Bipolar

Bipolar (pronounced bahy-poh-ler)

(1) Having two poles, as the earth.

(2) Of, relating to, or found at both polar regions.

(3) Characterized by opposite extremes in opinions, nature etc.

(4) In electronics, relating to a semiconductor device, such as a transistor, that exploits the electrical characteristics of contact between two substances, one with an inherent positive charge, the other with an inherent negative charge.

(5) In electric power distribution, a power transmission line having two direct-current conductors in opposite polarity.

(6) In physics, a region of magnetic flux having two distinct poles

(7) In psychiatry, of, relating to, or having bipolar disorder (a major mood disorder that is characterized by episodes of mania and depression; once known as manic-depression.

(8) In physiology, having two poles; used especially of nerve cells in which the branches project from two usually opposite points.

(9) In geopolitics, of or relating to an international system in which two states wield most of the cultural, economic, and political influence (ie two states with hegemonies exerted over their respective spheres of influence.  The companion terms are unipolar and multipolar and all are sometimes used by analogy in fields like commerce or sporting competition to reference instances of specific dominance.

1800–1810: The construct was bi- + polar.  Pole (in this context) was from the Middle French pole & pôle, from the Latin polus, from the Ancient Greek πόλος (pólos) (axis of rotation).  The –ar suffix was from Latin -āris (of, pertaining to) and was appended to nouns to create adjectives (it came increasingly to be appended to words of non-Latin origin).  The bi- prefix came directly from the Latin bi-, from Latin bis (twice) & bīnus (double), from the Proto-Italic dwi-, from the primitive Indo-European dwi- and was one of the sequence of Latin number prefixes (uni-, bi, tri etc).  In English, it can be confusing because it can used to mean either (1) two, pair, both, duo or (2) half.  In chemistry, the use meaning half has been discontinued.  In general use, the ambiguity remains, illustrated by the use when applied to measures of duration which can variously be interpreted as “once every two periods” or “twice every period”, the classic examples of which are this like biweekly, bimonthly, and biannual.  Style guides now often suggest choosing unambiguous forms such as “fortnightly” or, where no such elegant alternative exists, spelling it out explicitly (twice a month; every two years etc).  Using semi- as a prefix can work but is imprecise although acceptable if the meaning is in other ways made clear.

In English, as a clipping (a use of the prefix as a stand-alone word) of bisexual (used as both noun & adjective), the meaning was clear and effortlessly “bi” moved from LGBTQQIAAOP slang to the general vocabulary.  Potentially misleading however is bigender, a coining of LGBTQQIAAOP activists which became linguistically necessary when gender and sex were re-assigned as separate constructs.  It’s recommended it be used as the hyphenated bi-gender (to be consistent “bi-sexual” should probably also adopt the form) lest one might ponder if a bigend is LGBTQQIAAOP slang for something (and at this point one’s mind may wander) unbeknown to one.  Additionally in engineering, a big-end bearing in an internal combustion engine is the one located “big end” of the connecting rod and attached to the crankshaft.  Mechanics may use “bigender” (pronounced big-end-ah) as slang which in oral use won’t be confused with something pronounced as by-jen-dah but if transcribed, were the latter hyphenated, there’ll be no mystified mechanics.  Bipolar is a noun & adjective and bipolarization & bipolarity are nouns; the noun plural is bipolar.

Lindsay Lohan following Edvard Munch's (1863–1944) The Scream (1893).  Much art has been analysed by those seeking insight into the mental health of the artist, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder two conditions frequently identified.

The adjective bipolar dates from 1810 in the figurative sense of "of double aspect" and was by 1859 used in the literature of anatomy (having two processes from opposite poles) to refer to nerve cells while the sometimes hyphenated noun bipolarity (state of having two poles) emerged in 1834.  The earliest known instance of the now familiar use in psychiatry as a technical term to describe what was then known as manic-depressive psychosis appears to date from 1957 in a publication by German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard (1904-1988), noted in the history of the profession for his extensive (though now mostly forgotten) classification of psychotic illnesses (a nosology (the construct being nos- + -ology, from the Ancient Greek νόσος (nosos) (disease) + -λογία (-logia) (study of), the branch of medical science dealing with the classification of diseases)) although still used in structural linguistics is the system of classification of non-verbal communication.  As the term “manic-depression” ascended the linguistic treadmill (a process accelerated by the negative connotations which attached to the word because in popular literature and films manic depressives were often characterised as psychopathic murderers or other flavours or madness) “bipolar disorder” was positioned as a preferable term, the reason being that bipolar was separated from both the connotations of “manic depression” and the two elements (“manic” & “depression”), each loaded with negative associations.  Accordingly, in 1980, bipolar disorder replaced manic-depressive psychosis in the third edition (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  According to tracking by dictionaries, it was in the mid-1990s that bipolar (in the context of mental health) gained traction in general use and, inevitably, appeared on the linguistic treadmill although even forty-odd years on there’s little to suggest it has yet reached the level of opprobrium which might prompt the DSM’s editorial board to discuss the need for a replacement although their processes can take a while, the term “mental retardation” (long regarded in the community as offensive and in some cases misleading) not replaced by term “intellectual development disorder (intellectual disability)” until the release of DSM-5-TR (text revision) in 2022.

