Autophagia

Autophagia (pronounced aw-tuh-fey-juh or aw-tuh-fey-jee-uh)

(1) In cytology, the process of self-digestion by a cell through the action of enzymes originating within the same cell (the controlled digestion of damaged organelles within a cell which is often a defensive and/or self-preservation measure and associated with the maintenance of bodily nutrition by the metabolic breakdown of some bodily tissues).

(2) In cytology, a type of programmed cell death accomplished through self-digestion (known also as apoptosis and associated with the maintenance of bodily nutrition by the metabolic breakdown of some bodily tissues).

(3) In psychiatry, self-consumption; the act of eating oneself.

The construct was auto- + -phagia.  The auto-prefix was a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek αὐτο- (auto-) (self-) (reflexive, regarding or to oneself (and most familiar in forms like autobiography)), from αὐτός (autós) (himself/herself/oneself), from either a construct of (1) the primitive Indo-European hew (again) + to- (that) or (2) the Ancient Greek reflexes of those words, αὖ (aû) (back, again, other) +‎ τόν (tón) (the) and related to Phrygian αυτος (autos), the existence of alternatives suggesting there may have been a common innovation.  Phagia was from the Ancient Greek -φαγία (-phagía) (and related to -φαγος (-phagos) (eater)), the suffix corresponding to φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat), the infinitive of ἔφαγον (éphagon) (I eat), which serves as aorist (A verb paradigm found in certain languages, usually an unmarked form or one that expresses the perfective or aorist aspect) for the defective verb ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat).  The alternative spelling is autophagal and the synonyms (sometimes used in non-specialist contexts) are self-consumption & auto-cannibalism.  Autophagia, autophagophore, autophagosome & autophagy are nouns, autophagically is an adverb, autophagocytotic is an adjective and autophagic is an adjective (and a non-standard noun); the noun plural is autophagies.

In cytology (in biology, the study of cells), autophagy is one aspect of evolutionary development, a self-preservation and life-extending mechanism in which damaged or dysfunctional parts of a cell are removed and used for cellular repair.  Internally, it’s thus beneficial, the removal or recycling of debris both efficient and (by this stage of evolutionary development) essential, most obviously because it removes toxins and “effectively “creates” younger cells from the old; it can thus be thought an anti-aging mechanism.  It something which has also interested cancer researchers because all cancers (as the word and the parameters of the disease(s) are defined) start from some sort of cell-defect and the speculation is it might be possible to in some way adapt the autophagic process, re-purposing it to identify and remove suspect cells.

In psychiatry, autophagia refers to the act of eating oneself which is sometimes described as self-consumption or the even more evocative auto-cannibalism.  Perhaps surprisingly, the behavior is not explicitly mentioned in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which of course means there are no published diagnostic criteria nor recommendations for treatments.  The DSM’s editors note there are a number of reasons why a specific behavior may not be included in the manual notably (1) the lack of substantial empirical evidence or research, (2) the rarity of cases and (3) the material to hand being unsuitable (in terms of volume or quality) for the development of practical tools for clinicians to diagnose and treat a disorders.

It would be flippant to suggest autophagia might have been included when the revisions in the fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5 (2013)) included a more systematic approach taken to eating disorders and as well as variable definitional criteria being defined for the range of behaviours within that general rubric, just about every other form of “unusual” consumption was listed including sharp objects (acuphagia), purified starch (amylophagia), burnt matches (cautopyreiophagia), dust (coniophagia), feces (coprophagia), sick (emetophagia), raw potatoes (geomelophagia), soil, clay or chalk (geophagia), glass (hyalophagia), stones (lithophagia), metal (metallophagia), musus (mucophagia), ice (pagophagia), lead (plumbophagia), hair, wool, and other fibres (trichophagia), urine (urophagia), blood (hematophagia (sometimes called vampirism)) and wood or derivates such as paper & cardboard (xylophagia).  The DSM-5 also codified the criteria for behaviour to be classified pica (a disorder characterized by craving and appetite for non-edible substances, such as ice, clay, chalk, dirt, or sand and named for the jay or magpie (pīca in Latin), based on the idea the birds will eat almost anything): they must (1) last beyond one (1) month beyond an age in infancy when eating such objects is not unusual, (2) not be culturally sanctioned practice and (3), in quantity or consequence, be of sufficient severity to demand clinical intervention.  However, pica encompassed only “non-nutritive substances” which of course one’s own body parts are not.

