Reinsure

Reinsure (pronounced ree-in-shoor or ree-in-shur)

(1) In insurance, to again insure.

(2) In insurance, to insure under a contract by which a first insurer is relieved of part or all of the risk (on which a policy has already been issued), which devolves upon another insurer.  It’s preferable in this context to use the hyphenated re-insure to distinguish from reinsure (the again of again insuring something.

1745–55: The construct was re- + insure.  The re- prefix was from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exceptions are all forms of be and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.  Insure was from the mid-fifteenth century insuren, a variant spelling of the late fourteenth century ensuren (to assure, give formal assurance (also the earlier (circa 1400) sense of "make secure, make safe")) from the Anglo-French enseurer & Old French ensurer, probably influenced by Old French asseurer (assure), the construct being en- (make) + seur or sur (safe, secure, undoubted).  The technical meaning in commerce (make safe against loss by payment of premiums; undertake to ensure against loss etc) dates from 1635 and replaced assure in that sense.  Reinsure, reinsured & reinsuring are verbs and reinsurer & reinsurance are nouns; the common noun plural is reinsurances.

Reinsurance

In commerce, reinsurance is a contract of insurance an insurance company buys from a third-party insurance company to (in whole or in part) limit its liability in the event of against the original policy.  In the industry jargon, the company purchasing the reinsurance is called the "ceding company" (or "cedent" or "cedant") while the issuer of the reinsurance policy is the "reinsurer".  Reinsurance can be used for collateral purposes such as a device to conform to regulatory capital requirements or as a form of transfer payment to maximize the possibilities offered by international taxation arrangements purposes but the primary purpose is as risk-management, a form of hedging in what is essentially a high-stakes gambling market.  There are specialised reinsurance companies which, in their insurance operations, do little but reinsurance but many general insurers also operate in the market, their contracts sometimes layered as they reinsure risk they’re previously assumed as reinsurance.

In the industry, there are seven basic flavors of reinsurance:

(1) Facultative coverage: This protects an insurance provider only for an individual, or a specified risk, or contract.  If there are several risks or contracts that needed to be reinsured, each one must be negotiated separately and the reinsurer has all the right to accept or deny a facultative reinsurance proposal.  Facultative reinsurance comprises a significant percentage of reinsurance business and must, by definition, be negotiated individually for each policy reinsured.  Facultative reinsurance is normally purchased by a cedent for risks either not or insufficiently covered by reinsurance treaties, for amounts above contractual thresholds or for unusual risks.    

(2) Reinsurance treaty: A treaty contract is one in effect for a specified period of time, rather than on a per risk, or contract basis.  For the term of the contract, the reinsurer agrees to cover all or a portion of the risks that may be have been incurred by the cedent.  Treaty reinsurance is however just another contract and there’s no defined template; the agreement may obligate the reinsurer to accept reinsurance of all contracts within the scope ("obligatory reinsurance”) or it may allow the insurer to choose which risks it wants to cede, with the reinsurer obligated to accept such risks ("facultative-obligatory reinsurance ((fac oblig)).

(3) Proportional reinsurance: Under this contract, the reinsurer receives a pro-rated share of the premiums of all policies sold by the cedent, the corollary being that when claims are made, the reinsurer bears a pro-rata portion of the losses.  The two pro-rata calculations need not be the same; that a function of agreement by contract but, in proportional reinsurance, the reinsurer will also reimburse the cedent for defined administrative costs such as processing, business acquisition and writing costs.  The industry jargon for this is “ceding commission” and the payment of costs can be front-loaded (ie paid up-front).  Technically, it’s a kind of agency arrangement best thought of as out-sourcing.

(4) Non-proportional reinsurance: Non-proportional reinsurance, also known as “threshold policies”, permit claims against the policy to be invoked only if the cedent’s losses exceed a specified amount (which can be defined in the relevant currency or as a percentage) which is referred to as the priority or retention limit.  Operating something like excess in domestic insurance, it means the does not have a proportional share in the premiums and losses of cedent and the priority or retention limit may be based on a single type of risk or an entire business category; this is a matter of contractual agreement.

(5) Excess-of-Loss (EoL) reinsurance: This is a specialised variation of non-proportional coverage, again the reinsurer covering only losses exceeding the cedent’s retained limit but EoLs are used almost exclusively in large-scale, high-value contracts associated with the coverage of catastrophic events.  The contracts can cover cedent either on a per occurrence basis or for all the cumulative losses within a specified term.

(6) Risk-attaching reinsurance: Here, all claims established during the define term of the reinsurance will be covered, regardless of whether the losses occurred outside the coverage period whereas no coverage will extend to claims which originate outside the coverage period, even if the losses occurred while the reinsurance contract is in effect.  These contracts are executed generally in specific industries where circumstances differ from the commercial mainstream.

(7) Loss-occurring coverage: A kind of brute-force coverage where the cedent can claim against all losses that occur during the term of the reinsurance contract, the essential aspect being when the event causing the loss have occurred, not when the claim has been booked.

Bismarck and the Reinsurance Treaty

Although in force barely three years between 1887-1890, the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret protocol between the German and Russian Empires, was an important landmark in European diplomatic history, partly because of the part it played in the intricate structure of alliances and agreements maintained by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) but mostly because of the significance of the circumstances in which it lapsed and the events which followed.

