Isolastic

Isolastic (pronounced ahy-soh las-tik)

An engine-mounting system developed for the Norton Commando motorcycle.

1967: The construct was iso- + e(lastic).  The prefix iso- is from the Ancient Greek, a combining form of ἴσος (ísos) (equal).

Elastic (also as elastik) was from the mid seventeenth century French (coined as part of the technical language of chemistry to describe gases “having the property of recovering its former volume after compression”), from the New Latin elasticus (expanding spontaneously), the construct being the Ancient Greek elast(ós) (a late variant of elatós (ductile, beaten (of metal)) and derivative of elaúnein & elân (beat out, forge, render from metal)) + -icus (-ic-).  The Greek elastos (ductile, flexible) & elaunein are of uncertain origin but some speculate the source was the primitive Indo-European base ele- (to go).  Elastic (and elastik) came to be applied to solids after the 1660s in the sense of "possessing the nature to return to the form from which it is stretched or bent after the applied force is removed".  Figurative use to describe things as diverse as the principles of politicians or statistical properties emerged by 1859 and the most widely used modern form, the noun meaning "piece of elastic material" (originally a cord or string woven with rubber) dates from 1847 as an invention of American English.  The noun elasticity (the property of being elastic) dates from the 1660s, either from the French élasticité or else as the ad-hoc construction from elastic + -ity.  The adjective inelastic began in 1748 as part of the jargon of physical science and engineering meaning “not restored to original shape after responding to strain" and was simply the technical antonym of elastic while the figurative sense of "rigid, unyielding" dates from 1867 but general use didn’t endure as the word became associated with fields such as economics.

In scientific use, the prefix iso- was used to indicate “equal (as in isometric, isobar, isocyanic acid et al); having equal measurements”.  As a word and abbreviation, iso had its quirks even before it became popular oral shorthand to refer to the various states of isolation imposed during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The use to describe the specifications of standards (eg ISO 9001 et al) defined by the Organisation internationale de normalisation (International Organization for Standardization) leads many to believe ISO is an acronym or initializm.  However, the organization notes that when founded, it was given approved the short form “ISO”, a nod to the Ancient Greek ἴσος (ísos) (equal), the implication being the equalization (ie standardization) of rules and terminology across jurisdictions.  Despite that, there appears to be no documentary evidence to support the pedigree of the name and most folk who give the matter a moment’s thought probably assume it means “International Standards Organization”.

In film and television production, an “iso” is an isolated camera (a camera used to isolate a subject, usually for instant replay, a use dating from 1967 in sports broadcasting).  In executive salary packaging, tax minimization etc, an ISO incentive stock option) is a right extended to an employee to buy shares of company stock at a discounted price (the realized profit on which are taxed usually at a concessional rate).  In a number of sports, iso is used as a clipping of isolation to refer to tactical plays and in category theory it’s a clipping of isomorphism (morph a back-formation from morpheme, from the Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) (form, shape).  In optics, isochromatic (iso- +‎ chromatic) refers to "possessing the same colour or wavelength; of or corresponding to constant colour".  Chromatic was from either the French chromatique (chromatic) or directly from its etymon the Latin chrōmaticus, from Ancient Greek χρωματικός (khrōmatikós) (relating to colour; one of the three types of tetrachord in Greek music), from χρῶμα (khrôma), (colour; pigment; chromatic scale in music; music), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ger- (to grind; to rub; to stroke; to remove), presumably in the sense in which pigments were found.

1966 Iso Grifo Spyder (left), 1971 Iso Fidia (centre) & 1973 Iso Grifo 7 Litre (penthouse).

Iso Autoveicoli SpA (subsequently several times re-named) was an automobile and motorcycle maker in Italy, active between 1939-1974, their most fondly remembered cars from the 1960s & 1970s being sold under the Iso brand.  The Iso name was derived from the company’s pre-war origin in Genoa as a manufacturer of refrigeration units when it was called Isothermos, the construct being iso + thermos, from the Ancient Greek θερμός (thermós) (warm), the implied sense being "something which maintains the correct temperature".  In 2022, the corporate name is IsoRivolta and it continues to operate as a low-volume manufacturer.

The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); a doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulfurous acid (H₂SO₃).

Norton's isolastic engine mounting

Norton Featherbed frame.

Powerful as the engines were, much of the success in competition Norton’s motorcycles enjoyed in the 1950s were attributable to the “Featherbed” frame, introduced in 1950.  Designed with twin parallel rectangular loops, each formed from a single length of Reynolds steel tubing with crossed-over welded ends which met a securely braced headstock at the front and swinging arm mountings to the rear, the Featherbed frame was stiff, strong and surprisingly light and proved resistant to even sever road and transmission stresses.  It was state of the art but that state reflected the technology of the late 1940s and as the years went by, engine speeds, displacement and compression ratios increased so power and torque rose, imposing mechanical stresses and, most significantly, vibration levels became so pronounced that the big Norton twin-cylinder bikes were becoming less attractive to buyers; while all the power and torque was admired, for many it was rendered unusable by all the shaking which had to be endured at a wide range of engine speeds.

