Apothaneintheloish

Apothaneintheloish (pronounced uh-poth-un-inn-th-loe-ish)

An expression of a wish to die.

1968: The construct was apo + thanein + thelo + ish.  The Ancient Greek prefix ἀπό- (apó-) was from the preposition ἀπό (apó) (from, away from), from the primitive Indo-European hepo (off, away), the ultimate source also of the English words "off" & "of" and of (ab- came via Latin).  The English –ish was appended to create the adjectival form.  The -ish suffix was from the Middle English -ish & -isch, from the Old English -isċ (-ish (the suffix)), from the Proto-West Germanic -isk, from the Proto-Germanic -iskaz (-ish), from the primitive Indo-European -iskos.  It was cognate with the Dutch -s, the German -isch (from which Dutch would gain -isch), the Norwegian, Danish & Swedish -isk or -sk, the Lithuanian -iškas, the Russian -ский (-skij) and the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ίσκος (-ískos).  It was used to create adjectives (standard and (in the modern era) increasingly non-standard, even in slang as the stand-alone "ish" indicating “sort of”, “kind of”, “tending towards” etc).  In colloquial use it became a popular way to create both adjectives & nouns with a diminutive or derogatory implication.  The word was coined by the author Anthony Burgess (1917–1993).  Apothaneintheloish is an adjective.

A black-figure pottery vase (circa 500 BC) showing Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep) carrying the dead body of the hero Sarpedon; discovered in Attica, Greece and now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In Greek mythology, Thantos was the god of death and the significance of Burgess's choice was that Thantos was associated specifically with a “graceful, peaceful departure from life”.  So, a vision of Thantos was a tap on the shoulder, a notice to quit the world and something known in English as "the visitation of the Angel of Death" and, except for those few wishing to go out in a “blaze of glory”, as one's death goes, a visit from Thantos was about as good as it got.   Thantos appears sometimes in commentaries by Freudians & neo-Freudians but Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) never used the word.  He used Todestrieb (death drive), the construct being Tod (death) +‎ -es- (in German a genitival interfix used to link elements in certain compounds) +‎ Trieb (sprout (but in the technical jargon of psychoanalysis specifically “drive” (in the sense of “desire, urge, impulse”)).  Freud in his famous Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)) borrowed the word (which he used more often in the plural (Todestriebe) (death drives) from Russian psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942 and a student and lover of Carl Jung (1875–1961)) who in 1912 had published the essay Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens (Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being).  The relationship between Freud & Spielrein was both convivial and entirely professional.  Thanatos came into popular use in psychoanalysis after it appeared in a paper by Austrian-American psychologist Paul Federn (1871–1950 and, like Freud, trained in Vienna).  Federn used Thanatos as a dichotomous contrast with eros (from the Ancient Greek ἔρως (érōs) (love, desire”) which in psychiatry) is used to describe the human “life drive” (the collective instincts for self-preservation).  In the profession it's used also of the libido and it's not only among the Freudians the link between the two uses is thought so fundamental.

The Greek phrase Apothanein thelo (I want to die) concludes the epigraph of TS Eliot’s (1888–1965) The Waste Land: “Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidiin ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβνλλα τί ϴέλεις; respondebat illa: άπο ϴανεΐν ϴέλω.”  The text was from the satirical novel Satyricon, presumed written by the Roman courtier Petronius (Gaius Petronius Arbiter, circa 27–66), Eliot’s translation being: “I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered: ‘I want to die.’”

Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl (circa 1670), oil on canvas by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini, (1609-1681).  Sibyl is holding a handful of dust.

The Satyricon was a collection of tales, the misadventures of Trimalchio, a one-time gladiator in the Roman Empire of the first century AD and the passage is one of the few fragments of the text still extant.  Sibyl of Cumae was one of the great beauties of the age and Apollo, wanting her for his own, offered to grant her any wish.  Without a moment’s thought she asked to “live for as many years as there were grains in a handful of dust.”  Apollo granted her wish, but she anyway refused his affections and she came to regret things, over the centuries growing older and more decrepit but unable to die.  What she had wanted was an eternal youth but instead decayed into a figure tiny, frail and confined to her bed.  When Trimalchio speaks of her in the Satyricon, he describes her as a tourist attraction, a withered, ancient relic, longing to die.  As recounted by the Roman Poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) in his Metamorphoses, Sibyl lived a thousand years and as she shrunk and shrivelled, eventually she was kept in an ampulla (jar); in her final years, only the faint echo of her voice remained.  She might have said, as the 99 year old Archbishop Daniel Mannix (1864–1963; Archbishop of Melbourne 1917-1963) grew fond of saying: “I have lived too long, but that is not my fault”.  That would have been half correct but, given Sibyl’s calling of prophesy, she had only herself to blame.

