Harlot

Harlot (pronounced hahr-luht)

(1) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; one given to the wanton; lewd; low; base.

(2) By extension, in political discourse, an unprincipled person (now rare).

(3) A person given to low conduct; a rogue; a villain; a cheat; a rascal (obsolete).

(4) To play the harlot; to practice lewdness.

Circa 1200: From the Middle English harlot (young idler, rogue), from the Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (rascal; vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin but thought probably of Germanic origin, either a derivation of harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow); most speculate the first element is from hari (army).  It was cognates with the Old Provençal arlot, the Old Spanish arlote and the Italian arlotto.  The long obsolete Middle English carlot (a churl; a common man; a person (male or female) of low birth; a boor; a rural dweller, peasant or countryman) is thought probably related.  Harlot was a noun and (less often) a verb, harlotry a noun and harlotize a verb; the present participle was harloting (or harlotting), the simple past and past participle harloted (or harlotted) and there’s no evidence exotic forms like harlotistic or harlotic ever existed, however useful they might have been.  Harlot is a noun & verb, harlotry is a noun, harlotish is an adjective, harlotize and harloted & harloting are verbs; the noun plural is harlots.  The adjective harlotesque is non-standard.

Harlot as a surname dates from at least the mid-late 1100s but by circa 1200 was being used to describe a “vagabond, someone of no fixed occupation, an idle rogue" and was applied almost exclusively to men in the Middle English and Old French.  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1345-1400) used harlot in a positive as well as pejorative sense and in medieval English texts it was applied to jesters, buffoons, jugglers and later to actors.  What is the now prevalent meaning (prostitute, unchaste woman) was originally the secondary sense but it had probably developed as early as the late fourteenth century, being well-documented by the early fifteenth.  Doubtless, it was the appearance in sixteenth century English translations of the Bible (as a euphemism for "strumpet, whore") which cemented the association.

In harlotesque mode: Lindsay Lohan in fancy dress as Suicide Squad's (2016) Harley Quinn, Halloween party, London, November 2016.  It may be a cliché but for purposes of fancy dress, fishnet stockings (or tights) are the motif of choice for those wanting the "harlot look". 

The biblical imprimatur didn’t so much extend the meaning as make it gender-specific.  The noun harlotry (loose, crude, or obscene behavior; sexual immorality; ribald talk or jesting) had been in use since the late fourteenth century and the choice of harlot in biblical translation is thought an example of linguistic delicacy, a word like “strumpet” though too vulgar for a holy text and “jezebel” too historically specific.  In this, harlot is part of a long though hardly noble tradition of crafting or adapting words as derogatory terms to be applied to women.  It has to be admitted there are nuances between many but one is impressed there was thought to be such a need to be offensive to women that English contains so many: promiscuous, skeezer, slut, whore, concubine, courtesan, floozy, hooker, hussy, nymphomaniac, streetwalker, tom, strumpet, tramp, call girl, lady of the evening, painted woman et al.  So the bible is influential although there’s a perhaps surprising difference in the translations of that prescriptive duo, Leviticus & Ezekiel: In the King James Version (KJV 1611), harlot appears in thirty-eight versus, but once in Leviticus, nine times in Ezekiel, some of the memorable being:.

Genesis 38:24: And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she [is] with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Leviticus 21:14: A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, [or] an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

Joshua 6:25: And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Isaiah 1:21: How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

Ezekiel 16:15: But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

Ezekiel 16:41: And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

Ezekiel 23:19: Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

Ezekiel 23:44: Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.

Amos 7:17: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

Nahum 3:4: Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

Stanley Baldwin election campaign poster, 1929.

Phrases like “shameless harlot” and “political prostitution” used to be part of the lively language of politics but social change and an increasing intolerance of gendered terms of derision have rendered them almost extinct (the language of metaphorical violence is next for the chopping-block: guillotined, knifed, axed etc all on death row).  Harlot’s most notable political excursion came in 1931 when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; thrice UK prime-minister 1923-1937) was facing an orchestrated campaign against his leadership by the newspaper proprietors, Lords Rothermere (1868–1940) & Beaverbrook (1879-1964), the "press barons" then a potent force (Beaverbrook called them collectively the "press gang").  Before commercial television & radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable.  The press barons though, whatever their desires, couldn't be dictatorial, as Beaverbrook found when his long campaign for empire free-trade achieved little but they sometimes behaved as if they could at a whim move public opinion and often politicians were inclined to believe them.  Within the UK at the time, Rothermere & Beaverbrook weren’t exactly “by Murdoch out of Zuckerberg” but it’s hard to think of a better way of putting it.

Baldwin in 1931 found a good way of putting it.  His leadership of the Tory party challenged because he refused to support them in what was even then the chimera of empire free trade, he responded with a strident speech which appealed to the public’s mistrust of the press barons, using a phrase from his cousin Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), ironically a friend of Beaverbrook.  Rothermere & Beaverbrook he denounced as wanting power without responsibility, “…the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  It was the most effective political speech in the UK until 1940, Baldwin flourishing and empire free trade doomed, although Beaverbrook would keep flogging the corpse for the rest of the 1930s.  Often underestimated, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) would later acknowledge Baldwin as the most formidable political operator of the era.

