Epicurean

Epicurean (pronounced ep-i-kyoo-ree-uhm)

(1) The philosophical system or doctrine of Epicurus (circa 340–270 BC), holding that the external world is a series of fortuitous combinations of atoms and that the highest good is pleasure, interpreted as freedom from disturbance or pain (classical meaning from Antiquity).

(2) A fondness for, and enjoyment of the luxuries of life, especially fine food and drink; a person who cultivates a refined taste, especially in food and wine; a connoisseur (modern meaning).

1350–1400: From the Middle English Epicures & Epicureis (Epicureans the plural) from the Latin Epicūrēus (Epicūrus in the Medieval Latin) from the Ancient Greek Ἐπίκουρος (Epíkouros).  The original meaning from the late fourteenth century was a “follower of the philosophical system of Epicurus".  From the 1570s, the sense evolved of "one devoted to pleasure, the adjectival form attested from 1580s in the philosophical sense and from the 1640s with the meaning "pleasure-loving".  The –an suffix is from the Middle English -an, -ain, -ein & -en, from the Old French –ain & -ein, from the Latin -ānus (feminine -āna), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European -nós.  It was appended to (mostly) nouns to create the adjectival form or to nouns to make an agent noun. Epicurean is a noun & adjective, Epicureanism is a noun, epicureanize, epicureanizing & epicureanizedare are verbs; the noun plural is epicureans. 

Mainland Epicure Gold cheese: highly recommended; sharp, crumbly and perfect for toasties.

Epicurus was a Latinized form of Greek Epicouros (circa 340-270 BC), an Athenian philosopher whose teachings were that (1) pleasure is the highest good and (2) virtue the greatest pleasure.  Western culture hungrily absorbed the first lesson but tended to neglect the second.  As late as the 1560s, the name was used pejoratively in the now (mostly) archaic sense of "one who gives himself up to sensual pleasure", especially as applied to gluttonous sybarites, a use well established by 1774. Epicurus's school was opposed by the stoics and it was they who first gave his name a reproachful sense, the non-pejorative meaning "one who cultivates refined taste in food and drink" noted since the 1580s.  The historic synonyms would include voluptuary or decadent, in the modern sense they would be gastronome, gourmet, gourmand, connoisseur or bon vivant.

Aspect views of a bust of Epicurus.

Epicurus, a philosopher in Hellenic Greece, founded a school circa 307 BC in which he developed a system hostile to superstition and divine intervention and believed pleasure leads to the greatest individual and collective good.  The path to this, Epicurus held, was to study the world, live modestly and contain one’s desires so as to not succumb to self-indulgence.  A life such lived, he taught, would allow one to attain a state of ataraxia (tranquility) and aponia (a freedom from fear and pain) and to attain these two states produces human happiness in its purest and highest form.  Happiness therefore comes from the virtues of diligence and restraint; the avoidance of excess.  To be fair to Epicurus, he was not averse to the odd luxury and his school was known for the feasts it held on the twentieth of each month.  Noted Epicurean and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) maintained the tradition.

A modern Epicurean: Lindsay Lohan at a table of delicacies.

Although austerity may sound unfashionable to those immersed in globalised consumerism, Epicureanism is, in other ways, astonishingly modern.  Epicurus dismissed the influence of gods in the natural world in favor of materialistic explanations and was thus wholly opposed to conventional theism.  Indeed, Epicureanism was the only non-theistic Western philosophy known before the modern age and in older usage, was synonymous with atheism, the reason it was a term used to condemn by many in the medieval Church.  He thought to have taken this to its logical conclusion and held that the Earth and the rest of the universe was but matter and energy arranged by chance in the form we know; a product of physics and chemistry rather than a deity but there must always be caution in that so little has survived for there to be definitive views of the philosophy of Epicurus.  Some of his writings survive but of the hundreds of books he’s said to have written, all that remains are fragments of text and some letters.  Much of what is known comes from Diogenes the Cynic (412 or 404-323 BC) and poem De rerum natura (Of the Nature of Things) by Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus (circa 99–circa 55 BC), a long didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism.

Rome During the Decadence (1547) by Thomas Couture (1815–1879).

