Burger

Burger (pronounced bur-ger or bur-gha)

(1) A clipping of hamburger.

(2) A disc-shaped food patty (or patty on a bun), sometimes containing ingredients other than beef including vegetarian concoctions.

(3) In Pakistani slang (usually derogatory), as burger or hamburger, a stereotypically well-off Pakistani aspiring to a westernized lifestyle.

(4) In Internet slang (apparently beginning on 4chan), an American (as in a white, US citizen); of or relating to Americans.

(5) In computer graphical user interfaces (GUIs), as hamburger button, an icon with three horizontal lines (the resemblance being to the stacked ingredients of a burger).  The hamburger label was applied retrospectively, the original idea being to represent a list, the icon’s purpose being to open up a list of options; it’s thus also known as the “collapsed menu icon”.

1939: An invention of US English, extracted from hamburger by misunderstanding (ham + burger).  Use of the noun hamburger is not exclusive to fast food.  As early as 1616 it was noted as being the standard description both of someone “a native of the city of Hamburg" and also of ships “registered with Hamburg as their home port").  From 1838 it was the name of a black grape indigenous to Tyrolia and after 1857, a variety of hen.  Technically the meat product is a specific variation of shaped, ground beef (minced meat); as a meatball is a sphere and meatloaf is a rectangular cuboid, hamburgers (and burgers) are discs.

Co-incidence of names: Earl Warren (1891–1974; Chief Justice of the US 1953-1969 (right)), Richard Nixon (1913-1994; President of the US 1969-1974 (centre)) & Warren Earl Burger (1907–1995; Chief Justice of the US 1969-1986 (right), Washington DC, June 1969: Official photo released after the formal ceremony making Burger the fifteenth chief justice.  Neither judge, both appointed by Republican presidents, much pleased the conservatives and the state of the court today is the consequence of decades of pressure and some fortuitous timing in judicial expiry. 

Not that the burger is even exclusively fast food.  Some very expensive burgers have been created although, compared to their availability, there’s considerably less publicity about their sales.  As pieces of conspicuous consumption they must have a niche but Netherlands diner De Daltons‘ (Hoofdstraat 151, 3781AD, Voorthuizen) opted to couple indulgence with a good cause, the proceeds of their Golden Boy burger donated to the local food bank.  Emphasizing quality rather than sheer bulk, the Golden Boy was actually a good deal less hefty than some of the huge constructions burger chains in the US have offered to satisfy the gulosity of some (burgers with names like Heart Attack, XXXL, 55 oz Challenge, One Pound of Elk, Sky-high Scrum, Monster Thickburger & Killer hardly subtle hints at the target market).

Golden Boy.

By comparison, the price tag of €5,000 (US$5,100) aside, the Golden Boy seems almost restrained, though hardly modest, presented on a platter of whiskey-infused smoke, its ingredients including Wagyu beef, king crab, beluga caviar, vintage Iberico Jamon, smoked duck egg mayo, white truffle, Kopi Luwak coffee BBQ sauce, pickled tiger tomato in Japanese matcha tea, all assembled on two Dom Perignon infused gold-coated buns.  The chef insists it still just a burger and should be eaten using the hands, a nice touch being that because the buns are covered in gold leaf, fingers will be golden-tinted when the meal is finished.  A Golden Boy must be ordered two weeks in advance and a deposit of €750 (US$765) is required.

People around the world had no doubt for centuries been creating meatloaves, meatballs and meat patties before they gained the names associated with them in Western cuisine.  The idea is simply to grind-up leftover or otherwise unusable cuts, add diced vegetables & spices to taste and then blend with a thickening agent (flour, breadcrumbs, eggs et al) to permit the mix to be rendered into whatever shape is desired.  The hamburger is no more an invention of American commerce that the sandwich was of the English aristocracy.

Lindsay Lohan masticating burger, Blank Magazine, May 2011.

The words however certainly belong to late-stage capitalism.  Hamburger is noted in the US as describing meat patties in the late nineteenth century (initially as hamburg steak), the connection apparently associative with German immigrants for whom the port of embarkation was often Hamburg although there is also a documented reference from 1809 in Iceland which referred to “meat smoked in the chimney” as Hamburg beef.  There are a dozen or more stories which speculate on the origin of the modern hamburger but, in the nature of such an ephemeral craft, there is little extant evidence of the early product and there’s no reason not to assume something so obvious wasn’t “invented” in many places at much the same time.  The earliest known references which track the progression seem to be hamburger sandwich (1902), hamburger (1909) & burger (1939) although burger was by then an element in its own right, acting as a suffix for the cheeseburger (1938).  The culinary variations are legion: baconburger; cheeseburger; fishburger; beefburger; bacon & egg burger; whale burger, dog burger & dolphin burger (those three still a thing in parts of the Far East although not now widely publicized); vege burger; vegan burger; kangaroo burger, camel burger & crocodile burger (the Australians have a surplus of all these fine forms of animal protein), lamb burger, steakburger, soyburger, porkburger etc.  Opportunistic constructions like burgerlicious are created as required.  The homophones are Berger & burgher (in English use a middle-class or bourgeois person).  The noun plural is burgers.

