Peripatetic

Peripatetic (pronounced per-uh-puh-tet-ik)

(1) Walking or travelling about; itinerant, wandering, roving, a vagrant.

(2) Of or of or relating to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens (with initial capital letter).

(3) A member of the Aristotelian school (with initial capital letter).

(4) Of or relating to the Aristotelian school of philosophy (with initial capital letter) so named because Aristotle, who used to teach philosophy while walking about the Lyceum in ancient Athens

(5) A person who walks or travels about.

(6) In the British educational system, one employed in two or more educational establishments and travelling from one to another; applied also to football coaches, used also as a wry reference to the pattern of them going from club to club, repeatedly sacked and hired.

1400-1450: From the French péripatétique, from the Latin peripatēticus, from the Ancient Greek περιπατητικός (peripatētikós) (given to walking around (especially while teaching)), from περιπατέω (peripatéō) (I walk around), the construct being περί (peri) (around) + πατέω (patéō) (I walk); in Greek texts from antiquity, peripatein (to pace to and fro) was commonly used.  Basis of the whole thing was Aristotle's custom of teaching while strolling through the Lyceum in Athens.  In fourteenth century Old French, the word was perypatetique, imported directly from the Medieval Latin peripateticus (pertaining to the disciples or philosophy of Aristotle)  In English, the meaning in the philosophical sense began to be used in the 1560s and in the literal sense from the 1610s (person who wanders about).  The adjective form (walking about from place to place; itinerant) emerged in the 1640, often humorously tinged.  Related forms are the adverb peripatetically and the noun peripateticism.  The old alternative spelling peripatetick is obsolete.  Charles Dickens (1812–1870) extended the meaning in Our Mutual Friend (1865), using it in a figurative sense to mean “rambling” or “long-winded”, describing someone who tended to long to meander around the topics sometimes never quite reaching the point.  Peripatetic is a noun is a noun & adjective, peripateticism is a noun and peripatetically is an adverb; the noun plural is peripatetics.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (circa 1710) by José Risueño (1665–1721).

The Peripatetic axiom is Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu (Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses).  It appears in Questiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth) (1256-1259), a collection of twenty-nine disputed questions on aspects of faith and the human condition by the Italian Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).

Aquinas derived the principle from Aristotle’s Peripatetic school of philosophy.  Aquinas insists the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from “sense data”, an argument he developed using a variation of the Aristotelian notion of the intellectus agens (active intellect) which he defined as the ability of the mind to abstract universal meanings from specific empirical data.  The essential idea that human experience can be based only on sensory input does sound reasonable, after all, what choice do people have?  Such however was the reverence in the West for Aquinas that his writings on the matter for centuries influenced not only the theological question but also the interpretation of Aristotle.

Peripatetic Painting (2015) by Charles Yates (b 1941).

What Aquinas calls the Peripatetic axiom is his distillation of Aristotelian thought, not a quote or even a paraphrasing from antiquity but it is anyway certainly a “disputed question”.  Regarding the proposition “nothing is in the intellect that was not previously in sense” he notes:  "That axiom is to be understood as applying only to our intellect, which receives its knowledge from things. For a thing is led by gradual steps from its own material conditions to the immateriality of the intellect through the mediation of the immateriality of sense. Consequently, whatever is in our intellect must have previously been in the senses. This, however, does not take place in the divine intellect.”

So ensued centuries of argument between those who maintained empiricism was no part of the way Aquinas reconciled revealed religion with Aristotelian thought and those who found Saint Thomas perhaps the proto-empiricist in the sense (1) he held all our ideas are derived from experience so (2) by definition there can be nothing in the intellect not previously in the senses and (3) that this was implicit in Aristotle.  Despite the implications of that, most however seemed to conclude he did not think all knowledge either consists of sense experience or is inferred inductively from experience.  From all this, although some remained still unconvinced by his position the existence of God could be proved by reasoning alone, few were unimpressed by the intellectual gymnastics it took to get there.

A peripatetic existence; Lindsay Lohan wandering the palnet: Istanbul, Nice, Los Angeles & Mykonos (top row), Dubai, Athens, London & Tokyo (middle row) and Washington DC, Melbourne, New York & Venice (bottom row).

Baffle

Baffle (pronounced baf-uhl)

(1) To confuse, bewilder or perplex.

(2) To frustrate or confound; to thwart (a now archaic and probably obsolete seventeenth century use which didn’t of necessity involve the creation of confusion or bewilderment).

(3) To check or deflect the movement of (sound, light, fluids, etc.).

(4) To equip with a baffle or baffles.

(5) To cheat or trick; to hoodwink or deceive someone (used between the sixteenth & eighteenth centuries and now obsolete).

(6) To struggle ineffectually, as a ship in a gale (a nineteenth form rare except in Admiralty use).

(7) Publicly to disgrace, especially of a recreant knight (used between the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries and now obsolete).

(8) Something that balks, checks, or deflects (also called a baffle-board); an artificial obstruction for checking or deflecting the flow of gases (as in a boiler), sounds (as in the loudspeaker system of a radio or hi-fi set), light (as in a darkroom) or fluids (as in a tank).

(9) In audio engineering, any boxlike enclosure or flat panel for mounting a loudspeaker.

(10) In military camouflage, an architectural feature designed to confuse enemies or make them vulnerable.

(11) In coal mining, a lever for operating the throttle valve of a winding engine (US dialectal use).

