Exchequer

Exchequer (pronounced eks-chek-er or iks-chek-er)

(1) A treasury, as of a state or nation.

(2) The governmental department in charge of the public revenues (often initial capital letter).

(3) A now disestablished English office administering the royal revenues and determining all cases affecting them.

(4) An ancient English common-law court of civil jurisdiction in which cases affecting the revenues of the crown were tried, now merged in the King's Bench Division of the High Court.  It was usually styled as the Court of Exchequer.

(5) Informal slang for one’s personal finances.

1250-1300: From Middle English escheker and eschequier, borrowed from the Anglo-French escheker and eschekier, derived from the Old French eschequier and escheccheck (chessboard, counting table).  Source was the Medieval Latin scaccarium (chess board).  The meaning with which it’s now most associated (government finances), emerged under the Norman kings of England, the basis the design of the cloth (divided in squares), covering the tables on which accounts of revenue were reckoned with counters; these reminded all who saw them of a chess board and the name was adopted.  The English respelling with an -x- was because of the erroneous medieval belief that it originally was a Latin ex- word (the old alternative spelling exchecker is long obsolete).  The most common modern use is the UK office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, equivalent variously to finance ministers or treasurers in other systems.  Confusingly for those not political junkies, the UK's prime-minister is formerly styled First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor, the Second Lord.  Exchequer is a noun & verb; the noun plural is exchequers.  When used to refer to an established institution (such as the UK's department of treasury), it's correct to use an initial capital.

Court of Exchequer Chamber

Although its origins date from the fourteenth century, it was the statute of 1585 which established the Court of Exchequer Chamber in essentially the form it would remain until its abolition by the Judicature Acts of 1873-1875 when it was absorbed into the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court.  Always an appellate court for common law civil actions, the court heard references from the King's Bench, the Court of Exchequer and, from 1830, directly rather than indirectly from the Court of Common Pleas.  It was a classic English appeal court in that it was constituted by four judges belonging to the two courts that had been uninvolved at first instance although, in matters of especial importance, twelve common law judges, four from each division below, sitting in Exchequer Chamber, might be asked to determine a point of law, the matter being referred by the court hearing the case rather than the parties.  Appeals from its judgments were, by leave, to the House of Lords but, because the Exchequer Chamber was regarded as a specialist and authoritative body, this was rare before the nineteenth century and rules of judgment by the Chamber were considered definitive statements of the law.

Court of Exchequer (1808) by William Henry Pyne (1769-1843).

Most appeals to the chamber were from the Exchequer of Pleas or Court of Exchequer, a court which dealt with matters of equity and expanded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries because the doing business in the Court of Chancery was a slow and expensive business.  In the manner of the evolution of the English courts, the Exchequer's jurisdiction, at various times, was common law, equity, or both, the prevailing trend being for discretionary areas of its jurisdiction to expand.  By the nineteenth century, Exchequer and Chancery enjoyed similar jurisdictions and with the Judicature Acts, the Exchequer was formally dissolved as a judicial body by an Order in Council of 16 December 1880.

The style of cloth spread across the tables of the courts of Exchequer has proved durable in fashion, the bold pattern working especially well with stark color contrasts, white with black, red, purple or navy blue the most popular combinations.  The gingham Macy midi dress (left) is a classic example but Lindsay Lohan (right) demonstrates how the look can be achieved using one’s own skin, using a Black Pash shirt & Alaia skirt combo (the t-strap sandals were by Miu Miu but an opportunity was missed by not adding a sympathetic clutch purse), The World's First Fabulous Fund Fair in aid of The Naked Heart Foundation, The Roundhouse, London, February 2015.

Pell

Pell (pronounced pel)

(1) An animal skin, fur or hide.

(2) A lined cloak or its lining.

(3) A roll of parchment; a record kept on parchment.

(4) As a Sussex dialectical form, a body of water somewhere between a pond and a lake in size.

(5) An upright post, often padded and covered in hide, used to practice strikes with bladed weapons such as swords or glaives.

(6) As Pell Office, a department of the English Exchequer (abolished in 1834).

Mid 1300s: From the Middle English pel (skin, hide), a roll of parchment, from the Anglo-French pell and the Old French pel (skin, hide (which by the thirteenth century it had evolved into peau which endures in Modern French)), from the Latin pellem & pellis (skin, leather, parchment, hide), from the Proto-Italic pelnis, from the primitive Indo-European pel- (skin, hide (also to cover, wrap; skin, hide; cloth)), the source of the modern pelt and distantly related to fell and film.  It was cognate with the Welsh pell (far), from the primitive Indo-European kwel and in Welsh, the plural was pell, the equative pelled, the comparative pellach and the superlative pellaf.  In the modern age, a frequently used derivation is rheolydd pell (remote control).  Pell is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is pells.  The present participle is pelling, the past participle pelled.

Before the internet made memes the preferred transport layer for just about any fragment of information, Ms Gemma Pell would probably have gone through life mostly untroubled by the cross-language phonetic coincidence in her name.  As it was she became a meme.  In French, Je m'appelle (pronounced "gem apell") means literally “I call myself” and translates as "My name is".

And that’s how the troubles started.

Pell-mell (confusedly; in an impetuous rush; with indiscriminate violence, energy, or eagerness) dates from the 1570s and was from the French pêle-mêle, from the twelfth century Old French pesle mesle, thought to be a jingling rhyme on the second element, which is from the stem of the verb mesler (to mix, to mingle".  The earliest known form in English was the phonetic borrowing from the French as “pelly melly”.  The primitive Indo-European root pel- (skin, hide) was a significant and productive pre-modern word, reflecting the importance of hides and skins in the economies of all societies, being related to fell (skin or hide of an animal), the Old English filmen (membrane, thin skin, foreskin),  pellagra (a disease characterised by skin lesions and mental confusion), pellicle (a thin skin or surface film), film (a thin layer of some substance; a pellicle; a membranous covering, causing opacity), pelt (skin of a fur-bearing animal), pillion (a pad behind the saddle of a horse for a second rider) & surplice (a thin, liturgical vestment of the Christian Church).

Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) in ecclesiastical regalia.  This was an exhibit introduced by the cardinal counsel to support the defence that the allegations against him were (as described) technically impossible (in the place and within the time alleged) because of the cut of the garments.  Within the Roman Curia (a place of Masonic-like plotting & intrigue and much low skulduggery), Cardinal Pell's nickname was “Pell Pot”, an allusion to Pol Pot (1925–1998, dictator of communist Cambodia 1976-1979) who announced the start of his regime was “Year Zero” and all existing culture and tradition must completely be destroyed and replaced. 

The origin of the surname Pell was metonymic occupational name for a dealer in furs, from the Middle English & Old French pel (skin, hide), a similar use to the Germanic forms Pelle & Pfell, the South German spellings from the Middle High German phellee & phelle (purple silk cloth).  In parallel, in England and Flanders, the surname Pell emerged as a pet form of Peter, a biblical name much admired by twelfth century Christian Crusaders and associated with the claim of St Peter, the founder of the Christian church, the name from the Ancient Greek word petrus (rock).  Because there was much commercial and population exchange between Flanders and England, Pell was also adopted as a surname in the former.  Even more so than in England, Flemish surnames were characterized by many variations in spelling and one reason for this was there were no real spelling rules in Medieval English.  Spellings were influenced by official court languages (Latin & French) and there was little consistency, changes happening between the efforts of one scribe and the next.  Names were recorded as they sounded so even the differences in pronunciation between one official or priest and another could induce differences and it wasn’t uncommon for people to have had their names registered in several different forms throughout their lives, something which makes difficult the work of genealogical researchers in the modern era.  Even within English, the variations were legion but there was a linguistic uniqueness among Flemish settlers in England, who spoke a language closely related to Dutch, meaning the pronunciation passed through another unfamiliar filter and anglicization was common, whole syllables sometimes deleted.  Pell has been spelled Pell, Pelle, Pel, Pels, Pells, Pelles & Pelf.

Cardinal Pell with Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) and former Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013).

In England, dating from the mid-fourteenth century, the Exchequer’s Pell Office was a department in which the receipts and payments were entered upon two rolls of parchment, the one called the introitta, which was the record of monies received, and the other the exitus, or the record of monies issued (ie credit & debit).  The office gained its name from the ledger entries being made in ink upon rolls called pells, from the Latin pellis (skin, leather, parchment, hide) which, while not exactly the blockchain of their day, represented a considerable advance in accuracy and reliability than the distributed and haphazard methods of the past and functionally similar institutions were established in Scotland and Ireland.  In the sixteenth century the pells (the parchment rolls) were replaced by books but the office retained its name until its abolition in 1834.  The lists of the name of holders of the office of Clerks of the Pells in the Exchequer read like something of a tale of English political corruption and nepotism.

Cardinal Pell makes a point.

The death at 81 of Australian Cardinal George Pell was announced by the Holy See on Tuesday 10 January 2023; he died after complications following “routine hip surgery”.  Created a cardinal in 2003, he was appointed the Vatican’s inaugural Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy (2014-2019 (effectively the treasurer or finance minister)), having earlier served as Archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney.  Although a player of real significance in the culture wars and later among the factions of the Vatican’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, the cardinal came to international attention when in 2018 he was convicted in the Supreme Court of Victoria on five charges of child sexual abuse, perpetrated against two boys of thirteen in a Cathedral a quarter-century earlier.  Sentenced to prison, the cardinal was the most senior Church figure ever jailed for such offences.  The conviction was upheld in a majority judgement (2-1) of the Victorian court of appeal but was in 2020 quashed in a unanimous (7-0) ruling by the High Court of Australia (HCA).  The cardinal served 13 months in prison.

Cardinal Pell accompanying to court laicised (defrocked) Roman Catholic priest and convicted child sex offender Gerald Ridsdale (1934-2025). Ridsdale died in prison while serving a 36 year sentence, technically still a priest because, as a matter of canon law, an ordination cannot be annulled.  Thus, while barred from undertaking most clerical rituals and functions, Ridsdale, convicted of some 70 sex-offences (including rape) against children could still have been called upon to perform the last rites for someone thought close to death "if no other priest was available".  

As a general principle, actions in law against a person die with them but what remained afoot was a civil suit, launched by the father of a choirboy who prosecutors alleged Cardinal Pell abused.  The action was able to proceeding because it was lodged against both the late cardinal and the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, something now possible because the old arrangement, under which the Catholic Church could not be sued (because at law it had no more status than the local bridge club), has been reformed.  It was of great interest because while the HCA quashed Pell’s criminal conviction because the Crown had not proven he was guilty (of that with which he was charged on the in the place and at the time alleged) “beyond reasonable doubt”, in civil proceedings, the standard to establish guilt is the less onerous “on the balance of probabilities”.  It was thus a matter analogous with the civil trial of football star OJ Simpson (1947-2024) which followed his acquittal on murder charges; in the civil trial, the court found against Simpson and awarded the plaintiffs US$33.5 million for his victims' wrongful deaths.  In Australia, the plaintiff sought unspecified damages for the mental injury he alleged he suffered after learning of the allegations against Pell, specifically compensation for "nervous shock" he endured as a result of losing his son and learning about the allegations a year later.  The term “nervous shock” is a creature of law with its own history of precedents and tests and describes a recognised mental disorder, injury or illness caused by the actions or omissions of another party and is not always entirely aligned with the term as used in medicine or psychiatry.  Because it’s now possible to sue the Catholic Church as an entity, in his statement of claim, the plaintiff argued the church was liable as it breached its duty of care.  That would have represented progress for many alleging they were victims of clerical child abuse because it seemed to allow a church to be pursued on the grounds of vicarious liability.

