Route

Route (pronounce rout or root)

(1) A course, way, or road for passage or travel; the choice of roads or a path taken to reach a destination,

(2) A customary or regular line of passage or travel, sometimes formally so-named.

(3) A specific itinerary, round, or number of stops regularly visited by a person in the performance of their work or duty (bus route, paper route, mountaineering route etc).

(4) To set the path of something or someone.

(5) To send or forward by a particular course or road.

(6) In clinical medicine, the means by which a drug or agent is administered or enters the body (the oral, surface or injectionoral route).

(7) Figuratively, one of multiple methods or approaches to doing something.

(8) In Sino-historiography, one of the major provinces of imperial China from the Later Jin to the Song, corresponding to the Tang and early Yuan circuits.

(9) In computing (networking), an entry in a router table instructing a router how to relay the data packets received (and as a transitive verb, to send information through a router).

(10) In computing, to connect two local area networks, thereby forming an internet (now a rare expression though the practice remains common).

(11) In horse racing, a race longer than one mile (1600m) (now rare).

1175–1225: From the Middle English route (a way, a road, space for passage), from the Middle French route, from the Anglo-Norman rute (troop, band) from the Old French rute (road, way, path), from the Vulgar Latin rupta (literally “via a broken established way” (a road opened by force or cut through a forest etc)), the feminine past participle of rumpere (to break; to burst).  Route is a noun, router is a noun & verb and routed & routing are verbs; the noun plural is routes.

The famous US Route 66.

The verb dates from the 1880s and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists the first citation as an 1881 guide for stationmasters on the London & North Western Railway which included the phrase “mark for use on a certain route”.  In the development of the noun, the sense of a “regular course for carrying passengers or freight (first used in the postal system) emerged in the late eighteenth century, and was an extension of the fifteenth century "customary path for the driving of animal stock and herds; something later applied to sales, collections, delivery of newspapers, bread etc and the pronunciation rout was apparently universal since the early nineteenth century.  The meaning “direct an electrical signal, phone call etc over a particular defined circuit or to a particular location" has existed since 1948 and is now most familiar in computer networking.  Computer networking engineers also picked-up “re-route” (direct packets of data to another route), a direct borrowing from the postal system where a “re-route” was an instruction physically to re-direct mail from one address to another.  The word “routine” was related to route (presumably from the notion of something like a postman’s route which was unchanged from year to year) as was “rut” which originally described the track in (an unpaved) road left by a wheel and etymologists speculate this may have begun as a variant of route.  The figurative sense of rut (a dull, unchanging and habitual course or life) emerged in the mid nineteenth century based on the idea that once the wheel of a cart become “stuck in a rut”, it’s difficult (and demands much energy) to change direction (ie to “get out of the rut”).

An unfortunate choice of route: In 2012, Lindsay Lohan, travelling on the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, California, was involved in a crash between her (rented) Porsche 911 (997) Carrera S and an eighteen wheeler truck.  As one would suspect in such an unequal contest, the Porsche was badly damaged.

In postal systems, railways, computing and other fields in which objects (real or weightless) must be moved, specialized forms have been created as needed including misroute, misrouting, misrouted, preroute, prerouted, prerouting, reroute, rerouted & rerouting (hyphenated forms also used) although deroute seems never to have been needed.  The alternative spellings misrouteing, rerooted etc also existed.  Route was one of many words used to describe some sort or road including avenue, course, direction, itinerary, journey, line, passage, road, track, trail, way, transmit, beat, beeline, byway, circuit, detour, digression, divergence & meandering although routes tend to be longer and made of many roads joined together.  In idiomatic use, “to go the route” is to see something difficult or challenging through to completion.

Funded by the Lockwood Charitable Foundation, London's Red Route Café (24 Lower Clapton Road E5) is located at the Community Service Volunteers (CSV) Springboard Hackney learning centre.  In 2012, while in London for a theatrical engagement, Lindsay Lohan added her support, tweeting "Volunteer and be of service.  Come help us at #RedRouteCafé".  Apparently, while in the city, Ms Lohan helped in promotional activities for the Red Route Café, contributing to a community radio show and planning events.

It’s a simple, five letter, one syllable word but around the world it supports two distinct pronunciations (rout & rout), both of which for centuries co-existed in British English but during the 1800s, rout faded and then vanished (Scotland the last hold-out and interestingly in the cities rather than the highlands) from the British Isles.  In North American it persisted and to this day, as both noun and verb, both can be heard.  One definite exception to the general pattern of use is the pronunciation of the noun router ((1) one who arranges or schedules routes or (2) in computer networking, a device (hardware or software) that forwards data packets between computer networks).  Many languages simply adopted the name and usual pronunciation from US use and in most of the world it’s thus root-ha or rou-ter.  However, in Australia & New Zealand, the word “root” evolved also a slang term for sexual intercourse which of course begat rooter in that sense so the pronunciations root-ha or rou-ter became exclusive to that use (and there’s some evidence the slang has somewhat spread in the south Pacific islands).  In those markets, the computer routers are pronounced rout-ah, something which sometimes initially baffles visiting engineers.

