Hovel

Hovel (pronounced hov-ill)

(1) A small, very humble dwelling house; a wretched hut.

(2) Any dirty, disorganized dwelling.

(3) A roofed passage, a vent for smoke (thought likely related to the use in the kilns used to fire pottery).

(4) An open or semi-open shed, for sheltering cattle, storing tools or protecting produce, etc from the weather.

(5) To shelter or lodge (archaic).

(6) In the manufacture of porcelain, a large, conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.

(7) In the interior design of churches, a canopied niche for a statue or image.

Circa 1425: From the late Middle English hovel, hovel, hovel and hovylle.  The origin is contested, some sources suggesting it’s a diminutive of the Old English hof (an enclosure, court, dwelling, house, farmhouse), from the Proto-Germanic hufą (hill, farm), from the primitive Indo-European kewp (arch, bend, buckle), the construct being howf +‎ -el. It was said to be cognate with the Dutch hof (garden, court), the German Hof (yard, garden, court, palace) and the Icelandic hof (temple, hall) and related in Modern English to both hove and hover.  The noun hovelling (or hoveling) describes a method of securing a good draught in chimneys by covering the top, leaving openings in the sides, or by carrying up two of the sides higher than the other two.  Hovel is a noun and hovelled & hovelling are verbs; the noun plural is hovels. 

Although scholars seem to agree the Middle English hovel, hovel, hovel and hovylle emerged in the fifteenth century; some dismiss the link to the Old English hof, Oxford English Dictionary (OED) maintaining it's "etymologically and chronologically inadmissible" and that hovel is of unknown origin.  The meaning "shed for human habitation; rude or miserable cabin" wasn’t adopted until 1620; prior to that it was used only to describe structures used for animals, objects or as workspaces not used as domestic accommodation.  The specialised use, mostly in the interiors of churches and chapels, to mean "a canopied niche for a statue or image" is from the mid-fifteenth century but faded from use as architecture became increasingly professional and international; it was replaced by aedicule.  About the only thing on which all agree is the plural form is hovels.

Technical

Technical (pronounced tek-ni-kuhl)

(1) Belonging or pertaining to an art, science, or the like.

(2) Something peculiar to or characteristic of a particular art, science, profession, trade etc.

(3) Using terminology or treating subject matter in a manner peculiar to a particular field, as a writer or a book.

(4) Skilled in or familiar in a practical way with a particular art, trade etc, as a person.

(5) Of, relating to, or showing technique.

(6) A descriptor of something technically demanding or difficult.

(7) Designed or used for technically demanding sports or other activities.

(8) In education, appertaining to or connected with the mechanical or industrial arts and the applied sciences.

(9) So considered from a point of view in accordance with a stringent interpretation of rules; existing by virtue of a strict application of the rules or a strict interpretation of the wording (a technical loophole in the law; a technical victory etc)

(10) Concerned with or dwelling on technicalities.

(11) In the jargon of financial markets, having prices determined by internal, procedural, speculative or manipulative factors rather than by general or economic conditions.

(12) In association football (soccer), as “technical area”, a defined area adjacent to the pitch, reserved for coaching and support staff.

(13) In sport, as technical foul, a type of offence which, while not involving contact with another player, is a deliberate attempt to commit an offence designed to create an advantage for the perpetrator's team, usually to prevent an opponent from scoring; also called the professional foul.

(14) In boxing, as “technical knock-out (TKO)”, a rule under which the referee (and in some contests an officially appointed physician) can stop the fight and declare a winner if a fighter s judged unable safely to continue (the equivalent of the old hors de combat (out of the fight) from the chivalric code).

(15) In aviation movement management, as “technical stop”, a landing used (1) for refueling, (2) to make unexpected critical repairs or (3) in any case where there’s a need to make an emergency landing.

(16) A re-purposed light pick-up, adapted as a mobile weapons platform and widely used by militaries, paramilitaries, insurgents and irregular combatants, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and West Asia.

1610-1620: From the Latin technicus (skilled in a particular art or subject), from the Ancient Greek tekhnikos (of art; systematic), from τέχνη (tékhnē) (skill, art, craft) + -icus (the suffix added to a noun, adjective, verb etc, to form an adjective).  The construct in English was technic + -al.  The –al suffix is from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjective suffix -ālis, or the Old & Middle French –el & -al.  The Latin form was probably from the Etruscan genitive suffix –l, the i-stem + -cus, occurring in some original case and later used freely.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic -igaz , the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic –eigs and the Proto-Slavic –bcb which has long since become a nominal agent suffix but appears originally to have served adjectival functions.

Technically adept: Lindsay Lohan using digital devices.

