Swiftie

Swiftie (pronounced swiftee)

(1) In slang (originally Australian) a trick, ruse, or deception (often in the form “(s)he pulled a swiftie”).

(2) A self-identifying term used by the most devoted (some suggest obsessed) fans of the musician Taylor Swift (b 1989).  The collective is “Swifties” (the initial capital not always used) and as fandom they distinguish themselves from mere casual listeners although the media tends to apply the term to all.  In 2017, Taylor Swift trade-marked the term Swiftie for commercial use and The Oxford English Dictionary elevated it from “slang” to “word” in 2022; it was a finalist in Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year judging.

(3) As "Singapore Swiftie", an emerging alternative form for term "exclusivity clause", most associated with contract law.

1945 (for the Australian slang) and (at least) 2010 (of Taylor Swift’s fans):  The construct was swift + -ie.  The word swift existed in the Middle English as an adjective & adverb prior to 900 and was an adjective in the Old English.  It was akin to the Old English swīfan (to revolve) and the Old Norse svīfa (to rove) and was most common as an adjective (moving or capable of moving with great speed or velocity; fleet; rapid; coming, happening, or performed quickly or without delay; quick or prompt to act or respond).  The Old English swift was from the Proto-Germanic swiftaz (swift; quick), from the primitive Indo-European sweyp & weyp- (to twist; wind around) and cognate with the Icelandic svipta (to pull quickly) and the Old English swīfan (to revolve, sweep, wend, intervene).  While the derived forms (swiftly, swiftness et al) are well-known and most have survived, one which went extinct was the thirteenth century swiftship “the ability to run fast”.  In the Australian way, the slang “swiftie” (also often as “swifty”) was also re-purposed as a nickname for someone “slow” (both mentally & physically).  The suffix -ie was a variant spelling of -ee, -ey & -y and was used to form diminutive or affectionate forms of nouns or names.  It was used also (sometimes in a derogatory sense to form colloquial nouns signifying the person associated with the suffixed noun or verb (eg bike: bikie, surf: surfie, hood: hoodie etc).  Swiftie is a noun; the noun plural is swifties.

The surname Swift was of English origin and is thought to have been literally a reference to someone who was “swift” (a fast runner).  There are entries in parish records in Suffolk dating from 1222 recording the birth of “Nicholas, ye sonne of Swyfte” and Swift evolved as a name often given to a messenger or courier (the faster a carrier, the faster the transmission of the message, a concept which has survived into the internet age.  In the household books of the court of Edward III (1312–1377; King of England 1327-1377), a Ralph Swyft was recorded as his courier.  The name became common in England and in later centuries spread throughout the English-speaking world.

As SWIFT, it’s the acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication: an international consortium that routes instructions concerning transfer of funds between financial institutions.  Except in the business of money transfers, it was an obscure organization until Mr Putin’s (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) special military operation against Ukraine when the significance of SWIFT in the commodities markets (where Russia is a big player) became widely understood after the imposition of trade and other economic sanctions.

In the purple: Dr Taylor Swift in academic gown after being conferred an honorary doctorate in fine arts from New York University, May 2022.

The noun swift was applied to name any of numerous long-winged, swallow-like birds of the family Apodidae, related to the hummingbirds and noted for their rapid flight.  It was used also of several types of moth, butterfly & lizard noted for their rapid movements and in engineering was used of the adjustable device on the processing apparatus upon which a hank of yarn is placed in order to wind off skeins or balls or the main cylinder on a machine for carding flax.  In the plural, the word was used of the faster-flowing current of a stream or reaches of a river and “swifts” in that sense remains in literary and poetic use although it’s otherwise obsolete.  Historically, the adjective Swiftian meant “of or pertaining to the Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) or his works” (the best known of which were A Tale of a Tub (1704) & Gulliver's Travels (1726) but of late it has in academia been used also of Taylor Swift.  Universities are businesses which operate to make a profit and even Harvard now runs Taylor Swift courses which focus on her musical and lyrical style.  Jonathan Swift in 1713 became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, thus his later common sobriquet: “Dean Swift”.  It’s thought unlikely Talyor Swift will follow her namesake into ecclesiastical administration.

The Singapore Swiftie

The lawyers in the Singapore government have a famously acute commercial sense and wouldn’t have needed the back of an envelope, let also a spreadsheet, to work out that if an exclusivity clause could be agreed with Taylor Swift, guaranteeing her six concerts in the city-state would be her only performances in the region, the economic benefits in terms of inward capital flows would be considerable.  For Taylor Swift’s operation too there would have been advantages, not the least of which would have been Singapore’s high level of security and world-class infrastructure but the cost off-sets would also have been considerable including a reduction in travel expenses and the logistical impositions of touring (the set-up and tear-down of the venues is a major operation with a high labor component).  The amount the government paid for the exclusivity clause wasn’t disclosed but presumably both parties were satisfied with the transaction.  Such is Ms Swift’s cultural power that it seems not even Greta Thunberg (b 2003) was prepared to risk incurring the wrath & indignation of the Swifties by commenting on the addition carbon generated by so many of them flying to see their idol.

