Frivol

Frivol (pronounced friv-uhl)

(1) An unserious person.

(2) An idle diversion or pastime; a frivolity.

(3) To behave frivolously; to trifle; to squander time; to waste on frivolous pursuits (historically followed by away).

(4) To spend money frivolously (historically followed by away).

1865–1870: A back formation from frivolous, from the French frivole, from the Latin frīvolus (trifling, worthless).  The word exists in Romanian where it’s used in the same sense as in English but in German there’s been a meaning shift and it’s now an adjective meaning saucy; sleazy; ribald (sexual in a frivolous way), the comparative being frivoler and the superlative am frivolsten (in the matter of frivolous sex, the Germans have grades).  The adjective frivolous emerged in the mid-fifteenth century, from the Latin frivolus (silly, empty, trifling, worthless), a diminutive of frivos (broken, crumbled), from friare (break, rub away, crumble).  In courts of law, frivolous was in use by the mid- 1730s to describe arguments (or entire cases) as “so clearly insufficient as to need no argument to show its weakness”.  The related forms were the adverb frivolously and the nouns frivolousness & frivolity.  Dating from the 1790s, frivolity was from the French frivolité, from the Old French frivole (frivolous), from the Latin frivolus.  Frivol is a noun & verb, frivoler (also frivoller) is a noun, frivoled (also frivolled) & frivoling (also frivolled) are verbs; the noun plural is frivols.  Frivol is all contexts is now rare (some sources suggest it is extinct) which is interesting because in English there’s usually a tendency for a short form to prevail over the long; for whatever reason frivolous & frivolity flourished and frivol floundered.

Of the frivolous and the vexatious

In legal proceedings, “frivolous” & “vexatious” are terms used to describe certain classes of argument or even an entire case.  An action or claim is labeled frivolous when it self-evidently lacks any merit or basis in law and has no reasonable prospect of success.  An action or a litigant is labeled as vexatious when they engage in persistent, repetitive, or burdensome litigation, often with the primary goal of annoying, harassing, or frustrating the opposing party.  Like the frivolous, a vexatious action is often one with little prospect of success but is characterized by a pattern of behavior rather than the lack of merit in a specific claim and the phrase “abuse of process” is often used in conjunction with “vexatious”.  If a litigant is found repeatedly to commence such actions, courts sometimes declare them a “vexatious litigant” and intervene to prevent them filing new suits without the permission of the court.  The terms “serial litigant” is also sometime used in this context but the courts will not move against a party simply on the basis of the frequency with which actions are brought; provided a actions are on sound legal grounds and have a reasonable prospect of success, as a general principle, there is no limit on their number.

Courts do act more harshly against the vexatious than the frivolous because the former (often involving the legal system in repetitive and burdensome litigation) are being used as a weapon, sometimes as devices to harass or annoy and sometimes as a way of attempting to cause the other party to have to spend so much in legal fees that they will discontinue the case.  Each matter is dealt with on its merits but courts can impose sanctions on both litigants and counsel; it’s not unusual for litigants declared vexatious to be self-represented because no lawyer will agree to run the action.  Although there can be nuances, a case is frivolous if it has no reasonable chance of succeeding, and is vexatious if the court finds it would be unreasonable to ask the other party to defend the matter.  Lindsay Lohan went through a “serial litigant” phase and the makers of GTA were not the only plaintiffs to suggest she was running frivolous cases, the accusation usually that the legal proceedings were being commenced only to seek publicity:

Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018)

In a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court, Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed.  In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.

Beware of imitations: The real Lindsay Lohan and the GTA 5 ersatz, a mere "generic young woman".

Agreeing with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong".  The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey wrote in his ruling.  Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.

Lindsay Lohan v E-Trade Securities LLC, New York State Supreme Court, Nassau County, No. 004579/2010

In 2010, one of Lindsay Lohan’s more unusual forays into litigation was settled prior to reaching trial.  In the Supreme Court of New York, Ms Lohan had filed suit for US$100 million against online investment site E-Trade, in connection with their Super Bowl ad featuring a "milkaholic" baby girl named Lindsay.  The claim was based on the allegation the commercial was mocking her on the basis of some drug and alcohol related matters which had involved the police, saying the work additionally improperly invoked her “likeness, name, characterization, and personality” without permission, violating her right of privacy.  In the statement of claim, the actress sought US$50 million in compensatory damages and US$50 million in exemplary damages as well as demanding E-Trade cease and desist running the commercial and turn over all copies to her.  One interesting technical legal point raised was that Ms Lohan enjoyed the same “single-name” recognition as celebrities such as talk-show host Oprah (Winfrey) or the singer Madonna (Ciccone).