The oratory of Lloyd-George and Churchill may be more regarded by history but Baldwin did have a way with words and less remembered lines from another of his famous speeches may have influenced climate change activist Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  Delivered in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 in a debate on disarmament, he argued for an international agreement to restrict the development of the aircraft as a military weapon:

“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him.  The bomber will always get through…”.  “The only defense is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.”

Prescient about the way the unrestricted bombing of civilians would be the Second World War’s novel theatre, the phrase "the bomber will always get through" reverberated around the world, chancelleries and military high commands taking from it not the need for restrictions but the imperative to build bomber fleets, Baldwin not planting the seed of the idea but certainly reinforcing the prejudices and worst instincts of many.  That was the power of the phrase; it subsumed the purpose of the speech, the rest of which was essentially forgotten including the concluding sentences:

"I do not know how the youth of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been on it."

“This is a question for young men far more than it is for us…”  “Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war…”  “At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone.  But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.”

“If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done.”  “As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth.”

Hansard recorded Baldwin’s speech being greeted with “loud and prolonged cheers”, his enthusiasm for disarmament making him as popular as Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) would briefly be in 1938 when he returned from Germany with a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature an a guarantee of “peace in our time”.  Soon, the views on both men would shift but historians today treat them more sympathetically.

The old and the young.

Greta Thunberg (b 2003) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), United Nations, New York, September 2019.  Ms Thunberg was attending a UN climate summit Mr Trump snubbed, going instead to a meeting on religious freedom.  Proving that God moves in mysterious ways, Mr Trump took a whole new interest in evangelical Christianity when he entered the contest for the 2016 presidential election.  Ms Thunberg seems to have noted the final paragraphs of Baldwin's speech and while convinced it’s quite right to “lay the blame on the old men” and their blah, blah, blah, which she thinks insufficient to lower carbon emissions, seems confident youth will prove more receptive to doing something about us defiling the earth.

Greta Thunberg, How Dare You? (Acid house mix).

Strumpet

Strumpet (pronounced struhm-pit)

A woman of loose virtue (archaic).

1300–1350: From the Middle English strumpet and its variations, strompet & strumpet (harlot; bold, lascivious woman) of uncertain origin.  Some etymologists suggest a connection with the Latin stuprata, the feminine past participle of stuprare (have illicit sexual relations with) from stupere, present active infinitive of stupeo, (violation) or stuprare (to violate) or the Late Latin stuprum, (genitive stuprī) (dishonor, disgrace, shame, violation, defilement, debauchery, lewdness).  The meanings in Latin and the word structure certainly appears compelling but there is no documentary evidence and others ponder a relationship with the Middle Dutch strompe (a stocking (as the verbal shorthand for a prostitute)) or strompen (to stride, to stalk (in the sense suggestive of the manner in which a prostitute might approach a customer).  Again, it’s entirely speculative and the spelling streppett (in same sense) was noted in the 1450s.  In the late eighteen century, strumpet came to be abbreviated as strum and also used as a verb, which meant lexicographers could amuse themselves with wording the juxtaposition of strum’s definitions, Francis Grose (circa 1730-1791) in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) settling on (1) to have carnal knowledge of a woman & (2) to play badly on the harpsichord or any other stringed instrument.  As a term in musical performance, strum is now merely descriptive.

Even before the twentieth century, among those seeking to disparage women (and there are usually a few), strumpet had fallen from favour and by the 1920s was thought archaic to the point where it was little used except as a device by authors of historical fiction.  Depending on the emphasis it was wished to impart, the preferred substitutes which ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years included tramp, harlot, hussy, jezebel (sometimes capitalized), jade, tart, slut, minx, wench, trollop, hooker, whore, bimbo, floozie (or floozy) and (less commonly) slattern skeezer & malkin.

There’s something about trollop which is hard to resist but it has fallen victim to modern standards and it now can’t be flung even at white, hetrosexual Christian males (a usually unprotected species) because of the historic association.  Again the origin is obscure with most etymologists concluding it was connected with the Middle English trollen (to go about, stroll, roll from side to side).  It was used as a synonym for strumpet but often with the particular connotation of some debasement of class or social standing (the the speculated link with trollen in the sense of “moving to the other (bad) side”) so a trollop was a “fallen woman”.  Otherwise it described (1) a woman of a vulgar and discourteous disposition or (2) to act in a sluggish or slovenly manner.  North of the border it tended to the neutral, in Scotland meaning to dangle soggily; become bedraggled while in an equestrian content it described a horse moving with a gait between a trot and a gallop (a canter).  For those still brave enough to dare, the present participle is trolloping and the past participle trolloped while the noun plural (the breed often operating in pars or a pack) is trollops.

Floozie (the alternative spellings floozy, floosy & floosie still seen although floogy is obsolete) was originally a corruption of flossy, fancy or frilly in the sense of “showy” and dates only from the turn of the twentieth century.  Although it was sometimes used to describe a prostitute or at least someone promiscuous, it was more often applied in the sense of an often gaudily or provocatively dressed temptress although the net seems to have been cast wide, disapproving mothers often describing as floozies friendly girls who just like to get to know young men.

