Atrophy & Hypertrophy

Atrophy (pronounced a-truh-fee)

(1) In pathology, a wasting away of the body or of an organ or part, or a failure to grow to normal size as the result of disease, defective nutrition, nerve damage or hormonal changes.

(2) Degeneration, decline, or decrease, as from disuse.

1590–1600: From the earlier Middle French atrophie and Late Latin atrophia from the Ancient Greek ἀτροφία (atrophía) (a wasting away), (derived from trephein (to feed)) from ἄτροφος (átrophos) (ill-fed, un-nourished), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) + τροφή (trophḗ) (nourishment) from τρέφω (tréphō) (I fatten).  Atrophic is the most familiar adjectival form.  The a- prefix, a proclitic form of preposition, is from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (not, without) and is used to form taxonomic names indicating a lack of some feature that might be expected.  In Middle English a- (up, out, away) was from the Old English ā- (originally ar- & or-) from the Proto-Germanic uz- (out-), from the primitive Indo-European uds- (up, out); it was cognate with the Old Saxon ā- and the German er-.  The suffix –ia is from Classical Latin from the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) and was used to form abstract nouns of feminine gender.  It creates names of countries, diseases, flowers, and (rarely) collections of things such as militaria & deletia).  The spelling atrophia is obsolete.  Atrophy is a noun and atrophic is an adjective; the noun plural is atrophies.  The noun atrophication is non-standard and seems to be restricted to the pro-ana community, usually as "self-atrophication".

Self-atrophication: Lindsay Lohan during "thin phase".

In pathology there are specific classes of atrophy including encephalatrophy (atrophy of the brain), fibroatrophy (atrophy of fibres), dermatrophy (atrophy (a thinning) of the skin), lipoatrophy (the loss of subcutaneous fatty tissue), scleroatrophy (Any of various atrophic conditions characterized by a hardening of tissue, including atrophic fibrosis of the skin, hypoplasia of the nails, and palmoplantar keratoderma), hemiatrophy (atrophy that affects only one half of the body) and the mysterious pseudoatrophy (where tissue (typically muscle), appears to have reduced in size or wasted away but the perceived reduction is really caused by factors such as swelling, inflammation, or the presence of fluid in surrounding tissues that make the muscle look smaller than it actually is).  In genetics, atrogene describes any gene which has some influence on atrophy of muscle tissue and in biochemistry atrophins are any of a class of proteins found in nervous tissue.

Hypertrophy (pronounced hahy-pur-truh-fee)

(1) In physiology, the abnormal (but usually non-tumorous) enlargement of an organ or a tissue as a result of an increase in the size rather than the number of constituent cells.

(2) In bodybuilding, an increase in muscle size through increased size of individual muscle cells (responding to exercise such as weightlifting); it is distinct from muscle hyperplasia (the formation of new muscle cells).

(2) Excessive growth or accumulation of any kind.

1825–1835: A compound word hyper- + -trophy.  Hyper is from the French hypertrophie, from the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér) (over, excessive), from the primitive Indo-European upér (over, above) (from which English gained over), from upo (under, below) (source of the English up). It was cognate with the Latin super- and is a common prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, where it meant “over,” usually implying excess or exaggeration (eg hyperbole); on this model used, especially as opposed to hypo-, in the formation of compound words.  Hypertrophy is a noun & verb, hypertrophic, hypertrophical, hypertrophous & hypertrophical are adjectives and hypertrophically is an adverb; the noun plural is hypertropheries.  For those for whom the successively multi-syllabic is a fetish or compile scripts for speech therapy practice, there's hypertrophic pulmonary osteoarthropathy (in pathology, a paraneoplastic condition characterised by clubbing and periostitis of the long bones of the arms and legs).

Two “Chernobyl mutant catfish” (left) and one with a human for scale (right).  They're now found in the cooling ponds of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor which in 1986 suffered a meltdown and subsequent explosion.

Their huge size is not a radiation-induced mutation but a result of the absence of a predator since humans were removed from their environment.  As far as is known, radiation-induced mutations very rarely lead to a generalized hypertrophy and it's much more common for an affected specimen to grow “less efficiently” and for a variety of reasons they can be less capable of catching food and thus not live as long as is typical for the species.  The “Chernobyl mutant catfish” which gained their infamy in the early days of the internet were no more the result of nuclear contamination than the “Fukushima mutant wolfish” of the social media age.  Genetically, there’s nothing novel about the size of the bulky inhabitants of the Chernobyl ponds.  While it’s not typical, the wels catfish (Silurus glanis) can weigh over 350 kg (770 lb), examples recorded both in scientific research and by fishers although up to 150 kg (330 lb) is more common for a large example.  So, to describe the big fish as “hypertrophic” is to use the word in a loose way because the growth registered is “extreme” rather than excessive, something made possible by them living without predators, in a suitable habitat with ample food.  With humans no longer killing them, the catfish have become both apex-level predators and scavengers, enjoying fish, amphibians, worms, birds and even small mammals; they appear to eat just about anything (dead or alive) which fits into their large mouths.  They can live for many decades and scientists are monitoring their progress in what is a close to unique experiment.  Thus far, despite some being tested as being some 16 times more radioactive than normal, the indications are they’re continuing happily to feed, re-produce and grow but because the hypertrophied state is function of genetics interacting with an ideal environment, it’s thought unlikely they’ll ever exceed the recorded maximum size.

Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) announces the Liberal Party's new policy advocating the construction of multiple nuclear power-plants in Australia.  The prosthetic used in the digitally-altered image (right) was a discarded proposal for the depiction of Lord Voldemort in the first film version of JK Rowling's (b 1965) series of Harry Potter children's fantasy novels; it used a Janus-like two-faced head.  It's an urban myth Peter Dutton auditioned for the part when the first film was being cast but was rejected as being "too scary".  If ever there's another film, the producers might reconsider and should his career in politics end (God forbid), he could bring to Voldemort the sense of menacing evil the character has never quite achieved.  Interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.

Stalk

Stalk (pronounced stawk)

(1) In botany, the stem or main axis of a herbaceous plant; any slender supporting or connecting part of a plant, as the petiole of a leaf, the peduncle of a flower, or the funicle of an ovule; the petiole, pedicel, or peduncle of a plant.

(2) In zoology, a slender supporting structure in animals such as crinoids and certain protozoans, coelenterates, and barnacles (such as the peduncle of the eyes of decapod crustaceans; the narrow basal portion of the abdomen of a hymenopterous insect.

(3) Analogous with plants, a stem, shaft, or slender supporting part of anything.

(4) In automotive use, a slender lever, usually mounted on or near the steering wheel, used by the driver to control a signal or function (when more than one function cam to be added, “multi-purpose stalk” was coined.

(5) In hunting (and by extension in certain parts of the military), stealthily to pursue or approach prey or quarry.

(6) To walk with measured, stiff, or haughty strides; to proceed in a steady, deliberate, or sinister manner.

(7) Persistently to pursue and, sometimes, attack a person with whom one is obsessed (also used to describe similar analogous behavior in the digital space of the internet.

(8) In architecture, an ornament in the Corinthian capital resembling the stalk of a plant, from which the volutes and helices spring.

(9) One of the two upright pieces of a ladder.

(10 In metal fabrication, an iron bar with projections inserted in a core to strengthen it (the core arbor).

1275–1325: From the Middle English stalke or stalken (stem of a plant), from stale (one of the uprights of a ladder, handle, stalk), the construct thought to be the Old English stal (a clipping of stalu (a stave or upright piece of wood (in the sense of a part of a tool or instrument) (and related to Old Frisian staal (handle))) + -k as a diminutive suffix.  The Old English bestealcian (to walk stealthily), stealcung (akin to steal) evolved in unison, as did the Middle Low German stolkeren and Danish stalke.  The Old English forms were from the Proto-Germanic stalla- (source also of the Old English steala (stalk, support) & steall (place), from the primitive Indo-European stol-no-, a suffixed form of stol-, as variant of the root stel- (to put, stand, put in order), with derivatives referring to a standing object or place.  The noun came to be applied to similar structures in animals after 1826.  The corn-stalk (stalk of a corn plant) became a standard descriptor in botany and commerce after 1816, perhaps influenced by the earlier (1800) bean-stalk (from children’s story).  Stalk & stalking are nouns & verbs, stalker is a noun, stalky, stalkiest & stalkier are adjectives.

The verb stalk (pursue stealthily) was from the Old English stealcian (as in bestealcian (to steal along, walk warily)), from the Proto-Germanic stalkon, frequentative of the primitive Indo-European stel- which may have been a variant of ster- (to rob, to steal) although some etymologists suggest the Old English word might have been influenced by the noun.  Interestingly, the meaning "harass obsessively" dates from 1991, well before the world wide web was generally available and at a time when the internet was used only by a tiny few.  The verb stalk is another of those creatures in English which must be annoying to those learning the language.  Originally it meant “moving quietly, with stealth, unobtrusively” and was applied to poachers (one who prowls for purposes of theft) of game (the property of others).  By the 1520s it had come to mean "walk haughtily" (ie essentially the opposite of the original) and etymologists it evolved either from stalk in the circa 1500 sense of “the poacher walking with long, awkward strides” or the Old English stealcung (a stalking, act of going stealthily) and related thus to stealc (steep, lofty).  In hunting, the word was first used of poachers but came later to be applied to all who hunted their prey.  A stalking-horse was originally literally a horse draped in trappings and trained to allow a fowler to conceal himself behind it to get within range of the game without alerting the birds.  The figurative use to refer to ”a person who participates in a proceeding to disguise its real purpose” was first noted in the early seventeenth century and survives in the language of modern politics despite being associated with animal cruelty.