1540-1550: Of uncertain origin but may have entered English from the Scots dialectal bauchle (to disgrace, treat with contempt, especially a perjured knight), from bauch or bachlen (publicly to condemn) and probably related to the early-modern French bafouer (to disgrace, to scorn, abuse or hoodwink) or the obsolete French befer (to mock) which was definitely picked up from the Scots bauchle.  The most likely root is the German natural sound of disgust, like bah which appears in the language as baff machen (to flabbergast) and the familiar modern meaning “to bewilder or confuse” is from 1640s while that of “to defeat someone's efforts” is from 1670s.  The use meaning “shielding device” dates from 1881 and “artificial obstruction” is from 1910.  The alternative spellings bafful & baffol are both obsolete.  Baffle is a noun & verb, bafflement & baffler are nouns and baffled & baffling are verbs & adjectives; the noun plural is baffles (or the rare bafflers).

As a noun, baffle emerged in the early 1880s, initially used mostly of the shielding device attached to stoves and ovens where it was short for “baffle-plate”, derived from the noun.  The earlier noun (from circa 1860) in the same sense was baffler, a word which can still be used to describe (1) something that causes one to be baffled, particularly a difficult puzzle or riddle & (1) in gaming, one of the projections inside a dice tower that serve to deflect the die unpredictably.  The noun bafflement (state of being baffled) dates from 1841 while the adjective baffling (bewildering, confusing, perplexing) was from 1733; it was the present-participle adjective from the verb baffle but also emerged in Admiralty slang (soon picked up in the merchant service) in the eighteenth century as a sailor's adjective for winds that blow variously and make headway difficult; although now rare, it survived into the age of steam.  The noun and verb bafflegab was first noted in 1952 and describes pretentious, incomprehensible, or overly technical language, especially legal or bureaucratic jargon; a synonym of gobbledygook (but not “hocus-pocus” or “mumbo-jumbo” which reference something nonsensical although use of those two is now probably proscribe because of their origin when speaking dismissively of the speech of African “witch doctors”.  The companion word is baffound (to perplex, bewilder by the use of bafflegab).

Although it had probably before been on the tips of not a few tongues, the words “baffle”, “baffling” & “baffled” in connection with Lindsay Lohan really spiked in 2016 when footage circulated of her speaking in distinctively different accent which used a conventional US English vocabulary but was delivered, with an occasionally halting delivery, the accent vaguely Russian or eastern European.  She later clarified thing by saying it was “…a mixture of most of the languages I can understand or am trying to learn”, adding that she’d been “…learning different languages since I was a child.  I'm fluent in English and French can understand Russian and am learning Turkish, Italian and Arabic”.  Taking advantage of the interest, she named the latest addition to the planet’s linguistic diversity “LiLohan” and a limited edition LiLohan clothing line was quickly made available as a philanthropic endeavour, part of the proceeds from each item sold going to Caudwell Children and the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD).  Turkey is now properly called Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (Republic of Türkiye); the accepted short form Türkiye.

Baffled sump (left) and fuel tank (right).In cars, baffles are used in sumps and fuel tanks to prevent fluids sloshing around when subjected to the high lateral forces encountered in high-speed cornering.  With fuel tanks this ensures weight transfers are minimized while the purpose in a sump is to (1) avoid the oil surge or starvation which can happen if movement means the oil becomes removed from the oil-pump’s pickup & (2) assist in reducing the oil’s tendency to foam.  In Australia Ford included a baffled sump on the Falcon GTHO Phase III (1970-1971) and this was to be carried over to the abortive Phase IV (1972), the novelty with the latter being the race cars gaining tear-drop shaped “ears” welded to each side of the sump, adjacent to the oil pump.  The ears not only increased oil capacity but also, sitting as they did in the air-flow passing under the body, enhanced cooling.

Speak no evil: Alan Tudge.

Given the number of times the Australian Liberal Party has in recent years sought to celebrate the virtue of “personality responsibility” the evidence given by Alan Tudge (b 1971) to the royal commission investigating the “robodebt” scheme (a system which sought to “recover” what were alleged to be debts incurred by citizens who had failed to inform the government about their earnings) must to some have seemed baffling; not necessarily surprising, just baffling.  The scheme had been found to be unlawful but Mr Tudge, who served as (Liberal) minister for human services in 2017-2018 and was (under the Westminster system) “responsible” for the administration of “robodebt”, refused during questioning to accept ministerial responsibility for the unlawfulness of the scheme.  Despite being the minister in charge, Mr Tudge said it was not his responsibility check whether or not the robodebt scheme was lawful although he did seem to concede he was responsible for the scheme’s “lawful implementation”, adding that he assumed it was lawful, and had never been shown legal advice regarding its legality.  His position appeared to be based on what sounds a reasonable assumption: that the departmental secretary (the public servant in charge of the department) would not be implementing a program which he or she would know to be unlawful, something he described as “unfathomable”, adding that the scheme had gone through a rigorous cabinet process “which always has a legal overlay”.

Justice Jackson prosecuting, Albert Speer in the dock, Nuremberg, 1946. 