Strum and trollop weren’t the only words in this vein to have more than one meaning.  Harlot was from the Middle English harlot, from Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (vagabond; tramp), of uncertain origin but probably from a Germanic source, either a derivation of harjaz (army; camp; warrior; military leader) or from a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow).  It was an exclusively derogatory and offensive form which meant (1) a female prostitute, (2) a woman thought promiscuous woman and (3) a churl; a common person (male or female), of low birth, especially who leading an unsavoury life or given to low conduct.

Lord Beaverbrook (1950), oil on canvas by Graham Sutherland (1903–1980).  It’s been interesting to note that as the years pass, Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) more and more resembles Beaverbrook.

Increasing sensitivity to the way language can reinforce the misogyny which has probably always characterized politics (in the West it’s now more of an undercurrent) means words like harlot which once added a colorful robustness to political rhetoric are now rarely heard.  One of the celebrated instances of use came in 1937 when Stanley Baldwin’s (1867–1947; leader of the UK’s Tory Party and thrice prime-minister 1923 to 1937) hold on the party leadership was threatened by Lord Rothermere (1868-1940) and Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964), two very rich newspaper proprietors (the sort of folk Mr Trump would now call the “fake news media”).  Whether he would prevail depended on his preferred candidate winning a by-election and three days prior to the poll, on 17 March 1931, Baldwin attacked the press barons in a public address:

“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense; they are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men.  What are their methods?  Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context and what the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

The harlot line overnight became a famous quotation and in one of the ironies of history, Baldwin borrowed it from his cousin, the writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) who had used it during a discussion with the same Lord Beaverbrook.  Like a good many (including his biographer AJP Taylor (1906-1990) who should have known better), Kipling had been attracted by Beaverbrook’s energy and charm but found the inconsistency of his newspapers puzzling, finally asking him to explain his strategy.  He replied “What I want is power. Kiss ‘em one day and kick ‘em the next’ and so on”.  “I see” replied Kipling, “Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  Baldwin received his cousin’s permission to recycle the phrase in public.

While not exactly respectable but having not descended to prostitution, there was also the hussy (the alternative spellings hussif, hussiv & even hussy all obsolete).  Hussy was a Middle English word from the earlier hussive & hussif, an unexceptional evolution of the Middle English houswyf (housewife) and the Modern English housewife is a restoration of the compound (which for centuries had been extinct) after its component parts had become unrecognisable through phonetic change.  The idea of hussy as a housewife or housekeeper is long obsolete (taking with it the related (and parallel) sense of “a case or bag for needles, thread etc” which as late as the eighteenth century was mention in judgements in English common law courts when discussing as woman’s paraphernalia).  It’s enduring use is to describe women of loose virtue but it can be used either in a derogatory or affectionate sense (something like a minx), the former seemingly often modified with the adjective “shameless”, probably to the point of becoming clichéd.

“An IMG Comrade, Subverts, Perverts & Extroverts: A Brief Pull-Out Guide”, The Oxford Strumpet, 10 October 1975.   

Reflecting the left’s shift in emphasis as the process of decolonization unfolded and various civil rights movements gained critical mass in sections of white society, anti-racist activism became a core issue for collectives such as the International Marxist Group.  Self-described as “the British section of the Fourth International”, by the 1970s their political position was explicitly anti-colonial, anti-racist, and trans-national, expressed as: “We believe that the fight for socialism necessitates the abolition of all forms of oppression, class, racial, sexual and imperialist, and the construction of socialism on a world wide scale”.  Not everything published in The Oxford Strumpet was in the (evolved) tradition of the Fourth International and it promoted a wide range of leftist and progressive student movements.

Lindsay Lohan in rather fetching, strumpet-red underwear.

The Oxford Strumpet was an alternative left newspaper published within the University of Oxford and sold locally.  It had a focus on university politics and events but also included comment and analysis of national and international politics.  With a typically undergraduate sense of humor, the name was chosen to (1) convey something of the anti-establishment editorial attitude and (2) allude to the color red, long identified with the left (the red-blue thing in recent US politics is a historical accident which dates from a choice by the directors of the coverage of election results on color television broadcasts).  However, by 1975, feminist criticism of the use of "Strumpet" persuaded the editors to change the name to "Red Herring" and edition 130 was the final Strumpet.  Red Herring did not survive the decline of the left after the demise of the Soviet Union and was unrelated to the Red Herring media company which during the turn-of-the-century dot-com era published both print and digital editions of a tech-oriented magazine.  Red Herring still operates as a player in the technology news business and also hosts events, its business model the creation of “top 100” lists which can be awarded to individuals or representatives of companies who have paid the fee to attend.  Before it changed ownership and switched its focus exclusively to the tech ecosystem, Red Herring magazine had circulated within the venture capital community and the name had been a playful in-joke, a “red herring” being bankers slang for a prospectus issued with IPO (initial public offering) stock offers.

