Mystique

Mystique (pronounced mi-steek)

(1) A framework of doctrines, ideas, beliefs, or the like, constructed around a person or object, endowing the person or object with enhanced value or profound meaning:

(2) The aura of mystery (real, imagined or confected) or mystical power surrounding a particular occupation or pursuit:

1891: A borrowing by English in the sense of “atmosphere of mystery and veneration”, from the French noun & adjective mystique (a mystic; the act of a mystic; the mystical), from the Latin mysticus, from the Ancient Greek μυστικός (mustikós) (secret, mystic), from μύστης (mústēs) (one who has been initiated).  Mystique is a noun; the noun plural is plural mystiques.

A Dangerous Liaison (2008) by Carole Seymour-Jones (1943-2015).

When Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex (1949)) was published by French feminist and social theorist Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), it was recognized almost at once as a landmark in feminist thought but it was in the twenty-first century re-evaluated when gender came to be re-defined as a spectrum rather than a binary.  Of particular interest was de Beauvoir’s mapping of existentialist thought on to the matter, asserting that being a woman was a construct, something obviously dependent on being born female but the product of processes integral to a society in which women had been defined as inferior to men, a tradition she traces back centuries.  The Second Sex and Dr Germaine Greer’s (b 1939) The Female Eunuch (1970) remain the two most important texts of late twentieth century feminism.  De Beauvoir is one of those writers who led a life which many choose to entangle with what she wrote but The Second Sex is best read by allowing the words to prevail.  

However, the complexity of The Second Sex, infused as it was with strands of French structuralism, meant that it lacked accessibility unless a reader had some background in certain philosophical traditions and it was American feminist Betty Friedan’s (1921–2006) The Feminine Mystique (1963) which, by sheer weight of numbers, proved the greater influence politically, many claiming still it was the work responsible for the emergence of second wave feminism.  The Feminine Mystique is by comparison a slight work and although not of excessive length, is thematically repetitious and can be deconstructed as a long social media post about one woman’s discontent with her life, something to which she (not without justification) links the structure of the patriarchal society in which she exists.  That made it a compelling polemic for the receptive millions of women who read it as their own biographies and ensured its success but it also lent second-wave feminism (which greatly the book at least influenced) a distinctly white, Western, middle-class flavor which asked many of the right questions but ignored (rather than deliberately excluded) most of what lay beyond that fashionable but narrow cultural vista.

Jane Birkin and the mystique of the Birkin Bag

The bag lady: Jane Birkin (with her usual straw bag) and Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991) at the premiere of their film Slogan, August 1969.

One well-known example of manufactured mystique is that attached to the Birkin Bag manufactured by the French fashion house Hermès, the origin of which was a chance meeting in 1984 on Paris-London shuttle flight between the English actress Jane Birkin (1946-2023) and Jean-Louis Dumas (1938-2010), then executive chairman Hermès.  Ms Birkin was placing her usual straw bag in the overhead locker when “everything fell out” her belongings scattering over her and Monsieur Dumas.  The inevitable conversation ensued and the pair thrown together by circumstances spent the brief flight designing Ms Birkin’s ideal leather bag for weekend travel, the airline’s sick bags improbably used for the first sketches.  Within months, the Birkin was a Hermès part-number.

Although in her later years Ms Birkin ceased to carry one (it became “just too heavy"), over the last four decades, the Birkin has become a coveted item, much sought by those attracted by its association with pop-culture celebrities and the price-tag which begins somewhere over US$10,000 and can, for a custom unit, extend into six figures.  Although the Birkin range is advertized both in the glossy catalogues and on-line, it’s not a “display item” carried on the shelves of the bricks & mortar stores and it’s long been part of the product’s image that as well as being PoA (price on application), they’re not “for everyone”, Hermès selling them only to someone “suitable”; it’s all part of the mystique.  There has long been speculation about how “real” this mystique may be, the suspicion being that if anyone offers cold hard cash (or its modern equivalent), a store manager would think of their end-of-year bonus and make the sale.  However, in March 2024, two disgruntled (rejected) Birkin customers filed suit in Federal court in California, alleging Hermès was in violation of US antitrust legislation by allowing only those with a “sufficient purchase history” with the company to bag a Birkin.  Essentially, the case hinges on the lure of the right to buy a Birkin being used as an inducement to spend money on shoes, jewellery, scarves and such, the carrot of the bag dangled while the stick is used to force folk to create a “purchase history”.  The suit also noted the company’s sales associates are driving the scheme, thereby gaining benefits for both themselves and Hermès, an important technical point in US antitrust law.

Hermès Birkin 3-en-1: "(1) a canvas clutch topped with the emblematic leather flap, (2) A leather tote with side straps & turnlock and (3) A clutch & tote together recreate the eternal Birkin."  The 3-en-1 is one of many current designs in the range.

Interestingly, it was further alleged the floor staff don’t earn commissions on Birkin bag sales and are instructed to use the handbags only as a device “…to coerce consumers to purchase ancillary products” while only “…those consumers who are deemed worthy of purchasing a Birkin handbag will be shown a Birkin handbag” in a private viewing room.”  Any civilian (ie a non-celebrity or not someone identified as rich) walking into the store and asking to see a Birkin is told they’re “out of stock”.  The lawsuit requested class-action status for thousands of US consumers who bought Hermès goods or were asked to buy them as a prerequisite for buying a Birkin and sought unspecified monetary damages and a court order banning Hermès’s allegedly anti-competitive practices.

