Tsar

Tsar (pronounced zahr)

(1) An emperor or king.

(2) Title of the former emperors of Russia and several Slavonic states.

(3) Slang term for an autocratic ruler or leader.

(4) Slang term for a person exercising great authority or power in a particular field.

1545-1555: From the Old Russian tsĭsarĭ (emperor or king), akin to the Old Church Slavonic tsěsarĭ, the Gothic kaisar and the Greek kaîsar, all ultimately derived from the Latin Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) while the Germanic form of the word was the source of the Finnish keisari and the Estonian keisar.  The prehistoric Slavic was tsesar, Tsar first adopted as an imperial title by Ivan IV (Ivan Vasilyevich, 1530–1584 and better remembered as Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584) in 1547.  There’s a curious history to spelling tsar as czar.  Spelled thus, it’s contrary to the usage of all Slavonic languages; the word was so spelt by the Carniolan diplomat & historian Baron Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486–1566) in his work (in Latin) Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549)) which was such a seminal early source of knowledge of Russia in Western Europe that "czar" passed into the Western languages; despite that history, "tsar" definitely is the proper Latinization.  It still appears and some linguistic academics insist the lineage means it should be regarded as archaic use rather than a mistake and, as a fine technical point, that’s correct in that, for example, the female form czarina is from 1717 (from Italian czarina and German zarin).  In Russian, the female form is tsaritsa and a tsar’s son is a tsarevitch, his daughter a tsarevna.

Nicholas II (Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov, 1868–1918; last Tsar of Russia, 1894-1917).  He cut an imposing figure for the portraitists but his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) reckoned the tsar's mental abilities rendered him most suitable to "a cottage in the country where he can grow turnips".  Wilhelm got much wrong in his life but historians seem generally to concur in this he was a fair judge of things.

Tsar and its variants were the official titles of (1) the First Bulgarian Empire 913–1018, (2) the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), (3) the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), (4) the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721) (technically replaced in 1721 by imperator, but remaining in use outside Russia (also officially in relation to certain regions until 1917) and (5) the Tsardom of Bulgaria (1908–1946).  So, although most associated with Russia, the first ruler to adopt the title was Simeon I (usually written as Simeon the Great; circa 865-927, ruler of Bulgaria 893-927) and that was about halfway through his reign and nobody since Simeon II (Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, b 1937; (last) Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria 1943-1946) has been a tsar.  The transferred sense of "person with dictatorial powers" seems first to have appeared in English in 1866 as an adoption in American English, initially as a disapproving reference to President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; US President 1865-1869) but it has come to be applied neutrally (health tsar, transport tsar) and use does sometimes demand deconstruction: drug tsar has been applied both to organised crime figures associated with the distribution of narcotics and government appointees responsible for policing the trade.  In some countries, some overlap between the two roles has been noted.

Comrade Stalin agitprop.

Volgograd, the southern Russian city was between 1925-1961 named Stalingrad (Stalin + -grad).  Grad (град in Cyrillic) was from the Old Slavic and translates variously as "town, city, castle or fortified settlement"; it once existed in many languages as gord and can be found still as grad, gradić, horod or gorod in many place-names.  Before it was renamed in honour of comrade Stalin (1878-1953, leader of the USSR 1924-1953), between 1589-1925, the city, at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga rivers was known as Tsaritsyn, the name from the Turkic-related Tatar dialect word sarisin meaning "yellow water" or "yellow river" but because of the similarity in sound and spelling, came in Russia to be associated with Tsar.  Stalingrad is remembered as the scene of the epic and savage battle which culminated in the destruction in February 1943 of the German Sixth Army, something which, along with the strategic failure of the Wehrmacht in the offensive (Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) in the Kursk salient five months later, marked what many military historians record as the decisive moment on the Eastern Front.  It has become common to refer to comrade Stalin as the "Red Tsar" whereas casual comparisons of Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) don't often reach to Russia's imperial past; they seem to stop with Stalin.

Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) was from the late fourteenth century cesar (from Cæsar) and was originally a surname of the Julian gens in Rome, elevated to a title after Caius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became dictator and it was used as a title of emperors down to Hadrian (76–138; Roman emperor 117-138).  The name ultimately is of uncertain origin, Pliny the Elder (23–79) suggested it came from the Latin caesaries (head of hair) because the future dictator was born with a lush growth while others have linked it to the Latin caesius (bluish-gray), an allusion to eye color.  The "probity of Caesar's" wife (the phrase first recorded in English in the 1570s) as the figure of a person who should be above suspicion comes from the biography of Julius Caesar written by the Greek Middle Platonist priest-philosopher & historian Plutarch (circa 46–circa 123).  Plutarch related the story of how Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia because of rumors of infidelity, not because he believed the tales of her adultery but because, as a political position, “the wife of Caesar must not even be under suspicion”.  That’s the origin of the phrase “the probity of Caesar’s wife, a phrase which first appeared in English in the 1570s.

In late nineteenth century US slang, a sheriff was "the great seizer" an allusion to the office's role in seizing property pursuant to court order.  The use of Caesar to illustrate the distinction between a subject’s obligations to matters temporal and spiritual is from the New Testament: Matthew 22:21.