A typically precise Bismarkian construct, the treaty required both parties to remain neutral were the other to become involved in a war with a third great power, but stipulated that term would not apply (1) if Germany attacked France or (2) if Russia attacked Austria-Hungary.  Under the treaty, Germany acknowledged Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia as part of the Russian sphere of influence and agreed to support Russia in (essentially any) actions it might take against the Ottoman Empire to secure or extend hegemony in the Black Sea, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the straits leading to the Mediterranean.  The treaty had its origins in the sundering in 1887 of the earlier tripartite German-Austro-Hungarian-Russian (Dreikaiserbund (League of the Three Emperors)) which had had to lapse because Vienna and St Petersburg were both anxious to extend their spheres of interests in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire declined and needed to keep options open.

Otto von Bismark.

Bismarck interlocking system of alliances was designed to preserve peace in Europe and the spectre of a competition between Russia and Austria–Hungary to carve up the Ottoman spoils in the Balkans, thus the attraction of the reinsurance treaty to forestall the risk of an alliance between St Petersburg and Paris.  Ever since the Franco-Prussian war, the cornerstone of Bismarck’s foreign policy had been the diplomatic isolation of France, his nightmare being hostile states to the west and east, a dynamic in Germany political thought which would last generations.  It certainly wasn’t true he believed (as he was reputed to have said), that the Balkans weren’t worth the death on one German soldier and that he never bothered reading the mailbag from Constantinople, but he did think it infinitely preferable to manage what should be low-intensity conflicts there than the threat of fighting a war on two fronts against France and Russia.  Thus the Reinsurance Treaty which, strictly speaking, didn’t contradict the alliance between the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the neutrality clauses not applying if Germany attacked France or Russia attacked Austria-Hungary.

Kaiser Wilhelm II in uniform as an Admiral of the Fleet in the British Royal Navy (circa 1896), oil on canvas (believed to be painted from a photograph), by Rudolph Wimmer (1849-1915).

However, Bismarck’s system was much dependent on his skills and sense of the possible.  Once Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia 1888-1918) dismissed Bismarck in 1890, German foreign policy fell into the hands of a sovereign who viewed the European map as a matter to be discussed between kings and Bismarck's successor as Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi (1831–1899; Chancellor of the German Empire 1890-1894) was inexperienced in such matters.  Indeed it was von Caprivi who, showing a punctiliousness towards treaties one of his successors wouldn’t choose to adopt, took seriously the contradictions with some existing arrangements the Reinsurance Treaty at least implied and declined the Russian request in 1890 for a renewal.  From that point were unleashed the forces which would see Russian and France drawn together while Germany strengthened its ties to Austria-Hungry and the Ottomans while simultaneously seeking to compete with Britain as a naval power, a threat which would see Britain and France set aside centuries of enmity to conclude anti-German arrangements.  While the path from the end of the Reinsurance Treaty to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 wasn’t either inevitable or lineal, it’s not that crooked.

Reinsurance recommended: Lindsay Lohan in Esurance Sorta Mom advertisement for Esurance Insurance (an Allstate company).

Schism

Schism (pronounced siz-uhm or skiz-uhm)

(1) Division or disunion, especially into mutually opposed parties.

(2) Parties or groups so formed.

(3) In ecclesiastical matters, a formal division within, or separation from, a church or religious body over some doctrinal difference.

(4) The state of a sect or body formed by such division.

(5) The offense of causing or seeking to cause such a division.

1350-1400: From the Church Latin schisma, scisma (and in the Medieval Latin as cisma), from the Ancient Greek σχίσμα (skhísma) (genitive skhismatos), (division, cleft), from σχίζω (skhízō) (I split), the stem of skhizein (to split), from the primitive Indo-European root skei- (to cut, split).  The word replaced the French and Middle English cisme scisme & sisme (a dissension within the church producing two or more parties with rival authorities) all of which were from the Old French cisme or scisme (a cleft, a split), again ultimately from the Ancient Greek σχίσμα (skhísma).  By the late fourteenth century, scisme (dissention within the church) had emerged although in the New Testament, schism (or an equivalent from the stem of skhizein) was applied metaphorically to divisions in the Church (eg I Corinthians xii.25).  The classical spelling was actually restored in the sixteenth century but pronunciation may have remained unchanged and the general sense of “disunion, division, separation” became common in the early fifteenth century, and within a few years the adjective schismatic (the original spelling being scismatik) was coined in the sense of “pertaining to, of the nature of, or characterized by schism”, something which referred specifically to “an outward separation from an existing church or faith on difference of opinion:, on the model of the Old French scismatique & cismatique (which endures in Modern French as schismatique), from the Church Latin schismaticus, from the Ancient Greek skhismatikos.  The adjective was used also as a noun in both the Old French and Late Latin and had actually been used thus in English in the late fourteenth century in the sense of “one who participates in a schism”.  In both French & English, the modern spelling was adopted in the late sixteenth century.  Schism is a noun, schismatic & schismatical are nouns & adjectives and schismatically is an adverb; the noun plural is schisms.

The East-West Schism of 1054 is sometimes casually referred to as the “Great Schism” but this is best avoided because it can be confused with the Great Schism of 1378-1417 (which followed the “Avignon Papacy” (1309-1376)), known as the “Babylonian captivity of the Papacy”.  The Avignon era was a confused period, presided over by seven popes and five antipopes, something to be recalled by those who think today’s squabbles between the Vatican factions are disruptive.  The schism of 1054 was the break of communion between what are now the (Eastern) Orthodox and (Western) Roman Catholic churches.  There were a myriad of ecclesiastical and theological disputes between the Greek East and Latin West before 1054 covering issues such as whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist.  More serious perhaps were a cluster of arguments about power; the Pope’s claim to universal jurisdiction and the place of Constantinople in relation to Rome.