The E-Trade commercial had been broadcast during the Super Bowl on 7 February 2010 as part of a series built around the theme “babies who play the markets”, and attracted an audience of around 106 ½ million viewers in the US market, then a record number.  E-Trade filed a statement of defense in which it said the claims were “without merit”, and that Lindsay Lohan wasn’t the world's only Lindsay, noting Lindsay was in 2008 the 380th most popular name for new-born American girls, down somewhat from 241th in 2004 when Mean Girls was released.  Grey Group, the advertising agency which produced the commercial later added the “milkaholic Lindsay” was named after a member of its account team although this apparently wasn’t added to the statement of defense.  The plaintiffs did raise the matter of dismissal as frivolous but the judge said the matters raised were "potentially legally substantive" and allowed the case to proceed.  After some months, a settlement was reached between the parties, both sides bound by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Pitbull (Armando Christian Pérez, b 1981).

Another of Lindsay Lohan's forays into litigation did however give a judge the opportunity to discuss the parameters a court works with when deciding whether an argument can be ruled "frivolous".  In 2011 she sued hip hop artist Pitbull over the lyrics in his song Give Me Everything, which included the line: So, I’m toptoein’, to keep flowin’, I got it locked up, like Lindsay Lohan.  Ms Lohan cited the lyric as a violation of her publicity and publicity rights which caused her emotional distress, claiming the lyrics “includes an unwarranted, unauthorized, and unfavorable mention of [her] name and personality, and allusions to her physical and mental character.”  The judge dismissed on technical grounds the claim made under New York Civil Rights law, adding that the First Amendment anyway affords full protection.  What was more interesting was the discussion of the argument the song was commercial rather than expressive in nature, the judge ruling that even if the work was created for the purpose of “making a profit”, that does not mean her name was “used for advertising or purposes of trade within the meaning of the New York law“ and that, on the facts of this case, even if that were proved, the “isolated nature of the use of her name” (just one line in the song) would “prove fatal” to the claims.  Putbull’s counsel indicated they wished to have the court sanction Ms Lohan for filing a frivolous lawsuit (an abuse of process) but the judge, noting the paucity of case law in this field, said the lack of precedent meant there was no clear indication the case would be doomed and the claim was therefore not so frivolous as to warrant the imposition of a sanction.  Lindsay Lohan thus remained free to litigate, which she did.

Spandex

Spandex (pronounced span-deks)

(1) A synthetic fibre composed of a long-chain polymer, used chiefly in the manufacture of garments to enhance their elasticity.

(2) Something made from the material (usually clothing).

1959: Spandex was coined as an anagram of the word expands, an allusion to the synthetic fibre's exceptional properties of elasticity and is a polyether-polyurea copolymer invented by an industrial chemist at DuPont.  Spandex is the preferred name in North America.  In continental Europe it’s known by variants of elastane (élasthanne (France), elastan (Germany & Sweden), elastano (Spain), elastam (Italy) and elastaan (Netherlands).  In the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Israel, it’s described usually as Lycra and the generic term is elastane (which tends to be restricted to technical use).  The acronym MAMIL stands for "middle-aged man in lycra" and is usually applied to men of a certain age who have taken up cycling.  Spandex is a noun; the noun plural is spandexes.

Lycra and Spandex

The Australian mamil in his natural habitat: Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime Minister of Australia 2013-2015) wearing Spandex (which, being Australian, he would call lycra).

Spandex and Lycra are the same material.  The Dupont Company registered Lycra as a tradename for a Spandex fibre thread because their marketing people thought a word like Spandex (coined by an industrial chemist) wouldn’t appeal to the female demographic at which many of the products were aimed and there is some genuine science in the deconstruction of words adopted or created for trademarks to use as product names.  It surprised some when one Microsoft revealed his regret at the use of the name "Windows NT" in 1993 because subsequent research had discovered "N" & "T" were perceived as two of the "weakest letters".  Now we know there are "weak" & "strong" letters in the alphabet and, impressionistically, the car manufacturers certainly seem to tend to favor some letters (A,C,D,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,O,R,S,T,V,X,Z) and avoid others (B,H,M,N,P,Q,U,W,Y).  NT actually stood for "New Technology", applying to software the tradition IBM had established in hardware by calling successive generations of the personal computer (PC) architecture XT (eXtended Technology) & AT (Advanced Technology).  Microsoft retired NT and it may be assumed "X" & "P" (the fondly remembered Windows XP debuted in 2001) must be "strong" letters although apart from the unhappy experiences with "Millennium" & "Vista", the post-NT Microsoft has stuck mostly to numeric strings.  Dupont attached the trademark to a newly created subsidiary company called Invista but it was later sold to another corporation.  Spandex and Lycra are thus the same material, Spandex being a generic term to describe the cloth whereas Lycra is a brand name for a range of Spandex products manufactured, marketed or licenced by Invista.  In Australia, Middle-Aged Men In Lycra, usually on their bicycles, are known as Mamils.  The sight can disturb some.

