Duplicity

Duplicity (pronounced doo-plis-i-tee or dyoo-plis-i-tee)

(1) Deceitfulness in speech or conduct, as by speaking or acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same matter; double-dealing.

(2) An act or instance of such deceitfulness.

(3) In law, the act or fact of including two or more offenses in one count, or charge, as part of an indictment, thus violating the requirement that each count contain only a single offense.

1400–1450: From the Late Middle English, from the Old French duplicite, from the Late Latin duplicitatem (nominative duplicitas (doubleness)).  Technically, the word wa borrowed from Latin duplicāre (double), present active infinitive of duplicō and the Medieval Latin duplicitās differed with ite replacing itās.  The notion is of being "double" in one's conduct ultimately is derived from the Ancient Greek diploos (treacherous, double-minded) which translates literally as "twofold, double".  Related in Medieval Latin was ambiguity, noun of quality from duplex, genitive (duplicis (two-fold)).

Duplicity good and bad

Because such conduct is inherent to human interaction, there are many words either similar in meaning or a synonym of duplicity.  Duplicity is the form of deceitfulness that leads one to give two impressions, either or both of which may be false.  Deceit is the quality that prompts intentional concealment or perversion of truth for the purpose of misleading.  The quality of guile leads to craftiness in the use of deceit; one uses guile and trickery to attain one's ends. Hypocrisy is the pretence of possessing virtuous qualities such as sincerity, goodness or devotion.  Fraud refers usually to the practice of subtle deceit or duplicity by which one may derive benefit at another's expense.  Trickery is the quality that leads to the use of tricks and habitual deception.  In modern English usage, the most common sense of duplicity is “deceitfulness.”  The roots of this meaning are in the initial dupl from the Latin duplex (twofold, or double).  We do seem a duplicitous lot.

Alexander Haig (1924–2010; US Secretary of State 1981-1982) & Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; US President 1981-1989) (left) and Lord Carrington (1919–2018; UK Foreign Secretary 1979-1982) & Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK Prime Minister 1979-1990) (right).

To accuse someone duplicity is usually to allege or suggest something negative, the idea that someone has acted in a manner perhaps not dishonest but certainly misleading or dishonorable.  However there are fields of endeavor where the successfully duplicitous are often admired and the most Machiavellian can be held in awe.  In international relations, it’s true in the upper reaches of diplomacy.

Duplicity, art and science: Haig and Carrington, the White House, 26 February 1981.

More than General Colin Powell (b 1937; US Secretary of State 2001-2005) and more even than General Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969; US President 1953-1961), General Alexander Haig (1924-2010) was an exemplar of that uniquely Washington DC creature, the political soldier, whose career shuttled between the military, diplomacy and politics.  After a meeting in 1981, Haig was heard to remark the UK Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, was a "duplicitous bastard".  Beyond the beltway, that would be a disparaging comment, but, in the world of international diplomacy, it’s more an expression of admiration of professional skill.

Mean Girls (2004), a story of duplicity, low skulduggery, Machiavellian manipulation, lies & deceit.  As a morality tale, the message can be reduced to: “Women would rather hear brilliant lies than honest truths”.

Perfidious

Perfidious (pronounced per-fid-e-us)

Deliberately faithless; treacherous; deceitful.

1590-1600: From the Latin perfidiōsus (faithless, dishonest, treacherous), the construct being perfidia + -ōsus.  The source of perfidia was perfidus (faithless), the construct being per (through) + fidēs (trust), from the primitive Indo-European per + the Proto-Italic feiðos from the root bheydh.  The English suffix –ious (full of, overly, prone to), used to form adjectives from nouns, was from the Latin –ōsus, from the Proto-Italic -owonssos from -o-wont-to-s, the last form a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes, (1) -went- (also -wont-) and (2) -to-.  The Latin was related to the Ancient Greek -εις (-eis).  Perfidious is an adjective, perfidiously is an adverb and perfidiousness is a noun; the noun plural is perfidiousnesses.

UK prime-minister Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957, later Lord Avon) with his French counterpart, Guy Mollet (1905–1975; French prime-minister 1956-1957), March 1956.

Used memorably in the phrase perfidious Albion (Albion is a poetic name for Britain), the adjective perfidious is an Anglophobic pejorative phrase used in histories of international relations to refer to diplomatic slights or acts of treachery and infidelity by the British (and especially the English).  There being many from which to choose, complaints about British foreign policy have not been without foundation but duplicity is the lingua franca of diplomacy and the UK Foreign Office probably tended just to be better at it than many.  In the Foreign Office, a word like "faithless" is thought "charming but not a great deal of help" and if they're thought manipulative or duplicitous in their dealings with others, it's because that's just the way business is done.  It's not known if terms like "faithless" or "perfidious Albion" were on Lindsay Lohan's mind while she was tweeting in support of the #remain cause on the day of the Brexit referendum.

Before Broken English (1979) changed it all: Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), Faithless (1978 NEMS Cat: NEL 6012), repackaged re-release of Dreamin' My Dreams (1976). 