Rooted: The Evil Dead (1981).

The most illustrative example of the slang term root (Australia & New Zealand) in action is the famous tree root scene from the horror movie The Evil Dead (1981).  After that, the producers had nowhere to go and the sequels were increasingly comedic and such is the cult following of the original that interest remains and Evil Dead Rise is scheduled for release in April 2023.

Huawei AR3260-100E-AC Series Enterprise Router.

Said to have been prompted by fears the equipment might be configured in such a way that it enabled spying by the Chinese government (ie the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)), a number of nations have either banned or restricted use of Chinese-made Huawei routers and other telecommunications equipment.  The countries imposing a complete or partial ban of the Huawei equipment in big-machine infrastructure included the "five eyes" countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia & New Zealand) and Japan.  Thus far, a number of EU nations (including Spain, France & Germany) have not issued an outright ban but have imposed restrictions and tightened security measures in networks in which they're installed.  This is either because they believe still that a robust security model can be mapped onto the concept of a "core & edges" model of network infrastructure or they've accepted Huawei's (TikTok-like) assurance they would decline any request from the CCP to provide information.  In Beijing, the Spanish, French and German files may already have been moved to the "Useful Idiots" filing cabinet.

Gerrymander

Gerrymander (pronounced jer-ee-man-duhr or gary-ee-man-duhr)

(1) The dividing of a state, county etc into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.

(2) To subject (a state, county etc) to a gerrymander.

(3) A generalized descriptor (though sometimes technically not gerrymanders in the technical sense) of distorted electoral systems (often non-US use).

1812: A portmanteau word and an Americanism, named after politician and diplomat Elbridge Thomas Gerry (1744–1814) who (as a Democratic-Republican), served as fifth vice-president of the United States.  Gerry was governor of Massachusetts at the time the electoral re-districting resulted in the map of Essex County gaining a salamander-like outline.  Gerrymander was coined by the editors of the Boston Gazette and published in the edition of 26 March 1812, the text likely written by Nathan Hale and Benjamin & John Russell, the accompanying a cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale (1768-1835).  Elbridge Gerry's surname was pronounced with a hard “G” (Gary) but gerrymander is almost always (and universally outside the US) pronounced with a soft “g” (jerry).  One (rare) derived noun form is the difficult to pronounce gerrymanderer; the more common adjective is gerrymandered.

The construct was gerry + (sala)mander.  The surname Gerry is a patronymic of Geary, of medieval English origin, from a Germanic personal name.  The personal name is derived from "geri, gari", meaning spear, and is a short form of the various compound names with this first element.  The first recorded spelling of the family name is that of Richard Geri, listed in 1195, during the reign of King Richard I (The Lionheart, 1189-1199) although the name was doubtless in use prior to this entry, surnames becoming necessary only after governments introduced personal taxation (known in England as the Poll Tax).  Over the centuries, surnames in many countries have seen many variations of the original spelling evolve.  Salamander is from the Middle English salamandre, from the Anglo-Norman salamandre, from the Classical Latin salamandra, from the Ancient Greek σαλαμάνδρα (salamándra), of uncertain origin but thought probably pre-Greek and from the Persian سمندر‎ (samandar).

The explanatory diagrams published by the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812.  To the left is what was described by journalists Nathan Hale and Benjamin & John Russell as "The Gerry-mander".  A new species of Monster which appeared in Essex South District in January", the cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale.  The centre map is the original gerrymander, a Massachusetts State Senate district submission drawn in 1812.  To the right is the second Massachusetts congressional district for the thirteenth congress.

The essence of the gerrymander is to draw the divisions on electoral maps such that votes surplus to requirements (often called "wasted votes") in "safe districts" are moved to marginal or opposition-held districts to maximize the possibility of winning.  In some cases, such malapportionments are constitutionally entrenched such as the arrangements often seen for the election of upper houses (including the US and Australian Senates (US political scientists insist the US Senate isn't an upper house but the basis of its electoral principle is a malapportionment).     

Gerrymander is used almost always as a derogatory term, suggesting some form of political corruption, even if usually, technically, lawful.  Strictly speaking, it refers only to bizarrely shaped boundaries drawn on maps of electoral districts to favor one political candidate over another but has come to be used also as a general descriptor of electoral malapportionment.  Malapportionment is the creation of electoral districts with divergent ratios of voters to representatives.  This was how most electoral trickery was done in Australia, the practice not eradicated federally until the 1970s (although constitutionally entrenched malapportionments (lower and upper houses) remain).  It was most famously (though not uniquely) practiced until the 1990s in Queensland where it was known as the Bjelkemander or Johmander (named after Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen (1911–2005; premier of Queensland 1968-1987) because of the way in which some rural electorates in the state parliament contained sometimes as few as half the number of voters as urban seats.  The malapportionment in Queensland, although usually associated with Bjelke-Petersen’s Country Party administration was actually a tweak of a zonal system introduced by the Labor party in 1949 and wasn’t even the worst in the country, the most extreme being in South Australia where, at one point, the largest city electorate contained as many voters as seven rural electorates.

Salamander scene in The Parent Trap (1998).

