Concubine

Concubine (pronounced kong-kyuh-bahyn)

(1) A woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage, especially one regarded as socially or otherwise subservient.

(2) In jurisdictions which permit polygamy, a secondary wife, often of inferior rank.

(3) A woman residing in a harem and kept (with others), as by a ruler, for wifely purposes.

1250-1300: From the Middle English concubine (a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin concubīna, derived from cubare (to lie down), the construct being concub- (variant stem of concumbere & concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix).  The related forms are concubinage, concubinary & concubinal.

The status of paramour (a woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the laity.  The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess.

Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“to sexually violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction" but in Medieval Latin meant also "forcible violation").

Depictions of concubines in the Egyptian and Persian courts.

Concubinage is, in the west, a term largely of historic interest.  It describes a relationship in which a woman engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage.  This may be due to differences in social rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions, or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities.  Historically, concubinage was often entered into voluntarily because of an economic imperative.

In the modern vernacular, wives use many words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).  They rarely use concubine.

Inamorata

Inamorata (pronounced in-am-uh-rah-tuh or in-am-uh-rah-tuh)

A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover

1645-1655: From the Italian innamorata (mistress, sweetheart), noun use of the feminine form of innamorato (the noun plural innamoratos or innamorati) (lover, boyfriend), past principle of innamorare (to inflame with love), the construct being in- (in) + amore (love), from the Latin amor.  A familiar modern variation is enamor.  Inamorata is a noun; the noun plural is inamoratas.

Words like inamorata litter English and endure in their niches, not just because poets find them helpful but because they can be used to convey subtle nuances in a way a word which appears synonymous might obscure.  One might think the matter of one’s female lover might be linguistically (and sequentially) covered by (1) girlfriend, (2) fiancé, (3) wife and (4) mistress but to limit things to those is to miss splitting a few hairs.

A man’s girlfriend is a romantic partner though not of necessity a sexual one because some religions expressly prohibit such things without benefit of marriage and there are the faithful who follow these teachings.  One can have as many girlfriends as one can manage but the expectation they should be enjoyed one at a time.  Women can have girlfriends too but (usually) they are “friends who are female” rather than anything more except of course among lesbians where the relationship is the same as with men.  Gay men too have girlfriends who are “female friends”, some of whom may be “fag hags” a term which now is generally a homophobic slur unless used within the LGB factions of the LGBTQQIAAOP community where it can be jocular or affectionate.

A fiancé is a women to whom one is engaged to be married, in many jurisdictions once a matter of legal significance because an offer of marriage could be enforced under the rules of contract law.  While common law courts didn’t go as far as ordering “specific performance of the contract”, they would award damages on the basis of a “breach of promise”, provided it could be adduced that three of the four essential elements of a contract existed: (1) offer, (2) certainty of terms and (3) acceptance.  The fourth component: (4) consideration (ie payment), wasn’t mentioned because it was assumed to be implicit in the nature of the exchange; a kind of deferred payment as it were.  It was one of those rarities in common law where things operated almost wholly in favor of women in that they could sue a man who changed his mind while they were free to break-off an engagement without fear of legal consequences though there could be social and familial disapprobation.  Throughout the English-speaking world, the breach of promise tort in marriage matters has almost wholly been abolished, remaining on the books in the a couple of US states (not all of which lie south of the Mason-Dixon Line) but even where it exists it’s now a rare action and one likely to succeed only in exceptional circumstances or where a particularly fragrant plaintiff manages to charm a particularly sympathetic judge.

The spelling fiancé (often as fiance) is now common for all purposes.  English borrowed both the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) from the French verb fiancer (to get engaged) in the mid nineteenth century and that both spellings were used is an indication it was one of those forms which was, as an affectation, kept deliberately foreign because English typically doesn’t use gendered endings. Both the French forms were ultimately from the Classical Latin fidare (to trust), a form familiar in law and finance in the word fiduciary, from the Latin fīdūciārius (held in trust), from fīdūcia (trust) which, as a noun & adjective, describes relationships between individuals and entities which rely on good faith and accountability.  Pronunciation of both fiancé and fiancée is identical so the use of the differentiated forms faded by the late twentieth century and even publications like Country Life and Tattler which like writing with class-identifiers seem to have updated.  Anyway, because English doesn’t have word endings that connote gender, differentiating between the male and the female betrothed would seem unfashionable in the age of gender fluidity but identities exist as they’re asserted and one form or the other might be deployed as a political statement by all sides in the gender wars.

Model Emily Ratajkowski's (b 1991) clothing label is called Inamorata, a clever allusion to her blended nickname EmRata.  This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in three aspects.

