Heaven & Hell

Heaven (pronounced hev-uhn)

(1) In theology, the abode of God, the angels, and the spirits of the righteous after death; the place or state of existence of the blessed after the mortal life.

(2) The celestial powers; God (initial capital letter and often in the plural).

(3) A metonym for God.

(4) In architecture, as heavens (used with a singular verb), a wooden roof or canopy over the outer stage of Elizabethan theatres.

(5) In poetic and (mostly historic) scientific & legal use, often in the plural, the sky, firmament, or expanse of space surrounding the earth, including the moon, Sun, planets & stars.

(6) A place or state of supreme happiness, often expressed as “heaven on earth”.

(7) A component of expression (variously singular & plural), used in exclamatory phrases of surprise, exasperation, emphasis etc.

(8) In mythology, a place, such as Elysium or Valhalla, to which those who have died in the gods' favour are brought, there eternally to dwell in happiness.

Pre 900: From the Middle English heven, hevin, heuen & hewin (heaven, sky), from the Old English heofon (home of God (and earlier) the visible sky, firmament), probably from the Proto-Germanic hibin (heaven, sky), a dissimilation of himin and source also of the Middle Low German heven, the Old Saxon heban, the Old Swedish himin, the Low German heben, the Old Norse himinn, the Old Danish himæn, the Gothic himins, the Old Frisian himul, the Scots heaven & hewin, the Dutch hemel and the German Himmel (heaven, sky).  The mysterious Proto-Germanic hibin (which existed also as hebn) is of uncertain and disputed origin.  It was cognate with and possibly the rare Icelandic and Old Norse hifinn (heaven, sky), which may be dissimilated forms of the Germanic root was more familiar in the Old Norse himinn (heaven, sky).  Among etymologists, the most popular alternative root is the Proto-Germanic himinaz (cover, cloud cover, firmament, sky).  A now archaic alternative spelling (in both sacred and secular writing) which persisted in poetry into the twentieth century because of the rhythmic advantages was heav'n.

Stairway to Heaven, sculpture by David McCracken, Bondi, Sydney, Australia.

From the late fourteenth century, the word in English assumed the meaning "a heavenly place; a state of bliss”.  The plural use in sense of "sky" may have emerged from a simple habit of use influenced by other words although a link has been suggested with the Ptolemaic theory of space as composed of many spheres.  It had also been used in the same sense in the singular in Biblical language, as a translation of Hebrew plural shamayim.  The earliest adjectival sense “heaven-sent” is attested from the 1640s.

Hell (pronounced hel)

(1) In theology, the place or state of eternal punishment of the wicked after death; the abode of evil and condemned spirits; Gehenna or Tartarus.  The ruler of hell is said often to be Satan; the Devil.

(2) Any place or state of torment or misery; something that causes torment or misery.

(3) The powers of evil.

(4) The abode of the dead; Sheol or Hades.

(5) Extreme disorder or confusion; chaos.

(6) In informal use, something remarkable of its kind (as in “one hell of a…”).

(7) A receptacle into which a tailor throws scraps and off-cuts (a practice in many industries).  In commercial printing, as the hellbox, a box into which a printer throws discarded type.

(8) A general purpose utterance of in swearing or for emphasis, now generally regarded as not actually obscene; used as an intensifier to express surprise, anger, impatience etc; an general intensifier in many phrases.

(9) A gambling house or booth in which bets are placed (archaic).

(10) In metal-working, to add luster to, burnish silver or gold (now rare).

Pre 900: From the Middle English, from the Old English hel & hell (nether world, abode of the dead, infernal regions, place of torment for the wicked after death), it was cognate with the Old High German hella & hellia (source of the Modern German Hölle), the Icelandic hella (to pour), the Norwegian helle (to pour), the Swedish hälla (to pour), the Old Norse hel & hella and the Gothic halja.  It was related to the Old English helan (to cover, hide) and to hull.  The Old English gained hel & hell from the Proto-Germanic haljō (the underworld) & halija (one who covers up or hides something), the source also of the Old Frisian helle, the Old Saxon hellia, the Dutch hel, the Old Norse hel, the German Hölle & the Gothic halja (hell).  The meaning in the early Germanic languages was derived from the sense of a "concealed place", hence the Old Norse hellir meaning "cave or cavern", from the primitive Indo-European root kel (to cover, conceal, save).  In sacred art, hell, whether frozen or afire, is almost always depicted as a cavernous place.

The English traditions of use may have been influenced by Norse mythology and the Proto-Germanic forms.  In the Norse myths, Halija (one who covers up or hides something) was the name of the daughter of Loki who rules over the evil dead in Niflheim, the lowest of all worlds (nifl "mist") and it was not uncommon for pagan concepts and traditions to be grafted onto Christian rituals and idiom.  Hell was used figuratively to describe a state of misery or bad experience (of which there must have been many in the Middle Ages) since the late fourteenth century and as an expression of disgust by the 1670s.  In eighteenth century England, there were a number of Hellfire Clubs, places where members of the elite could indulge their immoral proclivities.  They were said to attract many politicians.

Lindsay Lohan at a promotion for John John "Made in Heaven" jeans, Rua Oscar Freire, Sao Paulo, Brazil, March 2013.