There are many books by academics, historians and former politicians which discuss the doctrine of ministerial responsibility but it's not known if the transcript of 20 June 1946 of the International Military Tribunal (the Nuremberg Trial) was in Mr Tudge's mind: Mr Justice Robert Jackson (1892–1954; US Supreme Court Justice 1941-1954; Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg (IMT) trials of Nazi war criminals 1945-1946) cross-examining Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945):

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Your statement some time ago that you had a certain responsibility as a Minister of the Government.  I should like to have you explain what responsibility you referred to when you say you assume a responsibility as a member of the Government; your common responsibility, what do you mean by your common responsibility along with others?

DEFENDANT SPEER: In my opinion, a state functionary has two types of responsibility.  One is the responsibility for his own sector and for that, of course, he is fully responsible.  But above that I think that in decisive matters there is, and must be, among the leaders a common responsibility, for who is to bear responsibility for developments, if not the close associates of the head of State?

This common responsibility, however, can only be applied to fundamental matters, it cannot be applied to details connected with other ministries or other responsible departments, for otherwise the entire discipline in the life of the state would be quite confused, and no one would ever know who is individually responsible in a particular sphere. This individual responsibility in one's own sphere must, at all events, be kept clear and distinct.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, your point is, I take it, that you as a member of the Government and a leader in this period of time acknowledge a responsibility for its large policies, but not for all the details that occurred in their execution. Is that a fair statement of your position?

DEFENDANT SPEER: Yes, indeed.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I think that concludes the cross-examination.

Alan Tudge at the 2017 Midwinter Ball with Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller.

Ms Millar also provided some interesting evidence to the “robodebt” royal commission and (pursuant to an unrelated matter) received from the Commonwealth a taxpayer-funded Aus$650,000 settlement for damages while working in two ministerial offices.  Ms Millar had accused Mr Tudge of being physically abusive towards her while in a consensual relationship and part of the settlement related to these matters, including compensation for loss of earning, hurt, distress, humiliation & medical and legal costs.  The Commonwealth did not admit liability but in paying Aus$650,000 seems to have assumed responsibility.  In a Clintonesque touch, Mr Tudge admitted he was at times sexually intimate with Ms Miller but insists he did not have “sexual intercourse” with that woman.

Encyclopedist

Encyclopedist (pronounced en-sahy-kluh-pee-dist)

(1) A compiler of or contributor to an encyclopedia.

(2) One of the collaborators fn the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (now almost always used with initial capital letter).

(3) A dismissive term applied by KGB specialists to generalists.

1645–1655: The construct was encycloped(ia) + -ist.  Encyclopedia was attested from the 1530s, from the New Latin encyclopaedia (general education), from the Renaissance Ancient Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία (enkuklopaideía) (education in the circle of arts and sciences (literally “training in a circle”)), a mistaken univerbated form of the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδείᾱ (enkúklios paideíā) (education in the circle of arts and sciences, the construct being ἐγκύκλιος (enkúklios) (circular (also “general”)) + παιδείᾱ (paideíā) (child-rearing, education), from pais (genitive paidos (child).  The modern sense of a "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, the origin most associated with the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts (1751-1772)).  Encyclopedism (or encyclopaedism) is the related noun and encyclopaedist the alternative spelling, the Latin form surviving as a variant because many of the most famous printed volumes had Latin names; as the printed editions fade from use, except in historic references, encyclopedia is now by far the prevalent spelling.  The adjective encyclopedic dates from 1816 while the truncation cyclopaedia is attested from 1728.  Encyclopedist is a noun; the noun plural is encyclopedists.

The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).

The original Encyclopedists (encyclopaedists in historic British use) were the French Encyclopédistes, members of the Société des gens de lettres (a literary association) who between 1751-1765 contributed entries for the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers, published between 1751-1772, edited by noted art critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and (until 1759 when one of his entries triggered an amusing ecclesiastical turf-war), mathematician & musicologist Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783)

KGB identity card, issued in 1982 for British SIS defector Kim Philby (1912–1988).

The Soviet Union’s (USSR) KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), which translates literally at the “Committee for State Security” is better understood as “political police”.  It was the last of an alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH & MGB) which, building on the models of the many secret-police forces maintained by Tsarist Russia (1547-1917), was responsible for the USSR’s internal security and beyond its borders, espionage, counter espionage and a range of activities conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy (including that not disclosed and that sometimes denied).  In post-Soviet Russia, the KGB evolved into the Federal Security Service (FSB), comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) honing his skills in the institution he apparently joined in 1975.

"Lubyanka building" on Lubyanka Square, Meshchansky, Moscow, headquarters of various organs of the Soviet and Russian security services since 1918, most infamously the KGB, 1954-1991.  In Soviet times, it was referred to as "the Lubyanka", and noted especially for the basement cells where interrogations, torture and executions were conducted.  In synecdochic use, "the Lubyanka" was a phrase often used to refer to the KGB.

As an internal security agency, the KGB (like its predecessors) was always formidable and usually effective in the suppression of dissent but in espionage and counter-espionage, the record was patchy and increasingly so as the Cold War (1947-1991) drew to its (anti-) climax.  Most of the celebrated successes happened either before the Cold War began or in its early years, the number and usefulness of ideologically motivated defectors and traitors from the West sharply declining after Comrade Khruschev’s (Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “Secret Speech” at the 1956 Communist Party Congress in which he denounced Comrade Stalin's (Joseph Stalin 1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) repressions and purges, laying bare the nature of the his regime.  The speech didn’t long stay secret, the transcripts leaked to the West convincing all but the few most devoted of the “useful idiots” their faith had been misplaced.  After the interventions in Hungary that same year and Czechoslovakia in 1968, idea of a Soviet-like future became still less appealing, not only in the West but also among the disillusioned in the USSR and its satellite states.

