Mosaic

Mosaic (pronounced moh-zey-ik)

(1) A picture or decoration made of small, usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass etc.

(2) The process of producing such a picture or decoration.

(3) Something resembling such a picture or decoration in composition, especially in being made up of diverse elements (in general use, often confused with a collage or montage).

(4) In surveying, a number of aerial photographs assembled as a continuous photographic representation of an area (commonly called a mosaic map, aerial mosaic or photo-mosaic).

(5) In architectural plans, a system of patterns for differentiating the areas of a building or the like, sometimes consisting of purely arbitrary patterns used to separate areas according to function but often consisting of plans of flooring, reflected ceiling plans, overhead views of furnishings and equipment, or other items really included in the building or building plan.

(6) In the plant pathology field in biology, any of several diseases of plants, characterized by mottled green or green and yellow areas on the leaves, caused by certain viruses (also called mosaic disease); an organism exhibiting mosaicism.

(7) In television production, a light-sensitive surface in a camera tube, consisting of an insulating medium (a thin mica sheet) coated on one side with a large number of granules of photo-emissive material (small globules of silver and cesium insulated from each other).  The image to be televised is focused on this surface and the resulting charges on the globules are scanned by an electron beam.

(8) Of, pertaining to, resembling, or used for making a mosaic or mosaic work.

(9) As a general descriptor, something (physical, abstract or conceptual) composed of a combination of diverse elements (in this sense mosaic, collage & montage are often applied in undifferentiated fashion).

(10) To make a mosaic; to decorate with mosaic.

(11) In theology, of or pertaining to Moses or the writings, laws, and principles attributed to him (always initial capital).

(12) In genetics an alternative name for chimera (an individual composed of two or more cell lines of different genetic or chromosomal constitution, but from the same zygote).

(13) In graphical production (or as a tool of censorship), a pixelization of all or part of an image.

(14) An early web browser developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the name an allusion to the integration of multiple components including HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and Gopher's search & communications protocols.  It was the first widely adopted browser which used an implementation of the user interface still in use today.

(15) In palaeontology, as Mosaic evolution (or modular evolution), a theory that evolutionary change can occur in some body parts or systems without simultaneous changes in other parts.

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French mosaicq (mosaic work), from the Middle French moysaique & mosaïque, from the Italian mosaico, from the fifth century Medieval Latin mōsaicus & musaicum, a re-formation of the Late Latin musīvum (opus), from the Latin musēum & musaeum (mosaic work) of unknown origin.  The variants are assumed by etymologists to be linked to the Late Greek Μουσεῖον (Mouseîon) (mosaic work; shrine of the Muses; museum) by analogy with archivum & archīum (archive) although the classical Greek is nowhere attested in the sense “mosaic”.  The Ancient Greek mouseios (of the Muses) was from Μοῦσα (Moûsa) (Muse).  Because of the influence of both Moses and the Muses, the history is tangled.  The word was formed in Medieval Latin as though from the Greek, but the Late Greek word meaning "mosaic work" was mouseion (and further to twist the tale etymologists note this sense in Greek was borrowed from Latin).  The meaning "a piece of mosaic work" dates from the 1690s while the figurative form (anything resembling a mosaic work in composition) had been in use since the 1640s.  The familiar adjectival use in English in the sense of "made of small pieces inlaid to form a pattern" dates from the 1580s.  The spellings mosaick & musaic are listed by dictionaries respectively as obsolete & archaic.  Mosaic is a noun, verb & adjective, mosaicked is a verb, mosaicing, mosaicism & mosaicist are nouns, mosaiced & mosaicking are adjectives and mosaically is an adverb; the noun plural is mosaics.  All forms use an initial capital if used in association with Mosaic law.

Mosaic of Bruce McLaren (1937–1970) by Nikki Douthwaite (1973-2022); car is a 1968 Mclaren M7A, still fitted with the adjustable spoilers which (of course) the FIA banned.  The late Ms Douthwaite used a technique called pointillist hole punch art, the mosaics crafted by individually placing (using tweezers) colored paper dots which are the waste material from office hole punches.  Her mosaics, containing sometimes hundreds of thousands of dots, were constructed over weeks and finished with a preservative varnish.