Cardinal Pell with former Archbishop of Melbourne Sir Frank Little (1925–2008), found by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to have led a culture of secrecy in the Melbourne archdiocese designed to hide complaints against priests and protect the church's reputation from scandal and financial liability.

Given the extraordinary volume of child abuse cases involving Roman Catholic clergy, the case was watched with interest, not least because of the findings of the earlier Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse (which ran for several years), interviewed thousands and found Pell had known of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action.  Pell rejected the commission’s findings, insisting they were "not supported by evidence".  That interplay of findings and other histories meant the case assumed greater significance because of the argument the church should be liable for the wrongdoings of its priests and bishops under the doctrine of vicarious liability.  There are defences to that but given recent developments there was hope it migh be applicable but but in 2025 the HCA ruled priests and such are not employees of the church, despite the appearance and perception by just about everyone except the Roman Curia and the judges of the HCA.  What this means is the legal avenue of vicarious liability effectively is closed because except in a narrow range of circumstances,  a church can't be held liable for the conduct of its (non-employed) clerics.  

Cardinal Pell and Tony Abbott, in church, discussing something.

Still, in death the late cardinal had his loyal defenders.  Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015), a lay-Catholic who in his youth trained for several years for the priesthood (a background which would later, among his parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the aisle, gained for him the moniker “the mad monk”) eulogized Pell as a “saint for our times” and “an inspiration for the ages”, damning the charges he’d faced as “a modern form of crucifixion”.  Time will tell if some pope might take up Mr Abbott’s hint and begin the process to create another Saint George (all would probably agree just now might be “too soon”) but the flourish “modern form of crucifixion” displayed a flair with words Mr Abbott but seldom managed during his years in office.

Backwoodsman

Backwoodsman (pronounced bak-woodz-muhn)

(1) A person living in or coming from the backwoods, or a remote or unsettled area (backwoodswoman a later back-formation).

(2) A person of uncouth manners, rustic behavior or speech etc.

(3) In historic UK use, a peer (member of the House of Lords) who rarely attends the chamber.

1700-1710: An Americanism, the construct being backwoods ((1) partly or wholly uncleared forest (especially in North America use) and (2) a remote or sparsely inhabited region (especially in North America use); away from large human settlements and the influence of modern life) + -man.  The related terms included “hinterlander”, “mountain man” & “woodsman” and while the history of use meant they evolved to be not wholly without implied meaning, in various places a number of “loaded” words and phrases came to be used as a way of disparaging rural dwellers including country bumpkin, boor, clodhopper, hick, rube, rustic, yokel, country boy (or country girl), hayseed, clod, hodge, swain, country cousin, son of the soil, lubber, lummox, galoot, mountainmen & lunk.  Backwoodsman is a noun; the noun plural is backwoodsmen.

Back was from the Middle English bak, from the Old English bæc (rear part of the body), from the Proto-West Germanic bak, from the Proto-Germanic baką & bakam, possibly from the primitive Indo-European bhago- (to bend; to curve) and may be compared with the Middle Low German bak (back), from the Old Saxon bak, the West Frisian bekling (chair back), the Old High German bah, and the Swedish and Norwegian bak.  It was cognate with the German Bache (sow (adult female hog)).  Wood was from the Middle English wode, from the Old English wudu & widu (wood, forest, grove; tree; timber), from the Proto-West Germanic widu, from the Proto-Germanic widuz (wood), from the primitive Indo-European hweydh- (to separate).  It was cognate with the Dutch wede (wood, twig), the Middle High German wite (wood), the Danish ved (wood), the Swedish ved (firewood), the Icelandic viður (wood) and additional cognates include the Irish fiodh (a wood; tree), the Irish fid (tree) and the Welsh gwŷdd (trees), all from the Proto-Celtic widus (wood).  The word was unrelated to the Dutch woud (forest), and the German Wald (forest).  Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man), probably from the primitive Indo-European mon- (man) (men having the meaning “mind”); a doublet of manu.  The specific sense of “adult male of the human race” (distinguished from a woman or boy) was known in the Old English by circa 1000.   Old English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late in the thirteenth century, replaced by mann and increasingly man.  Man also was in Old English as an indefinite pronoun (one, people, they) and used generically for "the human race, mankind" by circa 1200.  It was cognate with the West Frisian man, the Dutch man, the German Mann (man), the Norwegian mann (man), the Old Swedish maþer (man), the Swedish man, the Russian муж (muž) (husband, male person), the Avestan manš, the Sanskrit मनु (manu) (human being), the Urdu مانس‎ and Hindi मानस (mānas).  Although often thought a modern adoption, use as a word of familiar address, originally often implying impatience is attested as early as circa 1400, hence probably its use as an interjection of surprise or emphasis since Middle English.  It became especially popular from the early twentieth century.

Types de pionniers, de bouviers et d indians de Benton (Montana) (pioneers, drovers and Indians from Benton, Montana).  A late nineteenth century engraving after the drawing by Émile-Antoine Bayard (1837–1891), depicting the voyage from Washington to San Francisco, in 1868, by French engineer & geologist Louis Laurent (1830-1886), published in Le tour du monde (Hachette edition, 1874), edited by Édouard Charton (1807–1890).  When reproduced for sale in the US (right), the title Backwoodsmen and Indians (in the sense of “Native Americans” was sometimes used.

