Mercury

Mercury (pronounced mur-kyuh-ree)

(1) In chemistry, a heavy, silver-white, highly toxic metallic element (uniquely liquid at room temperature), once widely used in barometers & thermometers and still a component of pesticides & pharmaceutical preparations.  In industrial use it provides the reflecting surface of mirrors, can still be a part of dental amalgams and is used in some switches, mercury-vapor lamps, and other electric apparatus.  It’s also used as a catalyst in laboratories.  Symbol: Hg; atomic weight: 200.59; atomic number: 80; specific gravity: 13.546 at 20°C; freezing point: −38.9°C; boiling point: 357°C.  It’s known also as quicksilver or hydrargyrum.

(2) In clinical pharmacology, the metal as used in various organic and inorganic compounds, used usually to treat infections of the skin.

(3) In mythology, the Roman god who served as messenger of the gods and was also the god of commerce, thievery, eloquence, and science, identified with the Greek god Hermes (initial capital letter).

(4) In astronomy, the planet nearest the sun, having a diameter of 3,031 miles (4,878 km), a mean distance from the sun of 36 million miles (57.9 million km), and a period of revolution of 87.96 days, and having no satellites; the smallest planet in the solar system (diameter and mass: respectively 38 and 5.4% that of earth) (initial capital letter).

(5) Borrowing from mythology, a messenger, especially a carrier of news (largely archaic).

(6) In botany, any plant belonging to the genus Mercurialis, of the spurge family, especially the poisonous, weedy M. perennis of Europe.  Historically, it was most associated with the annual mercury (Mercurialis annua), once cultivated for medicinal properties (the fourteenth century French mercury or herb mercury).

(7) In botany, a similar edible plant (Blitum bonus-henricus), otherwise known since the fifteenth century as English mercury or allgood.

(8) In botany, in eighteenth century US regional use, the poison oak or poison ivy.

(9) In the history of US aerospace, one of a series of U.S. spacecraft, carrying one astronaut and the first US vehicle to achieve suborbital and orbital manned spaceflights (initial capital letter).

(10) Liveliness, volatility (obsolete since the mid-nineteenth century).

1300–1350: From the Middle English Mercurie, from the Medieval Latin, from the Classical Latin Mercurius (messenger of Jupiter, god of commerce) and related to merx (merchandise),  Mercury, mercuriality & mercurialist are nouns, mercurial is a noun & adjective, mercurous, intramercurial & mercuric are adjectives and mercurially is an adverb; the noun plural is mercuries.

The late fourteenth century adjective mercurial (pertaining to or under the influence of the planet Mercury) evolved by the 1590s to include the sense “pertaining to the god Mercury, having the form or qualities attributed to Mercury (a reference to his role as god of trade or as herald and guide)”.  The meaning “light-hearted, sprightly, volatile, changeable, quick” was in use by the 1640s and was intended to suggest the qualities supposed to characterize those born under the planet Mercury, these based on the conduct of the god Mercury (which seems a generous interpretation given some of his antics), probably also partly by association with the qualities of quicksilver. A variant in this sense was the now rare noun mercurious, in use by the 1590s.  The adjective mercuric (relating to or containing mercury) dates from 1828 and in chemistry applied specifically applied to compounds in which each atom of mercury was regarded as bivalent.  Mercurous was by the 1840s applied to those in which two atoms of mercury are regarded as forming a bivalent radical. 

In the mythology of Antiquity, the Roman Mercury (or Mercurius) was identified with the Greek Hermes, protecting travelers in general and merchants in particular.  He was depicted as the messenger of Jupiter and in some tales even as his agent in some of Jupiter’s amorous ventures (famously in Amphytrion (circa 188 BC) by the playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (circa 254–184 BC)).  The location of Rome’s first Temple of Mercury was chosen because it was so close to both the port and the commercial precinct, the god of commerce thus well-placed.  Although it’s not entirely certain, the structure was thought to date from 496 BC and historians note the sanctuary was built outside the pomerium (the city’s religious boundary), leading to speculation the cult may have been of foreign origin.  Mercury’s attributes included the caduceus (the wand), a variety of very fetching broad-brimmed hats, winged sandals (essential for one so “fleet of foot” and the purse (symbolizing the profits merchants gained from their trade).  The tales from Antiquity are not consistent (and in some cases contradictory but Mercury in some traditions was the father of Evander or of Lares (charged with the supervision of crossroads and prosperity); Lares was born after Mercury raped Lara, the water Nymph in the kingdom of the dead.  The identification of Mercury with the Greek Hermes was ancient but in the early medieval period he was linked also with the Germanic Woden and noting his role as a messenger and conveyor of information, since the mid-seventeenth century Mercury was often used as a name for newspapers although has been a common name for a newspaper and some critics have adapted it for their own purposes: In Australia the Hobart Mercury was in the 1980s sometimes derisively called the “Hobart Mockery”.

