Mezzanine

Mezzanine (pronounced mez-uh-neen)

(1) In architecture, a low story between two other stories of greater height in a building, especially when the low story and the one beneath it form part of one composition; an entresol (in general use referred to as “mezzanine” or “mezzanine floor”, most historically between the ground and first levels because so many were added to take advantage of the high ceilings often found in these voids.  A mezzanine is an intermediate floor (occasionally called a “sub-storey” or “demi-storey”) which does not extend over the whole floor-space below and can thus be visualized a kind of (usually large) large balcony overlooking the floor below; many were atop “grand” staircases which were often the focal point of ground floors.

(2) By extension (and used loosely), an apartment, room, restaurant etc on such an intermediate floor.

(3) In theatre (and other performance spaces) design, the lowest balcony or forward part of such a balcony (North American use and known sometimes as the “dress circle”), the seats there usually sold either at a premium or a discount against the “orchestra” seats depending on the structure.

(4) In theatre design, a space under the stage, from which contrivances such as traps are worked (obsolete).

(5) In financial markets, an intermediate stage in a financial process, known variously as “mezzanine funding”, “mezzanine capital”, or “mezzanine debt” (“mezz” the shorthand of traders).

(6) In interior design, an additional layer of flooring, laid over a floor either to raise the height, conceal imperfections or afford protection from water penetration (the latter common in server rooms & farms).

(7) As “mezzanine window”, a a small window at the height of a mezzanine floor or an attic.

(8) In computer hardware, as mezzanine board, the gender-neutral replacement term for the earlier daughter boards (which plugged into motherboards (now the gender neutral system board)

(9) In figurative use, any intermediate or ancillary stage or device (rare except in engineering (engineering) where it’s used to describe things fulfilling an intermediate or secondary function.  Curiously, software engineers & coders seem not to use the term, possibly to avoid confusion with the hardware devices.

1705–1715: From the French mezzanine & its etymon the Italian mezzanino (a low story between two higher ones in a building), from mezzano (middle (adjective) & go-between (noun)) the construct being mezzan(o) (in either sense of “middle”), from the Latin mediānus (median; of the middle) + -ino (the diminutive suffix).  Mezzano was from the Latin adjective mediānus (central, middle), from medius (mid, middle), ultimately from a construct of the primitive Indo-European root médyos or médhyo (middle)) + -ānus (the suffix meaning “of or pertaining to”).  The word was almost exclusive to architects before the early twentieth century when it came to be used on New York’s Broadway to mean “lowest balcony in a theater”, presumably because the use of something so Italianesque might justify charging a premium for the ticket.  The Italian mediānus was an element also in words like mediator (an agent who interposes between two parties), medium (that size between big & small) and medieval (a creation of Modern English from the New Latin medium aevum (the middle age, thus pertaining to or suggestive of the Middle Ages), the construct being medi(ānus) (the middle) + aev(um) (age) + -al (the Latin adjectival suffix appended to various words (often nouns) to make an adjective).  Mezzanine is a noun & adjective and mezzanining & mezzanined are verbs; the noun plural is mezzanines.  Because mezzanine was a particular specification in architecture, historically, adjectives like mezzaninesque or mezzaninish would have been absurd but given the fertile imaginations of those engineering new financial products, they may yet come into vogue.

419 Venice Way, Venice Beach, Los Angeles where during 2011 Lindsay Lohan lived (in the house to the right; the semi-mirrored construction sometimes called a “pigeon pair”) next door to former special friend Samantha Ronson who inhabited the one to the left (417).  The four bedroom (3½ bathrooms) house included a floating stairway leading to a mezzanine which the property’s agent described as “ideal for a studio or office”.

419 Venice Way: Ground level showing the floating staircase to the mezzanine (left) and the mezzanine (right).

In casual use, many refer to smaller mezzanines as balconies but architects note the latter tend to be installed on a building’s exterior while a mezzanine is inherently an indoor feature.  While the motifs of ether can be used either inside or out, by convention the indoor/outdoor convention of use dictates the choice of nomenclature.  A mezzanine is an intermediate level which is built with a partial floor which doesn’t fully cover the floor and historically many were added between the ground and first levels to take advantage of the high ceilings often found in these voids, many featuring the so-called “grand staircases” which were often the focal point of ground floors.  By contrast, a balcony is an elevated platform typically attached to the upper exterior of a building to provide a space onto which people may sit or stand for a variety of purposes.

Lobby (foyer) of Stamford Plaza Brisbane, Queensland, Australia with the “grand staircase” leading to the mezzanine.  Wedding photographers are especially fond of big staircases because they provide the ideal base for the train of a bride’s dress to fall in a photogenic way.

