Evil

Evil (pronounced ee-vuhl)

(1) Morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked; morally corrupt.

(2) Harmful; injurious (now rare).

(3) Marked or accompanied by misfortune (now rare; mostly historic).

(4) Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious (obsolete).

Pre 900: From the Middle English evel, ivel & uvel (evil) from the Old English yfel, (bad, vicious, ill, wicked) from the Proto-Germanic ubilaz.  Related were the Saterland Frisian eeuwel, the Dutch euvel, the Low German övel & the German übel; it was cognate with the Gothic ubils, the Old High German ubil, the German übel and the Middle Dutch evel and the Irish variation abdal (excessive).  Root has long been thought the primitive Indo-European hupélos (diminutive of hwep) (treat badly) which produced also the Hittite huwappi (to mistreat, harass) and huwappa (evil, badness) but an alternative view is a descent from upélos (evil; (literally "going over or beyond (acceptable limits)")) from the primitive Indo-European upo, up & eup (down, up, over).  Evil is a noun & adjective (some do treat it as a verb), evilness is a noun and evilly an adverb; the noun plural is evils.

Evil (the word) arrived early in English and endured.  In Old English and all the early Teutonic languages except the Scandinavian, it quickly became the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement.  Evil was the word Anglo-Saxons used to convey some sense of the bad, cruel, unskillful, defective, harm, crime, misfortune or disease.  The meaning with which we’re most familiar, "extreme moral wickedness" existed since Old English but did not assume predominance until the eighteenth century.  The Latin phrase oculus malus was known in Old English as eage yfel and survives in Modern English as “evil eye”.  Evilchild is attested as an English surname from the thirteenth century and Australian-born Air Chief Marshall Sir Douglas Evill (1892-1971) was head of the Royal Air Force (RAF) delegation to Washington during World War II (1939-1945).  Despite its utility, there’s probably no word in English with as many words of in the same vein without any being actually synonymous.  Consider: destructive, hateful, vile, malicious, vicious, heinous, ugly, bad, nefarious, villainous, corrupt, malefic, malevolent, hideous, wicked, harm, pain, catastrophe, calamity, ill, sinful, iniquitous, depraved, vicious, corrupt, base, iniquity & unrighteousness; all tend in the direction yet none quite matches the darkness of evil although malefic probably come close.  

Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil

The word evil served English unambiguously and well for centuries and most, secular and spiritual, knew that some people are just evil.  It was in the later twentieth century, with the sudden proliferation of psychologists, interior decorators, sociologists, criminologists, social workers and basket weavers that an industry developed exploring alternative explanations and causations for what had long been encapsulated in the word evil.  The output was uneven but among the best remembered, certainly for its most evocative phrase, was in the work of German-American philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975).  Arendt’s concern, given the scale of the holocaust was: "Can one do evil without being evil?"

Whether the leading Nazis were unusually (or even uniquely) evil or merely individuals who, through a combination of circumstances, came to do awful things has been a question which has for decades interested psychiatrists, political scientists and historians.  Arendt attended the 1961 trial of Adolph Eichmann (1906-1962), the bureaucrat responsible for transportation of millions of Jews and others to the death camps built to allow the Nazis to commit the industrial-scale mass-murder of the final solution.  Arendt thought Eichmann ordinary and bland, “neither perverted nor sadistic” but instead “terrifyingly normal”, acting only as a diligent civil servant interested in career advancement, his evil deeds done apparently without ever an evil thought in his mind.  Her work was published as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).  The work attracted controversy and perhaps that memorable phrase didn’t help.  It captured the popular imagination and even academic critics seemed seduced.  Arendt’s point, inter alia, was that nothing in Eichmann’s life or character suggested that had it not been for the Nazis and the notion of normality they constructed, he’d never have murdered even one person.  The view has its flaws in that there’s much documentation from the era to prove many Nazis, including Eichmann, knew what they were doing was a monstrous crime so a discussion of whether Eichmann was immoral or amoral and whether one implies evil while the other does not does, after Auschwitz, seems a sterile argument.

Evil is where it’s found.

Hannah Arendt's relationship with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) began when she was a nineteen year old student of philosophy and he her professor, married and aged thirty-six.  Influential still in his contributions to phenomenology and existentialism, he will forever be controversial because of his brief flirtation with the Nazis, joining the party and taking an academic appointment under Nazi favor.  He resigned from the post within a year and distanced himself from the party but, despite expressing regrets in private, never publicly repented.  His affair with the Jewish Arendt is perhaps unremarkable because it pre-dated the Third Reich but what has always attracted interest is that their friendship lasted the rest of their lives, documented in their own words in a collection of their correspondence (Letters: 1925-1975, Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger (2003), Ursula Ludz (Editor), Andrew Shields (Translator)).  Cited sometimes as proof that feelings can transcend politics (as if ever there was doubt), the half-century of letters which track the course of a relationship which began as one of lovers and evolved first into friendship and then intellectual congress.  For those who wish to explore contradiction and complexity in human affairs, it's a scintillating read.  Arendt died in 1975, Heidegger surviving her by some six months.

