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.

Violin

Violin (pronounced vahy-uh-lin)

(1) The treble instrument of the family of modern bowed instruments, built as a small unfretted instrument with four strings tuned (lowest to highest) G-D-A-E and held nearly horizontal by the player's arm against the chin, with the lower part supported against the collarbone or shoulder; it’s played with a bow.

(2) In musical performance, metonymically, the position of a violinist in an orchestra, string quartet or other formation or group (sometimes as first violin, second violin etc).

(3) In musical composition, a part to be played on a violin.

(4) Any instrument of the violin family, always inclusive of violins, violas, and cellos and sometimes further including the double bass (used by certain musical specialists but a use derided by most).

(5) To play on, or as if on, a violin (rare except in technical use),

1570–1580: From the Italian violino (a little viola), the construct being viol(a) (from the Italian viola, from the Provençal and of uncertain origin but there may be some link with the Latin vītulārī (to rejoice)) + -ino (the suffix used to form diminutives).  The sixteenth century word described the modern form of the smaller, medieval viola da braccio.  The violin and viola share similarities in terms of construction and playing technique but a violin is smaller.  A full-size violin has a body length around 14 inches (360 mm) while a viola typically extends to around 16 inches (405 mm) and the larger instrument tends to have a lower pitch range and different tonal qualities.  The violin is noted for a high pitch range (G-D-A-E low to high) while a viola is tuned to C-G-D-A, a perfect fifth lower which lends it a deeper, mellower sound.  In an orchestra, the violin usually plays the melody (the highest voice in the string section) and thus many solo pieces are written which attract the most virtuosic players.  Viola pieces are usually supportive , providing harmony, inner voices, or countermelodies although it does have its own solo repertoire.  Violin is a noun & verb, violinist is a noun and violining & violined are verbs; the noun plural is violins.

The Duce with violin.

As well as professionals, the violin has long attracted also those who enjoy music as a hobby, Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977), Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), Albert Einstein (1879-1955) & Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) were all keen players and leader of the US Nation of Islam (NOI), Louis Farrakhan (b 1933), in 1993 even performed Felix Mendelssohn's (1809-1847) Violin Concerto in E Minor.  His skill aside (and the reviews were warm enough), the choice of a piece by Mendelssohn was interesting because of Mr Farrakhan's history of anti-Semitic rhetoric but even in that the interpretations of motive varied because although of Jewish ancestry, the composer was baptized and raised a Christian and while in recent years some scholars have made the case for the sincerity of his Christianity, others maintain that for most of his life he displayed an unalloyed reverence for his Jewish roots.  However while the persistent legend is that Roman Emperor Nero (37-68) "fiddled while Rome burned" in 64 AD it probably isn't true; even if he "fiddled away" on some instrument, it wouldn't have been a fiddle because that device was 15 centuries away.  If he played anything mid-inferno it was probably a lute but historians think the phrase was intended to mean something like "twiddled his thumbs", suggesting he was negligently inactive or inept in his handling of the disaster.  Even this is now thought by many historians to be the fake news of its day, spread by his political enemies (of which justly he had many).

Lindsay Lohan backstage with guitarist Michael Isbell (b 1979) & fiddle player Amanda Shires (b 1982) at the Dylan Fest concert, Bowery Ballroom, New York City, November 2013.

The distinction between the violin and the fiddle is less about the actual instruments than the use to which they’re put although both words are replete with cultural baggage.  What is essentially the same instrument is thought a violin when playing from the classical canon and a fiddle if performing folk or country & western music.  Of course there are many genres apart from these and when the instrument is used in other settings (jazz, pop et al), the use is up to the individual, influenced either by their own preference or some sense of adherence to the conventions describing whatever is being performed.  The fiddle (as a stringed musical instrument) has a long history and is a feature of much medieval art depicting performances of folk music.  It was from the late fourteenth century Middle English fedele, fydyll & fidel from the eleventh century fithele, from the Old English fiðele (fiddle) which was related to the Old Norse fiðla, the Middle Dutch vedele, the Dutch vedel, the Old High German fidula and the German Fiedel, all of which are of uncertain origin.  There’s never been anything to suggest there’s anything onomatopoeic in the origin and the most cited theory (based on resemblance in sound and sense), is that there’s a connection to the Medieval Latin vitula (stringed instrument (source of Old French viole and the Italian viola), which may be related to the Latin vitularia (celebrate joyfully), from Vitula, the Roman goddess of joy and victory, thought to have been drawn from the Sabines.  That however remains speculative and it’s not impossible the Medieval Latin word was derived from one of the Germanic forms.