A certain, brutish mystique: 1974 Holden Torana L34.

Restrictions on a right to purchase are not unusual.  Ferrari have specified that some of their low-volume models are available only to previous customers and that has sometimes demanded the prior purchase of more than one of the Italian machines.  Whether apocryphal or not, the story is that on more than one occasion, upon being informed of the clause, the buyer would at random pick a Ferrari from the showroom stock and buy it, just to qualify.  Somewhat down the automotive food chain, in 1974 when quietly Holden in Australia introduced their L34 option (a homologation package to ensure certain bits & pieces could be used in racing) for the Torana SL/R 5000, although the thing could be registered for road use, it was specified it could be bought only by holders of a certain level of competition licence issued by CAMS (the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, then the sport's peak regulatory body).  That policy was a pre-emptive strike to ensure there would be no repetition of the moral panic stirred up two years earlier by the tabloid press which claimed the three local manufacturers were selling “160 mph (257 km/h) supercars” to the public, summoning the fear of the usual suspects (males aged 17-25) unleashing these lethal weapons on public roads.  As was often the case in moral panics, the tabloids were being economical with the truth but their campaign spooked the politicians and the manufacturers, the new generation of high-performance machinery swiftly cancelled.  Ironically, when tested, it transpired the L34 package was about durability rather than power or speed and was actually a little slower than a standard SL/R 5000 but the exotic terms & conditions (T&Cs) certainly gained it some mystique.

The Mean Girls (2004) crew on DeviantArt by SBBeauregarde in cosplay mode: Marvel Comics' Mystique.

The Mystique de la Merde 

The word mystique even has a place in what must be one of the darker corners of literary theory.  The term Mystique de la Merde dates from September 1956 when an article by Robert Elliot Fitch (1902-1986) was published in the New Republic.  Fitch was a Congregationalist minister who graduated successively from Yale (1923), the Union Theological Seminary (1926) and Columbia (1929), later becoming a professor of Christian ethics and dean of Berkeley's Pacific School of Religion but he was interested also in literary theory, often as a device by which he could explore the decline in Western society associated with God’s withdrawal from the place.  Fitch’s Mystique de la Merde wasn’t literally “the mystique of shit” but a description of what he detected in literature (and therefore life in general) as “a preoccupation with the seamier, muddier, bloodier aspects of life, as well as, excessively, with sex and money.”  Befitting the decline of civilization, Mystique de la Merde was a deliberately more vulgar version of Nostalgie de la boue (nostalgia for mud), a phrase coined in 1855 by French dramatist Émile Augier (1820–1889) meaning “an attraction for low-life culture, experience, and degradation (in individuals, institutions & culture).”

In his New Republic piece, Fitch started as he intended to continue: "…perhaps we should take note of a brand of piety which may best be characterized as the mystique de la merde. This might be rendered in English as the deification of dirt, or the apotheosis of ordure, or just plain mud mysticism.  At any rate it provides a label for a sectarian cult which appears to have attracted some of the best talent in contemporary literature."  He nominated Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) as a founding father of the cult (he must have been tempted to call him the “high priest”) in whose writing he identified a surfeit of “…fertility, money, blood and iron."  One sex was stirred into that mix (as Hemmingway did), one has, as Fitch noted: all “…the basic ingredients of ultimate reality" as seen by the merde mystics.

Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, 1952.  F Scott Fitzgerald's (1896–1940) wife Zelda (1900–1948) described Hemmingway's novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) as "Bull fighting, bull slinging, and bullshit".  Had she lived, she may have found "Mystique de la Merde" a needless gloss.

Writing in the milieu of the beat generation writers, Fitch observed that in handling what clearly was a literary phenomenon, the critic was at some disadvantage because while writers could function on the “four letter [word] level”, “…the critic must stick to three-syllable words.”  He concluded, presumably not without regret, that: “When we have become honest, we discover that the reigning God is only a devil in disguise" and the real reason for this is that God “…has made us unhappy.”  He cites Mrs Evans in Eugene O'Neill’s (1888–1953) soliloquy heavy Strange Interlude (1928) who affirms that the only good thing is being happy: “I used to be a great one for worrying about what's God and what's devil, but I got richly over it… being punished for no sin but loving much.”  One suspects Fitch might have written a critique of the early twenty-first century with some relish.

Atomism

Atomism (pronounced at-uh-miz-uhm)

(1) In philosophy, an ancient theory, developed by Democritus and expounded by Lucretius, that the ultimate constituents of all matter in the universe are atoms which are minute, discrete, finite, and indivisible elements; also called atomic theory.

(2) In psychology, a method or theory that reduces all psychological phenomena to simple elements; that experiences and mental states are composed of elementary units.

(3) Within the sciences, any of a number of theories that hold that some objects or phenomena can be explained as constructed out of a small number of distinct types of simple indivisible entities; any theory that holds that an understanding of the parts is logically prior to an understanding of the whole.  These theories can be grouped under the rubric of reductionism

1670–1680: The construct was atom + -ism.  Atom was from the Middle English attome from the Middle French athome, from the Latin atomus (smallest particle), from the Ancient Greek ἄτομον & ἄτομος (átomos & átomon) (indivisible; uncuttable), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) +‎ τέμνω (témnō) (I cut).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

Many English nouns to which -ism is attached are loans from Ancient Greek (mostly via Latin and French).  In Late Latin, the -ismus suffix became the ordinary ending for names of religions and ecclesiastical or philosophical systems, a trend continued in Medieval Latin and from the sixteenth century, such formations became common in English although, until the eighteenth century, the use was usually restricted to either root words from Ancient Greek & Latin or proper names.   By the nineteenth century, the creation of “isms” began to expand and by the twentieth, coinages took no account of previous rules and conventions.  Atomism & atomist are nouns, atomistic & atomistical are adjectives and atomistically is an adverb; the noun plural is atoms.