Finger food: Severed fingers are a popular menu item for Halloween parties; kids think they're great.  For those who like detail, those emulating nail polish seem to be following Dior shades 742 (top right) and 999 (bottom right). 

In the profession, autophagia seems to be regarded not as a progression from those who eat their fingernails or hair but something with more in common with the cutters.  Cutters are the best known example of self-harmers, the diagnosis of which is described in DSM as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).  NSSI is defined as the deliberate, self-inflicted destruction of body tissue without suicidal intent and for purposes not socially sanctioned; it includes behaviors such as cutting, burning, biting and scratching skin.  Behaviorally, it’s highly clustered with instances especially prevalent during adolescence and the majority of cases being female although there is some evidence the instances among males may be under-reported.  It’s a behavior which has long interested and perplexed the profession because as something which involves deliberate and intentional injury to body tissue in the absence of suicidal intent (1) it runs counter to the fundamental human instinct to avoid injury and (2) as defined the injuries are never sufficiently serious to risk death, a well-understood reason for self-harm.  Historically, such behaviors tended to be viewed as self-mutilation and were thought a form of attenuated suicide but in recent decades more attention has been devoted to the syndrome, beginning in the 1980s at a time when self-harm was regarded as a symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD) (personality disorders first entered DSM when DSM-III was published in 1980), distinguished by suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or acts of self-mutilation.  Clinicians however advanced the argument the condition should be thought a separate syndrome (deliberate self-harm syndrome (DSHS)), based on case studies which identified (1) a patient’s inability to resist the impulse to injure themselves, (2) a raised sense of tension prior to the act and (3) an experience of release or at least partial relief after the act.  That a small number of patients were noted as repeatedly self-harming was noted and it was suggested that a diagnosis called repetitive self-mutilation syndrome (RSMS) should be added to the DSM.  Important points associated with RSMS were (1) an absence of conscious suicidal intent, (2) the patient’s perpetually negative affective/cognitive which was (temporarily) relieved only after an act of self-harm and (3) a preoccupation with and repetitiveness of the behavior.  Accordingly, NSSI Disorder was added to the DSM-5 (2013) and noted as a condition in need of further study.

However, although there would seem some relationship to cutting, it’s obviously a different behavior to eat one’s body parts and the feeling seems to be that autophagia involves a quest for pain and that suggests some overlap with other conditions and it certainly belongs in the sub category of self-injurious behavior (SIB).  The literature is said to be sparse and the analysis seems not to have been extensive but the behavior has been noted in those diagnosed with a variety of conditions including personality disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  The last two have been of particular interest because the act of biting off and eating some body part (most typically fingers) has been associated with the experience of hallucinations and patients have been recorded as saying the pain of the injury “makes the voices stop”.  Importantly, autophagia has a threshold and while in some senses can be thought a spectrum condition (in terms of frequency & severity), behaviors such as biting (and even consuming) the loose skin on the lips (morsicatio buccarum) or the ragged edges of skin which manifest after nail biting (onychophagia) are common and few proceed to autophagia and clinicians note neurological reasons may also be involved.    

Lindsay Lohan with bread on the syndicated Rachael Ray Show, April 2019.

Autophagia and related words should not be confused with the adjective artophagous (bread-eating).  The construct was the Artos +‎ -phagous.  Artos was from the Ancient Greek ἄρτος (ártos) (bread), of pre-Greek origin.  Phagous was from the Latin -phagus, from the Ancient Greek -φάγος (-phágos) (eating) from φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat).  Apparently, in the writings of the more self-consciously erudite, the word artophagous, which enjoyed some currency in the nineteenth century, was still in occasional use as late as the 1920s but most lexicographers now either ignore it or list it as archaic or obsolete.  It’s an example of a word which has effectively been driven extinct even though the practice it describes (the eating of bread) remains as widespread and popular as ever.  Linguistically, this is not uncommon in English and is analogous with the famous remark by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani (1930–2021; Saudi Arabian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources 1962-1986): “The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the Oil Age will end, but not for a lack of oil” (the first part of that paraphrased usually as the punchier “the Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks”).

Necrophilous

Necrophilous (pronounced neck-ra-phil-e-us)

(1) In psychiatry, a pathological fascination with death.

