Guy

Guy (pronounced gahy)

(1) In informal use, historically, a man or boy; a fellow.

(2) In modern informal use, in the plural, people (especially if younger), regardless of their sex (although if the group referenced is mixed, it can be used exclusively of males (ie a term such as “guys & girls”).

(3) In historic UK Slang, a grotesquely dressed person; ) A person of eccentric appearance or dress.

(4) A grotesque, deliberately crude effigy of Guy Fawkes, made usually of old clothes stuffed with straw or rags, paraded through the streets and that is burnt on top of a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day (5 November; the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot); now mostly UK use and often with an initial capita).

(5) A male given name, from a Germanic word meaning “woods” and used mostly in France or Francophone countries (in the French pronounced gahy); the use as a surname began as a patronymic.

(6) A rope, cable, or appliance used to guide and steady an object (widely used in nautical matters but also of radio transmission masts etc) being hoisted or lowered, or to secure anything likely to shift its position.  It’s often use as “guy wire”, “guy rope” etc.

(7) A guide; a leader or conductor (obsolete).

(8) To guide, steady, or anchor with a guy wire (or rope, cable etc) or guys.

(9) To jeer at or make fun of; to ridicule with wit or innuendo.

(10) In live theatre, to play in a comedic manner.

(11) As “give the guy to” a mostly UK slang form meaning “to escape from (someone): or “give (someone) the slip”.

(12) In international standards (ISO 3166-1) as the translingual GUY, the alpha-3 country code for Guyana. (GY the alpha-2).

1300–1350: From the Middle English gye, from the Old French guie (a guide (also “a crane, derrick”)), from guier (to guide), from a Germanic source (probably Low German or the Frankish witan (show the way), ultimately from the Proto-Germanic wītaną (know) or witanan (to look after, guard, ascribe to, reproach) and the source also of the German weisen (to show, point out), the Old English witan (to reproach) & wite (fine, penalty) and the Dutch gei brail & geiblok (pulley), from the primitive Indo-European root weid (to see) (although some etymologists maintain it’s not impossible it was from a related word in the North Sea Germanic.  The use to describe a “small rope, chain or wire” emerged in the 1620s in nautical use, replacing the mid-fourteenth century “leader”, from the Old French guie "a guide," also "a crane, derrick," from guier, from Frankish witan "show the way" or a similar Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic witanan "to look after, guard, ascribe to, reproach" (the source also of German weisen (to show, point out), the Old English witan (to reproach) & wite (fine, penalty).  Guy is a noun, proper noun & verb, guyed & guying are verbs; the noun plural is guys (the historic guies has long been listed as non-standard).

Promotional poster for an amateur production of Guys & Dolls (1950), West Genesee High School (Camillus, New York).

The uses referencing Guy Fawkes emerged in the first years of the nineteenth century (most sources cite 1806 or 1806).  The male given name Guy (cognate with the Italian Guido) was from the Old French Gui, a form of the Proto-Germanic Wido, a short form of names beginning with the element witu (wood), from the Proto-Germanic widuz (such as Witold & Widukind).  Guy is used mostly in France or Francophone countries (in the French pronounced gahy) and the use as a surname began as a patronymic.  Guy Fawkes (1570–1606) was an English Roman Catholic who maintained his allegiance to the pope.  He was hanged, drawn and quartered for his role in the Gunpowder Plot (5 November 1605), the more romantic (if misleading) label for which was “the Jesuit Treason” which was an act of attempted regicide against King James VI and I (1566–1625) and King of Scotland as James VI (1567-1625) & King of England and Ireland as James I (1603-1625).  The domestic terrorists (as they would now be called) considered their actions attempted tyrannicide, their object being regime change in England to end the decades of religious discrimination and persecution.  Experts long ago concluded that had the plot been brought to fruition, the 36 barrels of gunpowder placed directly under the debating chamber of the House of Lords would have been more than enough to destroy the building.  In England, the burning of bonfires on the anniversary became a tradition almost immediately after the plot was foiled but it wasn’t until the early nineteenth century it became the practice to burn Guy Fawkes in effigy, the figure constructed usually in a deliberately crude manner using rags and old clothes, stuffed with combustible dry straw.  The tradition became established in many parts of the British Empire but as fireworks became increasingly powerful ordnance, local authorities restricted their sale (for example most Australian jurisdictions have banned the once popular "cracker night") thereby saving many eyes and fingers of children) and beyond the UK, Guy Fawkes day persists only in parts of New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. 

