Cockade

Cockade (pronounced ko-keyd)

(1) A rosette, knot of ribbon, etc, worn usually on the hat as part of a uniform, as a badge of office, or the like.

(2) A feather or ribbon worn on military headwear, the colors of which served as unit identification.

(3) In (mostly military) aviation, an emblem of concentric circles of different colours, identifying the country to which an aircraft belongs (often called a roundel).

1650–1660: As cockade, an eighteenth century adaption of the earlier cockard, from the French cocarde (a knot of ribbons), from the Middle French cocquard (boastful, silly, cocky), the construct being coc (rooster, cock) + -arde (-ard).  The French suffix –arde was the female equivalent of –ard and was from the Middle French, from the Old French –ard & -art, from the Frankish -hard (hardy, bold), from the Proto-Germanic harduz (hard), from the primitive Indo-European kert- & kret- (strong).  It was used to form pejoratives, diminutives, and nouns representing or belonging to a particular class or sort.  The French cockade gained its name from the resemblance of the devices to a cock's crest, being from cocarde (feminine of cocard (arrogant, strutting) and thus cocquard (boastful, silly, cocky) which was an allusion to the behavior of the strutting rooster which appears so arrogantly boastful).  Cockade is a noun and cockaded is an adjective; the noun plural is cockades.

A gothic flavored Lindsay Lohan in Chanel with white rosette, MTV Studios, New York City, December 2005.

The companion (an now more widely used) term rosette describes a rose-shaped thing which may be an ornament, a fitting or any number of circular things, the best known of which are those with many small parts in concentric circles, especially when formed from a bunch or knot of ribbons and worn as a decoration or award.  Dating from 1790 from the French rosette (a diminutive of rose), rosette has a wider range of application than cockade and in the abstract is a generalized term referring to any number of stylized items which to one degree of another, are vaguely rose-like.  Rose was from the Middle English rose & roose, from the Old English rōse, from the Latin rosa, of uncertain origin but it may via Oscan be from the Ancient Greek ῥόδον (rhódon) (rose), from the Old Persian wṛda- (flower) and Middle Iranian borrowings including the Old Armenian վարդ (vard) (rose), the Aramaic וַרְדָּא‎ (wardā) & ܘܪܕܐ‎ (wardā), the Arabic وَرْدَة‎ (warda) and the Hebrew וֶרֶד‎ (wéreḏ)), from the primitive Indo-European wr̥dos (sweetbriar).  The –ette suffix was from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something.

Girl with Cocked Hat (1925), oil on canvas by Walt Kuhn (1877–1949), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.  It’s an example of early American Modernism.

Cockades fulfilled the function of maintaining the shape of a hat and were usually formed as a bow or knot of ribbons.  Inherently ornamental whetever their intended functional purpose, cockades quickly came to be used to signify the wearer’s identification with a political party, a particular military unit, or a household (in the form of livery).  They could be a matter of life or death during the French Revolution (1789) because the revolutionaries wore blue, white, and red cockades adopted from the colours of the royal family and the city of Paris.  The royalist forces and other reactionaries adopted white, orange, or black and yellow cockades (depending upon the nationality of the army in which they were serving), the French émigrés apparently preferring white.  The military often retained the colors but the use of cockades as such ceased for all but a handful of ceremonial uniforms when first armies and later navies ceased wearing cocked hats.  They’re still seen as a fashion item and a few of the surviving royal households have maintained their use in the leather cockades on the headgear of liveried coachmen and chauffeurs.

Although it seemed an early call, Nylon, after surveying the frocks at the 2023 Golden Globes, declared that rosettes were not only back but trending, noting the catwalks at the European spring shows were lush with floral themes.  Their conclusion: when roses bloom, rosettes surely follow.  If so, the fashion cycle is following the usual routine although the rapidity of cyclical churn does seem to have accelerated; whereas for most of the period since the seventeenth century when mass-produced rosettes first became a thing, the gaps between their splashes of popularity could be measured in decades, now they seem to be showing up every second generation.  Widely used in the 1980s (often as a bolt-on to the dreaded scrunchie), they re-appeared early in the new millennium and now Nylon says they’re back.

Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) with Conservative Party rosette and Lord Toby Jug (Brian Borthwick, 1965–2019, leader of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire branch of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party until expelled in 2014 at which point he founded the Eccentric Party of Great Britain) wearing Eccentric Party rosettes, UK general election, 2015.

Still used around the world as (mostly amateur) awards in sporting and other competitions, rosettes displaying party affiliations were once a feature of elections in much of the English-speaking world but never really caught on in the US where badges, buttons, banner and latterly, stickers were preferred.  In the modern age, their use has faded just about everywhere except in the UK where they remain an essential part of atmospherics of campaigning and New Zealand where they’re still sometimes seen.  In the UK, they’re now more standardized than they were during much of the twentieth century when the sizes could vary greatly and there was no such thing as an official party color, some candidates even switching colors between polls, either at whim or in the quest for electoral advantage.  The advent of color television changed that and the party leaderships insisted on a consistent theme.  The electoral authorities also impose restrictions on the text which can be displayed and limit the size of rosettes which can be worn at polling places.  The convention of use in the UK evolved into:

Red: Labour
Blue: Conservative
Amber: Liberal Democrats
Green: Green Party
Yellow: Scottish National Party
Red, white and blue: Democratic Unionist Party
Green and orange: Plaid Cymru
Light blue: Reform UK
Purple: UK Independence Party

Nylon could be onto something.  The sequined lace column gown by Valentino Lindsay Lohan wore for the Falling for Christmas premiere (New York City, November 2022) was embroidered with a floral motif.  The reaction was generally positive.

Deadman

Deadman (pronounced ded-man or ded-muhn)

(1) In architecture and civil engineering a heavy plate, log, wall, or block buried in the ground that acts as an anchor for a retaining wall, sheet pile etc, usually by a tie connecting the two.

(2) A crutch-like prop, used temporarily to support a pole or mast during the erection process.

(3) In nautical use, an object fixed on shore temporarily to hold a mooring line.

