Curious

Curious (pronounced kyoor-ee-uhs)

(1) Eager to learn or know; inquisitive; interested, inquiring

(2) Prying; meddlesome, overly inquisitive.

(3) Arousing or exciting speculation, interest, or attention through being inexplicable or highly unusual; odd; strange.

(4) Made or prepared skilfully (archaic).

(5) Done with painstaking accuracy or attention to detail (archaic).

(6) Careful; fastidious (archaic).

(7) Marked by intricacy or subtlety (archaic).

(8) In inorganic chemistry, containing or pertaining to trivalent curium (rare).

1275–1325: From the Middle English curious, from the Old French curius (solicitous, anxious, inquisitive; odd, strange (which endures in Modern French as curieux)), from the Latin cūriōsus (careful, diligent; inquiring eagerly, meddlesome, inquisitive), the construct being cūri- (a combining form of cūra (care) + -ōsus .  The –ōsus suffix (familiar in English as –ous) was from Classical Latin from -ōnt-to-s from -o-wont-to-s, the latter form a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes: -went & -wont.  Related to these were –entus and the Ancient Greek -εις (-eis) and all were used to form adjectives from nouns.  In Latin, -ōsus was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun.  The English word was cognate with Italian curioso, the Occitan curios, the Portuguese curioso and the Spanish curioso.  The original sense in the early fourteenth century appears to have been “subtle, sophisticated” but by the late 1300s this had been augmented by “eager to know, inquisitive, desirous of seeing” (often in a bad (ie “busybody”) sense and also “wrought with or requiring care and art”, all these meaning reflecting the Latin original.  The objective sense of “exciting curiosity” was in use by at least 1715 but in booksellers' catalogues of the mid-nineteenth century, the word was a euphemism for “erotic, pornographic”, such material called curiosa the Latin neuter plural of cūriōsus.  That was not however what was in the mind of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) when he wrote The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841).

The derived forms include noncurious, overcurious, supercurious, uncurious & incuruious.  Both uncurious and incurious are rare and between them there is a difference in meaning and usage, but it is much weaker and less consistently observed than the distinction drawn (though not always observed) between disinterest and uninterest.  Incurious means “lacking curiosity; not inclined to inquire or wonder” and often carries a critical or evaluative tone, implying intellectual complacency or narrow-mindedness; it can be applied to individuals but seems more often used of groups.  Uncurious means “usually not curious” and tends to be descriptive rather than judgmental.  Being rarely used and obscure in what exactly is denoted, some style guides list them as awkward and best avoided, recommending being explicit about what is meant.  Curious is an adjective, curiousness & curiosity are nouns, curiously is an adverb; the noun plural curiosities.  The comparative more curious or curiouser and the superlative most curious or curiousest

The proverb “curiosity killed the cat” means “one should not be curious about things that don’t concern one”.  The phrase “curiouser and curiouser” comes from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by the English author Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)).  As a modern, idiomatic form, it’s used to describe or react to an increasingly mysterious or peculiar situation (though usually not one thought threatening).  Alice made her famous exclamation after experiences increasingly bizarre transformations and other strange events in Wonderland; later, what was described would be thought surrealistic.  The phrase has endured and it appears often in literature and popular culture, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum even holding the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser event.  The author’s use of “bad English” was deliberate, a device to convey the child’s sense of bewildered confusion.  In standard English, the comparative of "curious" is “more curious” with the –er suffix usually appended to words with one or two syllables.  The word “curiouser” thus inhabits a special niche in that although mainstream dictionaries usually list it as “informal” or “non-standard” (ie “wrong”), unlike most “mistakes”, because it’s a literary reference, it’s a “respectable” word (if used in the phrase).  In that, it’s something like “it ain’t necessarily so”.

Depiction of the mad hatter’s tea party by Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) in an edition called Nursery Alice (1890), an abridged version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland intended for children under five (the original drawing now held by the British Museum).  The book contained 20 illustrations by Sir John who also provided the artwork for the full-length publication.  A fine craftsman, Sir John was noted also for his moustache which “out-Nietzsched” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).  Despite much later speculation, no evidence has ever emerged to suggest Lewis Carroll was under the influence of drugs when writing the “Alice” books

Special derived adjectival uses of curious include the portmanteau word “epicurious” (curious about food, especially wishing to try new dishes and cuisines), the construct being epicu(reean) +‎ (cu)rious.  Although the notion of Epicureans (those who are followers of Epicureanism) being focused on food is overstated, that’s the way the word usually appears in popular use.  “Indy-curious” is from UK politics and refers to those interested in the possibility of independence for Wales, without necessarily being a supporter of the proposal.  Those who are “veg-curious” are interested in or contemplating a vegetarian or vegan diet.

The word “curious” became an element in the punch-lines of some “gay jokes” (a now extinct species outside the gay community) but survived in derived forms in sexology, presumably because they can be used neutrally.  The constructs include (1) “pancurious” (exhibiting a state of uncertainty about one's pansexual or panromantic status), (2) “bi-curious” (interested in having relationships with both men and women, curious about one's potential bisexuality; considering a first sexual experience with a member of the same sex (used especially of heterosexuals), (3) gay-curious (curious about one's homosexuality; curious to try homosexuality (4) homocurious (questioning whether one is homosexual), (5) polycurious (curious about or open to polyamory; potentially interested in having relationships with multiple partners and (6) trans-curious (interested in one's potential transness or the experience of a sexual encounter with a trans person.  None of these forms seem to be in frequent use and some may have been created to “cover the field” and there may be some overlap (such as between pancurious and polycurious) and that at least some may be spectrum conditions seems implicit in the way dictionaries list comparative and superlative forms (eg more bi-curious; most bi-curious).

The synonyms include enquiring, inquiring; exquisitive; investigative and the now rare peery, the latter a use of curious in the vein of the “meddling priest” (ie a “busybody” tending to ask questions or wishing to explore or investigate matters not of their concern).  Such a person could be labelled a quidnunc (gossip-monger, one who is curious to know everything that happens) a word (originally as quid nunc) from the early 1700s, the construct being the Latin quid (what? (neuter of interrogative pronoun quis (who?) from the primitive Indo-European root kwo-, stem of relative and interrogative pronouns)) + nunc (now); the idea was of someone habitually asking “What's the news?” and that phrase was one with which for decades the press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) would pester his editors.  The other group of synonyms reference the word in its “funny-peculiar” sense and include queer, curious: weird, odd, strange & bizarre.  Such an individual, concept or object can be called “a curiosity” and that’s reflected in the noun “curio” which dates from 1851 and meant originally “piece of bric-a-brac from the Far East” and was a short form of curiosity in the mid seventeenth century sense of “object of interest”’ by the 1890s it was in use to refer to rare or interesting bric-a-brac (or just about anything otherwise unclassified) from anywhere.  The related curioso was in use by the 1650s and for two centuries-odd was a word describing “one who is curious" (of science, art, metaphysics and such) or “one who admires or collects curiosities”; it was from the Italian curioso (a curious soul (person)).

1971 Plymouths in Curious Yellow (code GY3): 'Cuda 340 (left) and GTX (right). 

Although buyers of Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis and such still often order cars in bright colors, most of the world’s fleet had for some years been restricted mostly to white, black and variants of silver & gray; it’s a phase the world is going through and it can’t be predicted how long this visually sober ere will last.  In the US in the late 1960s it was different and like other manufacturers, Chrysler had some history in the coining of fanciful names for the “High Impact” colors dating from the psychedelic era.  Emerging from their marketing departments came Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Limelight, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  That the most lurid colors vanished during the 1970s was not because of changing tastes but in response to environmental & public health legislation which banned the use of lead in automotive paints; without the additive, production of the bright colours was prohibitively expensive.  Advances in chemistry meant that by the twenty-first century brightness could be achieved without the addition of lead so Dodge revived psychedelia for a new generation although Sub Lime became Sublime.

Criterion's re-issue of I Am Curious (Blue) and I Am Curious (Blue) with edited (colorized) artwork.  The original posters were monochrome.  

