Armillary

Armillary (pronounced ahr-muh-ler-ee or ahr-mil-uh-ree)

(1) A shape, object or conception consisting wholly or substantially of hoops or rings.

(2) Something resembling an armlet or bracelet.

(3) Of or relating to bracelets.

1655–1665: From the New Latin armillaris, the construct being the Classical Latin arm (illa) (bracelet; armlet; arm ring; hoop) + -ill(a) (the diminutive suffix) + -ary.  The suffix -illa was an inflection of -illus (nominative/vocative feminine singular & nominative / accusative / vocative neuter plural).  The suffix -illā was the ablative feminine singular of -illus, itself a misinterpretation of the diminutive suffix -lus on such nouns as sigillum (signum + -lus) and used freely, the example set by medieval translators.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns.  The suffix –ary (of or pertaining to) was a back-formation from unary and similar, from the Latin adjectival suffixes -aris and -arius; appended to many words, often nouns, to make an adjective form and use was not restricted to words of Latin origin.  The Latin noun armilla dates from the early eighteenth century and was from armus (shoulder, upper arm) from the primitive Indo-European root ar- (to fit together) and came to be used in many specialized senses in anatomy, engineering etc.  Armillary is an adjective (although informally it has been used as a (non-standard) noun).

The armillary sphere.

Ptolemaic Armillary Sphere of the mid-twentieth century, believed to have been built in Italy or Spain, pasteboard with printed paper on an ebonized wood base.

Armillary spheres seem first to have been constructed by the astronomers of Antiquity and drawings and documents relating to one used by Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria (circa 100-170) who, in the way of the polymaths of the epoch was an astrologer, mathematician, musicologist and cartographer as well as an astronomer.  The devices were mathematical instruments used to demonstrate the movement of the celestial sphere about the unmoving earth which was the centre of all creation.  Although now understood fundamentally to be wrong, in the centuries from Antiquity, throughout the Middle Ages and into the Modern era, the armillary sphere remained the accepted model of orthodox understanding, despite the Ancient Greek mathematician & astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (circa 310-circa 230 BC) having proposed a heliocentric model (placing the Sun at the centre of the universe, the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis daily).  His ideas received little support and the geocentric model (with the Earth as the centre of the universe) prevailed, the Church coming to declare that to suggest otherwise was heresy.  It wasn’t until the Renaissance that advances in observational capacity and mathematical techniques that the heliocentric theory became compelling.

Wearing an array (the industry prefers “stacked”) of bracelets is called the “armillary effect”: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates.

However, as a model of a geocentric cosmos, the armillary sphere is a mechanical masterpiece.  At the centre sits static a small, brass sphere representing the Earth and about it rotate a set of rings representing the heavens, one complete revolution being the 24 hour day.  The classic spheres of the late medieval period were mounted at the celestial poles which defined the axis of rotation and they typically included an equatorial ring while parallel to this, two smaller rings representing the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn each midway to the poles sat north & south.  Of especial interest to astrologers (for centuries an respectable academic discipline), touching each of these circles, and crossing the celestial equator at points representing the equinoxes (equal hours of night and day) was placed the “ecliptic circle” or Zodiac ring.  This ring tracked the annual path of the Sun as (independently of the other stars), it made its unique journey through the constellations of the Zodiac.  The signs of the Zodiac were engraved upon the ecliptic ring which, being calibrated with a calendar scale, enabled the device to be used to model the apparent motion of the Sun and the stars at any time of the year and though of course conceptually flawed, it could be use not only to model the movements and relative geometry of the heavens, but accurately to carry out calculations such as the times of sunrise and sunset and the length of a day.  The spheres could be relative simple and build for a single purpose or intricate (some for example including the Moon) and the charm of the design was that it was scalable, only the dimensions ever needing to be increased to incorporate added complexity; the basic design never changed.

Subduction

Subduction (pronounced sub-duhk-shuhn)

(1) The action of being pushed or drawn beneath another object.

(1) An act or instance of subducting; subtraction or withdrawal; an act of taking away.

(2) In geology, the process by which collision of the earth's crustal plates results in one lithospheric plate being drawn down or overridden by another, localized along the juncture (subduction zone) of two plates, sometimes resulting in tensions and faulting in the earth's crust, with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

(3) In specialized us in applied optics, the act of turning the eye downwards.

(4) In mathematics, a surjection between diffeological spaces such that the target is identified as the push-forward of the source.

