Deglutition

Deglutition (pronounced dee-gloo-tish-uh)

In physiology, the act or process of swallowing, regarded in modern mdeicine as a three-part process.

1640-1650: From the sixteenth century French déglutition (act or power of swallowing) or the Late Latin dēglūtītiō, the construct the Classical Latin dēglūtīre & dēgluttīre + -tiō (the suffix forming nouns relating to actions or the results of actions).  Dēgluttīre was from dēgluttiō (to swallow down), the construct being dē- (the prefix meaning “from, off”) + gluttiō (to gulp down, swallow) from the primitive Indo-European gwel (throat).  The Classical Latin deglutitionem (nominative deglutitio) was a noun of action from the past-participle stem of deglutare (to swallow down), the construct being ," from de- (the prefix used here in the sense of "down" + glutire "to swallow".  The old synonym glutition is obsolete although in medical texts it persisted well into the twentieth century and the French spelling déglutition appears in some medical publications.  Deglutition is a noun, deglutitive, deglutitious, deglutitory & deglutible are adjectives; the noun plural is deglutitions.  It seems forms like deglutiting, deglutited, deglutitively et al don't exist.

The mechanism of deglutition.

The process of deglutition (swallowing) may in humans begin to develop in utero as early as 15 weeks gestation and the conventional wisdom now is that it happens in three stages: (1) Oral Phase, in which there’s a preparatory stage, liquids sealed in the oral cavity by the tongue & hard palate bolus (the mass of something, especially of chewed food in the mouth while solids are masticated and a propulsion stage in which the tongue moves the bolus (the mass of chewed food towards the pharynx (the opening to the canal and the back of the mouth), (2) Pharyngeal Phase, which is triggered by receptors sending messages to the brainstem’s swallowing centre, this initiating a sequence of actions which prevent preventing aspiration and pushing the bolus down into the esophagus (the pathway between pharynx & stomach) and (3) Esophageal Phase in which the bolus enters the esophagus to be moved toward the stomach by rhythmic contractions of the esophageal muscles, the final wave of which relaxes the lower sphincter (a body-part with a valve-like function) to allow the bolus to enter the stomach.

The verb swallow was from the Middle English swolowen, swolwen, swolȝen, swelwen & swelȝen, from the Old English swelgan, from the Proto-West Germanic swelgan, from the Proto-Germanic swelganą (to swallow, revel, devour), from the primitive Indo-European swelk- (to gulp).  It was cognate with the Dutch zwelgen (to revel, carouse, guzzle), the German schwelgen (to delight, indulge), the Swedish svälja (to swallow, gulp), the Icelandic svelgja (to swallow) and the Old English swillan & swilian (to swill, wash out, gargle).  The noun swallow was from the Middle English swelwe & swolwe, from the Old English swelh & swelg (gulf, chasm) and ġeswelge (gulf, chasm, abyss, whirlpool), both from the Proto-West Germanic swelg & swalgi, from the Proto-Germanic swelgaz & swalgiz. It was cognate with the Old English swiliġe (pit), the Scots swelch, swellie & swallie (an abyss in the sea, a whirlpool), the Middle Low German swelch (whirlpool, eddy), the Dutch zwelg (gorge, chasm, gullet, throat) and the Old Norse svelgr (whirlpool, current, stream).  The spellings swalow & swolow are long obsolete. Swallow & swallowing are nouns & verbs, swallower is a noun and swallowed is a verb; the noun plural is swallows.

Impending deglutition: Lindsay Lohan swallowing yogurt.

The familiar sense is “to cause (food, drink, medicine etc) to pass from the mouth into the stomach (ie to take into the stomach via the throat) emerged as early as the eleventh century.  The figurative use includes geopolitics (“to swallow another territory or population (usually by annexation or aggression) based on the thirteenth century use to mean “to take (something) in so that it disappears; to consume, to absorb” and gullibility (To accept easily or without questions; inclined to believe) which was in use by the sixteenth century.  The idiomatic uses include “bitter (or difficult) pill to swallow” (something unpleasant or unwanted which must be accepted or endured), “swallow one’s pride” (To set aside one's feelings and adopt an alternative stance for pragmatic or other reasons), “swallow one’s words” (to be forced to retract a prior statement after it has been proved wrong or inappropriate; to take back what one has said) and “swallowed a dictionary (or thesaurus) (to speak or write using long or obscure words)

A swallow in flight.

In ornithology, the swallow is a small, migratory bird of the Hirundinidae family with long, pointed, moon-shaped wings and a forked tail; it feeds on the wing by catching insects and is best known for the phrase “one swallow does not a summer make”, the idea being that just because there are sightings of the migratory swallows arriving in their summer home, it does not guarantee summer weather from that point on.  The bird’s name was from the Middle English swalwe, swalewe & swalowe, from the Old English swealwe, from the Proto-West Germanic swalwā, from the Proto-Germanic swalwǭ.  It was cognate with the Danish & Norwegian svale, the Dutch zwaluw, the German Schwalbe and the Swedish svala.  In all languages, the name is believed to be onomatopoeic, imitating the bird's twittering and chattering calls.

