Binge

Binge (pronounced binj)

A period or bout, usually brief, of excessive indulgence in something, historically strong drink but later food and of late, popular culture in digital form.

1854: Etymologists regard binge an adaptation of the northern English dialectical binge, of unknown origin and noted originally as a Northampton dialect word with meanings in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire including “drinking bout, drink heavily & soak up alcohol” although the original meaning was likely “soak” in the sense of "to soak in water a wooden vessel, that would otherwise leak" to make the wood swell (a meaning free of any association with alcohol), a use noted in Leicestershire Words, Phrases and Proverbs (1848) by English academic Arthur Benoni Evans (1781–1854) who recorded it was "extended locally to excessive drinking", usually in the form "soaking".

During World War I (1914-1918), it came to be applied to eating as well as drinking and binge-eating is now a recognized disorder although the phrase is casually used in a non clinical context.  In the twenty-first century, after the roll-out of fast broadband reached critical-mass, real-time streaming services became viable and binge watching came to be used to describe the practice among youth of streaming many hours of the one programme in one session, something which historically would have been done over weeks or even months.  "Binge watching" however pre-dates the mass-adoption of broadband, recorded first in 1996 when the technology (of necessity) tended to be tapes, or for the early adopters, the DVD (digital versatile disc), introduced that year.  The related forms are binged & bingeing.

Binche: Binging in Belgium

The modern construct which today is Belgium wasn’t created at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), emerging as an independent country only in 1830 after the Belgian Revolution when it it seceded from the Netherlands, itself a political creation of the congress.  Having borders with France and Germany always focused Belgium thoughts on defense and in Medieval times, walls were constructed around many cities.

Of these, the city of Binche retains the longest remains of walls, with some 1¼ miles (2.1 km) of fortifications, some dating from as early as 1230.  Binche is also known for its annual beer festival which takes place just before the start of Lent each year, the highlight the surreal sight of men in clown masks parading through the streets, drinking beer, beating drums and throwing oranges into the crowd.  Visiting foreigners, often unaware Belgium beers are brewed with alcohol content four or five times greater than that to which they’re accustomed, especially enjoy Binche.  Despite that, the alleged connection between Binche drinking and the English term binge drinking is apocryphal; just fake news.

Sleeping beauty re-imagined.

According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), binge drinking is associated with many health problems including (1) unintentional injuries such as motor vehicle crashes, falls, burns, and alcohol poisoning, (2) violence including homicide, suicide, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault, (3) sexually transmitted diseases, (4) unintended pregnancy and poor pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage and stillbirth, (5) fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, (6) sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), (7) chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and liver disease, (8) cancer of the breast (among females), liver, colon, rectum, mouth, pharynx, larynx, and esophagus (9) cognitive decline and (10) memory and learning problems.

Anorexia

Anorexia (pronounced an-uh-rek-see-uh)

(1) In clinical medicine, loss of appetite and inability to eat.

(2) In psychiatry, as anorexia nervosa, a defined eating disorder characterized by fear of becoming fat and refusal of food, leading to debility and even death.

(3) A widely-used (though clinically incorrect) short name for anorexia nervosa.

1590–1600: From the New Latin, from the Ancient Greek ἀνορεξία (anorexía), the construct being ἀν (an) (without) + ὄρεξις (órexis) (appetite; desire).  In both the Greek and Latin, it translated literally as "a nervous loss of appetite".  Órexis (appetite, desire) is from oregein (to desire, stretch out) and was cognate with the Latin regere (to keep straight, guide, rule).  Although adopted as a metaphorical device to describe even inanimate objects, anorexia is most often (wrongly) used as verbal shorthand for the clinical condition anorexia nervosa.  The former is the relatively rare condition in which appetite is lost for no apparent reason; the latter the more common eating disorder related to most cases to body image.  Interestingly, within the English-speaking world, there are no variant pronunciations.

Anorexia Nervosa and the DSM

The pro-ana community has created its own sub-set of standard photographic angles, rather as used car sites typically feature certain images such as the interior, the odometer, the engine etc.  Among the most popular images posted on "thinspiration" pages are those which show bone definition through skin and, reflecting the superior contrast possible, there's a tendency use grayscale, usually converted from color originals.  The favored body parts include the spine, hip bones, clavicles (collar bones) and the shoulder blades.     

Although documented since antiquity, the condition in its modern form wasn't noted in western medical literature until an 1873 paper presented to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) called “Anorexia Hysterica”, a description of a loss of appetite without an apparent gastric cause.  That same year, a similar condition was mentioned in a French publication, also called “l’anorexie hystérique”, and described food refusal combined with hyperactivity.  Although the author of the earlier work had within a year changed the descriptor to “Anorexia Nervosa”, the implication in all these papers was of an affliction exclusively female, something very much implied in “l’anorexie hystérique”, hysteria then a mainstream diagnosis and one thought inherently "a condition of women".

A slight Lindsay Lohan demonstrates "an anorexic look" which is something distinct from the clinically defined condition "anorexia nervosa" although there's obviously some overlap.