Atoms and voids

Atomism was a philosophical theory which suggested the universe consisted of indivisible, minute particles known as atoms and the idea was ancient, the first known writings on the matter those of the Ancient Greek philosopher Leucippus who was born during the fifth century BC but it was his better-known pupil Democritus (circa 460-370 BC) who developed and systematized the ideas.  What emerged was the theory that the two diametrically opposed constituents of the universe are indivisible entities: the void and the atom.  Democritus regarded a void as being literally nothing whereas atoms were matter and intrinsically unchangeable; an atom moving about in the void and sometimes combining into clusters although, being separated by the void, they cannot fuse, but instead bounce off one another when they collide.  It was the origin of the understanding that in the material world, objects are transitory because they change as their constituent atoms shift or become detached; matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed into something else.  To the philosopher, it meant everything we experience in the universe is doomed; it’s a question just of when it ends and how.  That’s sometimes expressed as “nothing lasts forever” and in a practical sense that’s correct but what was left unanswered (though not unexplored) was (1) whether the atoms survived no matter what and (2) whether the voids remained or became transformed into a singularity with an undetermined future.

Helpfully for some, the atomists’ postulation of the indivisible atom also provided a solution to one of the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea (circa 495–430 BC): that if magnitudes can be divided to infinity, it becomes impossible for movement to happen because the object would have to traverse an infinite number of spaces in a finite time.  If an atom is the point at which division is impossible, the dilemma, which admittedly occurs only in Philosophy 101 classes, dissolves.  Other problems however persisted because there was nothing to disprove the proposition an atom could infinitely be divided into progressively smaller parts and obviously such a process could be described mathematically, numbers extending infinitely in each direction from what would come to be called zero.

Atomism: Atomic Kitten, EMI promotional poster, 1999.

The notion all matter is composed of tiny, indivisible (and indestructible) particles called atoms (from a Greek form meaning “indivisible” or “uncuttable” endured well in both Western and Eastern traditions although there were those who resisted and clung to the model of continuous matter, something which would have seemed compelling obvious based on observation.  What the thinkers from Antiquity left however was something speculative and, given the technology of the time, wholly unsupported by empirical evidence but with the advances which followed the Enlightenment, there was renewed interest in what was at the time known variously as “modern” or “revival” atomism and the first structured theories emerged in the early 1800s.  Indeed, the diagrams and explanations which became widely available early in the twentieth century really made the atomic structure understandable (at least conceptually) even to those with no background which was fine until the shock of quantum mechanics, papers and discussions about which began to circulate in the 1920s.  Quite a jump in the understanding of atoms and sub-atomic particles, quantum theory did not describe atoms as solid, billiard ball-like objects but rather as probabilistic entities with wave-like properties, the most challenging implication of that being that such a thing could simultaneously be in two places (points in space) at the same time (points in time).  For those brought up on the neat little diagrams of the atom, it was quite a challenge to visualize those two points in space being possibly on opposite sides of the universe.

Etiquette

Etiquette (pronounced et-i-kit or et-i-ket)

(1) A construct both culturally specific and culturally variable which is a codification of the requirements as to social behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion (and thus often exists as sub-sets which can in detail be contradictory).

(2) A prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of procedure, ceremonies et al in any formal environment (courts, investitures et al).

(3) An accepted (and sometimes in whole or in part codified) set of rules of ethical behavior relating to professional practice or the conduct between members of the profession.

(4) The expected behavior in certain situations (surfing; golf etc) and enforced according to prevailing standards.

(5) A label used to indicate a letter is to be sent by airmail (the French par avion (by airplane).

1730–1740: From the French étiquette (property, a little piece of paper, or a mark or title, affixed to a bag or bundle, expressing its contents, a label, ticket; a memorandum), from the Middle French estiquette (ticket, label, memorandum), from the Old French verbs estechier, estichier, estequier estiquier & estiquer (to attach, stick), from the Frankish stekan, stikkan & stikjan (to stick, pierce, sting), from the Proto-Germanic stikaną, stikōną & staikijaną (to be sharp, pierce, prick), from the primitive Indo-European steyg or teyg- (to be sharp, to stab).  It was akin to the Old High German stehhan (to stick, attach, nail) (which endures in Modern German as stechen (to stick)) and the Old English stician (to pierce, stab, be fastened).  Etiquette is a noun and etiquettal is an adjective; the noun plural is etiquettes.

The most attractive story of the origin of etiquette in its modern form is that the groundskeepers tending the gardens & parks at the Palace of Versailles became annoyed at the casual way the courtiers attached to the household of Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715) would walk across their lovingly manicured lawns.  In response the gardeners would erect stakes onto which they would pin étiquettes (literally “little cards”) warning transgressors to “Keep off the Grass”.  Unfortunately, although there’s no doubt the signs did exist at Versailles and the legend is even Louis XIV dutifully complied, they were not the origin of “etiquette” in its modern sense.

