Phony

Phony (pronounced foh-nee)

(1) Not real or genuine; fake; counterfeit; imitation; hoax.

(2) An insincere or pretentious person.

1890s:  Phony is thought a US vernacular alteration of the British fawney, the word for a gilded brass ring used in a confidence trick called the "fawney rig".  In this scam, the trickster drops a ring (or a purse containing some valuables) and runs to pick the item up at the same time as the victim who spies it on the ground.  The trickster asserts that the found treasure should be split between them and the victim who "found" the item, convinced now of its value, is persuaded give the con artist some money in order to keep the phony item.  The alternative (mostly UK) spelling is phoney.  Actual origin of fawney seems to be a descriptor of a finger-ring, a word brought to England by the Irish, derived from the Irish fáinne (ring) and it’s likely the Irish Diaspora which introduced it to the United States.  Although it’s a bit murky, fáinne may be derived from the same Indo-European root (hehno) as the Latin ānus (ring) which existed also in Old French and first noted in English in 1658.

Speculative alternatives have been suggested.  An early twentieth-century notion thought it from a use of a telephone to lure victims to false appointments in order that a criminal operation might be carried out, further conjecturing connections either with phoo, a term of contempt, or funny.  No etymological evidence was offered.  Another origin, widely circulated by the popular press, says the word is derived from the name of a manufacturer of cheap jewellery, a Mr Forney and it’s likely the authors mistook fawney for the sadly maligned chap.  The OED agrees phony originates in colloquial American English, but dates it from an 1893 reference to the horse-racing slang, “phony bookmakers,” quoting The Chicago Tribune.  The OED defines them as “unofficial bookmakers issuing betting slips on which they do not intend to pay out.” 

Most interesting (and least likely) is the pondered derivation from Ancient Greek via Latin with an origin said to date from the Punic Wars.  During these wars, the Romans used the phrase “Punic Faith” which implied treacherousness and dishonesty and Poeni is the Latin word from which is derived Punic, itself from the Ancient Greek Phoeni.  While it seems the Phoenicians were regarded by the Romans as an untrustworthy lot, two-thousand-odd years passed before phony emerged in English and there’s no support for the theory.  Apparently unrelated too is the linguistic coincidence that in Welsh, poeni means “to hurt, to ail, to pain, to worry, to fret, to pester, to plague, to bother or to nag”.

Fake, phony and truthful hyperbole

The Trump presidency saw a spike in the use of phony.  Donald Trump (b 1946; US President 2017-2021) liked the word, using it to against both opponents and any news outlet at all critical, taking alliterative delight in describing Elizabeth Warren (b 1949, United States Senator for Massachusetts since 2013) as “a phony Pocahontas…” after her DNA test revealed the Native American bloodline she’d claimed was less than a small fraction of one percent.  In general use, he prefers the punchier fake news but also uses phony, often as a synonym but also as an analogue for negative.  In his 1978 book The Art of the Deal (which if Trump didn’t entirely write, he at least influenced), he noted the effectiveness of “…an innocent form of exaggeration…” which he called “…truthful hyperbole”, something his many critics noted was well suited to the age of social media and claimed was but a variation of the Nazis’ rule of propaganda that small lies are ineffective but big lies work well.  That’s most often attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933-1945) but is actually from the first volume of Adolf Hitler’s (1889–1945; German Chancellor 1933-1945) Mein Kampf, Goebbels memorably using the phrase years later in a critique of British wartime propaganda.  Goebbels was however well aware of the limitations of the use of untruths and in The Art of the Deal, Trump also cautioned there were limits to what can be done with variations of the phony, not so much what but for how long:  “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

Others like it too.  Mitt Romney (b 1947, US senator (Republican) for Utah since 2019), thinking Trump had no chance of winning the presidency, labelled him “…a phony and a fraud” adding “…his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.''  They did (briefly) make up, apparently without “multiple choice” Mitt having to drop to his knees (although that was never confirmed or denied), the former president endorsing Romney’s successful 2018 mid-term campaign to replace Orrin Hatch (1934-2022) as a senator for Utah. 

Donald Trump and "multiple choice" Mitt Romney, Jean-Georges Restaurant, Trump International Hotel & Tower, New York, 2016.