Penta Mezzanine’s conceptual diagram of mezzanine financing.

The idea of mezzanine financing emerged in the US early in the twentieth century and is a highly variable mechanism involving a hybrid mix of debt and equity, the use of mezzanine in this context reflecting its “middle or intermediate” position between senior debt and equity in the corporate structures.  Mezzanine was a niche in US capital markets until the early post-war years when un-met demand in the gap between conventional (secured) bank loans and equity investment was identified and in the buoyant trans-Atlantic economy of the era it proved ideally suited to the increasingly popular leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and mergers & acquisitions (M&A) because of the flexibility and the acceptance of subordinated forms of capital.  By later standards the use of mezzanine instruments was on a small scale but the techniques developed lad the basis for the boom in corporate financing which flared in the newly deregulated environment of the 1980s and 1990s when the volume LBOs & M&A activity was such that some institutions were able to devote entire divisions to service the market.

Mezzanine financing is now part of financial industry in just about every developed economy and provides a source of capital combines debt and equity, almost always at a higher cost than traditional arrangements so while not regarded as a “last resort” in the way that term in used in banking, the device exists to fill the shortfall (ie the bit “in the middle”) between need and what conventional sources decide is justified by the risk.  Demanding (1) a premium interest rate to provide capital which is subordinated to other debts in the case of liquidation or bankruptcy & (2) taking an equity position are the ways the risk-reward math can be made to work for both parties and mezzanine financing continues to exists because it fulfills a need, thus ensuring there is both supply & demand to sustain the model.

Probe

Probe (pronounced prohb)

(1) To search into or examine thoroughly; question closely; an investigation, especially by a legislative committee, of suspected illegal activity.

(2) To examine or explore with or as if with a probe; the act of probing.

(3) A slender surgical instrument for exploring the depth or direction of a wound, sinus, or the like.

(4) In aerospace, an unmanned exploration spacecraft.

(5) A projecting, pipe-like device on a receiving aircraft used to make connection with and receive fuel from a tanker aircraft during refuelling in flight.

(6) A device, attached by cord to an oven that can be inserted into food so the oven shuts off when the desired internal temperature of the food is reached.

(7) In biochemistry, any identifiable substance that is used to detect, isolate, or identify another substance, as a labelled strand of DNA that hybridizes with its complementary RNA or a monoclonal antibody that combines with a specific protein.

(8) In electronics, a lead connecting to or containing a measuring or monitoring circuit used for testing; a conductor inserted into a waveguide or cavity resonator to provide coupling to an external circuit

1555–1565: From the Medieval Latin proba (examination (“test” in Late Latin)), derivative of probāre (to test, examine, prove), from probus (good).  The Spanish tienta (a surgeon's probe) came from tentar (try, test).  The dual meanings in Latin ((1) instrument for exploring wounds etc and (2) an examination) persist in English.  The sense "act of probing" is from 1890, from the verb; the figurative sense of "penetrating investigation" is from 1903.  The use to describe a "small, unmanned exploratory spacecraft" is attested from 1953; unrelated to this is the curious popularity of aliens subjecting humans to examinations with anal probes in stories of alien abduction.  Probe is a noun & verb, probing & probed are verbs, probeable is an adjective and probingly is an adverb; the noun plural is probes.

The Voyager 1 space probe launched by NASA in 1977.

Originally (with companion probe Voyager 2) a twelve-year mission, it’s expected to remain a functional scientific instrument until 2025 and is now some 24 billion km (15 billion miles) away, the most distant human-made object from Earth (only our radio waves have travelled further).  There are some who claim the probes have already reached inter-stellar space while other astronomers  maintain the edge of our solar system extends much further than was once thought and they're travelling still through a sort of cosmic limbo.  The Voyager probes, even after they're long inert, may continue their journeys for thousands or millions of years because, although the universe is a violent, destructive swirl, there is vast distance between threatening stuff.

Of the many inconsistencies in English spelling, none must be seem more mystifying to anyone learning the language than those words affected by the “mute e rule”: the inflections and derivatives formed from words ending in a “silent e”.  The question always is: to e or not to e?  Deciding whether to retain or omit the last letter is easier than once it was because dictionaries seem now to be more consistent in their approach, presumably one of the benefits of their shift to becoming on-line resources although, for historic reasons, we seem stuck with what seem ancient, arbitrary decisions such as ageing and icing continuing in peaceful co-existence.  So, there are words where centuries of particular spellings have become entrenched that to suggest a change would be absurd and that means any rule would have both examples which conform and those which defy.  Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) acknowledged the impossibility of constructing a rule of absolute validity but as a guide offered (1) an indicative rule and (2) a guide to the exceptions.  The (1) rule was “when a suffix is added to a word ending in a mute e, the mute e should be dropped before a vowel but not before a consonant”.  The condition for (2) an exception was “the mute e should be kept even before a vowel if it is needed to indicate the soft sound of a preceding g or c or to distinguish a word from another with the same spelling”.  Probe is such an exception because if one has a probe, it’s helpful to know if something (or someone according to those who have been abducted by aliens) is probeable and that adjective can’t be spelled “probable” because that has another meaning.

