Bogus

Bogus (pronounced boh-guhs)

(1) Not genuine; counterfeit item; something spurious; a sham; based on false or misleading information or unjustified assumptions.

(2) In printing. a matter set (by union requirement) by a compositor and later discarded, duplicating the text of an advertisement for which a plate has been supplied or type set by another publisher.

(3) In computer programming, anything wrong, broken, unlinked, useless etc).

(4) In philately, a fictitious issue printed for exclusively for collectors, often issued as if from a non-existent territory or country (as opposed to a forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).

(5) As calibogus, a US dialectical word describing a liquor made from rum and molasses (sometimes rum and spruce beer).

1827: An invention of US English, coined originally by the underworld to describe an apparatus for coining counterfeit currency.  The origin is unknown, etymologists noting the Hausa boko (to fake) and because bogus first appeared in the US, it’s possible the source arrived on a slave ship from West Africa.  An alternative speculation is it was a clipped form of the nineteenth century criminal slang tantrabogus (a menacing object), from a late eighteenth century colloquial Vermont word for any odd-looking object (which in the following century was used also in Protestant churches to mean "the devil").  The New England form may be connected to tantarabobs (a regionalism recorded in Devonshire name for the devil) although the most obvious link (for which there’s no evidence) is to bogy or bogey (in the sense of “the bogeyman”).  In this sense, bogus might thus be related to bogle (a traditional trickster from the Scottish Borders, noted for achieving acts of household trickery which sometimes operated at the level of petty crime.  The use of bogy & bogie by the military is thought unrelated because the evidence is it didn’t pre-date the use of radar (a bogie being an unidentified aircraft or missile, especially one detected as a blip on a radar display).

The noun came first, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tracing the first use to describe the counterfeiting apparatus to Ohio in 1927, the products of the nefarious minting having also picked up the name by at least 1838, adjectival use (counterfeit, spurious, sham) adopted the following year.  Later, bogus came to be applied to anything of poor quality, even if not something misrepresenting a brand-name (ie bogus in intended function).  The adoption by computer programmers (apparently in the 1980s) to refer to anything wrong, broken, unlinked, useless etc was an example of English in action; they could have chosen any of bogus’s many synonyms but it was the word of choice and hackers use it too.  Bogus is an adjective and (an occasional) noun, bogotic is an adjective, bogusly is an adverb and bogusness a noun.

From the nerdy humor of programmers came the related bogon, the construct being bog(us) (fake, phony) + -on (the suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units) (the noun plural being bogons).  To programmers, the bogon was the the imaginary elementary particle of bogosity; the anti-particle to the cluon (the construct being clue (idea, notion, inkling) + -on (the plural being cluons) which was the imaginary elementary particle of cluefulness and thus the anti-particle to the bogon.  The slightly less nerdy network engineers adopted bogan to refer to an invalid Internet Protocol (IP) packet, especially one sent from an address not in use.  Clutron proved useful, a clutron an especially clever or well-informed nerd although it was also picked-up in the misogynistic word of on-line gaming where a slutron was a highly skilled female player a combination where meant she attracted hatred rather than admiration a make would usually enjoy.

The surname Bogus was borrowed from the Polish (masculine & feminine) forms Bogus & Boguś, or the Romanian Boguș (the plural of the proper noun being Boguses).  In the British Isles it was initially most common in Scotland before spreading south and is thought ultimately related to other named beginning with Bog- (Bogumił, Bogusław, Bogdan et al).  In Polish, Boguś is also a given name and listed as a back-formation (as a diminutive) from either Bogusław, Bogdan, Bogumił or Bogusław (+ -uś).

A real Ferrari 1963 250 GTO (left) and Temporoa's superbly made replica of a 1962 model (right).  US$70 million vs US$1.2 million. 

The synonyms can include fraudulent, pseudo, fake, faux, phony, false, fictitious, forged, fraudulent, sham, spurious, artificial, dummy, ersatz, imitation, pretended, pseudo, simulated, counterfeit but bogus is what’s known as a “loaded word”.  Bogus implies fake (and less commonly “of poor quality”) but just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it need be thought bogus.  Ferrari made only 39 (it can also be calculated at 36 or 41 depending on definitions) 250 GTOs and one has sold for US$70 million but it’s possible for experts to create an almost exact replica (indeed one of higher quality than an original although given the standard of some of the welding done in the factory in those years that's really not surprising) but it will only ever be worth a fraction of the real thing (a fine example offered for US$1.2 million).  Whether such a thing should be regarded as a replica, recreation, clone or whatever is something about which there's debate but few would dismiss such a work as bogus.  It really hangs on disclosure and representation.  With only 39 250 GTOs on the planet, all with well-documented provenance, it’s not possible to claim a replica is authentic but there are cars which have been produced in the hundreds or even thousands which some try to pass off as genuine; in these cases, they have created something as bogus as knock-off handbags.  One popular use of bogus is to describe various members of royal families who parade themselves in the dress military uniforms of generals or admirals, despite often having never served on been near a combat zone.  

With something digital, just about anyone can create an exact duplicate, indistinguishable from the source, hence the attraction of the non-fungible token (NFT) which, thus far, can’t be forged.  NFTs have been linked to real-world objects, as a sort of proof of ownership which seems strange given that actual possession or some physical certificate is usually sufficient, certainly for those with a 250 GTO in the garage but there are implications for the property conveyancing industry, NFTs possibly a way for real-estate transactions to be handled more efficiently.  For those producing items which attract bogus items (running shoes, handbags etc), there’s interest in attaching NFTs as a method of verification.