By 1053, there was open clerical warfare.  Greek churches in Italy were forced to close or to conform to Romish ways and, in retaliation, the eastern Patriarch closed the Latin churches in Constantinople; and harsh words were exchanged and by 1054 the hierarchies of both factions were busily excommunicating each other.  It’s a little misleading to cite 1054 as the date of the schism because the dispute actually dragged and technically, relationships wouldn’t fully be sundered for almost two centuries but historians accept that year as critical and in many ways, as a point on no return.  Now almost a thousand-years on, there seems no prospect of reconciliation.

Amusing Australian schisms

The Australian Rugby League (ARL), 1995-1997: Australia is well-known for schisms in sport.  The game of rugby league was the product of a schism in the rugby unions ranks, the essence of which was the disagreement about player payments and the amateur status of the game.  That schism happened in England in 1895 but exactly a hundred year later, in Australia, the professional rugby league competition endured its own when News Corp, seeing the game as the perfect content provider for the then novel platform of pay-TV, staged a raid and attempted to entice the clubs to join their breakaway competition, offering the traditional inducement of lots of money.  The established competition responded, backed with money from its broadcaster and a two-year war ensued until corporate realities prevailed and a merged entity divided the spoils between the media organizations.  The dispute and its resolution followed essentially the same path as the schism in Australian cricket a generation earlier.

The Australian Labor Party, 1955: By the mid-1950s, the strongly anti-Communist faction in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was actively engaged in a campaign to counter communist infiltration of both the political (the ALP) and industrial (the unions) arms of the labour movement.  Had the ALP enjoyed more capable leadership, things might have turned out differently but, handled as it was, the ALP split, the schism most serious in NSW and Queensland but no state was wholly unaffected.  What emerged as a predominately Catholic splinter-party was the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), the existence of which adversely affected the ALP vote for a generation.  Thought exterminated in 1974, the DLP still shows up at the odd election and has won seats before succumbing to its own schisms.

Department of Law, Macquarie University, 1980s: More traditional (black-letter) academic lawyers at Macquarie became concerned at the teachings of others whom they called legal sociologists.  Styling themselves substantive lawyers, they didn’t especially object to the content of their opponents; they just though it had no place in a law school.  A pre-social media schism, the dispute manifested mostly in letters to the editor and bitchy comments in legal journals.  Eventually, the dispute faded as the factions either called a truce or simply ignored each other.

Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, 1972: John Anderson (1893–1962) was a Scottish philosopher who held the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 until retirement in 1958.  His influence continued even after his death and by the early 1970s, faculty were engaged in a quite bitter dispute about subject matter, educational techniques and the very nature and purpose of philosophical study.  The differences proved irreconcilable and in 1974 the department split into two separate units, the Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy and the Department of General Philosophy.  The latter thought the former little more than a polite discussion group re-hashing the thoughts of last two and a half-thousand years while the former considered the latter politically radical but philosophically barren.  The department eventually reunited some thirty years later.

Mean Girls (2004) is a tale of schism, back-stabbing and low skulduggery. That has attracted those in "media studies" departments and other such places who, drawing perhaps a long bow, have constructed textual analyses aligning the script with William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1603), The Tragedy of Macbeth (1623) and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (1599).

Androgynous

Androgynous (pronounced an-droj-uh-nuhs)

(1) Being both male and female; hermaphroditic (archaic).

(2) Having both masculine and feminine characteristics.

(3) Having an ambiguous sexual identity.

(4) Neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance.

(5) In botany, having staminate and pistillate flowers in the same inflorescence.

1622: From the Latin androgynus (androgyne + ous), derived from Greek androgynos (hermaphrodite, male and female in one, womanish man).  Historically used as an adjective (of baths) with meaning "common to men and women," from andros, genitive of aner (male) (see anthropo) + gyne (woman).  Gyne is ultimate root of queen.  Related forms include androgyny, androgenous, androgynous. Androgyny was first used as a noun circa 1850, nominalizing the adjective androgynous.  Adjectival use dates from the early seventeenth century, derived from the older French and English terms, androgyne.  The older androgyne is still in use as a noun with overlapping meanings.  Androgynous is an adjective, androgyny is a noun, androgynously is an adverb; the noun plural is androgynies.

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) as Amy Jolly in Morocco (1930).

In an amusing political conjunction, it appears the Central Committee of the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) ruling Communist Party (CCP) seems now to agree with California’s most recent Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger (b 1947; governor of California 2003-2011), that “girly men” are a bit of a problem.  The committee has been for some time concerned with the habits of the young and in addition to cracking down on ideologically unreliable actresses, introduced restrictions on the amount of time the young could spend frittering away their (ie the state’s) time playing video games instead of studying agricultural techniques, developing surveillance systems or something useful.  Around the republic, it’s suspected parents gave thanks to the committee for at least attempting to achieve what their years pleas and nagging failed to achieve although, being an inventive and clever lot, no one is expecting the caffeine-fuelled youth easily to abandon their obsession.  Work-arounds are expected soon to emerge. 

The Guangzhou Circle (the doughnut).