Norton Commando frame.

A new engine was the obvious solution but, despite years of success, by the early 1960s, the whole British motorcycle industry was under-capitalized and nothing emerged; Norton’s bankruptcy surprised few.  Re-structured in 1966 as Norton-Villiers Ltd, it was still obvious a new engine was needed to remain competitive and this was pursued but the engineers suggested a new frame might be a stop-gap solution while engine development proceeded.  Most attractive was that a new frame should cheap and fast to create.  Afforcing the engineering staff, even with a German nuclear physicist who had once worked for Rolls-Royce, work proceeded quickly even though the Featherbed’s box-frame approach was abandoned in favor of a single, large diameter top tube that ran from the top of the steering tube to the seat struts with a short, angled gusset (made from a tube of the same dimension) was incorporated to triangulate the steering/top tube connection.  Two smaller diameter tubes extended from the bottom of the steering tube, running underneath the engine-gearbox unit where, connected by the centre stand’s mounting tube, they curved upwards to meet the seat struts at the rear suspension top fixing brackets.  The frame was completed by a triangulation of the rear section, achieved by using two more tubes which ran from the rear engine-gearbox unit mounting bracket to midway along the large top tube.

As intended, the new frame was light and the torsional strength (the resistance to twisting) was even higher than the engineers’ theoretical calculations had projected.  The design imperatives had been surprisingly simple, a kind of “back to basics” approach which (1) ensured the relation between the front & rear wheels remained constant regardless of the roughness of the surface, and 2) the higher loadings were Imposed only on the straight tubes, the bent portions of the frame are stressed.  Most innovative was the isolastic mounting system for the engine-gearbox unit (which the factory initially dubbed “GlideRide”.  Although essentially an admission the vibrations inherent in big, twin-cylinder engines couldn’t (then) be fixed, they could substantially be isolated to the unit and not transmitted through the frame to the rider.  At the core of the problem was that as a crankshaft rotates, the engine’s centre of gravity describes a heart-shaped path around the crankshaft axis, the engine therefore tending to oscillate around that path.  What the isolastic system did was provide the engine with three suspension points: (1) at the front, (2) at the top-rear of the gearbox and (3) at the cylinder head.  The mountings were large because of the vibration they needed to absorb but with a torsional stiffness provided by a rigidity in the side mountings, the idea being that the engine must be free to move in the plane of the crankshaft but without twisting in the frame.

1972 Norton Commando 750 Combat.

When the Norton Commando was launched in 1967, the combination of frame and the isolastic engine-gearbox mounting system proved the inherent vibration problem associated with big twins, if not solved, had been artfully concealed.  The early implementations of both the isolastic plumbing and the frame did reveal some weaknesses but these problems quickly were solved and both enjoyed a decade long life, over 60,000 Commandos produced between 1976-1977.  However, the clever improvisation (driven by financial necessity) really just delayed the inevitable as the manufacturers from the Far East had proven their modern, four-cylinder concepts were a better direction for the high performance motorcycle.  In the ten years the Norton Commando was on sale, the Japanese improved their products while the British tinkered at the edges and by the time the last Commando was made, the superiority it once enjoyed in road-holding and handling had evaporated.  The British industry never recovered from the mistakes made during the 1960s and 1970s.

Dictator

Dictator (pronounced dik-tey-ter)

(1) A person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who (at least ostensibly) has absolute control (ie effectively not restricted by a constitution, laws, recognized opposition, etc) in a government (and officially without hereditary succession); applied particularly to those exercising tyrannical rule.

(2) In republican ancient Rome, a person vested by the senate with supreme authority during a crisis, the regular magistracy being subordinated to him until the crisis was met (typically by conducting a war).

(3) A person who makes pronouncements, as on conduct, fashion etc, which are regarded as authoritative.

(4) A person who dictates text to someone or some sort or mechanical or electronic recording device.

(5) In Ancient Rome (during certain periods), an elected chief magistrate.