The Dallas-based Quebe Sisters (siblings Grace, Sophia & Hulda) are a triple fiddle trio who play what is described as "neo-traditionalist western swing".

Despite the snobbery of some, those who enjoy country & western music are not culturally inferior; it’s just a different form of sophistication.  In certain circles however there is a dismissive contemptuousness of “fiddle songs” and the fiddle’s reputation has suffered by association, relegated to the colloquial usage by the respectable violin, a process doubtlessly hastened by encouraged by phrases such as fiddlesticks (from the 1620s meaning “untrue; absurd”), fiddle-de-dee (from 1784 and a nonsense word in the sense of “contemptuously silly”) and fiddle-faddle (a mid-nineteenth century coining to convey the idea of “a statement worthy only of ridicule; blatantly untrue”).  The outlier of course is fit as a fiddle (robust; in rude good health), noted since the 1610s and apparently unrelated to music or the instrument, it being probably one of those English sayings which caught on because of the alliterative appeal and there are etymologists who suspect the original form was “fit as a fiddler” but the familiar version prevailed because it more easily rolled from the tongue.

The Kreutzer Sonata (1901), oil on canvas by René François Xavier Prinet (1861-1946).

The Kreutzer Sonata was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s (1828-1910) novella of the same title (1889), which was named after Ludwig van Beethoven’s (circa 1770–1827) Violin Sonata No 9, Opus 47 (1803), a violin and piano composition dedicated to the French violinist & conductor Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831).  Kreutzer never performed the piece but whether this was related to him being the “second choice” is unknown.  Beethoven originally dedicated the sonata to another violinist who first performed it but the two had a squabble about something and the bad-tempered composer instead conferred the honor on Kreutzer.  The work is a favorite among violinists because it can convey an emotional range from anger and despair to joy and in this vein, Tolstoy’s tale is one of a woman murdered by her husband because of his suspicion of her infidelity with a violinist.  The Tsar’s censor (a busy, full-time job) for a time banned the book because of concerns it might “stir the emotions”.

Viola is a genus of flowering plants in the violet family Violaceae.

The sonata had certainly stirred something in Tolstoy who said he was “shocked at the eroticism” when it was performed by a man and a woman and he wasn’t the only one affected by the instrument.  Both the Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque period Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) also referred to the violin as “the devil’s instrument, the Italian with rather more glee, the Russian well-deserving the appellation “six odd feet of Russian misery” attributed to George Gershwin (1898-1937).  Tolstoy depicted the violin as something so evil in the eroticism it could summon it could drive a man to murder and infamously there was a violinist who murdered on a grand scale.  The roll-call of evil-doers among the Nazi hierarchy was long and it’s probably morally dubious to try to suggest which were worse than others but probably all agree Schutzstaffel (SS) Obergruppenführer (an SS rank equivalent to an army general) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD 1939-1942)) was as repellently awful as any.  He was though a genuinely gifted musician and could have pursued a musical career; it was said that when he played the violin, grown men could be reduced to tears.

Kiki in Le Violon d'Ingres.

One of the enduring images of surrealist photography Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres's Violin) was taken by the US visual artist Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky 1890-1976) in Paris 1924.  The model was Kiki de Montparnasse (“Kiki of Montparnasse”: Alice Prin; 1901–1953) and the title was something of a play on words, the French phrase “le violon d'Ingres” meaning “hobby” and mademoiselle Kiki the photographer’s muse and lover (it was a tempestuous relationship). The French expression was derived from the habit of the neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) insisting on playing the violin to visitors who were there anxious to view his paintings.  The photograph references one of the artist’s most admired works, La Grande Baigneuse (The Valpinçon Bather) which focuses also on the female back.  Obviously, Man Ray worked in the pre-digital world when images were committed to celluloid but his post-production editing technique used layers in a way analogous with that of Photoshop and other image handlers: Wanting to explore the similarity in shape between the body of a violin and the pleasing torso of his model, he first printed a copy onto which he painted the f-holes of a violin, then photographed the modified image.  That became the famous work and in June 2022 it went under the hammer for US$12.4 million at Christie's New York, making it the most expensive ever to be sold at auction.