Although the sentiment exists in documents from the thirteenth century, origin of the phrase in its current form, is usually attributed to Augustin Louis de Ximénès (1728-1817), a French playwright who included the line "Attaquons dans ses eaux la perfide Albion" (Let us attack perfidious Albion in her waters) in his poem L'Ère des Français (1793), written at the start of the French Revolutionary wars.  In the Second Reich, das perfide Albion became frequently used especially during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) and later the Duce (Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) liked it; Mussolini complaining of perfida Albione whenever British foreign policy didn’t suit, which was often.  Even the English aren’t averse to its use.  Anthony Eden, (sort of) answering some criticism from the Quai d'Orsay over his government's conduct during the 1956 Suez crisis, answered simply “perfidious Albion”.

Bonk

Bonk (pronounced bongk)

(1) A bump on the head (usually not severe).

(2) To hit, strike, collide etc; any minor collision or blow.

(3) In slang, a brief intimacy between two people, usually with a suggestion of infidelity; often modified with the adjective quick and only ever used where the act is consensual (less common in North America).

(4) In sports medicine, a condition of sudden, severe fatigue in an endurance sports event, typically induced by glycogen depletion (also in the phrase “hit the wall”).

(5) In snowboarding, to hit something with the front of the board, especially in midair.

(6) In zoology, an animal call resembling "bonk" (such as the call of the pobblebonk (any of various Australian frogs of the genus Limnodynastes)).

1931: A creation of Modern English, the origin remains uncertain but most suspect it was likely imitative of sounds of impact (like bong, bump, bounce or bang) and thus onomatopoetic.  As a slang term for an affaire de coeur, use was first noted in 1975 and has always, depending on context, carried an implication of something illicit or quickly done; purely recreational though always consensual.  The use in sports medicine describing the condition of glycogen depletion references a metaphorical impact as in “hitting the wall”, the first known use in 1952 in endurance sports medicine.  Bonkee, as a descriptor for a "woman of loose virtue", appears to have been a 2014 creation which never caught on which is a shame because there are all sorts of cases where the companion terms "bonker" & "bonkee" might have been handy .  The form "bonkers", referring to the deranged, dated from circa 1957 and was apparently unrelated to the earlier naval slang for “drunk” but alluded rather to what could be the the consequence of a “bonk on the head”.  The third-person singular simple present is bonks, the present participle, bonking and the simple past and past participle, bonked.  Bonk & bonking are nouns & verbs, bonker is a noun, bonky is an adjective, bonked is a verb and bonkers is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bonks.

Bonkers: "Last Call" 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 in "Plum Crazy" (one of the retro colors which reprised those used by Chrysler in the "psychedelic era" of the late 1960s).  Some 3300 were produced (one of the many batches in Dodges "Last Call" programme), many of which soon were advertised for sale at well above the MRRP (manufacturer's recommended retail price), some believed to have been placed in long-term storage with expectation of future sales for greater profits, a strategy with a patchy record of success.  The yellow plastic fittings were installed to prevent damage during shipping to dealers.  The factory didn't envisage them becoming consumer items so they were described, prosaically, as “splitter guards” but leaving them attached after purchase became a cult and some cars were even retro-fitted, despite dealers cautioning the pieces weren't specifically molded to ensure a perfect fit so dirt and moisture were prone to being trapped in the gaps and this could scuff the paint.  They were referred to also as “damage guards” and “scuff guards” but the more imaginative dubbed them “underwires” and this is believed the first time that term entered the large lexicon of automotive slang.

The Demon 170 was released as part of Dodge’s “Last Call” programme which marked the end of the corporation's run of high-performance V8s for passenger cars, a tradition dating from 1950 when the first 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) "Firepower" (soon to be fetishized as "Hemi") V8 debuted.  Offered in a bewildering array of configurations in a process which was something like Nellie Melba's (1861-1931) "farewell" tours, the SRT Demon 170 was reckoned the most bonkers of a generally bonkers lot.  Rated at 1,025 HP (764 kW), the factory claimed it could accelerate from 0-60 mph (100 km/h) in 1.66 seconds with an ET (elapsed time) in the standing ¼ mile (402 metres for those who insist) of 8.91 seconds (terminal speed 151 mph (243 km/h)), setting the mark as the quickest ever standard production car over the classic distance, a reasonable achievement for something weighing 4275 lbs (1939 kg).  By world standards it was also very cheap and on the basis of cost-breakdown vs performance, there was nothing like it on the planet.  In British (and other English-speaking regions although rare in the US) use, "bonkers" can and often is used in an entirely non-pejorative way to suggest something or someone verging on the irrational but in some way astonishing, admirable or inspiring.  Road cars with 600+ horsepower V8 & V12 engines are of course bonkers but we'll miss them when they're gone and it would seem the end is nigh.  Greta Thunberg (b 2003) has expressed no regret at the looming extinction of this species.  

Bonking Boris

Hand-turned fish bonkers on sale in Jaffray, a village in the south-western Canadian province of British Columbia (left) and the front page of The Sun (7 September 2018; right), a tabloid which rarely avoids an alluringly attractive alliterative alternative.  