Apothaneintheloish appeared first in 1968 in an essay written by Anthony Burgess and published in The Listener:

“Waking crapulous and apothaneintheloish, as I do most mornings these days, I find a little loud British gramophone music over the bloody mary helps me adjust to the daily damnation of writing.”  It can be translated as: “Suffering from taking too much strong drink and feeling I want to die.”

Burgess had an extraordinary knowledge of words so probably felt entitled to kick language around a bit and it’s likely he’d not much have been concerned at any pedant drawing a red circle around the appended –ish, content the linguistic sin of mixing an English suffix into a otherwise Greek formation was minor compared with the world gaining a new adjective.  Such was the skill of Burgess that in his writing the rare and unusual words slurred effortlessly into the text, avoiding the tiresome, jarring effect achieved by some who seem intent to flaunt what Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his austere A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) called the “pride of knowledge”; Henry Fowler knew sin when he saw it on the page.  Others can do it too: the historian Piers Brendon (1940) made the discovery of novel forms a pleasure and when reading Umberto Eco’s (1932–2016) Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum (1988)), some can’t resist keeping pencil & paper at hand, just to note down the most memorable.

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

Burgess though probably made the trick most fun and without Burgess, would it have become known even slightly that vaccine can be an adjective?  It means “cow-like” so is a word for those who find bovine too repetitive or a bit common.  He also included gems like myrmidon (a faithful follower of someone or some institution who follows orders without demur), oneiric (of, suggestive of or pertaining to dreams), proleptic (the act of anticipation) and exiguity which should baffle most used to anything similar; it means “a tiny quantity” and was from the Latin exiguus (scanty), the antonym for which was the Pythonesque sounding adaequatus, the perfect passive participle of adaequō, the construct being ad- (near, at; towards, to) +‎ aequō (make equal, level or smooth).

Apothaneintheloish will of late have gained a new audience with the publication in January 2024 of The Devil Prefers Mozart, On Music and Musicians, 1962-1993, a compilation (Carcanet Press, edited by Paul Phillips (b 1956), an associate professor at Stanford University)) of Burgess’s (mostly) previously published pieces on the topic of music (something he grants an unexpectedly wide vista).  Although now remembered mostly as a novelist and literary critic, his attachment to music was life-long, reflected in the breadth of the 75 chapters of essays, reviews and letters plus the odd interview & transcription.  The book is divided into five parts (1) Musical Musings which ranges from thoughts on Shakespeare to the Beatlemania of the 1960s and the punk movement a decade later, (2) Composers and Their Music which is a list hardly less eclectic, including Monteverdi, Mozart, Wagner & Kurt Weill, (3) Burgess and His Music, a more personal assortment of material including some intriguing liner notes, (4) Performers and Performances which includes some interesting reflections on the less obvious aspects of affording a primacy to “the singer rather than the song” and (5) Of Opera, the West’s supreme art form.  Of particular interest to some will the focus on some of the now less than fashionable British composers, notably William Walton (1902–1983) and Edward Elgar (1857–1934).

Gerti Deutsch's (1908–1979) photograph of Hans Keller (1919-1985), London, 1961.  Keller was a noted Freudian and would these days be thought a suspected postmodernist.

It’s really not even necessary to have any great interest in music to be amused by this book because probably without the reader realizing it, what is so often being explored is the interplay between words and music, Burgess understanding “everything is text” even before the postmodernists made a cult of it.  It’s worth reading also for the waspish comments about the Austrian-born music journalist Hans Keller, best understood after listening to the composition Homage to Hans Keller (1982), written by Burgess in reaction to Keller’s review of his opera Blooms of Dublin (1982) based on James Joyce’s (1882–1941) Ulysses (1922).  Scored for four tubas (which should be a hint), the “homage” was very much in the spirit of Metal Machine Music which in 1975 Lou Reed (1942–2013) handed to his record company.  In that vein, an irony of his fame was he became best known as the author of the novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) and that happened because of the notoriety achieved by the film version (1971), directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999).