Wife was from the Middle English wyf & wif, from the Old English wīf (woman, wife), from the Proto-West Germanic wīb, from the Proto-Germanic wībą (woman, wife) and similar forms existed as cognates in many European languages.  The wife was the woman one had married and by the early twentieth century, in almost all common law jurisdictions (except those where systems of tribal law co-existed) it was (more or less) demanded one may have but one at a time.  Modern variations include “common-law wife” and the “de-facto wife”.  The common-law marriage (also known as the "sui iuris (from the Latin and literally “of one's own right”) marriage", the “informal marriage” and the “non-ceremonial marriage”) is a kind of legal quasi-fiction whereby certain circumstances can be treated as a marriage for many purposes even though no formal documents have been registered, all cases assessed on their merits.  Although most Christian churches don’t long dwell on the matter, this is essentially what marriage in many cases was before the institutional church carved out its role.  In popular culture the term is used loosely to refer sometimes just about any un-married co-habitants regardless of whether or not the status has been acknowledged by a court.  De facto was from the Latin de facto, the construct being dē (from, by) + the ablative of factum (fact, deed, act).  It translates as “in practice, what actually is regardless of official or legal status” and is thus differentiated from de jure, the construct being dē (from) + iūre (law) which describes something’s legal status.  In general use, a common-law wife and de facto wife are often thought the same thing but the latter differs that in some jurisdictions the parameters which define the status are codified in statute whereas a common law wife can be one declared by a court on the basis of evidence adduced.

Mistress dates from 1275–1325 and was from the Middle English maistresse, from the Old & Middle French maistresse (in Modern French maîtresse), feminine of maistre (master), the construct being maistre (master) + -esse or –ess (the suffix which denotes a female form of otherwise male nouns denoting beings or persons), the now rare derived forms including the adjective mistressed and the noun mistressship.  In an example of the patriarchal domination of language, when a woman was said to have acquired complete knowledge of or skill in something, she’s was said to have “mastered” the topic.  A mistress (in this context) was a woman who had a continuing, extramarital sexual relationship with one man, especially a man who, in return for an exclusive and continuing liaison, provides her with financial support.  The term (like many) has become controversial and critics (not all of them feminists) have labeled it “archaic and sexist”, suggesting the alternatives “companion” or “lover” but neither convey exactly the state of the relationship so mistress continues to endure.  The critics have a point in that mistress is both “loaded” and “gendered” given there’s no similarly opprobrious term for adulterous men but the word is not archaic; archaic words are those now rare to the point of being no longer in general use and “mistress” has hardly suffered that fate, thought-crime hard to stamp out.

This is Ms Ratajkowski showing Inamorata’s polka-dot line in another three aspects.

Inamorata was useful because while it had a whiff of the illicit, that wasn’t always true but what it did always denote was a relationship of genuine love whatever the basis so one’s inamorata could also be one’s girlfriend, fiancé or mistress though perhaps not one’s wife, however fond one might be of her.  An inamorata would be a particular flavor of mistress in the way paramour or leman didn't imply.  Paramour was from the Middle English paramour, paramoure, peramour & paramur, from the Old French par amor (literally “for love's sake”), the modern pronunciation apparently an early Modern English re-adaptation of the French and a paramour was a mistress, the choice between the two perhaps influenced by the former tending to the euphemistic.  The archaic leman is now so obscure that it tends to be used only by the learned as a term of disparagement against women in the same way a suggestion mendaciousness is thought a genteel way to call someone a liar.  Dating from 1175-1225, it was from the Middle English lemman, a variant of leofman, from the Old English lēofmann (lover; sweetheart (and attested also as a personal name)), the construct being lief +‎ man (beloved person).  Lief was from the Middle English leef, leve & lef, from the Old English lēof (dear), from the Proto-Germanic leubaz and was cognate with the Saterland Frisian ljo & ljoo, the West Frisian leaf, the Dutch lief, the Low German leev, the German lieb, the Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk ljuv, the Gothic liufs, the Russian любо́вь (ljubóv) and the Polish luby.  Man is from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man) and probably ultimately from the primitive Indo-European mon (man).  A linguistic relic, leman applied originally either to men or women and had something of a romantic range.  It could mean someone of whom one was very fond or something more although usage meant the meaning quickly drifted to the latter: someone's sweetheart or paramour.  In the narrow technical sense it could still be applied to men although it has for so long been a deliberate archaic device and limited to women, that would now just confuse.

About the concubine, while there was a tangled history, there has never been much confusion.  Dating from 1250-1300, concubine was from the Middle English concubine (a paramour, a woman who cohabits with a man without being married to him) from the Anglo-Norman concubine, from the Latin concubīna, derived from cubare (to lie down), the construct being concub- (variant stem of concumbere & concumbō (to lie together)) + -ina (the feminine suffix).  The status (a woman who cohabits with a man without benefit of marriage) existed in Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other civilizations, the position sometimes recognized in law as "wife of inferior condition, secondary wife" and there’s much evidence of long periods of tolerance by religious authorities, extended both to priests and the laity.  The concubine of a priest was sometimes called a priestess although this title was wholly honorary and of no religious significance although presumably, as a vicar's wife might fulfil some role in the parish, they might have been delegated to do this and that.

Once were inamoratas: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, barefoot in Los Cabos, Mexico, 2008.