The noun bonker describes (1) a short, blunt hardwood club used by fisherpersons efficiently to dispatch (ie bonking them dead) just-caught fish or (2) according to the Murdoch tabloid The Sun, the adulterous Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).  A bonk by Boris or the club and a not wholly dissimilar outcome ensues; a one-time employer called bonking Boris "ineffably duplicitous" and the estranged (now former) Mrs Johnson presumably agreed.  At the time, the former prime minister had "a bit of previous" in extra-marital bonking and when this one was announced, it was with an alliterative flourish not seen since the headline “BORIS BACKS BREXIT”.  His resignation from Theresa May's (Lady May, b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) government was unrelated to bonking (as far as is known) and came, in July 2018, three days after a cabinet meeting at Chequers (the prime minister's country house), where agreement was reached on Mrs May’s Brexit strategy, a document compromised by the need to make a nonsensical impossibility look like good policy.  That can be done but it requires rare skill to be in 10 Downing Street and it's been some time since that could be said. 

Freed by his resignation from the burdens of the Foreign Office, bonking Boris was clearly unconcerned at rumors his opponents in the party were assembling a dossier of some 4,000 words detailing his cheating ways, fondness for cocaine & failings of character and turned his attention to a campaign for the Tory leadership.  As wonderfully unpredictable as the politics of the time were fluid, nobody was quite sure whether he’d go into the inevitable election or second referendum as "leave" or "remain"; it would depend on this and that.  In the end, he remained a leaver and things worked out well, his election victory meaning that for one, brief, shining moment, the three world leaders with the best hair all had their own nuclear weapons at the same time.

Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025; left), Boris Johnson (centre) and Kim Jong Un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)) since 2011; right).

Some hairstyles are more amenable than others to a quick post-bonk fix.  Kim Jong Un's cut is probably quite good and would bounce back from a bonk with little more than a run-through with the fingers although he may have in his entourage an army general as "designated carrier of the comb".  Donald Trump however would likely need both tools and product for a post-bonk fix, ideally performed by an expert hairdresser.  Mr Trump usually appears well-fixed unless disturbed by breezes higher than 2 on the Beaufort scale and all but the most perfunctory bonks probably are equal to at least 4 on the scale so it would have been interesting to see if Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) lived up to her (stage) name although Mr Trump has denied that bonk ever happened.  Ms Daniels' testimony did include a mention of giving him a bonk on the butt with a rolled-up magazine (one with his picture on the cover!) and that at least had a ring of truth.  Mr Johnson's hair so often looks post-bonk that either his conquests are more frequent even than has been rumored or he orders a JBF with every cut.  One UK publication suggested exactly that, hinting his instruction was "not one hair in place".  That has the advantage for Mr Johnson in that it's a style essentially the same pre-bonk, mid-bonk and post-bonk and thus pricelessly ambiguous in that merely by looking at him, one couldn't tell if he was going to or coming from a bonk although, one assumes, whichever it was, a bonk would never be far from his mind.  Whatever the criticisms of Mr Johnson's premiership (and there were a few), it's to his eternal credit that in his resignation honours list Ms Kelly Jo Dodge (for 27 years the parliamentary hairdresser) was created a MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for “parliamentary service”.  Over those decades, she can have faced few challenges more onerous than Mr Johnson’s hair yet never once failed to make it an extraordinary example in the (actually technically difficult) “not one hair in place” style known colloquially in her profession as the JBF.  Few honours have been so well deserved and more illustrious decorations have been pinned on many who have done less for the nation.

In being granted a gong Ms Dodge fared better than another parliamentary hairdresser.  Between 1950-1956, the speaker of the Australian House of Representatives (the lower house) was Archie Cameron (1895–1956) and in some aspects his ways seemed almost un-Australian: he didn’t drink, smoke, or gamble and rarely swore.  Not approving of anything to do with the turf, he ordered the removal from the wall of the Parliament House barber’s salon a print of racehorse Phar Lap (1926–1932, the thoroughbred which won the 1930 Melbourne Cup) and later served notice on the barber to quit the building, Cameron suspecting (on hard & fast grounds) he was a SP (starting price) bookie.  Before T.A.B.s (Totalisator Agency Board) were in the 1960s established as quangos to regulate such activities, SP bookies were a popular (and convenient) way to place an off-course bet and, like Phar Lap, the T.A.B. was born in New Zealand, the first operating there in 1949.

While in some ways not stereotypically Australian, other parts of his character made Cameron a quintessential of the type.  Once, when displeased by one member’s conduct on the floor of the house, he demanded he bow to the chair and apologize.  Not satisfied with the response, he told the transgressor he needed to bow lower and when asked how low was required, replied: “How low can you go?”  As speaker he exercised great power over what went on in the building and insisted on dress standards being maintained although he didn’t adhere to his own rules, on hot days often wandering the corridors in shorts and a singlet; the parliamentary cleaning staff were said to resent the habit, fearing that visitors might mistake him for a cleaner and “damage their prestige”.

Official portrait of Speaker Cameron in the traditional horsehair wig and robes of office.  The wig was the one Dr HV Evatt (1894–1965; leader of opposition 1951-1960) had worn while a judge (1930-1940) of the High Court of Australia (HCA) and Cameron wasn’t best pleased about that but it had been presented to the parliament and no other was available so Cameron “contented himself by reflecting that ‘it was time some straight thinking was done under this wig’.”