Cover of a first edition A Clockwork Orange (1962), signed by the author, (Aus$18,975.08 on eBay (left)) and a promotional poster for the film version (1971, right).  The film was based on the abridged US edition of the book which omitted the final chapter in which the protagonist undergoes something of a redemption.  That does make the work a different sort of morality tale but some critics thought the distinction slight, the film just too gratuitous in its depiction of sexual violence for the original's anyway ambiguous conclusion to be rendered much different. 

In Flame into Being (1985), his biography of DH Lawrence (1885–1930), Burgess would write: “The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit (literally “game of the spirit” and used here to suggest something intended as a quick comment on an idea rather than anything carefully considered ) knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation, and the same may be said of Lawrence and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928).”  Scholars cataloguing his papers later found A Clockwork Orange was some two years in the making but that he didn’t deign even to mention the book by name was an indication of something and many suspect he’d have been not unhappy if remembered for the book and not the film which gained him a new audience, if not exactly the one he’d have preferred.  However, for those who like words, The Devil Prefers Mozart, On Music and Musicians contains enough expected Burgessian gems (like apothaneintheloish) and there aren’t many other places to find multiguous, parthenogenetical, theodician, apodemoniosis, stichomythia or quinquennium.

Frock

Frock (pronounced frok)

(1) A gown or dress worn by a female, consisting of a skirt and a cover for the upper body.

(2) A loose outer garment worn by peasants and workers; a smock.

(3) A coarse outer garment with large sleeves, worn by monks in some religious orders; a habit.

(4) In naval use, a sailor's jersey.

(5) In military use, an undress regimental coat (now less common).

(6) To clothe (somebody) in a frock.

(7) To make (somebody) a cleric (to invest with priestly or clerical office).

(8) In US military use, to grant to an officer the right to the title and uniform of a rank before the formal appointment is conferred.

1300–1350: From the Middle English frok, frokke and froke and twelfth century Old French froc (a monk’s habit; clothing, dress), from the Frankish hrok and thought probably related to the Old Saxon and Old High German hroc (mantle, coat) which appears to have spawned the Old Norse rokkr, the Old English rocc, and Old Frisian rokk.  Most etymologists seem to think it’s most likely all ultimately derived from the primitive rug or krek (to spin or weave); the alternative view suggests a link with the Medieval Latin hrocus, roccus and rocus (all of which described types of coats) which they speculate was the source of the Old French from, again from the Old Frankish hroc and hrok (skirt, dress, robe), from the Proto-Germanic hrukkaz (robe, jacket, skirt, tunic).  That does seem at least plausible given the existence of the Old High German hroch and roch (skirt, dress, cowl), the German rock (skirt, coat), the Saterland Frisian Rok (skirt), the Dutch rok (skirt, petticoat), the Old English rocc (an over-garment, tunic, rochet), the Old Norse rokkr (skirt, jacket) and Danish rok (garment).  Another alternative (more speculative still) traces it from the Medieval Latin floccus, from the Classical Latin floccus (flock of wool).  The meaning "outer garment for women or children" was from the 1530s while frock-coat (also as frock-cost & frockcoat) dates from the 1820s, the garment itself fading from fashion a century later although revivals have been attempted every few decades, aimed at a rather dandified market ignored by most.  Frock & frocking are nouns & verbs, frocked is a verb and frockless, frocklike & frockish are adjectives; the noun plural is frocks.