The bipolar world in 1980.  The geopolitical architecture of the Cold War (circa 1948-circa 1990) revolved around Moscow (the Warsaw Pact) and Washington DC (NATO).

Bipolar disorder was actually introduced to the DSM when the multi-axial system (Axis I to Axis V) was created:

Axis I: Clinical Disorders (including bipolar disorder)

Axis II: Personality Disorders and Mental Retardation

Axis III: General Medical Conditions

Axis IV: Psychosocial and Environmental Problems (stressors)

Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning

This structure was modified with the release in 2000 of DSM-IV-TR which, within the axis system, divided diagnoses and symptoms into sections or "decision trees," including which symptoms must be included for a diagnosis and which must not be present.  The sectional approach was carried over to the DSM-5 (2013) when the axis system was abandoned, replaced by 20 chapters containing categories of related disorders of which “Bipolar and Related Disorders” is one, others including Anxiety disorders, Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, Depressive disorders, Feeding and eating disorders and Personality disorders.  Within its category, bipolar disorder was subject to some refinements, including those reflected in other areas (such as objectum sexuality) that attempted to reduce the medicalization of behaviour that although statistically aberrant, was part of the normal human condition.  Childhood bipolar disorder for example, although long well-defined and accepted as a diagnosis, was effectively rolled into a new category of depressive disorders called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), reflecting the concern that the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder was being inconsistently and overly applied to behaviour better understood as variations of childhood irritability.  Possibly too, the editors may have been influenced by work in labelling theory which suggested the early appearance in an individual’s medical history of conditions such as depression or bipolar disorder could have life-long consequences.

In the DSM-5, the diagnostic sub-categories of bipolar disorder were extended to seven:

(1) Bipolar I disorder

(2) Bipolar II disorder

(3) Cyclothymic disorder

(4) Substance/medication-induced bipolar and related disorder

(5) Bipolar and related disorder due to another medical condition

(6) Other specified bipolar and related disorder

(7) Unspecified bipolar and related disorder

Other changes included (1) the elimination of “mixed episode”.  Instead, a manic, hypomanic, or depressive episode can be specified as “with mixed features” a specifier with its own DSM definition. (2) The bipolar II diagnosis in the DSM-IV excluded a history of mixed episodes and this exclusion has been removed, something many long advocated. (3) There was a standardization of the text.  The word “abnormally” was not included in the DSM-IV criterion A for a hypomanic episode, while it was in criterion A for a manic episode; in DSM-5 the same language is used for both, the full criteria for the two distinct types of episodes thus closer together. (4) Each type of bipolar disorder gained specifiers (such as “with mixed features”, “with anxious distress” & “with rapid cycling”) which serve further to clarify the illness.

The DSM-5-TR was released in 2022 and among the changes were amendments to the section covering disorder.  Criterion B in bipolar I disorder was refined to make explicit that a manic episode can't be “superimposed on” (ie bolted-onto to run simultaneously with) an existing diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, delusional disorder, or other specified or unspecified psychotic disorder.  A similar procedural clarification was made to criterion C for bipolar II.  The specifiers indicating the severity of a manic episode were also updated.  Under DSM-5, the bipolar severity specifiers were mild, moderate, and severe which certainly made sense when labeling depressive episodes but when of clinical significance, that was less helpful when categorizing manic episodes because, in the nomenclature of the DSM, “mild” indicated “no impairment in functioning” whereas manic episodes inherently impaired function.  The specifiers for manic episodes accordingly were updated in the DSM-5-TR to (1) Mild (the manic episode meets the minimum symptom criteria), (2) Moderate (the manic episode causes a very significant increase in impairment and (3) Severe (the patient needs nearly continual supervision to prevent harm from being done to themselves and/or others).

2:365 by Kim Rask & Missy Douglas (2014), Ucki Ood, pp 400 (ISBN-100615950620).  A collection of 365 works painted in 2013 as a document of bipolar disorder.

First diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 19 while a student of art at Cambridge, Dr Missy Douglas (b 1977) in 2013 undertook for that year, each day to paint a canvas which would express her feelings at that moment.  To ensure the works reflected her condition rather than the effects of medication, during this year she went un-medicated, hoping the paintings would more accurately reflect the highs and lows of bipolarity.  When going to sleep each evening, Dr Douglas had no idea how she would feel the next morning, some days ecstatic, some days depressed.  Although the change in name to bipolar was probably helpful, Dr Douglas' experiment does illustrate why “manic depression” was so evocative of the condition.  Interestingly, on not one day was a painting not completed, not does the set include a blank canvas or one simply black or rendered otherwise monochromatically.  What this indicates would be something to ponder but is perhaps indicative of how a spectrum condition can manifest, Dr Douglas presumably a high-functioning bipolar.  For a BBC piece, Dr Douglas provided brief notes for six of the works:

Day 5: “I was really anxious, angry and feeling trapped.”

Day 177: “I was really in a dark place here. I was completely in a depressive phase.”