Stalking and the web

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN)) operates the Large Hadron Collider (the LHC, a (very) big particle accelerator) to research high-energy physics.  The World Wide Web was invented at CERN in 1989 and the organization in January 1991 delivered the first web browser to other research institutions, a general public release on the internet happening that August.  Stalking quickly ensued.  The web didn’t create stalking in the modern sense of the word as “the unwanted or obsessive attention by an individual or group towards another person or group”; that behaviour has existed probably since the origins of mankind but the existence of the internet certainly opened a vista of possibilities in the way it could be done and use of the word in this context has spiked notably since the early 1990s.  Before the internet gained critical mass, the words stalk & stalking were used mostly in botany and zoology, the use in hunting but a niche.  One inventive use of stalk (sometimes as "stalking with intent") is to describe the rapid and purposeful gait adopted by some catwalk models, something which is often a reasonable achievement give the shoes they have to wear. 

Use of the word "stalking" in English, tracked by the Collins English Dictionary.  The gradual post-war decline reflected increasing urbanization, the spike in use after 1990 tracking with (1) the use to describe on-line behavior and (2) the codification of the offence of stalking in law.

Stalking behaviours are universally understood as related to harassment and intimidation although there were historic differences in definitions in psychiatry and psychology, as well as a myriad of variations in legislative detail between jurisdictions and depending on the jurisdiction, both civil remedies and criminal sanctions may be available.  Stalking is a crime in every state and territory in Australia and has to consist of more than one incident although some jurisdictions require at least three (single offences are dealt with under pre-existing legislation such as assault or intimidation).  The offense as defined in the Queensland Criminal Code (1899) differs in detail from what is used in other places but is illustrative of the modern approach.  Section 359B (as modified by the Criminal Code (Stalking) Amendment Act (1999)) of the Criminal Code and provides a maximum prison sentence of seven (7) years and details the offense as conduct:

(a) intentionally directed at a person (the "stalked person" ); and

(b) engaged in on any 1 occasion if the conduct is protracted or on more than 1 occasion; and

(c) consisting of 1 or more acts of the following, or a similar, type—

(i) following, loitering near, watching or approaching a person;

(ii) contacting a person in any way, including, for example, by telephone, mail, fax, email or through the use of any technology;

(iii) loitering near, watching, approaching or entering a place where a person lives, works or visits;

(iv) leaving offensive material where it will be found by, given to or brought to the attention of, a person;

(v) giving offensive material to a person, directly or indirectly;

(vi) an intimidating, harassing or threatening act against a person, whether or not involving violence or a threat of violence;

(vii) an act of violence, or a threat of violence, against, or against property of, anyone, including the defendant; and (d) that—

(i) would cause the stalked person apprehension or fear, reasonably arising in all the circumstances, of violence to, or against property of, the stalked person or another person; or

(ii) causes detriment, reasonably arising in all the circumstances, to the stalked person or another person.

Herr Vorderwulbecke, outside Westminster Magistrates Court, 2015.

German national Daniel Vorderwulbecke (b 1978) in 2015 became the subject of a restraining order issued in UK by a Westminster magistrate, Herr Vorderwulbecke believing he was (1) the nephew of the late Queen Elizabeth II and (2) married to Lindsay Lohan.  Ms Lohan was scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court to give evidence against Herr Vorderwulbecke (who also identifies as "King Lionheart") on two charges of stalking, relating to over a thousand messages and attempts to see her during theatrical rehearsals.  At the time he was being detained under the Mental Health Act at the Gordon Psychiatric Hospital in Pimlico but unfortunately she was unable to attend, apparently because the hearing conflicted with her completing a community service order for (unrelated) motoring offences in the US.  Herr Vorderwulbecke had what is in police vernacular "a bit of previous", having received several suspended sentences in his native Germany for offences involving violence and the charge sheet in England noted his "delusional obsession" with Ms Lohan.  Because Ms Lohan was not available to give evidence, the two stalking charges were dropped but he received a 12-week prison sentence (suspended for 18 months) and was made subject to a mental health treatment requirement for 12 months relating to harassment of a restaurant manager and two counts of criminal damage.

Caliginous

Caliginous (pronounced kuh-lij-uh-nuhs)

Misty; dim; dark; gloomy, murky (archaic).

1540-1550: From the Middle English caliginous (dim, obscure, dark), from either the Middle French caligineux (misty; obscure) or directly from its Latin etymon cālīginōsus (misty; dark, obscure), from caliginem (nominative caligo) (mistiness, darkness, fog, gloom), of uncertain origin.  The construct of cālīginōsus was cālīgin- (stem of cālīgō or cālīginis (mist; darkness)) + -ōsus or –ous (the suffix meaning “full of, prone to” used to form adjectives from nouns.  The origin of caliginem has attracted speculation, one etymologist pondering links with the Greek kēlas (mottled; windy (of clouds)) & kēlis (stain, spot), the Sanskrit kala- (black) or the Latin calidus (with a white mark on the forehead).  Caliginous is an adjective, caliginousness is a noun and caliginously is an adverb.

