Succinite

Succinite (pronounced suhk-sinn-ite)

(1) In mineralogy, Baltic (or “true”) amber, so called because of the succinic acid in the fossil resin: often incorrectly applied to fossilized resin (amber) generally.

(2) In non-technical use, a garnet of amber, especially fossilized resin.

(3) In non technical use, an substance resembling amber.

(4) The color amber.

1816: A creation for scientific purposes in modern English with the sense of “amber-colored mineral”, from the Latin succinum (amber) a variant of sūcinum, the construct being succin +‎ -ite.  The root of succus was the primitive Indo-European sewg & sewk; cognate with sugō (juice; sap of a plant).  The Classical Latin is said to be from a Northern European language and was assimilated in form to the Latin succus & sucus (juice, sap) and related to succinic (in organic chemistry, of or pertaining to succinic acid), from the French succinique.  It was a synonym of ambra (amber).  The -ite suffix was from the French -ite, from the Old French, from the Latin -ītēs, from the Ancient Greek -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs).  It had a wide application including (1) the formation of nouns denoting the followers or adherents of a individual, doctrine or movement etc, (2) the formation of nouns denoting descendants of a certain historic (real or mythical) figure (widely used of biblical identities), (3) the formations of demonyms, (4) in geology the formation of nouns denoting rocks or minerals, (5) in archeology, the formation of nouns denoting fossil organisms, (6) in biology & pathology to form nouns denoting segments or components of the body or an organ of the body, (7) in industry & commerce to form nouns denoting the product of a specified process or manufactured product & (8) in chemistry to form names of certain chemical compounds (historically especially salts or esters of acids with names with the suffix -ous.

There’s also the rare adjective succiniferous used with the senses (1) yielding amber, (2) of or pertaining to amber or the plant yielding it & (3) in organic chemistry, of or pertaining to succinic acid.  Ferous (or gerous) are from the Latin ferre & gerere, both meaning “to bear” and surviving in English are over two-hundred words ending in ferous; most of them now obscure and used only in a technical context.  In an illustration of linguistic overlap, the Latin verb succinite was the second-person plural present active imperative of succinō, the construct being sub- (under; below) +‎ canō (sing).  It had the meanings (1) to sing to, to accompany in song & (2) to accord, in agreement with.  Succinite is a noun; the noun plural is succinites.

Succiniferous: Lindsay Lohan wearing Baltic Amber pendant.

The word succinite is sometimes used casually of amber, things which resemble amber or even shades of the color.  Geologists use the more with more precision and within the community there was a long dispute about succinite (Baltic amber), its botanical origin, and methods of distinguishing it from other fossil resins.  The questions were resolved by advances such as infrared spectrometry and speculation about a link with other acids are now held to be unsustainable, the consensus now that amber is coniferous in origin, not as had been suggested in the nineteenth century, from the tree Pinites succinifer.  It seems now clear that the extant Baltic amber came from several species of conifers of the family Sciadopityaceae.  Baltic amber is not a polymer but has a complex, cross-linked  macromolecular structure with the pores filled by components of the structure, an arrangement chemists call a supramolecule, something which both hardens the substance and increases density, accounting for its extraordinary longevity, ancient samples notable for their encapsulated, perfectly preserved plant and animal samples.

Amber alerts.

The term “Amber Alert” is a defined part of public information messaging and analogous with the red/amber/green lights used in traffic signals, amber meaning essentially “proceed with heightened caution and awareness”.  Noting the evidence provided in the well publicized defamation case (John C Depp II v Amber Laura Heard (CL-2019-2911; Fairfax County Circuit Court)), the meme-makers responded.

Most succiniferous: The Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 1917.  This is the only known color image of the room.

Last seen (in crates) in 1945, it was either destroyed in the last days of World War II (1939-1945) or dissembled and hidden somewhere or otherwise disposed of.  Between 1979-2003, with early funding from the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, the old West Germany), a replica was built and installed in the Catherine Palace.  The golden, jewel-encrusted creation, rendered by artisans and craftsmen from tons of amber, was a gift to Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) in 1716, celebrating the conclusion of an alliance between Russia and Prussia.  Much admired during the centuries in which it endured wars, pandemics and revolutions, it was looted by the Nazis in the final months of the war, packed into crates which subsequently vanished.  Either they were lost or destroyed in the chaos or hidden away.

Originally installed in the Charlottenberg Palace of Friedrich I (1657–1713; King of Prussia 1701–1713), the Amber Room was a genuine multi-national venture, the design by Andreas Schlüter (1659–1714), a German sculptor in the baroque tradition, the bulk of the construction by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolfram (1646-1716), already famous for his skill in rendering amber.  It took over a decade to build and upon completion, Peter the Great expressed his wonderment and in 1716, Frederick William I (1688–1740; King of Prussia 1713-1740) presented it to the Tsar, part of his diplomatic effort to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.  Accordingly, along with a selection of paintings, the room was crated and shipped to Saint Petersburg where it remained until in 1755 it was moved to the Catherine Palace (Tsarskoye Selo (Tasar's Palace)) in Pushkin.  Now installed in a larger space, the Italian designer Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was engage to remodel the assembly to suit, addition amber panels shipped from Berlin.  Renovations and refinements continued to be undertaken during the eighteenth century and when complete, the room covered some 180 square feet (16.7 m³) and contained some six tons (6100 kg) of amber, semi-precious stones and gold leaf.  At the time, it was thought one of the wonders of the modern world.

