Charrette

Charrette (pronounced shuh-ret)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1897 Panhard & Levassor with charrette anglaise coachwork.

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

Corduroy

Corduroy (pronounced kawr-duh-roi)

(1) A cotton-filling pile fabric with lengthwise cords or ridges.

(2) In the plural as corduroys (or cords), trousers made from this fabric.

(3) Of, relating to, or resembling corduroy.

(4) A method of building an improvised road or causeway, constructed with logs laid together transversely (used by military forces, those operating in swampy ground areas etc); the result was described originally as “ribbed velvet” and when intended for sustained use, earth was thrown into the gaps and compacted, thus rendering a relatively smooth, stable surface.

(5) To form such a “road” by arranging logs transversely.

(6) In ski-run maintenance, a pattern on snow resulting from the use of a snow groomer to pack snow and improve skiing, snowboarding and snowmobile trail conditions (corduroy thought a good surface for skiing).

(7) In Irish slang, cheap, poor-quality whiskey (based on the idea on the fabric corduroy not being “smooth”.

1776: Of uncertain origin.  There’s no consensus among etymologists but the most support seems to be for the construct being cord +‎ duroy (one of a number of lightweight, worsted fabrics once widely produced and known collectively as “West of England Cloth”).  Cord (A long, thin, flexible length of twisted yarns (strands) of fiber) was from the late thirteenth century Middle English corde (a string or small rope composed of several strands twisted or woven together; bowstring, hangman's rope), from the Old French corde (rope, string, twist, cord), from the Latin chorda (string of a musical instrument, cat-gut), from the Doric Ancient Greek χορδά (khordá) (string of gut, the string of a lyre) and may be compared with the Ionic χορδή (khordḗ), from the primitive Indo-European ghere- (bowel; intestine).  The adjective cordless (of electrical devices or appliances working without a cord (ie powered by a battery) dates from 1905 and was augmented later by “wireless” which described radios so configured.  Cordless is still a useful word now that the meaning of “wireless” in the context of computing has become dominant.  The curious use of cord as “a unit of measurement for firewood, equal to 128 cubic feet (4 × 4 × 8 feet), composed of logs and/or split logs four feet long and none over eight inches diameter (and usually seen as a stack 4 feet high by 8 feet long)” dates from the 1610s and was so-called because it was measured with a cord of rope marked with the appropriate measures.

Lindsay Lohan as fashion influencer: In burnt red corduroy pants & nude platform pumps, Los Angeles, December 2011 (left) and leaving Phillippe Restaurant after dinner with Woody Allen (b 1935), New York, May 2012 (right).  It's said that before he met Lindsay Lohan, the film director had never worn corduroy trousers and he still prefers brown, seemingly unable to escape the 1970s when he was perhaps at his happiest.

Until well into the twentieth century, the old folk etymology was still being published which held the word was from the French corde du roi (cloth of the king”), which seems never to have be used in France, the correct term for “cloth of the king” being velours côtelé.  It’s not impossible there’s some link with cordesoy, from the French corde de soie (“rope of silk” or “silk-like fabric”) because that form is documented in an advertisement for clothing fabrics dating from 1756.  The spelling corderoy appears in commercial use in 1772 but the modern “corduroy” became the standard form in the 1780s.  The origin of duroy is obscure and the earliest known use (in print) of the word appeared in the early seventeenth century; it may be from the French du roi (of the king), a 1790 trade publication in France including the term duroi (a woolen fabric similar to tammy).  So, although the case for cord +‎ duroy seems compelling, etymologists note (1) duroy was fashioned from wool while corduroy was made with cotton and there’s no other history of the two words being associated, (2) grammatically, the compound should have been duroy-cord and (3) this does not account for the earlier corderoy.