Procession in the Fog (1828) by Ernst Ferdinand Oehme (1797-1855), oil on canvas, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany.

Lindsay Lohan in Among the Shadows (2019).  In film, using a dark and murky environment can help create an ambiance of gloom and doom, something helpful for several genres, most obviously horror.  Directed by Tiago Mesquita with a screenplay by Mark Morgan, Among the Shadows is a thriller which straddles the genres, elements of horror and the supernatural spliced in as required.  Although in production since 2015, with the shooting in London and Rome not completed until the next year, it wasn’t until 2018 when, at the European Film Market, held in conjunction with the Berlin International Film Festival, Tombstone Distribution listed it, the distribution rights acquired by VMI, Momentum and Entertainment One, and VMI Worldwide.  In 2019, it was released progressively on DVD and video on demand (VOD), firstly in European markets, the UK release delayed until mid-2020.  In some markets, for reasons unknown, it was released with the title The Shadow Within.

Not highly regarded as an example of the film-maker’s art, Among the Shadows is of some interest to students of the technique of editing and continuity.  As spliced in as some of the elements may have been, just as obviously interpolated was much of the footage involving Ms Lohan and while the editing has been done quite well, there are limitations to the extent to which this can disguise discontinuities.  In this case the caliginous atmospherics probably did help the editing process, the foggy dimness providing its own ongoing visual continuity.

Daytime in London during the Great Smog of 1952.

Ghastly things had been seen in the London air before the Great Smog of 1952.  In the high summer of 1858, there had been the Great Stink, caused by an extended spell of untypically hot and windless weather, conditions which exacerbated the awfulness of the smell of the untreated human waste and industrial effluent flowing in the Thames river, great globs of the stuff accumulating on the banks, the consequence of a sewerage system which had been out-paced by population growth, the muck still discharged untreated,  straight into the waterway.

The weather played a part too in the caliginous shroud which for almost a week engulfed the capital early in December 1952.  That year, mid-winter proved unusually cold and windless, resulting in an anti-cyclonic system (which usually would have passed over the British Isles) remaining static, trapping airborne pollutants and forming a thick layer of smog over the city.  The conditions lasted for several days and cleared only when the winter winds returned.  What made things especially bad was that in the early post-war years, most of the UK’s high quality coal was exported to gain foreign exchange.  Despite having been on the winning side in World War II, the cost of the struggle had essentially bankrupted the country and the mantra to industry quickly became “export or die”; thus the coal allocated for domestic consumption was “dirty” and of poor quality.  The official reports at the time indicated a death-toll of some 4000 directly attributed to the Great Smog (respiratory conditions, car accidents, trips & falls etc) with another 10,000 odd suffering some illnesses of some severity.  However, more recent statistical analysis, using the same methods of determining “surplus deaths” as were applied to the COVID-19 numbers, suggested there may have been as many as 12,000 fatalities.  It was the public disquiet over the Great Smog of 1952 which ultimately would trigger the Clean Air Act (1956), which although not the UK’s first environmental legislation, did until the 1980s prove the most far reaching.

Goblin

Goblin (pronounced gob-lin)

(1) In folklore, a small grotesque supernatural creature (depicted often as elf or sprite, regarded as mischievous and malevolent towards people.

(2) In modern fiction, one of various hostile supernatural creatures, in fantasy writing often depicted as malicious, grotesque and diminutive humanoids (sometimes also described as trolls or orcs.

1300–1350: From the Middle English gobelin & gobelyn (a devil, incubus, mischievous and ugly fairy), from the Middle French, from the Old Northern French gobelin (the source also of the Norman goubelin and the Walloon gobelin), perhaps a blend of the Old Dutch kobeholdo (goblin) (related also to the Dutch kabouter, the Middle High German kobold and the German Kobold) and the Late Latin cobalus (mountain sprite), from the Ancient Greek κόβαλος (kóbalos) (rogue, knave; goblin).  It displaced the native Old English pūca and was later picked up by some Easter European languages including Polish and Serbo-Croatian.  Goblin is a noun; the noun plural is goblins.