(2) In human sexuality, a pathological attraction to dead bodies, especially a sexual attraction which may include intercourse.

(3) In the biological sciences, creatures (from the bacterial to the sentient) exhibiting feeding behavior in a spectrum between a preference for dead tissue and its exclusive consumption.

(4) In biology, as functional necrophilia, a reproductive strategy in some amphibians in which a male will inseminate a newly-dead female, fertilizing the still viable eggs, and then squeezing the corpse to eject the newly fertilized eggs into the water.

1892: The construct was necro- + phil(ia) + ous.  Necro was a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek nekros (dead body, corpse, dead person) from the primitive Indo-European root nek (death).  The element philia was a word-forming element meaning "friendship, fondness, tendency toward" (and more recently "abnormal attraction to") from the Ancient Greek philia (affection) from φίλος (phílos) (love, loving) of uncertain origin.  The –ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from the Old French –ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and a doublet of -ose in an unstressed position.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns or denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance.  Related forms include necrophilism (apparently used first in 1864), necrophia and necrophiliac.  The primitive Indo-European (this one is properly part of the Proto-Indo-European subset) nek (the root word meaning "death) is a part of or influenced many words in Modern English including innocent, innocuous, internecine, necro-, necropolis; necrosis, necromancy, nectar, nectarine, nociceptive, nocuous, noxious. nuisance, obnoxious, & pernicious.  Connections are many including the Sanskrit nasyati (disappears, perishes), the Avestan nasyeiti (disappears), the Old Persian vi-nathayatiy (he injures), the Ancient Greek nekros (corpse) the Latin nex (genitive necis) (violent death, murder (as opposed to mors (death)) & nocere (to harm, hurt) & noxius (harmful), the Ancient Greek nekus (dead) & nekros (dead body, corpse), the Old Irish ec (dead), the Breton ankou (dead) and the Welsh angeu (death).  In English, the first mention in the literature in the sense of a "morbid attraction toward the dead" appears to be in Charles Chaddock's (1861-1936) 1892 translation of the impressively titled Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study, also known as Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to the Antipathetic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-forensic Study), published in 1886, a book by an Austro-German psychiatrist with a name of similarly imposing length, Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing (1840–1902), work and author respectively cited usually as the more manageable Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing.  

In the wild, necrophilous creatures range from bacteria, flies and beetles to larger animals such as hyenas and vultures.  All are niche species which fulfil a role in their ecosystem(s).  Even some beasts with reputations as hunter-killers, such as the big sharks, are pragmatically necrophilous eaters, attracted always the easy snack offered by the carcass of a recently dead whale.  Necrophilia, necrophile, necrophiliac, necrophily, necrophilist & necrophilism are nouns and necrophilistic is an adjective; the noun plural is necrophilias but the more commonly used is necrophiliacs.

Vultures enjoying a venison lunch.  

Vultures rarely attack healthy animals but may kill the wounded or sick if no threat exists; when a carcass has too thick a hide for its beak to open, it waits for a larger scavenger to eat first.  Entirely opportunistic, many reports from battlefields have noted the circling vultures and for an ecosystem, they’re of great value as scavengers, especially in hot regions. Vulture stomach acid is exceptionally corrosive, allowing them safely to digest putrid carcasses infected with botulinum toxin, cholera and anthrax bacteria that would be lethal to other scavengers.  They therefore play an important role in reducing the spread of disease. 

They can however fall victim to modern chemicals.  Vulture numbers in south Asia, mainly in India and Nepal, have declined dramatically since the early 1990s, the reduction caused by them being poisoned by residues of certain veterinary drugs in animal carcasses.  Action has been taken but, even if successful, it will take at least decades for the populations to be restored and without vultures to pick corpses clean, rabies-carrying dogs have multiplied, feeding on the carrion.  The decline has also threatened the age-old practice of Vultures practiced by the Parsis (or Parsees (literally “Persian” in the Persian language)), an ethno-religious group of the Indian subcontinent who practice the religion of Zoroastrianism.  According to Zoroastrian scriptures and tradition, a corpse is a host for decay, the scriptures commanding a safe disposal of the dead in a manner that does not pollute and an eight-thousand year old tradition among the Parsis is leaving of the bodies of the dead in a remote spot for vultures to devour.  With the vultures in the area poisoned almost to the point of extinction, this is no longer possible and other methods in sympathy with scripture have been adopted but none are as efficient or environmentally friendly as the big birds.