1350–1400: From the Middle English dictatour, from the Old French dictator, from the Latin dictātor (genitive dictātōris), (Roman chief magistrate with absolute authority) the construct being dictā(re) (inflection of dictō (I repeat, say often; I dictate (to someone for writing))), frequentative of dicere (to say, speak); I compose, express in writing; I prescribe, recommend, order, dictate)) frequentative of dicere (to say, speak)" (from the primitive Indo-European root deik- (to show (also "solemnly to pronounce") (and related to dīcō (say, speak) + -tor (from the Proto-Italic -tōr, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr from -tor-s; the suffix added to the fourth principal part of a verb to create a third-declension masculine form of an agent noun).  The feminine forms were dictatress or dictatrix, both probably now obsolete except in historic reference or as a jocular form; the old alternative spelling dictatour is obsolete.  Some European languages (including Dutch and Romanian) were like English and borrowed directly the Latin spelling while others used variations including Catalan (dictador), French (dictateur) Italian (dittatore), Piedmontese (ditator), Polish (dyktator), Portuguese (ditador), Russian (дикта́тор (diktátor)), Sicilian (dittaturi), Spanish (dictador) and German (Diktator).  Dictator is a noun, dictatorially is an adverb and dictatorial is an adjective; the noun plural is dictators.

The noun dictatorship (office or term of a (Roman) dictator) came into use in the 1610s to describe the historically specific terms of office the Roman senate sometimes granted individuals in extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances while the now familiar general sense of "a ruler exercising absolute authority" evolved by the late seventeenth century.  The noun dictator had already proceeded along this path, the historical sense being the first used in English circa 1600, the extension to “one who has absolute power or authority" (in any context and not just political power) noted by the 1690s.  The nasty and not infrequently genocidal nature of some of the dictators of the twentieth century and beyond certainly influenced the understanding of the word which, as late as the 1800s could be used neutrally, effectively as a synonym for president.

The adjective dictatorial (pertaining to a dictator; absolute, unlimited), dating from 1901 evolved also to enjoy use outside of descriptors of absolute government and by 1704 had acquired the general sense of "imperious, overbearing", usefully (and often applied as required to husbands, mothers-in-law, parish priests et al; the related for was the adverb dictatorially.  In that vein, to convey the notion of "pertaining to a dictator" there had been dictatorian (1640s) & dictator-like (1580s).  Etymologists insist the dictatorial’s historic duality of implication (1) a disposition to rule and (2) a sharp insistence upon having one's orders accepted or carried out has survived in modern use but instances of the former are now probably rare.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 and of state 1934-1945) is of course the dictator who for decades has loomed over the word and “Hitler” was used figuratively for "a dictator" from as early as 1934, a use which has persisted despite there being no shortage of dictatorial tyrants in the years since his assumption of power.  One amusing variation emerged in England in the early years of the Second World War (1939-1945), a “little Hitler” being someone appointed to a minor post (archetypically someone employed to walk the streets during a “black-out” telling folk to extinguish their lights) and, cloaked in this brief, unaccustomed authority, soon intoxicated by their power.  In post-revolutionary (1979-) Iran, the regime encouraged a similar put-down aimed at opponents, the US being شيطان بزرگ (Shaytân-e Bozorg (the great Satan)) and Israel شیطان کوچک, (Shaytân-e Kuchak (the little Satan)) and it’s even worse than it sounds because “great” is not the perfect translation, the idea of the great Satan being one of derision rather than awe.  When the Ayatollahs are in a bad mood (which does happens), sometimes the UK is also described as a “little Satan”.

Lindsay Lohan never forgave dictator Hosni Mubarak (1928–2020; president of Egypt 1981-2011) for shouting at Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001).  When told in 2011 he’d fallen from power as one of the victims of the Arab Spring, she responded: “Cool.”  When told it was brought about by a military coup she replied: “Gross!”  Lindsay Lohan doesn’t approve of coups d'état and believes soldiers should "stay in the barracks", allowing due constitutional process to be followed.   

Because of the evil of Hitler and his many spiritual successors in this century and the last, dictator really doesn’t cry out for synonyms but autocrat, despot, tyrant, absolutist, authoritarian, oppressor & totalitarian all tend in the direction.  Historically, the closest is probably the noun generalissimo (supreme military commander), dating from the 1620s and a borrowing of the Italian generalissimo, superlative of generale, from a sense development similar to the French general.  However, despite the title being used by the dictators comrade Stalin and General Franco, it’s never come into use as a general descriptor in the manner of dictator.

1935 Studebaker Dictator phaeton (left) & 1936 Studebaker Dictator sedan (right).

The Studebaker Dictator was produced between 1927-1937 and was part of a naming scheme which used titles from government service to indicate a car’s place in the hierarchy, the Dictator replacing the Standard Six as the entry-level model, the progressively more expensive being the Commander and President.  Briefly (only for 1927) there was also the Chancellor but, presumably because it wasn’t a title which much resonated in the American imagination, it was short- lived.  Other manufacturers have adopted a similar idea, Opal once also merging admiralty and political ranks, offering the Kapitän, Commodore, Admiral & Diplomat.  