Exclusivity clauses are common in commercial contracts and are used variously for purposes such as (1) guarding software, products or services from unwanted distribution, (2) granting exclusive rights to certain parties and forbidding the transfer of those permissions to others, (3) obliging certain parties to purchase products or services exclusively from one’s company rather than a competitor.  So, there’s nothing novel about exclusivity clauses and in most jurisdictions, usually they’re enforceable unless they offend against some over-arching restriction such as “unconscionable conduct” or a violation of competition rules.  As a general principle, the guidelines for an exclusivity clause to be held valid are (1) voluntariness (ie entered into without coercion), (2) certainty of terms (ie no ambiguity), (3) a beginning and an end (although the clauses can, with the agreement of both parties, be extended indefinitely, the clause should be limited in time and renewal & termination protocols must be clear), (4) product & service standards and payment terms must be clear (including variation protocols) and (5) the consequences of any breach must be explicit and detail specific remedies such as monetary compensation.

There are reasons other than the music to become a Swiftie:  The statuesque Taylor Swift in a Sachin & Babi patchwork dress at Capital FM’s Jingle Bell Ball, London, December 2014.  The eye was drawn by the intricate detailing and although some missed her trademark red lipstick, the garment's array of variegated reds meant that would have been too much, the same admirable restraint dictating the choice of black shoes.  Solid colors tend to dominate the red carpet so this piece was a rare splash of genuine adventurism.

Reaction to the deal (soon labeled the “Singapore swiftie”, the formation presumably influenced also by the equally alliterative "Singapore Sling") in the region was swift.  Authorities in Hong Kong & Thailand were immediately critical and one Philippine politician told local media Singapore was operating by “the law of the jungle” and not the law of a “neighborhood of countries bound by supposed principles of solidarity and consensus”, a not so subtle reminder that in the neighborhood diplomatic relations have in recent decades been usually smooth, the members of Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the regional economic and security bloc, famously operating on the basis of “consensus”, a reasonably achievement in an organization of which Myanmar (sometimes still referred to as Burma) is a member.

A Singapore Swiftie: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

However, even while the waves from west & north were disturbing Asean’s usually calm waters, Lee Hsien Loong (b 1952; Prime Minister of Singapore since 2004) was addressing the matter of the Singapore Swiftie in a press conference conducted as part of an Asean summit held, unusually, in Melbourne: “A deal was reached.  And so it has turned out to be a very successful arrangement.  I don't see that as being unfriendly” Mr Lee said, confirming an “incentive” had been paid to secure the deal.  That matter had already attracted interest but the Singapore Tourism Board declined to comment on the amount paid, saying the terms were “commercial in confidence” and Taylor Swift's concert promoter was just as reticent.  The math however will have been done by many and not only does the Singapore economy gain from all the visitors arriving to rent hotel rooms, buy food and catch trains but the city state benefits also from its citizens not leaving the territory, taking their money to neighboring countries to spend there.  Thus, Singapore’s gain is the loss of others and while the numbers in the estimates of the benefit gained bounce around a bit, all were in the hundreds of millions of US dollars.

Pulling a swiftie on X (when it was known as Twitter)?

Lindsay Lohan’s tweet to Taylor Swift on 14 December 2020 contained no message but it nevertheless garnered some 8K retweets, 53K Likes and over 1000 responses.  Neither sender nor recipient have ever commented but Twitter's deconstructionists pondered this postmodern message and concluded: Lindsay Lohan is a Swiftie.

Plenty of touring acts will have noted all of this and while few have anything like the drawing power of Taylor Swift, doubtless most will have suggested promoters add the Singapore Swiftie to their negotiating toolbox, the hope being that in playing countries & cities off against each other, a bidding war will ensue; certainly, for decades, the approach has worked well for operators like the IOC (International Olympic Committee), FIFA (Fédération internationale de football association) and Formula One.  Hopefully there’s also a linguistic legacy and in the jargon of law and commerce, the dull & boring “exclusivity clause” will be replaced by the exciting and attractively alliterative “Singapore Swiftie”.

Mercury

Mercury (pronounced mur-kyuh-ree)

(1) In chemistry, a heavy, silver-white, highly toxic metallic element (uniquely liquid at room temperature), once widely used in barometers & thermometers and still a component of pesticides & pharmaceutical preparations.  In industrial use it provides the reflecting surface of mirrors, can still be a part of dental amalgams and is used in some switches, mercury-vapor lamps, and other electric apparatus.  It’s also used as a catalyst in laboratories.  Symbol: Hg; atomic weight: 200.59; atomic number: 80; specific gravity: 13.546 at 20°C; freezing point: −38.9°C; boiling point: 357°C.  It’s known also as quicksilver or hydrargyrum.

(2) In clinical pharmacology, the metal as used in various organic and inorganic compounds, used usually to treat infections of the skin.

(3) In mythology, the Roman god who served as messenger of the gods and was also the god of commerce, thievery, eloquence, and science, identified with the Greek god Hermes (initial capital letter).

(4) In astronomy, the planet nearest the sun, having a diameter of 3,031 miles (4,878 km), a mean distance from the sun of 36 million miles (57.9 million km), and a period of revolution of 87.96 days, and having no satellites; the smallest planet in the solar system (diameter and mass: respectively 38 and 5.4% that of earth) (initial capital letter).