Trump’s endorsement for the Senate seat was however little more than a pat on the head for a well-behaved vassal.  A little after Trump won the 2016 election, Romney, rather as King Henry IV (1050–1106; King of Germany from 1054-1105, Holy Roman Emperor from 1084-1105) made his pilgrimage to Canossa to seek forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States 1073-1085), turned up at the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York to pay homage and, essentially, beg for a job.  “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump” Romney gushed after dinner with Trump at the hotel’s Jean-Georges restaurant.  “We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.”  Clearly Romney wanted to be secretary of state, the US’s chief diplomat.  That would have been an interesting assignment, given that in decades of public life Romney had shown scant evidence of original thought, so he’d have been Trump’s errand-boy, parroting a foreign policy not of his own creation, most observers concluded his desire for an important job outweighed his dislike for Trump.  What he thought being the international emissary for a man he’d earlier condemned as “neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president” either didn’t cross his mind or didn’t matter because he just wanted an important job.  Trump missed the opportunity to appoint Romney which was a shame because he’d have been a fine addition to a cabinet which might have included Rudy Giuliani as attorney-general, Sarah Palin as treasury secretary, Newt Gingrich as defense secretary and Ted Cruz as CIA director.  Something like that, truly a ministry of all the talents, would have been good to watch.

Serial phoney tans on Lindsay Lohan, the preferred term being "fake tan".  In fairness however, the redheads and other freckled folk should avoid the sun and use spray-on and other tanning products in preference to any form of radiation, natural or artificial.  An even more desirable option is to embrace the pale ascetic, and alluring look and one which offers glittering opportunities to contrast with dark fabrics, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.   

Phoney Time: One of the "Time magazine covers" prominently once displayed in several Trump golf courses.  Wholly phoney, they’ve since been removed.

In A Brief History of Time (1988), English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) used the concept of "imaginary time" as a conceptual tool to illustrate certain aspects of his theories but imaginary covers of Time magazine are something different.  Imaginary time has been misunderstood and, given the mysteriousness of much of which it's used to describe, that's perhaps understandable.  What it is is a mathematical representation of time used to build models of the relationship between special relativity and quantum mechanics, expressed using equations written with what mathematicians call imaginary numbers.  For most of us, it replaces one impenetrable idea with another but between consenting mathematicians and cosmologists in the privacy of their labs, it's a hoot.      

Inamorata

Inamorata (pronounced in-am-uh-rah-tuh or in-am-uh-rah-tuh)

A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover

1645-1655: From the Italian innamorata (mistress, sweetheart), noun use of the feminine form of innamorato (the noun plural innamoratos or innamorati) (lover, boyfriend), past principle of innamorare (to inflame with love), the construct being in- (in) + amore (love), from the Latin amor.  A familiar modern variation is enamor.  Inamorata is a noun; the noun plural is inamoratas.

Words like inamorata litter English and endure in their niches, not just because poets find them helpful but because they can be used to convey subtle nuances in a way a word which appears synonymous might obscure.  One might think the matter of one’s female lover might be linguistically (and sequentially) covered by (1) girlfriend, (2) fiancé, (3) wife and (4) mistress but to limit things to those is to miss splitting a few hairs.

A man’s girlfriend is a romantic partner though not of necessity a sexual one because some religions expressly prohibit such things without benefit of marriage and there are the faithful who follow these teachings.  One can have as many girlfriends as one can manage but the expectation they should be enjoyed one at a time.  Women can have girlfriends too but (usually) they are “friends who are female” rather than anything more except of course among lesbians where the relationship is the same as with men.  Gay men too have girlfriends who are “female friends”, some of whom may be “fag hags” a term which now is generally a homophobic slur unless used within the LGB factions of the LGBTQQIAAOP community where it can be jocular or affectionate.

A fiancé is a women to whom one is engaged to be married, in many jurisdictions once a matter of legal significance because an offer of marriage could be enforced under the rules of contract law.  While common law courts didn’t go as far as ordering “specific performance of the contract”, they would award damages on the basis of a “breach of promise”, provided it could be adduced that three of the four essential elements of a contract existed: (1) offer, (2) certainty of terms and (3) acceptance.  The fourth component: (4) consideration (ie payment), wasn’t mentioned because it was assumed to be implicit in the nature of the exchange; a kind of deferred payment as it were.  It was one of those rarities in common law where things operated almost wholly in favor of women in that they could sue a man who changed his mind while they were free to break-off an engagement without fear of legal consequences though there could be social and familial disapprobation.  Throughout the English-speaking world, the breach of promise tort in marriage matters has almost wholly been abolished, remaining on the books in the a couple of US states (not all of which lie south of the Mason-Dixon Line) but even where it exists it’s now a rare action and one likely to succeed only in exceptional circumstances or where a particularly fragrant plaintiff manages to charm a particularly sympathetic judge.

The spelling fiancé (often as fiance) is now common for all purposes.  English borrowed both the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) from the French verb fiancer (to get engaged) in the mid nineteenth century and that both spellings were used is an indication it was one of those forms which was, as an affectation, kept deliberately foreign because English typically doesn’t use gendered endings. Both the French forms were ultimately from the Classical Latin fidare (to trust), a form familiar in law and finance in the word fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūciārius (held in trust), from fīdūcia (trust) which, as a noun & adjective, describes relationships between individuals and entities which rely on good faith and accountability.  Pronunciation of both fiancé and fiancée is identical so the use of the differentiated forms faded by the late twentieth century and even publications like Country Life and Tattler which like writing with class-identifiers seem to have updated.  Anyway, because English doesn’t have word endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female betrothed would seem unfashionable in the age of gender fluidity but identities exist as they’re asserted and one form or the other might be deployed as a political statement by all sides in the gender wars.