1570-1580: From the Latin subductiōn (nominative subductiō) (pulling up, computation).  The original sense was “withdrawal, removal; the action of taking away” (originally of noxious substances from the body), from the Latin subductiōnem (nominative subductiō) (a withdrawal, drawing up, hauling ashore), a noun of action from the past participle stem of subducere (to draw away, take away).  From the 1660s it was used in the sense of “an act of subduing; fact of being subdued” while the now familiar geological sense, referring to the edge of a tectonic plate dipping under a neighboring plate came into use in English only by 1970, following the adoption in French in 1951.  The word is now peculiar to geology, the newness a consequence of plate tectonics becoming well understood only from the mid 1960s.  The verb subduct (used first in the 1570s in the sense of “subtract”) was from subductus, past participle of subducere, and the geological sense is from 1971, a back-formation from the noun subduction.  Subduction is a noun, subduct, subducting & subducted are verbs, subductively is an adverb and subductive is an adjective; the noun plural is subductions.

Subduction is a geological process which happens where the boundaries of tectonic plates converge and one plate moves under another, being forced or, under the force of gravity, sinking into the mantle. Regions where this process occurs are known as subduction zones and rates of subduction are usually small, averaging one to three inches (25-75mm) per year.

Affected plates include both oceanic and continental crusts.   Dutch scientists Douwe van der Meer, Douwe van Hinsbergen, and Wim Spakman of Utrecht University published Atlas of the Underworld in the journal Tectonophysics documenting ninety-four distinct slabs.

Etching

Etching (pronounced ech-ing)

(1) The art, act or process of making designs or pictures on a metal plate, glass etc, by the corrosive action of an acid instead of by a burin.

(2) An impression, as on paper, taken from an etched plate.

(3) The design so produced.

(4) A flat (usually metal) plate bearing such a design.

1625–1635: The construct was etch + -ing.  The verb etch was from the Dutch etsen (to engrave by eating away the surface of with acids), from the German ätzen (to etch), from the Old High German azzon (to cause to bite or feed), from the Proto-Germanic atjaną, causative of etaną (to eat), from the primitive Indo-European root ed- (to eat) (from these sources English gained “eat”).  The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing).  The “etching scribe” was a needle-sharp steel tool for incising into plates in etching and the production of dry points.  Etching is a noun & verb; the noun plural is etchings.

The noun was the present participle and gerund of etch (the verbal noun from the verb etch) and was used also in the sense of “the art of engraving”; by the 1760s, it was used also to mean “a print etc, made from an etched plate" and the plates themselves.  The term etching (to cut into a surface with an acid or other corrosive substance in order to make a pattern) is most associated with the creation of printing plates for the production of artistic works but the technique was used also as a way to render decorative patterns on metal.  In modern use, it’s also a term used in the making of circuit boards.  In idiomatic use (often as “etched in the memory”), it’s used of events, ideas etc which are especially memorable (for reasons good and ill) and as a slang word meaning “to sketch; quickly to draw”.  The Etch A Sketch drawing toy was introduced 1960 by Ohio Art Company; a kind of miniature plotter, it was a screen with two knobs which moved a stylus horizontally & vertically, displacing an aluminum powder to produce solid lines.  To delete the creation, the user physically shook the device which returned the powder to its original position, blanking the screen.

Rembrandt's Jan Asselyn, Painter (1646) (left) and Faust (circa 1652).

Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669)) wasn’t the most prolific etcher but he remains the most famous and his output provides an illustrative case-study in the evolution of his mastering of the technique, his early work really quite diffident compared with his later boldness.

What came to be known as etching gained the name from the Germanic family of words meaning “eat & “to eat”, the transferred sense an allusion to the acid which literally would “eat the metal”.   Etching is an intaglio (from the Italian, from intagliare (to engrave) technique in printmaking, a term which includes methods such as hard and soft ground etching, engraving, dry-point, mezzotint and aquatint, all of which use an ink transferring process.  In this, a design is etched into a plate, the ink added over the whole surface plate before a scrim (historically starched cheesecloth) is used to force the ink into the etched areas and remove any excess.  Subsequently, the plate (along with dampened paper) is run through a press at high pressure, forcing the paper into etched areas containing the ink.  The earliest known signed and dated etching was created by Swiss Renaissance goldsmith Urs Graf (circa 1485-circa 1525) in 1513 and it’s from those who worked with gold that almost all forms of engraving are ultimately derived.

Lindsay Lohan, 1998, rendered in the style of etchings.

A phrase which was so beloved by comedy writers in the early-mid twentieth century that it became a cliché was “Want to come up and see my etchings?”, a euphemism for seduction.  The saying was based on some fragments of text in a novel by Horatio Alger Jr (1832–1899), a US author regarded as the first to formalize as genre fiction the “rags-to-riches” stories which had since the early days of the republic been the essence of the “American Dream” although it wasn’t until the twentieth century the term came into common use (it’s now used mostly ironically).

Veblen

Veblen (pronounced vebluhn)

A product (a good) for which demand increases as the price increases, an anomaly in the classical laws of demand in the science of economics.

1899: The name is from the author, US economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929); his observation was first mentioned in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).

Hermes Pink Ostrich Handbag.