The reverence for lawns however outlasted the Ancien Régime, Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna, the revolutions of the nineteenth century, wars, occupations and five republics and Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012).  On visits to Paris, tourists who have since high school neglected their French sometimes see the signs Pelouse au repos in parks which they translate as “place to rest”, only to be harangued by an angry attendant, pointing and ordering them back to the pavement.  The actual translation is “the lawn is resting” and any other country would include “Keep off the Grass” in English (the world’s lingua franca) but that’s not the French way.  In the hierarchy of Gaelic officialdom, the part inspectors are said to be worse than the parking police but not as bad as the stewards patrolling the spectator areas at the annual Le Mans 24 hour endurance race, their officiousness something to behold as gleefully they enjoy being cloaked in their brief authority.

The exact history remains murky but etymologists seem most convinced the word in its modern sense can be traced to the seventeenth century Spanish royal court which, impressed by the ritualized forms of the Hapsburg monarchy in Vienna, had officials record a list of the rules and procedures covering dress, orders of procedure in ceremonies, forms of dress and so on.  There were printed on cards distributed to functionaries and others so they would know what to do and when.  From this, the Spanish court became one of Europe’s better behaved royal operations and from the French etiquette (label, ticket etc), the Spanish form was etiqueta.  Simultaneously, many army barracks had such labels nailed to the walls (France étiquettes, In Spain etiquetas, in Italy etichette) containing the relevant instructions for the soldiers.  However, it’s thought the use in the royal court was the most influential and from this evolved the concept of etiquette which has developed into a list of the rules or formalities signifying the socially accepted rules of behavior and decorum.  Not all agree with the Spaniards getting the credit and some trace it back to well before Louis XIV but all seem to agree it was one royal court or another.

There has for centuries been an industry in publishing “etiquette guides” (the first seem to have appeared in sixteenth century Italy) and that many have been issued with titles such as “Modern Etiquette” or “American Etiquette” which does suggest what is regarded as acceptable is subject to change although the very notion of etiquette is highly nuanced; what is acceptable in one context can be social death in another.  Nor is necessary even to purchase a book because the internet is awash with guides on the matter but as an indication that both formats may just be scratching the surface, there are finishing schools in Switzerland which offer six-week courses for US$34,000.  Presumably essential for daughters being prepared for husband hunting, the six-week duration does hint there’s more to it than mastering the use of the flatware arrayed at dinner and knowing whether it’s a properly a napkin or serviette.  Even more essential that learning those details, what such courses can impart is the essential skill to be able to identify those who are and are not “one of us”; group identity as important to the rich as it is to supporters of football clubs.

Surely only a matter of time.

The model of eitquette has been used to coin a few amusing forms including netiquette (the construct being (inter)net + et(iquette)) which was documented as early as 1993 (the dawn of the world wide web) and referred to the “appropriate style and manners to be used when communicating on the internet).  Some of this early (often doomed) attempt to imposed civility on digital communication survives including the warning that the use of capital letters conveys SHOUTING.  Chatiquette is a similar set of rules, specific to chatrooms.  Jetiquette lists the standards of acceptable behavior expected of passengers travelling on a commercial airline) (arm-rest ownership, the politics of the reclining seat, the matter of socks and bare feet and all that).  Hatiquette defines the etiquette attached to the wearing of hats and it’s a complex business because what’s obligatory in one place is a sin against fashion in another.  It goes back a long way: After the passing of the UK’s Reform Act (1832) which extended the franchise, permitting the entry to parliament by lower reaches of the middle class, the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) cast his eye on the benches of the House of Commons and pronounced he’d “never seen such bad hats”.  Reddiquette describes the proper conduct to be followed on the website Reddit and it takes not long to work out not all redditors comply, any more than they take seriously the moderators’ rules on their sub-reddits.  In the narrow technical sense Wikiquette is the etiquette dictating how one should behave when working on a wiki (a type of database; there are many Wikis) but it’s used almost exclusively of Wikipedia, the open access online encyclopaedia.  Debtiquette sets out the rules of debt and deals both with owing something and being owed; it seems more to be about non-financial debts, the rules for which are fairly well defined in law. 

Epistle

Epistle (pronounced ih-pis-uhl)

(1) Text in the form of a letter (written classically in verse), especially a formal or didactic one; written communication.

(2) One of the New Testament’s apostolic letters of the Saints Paul, Peter, James, Jude, or John (usually with initial capital letter).

(3) An extract, usually from one of the Epistles of the New Testament, forming part of the Eucharistic service in certain churches (usually with initial capital letter).

(4) A literary work in letter form, especially a dedicatory verse letter of a type originated by the Roman lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC).

(5) A letter, especially one which is formal or issued publicly (now usually literary or ironic).

(6) A letter of dedication addressed to a patron, inspiration or reader, published as a preface to a literary work (associated with a qualifying word, as in epistle dedicatory); now usually a historic reference. 