The Mazda MX-6-based Ford Probe (1988-1997, left) and the car it was once mooted to replace, the long-serving “Fox” Mustang (1978-1993).

A competent, inoffensive coupé, the Ford Probe would probably have existed for a decade as a moderate success and then, having been discontinued without a direct replacement, been soon forgotten, had it not been for the furore which ensued when the idea surfaced it might be the company’s replacement for the Mustang.  In 1987, by means of a “controlled leak” the pro-Mustang faction (the beer drinkers) within the corporation let it be known Ford was planning to replace the Mustang with a modified version of a Mazda (championed by the chardonnay faction).  The reaction was vociferous & voluminous, Ford’s mailbox (and in 1987 mail came in envelopes with stamps attached) soon overflowing with complaints, the idea of a front-wheel-drive (FWD) Mustang anathematic, the absence of a V8 apparently beyond comprehension (although the Mustang II had suffered that fate in 1973-1975).  They also put their money where their poison pens were because the previously moribund sales of Mustangs suddenly spiked, the thought that this might be the last chance to buy a “proper” rear-wheel-drive (RWD), V8 powered Mustang enough to push the thing back up the sales chart.  The flow of letters and cash proved enough to persuade Ford and the platform was reprieved, the Mustang surviving to this day as a unique and highly profitable niche.  The Mazda co-project however was well advanced so the decision was taken to proceed and offer both and, badged as the Ford Probe, the modified Mazda lasted a decade-odd and it’s doubtful it cannibalized much of the Mustang’s market, its competition the other mid-sized, FWD Japanese coupés which had become popular.  A typical Japanese product, well engineered with a high build-quality, the Probe was a success (though it never realised Ford’s hopes in overseas markets) and when production ended, the only reason it wasn’t replaced was because the demographic buying the things had shifted to other segments, notably the sports utility vehicles (SUV) which would soon dominate.

1969 M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16 (Durango 95)

The still controversial film A Clockwork Orange (1971) was based on the dystopian 1962 novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess (1917–1993).  At the time shocking in its depiction of violence, it's set some time in the future and as part of the verisimilitude the car used in the "driving scene" was a M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16, one of three built.  Only 34 inches (864 mm) high (the prototype was 5 inches (125 mm) lower!), it emerged from the studios of the designers of the quirky Marcos sports cars which were idiosyncratic even by the standards of the cottage industry of low-volume sports cars which flourished in the UK until the early 1970s.  Although utterly impractical (passengers entered and exited through a sliding glass roof) it certainly looked futuristic but performance was disappointing because of the limited power. To create the mid-engined Probe, the designers used the engine and gearbox from the modest Austin 1800, moving the FWD package amidships, an approach later adopted by a number of manufacturers.  Had it been built using the mechanicals from the contemporary Cadillac Eldorado (which improbably had a 472 cubic inch (7.7 litre) V8 driving the front wheels through a chain-drive transaxle), assuming such a thing could be made to fit, it would have offered performance to match the promise of the looks.  In the film, the Probe was given the name “Durango 95” a name which seems to have chosen for no particular reason although the “95” may have been an allusion to 1995, decades away when the book was written.  Although A Clockwork Orange is perhaps not something with which manufacturers would like their products to be associated, many have since used the Durango name for a variety of purposes.

Newspaper headline writers like the word “probe”.  Within the industry, short, punchy words like “probe”, “jab”, “fix”, “bid” et al are part of a subset of English called “headline language”.

Driving scene in A Clockwork Orange (1971): 1969 M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16 (Durango 95).

Bathtub

Bathtub (pronounced bath-tuhb or bahth-tuhb)

(1) A tub in which to bathe, variations including permanent installations (either built-in fixtures or free-standing units) in a bathroom and (now less commonly in the developed world) portable constructions (historically of metal or timber although for military and outdoor use, foldable bathtubs (of leather or canvas) have a long history).

(2) An automotive style (most common in the 1950s) in which the bodywork resembled an upturned bathtub.