The Veblen effect is one aspect of conspicuous consumption; it describes individual or corporate spending of money on goods and services for the purpose of displaying their financial resources, usually as a means to manifest social power and prestige.  It's related to the dealer's saying in the antique business: "If something doesn't sell, keep putting up the price until it does".  As a phenomenon the behavior obviously pre-dates social media but TikTok, Instagram and such have proved the ideal platform for both the flaunting of wealth and faking it.  Veblen goods are those which (at least to a certain point), behave differently from the classic demand curve of orthodox economics in that demand for them rises as the price increases.  They are usually luxury products (a thing something inherently a product of their price) but there are cases where transitory shortages not always directly related to cost can create scarcity and thus a desirably; the diabetes drug Ozempic which is used by those attracted to its appetite-suppressing side effect is an example.  The retail price at which most luxury goods are sold can contradict classic economic theory as demand, instead of increasing with a decrease in price, follows the opposite curve although the demand curve does not increase indefinitely with the price.  Once a certain threshold has been reached, demand will drop or fall away completely but the propensity to purchase goods and services on account of the higher rather than lower price differential compared to average prices in a generic category is one of the principal characteristics of the luxury domain.  

Lindsay Lohan with Hermes Pink Ostrich Birkin, London, 2017.

One interesting reaction by manufacturers or retailers to a price threshold being reached (at which point demand begins to fall), is artificially to create an impression of a supply-side shortage.  When it appears a price-point is exceeding what even conspicuous consumers will pay for a certain handbag, manufacturers sometimes claim they’re limited-production items available only to selected clients.  This is rarely true, the handbag being just another part-number, manufacturers producing as many as required to meet demand.  Economists provide some nuance to the Veblen effect by noting the influence of what they call “income and substitution effects”.  The income effect suggests that as the price of a Veblen good rises, individuals with higher incomes may actually experience an increase in real income (since they can still afford the more expensive item) and therefore demand more of the luxury item; the substitution effect is overridden by the desire for the specific status or prestige associated with the higher-priced item.  The professionals also caution the Veblen effect is not universal and both between and within cultures it can’t be relied upon always to appear as some manufacturers and retailers has discovered.

Ostrobogulous

Ostrobogulous (pronounced os-truh-bog-yuh-luhs or os-truh-bawg-yuh-luhs)

(1) Something (slightly or tending towards) the risqué or indecent.

(2) Something bizarre, interesting, or unusual.

Circa 1910s: The word was coined by the writer Victor Neuburg (1883–1940), a model of English eccentricity who was Jewish, bisexual and an occasionally intimate associate of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) with whom he shared several interests and proclivities.  Neuburg & Crowley travelled near and far to collaborate on many things but the best remembered (and still much celebrated in the cult which to this day surrounds the memory of Crowley) was the blending of occult rituals and certain sexual practices which was systematized as “Sex Magick”, a combination which has been a notable part of many sects and cults since.  Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908–1992) was an author (one with a remarkable eclectic oeuvre) acquainted with both and in one of his memoirs (Magic my Youth (1951) he recalled “Ostrobogulous was Vickybird’s (Victor Neuburg) favourite word. It stood for anything from the bawdy to the slightly off-colour. Any double entendre that might otherwise have escaped his audience was prefaced by, ‘if you will pardon the ostrobogulosity’”.  Ostrobogulous is an adjective, ostrobogulation & ostrobogulosity are nous and ostrobogulously is an adverb; the noun plural is ostrobogulations.

Neuburg claimed ostrobogulous was a most irregular formation, the construct being the Ancient Greek ostro (something rich) + the English bog (in the sense of “dirt” from the schoolboy slang sense of “the toilet”) + the Latin suffix ulus (full of), the literal translation thus “full of rich dirt”.  The Latin suffix -ulus was from the Proto-Italic -elos, from the primitive Indo-European -elós, thematized from -lós; it was cognate with the Proto-Germanic -ilaz & -ulaz and used to form (1) a diminutive of a noun, indicating small size or youth, (2) a diminutive of an adjective with diminished effect (denoting “somewhat” or “-ish”) and (3) an adjective from a verb.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) rejected that, claiming the first element was from the Greek adjective oestrous (oyster), from the Latin ostrea, from Ancient Greek ὄστρεον (óstreon) (all related to the Modern English oyster).  Neuburg however ignored the professional lexicographers and decided he was as qualified to determine Classical etymology as he was to coin novel Modern English forms and noted the Greek word ostreon which was a type of mollusc was harvested to obtain a rare and expensive purple dye, hence he decided that figuratively, it meant “something rich”.  In that he was on sound historic ground; what was known as Tyrian purple (also shellfish purple) was for long periods the most expensive substance in Antiquity, often (by weight) three times the value of gold, the exchange rate set by a Roman edict issued in 301 AD.