Day 236: “I was burying feelings and my emotions were all over the place.  Very turbulent.”

Day 242: “I was at the height of mania here, but there was a massive wave of white depression heading towards me.”

Day 314: “Mania.  I was buzzing and everything was technicolor and beautiful.  I was flying and felt invincible."

Day 359: “Christmas Day 2013.  I was feeling very depressed yet I completely compartmentalised and concealed it.  The twinkly forced jollity hid the sadness.”

Socle

Socle (pronounced sok-uhl or soh-kuhl)

(1) In architecture, a low, plain part forming a base for a column, pedestal, or the like; a plinth or pedestal.

(2) In architecture, A plain face or plinth at the foot of a wall.

(3) In furniture design, as applied to tables, a large, full-width support used as an alternative to table legs.

(4) In cooking, the use of bread, rice, potato or similar as a (sometimes only decorative) base onto which other ingredients are laid.

(5) In algebraic ring theory (a branch of abstract algebra that studies rings, which are algebraic structures that generalize the properties of integers) the sum of the minimal normal sub-modules of a given R-module of a given ring R.

(6) In group theory, the sub-group generated by the minimal normal subgroups of a given group.

1695–1705: From the French socle, from the Italian zoccolo (wooden shoe; base of a pedestal) from the Latin socculus (small shoe (literally "small sock" (soccus)).  Socle is a noun; the noun plural is socles.

The Valkyrie plot: 20 July 1944

The Valkyrie Plot was an attempt, one of many but one also of a handful actually brought to fruition, to kill Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The conspirators were mostly Prussian aristocrats, senior army officers (a bit of overlap there) and a smattering of liberal politicians, all of whom ultimately demonstrated their ineptitude at staging a coup d'état but, on 20 July 1944, they did succeed in detonating an explosive device they had smuggled into the Wolfsschanze (the Wolf’s Lair, one of the Führer's heavily guarded military headquarters on the Eastern Front).  Previous opportunities to use a bomb for this purpose had been aborted because the conspirators had wanted as many leading Nazis as possible also killed and those circumstances never arose but after the Allies successfully established a beachhead in Normandy (the 6 June 1944 D-Day landings), it was decided to delay no longer.  The bomb used at the Wolf's Lair was actually of British origin, obtained by the Abwehr (literally "resistance" or "defence" but in a military context used by Germans to mean "counterintelligence"), the military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr & Wehrmacht between 1920-1945 (ironically it was for most of the war one of the centres of anti-Nazi activities) and chosen because its fuse operated with complete silence device.  Ultimately the blast four, seriously injuring another thirteen but Hitler survived for three reasons (although he would claim it was "providence").

(1) Hot, sultry weather.  The plan was for the assassination to be carried out by planting explosives in an underground bunker built with reinforced concrete which had just one steel door and no windows.  Designed to be bomb-proof in that it was built expressly to protect occupants from the energy of outside explosions, in an inside explosion, the occupants would be hit by several blast waves as a consequence of the resonant conditions of high-energy fluid dynamics; ideal conditions to stage an explosion with lethal intent.  However, with unpleasantly high temperature and humidity on the day, the meeting was moved to an above-ground building with several windows which offered ventilation to provide relief.  Thus, when the device exploded, both energy from the blast wave and shrapnel, instead of being contained and ricocheting around the room, dissipated partially outside.

(2) The furniture: The table under which the bomb was planted was supported by two stout, heavy socles rather than legs.  This wouldn’t have been critical except that minutes before detonation, the briefcase containing the device was moved from one side of the socle to the other so that the heavy timber stood between Hitler and the bomb, the structure now at the perfect angle to absorb much of the blast before it reached him.  Had the briefcase been left in its original position, the socle which ultimately absorbed or re-directed much of the energy would instead have increased the lethality of the energy directed towards Hitler. 

(3) Bad luck: Because of circumstances on the day, the plotters were able to arm only one of the two bombs they had intended to use.  Had both been detonated, in either room, the blast would have been much greater although opinion remains divided over whether even this would have been enough to guarantee Hitler’s death.  As it was, he escaped with non-life threatening injuries (curiously for some time after the blast, the shaking of his limbs (symptoms which may have indicated Parkinson's Disease) vanished) and was well enough to conduct social activities the same afternoon (after changing his trousers which had been shredded by the blast), meeting with the by now much diminished Duce (Benito Mussolini,1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943).  After that, they would never meet again.  

Aftermath: The Führer shows the Duce the effects of the blast, telling him he'd been saved "by providence".  Mussolini agreed with Hitler but of course, he always said he did, even when suffering his not infrequent doubts.

The popular television show Mythbusters, run by past masters at blowing-up stuff, did test whether the blast, if using both devices instead of one, would have killed Hitler in either the above-ground conference room or the sealed, underground bunker.  Their tests were conducted using full-scale emulations of both the conference room in which the attack took place and the the underground bunker from which the meeting had been moved.  In both, the intended explosive power was deployed rather than that generated by the single device used on the day.  Explosives experts who examined the data tended to agree that while not definitive, it was plausible Hitler could have survived even a more powerful blast in the conference room but that everything was still dependent on the placement of the briefcase.  However, because the second test didn't exactly replicate the sealed, underground bunker (the test structure was only partially buried) with its walls of think, reinforced concrete, the experts were less convinced by the Mythbusters' conclusion that too would have been survivable.  They further noted the significance of the socle in deflecting the blast, this something which happened only by chance on the day and all agreed that had the bomb been placed close to Hitler, as intended, the blast in either room probably would have killed or severely injured him.