Humble beginnings: Publicity shot for the 1960 Ford Falcon.

When Ford released the Falcon in 1960, it was modest in just about every way except the expectations the company had that it successfully would counter the intrusion of the increasingly popular smaller cars which, worryingly, many buyers seemed to prefer to the increasingly large offerings from Detroit.  A success in its own right, the Falcon would provide the platform for the Mustang, the Fairlane, the Mercury Cougar and other variations which, collectively, sold in numbers which would dwarf those achieved by the original; it was one of the more profitable and enduring platforms of the twentieth century.  In the US, it was retired after a truncated appearance in 1970 but it lived on in South America and Australia, the nameplate in the latter market lasting until 2016, a run of over half a century during which the platform had been offered in seven generations in configurations as diverse as sedans, vans & pick-ups (utes), hardtop coupés, 4WDs, station wagons and long wheelbase executive cars.

Ford Falcon GTHO Phase I leading three Holden Monaro (HT) GTS 350s, Bathurst 1969.

Most memorably however, between 1969-1972, it was also the basis of a number of thinly disguised racing cars, production of which was limited to not much more than was required by the rules of the time to homologate the strengthened or high-performance parts needed for use in competition.  The Falcon GT had been introduced in 1967 and had proved effective but the next year faced competition from General Motors’ (GM) Holden Monaro GTS which, with a 327 cubic inch (5.3 litre) Chevrolet V8 out-performed the Ford which had by then had benefited from an increase in displacement from 289 cubic inches (4.7 litres) to 302 (4.9) which proved not enough.  The conclusion reached by both Ford & GM was of course to increase power so for 1969 the Falcon and Monaro appears with 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) and 350 (5.7) V8s; the power race was on.  Ford however decided to make sure of things and developed homologation-special with more power, some modification to improve durability and, with endurance racing in mind, a 36 (imperial) gallon (164 litre) fuel tank, quickly (and inexpensively) fabricated by welding together two standard tanks.  The car was called the GTHO (written variously in documents as also as G*T*H*O, GT-HO & G.T.H.O. (and as GT·HO on the glovebox lid)), HO apparently understood by the Ford engineers to mean “high output” but presented to the public as “handling options”, the company not wishing to frighten the horses with fears of racing cars being sold for use on the streets (and such a furore did ensue in 1972 which proved the GTHO’s death knell.

1970 Falcon GTHO Phase II.

If the 1967 GT had been something beyond what Ford in 1960 thought the Falcon might become, the GTHO would have been beyond their wildest imaginings.  Still usable as a road car, it also worked on the circuits although, because of a bad choice of tyre which was unsuited to the techniques of the drivers, it failed to win the annual Bathurst 500, then (as now), the race which really mattered.  Determined to win the 500, a revised GTHO was prepared and, in a novel move, was known as the Phase II (the original retrospectively re-christened the Phase I), the most obvious highlight of the revised specification a switch to Ford’s new Cleveland 351 V8 which, heavier and more powerful, replaced the Windsor 351.  Underneath however, there were changes which were just as significant with the suspension re-calibrated to suit both racing tyres and the driving style used in competition.  Said to have been developed with “a bucket of Ford’s money in one hand and a relief map of the Bathurst circuit in the other”, the Phase II drove like a real racer and probably few cars sold to the public have deliberately been engineered to produce so much oversteer.  On the track it worked and victory at Bathurst followed, something which drew attention from the early unreliability of the Cleveland 351, the implications of it’s less elaborate lubrication system not for some months appreciated.

1971 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III (Clone).

The Phase III followed in 1971 with increased power, the propensity to oversteer toned down and it proved even more successful, the legacy due to be continued by a Phase IV with four-wheel disk brakes (something probably more helpful than more power) but the project was abandoned after a moral panic induced by a Sydney newspaper which ran a front page which alleged “160mph (257 km/h) supercars” were about to fall into the hands of teenagers to use on city streets and highways.  That certainly frightened the horses and politicians, always susceptible to anything which appears in a tabloid, vowed to act and prevailed on the manufacturers to abandon the homologation specials.  Thus ended the era of the GTHO and also the similar machines being prepared by GM and Chrysler, the handful of Phase IV GTHOs built quietly sold off, never to see a race track although one did, most improbably, enjoy a brief, doomed career as a rally car.

1972 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IV.

Over the decades, as used cars, the surviving GTHOs (many destroyed in accidents on and off the track) have become collectable and of the 1222 made (including circa 115 of the (unofficial) Phase 1.5 with a milder (hydraulic valve lifters) Cleveland engine), it’s the Phase III (300 built) which is the most coveted at auction (the handful of Phase IVs seem to change hands mostly in private sales and the record is said to be circa Aus$2 million) and while the prices achieved track the state of the economy, the current record is believed to be Aus$1.3 million.  Based on what was essentially a taxicab which was produced in the hundreds of thousands, there’s an after-market ecosystem which produces all the parts required for one exactly (except for tags and serial numbers) to create one’s own GTHO at considerably less than what a real one now costs so it’s no surprise there are many acknowledged replicas (also described as clones etc) but the odd bogus example has also been unearthed.

Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IVs being prepared for racing, Melbourne, 1972.

