Scum

Scum (pronounced skuhm)

(1) A film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as a result of natural processes such as the greenish film of algae and similar vegetation on the surface of a stagnant pond.

(2) A layer of impure matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as the result of boiling or fermentation.

(3) As disparaging slang, a person though low, worthless, or evil (often as “scumbag” or “scumbucket”.

(4) Such persons collectively (often as “scum of the earth”).

(5) An alternative name for scoria, the slag or dross that remains after the smelting of metal from an ore.

1200–1250: From the Middle English scume, derived from the Middle Dutch schūme (foam, froth) cognate with German schaum, ultimately of Germanic origin, drawn from the Old High German scūm and Old French escume.  In Old Norse word was skum, thought derived from the primitive root (s)keu (to cover, conceal).  By the early fourteen century, the word scummer (shallow ladle for removing scum) had emerged in Middle Dutch, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic skuma, the sense deteriorated from "thin layer atop liquid" to "film of dirt," then just "dirt" and from this use is derived the modern skim.  The meaning "lowest class of humanity" is from the 1580s; the familiar phrase “scum of the earth” from 1712.  In modern use, the English is scum, the French écume, the Spanish escuma, the Italian schiuma and the Dutch schuim.  Scum is a noun & verb, scumbag, scumbaggery, scumbagginess & scumbucket are nouns, and scumlike, scummy & scumbaggy are adjectives; the noun plural is scums.

Rendezvous: New Zealand-born cartoonist David Low's (1891-1963) famous take on the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

The document usually is called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because it was signed by comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945).  To illustrate the pact's cynical nature, Low depicted Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, left) exchanging artificial pleasantries with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953, right) both knowing it was only a matter of time before their nations would be at war.  Although Low at the time couldn't have known it, comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) was not unaware of public opinion and when presented with the pact's draft text, decided the rather flowery preamble extoling German-Soviet friendship was just too absurd, telling the visiting delegation that "...after years of pouring buckets of shit over each-other...", it'd be more convincing were the document to be as formal as possible.  Sensational as news of the pact was in 1939, what became more notorious still was the appended "secret protocol" which defined the line of delineation by which Poland would be "carved-up" between Germany and the USSR after the German invasion.  Because of geography and demographic reality, the line on the map was remarkably close to the Curzon Line, first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; Viceroy of India 1899-1905 & UK Foreign Secretary 1919-1924) as the border between Soviet Russia and a reconstituted Poland.

Cautiously, comrade Stalin waited a couple of weeks to ensure the German victory was secure before sending the Red Army over the border, an act the Poles would remember as "a stab in the back".  The defense counsel at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) obtained a copy of the secret protocol and attempted to have it introduced as evidence but the judges denied the motion, the compromise being it could be referred to but the contents could not be discussed.  The irony of two Soviet judges dealing with the charges of a conspiracy to wage aggressive war (Count 1) and waging aggressive war (Count 2) when knowledge of the secret protocol (a conspiracy to invade Poland) was afoot attracted much comment.  One unmoved by the perception of cynicism was comrade Stalin for whom all politics was realpolitik.  At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually would refer to “the Curzon Line” and the UK foreign secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed the more common practice was to call it “the Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  “Call it whatever you like” replied Stalin, “we still think it's fair and just”.  Rarely did comrade Stalin much care to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.      

 

The Society for Cutting Up Men: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

S.C.U.M. Manifesto (post shooting, 1968 paperback Edition).

Although celebrated in popular culture as the summer of love, not everyone shared the hippie vibe in 1967.  The S.C.U.M. Manifesto was a radical feminist position paper by Valerie Solanas (1936-1988), self-published in 1967 with a commercial print-run a year later.  Although lacking robust theoretical underpinnings and criticized widely within the movement, it remains both feminism’s purest and most uncompromising work and an enduring landmark in the history of anarchist publishing.  In the abstract, S.C.U.M. suggested little more than the parlous state of the word being the fault of men, it was the task of women to repair the damage and this could be undertaken only if men were exterminated from planet Earth.  The internal logic was perfect.

As well as the Society for Cutting Up Men, Acronym Finder’s list of the use of SCUM as an acronym includes (1) Subculture Urban Marketing, (2) Santa Clara United Methodist, (3) Sensitive Caring Urban Male (though being one of those wouldn’t save them and they’re as likely (after ordering their Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato with almond milk and an extra shot of espresso) as a (4) Self-Centered Urban Male to get Solanas’ “six-inch blade” between the ribs), (5) Southern California Unified Malacologists (malacology is the study of molluscs), (6) South Coast United Motorcyclist and (7) Socialist Cover-Up Media (how Fox News and those in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) cult think of the “fake news media).

