Idiot

Idiot (pronounced id-ee-uht)

(1) In informal use (1) a foolish or senseless person (derogatory) or (2) an affectionate expression of disapprobation or disagreement.

(2) In medicine & psychology, a person of the lowest order in the former classification of intellectual disability (a mental age of less than three years old and an IQ (intelligence quotient) lower than 25; no longer in technical use; considered now generally offensive unless used affectionately.

1250–1300: From the Middle English idiote & ydiote, from the twelfth century Old French idiote (later idiot) (uneducated or ignorant person), from the Late Latin idiōta (an ignorant person), from the Ancient Greek ἰδιώτης (idiṓtēs) (private person, layman, person lacking skill or expertise; an ignoramus (as opposed to a writer, soldier or skilled workman), the construct being idiō- (a lengthened variant of idio-, perhaps by analogy with stratiōtēs (professional soldier) derived from stratiá (army)) + -tēs (the agent noun suffix).  The Ancient Greek ἴδιος (ídios) meant " one's own, pertaining to oneself, private" and was a doublet of idiota.  Dialectical variations in English and Irish included eejit, idjit & idget.  The plural is idiots.  English offers a rich array of alternatives to idiot: fool, moron, nitwit, twit, blockhead, bonehead, cretin, dimwit, dork, dumbbell, dunce, ignoramus, imbecile, muttonhead, nincompoop, ninny, pinhead, simpleton, clodpoll, jerk, half-wit; dolt, dunce & numskull.

Use of the word "idiot" in headlines can hurt feelings.

The original meaning was “a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" but this in Middle English later in the fourteenth century extended to "a simple man, uneducated person, layman".  A meaning shift had also happened in Latin, the classical form meaning “an ordinary person, layman; outsider" whereas in the Late Latin it conveyed the sense of "an uneducated or ignorant person".  This mirrored what happened with the Greek idiotes which meant literally "a private person" (ie a layman, someone uninvolved in public affairs) but came to be applied patronizingly to suggest someone "ignorant and uneducated".  In plural, the Greek word could mean "one's own countrymen."  In medieval English common law, the formalized distinction was between an idiot (one who has been without reasoning or understanding from birth) and a lunatic (who became that way later in life), and the difference could be important in determining the responsibility and punishment for crimes committed.  The idiot savant first appeared in medical literature in 1870; idiot box was first used to describe television in 1959 and, given that broadcasting had begun in the 1930s, it’s surprising it took that long to work that out; idiot light to describe the dashboard warning lights in cars is attested from 1961, a reference to drivers so lacking in mechanical sympathy not to notice indications of problems or bother to scan gauges.

The adjective idiotic was from 1713, following the Classical Latin idioticus and the Ancient Greek idiotikos; idiotical is from 1640s; the noun idiocy (state of being an idiot) is from the 1520s, from idiot on the model of prophecy etc and the early alternatives included idiotacy (1580s), idiotry (1590s).  Until well into the twentieth century, blithering was one of the more popular adjectives applied to idiot, the form dating from 1880, the present-participle adjective from the verb blither (to talk nonsense).  A handy adaptation of idiot was the in-joke among IT staff who sometimes classify problems reported by users as ID10T errors.

Comrade Lenin agitprop.

The term useful idiot is from political science and so associated with Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924; first leader of Soviet Russia 1917-1922 & USSR 1922-1924) that it's attributed to him but there's no evidence he ever spoke or wrote the words.  It became popular during the Cold War to describe pro-communist intellectuals and apologists in the West, the (probably retrospective) association with Lenin probably because had the useful idiots actually assisted achieving a communist revolution there, their usefulness outlived, he'd likely have had at least some of them shot as "trouble-makers".  Although it took many Western intellectuals decades to recant (some never quite managed) their support for the Soviet Union, the watershed was probably Comrade Khrushchev's (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964)  so called "Secret Speech" (On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences) to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956 in which he provided a detailed critique of the rule of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), especially the bloody purges of the late 1930s.  Some had however already refused to deny what had become obvious to all but avid denialists, The God that Failed a collection of six essays published in 1949 by poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995) et al in which the writers lay bare their sense of betrayal and disillusionment with communism because of the totalitarian state built by Stalin which was in so many ways just another form of fascism. 