The KGB however continued to grow, reflecting the need to increase the surveillance and internal control in order for the party to maintain its authority over a system in decline.  By the mid-1970s, in the Moscow region alone the KGB establishment stood at some 50,000 (greater than the combined workforce of their Cold War opponent’s CIA & FBI although other Western nations also maintained large security establishments) and of the total force of half a million-odd, some 220,000 guarded the USSR’s borders, not from fear of invasion by a foreign power but to discourage escape attempts.  Once an organization with a relatively simple structure which, as late as the early 1960s was administered through three directorates, the KGB grew to encompass a dozen, the geographical division of the country by 1980 in twenty-one departments when once there had been eight.  Once consequence of this was a burgeoning bureaucracy, the upper echelons staffed increasingly by party apparatchiks with little knowledge of intelligence or espionage, the USSR’s equivalent of the MBA-CEO class in the West.  These the experienced operators disparagingly called “encyclopedists”, the idea being they knew just a little bit about many things and, being empire-builders as industrious as their imperialist lackey counterparts, fiefdoms proliferated.  Apart from the documented decrease in efficiency, the growth of the KGB, like that of the armed forces, the party and the military-industrial complex, absorbed (unproductively), a rising share of the USSR’s diminishing financial resources at a time of failing health care, food shortages and a general decline in living standards, one former KGB general (Oleg Kalugin (b 1934)) later telling the joke which circulated within the organization: The USSR was “the Congo with rockets”.  The flagship of the second-world was tending towards the third and the structural imbalances fed off themselves, an economic viscous circle which led to the economic and moral bankruptcy which doomed the USSR.  Late in 1991, the KGB was dissolved, having out-lasted the party by just weeks although, in the years since, the successor organizations in both Russia and the states within its sphere of influence have sometimes devolved towards the past.

Comrade Andropov.

General Kalugin did however give credit where it was due.  The KGB in 1979 had spies well-placed inside the intelligence apparatuses of a number of countries and one of these agents provided the intelligence the wife of a Soviet diplomat had with some frequency been observed enjoying sex with the family’s large pet (male) dog.  The KGB agents were a worldly lot and might have had a chuckle before turning a blind eye but the source advised there were plans to obtain video evidence with which the diplomat could be blackmailed.  So sensitive was the matter that discussions involved the head of KGB himself, Yuri Andropov (1914–1984; head of KGB 1967-1982, Soviet leader 1982-1984).  Unable simply to recall the couple lest it compromise the source and, in a nice touch, not wishing to burden the husband with the knowledge of his wife’s unusual predilection for canine-intimacy, no solution seemed immediately obvious until, after for some time sitting in silence, comrade Andropov suggested: “Kill the dog”.  All agreed this was a good idea so it was arranged for a KGB technician to visit the house on some pretext to slip the hound some poisoned meat.  The dose turned out to be wrong so instead of killing the beast, just its hind quarters became paralyzed although that obviously solved the problem; a tactical failure but a strategic success.  It was a minor event in a long career and it's believed it played no part in comrade Andropov being the last leader of the USSR but one.

Opening pages of Lindsay Lohan's entry at encyclopedia.com.

Trivia

Trivia (pronounced triv-ee-uh)

(1) Matters or things that are very unimportant, inconsequential, or nonessential; trifles; petty details, trifles, trivialities (functions as both singular & plural).

(2) In the religion of Ancient Rome, (used as the epithet Trivia) a name for the deity Diana: so called because she was trivius dea (goddess of three ways) and also because she was regarded as a deity with three personae (Selene/Diana/Proserpine).  In Greek mythology, the role (though not the epithet, which is from the Latin) is associated with Artemis (the Greek equivalent of Diana) and also with Hecate.

(3) A quiz game involving knowledge of (sometimes obscure) facts, the best known of which is the commercially available Trivial Pursuit (and its forks).

1700–1710: From the Latin trivia, feminine plural of trivius, from trivium (place where three roads meet; junction of three roads), the construct being tri-(three) + -vium, from via (way, road).  Tri- was from the Ancient Greek τρεῖς (treîs), from the Proto-Hellenic tréyes, from the primitive Indo-European tréyes.  The Latin adjective triviālis was from trivium and thus came to mean “appropriate to the street corner, commonplace, vulgar”.  In English trivial seems first to have appeared (in the same sense as triviālis) in 1589 and within decades was in common use in the modern sense: “Matters of little importance or significance” and thus far removed from the original Medieval scholastic triumvirate of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.  The adjective trivial meant “ordinary" in the 1580s but by the turn of the century the sense had shifted to “insignificant, trifling” and was from the Latin trivialis (common, commonplace, vulgar (and literally “of or belonging to the crossroads”)).  The verb trivialize dates from 1836 while the noun triviality was known as early as the 1590s in the sense of “quality of being trivial” and was at least influenced by the French trivialite or else from trivial, the phrases “a trivial thing” & “a trivial affair” emerged during the 1610s.  There is also the idea that because the trivium was an introductory-level course, it became associated with things at their most basic and simple but this notion came later and is thought by etymologists to be a grasp at linguistic straws.  Trivia is a noun (and proper noun), trivial is a noun & adjective, triviality is a noun and trivialize, trivialized; trivializing are verbs; the noun plural is trivias.