1825–1835: The construct was bath + tub and the previous related word was “wash-tub”, dating from the turn of the seventeenth century.  Bath was from the Middle English bath & baþ, from the Old English bæþ (bath), from the Proto-West Germanic baþ, from the Proto-Germanic baþą (bath), from the primitive Indo-European root bhē- (to warm).  The corresponding inherited verbs were bathe & beath.  The Old English bæð (“an immersing of the body in water, mud, etc” or “a quantity of water etc., for bathing”) was from the Proto-Germanic badan (the source also of the Old Frisian beth, the Old Saxon bath, the Old Norse bað, the Middle Dutch bat and the German Bad), also from the primitive Indo-European root bhē- with the appended –thuz (the Germanic suffix indicating “act, process, condition” (as in “birth”; “death”)). The etymological sense is of heating, not immersing.  Tub was from the late fourteenth century Middle English tubbe & tobbe (open wooden vessel made of staves), from the Middle Dutch & Middle Flemish tubbe or the Middle Low German tubbe & tobbe, of uncertain origin.  Etymologists have concluded there’s no link with the Latin tubus or the English tube but it was related to the Old High German zubar (vessel with two handles, wine vessel) and the German Zuber.  In the seventeenth century tub was slang for “pulpit”, thus since the 1660s a “tub-thumper” was a particularly forceful preacher who literally “thumped his fists on the pulpit” to emphasize some point; the use was later extended beyond the church to politicians and others who spoke in a loud or dramatic way.  The English city in the county of Somerset (in Old English it was Baðun) was so called from its hot springs.  The convention now probably is to refer to any permanently installed unit as a “bath”, a bathtub something portable.  The word can appear both as bath tub and bath-tub.  Bathtub is a noun and bathtubby is an adjective (bathtubesque & bathtubbish (resembling or characteristic of a bathtub) were jocular constructions); the noun plural is bathtubs.

Lindsay Lohan with claw-footed bathtub, music video release of Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father) (2005).

A “bathtub cockpit” is a cockpit with recessed seating, so that a pilot or driver is sitting in a bathtub-shaped space.  It was often seen in aircraft but the classic example was that used in the delicate, cigar-shape voiturettes built to contest the Formula One World Championship during the 1.5 litre era (1961-1965).  The bathtub curve is a concept from reliability engineering, describing a particular form of the hazard function taking into account three categories of failure rate.  As a theoretical model it assumes the shape of a bathtub (sectioned in the middle and viewed from the side), the three regions being (1) a decreasing failure rate due to early failures, (2) a constant failure rate due to random failures and (3) an increasing failure rate due to wear-out failures.  The slang term “bathtub gin” is a US prohibition era (1919–1933) term to refer to a gin (or other spirit) of such dubious quality it suggests it may have been distilled by an unskilled amateur in their bathtub.  It’s a similar form to “gutrot”, “moonshine” etc and was applied sometimes to any form of illicit alcohol and not just distilled spirit.  “Bathtub racing” literally describes bathtubs being raced.  One of sports more obscure niches, the variations have included (modified) bathtubs being rowed or sailed on waterways or raced on land (either powered, pushed or run on downhill courses.  In economics, the “bathtub theorem” is the charming illustration of the idea that capital accumulation = production - consumption.  The metaphor is that of the water running from the taps (production) and that exiting from the plughole (consumption).  That seems obvious but where the inflow is too great for the capacity of the plughole, the water in the tub (capital) overflows, flooding the place, an elegant explanation of the effects of over-production which can induce recessions or depressions.

Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax KCB.

In the intricate hierarchy of the UK’s honours system, The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is an order of chivalry dating from 1725 and the name really is derived from the use of a bathtub, the reference being to the medieval ceremony under which knighthoods were conferred, bathing being a symbol of purification.  More than most British honours, the Order of the Bath has a tangled history, at times limited to the military and with various restrictions on the numbers of members.  One thing which was once constant however was that recipients were entitled to the post-nominal letters “KB” after their name.  This changed in 1815 when the order was re-organized into three classes: Knight Grand Cross (GCB), Knight Commander (KCB) & Companion (CB) and the transition was handled effortlessly by the experts but one thing which these days annoys those who worry about such things (and there are a few) is that inexpert journalists and others not do sometimes attach a KB to a Knight Bachelor.  The Knight Bachelor actually attracts no post-nominal letters; it’s a kind of “entry-level” knighthood and recipients are not inducted as a member of one of the orders of chivalry (although there have been plenty of awards of the latter to those whose lives have been far removed from the chivalrous, not all of them from the colonies or Dominions).  The Order of the Bath also provided one of the amusing anecdotes in the unpromising field of diplomatic protocol.  In 1939, when Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax KCB (1880-1967) was introduced at a ceremony in Moscow, protocol required his honors be read out in full, the Russian translator rendering his KCB as рыцарь умывальник (rytsar' umyval'nik) (Knight of the Wash Tub).  The Russians honor guard couldn’t help but laugh and fortunately, the admiral shared their amusement.

