Gross

Gross (pronounced grohs)

(1) Without deductions; total (as the amount of sales, salary, profit, etc before taking deductions for expenses, taxes, or the like (net ).

(2) Unqualified; complete.

(3) Flagrant and extreme.

(4) Indelicate, indecent or obscene.

(5) Of personal qualities, tastes, etc, lacking refinement, good manners, education etc; vulgar.

(6) By extension, not sensitive in perception or feeling (archaic).

(7) Extremely, repellently or excessively fat.

(8) Dull, witless (obsolete).

(9) Of or concerning only the broadest or most general considerations, aspects etc.

(10) Obviously or exceptionally culpable or wrong; flagrant (“grossly inefficient”; “grossly incorrect” etc).

(11) In slang, extremely objectionable, offensive or disgusting:

(12) Thick; dense:

(13) In slang, to disgust or offend, especially by crude language or behaviour; to shock or horrify (often used (Gross!) as an exclamation indicating disgust or disapproval.

(14) In botany & agriculture etc (especially of vegetation), dense; thick; luxuriant.

(15) In textiles, coarse in texture or quality (obsolete but still used in this sense in material science & engineering (ie dense, heavy)).

(16) Rude; uneducated; ignorant (archaic).

(17) A unit of quantity, equal to 12 dozen (ie 144, a “dozen dozen”).

(18) In science, seen without a microscope (used typically of tissue or an organ); at a large scale; not detailed (ie macroscopic; not microscopic).

(19) By extension, easy to perceive (archaic).

(20) Difficult or impossible to see through (now used only as a poetic or literary device).

1350–1400: From the Middle English gros (large, thick, full-bodied; coarse, unrefined, simple), from the Old French gros (large; thus the noun grosse (twelve dozen)), from the Late Latin grossus (big, fat, thick (which in Late Latin picked up the additional sense “coarse, rough”).  The adjective gross in the fourteenth century meant “large” but by early in the 1400 it acquired also the senses “thick” and “coarse, plain, simple”, the development reflecting the influence of the eleventh century Old French gros (big, thick, fat; tall; strong, powerful; pregnant; coarse, rude, awkward; ominous, important; arrogant) which was from the Late Latin grossus (thick, coarse (of food or mind)) which, in Medieval Latin also picked up the meaning “great, big” (source also of the Spanish grueso and the Italian grosso).  The word is of unknown origin and no ancestor seems to have existed in the Classical Latin (it’s thought unrelated to the Latin crassus, which meant the same thing, or the German gross (large) but may be cognate with the Old Irish bres (big) and Middle Irish bras (big)).  Although the evidence is sketchy, some etymologists suspect some link with the Proto-Celtic brassos (great, violent).  The verb engross (to buy up the whole stock of) dates from the late 1300s (in this sense it had been in Anglo-French for decades) and was from the Old French en gros (in bulk, in a large quantity, at wholesale) as opposed to en detail;  The figurative sense (absorb the whole attention) was in use by at least 1709 while the curious “parallel engross” (to write (something) in large letters) came from the Anglo-French engrosser, from Old French en gros (in large (letters)).

The comparative is grosser (or “more gross”) and the superlative grossest (or “most gross”) but TikTokers and such also use disgrossting (a portmanteau word, the construct being dis(gust) + gross + ting” and they’re fond also of grossness and (the non standard but most pleasing) grossnessness.  On TikTok, users often are “grossed-out” (highly disgusted) by stuff although sometimes they will post deliberately gross content just to “out-gross” each other.  The negative form “un-gross” is recorded but is rare while de-gross & degrossify are humorous terms used when corrective attempts are being undertaken.  On TikTok and such, grossology is a discipline assiduously pursued and there are many & grossologists.  Gross, grossification & grossness are nouns, verbs & adjectives, grossification, grossology & grossologist are nouns, grossify, grossed & grossing are verbs, disgrossting, grossish & grossest are adjectives and grossly is an adverb; the noun plural is gross or grosses.

Der Grossers: 1938 Mercedes-Benz 770K (W150) Cabriolet F, a seven passenger tourer & parade car, pictured here with the folding soft-top in sedanca de ville configuration (left) and 1966 Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) Pullman Landaulet with “short” folding roof.  The 770K was produced in two runs (W07, 1931-1938 & W150, 1938-1943) while the W100 was built between 1963-1981.