In the Nazi mind, not only was the Amber Room of German origin but such treasures anyway belonged only in the Reich and it was added to the (long) list of artworks to be looted as part of Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union).  As the Wehrmacht advanced on Pushkin, the Russian curators began to attempt to disassemble the panels but their fragility was such it was quickly realized any work done in haste would cause only destruction.  Accordingly, they had carpenters construct a frame over which was glued wallpaper, there not being time even to construct a false wall.  Not fooled, the Nazi looters removed the entire structure, shipping it to be installed in the Königsberg Castle Museum (now in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) on the Baltic coast.  However, the tide of the war turned and in 1943 the museum's director received from Berlin instructions to return the room to crates and this had be accomplished by August 1944 when allied bombing raids severely damaged the castle.  Quite what happened to the crates remains unknown.  It may be they were destroyed during the war or were in the hold of a ship sunk in the Baltic but the tales of them being hidden somewhere has never gone away and continues to tantalize, a solitary panel actually found in Bremen in 1997.  The replica room, dedicated in a ceremony in 2004 by Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) and Gerhard Schröder (b 1944, Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005) remains on public display at the Tasrskoye State Museum Reserve outside Saint Petersburg.

Amber

Amber (pronounced am-ber)

(1) A pale yellow, sometimes reddish or brownish, brittle, translucent fossil resin of extinct coniferous trees that occurs in tertiary deposits; capable of gaining a negative electrical charge by friction and a fine insulator.

(2) The yellowish-brown color of amber resin; of the color of amber; yellowish-brown (not applied to the variety “blue amber” which appears blue rather than yellow under direct sunlight).

(3) To perfume or flavor with ambergris (rare and used only in the industrial production of scents).

(4) To cause to take on the yellowish-brown colour of amber (now rare and used only as a literary or poetic device).

(5) Certain objects made of amber (jewelry; ornamental articles; relics; fossilized creatures contained within the resin etc).

(6) The intermediate light in a set of three traffic lights, which when illuminated indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection when safe to do so (green indicating “go” and red “stop”).  In some places the amber is referred to as “orange”.

(7) By extension from the use in traffic management, an indication in other contexts that one should hesitance to proceed or proceed only with caution (sometimes as “amber light”).

(8) As “amber alert”, a public notification of a child abduction (North America), named in memory of Amber Rene Hagerman (1986–1996); technically AMBER Alert, referencing the backronym America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.

(9) In biology, genetics & biochemistry, the stop codon (nucleotide triplet) "UAG", or a mutant which has this stop codon at a premature place in its DNA sequence.  UAG is named “amber” because the first to isolate the mutation was then California Institute of Technology (Caltech) graduate student Harris Bernstein (b 1961), whose surname is the German word for the resin known as amber.

(10) A female given name.

(11) In automotive lighting (often as “the ambers”), the lights of that color mounted so to be visible at all corners or an automobile which flash sequentially in indicate a driver’s intention to turn, change lanes etc (thus known various as “flashers”, “turn-signals” and even “trafficators” (the (originally mechanical) semaphore signals which when activated protruded from the bodywork of a vehicle to indicate an intention to turn in the direction of the illuminated device).  They’re used also as warning lights (four-way flashers) when all flash in unison.  Since the late 1950s, in most markets their positioning, luminosity and rate of flashing has been regulated (sometimes in unfortunately contradictory ways.

1350–1400: From the Middle English ambre & aumbre, from the Old French, from the Medieval Latin ambra, from the Arabic عَنْبَر‎ (ʕanbar) (ambergris), from the Middle Persian ʾnbl (⁠ambar⁠) (ambergris).  It displaced the Middle English smulting (from the Old English smelting (amber)) and the Old English eolhsand (amber), glær (amber) and sāp (amber, resin, pomade).  The seemingly strange confusion between the fossilized tree resin and the ash-colored secretion of the sperm whale’s intestine (ambergris) is assumed to have arisen because the dissimilar substances both were rare, valuable and found on the seacoast.  The word ambergris came into use in the West during the Crusades.  In English, amber came to be used as an adjective by circa 1500 and it was in use as the name of a color by 1735.  Amber is a noun, verb & adjective, amberlike, ambery, anberish, amberesque & amberous are adjectives, ambering & ambered are verbs; the noun plural is ambers.

Actor Amber Heard (b 1986) who seems to have a thing for 1968 Ford Mustangs.

In Europe, the word amber was picked up to describe the fossil resins found on the shores of the Baltic first in the late thirteenth century in Anglo-Latin which, by the turn of the fifteenth had entered English.  Over time, this meaning prevailed and ambergris came to be restricted to the whale’s secretions although there has long been a faction of the etymology community which has suggested it’s not impossible amber is an unrelated word of unknown origin.  Once they were distinguished as white or yellow amber for the Baltic fossil resin and gray amber for the whale’s contribution, French distinguishing between the two as ambre jaune and ambre gris.