The Swallow Sidecar company was an English firm set up in the early inter-war years and. As the name implies, its business was building the sidecars which could be attached to a motorcycle to enable a passenger to be carried.  The “Swallow” name was chosen because the company made a conscious attempt to style their sidecars with elegant lines and they hoped buyers would associate them with the agile, graceful bird.  The business flourished but in the 1920s so did the British economy as a prosperity spread, so did the demand for motor cars and Swallow Sidecar entered this growing market, their template being to purchase relatively inexpensive chassis from mainstream manufacturers and cloak them with rakish bodies.  Because a stylish body cost about the same to produce as something more prosaic, profits were good even though Swallow Sidecars sold their machines at very attractive prices.  To reflect the new business model, the company had by 1927 changed its name to Swallow Sidecar and Coachbuilding Company but with the cars rapidly coming to absorb most of the manufacturing capacity, by 1930 it was known as Swallow Coachbuilding.

1938 SS 100 Jaguar 3½-litre roadster.

Unlike many small coach-builders, this structure survived the Great Depression and became SS Cars Limited in 1934 and the “SS” may have been (1) an allusion to the original Swallow Sidecar or (2) just an attractive pair of letters for a car manufacturer (“S” by then already associated by many with high-performance) but it had come to be widely reported as a reference to “Standard Swallow” because most of the chassis them being used were supplied by the Standard company.  It was on an SS car that the “Jaguar” name was in 1935 first used, speedy or sleek animals becoming a popular choice of name in the 1930s and it’s the SS Jaguar 100 (referred to usually as the SS 100) which is the best remembered although very few were built (198 with the 2½ litre straight-six & 116 with a 3½-litre version).  The SS 100 provided the template which in the post-war years Jaguar would use to build their reputation: speed, rakish lines and value for money.  Like Shelby American’s take on the AC Cobra, there are now many more replica SS 100s than ever were built by the factory.

In 1945, as part of the planning for the resumption of production for vehicles for the civilian market, SS Cars changed its name to Jaguar Cars Limited but despite much subsequent speculation, there seems to be nothing to suggest it had anything to do with avoiding the common used name of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (the SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes) 1925-1945) which was originally a party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) which evolved into a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) before becoming first a paramilitary formation and finally a kind of parallel army (the Waffen-SS) hundreds of thousands strong).  Instead, it seems to have been that the market response to the Jaguar name had been positive and was in its field unique and would therefore not be confused with anything else.

Degrees of authenticity: 2017 Jaguar XKSS (continuation series)

In 1957, the "SS" moniker was revived for what was planned to be a run of 25 XKSSs, road-going conversions of the Le Mans-winning D-type (1954-1956); such things were possible in those happier, less regulated times.  However, nine of the cars earmarked for export to North America were lost in fire so only 16 were ever completed.  In 2016 Jaguar displayed the first of nine XKSS "continuation" models and these nine, using the serial numbers allocated in 1957 are regarded as a "continuation of the original run" to completion, Jaguar insisting it is not "cloning itself".  The project was well-received and the factory subsequently announced it would also continue the production run of the lightweight E-Types, again using the allocated but never absorbed ID numbers.  Other manufacturers, including Aston Martin, have embarked on their own continuation programmes and at a unit cost in excess of US$1 million, it's a lucrative business. 

Palter

Paltering (pronounced pawl-ter)

(1) Insincerely or deceitfully to talk or act; to lie or use trickery; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.

(2) To bargain with; to haggle (now rare).

(3) Carelessly to act; to trifle (now rare).

(4) To babble; to chatter (archaic).

1530–1540: The original meaning was “indistinctly to speak; to mumble”.  The origin is obscure and etymologists suggest it may have been an alteration of “falter” in (the sense of a “faltering delivery of speech” same sense, with an appended “p-“ from palsy (in pathology, a complete or partial muscle paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by a loss of feeling and uncontrolled body movements such as shaking).  The predominant meaning by the mid-seventeenth century was the use to describe the particular form of deceptive or misleading conduct that is the telling of a partial truth in such as way as to avoid a “technical lie” yet convey an untruth.  The alternative suggestion is a connection with the Middle English palter (rag, trifle, worthless thing), from Middle Low German palter (rag, cloth).  The verb has long been a mystery because it had the frequentative, but there is nothing to suggest the existence of a verb “palt”; it’s not impossible it may have been an alteration of paltry (trashy, trivial, of little value; of little monetary worth; someone despicable; contemptibly unimportant).  The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing).

Via the notion of “talk in a trifling manner, babble” came (by the 1580s) the sense of both “insincere words” or “misleading statements; “playing fast and loose" with the truth.  The sense of “trifle away, squander” was in use by the 1620s.  The now obsolete noun palterly (paulterly the alternative spelling) is unrelated.  It was a late Middle English form from palter (a rag, worthless thing), from the Middle Low German palter (rag, cloth) and was used to convey the sense of something (or someone) "mean or parsimonious".  Palter and paltered are verbs and palterer & paltering are nouns & verbs; the more common noun plural is palterings but all forms of the word are rare outside of academic use in the analysis of politics and commerce.  Palter has been used as an irregular noun and palteresque is tempting in the post-truth age.