Upon release, I Know Who Killed Me (2007) received generally bad reviews (it was at one point a popular inclusion on “worst movie ever” lists) but there’s since been a reappraisal by some and the film now has a cult following and appears with some frequency in “midnight screenings”.  Those searching for an adjective to describe I Know Who Killed Me might find ostrobogulous suitable because it leave the viewer free to decide which of its two meanings they prefer.  

However tangled might be the etymology, there’s no doubt Newburg coined ostrobogulous to mean “something (slightly or tending towards) the risqué or indecent” yet by the 1960s it was recorded being used by respectable middle-class folk to mean “something weird, strange, bizarre unusual’ without any hint of indecency; the sense rather of the “harmlessly mischievous”.  Quite how that happened isn’t known but it is an example of the meaning shifts and re-purposing common in English.  Now, it’s only artificially common in that it’s one of those curiosities which are a fixture of lists of strange and obscure words, a lexicographical fetish which has flourished since the advent of the internet.

Bedchamber

Bedchamber (pronounced bed-cheym-ber)

A now archaic word for bedroom; the alternative form was bed-chamber.

1325–1375:  From the Middle English bedchaumbre, the construct being bed + chamber.  Bed was from the Middle English bed or bedde, from the pre-1000 Old English bedd (bed, couch, resting-place; garden-bed, plot), from the Proto-Germanic badją (plot, grave, resting-place, bed) and thought perhaps derived from the Proto-Indo-European bhed (to dig).  It was cognate with the Scots bed and bede, the North Frisian baad and beed, the West Frisian bêd, the Low German Bedd, the Dutch bed, the German bett, the Danish bed, the Swedish bädd, the Icelandic beður and perhaps, (depending on the efficacy of the Proto-Indo-European lineage), the Ancient Greek βοθυρος (bothuros) (pit), the Latin fossa (ditch),the Latvian bedre (hole), the Welsh bedd (grave), the Breton bez (grave).  Any suggestion of links to Russian or other Slavic words is speculative.

Chamber dates from 1175-1225 and was from the Middle English chambre, borrowed from Old French chambre, from the Latin camera, derived from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamára) (vaulted chamber); the meaning “room”, usually private, drawn from French use.  As applied to anatomy, use emerged in the late fourteenth century; it was applied to machinery in 1769 and to ballistics from the 1620s.  The meaning "legislative body" is from circa 1400 and the term chamber music was first noted in 1789, not as a descriptor of any musical form but to indicate that intended to be performed in private rooms rather than public halls.

The Bedchamber Crisis, 1839

A Lady of the Bedchamber, a position held typically by women of noble descent, is a kind of personal assistant to the Queen of England.  A personal appointment by the Queen, they’ve existed for centuries, their roles varying according to the relationships enjoyed.  Most European royal courts from time-to-time also adopted the practice.

The 1839 bedchamber crisis is emblematic of the shifting of political power from monarch to parliament.  Although the eighteenth-century administrative and economic reforms created the framework, it was the 1832 Reform Act which, in doing away with a monarch’s ability to stack parliaments with ample compliant souls, shattered a sovereign’s capacity to dictate election results and within two years the new weakness was apparent.  In 1834, William IV (1765–1837; King of the UK 1830-1837)  dismissed the Whig Lord Melbourne (1779–1848; Prime Minister of the UK 1834 & 1835-1841) and appointed the Tory Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850; Prime Minister of the UK 1834–1835 & 1841–1846).  However, the King no longer enjoyed the electoral influence necessary to secure Peel a majority in the Commons and after being defeated in the house six times in as many weeks, the premier was obliged to inform the palace of his inability to govern, compelling the king to invite Melbourne to form a new administration, one which endured half a decade, out-living William IV.  The king's exercise in 1834 of the royal prerogative proved the last time the powers of the head of state would be invoked sack a prime-minister until an Australian leader was dismissed in 1975 by the governor-general (and in a nice touch the sacked PM had appointed the clearly ungrateful GG).

Queen Mary's State Bed Chamber, Hampton Court Palace (1819) by Richard Cattermole (1795–1858).

By 1839, Melbourne felt unable to continue and the new Queen Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901), reluctantly, invited Sir Robert Peel to assume the premiership, a reticence some historians attribute as much to her fondness for the avuncular Melbourne as her preference for his Whig (liberal) politics.  Peel, knowing any administration he could form would be nominally in a minority, knew his position would be strengthened if there was a demonstration of royal support so asked Victoria, as a gesture of good faith, to replace some of the Whig Ladies of the Bedchamber with a few of Tory breeding.  Most of the ladies were the wives or daughters of Whig politicians and Sir Robert’s request made sense in the world of 1839.

Victoria rejected his request and prevailed upon Melbourne to continue which he did, until a final defeat in 1841.  By then it was clear only Peel could command a majority in the Commons and he insisted on his bedchamber cull, forcing Victoria to acquiesce to the parliament imposing on her the most intimate of her advisors.  This is the moment in constitutional history where the precedent is established of the parliament and not the Crown determining the formation and fate of governments.  Since then, the palace can warn, counsel and advise but not compel.

