Orchid

Orchid (pronounced awr-kid)

(1) Any terrestrial or epiphytic plant of the family Orchidaceae, often having flowers of unusual shapes and beautiful colors, specialized for pollination by certain insects and associated with of temperate and tropical regions.

(2) The flower(s) of any of these plants.

(3) A bluish to reddish purple.

1845: It was English botanist John Lindley (1799–1865) who in School Botanty (1845) coined the word orchid from the New Latin Orchideæ & Orchidaceae (Linnaeus), the plant's family name, from the Latin orchis (a kind of orchid), from the Ancient Greek orkhis (genitive orkheos) (orchid, literally "testicle") from the primitive Indo-European orghi-, the standard root for "testicle" (and related to the Avestan erezi (testicles), the Armenian orjik, the Middle Irish uirgge, the Irish uirge (testicle) and the Lithuanian erzilas (stallion).  The plant so called because of the shape of its root was said so to resemble testicles.  The earlier English (in Latin form) was orchis (1560s) and in the thirteenth century Middle English it was ballockwort (literally “testicle plant” and source of the more recent ballocks).  The extraneous -d- was added in an attempt to extract the Latin stem.  The construct was orch(is) (a plant) + -idae.   The noun plural is orchids, the field is called orchidology and an obsessive is called an orchidologist.

The irregular suffix –idae is the plural of a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek -ίδης (-ídēs), a patronymic suffix.  In Medieval writing, it was sometimes interpreted as representing instead the plural of a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek adjectival suffix -ειδής (-eidḗs) from εἶδος (eîdos) (appearance, resemblance).  It was adopted in 1811 at the suggestion of British entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850), to simplify and make uniform the system of French zoologist Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833) which divided insect orders into sections; in taxonomy, it’s used to form names of subclasses of plants and families of animals.  

Plant porn

The lure of the orchid seems to attract a certain sort of obsessive, drawn by the beauty of the flowers and their sensual fragrance, they speak of its blatant sexuality and leaf slowly through the specialized catalogues which, to them, is botanical pornography.  It’s also a business and a cut-throat one, the retail value of the trade is estimated at US$9 billion annually and, with some of the plant’s natural habitats under threat, the rarest are becoming more expensive.  Governments and quangos have become involved too, imposing regulations and limits on harvesting, the Geneva-based CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) rumored to be threatening even to seek the power to raid the private greenhouses of amateur collectors who may have violated their rules.  The idea of squads of international bureaucrats, escorted by police, turning up outside the potting shed and demanding to inspect the plants may sound Kafkaesque but according to some lawyers, there are international treaties, if ratified and recognized in domestic law, which might permit exactly that.  It's of particular interest in countries with a federal constitutional arrangement in which sub-national governments (states & provinces etc) guarantee certain protection.  In those systems, (1) international treaties are sometimes entered into by national governments which tend to be vested with the head of power encompassing foreign affairs and (2) federal constitutions usually provide that when any conflict exists between national and sub-national laws, the former shall prevail.

A Lindsay Lohan selfie with orchid, October, 2014.

Useful introductions to the weird world of the orchid-obsessed include The Orchid Thief (2000) by Susan Orlean. Orchid: A Cultural History (2016) by Jim Endersby and Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy (2000) by Eric Hansen.  Photographs can only hint at their sensual beauty but the obsessed differ on the best way to experience orchids, some saying nothing compares to their natural environment while others like to mix with them en masse, in a humid hothouse with sufficient air-flow to make them happy and permit the scent of the flowers to waft about.   

Orchidaceous

Orchidaceous (pronounced awr-ki-dey-shuhs)

(1) In botany, of, relating to, or belonging to the Orchidaceae, a family of flowering plants including (but not limited to) the orchids.

(2) Figuratively, characterized by ostentatiousness; showy; extravagant; excessive in some way.

1830–1840: From the New Latin Orchidace & Orchidaceae, the construct being orchidace + -ous.  It was English botanist John Lindley (1799–1865) who in School Botanty (1845) coined the word orchid from the New Latin Orchideæ & Orchidaceae (Linnaeus), the plant's family name, from the Latin orchis (a kind of orchid), from the Ancient Greek orkhis (genitive orkheos) (orchid (literally “testicle”)) from the primitive Indo-European orghi-, the standard root for “testicle” (and related to the Avestan erezi (testicles), the Armenian orjik, the Middle Irish uirgge, the Irish uirge (testicle) and the Lithuanian erzilas (stallion).  The plant so called because of the shape of its root was said so to resemble testicles (the Greek orkhis also was the name of a kind of olive, named also for its shape).  So striking did the writers of Antiquity fine the double roots of the plant that references appear in some texts.  The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (24-79) was (as was common at the time) also something of a naturalist and he was moved to observe: “Mirabilis est orchis herba sive serapis gemina radice testiculis simili.” (The orchis plant, also known as serapis, is remarkable with its twin roots resembling testicles.)  The noun plural is orchids, the field is orchidology and the breeders, collectors and other obsessives are called orchidologists.  Orchidaceous & orchidean are adjectives and orchidacity is a noun; the noun plural is orchidacities.