(4) In nautical use, a rope for hauling the boom of a derrick inboard after discharge of a load of cargo.

(5) In mountaineering a metal plate with a wire loop attached for thrusting into firm snow to serve as a belay point, a smaller version being known as a deadboy.

(6) In slang, a bottle of alcoholic drink that has been consumed (ie is empty).

(7) In the operation of potentially dangerous machinery, a control or switch on a powered machine or vehicle that disengages a blade or clutch, applies the brake, shuts off the engine etc, when the driver or operator ceases to press a pedal, squeeze a throttle, etc; known also as the deadman throttle or the deadman control.  The hyphenated form dead-man is often used, both as noun and adjective.  Deadman is a noun and the noun plural is deadmans which seems ugly and a resulting formation such as "seven deadmans" is surely clumsy but most authoritative reference sources insist only "deadmans" will do.  Deadmen or dead-men is tolerated (by some liberal types) on the same basis as computer "mice" although "mouses" doesn't jar in the way "deadmans" seems to.

Circa 1895: A compound word, the construct being dead + man.  Dead was from the Middle English ded & deed, from Old English dēad, from the Proto-West Germanic daud, from daudaz.  The Old English dēad (a dead person; the dead collectively, those who have died) was the noun use of the adjective dead, the adverb (in a dead or dull manner, as if dead," also "entirely") attested from the late fourteenth century, again derived from the adjective.  The Proto-Germanic daudaz was the source also of the Old Saxon dod, the Danish død, the Swedish död, the Old Frisian dad, the Middle Dutch doot, the Dutch dood, the Old High German tot, the German tot, the Old Norse dauðr & the Gothic dauþs.  It's speculated the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European dheu (to die).Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man), probably from the primitive Indo-European mon- (man) (men having the meaning “mind”); a doublet of manu.  The specific sense of “adult male of the human race” (distinguished from a woman or boy) was known in the Old English by circa 1000.   Old English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late in the thirteenth century, replaced by mann and increasingly man.  Man also was in Old English as an indefinite pronoun (one, people, they) and used generically for "the human race, mankind" by circa 1200.  It was cognate with the West Frisian man, the Dutch man, the German Mann (man), the Norwegian mann (man), the Old Swedish maþer (man), the Swedish man, the Russian муж (muž) (husband, male person), the Avestan manš, the Sanskrit मनु (manu) (human being), the Urdu مانس‎ and Hindi मानस (mānas).   Although often thought a modern adoption, use as a word of familiar address, originally often implying impatience is attested as early as circa 1400, hence probably its use as an interjection of surprise or emphasis since Middle English.  It became especially popular from the early twentieth century.

Calameo Dual-purpose MIL-SIM-FX mechanical dead-man and detonator switch (part-number MIL-12G-DMS).

The source of the name is the idea that if something is likely to in some way be dangerous if uncontrolled, operation is possible only if some device is maintained in a state which is possible only by a person not dead or in some debilitated condition.  The classic example is the train driver; if the driver does not maintain the switch in the closed position, the train slows to a halt.  Some manufactures describe the whole assembly as a "deadman's brake" and the part which is subject to human pressure as "deadman's switch" (or deadman's handle".  The phrase "dead man's fingers" is unrelated and is used variously in zoology, botany and in cooking and "dead man's rope" is a kind of seaweed (a synonym of sea-laces).  The legend of the "dead man's hand" (various combinations of aces and eights in poker) is based on the cards in the hand held by the unfortunate "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837–1876) when shot dead at the poker table.  A "dead man's arm" was a traditional English pudding, steamed and served in the cut-off sleeve of a man's shirt.  The phrase "dead man walking" began as US prison slang to refer to those on death row awaiting execution and it's since been adopted to describe figures like politicians, coaches, CEOs and the like who are thought about to be sacked.  Reflecting progress in other areas, dictionaries now list both "dead woman walking" and "dead person walking" but there scant evidence of use.

May have come across the odd dead man: Lindsay Lohan in hoodie arriving at the Los Angeles County Morgue to perform court-ordered community service, October 2011.

Deadman and the maintenance of MAD

The concept of nuclear deterrence depends on the idea of mutually assured destruction (MAD): that there would be certain retaliation, even if a nuclear first-strike destroyed the usual command and control structures of an adversary, that would not guarantee there wouldn’t be a nuclear counter-strike.  All front-line nuclear-weapon states employ systems to ensure a residual capacity to retaliate, even after suffering a catastrophic first strike, the best known of which are the Russian Мертвая рука (Dead Hand) and the US AN/DRC-8 (Emergency Rocket Communications System), both of which are often referred to as doomsday devices.  Both exist to close the strategic nuclear strike control loop and were inventions of the high Cold War, the USSR’s system later taken over by the successor Russian state.  The metaphor of a deadman is accurate to the extent of the need to keep closed a loop, the difference being the consequences.

Test launch of ground-based Russian RS-24 Yars ICBM from the Plesetsk facility in northwestern Russia, 9 December 2020.

The most extreme scenario is one in which there is left not a living soul with access to the loop.  In this case, the system switches from one designed to instigate a launch of ballistic missiles to one where some act is required to prevent the attack and is thus dubbed fail-deadly, the reverse of the fail-safe systems designed to prevent inadvertent launches.  The doomsday systems use a variety of mechanical and electronic monitoring protocols designed to (1) detect that a strike has occurred, (2) determine the extent of damage and (3) attempts to maintain or restore the usual communication channels of the military chain of command.  If the systems determine worst-case circumstances exist, a retaliatory launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) will be triggered.  Neither the Kremlin nor the Pentagon tend to comment on such things but, over the years, there have been (what are assumed to be managed) leaks that the systems are usually inactive and activated only during times of crisis but the veracity of this is unknown.

Royal Navy test launch of UGM-133 Trident II nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from Vanguard class submarine HMS Vigilant, 28 October 2012.