It proved adaptable in the English vernacular.  To have all hell break loose is from circa 1600; to hell in a handbasket is attested by 1867 (an in a context implying earlier use) although it may simply have been derivative of to heaven in a handbasket from 1853 which was a happy phrase implying an easy passage to a nice place.  Hell or high water from 1874 seems to have been a variation of the earlier between the devil and the deep blue sea and the first recorded instance of wishing someone would go to hell seems to have been in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice although it’s hard to believe it hadn’t before then been a familiar oral form and one with which the bard may well have been acquainted.  The snowflake’s (later snowball's) chance in hell meaning "no chance" is from 1931 and till hell freezes over meaning "never" is documented from 1832.  To do something just for the hell of it is from 1921, to ride (a horse) hell for leather is from 1889 and hell on wheels was noted (in the US) first in 1843, a reference to the river steamboats which, for propulsion, used large wheels rather than propellers and gained a general popularity after 1869 after it was used in reference to the temporary vice-ridden towns established along the path of the US transcontinental railroad.  Unrelated to this was the earlier (1580s) Scottish hell-wain (a phantom wagon seen in the sky at night).

What happens to snowflakes and snowballs in hell is interesting.  In the writings drawn from the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, hell is certainly a hot place, the “fire and brimstone” of the New Testament used in the US as a description of a certain type of preacher.  However, in the Divine Comedy (1320), Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321) located hell in Earth’s innermost core and he wrote of its characteristics in ways consistent with Aristotelian dynamics; it was mostly hot and fiery but in some places frozen and immobile:

When we were down in that ditch’s darkness, well below the giant’s feet, my gaze still drawn by the wall above us, I heard a voice say: ‘Watch where you walk. Step so as not to tread upon our heads, the heads of wretched, weary brothers.’ At that I turned to look about. Under my feet I saw a lake so frozen that it seemed more glass than water. Never in winter did the Austrian Danube nor the far-off Don, under its frigid sky, cover their currents with so thick a veil as I saw there.

This prison of ice is reserved for a variety of different species of traitors. Depending on the severity of their offense, they may only be frozen from the waist down; or, they may be completely immersed.

A vision of Hell: Pandæmonium (1841) by John Martin (1789–1854).

Dante lists the intricate layers of location for the punishment of sinners and evildoers and while some are hot, the ninth and innermost circle, reserved for the worst of the worst, is icy cold.  Dante goes further, noting that even within the ninth circle, there are gradations, the worst and coldest spot kept for Judas Iscariot.  A colder conception of hell than that familiar from scripture but the idea of a cold hell exists also in Buddhism and some Christian texts of the first millennium.  Dante’s marvelous work was however for centuries neglected and others took the chance to make sure the Biblical stories held sway, John Milton (1608-1674) in Paradise Lost (1667-1674) having the last word, convincing all that Hell was no place for snowflakes.  So today it remains.

“At once, as far as Angel’s ken, he views

The dismal situation waste and wild.

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light; but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all, but torture without end

Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.”

For those wondering about the fate of certain friends and family members or contemplating their own eternal fate, Dante’s Lonely Planet Guide to Hell summarizes the nine circles thus:

(1) Limbo: The first circle of Hell is Limbo, where the souls of the unbaptized and virtuous pagans reside; while there are no actual punishments, those in Limbo are forever denied the joy of God's presence.  Limbo, frankly, was a bit of a fudge, concocted by medieval theologians as a work-around to avoid the worst injustices of strict Christian rules (notably the souls of the stillborn being sent to Hell on the basis of being unbaptized).  Still it was orthodox Christian thought in Dante’s time and although in subsequent centuries there was much debate, it never went away.  Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022), no stranger to dancing on the head of a pin, seemed both to clarify and cloud the waters by saying limbo was only ever “medieval conjecture” and given there is no explicit answer from Scripture, people seem still free to make of it what they will.

(2) Lust: The second circle is for the lustful.  They are punished by being blown around in a violent storm, symbolizing their lack of self-control.  Perhaps surprisingly, given the fixation many modern denominations seem to have upon anything to do with sex, historically the Christian churches regarded lust usually as the “least to be condemned” of the seven deadly sins, the basis of that, as Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) pointed out: it was a sin “of the flesh and not the soul” and thus both understandable and forgivable as would one forgive one’s pet cat for eating the meat; it’s just what cats do.  Lust (sometimes expressed as “lechery) included not only fornication but also rape, adultery and “unnatural acts upon beasts of the field” so it was an uncharacteristically generous view from the pulpit.  Of course, given the well-documented predilection of priests, bishops and the odd pope to lustful ways, the relaxed view may have been corporate self-interest.

(3) Gluttony: The third circle is for the gluttonous. They are forced to lie in a vile slush of filth, symbolizing the garbage of their excessive consumption.  Theologians had a broader view of gluttony than is now current in that they were thinking also in terms of social justice; one person’s excessive consumption meant there were others who went hungry.  Some also explored aspects of gluttony as an example of “the idolatry of food” and thus a violation of one of the Ten Commandments.  One improbable supporter of this was Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) who re-purposed the notion in his forlorn attempt to convince Italians it was time to re-create the Roman Empire, lambasting his countrymen for “…following the French into the decadence of elevating cooking to high art while letting the blade of the sword fall to rust.”

(4) Greed: The fourth circle is for the greedy. They are divided into two groups and forced to push heavy weights, symbolizing their excessive desire for material wealth.  Again it’s linked to worship of a “false idol”, the “worship of money” being the “root of all evil” long accepted as orthodox Christian theology (often acknowledged rather than practiced) although the distinction seems lost in many of the modern evangelical congregations (notably those which sing, clap and strum guitars) where it’s made clear McMansions, surf-skis and a big TV in as many rooms as possible is most Godly.

(5) Wrath: The fifth circle is for the wrathful. They are submerged in the river Styx and must fight each other on the surface.  Wrath does seem a curious basis on which to be condemned to Hell, if only because if too rigorously enforced there would be few not damned.  The point seemed to be that the Christian message was not that one should never feel anger (indeed the Church would clarify this by saying mere anger was “neutral”) but that one should “practice Christian charity” and never allow wrathful thoughts to lead to the harming of one’s neighbour. 