Two years into the first administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US VPOTUS 1953-1961 & POTUS 1969-1974), and a year on from his declaration of a “War on Drugs”, it was obvious the psychedelic era was over but bright colors were still popular so come were carried over although the advertising became noticeably “less druggy”.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told is that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were in 1969 late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape but despite that, Plymouth for 1971 decided to change the name of their vibrant hue of yellow from “Citron Yella” to “Curious Yellow” (code GY3), that apparently borrowed from the controversial 1967 Swedish erotic film I Am Curious (Yellow), directed by Vilgot Sjöman (1924-2006); it was followed the following year by I Am Curious (Blue), the two intended originally as 3½ hour epic.  As promoted at the time, the films were advertised as “I Am Curious: A Film in Yellow” and “I Am Curious: A Film in Blue”, the mention of the colors an allusion to the Swedish flag.

Lindsay Lohan does her bit to revive Chrysler’s 1971 Curious Yellow, the New York Post’s Alexa magazine, 5 December 2024.

A footnote to the earlier film is an uncredited appearance by Olof Palme (1927–1986; Prime Minister of Sweden 1969-1976 & 1982-1986) whose assassination remains unsolved. The films are very much period pieces of a time when on-screen depictions of sex were for the first time in some places liberated from most censorship and while this produced an entire genre of blends of eroticism and pornography, some directors couldn’t resist interpolating political commentary (of the left and right); at the time, just about everything (sex included) could be sociological.  Critic and audiences mostly were unconvinced but films like the “Curious” brace and Michelangelo Antonioni’s (1912–2007) Zabriskie Point (1970) later gained a cult following.  Problems encountered during production resulted in the release of Zabriskie Point being delayed until 1970 but in retrospective this was a blessing because if anyone doubted the spirit of the 1960s had died, the film was there to remove all doubt.  A commercial failure, visually, it remains a feast for students of pre-digital cinematography and some maintain the best way to enjoy subsequent viewings is to mute the sound and play the soundtrack on repeat; unsynchronized with the scenes, its an experience rewarding in its own way.  

Mouse

Mouse (pronounced mous (verb form sometimes mouz))

(1) Any of numerous small Old World rodents of the family Muridae, especially of the genus Mus, introduced widely in other parts of the world.

(2) Any similar small animal of various rodent and marsupial families.

(3) As a verb (used with object), moused or mousing (1) to hunt out, as a cat hunts out mice, (2) to move a cursor about a screen using a mouse or (3) to prowl about, as if in search of something.

(4) In nautical use, to secure with a mousing (a turn or lashing of spun yarn or small stuff, or a metallic clasp or fastening, uniting the point and shank of a hook to prevent its unhooking or straightening out).

(5) As mouse-like, when applied to people, a descriptor of timidity.

(6) One of a brace of rodent-based slang terms to differentiate between the small-block (mouse motor) and big-block (rat motor) Chevrolet V8s built mostly in the mid-late twentieth century.

(7) In computing, a hand-held device used to control the cursor movement and select computing functions without using the keyboard.

(8) As a descriptor of hair color, a dull and lifeless blonde.

(9) In boxing, slang for black eye (hematoma).

(10) In early artillery, a match used in firing guns or in blasting.

(11) In the mathematics of set theory, a fragment of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the context).

(12) A small cushion for a woman's hair (obsolete).

(13) As mouse hair, an expression used to describe the suede-like covering used by some low-volume Italian car manufacturers for some interior fittings.

Pre 900: From the Middle English mous (plural mis) and Old English mūs (small rodent (also “muscle of the arm”)) (plural mȳs), from the Proto-Germanic mus, probably ultimately derived from the primitive Indo-European mus & muhs.  Germanic cognates include the Old Frisian mūs, the Old Saxon mūs, the Low German Muus, the Dutch muis, the Old High German mūs (German Maus), the Old Norse mús, the Swedish mus, the Danish mus, the Norwegian mus, the Icelandic mús & the Faroese mús.  Indo-European cognates include the Ancient Greek μῦς (mûs), the Latin mūs, the Spanish mur, the Armenian մուկ (muk), the Old Church Slavonic myšĭ, the Russian мышь (myšʹ), the Albanian mi, the Persian موش‎ (muš) & the Sanskrit मूष् (mūṣ).  Mouse & mousing are nouns & verbs, moused is a verb, mousy is an adjective and mousily is an adverb; the noun plural is mice (mouses a curious and best-avoided invention used to refer to the computer hardware).

Lindsay Lohan at Disneyland Resort, Anaheim, California with Mickey Mouse in 2003 (left) and, 21 years on, in 2024 (right).  Lindsay still looks good but Mickey hasn't aged a day.

The use to describe something (or more commonly someone) as timid or weak dates from the late fourteenth century and the phrase of diametric contrast “an or mouse” emerged in the 1620s.  The meaning "black eye" (or other dis-colored lump on the body) is from 1842 and is part of the jargon of boxing.  The familiar use in computing to describe a "small device moved by the hand over a flat surface to maneuver a cursor or arrow on a display screen" is from 1965, though the word had been applied to many objects with some vague remembrance to the rodent was applied to many objects since 1750 and was especially popular in Admiralty use.  The computer mouse picked up the name because the cord which connected it to the computer (which in the early days of PCs was usually a serial or bus connection) was compared to the creature’s tail; although the things increasingly are wireless and thus have no “tail” the name has stuck, divorced from the original imagery.  The preferred plural is mice (pronounced mahys); in the Old English it was mys and mice is thus an example if i-mutation.  The curious adoption of mouses as the plural for the computer mouse had no etymological or other basis and seems to have come into use to ensure references to the plastic pointing device wouldn’t be confused with rodents though it’s difficult to imagine that would often happen.  In the espionage community, MICE is a term used to refer to the four factors most likely to induce people to "work for the other side" by becoming traitor to their own country: Money, Ideology, Corruption & Ego.  In the hospitality industry, MICE is Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions which collectively describes a market segment distinct from activities such as weddings or birthday celebrations which can be held in the same physical space.  

Lindsay Lohan in Minnie Mouse mode, smoking.

The verb mouse (to hunt or catch mice) developed from the noun in the mid-thirteenth century and was from the earlier mousen while the noun mouse-hole (very small hole where mice go in and out, a hole only big enough to admit a mouse) dates from the early fifteenth century; from later that century, the noun mouser (cat that hunts mice) was an agent noun from the verb.  The adjective mousy (resembling a mouse) dates from 1812 was actually used mostly as a synonym of “mouse-like” to describe the demeanour of the timid although there are instances of use in zoology as an anatomical descriptor; after 1512 it came to describe hair color, now more memorably referred to as dirty blonde”.  The noun mousetrap (trap for catching mice) emerged in the mid-fifteenth century with figurative use noted since the 1570s.  The device however is an ancient design (which, conceptually, probably can’t be improved upon) and in the Old English was musfealle (literally "mouse-fall" after the imagery of the trap falling on the mouse); in the late fourteenth century Middle English it was mouscacche (literally "mouse-catch").

The figurative use of Mickey Mouse, the cartoon character created in 1928 by US animator Walt Disney (1901-1966) is interesting.  As an adjective meaning "small and worthless, petty, inconsequential" it was in use by 1951, presumably a reference to the less than exact accuracy in time-keeping by the popular, cheaply made Mickey Mouse wristwatch.  A similar negative connotation had emerged in 1935 to describe the innocuous but unimaginative dance-band music played as background in cartoon films.  However, by the 1950s, the Californian hot-rod movement had adopted Mickey Mouse as a contronym to describe the best and most desirable after-market equipment.

Small and big-block Chevrolet V8s compared, the small-block (mouse) to the left in each image, the big-block (rat) to the right.

Mouse and rat are informal terms used respectively to refer to the classic small (1955-2003 although still produced as a crate-engine) and big-block Chevrolet V8s (1958-2021 although still produced as a crate-engine).  The small-block was first named although the origin is contested; either it was (1) an allusion to “mighty mouse” a popular cartoon character of the 1950s, the idea being the relatively small engine being competitive with many bigger units from other manufacturers (which is some cases was true) or (2) an allusion to the big, heavy Chrysler Hemi V8s (the first generation 331 354 & 392 cubic inch (5.4. 5.8 & 6.4 litre) versions) being known as “the elephant”, the idea based on the widely held belief that elephants are scared of mice (which may actually be true although the reason appears not to be the long repeated myth it’s because the little rodents might climb up their trunk and it transpires they probably are more averse to bees).  The mouse (small-block) and rat (big-block) distinction is simple to understand: the big block is externally larger although confusingly the internal displacement of some mouse motors was greater than that of some rats.