The use of “guy" to describe “a grotesquely or poorly dressed man” began in England in the mid 1830s and came into use in the US about a decade later although there it seems either immediately or within a short time to mean “a man”, rather as “fellow” or “chap” might be used.  GK Chesterton (1874–1936) noted for English audiences that in the US to be called “a regular guy” was “the most graceful of compliments” although that meaning has by now shifted to mean “someone average; unexceptional”.  In mixed company, guys are male while women variously (depending on the region, social class etc) are girls, chicks etc but sometimes, in the plural, guys may not be completely gender-neutral but may refer to people of any gender in certain circumstances and forms (such as “hey guys”).  Indeed, so adaptable is the word that a group of guys may be wholly female.  Nor is guy always the preferred form for men, young generations often preferring “dude” and the companion feminine coining “dudette” is occasionally heard though unusually only when dude is used in the same context.  When used of animals, guy usually refers to either a male or one whose gender is not known; it is rarely if ever used of an animal that is known to be female (the matching term for a female being “gal”) and it’s often used as “little guy”, “big guy” etc.  The form in which the use of guy most annoys the pedants seems to be as “youse guys” which really seems to offend although, under the conventions of English plural constructions, “youse” should be correct.

Lindsay Lohan provides an authoritative ruling of meaning in context: When in a relationship, a “guy” is a man whereas her former special friend Samantha Ronson was not; she was a girl.

In idiomatic use, guy often appears including “… as the next guy” (indicating that one holds typical or mainstream views), “cable guy” (the technician who connects cable TV services to the home (or one who deals with cables in some way though probably not a professional who would usually be called a “cabler”)), “cis-guy” (a male (though this can’t be guaranteed in contemporary use because women may use the form) who uses the gender assigned at birth (ie conventional biological sex) and thus distinct from “trans guy”), one on use, “fall guy” (one who takes the blame for something). “family guy” (a conventional husband & father), “go to guy” (one who by virtue of knowledge, skills etc is the first sought for an opinion etc), “guy friend” (a nuanced term which varies in exactitude but always means some sort of platonic relationship), “nice guys finish last” (in life one needs to be ruthless to succeed), “you should see the other guy” (indicating the injuries one has suffered in a fight are minor compared with those inflicted on the opponent), “wise guy” (not exactly an ironic use but closer to “a smart-ass”).  General value modifiers are appended as needed including “good guy”, “bad guy”, “big guy” (which like “little guy” is often figurative), “nice guy”, “tough guy” etc.  Guy is handy because it’s pretty much neutral and can in most cases be used instead of buster, fella, man, bud, dude, fellow, bro, bloke, chap.  For women it can substitute for girl, woman or the many archaic forms (gal, broad, dame, jane, bird, sheila & chick).  Strangely, in colloquial use, it’s come to be widely used of things and the use is common in IT, among mechanics and others working with distinct bits & pieces.  While not overt, there is something of the anthropomorphic about this because as mechanics and IT techs know, one can have a dozen identical part-numbers which truly are functionally indistinguishable under any objective examination yet in use one or two might exhibit characteristics which will be described in terms used usually of personalities such as "troublesome", "inconsistent" or "un-cooperative".  Some guys are like that.   

Pale

Pale (pronounced peyl)

(1) Light-colored or lacking in color.

(2) Someone lacking their usual intensity of color due to fear, illness, stress etc.

(3) Not bright or brilliant; dim.

(4) Faint or feeble; lacking vigor (mostly archaic).

(5) To seem less important, significant, remarkable etc, especially when compared with something or someone else.

(6) A stake or picket, as of a fence.

(7) An enclosing or confining barrier; enclosure; a district or region within designated bounds; to encircle or encompass.

(8) Limits; bounds (now rare except if used figuratively in the phrase “beyond the pale”).

(9) In heraldry, an ordinary (band) in the form of a broad vertical stripe at the centre of an escutcheon.

(10) In shipbuilding, a shore used inside to support the deck beams of a hull under construction.

(11) In some of the dialectical English spoken in southern Africa, a euphemism for white.

1375-1400: From the Middle French Palle, from the twelfth century Old French paile & paleir (pale, light-colored (pâle in the Modern French)), from the Latin pallidus (pale, pallid, wan, colorless), from pallēre (be pale, grow pale) from the primitive Indo-European root pel- (pale) of which pallid is a doublet.  Pel was a significant root in many languages and productive, forming all or part of appall; falcon; fallow (in its adjectival sense), pallid, pallor, palomino, Peloponnesus, polio & poliomyelitis.  The linkages were many including the Sanskrit palitah (gray) & panduh (whitish, pale), the Greek pelios (livid, dark) & polios (gray (of hair, wolves, waves)), the Latin pallere (to be pale) & pallidus, the Old Church Slavonic plavu, the Lithuanian palvas (sallow), the Welsh llwyd (gray) and the Old English fealo & fealu (dull-colored, yellow, brown).  Pel also forms the root of words for "pigeon" in Greek (peleia), Latin (palumbes) and Old Prussian (poalis).

