Notorious

Notorious (pronounced noh-tawr-ee-uhs, noh-tohr-ee-uhs or nuh-tohr-ee-uhs)

(1) Something publicly or widely known.

(2) Something publicly or widely known and regarded with disfavor.

1548: From the Medieval Latin nōtōrius (well known, public), from the Classical Latin nōtus (known), past participle of nōscere (come to know), perfect passive participle of nōscō (get to know), from the primitive Indo-European root gno- (to know).  In Late Latin, there was nōtōria (a notice, news, intelligence) and nōtōrium (indictment, a (criminal) charge), the construct being nō(scere) (to get to know) + -tōrius (the adjectival suffix).  Middle English gained notoire from mid-fourteenth century Anglo-French, from the Old French in the sense of "well-known".  The now predominant negative connotation (noted for some bad practice or quality, notable in a bad sense, widely but discreditably known) arose in the seventeenth century, the suggesting being the meaning shift was influenced by the long pattern of use of the adjective’s frequent association with derogatory nouns.  Notorious is an adjective, notoriety & notoriousness are nouns and notoriously an adverb.  The handy derivation is notoriety.

During the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, the adjective notorious, except for academia and the practice of law, became almost wholly associated with derogatory nouns (bad, dishonest, untruthful etc) and the general perception thus arouse it was something of a synonym for infamous, a word which retained the dichotomy with famous.  Among lawyers and others in technical fields where the notorious preserved its original meaning, common use persisted well into the twentieth century and endures, if more rarely, still, the suspicion being it’s sometimes deployed in a courtroom as a flashy display of erudition, what Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) in his 1965 revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926), called “a pride of knowledge”.

Mandy Rice-Davis and Christine Keeler, 1963.

The murkiness in which notorious has swum means it’s better entirely to avoid what is now probably an archaic meaning, however pleasing it can be as literary device.  In the modern sense of the word, Christine Keeler (1942-2017) and Mandy Rice-Davis (1944-2014) became notorious because of their involvement in the Profumo affair of the early 1960s.  The infamy the notoriety brought them didn’t last because, for many reasons, the affair’s subsequent trial soon became itself notorious for injustice and official misconduct, Ms Keeler and Ms Rice-Davis becoming instead celebrities (in the very modern sense of that word).  They died famous rather than infamous and remembered more fondly than many of those who emerged less scared from the now notorious trial.  So context and the character of individuals can confuse things.  To say it’s notorious (in the old sense) crooked Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 is technically a neutral statement of fact but that date became well-known only because she “misspoke” in claiming her parents named her after Sir Edmund Hillary (1919–2008), the first man to ascend Mount Everest.  Sir Edmund conquered the mountain in 1953, years after her birth and her claim universally was derided as an untruth; when challenged, she blamed her mother.  Linguistically unambiguous is to use the word in both senses: crooked Hillary Clinton is notoriously untruthful.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.  Language and the meaning(s) words convey can vary according to the context in which they're used; "notorious" now has a common meaning but in courtrooms it retains also its technical, neutral sense.  All would agree Lindsay Lohan in her youth achieved a degree of notoriety but its only harsher critics who label her notorious.

Reactionary

Reactionary (pronounced ree-ak-shuh-ner-ee)

(1) Of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring the politics of reaction, applied especially (if not always accurately) to extreme conservatism or right-wing formations & individuals opposing social change or measures labeled as progressive.

(2) An individual associated with this position.

1830–1840:  From the French réactionnaire (one in favor of narrow conservatism or of a return to a previous social or political state (the colloquial was abbreviation reac)).  The construct was re- + -act- + -ion- + -ary.  Reaction was from the Old French reaction, from the Latin reāctiō, from the verb reagō, the construct being re- (again) + agō (to act).

The re- prefix was from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be” and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.  The Latin prefix rĕ- was from the Proto-Italic wre (again) and had a parallel in the Umbrian re- but the etymology was always murky.   In use, there was usually at least the hint of the sense "back" or "backwards" but so widely was in used in Classical Latin and beyond that the exact meaning is sometimes not clear.  Etymologists suggest the origin lies either in (1) a metathesis (the transposition of sounds or letters in a word) of the primitive Indo-European wert- (to turn) or (2) the primitive Indo-European ure- (back), which was related to the Proto-Slavic rakъ (in the sense of “looking backwards”).