Anxiety

Anxiety (pronounced ang-zahy-i-tee)

(1) Fear, foreboding, worry, disquiet, distress, uneasiness or tension caused by apprehension of possible future misfortune, danger etc, often to a degree that normal physical and psychological functioning is disrupted (can occur without an identifiable cause in which case the patient may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder).

(2) Earnest but tense desire; eagerness; an uneasy or distressing desire for someone or something.

(3) In psychiatry, a state of intense apprehension or worry often accompanied by physical symptoms such as shaking, intense feelings in the gut etc, common in mental illness or after a distressing experience; a generalised state of apprehension and psychic tension occurring in some forms of mental disorder.

1515–1525: From the Middle English anxumnesse (apprehension caused by danger, misfortune, or error, uneasiness of mind respecting some uncertainty, a restless dread of some evil), from the Old English angsumnes, from the Latin anxietatem (nominative anxietas) (anguish, anxiety, solicitude) a noun of quality from anxius (uneasy, anxious, solicitous, distressed, troubled in mind) from angō (to distress, trouble), akin to the Ancient Greek ἄγχω (ánkhō) (to choke).  The construct of the Latin anxietās was anxi(us) (anxious) + -etās, a variant of -itās used if appearing before a vowel.  The -itas suffix was from the Proto-Italic -itāts & -otāts (-tās added to i-stems or o-stems, later used freely) and ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -tehats.    Synonyms include foreboding, uneasiness, perplexity, disquietude, disquiet, trouble, apprehension, restlessness & distress and it’s become a popular modifier (range anxiety, climate anxiety, separation anxiety, performance anxiety etc).  Anxiety is a noun; the noun plural is anxieties.

Xanax tablets.

Xanax is the brand name for the drug alprazolam which is a benzodiazepine.  It is a prescription medication primarily used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders and (more controversially) depression.  A fast & short-acting benzodiazepine, Xanax works by enhancing the activity of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which helps to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.  Xanax is regarded as effective for treating anxiety and related disorders when used as prescribed but can be habit-forming, leading to dependence and addiction.  Lindsay Lohan released (or "dropped" in the fashionable parlance) the track Xanax in 2019.  With a contribution from Finnish pop star Alma (Alma-Sofia Miettinen; b 1996), the accompanying music video was said to be “a compilation of vignettes of life”, Xanax reported as being inspired by Ms Lohan’s “personal life, including an ex-boyfriend and toxic friends”.  Structurally, Xanax was quoted as being based around "an interpolation of" Better Off Alone, by Dutch Eurodance-pop collective Alice Deejay, slowed to a Xanax-appropriate tempo.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder (PD) were formalized when the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) was released in 1980 although among clinicians, GAD had for some years been a noted thread in the literature but what was done in DSM-III was to map GAD onto the usual pattern of diagnostic criteria.  In practice, because of the high degree of co-morbidity with other disorders, the utility of GAD as defined was soon a regular topic of discussion at conferences and the DSM’s editors responded, the parameters of GAD refined in subsequent releases between 1987-1994 when GAD’s diagnostic criteria emerged in its recognizably modern form:

By the time the terminology for mental disorders began in the nineteenth century to be codified, the word anxiety had for hundreds of years been used in English to describe feelings of disquiet or apprehension and in the seventeenth century there was even a school of thought it was a pathological condition.  It was thus unsurprising that “anxiety” was so often an element in the psychiatry’s early diagnostic descriptors such as “pantophobia” and “anxiety neurosis”, terms which designated paroxysmal manifestations (panic attacks) as well as “interparoxysmal phenomenology” (the apprehensive mental state).  The notion of “generalized anxiety”, although not then in itself a diagnosis, was also one of the symptoms of many conditions including the vaguely defined neurasthenia which was probably understood by many clinicians as something similar to what would later be formalized as GAD.  As a distinct diagnostic category however, it wasn’t until the DSM-III was released in 1980 that GAD appeared, anxiety neurosis split into (1) panic disorder and (2) GAD.  When the change was made, the editors noted it was a response to comments from clinicians, something emphasised when DSM-III was in 1987 revised (DSM-III-R), in effect to acknowledge there was a class of patient naturally anxious (who might once have been called neurotic or pantophobic) quite distinct from those for whom a source of anxiety could be deduced.  Thus, the cognitive aspect of anxiety became the critical criterion but within the profession, some scepticism about the validity of GAD as a distinct diagnostic category emerged, the most common concern being the difficulty in determining clear boundaries between GAD, other anxiety-spectrum disorders and certain manifestations of depression.

The modern label aside, GAD has a really long lineage and elements of the diagnosis found in case histories written by doctors over the centuries would have seemed familiar to those working in the early nineteenth century, tales of concern or apprehension about the vicissitudes of life a common thing.  As psychiatry in those years began to coalesce as a speciality and papers increasingly published, it was clear the behaviour of those suffering chronic anxiety could culminate in paroxysmal attacks, thus it was that GAD and panic attacks came to be so associated.  In English, the term panophobia (sometimes as pantaphobia, pantophobia or panphobia) dates from 1871, the word from the Late Latin pantŏphŏbŏs, from the Ancient Greek παντοφόβος (all-fearing (literally “anxiety about everything”)).  It appears in the surviving works of medieval physicians and it seems clear there were plenty of “pantophobic patients” who allegedly were afraid of everything and it was not a product of the Dark Ages, Aristotle (384-322 BC) in the seventh book of his Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC) writing there were men “…by nature apt to fear everything, even the squeak of a mouse”.

