Exorcise

Exorcise (pronounced ek-sawr-sahyz)

To seek to expel from a person or place an evil spirit by means of adjuration or solemn religious ceremonies.

1350-1400: Use of the verb predated this date but formerly it entered Middle English from the fourteenth century Old French exorciser from the Late Latin exorcizāre, derived from the Ancient Greek exorkízein (bind by oath; banish an evil spirit) and the sense "call up evil spirits to drive them out" was dominant by the sixteenth century.  In England, exorcize was actually an alternative spelling but this is now one the rare instances in English where the US adopted -ise rather than -ize which some etymologists suggest may have been because of the influence of "exercise" although why that would be compellingly persuasive seems never discussed.  What is more likely is the use of "exorcise" in so many church documents brought to the American colonies, there being more reluctance to edit "sacred" works.  Some US academic sources do suggest exorcize is "a rare but correct" alternative, a concession not extended to exercize.  The rarest of the related forms are exorcismal, exorcisory, exorcistical and the wonderful exorcistic.

The noun exorcism (a calling up or driving out of evil spirits) was a fifteenth century creation formation from the Late Latin exorcismus, from the Ancient Greek exorkismos (administration of an oath) which, in Ecclesiastical Greek existed as exorkizein (exorcise, bind by oath), the construct being ex- (out of) + horkizein (cause to swear), from horkos (oath) of uncertain origin although some have suggested there's a link to  herkos (fence), the idea being of a oath with boundaries one accepts as "restrictions, ties & obligations" or "a magical power that fences in the swearer".  It's speculative and one etymologist noted dryly that the discipline's enthusiasm to adopt the view "was restrained".  A fourteenth century form describing the ritual was spelled exorcization.

Exorcism: Vade retro satana (Step back, Satan)

Saint Francis and the Dying Impenitent (1788) by Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

Exorcism in Christianity is the practice of casting out demons from a person or place possessed by the Devil.  Although the biblical origins are dubious, depending on contested translations, by early in the second century of Christianity, the word was in general use and paintings of exorcists and their ceremonies are among the darker and more dramatic in medieval and later sacred art.

In the Roman Catholic Church, the rituals were formalized in 1614 because of Rome’s concerns about clandestine, underground exorcisms performed without their consent and the guidelines remained substantially unchanged until the Vatican’s revisions in 1999, a process necessitated by a late twentieth-century spike in demand.  Interestingly, for more than a decade after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II (1962-65)), it was really not done for clergy to speak of Satan as if he really existed, the modernizing church preferring the language of psychology and psychiatry for those displaying symptoms which would once have been blamed on the Devil.

Exorcism of Nicole Aubry (1563), etching by unknown artist.

Popular culture, especially cinema, revived interest in the ritual, with both churches and the medical profession reporting an upsurge in claims of demonic possession and most significantly, Saint Pope John Paul II (1920–2005, pope 1978-2005) had a more robust attitude to the Devil’s role upon earth than any of his twentieth century predecessors.  In 2004, JPII again warned that occult and new age practices were raging out of control in Europe, providing gateways for evil that could result in demonic attachment and possession.

It’s been good business for the Holy See ever since.  The most recent Course on Exorcism and Prayer of Liberatio, held at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum (an educational institute under the auspices of the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ) in Rome, attracted some two-hundred and fifty priests from fifty countries.  Until the disruption caused by COVID-19, the week-long course, entitled Exorcism and the Prayer of Liberation had been held every year since 2005, attendance more than doubling over the years.  Cost per head was €300,  (Stg£252, US$315); bookings were essential and an entry-ticket included discounts on rooms and food & beverage in several Rome hotels.

The Exorcist’s “spider walk” scene.

Based on the William Peter Blatty (1928-2017) novel The Exorcist (1971), the film version (1973) was directed by William Friedkin (1935-2023) and that it did not win the Best Picture Academy Award is a mystery explained only by the prejudices held at the time by those members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who cast ballots for The Sting (1973) a well-made but formulaic piece and hardly the a landmark like The Exorcist.  The “spider walk” scene was long the subject of speculation.  Not included in the original theatrical release, the director for years claimed it had never been shot and it was only when copies of the takes were found in the archives he admitted it had been done but that it couldn’t be used because the technology didn’t at the time exist to edit out the wires attached to a rail above which made the performance possible.  Subsequently it was revealed the scene had been shot without use of the harness designed for the purpose because it was performed by an experienced stunt double with gymnastic training.  Apparently the director didn’t include it because he thought it appeared too early and disrupted the sequence which is interesting because structurally, The Exorcist is far from perfect.  The spider walk scene was included in the “director’s cut” editions released the next century.

The Exorcism of Charles II of Spain

Charles II of Spain (Carlos Segundo 1661–1700), was the last king of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, sovereign of the Spanish Empire which stretched from Mexico to the Philippines.  The only surviving son of his predecessor, Philip IV (1605-1665) and his second wife, Mariana of Austria (1634-1696), his birth was greeted with enthusiasm by the Spanish people because, as was the fashion of the time, had the old king died without a male heir, a war of succession (traditionally a bloody business) would have ensued.

However, Charles was physically disabled, disfigured, mentally retarded and found later to be impotent, usually a drawback for any king but a discovery which brought relief to many courtiers.  He uttered no words until the age of four, didn’t take his first step before he was almost nine, suffering throughout childhood a range of diseases including measles, varicella, rubella, and smallpox.  Left almost uneducated because of his frailty, his mother was regent most of his reign and he came to be known to history as El Hechizado (the Bewitched), the name applied because both court and country believed his mental and physical incapacities were due to an act of witchcraft.  Modern science suggests otherwise, the condition actually the consequence of the strong preference for endogamy within the Spanish branch of the Habsburg royal family which led to its segregation toward neighbor communities and the emergence of consanguinity.  In short, Charles II was inbred: his grandparents were at the same time his great-grandparents; her father, who was married to her sister's daughter, was also her great-uncle, and her mother happened to be her cousin as well.  One could see how things might not have turned out well and the condition was well-known in Europe and not restricted to aristocracy and royalty.  The slack enforcement of marriage laws on much of the continent was one of the reasons there were so many victims of the Nazi euthanasia (Aktion T4, 1939-1945) programme and the scandal of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (circa 575–641; emperor 610-641) marrying his niece Martina (circa 590-circa 644) had been made still worse by the condition of some of the children the union produced.

However, to speak of incest in the royal family was just not done so the feeling at the time was to blame witches or the Devil and the court sought the advice of Fray Antonio Álvarez Argüelles, vicar of the Encarnación de Cangas del Narcea convent and a noted Asturian exorcist who advised “…last night the demon told me that the King is evilly bewitched to rule and to beget. When he was 14 years old, he was enchanted with a chocolate in which the brains of a dead man were dissolved to take away his health, corrupt his semen and prevent his generation”.

Exorcism of Charles II of Spain, engraving by Lechard, circa 1840.