One obvious theoretical vulnerability in the USSR’s and US systems is that at points it is electronic and therefore reliant on hardware, software and an energy source.  The UK government has an entirely analogue system which uses only pen and paper.  Known as letters of last resort, each incoming prime minister writes, in their own hand, four identical letters which are placed in a sealed envelope, given to the captain of each of the navy’s ballistic missile submarines who keeps it in his on-board safe.  The letters are only to be opened if an enemy (presumably nuclear) strike has damaged the chain of command to the extent it is no longer possible for the civilian government to instruct the military on what retaliatory action to take.  As soon as a prime-minister leaves office, the letters are, unopened, destroyed and replaced with ones from the new premier.  Those circumstances requiring a letter to be opened have never transpired and no prime-minister has ever commented publicly on what they wrote so the contents remain a genuine secret, known only to the writer and whomever they told.  So, although the only people who know the contents have never spoken, the consensus has long been the captains are likely to be given one of four options: 

(1) Retaliate.  Each of the four submarines is armed with up to sixteen 16 Trident II SLMBs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), each missile equipped with up to twelve independently targeted warheads with a range of 7,000 miles (11,000 km).  There is always at least one at sea and the Admiralty never comments on its location although, in times of heightened political tension, additional boats may be activated.

(2) Not retaliate.

(3) The captains should use their judgment.  This, known as “the man on the ground” doctrine has a long tradition in the military although it was in some circumstances rendered redundant by advances in real-time communications.  In this case, it’s “the man under the water”.  An interesting question which touches on constitutional, international and military law, is the question of the point at which a state ceases to exist and the orders of a regime can be no longer said legally to be valid.

(4) Proceed to a place under an allied country's command or control.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900).

There is also a probably unexplored fifth option: a prime-minister could leave in the envelope a blank page.  This presumably would be substantively the same as option (3) but would denote a different political message to be mulled over in whatever remained of civilization.  No prime-minister has ever commented publicly on the thoughts which crossed their minds when writing these notes but perhaps some might have recalled Nietzche’s words in Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886): "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.  And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."  Although troubled when he wrote that, he wasn't yet quite mad.

Medieval

Medieval (pronounced mee-dee-ee-vuhl (U), med-ee-ee-vuhl (U), mid-ee-ee-vuhl (non-U) or mid-ee-vuhl (non-U))

(1) Of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or in the style of the Middle Ages.

(2) In informal (usually disparaging) use, extremely old-fashioned; primitive; backward; uncivilized.

1820-1830: A creation of Modern English from the New Latin medium aevum (the middle age, thus pertaining to or suggestive of the Middle Ages), the construct being medi(um) (the middle) + aev(um) (age) + -al (the Latin adjectival suffix appended to various words (often nouns) to make an adjective).  The Latin medium was from the primitive Indo-European root medhyo- (middle); aevum was from the primitive Indo-European root aiw- (vital force, life; long life, eternity), also the source of eon.  Mediaeval & mediæval are the now rare alternative spellings.

Between Rome and the Renaissance

The noun medievalism, originally a descriptor of the beliefs and practices characteristic of the Middle Ages, dates from 1846, later used to describe the academic discipline studying the epoch; the adverb medievally was first noted in 1844; the noun medievalist, first used in 1847, meant "proponent of medieval styles, one who sympathizes with the spirit and principles of the Middle Ages”, but was from 1882 a companion word to the later sense of "medievalism” and used to describe historians and others “versed in the history of the Middle Ages".

Lindsay Lohan dressed in "medieval" flavor, Wendy Nichol's (b 1972) fashion show at the Elizabeth Street sculpture gardens, New York Fashion Week, September 2013.

The Middle Ages (or the Medieval) is one of the three epochs in Western Civilization: (1) Antiquity, (2) the Middle Ages and (3) the Modern Age (itself not to be confused with modernism or modernity).  It’s a modern construct.  The writers and historians working during the Medieval period divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", and, under the influence of Christian eschatology, seem universally to have though their own time to be the last before the end of the world, all referring to their age as "modern".  The phrase "Middle Ages" appeared first in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas (middle season) and this, over centuries, spawned many variants, including medium aevum (middle age) in 1604 and media saecula (middle ages) in 1625.  The more familiar medieval (and the now rare mediaeval & mediæval) is from medium aevum, its creation reflecting the enduring European reverence for the classical world (which still exists in academic historiography’s Greek and Roman factions).  The tripartite division of Western history had been used by historians for some time and became (more or less) standard after the seventeenth century German classical scholar Christoph Cellarius (1638–1707) in 1683 published his Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period.

Be prepared: Medieval armor.

Historians date the beginning of the Middle Ages from either in 410 or 476, depending on whether they prefer the Visigoth’s sack of Rome or the final overthrow of the last Roman Emperor as the crucial turning point.  A date around 1500 is usually accepted as the end of the Middle Ages but there’s no precise end-date and the transition to the modern era was marked by immense regional differences, some parts of Europe remaining distinctly medieval well into the twentieth century.  The end was more a milieu, events such as the discovery of the "New World" (1492), the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the Protestant Reformation (1520s onward) all landmarks of the transition.

Lighting up the Dark Ages: The burning of Protestant heretics, in English historian John Foxe’s (circa 1517–1587) Actes and Monuments (1653) (often published with the title John Foxe's Book of Martyrs).

The once parallel term "Dark Ages" does cause confusion.  It adopts a traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the “light” (the learning and progress Antiquity and the Modern Age) with the “dark” (the violence, backwardness and stultification of the Middle Ages), the phrase derived from the Latin saeculum obscurum (dark age), originally applied by Italian cardinal and ecclesiastical historian Caesar Baronius (1538–1607) in his writings about an especially tumultuous period during the tenth and eleventh centuries.  A memorable phrase, it caught the popular imagination and the concept came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, a slur most widely applied during the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment.  It’s now less used and English-speaking historians, following their German counterparts, generally subdivide the Middle Ages into "Early", "High", and "Late", avoiding “Dark Ages” completely, those who make any mention generally noting it can apply only to the earliest centuries and then usually in the context of the paucity of documents and other historic records rather than as a damnation of a thousand-odd years.

