Camarilla

Camarilla (pronounced kam-uh-ril-uh or kah-mah-ree-lyah (Spanish))

(1) A group of unofficial or private advisers to a person of authority, especially a group much given to intrigues and secret plots; cabal; a clique.

(2) The confidential advisers to the Spanish kings.

(3) By extension, an unelected individual in a position of influence in government.

1830-1840: From the Spanish camarilla, the construct being cámara (chamber; room) + -illa, the diminutive Latin suffix.  The Spanish cámara was from the Old Spanish camara, from the Vulgar Latin camara, from the Classical Latin camera (a vaulted building; arched roof or ceiling), from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamára) (something with an arched cover, a vaulted chamber).  A doublet of cambra, the Latin was the source also of the Italian camera, the French chamber, the Old Church Slavonic komora, the Lithuanian kamara and the Old Irish camra.  The suffix -illa was an inflection of -illus (nominative/vocative feminine singular & nomminative/accusative/vocative neuter plural).  The suffix -illā was the ablative feminine singular of -illus, itself a misinterpretation of the diminutive suffix -lus on such nouns as sigillum (signum + -lus) and used freely.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns.  Literally translated from Spanish it means “little room” and, in English, the origins of the cabinet, the “kitchen cabinet” and Privy Council are not dissimilar.  Outside of the formal workings of the Spanish court, word tends to be used with suggestions of something secret, sinister and conspiratorial and from this Modern English picked up cabal.  In Italian, camarille is the plural of Camarilla, a feminine proper name, from the Latin, feminine of Camillus, cognomen of several members of the gens Furia, from camillus (noble youth attending at sacrifices), possibly from Etruscan.

Camarilla of renown

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) & Martin Bormann (1900–1945), the Berghof Terrace (1942).

Bormann attached himself to the Nazi Party in the 1920s and proved diligent and industrious, rewarded in 1933 by being appointed chief of staff in the office of Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941) where he first built his power base.  After Hess made his bizarre flight in 1941, Hitler abolished the post of Deputy Führer, assigning his offices to Bormann and styling him Head of the Parteikanzlei (Party Chancellery), a position of extraordinary influence, strengthened further when in 1943 he was appointed Personal Secretary to the Führer, a title he exploited to allow him to act as a kind of viceroy, exercising power in Hitler’s name.  Known within the party as the “Brown Eminence” (an allusion to an éminence grise (literally “grey eminence”) one who exercises power “behind the scenes” and the brown Nazi Party uniform), he maintained his authority by controlling access to Hitler to whom his efficiency and dutifulness proved invaluable.  He committed suicide while trying to make his escape from Berlin in 1945.

Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; Australian prime-minister 1968-1971) & Ainsley Gotto (1946–2018), Melbourne, Australia, 1970.

Aged 21, the picturesque Ainsley Gotto was appointed personal private secretary to the prime-minister, something which raised eyebrows at the time though had it been reported (the press then more restrained in their intrusions into people’s private lives), that she was at the time having an affair with the leader of the opposition’s chief of staff, that would have been a sensation.  Gorton was less conventional than his predecessors and made no secret of his fondness of sometimes having a drink with younger women so unsubstantiated rumors of course followed.  Also alleged was that she exercised undue influence, one sacked minister blaming his demise on: “It wiggles, it's shapely and its name is Ainsley Gotto.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) & Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), Washington DC, 1941.

Harry Hopkins held a number of appointments in the Roosevelt administration (including at cabinet level) between 1933-1940 before being attached to the White House staff as the president’s personal advisor, especially in the key aspect of managing the US contribution to the British war effort at a time when the country was a non-belligerent and a substantial part of public and political opinion favoured maintaining neutrality.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor, his role in foreign affairs became more overt and he functioned essentially as Roosevelt’s personal emissary to both London and Moscow.  His influence waned in the later days of the war as US preponderance in military matters in the Pacific & Atlantic theatres and the supply of materiel to the Soviet Union meant political negotiations moved to the background.  Additionally, his health was failing and he died within a year of the end of the war.  In the post-war years he was criticized for being at least naïve in his estimation of Stalin's intentions and the very nature of the Soviet state but that was something which could be said of many at the time, including Roosevelt.

Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) & Dominic Cummings (b 1971), London, 2019.

Although he had for years been circulating in populist right-wing politics, Dominic Cummings really came to nation attention for his role in supporting a yes vote in the Brexit referendum (2016) which led to the UK leaving the European Union (EU).  One reward for this success was being appointed chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson upon his assumption of the premiership.  Johnson would have had his reasons but it’s suspected Cummins rather though the prime-minister might prove “the empty vase into which I poured water” as Spike Milligan (1918-2002) once said of Peter Sellers (1925-1980).  Things didn’t quite work out like that although sections of the press were never subtle in ascribing a to disproportionate influence which some hinted verged on the improper.  In the end it was not constitutional impropriety but denials and cover-ups over COVID-19 related lockdown transgression which saw his role in government sundered.  He wasn’t the first camarilla to have squandered the extraordinary possibilities offered by occupying a position of power without responsibility.