Cockatrice

Cockatrice (pronounced kok-uh-tris)

(1) A mythological monster, hatched supposedly by a serpent from the egg of a rooster and thus represented usually with the head, legs, and wings of a rooster, atop the body and tail of a serpent; the alternative name was basilisk.  Depicted usually as being the size and shape of a dragon or wyvern but with some lizard-like characteristics, if so minded it could kill with just a glance and could be slain only by tricking it into seeing its own reflection.  A young cockatrice was a chickatrice.

(2) In the Bible, a venomous serpent.

(3) Figuratively, a mistress; a harlot (obsolete).

(4) Figuratively, a mistress; (obsolete).

(5) Figuratively, any venomous or deadly thing (obsolete).

(6) The cobra (the common name of a number of venomous snakes, most of which belong to the genus Naja) (contested).

1382: From the Middle English cocatrice, from the Middle French cocatris, from the Old French cocatriz, from the Medieval Latin plural form caucātrīces & the unattested Latin calcātrīx (she who treads upon something), the feminine of the unattested calcātor (tracker), the construct built from calcō (tread) or calcā(re) (to tread) (a verbal derivative of calx (heel)) + -tor (the agent suffix).  The Latin was a direct translation of the Greek word ichneúmōn or ikhneúmōn which carried the same meaning.  Cockatrice is a noun; the noun plural is cockatrices.

The origin of the cockatrice certainly in ancient and frightening & fantastic beasts are common in the fables of many cultures but the one closest in appearance is thought to be one from the legends of Ancient Egypt, the mortal enemy of the crocodile, which it tracks down and kills.  In the way stories became mangled & tangled as they travelled between languages and across borders, in the Christian West, the cockatrice became conflated with the basilisk (a fire-breathing, snake-like dragon also with a murderous glance).  In the medieval era, such morphing was not uncommon and the popular association with a cock led to the legend the creature was born of a serpent, hatched from a cock's egg although there’s little to suggest there was much of a link with crocodile.  The connection with serpents persisted and it appears several times in the King James Version (KJV, 1611)) of the Bible, used to translate a Hebrew word meaning “serpent”.  In heraldry, it was used as a rampant, a beast half cock, half serpent and in slang it was used from the late sixteenth century to mean “a woman of loose virtue; a harlot”, an indication men are never short of sources when searching for ways to disparage women.  Etymologists note frequent references to “cockatrice” being a words used to describe the cobra, presumably because of the snake’s unusual hooded head and its habit of rearing up and “staring” but there appears to be scant evidence of actual use.

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

The cockatrice appears in the Christian Bible’s Old Testament (Isaiah 11:5-11; King James Version (KJV, 1611)):

5. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

7. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.

9. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

10. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

11. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

Isaiah was the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament.  In Isaiah 11, the prophet is describing to his listeners the nature of the world during the rule of a mysterious future king of Israel.  This king’s rule will be global, over the earth, men & animals and all beasts, prey & predator, will lie down together and eat together, all without bloodshed or death; in peace, together shall they live.  To illustrate how different will be this paradise, Isaiah says both the baby and the young child safely ill play surrounded by deadly, venomous snakes and be safe even from a cockatrice.  Readers were free to interpret the verse literally as an imagining the very nature of animals will change under this rule or, metaphorically, that the new regime of the Messiah's kingdom will usher in what would now be called a “new world order”, one in which all nations and peoples peacefully co-exist.  Isaiah needs to be read in conjunction with the Book of Revelation which says at the very end of history, in the new heaven and new earth, there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain and all wickedness will be banished from the Earth.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) lived in the England of the Elizabethan age, a time when the cockatrice was a fixture in popular culture and he used references to the mythological beast and its ability to kill with just a glance or as Shakespeare would put it, its “death-darting eye”, having the duchess in Richard III (1594) say in Act 4, Scene 1:

O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursèd womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous.

Crooked Hillary Clinton: How Shakespeare would have imagined “death-darting eyes”.

He returned to the allusion in Act 3, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (1597) in the words of the doomed Juliet:

What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?
This torture should be roared in dismal hell.
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'Ay,'
And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.
I am not I if there be such an 'I,'
Or those eyes shut that make thee answer 'Ay.'
If he be slain, say 'Ay,' or if not, 'No.'
Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

From before Antiquity to the horror films of the twenty-first century, fantastical beasts have often appeared and while most have been created to frighten, some have been more whimsical, such as the Jabberwock which first appeared in the nonsense poem Jabberwocky, written by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) and included in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).  The poem was about the killing of the fearsome Jabberwock and is part of what makes the two books among the most enjoyable in English literature but in literary theory “jabberwocky” has also been co-opted to mean “a form of nonsense; unintelligible speech or writing”, the connection illustrated by one fragment from the poem:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

The author helpfully had Humpty Dumpty say that brillig means “four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you start broiling things for dinner” but generally allowed his readers to make of the words what they will which probably was the best approach.  Alice in Wonderland was fun but those who followed would make linguistic gymnastics something else and James Joyce’s (1882–1941) Finnegans Wake (1939) was no fun for most although Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) claimed to find “a laugh on just about every page” and for A Clockwork Orange (1962) created his own slang argot, derived from a number of linguistic traditions.  As far as is known, Joyce never discussed jabberwocky but Burgess acknowledged the debt.  Other famous beasts include the leviathan & behemoth.  The leviathan was a truly massive sea creature rooted in ancient Middle Eastern and biblical texts, portrayed typically as a monstrous sea serpent or dragon, representing the primal forces of chaos and the ocean.  The behemoth was also of biblical origin and described generally as a massive, earth-bound beast, often symbolizing power and strength, thus the frequent use of the ox as an image, the creature dominating the land as the leviathan does the oceans.