Blogger Dario D had noticed that visually, the Big Macs he bought from random McDonalds outlets didn’t quite live up to the advertising.  That’s probably true of much industrially produced food but what was intriguing was what was revealed when he applied a tape measure to his research.  It seems Big Macs can’t be made exactly like they look in the advertising because then they would be too big to fit in the packaging.

The Big Mac Index (BMI) was created by The Economist newspaper in 1986.  The BMI is a price index which provides an indicative measure of purchasing power parity (PPP) between currencies and uses movements in the burger's price to suggest whether an official exchange rate is over or under-valued.  The newspaper has never claimed the BMI is an authoritative economic tool and has always documented its limitations but many economists have found it interesting, not so much the result on any given day but as a trend which can be charted against other metrics.  It was an imaginative approach, taking a single, almost standardized commodity available in dozens of countries and indexing the price, something which should in each place be most influenced by local factors including input costs (ingredients & labour), regulatory compliance, corruption and marketing.  Even those who don’t agree it has much utility as an economic tool agree it’s fun and other have published variations on the theme, using either a product made in one place and shipped afar or one made with locally assembled, imported components.

The BMI also brought to wider attention the odd quirk.  Although its place in the lineup has been replaced by a chicken-based dish, the Big Mac used to be on the McDonald's menu in India although, in deference to Hindu sensitivities (and in some states actual proscription), it was made not with beef but with lamb; it's said to taste exactly the same which seems a reasonable achievement.  Burgers can be thematic and these are based on the seven wonders of the ancient world:

The Colossus of Rhodes (that’s a big burger with Greek lamb)

The Great Pyramid of Giza (has an Egyptian sauce)

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (vegetarian (lettuce hanging out of it))

The Lighthouse of Alexandria (a lighter (low calorie) burger)

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (a traditional, very high calorie burger)

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (has a very hot sauce)

The Temple of Artemis  (Diana) at Ephesus (made with square or rectangular bun and finished with burnt edges)

Lindsay Lohan with burger.

Vapid

Vapid (pronounced vap-id)

(1) Lacking or having lost life, sharpness, or flavor; insipid; flat.

(2) Without liveliness or spirit; dull or tedious; flavorless, spiritless, unanimated, tiresome, prosaic.

1650s:  From the Latin vapidus (literally “that has exhaled its vapor”) and related to vappa (stale wine).  The word was used in Latin to describe anything the taste of which was thought bland, flat or insipid.  Related forms include the adverb vapidly and the noun vapidness but the most common form is the noun vapidity which dates from 1721.  The application to talk and text and music thought dull and lifeless dates from 1758.  The Latin vappa (wine without flavor) is still used figuratively in many languages (sometimes as "bit of a vapp") to refer to a man who is "a good-for-nothing" or a bit foppish.

The Koryo Burger

The Koryo Burger package.

It’s estimated that prior to Covid-19, some five-thousand Western tourists annually would visit the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), a trade it was hoped might quickly recover given it wasn't until early 2022 that the first COVID-19 outbreak of the pandemic was confirmed.  Remaining virus-free for so long was said to be an example of The Supreme Leader’s outstanding administration of the public health system, the outbreak the fault of lazy officials would have been dealt with in the DPRK way.  It’s not yet clear when the boarders will be re-opened, Pyongyang having no desire to expose its happy and grateful population to foreign diseases but one thing prospective tourists hungrily can anticipate is the national airline’s in-flight meal.  Although Air Koryo serves only the famously vapid Koryo Burger, it’s legendarily consistent, always cold and presented on a paper doily.  Inside the bun is a piece of unidentified processed meat, a slice of processed cheese, a dash of shredded cabbage or single lettuce leaf, finished with a dollop of sauce described variously as “reddish” or “brownish”.  Some sources, claiming to have received confirmation from the airline, suggest the meat is chicken but speculation on the Internet has long pondered the matter because it seems impossible to tell from the taste (there isn't any) or texture (said to be equally indeterminate).

The Koryo Burger expanded.

Air Koryo did in the past dabble with other culinary offerings.  Some years ago for several months, for reasons unknown, on some inbound flights full meals appeared including curried rice and side dishes and also served was a sort of sandwich wrapped in a Danish pastry but neither innovation lasted and in recent years it's been burgers all the way, Air Koryo clearly having decided to stick to the classics.  The decision may have been in response to public demand given the cult-following the Koryo Burger has attracted, #koryoburger a must-visit tag for any foodie.  Surely not as repugnant as some have alleged, the many reviews of the experience of eating one seem to struggle to find words adequately to convey blandness rather than awfulness although, apart from the plastic packaging which seems to be of a good standard, there’s no aspect of the burger which escapes condemnation, the buns said always to be stale (either through age, incorrect storage or some flaw in the manufacturing process), the meat patty vapid to the point where it’s been suggested the admired wrapping may be more tasty, the lettuce or cabbage usually limp and the smell of the sauce said to suggest some association with wood-working glue although one reviewer mentioned their relief at finding a thin liquid which oozed from the patty was too watery to be blood.  Most however did concede the slice of processed cheese was about the same as plastic cheese anywhere on the planet.  Koryo burgers are served chilled, apparently straight from the fridge and it may be that this accounts for much of the expressed distaste; were they served at the temperature at which burgers are typically enjoyed, it’s not impossible the Koryo Burger would taste much the same as similar offerings anywhere.