In the US, “backwoodsman” was a term used to describe those living remotely and it could be used neutrally or, by city-dwellers, as a form of disparagement.  It spread to the UK but didn’t become widely used until the dispute between the Conservative & Unionist Party (the Tories) opposition and the new Liberal government over certain budget measures, the squabble culminating in the “constitutional crisis” of 1911 and the passage of the Parliament Act which removed from the non-elected House of Lords the power permanently to block legislation passed by the (then sort of) democratically elected House of Commons.  When the Lords, defying convention, voted to reject the government’s budget, the prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer (the finance minister or treasurer) decided what was needed was constitutional reform, ending or at least severely restricting the right of their lordships to frustrate a government with a majority in the Commons.

HH Asquith, London, 1911.

The significance of the “backwoodmen” in the constitutional crisis was that they were the peers (members of the House of Lords, almost all of who had inherited their title and the right to sit in the parliament’s upper house, some there thus because of some great service (or in some cases corrupt act) of a ancestor possibly centuries earlier) who rarely, if ever attended sessions.  They gained their name by virtue of being country gentlemen and by virtue of their inherent bias for the Tory cause, they provided a built-in majority for the party and should ever the need arise, they could be summoned to vote.  That need arose during the crisis because the prime-minister (HH Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916) had threatened to secure George V’s (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) acquiescence to the creation of hundreds of Liberal Party aligned peers thereby overwhelming the Tory majority, a move which contained the implied threat of the new crop being used in an act of “political suicide”: voting to abolish the Lords.  That might have seemed scaremongery but in the decades ahead, elsewhere in the empire, upper houses would do exactly that.

Backwoodsperson Lindsay Lohan in the woods in Albus Lumen top & skirt from Matches Fashion with Missoni earrings & choker from Ounass, Emirates Woman magazine, May 2018.

As the parliamentary battle-lines were drawn, the Tories in the Lords coalesced into two factions: the “ditchers” and “hedgers”.  The ditchers were the “hardliners”, the absolutists prepared (metaphorically) to “die in the last ditch” rather than accede to any reform which constrained their power.  The ditchers had a world view which included the aristocracy being the natural and essential class to govern the nation.  The hedgers were the age’s version of the “power-realists”, pragmatists who may not have approved of reform but could sniff the winds of political change blowing through Westminster’s oak-panelled corridors, winds that were turning to gusts, blowing in moths already nibbling at the ermine.  Their view was the threatened reform was the lesser of two evils and it was better to concede a little now than later lose a lot more.

David Lloyd George, London, 1907.

Compromise was anathema to the ditchers who mobilized the network of backwoodsman peers, summoning them to London to vote which would have been a experience for some who had not for decades cat their eyes upon the the houses of parliament, let alone sat in the place.  The ditchers thought they had the numbers and at some points in the struggle they almost certainly did but when the news circulated the king had agreed to created hundreds of new barons, some of the ditchers, appalled at the thought their  exclusive circles would be diluted by an infusion of miners, manufacturers and motor car salesmen, left their ditch for the hedge.  When the moment arrived, the Parliament Act (1911) was passed by 131 votes to 114, the hundreds of abstentions an indication of how many had decided to “sit on the hedge”.  After the Parliament Act, the Lords could no longer veto all but the most fundamental constitutional acts and their power was restricted to delaying implementation for two years (in 1949 reduced to six months).  One Liberal actually pleased the need for the hundreds of new peers had never arisen was David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922), then chancellor of the exchequer.  Lloyd George was well acquainted with the character of men likely to be among the hundreds of new barons and viewed them with some distaste, admitting to the Tory leader of the opposition (Arthur Balfour (1848–1930; UK Prime Minister 1902-1905)) that like him he had no desire to see the creation happen: “…looking into the future, I know that our glorified grocers will be more hostile to social reform than your Backwoodsmen.”  Lloyd George appreciated the backwoodsmen might have some sense of noblesse oblige but he knew the way the “jumped up grocers” treated the working class in their mines, mills and factories.

Cutter

Cutter (pronounced kuht-er)

(1) A person employed to cut something, applied especially to one who cuts fabric for garments.

(2) A machine, tool, knife or other device for cutting.

(3) In nautical use, a single-mast sailing vessel, very similar to a sloop but having its mast set somewhat farther astern, about two-fifths of the way aft measured on the water line.

(4) In nautical use, a ship's boat having double-banked oars and one or two lugsails.

(5) In nautical use, a lightly armed government vessel used to prevent smuggling and enforce the customs regulations (known also as a revenue cutter).

(6) In psychiatry & psychology, a patient who repeatedly inflicts self-injury by cutting their flesh, a behavior traditionally associated with negative emotions.

(7) A person employed as a film editor, the titled derived from when physical film stock was physically cut with blades and re-joined.

(8) A small, light sleigh, usually single-seated and pulled by one horse.

(9) In construction, a brick suitable for cutting and rubbing, traditionally yellow and used for face-work (also called a rubber and now mostly obsolete but still use in restoration work).

(10) In industrial meat production (in the US government’s grading of beef), a lower-quality grade between utility and canner, used mostly in processed products such as hot dog sausages.

(11) In industrial meat production, a pig weighing between 68-82 kg (150-181 lb), from which fillets and larger joints are cut.

(12) In industrial meat production, an animal yielding inferior meat, with little or no external fat and marbling.

(13) In baseball, a variation of the fastball pitch.

(14) In cricket, as "leg cutter", a ball bowled by a fast bowler using finger spin to move the ball from leg to off (when delivered to a right-handed batsman); unrelated to the cut shot ("leg cut" & "off cut") except in the adjectival sense whereby a batsman might be described as “an expert cutter”, “an inept cutter” etc.  The "off cutter" is a delivery which moves in the other direction. 