The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I (1952) comprised what seems now a modest 130 pages.  The latest edition (DSM-5-TR (2022)) has 991 pages.  The growth is said to be the result of advances in science and a measure of the increasing comprehensiveness of the manual, not an indication that madness in the Western world is increasing.  The editors of the DSM would never use the word "madness" but for non-clinicians it's a handy term which can be applied to those beyond some point on the spectrum of instability.

Between Aristotle and the publication of the first edition of the DSM in 1952, physicians (and others) pondered, treated and discussed the nature of anxiety and theories of its origin and recommendations for treatment came and went.  The DSM (retrospectively labelled DSM-I) was by later standards a remarkably slim document but unsurprisingly, anxiety was included and discussed in the chapter called “Psychoneurotic Disorders”, the orthodoxy of the time that anxiety was a kind of trigger perceived by the conscious part of the personality and produced by a threat from within; how the patient reacted to this resulted in their reaction(s).  There was in the profession a structural determinism to this approach, the concept of defined “reaction patterns” at the time one of the benchmarks in US psychiatry.  When DSM-II was released in 1968, the category “anxiety reaction” was diagnosed when the anxiety was diffuse and neither restricted to specific situations or objects (ie the phobic reactions) nor controlled by any specific psychological defense mechanism as was the case in dissociative, conversion or obsessive-compulsive reactions. Anxiety reaction was characterized by anxious expectation and differentiated from normal apprehensiveness or fear.  Significantly, in DSM-II the reactions were re-named as “neuroses” and it was held anxiety was the chief characteristic of “neuroses”, something which could be felt or controlled unconsciously by various symptoms.  This had the effect that the diagnostic category “anxiety neurosis” encompassed what would later be expressed as panic attacks and GAD.

A: Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities (such as work or matters relating to educational institutions).

B: The patient finds it difficult to control the worry.

C: The anxiety and worry are associated with three (or more) of the following six symptoms:

(1) Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge.

(2) Being easily fatigued.

(3) Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank.

(4) Irritability.

(5) Muscle tension.

(6) Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless, unsatisfying sleep).

The key change really was for the criteria for GAD requiring fewer symptoms. Whereas with the DSM-IV-TR (2000) individuals needed to exhibit at least three physical and three cognitive symptoms for a diagnosis of GAD, under DSM-5 (2013), only one of each was required so not only was the accuracy and consistency of diagnosis (by definition) improved, the obvious practical effect was better to differentiate GAD from other anxiety disorders and (importantly) the usual worries and concerns endemic to the human condition.  The final significant aspect of the evolution was that by the time of DSM-5, GAD had become effectively a exclusionary diagnosis in that it cannot be diagnosed if the anxiety is better explained by other anxiety disorders and nor can GAD be caused directly by stressors or trauma.

Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No 2 (The Age of Anxiety) was inspired by WH Auden's long poem of the same name.

WH Auden's (1907-1973) The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1944) divided critics, said by some to be "his best work to date" and by others to be "dull and an obvious failure", some of whom rubbed in the critical salt by adding Leonard Bernstein's (1918-1990) Symphony No 2 (1948-1949), inspired by the poem, was the finer piece of art.  It was better received in the US where it was written, winning the Pulitzer prize but whether or not influenced by the reaction, Auden would never again complete an epic-length work.  Like HG Wells' (1866-1946) Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), it was very much a work of the unhappy time in which Auden found himself and in some ways picked up from his lament September 1st, 1939 (a poem he later renounced).  As a poem, The Age of Anxiety is a delight for structuralists, its six sections (prologue, life-story, dream-quest, dirge, masque & epilogue (and emulated by the six movements in Bernstein's symphony (each movement sub-divided))) able to be deconstructed even mathematically but, the most common complaint is that although his four protagonists (three men and a woman) are very different people and all from a world of vernacular American English, their thoughts on the human condition and their own are expressed as if each had once gone up to Oxford to take a degree in English, as Auden in his youth had done.  Such voices in poems are not unusual but the critics go further in claiming that anyone new to the work, were the characters' names to be concealed, could not possibly guess which of the four is talking.  While it becomes clear the abstractions he maps upon his four represent thought, intuition, sensation & feeling, while helpful as a device through which his word-view can be discussed, as flesh & blood characters they are vague indeed.  Still, literature should perhaps be enjoyed for what it is rather than what it's not; one doesn't need to find plausible what Philip Roth (1933-1918) thinks might be the thoughts of a woman to find pleasure in the text and it's the same with Auden's The Age of Anxiety.  Those interested in poetry as art will read such cleverness with relish, ticking the boxes on the path to technical ecstasy.  Those who want to feel something should stick to Sylvia Path (1932-1963).      