Model Emily Ratajkowski's (b 1991) clothing label is called Inamorata, a clever allusion to her blended nickname EmRata.  This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in three aspects.

Wife was from the Middle English wyf & wif, from the Old English wīf (woman, wife), from the Proto-West Germanic wīb, from the Proto-Germanic wībą (woman, wife) and similar forms existed as cognates in many European languages.  The wife was the woman one had married and by the early twentieth century, in almost all common law jurisdictions (except those where systems of tribal law co-existed) it was (more or less) demanded one may have but one at a time.  Modern variations include “common-law wife” and the “de-facto wife”.  The common-law marriage (also known as the "sui iuris (from the Latin and literally “of one's own right”) marriage", the “informal marriage” and the “non-ceremonial marriage”) is a kind of legal quasi-fiction whereby certain circumstances can be treated as a marriage for many purposes even though no formal documents have been registered, all cases assessed on their merits.  Although most Christian churches don’t long dwell on the matter, this is essentially what marriage in many cases was before the institutional church carved out its role.  In popular culture the term is used loosely to refer sometimes just about any un-married co-habitants regardless of whether or not the status has been acknowledged by a court.  De facto was from the Latin de facto, the construct being dē (from, by) + the ablative of factum (fact, deed, act).  It translates as “in practice, what actually is regardless of official or legal status” and is thus differentiated from de jure, the construct being dē (from) + iūre (law) which describes something’s legal status.  In general use, a common-law wife and de facto wife are often thought the same thing but the latter differs that in some jurisdictions the parameters which define the status are codified in statute whereas a common law wife can be one declared by a court on the basis of evidence adduced.

Mistress dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English maistresse, from the Old & Middle French maistresse (in Modern French maîtresse), feminine of maistre (master), the construct being maistre (master) + -esse or –ess (the suffix which denotes a female form of otherwise male nouns denoting beings or persons), the now rare derived forms including the adjective mistressed and the noun mistressship.  In an example of the patriarchal domination of language, when a woman was said to have acquired complete knowledge of or skill in something, she’s was said to have “mastered” the topic.  A mistress (in this context) was a woman who had a continuing, extramarital sexual relationship with one man, especially a man who, in return for an exclusive and continuing liaison, provides her with financial support.  The term (like many) has become controversial and critics (not all of them feminists) have labeled it “archaic and sexist”, suggesting the alternatives “companion” or “lover” but neither convey exactly the state of the relationship so mistress continues to endure.  The critics have a point in that mistress is both “loaded” and “gendered” given there’s no similarly opprobrious term for adulterous men but the word is not archaic; archaic words are those now rare to the point of being no longer in general use and “mistress” has hardly suffered that fate, thought-crime hard to stamp out.

This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in another three aspects.

Inamorata was useful because while it had a whiff of the illicit, that wasn’t always true but what it did always denote was a relationship of genuine love whatever the basis so one’s inamorata could also be one’s girlfriend, fiancé or mistress though perhaps not one’s wife, however fond one might be of her.  An inamorata would be a particular flavor of mistress in the way paramour or leman didn't imply.  Paramour was from the Middle English paramour, paramoure, peramour & paramur, from the Old French par amor (literally “for love's sake”), the modern pronunciation apparently an early Modern English re-adaptation of the French and a paramour was a mistress, the choice between the two perhaps influenced by the former tending to the euphemistic.  The archaic leman is now so obscure that it tends to be used only by the learned as a term of disparagement against women in the same way a suggestion mendaciousness is thought a genteel way to call someone a liar.  Dating from 1175-1225, it was from the Middle English lemman, a variant of leofman, from the Old English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart (and attested also as a personal name)), the construct being lief +‎ man (beloved person).  Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof (dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz and was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo & ljoo, the West Frisian leaf, the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs, the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the Polish luby.  Man is from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European mon (man).  A linguistic relic, leman applied originally either to men or women and had something of a romantic range.  It could mean someone of whom one was very fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly drifted to the latter: someone's sweetheart or paramour.  In the narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, that would now just confuse.

About the concubine, while there was a tangled history, there has never been much confusion.  Dating from 1250-1300, concubine was from the Middle English concubine (a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin concubīna, derived from cubare (to lie down), the construct being concub- (variant stem of concumbere & concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix).  The status (a woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the laity.  The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess although this title was wholly honorary and of no religious significance although presumably, as a vicar's wife might fulfil some role in the parish, they might have been delegated to do this and that.