The use of Scum as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men existed in printed form from 1967 (though not in the manifesto’s text) although Solanas later denied the connection, adding that S.C.U.M. never existed as an organization and was just “…a literary device”.  The latter does appear true, S.C.U.M. never having a structure or membership, operating more as Solanas’ catchy marketing label for her views; dubbing it a literary device might seem pretentious but, given her world-view, descending to the mercantile would have felt grubby.  That said, when selling the original manifesto, women were charged US$1, men US$2.  While perhaps not as elegant an opening passage as a Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) might have penned, Solanas’ words were certainly succinct.  "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.”  Ominously, “If S.C.U.M. ever strikes” she added, “it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”  No ambiguity there, men would know what to expect.

On set, 1967, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) & Nico (1938-1988).

Author and work were still little-known outside anarchist circles when, on 3 June 1968, Solanas attempted to murder pop-artist Andy Warhol, firing three shots, one finding the target.  The year 1968 was in the US a time of violence and tumult but amid it all, the celebrity connection and the bizarre circumstances ensured this one crime would attract widespread coverage.  Valerie Solanas with her two guns had entered Mr Warhol’s sixth-floor office at 33 Union Square West convinced he was intent on stealing the manuscript of the play Up Your Ass she’d repeatedly tried to persuade him to produce.  Warhol and his staff had reviewed the work and decided it simply wasn’t very good (Warhol giving the the back-handed compliment of it being "well-typed") but because he’d “misplaced” the manuscript (it was later discovered in a trunk) Solanas concluded that was just a trick and he was going to steal what she thought of as her brilliant play, claiming it as her own.  Although she’d for some time hovered around the fringes of the Warhol “Factory”, she seems not to have had much success as an advocate.  Her S.C.U.M. Manifesto envisioned a world without men which was at the time heady stuff with a certain mid-1960s appeal but Warhol also declined her offer to become a member of the Scum’s “Men’s Auxiliary” (a group for men sufficiently sympathetic to Scum’s aims to begin “working diligently to eliminate themselves.”)  As offers go, it really wasn't compelling.

New York Daily News, 4 June 1968.

Not best pleased by the headline, “Actress Shoots Andy Warhol”, Solanas demanded a retraction claiming that she was "a writer, not an actress."  The paper had based the headline on her appearance in Warhol's films I, a Man (1967) and Bike Boy (1967).  Warhol later admitted he'd cast her in I, a Man (for which she received a US$25 fee) in the hope she'd stop nagging him about the play she'd written.  She never complained about anything else the press wrote about her but apparently the label "actress" was beyond the pale.

Solanas’ state of mind about the fate of her intellectual property can be explained by it being no secret Warhol was inclined to “use” (the words “borrow”, “appropriate” “steal” also often used but “sample” was not yet a thing) and rebrand it all as “his art”.  For weeks leading up to the attempt on his life, repeatedly she’d called his office with first requests and then demands about her manuscript, culminating with threats at which point Warhol stopped taking her calls; the next call she made was in person and she shot him and an art gallery owner with who he was discussing an exhibition (he (as collateral damage) received minor injuries); Warhol was declared dead but paramedics arrived to stabilize him.  Calmly, Solanas left the building and several hours later, approached a policeman in Times Square, handed over her two guns and told him: “He had too much control over my life.”  Unsurprisingly, a judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation and she received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but despite this, she was found competent to stand trial and pleaded guilty to “reckless assault with intent to harm”; sentenced to three years incarceration (including time served) in the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane (1892-1977); she was released late in 1971.  Solanas never renounced the S.C.U.M. manifesto nor lost faith in its capacity to change the world but her her mental health continued to decline and reports indicate she became increasingly paranoid and unstable. She spent her last years in a single-occupancy welfare hotel in San Francisco, where, alone, she died in 1988, the official cause of death listed as "pneumonia".  

  

A (fake) montage of Lindsay Lohan as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) might have rendered.  Ms Lohan was not yet 12 months old when Warhol died (the start of her modeling career still two years off) but had he lived another two decades he'd almost certainly have painted her.

Ms Solanas' infamy lasted beyond fifteen minutes and one unintended consequence of her act was the S.C.U.M. Manifesto finally finding a commercial publisher, thus becoming what is publishing is known as succès de scandale (a work which owes its success or very existence to some notoriety or scandalous element).  In certain feminist and anarchist circles she remains a cult figure although, it takes some intellectual gymnastics to trace a lineal path from her manifesto to the work of even the more radical of the later-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), Susan Brownmiller (b 1935) or Catharine MacKinnon (b 1946).  Solanas to this day still is usually described as a “feminist” or “radical feminist” but, given the implication of the manifesto, it would seem more accurate to label her a misandrist (one who exhibits a hatred of or a prejudice against men), a world view which attracts many because, to be fair, there are any number of reasons to hate men.  Although one suspects among women the "all men are bastards" school of thought is ancient, the noun "misandry" was a late nineteenth century formation, the construct being mis- (in the sense of “hatred”) +‎ -andry (men), by analogy with the more commonly used misogyny (hatred of or a prejudice against women); the inspiration was the Ancient Greek μισανδρία (misandría), the construct being μισέω (miséō) (hate) + ἀνήρ (anḗr) (man).