(15) In dental classification, a foretooth; an incisor.

(16) In UK prison slang, a ten-pence (10p) piece, so named because it is the coin most often sharpened by prison inmates to use as a weapon.

(17) In medical slang, a surgeon (also modified to reflect specialties, neurosurgeons being “head cutters”, thoracic surgeons “chest cutter” etc).

(18) In the slang of criminology, an offender who habitually uses balded weapons to inflict injuries (also known as “slashers”).

(19) In film & television production, a flag, plate or similar instrument for blocking light.

(20) An officer in the exchequer who notes by cutting on the tallies the sums paid (obsolete).

(21) In slang, a disreputable ruffian (obsolete).

(22) As Cutter Expansive Classification (CEC), a library classification system, now obsolete although the core structure remains the basis for the system used by the US Library of Congress.

1375–1425: From the Middle English kittere & cuttere, the construct being cut(t) + -er.  Cut was from the Middle English cutten, kitten, kytten & ketten (to cut) (the Scots form was kut & kit), of North Germanic origin, from the Old Norse kytja & kutta, from the Proto-Germanic kutjaną & kuttaną (to cut), of uncertain origin, though there may be links with the Proto-Germanic kwetwą (meat, flesh) (related to the Old Norse kvett (meat)).  It was akin to the Middle Swedish kotta (to cut or carve with a knife) (the Swedish dialectal forms were kåta & kuta (to cut or chip with a knife)), the Swedish kuta & kytti (a knife), the Norwegian Bokmål kutte (to cut), the Norwegian Nynorsk kutte (to cut), the Icelandic kuta (to cut with a knife), the Old Norse kuti (small knife) and the Norwegian kyttel, kytel & kjutul (pointed slip of wood used to strip bark).  It displaced the native Middle English snithen (from the Old English snīþan) although the German schneiden survives still in some dialects as snithe or snead.  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.

A glove cutter at his bench at Omega srl Gloves (the Omega Glove Factory), Rione Sanità district, Naples, Italy.  In American Pastoral (1997), Philip Roth (1933–2018) wrote that no one was able to make gloves as well as “some small factory in Rione Sanità in Naples.”  In the 1980s, most glove production moved from Europe to the Far East and it's believed there are now fewer than a hundred master-certified glove cutters left in the world, the title formalized in seventeenth century France and conferred only after years of mentorship.

Night Suspect, a British Coast Guard Cutter in Pursuit (1958), oil on canvas by Montague Dawson (1890-1973). 

As a surname derived from occupation, Cutter emerged in the late twelfth century, based on the agent noun cutter (“one who cuts something” or “one who shapes or forms by cutting") from the verb cut From the 1630s it came to be used to describe an "instrument or tool for cutting", the use spreading as specialized tools and machines were developed.  In nautical use, beginning in 1792, it was applied to a range of small, single-mast vessels, a borrowing from the earlier use for a “double-banked boat belonging to a ship of war”, noted since 1745 and the rationale is unrecorded but it may have been either because of the similar lines of the hull or the more romantic idea of “cutting through” (moving quickly) the water.

Cake cutter: Lindsay Lohan cutting her chocolate birthday cake.

The original ships were the “revenue cutters", lightly-armed government vessels commissioned for the prevention of smuggling and the enforcement of the customs regulations.  The use was therefore for some time restricted to vessels cutter-rigged, but the name has survived to transcend the original specification, almost all revenue ships now powered while the handful of sailed-ships are schooner-rigged.  Modifiers are used to describe various specialized tools used for cutting including biscuit cutter, cigar cutter, bolt cutter, box-cutter, gem cutter, glass cutter, leaf-cutter etc.  The original box cutters, dating from 1871, were those employees with the task of “cutting boxes” while the installed box cutters were pieces of large industrial plant, first noted in 1890; the familiar modern box cutter (hand-held bladed tool for cutting cardboard) first sold in 1944.  A cookie cutter is literally a device used to cut shapes from a sheet of pastry dough but is also used figuratively to describe to things which are un-original or un-imaginative.  Cutter is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is cutters.

Cutters: Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI)

Fresh cuts.

Cutters are the best known example of self-harmers, the diagnosis of which is described in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).  NSSI is defined as the deliberate, self-inflicted destruction of body tissue without suicidal intent and for purposes not socially sanctioned; it includes behaviors such as cutting, burning, biting and scratching skin.  Behaviorally, it’s highly clustered with instances especially prevalent during adolescence and the majority of cases being female although there is some evidence the instances among males may be under-reported.  It’s a behavior which has long interested and perplexed the profession because as something which involves deliberate and intentional injury to body tissue in the absence of suicidal intent (1) it runs counter to the fundamental human instinct to avoid injury and (2) as defined the injuries are never sufficiently serious to risk death, a well-understood reason for self-harm.  Historically, such behaviors tended to be viewed as self-mutilation and were thought a form of attenuated suicide but in recent decades more attention has been devoted to the syndrome, beginning in the 1980s at a time when self-harm was regarded as a symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD) (personality disorders first appeared in the DSM-III (1980), distinguished by suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or acts of self-mutilation.

US Coast Guard (USCG) Legend Class National Security Cutter.