Once were inamoratas: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, barefoot in Los Cabos, Mexico, 2008.

Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“sexually to violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction").  In Medieval Latin it also meant meant also "forcible violation" & "kidnapping" and a misunderstanding of the context in which the word was then used has caused problems in translation ever since .  Concubinage is, in the West, a term largely of historic interest.  It describes a relationship in which a woman engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage.  This may be due to differences in social rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions, or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities.  Historically, concubinage was often entered into voluntarily because of an economic imperative.  In the modern vernacular, wives use many words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).  They rarely use concubine.  They might however be tempted to use courtesan which was from the French courtisane, from the Italian cortigiana, feminine of cortigiano (courtier), from corte (court), from the Latin cohors.  A courtesan was a prostitute but a high-priced one who attended only to rich or influential clients and the origin of the term was when it was used of the mistresses of kings or the nobles in the court, the word mistress too vulgar to be used in such circles.

Largo

Largo (pronounced lahr-goh)

(1) Slow; in a broad, dignified style.

(2) A movement in this style in music; performed slowly and broadly.

1675-1685: From the Italian Largo (slow, broad), from the Classical Latin largus (large, abundant).  In music, as an adjective it generally means "slow in time" and, as a noun, a movement to be performed in such style.  Composers use the modifying adjectives larghet′to to indicate "somewhat slow; not so slow as long; a movement in somewhat slow time & larghis′simo for "extremely slow".

Context matters

In music, largo is an Italian tempo marking.  It translates literally as “broadly”, hence the name of Florida’s Key Largo island chain but to a conductor or musician, it means “play at a slower tempo”.  In composition, the language of tempo markings is nuanced for while both largo and adagio signify a slowing of pace, they convey different meanings to which composers can also add refinements such as the emotionally manipulative bolt-ons giocoso (merry), mesto (sad) and nobilmente (noble).

Adagio (music performed in a slow, leisurely manner, borrowed circa 1745 from the Italian where the construct was ad (at) +‎ agio (ease), from the Vulgar Latin adiacens, present participle of adiacere (to lie at, to lie near), the noun sense in music to describe "a slow movement" dating from 1784) is used also in Italian traffic management (one of public administration’s more challenging assignments), appearing on Italian road signs to suggest a lower speed but drivers would never see a sign urging largo.  Except in musical notation largo means broad, a word of dimension or perspective, the use in music metaphorical as one might speak of the voice of a soprano “darkening” as they age and thus it can be baffling when composer uses largo in its ordinary sense.  In Gioachino Rossini's (1792–1868) The Barber of Seville (1816), a famously fast-paced aria is called "Largo al factotum" but this is not an instruction to the conductor but just a title; the translation being “make way (ie provide a broad space) for the servant”.  Factotum, known in English since 1556, is from the Medieval Latin factotum (do everything) and is used usually to describe a servant or assistant assigned to general duties.  Even in musical notation, the use of largo and adagio wasn’t always consistent among composers.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), remembered as the philosopher who loomed over the French revolution, was also a composer and in his 1768 Dictionary of Music insisted largo was the slowest of all tempo markings but for others it lay somewhere between adagio and andante (in musical direction meaning "moderately slow", a 1742 borrowing from the Italian andante, suggesting "walking" present participle of andare (to go), from the Vulgar Latin ambitare, from the Classical Latin ambitus, past participle of ambire (to go round, go about), the construct being amb- (around), from the primitive Indo-European root ambhi- (around) + ire (go), from ei- (to go)).  Rousseau's definition is now preferred.

While Rousseau didn’t expand on this, largo does by his era seem to have come to be used to signify an expression of emotional intensity, Ombra mai fù, the opening aria from Georg Friederich Händel's (1685–1759) 1738 opera Serse being such an exemplar it’s known famously as “Handel’s Largo from Xerxes”.  A hint of Handel’s intention is his marking on the original score being the diminutive larghetto.  Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) restricted largo only to the personal, emotional passages whereas Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) could use it also as a device of controlled tension, a slowing of tempo almost to a pause.  Others followed Handel, even if the largo became, after Beethoven, less fashionable, the cor anglais-haunted largo from Anton Dvořák's (1841–1904) 1893 Symphony No. 9 in E minor (From the New World) as illustrative of the technique as any.

Comrade Shostakovich (Dmitri Shostakovich 1906–1975) followed the textbook.  Having his own reasons for needing to write something to make people feel rather than think, on its first performance in 1937, the largo in his Symphony No 5 brought tears from the audience.  Pleased to have pleased the Kremlin, Shostakovich subsequently drew lachrymosity where he could, both the first movement of Symphony No 6 (1939) and three movements of the Eighth Quartet (1960) claw slowly at the emotions.  The motif is familiar from his earlier cello & violin concertos, other symphonies and a piano sonata.