Cause and effect: The (attempted) murder weapon (Beretta M1935 automatic in .32ACP, left) and Warhol's post-operative torso (right).

Warhol required surgery to his spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus and lungs; the damage he suffered to a range of internal organs not uncommon among those shot at close range; the bullet ricocheted off a rib, accounting for the lateral trajectory.  Although the Beretta M1935 automatic (in .32ACP) she used is not regarded as a “big calibre” (the .32 listed by most as a “small bore”), a single shot from one, especially at close-range, can be lethal and an wound from even a smaller load (like the .22 she was also carrying) can be fatal.  In the context of handguns, a “big calibre” load usually is defined as one with a diameter of .40 inches (10mm) or larger and of those there are many including .44, .45 & .50 although “magnum” versions of smaller bore ammunition (.22, .357 etc) can match many larger loads in “stopping power”.  Interviewed later, Warhol reflected: “Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television - you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”

Gun (1982), synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas by Andy Warhol.

Artistically, the shooting had consequences.  Warhol became more guarded, abandoning projects like filmmaking which required so much contact with people and stopping the production of controversial art which might attract more murderous types and focusing on business, in 1969 founding what in 1969 became Interview magazine.  Although there had in his previous output been evidence of an interest in death and violence, after the shooting, often he would visited the theme of death, painting a series of skulls and one of guns, a weapon with which he now had an intensely personal connection.  He was certainly not unaware what happened that day in June 1968 was a turning point in his life, some twenty years later noting in his diary: “I said that I wasn’t creative since I was shot, because after that I stopped seeing creepy people.”

Termagant

Termagant (pronounced tur-muh-guhnt)

(1) A mythical deity popularly believed in Medieval Christendom to be worshiped by Muslims and introduced into the morality play as a violent, overbearing personage in long robes (a proper noun and thus used with initial capital).

(2) A brawling, boisterous, and turbulent person or thing (archaic).

(3) A censorious, nagging, scolding and quarrelsome woman (not exactly synonymous with “harridan”, “virago” or “shrew” but with a similar flavor of disapprobation); for those who find some women worse than others, the comparative is “more termagant”, the superlative “most termagant”.

(4) The act of behaving violently; turbulent conduct.

Circa 1500: From the Middle English Termagaunt (one of the three fictitious deities (others being Apollin & Mahound) represented as being worshipped by Muslims; any pagan god), from the from the Anglo-Norman Tervagant, Tervagaunt & Tervagan and the Old French Tervagant & Tervagan, a name bestowed on a wholly fictitious Muslim deity, created by Christian polemicists to use in medieval morality plays as a symbol of the Islamic faith.  In the Old French, Tervagant was a proper name in the eleventh century chanson de geste (song of heroic deeds (from the Classical Latin gesta (deeds, actions accomplished)) Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland).  The epic poem is the oldest known work of substantial length in French still extant and was drawn from the exploits of the Frankish military commander Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778) during the reign of Charlemagne (748–814; “Charles the Great” and (retrospectively) the first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814).  That the text (more correctly “texts” as a number of variants have been identified) survived to this day is accounted for by the work’s popularity; it was between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries among the most widely distributed pieces of literature in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.  The alternative spelling was termagant.  Termagant is a noun & adjective, termagancy & termagantism are nouns, termagantish is an adjective, and termagantly is an adverb; the noun plural is Termagants.

The ultimate origin of the word is a mystery but the most supported theory suggests the construct being based on the Latin ter (three times, thrice) (from the primitive Indo- European tréyes (three)) + vagāns (rambling, wandering) (present active participle of vagor (to ramble, roam, wander), from vagus (rambling, roaming, wandering) (the source of which may be the primitive Indo-European hwogos) + -or (an inflected form of -ō (the suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).  Given that possible etymology, it’s argued the appearance of Termagant in Chanson de Roland as one of the three deities allegedly worshipped by Muslims was an allusion to the wandering of the moon (the crescent moon a well-known symbol of Islam) in the form of the mythological goddesses Selene in heaven, Diana on Earth, and Proserpina in the underworld.  The adjective was derived from the original proper noun, the sense of a “violent, overbearing person” (later applied especially to “difficult” women) evolving because Christian scribes always applied these characteristics to the figure; the meaning shift was thus a “partial transfer” in that the unpleasant personality was carried over to earthly flesh and blood with no suggestion of anything supernatural. 