Clinicians however advanced the argument the condition should be thought a separate syndrome (deliberate self-harm syndrome (DSHS)), based on case studies which identified (1) a patient’s inability to resist the impulse to injure themselves, (2) a raised sense of tension prior to the act and (3) an experience of release or at least partial relief after the act.  That a small number of patients were noted as repeatedly self-harming was noted and it was suggested that a diagnosis called repetitive self-mutilation syndrome (RSMS) should be added to the DSM.  Important points associated with RSMS were (1) an absence of conscious suicidal intent, (2) the patient’s perpetually negative affective/cognitive which was (temporarily) relieved only after an act of self-harm and (3) a preoccupation with and repetitiveness of the behavior.  Accordingly, NSSI Disorder was added to the DSM-5 (2013) and noted as a condition in need of further study.

KEIBA Side Cutters.

Although interest in the cutters spiked in the 1990s, papers had been published as early as the 1930s and the literature suggests something of a consensus among clinicians it should be regarded a matter of self-mutilation, such acts a form of attenuated suicide.  Accordingly, all non-fatal and deliberate forms of self-injury tended to be viewed as suicide attempts, regardless of whether there was any expressed suicidal intent and it wasn’t until the 1960s that any volume of doubt emerged.  That was significant, not only because self-injury was coming to be understood as something distinct from attempted suicide but that it implied the instance of attempted suicide was significantly overstated, something of interest to many.  This led to the coining of the novel word “parasuicide”, perhaps an indication the profession still preferred to think cutting a sub-set rather than anything distinct.

Cutters' scars, fresh & fading.

For clinicians, NSSI can at the margins be a difficult diagnosis.  To fit the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5, NSSI must be intentional and deliberate but acts sometimes occurs during dissociative episodes so a judgment needs to be made determining whether an act can be held to be intentional if the patient is detached from reality.  As a definitional matter. there’s also the issue that if the motivation is to “feel something” some degree of intentionality seems at least implied but these examples do illustrate why NSSI among those suffering an episode of dissociation need even more carefully to be assessed before a diagnosis is decided.  There’s also a threshold criterion for the injury suffered, wounds needing to be “moderately intense” to qualify, thus the exclusion of such as lip-biting, scab & skin picking, hair pulling and nail-biting, even if these injuries might demand clinical care in another context (and may well be relevant in assessment measures).  Some extent of a “destruction of body tissue” is thus required and the current DSM-5 definition specifies bleeding or bruising.  However, it’s noted in cases studies that while minor and highly normative behaviors such as lip-biting, skin picking and hair pulling are excluded: (1) When severe they may be indicative of another specific condition such as trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder) or excoriation (skin-picking disorder) rather than NSSI and (2) repeated and obsessional instances of behavior that might otherwise be considered mild and normative might appropriately be diagnosed as NSSI.

Case Fatality Rates by Suicide Method (8 indicative US states, 1989-1997)

Although the instances of death resulting from cutting are low, it’s clear many patients engage in NSSI behaviors while experiencing thoughts of suicide and while the evidence suggests many report being resigned to death as a consequence of cutting, actual suicidal thoughts and hopes for death are markedly higher in those exhibiting suicidal behaviors.  Intriguingly, it seems some may engage in NSSI as a way to avoid acting on thoughts of suicide; NSSI for these patients serving to regulate and reduce suicidal thoughts and intentions.  So it’s clear that in both thought and behavior, there’s some overlap between NSSI and suicidal thoughts meaning that even if a cutter’s injuries are (medically) minor, the condition should not be thought trivial although, for practical purposes, NSSI and suicidal behaviors need still to be categorized separately.  Cutting is also special in that it is so overt, unlike other forms of self-harm such as alcohol & drug abuse, risky behavior or neglecting to follow a prescribed treatment for a chronic condition.  There does however seem to be a pronounced co-morbidity between NSSI and eating disorders, the obvious link being a patient’s relationship with their body, NSSI being in some sense a compensatory behavior and form of self-punishment.  Data is clearly accumulating but the APA’s editorial committee seem not yet ready to make major structural changes: in the DSM-5-TR (Text Revision, 2022) although codes were included both suicidal behavior and NSSI, Suicidal Behavior Disorder (SBD) and NSSI Disorder remained in the section “Conditions for Further Study”.

Slum

Slum (pronounced sluhm)

(1) A densely populated, run-down, squalid part of a city, now usually on the outskirts, inhabited by poor people (often used in the plural).

(2) Any squalid, run-down place, especially if used for human habitation.

(3) As slumming it, (1) to visit slums, especially from curiosity or (2), to visit or frequent a place, group, or amusement spot considered to be low in social status or (3), to use goods or services of lesser quality or cheaper than those to which one is accustomed.

(4) Slang for a shabbily dressed person, essentially the noun form of those slumming it (in sense of (3) above) and can be used (“the slums” or “those slums”) as a collective noun for groups of the poorly dressed (now rare).

1825 (noun) & 1884 (verb): A truncation of back slum (dirty back alley of a city, street of poor or low people (1825)), it was initially a slang or cant word meaning "room" and most especially "back room” (1812).  Slumscape, a use drawn from landscape to describe depressed urban housing was first noted in 1947 but never became a popular form although slum-lord (1899), from slum-landlord (1885) was in common use until well into the twentieth century, the use in England diminishing after housing and hygiene regulations began to impose standards improving the condition of rented housing.  Slum is of unknown origin, though there is support from some etymologists for the theory of the imperfect echoic, possibly from a foreign accent.  The most common related form now is used most often in the phrase “slumming it”, an expression indicating (sometimes voluntary) use of some service or product lower in standard than that to which one is accustomed.  The other related forms, slummy, slummily and slumminess are rare probably to the point of being archaic.

Gladstone.