In the context used by Mercedes-Benz, in the English-speaking world, the use of “grosser” is sometimes misunderstood.  In German, groß means “large” while the Kompatativ (comparative) is größer and the Superlativ (superlative) größte; Der große Mercedes thus translates as “the big Mercedes”.  In that sense groß is used in the sense of “physically large” but it can be used also to be “highest” as in the naval rank Großadmiral (a five-star rank translated in English usually as “grand admiral” and equivalent to admiral of the fleet or fleet admiral).  The idea of the "big Mercedes" wasn't unique and to this day collectors still use the phrase "big Healey" (the Austin-Healey sports car, introduced as the 100 BN 1 (1953-55) which evolved into the 3000 (1959-1968), the term coined in 1958 to distinguish those cars from the smaller Austin Healey Sprite (1958-1970), produced also as the Austin Sprite (1971) and MG Midget (1961-1979)). In English, “gross” went on to prove itself a word of great versatility.

Lindsay Lohan never forgave dictator Hosni Mubarak (1928–2020; president of Egypt 1981-2011) for shouting at Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001).  When told in 2011 he’d fallen from power as one of the victims of the Arab Spring, she responded: “Cool.”  When told it was brought about by a military coup she replied: “Gross!”  Lindsay Lohan doesn’t approve of coups d'état and believes soldiers should "stay in the barracks", allowing due constitutional process to be followed.   

From the meaning “coarse in texture or quality” developed by the 1520s the sense “not sensitive, dull stupid” while that of “vulgar, coarse in a moral sense” emerged within a decade.  The early fifteenth century meaning “entire, total, whole, without deductions came via the earlier notion “general, not in detail” and in that sense became part of the standard language of accounting (the idea of a “gross profit” being the “before tax” number as opposed to the post-tax “net profit” was known in the 1520s) although the familiar GNP (GNP) didn’t appear until 1947.  The meaning “glaring, flagrant, monstrous” was in use by at least the 1580s and despite it sounding like “valley girl” dialect from the 1980s, the use of “gross” to mean “disgusting” was in US student slang in use by at least 1958; this meaning developed from the earlier use as an intensifier of unpleasant things ("gross stupidity" etc).  The phrase “gross-out” (make (someone) disgusted) became common in the early 1970s while that other favourite (grossness) was in use (purely as a marker of size) by the early 1400s with the more familiar sense of “state of being indelicate, rude, or vulgar” documented in the 1680s.  “Grossness” became a popular word on social media meaning variously “ugly, smelly, disgusting etc) and grossnessness was a twenty-first century adaptation applied more for amusing effect than emphasis.  The idea of a gross being “a dozen dozen” (ie 144) dates from the early fifteenth century from the Old French grosse douzaine (large dozen) although earlier it meant measure of weight equal to one-eighth of a dram.  The verb developed from the adjective in that the late nineteenth century meaning “"to earn a total of” may be compared with the adjectival use “whole, total”.

Lindsay Lohan (with un-done shoe laces) leaving the grocery store having stocked up on essentials, Los Angeles, 2008.  It's not known if her fondness for Doritos (Doritos the singular, plural and collective form, a single chip being "a Doritos chip") was formed or strengthened by them being on the product-placement list for Mean Girls (2004).

Historically, a grocer (used as a surname as early as the mid-thirteenth century) was a trader who owned or managed a grocery store in which were sold groceries; a specialized type was the greengrocer who stocked fresh fruits & vegetables from small shops, typically dotted around suburbs.  The origin of such folk being “grocers” is that they purchased their goods in bulk (ie “by the gross”) at a lower unit cost than if supplied individually or sold in small quantities.  It’s an idea probably as old as commerce itself (indeed, the very essence of trade is selling stuff for more than the cost of purchase/transport/storage etc) but “grocers” in a recognizably modern sense emerged in late thirteenth century Europe (they were known also as “providors” “spicers” or “purveyors”) when traders in the dry goods (sugar, spices etc and eventually tea, cocoa & coffee) which had become available in bulk as a result of European explorers reaching remote countries.  The trader bought their stock in bulk from wholesalers, splitting the items into the smaller quantities purchased by individual consumers.  Buying in bulk didn’t by definition imply everything bought “by the gross” (ie 12 dozen (144)) because different standard measures were used for different types of commodities but the principle was the same.  The word grocer came from grossier (French for “wholesaler”), from the from the Medieval Latin grossarius (wholesaler (literally “dealer in quantity” and the source also of the Spanish grosero and the Italian grossista), from the Late Latin grossus.  From the late 1600s until the 1850s, the word “grocery” referred to a place where people went to drink.