None of that of course means cord +‎ duroy was not the source and many English words have been formed in murky ways.  There’s also the possibility of some link with the English surname Corderoy (although there is no evidence of a connection); the name was also spelt Corderey & Cordurey, the origin lying in the nickname for “a proud person” (of French origin, it meant “king’s heart”).  Some are more convinced by a suggestion made in 1910 by the English philologist Ernest Weekley (1865-1954) who speculated corduroy began life as folk-etymology for the trade-term common in the sixteenth century: colour de roy, from the French couleur de roi (king’s colour) which originally was a reference to both a cloth in the rich purple associated with the French kings and the color itself. Later, it came to signify a bright tawny colour and a cloth of this hue.  Corduroy as an adjective came into use after 1789 and the use to describe roads or causeways improvised by means of with logs laid together transversely (usually to provide wheeled vehicles passage over swampy ground dates from the 1780s.  Corduroy is a noun, verb & adjective, corduroying & corduroyed are verbs and corduroylike is an adjective; the noun plural is corduroys.

1975 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 trimmed in classic 1970s brown corduroy.

By the 1960s most Mercedes-Benz were being trimmed in their famously durable MB-Tex, a robust vinyl which was not only easy to maintain but closely resembled leather, lacking only the aroma (and third-party manufacturers soon made available aerosols for those who found the olfactory appeal too much to forgo).  However, leather and velour (of mohair in the most exclusive lines) were either standard or optional on more expensive models and when exported to first-world markets beyond Europe (such as North America or Australia), MB-Tex or leather was standard and the fabrics were available only by special order.  A notable exception was the Japanese market where buyers disliked the way their prized “car doilies” slid of the hide; they always preferred cloth.  The velour was certainly better suited to harsh northern European winters and testers would often comment on how invitingly comfortable were the seats trimmed in the fabric.  To add to the durability, the surfaces subject to the highest wear (ie those at the edges on which there was the most lateral movement during ingress and egress) used a corduroy finish (the centre panels also trimmed thus, just for symmetry).

Aglet

Aglet (pronounced ag-lit)

(1) A tag or sheath at the end of a lace used for tying, as of a shoelace and made usually of plastic or metal; can be protective, decorative or both.

(2) A tip, originally of metal and often decorative, on a ribbon or cord that makes lacing two parts of a garment or garments together easier, as in corset lacings, "points" (lacing hose or trousers to jacket or doublet) or sleeves to a bodice (archaic sixteenth & seventeenth century use).  The aglet is still a part of dress uniforms in some militaries.

(3) An ornament worn on clothing, consisting of a metal tag on a fringe, or a small metallic plate or spangle; any ornamental pendant.

1400–1450: From the Late Middle English aglet, aglett & agglot from the Old French aguillete & Middle French aiguillette (a small needle), diminutive of aguille, the construct being aiguille (needle) + -ette (-et).  Root was the Late Latin acucula, an extended form (via diminutive suffix, but not of necessity an implication of smallness) of the Latin acus (a needle) from the primitive Indo-European root ak- (be sharp, rise (out) to a point, pierce).  Related were the Italian agucchia, the Portuguese agulha & the Spanish aguja (needle).  The alternative spellings aiguillette, aiglet & aygulet are used by some manufacturers.  Aglet is a noun; the noun plural is aglets. 

Lindsay Lohan Lightweight Leisure Breathable Running Shoes are available.  All use plastic aglets on the laces.

An aglet was sometimes known also as a catkin (spike of a flowering tree or shrub (especially a willow or birch) after fruiting, a 1570s derivation from Dutch katteken (flowering stem of willow, birch, hazel etc) which translates literally as "little cat or kitten”, diminutive of katte (cat).  The botanical connection to felines was because of the stems soft, furry appearance which had a resemblance to the lengthier kinds of a kitten’s tail.  It was cognate with the German Kätzchen and the Modern Dutch katje.  The ends attached to shoelaces were sometimes called catkins because of a similar visual connection.  Most of the earliest aglets probably were metal, glass or stone plastic hundreds of years away, although some were doubtless made from with fabric threads or thin strips of leather.  There’s more evidence of the metal ones in the archeological record because the survival rate of the hard materials is so much higher.  Known formally by cobblers as rabri threas igh somewere metalalso aiglet, (metal tag of a lace), they were created to prevent the fraying of boot-laces, making it easier to thread through the eyelet-holes, but later, certainly by the mid-fifteenth century and perhaps earlier, ornamental form had emerged for both men and women.

Variations on the theme.