(5) Borrowing from mythology, a messenger, especially a carrier of news (largely archaic).

(6) In botany, any plant belonging to the genus Mercurialis, of the spurge family, especially the poisonous, weedy M. perennis of Europe.  Historically, it was most associated with the annual mercury (Mercurialis annua), once cultivated for medicinal properties (the fourteenth century French mercury or herb mercury).

(7) In botany, a similar edible plant (Blitum bonus-henricus), otherwise known since the fifteenth century as English mercury or allgood.

(8) In botany, in eighteenth century US regional use, the poison oak or poison ivy.

(9) In the history of US aerospace, one of a series of U.S. spacecraft, carrying one astronaut and the first US vehicle to achieve suborbital and orbital manned spaceflights (initial capital letter).

(10) Liveliness, volatility (obsolete since the mid-nineteenth century).

1300–1350: From the Middle English Mercurie, from the Medieval Latin, from the Classical Latin Mercurius (messenger of Jupiter, god of commerce) and related to merx (merchandise),  Mercury, mercuriality & mercurialist are nouns, mercurial is a noun & adjective, mercurous, intramercurial & mercuric are adjectives and mercurially is an adverb; the noun plural is mercuries.

The late fourteenth century adjective mercurial (pertaining to or under the influence of the planet Mercury) evolved by the 1590s to include the sense “pertaining to the god Mercury, having the form or qualities attributed to Mercury (a reference to his role as god of trade or as herald and guide)”.  The meaning “light-hearted, sprightly, volatile, changeable, quick” was in use by the 1640s and was intended to suggest the qualities supposed to characterize those born under the planet Mercury, these based on the conduct of the god Mercury (which seems a generous interpretation given some of his antics), probably also partly by association with the qualities of quicksilver. A variant in this sense was the now rare noun mercurious, in use by the 1590s.  The adjective mercuric (relating to or containing mercury) dates from 1828 and in chemistry applied specifically applied to compounds in which each atom of mercury was regarded as bivalent.  Mercurous was by the 1840s applied to those in which two atoms of mercury are regarded as forming a bivalent radical. 

In the mythology of Antiquity, the Roman Mercury (or Mercurius) was identified with the Greek Hermes, protecting travelers in general and merchants in particular.  He was depicted as the messenger of Jupiter and in some tales even as his agent in some of Jupiter’s amorous ventures (famously in Amphytrion (circa 188 BC) by the playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (circa 254–184 BC)).  The location of Rome’s first Temple of Mercury was chosen because it was so close to both the port and the commercial precinct, the god of commerce thus well-placed.  Although it’s not entirely certain, the structure was thought to date from 496 BC and historians note the sanctuary was built outside the pomerium (the city’s religious boundary), leading to speculation the cult may have been of foreign origin.  Mercury’s attributes included the caduceus (the wand), a variety of very fetching broad-brimmed hats, winged sandals (essential for one so “fleet of foot” and the purse (symbolizing the profits merchants gained from their trade).  The tales from Antiquity are not consistent (and in some cases contradictory but Mercury in some traditions was the father of Evander or of Lares (charged with the supervision of crossroads and prosperity); Lares was born after Mercury raped Lara, the water Nymph in the kingdom of the dead.  The identification of Mercury with the Greek Hermes was ancient but in the early medieval period he was linked also with the Germanic Woden and noting his role as a messenger and conveyor of information, since the mid-seventeenth century Mercury was often used as a name for newspapers although has been a common name for a newspaper and some critics have adapted it for their own purposes: In Australia the Hobart Mercury was in the 1980s sometimes derisively called the “Hobart Mockery”.

Vintage wall thermometer: As the temperature increased, the mercury expanded in volume and rose (hence "mercury rising").  The red colour was achieved with the addition of a dye.

The origin of the chemical name of mercury (Hg) reflects the influence of Scientific Latin on early-modern chemistry; Hg is an abbreviation of the Latin name of the element: hydrargium (literally “water-silver”), from the Ancient Greek hydrargyros (liquid silver), an allusion to its unique quality of being a silvery liquid when at room temperature (all other metals being solid).  The older English name was quicksilver (still prevalent in literary & poetic circles) which was coined in the sense of “living silver”, a reference to the liquid tending to move “like a living thing” when provoked with the slight provocation.  The “quick” referred not to speed but “alive” in the sense of the Biblical phrase “the quick and the dead”.  Alchemists called it azoth and in medical and sometimes chemical use that’s still occasionally seen.  As late as the fifteenth century, in mainstream Western science the orthodox view was that mercury was one of the elemental principles thought present in all metals.  In Antiquity, it was prepared from cinnabar and was then one of the seven known metals (bodies terrestrial), coupled in astrology and alchemy with the seven known heavenly bodies (the others: Sun/gold, Moon/silver, Mars/iron, Saturn/lead, Jupiter/tin, Venus/copper.  In idiomatic use, (with a definite article), because of the use in barometers & thermometers, “the mercury” was a reference to temperature thus “mercury rising” meant “warmer”, the use dating from the seventeenth century and it has persisted even as the devices have moved to digital technology.  The name mercury was adopted because the stuff flows quickly about, recalling the Roman god who was the “swift-footed messenger of the gods”.