Vintage wall thermometer: As the temperature increased, the mercury expanded in volume and rose (hence "mercury rising").  The red colour was achieved with the addition of a dye.

The origin of the chemical name of mercury (Hg) reflects the influence of Scientific Latin on early-modern chemistry; Hg is an abbreviation of the Latin name of the element: hydrargium (literally “water-silver”), from the Ancient Greek hydrargyros (liquid silver), an allusion to its unique quality of being a silvery liquid when at room temperature (all other metals being solid).  The older English name was quicksilver (still prevalent in literary & poetic circles) which was coined in the sense of “living silver”, a reference to the liquid tending to move “like a living thing” when provoked with the slight provocation.  The “quick” referred not to speed but “alive” in the sense of the Biblical phrase “the quick and the dead”.  Alchemists called it azoth and in medical and sometimes chemical use that’s still occasionally seen.  As late as the fifteenth century, in mainstream Western science the orthodox view was that mercury was one of the elemental principles thought present in all metals.  In Antiquity, it was prepared from cinnabar and was then one of the seven known metals (bodies terrestrial), coupled in astrology and alchemy with the seven known heavenly bodies (the others: Sun/gold, Moon/silver, Mars/iron, Saturn/lead, Jupiter/tin, Venus/copper.  In idiomatic use, (with a definite article), because of the use in barometers & thermometers, “the mercury” was a reference to temperature thus “mercury rising” meant “warmer”, the use dating from the seventeenth century and it has persisted even as the devices have moved to digital technology.  The name mercury was adopted because the stuff flows quickly about, recalling the Roman god who was the “swift-footed messenger of the gods”.

The same rationale appealed to the astronomers of Antiquity who noted the swift movement of the planet which required only 88 days for each solar orbit.  Mercury is sometimes visible from the Earth as a morning or evening star and in our solar system and is the both the smallest and the closest planet to the Sun.  Second in density only to Earth, it’s a lifeless (as far as is known or seems possible) place with a cratered surface which makes it not dissimilar in appearance to Earth's Moon.  It behaves differently from Earth in that the rotational period of 58.6 days is two-thirds of its 88-day annual orbit, thus it makes three full axial rotations every two years.  The atmosphere is close to non-existent, something which, combined with the rotational & orbital dynamics and the proximity to the Sun produces rapid radiational cooling on its dark side, meaning the temperature range is greater than any other planet in our solar system (466°-184°C (870°-300°F)).  Being so close to the Sun, Mercury is visible only shortly before sunrise or after sunset, observation further hindered by Earth’s dust & pollution, this distorting the planet’s light which obliquely must pass through the lower atmosphere.  It wasn’t until circa 1300 that the Classical Latin name for the planet was adopted in English while a (presumably hypothetical) resident of the place was by 1755 a Mercurian or a century later as Mercurean.  The novel adjective intramercurial (being within the orbit of the planet Mercury) was coined in 1859 to describe a hypothetical planet orbiting between Mercury and the Sun.  The idea had existed among French astronomers since the 1840s but became a matter of some debate between 1860-1869 until observations of solar eclipses finally debunked the notion.  The origin of the noun amalgamation (act of compounding mercury with another metal), dating from the 1610s, was a noun of action from archaic verb amalgam (to alloy with mercury), the figurative, non-chemical sense of “a combining of different things into one uniform whole” in use by 1775.

Genuinely different and obvious a cut above a Ford: 1939 Mercury 8 Coupe.

Reflecting the philosophy of Henry Ford which put a premium on engineering and price, concepts like product differentiation & multi-brand market segmentation came late to the Ford Motor Company.  Unlike General Motors (GM) which in the 1920s fielded as many as nine brand-names (and even by 1940 still had six), it wasn’t until 1938 that Ford added a third, using until then just Ford and Lincoln and even they operated as separate companies whereas GM maintained a divisional structure.  The debut in 1938 of the Mercury label, sitting on the pricing scale between Ford and Lincoln made sense in a way that twenty years on, Edsel never did and, until internal cannibalization began in the 1960s, the Mercury brand worked well.  Even after that, the marketing momentum accrued over decades maintained Mercury’s viability and it wasn’t shuttered until 2011, a victim of the industry’s restructuring after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2008-2012).  Debatably, the Mercury brand may yet prove useful and, should a niche emerge, there may be a resurrection, Ford maintaining registration of the trademark.

A (slightly) better Ford LTD: 1969 Mercury Marquis Brougham four-door hardtop.

Perhaps it was the experience of GM which had discouraged Ford.  Although Harvard had begun awarding MBAs since 1908, history unfortunately doesn’t record whether any of them were involved in the brand-name proliferation decision of the mid 1920s which saw the introduction of companion offerings to four of GM’s five existing divisions, only the entry-level Chevrolet not augmented.  The new brands, slotted above or below depending on where the perceived price-gap existed, mean GM suddenly was marketing nine products in competition with Ford offering two and one probably didn’t need a MBA to conclude only one approach was likely correct.  As things turned out, GM’s approach was never given the chance fully to explore the possibilities, the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s suppressing demand in the economy to an extent then unknown, necessitating downsizing in just about every industrial sector.  Axed by GM in 1931 was Viking (Oldsmobile’s companion), Marquette (added to Buick) and Oakland (actually usurped by its nominal companion, Pontiac).  LaSalle (a lower-priced Cadillac) survived the cull… for a while.

