Bonk

Bonk (pronounced bongk)

(1) A bump on the head (usually not severe).

(2) To hit, strike, collide etc; any minor collision or blow.

(3) In slang, a brief intimacy between two people, usually with a suggestion of infidelity; often modified with the adjective quick and only ever used where the act is consensual (less common in North America).

(4) In sports medicine, a condition of sudden, severe fatigue in an endurance sports event, typically induced by glycogen depletion (also in the phrase “hit the wall”).

(5) In snowboarding, to hit something with the front of the board, especially in midair.

(6) In zoology, an animal call resembling "bonk" (such as the call of the pobblebonk (any of various Australian frogs of the genus Limnodynastes)).

1931: A creation of Modern English, the origin remains uncertain but most suspect it was likely imitative of sounds of impact (like bong, bump, bounce or bang) and thus onomatopoetic.  As a slang term for an affaire de coeur, use was first noted in 1975 and has always, depending on context, carried an implication of something illicit or quickly done; purely recreational though always consensual.  The use in sports medicine describing the condition of glycogen depletion references a metaphorical impact as in “hitting the wall”, the first known use in 1952 in endurance sports medicine.  Bonkee, as a descriptor for a "woman of loose virtue", appears to have been a 2014 creation which never caught on which is a shame because there are all sorts of cases where the companion terms "bonker" & "bonkee" might have been handy .  The form "bonkers", referring to the deranged, dated from circa 1957 and was apparently unrelated to the earlier naval slang for “drunk” but alluded rather to what could be the the consequence of a “bonk on the head”.  The third-person singular simple present is bonks, the present participle, bonking and the simple past and past participle, bonked.  Bonk & bonking are nouns & verbs, bonker is a noun, bonky is an adjective, bonked is a verb and bonkers is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bonks.

Bonkers: "Last Call" 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 in "plum crazy" (one of the retro colors which reprised those used by Chrysler in the "psychedelic era" of the late 1960s).  3300 were produced, many of which soon were advertised for sale at well above the MRRP (manufacturer's retail price).

The Demon 170 was released as part of Dodge’s “Last Call” programme which marked the end of the corporation's run of high-performance V8s for passenger cars, a tradition dating from 1950 when the first 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) "Firepower" (soon to be fetishized as "Hemi") V8 debuted.  Offered in a bewildering array of configurations in a process which was something like Nellie Melba's (1861-1931) "farewell" tours, the SRT Demon 170 was reckoned the most bonkers of a generally bonkers lot.  Rated at 1,025 hp (764 kW), the factory claimed it could accelerate from 0-60 mph (100 km/h) in 1.66 seconds with an elapsed time in the standing ¼ mile (402 metres for those who insist) of 8.91 seconds (terminal speed 151 mph (243 km/h)), setting the mark as the worlds quickest ever standard production car, a reasonable achievement for something weighing 4275 lbs (1939 kg).  By world standards it was also very cheap and on the basis of cost-breakdown vs performance, there was nothing like it on the planet.  In British (and other English-speaking regions although rare in the US) use, "bonkers" can and often is used in an entirely non-pejorative way to suggest something or someone verging on the irrational but in some way astonishing, admirable or inspiring.  Road cars with 600+ horsepower V8 & V12 engines are of course bonkers but we'll miss them when they're gone and it would seem the end is nigh.  Greta Thunberg (b 2003) has expressed no regret at the looming extinction of this species.  

Bonking Boris

Hand-turned fish bonkers on sale in Jaffray, a village in the south-western Canadian province of British Columbia (left) and the front page of The Sun (7 September 2018; right), a tabloid which rarely avoids an alluringly attractive alliterative alternative.  

The noun bonker describes (1) a short, blunt hardwood club used by fisherpersons efficiently to dispatch (ie bonking them dead) just-caught fish or (2) according to the Murdoch tabloid The Sun, the adulterous Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).  A bonk by Boris or the club and a not wholly dissimilar outcome ensues; a one-time employer called bonking Boris "ineffably duplicitous" and the estranged (now former) Mrs Johnson presumably agreed.  At the time, the former prime minister had "a bit of previous" in extra-marital bonking and when this one was announced, it was with an alliterative flourish not seen since the headline “BORIS BACKS BREXIT”.  His resignation from Theresa May's (Lady May, b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) government was unrelated to bonking (as far as is known) and came, in July 2018, three days after a cabinet meeting at Chequers (the prime-minister's country house), where agreement was reached on Mrs May’s Brexit strategy, a document compromised by the need to make a nonsensical impossibility look like good policy.  That can be done but it requires rare skill to be in 10 Downing Street and it's been some time since that could be said. 