The meaning has shifted.  Modern Western audiences have noted the monthly feast Epicurus hosted while turning a deaf ear to his caution that life otherwise should be lived with modesty and restraint.  Epicureanism thus became a synonym for hedonism and in the minds of most is now associated almost exclusively with fine food and drink.  By the late twentieth-century, the word in the sense of its original meaning was barely used outside academic circles but of late there’s been a revival of interest; there are several large Epicurean associations in Greece and a Society of Friends of Epicurus with a sizable following in the English-speaking world.  It’s also attracted the usual suspects: there are French chefs like to style themselves Epicurean as did, perhaps less plausibly, the late Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011).

Indent

Indent (pronounced in-dent)

(1) To form deep recesses in something.

(2) In typography, to begin a line or lines at a greater or less distance from the margin; to set in or back from the margin, as the first line of a paragraph (the “hanging indent” pulls the line out into the margin).

(3) To cut or tear a document (especially a contract or deed in duplicate) so the irregular lines may be matched to confirm its authenticity

(4) To cut or tear the edge of (copies of a document) in an irregular way.

(5) To make tooth-like notches in something; to notch.

(6) To indenture, as an apprentice (mostly archaic).

(7) In inventory control or stock management, to draw an order upon stock.

(8) In military use (originally under the Raj), a requisition or order for supplies, sent to the commissariat of an army (later adopted in commerce generally to mean “to place an order for a good or commodity, usually for foreign goods, historically through an agent).

(9) To enter into an agreement by indenture; make a compact.

(10) In US financial history, a certificate (or intended certificate), issued by the government of the United States at the close of the Revolution, for the principal or interest of the public debt; at the close of the Revolutionary War for the principal or interest due on the public debt.

(13) In steel fabrication, to form a pattern on metal.

(14) An alternative word for indentation.

(15) A class of stamp; an impression made in the paper (as distinct from a wax seal which sat atop and was indented with a seal).

(16) Formally commit to doing something; to engage someone (both obsolete and based on the notion of the arrangement being formalized with an “indented document” even after the practice has ceased).

(17) To crook or turn; to wind in and out; to zigzag (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French endenter, a back formation from indented (having tooth-like notches).  The verb indent in the sense of “to dent or press in” emerged in the early fifteenth century and was etymologically distinct from the contemporary verbs indenten & endenten (to make notches; to give (something) a toothed or jagged appearance (which was used also to convey “to make a legal indenture, make a written formal agreement or contract”)) and was from the twelfth century Old French endenter (to notch or dent, give a serrated edge to) and from the Medieval Latin indentare & indentātus, the construct in Latin being in- (in-) + dent (tooth) from dēns, from the Proto-Italic dents, from the primitive Indo-European dónts and cognate with the Ancient Greek ὀδούς (odoús), the Sanskrit दत् (dát), the Lithuanian dantìs, the Old English tōþ (source of the English tooth) and the Armenian ատամ (atam), from the primitive Indo-European root dent- (tooth).  The prefix -in is quirky because it can act either to negate or intensify.  The general rule is that when pre-pended to a noun or adjective, it reinforces the quality signified and when pre-pended to an adjective, it negates the meaning, the latter mostly in words borrowed from French.  The Latin prefix in- was from the Proto-Italic en-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥- (not), the zero-grade form of the negative particle ne (not) and was akin to ne-, nē & nī.  In Modern English it is from the Middle English in-, from Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in, from the primitive Indo-European en.  Dent was dialectal variant of the Middle English dunt, dent, dente & dint (a blow; strike; dent), from the Old English dynt (blow, strike, the mark or noise of a blow), from the Proto-Germanic duntiz (a blow) and akin to the Old Norse dyntr (dint).  Indent, indenture & indenting are nouns & verbs, indenter, indention, indentation & indentor are nouns, indented is a verb & adjective and indentable is an adjective; the noun plural is indents.

Scriptum super libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Liber I (Commentary on the Book I of the Sentences of Peter Lombard) by Italian Dominican friar, philosopher & theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), transcribed in Latin as a decorated manuscript on paper by an unknown scribe in central Italy in the mid-late fifteenth century.  Still sometimes used in newspaper and magazine publishing, the "Drop Cap" is a disproportionately large letter which appears as the first in a sentence and the practice created the most obvious need for an indent.  Otherwise the indent appeared as a blank space to indicate the start of a new paragraph, a technique some still use.