Curiously, in the twelfth century, there was also the Medieval Latin gobelinus, the name of a spirit haunting the region of Evreux, in chronicle of Orderic (Ordericus in the Latin) Vitalis) (1075-circa 1142) which etymologists say is unrelated either to the Germanic kobold or the Medieval Latin cabalus, from the Greek kobalos (impudent rogue, knave) & kobaloi (wicked spirits invoked by rogues), of unknown origin; it’s speculated it may be a diminutive of the proper name Gobel chosen for some reason (even as an in-joke) by the author.  Orderic’s Chronicles have been extensively cross-referenced against other primary and secondary sources and historians regard them as among the more reliable Medieval texts.  His other great work was the Historia Ecclesiastica, written in the last twenty years of his life (the bulk of the text composed between 1123-1132).  One interesting aspect of the history noted by etymologists was that although the French gobelin seems not to have appeared for over two centuries after the word emerged in English, it does appear in twelfth century texts in Medieval Latin and it’s thought few people who in some way adhered to folk magic used Medieval Latin.  John Wycliffe (circa 1328–1384) must have thought the word sufficiently well-known to use it in his translation of the Bible (published 1382-1395) intended to be read by (or more typically read to) a wide audience.  Psalms 91:5: Thou schalt not drede of an arowe fliynge in the dai, of a gobelyn goynge in derknessis.  Unfortunately, in the King James Version (KJV; 1611), the passage was rendered as the less evocative: Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.

A goblin shark (left) and a 1962 Dodge Dart station wagon (right).

The horrid looking goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni, also knonw as the elfin shark), goblin shark a calque of its traditional Japanese name tenguzame (tengu a Japanese mythical creature often depicted with a long nose and red face).  The last survivor of ancient lineage and one that retains several "primitive" traits, it's been called a "living fossil" and despite the fearsome appearance, dwelling at great depth, there have been no reports of attacks on people.  There's nothing to suggest Dodge's stylists were in the early 1960s influenced by the sight of a goblin shark; within Chrysler, it was just their time of "peak weirdness".

The system works: A goblin shark eats a fish.  Things didn't work out so well for the 1962 Chryslers which received some hasty re-styles to achieve a more conventional look. 

Folklore (and latter-day fantasy writing) has produced a number of derived terms including gobbo, goblette, gobioid, gobony, goblincore, goblinish, goblinize, goblinkind, goblinry, goblinesque & goblinish.  The history of the goblin’s depiction as something grotesque attracted some in zoology who named the goblin spider (which doesn’t look much more frightening than most arthropods) and the truly bizarre goblin shark which does live up to the name.  The noun hobgoblin dates from the 1520s, the construct being hob (elf), from Hobbe, a variant of Rob (short for Robin Goodfellow, an elf character in German folklore) + goblin.  Hobgoblins & goblins are all supernatural and all regard humans with malicious intent.  Traditionally, they are depicted as human-animal hybrids with an appearance tending to the former and they were said to assail, afflict and generally annoy folk before retreating to their haunts under bridges on in secluded spots in forests; Shakespeare’s contrast being: “Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,” (Hamlet, act I, scene 4).  Gremlins are a more modern creation and are especially prevalent in machinery, breaking things and disrupting production, their cousins in software being bugs.

Goblins from Texas en masse (left) and the one-off Goblin, Perth, Australia, 1959.

Although there have been Demons and Ghosts, no car manufacture seems ever have been tempted to build a Goblin although one Texas-based operation does offer a minimalist kit-car with the name and an enterprising Australian in 1959 chose it for a home-made special.  The Antipodean Goblin was the bastard offspring of unpromising origins: the chassis of a 1928 Essex, the drive-train from a wrecked Holden 48-215 (aka FX, 1948-1953).  Unusually for the era in which aluminum or fibreglass was preferred by small-scale producers, the body was all steel and apparently recycled from the donor Holden (although the grill components appear borrowed from the later FJ Holden (1956-1956), re-shaped with lines which owed something to both the MGA and AC Ace, later to become famous as the Shelby Cobra.  Its fate is unknown but, in the ways of such things, survival is unlikely.

1974 AMC Gremlin X.  Despite the ungainly look, it was a commercial success.

There was however a Gremlin, built between 1970-1978 by American Motors Corporation (AMC) (production in Mexico lasted until 1983 under AMC's Vehículos Automotores Mexicanos (VAM) subsidiary).  Created in the AMC manner (in a hurry, at low cost), the Gremlin was essentially a shortened AMC Hornet (1970-1977) with a kammback tail and was a successful foray into the sub-compact (in US terms) market, something well-timed given the importance the segment would assume during the difficult decade the 1970s became.  Purchased almost exclusively on the basis of cost-breakdown, the Gremlin did however attract the interest of the ever imaginative drag-racing crowd because, although AMC never fitted anything more powerful than a distinctly non-powerful (malaise-era) 304 cubic inch (5.0 litre) V8, because (like Pontiac), AMC used much the same block size for all second-generation V8s, fitting their 401 (6.6) to the Gremlin was simple.  Many were produced, some in small runs with factory support and, being relatively light and small, the performance was more than competitive with some of the notably more expensive competition.