George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) & Karl Rove (b 1950), Washington DC, 2007.

Coming out of the roughhouse of Texas politics, Karl Rove was described usually as a political strategist but his range was extraordinary, encompassing everything from data miner & analyst to campaign manager and media handler.  He masterminded a slew of Republican victories in Texas and beyond but is most associated with George W Bush’s gubernatorial and presidential successes.  Bush was generous in naming Rove the “architect” of these victories but in private also bestowed the most illustrious of all Texan terms of endearment: "Turd Blossom".  Although serving as White House Deputy Chief of Staff (2005-2007), the essence of his role was as Senior Advisor to the President and during these years he came to be described as “W’s brain”.  Historians mostly haven’t yet gone that far but do acknowledge his success in mobilizing the reticent Republicans and evangelicals and others to emerge from their basements and vote in 2004, narrowly gaining Bush his second term.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015) and Peta Credlin (b 1971), Canberra, Australia, 2014.

Peta Credlin drew interest when employed as Chief of Staff to Tony Abbott as leader of the opposition but was a lightning rod when she fulfilled the role when he was prime-minister.  Anyone who doubts misogyny exists in politics can’t have been paying attention to the treatment Ms Credlin endured, the rumors of affair between her and Abbott utterly unsupported by even a scintilla of evidence.  It was wasted effort really because her reactionary politics of hatred, division and dog-whistling surely offered sufficient scope for critics of her brand of shark-feeding populism.  The office however probably constrained her a bit because in her new role as a commentator on the Murdoch-run Sky News, there’s much more latitude, the business model to say something outrageous or in some way actionable, enjoy the reaction and then issue an apology, if need be accompanied by an out-of-court settlement.  Still, she did come up with one really good line: Her labelling of Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime-minister 2015-2018) as “Mr harborside mansion” was better than anything a man could think of so there’s that.

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president 1913-1921) & Colonel Edward House (1858–1938), New York, 1916.

Colonel (a non-military, honorary title) House was President Wilson’s closest advisor between 1914-1948 and despite lacking a background in European affairs, was the senior US diplomat at the Paris Peace Conference (1919).  Disappointed and feeling deceived by some of the decisions taken at Paris and agreed to in his absence by House, Wilson broke with him; after returning to the US, they would never meet again.  To his dying day House believed his estrangement from the president was engineered at least in part by the second Mrs Wilson.

Noon

Noon (pronounced noon)

(1) Midday; twelve o'clock in the daytime or the time or point at which the sun crosses the local meridian (the time of day when the sun is in its zenith).

(2) Figuratively (usually in literary or poetic use), the highest, brightest, or finest point or part; culmination; capstone; apex.

(3) The corresponding time in the middle of the night; midnight (archaic but historic use means old documents with the word must be read with care, entries appearing as both “noon” & “noon of the night”).

(4) Three o’clock in the afternoon (archaic).

(5) To relax or sleep around midday (as “to noon” “nooning” or “nooned”) (archaic).

(6) The letter ن in Arabic script.

(7) Midday meal (archaic).

Pre 900: From the Middle English noen, none & non, from the Old English nōn (the ninth hour), from a Germanic borrowing of the Classical Latin nōna (ninth hour) (short for nōna hōra), the feminine. singular of nonus (ninth), contracted from novenos, from novem (nine).  It was cognate with the Dutch noen, the (obsolete) German non and the Norwegian non.  Synonyms (some archaic) include apex, capstone, meridian, midday, noontide, noonday, noontime, nones (the ninth hour of daylight), midpoint (of the day), & twelve.  Descendants include the Modern English none and the Scots nane (none), Noon the proper noun enduring as a surname.  Noun is a noun and noons, nooning & nooned are verbs; the noun plural is noons.