Christ Rescuing Peter from Drowning (1370) by Lorenzo Veneziano (known as Lorenzo the Venetian, his dates of birth and death are unknown but he was active between 1356–1372).  A number of paintings from the medieval era featured the famous New Testament story in which Christ is said to have walked on water during a mighty storm.  Lorenzo's work depicts the fishing boat in which Jesus’ disciples were traveling in across Israel’s Sea of Galilee.  The story appears in three of the four Gospels (Matthew 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52 & John 6:16-21), each telling the tale in a subtlety different way.

Cisgender

Cisgender (pronounced sis-jen-der)

(1) Noting or relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with that person’s biological sex assigned at birth (also as cisgendered in this context) and the prefix cis- is used variously as a modifier (ciswoman, cismale, ‎cisnormativity et al) where the practices of chemistry are followed when forming names of chemical compounds in which two atoms or groups are situated on the same side of some plane of symmetry passing through the compound.

(2) A person who is cisgender.

1994:  A compound word, modeled on the earlier transgender, the construct being cis- + gender.  Cis is from the English preposition cis (on this side of) and the earliest known gender-related use of the prefix in any language was in a 1914 German language book on sexology.  In English, the first use of the prefix in the context of gender dates from 1994.  In English, cis was an abbreviation, presumably from either cosine and sine and the number i or translingual cos, i, and sin.  Latin gained the word from the primitive Indo-European ḱe (here) and it was cognate with ce-dō, hi-c, ec-ce, the Ancient Greek ἐκεῖνος (ekeînos) the Old Irish cē (here) and the Gothic himma (to this).  Gender is from the Middle English (where it at times co-existed with gendre), from the Middle French gendre from the Latin genus (kind, sort) and is a doublet of genre, genus, and kin.  The verb developed after the noun.

The Cisgender List

The word cisgender became a technical necessity when, in the late twentieth century, gender ceased to be a binary with a meaning essentially synonymous with sex; as expressions of gender fluidity became increasingly common, cisgender emerged as the preferred term to describe what gender used to be.  With gender being re-defined from a binary to a spectrum, linguistic politics became important and the imperative was to create a category for those for whom the sex identity assigned at birth continued later in life to align with their perceived gender-identity.  If it wasn’t just another point on the spectrum, there was concern cisgender would become normative, the implication being those elsewhere on the spectrum being defined as abnormal or sub-normal.  Cisgender is distinct from but interacts both with the LGBTQQIAAOP spectrum and the pronoun wars.

Possible Cisgender Pride Flags: The practice of identity politics is the staking of a claim (or the digging of a trench depending on one's view) in the battlefield of the culture wars and one aspect of this is the flying of the "pride flag" of one's group.  There have been a few proposed but none seems yet to have emerged as the accepted version.  Displaying one might be considered a hate crime so it should be unfurled with caution.   

The spectrum evolved as quite a democratic construct, something which may have been at least partially technologically deterministic in that the proliferation of points on the spectrum was driven not by medicine or the social sciences but by interaction on social media platforms.  While the users might have felt validated or empowered (and on the social, empowerment is good) by being able to adopt or invent their own self-identities, the platforms liked it because it added another filter for their ad-targeting, very handy for delivering the product (the users) to the consumers (the advertisers).  Some social media sites now offer dozens of options but there is much overlap and many are micro-variations; there appear to be about a dozen definable categories:

Agender/Neutrois: These terms are used by people who don't identify with any gender at all — they tend to either feel they have no gender or a neutral gender. Some use surgery and/or hormones to make their bodies conform to this gender neutrality.

Androgyne/Androgynous: Androgynes have both male and female gender characteristics and identify as a separate, third gender.

Bigender: Someone who is bigender identifies as male and female at different times. Whereas an androgyne has a single gender blending male and female, a bigender switches between the two.

Cis/Cisgender: Cisgender is essentially the opposite of transgender (cis from the Latin meaning "on this side of" versus the Latin trans meaning "on the other side"). People who identify as cisgender are males or females whose gender aligns with their birth sex.

Female to Male/FTM or Male to Female/MTF: Someone who is transitioning FTM or MTF, either physically (transsexual) or in terms of gender identity; probably most closely related to the earlier transvestism, a word now unfashionable, objections to its use being associative rather than linguistic.

Gender Fluid: Like the bigender, the gender-fluid feel free to express both masculine and feminine characteristics at different times.  The category can be misleading because of the use of the term gender fluidity generally to describe these matters.

Gender Nonconforming/Variant: This is a broad category for people who don't act or behave according to the societal expectation for their sex. It includes cross-dressers and tomboys as well as the transgender; again overlaps with other categories probably exist.

Gender Questioning: This category is for people who are still trying to figure out where they fit on the axes of sex and gender.

Genderqueer: This is an umbrella term for all nonconforming gender identities. Most of the other identities in this list fall into the genderqueer category.

Intersex: This term refers to a person who was born with sexual anatomy, organs, or chromosomes that aren't entirely male or female.  Outside of medicine, intersex has largely replaced the term "hermaphrodite" for humans although it continues to be used in zoology.

Neither:  Used by those who probably could be accommodated in other categories but prefer the ambiguity, indifference or imprecision of “nothing”.

Non-binary: People who identify as non-binary disregard the idea of a male and female dichotomy, or even a male-to-female continuum with androgyny in the middle. For them, gender is not a lineal spectrum but a concept better illustrated in three or more dimensions.

Other: Probably the same as "neither" but an important thing about gender fluidity is the primacy of self-identity.

Objectum: Those attracted to inanimate (non-living) objects.

Pangender: Pangender is similar to androgyny, in that the person identifies as a third gender with some combination of both male and female aspects, but it's a little more fluid.  It can also be used as an inclusive term to signify "all genders".

Trans/Transgender: Transgender is a broad category that encompasses people who feel their gender is different than the sex they were born (gender dysphoria).  Technically, it’s probably most useful as a blanket term but the historical association of the trans-prefix make it a popular choice.  The term "assigned at birth" is now popular but misleading in that it applies some arbitrariness in the habits of the nurses ticking the boxes.  The transvestites (those (mostly men) who wear women's outerwear) are at least in some cases a subset of the transgender spectrum although the term is no longer in wide use. 