The government has begun a five-year programme called the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation (APVC).  Intended to run between 2020-2025, it includes plans to prevent the of poisoning of cattle carcasses, enhance existing conservation breeding programmes, regular monitoring of vultures numbers and extending the existing vulture safe zone network by creating at least one more zone in each state.  As most vultures die after consuming carcasses of animals administered veterinary non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), it’s planned to stop misuse by requiring they be sold only against prescription and ensuring all treatment of livestock is performed by qualified veterinarians.  The matter is regarded as urgent, a 2016 study finding that "…of the twenty-two vulture species, nine are critically endangered, three are endangered, four are near threatened, and six are of concern".

Homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck

In November 2001, a researcher at Natuurmuseum (Museum of Natural History), Rotterdam, reported the first known case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck (mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)).  On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died, after which, another drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for seventy-five minutes.  The author who submitted the paper for publication then disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck for a post-mortem examination, the dissection confirming the victim of the necrophiliac rape was male.  The researcher concluded the two mallards were engaged in an “attempted rape flight” (ARF) which resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.

A Drake mallard in full breeding plumage (left) next to the dead drake mallard just after collision with the new wing of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam.

The museum’s architecture includes an all glass façade which, under certain light, behaves as a mirror and bird strikes are not uncommon and often fatal, a loud thud alerting the staff another bird has made itself available for purposes of display or research.  On 5 June 1995, the researcher responded to a thud, observing a drake mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) lying motionless on its belly in the sand and obviously dead.  Next to the carcass was another male mallard in full adult plumage without any visible traces of molt.  The live duck then forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head.

The same couple during copulation, two minutes after the above photo was taken.

“Rather startled”, the researcher, from behind a nearby window, observed and photographed the two ducks for seventy-five minutes, during which the live mallard almost continuously copulated with his dead congener; dismounting only twice, he stayed near his uncomplaining partner, picking the neck and side of the head before mounting again, his first break lasting three minutes, his second, about a quarter of an hour later, less than a minute.  After allowing love to follow its unnatural course for well over a hour, the researcher felt compelled to “disturb this cruel scene”.  At this, the necrophilic mallard only reluctantly left his “mate” not flying off but walking away a few metres, weakly uttering series of two-note raeb-raeb calls which the researcher identified as the mallard’s “conversation-call”.  Sometime later, the mallard was still present at the site of the act, still calling and apparently looking for his victim which, by then, was chilling in the freezer.

The researcher notes the supposition of an ARF cannot be verified and is wholly circumstantial, but it’s thought unlikely this was a mere opportunist event.  Disregarding the homosexual nature of the case, pursuit-behavior among mallards is commonly observed; when drakes congregate in small flocks, more than a dozen may chase a single female in the air, trying to force her down and rape her, a behavior known in the literature as “attempted rape flight” or “rape intent flights” but there appears to exist no report other than those of heterosexual ARF's although homosexual rape (referred to more delicately by some as “attempted non-consensual copulation”) is known among the mallard.  In fairness to the guilty mallard, a visual inspection of the corpse was performed because the plumage of senile females can change to resemble that of a male but the victim, although molting into the non-breeding (eclipse) stage, still showed enough male features to conclude it was no case of mistaken sexuality identity.

An exhaustive overview of animal homosexuality, published in 1999, found that in the mallard, “the proportion of male homosexual pairs varies between populations, and is anywhere from 2-19 % of all pairs” so male homosexuality can't be said to be an uncommon behavior in the breed.  Even among those drake pairs however, they do not exhibit overt sexual activity: they normally only show behavior that preludes copulation but neither partner mounts the other. Interestingly, the report added “some males in homosexual pairs have been observed attempting to rape or forcibly copulate with males outside their pair bond”.  Again, it’s speculative but this may have been the case on 5 June 1995: the drake attempted to rape the victim, which fled, the two becoming engaged in a true homosexual ARF.  Still, the unfortunate bird was dead while he was being raped although, it was noted, being dead, it may be argued by some it was no longer rape but it certainly remained non-consensual copulation and, being an act of necrophilia, this must have affected the duration of the event.  Whatever the circumstances, the case appears an avian oddity, necrophilia known in the mallard, but only among heterosexual pairs.  While occasionally, males try to mate with dead females, this does appear the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.

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.