The aglets may not first have been used for boot laces but rather as an alternative to buttons to fasten clothing.  Placed at the end of a ribbon, in addition to preventing fraying and permitting easier threading, their weight would have helpful when needing to find the end of the ribbon.  In ancient Rome, there would certainly have been a class divide in the aglet business, the poor folk probably using simple stones while those of the rich might have been fashioned from expensive metals, such as brass or silver.  Today, most aglets are made from a thin, stiff plastic and are used on more than just shoe-laces, cords, drawstrings and belts among the items with the handy terminations which can be functional, decorative or both.  Although there are a handful of fashion houses in Europe which still handcraft such things, most aglets are today applied by machines, the ones for shoes wrapping a plastic tape around the end of the lace, then using heat or chemicals to melt the plastic onto the shoelace and bond the plastic to itself.  Polyester laces can be crimped and heated so that an aglet is formed at the end out of the lace itself, the advantage being it’s less prone to falling off.

Aglets are available in various metals including stainless steel, titanium, aluminum, silver and gold.  The tiny size and defined shape of the device doesn’t lend much scope to designers seeking a decorative flourish beyond variations in color but bullets seem popular.

Phallus themed aglets exist but they seem not to be available for laces, instead being aglets in the other sense of the word: as ornamental pendant to be hung from the neck or attached to clothing.  The tradition of these reaches past antiquity and into pre-history, many societies known to have used fertility symbols.

Ri Sol-ju (b circa 1987) is the wife of DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) and she has sometimes appeared on state occasions wearing an aglet in the shape of the DPRK’s Hwasong-16 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM, left & right).  Analysts suggest her choice is jewellery is a layered political statement: (1) Eschewing a decadently Western display of gold, diamonds or precious stones over her tempting décolletage (centre), the demurely attired First Lady wears something crafted as a simple pendant in silver and (2) She is telling the world Kim Jong-un makes nuclear weapons sexy. 

Velvet

Velvet (pronounced vel-vit)

(1) A fabric fashioned from silk with a thick, soft pile formed of loops of the warp thread either cut at the outer end or left uncut.

(2) In modern use, a fabric emulating in texture and appearance the silk original and made from nylon, acetate, rayon etc, sometimes having a cotton backing.

(3) Something likened to the fabric velvet, an allusion to appearance, softness or texture,

(4) The soft, deciduous covering of a growing antler.

(5) In informal use (often as “in velvet” or “in the velvet”), a very pleasant, luxurious, desirable situation.

(6) In slang, money gained through gambling; winnings (mostly US, now less common).

(7) In financial trading, clear gain or profit, especially when more than anticipated; a windfall profit.

(8) In mixology, as “Black Velvet”, a cocktail of champagne & stout (also made with dark, heavy beers).

(9) A female chinchilla; a sow.

(10) An item of clothing made from velvet (in modern use also of similar synthetics).

(11) In drug slang, the drug dextromethorphan.

(12) To cover something with velvet; to cover something with something of a covering of a similar texture.

(13) In cooking, to coat raw meat in starch, then in oil, preparatory to frying.

(14) To remove the velvet from a deer's antlers.

1275–1325: From the Middle English velvet, velwet, veluet, welwet, velvette, felwet veluet & veluwet, from the Old Occitan veluet, from the Old French veluotte, from the Medieval Latin villutittus or villūtus (literally shaggy cloth), from the classical Latin villus (nap of cloth, shaggy hair, tuft of hair), from velu (hairy) and cognate with French velours.  The Latin villus is though probably a dialectal variant of vellus (fleece), from the primitive Indo-European wel-no-, a suffixed form of uelh- (to strike).  Velvet is a noun, verb & adjective, velvetlike & velvety are adjectives, velveting & velveted are verbs & adjective; the noun plural is velvets.