Act was from the Middle English acte, from the Old French acte, from the Latin ācta (register of events) (plural of āctum (decree, law)), from agere (to do, to act), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European héǵeti and related to the German Akte (file); it partially displaced deed (which endured in its other senses), from the Old English dǣd (act, deed).  The –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The suffix –ary (of or pertaining to) was a back-formation from unary and similar, from the Latin adjectival suffixes -aris and -arius; appended to many words, often nouns, to make an adjectival form and use was not restricted to words of Latin origin.  Reactionary is an adjective & noun; the noun plural is reactionaries.

"Reactionary" is used of social behavior often because it's thought to mean "reacting impulsively or badly".  

Because the jargon of political science is of little interest to most sensible folk, it’s not surprising the word reactionary is often misapplied, used to mean “acting in response to an external stimulus”, a condition properly described as “reactive”.  It occurs even among those who should know better, a marker of the decline in the quality of journalists and the extinction of the species of sub-editors who used to correct errors prior to publication.  Although not a related mistake, of note also is the modern buzz-word “proactive” (formed by analogy with “reactive”), used in the sense of distinguishing between prevention and cure although by overuse it’s become clichéd and seems at least superfluous given “active” would usually do as well.  It shows no sign of going away, like that other unhappy pairing of without and within, “without” used as an adverb or noun to mean “outside” when “within and beyond” would be more elegant.  Dictionaries of course concede this use of “without” is both correct and enjoys a long history and none comment on the elegance of a phrase and the two can be used in conjunction as long as the different senses are respected.  The UK Foreign Office for example explained in a 1945 memo that “…the Soviet Government will try a policy of collaboration with ourselves and the US (and China) within the framework of a world organization or without it, if it fails to materialize.”

Even reactive is nuanced.  As used in science it refers usually to a relationship between two substances, one guaranteed to produce a certain reaction if in some way interacting with another.  In general use reactive refers to the consequences rather than the chemistry which induces the reaction; while two chemicals can be guaranteed to be reactive upon contact, in interactions between people, the same circumstances can sometimes produce a reaction, in other cases there is none.  To be reactive can thus be either inevitable among substances or dependent on an individual’s state of mine.

Porträt des Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Prince of Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein in Ritterorden des Godenen vlies (cerimonial robes of the Order of the Golden Fleece) (1836), oil on canvas by Johann Nepomuk Ender (1793-1854).

In political science, the term reactionary is applied with rather more precision than in general use where, like fascist, it’s tended to become a general term of disapprobation for those who espouse an opposing view.  When applied with some academic rigor, it refers properly to the view that a previous political state of society is desirable and that action should be taken to return to those arrangements.  A reactionary is thus different from a conservative who wishes to keep things as they are but perhaps (at least sometimes) synonymous with ultra-conservative or arch-conservative, the classic example in politics being Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859; foreign minister or chancellor of the Austrian Empire 1809-1848) who constructed an intricate model of Europe which was design to avoid another unpleasantness (for the ruling class) like the French revolution (1789) and its aftermath.  It’s usually thought of as somewhere on the spectrum of conservatism although there are logical (as well as linguistic) problems with that and either in theory or historic practice, reactionary ideologies, although radical, haven’t always been the most extreme of the breed.  Even that sort of terminology wasn’t reliably indicative of anything except what the author intended, Sir Garfield Barwick (1903–1997; Chief Justice of Australia 1964-1981) giving his autobiography the title A Radical Tory (1995), a few reviewers enjoying the opportunity to point out he was neither.

Thou shalt not: Pope Pius IX and friends.