Paltering is an old and, outside of academia, rarely used word but the practice it describes, while hardly a modern invention, seems now more prevalent in public discourse so a revival may happen.  Paltering is a term used to describe the act of deceiving someone by telling the truth, but in a misleading or incomplete way, something more devious even than the many lies of crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) (which she usually “explains” by saying she “misspoke”).  The essence of paltering was captured in the elegant phrase of former UK cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong (1927-2020; later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster) who, under cross-examination in the “Spycatcher” trial (1986), when referring to a letter, answered: “It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.”  Whether the old Etonian was aware of much post-Classical writing isn’t known (at Christ Church, Oxford he read the “Greats” (the history and philosophy of Ancient Greece & Rome)) but he may have been acquainted with Mark Twain’s (1835-1910) Following the Equator (1897) in which appeared: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.  Let us economize it.” or the earlier thoughts of the Anglo-Irish Whig politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who in his Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory (1796) noted: “Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.”  Just as likely however is that Sir Robert had been corrupted by his long service in HMG (Her Majesty’s Government) and was thinking of: “The truth is so precious, it deserves an escort of lies”, a phrase often attributed (as are many) to Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), but there’s some evidence to suggest he may have picked it up from comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and even if it wasn’t something the old seminarian coined, it was the mantra by which he lived so he deserves some credit.  Sir Robert’s phrase entered the annals of legal folklore and was good enough to have been lifted from a script from the BBC satire Yes Minister.

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

Unlike crooked Hillaryesque blatant lying (which involves providing false information), paltering involves using truthful statements (or at least those with the quality of plausible deniability) to create a false impression or intentionally to mislead someone.  Paltering is achieved by (1) omitting crucial details, (2) emphasizing certain truths while downplaying or not disclosing others or (3) presenting information in a way that technically is correct but which leads one’s interlocutor(s) to draw erroneous conclusions.  In practice, the mechanics of paltering usually are (1) Selective Truth: (highlighting facts that support one’s position while ignoring those that do not, (2) Omission: Leaving out vital information that would correct a listener's misunderstanding(s) and (4) Context Manipulation: Presenting information out of context to alter its meaning.  The classic wording of the oath or affirmation given by witnesses in legal proceedings (“the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”) is essentially an “anti-paltering” device.

So paltering is insidious because it is the artful use of the truth to create which might be thought a “constructive lie” and the word seems first to have enjoyed its latter day revival when political scientists in the US adopted it when analyzing texts and there is qualitative research which suggests those who palter can tend to rationalize the act by expressing sentiments along the lines of “lying is worse”.  Helpfully, the Trump White House was (and may yet again be) a place where many case-studies in the “compare & contrast” of lies and paltering were created and for that we should be grateful.

An example of the “simple lie” came when Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director 2017) early in 2021 informed the White House press corps that Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) had enjoyed a greater larger live audience at his inauguration than that which had attended Barack Obama’s (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2009.  All available evidence appeared to suggest Obama’s numbers were up to twice those of Trump and if Spicer hadn’t brought it up (it was hardly a great affair of church or state) probably nobody else would have mentioned it but for Trump, who borrowed for his campaign so many of the techniques he’d learned from his career in reality television, viewer numbers were professional life and death and thus the lie. 

Kellyanne Conway in hoodie: Miss January, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's annual Conservative Women Calendar (2009).

The Trump administration actually gave the world a linguistic gift, another term for paltering: “alternative facts”, first mentioned by Trump campaign strategist and counselor, Kellyanne Conway (b 1967; senior counselor to the president, 2017-2020).  Ms Conway used the words during a Meet the Press interview to describe the use of statistics quoted by Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director, 2017), numbers which, prima facie, seemed dubious.  She sought later to clarify “alternative facts” by defining the phrase as "additional facts and alternative information" which, when deconstructed, probably did add a layer of nuance but really didn’t help.  Journalists, not a crew always entirely truthful, decided to help and called the phrase "Orwellian", provoking a spike on the search engines as folk sought out "doublethink" and "newspeak"; sales of George Orwell’s (1903–1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) said overnight to have risen several-dozen fold.  The relationship between the press and the Trump White House was never likely to be friendly but “alternative facts” meant things started badly almost from day one.  That had no discernible effect on Mr Trump who committed a classic act of paltering when, in arguing he had won the 2020 presidential election and it had been “stolen” from him by the corrupt, Democratic Party controlled “deep state”, emphasized that on election day he had “won more votes that any sitting president in history”.  That was of course literally true and something to be noted by psephologists for their trivia nights (psephologists know how to have a good time) but about as relevant to the results of the election as was crooked Hillary Clinton getting three million-odd more votes than Mr Trump in 2016.

The increase in the use of "paltering" is attributed to (1) the internet which encouraged the posting of lists of rare, obscure or archaic words and (2) the use in academia, the publications of which are indexed and harvested by statistical grabbers like Google's Ngrams.  Tempting though it may be, Mr Trump being an arch palterer probably did little to boost the use of the word although he may have inspired others to adopt the technique.

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Saturnalia

Saturnalia (pronounced sat-er-ney-lee-uh or sat-er-neyl-yuh)

(1) The festival of Saturn (in Ancient Rome a holiday to mark the winter solstice, honoring the deity Saturn), celebrated in December as a time of unrestrained merrymaking (with initial capital and used sometimes with a plural verb).

(2) Uninhibited revelry; orgy (usually without initial capital).

(3) Merrymaking.

(4) In paleontology, a taxonomic genus (Saturnalia tupiniquim) within the order Saurischia (a dinosaur of the Triassic).