Freed by his resignation from the burdens of the Foreign Office, bonking Boris was clearly unconcerned at rumors his opponents in the party were assembling a dossier of some 4,000 words detailing his cheating ways, fondness for cocaine & failings of character and turned his attention to a campaign for the Tory leadership.  As wonderfully unpredictable as the politics of the time were fluid, nobody was quite sure whether he’d go into the inevitable election or second referendum as "leave" or "remain"; it would depend on this and that.  In the end, he remained a leaver and things worked out well, his election victory meaning that for one, brief, shining moment, the three world leaders with the best hair all had nuclear weapons at the same time.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025; left), Boris Johnson (centre) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)) since 2011; right).

Some hairstyles are more amenable than others to a quick post-bonk fix.  Kim Jong-un's cut is probably quite good and would bounce back from a bonk with little more than a run-through with the fingers although he may have in his entourage an army general as "designated comber".  Donald Trump however would likely need both tools and product for a post-bonk fix, ideally performed by an expert hairdresser.  Mr Trump usually appears well-fixed unless disturbed by breezes higher than 2 on the Beaufort scale and all but the most perfunctory bonks probably are equal to at least 4 on the scale so it would have been interesting to see if Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) lived up to her (stage) name although Mr Trump has denied that bonk ever happened.  Ms Daniels' testimony did include a mention of giving him a bonk on the butt with a rolled-up magazine (one with his picture on the cover!) and that at least had a ring of truth.  Mr Johnson's hair so often looks post-bonk that either his conquests are more frequent even than has been rumored or he asks for a JBF with every cut.  One UK publication suggested exactly that, hinting his instruction was "not one hair in place".  That has the advantage for Mr Johnson in that it's a style essentially the same pre-bonk, mid-bonk and post-bonk and thus pricelessly ambiguous in that merely by looking at him, one couldn't tell if he was going to or coming from a bonk although, one assumes, whichever it was, a bonk would never be far from his mind.  Whatever the criticisms of Mr Johnson's premiership (and there were a few), it's to his eternal credit that in his resignation honours list Ms Kelly Jo Dodge (for 27 years the parliamentary hairdresser) was created a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for "parliamentary service".  In those decades, she can have faced few challenges more onerous than Mr Johnson’s hair yet never once failed to make it an extraordinary example in the (actually technically difficult) “not one hair in place” style.  Few honours have been so well deserved.

A bandaged Lindsay Lohan waking dazed and confused after a bonk on the head in Falling for Christmas (2022; left) and on the move in Irish Wish (2024).   

In May 2021, Netflix & Lindsay Lohan executed what became a three movie deal, the first (Falling for Christmas) released in the northern winter of 2022, just in time for the season.  She played the protagonist, a pampered heiress who loses her memory after suffering a bonk on the head, waking up to a new life.  The second Netflix release opens in February 2024 and in Irish Wish, the plotline involves her spontaneously wishing for something, subsequently waking up to find the wish granted.  So it’s a variation on the theme of the first (though without the bonk on the head), the twist being in the theme of “be careful what you wish for”.

Bonking Barnaby and the bonk ban

Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime-minister of Australia 2015-2018), a student of etymology, was as fond as those at The Sun of alliteration and when writing his memoir (A Bigger Picture (2020)) he included a short chapter entitled "Barnaby and the bonk ban".  As well as the events which lent the text it's title, the chapter was memorable for his inclusion of perhaps the most vivid thumbnail sketch of Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022) yet penned:

"Barnaby is a complex, intense, furious personality.  Red-faced, in full flight he gives the impression he's about to explode.  He's highly intelligent, often good-humoured but also has a dark and almost menacing side - not unlike Abbott (Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015)) - that seems to indicate he wrestles with inner troubles and torments."

Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce in parliament, House of Representatives, Canberra, ACT.

The substantive matter was the revelation in mid-2017 the press had become aware Mr Joyce (a married man with four daughters) was (1) conducting an affair with a member of his staff and (2) the young lady was with child.  Mr Turnbull recorded that when asked, Mr Joyce denied both "rumors", which does sound a lie but, in the narrow, technical sense, may have verged on "the not wholly implausible" on the basis that, as he pointed out in a later television interview, the question of paternity was at the time “...a bit of a grey area”.  Mr Joyce and his mistress later married and now have two children so all's well that end's well (at least for the adulterous couple) and Mr Turnbull didn't so much shut the gate after the horse had bolted as install inter-connecting doors between the stables.  His amendments to the Australian Ministerial Code of Conduct (an accommodating document very much in the spirit of Lord Castlereagh's (1769–1822; UK foreign secretary 1812-1822) critique of the Holy Alliance) banned ministers from bonking their staff which sounds uncontroversial but was silent on them bonking the staff of the minister in the office down the corridor.  So the net effect was probably positive in that staff having affairs with their ministerial boss would (through a rapid inter-departmental transfer), gain experience through cross-exposure to other portfolio areas although there's the obvious moral hazard they might be tempted to conduct trysts just to engineer a transfer in the hope of career advancement.  There are worse reasons for having an affair and a bonk for a new job seems a small price to pay; it's been done before. In a sense, Mr Joyce was a victim because when rugby union (and other codes) player Israel Folau (b 1989) in 2019 posted on social media a list of those God condemns to Hell which included “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters”, while there was strident support for the gay community, despite the mention of “adulterers” and “drunks” being obviously and blatantly an attack on Mr Joyce's character, not a whisper was heard in his defence.