New York Post, November 1999.

In 1999, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) tabloid the New York Post ran one of their on-line polls, providing a list of the usual suspects, asking readers to rate the evil to most evil, so to determine “The 25 most evil people of the last millennium”.  The poll received 19184 responses which revealed some “recency bias” (a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones) in that some US mass-murderers were rated worse than some with more blood on their hands but most commented on was the stellar performance of the two “write-ins”: Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) & crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), the POTUS coming second and the FLOTUS an impressive sixth, Mr Murdoch’s loyal readers rating both more evil than Saddam Hussein (1937–2006; president of Iraq 1979-2003), Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Dracula or Prince Vlad III of Wallachia (circa 1430-circa 1477); thrice Voivode of Wallachia 1448-circa 1477 or Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV Vasilyevich (1530–1584; Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584).

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

While fun and presumably an indication of something, on-line polls should not be compared with the opinion polls run by reputable universities or polling organizations, their attraction for editors looking for click-bait being they’re essentially free and provide a result, sometimes within a day, unlike conventional polls which can cost thousands or even millions depending on the sample size and duration of research.  The central problem with on-line polls is that responders are self-selected rather than coming from a cohort determined by a statistical method developed in the wake of the disastrously inaccurate results of a poll “predicting” national voting intentions in the 1936 presidential election.  The 1936 catchment had been skewered towards the upper-income quartile by being restricted to those who answered domestic telephone connections, the devices then rarely installed in lower-income households.  A similar phenomenon of bias is evident in the difference on-line responses to the familiar question: “Who won the presidential debate?”, the divergent results revealing more about the demographic profiles of the audiences of CBS, MSNBC, CNN, ABC & FoxNews than on-stage dynamics on-stage.

Especially among academics in the social sciences, there are many who object to the frequent, almost casual, use of “evil”, applied to figures as diverse as serial killers and those who use the “wrong” pronoun.  Rightly on not, academics can find “complexity” in what appears simple to most and don’t like “evil” because of the simple moral absolutism it implies, the suggestion certain actions or individuals are inherently or objectively wrong.  Academics call this “an over-simplification of complex ethical situations” and they prefer the nuances of moral relativism, which holds that moral judgments can depend on cultural, situational, or personal contexts.  The structuralist-behaviorists (a field still more inhabited than a first glance may suggest) avoid the word because it so lends itself to being a “label” and the argument is that labeling individuals as “evil” can be both an act of dehumanizing and something which reinforces a behavioral predilection, thereby justifying punitive punishment rather than attempting rehabilitation.  Politically, it’s argued, the “evil” label permits authorities to ignore or even deny allegedly causative factors of behavior such as poverty, mental illness, discrimination or prior trauma.

There are also the associative traditions of the word, the linkages to religion and the supernatural an important part of the West’s cultural and literary inheritance but not one universally treated as “intellectually respectable”.  Nihilists of course usually ignore the notion of evil and to the post-modernists it was just another of those “lazy” words which ascribed values of right & wrong which they knew were something wholly subjective, evil as context-dependent as anything else.  Interestingly, in the language of the polarized world of US politics, while the notional “right” (conservatives, MAGA, some of what’s left of the Republican Party) tends to label the notional “left” (liberals, progressives, the radical factions of the Democratic Party) as evil, the left seems to depict their enemies (they’re no longer “opponents”) less as “evil” and more as “stupid”.

The POTUS & the Pope: Francis & Donald Trump (aka the lesser of two evils), the Vatican, May 2017.

Between the pontificates of Pius XI (1857–1939; pope 1922-1939) and  Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013), all that seems to have changed in the Holy See’s world view is that civilization has moved from being threatened by communism, homosexuality and Freemasony to being menaced by Islam, homosexuality and Freemasony.  It therefore piqued the interest of journalists accompanying the pope on his recent 12-day journey across Southeast Asia when they were told by a Vatican press secretary his Holiness would, during the scheduled press conference, discuss the upcoming US presidential election: duly, the scribes assembled in their places on the papal plane. The pope didn’t explicitly tell people for whom they should vote nor even make his preference obvious as Taylor Swift (b 1989) would in her endorsement mobilizing the childless cat lady vote but he did speak in an oracular way, critiquing both Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) as “against life”, urging Catholic voters to choose the “lesser of two evils.”  That would have been a good prelude had he gone further but there he stopped: “One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils?  That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know.”

