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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Skeuomorph

Skeuomorph (pronounced skyoo-uh-mawrf)

(1) An ornament or design on an object that mimics the form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques, usually one that reflects a previously functional element.

(2) In digital technology. a design or design element, as an icon on a digital device, that mimics the three-dimensional look or the sound of a physical object, even if that object is obsolete.

1889: The construct was the Ancient Greek σκεῦος (skeûos) (implement, tool, vessel) + μορφή (morphḗ) (shape; form), modeled after the earlier zoomorph (resembling an animal) and phyllomorph (resembling a plant).  The suffix -morph was appended to words to denote “of or pertaining to shape or structure”.  Skeuomorph & skeuomorphism are nouns, skeuomorphic is an adjective and skeuomorphically is an adverb; the noun plural is skeuomorphs.

Magic Cap's start-up screen (1994).

The classic desktop metaphor, built with skeuomorphs, which was the start-up screen for the Magic Communicating Applications Platform (1994-2001 and commonly known as Magic Cap), an operating system for personal digital assistants (PDA) constructed wholly in the object oriented programming (OOP) model.  Loaded with good ideas and ahead of its time, Magic Cap failed because the planet's communication infrastructure was neither robust enough or sufficiently fast to realize the OS's possibilities.  Additionally, even as things evolved, there was never enough inter-operability with other systems and services which had achieved critical mass.

A skeuomorph is a design element in an object which mimics the design of a similar object made from another material or serving another function; it can thus be considered a derivative object which retains visual cues from the original object.  Quite when the idea emerged of the skeuomorph as something which consciously and deliberately “carries over” an earlier motif for some purpose beyond the functional is uncertain but in engineering and architecture, the technique pre-dates Antiquity.  Because architectural generations (expressed usually as eras or epochs) tend to extend over at least several human generations, what comes to be defined as “attractive” or “elegant” can become well-established but as technological advances make possible structures which are bigger, taller or able to be created with different materials or in different shapes, it had been common for motifs like familiar visual elements to be (explicitly or in detail) to be included in the new.  It softened the shock of the new.  In domestic architecture, this continues to this day, much to the disgust of architects who are appalled at the mash-up of influences which can appear in a McMansion (in which there will be chandeliers with electric bulbs emulating wax candles; a classic skeuomorph) but since modernity was delivered with the twentieth century, in big buildings and representational architecture, the shock of the new seems to have become the objective and skeuomorphs are regarded as sentimental or worse: bourgeois.

Instagram’s old skeuomorph (left) and the new flat logo (right).

In 2018 Instagram switched its logo from a skeuomorph UI to a flat UI.  It was a move which at the time surprised many because the retro brown and cream camera with a rainbow stripe (a nod to the Polaroid cameras which were such a symbol of the late twentieth century) had become instantly recognisable but the company insisted the new design reflected how the app had changed. When first released (as Burbn), the app was used almost exclusively for its photo filters and effects that lent digital images a “retro edge”, the dominant pattern of use then to use Instagram as handler to edit images which were then uploaded to a platform such as Facebook or X (then known as Twitter).  However, Instagram clicked with generation brought up on short-form content and static images and became suddenly a massive social phenomenon.  So, the logo changed because as the company put it: “We've been inspired by all the ways the community has grown and changed, and we wanted to create something that reflects how vibrant and diverse storytelling on Instagram has become”.  Exactly how all this was reflected in the new logo was neither immediately obvious nor expanded on by Instagram but the point probably was just that it was changed, the medium being the message.  In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for US$1 billion which now sounds a bargain but back then, a billion US$ was still a lot of money.

Skeuomorphs in action: The Lindsay Lohan Quiz for iOS.

In the more ephemeral world of screen icons, graphical user interfaces (GUI) and app design where the life of a design can be closer in duration to that of the premiership of Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister Sep-Oct 2022) than something like Westminster Abbey, skeuomorphs proved popular because instantly they could adopt symbols which were unambiguous and universally understood; the sense of continuity with the past really wasn’t important at all, the retro-look just amusing.  Although using a representation of an old-style rotary-dial telephone on a screen icons does sound paradoxical, it made sense because the symbol was internationally recognized whereas were an image of cell phone (mobile) to be used, it would not have worked as well because it could be easily confused with a calculator or some other rectangular device.  Equally, envelopes and mail-boxes were used where E-mail was involved because nothing else could possibly be so evocative of “mail”.

Among software designers, the dominant theme in the early skeuomorphs was to create panels with a 3D appearance to gain some resemblance to physical buttons.  This was at least partially because designers tend wherever possible to exploit to the maximum whatever is permitted by the medium which is their platform but it was also partly the persuasive utility of the skeuomorph itself.  The alternative approach was the “flat design” which deliberately avoided imitating real-world textures or objects, a paradigm inherited from a school of art and design which rejected the idea of one thing imitation another.  Imitation however thrived, thus smartphones have digital cameras which produce the audible sound of a mechanical shutter when a photograph is taken and note-taking apps may emulate the appearance (in 2D) of textured bond paper.  The trends come and go and no approach has ever seemed to be dominant, both motifs (and hybrid forms) peacefully co-existing, frequently on the one device although in recent years things do seem to have moved to the darker and more minimalist.