The Koryo Burger surprise.  Until opened, the passenger doesn't know whether the burger will contain lettuce leaves or shredded cabbage.

The airline review site Skytrax has for years consistently rated Air Koryo as the world’s worst airline but unfortunately they don’t provide the qualitative data which might indicate what part the Koryo Burger plays in securing the national carrier's perpetual last place.  It may be Skytrax’s reviewers allowed themselves unduly to be influenced by the burger; the customer write-ups of aspects of Air Koryo not touching on anything culinary actually often positive and not infrequently making the point the DPRK carrier is in some ways superior to some in the West.

The vegetarian option.

Neither can it be denied there has been gastronomic progress in the DPRK’s skies.  While in the days of Kim I (Kim Il-sung, 1912-1994; The Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994) and Kim II (Kim Jong-il, 1941–2011; The Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011), the only choice usually was to eat the burger or not eat the burger, in the new age of Kim III (Kim Jong-un, b circa 1982; The Supreme Leader (originally The Great Successor) of DPRK since 2011), there's now a vegetarian option, which is the familiar Koryo Burger but with sliced cherry tomatoes in place of the meat patty.  Few have commented on the veggie burger but one reviewer praised the tomatoes, saying they tasted better than those he ate elsewhere which tended to look nice and bright but usually lacked flavor.

Air Koryo quality control.

Every morning, the DPRK's Supreme Leader and noted gastronome personally selects the buns used to make Koryo Burgers, the buns Kim Jong-un rejects being fed to political prisoners who are said to be grateful to receive them.  The tradition of the daily selection of buns was started by his grandfather (the Great Leader) and carried on by his father (the Dear Leader).  The Supreme Leader's entourage always carry notebooks and pens in case he says anything interesting.  They all write it down. 

Combo

Combo (pronounced kom-boh)

(1) In informal use, a small jazz or dance band (as distinct from a big band).

(2) In informal use, many forms of combined items (bundled “meal deals”; products sold with a collection of options offered at a nominal discount against the price calculated on the basis of the extended value etc).

(3) In informal use, to combine.

(4) A sequence of actions combined as one for certain purposes.

(5) In informal use, the combination (the numerical sequence) of a combination lock.

(6) In video gaming, an action composed of a sequence of simpler actions, especially a composite attacking move in a fighting game; two or more game-play elements (characters, items, options etc) which are powerful when used together.

(7) In collectible card games, a strategy under which the objective is to win by playing a specific combination of cards (or similar), usually in a single play.

(8) In historic Australian (derogatory) slang, a white man (1) who lives among Aboriginal people and adopts Aboriginal culture or (2) has entered into an ongoing sexual relationship with an Aboriginal woman or (3) has taken an Aboriginal wife, usually in a common-law marriage (all now archaic).

(9) In computing (in the design of graphical user interfaces (GUI)), in the informal use “combo box” (A GUI widget that is a combination of a dropdown list or list box and a single-line textbox, allowing the user either to type a value directly into the control or choose from the list of existing options).

1924: A clipping of comb(ination) + -o.  Combination (the act of combining, the state of being combined or the result of combining) was from the Middle English combinacioun & combynacyoun, from the Old French combination, from the Late Latin combīnātiō.  The colloquial -o suffix (wino, ammo, combo, kiddo et al) appears widely in English but is most common in Australia where in certain sub-cultures it appears to be obligatory (they have names like Shaneo, Toddo, Wayneo etc).  The first use was of small jazz groups and dance bands and was used to differentiate the smaller ensembles from the then popular “big bands”, the implication also that while combos were often ad-hoc things with the membership varying from evening to evening whereas big bands had a more stable (usually salaried) membership and usually took the name of the band leader.  Combo is a noun, comboing & comboed are verbs and comboable is an adjective; the noun plural is combos or comboes.

The VW Kombi and the Samba

1951 VW Kombi.

Although there was for years in English-speaking markets something of a tendency to call all the Volkswagen Type 2s Kombis, the Kombi was just one configuration in a range which eventually extended beyond a dozen distinct types.  Kombi was a clipping of the German Kombinationskraftwagen (combination motor vehicle), another of those compound nouns at which they excel.  The Kombi coachwork featured side windows and removable seats in the rear compartment, permitting the thing thus to be used either for passengers, freight or a combination of the two.  Other types in the range included pure delivery vans (no rear seats) with a variety of door options, a high-roof version best suited to transporting cargo which was bulky but not especially heavy, pick-ups (Transporters) with either a single or double passenger cabin and the other classic, the Microbus, intended purely for people and thus configured with fixed seats in the rear.  It was the Microbus which made its mark with the US surfing community in the 1960s and it became identified with the counter culture, something perhaps assisted by its large, flat surfaces which lent themselves to the psychedelic paint schemes associated with the era.

