Sable

Sable (pronounced sey-buhl)

(1) An Old World, small, carnivorous, weasel-like mammal, Mustela zibellina, of cold regions in Eurasia and the North Pacific Islands, valued for its fur which exists in shades of brown.  They are solitary & arboreal, with a diet largely of eat small animals and eggs.

(2) A marten, especially the Mustela americana & Martes zibellina.

(3) The fur of the sable.

(4) A garment made from sable (as descriptor or modifier)

(5) An artist's brush made from the fur of the sable.

(6) A type of French biscuit of a sandy texture and made with butter, sugar, eggs & flour.

(7) The stage name of Rena Marlette-Lesnar (née Greek, formerly Mero; b 1968), a US model & actress, best known for her career (1996-1999 & 2003-2004) as a professional wrestler.

(8) The color black, especially when in heraldic use.

(9) The color of sable fur (a range from yellowish-brown to dark brown).

(10) A locality name in North America including (1) a cape at the southern Florida (the southern-most point of the continental US and (2) the southernmost point of Nova Scotia, Canada.

(11) In the plural (as sables), black garments worn in mourning.

(12) In literary use, dark-skinned; black (archaic when used of people but used still in other contexts).

(13) In figurative use, a “black” or “dark” mood; gloominess (now rare).

1275–1325: From the Middle English sable, saibel, sabil & sabille (a sable, pelt of a sable; (the color) black), from the Old French sable, martre sable & saibile (a sable, sable fur), from the Medieval Latin sabelum & sabellum (sable fur), from the Middle Low German sabel (the Middle Dutch was sabel and the late Old High German was zobel), from a Slavic or Baltic source and related to the Russian со́боль (sóbol), the Polish soból, the Czech sobol, the Lithuanian sàbalas and the Middle Persian smwl (samōr).  Sable is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is sables or sable.

The modern funeral: @edgylittlepieces take on the sable.  Their funeral dress included a mode in which it could be “tightened up to make it super modest for the funeral”, later to be “loosened back down for the after-party.”  The promotional clip attracted many comments, some of which indicated scepticism about whether funerals had “after-parties” but the wake is a long-established tradition.  Wake (in this context) was from the Middle English wake, from the Old English wacu (watch), from the Proto-Germanic wakō and wakes could be held before or after the funeral service, depending on local custom.  In James Joyce's (1882–1941) Finnegans Wake (1939), Tim Finnegan's wake occurs before the funeral service so the young lady would have “loosened” first before “tightening” into “super modest” mode for the ceremony.  “Modest” is of course a relative term and it's literature's loss Joyce never had the chance to write about this sable although how he'd have interpolated it into the narrative of Finnegans Wake is anyone's guess but fragments from the text such as “…woven of sighed sins and spun of the dulls of death…” and “…twisted and twined and turned among the crisscross, kisscross crooks and connivers, the curtaincloth of a crater let down, a sailor’s shroud of turfmantle round the pulpit...” lend a hint.

In Western culture black is of course the color of mourning so funeral garments came to be known as “sables” but the curious use of sable to mean “black” (in heraldry, for other purposes and in figurative use) when all known sables (as in the weasel-like mammal) have been shades of brown (albeit some a quite dark hue) attracted various theories including (1) the pelt of another animal with black fur might have been assumed to be a sable, (2) there may in some places at some time have been a practice of dying sable pelts black or (3) the origin of the word (as a color) may be from an unknown source.  It was used as an adjective from the late fourteenth century and in the same era came to be used as a term emblematic of mourning or grief, soon used collectively of black “mourning garments”.  In the late eighteenth century it was used of Africans and their descendants (ie “black”) although etymologists seem divided whether this was originally a “polite” form or one of “mock dignity”.

AdVintage's color chart (left) and a Crusader Fedora hat in True-Sable with 38mm wide, black-brown grosgrain ribbon, handcrafted from Portuguese felt (right).

The phrase “every cloud has a silver lining” was in general use by the early nineteenth century and is used to mean even situations which seem bad will have some positive aspect and thus a potential to improve.  That’s obviously not true and many are probably more persuaded by the derivative companion phrase coined by some unknown realist: “Every silver lining has a cloud” (ie every good situation has the potential to turn bad and likely will).  “Every cloud has a silver lining” dates from the seventeenth century and it entered popular use after the publication of John Milton’s (1608–1674) masque Comus (1634) in which the poet summoned the imagery of a dark & threatening cloud flowing at the edges with the moon’s reflected light of the moon, symbolizing hope in adversity:

I see ye visibly, and now believe
That he, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were
To keep my life and honor unassailed.
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err; there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

Who wore the sable-trimmed coat better?  The Luffwaffe's General Paul Conrath (1896–1979, left) with Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945, centre), Soviet Union, 1942 and Lindsay Lohan at New York Fashion Week, September 2024.  

Given modern sensibilities, Ms Lohan's “sable” presumably was faux fur and appeared to be the coat's collar rather than a stole but the ensemble was anyway much admired.  Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1943) wasn’t an impartial observer of anything German but he had a diarist’s eye and left a vivid description of the impression the Reichsmarschall made during his visit to Rome in 1942: “At the station, he wore a great sable coat, something between what motorists wore in 1906 and what a high grade prostitute wears to the opera.”  Ciano was the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) who later ordered his execution, a power doubtlessly envied by many fathers-in-law.

Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), during his famous trip to China in 1972, visiting the tomb of the Wanli Emperor.  The Wanli Emperor (Zhu Yijun, 1653-1620; Emperor of China 1572-1620) was the 14^th of the Ming dynasty and his 48 years on the throne was the eighth longest in Chinese history and the most enduring of the Ming dynasty.