The same rationale appealed to the astronomers of Antiquity who noted the swift movement of the planet which required only 88 days for each solar orbit.  Mercury is sometimes visible from the Earth as a morning or evening star and in our solar system and is the both the smallest and the closest planet to the Sun.  Second in density only to Earth, it’s a lifeless (as far as is known or seems possible) place with a cratered surface which makes it not dissimilar in appearance to Earth's Moon.  It behaves differently from Earth in that the rotational period of 58.6 days is two-thirds of its 88-day annual orbit, thus it makes three full axial rotations every two years.  The atmosphere is close to non-existent, something which, combined with the rotational & orbital dynamics and the proximity to the Sun produces rapid radiational cooling on its dark side, meaning the temperature range is greater than any other planet in our solar system (466°-184°C (870°-300°F)).  Being so close to the Sun, Mercury is visible only shortly before sunrise or after sunset, observation further hindered by Earth’s dust & pollution, this distorting the planet’s light which obliquely must pass through the lower atmosphere.  It wasn’t until circa 1300 that the Classical Latin name for the planet was adopted in English while a (presumably hypothetical) resident of the place was by 1755 a Mercurian or a century later as Mercurean.  The novel adjective intramercurial (being within the orbit of the planet Mercury) was coined in 1859 to describe a hypothetical planet orbiting between Mercury and the Sun.  The idea had existed among French astronomers since the 1840s but became a matter of some debate between 1860-1869 until observations of solar eclipses finally debunked the notion.  The origin of the noun amalgamation (act of compounding mercury with another metal), dating from the 1610s, was a noun of action from archaic verb amalgam (to alloy with mercury), the figurative, non-chemical sense of “a combining of different things into one uniform whole” in use by 1775.

Genuinely different and obvious a cut above a Ford: 1939 Mercury 8 Coupe.

Reflecting the philosophy of Henry Ford which put a premium on engineering and price, concepts like product differentiation & multi-brand market segmentation came late to the Ford Motor Company.  Unlike General Motors (GM) which throughout the 1930s fielded seven brand-names, it wasn’t until 1938 that Ford added a third, using until then just Ford and Lincoln and even they operated as separate companies whereas GM maintained a divisional structure.  The debut in 1938 of the Mercury label, sitting on the pricing scale between Ford and Lincoln made sense in a way that twenty years on, Edsel never did and, until internal cannibalization began in the 1960s, the Mercury brand worked well.  Even after that, the marketing momentum accrued over decades maintained Mercury’s viability and it wasn’t shuttered until 2011, a victim of the industry’s restructuring after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2008-2012).  Debatably, the Mercury brand may yet prove useful and, should a niche emerge, there may be a resurrection, Ford maintaining registration of the trademark.

A (slightly) better Ford LTD: 1969 Mercury Marquis Brougham four-door hardtop.

Perhaps it was the experience of GM which had discouraged Ford.  Although Harvard had begun awarding MBAs since 1908, history unfortunately doesn’t record whether any of them were involved in the brand-name proliferation decision of the mid 1920s which saw the introduction of companion offerings to four of GM’s five existing divisions, only the entry-level Chevrolet not augmented.  The new brands, slotted above or below depending on where the perceived price-gap existed, mean GM suddenly was marketing nine products in competition with Ford offering two and one probably didn’t need a MBA to conclude only one approach was likely correct.  As things turned out, GM’s approach was never given the chance fully to explore the possibilities, the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s suppressing demand in the economy to an extent then unknown, necessitating downsizing in just about every industrial sector.  Axed by GM in 1931 was Viking (Oldsmobile’s companion), Marquette (added to Buick) and Oakland (actually usurped by its nominal companion, Pontiac).  LaSalle (a lower-priced Cadillac) survived the cull… for a while.

Ford in the late 1930s had clearly been thinking about how to cover the widely understood "price-points" in the market, most of which existed between the mass-market Fords and the Big Lincolns, then a very expensive range.  One toe in the water of brand-proliferation was the creation in 1937 of "De Luxe Ford" which, despite some of the hints in the advertising, was neither a separate company nor even a division; it was described by historians of the industry as "a marque within a marque".  Structurally, this seems little different to the approach the company had been using since 1930 when it introduced a “Deluxe” trim option for certain models which could be ordered to make the “standard” Ford a little better appointed but the 1937 De Luxe Fords were more plausibly different because some relative minor changes to panels and detailing did make the two “marques” visually distinct.  The Deluxe vs De Luxe spelling was perhaps too subtle a touch to be noticed by many.

1968 Mercury Cougar GT-E 427.  The tennis court hints at the target market.

A long wheelbase Food Mustang with a higher specification, the original Mercury Cougar (1967-1970) was the brand's great success story.  The 1968 GT-E 427 was a tiny part of that but is remembered as the last use of the Le Mans winning 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 and the corporation's only 427 pony-car.  Civilized with hydraulic valve lifters and an automatic transmission, it was a glimpse of what might have been had Ford, as it once planned, put the 427 in a Mustang.     