Some of the opposition to crooked Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016 accused her of wanting to turn the US into a dictatorship.  That was hyperbolic because, although it may have been what she wanted, the US constitution would make it almost impossible to achieve.  The meme makers responded with agitprop.

It probably now seems strange a US manufacturer would call one of its products the Dictator but in 1927 the Nazis were years from power and Mussolini, in office since 1922 was far from the tainted character he would later become and the public perception of his rule was still at the stage of admiring him for “making the trains run on time” (although it’s thought unlikely any improvements in punctuality were noted by many).  Studebaker anyway had always explained the name as suggesting “a fine car at a moderate price” that would “dictate the standards” in the vital mid-priced field.  That was fair enough but with the benefit of post-Nazi hindsight, when the option of a straight-eight engine was offered as an upgrade from the straight-six, Studebaker probably would not to have used the marketing slogan “a brilliant example of excess power”.  By 1937, the use of excess power by the Third Reich’s dictator was becoming obvious and Studebaker quietly dropped the Dictator name for 1938, re-positioning the Commander as the base model, the cars exported to the Europe, the UK and the British Empire having early been renamed Director.  Of those changes, probably just about everyone except Henry Ford (1863-1947) approved.

So Studebaker’s tale is an example of how the shifting meaning of words can influence many things.  Still, if in 1937 any association with Hitler had become distasteful for a US corporation, even by 1940, some two years after the Nazi’s most publicized pogrom against the Jews (Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)), Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) released his satirical comedy The Great Dictator which parodied both dictators (Hitler and Mussolini), his argument being that however controversial it might be, “…Hitler must be laughed at."  He later admitted that had he known in 1940 what would later be understood, he’d never have produced the film.

The Hijab Police

Of the many “morality police” forces which have existed in countries with a majority Islamic population, the best known was Afghanistan's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice which actually pre-dated the Taliban takeover in 1996 but they certainly deployed it with an enthusiasm which went much beyond it functioning as “burka police” and in one form or another, it actually operated for most of the (first) post-Taliban era.  When the Taliban regained power in 2021, immediately they created the "Ministry of Invitation, Guidance and Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" and, in a nice touch, allocated as its headquarters the building formerly used by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

The institution is infamous also in Iran.  In the West, it’s usually referred to as the “morality police” and among women the sardonic slang is “hijab police” but technically, the instrument of the Islamic Republic of Iran which enforces, inter alia, the laws governing the wearing of the hijab is گشت ارشاد (Gašt-e Eršād (Guidance Patrol)).  On 16 September 2022, the hijab police arrested Mahsa Amini (b 2001) because she was wearing her hijab in “an un-Islamic way”.  While in custody, Ms Amini suffered a medical event, dying two days later without recovering consciousness, the hijab police claiming the cause of death was heart failure, induced by pre-existing conditions.  Her family dispute this, saying the evidence suggests she was severely beaten and many witnesses have confirmed she was tortured in the back of a van before arriving at a hijab police office.

Handy guide for the hijab police.  Not only must hijab must be worn correctly but clothing must also be (1) not brightly colored, (2) not patterned with extravagant designs or shapes and (3) be loose enough that the shape of the body is not discernable.

Her death triggered waves of protests in Iran, which, on the basis of footage seen in the West, seem dominated by school girls and young women which, in the context of political protest, is historically unusual.  With protest signs and banners rendered in YouTube & TikTok friendly English, the headline issue is of course the matter of the hijab and whether women should be beaten to death for letting a lock of hair slip from beneath but the women and girls are making clear they're protesting about corruption (noting the poverty of most while the clerical elite have become very rich), the structure of the state, the economy and the very question of whether the republic should be an Islamic theocracy.  The Ayatollahs are no doubt well aware that the standard calculation in political science is that if 3½% of the population can be mobilized to revolt, regimes can be toppled and most recently, the Afghan Taliban did it with a fraction of that.  For many reasons, Afghanistan may be a special case and the Iranian state, on paper, is much better equipped to suppress internal dissent but then the security apparatuses around Hosni Mubarak (1928-2020; Egyptian dictator 1981-2011) and Muammar Gaddafi (circa 1942–2011; Libyan dictator 1969-2011) both looked impregnable until the volume of the protesters reached critical mass.  These things are however hard to judge from afar, Bashar al-Assad (b 1965; Syria dictator since 2000) looked vulnerable long before Gaddafi and Mubarak fell yet today he sits still as dictator in Damascus.  The Ayatollahs are of course watching things with concern but so will individuals in the Kremlin, aware their security apparatus has proved inadequate to execute the battle plan of the recent special military action (war) in Ukraine and, in a nice echo of the 1979 revolution, the protesters are again chanting the cry once spat against the Shah: “Death to the Dictator!”.