Socks (1989-2009; FCOTUS (First Cat of the United States 1993-2001)) was Chelsea Clinton's (b 1980; FDOTUS (First Daughter of the United States)) cat.  Cartoon by Pat Oliphant, 1996.

The lesser of two evils: Australian-born US political cartoonist Pat Oliphant’s (b 1935) take on the campaign tactics of Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) who was the Democratic Party nominee in the 1996 US presidential election against Republican Bob Dole (1923–2021).  President Clinton won by a wide margin which would have been more handsome still, had there not been a third-party candidate.  Oliphant’s cartoons are now held in the collection of the National Library of Congress.  It’s not unusual for the task presented to voters in US presidential elections to be reduced to finding “the lesser of two evils”.  In 1964 when the Democrats nominated Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) to run against the Republican's Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), the conclusion of many was it was either “a crook or a kook”.  On the day, the lesser of the two evils proved to be crooked old Lyndon who won in a landslide over crazy old Barry.

Francis has some history in criticizing Mr Trump’s handling of immigration but the tone of his language has tended to suggest he’s more disturbed by politicians who support the provision of abortion services although he did make clear he sees both issues in stark moral terms: “To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them… it’s something terrible, there is evil there. To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly.”  Francis has in the past labelled abortion a “plague” and a “crime” akin to “mafia” behavior, although he did resist suggestions the US bishops should deny Holy Communion to “pro-choice” politicians (which would have included Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025), conscious no doubt that accusations of being an “agent of foreign interference” in the US electoral process would be of no benefit.  Despite that, he didn’t seek to prevent the bishops calling abortion is “our preeminent priority” in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the 2024 edition of their quadrennial document on voting.  Some 20% of the US electorate describe themselves as Catholics, their vote in 2020 splitting 52/47% Biden/Trump but that was during the Roe v Wade (1973) era and abortion wasn’t quite the issue it's since become and a majority of the faith in the believe it should be available with only around 10% absolutist right-to-lifers.  Analysts concluded Francis regards Mr Trump as less evil than Ms Harris and will be pleased if his flock votes accordingly; while he refrained from being explicit, he did conclude: “Not voting is ugly.  It is not good.  You must vote.”

Malevolent, malicious & malignant

Malevolent (pronounced muh-lev-uh-luhnt)

(1) Wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious.

(2) Evil; harmful; injurious.

(3) In astrology, a force evil or malign in influence.

1500–1510:  From the Middle English malevolent (suggested by Middle English malevolence (analyzed of late as “male violence”)), from the Old French malivolent and the Latin malevolentem, the construct being male (badly, ill, wrongly) + volens (wanting, willing, wishing”), the present participle of velle (to want, wish for, desire).  The most commonly used form in Latin appears to have been malevolēns (ill-disposed, spiteful).  Upon entering English in the sixteenth century, the word retained this sense of ill will or harmful intent.  The adjective malevolent (having an evil disposition toward another or others, wishing evil to others) dates from the early sixteenth century while the noun malevolence (the character of being ill-disposed toward another or others; ill-will, malice, personal hatred) was in use by the mid-fifteenth, from the Old French malevolence and directly from Latin malevolentia (ill-will, dislike, hatred), from malevolentem (nominative malevolens) (ill-disposed, wishing ill, spiteful, envious).  The antonym is benevolent and the usual negative forms are unmalevolent & non-malevolent.  Malevolent is an adjective, malevolence is a noun and malevolently is an adverb; the noun plural malevolences.

The writings of Russian-American author & mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (often styled Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891; co-founder of the Theosophical Society (1875)) were in the nineteenth century influential in non-mainstream theology and philosophy circles.  Her work included exploring "…the horrifying principles and malignant influence of the Society of Jesus [the Jesuit Order, a Roman Catholic cult] are brought out in the open for all to see, hitherto secret ciphers of the so-called higher Masonic degrees revealed, examples of Jesuit cryptography exposed, and a High Mason’s critical strictures upon Masonry itself articulated.”   In July 1773, Clement XIV (1705–1774; pope 1769-1774), acting on a request from many governments disturbed by the Jesuits’ plotting and scheming, issued the brief Dominus ac Redemptor (Lord and Redeemer) which dissolved the cult.  However, the Jesuits went underground and conducted a masonic-like infiltration of the Church which culminated in the pressure exerted on Pius VII (1742–1823; pope 1800-1823) who in 1814 issued the papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum (The care of all Churches) allowing the order to be re-established and resume its Masonic ways.

Malicious (pronounced muh-lish-uhs)

(1) Full of, characterized by, or showing malice; intentionally harmful; spiteful.

(2) In common law jurisdictions, vicious, wanton, or mischievous in motivation or purpose (often in statute as an “aggravating circumstance”).

(3) In common law jurisdictions as malicious prosecution, an intentional tort which arises from a party (1) intentionally and maliciously instituting or pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal) that is (2) brought without probable cause and (3) dismissed in favor of the other party.  It belongs sometimes to the class of actions called “abuse of process”.