Nixon’s sable-collared coat was well cut but it can be guaranteed the cloth wasn’t vicuña because he’d have recalled the scandal in 1958 when Dwight Eisenhower’s (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) chief of staff (Sherman Adams (1899-1986)) was revealed to have accepted as a gift an expensive vicuña coat.  Adams was as a consequence dismissed although in his memoirs Nixon observed while there was no doubt most Americans had no idea whether vicuña was animal, vegetable or mineral, just the perceived mystique of the word was enough to convince them it was something expensive and therefore corrupting.  There was a curious footnote to the affair in that Nixon claimed it was him to whom Eisenhower delegated the handing to Adams his pink slip while other sources maintain the hatchet man was lawyer Meade Alcorn (1907–1992), then serving as chairman of the RNC (Republican National Committee).  Nixon certainly didn’t forget the business and would later cite Eisenhower’s reluctance to do his own dirty work to explain why, as the Watergate scandal in 1973 closed in on the White House, rather than fire his own chief of staff (HR Haldeman (1926–1993; White House chief of staff 1969-1973)), he requested a letter of resignation although there were other dynamics also at play, Nixon relying on Halderman more than Eisenhower ever did on Adams.

The Ford Taurus & Mercury Sable

1996 Mercury Sable.  The styling of the third generation Sable (and the Ford Taurus) was upon its release controversial and, unlike some other designs thought “ahead of their time”, few have warmed to it.  To many, when new, it looked like something which had been in an accident and was waiting to be repaired.

Over five generations (1986–1991; 1992–1995; 1996–1999; 2000–2005 & 2008–2009), the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) produced the Mercury Sable, a companion (and substantially “badge-engineered”) version of the Ford Taurus (discontinued in the US in 2016 but still available in certain overseas markets).  Dreary and boring the FWD (front wheel drive) Taurus & Sable may have been but they were well-developed and appropriate to the needs of the market so proved a great success.  The Mercury brand had been introduced in 1939 to enable the corporation better to service the “medium-priced” market, its approach until then constrained by the large gap (in pricing & perception) between Fords and Lincolns; at the time, General Motors’ (GM) “mid-range” offerings (ie LaSalle, Buick, Oldsmobile & Pontiac (which sat between Chevrolet & Cadillac)) collectively held almost a quarter of the US market.  Given the structure of the industry (limited product ranges per brand) at the time it was a logical approach and one which immediately was successful although almost simultaneously, Ford added the up-market “Ford De Luxe” while Lincoln introduced the “Lincoln Zephyr” at a price around a third what was charged for the traditional Lincoln range.  It was a harbinger of what was to come in later decades when product differentiation became difficult to maintain as Ford increasingly impinged on Mercury’s nominal territory.  After years of decline, Ford took the opportunity offered by the GFC (Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2011) and in 2010 closed-down the Mercury brand.

Midler v. Ford Motor Co., 849 F.2d 460 (Ninth Circuit Federal Courts of Appeal, 1988)

Apart from the odd highlight like the early Cougars (1967-1970), Mercury is now little remembered and the Sable definitely forgotten but it does live on as a footnote in legal history which, since the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence), has been revisited because of the advertising campaign which accompanied the Sable’s launch in 1996.  The case in which the Sable featured dates from 1988 and was about the protectability (at law) of the voice of a public figure (however defined) and the right of an individual to prevent commercial exploitation of their “unique and distinctive sound” without consent.  FoMoCo and its advertising agency (Young & Rubicam Inc (Y&R)) in 1985 aired a series of 30 & 60 second television commercials (in what the agency called “The Yuppie Campaign”, the rationale of which was to evoke in the minds of the target market (30 something urban professionals in a certain income bracket) memories of their hopefully happy (if often impoverished) days at university some fifteen years earlier.  To achieve the effect, a number of popular songs of the 1970s were used for the commercials and in some cases the original artists licenced the material but ten declined to be involved so Y&R hired “sound-alikes” who re-recorded the material.  One who rejected Y&R’s offer was the singer Bette Midler (b 1945).

Sable (the stage name of Rena Marlette-Lesnar (née Greek, formerly Mero; b 1968)); promotional photograph issued by WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) to which she was contracted.

Y&R had from the copyright holder secured a licence to use the song, Do You Want to Dance which Ms Midler had interpreted on her debut album The Divine Miss M (1972) and neither her name nor an image of her appeared in the commercial.  Y&R’s use of the song was under the terms of settled law; the case hung on whether Ms Midler had the right to protect her voice from commercial exploitation by means of imitation.  At trial, the district court described the defendants' conduct as that “...of the average thief...” (“If we can't buy it, we'll take it”) but held there was no precedent establishing a legal principle preventing imitation of Midler's voice and thus gave summary judgment for the defendants.  Ms Midler appealed.

Years before, a federal court had held the First Amendment (free speech) to the US constitution operated with a wide latitude in protecting reproduction of likenesses or sounds, finding the “use of a person's identity” was central; if the purpose was found to be “informative or cultural”, then the use was immune from challenge but if it “serves no such function but merely exploits the individual portrayed, immunity will not be granted.”  Moreover, federal copyright law overlays such matters and the “...mere imitation of a recorded performance would not constitute a copyright infringement even where one performer deliberately sets out to simulate another's performance as exactly as possible.”  So Ms Midler’s claim was novel in that it was unrelated to the copyrighted material (the song), thus excluding consideration of federal copyright law.   At the time, it was understood a “voice is not copyrightable” and what she was seeking to protect was something more inherently personal than any work of authorship.  There had been vaguely similar cases but they had been about “unfair competition” in which people like voice-over artists were able to gain protection from others emulating in this commercial area a voice, the characteristics of which the plaintiffs claimed to have “invented” or “defined” (the courts never differentiated).

On appeal, the court reversed the original judgment, holding it was not necessary to “…go so far as to hold that every imitation of a voice to advertise merchandise is actionable.  We hold only that when a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs and have committed a tort in California.  Midler has made a showing, sufficient to defeat summary judgment, that the defendants here for their own profit in selling their product did appropriate part of her identity.”  What this established was an individual's voice can be as integral to their identity as their image or name and that is reflected in recent findings about AI-generated voices that mimic specific individuals; they too can infringe on similar rights if used without consent, particularly for commercial or deceptive purposes.  The “AI generated voice” cases will for some time continue to appear in many jurisdictions and it’s not impossible some existing (and long-standing) contracts might be declared void for unconscionability on the grounds terms which once “signed away in perpetuity” rights to use a voice will no longer enforced because the technological possibilities now available could not have been envisaged.