Idiot, Imbecile & Moron

Idiot, imbecile, and moron were in the early twentieth century used in a psychological classification system, each one assigned to a specific range of abilities.

Idiots: Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years.

Imbeciles: Those whose development is higher than that of an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of about seven years.

Morons: Those whose mental development is above that of an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.

Of these three words moron is the newest, created only in the early twentieth century, coined specifically for the purpose of medical diagnosis.  Moron is from the Ancient Greek mōros (foolish, stupid), the root shared with the rare morosoph (a learned fool).  Imbecile dates from the sixteenth century, an adjective meaning "weak, feeble", from the Classical Latin imbecillus (weak, weak-minded) and not until the early nineteenth century did it begin to be used as a noun.  Moran actually replaced “feeble-minded” and “simpleton” (introduced in 1846) but neither were ever standardised in the medical lexicon.  The clinical use is now obsolete but the generalized use of all three is well established as terms of opprobrium for someone who acts in some dopey way or says something stupid, but, the convention is now they can only be applied to someone not cognitively impaired, an inversion of their original purpose when part of the system of classification.

In the early 1900s, as the profession of psychiatry became more accepted within medicine, the system of classification became increasingly scientific: Idiots were those with IQs between 0–25, imbeciles between 26-50 and morons between 51–70.  The interest in the then fashionable field of eugenics saw further refinements with a teleological flavor: the concepts "moral insanity", "moral idiocy"," and "moral imbecility" used by the emerging field of eugenic criminology, which held crime could be reduced by preventing "feeble-minded" people from reproducing and the US Supreme Court used the terminology in the judgment of forced-sterilization case Buck v Bell (274 U.S. 200 (1927)). 

The later introduction of retard, retarded & retardation was a genuine attempt to de-stigmatize those once labeled idiots, imbeciles & morons.  The process was the same as the invented word moron replacing “simpleton” and “feeble-minded” (from the Latin flebilis (to be lamented).  Retarded was from the Latin retardare (to make slow, delay, keep back, or hinder) and was first used in relation to developmental delay in 1895 and was introduced as an alternative to idiot, moron, and imbecile because at the time it wasn’t derogatory, being a familiar technical term from engineering and mathematics but the associative connection meant that by the 1960s, it had become an insult.  As "retarded" and the related clinical terms from psychiatry appeared on the euphemism treadmill they gradually assumed their derogatory connotations.  It seems to be an organic process in language, an original term, neutral in meaning, enters public use and because of the thing with which it’s associated, becomes pejorative, the process noted also with words which become racial slurs.  It’s a very particular process: “Chinaman” thought pejorative while “Englishman” is not; “Aussie” a term of endearment whereas as “Paki” is a slur although that too is circumstantial, commercial television station Channel 9 (Australia) using “The Pakis” in their promotional material for the coverage of the 1983-1984 cricket season.  It wouldn’t now be used.

So, as sympathy emerged for various sensitivities, the search for connotatively neutral replacements settled on variations of “intellectual disability”, the new sub-categories being profound, severe, and moderate levels.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1968 published (in an out-of-sequence amendment to the ICD-8 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) a classification of intellectual disability (ID), based on what they called “relative degrees of cognitive functioning”:

Profound ID:          IQ below 20-25

Severe ID:             IQ 20-25 to 35-40

Moderate ID:         IQ 35-40 to 50-55

Mild ID:                 IQ 50-55 to 70

The alignment with the old system was idiot=profound, imbecile=moderate/severe and moron or feeble minded=mild but, by the time the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) and ICD-10 were published in 1994, the profession was moving away from the use of raw IQ scores to something more nuanced, the DSM noting the importance of assessing “dysfunction or impairment” in at least two areas including “communication, self-care, home living, social/interpersonal skills, use of community resources, self direction, functional academic skills, work, leisure & health and safety”.  The ICD noted “mental retardation is a condition of arrested or incomplete development of the mind, which is especially characterized by impairment of skills manifested during the developmental period, contributing to the overall level of intelligence- cognitive, language, motor and social abilities”.  However, the IQ baselines remained and the DSM-5 refined the model further, noting an intellectual disability should be defined by:

