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.

Oxfordian

Oxfordian (pronounced ox-for-dee-en or ox-for-dee-an

(1) In geology, relating to or describing the Oxfordian age or stage, a geological time interval in the Jurassic period between 163.5±1.0 Ma - 157.3±1.0 Ma or the stage of rocks (chiefly coral-derived limestones) deposited during it.

(2) A theory of Shakespeare authorship; the view that Edward de Vere (1550–1604), seventeenth Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare.

(3) A person or thing associated with the town of Oxford or (less commonly), Oxford University.

1920s: The construct was Oxford + -ian.  Oxford was first settled by the Anglo-Saxons and was initially known as Oxenaforda (ford of the oxen), noted in Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis (a kind of world history, written in Latin ehich begin's with God's creation and end in 1140); the river crossing for oxen began circa 900.  The suffix -ian was a euphonic variant of –an & -n, from the Middle English -an, (regularly -ain, -ein & -en), from the Old French –ain & -ein (or before i, -en), the Modern French forms being –ain & -en (feminine -aine, -enne), from the Latin -iānus (the alternative forms were -ānus, -ēnus, -īnus & -ūnus), which formed adjectives of belonging or origin from a noun, being -nus (cognate with the Ancient Greek -νος (-nos)), preceded by a vowel, from the primitive Indo-European -nós.  It was cognate with the English -en.

To be or not to be tattooed

Theories the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) were written by someone other than the bard began to be published in the mid-nineteenth century and although Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was the most cited alternative, there were others and some suggested committees of co-authors.  Edward de Vere (1550–1604), seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was mentioned in the earlier papers but it wasn’t until the helpfully named John Thomas Looney (1870–1944) published Shakespeare Identified (1920) that Lord Oxford was claimed to be the sole author.  Few have been persuaded but Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and two US Supreme Court judges were convinced Oxfordians.

One of Lindsay Lohan’s tattoos is "What Dreams May Come" which is from Hamlet’s (circa 1600) "To be, or not to be..." speech:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 1.

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.

Bus

Bus (pronounced buhs)

(1) A large motor vehicle, having a long body, equipped with seats or benches for passengers, usually operating as part of a scheduled service; sometimes called omnibus, motorbus or trolleybus

(2) A similar horse-drawn vehicle.

(3) A passenger automobile (or airplane in casual use) used in a manner resembling that of a bus.

(4) In electrical transmission, short for of busbar.

(5) In ballistics, the part of a MIRV (multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicle (an exoatmospheric ballistic missile)) payload containing the re-entry vehicles, guidance and thrust devices.

(6) In astronautics, a platform in a space vehicle used for various experiments and processes.

(7) In computer architecture, a communication system that transfers data between components inside or between computers. This expression covers all related hardware components (wire, optical fibre, etc) and software, including communication protocols.

1832: A clipping of the French omnibus.  Omnibus dates from 1829 and was used to describe a "long-bodied, horse-drawn, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers", from the French voiture omnibus (carriage for all, common (conveyance)), from the Latin omnibus (for all), dative plural of omnis (all), ablative of omnia, from the primitive Indo-European hep-ni- (working), from hep- (to work; to possess) or hop- (to work; to take).  Bus was thus a convenient shortening to describe the (then horse drawn) forms of public transport and subsequent uses by analogy with transporting (even weightless) stuff is derived from this.  The present participle is omnibusing or omnibussing and the past participle omnibused or omnibussed; the noun plural is either omnibuses or (for the public transportation) omnibusses; the attractive omnibi unfortunately wholly non-standard.  The sense "to travel by omnibus" dates from 1838; the transitive meaning "transport students to integrate schools" is American English from 1961.  The meaning "clear tables in a restaurant" is first attested 1913, probably from the four-wheeled cart used to carry dishes. The electrical sense is derived from a figurative application of the automotive sense; the use in computer architecture followed this model.  “To miss the bus” in the figurative sense of a lost opportunity is from 1901 and credited as an Australian invention (although the OED lists a figurative “miss the omnibus” from 1886).  It was most famously used by Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) during the "Phoney War".  On 5 April 1940, confident the previous eight months spent building up armaments meant the west was now invulnerable to invasion, Chamberlain felt sufficiently confident to declare to the House of Commons "Hitler has missed the bus".  The Wehrmacht invaded four days later.