The word first enjoyed popular use as a verb because it was popular in Victorian novels set in London’s East End, the negative association gained from the meaning "to visit slums for disreputable purposes or in search of vice" (1860).  The first modification of the verb form seems to date from 1884 in the sense of "visit slums of a city", especially as a diversion or amusement for the middle-class, often under guise of philanthropy.  Tempting though it is because of the timing, there’s nothing to suggest an etymological connection with the habit of William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898; variously the UK's chancellor of the exchequer or prime minister 1852-1894) of visiting slums, sometimes after midnight, for his "rescue work": meeting prostitutes on the street, recording their names in his little black book so that he might secure their salvation by arranging worthy and gainful employment.  Sometimes he would take them home for tea and readings from scripture.  Late in life, sensing perhaps the end was nigh, he clarified his role in a "Declaration" executed in his own hand on 7 December 1896.  Embossed with an embargo it was be unsealed only after his death, Gladstone wrote, "I desire to record my solemn declaration and assurance, as in the sight of God and before His Judgement Seat, that at no period of my life have I been guilty of the act which is known as that of infidelity to the marriage bed."  There’s some commendably Clintoneque precision there.

Slumming it: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend, Samantha Ronson, NYC subway, 2008.

Checkered

Checkered (pronounced chek-erd)

(1) Marked by numerous and various shifts or changes; variegated; diversified in color; alternately light and shadowed.

(2) Figuratively, changeable; inconsistent, marked by dubious episodes; suspect in character or quality, often in the forms “a checkered career”, “a checkered past” etc.  The still preferred spelling in the UK and much of the old British Empire is "chequered". 

(3) A fabric or other material marked with squares (most often in alternating black & white).

1350–1400: Check was from the Middle English chek & chekke, from the Old French eschek, eschec & eschac, from the Medieval Latin scaccus, from the Arabic شَاه‎ (šāh) (king (or check at chess); shah), from the Persian شاه‎ (šâh) (king, shah), from the Middle Persian mlkʾ & šāh, from the Old Persian xšāyaθiya (king), from the Proto-Indo-Iranian kšáyati (he rules, he has power over), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European tek- (to gain power over, gain control over).  The phrase “checkered past” appeared first in print in 1831 as a figurative use in the sense of “variegated with different qualities or events, having a character both good and bad”.  Checkered is an adjective.  Exchequer was from the Middle English escheker and eschequier, borrowed from the Anglo-French escheker and eschekier, derived from the Old French eschequier and escheccheck (chessboard, counting table).  Source was the Medieval Latin scaccarium (chess board).  The meaning with which it’s now most associated, government finances, emerged under the Norman kings of England, basis being the design of the cloth, divided in squares, covering the tables on which accounts of revenue were reckoned with counters.  These reminded all who saw them of a chess board and the name was adopted.  The English respelling with an -x- was because of the erroneous medieval belief that it originally was a Latin ex- word.

Flags in motorsport

Taking the checkered flag: Ralph Mulford (1884–1973) in a Lozier Type 51, winning the Vanderbilt Cup, Savannah, Georgia, USA, 28 November 1911.  In motorsport, the term "taking the checkered flag" means winning the race although at the conclusion of an event, the flag is displayed to all competitors as they cross the finish line for the final time.  Even in the digital age, flags continue to play a vital part in motorsport.  Despite progress, flags remain an efficient and reliable system instantly to convey information to those in visual range although in top-flight competition (such as Formula One) the bunting is now augmented by color-coded in-car display systems.  The most commonly seen flags are:

Green: Normal racing conditions apply.  The green flag is used also by staff under the control of the race director (the old "clerk of the course", a term borrowed from horse racing which donated much early terminology to the sport) in a way the drivers never see: When the cars are assembled on the grid prior to the start of an event, the race marshal posted at the back of the field will wave a green flag to indicate all vehicles are correctly placed; once the starter sees this, they are free to start the race which they do by waving a flag and while this may be green, these days it's often a national (or sub-national) flag or one with the symbol of a sponsor.    

Yellow: The hazard flag.  Its use varies according to the rules of the sanctioning body but in general: (1) it waved, it denotes a hazard on the racing surface, (2) if stationary a hazard near the racing surface and if two yellow flags are waved simultaneously, there’s a hazard (an object or person) blocking at least part of the racing surface.

Red and yellow vertical stripes: The oil flag.  It’s really the slipperiness flag because it’s used to warn of something on the surface (oil, coolant, sand, gravel, other fluids etc) which mean the track will offer less grip; despite that everybody calls it the oil flag.  Some sanctioning bodies display the flag until the hazard has cleared; others use it only for a couple of laps, the hazard beyond that point deemed "part of the track” with which the drivers are assumed to have become familiar.

Red: Stop the race.  This is usually done because a severe accident or natural conditions (weather, earthquake etc) mean it’s too dangerous to continue and, depending on the circumstances, drivers need either immediately to stop or slow to a safe speed and proceed to the pits.  Sometimes it’s used in conjunction with a yellow flag (there’s even a diagonally divided red and yellow flag for this purpose) to indicate the field should assemble for a re-start.

White: Once, the white flag was used to warn drivers an ambulance was sharing the track and as late as the 1970s, ambulances were deployed with the field still at racing speed and those for whom that sounds remarkable, should view footage of the aftermath of the horrific accident at Le Mans in 1955 to see how things used to be done without interfering with the running of the race.  Of late the white flag has come to be used in US motorsport as a component in the Green–White–Checker finish (GWC), an innovation which was a product of the sport being a content provider for television (and latterly other) feeds.  Its core rationale is to ensure races end under competitive conditions rather something anti-climatically processional under caution the caution flag.  Adopted in NASCAR, IndyCar (with variations), and other US series, the official explanation is that GWC ensures fairness while maintaining a structured approach but it’s really a device to ensure the product (the viewers) continue happily to be delivered to the customers (the advertisers).  In NASCAR the GWC is implemented with set parameters: (1) a green flag is waved to indicate the start of the final two laps (the so-called “overtime”) and (2) a white is waved to signify the final lap.  Should another caution flag be required before the white flag point is reached, the process can begin anew and this can be done as often as is possible within whatever “retries limit” rule applies on the day; should the white flag be taken, the next flag (checkered or caution) ends the race.  Other series have variations on the system, some extending laps under green or utilizing “red flag” stoppages to enable a competitive finish.