Grief

Grief (pronounced greef)

(1) Acute mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret; deep or intense sorrow or distress, associated especially with the death of someone.

(2) A cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow.

(3) In online use (especially in gaming and dating from the late 1990s), to behave in an un-sportsmanlike way or take pleasure in antagonizing other players (used as “to grief”, “griefing” or “be griefed” etc (and vaguely similar to the verb sense of troll)); to exploit a glitch or execute an online prank that diminishes or ruins a website or other online experience for other users.

(4) In idiomatic use, as “come to grief”, to suffer disappointment, misfortune, or other trouble; to fail:

(5) In idiomatic use as “good grief”, an exclamation of dismay, surprise or relief which can be used also to convey approval or disapproval, depending on context, verbal & non-verbal.

(6) In idiomatic use, as “giving me grief”, an expression of (usually mild) annoyance.

1175-1225: From the Middle English greef & gref (hardship, suffering, pain, bodily affliction), from the Anglo-French gref, from the verb grever (afflict, burden, oppress), from the Old French grief (grave, heavy, grievous, sad), from the Vulgar Latin grevis & gravare (make heavy; cause grief), from the Latin gravis (weighty, heavy, grievous, sad) (later influenced by its antonym levis) and ultimately from primitive Indo-European gréhus, gwere & gwerə- (heavy).  The general sense of “suffering or hardship” (Emotional pain, generally arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness) evolved between the early thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; a doublet of grave.  The alternative forms were greefe & griefe, both long obsolete.  The expression “good grief” appears to date only from 1912 but has been used in historical fiction which long pre-dates the twentieth century.

The circa 1300 adjective grievous was from the Anglo-French grevous, from the Old French grevos (heavy, large, weighty; hard, difficult, toilsome) and was formed directly from grief.  The term grievous bodily harm (the famous GBH) was first used in English criminal law in 1803.  The circa 1300 noun grievance (state of being aggrieved) was from the Old French grevance (harm, injury, misfortune; trouble, suffering, agony, sorrow) from grever (to harm, to burden, be harmful to) and was first used in reference to a cause of such a condition from the late fifteenth century.  The verb is now most commonly found in the gerund-participle griefing and the derived noun griefer; the past participle is griefed and the noun plural griefs.  The related terms include grievance, grieve & grievous and grief is sometimes used as a modifier (grief-striken, grief-tourism et al).  Words which often overlap with grief include agony, anguish, bereavement, despair, discomfort, gloom, heartache, heartbreak, melancholy, misery, moroseness, mourning, pain, regret, remorse, sadness, sorrow, trouble, unhappiness, woe & worry.

The DSM-5-TR, ICD codes and Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD)

In March 2022, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a revision to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 (2013)).  DSM-5-TR (text revision) includes some updated text and new references, clarifications to diagnostic criteria and updates to the ICD-10-CM (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification) codes which have changed since the DSM-5 was published in 2013.  A text revision to an edition of the DSM is released when a number of changes to the text that accompanies the description of disorders and their criteria are warranted by new evidence or the need for more clarity.  The text of the DSM-5 had since 2013 received some minor corrections but DSM-5-TR is a systematic text revision based on a review of the literature of the last decade (and some re-evaluation of some earlier material).  By contrast, a new edition of the DSM is released when there are thought to have been sufficient advances in the field to support the creation, substantive revisions, and elimination of multiple diagnostic criteria sets or disorders.  There has within the profession been some discussion of the implications of this and some have suggested there’s no indication of support for the need for a DSM-6, some speculation the APA might adopt the conventions of the software industry and work instead towards a version 5.1, the first number indicating a major release, the second the agglomeration of minor revisions, a format well suited to digital editions.

New ICD-10-CM codes have been added to flag and monitor suicidal behavior and non-suicidal self-injury and these can be used without the requirement of another diagnosis and in total there are over 50 coding updates for substance intoxication, withdrawal and other disorders.  The innovation in the use of the ICD-10-CM codes relation to suicidal behavior is interesting.  It’s long been understood suicidal behavior can be a useful tracking mechanism or flag for clinical attention and these codes are now available to all clinicians without the need for a mental disorder diagnosis.  The suicidal behavior codes can be applied to individuals who have engaged in potentially self-injurious behavior with at least some intent to die as a result of the act and the evidence of intent can be explicit or inferred from the behavior or circumstances.  Many suicide attempts don’t result self-injury and the changes reflect the analysis of the statistical data which indicated the previous focus on self-harm and injury meant the extent of the disorder was in many ways underestimated.  It should mean the always interesting phenomenon of “suicide attempts” undertaken in the in absence of suicidal intent becomes better understood or at least quantified.