That must have been convincing because soon after the king was subjected to what was, even by the standards of the time, a most macabre exorcism.  By coincidence, the remains of his ancestors were being transferred to a new pantheon at the Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial and the exorcist had their coffins opened, conducting a ceremony in which the corpses of his relatives and, in an advanced state of putrefaction, that of their his beloved first wife (María Luisa de Orleans (1662-1689)), were exhibited, the hope being the array of the dead would drive off the demons so tormenting the king.

It was in vain and the suffering continued.  Ill his whole life and king since the age of three, he lingered until 1700, dying at thirty-nine, the announcement one of the more eagerly awaited events in the courts and chancelleries of Europe, such was the anticipation of the struggles which would erupt to decide the succession.  Summarizing a sad life in Carlos, the Bewitched (1962, published in the US as Carlos: The King who would Not Die), his English biographer John Langdon-Davies (1897–1971) wrote: "Of no man is it more true to say that in his beginning was his end; from the day of his birth, they were waiting for his death".  On his deathbed, his last words were: "Everything hurts".

Gabardine

Gabardine (pronounced gab-er-deen or gab-ah-deen)

(1) A firm, tightly woven fabric of worsted, cotton, polyester, or other fibre, with a twill (a diagonally ribbed texture) weave.

(2) In casual use, any of various other similar fabrics (historically woven with cotton) once associated especially with raincoats worn by children (now mostly archaic).

(3) An ankle-length loose coat or frock worn by men, the name an allusion to the garment much associated with Jews in the medieval period (and one which in England Jews were by statue compelled to wear so easily they could be identified).  The general use to describe the long cloaks dates from circa 1525 and was an allusion to the Jewish-specific garment.

1510–1520: The spelling gabardine is a variant spelling of gaberdine, almost certainly from the Old French gauvardine & gallevardine (a long, loose outer garments much associated with pilgrims), from the Middle High German wallewart (pilgrimage (Wallfahrt in the German)), from the Spanish gabardina, possibly a conflation of gabán (from the Arabic qabā (men’s over-garment) and tabardina (diminutive of tabard or tabard (a sleeveless jerkin consisting only of front and back pieces with a hole for the head))).  The construct of the German Walfahrt was the Proto-Germanic wal- (source also of Old High German wallon (to roam, wander, go on a pilgrimage) + the Proto-Germanic faran (to go), from the primitive Indo-European per- (to lead, pass over).  The evolution of the word in Spanish was probably influenced by the Spanish gabán (overcoat) & tabardina (coarse coat) although the alternative etymology suggest it was an extended form of gabán and the Spanish word was borrowed and underwent alterations in Old French.  Gaberdine was documented from the 1510s while gabardine in the sense of "dress, covering" dates from the 1590s.  The meaning "closely woven cloth" dates from 1904 and the tightly woven fabric remains popular with designers for suits, pants, jackets, summer wear and especially overcoats.  Originally made from worsted wool, the twill weave fabric is now often rendered with synthetic and cotton blends and is renowned for its versatility and durability.  The alternative spelling garbardine is archaic.  Gabardine is a noun; the noun plural is gabardines.  

Pink & polka-dot combo by by Amiparism: Lindsay Lohan, in Ami three button jacket and flare-fit trousers in wool gabardine with Ami small Deja-Vu bag, Interview Magazine, November 2022.  Jaguar first fitted the basketweave (or lattice and some Jaguar owners call them "starflake") wheels in 1984. 

The car is a Jaguar XJS (1975-1996 and labeled XJ-S until mid-1991) convertible.  Upon debut, the XJ-S was much criticized by those who regarded as a "replacement" for the slinky E-Type (although, belying appearances, the XJ-S was more aerodynamically efficient), but Jaguar had never thought of it like that, taking the view motoring conditions and the legislative environment had since 1961 changed so much the days of the classic roadsters were probably done except for a few low volume specialists.  In truth, in its final years, the E-Type was no longer quite the sensuous shape which had wowed the crowed at the 1961 Geneva Salon but most critics though it still a more accomplished design.  In the West, the 1970s were anyway a troubled and the XJ-S's notoriously thirsty 5.3 litre (326 cubic inch) V12 wasn't fashionable, especially after the second oil shock in 1979 and the factory for some months in 1981 ceased production, a stay of execution granted only when tests confirmed the re-designed cylinder head (with "swirl combustion chambers") delivered radically lower fuel consumption.  That, some attention to build quality (which would remain a work-in-progress for the rest of the model's life) and improving economies of both sides of the Atlantic meant the machine survived (indeed often flourished) for a remarkable 21 years, the last not leaving the factory until 1996.

Jaguar didn't offer full convertible coachwork until 1988 but under contract, between 1986-1988, Ohio-based coachbuilders Hess & Eisenhardt converted some 2000 coupés.  Unlike many out-sourced conversions, the Hess & Eisenhardt cars were in some ways more accomplished than the factory's own effort, the top folding completely into the body structure (al la the Mercedes-Benz R107 (1971-1989) or the Triumph Stag (1969-1977)).  However, to achieve that, the single fuel tank had to replaced by a pair, this necessitating duplicated plumbing and pumps, something which proved occasionally troublesome; there were reports of fires but whether these are an internet myth isn't clear and tale Jaguar arranged buy-backs so they might be consigned to the crusher is fake news.  The one with which Ms Lohan was photographed in Miami was manufactured by Jaguar, identifiable by the ,ore visible bulk of the soft-top's folding apparatus.

The Gadarene Swine.  Les porcs précipités dans la mer (The Swine Driven into the Sea, circa 1894), watercolor (gouache over graphite on gray wove paper) by Jacques Joseph “James” Tissot (1836–1902), Brooklyn Museum, New York City.

The diary (The Struggle for Survival 1940-1965) entry of Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) physician (Sir Charles Wilson (Lord Moran); 1882-1977)) for 6 August 1942 records that in Cairo, there were some two-thousand, apparently unproductive, British Army officers who wore a very smart uniform called a gabardine and that in the slang of other units, they were called “the gabardine swine”.  The play on words was based on the New Testament tale of the Miracle of the Gadarene Swine, referred to sometimes in academic writing as the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac.  The miracle performed by Christ is the driving from a man demons which are allowed to take refuge in a herd of swine which then run down a slope into a lake where they drown.  The miracle is recounted in the three Synoptic (Matthew, Mark & Luke) Gospels, but not in that of John.  Matthew’s (8:28–34) account is short and differs in detail from Mark (5:1–20) & Luke (8:26–39), both of which include narrative descriptions which have informed the exorcism rites of the church ever since and the story has since Augustine attracted theologians and scholars who have found layers to interpret and it’s the origin too of the English proverbial word gadarene which describes or cautions against a “headlong or potentially disastrous rush to do something".  The Biblical reference to Gadarene is geographical although it’s uncertain exactly where the events transpired.

Sheep carcasses at the base of the cliff, Topyildizm, Türkiye, 2005.