(4) In common law jurisdictions as “malicious prosecution”, a common law intentional tort which arises from a party (1) intentionally and maliciously instituting or pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal) that is (2) brought without probable cause and (3) dismissed in favor of the other party.

(5) In common law jurisdictions as “malicious mischief”, the willful, wanton, or reckless destruction of the personal property of another occasioned by actual ill will or resentment toward the owner or possessor of such property.

1175–1225: From the Middle English malicious (which may have existed in the Old English as malicius but this is contested), from the Old French malicios (showing ill will, spiteful, wicked (which persists in Modern French as malicieux)) from the Latin malitiōsus (wicked, malicious), the construct being maliti(a) (badness; ill will; spite), from malus (bad; evil) + -osus.  In Latin, the -ōsus suffix was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun.  The Middle English form displaced the earlier native Middle English ivelwilled & ivelwilly (malicious), both related to the Old English yfelwillende (literally “evil-willing”).  In early fourteenth century Anglo-French legal language, it meant “characterized by malice prepense”, essentially little different from the sense “malicious” today enjoys in statute in common law jurisdictions.  The adverb maliciously (in a spiteful manner, with enmity or ill-will) emerged in the late fourteenth century while the noun maliciousness (extreme enmity or disposition to injure; actions prompted by hatred) was in use a few decades later.  The spelling malitious is obsolete.  The usual negative forms are non-malicious & unmalicious but lexicographers note also the use of semi-malicious & quasi-malicious, forms adopted presumably when some nuance of the evil done seems helpful.  At the other end of the scale of maliciousness, the comparative is more malicious and the superlative most malicious.  Malicious is an adjective, maliciousness is a noun and maliciously is an adverb.

Malignant (pronounced muh-lig-nuhnt)

(1) Disposed to cause harm, suffering, or distress deliberately; feeling or showing ill will or hatred.

(2) Very dangerous or harmful in influence or effect.

(3) In pathology, tending to produce death.

(4) In medicine (usually of cells or a tumor), characterized by uncontrolled growth; cancerous, invasive, or metastatic.

1540s: From the Middle French malignant, from the Late Latin malignantem (nominative malignans) (acting from malice), stem of malignāns, present participle of malignāre (to act maliciously; to behave with malign intent) and malignō (to malign, viciously to act).  The English malign (evil or malignant in disposition, nature, intent or influence) was from the Middle English maligne, from the Old French maligne, from the Latin malignus, the construct being malus (bad) + -gnus (born), from gignere (to bear, beget) from the primitive Indo-European root gene- (give birth, beget).  In medicine (of tumors and such), the antonym is “benign” but non-malignant & unmalignant both exist as does semi-malignant which sounds strange to non-clinical ears but which is used apparently with the sense of “not very malignant”, presumably something of a comfort to a patient.  The most commonly distinction in medicine seems to be between “malignant” and “benign” and this provide the author Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) with one of his better jabs.  Learning that the notoriously obnoxious Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) had been operated on after a tumor was found, when told it had been removed and sent for an analysis which proved it “benign”, he observed: “What a miracle that modern medicine could find the only part of Randolph that is not malignant and then remove it.”  Malignant is an adjective, malignancy & malignance are nouns, malignantly is an adverb; the noun plural is malignancies.

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

The word entered the medical jargon in the 1560s but the earlier use was as a theological slur, the Church describing as malignant “those damnable followers of the antichrist” in the ecclesiam malignantum (best translated as “Church of the Wicked”), a concept found in many writings in early Christian thought, particularly among certain groups that emphasized the contrast between the true, faithful Church and those who they believed were corrupt or evil within the broader Christian community.  The theme continues to this day and can be identified as the source of many schisms and internecine conflicts within and between many religions.  The term existed in a number of Latin Christian writings, often linked to Augustinian theology.  Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in his work attacking the Donatists (a Christian sect which in the fourth century forced a schism in the Church of Carthage) referenced the ecclesia malignantium to describe those within the Church who were corrupt or sinful, in contrast to the ecclesia sancta (the holy Church).  It was Augustine who constructed the influential doctrine that while within the Church, there could be both saints and sinners, ultimately the Church itself remained holy, an interesting proto-structralism upon which churches of many denominations to this day fall back upon in their handling of clerical scandals.