In December 1917, the US satirist & critic HL Mencken (1880–1956) published a fictitious history of the bathtub.  Intended as an amusing hoax, the story was so convincing that quickly it wildly was promulgated, appearing even in reference works and medical journals.  Around a century later, a similar hoax was perpetrated when a university student edited the electric toaster’s Wikipedia page, claiming it had been invented by a wholly factitious Scottish scientist.  The technique was exactly the same as Mencken’s: use the dry factual approach (ie the classic Wikipedia template) and it remained on-line for some years, presumably because the origin of the toaster is not a matter of great interest or controversy.

1949 Nash Ambassador (left), Evelyn Ay (1933–2008), Miss America 1954, in her “bathtub” Nash Rambler (the official car of the beauty pageant) (centre) and 1957 Nash Ambassador which still showed the legacy of the earlier, more extravagant bathtub styling cues.

The best remembered of the “bathtub” cars were first built in the late 1940s by manufacturers introducing their first genuinely new post-war lines (most of the cars produced in 1945-1946 were slightly updated versions of those which had last been made early in 1942).  Within the industry, engineers first called the motif “envelope styling” but the more evocative (and certainly more accurate because an up-turned bathtub came to mind more than an envelope) “bathtub” quickly became the preferred slang.  Echoes of the lines which became familiar in the next decade can be seen in some of the low-volume and experimental bodies seen in the 1920s & 1930s, many an evolution of the realization the “teardrop” shape was close to aerodynamically optimal (at least on paper, the implications of lift and down-force then not widely understood).  Among the large US manufacturers, Nash and Hudson pursued the bathtub style to its most extreme and persisted the longest.  In the early 1950s, the aerodynamic advantages were apparent and combined with the inherently good weight-distribution afforded by their low-slung “step-down” construction, the Hudson Hornet dominated NASCAR racing between 1951-1954, despite its straight-six engine having both less power and displacement than some of the competition.  Except for the odd quirky niche, the bathtub styling didn’t make it into the 1960s and nor did the Nash & Hudson nameplates, the former in 1954 absorbing the latter to created AMC (American Motor Corporation) and in 1957, both brand-names were retired.

Evolution of the Porsche “bathtub” style 1948-1965, the lines of the original a direct descendant of a pre-war racing car.  1948 Porsche 356-001 (the Gmünd Roadster) (top), 1955 Porsche 356 pre-A 1500 Speedster (centre) and 1965 Porsche 356SC Coupé (bottom).  Although the “bathtub” motif was abandoned with the end of 356 production, the 356’s contribution to the lines of the 911 (introduced in 1964 as the 901) is obvious and in the sixty-odd years since, stylistically, not much has changed.

Reich

Reich (pronounced rahyk or rahykh (German))

(1) With reference to Germany or other Germanic agglomerations, empire; realm; nation.

(2) The German state, especially (as Third Reich) during the Nazi period.

1871: From the German Reich (kingdom, realm, state), from the Middle High German rīche, from the Old High German rīhhi (rich, mighty; realm), from the Proto-West Germanic rīkī, from the Proto-Germanic rīkijaz & rikja (rule), a derivative of rīks (king, ruler), from the Proto-Celtic rīxs and thus related to the Irish rí.  The influences were (1) the primitive Indo-European hereǵ- (to rule), from which is derived also the Latin rēx and (2) the primitive Indo-European root reg (move in a straight line) with derivatives meaning "to direct in a straight line", thus "to lead, rule".  Cognates include the Old Norse riki, the Danish rige & rig, the Dutch rike & rijk, the Old English rice & rich, the Old Frisian rike, the Icelandic ríkur, the Swedish rik, the Gothic reiki, the Don Ringe and the Plautdietsch rikj.

Reich was first used in English circa 1871 to describe the essentially Prussian creation that was the German Empire which was the first unification of the central European Germanic entities.  It was then described simply as “the Reich” with no suggestion of any sense of succession with the Holy Roman Empire.  “Third Reich” was an invention of Nazi propaganda to “invent” the idea of Hitler as the inheritor of the mantle of Charlemagne and Bismarck.  The word soon captured the imagination of the British Foreign Office, German “Reichism” coming to be viewed as much a threat as anything French had ever been.