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Christ had been answering a question posed by the Pharisees to trap Him: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15–20)?  To answer, Jesus held up a denarius, the coin with which pay the tax and noted that on it was the head of Caesar, by then Caesar had become a title, meaning emperor of Rome and its empire.  It was a clever answer; in saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's", Jesus dismisses the notion of believers being conflicted by the demands of the secular state as a false dilemma because, one can fulfil the requirements of the sate by a mere payment of coin without any implication of accepting its doctrines or legitimacy.  Over the years much has been made of what is or should be "rendered unto Caesar", but more interesting is inference which must be drawn: if we owe Caesar that which bears his image, what then do we owe God?  It can only be that we owe God that which bears the image of God, an impressive inventory listed in the book of Genesis and now interpreted by some Christians as "the whole universe".  To Caesar we can only ever owe money; to God we owe ourselves.

In the Old English the spelling was casere, which would under the expected etymological process have evolved into coser, but instead, circa 1200, it was replaced in the Middle English by keiser, from the Norse or Low German, and later by the French or Latin form of the name.  Cæsar also is the root of German Kaiser, the Russian tsar and is linked with the Modern Persian shah.  Despite the common assumption, "caesar" wasn’t an influence on the English "king".  King was from the Middle English king & kyng, from the Old English cyng & cyning (king), from the Proto-West Germanic kuning, from the Proto-Germanic kuningaz & unungaz (king), kin being the root.  It was cognate with the Scots keeng (king), the North Frisian köning (king), the West Frisian kening (king), the Dutch koning (king), the Low German Koning & Köning (king), the German König (king), the Danish konge (king), the Norwegian konge (king), the Swedish konung & kung (king), the Icelandic konungur & kóngur (king), the Finnish kuningas (king) and the Russian князь (knjaz) (prince) & княги́ня (knjagínja) (princess).  It eclipsed the non-native Middle English roy (king) and the Early Modern English roy, borrowed from Old French roi, rei & rai (king).

The Persian Shah was from the Old Persian xšāyaθiya (king), once thought a borrowing from the Median as it was compared to the Avestan xšaϑra- (power; command), corresponding to the Sanskrit (the Old Indic) kṣatra- (power; command), source of kṣatriya (warrior).  However, recent etymological research has confirmed xšāyaθiya was a genuine, inherited Persian formation meaning “pertaining to reigning, ruling”.  The word, with the origin suffix -iya was from a deverbal abstract noun xšāy-aθa- (rule, ruling) (Herrschaft), from the Old Persian verb xšāy- (to rule, reign).  In the Old Persian, the full title of the Achaemenid rulers of the First Empire was Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām (or in Modern Persian, Šāhe Šāhān (King of Kings)), best as "Emperor", a title with ancient, Near Eastern and Mesopotamian precedents.  The earliest known instance of such a title dates from the Middle Assyrian period as šar šarrāni, used by the Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC).

Tsar Bomba: the Tsar bomb

Tupolev Tu-95 in flight (left) and a depiction of the October 1961 test detonation of the Tsar Bomb.

Царь-бомба (Tsar Bomba (Tsar-bomb)) was the Western nickname for the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (Project code: AN602; code name Ivan or Vanya), the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.  The test on 30 October 1961 remains the biggest man-made explosion in history and was rated with a yield of 50-51 megatons although the design was technically able to produce maximum yield in excess of 100.  For a long time the US estimated the yield at 54 megatons and the Russians at 58 but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was confirmed the true yield was 50-51 megatons.  Only one was ever built and it was detonated on an island off the Russian arctic coast.  The decision to limit the size blast was related to the need to ensure (1) a reduced nuclear fall-out and (2) the aircraft dropping the thing would be able to travel a safe distance from the blast radius (the Kremlin's attitude to the lives of military personnel had changed since comrade Stalin's time).  No nuclear power has since expressed any interest in building weapons even as large as the Tsar Bomb and for decades the trend in strategic arsenals has been more and smaller weapons, a decision taken on the pragmatic military grounds that it's pointless to destroy things many times over.  It's true that higher yield nuclear weapons would produce "smaller rubble" but to the practical military mind such a result represents just "wasted effort".

Progress 1945-1961.

The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO reporting name: Bear) which dropped the Tsar Bomb was a curious fork in aviation history, noted also for its longevity.  A four-engined turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform, it entered service in 1956 and is expected still to be in operational use in 2040, an expectation the United States Air Force (USAF) share for their big strategic bomber, the Boeing B-52 which first flew in 1952, the first squadrons formed three years later.  Both airframes have proven remarkably durable and amenable to upgrades; as heavy lift devices and delivery systems they could be improved upon with a clean-sheet design but the relatively small advantages gained would not justify the immense cost, thus the ongoing upgrade programmes.  The TU-95's design was, inter-alia, notable for being one of the few propeller-driven aircraft with swept wings and is the only one ever to enter large-scale production.  It's also very loud, the tips of those counter-rotating propellers sometimes passing through the sound barrier.

Footage of the Tsar Bomb test de-classified and released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1991).

The Tsar Bomb was in a sense the “ultimate” evolution of the centuries long history of the bomb although it wasn’t the end of innovation, designers seemingly never running out of ideas to refine the concept of the device, the purpose of which is to (1) blow stuff up and (2) kill people.  Bomb was from the French bombe, from the Italian bomba, from the Latin bombus (a booming sound), from the Ancient Greek βόμβος (bómbos) (booming, humming, buzzing), the explosive imitative of the sound itself.  Bomb was used originally of “projectiles; mortar shells etc”, the more familiar “explosive device placed by hand or dropped from airplane” said by many sources to date from 1908 although the word was in the former sense used when describing the anarchist terrorism of the late nineteenth century.  As a footnote, the nickname of Hugh Trenchard (1873-1956), the first Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) was “boom” but this was related to his tone of voice rather than an acknowledgement of him being one of the earliest advocates of strategic bombing.