(6) Heresy: The sixth circle is for the heretics. They are trapped in flaming tombs, symbolizing their rejection of God's love.  Heresy really is about as bad as it gets because it means one has disagreed with what the priest says and that means defying the pope who, as the “Vicar of Christ on Earth” is uniquely able to express the thoughts of God.  So, what the pope says goes which is why he is “infallible” in such matters; the internal logic is perfect.  While wrathful souls may end up in the fifth circle, a wrathful God is going to punish heretics by sending them for eternity to the sixth: “Vengeance is Mine” said the Lord.

(7) Violence: The seventh circle is divided into three rings, each for a different type of violence: against others, against oneself, and against God. The punishments include being boiled in blood, being transformed into trees and bushes, and being chased and mauled by dogs with sharp teeth.  It’s been hard for critics to resist the feeling Dante enjoyed writing of the sufferings in the seventh circle more than any other, possibly because of the exalted positions many of the victims enjoyed during however many of their four score & ten they managed.  The sanction of violence against self (suicide & attempted suicide) entered the criminal law systems in many jurisdictions and it’s only in recent decades that in some places it has been reclassified from crime to health condition of some type.

(8) Fraud: The eighth circle is for the fraudulent. It is divided into ten bolgias (from the Italian bolgia used here in the sense of “ditch”), each for a different type of fraud. The punishments include being whipped by demons, being immersed in excrement, and being transformed into reptiles.  In the matter of fraud, Dante casts a wider net than the offence captures in the modern imagination where it ranges from shop-lifting to Bernie Madoff’s (1938–2021) Ponzi scheme.  Instead of involving just financial matters, Dante encompasses fraud in a kind of omnibus bill which captures sins as diverse as those who corrupt others with flattery, those who seduce the innocent with lies and deception, those who practice magic & sorcery, those who corrupt the truth by the pedalling of fake news as well as, most obviously, thieves.

(9) Treachery: The ninth circle is for the treacherous. It is divided into four rounds, each for a different type of treachery. The punishments include being frozen in ice, being gnawed on by a three-headed demon, and being devoured by Lucifer himself.  Dante makes clear the sin of treachery is the worst of all and because there’s obviously some overlap with the offences which justify being sent to the other eight, the ninth is reserved for the worst of the worst.  Interestingly, the ninth circle is the part of Hell Dante describes as an icy, frozen place, something usually ignored in pop-culture, film-makers and Satanists staging their video clips almost always preferring fire, molten lava and red-hot pokers.  It could though be worse still because in the centre of Hell sits miserably the Devil, cast there for committing the ultimate sin: his personal treachery against God which saw him forever banished from Heaven.

Benedict XVI looking for Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023).  Canto XVIII, part of the eighth circle of Hell, in Divine Comedy (circa 1494), illustrated by Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi; circa 1445–1510).

Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos

The legal doctrine cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos (whoever's is the soil, it is theirs all the way to Heaven and all the way to Hell) is a historic principle of property law which holds the owner of a piece of land enjoys rights not just to the defined soil but to the air above (stretching to Heavens, ie to infinity) and what lay below (as far as Hell, ie all the way down); the legal shorthand is ad coelum.  Developments in technology, such as radio waves and flight, have much modified the doctrine but it continues, with limitations, to operate.  Some of the airspace above a piece of land can be recognized as a property right and as something therefore transferable but the right does not extend far, a position modified also in international law as long ago as the 1950s to accommodate the implication of satellites and, later, space flight, realizing the implications of discussions which had been going on since the advent of flight.  The rights to ownership of what lies below the soil and even the right to deny access to others now varies between jurisdictions but has long since ceased to be absolute.

Although there are no specific references in the record, it may be the origin of the maxim lies in in Roman or Jewish law, or at least customary practice.  The earliest surviving mention in English law is recorded in Bury v Pope (1587) Cro Eliz 118, [1653] EngR 382, (1653) Cro Eliz 118, (1653) 78 ER 375 (B), the Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), holding “the earth hath in law a great extent upwards, not only of water as hath been said, but of aire, and all other things even up to heaven, for cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum, as it is holden.”, finding for a plaintiff seeking to erect a structure which would block to his neighbor’s window the light which had fallen there for thirty years.  Even then however, limits were noted, Sir Edward saying ad coelum might be defeated if a claim for a right in conflict could be found to have existed prior to 1189, the significance of the date being the beginning of the reign of King Richard I (1157–1199; King of England 1189-1199) and, mentioned here as a legal fiction, the end point of time immemorial.

English law seems to have picked it up from the writings of thirteenth century Italian jurist Accursius (circa 1182–1263), and is said to have been used in common law during the reign of Edward I (1239–1307; King of England 1272- 1307) and the legal framework (air above and ground below) was defined by William Blackstone in his treatise Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766).

Land hath also, in its legal signification, an indefinite extent, upwards as well as downwards. Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum, is the maxim of the law, upwards; therefore no man may erect any building, or the like, to overhang another's land: and, downwards, whatever is in a direct line between the surface of any land, and the center of the earth, belongs to the owner of the surface; as is every day's experience in the mining countries. So that the word "land" includes not only the face of the earth, but every thing under it, or over it. And therefore if a man grants all his lands, he grants thereby all his mines of metal and other fossils, his woods, his waters, and his houses, as well as his fields and meadows.