The original significance of “indented documents” was they were an analogue version of modern digital cryptography such as the need for both public and private “keys” to make a file accessible.  The noun indenture was a late fourteenth century form meaning (written formal contract for services (between master and apprentice, etc), a deed with mutual covenants), from the Anglo-French endenture, from the Old French endenteure (indentation), from endenter (to notch or dent).  The classic indented document was a contact or agreement of some kind created in two (or more) parts on a single sheet of parchment which was then cut in an irregular zigzag (ie an “indented” line) with each party retaining their piece.  Each part of the parchment could be authenticated by matching its jagged edge with that of another part.  The forms indented & indenting were known by the late fourteenth century while the additional of indent to the jargon of mechanical printing to describe “the insertion of a blank space to force text inward” dates from the 1670 although the idea of an indent being “a cut or notch in a margin” was in use in the 1590s, derived from the verb.  There is also evidence indent was used in the late 1400s the sense of “a written agreement” (ie the documents cut from the single sheet of parchment) as a scribe’s short form of the formal term endenture."  That practice arose because ink and parchment were both expensive and over many pages, money would be saved if the number of letters used was reduced and the same tactic lasted well into the twentieth century because those sending telegrams were charged by the letter.  Unfortunately, different scribes sometimes used different abbreviations which can make the reading of medieval texts a challenge.

Prelude, dent & aftermath: Lindsay Lohan out driving (left), the big dent (centre) and after being fixed (right).

In 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive around Los Angeles in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster.  It didn’t end well.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 350 of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a fixed-roof.  However, by 2007, all dents had been repaired and the car (California registration 5LZF057), detailed & simonized, was being offered for sale in Texas, the mileage stated as 6207.  Bidding was said to be “healthy” so all's well that ends well.

The noun indentation was first used in 1728 do describe “a cut, notch or incision at the margin or edge of something” and after 1847 the word was used to describe “a dent or impression; a small hollow or depression, a slight pit” which was used in everything from metal-working & carpentry to pastry chefs making pies.  The significance was that usually an indentation was deliberate while a dent was the consequence of an accident.  The now rare indention was a noun dating from 1763 and was an irregular formation from indent and again gained its utility by distinguishing between marginal notches and dents but, in the way of such things, both seem often to have been used interchangeably. The familiar noun dent (a blow; strike; dent) in the sense of “an indentation, a hollow mark made by a blow or pressure" was known by the 1560 and although there’s no documentary evidence, most etymologists assume it was coined under the influence of indent.

Sickle

Sickle (pronounced sik-uhl)

(1) In agriculture, an implement for cutting grain, grass, etc., consisting of a curved, hook-like blade mounted in a short handle.

(2) In astronomy, a group of stars in the constellation Leo, likened to this implement in formation (initial capital letter).

(3) In veterinary anatomy, any of the sickle-shaped middle feathers of the domestic cock.

(4) In pathology, as sickle-cell anemia, a severe hereditary condition in which mutated haemoglobin distorts red blood cells into a crescent shape, causing the cells to become stuck in capillaries; historically known as drepanocytosis.  The deformation of red blood cells into an abnormal crescent shape is called sickling and in medical slang a patient with the condition is a sickler.  

(5) As a stylized graphic, crossed with a hammer, used as a symbol of communism and the USSR and adopted by communist parties in many countries; metonymically, Socialism or communism itself.

Pre-1000: From the Middle English sikel (also assibilated in sichel), from the Old English sicol & siċel, the origin of which is uncertain, the most supported suggestion being it was a borrowing from Latin sēcula (sickle) or sīcīlis (sickle)”, cognate with the Dutch zikkel and the German Sichel.  The construct of the Latin sēcula was sec(āre) (to cut) + -ula or –ule (the diminutive suffix used to form taxonomic names, usually of genera).  The alternative explanation is it was a diminutive of the Proto-Germanic sikilō (ploughshare) from the primitive Indo-European seg-, a variant of sek- (to cut).  It was cognate with West Frisian systel, sisel & sizel (sickle), the Dutch sikkel (sickle) and the German Sichel (sickle).  It was related also to West Frisian sichte (sickle), the Dutch zicht (sickle), the Low German Sichte & Sicht (sickle) & Sech (blade of a sickle or scythe).  Sickle is a noun, verb & adjective, sickler & sickleman (sicklewomoman seem never to have been a thing although there must have been many and one would presumably now use sickleperson) are nouns, sickled is a verb and sickling is a noun & verb; the noun plural is sickles.