The De Luxe Ford line was deliberately positioned between Ford and Lincoln but intriguingly, at the same time, Ford introduced both a new, lower priced V12 Lincoln called the Lincoln-Zephyr and the Mercury range, all three of these ventures contesting the same, now crowded, space.  The De Luxe Ford “marque” would last only until 1940 although Ford’s Deluxe option remained on the books; it’s doubtful many outside Ford’s advertising agency noticed.  It would seem Ford was hedging its bets and may have decided to persist with whichever of Mercury and De Luxe Ford proved most successful and as things transpired, that was Mercury so as the 1941 model year dawned, in the dealers’ brochures there were Fords, Mercurys, Lincoln-Zephyrs & Lincolns.  World War II of course intervened and when production resumed after the end of hostilities, that was simplified to Fords, Mercury & Lincoln, remaining that way until the mid-1950s when in a booming economy, the temptation to proliferate proved irresistible and the exclusive Continental division was created, followed by the infamous Edsel, the model spread of which over-lapped the pricing of both Ford and Mercury, an approach which seems to go beyond hedging.  The Continental experiment lasted barely two seasons and the Edsel just three, the latter a debacle which remains a case study in marketing departments.

A natural Mercury: 1955 Ford Thunderbird.

So by 1960 the corporation again offered just Fords, Mercurys & Lincolns but it was a troubled time for the latter, the huge Lincolns of the late 1950s, although technically quite an achievement in body engineering, had proved so unsuccessful that Ford’s new management seriously considered closing it down as well but it was saved when handed a prototype Ford Thunderbird coupé which was developed into the famous Lincolns of 1961-1969, remembered chiefly for the romantic four-door convertibles and being the cabriolet in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated.  That was one of the Thunderbird’s footnotes in corporate history, the other being that when introduced in 1955 it was the first Ford blatantly to intrude on what, according to marketing theory, should have been the domain of Mercury, home of the up-market offerings.

Cannibalizing the corporation: 1965 Ford LTD.

The Thunderbird though was just the first act of trespass and fancier Fords continued to appear, the landmark being the LTD, which began in 1965 as a luxury trim-package for the Galaxie, something which proved so popular it soon became model in its own right, encouraging a host of imitators from the mass-market competition, the most successful of which was Chevrolet’s Caprice (that innovation in retrospect the first nail in the coffins of the now shuttered Pontiac & Oldsmobile).  However, like Pontiac & Oldsmobile, Mercury would endure for decades, all three surviving before being sacrificed in the wake of the GFC and between the debut of the LTD and the end of the line, there were many successful years but the rationale for the existence of Mercury which had been so well defined in 1938 when there was genuine product differentiation and a strict maintenance of price points, gradually was dissipated to the point that with the odd exception (such as the wildly successfully Mercury Cougars of the late 1960s), Fords and Lincolns were allowed to become little more than competitors in the same space and the brand never developed the sort of devoted following which might have transcended the sameness.  By the twenty-first century, there were few reasons to buy a Mercury because a Ford could be ordered in essentially identical form, usually for a little less money.

Xylo-punk band Crazy and the Brains performing Lindsay Lohan, recorded live, Mercury Lounge, New York City, 2013.  Punk bands are said still not widely to have adopted the xylophone.

Utopia & Dystopia

Utopia (pronounced yoo-toh-pee-uh)

(1) An imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, a place enjoying perfection in law, society and politics; such a place cannot exist.

(2) An ideal place or state of being.

(3) Any visionary system of political or social perfection.

(4) A popular product name in the illicit drug industry.

1516: From the New Latin utopia (literally "nowhere"), coined by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) and used as title of his 1516 book about an imaginary island enjoying perfect legal, social, and political systems although the author’s meaning was rather more nuanced than that the casual use of “utopia” is used usually to convey.  The construct was the Ancient Greek οὐ (ou) (not) +‎ τόπος (topos) (place; region) + ia (from the Classical Latin ia and the Ancient Greek ία (ía) & εια (eia) which form abstract nouns of feminine gender).  The meaning was extended to "any perfect place" by the early seventeenth century.  Marx used the word in disparagement of the “…useless utopian myths…” he thought infected the schools of socialist too remote from political and economic reality.  The French form was utopie.  Utopia, utopographer, utopianizer, utopianization & utopianism are nouns, utopian & utopist are nouns & adjectives, utopianize is a verb, utopianistic is an adjective, utopianly is an adverb; the noun plural is utopias.

Dystopia (pronounced dis-toh-pee-uh)

(1) A society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.

(2) Any imaginary place or state of being where everything is bad.

1868: A compound word dys + (u)topia, the word coined by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and its first public use was in one of his speeches delivered in the House of Commons.  The construct was the Ancient Greek δυσ (dus) (bad) + τόπος (tópos) (place; region) + ia (from the Classical Latin ia and the Ancient Greek ία (ía) & εια (eia) which form abstract nouns of feminine gender). It’s since usually been used in the sense of any bad place, real or imagined.  In popular culture, depictions of dystopia have tended to follow the concerns of the time; pandemics, nuclear war, alien invasion, dictatorial régimes and climate change.  The spelling distopia is erroneous but not uncommon.  Dystopia, dystopographer, dystopianizer, dystopianization & dystopianism are nouns, dystopian & dystopist are nouns & adjectives, dystopianize is a verb, dystopianistic is an adjective and dystopianly is an adverb; the noun plural is dystopias.  The constructs follow the model of those derived from utopia although in use, most are rare.