Upon election in 1949, the prime-minister (Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) apparently shuddered at the thought of a “loose cannon” like Cameron in cabinet or on the backbench so appointed him speaker, despite being warned by the respected Frank Clifton Green (1890–1974; clerk of the House of Representatives (Australia) 1937-1955) that Cameron’s habit of being “…so consistently wrong with such complete conviction that he was right” made him “the worst possible choice” for the role.”  Menzies was well aware of Cameron's ways.  He'd once said to him: "Archie, I don't suffer fools gladly", receiving the response: "Well Bob, some of us bloody fools have trouble putting up with you too."  On hearing of Cameron's nomination, old Ben Chifley (1885–1951; prime minister of Australia 1945-1949) predicted “He’ll either be the best speaker ever or the worst”, concluding a few months later: “I think he’s turned out to be the bloody worst.”  Once installed, he made himself a fixture and one not easily dislodged.  Although it was in the Westminster system common for speaker to resign if a house voted a dissent from one of their rulings, Cameron suffered five successful motions of dissent against his rulings, one of them moved by the prime minister himself.  As one member later recounted: “He just shrugged his shoulders and carried on.  He couldn’t care less whether the house supported him or not.  Archie liked being speaker and intended to keep the job.”  Keep it he did, dying in office in 1956.  Green summed him up as “…a queer mixture of generosity, prejudice and irresponsibility” and many noted the parliament became a more placid place after he quit the world.

Dame Jilly Cooper (1937–2025), in the 1980s, in fishnets.

Bonkbuster is a literary genre first defined in the late 1980s as meaning “novels with more emphasis on the sex than the romance and enjoying or expecting best-seller status and like likelihood of adaptation in some form for the screen.”  The construct was bonk + (block)buster, the latter element used to describe highly successful book, films, albums etc.  In the literary genre Dame Jilly was the UK’s most accomplished author, something she attributed, at least in part to her “diligent research on the topic”.  Her novels were churning fantasies of smouldering glances, polo ponies, country houses and corporate back-stabbing, always with an undercurrent of infidelity, often in the green and pleasant land of the English countryside.  Before in 1975 she turned to fiction (albeit with much content drawn from he own active life), she’d spent years as a newspaper columnist where she’s offer practical advice to the modern women such as: “If you amuse a man in bed, he's not likely to bother about the mountain of dust underneath it.”  Although she always, accurately, described herself as “upper-middle class”, her novels tended up rather than down the class system and were studded with titles, money and privilege but the turn of phrase she’d honed within the tight word limits imposed on columnists never deserted her, a protagonist in one novel observing: “I don’t expect fidelity from my husbands, but I demand it from my lovers.”

A bandaged Lindsay Lohan waking dazed and confused after a bonk on the head in Falling for Christmas (2022; left) and on the move in Irish Wish (2024).   

In May 2021, Netflix & Lindsay Lohan executed what became a three movie deal, the first (Falling for Christmas) released in the northern winter of 2022, just in time for the season.  She played the protagonist, a pampered heiress who loses her memory after suffering a bonk on the head, waking up to a new life.  The second Netflix release opens in February 2024 and in Irish Wish, the plotline involves her spontaneously wishing for something, subsequently waking up to find the wish granted.  So it’s a variation on the theme of the first (though without the bonk on the head), the twist being in the theme of “be careful what you wish for”.

Bonking Barnaby and the bonk ban

Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime minister of Australia 2015-2018), a student of etymology, was as fond as those at The Sun of alliteration and when writing his memoir (A Bigger Picture (2020)) he included a short chapter entitled "Barnaby and the bonk ban".  As well as the events which lent the text it's title, the chapter was memorable for his inclusion of perhaps the most vivid thumbnail sketch of Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022) yet penned:

"Barnaby is a complex, intense, furious personality.  Red-faced, in full flight he gives the impression he's about to explode.  He's highly intelligent, often good-humoured but also has a dark and almost menacing side - not unlike Abbott (Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015)) - that seems to indicate he wrestles with inner troubles and torments."

Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce in parliament, House of Representatives, Canberra, ACT.

The substantive matter was the revelation in mid-2017 the press had become aware Mr Joyce (a married man with four daughters) was (1) conducting an affair with a member of his staff and (2) the young lady was with child.  Mr Turnbull recorded that when asked, Mr Joyce denied both "rumors", which does sound a lie but, in the narrow, technical sense, may have verged on "the not wholly implausible" on the basis that, as he pointed out in a later television interview, the question of paternity was at the time “...a bit of a grey area”.  Mr Joyce and his mistress later married and now have two children so all's well that end's well (at least for the adulterous couple) and Mr Turnbull didn't so much shut the gate after the horse had bolted as install inter-connecting doors between the stables.  His amendments to the Australian Ministerial Code of Conduct (an accommodating document very much in the spirit of Lord Castlereagh's (1769–1822; UK foreign secretary 1812-1822) critique of the Holy Alliance) banned ministers from bonking their staff which sounds uncontroversial but was silent on them bonking the staff of the minister in the office down the corridor.  So the net effect was probably positive in that staff having affairs with their ministerial boss would (through a rapid inter-departmental transfer), gain experience through cross-exposure to other portfolio areas although there's the obvious moral hazard they might be tempted to conduct trysts just to engineer a transfer in the hope of career advancement.  There are worse reasons for having an affair and a bonk for a new job seems a small price to pay; it's been done before. In a sense, Mr Joyce was a victim because when rugby union (and other codes) player Israel Folau (b 1989) in 2019 posted on social media a list of those God condemns to Hell which included “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters”, while there was strident support for the gay community, despite the mention of “adulterers” and “drunks” being obviously and blatantly an attack on Mr Joyce's character, not a whisper was heard in his defence.