Transsexual: Transsexual refers to transgender people who outwardly identify as their experienced gender rather than their birth sex. Many, but not all, transsexuals are transitioning (or have transitioned) from male to female or female to male through hormone therapy and/or gender reassignment surgery.

Two-spirit: This began life as a US-specific term which refers to gender-variant Native Americans.  In more than 150 Native American tribes, people with "two spirits" (a 1990s term coined to replace "berdache") were part of a widely accepted, often respected, category of gender-ambiguous men and women.  Whether the term comes to be adopted by other defined ethnicities (especially indigenous tribes) or such use is proscribed as cultural appropriation, remains unclear.

Elon Musk FRS.  Mr Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018.

Not all are pleased with the linguistic progress.  Twitter owner Elon Musk (b 1971) in June 2023 declared the use of “cis” or “cisgender” on Twitter were “slurs” which constituted “harassment” and transgressors were subject to suspension from the platform, adding that what constituted harassment would have to be “repeated & targeted”.  Presumably that implies the terms can still be used on twitter but not as weapons.  At this time, Twitter’s guidelines define slurs and tropes as language which “intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category”.  The notion of a “protected category” is from US law and refers to a specific group of individuals who are afforded legal protections against discrimination based on certain characteristics or attributes.  These categories typically include characteristics such as race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, and other similar attributes that are protected by anti-discrimination laws in various jurisdictions.  The categories are indicative rate than absolute.  The blind and infants for example can’t claim they are being discriminated against because the state refuses to permit them to hold drivers licenses and the race protections have tended to offer the most protection to minority groups.  As Mr Musk would have anticipated, his comments were quickly responded to by those recalling his asserting after assuming control of the platform the Twitter “believes in free speech” and that earlier in 2023 he’d quietly dropped from the hateful content policy the rule protecting trans people from dead-naming (the act of referring to a transgender person by their birth name, or the name they used prior to their gender transition) and mis-gendering.

Annex

Annex, Anex or Annexe (pronounced uh-neks, an-eks or an-iks)

(1) To attach, append, or add, especially to something larger or more important.

(2) To incorporate (territory) into the domain of a city, country, or state.

(3) To take or appropriate, especially without permission.

(4) To attach as an attribute, condition, or consequence.

(5) Something annexed.

(6) In architecture, a subsidiary building or an addition to a building.

(7) Something added to a document; appendix; supplement.

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the Anglo-French and Old French annexer (to join), from the Medieval Latin annexāre, from the Classical Latin annexus (tied to), past participle of annectere (to attach to; to connect with) from nectere (to join; to tie; bind).  It now almost always means "to join in a subordinate capacity", usually as it applies to nations or territories and the meaning “supplementary building" is from 1861.  In legal use, as it applies to documents, it’s an alternative to "append".  The alternative spellings are anex (US) and annexe (used variously in the rest of the English-speaking world).  Annex is a noun & verb; annexion, annexation, annexationism, annexationist, annexer & annexure are nouns, the noun plural is annexes.

A type of theft

Annexation is the formal act by which a state proclaims sovereignty over territory once outside its domain and varies from an act of cession in which territory is given away or sold.  Annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition and historically, annexation has been preceded by conquest and military occupation although in a few cases, such as the Anschluss, the 1938 German annexation of Austria, conquest may be accomplished by the threat of force without active hostilities and military occupation does not constitute or necessarily lead to annexation.  When military occupation results in annexation, an official announcement is the usual protocol, announcing the sovereign authority of the annexing state has been established and will be maintained in future.  This was the usual way of doing things, such as when Burma was annexed to the British Empire in 1886 and followed by Israel in 1981 when it annexed the Golan Heights.  George Orwell (1903-1950), who had spent time employed by the colonial police in Burma, when asked to explain the methods and purposes of the British Empire answered: "theft".  Privately, most in  the Foreign Office probably agreed but preferred "annexation" in official documents.  The subsequent recognition of annexation by other states may be explicit or implied; annexation based on the illegal use of force is condemned in the Charter of the United Nations and there are effectively annexed lands which for decades have been regarded as “disputed territory”.

Lindsay Lohan, after party at the Annex following Freaky Friday (2003) premiere, Hollywood, August 2003.

The formalities of annexation are not defined by international law; whether it be done by one authority or another within a state is a matter of constitutional law and conditions may exist which obviate the necessity for conquest prior to annexation.  In 1910 for example, Japan converted its protectorate of Korea into an annexed colony by means of proclamation; in a legal sense it was no more than a simple administrative act.  Preceding its annexation of the Svalbard Islands in 1925, Norway eliminated its competitors by means of a treaty in which the islanders agreed to Norwegian possession.  Annexation of Hawaii by the United States in the late nineteenth century was a peaceful process, based upon the willing acceptance by the Hawaiian government of US authority.  The Italian annexation of Ethiopia in 1936 was accomplished by a decree issued by the Italian King and joint resolutions of Congress were the means by which the United States annexed Texas (1845) and Hawaii (1898).

Tobacco

Tobacco (pronounced tuh-bak-oh)

(1) Any of several plants belonging to the genus Nicotiana (of the nightshade family), especially one of those species, as N. tabacum, whose leaves are prepared for smoking or chewing or as snuff.

(2) Any of numerous solanaceous plants of the genus Nicotiana, having mildly narcotic properties, tapering hairy leaves, and tubular or funnel-shaped fragrant flowers. The species N. tabacum is cultivated as the chief source of commercial tobacco

(3) Any of various similar plants of other genera.

(4) The leaves of certain of these plants, dried and prepared, as used in cigarettes, cigars & pipes, as snuff and for chewing.

(5) Any product or products made from such leaves.

(6) To indulge in tobacco; to smoke.

(7) To treat with tobacco.

(8) A range of colors in the brown spectrum, tending to the darker.