(1) Current intellectual deficits of two or more standard deviations below the population mean, which generally translates into performance in the lowest 3% of a person’s age and cultural group, or an IQ of 70 or below.

(2) Concurrent deficits in at least two domains of adaptive functioning of at least two or more standard deviations, which generally translates into performance in the lowest 3 % of a person’s age and cultural group, or standard scores of 70 or below.

Both assessments need to be measured with an individualized, standardized, culturally appropriate, psychometrically sound measure and needed to assess (1) conceptual skills (communication, language, time, money & academic), (2) social skills (interpersonal skills, social responsibility, recreation & friendships) and (3) practical skills (daily living skills, work & travel).  US legislation in 2010 required the terms "mental retardation" and" mentally retarded" be removed from federal records and replaced with "intellectual disability" and "individual with an intellectual disability", a change reflected in the DSM-5 (2013).

Mandarin

Mandarin (pronounced man-duh-rin)

(1) In Imperial China, a member of any of the nine ranks of public officials, each distinguished by a particular kind of button worn on the cap.

(2) By extension, an influential or senior government official or bureaucrat.

(3) In informal (derogatory) use, a pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.

(4) By extension, a member of an elite or powerful group or class, as in intellectual or cultural milieus (usually but not necessarily paid officials of institutions and it tends to be derogatory).  The word is sometimes applied to any authority thought deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow or obscurantist.

(5) As “Standard Mandarin”, an official language of China and Taiwan, and one of four official languages in Singapore; Putonghua, Guoyu or Huayu (initial capital letter).

(6) A northern Chinese dialect, especially as spoken in and around Beijing (initial capital letter).

(7) A small, spiny citrus tree, Citrus reticulata, native to China, bearing lance-shaped leaves and flattish, orange-yellow to deep-orange loose-skinned fruit, some varieties of which are called tangerines; a small citrus tree (Citrus nobilis), cultivated for its edible fruit; the fruit of such tree, resembling small tangerines.

(8) In botany, any of several plants belonging to the genus Disporum or Streptopus, of the lily family, as S. roseus (rose mandarin) or D. lanuginosum (yellow mandarin), having drooping flowers and red berries.

(9) Of or relating to a mandarin or mandarins.

(10) In ornithology, an ellipsis of mandarin duck (Aix galericulata).

(11) Elegantly refined, as in dress, language or taste.

(12) A color in the orange spectrum.

(13) In ichthyology, as mandarin fish, the term applied to a number of brightly-colored species.

1580–1590: From the Portuguese mandarim & mandarij (or the older Dutch mandorijn), an alteration (by association with mandar (to order) of the Austronesian Malay menteri & manteri, from the Hindi mantrī and the Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin) (minister, councillor), from मन्त्र (mantra), (counsel, maxim, mantra) +‎ -इन् (-in) (an agent suffix).  In Chinese folk etymology, the word originates from Mandarin 滿大人／满大人 (Mǎndàrén (literally “Manchu (important man”)).  Mantra was ultimately from the primitive Indo-European root men- (to think) and the evolution of mandarin (in the sense of Chinese civil administration) was influenced in Portuguese by (mandar) (to command, order).  It was used generically of the several grades of Chinese officials who had entered the civil service (usually by way of the competitive exam); the Chinese equivalent was kwan (public servant) and by the early twentieth century it came to be used of “an important person” though often in a resentful manner rather than the sense of “a celebrity”.  The use to describe the small fruit was first noted in 1771 and was from the French mandarine, feminine of mandarin, based on the association with the color often used for the robes worn by mandarins in the Chinese civil service.  Mandarin, mandarinship, mandarinism & mandarinate are nouns, mandarinal is an adjective; the noun plural is manderins.