Not a Kombi: 1959 VW Microbus Deluxe (Samba).

The Microbus was also offered (between 1951-1966) in a “Deluxe” version which featured both a folding fabric sunroof and some unusual “skylight” windows which followed the curve of sides of the roof.  Available in 21 & 23 window versions, these are now highly collectable and such is the attraction there’s something of a cottage industry in converting Microbuses to the be-windowed specification but it’s difficult exactly to emulate the originals, the best of which can command several times the price of a fake (a perfectly restored one in 2017 selling at auction in the US for US$302,000).  Such was the susceptibility to rust, the survival rate wasn’t high and many led a hard life when new, popular with the tour guides who would conduct bus-loads of visitors on (slow) tours of the Alps, the sunroof & skylights ideal for gazing at the peaks.  To add to the mood, a dashboard-mounted valve radio was available as an option.  The Microbus Deluxe is actually rarely referred to as such, being almost universally called the “Samba” and the origin of that in uncertain.  One theory is that it’s a borrowing from the Brazilian dance and musical genre that is associated with things lively, colorful, and celebratory, the link being that as well as the sunroof and windows, the Deluxe had more luxurious interior appointments, came usually in bright two-tone paint (other Type 2s were usually more drably finished) and featured lashings of external chrome.  It’s an attractive story but some prefer something more Germanic: Samba as the acronym for the business-like phrase Sonnendach-Ausführung mit besonderem Armaturenbrett (sunroof version with special dashboard).  However it happened, Samba was in colloquial use by at least 1952 and became semi official in 1954 when the distributers in the Netherlands added the word to their brochures.  Production ended in July 1967 after almost 100,000 had been built.

Combo in nature but not Kombi in name: 1959 VW Double passenger cabin Transporter (which the factory called the Doka, from Doppelkabine (double cabin).

The very existence of the VW Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) was an act of serendipity, one entrepreneurial dealer from the Netherlands in 1947 noting during a visit to the factory the use of a rather cobbled-together “pick-up” based on a Beetle chassis.  With Europe in the throes of post-war rebuilding and so much industrial production still disrupted, there was a shortage of such vehicles and he sketched what would now be called a “forward control van” which the factory agreed to develop.  However, such was the demand for the Beetle that it wasn’t until 1950 than production of the Type 2 began and, despite the legend that the two share underpinnings, that’s only partially true because to gain the necessary strength, a different floor plan was required.  Still, with many mechanical components there was much interchangeably between Types 1 & 2, something which added greatly to its appeal and it was instantly successful the first generation staying in production until 1966 and although in most of the world the classic air-cooled / rear-engine configuration was in subsequent decades replaced, Type 2 in that specification were made in Brazil until 2013 and although demand was still strong and the line was profitable, the country was the last developed market in the world to introduce the safety regulation which had seen the old Kombis go elsewhere extinct.  The South American line had been the last link with the Nazi’s Kdf-Wagen (which became the Beetle, the first prototype of which dated from 1935, renamed to the snappier Volkswagen (literally “people’s car”).  Kdf (Kraft durch Freude, literally “Strength Through Joy” was the Nazi state’s leisure organization which was involved in everything from holiday resorts and cruise liners to the regulation of workplaces (the classic Nazi “carrot & stick” approach) but it was also used as a slogan an in that sense joy was compulsory and the state had ways to punish those not thought sufficiently joyful.

Combo cards: 3Com Ethernet XL PCI 3c900 NIC (RJ45-AUI-BNC) (left), NVidia GPU (HDMI-VGA-DVI) (centre) & Startech AT (Advanced Technology (or ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)) 2S1P (2 x DB9 Serial-1 x DB25 Parallel) (right).

In personal computer hardware, combo devices have existed almost as long as the industry.  When, with rather modest expectations, IBM released the PC-1 in 1981, it was a US$5000 thing which even by the standards of the time was slow and not particularly capable but (1) it was an IBM and that really gave it a legitimacy no other name could and (2) it was delivered with lots of “open architecture” slots which meant third-party manufacturers could (license and royalty-free) produce all sorts of plug-in cards which extended the functionally.  Soon, there were cards offering sound, support for color monitors (IBM liked people to watch acid-green text displays because they thought the PC-1 would be used mostly as a way to hook into their big mainframes), higher definition graphics, additional ports and before long, connections to the various adapters which could be used to connect to networks.  Things advanced rapidly however and before long there were various ways of connecting to stuff and such were the realities of production-line economics that for manufacturers it often made sense to combine different things on the one card.  While for example a manufacturer could offer three different NICs (network interface cards) to support three different connections, what proved most popular was the combo card which included the three most common types.  The approach also suited customers who might want an additional serial & parallel port but found a combo card with both a better deal than buying two cards.  The approach is still followed today by the GPU (graphical processing unit) manufacturers which have at various times offered combo card with ports for VGA (technically “Video Graphics Array” but really long a reference to the pin-layout), HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), DVI (Digital Video Interface, of which there were many) & DP (DisplayPort).