Aphantasia

Aphantasia (pronounced ay-fan-tay-zhuh)

The inability voluntarily to recall or form mental images.

2015: The word (not the diagnosis) was coined by UK neurologist Dr Adam Zeman (b 1957), neuropsychologist Dr Michaela Dewar (b 1976) and Italian neurologist Sergio Della Sala (b 1955), first appearing the paper Lives without imagery.  The construct was a- (from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-), used as a privative prefix meaning “not”, “without” or “lacking” + phantasía (from the Greek φαντασία (“appearance”, “imagination”, “mental image” or “power of imagination”, from φαίνω (phaínō) ( “to show”, “to make visible” or “to bring to light”).  Literally, aphantasia can be analysed as meaning “an absence of imagination” or “an absence of mental imagery” and in modern medicine it’s defined as “the inability voluntarily to recall or form mental images”.  Even in Antiquity, there was some meaning shift in phantasía, Plato (circa 427-348 BC) using the word to refer generally to representations and appearances whereas Aristotle (384-322 BC) added a technical layer, his sense being faculty mediating between perception (aisthēsis) and thought (noēsis).  It’s the Aristotelian adaptation (the mind’s capacity to form internal representations) which flavoured the use in modern neurology.  Aphantasia is a noun and aphantasic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is aphantasics.

Scuola di Atene (The School of Athens, circa 1511), fresco by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483–1520), Apostolic Palace, Vatican Museums, Vatican City, Rome.  Plato and Aristotle are the figures featured in the centre.

In popular use, the word “aphantasia” can be misunderstood because of the paths taken in English by “phantasy”, “fantasy” and “phantasm”, all derived from the Ancient Greek φαντασία (phantasía) meaning “appearance, mental image, imagination”.  In English, this root was picked up via Latin and French but the multiple forms each evolved in distinct semantic trajectories.  The fourteenth century phantasm came to mean “apparition, ghost, illusion” so was used of “something deceptive or unreal”, the connotation being “the supernatural; spectral”.  This appears to be the origin of the association of “phantas-” with unreality or hallucination rather than normal cognition.  In the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries, the spellings phantasy & fantasy were for a time interchangeable although divergence came with phantasy used in its technical senses of “mental imagery”; “faculty of imagination”; “internal representation”, this a nod to Aristotle’s phantasía.  Fantasy is the familiar modern form, used to suggest “a fictional invention; daydream; escapism; wish-fulfilment, the connotation being “imaginative constructions (in fiction); imaginative excess (in the sense of “unreality” or the “dissociative”); indulgence (as in “speculative or wishful thoughts”)”.

While the word “aphantasia” didn’t exist until 2015, in the editions of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published between 1952 (DSM-I) and 2013 (DSM-5), there was not even any any discussion (or even mention) of a condition anything like “an inability voluntarily to recall or form mental images”.  That’s because despite being “a mental condition” induced by something happening (or not happening) in the brain, the phenomenon has never been classified as “a mental disorder”.  Instead it’s a cognitive trait or variation in the human condition and technically is a spectrum condition, the “pure” aphantasic being one end of the spectrum, the hyperaphantasic (highly vivid, lifelike mental imagery, sometimes called a “photorealistic mind's eye”) the other.  That would of course imply the comparative adjective would be “more aphantasic” and the superlative “most aphantasic” but neither are standard forms.

If That rationale for the “omission” was the DSM’s inclusion criteria including the requirement of some evidence of clinically significant distress or functional impairment attributable to a condition.  Aphantasia, in isolation, does not reliably meet this threshold in that many individuals have for decades functioned entirely “normally” without being aware they’re aphantasic  while others presumably had died of old age in similar ignorance.  That does of course raise the intriguing prospect the mental health of some patients may have been adversely affected by the syndrome only by a clinician informing them of their status, thus making them realize what they were missing.  This, the latest edition of the DSM (DSM-5-TR (2022)) does not discuss.  The DSM does discuss imagery and perceptual phenomena in the context of other conditions (PTSD (post-traumatic stress disoder), psychotic disorders, dissociative disorders etc), but these references are to abnormal experiences, not the lifelong absence of imagery.  To the DSM’s editors, aphantasis remains a recognized phenomenon, not a diagnosis.

Given that aphantasia concerns aspects of (1) cognition, (2) inner experience and (3) mental representation, it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to expect the condition now described as aphantasia would have appeared in the DSM, even if only in passing or in a footnote.  However, in the seventy years between 1952-2022, over nine editions, there is no mention, even in DSM-5-TR (2022), the first volume released since the word was in 2015 coined.  That apparently curious omission is explained by the DSM never having been a general taxonomy of mental phenomena.  Instead, it’s (an ever-shifting) codification of the classification of mental disorders, defined by (1) clinically significant distress and/or (2) functional impairment and/or (3) a predictable course, prognosis and treatment relevance.  As a general principle the mere existence of an aphantasic state meets none of these criteria.

Crooked Hillary Clinton in Orange Nina McLemore pantsuit, 2010.  If in response to the prompt "Imagine a truthful person" one sees an image of crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), that obviously wrong but is not an instance of aphantasia because the image imagined need not be correct, it needs just to exist.

The early editions (DSM-I (1952) & DSM-II (1968)) heavily were slanted to the psychoanalytic, focusing on psychoses, neuroses and personality disorders with no mention of any systematic treatment of cognition as a modular function; the matter of mental imagery (even as abstract though separated from an imagined image), let alone its absence, wholly is ignored.  Intriguingly, given what was to come in the field, there was no discussion of the cognitive phenomenology beyond gross disturbances (ie delusions & hallucinations).  Even with the publication of the DSM-III (1980) & DSM-III-R (1987), advances in scanning and surgical techniques, cognitive psychology and neuroscience seem to have made little contribution to what the DSM’s editorial board decided to include and although DSM-III introduced operationalized diagnostic criteria (as a part of a more “medicalised” and descriptive psychiatry), the entries still were dominated by a focus on dysfunctions impairing performance, the argument presumably that it was possible (indeed, probably typical) for those with the condition to lead, full, happy lives; the absence of imagery ability thus not considered a diagnostically relevant variable.  Even in sections on (1) amnestic disorders (a class of memory loss in which patients have difficulty forming new memories (anterograde) or recalling past ones (retrograde), not caused by dementia or delirium but of the a consequence of brain injury, stroke, substance abuse, infections or trauma), with treatment focusing on the underlying cause and rehabilitation, (2) organic mental syndromes or (3) neuro-cognitive disturbance, there was no reference to voluntary imagery loss as a phenomenon in its own right.