Fashionistas and rabid gamers weren’t the committee’s only target, an actual culture war declared on androgyny, many young men deemed too effeminate banned from the wildly popular television genre they seem to have co-invented with the TV broadcasters impressed by the ratings.  Having called in the executives to tell them to promote "revolutionary culture" instead of Western decadence, the crackdown on girly men is seemingly part of President Xi Jinping’s (b 1953; paramount leader of China since 2012) campaign to tighten control over business and society so the CCP can impose and enforce an official morality.  The president’s vision is certainly all-encompassing.  As well as “deviant” young men, Mr Xi also doesn’t like the “weird architecture” he’s noticed is part of the world’s biggest ever building boom, disapproving of intriguing structures like the doughnut-shaped Guangzhou Circle skyscraper by Italian architect Joseph di Pasquale (b 1968) and to demonstrate it’s not merely a criticism of foreign influence, he’s also condemned some of the works by Chinese designers.  The president expects buildings to be like Chinese youth: cost-conscious, structurally sound, functional and environmentally friendly.  That’s it; no deviation allowed.      

The new headquarters of the state media’s China Daily during construction.  When finished if looked less confronting but one can see why the president was concerned.

But the architects got off lightly compared with the androgynous, the state’s regulator of television content ruling that broadcasters must "resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics", telling them to ban from the screens the niang pao (derisive slang for girly men which translates literally as "girlie guns”).  Culturally, the new interest shouldn’t be surprising given a narrow definition of gender roles has long been a theme in the identity and propaganda of authoritarian administrations, the imagery, campaigns and policies of twentieth century communist & fascist regimes being well documented, those not conforming suffering much.

Lindsay Lohan is androgynous mode.

Like the West, modern China has some history with LGBTQQIAAOP issues and, certainly in the twentieth century, many in the LGBTQQIAAOP communities were treated as mentally ill undesirables and sometimes prosecuted but, reflecting changes in the West, in 1997, Beijing decriminalized homosexuality and in 2001 removed it from the official list of mental disorders.  Before long, officially recognized gay bars appeared in Shanghai and gay pride marches were held and it appeared state tolerance of such things had become, if not state policy, then certainly the practice.  However, under President Xi, things began to change, films and other material with LGBTQQIAAOP themes often censored or actually banned, universities compiling lists of students who identify as gay and the pride marches have been cancelled although this was officially a COVID-19 infection-prevention measure.  In a prelude to the committee’s statement on the suppression of androgyny, in July 2021, the government ordered the Tencent-owned messaging app WeChat to delete accounts connected to LGBTQQIAAOP groups.

Wrong: The androgynous men on Chinese TV.

Some medical experts have suggested the government is under no illusion about homosexuality and understand it’s always going to exist but they just want it to remain invisible; in the closet as it were, something done behind closed doors between consenting adults but something which dare not speak its name, must less be shown on television.  Others suspect the crackdown on degeneracy may reflect the regime’s fiscal and demographic concerns, a feeling the younger generation are suffering from the “curse of plenty”.  Having grown up knowing little but relative affluence and abundance, youth and working-age adults are starting to rebel against the heavy workload they’ll have to bear for the rest of their lives to maintain an aging population, a cultural movement called "lying flat" identified which rejects the “996” (working 9am-9pm 6 days a week, ie 72 hours) culture.  The party seems to have realised 996 may not be something helpful for regime survival and, in August 2021, arranged for the Supreme People's Court on to declare it illegal.  However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t endure as a cultural expectation, especially in companies employing younger workers.

996: When first seen by US pilots over Korean skies in 1950, the Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG-15  (NATO reporting name=Fagot)) made an impact like few others.  Unlike the British and Americans who had trouble keeping things secret from the Soviets, the MiG-15's existence was unknown and unexpected.  Clearly influenced by the German war-time experience and the North-American F86 Sabre, it used an (illegal) copy of a Rolls-Royce turbojet and so instantly did it transform the control of the Korean War skies that the Americans were compelled to rush squadrons of Sabres to the theatre to augment the now out-paced P51 Mustangs.  MiG-15 996 (NX996) was first assigned to the USSR Air Force but in 1955 was transferred to the People's Liberation Army Navy (the then correct term for the Chinese Navy).

Right: The manly men of the CCP’s Central Committee.

Making connections between the strands has been a rich environment for conspiracy theorists searching for hidden agendas and ulterior motives.  Blaming video games, entertainment, and androgyny for making men "too soft to work hard" is said to be just blame-shifting for the consequences of the 996 culture burning out whole generations.  State-sanctioned statistics do show extraordinary gains in productivity over the last dozen years, economic output having doubled but the gains disproportionately have been accrued by a relatively few oligarchs and those well-connected to the senior echelons of the party with even many in the upper middle-class complaining the purchasing power of their incomes are consistently falling, not keeping pace with the rising cost of housing and raising children.  Reaction to the party’s announcement that the one-child policy was finished and couples should now have two or three was thus muted; in the absence of anything actually to help parents afford to have another child, a baby-boom is not soon expected.  Still, one of the advantages of living in a communist state running a regulated capitalism as a sort of public-private partnership, is the compulsory education in Marxist theory so at least the people will understand where the alienated surplus profits from their labour went and the party does seem aware of the problem, another of their crackdowns directed against the oligarchs.  However, unlike the androgynous, they’re not expected to be banned, instead they’ll be “encouraged” to spread the wealth.  Just a little.