The plural in Modern English

The tendency by the mid-1980s to differentiate between multiple rodents and multiple Computer-Aided Display Control Devices (as mice were first called) as mice and mouses respectively was curious.  While the onset of mass-market computing in the 1980s made some linguistic differentiation desirable (eg between program for software and programme for all other contexts), there has never been much chance, in any context, of confusing rodents with two or more computer mice.  Hopefully, mouses will go extinct.

One mouse, two mice.

That does beg the question of why multiple rodents are mice and not mouses given that would be the usual practice in English: add an “s”.  Among animals, the mouse is not unique in this variation; there’s also moose, ox and goose, none of which enjoy plurals created by adding an “s” and there’s no apparent consistency for were the model for oxen to be universal, Modern English would enjoy goosen, micen and moosen, an echo of Old English.  In Modern English, mostly the noun plural is made by adding an “s” but there are irregular plurals, many but not all of which are animal names.   

The first group of irregular nouns come from an obsolete strain of Old English and includes ox and oxen.  Old English was a West Germanic language spoken and written between the mid-fifth and late-eleventh centuries in parts of what are now England and southern Scotland; it’s in this the epic poem Beowulf was written.  Although unintelligible to speakers of Modern English, as it evolved, it retained some elements of Old English including the plural nouns oxen, children and brethren although the evolution was organic and not consistent; some other nouns, such as eye, house and hose used to be pluralized in a similar way, but those forms, eyen, housen and hosen are now dialectic or obsolete.  Hosen of course endures in Modern German, as in lederhosen but, there are at least five different ways German nouns can form the plural.

The second group of irregular plurals are mutants, also from Old English roots.  Examples include foot, goose, woman and louse which as plurals became feet, geese, women, and lice, all under the influence of German.  Mutated plurals are formed simply by changing the vowel sound of the singular, in a process called “umlaut”.  An “umlaut” is better known as the two-dot symbol seen above some German vowels, but there’s also a sense in which it’s a concept in technical linguistics.  While quite rare in Modern English, mutated plurals are in common use and include man & men, mouse & mice and tooth & teeth.

Finally, there are nouns where the singular and plural forms are the same, such as deer, fish, moose, sheep, shrimp and swine; these are called zero-plural nouns.  Many are animals, but there are others such as aircraft and species.  Even here, there are deviations such as the convention in science to use fishes to differentiate between one and multiple species of fish which makes sense in a way mouses never did.

The fish vs fishes thing does have history.  There are many references to fish in the Bible, never species, just fish singular or plural but translators rendered the plural as both “fish” and “fishes” even when not necessarily referring to actual fish.  Translators used “fish” in its plural sense when the Greek opsarion appeared, a word simply denoting food eaten with bread, which was often fish but it’s translated also as "fishes", the original spellings often "fysshe" and "fysshes".  Both the original 1611 and the 1789 revision of the King James Version are rendered thus:

John 21:8 And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes.

John 21:9 As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.

John 21:10 Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.

John 21:11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.

None of this offers any revelation of grammatical or theological truth but it does illustrate the murky history of English plurals.  So, in English, there is no consistent rule for noun plural formations.  Unfortunately, the language is what it is and all that can be done is to memorize weird plurals, just as one has to learn irregular verbs.

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus

The “mountain in labor” is imagery dating from Antiquity (thought to be a Greek proverb) and has since often been used in Western literature.  The idea is of speech in a literary or political context which promises much but delivers little (ie “over promising and under-delivering” or “much ado about little”).  It’s best remembered in the phrase used by the the Roman lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC) in the influential Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry (19 BC)): Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus (The mountains are in labor but only an absurd mouse will be born).

And don’t start like the old writer of epic cycles:

‘Of Priam’s fate I’ll sing, and the greatest of Wars.’

What could he produce to match his opening promise?

Mountains will labour: what’s born? A ridiculous mouse!

Typology

Typology (pronounced tahy-pol-uh-jee)

(1) The doctrine or study of types or pre-figurative symbols.

(2) A systematic classification or study of types and the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics.

(3) In linguistics, the study and classification of languages according to structural features, especially patterns of phonology, morphology, and syntax, without reference to their histories.

(4) In archaeology, the result of the classification of things according to their characteristics.

(5) In Biblical scholarship, the study of symbolic representation, particularly the origin and meaning of Scripture types.

(6) In theology, the doctrine or study of types or of the correspondence between them and the realities which they typify.

1835–1845:  A compound word, the construct being typo- + -logy.  The Middle English type (symbol, figure, emblem) was from the Latin typus, from the Ancient Greek τύπος (túpos) (mark, impression, type), from τύπτω (túptō) (I strike, beat).  The –ology suffix was also a construct, built from -o- (an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The English -logy suffix originates with loanwords from the Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned such as astrology from astrologia, the practice since the sixteenth century.  The French -logie is a continuation of the Latin -logia, ultimately from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  In Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (logos) (account, explanation, narrative), itself a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English, the suffix has long been productive, especially to form the names of scientific disciplines, analogous to names of disciplines loaned from the Latin, such as geology from geologia.  Original compositions of terms with no precedent in Greek or Latin become common in the late eighteenth century, sometimes imitating French or German templates; insectology (after the French insectologie (1766) and terminology after German terminologie (1801).  From the nineteenth century, the suffix was applied to words with no Greek or Latin origin, such as undergroundology (1820) and hatology (1837).  In the twentieth century, it began liberally to be applied to for amusing yet useful words (such as Kremlinology) and sometime satirically (garbageology, burgerology, footballology etc).  Typology & typologist are nouns and typological & typologic are adjectives; the noun plural is typologies.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

In pop-psychology, one of the most popular tests is the so-called "16 Personalities Test", a multi-choice exercise in typology which determines one’s place in the sixteen.  The model is that of the original Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which uses a combination of four letters to represent different personality types.  The four letters are drawn from:

(E) Extraversion: How much one focuses on the outer world versus inner world.

(I) Introversion: How much one focuses on the inner world vs. outer world.

(S) Sensing: How one processes information through the senses and concrete experience.

(N) Intuition: How one processes information through patterns and possibilities.

(T) Thinking: How one makes decisions based on objective analysis and logic.

(F) Feeling: How one makes decisions based on subjective values and emotions.

(J) Judging: How one prefers a structured, organized, and planned lifestyle.

(P) Perceiving: How one prefers a flexible, adaptable, and spontaneous lifestyle.

Bolted on to the four letter string is an additional –A or –T.  The (-A) applies to those who are Assertive Advocates who see things through a filter that values humanity and want to have people (in limited introverted doses) in their lives.  The (-T) people are Turbulent Advocates who are more likely to go beyond merely wanting people in their lives.

Lindsay Lohan, suspected ESFP

Most sites which list celebrities as illustrative examples of the type categorize Lindsay Lohan as ESFP (Entertainer) although some also put her in the INFJ (advocate) list and variation between tests is not unusual because a single different answer can change the allocation.  For an actor to be found to be "an entertainer" is obviously uncontroversial, the interest presumably in the appended -A or -T which would depend on variations in the answers.  The test has always been popular although the profession doesn’t regard as serious science and its origin actually was a reaction by someone who though the orthodox scientific approaches were needlessly complex.  In its original form it was first published in 1944 and has been often since revised.  Pseudoscience or not, it’s great fun and there are worse ways of deciding whether or not to marry one’s boyfriend.  Grouped into four categories, the sixteen types are:

Analysts

(1) Architect (INTJ-A / INTJ-T): Imaginative and strategic thinkers, with a plan for everything.

(2) Logician (INTP-A / INTP-T): Innovative inventors with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

(3) Commander (ENTJ-A / ENTJ-T): Bold, imaginative and strong-willed leaders, always finding a way – or making one.

(4) Debater (ENTP-A / ENTP-T): Smart and curious thinkers who cannot resist an intellectual challenge.

