Retard

Retard (pronounced ri-tahrd and ree-tahrd (depending on definition))

(1) To make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process etc); hinder or impede (pronounced ri-tahrd).

(2) To be delayed (pronounced ri-tahrd).

(3) a slowing down, diminution, or hindrance, as in a machine (pronounced ri-tahrd).

(4) A contemptuous term of US origin (as a clipping of “mental retardation”) used to refer to a person who is cognitively impaired (now disparaging & offensive slang) (pronounced ree-tahrd).

(5) A person who is stupid, obtuse, or ineffective in some way (now disparaging & offensive slang) (pronounced ree-tahrd).

(6) In the tuning and maintenance of internal combustion engines, an adjustment made in the setting of the distributor so the spark for ignition in each combustion chamber is generated later in the cycle; the opposite procedure is “to advance” (pronounced ri-tahrd).

(7) In physics, as retarded, designating a parameter of an electromagnetic field which is adjusted to account for the finite speed of radiation (pronounced ri-tahr-did).

1480–1490: From the Old French retarder, from the Latin retardāre (to delay, protract), the construct being re- + tardāre (to loiter, to make slow; to be slow), from tardus (slow, sluggish, late, lingering; dull, stupid, slow-witted) (of unknown origin but one etymologist suggests it may have some relationship to the Etruscan), from which English gained tardy (late to arrive; slow in action).  The re- prefix is from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be” and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.

Retard is a noun & verb (used with and without object), retardation is a noun, retarded & retardative are adjectives, retarding is a verb and retardingly an adverb.  The (now proscribed except in historic reference) noun plural was retards; retardings remaining acceptable when used in science and engineering.  Words related in meaning in these later contexts include choke off, crimp, decelerate, hamper, handicap, impede, lessen, arrest, baffle, balk, bog, brake, check, choke, clog, dawdle, decrease, defer, delay & detain.

The general sense of “delayed; delayed in development, hindered; impeded” dates from the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth was absorbed into the early technical language of psychology (having mental retardation; mentally deficient or underdeveloped) as a clipping of “mentally retarded”.  Later it was part of the formalized system of classification of intelligence, a retard defined as having an IQ below 70.  From the jargon of the profession it was picked up in twentieth century US colloquial use to describe (1) those then defined as mentally retarded, (2) those thought stupid and (3) a derogatory term to be applied as wished.  From the 1980s it came to be regarded as offensive, use disapproved of in polite society.

President John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) addressing the thirteenth annual convention luncheon of the National Association for Retarded Children (NARC). Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC, 24 October 1963.

The names used by the NARC are interesting in that it wasn’t until the 1990s that the word “retard” was removed.  The organization was called the National Association for Retarded Children (1953-1973), the National Association for Retarded Citizens (1973-1981) & the Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States (1981-1992) before assuming the name Arc of the United States in 1992.  While hardly illustrative of the euphemism treadmill familiar elsewhere, it does hint at the difficulties changes in the social acceptability of words can cause institutions with a corporate history or identity vested in a brand name.  The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), formed in 1909, retained the name even after “colored people” had been declared an unacceptable form and replaced by “people of color”, because the brand NAACP was thought too valuable to alter.  However, acronyms and abbreviations can continue even if divorced from their historic connections.  The oil company British Petroleum, in filings with the various regulatory agencies with which it deals, explained that it now positions itself as “an energy company” and expected to remain trading as BP, even if the day came when it no longer dealt with fossil fuels or petro-chemicals.

Retard is an interesting example of a word in English, the use of which is socially proscribed in one historical context (human intelligence) but still acceptable in other adaptations (engineering & physics).  In this it differs from other words which began as something uncontroversial and perhaps merely descriptive but which, for associative reasons, became “loaded terms” and socially (and even legislatively) proscribed, including, the other “n-word” (negro) which as late as the 1960s was socially respectable but now, even for historic purposes (such as the description of the specific stream of music once called the “negro spiritual” or the “negro league” in baseball) should probably be replaced with an uncontroversial substitute unless use is deemed essential by virtue of the context of use.  The conventions of use may yet evolve to the point reached with the original n-word word whereby it can in certain circumstances be acceptable for it to appear in print but which may never be spoken (unless by (at least some) persons of color).       

In less globalized times, the loading could be geographically (and thus circumstantially) specific; as late as the early 1980s, the television network in Australia which held the broadcast rights to international cricket could include in their televised promotions for a series involving teams from the West Indies, Pakistan & Australia a jingle with the phrase “the Windies, the Pakis, the Aussies”.  Although all three were ostensibly affectionate diminutives of the country names and thus neutral, linguistic equivalents, “Paki” in the United Kingdom had by the 1960s come to be regarded as an offensive, ethnic slur referencing either (1) an actual Pakistani, (2) a person of Pakistani descent, (3) anyone whose origins were perceived to be South Asian or even (4) any person of color (Africans, Arabs et al).  Actually, structural linguistic equivalency is never of necessity any sort of guide to what a word has come to denote, “Chinaman” thought pejorative while “Englishman” is not.