After its acceptance as a psychogenic disorder in the late nineteenth century, anorexia nervosa (AN) was the first eating disorder placed in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  In the first edition (DSM-I (1952)), it was considered a psycho-physiological reaction (a neurotic illness).  In the DSM-II (1968), it was listed with special symptoms & feeding disturbances, which also included pica and rumination.  In DSM-III (1980), eating disorders were classified under disorders of childhood or adolescence, perhaps, at least in part, contributing to the under-diagnosis of later-onset cases.  At that time, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created two specific categories that formally recognized the diagnosis of eating disorders: AN and binge eating (called bulimia in DSM-III and bulimia nervosa (BN; the obsessive regurgitation of food) in both the revised DSM-III (1987) and DSM-IV (1994).  In the DSM-IV, all other clinically significant eating disorder symptoms were absorbed by the residual categories of eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) and binge-eating disorder (BED), noting the disorders were the subjects for further research.  Subsequently, When the DSM-IV was revised (2000), eating disorders moved to an independent section.  The DSM-5 (2013) chapter for eating disorders added to the alphabet soup.  In addition to pica, AN, BN and BED, DSM-5 added  avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) and other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED), the latter including some other peculiar pathological eating patterns, like atypical AN (where all other criteria for AN are met, but weight is in the normal range).

Fringe

Fringe (pronounced frinj)

(1) A decorative border of thread, cord, or the like, usually hanging loosely from a raveled edge or separate strip; an edging consisting of hanging threads, tassels etc.

(2) In architecture, engineering, gardening, interior decorating et al, anything resembling or suggesting this (sometimes used loosely).

(3) An outer edge; margin; the periphery.

(4) In political science, something regarded as peripheral, marginal, secondary, or extreme in relation to something else; Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views (famously as the “lunatic fringe”).

(5) In optical physics, one of the alternate light and dark bands produced by the diffraction or interference of light.

(6) In tax law, as “fringe benefit”, a non-cash element of earning treated as income for taxation purposes (sometimes at a concessional rate).

(7) To furnish with or as if with a fringe; to serve as a fringe for, or to be arranged around or along so as to suggest a fringe; to be a fringe.

(8) In hairdressing, a style in which hair sits vertically across the forehead (synonymous with “bangs”, the predominant US form although the latter describes a wider range of cuts and, under the influence of social media, is now widely used).

(9) In botany, the peristome or fringe-like appendage of the capsules of most mosses.

(10) In structured performance art, a series of events conducted in parallel with (though not formerly a part of) an established festival (Edinburgh Fringe; Adelaide Fringe et al).

1325–1375: From the Middle English frenge (ornamental bordering; material for a fringe), from the Old French frenge (thread, strand, fringe, hem, border) (which endures in Modern French as frange), from the Vulgar Latin frimbia (a metathetic variant of the Late Latin plural fimbria (fibers, threads, fringe)), from the Latin fimbriae (fringe) of uncertain origin.  It was related to the German Franse and Danish frynse and came to replace the native Middle English fnæd (fringe), byrd (fringe) & fasel (fringe) from the Old English fæs (fringe) & fnæs (fringe).  As a verb which described “to decorate with a fringe or fringes”, use emerged in the mid-fifteenth century.  The meaning “a border, a boundary, an edge” dates from the 1640s while the figurative sense of “an outer edge, the margin” didn’t come into use until the 1890s although fringe had been an adjective since 1809.  The use of the technical term “fringe benefits” was first recorded in 1952.  Fringe is a noun, verb & adjective, fringed & fringing are verbs and fringeless, fringelike & fringy are adjectives; the noun plural is fringes.

For those seeking an example of the fecundity of the human imagination, Urban Dictionary has listing of their contributor’s suggesting of forms in which fringe is an element including mini-fringe, fringe fries, Tetris fringe, stoner fringe, wannabe fringe, minge fringe, vagina fringe, fringe of wisdom, fringe sex, clunge fringe, stu fringe, fringed purse, fringe flicker, pube fringe, fringe binge, fanny fringe, block fringe, fringed unicorn, fringe wizzle, chocolate fringe, box fringe, fringe of darkness, fringe sleeper, fucking fringe & grunge fringe.  Especially in those with some anatomical reference, there may be some overlap in meaning but it remains an impressive list.

Slides from the research which identified the Beta-1,3-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase lunatic fringe gene (now called LFNG), an an essential mediator of somite segmentation and patterning.

In the science of genetics, “lunatic fringe” was too tempting to resist. As in many fields in science, the privilege of allocating a name for a gene is granted to whomever discovered it and those working on fruit flies and other creatures concocted, inter alia: Tinman (fruit flies with a mutated Tinman gene do not develop a heart); Casanova (Zebrafish with a mutation in the Casanova gene develops two hearts); INDY (I’m not dead yet (a reference to a line in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail) a mutation in the INDY gene prolongs the lifespan of fruit flies; Cheap Date (fruit flies with a mutation in the Cheap Date gene become highly sensitive to alcohol); Dracula (Zebrafish with a mutated Dracula gene are hyper-sensitive to light and soon die; Sonic Hedgehog (Fruit fly embryos with mutated Sonic hedgehog gene develop spikes that resembles a hedgehog); Pinhead (a fruit fly gene which resembled humans colloquially called "pinheads"); Groucho Marx (a gene in metazoa that induces excess facial bristles); Ken & Barbie (Mutations in Ken and Barbie result in fruit flies without external genitalia; Grim & Reaper (the genes Grim & Reaper regulate the death process (apoptosis) in fruit flies).  Even the names of some of genes discovered in fruit fly (and other non-human) research proved to be controversial because so many were shared with humans and accordingly the Human Genome Organization’s (HUGO) gene naming committee was petitioned to change them.   As part of this linguistic sanitization, three christened during the decoding of the human genome (Lunatic Fringe, Manic Fringe & Radical Fringe) were anonymized respectively as LFNG, MFNG & RFNG.