As an adjectival descriptor of color, it seems first, from the early fourteenth century to have been applied to human skin-tone and complexion to convey the sense of “whitish appearance, bloodless, pallid".  From the mid-fourteenth century it began to be used as a modifier to nuance the tones of colors in the sense of “lacking chromatic intensity, approaching white".  Late in the century, use was extended to non-human objects or substances (such as ales and other liquors) at which time it became also a frequent figurative form.  Paleface, is said to be a translation of a Native American word form noted in several dialects meaning "European"; attested from 1822 in American English, there are suggestions the tale may be apocryphal and a creation of the palefaces themselves.

The noun paling (stake, pole, stake for vines) was an early thirteenth century adoption of the circa 1200 Anglo Latin from the Old French pal and directly from the Latin palus (stake, prop, wooden post), source also of the Spanish and Italian palo, from the primitive Indo-European pakslo-, a suffixed form of the root pag- (to fasten) and a doublet of pole.  By the 1550s, the adjective form existed to refer to a fence made from palings, formed by connecting the pointed vertical stakes by horizontal rails above and below.

Romanian Vlad the Impaler postage stamp, 1976.

Paling is a word still used in fencing and impale is related.  In the 1520s, impale meant "to enclose with stakes, fence in", from the French empaler or directly from the Medieval Latin impalare (to push onto a stake).  The now better remembered sense "pierce with a pointed stake" (as torture or capital punishment) dates from circa 1610-1630.  In the popular imagination it’s associated especially with the Romanian Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III, circa 1430-circa 1477, thrice Voivode of Wallachia, 1448-Circa 1477).  One of his favorite methods of torture and execution (there’s often a bit of overlap in these matters) was said to be impalement but some of the more lurid tales of his cruelty may be from the imagination of the medieval mind though his rule is thought to have been severe.  Regardless, he remains a Romanian folk hero.

From the late fourteenth century paling came to refer to the constructed boundary as well as the components, understood generally to describe a "fence of pointed stakes", Paler as a surname meaning "fence-builder" being recorded from late twelfth century.  Another Middle English form of the word in the sense of "fence, paling, wall of an enclosure" sense, based on the plural, was the late fourteenth century pales or palis, the surname Paliser attested from early in the century.  Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) used the variant Palliser in his “parliamentary novels” (1864-1879) as the name for the repressed protagonist; Trollope took care with the selection of his character’s names.

Palisade (a fence of strong stakes), is attested from circa 1600 and was from the fifteenth century French palisade, from the Provençal palissada, from palissa (a stake or paling), from the Gallo-Roman palicea, from the Latin palus (stake) from the primitive Indo-European pakslo-.  The earlier Italian form was palisade, noted since the 1580s.  Palisades entered military jargon circa 1690 and described "close rows of strong pointed wooden stakes fixed in the ground as a defensive fortification", a use which remains a standard part of costal defenses against seaborn invasion.  The trap-rock precipices along the Hudson River opposite New York City were named The Palisades in 1823.  The word remains popular with property developers searching for a word with connotations of elevation and luxury.

Three images of a pale Lindsay Lohan.

In English, pale, pallid and wan imply an absence or faintness of color, especially when used to describe the human countenance.  Pale suggests a faintness or absence of color, which may be natural when applied to objects but when used to descript a human face usually means an unnatural and often temporary absence of color, as arising from sickness or sudden emotion.  Pallid, used almost exclusively to describe the human countenance, implies an excessive paleness induced by intense emotion, disease or death.  Wan implies a sickly paleness, usually as a consequence of illness.

The figurative sense of "limit, boundary, restriction" dates from circa 1400 and referenced the notion of "an enclosed space," hence "district or region within determined bounds" and later it meant "territory held by power of a nation or people".  The more modern idiomatic use, referring to the behavior of a person as “beyond the bounds of morality or social acceptability”, is not without critics but now so common it’s doubtless now the assumed meaning.  Using the phrase in the modern sense, in 2009, during one of their many squabbles, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson (b 1941) said of his Liverpool counterpart, Rafael Benitez (b 1960), "…he's beyond the pale”.  It’s said they’ve not since made up.

The English Pale in Medieval Ireland (1450).

Catherine the Great (Catherine II, 1729–1796; reigning empress of Russia 1762-1796) created the cherta (postaoyannoy yewreskoy) osedlosti (Pale of Settlement) in Russia in 1791. This was the name given to the western border region of the country (modern-day Belarus & Moldova and parts of the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia and western Russia) in which Jews were allowed to live, the motive being to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians.  In a process something like COVID-19 travel exemptions, some Jews were allowed, as a concession, to live “beyond the pale”.  Pales had been enforced in other European countries for similar political reasons.  During the late Medieval period, the Pale (An Pháil in the Irish), often described as the English Pale (An Pháil Shasanach or An Ghalltacht), was that part of Ireland administered directly the English government and the Pale of Calais was formed by the French as early as 1360.