Although the specific technical meanings are respected in science, in art & design, the terms mosaic, collage and montage are often used interchangeably and that’s sometimes understandable because the three can be visually similar and close examination can be required to determine the correct form.  In the visual arts, a mosaic is created by locating & fixing small (classically square tiles), usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass etc to create a pattern.  A collage is a picture created by using items of different shape, composition etc to create a (hopefully) thematically integrated result.  A montage is a work created by in some way assembling a number of separate components which are conceptually or thematically similar (even to the point of being identical.

Portrait by Lindsay Lohan by Jason Mecier (b 1968).  His work is crafted using discarded items and he attempts where possible to use objects in some way associated with his subjects.  Although described by some as mosaics, his technique belongs to the tradition of college.

The use in theology dates from 1655–1665, from the New Latin Mosaicus, the construct being the Late Latin Mōs(ēs) (Moses) + (the text-string) -aicus, on the model of Hebraicus (Hebraic).  In writing relating to Mosaic law or ethics, the adjectival forms Mosaical (which pre-dated Mosaic) and post-Mosaic are common.  The Ebionites were a Jewish Christian sect during the first two centuries after the crucifixion of Christ.  Ebonite was from the Latin ebonita, from the Greek Ἐβιωναῖοι (Ebionaioi), from the Hebrew אביונים‎ (ebyon; ebyonim; ebionim) (the poor, the poor ones) and the sect’s name was chosen to reflect their belief that poverty was a blessing and plenty a curse.  Their Christology was adoptionist, maintaining Jesus of Nazareth was mere human flesh & blood and therefore Christians continued bound by the Mosaic Law, the adherence to which was why God choose Jesus to be a messianic prophet in the vein of Moses himself.  While within the sect there were theological differences but the central tenet was that the essential Christian orthodoxy of the divinity of Jesus was a heresy and that he was the natural born son of Joseph and Mary.

Montage created with fragments from Lindsay Lohan's Playboy Magazine photoshoot, 2011.

The Ebionite world-view obviously shares much with Judaism but to mainstream (indeed almost all) thought within Christianity they are wholly heretical, the rejection of Christ’s divinity the objection rather than and technical points of difference with the Mosaic code of law.  Islam of course objected to Christian theology because it distorted the purity of monotheism, the doctrine of the Trinity a dilution of the Abrahamic God and really a type of iconography.  However, the Ebionites were faithful to the original teachings of the historical Jesus and thus shared Islamic views about Jesus as a prophet yet still mere human flesh and blood, leading to the intriguing situation of the Jewish Christianity which vanished from the early Christian church being preserved in Islam.  The particular Ebionite teaching of Jesus as a follower of Mosaic law was later reflected in the Koran which were the words of the prophet Muhammad.

Detail of the pointillist hole punch technique.  There are a number of pointillist methods using devices as varied as lasers and Sharpie brand pens.

Sandwich

Sandwich (pronounced sand-wich)

(1) Two or more slices of bread or the like with a layer of meat, fish, cheese, etc between each pair.

(2) To insert something between two other things.

(3) A type of engineering or construction where flat materials are joined in layers.

1762.  Named after John Montagu (1718-1792), Fourth Earl Sandwich, a bit of a gambler who, during marathon sessions at the tables, would eat slices of cold meat between bread rather than rise for a meal.  However, the earl’s biographer suggested his subject was a serious chap, committed to the navy, politics and the arts and the sandwiches were actually eaten at his desk at the Admiralty but the legend is much preferred.  It was in his honor Captain James Cook (1728-1779) named the Hawaiian Sandwich islands in 1778 when Montagu was First Lord of the Admiralty.  The family name is from the place in Kent which in the Old English was Sandwicæ (sandy harbor; trading center).  In structural linguistics, a "sandwich" word is one in which two or more syllables have been split (al la slices of bread) and filled with another word.  Use of the technique is common and exemplified by an opinion such as: "Fox News is just Murdoch propafuckinganda".  The term was coined by US lexicographer Dr Harold Wentworth (1904-1965).  

There is doubt whether the sandwich became so-named as early as 1762 because the first documented account of the Earl’s culinary innovation was written in 1770 but it certainly caught on.  The sandwich board, the two-sided mobile advertising carried on the shoulders, is from 1864.  The Wall Street Journal once described the sandwich as "Britain's biggest contribution to gastronomy" but, given the parlous reputation of the rest of their cuisine, the WSJ may have been damning with faint praise.  Regardless, while Sandwich may have lent his name, the historical record suggests sandwiches have been eaten since bread was first baked, pre-dating the earl by thousands of years.