One of the standards used by the USSR after 1922.

The hammer and sickle (available on PCs as the Unicode symbol ☭ long before emojis) was created in 1917 to symbolise proletarian solidarity: the hammer representing the workers, the sickle the peasants (the intelligentsia ignored for representational purposes by the journalists, school-teachers and lawyers who would come to dominate the later dictatorship).  The design, formerly adopted as the USSR’s national symbol in 1922, was by Yevgeny Ivanovich Kamzolkin (1885–1957), his winning entry in a competition.  During the decades when the USSR enjoyed a better image than during the cold war, the hammer and sickle became widely used as a symbol both for communist parties and international proletarian unity even though the Soviet state had long been the dictatorship of the party elite rather than of the proletariat as Karl Marx (1818-1883) had predicted in his Communist Manifesto (1848).

Hammer and Sickle Set, (1977) by Andy Warhol (1928–1987), screen-printed montage on paper.

It remains a familiar sight in Russia and states like China, Laos and Vietnam which are, even if only nominally, still communist.  It’s less welcome in many former communist countries, some of which make public display a criminal offence, mirroring German legislation banning the swastika.  Even the French Communist Party, for much of its existence the most cravenly Stalinist and Moscow-centric of operations, abandoned the hammer and sickle in favour of a five-pointed star although the painful step wasn’t taken until 2014.  The British Labour Party, wimpier than the French, once used a crossed shovel and quill which, to some critics, came respectively to symbolise the workers who founded the party and the bourgeoisie who staged a hostile takeover a process which afflicted also the Australian Labor Party (ALP), described by one disillusioned veteran as "the cream of the working class overthrown by the dregs of the middle class".  By the the 1980s, the British Labour party had adopted a rose which meant everything in general and nothing in particular so the "New Labour" of the 1990s was, if not inevitable, at least anticipated.  In the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) wasn’t going to let anything like that happen and in 2007 he intervened to stop modernisers among his own supporters removing the hammer and sickle from reproductions of the most hallowed relic of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), the Victory Banner, the flag Soviet troops raised over the Reichstag building in Berlin on 1 May 1945.  Mr Putin wasn't at all nostalgic about the Soviet economic model but he liked everything else and has tried to recreate as much of it as possible.

No sickle required: Lindsay Lohan with hammer used to attack a Volvo as part of a promotional stunt, New York City, March 2014.  Who hasn't wanted to attack a Volvo with a big hammer?

The flag of the Hezbollah (right), the public display of which is banned in some jurisdictions where both the organization's political & military wings are listed as "terrorist organizations" includes a depiction of  Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle but that of Mozambique (left) is the only national flag to feature the famous weapon and the Africans fixed a bayonet to the barrel which was a nice touch.  Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975 although the flag wasn’t officially adopted until 1983 as a modified version of what was essentially the battle flag of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, the Marxist (later styled “democratic socialist”) resistance movement which fought a war of liberation (1964-1974) against the Portuguese colonial forces).  Artistically, just as Marxism (notably often in Stalinist form) had been politically influential in post-colonial Africa, the hammer & sickle exerted an artistic appeal.  The flag of Mozambique has an AK-47 crossed by a hoe sitting atop an open book and is the only national flag upon which appears a modern firearm, the handful of others with guns all using historic relics like muskets or muzzle-loaded cannons.  The Angolan flag has a machete crossing a half gear wheel and both these African examples follow the symbolic model of the hammer and sickle, representing variously the armed struggle against repression, the industrial workers and the peasantry.

Hammer & sickle pencil mini-skirts.

Trait

Trait (pronounced treyt or trey (now rare))

(1) A distinguishing characteristic or quality distinguishing a particular person or thing, especially of one's personal nature.

(2) A pen or pencil stroke (emulated also in software).

(3) A stroke, touch, or strain, as of some quality (now rare).