1970 Cadillac Eldorado: 500 cubic inch (8.2 litre) V8 rated at 400 HP (gross).

Until 1971-1972, US car manufacturers quoted power outputs in “gross horsepower” (usually described as HP (horsepower) or BHP (brake horsepower) which meant the measure was taken on an engine dynamometer (the “brake” in BHP) without any power-sapping accessories (generator, alternator, power steering pump, water pump, AC (air-conditioning) compressor etc) being attached.  Additionally, optimised ignition timing was set, low-restriction exhaust headers were installed and neither air cleaners nor anti-emissions equipment were fitted.  What this produced was a number of interesting to engineers and those writing advertising copy but there was often quite a distant relationship to a customer’s experience with what they drove off the showroom floor.  By contrast net horsepower (defined by both the US SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) and DIN (Deutsche Industrienorm (German industrial standard)) tested the engine with all standard accessories installed (including regular induction & exhaust systems) and in all aspects tuned to factory specifications (ie the form in which the things would appear in showrooms).

For the consumer, use of the gross number wasn’t the only misleading thing about Detroit’s rated power outputs in the 1950s & 1960s.  Sometimes they were over-stated (exaggeration long the most common element in advertising) but increasingly the number came to be set artificially low.  In the latter cases, this was done variously to try to (1) fool the insurance companies (which had noted the striking correlates between horsepower and males aged 17-29), (2) not upset the politicians who were becoming aware of the increasing carnage on the roads) or (3) fool those setting the rules in competition (most infamously the 1968 Ford 428 cubic inch (7.0 litre) CobraJet V8 which was rated at a most conservative 335 bhp which enabled it to dominate its class in drag-racing; after that the sanctioning body ignored manufacturers’ claims and set their own ratings).  So, for a variety of reasons, many HP claims were little more than “think of a number” and, late in the era of the crazy muscle cars (1969-1970), a some high-performance V8s were capable of generating as much as 100 gross bhp more than what was put on the tin.

1976 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible: 500 cubic inch (8.2 litre) V8 rated at 190 HP (net).  The notional loss of 210 HP (52.5 %) of engine power was accounted for partly by the change in method from gross to net but the V8 was also detuned in the quest for lower emissions and reduced fuel consumption. Cadillac succeeded in the former; in the the latter not so much and the engine (the industry's biggest in the post-war years) was downsized, firstly to 425 (7.0, 1977-1979) and finally to 368 (6.0, 1980-1984).  When production ended in 1984, it was the last big-block V8 factory-fitted to a US-built passenger car.

Despite the urban myth (which still appears), the industry’s switch from the use of gross to net power ratings was not the product of a government edict or regulation although there was certainly a bit of a nudge because “consumer protection” and “truth-in-advertising” laws meant Detroit had to move closer to realism.  As early as the early 1960s, the emissions control hardware had made the gross readings even more misleading and the increasing use of these devices (PCV (positive crankcase ventilation) valves, air pumps & retarded timing) materially reduced real-world power which, coupled with the reduction in compression ratios which came with the removal of lead from gas (petrol) meant that in 1970-1971, claimed HP began precipitously to fall.  In 1971-1972, although the reductions seemed severe, it was the change in method (gross to net) which accounted for most of the differences but over the next decade, as the emission rules tightened and CAFE (corporate average fuel efficiency) standards were imposed, outputs really did fall; the manufacturers to some extent disguised this by re-tuning the thing to generate prodigious low-speed torque (at the expense of mid and upper-range power) but the differences really were obvious and the 1974-1984 period came to be known as the “malaise era” for a reason.

Grossadmiral and grossnessness: Official photograph of Großadmiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930; State Secretary of the German Imperial Naval Office 1897-1916) with his famous “twin-forked” beard (left) and Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) in SA (Sturmabteilung (literally “Storm Division” but better known as the “brownshirts” or “stormtroopers”) uniform at a Reichsparteitag (Party Rally), Nuremberg (believed to be the 1934 event, right).

In countries of the common law tradition which criminalized make homosexual acts, historically, the offence of “gross indecency” (a non-penetrative sexual act) was the companion to the “detestable and abominable vice of buggery” (a non-penetrative sexual act).  For countries with legal systems base on the common law tradition, “negligence” & “gross negligence: are conceptually related but differ in degree (not kind); the practical distinction lies in culpability thresholds and legal consequences, which vary by jurisdiction and context.  Negligence (at law sometimes as “ordinary negligence”) is the failure to exercise the standard of care a “reasonable person” (also a concept with a long legal history) would in similar circumstances be expected to exercise.  Depending on the case, negligence may involve carelessness, inadvertence or a lack of due attention and does not imply “moral blameworthiness” beyond failing to meet the objective standard.  In England, although Lord Denning’s (1899-1999; English judge 1944-1982) quip: “gross negligence is negligence with a vituperative epithet” is often cited, in operation, the term has substantive effects and in the criminal law there is the offence of "gross negligence manslaughter".  The only ones who seem to continue (except in the most egregious cases) to remain exempt from being subject to the threshold standard of "gross negligence" are the doctors who seem still able to convince all and sundry every inconvenient death is "medical misadventure".   