The ecclesia malignantium were used metaphorically to contrast the “true” Church (those who genuinely followed Christ) with those who may have been Christian in name but acted in ways that were contrary to Christian teachings, thus aligning themselves with evil or wickedness.  In the secular world, the model is not unfamiliar, a modern example being those in the US Republican Party not judged sufficiently “pure” by the right-wing fanatics being labeled “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only), an idea Saint Augustine would have recognized.  So, faith and politics can both be binary exercises, those judged heretical, schismatic, or in some way morally corrupt being a malignant presence in the community and needing to be excised as swiftly as the surgeon’s scalpel slices out a malignant tumor.  During the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation in Europe, the language was re-purposed, by the 1540s used by protestant theologians and activists to condemn as heretics the pope and the Church in Rome.  By the 1590s, malignant was in use to mean (of persons) “disposed to inflict suffering or cause distress” whereas in the early fourteenth century “malign” was used as an adjective and the now extinct malignous meant “poisonous, noxious”.  The noun malignancy dates from circa 1600 and by mid century had come to mean “state of extreme malevolence, bitter enmity”, the particular use in medicine (of diseases, growths, tumors etc with a virulence and tendency to get worse) appears in the medical literature from the 1680s.  In English history, borrowing from the turbulent priests, both the followers of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) and the royalist forces would label each other “malignants”.

In English, “mal-” words are familiar.  The mal- prefix was from the Old French mal- (bad; badly) from the Latin adverb male, from malus (bad, wicked).  In English the prefix was applied to create words variously with some denotation of the negative including (1) bad, badly (malinfluence), (1) unhealthy; harmful (malware), (3) unpleasant (malodorous) (4) incorrect (malformed), (5) incomplete (maldescent) & (6) deficiently (malnourished).  Malevolent, malicious & malignant are from a different linage but all are in some way negative on nature but there are differences between them:  Malevolent means “having or showing a desire to cause harm to others and carries the connotation of “a deep-rooted ill will or hatred”.  Malicious means “intending to do harm, typically without justification” and connotes something of an emphasis on a “spiteful or cruel intent”.  Malignant means “harmful, dangerous, or likely to cause death and while historically it was used to refer to “extreme malevolence”, the use in medicine has in the modern age tended to make that use almost exclusive although it can still be used of anything (or anyone) actively harmful or evil.  So in use, the modern tendency is for malevolent to be used of “ill will or hatred”, malicious “an intent to cause harm” and malignant “something that is dangerously harmful, often in a physical or medical context”.  The related "malign" seems most be used of intent and harmful speech.  Which to use hangs also on intent; if someone is murdered by the Freemasons, it’s not unreasonable to suppose the intent was malicious and the act malevolent but had they been eaten by a shark while swimming, neither word should be invoked because that’s just a thing sharks do.

Talisman

Talisman (pronounced tal-is-muhn or tal-iz-muhn)

(1) A stone, ring, or other object, usually engraved with figures or characters supposed to possess occult powers and worn as an amulet or charm; believed to protect the wearer from evil influences

(2) Any amulet or charm.

(3) Anything or anyone, the presence of which exercises a remarkable or powerful influence on human feelings or actions.

(4) A trim option offered on the Cadillac Fleetwood (1974-1976).

1630–1640: From the French or Spanish talisman, partly from Arabic طِلَسْم‎ (ṭilasm), from the Late Greek télesmon (completion, performance, consecrated object), and partly directly from the Byzantine Greek τέλεσμα (télesma) (talisman, religious rite, completion), from τελέω (teléō), (to perform religious rites, to complete), from τέλος (télos) (end, fulfillment, accomplishment, consummation, completion”).  The Arabic word was also borrowed by Turkish, Persian & Hindi and the only explanation for the -n in western European languages is replicated error.  Derived forms are the adjectives talismanic & talismanical and the adverb talismanically.  The correct noun plural is talismans (talismen is non-standard).

Lindsay Lohan wearing "Evil Eye" talisman, Los Angeles, March 2011.

The Evil Eye is a talisman (or amulet), or talisman which is said to afford the wear protection against the forces of evil.  Examples of Evil Eye talismans have for some three-thousand years existed in many cultures and are documented in early examples of the art of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, the forms including the Hebrew Ayin Ha’ra, the Turkish Nazar Boncugu, the Italian Mal Occhio, the Farsi Bla Band, the Arabic Ayin Harsha, the Scots Droch Shuil, the Spanish Mal Ojo (or El Oja), the French Mauvais Oeil, the German Busen Blick and the Roman Oculus Malus.  The imagery is particularly ingrained in the Republic of Türkiye where the symbolism is visible on symbol on currency, in architecture and interior design and one is often hung from the necks of new-born children and even farm animals.

Freemason Evil Eye talisman.

Also known as the “Eye of Providence”, the symbol is not only part of Masonic ritualism but it appears on both the reverse of the US dollar bill (in a pyramid’s top cap) and the nation’s Great Seal.  Although many of the founding fathers of the US were confessed Freemasons, the official line is the unfinished pyramid was intended to symbolise “strength and duration”, with the 13 levels representing the original states which formed the US while the eye was there to acknowledge God’s sympathetic oversight of the fledgling nation.  It’s claimed the Freemasons had no involvement in these choices and that they didn’t even begin publicly to display the evil eye until well into the eighteenth century.  Whether prior to that they used it in secret is of course unknown and also a mystery is whether every member of the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or is required to wear a concealed Masonic talisman.  It’s never been denied and unless there’s a defection from the cult, that too may remain a secret.

The Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman, 1974-1976

1971-1976 Cadillac Fleetwood.

Even by the standards of the American automobile of the time, the 1971 Cadillac was big.  Replacing the previous range which had run from 1965-1970, engineering innovations were limited and the changes were mostly cosmetic, much of the manufacturer’s attentions now devoted to conforming with the onrush of safety and pollution control legislation being imposed by governments.  In 1971 however, although somewhat detuned, the 472 cubic inch (7.7 litre) V8 was still rated at 365 gross horsepower and, with the emission controls still only rudimentary, retained the characteristics which by the early 1960s marked Detroit’s full-sized cars as having the world’s finest engine-transmission combinations.  Even though typically weighing over 5000 lbs (2300 KG) and built with few concessions to aerodynamic efficiency, Cadillacs had power enough for performance to be described usually as effortless.  Production volumes dropped in 1971 but that was because of difficulties in industrial relations and once new agreements were in place, sales quickly rebounded, records set in 1972 and again in 1973, Cadillac for the first time, producing more than three-hundred thousand cars.  There were however warning signs on the 1973 cars.  Although not yet the battering-rams which would later be bolted on, the bumper bars had grown bigger and heavier and for the first time, the emission controls began to be noticed, becoming intrusive by 1974, drivability suffering, power down and fuel consumption up.  The typical Cadillac owner might not have much noticed the additional fuel cost but they certainly noted, and complained about, the loss of power and occasionally stuttering engines.  Much worse was to come.

1973 would be the last good year for the “old” American economy which, sustained by the unusual circumstances of the post-war boom had, with the odd minor glitch, maintained an unprecedented general prosperity for over twenty years.  A generation now existed which knew no other world but the world shifted on 17 October 1973 when the first oil embargo was imposed, ending the boom which had been fed by cheap, limitless energy.  Suddenly, in the US, not only was gas (petrol) more expensive, the cost of a barrel of oil having quadrupled overnight, but there were, at least briefly, genuine shortages.  Even Cadillac owners with money enough to pay for a tank of gas found themselves in long queues, sometimes even unable to find any for sale.

1972 Oldsmobile 98 Regency interior in tufted, loose pillow style.

It was a short, sharp shock.  Oil supplies began again to flow within months but prices remained high.  Cadillac sales fell twenty-odd percent in 1974 but it was actually a good result, the company continuing to dominate its market sector, its results better than many.  The performance of the cars was less impressive, the bumpers ever bigger, the power lower and the driveability issues caused by the emission control devices worse.  At the time, there wasn’t much Cadillac could (or was prepared) to do about these things but resources were found to add even more luxury.  For years, the industry had been creating ever fancier versions of its lines, even the lower-priced being augmented with luxury versions, sometimes called “Brougham”, a moniker which came to be attached to the whole era.  Cadillac had long faced competition from Lincoln and Imperial but what must have been galling was the threat from within.  Oldsmobile, two notches down the GM pecking list from Cadillac, in 1972 introduced their “Regency” option, a package which essentially out-did Cadillac’s interiors with not just tufted velour upholstery but finished in a loose pillow style.  Cadillac had nothing like it but scrambled to respond, offering in 1973 the d'Elegance package, a US$750 option which included pillow-style velour seating as well as a more plush carpeting and bundled a few of the otherwise optional features.

1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman rear compartment in Medium Saddle leather.

However, all the d'Elegance stuff did was match what others were doing and there was still the corporate memory of the Cadillac mystique, a hankering for the time when Cadillac had been the “standard of the world”, a reputation built in the 1930s on basic engineering such as almost unique sixteen cylinder engines and maintained a generation later with cars such as the Eldorado Brougham, times when the name stood for something truly impressive.  By 1974 the world had changed and such extravagances were no longer possible but what could still be done was to add more gingerbread and for 1974, Cadillac announced the Talisman package.  Much more expensive than the d'Elegance and consequently more exclusive, the Talisman included an extended centre console, the front section housing an illumined writing tablet, the rear a storage compartment.  This had been done before but never with this opulence although it had the effect of reducing the huge car, a size which historically been a six-seater, into something strictly for four.  The interior was available in four colors in "Medici" crushed velour at US$1800 or in two shades in leather at US$2450 at a time when the Chevrolet Vega, GM’s entry-level automobile of the era cost US$2087.  The Talisman additionally gained matching deep-pile interior carpeting and floor-mats, a fully padded elk grain vinyl roof, exterior badge identifications, a stand-up, full-colour wreath and crest hood ornament and unique wheel-covers.  For those who needed more, for an additional US$85, a matching pillow and robe was available although the robe unfortunately wasn't cut in leather.  Optioned with the leather package, a 1974 Cadillac Talisman cost about US$13,200, matching what the company charged for the even bigger Fleetwood Seventy-Five limousines.  The additional gingerbread wasn’t all that expensive to produce; what Cadillac was selling was exclusivity and the market responded, 1898 Talismans coming off the production line that year, all sold at a most impressive profit.  Most prized today are the relative handful trimmed in leather, the urban legend being all were in medium saddle with none in the dark blue which was listed on the option list.  If any were sold with the blue leather, none appear now to exist and Cadillac’s records don’t record the breakdown.