Under Roman civil law, the parties were the concubina (female) and the concubinus (masculine).  Usually, the concubine was of a lower social order but the institution, though ranking below matrimonium (marriage) was a cut above adulterium (adultery) and certainly more respectable than stuprum (illicit sexual intercourse, literally "disgrace" from stupere (to be stunned, stupefied)) and not criminally sanctioned like rapere (“sexually to violate” from raptus, past participle of rapere, which when used as a noun meant "a seizure, plundering, abduction").  In Medieval Latin it also meant meant also "forcible violation" & "kidnapping" and a misunderstanding of the context in which the word was then used has caused problems in translation ever since .  Concubinage is, in the West, a term largely of historic interest.  It describes a relationship in which a woman engages in an ongoing conjugal relationship with a man to whom she is not or cannot be married to the full extent of the local meaning of marriage.  This may be due to differences in social rank, an existing marriage, religious prohibitions, professional restrictions, or a lack of recognition by the relevant authorities.  Historically, concubinage was often entered into voluntarily because of an economic imperative.  In the modern vernacular, wives use many words to describe their husbands’ mistress(es).  They rarely use concubine.  They might however be tempted to use courtesan which was from the French courtisane, from the Italian cortigiana, feminine of cortigiano (courtier), from corte (court), from the Latin cohors.  A courtesan was a prostitute but a high-priced one who attended only to rich or influential clients and the origin of the term was when it was used of the mistresses of kings or the nobles in the court, the word mistress too vulgar to be used in such circles.

Odalisque

Odalisque (pronounced ohd-l-isk)

(1) A female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one attached to the Ottoman seraglio.

(2) Any of a number of representations of such a woman or of a similar subject, as by Ingres, Matisse et al (initial capital letter).

(3) In informal use, (1) a desirable or sexually attractive woman and (2) in painting, a reclining female figure in some state of undress (contested).

1680s: From the 1660s French odalique (the intrusive -s- perhaps from -esque), from the Ottoman Turkish اوطه‌لق‎ (ōdalik) (maid-servant (sometimes translated as concubine)), the construct being اوده‎ (oda or ōdah) (room in a harem (literally “chamber, hall”) + lιk (the noun suffix of appurtenance).  In French, the suffix was sometimes confused with Greek -isk(os) (of the nature of, belonging to), hence the alternative spelling odalisk where was still circulating well into the twentieth century.  The spread of the Ottoman Empire from Asia to Europe meant useful or intriguing words from Ottoman Turkish entered other languages.  Some use the French or English forms but other variations included the Catalan odalisca, the Dutch odalisk, the German Odaliske, the Hungarian odaliszk, the Icelandic ódalíska, the Italian odalisca, the Portuguese odalisca, the Russian одали́ска (odalíska), the Serbo-Croatian одалиска (odaliska) and the Spanish odalisca.  Odalisque is a noun; the noun plural is odalisques)

An odalisque and the quality of odalisque: Odalisque à la culotte rouge (Odalisque in red trousers) (1921), oil on canvas by Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (left) and Lindsay Lohan (2008) in the same vein (right).

Matisse was one of many painters drawn to the exoticism of the orient and painted a series of “Odalisque works”.  There was a time when what white male artists did defined what was art but in recent decades, the depictions by Western artists of aspects of culture east and south of Suez have become controversial, the popular word “problematic” often heard.  Even as historical artefacts, it’s difficult now not to be aware of the complicated legacy such imagery evokes, the Western construct of “Orientalism”, although born of a time when such places were far removed from the industrial society of the post-Enlightenment West, jarring when considered using the twenty-first century standards of representing race and gender.  The objectification by white male artists of women (oriental or not), of course had a long history but it adds another layer when those depicted are the prisoners of a harem, a commodity maintained at the pleasure of a man and discarded at whim.  Did Matisee and the others reveal their colonial attitudes by focusing only on the female body as something which existed aesthetically to please men while ignoring the inherent violence beneath the surface?  There have always been those who argue the artist has the right not to be troubled by (or even know about) such things and the l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) school will always have a following but the recent deconstructions of patriarchal and colonial structures of power do mean that while such works can still be enjoyed, to admit such an indulgence is becoming harder to sustain.

Odalisque au pantalon rouge (Odalisque in Red Pants) (circa 1925), oil on canvas by Henri Matisse, Fundación Museos Nacionales, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela.  The real one is on the left, the forgery on the right.

As commodity however, Matisses remain desirable.  Sometime between 1999-2002, his Odalisque au pantalon rouge (Odalisque in Red Pants) was stolen from the Venezuelan national gallery in Carracus and replaced with a forgery.  The crime remained un-noticed until 2003 and the work was recovered some fourteen years later, the circumstances of the disappearance remaining as murky as Venezuela’s politics but the scandal did attract much attention especially given it was the only Matisse hung in any of the nation’s museums and the only of his Odalisques on display anywhere in Latin America.  After being recovered in 2012 in Miami by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the real and the fake were (side-by-side) exhibited as a kind of installation, accompanied by collateral displays which documented the technical differences between the two, the security protocols by which cultural institutions determined patrimony and the systems maintained to monitor any theft of patrimony, according to the regulations of each country and those of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