“Gross negligence” is not at law a separate tort (although it can operate as if it is) and is an aggravated form of negligence, understood generally as a great departure from the standard of care, demonstrating reckless disregard or indifference to the safety or rights of others, thus judges having included in the judgments phrases such as “utter disregard for prudence”. “want of even scant care” and “conduct bordering on recklessness”.  While “gross negligence” does fall short of intentional wrongdoing, it can approach or even approximate recklessness on the spectrum of culpability and in many cases, contractual exclusions or liability waivers may bar claims for ordinary negligence but cannot exclude liability for gross negligence.  It’s also a standard administered on a “case-by-case” basis and certain immunities (such as statutory protections for volunteers or professionals) may not apply to gross negligence.  Were a medically untrained “good Samaritan”, attending to an injured person they’d stumbled upon, to do something which if done by a nurse or doctor might be thought “negligent”, they’d almost certainly not be held liable on that basis and even had it been a passing medical professional who had done the same act, the threshold of “gross negligence” still might not be met.

Map: World GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in PPP (purchasing power parity) 2025.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNP (Gross National Product) were once the most commonly used metrics economics calculated to measure a nation’s macroeconomic performance.  GDP measured the total market value of all final (ie end of process which may be multi-national) goods and services produced within a country’s borders during a specific period (usually a year or quarter although faster reporting mechanisms have resulted in some also producing “provisional” monthly outcomes).  GDP’s core principle is the “location of production” and included all domestically produced products, regardless of the corporate ownership structure which meant off-shore production by domestically owned companies was not included.  For economists and policy-makers, GDP remains attractive because (1) its movements tend to track (though not necessarily in unison) markers like employment & inflation and (2) it is relatively easy to accurately to measure; it continues to be used by most governments (including some of the larger, sub-national units) and institutions such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund), UN (United Nations), World Bank, OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development) and BIS (Bank for International Settlements).

GNP (usually) is broader in that it measures the total market value of all final goods and services produced by a country’s nationals, regardless of where that production occurs, the core principle being ownership of the means of production & distribution.  Essentially, what GNP measures is (1) value of output produced by domestic-owned firms at home and off-shore and (2) income earned by individuals & companies from overseas investments; thus excluded is output produced domestically by foreign-owned firms meaning the difference between GDP & GNP can vary greatly between economies depending on their structure.  What links GDP & GNP is a mysterious formula (which began as an add-on for modelling tools) called NFIA (net factor income from abroad) explained as: FI earned by residents from abroad – FI earned by non-residents in the country meaning GNP = GDP + income earned by residents abroad.  NFIA is important to those wishing to analyse GNP because of the effect large multinational corporations (Japan, the UK & US emblematic examples) have on the calculations and, as a general principle, GDP tends better to reflects domestic economic activity while GNP is a better measure of aggregate national income available to residents.  The long-standing (if not always understood except as a comparative) GDP remains the standard “headline measure” most familiar to general observers while GNP is more useful for economists and other specialists.  Essentially, GDP is a measure of the value of local production while GNP calculates national income.  Economics being about money, GDP was thus something of an abstraction but GNP had limitations which is why economists created the newer GNI (Gross National Income) as a refinement GNP; it measure the same underlying concept (income accruing to a country’s resident) but is framed explicitly in terms of income terms rather than production.

Bhutan's construct of GNH (Gross National Happiness).

GNI is the total income earned by a country’s residents and businesses, including income from abroad and excluding income earned domestically by non-residents (ie GNI = GDP + net primary income from abroad) where “income” included (1) wages & salaries, (2) profits, operating surpluses and self-employment income and (3) property income (dividends, interest, reinvested earnings & rents).  GNI frequently aligns almost exactly with GNP and although GNP focuses on production by nationals whereas GNI emphasizes income received by residents, most major trans-national institutions (UN, IMF, BIS etc) tend to use GNI rather than GNP because (1) income is easier to interpret for welfare, savings and consumption analysis, (2) there is structural consistency with accounting frameworks and (3) the numbers are most adaptable to integration with modelling software handling inputs such as NDI (national disposable income), savings rates and balance of payments outcome.  Importantly, it’s also “meaty” for policy makers because governments tax and redistribute income, not gross output statistics.  GNI is thus something of an international standard although the government of Bhutan calculates and publishes an index of GNH (Gross National Happiness) which, philosophically, puts a premium on collective happiness over economic growth.  Although the formula has over the years been made more sophisticated, it’s based still on “four pillars”: cultural preservation, sustainable development, environmental conservation and good governance.