The noun velveteen was coined in 1776 to describe one of first the imitation (made with cotton rather than silk) velvets commercially to be marketed at scale; the suffix –een was a special use of the diminutive suffix (borrowed from the Irish –in (used also –ine) which was used to form the diminutives of nouns in Hiberno-English).  In commercial use, it referred to products which were imitations of something rather than smaller.  The adjective velvety emerged in the early eighteenth century, later augmented by velvetiness.  In idiomatic use, the “velvet glove” implies someone or something is being treated with gentleness or caution.  When used as “iron fist in a velvet glove”, it suggests strength or determination (and the implication of threat) behind a gentle appearance or demeanor.  “Velvet” in general is often applied wherever the need exists to covey the idea of “to soften; to mitigate” and is the word used when a cat retracts its claws.  The adjective “velvety” can be used of anything smooth and the choice between it and forms like “buttery”, “silky”, “creamy” et al is just a matter of the image one wishes to summon.  The particular instance “Velvet Revolution” (Sametová revoluce in Czech) refers to the peaceful transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from in late 1989 in the wake of the fall of Berlin Wall.  Despite being partially in the Balkans, the transition from communism to democracy was achieved almost wholly without outbreaks of violence (in the Balkans it rare for much of note to happen without violence).

Ten years after: Lindsay Lohan in black velvet, London, January 2013 (left) and in pink velour tracksuit, Dubai, January 2023 (right).

The fabrics velvet and velour can look similar but they differ in composition.  Velvet historically was made with silk thread and was characterized by a dense pile, created by the rendering of evenly distributed loops on the surface.  There are now velvets made from cotton, polyester or other blends and its construction lends it a smooth, plush texture appearance, something often finished with a sheen or luster.  A popular modern variation is “crushed velvet”, achieved by twisting the fabric while wet which produces a crumpled and crushed look although the effect can be realized also by pressing the pile of fabric in a different direction.  It’s unusual in that object with most fabric is to avoid a “crumpled” look but crushed velvet is admired because of the way it shimmers as the light plays upon the variations in the texture.  The crushing process doesn’t alter the silky feel because of the dense pile and the fineness of the fibers.  Velour typically is made from knit fabrics such as cotton or polyester and is best known for its stretchiness which makes its suitable for many purposes including sportswear and upholstery.  Except in some specialized types, the pile is less dense than velvet (a consequence of the knitted construction) and while it can be made with a slight shine, usually the appearance tends to be matte.  Velour is used for casula clothing, tracksuits & sweatshirts and it’s hard-wearing properties mean it’s often used for upholstery and before the techniques emerged to permit vinyl to be close to indistinguishable from leather, it was often used by car manufacturers as a more luxurious to vinyl.  The noun velour (historically also as velure & velours) dates from 1706 and was from the French velours (velvet), from the Old French velor, an alteration of velos (velvet) from the same Latin sources as “velvet”.

US and European visions of luxury: 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman in velour (top left), 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham in leather (top right), 1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 in velour (bottom left) & 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 in leather (bottom right).  Whether in velour or leather, the European approach in the era was more restrained. 

In car interiors, the golden age of velour began in the US in the early 1970s and lasted almost two decades, the increasingly plush interiors characterized by tufting and lurid colors.  Chrysler in the era made a selling point of their “rich, Corinthian leather” but the extravagant velour interiors were both more distinctive and emblematic of the era, the material stretching sometimes from floor to roof (the cars were often labeled “Broughams”).  The dismissive phrase used of the 1970s was “the decade style forgot” and that applied to clothes and interior decorating but the interior designs Detroit used on their cars shouldn’t be forgotten and while the polyester-rich cabins (at the time too, on the more expensive models one’s feet literally could sink into the deep pile carpet) were never the fire-risk comedians claimed, many other criticisms were justified.  Cotton-based velour had for decades been used by the manufacturers but the advent of mass-produced, polyester velour came at a time when “authenticity” didn’t enjoy the lure of today and the space age lent the attractiveness of modernity to plastics and faux wood, faux leather and faux velvet were suddenly an acceptable way to “tart up” the otherwise ordinary.  At the top end of the market, although the real things were still sometimes used, even in that segment soft, pillowy, tufted velour was a popular choice.

1989 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D'Elegance in velour (left) and a "low-rider" in velour (right).  The Cadillac is trimmed in a color which in slang came to be known as "bordello red".  Because of changing tastes, manufacturers no longer build cars with interiors which resemble a caricature of a mid-priced brothel but the tradition has been maintained (and developed) by the "low-rider" community, a sub-culture with specific tastes. 