Earlier in English (in the Latinesque form) was the mid-sixteenth century orchis while in fourteenth century Middle English it was ballockwort (literally “testicle plant” and related to the more recent ballocks).  The extraneous -d- in the modern spelling was added in an attempt to extract the Latin stem and it is here to stay, the history of that the construct as orch(is) (the plant) + -id(ae).  The irregular suffix –idae is the plural of a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek -ίδης (-ídēs), a patronymic suffix which in medieval writing was sometimes interpreted as representing instead the plural of a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek adjectival suffix -ειδής (-eidḗs) from εἶδος (eîdos) (appearance, resemblance).  It was adopted in 1811 at the suggestion of British entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850), to simplify and make uniform the system of French zoologist Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833) which divided insect orders into sections; in taxonomy, it’s used to form names of subclasses of plants and families of animals.  The –ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from the Old French –ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of); a doublet of -ose in an unstressed position.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance.  In chemistry, it has a specific technical application, used in the nomenclature to name chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a lower oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix –ic (as an example, sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).

The sensual orchid.

In the spirit of the figurative use (and usually of women’s fashion), although they’re non-standard, the adjective orchidaceousness and the adverb orchidaceously have been formed and in that vein, the only thing which would make orchidaceous difficult to use as a noun would be forming the plural (orchidaceoux would appall the purists).  Usually though, those commenting on what appears on the catwalks & red carpets seem content with the comparative (more orchidaceous) and the superlative (most orchidaceous).  Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) noted the old spelling (orchis) was “applied chiefly to the English wild flowers and is accordingly the poetic and country word”.  The very idea of “the country word” is now dated and was a particular sort of regionalism: one used by those tied by linguistic tradition to rural England rather than certain locations, and if orchis endures as a literary or poetic device, it’s rare.  Of flowers, although orchidaceous can mean “of, relating to, or belonging to the Orchidaceae”, such is the beauty of orchids, those who write of the things seem drawn to use sexual imagery and rarely can resist “seductive” and other lovely plants are sometimes also described as orchidaceous.

The original etymology survives in medicine as orchidectomy although the construct of that was the Latin orchis (wrongly interpreting orchid- as the stem) +‎ -ectomy (the surgical removal of); the correct term is actually orchiectomy (the surgical removal of one or both testes).  The synonym is testectomy which is interesting because the use of that within the profession (usually by veterinarians) does not of necessity imply something surgical.  The -ectomy suffix was from the Ancient Greek -εκτομία (-ektomía) (a cutting out of), from ἐκτέμνω (ektémnō) (to cut out), the construct being ἐκ (ek) (out) + τέμνω (témnō) (to cut).  In surgery, it was appended to the name of whatever is being removed (eg an appendectomy being the surgical removal of the appendix) although it's borrowed (often for jocular purposes) by plumbers, carpenters and others in professions where there often a need to "cut things off", a "roofectomy" being the process by which a coach-builder converts a coupé (or other closed vehicle) into some sort of convertible.

Lindsay Lohan in a Gucci Porcelain Garden print gown (the list price a reputed £4,040) at the launch of the One Family NGO (non-governmental organization), Savoy Hotel, London, June 2017 (left) and Taylor Swift in Etro navy and yellow silk floral ball gown at the Golden Globes award ceremony, The Beverly Hilton, Los Angeles, January 2020 (right).

Neither cutting-edge nor retro in the conventional sense of the word, Lindsay Lohan’s gown was mostly well-received and for students of intricacy it was worth studying although probably few would have called it orchidaceous because it conveyed such a sense of the conservative; only a burqa could have been more modest.  That’s why the blue was such a good choice; in scarlet there would have been mixed messages.  Some thought it Rococo and perhaps thematically it could have been done with just a ruffled collar, the pussy bow a detail too many, but the patterning was clever and accentuated the lines.  While it’s not certain the vivid floral patterns on Taylor Swift’s gown were actually intended to be suggestive of orchids, the effect was orchidaceous.  It was an exercise in monumentalism which swished around as wafted about, recalling the flowers of an orchid in a breeze.