Although derived from the Latin word for the number nine, the English word noon refers to midday, the time when the sun reaches the meridian.  The Romans however counted the hours of the day from sunrise which, for consistency, was declared for this purpose to be 06:00; the ninth hour (nona hora) was thus 15:00.  The early Christians adopted Jewish customs of praying at certain hours and when Christian monastic orders formed, the ecclesiastical reckoning of the daily timetable was structured around the hours for prayer.  In the earliest schedules, the monks prayed at three-hour intervals: 6-9 pm, 9 pm-midnight, midnight-3 am and 3-6 am.  The prayers are known as the Divine Office and the times at which they are to be recited are the canonical hours:

Vigils: night
Matins: dawn
Lauds: dawn
Prime: 6 am (first hour)
Terce: 9 am (third hour)
Sext: noon (sixth hour)
None: 3 pm (ninth hour)
Vespers: sunset
Compline: before bed

The shift in the common meaning of noon from 3 pm to 12 noon began in the twelfth century when the prayers said at the ninth hour were set back to the sixth, the reasoning practical rather theological, the unreliability of medieval time-keeping devices and the seasonal elasticity of the hours of daylight in northern regions meaning it was easier to standardise on an earlier hour.  Additionally, in monasteries and on holy days, fasting ended at nones, which perhaps offered another administrative incentive to nudge it up the clock.  An alternative explanation offered by social historians is that it was simply the abbots deciding to align their noon meal with those taken in the towns and villages, the Old English word non having assumed the meaning “midday” or “midday meal” by circa 1140.  Whatever the reason, the meaning shift from "ninth hour" to "sixth hour" seems to have been complete by the fourteenth century, the same path of evolution as the Dutch noen).  Noon is an example of what etymologists call a fossil word, one which that embeds customs of former ages.

The use as a synonym for midnight existed between the seventeenth & nineteenth centuries, apparently because the poetic phrase “noon of the night” entered popular use.  The noun forenoon (the morning (ie (be)fore + noon)) applied especially the latter part of it, those hours “when business is done”, the word emerging circa 1500.  The noun noonday (middle of the day) was first used by Myles Coverdale (1488–1569), the English cleric and ecclesiastical reformer remembered for his printed translation of the Bible into English (1535) and it was used as an adjective from 1650s.  In the Old English there had been non tid (noon-tide, midday, noon) and non-tima (noon, noon-time, midday).  The noun afternoon (part of the day from noon to evening) dates from circa 1300 and it was subject to an interesting shift in grammatical form.  In the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries it was used as “at afternoon” but from circa 1600 this shifted to “in the afternoon”; it emerged as an adjective from the 1570s.  In the Middle English there had been the mid-fourteenth century aftermete (afternoon, part of the day following the noon meal).

Lindsay Lohan at nuncheon, Scott's Restaurant, Mayfair, London, 2015.

The noun nuncheon was from the mid-fourteenth century nōn-schench (slight refreshment of food (with or without liquor) taken at midday, the name shifting with the meal, nuncheon taken originally in the afternoon (ie notionally the three o’clock meal), the construct being none (noon) + shench (draught, cup), from the Old English scenc, related to scencan (to pour out, to give to drink) and cognate with the Old Frisian skenka (to give to drink) and the German & Dutch schenken (to give).  The most obvious descendent of nuncheon is luncheon (and thus lunch).

Lāhainā Noon is the solar phenomenon (known only in the tropics) when the Sun culminates at the zenith at solar noon, passing directly overhead, thus meaning objects underneath cast no shadow, creating a effect something like the primitive graphics in some video games.  The name Lāhainā Noon (Lāhainā Noons the plural) was the winner in a contest organised by Hawai'i's Bishop Museum in 1990, the museum noting the word lāhainā (originally lā hainā) may be translated into English as “cruel sun” but makes reference also to the severe droughts experienced in that part of the island of Maui.  The old Hawai'ian name for the event was the much more pleasing kau ka lā i ka lolo (the sun rests on the brains).

Copacetic

Copacetic (pronounced koh-puh-set-ik)

In slang, fine; completely satisfactory; OK.

1919: An Americanism said to be of utterly obscure origin, the entirely speculative attributions of the word to Cajun (Louisiana) French, Italian, Hebrew, African American English, Yiddish, barracks Latin or even gangster slang all lack any supporting evidence.

Given that the English language offers: pleasant, satisfactory, acceptable, enjoyable, attractive, tempting, appetizing, cordial, OK, nice, fine, likable, sweet, cheerful, convivial, satisfying, amusing, agreeable, pleasing, pleasurable & amiable, copacetic filled no obvious gap although it was said by some (without evidence) to be specific to a mood, or relationship without problems.  The richness of the English vocabulary meant there were already plenty of ways of saying that and women have anyway long been skilled in loading the word “fine” with just a change of inflection, covering the spectrum from the first, fine careless rapture of love to homicidal loathing.  Copacetic wouldn’t seem to improve on that but some tried to get it to catch on, the alternative spellings including copasetic, copesetic & copesettic.  Copacetic is an adjective.