1585–1595: From the Latin Sāturnālia, neuter plural of the adjective Sāturnālis (pertaining to Saturn (corresponding to the Ancient Greek Kronia)), from Saturnus, the construct being Sāturn + -ālia, neuter plural of -ālis- (the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals).  Regarding the dinosaur, etymologists interpret the word as the Latin equivalent of the Portuguese carnaval (Carnival (the period before Lent)); so called because the genus was discovered in Brazil during Carnival.  The anagram of Saturnalia (a festival much associated with the taking of strong drink) is Australian; sometimes in language, things work out well.  Saturnalia is a noun, saturnian is a noun & adjective and saturnalian is an adjective; the noun plural is plural saturnalias.  In modern practice it's common for the forms to appear uncapitalized.

The Roman festival of the winter solstice was originally celebrated for three days beginning on 17 December but was later extended to seven days.  It was a popular winter event because the revelry, drinking and the taking of mirthful license was extended to all classes, even slaves (of which the Romans had many).  In the West the word remained the preserve of classists and historians until 1782 when an extended sense of "a period of wild or noisy revelry" began to be used, the adjectival Saturnalian (soon without the initial capital) noted in 1801.  The Latin proverb nōn semper Sāturnālia erunt (literally “it will not always be the Saturnalia”) translates as “not every day can be a holiday”, one of life’s more melancholy lessons.

Les Romains de la décadence (1847) (The Romans in their Decadence) by Thomas Couture (1515-1879), Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The painting of Les Romains de la décadence absorbed three years of Thomas Couture’s life and during the process he told fellow artists that in it was a work in the tradition of the masters of ancient Greece, the Renaissance and the Flemish school.  He wanted to give fresh impetus to French painting and thought a historical work documenting human behavior during high antiquity was the way to convey his moral message.  In the catalogue printed when he exhibited the finished piece at the 1847 Paris Salon, Couture quoted a fragment of two lines by the Roman poet Juvenal, (circa 55-circa 140) in the catalogue for the 1847 Salon where the painting was exhibited: "Crueller than war, vice fell upon Rome and avenged the conquered world". 

The imagery is heavy-handed but effective, ancient statures from an austere and pure past casting condemnatory eyes upon the debauched and decadent below.  Couture, a Jacobin, republican and anti-cleric, created the work as a critique of what would now be called the “political class”, his target the moral decadence which beset the country under the July monarchy, the elite of which had been discredited or disgraced by successive scandals.  As a political statement it was a realist allegory but it was influential too in its style.  A work on a huge scale and reminiscent of Raphael (1483–1520), so much of the French “classic” school of the second half of the century owed some debt to Les Romains de la décadence.  Within a year of the salon, the revolution of 1848 had toppled the July monarchy and prints with the faces of politicians imposed would circulate in France during the troubled 1930s dubbed Le français de la décadence (The French of the Decadence).

In a slightly santized form, Les Romains de la décadence was in 1846 etched by Edmond Hédouin (1820-1889).  It now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

As a festival, Saturnalia faded from memory in the early medieval period because of the decline and fall of Rome and the standardization on the Christian calendar of the Christmas holiday which borrowed some of Saturnalia’s traditions and should thus be thought an absorption of the pagan event rather than its replacement, the slight change in dates not climatically significant.  Unusually in the stratified society of Rome, Saturnalia was an egalitarian event in that some of the rituals involved a reversal of social norms, an allusion to those days when Saturn ruled over the Earth as a bucolic paradise.  Under Roman law, during the first three days of Saturnalia, all schools, businesses and courts were required to close to ensure all could share in the fun.

The Saturn cocktail (1967)

Ingredients

1½ oz Gin
½ oz fresh lemon juice
¼ oz passion fruit purée
½ oz orgeat syrup
¼ oz velvet falernum

Instructions

(1) Blend all ingredients with 1 cup of crushed ice until smooth.

(2) Pour contents into a rocks glass with 4 oz of fresh crushed ice.

(3) Garnish with a lime twist wrapped around a cherry.

The start of Saturnalia was marked by priests in the temples of Saturn unwrapping from the feet of the statues of the god the woolen garments with which they were usually attired, the intended symbolism an act of liberation signifying the strictures which usually governed life were, for a few days, relaxed.  Graphically emblematic of that was that during Saturnalia, all Romans whether senators, citizens, freedmen or slaves were free to wear a pilleus, the felt cap otherwise restricted to freedmen.  Slaves too enjoyed a little more latitude in life, technically free to disobey and disrespect their masters without fear of punishment although the work of historians did make the point this was a right exercised usually with some caution and thought for the future.  The best remembered (or at least the most frequently cited) ritual of Saturnalia was the feast where masters served their slaves or even had them sit at the same table but there’s little to indicate if this was a widespread practice, some sources suggesting it was more likely that something like “staff Christmas parties” were arranged, the wine and food provided by the master or employer.

Lindsay Lohan provides a rationale for saturnalia (quoted in 2006, during her saturnalian period).  This is available as desktop wallpaper (3840 x 2160) for those needing frequently to be reminded.   