Tangerine Dream, Zeit (1972).  Largo in four movements.

Zeit was one of the more starkly uncompromising pieces of the "dark ambient" music European experimentalists would explore for a couple of decades.  Four often languid movements, each a side of the two vinyl disks, it was underpinned by the then still novel Moog synthesizer and the jarring interruption of the strings of the Cologne Cello Quarte.  Whatever Zeit was, it proved to be either unique or the final evolution of the form, depending on one's view of earlier experiments with the possibilities offered by electronics.  Tangerine Dream certainly never pursued the concept but their work impressed film director Bill Friedkin (b 1935) who commissioned them to produce the soundtrack for Sorcerer (1977); at the time, the music was better received than the film although views have changed in the decades since and Sorcerer now enjoys a cult-following.  Friedkin later remarked that had he earlier known of the band, he'd have used them for The Exorcist (1973).  

Austere and gloomy, Zeit ("time" in German) was interesting experience if listened to in darkness, on headphones; acid helped.  Efforts by some to find a connection between this and the implications of inherited guilt on a generation of German youth again dabbling with amoral technologies were never convincing, Ziet just an hour and a quarter of electronica to be enjoyed or endured.  There were critics who found both but, as even the unconvinced seemed willing often to concede, in the milieu of the sometimes willfully obscure electronica of the era, the Tangerine Dream crew were fine exponents.

Lindsay Lohan story (2 September 2022) in the on-line edition of Die Zeit (The Time) a national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg, Germany.  A broadsheet (literally and editorially), it's a liberal publication and was first published in 1946, one of the earliest of the new newspapers which emerged in the immediate post-war years while Germany was still under allied occupation.  Hamburg was in the British Zone of Occupation until 1949 when it was merged with the US & French zones to constitute the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, the old West Germany) which lasted until the 1990 unification with the German Democratic Republic (GDR, the old East Germany). 

Kebab

Kebab (pronounced kuh-bob or khe-bab)

(1) A dish consisting of small pieces of meat, tomatoes, onions, etc, threaded onto skewers and grilled, generally over char-coal (in this classic skewered form also called the shish kebab); the most common short form is ‘bab.

(2) In Australia, a hand-held dish consisting of pieces of meat roasted on an upright skewer mixed with fresh vegetables and sauces and rolled up in a round piece of unleavened bread; vegetarian kebabs are also sold.

(3) To roast in the style of a kebab.

(4) In slang, to stab or skewer (something or someone).

(5) In Indian English use, roast meat.

(6) Colloquially and metonymically, as “the kebab”, a shop or restaurant which sells kebabs (although the technically incorrect genitive singular form kebaba is used in some places).

(7) In chemistry, the outward growing portions of a shish kebab structure.

(8) In slang as an offensive, ethnic slur, a person of Middle Eastern, or North African descent (applied by appearance and usually with the implication the subject is a Muslim and, in Germany, Turkish).

(9) In vulgar slang (mostly working-class UK), the vulva.

(10) In computing, as kebab menu (also called the three (vertical) dots menu), a convention in the design of graphical user interfaces which appears as an icon used to open a menu with additional options, often for configuration or utility purposes.  The icon most often appears at the top-right or (less commonly) the top-left of the screen or window.  It is distinguished form the “meatball menu” which uses three horizontal dots.

1665-1675: From the Arabic كَبَاب‎ (kabāb) (roast or fried meat), ultimately from the Proto-Semitic kabab- (to burn, to roast).  The word entered English under the Raj, via Urdu, Persian, Hindi and the Turkish kebap and the spellings found around the world include kabob kebob cabob kabaab, kabob, kebap, kabab & kebob.  The use of kebab as an ethnic slur directed at Muslims has, in the phrase “remove kebab” become a staple of the alt-right, great-replacement conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and other malcontents.  It became well-known in the mid-1990s because of the phonetic association with the Serbian Nationalist song of ethnic cleansing, Караџићу, води Србе своје (romanized as Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje which translates as “Karadžić, Lead Your Serbs)), a reference to the Bosnian Serb political leader Dr Radovan Karadžić (b 1945), once known (and even celebrated) for his poetry and now serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.  Kebab is a noun (used usually in the plural) & verb, kebabbing & kebabbed are verbs; the noun plural is kebabs.

Noted kebabs

Some linguistically contradictory but delicious vegetarian shish kebabs.