The term Fourth Reich was popularized by Edwin Hartrich’s (1913-1995) book The Fourth and Richest Reich (MacMillan 1980), a critique both of the modern German state and its influence on the EEC / EC which would become the EU.  The term is still sometimes used by those criticizing the German state, the not so subtle implication being Berlin gradually achieving by other means the domination of Europe which the Third Reich attempted by military conquest.  Fourth Reich is also sometimes used, erroneously to describe the two-dozen day “administration” of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; German head of state 30 April-23 May 1945) who in Hitler’s will was appointed Reich President (and therefore head of state); the so-called “Flensburg Government”.  That’s wrong and the only difference of opinion between constitutional theorists is whether it was either the mere coda to the Third Reich or mostly a charade, the German state ceasing to exist by virtue of events on the ground, a situation the finalization of the surrender arrangements on 8 May merely documented.  The latter view, although reflecting reality, has never been widely supported, the formal existence of a German state actually required to ensure the validity of the surrender and other administrative acts.

The word "Reich" does sometimes confuse non-specialists who equate it with the German state, probably because the Third Reich does cast such a long shadow.  Murdoch journalist Samantha Maiden (b 1972) in a piece discussing references made to the Nazis (rarely a good idea except between experts) by a candidate in the 2022 Australian general election wrote:

The history of the nation-state known as the German Reich is commonly divided into three periods: German Empire (1871–1918) Weimar Republic (1918–1933) Nazi Germany (1933–1945).

It's an understandable mistake and the history of the German Reich is commonly divided into three periods but that doesn't include the Weimar Republic.  The point about what the British Foreign Office labelled "Reichism" was exactly what the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), as a "normal" democratic state, was not.  The Reich's three epochs (and there's some retrospectivity in both nomenclature and history) were the Holy Roman Empire (1800-1806), Bismarck's (essentially Prussian) German Empire (1871-1918) & the Nazi Third Reich (1933-1945).  

Sketch of the orgone accumulator.

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was a US-based Austrian psychoanalyst with a difficult past who believed sexual repression was the root cause of many social problems.  Some of his many books were widely read within the profession but there was criticism of his tendency towards monocausality in his analysis, an opinion shared by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in his comments about Reich’s 1927 book Die Funktion des Orgasmus (The Function of the Orgasm), a work the author had dedicated to his fellow Austrian.  Freud sent a note of thanks for the personally dedicated copy he’d been sent as a birthday present but, brief and not as effusive in praise Reich as had expected, it was not well-received.  Reich died in prison while serving a sentence imposed for violating an injunction issued to prevent the distribution of a machine he’d invented: the orgone accumulator.

The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London (United Artists UAD 60037/8; referred to usually as Space Ritual) (1973).

The orgone accumulator was an apparently phoney device but one which inspired members of the SF-flavored band Hawkwind to write the song Orgone Accumulator which, unusually, was first released on a live recording, Space Ritual, a 1973 double album containing material from their concerts in 1972.  Something of a niche player in the world of 1970s popular music Hawkwind, perhaps improbably, proved more enduring than many, their combination of styles attracting a cult following which endures to this day.  

The First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire

Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century.

The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the early Middle Ages, the popular identification with Germany because the empire’s largest territory after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany.  On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III (circa 760-816; pope 795-816) crowned Charlemagne (747–814; King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of the Romans (and thus retrospectively Holy Roman Emperor) from 800) as Emperor, reviving the title more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.  Despite the way much history has been written, it wasn’t until the fifteenth century that “Holy Roman Empire” became a commonly used phrase.

Leo III, involved in sometimes violent disputes with Romans who much preferred his predecessor and the Byzantine Empress in Constantinople, had his own reasons for wishing to crown Charlemagne as Emperor although it was a choice which would have consequences for hundreds of years.  According to legend, Leo ambushed Charlemagne at Mass on Christmas day, 800 by placing the crown on his head as he knelt at the altar to pray, declaring him Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans), in one stroke claiming staking the papal right to choose emperors, guaranteeing his personal protection and rejecting any assertion of imperial authority by anyone in Constantinople.  Charlemagne may or may not have been aware of what was to happen but much scholarship suggests he was well aware he was there for a coronation but that he intended to take the crown in his own hands and place it on his head himself.  The implications of the pope’s “trick” he immediately understood but, what’s done is done and can’t be undone and the lesson passed down the years, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) not repeating the error at his coronation as French Emperor in 1804.

Some historians prefer to date the empire from 962 when Otto I was crowned because continuous existence there began but, scholars generally concur, it’s possible to trace from Charlemagne an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, describing a gradual assumption of the imperial title and role.  Not all were, at the time, impressed. Voltaire sardonically recorded one of his memorable bon mots, noting the “…agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."  The last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II (1768–1835; Holy Roman Emperor 1792-1806) dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after Napoleon's creation of the Confederation of the Rhine.