Portrait of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1783) by Thomas Gainsborough (c 1727-1788), National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

John Montagu was one of the more interesting chaps to sit in the House of Lords.  Rich and well-connected, he was a libertine in the milieu of the aristocratic debauchery of the eighteenth century, his country house described by a contemporary as “the scene of our youthful debaucheries, the retreat of your hoary licentiousness.”  There’s never been any suggestion Sandwich was more depraved than many of his companions in self-indulgence but he certainly fitted-in.

In his lifetime, the earl’s fame came not from the eponymous snack but his long affair with Miss Martha Ray (1746-1779), a most becoming and talented young singer.  It’s never been known when first they made friends but she lived with him as his mistress from the age of seventeen (he was then forty-five), the relationship producing nine children.  The concubinage of Miss Ray he  enjoyed while his wife was suffering from mental illness and while it’s not recorded if her condition was in any way related to her husband’s conduct, given he conducted an affair also with his sister-in-law, there must be some suspicion.

Montagu's behavior attracted the interest of many, including John Wilkes, a prominent satirist who wrote a number of pieces critical of the earl’s politics and ridiculing his (not so) private life.  Montagu’s revenge was swift.  Wilkes didn’t write only publicly-published satire, he also had a small circle of socially elite subscribers to his other literary output.  That was pornography, and the earl was a subscriber.  To discredit Wilkes, Lord Sandwich rose in the House of Lords and read extracts from Wilkes’ The Essay on Women which he prefaced by telling their lordships “…it was so full of filthy langue (sic) as well as the most horrid blasphemies”.  The earl did not exaggerate and even today the words would shock and appall their lordships although it must be admitted, it's always been a place where members easily are appalled.

The vengeance backfired.  The House of Lords ruled his speech a breach of procedure which sounds a mild rebuke but in that place it was a damning censure.  It also provoked Wilkes who responded with tales of Sandwich’s “debauchery, miserliness and lack of good faith” and a biography published in the 1760s labelled him “an arsonist and thief”.  His reputation never recovered.

Portrait of Martha Ray by Nathaniel Dance-Holland  (1735–1811)

Miss Ray’s end was sadder still.  Sandwich gave her a generous allowance and obtained a flat in Westminster so she had somewhere to live during those times when, for whatever reason, she couldn’t stay in his house.  He also introduced her to a young soldier, James Hackman (circa 1752-1779) who became obsessed with her and soon turned into what would now be called a stalker.  In 1779, Hackman resigned his commission to join the church and it seems he and Ms Ray may have had a brief liaison but she declined his offers of marriage, apparently because she thought his social status and financial means inadequate.  Not handling rejection well, Hackman remained infatuated, become increasingly jealous and continued the pursuit.

One evening in April 1779, he followed her to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden where he shot her dead, apparently under the impression she had taken another lover, which may or may not have been true.  Immediately after the murder, Hackman attempted suicide but succeeded only in wounding himself and was arrested.  Two days after she was buried, the Reverend Hackman was sentenced to be hanged and within the week he died on the Tyburn gallows at a public execution before “a large crowd”.

With Lindsay Lohan on location in Ireland for the shooting of the film Irish Wish, Westport Café The Creel created a sandwich to note the event.  The Lindsay LoHam includes 'nduja sausage, Monterey Jack cheese, mixed grated cheddar, caramelized onions and, naturally enough given the name, ham.  The film is scheduled for release in 2023; the sandwich is available for a limited season.

Sandwich is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, its population 20,675 at the last census.  It is the oldest town on Cape Cod and in 2014, Sandwich turned 375 years old.  Sandwich has a police department.  They are the Sandwich Police.

One noted concoction is the muffuletta, a thick, round sandwich similar to a hero, typically containing ham, salami, and cheeses and topped with an olive salad, a specialty of New Orleans.  It seems first to have been served in the late 1960s, the name from the Sicilian dialect, from the Italian muffoletta (a round hollow-centered loaf of bread), from muffola (mitten), from the French moufle.  In New Orleans, among the muffuletta cognoscenti, there is a heated faction and a room-temperature faction.