Heaven and Hell: Google and Bing

In a study hardly scientific but with a consistent methodology, a Google search for Heaven yielded 1.1 billion results and one for Hell, 784 million.  The same search using Microsoft’s Bing engine delivered 51.4 million hits for Heaven and 48.9 million for Hell.  Noting the method in the search engines' algorithm which underpins how results are delivered, this suggests 58.82% of Google’s users favor God and 41.18% prefer the Devil while Microsoft’s users are more evenly divided, 51.25% being godly and 48.75% Satanists.  Given the state of the world, both God and Satan might have hoped for better numbers but the results are unlikely greatly to have surprised either and it seems to confirm what Google have long said: Use Bing and burn in Hell.

DARVO

DARVO (Pronounced dhar-vo)

The acronym of Deny, Attack & Reverse Victim and Offender.

1997: Coined by US academic psychologist Dr Jennifer J Freyd in 1997 in Violations of power, adaptive blindness, and betrayal trauma theory in the journal Feminism & Psychology (7, 22-32).  The initialism references both the behavior of perpetrators of wrongdoing (said to be prevalent especially among sexual offenders) and the tactic used in courtrooms by counsel for the defense, attacking the victim, reversing the roles of victim and offender.

DARVO references the reaction noted sometimes of perpetrators of wrong doing.  Said to be most prevalent among sexual offenders, as a general principle, it’s treated as a response to being held accountable for their behavior and is in its simplest form an elaborated claim of self-defense or provocation, legal concepts well known (and often codified) in the criminal law as a defenses in assault-related cases.  It can be thought an instance of "victim blaming".  DARVO deconstructed is:

Deny the behavior: This is actually standard legal advice; whatever else may happen during an investigation or subsequent proceedings, an initial denial is unlikely to compromise a later defense whereas an admission, even if later recanted, can be most damaging.  An extreme example was the (unsuccessful) defense strategy of Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946; Austrian-born head of Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Nazi Germany 1943-1945) during the main Nuremberg trial (1945-1946).  Whatever he was accused of, Kaltenbrunner, a trained lawyer, denied it; when shown his signature on a documents, he denied it was his, when shown photographs in which he appeared, he denied he'd ever been there and when witnesses attested to what he'd said, he denied he'd ever met them.

Attack the individual doing the confronting: This is the basis of the claim of self-defense or provocation.  Self-defense can, depending on the fact of the case, be a good defense to a charge of assault and can succeed even in instances of death where the charge can be murder.  The defense of provocation where the prior conduct of the victim tends to be either remote in time or indirect in the sense of something said rather than a physical attack, can succeed as a defense but is introduced more often in mitigation as a factor when considering sentencing.

Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender: The perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim (who can be a whistle blower previously unknown to the perpetrator) into an alleged offender.  The variations on this theme most typically include (1) the perpetrator assumes the role of one "falsely accused" or (2) attacks the accuser's credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.

There is also Institutional DARVO which occurs when the DARVO is done by an institution (or with institutional complicity) such as when police wrongly charge rape victims with making a false complaint, institutional DARVO a form of what in the literature of political science is called “institutional betrayal”.  Structural DARVO describes the cultural construct in patriarchal societies where institutions act to protect the interest of its hegemonic components (in Western cultures those white, male and rich).  Other layers can be added to the analysis depending on the structure of a society: In non-Western cultures which can be essentially heterogeneous at what can be defined on some ethnic or racial basis, it can benefit those belonging to the dominant religious, cultural or tribal group.  Anti-DARVO is an omnibus term which encompasses both (1) the research & teaching in academic work describing ways to reduce the negative impact of DARVO (2) actual legislative and procedural innovations such as restrictions placed on the conduct of defense counsel in certain proceedings, especially sexual assault cases.

Dr Jennifer J Freyd.

The use of DARVO had for some time been controversial before Dr Freyd in 1997 coined the acronym and some jurisdictions had introduced some restriction of the extent to which defense counsel were permitted to attack victims (judges are limited in the extent to which they can intervene), especially on matters not directly connected with the offence.  It was also of interest to the mental health community, empirical research published in the literature of psychology & psychiatry both noting the prevalence of DARVO during victim-perpetrator confrontations and a striking correlation among many of the victims displaying feelings of self-blame, the more DARVO the perpetrator used during the interactions, the more victims reported feeling blameworthy for the wrongdoing.  Given the long history of the understanding of the imbalance in the power relationship between perpetrators (usually male) and victims (usually female), the findings were not suggested as unexpected.  One of the most interesting findings to emerge was the importance perpetrators place on the building of the social capital which surrounds their relationship with the victim.  For those who have committed abusive acts, the ability to influence how others perceive them and their victims is indispensable and typically this involves convincing those within their social circle (and even bystanders) either that nothing abusive happened and even if it appeared so it was not harmful.  Constructing a perception that the victim is untrustworthy gives the perpetrator a clear advantage in both social networks and the legal system.  Ultimately, in the absence of other evidence (as, inherently is often the case in these matters), in court it is a battle of competing narratives, the credibility of the authors often decisive.

Dr Freyd’s codification of DARVO however focused attention, both in law reform and the mental health community, the latter having previously documented tactics adopted by perpetrators to temper reactions to their wrongdoings, the umbrella term “outrage management” a construct which included a set of techniques employed to mitigate observers’ negative evaluations of both perpetrators and their objectionable behaviors.  Notably, this included casting doubt onto the credibility of the victim and denying the victims’ versions of events or, more typically, re-constructing the narrative to make them seem something innocuous.  Also identified were strategies intended to deflect blame for wrongdoing even if to some extent admitted: (1) Emphasize previous good behavior or (2) highlight some past suffering (thus inherently identifying as a victim).  Again, both these approaches will be familiar to defense counsel, even those never involved with sexual assault cases.  DARVO may thus be understood as generalized critique, although it’s most associated with sexual assault cases or other violence against women. 