The classic shish kebab was made by skewering (vaguely cuboid) chunks of grilled meat.  Associated with many Mediterranean cuisines, it’s essentially the same dish as the shashlik and khorovats, found in the Caucasus.  Traditionally, reflecting the geographical origin, shish kebab were made with lamb but have also long been made with various kinds of meat, poultry, or fish.  In Türkiye, shish kebabs are accompanied by vegetables but these grilled separately and sit on their own skewer (or sometimes on a side-plate).  In the barbaric West, the meat and vegetable chunks are usually on the same skewer and this sometimes includes pineapple, something said to appall the Turks.  Shish was from the Turkish şiş (skewer), from the Ottoman Turkish شیش‎ (şiş) (swollen) and related to the verb şişmek, cognate with Old Turkic šïš.

A plate of chapli kebabs.

The chapli kebab (چپلي کباب in Pashto) was a Pashtun-style minced-meat dish, made usually with ground beef, mutton, lamb or chicken, spiced and formed into the shape of a patty.  The origins of the dish lie in the old North-West Frontier of the Raj (the area around Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in modern-day northern Pakistan).  The cuisine, adapted with local variations and dietary rules, is popular throughout South Asia and West Asia and food critics note that the further it is from Peshawar, the more complex and elaborate are the alterations and aditions compared to the simple original.  Chapli Kababs can be served and eaten hot with naan or as a bun kebab.  Chapli is thought to be from the Pashto word chaprikh, chapdikh & chapleet (flat), thus the use for the kebab with a light, round and flattened texture.  A more amusing theory suggests the dish is named after the chappal (sandals), the implication being one’s meal looks as if it has been flattened by a man wearing a sandal.  It’s fine folk lore but humorless etymologists prefer to think of Chapli as a shortened version of chapleet.

Doner kebab in the Berlin style.

The doner kebab is a certain type of kebab, made with meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie which is almost always in public view.  Seasoned meat stacked in the shape of an inverted cone is turned slowly on the rotisserie, the heat coming from vertical cooking elements immediately adjacent.  To prepare a doner kebab, the operator uses a knife to slice thin shavings from the cooked, outer layer of the rotating meat.  This method of cooking, invented in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1800s has been adopted in many countries.  In Australia, a kebab is a hand-held dish consisting of pieces of meat roasted on an upright skewer mixed with fresh vegetables and sauces and rolled up in a round piece of unleavened bread; vegetarian kebabs are also sold.  The modern sandwich variant of döner kebab was first seen in the 1960s in shops in West Berlin operated by Turkish immigrants and quickly became popular to the point where it is now an accepted part of German cuisine and often ordered in the short form “doner”.  The noun, verb & adjective döner was from the Ottoman Turkish دونر‎ (döner) (to turn round; spinning; to rotate), from dönmek (to turn).

Mural of Lindsay Lohan in hijab (an al-amira) with Australian style kebab, Melbourne, Australia.

Naughty

Naughty (pronounced naw-tee)

(1) Disobedient; mischievous; wilful; wayward; misbehaving (used especially in speaking to or about children or pets).

(2) Improper, tasteless, indecorous, or indecent.

(3) Wicked; evil (obsolete).

(4) Sexually provocative; usually in a weakened playful sense, risqué or cheeky.

(5) Bad, worthless, sub-standard (obsolete).

1375-1400: From the Middle English naughty, nauȝty, nauȝti, naȝti, nowghty & noughti (needy, having nothing, also (also evil, immoral, corrupt, unclean)), from nought & naught (evil, an evil act; nothingness; a trifle; insignificant person; the number zero), from the Old English nawiht (nothing).  In the seventeenth century, as words like “bad” and “evil” came to be the preferred descriptors of the more extreme, naughty became something milder, used to describe the mischievous or those with a tendency to misbehave or act badly and this soon became most associated with children, a linguistic acknowledgment that bad behaviour unacceptable by an adult was excusable by in youth, This mitigated sense of "disobedient, bad in conduct or speech, improper, mischievous" to describe the delinquencies of children is attested from the 1630s.  The sense of "sexually promiscuous" is from 1869 but between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a woman of bad character (which might include but was not limited to lose virtue) might be called “a naughty pack” and there is evidence this was occasionally extended also to men and later an especially recalcitrant child.  Naughty, naughtier & naughtiest are adjectives; naughtily is an adverb and naughtiness a noun.  The alternative spelling noughty is archaic and obsolete.

The construct was naught + -y.  Naught in the mid-fourteen century meant "evil, an evil act" and also " a trifle"; by circa 1400 it had come to mean "nothingness", hence the adoption by mathematicians in the early fifteenth century as “the number zero" (from noht & naht (nothing) both of which had existed since the twelfth century, from the Old English nawiht (nothing, literally "no whit" from the primitive Indo-European root ne- (not) + wiht (thing, creature, being).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon neowiht (nothing), the Old High German niwiht, the Gothic ni waihts, the Dutch niet, and the German nicht. In the Old English, it became and adjectival form meaning "good for nothing" which endured to evolve by the mid-sixteenth century to the more focused "morally bad, wicked", softened over the years to the way the modern adjective naughty is now variously applied.  Naughty is an adjective & verb, naughtiness is a noun and naughtily an adverb; naughty has been used as a (non-standard) noun, usually as a euphemism for something related to sex so the noun plural there would be naughties (on the model of nasties).