Al Malik Al Ahmar (The Red Jinn-King) from an eighteenth century edition of the the Arabic manuscript of Kitab al Bulhan (Book of Wonders).

The Termagant was a wholly mythical deity invented by Christian writers in Middle Ages who claimed it was a figure worshiped by Muslims.  Depicted as a violent, overbearing personage in long robes, unlike a number of cross-cultural creations there was no figure which existed specifically in Islamic belief, theology, or folklore that could be said to be a model for the fanciful imaginings of Christian polemicists so it was “fake news” rather than a distorted version of a figure in what was in the West long called Mohammedanism (also a misleading tern because of the implication Muhammad is worshiped by Muslims; In Islam only Allah (God) is worshiped while Muhammad is venerated as His greatest prophet).  This was all part of Christianity’s misrepresentation of Islamic theology as not monotheist and thus in violation of first two of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus: (1) Thou shall worship no other Gods and (2) Thou shall not create false idols.  It was a blatant untruth because strictly Islam was tawḥīd (monotheistic) and explicitly proscribed even the suggestion of a pantheon of gods.  Unlike Christianity’s claims about Jesus Christ, the prophet Muhammad was never said to be divine and was never worshipped.  Thus, the so-called “Saracen trinity” in medieval texts has no basis in Islamic doctrine although that didn’t prevent the notion spreading and being believed and variants of the techniques of dissemination have since been practiced by propagandists such as priests and politicians.

An Islamic miniature (1595) depicting Iblīs (top right) plotting against Muhammad watching over a meeting by the leaders of the Quraysh discussing the second pledge at al-Aqabah, being spied on by the anti-Islamic zealot “the Monk” Abu ʿĀmir al-Rāhib, who is part of Iblīs' plan, New York Public Library collection.

It’s true that there were then (as there are now) in Islam many figures of authority cloaked in long, dark robes but that was true also of Christianity and other faiths.  By the late Middle Ages, even if the fake theology was proving unconvincing, the secular appeal of such a menacing figure was real and especially in English theatre (where there was often more leeway granted by the censors of church & state than elsewhere in Europe), the termagant evolved into a stock character: ranting, tyrannical, bombastic and often dressed in a costume of a type which late in the twentieth century the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said (1935–2003) in Orientalism (1978) identified as a clichéd “exoticized Eastern costume” (another Western construct).  Of Termagant Apollin & Mahound, although there are in the Islamic tradition no true analogues, there are figures (perhaps better thought of as “concepts”) in which there are vague or superficial resemblances to the stereotype although there was never a hint they should be worshiped.  The جنّ (Jinn) were supernatural beings made of “smokeless fire” and although some were rebellious or violent, depending on this and that, they might be benevolent, neutral, or malevolent but were certainly not deities to be worshipped and seem never to have been depicted as despotic tyrants in the theatrical sense of the Termagant of the Christian imagination.  Best known in the West was إبليس (Iblīs/Shayṭān (Satan)) who existed as the primary adversarial figure in Islam and one representing arrogance, rebellion, and temptation.  Iblīs however seems closer to the Christian Satan than a “false god”, not being nor portrayed as a blustering theatrical tyrant in robes.  Most interesting in the tradition were the طاغية (ẓālim; the tyrannical rulers), a crew made especially interesting in the last few months, following the ayatollahs’ recent bloody crackdown on the streets of Iran to ensure regime survival, the death-toll in January 2026 believed to have exceeded 30,000 and the author and public policy analyst Robert Templer (b 1966) has estimated that on at least two days that month, there were more were killed in state-sanctioned violence than on any day since the end of World War II (1939-1945), his calculations including the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans.  The Qurʾān condemns unjust rulers (such as the Pharaohs) and to make the point, the ẓālim tended to be overbearing, violent and arrogant.  Those Iranians killed by the thousand while chanting “Death to the dictator!” would have recognized what the Qurʾān condemns but the pattern is known from history.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right) with former special friend Samantha Ronson (b 1977, left).  The couple were a tabloid staple in 2008-2009 but at the time the question often asked was whether a relationship between one “quite termagant” and another “more termagant” could long be sustained.  As was predicted, things ended badly.  There seems no evidence there ever was a collective noun for Termagants.  If one is needed, it’s be something like a “tempest”, “scold”, “railing” or “fury” of termagants.