Trivial was picked up by Middle English (in the usual haphazard way) but was used in senses different from the familiar modern meaning.  In the mid-fifteenth century there was the phrase arte triviall an allusion to the three liberal arts that comprised the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), the lower division of the seven (the advanced four (or quadrivium) being arithmetic, geometry, astronomy & music.) taught in medieval universities, the link between pedagogy and the Latin trivium (place where three roads meet; junction of three roads) presumably the tradition of use in Antiquity that the point at which the roads met was “a place of public resort”.  Some etymologists also connect the very publicness of such places with the pejorative association attached to “trivia”.

As a packaged commodity, trivia had long existed but it began to labeled as such early in the twentieth century, the US-born British essayist (and a genuine authority on the language) Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) in 1902 publishing Trivia which was initially a commercial failure, his own mother’s critique of the text that it “began nowhere, ended nowhere and led to nothing” but for whatever reason it became so popular immediately after the World War I (1914-1918) that in 1921 he released More Trivia, the two combined in a best-selling edition (with annotations) in 1933.  Whether so named or not, books and later television series devoted to trivia (some quite specialized) became an established niche in these industries and the most celebrated product of all, the game Trivial Pursuit, was released in 1981 and it begat literally dozens of thematically-specific editions such as the “Horror Movie Edition” and “X”, a version described as “edgy” and “For Adults” which Amazon recommends for, inter alia, “family games nights & kids parties”.

Trivia by its nature attracted comic coinings.  Administrivia (the construct being adminis(trative) +‎ trivia) was created in 1922 by a US academic lawyer to refer to the administrative load (of mostly minor, procedural matters) carried by a head of department or dean in a law school.  A triviaphile (the construct being trivia +‎ -phile) is a person excessively fond of trivia, often boring others by reciting (obscure or unimportant facts) and the word for practical purposes may be synonymous with triviaholic (trivia +‎ -holic on the model of alcoholic) and both can also refer to those obsessed with the game Trivial Pursuit.  Although of concern only to a learned few (including one supposes, triviaphiles & triviaholics) there is a technical point about the use of administrivia.  In formal use, trivia, as a derivative of a Latin plural, required a plural verb but modern authorities ten now to be more permissive, extending the same tolerance enjoyed by Latin plurals such as data; the “game” sense has always been thought of as a singular noun.

Long a staple of tabloid newspapers and trashy magazines, trivia pages are among the oldest clickbait on the internet and uselessdaily.com, cleveland.com, tvtropes.org, triviaplaying.com, diply.com, absurdtrivia.com and funtrivia.com all have Lindsay Lohan trivia pages, some interactive and some mere lists.

Exquisite

Exquisite (pronounced ek-skwi-zit or ik-skwiz-it)

(1) Of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence and often associated with objects or great delicacy; of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship; beautiful, delicate, discriminating, perfect.

(2) Extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate.

(3) Intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain; keenly or delicately sensitive or responsive; exceeding; extreme; in a bad or a good sense (eg as exquisite pleasure or exquisite pain).

(4) Recherché; far-fetched; abstruse (a now rare early meaning which to some extent survives in surrealist’s exercise “exquisite corpse”).

(5) Of particular refinement or elegance, as taste, manners, etc or persons.

(6) A man excessively concerned about clothes, grooming etc; a dandy or coxcomb.

(7) Ingeniously devised or thought out (obsolete).

(8) Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact (now less common except as an adverb.

(9) Of delicate perception or close and accurate discrimination; not easy to satisfy; exact; fastidious (related to the sense of “exquisite judgment, taste, or discernment”.

1400–1450: From the Late Middle English exquisite (carefully selected), from the Latin exquīsītus (excellent; meticulous, chosen with care (and literally “carefully sought out”)), perfect passive participle of exquīrō (to seek out), originally the past participle of exquīrere (to ask about, examine) the construct being ex- + -quīrere, a combining form of quaerere (to seek). The construct of exquīrō was ex- +‎ quaerō (seek).  The ex- prefix was applied to words in Middle English borrowed from the Middle French and was derived from the Latin ex- (out of, from) and was from the primitive Indo-European eǵ- & eǵs-.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐξ (ex-, out of, from) from the Transalpine Gaulish ex- (out), the Old Irish ess- (out), the Old Church Slavonic изъ (izŭ) (out), the Russian из (iz) (from, out of).  Exquisite is a noun & adjective, exquisiteness is a noun and exquisitely an adverb; the noun plural is exquisites.

The etymology of the Latin quaerō (seek) is mysterious.  It may be from the Proto-Italic kwaizeō, from the primitive Indo-European kweh (to acquire) so cognates may include the Ancient Greek πέπαμαι (pépamai) (to get, acquire), the Old Prussian quoi (I/you want) & quāits (desire), the Lithuanian kviẽsti (to invite) and possibly the Albanian kam (I have).  Some have suggested the source being the primitive Indo-European kwoys & kweys (to see) but there has been little support for this.  The authoritative Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs (LIV)), the standard etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European languages, suggests it’s a derivation of hzeys (to seek, ask), via the form koaiseo.  "Exquisite corpse" is a calque of the French cadavre exquis (literally “exquisite cadaver”).  Dating from 1925, it was coined by French surrealists to describe a method of loosely structured constructivism on the model of the parlour game consequences; fragments of text (or images) are created by different people according to pre-set rules, then joined together to create a complete text.  The name comes from the first instance in 1925: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (The exquisite corpse will drink new wine).  Exquisite corpse is noted as a precursor to both post-modernism and deconstructionist techniques.