Quite how many of the 287 Phase IIs survive isn’t known and the prices are high so it’s little surprise some have been tempted to misrepresent a bogus example as something real and there are legal implications to this, both criminal and civil.  There are even examples of the less desirable Falcon GTs and in 2011, in a judgment handed down in the District Court of Queensland (Sammut v De Rome [2011] QDC 294), a couple was ordered to pay the plaintiff AU$108,394.04 (US$107,200 at the then favorable exchange rate).  The defendants had sold to the plaintiff what they advertised as a 1969 Ford Falcon GT, a vehicle they had in 2006 purchased for Aus$18,000.  The plaintiff undertook due diligence, inspecting the car in person and in the company of a expert in bodywork before verifying with Ford Australia that the VIN (vehicle identification number) was legitimate car.  Once the VIN had been confirmed as belonging to a 1969 Falcon GT, a sale price of Aus$90,000 was agreed and the sale executed, the buyer having the car transported by trailer to Sydney.

Bogus & blotchy: Lindsay Lohan with fake tan.

Two years later, when the plaintiff attempted to sell the car, a detailed inspection revealed it was a bogus GT, a real GT’s VIN having been used to replace the one mounted on an ordinary 1969 Falcon, an x-ray examination of the firewall confirming the cutting and welding associated with the swap.  It was never determined who was responsible for creating the bogus GT and expert testimony given to the court confirmed that then, a non-GT Falcon of this year and condition was worth between Aus$10-15,000 while the value of an authentic GT was between Aus$65-70,000.  Accordingly, the plaintiff sued for breach of contract, requesting to be compensated to the extent of the difference between what he paid for the car and its current value, plus associated matters such as transport, interest and court costs.  The court found for the plaintiff in the sum of Aus$108,394.04 although the trial judge did note that the defendants likely didn't know the car was bogus, thereby opening for them the possibility of commencing action against the party from whom they purchased the thing, his honor mentioned that because of the civil statute of limitations, they had less than a month in which to file suit.  It's to be hoped they kept the car because in 2022, well-executed replicas of XW Falcon GTs are being advertised at more than Aus$125,000.

Ersatz

Ersatz (pronounced er-zahts or er-sahts)

(1) Serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial (adjective).

(2) An artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute (noun).

1875: From the German ersatz (units of the army reserve (literally "compensation, replacement, substitute"), a back-formation from ersetzen (to replace; substitute good) from the Old High German irsezzen, the construct being ir- (an unaccented variant of ur; in German, the prefix signifying a notion of getting something (either by conscious effort or (rarely) producing the effect of coming to have it unintentionally) by specific means) + setzen, from the Middle High German setzen, from the Old High German sezzen, from the Proto-Germanic satjaną, from the primitive Indo-European sodéyeti; from the primitive Indo-European root sed- (to sit); it was cognate with the Hunsrik setze, the English set and the Dutch zetten.  Historically an adjective, use of ersatz as a noun was first noted in 1892.

Technically, although ersatz has many synonyms (synthetic, phony, imitation, fake, sham, substitute, counterfeit, bogus, manufactured, pretended, simulated, spurious, copied, false et al), because of its association with inferior quality goods (such as chocolate and, most famously, the notoriously unpleasant ersatz coffee, made typically from acorns), produced in Germany during the world wars to compensate for the shortage of genuine products, Ersatz tends to be used in that context while the preferred terms in modern English use are fake & faux, the latter with the particular sense of something imitative yet deliberately not deceptively so.  Indeed, faux can have positive connotations (faux fur, leather etc) and, among vegans, such things may be obligatory. 

Originally, the German military jargon was Ersatz Corps which described reserve, substitute or replacement troops, the word later adopted by the Kaiserliche Marine (the Imperial Navy) as part of the secrecy protocol which didn’t reveal the names of vessels until launch (and, in war-time, even during sea-trials), ships thus appearing in the naval lists with names like "Ersatz Yorck class".  During the two world wars, it was most famously applied to over ten-thousand substitute products, both industrial and consumer goods, created because of shortages.  The word entered Russian and English and came to describe any product thought not as good as the original.

Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018)

In a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court, Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed.  In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.

Beware of imitations: The real Lindsay Lohan and the GTA 5 ersatz, a mere "generic young woman".

Agreeing with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong".  The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey wrote in his ruling.  Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.

Schematic of Ersatz Yorck's armor deployment.

Ersatz Yorck was one of the project names for a planned build of three battlecruisers ordered in 1916 by the German navy.  After the first keel had been laid down, influenced by the tendency, noted since the launching a decade earlier of the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, towards bigger guns, the design was revised to become was significantly heavier than the Mackensen class which had been the original template.  The name Ersatz Yorck was derived from the ship being the replacement (ie ersatz in the original German sense of the word) for the Roon class armored cruiser SMS Yorck, sunk in home waters in 1914 after striking a (German) mine.  The other two ships in the programme were Ersatz Gneisenau & Ersatz Scarnhorst, both slated as replacements for namesakes lost during the Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914).

The three ships were never completed because it had become apparent augmenting the surface fleet was reinforcing failure and that U-boat (submarine) construction was a better use of available resources.  Thus the partially built Ersatz Yorck, years from completion, was broken up on the slipway and cannibalized to support U-boat production.  However, the navy retained the blueprints and it was these plans which in the 1930s provided the basis for what became the Scarnhorst class battleships although, in the Second World War, the illusion a surface fleet would be a more effective instrument of war at sea than the U-Boats proved again a chimera and one which meant that even in the early days of the conflict, the British never quite lost control of the Atlantic.  Had Germany entered the war with the 300 operational submarines advocated by the navy's U-Boat branch rather than the two-dozen odd available in 1939, the battle in the Atlantic would have have assumed a different character.   