The wide original meaning sense narrowed by the early 1700s to a focus on the mechanical arts, as distinct from literature or high culture, a division which informed the binary system of education in the West for centuries and remains influential today.  The first use to describe the offence in sport was recorded in the rules of basketball in 1934 although as early as 1921, boxing had allowed the “technical knock-out” to decide bouts and the first known use of the abbreviation TKO is attested from 1940.  The first recorded “Technical difficulty” appeared in print in 1805.  The rare adjective atechnical meaning "free from technicalities" is from 1889.  Technicality, which now has a generally negative association, was originally neutral, meaning merely "that which is peculiar to any science, the evolution of the meaning shift noted from 1828 when it was used in the sense of "technical character or quality".  The noun and adjective “untechnical” is an informal construction, used often as a self-descriptor by those challenged by the complexities of modern phones and such.  Technical is a noun & adjective, technicalness is a noun and technically an adverb; the noun plural is technicals.

Retrospectively named “technicals” from the two world wars.

The tank came into use during World War I (1914-1918) but before that, lighter vehicles (cars and trucks) were adapted for military purposes featuring heavy duty components, armor and increasingly, mounted weapons.  There were the first “armored cars” and literally they were exactly that, the heaviest, most sturdy cars then in manufacture with armor plates welded on in the spots thought most vulnerable.  They proved invaluable in the exercise of many tasks including communications, border raids and reconnaissance and among the most famous was the Rolls-Royce adapted for the purpose by TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia; 1888–1935).  Lawrence was enchanted by the thing, trusting in its life-saving robustness and faithful reliability, regretting only its thirst for petrol and propensity to chew through tyres.  From the Great War, the armored car evolved in parallel forks, one as a purely military vehicle with accommodation for sometimes a dozen troops, heavily armored but fitted usually only with light caliber, defensive weapons, the other light, essentially unarmored but heavily gunned and relying on its speed and maneuverability as the second element of for its defense.  The latter are probably best remembered in the form of the Jeeps the British used in the North African campaign, fitted with heavy machine-guns, mounted to be fired by a gunner standing, they carried a crew of three and were equipped with extra fuel, ammunition, water and little else.  In that form they proved ideal for long distance reconnaissance sweeps and what became known as “hit & miss” operations, fuel dumps among the popular targets.  The British army thought of them in much the same was the Admiralty once viewed the use of light cruisers, noting the compelling similarities between the behavior of the desert sand with that of the oceans.

A classic technical from the 1980s war between the Soviet occupation forces and the Afghan mujahideen.  Not until the 1990s would the term "technical" become common.

The inheritors this tradition are the “technicals”, the light pick-ups used as a platform for anything from general purpose machine guns (GPMG), Rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and (on the machines with a heavier chassis) even 4 inch (105 mm) howitzers.  The most commonly accepted origin for the use of the term in this context lay in the Somali Civil War which began shortly after the collapse of the Somali state in 1989.  Because so many restrictions were imposed on non-governmental organizations (NGO), they weren’t able to adopt their usual protocols for obtaining security contractors so they contracted with local warlords and their militia, the payments disguised as “technical assistance grants”.  These protection forces quickly took to the Japanese pick-ups which had proven their durability in mining and agriculture (the Toyota Hi-Lux the classic example) and had before been used in Africa as weapons platforms, the term “technical” soon transferring from the purchase orders to the vehicles.  Ideal for purpose in a battle between warlords, they’re highly vulnerable to attack (from land, air & water) by any conventionally equipped military but the view seems to be the personnel are expendable and in places like London & Washington DC, the generals have always been impressed that those who want them seem never to find significant obstacles in replacing their fleets of technicals.  Interestingly, and highly unusually among the military when discussing materiel, technical seems always to be pronounced with its three syllables and never clipped to "tech", presumably because the shortened form already has such a well-established pattern of use in all the armed services.    

The Mada 9, Afghanistan’s first “indigenously developed supercar”.

For adaptation as technicals, the various flavors of Toyota pick-ups have long been the favorite mount throughout Africa, the Middle East and West Asia and impressed by the build quality, reliability & robustness, the Afghan Taliban recently choose to use a Toyota Corolla engine to power what they described as Afghanistan’s first “indigenously developed supercar”.  Provisionally known as the Mada 9 (apparently an engineering code-name), the plan is to name the production version the “Black Swan”, an allusion to the shock Europeans felt when explorers reached the shores of what is now Western Australia and it became known not all swans were white.  Since then, the “black swan moment” has been used in university departments as diverse as philosophy and business to illustrate the dangers of making assumptions.  The Mada 9 was built by a company called Entop, the development taking five years and the efforts of some 30 engineers and designers from the Afghanistan Technical Vocational Institute.  While it looks the part, given it’s powered by the modest 1.8 litre (110 cubic inch) four-cylinder engine from Toyota’s mass-produced family hatchback, the performance is not going to match similarly styled vehicles which traditionally have been equipped with bigger eight, twelve and even sixteen-cylinder power-plants.  However, the Taliban are thinking ahead and in its existing form, the Mada 9 exists essentially as a “proof-of-concept” platform, the plan being to add an electric power-train.