The Second Reich, the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty, 1871-1919.

German Empire, 1914.

The German Empire existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the abdication of Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Kaiser (Emperor) & King of Prussia 1888-1918) in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic, remembered as the Weimar Republic (1919-1933).  The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, most ruled by royal families.  Although Prussia became one of several kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory and certainly the greatest military power and the one which exercised great influence within the state; a joke at the time was that most countries had an army whereas the Prussian Army had a country.

To a great extent, the Second Reich was the creation of Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898; chancellor of the North German Confederation 1867-1871 and of the German Empire 1871-1890), the politician who dominated European politics in the late nineteenth although his time in office does need to be viewed through sources other than his own memoirs.  When Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I and Germany’s defeat.  Following the Kaiser’s abdication, the Empire collapsed in the November 1918 revolution and the Weimar Republic which followed, though not the axiomatically doomed thing many seem now to assume, was for much of its existence beset by political and economic turmoil.  

The Third Reich, the Nazi dictatorship 1933-1945

Nazi occupied Europe, 1942.

“Nazi Germany” is in English the common name for the period of Nazi rule, 1933-1945.  The first known use of the term “Third Reich” was by German cultural historian Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925) in his 1923 book Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich).  Van den Bruck, a devotee of Nietzsche and a pan-German nationalist, wrote not of a defined geographical entity or precise constitutional arrangement, his work instead exploring a conceptualized (if imprecisely described) and idealized state of existence for Germans everywhere, one that would (eventually) fully realize what the First Reich might have evolved into had not mistakes been made, the Second Reich a cul-de-sac rendered impure by the same democratic and liberal ideologies which had doomed the Weimar Republic.  Both these, van den Bruck dismissed as stepping stones.

In the difficult conditions which prevailed in Germany at the time of the book’s publication, it didn’t reach a wide audience, the inaccessibility of his text not suitable for a general readership but, calling for a synthesis of the particularly Prussian traditions of socialism and nationalism and the leadership of a Übermensch (a idea from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) which describes a kind of idealized man who probably can come into existence only of society is worthy of him), his work had obvious appeal to the Nazis.  It was said to have been influential in the embryonic Nazi Party but there’s little to suggest it contributed much beyond an appeal to the purity of race and the idea of “leader” principle, notions already well established in German nationalist traditions.  The style alone might have accounted for this, Das Dritte Reich not an easy read, a trait shared by the dreary and repetitive stuff written by the party “philosopher” Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946).

A book channeling Nietzsche wasn’t much help for practical politicians needing manifestos, pamphlets and appealing slogans and the only living politician who attracted some approbation from van den Bruck was Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce & prime minister of Italy 1922-1943).  The admiration certainly didn’t extend to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945); unimpressed by his staging of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch (8–9 November 1923), van den Bruck dismissed the future Führer with a unusually brief deconstruction, the sentiment of which was later better expressed by another disillusioned follower: “that ridiculous corporal”.

The name “Third Reich did however briefly enter the Nazi’s propaganda lexicon.  The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich (German Empire) between 1933-1943 and Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Empire) between 1943 to 1945 but so much of what was fascism was fake and the Nazis were attracted to the notion of claiming to be the successor of a German Empire with a thousand year history, their own vision of the Nazi state being millennialist .  After they seized power, the term “Third Reich” would occasionally be invoked and, more curiously, the Nazis for a while even referred to the Weimar Republic as the Zwischenreich (Interim Reich) but as the 1930s unfolded as an almost unbroken series of triumphs for Hitler, emphasis soon switched to the present and the future, the pre Beer-Hall Putsch history no longer needed.  It was only after 1945 that the use of “Third Reich” became almost universal although the earlier empires still are almost never spoken of in that way.

Van den Bruck had anyway been not optimistic and his gloominess proved prescient although his people did chose to walk the path he thought they may fear to tread.  In the introduction to Das Dritte Reich he wrote: “The thought of a Third Empire might well be the most fatal of all the illusions to which they have ever yielded; it would be thoroughly German if they contented themselves with day-dreaming about it. Germany might perish of her Third Empire dream.”  He didn’t live to see the rise and fall of the Third Reich, taking his own life in 1925, a fate not unknown among those who read Nietzsche at too impressionable an age and never quite recover.

Nice

Nice (pronounced nahys)

(1) Pleasing; agreeable; delightful.

(2) Amiably pleasant; kind.