In the annals of zoological behaviour, there are reports of “mass suicide” by groups of animals but most have been classified by animal behaviourists as examples of “herd mentality” rather than a desire, individually or collectively, among the beasts to kill themselves.  In 2005, in what some press reports described as a “mass suicide jump”, more than 400 sheep perished while grazing close to the village of Topyildiz, in the Gürpinar prefecture of Türkiye’s eastern province of Van, the flock of 1,500 following one which had jumped from a 15 metre (50 feet) high cliff.  Well over 1,000 survived because their fall was cushioned by them landing on the carcasses of those which earlier had leapt.  What had happened was the first sheep had led the others to the Arebi-Krom plateau near the Yaprakli hamlet where it noticed the grass was greener on the other side and was thus inspired to leap across the chasm to the cliff edge opposite.  Unfortunately for the creature (and 400-odd of the flock), ambition exceeded ability and the plunge to a grisly death trigged a chain reaction, the others following, quite normal behaviour for the species.  Four year later, that was the fate also of 28 cows & bulls which, over three days, died after “throwing themselves off a cliff” in the Swiss Alps; while such fatalities are not unknown in the mountains it was untypical for so many in this way to perish over such a short span of time.  Researchers accounted for the phenomenon by noting the series of violent thunderstorms in the area and this is what was thought to have “spooked” the animals.

There are in the zoological record a number of instances of animals appearing to “commit suicide” although there’s much doubt whether non-human animals have an abstract conception of “death” despite observational findings there may be instances of something like “mourning” when a death occurs.  So whether an animal can “decide” to kill themselves is a controversial topic, the practical problem being it’s not possible to “interview” an animal and discover their thoughts; we can guess what an animal is “thinking” but we can never be certain.  While cat owners will confirm it’s possible to deduce from behaviour things like their pet wanting a snack (never difficult with cats) or wants a door open, they cannot work out whether their pet likes the color of their new car or preferred the old.  There were though reports from the 1960s of a dolphin which became “depressed” and “decided” not to take another breath (whales & dolphins are not involuntary air breathers like humans, every breath demanding conscious effort which means at any time they could end their lives if they so “choose”) and as long ago as 1845, the Illustrated London News ran the headline “Singular Case of Suicide” about a “fine, handsome and valuable black dog, of the Newfoundland species”.  According to the owner, the dog for some days had been “less lively than usual” before being seen “to throw himself in the water and endeavor to sink by preserving perfect stillness of the legs and feet.”  The dog was rescued but soon returned to the water, something repeated several times until eventually it drowned; various explanations have been offered.

Ready to explode: A serial pest dreaded by gardeners, pea aphids are born pregnant, re-produce quickly and have no other purpose except eating plants, a single example able within six weeks to have multiplied to almost 40 million.

Better known are the many cases of pods of whales, sometimes in the dozens, beaching themselves, often resulting in mass deaths and that’s been attributed both to “herd mentality” (ie one creature following another) and a variety of human-induced changes to the maritime environment.  More convincing as possible “conscious” suicides are those instances of bears kept captive in small cages in Japan and Vietnam so their bile (a digestive juice stored in the gall bladder and much prized in traditional Chinese medicine) can be harvested.  The bile is extracted through a catheter tube which sits in a permanent incision in the abdomen and gall bladder and the doubtlessly painful process usually is performed twice-daily.  In 2012, animal rights activists reported bears were “starving themselves to death to escape the misery of their captivity”.  Entomologists however have no doubts there are insects that sacrifice themselves to protect others of their species, a classic example being the sap-sucking (it’s not much but it’s a life) pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) which literally “explodes” itself (a benefit of all that sap) to protect others.  Despite that trigging of what is a “natural suicide vest”, it’s thought to be pure instinctive behaviour and not the result of a conscious “life or death” decision.

In philosophy, the Gadarene Swine Fallacy (GSF) is the logical fallacy of supposing (1) because a group is in the right formation, it is therefore on the right course or (2) supposing that because an individual has strayed from the group and isn't in formation, that they are off course.  The point of the GSF is that regardless of the vantage point from which a thing is viewed, mere appearances do not of necessity contain sufficient information accurately to convey what is right or wrong.  Moral theologians, legal theorists and others have been both satisfied and troubled by the miracle.  Saint Augustine's (354–430) immensely influential view was the story illustrated the special status God granted to man in the universe; that Christians have no obligations to God's other creatures, Jesus sacrificing two thousand swine to save the soul of one man and had it been a herd of ten-thousand he'd have seen them drowned too.  Augustine didn’t discuss the supposed right of Jesus to send to their death a large herd of pigs presumably the property of another who may have relied on them to feed and care for his family but this has since been discussed.

The Christian position must be that Christ is a Divine Being and therefore sovereign over the entire creation; the world is his dominion: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10).  That includes pigs and his actions gained the approbation (Mark 5:20) of those who watched the exorcism for they “marveled” (although they also asked him to leave town, the reasons for that a matter of theological dispute).  Technically too, Jesus could have quoted the Old Testament prohibitions of Leviticus who, among his list of abominations condemned swine as “unclean” (Leviticus 11) and thus fit for little but death by demonic possession.  Leviticus and Christ would also have agreed that whatever value some might place on the heads of two-thousand swine, it is nothing compared to the worth of one human soul.  Even before animal rights activism became main-stream, the orthodox Augustinian view (and those of the neo-Augustinian apologists) had been criticized.  The hardly impartial atheist  philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) discussed the miracle in Why I am Not a Christian (1927), finding it appalling a being omnipotent and therefore presumably able just to cast the demons into oblivion chose instead to kill two-thousand pigs, the creatures by any measure innocent of wrong-doing.  Modern activists Like Tash Petersen would doubtless be harsher still in their judgement than Lord Russell.

The Miracle of the Gadarene Swine (circa 1000), tempera colors, gold leaf & ink on parchment by an unknown artist of Canterbury, England, J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

In the centre of this miniature removed from a Gospel book, Jesus and his followers confront two men whose half-dressed, unkempt state suggest they are possessed by evil demons.  Jesus performs an exorcism, transferring the demons into a herd of swine.  Matthew wrote that the herd "ran violently down a steep place into the sea," where "they perished in the waters". The illuminator closely followed the story as Matthew described it, depicting the swine hurtling down the cliff into the sea at the bottom of the page. At the top right, shepherds run to the city to report the miracle.  In the work, the events are arranged in three horizontal bands, the main focus on the middle figures whose emphatic gestures and tense body movements recount the vivid story.

Mania

Mania (pronounced mey-nee-uh or meyn-yuh)

(1) Excessive excitement or enthusiasm; craze; excessive or unreasonable desire; insane passion affecting one or many people; fanaticism.

(2) In psychiatry, the condition manic disorder; a combining form of mania (megalomania); extended to mean “enthusiasm, often of an extreme and transient nature,” for that specified by the initial element; characterized by great excitement and occasionally violent behavior; violent derangement of mind; madness; insanity.