Ford in the late 1930s had clearly been thinking about how to cover the widely understood "price-points" in the market, most of which existed between the mass-market Fords and the Big Lincolns, then a very expensive range.  One toe in the water of brand-proliferation was the creation in 1937 of "De Luxe Ford" which, despite some of the hints in the advertising, was neither a separate company nor even a division; it was described by historians of the industry as "a marque within a marque".  Structurally, this seems little different to the approach the company had been using since 1930 when it introduced a “Deluxe” trim option for certain models which could be ordered to make the “standard” Ford a little better appointed but the 1937 De Luxe Fords were more plausibly different because some relative minor changes to panels and detailing did make the two “marques” visually distinct.  The Deluxe vs De Luxe spelling was perhaps too subtle a touch to be noticed by many.

1968 Mercury Cougar GT-E 427.  The tennis court hints at the target market.

A long wheelbase Food Mustang with a higher specification, the original Mercury Cougar (1967-1970) was the brand's great success story.  The 1968 GT-E 427 was a tiny part of that but is remembered as the last use of the Le Mans winning 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 and the corporation's only 427 pony-car.  Civilized with hydraulic valve lifters and an automatic transmission, it was a glimpse of what might have been had Ford, as it once planned, put the 427 in a Mustang.     

The De Luxe Ford line was deliberately positioned between Ford and Lincoln but intriguingly, at the same time, Ford introduced both a new, lower priced V12 Lincoln called the Lincoln-Zephyr and the Mercury range, all three of these ventures contesting the same, now crowded, space.  The De Luxe Ford “marque” would last only until 1940 although Ford’s Deluxe option remained on the books; it’s doubtful many outside Ford’s advertising agency noticed.  It would seem Ford was hedging its bets and may have decided to persist with whichever of Mercury and De Luxe Ford proved most successful and as things transpired, that was Mercury so as the 1941 model year dawned, in the dealers’ brochures there were Fords, Mercurys, Lincoln-Zephyrs & Lincolns.  World War II of course intervened and when production resumed after the end of hostilities, that was simplified to Fords, Mercury & Lincoln, remaining that way until the mid-1950s when in a booming economy, the temptation to proliferate proved irresistible and the exclusive Continental division was created, followed by the infamous Edsel, the model spread of which over-lapped the pricing of both Ford and Mercury, an approach which seems to go beyond hedging.  The Continental experiment lasted barely two seasons and the Edsel just three, the latter a debacle which remains a case study in marketing departments.

A natural Mercury: 1955 Ford Thunderbird.

So by 1960 the corporation again offered just Fords, Mercurys & Lincolns but it was a troubled time for the latter, the huge Lincolns of the late 1950s, although technically quite an achievement in body engineering, had proved so unsuccessful that Ford’s new management seriously considered closing it down as well but it was saved when handed a prototype Ford Thunderbird coupé which was developed into the famous Lincolns of 1961-1969, remembered chiefly for the romantic four-door convertibles and being the cabriolet in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated.  That was one of the Thunderbird’s footnotes in corporate history, the other being that when introduced in 1955 it was the first Ford blatantly to intrude on what, according to marketing theory, should have been the domain of Mercury, home of the up-market offerings.

Cannibalizing the corporation: 1965 Ford LTD.

The Thunderbird though was just the first act of trespass and fancier Fords continued to appear, the landmark being the LTD, which began in 1965 as a luxury trim-package for the Galaxie, something which proved so popular it soon became model in its own right, encouraging a host of imitators from the mass-market competition, the most successful of which was Chevrolet’s Caprice (that innovation in retrospect the first nail in the coffins of the now shuttered Pontiac & Oldsmobile).  However, like Pontiac & Oldsmobile, Mercury would endure for decades, all three surviving before being sacrificed in the wake of the GFC and between the debut of the LTD and the end of the line, there were many successful years but the rationale for the existence of Mercury which had been so well defined in 1938 when there was genuine product differentiation and a strict maintenance of price points, gradually was dissipated to the point that with the odd exception (such as the wildly successfully Mercury Cougars of the late 1960s), Fords and Lincolns were allowed to become little more than competitors in the same space and the brand never developed the sort of devoted following which might have transcended the sameness.  By the twenty-first century, there were few reasons to buy a Mercury because a Ford could be ordered in essentially identical form, usually for a little less money.

Xylo-punk band Crazy and the Brains performing Lindsay Lohan, recorded live, Mercury Lounge, New York City, 2013.  Punk bands are said still not widely to have adopted the xylophone.