The bus wars

For IBM, the decision in 1980 to adopt an open bus architecture for the original PC was a good idea at the time.  Anticipating the PC being a niche-market product, the open bus was seen as a way to encourage sales by encouraging smaller manufacturers to produce expansion boards (cards) but not involving IBM in what would be an activity of marginal profitability. However, the PC soon became a huge sales success and the open bus meant manufacturers were soon producing their own PCs, not just the expansion cards and by the mid-1980s, IBM weren’t best pleased to find of all the PCs being sold, relatively few were genuine IBMs.  Their response in 1987 was to develop a proprietary bus for the new range (the PS/2 PCs & the OS/2 operating system) which, unlike open architecture, would attract royalties from the cloners, the new bus called Micro Channel Architecture (MCA).  Technically MCA offered many advantages, most obviously an early implementation of the soon-familiar plug’n’play which (usually) worked surprisingly well as well as a twenty percent increase in bus speed.  Apart from the cost, the main drawback was the lack of backward compatibility; not only did third-party manufacturers have to re-tool to design and produce new motherboards & cards, consumers could not re-use their existing cards, something important at the time.

8-bit ISA (XT)

16-bit ISA (AT)

32-bit EISA

32-bit VESA

16-bit MCA

32-bit MCA

A pack of the biggest cloners didn’t like this and responded with their own design, an enhancement of the original AT (which they re-named Industry Standard Architecture (ISA)) called Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) which either matched on felt only slightly short of the technical improvements provided by MCA.  EISA advantages were (1) cost breakdown, (2) it was free for anyone to use and (3) backward compatibility.  IBM wasn’t impressed, stressing the technical superiority of 16 & 32-bit MCA, noting a mixing of 8, 16 and 32-bit cards in the one bus would inevitability result in one device getting very hot, leading to what they called “…a silicon barbeque”.  For a while, the bus wars raged and while it’s true MCA was better, it wasn’t that much better so for many the additional costs were hard to justify.  Had the bus wars continued, it could have gone either way because while EISA was free, it was a cul-de-sac, it’s development potential limited whereas IBM could have both improved MCA and lowered its licensing fees.  However, the development of the the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) bus rendered both MCA and EISA (and the short-lived VESA) obsolete.  When USB (Universal Serial Bus) devices became ubiquitous, the whole system board became unknown to all but the nerds.

Bus scene in Mean Girls (2004). 

Modal

Modal (pronounced mohd-l)

(1) Of, relating to or characteristic of mode, manner, or form.

(2) In music, pertaining to mode, as distinguished from key; based on a scale other than major or minor; of, relating to, or composed in the musical modi by which an octave is divided, associated with emotional moods in Ancient and medieval ecclesiastical music

(3) In transportation logistics, as single-modal, pertaining to or suitable for transportation involving only one form of a carrier, as truck, rail, or ship; related forms are bimodal, intermodal and multi-modal (can also be used figuratively or analogously).

(4) In grammar (of a verb or auxiliary verb form), expressing a distinction of mood, such as between possibility and actuality.

(5) In philosophy & metaphysics, pertaining to a mode of a thing, as distinguished from one of its basic attributes or from its substance or matter; relating to analogous qualifications such as that of rules as obligatory or permissive.

(6) In formal logic, exhibiting or expressing some phase of modality; qualifying or expressing a qualification of the truth of some statement, for example, as necessary or contingent.

(7) In computing, having separate modes in which user input has different effects, as in a graphical user interface (GUI) requiring immediate user interaction and thus presented so that it cannot be closed or interacted behind until a decision is made; used also to indicate different modes operating systems may implement hardware abstraction layers (HAL) such as the real, standard and enhanced modes in early versions of MS-Windows.