Beyond that, the rituals of Saturnalia were recognizably those of Christmas or other pagan festivals of the winter solstice, featuring festive masks, poetry readings & performances, games of chance (gambling became lawful during Saturnalia).  Most notably, there was the exchange of gifts between family, friends and loved ones, traditionally on the last day of the holiday which eventually settled on 23 December.   Many modern gift traditions can be traced back to Saturnalia, including the annual bonus employees would sometime enjoy and there were “gag gifts” too, worthless trinkets or items truly ghastly, senators and even the odd emperor recorded as having some fondness for giving these.

President

President (pronounced prez-i-duhnt or preza-dint (plus many regional variations)

(1) The title of the highest executive officer of most modern republics.

(2) An official appointed or elected to preside over an organized body of persons.

(3) The chief executive (and sometimes operating) officer of a college, university, society, corporation etc.  Many corporate presidents function as something like a “char(man) of the board” rather than a CEO or COO.

(4) A person who presides.

(5) An alternative form of “precedent” (long obsolete).

1325–1375: From the Middle English, from the Old French president, from Late Latin praesidēns (presiding over; president of; leader) (accusative praesidentem) from the Classical Latin praesident (stem of praesidēns), the noun use of the present participle of praesidēre (to preside over, sit in front of).  The Latin word was the substantivized present active participle of the verb praesideō (preside over) while the construct of the verb was prae (before) + sedeō (sit).  The verb’s original sense was “to sit before” (ie presiding at a meeting) from which was derived the generalized secondary meaning “to command, to govern”, praesidēns thus meaning variously “the one who presides at a meeting”, “governor or a region”, “commander of a force” etc.  In English the construct is thus understood as preside + -ent.  Preside was from the Old French presider, from Latin praesidēre, the construct being pre- (before) + sedere (to sit).  It displaced the Old English foresittan which may have been a calque of the Latin.  The –ent suffix was from the Middle English –ent (which existed, inter alia, also as –ant & -aunt.  It was from the Old French -ent and its source, the Latin -ēns (the accusative singular was -entem), suffix of present participles of verbs in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th conjugations.  The word is used with an upper case if applied honorifically (President of Italy; President Nixon etc) but not otherwise but this is of the more widely ignored rules in English.  Modifiers (minister-president, municipal president, president-elect et al) are created as required.  The spelling præsident is archaic.  President & presidency are nouns, verb & adjective, presidentship & presidenthood are nouns, presidenting & presidented are verbs, presidential is an adjective and presiˈdentially is an adverb; the noun plural is presidents.  The feminine form presidentess dates from at least 1763 and is probably obsolete unless used in humor but that may risk one’s cancellation.

US politics in the last decade has had moments of strangeness so some things which once seemed unthinkable are now merely improbable.

In the US, “president” was used in the original documents of the constitution (1787), picking up the earlier colonial use as “officer in charge of the Continental Congress” and it had also been used in several of the colonies and that in the sense of “chosen head of a meeting or group of persons”.  During and immediately after the Revolution, the tile was adopted by the chief magistrates of several states but before long all instead settled on “governor”, emulating the colonial designation.  In the US, the most common slang shortening of president is “pres”, dating from 1892 although dictionaries note the earlier existence of “prex” which was student slang for the president of a university or college.  First recorded in 1828, as a Latin verb, it meant “a request, entreaty”.  The handy initialization POTUS (President of the United States) dates from 1879 when it was created as part of the “Phillips Code” a system devised by US journalist, telegrapher & inventor Walter Polk Phillips (1846–1920) to speed up the transmission of messages across wire services and reduce their cost (the services charging per letter).  Among those in the code was SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) and later (long after the original rationale had been overtaken by technology) journalists and others started using VPOTUS (Vice-President of the United States), FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) and NPOTUS (next President of the United States) the latter once applied to both Al Gore (b 1948; VPOTUS 1993-2001 and in 2000 the NPOTUS)) and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013 and in 2016 the NPOTUS).  Word nerds, pondering nomination of the latest NPOTUS (Kamala Harris (b 1964; VPOTUS since 2021) as the likely Democrat nominee are wondering what will emerge to describe her husband should she become CMOTUS (Chief Magistrate of the United States), the options presumably FGOTUS (First Gentlemen of the United States) or FHOTUS (First Husband of the United States).  Presumably FMOTUS (First Man of the United States) won’t be used.  While a Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) as POTUS is desirable (and debatably inevitable), a tilt for the nomination in 2020 would have been premature because Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution requires one be at least 35 years old to to serve in the office.  She became eligible on 2 July 2021 so it seems only a matter of time. 

A full bucket of veep.