Obscure and unnecessary, copacetic exists mostly as a fetish word discussed between consenting etymologists and lexicographers in the privacy of their chat groups.  It does occasionally appear in literature or other places, either because the author is searching for linguistic variation or just as the type of flourish Henry Fowler (1858–1933) condemned in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) as a “pride of knowledge”, something he thought “a very unamiable characteristic”, the display of which “sedulously should be avoided”.  In other words, except between word-nerds, copacetic need not be used (because there are so many alternatives) and should not be used (because most won’t know what it means).  Knowingly or not, most seem to have followed his advice.  Henry Fowler, although disapproving of much, may have been more tolerant of another wilful display of the obscure: Oojah-cum-spiff.   Oojah-cum-spiff (all right; fine) appeared in PG Wodehouse's (1881-1975) novel Very Good, Jeeves (1930), possibly as an alteration of oojah-capivvy, Wodehouse's interpretation of an Indian or Persian expression of uncertain origin.  Wodehouse remains something of a nerdish cult but oojah-capivvy is now as rare as copacetic.

As far as is known, copacetic appeared first in the novel A Man for the Ages (1919) by Irving Bacheller (1859-1950).  The author had a character, noted for her idiosyncratic speech, twice use the word and added it and “coralapus” were “her peculiar property” and “prized possession”.  Coralapus vanished without trace but copacetic has never quite gone away, the novelty attracting journalists, headline writers and songsmiths but the place it was first embedded was elaborated African-American speech, especially among those associated with jazz music and by the 1930s, it was regularly included in dictionaries of US slang and etymological discussions in literary journals.  At this time, the speculation seems to have begun, one of the earliest claims of origin by a gentlemen from Milwaukee who claimed it was from the Cajun (Louisiana) French couper-sètique (able to cope with), the correspondent even providing a couplet from “a charming old Acadian poem.”

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, during an "RU OK?" moment, Los Angeles, 2012.

However, this theory gained no support.  Also dismissed were other suggestions of origin including the Chinook Jargon copasenee (which seems actually to exist in Chinook Jargon), the Israeli Hebrew hakol beseder (all is in order (in a transliteration from the pointed spelling ha-kōl bĕ-sēdher)), a calque on expressions in European languages such as the German alles in Ordnung, the Polish wszystko w porządku and the Russian vsë v porjadke.   All were debunked by one authority or another and the consensus is that Irving Bacheller simply coined the word for his character in the manner of the malapropisms Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) created as comic devices for his Mrs Malaprop in the play The Rivals (1775).  What supports this perhaps disappointing conclusion is that Mr Bacheller had a bit of previous in such coinings, the construct of copacetic presumably a blend of the Latin copia (plenty) + ceterum (otherwise, in other respects).

Cope

Cope (pronounced kohp)

(1) To struggle or deal, especially on fairly even terms or with some degree of success.

(2) To face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties, especially successfully or in a calm or adequate manner.

(3) To come into contact; to meet (archaic).

(4) A long mantle, especially of silk, worn by ecclesiastics over the alb or surplice in processions and on other occasions.

(5) Any cloak-like or canopy-like covering (now rare).

(6) The night sky or the sky (archaic except as a literary or poetic device, sometimes in conjunction with “heaven”).

(7) In metallurgy, the upper half of a flask.

(8) In woodworking, to join (two molded wooden members) by undercutting the end of one of them to the profile of the other so that the joint produced resembles a miter joint.

(9) To form a joint between such members in this way or to undercut the end of (a molded wooden member) in order to form a coped joint.

(10) In steel fabrication, to cut away a flange of a metal member so that it may be joined to another member at an angle.

(11) In falconry, to clip or dull the beak or talons of a hawk.

(12) In medieval military use, for infantry forces to meet in battle.

(13) In South Africa, an acronym for Congress of the People, a political party founded in 2008 by dissident members of the African National Congress (ANC).

(14) To buy, barter; make a bargain, exchange for value (obsolete since the seventeenth century.

1175-1225: From the Middle English capa (large outer garment, cloak, mantle) which by the late thirteenth century acquired the specific ecclesiastical sense of “large mantle of silk or other material worn by priests or bishops over the alb on special occasions” from the Medieval Latin capa (cloak), from the Late Latin cappa (hooded cloak) (and source of the Old English cāp and the modern cap).  In figuratively use it was used of the night (the idea of the “cloak” of night's darkness) which was later extended to the "vault of the sky", the notion of the sky enveloping the earth as a cape covers the body, hence the late fourteenth century poetic phrase “cope of heaven”.  Cope is a noun & verb and coping is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is copes.