De Havilland Goblin jet-engine schematic (left) and prototype Gloster Meteor (DG207G) with Goblin engines, de Havilland airfield, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, 26 October 1945.

The origin of the jet engine lay in designs by French and German engineers which in principle would have worked but, as the authorities at the time realized, the metallurgy of the time hadn’t advanced to the point where alloys light enough to be viable and able to withstand the temperatures to which they’d be subjected, hadn’t been developed.  Progress however was made and in 1931 an English engineer was granted a patent for what was the first recognizably modern jet engine although, bizarre as it seems in hindsight, the Air Ministry allowed the patent to lapse and it was the German Heinkel company which first flew a jet-powered aircraft when the He 178 took briefly to the air in August 1939.  Fortunately, the Luftwaffe high-command was as short-sighted as the Air Ministry (“the bloody Air Marshals” Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964) called them while minister for aircraft production (1940-1941)) and, knowing their immediate need was for a capable, reliable fighter force within two years, declined to fund development of a project which would absorb at least three years of expensive development to be battle-ready.  The British however by then saw the potential and in June 1939 ordered production of experimental airframes and engines; it was these which would become the basis of the Gloster Meteor, powered by the de Havilland Goblin.  Both would enjoy surprisingly long lives, the Goblin in series production between 1944-1954 while the Meteor, although by then obsolescent, served with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 1955, while in overseas service, some militaries didn’t retire their last planes until 1974.

Lindsay Lohan in goblin mode.

“Goblin mode” is a neologism for rejecting societal expectations and living in an unkempt, hedonistic manner without regards to self-image and Oxford University Press (OUP), publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), recently announced “goblin mode” as their 2022 word of the year.  Ignoring (as in the past) criticism from pedants they had picked a phrase rather than a word, OUP also provided a mini-usage guide, suggesting the most popular forms were “I am in goblin mode” or “to go goblin mode” and the meaning imparted was “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy”.  This year’s award differs from OUP’s usual practice in that it was chosen by public vote from a choice of three selected by their lexicographers.  Unlike some recent elections, there can be no suggesting this one was “stolen”, goblin mode winning in a landslide with 318,956 votes, 93% of the valid ballots cast.  While it can’t be proven, the margin of victory might have been greater still had those already in goblin mode not been too lazy to bother voting.

The win has provoked some comment because, despite having been used on-line since first appearing (apparently on twitter) in 2009, it’s hardly been popular and some have speculated its success can be attributed to it being the one which most appealed to an audience with memories of COVID-19 lockdowns still raw, a goodly number of voters probably recognizing it was goblin mode into which many had lapsed during isolation.  The other choices OUP offered were “Metaverse” and #IStandWith”, both probably more familiar but, lacking novelty and the quality of self-identification, clearly less appealing.  OUP also noted the suggestion there may be in the zeitgeist, something of a rebellion against “the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media”.

The Nightmare (1781), oil on canvas by the Swiss-English painter John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Detroit Institute of Arts.  It's a popular image to use to illustrate something "nightmare related".

When the political activist Max Eastman (1883–1969) visited Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in Vienna in 1926, he observed a print of Fuseli's The Nightmare, hung next to Rembrandt's  (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) The Anatomy Lesson.  Although well known for his work on dream analysis (although it’s the self-help industry more than the neo-Freudians who have filled the book-shelves), Freud never mentions Fuseli's famous painting in his writings but it has been used by others in books and papers on the subject.  The speculation is Freud liked the work (clearly, sometimes, a painting is just a painting) but nightmares weren’t part of the intellectual framework he developed for psychoanalysis which suggested dreams (apparently of all types) were expressions of wish fulfilments while nightmares represented the superego’s desire to be punished; later he would refine this with the theory a traumatic nightmare was a manifestation of “repetition compulsion”.  The juxtaposition of sleeping beauty and goblin provoked many reactions when first displayed and encouraged Fuseli to paint several more versions.  The Nightmare has been the subject of much speculation and interpretation, including the inevitable debate between the Freudians and Jungians and was taken as a base also by political cartoonists, a bunch more nasty in earlier centuries than our more sanitized age.

Conversation

Conversation (pronounced kon-ver-sey-shuhn)

(1) A (usually) informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc, by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy.

(2) Association or social intercourse; intimate acquaintance.

(3) In tort law, as criminal conversation, an action variously available (according to circumstances), pursuant to adultery.

(4) Behavior or manner of living (obsolete).

(5) Close familiarity; intimate acquaintance, as from constant use or study (now rare).

1300–1350: From the Middle English conversacion & conversacioun, from the Old French conversacion (behavior, life, way of life, monastic life), from the Latin conversātiōnem (accusative singular of conversātiō) (conversation) (frequent use, frequent abode in a place, intercourse, conversation), noun of action from the past-participle stem of conversari (to live, dwell, live with, keep company with), the passive voice of conversare (to turn about, turn about with (conversor (abide, keep company with) a frequently used derivative)), from an assimilated form, the construct being com (with, together) + versare, frequentative of vertere (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European root wer (to turn, bend).  Both the mid-fourteenth century meanings (1) "place where one lives or dwells" and (2) "general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world" are long obsolete.  Those senses were picked up from the Old French conversacion and directly from the Latin conversationem.