1975 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman front compartment in rosewood velour.

The leather in either color didn’t anyway survive to the new model year, four colors of velour the only Talisman choices in 1975 and gone too was the rear-console extension, reportedly because of feedback from owners who either didn’t see the point or would have preferred the flexibility to carry an additional passenger.  It was an era of high inflation so the deletion of the hardware secured only a two-dollar reduction in price and in the gloomy economic climate of 1975, 1238 were sold.  The cars themselves were in their last days, huge dinosaurs unable to adapt to the shock of the new world they found around them though there were minor improvements.  Although engine size had been increased to 500 cubic inches (8.2 litres), output was down to 190 horsepower (although this was less of a drop from the 365 of 1971 because of the change in quoting power from gross to net) but the addition of catalytic convertors and later in the year, fuel injection, did allow some retuning, improving drivability.  The bumpers were the biggest yet and fuel economy, although improved, remained dire.

1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman rear compartment in blue velour with optional pillows.  The pillows (which many would have described as "cushions") were also available on the Talismans trimmed in leather.  The world should have more leather pillows.

The end of the line came in 1976, the final year for the big Cadillacs which had evolved over three quarters of a century.  With so much corporate energy devoted to the new, smaller cars, little time was devoted to the dinosaurs, changes restricted to trim and details although the newly-legal rectangular headlights, adopted throughout the industry to permit lower bonnet lines and thereby slipperier aerodynamics, were spliced in.  Inside, new interior colors were offered and fake Rosewood replaced the simulated distressed pecan vinyl appliqués on the instrument panel, doors, and rear quarter trim.  Inspired by the Oldsmobile Regency which had caused such a stir in 1972, soft, thickly pillowed seats were now standard and the d'Elegance package with its accoutrements could still be added but bowing out after 1976 would be both the 500 cubic inch V8 and the Talisman package, available for its swansong in five colors at US$1813.  GM made no secret this was the last year of the big Cadillacs and sales spiked, a new record of 309,139 cars of which 1200 were Talismans.

Naughty

Naughty (pronounced naw-tee)

(1) Disobedient; mischievous; wilful; wayward; misbehaving (used especially in speaking to or about children or pets).

(2) Improper, tasteless, indecorous, or indecent.

(3) Wicked; evil (obsolete).

(4) Sexually provocative; usually in a weakened playful sense, risqué or cheeky.

(5) Bad, worthless, sub-standard (obsolete).

1375-1400: From the Middle English naughty, nauȝty, nauȝti, naȝti, nowghty & noughti (needy, having nothing, also (also evil, immoral, corrupt, unclean)), from nought & naught (evil, an evil act; nothingness; a trifle; insignificant person; the number zero), from the Old English nawiht (nothing).  In the seventeenth century, as words like “bad” and “evil” came to be the preferred descriptors of the more extreme, naughty became something milder, used to describe the mischievous or those with a tendency to misbehave or act badly and this soon became most associated with children, a linguistic acknowledgment that bad behaviour unacceptable by an adult was excusable by in youth, This mitigated sense of "disobedient, bad in conduct or speech, improper, mischievous" to describe the delinquencies of children is attested from the 1630s.  The sense of "sexually promiscuous" is from 1869 but between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a woman of bad character (which might include but was not limited to lose virtue) might be called “a naughty pack” and there is evidence this was occasionally extended also to men and later an especially recalcitrant child.  Naughty, naughtier & naughtiest are adjectives; naughtily is an adverb and naughtiness a noun.  The alternative spelling noughty is archaic and obsolete.