The first printed instance of the phrase is in John Harington's (1560-1612) lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella (1657).  In the verse Ortheris withdraws with his beloved to a country lodge for “quiet, calm and ease” but later they’re tempted to wander:

"Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk".

Clearly it was conveyed no good comes from venturing beyond the pale for soon the lovers are set upon by attacked by armed robbers with “many a dire killing thrust”.

Slut

Slut (pronounced sluht)

(1) A woman of loose virtue; one who seeks sexual partners to an extent thought wantonly excessive (vulgar and usually derogatory).

(2) By extension, a prostitute (now rare, presumably because as it came to be applied more widely, such use began to lack precision.

(3) By extension, someone who seeks attention through inappropriate means or to an excessive degree (vulgar, figuratively and usually derogatory) . 

(4) By analogy, a person with seemingly undiscriminating desires for or interests in something (coffee-slut, chocolate-slut etc).

(5) A kitchen maid or servant (obsolete).

(6) An slovenly, untidy person (historically usually applied to women and now rare).

(7) A bold, outspoken woman (always derogatory and now obsolete). 

(8) A female dog (obsolete, bitch the replacement although that's now sometimes avoided because of the way it's used offensively against women). 

(9) A rag soaked in a flammable substance and lit for illumination, tied or mounted usually to a long handle (obsolete).

Circa 1400: From the late Middle English slutte (a dirty, slovenly, careless, or untidy woman) which may be either derived from or related to "sloth" and the first known use in print was in the medieval "Coventry Mystery Plays"; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists it as "of doubtful origin" and though paired alliteratively with sloven (which also first appears there) both suggestive of "lewd, lascivious woman", this remains uncertain.  It’s thought likely cognate with the dialectal German Schlutt (slovenly woman), dialectal Swedish slata (idle woman) and Dutch slodde or slodder (a careless man) but the exact relationship of all these is obscure.  In dialectical Norwegian, there was slut (mud) and slutr sleet (dirty liquid) in which meaning, like future adoptions, tended to the impure.  It’s thought related also the Middle Dutch slore, the Modern Dutch slomp and the German schlampe, the latter enjoying some popularity in the English-speaking world.  Etymologists have also suggested the possibility of a link with the Old English (West Saxon) sliet & slyt, (sleet, slush) which may be compared to the Norwegian dialectal slutr (snow mixed with rain), the connection being the sense of "the impure or dirty".  Slut is a noun & verb; sluttish, slutty, sluttier & sluttiest are adjectives, sluttishness & sluttiness are nouns, the noun plural is sluts.

Another of those English words with meanings changing over centuries, in 1402 slut meant roughly what one sense of slattern means today: a slovenly, untidy woman or girl.  It also meant kitchen maid although Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) used sluttish to describe both them and the appearance of an untidy man but as early as the end of the fifteenth century the sense had emerged as a woman of loose virtue, though not (yet) a prostitute although in the 1660s there are examples of the use of the word to refer to "playful young women" without any suggestion of a sexual overtone.  By the mid-fifteenth century, slut had come to be used of "kitchen & scullery maids" and from this the meaning was transferred to the labors: as late as the eighteenth century the hard pieces of imperfectly kneaded dough were called slut's pennies and dust left to gather on a floor was slut's wool.  The meanings ran in parallel until the nineteenth century; Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) thought the main use of the word was to suggest untidiness and a Samuel Pepys' (1633–1703) diary note in 1664 uses it as a term of endearment to commend the cheerful efficiency of one of his kitchen maids.  By the late twentieth century, the modern meaning had subsumed all others and was applied almost always pejoratively.  However, there were some in the late 1990s who adopted slut in the names of websites with content broader than the more specialised in the genre, an example of which was the now sadly defunct literary discussion and book-review site, bookslut.com, edited by feminist critic and author Jessa Crispin (b 1978).  A newer site, https://www.thebookslut.com now exists, seeming to function as an all-purpose clearing house for all things literary.