US and Mexican nationals were convicted on charges of attempting to sell the stolen Odalisque but most Venezuelans appeared to draw the weary conclusion that official corruption was involved.  It was only when in 2002 the museum received a message telling them the painting was being offered for sale that a check was made and it was found the one on the gallery’s walls not just a fake but a poorly executed one.  Nevertheless, it had hung there for at least two years, an embarrassing photograph from 2000 emerging which showed then President Hugo Chávez (1954–2013; Venezuelan president 1999-2013 (except during a few local difficulties in 2002)) standing in the museum with the fake Matisse behind him.  An investigation began but, as often happens in Venezuela, it proved inconclusive although it did reveal word of the painting being on the market had been received as early as 2000 but the matter, for whatever reason, wasn’t pursued.  When the FBI made their arrests, the suspects told them the painting had been stolen and replaced by museum employees, something which elicited little surprise in Carracus and nor was anyone much shocked when an audit revealed several other pieces were missing, none of which have been recovered.  Under Chavez, Western art was not regarded as anything of importance and, given the country’s problems in the years since, it’s likely that if ever another audit is performed, a few more things might be found to be missing.

An odalisque and the quality of odalisque: Odalisque (circa 1880), oil on canvas by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845–1902)  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (left) and Lindsay Lohan in the same vein, Vanity Fair photo-shoot, 2010 (right).

Broad

Broad (pronounced brawd)

(1) Of great breadth.

(2) A quasi-standard expression of lineal measurement (from side to side).

(3) Of great extent; large; extensive, ample, spacious, vast.

(4) Wide-open; full (applied usually to daylight).

(5) Not limited or narrow; of extensive range or scope (applied to knowledge, experience etc).

(6) Liberal; tolerant (semi-institutionalized as one of the three factions of the Anglican Church (Low, broad & high).

(7) A generalized summary of something (often as broad outline); general rather than specific.

(8) Something made plain or clear; outspoken.

(9) Indelicate; indecent, vulgar (now rare).

(10) Of conversation, rough; countrified, unrefined.

(11) Unconfined; unbridled; unrestrained.

(12) In linguistics, of pronunciation, strongly dialectal; the most exaggerated of its type; consisting of a large number of speech sounds characteristic of a particular geographical area or social class.  As applied to Gaelic languages: velarized (ie palatalized).

(13) In phonetics, of a transcription, using one basic symbol to represent each phoneme; of or relating to a type of pronunciation transcription in which symbols correspond approximately to phonemes without taking account of allophonic variations.

(14) In (mostly historic US & Canadian) slang, a usually disparaging term for a women, often one that hints at promiscuity (but not prostitution); often in the plural.

(15) In film & television production, an incandescent or fluorescent lamp used as a general source of light in a studio.

(16) A type of wide-bladed battle sword.

(17) A gold coin of England and Scotland, minted first in 1656 and issued by James I and Charles I; equal to 20 shillings.

(18) As broadband, a term now vague in meaning which implies a high-speed internet connection but which has been applied to any service rated faster than the highest speed possible using a single analogue modem connected with a conventional phone line (copper pair (Cat3)).

(19) In public finance, as broad money, denoting an assessment of liquidity including notes and coins in circulation, bank holdings, most private-sector bank deposits, and certain bank-deposit certificates; usually classed as M3 in the (sort of) standardized system by which OECD countries measure the money supply.

(20) In UK dialectal use, a river spreading over a lowland (in East Anglia, a shallow lake).

(21) In woodworking, a wood-turning tool used for shaping the insides and bottoms of cylinders.

(22) In the UK, a common pronunciation of B-road (a secondary road).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English brood, brode, brod & broad from the Old English brād (broad, flat, open, extended, spacious, wide, ample, copious; not narrow), from the Proto-Germanic braidi, from the Proto-West Germanic braid, from the Proto-Germanic braidaz (broad), of uncertain origin.  It was cognate with the Scots braid (broad), the West Frisian breed (broad), the Saterland Frisian breed (broad), the Low German breet & breed (broad), the Dutch breed (broad), the German & Old High German breit (broad, wide), the Danish, Swedish & Norwegian Bokmål bred (broad), the Norwegian brei (broad), the Icelandic breiður (broad, wide), the Old Norse breiðr (breithr), the Old Frisian brēd and the Gothic braiths & brouþs.  The word is not found except in Germanic languages and there has never been any clear distinction between broad & wide although there are conventions of use but they vary widely (and presumably in some places broadly) by geographical region.  Related and sometimes synonymous words include deep, expansive, full, large, vast, comprehensive, extensive, far-reaching, sweeping, universal, wide, wide-ranging, clear, explicit, straightforward, radical, improper, indecent & roomy.  Broad is a noun & adjective, broadly is an adverb; broadness is a noun, broaden is a verb, broadening is a noun & verb and broadest & broadish are adjectives; the noun plural is broads.    