Bonk in progress, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, May 2024.

Bonk in the sense of “a blow to the head” was in May 2024 adapted for use in memes and other publicity tools associated with the protests staged on US university campuses demanding the institutions’ administrators divest from economic and other engagements with Israel and in support of the cause of the Palestinian people for (variously) statehood or freedom from repression.  The scenes were reminiscent of Vietnam War era protests but the emergence of the water-cooler jug as an icon of political dissent was an unexpected moment of levity.  The origin of that was a viral (“bonk, bonk, bonk”) video clip showing an unidentified protester at the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt bonking a uniformed law-enforcement officer on the helmet with an empty jug (believed to be a capacity of 5 US gallons (19 litres)) of the type which sits atop a water cooler.

Although recalling the similarly alliterative “burn baby, burn” slogan chanted during the Watts race riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the “bonk, bonk, bonk” was more a symbol of, if not exactly passive resistance, then certainly something short of actual violence although in a legal sense it would have been an instance of both assault and battery as well as other offences.  Around the country, stickers, posters and the inevitable T-shirts appeared within hours with slogans such as “Water Jug, Come and Take It” and “This machine bonks fascists”, a reference to the “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” message the left-wing US folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) wrote on his guitars.  Whether the water jug (bonking and not) will endure as a symbol of protest will depend, like many aspects of language, on whether it gains a sustained critical mass of use.

The "bonk, bonk, bonk" viral video.  In the conventional sense the production values weren't high but that very quality of authenticity accounted for its viral success.

Waterfall

Waterfall (pronounced waw-ter-fawl or wot-er-fawl)

(1) A steep fall or flow of water in a watercourse from a height, as over a precipice; a cascade of falling water where there is a vertical or almost vertical step in a river.

(2) A hair-style using long, loose “waves”.

(3) As “waterfall development”, “waterfall management” and “the waterfall model”, descriptions of product research & development (R&D) (especially in tech) including sequential stages, from conception and design through testing and implementation, hopefully to result in a final delivered product.

(4) Figuratively, any waterfall-like outpouring of liquid, smoke etc.

(5) In slang (originally US but now widespread), the action of drinking from a vessel without touching it with the lips (a sanitary precaution with shared vessels).

(5) In the smoking of weed, a particular design of bong.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English waterfal & waterfalle, from the Old English wæterġefeall (waterfall) and cognate with the Old Norse vatnfall, the West Frisian wetterfal (waterfall), the Dutch waterval (waterfall), the German Wasserfall (waterfall) and the Swedish vattenfall (waterfall).  The colloquial use to describe (1) a necktie, (2) a cravat, (3) a chignon (in hair-styling, a low bun or knot positioned at or close to the nape of the neck) or (4) a beard are now effectively extinct.  Waterfall’s synonyms in general use (though hydrologists are more precise) include cascade, cataract, sault (old Canadian slang more often used of river rapids) and the clipping falls.  Waterfall is a noun verb & adjective and waterfalling & waterfalled are verbs; the noun plural is waterfalls.

The construct was water + fall and the Modern English spelling appears to have been a re-formation from around the turn of the sixteenth century.  The noun “water” was from the Old English wæter (water), from the Proto-West Germanic watar, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The verb “water” was from the Middle English wateren, from the Old English wæterian, from the Proto-Germanic watrōną & watrijaną, from the Proto-Germanic watōr (water), from the primitive Indo-European wódr̥ (water).  The noun “fall” was from the Middle English fal, fall & falle, from the Old English feall & ġefeall (a falling, fall) and the Old English fealle (trap, snare), from the Proto-Germanic fallą & fallaz (a fall, trap).  It was cognate with the Dutch val, the German Fall (fall) & Falle (trap, snare), the Danish fald, the Swedish fall and the Icelandic fall.  The verb “fall” was from the Middle English fallen, from the Old English feallan (to fall, fail, decay, die, attack), from the Proto-West Germanic fallan (to fall), from the Proto-Germanic fallaną (to fall).  It was cognate with the West Frisian falle (to fall), the Low German fallen (to fall), the Dutch vallen (to fall), the German fallen (to fall), the Danish falde (to fall), the Norwegian Bokmål falle (to fall), the Norwegian Nynorsk falla (to fall), the Icelandic falla (to fall), the Albanian fal (forgive, pray, salute, greet) and the Lithuanian pùlti (to attack, rush).