It certainly had a long gestation to get to the point where “naughty” now is used  to describe mischievous kittens, vegan restaurants, sex shops and patisseries.  The primitive Indo European roots ne (not) & wekti (thing) both date back almost seven thousand years and, at the time of Antiquity, proceeded through the Proto-Germanic to become the Old English word nawiht (not a thing; nothing).  With the same meaning the word existed in the Middle English as naht, nought & naught, the last spelling, though now quite rare, enduring to this day.  Naughty was a fourteenth century fork, with the addition of the –y it was used to convey the same quality but with a new meaning (poor, literally "having nothing").  In the way class systems work by association, the rich (and perhaps even more so, the less-poor) extended the definition to include lazy, lawless, dirty, malignant etc (as required) because of a perception of correlation between poverty and crime.  Naughty however mellowed somewhat and society adapted, finding many other words with which to demonise the poor.

Naughty and Nice

Before mobile bandwidth and faster hardware drove them extinct, there were free afternoon newspapers, handed to commuters to read on the bus, tram or train journey home.  They were a welcome replacement for the afternoon papers (for which people had to pay) which, years or even decades earlier had been killed off by television.

mX Newspaper 2012 London Olympics medal table, 2 August 2012.

During the 2012 London Olympic Games, Melbourne’s mX commuter daily noted North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; the DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; the ROK) coincidently were running respectively fourth and fifth in the medal count so causing the ROK directly to sit atop the DPRK on their medal table.  Fearing confusion among readers not well acquainted with the peninsula’s geopolitics, mX decided to help, labelling the South “Nice Korea” and the North “Naughty Korea”.

In Pyongyang, the DPRK’s official Korean Central News Agency was quick to respond, accusing capitalist lackey mX of "…sordid behavior…" and “…a bullying act little short of insulting the Olympic spirit of solidarity, friendship and progress and politicising sports.”  The news media, it added, was “…obliged to lead the public in today's highly-civilised world where [the] mental and cultural level of mankind is being displayed at the highest level.”  Warming to the topic, the agency damned mX’s editors a being “…so incompetent as to tarnish the reputation of the paper…" which will remain a “…symbol of a rogue paper which will long be cursed in Olympic history."

DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un (b 1983) inspecting the North Korean pastry production line.

In response, mX ran the agency's attack on the next day’s front page under the headline Pyongyang Goes Ballistic Over mX Tally, claiming the table was “…not intended to be offensive” and just a “…humorous but harmless way…” for readers easily to differentiate between two countries with similar names.  It’s presumed Pyongyang was more upset at being labelled “naughty” than it was at the rogue state in the south being called “nice”.  Although nice has had many meanings, the agency probably well understood mX’s implication and acted appropriately against the imperialist propaganda.  The newspaper’s explanation was apparently accepted as an apology, the Supreme Leader not ordering any retaliatory missile strikes on the editorial office.

Naughty but Nice Patisserie, 39 Ilsham Road, Wellswood, Torquay, TQ1 2JG, UK.  Cakes, pastries, pies & rolls etc; it’s thought The Supreme Leader approves of pastry shops.

Naughty or Nice sex shop, 836 Main St, Lewiston, 83501 Idaho, USA.  Lingerie, toys, devices & accessories etc; it’s not known if The Supreme Leader approves of sex shops.

In December 2022, as a holiday season promotion, the Pepsi Corporation teamed with Lindsay Lohan to promote Pilk.  A Pilk is a mix of Pepsi Cola and milk, one of a class of dirty sodas created by PepsiCo which includes the Naughty & Ice, the Chocolate Extreme, the Cherry on Top, the Snow Float and the Nutty Cracker.  All are intended to be served with cookies (biscuits) and although Ms Lohan confessed to being “…a bit sceptical when first I heard of this pairing”, she was quickly converted, noting that “…after my first sip I was amazed at how delicious it was, so I’m very excited for the rest of the world to try it.”  

PepsiCo provided the instructions for mixing a Naughty & Ice: "For a pure milk taste that's infused with notes of vanilla, measure and combine 1 cup of whole milk, 1 tbsp of heavy cream and 1 tbsp of vanilla creamer.  From there, pour the mixture slowly into 1 cup of Pepsi and serve with a chocolate chip cookie."

Naughty and nice: Lindsay Lohan promotes Pilk.

Simonize

Simonize (pronounced sahy-muh-nahyz)

(1) To polish the exposed surfaces of an automobile (specifically using Simoniz brand products; later used generically).

(2) To shine or polish something to a high sheen, especially with wax.