Research about the real-world effect of DARVO is interesting. The findings do suggest that exposure to a perpetrator’s use of DARVO does to some extent displace at least some of the blame for the abusive behavior from the perpetrator to the victim, this hinting at why defense counsel so often adopt the tactic: It works.  The success of DARVO is not that it usually reverses the perception of a victim as blameless in favor of them being wholly culpable but that it introduces elements of doubt.  DARVO indeed often seemed to decreases the extent to which perpetrators are viewed as believable so the technique has the general effect of rendering both victims and perpetrators less believable.  That’s perhaps a predictable consequence of something so obviously antagonistic ("relational aggression" in the jargon).  However, as a legal tactic, success is not infrequent because the purpose of DARVO is not to actually render perpetrator as victim but to induce a perception of doubt about the victim; in criminal law, if that reaches the threshold of reasonable doubt then a jury, if properly instructed, must acquit.  In civil proceedings, cases are decided on a “balance of probabilities” but there too, the element of doubt must affect perceptions.

Amber Heard (b 1986).

DARVO would presumably have remained little more than part of the jargon of law and psychology had it not been for a well-publicized defamation lawsuit (John C Depp II v Amber Laura Heard (CL-2019-2911; Fairfax County Circuit Court)) between two celebrity actors, the matters of dispute relating to the period of their brief and clearly turbulent marriage.  It was a trial notable for reasons other than bringing the concept of DARVO to public attention, it being unusual in the US for defamation suits by public figures to succeed, based on precedent followed for some sixty years.  The substance of the suit was a piece written by Ms Heard and in 2018 published in The Washington Post.  Although the conventional legal wisdom is that where the choice exists, one sues the party with the capacity to pay whatever judgment one hopes to gain, in this case that was tempered by the robust protection courts have afforded the news media under the First Amendment to the constitution.  Mr Depp, as a public figure was anyway limited in his capacity to seek redress for defamation but his strategy seemed more risky still because of the earlier outcome in a defamation trial in an English court in which he sued a newspaper which printed allegations much more serious than anything mentioned by Ms Heard (who in her piece didn’t mention his name).  In that case (the verdict later upheld on appeal) the judge ruled against Mr Depp, noting in his judgment that "…the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms Heard by Mr Depp have been proved to the civil standard” of having, on the balance of probability, to have occurred as alleged.  The conventional wisdom, widely shared at the time, was that Mr Depp’s likelihood of success in a US court was smaller still.

Johnny Depp (b 1963).

As it was, the judge in Virginia ruled any mention of the English case or its verdict inadmissible but whether or not the jury were aware (or during proceedings made themselves aware) of the matter isn’t known.  The celebrity association aside, it was thus a trial of some technical interest, Ms Heard in her piece taking the precaution (if any doubt existed) of self-identifying as ”…a public figure representing domestic abuse".  Mr Depp sued on the grounds that Ms Heard’s statements had damaged his career and reputation; Ms Heard counter-sued on the basis that one or Mr Depp’s legal team had defamed her in statements published in an English newspaper.  Ms Heard’s defense was on the basis of (1) truth and (2) her free speech being protected by the First Amendment.

Dr Kate Manne.

The jury found for both Mr Depp and Ms Heard in their respective suits although, given the nature of the claims and the quantum of damages awarded, it could hardly be represented as anything but a victory for Mr Depp.  That of course was greeted with much commentary on social media though little of that was helpful, reflecting mostly the nature of celebrity culture, Mr Depp’s groupies both more numerous and more strident than those of his ex-wife.  More serious criticism did however discuss the extent to which the verdict could be thought a successful execution of DARVO.  Tellingly, many lawyers noted not only was it exactly that but nor was unusual, the novelty more the publicity attached to it being something between film stars.  The feminist critique was more severe, some claiming that DARVO works as well as it does because it interacts with “himpathy” (the construct him + (sym)pathy) coined by Cornell philosophy professor Dr Kate Manne (b 1983) and defined as “the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy men and boys (and the more powerful or influential the man the greater the himpathy) often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior”).

DARVO and himpathy are recent constructs but both are said to represent the long history of sympathy shown toward male perpetrators of sexual violence, women having long been expected to endure sexism (including violence) as part of their defined gender role which includes protecting men's reputation and power.  That of course went beyond being a social construct and was reflected in Western legal systems, women (and the bulk of her possessions) often literally “owned” by a husband or father and rape within marriage a statutory impossibility until well into the twentieth century.  DARVO for its success draws on those cultural biases.

Johnny Depp & Amber Heard, Australia, 2015.

Depp v Heard (a civil matter with a jury not sequestered and thus exposed to what were essentially un-mediated publicity campaigns on social media) was obviously not a typical trial and what its effect might be on later criminal matters (with which DARVO is more associated) is uncertain.  Lawyers do however note that in the US, relatively few cases actually proceed to trial and the greatest (and substantially unpublicized) effect is on prosecutors who decide not to proceed with cases (or downgrade charges) because, cognizant of the effectiveness of DARVO, take the decision there’s no reasonable prospect of securing a conviction.  This can be understood as an example of institutional DARVO, reinforcing the imbalance of power which typically exists between victim (typically female) and perpetrator (typically male) and it should not be unexpected that an institution created by the hegemon should act to protect the hegemony.  So, there was nothing contradictory when lawyers remarked of Depp v Heard that the jury’s verdict was remarkable given the evidence and unsurprising given the history.

Short

Short (pronounced shawrt)

(1) Having little length; not long.

(2) Of a person, of comparatively small stature; having little height; not tall (applied by extension to just about everything (furniture, buildings, animals et al)).