Orchidacity in Solod colors: Gigi Hadid and the Met Gala, New York, May 2022 (left), Sophie Monk at the TV Week Logie Awards-Gold Coast, June 2019 (centre) and Carolina Gaitan at the Academy Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, March 2022 (right).

Although dedicated (ie obsessional) orchidologists adhere to the language from botanical taxonomy (Epidendrum, Ludisia, Masdevallia, Erythraeum, Promenaea, Spathoglottis, Psychopsis, Angraecum, Encyclia cochleata et al) when classifying their collections, most people describe them in terms of the dominant color or, when a combination is particular striking (as many of the blues & purples especially are) that mix is referenced (orange/yellow, purple/white et al) but that doesn’t mean that for some object to be thought orchidaceous it must be multi-hued.  That’s because the allure of an orchid lies not in the colors but in the sensuality of the shape; they are the sexiest of flowers, soft, feminine things which seem to draw one in to be enveloped.

Giulia Salemie (b 1993, left) & Dayane Mello (b 1989, right), Venice Film Festival, Italy, September 2016.

The trend in recent years for the “naked dress” to become the red carpet motif of the era might have been thought to limit the possibility of the creations being thought orchidaceous because the focus is so much on flesh rather than fabric, of which there’s often precious little.  However, on a fortuitously warm and not too windy September day during the Venice Film Festival, two Italian models proved the naked look could be combined with voluminous folds; it was all in the cut.  For the reasons discussed, the dresses could not be called anything but orchidaceous although the internet had already suggested VVD (visible vag(ina) dress)) which in general was wrong because it correctly the hint was of a visible vulva and on that day in Venice, the models actually wore (that may not be the right word) color-coordinated (ie the same fabric as the dresses) adhesive micro-knickers, held in place with a skin-friendly surgical glue.  In a nice touch, their appearance came during the festival’s premiere of The Young Pope (the first time a television production had been included in the program).

Fugacious

Fugacious (pronounced fyoo-gey-shuhs)

(1) Fleeting; transitory.

(2) In botany, falling or fading early.

1625–1635: From the Classical Latin fugāci- (fleeing, likely to flee), stem of fugāx (apt to flee, timid, shy) and a derivative of fugere (to flee).  The construct was fugāci- + -ous.  The –ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from the Old French –ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of); a doublet of -ose in an unstressed position.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance.  In chemistry, it has a specific technical application, used in the nomenclature to name chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a lower oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ic.  For example, sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The Latin forms derived from fugiō (I flee) included fugācius, comparative of fugāciter (evasively, fleetingly).  From this root, English gained fugitive, refuge and subterfuge and the synonyms of fugacious include brief, ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting, impermanent, momentary, passing, short-lived, temporal, temporary, transient.  The related forms include the adverb fugaciously and the nouns fugaciousness & fugacity.

The most fugacious of the orchids (family: Orchidaceae), the Calypso bulbosa (Calypso orchid) is categorized a spring ephemeral, flowering with the first warmth of spring, the blooms lasting but a few days.  Calypso orchids are found most often on the forest floor, popping out from a carpet of ferns and moss.  They’re often referred to by their popular names (Fairy Slipper, Lady Slipper & Venus Slipper), rarely exceed six inches (150mm) in height and are seen usually in shades of pink, white & purple, including flecked combinations.  The blue varieties are especially rare and prized by collectors.

Lindsay Lohan selfie with fugacious orchid, October, 2014.

Greenhouse

Greenhouse (pronounced green-hous)

(1) A structure usually with a skeletal frame supporting panes of glass, Perspex or other translucent materials in which conditions such as temperature, humidity and irrigation are maintained within a desired range, used for cultivating delicate plants or growing plants out of season.

(2) In UK military slang, the clear material of an aircraft’s cockpit (now rare).

(3) In automotive design, the glass (and Perspex) between the beltline and roofline (also called the "glasshouse").

(4) In surgical medicine, a structure shielding an operating table and designed to protect from the transmission of bacteria.

(5) In climatology, as “greenhouse effect”, a description of the general global consequences of the increasing atmospheric concentrations of “greenhouse gases”, notably carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) et al).

(6) In climatology, a hot state in the global climate.

(7) To place (plants) in a greenhouse and (figuratively), to nurture something in some way to promote growth or development.