Eliminate, Exterminate & Eradicate

Eliminate (pronounced ih-lim-uh-neyt)

(1) To remove or get rid of, especially as being in some way undesirable.

(2) To omit, especially as being unimportant or irrelevant; leave out.

(3) To remove from further consideration or competition, especially by defeating in sport or other competitive contest.

(4) To eradicate or kill.

(5) In physiology, to void or expel from an organism.

(6) In mathematics, to remove (a quantity) from an equation by elimination.

(7) In sport, as elimination & eliminator (drag racing): category classifications. 

1560–70: From the Latin ēlīminātus (thrust out of the doors; expel), past participle of ēlīmināre, the construct being ē- (out) + līmin- (stem of līmen (threshold)) + -ātus (the Latin first/second-declension suffix (feminine -āta, neuter -ātum)).  The most commonly used form in Latin appears to have been ex limine (off the threshold).  Used literally at first, the sense of "exclude" was first attested in 1714; the now obsolete sense of "expel waste from the body" emerged circa 1795 although the general sense of an "expulsion of waste matter" is from 1855.  Eliminate is a verb, if used with an object, the verbs are eliminated & eliminating, eliminability, eliminant & eliminability are nouns and eliminable, eliminative and eliminatory are adjectives.

1964 Ford Mustang in Wimbledon White displayed at press conference in New York City, held in conjunction with the release of the Ford Mustang at the New York World’s Fair, April 1964.

The Ford Mustang in 1964 not only created the “pony car” market but also inspired the sector's name.  Successful beyond all expectations, the Mustang was within years in a more crowded pony car market but it remained atop the sales charts and more than sixty years on it remains in production, visually still recognizable as a descendent of the original.  In the 1960s, its competition came not only from General Motors (GM), Chrysler and even American Motors (AMC) but also from the corporation’s companion brand, Mercury which, in 1967, released the Cougar.  Ford had in 1938 created the Mercury brand as a marketing device to “plug the gap” between the most expensive Fords and the lower reached of the Lincoln range, the rationale being a separate nameplate untainted by having lower-priced models in its catalogue would be easier to position as up-market than a “Ford Deluxe” which could be otherwise identical to what came to be badged as a “Mercury”.  It was an approach many industries (washing powder, snack food et al) would adopt and it remains common because it can work well but with a car company the images in capital and image are considerable so while a new chocolate range can fail and barely be noticed, the consequences of a similar fate for a car brand can be significant, as Ford in the 1950s would discover with the fiasco of the Edsel and the less remembered but also unsuccessful Continental division.

1968 Mercury Cougar XR7 GT-E 427 in Wellington Blue.  357 Cougars were built with the GT-E 427 option, the 101 the base coupé, 256 the more expensive XR7, all fitted with the C6 three-speed automatic transmission.  The remaining 37 GT-Es (14 base coupés & 23 XR7s) used the 428, only three of which had the four-speed manual transmission.  

Built on a slightly extended Mustang platform, the 1967 Cougar followed the 1938 Mercury model in that it was essentially a “luxury Mustang” and it was a great success although analysts noted that while some of its healthy sales numbers would have been “conquests” from the competition, some would have been cannibalized from the Mustang or Ford’s Thunderbird.  In its original form, the position of the Cougar was well-defined but intra-corporation competition (which by the twenty-first century would play a part in dooming Mercury) soon emerged and a Mercury team contested the 1967 Trans-Am championship, displeasing Ford’s management which wanted the focus on its motorsport activities to be on Ford.  So, banned from the circuits, Mercury turned to the street and produced high-performance versions including the GT-E, some versions of which had the novelty of being powered by a detuned version of the Le Mans-winning 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) FE V8 although that it was available only with an automatic gearbox was an indication of the target market.  Uniquely configured with hydraulic valve lifters, it’s was the corporation’s last use of the 427 and the closest Ford came to producing a Mustang 427.

1968 Mercury Cougar Eliminator 428 in Bright Yellow.

Introduced in 1969, the Mercury Cougar Eliminator replaced the GTE and was a serious effort at image building, the “Eliminator” moniker borrowed from the popular sport of drag racing where described a process rather than a specific category.  The Eliminator “class” was a way the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) at the time organized competition brackets, the title awarded to the overall winner among several class winners within a broader category.  Then, the NHRA divided competitors into classes based on a formula which included metrics such as engine displacement, weight and modifications; it used to include the manufacturers claimed horsepower (HP) output until it became obvious that reliance on honesty flagrantly was being rorted.  Winners in heats of the various classes would compete in a runoff called the “Eliminator” to determine the top racer in that group, thus there would be titles such as “Top Eliminator”, “Street Eliminator”, “Modified Eliminator”, “Stock Eliminator” and “Super Stock Eliminator”.  It was a popular sport and it could take many runs to eliminate all except the winner.

1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator 428 in Competition Blue.