Jazz

Jazz (pronounced jaz)

(1) A style of music of African-American origin, said to have emerged in New Orleans early in the twentieth century.

(2) A style of dance music, popular especially in the 1920s, arranged for a large band and marked by some of the features of jazz.

(3) Dancing or a dance performed to such music, as with jerky bodily motions and gestures.

(4) In slang (1) liveliness; spirit; excitement, (2) insincere, exaggerated, or pretentious talk & (3) similar or related but unspecified things or activities (often in the form “…and all that jazz”) which can be used negatively if referring to rigmarole, red-tape etc.

(5) Of or relating to or characteristic of jazz; to play (music) in the manner of jazz.

(6) To excite or enliven; to accelerate (often in the form “jazz up”).

(7) In vulgar slang, copulation.

1912: An invention of US English of uncertain origin.  Until around the end of the World War I, the alternative spellings jaz, jas, jass & jasz were used.  The first documented use of the word jazz was in 1912 in the context of writing about baseball baseball, the use extending to the musical form in 1915 when it was used in reference to Tom Brown's all-white band out of New Orleans (although there are sources which date it either from a 1917 advertisement in a Chicago newspaper for Bert Kelly's Jaz Band).

Lindsay Lohan watching NBA game between Utah Jazz and LA Lakers, Los Angeles November, 2006.

The etymology has attracted much research but the findings have been inconclusive, the most popular theory being jazz was a variant of jism & jasm (from 1842 & 1860 respectively), archaic nineteenth century US slang meaning “zest for accomplishment; drive; dynamism”, the qualities apparently most often ascribed to women), also words of unknown origin.  That evolutionary path is tangled up with the sexual connotations once associated with the word jazz and etymologists stress the sequence is important.  At the turn of the twentieth century, "gism" certainly meant "vitality" but also "virility" and this (by 1899) led to the slang use for "semen" but, the etymologists caution, while a similar evolution happened to the word "jazz" (which became slang for the act of sex), that use was unknown prior to 1918 so any sexual connotation wasn’t attached at the point of origin but acquired later.  The use in reference to baseball is thought to have been among white Americans and this may also have been the case in the earliest uses with the musical form.  Overlaying all this, nor is it known whether the evolution to jazz was organic, an invention or an imperfect echoic.

Duke Ellington, Ellington At Newport (1956).

While ethno-musicologists note the way the form has evolved over a century as diverse influences have variously been absorbed, assimilated or interpolated, the profession regards the core of Jazz to be a form rooted in West African cultural and musical expression which borrowed from the unique African American blues tradition.  Technically, the most distinct characteristics are blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms and, most celebrated of all, improvisation.  As jazz was influenced, so jazz influenced and there was no musical form so associated with the “fusion movement” (better understood as a number movements) which was a feature of the experimental (and increasingly commercial) output of the decades after the World War II, a trend which produced an array of labels including acid jazz, cool jazz, jazzbo, jazz-funk, jazz fusion, trad-jazz, jazz-rock and more.

Count Basie And His Orchestra, April In Paris (1957).

In idiomatic use context matters much because to jazz something can mean “to destroy” whereas to “jazz up” is to enliven, brighten up, make more colorful etc but this can be good or bad, the familiar phrase “don’t jazz it up to much” a caution against excessive bling or needless complication.  The use in vulgar slang is now listed by most dictionaries as either archaic or obsolete but when it use it covered a wide range from (1) the act of copulation, (2) to prostitute oneself for money & (3) semen.  As an intransitive verb it meant to move about in a lively or frivolous manner or “to fool around”, the origin of this assumed to be the uninhibited style of dancing sometimes associated with the genre.  To jazz someone can also be to distract or pester them or provide misleading or incorrect information (which can be referred to using the noun “the jazz”).  As applied simply to music, it can mean either to play jazz music (in some set form or in a jam) or to dance to jazz music

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959).

The meaning "rubbish, unnecessary talk or ornamentation" dates from 1918, a use reflecting the snobby attitude many had towards a form of music which sometimes didn’t observe the usual conventions of structure.  The term “all that jazz” (sometimes cited as a synonym for “et cetera” but actually extending to ”similar or related but unspecified things or activities" was first recorded in 1939 although the extent of its history in oral use is unknown.  The verb jazz in the sense of “to speed or liven up” dates from 1917 and was used often as “jazzed” or “jazzing”.  The “jazz age” was first described in 1921 and soon popularized in the writings of F Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and the era is usually regarded as the years between the end of World War I (1918) and the Wall Street crash of 1929.  The phrase captures both what was seen as the accelerating pace of life in 1920s America and the popularity of the music.

Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um (1959).

The noun razzmatazz was interesting because it was used in the late nineteenth century to mean various things (most often something fanciful and showy) and thus obviously pre-dated jazz but, presumably because of the rhyming quality it picked up early associations with jazz which by the 1930s had become a disparaging critique ("old-fashioned jazz" especially in contrast to the newer “swing”).  Dating from 1917, the noun jazzbo (low, vulgar jazz) was a disparaging term to describe both the music and musicians; later in the twentieth century it was applied as derogatory term for African-Americans (and others with dark skins) but use soon died out.  The adjective jazzy (resembling jazz music) dates from 1918 and was often used in the forms “jazzily” & “jazziness”, use quickly extending from music to a general term suggesting “spirited, lively; exciting”.  The noun jazzetry (poetry reading accompanied by jazz music) came into use in 1959 and was part of the cultural ephemera of the beat generation.  The noun Jazzercise (the construct being jazz + (ex)ercise) was originally a proprietary name from the commercial fitness industry which, despite the implications, was used to describe routines using just about any form of music.

Lotus Jazz, 1985.

So unsuccessful was the marketing strategy used for Lotus Jazz that it’s said to rate with Ford’s Edsel and Coca-Cola's New Coke among the most popular case studies chosen by students of the discipline to illustrate corporate ineptitude.  Jazz was designed to run only on Apple’s Macintosh 512K and was an integrated suite which included a word processor, spreadsheet, database, graphics, and communication software.  It was a corporate companion of Lotus Symphony which was a suite which ran on IBM compatible PCs under PC-MS-DOS but not too much should be read into the musical nomenclature; both were integrated suites which ran under different operating systems on different hardware.  Lotus 1-2-3 wasn’t the first spreadsheet but it was the one which became the so-called “killer app” which legitimized the IBM PC for business use and, noting the small-scale successes being enjoyed by some of the early suites, Symphony was concocted as something which would rely on the reputation of 1-2-3 for its success.  Although never a big seller on the scale of 1-2-3, Symphony in the 1980s found a niche.

Jazz was supplied on four 400K floppy diskettes and Lotus thoughtfully supplied a sticky label users could use for their data diskette (which wasn’t included).

Jazz, introduced in 1985 was an attempt to replicate on the Mac the company’s success on the IBM-PC though why the decision was taken to introduce a suite instead of a version of 1-2-3 puzzled observers at the time given the Symphony name had nothing like the name-recognition of the Lotus spreadsheet.  Added to that, Jazz was expensive, limited in functionality by the memory constraint of the Mac 512 and clumsy in operation, users forced frequently to swap floppy diskettes (start-up, program & data) with the additional drawback that only a single floppy drive could be used with Jazz, neither dual floppy or hard-drives supported.  A critical and commercial failure, so toxic did the Jazz brand quickly become that plans to release an improved version in 1988 (called Modern Jazz) were abandoned and development resources were shifted to a version of 1-2-3 for the Mac.  That was of course what should have been done from the start and 1-2-3 for the Mac, released in 1991, was well received but months later Microsoft released Windows 3.1 and the universe shifted, Excel and the companion MS-Office becoming a juggernaut; Symphony and 1-2-3 were just two of the many victims.

Bureau

Bureau (pronounced byoor-oh)

(1) A chest of drawers, sometime with a mirror atop.

(2) A division of a government department or an independent administrative unit.

(3) An office for collecting or distributing news or information, coordinating work, or performing specified services; agency; typically a travel or news bureau.

(4) A desk or writing desk with pigeonholes, drawers etc, against which the writing surface can be closed when not in use, the best known form of which is the roll-top (historically chiefly British but now widely used in the international antiques trade).