Diplomats

(5) Advocate (INFJ-A / INFJ-T): Quiet and mystical, yet very inspiring and tireless idealists.

(6) Mediator (INFP-A / INFP-T): Poetic, kind and altruistic people, always eager to help a good cause.

(7) Protagonist (ENFJ-A / ENFJ-T): Charismatic and inspiring leaders, able to mesmerize their listeners.

(8) Campaigner (ENFP-A / ENFP-T): Enthusiastic, creative and sociable free spirits, who can always find a reason to smile.

Sentinels

(9) Logistician (ISTJ-A / ISTJ-T): Practical and fact-minded individuals, whose reliability cannot be doubted.

(10) Defender (ISFJ-A / ISFJ-T): Very dedicated and warm protectors, always ready to defend their loved ones.

(11) Executive (ESTJ-A / ESTJ-T): Excellent administrators, unsurpassed at managing things – or people.

(12) Consul (ESFJ-A / ESFJ-T): Extraordinarily caring, social and popular people, always eager to help.

Explorers

(13) Virtuoso (ISTP-A / ISTP-T): Bold and practical experimenters, masters of all kinds of tools.

(14) Adventurer (ISFP-A / ISFP-T): Flexible and charming artists, always ready to explore and experience something new.

(15) Entrepreneur (ESTP-A / ESTP-T): Smart, energetic and very perceptive people, who truly enjoy living on the edge.

(16) Entertainer (ESFP-A / ESFP-T): Spontaneous, energetic and enthusiastic people – life is never boring around them.

The difference between between Typology and Allegory in Biblical scholarship

Typology is an approach to the interpretation of the Scriptures found in the New Testament itself and in the writings of the early Church, which sees certain people and events in the Old Testament (Types) as foreshadowing things fulfilled in the New Testament (Antitypes). This is related to, but distinct from, allegory.  The opinions of those in the early Church were never monolithic, the view being that Scripture had different levels of meaning which included the literal or historical sense of the text, but could also have an allegorical, or a typological meaning.  A text also has a moral sense and an anagogical or mystical sense. That a text had an allegorical or typological meaning did not negate the historical sense, it being just another way of understanding the text.

Typology stresses the connection between actual persons, events, places, and institutions of the Old Testament, and their corresponding reality in the New Testament which they foreshadowed.  Moses the Lawgiver foreshadows Christ, the ultimate Lawgiver.  Aaron, the high priest, foreshadows Christ, the ultimate High Priest.  Manna, which fed the people in the wilderness foreshadows the Christ the Heavenly Bread (the Eucharist), which provides ultimate spiritual nourishment.  The classic example is probably the The Burning Bush which foreshadows the Theotokos.  In the book of Exodus, God calls Moses on Mount Horeb from the midst of a bush which "was burning, yet it was not consumed".  The Church sees the Unburnt Bush on Horeb as a type of the Most Holy Theotokos, who gave birth to Christ while still while remaining a virgin.

Allegory finds hidden or symbolic meaning in the Old Testament, which is inherent in text and does not depend on a future historical fulfillment; for example, I Corinthians 9:8-10 sees the law forbidding the muzzling of an ox while it treads the corn as having the hidden meaning that a minister of the Gospel should be supported by the people he ministers to.  The Song of Solomon is also often interpreted as an allegory of God (the Lover), and His love for His people (the beloved). The allegorical approach also often sees multiple correspondences in a given narrative which illustrate some point. For example, St Paul explicitly uses allegory in Galatians 4, in which he sees the child of the slave woman (Hagar) as representing those under the Law, while the child of the free woman (Sarah) as representing those under the New Covenant, and the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael as representing the inferiority of the Old Covenant to the New (Galatians 4:21-31).

Button

Button (pronounced buht-n)

(1) A small disk, knob, or the like for sewing or otherwise attaching to an article, as of clothing, serving as a fastening when passed through a buttonhole or loop.

(2) Anything resembling a button, especially in being small and round, as any of various candies, ornaments, tags, identification badges, reflectors, markers, etc.

(3) A badge or emblem bearing a name, slogan, identifying figure, etc., for wear on the lapel, dress, etc.

(4) Any small knob or disk pressed to activate an electric circuit, release a spring, or otherwise operate or open a machine, small door, toy, etc.

(5) In botany, a bud or other protuberant part of a plant.

(6) In mycology, a young or undeveloped mushroom or any protuberant part of a fungus.

(7) In zoological anatomy, any of various small parts or structures resembling a button, as the rattle at the tip of the tail in a very young rattlesnake.

(8) In boxing slang, the point of the chin.

(9) In architecture, a fastener for a door, window, etc., having two arms and rotating on a pivot that is attached to the frame (also called turn button).

(10) In metallurgy, when assaying, the small globule or lump of metal at the bottom of a crucible after fusion.

(11) In fencing, the protective, blunting knob fixed to the point of a foil.

(12) In horology, alternative name for the crown, by which watch is wound.

(13) In the graphical user interface of computers and related devices, a small, button-shaped or clearly defined area that the user can click on or touch to choose an option.

(14) Slang term for the peyote cactus.

(15) A small gathering of people about two-thirds of the drinks are spiked with LSD.  Those who drink the un-spiked are the buttons responsible for babysitting the trippers (1960s west coast US use, now extinct).

(16) A series of nuts & bolts holding together a three-piece wheel.  Such wheels are very expensive because of the forging process and the ability to stagger offsets to create large lips.

(17) In boiler-making, the piece of a weld that pulls out during the destructive testing of spot welds

(18) In rowing, a projection around the loom of an oar that prevents it slipping through the rowlock.

(19) South African slang for methaqualone tablet.

(20) A unit of length equal to one twelfth of an inch (British, archaic).

(21) Among luthiers, in the violin-family instrument, the near semi-circular shape extending from the top of the back plate of the instrument, meeting the heel of the neck.

(22) In the plural (as buttons), a popular nickname for young ladies, whose ability to keep shirt buttons buttoned is in inverse proportion to the quantity of strong drink taken.

1275-1325: From the Middle English boto(u)n (knob or ball attached to another body (especially as used to hold together different parts of a garment by being passed through a slit or loop)), from the Anglo-French, from the Old & Middle French boton (button (originally, a bud)), from bouter & boter (to thrust, butt, strike, push) from the Proto-Germanic buttan, from the primitive Indo-European root bhau- (to strike); the button thus, etymologically, is something that pushes up, or thrusts out.  Records exist of the surname Botouner (button-maker) as early as the mid-thirteenth century (and the Modern French noun bouton (button) actually dates from the twelfth century).  It was cognate with the Spanish boton and the Italian bottone.  The pugilistic slang (point of the chin) was first noted in 1921.  First use of button as something pushed to create an effect by opening or closing an electrical circuit is attested from 1840s and the use in metallurgy and welding is based by analogy on descriptions of mushrooms.  The verb button emerged in the late fourteenth century in the sense of "to furnish with buttons" which by the early 1600s had extended (when speaking of garments) to "to fasten with buttons".  The button-down shirt collar was first advertised in 1916.  In fields in which there are structures or entities which in part or in whole are “buttonlike” in appearance, there are many uses of “button” as a descriptor (button mushroom, button seal, button willow, button quail etc), botany, zoology anatomy, architecture, cooking and engineering all using the word thus.  There are also a number of idiomatic forms including “cute as a button” (very cute), “on the button” (correct) and “buttoned down (or up)” (conservative to the point of being repressed.Button is a noun & verb, buttoning is a noun & verb, buttoned is a verb & adjective, buttonize is a verb, and buttonlike & buttonable are adjectives; the noun plural is buttons.

John Button (1987) (1933-2008; senator for Victoria (ALP (Australian Labor Party) 1974-1993), oil on canvas by Andrew Sibley (1933–2015), National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia.

New uses continue to emerge as technology evolves:  The phrase button-pusher to describe someone "deliberately annoying or provocative" was first recorded in the 1970s and hot-button issue appeared in political science journals as early as 1954, apparently a derivation of the brief use in the press of big red-button and hot-button to (somewhat erroneously) describe the mechanics of launching a nuclear attack.  Hot button issues can be useful for political parties to exploit but what the button triggers can shift with generational change: As late as the 1990s the Republican Party in the US used "gay marriage" as a hot button issue to mobilize their base but within 25 years the electoral universe had shifted and the issue no longer had the same traction; there had been generational change.  In the 1980s, the now mostly extinct button-pusher had been co-opted as a somewhat condescending description of photographers both by journalists and snobby art critics, the former suggesting some lack of affinity with words, the latter, an absence of artistic skill. 