In Medieval Europe, meanings evolved in parallel.  The verb emerged in the late fourteenth century as coupen (to quarrel) which in the early 1400s had meant “come to blows, deliver blows, engage in combat”, from the Anglo-French & Old French couper, from colper (to strike; to cut; a blow hit, punch), from colp (a blow).  The meaning evolved and by the eighteenth century meant “handle (successfully), deal with” and etymologists suspect this may have been under the influence of the obsolete use of cope to mean “to traffic, bargain for, buy”, in common use between the fifteenth & seventeenth centuries in North Sea trade, from the Flemish version of the Germanic source of English “cheap”.  The construct of København (literally “merchant's port”) (Copenhagen), the capital of Denmark, was køber (merchant (literally “buyer”)) + havn (port) (thus the idea in English of a port as a “haven in a storm”).  English picked up cope in the fifteenth century from its sense in Low German of "to buy, barter, make a bargain”, use lasting until late in the seventeenth.  The noun coping dates from the early seventeenth century as a term in architectural meaning “the top or cover of a wall, usually sloped to shed water”, an allusion to the function of a priest’s cloak-like cope in protecting the wearing from rain.  By the 1660s, this technical sense in building extended to a general description of the form and shape of a typical cope and the verb cope in this context was used to describe “forming a cope, bend as an arch or vault”.  The notion was picked up in carpentry in the 1880s as “coping saw”, a saw with a long, narrow blade used for cutting curved patterns.

Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) in red papal cope & mitre, worn when presiding over the ceremonies marking the opening of the Pauline Year, 29 June 2008.

The cope is a liturgical vestment, a long cloak, open in front and fastened at the breast with a band or clasp, known as a morse.  Always made in a great variety of colors and patterns, the cope has never been restricted to the clergy and although now, in its more elaborate forms, it's most associated with bishops and cardinals, there's no doubt it was originally a functional garment designed for no higher purpose than to protect the wearer and his clothes from the elements.  In Ancient Rome, it was known in Classical Latin as pluviale (rain coat) or cappa (cape) and in design and construction has changed little in two-thousand years.

Cardinal Pell (1941-2023) in Cappa Magna with caudatario.

Among copes, the highlight of any ecclesiastical fashion parade in the Roman Catholic Church is the silk cappa magna (great cape).  Technically a jurisdictional garment, it’s now rarely seen and worn only in processions or when "in choir" (attending but not celebrating services).  Cardinals wear red and bishops violet and both cardinals and papal nuncios are entitled to a cappa magna of watered silk.  Well into the twentieth century, a cappa magna could stretch for nearly 15 metres, (50 feet) but Pius XII’s (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958) motu proprio (literally “on his own impulse”, essentially constitutionally the same as a royal decree which unilaterally creates law) Valde solliciti (1952) laid down that they should not be longer than 7m (23 feet) and later instructions from the Vatican banned them from Rome and curtailed their use elsewhere.  Valde solliciti translates literally as “very worried” and Pius in 1952 was clearly exactly that, concerned at complaints that the extravagance of the Church’s rituals was inappropriate at a time of such troubled austerity.  There was in 1952 still little sign of the remarkable post-war economic recovery which within a decade would be critiqued in Federico Fellini's (1920–1993) film La Dolce Vita (the sweet life, 1960).  Accordingly, Pius wrote:

Being greatly troubled by the peculiar conditions of our times, which laborious experiments and changes make daily more difficult and more difficult, and which make those wishes worthy of the greatest consideration and care, for the attainment of which many strive today with a noble anxiety, We have always thought it opportune and consistent with the duty of Our conscience to respond to them with warnings which arise from it: namely, that all, and in a special way from the sacred order of men, are directed to a more sober, moderate and austere way of life.

For this reason, which also concerns Us, it was decided to set an example in these matters: it was decided to moderate somewhat the external rites which belong to the fulfilment of Our Apostolic office, that is, to reduce the sacred ceremonies to a simpler and shorter form; and for this reason above all we are moved with joy, because we see all men of heart, when in the habit of acting of individuals, as well as in the actions of public life, even in regard to the clergy, more than pride, we are amazed at the painstaking concern for the needs of human society.

It is our intention, therefore, to issue some regulations concerning the vestments of the Cardinal Fathers, who indeed are very dear to Us, and are present to Us so much in the whole Church that we govern. Indeed, we know that they do not look to the admiration of their admirers, but to place their own excellent dignity and authority in their own light; and in the same way it was seen by Us not only to abhor them from empty luxury, but rather those who have attributed to them the piety of the ecclesiastical patrimony of the Christian faithful, and sometimes also family wealth, to spend liberally in projects of beneficence when they are deeply convinced of themselves, to respond to the precepts of evangelical wisdom, as those who the results that remain, even those that arise from a more moderate way of living and dressing, will be invested in divine worship, in charity, in the education of the youth, and in apostolic works.

Therefore, while we honor them with due honor, we think that We will make their laudable Christian plans and purposes easier by these, which we have established by Motu Proprio, norms pertaining to the attitude of the Cardinal Fathers:

(1) Of the robe of the Cardinal Fathers, the cord or tail is to be removed, either of a red or purple color.