1710-1720 (some sources claim instances from the 1690s): A borrowing from the French bureau, the earlier meaning of which was "coarse cloth (as desk cover), baize", from the Old French burel (woolen cloth), and a diminutive of bure (related were the Middle French bure (coarse woolen cloth) and the French bourre (hair, fluff)) from the Late Latin burra (wool, fluff, shaggy cloth, coarse fabric).  It was akin to the Ancient Greek βερβέριον (berbérion) (shabby garment) and a doublet of burel and borrel, taken from the Old French.  The Latin burra remains of unknown origin.  Bureau desks were once common office furniture of offices, rather the cubicles of their day and the meaning expanded by 1720 to "office or place where business is transacted" and by 1796 to "division of a government."  The meaning "chest of drawers for clothes etc" dates from 1770, said to be American English but was most associated with British use.  Bureau is a noun and the modern view is bureaus & bureaux (both pronounced byoor-ohz) are both accepted noun plural forms but the former seems preferred by most.

Lindsay Lohan's page at the All American Speaker's Bureau.

Squabbles on the Wilhelmstrasse; the German Foreign Ministry and the Ribbentrop Bureau

Most historical analysis of the Third Reich has understandably focused on the evil and the damage done but for structuralists, the nature of the bureaucratic state and those with is an interesting study.  Although assuming office in 1933, the Nazis didn’t immediately become the totalitarian regime familiar in later years because there were too many other power centres over which their control was either incomplete or non-existent.  For that reason, the party, while attempting to take control of the machinery of the state, within a numbers of sphere of activity, also sometimes maintained one or more party institutions in a competition for influence, something which reflected the Hitlerian world-view.  Sometimes these organizations would run in parallel, sometime in opposition.

Although the Nazi hierarchy was beset by internecine hatreds and jealousies, one of the few things on which most agreed was the stupidity, incompetence and unsuitability for his role of Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), foreign minister between 1938 and the end of the war.  Propaganda Minister Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), ever ready with a memorable phrase, noted in his diary that Ribbentrop “...bought his name, married his money and swindled his way into office.”  Historians don't dispute Ribbentrop's ineptitude but some are prepared to concede the blame should be shared and he should be thought "not competent" rather than "incompetent", a distinction which the more generous might be prepared to make of plenty of failed politicians.  In other words, a champagne salesman should no more have been appointed foreign minister that a sybaritic, bemedaled fighter ace should have been put in charge of the "four-year plan" (a sprawling apparatus which aimed to make Germany self-sufficient in essential raw materials (autarky), reduce unemployment through a public works programme, increase military production and reform the agricultural sector).  Hitler however, was an admirer (Ribbentrop's sycophancy a particular attraction) and in 1934 permitted him to create a party organization called the Büro Ribbentrop (later the Dienststelle Ribbentrop (Dienststelle best translated as office or department)) which, bizarrely, operated as a kind of alternative foreign ministry.

Illustration by Noel Sickles (1910–1982) in Life magazine, 28 October 1946, depicting the moments before von Ribbentrop was hanged, Palace of Justice, 16 October 1946.  The temporary gallows was erected in the prison gymnasium.

The Büro Ribbentrop also operated as a dirty-tricks outfit with some effort devoted to undermining the authority of the Foreign Ministry which, in a nice touch, operated from offices on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, just over the road from the Buro.  The Buro and its back-channel communications served as Hitler’s personal tool for the implementation of his foreign policy (which can be summed up as "lies, lies and damned lies"), the traditional institutions and diplomatic protocols often side-lined although, Ribbentrop himself had to fend of intrusions from yet more party units with interests in international affairs.  Ribbentrop however prevailed and was appointed foreign minister in 1938, serving in the position until the end of hostilities; convicted of planning & waging aggressive war, war crimes and crimes against humanity, he was hanged in 1946.

Victorian (circa 1870) English cylinder roll-top writing bureau: mahogany with burr walnut fitted interior and a trio of leather skivers.

Fragile

Fragile (pronounced fraj-uhl (U) or fraj-ahyl (non-U))

(1) Easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail.

(2) Vulnerably delicate, as in appearance.

(3) Lacking in substance or force; flimsy.