Definitely not a word for the twenty-first century unless one is a mechanic.  

Paki acquired the offensive connotations in the 1960s from a pattern of use in the UK, reinforced by the Fleet Street (and regional) tabloids which used the word to refer to subjects of former colonies, with no attempt to disguise that it was being done in a derogatory and racist manner.  Use persists in certain sections of the community although the popular press has been forced to adopt an uncharacteristic subtlety when making their point about people of color.  Interestingly, like some other disparaging slurs (n-word, slut), there has been noted a trend of reclamation, an adoption by second and third-generation youth of Pakistani extraction to claim exclusive use of the term, excluding all outsiders, even Indians, Bangladeshis and others at whom it was originally and offensively directed.

No such phenomenon appears to have happened with “retard”, presumably because it was not a word which (in the context of human intelligence or behavior) never had any history of enjoying a neutrality of meaning, either by definition or inference always being in the negative.  Despite that, when the medical profession introduced retard, retarded & retardation to their system of classifications, genuinely it was an attempt to de-stigmatize those once labeled idiots, imbeciles & morons, the early twentieth century classifications being:

Idiots: Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years.

Imbeciles: Those whose development is higher than that of an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of about seven years.

Morons: Those whose mental development is above that of an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.

Retard was used in relation to developmental delay in 1895 and was introduced as an alternative to idiot, moron, and imbecile because at the time it wasn’t derogatory, being a familiar technical term from engineering and mathematics but the associative connection meant that it soon became an frequently heard insult.  Indeed, following the example of the n-word, there is in the United States much lobbying by interested groups socially to construct retard as “the r-word” and render its use just as unacceptable.

US legislation in 2010 required the terms "mental retardation" and" mentally retarded" be removed from federal records and replaced with "intellectual disability" and "individual with an intellectual disability", a change reflected in the publication in 2013 of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).  The US National Institutes of Health, which took several years to scrub “retarded” and related terms from their archival material, recommend “intellectually and developmentally disabled”, the acronym IDD being one which rolls not easily from the tongue and is therefore less susceptible to entering the vernacular as an insult.  Other organizations focused on specific conditions have also made suggestions but constructions such as “differently-abled” do seem likely to attract derision and be applied as insults, as happened with “special”.

Ignition timing: Advancing and retarding the ignition

Intake, compression, power, exhaust: the four-stroke cycle.

In a four-stroke, internal combustion engine, the ignition timing is measured in degrees of a crankshaft rotation before top dead centre (BTDC).  To ensure the power stroke is at this point achieved, the spark plugs need to fire at the right time and this is achieved by advancing or retarding the timing of the engine.  Advancing the timing means the spark plugs fire earlier in the compression stroke, further from the TDC, meaning the fuel/air mixture in the combustion chamber doesn’t burn immediately.  The primary advantage in advancing the timing of ignition is an increase in top-end horsepower at the expense of some low end response.  Retarding the ignition causes the spark plug to fire later in the compression stroke which can reduce engine detonation, which is combustion inside the cylinders after the spark plug fires, commonly referred to as “engine knocking”.  In the early days of emission control systems, retardation was usually part of the process.  In the special (although now quite common) case of engines which use forced aspiration (by turbocharging or supercharging), retarding can be beneficial because it adjusts for the increased pressure, compensating for the denser fuel/air mixtures.

Orphism

Orphism (pronounced awr-fiz-uhm)

(1) The religious or philosophical system of the Orphic school, a religion of Ancient Greece, widespread from the sixth century BC onwards, a blend of pre-Hellenic beliefs, the Thracian cult of Dionysius Zagreus et al.  The name was derived from the movement supposedly being founded by the mythological prophet Orpheus.

(2) In fine art, a movement of the early twentieth century most associated with French artist of the Parisian school Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) although it was his wife Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) who produced work in the greater volume.  The movement is also known as orphic cubism and while not pure abstraction, it differed from Cubism in removing the need to maintain a representational relationship with the subject, the works rather imaginings of a viewer’s imagination.

Early 1800s: The construct was Orph(eus) (from the Greek root Ὀρφεύς) + -ism.  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).  The term Orphism emerged (with others) in the language of those classical scholars and historians who in the early nineteenth century were categorizing and analyzing various aspects of the less documented movements, religions and schools of thought from Antiquity, especially the Greek, the Roman material having earlier been better studied.  In the historic texts from Antiquity and later, the myths, rituals, and writings attributed to Orpheus or the associated the associated religious practices are discussed or described without the use a single encompassing term.