Tables with soles (for prosecution and defence counsel), Lindsay Lohan in court, Los Angeles, January 2013. 

Melon

Melon (pronounced mel-uhn)

(1) Any of various plants of two cucurbitaceous vines (the gourd family) including the watermelon, muskmelon et al.  Variations include Genus Cucumis (various musk melons, including honeydew, cantaloupes, and horned melon); Genus Citrullus (watermelons and others); Genus Benincasa (winter melon); Genus Momordica (a bitter melon)

(2) The fruit of any of these plants.

(3) A color ranging between a medium crimson and a deep pink, noted for the orange tinge.

(4) In zoology, the visible upper portion of the head of a surfacing whale or dolphin, including the beak, eyes, and blowhole (a mass of adipose tissue used to focus and modulate vocalizations).

(5) In the slang of (mostly North American) financial markets, an especially large additional dividend (often in the form of stock) distributed to stockholders (often as “cut a melon”).

(6) By extension, any windfall of money to be divided among specified beneficiaries.

(7) In slang, the breasts of the human female (almost always in the plural).

(8) In slang, the head; the skull.

(9) In slang, a derogatory term for members of a green political party, or similar environmental groups (rare and mostly Australia & New Zealand).

1350–1400: From the Middle English meloun & melon (herbaceous, succulent trailing annual plant or its sweet, edible fruit), from the Old Portuguese (via the thirteenth century Old French melon) melon, from the Late Latin melonem & mēlōn- (stem of mēlō and a shortening of mēlopepō (the “gourd apple”, a large apple-shaped melon)), from the Ancient Greek μηλοπέπων (mēlopépōn) (large apple-shaped melon), the construct being μηλο (mêlo(n)) (apple) + πέπων (pépōn) (ripe), from πέπτω (péptō) (to ripen).  Confusingly for historians seeking to reconstruct the recipes of Antiquity the Latin melopeponem was a kind of pumpkin while the Greek mēlopepon (gourd-apple) was applied to several kinds of gourds bearing sweet fruit, the origin of that in the noun use of pépōn (ripe) distinguishing the fruit on the vine ready for harvest from those yet to ripen.  As a modifier, melon is appended as appropriate (based on color, shape, diet, environmental niche, habitat etc) including melon beetle, melon cactus, Melon rugose mosaic virus, melon thistle & melon-headed.  The best known is probably the watermelon, dating from the 1610s and so named for their high content of water-like juice.  The more pleasing term in French is French melon d'eau.  Melon is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is melons.

Being prolific and undemanding to grow, melons were among the earliest plants domesticated and in Greek, “melon” was used in a generic way for many foreign fruits, a fate which would also befall apple, thus the naming of the pineapple and in some Old English texts, cucumbers are referred to as eorþæppla (literally "earth-apples", the deductive process which produced the French pomme de terre (potato (literally “earth-apple”, the French pomme from the Latin pomum (apple; fruit)).  Apple was from the Old English æppel (apple; any kind of fruit; fruit in general), from the from Proto-Germanic ap(a)laz (source also of the Old Saxon, Old Frisian & Dutch appel, the Old Norse eple, the Old High German apful & the German Apfel), from the primitive Indo-European ab(e)l- (apple), (source also of the Gaulish avallo (fruit), the Old Irish ubull, the Lithuanian obuolys, & the Old Church Slavonic jabloko (apple)) by etymologists caution original sense of these and their relationship(s) to which is now understood as “an apple” is uncertain.  In Middle English, as late as the seventeenth century (even the earliest compliers of recipe books aren’t always explicit so some reverse-engineering based on supposition has been undertaken), it was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts (such as Old English fingeræppla (dates (literally "finger-apples) and the late fourteenth century Middle English appel of paradis (banana (literally apple of paradise)).

The twenty-first century judgment of Paris: Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears & Paris Hilton reprise Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, New York City, 29 November 2006.  The car was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199).