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

WH Auden in The Age of Anxiety (1944).

Pugilist

Pugilist (pronounced pyoo-juh-list)

A person who fights with their fists; a boxer, amateur or professional.

1789: From the Latin pugil (boxer, fist-fighter) related to pugnus (a fist), from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European roots peuk- (to prick) & pewǵ- (to prick, to punch) and from the Latin root, English picked up the slang term for the journeyman boxer (pug).  Pugil as a descriptor for a boxer was first noted in English in the 1640s but faded from use although in 1962 the pugil stick was introduced by US military as a substitute for rifles in bayonet drills.  Related forms include the noun pugnacity (the act or characteristic of being aggressive or combative), from the Latin pugnacitas, from pugnāx (combative, fond of fighting) and the adjective pugnacious (naturally aggressive or hostile; combative; belligerent; bellicose), from the Latin, a derivative of pugnāx, from pugnō (I fight), from pugnus (a fist).  Pugilist & pugilism are nouns, pugilistic is an adjective and pugilistically and adverb; the noun plural is pugilists.

The heavyweights

Three heavyweights dominated the perception of the sport in the second-half of the twentieth century, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali & Mike Tyson.

Sonny Liston (circa 1932-1970).

Sonny Liston was a thug, something no disqualification for success in the  heavyweight ranks and he’d been undisputed world champion for half a decade when first he fought Muhammad Ali.  Ali was a rank outsider rated by the bookies between 7-8:1 yet beat Liston.  To this day it’s not known if there's any truth in the rumors of Liston’s heavy drinking the night before the bout or throwing the fight for money.  Some find the first-round knock-out of Liston in the return match proof of a conspiracy while claim it suggests Ali was the better fighter and Liston’s best years were over although when he died in 1970, even if no longer quite the formidable fighter of his younger years, he was still a world-rated boxer.

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016).

While understandable, it's unfortunate the popular focus on Muhammad Ali’s flair for publicity, prose and politics has drawn attention from just how good a boxer he was.  Ali was fast, technically almost perfect and possessed a physique close to at least equal in height and reach of most of his opponents although his most under-rated trait was the ability to absorb blows yet remain an attacking force late in matches.  In a career interrupted by bans and suspension, Ali fought in the heavyweight division’s golden age, the finest group of the mid-late century, of whom Ali was "the greatest", not because he was indisputably the best ever heavyweight (among the experts there are various top-ten list though he's in them all) but because he influenced his sport and wider culture like no other.

Mike Tyson (b 1966).

The younger Mike Tyson was ferocious and intimidating and he scared men.  Although not tall by the standards of his profession, he was famous for the power and speed of his punch and it’s really easy to believe there’s no one who could have beaten Tyson the younger.  Boxing analysts tend to disagree, being split on the likely result of Liston v Tyson, largely because of Tyson’s technical flaws but almost as one in finding Ali would have beaten Tyson.  Tyson had a difficult, troubled youth and has admitted that had it not been for boxing, things would likely have worked out worse but had his career been better managed, such was his potential, much more could have been achieved.

Amateur pugilist Lindsay Lohan in pugnacious mode.

Lectern

Lectern (pronounced lek-tern)

(1) A reading desk in a church on which is placed the Bible and from which lessons are read during the church service.

(2) A stand (usually with a slanted top), used to hold a book, papers, speech, manuscript, etc, sometimes adjustable in height to suit the stature of different speakers.

1400s: From the late Middle English lectryn, from the Middle English lectron, lectrone and the early fourteenth century lettorne & letron, from the Middle French letrun, from the Old French leitrun & lettrun, from the Medieval Latin lēctrīnum from the Late Latin lēctrum (lectern), from lectus (from which English gained lecture), the construct being the Classical Latin leg(ere) (to read) (or legō (I read)) + -trum (the instrumental suffix).  The Latin legere (to read (literally "to gather, choose") was from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather) which begat derivatives meaning "to speak” (in the sense of “to pick out words”).  In linguistics, the process by which in the fifteenth century the modern form evolved from the Middle English is called a partial re-Latinization.  Lectern is a noun; the noun plural is lecterns.

Crooked Hillary Clinton (in pantsuits), at the podium, during her acclaimed lecture tour “The significance of the wingspan in birds & airplane design”.

Some words are either confused with lectern or used interchangeably, in one case to the point there may have been a meaning shift.  In English use, a lectern was originally a stand on which was placed an open Bible.  Made usually either from timber or brass (depending on the wealth or status of the church), they were fashioned at an angle which was comfortable for reading and included some sort of ledge or stays at the bottom to prevent the book sliding off.  A pulpit (inter alia "a raised platform in a church, usually partially enclosed to just above waist height)" was where the minister (priest, vicar, preacher etc) stood when delivering the sermon and in many cases, there were lecterns within pulpits.  Pulpit was from the Middle English pulpit, from the Old French pulpite and the Latin pulpitum (platform).  Podium (inter alia "a platform on which to stand; any low platform or dais") was a general term for any raised platform used by one or more persons.  A lectern might be placed upon a podium and in an architectural sense most pulpits appear on a permanent structure which is podium-like although the term is not part of the language of traditional church architecture.  Podium was from the Latin podium, from the Ancient Greek πόδιον (pódion) (base), from the diminutive of πούς (poús) (foot) and was an evolution of podion (foot of a vase).  In formal settings, US use often prefers podium and one of the world's more famous podiums is that used for the White House's press briefings, a place that has proved a launching pad for several subsequent careers in political commentary.  Some press secretaries have handled the role with aplomb and some have been less than successful including Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2016-2021) first appointee Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director 2017), whose brief tenure was characterized as "weaponizing the podium", memorably parodied by the Saturday Night Live (SNL) crew.   