The figurative uses were wide, ranging from “a dilapidated car” (often as “old bomb”, the use based presumably on the perception such vehicles are often loud).  The bombshell was originally literally a piece of military equipment but it was later co-opted (most memorably as “blonde bombshell) to describe a particularly fetching young women.  So, used figuratively, “bomb” could mean either “very bad” or “very good” and in his weekly Letter from American (broadcast by the BBC World Service 1946-2004), Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) noted a curious trans-Atlantic dichotomy.  In the world of showbiz, Cooke observed, “bomb” was used in both the US & UK to describe the reaction to a play, movie or whatever but in the US, if called “a bomb”, the production was a flop, a failure whereas in the UK, if something was called “quite a bomb”, it meant it was a great success.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

I Know Who Killed Me bombed (in the traditional US sense) but in the way these things sometimes happen, the film has since enjoyed a second life with a cult-following and screenings on the specialized festival circuit.  Additionally, DVD & Blu-Ray sales (it's said to be a popular, if sometimes ironic, gift) meant eventually it generated a profit although it has never exactly become a "bomb" (in the UK sense).  However, while it now enjoys a following among a small sub-set of the public, the professional critics have never softened their view.

Charrette

Charrette (pronounced shuh-ret)

A final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline (historically most associated with architecture & students of the subject); it’s applied particularly to group work and other collaborative efforts.

1400s: From the French charrette (small cart), from the Middle French charrete, from twelfth century Old French charrete (wagon, small cart), a diminutive of charre, from the Latin carrum & carrus (wagon), the construct being char (chariot; wagon) + -ete (the diminutive suffix).  The sense of “work to meet a deadline” came from French, the conventional explanation of the origin being the use by groups of students of architecture who, after working all night, loaded their drawings, plans and sketches into a cart (pulled the legend suggests by the youngest member) into a small cart (pulled by the youngest member) on the day of the presentation of their work to the professor.  The alternative spellings are charette & charret.  Charrette is a noun; the noun plural is charrettes.

In the late nineteenth century, just before the deadline, the authorities of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris would send to a designated place on campus a charrette (a small cart) into which students of architecture would deposit their final drawings and models.  As every student and ex-student knows, it’s the final few hours before the deadline during which much of the work is done and the young Parisian scholars so associated the impending arrival of the little cart with this frenzied activity that the term “charrette” came to signify this burst of sudden enthusiasm.  .  Most sources suggest the use of charrette & charette (in this context) appeared in English only in either (1) the mid-1960s when adopted by university students as a verb meaning “an intense effort to compete a project before the deadline expires” or (2) sometime in the next decade when architects in Chicago added it to their project planning timelines; it’s now also used of any activity which is increased to meet a deadline.  Inevitably, charrette (used as noun & verb) has entered the jargon of management-speak to describe “intensive workshops”, “brainstorming sessions” and such where people gather to solve problems (which the management gurus often insist should be called “challenges” or “opportunities”), develop concepts and such.  The essence of the corporate charrette is said to be collaboration, creativity and a rapid arrival at decisions.

In French, the noun charrette was coined simply to describe “any cart smaller that that usually deployed for whatever purpose” and specific terms evolved to refer to devices of a certain design or function.  A charrette à bras was “a hand cart” (the French bras meaning “arm”) and described a cart propelled by a person rather than pulled by some beast of burden.  The best known of the variants was the charrette des condamnés (the cart of the doomed (ie those condemned to die) and it was in these those convicted of this and that were taken to their execution.

Execution of Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792), 16 October 1793 (unknown artist).

The charrette des condamnés famously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (the period in the mid-1790s after the declaration of the First Republic, marked by massacres, public executions, anti-clericalism and internecine political struggle) were properly called tumbrels although many illustrations of scenes at the guillotine depict the use of four-wheeled carts rather than tumbrels.  Presumably both types were used but historians generally believe it was usually the tumbrel because the revolutionaries preferred the symbolism of something usually used for moving dung or rubbish while artists choose the four-wheelers for compositional reasons.  The noun tumbrel (two-wheeled cart for hauling dung, stones etc) was from mid-fifteenth century French, a name, curiously perhaps, used in the early thirteenth century to describe what some eighteenth century dictionaries described as a mysterious “instrument of punishment of uncertain type” but which turned out to be (1) a name for the cucking stool used, inter alia, to conduct the dunking in water of women suspected of this and that and (2) was a type of medieval balancing scale used to weigh coins.  It was from the Old French tomberel (dump cart) (which exists in Modern French as tombereau), from tomber ((let) fall or tumble), possibly from a Germanic source, perhaps the Old Norse tumba (to tumble), the Old High German tumon (to turn, reel).

In English the charrette des condamnés was called the tumbril (the alternative spellings tumbrel & tumbrill), the English as content to pilfer other languages for words as their Empire builders would be to steal the lands of others (the Anglo-Latin was tumberellus), from tomber & tumber (to fall).  As well as being (1) the cart used to carry prisoners to the gallows, the tumbril was also (2) a cucking stool (actually based on a medieval torture device used, inter alia, to “detect” witches), used as a tool of punishment and humiliation (miscreants (usually women) accused of “social” offences such as “gossiping” or “trouble-making” strapped to the stool which was by some sort of mechanical apparatus “dunked” into a pond or river), (3) a cart designed for “dumping” its load, with a single axle and sometimes with a hinged tray or tailboard (ie the antecedent of the modern dump-truck), (4) a type of balancing scale used in medieval times to check the weight of coins and (5) a basket or cage of osiers, willows, or the like, to hold hay and other food for sheep (long extinct).