Lindsay Lohan in mandarin collar The Parent Trap (1998).  It wouldn't now be done because of fears of being cancelled for cultural appropriation.

In fashion, the mandarin collar (a short unfolded stand-up collar on a shirt or jacket) was a style adopted by Western fashion houses and said to be reminiscent of (though sometimes with exaggerated dimensions) the style depicted in the clothing of mandarins in Imperial China. The mandarin gown (technically a cheongsam which was actually from the Cantonese 長衫／长衫 (coeng saam) (long robe) was (1) a tight-fitting and usually brightly colored and elaborately patterned formal woman's dress, split at the thigh (known also as a qipao) & (2) a plain colored, tight-fitting dress with a short split at the thigh, worn as a school uniform by schoolgirls in Hong Kong.  Some dictionaries and food guides include “Mandarin cuisine” as a descriptor of the food associated with the area around Beijing but there’s little evidence of use and the main distinction in the West seems to be between Beijing cuisine and Cantonese cuisine from the south.  However, “Mandarin” is a most popular element in the names of Chinese restaurants in the West.

Lindsay Lohan mixing a Red Bull & mandarin juice while attending an event with former special friend Samantha Ronson, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, London, February 2012.

The use to describe the standard language of the nation was a calque of the Chinese 官話／官话 (Guānhuà) (spoken language of the mandarins), as an extension from mandarin (bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire) to the language used by the imperial court and sometimes by imperial officials elsewhere; from this, it was in the twentieth century adopted as a synonym for “Modern Standard Chinese” although academics and translators note the ambiguity which developed after the use was extended in the early seventeenth century to a number of northern dialects of Chinese to the extent they consider Manderin a branch of the Chinese languages and consisting of many dialects; Guanhua or Beifanghua.  Standard Mandarin (the language of the elites, media and education) and Mandarin Chinese (the group of Northern Chinese dialects together with Standard Mandarin) are not wholly interchangeable and within China are described differently.

Mandarin duck.

There are some forks of Mandarin Chinese which, but for a few words and phrases, are unintelligible to speakers of Standard Mandarin and the whole set of Mandarin languages are parts of the broader group of languages and dialects (or topolects) spoken.  The evolution of Mandarin to become both the imperial lingua franca and the official “court language” of the Ming and Qing dynasties was in part a pragmatic solution to the mutual unintelligibility of the varieties of spoken Chinese which had emerged over centuries.  It became prevalent during the late Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (1636-1912) eras and, because of the centralization of Imperial administration, the particular court dialect spoken in Beijing became dominant by the mid-nineteenth century and substantially formed what was by the time of the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, it was “Standard Chinese”.

Lament

Lament (pronounced luh-ment)

(1) To feel or express sorrow or regret for.

(2) To mourn for or over.

(3) An expression of grief or sorrow.

(4) A formal expression of sorrow or mourning, especially in verse or song; an elegy or dirge.

1520-1530: Ultimately, the noun was from the Latin lāmentum (plaint) and the verb from the Latin lāmentārī (to wail, moan, weep, lament), a derivative of lāmentum (a wailing, moaning, weeping).  In English, lament was a backformation from lamentation or else from the fourteenth century Middle French lamenter (to moan, to bewail" or directly from the Latin lāmentārī (from lāmentum).  The other formation in Latin was lāmentor (I wail, I weep”), from lāmenta (wailings, laments, moanings), the construct being la- (thought likely imitative) + the formative –mentum in the sense of “to project”.  

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

The adjective lamented in the sense of "mourned for" is from 1610 and the use as a form of mourning or lyric poetry dates from the 1690s.  Given the nature of man, the adjective unlamented, attested since the 1590s, is often used.  Lament & lamenting are nouns & verbs, lamentations & lamenter are nouns, lamentable and (the unpleasingly rare) lamentful are adjectives, lamentingly is an adverb and lamented is a verb & adjective; the common forms of the noun plural are is laments & lamentations.