Diligence

Diligence (pronounced dil-i-juhns or dee-lee-zhahns (French))

(1) Constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken; persistent exertion of body or mind.

(2) In law, expressed often as “due diligence” the extent of care and caution required of a person or entity in the relevant circumstances.

(3) In the law of Scotland, the process by which persons, lands, or effects are seized for debt; process for enforcing the attendance of witnesses or the production of writings.

(4) Care; caution (obsolete).

(5) A public stagecoach, especially of the small, fast type once used in France (archaic).

1300–1350: From the Middle English deligence (constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken), from the Old French dilligence (attention, care; haste, speed) and directly from the Latin dīligentia (carefulness, attentiveness), from diligentem (nominative dīligēns) (attentive, assiduous, careful), the present-participle adjective from diligere (single out, value highly, esteem, prize, love; aspire to, be content with, appreciate (originally “to pick out, select”), the construct being dis- (apart) + legere (choose, gather), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather (with derivatives meaning "to speak (in the sense of “to pick out words”).  The meaning-shift was gradual and evolved from “love” through “attentiveness” to “carefulness” to “steady effort”.  The legal sense “attention and care due from a person in a given situation” dates from the 1620s.  A now probably extinct synonym was worksomeness.  The –ence suffix was a word-forming element attached to verbs to form abstract nouns of process or fact (convergence from converge), or of state or quality and was from the Middle English -ence, from the Old French -ence, from the Latin –entia & -antia (depending on the vowel in the stem word).  The Latin present-participle endings for verbs stems in -a- were distinguished from those in -i- and -e- and as the Old French evolved from Latin, these were leveled to -ance, but later French borrowings from Latin (some of them subsequently passed to English) used the appropriate Latin form of the ending, as did words borrowed by English directly from Latin, thus diligence, absence et al.  There was however little consistency, English gaining many words from French but from the sixteenth century the suffix –ence was selectively restored, such was the reverence for Latin.  In French, the word dates from the 1740s and was a shortened form of carosse de diligence (literally “coach of speed”).  The stage-coach sense should be pronounced as in French because use will be so rare it’ll be thought correct rather than an affectation though if preferred, the further truncation “dilly” was common.  Diligence is a noun, diligent is an adjective and diligently an adverb; the noun plural is diligences.

In commercial law, due diligence describes the comprehensive and systematic review of all aspects of a business, investment opportunity or legal matter before a transaction or decision is made.  The process involves an examination of all available information (including identifying what is not available) related to the subject, including financial statements, contracts, legal relationships, intellectual property, internal structures and such obligations which may exist.  The purpose of due diligence is to identify potential risks, liabilities, or opportunities associated with the matter to ensure that whatever decision is taken, is made with a full understanding of all matters.  The companion term, summary diligence, isn’t drawn from law but describes a similar but less extensive process; less detailed and less comprehensive review which is restricted usually to only the critical aspects of the matter.  Summary diligence is undertaken when it’s certain that even in a worst case scenario, losses will be minimal or outweighed by other advantages.

Due diligence is the investigation or exercise of care that a reasonable business or person is normally expected to take before entering into an agreement or contract with another party or an act with a certain standard of care.  Although the concept also exists as a legal obligation, it’s also used of the process undertaken in self-interest to ensure all relevant information is known an assessed, prior to a decision being taken.  As a legal device, proof of others having failed to have exercised due diligence can in some circumstances be used as a defence against allegations of inadequate (as opposed to misleading) disclosure.  Alternatively, against allegations of negligence, if one can establish that the threshold of “reasonable care” had been reached, a defence can also succeed even if the process was in some way incomplete.  In the US where formally it entered the language of commerce and law during the 1930s, it was originally merely an indicative description of the process of investigation before, via an adjectival career, becoming both noun and legal jargon.  Depending on what’s required and as a general principle the larger the quantity and the more complex the quality of information to be assessed then the greater resources will be required duly to be diligent but the principles are the same of any data set and many check-lists are available for box-ticking.  Depending on what’s involved, there may be a functional need to create dozens of sub-headings under the boxes but, within the bounds of fuzzy logic, most check lists suggest the categories are something like: (1) Financial, (2) Legal, (3) Tax, (4) Compliance and Regulatory (5) Commercial, (6) Human Resources, (7) Intellectual Property, (8) Information Technology, (9) Environmental & (10) Health and Safety.