Spandex fibres under an electron microscope.

Spandex is a lightweight synthetic fibre which gains its quality of exceptional elasticity from its long-chain polymers named polyurethane and is made by combining polyester with a diisocyanate.  The fibres can be stretched to almost five times their original length and has the characteristic of an elastomer, a material which, after being stretched, returns to its original shape.  Invented in 1958 by DuPont, Spandex was one of the many products of post-war US industry with origins in the research effort undertaken into artificial rubber in the early 1940s.  Even before the supply of natural rubber was disrupted in the early days of World War II (1939-1945) some of the basic research involved the creation of strong, elastic synthetic polymers and the first polyurethane elastomers were produced in 1940.  After the war, the chemical industries in both Germany and the US continued polymer development and a spandex-like fibre was patented in Germany in 1952 but it was Dupont in 1958 which invented the process of synthesis suitable for mass-production and it was this which became Spandex, commercially released in 1962.

Lindsay Lohan in Spandex, promotional poster for Machete (2010).  The gun is an IMI Uzi.

One of many rapid-firing guns named after its designer (Uziel "Uzi" Gal (1923–2002)), the Israeli-made Uzi was first issued to military special forces in 1952, becoming a general-issue weapon in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1954.  Originally classified as a light-machine gun, it's now usually listed as a machine pistol and has for decades been one of the most widely used weapons of its type, said (officially) to have been exported to 103 countries.  The first releases used exclusively a 25 round magazine and 9mm cartridges but a capacity of 32 was later standardised.  Variants of the 9mm shell remain the most popular load but conversions are available for other calibres including the .45 ACP and the .22 LR (Rifle).

Senator Jane Hume who admits wearing lycra.

In June 2024, Lycra received a mention in a most improbable forum: Senate estimates.  Senate estimates are hearings conducted by the Australian Senate (the federal upper house) during which senators scrutinise government expenditure, the name “estimates” used because what is examined is (1) how much money the government estimates it will collect and (2) how it claims to be planning to spend it all.  The charm of the estimates process is that senators can question ministers, public servants and other officials about the work of the government and although politicians are adept at avoiding telling the truth, the employees are less skilled so interesting facts sometimes emerge and the rules under which the hearings are conducted are determined by the senators and not the government (a ruling party enjoying a majority in the Senate is rare) so there’s a wide scope for lines of questioning to be pursued.

Joseph Longo who denies wearing lycra.

Lycra got a mention when Joseph Longo (b 1958; ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission, the successor to the old NCSC (National Companies & Securities Commission) chair since 2021) sat before the senators.  His appearance moved Senator Jane Hume (b 1971; senator for Victoria (Liberal) since 2016) to remark: “I feel this is very awkward, every time I see Mr Longo now it seems to be at the gym on Saturday mornings.  So I apologise for the lycra.”  There was some ambiguity in the last sentence which prompted someone to ask: “His or yours?”  Senator Hume clarified things by responding: “Less worthy men have seen me in far less.” and to set minds at rest Mr Longo added: “I want to reassure the committee that I will never be seen in lycra.”  Unfortunately, things ended with the senator saying: “Sorry, I forgot myself for a moment.” before turning to matters related to government expenditure.  Strictly speaking: “Men less worthy have seen me in far less.” would have been better but as a spur-of-the-moment thing, it was pretty good.

Agathokakological

Agathokakological (pronounced ag-uh-thuh-kak-loj-uh-kuhl)

Composed of both good and evil.