1655–1665: From the late Middle English greenhouse (house for growing greens), the reference to the vegetables grown (the produce of various colors but much of the foliage was green during the growing process).  The construct was green + house and the form green-house, while now less common, still runs in parallel.  Green was from the Middle English grene, from the Old English grēne, from the Proto-West Germanic grōnī, from the Proto-Germanic grōniz, from the primitive Indo-European ghreh (to grow).  The related forms include the North Frisian green, the West Frisian grien, the Dutch groen, the Low German grön, green & greun, the German grün, the Danish & Norwegian Nynorsk grøn, the Swedish grön, the Norwegian Bokmål grønn and the Icelandic grænn.  The noun use to refer to the color developed from the earlier references to vegetables and having “grened”.  House was from the Middle English hous & hus, from the Old English hūs (dwelling, shelter, house), from the Proto-West Germanic hūs, from the Proto-Germanic hūsą (and comparable with the Scots hoose, the West Frisian hûs, the Dutch huis, the German Haus, the German Low German Huus, the Danish hus, the Faroese hús, the Icelandic hús, the Norwegian Bokmål hus, the Norwegian Nynorsk hus & Swedish hus).  The Germanic forms may have been from the primitive Indo-European skews & kews-, from skewh & kewh- (to cover, to hide).  The word supplanted the non-native Middle English meson & measoun (house), from the Old French maison (house).  The now rare (and effectively probable extinct) plural housen was from the Middle English husen & housen.  In the Old English the nominative plural was hūs.  Greenhouse is a noun & verb and greenhousing & greenhoused are verbs; the noun plural is greenhouses.

Greenhouse: The Orchid House, Kew Gardens.

As structures used to create artificial, environments, optimized for the cultivation of plants, greenhouse has several synonyms.  The earlier noun conservatory dates from the 1560s in the sense of “a preservative”, a development of the adjectival use (having the quality of preserving), from the Latin conservator (keeper, preserver, defender), an agent noun from conservare.  The meaning “a place for preserving or carefully keeping anything” emerged in the 1610s and when used for the growing of flowers & vegetables, such structures came in the 1650s be called greenhouses.  In English, the formal use in musical education as “a school of music; a place for the performing arts” dates from 1805, from the Italian conservatorio or the French conservatoire (places of public instruction and training in some branch of science or the arts, especially music), from the Medieval Latin conservatorium.  The first places so described were Italian and the word came into use in France after the Revolution (1789); the Italian word was used in English after 1771.  Among gardeners and horticulturalists, by the mid-nineteenth century earthier terms such as “planthouse” and “hothouse” were in use, even in places of serious scientific study such as London’s Kew Gardens (the Royal Botanic Gardens) which, for practical reasons, adopted for various greenhouses pragmatic descriptions such as “Palm House”, “Orchid House” et al.

Lindsay Lohan with a pair of ratchet loppers, pruning cuttings for the potting shed, May 2015.

A twentieth century coining was the “poly house”, an allusion to the use of thick, translucent polythene which in the 1930s, supplied at low cost in rolls by the US petrochemical industry, was instant popular, enabling greenhouses to be built quickly and cheaply.  The related “poly tunnel” & “poly-tube” described the use of the same material to produce even smaller micro-environments with the fabrication of long, “roofs” (semi-circular with the appearance of a tube although without a base) which covered the rows of plants; depending on the crop, such structures could be only a few inches high.  There was also the “potting shed” which was different in that it wasn’t a place with any form of climate control and simply a place a gardener (professional or amateur) could work with their tools, pots etc falling conveniently to hand.  “Potting shed” however has been a “loaded” euphemism and metonym since the publication of DH Lawrence’s (1885–1930) Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) which wasn’t generally available in the UK until 1961 when R v Penguin Books was decided.  That was a test case of recent legislative amendments in which a jury found the novel satisfied the new provision that the work was “in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern”.  According to some (and they still exist in the Conservative Party), society has since been in decline.  In the novel, more was fertilized in the potting shed than the plants.

August 1912: By the time reports about global warming appeared in the popular press, understandings of the basics of human-induced climate change had been understood for almost a century.

Most reputable sources define the greenhouse effect (on Earth and other heavenly bodies) as something like: “The radiative effect of all infrared absorbing constituents in the atmosphere”.  The operation of the greenhouse effect is not unique to the Earth of the post-industrial revolution but what makes it historically unusual is (1) the rapidity of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and (2) that so much of the increase is due to human activity (mostly the burning of fossil fuels).  In the early nineteenth century, French scientists had published papers describing what would later come to be known as the greenhouse effect, deconstructing the consequences of differing compositions in the Earth’s atmosphere and it was a Swedish meteorologist who first applied the term “greenhouse”, an example of the use of a term the general population would find more accessible than the sometime arcane language of science.  The term “greenhouse seems first to have appeared in print in 1937 but for decades, perception of the phenomenon as a problem was restricted to a handful of specialists and even in the scientific community there were many who viewed it as something benign or even beneficial, there being an awareness a rising temperature would make more of the planet habitable and the increasing volume of CO₂ would encourage plant growth, thus benefiting agriculture.  At the time, climate science was in its infancy, satellites and the big computers needed to model the climate system were decades away and the data on which to develop theories simply didn’t exist.  Additionally, it wasn’t until well into the second half of the century those emissions began radically to increase, the assumptions long that any possible problems probably wouldn’t emerge for centuries.