Lights burning at a quarter to midnight: the company formerly known as Credit Suisse.

The classic example of the use of the due diligence process is in mergers & acquisitions (M&A) and probably in no M&A activity is it of more interest than in the financial services sector.  It was notable therefore that the process or arranging the “purchase” by Swiss bank UBS (the old Union Bank of Switzerland) of its erstwhile national competitor Credit Swisse (the old Schweizerische Kreditanstalt) appeared to be completed in the time that either institution would once have though inadequate were either contemplating acquiring a reasonably successful suburban dry-cleaning shop.  It was however a most unusual purchase which should more correctly be thought a takeover or absorption and the timing of the announcement was based not on the satisfactory completion of the due diligence process but the need to make an announcement before the markets opened the next Monday morning.  Despite all that, UBS certainly undertook an exercise in due diligence, dotting every i and crossing every t, once the Swiss government had made it clear they were making an offer the bank shouldn’t refuse.  UBS’s interest was less in the exact state of Credit Suisse’s books (something that would take even a big team at least weeks to determine) than in ensuring whatever losses subsequently were sustained, they would be underwritten by the Swiss exchequer and not the bank.  To ensure that, UBS would have ensured diligence was more due than usual.  So there’s somewhere a “secret protocol” to the UBS-Credit Suisse pact, presumably well protected in a Zürich vault and it’s likely to be a document the Swiss government will be unlikely to discuss, let alone publish.

Hank Paulson before the US Congress, 2008, "explaining" the bank bailouts at the start of the global financial crisis (GFC).

Whether whatever the Swiss government undertook can be characterised as something like un-due diligence (as opposed to undue diligence) might emerge in the months ahead as the true position of Credit Swisse unfolds because it may be even within the organisation, nobody can be certain how high the liabilities might go, the track derivatives can follow being among the more unpredictable in the world of gambling.  Still, the fear over that weekend was something like Hank Paulson (b 1946; US treasury secretary 2006-2009) had little trouble conveying to the congress in the wake of the failure of Lehman Brothers (1850-2008) and the same risk of “contagion” meant Bern really had little alternative that have the Swiss taxpayer assume responsibility for whatever is going to happen.  If that turns out to be effectively a very big credit default swap (CDF), the Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB, the Swiss central bank) quantitatively may need to easy many Swiss francs.

Photo due diligence

There are two aspects to "photo due diligence".

(1) Ex ante (before the photograph is taken) due diligence is assessment of factors such as the background, the environment and (often especially) who else will appear in any photo.  This is of some importance to those for whom public image management is an important part of their career.  One would not wish to be photographed in the “wrong” surroundings or be seen with the “wrong” people.

(2) Ex post facto (after the photograph is taken but before release for publication) due diligence is really possible only when “embargo” arrangements exist with the photographer, something sometimes a condition imposed by event organizers.  When photographs needed to be processed from negatives this something sometimes difficult to enforce but in the digital era, unsuitable images can instantly be deleted.  Out in the wild, where the paparazzi roam, it’s a contractual arrangement between subject and photographer and there is some evidence of cooperation.

Photo due diligence failure: Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015) photographed (left) outside the Reject Shop, Canberra, Australia, June 2015.  There was some prescience in the image because some three months later, the Liberal Party ejected him as leader and thus from the prime-ministership.  In this case, the failure of due diligence was among those minders who arranged the photo-opportunity although it’s surprising Mr Abbott’s political antennae seems not to have been sensitive.

Photo due diligence success: Lindsay Lohan at Christian Siriano’s fashion show, New York City, February 2023.  This one could be used in a case study of how to tick the due diligence boxes: (1) prestige brand-name, (2) front-row seating, (3) an acceptable degree of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), (4) the show well attended & (5) ideal lighting for photography.

Fag

Fag (pronounced fag)

(1) Something hanging loose, a flap (mostly archaic except in US technical use in industrial production of textiles where, in the process of quality inspections, a fag is a rough or coarse defect in the woven fabric).

(2) Slang for a boring or wearisome task (archaic).

(3) The worst part or end of a thing (mostly UK, now archaic).

(4) Offensive slang for a contemptible or dislikable person (archaic).

(5) Offensive slang for a homosexual male, applied most often to an obvious, especially effeminate or “unusual” one (now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous although within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing).

(6) To tire or weary by labor; to be exhausted (usually in the phrase “fagged out”).

(7) One allocated to do menial chores for an older school pupil (mostly in the English public school system but said to be extinct since the late 1990s although apparently still practiced in some Commonwealth countries with public (private) schools based on the old English model).