In the US during the nineteenth century there was a joke about two brothers: "One ran off to sea and the other became vice-president; neither were ever heard of again."  That was of course an exaggeration but it reflected the general view of the office which has very few formal duties and can only ever be as powerful or influential as a president allows although the incumbent is "a heartbeat from the presidency".  John Nance Garner III (1868–1967, vice president of the US 1933-1941), a reasonable judge of these things, once told Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) being VPOTUS was "not worth a bucket of warm piss" (which is polite company usually is sanitized as "warm spit").  For US vice-presidents, the slang veep (based on the phonetic V-P (pronounced vee-pee) is more commonly used.  Veep dates from 1949 and may have been influenced by the Jeep, the four wheel drive (4WD) light utility vehicle which had become famous for its service in World War II (1939-1945) with a number of allied militaries (the name said to be derived from an early army prefix GP (general purpose light vehicle)).  It was introduced to US English by Alben Barkley (1877-1956; VPOTUS 1949-1953), reputedly because his young grandchildren found “vice-president” difficult to pronounce.  In the press, the form became more popular when the 71-year-old VPOTUS took a wife more than thirty years younger; journalists decided she should be the veepess (pronounced vee-pee-ess).  Time magazine entered into the spirit of things, declaring the president should be Peep, the Secretary of State Steep, and the Secretary of Labor Sleep.  In the US, a number of VPOTUSs have become POTUS and some have worked out well although of late the record has not been encouraging, the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; VPOTUS 1961-1963, POTUS 1963-1968), Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961, POTUS 1969-1974), George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; VPOTUS 1981-1989, POTUS 1989-1993) and Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2008-2017, POTUS 2021-2025 (God willing)) all ending badly, respectively in despair, disgrace, defeat and decrepitude .

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei (b 1939; supreme leader of of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1989) hands Masoud Pezeshkian (b 1954, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2024) the presidential seals of Office, Tehran, 28 July 2024.

Even in political science it’s not uncommon to see comparisons between “presidential system” and “parliamentary system” and while that verbal shorthand is well understood within the profession, it’s more accurate to speak of “presidential systems” because the constitutional arrangements vary so much.  Essentially, there are (1) “ceremonial presidencies” in which a president serves as head of state and may nominally be the head of the military but all executive functions are handled by a chancellor, premier or prime-minister (or equivalent office) and (2) “executive presidencies” where the roles of head of state & head of government are combined.  However, those structural models are theoretical and around the world there are many nuances, both on paper and in practice.  While there are many similarities and overlaps in presidential systems, probably relatively few are identical in the constitutional sense.  Sometimes too, the constitutional arrangements are less important than the practice.  In the old Soviet Union, the office of president was sometimes filled by a relatively minor figure, despite it being, on paper, a position of great authority, something replicated in the Islamic Republic of Iran where ultimate authority sits in the hand of the Supreme Leader (both of whom have been ayatollahs).  Many systems include something of a hybrid aspect.  In France, the president appoints a prime-minister and ministers who may come from the National Assembly (the legislature) but, upon appointment, they leave the chamber.  A US president appoints their cabinet from anywhere eligible candidates can be found but creates no prime-minister.  In the “ceremonial presidencies” there is also a spectrum of authority and the extent of that can be influenced more by the personality and ambition of a president than the defined powers.  One president of Ireland described the significance of the office as one of “moral authority” rather than legal power.

Some presidents who like being president.

(Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999).

Mr Putin was prime minister from 1999 to 2000, president from 2000 to 2008, and again prime minister from 2008 to 2012 before returning to the presidency.  The unusual career trajectory was a consequence of the Russian constitution forbidding the one person from serving as president for more than two consecutive terms.   Russia has an executive presidency, Mr Putin liked the job and his solution to (effectively) keeping it was to have Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (b 1965; president of Russia 2008-2012 & prime minister of Russia 2012-2020) “warm the chair” while Mr Putin re-assumed the premiership.  Generously, one could style this arrangement a duumvirate but political scientists could, whatever the constitutional niceties, discern no apparent difference in the governance of Russia regardless of the plaque on Mr Putin’s door.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), pictured here meeting Lindsay Lohan, Presidential Palace, Ankara, Türkiye, 27 January 2017.  Palace sources say the president regards this meeting as the highlight of his time in office.

Mr Erdoğan has been president since 2014 having previously served as prime minister between 2003–2014.  As prime-minister under Turkey’s constitution with a non-executive president, he was head of government.  After becoming president, he expressed his disapproval for the system and his preference for Turkey’s adoption of an executive presidency.  On 15 July 2016, a coup d'état was staged by the military and, as coups d'état go (of which Türkiye has had a few), it was a placid and unambitious affair and the suspicion was expressed it was an event staged by the government itself although there’s little evidence to support this.  Mr Erdoğan blamed an exiled cleric, his former ally Fethullah Gülen (b 1941), for the coup attempt and promptly declared a state of emergency.  It was scheduled to last three months but the parliament extended its duration to cover a purge of critical journalists, political opponents, various malcontents and those in the military not overtly supportive of Türkiye.  In April 2017 Mr Erdoğan staged a national referendum (which the people duly approved), transforming the Republic of Türkiye into an executive presidency, the changes becoming effective after the presidential and parliamentary elections of June 2018.

Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934; Reichspräsident (1925-1934) of Germany 1925-1934) (right) accepts the appointment of Adolf Hitler (left) as Reichskanzler (Reich Chancellor), Berlin, Germany, 21 March 1933 (Potsdam Day).  Standing behind Hitler is Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945).

Of course, if one has effectively “captured” the state, one can just decide to become president.  When in 1934 Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was informed Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934; Reichspräsident (1925-1934) of the German Weimar Republic 1918-1933) was dying, unilaterally he had replaced the constitutional procedures covering such an eventuality, the “Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich” (issued as a cabinet decree) stipulating that upon the president’s death the office of Reichspräsident would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor under the title of Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor of the Reich).  Thus, the leadership of the party, government and state (and thus the military) were merged and placed exclusively in Hitler’s hands, a situation which prevailed until his death when the office of Reichspräsident was re-created (by a legal device no more complex than a brief document Hitler called his “political testament”) as an entity separate from the chancellorship.  Interestingly though, in a manner typical of the way things were done in the Third Reich, although in 1934 there ceased to be a Reichspräsident, maintained as administrative structures were (1) the Chancellery, (2) the Presidential Chancellery and (3) what became ultimately the Party Chancellery.