Just about any combination of stuff can be a combo including mix & match makeup.  Lindsay Lohan also was part of Pepsi’s promotional campaign for a “dirty soda”, a concoction of Pepsi Cola & milk (Pilk), served with cookies; on the internet, opinion was divided.  One of the most prolific users of combo seems to be the fast food industry, a combo meal (there are often variations) two or more components (typically a burger, a soda and fries) bundled at a price lower than purchasing the items separately.  For the industry, the combos are a high profit item because they stimulate demand, increasing volume with only a marginal increase in labour costs.

Before the release of the Barbie movie in July 2023, it had probably never occurred to the industry there would one day be demand for a burger with hot-pink sauce but it’s now at Burger King, available as part of a combo meal.  First to make the Barbie-themed meal available was Burger King Brazil, the combo including a cheeseburger topped with bacon bits and dressed with a hot pink sauce, said to have a “smoky” flavor.  Also included is a pink vanilla milkshake with strawberry Nesquik powder mixed in and when the straw is put in, it’s topped with a pink frosted donut.  Barbie being the star, the side order of “Ken’s potatoes” is just a plain order of fries, a sly nod to the “he’s just Ken” message.

Apostrophe

Apostrophe (pronounced uh-pos-truh-fee)

(1) The punctuation mark (') used variously: (1) to indicate the omission of one or more letters in a word, whether pronounced or unpronounced, (2) to indicate the possessive case or (3) to indicate plurals of abbreviations and symbols.

(2) In formal rhetoric (as the literary apostrophe), a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea.

(3) In sociolinguistics & orthography, the text character (’) which serves as a punctuation mark in various languages and as a diacritical mark in certain rare contexts.

1525–1535: The use as a rhetorical device was from the Late Latin, from the Classical Latin apostrophe, from the Ancient Greek ἀποστροφή (apostrophḗ) (a turning away; a digression), the construct being apostroph-, verbid of apostréphein (to turn away) + -ē (the noun suffix).  The punctuation mark dates from 1580–1590 and was from the Middle French, replacing the earlier apostrophus, from the Late Latin, from the Ancient Greek ἀπόστροφος (apóstrophos) (accent of elision) (prosōidía) (eliding (mark) (literally “(mark) of turning away”), noun use of an adjective from ἀποστρέφω (apostréphō) (I turn away), verbid of apostréphein, the construct being ἀπό (apó) (away (which sometimes appeared as aph)) + στρέφω (stréphō or stréphein (to turn).  The now rare alternative forms were apostrophë & apostrophy and in non-US use apostrophise etc is more common than apostrophize etc.  Apostrophe & apostrophization are nouns, apostropher, apostrophizing & apostrophize are verbs, apostrophic & apostrophed are adjectives and apostrophically is an adverb; the noun plural is apostrophes.

Lindsay Lohan with pram, JFK airport, New York, January 2024.  In English, names with apostrophes are uncommon (almost all from other languages) but the punctuation mark is sometimes used as a guide to pronunciation.  Ms Lohan named her son (b 2023) Luai which in the Arabic is pronounced Lou’aye with the apostrophe operating as “a kind of break or a cut”.

There are a number of derived terms.  Some are purely descriptive (such as the “curly apostrophe”, the “perpendicular apostrophe”, “vertical apostrophe” and the “straight apostrophe” which in publishing are distinguished as the “typographic apostrophe” (an apostrophe that has a curved, asymmetrical form) (known also as the printer's apostrophe) and the “typewriter apostrophe” (an apostrophe with a straight, vertically symmetrical form).  In sociolinguistics & orthography, the apologetic apostrophe is imposed upon a Scots word in to lend it the appearance of being a contraction of an English word such as wi' (equivalent to the English “with”) and a' (equivalent to the English “all”).  The humorous apostrophectomy is a clinical procedure used by the grammar nazis ruthlessly to excise incorrect apostrophes, usually those used wrongly to form plurals.  The construct was apostrophe +‎ -ectomy (from the Ancient Greek -εκτομία (-ektomía) (a cutting out of), from ἐκτέμνω (ektémnō) (to cut out), the construct being ἐκ (ek) (out) + τέμνω (témnō) (to cut). The reverse procedure (inserting an apostrophe where one is required) was apostrophplant. the construct being apostroph(e) + (in)plant.  The grammar nazis operate usually on the “greengrocer's apostrophe” one where the symbol is used in error when forming a noun plural.  It’s probably a slight on greengrocers in that others are just as guilty but the most commonly cited examples are usually something like “Banana’s, 99c lb” rather than “Vegetarian Burger’s available”.  Among those in England who speak RP (Received Pronunciation, the “correct” form insisted on by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) until the 1960s (with the odd quirky exception)), the greengrocer's apostrophe is still sometimes known as the “Yorkshire apostrophe”; it’s a form of (southern) linguistic snobbery because the phenomenon certainly isn’t unique to those from the county.