At the time, the interiors were thought by buyers to convey “money” and the designers took to velour because the nature of the material allowed so many techniques cheaply to be deployed.  Compared with achieving a similar look in leather, the cost was low, the material cost (both velour and the passing underneath or behind) close to marginal and the designers slapped on pleats, distinctive (and deliberately obvious) stitching, extra stuffing, the stuff covering seats, door panels, and headliners, augmented with details like recessed buttons, leather grab-handles and the off chrome accent (often anodized plastic).  By the 1980s, velour had descended to the lower-priced product lines and this was at a time when the upper end of the market increasingly was turning to cars from European manufacturers, notably Mercedes-Benz and BMW, both of which equipped almost all their flagships destined for the US market with leather and real wood.

The Velvet Underground with Nico (Christa Päffgen; 1938–1988) while part of Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) multimedia road-show The Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966-1967 and known briefly as “The Erupting Plastic Inevitable” or The Exploding Plastic Invisible).  Unusually, the acronym EPI never caught on.

The (posthumously) influential US rock band The Velvet Underground gained their name from a book with that title, published in 1963, the year before their original formation although it wouldn’t be until 1965 the band settled on the name.  The book was by journalist Michael Leigh (1901-1963) and it detailed the variety of “aberrant sexual practices” in the country and is notable as one of the first non-academic texts to explore what was classified as paraphilia (the sexual attraction to inanimate objects, now usually called Objectum Sexuality (OS) or objectum romanticism (OR) (both often clipped to "objectum")).  Leigh took a journalistic approach to the topic which focused on what was done, by whom and the ways and means by which those with “aberrant sexual interests” achieved and maintained contact.  The author little disguised his distaste for much about what he wrote.  The rock band’s most notable output came in four albums (The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968), The Velvet Underground (1969) & Loaded (1970)) which enjoyed neither critical approval nor commercial success but by the late 1970s, in the wake of punk and the new wave, their work was acknowledged as seminal and their influence has been more enduring than many which were for most of the late twentieth century more highly regarded.

Spook

Spook (pronounced spook)

(1) In informal use, a ghost; a specter; an apparition; hobgoblin.

(2) A person whose appearance or conduct is thought “ghost-like”.

(3) In philosophy, a metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct.

(4) In slang, a ghostwriter (one who writes text (typically columns, autobiography, memoir) published under the name of another,

(5) In slang, an eccentric person (now rare).

(6) In disparaging and offensive slang, term of contempt used of people of color (historically African-Americans).

(7) In slang, a spy; one engaged in espionage.

(8) In slang, a psychiatrist (originally US but now more widespread under the influence of pop culture.

(9) In the slang of blackjack, a player who engages in “hole carding” by attempting to glimpse the dealer's hole card when the dealer checks under an ace or a 10 to see if a blackjack is present.

(10) In southern African slang any pale or colorless alcoholic spirit (often as “spook & diesel”).

(11) To haunt; inhabit or appear in or to as a ghost or spectre.

(12) To frighten; to scare (often as “spooked”).

(13) To become frightened or scared (often as “spooked”); applied sometimes to animals, especially thoroughbred horses.

1801: A coining of US English, from the Dutch spook (ghost), from the Middle Dutch spooc & spoocke (spook, ghost), from an uncertain Germanic source (the earliest known link being the Middle Low German spōk (ghost), others including the Middle Low German spôk & spûk (apparition, ghost), the Middle High German gespük (a haunting), the German Spuk (ghost, apparition, hobgoblin), the Danish spøg (joke) & spøge (to haunt), the Norwegian spjok (ghost, specter) and the Swedish spok (scarecrow) & spöke (ghost).  The noun spook in the sense of “spectre, apparition, ghost” seems first to have appeared in a comical dialect poem, credited to “an old Dutch man in Albany” and printed in Vermont and Boston newspapers which credited it to Springer's Weekly Oracle in New London, Connecticut.  The regional diversity in language was then greater and evolutions sometimes simultaneous and the word also appeared in US English around 1830 as spuke & shpook, at first in the German-settled regions of Pennsylvania, via Pennsylvania Dutch Gschpuck & Schpuck, from the German Spuk.  Spook & spooking are nouns & verbs, spooker & spookery are nouns, spooktacular is a noun & adjective, spooktacularly is an adverb, spooked is a verb & adjective, spookery is a noun, spooky, spookiest & spookish are adjectives; the noun plural is spooks.