Two views of Niagara Falls:  Between June-November 1969 (left), a temporary dam was built to stem the usual flow so geological studies could be conducted to ascertain the condition of the rocks and assess the extent of erosion.  After rectification work was carried out, the temporary structure was dynamited, an event promoted as a tourist attraction.  In 1885 (right), the falls underwent one of its occasional freezes.  Usually, these are what hydrologists call "partial freezes" (of late there have been a few: 2014, 2017 & 2019), the only (almost) "total freeze" recorded in 1848 although that was induced by the accumulation of ice on Lake Erie which caused a "natural dam" to form, stopping the flow of water to the Niagara River.  It was this rather than a "total freeze" of the falls which caused the phenomenon.

Lindsay Lohan with waterfall, Guanacaste Gold Coast, Costa Rica, January 2016.

For most of us, we know a waterfall when we see one: it’s a point in a waterway (usually a river) where the water falls over a steep drop that is close to literally vertical.  However, among hydrologists, there’s no agreed definition about the margins such as when something ceases to rapids and becomes a waterfall, some insisting that what lay-people casually call “waterfalls” are really “cataracts” or “cascades”.  To most of us there to admire the view, it’s a tiresome technical squabble among specialists but among themselves they seem happy for the debate to continue and some have even suggested precise metrics which can be mapped onto any formation.

Wasserfall (Waterfall), the embryonic SAM

Wasserfall (project Waterfall) was an early SAM (surface to air missile) developed by the Nazi armaments industry.  Although never used, it was highly influential in the post-war years.  In his memoirs (Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) discussed both the weapons systems with which he as minister was usually in some way connected and the political in-fighting and inter-service rivalries which hampered their development.  Although his writings are not wholly reliable (there was much he choose not to say on his contribution to anti-Jewish measures and his knowledge of the holocaust), on industrial and technical matters historians regard his account as substantially accurate (if incomplete).  Interestingly, after reading in Spandau prison a smuggled copy of the memoir (Ten Years and Twenty Days (1958)) of Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; as Grand Admiral head of the German Navy 1943-1945, German head of state 1945) who had been a fellow prisoner for the first decade of Speer’s twenty-year sentence, without any sense of irony, he remarked in his (extensively edited) prison journal (Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1975)):

“Where he discusses military operations and the questions of armaments, the book is interesting and probably also reliable.  His political attitude, on the other hand, his relationship to Hitler, his childish faith in National Socialism – all that he either wraps in silence or spins a veil of sailor’s yarns.  This is the book of a man without insight.”

Speer re-invented himself by wrapping in veils of silence anything too unpleasant to admit and spun plenty of veils so appealing that for decades there were many who, for various reasons, draped them over his past.  He wasn’t a man without insight but compared with Dönitz, he had much more guilt to conceal and thus more need of selective silence & spin.

Speer regarded the regime’s failure to devote the necessary resources to the Wasserfall project as one of Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945)  many strategic blunders which, by 1943, had made defeat inevitable.  Having delayed development of the revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter (deployed at scale mass it would have been a devastating weapon against the Allied bomber fleets then laying waste to German cities and industry), Hitler took the decision to afford the highest priority to the A4 (better known as the V2) rocket to retaliate against English cities; psychologically, Hitler always wanted to be on the offensive and would later appal the experts by demanding the Me 262 be re-designed as a fast, light bomber.  As a delivery system the V2 was a decade ahead of its time and there was then no defense against the thing but it was a hugely expensive and resource-intensive way to deliver an explosive load under a tonne.  As Speer noted, even if it became possible to produce and fire the projected 900 a month, that would mean a daily bomb-load of some 24 tonnes falling on England and that at a time when the Allied bomber groups were on average dropping some 3000 tonnes a day on German targets.  Hitler wasn’t wrong in predicting the use of the V2 against civilian targets would have an effect well beyond the measure of the tonnage delivered and the historians who claimed the disruption to the allied war effort caused by the V1 (an early cruise missile) & V2 was “negligible” were simply wrong but to have been an effective strategic weapon, at least hundreds of V2s a day would need to have found their targets.

Captured blueprints and photographs from the Wasserfall project's development. 

Speer admitted he “…not only went along with this decision on Hitler's part but also supported it. That was probably one of my most serious mistakes.  We would have done much better to focus our efforts on manufacturing a ground-to-air defensive rocket.  It had already been developed in 1942, under the code name Wasserfall (Waterfall), to such a point that mass production would soon have been possible, had we utilized the talents of those technicians and scientists busy with [the V2] under Wernher von Braun (1912–1977).”