A lady in, if not of, the bedchamber.  A recumbent Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons (IFC Films, 2013).

Prompt

Prompt (pronounced prompt)

(1) Something done, performed, delivered etc at once or without undue delay.

(2) Ready & quick to act as the circumstances demand (archaic).

(3) Quick or alert.

(4) Punctual.

(5) To move or induce to action; to occasion or incite (often as “prompted”).

(6) To assist by suggesting something.

(7) To remind someone of what has been forgotten (formalized in live performance (the stage, singing etc) where a “prompt” is a supplied from the wings to remind a performer of a missed cue or forgotten line (the noun prompter can indicate both a person employed to deliver cues or the device used (printed or on a screen).

(8) In computing, the message or symbol on the screen which indicates where an entry is require, the most basic of which is the “command prompt” of text-based operating systems which stood ready to receive a structured command.

(9) In computing, in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning algorithms (MLI) and related systems, to request particular output by means of instructions, questions, examples, context, or other input.

(10) In commercial use, a time limit given for payment of an account for produce purchased, this limit varying with different goods (archaic).

(11) In futures trading, the “front” (closest or nearest).

(12) The act of prompting.

1350-1400: From the Middle English prompte (ready, eager (adjective) & prompten (verb), from the French prompt, all forms ultimately from the Latin prōmptus (evident; manifest, at hand, ready, quick, prepared), participle of prōmō (to take or bring out or forth, produce, bring to light) and the adjectival use of past participle of prōmere (to bring forth, deliver, set forth), the construct being from prō- (forth, forward; for; on behalf of, in the interest of, for the sake of; before, in front of; instead of; about; according to; as, like; as befitting), a combining form of the preposition prō, from the Proto-Italic pro-, from the primitive Indo-European pro-, o-grade of per-) + emere (to buy, obtain, take).  The synonyms can include urge, spur, remind, refresh, instigate, impel, punctual, quick, rapid, hasty & timely.  Modifiers are applied as requited including over-prompt, quasi-prompt & un-prompt.  Prompt is a noun, verb & adjective, promptness & prompter are nouns, prompter & promptest are adjectives, promptly is an adverb and prompting & prompted are verbs; the noun plural is prompts.

The noun (in the phrase “in prompte”) emerged in the early fifteenth century in the sense of “readiness" and was from the Latin verb prōmptus while the more familiar meaning “hint, information suggested, act of prompting” dates from the mid-1500s.  The formal use of prompt in the sense of the indicator on a screen ready to accept user input dates only from 1977 although the concept had been in use for decades.  The ideas of coaching (someone) or assisting them by providing a reminder of that which clearly had been forgotten (or imperfectly learned) was first used in the early fifteenth century, the best-known use in live theatre (to assist a speaker with lines) dating from the 1670s.  The adjectival use (ready, prepared (to do something), quick to act as occasion demands) was from the thirteenth century Old French prompt and directly from Latin prōmptus (brought forth), hence “visible, apparent, evident, at hand”, a use now obsolete.  The commercial sense of the noun prompt “a time limit given for payment for merchandise purchased" dates from the mid-eighteenth and while the concept remains, the word is no longer formally use although the phrase “prompt payment requested” often remains as a reminder.  It remains unclear whether the verb was derived from the adjective or vice-versa and another oddity is that the first recorded instance of “prompting”, the gerund (the verbal noun logically derived from prompt and meaning “incitement or impulse to action” is from 1402, a quarter of a century before the verb.

The formal use of prompt in the sense of the indicator on a screen ready to accept user input dates only from 1977 although the concept had been in use for decades and predates screens, prompts emerging as soon as user input switched from the flicking of switches to character-based entries via a keyboard or similar input device.  The first prompts were those which sat (undifferentiated) on a plotter or printer, awaiting user input.  Command prompts were familiar from the late 1970s and appeared in early versions of Apple and CP/M systems among others but it was the IBM PC which introduced them to what was then the (still small) mainstream.  When the IBM PC was released in 1981, the user interface was exclusively text-based and the PC-DOS (or MS-DOS) command prompt was (almost) the only way for users to interact with their hardware and software.  The quirky exception to that was that on genuine IBM machines, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) included a BASIC (the Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code programming language) interpreter so it was possible to do certain things with the hardware even if an operation system (OS) wasn’t present.  IBM’s lawyers guarded their BIOS with rare efficiency so the numerous PC clones almost all needed an OS to be useful.