Lunatic Fringe, Canterbury, England.

In parts of the English-speaking world, it’s not uncommon to find a hairdressing salon called Lunatic Fringe but it’s less common in North America where the preferred term for what in the UK, Australia etc was traditionally called a fringe, is “bangs”.  Under the influence of social media and other cultural exports, the Americanism has spread and bangs is now commonly heard everywhere and it’s proved technically useful for professional hairdressers who often distinguish between the classic fringe and a variety of cuts called bangs (which might be considered partial fringes), typically a cut which involves some strands cut short in front of the face or longer, usually thicker strands at the sides to “frame the face”.  The origin of the use of “bangs” in this context is mysterious, some claiming it was a clipping of the hairdresser’s phrase “bang off” which meant to cut the hair in front of the face short, straight & even while others suggest a link with “bang tail”, a dressage cut done to horsetails for equestrian events where the tail hairs would be cut straight across.

Lindsay Lohan with fringe cut with the alluring “dangling in the eyes” look, known as early as 1875 as "the lunatic fringe" (left), in costume as Cleopatra in Liz & Dick (2012) with straight cut fringe (centre) and with curtain bangs which are layered but not quite a bottleneck (right).

There is art & science associated with bangs because not all variations suit all face shapes and certainly aren’t suitable (or even technically possible) with all types of hair.  Additionally, some really work only if complementary makeup is applied but the core base for the decision is almost always the shape of the face, particularly the curve of the jaw-line and essentially they pivot from four points: above the brows, at eye level, at cheekbone level and at the jaw-line.  As a general principle, the hairdresser’s four point rule for bangs is (1) square or heart-shaped faces look best with something wispier or feathered fringe to add softness, (2) oblong face shapes work well with blunt-cut bangs, (3) round faces can gain the effect of elongation with side-swept or curtain bangs and (4) oval-shaped faces will usually accommodate any bang.  In the jargon of professionals there are curtain bangs, bottleneck bangs, blunt bangs, curly bangs, side-swept bangs, layered bangs, choppy bangs, braided bangs, wispy bangs, wavy bangs, micro bangs, shaggy bangs, piecey bangs, JBF bangs & clip-in bangs.

Ali Lohan (b 1993) photographed with her pregnant sister wearing Sandal-Malvina Fringe Tank Dress (left).  The shoes are Alexandre Birmen Clarita Platforms although, as the pregnancy progresses, the Instagram feed can be expected increasingly to feature sensible and comfortable footwear such as Nike’s Air Vapormax Multicolor sneakers (right).

Fringe “festivals” (Edinburgh Fringe; Adelaide Fringe et al).are events which “piggy-back” on mainstream “official” events (Edinburgh Festival; Adelaide Festival et al).  They began as “pirate events” but often became so popular they really came to be considered part of the event and schedules of both came to be designed in conjunction.  The notion of them being “fringe” referenced (1) their components being exhibited or preformed not in the main performance spaces but in places on the periphery and (2) their content being (allegedly) avant-garde (“edgy” in arty talk) or too controversial to be staged in the main event.

Theodore Roosevelt in fringed jacket with Winchester Model 1876, customized with a half-round octagonal barrel, pistol grip, deluxe checkered wood, case-hardened receiver and a shotgun-style butt.

The “lunatic fringe” is really not a phrase from political science (although not a few academics seem to enjoy using it); and in this context it was coined by a politician and is a favorite in popular journalism.  Although many dictionaries early in the twentieth century are said to have described “lunatic fringe” as “a splendidly prejudicial British phrase, with its suggestion of hair dragged villainously low over the forehead or edging the circumference of the face in the way that magistrates disapprove of”, it seems first to have been used of political matters by Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) in a letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) on 4 November 1913.   In the letter, he wrote: “I have got some very amusing letters from the lunatic fringe. . . . It is extraordinary how they take hold of people who are just a little mad themselves.”

Lindsay Lohan with "lunatic fringe".