In a transition which would please historians and social theorists, the tumbrel began life as two-wheeled cart or wagon hauled usually by a single horse or ox and their most common use was the carrying of manure (horse shit, cow shit etc) and later was re-purposed to carry the “excrement” of society (criminal condemned to death).  The use of the word to describe the dunking stool is also indicative of the attitude of the establishment to another undesirable class: talkative women.  The point of the cucking stool was not to drown but simply publically to humiliate offenders and hopefully change their behavior.  It can be thought a kind of pre-modern community service order.

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

La Charrette Anglaise (The English Dog Cart (1897)) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), lithograph on wove paper.

A genre scene in the tradition of post-impressionism, the original title was La Partie de Canpagne and is an example of works of Toulouse-Lautrec which would be influential in the development of art nouveau (modern).  The dog cart (also as dogcart & dog-cart) was a style of coach-building popular in England and described both (1) a small cart drawn by a dog and (2) A larger two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with two transverse seats back to back (an outgrowth of the original design in which the rear compartment was an enclosed (usually caged) box for carrying dogs used for hunting or other sports.  It’s not clear if the phrase “in the dogbox” was an allusion to this design.  The French phrase La Partie de Campagne translates to “A Day in the Country” and both titles continue to be used of the work.  So evocative was La Partie de Campagne of the outdoors, nature, fresh air (no small thing for those accustomed to the pollution and filth of the cities of the age) and the charming simplicity of rural life that the phrase appears often in French art and literature.  The idea appealed even to modernists, so often associated with things urban.

La Partie de Campagne (The Outing (1951)), lithograph on Arches paper by Fernand Léger (1881-1955).

Léger’s art wasn’t always political but it became so (“the century made me so” he claimed) and the stilted, robotic figures in this 1951 work represent his take on man’s place in capitalist society and a rural environment ravaged and debased.  A sculptor and filmmaker as well as a painter, he was a significant (if rather neglected in the English-speaking world) figure and his creation of a style of painting he called “tubism” was the basis of much of his later, figurative works and there are critics who maintain tubism was a seminal influence on both agitprop and pop art.

1897 Panhard & Levassor with charrette anglaise coachwork.

Powered by a 1648 cm³ (101 cubic inch) two-cylinder gas (petrol) engine rated at 6 (taxable), the car is a typical example of the automobile at the dawn of the twentieth century when new innovations in engineering were beginning to be added to what had for the first decade-odd of the new type been literally “horseless carriages” in that the technique had usually been to take existing coach or cat designs and add an engine.  The example on the left was built in 1897 and fitted originally with a tiller-steering mechanism (right) but steering wheels (still in use today) were even then becoming the new standard and this restored example was fitted with one in 1898.

Idiot

Idiot (pronounced id-ee-uht)

(1) In informal use (1) a foolish or senseless person (derogatory) or (2) an affectionate expression of disapprobation or disagreement.

(2) In medicine & psychology, a person of the lowest order in the former classification of intellectual disability (a mental age of less than three years old and an IQ (intelligence quotient) lower than 25; no longer in technical use; considered now generally offensive unless used affectionately.

1250–1300: From the Middle English idiote & ydiote, from the twelfth century Old French idiote (later idiot) (uneducated or ignorant person), from the Late Latin idiōta (an ignorant person), from the Ancient Greek ἰδιώτης (idiṓtēs) (private person, layman, person lacking skill or expertise; an ignoramus (as opposed to a writer, soldier or skilled workman), the construct being idiō- (a lengthened variant of idio-, perhaps by analogy with stratiōtēs (professional soldier) derived from stratiá (army)) + -tēs (the agent noun suffix).  The Ancient Greek ἴδιος (ídios) meant " one's own, pertaining to oneself, private" and was a doublet of idiota.  Dialectical variations in English and Irish included eejit, idjit & idget.  The plural is idiots.  English offers a rich array of alternatives to idiot: fool, moron, nitwit, twit, blockhead, bonehead, cretin, dimwit, dork, dumbbell, dunce, ignoramus, imbecile, muttonhead, nincompoop, ninny, pinhead, simpleton, clodpoll, jerk, half-wit; dolt, dunce & numskull.

Use of the word "idiot" in headlines can hurt feelings.

The original meaning was “a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" but this in Middle English later in the fourteenth century extended to "a simple man, uneducated person, layman".  A meaning shift had also happened in Latin, the classical form meaning “an ordinary person, layman; outsider" whereas in the Late Latin it conveyed the sense of "an uneducated or ignorant person".  This mirrored what happened with the Greek idiotes which meant literally "a private person" (ie a layman, someone uninvolved in public affairs) but came to be applied patronizingly to suggest someone "ignorant and uneducated".  In plural, the Greek word could mean "one's own countrymen."  In medieval English common law, the formalized distinction was between an idiot (one who has been without reasoning or understanding from birth) and a lunatic (who became that way later in life), and the difference could be important in determining the responsibility and punishment for crimes committed.  The idiot savant first appeared in medical literature in 1870; idiot box was first used to describe television in 1959 and, given that broadcasting had begun in the 1930s, it’s surprising it took that long to work that out; idiot light to describe the dashboard warning lights in cars is attested from 1961, a reference to drivers so lacking in mechanical sympathy not to notice indications of problems or bother to scan gauges.