(8) In industrial production, a textile made from spun cellulose fiber.

(9) In molecular engineering, a type of analysis used in the study of the dynamic properties of structures under vibrational excitation.

(10) In telecommunications, a measure of bandwidth referencing the signaling rate per distance unit.

(11) In genetics, an ancestral haplotype derived from the DNA test results of a specific group of people.

(12) In linear algebra, a matrix, used in the diagonalization process involving eigenvalues and eigenvectors.

1560-1570: From the Middle French modal (pertaining to or affected by a mode), from the Medieval Latin modālis (of or pertaining to a mode), from the Classical Latin modus (measure, extent, quantity; proper measure, rhythm, song; a way, manner, fashion, style (in Late Latin also "mood" in grammar and logic)) and thus a doublet of mode; the Latin root also supplied the modern modal in French, Spanish & Portuguese and the Italian modale.  The Latin modus is from the primitive Indo-European modos (measure) from med- (to measure; take appropriate measures).  The use in music was first adopted in the 1590s and the word became part of formal grammar in 1798.  Modal is the adjective; modally the adverb.

The modal verbs shall & will

A modal verb is a type of verb used to indicate modality (likelihood, ability, permission, request, capacity, suggestions, order, obligation, or advice) and modal verbs always accompany the base (infinitive) form of another verb having semantic content.  In English, the modal verbs most commonly used are can, could, may, might, must, will, would, shall, should, ought, need & dare.

Regarding the use of shall and will when speaking of the future, there’s no definitive rule, just conventions, which, in a manner not unfamiliar in English, are subject to another contradictory convention.  From that, English speakers are left to make of things what they can.

Will is used:

(1) To describe the future: “The flight will be delayed because of fog.”

(2) To make a prediction: “Italy will one day win the Six Nations.”

(3) To express a decision made at the time: “I will have a G&T”.

(4) To make a request: “Will you get me a G&T?”

(5) To make promises and offers: “I will buy you a G&T.”

(6) To describe the consequence of a conditional phrase: “If it is raining, I will put an umbrella in my bag.”

Historically, “shall” (including other spellings), was often used as an alternative to “will” but, in modern English, “will’ tends now to be preferred for affirmative and negative sentences although “shall” still is used to form questions with “I” & “we”, a practice less common in North America than the rest of the English-speaking world.

Sentences with “shall” are formed in the same way as those built with “will”, the negative form created by adding “not”; the question is made by inverting the subject and “shall”, a universal form although “shall” appears usually only in questions containing “I” & “we”.  As a point of use, some suggest the contraction “shan’t”, commonly used in spoken English, should never appear in the written except in transcription but there’s no historic or etymological basis for this.

Shall is used:

(1) To make offers using I or we: “Shall I make us some lunch?”

(2) To make suggestions using I or we: “Shall we go on a picnic?”

(3) To express formal obligations: “The accused shall plead guilty or not guilty.”

(4) To make a promise: “I shall not be late for lunch.”

(5) To describe the future in a formal manner: “We shall fight them on the beaches…”

So, the convention is to use “will” for affirmative and negative sentences about the future or to make requests.  To make an offer or suggestion with “I” or “we”, use “shall” in the question form.  However, if it’s wished to impart a sense of formality, use “shall” instead of “will”.  So, “will” and “shall” can be interchangeable, adoption depending on context.

Lindsay Lohan will star in Netflix's upcoming film Falling For Christmas which will be available on the platform from 10 November 2022.  The film is the first of her two picture creative partnership with the streamer, the romantic comedy Irish Wish currently in production.  It's predicted most Lohanics swiftly shall stream both.

Handshake

Handshake (pronounced hand-sheyk)

(1) A gripping and shaking of (traditionally the right) hands by two individuals, as to symbolize greeting, congratulation, agreement or farewell.

(2) In digital communication, as handshaking, an exchange of predetermined signals between a computer and a peripheral device or another computer, made when a connection is initially established or at intervals during data transmission, in order to assure proper synchronization.