Homage to Blériot (1914), oil on canvas by Robert Delaunay.

The use to describe the fork of cubism (a description which offends some) was in 1912 co-opted (as orphisme) by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) (who five years later would also coin “surrealism”), the construct being Orpheus +‎ -ism.  The adjective Orphic (of or related to Orpheus or the doctrines attributed to him) dates from the 1670s, from a Latinized form of the Greek orphikos (pertaining to Orpheus).  The earlier adjective was Orphean, in use at least by the 1590s.  Orphism & orphist are nouns, orphic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is orphics.  When used of the religion or the art movement as a proper noun, an initial capital should be used (although the practice seem to be to use lower case in the case of the latter).

Singer Flamenco (1916), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay.

In Greek mythology, Orpheus was the son of Oeager and his mother was usually asid to be the Muse Calliope although in some tales it was Polhymnia or Menippe, daughter of Thamyris.  This was how things were in the days before copyright.  What is a constant in the myths is that Orpheus was of Thracian origin and lived in a region bordering Olympus.  The most famous tale of Orpheus is of his love for his wife, the nymph Eurydice, struck dead when she stepped on the serpent which bit her.  Heartbroken, Orpheus descended to the underworld to beg the gods to restore her to life.  Playing the lyre (for which he was credited with adding two strings to match the nine Muses), he so charmed the monsters of Hades they agreed to restore her to Earth but imposed one condition: Orpheus must walk back to the light with Eurydice following and must not look back until they had left the underworld.  The pair had almost reached to gates to Earth when a terrible doubt struck Orpheus and he had to turn to make sure Eurydice was there.  As soon as she fell into his glance, she died.  Orpheus tried to return to again rescue her but his entry was barred.  Inconsolable, he lived again in the human world but was killed by the women of Thrace who resented his fidelity to Eurydice, her precious memory more to him than the flesh & blood of their earthly charms.  The alternative history is darker.  Whatever happened in the underworld, after returning, Orpheus invented pederasty and his lover was Calais, the son of Boreas.  According to this tale, young men would meet at Orpheus’s house, leaving their weapons outside where they were taken by women angered at being neglected; together they took their revenge by killing an decapitating Orpheus, his head and lyre cast into the ocean.  They drifted to the shores of Lesbos where the women accorded the remains funerary honors, accounting for why the island produces so many fine lyric poets.

Lindsay Lohan imagined with an orphic influence.

Despite this perhaps unpromising history, it was Orpheus who lent his name to the religious movement and school of philosophy.  So many of the details are lost to history that often it’s described as a “mysterious cult” but it was long-lasting and is regarded as the last truly Greek religion although modern scholars don’t doubt the foreign influences in its origin.  It was the tales of Orpheus using music to seduce the gods of the underworld that the critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire recalled when in 19123 he first came upon Robert Delaunay’s canvases of swirling, colorful shapes, recalling in technique the works of the cubists yet unlike them, in mostly non-representational form.  The Orphists of Antiquity had believed it had been the art of music which had opened up one otherwise-inaccessible underworld and Apollinaire co-opted the name to describe the process (that does seem to be drawing a long bow) by which modern artists were borrowed elements from music and science to inject powerful sensation into painting.  One can argue with aspects of that but doubtlessly there was a contribution to the evolution of abstract art.

La Tour Eiffel (1911), oil on canvas by Robert Delaunay.

Orphic art is distinctive even now and must at the time have been striking, characterized by shapes rendered in color, often in spheres and other geometric forms, curves especially prominent.  Compositionally, the technique was to assemble these shapes in a way to encourage a viewer to sense a vibrating, lyrical harmony and Apollinaire regarded the pieces as essentially musical although he claimed their power was such they transcended any single art form.  The critic in him was also a structuralist who anticipated later writing by stating Orphism “pure art” that had no need for any semblance of identifiable imagery; it was instead, “the pictorializing of light.”  Those last pre-war years were certainly a time of ferment in art and for more than a decade the cubists had been re-imagining and re-packaging space and perception.  Orphism might not be a fork of Cubism but the influence seem undeniable, the schools sharing the same interest in breaking down solid objects and challenging the traditional conceptions of space, volume, angle and even time.  What was most novel about orphism was the intrusion of those vivid, colors which could jar or sooth: color as a language of lyricism.

Rythme-couleur 1076 (1939), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay.