The adjective idiotic was from 1713, following the Classical Latin idioticus and the Ancient Greek idiotikos; idiotical is from 1640s; the noun idiocy (state of being an idiot) is from the 1520s, from idiot on the model of prophecy etc and the early alternatives included idiotacy (1580s), idiotry (1590s).  Until well into the twentieth century, blithering was one of the more popular adjectives applied to idiot, the form dating from 1880, the present-participle adjective from the verb blither (to talk nonsense).  A handy adaptation of idiot was the in-joke among IT staff who sometimes classify problems reported by users as ID10T errors.

Comrade Lenin agitprop.

The term useful idiot is from political science and so associated with Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924; first leader of Soviet Russia 1917-1922 & USSR 1922-1924) that it's attributed to him but there's no evidence he ever spoke or wrote the words.  It became popular during the Cold War to describe pro-communist intellectuals and apologists in the West, the (probably retrospective) association with Lenin probably because had the useful idiots actually assisted achieving a communist revolution there, their usefulness outlived, he'd probably have had them all shot.  Although it took many Western intellectuals decades to recant (some never quite managed) their support for the Soviet Union, the watershed was probably Comrade Khrushchev's (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964)  so called "Secret Speech" (On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences) to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956 in which he provided a detailed critique of the rule of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), especially the bloody purges of the late 1930s.  Some had however already refused to deny what had become obvious to all but avid denialists, The God that Failed a collection of six essays published in 1949 by poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995) et al in which the writers lay bare their sense of betrayal and disillusionment with communism because of the totalitarian state built by Stalin which was in so many ways just another form of fascism. 

Idiot, Imbecile & Moron

Idiot, imbecile, and moron were in the early twentieth century used in a psychological classification system, each one assigned to a specific range of abilities.

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

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

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

Of these three words moron is the newest, created only in the early twentieth century, coined specifically for the purpose of medical diagnosis.  Moron is from the Ancient Greek mōros (foolish, stupid), the root shared with the rare morosoph (a learned fool).  Imbecile dates from the sixteenth century, an adjective meaning "weak, feeble", from the Classical Latin imbecillus (weak, weak-minded) and not until the early nineteenth century did it begin to be used as a noun.  Moran actually replaced “feeble-minded” and “simpleton” (introduced in 1846) but neither were ever standardised in the medical lexicon.  The clinical use is now obsolete but the generalized use of all three is well established as terms of opprobrium for someone who acts in some dopey way or says something stupid, but, the convention is now they can only be applied to someone not cognitively impaired, an inversion of their original purpose when part of the system of classification.

In the early 1900s, as the profession of psychiatry became more accepted within medicine, the system of classification became increasingly scientific: Idiots were those with IQs between 0–25, imbeciles between 26-50 and morons between 51–70.  The interest in the then fashionable field of eugenics saw further refinements with a teleological flavor: the concepts "moral insanity", "moral idiocy"," and "moral imbecility" used by the emerging field of eugenic criminology, which held crime could be reduced by preventing "feeble-minded" people from reproducing and the US Supreme Court used the terminology in the judgment of forced-sterilization case Buck v Bell (274 U.S. 200 (1927)). 

The later introduction of retard, retarded & retardation was a genuine attempt to de-stigmatize those once labeled idiots, imbeciles & morons.  The process was the same as the invented word moron replacing “simpleton” and “feeble-minded” (from the Latin flebilis (to be lamented).  Retarded was from the Latin retardare (to make slow, delay, keep back, or hinder) and was first used in relation to developmental delay in 1895 and was introduced as an alternative to idiot, moron, and imbecile because at the time it wasn’t derogatory, being a familiar technical term from engineering and mathematics but the associative connection meant that by the 1960s, it had become an insult.  As "retarded" and the related clinical terms from psychiatry appeared on the euphemism treadmill they gradually assumed their derogatory connotations.  It seems to be an organic process in language, an original term, neutral in meaning, enters public use and because of the thing with which it’s associated, becomes pejorative, the process noted also with words which become racial slurs.  It’s a very particular process: “Chinaman” thought pejorative while “Englishman” is not; “Aussie” a term of endearment whereas as “Paki” is a slur although that too is circumstantial, commercial television station Channel 9 (Australia) using “The Pakis” in their promotional material for the coverage of the 1983-1984 cricket season.  It wouldn’t now be used.

So, as sympathy emerged for various sensitivities, the search for connotatively neutral replacements settled on variations of “intellectual disability”, the new sub-categories being profound, severe, and moderate levels.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1968 published (in an out-of-sequence amendment to the ICD-8 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) a classification of intellectual disability (ID), based on what they called “relative degrees of cognitive functioning”:

Profound ID:          IQ below 20-25

Severe ID:             IQ 20-25 to 35-40

Moderate ID:         IQ 35-40 to 50-55

Mild ID:                 IQ 50-55 to 70

The alignment with the old system was idiot=profound, imbecile=moderate/severe and moron or feeble minded=mild but, by the time the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) and ICD-10 were published in 1994, the profession was moving away from the use of raw IQ scores to something more nuanced, the DSM noting the importance of assessing “dysfunction or impairment” in at least two areas including “communication, self-care, home living, social/interpersonal skills, use of community resources, self direction, functional academic skills, work, leisure & health and safety”.  The ICD noted “mental retardation is a condition of arrested or incomplete development of the mind, which is especially characterized by impairment of skills manifested during the developmental period, contributing to the overall level of intelligence- cognitive, language, motor and social abilities”.  However, the IQ baselines remained and the DSM-5 refined the model further, noting an intellectual disability should be defined by:

(1) Current intellectual deficits of two or more standard deviations below the population mean, which generally translates into performance in the lowest 3% of a person’s age and cultural group, or an IQ of 70 or below.