1801: The construct was hand + shake.  Hand was from the Middle English hond & hand, from the Old English hand, from the Proto-West Germanic handu, from the Proto-Germanic handuz (and related to the Dutch, Norwegian Nynorsk & Swedish hand, the Danish hånd, the German Hand and the West Frisian hân) of uncertain origin although there may be a link to the Old Swedish hinna (to gain), the Gothic fra-hinþan (to take captive, capture), the Latvian sīts (hunting spear), the Ancient Greek κεντέω (kentéō) (prick) and the Albanian çandër (pitchfork; prop).  Shake was from the Middle English schaken, from the Old English sċeacan & sċacan (to shake), from the Proto-West Germanic skakan, from the Proto-Germanic skakaną (to shake, swing, escape), from the primitive Indo-European skeg-, keg-, skek- & kek- (to jump, move).  It was cognate with the Scots schake & schack (to shake), the West Frisian schaekje (to shake), the Dutch schaken (to elope, make clean, shake), the Low German schaken (to move, shift, push, shake) & schacken (to shake, shock), the Old Norse skaka (to shake), the Norwegian Nynorsk skaka (to shake), the Swedish skaka (to shake), the Danish skage (to shake), the Dutch schokken (to shake, shock) and the Russian скака́ть (skakátʹ) (to jump”).  The present participle is handshaking and the familiar past participle handshaked but some dictionaries still list the rare handshook as an alternative; the noun plural is handshakes.

The handshake not a universal cultural practice (the Japanese famously favor the bow although in recent decades it’s executed often as more of a nod) but, in one form or another, it is global and involves usually two people grasping hands and moving them in a brief, up-and-down movement.  The right hand tends to be favored (left-handers sinister obviously) and this has been linked to the symbolism of that being the usual choice when wielding a weapon but that is speculative and the global preponderance of right-handedness may be of greater significance.  Quite when the handshake became a cultural practice isn’t known but it is certainly ancient, at least among those important enough to be depicted in forms of art because the oldest representations date back more than the-thousand years.

Some handshakes promised much; results were varied.  Clockwise from top left:  Mao Tse-tung & Richard Nixon (1972), Yitzhak Rabin & Yasser Arafat (1993), Mikhail Gorbachev & Ronald Reagan (1985), Donald Trump & crooked Hillary Clinton (2016), Martin McGuinness & Queen Elizabeth II (2012) and Nelson Mandela & FW de Klerk (1994). 

Handshake (hand-shake) is a surprisingly modern construction, dating only from 1801 and "hand-shaking" is attested from 1805; the phrases “to shake hands” & “shaking hands” have been in use since the sixteenth century and the use of the noun “grip” to mean "a handshake" (especially one of a secret society) dates from 1785.  Secret handshakes are created so members of clubs and societies may make their affiliation known to another person without needing to use words.  For a secret handshake to be effective it must be specific enough to be recognized by another member yet subtle enough that a non-member would not find the nature of the grip strange or unusual.  Because of the limited possibilities offered by fingers and thumbs, some secret handshakes involve also actions such as using the other hand to touch an earlobe in a certain way or a tapping a foot.  The concept has been documented since Antiquity and is most famously associated with the Freemasons but to speak of the “secret Masonic handshake” is misleading, some researchers claiming there are at least sixteen distinctly identifiable Masonic handshakes and most have speculated there will be dozens more.  Indeed, except in the early years, Freemasonry has never been monolithic and there are known cases of one faction (even within a lodge) developing their own so that they might discuss matter freely without the risk they may be spilling secrets to the other faction.  The mechanics of the secret handshakes used by members of the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or are not known.

Lindsay Lohan meets Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanı) since 2003), Ankara, 2017.

The golden handshake is a clause in executive employment contracts that provides for a generous severance package in certain circumstances.  Created originally as a relatively modest inducement to attract staff to companies in a perilous financial position, they evolved to the point where multi-million dollar pay-outs were common and they became controversial because they appeared to reward failure and there were suggestions (not only by conspiracy theorists) they were used even as Trojan horses to entice a CEO to drive down a company’s share price (thus becoming eligible for a golden handshake) in the interest of asset strippers and others.  The best operators were able to engineer things so they enjoyed both a golden handshake and a golden parachute (the generous package payable upon retirement in the normal course of things).