He added that von Braun’s team was employed to develop weapons “…for the army, whereas air defense was a matter for the air force.  Given the conflict of interests and the fierce ambitions of the army and the air force, the army would never have allowed its rival to take over the installations it had built up…”  The difference in resource allocation was stark, more than ten times the number of technical staff working on the V2 compared to Waterfall and other anti-aircraft rocket projects (such as the small Taifun (Typhoon)).  The attraction of the anti-aircraft rockets was obvious as Speer noted: “Waterfall was capable of carrying approximately six hundred and sixty pounds of explosives along a directional beam up to an altitude of fifty thousand feet and hit enemy bombers with great accuracy.  It was not affected by day or night, by clouds, cold, or fog. Since we were later able to turn out nine hundred of the offensive big rockets monthly, we could surely have produced several thousand of these smaller and less expensive rockets per month. To this day I think that this rocket, in conjunction with the jet fighters, would have beaten back the Western Allies' air offensive against our industry from the spring of 1944 on.  Instead, gigantic effort and expense went into developing and manufacturing long-range rockets which proved to be, when they were at last ready for use in the autumn of 1944, an almost total failure [a comment which, combined with Allied propaganda and disinformation, influenced for decades many post-war historians].  Our most expensive project was also our most foolish one. Those rockets, which were our pride and for a time my favorite armaments project, proved to be nothing but a mistaken investment. On top of that, they were one of the reasons we lost the defensive war in the air.”

Whether a mass-produced Waterfall would have been an effective weapon against the mass-bomber formations has divided analysts.  While the technology to produce a reliable directional mechanism had been mastered, what Germany never possessed was a proximity fuse which would have enabled the explosive charge to be triggered when a bomber was within range; instead the devices relied on impact or pre-set detonators.  Presumably, had other projects been suspended and the resources re-directed to Waterfall, mass production may have been possible and even if only partially successful, to disrupt a bombing offensive it was necessary only to inflict an ongoing 5-10% loss rate to make the campaign unsustainable.  Given the inevitable counter-measures, even that would likely have proved challenging but economic reality meant Waterfall probably did offer a more attractive path than the spectacular V2 and given the success in related fields, it was not impossible that had priority been granted, proximity fuses and other technical improvements may rapidly have appeared.  As it was, Waterfall (like Typhoon, Me 262, V2 and an extraordinary range of other intriguing projects) was the subject of a post-war race between the Russians, the Americans and the British, all anxious to gather up the plans, prototypes, and personnel of what were clearly the next generation of weapons.  As a proof of concept exercise Waterfall was convincing and within years SAMs were a vital component of defensive systems in most militaries.

The waterfall motif: Grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe (left) and the Liebian International Building in China (right).

In design, "waterfall" can be a motif such as used for the grill on the 1975 Imperial LeBaron Crown Coupe.  It can also be literal and architects have many times integrated water-flows as an external design element but at 108 metres (354 feet) high, the one on the façade of the Liebian International Building in south-west China is easily the world’s tallest.  An eye-catching sight, the waterfall isn't run all that often (which must disappoint influencers who turn up with cameras ready) because it’s said to cost some 900 yuan (US$125) per hour just to pump the water to the top and, with the downturn in the property market, the building's revenues have fallen short of expectation.  When completed and displayed in 2016, the waterfall attracted some criticism on environmental grounds, water shortages far from unknown in China although the builders (Ludi Industry Group) pointed out the signature feature uses storm-water runoff, rainwater and groundwater, all stored in vast underground tanks.  It may for a while be the last example of exuberance to show up among China's skyscrapers, Xi Jinping (b 1953; general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013) in 2014 calling for an end to what he called "weird architecture".  Mr Xi thinks buildings should be "suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye" rather than "oversized, xenocentric & weird".  Those skilled at reading between the CCP's lines decided the president had called the architects "formalists".  They would have taken note.

On TikTok, a small but active community of those who find waterfalls mesmerizing post video clips.

Nefandous

Nefandous (pronounced nef-and-us or nef-fandus)

(1) Not to be spoken of (archaic).

(2) Unspeakable, appalling; abominable, shocking to reasonable senses (rare).

1630s: From the Latin nefandus (unmentionable, impious, heinous), the construct being ne- (the negative particle: “not”) + fandus (to be spoken), gerundive of fārī (to speak), from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say).  Nefandous is an adjective.  Although not obviously a word needing an intensifier, the comparative is “more nefandous” and the superlative “most nefandous”.

Google's ngrams trace the use of words but because of the way the data is harvested, the numbers represented by the ngrams are not of necessity accurate but, over decades, probably are broadly indicative.  While the numbers do bounce around a bit, it would seen that in British English (lower chart), use of "nefandous" was not infrequent in the nineteenth century while the most recent spike was during the 1930s; while politically and financially a troubled decade, any suggestion of a causal link with use would be speculative.  In US English (upper chart) use appears also to have declined after the nineteenth century, the most recent spike in the use of "nefandous" coinciding with the 2016 presidential campaign; again, to suggest any link with Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) or crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) would be speculative.  With the 2024 election threatening to be a re-run of 2020 (something quite a few seem to think variously unspeakable, unthinkable or unmentionable), there may be another revival of the word.   