Although substantial advances in cognitive neuroscience meant by the 1990s neuropsychological deficits were better recognised, both the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-IV-TR (2000) continued to be restricted to syndromes with behavioural or functional consequences.  In a way that was understandable because the DSM still was seen by the editors as a manual for working clinicians who were most concerned with helping those afflicted by conditions with clinical salience; the DSM has never wandered far into subjects which might be matters of interesting academic research and mental imagery continued to be mentioned only indirectly, hallucinations (percepts without stimuli) and memory deficits (encoding and retrieval) both discussed only in the consequence of their affect on a patient, not as phenomenon.  The first edition for the new century was DSM-5 (2013) and what was discernible was that discussions of major and mild neuro-cognitive disorders were included, reflecting the publication’s enhanced alignment with neurology but even then, imagery ability is not assessed or scaled: not possessing the power of imagery was not listed as a symptom, specifier, or associated feature.  So there has never in the DSM been a category for benign cognitive variation and that is a product of a deliberate editorial stance rather than an omission, many known phenomenon not psychiatrised unless in some way “troublesome”.

The term “aphantasia” was coined to describe individuals who lack voluntary visual mental imagery, often discovered incidentally and not necessarily associated with brain injury or psychological distress.  In 2015 the word was novel but the condition had been documented for more than a century, Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911) in a paper published in 1880 describing what would come to be called aphantasia.  That work was a statistical study on mental imagery which doubtless was academically solid but Sir Francis’s reputation later suffered because he was one of the leading lights in what was in Victorian times (1837-1901) the respectable discipline of eugenics.  Eugenics rightly became discredited so Sir Francis was to some extent retrospectively “cancelled” (something like the Stalinist concept of “un-personing”) and these days his seminal contribution to the study of behavioural genetics is acknowledged only grudgingly.

Galton in 1880 noted a wide variation in “visual imagination” (ie it was understood as a “spectrum condition”) and in the same era, in psychology publications the preferred term seems to have been “imageless thought”.  In neurology (and trauma medicine generally) there were many reports of patients losing the power of imagery after a brain injury but no agreed name was ever applied because the interest was more in the injury.  The unawareness that some people simply lacked the facility presumably must have been held among the general population because as Galton wrote: “To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words “mental imagery” really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean. They had no more notion of its true nature than a colour-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of colour.”

His paper must have stimulated interest because one psychologist reported some subjects possessing what he called a “typographic visual type” imagination in which ideas (which most would visualize as an image of some sort) would manifest as “printed text” which was intriguing because in the same way a computer in some aspects doesn’t distinguish between an image file (jpeg, TIFF, webp, avif etc) which is a picture of (1) someone and (2) their name in printed form, that would seem to imply at least some who are somewhere on the aphantasia spectrum retain the ability to visualize printed text, just not the object referenced.  Professor Zeman says he first became aware of the condition in 2005 when a patient reported having lost the ability to visualize following minor surgery and after the case was in 2010 documented in the medical literature in the usual way, it provoked a number of responses in which multiple people informed Zeman they had never in their lifetime been able to visualize objects.  This was the origin of Zeman and his collaborators coining “congenital aphantasia”, describing individuals who never enjoyed the ability to generate voluntary mental images.  Because it was something which came to general attention in the age of social media, great interest was triggered in the phenomenon and a number of “on-line tests” were posted, the best-known of which was the request for readers to “imagine a red apple” and rate their “mind's eye” depiction of it on a scale from 1 (photorealistic visualisation) through to 5 (no visualisation at all).  For many, this was variously (1) one’s first realization they were aphantasic or (2) an appreciation one’s own ability or inability to visualise objects was not universal.

How visualization can manifest: Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December. 2011.  If an aphantasic person doesn't know about aphantasia and doesn't know other people can imagine images, their lives are probably little different from them; it's just their minds have adapted to handle concepts in another way.

Top right: What’s thought “normal” visualization (thought to be possessed by most of the population) refers to the ability to imagine something like a photograph of what’s being imagined.  This too is a spectrum condition in that some will be able to imagine an accurate “picture”, something like a HD (high definition photograph” while others will “see” something less detailed, sketchy or even wholly inaccurate.  However, even if when asked to visualize “an apple” one instead “sees a banana”, that is not an indication of aphantasia, a condition which describes only an absence of an image.  Getting it that wrong is an indication of something amiss but it’s not aphantasia.

Bottom left: “Seeing” text in response to being prompted to visualize something was the result Galton in 1880 reported as such a surprise.  It means the brain understands the concept of what is being described; it just can’t be imagined as an image.  This is one manifestation of aphantasia but it’s not related to the “everything is text” school of post-modernism.  Jacques Derrida’s (1930-2004) fragment “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte” (literally “there is no outside-text”) is one of the frequently misunderstood phrases from the murky field of deconstruction bit it has nothing to do with aphantasia (although dedicated post-modernists probably could prove a relationship).

Bottom right: The absence of any image (understood as a “blankness” which does not necessarily imply “whiteness” or “blackness” although this is the simple way to illustrate the concept), whether text or to some degree photorealistic is classic aphantasia.  The absence does not mean the subject doesn’t understand the relevant object of concept; it means only that their mental processing does not involve imagery and for as long as humans have existed, many must have functioned in this way, their brains adapted to the imaginative range available to them.  What this must have meant was many became aware of what they were missing only when the publicity about the condition appeared on the internet, am interesting example of “diagnostic determinism”.

WebMD's classic Aphantasia test.