Behemoth: 2020 Freightliner M2-106 in silver over black leather upholstery with alligator-hide inserts and timber trim, modified by Western Hauler, Fort Worth, Texas.

The big (and in recent decades they have got very big) US pick-up trucks appals some sensitive souls who sometimes damn the things as “behemoths” but for those for whom even they weren’t big enough, there were companies which would add enough bling to the first generation (2003-2023) of the Freightliner M2 medium-duty truck to some actually bought the things for private use.

The very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) used leviathan and behemoth as metaphors to explore concepts of social and political power in his works, especially in his famous book Leviathan (1651) and the lesser-known Behemoth (published posthumously in 1682), each creature deployed as a literary device to symbolize different forms of political structures and conflicts.  In Leviathan, the sea creature represented strong, centralized government or sovereign power, the state which Hobbes regarded as not merely desirable but essential.  He envisioned society as a “body politic” in which all individuals come together under a single, absolute authority to escape the chaos of the natural state, which Hobbes described in his most memorable phrase: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  The Leviathan represented the overarching power of the sovereign, something necessary to maintain order and peace, a vision of a government which could (and should) act decisively to suppress internal conflicts and keep external threats at bay, making it at once a protector and potentially an oppressor; little wonder then Leviathan has been found on the bookshelf of more than one overthrown tyrant.  In Behemoth, Hobbes used the monster of the land when describing the chaotic and destructive nature of civil war, focusing specifically focusing the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century and the theme of the book was the way parties and political factions and ideologies can tear a society apart.  Unlike the stabilizing leviathan, behemoth represents the forces of disorder and division that arise when people reject central authority and plunge into conflict.  It’s a cautionary tale, a warning that when men live in a society lacking a unifying authority, things will devolve into factionalism, chaos and political instability, the final result something like the “state of nature” in which life descended to something “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”.

Goth

Goth (pronounced goth)

(1) A member of an East Germanic people from Scandinavia who settled south of the Baltic early in the first millennium AD. They moved on to the Ukrainian steppe, first raiding and later invading many parts of the Roman Empire between the third and fifth centuries.

(2) In historic slang, a person of no refinement; barbarian.

(3) A genre of rock music, first popular in the 1980s and characterized by morbid themes and dreary melodies.

(4) A person part of a sub-culture favoring this style of music and whose tastes tend to be dark and morbid.

(5) In fashion, a descriptor of dark (usually black or purple) clothing and heavy make-up intended to create a ghostly appearance.

Pre-900: From the Middle English Gothe and Late Latin Gothī (plural); which supplanted the Old English Gota (plural Gotan), cognate with Gothic Gut (as in Gut-thiuda (Goth-people)).  Word in Greek was Gothoi.  In the nineteenth century, use in English became common to describe both architecture (often written as Gothick) and the literary style of certain novels; an adherent of either style was sometimes called a Gothicist.  Modern use to describe the fashion and music emerged in the 1980s, considered still a fork of the punk aesthetic.

The Visigoths

The Visigoths were the western branches of the old nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths.  These tribes flourished and spread throughout the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, an era known as the Migration Period.  It was the Visigoths under Alaric I who sacked Rome in 410, an act which made Europe’s descent into medievalism inevitable although there are historians who dispute the detail of that.

The term Visigoth was a geo-etymological error made by Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, circa 485–circa 585).  Always known as Cassiodorus, he was a Roman statesman, renowned scholar of antiquity, and a bureaucrat in the administration of the Ostrogoth king, Theoderic the Great.  Confusingly for students of the epoch, Senator was part of his surname; he was not a member of any senate.  His mistake was thinking Visigoth meant "west Goths".  Visigoth is from the Latin Visigothus, probably deriving from the Proto-Germanic Wīsagutô, a construction of wīsaz (wise, knowledgable) +‎ gutô (a Goth) or from the primitive Indo-European wesu (good).

Battle of Guadalete, circa 1890, by Salvador Martínez Cubells (1845–1914)).

It happened in what is now southern Spain but it’s not known exactly where the Battle of Guadalete was fought and even the date is disputed, most sources saying it was in 711, others a year later although all agree it lasted, on and off, for days.  There had been earlier engagements but Guadalete, fought between the Umayyad Caliphate and Roderic, Visigothic King of Hispania, was the first major battle of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.  Against the Christian Visigoth army under Roderic, the invading force of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate was comprised mostly of Berbers and a smaller number of Arabs.  The significance of the battle, not wholly realized at the time, is that it was a set-piece culmination of the earlier skirmishes which had weakened the structure and lines of communications of the Visigoth army.  The Umayyad victory marked the beginning of their conquest of Hispania,  Roderic and many of his generals killed in the battle, opening the way for the capture of the Visigothic capital of Toledo.