Circa 1300, broad also had the specific meaning "breadth", now obsolete, which was from broad the adjective.  The sense of "shallow, reedy lake formed by the expansion of a river over a flat surface" was a Norfolk dialect word from the 1650s and broad had assumed its (broad) meaning as "the broad (wide) part" of anything by 1741.  The broad-brim hat was first described in the 1680s and the phrase “broad-brimmed” or “broad-brimmer” was eighteenth & nineteenth slang for a "Quaker male", so described because of their characteristic attire.  Broad-minded (in the sense of open-minded, liberal, less judgmental) was from the 1590s but this abstract mental sense of broad existed also in Old English as bradnes which meant both "breadth" & "liberality".

German broadsword, Waloon pattern, circa 1650.

Some swordsmiths insist the only true broadsword is one of the “basket-hilted swords”, characterized by a basket-shaped guard at the hilt which protects the hand, an elaboration of the quillons added to swords' cross-guards since the later Middle Ages.  What everybody else now calls the broadsword is a bladed weapon of the early modern era (sixteenth-seventeenth century), the construct in Old English being brad + swurd and, exclusively a battlefield weapon, they were always distinguished from rapiers and other dueling swords by their wide and often long & thick blades.

The term broadsheet was first used to describe a newspaper in 1705 when the distinguishing characteristic was being a “large sheet of paper printed on one side only”; by 1831 the usual phrase was “"a broadsheet newspaper" which in the twentieth century evolved into a distinction between the sober publications of record, reflection and reporting (The Times of London, The New York Times, The Manchester Guardian etc) and the popular tabloid press concerned with entertainment, sport and (increasingly) celebrity culture (the News of the World, The Sun, the New York News etc), based on the former being printed in larger formats, the latter half-sized (tabloid in printer’s jargon.  Even when some broadsheets switched to the smaller format, the phraseology remained and seemed to have survived even where some have abandoned print editions entirely, tabloid journalism still something simultaneously popular and disreputable.

Lindsay Lohan on Broadway, attending the production MJ The Musical, New York, July 2022.

Broadway (like High Street or Main Road) became a common street name apparently as early as circa 1300, applied obviously to particularly wide roads or streets, the allusive use for "New York’s theater district" dating from 1881.  The derivative “off broadway” (sometime with initial capitals) described smaller theatres in the New York City area, those with fewer than 300 seats, or a production in such a theater, usually away from the "Broadway" theater district and which operated under special rules from the theatrical unions which permitted productions to be mounted at much lower cost.  Use of off-broadway was first noted in 1953 as the volume of productions began greatly to expand in the buoyant post war economy and off-off & off-off-off (etc) broadway followed, the number of “offs” hinting progressively at the diminishing size of the budget, theatre and reputations of those associated with the production.

Broadcasting in the modern understanding of the word attained critical mass first in the 1920s as medium-wave AM radio became popular as the cost of vacuum tube radio transmitters and receivers fell to affordable levels.  Broadcasting was based on the idea in agriculture of broad-sowing, the casting of seeds over a broad area and was electronic communication on a one-to-many basis, as opposed to earlier radio, telephone, and telegraph models which were one/few to one/few.  Although the technology and the distribution platforms have since much evolved, broadcasting remains conceptually the same but the technological changes have greatly affected the behavior of audiences and much of what “broadcasters” now do is really stranded narrowcasting, the content designed not for the large-scale, even nation-wide catchments which once were available but aimed instead at specific demographics also served by the narrowcasters proper.  So changed is the environment that the terms are now less useful than when there were clear distinctions between them.

Dean Martin (1917-1995) and Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) carry "strike" signs demanding "Free Broads" as part of a gag during a show at the Sands' Copa Room, Las Vegas, 1960.

Although the "rat pack" persona was cultivated as something edgy and anti-establishment, their audience was politically conservative and, by the 1960s, part of an older generation which mostly didn't approve of young people marching with protest signs.  For a couple of old pros playing Las Vegas, this was an easy laugh and, by the standards of the time, self-deprecating.

The apparently etymologically baffling use of broad to describe a woman with some suggestion of promiscuity has attracted speculation.  It’s been suggested it might be an alteration of bride, especially through influence of the cognate German Braut, which was used in a similar sense (young woman, hussy) and there was the Middle High German brūt (concubine) but, especially given it came to be noted as a generalized slang term for women only circa 1911 in US use, etymologists prefer to link the development to the earlier slang “abroadwife”, used to mean both “woman who lives or travels without her husband" and “woman maintained in another place by a man and unknown to his wife”.  It’s now a dated form, used sometimes ironically but has often been misapplied with a suggestion of prostitution.  Because of these negative associations, and the increasing popularity of women's athletics, the name of the track and field “broad jump” (dating from 1863) was changed to “long jump”, beginning in the US in 1967 and soon adopted by athletics federations worldwide.

Some broadband is more broad than others: Indicative speed (January 2022) of internet connections in selected countries based on Ookla’s speedtest.net data, the informal standard for consumer-level speed testing.