Gypsy

Gypsy (pronounced jip-see)

(1) A once common term for the Roma or Romani but now largely socially proscribed as disparaging and offensive (sometimes with initial capital letter).  The Roma or Romani are scattered throughout Europe and North America and often maintain a nomadic way of life even in urbanized, industrialized societies, their source apparently a wave of migration from north-west India from around the ninth century onwards.

(2) The Indic language of the Roma or Romani although not in formal academic or technical use (always with initial capital letter).

(3) A person held to resemble a Roma or Romani, especially in physical characteristics (notably the combination of darker skin and dark, curly hair) or in a traditionally ascribed lifestyle and inclination to move from place to place.

(4) Of or relating to the Roma or Romani (can be used neutrally but is often applied as a disparaging and offensive slur).

(5) In informal use, working independently or without a license; a vagrant; an itinerant person or any person, not necessarily Romani; a tinker, a traveller; a circus or carnival performer; any itinerant person, or any person suspected of making a living from dishonest practices or theft.

(6) In informal use, free-spirited (though distinct from “bohemian” which implies something more sophisticated).

(7) In informal use, a sly, roguish woman.

(8) In informal use, a fortune teller (now rare).

(9) A move in contra dancing in which two dancers walk in a circle around each other while maintaining eye contact (but not touching as in a swing), the variations including the whole gyp, the half gyp, and the gypsy meltdown (in which this step precedes a swing); out of context the terms can be disparaging and offensive.

(10) In theater, a member of a Broadway musical chorus line.

1505–1515: A back formation from gipcyan, a Middle English dialectal form of egypcien (Egyptian) which over centuries lost the unstressed initial syllable), adopted in this context because of the mistaken perception Gypsies came originally from Egypt.  It was used as an adjective since the 1620s (with the sense "unconventional; outdoor) and the modern (and now archaic) UK word gippy was in use by at least 1889 as a truncated colloquial form of “Egyptian” although gip & gyp as abbreviations of gipsy & gypsy were known since the 1840s, the related verbs being gipped & gipping.  It was cognate with the Spanish Gitano and close in sense to the Turkish & Arabic Kipti (gypsy) although the literal meaning of that was “Coptic” (the form of Christianity most common in Egypt).  In Middle French the closest term was Bohémien (although that tended to be a geographical reference without the same associations familiar from modern use), the Spanish also using Flamenco (from Flanders) in the same way.  Those adoptions of use do hint at the manner in which the Roma have so often been treated as “outsiders”, “outlanders” or “foreigners” in just about any country where they were found although the nuances of “gypsy” were very different to notions such as “rootless cosmopolitans” which were attached to the Jews.  The alternative spellings were gipsy, gipsey, gypsey, gypsie & gyptian, all of which except gipsy are thought archaic.

In his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Henry Fowler (1858–1933) noted the special significance of Gypsy (rather than gipsy) being the preferred spelling in English, a development not related to the practice imposed on other words (tyre, syphon etc) where a ‘y’ was substituted for an ‘I’ for no better reason than the effect was thought decorative.  Henry Fowler thought it helpful because it existed as a relic to remind those concerned that the original meaning was “Egyptian” but noted also the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) statement that (in the early twentieth century) the preferred spelling appeared to be gipsy by the plural form gypsies was far from uncommon, presumably because users found awkward the “…appearance and repetition of ‘y’”.  Gypsy is a noun, verb & adjective; gypsydom, gypsyhood & gypsyism are nouns, gypsying & gypsied are verbs and gypsyesque, gypsyish, gypsy-like & gypseian are adjectives; the noun plural is gypsies.

Noted traveller Lindsay Lohan, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), 2009.

The terms "Gypsy", "Roma", "Traveller" and "Romani" are often used interchangeably, but there are differences.  Gypsy is a term that historically referred to the Romani people, who are believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent and migrated to Europe and other parts of the world over many centuries but it’s usually now thought a derogatory slur because of the history of use in stereotyping and discriminating against Romani people.  Roma is now the preferred term for the Romani people, and it is often used to refer to the ethnic group as a whole.  Romani is an adjective that refers to anything related to the Roma people, such as Romani culture or the Romani language.  It is used also as a noun to refer to an individual member of the Roma people.  Traveller is a term used to describe various groups of people who live a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, including the Roma people. However, there are other groups of people who are also considered Travellers, such as the Irish Travellers in Ireland and the UK.

Lymantria dispar: The moth formerly known as gypsy (their appearance is subject to wide variations between regions).  

TheAwareness of the sense shift of “gypsy” from something purely descriptive to a racial slur has also had consequences in zoology.  In 2021, the Entomological Society of America (ESA) announced it was removing “gypsy moth” and “gypsy ant” as the sanctioned common names for two insects.  The link between the insects and the slur is not as remote as some may suspect because as Romani scholar Professor Ethel Brooks noted, the common name of the species Lymantria dispar was gained from the behavior of the hairy larvae of the caterpillar stage during which the larvae would swarm and strip the leaves from a tree, leaving behind so much destruction that they were habitually referred to as “a plague”.  Tellingly, nobody ever cursed the Lymantria dispar but all blamed the “gypsy moth caterpillars”.  Dr Brooks made the connection between peoples’ view of the ravenous bugs and her own experience of the way the Roma were often disparaged.  She however confessed to being surprised her advocacy for change succeeded with the entomologists although the ESA was aware the Lymantria dispar’s common name was derogatory and had received a request for change as early as 2020, forming a Better Common Names Project, a task force to review and replace offensive or inappropriate insect common names.