1834: The construct was the Greek ἀγαθός (agathós) (good) + κακός (kakós) (bad) + logical.  Agathós was from the Proto-Hellenic əgathós, possibly from the primitive Indo-European m̥ǵhdhós (made great; whose deeds are great), the construct being méǵhs (great) + dheh- (do) + -ós (the Latin magnificus was from the same roots) although there are etymologists who discount and Indo-European connection and suggest it was a borrowing from some Pre-Greek source.  The source of kakka- & kaka- is unknown but there may be some connection with the primitive Indo-European root kakka- & kaka- (to defecate) and it may be compared with the Phrygian κακον (kakon) (harm) and Albanian keq (bad).  Again, there are etymologists who prefer a Pre-Greek origin.  In English slang, to be “cack handed” (cackhandedly & cackhandedness the related forms) describes someone clumsy, someone prone to dropping or breaking things.  The association was with the Old English cack (excrement; dung) and in Old English a cachus was a privy (toilet), both from the Latin cacare (to defecate).  Apparently, the ultimate origin or cack-handed was from the ancient practice (developed among people who were of course mostly right-handed), that the left hand should be reserved for cleaning oneself after defecation, the right used for all other purposes (something related to the significance of shaking hands with the right).  It’s from kakka- & kaka- that poppycock, kakistocracy, cacophony, cacology and cacography are derived.

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

The suffix -logical was used to form adjectival forms of nouns ending in –logy although few terms are directly derived using this suffix. Terms ending in logical are often derived from words formed in other languages or by suffixing -ical to a word ending in logy (biological = biology + -ical; genealogical = genealogy + -ical).  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).  The -al suffix was from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjectival suffix -ālis, ((the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) or the French, Middle French and Old French –el & -al.  It was use to denote the sense "of or pertaining to", an adjectival suffix appended (most often to nouns) originally most frequently to words of Latin origin, but since used variously and also was used to form nouns, especially of verbal action.  The alternative form in English remains -ual (-all being obsolete).

As far as is known, “agathokakological” was coined by the English Romantic poet Robert Southey (1774–1843), noted for his introduction into English of many novel forms, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) listing him as the earliest known author of some 400 words.  Few have survived except as linguistic curiosities in the many lists of such things the internet has encouraged many to compile.  In The Doctor (1834), Southey included the passage: “For indeed upon the agathokakological globe there are opposite qualities always to be found.” but it suffers from being as unwieldy a way of saying “composed of both good and evil” as his epistolization was of “letter writing” and batrachophagous of frog-eating.  Although the latter usefully existed to distinguish between those who enjoyed the delicacy cuisses de grenouilles (frog legs) and those who digested the whole unfortunate amphibian, it never caught on.  He is though credited for being the first writer in English to use the word “zombie” (he use the Haitian French speeling zombi) when it appeared in his essay History of Brazil (1819) and one sadly neglected creation remains futilitarian (a person devoted to futility) which would seem to be crying out for wider use.

1974 Triumph Stag in magenta.

Agathokakological is an adjective, the comparative being “more agathokakological” and the superlative “most agathokakological”.  To be “most agathokakological” presumably implies something like “most polarized” in that one’s qualities of good and bad are especially exaggerated.  That presumably would be the understanding of psychiatrists who would regard agathokakological as a synopsis of the human condition and a spectrum condition, some individuals containing more good than others, others more bad.  Engineers would also be familiar with the concept, few machines being either perfect or so flawed as to be useless, most a mix of virtues and vices, the Triumph Stag a classic example and one which probably moved some owners to recall Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s (1807–1882) poem There was a little girl:

There was a little girl,
And she had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.

Aesthete

Aesthete (pronounced es-theet or ees-theet (especially British))

(1) A person who has or professes to have refined sensitivity toward the beauties of art or nature.

(2) A person who affects great love of art, music, poetry, etc and indifference to practical matters.

1880–1885: From the Ancient Greek αἰσθητής (aisthētḗs) (one who perceives), the construct being aisthē- (variant stem of aisthánesthai (to perceive)) + -tēs (the Greek noun suffix denoting agent).  It was a Victorian back formation from aesthetics, from either the German Ästhetik or the French esthétique, both from Ancient Greek αἰσθητικός (aisthētikós) (of sense perception), from αἰσθάνομαι (aisthánomai) (I feel).  There is probably no exact synonym, the closet being connoisseur but it conveys a slightly different implication and the derived noun hyperaesthete is used sometimes as a term of derision directed at the excessively civilized.  The rarely used alternative spellings esthete & æsthete are now used only as literary devices and are otherwise obsolete.  Aesthete is a noun and aesthetic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is aesthetes.

Aestheticism

View of Amalfi (1844), pencil, ink & water colour by noted aesthete John Ruskin (1819-1900).