(3) Extending or reaching only a little way; having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically.

(4) Brief in duration; not extensive in time.

(5) Brief or concise, of limited duration.

(6) Rudely brief; abrupt; brusque.

(7) Low in amount; scanty.

(8) Not reaching a point, mark, target, or the like; not long enough or far enough.

(9) Below the standard in extent, quantity, duration, etc.

(10) Being of an insufficient amount; below the desired level.

(11) Of pastry, crisp and flaky; breaking or crumbling readily from being made with a large proportion of butter or other shortening.

(12) Of dough, containing a relatively large amount of shortening.

(13) Of metals, deficient in tenacity; friable; brittle.

(14) In physiology, of the head or skull, of less than ordinary length from front to back.

(15) In markets, not possessing at the time of sale commodities or stocks that one sells and therefore compelled to make a purchase before the delivery date.

(16) In markets, noting or pertaining to a sale of commodities or stocks that the seller does not possess, depending for profit on a decline in prices.

(17) In markets, as short selling, a mechanism for gambling that the future price of a stock or other security will fall.

(18) In phonetics, a sound lasting a relatively short time; denoting a vowel of relatively brief temporal duration (in popular usage denoting the qualities of the five English vowels represented orthographically in the words pat, pet, pit, pot, put, and putt)

(19) In prosody, of a syllable in quantitative verse, lasting a relatively shorter time than a long syllable.

(20) Of an alcoholic drink, a small measure (sometimes known as a shot); also used in certain UK circles to describe whisky served undiluted (straight).

(21) In ceramics, of clay, not sufficiently plastic enough to be modeled.

(22) In rope-making, hard fibre.

(23) In baseball, holding the bat with hands higher on the handle of the bat than the usual grip; a fielder standing in a fielding position closer to the home plate than in an orthodox setting (often called the short-stop).

(24) In tailoring, a description for cuts for those who are shorter; a garment, as a suit or overcoat, in such a size.

(25) In clothing, trousers, knee-length or shorter; short pants worn by men as an undergarment, usually as an alternative to closely-fitted underpants; knee breeches, formerly worn by men but now rare except in certain equestrian pursuits.

(26) In finance, bonds with a short duration until maturity.

(27) In mining, crushed ore failing to pass through a given screen, thus being of a larger given size than a specific grade; remnants, discards, or refuse of various cutting and manufacturing processes.

(28) In army jargon, of artillery, a shot that strikes or bursts short of the target (also admiralty jargon for the same concept).

(29) In electricity, as short circuit, the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it.

(30) In gambling, in the jargon of betting odds, almost even.

(31) In film-making, a production of deliberately brief duration.

(32) A truncated form of a word or phrase.

(33) In cricket, as a modifier, describing a fielding position closer to the pitch than the (nominally) standard placement (eg short third man as opposed to third man); a ball bowled so that it bounces relatively far from the batsman; a “run” disallowed by the umpire because a batter failed to touch the designated line on the pitch.

(34) In (physical) money handling, providing a total amount in cash using the fewest possible notes, ie using those of the largest denominations (mostly archaic).

(35) In computer programming, an integer variable having a smaller range than normal integers; usually two bytes in length.

Pre-900: From the Middle English adjective schort (short), from the Old English sċeort & sċort (short, not long, not tall; brief), from the Old High German scurz (short), from the Proto-West Germanic skurt, from the Proto-Germanic skurta & skurtaz (short), from the primitive Indo-European sker & ker (to cut (on the notion of “something cut off) in the same sense as the Sanskrit krdhuh (shortened, maimed, small)).  It was cognate with shirt, skirt & curt, the Scots short & schort (short), the French court, the German kurz, the Old High German scurz (short (source of the Middle High German schurz)), the Old Norse skorta (shortness, scarcity a lack (source of the Danish skorte)) & skera (to cut), the Albanian shkurt (short, brief), the Latin curtus (shortened, incomplete) & cordus (late-born (originally "stunted in growth)), the Proto-Slavic kortъkъ, the Old Church Slavonic kratuku, the Russian korotkij (short), the Lithuanian skursti (to be stunted) & skardus (steep), the Old Irish cert (small) and the Middle Irish corr (stunted, dwarfish).

The verb shorten (1510) (make shorter) had by the 1560s encompassed "grow shorter"; the earlier form of the verb was simply short, from Old English sceortian (to grow short, become short; run short, fail), the fork gescyrtan meaning "to make short".  The meaning "having an insufficient quantity" is from 1690s, the idea of someone "rude" is attested from the late fourteenth century.  The sense of someone "easily provoked; short of temper" is from the 1590s but etymologists prefer the origin being "not long (ie short) in tolerating" rather than a link to a “short fuse” which would cause gunpowder quickly to explode, although that is the modern form.  There are conventions of use: short is often used in the positive vertical dimension and used as is shallow in the negative vertical dimension; in the horizontal dimension narrow is more commonly used.  Short & brief (as opposed to long) indicate slight extent or duration and short may imply duration but is also applied to physical distance and certain purely spatial relations (a short journey) while brief refers especially to duration of time (a brief interval).  Synonyms (according to context) includes abbreviated, brief, crisp, precise, shortened, terse, low, small, thick, tiny, limited, poor, shy, slender, slim, tight, sharp, fragile, bare & compressed.  Short is a noun, verb, adverb & adjective, shortness is a noun, shorter shorted & shortest are adjectives, shorted & shorting are verbs and shortly is an adverb.