By March 1945, it was obvious to most in Berlin that the end was nigh and one individual brought to the attention of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) a salient passage in his political manifesto Mein Kampf (1925-1926): “The task of diplomacy is to ensure that a nation does not heroically go to its destruction but is practically preserved.  Every way that leads to this end is expedient, and a failure to follow it must be called criminal neglect of duty.  State authority as an end in itself cannot exist, since in that case every tyranny on this earth would be sacred and unassailable.  If a racial entity is being led toward its doom by means of governmental power, then the rebellion of every single member of such a Volk is not only a right, but a duty.”  Unmoved, Hitler responded: “If the war is lost, the people will be lost also.  It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival.  On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things.  For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation.  In any case only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”  Presumably, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (1939-2026; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran 1989-2026) would have concurred with the sentiments for, just as the Germans had “failed Hitler”, those Iranians chanting “Death to the dictator!” had failed him, thus the holy duty to kill them, not for a motive as base as “regime survival” but because the protesters were attacking Islam and thus Allah himself.  In the Supreme Leader’s theological construct, killing thousands in defense of God was not merely justified but an obligation.

Over time, in English, “a termagant” came to mean a scolding or overbearing person, a meaning wholly detached from its supposed origin in religion and under a number of influences, it came to be used mostly of women.  The most significant of these influences was literature and the stage, use shifting from elaborate epics about the crusades to popular entertainment.  As a constructed theological fiction Termagant was anyway perfect for the playwright and had it not existed it surely would have been created, violence, bluster, and irrational fury staples of drama.  For students of such things, the shift from the ranting tyrant to the “stock stage villain” was interesting because in the latter role the Termagant needed sometimes to be a comic character, bombastic and shouting with deliberate “overacting” often in the stage directions.

John Cleese (b 1939) and Andrew Sachs (1930-2016) in Basil the Rat (25 October, 1979) the final episode in the BBC comedy series Fawlty Towers (12 episodes in two series (1975 & 1979)).  It was the episode The Germans (24 October, 1975) in which the phrase "Don't mention the war" was introduced; it shows Basil Fawlty at his most termagant and in that case Shakespeare would have instructed Cleese to “out-herod Herod”.

So in early Modern English, the shift began from character to adjective and with the use in stage drama expanding during the sixteenth century, the transition accelerated.  When William Shakespeare (1564–1616) had Sir John Falstaff faking his own death (Act 5, Scene 4) in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), he spoke of the fierce Scottish rebel, Archibald, Earl of Douglas as “that hot termagant Scot” and by then there was no hint of any connection to alleged Islamic deities; it was just about the man’s turbulent, violet nature.  Shakespeare’s characters run the gamut of the human condition, something sometimes misunderstood by those who associate him only with what’s understood as “high culture”; one suspects Shakespeare would have been proud to have created a Basil Fawlty or J.R. Ewing but he knew that while “overacting” sometimes was essential for comic effect. otherwise it needed sedulously to be avoided. In his stage instructions for Hamlet (circa 1600) he cautioned the cast: “Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.”  That instruction also assumed a new life, appearing in modified form in All's Well That Ends Well (circa 1602) as “out-villain'd villainy” before in the 1800s “out-herods Herod” came widely to be used as a critique of any behaviour thought “excessive” and by then, in stage productions, “termagant” explicitly was invoked as verbal shorthand for the sort of strident ranting sometimes required.

Color plate of Sir John Falstaff by Giovan Battista Galizzi (1882-1963) from The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff (1923, with an introduction by lawyer George Radford (1851-1917)).

Even before the scientific and technical advances of the last two centuries-odd led to a proliferation of creations, the English language's vocabulary was famously large and while some categories have been more more productive than others, few proved quite as imaginatively fecund as (1) coinings and re-purposings to describe female body parts and (2) terms with which to demonize or disparage women (termagant one of the latter).  After the dubious link with Islam had been discarded, termagant was understood as someone blustering, noisy and tyrannical; it was in the late sixteenth century there was a distinct gender shift and the word became specifically female, associated less with domineering violence and more with shrillness, emotional excess, and scolding, performed in a theatrical style that audiences coded as unseemly or grotesque, applying the word to “difficult” women in the world beyond.  It was a time of profound social and political change and as social norms in England hardened around ideals of female deference, obedience and modesty, the label migrated: While for men “termagant” had meant (depending on context) threatening or ridiculous, when applied to women it suggested social transgression.  It wasn’t quite Taliban-level repression but women with minds of their own were apt to be judged quarrelsome, overbearing and scolding, terms like “shrew” & “virago” becoming termagant’s companion terms.  At this point, lexical fossilization set in and by the mid-1700, the original sense (the fictional deity) had faded into obscurity with the meaning stabilized as “a domineering, bad-tempered woman”, thus the adjectival form “termagant behaviour”.  To etymologists, the long process was an interesting case study in that the mechanism of changed happened in phases, the theatrical and religious origins surviving only as residual footnotes while the metonymic shifts were driven by changing cultural norms, not grammatical rules.

The Royal Navy's Talisman-class destroyer, HMS Termagant, 1916.