The new diagnosis of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) has been added to the trauma- and stressor-related disorders chapter.  Noted for centuries, much recent research and clinical experience has indicated there are those who experience a persistent inability to overcome their grief for the loss of a loved one for at least a year or more, with intense yearning or preoccupation with thoughts or memories of the deceased person almost every day since the death (and it’s noted that in children and adolescents, this preoccupation may focus on the circumstances of the death), symptoms severe enough to impair day-to-day functioning.  As part of the diagnosis, the duration and severity of the bereavement reaction must clearly exceed what is expected based on standards related to the individual’s social, cultural, or religious background. This does not imply people feeling grief periodically one year or more after the loss of a loved one have the disorder but those with intense and impairing grief after one year may be considered for the diagnosis.  Prior to the fifth edition, the DSM did not distinguish between “normal” and prolonged grief but PGD may be considered an evolution given the DSM-5 did include a category of persistent complex bereavement disorder (known also as traumatic grief (TG) & complicated grief (CG)) as a “condition for further study” and the first draft of a proposal was in 2018 submitted to the DSM Steering Committee and the Review Committee on Internalizing Disorders, a white paper circulated for discussion before being approved by the Board of Trustees.

The DSM editors clearly were sensitive to suggestions the creation of prolonged grief disorder might have the effect of pathologizing grief and there has long be the criticism that psychiatry increasingly has attempted to list as disorders much that has for centuries been considered part of the “normal” human condition.  To clarity things, the editors note the diagnosis is not a medicalization of grief and the diagnosis is intended only for those individuals who meet the criteria: something dramatically different from the grief normally experienced by anyone who loses a loved one; a grief intractable and disabling in a way that typical grieving is not.  Grief continues to be thought of as something healthy but not if ongoing and it's dealt with in different ways.  In 2013 Lindsay Lohan revealed her 19 year old Maltese dog Gucci (which gained the name after chewing up a pair of prized Gucci boots) had died and to feel a form of grief is thought to be a natural reaction to the event but it shouldn't persist and in many cases it seems the best therapy to to replace the pet with another/

One internally significant technical change is also noted: there are now no unique DSM codes.  The codes that appear in DSM-5-TR are the ICD codes that are equivalent to the DSM diagnoses given the version of the manual and only ICD-10-CM codes are used because this is the version of ICD that is in effect in the United States.  Although based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ICD-10 codes, ICD-10-CM codes in DSM-5 (and thus DSM-5-TR) have been modified from ICD-10 for clinical use by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and provide the only permissible diagnostic codes for mental disorders for clinical use in the United States. In the United States, the use of ICD-10-CM codes for disorders in DSM-5-TR has been mandated by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) for purposes of reimbursement under the Medicare system. Although it sounds nerdy, it’s an important advance in standardization which should improve record keeping, data collection, retrieval, and compilation of statistical information.

One change which was expected was the update to the terminology to describe gender dysphoria based on updated and more culturally sensitive language.  (1) desired gender is now experienced gender, (2) cross-sex medical procedure is now gender-affirming medical procedure” and (4)  the companion terms natal male / natal female are now individual assigned male / female at birth.  Whether these changes prove to be final remains to be seen; the whole area is one of shifting linguistic sand but what’s in DSM-5-TR reflects current thinking and the entire text of the Gender Dysphoria chapter has also been updated based on a review of the literature.

Also expected was the restructuring (again) of the diagnostic criteria of Autism, reflecting the view that Autism seems to be over diagnosed, a problem inherent in spectrum conditions.  Less anticipated was the creation of Unspecified Mood Disorder (UMD) which, ominously, does sound like the criminal charge of “unspecified offences” used in the justice systems of places like the DPRK (North Korea) but which seems to have been coined to permit clinicians some flexibility so that patients presenting with irritability, agitation and sadness (and for whom some diagnosis is clearly appropriate), don’t have to be labeled as “bipolar unspecified” or “depressive disorder unspecified’, both stigmatizing conditions, the presence of which in a medical record may have implications which last a lifetime.  It’s thus a legitimate diagnosis (which really is important to patients) to be applied until a more specific disorder is found but does raise two interesting technical points: (1) can any emo not be diagnosed UMD and (2) should all emos be diagnosed UMD?

Pile

Pile (pronounced pahyl)

(1) An assemblage of things laid or lying one upon the other.

(2) Slang for a large number, quantity, or amount of anything.

(3) A heap of wood on which a dead body, a living person, or a sacrifice is burned; pyre the more common form.

(4) Slang term for a lofty or large building or group of buildings.