Destruction of Temple of Jerusalem (1867) by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882).

The Old Testament’s Book of Lamentations (from אֵיכָה‎, (‘Êykhôh) (how) in the Hebrew), written probably during the sixth century BC, commemorates in five poems the destruction in 586-587 BC of Jerusalem by the neo-Babylonians.  By this time, the language of lament already enjoyed a rich tradition in the writings of the Israelite religion, borrowing from a genre known in ancient Mesopotamian practices and continuing to late biblical times.  Lamentations is a bleak work which documents undeserved suffering and focuses on the dead and those who mourn their loss.  It seems clear that for those forsaken by God, hopes of redemption are scant although, despite it all, it’s clear that even if God has tired of Israel, the Israelites must keep the faith and hope one day for His grace.  There’s an exploration too of guilt, the Book of Lamentations drawing from ancient texts the teaching that the destruction of the holy city was God’s retribution for the sin and wickedness of the inhabitants.

The biblical message thus is: (1) There are consequences for sin and if repentance is refused even if offered time and again, God will deliver the appropriate judgment.  (2) Lamentation is the way to express grief and one good for the soul for in life there must be sadness. (3) Beyond despair there is always hope.  Although the people of Judah had defied God, committed idolatry, been adulterous and performed abominations and thereby deserved their just punishment, even in his judgment, God offers hope with the dawning of each new day.

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855).

Some anthologies include Charlotte Brontë’s poem Life (1846) among the laments but that may be the lingering effect of Elizabeth Gaskell's (1810–1865) 1857 biography, a very Victorian work which managed to portray the author of the deliciously depraved Jane Eyre (1847) as the doomed, saint-like victim of the circumstances which crushed her and the consumption which stalked her.  Gaskell’s crafted miserabilia of course created a legend of its own, a kind of death cult for those for whom victimhood isn’t quite enough so she’s long been on the emo reading list.  She deserves better.  Life is a poem which notes why one might lament the vicissitudes of existence but doesn’t long dwell on it and one suspects Charlotte Brontë found life on Earth enchanting.  As one might gather from Jane Eyre, she thought it better to better to lust for life than long lament losses.

Life (1846) by Charlotte Brontë

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly!

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway?

Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!

Dual & Duel

Duel Pronounced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) A prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure, especially to settle a private quarrel.

(2) Any contest between two persons or entities.

1585–1595: From the earlier English form duell (a single combat (also "a judicial single combat”), from the late thirteenth century Medieval Latin duellum (combat between two persons), a poetical variant of the old Latin form of bellum (war) (related to bellicose), probably maintained and given the sense “duel” by folk etymology with the Latin duo (two).  The Old Latin word was retained in poetic and archaic language, the fancied Medieval connection with duo organically creating the linguistic semi-coincidence.  In pre-Modern English, the Italian form duello was also used.  By the 1610s, the English word had taken on the specialized sense of "premeditated and pre-arranged single combat involving deadly weapons in the presence of at least two witnesses", the general sense of "any contest between two parties" dating from the 1590s.  The related verbs are duels, dueling & dueled , dueler & duelist are nouns and duelistic an adjective.  The US spelling favors the double “l”.

A cased pair of engraved, gold & silver-accented Durs Egg flintlock dueling pistols.  The case contains a three-way combination flask, rod, mallet head, worm, oiler, and “46” marked ball mold.