While programmers, nerds, and other obsessive types understood the charm of the command prompt and took to it fondly, most users had no wish to memorize even part of the sometime arcane command set needed and modern capitalism soon responded, menu systems soon available which allowed users to interact with their machine while hiding the essential ugliness beneath.  In time, these were augmented by graphical environments (some of which frankly overwhelmed the OS) and ultimately, the most successful of these would evolve into OSs, some of which included the ability to run multiple command prompts which at first contained and later emulated PC-MS-DOS.  The most elaborate of these was IBM’s OS/2 2.0 (and its successors) which permitted on a single machine literally hundreds of simultaneous command prompt sessions in a mix of 8, 16 & 32-bit flavors, some of which could even been launched as a bootable virtual machine, started from a floppy-diskette image.  Technically, it was an impressive achievement but around the planet, there were only a relative handful of organizations which needed such capabilities (typically those with megalomaniacs seduced by the idea of replacing perhaps dozens of MS-DOS based PCs each housing an interface handler of some type with one machine).  That could be made to work but the aggregate need was so limited that the direction proved a cul-de-sac.

The command prompt (with long file names, left) and the PowerShell prompt (right).  Both use the classic $p$g configuration.

The prompt didn’t however go away and in one form or another most OSs include one, Microsoft’s PowerShell (introduced in 2006 on Windows and ported to cross-platform compatibility within .NET in 2016) in its default configuration almost identical to that of the IBM-PC-1, all those years ago.  PowerShell included an enhanced list of commands but the earlier prompts were also not static and many options became available to customize the look, the list changing from release to release but a typical version included:

$Q (equal sign).
$$ $ (dollar sign).
$T (Current time).
$D (Current date).
$P (Current drive and path).
$V (OS version number).
$N (Current drive).
$G> (greater than sign).
$L & (less than sign).
$B| (pipe).
$E (Escape code (ASCII code 27)).
$_ (Carriage return and line feed).

Few actually customized their line beyond $P$G (so they would know the active sub-directory and that became the default with which most versions of PC/MS-DOS shipped) but $t $d$_$p$g had its followers (its displayed the time and the date above the prompt when in DOS.  Those for who aesthetics mattered could even set text and background colors and there were some genuinely nostalgic types who liked to emulate the bright orange or acid green screens they remembered from the world of the mainframes.  Most pleasing though was probably bright blue on black.

Prompt was one of the finalists for the Oxford University Press (OUP) 2023 Word Of The Year (WotY) although it didn’t make the cut for the shortlist.  Prompt was there not because the selection committee noted either a new international interest in punctuality or Microsoft’s PowerShell convincing a new generation to start enjoying a CLI (command-line interpreter) but because of the social and technological phenononom that is generative AI (artificial intelligence), the best-known of which is ChatGPT.  Of course, even those who weren’t dedicated command-line jockeys have for decades been interacting with the prompts of search engines but the influence of generative AI has been extraordinary and nudging “prompt” to OUP’s WotY finals is just a footnote, the editors noting even the emergence of a new job description: prompt engineer although, given the implications of generative AI, it might be a short-lived profession.  OUP also explained the expansion of meaning was a development of a wider sense: “Something said or done to aid the memory; a reminder” and that the earlier sense “prepared, ready” was long extinct although many clearly think of ChatGPT in this way.

Prompt would have been a worthy WotY and it’ll be with us for the foreseeable future, not something guaranteed for the winner: “Rizz”.  In its explanatory note, OUP sid rizz was “a popular Gen Z internet slang term”, a shortened form of the word “charisma”, used to describe someone’s ability to attract another person through style or charm, able also to be used as a verb (such as to “rizz up”, meaning to attract or chat up another person.  Rizz has about it the whiff of something which may quickly become cheugy (something once cool which became uncool by becoming too widely used by those who will never be cool) and the imprimatur of OUP’s WotY might be a nail in its coffin.  Time will tell but additionally, rizz is probably better click-bait than prompt, something to which even OUP's editors probably aren’t immune.  The other six finalists were:

Situationship: This describes a relationship (which may be sexual or romantic or neither) not thought (by the participants) formal or established (ie outside what are regarded as society’s conventions).  So, the state of relationship it describes in hardly new but it’s a clever use of language (the construct a portmanteau of situation + (relation)ship and it seems to have existed since around 2008-2011 (the sources differ) but its only recently that the use on social media and various dating apps and television shows that it’s achieved critical mass.

The anyway statuesque Taylor Swift, adding to the effect in 6 inch (150 mm) heels.

Swiftie: A (devoted / enthusiastic / obsessive etc) fan of the singer Taylor Swift (b 1989).  It was once pop culture orthodoxy that the particular conjunction of technological, demographic, economic and social conditions which were unique to the Western world in the 1960s meant what was described as the “claustrophobic hothouse” which produced “Beatlemania” couldn’t again happen.  While various pop-culture figures developed fan-bases which picked up descriptors (such as the “Dead Heads” associated with the Grateful Dead), the particular fanaticism surrounding the Beatles has never quite been replicated.  The Swifties however are said in devotion to go close and their numbers probably greater, Taylor Swift’s appeal truly cross-cultural and international; probably only the Ayatollahs and such are unmoved.  Etymologically, “Swiftie” is a conventional affectionate diminutive and among Swifties there are factions including die-hard Swifties, hardcore Swifties and self-proclaimed Swifties.  Someone a little ashamed of their fondness would presumably be a “confessed Swiftie” but none appear to exist and her appeal seems to transcend the usual pop-music boundaries.  Her songs are said to be "infectiously catchy" (a pleonasm she'd probably not allow in her lyrics).