The noun broadband actually dates from the 1620s in various senses from dressmaking to engineering.  It was used in electronics from 1956 with the meaning "a band having a wide range of frequencies" but the now most familiar use is as a descriptor of high-speed internet access.  Although the term broadband had since the 1970s been used in the technical language of the then embryonic industry of networking and distributed communications, it was little known by the public until the first standards were published for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), a consumer-level version of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology.  Ever since, it’s been used in the sense of “high-speed internet” but except for some local (and usually quickly outdated) legislated definitions, it’s never had a universal or even generally accepted meaning beyond the very early implementations when it was understood to imply a connection faster than the fastest service attainable by a single (8000/8000 baud; V.92; 56.0/48.0 kbit/s down/up) analogue modem connected with a conventional phone line (untwisted copper pair (UTP-Cat3)) which was usually accepted to be 56 kbit/s.  That soon was not a great deal of help and now, unless in a jurisdiction where use of the term broadband requires the maintenance of minimum up & download speeds, it’s really just an advertising term and unless a service so advertised turns out to be so slow that the use might be held to be deceptive or misleading, is often little more than “mere puffery”.  Hotels which in the 1990s and early 2000s spent a lot of money to install the hardware and software to support what was then “broadband” which they advertised as such soon, faced complaints as rapid advances in technology rendered their infrastructure quickly obsolescent and slow, the only solution sometimes to replace all the equipment although many instead took advantage of the profit-sharing industry which emerged, third-parties handling the installation and support, the hotel taking just a commission on total revenue.  Just as a precaution, some gave up on advertising “broadband” and instead offered the even more vague “hi-speed” which definitely meant nothing in particular.     

Contemporary art museum The Broad, Grand Avenue, Los Angeles.  The building's name is a reference not to the architecture but the philanthropists Eli (1933-2021) & Edythe (b 1936) Broad, who paid for it and provided the core of the collections exhibited.  It opened in September 2015, the architecture generally well-received.

Broadcloth (also as broad-cloth) was a "fine woolen cloth used in making men's garments" and dates from the early fifteenth century, the name derived from its width (usually 60 inches (1.5m)).  The phrase “broad daylight” emerged in the late fourteenth century and broad was first applied to speech and accents during the 1530s. To be “broad in the beam” is to be overweight, the term, predictably, applied almost exclusively to women.  To have “broad shoulders” suggests an ability to take criticism, or accept responsibility, an allusion to the figure of Atlas from Greek mythology who was condemned to forever carry on his shoulders the weight of the world.  In admiralty jargon, “broad on the beam” is a nautical bearing 90° to the heading of a vessel while “broad on the bow” is a bearing 45° to the heading of a vessel.  Broadacre farming or agriculture is a generalized reference to activities undertaken on large-scale open areas as opposed to smaller, fenced enclosures and can be used to describe either cropping or animal production.  The expression, like “mileage” or “tons” has survived metrification; “broadhectare” does exist as jargon in the field of residential land supply but is not widely used.

The Anglicans

Some time ago, the ever-entertaining Anglican Church, sort of formalized their three warring factions as the low and lazy, the broad and hazy and the high and crazy:

The Low and Lazy

Like the high churchers, the low lot still believe in God but, their time not absorbed plotting and scheming or running campaigns to stamp out gay clergy and opposing the ordination of women, they actually have time to pray, which they do, often.  The evangelical types come from among the low and don’t approve of fancy rituals, Romish ways or anything smelling of popery.  Instead, they like services where there’s clapping, dancing and what sounds like country & western music with sermons telling them it’s Godly to buy things like big TVs and surf-skis.

The Broad and Hazy

The broad church is more a club than a church, something like the Tory Party at prayer.  The parishioners will choose the church they (occasionally) attend on the same basis as their golf club, driving miles if need be to find a congregation acceptably free of racial and cultural DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).  They’re interested not at all in theology or anything too abstract so sermons are preached to please the bourgeoisie.  The broad church stands for most things in general and nothing in particular, finding most disputes in Anglicanism baffling; they just can't see what all the fuss is about.

The High and Crazy

The high church has clergy who love dressing up like The Spice Girls, burning incense and chanting the medieval liturgy in Latin.  They disapprove of about everything that’s happened since the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and believe there’d be less sin were there still burnings at the stake.  Most high church clergy wish Pope Pius IX was still running the show from Rome and some act as though he’s still there.

Of money

All will be pleased to know there is narrow money and broad money.  Narrow money includes notes and coins in circulation and bank deposits (if available to conduct transactions).  Broad money includes all narrow money and other liquid assets that can be used to buy goods and services.  Collectively, the money circulating in an economy is called money supply, movements in which are tracked and sometimes manipulated governments and central banks.  There are economists who insist the distinction between narrow and broad money is mainly theoretical and they have a point in that the relationship between national wealth and (1) physical notes and coins and (2) the notion of asset backing (such as a gold standard) are both now somewhat abstract and the money supply can now be expanded without the effects of the physical economy which would once have been inevitable but the measures are still of great interest, as is the strange fact that the actual definitions of money used by governments and central banks in major trading economies vary from country to country.

The United States

The US Federal Reserve provides only two main measures of money M1 (narrow) and M2 (broad).  M1 consists of currency in circulation, travelers’ checks of nonbank issuers, demand deposits, and other checkable deposits (eg negotiable order of withdrawal accounts at depository institutions).  M2 is M1 plus savings deposits and money market deposit accounts, time deposit accounts below $100,000, and balances in retail money market mutual funds.  The interesting thing about the US is that the Fed’s M1 & M2 excludes a lot of what most economists regards as money but it’s very difficult to estimate how much, all agreeing only that it’s big number.

