzodiazepines had fewer unfavorable side effects and a reduced potential for abuse.  The thus quickly became the preferred treatment for anxiety, used also to treat insomnia, general stress, calming muscle spasms and preparing patient for anesthesia or dental surgery.  Side effects include sleepiness, drowsiness, reduced alertness, and unsteadiness of gait but benzodiazepines are not lethal even in very large overdoses, having the tendency only to increase the sedative effects of alcohol and other drugs.  Dependence may however occur, even in moderate dosages, with withdrawal symptoms observed even after short-term use and for long-term users, almost half may suffer withdrawal symptoms which can take months to subside.  As a consequence, some long-term users continue to take the drug not because of persistent anxiety but because the withdrawal symptoms are too unpleasant.

Valium was introduced by the Swiss Roche Labs in 1963.  It was the first billion-dollar medicine and ushered in the era of brand-name drugs, the model of later marketing campaigns for products such as Prozac and Viagra.  In its halcyon years between 1969 and 1982, more prescriptions were written for Valium than any other drug.  The name Valium (which in US trademark law was Hoffmann-La Roche’s proprietary name for diazepam, first registered in 1961) was a creation of the corporation, not, as is often claimed, from a Latin word or formation meaning "to be strong and well".  Valium was no different from Telstra and Optus, creations by consultants needing a word both unique and different enough from others to withstand legal challenge while being something which hints, however vaguely, at what’s being sold.  In Latin, there was validum (strong; powerful; efficacious), vallum (a fortification) and the plant valerian (a herbal sedative), all of which were probably in the corporate mind.  Some with medical connections such as vulnerary (used for or useful in healing wounds), valetudinarian (a person of a weak or sickly constitution) and valetudo (one's state of health (good or bad)) might have been a bit remote so the closest inspiration was likely valere (a Latin verb meaning “to be strong”; “to be well”).  Best of all the sardonic industry jokes was a connection with the Latin vale (goodbye; farewell) although Valium wasn’t much use in suicide attempts, fatal overdoses, while not impossible, were rare.

Xanax tablets.

Xanax is the brand name for the drug alprazolam which is a benzodiazepine.  It is a prescription medication primarily used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders and (more controversially) depression.  A fast & short-acting benzodiazepine, Xanax works by enhancing the activity of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which helps to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.  Xanax is regarded as effective for treating anxiety and related disorders when used as prescribed but can be habit-forming, leading to dependence and addiction.  Lindsay Lohan released (or "dropped" in the fashionable parlance) the track Xanax in 2019.  With a contribution from Finnish pop star Alma (Alma-Sofia Miettinen; b 1996), the accompanying music video was said to be “a compilation of vignettes of life”, Xanax reported as being inspired by Ms Lohan’s “personal life, including an ex-boyfriend and toxic friends”.  Structurally, Xanax was quoted as being based around "an interpolation of" Better Off Alone, by Dutch Eurodance-pop collective Alice Deejay, slowed to a Xanax-appropriate tempo.