How it came to be done: 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS 56 inch (1.42 m) single-panel screen.  There are no physical buttons on the dashboard, something which provoked a reaction and, for certain critical features, there's been a welcome "button revival".

In cars, as in aircraft, the shifting of controls for core and ancillary systems from individual buttons and switches to combined or multi-function controllers began to accelerate during the 1960s, a reaction to the increasing number of electrically activated functions being installed to the point where, if left individualised, in some of the more electronic vehicles, space for all the buttons would have been marginal and ergonomics worse even than it was.  Some very clever designs of multi-function controllers did appear but in the twenty-first century, by the time LED flat-screen technology had become elsewhere ubiquitous, it became possible to integrate entire system control environments into a single screen which, able to display either one or a combination of several sub-systems at a time, meant space became effectively unlimited, arrays of virtual buttons and switches available in layers.  That didn't mean thing became easier or more convenient to use but production costs were lower.  Of late, in response to consumer pressure, some manufacturers have admitted the approach went to far and what might be appropriate for someone sitting at their desk using a desktop PC (and the only way things can be done on a phone), might not be a good idea when driving a car at speed, in traffic.  Thus, for core critical functions (ie those drivers most often perform) such as adjusting settings on entertainment and HVAC (heating, ventilation & air conditioning) systems, buttons are making a welcome comeback.

For those who can remember the ways things used to be done: 1965 Jaguar Mark X 4.2 with burl walnut & red leather.  Jaguar's cockpits in the 1960s were among the most atmospheric of the era although, even at the time, the less than ideal ergonomics attracted criticism.  Something has been lost with the decline of the sensual, tactile, analogue world of buttons, knobs & switches.

There were buttons and there were switches.  Jaguar used toggle switches until US safety regulations in 1967 compelled a change to rocker switches with softer edges and less forward projection, similar concerns resulting in the top section of the dashboard gaining a padded vinyl covering.  Indeed, at the time, there was in the UK and Europe a suspicion US regulators might ban the use of decorative timber in car interiors and the models Mercedes-Benz released in 1971 & 1972 had none but the austerity didn't last, the veneers soon restored.  The functionality of the rocker switches was exactly the same as that of the toggles and they were certainly less prone to damage but for some the tactile experience was lacking, the ASMR less satisfying.  ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) describes the physical & psychological pleasure derived from specific stimuli (usually a sound).  A highly segmented market, among the aficionadi there are niches as varied as those who relish the clicking of an IBM Seletric typewriter or Model M keyboard, the sight & sound of South Korean girls on TikTok eating noodles, the mechanical precision of the fore-end slide of pump-action shotgun being operated or the flicking toggle switches.

The accounting departments of car manufacturers liked the change to touch-screens because it was cheaper to produce and install the things rather than an array of individual buttons, switches, instruments and lights, behind each of which ran at least one and sometimes several wires or lines, requiring schematics that could be baffling even to experts who needed sometimes to track (literally) miles of cabling.   While now using sometimes even more wiring, the new systems are capable although their long-term reliability remains uncertain and in many cases, a button or switch is both easier to use and falls more conveniently to hand; that makes sense because with buttons one's sense of touch (finger-tips most sensitive) effortlessly can distinguish whereas all of a touchscreen feel the same.  It would be possible to make a a touchscreen "feedback" different vibrations or sounds depending on which icon is touched but that may create more problems than it solves and is anyway a complicated solution to a simple problem.   It's better just to provide some switches.  

1991 Mercedes-Benz 600 SE (W140).

Built on the SWB (short-wheelbase) platform, the 600 SE was offered only during the W140's first year, the V12 sedans subsequently available only as the LWB (long-wheelbase (V140)) 600 SEL (S 600 after 1993 when the corporate naming system changed).  The duplication on the glovebox of the trunk (boot) lid badging was also a single-year fitting and even if a buyer opted for the "badge delete option" the characters on the glovebox remained.  The badge delete option had existed for a long time but enjoyed a spike in popularity beginning during the 1970s when it became obvious the more expensive models were more likely to attract the eye of terrorists, kidnappers and such.  While outfits like the Baader–Meinhof Gang (technically the RAF (Red Army Faction)) had some fondness for stealing smart cars (the BMW 2002 ti_i and Porsche 911S apparently their favorites), they didn't approve of those driving (or being driven in) conspicuously expensive vehicles.  On the 450 SEL 6.9 (V116, 1975-1980), the factory's delete option code was 261 and in the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990) it was ticked by those who like to go fast on the Autobahn but not attract the attention of kidnappers or assassins.  One advantage the 6.9 did confer was, if pursued by kidnappers, one could outrun the BMWs and all but the fastest Porsches.

The noun buttonology genuinely does exist.  It was a calque of the Swedish knappologi and used to refer to the fashion for pedantic and often pointless systematization.  The construct followed the Swedish model (knapp (button) +‎ -ologi, coined by Swedish author August Strindberg (1849–1912) and appearing in the short story De lycksaliges ö (The Isle of the Blessed) which although written in 1884, wasn’t published until 1891 when it appeared in the compilation Svenska öden och äventyr (Swedish Destinies and Adventures).  Buttonology is used most often as a generic term to decry the exaggerated, obsessive or pointlessly pedantic systematization, especially of trivial subjects but literally it can describe the study or categorization of buttons (in the sense of clothing fasteners).  In a light-hearted vein, in the training of software engineers and designers, it’s the component of the course focusing on user interfaces (where there can be many buttons).  In US military slang, buttonology is used of user interfaces generally.

Button porn: Centre console in 1991 Mercedes-Benz 600 SEL (V140).

Although a sight to delight button-nerds, "peak button" unfortunately coincided with the "biodegradable wiring incident" (1991-1995) in which the soy-based insulation for the cables deteriorated some decades before the supplier's projected end-of-life, the issue exacerbated by the taste of soy which would attract rodents and other creatures happy to chew on the stuff for a quick snack.  The basic shape of the gear selector knob dates from one introduced in 1971, the design a product of analysing data from the Swedish government's mandatory post mortems (autopsies) of road-accident fatalities (under Swedish law, such corpses were for 48 hours the property of the state).  What the pathologists' findings revealed was lives could be saved if engineers could devise as a shift lever handle too large to penetrate the eye socket.  While there's an element of the macabre in such research and it wasn't something the factory choose widely to publicize, the design was a classic example of what's called "passive safety".

A tanned young lady in a bikini with a piece of belly button jewellery (sold also as "navel jewellery").

The 140-series sedans (1991-1998) and companion coupé (C140, 1992-1999) were peak-button and it won't happen again, touch-screens now much cheaper to install and although buttons are making something of a comeback, they'll not again be seen on such a grand scale.  The 140-series cars were end-of-era stuff in many ways and the last of the old-style exercises in pure engineering with which Mercedes-Benz re-built its reputation in the post-war years; what followed would increasingly show the influence of accountants and the dreaded "sales department".  Most charismatic of the 140s were the early, 402 bhp (300 kw) 600s tuned for top end power; the 6.0 litre (365 cubic inch) V12 (M120; 1991-2001 (although it would appear in cars by other manufacturers until 2012)) would later be toned-down a little with a greater emphasis on mid-range torque and thoughts of the 8.0 litre V16 and W18 prototypes entering production were shelved as the economic climate of the early 1990s proved less buoyant than had been expected.  Subsequent concerns about climate changed doomed any hope of resurrection but as something of a consolation, AMG for a while offered larger versions of the V12 (as big as 7.3 litres (445 cubic inch)).  Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997) died in her hotel's hire-car (S 280 with a 2.8 litre straight-six (171 cubic inch)) version of the 140.