The modern sense of "informal interchange of thoughts and sentiments by spoken words" dates from the 1570s but this for a long time ran in parallel with being a synonym for "sexual intercourse", in use since at least the late fourteenth century.  Depending on the circles in which one moved, that might have been the source of misunderstandings.  In common law, the tort of criminal conversation emerged in the late eighteenth century.  The "conversation-piece" was noted from 1712 in the sense of "painting representing a group of figures arranged as if in conversation" al la "still life"; by 1784 it had come to mean "subject for conversation, something about which to talk".

The tort of criminal conversation

Like “knowing” (of biblical origin), "conversation" was a euphemism for illicit sex and in this sense has long been obsolete except as “criminal conversation”. which, at common law, is a tort which can be used in proceedings pursuant to certain types of adultery.  Dating from the eighteenth century, although abolished in England in 1857, the tort survived in Australia until 1975 when the Family Law Act replaced the old Matrimonial Causes Act, a piece of law reform which much disappointed Liberal Party lawyers, not a few moralists (professional & amateur) and readers of the Melbourne Truth, a most disreputable tabloid noted for its outstanding racing form guide and publication of salacious photographs (often taken through the windows of St Kilda motels) used as evidence in divorce cases.  The action remains available in a handful of jurisdictions in the United States where the rules can be more liberal than permitted in English courts in that women are entitled to sue.  The name has always been misleading; although called "criminal" conversation, the action was only ever strictly a claim for damages in money.

Example one (Cheryl & Gareth): A man has an affair with a married woman.  

The husband of the unfaithful wife would have been able to sue the unfaithful husband in the tort of criminal conversation.

It was a precisely defined tort which existed to allow wronged parties to seek monetary compensation for acts of unfaithfulness.  Under criminal conversation, within certain limitations of timings and sequence of events, a husband could sue any man who slept with his wife, even if consensual.  If the couple was already separated, the husband could sue only if the separation was caused by the person he was suing.

Example two (Vikki & Barnaby): A man has an affair with an unmarried woman.  

No action would have been possible in the tort of criminal conversation because the woman has no husband to raise the action.  Only a husband could be the plaintiff, and only the "other man" could be the defendant.

Reflecting the moral basis of the tort, each separate adulterous act could give rise to a separate claim for criminal conversation and curiously, the plaintiff, defendant and wife were not permitted to take the stand, evidence being given by other observers, often servants in the employment of one of the parties to the suit.  The tort was a matter wholly a creature of civil law and the definitions of adultery codified in canon law had no relevance to the offence or any subsequent penalty.  Under canon law, someone was deemed to have committed adultery if they enjoyed intimacy with someone while married to another whereas if the other party was also married, the offence was double adultery but neither aggravated the offence or could be offered in mitigation.

Conversation piece: Lindsay Lohan in conversation with her sister Aliana, La Conversation bakery & café, West Hollywood, California, April 2012.  Sadly, La Conversation is now closed.

Conversation piece: The Schutz Family and their Friends on a Terrace (1725) by Philip Mercier, Tate Gallery.  As a genre in painting, the "conversation piece" was a notionally informal (though obviously often staged) group portrait, usually small in scale and depicting families (and sometimes groups of friends) in domestic interior or garden settings.  They were popular for much of the eighteenth century, the most noted artists in the style including Philip Mercier (1689-1760), William Hogarth (1697-1764), Arthur Devis (1712-1787) and Johan Zoffany (1733-1810).

The form is interesting because it reflects the emergence of a new component of the leisured class, the newly rich merchants, or mine and factory owners whose wealth was derived from the profits of industrial revolution and the country’s expanding international trade.  The painters tended to show their subjects in genteel interaction, taking tea, playing games or sitting with their pets.  Conversation pieces were thus different from the formal court or grand style portraits favored by the aristocracy and were an attempt to represent the new middle class behaving as they imagined the old gentry did in everyday life.  Their influence worked also in reverse, aristocratic and royal patrons soon commissioning artist to paint their families in a similar vein.

Hecatomb

Hecatomb (pronounced hek-uh-tohm or hek-uh-toom)

(1) In ancient Greece and Rome, any great public sacrifice and feast, originally a public sacrifice to the gods of 100 oxen.

(2) In Medieval use, by extension, any great sacrifice; a great number of people, animals or things, especially as sacrificed or destroyed; a large amount.

(3) In modern use (loosely), any great slaughter.