1525–1535 (attested since 1588): From the Spanish tabaco of uncertain origin.  It was either from the Arabic طُبَّاق‎ (ṭubbāq) (Dittrichia viscosa) or from one or more Caribbean languages (including Galibi Carib, Arawak or Taíno) from a word meaning “roll of tobacco leaves” or “pipe for smoking tobacco” (there are contemporary reports citing both and scholars tend now to prefer the former), the best known of which was tabago (tube for inhaling smoke or powdered intoxicating plants).  Taino is thought by linguistic anthropologists to be the most likely source.  That the name of the inhaling implement was applied to the leaves was explained by the Spanish assuming it was the name of the plant.  The West Indian (Caribbean) island of Tobago was said to have been named in 1498 by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) after the tambaku (pipe), a reference to the native custom of smoking dried tobacco leaves.  Derived forms include smokeless tobacco, tobaccoless & anti-tobacco and there are a wealth of slang terms for tobacco and its products (including the tax-evading illicit varieties) including occabot (the backward spelling), baccy, backy, chop chop, durrie, smoke, fag, gasper, ciggy, coffin nail, cancer stick, darb, dart, death stick, bine & stogie.  The spelling tabacco is obsolete.  Tobacco is a noun & verb, tobaccoing & tobaccoed are verbs; the noun plural is tobaccos or tobaccoes.

One difficulty public health authorities had in trying to reduce the use of tobacco was that images of smoking undeniably could be sexy: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates.

One attempt at social engineering began in earnest in the 1980s: Pressure was applied on film & television studios, advertisers and publishers to stop depicting smoking as something “attractive, sexy and cool” but because the creative community had over decades honed techniques to make even the lighting of a cigarette exactly that, success was limited.  What forever changed the environment in the US was when, in 1998, 52 state and territory attorneys general signed the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the nation’s four largest tobacco companies to settle what were by then dozens of lawsuits brought to recover billions of dollars in health care costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses and eventually some four-dozen tobacco companies settled under the MSA.  Although Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi and Texas are not signatories to the MSA, they all have individual settlements pre-dating the MSA.  What the framers of the MSA worked out was it was better to be realists and, in a sense. “write-off” those adults already addicted and focus on youth by (1) reducing the take-up rate (ie “the first cigarette) and (2) induce them to quit (ie “the next cigarette”).  The most obvious tactic in this was the traditional brute-force approach of increasing the cost of cigarettes by imposing payment obligations on the tobacco companies party to the MSA but more subtle measures also restricted tobacco advertising, marketing, and promotions, including:

(1) Prohibiting tobacco companies from taking any action to target youth in the advertising, promotion or marketing of tobacco products.

(2) Banning the use of cartoons in advertising, promotions, packaging, or labeling of tobacco products.

(3) Prohibiting tobacco companies from distributing merchandise bearing the brand name of tobacco products.

(4) Banning payments to promote tobacco products in media, such as movies, televisions shows, theatre, music and video games.

(5) Prohibiting tobacco brand name sponsorship of events with a significant youth audience (or team sports).

(6) Eliminating tobacco company practices which obscure the health risks associated with the use of tobacco (the history of which is extraordinary).

(7) Providing funds for the settling states that states may choose to use to fund smoking prevention programs.

(8) Establishing and funding the Truth Initiative, an organization “dedicated to achieving a culture where all youth and young adults reject tobacco.”

The National Association of Attorneys-General (NAAG) also established a Centre for Tobacco and Public Health (CTPH) which works with the settling states of the MSA to preserve and enforce the MSA’s monetary and public-health mandates, including:

(1) Representing, advising, and supporting the settling states in MSA-related legal matters, including litigation and arbitrations.

(2) Representing the settling states in bankruptcy cases filed by tobacco manufacturers.

(3) Representing the settling states before the MSA’s independent auditor and escrow agent to ensure that annual MSA payments are properly calculated and disbursed to the states.

(4) Monitoring tobacco companies’ compliance with the MSA’s payment and public health provisions.

(5) Communicating as the settling states’ collective counsel to tobacco companies, federal tobacco regulators and other third parties about the MSA and other tobacco regulatory matters.

A quarter-century on, the operation of the MSA continues to have a profound effect on smoking, particularly among youth.  Between 1998-2019, US cigarette consumption dropped by more than 50% and during that time, regular smoking by high school students dropped from its near peak of 36.4% in 1997 to a low 6.0% in 2019.  Under the terms of the MSA, tobacco manufacturers are obligated to make, in perpetuity, annual payments to the settling states as long as cigarettes are sold in the US by companies which have settled with the States.  The earlier social engineering initiatives were also rolled into the MSA and as well as the nudging of Hollywood, the programmes were cognizant of the changing media ecosystem and as well as movie studios, independent production houses, streaming services and social media platforms were prevailed upon to curb the frequency with which tobacco imagery appeared.

Billboard “welcoming” visitors to Zion, Illinois, 1919.

Eighty years before the attorneys-general secured the MSA, at least one local government knew smoking was dangerous.  Zion is a township in Lake County, Illinois and it's population in 1919 was declared to be  5460.  Named after Jerusalem's Mount Zion the settlement was founded in 1901 by a faith healer who ran Zion as a personal fiefdom though it later fell into the hands of a proponent of “flat earth theory” who maintained control until forced out when the extent of his corrupt activities became known.

When smoking was socially acceptable and some brands were marketed as "prestige products": Triumph Stag and Benson & Hedges cigarettes.  An advertisement from 1971 run in the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) which was a cross-promotion by B&H (Benson & Hedges) and Triumph, then part of the doomed British Leyland conglomerate.

Triumph never quite fixed the flaws in the Stag's unique 3.0 litre V8 (some were so fundamental they couldn't be fixed: only managed) but when the range was revised in 1973 (informally known as the "Mark II"), the parsimonious provision of ashtrays was improved, a central unit added for the rear-seat passengers who previously had none.  Triumph may have claimed the rear seat was intended for "children" and indeed leg room was a little "tight" but their in-period advertising sometimes featured four adults sharing the topless experience the Stag offered and it used to be that in a convertible, having a cigarette while enjoying the fresh air was all part of the fun.   