(3) Characterized by, showing, or requiring great accuracy, precision, skill, tact, care, or delicacy.

(4) Showing or indicating very small differences; minutely accurate, as instruments.

(5) Minute, fine, or subtle.

(6) Having or showing delicate, accurate perception.

(7) Refined in manners, language etc.

(8) Virtuous; respectable; decorous.

(9) Suitable or proper; carefully neat in dress, habits, etc; dainty or delicate (especially of food).

(10) Having fastidious, finicky, or fussy tastes (sometime used as over-nice in a disparaging sense).

(11) Coy, shy, or reluctant (obsolete).

(12) Unimportant; trivial (obsolete).

(13) Uncertain; delicately balanced (obsolete).

(14) Wanton (obsolete).

(15) A Mediterranean port and the capital of the department of Alpes-Maritimes, in south-east France; a resort on the French Riviera; founded by Phocaeans from Marseille circa third century BC; it was ceded to France in 1860 by Sardinia.  Ancient Nicaea is from the Ancient Greek nikaios (victorious) from nikē (victory); Nizzard (a resident of Nice) is derived from Nizza, the Italian form of the city name.

(16) In the UK, an acronym for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, a body established in 1999 to provide authoritative guidance on current best practice in medicine and to promote high-quality cost-effective medical treatment in the National Health Service (NHS).

(17) In computing (the Unix operating system), a program used to trigger a script or program with a specified priority.

(18) In the slang of drug users, being well affected. 

1250–1300: From the Middle English nice, nyce & nys (foolish, stupid), from the Old French nice, niche & nisce (silly, simple, foolish, ignorant) from the Latin nescius (to be ignorant, incapable), the construct being ne- (the Latin negative prefix) + sci- (stem of scīre (to know)) + -us (the Latin adjectival suffix); the more familiar Latin form being nescire (to know not, be ignorant of), the construct being ne- + scire, the ultimate source of which was the primitive Indo-European ne (not).  Use of the noun "nice" is restricted to the Unix operating system, where it describes a program used to trigger a script or program with a specified priority, the implication being that running at a lower priority is "nice" (in the sense of "kind") because it leaves more resources for others (thus the specialized verbs nicing & niced).  Nice is a noun, adjective & adverb, nicity is a noun, nicer & nicest are adjectives & adverbs, niceish (nicish the archaic spelling) is an adjective, nicely is an adverb and niceness & nicety are nouns; the most common noun plural seems to be niceties.

Not always nice

Lindsay Lohan in a nice dress, LLohan Nightclub pop up event, Playboy Club, New York, October 2019: David Koma crystal-embellished cady midi dress with asymmetric hem, Valentino Rockstud 110mm pumps (part-number WS0393VOD) and Chanel mini tweed bag.

The sense development of nice is regarded as unusual by most etymologists, most of whom find the meaning shifts extraordinary, even for an adjective.  Meaning originally “silly or foolish”, by circa 1300, it meant "timid, faint-hearted", came to mean "fussy or fastidious" by the late fourteenth century, shifting (slightly) within decades to "dainty, delicate" yet meaning "precise, careful" by the 1500s, the sense preserved in Modern English in such terms as “a nice distinction” and “nice and early”.  By 1769 it’s being used to convey something "agreeable or delightful and by 1830, "kind & thoughtful" yet the variety of meanings clearly overlapped, perhaps due to generational inertia: the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), writing in 1815 of the recent battle of Waterloo which at many points could have gone either way said “It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”, using nice in yet another older sense of "uncertain, delicately balanced".

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.  As early as the 1990s, some guides were predicting the use of "nice" to convey the sardonically ironic was becoming so clichéd it might become unfashionable but it continues to flourish, possibly because it has never become associated with "lower class" speech.

The meaning shifts have created problems for historians and archivists, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noting that when analysing documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it can be difficult to say in what particular sense a writer intended "nice" to be taken.  The imprecision upset many and by 1926, the authoritative Henry Fowler (1858–1933) wrote in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage that nice had become "too great a favourite with the ladies, who have charmed out of it all its individuality and converted it into a mere diffuser of vague and mild agreeableness."  Pace Henry Fowler but it is handy for a language to include a word which so encapsulates “vague and mild agreeableness” and in any of its meanings, nice is not without synonyms.  So the semantic history is varied and, as the etymology and the obsolete senses attest, any attempt to insist on only one of its present senses as correct will not be in keeping with actual use.  The criticism usually extended is nice is used too often and has become a cliché lacking the qualities of precision and intensity that are embodied in many of its synonyms.  In modern use, it’s now often used ironically, something not desirable, or worse, can now be described as “nice”, the meaning well-understood.