Bonk in progress, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, May 2024.

Bonk in the sense of “a blow to the head” was in May 2024 adapted for use in memes and other publicity tools associated with the protests staged on US university campuses demanding the institutions’ administrators divest from economic and other engagements with Israel and in support of the cause of the Palestinian people for (variously) statehood or freedom from repression.  The scenes were reminiscent of Vietnam War era protests but the emergence of the water-cooler jug as an icon of political dissent was an unexpected moment of levity.  The origin of that was a viral (“bonk, bonk, bonk”) video clip showing an unidentified protester at the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt bonking a uniformed law-enforcement officer on the helmet with an empty jug (believed to be a capacity of 5 US gallons (19 litres)) of the type which sits atop a water cooler.

Although recalling the similarly alliterative “burn baby, burn” slogan chanted during the Watts race riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the “bonk, bonk, bonk” was more a symbol of, if not exactly passive resistance, then certainly something short of actual violence although in a legal sense it would have been an instance of both assault and battery as well as other offences.  Around the country, stickers, posters and the inevitable T-shirts appeared within hours with slogans such as “Water Jug, Come and Take It” and “This machine bonks fascists”, a reference to the “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” message the left-wing US folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) wrote on his guitars.  Whether the water jug (bonking and not) will endure as a symbol of protest will depend, like many aspects of language, on whether it gains a sustained critical mass of use.

The "bonk, bonk, bonk" viral video.  In the conventional sense, the production values weren't high but that very quality of authenticity accounted for its viral success.

Byzantine

Byzantine (pronounced biz-uhn-teen, biz-uhn-tahyn, bahy-zuhn-tyne or bih-zan-tin)

(1) Relating to Byzantium, the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church.

(2) Of or about a situation deemed excessively complicated and typically involving a great deal of seemingly pointless administrative detail (usually without initial capital).

(3) A citizen of Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire.

(4) Of or belonging to the style of architecture developed from the fifth century AD in the Byzantine Empire, characterized especially by a central dome resting on a cube formed by four round arches and their pendentives and by the extensive use of surface decoration, especially veined marble panels, low relief carving, and colored glass mosaics.

(5) Of the painting and decorative style developed in the Byzantine Empire, characterized by formality of design, frontal stylized presentation of figures, rich use of color, especially gold, and generally religious subject matter.

(6) Characterized by elaborate scheming and intrigue, especially for the gaining of political power or favour (usually without initial capital).

(7) In numismatics, a coin issued by the Byzantine Empire.

(8) A dark, metallic shade of violet.

1651 (in English use): From the Late Latin Bȳzantīnus (of Byzantium), the name derived ultimately from the ancient Greek city Byzantion on the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, said to have been named in 657 BC for it founder, Byzas of Megara.  Constantine I (circa 272–337; Roman emperor 306-337 (and the first to convert to Christianity) rebuilt the city and renamed it Constantinople.  The city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 although the modern-day name Istanbul wasn’t (except in the Vatican and the Orthodox Church) universally adopted until the years after World War II (1939-1945).  Although in Greek legend the ancient city name Byzantion came from King Byzas, leader of the Megarian colonists, who is said to be its founder, the etymology remains uncertain although most historians of the period seem to agree it must be of Thraco-Illyrian origin and there’s no doubt Byzantium is a Latinization of the original.  Centuries later, in Western literature, the name Byzantium became the standard term with which to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire (the "Byzantine Empire” centred on the walled capital Constantinople.  For all the generations which lived while the empire stood, the term would have been mysterious and it gained currency only after 1555 when introduced by the German historian Hieronymus Wolf (1516-1580), a century after Constantinople had fallen and the empire had ceased to exist.  Until Wolf introduced the phrase, the word Byzantium was restricted to just the city, rather than the empire which, in the way of such things, had waxed and waned.  Byzantine is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is Byzantines.

Byzantium

A hand-painted rendition of Byzantine Constantinople after the style of medieval mapmakers.

Standing for centuries on blood-soaked soil on the Bosporus where Europe ends and Asia begins, Greek forces laid siege during the Peloponnesian war and Sparta took the city in 411 BC before it was reclaimed by the Athenian military in 408 BC.  Almost razed, by Roman forces in 196 AD, Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus (145-211; Roman emperor 193-211) and quickly regained its previous prosperity.  The location of Byzantium attracted Constantine I (circa 272–337; Roman emperor 306-337 (and the first to convert to Christianity)) who in 330 AD re-created it as an imperial residence inspired by Rome itself and after his death, it was called Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολις (Konstantinoupolis (literally "city of Constantine"))).  For a thousand years, it was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and a commercial, cultural & diplomatic centre and from its strategic position, Constantinople’s rulers controlled the major trade routes between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.  On 29 May 1453, in the first example of a major city falling to a siege by artillery, Constantinople fell to the Turks, becoming the capital of the Ottoman Empire.  The great walls which for centuries had defied invaders from land and sea, crumbled to modern cannon fire.  Even then, the Turks called the city Istanbul (from the Greek eis-tin-polin (to-the-city) although it was not officially renamed until 1930, almost a decade after the Empire was dissolved and it remains Turkey’s largest and most populous city, although Ankara is now the national capital.