Although not infrequently it appears in the same sentence as the word “unique”, exquisite can be more nuanced, the comparative “more exquisite, the superlative most exquisite” and there has certainly been a change in the pattern of use.  In English, it originally was applied to any thing (good or bad, art or torture, diseases or good health), brought to a highly wrought condition, tending among the more puritanical to disapprobation.  The common modern meaning (of consummate and delightful excellence) dates from the late 1570s while the noun (a dandy, a foppish man) seems first to have been used in 1819.  One interesting variant which didn’t survive was exquisitous (not natural, but procured by art), appearing in dictionaries in the early eighteenth centuries but not since.  The pronunciation of exquisite has undergone a rapid change from ek-skwi-zit to ik-skwiz-it, the stress shifting to the second syllable.  The newer pronunciation attracted the inevitable criticism but is now the most common form on both sides of the Atlantic and use seems not differentiated by class. 

An exquisite and a wimp: Baldur Benedikt von Schirach

Exquisite is used almost exclusively as an adjective, applied typically to objects or performances but it’s also a noun, albeit one always rare.  As a noun it was used to describe men who inhabited that grey area of being well dressed, well coiffured, well mannered and somewhat effeminate; it was a way of hinting at something without descending to the explicit.  PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) applied it thus in Sam the Sudden (1925) and historians Ann (1938-2021) & John Tusa (b 1936) in The Nuremberg Trial (1983) found no better word to apply to former Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, noting his all-white bedroom and propensity to pen poor poetry.  The companion word to describe a similar chap without of necessity the same hint of effeminacy is “aesthete”.  In The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992), Brigadier General Telford Taylor (1908–1998; lead US counsel at the Nuremberg Trial) wrote of von Schirath that: “at thirty-nine, was the youngest and, except perhaps for Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) and Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist), the weakest of the defendants.  If wimps had then been spoken of, Schirach would have been so styled.”  

Nazis at the Berghof: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), Martin Bormann (1900–1945), Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945), and Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974; head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) 1931-1940 & Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945)), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany, 1936.  Of much, all were guilty as sin but von Schirach would survive to die in his bed at 67.  

Convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT, 1945-1946) for crimes against humanity, von Schirach received a twenty year sentence, escaping conviction for his role as Nazi Party youth leader and head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), (though he was a good deal more guilty than Socrates in corrupting the minds (and perhaps more) of youth), the sentence imposed for his part in deporting Viennese Jews to the death camps while Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna.  Had subsequently discovered evidence against him been available at the trial, doubtlessly he’d have been hanged.

Exquisite: A style guide

Lindsay Lohan in a Gucci Porcelain Garden Print Silk Gown with an all-over Dutch toile in blue and white, high ruffled collar and bib, flared sleeves, pussy bow and a blue and red patent leather belt around a high waist, Savoy Hotel, London, June 2017.  The gown was said to have a recommended retail price (RRP) of Stg£4,040 (US$7300).  The occasion was the launch of the charitable organization One Family, dedicated to combating child trafficking.

Within the one critique, the word exquisite can appear, used as a neutral descriptor (an expression of extent), a paean to beauty and even an ironic dismissal.  A gown for example can be “exquisitely detailed” but that doesn’t of necessity imply elegance although that would be the case of something said to be an “exquisite design”.  That said, most were drawn to the gown in some way, the references to Jane Austin many (although historians of fashion might note Gucci’s creation as something evocative more of recent films made of Jane Austin novels that anything representative of what was worn in her era) and the fabric’s patterning & restraint in the use of color produced a dreamily romantic look.

Noon

Noon (pronounced noon)

(1) Midday; twelve o'clock in the daytime or the time or point at which the sun crosses the local meridian (the time of day when the sun is in its zenith).

(2) Figuratively (usually in literary or poetic use), the highest, brightest, or finest point or part; culmination; capstone; apex.

(3) The corresponding time in the middle of the night; midnight (archaic but historic use means old documents with the word must be read with care, entries appearing as both “noon” & “noon of the night”).

(4) Three o’clock in the afternoon (archaic).

(5) To relax or sleep around midday (as “to noon” “nooning” or “nooned”) (archaic).

(6) The letter ن in Arabic script.

(7) Midday meal (archaic).

Pre 900: From the Middle English noen, none & non, from the Old English nōn (the ninth hour), from a Germanic borrowing of the Classical Latin nōna (ninth hour) (short for nōna hōra), the feminine. singular of nonus (ninth), contracted from novenos, from novem (nine).  It was cognate with the Dutch noen, the (obsolete) German non and the Norwegian non.  Synonyms (some archaic) include apex, capstone, meridian, midday, noontide, noonday, noontime, nones (the ninth hour of daylight), midpoint (of the day), & twelve.  Descendants include the Modern English none and the Scots nane (none), Noon the proper noun enduring as a surname.  Noun is a noun and noons, nooning & nooned are verbs; the noun plural is noons.