Thereafter, the phrase became widely known and has since been used of extremist groups or individuals with radical or unconventional views.  It’s in a sense a successor to the way “ultra” was earlier used (ultimately as both noun and adjective) as a prefix (ultra-Tory, ultra-revolutionary etc) before emerging in its own right as a “curtailed word”.  In modern use, it’s handy in that it’s politically agnostic: Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) could say of his Democratic Party challenger, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) that he was “…a candidate that will destroy this country and he may not do it himself. He will be run by a radical fringe group of lunatics that will destroy our country” as effortlessly as earlier Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) could describe the Republican Party’s Tea Party faction as “… a lunatic fringe which the Republican leadership should reign in or else the country would suffer.”  However, although President Roosevelt may have thought he was coining something original, some forty years earlier the phrase had some currency among hairdressers in West Virginia, the Wheeling Daily Register in July 1875 reporting “…lunatic fringe is the name given to the fashion of cropping the hair and letting the ends hang down over the forehead.”

Vomitory

Vomitory (pronounced vom-i-tawr-ee or vom-itohr-ee)

(1) Inducing vomiting; to make vomitive.

(2) An emetic (a vomitory agent).

(3) Of or relating to vomiting.

(4) An aperture through which matter is ejected or discharged.

(5) In architecture, an opening, as in a stadium or theater, designed to permit large numbers of people to enter or leave (also called vomitorium).

(6) A container for receiving vomitus (whatever is discharged) (obsolete except in historic context).

1595–1605: From the Latin vomitōrius, the construct being vomi- (variant stem of vomere (to vomit) + -tōrius (the suffix added to a participle to create a first- and second-declension adjective).  Vomit as a verb was an early fifteenth century adoption from the Latin vomitus (past participle of vomitare) and was developed from the fourteenth century noun vomit (act of expelling contents of the stomach through the mouth), from the Anglo-French vomit, from the Old French vomite, from the Latin vomitus, from vomō & vomitare (to vomit often), frequentative of vomere (to puke, spew forth, discharge), from the primitive Indo-European root weme- (to spit, vomit), source also of the Ancient Greek emein (to vomit) & emetikos (provoking sickness), the Sanskrit vamati (he vomits), the Avestan vam- (to spit), the Lithuanian vemti (to vomit) and the Old Norse væma (seasickness).  The used of the noun to describe the matter disgorged during vomiting dates from the late fourteenth century and is in common use in the English-speaking world although Nancy Mitford (1904–1973 and the oldest of the Mitford sisters) in the slim volume Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (1956) noted “vomit” was “non-U” and the “U” word was “sick”, something perhaps to bear in mind after, if not during, vomiting.  Vomitory is a noun & adjective (vomitorium is a noun); the noun plural is vomitories.

Predictably, the sight of the words vomitory & vomitorium (and its plural vomitoria) captured the always vivid imaginations of a few medieval “historians” who decided these were specially-built spaces designated for the purpose of allowing an Ancient Roman indulging in epic feats of eating and drinking at an orgy (another medieval favorite when describing the lives of Roman decadents) to stagger off and tickle their throat with a feather, inducing them to vomit up what had just been consumed, emptying the stomach so they might return to gorge more.  The idea of frequent orgies which included binge and purge cycles as an institutionalized feature of Roman life is wholly erroneous.

The correct (sixteenth century) translation of the Latin vomitorium (from the use in Roman architecture) noted the helpfully illustrative derivation from vomere (to vomit) and defined the word as “disgorging the spectators”.  Architects refined the use in the mid-eighteenth century when vomitory first appeared in the literature, then defined as “an entrance piercing the banks of seats of a theatre, amphitheater, or stadium and designed to permit the most efficient ingress & egress of people in volume”.  At the definitional level nothing has since changed although improvements in machinery, engineering and materials have permitted the construction of larger structures with greater human capacity and this has meant the planning and design process in determining the points and process of ingress & egress has assumed increasing importance, to optimize economy of operation, logistical efficiency and, critically, safety, modern building codes especially emphasizing the latter.  In architecture, the word vomitory is often used casually to refer to the whole sub-structure but one is made of components which can includes aisles, cross-aisles (sloped & level walking surfaces), ramps, stairs, tunnels and the particular constructions which are the bulk entry/exit apertures and areas at each end of the system.

Circle in the Square Theatre, Broadway, New York City, built wit classic vomitory.

The term “theatre-in-the-round” can be misleading because the arrangement of the performance areas, while central, is rarely executed as an actual circle, the reference instead being to the audience being seated “all around”.  The classic design is a square or polygonal formation and, except in some one-act performances, actors enter through vomitories between the seating, directors moving them as necessitated by the need to relate to an audience viewing from anywhere in the 360^o sweep, the scenery minimal and positioned avoid obstructions.  Because theatre-in-the-round inherently deconstructs the inherently two-dimensional nature of the classical stage, it was long a favorite of the avant-garde (there was a time when such a thing could be said to exist).  The arena theatre is theatre-in-the-round writ large, big auditoria with a central stage and like the sports stadia they resemble, typically rectangular and often a multi-purpose venue.  There’s a fine distinction between arena theatres and hippodromes which more recall circuses with a central circular (or oval) performance space surrounded by concentric tiered seating with deep pits or low screens often separating audience and performers.

Lindsay Lohan descending a vomitory after selecting an audience member to participate in a skit, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, November 2012. 

