Kamikaze

Kamikaze (pronounced kah-mi-kah-zee or kah-muh-kah-zee)

(1) A member of a World War II era special corps in the Japanese air force charged with the suicidal mission of crashing an aircraft laden with explosives into an enemy target, especially Allied Naval vessels.

(2) In later use, one of the (adapted or specifically built) airplanes used for this purpose.

(3) By extension, a person or thing that behaves in a wildly reckless or destructive manner; as a modifier, something extremely foolhardy and possibly self-defeating.

(4) Of, pertaining to, undertaken by, or characteristic of a kamikaze; a kamikaze pilot; a kamikaze attack.

(5) A cocktail made with equal parts vodka, triple sec and lime juice.

(6) In slang, disastrously to fail.

(7) In surfing, a deliberate wipeout.

1945: From the Japanese 神風 (かみかぜ) (kamikaze) (suicide flyer), the construct being kami(y) (god (the earlier form was kamui)) + kaze (wind (the earlier form was kanzai)), usually translated as “divine wind” (“spirit wind” appearing in some early translations), a reference to the winds which, according to Japanese folklore, destroying Kublai Khan's Mongol invasionfleet in 1281.  In Japanase military parlance, the official designation was 神風特別攻撃隊 (Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai (Divine Wind Special Attack Unit)).  Kamikaze is a noun, verb & adjective and when used in the original sense should use an initial capital, the present participle is kamikazeing and the past participle, kamikazed; the noun plural is kamikazes.

HESA Shahed 136 UAV.

The use of kamikaze to describe the Iranian delta-winged UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, popularly known as “drones”) being used by Russia against Ukraine reflects the use of the word which developed almost as soon as the existence of Japan’s wartime suicide bomber programme became known.  Kamikaze was the name of the aviators and their units but it was soon also applied to the aircraft used, some re-purposed from existing stocks and some rocket powered units designed for the purpose.  In 1944-1945 they were too little, too late but they proved the effectiveness of precision targeting although not all military cultures would accept the loss-rate the Kamikaze sustained.  In the war in Ukraine, the Iranian HESA Shahed 136 (شاهد ۱۳۶ (literally "Witness-136" and designated Geran-2 (Герань-2 (literally "Geranium-2") by the Russians) the kamikaze drone have proved extraordinarily effective being cheap enough to deploy en masse and capable of precision targeting.  They’re thus a realization of the century-old dream of the strategic bombing theorists to hit “panacea targets” at low cost while sustaining no casualties.  Early in World War II, the notion of panacea targets had been dismissed, not because as a strategy it was wrong but because the means of finding and bombing such targets didn’t exist, thus “carpet bombing” (bombing for several square miles around any target) was adopted because it was at the time the best option.  Later in the war, as techniques improved and air superiority was gained, panacea targets returned to the mission lists but the method was merely to reduce the size of the carpet.  The kamikaze drones however can be pre-programmed or remotely directed to hit a target within the tight parameters of a GPS signal.  The Russians know what to target because so many blueprints of Ukrainian infrastructure sit in Moscow’s archives and the success rate is high because, deployed in swarms because they’re so cheap, the old phrase from the 1930s can be updated for the UAV age: “The drone will always get through”.

Imperial Japan’s Kamikazes

By 1944, it was understood by the Japanese high command that the strategic gamble simultaneously to attack the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor and territories of the European powers to the south had failed.  Such was the wealth and industrial might of the US that within three years of the Pearl Harbor raid, the preponderance of Allied warships and military aircraft in the Pacific was overwhelming and Japan’s defeat was a matter only of time.  That couldn’t be avoided but within the high command it was thought that if the Americans understood how high would be the causality rate if they attempted and invasion of the home islands, that and the specter of occupation might be avoided.

USS New Mexico (BB-40) hit by Kamikaze off Okinawa, 12 May 1945.