(8) Slang for a cigarette (now rare, especially in North America); the Cockney rhyming slang was “oily rag”.

(9) As "fag-end" (as in the last un-smoked end of a cigarette), a remnant of something once larger, longer etc such as the frayed end of a length of cloth or rope.

(10) As "fag-end administration", the last months or weeks of a government prior to an election.

1425–1475: From the late Middle English fagge (flap; broken thread in cloth, loose end (of obscure origin)), the later sense-development to the intransitive verb meaning “to droop, to tire, to make weary; drudgery” apparently based on the idea of “a drooping end” or “something limply hanging” dating from the 1520s.  The transitive sense of "to make (someone or something) fatigued, tire by labor" was first noted in 1826.  Those fagged-out fatiguing labor were in the 1850s said to have been engaged in “faggery” and from the same era “brain-fag described "mental fatigue."  Fag is a noun and verb, fagging or fagged are verbs and faggish & fagged are adjectives.  Apparently un-fagged is a correct construction which may be used to describe the process of cutting the ties binding a bundle of sticks.  Functional forms (fag butt, fag lighter, fag grave (an ashtray) are created as required. Fag is a noun & verb; the noun plural is fags.   

A GIF of Lindsay Lohan enjoying a fag.

The meaning “cigarette” dates only from 1888 and was derived from fag-end (applied to many things and attested since the 1610s) and thus a cigarette butt was one of many fag-ends but “fag” (and the plural “fags”) came much to be associated with cigarettes.  Fag may be variant of the verb “flag” in the sense of “droop, tire” and related (perhaps remotely) to the Dutch vaak (sleepiness).  The use of the term to refer to cigarettes is still heard in parts of the English-speaking world but is almost unknown in the US where use is not advised because there, almost exclusively, it's exclusively a gay slur.

Inhaling a known carcinogen is of course a bad idea and not recommended but Lindsay Lohan did make smoking look sexy.

Faggery (or faggotry) was the system in English public schools in which the younger students acted as servants (there were sometimes other purposes) for the older.  It was part of public school environment which Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) said was designed primarily to teach pupils life was “inherently unfair”.  Still, he valued the process and described any chap who hadn't benefited from the experience as having "no background".  The use in English public schools to describe a junior student who performs "certain duties" for a senior seems first to have been used in 1785 although the practice is documented from the seventeenth century.  The schoolboy slang describing the offices of the institution as “fagdom” & “fagmaster” dates from 1902.  In modern use, faggery (less so faggotry but like faggotness, faggotize & faggotism) is used as a gay slur.  The term "faggot voter" was a historic term in the UK & Ireland used when there was a property qualification attached to the electoral franchise.  A legal loophole, it described someone entitled to vote by virtue of holding some form of property title short of freehold, typically to a subdivision.  The origin of the term was based on the idea of “faggot” in the sense of the sticks gathered together and bound to make a whole (ie one property with one title fragmented for electoral purposes while not diminishing the quality of the ultimate ownership).  The “loophole” was one of those things which began as an “unintended consequence” of changes to the rules of real property but it wasn’t reformed until the late 1800s because so many land-owners and members of parliament made use of it to “stack their constituencies” with voters.

As a shortening of faggot, “fag” is documented as being applied as a term of disparagement to homosexual males from 1914, an invention of American English slang, though related to the earlier (1590s) contemptuous term for a woman, especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot in the sense of "bundle of sticks", ie something awkward that has to be carried in the sense of "worthless baggage” (and therefore “worthless woman").  More speculatively, there may be a link with the Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a faggot homosexual man).  There may also have been some connection with the English public school slang noun fag which even then carried the suggestion of catamite (From the Latin catamītus (boy kept as a sexual partner), from Catamītus, from the Etruscan catmite, from the Ancient Greek Γανυμήδης (Ganumḗdēs) (Ganymede), in Greek mythology an attractive Trojan boy abducted by Zeus and taken to Mount Olympus to become his cupbearer and lover (and Ganymede endures as a doublet in that sense)).  The term “faggot marriage” was not a synonym of “lavender marriage” (an arrangement in which a gay man would marry a lesbian for purposes of social or professional respectability) but a disparaging reference to gay marriage.