Dating from the early nineteenth century, this brace of duelling pistols was from the London shop of Durs Egg (1748-1831) and features an uncommon 90^o grip angle, similar to that used on the heavier “saw-handle” pistols.  The smooth-bore Damascus barrels features gold blade front sights, case-hardened breech plugs with dovetailed notch rear sights, platinum vent liners & dual gold bands.  This pair belong to the class of dueling pistols known as “detented” which were once damned by the dueling class as “unfair weapons which no gentleman would hold” but, such were the advantages, by the late flintlock era the design was close to universal.  The “detent” refers to the mechanism in a flintlock (or later, percussion cap) pistol built into the lock or trigger system and its purpose was to ensure a smoother, more controlled trigger pull, something obviously critical in duelling where a fraction of an inch or second might have been the difference between life & death.  The detent was a small, spring-loaded catch or resistance point in the trigger system which provided a subtle “stop” (ie a resistance point) before the trigger fully releases the hammer, affording a duelist greater control and awareness of exactly when the gun would discharge, minimizing accidental firings or flinching.  In formal duels, both participants had to fire under controlled, fair circumstances so the classic arrangement was for a matched pair of duel pistols to be provided by the man who had issued the challenge with the choice of weapon granted to the respondent.

In the West, although very much a clandestine activity, the classic duel did survive into the twentieth century, mostly in aristocratic and military circles.  One institution which did attempt a codified revival was Nazi-era (1922-1945) SS.  The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 900,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The head of the SS was Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) and while rightly infamous for his many crimes, he’s of interest also for his weirdnesses.  One idea he introduced was the duel as a way of settling “matters of honor” (ie squabbles over this & that) between SS members and twisted though the conception may have been, “honor” was in the SS a core tenet, the organization's motto being Meine Ehre Heisst Treue (My Honor Is Loyalty).  As things turned out, Himmler didn’t quite live up to that ethos but by 1945 maybe he regarded loyalty as something like what John Howard (b 1939; prime minister of Australia 1996-2007) would have called a “non-core promise”.  A few SS duels were fought before Hitler, who regarded the practice as archaic and inefficient, ordered it stopped although the Führer did though see a place for the duel.  Calling priests “those black crows” and believing all Germans must learn it was "shameful to be a lawyer", ruefully he observed he’d be quite content to see duelling added to the rituals of both professions.

Hitler was of the school which believed the world would become a fine place "when the last lawyer was strangled with the guts of the last priest" (one of the variants of the phrase attributed to the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784): "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.").  Diderot picked up his notion from Mémoire contre la religion (Memoir against religion, a work of over 600 pages written circa 1729 but uncovered only posthumously) which was the final testament of French Catholic priest Jean Meslier (1664–1729) who, it transpired, secretly was an atheist, an intellectual position believed to be held by a number of rationalist cardinals in the Roman curia although, being obviously a sensitive issue in a place like the Vatican, it'd be a challenge to do the research and get the numbers.  Meslier wrote: “Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre; Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois” (And his hands would weave the priest's entrails; For lack of a rope, to strangle kings), the most appealing fragment in that vein being: “Je souhaiterais que tous les grands de la terre et tous les nobles fussent pendus et étranglés avec les boyaux des prêtres” (I wish that all the great ones of the earth and all the nobles would be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests).  Plenty of academics and revolutionaries have needed many more words (sometimes several volumes) to say much the same thing.  What the SS was allowed to retain was the “honourable” option of suicide for members in disgrace (ie found to be a bit of a homosexual), something of which George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) would have approved.  Gay SS members who declined the generous offer were sent to a concentration camp where routinely they were processed with the traditional EWEF (Erschossen während eines Fluchtversuchs (shot while attempting to escape)) method.

In bizarre circumstances, Himmler almost was given the opportunity to prove his prowess as a duelist.  In 1938, knowing Hitler was unimpressed by the attitude of both Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946; minister of war 1933-1938) and Generaloberst (colonel-general, equivalent to general (four-star) in UK & US use) Werner von Fritsch (1880–1939; commander-in-chief of the German Army 1934-1938) towards his foreign policy and plans for war, in a series of internal machinations, Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) and Himmler engineered the removal of from the army of both.  Göring coveted the war ministry and Himmler was seeking to weaken the army in order to strengthen the role of his SS.  Blomberg mistake was to marry an attractive young woman with some history of prostitution (appalling Hitler whose lower-middle class views on morality never left him) while Fritsch was accused of being a homosexual on the basis of evidence which Himmler knew to be a concoction.  Prior to the marriage, Göring had been told of the bride’s past but, with Hitler, happily attended the wedding as a witness, knowing he had the tool with which to procure Blomberg’s demise while Fritsch was cleared by a military court of honor, the evidence so obviously fake the verdict quickly was delivered, delayed only by an adjournment necessitated by the German invasion of Poland which triggered World War II (1939-1945).