(3) In mythology, the consort of Mantus, Etruscan god of the dead and ruler of the underworld.  Perhaps identified with the tenebrous Mater Larum, she should not be confused with the Greek Maniae, goddess of the dead; In Greek mythology Mania was the personification of insanity.

(4) In popular use, any behavior, practice, cultural phenomenon, product etc enjoying a sudden popularity.

1350–1400: From the Middle English mania (madness), from the Latin mania (insanity, madness), from the Ancient Greek μανία (manía) (madness, frenzy; enthusiasm, inspired frenzy; mad passion, fury), from μαίνομαι (maínomai) (I am mad) +‎ -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā).  The –ia suffix was from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia), which form abstract nouns of feminine gender.  It was used when names of countries, diseases, species etc and occasionally collections of stuff.  The Ancient Greek mainesthai (to rage, go mad), mantis (seer) and menos (passion, spirit), were all of uncertain origin but probably related to the primitive Indo-European mnyo-, a suffixed form of the root men- (to think)," with derivatives referring to qualities and states of maenad (mind) or thought.

The suffix –mania was from the Latin mania, from the Ancient Greek μανία (mania) (madness).  In modern use in psychiatry it is used to describe a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/or energy levels and as a suffix appended as required.  In general use, under the influence of the historic meaning (violent derangement of mind; madness; insanity), it’s applied to describe any “excessive or unreasonable desire; a passion or fanaticism” which can us used even of unthreatening behaviors such as “a mania for flower arranging, crochet etc”.  As a suffix, it’s often appended with the interfix -o- make pronunciation more natural.  The sense of a "fad, craze, enthusiasm resembling mania, eager or uncontrollable desire" dates from the 1680s, the use in English in this sense borrowed from the French manie.  In Middle English, mania had sometimes been nativized as manye. The familiar modern use as the second element in compounds expressing particular types of madness emerged in the 1500s (bibliomania 1734, nymphomania, 1775; kleptomania, 1830; narcomania 1887, megalomania, 1890), the origin of this being Medical Latin, in imitation of the Greek, which had a few such compounds (although, despite the common perception, most were actually post-classical: gynaikomania (women), hippomania (horses) etc).

The adjective maniac was from circa 1600 in the sense of "affected with mania, raving with madness" and was from the fourteenth century French maniaque, from the Late Latin maniacus, from the Ancient Greek maniakos, the Adoption in English another borrowing from French use; from 1727 it came also to mean "pertaining to mania." The noun, "one who is affected with mania, a madman" was noted from 1763, derived from the adjective.  The adjective manic (pertaining to or affected with mania), dates from 1902, the same year the clinical term “manic depressive” appeared in the literature although, perhaps strangely, the condition “manic depression” wasn’t describe until the following year although the symptoms had as early as 1857 been noted as defined as “circular insanity”, from the from French folie circulaire (1854).  It’s now known as bi-polar disorder.  The constructions hypermania & submania are both from the mid-twentieth century.  The adjective maniacal was from the 1670s, firstly in the sense of "affected with mania" and by 1701 "pertaining to or characteristic of a maniac; the form maniacally emerged during the same era.  Mania is quite specific but craving, craze, craziness, enthusiasm, fad, fascination, frenzy, infatuation, lunacy, obsession, passion, rage, aberration, bee, bug, compulsion, delirium, derangement, desire & disorder peacefully co-exist.

Noted manias

Anglomania: An excessive or undue enthusiasm for England and all things English; rarely noted in the Quai D'Orsay.

Anthomania: An extravagant passion for flowers; although it really can’t be proved, the most extreme of these are probably the orchid fanciers.  Those with an extravagant passion for weed are a different sub-set of humanity and are really narcomanics (qv) although there may be some overlap. 

Apimania: A passionate obsession with bees; beekeepers tend to be devoted to their little creatures so among the manias, this one may more than most be a spectrum condition.

Arithmomania: A compulsive desire to count objects and make calculations; noted since 1884, it’s now usually regarded as being within the rubric of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Bibliomania: A rage for collecting rare or unusual books.  This has led to crime and there have been famous cases.

Cacodaemomania: The obsessive fixation on the idea that one is inhabited by evil spirits.  To the point where it becomes troublesome it’s apparently rare but there are dramatic cases in the literature, one of the most notorious being Anneliese Michel (1952–1976) who was subject to the rites of exorcism by Roman Catholic priests in the months before she died.  The priests and her parents (who after conventional medical interventions failed, also become convinced the cause of her problems was demonic possession) were convicted of various offences related to her death.  Films based on the events leading up to death have been released including The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Requiem (2006) and Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (2011).

Callomania: The obsessive belief in one’s own beauty, even when to all others this is obviously delusional.

Dipsomania: The morbid craving for alcohol; in pre-modern medicine, it was used also to describe the “temporary madness caused by excessive drinking”, the origin of this being Italian (1829) and German (1830) medical literature.

Egomania: An obsessive self-centeredness; it was known since 1825 but use didn’t spike until Freud (and others) made it widely discussed after the 1890s and few terms from the early days of psycho-analysis are better remembered.

Erotomania: Desperate love, a sentimentalism producing morbid feelings.

Flagellomania: An obsessive interest in flogging and/or being flogged, often as one’s single form of sexual expression and thus a manifestation of monomania (qv).  The English Liberal Party politician Robert Bernays (1902-1945), the son of a Church of England vicar, was a flagellomanic whose proclivities were, in the manner of English society at the time, both much discussed and kept secret.  He was also an illustration of the way such fetishes transcend other sexual categories.

Gallomania: An excessive or undue enthusiasm for France and all things French; rarely noted in the British Foreign Office.

Graphomania: A morbid desire to write.  Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527; Italian diplomat, philosopher and political advisor of the Renaissance) attributed many of the problems he suffered to his graphomania and he was right, his sufferings because of what he wrote, when it was written and about whom.

Hippomania: An excessive fondness for horses; an affliction which often manifests as the intense and passionate interest in horses developed by some girls who join pony clubs and fall in love.

Hypermania: There’s a definitional dualism to hypermania; it can mean either an extreme example of any mania or, as used by clinicians, specifically (and characterized usually by a mental state with high intensity disorientation and often violent behavior), a severe case of bipolar disorder (the old manic-depression).  The earlier term was hypomania (A manic elation accompanied by quickened perception), one of the earliest (1882) clinical terms from early-modern psychiatry.

Kleptomania: The obsessive desire to steal; in early (1830s) use, the alternative form was cleptomania.  The klepto element was from the Ancient Greek kleptes (thief, a cheater), from kleptein (to steal, act secretly), from the primitive Indo-European klep- (to steal), from the root kel- (to cover, conceal, save) and was cognate with the Latin clepere (to steal, listen secretly to), the Old Prussian au-klipts (hidden), the Old Church Slavonic poklopu (cover, wrapping) and the Gothic hlifan (to steal) & hliftus (thief).  The history of the word kleptomania is of interest also to sociologists in that as early as the mid-nineteenth century, there was controversy about the use by those with the capacity to buy the services of doctors and lawyers were able to minimize or escape the consequences of criminal misbehavior by claiming a psychological motive.  The argument was that the “respectable” classes were afforded the benefit of this defense while the working class were presumed to be inherently criminal and judged accordingly.  The same debate, now also along racial divides, continues today.