Modern-sounding geopolitical concepts like political economy were important influences in the Islamic expansion in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.  North African politics and economics influenced the early Muslims’ decision to cross the Strait of Gibraltar because the Arab armies which had conquered North Africa found themselves drastically outnumbered by the Berbers (Amazigh), many of whom were either Christian or somewhere in the pagan tradition and the invaders’ rules were unambiguous: Christians, a “People of the Book,” were expected to pay the jizya, an additional tax not imposed on Muslims while pagans were offered the choice of conversion or the blade of the sword.

Clear though the theocratic rules may have been, the realities of an small occupying force attempting to exploit a local population which was hostile and greatly outnumbered the conquerors meant the triumph of politics over ideology, both the collecting of tax and conversions of heathens soon haphazard.  But, the lands of North Africa were vast and their defense and administration required money and if it couldn’t locally be collected, it would have to come from the spoils of war new conquests will bring.  To the south lay the seemingly endless deserts of the Sahara and to the north, the waters of the Mediterranean and whatever dangers lay in the sea-crossing to Iberia, they were preferable to attempting to push through the Sahara.

Some toxicity in Visigothic politics was also a factor in the invasion.   The Visigoths had ruled almost all of Hispania since 415 when they drove out the Vandals who taken control of the province from Rome; ironically it was to North Africa the Vandals fled.  The Visigoth king had once been elected but, as happens in kingdoms, dynastic habits evolved and had become the practice for the crown to be passed to a son although, that inheritance was subject to the veto of the aristocracy.  Usually the nobles concurred but not always and in 710, upon the death of a king, they intervened to replace the dynasty with new blood.  Conflict between the clans ensued and, although in battle the new king prevailed, it appears part of the settlement was the division of the kingdom.

At that point, matters cease to be history and become the stuff of myth and legend.  From Arabic sources is the story that the Muslims invaded Hispania at the behest of Count Julian of Ceuta, the last Christian governor in North Africa. Ceuta lies on the African coast just south of Gibraltar and Julian, who may have been Berber, or Germanic, or Greek and was either a vassal of the Visigoths or a Byzantine governor of North Africa, the records to establish the truth are lost.  Julian had somehow succeeded in holding Ceuta against the Muslim advance and, secure in his city, sent his daughter to Toledo to study at the court of Roderic, the new Visigoth king, which seemed a good idea at the time but within months, Julian was told she was pregnant with Roderic’s child.  Enraged, in 710 Julian approached his former enemies and suggested an invasion of Hispania.  Improbable though this may be, the PR machines on the Muslim and Christian sides were cranked up and offered their own embellishments, the former saying the evil Roderic had raped the poor girl, the latter that the little harlot had seduced poor Roderic.

Julian, it is said, provided provisions, logistical support and intelligence for the assault but little more is known other than it was the name of the general leading the invasion force, Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād (طارق بن زياد in the Arabic) from which the Rock of Gibraltar gained its name, Jabal Ṭāriq (جبل طارق), meaning “mountain of Ṭāriq”.  The invasion was a success but the scale of the military operation is uncertain, medieval writings mentioning forces on both sides in the hundreds of thousands but most historians believe the Muslims had no more than 20,000 troops and the Visigoths perhaps twice that number.

Whatever the numbers, the Visigoths were defeated, Roderic killed in battle.  After the fog of war cleared, the fog of history drifted in and there are many tales to explain how a big army with all the advantages which accrue to defenders could be defeated by a smaller expeditionary force.  Some suggest Roderic didn’t enjoy the loyalty of all his men, many unhappy at his usurpation of the throne but this is contradicted by those who claim the old king was despised by all and that Roderic’s enthronement had been widely celebrated.  Apart from the legal point about the nobles exercising their right to elect a king so it could hardly be said to be a usurpation, the truth of any of this is unknown.  Nor is much known about the battle, military historians tending to conclude the most likely reason for the Arab success was the deployment of fast, mobile, cavalry against static defencs lines in an unrelenting succession of attacks which simply overwhelmed the Visigothic army.

After victory at Guadalete, Ṭāriq didn’t pause, marching on to the Visigothic capital, Toledo before his enemy had time to regroup.  At that point, Musa bin Nusayr, Ṭāriq’s commanding officer, shocked at the rapidity of the advance and anxious to grab for himself the glory of victory, assembled “reinforcements” and hastened across the strait to assume personal command.  Musa didn’t long get to bask in the glow of Ṭāriq’s triumph, the Caliph, Ibrahim ibn al-Walid (ابراهيم ابن الوليد بن عبد الملك‎), soon recalling them both to Damascus where they would live out their days.  This narrative, though widely told, is disputed, some claiming the two soldiers had a harmonious relationship and some saying that while there were disputes, they were later reconciled.  Again, it’s all lost to history.

One military legacy of the conquest of their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was one hardly noticed at the time and dismissed as insignificant by those who did.  The one area which did not fall to them was the tiny northern kingdom of Asturias and it was from this postage stamp of a renegade province that one day would form the political and geographic base for the Reconquista, the eventual re-imposition of Christian control over Iberia.