Although on paper, late in the war, Japan had over 15,000 aircraft available for service, a lack of development meant most were at least obsolescent and shortages of fuel increasingly limited the extent to which they could be used in conventional operations.  From this analysis came the estimates that if used as “piloted bombs” on suicide missions, it might be possible to sink as many as 900 enemy warships and inflict perhaps 22,000 causalities.  In the event of an invasion, used at shorter range against landing craft or beachheads, it was thought an invasion would sustain over 50,000 casualties to by suicide attacks alone.  Although the Kamikaze attacks didn't achieve their strategic objective, they managed to sink dozens of ships and kill some 5000 allied personnel.  All the ships lost were smaller vessels (the largest an escort carrier) but significant damage was done to fleet carriers and cruisers and, like the (also often dismissed as strategically insignificant) German V1 & V2 attacks in Europe, significant resources had to be diverted from the battle plan to be re-tasked to strike the Kamikaze air-fields.  Most importantly however, so vast by 1944 was the US military machine that it was able easily to repair or replace as required.  Brought up in a different tradition, US Navy personnel the target of the Kamikaze dubbed the attacking pilots Baka (Japanese for “Idiot”).

HMS Sussex hit by Kamikaze (Mitsubishi Ki-51 (Sonia)), 26 July 1945.

Although it’s uncertain, the first Kamikaze mission may have been an attack on the carrier USS Frankin by Rear Admiral Arima (1895-1944) flying a Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Allied codename Judy) and the early flights were undertaken using whatever airframes were available and regarded, like the pilots, as expendable.  Best remembered however, although only 850-odd were built, were the rockets designed for the purpose.  The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花, (Ōka), (cherry blossom)) was a purpose-built, rocket-powered attack aircraft which was essentially a powered bomb with wings, conceptually similar to a modern “smart bomb” except that instead of the guidance being provided by on board computers and associated electronics which were sacrificed in the attack, there was a similarly expendable human pilot.  Shockingly single-purpose in its design parameters, the version most produced could attain 406 mph (648 km/h) in level flight at relatively low altitude and 526 mph (927 km/h) while in an attack dive but the greatest operation limitation was that the range was limited to 23 miles (37 km), forcing the Japanese military to use lumbering Mitsubishi G4N (Betty) bombers as “carriers” (the Ohka the so-called "parasite aircraft") with the rockets released from under-slung assemblies when within range.  As the Ohka was originally conceived, with a range of 80 miles (130 km), as a delivery system to the point of release that may have worked but such was the demand on the designers to provide the highest explosive payload, thereby limiting both the size of the rocket and the fuel carried, restricting the maximum speed to 276 mph (445 km/h) which would have made the barely maneuverable little rockets easy prey.

Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka.

During the war, Japan produced more Mitsubishi G4Ms than any other bomber and its then remarkable range (3130 miles (5037 km)) made it a highly effective weapon early in the conflict but as the US carriers and fighters were deployed in large numbers, its vulnerabilities were exposed: the performance was no match for fighters and it was completely un-armored without even self-sealing fuel tanks, hence the nick-name “flying lighter” gained from flight crews.  However, by 1945 Japan had no more suitable aircraft available for the purpose so the G4M was used as a carrier and the losses were considerable, an inevitable consequence of having to come within twenty-odd miles of the US battle-fleets protected by swarms of fighters.  It had been planned to develop a variant of the much more capable Yokosuka P1Y (Ginga) (as the P1Y3) to perform the carrier role but late in the war, Japan’s industrial and technical resources were stretched and P1Y development was switched to night-fighter production, desperately needed to repel the US bombers attacking the home islands.  Thus the G4M (specifically the G4M2e-24J) continued to be used.

A captured Japanese Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (Model 11), Yontan Airfield, April 1945.

Watched by Luftwaffe chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946), Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) awards test pilot Hanna Reitsch the Iron Cross (2nd class), Berlin, March 1941 (left); she was later (uniquely for a woman), awarded the 1st-class distinction.  Conceptual sketch of the modified V1 flying bomb (single cockpit version) (right).