It was of course a good name for a warship and between 1780 and 1965, the British Admiralty from time to time had seven HMS Termagants attached to the Royal Navy’s fleets, the last launched in 1943.  One with a vague connection to the original meaning was a Talisman-class destroyer, ordered originally by the Ottoman Empire but in 1915 requisitioned by the Admiralty (as HMS Narborough) before being renamed built HMS Termagant.  Despite the expectations of decades, World War I (1914-1918) was not a conflict of great naval clashes and although she took part in the Battle of Jutland (1916, which seemed at the time anti-climatic but was strategically decisive), her record was not illustrious and, sold for scrap in 1921, she was broken up two years later.

Anthony Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister of Australia since 2022, left) and his wife Jodie Haydon (b 1979, centre) with Grace Tame (b 1994; activist and advocate for survivors of sexual assault, right) in photo opportunity before a morning tea at the Lodge (the prime minister’s residence), Canberra, Australia, January, 2025.

The “Fuck Murdoch” T-Shirt she made famous was worn with a purpose.  Happy to discuss the provocative fashion piece, Ms Tame said the message wasn’t aimed just at media mogul Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) but rather the “obscene greed, inhumanity and disconnection that he symbolises, which are destroying our planet.  For far too long this world and its resources have been undemocratically controlled by a small number of morbidly wealthy oligarchs.  If we want to dismantle this corrupt system, if we want legitimate climate action, equity, truth, justice, democracy, peace, land back, etc, then resisting forces like Murdoch is a good starting point.  Speaking truth to power starts at the grassroots level with simple, effective messages. It’s one of my favourite shirts.”

A difficult woman's sceptical glance: Grace Tame (right) looking at Scott Morrison, Canberra, Australia, January 2022.

Ms Tame had previously provided photographers with some good snaps, most memorably her stony “side-eye” expression to Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime minister 2018-2022), another politician she deemed not to have treated allegations of sexual assault and toxic workplace culture in federal parliament with sufficient seriousness, noting his casual dismissal of her as having “had a terrible life”.  Less than amused at some of the commentary about her sideways glance, she tweeted on X (the called Twitter) that some in the media appeared to have reduced the matter of survival from abuse to a culture “…dependent on submissive smiles, self-defeating surrenders and hypocrisy”, adding “What I did wasn’t an act of martyrdom in the gender culture war.”   Expanding things to a construct, she explained: “It’s true that many women are sick of being told to smile, often by men, for the benefit of men. But it’s not just women who are conditioned to smile and conform to the visibly rotting status-quo. It’s all of us.”

If Anthony Albanese didn't previously think Grace Tame was “a difficult woman”, he probably now does.

In Australian political discourse, “termagant” has not often been heard but ALP (Australian Labor Party) luminary Kim Beazley (b 1948) did in 2008 so label the Liberal Party’s Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015); while a by then untypical use, it did prove the word was still used of men.  Unfortunately, that seems not to have stuck in the mind of mind of the ALP’s Anthony Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister of Australia since 2022) who, during a “rapid-fire word association game” at a function organized by Mr Murdoch’s News Corp, was prompted with “Grace Tame” to which he responded “difficult”.  The remarks were noted by Ms Tame who had in the past been critical of politicians who she claimed treated her as a “problem to be managed” rather than doing anything substantive to prevent sexual abuse or assist survivors.  Whether it would have been any better had he be called her “termagant” rather than “difficult” is debatable but at least the history of Mr Abbott being so labelled would have meant it could be argued it wasn’t a “gendered” word (the history of the last few centuries notwithstanding).  Probably the best choice for Mr Albanese would have been “formidable” in the sense of the French très formidable meaning something like “wonderful” or “terrific”, such a woman being une femme formidable.  Formidable was from the Middle English formidable, from the Old French formidable & formible, from the Latin formīdābilis (formidable, terrible), from formīdō (fear, dread); it was another example of a meaning shift.  In fairness to Mr Albanese, it was a spur-of-the-moment response to an unexpected prompt and, in an attempt to make things better, he explained: “I was asked to describe people in one word and Grace Tame you certainly can’t describe in one word.  She has had a difficult life, and that was what I was referring to.  If there was any misinterpretation, then I certainly apologise. I think that Grace Tame has taken what is personal trauma and that awful experience that she had and channelled that into helping, in particular, other young women, being a strong and powerful advocate, being quite courageous in the way that she has gone out there.”  That probably made things worse.  Unimpressed, Ms Tame (a most adept media player) issued a statement: “Spare me the condescension, old man”, suggesting Mr Albanese was paraphrasing Scott Morrison who’d once explained her attitude as the consequence of a “terrible life”.  Continuing her critique, she added: “We all know what you meant. A badge of honour anyway.  A confession that I’ve ruffled him.”  On social media, she found much support, one posting: “‘Difficult’ is the misogynist’s code for a woman who won’t comply.  History tends to call her ‘courageous’.”

Australian Femicide Watch's Difficult Woman T-shirt in red (also available in seven other colors.  The fingernail shape is a stiletto.