Aestheticism was a nineteenth century movement in European art now best remembered for the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, with no need for it to serve any political, didactic or other purpose.  The modern expression most associated with the movement is l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake).  The movement is held to have been a reaction to the prevailing utilitarian social philosophies and what was said to be the ugliness of the industrial age and the philistinism of the newly prominent mercantile class.   Its philosophical framework was built in the eighteenth century by German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who argued for the autonomy of aesthetic standards, set apart from considerations of morality, utility or pleasure.  The idea attracted many including Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and it was the French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792–1867) who, in 1818, coined the phrase l’art pour l’art.  It was at the time controversial.  The establishment regarded art and literature as part of the ethical and social construct, something certainly challenged by what seemed a decadent display of sensuality and a flaunting of sexual and political experimentation.  The phrase art for art’s sake became identified with the energy and creativity of aestheticism but was adopted also by those who feared the implications of a decoupling of art and morality: that the dangerous ideas of art could infect politics and challenge the social order.

Aesthete is now rare and the more familiar related form is the noun & adjective aesthetic (1) concerned with beauty, artistic effect, or appearance; appealing to one's sense of beauty or art & (2) the study of art or beauty; that which appeals to the senses; the artistic motifs defining a collection of things.

Deipnosophist

Deipnosophist (pronounced dahyp-nos-uh-fist)

Someone noted for their sparkling dinner-table conversation.

1650–1660: From the Ancient Greek Δειπνοσοφισταί (Deipnosophistaí), the title of a literary work in fifteen volumes (translated usually as something like “philosophers at their dinner table”) by the third century scholar Athenaeus of Naucratis, describing learned discussions at a banquet, the construct being δειπνο- (deipno-) (meal) + σοφιστής (sophistḗs).  The plural of sophistḗs was sophistaí and the sense used by Athenaeus was one of “wise men knowledgeable in matters of art & science”.  The now obsolete alternative spelling was dipnosophist.  Deipnosophist, deipnosophistry & deipnosophy are nouns; the noun plural is diepnosophists.  Tempting though they are, forms such as deipnosophistically and deipnosophising are non-standard.

Deipnosophistry in practice: Lindsay Lohan at the Fox News table, White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner, Washington DC, 2012.  At the annual event, there is much table talk.

Scholars of Antiquity regard the Deipnosophistaí as a conceptual work encompassing the aspects of life most interesting to the elites of society and these included matters of gastronomy, philosophy, music, literature, women and fine points of grammar.  Structurally, the approach of Athenaeus would have been familiar to twentieth century modernists, the fifteen volumes absorbed by an account of the discussions which transpired during a banquet given by a rich man and attended by two-dozen of those he thought possessed knowledge and conversational skills sufficiently sparkling to be worthy of an invitation; “chaps with some background” as it were.  As a literary (and didactic) technique, this approach was known from Plato’s (circa 427-348 BC) Dialogues but the Deipnosophistaí is a sprawling work and the author made no attempt to disguise the use of the format as a device to explore an extraordinary range of ideas and concepts; he did not claim to be writing a transcript.  Because a substantial part of the text was devoted to the cooking and serving of fine food, in the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries, the noun deipnosophist was used also as learned synonym of gourmand and not always in a complimentary way, the English viewing ornate, stylized food as “something continental” and therefore suspicious and the word “sophist” was similarly suspect, used often in the pejorative sense of someone “silver tongued” rather than simple and sincere.

So the Deipnosophistaí was a kind of idealized conversation of the kind only something scripted (and thus artificial) can be.  However, even the most reliable of verbatim transcripts erroneously can convey the impression that what’s been recorded are the words of a deipnosophist because even if annotated, much is missed: the pauses, the volume, the inflections and changes in tone of the voice and perhaps especially the little variations which mean a passage of conversations could have been delivered with confidence of diffidence.  The case study is the distance between conversational reality and the impression which can be left when published in transcript is Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Hitler's Table Talk), a series of what were presented as monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) between 1941-1944, mostly over the dinners held in the two Führerhauptquartiere (Führer Headquarters), the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) in what was then East Prussia (present-day Poland) and Werwolf (Werewolf) in the Ukraine.  Because of Hitler’s pattern of life (which became more extreme as the military situation deteriorated), the dinners could be held at any hour and not infrequently extended to the early morning.