The idea of suicide missions also appealed to some Nazis (predictably most popular among those not likely to find themselves at the controls.  The idea had been discussed earlier as a means of destroying the electricity power-plants clustered around Moscow but early in 1944, the intrepid test pilot Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) suggested to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & of state 1934-1945) a suicide programme as the most likely means of hitting strategic targets.  Ultimately, she settled on using a V1 flying bomb (the Fieseler Fi 103R, an early cruise missile) to which a cockpit had been added, test-flying it herself and even mastering the landing, some feat given the high landing speed.  As a weapon, assuming a sufficient supply of barely-trained pilots, it would probably have been effective but Hitler declined to proceed, feeling things were not yet sufficiently desperate.  The historic moment passed.

Tether

Tether (pronounced teth-er)

(1) A rope, chain, or the like, by which an animal is fastened to a fixed object so as to limit its range of movement; a rope, cable etc. that holds something in place whilst allowing some movement.

(2) The utmost length to which one can go in action; the utmost extent or limit of ability or resources.

(3) To fasten or confine with or as if with a tether.

(4) In digital technology, to use an electronic device (typically a phone) to enable a wireless internet connection on another nearby device (typically a laptop).

(5) In idiomatic use, as “at the end of one's tether”, to be at the limit of one's resources, patience, or strength.

(6) In nautical jargon, a strong rope or line that connects a sailor's safety harness to a boat's jackstay.

(7) The cardinal number three in an old counting system used in Teesdale and Swaledale (a variant of tethera).

1350-1400: From the Middle English tether & teder, (rope for fastening an animal), said by some to be from the Old English tēoder and/or the Old Norse tjóðr (tjothr, from the Danish tøjr), both from the Proto-Germanic teudrą or teudran (rope; cord; shaft) of uncertain origin but possibly from the primitive Indo-European dewtro-, from dew- (to tie), or from the primitive Indo-European dewk- (to pull).  It was cognate with the North German Tüder (tether for binding the cattle), the Middle Dutch tūder & tether and the Old High German zeotar (pole of a wagon)

Most etymologists are unconvinced by the link to Old English and conclude a Scandinavian source was most likely but no documentary evidence exists.  The circumstantial evidence is that the Old Norse tjoðr (tether) is certainly from the Proto-Germanic teudran and was the source also of the Danish tøir, the Old Swedish tiuther, the Swedish tjuder, the Old Frisian tiader, the Middle Dutch tuder, the Dutch tuier (line, rope) and the Old High German zeotar; the ultimate root of all was the primitive Indo-European deu- (to fasten) + the mysterious suffix -tro.  The original meaning (confining grazing animals by a rope or cord) dates from the second half of the fourteenth century and the familiar figurative sense of "measure of one's limitations" is attested from the 1570s.  Perhaps surprisingly, there appears to be no mention in English of the words describing the reverse procedure (untethered; untethering) until 1775.  The verb emerged in the late fourteenth century (implied in tethering) in the sense of "confine by a tether," and was used originally of grazing animals as a direct development of the noun.  The figurative use was contemporary with this.

HG Wells’ (1866–1946) last book was Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), a slim volume, best remembered for the fragment “…everything was driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity”, seemingly describing a world which had become more complicated, chaotic and terrifying than anything he had prophesized in his fiction. In this it’s often contrasted with the spirit of cheerful optimism and forward-looking stoicism of the book he published a few months earlier, The Happy Turning (1945), but that may be a misreading.  Mind at the End of its Tether is a curious text, easy to read yet difficult to reduce to a theme; in his review, George Orwell (1903-1950) called it “disjointed” and it does have a quality of vagueness, some chapters hinting at despair for all humanity, others suggesting hope for the future.