Other branches of science are also acting.  The American Ornithological Society in 2020 announced the formation of an ad hoc committee to look into nomenclatures, some of the more obvious changes being the replacement of bird-names based on the names of people with dubious histories in colonialism or slavery.  In genetics, there’s also a move to rename the “Gypsy jumping genes”, a class noted for their propensity to make copies of themselves and insert them back into the genome.   In genetics, such revisions are not unknown; some years ago a number of genes were renamed because their original names, thought whimsical at the time, were held to be offensive to those with certain physical characteristics or suffering some forms of mental illness.  In ichthyology, attention is also being paid to names.  The Atlantic goliath grouper was historically referred to as the "jewfish" and while the origin of the name is obscure, a review determined it was likely the species' physical characteristics were connected habitually deployed caricatures of anti-Semitic beliefs and as long ago as 1927, the New York Aquarium changed the fish's name to Junefish.  In 2001, the American Fisheries Society (AFS) changed the name to "goliath grouper".

South African de Havilland DH.60G Gipsy Moth c/n 842 ZS-ABA, registered to The Johannesburg Light Plane Club At Baragwanath Airfield and pictured with Junkers A50 Junior ZS-ABV c/n 3511 and Avro 594 Avian II ZS-AAN c/n 124.  The de Havilland Gipsy aero-engine enjoyed a very long life.  First produced in 1927, it was used in an extraordinary number of airframes, most famously de Havilland’s Gipsy Moth and Tiger Moth.  The last variant, the Gipsy Queen 70, left the assembly line almost thirty years after the first.

Stanton Special in its original 1953 hill climb form (left) and as re-configured in 1954 with a Weltex Mistral body for land speed record competition (right).    

One curious footnote in the long career of the Gipsy engine was its use in the 1953 Stanton Special, a New Zealand built race-car.  Although not a classic racing-car power-plant, the Gipsy was light, reliable and produced a lot of torque over a wide power-band, making it ideal for the hill-climbs for which it was intended.  A product typical of the practical improvisation which characterized so much of the early motor-sport scene in New Zealand, the engine was salvaged from a Tiger Moth used for aerial-spraying and the Stanton Special quickly was dubbed “the cropduster”, the aero-engine’s distinctive exhaust note meaning it was never mistaken for anything else.  So effective did it proved in hill climbs it attracted comments suggesting that were something done to improve its dubious aerodynamic properties, it might enjoy some success in events where speeds were higher.  Accordingly, Christchurch-based Weltex Plastics, one of the pioneers in the production of fibreglass structures, in 1954 furnished one of its Mistral bodies (a design produced under license from the UK’s Microplas), complete with a tail fin to enhance straight-line stability (a la that year’s Jaguar D-Type at Le Mans).  Thus configured and with the engine tuned further with the addition of an Abbott supercharger & four Amal carburetors, it was entered in some national land speed contests and won convincingly, managing an elapsed time of 12.96 seconds in the standing quarter-mile (400 m) and a flying quarter at 154 mph (248 km/h).  The tweaking continued and in 1958 it set an Australasian land speed record which would stand for ten years, covering the standing kilometre in 22.95 seconds with a terminal velocity of 175 mph (281 km/h).  The aerodynamics must have been good but remarkably no wind-tunnel time was part of the design process, the stylist apparently sketching something which “looked slippery”.

Coronet

Coronet (pronounced kawr-uh-nit, kawr-uh-net, kor-uh-nit, or kor-un-net)

(1) A small crown.

(2) A crown worn by nobles or peers (as distinct from those worn by sovereigns).

(3) A crown-like ornament for the head, as of gold or jewels.

(4) An ornament, tending to the pedimental in form, situated over a door or window.

(5) The lowest part of the pastern of a horse or other hoofed animal, just above the hoof.

(6) In heraldry, a crown-like support for a crest, used in place of a torse; also called crest coronet.

(7) The margin between the skin of a horse's pastern and the horn of the hoof.

(8) The knob at the base of a deer's antler.

(9) The traditional lowest regular commissioned officer rank in the cavalry (the equivalent of an ensign in the infantry or navy).

(10) Any of several hummingbirds in the genus Boissonneaua.

(11) A species of moth, Craniophora ligustri.

1350–1400: From the Middle English crownet & corounet, from the Middle French couronnette, from the Old French coronete (little crown) a diminutive of corone (crown) from the Latin corona (third-person singular present active subjunctive of corōnō) (crown), from the Ancient Greek κορώνη (korṓnē) (garland, wreath; a type of crown; a type of sea-bird, perhaps shearwater; a crow; anything curved or hooked (like a door handle or the tip of a bow).  Related in form, if not always function are diadem, wreath, crown, chaplet, circle, tiara, headdress, headband & anadem (a headband, particularly a garland of flowers).  Coronet is a noun; the noun plural is coronets.

Lindsay Lohan in coronet: Mean Girls (2004).