Ms Tame must have resisted the temptation to order a batch of “Fuck Albo” T-shirts which shows some generosity of spirit but the Australian Femicide Watch's Red Heart Movement is offering “Difficult Woman” T-shirts with Aus$5 from each sale donated to the Grace Tame Foundation.  The garments are made with 100% combed organic cotton grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides and certified as compliant to the GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard).  Depressingly, Australian Femicide Watch tracks the death toll of women in Australia killed in “intimate partner violence”; in 2025 the rate was 1.44 per week and by the first week in April 2026, 1.23.

Crooked Hillary Clinton, the termagant of the last four decades.

Although it’s Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) “crooked” moniker which will forever be attached to crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), more than most women who have dared trespass on the historic male preserve of politics, she has attracted gender-based terms of disparagement.  Not content only with words from English, Mr Trump also borrowed from Yiddish, referring to her failure to secure the Democrat nomination for the 2008 presidential election as having been “schlonged by Barack Obama” (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) in the primaries.  A schlong (from the Yiddish שלאַנג (shlang) (snake)) is “a penis” and usually carries the implication of “a big one” so his idea was one of “man beats woman”; as “woman beats man”, the closest companion term is “pussy whipped” which for men obviously is quite a put-down.  Crooked Hillary has also been called “a tough little termagant in a pantsuit”, “the virago of Pennsylvania Avenue”, “calculating”, “disingenuous”, “a radical feminist”, “a harridan” (a bossy or belligerent old woman), a “femocrat”, a “feminazi”, “a succubus” (a female demon who had sex with sleeping men”, “Lady Macbeth in a headband”, “Ms bad-hair day” and “a shrew”.  All very sexist of course and there also been a debate about whether she should be called a “habitual” or “pathological” liar but she really can’t complain about that; she has “a bit of previous”.

Surplus

Surplus (pronounced sur-pluhs)

(1) Something that remains above what is used or needed.

(2) In agricultural economics, produce or a quantity of food grown by a nation or area in excess of its needs, especially such a quantity of food purchased and stored by a governmental program of guaranteeing farmers a specific price for certain crops.

(3) In accounting, the excess of assets over liabilities accumulated throughout the existence of a business, excepting assets against which stock certificates have been issued; excess of net worth over capital-stock value.

(4) In public finance, an excess of government revenues over expenditures during a certain financial year.

(5) In international trade, an excess of receipts over payments on the balance of payments.

(6) In economic theory, an unsold quantity of a good resulting from a lack of equilibrium in a market.  For example, if a price is artificially high, sellers will bring more goods to the market than buyers will be willing to buy.  In classical economics, the opposite of shortage.

(7) In Chancery law (and its successor courts), the remainder of a fund appropriated for a particular purpose.

1325–1375: From the Middle English surplus, from the Old French sorplus (remainder, extra), from the Medieval Latin superplūs (excess, surplus), the construct being super (over) + plūs (more).  The Italian surplus was a borrowing from modern French where surplus had existed since the twelfth century while in English, surplus has been used as an adjective since the fourteenth century.  Enjoying the same pronunciation, surplice and surplus are often confused.  A surplice is a liturgical vestment of the Christian Church, usually styled as a tunic of white linen or cotton material, with wide sleeves and often some lace embellishment or embroidered edges.  Lengths vary; in medieval times it reached almost to the ground but tends now to be shorter; some still retain the longer garments for the ceremonial.  As surplis, it was a thirteenth century Middle-English borrowing from the Anglo-French surpliz, a syncopated variant of Old French surpeliz, derived from the Medieval Latin superpellīcium (vestīmentum) over-pelt (garment), neuter of superpellīcius, the construct being super (over) + pellīt(us) (clothed with skins or fur) + -ius (the adjectival suffix).  A clerical surplice is thus a kind of frock; a clerical surplus means "too many priests".  Surplus is a noun, adjective & verb, surplusage is a noun and surplused & surplussing are verbs; the noun plural is surpluses or surplusses.

Surplus Repression

German-American Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), a sociologist and philosopher, highly influential in the mid-late twentieth century.  Even today, Marcuse enjoys a cult following and remains a hate-figure for those on the right who trace the ills of Western civilization to the corrosive influence Marxist & neo-Marxists exerted on youth in the newly expanded universities in the 1960s & 1970s.