A chilly looking Greta Thunberg (b 2003), during School Strike for Change, protesting against global warming outside the Swedish Parliament, November 2018.  On 3 January 2024, the world's most famous weather forecaster turned 21.

So “greenhouse effect” never really worked as a term successfully to convey the degree of seriousness the issue deserved.  Accordingly, academics, the activist communities and sympathetic journalists began in the late 1970s to use other words but “global warming” although accurate, really wasn’t much of an improvement because “warm” is a generally “positive” word, used to covey the idea of “kindness, friendliness or affection” and while many people probably thought their climate was already hot enough, more (especially those in the “global north”) would probably have welcomed generally warmer weather.  So that didn’t gain the necessary traction and by the early 1990s, “climate change” began to be used interchangeably with “global warming”, the old “greenhouse effect” by now abandoned.  The scientific rationale for this was that in the narrow technical sense, global warming describes only increased surface warming, while climate change describes the totality of changes to Earth's climate system.  However, until well into the twenty-first century, for most of the population in the First World, what in retrospect have come to be understood as manifestations of climate change, things were hardly obvious.  By the 2020s, the linguistic implications in messaging seemed finally understood and “climate crisis”, “climate emergency” and “climate catastrophe” became the preferred terms and while the “climate change deniers” seem now less numerous (at least some perhaps having perished from heat stroke or drowned in one of the “once in 500 year floods” which seem now frequent).  In the political discourse, "climate crisis" and "global heating" seem now the popular forms. 

The Automotive Greenhouse

1970 Series 2 Fiat 124 Coupé (left) and 2022 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE (right).

The Fiat and Chevrolet represent two approaches to the coupé greenhouse (styled also as the "glasshouse") and both attracted some comment from critics, the Fiat because it was judged around an inch (25 mm) too high to achieve aesthetic success and the Chevrolet because it was too low (the estimates of by how much varied).  The Italian car however was much admired and enjoyed strong demand for most of its life (1967-1975 and given what followed the end of production was probably premature), and at least some of the success was attributable to the comfortable cabin with its generous headspace and the greenhouse which provided outstanding visibility in all directions, am important aspect of what was coming to be understood as “passive safety” (as opposed to “active safety” elements such as seat-belts or crumple-zones).  The low roof-line on the Chevrolet was thought by some to give the car a “cartoonish” quality although it’s a subjective judgment whether that detracted from the look and certainly it lent the thing a low-slung, sporty appearance which was after all presumably what most appealed to the target market.  The practical drawback was the abbreviated greenhouse meant a dark cabin and some compromise in the ease of ingress & egress although descriptions suggesting the space was “claustrophobic” or “oppressive” seem hyperbolic.  As a retro take on the original Camaro (1967-1969), the fifth (2010-2015) & sixth (2016-2024) generation models were well executed although greenhouse and other details unsettled some.  Ms Thunberg approves of neither although, depending on how one deconstructs the numbers, it's debatable which contributes more to the climate crisis.

Standard and Spezial coachwork on the Mercedes-Benz 300d (W189, 1957-1962).  The "standard" four-door hardtop was available throughout the run while the four-door Cabriolet D was offered (off and on) between 1958-1962 and the Spezials (landaulets, high-roofs et al), most of which were for state or diplomatic use, were made on a separate assembly line in 1960-1961.  The standard greenhouse cars are to the left, those with the high roof-line to the right.

The 300d (W189, 1957-1962) was a revised version of the W186 (300, 300b & 300c; 1951-1957) which came to be referred to as the "Adenauer" because several were used as state cars by Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967; chancellor of the FRG (West Germany) 1949-1963).  Although the coachwork never exactly embraced the lines of mid-century modernism, the integration of the lines of the 1950s with the pre-war motifs appealed to the target market (commerce, diplomacy and the old & rich) and on the platform the factory built various Spezials including long wheelbase "pullmans", landaulets, high-roof limousines and four-door cabriolets (Cabriolet D in the Daimler-Benz system).  The high roofline appeared sometimes on both the closed & open cars and even then, years before the assassination of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963), the greenhouse sometimes featured “bullet-proof” glass.  As well as Chancellor Adenauer, the 300d is remembered also as the Popemobile (although not then labelled as such) of John XXIII (1881-1963; pope 1958-1963).