The extinct nineteenth century formations were the noun nefandousness and the adverb nefandously; as an expression of character, nefandousness briefly found uses but the adverb was just silly.  Both seem to have followed the example of nefariousness & nefariously which is etymologically distant although in meaning there’s some overlap, those labelled nefandous often associated with things nefarious (sinful, villainous, criminal, or wicked).  Dating from the late sixteenth century, nefarious was from the Latin nefārius (execrable, abominable), from nefās (that which is contrary to divine law, an impious deed, a sin, crime), the construct being ne- (the negative particle: “not”) + fās (the dictates of religion, divine law), related to the Latin forms Latin forms meaning “I speak, I say” (thus the link with nefandous) and cognate with the Ancient Greek φημί (phēmí) (I say).

Unspeakable, unthinkable, unmentionable

Although the word "nefarious" is now rare, the idea is often expressed in the term "unspeakable", used to describe anything from crimes against fashion to mass murderers.  There was also the use use of "unmentionable" as a euphemism for a lady's underwear (usually in the plural as "her (or my) unmentionables") and although sometimes cited as an example of prudery in Victorian England, the evidence of use at the time suggests it was often something jocular or ironic.  However, there was also the notion of "unspeakable" a piece of literal positive law.  In Asia Minor (near present-day Selcuk, Türkiye), in a sacred grove not far from the city of Ephesus, stood the Great Temple of Artemis (also known as the Temple of Diana), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. During the evening of 21 July, 356 BC, Herostratus (also called Erostratus) of Ephesus saturated the timber and fabric furnishings of the temple with gallons of oil and when all was thoroughly soaked, he set fires in many places, inside and out.  Within minutes, as he had planned, the fire was uncontrollable and the temple doomed.  Coincidently, on the day the temple was razed, Alexander the Great (356-323 DC) was born.

St. Paul Preaching in Ephesus Before the Temple of Artemis (1885), by Adolf Pirsch (1858-1929).

Herostratus was apparently a wholly undistinguished and previously obscure citizen, different from others only in his desire to be famous and the lengths to which he was prepared to go to achieve that fame.  As shocked Ephesians rushed to the fire, Herostratus met them and proudly proclaimed his deed, telling them his name would for all eternity be remembered as the man who burned down the Great Temple of Artemis and razed one of the wonders of the world.  Herostratus was, as he expected, executed for his arson.  In an attempt to deny him the fame he craved, the Ephesians passed the damnatio memoriae law, making it a capital crime ever to speak of him or his deed.  However, it proved impossible to suppress the truth about such an event; the historian Theopompus (circa 380–circa 315 BC) relates the story in his Philippica and it later appears in the works of the historian Strabo (circa 64 BC–circa 24 AD).  His name thus became a metonym for someone who commits a criminal act in order to become noted.  Subsequent attempts to erase names from history by declaring them unspeakable (tried on a grand scale by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and the Kim dynasty in the DPRK (North Korea)) seem always to fail.

It's unfortunate history didn't unfold so Android and iOS were available in 356 BC so  Herostratus could have played Lindsay Lohan's The Price of Fame instead of turning to arson.  The game was said to be "a parody on celebrity culture and paparazzi" and enabled players to become world famous celebrities by creating an avatar which could "purchase outfits, accessories, toys and even pets".  Played well, he could have entered a virtual herostratisphere and the temple might stand today.  As Ms Lohan would understand, the tale of Herostratus reminds all that for everything one does, there's a price to be paid. 

Like many of the tales from antiquity, the story of destruction by arson is doubted.  Various conjectures have been offered, some of which doubt the technical possibility of what Herostratus is said to have done, some claiming it was a kind of inside job by the temple’s priests who had their own reasons for wanting a new building and even a reference to the writings of Aristotle which offers a lightning strike as the catalyst for the conflagration.  However, whatever did or didn’t happen in 356 BC, the word herostatic, to describe one who seeks fame at any cost, has endured, the attempt to make his name unspeakable as doomed as the temple.

Asymptote

Asymptote (pronounced as-im-toht)

(1) In mathematics, a straight line which a curve approaches arbitrarily closely as it extends to infinity; the limit of the curve; its tangent “at an imaginary representation of infinity”.

(2) By extension, figuratively, that which comes near to but never meets something else (used in philosophy, politics, conflict resolution etc).