(4) In biology (and later picked up in psychology), a genetically determined characteristic or condition which is some cases may be influenced by environmental factors.

(5) In programming, languages, those methods which can be used to instance or extend functionality to a class by using the class’s own interface.

1470–1480: From the French trait (line, stroke, feature, tract), from the Middle French trait (line, feature), from the Old French trait (a pulling (literally “something drawn”)), from the Latin tractus (drawing, drawing out, dragging, pulling (an later “line drawn; feature”), from trahō, from the past participle stem of trahere (to drag, pull, draw), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European treg- (to drag, pull) which may have been a variation of dreg (to pull, draw, drag”).  In the late fifteenth century the word was used in the sense of “shot, missiles; a projectile” while the meaning “a stroke in drawing, a short line” emerged in the 1580s, that form still in technical use in graphic art and some image editing software.  The earliest known record of trait being used in English to men “a particular feature or distinguishing quality” dates from 1752.  Like niche, the tradition pronunciation (trey) is now so rare that its use might be counter-productive because it likely only to mislead and the form treyt, once known only in North America, seems now universal.  Such an evolution should not be resisted because English has always worked this way although there will be snobs who cherish trey as a class-identifier however wrong-headed this may be.  Trait is a noun and trait-like is an adjective; the noun plural is traits.

In the biological sciences, a trait refers to any observable characteristic of an organism and that might be physical, physiological, or behavioral and can be something the result entirely of genetic inheritance or a combination of genetic and environmental factors.  Like niche (another word where the US pronunciation seems to have prevailed), trait was borrowed from biology by psychology where it describes enduring patterns of thought, feelings or behavior which tend to be relatively stable despite the influence of external factors but traits in psychology are acknowledged often to be affected by both genetic and environmental factors.  Crucially, the understanding in human psychology notes the significance of the relationship in trait development between external factors and an individual’s reaction to them.  For psychologists, the study of traits often focuses on individual differences and how they contribute to personality and behavior whereas in botany & zoology etc, it’s usually more about what can be generalized about species & sub-species.

The personality traits of some attract much attention.

So, while the essential concept of traits is common between biology and psychology, the focus and application differ. In biology, traits are studied to understand the characteristics of organisms and how they evolve while in psychology traits are studied to understand human personality and behavior.  In general use (and that includes pop-psychology), the word (often in the form “character trait”) is used as a synonym for characteristic, peculiarity, mark, attribute, property etc and is well-understood, nobody confusing a genetic trait (like hair color) with descriptions of behavioral proclivities.  The apparently strange use in computer programming does make sense even though it can be argued that in programming languages there’s really no such thing as genetics (except in the abstract although the simile is useful in things like the change-logs which document changes from version-to-version) and everything is environmental.  However, the idea does work because what it means is that aspects of the language which manifest as particular characteristics of the type will appear also in the function of the software produced, something most apparent when a functional change is obvious such as when object-oriented programming (OOP, which was an example of when the over-used term “paradigm change” was justified) began to become dominant in consumer-level application in the 1990s.

The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) is a 220 item self-rated personality trait assessment scale for adults.  The domains appear in the middle column, with contributed facets (green, left) and non-contributed facets (blue, right).

The notion of personality traits of course underlie much of the content of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the most notable codification of the approach to personality disorders appeared in the DSM-5 (2013).  Although there have been detail changes in the DSM-5-TR (2022), the structure has been maintained and the revisions were most concerned with ensuring the diagnostic criteria accommodated the not unusual situation of a patient meeting the criteria for a specific personality disorder frequently also satisfying those for other personality disorders.  The emphasis remains on personality disorders being characterized by impairments in personality functioning and pathological personality traits.  The specific personality disorder diagnoses that may be derived from this model include antisocial, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, and schizotypal personality disorders but there’s also the diagnosis of “personality disorder—trait specified” (PD-TS) which can be made when a personality disorder is considered present but the criteria for a specific disorder cannot be met.

Ordinal

Ordinal (pronounced awr-dn-uhl)

(1) In botany and zoology, of, relating to, or characteristic of an order in the biological classification of plants or animals.

(2) Of or relating to order, rank, or position in a series; denoting a certain position in a sequence of numbers.