Frocks and Brass Hats

The phrase “frocks and brass hats” was coined in the years immediately following World War I (1914—1918) in reaction to the large volume of memoirs, autobiographies and histories published by some of the leading politicians and military leaders involved in the conflict, the phrase derived from (1) the almost universal habit of statesmen of the age wearing frock coats and (2) the hats of senior military personnel being adorned with gold braid, emulating the physical polished brass of earlier times.  Many of the books were polemics, the soldiers and politicians writing critiques of the wartime conduct of each other.  Politicians no longer wear frock coats and although some of the hats of military top brass still feature a bit of braid, it’s now less often seen.  However, the term persists although of late, academics studying institutional conflict in government have extended it to “frock coats, mandarins and brass hats”, reflecting the increase in importance of the part played by public servants, especially the military bureaucracy, in such matters.  So structurally, the internecine squabbles within the creature of the state have changed, the most obvious causes the twin threads of (1) the politicization of the upper reaches of the public service and (2) the creation of so many organs of government as corporate entities which enable the frocks (the politicians) to distance themselves from unpalatable policies and decisions by asserting (when it suits them), the “independence” of such bodies.  Of course, such functionaries will find their “independence” counts for little if the frocks start to feel the heat; then brutally the axe will fall, just as it did on some of the Great War generals.

Men in frock coats: The “Big Four” at the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920), outside the Foreign Ministry headquarters, Quai d'Orsay, Paris.  Left to right: David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922), Vittorio Orlando (1860–1952; Italian prime minister 1917-1919), Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) and Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president 1913-1921).

At the time, nothing quite like or on the scale of the Paris Peace Conference had ever been staged.  Only Orlando anticipated the future of fashion by preferring a lounge suit to a frock coat but he would be disappointed by the outcome of the conference, leaving early and to his dying day content his signature never appeared on the treaty’s final declaration, a document he regarded as flawed.  Not even John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) or Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) on their tours of European capitals received anything like the adulation Wilson enjoyed when he arrived in Paris in 1919.  His successors however were there more as pop-culture figures whereas Wilson was seen a harbinger of a "lasting peace", a thing of much significance to the French after four years of slaughter.  Ultimately Wilson's hopes would be dashed (in the US Senate as well as at the Quai d'Orsay's conference table) although, historians will likely continue to conclude his Nobel Peace Prize (1919) was more deserved than the one awarded to Obama (apparently on the basis he wasn't George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009)).  Lloyd George's ambitions in 1919 were more tempered by realism and he too regarded the terms of final document as a mistake, prophesying that because of the punitive terms imposed on the defeated Germany: “We shall have to fight another war again in 25 years' time.”  In that, he was correct, even if the expected wait was a little optimistic.  Only Clemenceau had reasons to be satisfied with what was achieved although, has his instincts been allowed to prevail, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1920) would have been more onerous still.  It was the Englishman Eric Geddes (1875–1937; First Lord of the Admiralty (the civilian head of the Royal Navy) 1917-1919) who coined the phrase "...squeeze the German lemon until the pips squeak." but it's doubtful that sentiment was ever far from Clemenceau's thoughts.

Lindsay Lohan in a nice frock.  V Magazine Black & White Ball, New York City, September 2011.

In idiomatic use, “frock” has proved as serviceable as the garment.  A “frock flick” is a film or television production noted for the elaborate costuming and most associated with costume dramas (typically sixteenth-nineteenth centuries) in which the frocks of the rich are depicted as big & extravagant.  To “frock up” is used by young women to describe “dressing-up” for some event or occasion and in the (male) gay community to refer either to much the same thing or cross-dressing.  A “cock in a frock” (“cocks in frocks” the collective) is a type of trans-woman (one without the relevant medical modification) and what used to be called a transvestite (a once technical term from psychiatry now (like “tranny”) thought derogatory except in historic use).  A “smock frock” was a garment of coarse, durable material which was worn over other clothing and most associated with agricultural and process workers (and usually referred to either as “smock” or “frock”.  In fashion there’s the “sun frock” (one of lightweight material which exposes more than the usual surface area of skin, often in a strappy or strapless style.  A “housefrock” was a piece of everyday wear form women which was self-explanatory: a simple, practical frock to be worn “around the house” and well suited to wear while performing “housework”.  “Underfrock” was a now archaic term for a slip or petticoat.  The A coat with long skirts, worn by men, now only on formal occasions.  The “frock coat” (also listed by some as the “Prince Albert coat”) is characterized by a knee-length skirt cut all around the base, ending just above the knee.  Among the middle & upper classes, it was popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1830s–1910s) although they were widely into the 1920s.  Although some fashion houses may have had lines with detail differences, there was really no difference between a “cocktail dress” and a “cocktail frock” except the latter seems now to be used only humorously.