Lindsaymania: A specific instance of mania suffered by those obsessed with Lindsay Lohan (manifested often on Instagram and other social media platforms), including those poor deluded souls who curate blogs with substantial Lohanic content.  They are sometimes referred to as "Lindsaiacs".  Those who focus on Ms Lohan's feet were historically labeled podophiles but the DSM has since re-classified them as "foot particularists"; if their interest is restricted to her feet alone they are a subset of the Lindsaymaniacs whereas if their interest includes the feet of others, they are pure foot particularists. 

Logomania: An obsession with words.  It differs from graphomania (qv) which is an obsession to write; logomania instead is a fascination with words, their meanings and etymologies.

Megalomania: Delusions of greatness; a form of insanity in which the subjects imagine themselves to be great, exalted, or powerful personages.  It was first used in the medical literature in 1866 (from the French mégalomanie) and came to be widely applied to many politicians and potentates the twentieth century.

Micromania:  "A form of mania in which the patient thinks himself, or some part of himself, to be reduced in size", noted first in 1879 and twenty years later used also in reference to insane self-belittling.  In the twentieth century and beyond, micromania was widely used, sometimes humorously, to refer to things as varied as the sudden consumer in interest in small cars to the shrinking size of electronic components.   

Monomania: An insane obsession in regard to a single subject or class of subjects; applied most often in academic, scientific or political matters but can be used about anything where the overriding mental impulses are perverted to a specific delusion or the pursuit of a particular thing.

Morphinomania: A craving for morphine; one of the earliest of the words which noted specific addictions, it dates from 1885 but earlier still there had been morphiomania (1876) and morphinism (1875) from the German Morphiumsucht.  In the medical literature, morphinomaniac & morphiomaniac rapidly became common.

Narcomania: The uncontrollable craving for narcotic drugs and a term which is so nineteenth century, the preferred modern form being variations of "addiction".

Necromania: An obsession to have sexual relations with the bodies of the dead although, perhaps surprisingly, practitioners (those who treat rather than practice the condition) classify many different behaviors which they list under the rubric of necromania, some of the less confronting being a morbid interest in funeral rituals,  morgues, autopsies, and cemeteries.   Those whose hobbies include the study of the architecture of crypts and tombs or the coachwork of funeral hearses might be shocked to find there are psychiatrists who classify them in the same chapters as those who enjoy intimacy with corpses.

Nymphomania: The morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire in women.  Perhaps the most celebrated (and often sought) of the manias, it dates from 1775, in the English translation of Nymphomania, or a Dissertation Concerning the Furor Uterinus (1771) by French doctor Jean Baptiste Louis de Thesacq de Bienville (1726-1813), the construct being the Ancient Greek nymphē (bride, young wife; young lady) + mania.  The actual condition is presumed to have long pre-dated the term and in use, deserves to be distinguished from less pleasing modern forms such as the "skanky ho".

Onomatomania: One obsessively compelled to respond with a rhyming word to the last word spoken by another (something possible even with orange and silver).  It’s thought to co-exist with other conditions, especially schizophrenia.

Phonomania: An uncontrollable urge to murder; those who suffer this now usually described as the more accessible “homicidal maniac”.  When applied especially to serial killers, the companion condition (just further along the spectrum) is androphonomania which, if properly argued, could be a defense against a charge of mass-murder but counsel would need to be most assiduous in jury selection.

Plutomania: The obsessive pursuit of wealth (and used sometimes in a clinical setting to describe an "imaginary possession of wealth").

Pyromania: A form of insanity marked by a mania for destroying things by fire.  It was used in German in the 1830s and seemed to have captured the imagination of Richard Wagner (1813–1883); the older word for the condition was incendiarism.

Rhinotillexomania: Nose picking. Gross, but a thing which apparently often manifests when young but fades, usually of its own volition or in reaction to the disapprobation of others.

Trichotillomania: The compulsion to pull-out one’s hair.  The companion condition is trichtillophagia which is the compulsive eating of one’s own hair, one of a remarkable number of eating disorders.

Definitional variations in the criteria for mania, DSM-IV & DSM-5

The study and classification of idea of manias had been part of psychiatry almost from its origin as a modern discipline although the wealth of details and fragmentation of nomenclature would come later, the condition first noted “increased busyness”, the manic episodes characterized by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926; a founding father of psychiatric phenomenology) as those of someone who was “…a stranger to fatigue, his activity goes on day and night; work becomes very easy to him; ideas flow to him.” 

Whatever the advances (and otherwise) in treatment regimes, little has changed in some aspects of the condition.  In the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, 2013), the primary criterion of mania remains “a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood” and “abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy” but did extend duration of the event to qualify for a diagnosis.  In the DSM-IV (1994), the criterion for a manic episode only required “a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least one week” whereas DSM-5 now requires in addition the presence of “abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy”; moreover, these symptoms must not only last at least one week, they must also be “present most of the day, nearly every day.”

The changes certainly affected the practice of the clinician, DSM-5 substantially increasing the complexity associated with the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder, no longer requiring that clinically significant symptoms which may be present should be ignored.  All those years ago, Kraepelin conceptualized manic-depression as a single illness with a continuum of episodic presentations including admixtures of symptoms which have long since been considered opposing polarity.  DSM-5 thus represents an advance with the possibility of improved treatment outcomes because it enables clinicians to diagnose mood episodes and specify the presence of symptoms inconsistent with pure episodes; a major depressive episode with or without mixed features and manic/hypomanic episodes with or without mixed features.

The revisions in DSM-5 also reflect the efforts of the editors over several decades to simplify diagnostic criteria while developing more precise categories of classification.  In the DSM-IV, both bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder were included in one chapter of mood disorders and a “mixed state” was a subtype of bipolar I mania, a diagnosis of a mixed state requiring that criteria for both a manic episode (at least three or four of seven manic symptoms) and a depressive episode (at least five of nine depressive symptoms) were met for at least one week.  In DSM-5, bipolar disorder and depressive disorders have their own chapters, and “mixed state” was removed and replaced with “manic episode with mixed features” and “major depressive disorder with mixed features.”

Mountweazel

Mountweazel (pronounced mount-wee-zuhl)

Factitious material deliberately included in a publication as a “copyright trap”, allowing identification of plagiarism and potential violations of copyright.