Circa 1921: A creation of US English meaning "polish by the application of Simoniz wax”, from Simoniz, the registered trademark for a brand of car polish invented by George Simons who in association with Elmer Rich of the Great Northern Railway, in 1910 formed the Simons Manufacturing Company (Chicago) to produce and sell the products.  The construct was Simoniz + “e”, the addition an emulation of the –ize prefix  Said to have been in oral use since circa 1921, lexicographers began to add simonize (as a verb with the noted meaning) to dictionaries in 1935.   In the English-speaking world, the word often appeared (outside North America) as simonise.  Simonize, simonizes, simonized & simonizing are verbs.

The –ize suffix was from the Middle English -isen, from the Middle French -iser, from the Medieval Latin -izō, from the Ancient Greek -ίζω (-ízō), from the primitive Indo-European verbal suffix -idyé-.  It was cognate with other verbal suffixes including the Gothic -itjan, the Old High German –izzen and the Old English -ettan (verbal suffix).  It was used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives which (1) make what is denoted by the noun or adjective & (2) do what is denoted by the noun or adjective.  The alternative form is –ise.  Historically, the –ize suffix was used on words originating from Greek while –ise was preferred (most prevalently as -vise, -tise, -cise and –prise) on words derived from various roots, many of which entered English via French.  In the nineteenth century, under the influence of French literature, in the UK and other parts of the British Empire, -ise often replaced –ize even when there was a long tradition of the latter’s use.  The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED) never changed its spellings which meant that throughout the Empire (and later the Commonwealth), both forms appeared and before the advent of spell-checkers (which ensured that at least within a given document there was consistency) use was mixed although, under the Raj and beyond, India tended to stick to –ise.  The –ize has always been the preferred form in North America.

Spa day service station, Connecticut Avenue. Washington DC, September 1940.

Although simonize had by then entered the language as verb meaning “to shine or polish something to a high sheen, especially with wax”, one of the early conditions imposed to permit the advertising of “Simonizing” as a service was the exclusive use of genuine Simoniz brand products.

One reason companies registered trademarks used to be a wish to control the use of the name, businesses wishing to prevent their exclusive brand becoming so popular it came to be used to describe, and to some extent even define, all similar products.  The process was called genericide by the experts in business and marketing, the idea being that in becoming a generic term, some of the value invested in the product and its name was transferred to competitors.  The classic example was the vacuum cleaner made by Hoover, the word catching on to the extent that within years, just about all vacuuming came to be called “hoovering”, regardless of the manufacturer of the device doing the sucking.  The problem was that while trademark holders could restrict their use by corporations, what the public did was beyond their control and language just evolved by popular use.

The early Xerox photocopiers were always advertised as devices to be used by women.

The literature often cites Xerox as an example of the problem of the public perception of a corporation being defined in their imagination by its best known product.  The phrase “xerox it” had by the late 1960s become the default expression meaning “photocopy it” and was of concern to the corporation because they feared their differentiation in the market place would be lost.  Time however change and now, Microsoft would doubtless be delighted if “bing it” became as much a term of everyday speech as “google it”.  That is of course a little different because “Bing” is one of Microsoft’s many trademarks rather than the corporate name but the modern view now generally is that the public “verbing-up” a trademark is a very good thing and an easy way to extend the prized “brand awareness”.

The perfect secretary did much "xeroxing" but according to Xerox, would never say "xerox it".

Twitter’s case is a variation on the theme and a case study on how such matters must be managed.  The verb form “to tweet” became a verb through popular use which induced Twitter to trademark the term in 2009.  From there, the company announced they would not seek to restrict its use by third parties using “tweet” for Twitter-related services and apps but warned they would seek both injunctive relief and damages were there evidence of a “confusing or damaging project” to “to protect both our users our brand."  What Twitter wanted to do was ensure “tweet” was used in a way beneficial and not detrimental to them.

The Great Crash of 2005

Crashed and towed, Los Angeles, 2005.

In 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 350 of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a fixed-roof.

Fixed and simonized, Texas, 2007.

By 2007, the car (still with California registration plates (5LZF057) attached) had been repaired, detailed & simonized and was being offered for sale in Texas, the odometer said to read 6207 miles (9989 km).  Bidding was said to be “healthy” so it was thought all's well that ends well but once the vehicle's provenance was brought to the attention of the repair shop, it was realized the celebrity connection might increase its value so it was advertised on eBay with more detail, including the inevitable click-bait of LiLo photographs.  However, either eBay doesn't approve of commerce profiting from the vicissitudes suffered by Hollywood starlets or they'd received a C&D (cease & desist) letter from someone's lawyers and the auction ended prematurely.  It proved a brief respite, the SL 65 soon back on eBay Motors but with the offending part of the blurb limited to "previously owned by high profile celebrity", leaving it to prospective buyers to join the dots.