Among her inventory of beauty care essentials, Lindsay Lohan lists the long-serving Dior Backstage Eyeshadow Palette in Amber Neutrals as her “favorite eye palette”

In a chemical coincidence, the solidified tree resin possesses remarkable static electricity properties and Baltic amber was known to the Romans as electrum, able to gain a negative electrical charge merely through friction and although rarely used as such, it’s a fine insulator.  In the Old Testament the Hebrew חַשְׁמַל (chashmal) is translated variously as “a shining metal” or “the gemstone amber” but as the light plays upon amber it can recall fire or lightning, the impression strengthened when the substance is stimulated to spark and crackle with static electricity.  The prophet Ezekiel clearly had witnessed the electrical phenomenon and although he'd not have understood the science, in his vision of God’s throne, Ezekiel wrote:

“On this throne high above was a figure whose appearance resembled a man. From what appeared to be his waist up, he looked like gleaming chashmal, flickering like a fire.  And from his waist down, he looked like a burning flame, shining with splendor.”  (Ezekiel 1:26–27)

It was the Lithuania-born journalist Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda (1858–1922) who re-established the Hebrew language as living tongue to be used in everyday life.  In the late nineteenth century, except for a handful of scholars, Hebrew was used only as a Holy language, restricted to prayer and worship in the synagogue, Yiddish the only recognizably Jewish language spoken on the street or in the home.  Something of a prophet himself, he created the first Israeli Hebrew newspaper and dictionary and to make it useful in the modern age, he had to create many new words and one was needed to describe electricity, then a concept understood for little more than a century.  He chose chashmal.  When the Hebrew Scriptures were first translated into Greek some 2,100 years ago, the Hebrew chashmal became the Ancient Greek ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron) and could be used to refer to the gemstone but was used also in the manner of the Phoenician elēkrŏn (shining light).  Seventeenth century English scientists who conducted some of the earliest experiments which began to explain the phenomenon called it electrikus (like amber) and from this came the Modern English electricity.  Ben‑Yehuda’s work was popularized by Judah Leib Gordon (1830-1892), a leading poet of the nineteenth century Jewish Enlightenment whose words were more lyrical than the dry, journalistic lists of Ben-Yehuda would write: “The light, the heat, the steam, and the electricity (chashmal), all nature’s forces are the angels above.”  He added in an explanatory footnote: “By chashmal (hash-ma-LA), I mean the natural force that is electritzitat, since the Greek translation of chashmal is elektrika.”

Immortality of sorts: An unfortunate gecko, trapped in amber 54 million years ago.

The first AMBER Alert, 1996.

The amber alert is a system used in North America to provide public notification of a child abduction (North America), named in memory of Amber Rene Hagerman (1986–1996).  Technically it’s AMBER Alert, referencing the backronym of America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.  Then aged nine, Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in 1996 and a campaign was organized which demanded protocols be established to alert the local population of details which might assist in finding the child (description of suspects, vehicle registration numbers etc).  Initially, the vectors of transmission were local radio and television stations but as technology evolved, other were added including platforms on the internet such as e-mail & social media, electronic traffic-condition signs, advertising billboards and SMS text messages delivered to cell phones.

Most succiniferous: The Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 1917.  This is the only known color image of the room.

Last seen (in crates) in 1945, it was either destroyed in the last days of World War II (1939-1945) or dissembled and hidden somewhere or otherwise disposed of.  Between 1979-2003, with early funding from the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, the old West Germany), a replica was built and installed in the Catherine Palace.  The golden, jewel-encrusted creation, rendered by artisans and craftsmen from tons of amber, was a gift to Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) in 1716, celebrating the conclusion of an alliance between Russia and Prussia.  Much admired during the centuries in which it endured wars, pandemics and revolutions, it was looted by the Nazis in the final months of the war, packed into crates which subsequently vanished.  Either they were lost or destroyed in the chaos or hidden away.

Originally installed in the Charlottenberg Palace of Friedrich I (1657–1713; King of Prussia 1701–1713), the Amber Room was a genuine multi-national venture, the design by Andreas Schlüter (1659–1714), a German sculptor in the baroque tradition, the bulk of the construction by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolfram (1646-1716), already famous for his skill in rendering amber.  It took over a decade to build and upon completion, Peter the Great expressed his wonderment and in 1716, Frederick William I (1688–1740; King of Prussia 1713-1740) presented it to the Tsar, part of his diplomatic effort to secure the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.  Accordingly, along with a selection of paintings, the room was crated and shipped to Saint Petersburg where it remained until in 1755 it was moved to the Catherine Palace (Tsarskoye Selo (Tasar's Palace)) in Pushkin.  Now installed in a larger space, the Italian designer Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was engage to remodel the assembly to suit, addition amber panels shipped from Berlin.  Renovations and refinements continued to be undertaken during the eighteenth century and when complete, the room covered some 180 square feet (16.7 m³) and contained some six tons (6100 kg) of amber, semi-precious stones and gold leaf.  At the time, it was thought one of the wonders of the modern world.