The construct was naught + -y.  Naught in the mid-fourteen century meant "evil, an evil act" and also " a trifle"; by circa 1400 it had come to mean "nothingness", hence the adoption by mathematicians in the early fifteenth century as “the number zero" (from noht & naht (nothing) both of which had existed since the twelfth century, from the Old English nawiht (nothing, literally "no whit" from the primitive Indo-European root ne- (not) + wiht (thing, creature, being).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon neowiht (nothing), the Old High German niwiht, the Gothic ni waihts, the Dutch niet, and the German nicht. In the Old English, it became and adjectival form meaning "good for nothing" which endured to evolve by the mid-sixteenth century to the more focused "morally bad, wicked", softened over the years to the way the modern adjective naughty is now variously applied.  Naughty is an adjective & verb, naughtiness is a noun and naughtily an adverb; naughty has been used as a (non-standard) noun, usually as a euphemism for something related to sex so the noun plural there would be naughties (on the model of nasties).

It certainly had a long gestation to get to the point where “naughty” now is used  to describe mischievous kittens, vegan restaurants, sex shops and patisseries.  The primitive Indo European roots ne (not) & wekti (thing) both date back almost seven thousand years and, at the time of Antiquity, proceeded through the Proto-Germanic to become the Old English word nawiht (not a thing; nothing).  With the same meaning the word existed in the Middle English as naht, nought & naught, the last spelling, though now quite rare, enduring to this day.  Naughty was a fourteenth century fork, with the addition of the –y it was used to convey the same quality but with a new meaning (poor, literally "having nothing").  In the way class systems work by association, the rich (and perhaps even more so, the less-poor) extended the definition to include lazy, lawless, dirty, malignant etc (as required) because of a perception of correlation between poverty and crime.  Naughty however mellowed somewhat and society adapted, finding many other words with which to demonise the poor.

Naughty and Nice

Before mobile bandwidth and faster hardware drove them extinct, there were free afternoon newspapers, handed to commuters to read on the bus, tram or train journey home.  They were a welcome replacement for the afternoon papers (for which people had to pay) which, years or even decades earlier had been killed off by television.

mX Newspaper 2012 London Olympics medal table, 2 August 2012.

During the 2012 London Olympic Games, Melbourne’s mX commuter daily noted North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; the DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; the ROK) coincidently were running respectively fourth and fifth in the medal count so causing the ROK directly to sit atop the DPRK on their medal table.  Fearing confusion among readers not well acquainted with the peninsula’s geopolitics, mX decided to help, labelling the South “Nice Korea” and the North “Naughty Korea”.

In Pyongyang, the DPRK’s official Korean Central News Agency was quick to respond, accusing capitalist lackey mX of "…sordid behavior…" and “…a bullying act little short of insulting the Olympic spirit of solidarity, friendship and progress and politicising sports.”  The news media, it added, was “…obliged to lead the public in today's highly-civilised world where [the] mental and cultural level of mankind is being displayed at the highest level.”  Warming to the topic, the agency damned mX’s editors a being “…so incompetent as to tarnish the reputation of the paper…" which will remain a “…symbol of a rogue paper which will long be cursed in Olympic history."

DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un (b 1983) inspecting the North Korean pastry production line.

In response, mX ran the agency's attack on the next day’s front page under the headline Pyongyang Goes Ballistic Over mX Tally, claiming the table was “…not intended to be offensive” and just a “…humorous but harmless way…” for readers easily to differentiate between two countries with similar names.  It’s presumed Pyongyang was more upset at being labelled “naughty” than it was at the rogue state in the south being called “nice”.  Although nice has had many meanings, the agency probably well understood mX’s implication and acted appropriately against the imperialist propaganda.  The newspaper’s explanation was apparently accepted as an apology, the Supreme Leader not ordering any retaliatory missile strikes on the editorial office.

Naughty but Nice Patisserie, 39 Ilsham Road, Wellswood, Torquay, TQ1 2JG, UK.  Cakes, pastries, pies & rolls etc; it’s thought The Supreme Leader approves of pastry shops.

Naughty or Nice sex shop, 836 Main St, Lewiston, 83501 Idaho, USA.  Lingerie, toys, devices & accessories etc; it’s not known if The Supreme Leader approves of sex shops.

In December 2022, as a holiday season promotion, the Pepsi Corporation teamed with Lindsay Lohan to promote Pilk.  A Pilk is a mix of Pepsi Cola and milk, one of a class of dirty sodas created by PepsiCo which includes the Naughty & Ice, the Chocolate Extreme, the Cherry on Top, the Snow Float and the Nutty Cracker.  All are intended to be served with cookies (biscuits) and although Ms Lohan confessed to being “…a bit sceptical when first I heard of this pairing”, she was quickly converted, noting that “…after my first sip I was amazed at how delicious it was, so I’m very excited for the rest of the world to try it.”  

PepsiCo provided the instructions for mixing a Naughty & Ice: "For a pure milk taste that's infused with notes of vanilla, measure and combine 1 cup of whole milk, 1 tbsp of heavy cream and 1 tbsp of vanilla creamer.  From there, pour the mixture slowly into 1 cup of Pepsi and serve with a chocolate chip cookie."

Naughty and nice: Lindsay Lohan promotes Pilk.