Produced only for 1969 & 1970, the Cougar Eliminator not only looked the part with front & rear spoilers and the inevitable racing stripes but included also front & rear spoilers, up-rated suspension and wider wheels.  Available only as a hardtop coupé, befitting the image, it was offered only in the “high-impact” colors (White, Competition Orange, Bright Blue Poly & Bright Yellow in 1969, Competition Yellow, Competition Blue, Pastel Blue, Competition Gold, Competition Green & Competition Orange in 1970 (with the rare Black a special order) while the range of V8 engines variously installed spanned most of the catalogue.  The standard engine was a 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) unit (the Windsor version in 1969, the Cleveland in 1970) while the 390 (6.5) and 428 (7.0) were optional, the former only for the first season.  Genuine racing engines were also (sort of) offered: the Boss 302 (4.9) enjoyed nation-wide availability but only two Eliminators were built in 1969 with the Boss 429 (7.0) and while the exotic mill remained on the option list for 1970, none left the line.  It was a niche product which enjoyed some appeal with 2,250 sold in 1967 and 2,267 in 1970 but despite the apparent implications of the “Eliminator” name, in stock form it was never a class-leader on the drag strip, however much it looked the part.  The market much preferred the up-market, luxury oriented Cougar XR-7 which in 1970 found 33,946 buyers and, the customer always being right, for 1971 Mercury withdrew the Cougar from the high-performance business, with great success, returning it to what had been envisaged in 1967, the car now functioning as a sort of more conveniently sized Thunderbird.

Exterminate (pronounced ik-stur-muh-neyt)

Totally to destroy (living things, especially pests or vermin); annihilate; extirpate.

1535–1545: From the Latin exterminātus, past participle of extermināre (to drive away (from terminus boundary)), perfect passive participle of exterminō, the construct being ex- + terminō (I finish, close, end), from terminus (limit, end).  In Late Latin there was also the sense "destroy" from the phrase ex termine (beyond the boundary), ablative of termen (boundary, limit, end).  The meaning "utterly to destroy" appeared in English only by the 1640s, a sense found earlier in equivalent words in French and in the Vulgate; earlier in this sense was the mid-fifteenth century extermine.  Exterminator actually came earlier: as early as circa 1400, the Late Latin exterminator (from past participle stem of exterminare) had the sense of "an angel who expells (people from a country) and, by 1848, as a “substance for ridding a place of rats etc) and by 1938 this was applied to a person whose job it was.  Exterminate is a verb, used with an object the verbs are exterminated & exterminating, exterminable, exterminative & exterminatory are adjectives and extermination & exterminator are nouns.

Defendants in the dock, International Military Tribunal (IMT, the main Nuremberg trial (1945-1946)). 

The meanings of eliminate, exterminate & eradicate, both in their English senses and in translation from German have been debated before.  Although not defined in law until the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), the newly (1944) created word genocide appeared in the indictments served at the main Nuremberg trial (1945-1946) upon those accused under count IV, crimes against humanity.  This attracted the interest of lawyers who noted the words exterminate and eliminate appear both in the academic and legal discussions about the novel concept of genocide and in translations of many documents from the Third Reich which related to the Jews.  Defense counsel probed what was meant by these words and whether, in original or translation, their actual meaning in the context of their use was in accord with what was meant when applied to genocide.  The etymological excursion didn’t much help the defendants, most of whom were hanged.  Hermann Göring also raised an objection to a translation from the German being rendered as "final solution to the Jewish problem" rather than "total solution" which, he argued, should compel the court to draw a different inference.  In both discussions, the judges concluded what was being discussed was mass-murder and the relative degree of applicability between synonyms was not a substantive point.  Actually the word used by Göring in the first paragraph of the letter which ultimately authorized the holocaust was Gesamtloesung (complete solution) while in the final paragraph he use Endloesung (final solution).  This was the document which SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant-General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) revealed at the infamous Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942).

In the context of Nazi policies, the difference between "exterminate" and "eliminate" was something of which the party hierarchy were well-aware, presumably because the extermination of certain groups (Jews, those with mental illness, Gypsies et al) was often discussed and in his Totaler Krieg – Kürzester Krieg (Total War – Shortest War) speech to a carefully selected audience at Berlin's Sportpalas on 18 February 1943, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), in full-flight during one of his most masterful rants, briefly used the term doubtlessly often heard behind closed doors.  It was while telling the crowd how the regime would deal with the Jews that he began to use the word Ausrotten (extermination) or Ausschaltung (elimination) before correcting himself and instead saying Ausschaltung (exclusion).  The slip of the tongue represented perhaps what had in the upper reaches of the party been the accepted (if usually unspoken) orthodoxy since the speech made what came to be remembered as his most chilling prophesy: "If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Eradicate (pronounced ih-rad-i-keyt)

(1) To remove or destroy utterly; extirpate.

(2) To erase by rubbing or by means of a chemical solvent or other agent.

(3) Of plants, to pull up by the roots.