In the Nazi mind, not only was the Amber Room of German origin but such treasures anyway belonged only in the Reich and it was added to the (long) list of artworks to be looted as part of Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union).  As the Wehrmacht advanced on Pushkin, the Russian curators began to attempt to disassemble the panels but their fragility was such it was quickly realized any work done in haste would cause only destruction.  Accordingly, they had carpenters construct a frame over which was glued wallpaper, there not being time even to construct a false wall.  Not fooled, the Nazi looters removed the entire structure, shipping it to be installed in the Königsberg Castle Museum (now in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) on the Baltic coast.  However, the tide of the war turned and in 1943 the museum's director received from Berlin instructions to return the room to crates and this had be accomplished by August 1944 when allied bombing raids severely damaged the castle.  Quite what happened to the crates remains unknown.  It may be they were destroyed during the war or were in the hold of a ship sunk in the Baltic but the tales of them being hidden somewhere has never gone away and continues to tantalize, a solitary panel actually found in Bremen in 1997.  The replica room, dedicated in a ceremony in 2004 by Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) and Gerhard Schröder (b 1944, Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005) remains on public display at the Tasrskoye State Museum Reserve outside Saint Petersburg.

The "tombstone" headlamps on the 1959 Mercedes-Benz W111 sedans (the so-called Heckflosse) were a variation of the style introduced in 1957 on the 300 SL roadsters (W198) and while much admired, were not lawful for use in the US so a "stacked" arrangement was devised which came informally to be known as "Californian".  So attractive was it found in Europe that ultimately it became available in the rest of the world (RoW) but with one difference: the  factory's solution of integrating the amber turn-signal indicators (the "ambers" or "flashers" to many) and side-marker lamps into the assembly was elegant but didn’t comply with the rules.  As explained by automotive lighting expert Daniel Stern, the lit area was probably compliant (the rules specified a minimum 3½ square inches (22.5 cm²) but the intensity and inboard visibility angles would have been inadequate.  A turn signal with its centre 4 inches (100 mm) or closer to the low-beam lamp had to provide at least 500 candela on-axis, which would be close to impossible for a lamp with this construction; turn signals more than 4 inches from the low-beam needed only to provide at least 200 candela.  The RoW cars (left) were supplied with the original design while for the US market some rather ugly after-market lamps were crudely added to the gaps next to the grill (centre).  Late in the 1960s, the aesthetics were improved somewhat by using a larger unit (right) which emulated the look of a fog-lamp, the US cars by then also suffering the addition of side-marker lights front & rear.

Ambergris

Ambergris (pronounced am-ber-grees or am-ber-gris)

The waxy, sometimes opaque (the color from ash-gret to jet black) morbid secretion of the sperm whale intestine, usually found floating on the ocean or washed ashore: used in perfumery and (historically), in cooking & folk medicine.

1375–1425: From the Old & Middle French ambre gris (literally gray amber) which replaced the Middle English imbergres.  The construct was thus amber + gris.  Amber was from the Middle English ambre & aumbre, from the Old French aumbre & ambre, from the Arabic عَنْبَر‎ (ʿanbar), (ambergris), from the Middle Persian anbar & ambar (ambergris).  The word displaced the Middle English smulting (from Old English smelting (amber)), the Old English eolhsand (amber), the Old English glær (amber), and the Old English sāp (amber, resin, pomade).  Most etymologists seem to conclude the Arabic anbar entered European languages via Medieval Latin.  Gris was from the Old French or the Old Occitan gris (grey), both from the Frankish grīs, from the Proto-Germanic grīsaz (grey) and was akin to the Old High German grīs (grey) (source of the modern German greis) and the Dutch grijs (grey).  The now largely obsolete spellings were amber-gris & amber gris and the latter was for centuries the usual form, the single-word spelling not predominate until the nineteenth century.  During the seventeenth century, folk etymologies interpreted the form as “amber grease” or “amber of Greece” and regionally both were for some time in common use.  Until the twentieth century, the clipping “amber” was also in use and this was the original form, the “grey” element appended in the fourteenth century as a point of differentiation after the adoption in Romance languages of “amber” as the term to describe Baltic amber (the resin associated with fossils) and gradually, that use came to replace “yellow amber” (ambre jaune).  In modern use, amber is understood as the color and the resin white ambergris is the whale secretion.  Ambergris is a noun; the noun plural is plural ambergrises (although ambergris is in common use).

Lindsay Lohan in an advertisement for FCUK (French Connection UK).  According to FCUK, their fragrances have never used ambergris in the mix.

Curiously, the knowledge of the origin of ambergris was for centuries lost to European science.  Notes about the relationship of the substance to whales were later found in the papers of the eleventh century physician Constantinus Africanus (a Muslim of North African origin who spent the latter part of his life practicing his profession in Italy) but as late as the eighteenth century the matter was still subject to speculation, some of the theories as bizarre as anything contemplated during Antiquity to explain the existence of the mysterious eel and others were also baffled; both the Malays and the Chinese attributed the source of ambergris to either sea-dragons or sea-serpents.  It was though prized for its scent and authors noted the relationship between color and fragrance: the darker the less pleasing one was to the nose.  However, chefs had to be cautious because as noted by the English poet & satirist Alexander Pope (1688-1744): A little whiff of it, by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to his nose, it is a stink and strikes you down”.  It was thus much enjoyed but only in small doses and rather as a little truffle might be grated today over a plate of scrambled eggs, so was ambergris once used, eggs with a dusting said to be the favorite dish of Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of Scotland, England and Ireland 1660-1685).

Chanel No.5 concentrate.