1650–1660: From the Greek asýmptōtos (not falling together).  The Ancient Greek ἀσύμπτωτη (asúmptōtē) was the feminine of Apollonius Pergaeus' Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Περγαῖος Apollṓnios ho Pergaîos (Apollonius of Perga (Apollonius Pergaeus (circa 240-190 BC)), an astronomer whose most noted contribution to mathematics were his equations exploring quadratic curves.  The construct of the Ancient Greek adjective ἀσύμπτωτος (asúmptōtos) (not falling together) was a- (not) + sýmptōtos (falling together (the construct being +‎ συν (-sym-) (together) + πτωτός (ptōtós) (falling; fallen inclined to fall), the construct being ptō- (a variant stem of píptein (to fall) (from the primitive Indo-European root pet (to rush; to fly)) + -tos (the verbid suffix).  The adjective asymptotic (having the characteristics of an asymptote) dates only from the 1970s.  Asymptote is a noun & verb, asymptotia & asymptoter are nouns, asymptotic & asymptotical are adjectives, asymptoted & asymptoting are verbs and asymptotically is an adverb; the noun plural is asymptotes.

Lines, curves & infinity

The noun asymptote describes a straight line continually approaching but never meeting a curve, even if extending to infinity.  This means that although the distance between line and curve may tend towards zero, it can never reach that point, which is hard to visualize but explained by the notion of the line only ever able to move half the distance required to achieve intersection.  At some point such a thing becomes impossible usefully to represent graphically and even exactly to define the asymptotic using integer mathematics would be unmanageable, thus the use of the infinity symbol (∞).

Horizontal (left), vertical (centre) and oblique asymptotes (right).

There are (1) horizontal asymptotes (as x goes to infinity (in either direction (ie also negative (-) infinity)), the curve approaches b which has a constant value), (2) vertical asymptotes (as x (from any direction) approaches c (which has a constant value), the curve proceeds towards infinity (or -infinity) and (3) oblique asymptotes (as x proceeds towards infinity (or -infinity), the curve goes towards a line y=mx+b (m is not 0 as that is a horizontal asymptote).

The logarithmic spiral and the asymptote.

Although usually depicted on a flat plane, a curve may intersect the asymptote an infinite amount of times.  A spiral with a radius is a logarithmic spiral, distinguished by the property of the angle between the tangent and the radius vector being constant (hence the more popular names “equiangular spiral” or “growth spiral”, the latter favored by laissez faire economists.  The shape appears often in the natural environment in objects and phenomenon as otherwise dissimilar as sea-shells, hurricanes and galaxies near (in cosmic terms) and far.  This diagram was posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) by Dr Cliff Pickover (@pickover) who writes the most elegant explanations which help draw the eye to the often otherwise hidden beauty of mathematics.

Zeno of Elea (Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της (circa  490–430 BC)) was a Greek philosopher of the Eleatic school, an ever-shifting aggregation of pre-Socratic thinkers based in the lands around the old colony of Ἐλέα (Elea, in the present day southern Italian region of Campania, then called Magna Graecia).  Among his surviving thoughts were nine musings (now called Zeno's paradoxes) on the nature of reality, the details of which survived only in the writings of others which has led to some speculation perhaps not all came originally from the quill of Zeno.  Although most of the paradoxes revolve around the notion movement is illusory (and thus effortlessly & instantly resolved by every student in their first Philosophy 101 lecture), they are all less about physics than language and mathematics, the most intriguing of them one of the underlying structures of the argument about whether “now” does or can exist, the “ultras” of one faction asserting “now cannot exist” the other that “only now can exist”.  In that spirit, there’s much to suggest Zeno was aware of the absurdity of many of “his” paradoxes and created them as (1) tools of intellectual training for his students and (2) devices to illustrate how ridiculous can be the result if abstraction is pursued far beyond the possibilities of reality (ie not all arguments pursued to their “logical conclusion” produce a “logical” result).  One of Zeno’s paradoxes contains an explanation of why a curve might never reach a straight line, even if that line stretches to infinity: If the curve can at any time move closer to the line only by half the distance required to intersect, then the curve can only ever tend towards the line.  The two will never touch.

Christian von Wolff (circa 1740), mezzotint by Johann Jacob Haid (1704-1767).

The German philosopher Baron Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) was an author whose writings cover an extraordinary range in formal philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and mathematics and were it not for the way in which Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) work has tended to be an intellectual steamroller flattening the history of German Enlightenment rationality, he probably now be better remembered beyond the profession.