In the same way the infamous N-word has been re-claimed by certain sub-sets of people of color and is, in context, an acceptable use by or between them, “faggot” similarly, although now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous, within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing.  Two inventive variations were “fag hag” (a heterosexual woman who socializes with homosexual men (1969)) and “fag stag” (a heterosexual man who socializes with homosexual men (circa 1995)).  The less common companion slang for men who have many lesbian friends was “dutch boy”, “lesbro” or “dyke tyke”.  Covering all bases, it transpires that those of both sexes who associate with lesbian, gay and bisexual people are “fruit flies”.  The story that male homosexuals were called faggots because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an urban legend with no etymological or historical basis. Burning sometimes was a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (which relied on the scriptural suggestion invoked as the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, although parliament had declared homosexuality a capital crime in 1533, the prescribed method of execution was to be hanged.  While the inquisitorial and judicial organs of the Roman Catholic Church may over the centuries have burned at the stake a good many homosexuals, that really was incidental to the process (sort of the "collateral damage" of the day), the actual sentence imposed usually for other offences.

Faggot was from the Middle English fagot, from the Middle French fagot (bundle of sticks), from the Medieval Latin and Italian fagotto and related to the Old Occitan fagot, the Italian fagotto & fangotto and the Spanish fajo (bundle, wad).  In Italian a fagotto was (1) a bundle or sack, (2), (figuratively) a clumsy or awkward person; a klutz or (3), in music, a bassoon and was probably from the Italian fagotto (diminutive of Vulgar Latin facus, from the Classical Latin fascis (bundle of wood), or perhaps the Ancient Greek φάκελος (phákelos) (bundle).  The senses relating to persons, though possibly originating as an extension of the sense "bundle of sticks", could have been reinforced by Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a homosexual man).  In English, “fagot” was long the alternative spelling.

A sincere form of flattery: North American F-86 Sabre (first flown October 1947, left) and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (first flown December 1947, right).

A well-crafted amalgam of technology stolen from the West (the airframe construction techniques from the US, the jet-engine a blatant copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene and the aerodynamics the result of wartime German research), the USSR’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 was a short-range interceptor, the appearance of which in the skies of the Korean War (1950-1953) theatre was such a shock to the UN forces that the US Air Force (USAF) had to scramble to assemble squadrons of North American F-86 Sabres for deployment.  Made in both the USSR and by licensed overseas constructors, the MiG-15 was produced in extraordinary numbers (some sources suggest as many as 17,700) and equipped not only Warsaw Pact militaries, some three dozen air forces eventually using the type and it was widely used in front-line service well into the 1960s.  Simple, robust and economical to operate, many still fly in private hands and some continue to be used as jet-trainers, ideal for the role because of their predictable characteristics and good handling.

The MiG-15’s NATO reporting name was Fagot.  NATO reporting names have no linguistic or etymological significance, being chosen (1) with an initial letter indicating type (B=bomber; F=fighter; C=commercial & cargo; H=helicopter; M= miscellaneous) and (2) a one-syllable name for propeller aircraft and a two-syllable name for jets.  Fagot was just another reporting name picked from NATO’s list of the possible for allocation to fighters:

Fairytale of New York (1987) is a song by the Irish pop-band The Pogues, augmented for the occasion by the late Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000).  One stanza includes the lines:

You're a bum

You're a punk

You're an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot

You cheap lousy faggot

Happy Christmas your arse

I pray God it's our last

The offending line quickly became: "You cheap lousy faggot" and for many years, every Christmas, there was in England an almost ritualistic argument about whether it was appropriate to play the piece on radio, a matter of some interest because Fairytale of New York was frequently voted the nation’s most popular Christmas song.

In the late 1980s the BBC seemed unconcerned at the possibility of a gay slur being thought at least implied but found the anatomical slang offensive, asking that "arse" be replaced with “ass” which was a liberal approach compared with the old BBC tradition of outright bans but sensitivities shifted to gender in the 1990s and in subsequent live performances MacColl sometimes adjusted the lyrics further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard".  Since then broadcasts have varied in the version carried, the BBC even permitting all or some of “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” on some of their stations but not others.  There’s was also use of the old practice “bleeping out” (actually scrambling) “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” as required and it’s now fairly unpredictable just which version will be played.  It did seem one of the more improbable battlefields of the culture wars but was emblematic of the new censorship.  Although, in the context of the song, it was obvious “faggot” was being used in the old sense of meaning “someone worthless” rather than “someone a bit of a homosexual”, the objection was to the very word which many activists demand should be proscribed, the same fate suffered by "niggardly" a form with an etymology as unrelated to the infamous "N-word" as the meaning.

Climate

Climate (pronounced klahy-mit)

(1) The composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years (decades, centuries or other epochs).

(2) A region or area characterized by a given climate (often as climatic zone or with modifiers such as cold-climate, sub-climate, micro-climate, dry-climate et al).

(3) The prevailing attitudes, standards, or environmental conditions of a group, period, or place (used in politics, sociology, economics etc in the sense of mood, atmosphere, spirit, tone, temper etc).