However, the accusation was enough to end his career and although rehabilitated, he wasn’t restored to office but, following the old Prussian code, Fritsch challenged Himmler to a duel with pistols.  Realizing a duel would make the unfortunate situation even worse for the army, the general to whom Fritsch gave the letter containing the challenge choose not to deliver it to Himmler so one of history’s more potentially significant duels was never fought.  Most analysts have assumed the result would not have been in doubt, Fritsch a fine shot and Himmler more used to pen & paper.  When, in January, 1945 Himmler’s ineptitude as a military commander was exposed by his brief command of an army group, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), with typical acerbity, noted in his diary: “The Reichsführer may be a fusspot but he’s no warlord.”  The greatest loss to history in the duel never being fought was that Goebbels never had the opportunity to leave a tart comment about Fritsch’s service to the world in ridding it of Himmler.  As a footnote, there has always been speculation that Fritsch may have been a bit of a homosexual, based both on his bachelorhood and Blomberg telling Hitler Fritsch “…was not a lady’s man”.  There is however no evidence to support this and the general’s correspondence reveals only a deep misogyny, felt apparently towards to whole species except his mother, something he had in common with the Führer although Hitler’s attitude was more a dismissive uninterest than hatred.

Dual (pronunced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) Of, relating to, or denoting two.

(2) Composed or consisting of two people, items, parts, etc., together; twofold; double; having a twofold, or double, character or nature.

(3) In the formal grammar of Old English, Old Russian, Arabic and Ancient Greek, denoting a form of a word indicating that exactly two referents are being referred to (a form in the dual, as the Old English git (you two), as opposed to ge (you) referring to three or more.

(4) In mathematics and formal s logic (of structures or expressions) having the property that the interchange of certain pairs of terms, and usually the distribution of negation, yields equivalent structures or expressions

1535–1545: From the Latin duālis (containing two, relating to a pair), the construct being du(o) (two) + -ālis (-al) The Latin duo was from the primitive Indo-European root dwo (two).  The General sense of "relating to two, expressing two, composed or consisting of two parts" is from 1650s.  The general sense of "division into two" has been in use since 1831.  The noun duality (two-fold nature, state of being two or divided in two) is a late fourteenth century form from the Late Latin dualitas.  The noun dualism dates from 1755 as a term in philosophy, the sense being "a way of thinking which explains phenomena by the assumption of two independent and absolute elements," from the French dualisme (1754).  The theological adoption to describe the doctrine of “two independent divine beings or eternal principles” was first noted in 1847.  Duel & dueling are nouns & verbs, dueler & duelist are nouns, dueled is a verb and dually is an adverb; the noun plural is duels (duelers & duelists now rare expet in historic contexts).  The adverb duely is an obsolete spelling of duly. 

Apparently, at the premiere of Disney’s The Parent Trap (1998), then CEO Michael Eisner (b 1942; chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company, 1984-2005), believing the central parts in the film had been played by identical twins asked her “Where's your twin?”.  She told him she didn’t have one and that she should have been paid double.

Dualism in Philosophy

In Metaphysics, dualism holds there are two kinds of reality: the physical world (material) and the spiritual world (immaterial).  In the philosophy of mind, Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate and that mental processes and phenomena are, at least in some respects, non-physical.  Both positions are radically different from even nuanced flavors of monism (which, at its most pure, maintains there is but the universe and that any form of division of the whole is artificial and arbitrary) and pluralism suggests there are many kinds of substance and not just dualism’s two.  In the pre-enlightenment age, dualism had some appeal but it’s now of only historic interest except as a device to train the mind to explore speculative paths.