Urban future by noted practitioner of dystopian art, Polina Kulagina.  There is an entire genre of dystopian art and literature.

For something which More insisted can't exist, utopia has survived well and it's proved a popular building block.  A gaytopia is the sort of place (real or imagined) which is (for whatever reason) a paradise for the LGBTQQIAAOP community and the hetrotopia was apparently a right-wing reaction to that, the idea being a "gay-free" zone.  A pornotopia is a place (real or virtual) in which every form of pornography however depraved was available; it was a specialized form of an infotopia which was something like the original vision of some for the WorldWideWeb (WWW) back when Al Gore (b 1948; US vice president (VPOTUS) 1993-2001 & in 2000 the next president of the United States (NPOTUS)) called it the "information superhighway".  Apparently he invented the internet so it's reasonable he assumed naming rights.  Pornotopia was originally used to describe a imagined world where all were willing (even anxious) to engage in all forms of sexual activity while an intimatopia was a fantasy world serving as an ideal setting for sexually charged relationships involving a high degree of sustained emotional intimacy.  The romantopia was a world imagined by women as the ideal setting for romantic love (it has dismissively been called millsandboonatopia).  A cyberutopia is a kind of heaven for nerds, a place full of cables, computers, routers and coffee machines where Coca-Cola & pizza are free.  The technoutopia is much the same sort of place and one inhabited by technoutopians and technoutopists dedicated to the pursuit of technoutopism.  An autopia was envisaged as an urban landscape designed around the use of the automobile and it's long been used as a critique of certain cities of which Los Angeles is the best-known example although there are many cities where traffic management is far, far worse.  The negative forms can be a bit fuzzy (and remember More's Utopia was used as an internally negated concept).  Dystopia is well known but there is also unutopia & anti-utopia, all appearing to mean "the antithesis of utopia".  On the rare occasions anti-utopia & unutopia appear, it's advised to deconstruct the context.

The dystopian vision of Dante's Inferno: The Fifth Circle (1587) by Stradanus (1523-1605)), depicting Virgil and Dante on the River Styx in the fifth circle of Hell where the wrathful are for eternity condemned to splash around on the surface, fighting each other.  Dante Alighieri's (circa 1265–1321), Divine Comedy was written between 1307-1321 and helping the pair cross is the infernal ferryman Phlegyas.  Stradanus was one of the many names under which the Flemish artist Jan van der Straet painted, the others including Giovanni della Strada, Johannes della Strada, Giovanni Stradano, Johannes Stradano, Giovanni Stradanus, Johannes Stradanus, Jan van Straeten & Jan van Straten.

So influential has been Robert Bolt’s (1924–1995) play A Man for All Seasons (1960) in forming the public perception of Sir Thomas More that he seems now remembered as a kind of proto-liberal.  It is true he held opinions which would have been shared by few (lord) chancellors of the last 500-odd years including a condemnation of private property and the idea that the very structure of English society was a “conspiracy of the rich”.  Centuries before Karl Marx (1818-1883), he discussed the surplus value of labor and the mechanisms by which working people were alienated for this value so it could be absorbed by the already rich to add to their wealth.  So he ticks many boxes of wokeness but he also held views on women and their place that would make social media identity Andrew Tate (b 1986) follow his X (formerly known as Twitter) account.

More’s book Utopia is similarly misunderstood, the modern use of the word meaning many who have never read it merely assume what it means.  Structurally, it was influential because it contains threads identifiable as both science fiction (SF) and fantasy and in both these genres, authors have often described “utopias”, usually either as (1) places of unrestricted self-indulgence or (2) places in which everything is so antiseptically perfect that humans, with their inherent imperfections, just “don’t fit in”.  In these alternative universes, being fictional, something has to happen and what often occurs is that they turn into dystopias, the ultimately inadequate human inhabitants dealt with; that which doesn't "fit in" must be "thrown out".  More wasn’t quite so theatrical; his original title for the book was in Latin and is best translated as something like “the Best State of a Commonwealth on the New Island of Utopia” and, living in troubled times, his book explored ways society might be arranged in another way that would ensure the intrigue, corruption and scandal with which he was familiar might be avoided.  Unlike England with its then quite rigid hierarchical structure, Utopia was a communal venture and one in which forms of wealth existed but only as a means to ensure things run smoothly.  Not only was the quest to accumulate wealth not pursued, the very idea was absurd because it would fulfil no useful purpose.  Unfortunately, such is the nature of man that it seems such a place can never exist, or at least not long survive, thus the choice of the name Utopia (“nowhere” in the New Latin).

Robot

Robot (pronounced roh-bot)

(1) A machine resembling a human, designed to perform certain functions.  Originally, the most popular were the “intelligent” mechanical beings which appeared in science fiction (SF) but of late advances in technology have encouraged manufacturers to build robots in humanoid form, the advantage being they can be applied to replace human labor using without the need to change existing infrastructure.

(2) A person who acts and responds in a mechanical, routine manner, usually subject to another's will; an automaton (often a figurative use).

(3) A device operating automatically, in a pre-programmed fashion.

(4) As a non-physical device (in software), a program which to some extent (including beyond) can duplicate or emulate human actions; now often called “bots”.