1975: A definition by Henry Alford (b 1962) which appeared in a 1975 edition of The New Yorker, referencing an entry in the fourth edition (1975) of the New Columbia Encyclopedia, involving the fictitious Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, said to have died in an explosion while on assignment for the just as fanciful “Combustibles” magazine.  Mountweazel was not a legitimate family name, the neologism coined by Karen Tweedy-Holmes (b 1942), then an editor for the encyclopedia, the purpose being a fictional biographical entry for the imaginary Lillian Virginia Mountweazel.  For all purposes (other than the doomed heroine), mountweasel is used without an initial capital.  Mountweazel is a noun; the noun plural is mountweazels.

Ms Tweedy-Holmes (there can have been few finer names for a lexicographer) described her tragic heroine as an American fountain designer turned photographer, born in 1942 in Bangs, Ohio and most noted for her commissioned series of images of the mailboxes of rural America, her death said to have come in 1973.  Ms Tweedy-Holmes authoritative (and wholly bogus) biographical entry for the late Ms Mountweazel read: “Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942–1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio.  Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964.  She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes.  The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972).  Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”  The coining was for the purpose of a “copyright trap”, in this context an apparently legitimate dictionary entry structurally and stylistically indistinguishable from thousands of others, the idea being that were another publication to include a “Lillian Virginia Mountweazel” entry with the same “facts”, that obviously would be a plagiarism and potentially a breach of copyright.

Combustibles magazine (special issue, 4 June, 1973).

Ms Mountweazel may never have lived but in death is memorialized in the Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection which includes an “extensive collection of Combustibles Magazine” covers, some editions including her assignments, notably “The Whimsical History of Fireworks” and “Disturbing Revelations” about Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) who in 1945 had been employed by the US government, suddenly rather more interested in the missiles the German could help them build rather than his wartime use of slave labor.  There’s also the revelation the Flags Up! project, although promoted as the USPS (US Postal Service) using “captivating imagery” to demonstrate how the new ZIP codes enhanced “the efficiency and modernization of the postal system”, actually was funded by the CCF (Congress for Cultural Freedom), a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) “front organization” used during the Cold War to produce anti-Soviet propaganda.  The “messaging” in Flags Up! was to show the way freedom of thought and the expression of ideas was allowed freely to flow between Americans, however remote they might be.  Of course, also included is the “special issue” of Combustibles (4 June, 1973) in which was announced the death the previous day of Ms Mountweazel, killed in the crash of a Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 SST (supersonic transport) passenger airliner during the 1973 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport.  In the accident, all six crew members died along with eight in the nearby village of Goussainville, Val-d'Oise where Ms Mountweasel had been researching “the negative health effects of sound pollution in communities near major international airports.”  After her death, photojournalism scholar Pierre Menard, acknowledged Ms Mountweazel as “one of the most important in the world of pyromaniac publishing.”  Pierre Menard was also factitious, the name borrowed from Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)), a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

Official Journal of the Institute of Explosives Engineers, March 2026 edition.  It would seem women involved in “blowing-up stuff” prefer to wear sensible shoes which seems wise.

While there was no “Combustibles” magazine (which for the entrepreneurial seems a gap in the market), for students of such things or enthusiasts of the art & science of “blowing-up stuff”, the IEE (Institute of Explosives Engineers (Voice of the Explosive Industries)) publishes the quarterly Official Journal of the Institute of Explosives Engineers, currently distributed to a membership of some 2,000 “highly qualified engineers and specialists” involved in blowing-up stuff.  Additionally, copies are made available to selected academics, professional institutions and those in the business (of blowing-up stuff).  As well as academic papers, features and articles, the journal functions as a trade publication with information and reviews of new products and services.  The editors welcome submissions relevant to blowing-up stuff and, if appropriate, prior to publication, will submit texts for professional peer review.  The next International Explosives Conference will be held between 16-18 June, 2026 at the Parkgate Hotel in Cardiff, Wales and the institute recommends the early booking of hotel rooms because on the evening of the 16^th, Take That (an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990) will be performing their Circus Live show at the city’s Principality Stadium.

A synonym of mountweazel is the German Nihilartikel, said to have appeared in 2003 as a hoax in the German-language Wikipedia in 2003 and later picked up by the English version from which it spread through blogs, print publications and such, these serving as “references” appearing to legitimate subsequent use.  The construct of Nihilartikel (being a noun, if used in the original German, with an initial upper case) was the Latin nihil (nothing), from nihilum (from ne- (not) +‎ hīlum (the least bit)) + the German Artikel (article) (from the Middle High German artikel, from the Latin articulus.  This is defined (in the jargon of Wikipedia) as a type of citogenesis (a circular form of citation where various sources report each other, creating a false impression of reliability).  The construct being cit(e) +‎ -o- +‎ -genesis, citogenesis was in 2011 coined by US engineer Randall Munroe (b 1984), presumably on the model of the homophone cytogenesis (the formation, development and variation of cells), the construct being cyto- + genesis.  Cyto- (“cell” as used in biology) was a learned borrowing from the Ancient Greek κύτος (kútos) (container, receptacle) and genesis (origin, start; point (in time) at which something comes into being). came via Latin from the Ancient Greek γένεσις (génesis).  Cite (in this context “to quote; to repeat, to make mention of; to list”) was from the Old French citer, from the Latin citare (to cause to move, excite, summon) and frequentative of ciēre (to rouse, excite, call).  So, just as cytogenesis describes cells being formed and variations emerging from components, in citogenesis what is happening to the assembly of “apparent (but erroneous) facts” with “authenticity verified” on the basis of other “apparent (but erroneous) facts that gained their “apparent veracity” merely from the frequency of citation.

The Pentagon Papers.  In 1971, the USSC (US Supreme Court) ruled 6-3 against granting the Nixon (Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US VPOTUS 1953-1961 & POTUS 1969-1974)) administration an injunction preventing further publication of excerpts by the New York Times & The Washington Post, holding the government’s attempt to invoke “prior restraint” violated the First Amendment (freedom of the press) of the constitution and the claim of a threat to national security was not in this case sufficiently justified to allow suppression of the press.  It’s interesting to speculate how today’s USSC would rule on the same facts.

For other purposes, there are variants of the “copyright trap”.  Organizations wishing to detect the source of “leaks” (documents being photocopied and given to unauthorized recipients) would sometimes make visually almost imperceptible changes (an additional space, a character in a slightly different font etc) in certain copies, meaning an analysis of a “leaked copy” could isolate the source.  That obviously depended on the existence of relatively few original copies but that is the nature of leaked material.  The digitization of documents of course made copying and leaking not only quicker and easier but also made possible grabbing data on a huge scale.  While in 1969 Dr Daniel Ellsberg (1931–2023) had to spend several evenings alone with one of Rand Corporation’s photocopiers to duplicate the 7000-odd pages that became “the Pentagon Papers”, by the time Edward Snowden (b 1983) and Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning (b 1987) were stealing US government data by the gigabyte, all they needed was a USB stick onto which stuff silently was copied as they went about their paid work.  All digital copies of a document are of course functionally identical and even metadata which can reveal something about the copying (such as a date stamp) can be edited so what sometimes was done was the insertion of something hidden which could be detected only at the software level and not visually.  The best known was the “Alt + 255 trick”, a keyboard combination which created the NBSP (non-breaking space) Unicode character U+00A0.  Visually indistinguishable from the standard gap (U+0020) created by a tap of the space bar, the location could be detected using certain text editors so, correctly implemented, it would be a useful device for tracing sources of leaks.  However, “software tricks” can be detected by other software which is why crooked Hillary Clinton’s (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) legal team (a well-resourced and busy crew) insisted on printing out thousands of E-mails because of fears the investigators exploring the (still not adequately explained) “servergate” scandal might detect in the raw files something crooked Hillary had deleted.