Delaunay genuinely was interested in the actual process of vision. While the point of Cubism was what people saw and what they thought about it, he focused on how the eye sees and what the brain does with the information to turn it into movement or music; his interest was the optical structure of vision and he never forgot the eye was an out-growth of the brain.  After all, once imagery is deconstructed, there is only color and light passing to the brain through the retina and from this information comes the instinctive or learned constructs of shape, texture, depth & time; something four dimensional from a two dimensional object.  That can of course be a quality of any painting but what Orphism attempted to do was add the fifth dimension of lyricism.  Sonia Delaunay outlived her husband by many decades and lived to see the influences of orphism incorporated into the orthodoxy of design, fashion and commercial art of all types, fields in which she would practice almost to her last days.  In that sense it was a success although that very absorption led some of the sterner (and usually more conservative) critics to claim it was a cul-de-sac, melting away to invisibility whereas movements like Cubism, Surrealism and even pop-art left motifs which endure to this day.  That seems a harsh and particularly reductive reductionism but it is possible to write a convincing history of twentieth century art without mentioning Orphism, whereas to ignore other movements which in their time created the same sort of stir would leave obvious gaps.  Perhaps it was a victim of the forces of its era and like vorticism, after World War I (1914-1918), it wasn’t what people wanted to see.

Cacoethes

Cacoethes (pronounced kak-oh-ee-theez)

(1) An uncontrollable urge or irresistible desire, especially something harmful or ill-advised.

(2) In medicine, a bad quality or disposition in a disease; a malignant tumor or ulcer (obsolete).

1560s: From cacoēthes, a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek κακοήθης (kakoēthēs) (ill-habit, wickedness, itch for doing (something)), from κακός (kakós) (bad) from the primitive Indo-European root kakka- (to defecate) + ἦθος (ēthē- & êthos) (disposition; character, moral nature).  Related forms include the Modern English ethos & ethics.  The Ancient Greek kakóēthes was a neuter (used as noun) of kakoḗthēs (malignant), literally “of bad character; of evil disposition”.  Perhaps as a consequence of the operation of certain spell-check programs, the word is sometimes confused with cacoethics (bad ethics or morals; bad habits), the construct being caco- +‎ ethics.  Caco- (in the sense of "bad" or "defective" and well illustrated by words such as cacography (bad handwriting; poor penmanship, incorrect spelling), kakistocracy (a form of government in which the worst persons are in power), cacophony (a harsh discordance of sound; dissonance) or caconym (an incorrect name for something)) was from the Ancient Greek κακός (kakós) (bad) and ethics (used in the sense or "morality"; "right & wrong") was from the Middle English etik, from the Middle French ethique, from the Late Latin ethica, from the Ancient Greek ἠθική (ēthikḗ), from ἠθικός (ēthikós) (of or for morals, moral, expressing character), from ἦθος (êthos) (disposition; character, moral nature).  The preferred modern spelling is cacoethes but cacoëthesor is used by some classists.  Cacoethes (or cacoëthes) is a noun, cacoethical & cacoethic are adjectives and cacoethically is an adverb; the noun plural is cacoethe.

The consequences of cacoethetic conduct.  Lindsay Lohan under arrest, Los Angeles, October 2011.

The phrase insanabile scribendi cacoethes is the most quoted fragment from the passage “Tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes et aegro in corde senescit” (literally “An inveterate and incurable itch for writing besets many, and grows old in their sick hearts many are afflicted by an incurable desire to write” although it’s more often cited as something more manageable like “many are afflicted by an incurable desire to write” which appears in the Seventh Satire by Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, a Roman poet of the late first and early second century AD).  In political discourse, the phrase is used of those with “an urge to write dangerous words”, penning the texts which upset the rich and powerful.  It’s thus been said of figures such as Socrates (circa 470–399 BC (although he spoke rather than wrote), Machiavelli (1469–1527), Luther (1483–1546), Voltaire (1694–1778) and might be extended to any number of dissidents and ratbags of the modern age, not all of who suffered for their craft under totalitarian rule.  The example of Julian Assange (b 1971) lends a new layer of meaning to the idea.

Assange claims to be an editor (which is some sense he is), an activist (which none dispute) and a journalist (which is contested) and although the celebrated US case against him is on grounds which don’t hang on any of these descriptions being accepted, there is a long tradition of people being pursued by governments for words they didn’t necessarily write.  Printers and publishers have been jailed (or worse) for making possible the dissemination of the writing of others (one notorious case in Germany involving a printer’s assistant, the illiteracy of whom was conceded even by the prosecutor) and English biblical scholar William Tyndale (circa 1494–1536) was convicted of heresy, executed by strangulation and then burnt at the stake for the subversive act of publishing Bibles in vernacular English.  Well Tyndale knew the risks but he was afflicted by an incurable desire to translate the word of God.