Crowns and coronet are both types of headgear worn as symbols of authority but there are technical differences between the two.  The crown is the traditional symbolic headpiece worn by a monarch and (in some cases) certain other members of royal families.  Fabricated usually from precious metals and adorned with jewels, crowns are by convention taller and more ornate than coronets but this is not an absolute rule and the symbolism of a crown as something representing sovereign power and regal authority doesn’t rely on its size.  Despite that, coronets tend to be smaller, less elaborate versions of crowns and they’re worn by members of the nobility who do not hold the rank of monarch and the consort of a monarch.  According to authoritative English sources, the general specification for a coronet dictates a small crown of ornaments  fixed on a metal ring and, as a general principle, a coronet has no arches and unlike a tiara, it wholly encircles the head.  Helpful as that may be, coronets in the wild are obviously rare (although that depends on the circles in which one moves) but are commonly seen as rank symbols in heraldry, emblazing coats of arms.  More opportunistically, they’re a popular symbol used in commerce.

Coronets of the United Kingdom.

In the UK, a country where there are more coronets than most, those worn by members of the House of Lords are of a defined designed according to the notch on the peerage one inhabits but surprisingly, they’re worn usually only for royal coronations (donning them for a lying in state or state funeral not the modern practice) so the 2023 event will be their first appearance en masse since 1953.  Outside of royalty, they were once exclusive to dukes but the right was granted to marquesses in the fifteenth century, to earls in the fifteenth, to viscounts (of which there are surprisingly few) in the sixteenth and barons in the seventeenth.  Coronets may not bear any precious or semi-precious stones.

1959 Dodge Silver Challenger

Chrysler’s Dodge division used the Coronet nameplate in a way typical of Detroit’s mid-century practices.  Between 1949-1959 it was a full-sized Dodge, beginning as a top-of-the-range trim before in 1955 being shifted downwards, seeing out its first iteration as an entry-level model.  One mostly forgotten footnote of the first Coronets is the 1959 range saw Dodge's first use of the Challenger name; in 1959 the Coronet-based Challenger was an early example of a model bundled with a number of usually optional accessories and sold at an attractive discount.  The concept would become popular and the Challenger name would later be twice revived for more illustrious careers as pony cars (and although the first attempt (1969-1974) was a financial disaster, the cars now much sought-after which, in their most desired configurations trade in the collector community well into six figures with the odd sale above US$1 million).

1979 Dodge Challenger (a "badge-engineered" Mitsubishi).

Although the Mopar crew don't much dwell on the matter, between 1978-1983, Dodge also applied the Challenger name to a "captive import" (the then current term describing an overseas-built vehicle sold under the name of domestic manufacturer through its dealer network), a Mitsubishi coupé sold in other markets variously as the Sapporo, Lambda and Scorpion.  Although somewhat porcine (until a mid-life facelift tightened things up), it was popular in many places (Australians especially took to it) but never achieved the same level of success in the US (where Plymouth also sold it as the Sapporo), even though that was where the "personal coupé" had become a very lucrative market segment.   

1969 Dodge Hemi Coronet.  By 1969 the writing was on the wall for engines like the Hemi and just 97 Coronet hardtops and ten convertibles were built.  In 1970, when the last two-door Coronets were made, production had dropped to 13 hardtops and just a brace of convertibles (one manual, one automatic).

The Coronet’s second run was as an intermediate between 1965–1976 and it’s the 1968-1970 models which are best remembered, based on the corporate B-body platform shared with the Plymouth Belvedere and Dodge Charger.  Plymouth gained great success with their take on the low-cost, high-performance intermediate when they released the Road Runner, a machine stripped of just about all but the most essential items except for its high performance engines, including the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) HEMI V8.  It was a big hit, the sales wildly exceeding projections and it encouraged Dodge to emulate the approach with the Coronet Super Bee although for whatever reason, it didn’t capture the imagination as had the Road Runner and in the three seasons both were available, sold less than a third of its corporate stablemate.

1967 Dodge “Road Runner” advertisement.

Curiously though, Dodge may have missed what proved to be the priceless benefit of using the Road Runner name.  In 1967, Dodge had run advertisements for the Coronet R/T (“Road & Track” although “street & strip” would have been closer to the truth but Chevrolet had for years been using "SS" and S/S might have been thought slavishly imitative although the lawyers would have confirmed it would have been OK) which used the words “Road” & “Runner” although spaced as far apart as perhaps the lawyers advised would be sufficiently distant to avoid threats of litigation.  Plymouth solved that problem by legitimization, paying Warner Brothers US$50,000 for the Road Runner name and the imagery of the Wile E Coyote and Road Runner cartoon depictions, spending a reputed (though unverified) additional US$10,000 for the distinctive "beep, beep" horn sound, the engineering for which seems to have been as as simple as replacing the aluminium strands in the mechanism with copper windings.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) admiring the coronet worn by Miss USA Kristen Dalton (b 1986), Miss USA 2009 Pageant, Las Vegas, Nevada.  Although the beauty contest business called them crowns or cornets, most, like that worn by Ms Dalton, technically were tiaras.

Summit

Summit (pronounced suhm-it)

(1) Highest point or part, as of a hill, a line of travel, or any object; top; apex; peak, pinnacle; acme, zenith, culmination.

(2) One’s highest point of attainment or aspiration.

(3) A meeting of heads of government.

(4) In mountaineering, any point higher than surrounding points (distinguished by topographic prominence as subsummits (low prominence) or independent summits (high prominence)).

(5) In mountaineering to ascend to the peak.

1425–1475: From the Late Middle English somete, borrowed from the Middle French and drawn from the Old French sommette, diminutive of som (highest part, top of a hill).  Ultimate source was the Latin summum, the noun use of neuter of summus (highest) + -ete or -et as the suffix and it’s from here English ultimately picked-up super.  Summit is a noun & verb; subsummit & summiteers are nouns, summital & summitless are adjectives and summited & summiting are verbs; the noun plural is summits.  The nouns minisummit & presummit are creations of twentieth century diplomacy and have (not always happily) been applied adjectivally.