Mercedes-Benz 600 Landaulets a 1966 short roof (left) and 1970 long roof ("presidential", right),  

Between 1963-1981, Mercedes-Benz built 2190 600s (W100), 428 of which were the long wheelbase (LWB) Pullman versions, 59 were configured as Landaulets with a folding roof over the passenger compartment.  Built in both six and four-door versions, the Landaulets were available with either a short or long fabric roof, the latter known informally as the "presidential" although the factory never used the designation.  Twelve of the presidentials were built, a brace of which were bought by Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912–1994; Great Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1948-1994) and subsequently inherited (along with the rest of North Korea) by Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; Dear Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1994-2011) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011).

The 1970 Landaulet pictured was purchased by the Romanian government and used by comrade president Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989; general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party 1965-1989) until he and his wife were executed (by AK47) after a “people's tribunal” held a brief trial, the swiftness of which was aided by the court-appointed defense counsel who declared them both guilty of the genocide of which, among other crimes, they were charged.  Considering the fate of other fallen dictators, their end was less gruesome than might have been expected.  Comrade Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; prime-minister or president of Yugoslavia 1944-1980) had a similar car (among other 600s) but he died undisturbed in his bed.  The blue SWB (short wheelbase) car to the rear is one of the few SWB models fitted with a divider between the front & rear compartments including hand-crafted timber writing tables and a refrigerated bar in the centre console.  It was delivered in 1977 to the Iranian diplomatic service and maintained for Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980; the last Shah of Iran 1941-1979).

Crooked Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) chatting with crooked Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969).  His credibility destroyed by the Watergate scandal, Nixon is the only US president to resign from office.

The term Watergate has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration but the name is derived from a break-in into Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC on 17 June 1972.  A series of revelations made it clear the White House was involved in attempts cover up Nixon’s knowledge of this and other illegal activities.  He continued to insist he had no prior knowledge of the burglary, did not break any laws, and did not learn of the cover-up until early 1973.  Also revealed was the existence of previously secret audio tapes, recorded in the White House by Nixon himself.  The legal battle over the tapes continued through early 1974, and in April Nixon announced the release of 1,200 pages of transcripts of White House conversations between him and his aides. The House Judiciary Committee opened impeachment hearings and these culminated in votes for impeachment.  By July, the US Supreme Court had ruled unanimously that the full tapes, not just selected transcripts, must be released.  One of the tapes, recorded soon after the break-in, demonstrated that Nixon had been told of the White House connection to the Watergate burglaries soon after they took place, and had approved plans to thwart the investigation.   It became known as the "Smoking Gun Tape".  With the loss of political support and the near-certainty that he would be impeached and removed, was “tapped on the shoulder” by a group of Republicans from both houses of Congress, lead by crazy old Barry Goldwater (1909–1998).  Nixon resigned the presidency on 8 August 1974.

Mr Nixon assured the country he was "not a crook" although in that he was speaking of matters unrelated to the Watergate scandal.

One thing even his most committed enemies (and there were many) conceded of Nixon was his extraordinary tenacity and Nixon fought hard to remain president and the most dramatically Shakespearian act came in what came to be called the Saturday Night Massacre, the term coined to describe the events of 20 October 1973 when Nixon ordered the sacking of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox (1912-2004), then investigating the Watergate scandal.  In addition to Cox, that evening saw also the departure of Attorney General Elliot Richardson (1920-1999) and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus (1932-2019).  Richardson had appointed Cox in May, fulfilling an undertaking to the House Judiciary Committee that a special prosecutor would investigate the events surrounding the break-in of the DNC’s offices at the Watergate Hotel.  The appointment was made under the ex-officio authority of the attorney general who could remove the special prosecutor only for extraordinary and reprehensible conduct.  Cox soon issued a demand that Nixon hand over copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office; the president refused to comply and by Friday, a stalemate existed between White House and Department of Justice and all Washington assumed there would be a break in the legal maneuvering while the town closed-down for the weekend.

Before the massacre.  Attorney-General Elliot Richardson, President Richard Nixon and FBI Director-Designate Clarence Kelly (1911-1997), The White House, 1973.

However, on Saturday, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox.  Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.  Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.  Nixon then ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork (1927-2012), as acting head of the Justice Department, to fire Cox; while both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to congressional committees they would not interfere, Bork had not.  Brought to the White House in a black Cadillac limousine and sworn in as acting attorney-general, Bork wrote the letter firing Cox; thus ended the Saturday Night Massacre.  Perhaps the most memorable coda to the affair was Richardson’s memorable post-resignation address to staff at the Department of Justice, delivered the Monday morning following the “massacre”.  Richardson had often been spoken of as a potential Republican nominee for the presidency and some nineteen years later, he would tell the Washington Post: “If I had any demagogic impulse... there was a crowd... but I deliberately throttled back.” His former employees responded with “an enthusiastic and sustained ovation.”  Within a week of the Saturday Night Massacre, resolutions of impeachment against the president were introduced in Congress although the House Judiciary Committee did not approve its first article of impeachment until 27 July the following year when it charged Nixon with obstruction of justice.  Mr Nixon resigned less than two weeks later, on 8 August 1974, leaving the White House the next day.