(2) Concurrent deficits in at least two domains of adaptive functioning of at least two or more standard deviations, which generally translates into performance in the lowest 3 % of a person’s age and cultural group, or standard scores of 70 or below.

Both assessments need to be measured with an individualized, standardized, culturally appropriate, psychometrically sound measure and needed to assess (1) conceptual skills (communication, language, time, money & academic), (2) social skills (interpersonal skills, social responsibility, recreation & friendships) and (3) practical skills (daily living skills, work & travel).  US legislation in 2010 required the terms "mental retardation" and" mentally retarded" be removed from federal records and replaced with "intellectual disability" and "individual with an intellectual disability", a change reflected in the DSM-5 (2013).

Agitprop

Agitprop (pronounced aj-it-prop)

(1) A form of propaganda, emanating originally from the USSR but later more generally applied.

(2) A (usually disparaging) term for an agency or department of government or corporation which directs or coordinates publicity, advertising or other activities which may be classed as propaganda.

(3) A person (technically an agitpropist) who is trained or takes part in such activities.

(4) Of or relating to agitprop; an instance of such propaganda.

1920s: From the Russian агитпро́п (agitprop), from отде́л агитации и пропаганды (otdél agitacii i propagandy) (Department for Agitation and Propaganda), the construct in English being agit(ation) + prop(agenda), the Russian agitatsiya a borrowing from the French agitation while propaganda was gained from the German which picked it up from the Roman Catholic Church, the ecclesiastical Latin from the New Latin propāganda which was thought to be the ablative feminine gerundive of the Classical Latin prōpāgō (propagate).  The Congregātiō dē Prōpāgandā Fidē (the official title sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando (the sacred congregation for propagating the faith)), was a committee of cardinals created in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV (1554–1623; pope 1621-1623) to supervise foreign missions.  The original Agitation Propaganda Section of the USSR’s Central Committee of the Communist Party in the USSR appeared in contemporary documents variously as Agitpróp, Agitatsiónno-propagandístskiĭ otdél, Agitpropbrigáda and Agitpropbyuro, reflecting the frequent bureaucratic and administrative changes in the early days of the Soviet state.  Agitprop is a noun and a verb and agitpropist is a noun; the noun plural is agitprops.  Variations (agitpropesque, agitproplike et al) have been used as non-standard adjectives and although no one seems to have concocted an adverb, dictionaries note the present participle agitpropping (used as a noun & adjective) and the past participle agitpropped.  The alternative spelling is agit-prop.

Agitprop began in the Soviet Union but was co-developed to its definitive forms under fascism, a political system much concerned with spectacle.

Agitprop is political propaganda disseminated through art, drama, literature etc and is historically associated with communist regimes, its origins in the material disseminated by the Department for Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  Like the less overtly atheistic Nazis, the Bolsheviks learned much from the techniques the Roman Catholic Church had developed over the centuries and even Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) who habitually referred to priests as “those black crows” never tried to hide his grudging admiration for an institution which had endured and prospered for two thousand-odd years.

The Church’s sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando (the sacred congregation for propagating the faith), established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV (1554–1623; pope 1621-1623) was a propaganda operation created to manage communications with the new countries then recently discovered and also to supervise the new system of government by congregations adopted during the Counter-Reformation.   For the Church, of interest was both the re-conquest of severed lands and the evangelization of the vast populations in regions then becoming known through the expeditions of European explorers, not all of whom were Catholic.  The theological cold war of the age was the contest between the doctrines of Rome and those of the dreaded Protestantism.

In the 1920s, the Red Army used both trains and trucks as mobile agitprop units, the trains often equipped with printing presses which enabled the graphic artists to create regionalized variations of the material.

Although the results achieved by the sacred congregation ebbed and flowed with because it was so dependent on the energy and priorities of the members of the committee, it succeeded as a propaganda project and many of the territories in Africa, Asia and South America (as well as some re-claiming of souls in Europe) which remain today predominately Roman Catholic are due to the efforts which began in the seventeenth century.  The objectives of the early Bolsheviks was strikingly similar in that their task of evangelization was one of spreading to all the gospel of communism so that the Marxist prediction of a world-wide revolution might be realized.  To the techniques borrowed from the Church the Russians added the novelties now so associated with agitprop, the colors and practices of graphic art which were mapped on to the stark simple imagery known in religious iconography and stained glass windows.  The method remained the same: a simple message, endlessly repeated and presented in a form which changed just enough to keep the viewers interested, the need for text kept to a minimum so it was suitable for the illiterate likely to be among the most receptive audiences.  Innovative too was the idea of agitprop as a moving thing, trains and trucks loaded with material to be distributed far and wide.

So distinctive is the classic agitprop poster that it remains in use as a political message implying dictatorship.  Inevitably, it’s popular also with meme-makers.