Lindsay Lohan tethered in bondage scene in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

It’s perhaps the publication date that tints the opinions of some.  Although released some three months after the first use of atomic bombs in August 1945, publishing has lead-times and Wells hadn’t heard of the A-bomb at the time of writing although, he had in 1914 predicted such a device in The World Set Free.  In writing Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells, the great seer of science, wasn’t in dark despair at news of science’s greatest achievement, nuclear fission, but instead a dying man disappointed about the terrible twentieth century which, at the end of the nineteenth, had offered such promise.

Anchorite

Anchorite (pronounced ang-kuh-rahyt)

A person who has retired to a solitary place, traditionally for a life of religious seclusion; a recluse or hermit.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English anchorite & ancorite, (hermit, recluse, one who withdraws from the world for religious reasons (and applied especially in reference to the Christian hermits of the Eastern deserts in the two centuries after circa 300 AD.)), a conflation of the Middle English ancre (from the Old English ancra & ancer) and the Old French anacorite or the Medieval Latin anachōrīta & anchōrīta and the Late Latin anchoreta from the Late Greek anachōrētḗs (literally "one who has retired"), the construct being ana- (back), from anachōrē- (stem of anachōreîn (anakhōrein) (to withdraw)) + khōreîn (to withdraw, to give place), a verbal derivative of chôros (khōra) (place, space, free space, room), from the primitive Indo-European root ghē- (to release, let go; be released) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Old English and the Old Irish ancharae were from the Late Latin anachōrēta, from the Late Greek.  The word replaced the Old English ancer, from the Late Latin anchoreta.  Anchoritic is an adjective, anchoritically is an adverb, anchoritism is a noun; anchoress is the feminine noun form.  Synonyms include hermit, recluse, solitary, cenobite, ascetic, monastic, eremite, vestal, postulant & solitaire.

The last papal resignation but one.

Pietro Angellerio (1215-1296) was for five months between July and December 1294 installed as Pope Celestine V.  His resignation from the office was the last until Joseph Ratzinger (1927-2022; Pope Benedict XVI 2005-2013; pope emeritus 2013-2022) in 2013 retired from his eight-year pontificate to become (uniquely) pope emeritus.  Prior to being created pope, Celestine had for decades been a monk and hermit, living a anchorite existence in remote caves and subsisting on little more that wild vegetables, fruits, honey and the occasional locust, his unworldly background meaning he emerged as the ultimate compromise candidate, declared pope after a two-year deadlock in the church’s last non-conclave papal election.  The cardinals had been squabbling for all those two years which so upset the hermit in his cave that he wrote them a letter warning divine retribution would be visited upon them if they didn't soon elect a pope.  Realizing he was entirely un-political, without enemies and likely pliable, the cardinals promptly elected him by acclamation.

Shocked, the hermit declined the appointment, only to have his own arguments turned on him, the cardinals insisting if he refused the office he would be defying God himself; trapped, he was crowned at Santa Maria di Collemaggio in Aquila, taking the name Celestine V.  The anchorite, lost in the world of power politics and low skulduggery was utterly unsuited to the role and within months issued an edict confirming the right of a pope to abdicate.  That done, he resigned, intending to return to his cave but his successor, Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani, circa 1231-1303; pope 1294-1303), having no wish to have such a puritanical loose cannon at large, imprisoned him in an agreeable castle where, within months, he died.  In 2013, Benedict XVI fared better, retiring to a sort of papal granny flat in the Vatican and the edict confirming the right of a pope to resign rather than waiting to be taken by God or the Devil is all that remains from Celestine V's pontificate.

Allegory of the Coronation of Celestine V, Musée di Louvre, Paris.

The painter is unknown but the work has been dated to the sixteenth century.  There was long a story, published in both the 1967 forgery Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau (Secret Files of Henri Lobineau) and the almost equally dubious 1968 book Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château (The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Château) by Géraud-Marie de Sède (1921–2004), that the painting was one allegedly brought by controversial priest François-Bérenger Saunière (1852–1917) from the Louvre, circa 1891, but this was later disproved.  It wasn’t until 1923 it was recognized and subsequently classified as being of Celestine V.