In the UK there were of course already the Tories but it was the French Revolution from which English gained the descriptors "conservative", "right-wing" and "reactionary".  Conservative was from the French conservateur and was applied to those deputies of the French assembly which supported the monarchy (ie they wish to conserve that which was).  The term right-wing came to be used because when the Estates General was summoned in 1789, liberal deputies (the Third Estate) sat usually to left of the presiding officer's chair while the (variously usually either conservative or reactionary) members of the aristocracy (the Second Estate) sat to the right (the clerics were the First Estate and it’s from here is derived the later idea of the press as the Fourth Estate).  Reactionary was from the late eighteenth century French réactionnaire (from réaction (reaction)) and was used to denote "a ideology directed to return the structure of the state and the operation of society to a previous condition of affairs".  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates the first use of the word in English to 1799 and political scientists have managed to coin variations like reactionist and even the (thankfully rare) reactionaryism.  In theology, the classic reactionary was Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, 1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) who in 1864 published Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors), a still controversial document which listed all the ideas of modernity which His Holiness thought most appalling and which should be abandoned because the old ways are the best.  Had he lived, his Holiness would have noted with approval the entry in that manual curmudgeons, Henry Fowler's (1858–1933) A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): "The word derives its pejorative sense from the conviction, once firmly held but now badly shaken, that all progress is necessarily good."

Mercator

Mercator (pronounced mer-key-ter or mer-kah-tawr (Flemish))

Noting, pertaining to, or according to the principles of a Mercator projection, a type of cartographical projection used to render the spherical globe as a flat map.

1568: From the Latin Mercator (from mercor (trade or deal in goods)) from merx from the Proto-Italic merk, possibly from Etruscan, referring to various aspects of economics (and the source of the English merchant).  The map was named after Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), a Flemish geographer and cartographer whose name was Gerhard Kremer until his adoption of the Latinized form which translates as "dealer” or “tradesman".  In 1585 he began work on a book of maps of Europe, a project later completed by his son and published in 1595.  On the book’s cover was a drawing of the titan Atlas (from Greek mythology) carrying the globe on his shoulders and the word atlas has since been applied to any book of maps.

The Mercator Map.

The Mercator projection was developed in 1568 by Gerardus Mercator as a navigation tool with spherical planet earth depicted on a flat rectangular grid with parallel lines of latitude and longitude.  Its functionality was such that in the west, it became the standard technique of projection for nautical navigation and the de facto standard for maps and charts.

Flat map rendered with actual dimensions.

However, the Mercator map is a most imprecise representation of the precise shapes and relative sizes of land masses because the projection distorts the size of objects as the latitude increases from the Equator to the poles, where scale becomes infinite.  That’s why land-masses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear much larger than they actually are, relative to equatorial areas such as central Africa.

Mercator v actual.

In the twentieth century, that distortion attracted criticism on the grounds the projection tended to increase the size of the land-masses of the European colonial powers while reducing those in the colonized south.  However, neither Gerardus Mercator nor cartographers had social or political axes to grind; the geographical distortion was an unintended consequence of what was designed as a navigational device and it's anyway impossible accurately to depict the surface of a sphere as a two-dimensional rectangle or square (the so-called "orange-segment" renditions are dimensionally most accurate but harder to read).  The Mercator map is no different from the map of the London Underground; a thing perfect for navigation and certainly indicative but not to exact scale.  Modern atlases generally no longer use the Mercator map (except for historical or artistic illustrations) but they’re still published as wall-maps.

Referendum

Referendum (pronounced ref-uh-ren-duhm)

(1) The principle or practice of referring measures proposed or passed by a legislature or executive authority to the vote of the electorate for approval or rejection; the submission of an issue of public importance to the direct vote of the electorate.

(2) A measure thus referred.

(3) The vote on such a measure.

(4) A poll of the members of a club, union, or other group to determine their views on some matter.

(5) In historic diplomatic use, a diplomat’s official's note to their government requesting instructions.

(6) In legal & diplomatic use (as ad referendum (To reference)), an indication that although the substantive issues have been agreed, some differences on matters of detail need still to be resolved.

1847: From the Latin referendum (something to be referred; that which ought to be announced), neuter future passive participle (gerundive) of referre (to bring back), the construct being the verb ferre (to bear, bring, carry) + re- (here used to mean “back”).  It was an inflection of referendus, gerundive of referō (I announce).  Modern use appears to have begun in 1847 to describe the voting process used by the Swiss cantons (provinces) to validate certain laws passed by a legislature and use extended to the English-speaking world in 1882.