Spooked: Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

A “spook show” (frightening display) was a term in use by 1880 and in the sense of a “popular exhibition of legerdemain, mentalism or staged necromancy” it was documented by 1910.  The spook house (abandoned house) was in use in the 1850s, the expression meaning “haunted house” emerging in the 1860s.  The meaning “superstition” had emerged by 1918, presumably an extension from the earlier sense of “a superstitious person”, documented around the turn of the century although it probably existed longer in oral use.  In the 1890s, “spookist” (described variously as “jocular” and “a less refined word” was used to refer to spiritualists and medium (and in those years there were a lot of them, their numbers spiking after World War I (1914-1918) when many wished to contact the dead.  Spooktacular (a pun on “spectacular” developed some time during World War II (1939- 1945).  The meaning “undercover agent” or “spy” dates from 1942 (inducing “spookhouse” (haunted house) to pick up the additional meaning “headquarters of an intelligence operation”, a place presided over by a “spookmaster” (“spymaster” the preferred modern term).  In the same era, in student slang a spook could be an unattractive girl or a quiet, diligent, introverted student (something like the modern “nerd” but without any sense of a focus of technology).

Senator Rebecca Ann Felton (1835–1930, left) and Senator Mitch McConnell (b 1942; US senator (Republican-Kentucky) since 1985; Senate Minority Leader since 2021).  The spooky resemblance between Senator Fulton (who in 1922 served for one day as a senator (Democratic-Georgia), appointed as a political manoeuvre) and Senator Mitch McConnell has led some to suggest he might be her reincarnated.  Some not so acquainted with history assumed the photograph of Senator Felton was Mitch McConnell in drag.

The sense of spook as “a black person” is listed by dictionaries of US slang as being documented by 1938 (the date of origin uncertain) and it seems to have begun in African-American (hep-cat) slang and it was not typically used with any sense of disparagement, nor was it thought in any way offensive word.   However, by 1945 it had picked up the derogatory racial sense of “black person”, defined specifically as “frightened negro” and it became a common slur in the post-war world, probably because that even by then the “N-word” was becoming less acceptable in polite society.  That was the “linguistic treadmill” in practice but spook had also deviated earlier: In 1939 it is attested as meaning “a white jazz musician” and is listed by some sources as a disparaging term for a white person by 1947.  Spook also developed a curious fork in military aviation although one probably unrelated to the informal pilot’s jargon of the 1930s, a “spook” a “novice pilot” of the type who “haunt the hangers”, hiring air-time and learning to fly for no obvious practical purpose other than the joy of flying.  During the early 1940s, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) began the recruitment of black athletes for training as pilots, conducted at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; the group (1940-1948) was known as the Tuskegee Airmen and during World War II (1939-1945) they gained a fine reputation when deployed as combat units.  However, they also suffered prejudice and when first posted to Europe were often called the “Spookwaffe” (a play on Luftwaffe, the name of the German air force) although as happened decades later with the by then infamous N-word, some black pilots “re-claimed” the name and used it as a self-referential term of pride.

Left to right: Spook, the Bacterian ambassador, Benzino Napaloni, Diggaditchie of Bacteria (a parody of Benito Mussolini), Adenoid Hynkel (Adolf Hitler) and Field Marshall Herring (Hermann Göring).  The satirical film The Great Dictator (1940) was very much a personal project, Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) writing, producing & directing as well as staring as Adenoid Hynkel, Phooey of Tomainia.  The rather cadaverous looking Spook was the Bacterian ambassador.

Seventy years of spooks.

On 9 September 2019, the Royal Australian Mint released a 50 cent coin to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency (similiar in function to the UK's MI5 (Security Service)).  The issue was limited to 20,000 coins and each featured an encrypted code, similar in structure to those used by spooks during the Cold War.  At the time of the release, the Mint ran a competition inviting attempts to "solve the code", the prize the only proof commemorative coin in existence.  The competition was won by a fourteen year old who is apparently still at liberty, despite having proved him or herself a threat to national security.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) gave the word a few memorable phrases but one of the most evocative is a calque of the German spukhafte Fernwirkung (rendered by Einstein as spukhafte Fernwirkungen (spooky actions at a distance) in a letter of 3 March 1947 to the physicist Max Born (1882–1970)).  Einstein used “spooky actions at a distance” to refer to one of the most challenging ideas from quantum mechanics: that two particles instantaneously may interact over a distance and that distance could be that between different sides of the universe (or if one can’t relate to the universe having “sides”, separated by trillions of miles.  Known as “quantum entanglement”, it differs radically from some of the other (more abstract) senses in which everything in the universe is happening “at the same time”.