A critique of capitalism’s culture and economic arrangements, Marcuse's book Eros and Civilization (1955) drew, inter alia, from Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and described an alternative structure for society.  He didn’t reject Freud’s idea that repression of man's instinctive desires was necessary for civilization to endure but Marcuse distinguished between basic (or necessary) repression and surplus repression, detailing the differences between the biological vicissitudes of the instincts and the socially imposed.  His construct was that basic repression was that which man suppresses to permit peaceful societies to form; repression or modification of the instincts being necessary “…for the perpetuation of the human race in civilization.”  Surplus repression meant those “…restrictions necessitated by [the] social domination” of the particular ruling-class or hegemony.  The purpose of surplus repression was to shape the instincts of individuals to conform to the requirements of modern capitalism, a surrender to what Marcuse called the “performance principle”, a construct building on Marx’s theories of alienation and surplus value.

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

Marcuse's writing did have the attraction of being more accessible than that of Marx or Freud (and certainly that of many neo-Marxists or Freudians) but that also meant it was easier for critics to cherry pick the points they found most objectionable.  For an explanation of why society need to be organized the way it was, conservatives seemed to prefer the rationalization of the "harsh but deliciously clever" English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) best known for his book Leviathan (1651) in which appeared the memorable passage describing the life of man in a world where there existed no restraining authorities forcing people to repress their worst instincts:

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Such a culture Hobbes called the "state of nature" by which he meant not an environmentally sustainable hippie commune but a place in which there was "bellum omnium contra omnes" (war of all against all) and murder went unpunished except by another murder.  Although the distinction is now an unfashionable one to draw, conservatives liked the way Hobbes seemed to know not all cultures were civilizations and that a little surplus repression was a small price to pay for for its benefits.  Hobbes lived through troubled times and his views on the importance of stable, strong governance should be understood as the writings of one who had seen what the alternative looks like but as a list of exculpatory bullet-points, his world view was one which could be ticked off by by the ayatollahs in Tehran or the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).  Marcuse is not so transportable.

Peace man: PotM (Playmate of the Month) Debbie Ellison (b 1949) on the cover of Playboy magazine, September 1970.  That year's PotY (Playmate of the Year) was Sharon Clark (b 1943).  With due respect to Ms Ellison, sometimes, it really may have been bought for the articles: Michael G Horowitz's profile of Marcuse was published in this edition.  The old curmudgeon of the left wouldn’t have had much sympathy for hippies and their piece sign because neither appeared to be doing much to bring on the revolution and was anyway once heard to remark: “Ach, women!  Useless in a revolutionary situation!”

Playboy titled the profile Portrait of the Marxist as an Old Trooper although the author (one of the philosopher's old students) preferred to call the piece a "personality snapshot" and it certainly had a different flavor than what would have been found in the activist press or journals of political science.  Years later, the author would concede some of his critique of Marcuse's work was misplaced and many of the old pessimist's predictions had (unfortunately) transpired.  That said, Marcuse seems never to have complained about the piece, unlike Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) whose interview by Eric Norden, conducted over an apparently convivial ten days in the “richly furnished living room of his spacious home” in Heidelberg, was published in Playboy’s June 1971 edition.  Speer would later complain the piece had been “…restructured, with words and formulations entirely foreign to me.”  He did however conclude “…on the whole the interview as printed corresponds with my opinions…” by which he meant Nordon was yet another to accept an recycle his core position: “If I didn't see it [the Holocaust], then it was because I didn't want to see it.”  That was the so-called “Billigung defense” which Speer since 1945 had, in a masterful manner, used simultaneously to accept a collective guilt yet absolve himself of individuality responsibility.  Others no more guilty but less cunning had been hanged at Nuremberg and the Playboy interview was printed years before material was discovered in the German federal archives documenting his part in the persecution of Jews and the discovery of private correspondence in which he admitted knowing of the holocaust and its awful, chilling rationale.  As one of his biographers, Gitta Sereny (1921–2012), rightly pointed out in Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995): “If Speer had said as much in Nuremberg, he would have been hanged.”

Marcuse’s work was acknowledged as a landmark in the synthetization of Marxist and psychoanalytic theories but was criticized for being just another of the "pointless utopian myths" written of since antiquity, work cut adrift from the moorings of the political reality which seemed in the 1960s more urgently to demand attention.  Marcuse acknowledged the distance of his work from reality and conceded his theories could reach actualization only by revolution or gradual infiltration of the structures of the power-elite and, after the disappointments of the moments in 1968 when revolution fleetingly was in the air, he preferred the latter.  German student activist Rudi Dutschke (1940–1979) had advocated a "…march through the institutions of power", radically to change society from within government and cultural institutions by becoming part of the machinery and structures under which capitalism operated.  This too owed a debt to the theories of hegemony and Marcuse wrote to Dutschke in 1971 saying he “regarded your notion of the "march through the institutions" as the only effective way.”  It all failed.  It was the highly unusual coincidence of political, economic & demographic circumstances in the post war (1948-1973) Western world which briefly in 1968 made the system seem internally vulnerable and the hegemony learned the lesson: they would control who manned the institutions that matter and the trouble-makers could march through things like theatre trusts, literary festivals and art gallery committees.