Coincidently, it was in the "peak button" era that Mercedes-Benz revised the convention of model nomenclature, inverting the alpha-numeric placement which had evolved since the 1920s.  Until the 1980s, old nnn.xxx convention (mostly) made sense once the logic behind the sequence had been explained but even then there had long been inconsistencies with the letters doing "double duty" and the numerals not always aligning with displacement (as well as one off aberrations like "219") but by the 1990s the proliferation of ranges and models had made the old system more or less unmanageable.  Every series of cars was changed but most affected were the various C140s and they were especially unusual in being the last of the “SECs” and the first of the “CLs” with a mid-life spent as an “S”, the confusing alpha-numeric trajectory of the C140 600 being:

1992 600 SEC (Not sold in North America)

1993 600 SEC (Global)

1994-1995 S 600 (Global)

1996-1997 S 600 (North America) & CL 600 (RoW (rest of the world))

1998 CL 600 (Global)

1999 CL 600 (North America only)

1993 Cadillac Allanté in standard form (left) and with “wood grain kit” fitted (right).  Cadillac in the peak-button era did its bit and for most owners the look either was “enough” or “too much” but although the Allanté was then a very different sort of Cadillac targeting a demographic younger than the marque’s usual buyer profile, third party suppliers (which for generations had been selling all sorts of Cadillac accessories of dubious taste such as Rolls-Royce style grills & badges in anodized gold or “neo-classical” external spare tyre housings) saw possibilities and offered “wood grain kits”, pieces of plastic appliqué which could be glued to the dashboard and anywhere else there was an accommodating surface.

1991 Cadillac Allanté: Although the lines were neither adventurous or innovative, it was an accomplished design.

The Cadillac Allanté (1987-1993) was an ambitious project, a two-door, two-seater roadster produced in an expensive, travel & labor-intensive process which required trans-Atlantic transport (in modified Boeing 747 freighters) for the bodies from Pininfarina’s Italian factory to Cadillac’s assembly line in Detroit where final assembly was undertaken.  The US industry had in the 1950s & 1960s dabbled with this approach and even then it made little financial sense but it was a time when indulgences could be tolerated as a part of “image building”.  The economics of the late 1980s were very different but Cadillac early in the decade had, with a mix of jealousy and lust, been pondering the numbers achieved by the Mercedes-Benz R107 SL roadster (1971-1989), then quite ancient in automotive terms yet still habitually selling in numbers which belied its high price and vintage design.  Sharing mechanical components with higher-volume models and with the tooling for the structure long since amortized, Cadillac knew the thing was absurdly profitable despite being visually almost unchanged since its debut.

1988 Cadillac Allanté: One tangible advantage was the Allanté's removable hard-top was of aluminum and thus a relatively svelte 58 Lbs (26 kg) compared with the R107's steel unit which weighed in at a hefty 96 (44).  Roof-mounted hoists were popular with R107 owners.

Thus the Allanté, the company’s first two-seat roadster since the 1930s and one with the exclusivity of being built by an Italian coach-builder famous for having designed some of the most admired Ferraris.  Mechanically, the Allanté was unchallenging in that it was built on a shortened version of an existing platform which meant the use of FWD (front wheel drive) and the 4.1 litre (250 cubic inch) HT-4100 V8, both factors which meant there was no need to build new assembly lines or make expensive changes to existing facilities.  While the notion of an expensive “FWD roadster” may now seem strange, dynamically it made less difference than might be imagined because the Mercedes-Benz R107 was no sports car and for the Allanté’s intended market, the advantage of more interior space was thought more important than behaviour on a skid-pan.  The HT engine however proved more troublesome although that was a product of design flaws, not its placement in the Allanté.

Buttons come in many shapes, shades and sizes although most still are circular.  A button with four "sew holes" is called a "four-eye button".

The critical response was unexpectedly favorable.  In a comparison test published in the in February 1989 edition of C&D (Car and Driver magazine, not noted for being lavish in its praise of the US industry’s output), the writers declared it a better car than the Mercedes-Benz 560 SL (which may seem a slight achievement given the R107 was then some 18 years old and on a platform which had been designed in the late 1960s) and didn’t much dwell on either the Cadillac being some 15% cheaper nor it delivering slightly better fuel economy; their judgement was all about the driving experience likely to be typical of buyers (many of whom probably wouldn't notice the difference between FWD and RWD) although perhaps the sight of the “Pininfarina” script on the flanks lent some rose-tinting to their spectacles.  The testers noted the US-Italian hybrid was better suited to the urban conditions where most people would be operating most of the time, finding the Allanté more nimble and decidedly more modern although what was left unstated was it was remarkable the trans-continental effort managed to be only slightly better in some aspects than what was a design two decades old and in its final months.

Last days of the baroque: 1989 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL in Light Ivory over Brasil Dark Brown leather.

The RoW (rest of the world) R107s & C107s didn't suffer the disfiguring modifications (headlights for the whole model life, bumper bars after 1973) fitted to the NA (North America) market cars to ensure compliance with various US regulations.  In the US, there's now a minor industry importing the RoW headlights and bumper bars to restore cars to the appearance the designers intended. 

In one area though, the 560 SL proved its mettle, the 5.5 litre (338 cubic inch) V8 out-running the Cadillac by 10 mph (16 km/h) in top speed and effortlessly out-accelerating it in any range about 25 mph (40 km/h), the advantage increasing as speeds rose.  Despite all the effort and expense, in some seven years, fewer than 21,500 Allantés were built while Mercedes-Benz shipped 237,287 R107s plus 62,888 LWB coupés (C107, 1971-1981) on the same platform, an average annual build rate over 18 years of some 17,000, two-thirds of which were exported to North America where, in places like Los Angeles, they were for decades the preferred (one suspects almost obligatory) transport for types such as interior decorators, successful hairdressers, the wives of cosmetic surgeons and bare-shouldered Hollywood starlets.  Had Lindsay Lohan in 1989 been of age, she'd have been at the wheel of a 560 SL.  Cadillac has had its failures (infamously the Cimarron) but it's believed never to have booked more of a loss on a single model than was the accountants' final reckoning of the (by then virtual) red-ink in which the Allanté's numbers were written.  By comparison, the write-down suffered with the cancellation of the division's remarkable Blackwing V8 (2018-2020) was relatively modest.  

1933 Cadillac 355C Coupe Convertible.  In 1933, Cadillacs had buttons but not many because there was then not so much stuff to activate although a valve-radio was on the options list.  As a nice touch (and a hint Cadillac understood their target market), a “golf bag compartment” was fitted behind the passenger’s door.  The external trunk and folding luggage rack were optional extras.

Introduced for 1931 as a lower cost range because the effects of the Great Depression drastically had reduced demand for Cadillac’s V12 & V16 lines, the V8-powered 355s (1931-1935) were, until the Allanté in 1987, the last Cadillac to be offered as a two-seat convertible although La Salle (its lower-cost stable mate) would offer the style as late as 1940, the year the brand was retired after a seven year stay of execution.  Cadillac called the coachwork a “Convertible Coupe” because “roadster” was associated with smaller, lighter machines; had it been built in England this would be dubbed a DHC (drop head coupé) while continental manufacturers would have preferred “cabriolet”.  In the elaborate Mercedes-Benz naming system it would be a “Cabriolet A” which designated “a two, door, two seat cabriolet with no rear quarter glass panes”.  The existence of supplemental passenger accommodation in the rumble seat does not affect the use of “Cabriolet A” because (1) Daimler-Benz never created a designation to describe the configuration (although “Cabriolet E” seems not to have been allocated if the factory is in the mood for retrospection) and (2) “Cabriolet A” anyway included certain models with provision for a third occupant in the rear of the passenger compartment. 