Beige flag: Beige flag has a range and can be a trait which while not something distasteful or shocking, is of a nature which makes one pause and perhaps reconsider one’s relationship with whoever exhibits it.  It can be something which does little more than indicate the person isn’t interesting and is thus a adaptation of “red flag” which is something to which the only rational reaction is an immediate sundering of a relationship.  So a red flag might be being a Scientologist, a Freemason or listening to country & western music whereas a beige flag might be driving a front wheel drive car; undesirable but perhaps not a deal-breaker.  It can also mean something which suggests someone is just not interesting though not actually evil.  Of late however, the meaning of beige flag has shifted, thus it’s making OUP’s list of finalists.  Now, it appears to be used to reference traits which can be thought “neutral” and it’s been further adapted to cover those situations or objects which cause one briefly to pause, before moving on and probably forgetting what they’ve just seen.  It just wasn’t interesting.

Lindsay Lohan, de-influencing.

De-influencing: De-influencing is one which will probably annoy the pedants.  In the social media era, the word influencer has come to mean “someone who seeks to influence the consumption, lifestyle, political behavior etc of their online audience by the creation of social media content, often as a part of a marketing campaign”.  A de-influencer is “someone who attempts to discourage consumption of particular products or consumption in general using the same platforms”.  So the de-influencers are the latest in the long tradition of anti-materialists who have existed at least since Antiquity, whole schools of philosophy sometimes constructed around their thoughts.  There’s said to be a discernible increase in their presence on the socials and many are linked also the various movements concerned with environmental concerns, notably climate change.  The pedants will object because the de-influencers are of course trying to exert influence but OUP are right to note the trend and the associated word.

Heat dome: A heat dome is a persistent high-pressure weather system over a particular geographic area, which traps a mass of hot air below it.  The weather phenomenon, the physics of which have for decades been understood by climate modelers and meteorologists, suddenly entered general in the high (northern) summer of 2023 when much of the northern hemisphere suffered from prolonged, unusually high temperatures, July measured as the hottest month ever recorded.  Under a heat dome, the atmospheric pressure aloft prevents the hot air from rising and dissipating, effectively acting as a lid or cap over the area, thus the image of a dome sitting over the land and they create their own feedback loop: Static areas of high pressure (which already contain warm or hot air trapped under the high) will become hotter and hotter, creating a heat dome.  Hot air will rise into the atmosphere, but high pressure acts as a lid and causes the air to subside or sink; as the air sinks, it warms by compression, and the heat builds. The ground also warms, losing moisture and making it easier to heat even more.  This is climate change in action and heat dome may well become as common an expression as “cyclone” or “hurricane”.

The UK's Royal Meteorological Service's simple illustration of the physics of a heat dome.  Heat domes are also their own feedback loop.  A static areas of high pressure which already contains warm or hot air trapped under the high will become hotter and hotter, creating a heat dome.  Hot air will rise into the atmosphere, but high pressure acts as a lid and causes the air to subside or sink; as the air sinks, it warms by compression, and the heat builds. The ground also warms, losing moisture and making it easier to heat even more.

Parasocial: The adjective parasocial designates a relationship characterized by the one-sided, unreciprocated sense of intimacy felt by a viewer, fan, or follower for a well-known or prominent figure (typically a pop-culture celebrity), in which the follower or fan comes to feel something similar to knowing the celebrity as they might an actual friend.  The parasocial is really a variation of fictosexual (an identity for someone for whom the primary form of sexual attraction is fictional characters) in that the pop-culture celebrity is also an at least partially fictional construct and the relationship is just as remote.  It’s almost irrelevant that one is flesh & blood and parasocial relationships do have certain advantages in that never having to have actual contact, one can never be rejected.  What appears most to have interested OUP is the idea that our relationship with celebrity culture is changing to something more intimate, presumably because the medium is the cell phone (mobile), increasingly our most personally intimate possession.

When one attempts transform a parasocial relationship into something conventional, one sometimes becomes a stalker.

Dunbar

Dunbar (pronounced duhn-bahr)

(1) A proper noun (given and surnames, town & locality names et al).

(2) As Dunbar's number, a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships (those in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person).