(3) In church administration, a directory of ecclesiastical services.

(4) In church administration, a book containing the forms for the ordination of priests, consecration of bishops etc.

(5) In numbering conventions (usually as ordinal numeral), any of the numbers that express degree, quality, or position in a series, as first, second, and third (and thus distinguished from cardinal numbers).

(6) In mathematics, a symbol denoting both the cardinal number and the ordering of a given set, being identical for two ordered sets having elements that can be placed into one-to-one correspondence, the correspondence preserving the order of the elements; in logic maths a measure of not only the size of a set but also the order of its elements.

1350–1400: Middle English from the Old French ordinel from the Medieval Latin ōrdināle, noun use of the neuter of ōrdinālis (showing order, denoting an order of succession), the sense being “orderly”, ōrdinālis denoting order or place in a series, from Latin ōrdō (order), (genitive ordinis), the construct being ōrdō (order) + -alia (the Latin adjectival suffix).  The first sense of ordinal was that adopted to describe ecclesiastical documents, the meaning "marking the place or position of an object in an order or series" unknown until the 1590s.  Ordinal is a noun and adjective, the adverb is ordinally.

Conventions

In English there are conventions to guide the way written text is handled in oral speech.  Where a word or phrase, however familiar in English, remains foreign, it should, when spoken, be rendered in translation so, the written text “Hillary Clinton is, inter alia, crooked”, is spoken as “Hillary Clinton is, among other things, crooked.”  Where a foreign word or phrase has been assimilated into English it is treated as native so the written text “Hillary Clinton’s statement was the usual mix of lies, half-truths, evasions etc.” is spoken as “Hillary Clinton’s statement was the usual mix of lies, half-truths, evasions etcetera.”  Note the usual shortened form (etc) has traditionally always been followed by a full-stop but there is a welcome revisionist movement which argues it too has become an English word (as etcetera is an anglicized form of the Latin et cetera) and thus needs no longer to be treated as a truncation.

Where a foreign word or phrase, however familiar in English, depends for technical or other reasons on the original form to convey its meaning, it should be spoken as written.  Words of this class are often legal Latin such as obiter dictum (a judge's expression of opinion not essential to the verdict and thus not binding as a precedent) and habeas corpus (now a mechanism to challenge the lawfulness of a detention).  Status quo is well-known and widely used as kind of verbal shorthand to avoid clumsy English constructions yet the Status Quo is an Ottoman era firman (decree) which defines certain unchanging understandings among religious communities with respect to nine shared religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to translate this to anything else would rob it of the meaning which relies on its historic context.

A DOB written as 07-02-86 is generally understood by Americans but 02 Jul 1986 is preferable because internationally it's unambiguous.  The ordinal numbers (1^st (first), 2^nd (second), 3^rd (third), 4^th (fourth) etc) which sometimes still appear in written text, usually as superscript (set slightly above the normal line of type) reflect actual speech and are often an invaluable aid to the flow and rhythm of text.  However, when used to write dates, they’re wholly unnecessary, a “…needless tribute by the written word to the spoken…” in the words of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) in a note to his father (one of the few of Randolph’s opinions of which he approved).  The preferred format for dates is 2 Jul 1986 (or 2 July 1986 if added formality is needed); as Randolph’s memo explained, this removes the ambiguity which is inevitable if formats like 2/7/1986 or 7/2/1986 are used and placing the word of the month in the middle separates the two numbers.  Randolph Churchill was writing in 1949, long before the storage of data in digital form entered the mainstream.  Because of the way computers usually handle the indexing of such things, if using the date to name files, sub-directories etc, advice has long been to adopt the convention YYYYMMDD (19860702).  That however is but a Y2K approach and may, eight-thousand years odd from now, contribute to the Y10K crisis.  Some have been pondering this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550

Eavesdrop

Eavesdrop (pronounced eevz-drop)

(1) Secretly to listen to the private conversation of others; to hear a conversation one is not intended to hear.

(2) To eavesdrop upon.

(3) A concealed aperture through which an occupant of a building can surreptitiously listen to people talking at an entrance to the building.

(4) Water that drips from the eaves (also as eavesdrip) (rare).

(5) The ground around a structure on which such water drips (rare).