1933 Cadillac 355C Coupe Convertible. 

Somewhat unusually for the industry, Cadillac’s alpha-numerics were from day one locked in (355A (1931), 355B (1932), 355C (1933), 355D (1934) & 355E (1935)) so the “A” was not a retrospective appendage, unlike the Chrysler 300A which (informally) became the description of the 1955 C-300 only after, impressed by the sales of what had been intended as a one-off model to homologate parts for use in competition, the company for 1956 released the 300B.  Retiring the 355 range after 1935 meant Cadillac in 1939 never had to face the problem which afflicted not only Chrysler (when updating the 300H) but also bra manufacturers (what to slot-in between a 32H & 32J?) and the USAF (US Air Force) (when updating the Boeing B-52H).  The issue always was the desire to avoid an “I” being confused with a numeric “1”.  Chrysler and Boeing solved the problem by skipping the letter “I” and going straight to “J” while in the bra business there are very few “I cups”, the usual convention being to offer an “HH” (“double-H” in retail slang) or a “J”.  Although nominally a two-seater, three (snugly) could be accommodated and two more could fit in the rumble seat, the so-called “mother-in-law seat”, an appellation which makes most sense if she’s put there while the soft-top is in the raised position.  Unlike the Allanté, the 355 Coupe Convertibles were bodied in the US by Fisher, a GM (General Motors) coach-building division which was shuttered in 1984.

Reset button on early (clone) PC.

The stability of the PC (personal computer) has improved since August 1981 when the first IBM PC-1 appeared, triggering several waves of transformative changes which profoundly have altered the world; the AI (artificial intelligence) cycle is merely the latest of these “revolutions” and is unlikely to be the last.  One feature common on PCs during their first two decades of existence was the “reset button”, an oft-resorted to device because of the propensity of the things to “freeze” or lock-up, rendering the keyboard (until the late 1980s, mice were rare, expensive and used mostly by a lunatic fringe) useless.  While it might seem a redundant feature given each machine came with an on/off switch or button, the two performed distinct functions related to the limitations of the hardware and operation systems of the era.  The on/off switch performed a “cold start”, cutting and then restoring power to all components, an inherently slow and potentially stress-inducing process.  By contrast, the reset button triggered a “warm reset” which electrically asserted the CPU’s (central processing unit) RESET line (which, as implemented by many manufacturers, also often often reset the system bus) without cutting power; what it did was immediately restart execution at the firmware’s entry point (BIOS (basic input output (I/O) system) on genuine IBM PCs) while leaving the power-flow to the system uninterrupted.  The most obvious practical advantage of using the reset button was a faster restart and a reduction in mechanical wear on hard & and floppy drives by not subjecting them to spin-down & spin-up cycles.

Front panel on early (clone) PC.

The key (to the right, below the on/off power switch) enabled users to "lock" the keyboard, preventing use of the machine.  This mechanical security layer was required because the early operating systems had no accounts requiring a login and no password protection, meaning anyone who turned the thing on had unfettered access (very few programs offered application-level security).  The "Turbo" button was there to permit users to "throttle-back" to CPU to the 4.77 MHz speed used by the 8086 & 8088 CPUs in the original PCs.  That was needed to ensure some older software (especially games) would still run on newer hardware, running at a dazzling 7.16 or 9.54 MHz.  

Because almost all the early operating systems (PC/MS-DOS, CP/M-86 and the various UNIX ports) had no memory protection and only primitive fault recovery, a single misbehaving program could (1) disable the interrupts upon which hardware depended, (2) corrupt the system state and (3) make the keyboard wholly unresponsive.  Not only did all these things happen, they happened with some frequency so the advantages of the reset button offered were a real benefit to users.  The hardware also enjoyed a protection layer because the power switches on early PCs were "hard mechanical mains" switches, often directly switching line voltage which meant rapid power cycling could stress the power supply, cause voltage transients harmful to expansion cards and risk data corruption or loss because robust “parking” mechanisms were rare on the early hard drives.  As operating systems gained protected mode, multitasking, and graceful reboot mechanisms, the need for reset buttons diminished and gradually they disappeared from the standard specification.

Reset button: Sergey Lavrov (left) and crooked Hillary Clinton, Geneva, 2009.  The delicious irony is that one of crooked Hillary's few diplomatic successes came from a mistake in translation.  

Having failed in 2008 to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination to contest that year’s presidential election, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947) between 2009-2013 to the consolation prize of becoming US secretary of state, the job she decided was a prelude to her becoming POTUS in 2016, a position to which she believed she was entitled.  Things didn’t quite work out as she’d hoped and her tenure at Foggy Bottom was marked by scandal (related, predictably, to her chronic untruthfulness) but one potential “diplomatic incident” was allowed to pass without adverse comment on the basis “she meant well”.  Following a not untypically troubled recent past, Barack Obama (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) decided to try to improve Washington’s relations with the Kremlin.  As a gesture in this vein, in 2009, crooked Hillary presented Sergey Lavrov (b 1950 Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2004) with a red button (of the type often used in heavy machinery as an “emergency stop”) on which was printed “Reset” and a Roman alphabet transliteration of the Russian Cyrillic перегрузка (peregruzka).  The idea was, with the arrival in Washington of a new administration, the two states should “re-start” their relationship and try to pretend to forget as much as possible of the past.  Unfortunately, the department got the translation wrong and used the Russian word for “overload”; it should have read перезагрузка (perezagruzka).  Mr Lavrov however was also at the time anxious to improve things and accepted the gift in the spirit in which it was intended, he and crooked Hillary pushing the button simultaneously for several photo opportunities.

Lindsay Lohan’s belly button adorned  with belly button jewellery, Los Angeles, 2009.

The noun buttonology genuinely does exist.  It was a calque of the Swedish knappologi and used to refer to the fashion for pedantic and often pointless systematization.  The construct followed the Swedish model (knapp (button) +‎ -ologi, coined by Swedish author August Strindberg (1849–1912) and appearing in the short story De lycksaliges ö (The Isle of the Blessed) which although written in 1884, wasn’t published until 1891 when it appeared in the compilation Svenska öden och äventyr (Swedish Destinies and Adventures).  Buttonology is used most often as a generic term to decry the exaggerated, obsessive or pointlessly pedantic systematization, especially of trivial subjects but literally it can describe the study or categorization of buttons (in the sense of clothing fasteners).  Obviously, practitioners of buttonology are buttonologists.  In a light-hearted vein, in the training of software engineers and designers, it’s the component of the course focusing on user interfaces (where there can be many buttons).  In US military slang, buttonology is used of user interfaces generally.

Childless cat lady Taylor Swift (b 1989) with Ragdoll Benjamin Button, named after the eponymous character in the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Time Magazine cover for “Person of the Year” edition, 25 December, 2023.  Ragdoll cats make good stoles because (attributed to a genetic mutation), they tend to “go limp” when picked up.

An owner of three most contented felines, gleefully, Ms Swift in 2024 embraced the appellation “childless cat lady” after wide publicity of its earlier use as a slur by James David (J.D.) Vance (b 1984; VPOTUS since 2025), something prompted by Mr Vance being named as Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) running-mate in the 2024 US presidential election.  The now famous phrase had been used in a 2021 interview with then Fox News host Tucker Carlson (b 1969) when he lamented the decline in the state of the nation: “…we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”  Mr Vance may have struck an electoral chord because while Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president 2021-2025) presumably gained the childless cat lady vote, the Trump-Vance ticket won the election: 77,302,580 (49.8%) to 75,017,613 (48.3%) in the popular vote and 312 to 226 in the Electoral College on a turnout of 64.1%.

Pressed or pushed, many buttons needed.

The literal (physical) button-hole was noted in tailoring first during the 1560s, the figurative sense "to detain (someone) unwillingly in conversation” dating from 1862, a variation of the earlier button-hold (1834) and button-holder (1806), all based on the image is of holding someone by the coat-button so as to detain them.  The adjectival push-button (characterized by pressing a button used to activate something) emerged in 1945 as a consequence of the increasing public appreciation of the extent to which military weapons systems had become electronically controlled.  The earlier form “push-buttons" was from 1903, a modification of the noun push-button (button pressed with the finger to effect some operation) from 1865, then applied to mechanical devices.  The earlier adjectival form was “press-button” (1892) derived from the noun (1879).  For no apparent reason, it was the earlier “press of a button” which tended in the 1950s & 1960s to be preferred to “push of a button” to express the concern felt at the ease with which the US and USSR could trigger global thermo-nuclear war although “flick of a switch” also achieved much currency.  None were exactly usefully descriptive of a complex chain of events but it’s true that in a launch of nuclear weapons, many buttons and switches still are involved.

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996) during “button-theory” test session.  Button theory involves trying on “button-up” tops of various sizes and subjecting each to normal human movement, the test “passed” when no buttons “pop open”.