The eyes are an out-growth of the brain and WebMD explains aphantasia is caused by the brain’s visual cortex (the part of the brain that processes visual information from the eyes) “working differently than expected”, noting the often quoted estimate of it affecting 2-4% of the population may be understated because many may be unaware they are “afflicted”.  It’s a condition worthy of more study because aphantasics handle the characteristic by processing information differently from those who rely on visual images.  There may be a genetic element in aphantasia and there’s interest too among those researching “Long Covid” because the symptom of “brain fog” can manifest much as does aphantasia.

Aphantasia may have something to do with consciousness because aphantasics can have dreams (including nightmares) which can to varying degrees be visually rich.  There’s no obvious explanation for this but while aphantasia is the inability voluntarily to generate visual mental imagery while awake, dreaming is an involuntary perceptual experience generated during sleep; while both are mediated by neural mechanisms, these clearly are not identical but presumably must overlap.  The conclusions from research at this stage remains tentative the current neuro-cognitive interpretation seems to suggest voluntary (conscious) imagery relies on top-down activation of the visual association cortex while dream (unconscious) dream imagery relies more on bottom-up and internally driven activation during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.  What that would seem to imply is that in aphantasia, the former pathway is impaired (or at least inaccessible), while the latter may remain intact (or accessible).

The University of Queensland’s illustration of the phantasia spectrum.

The opposite syndrome is hyperphantasia (having extremely vivid, detailed, and lifelike mental imagery) which can be a wonderful asset but can also be a curse, rather as hyperthymesia (known also as HSAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory) and colloquially as “total recall”) can be disturbing.  Although it seems not to exist in the sense of “remembering everything, second-by-second”, there are certainly those who have an extraordinary recall of “events” in their life and this can have adverse consequences for mental health because one of the mind’s “defensive mechanisms” is forgetting or at least suppressing memories which are unwanted.  Like aphantasia & hyperphantasia, hyperthymesia is not listed by the DSM as a mental disorder; it is considered a rare cognitive trait or neurological phenomenon although like the imaging conditions it can have adverse consequences and these include disturbing “flashbacks”, increased rumination and increased rates of anxiety or obsessive tendencies.

Foxbat

Foxbat or fox-bat (pronounced foks-bat)

(1) As Foxbat, the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) reporting name for the Soviet-era MiG-25 (Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25) high-altitude supersonic interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft.

(2) A common name for members of the Megachiroptera (the Pteropus (suborder Yinpterochiroptera), a genus of megabats), some of the largest bats in the world.

Fox is from the Middle English fox, from the Old English fox (fox), from the Proto-West Germanic fuhs, from the Proto-Germanic fuhsaz (fox), from the primitive Indo-European púḱsos (the tailed one), derive possibly from puḱ- (tail).  It was cognate with the Scots fox (fox), the West Frisian foks (fox), the Fering-Öömrang North Frisian foos, the Sölring and Heligoland fos, the Dutch vos (fox), the Low German vos (fox), the German Fuchs (fox), the Icelandic fóa (fox), the Tocharian B päkā (tail, chowrie), the Russian пух (pux) (down, fluff), the Sanskrit पुच्छ (púccha) (source of the Torwali پوش‎ (pūš) (fox) and the Hindi पूंछ (pūñch) (tai”).

Bat in the context of the animal was a dialectal variant (akin to the dialectal Swedish natt-batta) of the Middle English bake & balke, from the North Germanic. The Scandinavian forms were the Old Swedish natbakka, the Old Danish nathbakkæ (literally “night-flapper”) and the Old Norse leðrblaka (literally “leather-flapper”).  The Old English word for the animal was hreremus, from hreran (to shake) and it was known also as the rattle-mouse, an old dialectal word for "bat", attested from the late sixteenth century.  A more rare form, noted from the 1540s, was flitter-mouse (the variants were flinder-mouse & flicker-mouse) in imitation of the German fledermaus (bat) from the Old High German fledaron (to flutter).  In Middle English “bat” and “old bat” were used as a (derogatory) term to describe an old woman, perhaps a suggestion of witchcraft rather than a link to bat as "a prostitute who plies her trade by night".  It’s ancient slang and one etymologist noted the French equivalent hirondelle de nuit (night swallow) was "more poetic".  To “bat the eylids” is an Americanism from 1847, an extended of the earlier (1610s) meaning "flutter (the wings) as a hawk", a variant of bate.  Fox-bat is a noun; the noun plural is fox-bats.  When used of the MiG-25 (as "Foxbat", the NATO reporting name), it's a proper noun and thus used with an initial capital.

Fox-bat in flight.

The term fox-bat or flying fox, (genus Pteropus), covers some sixty-five bat species found on tropical islands from Madagascar to Australia and north through Indonesia and mainland Asia.  Most species are primarily nocturnal and are the largest bats, some attaining a wingspan of 5 feet (1.5 m) with an overall body length of some 16 inches (400 mm).  Zoologists list fox-bats as “Old World fruit bats” (family Pteropodidae) that roost in large numbers and eat fruit and are thus a potential pest, many countries restricting their importation.  Like nearly all Old World fruit bats, flying foxes use sight rather than echolocation, a physiological process for locating distant or invisible objects (such as prey) by means of sound waves reflected back to the emitter by the objects) to navigate, despite the largely nocturnal habit of most species.  In the database maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), about half of all flying fox species are listed as suffering declining populations, 15 said to be vulnerable and 11 endangered. The fox-bats were previously classified in the suborder Megachiroptera, but most researchers now place them in the suborder Yinpterochiroptera, which also contains the superfamily Rhinolophoidea, a diverse group that includes horseshoe bats, trident bats, mouse-tailed bats, and others.

MiG-25 (Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25).