(5) In metallurgy, a bundle of pieces of iron ready to be welded and drawn out into bars; fagot.

(6) In electricity, slang for a voltaic pile.

(7) To gather, accumulate, or rise in a pile or piles (often followed by up).

(8) In construction, a long column of timber, concrete, or steel that is driven into the ground to provide a foundation for a vertical load (a bearing pile) or a group of such columns to resist a horizontal load from earth or water pressure (a sheet pile)

(9) In heraldry, an ordinary in the form of a wedge or triangle coming from one edge of the escutcheon, from the chief unless otherwise specified.

(10) In archery, the sharp head or striking end of an arrow, usually of metal and of the form of a wedge or conical nub.

(11) A fabric with a surface of upright yarns, cut or looped, as corduroy, Turkish toweling, velvet, and velveteen.

(12) In nuclear physics, a structure of uranium and a moderator used for producing atomic energy; nuclear reactor.

Pre 1000: Middle English pile from Old English pīl (shaft) derived from the Latin pīlum (javelin) and pīla (pillar or mole of stone).  Variations emerged in Late Middle English, pyles from 1375–1425 was a plural of the Latin pilae (literally, balls) and from 1300–50 piles (hair, plumage) from the Latin pilus (hair), the -i- short in Latin but long in Anglicized school pronunciation.  The Middle English pyl (reverse of a coin) was a special use of the Medieval Latin pīla.  Word actually passed to English from the Old French pyle. 

The meaning "mass or heap" was universal by the early fifteenth century, originally "pillar, pier of a bridge," from Middle French pile and directly from Latin pila "stone barrier, pillar, pier"; the development in Latin from "pier, harbor wall of stones," to "something heaped up" and the meaning "large building", common by the fourteenth century is probably the same word.  The "heavy pointed beam" is from the Old English pil (stake), as "arrow" is from the Latin pilum (heavy javelin of the Roman foot soldier, literally pestle), source of the Old Norse pila, the Old High German pfil, and the German pfeil (arrow).  Of all these, origin is uncertain.  The meanings as applied to fabrics and downy plumage are from the Anglo-French pyle or the Middle Dutch pijl, both from Latin pilus (a hair), source of the Italian pelo and Old French pel.  Phonological evidence rules out transmission of the English word via the Old French cognate peil and poil; meaning "nap upon cloth" emerged in the 1560s.  The most familiar modern meeting (to heap up) is from the mid fourteenth century while the figurative verbal expression “pile on” (attack vigorously, attack en masse) is an Americanism from 1894.

Chicago Pile-1

The atomic pile was the original name for a nuclear reactor, a device used to initiate and control a self-sustained nuclear chain reaction.  Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world's first nuclear reactor and on 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated.

Chicago Pile-1, 1942                          

CP-1 was built with 45,000 graphite blocks weighing 360 tons used as neutron moderators, fueled by 5 tons of uranium metal and 45 tons of uranium oxide which, despite the bulk, produced only a tiny amount of power, about one-half watt. The original design intended the shape to be spherical but, during construction, it was calculated the critical mass required for a chain-reaction could be achieved with a smaller pile.  Disassembled in 1943, CP-1 was reconfigured to become Chicago Pile-2 (CP-2) and it operated in that form until 1954 when it was dismantled and buried.

A pile of granite blocks (left) and Lindsay Lohan with several stacks of pregnancy books (right), out-take from Labor Pains (2009).

The term "atomic pile" is a historic artefact from the early years of the science but essentially they were the first nuclear reactors, the term derived from what the physicists at the time visualized as a "pile" of the graphite blocks used to moderate the nuclear reaction.  Why the word "pile" was chosen as a descriptor doesn't seem to have been recorded but it must at the time have seen an obvious choice although, the convention in English would have been to use "stack" because although "pile" and "stack" both refer to agglomerations of objects (although can figuratively also be used of the non-physical), the two have slightly different connotations.  A pile tends to be an unordered heap of items, placed without much care to produce a random or shape ("pile of clothes on the floor", "pile of leaves in the yard" etc).  By contrast, a stack is a more orderly arrangement of items placed atop each other ("stack of books on a table", "stack of plates in a cupboard" etc), suggesting something and structured (although the stuff in the stack could in some ways be quite haphazard (ie not in alphabetical order etc).   So, a pile tends to appear to be disordered or unstructured, while a stack suggest some sense of deliberate organization.  None of that suggest the early, pioneering theorists and researchers were wrong in their choice of word.  The first nuclear reactors were called a pile to reflect the basic, rather unrefined way the components were "piled together"; these really were scientific experiments and not without risk, a number of scientists and engineers who worked in close proximity to Chicago Pile-1 dying prematurely from internal cancers, including Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), the device's designer & builder.