Sociolect

Sociolect (pronounced soh-see-uh-lekt (U) or soh-shee-uh-lect (non-U))

In the jargon of sociolinguistics, a variant of a language used by a particular social group (socioeconomic class, an ethnic group, an age group etc); a social dialect.

1970–1975: The construct was socio- + (dia)lect (ie by analogy with dialect, idiolect, etc).  The prefix socio- was from the Latin socius (associated, allied; partner, companion, ally), from the primitive Indo-European sokyo- (companion), from sek- (to follow).  The suffix –lect was adopted from the terminal element of dialect, thus representing the Ancient Greek element -λεκτος (-lektos), ultimately from λέγω (légō) (I say or speak).  The plural was sociolects.

In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a variation of an established language, distinguished by a non-standard dialect or a re-allocation of meaning to elements of an existing dialect and a restricted or extended register).  Most sociolinguists restrict the definition to language used by a socioeconomic class, ethnic group, age group etc but some (somewhat controversially) include the language sub-sets used almost exclusively by trades or professions; few sociolinguists agree with the latter approach and maintain this language of essentially technical terms should be listed just as jargon.  The other significant difference from most other dialects is that it tends to be social class rather than geographical origin which substantiates the (unique or shared (lexical overlap being a noted feature in this field)) linguistic elements.

Sociolects (the companion term ethnolect is sometimes applied to ethnic-based dialects) as a distinct phenomenon are a recent addition to the field of structural linguistics.  There had long been an interest in dialectial variations which usually emerged organically in specific geographical spaces and tended to evolve and become entrenched in when the mobility of people was limited (although recent research does suggest this effect was over-stated) but what began in the late 1960s was the distinct branch of dialectology, the study of different dialects in relation to social society.  Unlike the dialects which began and became associated with a particular geographical space, the idea of the sociolect was of a speech which conforms to a social group identity, based usually on age or ethnicity and greatly influenced by socio-economic status.  That sounded environmentally deterministic and at the time that was probably true but what later emerged, especially as new technologies permitted an essentially instantaneous dissemination of popular culture to an increasing number of the global population, the earlier sociolinguistic view that patterns of speech are learned from the surrounding community was modified: people could now mix & match, picking community with which they wished to be associated and adopting their linguistic traits.

One of the best known of the genre is Ebonics (the construct a portmanteau of ebony + phonics), a word re-purposed in the early 1970s by a group of African-American academics, headed by a psychologist, Professor Robert Lee Williams II (1930–2020).  Originally, linguistic anthropologists used Ebonics to refer to the forms of English-based languages used by all those descended from black African slaves, particularly those brought from West Africa to the Caribbean and North America.  For generations, scholars had regarded these variations from Standard English as inferior and essentially a form for the “uneducated” and the assertion of a redefined Ebonics was a reaction to the negative connotations which had long pervaded academia.  It proved of some interest to those working in structural linguistics but within the community of black academics (who turned out to be as diverse and disparate in their opinions as academics of any race), it was a controversial topic because of the view that whatever the merits in recognizing that all dialectical forms (and structurally, in a sense, Standard English was just one of many) deserved to be recognized as equally valid forks, there was the recognition that the use and mastery of the standard forms was a fundamental necessity for social advancement and economic empowerment.

A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess, first edition, signed by the author, AU$18,975.08 on eBay.

Neither widely embraced by the linguistic community nor recognized by most lexicographers (although dictionaries in the era were still substantially in print and acceptance did take longer, mistakes in static documents impossible to correct), Ebonics for years remained little-known outside universities although some police departments did use the word, providing printed guides of phrases used (uniquely it was said) by African-Americans to communicate among themselves while concealing the meaning from outsiders who might be listening.  These phrases used words from the vocabulary of Standard English but with a different grammar and sometimes a re-allocation of meaning.  In this it differed from Nadsat, the argot or fictional register invented by Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) for the droogs in A Clockwork Orange (1962), where the words, although often derived from English, were barely if at all unrecognizable.

It was in 1996 Ebonics became widely known in the US.  The Oakland School Board, apparently in an attempt to gain additional funding for the teaching of English to those for whom it was not a first language, listed Ebonics as the primary language of the substantial number of their African-American pupils.  The use of the term seems to have been an attempt to add some academic gloss or gain political favor because the alternative term “African American English”, had been in use for some years and technically, meant the same thing although there may have been the feeling Ebonics carried a favorable political loading.  The board’s view was interpreted as a recognition there was in some senses a separate community of African Americans and to enable them to operate in both cultures it was desirable for them to learn Standard (American) English so they might use both depending on the circumstances, a process called "code switching".

A roaming pack of valley girls.