That generality of meaning saw “apple” named as the fruit with which the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, creating the original sin with which we’ve all since been damned, women especially since the Bible says it was all her fault.  However, the “fruit of the forbidden tree” was unspecified in the original texts of the Book of Genesis but despite the wishful thinking of a few, in biblical scholarship there’s no support for the notion the fruit was even hinted at being an appel of paradis, however appropriate a nice plump banana might seem, given the context.  Nor is the forbidden fruit explicitly mentioned in the Holy Quran but according to traditional Islamic commentaries it was not an apple but wheat.  The Prophet may not have been concerned but in Greek mythology there was the μῆλον τῆς Ἔριδος (Golden Apple of Discord) in the story of the Judgment of Paris which the goddess Ἔρις (Eris) (Strife), tossed in the midst of the feast of the gods at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis as a prize of beauty, thus sparking a vanity-fueled dispute among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite which ultimately triggered the Trojan War.  Eris was the goddess of chaos and discord who (perhaps unsurprisingly), having not received a wedding invitation, was miffed and inscribed kallisti (To the prettiest one) on her “wedding gift” handing it to Πάρις (Paris, AKA Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros) (Alexander), the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy) who was told to choose the goddess he found most beautiful.  Judging what turned out to be one of Greek mythology's more significant beauty contests, Paris chose Aphrodite, offending Hera and Athena, the most famous consequence of their feud being the Trojan War.  Tragedy did thereafter stalk the marriage of Peleus and Thetis; of their seven sons, the only one to survive beyond infancy was Achilles.

Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit (circa 1620-1625), oil on canvas by Sir Nathaniel Bacon (1585–1627).

Beginning probably in Holland in the early seventeenth century and apparently first painted by Pieter Aertsen (circa 1533-circa 1573) "cookmaid and market scenes" was a genre in painting which combined representations of produce and kitchens with themes often borrowed from the New Testament.  Two other of Sir Nathaniel's works in this vein are known still to exist: Cookmaid with Still Life of Game & Cookmaid with Still Life of Birds, both featuring healthy young ladies and there is obviously some artistic license in Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit given that although every piece of produce depicted was at the time grown somewhere in England, not all simultaneously would have been in season.  Sir Nathaniel's lengthy title was too much for many and the painting has often been referred to as "Maid with Melons".  This slang use of melons is listed by many dictionaries as “vulgar” or “mildly vulgar” but does travel with the vague respectability of a classical origin: In Antiquity the plural of the Greek melon (μῆλα) (mela) was used for “a girl's breasts”.

Juicy Melons, Euston Station, London. 

A cantaloupe as one would appear in most of the world (left) and a rockmelon down under (right).

Globalization has to some extent standardized in the English language spellings and meanings which once were disparate, sometimes reversing the trend towards diversity which was noted as one of the linguistic effects of the British Empire, especially in India under the Raj where the British pillaged the local languages with only slightly less enthusiasm than they showed for gold and diamonds.  However, the names of food seem often resistant to change, presumably most often where forms are well-established and supplied by local production.  Thus what is in some places eggplant is elsewhere the aubergine.  It’s also a melon matter because in Australia, what most of the world knows as the cantaloupe (from the French cantaloup, from the Italian place name Cantalupo, a former Papal summer estate near Rome, where the melons were first grown after being introduced to Europe from the Middle East), is called the rockmelon (occasionally rock-melon) and the antipodean quirkiness is not unique, the cantaloupe in some places call the “sweet melon” or “Crenshaw melon” while in South Africa where it’s not uncommon to see fruit-stalls side-by-side, one might be selling cantaloupes and the other spanspeks (from the Afrikaans Spaanse spek (literally “Spanish bacon”)).  The Australian use, once deconstructed, does make sense in that a cantaloupe does resemble some rocks but the case seems not compelling and cantaloupe is a wonderful word.  Visiting foodies will be gratified Australians follow the rest of the world when it comes to the honeydew (or honey-dew) melon, the name from the late sixteenth century honeydew (sticky sweet substance found in small drops on trees and plants), a replication of the formations in the Dutch honigdaauw and the German Honigthau.  The melon was first named in 1916 when selective breeding produced a cross between the cantaloupe and a melon native to southern African.

Plasma

Plasma (pronounced plaz-muh)

(1) In anatomy, physiology & hematology, the liquid part of blood or lymph, as distinguished from the suspended elements; A clear component of blood or lymph containing fibrin.

(2) In cell biology, a former name for protoplasm; cytoplasm

(3) In cheese-making, a less common term for whey (a milk serum, separating as liquid from the curd after coagulation, as in cheese making).

(4) In mineralogy, a green, faintly translucent chalcedony.  Heliotrope is a green variety of chalcedony, containing red inclusions of iron oxide that resemble drops of blood, giving heliotrope its alternative name of bloodstone. In a similar variety, the spots are yellow instead, known as plasma.

(5) In physics, a highly ionized gas containing an approximately equal number of positive ions and electrons.

(6) In historic medicine, a mixture of starch and glycerin, once used as a substitute for ointments.

(7) In digital graphics (as demoscene), a visual effect in which cycles of changing colors are warped in various ways to give the illusion of liquid organic movement.

1712: From the Late Latin plasma (literally "mold") from the Ancient Greek πλάσμα (plásma) (something molded or formed, hence "image, figure; counterfeit, forgery; formed style, affectation”), akin to plássein (to form, mold; (and related to the modern plastic).  The Ancient Greek plásma originally meant "to spread thin" from the primitive Indo-European plath-yein, from the root pele (flat; to spread).  The original meaning in English was the now obsolete "form; shape" which reflected the classical form of the earlier plasm, the sense of a "liquid part of blood" dating from 1845 while that of "ionized gas" was from 1928.  Plasma is a noun and plasmatic & plasmic are adjectives; the noun plural is plasmas.