Although derived from the Latin word for the number nine, the English word noon refers to midday, the time when the sun reaches the meridian.  The Romans however counted the hours of the day from sunrise which, for consistency, was declared for this purpose to be 06:00; the ninth hour (nona hora) was thus 15:00.  The early Christians adopted Jewish customs of praying at certain hours and when Christian monastic orders formed, the ecclesiastical reckoning of the daily timetable was structured around the hours for prayer.  In the earliest schedules, the monks prayed at three-hour intervals: 6-9 pm, 9 pm-midnight, midnight-3 am and 3-6 am.  The prayers are known as the Divine Office and the times at which they are to be recited are the canonical hours:

Vigils: night
Matins: dawn
Lauds: dawn
Prime: 6 am (first hour)
Terce: 9 am (third hour)
Sext: noon (sixth hour)
None: 3 pm (ninth hour)
Vespers: sunset
Compline: before bed

The shift in the common meaning of noon from 3 pm to 12 noon began in the twelfth century when the prayers said at the ninth hour were set back to the sixth, the reasoning practical rather theological, the unreliability of medieval time-keeping devices and the seasonal elasticity of the hours of daylight in northern regions meaning it was easier to standardise on an earlier hour.  Additionally, in monasteries and on holy days, fasting ended at nones, which perhaps offered another administrative incentive to nudge it up the clock.  An alternative explanation offered by social historians is that it was simply the abbots deciding to align their noon meal with those taken in the towns and villages, the Old English word non having assumed the meaning “midday” or “midday meal” by circa 1140.  Whatever the reason, the meaning shift from "ninth hour" to "sixth hour" seems to have been complete by the fourteenth century, the same path of evolution as the Dutch noen).  Noon is an example of what etymologists call a fossil word, one which that embeds customs of former ages.

The use as a synonym for midnight existed between the seventeenth & nineteenth centuries, apparently because the poetic phrase “noon of the night” entered popular use.  The noun forenoon (the morning (ie (be)fore + noon)) applied especially the latter part of it, those hours “when business is done”, the word emerging circa 1500.  The noun noonday (middle of the day) was first used by Myles Coverdale (1488–1569), the English cleric and ecclesiastical reformer remembered for his printed translation of the Bible into English (1535) and it was used as an adjective from 1650s.  In the Old English there had been non tid (noon-tide, midday, noon) and non-tima (noon, noon-time, midday).  The noun afternoon (part of the day from noon to evening) dates from circa 1300 and it was subject to an interesting shift in grammatical form.  In the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries it was used as “at afternoon” but from circa 1600 this shifted to “in the afternoon”; it emerged as an adjective from the 1570s.  In the Middle English there had been the mid-fourteenth century aftermete (afternoon, part of the day following the noon meal).

Lindsay Lohan at nuncheon, Scott's Restaurant, Mayfair, London, 2015.

The noun nuncheon was from the mid-fourteenth century nōn-schench (slight refreshment of food (with or without liquor) taken at midday, the name shifting with the meal, nuncheon taken originally in the afternoon (ie notionally the three o’clock meal), the construct being none (noon) + shench (draught, cup), from the Old English scenc, related to scencan (to pour out, to give to drink) and cognate with the Old Frisian skenka (to give to drink) and the German & Dutch schenken (to give).  The most obvious descendent of nuncheon is luncheon (and thus lunch).

Lāhainā Noon is the solar phenomenon (known only in the tropics) when the Sun culminates at the zenith at solar noon, passing directly overhead, thus meaning objects underneath cast no shadow, creating a effect something like the primitive graphics in some video games.  The name Lāhainā Noon (Lāhainā Noons the plural) was the winner in a contest organised by Hawai'i's Bishop Museum in 1990, the museum noting the word lāhainā (originally lā hainā) may be translated into English as “cruel sun” but makes reference also to the severe droughts experienced in that part of the island of Maui.  The old Hawai'ian name for the event was the much more pleasing kau ka lā i ka lolo (the sun rests on the brains).

Copacetic

Copacetic (pronounced koh-puh-set-ik)

In slang, fine; completely satisfactory; OK.

1919: An Americanism said to be of utterly obscure origin, the entirely speculative attributions of the word to Cajun (Louisiana) French, Italian, Hebrew, African American English, Yiddish, barracks Latin or even gangster slang all lack any supporting evidence.

Given that the English language offers: pleasant, satisfactory, acceptable, enjoyable, attractive, tempting, appetizing, cordial, OK, nice, fine, likable, sweet, cheerful, convivial, satisfying, amusing, agreeable, pleasing, pleasurable & amiable, copacetic filled no obvious gap although it was said by some (without evidence) to be specific to a mood, or relationship without problems.  The richness of the English vocabulary meant there were already plenty of ways of saying that and women have anyway long been skilled in loading the word “fine” with just a change of inflection, covering the spectrum from the first, fine careless rapture of love to homicidal loathing.  Copacetic wouldn’t seem to improve on that but some tried to get it to catch on, the alternative spellings including copasetic, copesetic & copesettic.  Copacetic is an adjective.

Obscure and unnecessary, copacetic exists mostly as a fetish word discussed between consenting etymologists and lexicographers in the privacy of their chat groups.  It does occasionally appear in literature or other places, either because the author is searching for linguistic variation or just as the type of flourish Henry Fowler (1858–1933) condemned in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) as a “pride of knowledge”, something he thought “a very unamiable characteristic”, the display of which “sedulously should be avoided”.  In other words, except between word-nerds, copacetic need not be used (because there are so many alternatives) and should not be used (because most won’t know what it means).  Knowingly or not, most seem to have followed his advice.  Henry Fowler, although disapproving of much, may have been more tolerant of another wilful display of the obscure: Oojah-cum-spiff.   Oojah-cum-spiff (all right; fine) appeared in PG Wodehouse's (1881-1975) novel Very Good, Jeeves (1930), possibly as an alteration of oojah-capivvy, Wodehouse's interpretation of an Indian or Persian expression of uncertain origin.  Wodehouse remains something of a nerdish cult but oojah-capivvy is now as rare as copacetic.