The re- prefix was from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be” and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.  The Latin prefix rĕ- was from the Proto-Italic wre (again) and had a parallel in the Umbrian re- but the etymology was always murky.   In use, there was usually at least the hint of the sense "back" or "backwards" but so widely was in used in Classical Latin and beyond that the exact meaning is sometimes not clear.  Etymologists suggest the origin lies either in (1) a metathesis (the transposition of sounds or letters in a word) of the primitive Indo-European wert- (to turn) or (2) the primitive Indo-European ure- (back), which was related to the Proto-Slavic rakъ (in the sense of “looking backwards”).

The word referendum illustrates the difference between the Latin constructs known as gerunds & gerundives and their English equivalents.  In Latin, gerunds are neuter singular nouns formed from verbs by appending -ndum to the stem whereas in English, gerunds are verbal nouns formed by adding an -ing.  The Latin legendum (reading) is for example formed from the verb legere (to read) while the English gerund is reading (read + -ing).  Because English gerunds are nouns, the preceding pronouns should take the possessive form (“we noticed him reading” (present participle)) but “we enjoyed his reading of that passage” (gerund).  By contrast, the Latin gerundive has the same form as a gerund but is used as an adjective and can take any number (singular or plural) and gender.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), there exists in English some sixty words which are unchanged from the original Latin (gerundives & gerunds) in a ratio of about two to one.  Some two-dozen are Latin phrases, noted from their continued use in legal jargon (such as capias ad respondendum (to enforce attendance at court) while the remainder are often from Medieval or Church Latin, unknown to Classical Latin.  Curiously, the OED was (at least earlier) ambivalent about whether referendum comes from a gerund or a gerundive but most agree a gerund it is and thus would have no plural in Latin so the rules of English plural construction would apply, creating referendums.  Were it a gerundive, the alternative plural in English could be referenda and that has attained some popularity but most authorities think this usually a misunderstanding based on the treatment of nouns (eg stadium & stadia). 

The meaning has of course shifted.  In Latin, a referendum was “a question to be referred to the people” but in modern European political discourse it was appropriated to describe the mechanics of the vote itself.  Had the original conventions of Latin be adhered to by those who followed. Such a thing would have been “a reference” but referendum is well understood and the original sense is now covered by the ubiquitous “terms of reference” and the preferred plural form is doubtlessly referendums although referenda is heard so often it may well have become an alternative unique to English.  Variations are actually not unusual: a neverendum is political slang for something which a government is never likely to submit to a vote and technically, a preferendum is a referendum in which more than two items or persons are being voted upon.

In modern use plebiscite has a similar meaning in modern use and by many is used interchangeably.  It was from the Latin plebiscita, which originally meant “decree of the Concilium Plebis (Plebeian Council)”, the popular assembly of the Roman Republic.  English gained the word from the Middle French plébiscite, from the Latin plebiscita from plebs & plebis (the common people) and the construct of the Latin plēbīscītum (decree of the plebs) was plēbī (for plēbis & plēbēī genitive singular of plēbs & plēbēs) + scītum (“resolution, decree”, the noun use of neuter of scītus, the past participle of scīscere (to enact, decree) (originally, to seek to know, learn)), inchoative of scīre (to know).  Despite some imprecision in modern use, there are places where some distinction is (at least to some extent) maintained, usually with a referendum being a vote binding upon a government whereas a plebiscite is merely indicative.  The initiative (usually in the form ballot initiative) is related in that it refers to a process (usually signatures on a form of petition) by which a matter may be submitted to a referendum.