Valleyspeak (sometimes shortened to Valspeak) was another interesting form.  It was a socially-specific dialect associated with the stereotypical white, materialistic, upper middle-class, teen-aged girl (hence “valley-girl” being the archetype) in southern California circa 1980-1987, characterised by the adoption (and sometimes re-purposing) of existing words and phrases, delivered with an exaggerated inflection.  Elements of Valleyspeak spread to other demographics and for a certain period in the 1980s and 1990s, it was something of a fad with a peak period from around 1981 to 1985 although some of it has endured in words and phrases now part of much mainstream speech.  The use of “like” as a discourse marker and “whatever”, deployed to covey general dismissiveness have become endemic and “uptalk” or “upspeak” (technically the “high rising terminal” (HRT) or “high rising intonation” (HRI), where declarative sentences can end with a rising pitch similar to that once associated only with yes/no questions) seems to have been infectious in younger, less educated demographics.  The source of the term Valleyspeak is said to have been Frank Zappa’s (1940-1993) parody music single Valley Girl (1982) in which, behind the music, his teenage daughter Moon Unit Zappa (1967), delivered a monologue in what would come to be known as Valleyspeak.  The form was subsequently spread and popularized by US pop-culture, especially film and television.  Valleyspeak includes:

Like = um.
Whatever = dismissively, whatever you say.
Totally = I agree.
As if = unlikely, impossible.
Oh my God = amazing, shocked.
So = very.
Fer shur (for sure) = certainly.
Bitchin’ = excellent.
Filth = excellent.
Gag Me = ick.
Gag me with a spoon = super ick.
Awesome = awesome.
I know, right? = agree.
Grody = somewhat gross.
Gross = disgusting.
Bogus = untrustworthy, sketchy.
Barf out! = An exclamation of encountering something grody.
For sure = absolutely.
Dork = someone uncool & clueless.
Hunk = attractive male.
Spaz = someone clumsy.
To the max = extreme adjective.
Excellent! = excellent.
No way = I don’t believe it, dude.
Yes way = believe it, dude (in response to ‘no way’).
Humongous = very large, bigger than huge.
Humongoid = humongous.
Heinous = ugly.
Nice = an ironic judgement.

Moon Unit Zappa, Valley Girl (1982)

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude (pronounced ver-uh-si-mil-i-tood (alt –tyood))

(1) The appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability, quality of seeming true.

(2) Something that merely seems to be true or real, such as a doubtful statement.

(3) In literary fiction, faithfulness to its own rules; internal cohesion.

(4) In film & TV etc, props, sets, backdrops et al assembled to create as accurate as possible an emulation of reality.

1595-1605: From the 1540s French verisimilitude (appearance of truth or reality, likelihood), from the Latin vērīsimilitūdō (likeness to truth), the construct being veri (genitive of verum, neuter of verus (true)) + similis (similar; like, resembling; of the same kind).  In Classical Latin, it was more correctly written as vērī similitūdō.  The Latin verus was from the primitive Indo-European root were-o- (true, trustworthy).  Verisimilitude & verisimilarity are nouns and verisimilar, verisimilitudinous & verisimilous are adjectives.

A word for critics, directors, students etc

In modern philosophy, verisimilitude is a philosophical concept which distinguishes between the relative and apparent (or seemingly so) truth and falsity of assertions and hypotheses.  Able at least to approach perfection in mathematics, applied to other fields, the problem arises in trying to define what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory; analogies with string theory are tempting.  For Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994), for whom truth was (and must be) the object of scientific inquiry, the problem was the acknowledgment that most scientific theories in history have been shown to be false.  Therefore, it must, from time to time, be at least possible for one false theory to be closer to the truth than others.

In literary fiction, verisimilitude, even if cleverly executed, can attract disapprobation.  Those writings of Phillip Roth (1933-2018) which in some way document the author’s construct of how women think (and he had a bit of previous there) usually reflect a perfect internal logic without which, as literature, his text wouldn’t have worked.  Solid verisimilitude therefore but more than one feminist critic has both deconstructed and demurred, finding his world-view a bogus male fantasy.  Perhaps more than other living writers, Roth’s literary relationships tended more to be with his critics than his readers; in less unforgiving times he might have received the Nobel Prize his body of work may have deserved.  In popular culture, verisimilitude is most commonly used to describe things which make film and television “realistic”; props, costumes and such.  It’s a popular word in university courses with studies in their titles (peace studies, media studies, gender studies, communications studies etc).  Academics in these fields adore words like verisimilitude and paradigm, encouraging their students to use them wherever possible.

Failures in verisimilitude in Mean Girls (2004): One of the props was a framed photograph representing Cady Heron during her childhood in Africa, sitting atop an elephant.  The elephant is of a different taxonomy, being an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) instead of the appropriate African savanna bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) known in Kenya.  The left hand's inadvertent srpski pozdrav (a three-fingered Serbian salute originally expressing the Holy Trinity and used in rituals of the Orthodox Church which has (like much in the Balkans) been re-purposed as a nationalist symbol) is a Photoshop fail.

Hollywood

Hollywood (pronounced hol-ee-wood)

(1) A locality name shared by some two-dozen locations in the US, most associated the neighborhood in north-west Los Angeles, the historic centre of the US motion-picture industry.

(2) A locality name used by several places in England and Ireland.

(3) As a metonym, the US motion-picture industry (not necessarily restricted to LA) or the various cultural constructs associated with the business.

(4) Of or characteristic of a motion picture which tends to the type most associated with the mainstream US industry.

(5) In the beauty industry, a technique of waxing which removes all of the pubic hair, contrasted usually with the “Brazilian” which leaves a narrow strip.

Pre-1200 (in Ireland): In England and Ireland, Hollywood was used as a place name, based on the existence of established holly plantations in the region and it was adopted for dozens of settlements in North America although it’s not clear if the presence of holly plants was a prerequisite.  The use of Hollywood as a metonym for the US film industry (and by film nerds specifically the “studio system”) dates from 1926, some three years after the big sign on the hills was erected.