Two from the Daimler-Benz Spezial line: The 1965 Papal Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) Landaulet (left) built for Pope Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978) (left) and the one-off short wheelbase (SWB) 600 Landaulet (right) built for racing driver Graf von Berckheim (Count Graf Philipp-Constantin Eduard Siegmund Clemens Tassilo Tobias von Berckheim, 1924-1984).

The Papal 600 used the higher roof-line which was a feature of some of the Spezial Pullmans & Pullman Landaulets.  The attractions of the high-roof coachwork was (1) greater headroom which afforded more convenient ingress & egress (a practical matter given the cars were sometime parade vehicles used by royalty and military dictators, both classes given to wearing crowns or big hats) and (2) the extended greenhouse made it easier for crowds to see the occupants.  Count von Berckheim's car used the standard roof-line and was the only SWB Landaulet, the other 59 all built on the LWB Pullman platform.

Mania

Mania (pronounced mey-nee-uh or meyn-yuh)

(1) Excessive excitement or enthusiasm; craze; excessive or unreasonable desire; insane passion affecting one or many people; fanaticism.

(2) In psychiatry, the condition manic disorder; a combining form of mania (megalomania); extended to mean “enthusiasm, often of an extreme and transient nature,” for that specified by the initial element; characterized by great excitement and occasionally violent behavior; violent derangement of mind; madness; insanity.

(3) In mythology, the consort of Mantus, Etruscan god of the dead and ruler of the underworld.  Perhaps identified with the tenebrous Mater Larum, she should not be confused with the Greek Maniae, goddess of the dead; In Greek mythology Mania was the personification of insanity.

(4) In popular use, any behavior, practice, cultural phenomenon, product etc enjoying a sudden popularity.

1350–1400: From the Middle English mania (madness), from the Latin mania (insanity, madness), from the Ancient Greek μανία (manía) (madness, frenzy; enthusiasm, inspired frenzy; mad passion, fury), from μαίνομαι (maínomai) (I am mad) +‎ -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā).  The –ia suffix was from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia), which form abstract nouns of feminine gender.  It was used when names of countries, diseases, species etc and occasionally collections of stuff.  The Ancient Greek mainesthai (to rage, go mad), mantis (seer) and menos (passion, spirit), were all of uncertain origin but probably related to the primitive Indo-European mnyo-, a suffixed form of the root men- (to think)," with derivatives referring to qualities and states of maenad (mind) or thought.

The sense of a "fad, craze, enthusiasm resembling mania, eager or uncontrollable desire" dates from the 1680s, the use in English in this sense borrowed from the French manie.  In Middle English, mania had sometimes been nativized as manye. The familiar modern use as the second element in compounds expressing particular types of madness emerged in the 1500s (bibliomania 1734, nymphomania, 1775; kleptomania, 1830; narcomania 1887, megalomania, 1890), the origin of this being Medical Latin, in imitation of the Greek, which had a few such compounds (although, despite popular opinion, most were actually post-classical: gynaikomania (women), hippomania (horses) etc).

The adjective maniac was from circa 1600 in the sense of "affected with mania, raving with madness" and was from the fourteenth century French maniaque, from the Late Latin maniacus, from the Ancient Greek maniakos, the Adoption in English another borrowing from French use; from 1727 it came also to mean "pertaining to mania." The noun, "one who is affected with mania, a madman" was noted from 1763, derived from the adjective.  The adjective manic (pertaining to or affected with mania), dates from 1902, the same year the clinical term “manic depressive” appeared in the literature although, perhaps strangely, the condition “manic depression” wasn’t describe until the following year although the symptoms had as early as 1857 been noted as defined as “circular insanity”, from the from French folie circulaire (1854).  It’s now known as bi-polar disorder.  The constructions hypermania & submania are both from the mid-twentieth century.  The adjective maniacal was from the 1670s, firstly in the sense of "affected with mania" and by 1701 "pertaining to or characteristic of a maniac; the form maniacally emerged during the same era.  Mania is quite specific but craving, craze, craziness, enthusiasm, fad, fascination, frenzy, infatuation, lunacy, obsession, passion, rage, aberration, bee, bug, compulsion, delirium, derangement, desire & disorder peacefully co-exist.

Noted manias

Anglomania: An excessive or undue enthusiasm for England and all things English; rarely noted in the Quai D'Orsay.

Anthomania: An extravagant passion for flowers; although it really can’t be proved, the most extreme of these are probably the orchid fanciers.  Those with an extravagant passion for weed are a different sub-set of humanity and are really narcomanics (qv) although there may be some overlap. 