Pre 900: From the Middle English epistel, epistole & pistel (letter; literary work in letter form; written legend or story; spoken communication), from the Old English epistol, epistola & pistol (letter, epistle), from the Latin epistola (letter, epistle; literary work in letter form) (from the came the Late Latin epistola (one of the letters by an apostle in the New Testament)), from the Ancient Greek ἐπῐστολή (epistolḗ) (letter; message), from ἐπῐστέλλω (epistéllō) (to inform by, or to send, a letter or message), the construct being ἐπῐ- (epi-) (the prefix meaning "on, upon" and ultimately from the primitive Indo-European hepi (at; near; on)) + στέλλω (stéllō) (to dispatch, send (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European stel- (to locate; to place, put))) + -η (-ē) (the suffix forming action nouns).  The familiar and specific sense of "letter from an apostle forming part of canonical scripture" dates from circa 1200.  It was in use as the Anglo-Norman epistle and the Middle French epistle, epistele & epistole (letter; (Christianity)).  As well as one of the letters by an apostle in the New Testament, it referred to also an extract from (or something inspired by) such a letter read as part of the Mass.  The verb was derived from the noun.  The synonym pistle has been extinct since the eighteenth century (and even then it seems mostly to have been used as ecclesiastical shorthand).  Epistle is a noun & verb, epistolary is a noun & adjective, epistoler, epistolarian, epistolographist, epistolography & epistler are nouns, epistolical is an adjective; the noun plural is epistles.  

Although the use in Biblical translation long ago created the general impression an "epistle" was something associated exclusively with scripture, long goa (and still in the technical language of literature), an epistle was a poem addressed to a friend or patron; a letter in the form of verse and the classic distinction was between (1) the moral & philosophically thematic such as  Horace's Epistles and (2) the romantic (the sentimental according to sterner critics) (such as Ovid's (43 BC–17 AD) Heroides).  Throughout the Middle Ages, it was the romantic which was the more popular form and historians link the form with the evolution of the theories of courtly love which would remain influential in fiction for centuries.  During the Renaissance and thereafter however it was the Horatian tradition which began to prevail, the Italian poets Petrarch (1304–1374) and Italian Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) both working in this vein although the latter also wrote romantic tracts.  Historians usually attribute to Ben Jonson (circa 1572-circa 1637) the first use in English of the Horatian mode in The Forest (1616) although elements can be identified in works by earlier authors.  The Forest, a collection of fifteen verses is actually a quite pragmatic work, typical of what emerged from the quills of many compelled to please those who supported them in than most of the poems were addressed to the gentry who were Jonson's patrons aristocratic supporters, but there's also the more personal To Celia.  Content providers having to respond to algorithms sounds like something which belongs to the TikTok era but the effect has long been exerted.  John Dryden (1631–1700), William Congreve (1670–1729), Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) refined the form in English and not uncritically, Congreve especially scathing about some of Jonson's metaphysical meanderings but it was Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in Moral Essays (1731-1735) and the memorable satire An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot which modern critics tend to regard as the finest; readers can draw their own conclusions about that but there would be few who would deny Pope is the most fun.  After the rise of the novel, the tradition fell from favor although poets would continue to find it useful and WH Auden's (1907-1973) Letter to Lord Byron (1936) illustrates why; the mix of light and dark in the piece reminding one the Biblical translators use the word has infused that something of that into the meaning.        

Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1)

Many of the books of the New Testament are actually letters and Biblical scholars describe them both as letters and epistles, apparently usually with an eye to their audience rather than the content or implied meaning; they’re often a curious mixture of Christian teaching and other matters specific to those to whom they were addressed.  Paul's second letter is thought to have been written circa 56 AD, shortly after he penned the first and was addressed to the Christian community in city of Corinth, a major trading centre which, although by then noted for its rich artistic and philosophic traditions, was notorious also as a place also of vice and depravity.  It was this last aspect that compelled Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church and in it, sharply he rebuked them for permitting immoral practices in their community; in response, the Corinthians had cracked-down on some of the worst excesses and Paul wrote his second letter to congratulate them on their reforms and even commended forgiving sinners and welcoming them back to the flock.  Harsh though his words could be, Paul’s preference tends always towards restoration, not punishment.  The letter then discusses some sometimes neglected characteristics of the Christian church such as generosity to others and devotes time to defending himself against attacks on his ministry, reminding the Corinthians both of his own poverty and the harsh reality of what it meant to be a minister of Christ in the Roman empire: beatings, imprisonment, hunger, and the constant threat of death.  Because of the discursive range of topics and the changes in tone throughout this letter, some Biblical scholars have suggested that this is a compilation of several different letters or even the work of a number of authors.

The First & Second Epistles to the Corinthians are among the most quoted parts of the Bible.  In the design of one of her tattoos, Lindsay Lohan was drawn to 1 Corinthians 13:4. 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (King James Version (KJV, 1611)):

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

More contemporary English is used in the New International Version (NIV, (1978)):

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

Entropy

Entropy (pronounced en-truh-pee)

(1) In thermodynamics,  the capacity factor for thermal energy that is hidden with respect to temperature; an expression of the dispersal of energy; a measure of the energy is spread out in a process, or how widely spread out it becomes, at a specific temperature.

(2) In thermodynamics (on a macroscopic scale), a function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy not available for work during a thermodynamic process (a closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy).

(3) In statistical mechanics, a measure of the randomness of the microscopic constituents of a thermodynamic system (symbol=S).  Technically, a statistical measure of the disorder of a closed system expressed by S = k log P + c where P is the probability that a particular state of the system exists, k is the Boltzmann constant, and c is another constant).  Expressed as joules per kelvin, it's essentially a measure of the information and noise present in a signal.

(4) In data transmission and information theory, an expression of specific efficiency, a measure of the loss of information in a transmitted signal or message.

(5) In cosmology, a hypothetical tendency for the universe to attain a state of maximum homogeneity in which all matter is at a uniform temperature (heat death).