Plasma physics

Although plasma was first observed (and named “radiant matter”) in 1879 by British chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes (1832–1919),its nature wasn’t identified until work in 1897 by British physicist Sir Joseph Thomson (1856–1940).  The term “plasma” was first used in 1928 by American chemist, physicist, and engineer Irving Langmuir (1881–1957), the word chosen as a description of ionised gas because Langmuir noted the similarity between the transport of electrons from thermionic filaments and the way blood plasma carries the red and white corpuscles. 

Almost all observable matter in the universe is in the plasma state. Formed at high temperatures, plasmas consist of freely moving ions and free electrons and are known as the “fourth state of matter” because their unique physical properties distinguish them from solids, liquids and gases.  Plasma densities and temperatures greatly vary, from the cold gases of interstellar space to the extraordinarily hot, dense cores of stars and inside a detonating nuclear weapon.  Plasma and ionized gases possess unique properties quite unlike those of the other three states, the transition between them more a definitional question of the point(s) at which nomenclature shifts from one to the other; a kind of demarcation dispute between physicists.  A wholly speculative dispute is whether plasma is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe, something impossible to determine because of uncertainty surrounding the existence and properties of dark matter.  Based on the existing mathematical models of the universe, there should be a great deal more matter and energy than has ever been observed, hence the “dark” fudge.  The assumption is that both are there but because they’re “dark” we can’t see them.  That assumption is however based on other known orthodoxies and either the existence or the deduced volume of dark matter may be found to be errors if any of those orthodoxies are either disproved or proved to have been wrongly calculated.  In the history of science, probably most orthodoxies have be overturned.

Plasma and blood

Plasma & platelets not separated: Lindsay Lohan in a blood-soaked photo-shoot by Tyler Shields (b 1982), Los Angeles, 2011.  Shields had worked with blood before, once completing a painting with blood from twenty donors, obtained using a commercial service after physicians declined to be involved in the project.

Plasma is the liquid component of blood and in human blood and by volume, some 55% of blood is plasma, the remainder made of red & white blood cells and platelets, all of which is suspended in the plasma which is about 92% water, a further 7% containing vital proteins such as albumin, gamma globulin and anti-hemophilic factor while the remaining 1% consists of mineral salts, sugars, fats, hormones and vitamins.  Plasma is vital for human function because it (1) assists in the maintenance of blood pressure and volume (2) transports the proteins critical for blood clotting and immunity, (3) carries electrolytes such as sodium and potassium on which muscles depends and (4) assists cell function by maintaining the body's pH balance.

In clinical medicine, plasma is given to trauma, burn and shock patients, as well as people with severe liver disease or multiple clotting factor deficiencies.  It boosts a patient’s blood volume, helping to prevent shock and encouraging clotting.  Pharmaceutical companies use plasma to make treatments for conditions such as immune deficiencies and bleeding disorders and in blood donations, the liquid portion can be separated from the cells.  As blood is drawn from the arm, it is fed through a machine which collects the plasma, the donor’s red blood cells and platelets then returned to the donor along with some saline. Remarkably, the process takes little longer than donating whole blood.  Donated plasma is frozen within 24 hours of being donated to preserve its clotting factors and can then safely be stored for up to a year, thawed for transfusion when needed.

Tavern

Tavern (pronounced tav-ern)

(1) In certain jurisdictions, a place where liquors are sold to be consumed on the premises.

(2) In certain jurisdictions, a name used what in other places might be called a bar, pub, hotel etc.

(2) Loosely used, an alternative name for a bar, pub etc in the sense of being a place where one can buy and consume alcohol.

1250–1300: From the Middle English taverne, from the mid-thirteenth century Old French taverne (shed made of boards, booth, stall (also “inn; wine shop”), from the Latin taberna (hut, inn, wine shop).  The Latin taberna originally described any “hut or shed”, the meaning later extended to “inn; wine shop” (presumably reflecting the building from which strong drink was first sold), a possible origin of the word a dissimilation from traberna, from trabs (genitive trabis) (beam, timber), from the primitive Indo-European treb- (dwelling) (the source also of the Lithuanian troba (a building), the Old Welsh treb (house, dwelling), the Welsh tref (a dwelling (literally "hamlet, home, town”)), the Irish treb (residence) and the Old English ðorp (village, hamlet, farm, estate).  If that’s accepted, the original meaning was something like "a wooden shed", some aspect of the mode of construction thus providing the name, something not unknown in architecture (eg glasshouse, A-Frame etc).  In English, the additional meaning of “a public house” (source of the modern “pub”) emerged in the mid fifteenth century.  The alternative spellings were tavarn, tavarne, taveron, tawern & tawerne.  Tavern, tavernkeeper & taverner are nouns; the noun plural is taverns.