Published in several languages between 1953-1954, the transcripts have extensively been studied and while the consensus has always been that while there’s no evidence of any great inaccuracy in terms of what was said (except for some of the material about Christianity which does appear to have been somewhat “embellished” by Martin Bormann (1900–1945; Hitler’s secretary 1941-1945) who hated the churches and the Jews with almost equal vehemence), just about all historians have observed that based on the reports of those who were actually at these meals and listened, a casual reader would gain entirely the wrong impression.  For one thing, what is missing is the repetition.  Hitler had a number of what were really set-piece speeches which for some twenty years he returned to on these occasions, the topics including vegetarianism, his dislike of smoking, the making of artificial honey, the relative merits of various styles of architecture and the history of opera.  For occasional visitors or someone new, the experience of listening to these banalities may have been pleasant enough but many of the regulars interviewed after the war recounted their boredom at the repetition, something noted especially by the military and secretarial staff who listened to the “script” dozens or even hundreds of times; many knew the words off by heart.  So a deipnosophist can’t be judged by words alone, even if recorded verbatim and nor is an audio tape of necessity any better because obviously the visual clues which lend so much to meaning are lost.

Fedora

Fedora (pronounced fi-dawr-uh or fed-dohr-uh)

A soft felt or velvet hat with a curled medium-brim, usually with a band and worn with the crown creased lengthwise.

1887: An invention of American English, from Fédora, an 1882 play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), the protagonist of which was the Russian princess Fédora Romanoff, played originally by Sarah Bernhardt.  Bernhardt, a noted cross-dresser, wore a center-creased, soft brimmed hat which was adopted by feminists of the age, then known as women's-rights activists.  The name comes from the Russian Федо́ра (Fedóra), feminine form of Фёдор (Fjódor), from the Ancient Greek Θεόδωρος (Theódōros) (gift of god), derived from θεός (theós) (god) and δῶρον (dôron) (gift).  The ultimate root was the Indo-European dhes- (forming words for religious concepts) + dōron (gift) from do- (to give)).

In the Western world, between the demise of the top hat after the First World War and the abandonment of hats in the 1960s, three variations on a theme, the Fedora, the Trilby and the Homburg vied for choice as men’s headgear, all popular in a way the bowler hat never was.  Fedoras used to be made mostly from wool, cashmere, rabbit or beaver felt, some of the more expensive varieties blended with mink or chinchilla (and rarely mohair, vicuña, guanaco or cervelt).  After enjoying a 1990s revival, they came to be made from any available material, including modern synthetics.

The Trilby (left), Homburg (centre) and the Fedora (right).

The Fedora first became fashionable during the 1920s, displacing the less rakish Homburg (named after Homburg in Imperial-era Germany from where it originated as hunting headgear) although it was the similar, though narrow-brimmed, Trilby (also known in the UK as the “Brown Trilby”) which was said to be more popular with the rich.  The Trilby proved attractive to those often at the track, apparently because, with a narrow brim and one slightly turned up at the back, it made more convenient the carrying of a pair of binoculars.  The name Trilby was derived from a hat worn in the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's (1834-1896) 1894 novel Trilby.  Just another hat in most countries, it suffered by association in Germany because a black Trilby was the choice of most Gestapo officers.

Lindsay Lohan wearing Fedora with coat of unknown provenance, Chiltern Firehouse, London, 2014.

The Homburg did make a mid-century comeback after it became the choice of the UK's pre-war foreign secretary Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957).  The highly strung Eden was the most stylish politician of the age, although his sartorial elegance failed to impress the Duce, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) noting he had “…never met a better dressed fool.”  It was his colleague Rab Butler (1902–1982) who, noting the character of Eden's parents, reckoned genetics could explain why Eden was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman" and he understood that something as distinctive as a hat could convey a political message if the association was widely understood.  At the time when the great dividing line in British politics was the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940), Eden was replaced as foreign secretary by the pro-appeasement Lord Halifax (1881–1959; UK Foreign Secretary 1938-1940), Butler becoming his under-secretary.  One thing an under-secretary gets allocated is a parliamentary private secretary (PPS), a member of parliament (MP) keen to stake a claim to advancement and on his first day in the Foreign Office (FO), Butler took the PPS to a quiet corner and told him to discard his homburg since it was "too Edenesque" and to "buy a bowler", the hat almost always worn by Halifax.  The PPS had no great regard for Eden and had adopted the homburg merely because he liked the look but anyway took the advice, delighted to be unexpectedly appointed a FO PPS, noting in his diary "...just think, bowlers are back".

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).