Lyndon Johnson (left) & Sam Rayburn (1882-1961, right), Washington DC, 1954.

Nixon’s predecessor also liked being president and few have assumed the office in circumstances more politically propitious, even if it was something made possible by the assassination of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963).  Johnson had for over two decades worked to achieve control of the Senate and at the peak of the success of the Johnson-Rayburn congressional era the Democrats held majorities of 64-36 in the Senate and 263-174 in the House of Representatives.  In the 1964 presidential election (facing Barry Goldwater), Johnson won a crushing victory, securing over 60% of the popular vote and taking every state except Goldwater’s home state of Arizona and a handful south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Relatively uninterested in foreign policy, Johnson had a domestic agenda more ambitious than anything seen since the US Civil War (1861-1865) a century before and what he achieved was far-reaching and widely appreciated for its implications only decades after his death but it was the US involvement in the war in Vietnam which consumed his presidency, compelling him dramatically to announce in April 1968 “…I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”  As a message, it was strikingly similar to that in July 2024 delivered by Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025), something nobody seemed to think a mere coincidence.  Also compelling are similarities between the two, both spending a political lifetime plotting and scheming to become president, having no success until curious circumstances delivered them the prize with which genuinely they achieved much but were forced to watch their dream of re-election slip from their grasp.

Nicolás Maduro (b 1962; President of Venezuela since 2013, left) and Hugo Chávez (1954-2013; President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela 1999-2013 (except during a few local difficulties in 2002, right)).

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) of course liked being president and the events of 6 January (the so-called "capitol riot") are regarded by many (though clearly not a majority of US Supreme Court judges) as an attempted (if amateurish) insurrection, something Mr Trump denies encouraging.  To the south, in Venezuela, Mr Maduro also really likes being president and is from the comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) school of democracy: “It matters not who votes, what matters is who counts the votes”.  Accordingly, in July 2024 there was some scepticism when the National Electoral Council (the NEC, controlled by Mr Maduro’s political party) announced the president had won the 2024 presidential election with 51.2% of the vote, despite the country being in a sustained economic crisis during which it had suffered a rate of hyper-inflation at its peak so high the economists stopped calculation once it hit a million percent and seen more emigration than any country in South or Central America not actually in a state of declared war.  For a country which possesses the world’s largest known reserves of crude oil, the economic collapse has been a remarkable achievement.  Mr Maduro came to office after the death of Hugo Chávez, a genuinely charismatic figure who took advantage of a sustained high oil price to fund social programmes which benefited the poor (of which his country had a scandalous number) who, unsurprisingly voted for him; Mr Chávez won his elections fair and square.  The decrease in oil revenue triggered a chain of events which meant Mr Maduro hasn’t enjoyed the same advantages and some claim his victories in the 2013 & 2018 elections were anything but fair & square although the numbers were so murky it was hard to be definitive.  Details of the 2024 results however are not so much murky as missing and although the NEC provided aggregate numbers (in summary form), only some 30% of the “tally sheets” (with the booth voting details) were published.  Interestingly, the (admittedly historically unreliable) public opinion polls suggested Mr Maduro might secure 30-35% of the vote and the conspiracy theorists (on this occasion probably on sound ground) are suggesting the tally sheets made public might have been selected with “some care”.

In the way these things are done, the regime is sustained by being able to count on the reliability of the security forces and the conventional wisdom in political science is this can be maintained as long as (1) the members continued to be paid and (2) the percentage of the population prepared to take to the streets in violent revolt doesn’t reach and remain at a sustained critical mass (between 3-9% depending on the mechanics of the country).  So the streets are being watched with great interest but already Mr Maduro has received congratulations from the leaders of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the DPRK; North Korea), Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua and Russia so there’s that.  Mr Maduro runs the country on a basis not dissimilar to being the coordinator of a number of "crime families" and on 2 August the US State Department announced they were recognizing the leader of the opposition as the "legitimate winner" of the election and thus president of the Bolivarian Republic; gestures like this have previously been extended but the regime's grip on power was strong enough to resist.  The opposition numbers are now greater and generous will be the resources devoted to ensuring a critical mass of protesters isn't achieved and Caracas doesn't see its own "capital riot".  For as long as the security forces remain willing and able to retain control of the streets and ensure the population isn't deprived of food for three days (another trigger point for revolution established by political scientists), Mr Maduro should be able to keep the job he so obviously enjoys. 

1955 Studebaker President Speedster.  As well as the styling motifs, there was a sense of exuberance in the two (and sometimes three) tone color schemes the US industry offered in the 1950s.  

Studebaker used the President name (they also offered a "Dictator" until events in Europe made that a harder sell) for their most expensive models, the first three generations a range of sedans, coupes and roadsters produced between 1926-1942.  The name was revived in 1955 and used until 1958, the range this time encompassing two and four-door sedans & station wagons and two-door coupes and hardtops.  The last of the Packards (the much derided, so-called "Packardbakers" which had a brief, unsuccessful run between 1957-1958) was based on the Studebaker President Speedster, the most admired of the range.