Lindsay Lohan photoshoot in the Hollywood hills for Vogue Espana, August 2009.

Standing 45 feet (13.7 m) high and 350 feet (106.7 m) in length, the sign originally spelled-out HOLLYWOODLAND and was intended as a temporary advertisement to promote a real estate development but became so identified with the place it was decided to allow it to remain.  As a temporary structure exposed to the elements, damage or deterioration was inevitable and in 1949, after the “H” had collapsed, restorative work was undertaken, the “LAND” letters demolished.  This work actually endured well but by the 1970s it was again quite dilapidated, a rebuild completed in 1979 and periodic maintenance since has ensured it remains in good condition.  There have been instances of vandalism so perimeter fencing of the site has over the years been increased but, as far as is known, only one soul has ever committed suicide by throwing themselves from one of the letters.  The first known instance of the name being used is in local government planning documents filed in 1887.  Quite why the name was chosen is obscure but there are a number of suggestions:

(1) Of the heteromeles arbutifolia.  It’s said the early residents in the region so admired the prolific holly-like bush (heteromeles arbutifolia, then commonly called the toyon) which grew in the Santa Monica Mountains they fondly re-named it the “California holly” and it was as this the plant lent its name to the neighborhood.  Easy to cultivate, tolerant of the Californian sun and demanding only occasional water, the toyon can grow as high as 18 feet (5½ m) high, the white summer flowers in the fall & winter yielding red berries.  The branches were a favorite for floral centerpieces and during the 1920s their harvesting as Christmas decorations became so popular the State of California passed a law (CA Penal Code § 384a) forbidding collection on public land or any land not owned by the person picking the plant unless with the the landowner’s written permission.

Heteromeles arbutifolia (the toyon or California holly)

(2) More in the spirit of the American dream is that the name was a marketing exercise.  In 1886, Harvey Wilcox (1832–1891) and his wife Daeida (1861-1914) purchased farmland and fruit groves near the Cahuenga Pass, his intention being to sub-divide the land, selling the plots for profit.  A year later, Mrs Wilcox met a passenger on a train who mentioned owning an Illinois estate named Hollywood and she was so enchanted by the name she convinced her husband to use if for his development, sitting on the land now known as Hollywood.

(3) A variation of this story is that Mrs Wilcox met a woman who told her of her home in Ohio named after a Dutch settlement called Hollywood and, without telling her husband, she bestowed the name on the recently purchased land.  Mr Wilcox apparently didn’t demur and had a surveyor map out a grid for the sub-division which was lodged with the county recorder's office on 1 February 1887, this the first official appearance of the name "Hollywood".

Lindsay Lohan photoshoot in the Hollywood hills for Vogue Espana, August 2009

(4) Year another twist to the tale maintains a friend of Mrs Wilcox hailed from a place called Holly Canyon and it was this which induced her to pick the name.  This included the area we now know as Hollywood which was purchased as part of a larger package by land developer Hobart Whitley (1847–1931) although there are sources which give some credit to Los Angeles businessman Ivar Weid, this linked also to the toyon tree.

(5) Some of the stories seem imaginative.  One involves divine intervention with Mrs Wilcox naming the area after attending a Mass of the Holy Wood of the Cross on the site though if that’s the case, Hollywood may subsequently have disappointed God.  There’s also a version with a phonetic flavor and it’s said to come from Hobart Whitley's diary: In 1886, while in the area, Whitley came across a man with a wood-hauling wagon and they paused to chat.   The carrier turned out to be Scottish who spoke of "hauling wood" which sounded to Whitley like "Hollywood" and Whitley was attracted by the combination of holly representing England and wood, Scotland; the tale reached Harvey Wilcox, and the name stuck.  An Irish version of this says the name was based on an immigrant's nostalgic memories of his home town: Hollywood in Wicklow, Ireland.  The immigrant was Mathew Guirke (1826-1909) who arrived in the US in 1850 and became a successful Los Angeles businessman, owning even a racetrack.  It’s said he named his new homestead Hollywood in honor of his hometown.

Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US National Security Advisor 1969-1975 & Secretary of State 1973-1977) meets Dolly Parton, 1985.

The noun Bollywood dates from 1977 and was based on the construct of Hollywood.  It references the Indian film industry, the construct being B(ombay) +‎ (H)ollywood, because the city of Bombay was where the bulk of the industry was located’ it’s sometimes truncated as B'wood.  Although the Raj-era name Bombay has formerly been gazetted as Mumbai and the name-change seems to be adhered to in the West, among Indians Bombay continues often to be used and Bollywood is so well entrenched it has assumed an independent life and nobody has suggested Mollywood.  Historically, Bollywood was a reference to (1) the Hindi-language film industry in Bombay and (2) a particular style of motion picture with a high song & dance content but of later it (3) refered to the whole industry in India.  Thus, as use has extended, the specific meaning has been diluted.  By extension, slang terms to describe motion pictures produced in India in languages other than Hindi include Kollywood (Tamil film industry located in Kodambakkam in Chennai, southern India.), Tollywood (Film Nagar, the Telugu film industry located in Hyderabad, Telangana) and Urduwood (anything using the Urdu language), the last often used in a derogatory sense by Hindu Indians after the fashion of substituting “I am going to the loo” with “I am going to Pakistan”.  Predictably, Nollywood (the construct being N(igeria) +‎ (H)ollywood) was coined when a industry of scale became established there.  Located in the Knoxville metropolitan area in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Dollywood is a theme park co-owned by country & western singer Dolly Parton (b 1946) and Herschend Family Entertainment (HFE).