(6) In political science, a doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration; the tendency of a system that is left to itself to descend into chaos (this definition widely used literally and figuratively in many fields.

(7) In modeling theory and applied modeling, a lack of pattern or organization; a state of marked disorder; a measure of the disorder present in a system.

1867: From the German Entropie, coined in 1865 by German physicist and mathematician Rudolph Clausius (1822–1888) by analogy with Energie (energy), replacing the root of Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon) (work) by the Ancient Greek τροπή (tropḗ) (transformation).  The Ancient Greek ἐντροπία (entropía) (a turning towards) is from energie, the construct being en (in) + trope (a turning, a transformation) from the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn).  Rudolph Clausius had for years been working on his theories before he coined the word Entropie to describe what he had been calling "the transformational content of the body."  The new word encapsulated the second law of thermodynamics as "the entropy of the universe tends toward a maximum" but Clausius thought the concept better illustrated by the mysterious disgregation (an series of equations explaining dissolution at the particle level), another of his coinings which never caught on in the same way.  Entropy & entropology are nouns, entropic is an adjective and entropically is an adverb; the noun plural is entropes.  The synonym entropia is an internationalism rarely used in English.

Entropy describes uncertainty or disorder in a system and, in casual use, refers to degradation or disorder in any situation, or to chaos, disorganization, or randomness in general.  In a technical sense, it is the gradual breakdown of energy and matter in the universe and is an important part of several theories which postulate how the universe will end.  The laws of thermodynamics describe the relationships between thermal energy, or heat, and other forms of energy, and how energy affects matter.  The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; the total quantity of energy in the universe stays the same. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about the quality of energy.  It states that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is wasted. The second law also states there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state; at a microscopic level, if a system is isolated, any natural process in that system progresses in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy, of the system.  The second law also predicts the end of the universe, implying the universe will end when everything becomes the same temperature. This is the ultimate level of entropy; if everything is the same temperature, nothing can happen and energy can manifest only as the random motion of atoms and molecules.  Time would stop immediately after the point at which, for the first time since the point at which the big bang happened, everything was happening at the same time.

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

The term entropology is a portmanteau word (the construct of the blend being entrop(y) +‎ (anthrop)ology) which was 1955 coined by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) whose theories and models even today continue to underpin some of the framework of structural anthropology, the debt to him acknowledged by structuralists in many fields and apart from all else, in the social sciences, words like entropology are much admired.  It first appeared in his book Tristes Tropiques (Sad Tropics (1955)) a text itself structurally interesting, being in part travelogue, research paper and memoir, interspersed with philosophical musing on music, literature, history, architecture and sociology; these days it’d be called post-modern.  The essence of entropology is that the transformative path of human cultures (the sometimes separate, sometime parallel notion of “civilization” seemed not to trouble Lévi-Strauss) is inherently corrosive & disruptive.  It seemed a grim thesis but it must be admitted that by 1955, there was plenty of evidence to support his view.

A probably inaccurate representation of nothing.

The idea of nothing, in a universal sense in which literally nothing (energy, matter, space or time) exists is difficult to imagine, imaginable presumably only as infinite blackness although even that would seem to imply the spatial.  That nothingness is perhaps impossible to imagine or visualize doesn’t however prove it’s impossible but the mere fact matter, energy and time now exist in space does imply that because, were there ever nothing, it’s a challenge to explain how anything could have, from nothing, come into existence.  Despite that, it would be interesting if cosmologists could attempt to describe the mathematics of a model which would describe what conditions would have to prevail in order for there truly to be nothing.  That may or may not be possible but might be an interesting basis from which to work for those trying to explain things like dark matter & dark energy, either or both of which also may or may not exist.  Working with the existing universe seems not to be helpful in developing theories about the nature of all this supposedly missing (or invisible) matter and energy whereas were one, instead of working backwards as it were, instead to start with nothing and then work out how to add what seems to be missing (while remaining still not visible), the result might be interesting.

Hypnopompic

Hypnopompic (pronounced hip-nuh-pom-pik)

Of or relating to the state of consciousness between sleep and becoming fully awake.

1897: The construct was hypno-, from the Ancient Greek ὕπνος (húpnos) (sleep) + the Ancient Greek πομπή (pomp(ḗ)), (a sending away) +‎ -ic.  The -ic suffix was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); a doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The word was coined in the sense of “pertaining to the state of consciousness when awaking from sleep” by Frederic WH Myers (1843-1901), the construct being from hypno- (sleep) + the second element from the Greek pompe (sending away) from pempein (to send).  The word was introduced in Glossary of Terms used in Psychical Research, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xii (1896-1897 supplement), an organization founded by Myers.  Hypnopompic & hypnopompia were thought to be necessary as companion (in the sense of “bookend”) terms to hypnagogic & hypnagogia (Illusions hypnagogiques) which are the “vivid illusions of sight or sound (sometimes referred to as “faces in the dark”) which sometimes accompany the prelude to the onset of sleep.  Hypnopompic is an adjective and hypnopompia is a noun; the noun plural is hypnopompias.