Apimania: A passionate obsession with bees; beekeepers tend to be devoted to their little creatures so among the manias, this one may more than most be a spectrum condition.

Arithmomania: A compulsive desire to count objects and make calculations; noted since 1884, it’s now usually regarded as being within the rubric of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Bibliomania: A rage for collecting rare or unusual books.  This has led to crime and there have been famous cases.

Cacodaemomania: The obsessive fixation on the idea that one is inhabited by evil spirits.  To the point where it becomes troublesome it’s apparently rare but there are dramatic cases in the literature, one of the most notorious being Anneliese Michel (1952–1976) who was subject to the rites of exorcism by Roman Catholic priests in the months before she died.  The priests and her parents (who after conventional medical interventions failed, also become convinced the cause of her problems was demonic possession) were convicted of various offences related to her death.  Films based on the events leading up to death have been released including The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Requiem (2006) and Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (2011).

Callomania: The obsessive belief in one’s own beauty, even when to all others this is obviously delusional.

Dipsomania: The morbid craving for alcohol; in pre-modern medicine, it was used also to describe the “temporary madness caused by excessive drinking”, the origin of this being Italian (1829) and German (1830) medical literature.

Egomania: An obsessive self-centeredness; it was known since 1825 but use didn’t spike until Freud (and others) made it widely discussed after the 1890s and few terms from the early days of psycho-analysis are better remembered.

Erotomania: Desperate love, a sentimentalism producing morbid feelings.

Flagellomania: An obsessive interest in flogging and/or being flogged, often as one’s single form of sexual expression and thus a manifestation of monomania (qv).  The English Liberal Party politician Robert Bernays (1902-1945), the son of a Church of England vicar, was a flagellomanic whose proclivities were, in the manner of English society at the time, both much discussed and kept secret.  He was also an illustration of the way such fetishes transcend other sexual categories.

Gallomania: An excessive or undue enthusiasm for France and all things French; rarely noted in the British Foreign Office.

Graphomania: A morbid desire to write.  Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527; Italian diplomat, philosopher and political advisor of the Renaissance) attributed many of the problems he suffered to his graphomania and he was right, his sufferings because of what he wrote, when it was written and about whom.

Hippomania: An excessive fondness for horses; an affliction which often manifests as the intense and passionate interest in horses developed by some girls who join pony clubs and fall in love.

Hypermania: There’s a definitional dualism to hypermania; it can mean either an extreme example of any mania or, as used by clinicians, specifically (and characterized usually by a mental state with high intensity disorientation and often violent behavior), a severe case of bipolar disorder (the old manic-depression).  The earlier term was hypomania (A manic elation accompanied by quickened perception), one of the earliest (1882) clinical terms from early-modern psychiatry.

Kleptomania: The obsessive desire to steal; in early (1830s) use, the alternative form was cleptomania.  The klepto element was from the Ancient Greek kleptes (thief, a cheater), from kleptein (to steal, act secretly), from the primitive Indo-European klep- (to steal), from the root kel- (to cover, conceal, save) and was cognate with the Latin clepere (to steal, listen secretly to), the Old Prussian au-klipts (hidden), the Old Church Slavonic poklopu (cover, wrapping) and the Gothic hlifan (to steal) & hliftus (thief).  The history of the word kleptomania is of interest also to sociologists in that as early as the mid-nineteenth century, there was controversy about the use by those with the capacity to buy the services of doctors and lawyers were able to minimize or escape the consequences of criminal misbehavior by claiming a psychological motive.  The argument was that the “respectable” classes were afforded the benefit of this defense while the working class were presumed to be inherently criminal and judged accordingly.  The same debate, now also along racial divides, continues today.

Logomania: An obsession with words.  It differs from graphomania (qv) which is an obsession to write; logomania instead is a fascination with words, their meanings and etymologies.

Megalomania: Delusions of greatness; a form of insanity in which the subjects imagine themselves to be great, exalted, or powerful personages.  It was first used in the medical literature in 1866 (from the French mégalomanie) and came to be widely applied to many politicians and potentates the twentieth century.

Micromania:  "A form of mania in which the patient thinks himself, or some part of himself, to be reduced in size", noted first in 1879 and twenty years later used also in reference to insane self-belittling.  In the twentieth century and beyond, micromania was widely used, sometimes humorously, to refer to things as varied as the sudden consumer in interest in small cars to the shrinking size of electronic components.   

Monomania: An insane obsession in regard to a single subject or class of subjects; applied most often in academic, scientific or political matters but can be used about anything where the overriding mental impulses are perverted to a specific delusion or the pursuit of a particular thing.