Lindsay Lohan, Vogue Espana cover, August 2009.

Other linguistic inventions include hollyweird (said often used by respectable folk in the flyover states to decry the decadent lifestyles and liberal opinions held by those who live close to America's corrupting coastlines (ie not restricted to a condemnation just of a part of LA) and hollywoke, a more recent coining which links the liberal views held by the hollyweird with political correctness and wokeness in general.  The "Hollywood bed" was a marketing invention of the 1950s which described a mattress on a box spring supported by low legs and fitted with an upholstered headboard, so-named because it resembled the beds which often appeared in Hollywood movies although, the term has also been used in the context of Harvey Weinstein's (b 1952) nefarious activities.  Hollywoodian and Hollywoodish are both adjectival forms, applied usually disapprovingly.  Beyond mainstream use, the ever-helpful Urban Dictionary lists a myriad of creations including hollywood hot-pocket, hollywood wife, hollywood hair, hollywood drone, hollywood douchebag, Hollywood zombie, hollywood vitamins, pull a hollywood, hollywood Nap, hollywood snow, hollywood republican & hollywood handler.  Some are self-explanatory (at least to those who enjoyed a misspent youth) while others Urban Dictionary can flesh-out.

Hollywoodland, 1923.

Hollywood is of course inherently associated with glitzy renditions of fiction though it seems a bit rough that on-line dictionaries include as synonyms: bogus, copied, false, fictitious, forged, fraudulent, phony, spurious, affected, assumed, bent, brummagem, crock (as in “…of shit”), ersatz, fake, feigned, framed, imitation, misleading, mock, pirate, plant, pretended, pseudo, put on, queer, sham, wrong, deceptive, delusive, delusory, fishy, not genuine, not kosher (that one a nice touch), pretentious, snide, soft-shell, suppositious and two-faced.  Presumably the Republican National Committee (RNC) didn’t write the list but it’s doubtful they'd much change it.  In the same spirit, the antonyms include actual, authentic, factual, genuine, honest, real, sincere, true, truthful & valid.

Moniker

Moniker (pronounced mon-i-ker)

(1) A personal name or nickname as an informal label, often drawing attention to a particular attribute; sometimes also used in commerce.

(2) In computing, an object (an instance of structured data) used to associate the name of an object with its location; many coders prefer “tag”.

1849: Moniker is perhaps from the Irish Shelta munik, munika &  mŭnnik (name), said to be a permutation and extension of Irish ainm (name).  Earlier scholars said it was originally a hobo term, dating it from 1851 and of uncertain origin, perhaps from monk (monks and nuns take new names with their vows) and noted British tramps of the period referred to themselves as “in the monkery”.  Monekeer is attested among the London underclass from 1851 and there were those who claimed to detect “a certain Coptic or Egyptian twang” but, given the uncertainty, all conclude the origin can be only uncertain and the ideas of it being (1) a back-slang of the Middle English ekename (the construct being eke (also, additionally) +‎ name), (2) a corruption of monogram (in the sense of “a signature”), (3) from monarch in the egotistical sense of “I, myself” or (4) from “monk” (monks and nuns take new names with their vows) are all speculative and there’s certainly no link with the primitive Indo-European root no-men (name).  The (rare) alternative forms were monacer, monicker & moniker. Moniker is a noun; the noun plural is monikers.

Lindsay Lohan doing the LiLo, Mykonos, Greece, 2018.

Lindsay Lohan’s moniker LiLo is a blend, the construct being Li(ndsay) + Lo(han).  Being based on proper nouns, in linguistics this would by most be regarded a pure blend, although some would list it as a portmanteau which is a special type of blend in which parts of multiple words are combined into a new word (and some insist that in true portmanteaus there must be some relationship between the source words and the result).  As a proper noun in its own right, “Lilo” means “generous One” and its origin is Hawaiian although in some traditions in the islands it can be translated as “lost”.  The LiLo name was also adopted as the name of an impromptu dance Ms Lohan performed in 2018 at the Lohan Beach House on the Greek Island of Mykonos.

English has a tradition of accumulation many words to mean much the same thing and this can be handy because it allows nuances of use to emerge.  Moniker has as one of those words which, despite there being many better-known and probably better understood synonyms, offers variety, a linguistic flourish that doesn’t suffer the boring familiarity of “nickname” or the dubious connotations of “alias”.  The other related forms include epithet, byname, pseudonym, sobriquet pen-name & to-name.  By some typically strange process, in English the French nom de plume (pen-name) is common whereas among the French nom de guerre (literally, “name of war”, referring to the pseudonyms used during wars) is used for all purposes.  The more recent creation "nom de Web" was a humorous coining for those operating on the internet under a cloak of anonymity although for those who object to mixing linguistic sources for such things there was also nom de clavier, the construct being the French nom (name) + de (of) + clavier (keyboard).  Of course, even someone using a nom de clavier will be able to pay their monthly US$8 and attach to it a Twitter blue tick.