In computer communications, a handshake is a signal exchanged between two or more devices or programs to confirm authentication and connection.  In the same way that the human handshake is a process: (1) an offer of a hand, (2) the taking of that hand and (3) the shaking of the hands, in computing, the sequence is (1) seeking a connection, (2) verifying the connection and (3) effecting the connection.  The breaking of the handshake and the termination of the connection in each case constitutes the final, fourth setup.  The purpose of handshaking is to establish the parameters for the duration of the session which involves the devices agreeing on vital stuff like (1) both being switched on, (2) both ready to transmit & receive and (3) that certain technical protocols will be used (familiar to many as famous strings like “9600,N,8,1”).  Handshaking historically was a process separate from the security layers which had to be satisfied once communication was established and again, this is analogous with the handshake in the process of human interaction.

The Duce emulates an illustrious Roman forebear.

As a cultural practice with a history known to date back at least ten thousand years, the handshake has proven a resilient tradition which has survived the vicissitudes of many millennia and even the preference of elbow-bumping and such during the Covid-19 pandemic seems only to have been a minor interruption.  Not all however approved.  The Duce (Benito Mussolini, 1883–1945; prime minister and Duce (leader) of Italy 1922-1943) thought handshaking effete and unhygienic (he was ready for pandemics) and preferred the fascist salute he thought (apparently on the basis of statues from Ancient Rome) more martial.  He certainly had plans to make Italy great again (MIGA) and men shaking hands with each other had to go; the Duce had expressed his disgust at the decadence of the modern Italian people, believing they had been seduced by French ways into “elevating cooking to the status of high art”, declaring he would never allow Italy to descend to the level of France, a country ruined by “alcohol, syphilis and journalism”.  Still, when meeting friends (even those forced on him by the brutishness of political necessity) he shook hands and a handshake was both his first and last interaction with the Führer (Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 and of state 1934-1945).  Their smiles when shaking hands always seemed genuine and conspicuously were warm when they parted after the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944.  Within a year, both would be dead.

One historian entitled his work on the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini The Brutal Friendship and that it was but it was certainly enduring and as he promised in 1938 when Rome proved helpful during the Nazi's annexation of Austria, "no matter what", the Führer stuck with the Duce through "thick and thin".  They shook hands on many occasions, the last of which would happen on the railway station platform close to where the attempt on the Führer's life failed.  At this time, Hitler was using his left hand to shake, the right arm injured in the blast.  After this, they would never meet again.  

For politicians, handshakes are a wonderful photo opportunity and some have been famously emblematic of the resolution of problems which have been intractable for decades or more.  However, such photographs can be unpleasant and sometimes embarrassing reminders of a past they’d prefer was forgotten.  When Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021; US secretary of defense 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) shook hands with Saddam Hussein (1937–2006; president of Iraq 1979-2003) in Baghdad in December 1983, it was as a presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; president of the US 1981-1989) and he was there to do business with the dictator.  Iraq at the time had started a war with Iran and was using chemical weapons while practicing abuses of human rights on parts of the Iraqi population and Saddam Hussein had even made known to the US administration Baghdad’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons.  Thus was special envoy Rumsfeld dispatched to offer Washington’s hand of friendship, anybody opposed to the Ayatollahs held in high regard in Washington DC. 

Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, 1983.

Despite what Mr Rumsfeld would claim twenty years on, he made no mention of chemical weapons or human rights abuses, his discussions instead focusing on the projection of US military force in the Gulf and the need to guarantee and protect the supply of oil.  Later, as international pressure increased on the US to condemn the use of chemical weapons by Iraq it responded with a low-key statement which made no mention of Iraq and actually stressed the need to protect Iraq from Iran’s “ruthless and inhumane tactics”.  When Mr Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad in 1984, during the visit the United Nations (UN) issued a report which stated chemical weapons had been used against Iran, something already known to both the Pentagon and state department.  In Baghdad, the matter wasn’t mentioned and when Mr Rumsfeld departed, it was with another warm handshake.  That's not a criticism or Mr Rumsfeld; it's just the way politics is done.