As far as is known, copacetic appeared first in the novel A Man for the Ages (1919) by Irving Bacheller (1859-1950).  The author had a character, noted for her idiosyncratic speech, twice use the word and added it and “coralapus” were “her peculiar property” and “prized possession”.  Coralapus vanished without trace but copacetic has never quite gone away, the novelty attracting journalists, headline writers and songsmiths but the place it was first embedded was elaborated African-American speech, especially among those associated with jazz music and by the 1930s, it was regularly included in dictionaries of US slang and etymological discussions in literary journals.  At this time, the speculation seems to have begun, one of the earliest claims of origin by a gentlemen from Milwaukee who claimed it was from the Cajun (Louisiana) French couper-sètique (able to cope with), the correspondent even providing a couplet from “a charming old Acadian poem.”

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, during an "RU OK?" moment, Los Angeles, 2012.

However, this theory gained no support.  Also dismissed were other suggestions of origin including the Chinook Jargon copasenee (which seems actually to exist in Chinook Jargon), the Israeli Hebrew hakol beseder (all is in order (in a transliteration from the pointed spelling ha-kōl bĕ-sēdher)), a calque on expressions in European languages such as the German alles in Ordnung, the Polish wszystko w porządku and the Russian vsë v porjadke.   All were debunked by one authority or another and the consensus is that Irving Bacheller simply coined the word for his character in the manner of the malapropisms Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) created as comic devices for his Mrs Malaprop in the play The Rivals (1775).  What supports this perhaps disappointing conclusion is that Mr Bacheller had a bit of previous in such coinings, the construct of copacetic presumably a blend of the Latin copia (plenty) + ceterum (otherwise, in other respects).

Sassy

Sassy (pronounced sas-ee)

(1) Disrespectful or impudent; impertinent; insolent.

(2) Boldly stylish and smart; pert.

1830–1835: An invention of American English, the colloquialism thought an alteration of “saucy” which in the context of human interaction could mean either: (1) brazen, cheeky, discourteous & disrespectful, (2) audacious, bold & assertive or (3) ribald.  Sassy picked up these variations (although the use to hint at the mildly erotic faded) and gained also the notion in fashion of something stylish or avant-garde.  Sassy is another of those words in English which must seem strange to those learning the subtleties of the language: It can be either a compliment or an expression of disapproval, used sometimes variously to reference the same conduct.  Of objects (usually in fashion), it’s less ambiguous, sassy always said in admiration.  The unrelated sasswood (or sassy wood) is a West African leguminous tree, Erythrophleum guineense, with poisonous bark (sassy bark) and hard strong wood; an alkaloid from this source used in pharmaceuticals.  The etymology is thought to be from a language of the Kwa family.  The comparative is sassier and the superlative sassiest.  Sassy is an adjective, sassiness is a noun and sassily an adverb.

On sale between 1988-1996, Sassy magazine was nominally classed as a “teen magazine” but in terms of editorial content was aimed at the “young women” targeted by the other glossies such as Seventeen and YM but with content which attempted to straddle the gap between the emphasis on weight-loss, make-up & clothes in such titles and what might be called “serious content”.  That turned out to be something of a sweet spot (a gap in the market as it were) because it turned out that what Sassy did was validate that young women could simultaneously be interested both in feminist issues and boy bands.  It may not sound remarkable now but at the time, including in such magazines articles about suicide or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) was actually subversive.  Sassy also was of note in that when Australian feminists Sandra Yates (b 1947) & Anne Summers (b 1945) took control, it was only the second only women-led management buyout in US corporate history.  To mark the significance of suddenly being in the same business as Rupert Murdoch (b 1931), the bolshie pair described themselves as “mogulettes” (in the sense of being on a smaller scale than News Corporation rather than a feminized form) and Sassy was immediately successful, circulation almost doubling within a year.  Sassy's message was that girls didn't have to be sassy but if that's what they wanted, sassy they should be.

Sassiness: Lindsay Lohan with sassy Hermes Pink Ostrich Birkin Bag & Charlotte Olympia Kitty moccasins in chestnut brown suede and leather, London, 2015.

It was also quite innovative, people of color showing up on the pages and sometimes even on the cover and Sassy anticipated crowd sourcing when it published the December 1990 issue consisting wholly of “reader-produced” content.  However, if the daughters of America were reading, their mothers were watching and groups representing evangelical Christian women mobilized, claiming Sassy’s advice on sex would encourage promiscuity and a flood of unwanted pregnancies.  What Sassy printed was actually little different to what appears in the brochures in doctors’ waiting rooms but, just as Sassy had achieved consistent profitability, advertisers pulled their support, the threat of boycotts too great a risk.  Just as the printing presses has started to roll in 1988, Sandra Yates had told the New York Times (NYT) “I’m going to prove you can run a business with feminist principles and make money” and briefly she did but, spooked by Christians threatening to stop buying stuff, capitalism bit back and Sassy never recovered, officially folded into `TEEN magazine with the coming of 1997 but actually quietly put into a burka.