Kiki in a French postcard, circa 1920.

Mademoiselle Kiki was from the provinces and came to nude modelling in Paris only after a succession of dreary jobs, the last in a bakery from which she was fired by the baker’s wife for punching her in the face after being called a whore for wearing eye make-up.  Man Ray “discovered her by accident” and she found nude modelling both a pleasant occupation and more lucrative than the hard work of being a baker’s assistant but that view wasn’t shared by her mother who, tipped off by a neighbor, burst into the photographer’s studio and make it clear she agreed with baker’s wife, banning her from the apartment they shared.  The affair with Man Ray was thus immediately convenient but their feelings seem genuinely to have been sincere although it did end badly; at one point he was seen chasing her down the street, revolver in hand.

Model Adriana Fenice (b 1995) with violin.

Nude modelling was at the time frowned upon by the more respectable of those engaged by Parisian fashion houses, something which endures to this day.  Even in 1946, the inventor of the bikini (not a new style but his cut was daringly minimalist) couldn’t find a model on the books of the agencies willing to be photographed in such a thing so he hired a nude model; for her it was more fabric than usual.  The disapprobation of the middle-class towards non-conforming women persists and manifests in different cultures at different levels.  In India, nude modelling is definitely out but mothers will also tar occupations such as prostitute, flight attendant and call-centre worker with the same brush of un-virtue, apparently because they all sometimes work during the hours of darkness when respectable girls are in the home, cooking & cleaning.

Nicola Benedetti CBE (b 1987) with her "Earl Spencer" Stradivarius.

Violinist (one who plays the violin) dates from the 1660s and was from the Italian violinist.  A violinist is thus a musician and not a “violin maker”: those practicing that profession are properly called luthiers.  A luthier is a skilled craftsperson who specializes in the construction, repair, and restoration of stringed instruments, particularly violins and the range of skills needed is wide because a luthier needs to select and fashion by cutting and carving, different types of wood which need to be assembled and varnished, all processes which ultimately determine the instrument’s tone and aesthetic qualities.  In the traditional way of making violins, there is both artistry and craftsmanship.  Luthier has no connection with “Lucifer” (and there’s thus no link with the notion of the “devil’s instrument”).  Luthier was from the French luth (lute), a stringed instrument of great antiquity that was wildly popular during the medieval era and the Renaissance periods and the luthier's craft once focused predominately on the construction and repair of lutes.  As the lute faded from use and the violin gained prominence, luthiers adapted and changed, becoming specialists in the violin making, some branching out to include other stringed instruments such as violas, cellos, and guitars.  The French luth was from leutier, from the Latin luteum (yellow or yellowish), thought to refer to the honey-colored wood most suited to musical instruments.

Yehudi Menuhin on stage, 1943.

Still the most famous of the luthiers is Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) whose workshop was in Cremona.  His violins, of which there were thousands, may or may not have been the product of his own hands because he had sons and pupils in his business but the survivors by the 1990s were selling for millions.  The familiar Stradivarius is the anglicized form and although some “blind tests” have suggested even experts can’t tell the difference in the sound from a genuine “Strad” and a good quality modern violin, they have become a collectable and now sell for even more millions.  The acclaimed virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) for decades played on one of the rare Soil Stradivarius, crafted in 1714 during the luthier’s “golden period”.  During World War II (1939-1945), Menuhin sometimes played concerts to entertain troops and once found out that due to an army SNAFU, his waiting audience was expecting an attractive young lady to sing for them.  Undeterred, he walked on stage, telling the soldiers: “You won’t enjoy this, but it’s good for you”, proceeding to play Handel’s Violin Sonata No. 3.  It was well received.

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.