What Assange does through the vehicle of Wikileaks is different from what has been done by political dissidents or religious dissenters (heretics usually the preferred term) and aligns more with the decision by former military analyst Dr Daniel Ellsberg (1931–2023) in 1971 to leak to the press what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers (officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force) a top-secret report of some 7,000 pages detailing the political & military aspects of the US involvement in Vietnam between 1945-1967 (eventually de-classified and made public in 2011).  Ellsberg obtained copies of the documents by spending late nights with the Pentagon’s Xerox machines (photocopiers), a long, boring, repetitive task; by the time in 2010 a low-level US Army analyst on deployment in Iraq could obtain the material Wikileaks published, all that was needed was the necessary access and a USB flash drive.  Conceptually, the two processes are about the same but whether the two men can be said to have similar motivations (their insanabile scribendi cacoethes) has become the subject of debate.  Ultimately, the US Supreme Court ruled publication of the Pentagon Papers was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution (freedom of speech) and Ellsberg, although guilty as sin under the espionage counts with which he was charged, walked free because of the many outrageous acts by the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) which saw the case collapse.  Julian Assange awaits an appeal hearing in London which will decide whether he can be extradited to face espionage charges in the US.  Should he face trial, the special circumstances which prevailed during the Ellsberg hearings won't exist to help and darkly his lawyers are hinting he may take hemlock with Socrates.

Valetudinarian

Valetudinarian (pronounced val-i-tood-n-air-ee-uhn or val-i-tyood-n-air-ee-uhn)

(1) An individual in chronically poor health; sickly; an invalid.

(2) An individual who believes themselves in chronically poor health.

(3) An individual obsessively or excessively concerned about their health or ailments; a hypochondriac.

(4) Of, relating to, or characterized by invalidism.

1695-1705: A learned borrowing from the Latin valētūdinārius, from valētūdō (state of health (good, bad or indifferent) (from valeō (to be strong) or valēre), the construct being valēre (be strong (from the primitive Indo-European root wal- (to be strong)) + -tudo (the abstract noun suffix).  The construct of valetudinarian was the now obsolete valetudinar(y) (Sickly, infirm) + -ian.  The suffix -ian was a euphonic variant of –an & -n, from the Middle English -an, (regularly -ain, -ein & -en), from the Old French –ain & -ein (or before i, -en), the Modern French forms being –ain & -en (feminine -aine, -enne), from the Latin -iānus (the alternative forms were -ānus, -ēnus, -īnus & -ūnus), which formed adjectives of belonging or origin from a noun, being -nus (cognate with the Ancient Greek -νος (-nos)), preceded by a vowel, from the primitive Indo-European -nós.  It was cognate with the English -en.  Valetudinarian & valetudinary are nouns & adjectives and valetudinarianism & valetudinariness are nouns; the noun plural is valetudinarians.

The form valetudinarian (one who is constantly concerned with his own ailments) was in use by 1703 and developed from the adjective valetudinary, documented as early as the 1580s and is an example of the profligate ways of English being nothing new, hypochondriac (as both a noun & adjective) first noted in the 1570s, developed from the earlier noun hypochondria which was in use as early as the 1550s.  Like hypochondriacs, the valetudinarian is on a spectrum, the comparative “more valetudinarian”, the superlative “most valetudinarian”).  Hypochondria was from the Late Latin, from the Ancient Greek, the neuter plural of Greek ὑποχονδριακός (hupokhondriakós (pertaining to the upper abdomen which, in the medical orthodoxy of Antiquity, was the supposed seat of the condition of melancholy).  The construct of the anatomical area the ὑποχόνδριος (hupokhóndrios) (the region between the ribs and navel) was ὑπό (hupó) (below) + χόνδρος (khóndros) (cartilage).  One very modern derived form was the portmanteau noun cyberchondriac, the construct being cyber- (the prefix here used as a clipping of cyberspace thus denoting the Internet, or computers generally) +‎ (hypo)chondriac.  First documented in 1997, a cyberchondriac belongs to a subset of hypochondriacs who research their medical condition(s) (real, imagined and, more controversially, desired) using the internet, thus the popular label “Dr Google”.