Variations on the theme of the cocktail dress: Lindsay Lohan in vintage Herve Leger at Arrivals For Cartier’s Declare Your Love Day VIP cocktail reception, Cartier Store, New York, June 2006 (left) and in black Dion Lee cocktail dress with illusion panels and an off-the-shoulder silhouette, January 2013 (right).

A cocktail dress does however differ from a cocktail gown because they straddle the gap between daywear and ball gowns.  Intended to be worn at formal or semi-formal occasions (classically of course, the “cocktail party”) including wedding receptions or dinner parties, they’re typically shorter in length than a gown, the hemline falling somewhere between just above the knee to mid-calf.  There’s no exact template for a cocktail dress but they should be identifiable by their simplicity and elegance, thus the utility of their versatility.  While not exactly post-modern, they appear in many fabrics and just about any style including empire, bandage, A-line or sack, featuring a range of necklines, sleeve lengths, and embellishments.  Historically, befitting the sophistication once associated with the cocktail party, the dresses were characterized by modesty and severity of line, the classic motif the tailored silhouette, relatively uncluttered by details.  Vogue magazine labeled the accessories (shoes, jewelery, a clutch and sometimes a wrap) the “cocktail dress ensemble” but in recent decades there’s been a rise in stylistic promiscuity and some discordant elements have intruded.

Men of the frock: Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023; left) and Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022; right) at an inter-faith meeting in Sydney, Australia, July 2008.

A “man of the frock” is a clergyman of some description (almost always of some Christian denomination) and the apparent anomaly of nuns never being described as “women of the frock” (despite always wearing something at least frock-like) is explained presumably by all women once being assumed to wear frocks.  To “defrock” (literally “to divest of a frock”) is in figurative use used widely to mean “formally to remove the rights and authority of a member of the clergy” and by extension this is casually applied also to “struck-off” physicians, lawyers etc.  “Disfrock” & “unfrock” are used as synonyms of “defrock” but none actually appear in Roman Catholic canon law, the correct term being “laicization” (ie “returned to the laity).  Despite the popular impression, the Vatican has revealed most acts of laicization are pursuant to the request of the priest and performed because they feel, for whatever reason, unable to continue in holy orders (ex priests marrying ex-nuns a thing and there must be some theological debate around whether they’ve been “brought together by God” or “tempted by the Devil”).  Defrock dates from the 1580s in the sense of “deprive of priestly garb” and was from the fifteenth century French défroquer, the construct being from de- (used her as a negative prefix) + froque (frock) and familiar also as the verb “defrocked”.  The modern English verb “frock” (supply with a frock) seems to have come into use only in the 1820s and was either a back-formation from defrock or an evolution from the noun.  The verb was picked up by the military and “to frock” is used also as a jocular form of “to dress”.

Tsar

Tsar (pronounced zahr)

(1) An emperor or king.

(2) Title of the former emperors of Russia and several Slavonic states.

(3) Slang term for an autocratic ruler or leader.

(4) Slang term for a person exercising great authority or power in a particular field.

1545-1555: From the Old Russian tsĭsarĭ (emperor or king), akin to the Old Church Slavonic tsěsarĭ, the Gothic kaisar and the Greek kaîsar, all ultimately derived from the Latin Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) while the Germanic form of the word was the source of the Finnish keisari and the Estonian keisar.  The prehistoric Slavic was tsesar, Tsar first adopted as an imperial title by Ivan IV (Ivan Vasilyevich, 1530–1584 and better remembered as Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584) in 1547.  There’s a curious history to spelling tsar as czar.  Spelled thus, it’s contrary to the usage of all Slavonic languages; the word was so spelt by the Carniolan diplomat & historian Baron Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486–1566) in his work (in Latin) Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549)) which was such a seminal early source of knowledge of Russia in Western Europe that "czar" passed into the Western languages; despite that history, "tsar" definitely is the proper Latinization.  It still appears and some linguistic academics insist the lineage means it should be regarded as archaic use rather than a mistake and, as a fine technical point, that’s correct in that, for example, the female form czarina is from 1717 (from Italian czarina and German zarin).  In Russian, the female form is tsaritsa and a tsar’s son is a tsarevitch, his daughter a tsarevna.