That a waxy substance which is a mixture of steroid derivatives (consisting mainly of cholesterol) and secreted by the intestinal tract of the sperm whale should be a prized ingredient of the most expensive scents amuses many, some of who enjoy telling those daubed with the stuff they’re wearing “whale shit”, “whale vomit” or “whale snot”.  That’s of course not correct and in some cases, there’s not even a direct connection with the big mammals, even some high-end perfume houses using a synthetic ambroxide rather than ambergris and recent research has determined a gene from balsam fir is a most efficient producer of ambroxide so use of the traditional ingredient might become more rare still.  There’s long been speculation about whether the famous Chanel No.5 even included ambergris and the conclusion of most is that certainly once it did but now nobody is quite sure; Chanel have always declined to comment.  Both the natural and synthetic compounds produce an apparently unique chemical called ambrein and while the fragrance is the most obvious property, the perfume houses prized it also as a fixative, something which extends the endurance of the potency of the fluid (and thus the appeal to the olfactory senses) by reducing the natural propensity to evaporate.  In some jurisdictions the trade in (and even the gathering of) ambergris is prohibited, a reflection of the practice applied to trade in the body parts of other threatened species but the ban has be criticized because no whale is harmed (or even approached) in the harvesting process.

Three shades of grey: White, brown & black ambergris.

Ambergris is expensive for the most obvious reason in a world of supply and demand: rarity.  For reasons not understood, it appears fewer than 2% of sperm whales produce the substance and chunks of it can drift for years in the ocean currents before washing ashore to be collected, either by a lucky beachgoer or (more probably) by professional harvesters who study tidal charts and the migration patterns of whale herds to determine the most likely spots for a crop.  It can certainly be a lucrative business, brokers or perfumers paying thousands of dollars a kilogram and it’s the color (there are three color-based grades) and quality which determines the value, not the volume.  The white ambergris is the highest grade and thus the most expensive, possessing what aficionados describe as a “well-rounded, delicately soft, sweet, marine scent” and one which intensifies with age, an ambergris left undiscovered for years will “cure” finally to mature as a dusty, bright white chunk.  While less exalted, brown ambergris is the most versatile of the three and adaptable for use in more variations of scent, straddling the qualities and characteristics of the white and black.  Brown ambergris is noted for its woodier, tobacco-like fragrance and is probably closest in nature to musk.  Black ambergris is said by some to be almost brutish but, lack the delicate tones of the light shades, this can be an advantage for those formulating something like an aromatherapy oil which will be dispersed over a large space.  Noted for a pungent smell, it uses are limited because to most it seems more faecal than brown or white ambergris, but it’s very primitiveness makes it attractive for the niche market it serves.  In a sense it’s just another commodity so the retail prices do bounce around but the lighter shades tend to sell for as much as US$35 a gram.

Sherry

Sherry (pronounced sher-ee)

(1) A fortified, amber-colored wine, originally from the Jerez region of southern Spain or any of various similar wines made elsewhere; usually drunk as an apéritif.  Technically, a white wine.

(2) A female given name, a form of Charlotte.

(3) A reddish color in the amber-brown spectrum.

1590-1600: A (mistaken singular) back formation from the earlier sherris (1530s), from the Spanish (vino de) Xeres ((wine from) Xeres).  Xeres is now modern-day Jerez (Roman (urbs) Caesaris) in Spain, near the port of Cadiz, where the wine was made.  The official name is Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, one of Spain's wine regions, a Denominación de Origen Protegida (DOP).  The word sherry is an anglicisation of Xérès (Jerez) and the drink was previously known as sack, from the Spanish saca (extraction) from the solera.  In EU law, sherry has protected designation of origin status, and under Spanish law, to be so labelled, the product must be produced in the Sherry Triangle, an area in the province of Cádiz between Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María.  In 1933 the Jerez denominación de origen was the first Spanish denominación officially thus recognized, named D.O. Jerez-Xeres-Sherry and sharing the same governing council as D.O. Manzanilla Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

In hair color and related fields, "sherry red" (left) is a rich hue on the spectrum from amber to dark brown: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates, Liz & Dick premiere, Los Angeles, 2012.

Lindsay Lohan

The name "sherry" continues to be used by US producers where, to conform to domestic legislation, it must be labeled with a region of origin such as Oregon Sherry but can’t be sold in the EU because of their protected status laws.  Both Canadian and Australian winemakers now use the term Apera instead of Sherry, although customers seem still to favor the original.

The Sherry Party

For the upper-middle-class and beyond, sherry parties were a fixture of late-Victorian and Edwardian social life but the dislocations of the First World War seemed to render them extinct. It turned out however to be a postponement and sherry parties were revived, the height of their popularity being enjoyed during the 1930s until the Second World War succeeded where the first had failed.

For Sherry and Cocktail Parties, trade literature by Fortnum and Mason, Regent Street, Piccadilly, London, circa 1936.  The luxury department store, Fortnum & Mason, used the services of the Stuart Advertising Agency, which employed designers to produce witty and informative catalogues and the decorative art is illustrative of British commercial art in this period.

For the women who tended to be hostess and organizer, there were advantages compared with the tamer tea party.  Sherry glasses took less space than cups of tea, with all the associated paraphernalia of spoons, milk and sugar and, it being almost impossible to eat and drink while balancing a cup and saucer and conveying cake to the mouth, the tea party demanded tables and chairs.  The sherry glass and finger-food was easier for while one must sit for tea, one can stand for sherry so twice the number of guests could be asked.  Sherry parties indeed needed to be tightly packed affairs, the mix of social intimacy and alcohol encouraging mingling.  They also brought more men, tea holding little attraction for many.  The traditional timing between six and eight suited the male lifestyle of the time and they were doubtless more attracted to women drinking sherry than women drinking tea.