Lindsay Lohan at a lectern some might call a rostrum, World Music Awards, 2006.

A dais (inter alia "a raised platform in a room for a high table, a seat of honor, a throne, or other dignified occupancy, such as ancestral statues or a similar platform supporting a lectern or pulpit") is for most practical purposes a podium and thus often effectively a synonym although dais probably tends to be used of structures thought more grand or associated with more important individuals (dead or alive).  There's also a literature detailing support of or objections to the various pronunciations (dey-is, dahy-is & deys-s), most of which are class or education-based.  Dais was from the Middle English deis, from the Anglo-Norman deis, from the Old French deis & dois (from which modern French gained dais), from the Latin discum, accusative singular of discus (discus, disc, quoit; dish) and the Late Latin discum (table), from the Ancient Greek δίσκος (dískos) (discus, disc; tray), from δικεῖν (dikeîn),(to cast, to throw; to strike).  It was cognate with the Italian desco and the Occitan des.

A rostrum (inter alia "a structure used by dignitaries, orchestral conductors etc") is really a lectern with a built in dais.  It's thus an elaborate lectern.  Rostrum was a learned borrowing from the Latin rōstrum (beak, snout), the construct being from rōd(ō) (gnaw) + -trum, from the primitive Indo-European rehd- + -trom.  The early uses were in zoology (beak, snout etc) and naval architecture (eg the prow of a warship), the use in sense of lecterns a back-formation from the name of the Roman Rōstra, the platforms in the Forum from which politicians delivered their speeches (the connection is that the Rōstra were decorated with (and named for) the beaks (prows) of ships famous for being victorious in sea battles.

The ups and downs of politics: Downing Street's prime-ministerial lectern.

The Times of London published a hexaptych noting the evolution of the prime-ministerial lectern which has become a feature of recent British politics, especially the turnover at the top.  Whether any psychological meanings can be derived from the style of the cabinet maker’s craft is debatable although some did ponder Boris Johnson's (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) dark finish and the twisted nature of that used by Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister Sep-Oct 2022).  The Times did however note a few things including the modest origins of the concept in the lecterns used by Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007) and later by Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010).  Then, the lectern was a simple, off-the-shelf item familiar to anyone who has endured PowerPoint presentations and the cables trailing over Downing Street were a reminder of those (now almost forgotten) times when WiFi wasn’t sufficiently robust to be trusted even a few steps from a building.  Also commented upon was that unlike his most recent predecessors who enjoyed their own, custom-made lectern, Rishi Sunak (b 1980; UK prime-minister since 2022) had to use a recycled item borrowed from Downing Street stocks.  That happened because the premiership of Liz Truss was so short and her demise so sudden.  In her photograph, the fallen autumnal leaves behind her seem quite poignant.

Weaponizing the podium: SNL's take on then White House Press Secretary & Communications Director Sean Spicer, 2017.

Cabriolet

Cabriolet (pronounced kab-ree-uh-ley)

(1) A light, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage with a folding top, capable of seating two persons.

(2) An automobile based usually on a two-door coupé but with a folding top.

(3) The equivalent continental term for the (mostly UK) drophead coupé (DHC) or the more generic convertible.

1766: from the French cabriolet, from the Italian cabriole & cabriole (horse caper) +‎ -et.  Cabriole & cabriole were from the Latin capreolus (wild goat), from the primitive Indo-European kápros (buck, he-goat) and related to the Old Norse hafr (he-goat), the Old English hæfr, the Welsh gafr and the Old Irish gabor.  The seemingly strange relationship between the Latin capreolus (roebuck; wild goat) and the eighteenth century horse-drawn carriage is explained by the French cabriole (little caper) a meaning derived from its light movement, from cabrioler (to leap, caper), from the Italian capriolare (to somersault), from the Latin capreolus (roebuck; wild goat), the idea being of something light and agile in movement.  The larger, more upscale version of the lightweight carriages the French named cabriolet, “cab” being the common form in the vernacular.  The –et suffix, indicating diminution or affection, was borrowed from Old French -et, and its feminine variant -ette, both derived from the Late Latin -ittus (and the other gender forms -itta, -ittum).  In English use, the word evolved as "cab" and later "taxicab".  Cabriolet is a noun, the noun plural is cabriolets.