Mr Putin’s use of referendums as an attempt to add a veneer of legal gloss to Moscow’s annexation of parts of the Ukraine are an example of the way dictators often are most concerned with the appearance of lawfulness in what they do.  As a general principle, for an annexation to be valid under international law it requires (1) that the borders be exactly defined, (2) that the nation asserting control be capable of defending the territory, (3) that the population is substantially in accord with the change and (4) that recognition is granted by the international community (these days through the mechanism of the United Nations (UN)).  Given the military situation on the ground, it seems unlikely any of these pre-conditions had been met at the time Mr Putin conducted his triumphal ceremonies in the Kremlin.  The substantial majorities reported as being in favor of annexation in referendums conducted in September 2022 were an echo of the result of the 2014 Crimean status referendum which (according to the Kremlin) validated the earlier Russian occupation.  As comrade Stalin noted in 1945 when assuring his allies that free and fair elections would soon be held in Poland, what’s important is “…not who votes in an election but who counts the votes”.

In this, Moscow’s referendums were to some extent similar to the infamous referendum conducted by the Nazis in 1938 to validate the Anschluss (joining) with Germany.  Although the reported result had some 99% voting in favor, it was not a vote which could be considered in any way free or fair although it may be a majority might have been achieved, based on the response of the population when the occupation was executed.  In some ways, the exaggeration of the yes vote by the Nazis worked to Austria’s long-term advantage, the improbability of the published result allowing the creation of the post-war narrative of Austria as the first of the Nazi’s victims rather than a nation which welcomed the incorporation.  The voting papers were headed Referendum and Greater German Parliament and the question was: Do you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that took place on 13 March 1938 and do you vote for the list of our Leader Adolf Hitler?  The choice was Yes or No.

When the political cartoonist David Low (1891-1963) drew his take on the Anschluss referendum, he called it a plebiscite, and included the Duce and the Western powers as complicit.

Much has changed since 1945 but the recommendations for the best way for the West to handle the Kremlin today are exactly the same as those included in a paper called Facts and Tendencies in Wartime, 1944, written by the socialist Ronald Matthews, Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald (1942-1944):

"It is of absolutely paramount importance that the Western powers should be able to give Russia at the end of the war... a sense of security.  Though I think it is just as important from all points of view that they should be able to do so without making concessions to her which they feel to ne unjustified.  Such concessions would make only for further rankling ill-feeling; nor do I think the Russians will ever really trust us till we show firmness as well as conciliation in our dealings with them.  I may be wrong but I cannot help feeling that the effects of our giving in to them on points on which we feel we are right is doubly unfortunate.  First, it loses us their respect (the Russians respect and respond to tough bargaining).  And, secondly, it may well give them not confidence in us, but a sense that we are temporarily buying them off, just as the Germans and they bought each other off in August 1939 (the Nazi-Soviet Pact)".

Massacre

Massacre (pronounced mas-uh-ker)

(1) The unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of a large number of human beings or animals, as in barbarous warfare or persecution or for revenge or plunder.

(2) A general slaughter, as of persons or animals:

(3) In informal use, a crushing defeat, especially in sports.

(4) In the slang of political discourse, referring to the sudden dismissal of a number of people from office or a large electoral defeat.

1575–1585: From the Middle French massacre, noun derivative of massacrer, from the Old French maçacrer & macecler (slaughterhouse; butchery, slaughter), probably from the unattested Vulgar Latin matteūcculāre, a verbal derivative of the unattested matteūca (mallet) from the Middle French massacrer.  The Latin link is better described as speculative, the ultimate origin possible macellum (provisions store, butcher shop), probably related to mactāre (to kill, slaughter).  Confusingly, there’s also the Latin mazacrium (massacre, slaughter, killing), used also to describe “the head of a newly killed stag”.  The Middle Low German was matskelen (to massacre), the German is metzeln, (massacre), frequentative of matsken & matzgen (to cut, hew), from the Proto-West Germanic maitan, from the Proto-Germanic maitaną (to cut), from the Primitive Indo-European mei- (small).  It was akin to the Old High German meizan (to cut) and in the Arabic مَجْزَرَة‎ (majzara) was originally a “spot where animals are slaughtered” which now means also “massacre” and in Maghrebi Arabic “slaughterhouse”.   The source for both was جَزَرَ‎ (jazara) (to cut, slaughter).  The familiar meaning "to kill many indiscriminately” dates from the 1580s, commonly in reference to those who are not in a condition to defend themselves but by the mid-seventeenth century, it was used also to suggest "to murder cruelly" even if there was but a single victim.  Both uses persist to this day.  Massacre is both noun & verb, massacrer a now rare noun and massacred is an adjective.