Frederic Myers was a philologist with a great interest in psychical matters, both the orthodox science and aspects like the work of mediums who would “contact the spirits of the dead”, the latter, while not enjoying much support in the scientific establishment, was both taken seriously and practiced by a remarkable vista of “respectable society”.  Mediums enjoyed a burst in popularity in the years immediately after World War I (1914-1918) when there was much desire by grieving wives & mothers to contact dead husbands and sons and some surprising figures clung to beliefs in such things well into the twentieth century.  In the early 1960s, a reunion of surviving pilots from the Battle of Britain (1940) was startled when their wartime leader and former head of Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding (1882–1970), told them: “regularly he communicated with the spirits of their fallen comrades”.  Myers also had what might now be called a “varied” love life although it’s said in his later life his interest was restricted to women, including a number of mediums, all reputed to be “most fetching”.

In the profession, while acknowledging the potential usefulness in things like note-taking in a clinical environment, few psychologists & psychiatrists appear to regard hypnopompia & hypnagogia as separate phenomena, both understood as the imagery, sounds and strange bodily feelings sometimes felt when in that state between sleep and being fully awake.  In recent years, as the very definition of “sleep” has increasingly been segmented, the state in some literature has also been referred to both as “stage 1 sleep” & “quiet wakefulness” although the former would seem to be most applicable to falling asleep (hypnagogia) rather than waking up (hypnopompia).  Still, the distinction between what’s usually a late night versus an early morning thing does seem of some significance, especially that most in the discipline of the science of sleep (now quite an industry) seem to concede wake-sleep & sleep-wake transitions are not fully understood; nor are the associated visual experiences and debate continues about the extent to which they should (or can) be differentiated from other dream-states associated with deeper sleep.

Waking in a hypnopompic state: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022).

One striking finding is that so few remember hypnopompic & hypnagogic imagery and that applies even among those who otherwise have some ability to recall their dreams.  What’s often reported by subjects or patients is the memory is fleeting and difficult to estimate in duration and that while the memory is often sustained for a short period after “waking”, quickly it vanishes.  An inability to recall one’s dreams in not unusual but this behavior is noted also for those with a sound recollection of the dreams enjoyed during deeper sleep states.  What seems to endure is a conceptual sense of what has been “seen”: faces known & unknown, fragmentary snatches of light and multi-dimensional geometric shapes.  While subjects report they “know” they have “seen” (and also “heard”) more fully-developed scenes, their form, nature or even the predominate colors prove usually elusive.  Despite all this, it’s not uncommon for people to remark the hypnopompic experience is “pleasant”, especially the frequently cited instances of floating, flying or even a separation from the physical body, something which seems more often called “trippy” than “scary”.

For some however, the hypnopompic & hypnagogic experience can be recalled, haunting the memory and the speculation is that if “nightmarish” rather than “dream-like”, recollection is more likely, especially if associated with “paralyzed hypnogogia or hypnopompia” in which a subject perceives themselves “frozen”, unable to move or speak while the experience persists (for centuries a reported theme in “nightmares).  Observational studies are difficult to perform to determine the length of these events but some work in neurological monitoring seems to suggest what a patient perceives as lasting some minutes may be active for only seconds, the implication being a long “real-time” experience can be manufactured in the brain in a much shorter time and the distress can clinically be significant.  For this reason, the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) regards hypnagogia & hypnopompia as something similar to synaesthesia (where a particular sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation; things like letters being associated with colors) or certain sexual fetishes (which were once classified as mental disorders) in that they’re something which requires a diagnosis and treatment only if the condition is troubling for the patient.  In the fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5 (2013)), hypnagogia anxiety was characterized by intense anxiety symptoms during this state, disturbing sleep and causing distress; it’s categorized with sleep-related anxiety disorders.

The Nightmare (1781), oil on canvas by the Swiss-English painter John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Detroit Institute of Arts.  It's a popular image to use to illustrate something "nightmare related".

When the political activist Max Eastman (1883–1969) visited Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in Vienna in 1926, he observed a print of Fuseli's The Nightmare, hung next to Rembrandt's  (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) The Anatomy Lesson.  Although well known for his work on dream analysis (although it’s the self-help industry more than the neo-Freudians who have filled the book-shelves), Freud never mentions Fuseli's famous painting in his writings but it has been used by others in books and papers on the subject.  The speculation is Freud liked the work (clearly, sometimes, a painting is just a painting) but nightmares weren’t part of the intellectual framework he developed for psychoanalysis which suggested dreams (apparently of all types) were expressions of wish fulfilments while nightmares represented the superego’s desire to be punished; later he would refine this with the theory a traumatic nightmare was a manifestation of “repetition compulsion”.  The juxtaposition of sleeping beauty and goblin provoked many reactions when first displayed and encouraged Fuseli to paint several more versions.  The Nightmare has been the subject of much speculation and interpretation, including the inevitable debate between the Freudians and Jungians and was taken as a base also by political cartoonists, a bunch more nasty in earlier centuries than our more sanitized age.

Aberrant & Aberration

Aberrant (pronounced uh-ber-uhnt or ab-er-uhnt)

(1) Departing from the normal or usual course.

(2) In zoology & botany, deviating from the ordinary, natural type; an exceptional or abnormal example (which can be applied to an individual specimen or an entire species, in the case of the latter the aberrant point producing a new normative type).

(3) As a moral judgement, straying from the right way; deviating from morality or truth.