Milieu

Milieu (pronounced mil-yoo, meel-yoo or mee-lyœ (French))

(1) Surroundings, medium, environment, especially of a social or cultural nature.

(2) A group of people with a common point of view; a social class or group.

(3) In psychotherapy, as "milieu therapy" a controversial form of community-based psychotherapy in which patients are encouraged to take responsibility for themselves and others within the unit, based upon a hierarchy of collective punishments.

(4) In linguistics & human communications, as "milieu control", tactics that control environment and human communication through the use of peer pressure and group language.

1795-1805: From the twelfth century French milieu (physical or social environment; group of people with a common point of view (literally “middle place”)), from the Middle French milieu, meilleu, & mileu, from the Old French milliu, meillieu & mileu (middle, medium, mean),  from the Latin medius, formed under the influence of the primitive Indo-European root medhyo (middle) + lieu (place), thus understood as the Latin medius (half; middle) + locus (place, spot; specific location) and the French construct mi- (mid) +‎ lieu (place) mirrors that.  English speakers have used milieu for the environment or setting of something since the early-1800s but other "lieu" descendants are later including lieu itself and lieutenant, in use since the fourteenth century.  By the mid-nineteenth century milieu was in use in English in the sense of “surroundings, medium, environment: and had become a fashionable word among scholars and writers.  A micromilieu is a subset of a milieu.  Milieu is a noun; the noun plural is milieux or milieus.

In the milieu of the industrial baroque, Lohan Nightclub, Iera Odos 30-32 | Kerameikos, Athens 104 35, Greece.

In the twentieth century, milieu was adopted by the emerging discipline of sociology as a technical term.  The US sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962; professor of sociology at Columbia University 1946-1962) contrasted the immediate milieu of an individual’s life with the over-arching social, political and economic structure, highlighting the distinction between "the personal troubles of milieu" and the "public crises of social structure".

Mills' best known work was the much criticized but also influential The Power Elite (1956), a work much focused on the construct of the milieu which is the repository of power in the modern capitalist West.  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions works to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.  Had he lived, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) probably wouldn't much have differed from Mills but in his era he was more concerned with an individual's personal formation and the relationship of that to the enveloping milieu in which they existed.  He described the "big" structure as the milieu social, asserting it contained internalized expectations and representations of social forces & social facts which, he argued, existed only in the imaginations of individuals as collective representations.  Phenomenologists, structuralists at heart, built two models: society as a deterministic constraint (milieu) or a nurturing shell.

Hispanic & Latino

Hispanic (pronounced hi-span-ik)

(1) Relating to, characteristic of, or derived from Spain or Spanish-speaking countries (applied especially to Spanish-speaking Latin America.

(2) A person whose primary or native language is Spanish.

(3) As Hispanic-American (and the rarer Hispano-American), a citizen or resident of the United States who is of Spanish or Spanish-speaking Latin-American descent; often used to refer to non-Spanish speakers, except for technical use, it’s now often replaced by the more general Latino.

(4) The Iberian Peninsula, when under the control of Ancient Rome (now in historic reference only).

1575-1585: From the Latin hispānicus (Spanish), the adjectival derivation of the Classical Latin (and Ancient Greek) Hispania (Spain) and Hispanus/Hispanos (Spaniard), ultimately probably of Celtiberian origin.   In English the word is attested from the sixteenth century, spreading to American English) by the nineteenth.  The construct is hispania +‎ -icus.  Hispania was long thought derived from a Phoenician/Punic name ‘i shapan, (land of hyraxes), cognate to the Hebrew שָׁפָן‎ (shafan) (hyrax), supposedly applied because the Phoenicians thought the land's many rabbits resembled hyraxes.  This theory (or legend) was repeated by many Roman authors and may explain why Hispania is depicted with rabbits on some Roman coins.  Later scholars however have cast doubt on the story and suggested possible Phoenician etyma, the most supported is ‘i ṣapun ((is)land to the north).  The –icus suffix was added to a noun or verb to form an adjective.  It was from the i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original cases but later used freely.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic –igaz, the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic -eigs, the Proto-Slavic –ьcь, the last having long fossilized into a nominal agent suffix  but originally probably also served adjectival functions.  The words Spain, Spanish, and Spaniard are of the same etymology as Hispanus.