Nicholas II (Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov, 1868–1918; last Tsar of Russia, 1894-1917).  He cut an imposing figure for the portraitists but his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) reckoned the tsar's mental abilities rendered him most suitable to "a cottage in the country where he can grow turnips".  Wilhelm got much wrong in his life but historians seem generally to concur in this he was a fair judge of things.

Tsar and its variants were the official titles of (1) the First Bulgarian Empire 913–1018, (2) the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), (3) the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), (4) the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721) (technically replaced in 1721 by imperator, but remaining in use outside Russia (also officially in relation to certain regions until 1917) and (5) the Tsardom of Bulgaria (1908–1946).  So, although most associated with Russia, the first ruler to adopt the title was Simeon I (usually written as Simeon the Great; circa 865-927, ruler of Bulgaria 893-927) and that was about halfway through his reign and nobody since Simeon II (Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, b 1937; (last) Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria 1943-1946) has been a tsar.  The transferred sense of "person with dictatorial powers" seems first to have appeared in English in 1866 as an adoption in American English, initially as a disapproving reference to President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; US President 1865-1869) but it has come to be applied neutrally (health tsar, transport tsar) and use does sometimes demand deconstruction: drug tsar has been applied both to organised crime figures associated with the distribution of narcotics and government appointees responsible for policing the trade.  In some countries, some overlap between the two roles has been noted.

Comrade Stalin agitprop.

Volgograd, the southern Russian city was between 1925-1961 named Stalingrad (Stalin + -grad).  Grad (град in Cyrillic) was from the Old Slavic and translates variously as "town, city, castle or fortified settlement"; it once existed in many languages as gord and can be found still as grad, gradić, horod or gorod in many place-names.  Before it was renamed in honour of comrade Stalin (1878-1953, leader of the USSR 1924-1953), between 1589-1925, the city, at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga rivers was known as Tsaritsyn, the name from the Turkic-related Tatar dialect word sarisin meaning "yellow water" or "yellow river" but because of the similarity in sound and spelling, came in Russia to be associated with Tsar.  Stalingrad is remembered as the scene of the epic and savage battle which culminated in the destruction in February 1943 of the German Sixth Army, something which, along with the strategic failure of the Wehrmacht in the offensive (Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) in the Kursk salient five months later, marked what many military historians record as the decisive moment on the Eastern Front.  It has become common to refer to comrade Stalin as the "Red Tsar" whereas casual comparisons of Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) don't often reach to Russia's imperial past; they seem to stop with Stalin.

Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) was from the late fourteenth century cesar (from Cæsar) and was originally a surname of the Julian gens in Rome, elevated to a title after Caius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became dictator and it was used as a title of emperors down to Hadrian (76–138; Roman emperor 117-138).  The name ultimately is of uncertain origin, Pliny the Elder (23–79) suggested it came from the Latin caesaries (head of hair) because the future dictator was born with a lush growth while others have linked it to the Latin caesius (bluish-gray), an allusion to eye color.  The "probity of Caesar's" wife (the phrase first recorded in English in the 1570s) as the figure of a person who should be above suspicion comes from the biography of Julius Caesar written by the Greek Middle Platonist priest-philosopher & historian Plutarch (circa 46–circa 123).  Plutarch related the story of how Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia because of rumors of infidelity, not because he believed the tales of her adultery but because, as a political position, “the wife of Caesar must not even be under suspicion”.  That’s the origin of the phrase “the probity of Caesar’s wife, a phrase which first appeared in English in the 1570s.

In late nineteenth century US slang, a sheriff was "the great seizer" an allusion to the office's role in seizing property pursuant to court order.  The use of Caesar to illustrate the distinction between a subject’s obligations to matters temporal and spiritual is from the New Testament: Matthew 22:21.