1505–1515: From the Middle English fragile (liable to sin, morally weak), from the Middle French fragile, from the fourteenth century Old French fragele, from the Latin fragilis (easily broken) (doublet of frêle), the construct being frag- (variant stem of the verb frangere (break), from the primitive Indo-European root bhreg- (to break) + -ilis.  The -ilis (neuter -ile) suffix was from the Proto-Italic -elis, from the primitive Indo-European -elis, from -lós; it was used to form an adjective noun of relation, frequently passive, to the verb or root.  It was cognate with fraction & fracture and doublet of frail.  The original meaning from circa 1510 (liable to sin, morally weak) by circa 1600 extended to "liable to break" as a back-formation from fragility which was actually an adoption of the sense in Latin.  The transferred sense "of frail constitution" (of persons) dates from 1858.  The companion adjective frail emerged in the mid fourteenth century in the sense of "morally weak", from the twelfth century Old French fraile & frele (weak, frail, sickly, infirm) (enduring in Modern French as frêle), from the Latin fragilis.  The US slang noun meaning "a woman" is documented from 1908 and although there’s no evidence, etymologists have noted Shakespeare's "Frailty, thy name is woman" (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2).  The comparative fragiler and the superlative fragilest are both correct but the more elegant “more fragile” and “most fragile” tend to be preferred.  Fragile is used usually as an adjective but can be applied as a noun (typically by folk like furniture movers) or in the same way as “exquisite”.  Fragilely is an adverb and fragility is a noun; the noun plural is fragiles.

Words which are either synonyms or close in meaning include delicate, feeble, frail, weak, brittle, crisp, crumbly, decrepit, fine, flimsy, fracturable, frangible, friable, infirm, insubstantial, shivery, slight & unsound.  The antonym most often used to suggest the opposite quality to fragile is “robust” (evincing strength and health; strong).  Robust dates from circa 1545 and was a learned borrowing from circa 1400 Medieval Latin rōbustus (oaken, hard, strong), the construct being rōbus- (stem of rōbur (oak, strength) + -tus (the adjectival suffix).

Lindsay Lohan looking fragile: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985) (left), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, LA (right).

However, fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing.  In the narrow technical sense an expression of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of strength.  The traditions of language obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers.  It's true that on such a continuum a point could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other.

The opposite of fragile is actually antifragile (the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))).  The concept is well known in physiology and part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t happen.  It’s thus an act of antifragility, the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the skin blisters in response to work.  Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used according to emphasize the extent of strength; antifragile is the true opposite.

The idea of antifragile was introduced by Lebanese-born, US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability, the best-known and most influential was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007).  His work was thoughtful, intriguing and practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the texts agreed with that.  Apart from the ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many suppositions is also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our use of language to create.

Toothache

Toothache (pronounced tooth-eyk)

(1) In dentistry, a pain in or about a tooth.  Technical names are dentalgia or odontalgia.

(2) In informal diplomatic code, a term whereby a diplomatic snub may be conveyed as an expression of temporary displeasure and (usually) without serious consequence.

1400s: From the pre 1050 Middle English tothache, from the Old English tōthæce, tōthece, toðece & tōþeċe, the construct being toð or tōþ (tooth) +‎ eċe (ache).  Tooth was from the Old English toð or tōþ (plural teð), from the Proto-Germanic tanthu- (the source also of the Old Saxon, Danish, Swedish and Dutch tand, the Old Norse tönn, the Old Frisian toth, the Old High German zand, the German Zahn and the Gothic tunþus) from the primitive Indo-European root hdónts & dent- (tooth).  The plural form (teeth) is an example of i-mutation.  Ache was from the Middle English aken (verb), and ache (noun), from Old English acan (verb) (from Proto-Germanic akaną (to be bad, be evil)) and æċe (noun) (from the Proto-Germanic akiz), both from the Proto-Indo-European heg- (sin, crime) and represented also in Sanskrit and Greek and probably onomatopoeic: imitative of groaning.  It was cognate with the Low German aken, achen & äken (to hurt, to ache), the North Frisian akelig & æklig (terrible, miserable, sharp, intense), the West Frisian aaklik (nasty, horrible, dismal, dreary) and the Dutch akelig (nasty, horrible).  Historically the verb was spelled ake, and the noun ache and the pronunciation likewise varied until the turn of the eighteenth century under the influence of lexicographer Samuel Johnson who mistakenly assumed it derived from the Ancient Greek ἄχος (ákhos) (pain) due to the similarity in form and meaning of the two words.  The Greek was actually a distant relation of awe and ake was a rare alternative spelling which lasted until the 1800s.