The literary apostrophe is a figure of speech in which a thing, a place, an abstract quality, an idea, a dead or absent person, is addressed as if present and capable of understanding. Classic instances include Oliver Goldsmith’s (1728–1774) opening in The Deserted Village (1770): “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain…”; Antony's cry in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Julius Caesar (1599): “'O Judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts…”; William Wordsworth’s (1770–1850) passionate appeal in London 1812: “Milton! Thou should'st be living at this hour…” and the biblical: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55; King James Version (KJV, 1611)).

The star cross'd lovers: Romeo and Juliet (1884), oil on canvas by Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853–1928), Southampton City Art Gallery.

As a mark indicating “an omitted letter”, the apostrophe was in common (though far from universal) use by the early sixteenth century and the origin of use as a possessive marker lay in one representing the loss of -e- in words ending in –es; by the mid eighteenth century, it was being applied to all possessives, whether or not they were ever once spelled with an additional “e”.  Another of the grammar nazis bugbears (they have many) is the incorrect use of “it’s” as a neuter possessive pronoun, the late sixteenth century construct being it + the genitive/possessive ending “'s”.  The correct use of “it’s” is as a contraction of “it is” etc but as a possessive form it endured until the early nineteenth century and etymologists suggest the decline in use was due to either because the contraction of “it is” had become established or to align use with the general practice of omitting apostrophes in personal pronouns (yours, hers, theirs et al.).  One of the best known instances of a word with a “apostrophe substitution” appears in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) where “star cross’d lovers” is used to describe the doomed pair.

1967 Ford Mustang (left), 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda (the 1971 grill an aesthetic choice and the apostrophe indicating a clipping of “Barracuda”, the model designation used on the non high-performance models) (centre) and 1968 Chevrolet Camaro (right) at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC) (the “Race to the Clouds”).  The three compete in the "Vintage Car" class.  The PPIHC is a marvelously anarchic event, run continuously since 1916 (except in 1917-1919 & 1942-1945 because of wartime restrictions) and an example of how good things can be if the FIA (the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation), world sport’s dopiest regulatory body) isn’t involved.

Pikes Peak in the US state of Colorado was in 1820 named (as Pike’s Peak) after Brigadier General Zebulon Pike (1779–1813) who led an earlier expedition (which failed to reach the summit).  It a shame the landmark wasn't named "Zebulon's Peak"; so much more evocative.  The name Zebulon was from the Latin Zabulon, from the Ancient Greek Ζαβουλών (Zaboulṓn), from the Biblical Hebrew זְבוּלוּן (z'vulún).  In the Hebrew, Zebulon was a male name meaning “exalted house,” “dwelling,” “lord,” or “prince” (the alternative spelling was Zebulun.  In biblical times, Zebulun was one of the twelve tribes of Israel and it was the given name for the sixth son of Jacob and his wife, Leah.  Prior to European settlement, the native peoples of the region called the peak variously Tava (Sun) or Heey-otoyoo' (Long mountain).  In 1890, the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) introduced a policy avoiding the use of apostrophes in the possessive form in place names, the intent being: (1) a standardization convention to remove confusion, (2) to simplify the printing of maps by ensuring there were fewer clashes with special characters and (3) to remove another source of imaginative interpretation by lawyers.  An additional benefit was realized when computer databases began to be created and, especially in the early post-war years, many problems in indexing and formatting were avoided by restricting entries to letters & numbers.  In 1890, Pike’s Peak thus became Pikes Peak and just to make sure no grammar Nazis ever attempted a revival, in 1978 the Colorado state legislature outlawed the use of an apostrophe in Pikes Peak, apparently one of the world’s few laws about punctuation.  The BGN does make the odd exception in the case of places of historical significance and Martha's Vineyard was one of the few places to emerge with apostrophe intact.  

It’s a pity the BGN doesn’t set the other rules for the use of the apostrophe, a matter which so concerned Henry Fowler (1858–1933) that he devoted several paragraphs to the topic in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926).  One helpful reform would be to standardize the placement when making a possessive of names ending in “s” and that rule should be: (1) when a name ends in a letter other than “s” the apostrophe sits before the appended (plural) “s” (Lindsay Lohan’s car) and (2) when a name ends in “s” the apostrophe follows (the so-called “trailing apostrophe”) (Britney Spears’ car).  That has the benefit of simplicity and would mean one wouldn’t have to choose between the various options published in style guides, some of which are based on the number of syllables and some on the sound of the word when pronounced.  It’s a layer of complication as unnecessary as adding pronunciation guides to printed numbers (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th etc) in that it’s a needless tribute by the written to the spoken; the human brain can manage without them.

Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021) and Tim Walz (b 1964; governor of Minnesota since 2019), on stage, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 6 August 2024.