Because cigarette smoke is known to be carcinogenic and sustained use typically reduced the human lifespan by about a decade it was an admirable target in public health programmes and with big data sets assembled, things became more exact.  In December 2024, after running the numbers, a team at University College London released a report which concluded (on average) a single cigarette robs some 20 minutes from a person’s life; that means each pack can shorten life expectancy by about seven hours.  Historically, the term “pack-a-day-smoker” was based on the pack of 20 but those who buy the bigger packs can do their own math.  In theory, the report added, should a smoker quit on 1 January, they would by 8 January have extended their life-span by a day and if they avoid tobacco until 31 December, they’d have gained 50 days.  Explaining the findings, the team noted smoking usually “doesn’t cut short the unhealthy period at the end of life” but “primarily eats into the relatively healthy years in midlife, bringing forward the onset of ill-health. This means a 60-year-old smoker will typically have the health profile of a 70-year-old non-smoker.”   

GIF of a supine Lindsay Lohan, smoking in The Canyons (2013).

The unusual construct of the noun tobacconist (one who deals in tobacco) was tobacco + -n- + -ist.  The abnormal inserted consonant appeared to reflect the way the word actually was pronounced.  The sense of the commercial trader in the product dates from the 1650s although the earlier meaning, dating from the 1590s was “someone addicted to tobacco and by 1873 the word nicotinism (morbid effects of excessive use of tobacco) had been coined so the awareness of the adverse effects of tobacco are not new.  The first “tobacconist” (a shop where tobacco and related products are purchased) seems to have operated in Florida in the early 1800s.  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).

Art deco: Snuffbox (left) and cigarette case (right).

Snuff (powdered tobacco to be inhaled) was first available in the1680s and was from the Dutch or Flemish snuf, a shortening of snuftabak (snuff tobacco), from snuffen (to sniff, snuff).  The practice of taking (sniffing) snuff quickly became fashionable in England and generated an industry in the making of “snuff boxes”; many small and exquisite, they’ve long been collectable.  The slang phrase “up to snuff” (knowing, sharp, wide-awake, not likely to be deceived) dates from 1811, the order of the words thought a reference to the upper-class association with the substance while the meaning is presumed to allude to the "elevating" properties of snuff.  The noun nicotine (which still appears occasionally in scientific papers as nicotin) describes the poisonous ,volatile alkaloid base found in tobacco leaves and was first documented in English in 1819, from the French nicotine, from the earlier nicotiane, from the Modern Latin Nicotiana, the formal botanical name for the tobacco plant, named for Jean Nicot (circa 1530-1600), the French ambassador to Portugal who in 1561 sent tobacco seeds and powdered leaves from his embassy in Lisbon to Paris.

Marlboro packaging.

Until the mid-twentieth century, there was much variation in packaging but in the post-war years things were (more or less) standardized in terms of size and shape.  It was a relatively small area with with to work and the convention which developed was to use the simple corporate symbol and product name, thus Marlboro's famous red-on-white chevron.  As the product range proliferated (women were a target market thought to have great potential), Philip Morris adopted the technique of semiotics to differentiate while retaining the same identifiable shape, the basic difference being in the color: red for the standard cigarette, blue for mild, green for menthol, gold for longer (ie 4 inch or 100 mm sticks) and black for higher-priced special offerings.  That didn't last and while some manufacturers stuck to the red (strong) / blue (mild) / green (menthol) convention, Marlboro's pack colors seemed increasingly to become random.       

James VI and I (1566–1625) King of Scotland as James VI (1567-1625) & King of England and Ireland as James I (1603-1625) was appalled by tobacco and in 1604 wrote the treatise A Counterblaste to Tobacco in which he left none in any doubt about how he felt and it’s a document which sounds very contemporary in its condemnation even if some of what was then medical orthodoxy is dated.  The king blamed the scourge of tobacco on Native Americans (although it was European adventurers which brought it from the New World) and was especially scathing about what is now called passive smoking, responding by imposing heavy taxes but such were the adverse consequences for the American colonies that in 1624 a royal charter was instead granted and the whole crop became a royal monopoly: it was the "if you can't beat them, join them" model to which which governments become attracted if there's money in it.  Written originally in Early Modern English (here transliterated) the king's words still read well:

Have you not reason to be ashamed, and to forsake this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken as something good to use?  In your abuse you are sinning against God, harming both your health and your wallet, making yourselves look absurd by this custom, scorned and contemned by the civilized people of any nation.  It is a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes are like the horrible Stygian smoke of the bottomless pit of Hell.

The king’s mention of Stigian is a reference to the goddess Styx (Στύξ) (stýks (literally “Shuddering”)) who in Greek mythology took the form of a river of Elia, Arcadia which surrounded Hades nine times and flowed from a rock into silver-pillared caves.  What the king probably had in mind was the tale that Stygian waters imposed senselessness for a year and a draft of the waters was decreed by Zeus for gods who had perjured themselves.  More positively though it was said of Zeus he also insisted the oaths of the gods be sworn by the water of the Styx.

Mid-century cigarette advertising.  Even in the 1950s the public's suspicion that tobacco was a dangerous product was rising and the industry's advertising switched from the traditional "lifestyle" model to one which relied on endorsements by celebrities and scientists; there was much quoting of research and statistics, much of which would later be wholly debunked.  The tactics and techniques were similar to those later adopted by the fossil fuel lobby in their long campaign to discredit the science of human-activity induced climate change. 

Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), smoking.

Although there were always the fastidious types like James I who found it abhorrent, it wasn’t until late in the twentieth century that in the West governments began to crack down on the industry to the point where in many jurisdictions the stated aim is to eliminate it completely, the most recent innovation being progressively to raise the minimum age at which tobacco products can be purchased which, in theory, means that within decades, nobody will be able to buy them.