The moniker in modern US politics

Monikers in politics are nothing new but Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination and subsequently the presidency then and in 2020 was an example of democratic politics adopting the techniques of reality television and his application of derisive monikers to his opponents proved quite effective in 2016.  The campaign team took the idea seriously from the start, workshopping the possibilities in focus groups to find which gained the best response.  It turned out, based on data from the focus groups there was nothing to choose between crooked Hillary and lying Hillary (as one might imagine) but this was just another big TV show so Trump picked the one he preferred.  Crooked Hillary’s loss was Ted Cruz’s gain: He became Lyin’ Ted which was remembered when, rather than sharing the cold with his those who he represents when Texas froze under a polar vortex, the flew off to sunny Mexico for a vacation.  He was immediately dubbed flyin’ Ted.  The monikers are also recycled “crazy” briefly tried for crooked Hillary, used for Bernie Sanders and later for Liz Chaney, the last use probably because of the attractiveness of the cadence.  The opposing campaign teams noted both phenomenon and effect but all decided they either didn’t wish to adopt the technique or it was too late and to come up with a dirty Donald or cheating Donald or whatever, would have seemed an unoriginal reaction.  They were probably right to resist temptation.

The class of 2016: (1) Tez Cruz: Lyin’ Ted, (2) Marco Rubio: Little Marco, (3) Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren: Pocahontas, (4) Pete Buttigieg: Alfred E Neuman, (5) Michael Bloomfield: Mini Mike, (6) Jeb Bush: Low Energy Jeb, (7), Hillary Clinton: Crooked Hillary, (8) Bernie Sanders: Crazy Bernie.

Some of the memorable monikers Mr Trump has deployed over the years include: Wacky Bill Cassidy, Sleepin' Bob Casey, Low-Polling Liz Cheney, Wacky Susan Collins, Leakin' James Comey, Shadey James Comey, Slimeball James Comey, Slippery James Comey, Ron DeSanctimonious (Ron DeSantis), Leaking Dianne Feinstein, Jeff Flakey, (Jeff Flake), Rejected Senator Jeff Flake, Al Frankenstein (Al Franken), Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Nasty Kamala (Kamala Harris) Phony Kamala Harris, Corrupt Kaine (Tim Kaine), Cryin' Adam Kinzinger, Senator Joe Munchkin (Joe Manchin), Broken Old Crow (Mitch McConnell), Evan McMuffin (Evan McMullin), Disaster from Alaska (Lisa Murkowski), Fat Jerry (Jerry Nadler), Eva Perón (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Foul Mouthed Omar (Ilhan Omar), Dummy Beto (Beto O'Rourke), Truly weird Senator Rand Paul, Nancy Antoinette (Nancy Pelosi), Nervous Nancy Pelosi, The Nutty Professor (Bernie Sanders), Adam Schitt (Adam Schiff), Pencil Neck (Adam Schiff), Weirdo Tom Steyer, Goofy Elizabeth Warren, Low-IQ Maxine Waters, That woman from Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) and Gretchen Half-Whitmer (Gretchen Whitmer).

Sleepy Joe and wife on the campaign trail, 2020.

Even Trump however probably had to reign in his worst instincts, of which there are many.  He must have been tempted to persist calling Joe Biden sleepy-creepy Joe because of the long history of hair-sniffing photographs but, given his own record of locker-room talk, perhaps thought an allusion to senility might be safer.  Sleepy Joe it became although he’d previously flirted with Corrupt Joe, Basement Biden, Beijing Biden, China Joe, Quid Pro Joe and Slow Joe.  Had it been twenty years earlier, he’d probably have dismissed Pete Buttigieg with the gay slur Mayor Buttplug but times have changed.  He actually struggled to find some way successfully to disparage Buttigieg, finally picking up a reference to the Mad Magazine character Alfred E Neuman.  Buttigieg successfully deflected that echo from the analogue age, claiming never to have heard of Alfred E Neuman and suggesting it might be a “generational thing”, the cultural moment having passed.  It may also have been a good tactic; Ronald Reagan’s campaign staff never cared if anyone said he was too ignorant to be president but worried greatly if anyone suggested he was too old.  All the same, between Buttigieg and Neuman, there is some resemblance.

The pot calling the kettle black: Donald Trump in action.

One of the more recent to emerge was Ron DeSanctimonious to describe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who a well-regarded betting site currently lists as the $2.10 favorite for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 with Mr Trump at $3.10 and all others as outsiders.  Perhaps surprisingly, the Democrat field is more closely contested although Sleepy Joe remains the favorite though it’s a long way out and even Crooked Hillary Clinton is at only $26.00 which doesn’t seem long odds considering the history.  Ron DeSanctimonious has lots of syllables so isn’t as punchy as some of the earlier monikers but Mr Trump has a habit of trying them out to see how they catch on and replacing anything which doesn’t work and in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election he confirmed he voted for DeSantis so there's that.  However, long words can work well if they roll easily off the tongue which is why Pocahontas gained resonance.  Donald Trump dubbed Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas because of her claim to Native American ancestry which proved dubious but others were more clever still, referring to her as Fauxcahontas.  That was actually an incorrect use necessitated by the need of rhyme and word formation; technically she was a Fakecahontas but as a word it doesn’t work as well.  People anyway seemed to get the point: as a Native American, she was fake, bogus, phoney.

Mr Trump in November 2022 announced he'd be seeking the Republican Party's nomination again in 2024 so monikers old and new might again be deployed although, gloating somewhat over the disappointing performance of Trump-aligned candidates in the mid-term elections, Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The New York Post ran the headline "Trumpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall".  The Trumpty Dumpty line wasn't original, memes and books having circulated for years, but, News Corp having given the lead, it'll be interesting to see if that starts a trend among what Mr Trump calls "the fake news media".