Gay

Gay (pronounced gey)

(1) Of a happy and sunny disposition (now rare except for historic references although "gay" is sometimes used in this sense when some mischievous ambiguity is sought).

(2) Given to or abounding in social or other pleasures (probably obsolete except for historic references).

(3) Of relating to, or exhibiting sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons of one's own sex (homosexual); technically gender and sex-neutral but use tends now to be restricted to males.

(4) Of, indicating or supporting same-sex interests or issues.

(5) Slang term among certain classes of youth for something thought bad or lame; use now frowned upon in polite society.

1275-1325: From the Middle English gay, from the Old French gai (joyful, laughing, merry), usually thought to be a borrowing of Old Occitan gai (impetuous, lively), from the Gothic gaheis (impetuous), merging with earlier Old French jai (merry) and Frankish gāhi, both from the Proto-Germanic ganhuz and ganhwaz (sudden).  Origin was the primitive geng or ǵhengnh (to stride, step”), from ǵēy or ghey (to go), cognate.  Word was cognate with Dutch gauw (fast, quickly) and the Westphalian Low German gau and gai (fast, quick) which became the German jäh (abrupt, sudden), familiar in the Old High German gāhi.  There is alternative view, promoted by Anatoly Liberman, that the Old French gai was actually a native development from the Latin vagus (wandering, inconstant, flighty) as in French gaine (sheath).  The meaning "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree" existed from the beginning but "wanton, lewd, lascivious (though without any suggestion of homosexuality) had emerged at least by 1630 and some claim it can be traced back to the work of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400).  The word gay has had various senses dealing with sexual conduct since the seventeenth century. Then, a gay woman was a prostitute, a gay house a brothel and, a gay man was a womanizer.  Gay is a noun, verb, adjective & adverb, gayness & gaiety are nouns, gayify is a verb and gayest is an adjective; the noun plural is gays.  Irregular forms like gaydar or gaynessness are coined as required but in many cases, use of some outside the gay (or in certain cases the the broader LGBTQQIAAOP community) is socially proscribed.

A brief history of gay

Hillman Minx, 1955 (Rootes Corporation).  "Go gay" was an advertising slogan and not an editorial imperative; at this time, advertising was carried on the covers of magazines.  It was not until the 1960s that the relationship between cover photography and the news-stand sales of magazines became better understood.

There’s a widespread perception that gay shifted meaning from describing happy folk or events to a chauvinistic assertion of group identity as an overtly political act dating from the late 1960s.  The specific use actually dates from the 1920s, the years immediately after the First World War when first it appeared as an adjective.  It was used thus by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) in Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922), becoming widespread in certain circles in US cities by the late 1930s.  Academic literature picked this up and reports of gay as slang began to be cited in psychological journals in the late 1940s.  Later, archivists found the term gay cat existed as early as 1893 among itinerants in north-east American cities and the use clearly persisted, attested to in Erskine's 1933 dictionary of Underworld & Prison Slang.  Nothing is known about the author of this work and the name N. Erskine may be a pseudonym, one assumption being he had served time in prison.  Within the community, those “in the linguistic know” certainly made use of “gay” in the modern sense well before the 1960s.  The troubled English mathematician Dr Alan Turing (1912–1954) spent time in the US (taking his PhD at Princeton University (1936-1938)) and it may have been there he, by some path, became acquainted with the re-purposing.  Whether it was part of his general speech (at least is some circles) isn’t recorded but in 1951 he wrote a “short story” (three pages of which still exist) in which appeared: “Now that his paper was finished he might justifiably consider that he had earned another gay man, and he knew where he might find one who might be suitable.”  There is though little to suggest that in the early post-war years “gay” in that sense was widely used outside the US with “homosexual” still the prevalent term although it seems between gay man, it wasn’t uncommon for them to reclaim “queer”, then otherwise a gay slur.

Admiring glance: Lindsay Lohan (right) during her "L" phase with former special friend Samantha Ronson (left). 

It wasn’t gay’s first fluidity in meaning; for centuries it’d been used in reference to various flavors of sexual conduct, ranging from female prostitutes to womanizing(!) men, all while the traditional use continued in parallel.  The most recent shift, essentially an appropriation for political purposes, ended the duality and has become so entrenched this may be final.  This final shift began in the late 1960s and quickly won the linguistic battle, use of gay in the new sense being common, though not universal, throughout the English-speaking world within a decade.  Other things changed too, some quickly, some not.  When in 1974 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued the seventh printing of second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II (1968)), they (sort of) de-listed homosexuality as a mental disorder although it wasn't wholly removed the publication of until the DSM-III in 1980; legislative changes unfolded over many decades.  One practical effect of removing homosexuality from the DSM's list of mental disorders was that overnight, tens of millions of people instantly were "cured", a achievement which usually would gain someone the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Flying the rainbow flag: Members of Gay Men Fighting AIDS with their pink SPG, London for Pride Parade, 24 June 1995.