Lindsay Lohan in hospital bed in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

The most extreme (or skillful) of the valetudinarians & hypochondriacs often seek to spend as much time as possible admitted to hospital ignoring the warning of Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) that “…the greatest danger to one in hospital is being murdered by the doctors.”, a phenomenon thought statistically under-recorded because the legal system is complicit in allowing an extraordinary definitional largess in the matter of “medical misadventure”.  “Medical misadventure” is a deliciously vague term which began as a way to add a scientific gloss to “act of God” but it has come to appear with such frequency in tort cases and coronial inquests that some doctors claim it now conveys the very implication of “responsibility” to profession originally concocted the phrase to avoid.  Some have suggested it be replaced with “death while under medical care” but the way the linguistic treadmill works means that this too would come similarly to be vested with the same hint of guilt.

The baron surprising gunners by arriving on a cannonball, an illustration from a nineteenth century edition of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe.

At the margins, it can be hard to tell where hypochondria end and Munchausen syndrome begins.  Munchausen syndrome (also known as factitious disorder (FD)) is a rare type of mental disorder in which a person fakes illness, either by lying about their symptoms or using some trick or technique to make themselves appear unwell.  There are cases in the literature where the conditions have overlapped, patients, convinced they are suffering some ailment despite the contrary opinion of physicians, inducing the requisite symptoms by some means in order to be admitted to hospital.  There, they assume they’ll be more closely examined and their elusive conditioned diagnosed.

That, like hypochondria, can be understood as an aspect of the human condition but what is truly mysterious is what the American Psychiatric Association (APA) insist has been re-named factitious disorder in another (FDIA): Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP).  It also once was called factitious disorder imposed on another FDOA) or factitious disorder by proxy (FDP) but most agree MSbP is best.  Its primary characteristic is the production or feigning of physical or psychological symptoms in another person (usually a young child or but the proxy subject can be an adult or even an animal) under the care of the person with the disorder. The symptoms are problems which are inexplicable, persistent or resistant to interventions which, based on clinical experience, would have worked, after adequate evaluation and treatment attempts.  MSbP is a variation of Munchausen syndrome (which the APA lists as factitious disorder (FD)), a mental disorder in which those affected feign (or sometimes even induce) disease, illness, injury, abuse, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance to themselves.  The name is from the fictional character Baron Munchausen from the 1785 novel Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, by German author Rudolf Erich Raspe (1736-1794), a collection of extraordinary stories, based (loosely) on the tales told by the real-life Baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720-1797).  The real baron was prone to quite some exaggeration in the tales of his travels but never went as far as Herr Raspe who included in his volume the eighteenth century baron flying to the moon.

So valetudinarian & hypochondriac are synonyms as use of the former evolved in English, losing the specific senses enjoyed in antiquity and that one became popular and one fell into obscurity is the way the language develops.  While it can be argued it might have been useful had the valetudinarian retained the sense “an individual in chronically poor health; sickly; an invalid”, there’s hardly a lack of words and phrases to describe that.  Although hypochondria & hypochondriac remain common in popular use (whereas valetudinarian and the related forms are used only by historians or as a literary device), in the lexicon of medicine & psychiatry they endured (officially) only until the early twenty-first century.  Hypochondria (historically known as hypochondriasis) did appear in the earlier editions of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), last used in the DSM-IV-TR (Text Revision, 2000) when Hypochondriasis listed as a somatoform (having no physical or organic cause) disorder but when the fifth edition (DSM-5) was released in 2013, the terms were replaced with two classifications said better to capture the range of symptoms associated with the condition:

Somatic Symptom Disorder (SSD): SSDs are characterized by one or more somatic (physical) symptoms that are distressing or result in significant disruption of daily life, causing the patient excessive numbers of troubling thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to the somatic symptoms or associated health concerns.

Illness Anxiety Disorder (IAD): IADs are characterized by a preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious illness.  Individuals with IAD have minimal or no somatic symptoms but exhibit a high level of anxiety about health and frequently engage in excessive health-related behaviors which can include seemingly contradictory behavior patterns such as repeatedly & obsessively checking their bodies for symptoms of illness or exhibit maladaptive avoidance, the most common of which is not attending medical consultations.

The tenth edition of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10, 1990) classified hypochondriasis as a mental and behavioral disorder (substantively unchanged in ICD-11, 2018) but the trend in recent decades has been for the DSM & ICD to align so there may in the future be changes to either.

Trends of use 1800-2019: Hypochondriac & Valetudinarian.

Impressionistically, the decline in use of valetudinarian is unsurprising and the twenty-first century resurgence probably reflects nothing more than proliferation of on-line dictionaries, etymology sites and lists of bizarre, archaic & unusual words.  Just as impressionistically, it seems remarkable hypochondriac appears more frequently to have appeared in print in throughout the nineteenth century than today.

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Compliment & Complement

Compliment (pronounced kom-pluh-muhnt (noun) or kom-pluh-ment (verb))

(1) An expression of praise, commendation, or admiration.

(2) A formal act or expression of civility, respect, or regard.