(6) In zoology, to listen for another organism's calls, so as to exploit them.

Pre 900: From the Middle English evesdrope & evesdripe, from the Old English yfesdrype (water dripping from the eaves).  The late Middle English evisdroppyr was apparently literally “one who stands on the eavesdrops in order to listen to conversations inside the house”.  The ultimate source may be the Old Norse upsardropi, the construct being ups (eaves) + -sar- (container) + dropi (a drop).  The noun eavesdropper seems to have come into use in the mid-fifteenth century in the sense of “one who lurks at walls or windows to overhear what's going on inside.”  The same form was adopted for those who “listened in” even if well away from eaves such as those inside listening through keyholes and in the security community, it’s also used informally of wiretaps, listening devices etc.  The word eavesreading was coined on the model of eavesdropping and meant “surreptitiously to read something”; it’s main use appears to be in spy fiction but the extent of actual use among spies is of course difficult to estimate.  Eavesdrop & eavesdropping are nouns & verbs, eavesdropped is a verb, eavesdropper is a noun and eavesdroppingly is an adverb; the noun plural is eavesdrops (the more common probably eavesdroppers).

Cross-section of eaves.

Eaves (eave the alternative form) was from the Middle English eves (projecting lower edge of a roof), from the Old English efes, yfes & ofes (edge of a roof), from the Proto-West Germanic ubisu (hall), from the Proto-Germanic ubiswō (and related to the Gothic ubizwa, the Old High German obasa (hall; porch; roof) and perhaps ultimately from the primitive Indo-European upér (above; over) from which English ultimately gained “over”.  Drop in this context was from the Late Middle English droppe, from the Middle English drope (small quantity of liquid; small or least amount of something; pendant jewel; dripping of a liquid; a shower; nasal flow, catarrh; speck, spot; blemish; disease causing spots on the skin), from the Old English dropa (a drop), from the Proto-West Germanic dropō (drop of liquid), from the Proto-Germanic drupô (drop of liquid), from the primitive Indo-European drewb- (to crumble, to grind away).

Long distance eavesdropping: Marketed as an "Extreme Sound Amplifier Professional Bionic Ear Listening Device", Amazon notes the Guppy is ideal for bird watchers, nature lovers and outdoor because it can detect "voice equivalent sounds" at distances up to 75 m (250 feet).  Recommended for children aged six and above, it's said to improve children's audiovisual perception, help them explore nature and stimulate their imagination and curiosity.  While Amazon doesn’t dwell on the matter, the Guppy could be used as a dual-purpose device.

The noun eavesdrop described (1) the dripping of rain-water from the eaves of a building (2) the space of ground onto which the water fell and (3) the container at the end of a pipe or spout which collected the water so it would be available for other uses such as gardening, cleaning etc.  In the ninth century the word was eavesdrip which in early Modern English evolved to become eavesdrop.  The Old English words efes, yfes & ofes (edge of a roof) from which eaves was derived were all singular but in the way these thing happened in the Medieval period, the final -s was assumed to indicate a plural (on the basis of the relationship enjoyed by many other words), thus the emergence of the Middle English eves which later became eaves, reputedly because with “Eve” appearing in version of the Bible, the clergy objected to the spelling being used for a form of drainage which was a remarkable concern for the one they held responsible for original sin, the downfall of man and the banishment of humanity from the Garden of Eden.

Stasi eavesdropping ceremony: Stasi officers undertook their duties seriously but there were also office parties where dark good humor was on show.  Operatives who have proved outstanding at eavesdropping and eavesreading could be "dubbed" and conferred with a "knighthood" in the Abhörgerät der Ordnung alten (Ancient order of the Wiretap).  The Stasi (Ministry for State Security) fulfilled in the German Democratic Republic (the GDR (1949-1990), the old East Germany) a function similar to that of the Soviet KGB and is renowned still as history's most prolific eavesdroppers, their surveillance of written and oral communication so extensive and intrusive that for much of the state's existence, individuals needed to assume their telephone calls were being monitored.  The Stasi's (1950-1990) capacity to watch an entire population may soon be exceeded because advances in artificial intelligence (AI) mean it may become possible for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) literally to listen to every telephone call and read every electronic exchange.  In China, it may be that carrier pigeons and typewriters will be made illegal as the CCP moves to ensure there is no communication of which they are unaware.