Before the advent of modern science gave rise to the extraordinary proliferation of technical terms, probably no purpose in English was so productive in the manufacture of words than the need to insult or disparage women and as an element, "slut" did its bit to contribute.  Although there are no rules which dictate exact use, there are dirty sluts, total sluts, pub sluts, slum sluts, ugly sluts, supersluts and slutbags.  Those thought sluts form part of the sluthood and exist in a state of slutdom; if one sleeps with one on a casual basis, one has had a slut stand and when observing her among the others in a slutfest, one might have noticed her was styled in slutstrands (two strands of hair (left & right) pulled down around the face with the rest pulled back.  Surprisingly, although sluts wear certain sorts of shoes, they're described not a slut-shoes but as "fuck-me shoes" (which isn't too literal because "fuck-me shoes" can be boots).  Among adjectives, the common form is slutty, the comparative sluttier & the superlative sluttiest but the simpler form is simply that one slut "out-sluts" another; a judgment inherently subjective.  The male slut was often a term of (sometimes grudging) admiration and referred to a promiscuous man who could sometimes be said to be a slut-maker.  A job slut was someone who often switched occupations and that could be used either neutrally or in a derogatory sense although in politics, the term "political prostitute" became popular and "political slut" did not, presumably because the intended implication was that the switching of allegiances was venal.  As a self descriptor without a sexual connotation it was once widely used but has become less popular because of feminist criticism (which must be why there were Facebook sluts but not TikTok sluts although the latter may be applied in a different context).  Once, there were press sluts (also known as media tarts in the digital age), coffee-sluts, beer sluts, chocolate-sluts, party sluts and book sluts, the terms all indicating an indiscriminate consumption of or addition to whatever was referenced.  To confuse English speakers, in Swedish, a slutstation is not what people variously may imagine but a part of public transport infrastructure meaning a terminus (the end-station at which a service terminates); figuratively it's used to mean "a final destination".  English visitors, returning home from Sweden have been known to nickname nightclubs with a certain reputation "slutstations".

Slutwalk, Toronto, Canada, April 2011. 

In the twenty-first century, feminists sought to claim the word and began a campaign socially to construct slut-shaming as an unacceptable form of bullying or discrimination.  Just as overtly political have been the slut-walks, the first of which was held in Toronto, Canada in April 2011 in reaction to comments by a police officer suggesting women were at least partially complicit in sexual assault by dressing in certain ways and that in their own interest, they should “…avoid dressing like sluts".

The police hastened to issue a flurry of apologies but that was perceived as crisis management rather than any indication of cultural change and the slut-walk soon followed, since repeated in many cities world-wide, sometimes as regular events.  Despite that, expressions of “victim blaming” continue to be issued by figures of authority.  A stated aim at the time was to redefine "slut" to describe someone in control of their own sexuality, to rid the word of any negative connotations.  That seemed linguistically ambitious but, although there are in English words which over time have come to mean the exact opposite of what they once did, it’s wrong to describe this as part of the “reclaim the word” movement.  It’s more of an attempt at re-appropriation like the successful campaign which gained “gay” its new exclusivity.  From within feminism came a critique which thought the word slut a distraction, something which attracted too much of the news media’s focus at the expense of the substantive issues: (1) a right to choose one’s clothing without fear of harassment, (2) the right to inhabit public space on the same basis as men and (3) that consent to sexual activity must always be explicit and can never be deemed to be implied on the basis of clothing or other signal.  This view suggested the issue was not the right to self-label as a slut but the right for women actually safely to exist in a time and place on the basis of their choice.

The RHS

The cocktails called the Red-Headed Slut (RHS) or the Ginger Bitch are identical.  Although variations exist, the original is served on the rocks, poured over ice, either in a old fashioned (rocks) glass or a highball.  Quantities of ingredients can vary but the alcohol components should always be equal.

Ingredients

(1) One part Jägermeister
(2) One part peach schnapps
(3) Cranberry juice

Instructions

Combine Jägermeister and schnapps in glass full of cubed or crushed ice. Add cranberry juice to fill glass. Stir as preferred.

It may be served as a shooter, chilled and shaken but without ice.   One popular derivative includes equal parts Jägermeister, Schnapps, Crown Royal, and cranberry-flavored vodka.  Some substitute Chambord for the cranberry juice, and sometimes Southern Comfort for the schnapps.  For a sweeter taste, apricot brandy can be used instead of schnapps and best of all, there’s the Angry Red-Headed Slut which adds rum (over-proof or two shots to increase the degree of anger).

Lindsay Lohan enjoying an eponymous: Surely an affectionate homage, the Lindsay Lohan is a variation, the Lohanic version taking a classic RHS and adding a dash of Coca-Cola (usually expressed as "coke").  It should be served in a highball or other tall glass.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology (pronounced fi-nom-uh-nol-uh-jee)

(1) The study of phenomena.

(2) In philosophy, the system of German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) stressing the description of phenomena; the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view; developed later as existential phenomenology, in the work of Husserl's student, the one-time Nazi, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976).

(3) In the philosophy of science, the science of phenomena as opposed to the science of being.

(4) In architecture, a school of design based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties.