In service with both the British and Indian armies variously between 1965-2016, Vickers built 234 of the FV433 "Abbot" 105 mm Self-Propelled Gun (SPG) Field Artillery vehicles, using the existing FV430 platform with the addition of a fully-rotating turret.  The factory project code (and informal military designation) was “Abbot”, in the World War II (1939-1945) British tradition of using ecclesiastical titles for self-propelled artillery (following the Bishop, Deacon & Sexton).  The official model name was “L109” but to avoid confusion with the US-built 155 mm “M109” howitzer, 144 of which also entered British Army service in 1965, this rarely was used.  While the sight of a cluster of gay men atop a pink SPG might have frightened a few, the thought of one in the hands of a pack of lesbians truly is terrifying.    

LGBTQQIAAOP: The Glossary: The generally accepted oral shorthand used to be “LGBT” but any truncation can suggest issues around the politics of hierarchy and exclusion.  The modern practice seems to be to use variations of “LGBTQI plus” (often written as LGBTQI+).

L: Lesbian: Women attracted only to women.

G: Gay: Men attracted only to men (historically gay can used to describe homosexual men and women but modern convention is still to use lesbian for women although many lesbians self-describe as gay).

B: Bisexual: A person attracted to both sexes.

T:Transgendered: A person who has or is transitioning to the opposite sex, as they were born as the wrong sex, in the wrong body.  The most obvious category to illustrate sex and gender are not synonymous.

Q: Queer: A non-heterosexual person who prefers to call themselves queer.  Often used by those in the queer art movement, especially by those who maintain there is a distinct queer aesthetic.  Queer used to be a term of disparagement directed at certain non-heterosexuals but (like slut in another context), became a word claimed and re-purposed.

Q: Questioning: Someone questioning their sexual orientation, either unsure of which gender to which they’re attracted or not yet ready to commit.

I: Intersex: Anyone anywhere on the spectrum which used to be defined by the term hermaphrodite.  Intersex is now the accepted term and hermaphrodite should be used only where necessary in the technical language of medicine.

A: Asexual: A person not sexually attracted to anyone or anything (sometimes styled as aromantic).

A: Allies: A straight person who accepts and supports those anywhere in the LGBTQQIAAOP range(s).

O: Objectum: A person attracted to an inanimate object.  Curiously, despite being the only category which, by definition, can't harm another, objectum is now the most controversial entry on the spectrum.

P: Pansexual: A person attracted to a person because of their personality; sex and gender are both irrelevant.

One amusing footnote in the history of matters LGBTQQIAAOP is the persistent urban myth Queen Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) prevailed on the government not to include women under the provisions of “Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885” because she didn’t believe there was anyone lesbionic in the world (or at least the British world).  The 1885 act (the so-called Labouchere Amendment) criminalised “gross indecency” between men, whether in public or private and replaced an earlier statute which since 1533 explicitly had criminalized “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery”; that evocative phrase (usually as “the abominable crime of buggery”) in some parts of the old British Empire remaining on the books for many decades and in England & Wales, as late as 1861, a conviction could attract the death penalty although this was thought so onerous a punishment for what was often a consensual act that prosecutions became rare.  For the state, the problem was the old law had been so specific and if the prosecution could not beyond reasonable doubt prove anal sex had happened between at least two “male persons”, a conviction couldn’t be secured.  Thus the attraction of the phrase “Gross Indecency” which covered the whole vista of “unnatural caresses” and it was under the new law Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was tried and convicted, receiving a sentence of two years.

Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas (1870–1945, left) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900, right) in sepia, London, 1893.

It seems only to have been in the late 1960s the “Queen Victoria didn’t believe lesbians existed” story appeared in print when it was reported as “campus student lore” and it first attracted wide publicity when, during a lesbian rights demonstration in Wellington, New Zealand in 1977, protestors draped a statue of Victoria with a banner reading: “Lesbians Are Everywhere”.  No evidence (parliamentary records, government papers, royal correspondence etc) has ever emerged to suggest she was ever consulted about the matter or attempted to “warn, counsel or advise” and that’s in accordance with British constitutional law in which the monarch possesses no “line-item power of veto”; no king or queen had since the early eighteenth century withheld royal assent to a act.  While it was true Victoria did on occasion try to influence things (by threatening to abdicate), her interest was piqued by great matters of state or foreign affairs, not the details of criminal law, especially if something she’d likely have thought distasteful.  Historians have concluded lesbians were not included in the 1885 act because male politicians and churchmen (1) believed women were unlikely to engage in such acts and (2) if they did it didn’t really matter because it was just something women did.  Victorian legislators were more anxious about the threat of male homosexuality to patriarchal structures, military, and public schools.