(4) An area of the earth's surface between two parallels of latitude (obsolete).

(5) A region of the Earth (obsolete).

(6) In contemporary slang, a clipping of “climate change” and frequent verbal (especially oral) shorthand.

1350–1400: From the Middle English climat, from the Old French climat (region, part of the earth), from the Late Latin clīmat- (stem of clīma, from the Ancient Greek κλῐ́νω (klínō) (I slope, incline)), from klīmat- (stem of klī́ma (latitude, slope, region (literally “inclination”), the notion being “slope of the earth from equator to pole”), the construct being klī- (akin to klī́nein (to slope, lean)) + -ma (the noun suffix), ultimately from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root klei- (to lean).  The adjective climatic is sometimes confused with climactic.  Climatic is used of the climate; climactic describe something which forms a climax.  Climate is a noun & verb and climatic, climatical & climatal are adjectives and climatically is an adverb; the noun plural is climates.

The original meaning in the mid-fourteenth century was purely geographic, the sense being horizontal zone of the earth's surface measured by lines parallel to the equator (ie latitude).  From antiquity, geographers and cartographers divided earth into zones determined by the angle of the sun on the slope of the surface and the length of daylight.  Not knowing what lay beyond reported (and not always reliable) observations, these zones varied greatly.  Some calculated variously 24 or 30 climates between Meroe on the upper Nile (in modern-day Sudan) and the mythical Riphaean Mountains which thought to be the Arctic’s boundary, systems in which as one traced the map north, the climate changed at the point where daylight was a half hour longer or shorter (according to season) than the starting point.  Others thought cosmically and listed seven (one for each known planet) or twelve (tied to the signs of the zodiac).

Being a measure of latitude, there was obviously a tendency for the climates to correlate with temperature, something noticed as early as the late-fourteenth century and, being practical rather than abstract, the word came rapidly to be used in the sense of “distinct zones of the earth's surface associated with changes in weather”.  This meaning shift evolved by the early seventeenth century to make climate understood as “combined results of weather associated with a region, the characteristics of a country or region with reference to variation of heat, cold, humidity, rainfall, wind etc.  The figurative use (the collective mental or moral atmosphere of a group or whole society) dates from the 1660s.  The difference between climate and “the weather” is that climate is a summary of the long-term manifestations of weather and other atmospheric conditions (which can be applied to defined zones or globally).  The modern practice is that climate is a statistical summary of a representative period and that’s usually generational (ie 25-30 years) but climate modelers using the geological record and other sources (trees, ice cores etc) can construct longer epochs in centuries (eg the ice ages) or even millions of years, the global climate during the age of the dinosaurs often summed up as “warm & wet”.

Lindsay Lohan pondering climate change.

To acclimatise (or acclimatize) is to acclimate (become accustomed to) one’s self to the weather conditions prevalent where one find’s one’s self, a term used also figuratively in the sense of adjusting tastes or expectations to different cultures.  The use of modifiers is common and can be meteorological (warm-climate, dry-climate, chilly climate, temperate-climate etc) or figurative (hostile climate, sceptical climate etc).  In the age of climate-concern, there’s been a growth of such use including climate canary, climate control, climate denial, climate denier, climate despair, climate emergency, climate finance, climate doom, climate system, climate-speak and, of course, climate change.  Indeed, the very phrase “climate change” is a construct which has come widely to be used because it references easily understood consequences rather than some abstract process.  The possible climatic implications of man-made atmospheric CO₂ emissions was discussed as early as 1896 by Swedish chemist & Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) in a paper called On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground, his conclusion being that the burning of fossil fuels could lead to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading a global increase in average temperatures.  In the scientific community, his ideas for decades remained controversial and in the wider community, barely noted and it wasn’t until the 1950s when researchers, taking advantage of new techniques made possible by the vastly increased quantity of data which became available because of wartime advances and a vast expansion of meteorological and atmospheric measuring, began serious study of the study the potential impact of human activities on the Earth's climate.

Between the 1970s and the early twenty-first century, a consensus built in mainstream science that human activities (especially the burning of fossil fuels), were contributing to global warming and other climatic changes.  The early phrase popular in the discussion, at that stage conducted mostly among scientists and environmentalists (although the fossil fuel industry quickly mounted counter campaigns, both in public relations activities and the traditional buying-off of politicians) was the “greenhouse effect” but greenhouses, associated with positive things like grapes & tomatoes didn’t have the desired worrying effect so the terminology in the 1990s shifted to the consequences.  “Global warming” replaced “greenhouse effect” in consciousness-raising but it proved vulnerable to attacks from industry which claimed every unseasonal cold-spell disproved the thesis, thus the use of “climate change”.  That has proved resistant to challenge and even in the West the matter is now being taken seriously, as the consequences of climate change begin to affect to rich nations of the global north, destructive heat, fires, hurricanes, floods and tropical diseases no longer ignored as largely they were when those who suffered were mostly Africans, Arabs, Asians and animals.