(5) In archaeology, a set of theories based upon understanding cultural landscapes from a sensory perspective.

(6) In physics, a branch which deals with the application of theory to experiments.

(7) In empirical psychology, the study of subjective experiences or the experience itself.

(8) In the study of comparative religions, a field of research concerning the experiential aspect of religion in terms consistent with the orientation of the worshippers.

1764: A compound word phenomen(on) (from the Late Latin phaenomenon (appearance) from the Ancient Greek φαινόμενον (phainómenon) (thing appearing to view), the neuter present passive participle of φαίνω (phaínō) (I show) + logy.  In English the logy suffix originates with loanwords from the Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned.  Within English, the suffix became productive, forming names of sciences or departments of study and original compositions with no link to Greek or Latin forms were common by the late eighteenth century.  Phenomenology & phenomenologist are nouns phenomenological is an adjective and phenomenologically is an adverb; the noun plural is phenomenologies.

The road to Hegel

Portrait of the philosopher as a young man: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

Phenomenology was a created philosophical system that was intended to be free of presupposition, the notion being that objects and events should be observed and described from the position of the observer(s) a process supposedly free from claims about any objective reality. Anything not immediately conscious is to be excluded and rather than deductive or empirical methods, there was a reliance on the information gathered by the senses; all scientific or metaphysical knowledge or belief was discarded.  Phenomenology is not an essentially theoretical exercise like idealism which claimed the only thing truly to exist is the mind.  Phenomenology instead takes the position that that can be known is subjective reality, thus the pointlessness of an attempt to seek out some objective reality.  The focus is on the subjective.  That didn’t mean existentialism and phenomenology were the same.  Phenomenology was a toolbox of processes with which to view metaphysics and knowledge; existentialism, ultimately, was about generating the normative ethics to make a worthwhile life.  Phenomenology’s core method was the investigation and description of phenomena as consciously experienced, devoid from any theoretical framework, and, to whatever extent was possible, undertaken without preconceptions and presuppositions.

Lindsay Lohan capturing Hegel's phenomenology of spirit in a T-shirt.

The word, though without quite its modern meaning, seems first to have been used in 1764 by Swiss philosopher and mathematician, Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) in his work Neues Organon, a treatise on logic, the title (New Organon), a nod to The Organon (Ὄργανον in the Ancient Greek meaning “instrument, tool, organ"), the collection of Aristotle's (384-322 BC) six works on logic assembled (circa 40 BC) by a group of disciples known as the Peripatetics.  In the reductionist spirit of logic, Lambert applied the word to his particular exploration of the systemic use of knowledge to differentiate truth falsehood but it wasn’t until the publication in 1807 of Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit) by German philosopher GWF Hegel that lineal paths to the twentieth century phenomenological can be traced.  Hegel was impenetrable even by the standards of German philosophers so the discursive output of the new phenomenologists of the new century seems hardly surprising.  As many students discovered, one can find one's way to Hegel but it's hard to find one's way back.

Occidental & Oriental

Occidental (pronounced ok-si-den-tl)

(1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Occident or its natives and inhabitants (usually initial capital letter).

(2) A literary or formal word for Western.

(3) A native or inhabitant of the Occident (usually initial capital letter).

(4) An artificial language, created by Baltic German mathematician Edgar de Wahl (1867-1948), later renamed Interlingue shortly before the publication of Interlingua (1949) (always initial capital).

1350–1400: A Middle English borrowing from the Old French occidental from the Latin occidentālis (western), the construct being occident- + -ālis.  The Latin occidentalis was from occidēns (west), the present active participle of occidō (I fall down; pass away).  Occidental is a noun & adjective, occidentalism, occident & occidentalist are nouns and occidentally is an adverb; the noun plural is occidentals.

Oriental (pronounced awr-ee-en-tl or ohr‐ee-en-tl)

(1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Orient, or East; Eastern (usually initial capital letter).

(2) Of the orient, or the eastern region of the world.

(3) In geography, belonging to a geographical division comprising southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago as far as and including the Philippines, Borneo, and Java (initial capital letter).  (In pre-modern geography, pertaining to the regions east of the Mediterranean, beyond the Roman Empire or the early Christian world).  Oriental is a noun & adjective, orientalism, orient & orientalist are nouns and orientally is an adverb; the noun plural is orientals (often correctly used with initial capital).

(4) In jewelry, designating various gems that are varieties of corundum: Oriental aquamarine; Oriental ruby (usually initial capital letter).

(5) Designating certain natural saltwater pearls found especially in Asia.

(6) Of a pearl or other precious stone: having a superior lustre.

(7) A breed of slender muscular cat with large ears, long legs, and a long tail.

(8) A native or inhabitant of the Orient (usually initial capital letter).