Novelist Laura, Lady Troubridge (1867–1946), who in 1935 published what became the standard English work on the topic, Etiquette and Entertaining: to help you on your social way, devoted an entire chapter to the sherry party.  She espoused an informal approach as both cheap and chic, suggesting guests be invited by telephone or with “Sherry, six to eight” written on a visiting card and popped in an envelope.   She recommended no more than two-dozen guests, half a dozen bottles of sherry, a couple of heavy cut-glass decanters and some plates of “dry and biscuity” eats: cheese straws, oat biscuits, cubes of cheddar.  This, she said, was enough to supply the makings of a “…jolly kind of party, with plenty of cigarettes and talk that will probably last until half past seven or eight.”

Compunction

Compunction (pronounced kuhm-puhngk-shuhn)

(1) A feeling of uneasiness or anxiety of the conscience caused by regret for doing wrong or causing pain; contrition; remorse; sorrow.

(2) Any uneasiness or hesitation about the rightness of an action.

1350–1400: From the Middle English compunccion, from the Old French compunction (from which in the twelfth century Modern French gained compunction), from the Late Latin compunctionem (a pricking) & compūnctiōn- (stem of the Ecclesiastical Latin compunctiō) (remorse; a stinging or pricking (of one’s guilty conscience)), the construct being the Classical Latin compūnct(us) (past participle of compungere (to sting; severely to prick), the construct of which was (com- (used as an intensive prefix) + pungere (to prick; to puncture) (from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root peuk- (to prick)) + -iōn- (stem of –iō and a suffix forming nouns, used especially on past participle stems).  The origin of the meaning in Latin (transferred from the element pungere (to prick; to puncture)) was the idea of “a pricking of one’s guilty conscience” which could induce some feeling of regret although, like many injuries cause by pin-pricks, recovery was often rapid.  The adjective compunctious (causing compunction, pricking the conscience) dates from the late sixteenth century.  Compunction & compunctiousness are nouns, compunctious & compunctionless are adjectives and compunctiously is an adverb; the noun plural is compunctions.

The Ecclesiastical Latin compunctiō (and compunction in other forms) appears frequently in the texts of the early Church, used in a figurative sense originally to convey a more intense sense of “contrition” or “remorse” than that familiar in modern use.  Contrition and remorse were of course a thing vital for the Church to foster, indeed to demand of the congregation.  The very structure of Christianity was built upon the idea that all were born in a state of guilt because the very act of conception depending upon an original sin and this was what made Jesus unique: the virgin birth meant Christ was born without sin although centuries of theological squabbles would ensue as the debate swirled about his nature as (1) man, (2) the son of God and (3) God.  That was too abstract for most which was fine with the priests who preferred to focus on the guilt of their flock and their own importance as the intermediaries between God and sinner, there to arrange forgiveness, something which turned out to be a commodity and commodities are there to be sold.  Forgiveness was really the first futures market and compunction was one of the currencies although gold and other mediums of exchange would also figure.

Sorry (Regretful or apologetic for one's actions) was from the From Middle English sory, from the Old English sāriġ (feeling or expressing grief, sorry, grieved, sorrowful, sad, mournful, bitter), from the Proto-West Germanic sairag, from the Proto-Germanic sairagaz (sad), from the primitive Indo-European seh₂yro (hard, rough, painful).  It was cognate with the Scots sairie (sad, grieved), the Saterland Frisian seerich (sore, inflamed), the West Frisian searich (sad, sorry), the Low German serig (sick, scabby), the German dialectal sehrig (sore, sad, painful) and the Swedish sårig.  Remarkably, despite the similarities in spelling and meaning, “sorry” is etymologically unrelated to “sorrow”.  Sorrow (a state of woe; unhappiness) was from the Middle English sorow, sorwe, sorghe & sorȝe, from the Old English sorg & sorh (care, anxiety, sorrow, grief), from the Proto-West Germanic sorgu, from the Proto-Germanic surgō (which may be compared with the West Frisian soarch, the Dutch zorg, the German Sorge, and the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian sorg), from the primitive Indo-European swergh (watch over, worry; be ill, suffer) (which may be compared with the Old Irish serg (sickness), the Tocharian B sark (sickness), the Lithuanian sirgti (be sick) and the Sanskrit सूर्क्षति (sū́rkṣati) (worry).

Johnny Depp & Amber Heard saying sorry in Australia and Johnny Depp deconstructing sorry in London.

Sorry indicates (1) one is regretful or apologetic for one’s thoughts or actions but it can also mean (2) one is grieved or saddened (especially by the loss of something or someone), (3) someone or something is in a sad or regrettable state or (4) someone or something is hopelessly inadequate for their intended role or purpose.  Such is human nature that expressions of sorry in the sense of an apology are among the more common exchanges and one suspects something like the 80/20 rule applies: 80% of apologies are offered by (or extracted from) 20% of the population.  So frequent are they that an art has evolved to produce phrases by which an apology can be delivered in which sorry is somehow said without actually saying sorry.  This is the compunction one fells when one is not feeling compunctious and a classic example was provided when the once (perhaps then happily) married actors Johnny Depp (b 1963) & Amber Heard (b 1986) were in 2015 caught bringing two pet dogs into Australia in violation of the country’s strict biosecurity laws.  Ms Heard pleaded guilty to falsifying quarantine documents, stating in mitigation her mistake was induced by “sleep deprivation”.  No conviction was recorded (the maximum sentence available being ten years in jail) and she was placed on a Aus$1,000 one-month good behavior bond, the couple ordered to make a “public apology” and that they did, a short video provided, the script unexceptional but the performances something like a Monty Python sketch.  However, whatever the brief performance lacked in sincerity, as free advertising for the biosecurity regime, it was invaluable.  Mr Depp later returned to the subject when promoting a film in London.