Once the most controversial fighter in the skies, there was so much mystery surrounding the MiG-25 that US, British and NATO planners spent years spying on it with a mixture of awe and dread.  Conceived originally by Soviet designers to counter the threat posed by Boeing’s B-70 Valkyrie bomber, development continued even after the B70 project, rendered redundant by advances in missile technology, was cancelled.  First flown in 1964 and entering service in 1970, nearly 1200 were built and were operated by several nations as well as the USSR.  Able (still) to outrun any other fighter, only the US Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was faster but fewer than three dozen of those were built and those were configured only for strategic reconnaissance.  When first the West became aware of the Foxbat, it caused quite a stir because, combining stunningly high speed with high altitude tolerance and a heavy weapons load, it did appear to be the long-feared platform which would render Soviet airspace immune from US penetration.  It was the threat the Foxbat was thought to pose which was influential in the direction pursued by US engineers when developing the McDonnell Douglas F15.

A brunette-phase Lindsay Lohan in MiG-25 Foxbat T-shirt, rendered by Vovsoft as pen drawing.

The Foxbat however never realized its apparently awesome implications. Because the original design brief was to produce a device which could combat the fast, high-flying B-70, many of the characteristics desirable in a short-range interceptor were neglected in the quest for something which could get very high, very quickly.  At that it was a breathtakingly successful but there were compromises, the fuel burn was epic and, with a very high take-off and landing speed, it could operate only from the longest runways.  Still, at what it was good at it was really good and its very presence meant the US had to plan any mission within range of a Foxbat, cognizant of the threat it was thought to present.  Unbeknown to the West, at lower altitudes it presented little threat and was no dog-fighter; it was essentially a dragster built for the skies, faster in a straight line than just about anything but really not good at turning.  Its design philosophy was essentially the same as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, a US supersonic interceptor which first flew in 1954 with over 2,500 built and supplied to many air forces, the last of which wasn’t retired from active service until 2004.  An uncompromising machine built for speed, pilots dubbed it the “winged missile” and that assessment was not unrelated to it later gaining the nickname “widow-maker”; those who flew the thing described the characteristics it exhibited in low speed turns as: “banking with intent to turn”.

It wasn’t until 1976 when a Soviet defector landed a new Foxbat in Japan in 1976 that US engineers were able to examine the airframe and draw an understanding of its capabilities.  What their analysis found was that the limitations in Soviet metallurgy and manufacturing techniques had resulted in a heavy airframe, one which really couldn’t maneuver at high speeds, and handled poorly at low altitudes. The surprisingly primitive radar was of limited effectiveness in conventional combat situations against enemy fighters, which, combined with the low altitude clumsiness meant that its drawbacks tended to outweigh the advantage it had in sheer speed at altitude, something which meant less to the US since missiles had replaced the B-70 strategic bomber (which never entered production).

In its rare combat outings, those advantages did however confer the occasional benefit.  In 1971, a Soviet Foxbat operating out of Egypt used its afterburners to sustain Mach 3 for an extended duration, enabling it to outrun three pursuing Israeli F4-Phantoms and one downed a US Navy F/A-18 Hornet during the first Gulf War (1991).  During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Iraqi Air Force found them effective against old, slow machinery but sustained heavy losses when confronted with the Iran’s agile F-14 but most celebrated was probably the Foxbat’s success during the Gulf War in claiming both of the last two American aircraft lost in air-to-air combat.  Otherwise, the Foxbat has at low altitude proved vulnerable, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) shooting down several in the war over Lebanon (1981) although they have of late been used, most improbably, in a ground attack role in the Syrian Civil War, the Syrian Arab Air Force, lacking a more appropriate platform, pressing the Foxbats into a ground support role, in at least one case using air-to-air missiles to attack ground targets.  The Soviet designers took note of the operating environment when developing the Foxbat’s successor, the MiG-31 (NATO reporting name Foxhound), a variant which sacrificed a little of the pure speed and climb-rate in order to produce a better all-round fighter.

Usually unrelated: 1957 Morris Minor Traveller (left) and 1960 Jaguar XK150 FHC (right).  Stations wagons with wood frames (real and fake) are in the US called "woodies" but the spelling "woody" also appears in UK use.  Although between 1968-1973, there were “badge-engineered” Versions of the Minor’s commercial derivatives sold as the Austin 6cwt & 8cwt Van & Pick up, all the “woodies” were Morris Travellers.

Although for the whole of the Jaguar XK150’s production run (1957-1961) the Morris Minor Traveller (1952-1973) was also being made in factories never more than between 20-60 odd miles (32-100 km) distant, so different in form and function were the two it’s rare they’re discussed in the same context.  One was powered by an engine which had five times won the Le Mans 24 hour endurance classic while the other was one of several commercially-oriented variants of a small, post-war economy car, introduced in the austere England of 1948.  The Traveller did however have charm and it was also authentic in its construction, the varnished ash genuinely structural, an exoskeleton which provided the strength while the panels behind were there just to keep out the rain.  By contrast, by the mid-1950s, the US manufacturers had abandoned the method and produced “woodies” with a combination of fibreglass (fake timber) and DI-NOC, (Diurno Nocturna, from the Spanish, literally “daytime-nighttime” and translated for marketing purposes as “beautiful day & night”) appliqué, an embossed vinyl or polyolefin material with a pressure-sensitive adhesive backing produced since the 1930s and perfected by Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing (3M).

In phased releases over 1957-1958, Jaguar made available the usual three versions of its XK sports car, the DHC (drophead coupé, a style which elsewhere was usually called a cabriolet or convertible) and FHC (fixed head coupé, ie coupé), later joined by the more minimalist OTS (open two-seater, a roadster) and the line was a link between flowing lines of the inter-war years and the new world, celebrated by the E-Type (1961-1974) which created such a sensation upon debut at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show.  One sometimes unappreciated connection between the XKs (XK120: 1948-1954, XK140: 1954-1957 & XK150: 1957-1961) and E-Type is neither was envisaged as the long-term model both became.  The XK120 had been shown at the 1948 London Motor show with the purpose of drawing attention to the new XK straight-six (which would serve in vehicles as diverse as racing cars, limousines and fire engines until 1992) but such was the public response it was added to the factory catalogue, the early models hurriedly built in aluminium to satisfy demand.  Later, Jaguar hadn't believed there would be a market for more than a few hundred E-Types so it was not designed in a way optimized for mass-production which was embarked upon only because demand was so high.  Many of the car's quirks and compromises remained part of the structure until the end of production more than a decade later.   