(5) As a modifier, a device not (directly) controlled by a human; something automated within certain parameters (such devices sometimes called “robot” in colloquial use).

(6) In surveying, a specialized form of theodolite which follows the movements of a prism and can thus be used by a single operator.

(7) In various forms of modern & modernist dance, a style in which dancers imitate the stiff and jerky movements of a stereotypical fictional robot.

(8) In various on-line communities, a habitual user who posts content of dubious or no value (in this case a human, not a bot in the modern sense)  In the earlier era of the bulletin boards an equivalent term was “slug” (which was probably worse than being labeled a “file pig”).

(9) In internet use (1) a computer-controlled character in a video game, especially a multiplayer one, (2) a dreadfully inempt player of video games and (3) a person thought to have no independent capacity for thought.

(10) Figuratively, a person who seems not to have emotions.

1920: Robot first appears (in the modern sense) in the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots (1920)) by Czech writer Karel Čapek (1890–1938), the word suggested by his brother, the artist, writer & poet Josef Čapek (1887–1945).  R.U.R. was Čapek's first international success and was a dystopian vision of an industrial society and while sometimes compared to Charlie Chaplin’s (1889–1977) Modern Times (1936), thematically, they’re quite different.  Typically, the word was brought unchanged into English but such was the simplicity of form that many languages have also retained the spelling, the odd variation including the Japanese robotto (ロボット) and the Swahili roboti.  Surprisingly, despite what must be a temptation, ROBOT is a rare construction as an acronym.  Robot, robotics, robotism, robotry, roboticization & roboticist are nouns, robotic, robotistic, robotical & robotlike (and the non-standard robotesque) are adjectives, robotize (also as roboticise) is a verb and robotically is an adverb; the noun plural is robots.

The Czech-derived robot (mechanical person, also “person whose work or activities are entirely mechanical”) was from robota (drudgery, servitude, compulsory labor) and robotník (the landless peasant so employed (although that was also sometimes applied to “richer peasants” (al la the Russian кула́к (kulák) (wealthy peasant) who employed their own roboniks), from robotiti (to work, drudge), from an Old Czech source akin to the Old Church Slavonic rabota (servitude), from rabu (slave), from the Old Slavic orbu-, from the primitive Indo-European orbh- (pass from one status to another (and related to the later English “orphan”)).  The German noun Robot, was used to refer to a system of serfdom in Central Europe, under which a tenant's rent was paid in forced labor and the Slavic thread is related to the German Arbeit (work), from the Old High German arabeit. 

Several derived forms entered the language after appearing in Liar! (1941, a short story by Russian-born US SF author Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) including the adjective robotic (of or characteristic of robots) and the nouns robopsychologist (one who studies or practices the discipline of robopsychology) & robotics (the science of robots, their construction and use) and earlier, in Robbie (1940 and first published as Strange Playfellow), he’d introduced roboticist (one who conceptualizes, designs, builds, programs, and experiments with robots).  Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (1968) is often quoted as the basic framework of protocols which should be adopted as a regulatory environment for the industry.

Daleks: The original BBC series was broadcast in black & white which made life easier for the props department but the cyborg Daleks later came in designer colors.

“Bot” has become familiar in the internet era to describe software implementations which appear (sometimes deliberately) to be actual humans but it has a long history.  According to the authoritative Online Etymology Dictionary, “bot” as a head-clipping of “robot” was unknown until around the turn of the twenty-first century and remarkably: “The method of minting new slang by clipping the heads off words does not seem to be old or widespread in English.  The examples (za from pizza, zels from pretzels, rents from parents, burbs from suburbs) are American English student or teen slang and seem to date back no further than the late 1960s.”  Bot has flourished as have (cy)borg & (an)droid and there is sometimes genuine linguistic innovation in the field:  The name of the cyborg (a combination of robotics and a biological intelligence) Daleks in the BBC Dr Who television series was an invention with no etymological basis.

Long before computers and robots, “bot” had a history.  In the early sixteenth century, in what was thought an alteration of the Scottish Gaelic boiteag (maggot), in both England a Scotland, bot (and bott) meant “the larva of a botfly, which infests the skin of various mammals, producing warbles, or the nasal passage of sheep, or the stomach of horses”.  Unrelated to that (hopefully), was the eighteenth century English slang (often as the verbs botting & botted) meaning “to buggar” (ie the old criminal offence of “the abominable crime of buggery”).  Presumably an independent evolution was the now obsolete Australian slang meaning “to ask for and be given something with the direct intention of exploiting the thing’s usefulness” and dictionaries of slang suggest it was used almost exclusively of cigarettes (ie “can I bot a smoke?” a alternative form of “can I bum a smoke?”, the latter form now rare but still heard.  The World War I (1914-1918) era slang in Australia & New Zealand indicating a “"worthless, troublesome person” is extinct.  Strangely, given the document fondness for clippings & abbreviations in the camp lexicon, “bot” seems never to have emerged as a form of “bottom” which, in gay (male) slang, is the companion term for “top”.

Lindsay Lohan in the stop motion-animated sketch comedy Robot Chicken (2005-).  The character was voiced by Breckin Meyer (b 1974).