1555–1565: From the Latin ērādīcātus (usually translated as “destroy utterly”; literally “pull up by the roots”), past participle of ērādīcāre (root out, extirpate, annihilate), the construct being ē- (out) + rādīc- (stem of rādīx (root) (genitive radicis)) + -ātus (the Latin first/second-declension suffix (feminine -āta, neuter -ātum)).  The assimilated form of ērādīcāre is derived from the primitive Indo-European wrād (branch, root) and from the same source, the native form of the same idea existed in mid-fifteenth century Middle English as outrōten (to root (something) out; eradicate).  A surprisingly recent creation in 1794 was ineradicable and within a few years, ineradicably.  Eradicate is a verb, eradicant is an adjective and noun, eradicated & eradicating are verbs (used with object), eradicable & eradicative are adjectives, eradicably is an adverb, eradication & eradicator are nouns.

Eliminate, exterminate and eradicate in the age of pandemics

In Modern English usage, eliminate, exterminate and eradicate are often used interchangeably despite differences in nuance.  This means also the wealth of synonyms the three enjoy are sometimes haphazardly used although some overlap does exist, the synonyms including: annihilate, expunge, abolish, erase, uproot, extinguish, efface, demolish, total, abate, liquidate, obliterate, trash, squash, purge, extirpate, scratch, slaughter, decimate, execute, massacre, abolish, erase, extirpate, destroy, oust, waive, ignore, defeat, cancel, exclude, disqualify, invalidate, drop, eject, expel, liquidate, omit, terminate, slay, discard & disregard.

In the (relatively) happy times before the emergence of SARS-Cov2's Delta variant, the New Zealand prime minister declared COVID-19 “eradicated but not eliminated” which did sound given that, regarding disease, the words have specific, technical meanings.  In the context of disease, eradication refers to the complete and permanent worldwide reduction to zero new cases through deliberate effort.  Elimination refers to the reduction to zero (or a very low defined target rate) of new cases in a defined geographical area, which can be any size, a province, country, continent or hemisphere.  As used by virologists and epidemiologists therefore, eradication is used in its normal conversational sense but elimination is applied with a specific technical meaning.  There is a quirk to this. The World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1980 although small cultures remain in US and Russian research laboratories.  If these residual stocks are ever destroyed, the WHO may adopt some new term to distinguish between eradication in the wild and an absolute extermination from the planet.  Nobody seems now to believe COVID-19 will ever 

Professionals in the field of pest control actually stick more closely to classic etymology in their technical distinction between the two central words: extermination and eradication.  Extermination (from the Latin, exterminare meaning “out of the boundary” and related to the deity Terminus who presided over boundaries) means to drive the pests beyond the boundaries of the building.  It doesn’t of necessity mean the pests are all dead, just that they are no longer in the building.  Eradicate (from the Latin eradicare meaning to root out) refers to the processes leading to extermination, to bring to light the breeding spots, the places where the infestation has, so to speak, taken root.

Comet

Comet (pronounced kom-it)

(1) In astronomy, a celestial body moving about the sun, usually in a highly eccentric orbit, most thought to consist of a solid frozen nucleus, part of which vaporizes on approaching the heat from Sun (or other star) to form a gaseous, luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas, the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).

(2) In astronomy, a celestial phenomenon with the appearance of such a body.

(3) Any of several species of hummingbird found in the Andes.

(4) In slang, as “vomit comet”, a reduced-gravity aircraft which, by flying in a parabolic flight path, briefly emulates a close to weightless environment.  Used to train astronauts or conduct research, the slang derived from the nausea some experience.

(5) In figurative use (often applied retrospectively and with a modifier such as “blazing comet”), someone (or, less commonly, something) who appears suddenly in the public eye, makes a significant impact and then quickly fades from view, their fleeting moment of brilliance a brief but spectacular event.

1150–1200: From the Middle English comete, partly from the Old English comēta and partly from the Anglo-French & Old French comete (which in Modern French persists as comète), all from the Latin comētēs & comēta, from the Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs) (wearing long hair; ling-haired), the construct being komē-, a variant stem of komân (to let one's hair grow), from κόμη (kómē) (hair) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Greek was a shortened form of ἀστὴρ κομήτης (astēr komētēs (longhaired star)), a reference to a comet’s streaming tail.  The descendants in other languages include the Malay komet, the Urdu کومٹ (komeṭ) and the Welsh comed.  Comet, cometlessness, cometography, cometographer, cometology & cometarium are nouns, cometless, cometic, cometical, cometocentric, cometary, cometographical & cometlike (also as comet-like) are adjectives, cometesimal is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is comets.

Comets orbit the Sun along an elongated path and when not near the heat, the body consists solely of its nucleus, thought to be almost always a solid core of frozen water, frozen gases, and dust.  When near the sun, the nucleus heats, eventually to boil and thus release the gaseous and luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas), the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).  The path of a comet can be in the shape of an ellipse or a hyperbola; if a hyperbolic path, it enters the solar system once and then leaves forever while if it follows an ellipse, it remains in orbit around the sun.  Astronomer divide comets into (1) “short period” (those with orbital periods of less than 200 years and coming from the Kuiper belt) and (2) “long-period” (those with an orbital period greater than 200 years and coming from the Oort cloud).