Slime

Slime (pronounced slahym)

(1) Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; thin, glutinous, viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.

(2) Any mucilaginous substance; or a mucus-like substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals (typically fish, snails or slugs) or vegetable (eg fungi); any ropy or viscous liquid matter, especially of a foul kind.

(3) In slang, as slimeball, an informal, derogatory term for a sneaky, unethical, repulsive or otherwise despicable person.

(4) In video gaming, a monster appearing as a slimy blob or in some other way slimy.

(5) Human flesh, seen disparagingly (an obsolete figurative use).

(6) In slang as “Jew’s slime”, bitumen (offensive and obsolete).

(7) In the African-American vernacular (more recently adopted in MTE (my thoughts exactly) slang)), a friend; “a homie”.

(8) In biology, as the acronym SLIMEs (also as abbreviated SLMEs & SLiMEs), subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems, a type of endolithic ecosystems which manifest as agglomerations of bacteria and fungi which inhabit pores in the interlocking mineral grains of igneous rock beneath Earth's surface.

(9) In biology, as slime-mold, a broad term often referring to roughly six groups of Eukaryotes (organisms the cells of which contain a nucleus).

(10) In computing, as the acronym SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs), an Emacs mode for developing Common Lisp applications.

(11) To cover or smear with or as if with slime.

(12) In industrial processing, to remove slime from, as fish for canning (technically a clipping from de-slime so slime can be both a synonym and antonym of de-slime).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English slime, slyme, slim & slym from the Old English slīm.  The Old English slīm may be from the Old English lim (birdlime; sticky substance) but is probably from the Proto-Germanic slīmą, from the primitive Indo-European sley- (smooth; slick; sticky; slimy), the source slao of the Old Norse slim.  The English forms were related to a remarkable number of similar words in many languages including the Dutch slijm (phlegm), the Danish slim, the Old Frisian slym, the Old Norse slīm, the German Schleim (mucus, slime), the Saterland Frisian Sliem, the Latin limus (alime, mud or mire), the Sanskrit linati (sticks, stays, adheres to; slips into, disappears), the Russian slimak (snail), the Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē) (marsh), the Old Church Slavonic slina (spittle), the Old Irish sligim (to smear) & leinam (I follow (literally "I stick to")), the Welsh llyfn (smooth), the Greek leimax (snail), limne (marsh, pool, lake) & alinein (to anoint, besmear), the Old High German slīmen (to smooth), and the Latin līmax (snail).  The main influence on the changes in spellings noted in the Medieval period is thought to have been the Latin limus (slime, mud or mire) & linere (to daub, besmear, rub out, erase).  Slime & sliming are nouns and verbs, slimed is a verb, slimy is a noun & adjective and slimily is an adverb and slimier & slimish are adjectives; the noun plural is slimes.

Slime is available in designer colors.

Slime was used as an insult to a person from the early-fifteenth century when the phrase “to cover with slime" appeared (apparently the first use of slime as a verb) although slimeball appears not to have appeared until the twentieth and, unusually in English, hyphenation is rare.  Similar words in English include sludge, mud, goo, gunk, mucus, mire, scum, ooze, fungus & glop and, ever inventive, English has a wide range of alternatives for slimeball as an insult.  In biology, the slime-mold dates from 1880 and those with a morbid fear of slime are said to be suffering from blennophobia, from the Ancient Greek βλέννος (blénnos) (mucus, slime) + -phobia.  The suffix -phobia (fear of a specific thing; hate, dislike, or repression of a specific thing) was from the New Latin, from the Classical Latin, from the Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía) and was used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing (the idea of a hatred came later).

Slime is a popular motif in political satire, used here by Glenn McCoy (b 1965) to sum up crooked Hillary Clinton's (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) past and the 2016 presidential campaign between her and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021).  The use of "slime" in this context plays on the almost universal human revulsion to such substances.  

An unverified representation of the Earth’s human population as a slimeball, plonked in New York’s Central Park (a place that’s seen not a few slimeballs).  This is actually a revival of the word "slime" in the now obsolete way it was used as a disparaging reference to human flesh.  At the time it was rendered, total population was some 7.88 billion souls and the calculation used was a human density of 985 kg/m³ (2172 lb/35 cubic foot) at an average human body mass of 62 kg (137 lb).  This would create a slimeball just under 1 km (820 yards) wide but the Earth’s population may just have reached 8 billion so the slimeball’s mass will have increased by 0.010152%.

Slimeballs are where one finds them:  Crooked Hillary Clinton with Harvey Weinstein.  In some places, “slimebucket” is used to convey the same meaning.

A depiction of Laura Croft, of Tomb Raider fame, being slimed.