In fashion, the number of a top’s buttons “left undone” is a signifier of various things and the range extends from “all done up” to “all undone”, the latter usually restricted to catwalks and red carpets when stability of fabric sometimes is achieved with the use of adhesive, double-sided tape.  While not culturally specific, the meanings signified by the number left undone (usually from top-to-bottom) can differ depending on certain circumstantial variables (time, place, temperature, wearer, presence of paparazzi etc).

No fear of button theory: Button theory suggests buttons can be done-up or undone.  Noted empiricist Lindsay Lohan has for some years been undertaking a longitudinal study to test theory.

The fear of buttons is koumpounophobia, the construct being the Modern Greek κουμπί (koumpí) +‎ -phobia and the word, like many describing phobias is a neologism.  Koumpi was from the Ancient Greek κομβίον (kombíon) translates as button in its two literal senses (a fastener for clothing or a device for instrument or remote mechanical control).  A button in Greek is thus κουμπί (koumpí) (the plural κουμπιά) and the verb is κουμπώνω (koumpóno).  In the Ancient Greek the lexemic unit koump- didn’t exist although it did have κομβίον (kombíon (which exists in Modern Greek as komvíon)) which meant buckle.  It may seem as strange omission because Ancient Greek had κουμπούνω, (koumpouno) which meant “to button” but the root was κύαμος (komos or koumos) meaning “broad bean” and, because there were no buttons in the Greece of Antiquity, they used appropriately sized & shaped beans as clothes fasteners.  The construct of koumpouno (to button) koum(os) + + πονέω (poneo) (to work; to exert), the idea of a bean which is used again and again.  The suffix -phobia (fear of a specific thing; hate, dislike, or repression of a specific thing) was from the New Latin, from the Classical Latin, from the Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía) and was used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing (the idea of a hatred came later).  In medicine, the absence of the belly button is a rare congenital defect, the medical term for which is omphalocele, usually something ultimately of no physiological significance but because it can cause psychological distress, plastic surgeons can re-construct one, a relatively simple procedure.  The alternative for an omphalocelic is to shun omphalophiliacs and hook up with someone who suffers omphalophobia (fear of the belly button); they should live happily ever after.  The phobia koumpounophobia is unrelated and references only the manufactured objects.

Lindsay Lohan in trench coat buttons up.  As fashionistas know, with a trench the belt is tied, only the military buckling up.

So, in the narrow technical sense, an etymologist might insist koumpounophobia is the fear of clothing fasteners rather than buttons of all types but that seems not helpful and it’s regarded as a generalised aversion and one said sometimes associated with kyklophobia (the fear of circles or other round objects) and especially the surprisingly common trypophobia (fear of holes (particularly if clustered or in some way arranged in a pattern)).  Estimates of the prevalence of the condition have been given by some but these are unverified and it’s not clear if those who for whatever reason prefer zips, Velcro or some other fastener are included and with phobias, numbers really should include only those where the aversion has some significant impact on life.  The symptoms suffered can include (1) an inability to tolerate the sight, sound, or texture of buttons, (2) feelings of panic, dread, or terror when seeing or thinking about buttons, (3) an acknowledgment that the fear is either wholly irrational or disproportionate to the potential danger.  Koumpounophobia reactions are usually automatic & uncontrollable and the source may be unknown or experiential (exposure to some disturbing imagery or description of buttons or an actual event involving buttons such as swallowing one when a child).  Like many phobias, the physical reactions can include a rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, inability to speak or think clearly, tightening of stomach muscles, and an overwhelming desire to escape from button-related situations.  All are likely to involve an anxiety attack to some extent and the recommended treatment is the staggered exposure therapy used for many phobias; the patient slowly learning to wear, use and live with buttons; antidepressants, tranquillisers & beta-blockers are now considered medications of last resort.

Buttons are hard to avoid.

What is sometimes treated as koumpounophobia can be a manifestation of a different phobia.  In the literature there are examples of buttons triggering anxiety when touched or viewed but the reaction was actually to texture, color or a resemblance to something (typically a face, mouth or teeth).  The button is thus incidental to the reaction in the same way that those with mysophobia (in popular use the germophobic) may react to buttons because of the association with uncleanliness.  One documented aspect of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is that many sufferers immediately wash their hands after touching a button; the increased prevalence of this behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to buttons touched by other (keyboards, elevators etc) is not thought indicative of a phobia but would be if it manifests as life-long behaviour.

Apple Magic Mouse, Multi-Touch Surface in white @ US$99.00 (left), Logitech Signature M650 L, full-size wireless two-button Scroll Mouse with Silent Clicks in blue @ US$37.99 (centre) and Steve Jobs' vision of hell: Canon 5565B001 X Mark I Slim 3-in-1 wireless mouse with keypad calculator @ US$49.95. 

Steve Jobs (1955-2011; co-founder, and sometime chairman & CEO of Apple) was said to have an aversion to buttons, something linked to his fondness for button-free turtleneck clothing but given he spent decades using keyboards without apparent ill-effect, it’s doubtful a clinician would diagnose koumpounophobia and it's more likely he was just convinced of the technological advantages of going button-less.  Without buttons, manufacturing processes would be cheaper, water-proofing devices like iPhones would become (at least theoretically) possible and upgrades would no longer be constrained by static buttons, the user interface wholly virtualized on one flat panel, able to be changed (the industry's term for "change" is "upgrade" although users don't always agree there has been an improvement) purely in software.  It apparently started with the button-less Apple mouse, the industry legend being Mr Jobs saw a prototype (which the designers regarded as nothing more than speculative) and insisted it become Apple’s standard device.

Whether or not it happened that way, the story is illustrative of the way business was done at Apple and it’s notable his veto on offering a stylus with which to interact with apps or the operating system didn’t survive his death.  His response to the idea of a stylus was reportedly “yuk” and he seems to have decided all his users would think the same way and probably he was right, Apple’s users tending usually to do what Apple tells them to do.  Indeed, one of reasons Apple has found the Chinese market so receptive to the iPhone is that the company's approach accords with "the Chinese way": First, their parents tell them what to do, then their teachers tell them what to do, then the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) tells them what to do; Apple found it most agreeable they also did what it told them to do.  However, for those who find the sleek Apple mouse better to behold than use, third-party products with buttons and scroll wheels are available, sometimes for half the cost of the genuine article.  Since the death of Mr Jobs, Apple has relented on the "stylus question".

Shiny on the outside: Finished in Bianco Avus over black leather with Rosso Corsa (racing red) instruments, of the 400 Ferrai Enzos (2002-2004) chassis 133023 (2003) was the only one the factory painted white.  Some Ferraris really suit white, notably the elegant 365 GT4 2+2 and the successor 400 and 412 models (1972-1989).

The dreaded “Ferrari sticky buttons” is a well-known phenomenon, the stickiness coming from the rubberized material preferred by the factory because of the superior feel offered.  However, under just about any climatic conditions, continuous use will induce a deterioration which resembles melting, "mushiness" the final outcome.  The internet is awash with suggestions, the simplest of which involves products like rubbing alcohol (the use of which can cause its own destructiveness) and the consensus seems to be that in many cases only replacement buttons will produce a satisfactory result.  The choice is between obtaining the real Ferrari part-number (if available) with the knowledge the problem will re-occur or use third-part replacements which are made of a more durable material, the disadvantage being the feel won’t be quite the same and there’s a reluctance among some to use non-factory parts, an attitude enforced by the "originality police". 

Sticky on the inside: Ferrari 485 California F1 gearbox buttons, sticky (left) and not (right).

Ferrari does use the suspect material for a reason and it’s applied to interior components such as trim, bezels, buttons & switches, and heating, ventilation & air-conditioning panels.  The coatings are usually referred to as “soft-touch” and designers like them for the soft, velvet-like feel imparted.  Used also on computer mice and electronic remote controls, the low gloss sheen is in cars helpful because being absorptive, glare is reduced and Ferrari uses both a clear and black finish.  It’s an issue not exclusive to Ferraris although owners of those do seem most concerned and while using rubbing alcohol might sound a tempting Q&D (quick & dirty) fix, for those with sticky buttons this is probably a job best left to experts of which there are now a few and they're finding business good.