(3) A courteous greeting; good wishes; regards.

(4) To pay a compliment to.

(5) To show kindness or regard for by a gift or other favour.

1570–1580: From the French compliment from the Italian complimento, a borrowing from the Spanish cumplimiento from cumplir (to complete, do what is proper or fitting, be polite).  The construct was compli- (from complir) + -miento (from the Old Spanish, from the Late Latin -mentum, from the Classical Latin -menta. A doublet of –mento (and used as the suffix –ment in Modern English), it formed nouns from verbs with the sense of the action or process.  Compliment is a doublet of complement and the synonyms include admiration, applause, commendation, homage, ovation, blessing, courtesy, adulation, endorsement, tribute, congratulate, applaud, laud, commend, cajole, endorse, extol, acclaim, bouquet and confirmation.  Compliment is a noun, complimenter is a noun, complimenting & complimented are verbs and complimentary, complimentable & complimentative are adjectives; the noun plural is compliments.  Complimentarity is a misspelling of complementarity.

Human nature being what it is, there are sincere compliments and “backhanded compliments”, the latter best understood in the portmanteau word "complisult", the construct of the blend being compl(iment) +‎ insult.  In the language of nineteenth century diplomacy it was known as the “Chinese compliment” (a pretense of deference; a veiled or subtle insult), based on the practice at the time for the Chinese to do thing like allocate foreign delegations lower chairs at the table when signing treaties.  China was then a weak power and compelled to make some unsatisfactory agreements but what also annoyed them was the Western diplomats seems not to mind, instead going away happy with their lucrative treaties in hand.  This was interpreted as the “foreign devils” being too stupid to comprehend the Middle Kingdom’s subtleties.  Other forms, all in some way variations on “damning with faint praise” include the “dubious compliment”, the “left-handed compliment”, the “poisonous compliment” and the “pseudo-compliment”.  For those prepared to take the risk, there’s the art (a calling for some) of “compliment fishing” (the act of self-deprecating for the purpose of baiting other people into giving praise or compliments).

Complement (pronounced kom-pluh-muhnt (noun) or kom-pluh-ment (verb))

(1) Something which completes, something which combines with something else to make up a complete whole (ie makes perfect); loosely, something perceived to be a harmonious or desirable partner or addition.

(2) The quantity or amount that completes anything.

(3) Either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole; counterpart.

(4) To complete something by some addition.

(5) The totality, the full amount or number which completes something.

(6) In nautical use, the whole working force of a vessel.

(7) In astronomy & geometry, an angle which, together with a given angle, makes a right angle.

(8) In formal grammar & linguistics, a word or group of words which completes a grammatical construction in the predicate and that describes or is identified with the subject or object.

(9) In music, an interval which, together with the given interval, makes an octave.

(10) In optics, the color which, when mixed with the given color, gives black (for mixing pigments) or white (for mixing light).

(11) In set theory, given two sets, the set containing one set's elements that are not members of the other set (whether a relative complement or an absolute complement)

(12) In immunology, one of several blood proteins that work with antibodies during an immune response.

(13) In formal logic, an expression related to some other expression such that it is true under the same conditions that make other false, and vice versa.

(14) In electronics, a voltage level with the opposite logical sense to the given one.

(15) In computing, a bit with the opposite value to the given one; the logical complement of a number.

(16) In computing & mathematics, the diminished radix complement of a number; the nines' complement of a decimal number; the ones' complement of a binary number; the numeric complement of a number.

(17) In genetics, a nucleotide sequence in which each base is replaced by the complementary base of the given sequence: adenine (A) by thymine (T) or uracil (U), cytosine (C) by guanine (G), and vice versa (a DNA molecule is formed from two strands, each of which is the complement of the other).

(18) In biochemistry, a synonym of alexin (a protective substance that exists in the serum or other bodily fluid and is capable of killing microorganisms).

(19) In economics, a clipping of complementary good (a good, the appeal of which increases with the popularity of its complement).

(20) Someone or something which completes; the consummation (archaic).

(21) The act of completing something, or the fact of being complete; completion, completeness, fulfilment (obsolete).

(22) Something which completes one's equipment, dress etc; an accessory (obsolete).

(23) An alternative spelling of compliment (obsolete although misspellings persist).