Nancy Pelosi and Bashar al-Assad, April 2007.

By virtue of her education in a Roman Catholic school, Nancy Pelosi (b 1940; speaker of the US House of Representatives 2007-2011 and since 2019, member of the house since 1987) was well acquainted with the Bible so after shaking hands with Bashar al-Assad (b 1965, President of Syria since 2000) in April 2007, to use the phrase “The road to Damascus is a road to peace” must have been a deliberate choice.  It might also be thought a curious choice given that at the time the president was providing shelter and protection to a range of terrorist groups involved in attacking US forces in Iraq.  As speaker of the house, Ms Pelosi would have received high-level intelligence briefings so presumably was acquainted with the facts and had she been uncertain, could have had aides prepare a summary from publicly available sources.  As recent events in the Far East have illustrated, the speaker’s forays into foreign affairs are not always a help to the State Department.

In cultural anthropology, greetings like handshakes, high fives, fist bumps and such are classed as “gesture-based greetings” or “physical greetings” and while there’s much cross-cultural overlap, some cam be specific.  As social gestures used variously to convey to greeting, respect, acknowledgment, agreement, celebration etc, they can be exclusively non-verbal or combined with either an ad-hoc or structured use of text or even an ancillary gesture such as the handshake plus bow combo or the salute plus a “clicking of the heels” (a sharp, audible snap of the heels together when coming to attention),  In popular culture, representations of the latter have made it much much associated with nineteenth & twentieth century German military tradition but it was not exclusively Prussian in origin or use.  Historians do however believe it was the Königlich Preußische Armee (Royal Prussian Army (1701–1919)) which institutionalized the practice as a part of formal drilling and from there it became part of everyday military life.  The joke in Europe was that “while most countries had an army, the Prussian army had a country”, and the practice widely was adopted by civilians although whether this was because the army was so admired or simply soldiers “taking it with them” even when not on duty isn’t documented.  It can though be said that following the unification of Germany in 1871 (essentially a Prussian takeover), the army’s traditions effectively were nationalized and military-style drills (including the heel click) were integrated into the education system.  During the Third Reich (1939-1945) the practice became exaggerated for dramatic effect, yet another aspect of the regime’s focus on spectacle.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, left) training Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941, right) in party etiquette, opening of the Nuremberg Party Congress, September, 1938.

There are many “body language greetings” and in the Western tradition they include (1) the handshake (used in both formal or informal settings to convey various sentiments), (2) the high five (a celebratory or friendly gesture popular in many sub-cultures) and (3) the fist bump (which was once an inherently informal practice in among the “cool” but may have been devalued when in 2022 footage appeared of Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) offering one to Saudi Arabia’s de-facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (b 1985 and referred to colloquially as MBS), the problem being if Mr Biden did something it ceased to be “cool” and became associated with cognitive decline.  The elbow bump was recommended during the Covid-19 pandemic as a hygienic alternative to the handshake but never caught on because (1) the recommendation came from the same governments which were subjecting people to lock-downs, (2) it seemed a silly thing to do given the alternative (saying “hello”) solved the problem; if a gesture was thought necessary, a wave worked well.  Post-pandemic, hugs made a comeback although in the #metoo era many avoid them and men greeting women have started to use something between a respectful nod and a slight bow, a technique with some history because the conventions for shaking hands with women never became as standardized as was the long established practice between men.  The bow of course is highly cross-cultural and in the upper reaches of Western culture it can be obligatory for men to bow to certain individuals.  In East Asia, the bow remains in many circles a social convention but even in highly ritualistic Japan use has declined among the general population although the action, sometimes in an exaggerated form, remains a vital part of the “public apology” process when a politician, businessman, entertainer etc is compelled to “say sorry” for some transgression or loss of face.