Although it seems strange, the documentary evidence suggests it wasn’t until the 1520s tooth came to be applied to the tooth-like parts of devices like saws, the phrase “tooth and nail” appearing in the next decade.  Curiously contested is the origin of the mythical tooth fairy, some sources claiming it was unknown before 1964 or even 1977 but it's mentioned in a US newspaper in 1908 and in a way that suggests no novelty of use.  Going back more than a thousand years, to Medieval Europe, the tradition of giving something of value to children in exchange for baby teeth (particularly the first which attracted a tand-fé (tooth-fee) and sometimes the sixth) is documented in Viking tradition.  Baby teeth seem to have been a concern in many cultures, some wanting them buried out of fear a witch would find them and gain power over the child, others insisting they should be burned otherwise, after death, children would spend eternity searching for them.  It's thus a long tradition but the linkage with a fairy does seem more recent, the most popular antecedent being a mouse who visited children in their sleep, replacing the baby tooth with a coin under their pillow.  In Spain and Latin America, adopted by Colgate for advertising, the rodent is called El Ratoncito Pérez or Ratón Pérez (Perez the Mouse) and the French equivalent was La Petite Souris (the little mouse).

Diplomatic toothache

The concept of the diplomatic snub predates formal diplomacy, known probably in the earliest human interactions, but as diplomatic toothache, it entered the vocabulary of international relations during a 1959 official visit to Moscow by UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963 (later the first Earl of Stockton, one of the few hereditary peerages created in the last few decades)).

Harold Macmillan and comrade Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964), on the tarmac at Moscow airport, February 1959.

Macmillan’s visit, the first to Russia by a British PM since Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) wartime trips, started with him making what he hoped would be a friendly gesture, wearing a Russian white fur hat (ushanka) but this was soon swapped for a black one because a foreign office advisor suggested the white, dating from his last visit to Russia during the Russo-Finnish War (the so-called "Winter War", 1939-1940) might cause offence, the conflict not a happy memory in the Kremlin.  The foreign office was correct but (and this does happen with the FO) for the wrong reason, the white fur purely a fashion faux pas.  When Macmillan's predecessor (Anthony Eden, 1897–1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957), visited Moscow in 1941 while foreign secretary, comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; USSR foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), showing an untypical concern for the details of protocol, told Eden "Á Moscou, Excellence, on ne porte pas la casquette de fourrure blanche" (In Moscow, Your Excellency, you don't wear a white fur hat). 

Twenty-odd years on however, the Russians seemed either not to notice or be unconcerned, the white fur attracting no comment on arrival and the prime-minister’s sartorial flourishes continued, choosing practical plus fours for his tour of collective farm, and, in a nice touch, a Guards Regiment tie when visiting a nuclear facility.  Lavish banquets followed around tables laden with champagne, vodka, caviar, salmon and Cuban cigars and all went well although, regarding the vodka, perhaps a little too well, as Macmillan would later note.

The appeal of the ushanka endures: Lindsay Lohan in Netflix's Falling for Christmas (2022).

While the prime-minister was touring a Moscow research institute, comrade Khrushchev was in Berlin where he delivered a truculent speech intending use Macmillan’s visit to destabilize NATO.  The next day’s Anglo-Soviet discussions were “angry and fraught”, an atmosphere not helped by both delegations being “rather drunk”.  To express his displeasure with a snub, Khrushchev the next day issued a statement saying he was taking no part in that day’s activities because he had “toothache” and the Western press promptly, and gleefully, coined the phrase “diplomatic toothache”.  Just to add emphasis, despite being indisposed by his “toothache”, the Kremlin made it known comrade Khrushchev had spent the day in meetings with a visiting delegation from Iraq.  Macmillan rescued the situation with some typically cynical British diplomacy and comrade Khrushchev quickly resumed his role of genial host, telling everyone his toothache had been cured “…by a British drill”.  Although achievements had been modest, both sides considered the visit a success, something in this field measured less by anything attained than unpleasantness avoided.

The ushanka never goes out of style: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) admiring the headgear of Crown Prince Wilhelm (1882-1951), Tag von Potsdam (Potsdam Day), 21 March 1933.  Potsdam day was a ceremony conducted on March 21, 1933 in Potsdam to mark the re-convening of the Reichstag, the fire which gutted the building on 27 February 1933 never fully explained although conspiracy theories suggesting the act of arson was a Nazi plot have little support among mainstream historians, the consensus being the regime simply took advantage of the unexpected event to conduct the first of many purges of their opponents.