Psychiatrists & psychologists find the distinction between climate and weather a helpful metaphor when explaining personality.  The term personality denotes the enduring pattern of a patient’s life and can thus be thought their individual climate.  The weather which produces that climate can be good (happy events, a successful marriage, a fulfilling career), bad (a dull job, habitually sore feet) or severe (cancer, divorce) and in some cases a patient’s reaction to these event can result is what is diagnosed as a personality disorder (PD).  In the West, psychiatry is thought one of medicine’s more recent disciplines and in some structural senses that’s probably true but the understanding of the human personality is ancient.  Writing in 45 BC, the Roman statesman & scholar Cicero (106-43 BC) observed that in men existed “…all kinds of depravity and perversity” and that “There are more disorders of the mind than of the body and they are of a more dangerous nature for the mind, when disordered… can neither bear nor endure anything and is under the perpetual influence of desires”.  Cicero went further, noting the depravities of men were deep seated and either caused or exacerbated by environment in which men lived and what afflicted one could also poison the whole for when an entire society “declare unanimously for what is wrong, then we are altogether overwhelmed”.  PD writ large: Each individual an element of the weather and the body politic the climate.

La Mort de Cicéron (The Death of Cicero (circa 1635), oil on canvas by François Perrier (1590–1650), Bad Homburg, Staatliche.

Within two years of writing those words Cicero would be dead and the circumstances of his execution would provide probably several case studies in PD but he had few reasons to complain; he may have lived by the pen but he ruled by the sword, for centuries remembered fondly by scholars of Antiquity and, perhaps less helpfully for his reputation, of late by Ted Cruz (b 1970; US senator (Republican, Texas) since 2013).  Knowledge of PD then was not novel when in 1980 when first it appeared in the third edition (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, organized on a categorical basis with patients classified into one of several distinct personality disorder types.  This system was revised in the DSM-IV (1994) and again in the DSM-5 (2013), the latter adopting a hybrid categorical-dimensional approach to PD, a condition it notes affects at least two of a patient’s (1) way of thinking about oneself and others, (2) way of responding emotionally, (3) way of relating to other people and (4) way of controlling one’s behavior.  In the DSM-5-TR (2022), the types of PD are listed as:

Antisocial personality disorder: A pattern of disregarding or violating the rights of others.  A person with antisocial personality disorder may not conform to social norms, may repeatedly lie or deceive others, or may act impulsively.

Avoidant personality disorder: A pattern of extreme shyness, feelings of inadequacy, and extreme sensitivity to criticism.  Patients with avoidant personality disorder may be unwilling to get involved with others unless they are certain of being liked, be preoccupied with being criticized or rejected, or may view themselves as not being good enough or socially inept.

Borderline personality disorder: A pattern of instability in personal relationships, intense emotions, poor self-image and impulsivity.  A patient with borderline personality disorder may go to great lengths to avoid being abandoned, have repeated suicide attempts, display inappropriate intense anger, or have ongoing feelings of emptiness.

Dependent personality disorder: A pattern of needing to be taken care of and submissive (clingy the modern term) behavior.  Patients with dependent personality disorder may have difficulty making daily decisions without reassurance from others or may feel uncomfortable or helpless when alone because of fear of inability to take care of themselves.

Histrionic personality disorder: A pattern of excessive emotion and attention-seeking. Patients with HPD may be uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention and may use physical appearance to draw attention to themselves or have rapidly shifting or exaggerated emotions.

Narcissistic personality disorder: A pattern of need for admiration and lack of empathy for others.  A patient with NPD may have a grandiose sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, take advantage of others or lack empathy.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: A pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfection and control.  A patient with OCPD (distinct from Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)) may be overly focused on details or schedules, may work excessively, not allowing time for leisure or friends, or may be inflexible in their morality and values.

Paranoid personality disorder: A pattern of being suspicious of others and seeing them as mean or spiteful.  Patients with paranoid personality disorder often assume people will harm or deceive them and refuse to confide in others or become close to them.

Schizoid personality disorder: Being detached from social relationships and expressing little emotion.  A patient with schizoid personality disorder typically does not seek close relationships, chooses to be alone and appears to care little about praise or criticism from others.

Schizotypal personality disorder: A pattern of being very uncomfortable in close relationships, having distorted thinking and eccentric behavior. A patient with schizotypal personality disorder may have odd beliefs or odd or peculiar behavior or speech or may have excessive social anxiety.