The Saturday Night Massacre, 20 October 1973

The Saturday Night Massacre is a term coined to describe the events of 20 October 1973 when US President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) ordered the sacking of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox (1912-2004), then investigating the Watergate scandal.  In addition to Cox, that evening saw also the departure of Attorney General Elliot Richardson (1920-1999) and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus (1932-2019).  Richardson had appointed Cox in May, fulfilling an undertaking to the House Judiciary Committee that a special prosecutor would investigate the events surrounding the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) offices at the Watergate Hotel in 1972.  The appointment was made under the ex-officio authority of the attorney general who could remove the special prosecutor only for extraordinary and reprehensible conduct.  Cox soon issued a demand that Nixon hand over copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office; the president refused to comply and by Friday, a stalemate existed between White House and Department of Justice and all Washington assumed there would be a break in the legal maneuvering while the town closed-down for the weekend.

Before the massacre.  Attorney-General Elliot Richardson, President Richard Nixon and FBI Director-Designate Clarence Kelly (1911-1997).

However, on Saturday, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox.  Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.  Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.  Nixon then ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork (1927-2012), as acting head of the Justice Department, to fire Cox; while both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to congressional committees they would not interfere, Bork had not.  Brought to the White House in a black Cadillac limousine and sworn in as acting attorney-general, Bork wrote the letter firing Cox; thus ended the Saturday Night Massacre.  Perhaps the most memorable coda to the affair was Richardson’s memorable post-resignation address to staff at the Department of Justice, delivered the Monday morning following the "massacre".  Richardson had often been spoken of as a potential Republican nominee for the presidency and some nineteen years later, he would tell the Washington Post: “If I had any demagogic impulse... there was a crowd... but I deliberately throttled back.” His former employees responded with “an enthusiastic and sustained ovation.”  Within a week of the Saturday Night Massacre, resolutions of impeachment against the president were introduced in Congress although the House Judiciary Committee did not approve its first article of impeachment until 27 July the following year when it charged Nixon with obstruction of justice.  Nixon resigned less than two weeks later, on 8 August 1974.

Massacres figurative and not

Even in the age of trigger warnings, “massacre” remains a word headline writers find hard to resist and it is luring enough click-bait to have survived into the world of the internet.  The most popular event to which to allude is the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, an ambush on Saint Valentine's Day 1929 by Chicago gangsters during which seven competitors in the business of running bootleg liquor (prohibition applied in the US between 1920-1933) were murdered by being put up against a wall and shot.  Later though came the Saint Patrick’s Day massacre which, although not without violence, was, like Richard Nixon’s attempt to solve the Watergate “problem”, a figurative use.  On 17 March 1991, the National Hockey League (the NHL, the premier ice hockey competition) teams the Chicago Blackhawks and the St Louis Blues played a match still unmatched for its injury count and mayhem, the official statistics (which commentators at the time suggested understated things) recording 278 penalty minutes, 12 major penalties, 17 misconducts and 12 ejections.  Remarkably, only three players were later suspended for their actions but in 1991 there was more tolerance for on-rink violence.  The Blackhawks won the game 6-4.

The Murdoch tabloid the New York Post certainly couldn’t resist “Saint Patrick’s Day massacre” as the headline for a review of a film (Irish Wish (2024)) set in Ireland and rated (grudgingly it would seem) with a miserable one-star.  Really, considering how many newsstand sales the Post gained from Lindsay Lohan’s misspent youth early in the century, their movie reviewer should return the favour and wear some rose-tinted spectacles when watching her films.

Clamshell

Clamshell (pronounced klam-shel)

(1) The shell of a clam.

(2) Any of a variety of object with two hinged parts and that opens and closes like a clamshell, as a laptop computer or a box with a cover joined on one side (clamshell phone; clamshell computer, clamshell packaging etc).

(3) In dredging and earth-moving machinery, a dredging bucket opening at the bottom, consisting of two similar pieces hinged together at the top (also called the clamshell bucket); a machine equipped with such a bucket.