The Euro Zone

The European Central Bank (ECB) publishes M1, M2 & M3, each measure becoming progressively broader.  M1 includes currency in circulation plus overnight deposits.  M2 is M1 plus deposits redeemable at notice of up to three months and deposits with an agreed maturity of up to two years.  M3 is M2 plus repurchase agreements, money market fund shares, money market paper, and debt securities issued with a maturity of fewer than two years.

The United Kingdom

The Bank of England uses four measures of money, M0, M2, M4, and M3H, M0 the narrowest, M4 the broadest.  M0 is currency in circulation plus bankers’ deposits held by the Bank of England.  M2 is M0 plus deposits held in retail banks.  M4 is M2 plus certificates of deposits, and wholesale bank and building society deposits.  The mysterious M3H is a parity device which exists to allow the Bank of England to align their reporting for statistical purposes with the money supply measures published by the ECB and this is M4 plus foreign currency deposits in banks and building societies.

Australia

The Reserve Bank of Australia used to use M1, M2 & M3 but now publishes M1, M3 & Broad Money.  M1 is currency in circulation plus bank current deposits from private non-bank entities.  M3 is M1 plus other deposits from building societies and credit unions with banks.  Broad Money is M3 plus borrowings from the private sector by non-bank depository corporations excluding holdings of currency and deposits of non-bank depository corporations.

Japan

The Bank of Japan is a monetary classicist and publishes M1, M2, and M3, where M1 is the narrowest and M3 the broadest.  M1 includes currency in circulation plus deposits.  M2 is M1, plus certificates of deposit.  M3 is M2 plus savings and deposits at financial institutions and post offices.

For countries which run modern economies with convertible currencies and a high degree of interoperability and (usually), little (at least by historic standards) in the way of exchange controls, it may seem strange that the definitions of money vary to the extent they do, the only feature of commonality really that each maintains a measurable concept of narrow and broad money.  Only a few central banks, such as the Bank of England, include a device with which those interested in such things can align the numbers more accurately to compare one with another; it’s almost as if the central banks and governments like some vagueness in the system.

There is no direct relationship between the volume of the money supply and its value expressed as purchasing power.  German children during the hyper-inflation experienced in the Weimar Republic in 1923 would play with literally trillions, using bundles of currency with a face value in the billions (of the then current Papiermark) as toy building blocks.  Although the purposes for which it was originally set up have long been overtaken by events, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) still exists (which is interesting in itself) and although the BIS organizes interesting conferences and seminars and publish a wealth of meaty material, it’d be an interesting task for them to devise a standardized money supply model which could augment (ie not replace) the machinery to which the central banks would no doubt cling.  Even if restricted to members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it would be an interesting data-set to align with other charts but the chances of this seem remote.  It might frighten the horses.

Harlot

Harlot (pronounced hahr-luht)

(1) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; one given to the wanton; lewd; low; base.

(2) By extension, in political discourse, an unprincipled person (now rare).

(3) A person given to low conduct; a rogue; a villain; a cheat; a rascal (obsolete).

(4) To play the harlot; to practice lewdness.

Circa 1200: From the Middle English harlot (young idler, rogue), from the Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (rascal; vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin but thought probably of Germanic origin, either a derivation of harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow); most speculate the first element is from hari (army).  It was cognates with the Old Provençal arlot, the Old Spanish arlote and the Italian arlotto.  The long obsolete Middle English carlot (a churl; a common man; a person (male or female) of low birth; a boor; a rural dweller, peasant or countryman) is thought probably related.  Harlot was a noun and (less often) a verb, harlotry a noun and harlotize a verb; the present participle was harloting (or harlotting), the simple past and past participle harloted (or harlotted) and there’s no evidence exotic forms like harlotistic or harlotic ever existed, however useful they might have been.  Harlot is a noun & verb, harlotry is a noun, harlotish is an adjective, harlotize and harloted & harloting are verbs; the noun plural is harlots.  The adjective harlotesque is non-standard.

Harlot as a surname dates from at least the mid-late 1100s but by circa 1200 was being used to describe a “vagabond, someone of no fixed occupation, an idle rogue" and was applied almost exclusively to men in the Middle English and Old French.  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1345-1400) used harlot in a positive as well as pejorative sense and in medieval English texts it was applied to jesters, buffoons, jugglers and later to actors.  What is the now prevalent meaning (prostitute, unchaste woman) was originally the secondary sense but it had probably developed as early as the late fourteenth century, being well-documented by the early fifteenth.  Doubtless, it was the appearance in sixteenth century English translations of the Bible (as a euphemism for "strumpet, whore") which cemented the association.

In harlotesque mode: Lindsay Lohan in fancy dress as Suicide Squad's (2016) Harley Quinn, Halloween party, London, November 2016.  It may be a cliché but for purposes of fancy dress, fishnet stockings (or tights) are the motif of choice for those wanting the "harlot look". 