New York’s Circle in the Square Theatre, originally located in another place, sits now in mid-town Manhattan and is one of only two Broadway theaters which feature a thrust stage extending on three sides into the audience.  The architect’s combination of a tri- thrust stage and a U-shaped seating arrangement was chosen to enable the intimacy associated with the company’s older, smaller performance space to be maintained in what was a much larger room.  The design made possible a configurable seating arrangement for up to 650 in which no member of the audience member would be more than eight rows from the stage and the theatre is also one of the few in Broadway with a vomitory, used in some productions as an entry or exit point for members of the cast.

The rare use as an artistic device aside, the purpose of a modern vomitory remains what it was for Roman architects; a thing of pure functionality, the form of which is dictated by efficiency of operation.  Thus, as the volume of stadiums grew, vomitories needed to become either larger or more numerous and there were a number of factors which compelled architects sometimes to follow both courses.  However, just as skyscrapers can’t practically be built as tall as techniques of structural engineering now permit because beyond a certain point the internal volume which needs to be allocated to lift-shafts and stairwells renders them uneconomic, neither can vomitories be allowed disproportionately to absorb space.

Classic vomitory (left) and latitudinal vomatory (right).

Another approach is the so-called latitudinal vomatory which is not new, the best-known extant example of the tradition seen in Warsaw's Royal Lazienki Park, the Theatre on the water (often referred to as the Theatre on the Isle) designed by Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer (1753–1795) and thought one of the more interesting pieces of eighteenth century theatre architecture.  A striking feature of the latitudinal approach is the complete functional and structural separation of stands & vomitories and visually it appeals to architects because it reduces the number of interruptions to the sweep of the horizontal lines which define the terraced surfaces.  The sympathy with the shape of the terraces mean it’s thought by many a truer representation of vomitories as a stadium’s circulatory system, a favorite expression of architects from Antiquity.

Warsaw's Theatre on the water (1790-1793) in the Royal Lazienki Park.  The amphitheatre showing the stairs of the latitudinal vomitory (left), the vista from above (centre) & the lobby level entrance to the vomitory (right).  The design of the amphitheatre borrowed from structures built in ancient Herculaneum.

Nudge

Nudge (pronounced nuhj)

(1) To push slightly or gently, especially with the elbow; a gentle push.

(2) To give a nudge.

(3) To annoy with persistent complaints, criticisms or pleas; to nag.

(4) In behavioral economics (and other disciplines), the use of positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence behavior.

(5) In internet use, a feature of instant messaging software used to get the attention of another user, as by shaking the conversation window or playing a sound.

(6) In gambling (slot machines; fruit machines etc), the rotation by one step of a reel of the player's choice.

(7) Slightly to move.

(8) In slang as “giving it a (bit of a) nudge”, high alcohol consumption in the context of binge drinking.

1665-1675: From the Middle English, a variant of the earlier nidge & knidge, akin to the Old English cnucian & cnocian (to knock).  In other languages, there were similar forms.  There was the Yiddish nudyen (to bore), first noted in English in 1877, apparently derived from the Polish nudzić (sometimes written as nudnik in translation (and both from Slavic words meaning "fret, ache”)) and in the 1960s modern Yiddish adapted nudge (nudjh in Modern Yiddish) to mean complainer or nagger (presumably to satisfy the demand from daughters-in-law needing descriptors of Jewish mothers-in-law).  In the Nordic region, dating from the seventeenth century there was the Icelandic nugga (to push, rub or massage) and the Norwegian nugge or nyggje (to jostle, rub, push slightly with the elbow), from the Proto-Germanic hnōjaną (to smooth, join together), from the primitive Indo-European kneh- which may have had some relationship to the Ancient Greek κνάω (knáō) (to scratch, scrape), source of the English noun acnestis (the section of an animal's skin that it cannot reach in order to scratch itself, usually the space between the shoulder blades).  There was also the Scots nodge (to push, poke, nudge), knidge (to push, squeeze), gnidge (to rub, press, squeeze, bruise) & knudge (to squeeze, press down with the knuckles) and the Middle Low German nucke, nücke & gnücke (a sudden push, shock, impetus).  Nudge is a noun & verb, nudged & nudging are verbs, nudger is a noun, nudgy is an adjective and nudgingly is an adverb; the noun plural is nudges. 

Nudge theory

The most famous example of a nudge is the etching of the image of a housefly into the urinals at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport (actually an idea dating back decades).  It’s to nudge men towards “improving the aim" and one feminist critic suggested images of dartboards so “men could keep score.”  She may have been taking the piss.

First appearing in the 2008 book Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by University of Chicago economist & Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler (b 1945) and Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein (b 1954), nudge theory was a concept now part of the behavioral sciences, political theory and economics.  It suggests the use of positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance with desirable objectives.  Nudge theory attracted criticism from both left and right because it is a form of social engineering although the specifics of the critiques vary but it certainly was organizationally influential, the seemingly radical that government could maintain the freedoms enjoyed by citizens in the democratic West while simultaneously helping them make better choices in matters relating to their health, happiness & wealth.  Within months of publication, over 500 nudge units or departments had been created around the world, including institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations (UN).  However, in recent years, critics have challenged the both the effectiveness of the idea and even that nudges by governments are inherently less intrusive and thus more likely to sustain civil freedoms than other approaches (taxes, legislation etc).  One obvious difficulty for both sides of the argument is that any attempt to find a correlation between nudges and alleged outcomes cannot easily be reduced to numbers so conventional economic modeling is often not useful.