(9) In astronomy and astrology), pertaining to the eastern part of the sky; happening before sunrise.

(10) Designating various types of aromatic tobacco grown in Turkey and the Balkans (post-nineteenth century use).

(11) A lily cultivar of a widely varied group, with strong scent.

(12) In any context, eastern or of the eastern part (obsolete except as a literary or poetic device).

1350–1400: Middle English from the Middle French $ Anglo-Latin oriental from the Latin orientālis (eastern), from oriēns (rising (of the sun)), present active participle of orior (I rise), the construct being orient- (east, the east) –ālis.  The suffix –ālis was added to a noun or numeral to form an adjective of relationship; it was from the primitive Indo-European -li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of –aris, perhaps connected to hzel- (to grow).  The neuter form was –āle.

Edward Said

Controversial even in the post-colonial milieu of the time, Edward Said’s (1935-2003) Orientalism (1979) was a critique of a particular construct of the historic Western treatment of things eastern.  It dealt with not only academic orientalists but also seminal figures of western social science such as Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Max Weber (1864-1920) whose writings emphasized fundamental differences between East and West.  It’s regarded still, by some, as a dangerous book, blamed for the schism in the field of modern Middle Eastern studies which coalesced into the polarized factions of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and its newer rival, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA).  The stylistic patchwork Said adopted perhaps made criticism inevitable.  Within a scholarly framework, the author laid bare his outage at the reductionist objectification of the Western tradition in its treatment of the other, his words construed as political and polemic.

Even the book's covers attracted comment and varied according to the market in which it was sold although, unlike some controversial titles, it was apparently never necessary anywhere to offer it in a plain, brown wrapper. 

Detractors and admirers alike all were aware of the significance of Orientalism and it’s regarded still as “one of the most influential scholarly books published in English in the last half-century”, even by some who documented its flaws.  The book was one of those rare texts in historiography which stirred up a stormy debate in and beyond academia, the idea of authors in the West having a skewed and condescending view towards the East finding a sympathetic audience.  So incendiary was the reaction that not only was the book controversial but so was the nature of the reaction although, despite the claims of some, the pattern of the responses appeared not to align with the ethnicity or religious orientation of the scholars and intellectuals but with their attitude to history and the modern and post-modern philosophical ideas (deconstruction, truth as illusion, intellectual hegemony et al).

In a sense, it was Said himself who created the structure for the criticism which would follow because he defined Orientalism in three ways: (1) the academic profession, (2) the world view and (3) a mode of hegemony.  The first was the most readily understood, an academic Orientalist was anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient, whether they be an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, philologist or literary critic.  That did not imply the world view of Orientalists was monolithic but Said did contend that their views were almost invariably dictated by a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the “the Orient” and “the Occident” (ie between Eastern & Western culture) and this applied also to poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists and economists, their position a direct inheritance from the ideas spread by European imperial administrators, travellers and explorers; whether in simple or elaborate form, the theorists, novelists and poets all worked within the same framework of “difference”.  Finally, Said defined Orientalism by the actual political and colonial relations constructed in “the West” epistemologically, based on the earlier definitions; it was this construct with which the West conducted itself with the Orient.  Perhaps predictably, the academics appeared more upset at what they perceived as Said’s attack on the accuracy of their research and their intellectual impartiality than what was done with what he claim they created, even if unknowingly. 

One concept he introduced was the notion of “the distinction between the latent and manifest orientalism”, the latent being a general unconscious certainty the Orient was the way it has been described by the practitioners while the manifest was the supremacy of American imperialism as practiced since in the post-war years they assumed the hegemony in things east of Suez from the British and French: “The distinction I am making is really between an almost unconscious (and certainly an untouchable) positivity, which I shall call latent Orientalism, and the various stated views about Oriental society, languages, literatures, history, sociology, and so forth, which I shall call manifest Orientalism”.  The idea of the latent and manifest wasn’t wholly new but was one which later would be picked up and developed in critical race theory (CRT).

An occidental in the orient: Long-time resident Lindsay Lohan creating a photo opportunity with the Dubai Police, thanking them and the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their ongoing support during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dubai, April 2020.

That the critics found faults in both Said’s historiography and theoretical inconsistencies in his framework clearly pleased them but appeared to do little to affect the impact of Orientalism, something probably at least partly attributable to his deconstruction of the Western filter through which things eastern were viewed being built with the tools provided by some of the cult favourites in late twentieth century Western philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) (representation and the thing-in-itself), Michel Foucault (1926–1984) (discourse, power, knowledge, episteme and truth regimes), Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) (cultural hegemony) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) (deconstruction).  Said was a subtle thinker but to try to synthesize something from applying the thoughts of that lot would of necessity need some intellectual brutishness just to make it fit and it’s not surprising there were those who faulted him for occupying “…theoretical positions which are mutually contradictory”.  Still, if anything the effect of that was stimulative and Orientalism was one of those books which people read and found it confirmed their own views about the West or the West’s critics.  It’s doubtful Orientalism changed many minds and there were flaws which the critics were right to identify but regardless of how ultimately it will be remembered as an academic text, it remains a literary classic.