Derived forms include shortage (limited supply) (1862 from US English), shorty (short person) (1888), shortfall (something falling short of expectations) (1895), shorthand (a method of rapid writing used to record dictation or other speech) (1636), shorts (short pants) (1826 and uniquely applied to trousers, short-sleeved shirts etc never using the form) and the intriguing short shorts (1946 describing men's briefs, now often called boxer shorts (1949)), shortcoming (1670s) (an expression of inadequacy and usually used in the plural), shortly, from the Old English scortlice (briefly also in late Old English) (in short time; soon; not long), shortness (1570s), from the Old English scortnes and now used mostly in the sense of “shortness of breath”, shortstop (1837) (a fielding position in various sports (although has faded in cricket)), shortcut (1610s) (often as short-cut, (path not as long as the ordinary way)) although the term may have been longer in oral use because the figurative sense is documented from the 1580s; it’s familiar now as “a desktop pointer to files more deeply nested” since file-loading graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were bolted atop computer operating systems in the 1980s.  Shortening (1540s) (action of making short) was a verbal noun from shorten and the meaning "butter or other fat used in baking" (1796) was from shorten in the sense "make crumbly" (1733), from the adjective short in the early fifteenth century secondary sense of "easily crumbled" which may have been linked to the idea of "having short fibers" and from this, came shortbread (1755) and shortcake (1590).

The noun & verb shortlist (to cull someone from a long list and place them on a shorter list of those to be considered for advancement or preferment) dates from 1955, although the noun form short list (and short-list) had existed in this sense since 1927; the shortlist is now most celebrated in literary awards, the appearance on one something of an award in itself.  The short-timer (1906) was "one whose term or enlistment is about to expire" and was used variously in employment, sports teams and the military (the similar short-term was noted in 1901).  Short-wave (1907) was a reference to the broadcast radio wavelength less than circa 100 meters, used for long distance transmission.  Short handed in the sense of "having too few hands (employees)" dates from 1794, the use in ice hockey noted first in 1939.  Short-lived was from the 1580s and later assumed a specific technical definition in nuclear & high-energy particle physics.  The short-sleeve (of a shirt or blouse etc), although presumably a garment design of longstanding was first documented in the 1630s in a regulation issued in the Massachusetts Bay colony, forbidding "short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arme may be discovered”, a notion still part of the dress-code in some societies.  The first use of short-sighted was in the 1620s, surprisingly a reference to someone “lacking foresight”, the literal use in optometry to describe myopia not adopted until the 1640s.  The short-order was restaurant jargon from 1897, from the adverbial expression “in short order” (rapidly, with no fuss) and survives functionally as the “short order cook” in the fast food industry. The electrical short-circuit (the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it) was first described in 1854.  The use as a verb (introduce a shunt of low resistance) began in 1867; the intransitive sense from 1902 and the figurative sense (to interfere with some process and stop it) is recorded by 1899.  The short haul was US use from the 1950s to describe a commercial airline flight of short duration.  The blended noun shortgevity apparently exists as a (rarely used) back-formation from longevity.

Something described as “short and sweet”, dates from the 1530s and is something unexpectedly brief and can be applied positively, neutrally or negatively.  To be “caught short” is feeling a sudden need to urinate or defecate in circumstances where a loo is not conveniently accessible.  To “fall short” is to prove inadequate for some task or to fail to reach or measure up to a standard or expectations.  In cinema the “short film” carries a connotation of something artistic where as “shorts” are often just fillers in a commercial space.  A “short-seller” is one “shorting stocks”, a method of trading in which positions are placed to attempt to profit from a expected decline in the future price of the stock.  To be “cut short” is to be interrupted in some way by someone or something.  To have someone “by the short and curlies” is to have someone completely in one's power, an allusion to pubic hair, hence the related (and more evocative) phrase “they have us by the scrotum”.  Having the “short end of the stick” is to receive the most disadvantageous part of something (analogous with “drawing the short straw”, a literal practice used to allocate an undesirable task, usually in the absence of volunteers.  To give “short shrift” (often incorrectly expressed as “short shift”) to someone is to be dismissive.  The “long and short of it” is a brief, succinct explanation of something; gist of the matter.  Something “short for” (contraction of a name or phrase) is a more convenient form of a longer word or phrase (such as bus for omnibus and ETA for expected time or arrival).  That use dates from 1873 but the forms have altered over time: Psycho by 1921 was campus slang for psychology, use extended to cover psychologists by 1925 but this has since shifted to be a reference to psychopaths, the change thought provoked by the frequency with which the word came to be used in popular culture.  To “short change” someone originally (1903) meant not to give someone all the change they were due in a financial transaction; now mostly used figuratively.  The “short story” was obviously an ancient form of writing but as a defined genre in literature, was first labelled in 1877.  To “make short work” of something is quickly to complete the task, the phrase first noted in the 1570s. To be “short by the knees” was to be kneeling, attested since 1733; to be "short by the head" dates from the 1540s and was to be beheaded.  In 1897 a short was also a term for a street car (trolley bus), so called both because the street cars and the rides taken in them were shorter (respectively in length and duration) than railroad cars.

Of machinery short & long

The stretching of military and commercial airframes has for decades been common practice, the objective usually to increase carrying capacity (passengers, freight, weapons etc).  Unusually, with the Boeing 747 (the original jumbo jet), there were variations both short and long.  The origin of the term jumbo-jet seem to lie in the slang adopted by Boeing’s engineers circa 1960 (the first reference in print apparently in 1964), during the early planning for the project which would first fly in 1969.  Then called the jumbo-707, it was soon shortened to jumbo-jet, probably because a three syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven.  The term jumbo-jet came to refer to all wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes but has always tended most to be associated with Boeing’s 747.  Highly successful and as influential on the economics of the industry in the 1970s as the 707 had been in the 1950s, the basic platform was offered in an stretched version (747-8) in 2005, the fuselage lengthened from 232 feet (71 m) to 251 feet (77 m).