American Sapphic, Lindsay Lohan & former special friend Samantha Ronson by Ben Tegel after American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood (1891-1942).

Punkess

Punkess (pronounced puhngk-es)

A feminine form of “punk”.

1976: The construct was punk + -ess.  The word was coined by fashion & pop culture writer Blair Sabol (b 1944) and appeared in the “Observations” column in the October 1976 edition of Vogue magazine.  Punkess is a noun; the noun plural is punkesses.

Vogue cover, October, 1976.

In coining “punkess”, Ms Sabol’s grammar was sound because appending the –ess suffix is the orthodox way to feminize a noun.  The -ess suffix was from the Middle English -esse, from the Old French -esse, from the Late Latin -issa, from the Ancient Greek -ισσα (-issa) and was appended to words to create the female form.   It displaced the Old English -en (feminine suffix of nouns).  The other often used suffix was–ette, from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  Properly applied, it was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something and thus related to –et, from the Middle English -et, from the Old French –et & its feminine variant -ette, from the Late Latin -ittus (and the other gender forms -itta & -ittum).  It was used to form diminutives, loosely construed.  Because of (1) the link with the Latin –itta (the feminine form of –ittus) and (2) the historic tendency to conflate diminutive forms (ie smaller, lesser, inferior) with “female”, the association of the use of the –ette suffix with feminized forms emerged and on some cases entered standard English (majorette (female drum major); usherette (female usher) et al).  The use became less common as gender-neutral language spread.

Vogue Observations (OB) page, October 1976.  In 1976, a pair of raw-hide, knee-high boots, hand-stitched in (just) post-Franco Spain, listed with a RRP (recommended retail price) of US$68 and for “darkening and waterproofing”, the purchase included a tin of ”Graza de Caballo (pig oil, goose grease, and essence of almond).”  Vogue remains an Oxford comma holdout.

So the grammar was (at least historically) sound but whether Ms Sabol’s choice was sociologically well-founded may to some have seemed dubious.  The word “punk” has enjoyed an extraordinary range of use since the seventeenth century and although its origin (in American English)  is murky, all uses thought forks of “punk” in the sense of “rotten wood dust used as tinder” (used thus since at least the late 1670s), evolving by the mid-nineteenth century to mean “something worthless”, personalized by 1910 to mean “an undesirable person (thus the link with petty criminals).  By 1976 however, what Ms Sabol (indirectly) was referencing was the “punk rock” movement which, musically, had actually been around for almost a decade but although the term “punk rock” had in the US appeared in the US pop-music press as early as 1972, it didn’t enter mainstream use until 1976-1977 when the industry (and there have been discussions about cause & effect) realized they had a marketable commodity to package.

An AI (artificial intelligence) generated female punk, who, were she IRL (in real life), might not have a Vogue subscription.

The punk persona of the 1976 punks was such that the female punk musicians stereotypically would have found the notion of “punkess” absurd; they were simply punks making their music.  Of course Ms Sabol was writing in Vogue, discussing not jarring music but the attitude of the women she called the harbingers of “punkess preakness”, those for whom “toughness and aloofness” was not “their trade, but rather feistiness and endurance”  In other words, punkness (for the Vogue readership) describes a kind of “selective attitudinal transference”.  It’s not correct to say critiques of language disparaging or dismissive of women didn’t exist in 1976, the point being that such objections tended then variously to be ignored or devalued, the critics marginalized but Ms Sabol’s crew of punkesses might have approved of the label; a generation earlier, there were those who would have called them “tough broads” so it may have seemed like progress.  Despite that, “punkess” never caught on although “punkette” was used by a number of publications, usually in the context of “young women who adopt the fashion aesthetic of the punk subculture”.

Punkess crooked Hillary Clinton iPhone 16 case by Harold Ninek.

“Punk” proved one of the more adaptable words in English, all traceable to the original sense of “something worthless”.  The re-purposing included (1) “pre World War I (1914-1918) bread of not the highest quality”, (2) “driftwood”, (3) “toxic or poor quality liquor”, (4) “a homosexual”, (5) within the homosexual community “a (usually weak, young) man kept by a man for sexual purposes”, (6) a “ineffectual or worn-out boxer”, (7) “insincerity” (which may have been an imperfect echoic of the slang “bunk”, (8) “Chinese insect repellent”, (9) “certain tobacco products”, (10) “some strains of cannabis”, (11) a “novice” at a trade (much used in the construction industry). (12) “a criminal” (historically much associated with petty crime and “juvenile delinquency”), (13) “decayed or rotted timber”, (14) “a foolish or absurd argument”, (15) a type of incense, (16) “a fungus (polyporus fomentarius etc) sometime dried for use as tinder”) (ie harking back to the seventeenth century original), (17) “a harlot or prostitute” (which gains linguistic respectability for having appeared in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602): “This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers…” & Measure for Measure (1604): “She may be a punk, for many of them are neither maid, widow nor wife”, (18) “used or discarded fruits & vegetables”, (19) a 1970s pop-culture philosophy described as “hip nihilism”, (19) “a photographer’s assistant”, (20) a clipping of “punk rock” or “punk rocker”, (21) “the fashion styles associated with punk rockers and their audiences” (labeled “aggressively dumb” by some who didn’t approve), (22) in pyrotechnics, “a stick coated with a slow-burning paste, used to ignite fireworks, (23) “poverty and the poor”, (24) (as a verb) “to obtain” (often with a hint of the illicit), (25) (as verb) “to puncture a tyre” and (26) “a young elephant”.  Under the Raj, a punkah (or punka) was “a fan, especially made of leaf or cloth and hung from the ceiling”.  Punkah was from the Hindi पंखा (paṅkhā) (fan), from the Sanskrit पक्षक (pakṣaka), from पक्ष (pakṣa) (wing).  Before the advent of electricity a punkah remotely was operated manually by a servant, known as the “punkah-boy” or “punkahwallah” (depending on age).  Wallah was from Hindi -वाला (-vālā) either in the sense of “pertaining to” or (which etymologists think more likely) “man in charge”.

Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys (2002) by Pat Oliphant.

Australian-born US political cartoonist Pat Oliphant (b 1935) used the device of a little penguin as his alter ego and that penguin’s name was “Punk”.  Punk often appeared in Oliphant’s cartoons, making some wry comment or asking a question.  One of the most controversial pieces appeared as “Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys” in which Punk says: “I’ll call the bishop”, receiving the answer: “The bishop has first dibs.”  Widely condemned by the hierarchy of the US church, some newspapers refused to print the cartoon and others didn’t add it to their more widely-distributed on-line editions.  Oliphant’s cartoons are now held in the collection of the National Library of Congress.

Of cyberpunks and cybergoths

Punk has been used as a prefix to create literally dozens of forms and punkitude (the quality or state of being a punk; punkishness; adopting or projecting a punkish persona) captures the flavor of many, the construct being punk + att(itude).  Also existing in many forms, the suffix –punk seems first to have been used in 1986 to create cyberpunk and it spiked in 1992 with the coining of steampunk (although some sources claim this was first seen in 1989).  It’s used to apply the aesthetic or (perceived) attitudes of the 1970s (and beyond) punk subculture (loosely defined) on genres previously unrelated.

A cyberpunk Lindsay Lohan sipping martinis with Johnny Depp and a silver alien by AiJunkie.

The youth subcultures “cyberpunk” and “cybergoth” had common threads in the visual imagery of science fiction (SF) but differ in matters of fashion and political linkages.  Academic studies have suggested elements of cyberpunk can be traced to the dystopian Central & Eastern European fiction of the 1920s which arose in reaction to the industrial and mechanized nature of World War I but in its recognizably modern form it emerged as a literary genre in the 1980s, characterized by darkness, the effect heightened by the use of stark colors in futuristic, dystopian settings, the cultural theme being the mix of low-life with high-tech.  Although often there was much representation of violence and flashy weaponry, the consistent motifs were advanced technology, artificial intelligence and hacking, the message the evil of corporations and corrupt politicians exploiting technology to control society for their own purposes of profit and power.  Aesthetically, cyberpunk emphasized dark, gritty, urban environments where the dominant visual elements tended to be beyond the human scale, neon colors, strobe lighting and skyscrapers all tending to overwhelm people who often existed in an atmosphere of atonal, repetitive sound.

Cybergoth girls: The lasting legacy of the cybergoth's contribution to the goth aesthetic was designer colors, quite a change to the black & purple uniform.  Debate continues about whether they can be blamed for fluffy leg-warmers.

The cybergoth thing, dating apparently from 1988, thing was less political, focusing mostly on the look although a lifestyle (real and imagined) somewhat removed from mainstream society was implied.  It emerged in the late 1990s as a subculture within the goth scene, and was much influenced by the fashions popularized by cyberpunk and the video content associated with industrial music although unlike cyberpunk, there was never the overt connection with cybernetic themes.  Very much in a symbiotic relationship with Japanese youth culture, the cybergoth aesthetic built on the black & purple base of the classic goths with bright neon colors, industrial materials, and a mix of the futuristic and the industrial is the array of accessories which included props such as LED lights, goggles, gas masks, and synthetic hair extensions.  Unlike the cyberpunks who insisted usually on leather, the cybergoths embraced latex and plastics such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), not to imitate the natural product but as an item while the hairstyles and makeup could be extravagantly elaborate.  Platform boots and clothing often adorned with spikes, studs and chains were common but tattoos, piercings and other body modifications were not an integral component although many who adopted those things also opted to include cybergoth elements. 

Although there was much visual overlap between the two, cyberpunk should be thought of as a dystopian literary and cinematic genre with an emphasis on high-tech while cybergoth was a goth subculture tied to certain variations in look and consumption of pop culture, notably the idea of the “industrial dance” which was an out-growth of the “gravers” (gothic ravers), movement, named as goths became a critical mass in the clubs built on industrial music.  While interest in cyberpunk remains strong, strengthened by the adaptability of generative AI to the creation of work in the area, the historic moment of cyberpunk as a force in pop culture has passed, the fate of many subcultures which have suffered the curse of popularity although history does suggest periodic revivals will happen and elements of the look will anyway endure.