Before the development of modern techniques, comets were visible only when near the sun so their appearance was sudden and, until early astronomers were able to calculate the paths of those which re-appeared, unexpected.  Superstition stepped in where science didn’t exist and comets were in many cultures regarded as omens or harbingers of doom, famine, ruin, pestilence and the overthrow of kingdoms or empires.  It was the English astronomer, mathematician and physicist Edmond Halley (1656–1742; Astronomer Royal 1720-1742) who in 1682 published the calculations which proved many comets were periodic and thus their appearance could be predicted.  Halley's Comet, named in his honor, remains the only known short-period comet consistently visible from Earth with the naked eye and remains the world’s most famous; it last appeared in 1986 and will next visit our skies in 2061.

Comet wine: Non-vintage Alois Lageder Natsch4 Vigneti Delle Dolomiti.

Halley’s findings put an end to (most) of the superstition surrounding comets but commerce still took advantage of their presence.  A comet with a famously vivid tail appeared in 1811 and in that year, Europe enjoyed a remarkably pleasant autumn (fall) which was most conducive to agriculture and became associated with the abundant and superior yield of the continental vineyards.  For that reason, the vintage was called the “comet wine” and the term became a feature in marketing the product which emerged from any year in which notable comets were seen, a superior quality alleged (and thus a premium price).  Wine buffs say any relationship between the quality of a vintage and the travel of celestial bodies is entirely coincidental.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2021) by Dr Heather Clark (b 1974).

One of things about the feminist cult which is now the construct of Sylvia Path (1932-1963) is that her mistreatment at the hands of her husband Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) tends to obscure her work which many quite familiar with the story of her brief life will barely have read and that’s perhaps predictable, certainly for those for whom the lure of tales of tragic woman and brutish men is a siren.  As human tragedies go, her story is compelling: A precocious talent, the death of the father to whom she was devoted when only eight, the suicide attempt while a student and the burning ambition to write and be published.  Almost as soon as she met Ted Hughes she knew he was “my black marauder” and their affair was one of intense physicality as well as a devotion to their art, something which might have endured during their marriage (which produced two children) had Hughes not proved so unfaithful and neglectful.  In 1963, as an abandoned solo mother in a freezing flat during what entered history as London’s coldest winter of the century, she took her own life while her two babies slept nearby, becoming a symbol onto which people would map whatever most suited their purposes: the troubled genius, the visionary writer, a feminist pioneer and, overwhelmingly, a martyr, a victim of a man.  To his dying day, feminists would stalk literary events just to tell Hughes he had “Sylvia’s blood on his hands”.

So the story is well known and in the years since her death there have been a number of biographies, critical studies, collections of letters, academic conferences; given that, it’s seemed by the 2020s unlikely there was much more to say about one whose adult life spanned not even two decades.  For that reason the 1000-odd densely printed pages of Dr Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was a revelation because, as the author pointed out, her life “has been subsumed by her afterlife” and what was needed was a volume which focused on what she wrote and why that output means she should be set free from the “cultural baggage of the past 50 years” and shown as “one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.”

Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956.

Red Comet is thus far this century’s outstanding biography and a feminist perspective is not required to recognize that when reading her last poems (written in obvious rage but sustaining a controlled tension few have matched) that she was a profoundly disturbed woman.  Most clinicians who have commented seem now to agree her depression of long-standing had descended to something psychotic by the time of her suicide, a progression she seems to have acknowledged, writing to one correspondent that she was composing poetry “on the edge of madness”.  This is though a biography written by a professional literary critic so it does not construct Plath as tale of tragedy and victimhood as one might if telling the story of some troubled celebrity.  Instead, the life is allowed to unfold in a way which shows how it underpins her development as a writer, the events and other glimpses of the person interpolated into the progress of a text through drafts and revisions, each word polished as the poet progresses to what gets sent to the publisher.  Red Comet is not a book for those interested in how much blame Ted Hughes should bear for his wife killing herself and in that matter it’s unlikely to change many opinions but as a study of the art of Sylvia Plath, it’s outstanding.  Unlike many figurative uses of "comet", Plath continues to blaze her trail. 

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  In the early 1950s there was much optimism about the Comet and had it been successful, it could have given the UK’s commercial aviation industry a lead in a sector which rapidly would expand in the post war years.  One who didn’t express much faith in his country’s capacity to succeed in the field was the politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) who, shortly before taking up his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to France, was flying on an Avro York (a transport and civil adaptation of the Lancaster heavy bomber) and he noted in his diary: “I think the designer of the York has discovered the shape of an armchair in which it is quite impossible to be comfortable, if this is typical of the civil transport plane in which were are to compete against the US, we are already beaten.”  As Lindsay Lohan’s smiles indicate, as least on private jets, the seats are now comfortable.