The companion (in form though not intent) of the mountweazel is the “ghost word”.  A ghost word is a word that enters a dictionary, reference book or some other reputable source, despite being “wrong”.  The causative events have been varied, including misunderstood abbreviations, typographical errors, printer's mistakes, errors in transcription or translation, scribal copying errors, damaged manuscripts, corruptions in transmission and mishearings of audio recordings.  While advances in technology have made it possible more efficiently to identify ghost words, the increasing use of OCR (optical character recognition) on texts of sometimes dubious legibility may yet create a few and given the propensity of AI (artificial intelligence) bots to “make-up stuff”, there’s likely to be a new generation yet to be discovered.  In linguistics, the professionals distinguish between “ghost words” and “phantom words” and the distinction matters in their rarefied world but to most of us the latter probably would be thought mere “spelling errors”.

Few have made a great as contribution to the study of the English language as Walter William Skeet, the ghost word but one of his minor legacies.

All that matters for purposes of definition is that the word has no actual history of use in the language.  One celebrated example was “dord” which appeared in the 1934 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, defined as “density”.  What had happened was the chemistry section’s editor had written a note saying: “D or d, cont/ density” (meaning “uppercase D or lowercase d is the abbreviation for density”) but a typesetter misread the spaces, blending the characters to create a “new word”.  Until 1939 “dord” sat on its page in Webster’s, apparently without causing trouble but it was noticed during an internal review and a “plate change/imperative/urgent” instruction was sent to the printer; at that point the linguistic exorcism was effected but, because lead-times and product supply-lines were then longer, not until 1947 were Webster’s confident they successfully had “de-dorded” things.  It could of course have been different.  Had chemists ((The origin, start; point (in time) at which something comes into being). or anyone else) decided dord was a “perfectly cromulent word” and use had achieved critical mass, it would have become a “real word”.  Quite when the term “ghost word” first was used in this sense is uncertain but lexicographers agree it was popularized by English mathematician, philologist & Anglican deacon Walter William Skeat (1835–1912), notable for his seminal work in editing Medieval texts.

The neologism “cromulent” appeared in Lisa the Iconoclast (episode 16, season 7 of the US animated TV series The Simpsons (1989-) which aired on Fox on 18 February, 1996.  Cromulent (acceptable; valid; correct) was deliberately not “a real word”, the gag being it was included in the script to be used by one character to assure another that “embiggen” (to make larger) was “a real word”.  So it was a funny line but the irony was embiggen had a (limited) history of use dating from 1884.  In the years since, it has been included in mainstream dictionaries and has found a niche in the mysterious world of string theory, a collection of explanations of the structure of the universe; being under the rubric of quantum gravity, string theory is understood only by a handful of specialists, not all of whom agree with each other.  Probably few would deny embiggen deserves to be in the jargon of string theory but whether the discipline is cromulent science continues to divide opinion.

Warren Harding (1865–1923; POTUS 1921-1923), New Year's Day, 1920.  A confessed Freemason, Harding presided over a scandal-plagued administration and his early death might have been one of those “good career moves”.  Theodore Roosevelt’s (TR, 1858–1919; POTUS 1901-1909) daughter Alice Longworth (1884–1980) “knew everybody” in twentieth century US politics and in summing up Harding concluded: “Harding wasn’t a bad man, he was just a slob.”

There have over the years been many “ghost words” (the authoritative Wiktionary listing 33 instances in English of examples meeting their strict criterion).  It’s not enough that a word is “wrong”; whether fictitious, malicious, erroneous or whatever, to become a “ghost word” it must appear in some work of reference and be presented as “genuine”, enduring in that form long enough to take on some sort of life.  Humorists and experimentalists have of course coined or repurposed words which have entered mainstream use but these are not ghost words because their lineage was documented.  There are also “pseudo ghost words” (those treated as such but with a verified history authenticating the alleged error), a celebrated example being Warren Harding’s use during his successful 1920 presidential campaign of “normalcy” instead of “normality”, the section of his speech containing the offending word almost aggressively alliterative:

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Unrelated: The mountain weasel (Mustela altaica), an inhabitant of high-altitude regions in parts of Asia including Kazakhstan, Tibet, India, Mongolia, north-eastern China and southern Siberia.

In saying "normalcy", he may have misspoken or perhaps Harding liked the word; questioned afterwards he said he found it in a dictionary which probably was true although whether his discovery came before or after the speech wasn't explored.  Although Harding’s choice was at the time much-mocked, normalcy certainly had existed since at least 1857, originally as a technical term from geometry meaning the “mathematical condition of being at right angles, state or fact of being normal in geometry” but subsequently had on several occasions appeared in print as a synonym of normality.  Still, it was hardly in general use though Harding gave it a boost and it’s not since gone extinct, now with little complaint except from the most linguistically fastidious who insist the use in geometry remains the only meaning and all subsequent applications are mistakes.  In these circumstances, a misspeak “does not a ghost word always make” and in 1920 many assumed Mr Harding had “misspoken”.  For someone to “misspeak” was then understood to mean “saying something incorrectly, unclearly or inaccurately (by mistake).  The word “Misspeak” thus distinguished unintentional errors, mispronunciations or “slips of the tongue” from deliberate lies but it came to suffer a darkly amusing late career change.  Historically, it meant (1) to fail to pronounce, utter, or speak correctly or (2) to speak insultingly, disrespectfully or inappropriately (a use long obsolete) but in recent decades it has evolved as a “weasel word” (a word used to hedge a statement, making it vague; equivocal; ambiguous; misleading) used by politicians and others tacitly to admit having lied without having to say: “I lied”.  So it’s beyond a euphemism (which has a hint of polite respectability) and something most associated with crooked Hillary Clinton, notorious for her “strained” relationship with truthfulness although to be fair to crooked Hillary (difficult, but it can be done), her husband (Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001)) did not in such matters set a stellar example.