Morphinomania: A craving for morphine; one of the earliest of the words which noted specific addictions, it dates from 1885 but earlier still there had been morphiomania (1876) and morphinism (1875) from the German Morphiumsucht.  In the medical literature, morphinomaniac & morphiomaniac rapidly became common.

Narcomania: The uncontrollable craving for narcotic drugs and a term which is so nineteenth century, the preferred modern form being variations of "addiction".

Necromania: An obsession to have sexual relations with the bodies of the dead although, perhaps surprisingly, practitioners (those who treat rather than practice the condition) classify many different behaviors which they list under the rubric of necromania, some of the less confronting being a morbid interest in funeral rituals,  morgues, autopsies, and cemeteries.   Those whose hobbies include the study of the architecture of crypts and tombs or the coachwork of funeral hearses might be shocked to find there are psychiatrists who classify them in the same chapters as those who enjoy intimacy with corpses.

Nymphomania: The morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire in women.  Perhaps the most celebrated (and often sought) of the manias, it dates from 1775, in the English translation of Nymphomania, or a Dissertation Concerning the Furor Uterinus (1771) by French doctor Jean Baptiste Louis de Thesacq de Bienville (1726-1813), the construct being the Ancient Greek nymphē (bride, young wife; young lady) + mania.  The actual condition is presumed to have long pre-dated the term.

Onomatomania: One obsessively compelled to respond with a rhyming word to the last word spoken by another (something possible even with orange and silver).  It’s thought to co-exist with other conditions, especially schizophrenia.

Phonomania: An uncontrollable urge to murder; those who suffer this now usually described as the more accessible “homicidal maniac”.  When applied especially to serial killers, the companion condition (just further along the spectrum) is androphonomania which, if properly argued, could be a defense against a charge of mass-murder but counsel would need to be most assiduous in jury selection.

Plutomania: The obsessive pursuit of wealth (and used sometimes in a clinical setting to describe an "imaginary possession of wealth").

Pyromania: A form of insanity marked by a mania for destroying things by fire.  It was used in German in the 1830s and seemed to have captured the imagination of Richard Wagner (1813–1883); the older word for the condition was incendiarism.

Rhinotillexomania: Nose picking. Gross, but a thing which apparently often manifests when young but fades, usually of its own volition or in reaction to the disapprobation of others.

Trichotillomania: The compulsion to pull-out one’s hair.  The companion condition is trichtillophagia which is the compulsive eating of one’s own hair, one of a remarkable number of eating disorders.

Definitional variations in the criteria for mania, DSM-IV & DSM-5

The study and classification of idea of manias had been part of psychiatry almost from its origin as a modern discipline although the wealth of details and fragmentation of nomenclature would come later, the condition first noted “increased busyness”, the manic episodes characterized by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926; a founding father of psychiatric phenomenology) as those of someone who was “…a stranger to fatigue, his activity goes on day and night; work becomes very easy to him; ideas flow to him.” 

Whatever the advances (and otherwise) in treatment regimes, little has changed in some aspects of the condition.  In the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, 2013), the primary criterion of mania remains “a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood” and “abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy” but did extend duration of the event to qualify for a diagnosis.  In the DSM-IV (1994), the criterion for a manic episode only required “a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least one week” whereas DSM-5 now requires in addition the presence of “abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy”; moreover, these symptoms must not only last at least one week, they must also be “present most of the day, nearly every day.”

The changes certainly affected the practice of the clinician, DSM-5 substantially increasing the complexity associated with the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder, no longer requiring that clinically significant symptoms which may be present should be ignored.  All those years ago, Kraepelin conceptualized manic-depression as a single illness with a continuum of episodic presentations including admixtures of symptoms which have long since been considered opposing polarity.  DSM-5 thus represents an advance with the possibility of improved treatment outcomes because it enables clinicians to diagnose mood episodes and specify the presence of symptoms inconsistent with pure episodes; a major depressive episode with or without mixed features and manic/hypomanic episodes with or without mixed features.

The revisions in DSM-5 also reflect the efforts of the editors over several decades to simplify diagnostic criteria while developing more precise categories of classification.  In the DSM-IV, both bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder were included in one chapter of mood disorders and a “mixed state” was a subtype of bipolar I mania, a diagnosis of a mixed state requiring that criteria for both a manic episode (at least three or four of seven manic symptoms) and a depressive episode (at least five of nine depressive symptoms) were met for at least one week.  In DSM-5, bipolar disorder and depressive disorders have their own chapters, and “mixed state” was removed and replaced with “manic episode with mixed features” and “major depressive disorder with mixed features.”