What most historians agree is the paradoxes were written to provide some framework supporting Parmenides' (Parmenides of Elea (Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης (circa 515-570 BC)) was a teacher of the younger Zeno) doctrine of monism (that all that exists is one and cannot be changed, separable only descriptively for purposes of explanation).  The word “monism” was coined by Christian von Wolff and first used in English in 1862; it was from the New Latin monismus, from the Ancient Greek μόνος (mónos) (alone).  Spending years contemplating things like monism may be one of the reasons why so many German philosophers went mad.  So the doctrine of monism is one of the oneness and unity of reality, despite the appearance of what seems a most diverse universe.  That “one-thingism” (that one of philosophy’s great contributions to language) attracted political thinkers along the spectrum but most appealed to those who hold there must be a single source of political authority, expressed frequently as the need for the church to be subordinate to the state or vice versa although the differences may be less apparent than defined: the systems imposed by the ayatollahs in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People’s Republic of China structurally more similar than divergent.  Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) once observed that while to political scientists fascism & communism seemed polar opposites, to many living under either the difference may have been something like comparing the North & South Poles, one frozen wilderness much the same as any other.  Arctic geographers would quibble over the details of that but his point was well-understood.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Because of the self-contained, internal beauty, Monism has attracted long attracted political philosophers with axes to grind.  According to Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), “value monism” holds there are discoverable, axiomatic ethical principles from which all ethical knowledge may be derived, that ethical reasoning is algorithmic and mechanical, and that it seeks permanent, “final solutions” (no historical baggage in the phrase) to all ethical conflicts.  Berlin had his agenda and that was to warn monism tends to support political despotism, rejecting Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) argument “asymptotic monism” is not merely compatible with liberty and liberal toleration but actually a prerequisite for these values.  Although the phrase “Kant’s asymptotic monism” appears often, the phrase was never in his writings and is an encapsulation used by later philosophers to describe positions identifiably Kantesque.  His own philosophy has often been called “a form of transcendental idealism” which holds that the mind plays an active role in shaping our experience of the world, one’s individual’s experience of things not a direct reflection of what is but a construct shaped by the categories and concepts one’s minds impose on one’s experience.  Implicit in Kant is there is certainly one, ultimate, objective reality but experience of reality is limited and shaped by one’s cognitive capacities: because one’s experience of reality is always incomplete and imperfect, it can only ever approach a complete understanding of reality.  One’s cognitive capacities might improve but can only ever tend toward and never attain perfection.  Reality is the asymptote, one’s cognitive capacity the curve.

Plangent

Plangent (pronounced plan-juhnt)

(1) Resounding loudly with an expressively plaintive sound (associated especially with the chiming of bells).

(2) Any loud, reverberating sound (now rare and probably obsolete).

(3) Mournful music (regardless of volume).

(4) By extension, in literature and poetry, text which is plaintive, mournful, a lament etc (now used loosely).

(5) By extension, in casual use, a state of mind somewhat short of melancholy.

(6) Beating, dashing, as in the action of breaking waves (obsolete except (rarely) as a literary or poetic device).

1822: From the Latin verb plangent- (stem of plangēns), the present participle of plangere (to beat (in sorrow more than anger)) and third-person plural future active indicative of plangō (I beat (my breast); I lament), from the primitive Indo-European root plak- (to strike).  The origin of the idea was in the “breast-beating” a demonstrable form of grief noted by anthropologists in cultures far removed from European contact so apparently something which evolved independently and possibly inherited from our more distant ancestor species.  Plangent is an adjective, plangency is a noun and plangently is an adverb; the noun plural is plagencies.

Plangent was adopted in English to mean “a loud sound which echoes and is suggestive of a quality of mournfulness”.  It was originally most associated with the bells sounded during funerals or memorial ceremonies.  By the mid-late nineteenth century additional layers of meaning had been absorbed, notably (1) sorrowful or somber music and, (2) prose or poetic verse evocative of such feelings.  So it was linguistic mission creep rather than a meaning shift that saw “plangent” a word to use of sad songs and maudlin poetry.  In the technical sense, the original meaning still resonates; the “haunting peal of a church bell” can be called plangent and a poem which as text on the page may seem emotionless can be rendered startlingly plangent, if spoken in a certain tone and with a feeling for the pause.  In the jargon of some military bands, “the plangent” remains the instruction for the use of percussion to produce the slow, continuous and atonal beat used for funeral marches or somber commemorative ceremonies and this recalls the original use in English: “beating with a loud sound”, from the Latin plangere, (to strike or beat), the idea in antiquity an allusion to the “beating of the breast” associated with grief.  From this developed the general sense of “lament” which has survived and flourished.  The adjectival sense of anything “loud and resounding” is probably obsolete.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Suffering ranging from mild displeasure to dark despair being clearly an inescapable part of the human condition, the synonyms of plangent are legion, the choice dictated by the precise nuance one wishes to capture, the forms including: aching, agonized, anguished, bemoaning, bewailing, bitter, deploring, doleful, dolorous, funereal, grieving, heartbroken, lamentable, longing, lugubrious, mournful, plaintive, regretful, rueful, sorrowful, sorry, wailing, weeping & woeful.  Take your pick.

Long Distance II by Tony Harrison (b 1937)

 Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
 
You couldn't just drop in.  You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
 
He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.
 
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

Shortly before he died, the poet Stephen Spender (1909–1995) wrote that Tony Harrison’s series of elegies for his parents “...was the sort of poetry for which I've been waiting my whole life.”