(4) In printing, a platen press.

(5) Of, pertaining to or noting an object that opens and closes like a clamshell; the opening and closing actions of this object (ie anything resembling the bivalve shell of a clam).

(6) In anatomy, another name for eyelid (technical use only).

(7) In aviation, (1) an aircraft cockpit canopy hinged at the front and rear or (2) the hinged door of a cargo aircraft.

(8) In slang, the mouth (US archaic).

(9) In architecture, an amphitheater, especially an outdoor amphitheater; the semi-circular acoustic backdrop behind and above the performers (a use based (unusually) on the appearance of the shell in only its open state).

(10) In manufacturing, to deform a die in a shape resembling the shell of a clam, as a result of uneven extrusion pressure.

1490–1500: the construct was clam + shell.  Clam was from the Middle English clam (pincers, vice, clamp), from the Old English clamm (bond, fetter, grip, grasp), from the Proto-Germanic klamjaną (press, squeeze together).  Shell was from the Middle English schelle, from the Old English sċiell, from the Proto-West Germanic skallju, from the Proto-Germanic skaljō, from the primitive Indo-European skelh & kelh (to split, cleave).  It was related to the West Frisian skyl (peel, rind), the Dutch schil (peel, skin, rink), the Low German Schell (shell, scale), the Irish scelec (pebble), the Latin silex (pebble, flint) & siliqua (pod) and the Old Church Slavonic сколика (skolika) (shell).  Although sharing a source, the adjective clammy is otherwise unrelated, being from the Middle English clam (in the literally descriptive sense of “viscous, sticky, slimy”) & clammen (“to smear, bedaub”), from the Old English clǣman (to smear, bedaub) and related to the German klamm (clammy) & klemmen (to be stuck, stick).  Clamshell is a noun, the present participle is clamshelling and the past participle clamshelled; the noun plural is clamshells.

Lindsay Lohan with T-Mobile flip-phone Sidekick II, T-Mobile Sidekick II party, The Grove, Los Angeles, August 2004.

In (mostly archaic) US slang, a clam was one dollar (used usually in the plural) and it’s though the origin of this was an allusion to the wampum (a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans.  It includes white shell beads hand-fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam.).  Clams are of some note in the strange history of the Church of Scientology, a tax-exempt operation created by L Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) who constructed its ethos from an amalgam of his science fiction and fantasy stories, combined with pseudo-scientific explanations about the human condition.  His idea (a central tenet of Scientology) that human “thetans” (souls) previously inhabited clams he expanded upon in Scientology: A History of Man (1961) (first published as What to Audit (1952)), explaining that interactions between jellyfish and cave walls were responsible for the emergence of “a shell as in the clam” and that the clam itself suffered from a split personality when he described as a “double-hinge problem” in which “…one hinge wishes to stay open, the other tries to close, thus conflict occurs".  That does of course explain much about the problems of man and, more prosaically, because the clam’s hinges would become the Clam “hinges of the human jaw”, the Clam's method of issuing spores to reproduce is why we suffer toothache.  Who knew?

Trendsetter: The influential clamshell and some of its many imitators.

What engineers and designers liked once to call the “clam shell form factor” was shortened inevitability to “clamshell” but for portable computers and cellular (mobile) phones neither term caught on, laptop soon the ubiquitous choice and phone users preferred the punchier flip-phone.  Laptop endured as the generic description of all such devices and the distinction manufacturers applied to models technically classed as notebooks and netbooks escaped most, any clamshell computer since first they appeared in the early 1980s most often referred to as a laptop.  The flip-phone was a turn of the century fad and actually a good example of packaging efficiency, especially for those who carried their phones in handbags although men, most of whom had only pockets, were never as enthusiastic.  As it was the sleek iPhone and the smartphones which followed in its wake killed off most flips although there was the occasional retro-themed revival.  However, advances in materials had by 2020 made folding screens both durable and economical to produce in volume so these have become the latest variation to use the clam shell, offering all the packaging advantages of old with the benefit of being able to offer a flip screen in a thin form factor, thus appealing also to men, few of whom have been convinced by the utility of that other turn of the century fad: the man bag.