(2) The string or tail of their cap, which will not be worn in the Supreme Pontifical Chapels, nor in the Sacred Consistory, should be reduced to half, considering its size, which is in use today.

(3) Their clothes of a purple color (talar clothes, mantles, mozeta) are woolen; that the Cardinal Fathers, who had previously had silk vestments of a purple color, may continue to wear them for the same period.

(4) The norms of the ceremonies in the Roman Court will be reintegrated, according to the habit of those Cardinal Fathers who are recruited into the Sacred College either from among the Canons Regular, or from the Clergy Regular, or from the Religious Congregations.

Amanda Seyfried (b 1985) in cloak, Little Red Riding Hood (2011).

The caudatari need a practical understanding of physics when dealing with the challenge of stairs; note the parabolic curve a Cappa Magna assumes in ascent.

Over the centuries, there was certainly a bit of mission creep in the cope.  Originally garments like other cloaks of at most of ankle-length, by the mid-twentieth century, those used by cardinal could trail for 7 metres (23 feet).  Formerly introduced as an ecclesiastical vestment by Pope Nicholas III (circa 1225–1280; pope 1277-1280), even when of more modest length, in those dustier, muddier times, the need for an aide (familiar in English as “Page of the Robes”), saw the appointment of those who would follow behind, carrying the tail of the robe and preventing it dragging on the ground.  The first aides were laymen but the role was later assigned to junior clerics, often trainee priests and, in the way of bureaucracy, as bishops and other more junior clerics began to lengthen their trains, their numbers grew, not least because sometimes two were required when a cardinal might be negotiating tricky obstacles like stairs.  In the Church these aides were styled as caudatario (plural caudatari), (from Italian and literally “train-bearer”) and their sole role was to carry the train of the cassock or cappa magna during solemn ceremonies but, again in the way bureaucracies tend to grow, they began to assume the role of a personal assistant (PA) taking charge of the vestments’ cleaning, repair and storage (the role in England of the “Master of the Robes”) and during services, holding the cardinal’s cap or books and prompting him to recall (as required) what came next in the order of service.  However, Pope John XXIII (1881-1963; pope 1958-1963), either moved by the spirit of La Dolce Vita or responding to cardinals complaining about their sartorial emasculation, restored things, setting the Cardinals' copes to 12 meters (40 feet) and the bishops’ to 7m (23 feet).  One quirk in the Orthodox Church is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is required to don an ermine-lined winter cappa, because he is bound by the unalterable rules of the Status quo, an 1852 Ottoman firman (a word from the Persian (فرمان) meaning "decree") which regulates relations between the various religious groups caring for sites in the Holy Land.

Lindsay Lohan in Lavish Alice cape.  Lindsay Lohan is believed to have good coping skills.

In modern use, people seem often to use the words cloak & cape interchangeably, presumably because (1) both are now less common and (2) both are made from a single piece of fabric (though often lined), is sleeveless and hangs loose.  Properly though, capes are shorter, often of hip-length while cloaks are calf-length or descend to the floor.  Perhaps what misleads is the tendency in popular culture (especially film) to depict super-heroes (Superman and his many imitators) in flappy capes which extend sometimes almost to the ankles.  Cloaks also often have hoods which are less common on capes.  Cloak is from the French word cloche (bell), implying a wrap narrow at the top, flaring at the bottom and the envelopment they provide saw the word adopted to mean conceal, used in fields as diverse as coatings which resist detection by radar and masking agents used to suppress the presence of drugs.

Sassy

Sassy (pronounced sas-ee)

(1) Disrespectful or impudent; impertinent; insolent.

(2) Boldly stylish and smart; pert.

1830–1835: An invention of American English, the colloquialism thought an alteration of “saucy” which in the context of human interaction could mean either: (1) brazen, cheeky, discourteous & disrespectful, (2) audacious, bold & assertive or (3) ribald.  Sassy picked up these variations (although the use to hint at the mildly erotic faded) and gained also the notion in fashion of something stylish or avant-garde.  Sassy is another of those words in English which must seem strange to those learning the subtleties of the language: It can be either a compliment or an expression of disapproval, used sometimes variously to reference the same conduct.  Of objects (usually in fashion), it’s less ambiguous, sassy always said in admiration.  The unrelated sasswood (or sassy wood) is a West African leguminous tree, Erythrophleum guineense, with poisonous bark (sassy bark) and hard strong wood; an alkaloid from this source used in pharmaceuticals.  The etymology is thought to be from a language of the Kwa family.  The comparative is sassier and the superlative sassiest.  Sassy is an adjective, sassiness is a noun and sassily an adverb.