Latino (pronounced luh-tee-noh (U) or la-tee-noh (non-U))

(1) Of or relating to people of Latin American origin or descent, especially those living in the United States.

(2) A person of Latin American origin or descent, especially one living in the United States.

1939: A creation of American English borrowed from Spanish adjective latino, in this context short for latinoamericano (Latin American) and thus an ellipsis of that form, from the Latin latīnus (pertaining to Latium, the region of Italy around Rome), possibly from the primitive Indo-European base stela- (to spread, to extend, hence flat country as opposed to mountainous).  Latino was first attested as a prefix from 1939 as a combining form of Latin, from ablative of the Latin latīnus.  It began to enter common use in the US in 1945-1950 as Latino referring to the places or people with Latinate or Romance language in common, the construct essentially a truncated merging of Latin + americano, the adjectival sense of Latino-American (al la African-American) first noted in 1974.  In noun form it should be gender-neutral but has always tended to male association; Latina is the feminine form and there’s long been the gender-neutral Latinx but a more interesting recent invention is latin@, the @ said to resemble both the feminine ending/element “a” and the masculine “o”, though the vagaries of pronunciation probably escape all but native Spanish speakers.

Changes in conventions of use

Latino and Hispanic, though laden with associative connotations from decades of use in the US, refer only to a person's origin and ancestry; a Latin(o/a/x/@) or Hispanic person can be any race or color, the former coming from anywhere in the defined geographical space, the latter the Spanish-speaking sub-set.  Among etymologists and political geographers, there has long been debate about whether the Caribbean can in whole or in part be considered as Latino although some are certainly Hispanic. Some suggest those from French Guiana should be accepted as Latino because French shares linguistic roots with Spanish and Portuguese which does seem a tenuous point, little different about whether people from English-speaking Belize and Guyana and Dutch-speaking Suriname truly fit under the category since their cultures and histories are so distinct.

Latin America, extends from the US-Mexico border to the southern Chilean islands, encompassing many countries, most of them predominately Spanish-speaking, a legacy of colonization.  In the US, the terms Hispanic and Latino (Latina for women, sometimes written as the gender-neutral Latinx or Latin@) were adopted in an attempt, initially for administrative purposes, loosely to group immigrants and their descendants.  The early post-war use of the terms, mostly by statisticians, epidemiologists and other academics does indicate there was adherence to the technical meanings but this dissipated as the words, especially Hispanic, entered mainstream media and public discourse.  By the mid-1950s, Hispanic tended to be used to reference everything and everyone south of the US-Mexico border, regardless of language spoken but since revisions to statistical categories during the Nixon administration (1969-1974) (the change first reflected in the 1980 Census form), the blanket term has tended towards the more correct Latino, the trend accelerating in recent years.  Despite this, some do still use the terms interchangeably.

Lindsay Lohan alighting from helicopter, São Paulo Airport, Brazil, April 2013.

Hispanic is generally accepted as a narrower term that includes people only from Spanish-speaking Latin America, including those countries and territories of the Caribbean or from Spain itself.  Thus, a Brazilian could be Latino and non-Hispanic, a Spaniard could be Hispanic and non-Latino, and a Colombian could adopt both terms.  Perhaps seeking to clarify things, the 2010 US Census helpfully listed both terms specifically mentioning the Spanish-speaking areas of the Caribbean but somewhat vaguely excluded non-Spanish speaking countries.  Whether pragmatically or for other reasons, when filling-out the form, many Latin American immigrants and descendants simply stated their countries of origin.  It may be the case Hispanic is on the linguistic treadmill and should thus be avoided.

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.