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Christ had been answering a question posed by the Pharisees to trap Him: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15–20)?  To answer, Jesus held up a denarius, the coin with which pay the tax and noted that on it was the head of Caesar, by then Caesar had become a title, meaning emperor of Rome and its empire.  It was a clever answer; in saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's", Jesus dismisses the notion of believers being conflicted by the demands of the secular state as a false dilemma because, one can fulfil the requirements of the sate by a mere payment of coin without any implication of accepting its doctrines or legitimacy.  Over the years much has been made of what is or should be "rendered unto Caesar", but more interesting is inference which must be drawn: if we owe Caesar that which bears his image, what then do we owe God?  It can only be that we owe God that which bears the image of God, an impressive inventory listed in the book of Genesis and now interpreted by some Christians as "the whole universe".  To Caesar we can only ever owe money; to God we owe ourselves.

In the Old English the spelling was casere, which would under the expected etymological process have evolved into coser, but instead, circa 1200, it was replaced in the Middle English by keiser, from the Norse or Low German, and later by the French or Latin form of the name.  Cæsar also is the root of German Kaiser, the Russian tsar and is linked with the Modern Persian shah.  Despite the common assumption, "caesar" wasn’t an influence on the English "king".  King was from the Middle English king & kyng, from the Old English cyng & cyning (king), from the Proto-West Germanic kuning, from the Proto-Germanic kuningaz & unungaz (king), kin being the root.  It was cognate with the Scots keeng (king), the North Frisian köning (king), the West Frisian kening (king), the Dutch koning (king), the Low German Koning & Köning (king), the German König (king), the Danish konge (king), the Norwegian konge (king), the Swedish konung & kung (king), the Icelandic konungur & kóngur (king), the Finnish kuningas (king) and the Russian князь (knjaz) (prince) & княги́ня (knjagínja) (princess).  It eclipsed the non-native Middle English roy (king) and the Early Modern English roy, borrowed from Old French roi, rei & rai (king).

The Persian Shah was from the Old Persian xšāyaθiya (king), once thought a borrowing from the Median as it was compared to the Avestan xšaϑra- (power; command), corresponding to the Sanskrit (the Old Indic) kṣatra- (power; command), source of kṣatriya (warrior).  However, recent etymological research has confirmed xšāyaθiya was a genuine, inherited Persian formation meaning “pertaining to reigning, ruling”.  The word, with the origin suffix -iya was from a deverbal abstract noun xšāy-aθa- (rule, ruling) (Herrschaft), from the Old Persian verb xšāy- (to rule, reign).  In the Old Persian, the full title of the Achaemenid rulers of the First Empire was Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām (or in Modern Persian, Šāhe Šāhān (King of Kings)), best as "Emperor", a title with ancient, Near Eastern and Mesopotamian precedents.  The earliest known instance of such a title dates from the Middle Assyrian period as šar šarrāni, used by the Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC).

Tsar Bomba: the Tsar bomb

Tupolev Tu-95 in flight (left) and a depiction of the October 1961 test detonation of the Tsar Bomb.

Царь-бомба (Tsar Bomba (Tsar-bomb)) was the Western nickname for the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (Project code: AN602; code name Ivan or Vanya), the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.  The test on 30 October 1961 remains the biggest man-made explosion in history and was rated with a yield of 50-51 megatons although the design was technically able to produce maximum yield in excess of 100.  For a long time the US estimated the yield at 54 megatons and the Russians at 58 but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was confirmed the true yield was 50-51 megatons.  Only one was ever built and it was detonated on an island off the Russian arctic coast.  The decision to limit the size blast was related to the need to ensure (1) a reduced nuclear fall-out and (2) the aircraft dropping the thing would be able to travel a safe distance from the blast radius (the Kremlin's attitude to the lives of military personnel had changed since comrade Stalin's time).  No nuclear power has since expressed any interest in building weapons even as large as the Tsar Bomb and for decades the trend in strategic arsenals has been more and smaller weapons, a decision taken on the pragmatic military grounds that it's pointless to destroy things many times over.  It's true that higher yield nuclear weapons would produce "smaller rubble" but to the practical military mind such a result represents just "wasted effort".

Progress 1945-1961.