On sale between 1988-1996, Sassy magazine was nominally classed as a “teen magazine” but in terms of editorial content was aimed at the “young women” targeted by the other glossies such as Seventeen and YM but with content which attempted to straddle the gap between the emphasis on weight-loss, make-up & clothes in such titles and what might be called “serious content”.  That turned out to be something of a sweet spot (a gap in the market as it were) because it turned out that what Sassy did was validate that young women could simultaneously be interested both in feminist issues and boy bands.  It may not sound remarkable now but at the time, including in such magazines articles about suicide or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) was actually subversive.  Sassy also was of note in that when Australian feminists Sandra Yates (b 1947) & Anne Summers (b 1945) took control, it was only the second only women-led management buyout in US corporate history.  To mark the significance of suddenly being in the same business as Rupert Murdoch (b 1931), the bolshie pair described themselves as “mogulettes” (in the sense of being on a smaller scale than News Corporation rather than a feminized form) and Sassy was immediately successful, circulation almost doubling within a year.  Sassy's message was that girls didn't have to be sassy but if that's what they wanted, sassy they should be.

Sassiness: Lindsay Lohan with sassy Hermes Pink Ostrich Birkin Bag & Charlotte Olympia Kitty moccasins in chestnut brown suede and leather, London, 2015.

It was also quite innovative, people of color showing up on the pages and sometimes even on the cover and Sassy anticipated crowd sourcing when it published the December 1990 issue consisting wholly of “reader-produced” content.  However, if the daughters of America were reading, their mothers were watching and groups representing evangelical Christian women mobilized, claiming Sassy’s advice on sex would encourage promiscuity and a flood of unwanted pregnancies.  What Sassy printed was actually little different to what appears in the brochures in doctors’ waiting rooms but, just as Sassy had achieved consistent profitability, advertisers pulled their support, the threat of boycotts too great a risk.  Just as the printing presses has started to roll in 1988, Sandra Yates had told the New York Times (NYT) “I’m going to prove you can run a business with feminist principles and make money” and briefly she did but, spooked by Christians threatening to stop buying stuff, capitalism bit back and Sassy never recovered, officially folded into `TEEN magazine with the coming of 1997 but actually quietly put into a burka.

Cipher

Cipher (pronounced sahy-fer)

(1) Zero (archaic).

(2) Any of the Arabic numerals or figures (historic use only).

(3) To use figures or numerals arithmetically (historic use only).

(4) To write in or as in cipher.

(5) To calculate numerically; figure (historic use only).

(6) To convert into cipher.

(7) A numeric character (historic use only).

(8) Any text character (historic use only).

(9) A combination or interweaving of letters, as the initials of a name; a device; a monogram.

(10) A method of transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning.

(11) In cryptography, a system using an algorithm that converts letters or sequences of bits into cipher-text.

(12) A grouping of three digits in a number, especially when delimited by commas or periods.

(13) In music, a fault in an organ valve which causes a pipe to sound continuously without the key having been pressed.

(14) In music, slang for a hip-hop jam session (although some etymologists thing this is wholly unrelated to cipher’s accepted lineage.

(15) The path (usually vaguely circular) shared cannabis takes through a group.

(16) Someone or something of no importance.

(17) As cipher.exe, an external filter command in some versions of Microsoft operating systems, used to encrypt and decrypt data on drives using HPFS (High-Performance File System & NTFS (New Technology File System).

Late 1300s: From the Middle English siphre & cifre, from the Old French cyfre & cyffre (nought, zero) (which endures in Modern French as chiffre) from the Medieval Latin cifra & ciphra, (like the Spanish and Italian cifra), ultimately from the Arabic صِفْر‎ (ṣifr) (zero, empty), from صَفَرَ‎ (ṣafara) (to be empty), a loan-translation of the Sanskrit śūnyā-s (empty) The alternative spelling is cypher.  The word came to Europe in the twelfth century with the arrival of Arabic numerals.  Meaning first "zero", by the fifteenth century it had come to mean "any numeral" and then, following the use in French & Italian, "secret way of writing; coded message", a sense which in English emerged by the 1520s, the origin of the shift being the early diplomatic codes, often creations which substituted numbers for letters.  The meaning "the key to a cipher or secret writing" was by 1885 short for “cipher key”, a phrase in use since 1835.  Drawing from the sense of “zero”, the figurative sense of "something or someone of no value, consequence, or power" dates from the 1570s.