This aspect of quantum mechanics has for a century-odd been one of the most contested but the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who designed experiments which tested the theories, their results contradicting Einstein and discovering the seriously weird phenomenon of quantum teleportation.  Quantum entanglement is a process in which two or more quantum particles are in some way connected so any change in one causes a simultaneous change in the other, even if they are separated by vast distances.  Indeed those distances could stretch even to infinity.  Einstein was one of many physicists not convinced and he didn’t like the implications, calling the idea “spooky action at a distance” and preferred to think the particles contained certain hidden variables which had already predetermined their states.  This was neat and avoided the need for any teleportation.  However, what the 2022 Nobel Laureates found that the fabric of the universe should be visualized as a sea of wave-like particles that affect each other instantaneously, distance as conventionally measured being irrelevant.  What that seems to mean is that nothing has to travel between the two particles (the speed of light therefore not a limitation) because the two are in the same place and that place is the universe.  The English physicist Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) was surely correct when he remarked “…not only is the universe queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.”

Occidental & Oriental

Occidental (pronounced ok-si-den-tl)

(1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Occident or its natives and inhabitants (usually initial capital letter).

(2) A literary or formal word for Western.

(3) A native or inhabitant of the Occident (usually initial capital letter).

(4) An artificial language, created by Baltic German mathematician Edgar de Wahl (1867-1948), later renamed Interlingue shortly before the publication of Interlingua (1949) (always initial capital).

1350–1400: A Middle English borrowing from the Old French occidental from the Latin occidentālis (western), the construct being occident- + -ālis.  The Latin occidentalis was from occidēns (west), the present active participle of occidō (I fall down; pass away).  Occidental is a noun & adjective, occidentalism, occident & occidentalist are nouns and occidentally is an adverb; the noun plural is occidentals.

Oriental (pronounced awr-ee-en-tl or ohr‐ee-en-tl)

(1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Orient, or East; Eastern (usually initial capital letter).

(2) Of the orient, or the eastern region of the world.

(3) In geography, belonging to a geographical division comprising southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago as far as and including the Philippines, Borneo, and Java (initial capital letter).  (In pre-modern geography, pertaining to the regions east of the Mediterranean, beyond the Roman Empire or the early Christian world).  Oriental is a noun & adjective, orientalism, orient & orientalist are nouns and orientally is an adverb; the noun plural is orientals (often correctly used with initial capital).

(4) In jewelry, designating various gems that are varieties of corundum: Oriental aquamarine; Oriental ruby (usually initial capital letter).

(5) Designating certain natural saltwater pearls found especially in Asia.

(6) Of a pearl or other precious stone: having a superior lustre.

(7) A breed of slender muscular cat with large ears, long legs, and a long tail.

(8) A native or inhabitant of the Orient (usually initial capital letter).

(9) In astronomy and astrology), pertaining to the eastern part of the sky; happening before sunrise.

(10) Designating various types of aromatic tobacco grown in Turkey and the Balkans (post-nineteenth century use).

(11) A lily cultivar of a widely varied group, with strong scent.

(12) In any context, eastern or of the eastern part (obsolete except as a literary or poetic device).

1350–1400: Middle English from the Middle French $ Anglo-Latin oriental from the Latin orientālis (eastern), from oriēns (rising (of the sun)), present active participle of orior (I rise), the construct being orient- (east, the east) –ālis.  The suffix –ālis was added to a noun or numeral to form an adjective of relationship; it was from the primitive Indo-European -li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of –aris, perhaps connected to hzel- (to grow).  The neuter form was –āle.