The Australian government took the conventional approach of taxing cigarettes to the point where the cost of consumption became prohibitive for all but the rich (who now tend not to smoke).  That method works well in economics textbooks and elegant models can even predict the point on the elasticity of demand curve at which the punitive taxation becomes effective but the IRL (in real life, a inconvenience which often annoys economists) what happened was organized crime began smuggling cigarettes from overseas where they remained cheap, selling them as "under-the-counter" merchandize in 7-11s and similar outlets, demand guaranteed because they cost Aus$20 rather than the Aus$60 of the lawful (and taxed) product.  As well as being addicted, smokers tend to be poorer than average so were pragmatic; while smoking may not be rational behavior, paying Aus$20 for a pack rather than Aus$60 certainly was and this had the unintended consequence of a rapid decline in government revenue.  Although the intention was to remove this form of revenue by reducing tobacco consumption to zero, what instead happened was much of the forgone money ended up instead with those in the criminal supply chain, organized crime (the importers) the greatest beneficiaries.  That was bad enough but organized crime is not monolithic and the gangs took up battle against each-other, the preferred method to gain control of regional distribution being to fire-bomb the shops obtaining their contraband from the opposition; fire spreading to surrounding shops (florists, hardware stores and such) was collateral damage.  Presumably, with alcohol prohibition in the US (1920-1933) being a well-documented case-study, the implications of the putative approach mush have been considered but governments seem to have though it "worth the risk".  Having effected their policy, the heath advocates might have hoped to see light at the end of the tunnel, only for vaping to become a thing.

Governments were always interested in tobacco as a form of revenue and taxing an addictive, lawful product provided for centuries a constant and often gradually increasing source of income and cynics like to note the attitudes seemed only to shift when advances in surgical techniques and drug treatments meant those suffering the consequences of a lifetime of tobacco use began to be kept alive for decades, often at public expense.  Previously, the afflicted had had the decency quickly to drop dead, usually at an age when their usefulness as economic units had either vanished or significantly diminished to the point where, as pensioners, they were a cost to society.  The BBC’s comedy Yes, Prime Minister explored the math & morals in a discussion between the prime-minister and the permanent head of the cabinet office.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

Prime-minister: Perhaps I might have a précis of that?  It says here, smoking related diseases cost the National Health Service £165 million a year.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes but we've been in to that, it has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a ripe old age, it would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than it did in medical treatment.  So, financially speaking it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at their present rate.

Prime-minister: We're talking of 100,000 deaths a year.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, but cigarette taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health Service.  We're saving many more lives than we otherwise could, because of those smokers who voluntary lay down their lives for their friends. Smokers are national benefactors.

Prime-minister: So long as they live.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: A lot of people, eminent people, influential people have argued that such legislation would be a blow against freedom of choice.

Prime-minister: Rubbish. I'm not banning smoking itself. Does every tax rise represent a blow against freedom?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, depends how big the tax rise is.

Prime-minister: Oh, that's fascinating. Does 20p represent a blow against freedom?  25p? 30p? 31? Is something a blow against freedom simply because it can seriously damage your wealth?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: I foresee all sorts of unforeseen problems.

Prime-minister: Such as?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: If I could foresee them, they wouldn't be unforeseen.

The Kennedy connection

The 1941 film Tobacco Road was based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987).  It involved a family living in poverty in the rural backwoods of the US and their antics did not suggest the possession even of average intelligence.  The term “tobacco road” came to be used as a slur against such folk and their lifestyle and while it’s usually an amusing disparagement exchanged between the rich and well-connected, even among them context can matter as Thomas Maier (b 1956) illustrated in one episode recounted in When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys (2014) involving John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) and Pamela Harriman (1920–1997), later one of Western society’s last great courtesans but then just divorced from what had been a brief and understandably unhappy marriage to the even then dissolute Randolph Churchill (1911-1968), son of Winston (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955).  Crooked old Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969) fashioned his sons to become politically powerful establishment figures but didn’t forget his great-grandfather had in 1848 left the poverty of rural Ireland during the potato famine to begin to build wealth and influence in Boston.  He’s made sure his sons knew the family history and when in Ireland in 1945, JFK’s curiosity had prompted a trip to the old Kennedy homestead:

At the Kennedy farm in County Wexford, accompanied by Pamela, Jack discovered not much had changed since his great-grandfather left. “I’m John Kennedy from Massachusetts,” he said after his knock on the door was answered. “I believe we are related.” His distant cousin Mary Kennedy Ryan seemed dubious at first but eventually invited the two strangers in for tea.

The Kennedys who remained in Ireland had spent much of the past century trying to regain the land rights to their tenant farms from the British and supporting Ireland’s independence movement led by such politicians as de Valera. Mary Ryan herself had been a member of the old IRA’s women’s auxiliary during the 1920s conflict against the British, carrying guns and money, either in carts or under her dress, to a secret hiding spot near their farm. “Jack kept pressing on about his ancestors going to America and so on, trying to make the link,” recalled Pamela. As a treat, Jack took the Irish Kennedy cousins for a short ride in Kick’s shining new station wagon, accompanied by the former Mrs. Randolph Churchill. “They never could figure out who I was,” recalled Pamela. “‘Wife?’ they’d ask. I’d say no. And they’d say, ‘Ah, soon to be, no doubt!’”

After nearly two hours “surrounded by chickens and pigs,” Jack recalled, he “left in a flow of nostalgia and sentiment.” The trip reaffirmed the Irish stories he’d heard from his parents and grandparents. Neither Pamela nor Kick, however, seemed impressed. As their car pulled away from the Kennedy farm, Pamela turned to Jack with a remark meant as witty. “That was just like Tobacco Road!” she tittered, referring to the popular novel about rural life in Georgia. Jack wasn’t amused. “The English lady,” he later recounted, ” …had not understood at all the magic of the afternoon.” To Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell, his Irish-Catholic political aides from Boston, he was much blunter: “I felt like kicking her out of the car.” At Lismore, Lady Hartington was even haughtier. After listening to her brother’s wondrous account of the Kennedy homestead, Kick mustered only a bemused question. “Well, did they have a bathroom?”