Minor modification: 1960 Jaguar XK150 3.4 Shooting Brake (“Foxbat”).

The Morris Minor Traveller was the last true woodie in production and is now a thing in the lower reaches of the collector market but there's one less available for fans because of a sacrifice to a project by industrial chemist and noted Jaguar enthusiast, the late Geoffrey Stevens, construction undertaken between 1975-1977. He wanted the Jaguar XK150 shooting brake the factory never made so blended an XK150 FHC with the rear compartment of a Morris Minor Traveller of similar vintage.  Mr Stevens in 1976 dubbed his creation “Foxbat” because, just as a MiG-25 landing in Japan was an event so unexpected it made headlines around the world, he suspected that in the circles he moved, a timber-framed XK150 shooting brake would be as much a surprise.  In that he proved correct and the unique shooting brake has been restored as a charming monument to English eccentricity, even the usually uncompromising originality police among the Jaguar community (mostly) fond of it.  In a nice touch (and typical of an engineer’s attention to detail), a “Foxbat” badge was hand-cut, matching the original Jaguar script.  Other than the hybrid coach-work, the XK150 is otherwise “matching-numbers” (chassis number S825106DN; engine number V7435-8).   

On the Wings of a Russian Foxbat: Deep Purple bootleg, 1977.

The origin of the term “bootlegging” dates from the late eighteenth century when it was used by British customs and excise officers to describe the trick smugglers used hiding valuables in their large sea-boots.  Since then, it’s been applied variously including (1) the distilling, transporting and selling of unlawful liquor (2) unlicensed copies of software and (3) unauthorized recordings of music and film.  In music, bootleg recordings began to appear in some volume in the 1960s and originally were often from live performances.  Often created from tapes of dubious quality with little or no editing, these bootlegs generally were tolerated by the industry because they tended to circulate among fans who anyway purchased the official product and were thought of just a form of free promotional material.  Later, when things became more organized and bootleggers began distributing replicas of official releases, the attitude changed and for decades the software industry fought ongoing battles against bootleg copies (which in some non-Western markets represented in excess of 90% of installations).

On the Wings of a Russian Foxbat, re-released (in re-mastered form with bonus tracks) in 1995 as Live in California, Long Beach Arena, 1976.

Taken from a performance by the English heavy metal band Deep Purple at the Long Beach Arena, Los Angeles on 27 February 1976, the bootleg On the Wings of a Russian Foxbat was released in 1977 and was another example of the effect on popular culture of the Soviet pilot’s defection.  The link with the event in Japan was that the quality of the band’s performance was unexpectedly good, their reputation at the time not good (they would break-up only weeks after the Long Beach show).  Additionally, the sound quality was outstanding (certainly by the usual bootleg standards), something not then easy to achieve in an outdoor venue with a raucous audience.  Curiously, the original On the Wings of a Russian Foxbat bootleg used for the cover art a picture of unsmiling soldiers from the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) from the Republic of China (then usually called “Red China” or “Communist China); presumably the bootleggers decided the star on the caps was “sufficiently Russian”.  In 1995, re-mastered, the recording (with a few bundled “extras”) was re-issued as an “official” release, the fate of many a bootleg with a cult-following.  With memories of the diplomatic incident in 1976 having faded, although On the Wings of a Russian Foxbat still appeared on the cover, the album was marketed as Live in California, Long Beach Arena, 1976.

Inamorata

Inamorata (pronounced in-am-uh-rah-tuh or in-am-uh-rah-tuh)

A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover

1645-1655: From the Italian innamorata (mistress, sweetheart), noun use of the feminine form of innamorato (the noun plural innamoratos or innamorati) (lover, boyfriend), past principle of innamorare (to inflame with love), the construct being in- (in) + amore (love), from the Latin amor.  A familiar modern variation is enamor.  Inamorata is a noun; the noun plural is inamoratas.

Words like inamorata litter English and endure in their niches, not just because poets find them helpful but because they can be used to convey subtle nuances in a way a word which appears synonymous might obscure.  One might think the matter of one’s female lover might be linguistically (and sequentially) covered by (1) girlfriend, (2) fiancé, (3) wife and (4) mistress but to limit things to those is to miss splitting a few hairs.  A man’s girlfriend is a romantic partner though not of necessity a sexual one because some religions expressly prohibit such things without benefit of marriage and there are the faithful who follow these teachings.  One can have as many girlfriends as one can manage but the expectation they should be enjoyed one at a time.  Women can have girlfriends too but (usually) they are “friends who are female” rather than anything more except of course among lesbians where the relationship is the same as with men.  Gay men too have girlfriends who are “female friends”, some of whom may be “fag hags” a term which now is generally a homophobic slur unless used within the LGB factions of the LGBTQQIAAOP community where it can be jocular or affectionate.

A fiancé is a women to whom one is engaged to be married, in many jurisdictions once a matter of legal significance because an offer of marriage could be enforced under the rules of contract law.  While common law courts didn’t go as far as ordering “specific performance of the contract”, they would award damages on the basis of a “breach of promise”, provided it could be adduced that three of the four essential elements of a contract existed: (1) offer, (2) certainty of terms and (3) acceptance.  The fourth component: (4) consideration (ie payment), wasn’t mentioned because it was assumed to be implicit in the nature of the exchange; a kind of deferred payment as it were.  It was one of those rarities in common law where things operated almost wholly in favor of women in that they could sue a man who changed his mind while they were free to break-off an engagement without fear of legal consequences though there could be social and familial disapprobation.  Throughout the English-speaking world, the breach of promise tort in marriage matters has almost wholly been abolished, remaining on the books in the a couple of US states (not all of which lie south of the Mason-Dixon Line) but even where it exists it’s now a rare action and one likely to succeed only in exceptional circumstances or where a particularly fragrant plaintiff manages to charm a particularly sympathetic judge.