The issue flared when Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 US presidential election for not only does “Harris” end in “s” but “Walz” when spoken sounds like it too ends thus, something which style guides variously suggest should exist in the possessive either as Walz’s or Walz’.  Clearly, he’s a trouble-maker.  Most of the grammar nazis (X (formerly known as Twitter) their natural home where debate ensued) seemed to conclude “Walz’s” was correct but Harris’ or Harris’s divided opinion, the factions forming to defend either (1) if the “s” is sounded, spell the “s” and (2) if it ends in an “s” regardless of pronunciation, it’s a trailing apostrophe.  Most dictionaries say either practice is acceptable provided use is consistent which is fence-sitting but reflects reality although there is the sense many editors would be happy if a universal appended “’s” was the “rule” so the tiresome debate would go away.  Presumably that would also please the Harris-Walz campaign team which has issued press releases which included “Harris’s positive vision” and “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”

Henry Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage has been influential for almost a century and it’s the original and the second edition (1965) edited by Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) which remain the standard (the third (1996) and fourth (2015) editions less helpful although some readers might appreciate being “spoken with” rather than “dictated to” as was Henry Fowler’s way).  However, in the TikTok age, it may prove the singer Taylor Swift (b 1989) is now the final arbitrator of the language’s squabbles.  In mid 2024, MS Swift released the album The Tortured Poets Department and while most (Swifties and others) focused on the music, some couldn’t help but notice what appeared to be the “missing apostrophe”.  However, whether or not it’s missing depends on how the title is read:  If it's a possessive form then one should appear but if “poets” is operating as descriptive modifier of “department” then none is required.  Understanding the distinction is easiest if the phrase is deconstructed and imagined as a department in a university which contains tortured poets; there morosely they sit for a time but they don’t “possess” the department; instead, tortured poets come and go and over generations the membership changes but the department endures.  In that sense, Ms Swift’s "Tortured Poets Department" is like a "Farmers Market" rather than a "driver’s license".  So, it’s really a matter of what Ms Swift intended and she seems a bit of a word nerd so it may be assumed she says what she means and means what she says.

Fabulous

Fabulous (pronounced fab-yuh-luhs)

(1) Exceptionally good or unusual, wonderful or superb; fashionable, glamorous (which pedants insist is informal but it’s long been the standard meaning).

(2) Almost impossible to believe; incredible.

(3) In slang or as a euphemism, gay or pertaining to gay people; camp, effeminate ("a fabulousity" suggested as a collective noun for gay men but it never caught on) .

(4) In slang, fashionable, glamorous.

(5) Of or about fables; stories wholly or substantially of the imaginary and known of through myth or legend; something in the record known to be unhistorical.

Circa 1550: From the Late Middle English fabulous & fabulose, from the Latin fābulōsus (celebrated in fable; rich in myth), the construct being fābul(a) (a story, a tale) + -ōsus (the adjectival suffix).  The –ōsus suffix (familiar in English as –ous) was from Classical Latin from -ōnt-to-s from -o-wont-to -s, the latter form a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes: -went & -wont.  Related to these were –entus and the Ancient Greek -εις (-eis) and all were used to form adjectives from nouns.  In Latin, -ōsus was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun.  As a literary genre (and some fables came from oral traditions) fables were stories told usually to make some moral point or illustrate the consequences of one’s actions and while they could sometimes involve fantastical creatures like winged stallions or unicorns, sometimes they involved fictional characters who were mere flesh & blood and even a multi-volume, epic-length novel like Don Quixote (1605-1615) by Miguel de Cervantes circa 1547–1616) can be thought a fable.  Fabulous is an adjective, fabulousness & fabulosity are nouns and fabulously is an adverb; the use is the plural is rare but both fabulousnesses & fabulosities exist.  There is some evidence of use in the gay community of fabulous as a (non-standard) noun, sometime in the form “uber-fabulous” although that construction is also used generally as an adjective of especial emphasis.

Looking fabulous: Lindsay Lohan Fabulous magazine, August 2010.

The original sense was “of or pertaining to fable” and dates from the 1550s.  The now familiar meaning shift began as early as the turn of the seventeenth centuries when the word was recorded to convey the sense of “incredible” which soon extended to “enormous, immense; amazing” and by the mid-twentieth century it was used almost exclusively to mean “marvelous; wonderful, superb”.  The clipping to create the slang “fab” was in used by at least 1957 and use spiked after 1963 when the alliterative “fab four” was used to describe the pop group, The Beatles.  When in 1965 revising Henry Fowler’s (1858–1933), A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) maintained his predecessor’s disapproval of much that was a bit too modern, noting that correctly fabulous meant “…mythical, legendary, but was long ago extended to do duty as an adjective for something that is real but so astonishing that you might not think it was legendary if you did not know better.”, adding that it had “…become fabulously popular as a term of eulogy or allure.”  He seemed though to suspect it might be a “fad word”, noting it and its contracted forms “fab” & “fabs”, like “fantastic”, were perhaps the latest “…in that long list of words which boys and girls use for a time to express high commendation and then get tired of, such as, to go no farther back than the present century, topping, spiffing, ripping, wizard, super, posh, smashing.”  Decades on however, fabulous seems to have endured in its contemporary uses and even the portmanteau adjective fantabulous (the construct being fanta(stic) + (fa)bulous) has survived in its niche.  Fabulous probably gained a new lease of life when it was in the late 1960s picked up by the gay community which has used it even as a noun and it remains an essential element in the camp vocabulary.  Unless it’s between scholars, those wishing to convey the original meaning should probably use terms such as “fabled” or “mythological” rather than fabulous and even “legendary” can be ambiguous because it’s now often used to mean something like “famous” or “very well-known”.