Agitprop was thus overt political propaganda, understood as such by some and to others just another form of religion, temptingly offering something tangible in this life rather than paradise in the next.  Designed to produce political consequences, it spawned a number of forks, the best known of which were those distributed through popular media such as theatre, cinema and pamphlets and although agitprop literature did exist, agitprop was so inherently visual that even in those few –laces where radio existed, impact was limited.  Soon after the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, broadcasting propaganda and staging plays.  On board was a printing press which reproduced posters to be thrown from the windows as it passed through even the tiniest villages.  The Soviet’s train inspired agitprop theatre, a politicized left-wing theatre formed in 1920s Europe which soon spread to the rest of the western world.  An international and briefly influential theatre movement, it’s most associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), Joan Littlewood (1914-2002) and a myriad of groups such as Red Ladder and 7:84 which emerged during the mid-twentieth century.  Despite this, agitprop is essentially a footnote in theatre history, probably because its historical moment passed, its techniques and styles becoming absorbed into mainstream, bourgeois theatre.  In its early form a didactic form of mass-propaganda, the word agitprop had, by the 1950s, come to mean a kind of highly politicized art although, having become just another mass-produced commodity, classical, two-dimensional agitprop imagery exists now in something of an ironic space.

Lindsay Lohan agitprop.

Dictator

Dictator (pronounced dik-tey-ter)

(1) A person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who (at least ostensibly) has absolute control (ie effectively not restricted by a constitution, laws, recognized opposition, etc) in a government (and officially without hereditary succession); applied particularly to those exercising tyrannical rule.

(2) In republican ancient Rome, a person vested by the senate with supreme authority during a crisis, the regular magistracy being subordinated to him until the crisis was met (typically by conducting a war).

(3) A person who makes pronouncements, as on conduct, fashion etc, which are regarded as authoritative.

(4) A person who dictates text to someone or some sort or mechanical or electronic recording device.

(5) In Ancient Rome (during certain periods), an elected chief magistrate.

1350–1400: From the Middle English dictatour, from the Old French dictator, from the Latin dictātor (genitive dictātōris), (Roman chief magistrate with absolute authority) the construct being dictā(re) (inflection of dictō (I repeat, say often; I dictate (to someone for writing))), frequentative of dicere (to say, speak); I compose, express in writing; I prescribe, recommend, order, dictate)) frequentative of dicere (to say, speak)" (from the primitive Indo-European root deik- (to show (also "solemnly to pronounce") (and related to dīcō (say, speak) + -tor (from the Proto-Italic -tōr, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr from -tor-s; the suffix added to the fourth principal part of a verb to create a third-declension masculine form of an agent noun).  The feminine forms were dictatress or dictatrix, both probably now obsolete except in historic reference or as a jocular form; the old alternative spelling dictatour is obsolete.  Some European languages (including Dutch and Romanian) were like English and borrowed directly the Latin spelling while others used variations including Catalan (dictador), French (dictateur) Italian (dittatore), Piedmontese (ditator), Polish (dyktator), Portuguese (ditador), Russian (дикта́тор (diktátor)), Sicilian (dittaturi), Spanish (dictador) and German (Diktator).  Dictator is a noun, dictatorially is an adverb and dictatorial is an adjective; the noun plural is dictators.

The noun dictatorship (office or term of a (Roman) dictator) came into use in the 1610s to describe the historically specific terms of office the Roman senate sometimes granted individuals in extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances while the now familiar general sense of "a ruler exercising absolute authority" evolved by the late seventeenth century.  The noun dictator had already proceeded along this path, the historical sense being the first used in English circa 1600, the extension to “one who has absolute power or authority" (in any context and not just political power) noted by the 1690s.  The nasty and not infrequently genocidal nature of some of the dictators of the twentieth century and beyond certainly influenced the understanding of the word which, as late as the 1800s could be used neutrally, effectively as a synonym for president.

The adjective dictatorial (pertaining to a dictator; absolute, unlimited), dating from 1901 evolved also to enjoy use outside of descriptors of absolute government and by 1704 had acquired the general sense of "imperious, overbearing", usefully (and often applied as required to husbands, mothers-in-law, parish priests et al; the related for was the adverb dictatorially.  In that vein, to convey the notion of "pertaining to a dictator" there had been dictatorian (1640s) & dictator-like (1580s).  Etymologists insist the dictatorial’s historic duality of implication (1) a disposition to rule and (2) a sharp insistence upon having one's orders accepted or carried out has survived in modern use but instances of the former are now probably rare.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 and of state 1934-1945) is of course the dictator who for decades has loomed over the word and “Hitler” was used figuratively for "a dictator" from as early as 1934, a use which has persisted despite there being no shortage of dictatorial tyrants in the years since his assumption of power.  One amusing variation emerged in England in the early years of the Second World War (1939-1945), a “little Hitler” being someone appointed to a minor post (archetypically someone employed to walk the streets during a “black-out” telling folk to extinguish their lights) and, cloaked in this brief, unaccustomed authority, soon intoxicated by their power.  In post-revolutionary (1979-) Iran, the regime encouraged a similar put-down aimed at opponents, the US being شيطان بزرگ (Shaytân-e Bozorg (the great Satan)) and Israel شیطان کوچک, (Shaytân-e Kuchak (the little Satan)) and it’s even worse than it sounds because “great” is not the perfect translation, the idea of the great Satan being one of derision rather than awe.  When the Ayatollahs are in a bad mood (which does happens), sometimes the UK is also described as a “little Satan”.

Because of the evil of Hitler and his many spiritual successors in this century and the last, dictator really doesn’t cry out for synonyms but autocrat, despot, tyrant, absolutist, authoritarian, oppressor & totalitarian all tend in the direction.  Historically, the closest is probably the noun generalissimo (supreme military commander), dating from the 1620s and a borrowing of the Italian generalissimo, superlative of generale, from a sense development similar to the French general.  However, despite the title being used by the dictators comrade Stalin and General Franco, it’s never come into use as a general descriptor in the manner of dictator.