The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO reporting name: Bear) which dropped the Tsar Bomb was a curious fork in aviation history, noted also for its longevity.  A four-engined turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform, it entered service in 1956 and is expected still to be in operational use in 2040, an expectation the United States Air Force (USAF) share for their big strategic bomber, the Boeing B-52 which first flew in 1952, the first squadrons formed three years later.  Both airframes have proven remarkably durable and amenable to upgrades; as heavy lift devices and delivery systems they could be improved upon with a clean-sheet design but the relatively small advantages gained would not justify the immense cost, thus the ongoing upgrade programmes.  The TU-95's design was, inter-alia, notable for being one of the few propeller-driven aircraft with swept wings and is the only one ever to enter large-scale production.  It's also very loud, the tips of those counter-rotating propellers sometimes passing through the sound barrier.

Footage of the Tsar Bomb test de-classified and released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1991).

The Tsar Bomb was in a sense the “ultimate” evolution of the centuries long history of the bomb although it wasn’t the end of innovation, designers seemingly never running out of ideas to refine the concept of the device, the purpose of which is to (1) blow stuff up and (2) kill people.  Bomb was from the French bombe, from the Italian bomba, from the Latin bombus (a booming sound), from the Ancient Greek βόμβος (bómbos) (booming, humming, buzzing), the explosive imitative of the sound itself.  Bomb was used originally of “projectiles; mortar shells etc”, the more familiar “explosive device placed by hand or dropped from airplane” said by many sources to date from 1908 although the word was in the former sense used when describing the anarchist terrorism of the late nineteenth century.  As a footnote, the nickname of Hugh Trenchard (1873-1956), the first Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) was “boom” but this was related to his tone of voice rather than an acknowledgement of him being one of the earliest advocates of strategic bombing.

The figurative uses were wide, ranging from “a dilapidated car” (often as “old bomb”, the use based presumably on the perception such vehicles are often loud).  The bombshell was originally literally a piece of military equipment but it was later co-opted (most memorably as “blonde bombshell) to describe a particularly fetching young women.  So, used figuratively, “bomb” could mean either “very bad” or “very good” and in his weekly Letter from American (broadcast by the BBC World Service 1946-2004), Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) noted a curious trans-Atlantic dichotomy.  In the world of showbiz, Cooke observed, “bomb” was used in both the US & UK to describe the reaction to a play, movie or whatever but in the US, if called “a bomb”, the production was a flop, a failure whereas in the UK, if something was called “quite a bomb”, it meant it was a great success.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

I Know Who Killed Me bombed (in the traditional US sense) but in the way these things sometimes happen, the film has since enjoyed a second life with a cult-following and screenings on the specialized festival circuit.  Additionally, DVD & Blu-Ray sales (it's said to be a popular, if sometimes ironic, gift) meant eventually it generated a profit although it has never exactly become a "bomb" (in the UK sense).  However, while it now enjoys a following among a small sub-set of the public, the professional critics have never softened their view.

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 etc) 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 fossil-fuel rich 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.  Swift 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.

Operation Hummingbird (1934): Crushing the "Röhm Putsch"

Adolf Hitler looking at Ernst Röhm, 1934.  Suspecting Röhm would at some time "pull a swiftie" on him, Hitler was persuaded to "pull a swiftie" first.  Giver the swiftness at which things were executed, the operation's "hummingbird" tag was well-deserved. 

Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives), also called Unternehmen Kolbri (Operation Hummingbird) was a purge executed in Nazi Germany between 30 June-2 July 1934, when the regime carried out a number of extrajudicial executions, ostensibly to crush what was referred to as "the Röhm Putsch".  Targets of the purge were those in the Nazi (National-Socialist) movement labelled as identifying with the need to continue the revolution so it would be as much socialist as it was nationalist.  Ironically, at the time, there was no putsch planned although Ernst Röhm (1887–1934; chief of the Sturmabteilung (the stormtroopers (the SA)), head of the four-million strong SA had certainly in the past hinted at one.  A brutal act of mass-murder (the first of many to follow), the Night of the Long Knives was executed with remarkable swiftness and the most generous interpretation is it can be thought a "preventive" rather than a "pre-emptive strike".  Elsewhere in Europe, the events were noted with some alarm although most statesman of the Western democracies came quickly to conclude (in the Westphalian way) it was an "internal German matter" and it was best politely not publicly again to speak of it.  Among Germans, the lesson about the nature of the Nazi state was well-learned.  

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.

Juxtaposition.

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 Dr 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”.