1350–1400: From the fourteenth century French complément, from the Old French compliement (accomplishment, fulfillment), from the Latin complēmentum (something that completes; that which fills up or completes) from compleō (I fill up, I complete) from complēre (fill up), the construct being com- (thought most likely used as an intensive prefix) + plere (to fill) from the primitive Indo-European root pele- (to fill).  The construct of the Latin complēmentum was complē(re) + -mentum (from the Latin suffix -menta (in collective nouns like armenta (herd, flock)); the Latin -menta was from the primitive Indo-European -mnthe.  Complement is a doublet of compliment.  From the early seventeenth century, the meaning "full quality or number," was assumed while the musical sense of "simple interval that completes an octave from another simple interval" dates from 1873.  During the sixteenth century, the word was used also in the senses taken up between circa 1650-circa1725 by compliment.  The verb in the sense of "make complete" was in use by the 1640s and was derived from the noun.  The evolution of use is illustrated by the long-obsolete sense of "exchange courtesies" (in use in the 1610s) which came from the noun complement, a hint of the sixteenth century sense "that which is added, not as necessary, but as ornamental".  Complement & complementary are nouns & verbs, complementarity is a noun, complementing & complemented are verbs and complemental is an adjective; the noun plural is complements.

Lindsay Lohan in an Alice Temperley (b 1975) gown, complemented with silver and diamond cluster jewelry, front at back, Montecito, California August 2011.

The gown attracted many compliments from the fashionistas, the details of the cutaway back especially admired, but many dwelt on the matter of whether a guest should wear white to a wedding, the occasion Kim Kardashian’s (b 1980) (second) marriage to Kris Humphries (b 1985).  However, there was a strict “black & white” dress code for the event and there was a lot of white on display and Ms Kardashian is anyway hard to upstage.  Ms Lohan’s gown had been seen a few months earlier, the also much complimented Pippa Middleton (b 1983) wearing one in emerald when attending the party after her sister married a prince.

Complement and compliment, which (noun & verb) are pronounced alike and originally shared some meanings, evolved to become separate words with entirely different meanings.  As a noun, complement means “something that augments, completes or makes perfect”.  As a verb, complement means “to add to or complete”.  The noun compliment means “an expression of praise, commendation, or admiration”.  The verb compliment means “to pay a compliment to”.  In the jargon of formal grammar, complement means “that which completes or helps to complete the verb, making with it the predicate (this the widest sense of the word, not the direct object of a transitive verb or adverbs.  In one of the paradoxes he delighted in recounting, Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) noted this was “the most reasonable application of the term” while being also both the “least useful and the least used”.  Warming to the topic he pointed out that not infrequently the “direct object is excluded but all other modifications or appendages of the verb are called complements; a sense found convenient in sentence analysis but too wide to be precise and too narrow to be logical.”  Further to complicate complement, another restriction is the definitional net permits the catch only of those words or phrases so essential to the verb “that they form one notion with it and its meaning would be incomplete” were they to be omitted.  Examples are legion and so blatant it seems unnecessary to define certain forms as a complement and Henry Fowler took the view that some verbs are by their very nature incomplete and were the definition of what is a complement thus limited, it would be “a serviceable rule, especially if it were established as the only one.”  It’s not however the only one and the flavour which most pleases the pedants is the narrowest and most technical in which complement is applied only to the noun or adjective predicated by means of a conjunctive verb “(be, become etc) or of a factitive verb (make, call, think etc) of the subject (He is a fool; He grew wiser; He was made king) or of the object (Call no man happy); in such example as the last, the complement is called an objective or an oblique complement.  A sense frequent in Latin grammars.”

So, in formal grammar, a “complement” is a word, phrase or clause which is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression.  What complements do is lend additional information about the subject or object in a sentence, often completing the thought or idea that the verb begins.  Complements are important (and often essential) essential because they complete the meaning of the predicate in a sentence, ensuring a sentence expresses a complete thought and in structural linguistics, they’re categorized thus:

(1) Subject Complements: These follow a linking verb (such as “be’ or “seem”) and provide information about the subject. They can be: (1a) predicate nominatives which are nouns or pronouns that rename or identify the subject (in “she is an actor”, “actor” is the predicate nominative that complements the subject “she”) or (1b) predicate adjectives which are adjectives that describe the subject (in “the sky is blue”, “blue” is the predicate adjective that complements the subject “the sky”).

(2) Object Complements: These follow and modify or refer to the direct object. They can be: (2a) noun phrases such as “We elected him president” (“president” the noun phrase that complements the direct object “him”) or adjective phrases such as “She dyed her hair blonde” (“blonde the adjective phrase that complements the direct object “he hair”).

(3) Adjective Complements: These provide additional information about an adjective, often introduced by prepositions such as “of”, “to”, “for”, or “that” such as in the phrase “I am happy that you came” (“that you came” is an adjective complement adding information about “happy”).

(4) Verb Complements: These can be objects or other structures that complete the meaning of a verb.  In "she wishes to leave", “to leave” is a verb complement providing more information about what "she wishes”.