In the business of selling liquor, outlets have variously been named bar, pub, public house, hostelry, hotel, lounge, inn, lodge, saloon, barroom, taphouse, alehouse, roadhouse, speakeasy & drinkery.  In slang, the names are legion including dive, pit, suds, joint, boozer, joint, watering hole and probably a dozen more.  In general use, the words pub, bar, tavern and inn have long been used interchangeably and inn & tavern in particular have become general terms of commerce and an establishment which might, upon a deconstruction of its trade, appear historically understood as a tavern might actually be called an inn of some type, something which might once have confused but now is probably never noticed, business done according to the terms of the license which (in most jurisdictions) must be on public display (usually framed and in some dark, obscure corner).

Lindsay Lohan outside a (studio set) tavern door, Anger Management, March 2013.

The differences did though once matter.  Inns and taverns began to appear in some number in the towns & villages of England, Wales & Scotland during the twelfth & thirteenth centuries, the institutions providing an important infrastructure for the both the travelers of the age and the social life of communities.  The function of an inn was to provide lodgings for those traveling while taverns were drinking houses, ale at the time (long before clean drinking water was an assumed part of a civilized existence) as vital a part of British life as bread & cheese.  It was also a time of limited intrusion from government and well into the medieval era, anyone with a vaguely suitable building could start brewing ale and set up business as a tavern; taverns accordingly proliferated and it would be rare to find a village of any size without one.  Inns were different in that they offered lodgings, overnight accommodation for those on the traveling and while they usually had a place where a guest’s horse could be fed, watered and stabled, they didn’t always offer ale for sale though meals were usually available.  Sometimes, in the interest of synergy, a village’s inn and tavern would operate co-operatively, each serving the customer within their own fields of specialization.

Lindsay Lohan in the pub enjoying a cocktail, August 2022.

Gradually, things became more regulated and businesses expanded their range of operations, taverns beginning to offer food (simple snacks served at the bar or table) while inns operated as quasi-ale houses although service was usually restricted to drinks taken with meals.  From these practices emerged the classic model of licensing used in many parts of the English-speaking world (although the terminology might vary between jurisdictions.  There were (1) taverns which were licensed to serve alcoholic drinks and simple (often packaged) snacks, (2) public houses (universally known as pubs) which offered rooms for overnight accommodation and the provision of meals for guests (at least breakfast & dinner) with the service of alcohol restricted usually to beer and wine and available only to be taken with meals and (3) inns of residence which offered only rooms for rent.  Governments imposed the highest licensing fees on taverns, that levied on pubs considerably less because they discharged their social license by offering a vital service.  Inns often didn’t need to be licensed although local authorities might impose higher rates or land taxes based on the commercial nature of the operation.  In the modern era, things have changed and although by historic definition a place like the New York Hilton Midtown might be a pub, few would describe such places as such, the modern use being “hotel” while “inn” has devolved to be a marketing term, “pub” “tavern” & “bar” becoming more or less synonymous and used thus irrespective of what appears on the license.

Vermiform

Vermiform (pronounced vur-muh-fawrm)

Resembling or having the long, thin, cylindrical shape of a worm; long and slender.

1720-1730: From the Medieval Latin vermiformis, the construct being vermis (worm) + forma (form).  Vermis was from the primitive Indo-European wr̥mis and cognates included the Ancient Greek ῥόμος (rhómos) and the Old English wyrm (worm (which evolved into the Modern English worm)).  Form was from -fōrmis (having the form of), from fōrma (a form, contour, figure, shape, appearance, looks).  The root of the Latin vermis was the primitive Indo-European wer- (to turn, bend), an element most productive, contributing to: adverse; anniversary; avert; awry; controversy; converge; converse (as the adjectival sense of "exact opposite”); convert; diverge; divert; evert; extroversion; extrovert; gaiter; introrse; introvert; invert; inward; malversation; obverse; peevish; pervert; prose; raphe; reverberate; revert; rhabdomancy; rhapsody; rhombus; ribald; sinistrorse; stalwart; subvert; tergiversate; transverse; universe; verbena; verge (as the verb meaning "tend, incline"); vermeil; vermicelli; vermicular; vermiform; vermin; versatile; verse (in the sense of the noun "poetry") version; verst; versus; vertebra; vertex; vertigo; vervain; vortex; -ward; warp; weird; worm; worry; worth (in the adjectival sense of "significant, valuable, of value") worth (as the verb "to come to be"); wrangle; wrap; wrath; wreath; wrench; wrest; wrestle; wriggle; wring; wrinkle; wrist; writhe; wrong; wroth & wry.  Vermiform is an adjective.

Commonly used in medicine to describe the appendix, Modern French also gained the word from Latin as the adjective vermiforme (plural vermiformes), the spelling of the medical use apéndice vermiforme (plural apéndices vermiformes).  The only known derived form in English is the adjective subvermiform, used apparently exclusively in the disciplines of zoology, including entomology.  The meaning was defined in a dictionary from 1898 as “shaped somewhat like a worm” which is surprisingly imprecise for the language of science but that vagueness appears adequate for the purposes to which it’s put.  For whatever reason, vermiform was a word much favored by the US humorist HL Mencken (1880-1956).

The female Eumillipes persephone: 1,306 legs & 330 segments.  

Because the scientific literature has for some time been dominated by COVID-19 and all that flowed the brief, sudden prominence of two vermiform creatures, one ancient, the other more recent, was an amusing distraction.  The younger animal was a new species of millipede which boasted not only more legs than any other creature on the planet but was the first of its kind to live up to its name.    