The verb in the sense of “doing arithmetic" (with Arabic numerals) emerged in the 1520s and was derived from the noun while the transitive sense (reckon in figures, cast up) was first noted in 1860 and the specific sense of a cipher code being something which might be associated with the occult characters was first attested in 1563.  The verb decipher (an obviously essential companion to cipher) in the 1520s had a now obsolete meaning in mathematics (find out, discover) but by the 1540s it meant "interpret” in the sense of rendering a coded message (a cipher) back into the language or origin by use of a cipher-key.  It may, at least in part, be a loan-translation from the French déchiffrer.  From circa 1600, it moved beyond the literal to the transferred sense of "discover or explain the meaning of what is difficult to understand", the sense of "succeed in reading what is written in obscure or partially obliterated characters" used by 1710.  Cipher is a noun & verb; ciphering is a noun; the noun plural is ciphers.

German Enigma M4 encryption machine.  Introduced for commercial purposes in 1923, it was used by the German Navy from 1926, all branches of the service adopting it by 1935.  Built initially with three rotors, a fourth was added in 1941.

Although used by the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) throughout the war, work by Polish mathematicians, aided by French intelligence, had enabled Polish cryptographers to break the codes and thus read German military traffic between 1932-1938, at which point additional layers of complexity were added.  In 1939, as war approached, the Poles passed their work to the allies where the code-breaking continued, culminating in the “Ultra” decrypts which would be of such value during the war.

The text "Lindsay Lohan" encrypted using different ciphers:

Standard Vigenère cipher: Nzlslig Nffpg
Beaufort cipher: Rjlmbik Rdrpg
Variant Beaufort cipher: Jrpozsq Jxjlu
Trithemius cipher: Ljpgwfe Swqky

In the decryption process, the British made some of the first use at scale of electronic computers and so secret was the project regarded that the protocols of the existing highest level of secrecy in the machinery of government, “Most Secret”, was thought inadequate and “Ultra Secret” was thus created with a tiny distribution list.  Also deployed was the coat-and-dagger trick of the misleading code-name Boniface, used in a way to convey the impression the British had a master spy they called “Boniface” controlling a network of spies throughout the political, military and industrial structures of the Reich.  The ruse proved successful, the OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the German naval high command) never taking seriously the suggestion their codes had been broken, instead repeatedly combing their organisation for spies.  The existence of the British code-breaking project and the volume and importance of the Ultra decrypts to the war effort wasn’t widely known until an (at times misleading) account was published  in 1974 in The Ultra Secret by a former RAF officer, FW Winterbotham (1897-1990).  Although criticised in detail, what was revealed did compel a re-evaluation of some of the conclusions drawn by historians about political and military matters during the war.

Zaftig

Zaftig (pronounced zahf-tig, zahf-tik, zawf-tig or zawf-tik)

(1) Of a woman, having a particular and pleasingly curvaceous figure.

(2) By extension, of wine, certain machines, architecture etc, full-bodied; well-proportioned.

1926: From the Yiddish זאַפֿטיק‎ (zaftik) (literally, “juicy, succulent”) from zaft (juice) and cognate with the Middle High German saftec, a derivative of saf & saft, the Old High German saf and the German Saft (juice, sap) & saftig (juicy).  The alternative spellings are zoftig & zaftige, both known in Yiddish texts but in English slang it’s appeared also as zoftik, zoftick, zaftige, zofttig & softic, the variations presumably because the written form came directly from the oral but the latter may have been under the influence of German.  Zaftig is an adjective but in slang has been used as a (non-standard) noun (a zaftig) and zaftigish & zaftigesque are both (non-standard) adjectives; the (non-standard) noun plural is zaftigs.

Rubenesque: The Three Graces (circa 1632) by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Museo del Prado, Madrid.

According to Jewish linguistic anthropology, zaftig entered Yiddish in the mid-nineteenth century and was picked up in English sometimes early in the next, the first recorded instance of use in 1927 where it became a US colloquialism which referred to a woman whose figure was plump yet sexually attractive.  It implied someone voluptuous and well-proportioned even if large, conveying something like the word Rubenesque which had long been a “polite” way of putting it, the construct being Rubens +‎ -esque, an allusion to many of the women depicted in the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens.  Rubenesque was understood usually to be a compliment because it was thought a reference to sensuousness rather than mere size and in this, like zaftig, it differed from more brutish descriptors such as chunky, flabby, plump, portly, pudgy, stout, rounded, shapely, beefy, corpulent or meaty which tend to the negative, even if modified with a helpful adverb like “pleasingly” or “alluringly”.

Zaftigesque: The Three Charlottes; Charlotte McKinney (b 1993), Encore Player’s Club grand opening, Las Vegas, 2016.  This little black dress (LBD) is optimized for Ms McKinney’s specific instance of selective zaftigism.

Zaftig remains useful because of its comparative rarity, the obscurity of the word meaning if can still often be used to objectify women (if that’s one’s thing) whereas the use of other, more familiar adjectives would see one condemned as sexist, misogynistic or worse.  For students of nuance, the comparative is more zaftig, the superlative most zaftig.