The application of cabriolet to describe convertible cars emerged in the early years of the continental motor industry because of the conceptual similarity to the earlier, light horse-drawn two-seater carriages but as the years went by, although there was never all that much exactitude in the nomenclature, the terms to describe the variations in convertible coachwork became merely model names (except for the much later targa which Porsche had the foresight to register as a trademark) and if a car was called a roadster, drophead coupé, phaeton, cabriolet or landau, it was an indication only that the roof could (usually) be removed or folded back.  One exception to that was Daimler-Benz which tightly defined the specifications of roadsters and landaulets and, with Teutonic thoroughness, in the mid-twentieth century codified the five variations of Mercedes-Benz cabriolets as Cabriolet A, B, C, D & F (if ever there was a Cabriolet E, the factory’s definition has never surfaced.

The classification of cabriolets by Daimler-Benz

Cabriolet A coachwork: 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K (left), 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300 SC (centre) & 2017 Mercedes Maybach 6 (right).

A cabriolet with two doors and room for two passengers.  Occasionally, the cabriolet As would be built with provision for one additional passenger, seated sideways behind the front seats, an arrangement the factory would use as late as 1968 (in the W113 "California" roadsters) until outlawed by US safety regulators.  With Mercedes-Benz, the tradition of the cabriolet A in the big, open two-seat convertible would survive only until the 300 S & 300 SC (W188, 1951-1958) although in 2017, the Mercedes-Maybach 6 Cabriolet was displayed, probably the most extravagantly self-indulgent two-seater seen since the pre-war years.  That was mitigated somewhat by the electric powertrain but production was never considered.

Cabriolet B coachwork: 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 (left), 1992 Mercedes-Benz 300 CE (centre) & 2018 Mercedes-AMG S 650 (right).  

A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers, fitted with a rear-quarter window for the rear seat.  Other than when interrupted by World War II (1939-1945) and its aftermath, the cabriolet B was long a staple of the Mercedes-Benz lineup but between 1972-1992 there was a hiatus, fears that impending US legislation would outlaw convertible sales in that lucrative market meaning no two door variations were constructed on the new S-Class (W116, 1972-1981) platform and no convertible version of the mid-range (W123, 1976-1984) cars was ever offered.  In those years, the R107 (1971-1989) roadster was the sole convertible available, it's sales outside the US sufficient to maintain profitability if the ban eventuated.  As things turned out,  Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) thought a ban dopey so the idea was dropped and the cabriolet B returned in the form of the mid-range A124 (1991-1997).  Models in that segment have remained available since although the brief return of a big Cabriolet B (the A217 S-Class, 2015-2020) seems an experiment unlikely soon to be repeated.

Cabriolet C coachwork: 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K (left), 1950 Jaguar Mark V Drophead Coupé (DHC) (centre) & 2020 Alvis TB60 DHC (continuation) (right).

A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers with no rear quarter window.  Remarkably, the wedding car used by Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945 and Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) for his (second) marriage to Emmy Sonnemann (1893-1973) was a 500 K Cabriolet C and the photographs of the happy day do show things were a little cramped once Göring's corpulent form was in place but his more slender bride looked content.  Most German manufacturers and virtually all coachbuilders kept the cabriolet C on the books throughout the interwar period but in the post-war years, it was actually the British which did most to maintain the tradition, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Daimler, Armstrong Siddeley and Alvis all offering the style and Alvis in 2018 actually re-commenced production of what they called their "continuation" series.  While it can lend elegance, one obvious drawback of the design is visibility, the bulk of the fabric creating blind-spots rearward.

Cabriolet D coachwork: 1961 Mercedes-Benz 300d (left), 1967 Lincoln Continental (centre) & 2006 Mercedes-Benz Concept Ocean Drive (right). 

A cabriolet with four doors and room for four to six passengers.  Common in the 1930s, the four door convertible was rare by the mid 1950s and even Mercedes-Benz removed the 300c (W186, 1951-1957) Cabriolet D from the range when the 300d (W189, 1957-1962) was released in 1958.  However, although demand for such a machine was tiny, it wasn't non-existent and in 1959 it was announced the Cabriolet D would again be available to special order, the price on application (POA) and depending on specification; eventually, a further 65 were made.  That was the last of the line however and when "semi-convertible" coachwork was introduced for the 600 (W100, 1963-1981), the term "landaulet" was preferred and apart from the mouth-watering Concept Ocean Drive presented in 2006, the factory has never hinted such things might return.  Apart from truck-like off-road machines, nor has any other manufacturer since the last convertible Lincoln Continental was made in 1967.  Remembered also for its connection to the limousine in which President John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated, the connection didn't dissuade his successor (Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1969-1969) from owning one but even a the presidential imprimatur didn't stimulate sales sufficiently and the four-door convertibles didn't appear after 1968.  They were the last convertibles of any description, ever built by Lincoln.

Cabriolet F Coachwork: 1930 Mercedes-Benz 770K (W07) (left), 1961 Lincoln Continental (X-100 by Hess & Eisenhardt) (centre) & 1966 Mercedes-Benz 600 Landaulet in four-door, short roof configuration (right, which is not really a cabriolet F). 