Lindsay Lohan meeting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), January 2017.

The other senses of byzantine (as often used without the initial capital): (1) “characterized by a devious and usually surreptitious manner of operation, often for some nefarious purpose” and (2) “something intricate, complicated; inflexible, rigid, unyielding” are both of dubious historical validity.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “byzantine” was first used in English in 1937 (of the impenetrable despotism of the Soviet Union which appeared to those in the Foreign Office schooled in the classics to be much the same as what they’d learned of the antics practiced in Constantinople) in the sense of “reminiscent of the manner, style, or spirit of Byzantine politics; intricate, complicated; inflexible, rigid, unyielding” but in French political scientists had earlier applied in the same figurative context, something which would surprise few familiar with the politicians of inter-war France, a generally rotten crew about whom it was remarked “they can’t keep a government for nine months, nor a secret for five minutes”.  Still, it was probably the English who lent the word its loaded meaning.  Edward Gibbon’s (1737–1794) magisterial The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (six volumes: 1776-1788) was influential for generations in forming the construct of the period in the European imagination and he caricatured the history of the empire as endless chicanery, shadyness, back-channel deals, low skulduggery, back-stabbing, and naked grabs for power.  Until late in the twentieth century, phrases like “bewildering Oriental intrigue” flowed easily from the pens of English historians and hints of the attitude, cloaked in wokish words, appear even since they’ve switched to keyboards.  Much modern scholarship though has been more forgiving and there’s now an understanding that while like everywhere, low politics and dirty deeds were sometimes done, a remarkable civilization grew on the Bosporus.

Byzantium architectural styles.

The association with needless complexity and pointless administrative duplication was probably born of the same prejudices to which was added the view the empire was infused with strange religious rituals and stubbornness in the way it clung to superstition.  Historians have of late have refined this view, suggesting words like “intricate” or even “labyrinthine” might better capture the spirit of the place which was, by any standards and certainly those of medieval Europe, a complex and highly developed society.  The loaded meaning though seems here to stay, perhaps reinforced in the public imagination by the phonetic similarity between “byzantine” & “bizarre”.  Bizarre means “strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from common experience, often in an extravagant, fantastic or conspicuous ways” and was from the French bizarre (odd, peculiar (and formerly “brave; headlong, angry”), either from the Basque bizar (a beard (on the notion that bearded Spanish soldiers made a strange impression on the French) or from Italian bizzarro (odd, queer, eccentric, weird (and, of a horse “frisky” in the sense of the English “bolter”)) of unknown origin but thought probably related to bizza (tantrum), which may be of Germanic origin.  In summary then, the Byzantines would have had their moments but were no more nasty and duplicitous that politicians everywhere and when describing convoluted things as byzantine it might be more accurate to instead call them labyrinthine or just bizarre.

Janus

Janus (pronounced jey-nuhs)

(1) In Roman mythology, a god of doorways (and thus also of beginnings), and of the rising and setting of the sun, usually represented as having one head with two bearded faces back to back, looking in opposite directions, historically understood as the past and the future.

(2) When used attributively, to indicate things with two faces or aspects; or made of two different materials; or having a two-way action.

(3) In zoology, a diprosopus (two-headed) animal.

(4) In chemistry, used attributively to indicate an azo dye with a quaternary ammonium group, frequently with the diazo component being safranine.

(5) In astronomy, a moon of the planet Saturn, located just outside the rings.

(6) In figurative use, a “two-faced” person; a hypocrite.

(7) In numismatics, (as Janus coin),a coin minted with a head on each face.

(8) In architecture, as the jānus doorway, a style of doorway, archway or arcade, the name derived from the Roman deity Iānus (Janus) being the god of doorways.

Mid-late 1500s: From the Latin Iānus (the ancient Italic deity Janus), to the Romans of Antiquity, the guardian god of portals, doors, and gates; patron of beginnings and endings.  The Latin Iānus (literally “gate, arched passageway”) may be from the primitive Indo-European root ei- (to go), the cognates including the Sanskrit yanah (path) and the Old Church Slavonic jado (to travel).  In depictions, Janus is shown as having two faces, one in front the other in back (an image thought to represent sunrise and sunset reflect his original role as a solar deity although it represents also coming and going in general, young and old or (in recent years) just about anything dichotomous).  The doors of the temple of Janus were traditionally open only during the time of war and closed to mark the end of the conflict, the origins of allusions to the “temple of Janus” being used metaphorically to mean conflict or wartime and the month of January is named after Janus, the link being to “the beginning of the year”.  The most commonly used forms are Janus-faced & Janus-headed while specialized uses include Janus cat (a cat with diprosopus (a condition in which part of the face is duplicated on the head)) and Janus particle (in nanotechnology and physics, a spherical microscopic particle which has hemispheres with sharply differing properties, such as one hydrophilic hemisphere and one hydrophobic hemisphere).  Janus is a noun or proper noun and Janus-like, janian, janiform & januform are adjectives.