Peptonize

Peptonize (pronounced pep-tuh-nahyz)

(1) In physiology and biochemistry, to hydrolyse (a protein) to peptones by a proteolytic enzyme, especially by pepsin or pancreatic extract (done usually to aid digestion).

(2) In biochemistry, any water-soluble mixture of polypeptides and amino acids formed by the partial hydrolysis of protein.

(3) To render a text or some other form into something more easily understood (ie a figurative use of the notion of “making more digestible”).

1877: The construct was peptone + ize.  The noun peptone was from the German Pepton, from the Ancient Greek πεπτόν (peptón) (cooked, digested), (neuter of peptos), the verbal adjective of peptein (to cook), from πέπτω (péptō) (soften, ripen, boil, cook, bake, digest); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European root pekw (to cook; to ripen).  The –ize suffix was from the Middle English -isen, from the Middle French -iser, from the Medieval Latin -izō, from the Ancient Greek -ίζω (-ízō), from the primitive Indo-European verbal suffix -idyé-.  It was cognate with other verbal suffixes including the Gothic -itjan, the Old High German –izzen and the Old English -ettan (verbal suffix).  It was used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives which (1) make what is denoted by the noun or adjective & (2) do what is denoted by the noun or adjective; the alternative form is –ise.  In British English, alternative spelling is peptonise.  Peptonize, peptonized & peptonizing are verbs, peptonic is an adjective and peptonization & peptonizer are nouns; the most common noun plural is peptonizations.

Peptone was adopted as the general name for a substance into which the nitrogenous elements of food are converted by digestion.  The word entered scientific English in 1860, the German Pepton having first appeared in academic papers in 1849.  Being used in chemistry, a number of derived forms were created as required including antipeptone (a product of gastric and pancreatic digestion, differing from hemipeptone in not being decomposed by the continued action of pancreatic juice), hemipeptone (a product of gastric and pancreatic digestion of albuminous matter, which (unlike antipeptone) is convertible into leucin and tyrosin by the continued action of pancreatic juice; it's formed also from hemialbumose and albumin by boiling dilute sulphuric acid), bactopeptone (a peptone used as a bacterial culture medium) and neopeptone (a commercial mixture of peptones & vitamins), amphopeptone (a product of gastric digestion, a mixture of hemipeptone and antipeptone

Peptides attracted interest some years ago when their use in the performance enhancing drugs (PED) supplied to athletes was publicized.  Peptones and peptides are both derived from proteins but have distinct differences in their structures and properties.  Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds and are naturally occurring molecules found in the body and in some foods (hence the interest in their use in PEDs), their biological functions including acting as signaling molecules, hormones, and enzymes.  Under laboratory conditions or during industrial process they can also be derived from the hydrolysis of proteins to be used as therapeutic agents, diagnostic tools, and in many research environments.  Examples of peptides include oxytocin, vasopressin, and insulin.  Peptones are mixtures of amino acids and peptides produced by the partial hydrolysis of proteins and are significantly larger and more complex than peptides.  In the body, they’re produced by the digestion of natural proteins using enzymes or acids and in microbiological culture media are widely used as a source of amino acids and peptides which readily can be utilized by microorganisms for growth and metabolism.  In the industrial production of food, peptones are a common flavor enhancer and examples include tryptone, casitone, and yeast extract.

Mother's other little helper: Peptonized port was once recommended for nursing mothers.

The reason the verb peptonize (and peptonise) is at all known beyond biochemistry & industrial laboratories is the form can by analogy be used to describe the process by which some long or unintelligible document is rendered into something more easily digestible.  In this it differs from “abridge” which describes reducing the size of a document and, strictly speaking, the process should be restricted to removing passages of text which are not essential to the meaning or which intrude on the narrative flow.  Abridgment of novels (of which those published by the Reader’s Digest periodical remain the best-known) have become a popular form and often appear in editions including several of an author’s works.  The Reader's Digest began publication of these anthologies (fiction & nonfiction) in 1950 and originally they marketed by advertisements in the periodical and in mail-order catalogues (which were for 150-odd years a form of distribution which can be considered the B2C (business to consumer) websites of the pre-internet age as “Reader's Digest Condensed Books” before in 1997 being re-branded as “Reader's Digest Select Editions”.  There were some who were rather snobby about the Reader's Digest because it avoided abstractions and wrote for a literate but not necessarily highly educated audience and the news in the 1980s that it was Ronald Reagan’s (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) preferred periodical reinforced the prejudice although it appears also to have boosted circulation.  More sympathetic critics however have praised the editing of the company’s abridged editions which they in more than one case observed made for a better novel.