1585–1595:  From the Latin hecatombē, from the Ancient Greek ἑκατόμβη (hekatómbē) (originally (and literally) “an offering of 100 oxen” and later “any great sacrifice”), from hekatombwā, the construct derived from the idea of ἑκατόν (hekatón) (one hundred) + -bwā, (a form which etymologists have always found curious an assumed to be a derivative of βοῦς (boûs) (ox), from the primitive Indo-European root gwou- (ox, bull, cow).  The origin of hékaton is also a mystery but the construct may be from hem-katon, with hen (a neuter of heis or eis (one)) + katon (hundred).  The first month of the Attic calendar (July-August) was Hekatombaion, the annual season of sacrifice.    Hecatomb is a noun; the noun plural is plural hecatombs.

Hecatomb remains rare and obscure except in historic use but can, in the correct context, be used as a linguistic flourish as an alternative to warfare, havoc, killing, slaughter, crime, butchery, bloodshed, homicide, murder, liquidation, rapine, blood, blitz, holocaust, extermination, annihilation, shambles etc but should not replace the specific forms genocide or the holocaust; opinion is divided on whether it’s a suitable substitute for events pre-dating World War II which were historically described as holocausts.  Holocaust was from the Middle English holocaust (burnt offering), from the Anglo-Norman holocauste, the Old French holocauste & olocauste (which exists in modern French as holocaust), from the Late Latin holocaustum, from the Ancient Greek ὁλόκαυστον (holókauston), the neuter form of ὁλόκαυστος (holókaustos) (wholly burnt), the construct being ὅλος (hólos) (entire, whole (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European solh- (whole)) + καυστός (kaustós) (burnt), from καίω (kaíō) (to burn, burn up), the source of which is uncertain although there may be some link with the primitive Indo-European kehw-.  The verb is derived from the noun

The word holocaust is regarded by some as problematic (in the modern way that word is now used).  Holocaust has since at least the 1960s been established as the descriptor of the industrialized mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe taken in 1941 and formalized in 1942.  Some Jewish scholars however criticize the use of the word because of the historical associations with voluntary sacrifices to God and don’t wish any to draw the inference there was any voluntary religious purpose in the Nazi crime, either from the perspective either of the perpetrators or the victims.  Their preferred term is Shoah, (from the Hebrew שׁוֹאָה‎ (catastrophe).  Other Jewish scholars note the technical point but argue the use of Holocaust (capitalized) uniquely as a descriptor for the events of 1942-1945 is didactically helpful in a way a wider adoption of Shoah would not serve.

The Pentelic marble sculpture of the procession of sacrificial bulls during Hekatombaion, from the Parthenon frieze.

According to a legend which appears in more than one source, when the Greek philosopher Pythagoras discovered what came to be called the Pythagorean theorem (the one about famous right-triangles), he celebrated by sacrificing a hecatomb (100 head) of oxen to the gods.  Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832–1898) is remembered now mostly for Alice’s many adventures but he was also a prolific author of works in mathematics, a discipline in which he took a first at Oxford.  In A New Theory of Parallels (1895), he wrote his whimsical take on the legend of the Pythagoras’s sacrifice.  As an anecdote it probably wouldn’t get many laughs in a any of today’s stand-up comedy clubs but it’s a nice relic of gentlemanly Victorian humor by one who was once an Oxford under-graduate and never quite recovered:

But neither thirty years, nor thirty centuries, affect the clearness, or the charm, of Geometrical truths.  Such a theorem as “the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the sides” is as dazzlingly beautiful now as it was in the day when Pythagoras first discovered it, and celebrated its advent, it is said, by sacrificing a hecatomb of oxen — a method of doing honor to Science that has always seemed to me slightly exaggerated and uncalled-for.  One can imagine oneself, even in these degenerate days, marking the epoch of some brilliant scientific discovery by inviting a convivial friend or two, to join one in a beefsteak and a bottle of wine.  But a hecatomb of oxen!  It would produce a quite inconvenient supply of beef.

That in the German vernacular someone thought a dunce is called “an ox” allowed the penning of some Teutonic whimsy, the satirist Karl Ludwig Börne (1786–1837) observing: “After Pythagoras discovered his fundamental theorem he sacrificed a hecatomb of oxen. Since that time all dunces tremble whenever a new truth is discovered.”  The botanist and romantic poet Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838) also liked the pun which he used in a short verse:

Truth lasts throughout eternity,

When once the stupid world its light discerns:

The theorem, coupled with Pythagoras’ name,

Holds true today, as’t did in olden times.

A splendid sacrifice Pythagoras brought

The gods, who blessed him with this ray divine;

A great burnt offering of a hundred kine,

Proclaimed afar the sage’s gratitude.

Now since that day, all cattle [blockheads] when they scent

New truth about to see the light of day,

In frightful bellowing manifest their dismay;

Pythagoras fills them all with terror;

And powerless to shut out light by error,

In sheer despair, they shut their eyes and tremble.