Prosthetic in studio (left), Ralph Fiennes (b 1962) on-set in character (centre) and Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 2022-2025) imagined in the same vein (right).

The prosthetic used in the digitally-altered image (right) was a discarded proposal for the depiction of Lord Voldemort in the first film version of JK Rowling's (b 1965) series of Harry Potter children’s fantasy novels; it used a Janus-like two-faced head.  It's an urban myth Peter Dutton auditioned for the part when the first film was being cast but was rejected as being "too scary" but if ever there's another film, the producers could do worse than to cast him and should Mr Dutton not resume his political career (God forbid), he could bring to Voldemort the sense of menacing evil the character has never quite achieved, fine though Mr Fiennes' performance surely was.

Peter Dutton captured by a photographer during a happy moment (left), Pinhead the head Cenobite (centre) and and artist's depiction of Mr Dutton in “Pinhead mode” (digitally altered image, right).

However, even if too scary to be a Voldemort, for the next instalment in the Hellraiser franchise, Mr Dutton may be just scary enough to be the next “Pinhead”, the leader of the Cenobites, extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic creatures unable to differentiate between pain and pleasure.  As well, as looking the part, to depict a convincing Cenobite, Mr Dutton would absorb little of the director’s time in rehearsals because he’d need just to “act naturally”.  The first Hellraiser film was released in 1987 and there have since been nine sequels with Pinhead gaining a cult following among aficionados of the genre so, should he need a post-political career, definitely he should audition.  Interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason and that also would work in his favour because it’s clear the Cenobites are a Masonic crew.

Roman cast bronze coin from the aes grave series, circa 225-217 BC; it shows the bearded head of Janus opposite the prow of a war galley.

In the lushly populated pantheon of Roman gods, Janus (Iānus) was one of the oldest, represented with two faces, one looking forwards and the other backwards (ie artistically, to the left & right).  In some of the myths, Janus was a native of Rome where, at some point, he ruled with Camesus while others claimed he came from Thessaly and ended up in Rome as an exile, welcomed there by Camesus, who shared his kingdom with him.  He ruled alone after the death of his host and in many tales Janus built a city on a hill (consequently called Janiculum as would have been the convention).  He had come to Italy with his wife (Camasenea or Camise) and the best known of their children was Tiberinus.  Janus received Saturn when he was driven from Greece by Jupiter, Saturn ruling over Saturnia, a village situated on the heights of the capitol.  By consensus, it seems that during the reign of Janus people unfailingly were honourable & honest (the stories from Antiquity are well-named as “myths”) and there was universal peace and prosperity.  While trade was as old as humanity and it’s clear there had been various means of exchange, it’s Janus who is credited with inventing “money” in the modern sense in which currency is understood, the oldest known Roman bronze Roman coins cast with an effigy of Janus on one side and the prow of a boat on the reverse.  Where the myth-tellers differ is whether the “civilizing” of the first natives of Latium can be attributed to Janus or Saturn but upon his death he was deified so there was some sense of gratitude.

The fate of Tarpeia, pressed (bludgeoned in some stories) to death by the shields of the Sabines.

In the way the myths did tend to multiply, other legends became attached to his memory, the most famous being the events which transpired after Romulus and his companions had carried off the Sabine women, prompting Titus Tatius and the Sabines to attack the city.  One night, driven by her lust for Tatius, the treacherous Tarpeia delivered the citadel into the hands of the Sabines but rather than wedding her as he had promised, Tatius had her put to death on the very Roman basis: “nobody likes a snitch”.  His soldiers had already scaled the heights of the Capitol when Janus launched a jet of hot water which put them to flight; to commemorate this military miracle, it was decreed that in time of war the door of the Temple of Janus should always be left open so in times of trouble the god could come to the aid of the Romans.  It was closed only if the Roman Empire was at peace.  Janus was said also to have married the Nymph Juturna who gave him a son, the god Fontus (or Fons).

(John) Foster Dulles (1888–1959; US Secretary of State 1953-1959, left) with Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961, right), Washington DC, 1955.

The terms “Janus-faced” or “Janus-headed” are used in engineering an architecture to describe designs where the “face” or “head” of an object or shape is duplicated but the idea usually is applied to people.  To speak of someone as being “two faced” is to suggest, variously, they’re deceitful, duplicitous or hypocritical.  Many have been damned (and sometimes even admired) as “two-faced” but on one occasion, after someone had observed Foster Dulles was “a bit two-faced” about something, Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) responded he couldn’t be because “…if he had two faces, he wouldn’t use that one.”  During his not infrequent criticisms of Dulles, habitually Churchill would speak of his “great slab of a face” although in retirement the old enmities (mostly) were forgotten and in May 1959 he visited him in his hospital room in Washington DC.  The two had “a pleasant chat” and within a fortnight Dulles was dead.

Noses down: In the Berghof on the Obersalzberg on 21 June 1939, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments & war production 1942-1945, (left) and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, right) study plans for Linz's new opera house (photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957; Nazi court photographer), Bavarian State Library's Fotoarchiv Hoffmann.