Dualism in Carburetion

1967 Shelby C7zx dual quad-aluminum intake manifold for Ford 427 FE.

From the late 1950s, Detroit’s V8s, with a sudden and increasing rapidity, grew bigger and more thirsty, the most rapacious of the engines out-pacing the capacity of the carburetors brought from outside suppliers, with the result the only solution was to use two or even three carburettors.  The manufacturer did eventually produce units with sufficient throughput but it took a while for supply to meet demand.  For street use, triple induction was for some time quite a good solution because the three-in-a-row layout lent itself to a good compromise, the engine most of the time being fed only by the central two-barrel carburetor, the outer two used only when the throttle was pushed wide open.  It meant engines with great available power were actually surprisingly economical most of the time although the delicate business of tuning could be a challenge, especially in conditions where there were notable variations in temperature or humidity.  For the high performance engines however, the best cost-performance equation (ignoring the fuel consumption which was the customer's problem) was dual induction, two four barrel carburettors, mounted either in-line or side-by side, the air-flow dynamics of the latter delivering the optimal top-end-power.

Short & Long-Ram Sonoramic dual quad intake manifolds.  The difference was that the short versions had 15 inch (380 mm) tuned intake runners while the long rams had their entire 30 inch (760 mm) length tuned.  

Most dramatic in appearance of all the dual quad setups were the Sonoramics, offered by Chrysler on a handful of models between 1959-1963.  Sonoramic was a linguistic novelty but the engineering principles of tuned resonance in thermal dynamics had been known for decades, the trick being to create a shape which essentially caused the fuel-air mixture to “bounce around”, emulating a low-boost “ram-air” effect.  There were two different versions which looked externally similar but differed internally, the rare so-called “short-ram” tuned for top-end power, the “long-ram” for the mid-range torque which was ideal for street use because the additional performance was delivered in the speed-ranges at which highway passing manoeuvres typically were undertaken.

Jaguar E-Type 4.2 with triple SUs (top) & with dual Strombergs (bottom).

From its introduction, the Jaguar E-Type (1961-1974 and in the US known also as XK-E or XKE) used triple SU HD.8 carburetors but in 1967, to conform to US emission control rules, models built for the North American market were switched to dual Zenith Stromberg 175 CD2SEs.  Unlike some manufacturers which applied the such changes globally, Jaguar maintain the triple assembly for sale in place with less rigorous rules which, at the time, was the rest of the world.  Ominously, power and torque dropped a bit, especially higher in the rev range, a prelude to the malaise which would affect so many in the 1970s.  The dual Zenith Stromberg were one element in a series of changes phased-in during 1967 and culminated in all of them appearing in the re-designated Series 2 (S2) E-Type, released as a 1968 model.  Again necessitated by US legislation, the most obvious modifications were (1) the carburetors, (2) the slight truncation of the cigar-shaped tail & the substitution of the elegant tail-lamps with rather more agricultural-looking units, (3) the use of safer, softer rocker switches on the dash instead of the stylish but sharp toggle switches and (4) the deletion of the lovely, fared-in head-lamp covers, the slightly elevated  replacements lending the car a not exactly bug-eyed look, but combined with the gaping "mouth", perhaps something which recalled a wide-eyed catfish scanning the waters.  There were a host of other changes, most of which made the Series II a better car but it was just a bit slower and didn't look as good.  The unofficial (but helpful and semi-codified) designation used to refer to the two distinct phases of the transitional Series 1 (S1) cars was 1.25 & 1.5, now an accepted part of the E-Type lexicon.

The lovely, pure lines of the S1 Jaguar E-Type (1961-1967, left).  It's not certain Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) really did say it was "the most beautiful car ever made" but he never denied it and was a fair judge of such things.  Visually, the S2 cars (1968-1971, right) were a little more cluttered although they were available with air-conditioning, something which for most owners was more important than the superior throttle response above 100 mph (160 km/h) delivered by the triple SUs.