The Illustrated Police News reports the final Wilde trial, 4 May 1895.

There were though many judges and politicians who, drawing on classical literature and other sources, were aware of the long history of female same-sex activity but it does seem to have been thought an “upper class” thing of the drawing room set and thus less of a concern to the law, the argument being criminalising lesbianism would risk drawing attention to it and encouraging it among those “not of the better classes”.  However, in 1921 the House of Commons did vote to add women to the act because of the moral panic around the so-called “Black Book”, compiled during World War I (1914-1918) by the German espionage service which listed the names of thousands of “sexual perverts” (men and women).  Fearing the subjects may be subject to blackmail and thus a threat to national security the government decided to discourage such acts but the House of Lords rejected the bill, deciding that to acknowledge sapphism in statute was at some level to legitimize it in cultural discourse; their lordships thought it might give women ideas, never something of which men much approve.

Tread-wheel and oakum-shed, City Prison, Holloway.

The “Gross Indecency” provision was called the Labouchère Amendment because it was introduced (apparently as an afterthought) by Liberal Party MP Henry Labouchère (1831–1912) during the late stages of debate on the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.  As originally envisaged, the act primarily was concerned with raising the age of consent (from 13 to 16) and tackling child prostitution with Mr Labouchère adding his clause as a proposed amendment during the second reading (the substantive debate) after agreement mostly had been reached.  The wording of Labouchère’s amendment was clever in that it was an early example of “fuzzy law”, a vague, catch-all provision which, by not descending to specifics (such as explicitly listing “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery”) allowed to state to prosecute any conduct between men much beyond a handshake; to the many moralists in the state, it was delightfully vague with the additional attraction of not demanding much evidence to secure a conviction.

Truth, 10 February, 1937.

Henry Labouchère was described as “a paradoxical Victorian figure: a radical in some respects, yet profoundly reactionary in others, a defender of democracy and free speech yet the man who authored the repressive law used to persecute Oscar Wilde.”  That is however a modern view and on matters of personal sexual morality, the “small l liberals” of the nineteenth century probably tended to be as conservative as many of the era.  Also, there’s nothing novel about individuals holding apparently disparate views, Arthur Calwell (1896-1973; Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader of the opposition 1960-1967) in his memoir (Be Just and Fear Not (1972)) writing of one colleague: “…he was left-wing on some issues and right-wing on others, just as many men are.”  Labouchère was in this vein, backing causes such as republicanism, extending the franchise, Irish Home Rule, opposition to the monarchy’s lavish spending, and anti-imperialism while being deeply prejudiced in other fields: he was anti-Semitic, homophobic and a puritanical moralist who helped entrench one of the harshest anti-homosexual laws in modern Europe.  He may also have had a financial interest, being the founder and editor of the popular weekly newspaper Truth, which specialised in muckraking exposés of corruption, quackery and hypocrisy.  The Truth often featured articles concerned with sexual “immorality” and giving the police scope to “scoop up” men performing “gross indecencies” upon each other would have provided much juicy content.

Vice

Vice (pronounced vahys)

(1) An immoral or evil habit or practice.

(2) Immoral conduct; depraved or degrading behavior.

(3) A particular form of depravity.

(4) A fault, defect, bad habit or shortcoming.

(5) A character in the English morality plays, a personification of a general or particular vice, serving as the buffoon (with initial capital letter).

(6) In clinical pathology, a physical defect, flaw or infirmity (archaic).

(7) Instead of; in the place of.

(8) A combining form meaning “deputy,” used in the formation of compound words, usually titles of officials who serve in the absence of the official denoted by the base word.  Can be (1) pre-nominal (eg vice-president) if serving in the place of or as a deputy for or (2) in combination (eg viceroy).

(9) Any of various devices, usually having two jaws that may be brought together or separated by means of a screw, lever, or the like, used to hold an object firmly to permit things to be done to it.

Meanings (1– 6); 1250-1300: Middle English, borrowed from the Anglo-French & Old French from the Latin vitium (a fault or defect) which charmingly persists in Modern Italian as vezzo (usage, entertainment).  In the English-speaking world, police vice-squads attested from 1905.  The French construction vice anglais (corporal punishment; literally "the English vice") dates from 1942.

Meanings (7-8): 1760–1770; From the Latin vice (instead of) ablative of vicis (genitive; not attested in nominative) (interchange, alternation).