Sometimes, such realizations, literal or figurative, come too late.  In the entry Speer made on 30 November 1946 in his clandestine prison diary (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau: The Secret Diaries) (1975)) is the passage: “Once again I am obsessed by the thought of Hitler’s two faces, and that for so long a time I did not see the second behind the first.  It was only toward the end, during the last months, that I suddenly became aware of the duality; and, significantly, my insight was connected with an aesthetic observation: I suddenly discovered how ugly, how repellent and ill proportioned, Hitler’s face was. How could I have overlooked that for so many years?”  Clearly, such thoughts stayed with him because on 8 December 1953 he noted: “Last night I had the following dream: In a rather sizable group, sometime toward the end of the war, I declare that everything is lost, that there is no longer a chance and the secret weapons do not exist.  The others in the dream remain anonymous. Suddenly Hitler emerges from their midst I am afraid that he will have heard my remark and may order my arrest.  My anxiety increases because Hitler’s retinue displays extreme iciness.  Nobody says a word to me.  Suddenly the scene changes.  We are in a house on a slope, with a narrow driveway.  Only gradually do I realize that it is Eva Braun’s [Eva Hitler (née Braun; 1912–1945)] house.  Hider comes to tea, sits facing me, but remains frosty and forbidding.  He chews the comers of his fingernails, as he so often did.  There are bloody places where they are bitten down to the quick.  Looking into his swollen face, I realize for the first time that perhaps Hitler wore his moustache in order to divert attention from his excessively large, ill-proportioned nose.  Now I am afraid that I will be arrested any moment because I have perceived the secret of his nose.  Heart pounding, I wake up.”

An eighteenth century carving of Janus in the style of a herm.

A part of the etymological legacy of the Roman Empire, the name Janus appears in several European languages.  In Danish (from the Latin Iānus), it’s a Latinization of the Danish given name Jens.  In Faroese, it’s a male given name which begat (1) Janussson or Janusarson (son of Janus) and (2) Janusdóttir or Janusardóttir (daughter of Janus).  In Estonian it’s a male given name.  In Polish, it’s both a masculine & feminine surname (the feminine surname being indeclinable (a word that is not grammatically inflected).  There is no anglicized form of the Latin name Janus.  Although it was never common and is now regarded by most genealogy authorities as "rare", when used in the English-speaking world the spelling remain "Janus".  Often, when Latin names were adopted in English, even when the spelling was unaltered, there were modifications to suit local phonetics but Janus is pronounced still just as it would have been by a Roman.

Tristar pictures used the Janus motif in promotional material for I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  Not well-received upon release, it's since picked up a cult following.

Dating from the 1580s, was from the Latin ianitor (doorkeeper, porter), from ianua (door, entrance, gate), the construct being ianus (arched passageway, arcade" + tor (the agent suffix).  The meaning “usher in a school” and later “doorkeeper” emerged in the 1620s white the more specific (and in Scotland and North America enduring) sense of “a caretaker of a building, man employed to attend to cleaning and tidiness” seems first to have been documented in 1708 (the now unused feminine forms were janitress (1806) & janitrix (1818).  Why janitor survived in general use in Scotland and North America and not elsewhere in the English-speaking world is a mystery although the influence of US popular culture (film and television) did see something of a late twentieth century revival and in  sub-cultures like 4chan and other places which grew out of the more anarchic bulletin boards of the 1980s & 1990s, a janitor is the (often disparaging) term for a content moderator for a discussion forum.

Augustus Orders the Closing of the Doors of the Temple of Janus (circa 1681), oil on canvas by Louis de Boullogne (1654–1733), Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

Among the more annoying things encountered by those learning English are surely Janus words, those with opposite meanings within themselves.  Examples include:  Hew can mean cutting something down or adhering closely to it.  Sanction may mean “formal approval or permission” or “an official ban, penalty, or deterrent”.  Scan can mean “to look slowly and carefully” or “quickly to glance; a cursory examination”.  Inflammable, which many take to mean “easy to burn” but the treachery of the word lies in the in- prefix which is often used as a negative, with the result that inflammable can be deconstructed as “not flammable”.  Trip can (and usually does) suggest clumsiness but can also imply some nimbleness or lightness of foot, as in the saying “trip the light fantastic”.  Oversight is a particularly egregious example.  To exercise oversight over someone or something is provide careful, watchful supervision yet an oversight is an omission or mistake.  In the ever-shifting newspeak of popular culture, the creation of the janus-word is often deliberate.  Filth can mean “of the finest quality”, wicked can mean “very good” and in the way which might have pleased George Orwell (1903-1950) "bad" has become classic “newspeak” (coined by Orwell for Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and used now to describe ambiguous, misleading, or euphemistic words, used deliberately to deceive, typically by politicians, bureaucrats or corporations).  “Bad weed” can mean the drug was either of fine or poor quality depending on the sentence structure: “that was bad weed” might well suggest it was of not good while “man, that was some bad weed” probably means it was good indeed.  Saying nice now seems rarely to mean what dictionaries say nice has come to mean but can variously describe something wonderful, appalling or disgusting.