A cabriolet with four doors, built on an extended wheelbase, usually for state or formal use with room for six or more passengers.  The rare cabriolet Fs were almost exclusively state or parade vehicles (although as used cars, they've been sometimes imaginatively re-purposed in the secondary market) and are now effectively extinct, driven from the market by security concerns and the lack of appropriate new vehicles upon which they could be based.  Politicians now feel much safer in armored cars, built on usually on a truck chassis.

Lindsay Lohan alighting from Porsche 911 Carrera (997) cabriolet, Los Angeles, 2012.

Being a German company, Porsche from its early years used "cabriolet" to describe its soft-top models although the Americans never really embraced the idea, habitually calling the open 356s "convertibles".  Strangely, Volkswagen owners in the US took to the term, cabriolet usually preferred for the Karmann-built soft-top beetles.  After their targa (a word they trade-marked) models were introduced, Porsche anyway had a reason to avoid "convertible" as imprecise.   In 1981 they had shown a cabriolet concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show and the 911 Cabriolet was released late the next year, their first full convertible since the last of the 356s in 1965 so to clarify things, Porsche insisted there were no convertibles in the range, just coupés, targas and cabriolets.

Pope Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) in  Ferrari Mondial cabriolet while on a visit to the Ferrari test track, Fiorano, Italy, 4 June 1988.  This is believed to be the fastest ever Popemobile.

The term "cabriolet" has over the decades been applied to convertible Ferraris but a convention seems to have emerged that it's now used exclusively for the four seaters (which the factory admits are really 2+2s).  The factory has had 2+2 cabriolets in the lineup for a while, most recently the California (2008-2017) and the Portofino (since 2018) but those used a conventional front-engine layout.  The Mondial (1980-1993) was mid-engined, making the accommodation of four within the cabin quite challenging and critics noted one of the compromises imposed was aesthetic, the body lacking Ferrari's usually lovely, lithe lines, something said also of its 2+2 predecessor, the fixed-roof 208 & 308 GT4 (sold as both a Dino and a Ferrari).  However, the practicality of the Mondial much appealed to the market and it was at the time one of the the most successful Ferraris ever made and much thought had been put into the design, not only to ensure the one basic specification could be sold in all markets but also that the cost of ownership would be lower.  It was much improved as the years went by and made in four distinct generations but Ferrari have not since attempted another mid-engined 2+2.

1966 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE Cabriolet.

In the collector-car market, the Mercedes-Benz W111 (1961-1971) & W112 (1962-1967) remain coveted and, as is usually the case, it's the convertibles which are most sought after, even though the cabriolet lacks the coupé's lovely roofline.  Pedants note that although the two-door W111s & W112s are technically a Coupé B & Cabriolet B in the factory's naming system, they're never referred to as such because no other configuration was offered in the model.  The W112 (300 SE) is of interest too because of the chrome moldings around the wheel arches, a feature which had been seen on some earlier cars and would be shared by the 600 Grosser (W100, 1963-1981).  Criticized by some when they appeared on the 600, the additional chrome on the W112 wasn't to everyone's taste (and it was a "delete option" when new) but it clearly had an enduring appeal because for decades after-market suppliers found a read market among those with later model Mercedes-Benz, BMWs, Jaguars and some others.  This is not approved of by the purists and whether in chrome, stainless steel or anodised plastic (!) it makes no difference: the originality police insist if it wasn't done by the factory, it shouldn't be done.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet (a converted coupé).

This is one really to upset the originality police because (1) it started life as a coupé, (2) the chrome wheel-arch moldings were never available on this model and (3) the Fuchs (Bundt) aluminium wheels have been chromed (and may anyway be reproductions).  Such is the price premium the cabriolets command compared with the coupés, over the years, many have been tempted to cut but exactly to replicate what the factory did is harder than at first glance it seems.

Mercedes-Benz 770K (W150; 1939-1943), Cabriolet D (top) and Cabriolet F (bottom).

With a variety of coachwork, all the second generation of the Grosser Mercedes-Benz were built on a chassis with a wheelbase of 3880 mm (152¾ inch).  In some four years, only 88 were built, most of which were allocated to senior figures in the Nazi Party, the Wehrmach (the armed forces) and the German state although a handful were gifted to foreign heads of state.  The 770K will forever be associated with Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) because until the outbreak of war the big Cabriolet F was his preferred parade car and one of the quirks in the factory's nomenclature is that while the body-styles Cabriolet A, B, C & D were defined and well-documented, there was a 770K Cabriolet F, but no Cabriolet E.  The Cabriolet F was among the rarest of the 770Ks with only five made and featured the additional rear window in the passenger compartment.  The jump in the factory's designations from "D" to "F" obviously skipped "E" and because that didn't seem the typically precise German way of doing things, there was speculation that another type of open coachwork had been planned (though not necessarily on the 770K chassis) but which was never built because of the outbreak of war in 1939.  That's not impossible (some records were lost during the war) but the archives for the period have revealed nothing which supports the theory and the consensus is the "Cabriolet F" label was an allusion to "Führer", the car's most infamous customer.  The factory has never commented on the speculation; despite having a great sense of history and claiming to have produced the world's first automobile in 1886, unsurprisingly, Mercedes-Benz doesn't much dwell on the company’s relationship with the state and party between 1933-1945.