The synonyms for “sorry” (as in an apology) include regret, apologize, compunctious, contrite, penitent, regretful, remorseful & repentant (which is more a subsequent act).  Practiced in the art of the “non-apologetic” apology are politicians (some of whom have honed it to the point where it’s more a science) who have a number of ways of nuancing things.  Sometimes the excuse is that simply to say “sorry” might subsequent legal proceedings be construed as an admission of liability, thus exposing the exchequer and there was some basis for that concept which has prompted some jurisdictions explicitly to write into legislation that in traffic accidents and such, simply to say “sorry” cannot be construed as such an admission.  That of course has had no apparent effect on the behaviour of politicians.  Even when there is no possibly of exposing the state to some sort of claim, politicians are still averse to anything like the word “sorry” because it’s seen as a “loss of face” and a victory for one’s opponents.

There are exceptions.  Some politicians, especially during periods of high popularity, worked out that such was the novelty, saying sorry could work quite well, especially if delivered in a manner which seemed sincere (and the right subject, in the right hands, can learn such tricks) although some who found it worked did overdo it, the repetition making it clear it was just another cynical tactic.  An example was Peter Beattie (b 1952; Premier of Queensland 1998-2007) who found the electorate responded well to a leader saying sorry but such was the low quality of the government he headed that there was often something for which to apologize and having set the precedent, he felt compelled to carry on until the sheer repetitive volume of the compunctiousness began merely to draw attention to all the incompetence.

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

The other exception is the set-piece event.  This is where a politician apologizes on behalf of someone else (a previous government, hopefully the opposition or something a vague as the nation in some dim, distant past) while making it clear that personally it’s nothing to do with them personally.  There has been a spate of these in recent decades, many apologizing for egregiously appalling acts by white men against ethnic minorities, indigenous populations, the disabled or other powerless groups.  Again, some of the apologies have been in the form of “personally sorry it happened”, thereby ticking the box without costing anything; people like and indigenous population apparently deserving words but not compensation.  For the rest of us, ranging from the genuinely sincere to the cynically opportunistic nihilistic psychopaths, the most obvious tool is the adverb: to say “I am so sorry” can be more effective than “I’m sorry” provided the tone of voice, inflections and the non-verbal clues are all in accord.  Sorry is recommend by many because it so easily can be made to sound sincere with a ease that’s challenging with compunctious, contrite, penitent, regretful, and remorseful, the longer words ideal for one politician “apologizing” to another in a form which is linguistically correct while being quite contemptuous.

Prosaic

Prosaic (pronounced proh-zey-ik)

(1) Of writing or speaking, straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or elegance of poetry.

(2) Something commonplace or dull; matter-of-fact or unimaginative; overly plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring.

(3) Of or having the character or form of prose, the ordinary form of spoken or written language, rather than of poetry (now of technical use only).

1650-1660: From the fifteenth century Middle French prosaïque and directly from the sixteenth century Medieval Latin prōsaicus (in prose), from the Classical Latin prōsa (prose), from prorsus (straightforward, in prose), from the Old Latin provorus (straight ahead), the construct being pro- (forward) + vorsus (turned), from vertō (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European wer- (to turn, to bend).  The original meaning was technical, distinguishing text as prose rather than poetry and in this sense was usually written as prosaicus (in prose).  The first hints of literary hierarchy were first noted in French in 1746 when used to contrast the “character” of prose in contrast to the “feeling” of poetry.  The sense of describing something ordinary or mundane first seen in French in 1813, a meaning soon adopted in English.  Prosaic & prosaical are adjectives, prosify is a verb, prosified & prosifying are verbs & adjectives, prosaicness is a noun and prosaically is an adverb.

Figurative use of poetic & prosaic:  Jaguar E-Type (XK-E, 1961-1974) (left) & Jaguar XJ-S (1975-1996) (right).

Whether Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) ever called the E-Type "the most beautiful car in the world" remains uncertain but over the decades plenty have echoed the sentiment, sometimes using the phrase "poetry in motion".  By 1975, the world had changed and there were now rules with which to comply and although the XJ-S (later XJS) wasn't really a replacement for the E-Type, because of the timing, that was how it was viewed.  Dynamically, it was a better car than the E-Type on about any objective measure but it certainly wasn't better looking and in contemporary reviews, the styling was sometimes described as "proasic".  It might have been more accurate to use the word "pragmatic" and the lines have aged better than many at the time imagined, the car in continuous production for over twenty years and the platform endured until 2006, providing the underpinnings for the first generation of Jaguar's XK8 (1996-2005) and the Aston Martin DB7 (1997-2004), both of which looked better than the XJ-S although neither matched the timeless E-Type.