Since circa 1600, the term millipede has been applied to any of the many elongated arthropods, of the class Diplopoda (a taxonomic subphylum within the phylum Arthropoda (the centipedes, millipedes and similar creepy-crawlies) with cylindrical bodies that have two pairs of legs for each one of their many body segments and, although milliped was long regarded as the correct spelling by scientists who work with myriapods, millipede is by far the most common form in general use (although there’s the odd specialist who insists on millepede).  Millipede was from the Latin millipeda (wood louse), the construct being mille (thousand) + pes (genitive pedis) (foot), from the primitive Indo-European root ped (foot) (probably a loan-translation of Greek khiliopous).  When named, it wasn’t intended as a mathematically precise definition, only to suggest the things had lots of legs though, certainly many fewer than a thousand.  The creature has always possessed a certain comical charm because, despite having usually twice the number of legs as centipedes, the millipede is entirely harmless whereas there are centipedes which can be quite nasty.  For centuries millipede was thought a bit of a misnomer, with no example ever observed with more than 750 legs and that deep-soil dweller was an outlier, most having fewer with a count in two figures quite common.  The new species also lives in the depths: Eumilipes persephone (Persephone, the daughter of Zeus who was taken by Hades to the underworld), a female was found to be sprouting 1,306 legs.  Pale and eyeless, it’s vermiform in the extreme, the body-length almost a hundred times its width and instead of vision, it used a large antennae to navigate through darkness to feed on fungi.

The sheer length of the thing does suggest a long lifespan by the standards of the species, most of which tend not to survive much beyond two years.  The persephone however, based on a count of the body segments which grow predictably in the manner of tree rings, seems likely to live perhaps as long as a decade.  One factor which accounts for the longevity is the absence of predators, the persephone’s natural environment banded iron formations and volcanic rock some 200 feet (60 m) beneath the surface of a remote part of Western Australia.  Entomologists didn’t actually venture that deep to explore, instead using the simple but effective method of lowering buckets of tempting vegetation down shafts drilled by geologists exploring for minerals, returning later to collect whatever creatures had been tempted to explore.

Artist’s impression of an Arthropleura: half a metre wide and perhaps nearly three metres in length, the latter dimension similar to a small car.  

Days after the announcement from the Western Australian desert, livescience.com also announced researchers in the UK found the fossilized exoskeleton of an Arthropleura, the largest arthropod yet known to have lived.  The length of a modern car, the giant millipede-like creatures appear to have done most of their their creeping and crawling during the Carboniferous Period, between 359 million and 299 million years ago.

Although the Arthropleura have long been known from the fossil record, there’d not before been any suggestion they ever grew quite so large and the find was quite serendipitous, discovered on a beach in a block of sandstone which had recently fallen and cracked apart.  The exoskeleton fragment is 30 inches (750 mm) long and 22 inches (550 mm) wide which means the giant millipede would have been around 102 inches (2600 mm) long and weighed around 110 lbs (50 kg)m making it the biggest land animals of the Carboniferous era.  Despite its bulk however, the physics of movement and the need to support its own weight mean the leg count is nowhere near as impressive as its young relation what is now on the other side of the world (what are now the Australian and European land masses were closer together during the Carboniferous) and it’s still not clear if Arthropleura had two legs per segment or every two segments but either way it adds up to much fewer than a hundred.

Ultimately, Arthropleura was a victim of changing conditions.  In its time, it would have been living in a benign equatorial environment but, over millions of years, the equator can shift because of the phenomenon of TPW (true polar wander) in which the outer layer of Earth shifts around the core, tilting the crust relative to the planet’s axis.  This last happened some eighty-four million years ago.  So, the conditions which for so long had been ideal changed and changed suddenly and Arthropleura was unable to adapt, going extinct after having flourished for nearly fifty-million years.  The reasons for their demise are those seen repeatedly in the fossil record: In an abruptly changed environment, there was suddenly more competition for fewer resources and the Arthropleura lost out to animals which were stronger, more efficient and better able to adapt.

The human appendix.

Thousands of years after first being described, the human appendix, a the small blind-ended vermiform structure at the junction of the large and the small bowel remains something of a mystery.  For centuries the medical orthodoxy was it vestigial, a evolutionary dead-end and a mere quirk of human development but the current thinking is it exists as a kind of “safe-house” for the good bacteria resident in the bowel, enabling them to repopulate as required.  However, being blind-ended, although intestinal contents easily can enter, in certain circumstances it can operate as a kind of one-way, non-return valve, making exit impossible which results in inflammation.  This is the medical condition appendicitis and in acute cases, the appendix must surgically be removed.  That's usually fine if undertaken in good time because it's a simple, commonly performed procedure but unfortunately, in a small number of cases, a residual "stump" of the structure may escape the knife and in this inflammation may re-occur, something surgeons resentfully label “stumpitis”.  Apparently the most useless part of the human anatomy, there is noting in the medical literature to suggest anyone has noticed any aspect of their life being changed by not having an appendix.