Edward Said

Controversial even in the post-colonial milieu of the time, Edward Said’s (1935-2003) Orientalism (1979) was a critique of a particular construct of the historic Western treatment of things eastern.  It dealt with not only academic orientalists but also seminal figures of western social science such as Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Max Weber (1864-1920) whose writings emphasized fundamental differences between East and West.  It’s regarded still, by some, as a dangerous book, blamed for the schism in the field of modern Middle Eastern studies which coalesced into the polarized factions of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and its newer rival, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA).  The stylistic patchwork Said adopted perhaps made criticism inevitable.  Within a scholarly framework, the author laid bare his outage at the reductionist objectification of the Western tradition in its treatment of the other, his words construed as political and polemic.

Even the book's covers attracted comment and varied according to the market in which it was sold although, unlike some controversial titles, it was apparently never necessary anywhere to offer it in a plain, brown wrapper. 

Detractors and admirers alike all were aware of the significance of Orientalism and it’s regarded still as “one of the most influential scholarly books published in English in the last half-century”, even by some who documented its flaws.  The book was one of those rare texts in historiography which stirred up a stormy debate in and beyond academia, the idea of authors in the West having a skewed and condescending view towards the East finding a sympathetic audience.  So incendiary was the reaction that not only was the book controversial but so was the nature of the reaction although, despite the claims of some, the pattern of the responses appeared not to align with the ethnicity or religious orientation of the scholars and intellectuals but with their attitude to history and the modern and post-modern philosophical ideas (deconstruction, truth as illusion, intellectual hegemony et al).

In a sense, it was Said himself who created the structure for the criticism which would follow because he defined Orientalism in three ways: (1) the academic profession, (2) the world view and (3) a mode of hegemony.  The first was the most readily understood, an academic Orientalist was anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient, whether they be an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, philologist or literary critic.  That did not imply the world view of Orientalists was monolithic but Said did contend that their views were almost invariably dictated by a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the “the Orient” and “the Occident” (ie between Eastern & Western culture) and this applied also to poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists and economists, their position a direct inheritance from the ideas spread by European imperial administrators, travellers and explorers; whether in simple or elaborate form, the theorists, novelists and poets all worked within the same framework of “difference”.  Finally, Said defined Orientalism by the actual political and colonial relations constructed in “the West” epistemologically, based on the earlier definitions; it was this construct with which the West conducted itself with the Orient.  Perhaps predictably, the academics appeared more upset at what they perceived as Said’s attack on the accuracy of their research and their intellectual impartiality than what was done with what he claim they created, even if unknowingly. 

One concept he introduced was the notion of “the distinction between the latent and manifest orientalism”, the latent being a general unconscious certainty the Orient was the way it has been described by the practitioners while the manifest was the supremacy of American imperialism as practiced since in the post-war years they assumed the hegemony in things east of Suez from the British and French: “The distinction I am making is really between an almost unconscious (and certainly an untouchable) positivity, which I shall call latent Orientalism, and the various stated views about Oriental society, languages, literatures, history, sociology, and so forth, which I shall call manifest Orientalism”.  The idea of the latent and manifest wasn’t wholly new but was one which later would be picked up and developed in critical race theory (CRT).

An occidental in the orient: Long-time resident Lindsay Lohan creating a photo opportunity with the Dubai Police, thanking them and the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their ongoing support during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dubai, April 2020.

That the critics found faults in both Said’s historiography and theoretical inconsistencies in his framework clearly pleased them but appeared to do little to affect the impact of Orientalism, something probably at least partly attributable to his deconstruction of the Western filter through which things eastern were viewed being built with the tools provided by some of the cult favourites in late twentieth century Western philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) (representation and the thing-in-itself), Michel Foucault (1926–1984) (discourse, power, knowledge, episteme and truth regimes), Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) (cultural hegemony) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) (deconstruction).  Said was a subtle thinker but to try to synthesize something from applying the thoughts of that lot would of necessity need some intellectual brutishness just to make it fit and it’s not surprising there were those who faulted him for occupying “…theoretical positions which are mutually contradictory”.  Still, if anything the effect of that was stimulative and Orientalism was one of those books which people read and found it confirmed their own views about the West or the West’s critics.  It’s doubtful Orientalism changed many minds and there were flaws which the critics were right to identify but regardless of how ultimately it will be remembered as an academic text, it remains a literary classic.