The spelling fiancé (often as fiance) is now common for all purposes.  English borrowed both the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) from the French verb fiancer (to get engaged) in the mid nineteenth century and that both spellings were used is an indication it was one of those forms which was, as an affectation, kept deliberately foreign because English typically doesn’t use gendered endings. Both the French forms were ultimately from the Classical Latin fidare (to trust), a form familiar in law and finance in the word fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūciārius (held in trust), from fīdūcia (trust) which, as a noun & adjective, describes relationships between individuals and entities which rely on good faith and accountability.  Pronunciation of both fiancé and fiancée is identical so the use of the differentiated forms faded by the late twentieth century and even publications like Country Life and Tattler which like writing with class-identifiers seem to have updated.  Anyway, because English doesn’t have word endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female betrothed would seem unfashionable in the age of gender fluidity but identities exist as they’re asserted and one form or the other might be deployed as a political statement by all sides in the gender wars.

Model Emily Ratajkowski's (b 1991) clothing label is called Inamorata, a clever allusion to her blended nickname EmRata.  This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in three aspects.

Wife was from the Middle English wyf & wif, from the Old English wīf (woman, wife), from the Proto-West Germanic wīb, from the Proto-Germanic wībą (woman, wife) and similar forms existed as cognates in many European languages.  The wife was the woman one had married and by the early twentieth century, in almost all common law jurisdictions (except those where systems of tribal law co-existed) it was (more or less) demanded one may have but one at a time.  Modern variations include “common-law wife” and the “de-facto wife”.  The common-law marriage (also known as the "sui iuris (from the Latin and literally “of one's own right”) marriage", the “informal marriage” and the “non-ceremonial marriage”) is a kind of legal quasi-fiction whereby certain circumstances can be treated as a marriage for many purposes even though no formal documents have been registered, all cases assessed on their merits.  Although most Christian churches don’t long dwell on the matter, this is essentially what marriage in many cases was before the institutional church carved out its role.  In popular culture the term is used loosely to refer sometimes just about any un-married co-habitants regardless of whether or not the status has been acknowledged by a court.  De facto was from the Latin de facto, the construct being dē (from, by) + the ablative of factum (fact, deed, act).  It translates as “in practice, what actually is regardless of official or legal status” and is thus differentiated from de jure, the construct being dē (from) + iūre (law) which describes something’s legal status.  In general use, a common-law wife and de facto wife are often thought the same thing but the latter differs that in some jurisdictions the parameters which define the status are codified in statute whereas a common law wife can be one declared by a court on the basis of evidence adduced.

Mistress dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English maistresse, from the Old & Middle French maistresse (in Modern French maîtresse), feminine of maistre (master), the construct being maistre (master) + -esse or –ess (the suffix which denotes a female form of otherwise male nouns denoting beings or persons), the now rare derived forms including the adjective mistressed and the noun mistressship.  In an example of the patriarchal domination of language, when a woman was said to have acquired complete knowledge of or skill in something, she’s was said to have “mastered” the topic.  A mistress (in this context) was a woman who had a continuing, extramarital sexual relationship with one man, especially a man who, in return for an exclusive and continuing liaison, provides her with financial support.  The term (like many) has become controversial and critics (not all of them feminists) have labeled it “archaic and sexist”, suggesting the alternatives “companion” or “lover” but neither convey exactly the state of the relationship so mistress continues to endure.  The critics have a point in that mistress is both “loaded” and “gendered” given there’s no similarly opprobrious term for adulterous men but the word is not archaic; archaic words are those now rare to the point of being no longer in general use and “mistress” has hardly suffered that fate, thought-crime hard to stamp out.

This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in another three aspects.

Inamorata was useful because while it had a whiff of the illicit, that wasn’t always true but what it did always denote was a relationship of genuine love whatever the basis so one’s inamorata could also be one’s girlfriend, fiancé or mistress though perhaps not one’s wife, however fond one might be of her.  An inamorata would be a particular flavor of mistress in the way paramour or leman didn't imply.  Paramour was from the Middle English paramour, paramoure, peramour & paramur, from the Old French par amor (literally “for love's sake”), the modern pronunciation apparently an early Modern English re-adaptation of the French and a paramour was a mistress, the choice between the two perhaps influenced by the former tending to the euphemistic.  The archaic leman is now so obscure that it tends to be used only by the learned as a term of disparagement against women in the same way a suggestion mendaciousness is thought a genteel way to call someone a liar.  Dating from 1175-1225, it was from the Middle English lemman, a variant of leofman, from the Old English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart (and attested also as a personal name)), the construct being lief +‎ man (beloved person).  Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof (dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz and was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo & ljoo, the West Frisian leaf, the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs, the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the Polish luby.  Man is from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European mon (man).  A linguistic relic, leman applied originally either to men or women and had something of a romantic range.  It could mean someone of whom one was very fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly drifted to the latter: someone's sweetheart or paramour.  In the narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, that would now just confuse.

About the concubine, while there was a tangled history, there has never been much confusion.  Dating from 1250-1300, concubine was from the Middle English concubine (a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin concubīna, derived from cubare (to lie down), the construct being concub- (variant stem of concumbere & concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix).  The status (a woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the laity.  The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess although this title was wholly honorary and of no religious significance although presumably, as a vicar's wife might fulfil some role in the parish, they might have been delegated to do this and that.

Once were inamoratas: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, barefoot in Los Cabos, Mexico, 2008.

Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“sexually to violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction").  In Medieval Latin it also meant meant also "forcible violation" & "kidnapping" and a misunderstanding of the context in which the word was then used has caused problems in translation ever since .  Concubinage is, in the West, a term largely of historic interest.  It describes a relationship in which a woman engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage.  This may be due to differences in social rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions, or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities.  Historically, concubinage was often entered into voluntarily because of an economic imperative.  In the modern vernacular, wives use many words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).  They rarely use concubine.  They might however be tempted to use courtesan which was from the French courtisane, from the Italian cortigiana, feminine of cortigiano (courtier), from corte (court), from the Latin cohors.  A courtesan was a prostitute but a high-priced one who attended only to rich or influential clients and the origin of the term was when it was used of the mistresses of kings or the nobles in the court, the word mistress too vulgar to be used in such circles.