Black: The solid black flag is shown to inform a drive they should return to the pits to serve a penalty for some infringement of the rules or to have the vehicle checked because of some concern.  The black flag with an orange disc in the centre (the so-called meatball flag) is used to call a vehicle to the pits to have some mechanical defect immediately rectified.  The meatball flag, either by explicit regulation or convention, is used only when the mechanical defect presents some real or immediate risk to drivers or spectators (oil leaks, protruding bodywork etc)  

Blue: A proximity warning.  If held in a static position, it tells the driver another vehicle is closely following while if waved, it means another vehicle is attempting to overtake.  The idea is a slower car should not impede the progress of a faster one but the pattern of enforcement varies, the most common regulation being that lapped cars must yield to one attempting to pass but while this is mandated in some series, in others it remains merely advisory (although conduct can still be subject to “bad sportsmanship” rules, the ultimate on-track sanction of which is the “black flag”).  Often, the blue flag is used also at the exit from the pits to assist vehicles safely to re-join the race without disrupting those still circulating.

Checkered:  Also known as the chequered flag, the checkered flag indicates the end of a race.  Some sources suggest historically it was waved to acknowledge the race winner and held static to indicate to others the race had finished but there’s no evidence this practice was ever written into rules or even widely adopted and the checkered flag seems mostly to be waved.  The winner of a race is said to have “taken the checkered flag”.  Checkered flags are usually black and white and rendered in squares or rectangles but different color combinations have been used, sometimes to suit the needs of sponsors.  A noted innovation came in the 1980 Indianapolis 500 when two checkered flags were waved at race-end and the Indy series has adopted this as a standard.

Lindsay Lohan with fingernails in checkered flag pattern.

Various stories have been offered as the origin of the checkered flag in motorsport.  One suggests that in the horse-racing events popular at the large public picnics held during the settlement of the American mid-west during the nineteenth century, when the ladies were ready to serve lunch, they would wave large, checker-board tablecloths to inform the men food was ready and they competition should quickly be concluded.  As motorsport emerged as another amusement for men, because the early competitions were almost always held on dirt tracks, it’s said the contrasting colors of the checkerboard pattern were easier to see in a dusty environment and were thus ideal to signal the finish line.  Historians of the sport think these stories dubious on the basis of a lack of any contemporary evidence and for the some reason they’ve always been unwilling to give credence to any link with late nineteenth century bicycle racing in France.

British Admiralty Flag Chart.  

More convincing is the notion it may have been a borrowing from a naval flag signaling system and those of some admiralties did include a black (or blue) & white checkerboard to denote “Z” (ie final letter and thus the end in that sense).  It may be true or else, like many things, the checkered flag was chosen for its purpose at random.  What all agree upon is the documentary record.  The earliest known use of the checkered flag, based on the photographic record, is the one used to mark the end of the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race in Long Island, New York.

Manufacturers used the checkered flag to convey a sense of high performance and to suggest some link (which sometimes was real) with a competition history.

The flag of Croatia

A banner used in Croatia between 925-1102 (left), the current Croatian flag adopted after independence in 1990 (centre) and the Croatian naval ensign (1990).

One of the most ancient symbols to endure in modern nation flags is the red & white checkered pattern used to this day on the flag of Croatia.  The oldest known example dates from 925 and the pattern was used (with the odd interruption) for centuries, even when the country was a non-sovereign component of supranational states such as the Habsburg Empire.  A red star was used instead when Croatia was a part of comrade Marshall Tito’s (1892-1980) Jugoslavija (Yugoslavia) between 1945-1990 but the red & white checks were restored when independence was regained in 1990.

Ivana Knoll at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Noted Instagram influencer Ms Ivana Knoll (b 1992) was a finalist in the Miss Croatia beauty contest in 2016 and for her appearances at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, chose a number of outfits using the national symbol of the red and white checkerboard, matching the home strip worn by the team.  By the standards of Instagram, the design of the hoodie she donned for Croatia's game against Morocco at the Al-Bayat stadium wasn't particularly revealing but it certainly caught the eye.  As if Gianni Infantino (b 1970, president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football) since 2016) didn't have enough to ponder, the former Miss Croatia contestant tagged FIFA in her posts, fearing perhaps the president might not be among her 600,000 Instagram followers and her strategy seems to have had the desired effect.  Although it deems dubious the design (which did cover her hair, shoulders and legs) was sufficiently demur to satisfy the local rules, it seems she posted throughout the event, undisturbed.   The guidance provided by FIFA indicated non-Qatari women didn't need to wear the abaya (the long, black robe) but tops had to cover the midriff and shoulders, and skirts, dresses or trousers must cover the knees; moreover, clothing should not be tight or reveal any cleavage.  In accordance with the rules or not, Ms Knoll proved a popular accessory for Qatari men seeking selfies.

Croatian FIFA World Cup 2022 strips, home (left) & away (right). 

On the basis of her Instagram posts, the German-born beauty (although perhaps technically in violation of some rules) had a pleasant tournament if she's had any problems, Sepp Blatter's (b 1936; FIFA president 1998-2015) lawyers may have been available.  They seem pretty good.  Paradoxically, although the impressively pneumatic Ms Knoll generated much interest in her hoodie, had she worn an all-enveloping burka in the red & white checkerboard, it might have gained even more clicks.