Of late, additions to the language have included robothood (the state or condition of being a robot; an environment largely or exclusively inhabited by robots), robotless (a place, institution or device in which robots are not used) and fembot (a female version of a robot).  Note that fembot is used in different ways.  In SF, fembots could genuinely be “female robots” for in the genre not only could there be actual genders (as opposed to the mere representation of characteristics) but there was not of necessity any need for the number of different sexes to be restricted to two.  In real-world use, voice fembots were among the earliest widely to be deployed and that was because the research made clear the female voice tended to be preferred (by men and women), thus the “talking clocks”, automated switchboard attendants etc usually being feminine.  In (derogatory) figurative use, fembot was used also to suggest a docile, unthinking and conformist woman (something like a mature version of the “basic bitch”), the idea explored in Ira Levin’s (1929—2007) The Stepford Wives (1972); the “feminist horror” genre remains still sadly neglected.  Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and sensors have in recent years made fembots notably more “realistic” and fembots have already been deployed in two of the oldest of the “feminized” professions: sex work & health care.

In medicine, the possibilities had been discussed for decades but the first products emerged in the 1980s as technology caught up with the most simple of the ambitions, robotic arms for use in simple procedures the first commercially available.  Progress was incremental until the last ten years although robotics did make a significant contribution to research, not only taking the place of human labor but making possible projects which would never otherwise have been possible because some of the big data analysis would have required so much labor that funding would never have been available.  The evolutionary pattern in the industry will likely follow the same path as in the legal professional in that the first human jobs to go are those in back-office and other administrative functions before ancillary roles are also absorbed by machines.  The clinicians will be last to be thinned from the hollowed-out middle while at the upper end, executive roles will continue and perhaps even expand while at the lowest level, cleaners, porters, security guards and such may endure, not because machines can’t be built to do the jobs but the nature of the duties is such the attrition rate will for the foreseeable future make human labor cheaper.

Grace the bot, coming to a hospital near you.

The use of fembots as ancillaries in clinical health care will of course be the thin end of the wedge because a fembot can instantly recall the complete medical history of all patients in a hospital while simultaneously possessing an unparalleled degree of medical knowledge, dynamically updated minute by minute.  Already, machines are proving better than humans in fields such as the analysis of diagnostic imagery and in the near to mid-term, the only obvious disciplines in the field where they’re likely to remain at a disadvantage is in certain surgeries and other activities where physical dexterity or the ability to execute intricate movements is at a premium.  Years from now (and there’s genuine debate about how many), those wishing to pursue a career in medicine might find psychiatry remains the last human preserve, at least for those tending to the rich; the poor will be relegated to pacifying drugs and bots. 

A Harmony 2.0 in completed form.

As sex dolls, progress has been followed with great interest and the most interesting aspect has been the extent of the focus on communication, the manufacturers clearly responding to demand from men for a “relationship” and not merely a more elaborate and life-like sex toy.  The phenomenon of “lonely Japanese men” has for some time been well-documented and it’s unlikely the problem is culturally specific so such demand is likely to exist also in other markets.  Manufacturers in the Far East have been active but so are players in Europe and the US and with the mechanical challenges “substantially” solved, attention has turned to emotions and their physical manifestations.  In April 2023, US-based Abyss Creations displayed what was described as a “new generation sexbot”, “Harmony 2.0” said to have the ability to learn from “her human companion” a greater range of emotions which subsequently can be generated, including tears.  Technology site CNET reported Harmony can be customized and is interactive, conversations able to be conducted, the quality of which will improve over time because the sexbot will learn from the experience; thus the emotional range of one Harmony 2.0 will differ from another which has been interacting with a different companion.  Memory is persistent and Abyss have indicated that at some time in the future, a greater range of “pre-loaded personalities” will be available, users able to choose “their type”, some presumably preferring a quiet and deferential sexbot, others something more highly strung.  Like anything, it’s all a question of what one wants from life (a male version is said to be “in development”) and being a software download, the implication is that if the personality of one’s Harmony 2.0 proves unsatisfactory, the memory can be over-written with something which hopefully proves better.  By default, Harmony has 18 distinct personality traits such as such as “shyness” or “strong sexual desire”; there seems no proneness to headaches although, at the software level, there’s no reason why one couldn’t be trained to display anything from aversion to sex to actual frigidity.  Again, it’s all a matter of what one wants from life and one can map one’s kinks onto one’s Harmony 2.0.

Mix & match: Being modular, there is a Harmony app (a subscription service) with which users can “build their bot”, customizing it according to one’s preferences (appearance and personality).

A Harmony 2.0 requires some 80 hours of labor to complete and every detail is said to be “perfect” (ie conforming to the desired specification) and the devices are modular.  This is familiar from the model used to build industrial robots where the one core design could be adapted to welding, component placing, painting or a range of other activities, simply by swapping attachments like arms and changing software instruction sets.  With sexbots, the modularity focuses more on aesthetic elements such as hair, eyes, mouths, breasts and such.  At the time of release, Abyss listed Harmony 2.0 at US$6,500 while the “tearful” version was US$12,000, reflecting both the development costs and the additional hardware (presumably plumbing including a “tear reservoir”) required.  Sexbots may only ever be a market niche but in a sense, it’s the oldest niche in the world.