Among the more infamous suggested abridgments was that recommended by some critics for Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) dark satire Catch-22 (1961).  Apparently not enjoying the mental gymnastics demanded by the structure, not only did they suggest one or more chapters should be deleted, the consensus appeared it be it would matter little which chapters were sacrificed in the desired abridgment.  Time has been kinder to the book and few would now suggest deleting anything although the author, like many novelists, discarded much from his early drafts and in 2003 release Catch as Catch Can which included two chapters which never made it to the final draft (the previously published Love, Dad & Yossarian Survives), both of which worked well as short stories which were more viciously condemnatory of the US military than even what appeared in 1961.  Six decades on, it’s difficult to make the case removing a chapter from Catch-22 would in anyway peptonize to work although in at least one literary studies course students were set the task of working out which chapter could be deleted with the fewest consequential changes needing to be imposed on the rest. 

In 1970 however, it became possible to assess what would happen if chunks of the book were deleted because that year a film “version” was released and to produce that, radically the novel was abridged.  Whether it was much peptonized by the process was at least questionable, the phrase in the review by Richard Schickel (1933–2017): “One of our novels is missing” capturing the view of many.  In fairness, given the sprawling scale, there was of course no other way it could be condensed into two hours of screen time and something spread over many viewings, a la Richard Wagner’s (1813–1883) Ring Cycle (1876), would have brought its own problems.  Still, by 2019 technology had made the habits of audiences change and a six-part mini-series was released.  With a total running time over four hours it was still not enough to encompass the whole novel but hardly of a length to intimidate the binge generation and as a piece of entertainment it was well received although the advice of the serious-minded remained the same: read the book.

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

Both the film and the book actually went well beyond mere abridgment, verging solidly into what students of the visual forms call “interpretation” or “adaptation” so people can decide whether there was peptonization, simplification or both.  By contrast, a document subjected to a peptonization may be rendered shorter, longer or even transformed into a different format.  The genre known as “popular” (“popular science” and “popular history” the best known) often contain elements from technical or academic works which are re-written into a form more easily comprehended by readers without background in the specialization and is a classic form of peptonization.  Once can also exist as an adjunct document which accompanies the substantive text: an explanatory memorandum and an executive summary are both examples and even the abstract which sits as a header can fulfil the function and all three probably are valued by many because they obviate any need to read something which may be tiresomely and often needlessly long.  That may have been what Lord Salisbury (1893-1972) had in mind when in 1952 he remarked of the idea “…budget proposals could be simplified and summarized a little before being shown to the prime-minister.”: “Of course, I don’t know how far they are peptonized already.”  Even then, such use was rare (certainly outside the House of Lords) and now the meaning functionally be extinct.

Approved by His Majesty's Home Secretary.

In England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, peptonised milk was part of the treatment regimes used in the force-feeding of patients in lunatic asylums, suffragettes on hunger strike those afflicted by Anorexia Nervosa (then still often called Anorexia Hysterica).  The method didn’t long endure in dealing with the bolshie proto-feminists because the public reaction was such the Home Office usually relented.  It remained often used for the anorexics and it presumably enjoyed some success but in 1895 The Lancet (a weekly medical journal first published in 1823) reported a fatal case: “The patient refused food so ‘was fed an enemata of peptonised milk, beef tea and brandy.  This was carried out for two to three days and in ten days she could take a moderate diet by the mouth, but suffered from diarrhoea.  On the thirteenth day after admission she rapidly became worse, the temperature rose to 102°F, and on the fifteenth day she died.”

Thinspo

Thinspo (pronounced thin-spoh)

Material created, curated or used (almost exclusively in distributed digital form) to inspire thinness or weight loss; a sub-set of the pro-ana community which exists to support those who have chosen to anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle.

2005–2010: The short form of thinspiration, the construct being thin +‎ (in)spiration.  Thin was from the Middle English thinne, thünne & thenne, from the Old English þynne, from the Proto-West Germanic þunnī, from the Proto-Germanic þunnuz (thin) (and related to þanjaną (to stretch, spread out)), from the primitive Indo-European ténhus (thin), from ten- (to stretch).  It was cognate with the German dünn, the Dutch dun, the West Frisian tin, the Icelandic þunnur, the Danish tynd, the Swedish tunn, the Latin tenuis, the Irish tanaí, the Welsh tenau, the Latvian tievs, the Sanskrit तनु (tanú) (thin) and the Persian تنگ‎ (tang) (narrow). A doublet of tenuis, it was related also to tenuous.  Inspiration was from the Middle English inspiracioun, from the Old French inspiration, from the Late Latin īnspīrātiōnem (nominative īnspīrātiō), from the Classical Latin īnspīrātus (past participle of inspīrō).  It displaced the native Old English onbryrdnes (literally “in-pricked-ness”).  Thinspo inspired others forms such as fitspo (encouraging fitness) and blondespo (advocating being blonde) and between thinspo and fitspo, critics noted some overlap, suspecting that in at least some cases the later identity is assumed as an attempt at disguise.  Thinspo is a noun; the noun plural is thinspos.

Thinspo's idealized bone definition.