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

A malapropism is a literary device and not a ghost word.  Mrs Malaprop was a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s (1751-1816) play The Rivals (1775); she had the habit of substituting inappropriate but like-sounding words that would take on a ludicrous meaning in the sentence in which they appeared (her intended compliment “nice arrangement of epithets” came from her lips as “nice derangement of epitaphs”).  That was very different from a “mere typo”, a breed which tends either to be annoying or amusing but which in certain documents could be consequential (consider “prescribe” vs “proscribe”) but typos can also coin words.  “Hodling” was intended to be in the text string “I am holding”, typed by a cryptocurrency investor who wished to assure others in the chatgroup he was “holding” his Bitcoin position and not selling despite the sudden drop in the price.  Unfortunately, he’d reputedly enjoyed half a bottle of whisky (or whiskey) so finger control on the keyboard was diminished, thus the word-making “I am hodling.”  That proved a linguistic gift because “hodl” (hold) entered the jargon of the cryptocoin jockeys and hodlers (those who do not react to every price downturn by selling) are thought a fearless elite. 

Applied spoonerism: First assembled in 1977, the Cunning Stunts was a London-based, feminist performance collective.  Suffering the internal conflicts perhaps endemic to collectives, the Cunning Stunts dissolved in 1982, having seemingly worked their concept dry.  In the UK, much alternative theatre didn’t survive the 1980s, the administration of Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) dismantling many of the often left-wing local authorities which had provided a substantial proportion of the funding.

Nor is a spoonerism likely to become a ghost phrase.  A spoonerism is a play on words in a phrase in which the initial (typically a consonant) sounds of two or more of the words are transposed.  It was named after Oxford don the Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), who was alleged to have made many such slip-ups (“Our dear old queen” becoming “Our queer old dean”) although among scholars it’s suspected that while doubtless he made a few, there was likely a healthy industry among his students (and perhaps even his fellow dons) is concocting more to be attributed.  Another variant was the mondegreen.  Mondegreen was coined by US editor & journalist Sylvia Wright (1917-1981) who, in a piece published in 1954 in Harper's Magazine, recalled a childhood memory of mishearing her mother read a line in the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o' Moray (which appeared in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) by the English clergyman bishop and antiquarian Thomas Percy (1729-1811)): “They have slain the Earl o' Moray, / And laid him on the green”, the second line misheard as, “And Lady Mondegreen”.  Now an acknowledged descriptor, “mondegreen” didn’t appear in mainstream dictionaries until the twenty-first century and that was a product of lists of “obscure or unusual” words beginning to proliferate on the internet as bandwidth increased and cost fell.  Not all novelties pleased the editors but mondegreen was nerdy enough to make the lexicographical cut.  Structurally, there’s no reason why a misspeak, malaproprism, spoonerism or mondegreen can’t become a ghost word; it’s all in the history.

Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo in his battered 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet.

Both embiggen and cromulent are not ghost words because they were positioned as “joke words” rather than being errors and nor are they mountweazels because they were inserted into the script as something other than copyright traps.  Essentially, a mountweazel deliberately is fake while a ghost word is in some sense “wrong”, the distinction summed up as: (1) a ghost word is an error mistaken for truth while (2) a mountweazel is a fabrication presented as truth for strategic reasons.  There are however limitations to the mountweazel’s utility as a copyright trap, the classic example the legal squabble which came to be dubbed “the Columbo Trap”.  Columbo was a TV detective drama which at various times between 1968-2003 was shown on the NBC & ABC networks; it started Peter Falk (1927–2011) as Lieutenant Columbo, remembered for (1) always solving the murder(s), (2) his catch phrase “just one more thing” and (3) driving a dilapidated 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet (one of 504 built that year out of the 2,030 produced during a six-year run (1956-1961)).

The Trivia Encyclopedia (1974): Mostly accurate.

The first edition of the best-selling book The Trivia Encyclopedia appeared in 1974; written by Fred L. Worth, it was for years a fixture on bookshop “Christmas gift” lists.  In 1984, claiming damages of US$300 million, Mr Worth filed suit against the distributors of the board game Trivial Pursuit, claiming they had stolen their game’s Q&A (questions & answers) from his books.  There were many instances of copying he cited but his key piece of evidence was a mountweazel he'd included: the “trivial fact” the first name of the TV detective Lieutenant Columbo was: “Philip”.  This was a product of Mr Worth’s imagination but in the board game, it appeared as an answer to that question.  His legal point was that while the board game’s creators could have obtained his other examples from many other sources (as indeed he had), the notion of “Philip Columbo” appeared first in his book and that it was “not a fact” was irrelevant because the basis of his suit was the unauthorized and unattributed copying.

Not to be confused: Mr Spock (left) & Dr Spock (right).

The Trivia Encyclopedia mostly was accurate although there appeared on the cover an “accidental” mountweasel.  The “Dr Spock” mentioned in the cover art was the character in the TV Series Star Trek (1966-1969) who was always referred to as “Mr Spock” (reflecting the practice in the USN (US Navy), the rank-structure and conventions of which were adopted for the series).  Within The Trivia Encyclopedia, things are OK, the character always referred to as “Mr Spock” and the “trivial facts” correct:  (1) Mr Spock was Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise; (2) he was played by Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015); (3) his human mother was Amanda (played by Jane Wyatt (1910-2006); (4) his Vulcan father was Sarek (played by Mark Lenard (1924-1996).  In publishing, by convention, authors tend not to have the final say on a book’s title or cover art so it was likely an editor at Brooke House who may inadvertently have put the mountweazel on the cover.  Presumably the confusion arose because (1) Mr Spock was rather nerdy in the stereotypical way of a physics Ph.D, and (2) while the series was being televised, the book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by US paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) had become a best-seller, making its author a household name.  Spock being an unusual name, “Dr” became so associated with “Spock”, many not familiar with the intricate details of the TV series may have conflated the two.

On just about any topic, there's probably a trivia list somewhere on-line.

Defending the suit, the distributers of Trivial Pursuit made no attempt to deny sourcing much material from Mr Worth's book, arguing “facts” are not able to receive the protection of copyright.  To emphasize the point, the company provided a long list of published texts from which information had been copied and argued it would be absurd to suggest they could be sued for providing the answer “Queen Victoria reigned between 1837-1901” because that fact appears in thousands of books.  They acknowledged an action might be possible (depending on many things) had they merely published a “book of trivial facts” (a la Mr Worth’s) but a multi-player board game in which questions had to be answered was “a substantially different product” within the meaning of copyright law.  The judge agreed, a finding upheld on appeal and the USSC declined to re-hear the case, thus reinforcing general principle “a fact cannot be copyrighted”.  Mr Worth’s response was that by definition “Philip Columbo” was thus a piece of fiction deserving copyright; the judges acknowledged the logic but found it too much of a stretch to be accommodated within copyright law and did not concur.  Amusingly however, others also copied Mr Worth’s mountweazel with references to “Lieutenant Philip Columbo” over the years appearing in print and on-line, Peugeot in the 1980s even running advertising campaign in which “Lt. Philip Columbo” was mentioned as the “most famous driver” of a Peugeot convertible.  That was a bit of a shift from the company’s original views on the 403 Cabriolet’s appearance in the TV series, the executives not best pleased at its dilapidated state.  Internet sleuths later published close-up screen shots of his police badge which revealed his name was “Frank Columbo”.