1983 Ferrari 512BBi.  All versions of the BB (1973-1984) used the clamshell design front & rear.

In automotive design, clamshells are used for both front and rear sections of the bodywork, some cars using both.  It was a popular idea on racing machinery like the Ford GT40 or the Porsche 917 because the method of construction used meant the panels carried little load, providing just coverage and aerodynamic optimization.  Some road cars also adopted the idea including Triumph’s Spitfire (and the GT6 derivative) and Jaguar’s E-Type (XKE) and there were real advantages in accessibility for servicing and that’s probably why the bulky Jaguar V12 enjoyed a better reputation among mechanics when under the clamshell than it did in the tighter confines of the XJ or XJ-S (later XJS).  Few mass-market vehicles used the idea and the Triumph Herald and Vitesse (which provided the platforms for the Spitfire & GT6) was one of the few but it was unusual in being built on a separate chassis after most of the industry had switched to unitary construction.

Variation

Variation (pronounced vair-ee-ey-shuhn)

(1) The act, process, or accident of varying in condition, character, or degree.

(2) Amount, rate, extent, or degree of change.

(3) A different form of something; variant.

(4) In music, the transformation of a melody or theme with changes or elaborations in harmony, rhythm, and melody.

(5) In ballet, a solo dance, especially one a section of a pas de deux.

(6) In astronomy, any deviation from the mean orbit of a heavenly body, especially of a planetary or satellite orbit.

(7) In admiralty use as applied to nautical navigation, the angular difference at the vessel between the direction of true north and magnetic north; also called magnetic declination.

(8) In biology, a difference or deviation in structure or character from others of the same species or group.

(9) In linguistics, any form of morphophonemic change, such as one involved in inflection, conjugation, or vowel mutation.

1350-1400: From the Middle English variation (difference, divergence), from the Middle French variation, from the Old French variacion (variety, diversity) and directly from the Latin variationem & variātiōn (stem of variātiō) (a difference, variation, change), from the past participle stem of variare (to change) (the source of the modern English vary).  The use in the context of musical composition wasn't common until the early nineteenth century.  Variation is a noun and the (rare) adjective is variational; the noun plural is variations.

The available synonyms themselves show an impressive variation: deviation, abnormality, diversity, variety, fluctuation, innovation, divergence, alteration, discrepancy, disparity, mutation, shift, modification, change, swerve, digression, contradistinction, aberration, novelty, diversification, mutation, alteration, difference.  Apart from the English variation, European descendants include the French variation, the Italian variazione, the Portuguese variação, the Russian вариация (variacija), the Spanish variación and Swedish variation.

Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations: 1955 & 1981

Published in 1741, JS Bach’s (1685-1750) Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and thirty variations.  Written for the harpsichord, it’s named after German harpsichordist & organist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756), thought to have undertaken the first performance.  The work is now thought part of the canon of Baroque music but before 1955, was an obscure piece of the Bach repertoire, a technically difficult composition for the hardly fashionable harpsichord and known mostly as a device for teachers to develop students’ keyboard skills.  Even for aficionados of the Baroque, it was rarely performed.

Glenn Gould (1932—1982) was a Canadian classical pianist, his debut album on the then novel twelve-inch vinyl LP an interpretation of the Goldberg Variations, played on the piano.  A quite extraordinary performance and a radical approach, played at a tempo Bach surely never intended and with an electrifying intensity, it was beyond mere interpretation.  The work was also his swansong, uniquely for him, re-recorded in 1981 and issued days before his death.  Eschewing the stunningly fast pace which made its predecessor famous and clearly the work of a mellower, more reflective artist, for those familiar with the original, it’s a masterpiece of controlled tension.

In 2002, Sony re-released both, the earlier essentially untouched, the later benefiting from a re-mastering which corrected some of the technical deficiencies found in many early digital releases.  Although critics could understand Gould thinking there were aspects of the 1955 performance which detracted from the whole and why he felt the second version a better piece of art, it’s still the original which thrills.