The companion term ribspro (the short form of ribspiration (known also as bonespo)) is a particular genre within thinspo.  Whereas thinspo material can be long or short-form text, diagrams or images, rinspro is almost exclusively visual, the text limited to perhaps a few admiring or encouraging words and as the names suggest, the focus is on ribcages or other bones proximately highlighted against taut skin.  Backbones, ribs, clavicles and hipbones seem the most favored, presumably because they tend to provide the most definitional contrast but there’s also the suspicion that the particular aesthetic construct of the thinspo community finds there the most attractive, unlike a knee or elbow which, however boney, seems not to be thought photogenic.  Another genre (a kind of applied thinspo) within the community is meanspo (the short form of mean inspiration), from the “tough love” or “cruel to be kind” school of weight loss and this school of thought advocates issuing critical and insulting comments to those considered “insufficiently thin enough”, the rationale being this will convince them to reduce intake, exercise more, purge and thus lose weight.  The thinspo ecosystem has also proliferated thematic variations such as “vegan thinspo” although that to some extent was opportunistic give that the most extreme of the thinspo operatives had long since banished animal products, regarding recommendations like “lean mean” or “chicken strips” as just so much fat.

Like much in the pro-ana community, the thinspo sites exist on a spectrum, those thought innocuous left to continue while any judged to be encouraging eating disorders subject to being shutdown although the efforts undertaken by (and sometimes imposed on) the platforms is a Sisyphean battle, the content shifting as required.  It’s also organic in that thinspo, like all that’s curated by the pro-ana community, is just another function supply-demand curve; the supply of pro-ana content at least to some extent a product of demand and, like much that is on-line, some of the material is blatantly fake, something most obviously detected in the dubious before & after photos which appear with frequent duplication.  Whether there were statistically significant differences in the nature of the content of thinspo and fitspo sites attracted academic interest and there were studies, the results differing in detail (and demonstrating widely divergent results depending on the platform analyzed which was thought to be a reflection more of the degree of success a platform achieved in enforcing its policies than any difference in the collective user profile) but displaying the same general trends: Thinspo sites portrayed body parts with more than twice the frequency of fitspo and posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness were overwhelmingly almost specific to thinspo.  Interestingly, the differences between fitspo & thinspo relating to sexually suggestive images, appearance comparison and messages encouraging restrictive eating were not statistically significant, the divergences being striking but almost wholly correlated with the platform on which they were posted.  The more extreme of the forks such as self harm (cutters etc) appeared almost exclusively on thinspo.

Thinspo Rules

Lindsay Lohan during thinspo pin-up phase, 2005.

(1) Never eat something just because you want to finish it.  Eat only enough to stop the worst of the hunger pangs and don’t eat until sated; those extra bites add up.

(2) Don’t let emotions take over and eat only if hungry.  Stop yourself once you start eating if you know it’s for the wrong reasons.

(3) If you catch yourself in a binge, stop the moment you realize.  Don’t forgive yourself for screwing up; it will only permit you to screw up again.

(4) Every calorie counts.  Review every recipe and remove as many calories as possible.  Where possible, choose the diet or low cal version and drink water (soda water is fine), black tea or black coffee instead of other beverages.  Avoid zero-cal sweeteners (1) because they’re a chemical cocktail and (2) on thinspo goal is to completely cure the body’s natural sugar addiction. 

(5) Don’t feel guilt about wasting food.  The undesirability on environmental grounds is noted but the sooner you change yourself, the better.  Set a goal always not to eat everything you’re served and gradually increase this quantity.  Before long, you’ll be throwing away food without barely a thought.

(6) Eat slowly, savoring each bite.

(7) Drink water during meals, as much as you can manage.   This curbs hunger, is filling, aids in digestion and maintains hydration which has many benefits.  Water has zero calories and can be taken as ice.

(8) Chew your food more, taking at least one 1 full breathe after every bite.  It can vary according to what’s being eater but as a guide, chew 30 times for each mouthful. This not only assists digestion but slows the pace of eating, reducing consumption.

(9) Cut food into smaller pieces which slows eating, can make you you’re eating more and it will makes other people think you ate more, something which can be important.

 (10) Associate unhealthy food with something else: ice cream with saturated fat, bread with carbs, juice with sugar etc.  Concrete visual examples are also helpful: cake as fat sitting in your thighs, chips as a permanent lining in the stomach etc..

(11) Learn from other people eating because while there are individual variations, overall, the patterns should be consistent.  Watch skinny people and apply their principles to your own diet; watch fat people with disgust and revulsion, avoiding what they do.

(12) Decide beforehand how much you are going to eat and never eat more.  If cooking, cook only one serving, so you can’t eat anymore.  The idea model is to have no food in the house and each day but only what you’re that day allowed.  It can be difficult at first but it can be done and if stuck to, it’s a foolproof diet.

(13) Always remind yourself of your goals and rewards.  Keep track of daily nutrient and food goals (some use diet minder journal or cronometers but the best method is whatever works for you).  Weigh yourself twice a day (before morning coffee and just before going to bed), the goal being always to see a lower number than previous weigh-in.  If you have achieved a target weight and operate in a variation of +/- 100g, that is acceptable.

(14) Don’t eat 2½ hours before bed.

(15) You’ll sometimes eat with friends or family so you may need to develop techniques surreptitiously to dispose of food.  You’ll get good at knowing where to sit so one hand can always been unseen and a good trick is to wear clothes with big pockets you can line with plastic bags.