1935 Studebaker Dictator phaeton (left) & 1936 Studebaker Dictator sedan (right).

The Studebaker Dictator was produced between 1927-1937 and was part of a naming scheme which used titles from government service to indicate a car’s place in the hierarchy, the Dictator replacing the Standard Six as the entry-level model, the progressively more expensive being the Commander and President.  Briefly (only for 1927) there was also the Chancellor but, presumably because it wasn’t a title which much resonated in the American imagination, it was short- lived.  Other manufacturers have adopted a similar idea, Opal once also merging admiralty and political ranks, offering the Kapitän, Commodore, Admiral & Diplomat.  

Some of the opposition to crooked Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016 accused her of wanting to turn the US into a dictatorship.  That was hyperbolic because, although it may have been what she wanted, the US constitution would make it almost impossible to achieve.  The meme makers responded with agitprop.

It probably now seems strange a US manufacturer would call one of its products the Dictator but in 1927 the Nazis were years from power and Mussolini, in office since 1922 was far from the tainted character he would later become and the public perception of his rule was still at the stage of admiring him for “making the trains run on time” (although it’s thought unlikely any improvements in punctuality were noted by many).  Studebaker anyway had always explained the name as suggesting “a fine car at a moderate price” that would “dictate the standards” for the mid-priced field.  That was fair enough but in hindsight, when the option of a straight-eight engine was offered as an upgrade from the straight-six, Studebaker probably would not to have used the marketing slogan “a brilliant example of excess power”.  By 1937, the use of excess power by the Third Reich’s dictator was becoming obvious and Studebaker quietly dropped the Dictator name for 1938, re-positioning the Commander as the base model, the cars exported to the Europe, the UK and the British Empire having early been renamed Director.  With those changes, probably just about everyone except Henry Ford approved.

So Studebaker’s tale is an example of how the shifting meaning of words can influence many things.  Still, even if in 1937 any association with Hitler had become distasteful for a US corporation, even by 1940, some two years after the Nazi’s most publicized pogrom against the Jews (Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)), Charlie Chaplin, 1889–1977) released his satirical comedy The Great Dictator which parodied both dictators (Hitler and Mussolini), his argument being that however controversial it might be, “…Hitler must be laughed at."  He later admitted that had he known in 1940 what would later be understood, he’d never have produced the film.

The Hijab Police

Of the many “morality police” forces which have existed in countries with a majority Islamic population, the best known was Afghanistan's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice which actually pre-dated the Taliban takeover in 1996 but they certainly deployed it with an enthusiasm which went much beyond it functioning as “burka police” and in one form or another, it actually operated for most of the (first) post-Taliban era.  When the Taliban regained power in 2021, immediately they created the "Ministry of Invitation, Guidance and Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" and, in a nice touch, allocated as its headquarters the building formerly used by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

The institution is infamous also in Iran.  In the West, it’s usually referred to as the “morality police” and among women the sardonic slang is “hijab police” but technically, the instrument of the Islamic Republic of Iran which enforces, inter alia, the laws governing the wearing of the hijab is گشت ارشاد (Gašt-e Eršād (Guidance Patrol)).  On 16 September 2022, the hijab police arrested Mahsa Amini (b 2001) because she was wearing her hijab in “an un-Islamic way”.  While in custody, Ms Amini suffered a medical event, dying two days later without recovering consciousness, the hijab police claiming the cause of death was heart failure, induced by pre-existing conditions.  Her family dispute this, saying the evidence suggests she was severely beaten and many witnesses have confirmed she was tortured in the back of a van before arriving at a hijab police office.

Handy guide for the hijab police.  Not only must hijab must be worn correctly but clothing must also be (1) not brightly colored, (2) not patterned with extravagant designs or shapes and (3) be loose enough that the shape of the body is not discernable.

Her death triggered waves of protests in Iran, which, on the basis of footage seen in the West, seem dominated by school girls and young women which, in the context of political protest, is historically unusual.  With protest signs and banners rendered in YouTube & TikTok friendly English, the headline issue is of course the matter of the hijab and whether women should be beaten to death for letting a lock of hair slip from beneath but the women and girls are making clear they're protesting about corruption (noting the poverty of most while the clerical elite have become very rich), the structure of the state, the economy and the very question of whether the republic should be an Islamic theocracy.  The Ayatollahs are no doubt well aware that the standard calculation in political science is that if 3½% of the population can be mobilized to revolt, regimes can be toppled and most recently, the Afghan Taliban did it with a fraction of that.  For many reasons, Afghanistan may be a special case and the Iranian state, on paper, is much better equipped to suppress internal dissent but then the security apparatuses around Hosni Mubarak (1928-2020; Egyptian dictator 1981-2011) and Muammar Gaddafi (circa 1942–2011; Libyan dictator 1969-2011) both looked impregnable until the volume of the protesters reached critical mass.  These things are however hard to judge from afar, Bashar al-Assad (b 1965; Syria dictator since 2000) looked vulnerable long before Gaddafi and Mubarak fell yet today he sits still as dictator in Damascus.  The Ayatollahs are of course watching things with concern but so will individuals in the Kremlin, aware their security apparatus has proved inadequate to execute the battle plan of the recent special military action (war) in Ukraine and, in a nice echo of the 1979 revolution, the protesters are again chanting the cry once spat against the Shah: “Death to the Dictator!”.