Summits (meetings between those in charge of tribes, groups, nations etc to discuss issues) predate civilization but the adoption of the word for this purpose is recent.  Usually summits are public but some have been secret and in the age of modern communications, they’re not the novelty once they were.  Some are famous, such as Henry IV’s (1050–1106; Holy Roman Emperor 1084-1105) Walk to Canossa in 1077 to beg the forgiveness of Pope Saint Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; pope 1073-1085) and seek absolution of his excommunication.  Others were cynical; the notorious 1938 Munich Conference was attended by the heads of government of France, Germany, Italy and the UK.  The meaning "meeting of heads of government" is from Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) 1950 metaphor of "…a parley at the summit" and was first widely used in 1955 when the phrase “Geneva Summit” appeared on press releases, menus and the final communiqué.  The classic summits were probably the great set-piece events conducted during World War II (1939-1945) and subsequently those of the high Cold War but there have since been many summits (notably the G5, G7, G8, G20 etc) but the term has somewhat become devalued because it’s not uncommon for events not involving heads of government so to be described.  While treasurer, Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) once suggested “a summit” which didn’t include the prime-minister; Bob Hawke (1929–2019; Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) soon corrected his error.

Great power summits have over the years excited more expectations than ever they have delivered.  Noted summiteer Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) was aware of this but in his prolific post-presidential career as an author altered his rationalizations depending on the point he wished to make.  While he could write that he was "...well aware that our highly successful summit meeting in 1972 might spawn euphoric expectations among the American people... [and that] I knew knew I stood politically to benefit from such euphoria, I tried to damp it down and keep our successes in perspective", he admitted elsewhere that "...creation of a willowy euphoria is one of the dangers of summitry".  Warming to the idea of a confession (not a feeling which often overcame him), he added of the public atmosphere in 1972 that "... I must assume a substantial part of the responsibility for this.  It was election year and I wanted the political credit."  The contradictions are just part of what makes Nixon the most interesting president of the modern era.          

Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton on the infamous front page in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, 29 November 2006.  The car was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199; 2003-2010).

In mountaineering, a summit is any point higher than surrounding points (distinguished by topographic prominence as subsummits (low prominence) or independent summits (high prominence)) and those who attempts to summit a peak are summiteers.  Thus when summiteers Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986) in 1953 summited the summit of Mount Everest, they became the first people ever to stand on the highest point on Earth.  That achievement provided a fun footnote in the long list of crooked Hillary Clinton’s (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) lies (which she calls “misspeaking”), one of which was “My mother named me after Sir Edmund Hillary”.  The claim was based on her finding his climbing of Mount Everest so inspiring, thus explaining the double-l spelling of her name but the assent of the summit came a half decade after her birth.  The story was later “clarified” when a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the famous mountaineer but the account “...was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”  Despite this, it remains unclear if crooked Hillary lied about her own name or was accusing her mother of lying.  Still, given everything else, “…at this point, what difference does it make?”

Eschew

Eschew (pronounced es-choo)

To abstain or keep away from; to refuse to use or participate in; stand aloof from; shun; avoid.

1300–1350: From the Middle English eschewen from the Old French eschiver & eschever (shun, eschew, avoid, dispense with (which in the third-person present was eschiu), from the Frankish skiuhan (to dread, shun, avoid), from the Proto-Germanic skeukhwaz (source also of the Old High German sciuhen (to avoid, escape) and the German scheuen (to fear, shun, shrink from), from scheu (shy, timid).  In German the evolution produced the Old High German sciuhen & skiuhan (to frighten away) and the German scheuchen (shoo, shoo away, drive away).  The Italian schivare (to avoid, shun, protect from) from schivo (shy, bashful) are both related loan words from the Germanic.  Eschew, eschewed & eschewing are verbs and eschewal & eschewance are nouns; the most common noun plural is eschewals.

Orson Wells (1915-1985) as Sir John Falstaff, Chimes of Midnight (1965).

The convention of use has evolved to suggest the verb eschew should not be applied to the avoidance or shunning of a person or specific physical object but only to the ideas, concepts, or other intangibles and William Shakespeare (1564–1616), in Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor (1602), though the concept a binary: “What cannot be eschew'd must be embrac'd”.  Avoid is the most often used synonym, similar but not quite in the same sense are “circumvent”, “boycott” and “forgo”.  Eschew is a verb, the nouns are eschewment, eschewal & eschewer.

Lindsay Lohan eschewing some underwear and the fastening of a couple of buttons, Los Angeles, 2010.

The surviving dialectical variation is the Scots umbechew (umschew & umchew now extinct), the construct being umbe- +‎ eschew.  As a transitive, it meant “to avoid; shun” and as an intransitive “to get away; escape”.  The prefix umbe- is from the Middle English um-, umbe- & embe-, from Old English ymb- & ymbe- (around), from the Proto-Germanic umbi- (around, about, by, near), from the primitive Indo-European hzmbhi (round about, around).  It was cognate with the Dutch om- (around), the German um- (around), the Latin amb- (around, about), the Latin ambi- (both), the Ancient Greek ἀμφί (amphí) (around, about), the Sanskrit अभि (abhi) (against, about).  The prefix (meaning around; about) is no longer productive, obsolete outside mostly Scots dialects.