Lindsay Lohan in an unusual cage cutout top, the lines assuming or relaxing from the orthogonal as the body moves (maybe an instance of "a shifting semiorthogonal"), The World's First Fabulous Fund Fair in aid of the Naked Heart Foundation, The Roundhouse, London, February 2015.  An opportunity was missed by not adding a sympathetic clutch purse.

George W Bush, Condoleezza Rice & Colin Powell.

The phrase “the fabulous invalid” refers to live theater & stage productions generally, the use derived from a 1938 stage play of that name by George S Kaufman (1889-1961) and Moss Hart (1904-1961) which traced the that follows the seesawing fortunes of a fictitious Broadway theater between 1900-1930.  In a touching irony, while the play was barely a modest success and not highly regarded by its authors, the title has endured as a synonym for the theatre.  George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) who (admittedly unwittingly) contributed more than most to coining new words & novel grammatical structures, probably wasn’t deliberately alluding the original meaning of fabulous when he used it to describe the performance of his first foreign minister, Colin Powell (1937–2021; US secretary of state 2001-2005) but if considered thus it certainly reflected his view that the general’s favorable public image reflected more myth than reality and he’d prefer a secretary of state who both ticked a few boxes and was more attuned to his brutish world-view.  In Dr Condoleezza Rice (b 1954; US secretary of state 2005-2009) he certainly got that but in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, whatever might have been his better judgment, the general did his job because, as Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel (1882–1946; head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the Nazi armed forces high command) put it at the Nuremberg Trial (1645-1946): “For a soldier, orders are orders.”  His flirtation with politics is a fable and story of Condoleezza Rice’s career in government even more so: a cautionary tale of what can happen when a nice young lady from a good family gets mixed up with an unsavory crowd (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al).

White House transcript of press conference assembled when the president met with Colin Powell and Richard Armitage (b 1945; US deputy secretary of state 2001-2005) at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Wednesday, 6 August 2003:

THE PRESIDENT: First, it's been my real privilege and honor to welcome the Secretary of State back to Crawford. He and Dick Armitage came, and we spent yesterday evening and this morning talking about our country's desire to promote peace and freedom, our obligations as a prosperous and strong nation to help the less fortunate. And we had a good strategy session, and now we're about to go out and brand some cows -- well, not exactly. (Laughter)

QUESTION: Sir, you've seen the report that Secretary Powell and Secretary Armitage are going to leave at the end of this administration. Do you expect them to stay on if there is a second Bush administration? Would you like them to?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first things first, we hope there is a second Bush administration. And I will work hard to convince the American people that their confidence in me is justified. And we'll deal with it at the right time.  Listen, this guy has done a fabulous job. Washington, particularly in August, is a dangerous period -- a dangerous time, because there's a lot of speculation. And all I can tell you is, the man flies to Crawford and we spend a good 24 hours talking about how we're going to work together to make the world a better place.

QUESTION: But, Mr. President, you said, we'll deal with it…

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Elizabeth.

QUESTION: We'll deal with it at the right time. That isn't "yes".

THE PRESIDENT: Deal with what at the right time?

QUESTION: With whether Secretary Powell will serve in a second term. Is that, "yes" or "no"? I mean, are you going to offer him a spot in the second term?

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't have a term. I serve the President. (Laughter)

QUESTION: No, but the President…

THE PRESIDENT: Elizabeth, look, first things first, and that is, we've got a year-and-a-while during my first term to make the world a more peaceful place and we'll deal with it. Washington loves speculation. Clearly, you love speculation. You love it. You love to speculate about…

QUESTION: It wasn't my story. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Let me finish, please; let me finish. You love to speculate about whether so-and-so is going to be a part of the administration or not. And I understand the game. But I have got to do my job, and I'm going to do it. And I'm going to do it with the Secretary of State. And the fact that he is here in Crawford, Texas, talking about issues of importance, should say loud and clear to the American people that he's completely engaged in doing what he needs to do, and that is, serve as a great Secretary of State.

QUESTION: Do you want to serve more than four years, Mr. Secretary?

SECRETARY POWELL: I serve at the pleasure of the President, and this is all August speculation with no basis in fact. There was no basis for this story to begin with, and we're doing our jobs together.

THE PRESIDENT: All right. We're going to get a burger. Thank you.