Synesthesia

Synesthesia (pronounced sin-uhs-thee-zhuh or sin-uhs-zhee-uh)

(1) In neurology and psychology, a neurological or psychological phenomenon in which a particular sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation.

(2) The association of one sensory perception with, or description of it in terms of, another, unlike, perception that is not experienced at the same time.

(3) In literary theory or practice, an artistic device whereby one kind of sensation is described in the terms of another.

(4) In medical diagnostics, where a sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus that is applied to another, as in referred pain.

1881: From the Modern French or the New Latin and derived from Ancient Greek σύν (sún (with) or syn (together) + αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), (sensation; feeling) from the primitive Indo-European root au (to perceive) + abstract noun suffix -ia.  The word was modelled after existing construction anaesthesia.  Traditional spelling in the British Empire was synæsthesia but the US form synesthesia appears now global.  The meaning in psychology relating to the senses (colors that seem to the perceiver to having odor, etc.) is from 1891.  Synesthesia & synaesthete are nouns, synaesthetic is an adjective and synesthetically is an adverb; the noun plural is synesthesias..

Clinicians have two categories of synesthesia: projective and associative.  Those who project see actual colours or shapes when stimulated whereas associators will feel an involuntary connection between the stimulus and the sense that it triggers.  For example, in the form chromesthesia synesthesia (sound to color) a projector would listen to a piano and see a purple shape whereas an associator might respond to the music by thinking it “sounds” purple.  There are a number of types of synesthesia, the best known of which grapheme-color synesthesia or the association of colours with letters or words.  In auditory-tactile synesthesia, certain sounds can induce sensations in parts of the body and debate continues about whether the near-universal reaction(s) induced by finger nails on a blackboard indicates synesthesia is a spectrum condition or this example is endemic in human physiology.   Lexical-gustatory synesthesia is the phenomenon of certain tastes being experienced upon hearing certain words.  Mirror-touch synesthesia is where someone feels the same sensation another person feels such as when a synesthete sees another touched on the arm; the synesthete involuntarily feeling a touch in the same place.  Logically, every possible combination of experiences which can occur can be a type of synesthesia.  Something need not be wide-spread to be a type of synesthesia, it needs just to be specific.

Winter Landscape (1909), oil on cardboard by Wassily Kandinsky, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

In Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866–1944) particular synesthesia, color and music inextricably were tangled and so precise was it that he associated each note with an exact hue and it was so intrinsic to his being that he once observed: “…the sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.”  It meant his experience of music was heightened, indeed defined, by the range of visual perceptions which shifted with every note.  The music of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) has had its consequences, good and bad, and it was his vivid visual response to a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin (1850) at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre that he abandoned his successful career as a lawyer and devoted himself to the painting which had been his hobby.  Accepted as a student at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts, he later described the Wagnerian transformation of his life: “I saw all my colors in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.”  Wagner has led a few astray but he took Kandinsky on a good path; the world needs more artists more than it needs more lawyers.

Composition VII (1913), oil on canvas by by Wassily Kandinsky, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Music remained critical to the development of Kandinsky’s abstract paintings and noting the way the Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) had abandoned tonal and harmonic conventions in his compositions, he rejected the figure or recognizable object in favor of shapes, lines, and discordant colors which he deployed overlaid on texture to create a rhythmic visual experience which as closely as possible emulated in a two-dimensional space the emotional response he’d experienced when hearing the sounds.  Unsurprisingly, Kandinsky gave many of his paintings musical titles, such as Composition or Improvisation and it wasn’t unusual for critics to use phrases like “Kandinsky’s symphony of colors”.

Lindsay Lohan in blue & yellow as Wassily Kandinsky might have imagined her. 

Kandinsky also perceived color also had the ability to touch the feelings of the viewers, yellow able to disturb while blue awakened the highest spiritual aspirations.  That may have been mapping his experience as a synaesthete on to those not able to enjoy the gift but it was certainly an insight into his visions.  In 1911, Kandinsky published Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) in which he defined the three types of painting: impressions, improvisations and compositions.  Impressions were based on an external reality while improvisations and compositions depicted images summoned from the unconscious, compositions the more formal of the two.  The treatise is one of the landmarks in the theoretical foundations of abstraction and remains an important contribution to an explanation of the techniques with which art can be constructed in an attempt to evoke psychological, physical, and emotional responses.