The biblical imprimatur didn’t so much extend the meaning as make it gender-specific.  The noun harlotry (loose, crude, or obscene behavior; sexual immorality; ribald talk or jesting) had been in use since the late fourteenth century and the choice of harlot in biblical translation is thought an example of linguistic delicacy, a word like “strumpet” though too vulgar for a holy text and “jezebel” too historically specific.  In this, harlot is part of a long though hardly noble tradition of crafting or adapting words as derogatory terms to be applied to women.  It has to be admitted there are nuances between many but one is impressed there was thought to be such a need to be offensive to women that English contains so many: promiscuous, skeezer, slut, whore, concubine, courtesan, floozy, hooker, hussy, nymphomaniac, streetwalker, tom, strumpet, tramp, call girl, lady of the evening, painted woman et al.  So the bible is influential although there’s a perhaps surprising difference in the translations of that prescriptive duo, Leviticus & Ezekiel: In the King James Version (KJV 1611), harlot appears in thirty-eight versus, but once in Leviticus, nine times in Ezekiel, some of the memorable being:.

Genesis 38:24: And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she [is] with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Leviticus 21:14: A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, [or] an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

Joshua 6:25: And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Isaiah 1:21: How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

Ezekiel 16:15: But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

Ezekiel 16:41: And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

Ezekiel 23:19: Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

Ezekiel 23:44: Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.

Amos 7:17: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

Nahum 3:4: Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

Stanley Baldwin election campaign poster, 1929.

Phrases like “shameless harlot” and “political prostitution” used to be part of the lively language of politics but social change and an increasing intolerance of gendered terms of derision have rendered them almost extinct (the language of metaphorical violence is next for the chopping-block: guillotined, knifed, axed etc all on death row).  Harlot’s most notable political excursion came in 1931 when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; thrice UK prime-minister 1923-1937) was facing an orchestrated campaign against his leadership by the newspaper proprietors, Lords Rothermere (1868–1940) & Beaverbrook (1879-1964), the "press barons" then a potent force (Beaverbrook called them collectively the "press gang").  Before commercial television & radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable.  The press barons though, whatever their desires, couldn't be dictatorial, as Beaverbrook found when his long campaign for empire free-trade achieved little but they sometimes behaved as if they could at a whim move public opinion and often politicians were inclined to believe them.  Within the UK at the time, Rothermere & Beaverbrook weren’t exactly “by Murdoch out of Zuckerberg” but it’s hard to think of a better way of putting it.

Baldwin in 1931 found a good way of putting it.  His leadership of the Tory party challenged because he refused to support them in what was even then the chimera of empire free trade, he responded with a strident speech which appealed to the public’s mistrust of the press barons, using a phrase from his cousin Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), ironically a friend of Beaverbrook.  Rothermere & Beaverbrook he denounced as wanting power without responsibility, “…the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  It was the most effective political speech in the UK until 1940, Baldwin flourishing and empire free trade doomed, although Beaverbrook would keep flogging the corpse for the rest of the 1930s.  Often underestimated, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) would later acknowledge Baldwin as the most formidable political operator of the era.

The oratory of Lloyd-George and Churchill may be more regarded by history but Baldwin did have a way with words and less remembered lines from another of his famous speeches may have influenced climate change activist Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  Delivered in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 in a debate on disarmament, he argued for an international agreement to restrict the development of the aircraft as a military weapon:

“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him.  The bomber will always get through…”.  “The only defense is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.”

Prescient about the way the unrestricted bombing of civilians would be the Second World War’s novel theatre, the phrase "the bomber will always get through" reverberated around the world, chancelleries and military high commands taking from it not the need for restrictions but the imperative to build bomber fleets, Baldwin not planting the seed of the idea but certainly reinforcing the prejudices and worst instincts of many.  That was the power of the phrase; it subsumed the purpose of the speech, the rest of which was essentially forgotten including the concluding sentences:

"I do not know how the youth of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been on it."

“This is a question for young men far more than it is for us…”  “Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war…”  “At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone.  But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.”

“If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done.”  “As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth.”

Hansard recorded Baldwin’s speech being greeted with “loud and prolonged cheers”, his enthusiasm for disarmament making him as popular as Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) would briefly be in 1938 when he returned from Germany with a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature an a guarantee of “peace in our time”.  Soon, the views on both men would shift but historians today treat them more sympathetically.

The old and the young.

Greta Thunberg (b 2003) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), United Nations, New York, September 2019.  Ms Thunberg was attending a UN climate summit Mr Trump snubbed, going instead to a meeting on religious freedom.  Proving that God moves in mysterious ways, Mr Trump took a whole new interest in evangelical Christianity when he entered the contest for the 2016 presidential election.  Ms Thunberg seems to have noted the final paragraphs of Baldwin's speech and while convinced it’s quite right to “lay the blame on the old men” and their blah, blah, blah, which she thinks insufficient to lower carbon emissions, seems confident youth will prove more receptive to doing something about us defiling the earth.

Greta Thunberg, How Dare You? (Acid house mix).