1983 Jaguar XJ-S Lynx Eventer shooting brake.

What many regard as the best-looking XJS version were the "shooting brakes" (a kind of station wagon) made by specialist coach-builders, the best-known of which was the Lynx Eventer, 67 of which were made.  The critics at the time noted the rear treatment rendered a better balanced shape and much the same observation was made of the convertible versions (although not the less happy "cabriolet").  Although the pre-war shooting brakes often were built for the HFS (hunting, fishing & shooting) set who needed space for shotguns, fishing rods, hunting hounds and such, in the 1980s they emerged in the niche of the "horsey" set although there was obviously appeal for those who liked the image even if they never sat in a saddle.  In naming the Eventer, Lynx may have had in mind the sport of "eventing", an equestrian event in which a a single horse and rider compete against others across the three disciplines of dressage, cross-country, and show jumping, the sport having its roots in the drills European armies conducted to ensure officers seeking a commission in the cavalry possessed the requisite skills.  Eventing has a reasonably impressive death toll of both riders and beasts.         

Prosaic is an example of the figurative adoption of a word with a precise technical meaning assuming such popularity that the original sense was effectively lost.  Once, any text not poetic was “prosaic” (ie “written in prose”), and this description denoted nothing negative; it was just a way of distinguishing between written forms, reflecting prosaic’s origins in the Latin prosa (prose).  However, by the seventeen century, poetry had come to be regarded as a most superior form of expression, considered more beautiful, imaginative, and emotional, prose relegated to the status of the mundane and procedural.  The figurative use evolved from this and prosaic came to be used to refer to anything thought ordinary or unimaginative including music, ideas and architecture etc.  The adjective thus transformed into a synonym for "colorless, drab, lifeless, lacklustre, humdrum, dull, pedestrian, unimaginative" etc and this resulted in phrases which once would have been thought bizarre or tautological: “prosaic poetry” & “prosaic prose”.  In its original technical sense (distinguishing the style of writing used for poetry from other literature), the word is now obsolete except for historic references and indeed, it’s now challenging to use in the context of literature because of the implications of the modern meaning.  Still, for those who wish to emphasise that some bad texts are worse than others, the comparative is more prosaic and the superlative, most prosaic.

Lindsay Lohan, a poem by Amber Tambling, from the collection Dark Sparkler (2015).

Actress and author Amber Tamblyn (b 1983) solved the writer's dilemma about whether to handle the subject of Lindsay Lohan in prose or poetry by using no text at all.  The publisher HarperCollins described her third collection Dark Sparkler (2015) as a “…hybrid of poetry and art exploring the lives and deaths of actresses who began their careers as child stars.”  The book, which included original artwork by a number of artists, was well received, critically and commercially.  The title was well-chosen because Dark Sparkler was a catalogue of murder and suicide but what attracted much comment was the inclusion of one living soul: Lindsay Lohan, her entry (on page 47) blank but for her name as the title.  An author’s relationship ultimately is with their readers but first it’s with their critics and the response to that one proved it’s possible to deconstruct text even when it doesn’t appear.  The critical reaction was something in vein taken by those who approached John Cage’s (1912–1992) 4:33 (1952) in that, without much with which to work, the only obvious question seemed to be “What did you mean?”  Ms Tamblyn did say she found it “upsetting” when, after reading several of the poems dedicated to starlets who died young, she spoke the words “Lindsay Lohan” and the audience laughed; perhaps in the age of TikTok she’d not now be surprised.  She claimed the inclusion of the work in its unusual form was not to say “you’re next” but explicitly to avoid writing anything about a life in progress, the idea being Ms Lohan’s life was her own story to write.  Like any work of prose or poetry, page 47 was there for people to take from it what they found.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

William Topaz McGonagall (circa 1825–1902) was a Scottish poet of Irish ancestry, now acknowledged as perhaps the worst poet ever to have been published in English, a fair achievement given the wealth of modern competition.  His best known work remains The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), lamenting the disaster of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the central section of Dundee's Tay Rail Bridge collapsed, sending to their deaths in the freezing water the 80-odd souls aboard the Wormit-Dundee train passing at the time.  Regarded at the time as a triumph of Victorian engineering, the Tay bridge was nearly two miles (3.2 km) long and then the longest in the world but was built with an insufficient allowance for lateral wind-load, the structure that night succumbing to the gale-force winds estimated at 80 mph (130 km/h / 70 knots).  An enquiry was conducted and the designer, Sir Thomas Bouch (1822-1880) (knighted by Queen Victoria in recognition of the quick and economic construction of the bridge) was found for primarily responsible for the disaster.  He died within a year of the collapse.

The Tay Bridge after it collapsed. Photo credit: National Library of Scotland

Whether the The Tay Bridge Disaster can be said to be prosaic is debatable because there are probably better adjectives but critics have long been united that it's a very bad piece of poetry and it's doubtful a re-rendering in prose would be much of an improvement, one writing of it that McGonagall was “deaf to poetic metaphor, employing inappropriate rhythms that resulted in unintentionally amusing poetry.”  Said to be wholly oblivious to the invective almost universally directed to his oeuvre of over two-hundred pieces of verse, his sheer awfulness and tenacity caused him to be remembered to this day for at least something while countless poets who were merely earnest and competent are long forgotten.

The Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”
 
When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”
 
But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.
 
So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.