Meaning (9): 1300–1350; From the Middle English vis, borrowed from the Old French vis (a screw), from the Latin vītis (vine, plant with spiralling tendrils).  From the early fourteenth century, the meaning "device like a screw or winch for bending a crossbow or catapult" was widely applied to any tool or appliance which winds.  Root was the Latin viere (to bind, twist) and was used to describe the modern vice meaning “clamping tool with two jaws closed by a screw”.

Vice Magazine, 13 December 2017.

Los Angeles based Vice Media on 15 May 2023 formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a mechanism in US corporate law which protects insolvent companies from immediate action by their creditors, enabling them to continue trading while undergoing a restructure or as a prelude to sale as a going concern.  It was one of the better known (along with BuzzFeed) of the media creations of the internet age which have recently struggled in the unforgiving environment which has emerged as the post-pandemic, high inflation economy has unfolded while institutions like Instagram and TikTok have proved more attuned to the demographic once presumed to be their audience, thus the precipitous shrinking of a revenue base so reliant on advertising.  The magazine was founded in 1994 and, edgy before the term was in general use, was successful and it adapted well to the then embryonic digital world and in addition to a website, soon branched into film production, music distribution and publishing.  Audaciously (or so it at the time seemed to some), Vice took on news gathering and distribution, this at a time when people still read, paid for and were advertised to in printed newspapers.  Among what came to be called the “legacy media” however, the threat was thought real and News Corporation invested tens of millions of dollars in Vice; others took notice and a recently as 2017 Vice Media Group was valued at US $5.7 billion.  In a statement issued shortly after the Chapter 11 filing, Vice said it expected “…to emerge as a financially healthy and stronger company in two to three months”. In the circumstances that seemed optimistic but if an ongoing entity emerges it will be have to be very different to what Vice was, its high-cost model never adaptable to a business model in which free on-line content was sustained by advertising, even when such revenue was considerably higher than now.  Vice's lenders have agreed to provide US$20m to maintain the operation during “an orderly sale process”, during which other corporations or investors can submit bids.  If no sale is achieved, Vice Media's lenders will acquire all assets for US$225 million, the process is expected to take about two-three months.

Vice in the UK and US

In the sense of “deputy”, the use of vice in the UK (and the Commonwealth including Australia) can differ from that in US.  In the UK and Australia for example, a university vice-chancellor is really the CEO and the chancellor a ceremonial figurehead.  In the US a university president is in charge and their vice-president either an assistant or deputy.  It’s because these structures follow their respective country’s constitutional arrangements for government.  The UK has many such appointments, some of which became mere sinecures, others being active positions.  Vice-Admirals of the United Kingdom (and the earlier VAs of England and GB) have existed almost continuously since their creation in 1545 by Henry VIII and was the second most powerful office of the Admiralty, indeed until 1801, styled as Lieutenant of the Admiralty and the VA was deputy to the Lord High Admiral.  It’s another of those honorary offices now used as baubles; they litter the British establishment.

Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton (circa 1782), oil on canvas by George Romney (1734-1802).  Emma Hamilton (1765-1815) was the mistress of Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson (1758-1805) and muse of the society portraitist, George Romney.

In the West, the law evolved to distinguish between what was vice (which might be subject variously to parental, societal or ecclesiastical disapprobation) and what was deemed unlawful (which the state could in some way punish).  Once though there was overlap and one amusing footnote in the history of matters LGBTQQIAAOP is the persistent urban myth Queen Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) prevailed on the government not to include women under the provisions of “Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885” because she didn’t believe there was anyone lesbionic in the world (or at least the British world).  The 1885 act (the so-called Labouchere Amendment) criminalised “gross indecency” between men, whether in public or private and replaced an earlier statute which since 1533 explicitly had criminalized “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery”; that evocative phrase (usually as “the abominable crime of buggery”) in some parts of the old British Empire remaining on the books for many decades and in England & Wales, as late as 1861, a conviction could attract the death penalty although this was thought so onerous a punishment for what was often a consensual act that prosecutions became rare.  For the state, the problem was the old law had been so specific and if the prosecution could not beyond reasonable doubt prove anal sex had happened between at least two “male persons”, a conviction couldn’t be secured.  Thus the attraction of the phrase “Gross Indecency” which covered the whole vista of “unnatural caresses” and it was under the new law Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was tried and convicted, receiving a sentence of two years.  At law, the concept of replacing something specific with something more general is called "fuzzy law" and the purpose is to make it more difficult for lawyers to thread their clients through loopholes created by "excessive exactitude" in wording.  Despite that, lawyers remain committed to rising to any linguistic challenge.