Lindsay Lohan under the eaves, though probably not eavesdropping.

The noun eavesdrop (also as eavesdroppe) & eavesdrip had a significance beyond domestic storm-water management because they were measurements used first in ancient customary law and later in early English common law as part of what would now be thought a building or planning code.  Under the doctrine, a land-holder was not permitted to erect a roofed-structure so close to the boundary of his land that the water which fell from the roof might fall upon and damage adjacent land.  In customary law, the actual distance was expressed in different ways including “the extended arm-span of a man” (sometimes the parish priest was nominated) but when English measures were (more or less) standardized, that became “not lesse than two footes”.  Wind and water being what they are, it was obviously not possible to guarantee absolutely none of the water from one’s roof would end up on a neighbor’s land so there emerged the common law “right of drip” which technically created an easement upon the affected land, restricted to drips from the roof.  That would now be understood under the notion of “reasonableness” and drips would be held to be reasonable while torrents would not and an order of rectification could be made to demand the torrents in some way be reduced to drips.  This protected the neighbor (the dripee one might say) from water-damage but also meant that if economic benefit was derived from even a torrent (such as free agricultural irrigation), the dripor could not claim for a share of value against the dripee.

The noun eavesdropper was created to refer to “one who stands within the eavesdrop of a house to overhear conversations inside” and the first known record of use in the Presentments at the Sessions of the Borough of Nottingham, 1 October 1487, written in the Legal Latin of the day:

Juratores Constabulariorum dicunt, super sacramentum suum, quod Henricus Rowley, de Notingham, in Comitatu villae Notingham, yoman, die Jovis proximo ante festum Sancti Michaëlis Archangeli, anno regni Regis Henrici Septimi tertio, ac diversis aliis diebus et vicibus, communiter et usualiter, apud Notingham praedictam, est communis evysdropper et vagator in noctibus, in perturbationem populi Domini Regis et contra pacem suam.

The jurors of the Constables say, upon their oath, that Henry Rowley, of Nottingham, in the County of the town of Nottingham, yeoman, on Thursday next before the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, in the third year of the reign of King Henry the Seventh, and upon divers other days and occasions, commonly and usually, at Nottingham aforesaid, is a common eavesdropper and night-wanderer, to the perturbation of our Lord the King’s folk and against his peace.

There may in the charge have been the implication Henry Rowley was more than a quidnunc keeping up with things and may have been “casing the joint” with nefarious intent but in its pure sense eavesdropper was later defined in one of the first dictionaries of legal terms; Les Termes de la Ley: or Certaine difficult and obscure Words and Termes of the Common Lawes and Statutes of this Realme now in vse expounded and explained (London, 1636), by John Rastell (circa 1475-1536) and his son, William Rastell (circa 1508-1565):

Euesdroppers are such as stand vnder walls or windowes by night or day to heare newes, and to carry them to others to make strife and debate amongst their Neighbors, those are euill members in the Cōmon-wealth, and therefore by the Statute of Westminst. (I. cap. 33.) are to bee punished.

Etymologists differ on the matter of sequence.  Because the verb eavesdrop is first attested more than a century after the noun eavesdropper, some maintain former is a back-formation while others (on the basis of much linguistic precedent) suggest the very existence of the noun implies the pre-existence of the verb.  Sill the earliest use of the verb known to be extant was in the writings of the English playwright & poet George Chapman (circa 1560-1634) in the comedy Sir Gyles Goosecappe Knight (London, 1606) in which Momford and Lord Furnifall are in the house and plotting to repair to the gallery outside in order secretly to listen to the conversation between Clarence and the physician, Doctor Versey:

Momford: Bring hether the key of the gallerie, me thought I heard the Doctor and my friend.

Lord Furnifall: I did so sure.

Momford: Peace then a while my Lord.  We will be bold to evesdroppe.

It’s a forgotten play but Chapman is not because his translations of the Iliad (1598-1611) and the Odyssey (1616) rank with the most highly regarded in English and the evocative beauty of his style influenced many.  It was his work which inspired the Romantic poet John Keats to write the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816) by John Keats (1795–1821).

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.