Not quite an Edsel, not yet a Mercury: The 1960 Comet; it was an era of imaginative (other use different adjectives) styling (and at this time they were still "stylists" and not "designers").

The Mercury Comet, built in four generations between 1960-1969 and another between 1971-1977, had a most unusual beginning.  The Ford Motor Company (“FoMoCo”, Mercury’s parent corporation) had in the mid 1950s studied the five-tier (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac) branding used by General Motors (GM) and decided it too would create a five divisional structure (which by 1955 Chrysler had also matched).  The GM model dated from the 1920s and was called the “ladder” (GM at times had as many as nine rungs) and the idea was each step on the later would take a buyer into a higher price (and at least theoretically more profitable) range of models.  There was a time when this approach made sense but even in the 1950s when Ford embarked on their restructure it was beginning to fragment, the implications of which would become apparent over the decades.  Thus Ford ended up (briefly) with five divisions: Ford, Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln and Continental.  That didn’t last long and Continental was the first to go, followed soon by the still infamous Edsel and the corporation even flirted with the idea of shuttering Lincoln.

1963 Mercury Comet S-22 Convertible.

The original plan had been for the Comet to be the “small Edsel” but by the time the release date drew close, the decision had been taken to terminate the Edsel brand so the Q&D (quick & dirty) solution was to sell the car through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, an expedient which lasted for the 1960 & 1961 model years before the Comet was integrated into the Mercury range and badged appropriately.  The early Comets were built on the Falcon platform (“compact” in contemporary US terms) but when the 1966 range was released, the cars became “intermediates” (ie the size between the “compact” and “full-size” platforms).  The Comet name was withdrawn from use after 1969 but was in 1971 revived for Mercury’s companion to the Maverick, Ford’s replacement for the compact Falcon which slotted above the Pinto which was smaller, requiring the industry to coin the class-designation “sub compact”.  Cheap to produce and essentially a “consumer disposable”, the Maverick and Comet proved so popular they continued in production for a season even after their nominal replacements were in showrooms.

1967 Mercury Comet Cyclone "R Code", one of 60 built that year with the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) FE side-oiler V8 and one of the 19 with a four-speed manual transmission.

The Mercury Comet has never attracted great interest from collectors because few were built with the more robust or exotic drive-trains found more frequently in both the competition from GM & Chrysler and the companion versions from Ford.  The mid-range performance package for the general market was the Comet Cyclone, introduced in 1964 to replace the Comet’s earlier S-22 option; neither were big sellers but they were not expensive to produce and remained profitable parts of the Mercury range.  In 1968, during the peak of the muscle car era, Mercury sought to promote the line, dropping the Comet name and promoting the machines as the “Cyclone”, now with quite potent engines although the emphasis clearly was drag racing rather than turning corners; the high performance package was now called the “Cyclone Spoiler”.  For the NASCAR circuits however, there was in 1969 the Cyclone Spoiler II, one of the so-called “aero cars”, the better known of which were the much more spectacular, be-winged Dodge Daytona (1969) and Plymouth Superbird (1970).  Chrysler’s cars looked radical to achieve what they did but the modifications which created the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II and Ford Torino Talladega were so subtle as to be barely noticeable, the most effective being the increased slope on the lengthened nose, the flush grill and some changes which had the effect of lowering both the centre of gravity and the body.  The Ford and Mercury might have been a less spectacular sight than the Dodge or Plymouth but on the tracks the seeming slight tweaks did the job and both were among the fastest and most successful of their brief era.

1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (slab-sided but slippery, left), 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler (sleek but less aerodynamic than its predecessor, centre) and the aborted 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (handicapped out of contention by NASCAR, right).   

In 1970, just how aerodynamic was the 1969 Cyclone Spoiler was proved when the racing teams tried the new model which, although it looked sleek, was not as aerodynamically efficient and noticeably slower.  That might seem something of an own goal but Ford were blindsided by NASCAR’s decision to render the low-volume “aero cars” uncompetitive by restricting them to the use of 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engines while the conventional bodies were permitted to use the full 430 (7.0).  Thus the aerodynamic modifications planned for the 1970 Torino and Cyclone never entered production.  Of the two prototype Cyclone Spoiler IIs built, one survives revealing a nose which was in its own way as radical as those earlier seen on the Plymouth and Dodge.  In the collector market, the aero cars are much sought but the Cyclones are the least valued which may seem strange because they were on the circuits among the most successful of the era.  Market analysts attribute this to (1) the Cyclone Spoiler II (and Torino Talladega) being visually much less eye-catching than the wild-looking pair from Chrysler and (2) the Cyclone Spoiler II being sold only with a modest 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) engine whereas the Fords ran 428s (7.0) and the Chryslers 440 (7.2) & 426 (6.9) units, the latter a version of the engine actually used in the race cars.

The highly qualified Kate Upton (b 1992) was in 2014 featured in a Sports Illustrated session filmed in a "vomit comet" (a modified Boeing 727 with a padded interior).