1560-1610: From the Latin aberrant (stem of aberrāns), present participle of aberrāre (to deviate), present active participle of aberrō (go astray; err), the construct being ab- (from) + errō (to wander).  The word was rare prior to the mid-nineteenth century when it became widely used in botany and zoology to describe any example deviating from the ordinary or natural type in the sense of producing something exceptional or abnormal and the seminal text in this context is of course Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) On the Origin of Species (1859) although he and others had previously published work in this vein: “The more aberrant any form is, the greater must have been the number of connecting forms which, on my theory, have been exterminated.”  Despite the origins of the construct in Latin seeming to suggest something associated with “error”, and that does appear to have been the flavor of the original sixteenth century sense, it was always possible for the word to be used as a neutral descriptor (something differing from the norm).  Certainly, in zoology & botany, something aberrant was merely something different and of necessity there was no notion of good or bad although that certainly could be ascribed.

It was by the mid-eighteenth century that the notion of the “aberrant” became so associated with “aberrant sexual conduct” (especially homosexuality), lending the word a loading which it carries to this day and as an expression of disapprobation based on moral or religious constructs, the synonym most often appropriate in this is “deviant” (from that defined as normative) and it’s often used in conjunction with “abhorrent” or “abomination” which carries some Old Testament baggage.  Essentially, when borrowed by the moralists from the scientists, it came to mean “deviating from morality or truth”, that somewhat removed from a shrub known for its red flowers beginning to yield purple.  In some uses it is definitely neutral such as astronomy where it describes behaviour which is novel, unexpected or unique.  The synonyms (and these vary in utility according to context) historically included strange, abnormal, atypical exceptional, bizarre, different, odd, unusual, and later devious, errant, immoral, psycho, weird, deviant, flaky, mental, peculiar & queer (in senses both ancient & modern).  Aberrant is a noun & adjective, aberrance & aberrancy are adjectives and aberrantly is an adverb; the noun plural is aberrant.

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

Aberration (pronounced ab-uh-rey-shun)

(1) The act of departing from the right, normal, or usual course.

(2) The act of deviating from the ordinary, usual, or normal type.

(3) Mental irregularity or disorder, especially of a minor or temporary nature; lapse from a sound mental state.  Most often associated in the literature with wandering; deviation and divergence.

(4) In astronomy, the apparent displacement of a celestial body due to the (5) finite speed of light and the motion of the observer with the earth.

(6) In optics, any disturbance of the rays of a pencil of light such that they can no longer be brought to sharp focus or form clear images.

(7) In photography, a defect in a camera lens or lens system, due to flaws in design, material, or construction, that can distort the image.  These are usually classified into spherical and chromatic aberrations.

1585-1595; From Late Latin aberrātiōn (stem of aberrātiō) from the Classical Latin aberrationem (nominative aberratio) and equivalent to aberrātus, noun of action from past-participle stem of aberrāre.  The meaning in Latin appears never to have shifted from a literal “wandering or straying or losing one’s way”, no figurative flourishes ever found in surviving texts.  The modern meaning in English (deviation from normative types) was in use by at least 1846.  Aberration is a noun; the verb aberrate is rare to the point of being almost unused.  Aberration & aberrationality are nouns, aberrate & aberrating are verbs, aberrational is an adjective, aberrated is an adjective & verb and aberrationally is an adverb; the noun plural is aberrations.  Except in scientific use, the verbs aberrate & aberrating are rare while abberated remains in occasional use

Until the release Broken English (1979), Marianne Faithfull’s discography had been a predictable pastiche of any number of “girl” singers of the 1960s, the music rarely original, usually melodic and pleasing but never with an arrangement which could suggest her voice could be called “interpretative”.  Faithless (1978, a repackaged re-release of Dreamin' My Dreams (1976)) was representative of her output, being inoffensive and unmemorable but Broken English was so startlingly different that some reviewers assumed it was a kind of aberration.  Subsequent material however confirmed there had been a change of direction, her troubled years resulting in a voice which was described usually as “gin soaked” and the repertoire selected to suit.  Thought aberrant at the time, Broken English proved no aberration. 

Sir Billy Snedden (1926–1987) who, at 61, breathed his last in a Travelodge at Sydney's Rushcutters Bay, in the company of a somewhat younger woman who was his son’s ex-girlfriend, an event recorded on what was perhaps the Melbourne Truth's most memorable front page.  Remarkably, despite decades of speculation, her identity has never publicly been confirmed but it's thought Sir Billy's last liaison was something habitual rather than a temporary aberration.

Politicians like the word aberration because it’s an abstract way of suggesting something “really didn’t happen” and if it did it was someone else’s fault.  When the Labor Party won the 1972 Australian general election after having spent 23 years in opposition, one of the head-kickers from the ousted Liberal Party suggested it was “a temporary aberration” and once this unfortunate filing error was fixed, things would get back to normal.  That theory needed some nuancing when the Liberals, although making some gains, failed to win the next election in 1974, the revised opinion now it was “a temporary aberration by the voters in Sydney & Melbourne”.  That comment attracted some wry comment about “politicians in denial” but the Liberals seemed to have a point when, in 1975, the two big cities also realised their mistake, the Labor administration swept from office in a landslide, an election in which, uniquely, every seat swung against the government.  There were special circumstances surrounding the 1975 election, just as there had been an unusual conjunction of electoral conditions between 1949-1972 when Labor endured their long stint in opposition.  However, the comment which attracted the most derision in the second “aberration” election was that of the Liberal leader Sir Billy Snedden who, after pondering the results, announced: “We didn’t lose the election; we just didn’t get enough seats to win”.  There was much laughter at that but actually, up to a point, Snedden had a point because there have been a number of elections where the losers gained more votes that the winners including the UK in 1951, Australia in 1961 and of course, Crooked Hillary Clinton in 2016.