Pre 1100: From a Boernician family in ancient Scotland who are the ancestors of those who first used the name Dunbar. They lived in the barony of Dunbar on the North Sea coast near Edinburgh. The construct of the place name is from the Gaelic dùn (a fort) + barr (top; summit).  The surname Dunbar was created by the eleventh century barony of Dunbar in the Lothians, created when Cospatrick fled to Scotland after being deprived of his Earldom of Northumberland by William the Conqueror.

Dunbar’s Number

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar (b 1947) explored the idea there might be a relationship between brain size and social group size through his studies of non-human primates.  This ratio was mapped using neuroimaging and the observation of time devoted to important social behaviour among primates.  Dunbar concluded that the size (relative to body mass) of the neocortex (the part of the brain associated with cognition and language) is linked to the size of a cohesive social group.  This ratio is a measure of the complexity a social system can handle.

Using this mathematical model, Dunbar applied the principle to humans, examining historical, anthropological and contemporary psychological data about group sizes, including how big groups get before they fragment, split off or collapse, finding a remarkable consistency around the number one-hundred and fifty (150).  The 150 number appears to apply to early hunter-gatherer societies and an array of more modern formations: offices, communes, factories, residential campsites, military organisations, medieval English villages and even Christmas card lists.  Where the number exceeds 150, network cohesion reduces.

Others have done research in this area and their theories tend to suggest the tightest circle has just 5 (loved ones) followed by successive layers of 15 (close friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (those you can recognise).  People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.  Dunbar offered no suggestion why these layers exist in multiples of five, but noted it did seem fundamental to monkeys and apes and most research indicated this was replicated in human relationships.  Dunbar’s 150 number is contested within the discipline although most in the field concur there probably is a Dunbarian number.  However, reducing it to a mean value may not be a helpful model of social interaction because connections aren’t normally distributed (shaped like a bell curve), a few people with massive or tiny numbers of contacts tending to distort the result.  There are also critiques on methodological grounds. Primates’ brain sizes are influenced by other aspects besides social complexity and social capacity can be stretched in different cultural settings, especially with the advent of newer technologies.

There are friends and there are followers and there is no such thing as a Dunbar number for followers; one can certainly suffer a surplus of "friends" but one can never have too many "followers".

People had friends before there was Facebook but the platform’s use of “friends” as the original prime identifier of a linkage with another did annoy those who thought “acquaintances” should have been offered as an alternative and had Facebook’s founders known what was to come, they might have done things a little differently.  However, because of Facebook’s origins as a parochial system peculiar to a single educational institution, the use of “friend” at the time certainly reflected the purpose and the approach was little difference to the other embryonic social media platforms early in the twenty-first century.  Once deconstructed, the structural similarities between Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, hi5 and MySpace were quite striking but Facebook flourished and the others did not.  There were many reasons for this but Facebook certainly benefited from learning from the mistakes of those who came first and their product offered a better experience for users who clearly preferred ease of navigation and simplicity of use compared to extensive (and not always intuitive) configurability.  Having a large group of Harvard University students as a beta test group proved invaluable and unlike others, what Facebook had from day one of its general release was a product which was inherently global and scalable.

Had the evolution of the socials been predictable, Facebook might well from the start have had “customers” and “acquaintances” as well as “friends” and it probably would also have allowed the addition of “followers”, now one of the core measures in the ecosystem.  The difference between “friends” and “followers” is that friends are presumed to enjoy a mutual connection and the establishment of the relationship needs mutual consent while followers may attach themselves of their own volition; friends are thus symmetrical, followers inherently an asymmetric concept although it’s known many Facebook accounts have friend counts which suggest the user is accumulating them essentially as followers.

“Friend” has before been used in novel (frankly Orwellian) ways.  The head of the Nazi SS (the Schutzstaffel (protection squad), a paramilitary formation which became an economic empire and in wartime eventually morphed into a parallel army close to a million-strong), Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945), also coordinated an interesting aggregation of individuals and institutions styled the Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS (Circle of Friends of the Reichsführer SS (FRFSS)).  The origins of the FRFSS lay in the Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft (Circle of Friends of the Economy), a kind of combination of think tank and slush fund, the money provided by those in industry or the finance sector who either wished to support the party or anticipated them gaining power and wished to be on the winning side.  Himmler’s power grew during the 1930s but many of his grand designs (a good number of them crackpot schemes) hadn’t proceeded beyond the planning stage because of a lack of funds, the resources of the state directed primarily towards re-armament.  In re-constituting the Circle of Friends of the Economy as the FRFSS, funds became available on the basis of mutual interest, Himmler as the coordinator of repression in the Nazi state able to use the SS to deliver cheap labor (mostly from concentration camps) in exchange for the money and technical assistance he needed to build the economic enterprises he intended to create to make the SS independent of the state.  In this hunt he faced some competition from others, notably Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) who led an expensive lifestyle as well as needing money for his industrial empire.  Himmler’s Dunbar number has never been certain but it’s believed the number of friends in the FRFSS never exceeded a few dozen.