The original 747-100 series (1969, left), the elongated 747-8 (2005, centre) and the shortened 747SP (1975).

Unusually however, in 1975 Boeing announced a short version, named 747SP (Special Performance), the lower weight improving fuel consumption, permitting operators to fly long-haul routes non-stop.  Some 47 feet (14 m) shorter than the original 747-100 series, the SP entered service in 1976 but was never as commercially successful as Boeing hoped, only 45 of the projected 200-odd ever built.  Had fuel remained cheap demand may have been higher but every analysis confirmed the role envisaged for the SP would be more economically served with a new generation of two-engined jumbos and this was the path pursued both by Boeing and Airbus.

1965 Mercedes-Benz 600s: Four-door Pullman (background) & the standard saloon (foreground).

Short is a relative term.  The standard Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) at some 5.54m (218.1 inches) in length was long by most standards but informally,  it’s always been referred to as the SWB (short wheelbase) because the companion Pullman model was even more imposing at 6.24 m (245.7 inches), the elongation effected by extending the wheelbase from 3.2 m (126 inches) to 3.9 m (153.5 inches).  Some sources refer to the bigger car as a LWB but the factory designation was always Pullman.  US manufacturers habitually used a variety of wheelbases on the platforms which began to proliferate during the 1960s but didn’t much reference the dimension in advertising and never in model designations.  The British and Europeans, with smaller ranges, often did both, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz & BMW all designating their long wheelbase saloons with an appended “L” (short for Long or Lang), the Germans for decades maintaining the distinction although Jaguar found demand for their (shorter) standard wheelbase XJ declined to the extent that production was halted and the long wheelbase (LWB) became standard.  Introduced initially as an extra-cost option in 1972 on the XJ12 and Daimler Double Six, the LWB began as a niche model for those wanting more rear-seat leg room (1105 sold compared with 3008 of the SWB) but by 1974, such had the demand profile changed that the SWB platform was restricted to the lovely but doomed two-door XJC (coupé, 1975-1978).  When the XJC was cancelled, all XJs were built on the LWB platform, now marketed without the obviously superfluous “L” badge.

1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK (left) & 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K.

Mercedes-Benz didn’t always make it easy to work out what was long and what was short.  The “K” in SSK (W06, 1928-1932) is short for kurz (short) which was fine given it was a SWB version of the SS but the 770K (W07, 1930-1938 & W150, 1939-1943) was anything but short, the “K” short for kompressor (supercharger).  Further to complicate things the SSK was supercharged but presumably SSKK might have been thought a bit much although there was a lightweight version of the SSK called SSKL (W06, 1929), the “L” short for licht (light) which was, again, fine except “L” would later appear simultaneously as short forms of both licht & lang.  This duplication of meaning has seemed always to lack the expected Teutonic exactitude.

Wearing it well: Lindsay Lohan in shorts.

1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder (LWB) (left) & 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder SWB (right).

Lengthening already large saloons to provide more rear-seat space made sense for many, especially those driven by a chauffeur.  However, with sports cars or other machines intended for competition, the tendency is to shorten, this reducing weight and improving agility although the combination of high power and a short wheelbase can induce some handling characteristics best explored by expert hands.

Ferrari's 250 (1952-1964) series of sports cars, cabriolets and coupés was significant not only for the many successes achieved on the track but also because it was the first model to be built in commercially viable numbers for sale to the public.  In this, the 250 set the template for the generations of road-cars which the factory would offer in succeeding decades, models which would provide not only the basis for the lightweight, high-performance variants used in racing but much of the funding as well.  All but a handful of the 250s were built either on the original 2.6 m (102.4 inch) wheelbase or the later (SWB) of 2.4 m (94.5 inch).  After the release of the SWB (which became the factory designation), the term LWB was retrospectively (and unofficially) applied to the longer frames.

The 250s had attracted much attention in the US market but the overwhelming response was that there was demand for a luxury cabriolet.  Accordingly, Ferrari's coachbuilder Scaglietti's created a roadster called the 250 GT California Spyder on the standard (LWB) platform and between 1957-1959 produced a run of fifty.  In the days before the quantitative easing (creating money and giving it to the rich) programmes run during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis 2008-2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) when a million dollars was still a lot of money, a California Spider set a then world-record for a car sold at open auction, the hammer dropping at US$12 million.  The 250 GT Berlinetta (coupé) had been released in SWB form in 1959 and it was on this platform the revised 250 GT California Spyder SWB was shown at the 1960 Geneva Motor Show.  Using the same proportions which would become famous on the 250 GTO, as well as the revised lines, the SWB Spyder benefited from being fitted with disc brakes and an updated version of the 3.0 litre (180 cubic inch) Colombo V12.

Wearing it not so well: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; head of state (1934-1945) and government (1933-1945) in Nazi Germany) in shorts.

So much in Nazism (and fascism generally) was fake spectacle that much emphasis was always given to the few things of note which were real (Hitler’s Iron Crosses (though he rarely wore the "First Class" one), Göring's war record, Goebbels' PhD etc), the importance to the regime of spectacle at the time suspected but not fully understood until the post-war years.  All politicians carefully cultivate their image but Hitler was singularly careful and diligent in preparation, these photographs in shorts (Bavarian Lederhosen (leather trousers)) taken for him to assess their suitability for use as publicity shots.  Unsurprisingly, he rejected them as “beneath my dignity” and ordered the negatives destroyed but they ended up in the photographer's archive.